Arlo Guthrie :: Alice’s Restaurant (The Massacree Revisted)
Winter of my sophomore year, my high school held auditions for Our Town. I knew I wanted the part of the Stage Manager, the wise, detached narrator of the play. We had a guy at Lakewood High who always got these dad type, old man parts—one of those unfortunate teens who already kind of looked 40 years old. He was a senior that year, and a shoe-in for the role.
In order to set my audition apart, I worked on a New England accent. Being from Cleveland, I had no real idea what that sounded like, apart from a sketch on SNL of a game show where people from New Hampshire give inscrutable driving directions. That was my shred of a start, but I really got there listening to Alice’s Restaurant over and over again for like two weeks straight. I’m not sure if the clipped singsong cadence I picked up from Arlo Guthrie is anywhere near what folks from the northeast actually sound like, but it got me the part.
Arlo Guthrie re-recorded the Alice’s Restaurant album in 1996, almost thirty years after the original. I know all the pauses and lilts of the 18 minute yarn he spun back in 1967, and this version, and who knows, maybe this happened every time he sang it in the intervening 30 years, is a close to perfect copy of that other version. And that makes me think, is that what performance is? Is that what a professional musician with a 30 year career has to endure? Does anyone who plays music that long expect to develop in their craft when the audience just wants the same thing out of you that they’ve heard before?
BUT BUT BUT. Arlo saves it, at least for me, at the end of this song. If you’ve heard Alice’s Restaurant before, skip straight to 17:14, where he starts on one of the thoughtful and playful storytelling tangents that have made me a real fan of his early live recordings. Yes, he’s getting old now, and punny, and cheesy in his delivery. But he KNOWS all that, he’s over it, and comes out updating the story and providing a punchline for a song that always felt like the longest joke in the world that accidentally became serious.
Alice’s Restaurant (The Massacree Revisted) (9MB MP3)
Arlo Guthrie (wikipedia)
Infiniti (Juan Atkins) :: Game One
everyone’s got secrets, you know. and who doesn’t love to hear about the next man’s? (to live vicariously though him or rather just to calculate our moral standing in this world). well, sure as hell, i’ve got one; and it’s a little dirty alright.
but, no. i’m not ashamed.
say it loud.
UH-HUH.
say it proud.
THAT’S RIGHT
you know what i like? i like Dance Music.
now before you go and choke yourself into a state—all indignant scowls, furrowed brows and moistened murmurs—over the fact that, like, DUH, it’s eight into the aughts and even your hillbilly uncle in Pasipuchammuck, Rhode Island picked up the latest Gorillaz album. cause i’m here to talk about the capital-D Dance, not its bastard children. i might even be inclined to invoke the dreaded C-word despite the bad taste it leaves in my mouth; cause as much as this could be the soundtrack to one chapter of your appropriately bohemian midnight boudoir dance parties, it’s really meant for the Club.
i’ll spare you a rigorous history but supply a few tidbits of crudely oversimplified context instead. soul, funk and r&b begot disco; and disco begot house; and house and funk begot techno; and Eliud begot Eleazar; and the Lord said “this is good.” contrary to popular perception, techno wasn’t always the icy, teutonic clamor of sports car commercials and Polish discotheques. it was smart, soulful, and progressive—and, at the time, the latest in the long, distinguished tradition of innovative Black American musical genres. pioneered by a group of three Detroit teens (Juan Atkins, Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson) who were greatly influenced by a motley mélange of P-Funk, futurism, and Detroit’s slow urban decay, techno first emerged from the bedroom in 1981 with Atkin’s Alleys of Your Mind. perhaps no one has yet better captured the sound and genesis of this music in print better than May who once described techno as “just like Detroit, a complete mistake. It’s like George Clinton and Kraftwerk stuck in an elevator.”
admittedly, i was hesitant to post this song, or a dance track of any kind. taken out of context—the club, the dance, the mix—its simplicity and monotony, while both essential to the track’s purpose, may strike you as liabilities rather than strengths. but it’s a mistake to evaluate dance music by the metrics of pop and rock. free yourselves from the tyranny of verse chorus verse, if just for a moment. there is an arc rather than a rhythm to the structure. a glacial unfolding. rhythm here is all micro, and swingin; the skittering, clipped skips of the hi-hat and gloriously reverbed, hollow stabs of keyboard compel my feet and hips to feats unhip but primal and natural and culturally unmolested. this is the secret of Dance Music, and mine, too. dirty, indeed.
Game One (7.9MB MP3)
Infiniti (Juan Atkins) (myspace, more info, and more)
the Beatles :: Two of Us
The summer of 2002 I was Ben’s babysitter. Ben was three, I was 21, and we were together all day Monday through Friday, and this was our theme song.
We had the Ocean Mist (a.k.a. purple) Honda mini van, a credit card, and summer days at our disposal. We could be seen often at the Evanston beach and the Lucky Platter. We went to the Lincoln Park Zoo twice a week the whole summer. Like the zoo, we never got tired of this song. I would put it on and Ben would stop what he was doing and stand up in a position I call the A-frame: legs a bit wider than hip width apart, then he’d start swaying side to side, lifting one leg at a time to the music. The best part was that he’d also sing along, which was more like a wail and/or a sigh and included grunts and head bobs while trying to keep up with the beat. It kind of went like this: “twou ush…reedin..nowha…..I gown hoom!” He’d usually end the song with a big leap, flailing arms, and collapse on the floor.
There were times when we’d be in the basement play room (a.k.a. the primary colored plastic palace), I would be sitting on the couch saying things like, “for the love of Jezuz Cristo, I need to talk to someone who is more than three years old. If I have to play that game one more time where he’s the lion and I’m the tiger and I never win, why I’m gonna…I’m gonna….What’s that Ben? You want to listen to Twou Ush? Awesome.”
And have you ever heard ‘normal’ kids music? Like this Ralph’s World guy? Seriously, who sings about boogers and days when mom gets mad? Maybe we liked Two of Us that much more because it wasn’t based on bowel movements and nap time, but treated us as who we were: two people creating their own adventures, trying not to get too bored or on each others nerves. Maybe that’s why Paul McCartney wrote this song for Linda. This song was the background to watching tigers at the zoo and to playing with plastic tigers in the basement. It meant summer and intensely serious play time for us.
The last time I saw Ben was two years ago. He acted shy with me at first and I wondered if he remembered me as well as I remembered him. At first he acted like he had maybe had a dream about me once and the whole thing was deja vu all over again. Like he knew something special had happened between us, but he wasn’t exactly sure how to bridge that to the present. Eventually he warmed up and although we didn’t get to play our theme song, we did get to play. And I’m sure he won.
Two of Us (5MB MP3)
the Beatles (homepage)
Faraquet :: the Missing Piece
It’s impossible for me to pick one favorite Faraquet song to write about. It took me days to settle on this one and I did so simply because it’s the one tune I put on every single mix I ever give to anyone. That doesn’t necessarily make it my favorite per se, but the Missing Piece is a song that I think should be in everyone’s life. If for anything, then to introduce them to Faraquet’s incredible music.
I first heard this band after they split up in 2001, so I have always bemoaned my misfortune at missing their live shows. But this is a funny world. Grace and Fate are lovers and sometimes they rendezvous in the form of a reunion show at the Black Cat! Guess where I’m going to be on September 18th? I’ll be the one with the big toothy grin on his face.
In their way too short time together as a trio they put out one full-length, The View From This Tower, a couple of singles and a split 7”. Dischord just released an Anthology of re-mixed/mastered versions of previously released and out-of-print songs. The guitarist, Devin Ocampo, and drummer, Chad Molter, went on to form Medications, which is another totally freaking awesome band that everyone should go listen to.* Go…now!
* In the interests of full disclosure and blatant gloating Devin Ocampo produced and performed on my band’s new EP.
the Missing Piece (4.9MB MP3)
Faraquet (label site, fan video)
John Prine :: the Bottomless Lake
As I prepare this week to head out for a fly fishing trip to the Ontonagon river up north in the grand UP, I’m needing a little inspiration. This is the beginning of Fall, a time of nostalgia. To assist in this time of recollection and warmth I thought about turning to Greg Brown or even a Croce tune or two. This isn’t cuttin’ it. What this trip needs is a good old splash of John Prine. John is a good old Chicago boy that has taken me on many trips with his lyrical paddle boat. Most of my time with John Prine has been spent listening to his whimsical album Prime Prine. Greatest hits albums are usually not my cup of tea but this one is a standard in my play list. Regardless of how great it is, I decided to venture out with the album Aimless Love.
It worked. I found my fall fishin’ song. It’s so great when you know you can rely on a musician to take you to that place you need to go. The Bottomless Lake is now my 2008 fishin’ anthem. I just hope the Ontanagon can produce some specs like Mr. Prine can produce timeless songs.
The Bottomless Lake (3.4MB MP3)
John Prine (homepage)
Buck Owens :: Who’s Gonna Mow Your Grass
Most people remember Buck from the hokum of Hee Haw and with good reason since he co-hosted the show from 1969 to 1986. But there’s more to Buck than yelling “sah-LUTE” for small towns on television.
A favorite songwriter of the Beatles and John Fogerty (who name checks Owens in the tune Lookin’ Out My Backdoor), Owens and the Buckaroos moved country music back to its honky tonk past during a time when the sophisticated sound of countrypolitan was big on the charts, shooting it with the rockabilly that folks like Johnny Cash had brought before (Owens recorded a rockabilly song under the name of Corky Jones—he didn’t want the tune to hurt his country career so he used a pseudonym). As the inventor of the Bakersfield sound, Owens realized that his music was coming out of AM radios and pushed the treble on his recordings to a point that would take off your skin at the right levels. Dwight Yoakam at least did right by the person who created the sound that he used by helping out Owens with a comeback in 1988.
There’s a couple of reasons that I love this song. The first and foremost is Don Rich’s use of the Maestro fuzztone. Rich was Owens righthand man in the Buckaroos. After Rich died in 1974 in a motorcycle accident, Owens gave up music until the aforementioned Yoakam album in ‘88. The sound of the Maestro, along with the harpsichord, places the song firmly among any Nuggets-era baroque-ravaged garage rock tune and also points country music to its teenage brother rock and roll.
Second, the lyrics of the song on first blush seem a bit sexist, but before you dismissing Buck with a simple fish and bicycle argument, listen to it again. It’s a song about a man who is just about out of his lover’s door. He brings her breakfast in bed. He chops wood. He dries her crying eyes. He jumps when she says frog. Plus, for me, the double entendre of the titular line is one of the better metaphors for domesticity around. Sure beats anything that doofus Frank Zappa came up with, and you don’t even have to listen to Steve Vai wank on his guitar for 10 minutes.
Who’s Gonna Mow Your Grass (4.4MB MP3)
Buck Owens (wikipedia)
Common Loon :: Dinosaur Vs. Early Man
i went down to urbana to visit friends and celebrate a birthday. we all got on bikes to check out some local music at a champaign bar, not knowing what to expect. the first band we saw dominated the other bands of the night playing their brand of haunting, shoe-gazey, dreamy pop music. 50% Beatles + 50% Radiohead + 50% 60’s Psychedelia + 50% Apples In Stereo + 50% Elliot Smith = 250% good. two guys total, one with a guitar the other playing drums and running sequencers of organ tones, deep bass swells and sleigh bells, can make any of their songs sound like 10 guys with 3 background singers. i went up to them after the show to tell them i thought the show was great and i loved their sound, but when i started talking, the dude just kinda looked down, then around and quickly finished our conversation to get away from me. am i an asshole (no need to answer that) or is it better to just buy the record and leave bands alone? i always thought it would be cool if someone actually liked the music i played. either way, find this record, buy their new album coming out, become friends with them on myspace, look them up on itunes, bug them if you see them live and always support local acts.
Dinosaur Vs. Early Man (4.6MB MP3)
Common Loon (myspace)
T. Rex :: Monolith
Some songs exist outside time. They float in the mesosphere, far above the machinations of man. The mesosphere is a good place for these songs. It is a region too high for aircraft and too low for spacecraft, so there’s plenty of room for these songs; if they are needed, they could float down to earth on a gravity wave—the only relevant habitant of the mesosphere.
Who can say when this song was written? Twenty or perhaps sixty years ago? Or eighty years from now? It’s like that part at the end of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure when they see holographic portraits of themselves playing their songs in the future.
Monolith spans time, or perhaps connects it, like a wormhole. Actually, a wormhole would allow it to pop into different times and be present in multiple eras.
Yeah. That’s probably what it did.
Monolith (4.4MB MP3)
T. Rex (wikipedia)
Talking Heads :: This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)
Last week, I unintentionally developed a severe crush on this tune. It grabbed a hold of me as I was watching the awkward party scene in Craig Gillespie’s Lars and the Real Girl (2007). Ryan Gosling’s misanthropic character is standing there sporting a sharp three-piece suit while his artificial, ductile baby-love (Bianca) sits strategically posed in her wheelchair, dancing with some other man. The camera slowly turns from her to Lars. This lesser-known Talking Heads song from Speaking in Tongues is playing. Lars feels it. He understands; he almost seems at peace with himself. Something about Byrne’s emotive chorus crooning speaks fluently to the absurdity of Lars’ plight. Have a look.
A couple of days later I was watching Oliver Stone’s Wall Street (1985) and as the nostalgia of its 80s-esque aesthetic became less captivating, I shifted my attention from Charlie Sheen’s luxurious, Darryl Hannah-inspired, fashion-disaster of an apartment to, once again, this song. As it played, Charlie Sheen/Bud Fox’s new, albeit garish, abode emerges as his financial triumph, the evidence that he had indeed ‘made it.’ At that moment, my crush on This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) achieved maximum crushiness as it demonstrated its own sonic and lyrical versatility, fitting two very different films from two very different decades, so very well.
On some level, Byrne’s number is about love and home. Beyond the physical dimensions of a home there is of course the way a self resides within itself. For Lars, one can posit that his metaphoric/metaphysical abode suddenly became, however momentarily, a comfortable habitat. In the context of the film, this stasis remains for Lars an elusive end, making the magic dance-floor moment an even more crucial part of the storyline. On the other hand, Bud Fox’s newly acquired, lavish apartment, despite representing at one time the dream to which he aspired, ultimately emerged as the physical contradiction of what he was utterly inclined to be: a more or less plain and decent fellow. You just have to see it.
I am sure that when Byrne wrote this tune he had no idea that it would be appropriated for such seemingly disparate cinematic projects. While it might be an interesting endeavor to delve deeper into how the song reflects its original physical and emotional environment (or what’s unique about the 80s in general), I prefer to confront it in the broader terms of its journey from 1985 to 2007. We often consider songs to be windows through which the intimate and sometimes obscure details of a specific historical moment come into view. At the same time, the penultimate meaning of a song is not necessarily tethered to the moment during which it was conceived. Therein lie the beauty, power, and dynamism of songs and why they say so much about society and consciousness. When tunes manage to transcend the neat and easy stylistic boundaries that ostensibly separate one decade from the next, they reveal something wholly human and, to some extent, what does not change over time.
This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) (4.5MB MP3)
Talking Heads (fan site)
Pavement :: Gold Soundz
To: Stephen Malkmus and Pavement
From: David Perez
Re: Gold Soundz
Dear Stephen-
There is no reason I should like your band. There is no reason I should love this song.
Your songs are constantly on the border of collapse. Sometimes I feel like you’re playing on a tight rope. Sometimes I feel like you’re fucking with me.
And the noise…is unabashedly turbulent. So rocky, you have to negotiate with yourself whether you think it’s music. And it is. It is music. Maybe in its purest form.
The first thing that strikes me is that YOU DID THIS. You decided it was OK to be almost frustratingly vague in your lyrics. You decided it was ok to have a song like 5-4=Unity, weird and sundry in its style, almost a dim sum of idioms on the same record as Gold Soundz. Gold Soundz —sweet, and self-centered—almost abusive of its creators:
It has a nice ring when you laugh
At the low life opinions
And they’re coming to the chorus now…
Despite the nice brittle poetry in this sentence… the historical context is unavoidable. Your reputation as a difficult if not self-contained collaborator is evident, and almost vindicated by the acknowledgment. Then, you motherfucker/genius… you change the narrative:
So drunk in the august sun
And you’re the kind of girl I like
Because you’re empty and I’m empty
And you can never quarantine the past.
The song instantly becomes deceptively sentimental.
I have to have a long talk with myself. I have to ask some hard questions. Why do I love your band so much? Why do I love this song?
Maybe it’s because, somewhere in that quiet/selfish head of yours you trusted us, and didn’t assume how smart or willing we are to devour this music. You let us decide if music could exist in this weird collision.
Maybe one day we will run into each other in the supermarket. You’ll be buying yogurt for your kids, I will be buying limes or something. I’ll sputter awkwardly about seeing you at Pitchfork, and how I like Trigger Cut so much. You will probably feign modesty, and get awkward and want to leave. And you won’t know that I am grasping for a tomato. I’ll clench it in my hand, and decide in that moment whether I throw it at you, or just kiss you on the mouth.
Gold Soundz (3.7MB MP3)
Pavement (label site)