Discography - Week 21

We've moved on to the twenty-first week of our weekly Discography discussion.  I like all the selections this week, and I suspect that more will sneak in before the weekend plays itself out.  This week we're featuring our first Trigger Warning, although I suspect not our last. Trigger Warnings are designed to warn a fellow Discography member (could be anyone, really) not to read further because it would be an affront to everything they hold dear musically. This is not the same as the person mentioned being labelled a Walking Trigger Warning (although she is, although this could be anyone).  That would be a good theme week: Trigger Warning Songs for a specific Discography member (could be anyone).

Nate Bell

I'm pretty excited about this pick, and I hope I can convince the group to listen to this whole album, just so we can discuss it.

Kentucky Knife Fight, Bad Blood and Father from Hush, Hush

About 5-6 years ago, M and I were attending the local Midpoint Music Festival, and stumbled across this band.  At the time, they were in one of the worst venues, in a decent bar, but with the band set up in a server's station next to a stairwell.  We immediately latched onto their incredibly diverse and unique sound.  There was a starveling bald lead singer, strong guitar and bass, and harmonica and banjo.  Their sound eludes categorization, but the closest I can come is "post-punk noir rock".

The sound was insistent and harsh...the singers voice is at once reedy, buzzing and a growl, unlike almost anything else I had heard.  We rushed to buy a CD.

The band is Kentucky Knife Fight, and despite the name, they are not alt-country, no one is from Kentucky, and there is no mention of knife fighting or even a knife that I can recall in any of their albums.  This band has since broken up, but they are from St. Louis, and had a very strong following there.  M and I traveled to see them a handful of times after that first concert, and ended up spending a fair amount of time talking to the various band members about politics, the state of education in America, disabilities, urbanization, crime, racism, and literature.  And they play some great music.

The front man, a wasted and tortured soul, was clearly the inspirational force behind the band, and it is clear that he is, at heart, a writer with a music problem.  The selections I have for you this week come from Hush Hush.  This album is a "concept album", but I feel it goes beyond that often-worn description, and it is actually a well-crafted short story with music.  The album tells a tale of a awful and sordid crime, a diamond heist gone terribly wrong, told from the varying points of view of the couple enlisted to commit the crime, and their sociopathic, petty mastermind of a "recruiter".  It is told also in flashbacks, backstory, and retrospective, all glimpses of characters and history that is fascinating--facets, if you will of an entire whole.  The band describes the album as :  A seductive collection of songs about crime and human sexuality, which attempts to understand why good people do bad things.

I was very compelled by the vocal style, but others may be immediately put off by it.  I would encourage you to power through the vocal style if you do not enjoy it, and listen to the lyrics and phrasing, and I think you will be intrigued by the storyline.  

"Bad Blood"--this song is energetic, pounding, and chaotic.  It's told from the point of view of one of the newly recruited criminals, and it captures very well an emotive sense of the greasy, amphetamine driven rush of the criminal's excitement at the prospect of the caper, and the lyrics hint at the harsh resolution that is to come.  You can clearly see the dodgy interior of the Tic Toc Inn and the sketchy, twitchy motions of the newly recruited thug.

This piece is told from the point of view of the Recruiter, who is simultaneous recruiting one of the people who will commit the deed, while at the same time reminiscing in glee about a major crime the Recruiter committed with the subject's father in the distant past.  The old and storied crime appears to be the sort of chaos and destruction done without any apparent purpose other than to sow strife.  It is told musically in a languid, tingling, but sinister form, building to a crescendo that reveals the deep seated psychopathy of the Recruiter---showing the listener where the current plot will lead, to the destruction of the flawed and tainted ne'er do wells who will carry out the heist and murder.  Even in the memory of the Recruiter, the past Grand Crime resulted in a nearly deadly confrontation which the Recruiter appears to recall with great fondness and pride, which in itself is enough to cause a small shiver in the spine of the listener.  (the youtube video is not, unfortunately, as good as the album version or the live versions we heard, but was the best one I could find)  Here are the lyrics, from their still operative website.

I truly encourage the group to listen to the whole album as a whole story.  We will gladly share the album, so that we can all discuss the "story" contained in it.  I hope you find it as darkly interesting as we do.

Miranda Tavares

Cake, Short Skirt/Long Jacket

Cake has a unique sound, but it is a specific sound, sometimes stopping just short of formulaic, and this song is no exception. So why pick it? Well, the timing is pretty cool, even by Cake standards. And the patented Cake awkwardness is minimized, which I prefer (except in Sad Songs and Waltzes, which is kind of the point of the song). But mostly, this is a man singing about wanting a strong woman. It is a song about a woman who is a force to be reckoned with. This chick is freaking amazing. She is a worthy role model for all women. Fellow females (of which there is exactly one on this blog - Gary B., can you PLEASE convince Marjie to join in now and then) let's don our short skirts and long jackets and forego the sexist pantyhose. I will aim for having a mind like a diamond; I have always wanted to be fast, and thorough, and sharp as a tack; I would love to wield a machete to cut through red tape; and who doesn't want fingernails that shine like justice?! But...this song is a dude's list about his requirements. It is a shopping list for a woman. Essentially, he is creating his own version of a Stepford wife...who just happens to be powerful instead of yielding. Does the latter cancel out the former? Does it make it all politically correct? I am not entirely sure. But I do know that, right or wrong, I still want to be that girl. 

Dave Wallace

Tommy James and the Shondells, Mony Mony

Party Time!!  One of the all-time great rock songs, with the catchy keyboard riff, the brilliant call-and-response, the delirious "Mony Mony" chant, and the fantastic break.  Then, just when you think it can't go any higher, the song finds another gear towards the end, with James yelling "Come ON!" repeatedly.  Irresistible!

Gary Beatrice

Wilco, At Least That’s What You Said

Cyndi and I have something in common. I am a Wilco boy. And I've got it bad.

I may have lost some alt.country cred last week when I argued that the Bottle Rockets are at least as good as Uncle Tupelo. Well Gary may kick me off the blog today.

Jeff Tweedy and Wilco have far exceeded the music of Sun Volt and Jay Farrer in his numerous post Uncle Tupelo incarnations. And, in fact, alt.country or not, Wilco's music is better than Uncle Tupelo's. Maybe not more important, certainly not more influential. But better.

I've read the lyrics to At Least That's What You Said, and the best I can tell they don't mean a thing. And that is fine by me. This is all about a great band stretching out and sounding outstanding. Like Cyndi, this is one of many Wilco songs that never fails to put me in a good mood.

Dave Kelley

Here comes the inevitable overwrought DK post about Bruce Springsteen.  Once again, I am going to cheat a bit and include two songs.  I think this is legitimate though because the songs are linked, and the second one even references the first.  To me they represent the yin and yang of The Boss.

The first is Thunder Road.  Need I even say much about this classic?  Any song that begins "The screen door slams, Mary's dress waives, like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays", includes such great singing and piano work, and concludes with:

"There were ghosts in the eyes of all the boys you sent away.  They haunt this dusty beach road in the skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets.  They scream your name at night in the streets, your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet.  And in the lonely cool before dawn, you hear their engines roaring on.  But when you get to the porch they're gone, On the wind.  So Mary climb in.  It's a town full of losers, and I am pulling out of here to win." is a classic.  To my ear, it is the most perfect song of the rock era.  I would not change a damn thing.

Bruce wrote this in his early twenties.  That is a time in many of our lives when we are Romantics in every sense of the term.  The perfect night with the right girl, the right car, and the right opportunity makes everything possible.  All things are within our grasp.  Bruce has described the a great pop single as the eternal now.  I think "Thunder Road" captures that feeling   I think the spirit that infuses "Thunder Road" should still grab us occasionally no matter our age.

But life is not that simple.  Life is messier than art.  The perfect night with the perfect girl ends, and the new day must be faced.  Most of our dreams are not totally fullfilled.  Fuck, most of them are not fulfilled at all.  A young person's dreams become an adult's regrets more often than not.  "Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse."  Life is not art.  It is not perfection.  It is more often than not a series of compromises and disappointments.  I think a huge part of adulthood is dealing with these hard realities without waving a white flag. 

After the great success of the Born to Run record and tour, Bruce realized that he had signed an awful deal with his producer.  To make matters worse, his producer was a dear friend and someone that Bruce felt he could trust.  Mike Appel not only owned Bruce's music, he controlled his future releases and was able to get an injunction which prevented Springsteen from recording with anyone else.  For several years, Bruce could not release new music and had to support himself and the band by playing live.  His cover of "It's My Life" in his live shows  of that period reflect his feelings and his anger.  Eventually he regained control of his music and his future by signing a big check.  This left him deeply in debt but back in control.  He said that more than money, more than fame, and even more than happiness, he wanted to be great.

I think "Darkness on the Edge of Town" is perhaps Bruce's greatest record.  It is very much informed by the betrayal he felt from a dear friend.  Bruce gave many great songs that he wrote at the time away to other artists because he felt that they did not fit with the "apocolyptic grandeur" that he was seeking.  "Fire" and "Because the Night" are two of the songs he gave to others.  However, there was another song left off of the record that he did not give away.  To my mind, it is one of the five or ten best song he has ever written.  It would have fit perfectly on Darkness but perhaps it hit too close to home.  That song is "The Promise", and it is my second selection for the week.

The singer in "The Promise" is not a musician but is instead a guy who built a race car.  A Challenger.  The song is about betrayal and cashing in on a dream. The romanticism of "Thunder Road" has been replaced with the realism and hard realities of adulthood.

"Well I built that Challenger by myself

But I needed money

and so I sold it

I lived a secret I should have kept to myself

but I got drunk one night and I told it.

All my life I fought that fight

that fight no man can ever win

every day it just gets harder to live

that dream you're believing in"

Later he sings:

"When the promise is broken

you go on living

but it steals something from down in your soul

Like when the truth is spoken

but it don't make no difference

and something in your heart goes cold."

At several points in the song, the singer plaintively repeats the line "Thunder Road" making the connection between the two songs clear. 

"Thunder Road is for the lost lovers and all the fixed games

Thunder Road is for the tires rushing by in the rain

Thunder Road, me and Billy we'd always sing

Thunder Road, we'd take it all and throw it all away."

For me, The Promise is about holding onto your ideals after you have lost your idealism.  It is about living a life filled with compromises and disappointments and yet not giving up.  You and Mary may may have pulled out of there to win, but hard reality ultimtely sets in and what the fuck are you going to do about that.   A much more recent Bruce song talks about "Hold tight to your anger, but don't fall to your fears."   I have a hard time listening to "The Promise" without getting teary eyed. 

Gary Scudder

* * * MIRANDA TRIGGER WARNING * * *

Frank Sinatra, If You Are But a Dream

I had a couple different songs that I was considering this week, but in the end I just followed my usual dictate of just writing up what I'm listening to that week.  Recently I downloaded the Essential Frank Sinatra from the Columbia Years (which I owned as a CD in a different lifetime).  Yes, I admit it, I love Frank Sinatra.  The most excellent Gary Beatrice and I have had a long-running, although friendly, debate on which Sinatra is better: the Big Band Frank from the 1940s or the Cool Frank from the 1950s and early 1960s?  They are both noble options, but I tend to come down on the side of Big Band Frank.  To me this is just about a perfect song.   It also provided the soundtrack for one of the great movie scenes of all-time: Woody Allen reflecting upon his first visit to Radio City Music Hall from the sadly underappreciated film, Radio Days.