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11
Oct 22

1,000 words on music, and more

Two trees, two species, two colors, one block. And this is peak autumn. Rain is coming on tomorrow and that means the leaves will go, the cold front behind it will settle in and blah, blah, blah.

It’ll be in the 50s next week. And soon after denial will give way to grim acceptance and the countdown to April will begin.

I need about two dozen different ways to say that, so I can return to this trope at least once a week between now and then.

My contribution to the cause today was this. Meetings. And preproduction meetings for videos I have to shoot this week. Also I spent some time on a quixotic search for a delivery that’s somewhere in the building, but nowhere in the building. The UPS note says “Desk.” Well, sir or ma’am, this is a school, and there are a lot of desks, and also offices. Each one of those have desks. I have checked them all, and the administrative desks, and unoccupied desks. And also the loading dock. Nothing.

We’re going to get caught up on the Re-Listening Project here. I’m filling space and time on the blog from an in-car project, where I’m working my way through all of my old CDs in chronological order. None of these are reviews, but sometimes there’s something fun, and at least the embedded music has potential. All of these discs (eventually) cross genres in a haphazard way and today is a slight example of that. There’s no larger theme here. It is, as I’ve been saying, a whimsy, as music should be. So fall back to the mid 1990s with me, won’t you.

I don’t understand the point of a sampler in the CD format. At this late date the process seems too slow. Loading a disc, playing that song or two, swapping it to something else if you don’t like the whole mix. And maybe that is informed by always preferring a full record.

Which makes me wonder why I have this, Loaded Volume 1. (I don’t think there was ever a Volume 2.) This is an EMI sampler, and I think I probably picked it up in a bunch, and likely for just one or two songs. But what an eclectic mix beyond the electronic, rock, pop and synth-pop.

I was never invested in this collection, so let’s explore the track by track listing.

EMF’s “Unbelievable.” Maybe I bought it for this song. I think I used this on a radio show for some reason in college. (Hey, it was 1996.)

D Generation’s “No Way Out.” I probably listened to this one more closely this week than I did back then.

It’s hard to imagine a time that Lenny Kravitz ever needed to have a single included on a sampler.

Radiohead’s “Creep” holds up remarkably well, even if they seldom play it live.

Here’s an interesting story about Jesus Jones and “The Devil You Know.” There is no interesting story about this song. I checked. This is a 1993 release, though, which is why it sounds like the perfect bridge between the 1980s and 1990s, from several decades removed.

Yeah, no idea why Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark is on this CD, especially in the all-important track six spot.

The song from Blur you knew before “Song 2.”

In 1993 Duran Duran did Unplugged and “The Wedding Album” which is as big a late-career comeback a pop band can ask for. And two years later, “Come Undone” was found here. There’s a lot of Duran Duran that is aging well, considering, and I am still wondering what’s going on at this point in this disc.

There’s a nice acoustic version of Tasmin Archer’s “Sleeping Satellite” up next. This was her 1992 debut, which went number one in the United Kingdom and Ireland and reached the top 20 in 13 other countries and peaked at number 32 on the US Billboard Hot 100.

Which sets us up nicely for Milla Jovovich’s “Gentleman Who Fell.” She looks 19 on her late night debut with Conan.

Then you get Sinead O’Connor’s “I Believe In You.” Say what you will, and heaven knows a lot has been said about O’Connor, but this song is amazing.

Then there’s … “Alleluia, Beatus Vir Qui Suffert” from The Benedictine Monks Of Santo Domingo De Silos.

Interesting story, this song was part of a series of recordings from the 1970s and 1980s. It didn’t sell. A different record label, an EMI imprint, re-released it in 1994. “Chant” became the best-selling album of Gregorian chant ever released. It peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, and was double platinum, two million copies sold in the United States, four million worldwide.

Then comes Shara Nelson, “What Silence Knows.” This is the title track from her debut album. This song was never released as a single, but that album was a substantial hit in the UK in 1993-1994.

And here’s a B-side from the critically important Jeffrey Gaines.

The last song is from The Specials, and I found myself wondering, while listening to “Ghost Town” the other day, if this was, in fact, the first ska song I ever heard.

Probably not, but maybe?

Anyway, should you buy this record? Do you like these songs? Will you be impressed to learn that the bonus track, not listed here, is the best song on the thing?

I’m not going to spoil that one, but if you think it is possible that, among the assembled great music above, the best song isn’t here, then maybe you should make a purchase. Here’s an incentive. The hidden track was 40 years old when this record was distributed. And it’s almost 30 years older even now.

There’s one more CD to discuss here, but it’s another one of those that was a cassette upgrade in my earliest days in the new medium. I found out about this band from some improbable late night live show. A few weeks later they were on SNL. And I’m not sure if it was days before that network appearance or in the days immediately after that I bought the debut record. It’s the first of four or six that will wind up in this project.

I was a high school freshman, listening to this too much. Way too much. Couldn’t wait to get home from school to put this on, too much. Started wondering what that meant, too much. Way too much. Nirvana didn’t interest me. I didn’t get Alice in Chains. Soundgarden and Stone Temple Pilots were coming my way soon. Pearl Jam was where all of it started. It meant a lot.

It meant adolescence and grunge music happened at about the same time, a ridiculous combination, and it means I’m mentally prepared if flannel and Doc Martens make a comeback. (Maybe they shouldn’t?)

“Ten,” for a 30-year-old debut, in a then-still developing genre, holds up remarkably well as a complete album. It was later that Pearl Jam would become something like The Doors.

Catober / photo — Comments Off on Catober, Day 11
11
Oct 22

Catober, Day 11

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!

Catober / photo — Comments Off on Catober, Day 10
10
Oct 22

Catober, Day 10

Catober / photo — Comments Off on Catober, Day 9
09
Oct 22

Catober, Day 9

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