Best Thing I Heard Today: Janet Jackson doing "This Time" and "New Agenda"

Assisted by Kathleen Battle's vocal impression of a theremin, Janet gives one of her most forceful performances:



Janet's never had the biggest voice, and her production team, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, perversely bury her inside their enormous productions, so that it's often hard to understand what she's singing. (To their credit, those productions sound fabulous.) This time they let her soar; we hear a litany of complaints about Janet's cheating boyfriend and all his "nasty hoes." Team Janet enliven their unremarkable breakup song by letting Janet's voice pop out of the mix, and by setting the breakup inside some sinister concert hall, replete with an orchestra and Battle's "opera solo."

Here's how it went down: heartbroken Janet hired the ensemble for the sole purpose of humiliating her man. She rented out the hall, invited her unsuspecting boyfriend to join her for an evening of forbidden pleasure (maybe she sang him "You Want This" over the phone), and then ambushed him with a bunch of stern musicians wearing opera masks. (Wearing only opera masks?) Since this is Janet we're talking about, the boyfriend was also trampled by an exquisitely choreographed dance troupe. By the time she could say, "You're dismissed," he lay bloody on a stretcher. Don't cheat on Janet.

Because it's Friday and I can't decide and Jam & Lewis make the best drum sounds known to man, here's Janet's happiest social justice song, "New Agenda". At least, I assume it's a social justice song; her voice is buried inside an enormous production. (Sounds great!) The song features Chuck D and it's called "New Agenda", so what else could it possibly be about?

The Flowtation Device Prezentz: Kanye's "Gold Digger"

How do you get to be the second- or third-biggest rap song of all time?  That's the question the Flowtation Device will ponder today as we consider "Gold Digger", Billboard's 49th biggest hit.  Among raps and semi-raps, only Flo Rida's "Low" and the Usher/Luda/Lil' Jon behemoth "Yeah" have placed higher on the all-time list.  Without considering those two for now, the FD would like to propose that Kanye's rapping was an integral factor to the song's success.  Obviously FD is biased, but consider the argument while you listen.



First, let's ask this:  what rap songs do you have memorized?  If you're anything like the Flowtation Device--i.e., a casual rap fan for most of your life--the answer is probably Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" and Young M.C.'s "Bust a Move".  FD attributes this to a couple factors.  First, these songs hit when FD had way more time to devote to pop radio, and way fewer pop songs already cluttering the brain.  Second, their flows are in the simple "sung" style of most early rap--the couplets fall at regular intervals, and the syllabic patterns stay pretty much the same from one line to the next.  Obviously, Young M.C. raps with ease and authority:

"*.*.*.*this / =here's=aJAM_FOR_ / ALL.THEfel=las*tryin' /
=toDO_WHAT_THOSE_ / LAdies=tell=us="

--while Vanilla Ice sounds like one of the proverbial Retarded Cousins:

"TAKE.HEED.*causeI'Ma / LYRicAL.PO_ETmi /
AMi'sONtheSCENE.JUSTin / CASEyouDIDn'tKNOW_IT"

Oh, I kid Vanilla Ice!  He actually gets off some lovely syncopations in that song, whose complexity has been wholly underrated.  (Vanilla Ice, on the whole, has not been underrated.)  The point is this:  "Bust a Move" and "Ice Ice Baby" are easy to memorize because their rhymes occur at regular intervals, because their slang isn't terribly esoteric, and because, when they do alter their rhythmic patterns, they do so in ridiculously catchy ways.  Witness:

"WILLitEVerSTOP.YO. / *iDON'T.KNOW"

Chances are, if you're FD's age and someone near you says "Will it ever stop?", you'll have "Ice Ice Baby" running through your head the rest of the day.  Likewise this nursery rhyme sing-song cadence from "Bust a Move":

"O.K.SMART_Y. / GO.TOaPART_Y"

These songs are full of non-melodic hooks that dig into our brains and don't let go.  Both were big hits, though neither was as big as "Gold Digger".  Now, "Gold Digger" also places rhymes every two bars, but it's much more lyrically complex than those earlier songs.  Syllabic patterns change several times per verse; Kanye employs many more internal rhymes than did Vanilla Ice or Young M.C.  As the simplest and funniest verse, Verse 2 is closest to those precursors and also the easiest to memorize.  It contains several ear-puncturing hooks that break from their surrounding patterns, namely:

"EIGH_TEEN_YEARS_*. / EIGHteen=years=sheGOT. /
ONEofYOURkids=gotYOUfor / EIGHteen=years"

and,

"*.*.*.IFyou / AIN'Tno*punk*.HOLla /
WEwant*pre=nup*. / WEwant*pre=nup*yeah"

--which reprises Vanilla Ice's strategy of having a bunch of burly guys shout out a memorable line.  At verse's end, we get to hear "EIGH_TEEN_YEARS" again.  Catchy!  But then, virtually everything Kanye says in this song is catchy.  Other highlights include, from Verse 1:

"ASSlikeSERe=na=tri / =na*.JENniFERlo / =pez=fo'=kids"

--and from Verse 3:

"but / WHILE_YA'LL_WASH_IN'watch / *him"

Basically, anytime Kanye changes up his flow pattern, he adds another hook to the song.  This is why, when people complain about Kanye or Vanilla Ice being poor rappers, it doesn't really ring true--at least not as far as the aforementioned hits are concerned.  (As I say, Vanilla Ice isn't usually underrated.)  Even if they don't conjure up mindbending displays of lyrical dexterity, a la Nas or Eminem, they're capable of creating three verses full of rhyming couplets that people around the world have effortlessly memorized.  That's some kind of feat.

Kanye gets more credit for making tracks than for rapping, and this song is a prime example of why that's so.  His* beat bounces thunderously--how'd he manage that?--and the synth bari-sax under Verse 3 is funny and irresistible, as is usually the case with bari-saxes in pop music.  The Ray Charles sample is also gold.  Quite simply, there are more catchy elements in "Gold Digger" than you find in the entire Billboard Top 10 some weeks, and it hit #1 the day after FD's boy was born five years ago.  The Flowtation Device has no problem considering this the 49th best pop song ever.

"Low", on the other hand, is a different story--one that we needn't discuss today.

*see commentz

Cathedral and Grong Grong are Worth It! Ariel Pink, Toro Y Moi, and the Newsboys just plain suck.

Cathedral
The Guessing Game
(Nuclear Blast)

Determined to exploit every conceivable nook of Prog, pseudo-Prog, brutal Prog, and (this being Nuclear Blast and all) Prog Metal possible, this bunch of British vets have created a double disc album-of-the-year contender that sounds effortless. They're Prog because their songs are shape-shifting organisms with new elements busting out all over, ignoring conventional song structures. (Also there's a Mellotron.) The pseudo-Prog is audible in their weird debt to jazz rock shuffles and Ken Nordine. You can hear the brutality in Garry Jennings's crushing doom riffs, though the band use that sound more for the joy of its sonic kickassery. And the Metal holds it all together. Leader Lee Dorrian (ex-Napalm Death) ensures that every fill, solo, and flourish sounds as good as what's come before it, all the while drawling out his sprechtstimme with a sense of detached cool. Ultimately, the whole thing is a celebration: of how much ground you can cover with a rock band, and, in closing song "Journey Into Jade," of what such a band can mean to the world, even if it's all ultimately a guessing game.

Grong Grong
To Hell 'n' Back
(Memorandum reissue)

This '80s Australian sicko-punk band had a pretty good sense of what they WANTED to mean to the world; they just had a strange way of going about it.

Guitarist Charlie Tolnay on Grong Grong's songwriting process:
“It was just so simple. Dave [Taskas] would think of a bass line, or I’d think of a guitar line, then we’d put drums to it, and then think of some lyrics and that would be it.”
Maybe the weirdest thing about Grong Grong--aside from their lurching monoriff "songs," tin can production values, and squawl that sounds like guitar strings scraping the scales from a screaming eel--is the fact that they actually had some showbiz acumen. Singer Michael Farkas might have barked out every grotesque image that popped into his head, but he also hired a sax player and led his combo to a Battle of the Bands victory on the radio. Amid the odes to "Vlad the Impaler" and a "Meat Axe", they made room for a band theme song ("Grong Grong") and a dedicated show opener ("Club Grotesque"). As far as it's possible for a group like this, they almost hit the big time, derailed only by Farkas's overdose and subsequent coma. (He recovered, partially paralyzed.) Like most good post-punk bands, they had arresting grooves and a singer who could bellow like nobody else. So God bless Memorandum for this collection of live stuff and demos. It sounds great driving through a summer heat haze or trying to endure a bad campground.

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti
Before Today
(4AD)

These guys are prog too, right? Because they keep changing time signatures, and they let their cleverness get in the way of their tunes? The disjointed songs sound like they'll fall apart any second, which may be what Ariel Pink was going for. Only, where sometimes that's a good thing--like with Cathedral or early Weezer--here it's pretty terrible. Cathedral thunder like the carousel-gone-wild at the end of Strangers On a Train; the Haunted Graffiti sound like wet tissue paper in a fan. Mr. Pink's voice and his drummer hardly bother to show up. "Butthouse Blondies" at least has the courtesy to rock--for almost half its running time!--but nothing else is compelling, even when the band manages to land on a pretty chord. When Pitchfork's Mark Richardson calls "Round and Round" "one of indiedom's most unifying and memorable songs in 2010," and also "endlessly replayable," I honestly have no idea what he's talking about, unless he means it's replayable as a torture device for some common enemy. So, while I'd be happy to blast it Cusack-style outside Sarah Palyn's window, I'd be sure to demand some earplugs for my trouble. Indiedom can do better.

But wait, there's more! Apparently Mr. Pink is a big influence on:

Toro Y Moi
Causers of This
(Carpark)

As a work of production prowess it's pretty flawless, seamless, facile, all that kind of stuff, and I SUPPOSE could serve as swank mood music for your next Espana y Gaul dinner party, because Lord knows the musical substance wouldn't distract anybody from their conversations. (Trust me: when you're proffering educated opinions on the new Rick Bayless restaurante or your latest homebrewing discoveries, you don't wanna be derailed by the crass sound of a hook!) T Y M is the nom de glo of Chaz Bundick, who's part of this new chillwave scene that WE WILL ALL STILL CARE ABOUT NEXT YEAR, assuming nothing else happens between now and then. I enjoy my hazy '80s memories as much as the next huppie, but I prefer to re-enact them by chilling to actual pop songs, whether by Groove Armada, Diana Reyes, my beloved Kylie, even the ol' Vampire Weekend boys. And strangely enough, all those schlockmeisters boast more interesting "soundscapes" than Toro Y Moi. So there!

Newsboys
Born Again
(Inpop)

At this point the NEWSBOYS are only 1/4 Australian, and sound NOTHING like Midnight Oil. Or Grong Grong.

CD's called Born Again, and it's a concept album about Nicodemus. JUST KIDDING! You'd like that, wouldn't you, people who don't read this blog? (That's OK, you don't have to start.) First song sounds like ALL OTHER MODERN ROCK SONGS FROM HOT ac RADIO STATIONS LIKE 101.9 "THE MIX"--Michael Tait (formerly of DC Talk) is putting it all out there to let us know "where he stands," i.e., that he's a Christian, like we didn't know. Now the guitar solo. That was a guitar solo? The guy played one note. What is he, the Edge? (Answer: no he is not.) Yeah, that song sucked. Wellness does not bode.

"HEY!" They're excited, you can tell. OR CAN YOU? (No I cannot.) Tait seems to be singing about how he came up in "the industry" now. You've only got ONE SHOT--to prove what you're all about! That's a harmful message to send today's youth--isn't the message of the God of Grace that you get shot after shot? That, while our missioning message should be fueled by an existential urgency, we need no longer fear the grave, the ever-rolling stream of time culminating in DEATH, because Christ has conquered death and the grave forever and ever? (All around the world every boy and girl!) What would Grong Grong do? (WWGGD?)

"Even though you brought this world to shape/ You love me in a personal way." I guess I'll let 'em get away with that--that's sort of one of the crucial paradoces, right? (I just noticed that "crucial" is derived from "crux.") Mr. Tait is seeking something "way beyond [him]self." Though storms come his way, though Kid murder Play, though bishops be gay, Tait will persevere. "Like the wind that moves the leaves, Lord you move me to my knees." This is an awful CD, by the way.

Here's the one where God gives us strength. The strength to waltz, apparently. You ever try to waltz? It's a strenuous endeavor, I gotta say, especially if you're supposed to be leading. (With G's help, Tait can "do the impossible.") Anyway, waltzing. You gotta know where you're going and be keenly aware of spacial relationships, because it's not just YOU that's gotta stay out of everyone's way, it's HER too (or HIM, if you're a gay bishop), and S/HE will be more keenly embarrassed than you if you ram into another couple. There's not much that can save face in that situation. If you're lucky, nobody's hurt and you all head over to the punch bowl, which some punk kid has (again luckily) spiked, and then you can imbibe and jibe, and maybe bribe the picture-taking lady to erase any record of this humiliating incident. As I say, luck plays a big role. We can call it "providence" if you prefer.

Whoa, new song! They don't mean to brag, don't mean to boast, but... actually, that's pretty much it. "When the boyz light up, who gets the praise, who owns the show? We ain't nothing but the conduits." This is where Tait and the boyz deflect the inevitable adoration of their audience to the One who has so blessed them with the ability to rock bellz. I refer, of course, to Hal Leonard. His influence is immense.

Ooh, now we're chuggin' like Muse. Not quite as dramatic, but still, best or second-best riff on this turd.

Do the guitarists know how to do anything other than play chords? Or play rhythms that aren't straight eighth notes? There's no modulation or variation or amelioration or animals-we-ation of anything here. Well, I guess they DO get soft and then they get loud again, whoop-de-doo. Tait's running to God, fantastic.

Does God like this music? Well, look, you can't really put God onto that plane--the "music-digging-or-not" plane, let's call it. God hears music. God doesn't hear music. God is music. God is not music. (I'm doing my non-personifyin' exercises; they're like kegels for the soul.) Whether God does or not, I DON'T. And I don't say that about all Xian rock, you know that, whoever nonexistent reader you are. "Get on your knees!" bellows Tait. HE MUST WIN US OVER. HE IS CONDUIT (for sale).

Here's my dilemma. I really don't want to listen to any more of this album, but they're going to cover DC Talk's "Jesus Freak," which is a really good song and it'll be either the best thing on here or a train wreck beyond comprehension. So I've gotta stick it out. (Current song sux, stopped keeping track. Mountains, mighty like you know who...)

Here it is. Why is "Jesus Freak" better than anything else that sounds remotely like it? Better riff, for one thing. We'll see how the rapper does. Sounds pretty good, gives me chills. Why do I have no control over my senses when I hear this song, even a remake of this song? Probably because I have a history with it, plus some sense of its historical significance. Please, God, let that be the end of the album.

Surfing With Avantasia

We've surfed with Tobias Sammet before.  When last we sailed with him through the frothy white seas of Babylonian iniquity, he was singing lead for Edguy and raising towers of untold height.  Such hubris!  Well, the world hadn't seen nothing yet:  Sammet went on to form power metal's pre-eminent supergroup, AVANTASIA.  What's that?  You thought all power metal bands ALREADY sounded like supergroups, with everybody trying to outsing and outshred their fellow soul-patched lifers?  Just try listening to this with a straight face:



Think nothing of it, friends, that's just Jens Johansson of Stratovarius tickling the ivories at 3:20!

In Edguy's "Babylon," Sammet joyfully proclaimed that nobody could stop him from raising towers to Babylon, no matter how much the old ladies in town frowned upon such a practice.  It was an homage to hubris as happy as any song you're likely to hear.  (HACHOO!)  In "Angel of Babylon," Sammet contrasts Babylon with Paradise, a conception that's pretty common.  (Indeed, if I ever get around to editing and compiling all these ramblings, Babylon As Hell will get its own chapter.)  But the question remains:  how does our friend Tobias imagine his Hellish prison of despair?

1. Its entrance is marked by a "tower in the night, up to the sky."  This got me wondering, what would Freud say about such a tower...?

2. Babylon's relationship with Paradise is expressed in curiously intimate, and consistent, terms:  it exists on "the back side of light," it's "the snake in the backyard of heaven," and when you visit Babylon, "Venus" guides you "to the back door of love."

3. While peering at Babylon through the shadows, Tobias and his supersinger friend Jorn witness "iniquity galore."  Do they run away in terror and disgust?  Hardly!  "Been worth a detour and some more," they crow.

Well!  It kind of makes me wanna go to Babylon, how about you?  Tobias's Babylon sounds less like a Hellish gauntlet of fire, and more like a delightful, if not completely sanitary, bathhouse.  This may be an important wrinkle in the story--the symbolic oppositional society that dare not speak its name.  I wonder how that OTHER Tobias would read it...?

Surfing With Pajama Party (they titled this blog!); and also Amy Grant, sort of

About time!  "Surfing In Babylon" is from Pajama Party's wonderful 1989 freestyle album Up All Night.  It follows the monumental "Yo No Se" and pales in comparison--though really, MOST songs pale in comparison to "Yo No Se."  "Surfing In Babylon" also has the distinction of not really being freestyle, but something closer to "rock."  Not that you hear many "guitars" on the song; there's something like a distorted guitar on the chorus, but it cuts off so abruptly I suspect it's a synth.  (The credits do say there's a rhythm guitar somewhere.)  There's also a wailing electric guitar solo that may or may not be an actual guitar--we have no reason to believe otherwise.  But anyway, even a synth guitar sound signifies Rock Music in the context of a freestyle album, so there you have it--this is PJ Party's rock song!  As such, fans of the group have largely overlooked it.  Listen and love here.


Thankfully, PJ Party fan Chuck Eddy has not overlooked it!  In The Accidental Evolution of Rock 'n' Roll, Eddy interprets the song this way:

"[J]ust because disco lets the party be the main thing doesn't mean the terror's not there...  [T]his is a song about a girl trying to get her friend to try something dangerous--heroin maybe, or lesbian sex.  Or maybe just a cigarette.  Guitars and strings add noisy ornamentation as the singer stands 'on the edge.'  Her pal says 'jump in, the water's fine,' but as soon as the singer dives into iniquity, the friend disappears.  Surfing in Babylon means playing with fire, and getting burned."

It's sort of an abstracted version of Decadent Babylon, a place we've seen before.  Whatever "dangerous" thing the PJ Party girls are doing--we can imagine it's lesbian sex, if you want--it runs counter to the norms of what they perceive to be correct society.  NOT Surfing In Babylon would mean--what?--falling in love and getting married.  Eating dinner at the table with your family, playing a board game together, and going to bed at a reasonable hour.  Filing your taxes correctly.  This straw-society ignores all the intricacies and vagaries that color individual lives, but no doubt there are people who strive for just such a life, and people who strive to get as far away from that life as possible.

People like... rock stars!  Maybe the most interesting thing about "Surfing" is that it posits the Babylon symbol as more a "rock" thing than a "disco" thing.  Jim Klein, who produced the album and co-wrote the song with Peggy Sendars, must've made it sound like rock for SOME reason--he sure didn't make it sound like surf music!  And a symbol like Babylon isn't endemic to the disco or freestyle genre, Boney M notwithstanding.  A PJ fan on Amazon sez, "I know the title of this song sounds a little unusual, but it's a catchy pop song.  It's not too bad at all."  Whew!--I was expecting it to sound like Celtic Frost or Faster Pussycat.  (The latter of whom did wear fabulous animal prints, much like PJ Party.)  I'm guessing that for a lot of freestyle fans in the '80s--or at least in the context of their expectations for a freestyle album--rock music was also sort of a dangerous "other," the same as what Babylon represents in Western culture.  Not that freestyle fans didn't dig rock, and not that freestyle didn't incorporate rock elements--or, indeed, rock harder than a lot of rock music of the time.  But there's no question they were different, and that rock had more of a dangerous stigma.

(This song reminds me of another pop song that incorporates screaming guitar as a rock signifier:  Amy Grant's "Good for Me," from 1991.  In Amy's case, the rock guitar doesn't signify danger, but it still signifies an "other."  It contrasts with the shiny synths that play the main riff, and within the context of the song, Amy is the synths and her husband is the squealing electric guitar.  Or vice versa.  The point is, they're different but good for one another.)  (I wonder if this move, from rock guitar signifying "dangerous other" to rock guitar signifying simply "other," indicates that rock music became totally toothless from '89 to '91.)  (And then Nirvana came along and saved us all.)  (Or something.)



To recap:  Pajama Party sang a song about Decadent Babylon, abstracted; they sort of made it sound like rock music, since that's where Babylon lives; and some yak co-opted the title for his blog.  Two of these were great decisions; jury's still out on that last one.

Best Thing I heard Today: Nas & some Marleys doing "In His Own Words"

It sure wasn't anything off that Ariel Pink CD, I can tell you that!

Distant Relatives, the recent collaboration between Nas and Damian Marley, deserves its own Babylon analysis. The album's equal parts reggae and rap, so Babylon comes up quite a bit. For now though, here's a pretty tune with Stephen Marley on the hook, Damian on beats and toasting, and Nas doing a couple verses:



Nas barely reveals what he's capable of, but he does have some interesting lines. For instance, he sees God's face in the shapes on his vintage designer clothes. Must be nice. He also sees God in the billboards, which is a little better but further evidence that Nas is often high--a suspicion backed up by this couplet:

"Through my perspective I can see Jah reflection/
In the highest definition getting high with my brethren"

OK, so we don't turn to Nas for dogmatic Christian orthodoxy. Probably not even dogmatic Rasta orthodoxy, if such a thing exists. But Damian! If you ever need beats, turn to Damian. The guy's catchy as all get out, and he comes up with a number of memorable creations on this album. I like how the acoustic guitar in "Words" starts stop-starting during the final refrain, reminiscent of Madonna's "Don't Tell Me" and probably lots of other stuff.

Distant Relatives isn't perfect. Nas, while still sounding better than 75% of other MCs, is fairly humorless and doesn't do anything astounding. There are too many slow, uninteresting reggae songs, but at least they're dispersed throughout the album, and there's enough good tunes to recommend it overall. Definitely stronger than that Ariel Pink CD.

P.S.-- I do take issue with the highly rated Youtube commenter who observed of this song, "Amazing man, to hell with mainstream rap!!!!!" You might not hear anything from Distant Relatives on the radio, but it's on Universal and debuted at #5 on the main Billboard chart, and #1 on the Rap, R&B, and Reggae charts. If that's not mainstream rap, I dunno what is.

Surfing in Babylon Leaves Home: Swell Season! Lightning Bolt! Kid Sister! Urinetown!

In what's surely been a banner period for witnessing live music not performed by myself, I've been to several performances of the stuff in the past week. Whaddo they call 'em? "Shows"? Of course, in two instances I couldn't really see the performers, so the "show" part consisted more of watching my fellow music afficionadi. To wit:

The Swell Season at Ravinia, Wed. 7/14/10

My wife's more of a fan than I am; their albums make me sort of sleepy. The movie Once, which notably starred Swell Seasoners Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, was a delight, and Glen is a real charmer live. When we saw them last December at the Auditorium Theatre, Glen kept shouting out to the cheap seats, the area where you could've guessed we were sitting, if you have ANY understanding of my monetary policies. Glen told story after story. Some were moving, some were funny; all showcased his shambling appeal as a performer. We were his. I didn't want the show to end.

This Ravinia show, we were OK with it ending. Ravinia's cheap seats are a lawn with no clear view of the stage; they have a big TV, but it's less compelling. Throughout the concert, wife and I marveled at the people around us who were dining and conversing while giving little attention to the music being piped through the trees. Hadn't they paid good money for these tickets? I could see if you're going to Ravinia for Shostakovich quartets or something and you paid ten bucks, maybe you take a walk and play with the kid while listening to beautiful music in the background. But somehow a pop show demands more of your undivided attention, even if the music doesn't require close listening like a string quartet. The performers interact more with the audience, and the tickets cost more.

Unfortunately, charming Glen seemed to realize that he couldn't see 3/4 of his audience, and he seemed a little cowed by it. The stories were missing, the funny little bits of stage patter gone. A couple Swell Season songs require that the audience sing backup vocals, and Glen had no hope of communicating that to his unseen fans. He and Marketa and their band, the Frames, performed well, but the communal spirit of the Auditorium show was missing. In hopes of beating the rush to the shuttle bus, we left during "Falling Slowly," their big Oscar hit; but we did get to hear my favorite song of theirs, "When Your Mind's Made Up" (got big applause):



Lightning Bolt and the Catacombz at "The Spot," Friday 7/16/10

Against all odds, Lightning Bolt are probably my favorite band of the '00s. They put out four really good albums last decade--who DOES that? (The Beatles, the Stones, Led Zeppelin... the list is not long.) Lightning Bolt are a two-piece noise band, with Brian Chippendale on drums and Brian Gibson on bass, and they're ridiculously amplified. I mean, these guys are SO amplified, you feel them in your chest before you hear them. Before the show, everybody starts stuffing their ears with earplugs or ripped-up pieces of paper. It's ominous, like the rippling glass of water in Jurassic Park. (The trick, if you're planning on seeing them, is to find the earplug sweet spot where you can still hear plenty of treble from the bass and the cymbals. If you stuff it in too far, all you can hear is chest vibrations and snare drum thwack.) Lightning Bolt have a sound all their own, and they're slavishly devoted to that sound. In fact, in The Wire, Gibson spoke of the attention they've given their live sound:

"Cause it's so much distortion and bi-amped all this sub-low coming out of the 18s, anything I do has so much force, it's really nice. I do think that's such an important thing, that's the problem with most bands that I see, is actually getting your equipment to sound good live. It just seems like people neglect that, and they think way more about what they're playing and what's happening in the song, in theory, but I think the reality of it is that people are gonna be just hearing something initially that's purely sonic and either sounds when it hits you or it doesn't."

Trust me--when Lightning Bolt plays, IT HITS YOU.



That said, the show was just a little disappointing. Predictable. In '05, Frank Kogan argued on an Ashlee Simpson ILM thread that Lightning Bolt didn't sound like they might "potentially veer out of control." And it's true, they don't. And I think part of the expectation at a Lightning Bolt show--where you've got all this NOISE NOISE NOISE, and you might go deaf, and the band's in the middle of the audience, and hairy people are moshing and crowd-surfing, and everybody's sweaty and touching--is that the band will create, using only their music, a situation that might possibly veer out of control. But no, there's little chance of that. Lightning Bolt are well-rehearsed and they have hooks. You can recognize distinct songs from their CDs, even if I'd be hard pressed to tell you the titles of those songs, apart from "The Faire Folk." They're very polite after showtime, greeting fans with handshakes. And despite all the apparent flailing, all their songs have a basic pulse of either 60, a resting heart rate, or 100, a "Stayin' Alive" beat. They should play Lightning Bolt at CPR seminars!

So what, they never threatened to cut themselves with glass or electrocute the crowd. That's probably for the best. For ten bucks (and even if it'd cost considerably more) they put on a great, energetic show, full of guitar effects you're simply not gonna hear from any other band. See 'em before you die.

And before Lightning Bolt came tha Catacombz! Fairly loud Milwaukee four-piece that combined noise energy with classic-rock and motorik song structures--they were blasting Creedence at their merch table. These guys surprised me in ways that LB didn't, if only because I'd never heard their shtick before. Few have. I believe they've only got cassette releases right now, and their shirts are secondhand tees with the Catacombz logo spraypainted on. Catch 'em while they're hot!

(Special thanks to Chi-town's own Castro, aka Idol Threat, for getting me outta the house!)



Kid Sister at Millennium Park, Mon. 7/19/10

Hometown! Actually, I was more hoping to catch the amplified thumb piano groovez of Konono No. 1, but we missed them, so Chicago rapper Kid Sister had to do, and indeed she did. My four-year-old spent most of her show dancing and running around. The crowd, an assortment of hippies and other-people-who-like-free-live-music, seemed to be into her--they, too, danced and ran around. Sound was good, stage patter a little awkward but genuine, new songs fit right in, and all the rhymes were spot-on. In fact, Castro and I discussed her flow on the way to the LB show, and while I was claiming that, like Ke$ha, Kid Sister's flow came out of L'Trimm and Fannypack, I now think I was mistaken. Kid Sister is squarely in the GILLETTE camp of aggressive syncopation, whereas the other girls are a little cutesier and girlier, with more on-beats. (THE FLOWTATION DEVICE will get on this shit, if we ever stop horsing around.)

Anyhow, here's the lovely "Daydreaming":



Urinetown: the Musical at College of Lake County, Friday 7/23/10

"I DIDN'T KNOW TWO HEARTS COULD BEAT AS ONE!"

Urinetown is one of that prevalent recent genre, "Musicals That Dwell On The Fact That They're Musicals." Along with The Drowsy Chaperone, this one has a shot at outlasting our cynical era. Ironic? Unlike Chaperone, which is steeped in its love of musicals, Urinetown is relentlessly cynical. Every song is played for laughs, whether a death song or a love song--like the lovely, complex "Follow Your Heart":



There are moments in Urinetown where you start to care about the characters or the plot mechanations, and then the musical simply makes fun of you for caring. In the end, the hero dies, the heroine ruins civilization, and the audience walks out laughing uncertainly, envisioning mankind engulfed in a river of pee. At least I do. I then try to conserve water for a week or so. While I refrain from flushing, I get the feeling that Urinetown is laughing at me even more.

What these live performances have in common, I don't know. I suppose they teach us the lesson that great music can come from anywhere, whether the local community college (which outperformed that link I posted), the big city immediately to the north or south, a different state, or a different country. But we already knew that, didn't we? So probably it's more like this: my synchronicity is your coincidence, my nights on the town are pretty humdrum. Which is fine. My wife just handed me a coconut macaroon that she made (we've been baking all day for the county fair). It's good, and I'm set. But it was nice to get out of the house.

This Frightened Rabbit album is WORTH IT!!

You guessed it: me at the Burnside Writers' Collective, jauntily. These guys seem to inspire jaunt, maybe in spite of themselves.

Surfing With Sugar Minott (RIP)

Sugar Minott worked three different reggae styles in the late '70s/early '80s, and actually originated one of 'em--studio dancehall. After starting a singing career in 1969, he spent about a decade doing roots reggae, like "Mr. Babylon Man" from 1979's Black Roots album. It's a simple plea for the agents of Babylon to leave him and his Rasta brothers (and sisters?) alone:



Around that same time, Minott started innovating. Working as a session instrumentalist at the fabled Studio One in Kingston ("the Motown of Jamaica"), Minott and his boss discovered that Minott had a knack for singing original tunes over the tracks of other songs. Now, before he started singing, Minott had come up through the sound systems of Jamaica, where DJs would spin records and audiences would party. Since 1970, some of the DJs (notably U-Roy) would toast along with the records they played, rhythmically exhorting people to Get Up On It and whatnot. (New York's pioneering hip-hop DJ Kool Herc came out of this scene, so we have these guys to thank for much of today's pop radio.) U-Roy had recorded his toasting act in studios, but Minott was arguably the first to sing new songs over existing riddims. Throw in some very au courant synth drums, and you've got the sound that'd be known as "dancehall." Here's "Rough Ole Life (Babylon)", a 1983-ish (maybe) track based on one of the most popular Jamaican riddims, the "M-16":



These riddims make up a unique oral culture in Jamaican reggae music. (Somebody, probably not me, needs to write a comprehensive study of the relationship between all the songs based on the same riddims.) U-Roy himself used the M-16 in the late '60s, for the song "Scandal"--you can hear the difference between his toasting style and Minott's singing style, over what I BELIEVE is a Sly & Robbie rhythm track.

Minott's third style was the lover's rock reggae of England, where he lived for a bit in the '80s. I don't think any Babylon songs came out of that period, but this Michael Jackson cover sure did!



As you can hear, the guy was smooth whether he was singing love songs or raging gently against the machine. His anti-Babylon stance was one of faithful presence and quiet resistance. At the end of "Rough Ole Life," starvation and jubilation coexist, and Minott seemed to accept that duality as the lot of Jah's follower, working inside Babylon system.

Best Thing I Heard Today: Trip Lee doing "Snitch"

Christian Rap: It's Competent Now! (My marketing services are available for a fee.) Actually, it may have been competent for a while; da t.r.u.t.h. is, I've been out of touch. But Christian rappers aren't out of touch. Foor proof, here's a new song that sounds like six-year-old Timbaland:



"Snitch" is a clever co-opted gangstaism. Mr. Trip Lee, you see, is snitching on himself. So he's in his confessional booth, or in the Protestant version of same--his mind--and busily hating his sin. Unfortunately, he doesn't snitch to his listeners what he's been up to, which might make the song more interesting.

Based on this song and the rest of his new album, Between Two Worlds, Trip's a pretty good rapper. He's able to change up his patterns in subtle ways, and he's got nothing against syncopation, ptl. He's also got an appealing southern twang that kind of reminds me of a reined-in Weezy, without the craziness and wit.

So, not great, but refreshingly GOOD. Actually, I probably prefer this LL song with an actual, similar Timbo beat:



Play 'em at the same time!

Worth-It Roundup (first half of 2010)

Ke$ha still roolz!

There are some fine CDs and digital files in the world; we should all be grateful. Special thanks to Lake County's wonderful libraries, especially the Round Lake Area Library (call my legislator to preserve Interlibrary Loan!); the MSN Listening Booth; and, believe it or not, MySpace! They're not just for pederasts anymore.

1. Ke$ha--Animal
2. DMX--The Best of DMX (REISSUE) (and a seemingly redundant one, since his label just put out a DMX best-of a couple years ago; nonetheless, this demonstrates what flabbergasting skills the guy possesses) (and also what jawdropping misogyny...)
3. Diana Reyes--Amame, Besame
4. WASP--Babylon

5. Grong Grong--To Hell 'n' Back ('09 REISSUE)
6. Frightened Rabbit--The Winter of Mixed Drinks
7. Fela Kuti--Koola Lobitos/The '69 L.A. Sessions (REISSUE)
8. The Like--Release Me
9. Marvin Sapp--Here I Am
10. Drive-By Truckers--The Big To-Do
11. Various Artists--Fire In My Bones: Raw, Rare & Otherworldly African-American Gospel (1944-2007) ('09 REISSUE)
12. Vampire Weekend--Contra
Have I really not linked to any Vampire Weekend on here? They're beautiful and spunky. (And, if you believe the guy from Xiu Xiu, they are "fake Ivy League Afropop rip-off assholes who are, as their wealthy grandparents before them, plundering race without any consideration for the implications." But why would you believe the guy from Xiu Xiu?) Here's "Giving Up the Gun":

13. Daddy Yankee--Mundial
14. Mary J. Blige--Stronger With Each Tear ('09)
15. David Bowie--A Reality Tour
16. Gary Allan--Get Off On the Pain
17. Los Titanes de Durango--Los Locos del Corrido
18. Art Museums--Rough Frame (apparently I need to listen to more Television Personalities; like, more than none)
19. Intocable--Classic ('09) (also for further research: Los Relampagos del Norte, who originally did the songs on this album)
20. New Pornograpers--Together (I confess to only remembering the first three songs, which are amazing; hope to hear the whole thing again soon...)
21. Youssou N'Dour--Music from the Motion Picture I Bring What I Love
22. Josh Turner--Haywire (concept album about what an awesome husband and father he is)
23. Ludacris--Battle of the Sexes
24. Meth, Rae, & Ghost--Wu-Massacre
25. This Moment in Black History--Public Square
26. Hold Steady--Heaven is Whenever (I think; this one's kind of in the same boat as the Pornographers, only no songs were flat-out amazing)
27. XP8--Drop the Mask
28. Nneka--Concrete Jungle
29. Carolina Chocolate Drops--Genuine Negro Jig
30. Spoon--Transference
Have I really not linked to "Mystery Zone" yet? We'll set that right today!

31. Alicia Keys--The Element of Freedom ('09)
32. Matthew Shipp--4D
33. Los Tucanes de Tijuana--Retro-Corridos
34. Blake Shelton--Hillbilly Bone
35. Gary Lucas & Dean Bowman--Chase the Devil
36. Ray Wylie Hubbard--A. Enlightenment B. Endarkenment (Hint: There is no C)
37. Was (Not Was)--Pick of the Litter (1980-2010) (REISSUE)
38. Midlake--The Courage of Others
39. Various Artists--Minimal Wave Tapes (REISSUE) (I go back and forth on those last three.)

Four Tet's in there somewhere, too; I just listened yesterday to that groovy electronic gentleman, and he was very charming. Not charming enough for the Top 20, probably, but he knows what he's doing.

Exempt from the ranking is good friend Kyle Gray Young, whose Songs for the Moon is a lovely classic rock record, chopsier than he's been in the past.

Somewhere around here there's a "Not Worth It" list, approximately as long, available upon request. It's not completely dire; some of it has sounded pretty good to other ears, but it's just not stuff I'd wanna subject myself to on a regular basis. And some of it is completely dire.

On to singles! I'm not quite as sure about these right now--lots I heard once or twice and haven't heard since, but they sounded good at the time. That's a pretty solid top ten, though. Thanks to Singles Jukebox for recommending and thinking!

"Your Love Is My Drug"--Ke$ha
"Praise You Forever"--Marvin Sapp
"Babylon"--Congorock
"Soldier of Love"--Sade
"Wile Out"--DJ Zinc ft. Ms. Dynamite
"Take That"--Wiley & Chew Fu
"Baby"--Justin Bieber feat. Ludacris
"Hipnotika"--A.B. Quintanilla's All Starz
"Wavin' Flag"--K'Naan
"Shutterbugg"--Big Boi
"Born Free"--M.I.A.
"Speechless"--Lady Gaga
"American Saturday Night"--Brad Paisley
"Hard"--Rihanna
"Swim Until You Can't See Land"--Frightened Rabbit
"I'm Ready"--Alicia Keys
"Stinkin' Rich"--Gappy Ranks
"Bedrock"--Young Money
"Tik Tok"--Ke$ha
"Crash Years"--New Pornographers
"Call Me Dragon"--These Monsters
"Estamos En Algo"--Intocable
"Falling"--I:Cube
"Why Don't We Just Dance"--Josh Turner
"Bricks and Mortar"--Editors
"Chase the Tear"--Portishead
"Ala Freakin' Bama"--Trace Adkins
"Wrong Baby Wrong Baby Wrong"--Martina McBride
"Rainy Days at the Beach"--Sable
"A Little More Country Than That"--Easton Corbin

Best Thing I Heard Today: Courtney Jaye doing "Can't Behave"

From the not-bad soundtrack to Aquamarine, and also from Courtney Jaye's less not-bad debut album, comes this ode to the Bad Boys:



Courtney's boyfriend might not be a trustworthy individual. Rumor has it he's mischievous, and these rumors knock Courtney off her cloud. Does she kick him to the curb because he acts like Mick Jagger? Hardly; but she does confront BF about said rumors, amid handclaps. Bad boy to the left of her, gossips to the right, Courtney's stuck in the middle with her paranoia and empty threats. Here she is. Will she move?

(Re Aquamarine: Isabelle2828 sez, "They should make a second one. Where Clare visits Hayley and they meet Aqua in Australia. That would be so awsome!")

These Los Titanes de Durango are WORTH IT!!!

Los Titanes de Durango
Los Locos del Corrido
(Disa)

Picture Cream. Now imagine that Eric Clapton plays accordion. He has to cover all the same parts--fills and riffs and power chords and whatnot--only he plays accordion. Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker are still around, only now they're named Agustin and Jose. And Clapton has a brother! He plays a 12-string that he tunes an octave down. Doesn't add a whole lot to the power trio texture, but, you know, he's cool and he's Clapton's brother. Anyway, Clapton--now rechristened Sergio--writes and sings all the songs. They're like Cream songs if Cream had only one slow song, and if most of the others were spritely waltzes, and everything was recorded really dry and clean and sung in Spanish. (They're not really like Cream songs.) And now imagine that Arizona governor Jan Br3w3r wakes up in the desert to find that she's missing a kidney; someone replaced it with a baggie full of cocaine. Ms. Br3w3r starts to hallucinate in the desert heat--OR DOES SHE?? She gets into a fight with the Statue of Liberty on Gl3nn B3ck's TV show, and the Statue of Liberty bares her noble fangs and rips the baggie out of Br3w3r's abdomen in front of a live audience. Pandemonium ensues, and a Latino March on Washington. (Gl3nn B3ck is so moved by the whole experience that he quits his media jobs and joins the Catholic Workers.) (For no apparent reason, Jeff Beck does the same.) At the March, the transmogrified Cream, rechristened Los Titanes de Durango, play a long set bursting with giddy triumph, and the crowd listens for hours, barely even noticing when the band start repeating songs. That's sort of like this CD.

Best Thing I Heard Today: Billy Joel doing "Shades of Grey"

Billy Joel's songs are sort of like Weird Al's, without any laughs: each one shamelessly apes the style of some other famous band. (Or classical composer.) Here's Billy's Cream song:



There are people who will tell you that Billy's a terrible lyricist, literal and bludgeoning, dwelling on esoteric minutiae while grinding his own little axes; but then, there are people who have lost every trace of human kindness. What he is is a GREAT tunesmith--unless he's trying his hand at "soul"--whose lyrics fit the melodies pretty well and don't offend. Well, sometimes they involve "soft soap" (or lack thereof), and THEN they offend.

The Cream song in question is "Sweet Wine." Billy Joel's "Shades of Grey" shouldn't be confused with Joel Grey's version of "White Room":

Best Thing I Heard Today: The Like doing "Fair Game"

Retro-rock in any number of ways: there's '60s garage rock in the organ and guitar riffs, Liliput/Kleenex in the sprechtstimme vocals, and "Hungry Like the Wolf" in a lyrical namecheck. There's also plenty of Peter, Bjorn, and John in the excellently recorded drum pattern, but I don't mind:



What else? Mark Ronson produced (which is why this sounds like an Amy Winehouse record), and it seems like Little Steven and my StL man Doug Morgan should TOTALLY be playing these ladies, but they're not yet, so far as I can tell.

What would '60s girl groups sing about in today's debauched world? Well, she sings fast so I'm not totally sure, but I THINK Z. Berg is describing making out with her cousin at a family reunion. Not necessarily romantically; they might just be bored. "The rules are strange, but aren't they GREAT?!" It's our job to groove, not to judge.

Best Thing I Heard Today: Byron Cage doing "Faithful to Believe"

Absolutely thrilling call and response over drums, with blazing instrumental fills:



The drummer, I'm happy to learn, is the remarkable Calvin Rodgers, who you'll remember from Marvin Sapp's latest CD. Like that album, Mr. Cage's was produced by Aaron Lindsey and recorded live in a Michigan church. No doubt they touched it a little up after the concert, but just look at the video! The bulk of what we're hearing is live, and I'm always amazed by live bands who sound this good.

NOT WORTH IT: Titus Andronicus! Hole! Los Primos de Durango! Point of Grace!

Titus Andronicus
The Monitor
(XL)

Concept album about the giant lizard that devoured the Lincoln baby, kicking off the Civil War.

Here's the problem with having a sloppy drunk guy unravel all his Civil War metaphors for you, at LENGTH, in SONG: no matter how audacious the concept, it's probably not gonna stick once everyone's sobered up. He won't be able to maintain his momentum for an entire tune. No matter how ingratiating his melodies, they won't have enough tension and heft to be memorable. And even if, through sheer good will or pathos, he's able to lure you into a gang singalong, you won't have any idea why you're singing the words that you're singing. Once he stops ranting and you're home in bed, all you'll have is a vague memory of some thick guitar sludge.




Hole
Nobody's Daughter
(Mercury/Island Def Jam/CherryForever)

She's still got one of the best voices around. Sadly, her new material has fewer surprises than the proverbial phone book in song. And since most of the album's interest stems from "who wrote what," Courtney's phone book's gotta be fascinating.




Los Primos de Durango
Mi Mejor Regalo
(Disa)

Their "100% Duranguense Light" is the only instance I can recall of a band blatantly trying to innovate through selling out. More power to 'em--except that to call regular duranguense "heavy" or "authentic" or somehow "not pop" is to hear music that's simply not there. Duranguense per se is already a softer, quicker, synthier, poppier version of banda, so what can it possibly mean to "lighten" it? The Primos' answer is to keep their tambora player in line and make their horn fills more cloying.




Point of Grace
No Changin' Us
(Word Entertainment)

There are probably "moms" who "identify" with "Love and Laundry" and the rest of the 11 slices of "country" "life" collected here. I just wonder about this gritty couplet:

"I’d sure like to relax laying in a bubble bath/
but then I’d have to clean the tub and really who's got time for that?"

Seriously, how dirty do Point of Grace leave their tub?

Best Thing I Heard Today: Genesis doing "No Reply At All"

Phil Collins infamously wrote "No Reply At All" for Disney's The Miracle Worker. This 1981 musical adaptation shouldn't be confused with other Disney flops from that dark era: the X-rated Tommy, cast entirely with animals; the misanthropic dreamscape Johnny Got His Gun; the sexually rapacious Annie Got HER Gun; and of course, Annie Frank, which denied both Holocaust and Jewry, and with which I always confuse The Miracle Worker.

"No Reply" expresses the title Worker's frustration at trying to communicate with her young charge, Helen Keller. The biggest controversy arose when Ron W. Miller, then Disney president, changed the Keller character's condition to an acute case of tinnitus, with which Miller's own son was stricken. The filmmakers dramatized this malady by inserting a piercing whine that sounded during most of the movie, rendering Collins's songs inaudible and chasing viewers out of the theater in droves. Collins countered with furious legal gesticulations. He is now wealthy.

Best Thing I Heard Today: Diana Reyes doing "Baila Esta Cumbia / La Carcacha"

An irresistible Selena medley from the eclectic Reina del Pasito Duranguense:



Like every Diana Reyes album since she jumped to the Duranguense genre in '05, Amame, Besame is packed with energy and color. Unlike those other albums, this new one is only half Duranguense, the regional Mexican polka-pop genre that got its start in Chicago. (Read more about it in this landmark record review!) The other half is technocumbia, a more Afro-Latin pop genre named after a Selena song. Those tracks were produced by Luigi Giraldo, a former Latin boy band dude who's been working with Selena's brother in his Kumbia Kingz empire. (Giraldo's sort of like--who?--Justin Timberlake? If JT was mainly a producer? I'll think of a more apt comparison later.)

Anyway, here's one of the technocumbias--or rather, two! Diana sings Selena's songs in her huskier, throatier voice and knocks 'em out of the park, especially her triumphant long notes about two and three minutes in. The production is also full-throated, with horns and electronic effects jumping around the edges. I can't really hear the accordion player, but his nickname is "El Animal." What's not to love?

This new Marvin Sapp album is totally worth it!

At least, if you believe me at the Burnside Writers Collective. And come on, when have you ever believed me to your detriment? (Don't say Ke$ha.)