Best Thing I Heard Today: Liquid Divine doing "Sojourner (Diskonnekted Remix)"

The beat, glorious electrobeat! And the lyrics! They mope in a stolid way. "We will fight/ We will fail/ and the sun will always rise/ and I'm beyond time/ We will fade away/ From the arena of life/ And I'm beyond time..." It's sort of like Ecclesiastes with synth stabs--click and marvel.



These guys can't seem to write memorable melodies to save their lives, but it's like metal, it doesn't really matter when you've got all this texture and momentum and layering action going on. "I remember the night/ Don't you miss the sky?" Well yes, if the sky were unavailable I believe that I would miss it. What does lead singer Guido mean when he sez he's "beyond time," though? I dunno, if Guido wants this song to preserve his place in immortality, he might be disappointed. But it is very pleasant, thank you Guido. I should also thank Christian, who's doing all the production. They seem like good guys.

Surfing With Yabby You (RIP)

Nothing sounds better on a Friday afternoon than this tune. If you're looking to chant down Babylon, this is where you start.

"Chant Down Babylon Kingdom", from the Jesus Dread comp, 1977:



also,
"Babylon Gone Down", from One Love, One Heart, 1983:




"Babylon A Fall", from Deliver Me From My Enemies, also 1977 (bad buffering on this one):



Farewell to a conquering lion of Judah!

Not Worth It: new Freedy Johnston, Jason Boesel, and the Avatar soundtrack

Freedy Johnston
Rain on the City
(Bar/None)

Johnston's smoothed out all the weird phrasing and vowel shapes in his voice, and only a couple tunes are worth remembering. What remains of his arsenal? "Evocative" lyrics, which usually only evoke the feeling that I wish the song was faster; and a pretty good sense of rhythm for a singer-songwriter, which is SOMETHING, but also faint praise. You should totally listen to this, though:



xoxo



Jason Boesel
Hustler's Son
(Team Love)

Boesel drums for Rilo Kiley and Conor Oberst, so it's ironic that this alt-country effort is devoid of beats. He sounds SORT of like Jack Johnson, if Johnson had a less distinctive voice.

xoxo



James Horner
Avatar soundtrack
(Atlantic)

Depending on how much you dig movie scores, your opinion may vary. The most I can say is that it's unobtrusive enough for background music. As someone who's recently been subjected to the third Harry Potter soundtrack, I can testify that big budget mainstream movie scores can be far more adventurous than Horner's faux nativisms. With all of the 20th century's classical techniques at his disposal, why is Horner content to rip off himself?

Surfing with Congorock

Congorock: "Babylon"
(For real, click on this--you WON'T NOT turn into a dancing fool.) (The double negative represents the strength of my feelings and the unruliness of my limbs.)



What's a song like this got to do with Babylon, you ask? Does it serve as a reminder that they knew how to party? Invented the beat? Laid down the Code of the... OK, I'll stop now and listen to it again.

It comes down to this: if you come up with a vaguely "exotic" sounding synth hook and set it to a sped-up reggaeton beat, you can call your song "Babylon." I'm surprised MIA hasn't done a Babylon song yet. Along with that irresistible hook, Mr. Congorock (Italian producer Rocco Rampino) gives us a shimmery synth cloud that resembles a cloud of gnats, a heavy "distorted guitar" sound, something that sounds like a lawnmower or clippers, and a dude (the gardener?) yelling out "Boyo!" and "Yeah!" and "Babylon!" in approval. It's a very outdoorsy tune, though maybe I'm being influenced by the excellent video, with its lovely closeup shot of a snail. Really, I feel like I need to keep listening to this song over and over.

Best Thing I Heard Today: Merle Haggard and Leona Williams doing "The Bull and the Beaver"

This delightful tune might be the sexiest trucking song ever (give or take Garth's "Callin' Baton Rouge"), if it weren't so goofy. And it's not just me--after the song played on Rick Jackson's Country Hall of Fame yesterday--and after Lea and I finally figured out what it was about--Rick Jackson himself practically collapsed into giggles talking about it. He could barely get a word out! Your results may vary, but here you go:



What else? The sax solo reminds me of something off Paul Simon's Graceland, weirdly enough--maybe it's just the timbre. This song is NOT on the album pictured above, but Bear Family's still a great label, so how could you go wrong? And it occurs to me that "Bull/Beaver" may also be the sexiest jargon song (which I'm thinking of redubbing "shoptalk songs") ever, not that there's a lot of competition on that front (unless you read "Strawberry Roan" WAY differently than I do). I mean, you gotta love that Merle ACTUALLY SINGS this verse:

"Well, it won't be hard to back it,
Babe, I'm right behind you--
Just put them air brakes on and let 'er slide!"

Ah, romance.

This new XP8 album is worth it! (CUSSING CAUTION)

XP8
Drop the Mask
(Metropolis)

In song, album title, and press release, XP8 declare, "It's time to grow real fast... it's time to drop the mask." This is a TERRIBLE idea for a couple industrial dudes wearing mascara and creative hair, one of whom has this rad tattoo of some cattle-skull deity on his arm:



Dressing up is intense! Masks are intense! Remember Eyes Wide Shut, when the King of the Orgy commands Tom Cruise, "You will kindly remove your mask"? Spoiler alert: Tom Cruise removes his mask and doesn't get to have any orgy fun. (He has a bad couple days besides that.) And consider the Greek tragedy! Those people all wear masks, and they're so creepy I can barely look at these people doing Agamemnon:



In short: masks = mysterious, sexy, and badass.

XP8 seem to be going for mysterious, sexy, and badass. Lead single "Want It" is sort of like a more thumping version of "Closer" by NIN, wherein guest singer Daniel Graves (from Aesthetic Perfection) Wants It "now," "rough," and "sexy as fuck." I think we all know what he's referring to! Honestly, I can't think of a better soundtrack for violating someone you hate--or at least someone you're pretending to hate, for kicks (they keep getting harder to find)--while lights both black and strobe jack up your electrical bill.

But of course the two XP8ers, Marco and Marko, could just claim that their future stripclub hit is telling it like it is. Being honest! Cutting through the usual seduction crap! Isn't that what we all want, after all--to live in a world that's honest, where men can be free to bare their souls and atone for any previous deception? Hence the cynical "One True God," which seems to be about how monotheism is a precursor to violence and hatred, much like the violence and hatred embodied in Marc(k)o's fierce industrial grooves.

But what've they got going in "One True God"? Synths and synths and synths, that's what! And without making any fatuous "synths signify falseness" claims, I can point out that there's a low swoopy bass synth, a midrange fast-sequence synth, a high shimmery descant synth, and a disco thud, which, when coupled with the swoopy bass synth, makes the whole thing sound pretty bouncy for an angry anti-intolerance tune. One way to make angry protests signify is to strip them way down to an acoustic guitar and a voice, like Tom Morello doing his dire Nightwatchman spiel; a better, albeit more dressed-up, way is to make them dance.

Land sakes, the next song's even faster! "One Pill Missing" it's called, and must be a representation of a frantic speed freak in search of that one precious pill that was no doubt palmed by his good-for-nothing jock roommate, who keeps calling speed freak's EBM music "totally hardcore, dude," and then returns to his idiotic O.A.R. CDs. Only, O.A.R. can do rage, too--what's that song that gets some play on AAA and Hot AC stations--"Didn't you LOOOOVE ME, faster than the devil?!!" (Always struck me as a waste of a good rhetorical question, that one--how fast is the devil supposed to be capable of loving? Your Bible's not gonna have the answer, friend; maybe Paradise Lost, or the South Park movie.)

And "Awake, Restart" is ALL thump. Until the synths start to pile up, that is, and Marc(k)o starts screaming orders at himself. "aWAKE! reSTART!" It's gonna be a great day! And you could TOTALLY do aerobix to this song--remember Kanye's Workout Plan? That's what the beat reminds me of, even though the songs are nothing at all alike. You could use this album in a number of different social settings. This tune's good for the gym, whereas "Want It" is a total strip club hit waiting to happen, tucked between "Crazy Bitch" and Rob Zombie's greatest hits. The awful slow "Breathe the Poison In" is perfect for your breakup mixtape, when you're trying to inflict as much pain as possible on the recipient, blinded from the fact that they're just gonna listen once, laugh, and load that one O.A.R. song into iTunes before pitching the CD. I mean, seriously: even when the disco thud comes in, it doesn't enliven the fact that Marc(k)o's still being a sadsack who just keeps breathing poison, and I can't figure out WHY. Dude, you don't even have to go out in the sun or anything, just pull your shirt up over your face.

Look, XP8 can drop whatever masks they want, but as long as they're making music their music's gonna dress up whatever cathartic revelations they deem worthy of honest poesy. Most such sentiment is rendered palatable with big beats and squiggly sequences. I don't know if those elements are masks that obscure or conduits of true emotion, but here's the skinny: no songs as good as "Zero" by the YYYeahs, which follows these guys in my iTunes, but still seven or eight solid genre stompers. They'll be a swell accompaniment to your next makeup-and-leather get together.

Best Thing I Heard Today: Sade doing "Soldier of Love"

Completely unexpected, with more jagged edges than I've ever heard from Sade before, but maybe I just haven't been listening. The drummer keeps coming up with new snare beats while maintaining the martial groove, which is some kind of feat in itself. The gang vocals swerve towards atonal "WOOO"s and new structural elements keep unraveling before our ears. Sade the soldier sounds bedraggled, like she's at the end of her tour, until all she can do is wait for love to come, the surge that'll turn everything around. But her music tells us that's more dream than certainty.

The Flowtation Device Prezents: "I'm On a Boat" by Lonely Island ft. T-Pain (DETAILED DISCUSSION OF PROFANITY)

The Flowtation Device doesn't actually have much to say about this one, but when has that stopped us before? Sometime before you lose your sense of humor, you should really watch this video, if you're not one of the 10 million people who's already done so:



And if irregular buffering gets you down, you can always just listen to the song:



The Singles Jukebox, an entertaining critical roundup, was divided into thirds over whether this song was a really good parody that was also an homage, an OK joke that could have been better executed, or a lametard joke that insulted its target and wasn't funny at all. Since it was my favorite single of 2009, I'm going with the first choice, but I'd like to downplay the importance of the "parody being simultaneously an homage". Of COURSE it's simultaneously an homage! This is not so unusual. In fact, the genre of parodies could plausibly be divided into thirds: one third simultaneously pays tribute to its target (Lonely Island, Hot Fuzz, some Spike Jones); one third insults its target (other Spike Jones, "Smells Like Nirvana"); and one third you can't really tell (most other Weird Al songs). These thirds are probably unequal; I haven't done the math, nor do I intend to. Please contact me if you're interested in doing so, and I'll endorse your results.

The guys in Lonely Island are pretty good rappers, and they're good in a way that highlights the shortcomings of the Flowtation Device. Read on the page, a line like

"i'mRIDin /
ONaDOLphin*.DOin / FLIPS_ANDshit=theDOLphin's /
SPLASHin=.GETtinEV'ry / BODyALLwet*"

is sort of funny, but rhythmically it's simple and boring. Accented syllables fall about where you'd expect them to, and the only item of interest is the syncopation that sometimes occurs on the "and" of beat 2: "FLIPS_ANDshit" and "EV'ry / BODyALLwet". (Let's call that the "rhythm of the boogie the beat" phrase-ending syncopation, for short.) But the Lonelies' delivery makes the line and puts over the rest of the song. It's the Beastie Boys effect. Lonely Island are aggressively in character and they really sell this idea that being on a boat is the most covetable example of conspicuous consumption that's ever existed. Plus they have T-Pain singing the funniest parody cameo since Michael McDonald offered to get your car detailed for 20 bucks, at the end of the South Park movie.

Alas, the Flowtation Device cannot depict flow delivery. So we'll end by pointing out two elements that DO fall under our jurisdiction, but that you probably could have noticed without our help:

1. The Lonely Island may not be the most skilled rappers, but they make themselves appear more skilled by changing flow patterns every four lines. The array of patterns--five different ones over six verses--helps create the impression that a whole posse of guest rappers is in the studio, and the brevity of these four-line verses keeps us from getting bored by what are some fairly pedestrian rhythms. Some of the verses start their lines on beat one, some rest on beat one, some rhyme at the end of each line, some rhyme on beat 2--they've identifed a variety of simple ways to change things up.

2. The one surprising rhythm (and maybe I'm just easily surprised) occurs in verse 5, the "motherfucker" verse. I expect lines like

"*.FUCK.LANDi'mONa / BOAT.MOTHerFU_CKAH."

to end on the "and" of beat 3, which would continue the "rhythm of the boogie the beat" phrase-ending syncopation, discussed above. Instead, Mr. Lonely holds out "FU--" for a whole beat, and hits second syllable "CKAH" right on beat 4, if not the barest smidge before. Ordinarily, hitting every beat in a bar would be the most boring rapping imaginable, the sort of parody you'd get from some blowhard who'd only ever heard rap blasting out of car windows and felt threatened by it. But since they've cannily established the expectation of ending phrases on offbeats--since we know the Lonely Island are capable of syncopation--the refusal to syncopate just emphasizes the word "motherfucker," in all its ridiculous glory, even more.

Best Things I Heard Today: Don Williams's "I Believe in You" VS. Savage Garden's "Affirmation"

"Best" with reservations, maybe--more on those in a moment. (They concern the lyrics.) But the tune's unforgettable, the bass sound is big, the pedal steel sounds like a synth (unless that's a synth?), and Mr. Williams's delivery is laconically intense, if such a thing is possible. Here he is on Hee Haw:



Yeah, about those lyrics. Don Williams offers us a belief system, cunningly presented through a dogmatics of disbelief. Perhaps he's been reading this book (I know I haven't!):



A dialectic: Don Williams explains what he doesn't believe in, and then what he does believe in, so we get a better sense of what's going on inside Don Williams.

So what does Don Williams believe in? Unfortunately: babies, children, and old folks. What does that mean, exactly? He believes they exist? That can't be it, because he doesn't believe in organic food and foreign cars, the existence of which only a fool would deny.

So maybe he believes that babies, children, and old folks have something true and important to tell us about life and the world. Well, I don't know about that either. Have you ever met a baby? I say this with all the greatest love for my own son, and with the acknowledgment that kids have a remarkable capacity for faith and love, but KIDS ARE NOT FUNDAMENTALLY GOOD. Not even babies! They're selfish little parasites, endowed by natural selection with the cunning and will and cuteness to get what they need to survive into adulthood, at which point they have the luxury of acting on more altruistic ideals. You can call this "original sin" if you want, but just because kids aren't smart enough to break the 10 Commandments or whichever checklist you like to use, doesn't make them "innocent" or "sweet" or anything. There's a reason we tell adults not to act like children--it's because children don't act all that great to begin with.

Rather than move on to insulting all the old folks in my life, I'll just say that, for all of Don's spiritual insight in verse 2, I wish he didn't slip into this tired glorification of babies. Sure, you need "faith like a child" and whatnot, but that's a symbol of one specific aspect of children's behavior--their natural, unforced faith--and not a glorification of childhood or infancy as some ideal state of being. This "belief in babies" recalls another lyrical howler, from Savage Garden's "Animal Song": "Animals and children tell the truth, they never lie." Where are they? Where are these children who never lie?! And what about those moths that make themselves look like wasps?!!!!??

Ahem. As it happens, Savage Garden also have a musical dogmatics of belief, entitled "Affirmation." From the same album, in fact! Enjoy, and then we'll figure out a creed to incorporate both the Garden and Don Williams. The Savage Williams Creed, we'll call it. (Do Creed have any songs like this?)



Well, I don't wanna spend too much more time on this, but a couple notes:

Savage Garden are sometimes as softheaded in "Affirmation" as they were in that line about animals and children. I note particularly "the struggle for financial freedom is unfair"--not sure I agree with it, since all of life for most everybody (INCLUDING animals and children and maybe millionaires) is a struggle. (Savage Garden themselves struggle with English when they sing "the grass is no more greener on the other side.") Which isn't to say we shouldn't struggle for financial freedom. By all means, struggle and manipulate laws to take money from the privileged classes! That's what politics is all about.

Meanwhile, Mr. Williams does not believe "that gasoline's in short supply, the rising cost of getting by." Does this mean he does believe inflation and income are rising at equal rates? That gas prices are high because of futures speculation or OPEC manipulating the market? Does anyone remember what gas prices were like in 1980?

But forgive me, I must go. If anyone wants to convene a credal conference to work out a Savage Williams synthesis, let me know.

Best Thing I Heard Today: The Raveonettes doing "Bang!"

An irresistible homage to the Crystals' "He Hit Me (and It Felt Like a Kiss)." More to the point, an irresistible homage to Stella Kowalski reminiscing about her husband Stanley's violence, and concluding "I was sort of--thrilled by it." Which is to say, the Raveonettes aren't doing anything new by wrapping up edgy material in a pretty package. Don't they make it sound good, though?:



Boring confessional: Along with 2009's debut from the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, this Raveonettes album (In and Out of Control) makes me think I should get around to listening to the Jesus and Mary Chain before I die. I've heard more JMC tribute bands than I've heard JMC themselves. It's really disgraceful. From what I understand, JMC were a feedback/reverb-heavy Phil Spector tribute band, so it's not like THEY were doing anything new either. PoBPaH emphasize the feedback/reverb aspect of JMC, with little wispy melodies floating through the noise.

The Raveonettes are more in love with pop structure, so their songs have actual bridges and things amid the wispy melodies. At least on "Bang!", Sharin Foo's voice has more presence than anything the Painz were able to pull off. Great chiming guitar tone, too. Drumming isn't their strong suit, I think--on a Spector song you'd have huge fills and exciting textures in the background, where the Raves manage a couple simple thumping patterns. But the rest of the song's good enough that they prevent me from caring.

Best Things I Heard in 2009: Pazz/Jop Ballot and Comments

If you're interested in year-end music lists, especially those made by people who heard pathetically few new albums over the course of the year, here's mine! Also, if you enjoy rambling specious comparisons between theological concepts and pop music, you've reached the right page, my friend. These ballots are always fun to do, so God bless the Village Voice for letting me continue. As a response to their grace, my New Year's resolution is to be a better rock critic in 2010. Off I go to download some darkwave promos!

With the exception of the Collin Raye song, all top 10 singles are Youtubable, but I'm too lazy to provide links right now. (You know how to use Youtube.) I've had the best luck with Collin's tune at myspace.

Singles
1. "I'm On a Boat"--The Lonely Island feat. T-Pain (Universal Republic)
2. "High Cost of Living"--Jamey Johnson (Mercury Nashville)
3. "Midlife Chrysler"--Collin Raye (Saguaro Road)
4. "Quiet Dog"--Mos Def (Downtown)
5. "New Wu"--Raekwon feat. Ghostface Killah and Method Man (ICEAL)
6. "2 Turntables and a Microphone"--DJ Crazy Toones feat. Kurupt (www.hardknock.tv)
7. "Don't Stop Believin'"--Glee Cast (Sony)
8. "Sidestep"--Robin Thicke (Interscope)
9. "Then"--Brad Paisley (Arista Nashville)
10. "On the Ocean"--K'Jon (Universal Republic)

Other good ones:
"Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell"--Das Racist
"Bang!"--the Raveonettes
"Nothing to Hide"--Yo La Tengo
"ABCs"--K'Naan feat. Chubb Rock
"Waving Flag"--K'Naan
"Dead and Gone"--TI feat. JT
"I Run to You"--Lady Antebellum
"Waking Up in Vegas"--Katy Perry
"Nothing to Worry About"--Peter Bjorn & John
"My Life Would Suck Without You"--Kelly Clarkson
"I Get Crazy"--Nicki Minaj feat. Lil' Wayne
"I Do Not Hook Up"--Kelly Clarkson
"Use Somebody"--Kings of Leon

Albums
1. K'Naan--Troubadour (A&M/Octone)
2. Maxwell--BLACKsummer's Night (Columbia)
3. Ata Ebtekar and the Iranian Orchestra for New Music--Orientalism (Sub Rosa)
4. Lightning Bolt--Earthly Delights (Load)
5. Yeah Yeah Yeahs--It's Blitz! (Interscope)
6. Bob Dylan--Together Through Life (Columbia)
7. Brad Paisley--American Saturday Night (Arista Nashville)
8. Cesium 137--Identity (Metropolis)
9. Raekwon--Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II (ICEAL)
10. U2--No Line on the Horizon (Interscope)



Hi, thanks for letting me vote, since I'm nobody's idea of a Gatekeeper. Demographia: 32, a straight white married American, and a stay-at-home father of one. Also, as a part-time Lutheran organist and choir director, I am very moved whenever I listen to "Welcome to the Future" and Brad Paisley proclaims, "Wake up Martin Luther!" Assuming we did awaken the crusading monk and noted anti-Semite, what would he have to say about The Year In Music 2009? Probably something dicey about Matisyahu--but then, who wouldn't?



Maybe he'd compare the Catholic Church to The Monoculture! Remember when Michael Jackson's death symbolized the Death of Monoculture? (Results 1 - 10 of about 27,100 for "michael jackson" death monoculture.) I'm not totally sure I understand this claim--how long has The Monoculture been dead, exactly? Did it just die in June? Was it still alive in 2001, when Jackson's last album came out? Or did it die sometime since 1991-2, when he could have reasonably been said to have a claim on EVERYONE? (Though maybe not as big a claim as niche artists Metallica, Garth Brooks, Pearl Jam, and Nirvana, all of whom have sold more copies of their 1991 albums, at least in the U.S.) Furthermore, if The Monoculture has been dying or dead for a while, why did we only start mourning it when its last living exponent kicked the bucket? I'm pretty sure we noticed its death before Jackson died, if we read the preface to Christgau's Consumer Guide: Albums of the '90s, published in 2000. ("Who can possibly believe that Madonna and the Wu-Tang Clan mean as much to the Culture at Large as the Beatles and Aretha Franklin?") So if we only started mourning at decade's end, how much could The Monoculture have actually meant to us?

If any musician had Monocultural reach, I suppose it was '80s Jackson. But by 2009, MJ and The MC had outlived their symbolic equivalence. Maybe the Black Eyed Peas or, yes, Madonna still deserve it. More likely, The Monoculture as symbol deserves to die. The cranky Protestant in me counters any claim on The Monoculture with Jimmy Guterman's sage comment from 1991's The Worst Rock 'n' Roll Records of All Time: "Rock and roll is but one small part of the music being made on this planet. Rockers who think they're changing the world are in fact only reaching a small part of it." (If you're put off by the rockist language, Guterman selected MJ's Off the Wall in his companion volume of Best Rock 'n' Roll Records.) My advice for trendwatchers: next time you're tempted to overstate the importance of The Monoculture, stop to consider the reach of Norman Borlaug, practitioner of a very different kind of monoculture. The agronomist, who died in September, won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize and is estimated to have saved a billion lives through increased crop yields and large scale farming techniques. That's monoculture with reach.



That said, I liked Jackson more than most other pop stars--probably more than I like the Catholic Church, now that I think of it. I can't think of another singer able to negotiate such rage and beauty within a single song--and in plenty of his songs, within a single line ("DIRTY DIANA! Nooo...."). Forget "crazy," forget "rich," even forget "entertainer" and "influence." They may be true, but they smack of faint praise. This guy was one of the great MUSICIANS of the past century. We're talking Stravinsky, Armstrong, Ornette, Beatles territory. (As a vocal arranger of multitracked Michaels, he's an unsung studio hero.) The fact that he was able to communicate to unimaginably huge audiences with stuff that was as claustrophobic and violent as lots of black metal only rarefies his music even more.

Ultimately, though, the only size audience I care about is me. I'm sure you all have the same impulse. That's the Protestantism rearing its head again--screw the papacy, I'll worship however (whoever?) I want! It's no accident that Protestantism has inevitably led to "niche" religions, even within Lutheranism. The self-hating Missouri Synod Lutherans = doom metal, the woman-hating Wisconsin Synod Lutherans = black metal, while my beloved Evangelical Lutheran Church in America = power metal. We're happy and we fight dragons! Plus, as of August, gay people can preach and get married. And fight dragons. (If they want--we don't make them or anything.)



I guess the "point" I'm dancing around (and was trying to avoid "making") is this: just as the breakdown of Catholicism wasn't really a breakdown because Catholicism still exists, and just as the breakoffs from Catholicism inevitably led to a boutique culture within Protestantism--so the breakdown of The Musical Monoculture wasn't really a breakdown because the Black Eyed Peas still exist, and so the breakoffs from Said Monoculture have inevitably led to the boutique culture that Christgau identified back in 2000, if not earlier.* The interesting aspect of all this is that both impulses, Protestant and Catholic, still exist, always have and always will--we only like what we like, but we still want to see the consensus. If your Protestant nature totally wins, you're probably not voting in the poll. If your Catholic nature takes over, you probably scored the top Critical Alignment rating, and everyone knows those dudes are LAAAAME.

I fear I'm making the classic critic's mistake of equating Pazz and Jop with The Monoculture. Sure, Thriller won, but so did TV on the Radio's Dear Science. Like, who actually listens to Dear Science? Among people I regularly talk to, Susan Boyle is far more important. So is Brad Paisley. And like Martin Luther, like MLK, like most sane people who accomplish anything, Paisley's a dreamer and a realist, which is why his vision of a modern American Saturday Night is a union of the niches. (A very consumer-driven union, too--his multicultural title song reads like a Google Products search.) However popular, though, Paisley's not The Monoculture. He's a niche, too--just one with more crossover appeal than TVOTR.

Speaking of crossover appeal, the local Hot AC station became integrated this year! I mean, they'd played "Hey Ya" and "No One" before, but this was the first time I heard actual black people rapping on 101.9 "The Mix." We're talking a station that had previously left Lil' Wayne and TI verses on the cutting room floor. Now they play the Peas (who doesn't?), but also the Weezy verse of Jay Sean's "Down," and "Empire State of Mind." That one blew me away. Aging fans of Bon Jovi and Vertical Horizon must finally be ready for Jay-Z!



I digress.

Most Protestants still value their gatekeepers, be they pastors, bishops, teachers or whoever. Our worship is our own, but it's nice to have people in charge who know what they're talking about just the same--WHICH LEADS ME TO MY BRIGHT IDEA FOR FUTURE POLLS. Have everyone list the gatekeeper who introduced them to their favorite music. That'd give us a nice sense of how the industry operates and who the most influential critics are, about which I'm sure everybody's curious. Here, I'll start:

"I'm On a Boat"--Chuck Eddy via Rhapsody
"High Cost of Living"--Chuck via ilx, library
"Midlife Chrysler"--Chuck via ilx (I swear I'm not a sycophant.) (Actually, I think I first heard this on some mysterious country station in Rolla, MO, this past summer. Haven't heard it on the radio since.)
"Quiet Dog"--KDHX (St. Louis community radio)
"New Wu" and OB4CLII--media blitz, previous fandom
"2 Turntables"--KDHX
"Don't Stop Believin'"--TV
"Sidestep"--Chuck via LiveJournal
"Then" and American Saturday Night--media blitz, library
"On the Ocean"--WGCI (Chicago R&B radio)

K'Naan--Chuck via ilx
Maxwell--Borders promo, previous fandom
Ata Ebtekar--Scott Seward via ilx
Lightning Bolt--previous fandom
Yeah Yeah Yeahs--media blitz, library
Dylan--Borders promo, previous fandom
Cesium 137--Metropolis promo, previous fandom (Note that this is the only item on my list that came directly to me as a promo. Metropolis is my only promo provider. Boo hoo.)
U2--Borders promo, previous fandom

With the Borders well dried up (I quit in August), who knows how I'll hear music next year? Library CDs and darkwave in 2010!

Despite my stodgier demography, I think this is the first time I've ever voted for three artists whose names rhyme--K'Naan, K'Jon, and Raekwon. (Of course, pointing this out may just reinforce the stodge.) No Jay Sean, though, and I'm still awaiting the J-Kwon comeback. Oh wait--Wikipedia tells me it happened this year and I missed it. Youtubing (at church) as we speak... The lyric "J-Kwon back--WHAT?!" seems about right. Yeah, this "I Smacked Nikki" thing is way stodgier than even my sorry attempts at rhyming.

Speaking of stodge, how about that Neko Case CD?



If I want a song cycle that grapples with nature and gets me in touch with my chthonic urges, I'll listen to Germans. Schubert's piano/vocal Winterreise has more variety, and Mahler's Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children) has more feel-good moments. I would maybe buy Case's maneater claim if she didn't sing "surprised, -prised, -prised" the exact same way in every chorus of "People Got a Lotta Nerve." As it is, I feel like I can predict her every move, and would thus be able to escape her attempts to eat me. Frankly, there's an alarming shortage of people on my list that I believe could eat me. Maybe the girl from Glee. But even Lightning Bolt are more comforting than threatening at this point.

I'd apologize for running out of steam and leaving you with half-baked ideas, but that assumes the presence of steam and ideas to begin with. So anyway, keep up the good work and may your health insurance not screw you over.

*My parallel between Catholic/Protestant and Monoculture/Niche Culture breaks down in a couple important respects. Catholicism is (theoretically) completely hierarchical, whereas The (theoretical) Monoculture is at least partly driven by consensus and consumer choice. Untouchable record label honchos may be responsible for 90% of what we hear, but even they can't make us like what we don't like. It's not like pop stars are ordained by God, no matter what they might say while accepting Grammys. And while Protestantism represents a more direct relationship with God, which resonates when discussing Niche Culture--nobody's force-feeding you this music, and maybe you even know the artists--it also represents a rejection of idolatry, which means the elevation of something temporal to the status of an absolute. Temporal things could include golden calves, money, the Bible, or your own opinion. Absolute things include God. So it's sort of perverse to say the Protestant Principle is making me vote for Ata Ebtekar instead of the Peas. If anything, the Protestant Principle should be telling me, "Christgau and Rosen are voting for the Peas, you think you know any better?" Or, "In the grand scheme of things, what does it matter whether Ebtekar's better than the Peas?" Or, "Why don't you go become an agronomist and feed starving people?"

Best Thing I Heard on Christmas: Michael Nyman doing "Chasing Sheep Is Best Left to Shepherds"

Not THOSE shepherds! Nyman originally wrote this peppy Purcell rip for Peter Greenaway's 1982 movie The Draughtsman's Contract, but we heard it last night in the 2008 documentary Man On Wire, which is fantastic, go Netflick it now. (You can stream it!) Here's the Youtube with superior sound:



--and here's a live performance, which is nice because you can see who's playing what:



When I played Nyman’s career retrospective overhead at work some years back, I got one of two responses:
“It sounds like movie music.”
“It sounds like Philip Glass.”

These made sense, because it was movie music, and because Nyman wrote the book, literally, on Philip Glass and his cronies (Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond), and some people blame him with first describing music as “minimalist” back in 1968.

Ever since I first heard him, though (in Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover), I’ve heard a lunatic parody of Baroque music. Nyman’s stuff is more compact, driving, and repetitive than most movie music, and it employs Baroque circle-of-fifths ground basslines, rather than the 3 or 4-chord pop basslines of Glass’s tunes. "Chasing Sheep" features crazy horns jumping unexpectedly out of the texture on dissonant passing tones, a caffeinated pogo-stick beat, and a weird double-time “B” section, but the whole thing manages to be gorgeous anyway. Nyman’s repetition and aversion to development gives his music a static quality, which goes well with Greenaway’s contemplative, often monochromatic imagery. Be warned: after it loses the Baroque edge a quarter-way through, Nyman’s 2-disc retrospective goes downhill, with only a couple minimalist-y exceptions along the way. (He also wrote some more generically pretty stuff for The Piano.)

Best Thing I Heard Today: Brenda Lee doing "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree"

As Ms. Dynamite would say, I'm sorry, because you're probably sick of this song. But isn't it the coolest? Think nothing of it friends, that's just Mr. Hank Garland on the guitar fills, with Mr. Boots Randolph on the ace sax solo. And the lovely and talented queenofspades25 helped us out with the Sims animation in this video.



Whenever this song comes on the radio, my four-year-old boy says "I LOVE that voice!" Me too: good-humored without hamming it up, the 13-year-old Brenda Lee somehow had the presence of mind to wink with her voice. When she sings the lines,

You will get a sentimental feeling when you hear
Voices singing "Let's be jolly,
Deck the halls with boughs of holly",

we're reminded of how unsentimental this music is. The guitar fills and sax solo refuse to linger, and their virtuosity is casual. Even the song itself is a highly efficient joy machine, doing its job as quickly as possible and then going away. (May your holiday guests behave likewise!)

Fifty years after it was recorded, "Rockin'" no doubt induces sentimental feelings in lots of people, the way most oldies do. But lately I've been hearing the song in a NEW old-fashioned way. Its citified professionalism, the mark of "Nashville Sound" producer Owen Bradley, makes "Rockin'" sound even more stunning--it can cut through the maudlin sentiment of Christmas radio like the shards of a broken ornament. (Or like our little ceramic Mrs. Victorian Caroler, who recently sustained a decapitation while worshiping at the manger scene.) (May your holiday guests behave likewise?) Writer Johnny Marks knew how to make money off of Christmas songs. In "Rockin'," he and Ms. Lee blatantly condescend to the idea of "sentimental feeling" in order to have some fun and make a buck. The effect is beautiful.

Best Thing I Heard Today: Hawkwind doing "Spirit of the Age"

The lyrics in verse one have not been equaled. Equaled for what? Not sure, but they're in a class by themselves:

"I would've liked you to have been deep frozen too
and waiting still as fresh in your flesh for my return to Earth
But your father refused to sign the forms to freeze you
Let's see you'd be about 60 now,
and long dead by the time I return to Earth
My time held dreams were full of you,
as you were when I left; still underage
Your android replica is playing up again, it's no joke
When she comes she moans another's name
But that's the spirit of the age"



Not to belabor the point, but these guys sound like how I WISH Amon Duul II sounded. That's especially true of the Live Seventy Nine album, which is one monster moto-jam after another, and vocals that are much more unhinged than those in the above clip. Some quick digging reveals that I'm not the first person to hear some Kraut in the English Hawkwind. It's blitz!

I'd also like to note that, in the past year, two of Rolling Stone's "legacy" interviews have been with ex-members of Hawkwind--Lemmy and Ginger Baker. (They weren't in the band at the same time, true...) Unfortunately, Hawkwind didn't get a mention in "The Devil and Ginger Baker." The Lemmy interview mentioned Hawkwind, though, and also referred to Lemmy as a "Zelig-like figure." Other "Zelig-like" figures in that same issue were Paul Shaffer and Madonna. Granted, Madonna referred to HERSELF as Zelig, but still! Either the editors need to settle on some new cliches, or Hawkwind and Zelig are the real roots of rock 'n' roll. There are no other options.

Surfing with CryoShell

Allmusic's biggest failure may be that they don't have a proper biography of the band CryoShell. Of course, that's true of the band's website too, leading me to believe that CRYOSHELL ARE SHROUDED IN MYSTERY. Either that, or they're an Archies-like jingle machine for the LEGO corporation, a theory supported by this droll Wikipedia entry:

"Cryoshell is a Danish band best known for their work for Lego BIONICLE advertisements. Until their site changed its cover in promotion for their newest song, "Bye Bye Babylon", the site contained a strange and interesting story stub relating to a powerful biomechanical form in the Arctic, called the Cryoshell, from which the band may take its name. There were also fictional profiles of the three band members..."

Indeed, the most hilarious comment for the above-linked Youtube says, "I work at a LEGO store and this song KEEPS PLAYING in the Bionicle section. Good song when heard thru occasionally, not when you hear the chorus every 3 minutes for 5 hours straight!" Momentarily set aside the question of how huge the LEGO store must be to have a whole Bionicle section. You can really hear the pathos of the Common Man in commenter 902411's words, especially if you've ever worked retail.

I'm puzzled as to why the latest Bionicle jingle is a Babylon song. A cursory search turns up nothing in the Bionicle line of fine products that would support such imagery, but maybe I'm missing something (or maybe something's coming down the pike). The song does sound like what I imagine Bionicle fans hear when they're playing with their action figures or video games, i.e., an uninteresting Lacuna Coil knockoff, sung by a hot chick.



Though it dabbles in "Middle Eastern" scales by throwing some flat seconds into the guitar riff, CryoShell's Babylon song has little in common with Rainbow's far superior invitation to hell. "Bye Bye Babylon" is basically a smattering of Babylon cliches mixed with the sort of dimestore (LEGOstore?) antiauthoritarianism that advertisers and their young demographic targets love.

This Bionicled Babylon is a land that reaches for the sun, depraves everyone, is scattered and will run, left burning in the sun; so right there we've got the Tower of Babel's hubris, the unspecified moral depravity of hair metal's Babylon, and the fact that Babylon's in the desert. These various definitions do NOT mean that lead singer "Lore" is operating on some multi-tiered architectonic platform of deep meaning. More likely, she (or whoever wrote it) didn't know why they were writing a song about Babylon any more than we do, so they went to Wikipedia and tried to incorporate every meaning in the book. (No whores, though; missed one!)

Note the lack of specificity. We don't know exactly how Babylon is obstructing our heroine's fight for... whatever it is she's fighting for. Freedom? Identity? The right to trademark Maori words for commercial purposes? (Dude, some of those words sound pretty rad.) Maybe she should buy some Bionicles and make them fight; I bet that'd help.

Best Thing I Heard Today: Hawkwind doing "Motorway City"

I'm tagging this "metal" because they're in Martin Popoff's books, but this tune is more thud-prog meets Krautrock (a term I use with impunity, thanks to my heritage) (Did you hear about the new German microwave? Seats six!). Great solo at about 3:00 or so, and the fadeout jamming is just as motorik as anything by Neu--with Ginger Baker on drums, no less!



Someone had a good time making the Youtube video, too! I'm not quite sure about the cover, though--what exactly is the HMS Hawkwind beaming down onto the mountains? It looks like something Dan Brown would recognize.

Best Thing I Heard Today: Dirty Little Rabbits doing "Hello"

If you asked me, "Would you like to hear a Slipknot side project?" I would of course say "Yes," but no way would I expect it to sound this HAPPY:



The drummer is the Slipknot link; and so (nevertheless?) the Rabbits manage some nice grooves here, especially the metal chugging during the dramatic prologue. Stella the singer manages to do justice both to the spacey journal-entry esoterica of the verses, and to the pure joy and vindication of the choruses. "All good people find one another," eh? It's easy for her to say that once she's found the guy. If she was still down in the rabbit hole or wherever, I doubt she'd feel quite as self-satisfied.

Surfing with SOJA

Here's a touching ode to the difficulty of NOT being an impoverished Jamaican:



SOJA (Soldiers of Jah Army) are a competent middle-class white reggae band from Washington D.C. Simply keeping their noses to the grindstone, they could have had a respectable career playing UB40 covers on cruise ships, or maybe busting out their roots repertoire at frat parties seeking a modicum of "authenticity." Instead, lead singer Jacob Hemphill seems bent on "self-expression." This is unfortunate, considering his skill at expressing himself in interviews:

HEMPHILL ON SONGWRITING: “When you listen to an artist you can either have a series of one liners, or you can tell a story with your music."
Guess which one he wants to do.

HEMPHILL ON ELEMENTS OF STYLE AND FINANCE: "We set out to tell a story, it's like poetry – dancing around an entire theme, but never putting a period on anything. It is like the two sides of a coin, but you can see them at the same time.”
Thoughtful of him to explicate the obscure meaning of that cliche.

HEMPHILL ON HIS LOVE AFFAIR WITH MUSIC: "I think music calls me for booty calls. It's kind of crazy."
Dude, that's called "masturbating to your Lee Perry records"--which is, admittedly, kind of crazy.

Granted, musicians often sound like idiots in interviews. (See Sheryl Crow.) Usually they can muster some clarity in their songs, though--that's what we pay them to do. True to form, Hemphill's "Born in Babylon" is CLEARLY the rant of a man who's been lambasted by critics, doesn't appreciate it, and sees in his bad reviews a parallel with the physical and economic enslavement of the Jamaican people. Why? Because these authoritarian critics are stifling His Voice!

Attacking critics is certainly nothing new--Eminem and Toby Keith have done so in fairly entertaining ways, Akon more passive-aggressively. (I'm conflicted about increasing nu-Idolator's hit count, but this is right on.) SOJA wisely choose the latter method, particularly during Jacob's priceless closing scat:

"If I never tried to do this at all/ I think he [the critic]'d be out of a job/ And maybe I just should've stayed in bed/ Stay out of the booth and put all these guitars in the closet."

Perish the thought! If you did that, we might never get to know your attractive self-righteous side:

"Saving this world just come with a cost..."
"I'm too busy to judge another man/ I'm tryin' to write the blueprint for all the world to understand."

Good luck with that, Jake! In the meantime, you might want to decide whether you want people to actually read that blueprint, or simply look into your eyes and divine your saving heart:

"While they were aiming at my words/ they missed the rest of me."

Well, your words provide a big target. The idea of "Born in Babylon" was born when Hemphill was shooting the breeze with his buddy, Redskins quarterback Colt Brennan, who has also faced the abject, soul-killing adversity of people telling him he'd never make it to the NFL. In what could have been a misplaced Punky Brewster episode, the two sat around one day bemoaning their lot in life. According to The Star:

"Me [Hemphill] and [Brennan] were sitting there talking one day like, `Dude, nobody wants us to f--king make it because of who we are, it's so f--king Babylon.' He said, `I came from a good family and good house, but because of who I was everybody says I can't make it; so it's like I might as well have come from nothing and pulled myself all the way up.'"

Not exactly. COMING FROM NOTHING is like coming from nothing. Overcoming discouraging words to become an NFL QB or a professional musician is admirable, but not unthinkable when your parents have had the good fortune to raise you in a middle-class suburb like Arlington, VA. I'll grant you, worrying about bands' authenticity and whether they've "paid their dues" is one of the biggest bugaboos around; a more real concern is when some yak from "a good family and a good house" makes a living in a touring band (behind Matisyahu, no less!), but still compares himself to this guy:



Choose your symbols carefully!

The Flowtation Device Presentz: "House of Flying Daggers" by Raekwon feat. GZA, Deck, Ghost, Meth, and LOTS OF CUSSING BEWARE

After days of soul searching, struggle, wrestling with angels and the absent U-God Himself (QUOTH THE U-GOD FROM VOLUME I: "Before we got Germanic and thoughts got sporadic..." POINT TAKEN U), I've finally come to the determination that I don't love Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II as much as I should. Like Job when he came face to face with the Almighty and lost, I'm bewildered and don't pretend to understand, but I take solace in the fact that the whole thing is made with untold skill, not unlike Leviathan (NOT the Mastodon album, though my feelings toward it are similar). Indeed! Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook? Bitch? I don't think so! Nor shouldst you expect to draw out Cuban Linx II with hooks, cuz they're not there. There's nothing to hang onto, nothing to grab. You want grabby, go listen to K'Naan.

But forget what I just said! Because every time I listen there's more and more--like you're, what, surveying the surface of Leviathan and seeing all the little details, all the scars of, um, harpoons past? With that, we retire the metaphor and instead listen to one of these songs I DO love, a battle-hardened harpoon scar incarcerated on larceny and arson, see--you Johnny Carson, son, a farce to me:



Anyway, this tune's handy for comparing different flow styles. Inspectah Deck (verse 1) and Method Man (verse 4, 3:32) offer what I'll call "complex sung" verses until world-historical hip-hop scholar Adam Krims deigns to advise me otherwise. Meth bases his rhyme schemes around a four-bar, three-rhyme pattern:

MANya'll /
NIGgasAIN'T.SHIT.TOus / =.STILLaPIS_TOLbust /
*split*yourMELonLIKEi / SPLIT.THEdutch

He messes around with that pattern throughout the verse. My favorite variation comes later in the verse where he pushes the second rhyme to beat 1 of bar three:

GOTa /
WHOLE_LINEofCLAS_SICjoints / =andWHILEyouATitPASS_ /
THEjoint*let'sPUSHthisMUSic / PAST_THEpoint*

And Meth LOVES his syncopated syllables here. Listen to the end of his verse, where he's practically chewing his off-beat "ch" sounds:

MY_TIMEtoGO.FORsure / *yaNIGgaGOES_TOwar /
=whatch=yaTHINKiBROUGHTthese / SOL_DIERSfor*toSEND. /
SHOT.LIKEforGET.MEnots / *atANyNIGgaRESpect /
*bitch*thatFIGureTHEYgon' / GET.MEgot*

Deck is a little more varied, but is basically playing around with a similar four-bar pattern of three rhymes:

iPOP_ /
OFF_LIKEaMOB_STERboss / =.ANgelHAIR_WIT'the /
LOB_STERsauce=.SUMmer / TIME.CAN'T_TOP_THEscorch

He nearly always pauses for an empty beat between phrases. (Meth would, too, except he fills his empty beats with those chewy syncopated "bitch"es and whatnot, that anticipate the next phrase.) While Deck changes his phrase lengths, he ends every rhyme on beat 2 or 4--an opening verse that's good and solid, but not too off-kilter.

Both of those guys offer up lots of stuff to hang onto--regular patterns of rhythm and rhyme, beat-long rests separating phrases--that makes it easier to grasp their words and rhythmic variations. Between those "complex sung" verses, we've got the "definitely speech effusive" Raekwon (verse 2, 1:53) and Ghostface Killah (verse 3, 2:53), who occasionally nod to regular rhyme patterns, but mostly do away with them altogether. They also rarely place more than an empty half-beat between phrases, because they've got too much language and murder to cram in. BUT they throw us some crumbs: in the middle of their verses they break up the chaos of their attacks with strong on-beat lines. Rae's got:

FLY_CRI_TERiA_ / BURyMEinAFriCAwith /
WHIPS_ANDspears=andROUGH_ / DIAmondsOUTofSYriA= /

--while Ghost gives us:

hu /
MILiATE.BRUtalIZE. / RUgerPOP.PULverIZE. /
STILL_GOT_GEARinTHEclo / SET.THAT'S_STUpidLIVEfrom

These are like little islands we, their humble listeners, can process before they flip into insane shit like Ghost's:

BENetTON_RUGbySKUL / LIES.OSH_KOSHconDUCTor /
JUMpers*theTRAIN_HATS_ / FIT*MEloveLY.


Young Zeegy models the Osh Kosh conductor jumper, minus train hat. OG since '05!

Given all these similarities, it's nice of Rae and Ghost to sound so dissimilar. Rae's all quiet burn, while Ghost always reminds me of some unhinged free jazz trombone solo. He's one of the most musical rappers I can think of, even though he's nearly always speech effusive and rarely "sung" (though I haven't heard his new smooth R&B CD--further research).

As I look over Rae's verse, I'm seeing that he breaks up his phrases with empty beats a little more than Ghost does, giving us bewildered listeners a chance to appreciate lines like these on first hearing:

and /
SPEAK.WIT'theYOUTHinTHEspot / *.EATtheFRESH_FRUITin /
THEcrop=.ALLtheseHIP. / HOPpersEATcock*.YOUcan
SEEmeINtheSTREETorTHEyacht / =i'dRAtherBEproMOTin' /
YOURblock*orBUYin'FRESH= / SNEAKersWITHgwops

Let me just reiterate how, as in Meth's verse, I LOVE the rhymes landing on beat 1. And part of that LOVE comes from the fact that it frustrates my expectation of where they SHOULD land (on beat 2 or 4), an expectation that exists partly from Deck's Verse One patterns, but more from Rae's ability to SEEM like he's slipping into a typical "sung" pattern that we've heard somewhere before, where the rhymes end on 2 or 4. This ability is no doubt intuitive for Rae, as it is for all these guys. It's sort of like how a jazz soloist will have all kinds of licks and melody fragments at her disposal, deploy them selectively, and wickedly exploit listeners' memories of those fragments by altering them at choice moments.

Ghost makes the fewest nods to typical "sung" patterns, and is consequently the most exhausting of the four to listen to. Maybe this is a key to why this whole album hasn't reached out and grabbed me yet--because it's got a lot of Rae (obv) and Ghost, and they're exhausting. If it was all Meth's delicious syncopated stuff in fairly regular patterns, I'd have a better idea of what's going on and would be annoying my family with more recitations by now. As it is, I'd've never heard Ghost's Osh Kosh reference without looking at the words written out. So while I love listening to these speech effusive guys in small doses, because what they're able to do is incredible, they're a lot to take in. I appreciate Rae's efforts, however meager, to give me something to hang onto.

And "New Wu"--you've GOT to hear Meth on this one (3:28)...

Best Thing I Heard Today: Marty Robbins doing "The Strawberry Roan"

Today's pic for Best Line in Any Song Ever: He's about the worst bucker I've seen on the range; he'll turn on a nickel and give you some change.



Most of the songs we listen to, we know what they mean. (Unless they're by Pavement.) They employ words and phrases from our experience, sentences we might have actually said at some point. "You must not know about me--I could have another you in a minute." "I've got a feeling that tonight's gonna be a good night." "You belong with me-ee-ee!" Smokey Robinson became America's greatest poet--in Simon Frith's explication of Bob Dylan's apocryphal(?) comment--by turning everyday phrases into resonant art. You, the listener, see yourself in the song first, and then (if it's a good song) you see your experience elevated to something universal because of its song treatment.

But some of the songs we listen to--and sorry for heedlessly roping you in here with me, but I bet it's true--we don't know what they mean at all. Or even if we do, there's NO WAY that these songs' specific lyrics resonate with their entire listening audience. I mean, how many cars do you see driving around with 28-inch rims? Not many, right? I see one out of several thousand, if that. But R Kelly's "I'm a Flirt" was a huge hit, and there's T-Pain opening his verse with the line, "When I pull up to the club all the shawties be like 'Daaaaaamn, 28s!'" (I don't make it to "clubs" or "VIPs" much, either, but those might be a little more prevalent.) Or, at a completely opposite end of the musical spectrum, take these cryptic lines scrawled into stone tablets by the Beach Boys:

"Just a little deuce coupe with a flat head mill
But she'll walk a thunderbird like she's standin' still
Shes ported and relieved and shes stroked and bored.
Shell do a hundred and forty with the top end floored"

I don't even know what a "Little Deuce Coupe" is, outside the fact that it's a Fast Car (Tracy Chapman! Now there's a universalist!), but that's all I need to know. And I'd guess that if you took all the people that love that song, you'd find more people who couldn't accurately describe a "flat head mill" than people who could. And of course, the Beach Boys also excelled at impenetrable surfing jargon.

We've got the same principle in play with today's featured song, "The Strawberry Roan," off Marty Robbins's iconic Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs:



While the idea of the song is pretty clear--Marty meets a horse he can't ride--some of the lingo is mysterious: "His legs are all spavined, he's got pigeon toes." Um...poor horse? "He sure is a frog-walker." Yeah, I remember when I came across a...frog-walker. That was a trip. Even when I understand something, it sounds enough like bronc fighter jargon that I sort of congratulate myself for being able to decipher it (much like T-Pain's "28s" line): "I gets the blinds on 'im and it sure is a fright / Next comes the saddle and I screws it down tight." I can picture it in my head, though that's not the verbiage I myself would've used, being scared of horses and all.

The appeal of these "jargon" songs seems to lie in that blend of self-congratulation ("I'm more a surfer than you are, because I know where Australia's Narabine is!") and authoritative mystery ("I'm sure Usher frequents the VIP, because he knows exactly what they drink there!"). In the case of Mr. Robbins and me, I have no doubt that this experience really happened, and that he is all the more badass as a result. (That's why he doesn't even have to play his guitar in the above clip!) (Note: the author of this song--"Traditional"--may be the true badass.) I also have no doubt that some of this badassness has transferred to me, since I was able to understand about 75% of what he was singing. In however small a way, I'm now part of Bronc Fighting World, and I can recognize the sublime mixture of relief and humiliation near song's end:

"I know there are ponies that I cannot ride;
There's some of them left, they haven't all died."

That's probably the true takeaway line. Actually, it's how I feel when I listen to music and I come across a song like this, that I don't fully understand (it happens more often with rap, or contemporary classical): Embarrassed by my ignorance, sure, but relieved that there are still unexplored vistas.

"There still are strange songs you unwrap like a gift;
There's some of them left, it's not all Taylor Swift."