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memories / Monday / music / photo / Re-Listening / Twitter — Comments Off on Mostly the music
10
Oct 22

Mostly the music

I was just wondering … have you ever felt like a tree?

I’ve sat under trees and slept under trees and measured trees. I’ve watched trees and identified trees and cut parts of trees away. I’ve climbed them and used them for lean-tos and projects and umbrellas. I’ve planted them and dug them up and helped haul them away and, once, I portrayed a tree in an acting exercise. (Some of these things I’ve done poorly.) But every so often, I look at this tree behind our house and I wonder if I have felt like this tree.

Not yet. But in a few days, this tree hits a particular moment in its annual cycle and I can relate. It isn’t a one-with-the-earth moment, but recognition of the versimilitude of another living thing. And there’s a good, real moment, where I feel like I have a basic sense of what it must be thinking.

He said, determined to start the week off with some proper anthropomorphism.

Anyway, after a late evening on campus I went to the deck to supervise the starting of the grill and looked up and there was the tree, sending the maple tree signal in a beautiful warm day’s gloaming hour, and I thought, “I know. I understand.”

Exactly what, I can’t say. But it seemed important to feel empathetic at the moment.

I need to catch up on notes to the Re-Listening Project, before it all gets out of hand.

Get it? Out of hand? You got it.

Man, not even the tree laughs at that joke.

Anyway, I’m just listening to all of the old CDs in the car. Second time through them all as a chronological study of my music acquisition in this specific medium. These aren’t reviews, but sometimes they are the memories that mark time. All of these discs (eventually) cross a few genres and periods. They’ll do so in a haphazard way; there’s no larger theme. It is, a whimsy as music should be. And at this particular point in the CD book I’m both buying new music and replacing things from cassettes.

Hey, it was the ’90s.

Here’s some 1995 alt rock from Dishwalla, the pop-version of industrial music. Who cares. The lead singer, J.R. Richards, had a great voice, and they put on a fun live show in April of 1996 when I saw them in support of their debut album, “Pet Your Friends.”

Richards split his pants on stage. He was quite embarrassed by that, but was eventually able to laugh it off. Rock ‘n’ roll jokes were, no doubt, made. They were opening for Gin Blossoms, who were the musical King Kong of the moment. For half a second, maybe, it seemed like Dishwalla would join them up there. “Counting Blue Cars” hit number one on the alternative charts. The record went gold and sat atop the Heatseekers chart. They were musically adventurous.

Here’s the second track off the record.

If this song doesn’t make you want to rush, rush, to a mall and buy 1990s clothes I don’t know what else I can say.

I always thought — and apparently modern me agrees with young me — that the first half of this record was the best part. There are six really nice tracks on here, but there’s a fall off. And the back half of the record has a different mood.

Then, in September of 2015, this happened.

Richards liked that tweet. I like to imagine he was just sitting around in-between production sessions (Dishwalla is still a band and Richards is still making music, though he has left the group) doing random word searches.

I say it was random because the next month, in a different grocery store, I heard Dishwalla again, but he didn’t like that one. Maybe he was on vacation.

After Dishwalla comes Joshua Tree. And my memory is a little fuzzy here, but I’m fairly sure this was one of those that I bought to replace the cassette version. Worth it in every respect, though, right?

I remember this clear: At my college radio station everyone was tasked with listening to new music. What songs were good? What were radio friendly? What had profanity and where? They’d always done this. I assume they still do. It was a rite of passage. Anyway, when U2 released Joshua Tree the label sent the station an actual vinyl album. And on the bottom right corner of the album jacket was a little sticker. The practice at that time was to list three or four songs and put some stars by it. (This was U2’s fifth album, and the one that would set the standard for the rest of their career, but whoever reviewed this had no way of knowing that, of course.) That person also wrote on the sticker “And on the eighth day God handed down this record …”

Some other DJ had come along later and slapped another sticker next to that one. “We get it. You like this album.”

Some 25 million copies later, having sat atop the charts in nine countries, run up the flag pole for a 20th and a 30th anniversary re-release … safe to say that reviewer wasn’t the only one.

I wonder how that second person felt every time they heard one of the five singles on the radio, because that happened to that poor cynical soul a lot.

The only problem with this record is that it demands long, wide open roads, and woe unto you if you have to run the gauntlet of red lights when Larry Mullen Jr. is setting up the rest of the band.

The last disc was a greatest hits collection of Prince’s work. Some of it, I felt then as now, you should have a copy of close at hand. Some of the tracks here are aging poorly. Some still stand as seminal classics of a pop music genius.

Also, “I Would Die 4 U” is due a renaissance. (Odd that Stranger Things hasn’t licensed that.)

Prince’s falsetto, while impressive, gets too much attention. The genius is everywhere else. I’ve always wanted to know who said “What happens if you record a blues song as Iggy Pop?”

And why does that work? It works, I’m pretty sure, because it is Prince.

And that should be enough music for today. Not to worry. I still have a few more records to catch up on. Come back tomorrow for more tunes!

collarbone / IU / memories / music / photo / Re-Listening / Tuesday / Twitter — Comments Off on I’m catching up on sleep, thanks
4
Oct 22

I’m catching up on sleep, thanks

This, the Twitter thread below, is an extremely true story. I took a nap this evening and have basically gotten back to the point of feeling like normal again. Can’t imagine how she feels, but she’s got the medication! And she can take naps if she feels like it.

I’d say she’s lucky, but I’ve seen the X-rays. I know exactly how lucky she is.

Spent most of yesterday at the office telling people about it, I think. Word gets around. Maybe in a day or two I’ll be back up to full speed, and feeling like it, too!

Let’s wrap up the Poplars Building talk. You’ll remember it was a hotel, and then dorms, and finally some administrative space. The whole building is gone now. They torn down the first half during late August and September. They took the other half last week. But the remnants are still there.

Eventually this will become a green space. I take that to mean they don’t know, yet, what they want to go in that space, but some plan will come along one day.

We should catch up on the Re-Listening Project. If that sounds official, it isn’t. I am working through all of my old CDs in the car. Easy content and, sometimes, good music. These aren’t reviews, mostly just the memories that mark the time.

This is strictly chronological, which is to say the order in which I bought all of these things. My discs cross genres and periods in a haphazard way and there’s no large theme. It is, a whimsy as music should be.

“Deluxe” was Better Than Ezra’s major label debut, and I bought this first as a cassette. “Good,” which they still do on stage as “The one you remember” was released in February of 1995, and I bought it sometime around there. Obviously I thought enough about it to purchase it a second time, as a CD.

I remember playing the tape version almost continuously on a three-hour solo road trip to see a friend.

First of all, no one remembers that Salma Hayek was in the video for the third single off this record.

Her career, in American media anyway, was just about to take off. This was sublimely timed casting that wouldn’t have been possible even a few months later.

Secondly, I have this weird flash of a memory of listening to this record in an Arby’s drive thru. Maybe that was the beginning of that road trip.

It’s a deep cut, but Summerhouse still holds up.

This, along with Rosealia, was one of my favorite songs of the record.

A few years later I was shooting pool in a restaurant — that no longer exists — when a friend came out of the closet to me and the guy playing his guitar in the corner was covering that song. I was the first person she told, she said. She figured I was from the big city, and that I’d understand. But I knew already. And whole, larger story, is an incredibly sharp memory.

Seven-ball-with-a-weird-pant-scuff-in-the-right-side-pocket sharp.

This was the song for part of that fall, and parts of many subsequent autumns.

Better Than Ezra has seven more studio albums. At least the next five get better and better. They’ll all appear in this list, eventually.

music / Re-Listening / video / Wednesday — Comments Off on ‘And the magic music makes your morning mood’
21
Sep 22

‘And the magic music makes your morning mood’

A sticky bike ride this morning, a day in the office, an evening in the studio. There’s not a lot to show for all of that, but my legs are tired, at least, and some meetings took place and shows got produced. The usual, as they say, if there’s anyone else having a day like that.

So let’s do another music post, where we catch up on the Re-Listening project. I am working through all of my old CDs in the car. It’s easy content! And there’s some good music here and there — featuring two records today. These aren’t reviews, usually. Mostly they’re just memories, or marking the time.

This is strictly chronological, which is to say the order in which I bought all of these things. My discs cross genres and periods in a haphazard way and there’s no large theme. It is, a whimsy as music should be.

First up is a record, and a band, that I’ve pretty much outgrown in every way. In 1993, when Counting Crows’ debut album, “August and Everything After” came out it was the perfect timing of emo and rock. (Ahhh, high school.) Think of it. The top albums up to that point in 1993 were Whitney Houston, Eric Clapton, Depeche Mode, Aerosmith, Janet Jackson, Barbra Streisand, U2, Cypress Hill, the Sleepless in Seattle soundtrack, Billy Joel and Garth Brooks. Nirvana’s final album came out that same week, but even still it felt like a mid-sea change, musically. And at just that moment T Bone Burnett produced August. Four singles were released off the record, Mr. Jones hitting number two on the charts. The album made it to number four that year. It went platinum in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, seven-times platinum in both Canada and the United States.

I have a lot of their music, and it fits a certain … mood … let’s say. But I’ve just outgrown most of Adam Duritz’s oeuvre. (I bet he has, too.) So I skip a lot of this one when it’s on now, though they held my rapt attention — this record and the later works — for many years.

I still play “Rain King” because it’s a great live tune, and I still like to think of it that way.

There’s still enough musicianship and jazz in “Ghost Train” to make me listen closely now almost 30 years later.

“A Murder of One” is a lot of fun, until you think about is transpiring there, and then, catchy tune or not, it can bum you out. Which one of those things is the real point?

And yet, it’s still a catchy tune.

From 90s alt rock, let’s shift up to 70s and 80s progressive rock. In case you’ve never looked it up, prog rock is used broadly because all the creativity was going into the music and not the labels. So you have a few decades of bands evolving from psychedelia and further away from standard pop. Record labels started giving a little more leeway to their musicians, meaning more intricate instrumentation and compositional techniques, more poetic lyrics and new sounds and, a wide fusion of styles. It turned into art.

Which is to say that’s what Rush was, but by the time they released “Exit … Stage Left” they were starting to reign it in. This was the Canadian group’s second live album, and it features music from their previous two tours, each of which supported studio records that saw the band headed in a more radio-friendly direction.

So think of it as a transitional moment in a Hall of Fame band? The album went to number six in the U.K., hit seven in Canada and 10 in the United States in 1981. I bought this on cassette in high school, because a guy I worked with turned me on to one particular song. We had a big discussion about the best guitar riff of all time. He played me the acoustic version of “La Villa Strangiato.”

That probably won the conversation. I think I decided ‘What if the best guitarist isn’t Alex Lifeson, but some guy in a village somewhere and we’ve just never heard him?’

The guys I worked with had their minds sufficiently blown. It was probably the last time I’ve asked a question that impressed anyone.

So I went out at some point and got “Exit.” It features the much more familiar electric version of “La Villa Strangiato” but a great deal of other important songs, too. (And also Tom Sawyer, but we’re skipping it.)

This is a song about a car; this is called “Red Barcheta.”

P.J. Spraggins was a drummer. He invented extra drums he could play in the marching band. One night at a game I happened to be at a transformer blew and the stadium went half-dark. The game was paused. The band played. The other school’s band played. And then P.J. played for the better part of 45 minutes or so. Just making stuff up, brilliant guy that he is. Spraggins is still a drummer. He became a professional musician. He’s played with everyone. He’s released three jazz records. And he’s still doing it. I remember one sunny day we sat in my card because I wanted him to hear the drum solo in YYZ.

I wish we had cameras in our phones — or phones in our pockets — at that point. It would be great to make a reaction video with him. I, a listener who can keep rhythm, listen to the beat. My friend, the musician, was visualizing the mechanics of it all. Until he couldn’t anymore. It was a great time.

Prog rock isn’t snooty, just FYI. “Closer to the Heart” is a singalong.

And just as soon as I say that, I’ll close this little list with a song that has maple trees unionizing so that they can get some more sunlight in the forrest.

Prog rock, man.

These days, I almost never listen to either one of these bands. They’re there if needed, though, I still, as Neil Peart wrote, made a choice.

books / music / Re-Listening / Wednesday — Comments Off on A musical catchup
14
Sep 22

A musical catchup

I am woefully overdue on an update to the Re-Listening Project. I am working through all of my old CDs in the car, repeating a project I did a few years ago. I didn’t write about it then, but using it as a bit of content now. And you’re along for the ride. What you’ll read today aren’t reviews, but maybe a few highlights or memories.

And the Re-Listening Project is strictly chronological, which is to say the order in which I bought all of these things. My discs crosses genres and periods in a haphazard way and there’s no large theme. It is, a whimsy as so much of music should be.

If you watched any MTV in the fall of 1995 or the spring of 1996, you saw Seven Mary Three. That is, most assuredly, how I discovered the guys from Florida. Their label debut, “American Standard” was rapidly surging toward platinum status and Jason Ross was screaming in everyone’s ear. And if that strikes a familiar cord, then you remember “Cumbersome” and “Waters Edge” and some of those last dying blooms of Gen X angst. (Or were these the first roars from the millenials? Hard to know.)

Anyway, this was the place where grunge and the pure rock of that era intersected. It was right-place, right-talent, right-A&R-staff, right time. And we’re going to hear more from 7M3 in due time. So as not to overburden you, dear friend, here are just three songs. All of these diverge from the over-the-top intensity of their singles, but also hinted at where they were going.

They evolved in interesting ways, releasing seven studio albums and one live record. I have at least four of them.

The math doesn’t make a lot of sense in this song. So I’ve decided it is hyperbole, which lets me just get back to enjoying the song. Which is good, because it’s a great little rock tune.

I’m pretty sure I bought this CD because of my roommate. He loved this song. I can still see us riding around in his pickup pumping this through the old worn speakers in the dashboard.

I don’t know if it is a false memory, but I can just seem him banging out the drums on his steering wheel, with that big perfect smile on his face. He was a good guy, and I always think about him a lot when I hear this record.

And to really shake things up, the next disc in my first CD book was “A Kind of Magic.” This was Queen’s 12th studio record, a quasi-soundtrack to the first Highlander movie. If you think there are a lot of things going on in that sentence, you are correct. Any number of them might be quirky on their own, but in this combination, they make for something totally weird.

It was an immediate and huge hit in the UK. Stayed on the charts there for more than a year, spawned four hit singles. This record peaked at 46 in the United States, but was a top 10 in Argentinia, Austria, Finland, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and West Germany. And, yes, we’re going with quasi-soundtrack. No official soundtrack was produced for Highlander. Six out of nine songs on the album appeared in the film, although all of them in different forms.

If you remember that movie, though, (and how could you not!?!?!?) this song also became the love theme.

That was a hit single, and one of the better ones. This was not released as a single, but is integral to the movie. And also, shows off Queen’s serious musicianship, punctuated by weird movie interjections.

I am pretty sure I picked up this CD at one of the radio stations I worked at. And I’m pretty sure two songs are the reasons why. “Princes of the Universe” became the movie theme and later, a modified version was the theme of the TV spinoff. Also, Brian May is really bending some strings here.

And while this was a quasi-soundtrack for Highlander, I learned about this song from the Iron Eagle movie, which was released the year before. And, somehow, it got tacked on to both movies. This is an open-road, windows down song, and it still evokes that feeling all these many (many) years later.

It has big allusions to Martin Luther King, Jr., and I did not know until just now that it was a Roger Taylor song.

{{{Fried chicken!}}}

(That part always ruined it for me, though.)

And so we move from the UK to Arizona, for another band I discovered because of moderate rotation on MTV.

People that didn’t take the time to get into The Refreshments probably thought this was a novelty act, or a splash in the pan. But let me tell you, Roger Clyne has chops. And some soul. The Refreshments put out one more record together, got disgusted with the big labels, split up and did some other things. Clyne and P.H. Naffah have another Arizona-based band these days, Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, and they have 13 albums out and a huge party-band following. But, for now, a little bit more about “Fizzy, Fuzzy, Big and Buzzy.”

I must have picked this up late in the spring of 1996. I stayed at college. Everyone I knew at the time went off to work or home or wherever they went. But to my freshman way of thinking, if you’re paying rent, you may as well be there. If you’re there you may as well be taking classes. So I took classes. (Made the dean’s list that summer.)

And I listened to this record A LOT.

I don’t know what made the narrative structure work so well on me, but it surely did. Straightforward themes, you could see yourself in some of these dusty roles. And you can belt out the choruses with abandon if no one is around all summer.

What’s great about this record, to me, is that I feel exactly the same today about each of these songs as I did 26 years ago. They all still sit just as they should in my ears.

Maybe it was because I really took the time with this record in one hot, slow summer, and they were writing about the hot, slow world in Arizona and Mexico and added just enough wanderlust.

Also, there’s weird doses of humor mixed in everywhere. And if I had to describe the first half of college in one phrase, I could do far worse than saying “It was weird doses of humor.”

Anyway, The Refreshments were great. Another one of those bands I never had the chance to see live, but one day The Peacemakers will be nearby, and I’ll be there. It will be a glass-raising party.

I had one more musical addition. Some label sent me a maxi single of a band they were pushing. It was a hit in southern California, I guess. But they never caught on elsewhere. And the tracks just weren’t good. I made the mistake of googling the band. They managed to put out two records. And at least one of the former members is still in music. His website told me he composes stuff for games and a few movies and slot machines these days. He looked happy. He referred to his band in a nice way. Took the wind out of my sails about being critical of his old work. (I mean, how would I feel? And you certainly could.) So we’ll end the musical exploration here for now.

I’m about to wrap up Cahill’s book, How the Irish Saved Civilization. I will, that is, if I stop nodding off. (This is a function of going to bed too late, not being interested in what I’m reading. I need to start turning pages earlier in the evening once again, especially for good stuff. And this is a nice book. We’re getting close to it, and while these last sections have defied excerpting, this part is telling. After the fall of Rome, when surviving was the most important thing a person could do in Europe, not “reading” or “writing.”

I suppose the most impressive thing we’ve learned here is how quickly that could happen, over the span of time. Just a few generations of collapsing societies and economies and oncoming hordes and it was almost all gone. Makes you wonder a bit about what it will be the next time.

And, even worse, I must now start to wonder, even as I finish this book, what I’ll read next. (So many good options. Only so many I can read all at once.)

adventures / Friday / music / video — Comments Off on Handle Me With Care
2
Sep 22

Handle Me With Care

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