Teenage Fanclub :: the Concept
Back when i was tiny Johnny i used to watch 120minutes and Post Modern late nights on MTV with my sisters, where i first caught a glimpse of Scottish power pop band Teenage Fanclub. Soon i would see them performing this song on SNL, their long grungy hair juxtaposed with their uber-catchy melodies and nerdy looks. I found out later that this record Bandwagonesque was actually their third record as a band and first on a major label. This release in 1991 was considered the best record of the year by Spin Magazine, which beat out Nirvana’s Nevermind, My Bloody Valentines’ Loveless, and R.E.M.‘s hugest record Out of Time. Prior to Bandwagonesque they supposedly had a noisier hard rock sound that masked their vocals. Don Fleming their producer for this album, convinced them to strip down their sound for clarity and to bring forth their Brian Wilson inspired vocal harmonies.
No doubt about it, they’re my favorite of the power pop groups. Maybe because i grew up listening to them as opposed to Big Star or Cheap Trick, bands i didn’t find until later in my life. Maybe because at 11 years old seeing a band and getting caught in a moshpit was the sweetest feeling because it was the 90s. But there was no anger or apathy involved, it was just pure unadulterated pop music with loud guitars and songs about those ladies (or dudes) with the glowing aura you just have to be around. This song is about that girl or guy, the one that you see everywhere and want to hang out with because they’re just so damn sweet, wearing jeans (yup, that’s right jeans!) with a Status Quo Pictures of Matchstick Men 45rpm in hand. The picture is painted so clear with so little, yet in the chorus they sing “I didn’t want to hurt you, oh yeah” which leads your mind to wander and revel in the possibilities of this seemingly heart wrenching journey of fateful relationships. It’s not a new concept in the world of lyrics, but goddamn, they make it sound so luscious.
Ferg and Kurt this is for you. So turn out the lights, put your headphones on and blast the shit out of this song.
the Concept
Teenage Fanclub (homepage)
Sarah Dougher :: the Ground Below
If you’ve just met that sort-of-special someone and you’re looking for that perfect song that says “I care, but not too much” or “I like you and tentatively hope you like me (but I rather doubt it)” or “We all know that love is a lie, but I am experiencing intense biochemical reactions around you that indicate a certain physical compatibility that may prove fruitful to explore would you be so inclined,” then you are not looking for the Ground Below. This song is not for pussyfooting around. It’s for that moment, usually around 3 am, when you realize that there’s hours left before light and you have nothing to fill them but desire for someone who’s not there. Saying “you’re my world” won’t work because that’s a dumb cliché. Luckily, Sarah Dougher found a way to say exactly that minus the dumb:
Every sky your eye
every star you are
every word I know
and the ground below.
It’s naked. It’s over the top. It’s also the truth, and you can’t take it back. Give it only to someone you can’t describe with qualifiers. I did, because it said the words I wanted to but couldn’t find and it said them clear as day.
I’m looking at the mix I put it on now, with its hand-painted cover and painstaking tiny writing. After years spent in two cars and four houses in states separated by a thousand miles, the case is so scratched that it’s nearly opaque. It’s one of hundreds we have, yet when I asked for it my husband instantly knew where it was. I knew he would. It’s why I gave it to him.
I love you, Hiram. Happy anniversary.
the Ground Below
Sarah Dougher (homepage)
János Starker :: Sonata for Unaccompanied Cello: III. Allegro molto vivace
Zoltán Kodály’s Sonata for Unaccompanied Cello is obscenely, tortuously hard to play. Which means that it is performed, frequently, as a show-piece — a big ‘here I am’ — a pronouncement of “yes, I’ve disciplined myself to this point. Yes, I can grind away this hard. And no, you can’t believe that I am one person, that this is one instrument.” And, of course, you can listen to it that way. But like most virtuosity-proving pieces, this one is more than technically astonishing. It is truly, unreally gorgeous when someone really plays the shit out of it.
So this is János Starker playing the living shit out of the last movement. Starker, at least in my opinion, is the greatest living, smoking, boozing, old school, eastern bloc badass classical musician. I watched him teach a master class with a cigarette hanging from his bow-hand the whole time (ashing irreverently onto his Stradivarius) — then heard him refuse, the next year, to give a master class because the building insisted on enforcing its non-smoking policy (in the end they bent the rules for him). The thing is, the way Starker plays Kodály is just so brutal and so perfect — there’s still a tender ache under the pizzicato, but there’s that unabashed dirtiness, too, that wailing. Whew. Those Hungarians.
Sonata for Unaccompanied Cello: III. Allegro molto vivace
János Starker (cello.org)
Zoltán Kodály (wikipedia)
Shangri-Las :: Give Him a Great Big Kiss
When I say I’m in love you best believe I mean love: L-U-V.
For everyone who like boys or bois—good bad not evil ones, like the girl says—a song for spring now that we can see their backs and shoulders proper. Where I work, locked-up girls crowd near the windows on the yard and watch the boys on rec pretend to ignore them. They hoot and bite their hair when the boys remove their shirts—you know, for less restrictive pseudo-obliviousness. Caged heat indeed, and we’re all like this, the adolescents and people like me, forever young at heart. It’s all sarcastic talk and gum popping while we fantasize that someday the horns and vocals will drop out and our girls will handclap us a strut right up to the heartbreaker upon whom we lay A Great Big Kiss.
For some people it goes like that: Pinkie Tuscadero, John Cusack, Italians. For the rest of us, here’s the least cool of the obscenely cool Shangri-Las’ songs—a theme by which we’ll reclaim that precious adolescent mix of awkwardness and heedless, groundless, nearly delusional self confidence!
As a special L-U-V bonus, I direct you to Nation of Ulysses’ Today I Met the Girl I’m Gonna Marry. The Sassiest Boy in America kicks it off by flipping the Shangri-Las line from “best believe” to “better believe”—perfect, since Nation of Ulysses is better but the Shangri-Las are best. I suggest we put these songs together, put on our shades, tighten up our pants and pretend we’re tuff enough to get close…real close.
Give Him a Great Big Kiss
Shangri-Las (fansite)
Today I Met the Girl I’m Going to Marry
Nation of Ulysses (label site)
Electric Light Orchestra :: Mr. Blue Sky
This is a love letter of sorts, so if you don’t want to deal, just skip to the last paragraph:
I spent my early childhood in the late 70s and early 80s, so my brain doesn’t really see what’s wrong with androgyny, polyester (as long as I don’t have to wear it), or overly-dramatic and completely overblown pop songs. I love Black Sabbath as much as I love ABBA. I can listen to a lot of proggy goodness in the way of Guru Guru and then turn on the sixth Beatle Jeff Lynne and his bubblegumilicous candy-prog band ELO. But it hasn’t always been that way.
You see, I have a problem with nostalgia. It’s a game for losers and advertising firms and I really had worked hard on getting rid of it in my life. Around 2002, however, I had a small change of heart. It was around then a lot of things ended for me and I was stuck in a horrible job in a three-bedroom house with holes in the floor; I couldn’t even pace back and forth because there was no room. I had begun hanging around my friend Melissa a lot more, because she saw that I wasn’t doing well at all. We watched movies together and went out to dinner. We had drinks at local bars (even though she doesn’t drink) and talked about books and music and art and our past lives. We both came to a few conclusions: H.I.‘s words in Raising Arizona, “Sometimes it’s a hard world for small things,” are some of the truest spoken by a film character in recent history; no one should read a novel by a man written from ‘65 to now in which the main character comes to terms with his father through sports/cars/art/women; love is bolder than hate; and lit degrees are kind of worthless.
I had planned a trip to New Mexico in early spring to camp by myself for a few days, but a huge snow storm was coming directly in the path of my trip, so I couldn’t go. Getting ready for the trip, I heard Mr. Blue Sky on the radio or in a shop or something and had flashbacks to my older cousins’ rooms with posters of the Bee Gees and Olivia and John in Grease and that weird flying neon ELO jukebox symbol. What was that thing? It wasn’t as cool as the spaceship on Boston albums, that’s for sure. I thought about how much I wanted a vocoder and that the song was actually really good, even if it was a complete Beatles ripoff, and then it left my head. Anyway, in lieu of New Mexico, Melissa decided that we should go a couple of hours north to Omaha and spend the weekend. I’m all like, “Omaha? Yecch!” and she said, “No, it’s great. Let’s go!” So I relented.
We get to Omaha and it is great and we have a wonderful few days. On our last day, we step into a book store with a record store in the basement and an art gallery upstairs called The Antiquarian. While walking around the art exhibit we accidentally walk into an NA meeting. Whoops. We slowly backed out as they said their prayer and we made our way to the record store downstairs. There we met the older man and twenty-something working the register (named by us Dinosaur and Dinosaur Jr. for their record store crustiness—they were nice fellas, though). We looked around and I noticed ELO’s Greatest Hits for $3, so I pick it up and debate. “I’m really not sure if I should get this,” I tell Melissa, “it’s pretty corny and it just brings back feelings of nostalgia more than anything.”
“Nostalgia, shmostalgia. If you like it, get it. If you don’t get it, I will,” she said and smiled. So I walked it up to the counter with the other purchases, which D. and D. Jr. liked and commented on even as they balked and frowned at my copy of ELO’s Greatest Hits, and we walked out of the store.
Soon Melissa and I’s occasional being together became being together all the time and not wanting to spend any time without one another. I also became obsessed with the song Mr. Blue Sky, and its second-rate Beatles progressions, so much so that every day when we’d wake up together for about three months, I’d play it on the stereo. I’d play it loudly. Sometimes I wouldn’t even wait for the gratuitous ending before I would pick up the needle and start it again, dancing off to the shower. I no longer had ghosts of the late 70s drifting through my thoughts whenever I heard it, just how happy I was to have Melissa around. Now when the song comes up in a commercial or movie or on the radio, I remember how it feels to be loved enough by someone that they would offer to buy an album that I liked but was too afraid to buy because of nostalgia—to be loved by someone who knows me better than I know myself and doesn’t care—and that makes me infinitely happier than anything else in the world.
I honestly like Supertramp as well. Journey, not so much.
Mr. Blue Sky
Electric Light Orchestra (homepage)
Badfinger :: Dennis
When Pete Ham, lead singer and songwriter for Badfinger, hung himself in his garage recording studio in April 1975, he left a note: “Anne, I love you. Blair, I love you. I will not be allowed to love and trust everybody. This is better. Pete. P.S. Stan Polley is a soulless bastard. I will take him with me.” Stan Polley, Badfinger’s manager, had previously seized control of the band’s finances and kept the band members in financial dire straits; following Pete’s death, he pleaded no contest to charges of embezzlement and money laundering.
Pete’s most widely recognized piece is Without You (later made famous by Harry Nilsson), cowritten with Badfinger bandmate Tom Evans, who later hung himself in his backyard in November 1983. Tom was in the midst of a lawsuit over the royalties of Without You at the time of his death. He left behind his wife and son, as did Pete Ham when he hung himself. Pete’s wife Anne was eight months pregnant at the time of his death, and his daughter Petera (named in memory of him) was born a month later. Last year, she wrote the following for a website in his memory:
I just wanted to write a few words about my dad, Pete Ham, for what would have been his 60th Birthday (April 27, 2007).
As you probably know I have never met my dad, but I still have love and respect for him and also feel a very close bond to him. I feel sad, though, that I never had the opportunity of knowing him. I suppose in some ways I am lucky as I get to listen to his music and interviews which brings me closer to him.
I have heard a lot of stories from my mum and other people, and this has given me an insight into what kind of person he was. From what I’ve heard he was a shy, kind, considerate, selfless person with a good sense of humour who liked to joke around. I have been told by my mum that I resembled him in many ways, even down to the way he walked.
I have been lucky with the life he has given me through his music, which is famous throughout the world. This makes me very proud whenever I hear any of his songs. Sometimes it has been strange when I have been on holiday to places like Kenya and Dominican Republic, to hear people there sing his songs, particularly Without You. In a way, I think he is watching me, wherever I am.
There are many songs that I like by my dad, but I have a few favourites. Some of my favourite songs are Just Look Inside The Cover, Shine On, Name Of The Game and of course Dennis, which is about my brother, Blair.
Although my dad died just before I was born, I have a stepfather called Tony, although I don’t class him as that, he is my dad, too. He, along with my mum and family, helped me to grow up in a loving family, and I am very grateful to have them all. Tony has been very good throughout my life, helping me with things in respect of my dad, he has always wanted my dad to get the recognition he deserves.
I also would like to thank Dan Matovina for his help throughout the years in keeping the true memory of my dad’s work.
Sometimes I miss not meeting my dad. This makes me feel sad that he isn’t with me today, because of the problems he went through; I usually switch on my iPod and listen to his songs, which make me cry.
Happy Birthday Dad, I think of you all the time and love you with all my heart, your daughter Petera.
While the story of Badfinger is overwhelmingly tragic, their music is haunting and beautiful, particularly this song, Dennis, from their 1974 masterpiece Wish You Were Here. It was recorded in the midst of Badfinger’s financial struggles just months before Pete’s suicide, and is one of the most gorgeous and affecting songs that I know.
Stan Polley is alive to this day, and I hope he feels a deep and gnawing guilt every day of his life.
Dennis
Badfinger (wikipedia)
Gillian Welch :: Orphan Girl
from Favorite Moments of Least Favorite Step-Fathers
The way newspaper softens
after crumpling and uncrumpling
while waiting for the newlyweds
to get home from their datenight.
The quiet you insert
after each question
he asks—some late evening drive—
and how the power you feel is even
better than hoping you appear
thoughtful.
Ditchgrass out the window
practices its magic as if it’s got all the time
in the world.
The girl’s hair smells
of lifesavers. She smiles with half
her mouth and asks if you think
people
should be married forever.
Summer. So hot you wonder
if the crickets might
rub themselves
into flames, and their music swells
just as you’ve decided, one last time,
if you like it better when he introduces
you as his stepson, or simply his son.
Orphan Girl (4.5mb mp3)
Gillian Welch (homepage, profile)
Damien Jurado :: Like Titantic
I am in my first Chicago apartment, unpacking and finding a place for all my goddamn stuff. I tear into a housewarming package from Ladawn, and eagerly press play on the latest installment in a beautiful series of mixtapes. The second song transports be back to high school, going for muggy evening walks in Lakewood OH, ending up on the top floor of the hospital parking garage with Nate, or down by the lake.
I am driving crazily around the northside, gotta hit to Costco, pick up smokes, then back to set. I’m working the snack table for a ridiculous indie horror film. It’s December, and we are shooting outdoors for a week. There’s no place to get warm except my car, so I’m on errands all the time. I shove the gray tape labeled “Ladawn Rocks Out” into the eager mouth on my dashboard. Song two comes on, and suddenly, my heart is yanked back three years and a couple hundred miles. Cleveland 2001. Nate and I are climbing a skinny ladder to the roof of a warehouse he’s rehabbing to make it while the rising sun spills over the horizon.
I am looking through my collection of mixtapes, searching for a song for this little writing project. I want to find one that represents the pleasure packed into songs carefully selected by a friend. I listen through a few songs on the bus, feeling a few bemused glances linger on Walkman. I float back; this is now a familiar feeling. We are driving in his dad’s rickety Chevy truck, under the quintessential Cleveland overcast. The clouds are impossibly low, and reflect the city lights, glowing mauve. The street lamps give off a peachy yellow. The twinkling steel plant looms into view beyond the highway railing; a couple smokestacks are tipped with electric pink fires. Nate is commenting, isn’t strange that a city so good at being gray, burns fluorescent on certain cloudy nights.
Like Titanic
Damien Jurado (myspace)
Beck :: Puttin’ It Down
Leave it to Beck to capture the bitterness of rejection in such plain sweet words. Puttin it Down is about eagerness, apathy and disappointment. When he sings “I don’t wanna be funny,” it’s the prettiest heart-breakinest thing I ever heard. While listening to my playlist in alphabetical order recently, this song stuck out and poked me in the brain, jostling out dormant memories of being a 14 year old freshman during that magic time in the 90s — when people were weird because they were weird and it was easy to be shocked, when ugly became attractive and we didn’t know why. Beck released three different albums on three different labels that year. I only knew about Mellow Gold back then, but it was perfect, and enough to hook me forever.
My first real deal high school crush loved Beck too. We were in a beginning art class together and I’d sit nearby and listen to him talk about music with an Armenian kid he’d befriended and dubbed ‘Rasputin’. His name was Matt and he was 17 or 18, a senior, hilarious, and a dork. He wore wire-rimmed glasses, had an out of style haircut, and wore fitted jeans when everyone else’s were baggy. Seeing the actual shape of a teenage boy’s body, day after day, left me both confused and titillated. He dunked his head in the water of our classroom’s paint-clogged utility sink once, just because, and I was smitten.
I never spoke to him until the day he was talking about a show Beck did at the Detroit Science Center. (My aunt had almost taken me, but she was middle-aged and I was absurdly self-conscious about strangers thinking I was a loser… pun not intended, irony noted). Out croaked, “I was supposed to go to that,” and Rasputin sneered, “yeah right”. But Matt *sigh* said, “you should’ve gone, it was awesome.” In subsequent weeks, we became friendly, and were frequently reprimanded for “having too much fun,” though I remained ever-awkward. At the end of the year he invited me over to his house for cookies and kool-aid, and to study for finals. I declined because I was a coward. He offered me a ride home when he saw me waiting outside the school in my band clothes after his graduation, but I looked at him with his tie wrapped around his head and said, “no, thanks, my mom’s picking me up.” I sat waiting for my mother for almost an hour after that, cursing her and God and myself until a fellow band nerd straggler offered to take me home.
I didn’t see him again until 1997, the day of my own graduation. Beck was a superstar and high school was over; the world was wide open. In the school parking lot, in my uncle’s car, off to celebrate at Macaroni Grill with my family, I caught a glimpse of Matt bounding off the football field. His head was shaved, he was a bit fatter, and he was covered in mud. But it was too late, the car was moving. So I cursed my uncle and I cursed myself and I burned that God damned Macaroni Grill to the ground!
Puttin’ It Down
Beck (homepage)
Josh White :: Jesus Gonna Make Up My Dyin’ Bed
Today’s entry is going to be short. I spent the weekend in Michigan dealing with the passing of a close person, godfather, best friend’s father and a great neighbor. Joe Ludlam was a good man and was great to me, my family, and especially my best friend, his son. I bid him farewell and hope the greener pastures he prayed for his entire life truly exist. Farewell Mr. Ludlam, and thanks for everything. We’ll all miss you.
Jesus Gonna Make Up My Dyin’ Bed
Josh White (fan site)