This band is truly a subject for further research. If you came here to learn more about this mysterious mbaqanga band, I'm afraid I cannot help you. As far as I can tell, Udokotela Shange Namajaha recorded two fantastic songs for the above South African comp and quit the biz. I'm sure that's not the case, but who knows otherwise? Not the Internet! Not WorldCat!
Anyway, the bassline in "Awungilobolele" (I think it's a wedding song about a poor musician who can't afford to pay for his wife--not unlike Springsteen's "Rosalita," only COMPLETELY DIFFERENT) is something else--just try to resist bobbing up and down, floppily, while listening to it. The moment at the beginning where the guitar finds its groove, and the bass and thump kick in, is irresistible. And I can tell you a little bit about mbaqanga! The dude singing lead is the groaner, and the female harmonizers are characteristic. (Emphasis on the word "little.") Anyway, enjoy the tune!
"They Told Me You Had Been To Her" is a wild aria from Del Tredici's Final Alice, a one-soprano cantata based on the chaotic courtroom scene from Alice in Wonderland. Unfortunately, I can't find a sound clip online, so you're just gonna have to trust me on this. But trust me: THERE'S A THEREMIN! Also lots of loud brass playing in what sounds like completely different meters at the same time. I imagine it's a bear to conduct, so God bless Georg Solti for getting it done.
Del Tredici's an interesting guy. He's best known for his series of Alice pieces, one of which won a Pulitzer in 1980, and for helping bring tonality back to contemporary classical music. When he first abandoned 12-tone serialism to write Final Alice, he was a pretty polarizing figure among composers, many of whom viewed any deviation from atonal composition as apostasy. (Critic Kyle Gann has a nice article about that movement here.)
When you listen to the music, though, it makes total sense. Just think of the world conjured by Alice in Wonderland: bizarre but recognizable, full of both nonsense language and dry wit, morphing the everyday elements of Alice's subconscious into visions absurd and monstrous. Del Tredici's music is ideal text-painting. It's based on a theme that's SO tonal it's almost annoying--completely diatonic, it spends most of its time just outlining a major scale. (Catchy, though.) But then Del Tredici takes that theme and twists it beyond recognition, or throws up multiple statements of the theme that are out of phase with one another. Chaos and dissonance ensue, but all in the service of setting a scene. It's not unlike how, more than a century ago, Richard Strauss presaged serialism by using atonality to depict absurdities and monstrosities in his music. Only, in 1976, Del Tredici was moving in the opposite direction.
In this interesting Del Tredici interview, the gay composer admits that he identified with Lewis Carroll's "closeted" emotional life more than he identified with the books themselves. (Carroll secretly pined for the real-life Alice, and Del Tredici secretly pined for men.) He'd never read Alice all the way through, but something drew him to the books for inspiration. Apparently English people didn't appreciate how the Alice pieces drew attention to this aspect of Lewis Carroll's life. From the interview:
DAVID DEL TREDICI: In a wild kind of way the Alice pieces...are about being gay... In the sense that when they were done in England—this whole idea of having the love songs come out all tonal—they took great offense at my treatment of Lewis Carroll. They thought it was horrific that I let the erotic out of the bottle, or suggested that there was this whole other side to Lewis Carroll. In America we don't care. It's not really our book. Somehow it was more proprietary in England. I was amazed by this different aspect. My settings are also very emotional, which is not really the way the book is commonly perceived.
FRANK J. OTERI: In a weird way tonality at that point in time was the musical language that dare not speak its name.
DAVID DEL TREDICI: [laughs] I like that. That's exactly right. Great.
Now there's a thesis waiting to be written! Anyway, Final Alice is still in print and available through MY local library system, at least. Mr. Del Tredici's Myspace is musically underwhelming, though he does list as influences "Lots of Gay Poets" and "All things that have to do with leather." So there's that.
Now THERE'S a sentence I never thought I'd utter. It's right up there with "I really wanna see this movie Hot Tub Time Machine" and the dinner-table-with-toddler classic "Touch your own hot." But as far as I knew, WASP were one of those bands that just always sucked. It seemed like their purpose in life--people would ask them what they did for a living, and they'd say, "We suck." People: "I'm sorry?" WASP: "We SUCK (like a beast)." People: "No, I mean I'm sorry you suck." WASP: [either] "Ba-DUM bum!" [or] "No, it's cool--we're pretty wealthy."
Granted, "as far as I knew" was not very far. Aside from their public battles with the PMRC in the '80s, I only knew their music through Babylon research. Their OTHER Babylon song is this really-very-poor excuse for a decadent screed, "Sunset and Babylon," a pathetic attempt to sum up their "legacy" and sell a couple greatest hits albums. They even cut a video for it, complete with scandalous WASP-related headlines:
At this point WASP seemed washed up and almost theoretical. Blackie Lawless's key lines in "Sunset" are "My hand firmly wrapped around a fifth of Bacardi" and "Just come on down and we'll get crude." If anything, he needed to drink MORE. But since then, Blackie got religion and started recording concept albums. Believe me, I haven't kept up, so feel free to fill in any blanks in the comments. But if WASP's recent album titles are to be believed, Blackie is now in the unusual position of being either the antichrist or the world's messiah. He is an Unholy Terror, a Dominator, who is busily Dying for the World while recording a two-part album called The Neon God. Heavy shit.
Maybe I need to go back and listen to all of them, because new one Babylon is REALLY GOOD. Like, one of the best new albums I've heard this year. (And I'm counting it for this year, even though it came out last year. Time cannot contain me.) More on the whole album later, but its concept is "Blackie sings the Book of Revelation," which everyone knows is the most kickass book of the Bible, except maybe Daniel. Well, and then you've got all the genocidal mayhem of Joshua and Samuel, and Job arguing with God, and the borderline-nihilism of Ecclesiastes--let's say most kickass book of the New Testament.
"Babylon's Burning" packs in all your favorite unsavory elements from Revelation. You've got Babylon, of course, and its attendant whore; you've got 666 and the seven seals and a seven-headed beast; there's even a horseman, though I'm not sure where the other three went to. (Maybe they're still hanging with Aphrodite's Child.) It's all pretty straightforward and Blackie makes no attempt at interpreting this complex apocalyptic symbolism.
No, he wisely saves that for the video. Ah, now I get it! The "Babylon" that's burning is every modern totalitarian government! They stifle freedom! They murder dissenters! They are typified by the evil faces of their leaders, who appear in an ominous filmic parade behind the band: Hitler, Stalin, Ahmadinejad, Putin, and--my word, is that Obama? Why yes, as it turns out, the new improved Blackie Lawless is on record comparing Obama to Hitler, and, um, denigrating him for being a socialist Robin Hood. (Didn't we used to LIKE Robin Hood?)
By showing Obama amid all these dictators, Blackie is dangerously close to making a good point. If he were making said point, it might be that our society is ALSO a Babylon; indeed, that ANY civilization apart from God's Kingdom occupies the symbolic position of Babylon; and that ALL rulers and regimes, no matter how much they might superficially differ from Blackie's parade of despotic wackjobs, are in fact running a system that's incompatible with the Kingdom.
As it is, Blackie's video is not making that good point. Rather, it's making the RETARDED point that Obama--unlike any previous American president OR sitting rich world leader--is a totalitarian dictator. I mean, come on Blackie! How hard would it have been to throw Bush's face up there? Or Nicolas Sarkozy, or Angela Merkel, or Stephen Harper--you KNOW we can't trust that guy! Obama is less socialist than ANY OF THEM, and saying even that much traps us inside the weird thought territory where any incremental socialism equals totalitarian brutality, and...
Oh Blackie. You see what you do to me? Here I am getting all worked up over this little song of yours, and it's really good! Congratulations! And if you were considering a second career in politics, here's another sentence I never thought I'd say: Blackie Lawless, you should keep your day job.
A beautiful song about sickness, death, and anger; a Christian ballad that portrays only desperation and refuses to show the consolation. In a CCM market that's full of pat answers and rehashed statements of easy faith, this song sounds miraculous. It sarcastically badgers God like a movie cop: "Am I getting through tonight?" When it ends, we have no idea how the parents' prayer will be answered--just like when most of our own prayers end. And it was a big hit. I still wonder if Mr. Schultz feels like he got away with something--but how could you hear this song and not be moved?
Before I'd ever heard "He's My Son," I thought it'd be a melodramatic statement placed into the mouth of God, probably focusing on the horrors of the crucifixion and all the bad stuff we've done to Jesus. Needless to say, I was relieved when it turned out to be one of the best songs about parenting ever recorded. But Christians are crafty--we read all sorts of free-lunch symbolic associations into our music, and this one is no exception. If you want "He's My Son" to be about parents at the end of their rope, it is. But if you'd rather imagine that it's narrated by God or Mary, as our thoughtful Youtube poster has done--well, that reading pretty much falls apart. HOWEVER, you can certainly compare the anguish of a parent with a sick kid to the anguish Mary (and God) must have felt 2,000 years ago. It doesn't hurt, and it might even help. I'm just glad Mr. Schultz trusted his audience to make that connection and didn't spell it out in his lyrics. The song would have lost most of its power as a result.
I like PJ Harvey, but she sometimes sounds stifled--by her devotion to the blues, by her own exquisite longings, by the sense that she's trying to live up to someone else's sound. Too many slow songs; too much atmospheric "building".
Not this song, though--this is pure untrammeled cocksmanship. Loose, funny, rocks like a force ten hurricane and lands a bunch of good lines. It's as irreducible and absurd as anything by Dylan or Howlin' Wolf (who she covered in '93) or Beefheart (who she interpolated in '95)--certainly more so than "Down By the Water," or the rest of her interminable "bluesy" album To Bring You My Love. (Except "Meet Ze Monsta"--that one's pretty cool.)
Best of all is her voice--Ms. Harvey's got one of those voices that can do about six different things, and each thing sounds better than the last. This song features her aggressive rockin' voice, with some desperate squeaking on top. (Not sure who's doing the squeaking in this video; I actually heard this song today on her 4-Track Demos album, where it's all her.) Her delivery of the line "Hey, I'm the kingoftheWORLD!" falls at some sweet spot in her range that's endlessly listenable.
Upon further lyrical review, I've discovered that, if Boy WERE to walk around in public singing this song, I would be deeply embarrassed. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.
Ice Cube's rapping is instantly recognizable. His voice's unique timbre probably played a big role in making him a huge success--even my wife likes his voice*, and she (wisely) takes much more offense at his lyrics than I do. But your instrument is only as good as you can play it, and he's a master at "playing" his voice. As he chomps off consonants and articulates every last vowel in his diphthongs, his words take on a physical presence that you can seemingly hold in your hands and study. However you feel about the sentiment, there's no denying the splendor of a couplet like:
Notice what makes that couplet so appealing--the rhyme is asymmetrical. That is, "ban the A.K." is said straight, beats 1-2-3; while "any fucking way" is syncopated, beats 1-2&-4. So he sets up an expected rhyme pattern, and then he delivers that rhyme, but differently than we expect. Perhaps this is to show that he is THE MACK. And at this point, the Flowtation Device would like to go out on a limb and say that this aspect of Ice Cube's flow--asymmetrical rhyming and the delayed delivery of syllables--is his most salient musical feature.
I don't know enough to say whether he pioneered this device, or if not, who he stole it from, so if my gentle reader(s) know of examples that predate 1990, please let me know in the comments. For now, suffice it to say that this device is all over his music, and all over this irresistible song.
Often Mr. Cube will simply delay the expected delivery of a syllable by half a beat. (Actually, the very first line of the song delays the very first "nigga" by a full beat, from its expected landing on beat 1 to beat 2. This is atypical.) For instance, here's the second couplet:
The rhyme is asymmetrical, although this time, the rhyme "m" lands half a beat earlier than its corresponding "him." But notice how Cube delays it from beat 3 to the "and" of beat 3. You expect to hear "NINE_DOUBleM.*.", and instead he gives you "NINE_DOUBle=m*."
I don't know about you, but whenever I think of Ice Cube's flow, this is the feature that sticks out. He does it again and again, starting with the next line:
You get the idea. Of course, he doesn't do it all the time. That'd get old pretty quickly. So for instance, in the middle of Verse 1 we get the (still) wonderful:
Mr. Cube could've easily delayed the second syllable of "Brougham" by half a beat. Go ahead, try it! "DROP.TOP.BROU_=gham"--it's fun! (I admit a propensity to sort of mutter these things to myself while wandering the neighborhood with my boy. Not the cussing, of course.) The problem with using such a device all the time is that overuse leads to diminished impact. It's like when a clear-voiced American Idol candidate discovers that she can growl out certain lines of songs. It's effective the first time, but by the third instance you wish she'd learn some new tricks. Ice Cube's delaying device doesn't lend itself to fatigue that quickly, but he's wise to maintain his straightforward, on-the-beat "DROP.TOP.BROU.GHAM."s at least half the time.
Ice Cube's car?
One more thing to add about Cube's "delay" device--it give him a more legato flow. On occasion he'll break before a delayed syllable, but usually he holds out the leading syllable a beat and a half before his next articulation. The clearest example of this is in Verse 2, around 1:30 or so, when we get another instance of the rare delay-by-a-whole-beat:
Listen to that "-ssssss" in the word "ass"! If my choir were singing an arrangement of this song, they'd be in trouble for that! (Actually, I'd be in WAY MORE trouble.) Ice Cube is allowed, though--I'm not eager to be ganked or shanked.
Now of course, the subject matter of this song is problematic at best, piggish and sexist and violent and prudishly anti-dancing at worst. Here at the Flowtation Device, a more-or-less strictly musical enterprise, we try not to judge, but sooner or later the strictly musical analysis must be brought to bear on a song's subject matter. Alas, we're not quite ready to do that today.
Let me just say this--this song is EXHILARATING. I say that as a comfortably middle-class white suburban dad, but I imagine it was no less true for young inner-city black Comptonites of the early '90s. Musically, the exhilaration comes from all the aspects of Ice Cube's flow discussed above, along with the incredibly funky Bomb Squad beat that, if dated, only sounds that way because no other production team has yet touched their sound. (It's ironic that Cube's so disparaging of black people who dance, considering he basically dances with his voice throughout this song.) Lyrically, it's exhilarating as a kind of "art of permission", in the same way that Where the Wild Things Are or The Daily Show are exhilarating. It gives voice to impulses and profanities that we necessarily suppress so that our society can function civilly and morally. But society DOESN'T always function civilly and morally--keep in mind that this song came out a year before Rodney King's beating and the riots that followed, and that Ice Cube was from the same town. I'm not excusing lines like "bitch killa, cap peela" as mere metaphors for his machismo or rapping skills--even if that's what they are, they're grisly and unfortunate metaphors. But there's no denying the exhilaration, musically AND lyrically, that comes from hearing Ice Cube land all these great lines. And to paraphrase the Rev. James Cone, those who decry revolutionary violence (um... if that's what this is--it's certainly what it WANTS to be) are typically those who want to stay in power, NOT those on the underside of society.
*After double-checking, I learn it's actually Ice-T's voice that she likes. My bad.
Into Eternity blend virtuosic math-rock switchbackery with virtually every kind of metal you can name (except Doom; I don't think they're Doom). In addition, their vocals are multitracked into a fiendish barbershop quartet of radness*. I was impressed when, back in '05, Mercenary had their clean guy sing at the same time as their death guy; but Into Eternity have TWO distinct clean ranges (high and REALLY high), plus a high raspy death voice and a low growly death voice. Somehow, all four of these vocals are covered by three guys, so it's hard to know who's doing what, but I'll say that's designated frontman Stu Black squealing out "DROWNING ME!!!" during the choruses. That part makes me giggle. And maybe that's guitarist/founder Tim Roth doing the low growls; they sound EXTREME and everything, but also matter-of-fact, as though this guy joined the Muppet Band:
"You are all... WEIRDOS."
As an added Youtube bonus, here's Mr. Roth teaching us how to play his wonderful riffs. (Thankfully he's not singing--not that he's a bad singer, but you SO don't want to hear the idiotic words of this song.) I like how he's not tied to any one particular metal genre--note the part where Roth describes his riff as "kinda death- or black-metal-sounding or whatever." Despite this indifference to nomenclatural niceties, I find no online evidence that metal fans hate him for it, or that they think it makes him suck. And hey--nice of him to teach his trade secrets for free. Imagine if Liszt had had access to Youtube!
* I apologize if I've misled you into thinking that all four voices sound simultaneously. They don't. My bad. In this and several other ways, Into Eternity are nothing like a barbershop quartet.
Basically this is a Ne-Yo song sung by Mary J. Blige. Great idea, if you ask me, since Ne-Yo and his regular production partners Stargate were my favorite musicians to emerge last decade. (I think. Unless the White Stripes count.) Mary J. even seems to imitate Ne-Yo's singing style in this song--her voice is smooth and restrained, but she throws in little vibrato quavers at the end of each line. Maybe this approach is simply endemic to Ne-Yo songs, encoded in the way they're written. Have a listen:
Ne-Yo, in turn, seems to have picked up this style from Michael Jackson's softer side, particularly the song "Human Nature." In fact, I hear much of his/Stargate's catalog as teasing out the implications of "Human Nature"--the music, not the words. The beats may be different, but the singing always comes from MJ.
And then there's the chord progressions! "Human Nature" provides a wealth of unusually beautiful chord progressions to play with. This particular song, "I Feel Good," explores the way "Human Nature" centers around a minor ii chord ("does hedoitthat way..."). Ne-Yo's own "When You're Mad" plays with the keyboard riff's IV/V/flat-III-Maj7/IV progression. "Sexy Love" takes up the IV/V/I6/IV from the verses. Um, I'm pretty sure there are others that I won't analyze today. Not bad for a song written by Steve Porcaro, aka "One of the Guys from Toto"! (Maybe "Human Nature" is just teasing out the implications of "Africa" or something. The thought gives me pause.) Anyway, I won't post all that stuff cause who knows what four Youtube embeds would do to your computer, but go to Youtube! Go on! All these songs are there! Trust me, you'll feel good.
Or, if you prefer, the unembeddable original promo video. And it's also on Bowie's new live album, A Reality Tour, in a stripped-down version that emphasizes the Velvet Underground guitar groove. (I've heard it innumerable times over the past week because of my four-year-old's David Bowie obsession. No complaints.)
"'Heroes'" came during a period of Bowie's life when he was really into dolphins and krautrock. We've all been there. So his 1977 album, and this song, are named at least partly in homage to Neu!, German critics' darlings who will make you break the speed limit if you listen to them in your car. Here's their 1975 "Hero":
Unbeknownst to me, before I happily stumbled across the above Dio/Rainbow cover, there were TWO Holy Soldiers, albeit with some continuity in their personnel. Basically, they were High-Voiced Soldier and Low-Voiced Soldier. The High-Voiced Soldier I grew up with featured Steven Patrick on lead vocals. He had a great voice! He sang with a quivering tenor that gave every song an undertone of exquisite pain, sort of like Brad Delp of the band Boston. Patrick always sounded like he just couldn't get enough God. So when you hear a song like "Love Me," my favorite, you really feel that this guy's at his wit's end and NEEDS God in a way that only his voice can express:
Low-Voiced Soldier--remakers of Rainbow's "Gates of Babylon" and Larry Norman's "Why Don't You Look Into Jesus"--were fronted by Eric Wayne. I don't really know anything about him, aside from his hairy machismo. According to Lutheran theologian/CCM critic Mark Allan Powell, the Wayne-led album Promise Man is supposed to be really good. (But then he says they sound like "Crash Test Dummies doing Soundgarden songs," so I don't know WHAT to believe!) Me, I'll rep for the High-Voiced 1990 debut, Holy Soldier, and maybe the High-Voiced followup Last Train, which I listened to on the bus en route to a band contest once. It had a cover of "Gimme Shelter" and may have been beautiful. I can't promise anything beyond that, but it's gonna cost you, what?, a buck, so why not shell out and take a chance?
AS FAR AS THEIR TENUOUS RELATION TO BABYLON: Um, they covered Rainbow for this 1995 movie Raging Angels, an Alan Smithee film that featured Shelly Winters in a very special role as Grandma Ruth. Here's what one IMDB commenter has to say:
"The ending sees a rather over tanned Archangel take on the Devil in a rubbish sword fight, as well as some of the most rip off music.
"Buy this movie."
I think we can all imagine the depths of suck this movie would drag us through*. Nonetheless, it's worth noting that the idea of Babylon-as-hell is alive and well, even in the most dire B-movie universes. Also worth noting that although the song "Gates of Babylon" is narrated by the devil, there's nothing that says a Christian metal band can't cover it. It's sort of like The Screwtape Letters, or Petra's "Killing My Old Man" ("So I'll nail him to the wood..."). I'm admittedly out of the CCM loop, but it seems like Back Then was a more adventurous time. (sigh...) (Please prove me wrong...)
High-Voiced Soldier have one more Babylon reference, on their debut album. In the grimly eschatological "When the Reign Comes Down," Steven Patrick sings with trademark desperation about Babylon burning, the world stopping its turning, the sky raining fire, the flames rising higher, and--whoa baby, check out what's in store for rapists and killers:
"The scavenger of lost souls It feeds as they expire Licks the lips of the mouth of Hell And spews eternal fire"
Tell me again, why was I allowed to listen to these guys but not Slayer?
*The soundtrack featured another (High-Voiced) Soldier tune, "The Pain Inside of Me," along with Stryper's "To Hell With the Devil" (over the end credits) and lead actor Sean Patrick Flanery's--yes--"Come In My Mind." (Now THERE'S an invitation!) Plus Boston, Golden Earring, and Candlebox! Remember Candlebox?
Better riff and more funk than the original, and it's by a GERMAN POWER METAL BAND. Let that sink in for a moment. This cover outdoes Cream's original RHYTHMICALLY. Helloween almost sound like Guns 'n' Roses! Wonders will not cease.
And since it's Friday, here's a twofer! (It was hard to choose.) Helloween's excellent Metal Jukebox album also boasts covers of Abba, Babe Ruth, and this tune by Focus, in all its goofy yodeling glory:
This is one of Bob Mould's Cautionary Advice songs, sort of like Janet Jackson's "Black Cat" two years later. Of course, the advice is palatable because it's also a Husker Du song. In fact, here's my advice for stagers of interventions: incorporate black sheets of guitar squall and a fantastic rhythm section into your shtick, and that hollow-eyed friend will have no choice but to listen to you. (Don't Grant and Greg sound GOOD on this one? Loose! They're not always like that.) If you can sing your advice through four distinct key changes, that also helps. Lets 'em know you went to some trouble.
The sound world in "Freaky Freaky" is made up of several things I'm a total sucker for. The opening synth stutter sounds like it was lifted wholesale from Timberlake/Timbaland's "My Love," easily one of the past decade's greatest huge hits. The voices keep doing crazy things, like call-and-responding falsetto "fricky-fricky"s with some electro dude nodding "aw aw", and following THAT up with the overly dramatic "OOH OOH OOH OOH" hook. There's even some cute Prince-like text painting when the morning dove sings "tweet tweet tweet". The whole song is a colorful feast of disparate sounds. Feast away!
You can guess what the song's about, but honestly, the words didn't even register until I read them online. It's all a bunch of "baby sex-stuff" (as Randy Newman once characterized Prince lyrics, positively) like "If my body's a club, you're my disco ball." The most interesting line, apart from the sound fx quoted above, is probably the oft-repeated rap, "Love when the DJ, DJ play my shit, my shit." The line conjures up images of Electrik Red hearing their song and bragging to their conquests WHILE getting freaky freaky. In some interview somewhere, Janet Jackson says it's weird when that happens.
This tune, like most Electrik Red songs, was written and produced by The-Dream with his partner in music, Tricky Stewart. Together these guys are responsible for three of my favorite songs from the last decade: Rihanna's "Umbrella," J. Holiday's "Bed" (which shares "Freaky"'s sense of overwrought drama), and Beyonce's "Single Ladies," for which they should win every Grammy in sight this Sunday. In addition, they came up with the first Mariah song I've liked in a long time, "Touch My Body."
Look at the variety among those songs! "Umbrella"'s an impassive mountain; the song's words are comforting, but it guarantees its promises with the transcendent steely power of its beats and bassline and Rihanna's voice. You're glad to have "Umbrella" on your side, and you sort of feel bad for the rain. "Bed" is all pleading psychodrama, the desperate cry of a man who needs It worse than anyone outside his head can imagine, so he'll say whatever it takes. "Single Ladies" is an almost Spartan contrast to Dream/Tricky's normally stuffed palette; the unusual beat is all*, every element is exposed for observation, with the little random background squiggles just as vital as Beyonce herself. And "Touch My Body" is warm, plush, funny Mariah, just a rung down from the others. I haven't done the math, but that could well add up to a collection of hits as impressive as anyone racked up in the '00s.
*"All" except for Beyonce's voice, of course, and the vocal harmonies, and the massive bassline that shows up periodically, etc...
Since Surfing in Babylon has allotted blog space to Satanists and metaphorical Satanists, it's time we offer the Christian rock community a forum for rebuttal. First up: White Heart, from their excellent excellent '89 album Freedom, this is "Bye Bye Babylon":
As you might expect from Christian rockers, White Heart give us a little sermon-in-song. In verse one they look back at historical Babylon; in verse two they apply the lessons of Babylon to today's world. (Steve Taylor will do something similar below, only more subtly and less well.) Interestingly enough, the 'Heart's take on Babylon isn't particularly Biblical, except for its Judeo-Christian bias. That is, they don't focus on the Exile or on any other specific Biblical texts; Babylon is just a big impressive civilization that didn't worship God, and today lies in ruins. If this song was your only frame of reference, you'd never know that Babylon enslaved the Israelites. White Heart's Babylon could just as well be Assyria or the Persian Empire, and it wouldn't make a bit of difference to the song.
Well.... maybe a BIT of difference, for two reasons:
2. Since Babylon is the Bible's second-most-mentioned ancient civilization--right behind Israel--White Heart's Christian fans can more immediately relate to the image. White Heart are sort of exploiting the free-lunch symbolic associations we already give Babylon, thanks to the fact that John the Revelator and his prophetic predecessors imbued the place with oppositional symbolic meaning centuries ago. They did the work so White Heart wouldn't have to.
What's White Heart's main takeaway message? "Don't be Babylon!" (Did I get that right, guys?) Though again, it's not QUITE what you'd expect. They're ambivalently didactic with their advice. Here's verse two:
"Rocket ride through time and space, It's 2088-- They're diggin' around in the dust of what we've done. Now people study me, I'm a part of history; Oh, did we leave them another Babylon? Is there evidence of spiritual revival, Or did we leave a land of broken idols?"
They're not pulling a Pat Robertson, saying "If we worship idols, we'll be destroyed." In White Heart's theology, you get destroyed regardless of who you worship. (And apparently, America will be dust by 2088. Good times.) But wait: then they sing this in the chorus:
"If God is not our strength and song It's good-bye Babylon!"
Unless I'm misreading them, White Heart seem confused about providence, about causality and their own Deuteronomic convictions. (Whatever the case, "Bye Bye Babylon" is certainly more coherent than Cryoshell's song of the same name.) I could very well be misreading the White Hearts; doing so makes them sound SO much more reasonable. An alternate reading might say that if God IS our strength and song, the future people sifting through our dust will be fellow Americans; whereas if God is NOT our strength and song, America will lie in ruins and when the Chinese finally arrive to collect on their debt, they'll be in for a very big surprise.
This theme, of Babylon as Dead Civilization, is fairly common. It notably appears in Celtic Frost's "Babylon Fell" ('87), which we'll get to someday.
Next up is Steve Taylor's "Babylon," from his '87 album I Predict 1990. "Babylon"'s not very good; Steve's often sarcastic and funny, or at least catchy, and this song is none of the above. (Other songs on 1990 include "Since I Gave Up Hope I Feel a Lot Better" and the brilliantly titled, apparently controversial "I Blew Up the Clinic Real Good," about an ice cream man who's an anti-abortion zealot for financial reasons.)
Taylor's Babylon seems to depict a Hebrew child of the Exile, torn between the lure of Babylon's worldly expertise ("Come and learn," she beckons) and the promise of something better from "the heavens." Does this not parallel our contemporary life? Aren't we torn between vicissitudes of science and faith? Do we not dance around with light sources both spot and torch, if you believe the very dated video?
According to both Taylor and White Heart, Babylon has walls and idols, and they could very well be the same place. Both Babylons seem nice from a worldly point of view--White Heart's offers "strength and security, comfort and safety", while Taylor's has learning, or something. Taylor's seems more negative because his narrator is in the final throes of disillusionment, but the two are still compatible--you could imagine Steve Taylor showing up in White Heart's song to wave his light sources around. Most importantly to their meaning, both songs see Babylon in contemporary America, and both say God provides more than what Babylon's got to offer. If you confuse your country with God, you do so at your peril--which is a refreshing lesson to hear from Christians, especially if you've been watching too much Fox News.
Hearing "Then" on the radio today, I realized the song is kind of about itself, at least in my world. That is, it keeps growing on me, and that's afterI voted for it in a year-end poll, and after I've stuck up for it over on ILM's Rolling Country thread. But today it was even more touching, relatable, and perfect, like an image of my life here in Two-Thousand and Ten, so I thanked the song and said, "And I thought I loved you then." (This increase in love is kind of a relief, proof to myself that I didn't overrate it.) By all means click and listen:
"Then" is better than most sappy prom ballads, in part because its verse melody sets the song up to be in a minor key, which is unusual for a happy song. The minor opening gives the song some additional depth. It creates a wistful tinge of longing and maybe even uncertainty--is this going to be a sad song? Does she get run over by a train or something? But once we get to the soaring major chorus and we realize everything's OK, Brad Paisley's love sounds even happier for having made it through the minor-ness.
On Youtube, the Change comments are mostly music-related; they talk about how great Luther was, and how great Michael Jackson was (sister Janet sampled "The Glow of Love" in "All For You"). The Brad Paisley comments, on the other hand, are mostly shout-outs and dedications, tributes to real life love and how people use this song in their actual lives. Will we still be using it in 30 years? "Then" is so perfectly crafted, it should be sturdy enough to survive, no problem.
Autophobia, by German electro-dudes Liquid Divine, starts off great. The first three songs are like a mini course in "Synths I Like 101"--big ol' elektro backbeat, lots of bouncy synth layers, shimmery fake-string overlay with the majestic sweep of Lawrence doing Arabia. Raspy singer Guido doesn't fare too well, but he disguises his voice with enough Grandmaster Flash "Scorpio" FX that it doesn't matter too much. If Guido and his producing partner Christian kept up this pace throughout, we'd have a solid genre release tailor made for Saturday night at the Exit club (or, in my case, the Radio Shack--good times!).
Alas, it's not to be. With song #4, "Ghost," we leave the straightforward thumping and enter busy-beat territory, which sounds like the Pet Shop Boyz when they're trying to get fancy, or like "Tom's Diner"--only without the tunes. Kick drums start hitting on offbeats and songs lose their power. Occasionally the drums even drop out so that Guido can whisper about his tears and whatnot. Ug.
Even the song "Cocoon," which starts off fairly bangin', turns boring. Scorpio's back, they regain some momentum--I'm ready to be reeled back in, boyz! But then the cool kickdrum goes away, to be replaced by more boring...DIFFUSE...16th beats. If you have a cool beat, don't mess it up, man! It's like when we moved the old bookcase and we thought about knocking out a shelf so we could put the TV on it, but I couldn't get the shelf out! I tried unscrewing, hammering, prying, everything my Inept Handyman brain could conjure up, but no dice, the shelf stayed attached. It's like after 30 years wood glue just SETS IN for good and there's nothing you can do about it. Well, we finally reasoned, you don't waste sturdy shelves, so we gave up, the TV remains where it remains, and we keep books on the bookcase, calm in the knowledge that no matter how much we load 'er up, the shelf ain't gonna bow. AND THAT'S WHAT CHRISTIAN SHOULD DO WHEN HE STUMBLES ACROSS A GOOD BEAT! Don't let that baby out of your sight! Good rockin' beats are more precious than gold, so why mess with 'em?
Song #8 is about "Comagirl." Feelin' a little comatose myself right now, I gotta say. Oh my word, a woman is singing! Too bad they didn't give her a tune. No no, I kid; there IS, technically, a tune. Though of course, if you charted the silhouette of a goldfish on staff paper, you'd have a tune too, and one that was more of a conversation starter at parties. I mean, yeah, you can talk about aleatoric composition technique for all of, what?, two minutes, but that conversation will at least lead into other things, like your useless composition major, and the stodginess of the academy, and before you know it you're both drunk out on the porch discussing the proto-Marxist rhetorics of Beethoven's Ninth and feeling absolutely WONDERFUL. "Comagirl," on the other hand, would not start any such conversations. You'd be all like, "Why do they always play this crap electro when I come here?," and the other person's all like, "I know, right?," and then you look around for something to eat. It's sad, really, because your relationship could've amounted to so much more.
An informative man introduces song #11, "Redshift": Autophobia is the fear of being alone. That's good to know in case you're ever on Cash Cab. Now HERE'S a beat! BIG thumping house, bouncing, this is what I needed. At this late stage it's not enough for me to recommend the CD or anything, but the Liquid Divines should at least know that THIS BEAT IS GOOD. "Redshift"! Do more songs like "Redshift"! Do a suite of variations on "Redshift," that'd kill an hour or so. Arpeggios, oh my lord, arpeggios! And then... the beat drops out. Now wait a minute, Christian, you remember what we talked about? When you find a good beat, you don't just make it go away for an operatic soprano and a dude talking about autophobia. Especially when he's repeating info he gave us at the beginning of the song! Time out for Christian.
Song #12 is called "One Day of May in '99." I actually remember that time! I was sprawled on a college lawn reading Goedel Escher Bach, when my composition teacher passed by and told me I should be working on my composition portfolio, even though we both knew I wasn't going to grad school. I still don't have a composition portfolio. I also don't remember that much about Goedel Escher Bach, so I guess it was a lose-lose, but I do remember how excited I was about that book while reading it, how I wanted THIS to be my life, even though I couldn't have told you what THIS was, exactly. Something about recursive loops creating intelligence. I bet Guido and Christian have read it, or are at least more conversant with AI than I. (This song sux, by the way.) (Slow.) You need books like that, to spur you on, even if your life has nothing to do with the subject matter of the book. Who knows what your life "has to do with"? Everything, nothing, certain things, that's the eternal ever-shifting mystery. Good song title at least.
The official consensus: NO, NOT WORTH IT. Though as I've pointed out, Youtube might give you something tasty:
I should've posted this on 01/02/2010, but 01/020/2010 isn't too much of a stretch. This is the smartest "Subterranean Homesick" parody, if not the smartest Dylan parody ever, because it works ON A WHOLE OTHER LEVEL, MAN. In case there was any doubt that Weird Al's a genius, here you go:
This must've been a hard, but fun, song to write. I mean, he got it to rhyme! And the lines have just enough thematic unity that it actually sounds like an inscrutable Dylan song.
In which the Flowtation Device comes to the controversial conclusion that NAS IS A BETTER RAPPER THAN RICK ROSS. OR maybe you already knew that without the FD's help. Indeed, any four-year-old could probably deliver the same verdict, provided we let them listen to Rick Ross CDs in the car, which we certainly DO NOT. So this particular aesthetic judgment is not particularly earth shattering, nor was the FD necessary to its derivation. BUT! Maybe the Flowtation Device can help to clarify WHY Nas is superior. Listen and we'll chat:
Truth is, Rick Ross is pretty good. And his CD! Deeper Than Rap should TOTALLY have made my '09 list, probably #3 or #4. (Adios, U2!) The first several songs hone to perfection a smooth variety of "yacht rap," based on conspicuous-consumption lyrics and perfectly placed sonic elements, that's as reassuring as reading the Zingerman's catalog. (Or another expensive catalog from which you dream of someday placing an order.)
But back to Mr. Ross. He's maybe a little stiff and doesn't attempt anything too outrageous, but he's certainly more authoritative than Soulja Boy, let alone the guys in Lonely Island, whose "I'm On a Boat" sprays Rick's whole block with a glock. His two verses here set up such regular rhyme patterns that you barely need the Flowtation Device to make them scan:
If you balling physics, nigga money never flow Meaning every day I'm living tryna stay afloat Coming from a BOSS, I can predict a double cross Handlers managing money, they never come across
Of course I have to point out that he rhymes "cross" with "cross." There are worse crimes. For instance, there's fact that a bunch of his rhymes fall square on beat 4, which makes him sound like he's trying to run in lead shoes. But he's capable of changing things up on occasion, like with this swingin' syncopation from Verse 1:
*i'mTOO_COOL_FORlame / =dudes=thatRIDiCULE_ /
So, yeah, faint praise, but it's not like he's got no business doing what he's doing. As I said before, he knows how to make a great album and he's a talent magnet--as evidenced by the Nastradamic greatness of the middle verse, at 1:59.
If Ross sounds leaden, Nas's verse has more twists and swoops than Muhummad Ali flying around the ring. Here's the blow by blow:
Rhymes are EVERYwhere. Notice that "talent" and "challenged" start on offbeats, while all the others--"pilot," "Khaled," "college," "logic," "wallet"--start on the beat, but on DIFFERENT beats--4, 2, 2, 3, and 4, respectively. You can tell immediately that Nas commands his words enough to rhyme wherever he wants. Ross's regular rhyme patterns, on the other hand, make it seem like he HAD to put those rhymes on the final beats or else he'd get lost. His attitude is big enough that it doesn't undermine his authority too much (he's THE BOSS, after all), but next to him, Nas sounds like he's spiraling into the stratosphere. And it gets better:
That virtuosic run of 29 syllables without a rest is a thrilling contrast to the shorter phrases that precede it. Listening to this verse is like listening to a Sonny Rollins solo heat up. When it starts out I'm thinking, "OK, I think I know what's going on here," I can follow the notes and the tune and everything, and then all of a sudden he's gone, and I have NO IDEA what's going on, and I love him even more. Not done yet; I believe Nas was talking about his wrists...
I sheepishly admit that I don't understand why the Nazareth wants to turn his Timberlands to Crocs. Please explain this mystery to me, and then allow him to flabbergast you again:
ANOTHER 29 syllables without a break, the strong ones on offbeats and the weak ones on strong beats, except in those cases that they're not. In this verse, Nas demonstrates his unique gift for creating an rhyme logic that doesn't fall into those cookie-cutter "sung-style" (Adam Krims holla!) patterns, patterns that are weaker MCs' bread and butter. This verse would be amazing in any context, but it leaves Rick Ross in the dust. One Youtube commenter wonders, "Why would Nas go on a song with this guy?" That's like asking, "Why would he want his dick to look huge?"
