Franz Strokinand?

Catchy as heck, no matter. And that's a mighty fun video, too. LA band makes good.

Tuned v. 1 no. 6: "Constructive Summer," The Hold Steady

found on The Hold Steady's Stay Positive (2008)

Tuned In:
In lieu of a concert review (for a killer show by THS at El Rey in LA on May 5), I thought it might be more instructive to examine "Constructive Summer," which I'd like to subtitle "It's All Over but the Rocking and the Pointing" and goes a little like this:



Sneaky, huh, how it passes up the "Lust for Life" drums it name-checks in line one, the bop-bop-bop bop-bop-de-bop-bop beat that even Colin Meloy nicked for "The Sporting Life," and that improbably Carnival Cruises stole as a theme song for awhile (Iggy at sea sort of confounds me, but what do I know about marketing), to opt for something much more straight-ahead, driving--even the piano makes a lie of its name and is all tympani. But that's the song, isn't it, cutting grammar off at the pass--"Me and my friends" indeed. No surprise later our singer didn't like schooling none, is it.

For this is a you and me song, one that throws its friendly arm over our shoulders. You have to sing along to one of our psalms for the "this summer" shouts, one of which turns out to be "get hammered," and why not, this town is dying. For maybe we're in a real place and maybe we're in Springsteenvania,* for Craig Finn, The Hold Steady's leader, certainly has an affinity for the Boss. In some ways at times THS seems to write its songs the way so many filmmakers now make movies--why write from life when you can write from the art that precedes you and moves you? Life can be a bore, but the best art--by which, of course, I mean the art you like--is even thrilling in its losses, so monumental.† "My friends that aren't dying are already dead," is just such a line, how grand our misery is, it proudly asserts.

Cause it can't be true now, can it, not with a song this zippy? It puts the vim in invigorated, the way we have to raise our hands in defiance, the way we have to rock really hard and of all ridiculous things hope. Sure the song ends dead on its last two lines "Getting older makes it harder to remember…we are our only saviors/We’re gonna build something, this summer," and you have the feeling our fine Finn-y friends sing this tune each and every Memorial Day with not much to show but a hangover back to work at the mill on Tuesday. But perhaps that's ok. It sure felt good thinking about it. And while all this hope can be fit in under a 3 minute rockin' nutshell, there might be a next song that kicks in before we know it. We can all be something bigger if it's nothing more than knowing that wherever two or three of us gather in rock's name...you know, they're called power chords for a reason.

*In particular nowhere more than "Racing in the Street," the closest Bruce has ever got to Raymond Carver goes to New Jersey, although that might be as much as close as Roy Bittan has got to Raymond Carver goes to New Jersey. You can check a video of the famous 1978 Capitol Theatre in Passaic NJ version, even. Note Bruce's version is a ballad. Perhaps that's where St. Joe Strummer comes in.

† Think of the sheer joy in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, say, before people started to like him and his moves codified, or to refer to one of Tarantino's references, the Truffaut of Shoot the Piano Player, all that joy in knowing what we know and letting you know it too. Come bathe in our collective cool.

Tuned Out:
Does everyone have a water tower in his or her past? There was one right outside the gate of our high school and I never climbed it let alone took part in the annual graffiti-ing, which was never clever, just a claim that Class of ____ was here and you damn well better remember it. (Till Class of ____+1 comes along.) Might my life be different, having looked down from such a lofty, and no doubt slightly drunken, perch, I do not know.

And that was even with hearing the call of St. Joe Strummer even then, buying London Calling at a Sam Goody's on 6th Avenue in New York, a double LP for $5.99 and liking it plenty, but of course they weren't really punk by then (just, for a moment, the world's best band? that title no one can hold for long as it's just too much to be that wise and sloppy at once to survive). And I was never punk, despite to this day thinking "Blank Generation"‡ speaks to me, but I came to The Voidoids late, and so much of that speaking is Quine's guitar, so the unspeakable. So I'm a fraud--the life of a secret punk isn't very punk at all.

That's why I need so music so much, something has to give me a way out, a way to hold steady.

‡ And how have I never seen this before on YouTube? And why the hell do they cut away from the song to interview wasted audience members? Richard Quine, how I miss you.

The Cows that Agriculture Won't Allow

If you started with the videos, there's really no point in reading what I've got to say, is there. For while this performance wasn't from Yo La Tengo's concert last night at Velvet Jones in Santa Barbara, it certainly is close enough to the version essayed yesterday to give you the full meaty flavor of what was a typically terrific show from the veteran outfit. "More Stars than There Are in Heaven" is probably my favorite track from their most recent CD, the tongue-in-cheekily named Popular Songs, with its lovely noisy wanting-keening, so it was wonderful for it to get such a mind-blowing, Ira-bending workout. Not that those of us who have been following the band for years expect any less--even back in the early mid 1980 days when 10 people might show up for a show and a peeved Kaplan would merely feedback solo for a half hour, the mild-mannered guitar hero was always in the making. Here, though, such control of that chaos. Such beauty out of noise. If only it were a land we could walk hand-in-hand in. (How fitting it can't be contained in one video.)

For it has to be said, Kaplan is a man possessed in concert. For not only was there this work out, and the set-ending opus that the magisterial instrumental "I Heard You Looking" became, but there was his all out attack on the keyboards for "Sudden Organ," too, blatty-blasts punctuating the song as he'd seemingly randomly fall onto his right elbow. In many ways while they performed much of the latest disc, the heart of this live set was Painful, a hint both of when the band came together with not just alternately but often simultaneously supple and muscular bassist James McNew, but a world view: Beauty hurts, it has to--it teaches us how much is ugly then it ups and leaves.

Take McNew's prime turn at the mic (well, except for the encore's "Ant Music," just as fun as you would have hoped) "Stockholm Syndrome." I'm far from the first person to point out its Neil Young-ish folk rock charms, but just as you get used to the gentle ride, Kaplan jumps in with a guitar solo that makes the tune a mad mash-up: if it were Disneyland, it would be like getting ripped from the carousel, and you're not even on one of the up-and-down horses, and ending up on Tower of Terror, everything about you free-fall guitar.

Alas, I don't mean to ignore Georgia Hubley, whose drumming keeps her wildman husband's ways pinned tight to the songs. How steady she is, mallets-aswinging. How unwilling she seems to want to step into the spotlight, even during a rousing encore version of "Emulsified" when she was called on to take a drum solo. (Perhaps, though, it was Kaplan saying, "take it my little lady," that kept her laughing, instead of drumming crazy.) And then, despite the crowd's noisy rumble (stupid crowd), she also got to sing "Hanky Panky Nohow," that gorgeous John Cale lullabye of sorts, and totally make it her own.

Forget about Ant Music. Let's hear it for YLT Music.

The House of Tomorrow (or Tuesday)

So Tuesday is Magnetic Fields in LA day, and to get psyched, and keep that doleful-ness you've come to expect this week, here's a band that's led by a guy everyone says sounds like Eeyore...

First, I really got into the band with the release of The Charm of the Highway Strip, a road album of lost highways and the beloved losers who drive them, and usually they don't do songs from it on tour, but lookie here....



Just as lovely, lovelorn, as it needs to be.

And since that song mentions fireflies...there's what's still his most famous song, "100,000 Fireflies," which also is getting played this tour (and if they don't do it Tuesday, I'll do my best to not cry for the rest of the week, but am not promising anything):



Then, during my YouTube ramble I discovered this, a Stephin Merritt documentary!

Sure She's Got Her "S" in an Odd Place, But....

Got nothing today. Damn the corporate toadying Supreme Court, the paralytic CA constitution, the stupid fumbling incompetence of Martha Coakley, of Air America, of the Democrats, of Omar Minaya, of NBC. I'm sure there are people/groups/dupes/dummies/disasters I've left out. You can create your own loser list.

In the meantime, fun two ways. Gotta love this woman.





She makes me bust my frame and I don't even mind.

Fits and Starts

I was doing so well for awhile there, having that daily entry ready to run at 8:01 every am, and now, thank god for the archives. Here's something that was just getting to the meat of the matter, but turns out to be mostly butter sizzling in the pan, a-waiting. Still, it certainly contains all sorts of themes I've kicked around this year, even if it's from 10 years ago, so, for what it's worth....

Lili Taylor, who has always beguiled me despite her never really getting to play a babe (except, tellingly, in Bright Angel, a film that proves the hard-edged prose of Richard Ford, another kind of beauty that has always beguiled me, seems so odd when spoken by real people and not the page), made her first impression, way before she was queen of the indies, in Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything. If you’ve seen the film you must remember her as the sweet and moony girl with a guitar who has written 65 songs for the boy who has dumped her. She could be laughed at. But we, and here I hope I have earned the plural first person, can’t, really. The knitting and re-knitting of obsession we all know a thing or two about, especially when music is the thread we use to sew up our dreams. After all, how does John Cusack finally woo and win Ione Skye? With a boombox held high over his head, and Peter Gabriel singing his thoughts for him, and without even knowing it making “In Your Eyes” an anthem for high school proms for half a decade.

But that’s pop music for you, or me, or us. And pop, although short for popular, perhaps only works its magic when it speaks to us, whispers to us, crooks its finger in our direction, one stained-with-sadness heart at a time. That we follow, lost and in love, and soon notice we follow others, that there’s a line of lovers, well, that’s what makes pop pop. Choose any song that chose you, that held you in its chords, that played its clichés like strings just for you, and you’ll see what I mean.

Ain’t love, life, grand. That’s all, and one gigantic three letter word that is, and all pop hopes to attest to. No, that’s not right, either, for attest is one of those hedge words with time written all over it, intellect too busy with a spray can in its hand. The best pop is-es. Present tense in a way even writing can never be, as the sentence winds its way by its very accumulative nature off into short term memory. Why does rock and roll matter? It’s the rare place America lets art and entertainment be one, it lets the venal and spiritual (or the economic and sexual, if you prefer) collapse--the old melting pot--or better yet, expand into something bigger than us, a collective experience, if that isn’t too much to ask of three minutes, two guitars, bass, and drums. But the real thing (and try to use that phrase without thinking Coca-Cola) is never too much: “Jailhouse Rock” is the real “We Are the World.”

Or, to start again (and again and again, a juke box’s, that is a real one that still plays 45s, series of drops, a DJ’s segues from tune to tune)...love, rock ‘n’ roll, and religion all talk the same language of ecstasy and damnation, stairways to heaven and free-fallin’ to hell. What the greatest songs do is enforce this, which is why we get scared and excited and confused and contradictory, and love and hate like a coin toss. It’s all about life closing down while it opens up, about projection and unity, about communion--there, I’ve said it--and the way rock is beyond academia, literary journals, and this very blather I can’t help but tease through. The stubborn streak of true-blue-American anti-intellectual venom is on the mark: fuck thinking, let’s dance, or go one better, fuck dancing, let’s fuck. Even the caring, careful appreciation of a thinker like Peter Guralnick or Greil Marcus is too much; you want to just seize the moment, after all, and thinking is always kind of past tense, isn’t it?

It’s sad, then, that with CDs one of the things we’ve lost beyond the elusive “warmth” audiophiles go on about, and perhaps means something else all together, is the very term “record.” Let’s make a record. We’re a real band now, we’re going to record. That’s what music is, or can be, the mark, the memory, the moment written out in space. Like the Buzzcocks sang, it feels so real, but why can’t I touch it? Getting back to Cameron Crowe, again, a failed director of fine moments (which is an achievement, really it is), and to his film Singles (and how could the pun not be intended), there’s the seduction moment, with Campbell Scott alone at last with Kyra Sedgwick in his apartment, and he’s got LP’s and by the way he holds them you know he loves them, which means he can love, which means he’s been sold the whole bill of goods and the two of them are destined for each other, she cannot resist, particularly in a movie, the only thing that hypes love more than music, as it’s the only thing bigger, even in the tinniest of mall theatres. Scott’s character says without saying, If I let you see this much of me, what can I have in return, what will you hum for me, what can you share, and how could you not? Because it is vinyl, and it is my heart.

Of course here I romance an age, my past, romance itself. But doing it and recognizing I’m doing it takes nothing away from it as a fact. An attempt at ironic detachment only attaches me more, for now I lavish attention on the ephemeral, which I realize, as a collector of LPs and now CDs, as a one-time disc jockey and a long-time music critic, has been my life.

But then again, we’re all ephemera if you take the long look at it.

Face the Music

Face it, there's nothing quite like faces. They do that dance from magic to reveal and back. They fill happy and drain sad. Even when nominally blank, we then get to project what we want to think on them, like the world's first movie screens. Documentary or fantasy, there's nothing like a face.

Perhaps this was Warhol's lesson as he shot his "screen tests"--500 black and white films that took place in just under 3 minutes but then were screened at 16 frames per second, the old silent film speed (he was a classicist at heart), slowing things down, elongating time, making one person's pas de deux with the camera stretch out even more. You deal with the gaze for that long. It's sort of like Michael Powell's Peeping Tom without the death--just face the camera and deal.

These films, or at least a handful of them, are making the rounds right now, and a version of them called 13 Most Beautiful... played at UCSB Arts & Lectures Saturday night to a sadly sparse crowd drained by competing events like Ani DiFranco at the Lobero and the very nice yet very bland Jack Johnson (and his film) at the Arlington. Those not there don't know what they missed since the 13 films were also accompanied by Dean & Britta doing live soundtracks to the films.

Now, Dean Wareham, alas, isn't the household name he should be unless you live at ______ (my address, redacted). Ever since Galaxie 500, and then through the sublime Luna, he's made more good music than most, from dreamy pop to Velvets-inspired crunchy rock, he's one of the guitar lines that connects Lou Reed and Tom Verlaine and then does even more with it. Plus he writes funny-smart songs that rhyme "girlies" with "earlies." So yes, I'd just go to see Dean & Britta, his latest band (Britta Phillips is his wife and the second bassist in Luna and now, well, just check the band name).

So, it was sort of like a concert with the coolest background visuals you could imagine, for the 13 beautiful almost always were beautiful, almost always were touchstones of the '60s counter-culture (not just the obvious like Edie Sedgwick but Billy Name!), and they did, for 4 minutes (at 16 inhuman and therefore terribly clearly illuminating, frames per second) let us in on some part of who they were, or wanted to be, or imagined Warhol wanted them to be. Ann Buchanan stares the camera down, let's one tiny tear out. How much we like our beauty to suffer, just a bit, something towards the sublime. Even better as Dean, Britta and their band play away, they often face the screen, as if they're in concert with these people, this time, channeling, taking us back to the glory days of the Factory that now seems so artfully optimistic. Dennis Hopper, chuckling to himself, the keeper of the world's best joke. Jane Holzer, brushing her teeth the whole time, parodying wholesomeness and being mundanely sexy. (And therefore stressing there is such a thing.)

Not surprisingly the highlight of the night was probably the Lou Reed screen test, given Wareham's brighter shade of Velvets fixation. Reed himself is all ornery youth, wearing his hipster shades, sucking away at a Coca-Cola bottle, as if to say "I've got Rauschenberg in your Warhol!" (am I hoping too much from him?). Meanwhile the band totally cut through a recent Velvet Underground find, a very early rare recording called "Not a Young Man Anymore." It's got that VU insane drive, but also room for Wareham to do the fine guitar work he can, always faster than he seems to be moving--as if he were playing at 16 fps, but we hear him at 24. Propulsive and a tribute and totally of the moment all at once--how often does that get pulled off?

One small complaint with the evening. It's mighty short. Going in there's that challenge--can you take looking at faces as long as faces can look at the camera/you? And 13 of them? In a row? But each proves how much people fascinate, and how little we ever stare each other down in this way. If we did, we'd need the sweet and crunchy music of Dean & Britta to keep us stable, to tether us to the ground when someone's eyes offer so much.

And at least they did one encore sans films. And not just any, when they started out I thought, no, it can't be, but it is..."Tugboat." [a video of them playing it, not at our show, here; my last ever poem, with its lyrics as an epigraph, here] Yep, he reached past the D&B catalog, past the Luna catalog (sniff), to Galaxie 500. But at least one of my favorite songs, that starts in dreams and moves to action, that repeats its words, as if a prayer, or a sense that anything worth saying is worth saying twice at least, like a face you can stare into for longer than you ever thought possible to fall deeper than you knew depths, into eyes dreamier than anything that ever began something that promised, promised so, and then there's no fade out but a flash to glorious blinding white, which might be the light of nothingness or acceptance, as if we know the difference, as if we care.

I Ramble

The long weekend up in Anderson Valley is about to commence, but I'd hate to leave you all with nothing, so instead, here's a song about the end with much silly dancing. I can't say how much I value Jon Langford, and I'm sure you'll feel the same. Plus you have to love Sally Timms' retort at the seeming end of the song. Must be something for the two of them to have gone from lovers to enduring, incredible co-conspirators in the greatest band on the planet (sorry LC!, but the Mekons have done it for decades--we'll talk in 2039).

Zing Went the Sing of My Car

Before I begin, I have to say this--I'm a writer, not a counter. So perhaps I screwed this up, as my Blogger dashboard claims this is post 2499, and therefore I only have one more to go and not two after this. My how time flies when you're dropping words like a fiend.

So as the big build up to the big count, if this is anti-climactic, that's just how often life is, isn't it. Perhaps I'm not here to please you but school you. Perhaps there's no pleasing anyone.

But that's fitting for this entry, as it's about pleasing no one but myself. Then again, the flip side is it probably pleases everyone I don't try to sing with others in earshot, at least anyone who values tune, pitch, his or her hearing, beauty, the sweet simplicity of song. For today's entry is about this: what I might karaoke if karaoke was cool and not what it is.

Or, to put it in a way already trivialized, which saddens me, this is caraoke. Of course that leaves me even more conflicted (and what doesn't? what isn't a ball of ugly compromise with all our angels and devils and perhaps worse inertia?) as it means driving in a car alone, which I know isn't a good thing, but somehow it's necessary. Like my cassette deck, still, thank god for older cars. If you're a regular reader of this blog, you might have guessed music is important to me. Even in my feeble way, I like to join in. Just don't want anyone to know.

So with that thrilling build up, here's a list of songs I might karaoke if.... Random order. Go listen to the real ones and tell me you might not want to join in.

Boomtown Rats, "I Don't Like Mondays"
Feeling like totally over-emoting? Join Bob Geldof and let loose. Plus you can also clap hands and do Johnny Fingers' keyboard parts for extra credit.

Elvis Costello, "Other End of the Telescope"
Just a terrific all over the place vocal, very full or emotion, and any song that begins "Can we agree that just this once I'm going to change my life," has to be ok.

Archers of Loaf, "Web in Front"
Most of these are going to be ballad-y, from that spot where enough beer and enough maudlin find their Venn Diagram closeness and hug inconsolably. So here's 2 minutes of peppy rock brilliance. Do I know all the words perfectly? Does it matter? "I've got a magnet in my head...."

Richard Buckner, "Lucky Buzz"
Lots of Buckner could work, as he has that way of nailing a certain lived in the languor vibe, but this one has that great little beat to it, and Dave Schramm's guitar, that makes whatever you sing more, well, heavy, somehow. Plus it's sort of about drinking.

Old 97s, "Jagged"
A jagged little song about feeling jagged--what more could one want to sing? The very idea of emotion so moving it moves you to not just say it but give it a melody--now that's what singing is for. Wanna be happy, just sit in the corner and go "blub blub blub."

Kevin Salem, "Falter"
First line: "Measure me by all I have not got." Chorus: "If I've faltered, I've made my best mistakes." But it's all set to a really rocking tune. So you get your pity and can even air guitar.

Magnetic Fields, "Busby Berkeley Dreams"
Merritt pens plenty of songs to sing(more than 69), and given it's taken awhile for him to tune his own bari-drone, they often invite joining in, but this one is so melodramatic, with a great movie allusion....

Freedy Johnston, "Bad Reputation"
There's a certain yearning cynicism here, to coin a phrase--"You know about the best I'll ever be, I see it in your eyes" is one mighty knowing line and awfully fun to sing. And then Dave Schramm part II. He's one underrated guitarist.

Dave Alvin, "Fourth of July"
Yeah, I know he wrote it for X but the version I like best is the one from King of California. Fun to try to hit the low notes on the drops for "on the stairs I smoke a cigarette alone." That's one lonely alone.

Steve Earle, "I Ain't Ever Satisfied"
Sort of the core rock n roll song, isn't it? Plus you get to shout out to people--who aren't there--to join you on the chorus. Even gets in a line about distance from the divorced dad for fine biographical points.

Replacements, "Can't Hardly Wait"
Gotta have at least one somewhat positive song, for so many, even when the guitars do happy, ringing things, aren't really (see "September Gurls" for a start). But this is about looking forward to something. So that's good, no? Fun to sing with horns. And I like the Justin Townes Earle version, too.

(29 or 30 of 31/or 29 of 30 in the drive to 2500)

You're Number 37 Have a Look

It might be a crass thing to say, given two of them are dead and one's Ringo Starr, but I come to bury the Beatles, not to praise them. I do this not for mere provocation, either. I do it to argue for the secret history as opposed to the official, for that which barely touches commercialism's trampy hem of its cheap miniskirt. For it's hard not to think of the Beatles as anything but a whored day's night at this point, repimped, repackaged, re-gamed, re-fucking-Cirque-du-Soleiled. How can anything as brittle and lovely as Lennon's "I'm Only Sleeping" stand up to the onslaught? Of course my position partially comes from the belief their own success hurt them--can anyone really argue they topped the one-two of Revolver and Rubber Soul? The line to defend "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" say, no matter how many stupid people sing it in stupid unison at whatever stupid Boomer nostalgia party, starts far away from me.

True, I was four in 1967 the year the gods dictated Sgt. Peppers into the Fab Four's ears, so maybe I should just shut up, but I've got a bunch more entries to write to get 2500 and anyway, that's not my style. Not being too conscious by the time the Beatles broke up does mean they were already kind of reified by the time they got to me--simply part of the world like carbon, Chevrolet, and Coca Cola. I've even had trouble getting into classic 1960s Dylan, just because the songs seem so much of their time and place I wasn't of, and so many people want to claim them, I feel a bit shut out. Which might just be a way to say that I like walking the fine line of discovery and snobbery, which do sort of rhyme, don't they.

Turn to 1967, though, and all I can think is it's the same year that The Velvet Underground with Nico was released and it exposes Sgt. Pepper's as the juvenile play-acting it is (day-glo military, represent!). Think of "Heroin"--scary and thrilling all at once, honest about the danger and attraction of drugs. Now think about the cutesy, coy "Little Help from My Friends," or "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," which now reads like Lisa Simpson's visions after drinking the bad water at Duff Gardens. That comparison alone might be game set match, Velvets. The rest is all noise and beauty, life, goddam messy life. Nico's voice too icy to be pretty on "I'll Be Your Mirror," Cale's viola sawing its way through sadism on "Venus in Furs," Cale's bass running away from the rest of the song in "Waiting for My Man," and then "All Tomorrow's Parties," about which Lester Bangs, in the essay in which he admits, "I would suck Lou Reed's cock, because I would also kiss the feet of them that drafted the Magna Carta," wrote: "It's the best music ever made, the instrumental intro to 'All Tomorrow's Parties' is like watching dawn break over a bank of buildings through the windows of these elegantly hermetic cages, which feels too well spoken, which I suspect is the other knife that cuts through your guts, the continents that divide literature and music and don't care about either."

But, to quote Dramarama, "The records never sold and that was bad." When does sold become sold out is the question, and I'm pretty sure my answer isn't the one most people have. But then again, I'm probably just privileging my own viewpoint fed by my own life--I give most my words away for free (even many of the ones I get "paid" for, practically). Would I write a "Yesterday" if I could? That's the million dollar question, isn't it.

(23 of 31 in the drive to 2500)

San Diego Serenade

San Diego Street Scene is like working two 8 hour days of attending concerts. Nice work if you can get it, and we did, last weekend, luxurating in the modern sounds of so many bands I'm already starting to lose track. (Those of you who are friends with me on FB, sorry for the barrage of nearly Twit-like updates. But if you want stuff like that, and actual pictures of who I am (!), use the email at the bottom of this page and to tell me you want to be my FB friend. This offer not valid for anyone coming here looking for photos of Morganna the Kissing Bandit.)

In general the festival scene usually seems less and less appealing to me the older and crankier I get, since I sort of don't like many people, and festivals tend to be filled with many people, mostly of the sort I don't like. I do like music I can hear without yahoos chatting through the whole thing, or calling up friends on their cell phones saying how cool the concert is that they're now talking way too loudly at. Still, I vowed to be a new me, accepting of my fellow troglodyte concert-goers more interested in getting sloshed on $7 Millers than enjoying the music. Beyond making sure I was right up front to see Los Campesinos!, go native, I thought.

And it worked. It didn't hurt there was a Microbrew Area to comfort me, even if you only got five 3 oz. tasters for $10. But in addition to the usual San Diego brews like Stone, there was Lagunitas and Left Coast from San Clemente, that also had solid stuff. You could even see one of the stages from one corner of the Microbrew Area, where I glimpsed No Age for a couple songs and was sad I missed them in Santa Barbara--way more going on than you'd think from two kids.

Sidenote: Yeah, there were folks well into geezerdom beyond me there, but I might be growing too old for my tastes to appear a normal human. Luckily I appear young for my age, that fine combo of never perfect skin and lots of immaturity. Plus I love to suck the energy from the youth of today's music.

Now that I've introed this to death, plus a digression, here's report on who I saw:

Friday

Trombone Shorty
Really only saw the last 3 songs of his set, but it seemed pretty super-powered. One of our rules going in was when in doubt, pick a band with horns. Horns is fun. Horns is plenty. So a guy who names himself after the long slide instrument but mostly plays trumpet (from what we saw)--including an endless cycle blow for about 2 minutes that looked pretty amazing on the big screen projection. The two largest stages had them, which made not getting too close bearable--you could go for both vibe and immediacy.

Mastodon
Ridiculous and utterly fascinating. I'm sure all my regular readers will be shocked to know I'm not a metal fan. But the folks we were with off and on throughout both evenings, the wonderful Sarah and Chuck, were interested, so we figured--a peek can't hurt. And then our faces melted.... OK, not my music, and borderline parody (not that, I'm sure, they think of that way, but a tattoo on your face, dude, please!), but fantastic force.

Matt & Kim
I'm less happy about my quick FB status on these two, calling them a Devo for the Aughts. For while they got that herky-jerky a-going a few times--Matt plays keybs, Kim drums--they're also in that Mates of State mold, too, except Kim rarely sings. But the energy amazes, and they seem to, of all things, be having fun. What will rock n roll think of next?

Connor Oberst (with Jenny Lewis)
I've seen, and liked a bunch, Oberst in his Bright Eyes guise, so figured it would be better to see something new. But we wandered by his stage just in time for him to introduce guest Jenny Lewis. Who I have not seen, but like a bunch, in any of her guises. They ripped into the Rilo Kiley tune "Portions for Foxes," trading verses. This is what makes festivals get good names. Thanks.

CAKE
OK, I really didn't know them heading in, despite them being the pride of Sacramento. But I wanted to like them as people I like like them--you know how that is. But while I do enjoy the music--there's even a horn sometimes--and the stuttery funkiness is cool, the lead singer is a dick. It was a festival, so of course everyone had technical problems as they tried to keep the trains running on time. But all he would do is carp and bitch. And wear sunglasses at 10 pm. Fuck him, it was better to go see someone who cared.

Nortec Collective
Now these guys, even with so much of what they did electronic pipings-in, were a blast. The big dark cowboy hats don't hurt, or that the electronic duo are matched with a trumpet, accordion, and tuba. Now talk about your horns--bands need more tuba! So all that plinking and plonking gets matched with a polka beat blasted from the tuba. Delish. And when they lost power, they just worked on it, didn't bitch and moan like somebody else. It's called being a professional.

Modest Mouse
Really only watched for a couple of songs and they seemed fine, but I felt a tad disappointed. One piece of advice for bands playing festivals--no matter how good your slow songs are, and I actually really like "Blame It on the Tetons," don't play them in a shortened festival set. Major bummer. Get out that tuba and polka!

Calexico
One of the highlights of Friday, but I figured that would be true going in. Their wonderful widescreen take on the Southwest enthralls me, and it only was more enhanced by the addition of their friends from Tucson, Salvador Duran and his Orquestra. That means six horns to do "Alone Again Or" (one of my favorite covers of all-time) and Duran doing Spanish language parts and an amazing mouth-click. Plus they did that cool rock-out Feelies-feeling moment at the end of "Not Even Stevie Nicks." Great great show. And all the weenies were at Black Eyed Peas, so more room for the cool kids.

Saturday

LC!
See review linked above. I love this band more than I can say, and I'm not good at being adoring fanboy. You really really got to earn it. They do.

Of Montreal
And then the circus came to town. The music actually had more variety than I thought it would going in--some more electronic based, some surprisingly crunchy guitar--but that lead guitarist hit the stage decked out like Brian Eno in his Roxy Music days, and then the stage show began--masks, weird acting, sort of imagine The Nutcracker as put on by the Residents. It was a blast.

Silversun Pickups
My FB joke was they play their songs better than I do on Guitar Hero, and if that sounds like damning with faint praises, especially to those of you who have witnessed me playing Guitar Hero, it is. They clearly were giving it up on stage, but something just isn't enough for me about them. I'm really a song guy, when it comes down to it, so any riffs and runs band just isn't going to make me love them. Even if they can pull off stopping one song on a dime--I'm a sucker for that concert trick.

Dead Weather
Everyone loved these folks, who seemed to be performing in black and (Jack) white. Another confession--I'm from the school of pop (my 7 year college radio show was called, spot the reference, "This Is Pop?"), so anything more rooted in bluesy rock won't do it for me. Again, Alison Mosshart is a powerful lead figure, even doing the cig drags between lines, but the music doesn't move me. It's one kind of hip I can't begin to aspire to.

Thievery Corporation
And now I'll piss off a bunch of my reading audience who got excited about this band when I FBed--I like it, but it's sort of aural wallpaper to me. I'm still not sure if the exotic airs are integral or charming Third World graft on, but it sure helps to have the sitar live. So we watched a bit, then went off to sit curbside--standing for 8 hours sort of sucks when you're an old fart--to prepare for....

Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings
We chose them over MIA and don't regret it a bit. Another band friends I like like, so I figured, what better than a soul review to close out the two nights? The answer? Nothing. I have never seen a performer leave it all on stage like Sharon Jones, both a killer singer, one who has the pipes but also modulates (none of that bullshit American Idol emoting for her), and an insane crazy dancer. That she's such a buzz of action and the well-decked out Dap Kings just stand surrounding her only adds to the clever visual play. If you ever wondered what would happen if James Brown was a woman, Sharon Jones is the person you have to see.

(16 of 31 in the drive to 2500)

Twocinda

Anyone who goes to live shows knows that the level of live can be infinitely variable. I don't blame performers having difficulty trying to get it up for the umpteenth time for a tune they'd probably wished that they'd never written in the first place--even saintly Bruce Springsteen has to mutter "Born to Fucking Run" to himself on his dark days. Then there's that delightful moment in Wings of Desire, say, when, since we've got angel-super-power, we get to hear Nick Cave think "I'm not going to sing you a song about a girl" before he says "I'm going to sing you a song about a girl." Of course, that Cave and the Bad Seeds then totally rip into that gorgeous train crash of a tune "From Her to Eternity" sort of ruins my point. But that's in a movie. With angels.

So, for your enjoyment and study, are two performances by Lucinda Williams. Watch, then we'll discuss.





Shocking, no? The first one certainly hews closest to the recorded version--the guitar lines are almost note-for-note--but for a song that espouses "I just want to see you so bad" in 9 of its 21 lines, you have to feel either the want or the bad, preferably both, to give that want the proper frisson. She just seems to be singing, and that's when you realize it's the feeling that matters. Not to get too method acting on it, she doesn't seem to be considering she's singing the tune to anyone. It's not till the last "see you" that she devotes anything more to it, gives it that off-tune edge that makes the need all more needy--her voice can't even need straight. But that it's the last "see you" also might mean she's just happy to welcome the song's end.

Version two, on the other hand, well, at first it doesn't even quite look like her. The distance. The darker hair color. And I don't think it's just because it's shot from the crowd that it seems to have more of a vibe--a sort of contact energy. One key might be she seems to slur it--perhaps she's a bit buzzed this time? But that works, as if it opens her up to some honesty.

The guitar, too, isn't the clean lines from version 1, and that freedom, that surprise for fans who know the tune, makes the discovery a "see you" so good, as it were. Of course she's not playing guitar in this version, either, so perhaps she needs to focus, have only the vocal on her mind. But I'm at least buying the guy in performance two is going to be a lot happier to see her back.

(10 of 31 in the drive to 2500)

All This Useless Beauty

Shaky cam start, silly cheer because they say North Carolina at a show in North Carolina, nothing can stop the wonder of Magnetic Fields' "All My Little Words." At least I'm assuming it's not just because I'm a poet who gave up writing poetry because you can only write the "language is a tool that fails us" poem so often before you have to at least convince yourself. But the song certainly has enough heartbreak to stock the shelves for the losers in love Costcos across the country. Not the anything seems off the shelf, for even the "if I could sing like a bird," which points back to the Troubadours at least, gets sung so sweetly--what a melody!--that you have to wonder what bird could match Claudia Gonson's croon (let alone with Shirley Simms soaring her harmony alongside). And then the chorus has the "Not for all North Carolina" line, which is a stunner in any state and conveniently rhymes with China. That's where rhymes get you, and songs--even further down the road you didn't want to travel but find oddly compelling anyway.

Of course we haven't discussed the cello yet, but if we could discuss it, we wouldn't need cello, now would we? It's such a primal sound, like wood that could have been a coffin got a reprieve but still has to attest to dark secrets. If someone needed a definition of beauty, I might point to that, but it's sound, so pointing doesn't quite work. Here and gone. Only more beautiful, then.

You don't have to tell me, by the way, that the song is as melodramatic as a troubled teen on the bad side of a Friday night. That only makes it more wonderful, its relishing slosh in wallow. For if you can't have your lover, you can have your pain. If you can have your pain in the sweetest song you've ever heard, you just feel it more. Perhaps even now somewhere the object of your affection, for just a moment, a flash, doesn't see the world quite as brightly even as he or she moves further and further away into something you only can assume is happiness.

(6 of 31 in the drive to 2500)

On Another Trip around the Sun

As we continue music week at INOTBB, long-time readers know I still put together a mixed cassette, yes, that funny plastic thing with tape in it, for my birthday. Although I rarely do it around my birthday--this year it only took 5 extra months, which still beats last year, so either I'm getting quicker as I get older or I have less to do. Or I'm more willing not to do something I should be doing. (I'm clearly just as decisive about my personal mien.)

I Ache in the Places That I Used to Play

side A
Neko Case "Animal"
Marshall Crenshaw "Passing Through"
Leonard Cohen "Tower of Song" (live)
Stars "Going, Going, Gone"
Shannon McArdle "Poison Cup"
Regina Spektor "Eet"
The Bird and the Bee "Birthday"
The Pipettes "Because It's Not Love (But It's Still a Feeling)"
Detroit Cobras "As Long as I Have You"
Jenny Owen Youngs "Hot in Herre"
David Byrne/Brian Eno "Wanted for Life"
Crooked Fingers "Your Control"

side B
Bishop Allen "The Ancient Common Sense of Things"
Earl Greyhound "It's Over"
Portastatic "Through with People"
John Cooper Clarke "I Don't Want to Be Nice"
The Wombats "Let's Dance to Joy Division"
Los Campesinos! "Miserabilia"
Okkervil River "Pop Lie"
Nick Cave the Bad Seeds "Lie Down Here (and Be My Girl)"
Rhett Miller" Happy Birthday Don't Die"
The Baseball Project "Past Time"
A.C. Newman "The Heartbreak Rides"
Dent May and His Magnificent Ukulele "College Town Boy"
Nick Lowe "Nutted by Reality"

Not Enough People Love Him and I Don't Know Why

Perhaps Alejandro Escovedo almost always tours with strings because his voice is in their register, if sometimes unstrung. Of course that one sentence is already too far into the story for many of you, as Escovedo has never got much beyond cult status--sadly mentioning that his niece is Sheila E. might be the best way to put him on most folks' cutural radar. But over his four decade career (wrong word, as that implies a plan), Escovedo has made more good music of more kinds than most, and by being so insufferably un-pigeon-hole-able has never even got the acclaim of, say, a Leonard Cohen, ever the cynical-Buddhist-roué (a genre-busting role, sure, but a consistent one). Escovedo first performed with the SF punks the Nuns, even playing at the infamous Sex Pistols' last concert. But since 1975 he's gone country punk and then maybe just country (Rank & File and the True Believers), fronted the thank the wham-bam-of-glam band Buick MacKane, and released solo albums fine enough to get him named No Depression's artist of the decade (1990s). Of course, those albums feature tunes as sweet as the love song "Broken Bottle" and a cover of The Stooges "I Wanna Be Your Dog." Oh, and he's Mexican-American, but that signifies more culturally (a whole song cycle for his dad and the immigrant experience) than musically ("Castanets," for instance, isn't Latin-tinged but an out-and-out rocker, something like the Chuck Berry meets the Replacements). I mean us anglo-folk can't even say he's the guy who covered "La Bamba" or something.

But we can love his music and his performances of that music, as what looked to be a near sold-out house did at the Lobero Theatre on Saturday night. He opened in front of the stage (it's a usual bit of his performance, working in or near the crowd), and that's part of his power--he draws you in, sometimes so you might swoon, sometimes to make you flinch. Playing with his longtime guitarist David Pulkinghame and a cellist whose name, alas, I couldn't quite catch, they kicked off with "Five Hearts Breaking," a song that sets his musical scene well. The cello gets to both soar and saw; the song whispers and wings--his love of volume/tempo shifts echo how his art witnesses life's duality; as for the words, well, her voice is five hearts breaking, but it's saying, "Believe believe and everything will be alright." Escovedo sings it likes he means it--he always does--so we end up with a song that says believe while recognizing exactly why we shouldn't, too. It's way (weigh?) more than a pop ditty.

That's how the rest of the show went, too. Escovedo brought out show opener (and, sadly, sort of a bore) Chuck Prophet, musical accomplice for his most recent fine album Real Animal, for the last two-thirds of the set, and even those who were not-for-Prophet before had to be converted with killer versions of "Always a Friend" (so damn catchy), "Sister Lost Soul" (slowed down and even more mournful), and others.

Finally, for encores he both pleased and slightly pissed off this fan, and not just because he didn't play the monumental "Pissed Off 2 a.m." Nope, it's because he promised so much that I wanted more--he's not the kind of guy who you let off the hook for just a fine show, it has to be a killer (in every way). First, they played "Broken Bottle," with its haunting melody and wistful lyrics, ever a crowd pleaser. Except I've seen the definitive version of it live, Jon Langford and Sally Timms doing a death-defyingly slow version at McCabe's a few years back. Now, Escovedo could probably win the song back, but not with the help of his special guest Amy Cook, who suffers from that over-dramatic singing thing that gives me American Idol creeps. You have to be more gnetle with a "Broken Bottle" you know. Next up was a cover of the Bowie-penned Mott the Hoople-performed "All the Young Dudes," another winner, till Ms. Cook got her verse and wrung its poor neck. (Sorry to be harsh, but Cook doesn't deliver in my musical kitchen as it were.) Then to close they opted to resurrect an obscure cover (it's on a Bloodshot Records anniversary disc) of Mick Jagger's (no, not the Stones, we're talking solo Jagger) "Evening Gown." It's a terrific country rock romp, a bit too melodically straightforward to fit on Exile on Main Street perhaps, and it fits Escovedo's timbre perfectly. Alas, instead of dueting with (and no, I'm not obsessed, but it sure does seem odd to me he comes up twice) Jon Langford as he did on the recording, he dueted with Chuck Prophet. And going from Jon Langford to Chuck Prophet is like going from Rembrandt to Thomas Kincaide, minus the units moved, of course.

So, what should have been out and out a brilliant way to go out was just damn good. But Escovedo is so damn good, I wanted more.

I realize this probably says more about me than the show.

Here's a version of "Everybody Loves Me" with a violin in place of the cello, but you'll get the point.

I Put a Spell On You

A little something for your weekend--he had a run of great songs for awhile there nearly, uh, 30 years ago, didn't he? And even in this more recent clip, you can't go wrong with Brinsley Schwarz and Steve Goulding backing you up.

Do Come A-Knockin' If the Submarines Are A-Rockin'

It's a lovely story and the lovely couple make lovely songs. They were together, they fell apart, they separately wrote songs about missing each other, then recording those songs made them realize they belonged together. Now two CDs into their career and marriage they record a tune that questions consumption and shills for Apple. It's a complicated world.

The good news is that the Submarines, for all their loveliness, opt to put so much oomph into their live shows it's hard to sometimes tell if they're doing a cut from one of their CDs, as we learned at SOhO last Thursday night (thanks, Club Mercy). It helps they have a drummer in J Stare who not only whacks away at his kit so energetically that you think he might have to chase it around the club, but, as one concert-goer suggested, he has Sideshow Bob hair. While drumming, the hair more than bobs, is far from a sideshow.

Not that Blake Hazard (supposedly a great-granddaughter of F. Scott Fitzgerald, so there's something to live up to), who sings most of the songs, isn't the real center of attraction. Possesor of the most precious overbite since Gina Gershon nibbled her lip in Jennifer Tilly's direction, Hazard was ever quick with a smile, even mid-song. Plus during between song chatter she was enchanted to learn that "huevos" can be slang for "balls," even after her muscial compadre John Dragonetti made the joke, "That puts huevos rancheros in a whole different light."

So yes, they can be light themselves, but charm can go a a long way when you're putting out max effort on delicious pop songs. (Think, maybe, Luna without the guitar solos.) In that song Apple ads made famous, "You, Me, and the Bourgeoisie," there's the repeated lines "We choose love/ We choose light," and they do choose light, but they really mean it. Non-ironists having a good time singing happy songs with sweet melodies. That they can convert a cynic like me to like them, they have to be really good. After all, too many performers seem to feel it's miserable agony that they have to be performing, have to reflect the inordinate and impersonal yet total and devotional love from fans. Have a goddam good time, you. Millions would do anything to have a stage-ecstatic moment like your many.

Here's a pretty good clip from the actual show (thanks mmMarco17, whoever you are):

The Fine Art of Surfacing

Anybody who is smart enough to make a play on the great Magnetic Fields lines "won't be happy with me/give me one more chance/you won't be happy anyway" is ok in my book, and that's what The Submarines do on "Peace and Hate" with "if you should go/I won't have you to blame/for my unhappiness, for darker days." That they set it to a lilting pop tune doesn't hurt, neither, plus they do the male-female vocal trade-off trick I'm almost always a sucker for too (see X, Los Campesinos!, the Mekons, Yo La Tengo, etc.). So, while you might know them for the boppy ditty backing the omnipresent iPhone ads*, they're probably more than that.

And we'll get to find out for sure when the Submarines play SOhO tomorrow (Thursday) at 9 pm. See you there?



*And does Apple do it on purpose, excerpting songs that would never quite make it in the advertising world in their entirety? This Submarines cut is "You, Me, and the Bourgeoisie," and at least a bit of a comment on consumerism. Still, that's better than the iPod ad that featured Chairlift's "Bruises," which focuses on bruised and grass-stained knees, no doubt from a lover deep in prayer. (Oh, and Regina Spektor really deserves some royalties from that one, no?)

The Rest of the 25 Albums, Or So, that Shaped My So-Called Life

#2, George Carlin, Class Clown
Class clown that I am, I'm going to do 27 albums--25 music, 2 comedy. I can't begin to say how influential this disc was, and not just for the dirty words. But yes, for the words. He made language so fun, so funny. He made context so clear. He made fun of going to Catholic school. I owe Carlin a ton, as do many un-normals in my generation, I'd guess.

#3, Jackson Browne, The Pretender
Yes, alas, I was a California "rocker" years before coming to CA. Or, as I like to see it, Browne was my first stop in the world of what I call pity pop (future stops, Ian Hunter, Billy Bragg's love songs), for I love music that's a wallow. Goddam I'm misunderstood. And I started out so young and strong, only to surrender. (Of course this moved me at 15, please....)

#4, Woody Allen, Standup Comic
Here's where I get to be witty and urbane, while actually being shitty and surbuban(e). And if you can have a sense of humor that rests between classic Allen and classic Carlin, that's me.

#5, Peter Gabriel, untitled (3)
On a road trip to the Jersey shore with my Jersey friends on the Jersey Turnpike I was told I had to turn this off as it was too weird. And that's when I learned something bout meself, as they say. Plus, after our house got hit by a car (true story) and there was the as-yet un-repaired hole from basement to living room, I was sure something would rise out of the basement as I listened to "Intruder" on headphones. Oh, and "Biko" started helping lefty me think outside the U.S. box.

#6, Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack
Have I ever fessed up to this? That I had a huge Rocky Horror phase? Don't dream it, be it. Half the fun was trying to come up with lines to shout out at screenings that people would laugh at. But given I wasn't getting anything at the time (high school), the idea that anything could be got seemed fascinating.

#7, The Clash, London Calling
Bought it in New York City, at a Sam Goodys on Sixth Avenue for $5.99. A double lp. And then I realized there was so much more to music, as there was so much to that album. The guys in that car for PG3 had no idea where my taste would lead me.

#8, Ian Hunter, Welcome to the Club
Great music and the beginning of some sense of history (perhaps Mott should be on the list, too). One of the albums of my high school graduation, and then I also had a fixation with pity pop classic "Irene Wilde" ("I'm going to be somebody someday" is the refrain the jilted lover clings to). And then it played in my freshman year dorm room, a woman in the room realized it moved me (my god, how did I look--what did I do?), but eventually she'd pop my cherry. So Ian Hunter's been very very good to me. Welcome to the club indeed.

#9, Roxy Music, Siren
I came to this record well after its release, but it provided me with much release through college. For it goes like this--you played side 1 on your way out the door for an evening, knowing that love was the drug and you needed to score. Then you came home, alone, sublimated with food from the snack bar, and listened to side 2, which ended reminding you love was just another high. Plus Paul Thompson's work on that last song is one of the best songs ever to air drum to.

#10, Lou Reed, Rock and Roll Diary 1967-1980
This sort of odd compilation of Lou and Velvets cuts was my real intro to that whole world, and so I owe it much gratitude. Plus it had liner notes by Ellen Willis so introduced me to her, too. (Can an album rock your world for its liner notes?)

#11, Bill Nelson, The Love that Whirls (Diary of a Thinking Heart)
Hyper-realized romance while in college made me very happy, and so, Mr. Nelson. That echo-ey, aching e-bow guitar. Plus he's sort of a bridge from Roxy Music to all the Japanese electro pop of that era, too--Yellow Magic Orchestra and its three guys' solos efforts.

#12, XTC, English Settlement
Can't begin to describe how much I was into XTC back in the day, although that's really faded (and that's kind of sad). My radio show through undergrad and grad school (81-88) was called "This Is Pop?" even. But this double album--of course I had the import, it was the age of being a geeky "get the import" guy--defined that era. Plus "All of a Sudden" is actually a pity pop gem, too.

#13, Elvis Costello Imperial Bedroom
Helped me bridge then current music with the songs my then-roommate jazzbo, Sinatra head liked. Even Chet Baker covered "Almost Blue." Catchy tunes, witty wordplay, and plenty of pity pop.

#14, Kate Bush, Hounds of Love
Aboundingly creative, this album. And while her videos are always pitched near hysteria ("Breathing" is the worst), the drama of these songs was very appealing. Plus she put out great B-sides on 12" singles in an era when I bought all the 12" singles. So this is here as an emblem of that, too.

#15, Billy Bragg, Talking to the Taxman about Poetry
I wrote poetry, then, and figured I'd never have nothing to talk to a taxman about. But it was darn fun being a writer. Plus "Levi Stubbs' Tears" is still one of my favorite songs and that's why this disc just edges out Workers' Playtime, but maybe they should be a twofer.

#16, The Mekons, Mekons Rock 'n' Roll
How can an album that opens with the lines "Destroy your safe and happy lives before it is too late," not wake one up? Especially when the violin rocks as hard as the guitars? And then there's secret weapon Sally Timms....

#17, The Pooh Sticks, Multiple Orgasm
I've gone on and on about my Multiple Orgasm on the blog, but perhaps I didn't say that this tape (for years I only had a dubbed copy) got played at every party I went to in 1991. And every time someone asked, "What’s that?"

#18, Pavement, Slanted and Enchanted
It might not be my fave Pavement, but it was quite an introduction to a band that still holds sway over my musical taste. Weird angles of lyrics and song all combine to make right. Plus this got played all year 1992.

#19, Uncle Tupelo, Anondyne
What incredible songs! Plus Tweedy finally got as good as Farrar, and that was very exciting--so much so the band had to fold.

#20, Yam, More Iowa, Less Worcester
This is the full length, cassette-only release by the band I was in 1993-94. Given it features the only songs I can play on an instrument, it's very important to me. Everyone should be in a band at least once in his or her life. You get free beer and can shout at people with a microphone to help you.

#21, Beck, Odelay!
This album seemed to be CA to me once I moved here, a wild and woolly mix. It should be paired with Los Lobos' Colossal Head, which came out the same year and also seemed to say "Welcome to CA." (Indeed, after moving here I finally could go back and get X, like I needed to live near LA to make sense of it.)

#22, Yo La Tengo, I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One
The album of the year of our wedding (yes, say awwww), 1997. I remember meeting with our very nice cover band folks before the reception and they asked what we wanted them to play beyond our instruction to get people to dance. They queried, "What's your favorite song right now?" And I thought, but didn't say, "Autumn Sweater," which would have been a weird wedding song indeed.

#23, The Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs
An incredible achievement. As with YLT, I'd been a big fan before this album that made the list, but with 69 I remember actually running to the computer and emailing friends six songs in, telling them they had to run out and buy this incredible record. Plus I actually presented an academic paper on the record, too.

#24, Fountains of Wayne, Welcome Interstate Managers
I like to recognize those who get by on clever, which for pop is enough. (So I guess I need to be pop.) But there's more to this than people want to give it credit for--really listen to "Valley Winter Song," say. Another good times album for its year.

#25, Neko Case, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
Flat-out gorgeous. And I mean her singing, btw. Plus there's "Maybe Sparrow," a song that's ending almost always brought me to tears even before I somehow connected it to my mom passing away, so there's all that for the poor little bird to bear.

#26, Shout Out Louds, Our Ill Wills
My mom gets Neko, my dad this album. I actually bought it in NJ when back for his funeral. So it's far from sad in its music, but it's totally sad in my head. So really powerful. Plus there is a dark side to it, so that just gets deeper.

#27, Los Campesinos!, Hold On Now, Youngster
Given I just learned they canceled their upcoming Santa Barbara show, I sort of want to kick them off the list. But no CD in the past few years gets me going like this one--it's what Red Bull is supposed to be, but without the gross taste. Insta-adrenalin. And too darn smart, too.

We've Only Just Blog-un

I feel stuck between stations. Now that I'm a mad-FBer, there's the blog, and there's FB, and there's endless internets calls for my attention, as if I don't actually have, oh, jobs to do or a life to live ("hi, Amy, hi, dogs--I'm computing!") or something. But Mike from Mike's Neighborhood tagged me with this music meme on FB and I really want to do it, but, of course, I made it complicated.

Here's the original instructions: "Think of 25 albums, CDs, LPs (if you're over 40) that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life. Dug into your soul. Music that brought you to life when you heard it. Royally affected you, kicked you in the ass, literally socked you in the gut, is what I mean. Then when you finish, tag a bunch of others, including me. Make sure you copy and paste this part so they know the drill. Get the idea now? Good. Tag, you're it!"

So I made my list, but realized a naked list wouldn't do justice to why these albums did what they did to me. This is far from a list of my favorite albums, as it's about records that define a time, that were wrapped up in my me-ness for at the minimum a few months. So I put them in chrono order, as they're sort of an autobiography, in one way, (25 Short Albums about GY?), and realized the first one (it is actually the first album I can remember owning) would take the most explanation. Luckily I already wrote that explanation, so I'm going to quote myself from a review for the cover album If I Were a Carpenter that I wrote back in 1995, as so many writers are moved by their own hands.

Album 1: Carpenters, Singles, 1969-1973

Never mind the Sex Pistols, here's the Carpenters. At least that's how the 1970s look, really look. C'mon, how many of us were hip enough to be gobbed on and gob back in 1976-77? They don't call it Generation Sex, after all.

But the Carpenters were all the 1970s were.

Stop and think about that, because much of what the 70s were about was not thinking. I'm unlucky enough to have my own personal rhyme for this--my parents got divorced, first on our block to do so. Playing music on my crappy white plastic stereo meant turning away from the house, the world. So sure as hell, rainy days and Mondays always got me down. Most of the rest of the week, too.

The Carpenters were hitmakers because they flatlined emotion. "Top of the World" exists in the same bright affectless vocal bubble as "Hurting Each Other," only the secondhand Phil Spector swells of strings hint at feeling. These songs make every up, down, fantasy, fuckup seem midtempo okey-dokey decent, just as Karen and Richard were smiling siblings, not lusty or squabbling lovers, just as Karen and Richard were average-looking and so unsexy that they seemed advertisements for a spay and neuter clinic. But the songs, so simple, so definitional. They got played at wedding because they were as staid and safe as church. They denied, Watergate, Vietnam, sure, but also that your seventh grade groin might ache for Ellen Sombers, that your dad didn't sing when he left the house for good. The songs had all the surprise of Hallmark, all the off-the-rack wisdom. It's no surprise, then, that Karen Carpenter faded away; she finally (dis-)embodied the nothing she was. But being nothing can be everything. At least a decade.