Discography - Week 24

And we've reached the 24th week of our Discography music discussion and the choices continue to be stellar.  Next week we'll be in the midst of our third thematic week - on the best use of a song in a movie or TV series - but this week is our usual anarchic approach.  I have decided that the unofficial theme for this week is perception, although I'm not certain why, and am willing to accept alternative proposals.

Gary Beatrice

The Feelies, Real Cool Time

Dave Wallace and Dave Kelley have introduced me to tons of great music over the years. On most of these occasions, they helped me appreciate acts I had some familiarity with but hadn't given a fair shake. Sometimes they recommended acts I'd read about but never listened to. When Dave Wallace introduced me to The Feelies I'd never even heard their name. I instantly loved them and never stopped. And as I recall, Dave introduced them because they were Lou Reed's opening act at a show we were attending, and Dave's review of them was positive but not overwhelming.

The Feelies have one trick, but by god it's a beauty. Their first album was titled "Crazy Rhythms" and their five piece, two drum band builds every song around crazy driving drum/guitar sounds. Lyrics don't matter, vocals are muffled, but the music explodes, and never more so than on this cover of an Iggy and The Stooges song. I don't know how a band can be so brilliant and so unknown, but I sure am happy Dave introduced them to me.

Dave Wallace

Stone Roses, I Am The Resurrection

Somehow, I missed the first Stone Roses album when it was initially released.  It was a huge hit in England but didn't make much of a splash in the U.S.  I picked it up several years later and fell in love with it.  Chock full of great songs, it's your classic one-hit wonder as the band was never able to replicate the success of this album.  I could have picked any one of several songs from the album, but "I Am The Resurrection" may be my favorite.  Really two different songs, the first part features a killer bassline that propels the song along until the fantastic chorus.  The arrogance of the title is belied by the song's lyrics which are an attempt to rise above the ashes of a doomed relationship.  The second half of the song is an extended rave-up that is awesome.  If you like this, check out the rest of the album.

Miranda Tavares

Langhorne Slim, "Yup, a whole artist." (Tavares, Miranda, email to Scudder, Gary 30/09/2016)

I'm writing this on my phone, which, when using email, contains no spell check or predictive text to compensate for my ignorance and fat fingers. I like to live dangerously.

This week's pick is Langhorne Slim, with or without the Law. Yup, a whole artist. Not two or three songs, but all the songs. I've always been one to test limits, just ask my poor mother.  It seems to me that Langhorne Slim is so unknown and vastly underrated, so I'll attempt to gain him a fan or two.

His vocals are the main draw for me. In a time when indie rock tends toward plaintive, often whiny, Langhorne Slim kicks it up a notch or ten to wild desperation. On his slower songs he lowers it a bit to quiet agony. He sounds ragged, haggard and soulful, and it's so damn hard to resist. He also uses a piano. I love a good piano as much as i love horns. Not quite sure the Law member who plays piano (yes, I'm writing about a band i know nothing about, other than I've seen them twice and listen to their entire catalogue weekly) counts as good piano, but mediocre piano is better than no piano at all. Pretty sure that's in the Bible, sounds like something Mary Magdalene would say.

Although i wish i could literally write about all the songs (his lack of filler is astounding), I suppose I'll just highlight a couple so you all don't skip over this whole damn post. The Way We Move is my favorite. It's just so damn catchy. I'm not sure about the meaning, exactly, but the lyrics are pretty one size fits all. I like to think it's about being yourself, through good times and bad. The best lyric is, "All my friends have crooked tails/but that's the way i like it, that's the company I keep." All my friends do have crooked tails. Tails that have been slammed in doors, run over by cars, struck by lightening. Some were just born crooked. Can't be close friends with someone without appreciating their hardships. LoveCrimes also deserves mention. It's best lyric: "You know my name, girl/You've moaned it before." The woo-hoos are pleasant and catchy, as well. And if you are depressed and regressing while reconsidering a relationship, put down the razor blade and put Coffee Cups on repeat. Slim's voice will do your cutting for you. Want to be saved? Throw on "The Spirit Moves." It's salvation with horns, as the Bible intended. At a crossroads? "Changes" is for you. Need a break from reading this ridiculously long post? Try "Fire."

Nate Bell

Live, White, Discussion

This a a selection that fits the feeling about the current level of political "discussion" at present.

The lyrics really speak for themselves, and the lyrics are short. So I'm just going to leave this right here:

White, Discussion

I talk of freedom

you talk of the flag

I talk of revolution

you'd much rather brag

and as the decibels of this disenchanting discourse

continue to dampen the day

the coin flips again and again, and again, and again

as our sanity walks away

all this discussion though politically correct

is dead beyond destruction

though it leaves me quite erect

and as the final sunset rolls behind the earth

and the clock is finally dead

I'll look at you, you'll look at me

and we'll cry a lot

but this will be what we said

this will be what we said

Look where all this talking got us, baby.

What I really like about about this song is the way the music tracks the feeling and emotion of a political argument. It starts slow with an underlying high treble twang, and slowly builds until it becomes cacophonous,with screaming lyrics. I feel like this is the perfect musical analog to the frustrated rage a person feels when thwarted in the governing political system 

Dave Kelley

"Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream"

Wilco, On and On and On

It seems like the consensus amongst most Wilco fans is that "Yankee, Hotel, Foxtrot" is their best album.  While that record has a number of songs I like a great deal, I find "Sky Blue Sky" to be far and away their best release.  The many lineup changes that have taken place since "Yankee, Hotel, Foxtrot" have significantly improved the band both live and in the studio.   I love Uncle Tupelo and have always thought Jay Farrar was much more important than Jeff Tweedy in that band.  Somewhat surprisingly to me, Tweedy has had a much better post-Uncle Tupelo career.    

"On And On And On" is both beautiful and comforting despite the fact that it is clearly about death.  I have read that Tweedy wrote it about his recently widowed father.  I have no idea if that is true.  To me, it deals with such a potentially dark subject matter in a very reassuring and Zen like manner. 

The song begins very quietly with Tweedy's voice accompanied only by a simple but beautiful piano melody.  Eventually the song adds a bass line and swirling organ music and ultimately builds to something of a crescendo.   

"One day we'll disappear together in a dream

However short or long our lives are going to be

I will live in you or you will live in me

Until we disappear together in a dream

Please don't cry

We're designed to die

You can't deny

even the gentlest tide

On and on and on we'll be together yeah"

Not being married or in a committed relationship myself, I suppose I think about this song differently than those who are.  I was very close to both of my parents, and they have both been gone for many years.  A dream I had about them a few nights ago was the genesis of this week's post.  Listening to this song always makes me think of them.  Not only about their relationship with one another, but also about their relationship to me.  I also think of other lost loved ones (and you know that this includes dogs) as well as loved ones that I have now (and you know this includes dogs) whom I will eventually lose or who will lose me.  I have given up trying to figure out what my religious beliefs are or if I even have any.  It seems clear to me though that reality as we perceive it is only the tip of the iceberg.  Disappearing together in a dream not only seems awesome, it also seems plausible.  Please play this one at my wake instead of "Wildfire."  :)  

Gary Scudder

Allman Brothers, In Memory of Elizabeth Reed

Actually, this selection is inspired by a brief email exchange with the excellent Nate Bell from last week.  I'm not a huge Allman Brothers fan, but I like their album Live at the Fillmore East quite a bit, as I suppose most folks do.  Oddly, although maybe not that oddly because it is a great song, my favorite song on the album is In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.  Now, I could go off on a poorly considered-John Coltrane exegesis, but in this particular case (keeping with my general rule of writing about whatever I'm thinking about that week) I'd rather talk about it being an instrumental (and spinning back to the brief email chat with Nate).  While it is a serious jam, maybe I'm most drawn to the fact that it is an instrumental, which allows me to create my own universe within the bounds of the song.  Essentially, for the longest time I knew nothing at all about the song and I didn't need to because I painted in the landscape (much like Neil Young's Emperor of Wyoming or R.E.M.'s New Orleans Instrumental No. 1).  Eventually I learned the backstory, which is in itself interesting, but by then the song, or at least my perception of the song, had imprinted itself on my brain.  This also relates to a discussion I was having with my first year students this week.  We read a book on neuroscience, David Linden's The Accidental Mind, in my Concepts of the Self class, and when we discuss the brain and perception I always show them this picture.  It's a painting that my friend Steve Wehmeyer and I stumbled across in a little gallery in New Orleans, and like nerds, we stood outside in the sweltering July New Orleans heat (not drinking hurricanes) discussing how I intended to use it in class (which led Steve to ask if I could possibly stop being a teacher for more than five minutes at a time).  I show the students this picture, but don't share the title, and ask them to analyze it.  Within a couple minutes they construct these incredible narratives about her being stood up by her lover or her calling Alcoholics Anonymous or her calling her lover's wife or theories about what she's actually wearing or the significance of the red drink or the empty sockets (which usually gets very Freudian very fast).  And then I share the title, Making the First Move, and their response is, "What, it's a stupid booty call?"  And then we get back into Linden, and discuss the fact that the narrative making part of the brain never shuts down, and thus they naturally created a richer narrative than the artist intended; and then we hop back into Othello and try to grapple with the fact that Othello believed Iago because his brain naturally created an infidelity narrative from the snippets that Iago left him (all the while the students pray for the sweet release of death).

Peter O'Neill's Making the First Move.

Oh, and apropos of nothing, one last quick comment about the vagaries of social media.  Normally around 25-50 people stop by this blog on any particular day, normally Proust true believers who devoutly swing by to see me struggle with Remembrance of Things Past.  We may have 150 viewers on a Saturday as more people stop by to read our Discography discussion.  Still, it's a generally (and rightly so) ignored little corner of cyberspace.  Last night after Kathleen Edwards Retweeted and commented on my Twitter homage to Quitters Coffee and her music I had 335 people visit the blog in a couple hours, which, with the notable exception of a mad rush of Russian visitors a few months ago, which I initially thought was either Trump trollers or a porn scam, but which I think were students at a Russian English language school reading my comments on the Hermitage for an assignment, was by far the most who had ever stopped by (which was fantastic, although I ran out of paper plates).