the Effigies :: Security
sporting a look halfway between skinhead and steelworker, The Effigies were emblematic of Chicago’s rough and tumble origins and its culturally dominant working class and a harbinger of the look and attitude that would command the local punk and hardcore scene for years to come.* musically**, they cast the die as well, weaving muscular guitars with deftly crafted hooks and melodies that might even have you humming if you weren’t so busy ducking punches. their sound was big and brawny like the city that spawned them. this is the foundation, and a solid one at that; hefty enough in and of itself to have guaranteed the Effigies a prominent place in the local punk pantheon. but something else is going on here: just listen.
though not without precedent elsewhere in the world, the Effigies no less boldly grafted select phonemes of dub and disco onto a regionally distinct but unequivocally American punk syntax, producing a musical creole unseen before or since. British dub-punk hybrids (The Clash, The Ruts) were mostly a success, but on occasion toothless, and certainly more pop that our boys from Chicago could ever hope to be. PIL probably trod the more righteous path first, with a nod to (if not a warm embrace of) the galloping hi-hat and steady 4/4 of 70s Manhattan clubland. i won’t delude myself into thinking that the scores of post-Rapture dance-punk neophytes lay any claim to this ragged, midwestern troupe or that their novel experiment had much significance to Music at large; but it was honest and—dare I say—a little bit courageous, and that means the world to me. architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh once wrote “there is hope in honest error, none in the icy perfections of the mere stylist.” yeah, I like that.
* to contrast, the dominant punk scenes in the US in 1981 were the decidedly middle class, straight edge Washington DC scene (‘Georgetown punks’), the blue collar jock-punks of the militantly straight edge Boston scene and all of those misfits out in LA. the beer-swilling sons of Polish laborers were unmistakably odd men out.
** the Haunted Town five-track EP was released on Autumn Records in 1981. it was later re-released in 1984 in Ruthless Records with Security as an added track. the Bodybag / Security 7” single was originally released on Ruthless Records in 1982.
Security (6.3MB MP3)
the Effigies (homepage, more info)
Akon :: Locked Up
This song was everywhere summer 2004. I went and bought the CD because I love socially conscious music. This is a silly term, because what I mean to say is: I like music that reinforces my socialist-feminist-anti-racist worldview. With a beat you can dance to!
This song is off Akon’s first album, Trouble, which also includes the similar-sounding and even more socially conscious Ghetto. While both songs are awesome, I like Locked Up better because if you are going to address social issues previously addressed by Elvis, at least go with a different vibe. This is no Jailhouse Rock—this is a big thud beat and simple piano line. The killer is the cell doors slamming. Subtlety is for math rock and jazz. Additionally, if you stack Locked Up with Trouble Nobody you get a hip-hoppity primer on the criminal justice morass we’ve gotten ourselves into. To sum up: No more prisons.
Even Akon, a good Senegalese immigrant with a jazz musician father, fell into the gruesome double trap set by the Prison Industrial Complex and our top down culture of gangster capitalism. But do not fret! Sure, mostly they set poor people and dark people up with bracelets and parole and the convict label in neighborhoods with no jobs and there is 70% recidivism and no one feels any safer, but at least Akon got out. He wrote this awesome song in jail while serving time for car theft and is now a big famous star.
I was one of only three people in my whole school to be on both Honor Role and Effort Role in fifth grade. For me, sure, it’s a big deal, but why am I telling you? For the same reason Akon name his second album Konvicted. Sometimes it’s difficult to let little identity building experiences go, no matter how trivial they are in retrospect. Akon: it was a car theft conviction. 50 Cent was shot 89 times, and Suge Knight eats babies.
I’m just mean because I’m disappointed. Konvicted is as horrible as its title. If you have ears and left your home in 2007, you have heard the song Smack That, featuring Eminem—the hit song from an album of money-worshiping, lady-hating crap. Clearly, Akon is dedicated to exploring the whole two popular images America offers black men: thug or pimp. He also appears to like money a great deal.
I am sick of money and the power it has and the interests it serves, and I’m tired of watching late stage capitalism eat whole communities. I’m not alone, and while Akon has temporarily abandoned the honest vulnerability of those first songs, I have not abandoned my hope for Akon or the complete transformation of ourselves, society, and the world based on justice in the service of love. Akon, call me.
Locked Up (5.4MB MP3)
Akon (homepage)
Summer Break
So, I had planned to keep updating over the next two weeks while I traveled and though I do have a few entries in the queue for y’all, I’ve decided to skip it. Scrambling to find internet connections and uploading mp3s is no way to spend one’s vacation. So, consider this a lil summer break with posting to resume in two weeks, on August 5th. Have a nice rest of July everyone, and we’ll share more tunes in August!
(contributors, please keep sending stuff my way, I hope to make edits and drafts and such on airplanes and trains)
Max Romeo :: Chase the Devil
This is from one of my mom’s favorite records, War Ina Babylon. This song is taking it way back for me. I remember watching the island label on the record spinning around, changing, to my delight, from a lower case i to an exclamation point and back. I must have been two or three. Since she mastered that complicated leap from records to cassettes in 1986, my mother has kept a copy of this album in her car at all times. I know for a fact that it’s there right now. During my elementary school years, I learned every word to this album. I adore it. I would place it higher than Charlotte’s Web and the Care Bears Movie on my nostalgia list. And listening to it now, it’s clear why. Can’t you picture the Muppets dancing to this cute simple music?. There are definitely long legged birds with accordion necks, tropical trees and small monkeys. Perhaps a dread-locked muppet puts on a metal shirt and chases a muppet Satan to outer space?
Riding shotgun in our hatchback Buick Skylark, I would giggle to myself, imagining colorful scenes along with this album, superimposed over the dingy Cleveland highways. I’d make up meanings for the nonsensical lyrics, which sounded a little bit like my Hungarian grandmother’s odd version of English, and ask my mom to explain the more adult themes. She explained to me what a pimp is, the possible benefits of growing your own marijuana, that there are children in the world who go hungry. We were never clear on that War Ina Babylon, though. I love this song in particular, because Max is saying he is personally going to kick Satan’s ass. I appreciate the DIY attitude, and I love the little scrapey noises that punctuate the beat.
Chase the Devil (4.8MB MP3)
Max Romeo (wikipedia)
BB King :: How Blue Can You Get?
Living in Chicago, some might think that the blues was part of my everyday rotation. I came to the city over 10 years ago it couldn’t be farther from the truth. I used to LOVE the blues. Sittin’ up nights with friends, listening to Hooker ‘n Heat. Kickin’ back on Sunday afternoons with a set of Robert Johnson and rampin’ it up with some Hound Dog Taylor by evening time. Man, I had my heart set that blues like that still existed. I could take a trip to the deep South or the south side of Chicago and there it would be. To quench my thirst I’d hit a blues fest here or there, head over to the Green Door in Lansing, MI and watch Root Doctor tease me with some howls. I still never got what I was looking for. Nothing really hit me.
I ended up in Chicago in ‘97 and my search was done. I’m not saying it was complete, I just gave up. I’d hit a club here or there and try to drink my way toward admiration but that never seemed to work. Everything seemed so scripted. Every chord bent was something archived years before. There wasn’t any heart. It was time to move on.
Over the past few years, I haven’t spent much time thinking about the blues until yesterday when I was heading back from a weekend visit to Michigan. My iPod was turning songs randomly and on came a slice of one of my favorite albums: BB King Live At the Regal. How Blue Can You Get? began with screams, coasted with some more screams and ended with screams once again. Shit, even the album cover shows old BB screamin’!! This is the emotional power I needed. I remembered what I missed and loved those few years ago.
Everything came rushing back but now I knew what I was wanting. I love going to a show and shouting with the band. From jazz, to blues to indie pop, screaming has always enhanced my momentary relationship with the band. I’m not obnoxious with it by any means. I just think some music is meant to be screamed with. So next time you find yourself at a show and if the feeling is right, let it out. Join me. Let’s bring the feeling of the blues back someway, somehow.
How Blue Can You Get? (5MB MP3)
BB King (homepage)
Yes :: And You and I
I wrote a bunch of junk about this song (stuff like: 1972, moog, mini-moog, mellotron, leslie speakers, neo-Wagnerian, blah blah blah, etc. etc), and realized it was boring. So, I’ll just say that And You and I makes me happy. I like the beginning where it seems like they’re just figuring out chords and creating it as they go and then BLAMMO, a ten minute epic is in the bag.
My favorite part is close to eight minutes in when there’s a little turn and a full on jam ensues. Unfortunately, I’m incapable of accurately describing the capabilities of Yes or any other band/musician that can orchestrate such complicated musical structures, but the geek in me is totally appreciative. Even though I’ve been listening to the lo-fi brilliance of Jay Reatard all week and loving it, I still get a big kick out of Yes and all their production and time changes.
If I could do what they do, I would. Armed with a piece of shit acoustic guitar, I once made up a sprawling epic involving my cat George going on a journey to find an amulet (of power); certain elements of the sound and lyrics at the end of And You and I encapsulate the tone I was going for:
And you and I climb, crossing the shapes of the morning.
And you and I reach over the sun for the river.
And you and I climb, clearer, towards the movement.
And you and I called over valleys of endless seas.
Just beautiful. My song was pretty difficult to ‘write’, as I don’t know how to play guitar and was only strumming and droning on about mountains and…wizards(!), so it’s probably a good thing I forgot how it went exactly. I’ll leave that sort of thing to the people who can handle it, I suppose.
Anyhow, even though I’m not sure what it’s about (God? A boy and his dog? A fisherman and the sea? A father and son? George and I? Preachers and teachers? Barb’s mom?), this song sounds like life and nature and humans and growing and traveling and making things, and it lifts my spirits when I’m feeling down.
And You and I (13.9MB MP3)
Yes (homepage)
The Glenrays :: Haunted By Repetition
You may be surprised to hear that the soundtrack of day-to-day life in the laboratory was not written by Thomas Dolby. In science, those blinding ‘Eureka!’ moments are few and far between. Unless perhaps you happen to be uncommonly lucky or especially brilliant—moving with God-like intuition through that Pyrex labyrinth—your average yeti in a lab coat operates more on rigor and reproducibility than wizardry or perhaps evil genius. Harboring certain autistic tendencies is helpful.
In the era of ‘Big Science’ you ask small questions with fine focus. The puzzle is a masterpiece but sometimes you’re left feeling like a beat cop working the sidelines in the off-shift just across town from the forensic investigation of the crime of creation and being. The soundtrack gets boring. My day-to-day lab work sometimes feels like a begging and often repeated conversation between me and the reticent bacteria I married, I mean ‘study.’ Thus, playing god is more like playing a slow game of tennis than the average mediocre tennis player may realize. You volley a question, wait for the answer, react, repeat, repeat, repeat…
But don’t be sad! The soundtrack is always changing. And maybe the next track will be Thomas Dolby.
Haunted By Repetition (1.5MB MP3)
The Glenrays (homepage)
Luciano Pavarotti :: Nessun Dorma
When I signed on as a contributor for this project, my ostensibly noble mission was to avoid penning any melodramatic, self-indulgent descriptions of why and how any particular song ended up as one of my personal favorites. I was determined to prevent my prosaic, subjective exposition from potentially obfuscating the broader, and possibly more important, meaning and social context of a tune (not that these two dimensions of interpretation are mutually exclusive). At the same time, from the very start of my involvement in this blog, I secretly conspired to betray my own directive; eventually, I would write an inordinately emotional piece about how Nessun Dorma, absolutely destroys me.
Sure, at first I dreamt of a way to integrate my private world with the song’s public legacy. I told myself that I could locate this song within its historic and artistic context, compose a textual exegesis, and would then use it as a worthy platform for qualifying why the song, and this particular performance of it, just splits me in half, right down the center of my metaphoric body. First performed in 1926, critics have called Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot a great many things, ranging from brutally heartbreaking to utterly misogynistic and Eurocentric. If you don’t have a chance to listen to and understand the whole of Turandot, here is the New York Metropolitan Opera’s concise synopsis.
I’m going to purposefully evade the task of intellectualizing the song and simply say that the combination of Pavarotti’s voice and the lyrics (out of the context of the story) descend on you like the still air of that monumental moment when you first realized that you would surrender all your possessions and time to the one you love. In my humble opinion, this piece is above all else pure sonic passion. It is the sound of your cauldron boiling and your belly burning. It is an eruption of desperation and hope that shatters the strictures of reason and critical consciousness. It is the encapsulation of the singular moment you realized that you were, in fact, alive, unashamed, and doomed to love someone despite anyone’s better judgment; it was on her/his mouth that you could find, for however brief, your true name:
Nessun dorma! Nessun dorma!
Tu pure, o, Principessa,
nella tua fredda stanza,
guardi le stelle
che fremono d’amore
e di speranza.
Ma il mio mistero e chiuso in me,
il nome mio nessun sapra!
No, no, sulla tua bocca lo diro
quando la luce splendera!
Ed il mio bacio sciogliera il silenzio
che ti fa mia!
(Il nome suo nessun sapra!
e noi dovrem, ahime, morir!)
Dilegua, o notte!
Tramontate, stelle!
Tramontate, stelle!
All’alba vincero!
vincero, vincero!
I should also note that this entry comes with a heaping portion of irony: people stop me in the street to tell me that I am the spitting image of Luciano Pavarotti. I used to protest vehemently, declaring that the man has got at least 150 pounds on me and that I’m a hell of a lot better looking. Of late, I’ve changed my tune and actually don’t mind bearing the resemblance. Pavarotti, despite being somewhat of a flake and a letch, was an opera god whose artistic efforts challenged the elitist boundaries that formerly kept opera under snobby lock and key. Here’s the proof.
And let’s not equivocate, Pavarotti can really fucking sing. My recommendation is that you close your eyes and play this track as loudly as you can. Suspend your preconceived notions of what Opera might be. Forget pop music for just a couple of minutes. Let the song pull from you the amorous force of your design. Answer the song when it asks you whether anything on this earth could possibly stop you from adoring and serving the people that you love. Let it allow you to suddenly realize that everything that might be good in our lives and in this world extends from those uncertain moments during which we dared to love one another far beyond the best of our ability. I also suggest that you listen to this song while reading its lyrics unless, of course, your Italian is fluent and you don’t need a translation. In case you do, here’s a rough conversion:
No one sleeps, no one sleeps…
Even you, o Princess,
In your cold room,
Watch the stars,
That tremble with love
And with hope.
But my secret is hidden within me;
My name no one shall know, no, no,
On your mouth I will speak it.
When the light shines,
And my kiss will dissolve the silence
That makes you mine.
No one will know his name
And we must, alas, die.
Vanish, o night!
Settle, stars! Settle, stars!
At dawn, I will conquer! I will conquer! I will conquer!
Nessun Dorma (4.1MB MP3)
Luciano Pavarotti (homepage)
Nina Simone :: Feeling Good
I’m kind of working on this book. It’s the dissertation in African American studies I’d be working on if I lived in a part of the country with a PhD in African American studies. (Damn you Cornell.)
As a consequence of the project, I’ve been immersed in Black history in the era (or three) between about 1913 and 1985. It’s a fascinating period. For one thing, rapid changes in the Black condition during this time caused rapid changes in Black cultural perspectives. Duh, right? But I mean relatively constant and relatively damning 180 degree shifts. Values on which African Americans hung their hats would transmogrify into the values of a scraping Uncle Tom—and then into wholesomeness once again. What was once a welcome representation would become classic ‘coon’—and then back again.
But, of course, that’s just how it looks on the surface of things. In the roiling culture-making underneath, it’s all always alive and well: the church lady and the race man and the dealer are all present on the pre-riot corners of James Baldwin’s Harlem. Sonny Liston and Floyd Patterson step into the ring together, necessarily of and by and for the same era.
Maybe that’s part of why I love Nina Simone so—for the way she swims seamlessly between perspectives and stances, never being any more Black in one moment than in the next. To my ears, Feeling Good starts in the mode of an old Negro Spiritual—elemental, solitudinous, hopeful, day lit. But at 39 seconds, the brass kicks in. Suddenly the song is all satin and hips and nighttime swing, even if Nina’s singing about dawn. It is my most favorite Nina song of all.
Feeling Good (3.5MB MP3)
Nina Simone (wikipedia)
(originally written by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse for the musical The Roar of the Greasepaint—the Smell of the Crowd)
Okkervil River :: Listening To Otis Redding At Home During Christmas
When I lived on Kenmore we’d have a show in our basement every Valentine’s Day. We called it the Black Valentine party and we’d invite some friends to join us in performing acoustic heartbreakers to the 40-odd folks that would gather. Cats would pile-in, drinking, sit crossed-legged in silence in our dark basement, watching their pals belt out broke winter songs about the trouble we were in.
‘Cos we were in trouble. Working terrible jobs, living in crummy apartments, falling out of love fiercely. G had busted her teeth out, wasted riding her bike, and I fainted from the smell of her blood while S called Cook County. A was nine hundred miles away studying ducks. M had met someone in Tennessee who moved to our city and then it didn’t work out. As for me, I don’t think it’s fair to speak of the trouble I was in; that’s someone else’s story to tell. But worst of all, we each still believed that if we sang strong enough, maybe, maybe, somehow, something…
There are countless reasons I adore Okkervil River. Their sense of the basic musicality of language is totally unparalleled. I think the arrangements are brilliant; I think the care they take in borrowing from pop history is so smart. But I love this song, because I think everyone has a “Sarah in New Hampshire.”
Lover or friend or sister, the person we left behind forever, emotionally or geographically, because we thought we had somewhere else we needed to be. Sarah, the ghost that stands in as old home for us, to whom, in our dark hours, we imagine ourselves retreating.
M played the Otis Redding tune that Okkervil River borrows from here, on one of those Black Valentines. On those nights, we were trying, desperate, to make a kind of home there together. So we sang, asking our friends to be new Sarahs enfleshed and hoping they might convince us to continue remembering the now threatened dreams that had led us all there.
Listening To Otis Redding At Home During Christmas (8.9MB MP3)
Okkervil River (homepage)