De La Soul -- "Millie Pulled a Pistol On Santa" (1991, from De La Soul is Dead)
As I've earlier indicated, I'm not the biggest fan of rap, or hip-hop, or whatever term might be considered more "street" at this micro-juncture of time. There's too much splash and not enough true creativity; too much chest-pounding and not enough soul. I am fully aware that such can easily be charged against my favorite forms of music. This may be just a preference on my part; nevertheless, I think the criticisms valid, and certainly un-controversial, as they are shared by many.
That said, there are a few acts out there I do like, because they make the effort to step above the banal brutality and blingery of most and try to actually say something or tell a real story. You'd think a genre of music in which lyricism was considered the point would put a premium on thought, but alas, such is usually not the case. For the few for whom it is, I have great respect. A Tribe Called Quest is one such group. Public Enemy, much as I roll eyes at their politics, is another. De La Soul may be my favorite.
De La Soul Is Dead was the group's second album, and their answer to the more HARRDDDDcore acts that dissed the first. They gleefully attack the pretenses of their detractors both directly and subtly (check out "Johnny's Dead," the most hilarious send-up of strap'd ghetto boyz in tha hood and their presumed demises yet recorded, so completely off-center that the group itself can't get through it with a straight face), and demonstrate a capacity to move beyond Standard Rap Lyrics to bespeak something of real tragedy.
"Millie" tells the story of a social-worker named Dylan, who is beloved of the troubled kids he helps (the narrator included, who makes himself a character in the drama), and is sufficiently devoted to the community to serve as a mall Santa during the Christmas season. He's also an abusive parent who molests his daughter Millie. Hilarity ensues.
One of the treats of this song is the piano sample that carries the melody; it's hard to categorize by genre, as it jumps along, sounding as much like band music as anything else. The beat, by contrast, is softer, but not neutered, and is powerfully evident in the chorus sections. The effect of this is a mixture of brightness and repressed evil, a back-and-forth that mirrors the story.
In the end, Millie morphs from sweet victim to spirit of vengeance; one section of the song has Millie asking the narrator if he could find her a weapon. He asks what for, she tells him, and he refuses to believe her. This is the most affecting aspect of the story; as the narrator, without saying so, assumes his share of guilt for all those who see and do nothing. No matter, Millie gets her pistol, and heads for the mall, and confronts her father/victimizer with same before a crowd of suddenly terrified children. He begs for mercy, she guns him down, and "with the quickness it was over." Full stop.
Does anyone now require me to explain why I never thought much of Eminem?
#5
Showing posts with label Greatest Songs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Greatest Songs. Show all posts
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Monday, February 06, 2006
Greatest Songs #5
Beck - "Beautiful Way" (1999, from Midnite Vultures)
It's fitting that I start the top five with a departure from form, both from the tone of most of the songs on this list and the artist known as Beck. Midnite Vultures was Beck's first mess-with-my-palette album, a sea change before Sea Change. He basically took away all the blues-country, white-trash elements that had marked his earlier work in favor of a pure R&B booty-beat partaaaay. It's self-consciously an album to get laid to, and I'm not entirely sure if it really works as such (tunes like "Debra" for example, are a little too goofy. Humor has a limited place in the realm of Eros). But "Beautiful Way" is a step outside the groove, a morning-after seperation song that ought to have been the last track, but wasn't (that honor goes to the aforementioned "Debra").
We start with a deep, soft melody, a gentle kiss with piano and bass, and a bare minimum of the sound-effects collage that graces most Beck tunes. Then comes Beck's voice, plain and unaffected:
Ah, the Departure Song, a well-worn groove in the annals of Pop Consciousness; how typical of the Love Album to pay homage to Love's Afterbirth. Yet paying attention to the lyrics provides some interesting variations. Note the fact that Becks isn't wondering who's going to love him. This could be a sign that he's got a line waiting for him back at his crazy sawinging bachelor pad, but I don't think so. He's actually wondering who's going to love her: How she's going to fare. Again, we could chalk this up to male arrogance, but I don't find anything constructive in that. For once, the guy's watching her leave without bemoaning his own fate.
The refrain
:
As silly as this reads, when you hear it, you can't help being caught up in the rising emotion, or singing along with the "Bum bum bum's". And the viewpoint is mature, knowing, appreciative. He feels the loss of her, aches for more time, but doesn't want her to miss her train. Our hearts are broken, and damn, it's beautiful. C.S. Lewis would approve.
#6
It's fitting that I start the top five with a departure from form, both from the tone of most of the songs on this list and the artist known as Beck. Midnite Vultures was Beck's first mess-with-my-palette album, a sea change before Sea Change. He basically took away all the blues-country, white-trash elements that had marked his earlier work in favor of a pure R&B booty-beat partaaaay. It's self-consciously an album to get laid to, and I'm not entirely sure if it really works as such (tunes like "Debra" for example, are a little too goofy. Humor has a limited place in the realm of Eros). But "Beautiful Way" is a step outside the groove, a morning-after seperation song that ought to have been the last track, but wasn't (that honor goes to the aforementioned "Debra").
We start with a deep, soft melody, a gentle kiss with piano and bass, and a bare minimum of the sound-effects collage that graces most Beck tunes. Then comes Beck's voice, plain and unaffected:
Searchlights on the skyline
Just lookin' for a friend
Who's gonna love my baby
When she's gone around the bend?
Ah, the Departure Song, a well-worn groove in the annals of Pop Consciousness; how typical of the Love Album to pay homage to Love's Afterbirth. Yet paying attention to the lyrics provides some interesting variations. Note the fact that Becks isn't wondering who's going to love him. This could be a sign that he's got a line waiting for him back at his crazy sawinging bachelor pad, but I don't think so. He's actually wondering who's going to love her: How she's going to fare. Again, we could chalk this up to male arrogance, but I don't find anything constructive in that. For once, the guy's watching her leave without bemoaning his own fate.
The refrain
:
Ooooooooooooooh,
Such a beautiful way to break my heart
Ooooooooooooooh,
Such a beautiful way to break your heart
(Bum bum bum) There's someone calling my name
(Bum bum bum) She's gonna miss that train (Bum bum bum)
As silly as this reads, when you hear it, you can't help being caught up in the rising emotion, or singing along with the "Bum bum bum's". And the viewpoint is mature, knowing, appreciative. He feels the loss of her, aches for more time, but doesn't want her to miss her train. Our hearts are broken, and damn, it's beautiful. C.S. Lewis would approve.
#6
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Greatest Songs #6:
Nirvana -- "All Apologies" (1993, from Unplugged in New York)
Two years ago, in its full-issue necrophilia for the decade anniversary of Kurt kissing his shotgun, Spin managed one moment that was an actual testament to Nirvana's music, rather than their pop culture status and image. In an alt-history timeline of what might have happened had Cobain been too stoned to pull the trigger, the author has Nirvana reform for November 2001's Concert for New York. The opening song to their set, is, of course, "All Apologies."
When all is said and done, it's that song and the obvious one that Nirvana is going to be remembered for, and it's the one that, if they're honest, the fans will admit to being superior. If, as Matt once told me, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is our generation's "Hard Day's Night," the song that captured a moment forever in crystal, then "All Apologies" is our "Comfortably Numb," the song that everyone sings to without knowing why.
I used the version of the song from Unplugged instead of In Utero for two reasons: 1) I don't have In Utero, and 2) this allows me to get in a last slap at all the self-important swine who screamed about Nirvana "selling out". Yeah, Kurt may have thought that Nevermind sounded like a Motely Crue record, but let's not forget that Kurt's perspective was, shall we say, a touch off at times. And if if Nevermind had been Nirvana's last album, maybe the argument would have some shred of merit (though I doubt it). But it wasn't. In Utero was, and it was by collective critical opinion the harsher, less commercial work. I don't know what you call that, but it's not selling out.
Unplugged, on the other hand, the live album everyone ran out and bought because it was released but a month or so after the Awful News, features the band sitting in front of a fawning, uncritical audience, playing the blues. You know, the blues? The oldest musical form in America? The ur-genre from which all others (except country, its kissin' cousin) are descended? The genre that was old before it started? Is there a more obvious way to cement your stature as Serious Musicians than to play blues progressions with a warbly voice?
I thought not. So where were the hipsters complaining about Unplugged?
Don't get me wrong, I don't want them to start. The album's brilliant, start to finish, and sweet and haunting and beautiful and deranged. It's a short history of popular music, where the Meat Puppets and David Bowie and Leadbelly share the same space, and done so well that we hardly notice the juxtaposition. Played the right way, "All Apologies" sounds like Robert Johnson, because "All Apologies" is Robert Johnson.
They never sold out. They just sold. There's a difference.
#7
Two years ago, in its full-issue necrophilia for the decade anniversary of Kurt kissing his shotgun, Spin managed one moment that was an actual testament to Nirvana's music, rather than their pop culture status and image. In an alt-history timeline of what might have happened had Cobain been too stoned to pull the trigger, the author has Nirvana reform for November 2001's Concert for New York. The opening song to their set, is, of course, "All Apologies."
When all is said and done, it's that song and the obvious one that Nirvana is going to be remembered for, and it's the one that, if they're honest, the fans will admit to being superior. If, as Matt once told me, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is our generation's "Hard Day's Night," the song that captured a moment forever in crystal, then "All Apologies" is our "Comfortably Numb," the song that everyone sings to without knowing why.
I used the version of the song from Unplugged instead of In Utero for two reasons: 1) I don't have In Utero, and 2) this allows me to get in a last slap at all the self-important swine who screamed about Nirvana "selling out". Yeah, Kurt may have thought that Nevermind sounded like a Motely Crue record, but let's not forget that Kurt's perspective was, shall we say, a touch off at times. And if if Nevermind had been Nirvana's last album, maybe the argument would have some shred of merit (though I doubt it). But it wasn't. In Utero was, and it was by collective critical opinion the harsher, less commercial work. I don't know what you call that, but it's not selling out.
Unplugged, on the other hand, the live album everyone ran out and bought because it was released but a month or so after the Awful News, features the band sitting in front of a fawning, uncritical audience, playing the blues. You know, the blues? The oldest musical form in America? The ur-genre from which all others (except country, its kissin' cousin) are descended? The genre that was old before it started? Is there a more obvious way to cement your stature as Serious Musicians than to play blues progressions with a warbly voice?
I thought not. So where were the hipsters complaining about Unplugged?
Don't get me wrong, I don't want them to start. The album's brilliant, start to finish, and sweet and haunting and beautiful and deranged. It's a short history of popular music, where the Meat Puppets and David Bowie and Leadbelly share the same space, and done so well that we hardly notice the juxtaposition. Played the right way, "All Apologies" sounds like Robert Johnson, because "All Apologies" is Robert Johnson.
They never sold out. They just sold. There's a difference.
#7
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Greatest Songs #7
Blur - "Death of a Party" (1997, from Blur)
Not much to yap about here. This is just a very well-crafted song, expressing an idea that will always have a niche in our culture. We love parties, we love throwing parties, we love going to them, and we love the idea that those who do nothing but become miserable thereby. And so it probably is; repitition is the mother of tedium.
Like the last song, the music to Blur's "Death of a Party" fits the subject. There's an overflowing mix of instruments, distorted and loud yet oddly distant, as though being heard in another room. Two and three-note vamps drop in and out while the guitars crunch along the same several chords. Only the bass line really displays anything like motion, and it too is locked in the same riff. The resulting sound is pretty and sad, and decadent and empty, while Damon sings about going to another party and hanging himself, gently.
Sure, the tune owes scads to Velvet Underground's "All Tommorrow's Parties," but it's not merely a rip-off, as it manages to be both heavier and darker, no mean feat. And as I said, it's not exactly a new mine of ideas. But it works well, demands attention, and speaks to a great truth about our culture. That's good enough for the Hebrew children, and it's good enough for me.
#8
Not much to yap about here. This is just a very well-crafted song, expressing an idea that will always have a niche in our culture. We love parties, we love throwing parties, we love going to them, and we love the idea that those who do nothing but become miserable thereby. And so it probably is; repitition is the mother of tedium.
Like the last song, the music to Blur's "Death of a Party" fits the subject. There's an overflowing mix of instruments, distorted and loud yet oddly distant, as though being heard in another room. Two and three-note vamps drop in and out while the guitars crunch along the same several chords. Only the bass line really displays anything like motion, and it too is locked in the same riff. The resulting sound is pretty and sad, and decadent and empty, while Damon sings about going to another party and hanging himself, gently.
Sure, the tune owes scads to Velvet Underground's "All Tommorrow's Parties," but it's not merely a rip-off, as it manages to be both heavier and darker, no mean feat. And as I said, it's not exactly a new mine of ideas. But it works well, demands attention, and speaks to a great truth about our culture. That's good enough for the Hebrew children, and it's good enough for me.
#8
Monday, November 28, 2005
Greatest Songs #8
Richard Hell and the Voidoids -- "Betrayal Takes Two" (1977, from Blank Generation)
On the surface of it, Richard Hell is exactly the kind of cat I should dislike: pretentious, self-absorbed, and nihilistic to the point of boredom. What's more, he's aware of it, and consciously chooses to live that way. Based on his interviews, he seems to genuinely admire the addled, post-Revolutionary aristocrats he's read about in such authors and Huysmans and really wants to be like them. In other words, he's the kind of person who's always proclaiming doom without offering solutions, because the doom feels right, sounds complete. In politics, I hate that, and I'm not too fond of it in art, either.
So why do I love this guy's music?
I suspect it has a lot to do with his backing band. Marc Bell, soon to be Marky Ramone, was his drummer, and his two guitarists, Bob Quine, and Ivan Julian, created some truly beautiful noise, despite the fact that you couldn't have found men who appeared to be more different (Quine looked like an adjunct poetry professor and Julian looked like Sly Stone's cousin). What was more, they crafted an album in 1977 that dared to have songs that sounded different from one another, to make their rebellion in the wierd tangents of their riffs rather than a typical expression of impotent rage. The classic example of which is "Betrayal Takes Two"
First off, the song is not a quick-off, three-chord bottle rocket; it moves at a mellow blues shuffle, unafraid of space. Hell attempts a croon, doesn't quite pull it off, gives up and howls his way to the chorus. The guitars mope prettily, until the aformentioned, at which point they turn on each other and claw and scratch like two alleycats, only to settle down again, then start it up again, etc. The structure of the song thus nicely reflects the subject of the lyrics. Observe:
You'd call it emo, if you were an idiot, because the lyrics speak of pain and doomed romance, and the tune fits it. But if you were capable of drawing distinctions, you'd note that the lyrics are devoid of maudlin sentiment, that they hold these exchanges at comic distance. The song doesn't say "Hold me," but "This is how it is, ain't it a hoot?" as only someone who's been knocked up the side of the head by life enough times can say.
And yes, that kind of thinking is dangerous if it becomes an excuse for avoiding life, as many have suspected it has for M. Hell. But at some point in life we have to get over sappy romanticism and look with a jaundiced eye at the games we play. Only then can we ever hit the next lock in the Love Canal.
#9
On the surface of it, Richard Hell is exactly the kind of cat I should dislike: pretentious, self-absorbed, and nihilistic to the point of boredom. What's more, he's aware of it, and consciously chooses to live that way. Based on his interviews, he seems to genuinely admire the addled, post-Revolutionary aristocrats he's read about in such authors and Huysmans and really wants to be like them. In other words, he's the kind of person who's always proclaiming doom without offering solutions, because the doom feels right, sounds complete. In politics, I hate that, and I'm not too fond of it in art, either.
So why do I love this guy's music?
I suspect it has a lot to do with his backing band. Marc Bell, soon to be Marky Ramone, was his drummer, and his two guitarists, Bob Quine, and Ivan Julian, created some truly beautiful noise, despite the fact that you couldn't have found men who appeared to be more different (Quine looked like an adjunct poetry professor and Julian looked like Sly Stone's cousin). What was more, they crafted an album in 1977 that dared to have songs that sounded different from one another, to make their rebellion in the wierd tangents of their riffs rather than a typical expression of impotent rage. The classic example of which is "Betrayal Takes Two"
First off, the song is not a quick-off, three-chord bottle rocket; it moves at a mellow blues shuffle, unafraid of space. Hell attempts a croon, doesn't quite pull it off, gives up and howls his way to the chorus. The guitars mope prettily, until the aformentioned, at which point they turn on each other and claw and scratch like two alleycats, only to settle down again, then start it up again, etc. The structure of the song thus nicely reflects the subject of the lyrics. Observe:
The sensation of life was aroused in ourselves,
from the plot we digressed, knocked the books off the shelves,
then burned down the house, then met in a bar
with a motel attached and kissed all the scars
You'd call it emo, if you were an idiot, because the lyrics speak of pain and doomed romance, and the tune fits it. But if you were capable of drawing distinctions, you'd note that the lyrics are devoid of maudlin sentiment, that they hold these exchanges at comic distance. The song doesn't say "Hold me," but "This is how it is, ain't it a hoot?" as only someone who's been knocked up the side of the head by life enough times can say.
And yes, that kind of thinking is dangerous if it becomes an excuse for avoiding life, as many have suspected it has for M. Hell. But at some point in life we have to get over sappy romanticism and look with a jaundiced eye at the games we play. Only then can we ever hit the next lock in the Love Canal.
#9
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Greatest Song #9
U2 -- "Seconds" (1983, from WAR)
I've never been a massive fan of U2, but neither do I really have a problem with them. They fit nicely into a group of bands, such as Coldplay and Radiohead, that I feel comfortably neutral about: I respect them as musicians, perhaps like a few of their tunes, and could otherwise hardly be bothered with them. Nowadays, with U2 as the Irish Beatles, agelessly throwing out pop hooks that will result in fulsome praise from critics and gushing fans alike, I can happily delete them from my ruminations without wishing to see them destroyed. There's nothing offensive about them, and no need for me to by their records.
I liked them better when they were the Irish Clash. The cover of War is startling, with layers of complexity sitting just beyond. We see a young boy, his eyes furious, a scab on his lower lip. We see here the reduction of all conflict to an immature response to pain: battling for blocks in kindergarten. But look again. Note how androgynous the boy's appearance is, even angelic. He's got no shirt on, his hair is tousled and flowing. And what is that background behind him? Council Flats, like as not, but whose to say they aren't the layers of Hell? Really, what's the difference?
Maybe I'm reaching, but Bono's devout Catholocism should be pretty well known to anyone with more than a passing familiarity with the band. Maybe bono intended nothing Miltonic by the cover, but the connection is still striking.
It's said that until an hour before he fell, Satan was beautiful in Heaven, and according to U2, it only "takes a second to say good-bye". The second song on this album is a much better early-80's lament on the possibility of nuclear war than was usual, better by a mile than Sting's mewling blather about how the Russians loved their children, too. The lyrics aren't about telling anyone to get along, merely describing the Apocalyptic horror, the reign of Death. This is depicted not by what it says as what's left out: not burning cities, bodies turned to ash, radiation vomit, but merely "good-bye"; Finalilty.
The song structure is likewise a pleasing back-and-forth; the bass line lurches while the Edge's trademark guitar scratch punctuates the phrases. It's a bizarre sound for an Armageddon jam, but there is a payoff: in the middle of the song the documentary "Soldier Girls" is sampled, a call-and-response of an instructor leading female recruits in "I Wanna Be an Airborne Ranger" and ending with martial shrieks. Basic exists to transform citizens into killers, and this microcosm of that transformation is scary even to those of us who favor a big military with spiffy uniforms and lots of dangerous toys. As this freakiness fades out, that bass line pumps back in, and the song's rythmn fits the recruits howls, and the whole tune is a lot darker for it.
Look, I figured out when I was about eleven that the bombs weren't coming, because if everyone else could see that Nuclear Smackdown was M.A.D., then surely Reagan and Gorby could. But the central message of the song remains intact, if we flit back to Milton: it only takes a second to kill something or someone in your heart, and it is there that death can still reign o'er us. Walls built across cities can be brought down with some hammers and drills. The other walls can come down, too...as soon as we admit that they're there.
#10
I've never been a massive fan of U2, but neither do I really have a problem with them. They fit nicely into a group of bands, such as Coldplay and Radiohead, that I feel comfortably neutral about: I respect them as musicians, perhaps like a few of their tunes, and could otherwise hardly be bothered with them. Nowadays, with U2 as the Irish Beatles, agelessly throwing out pop hooks that will result in fulsome praise from critics and gushing fans alike, I can happily delete them from my ruminations without wishing to see them destroyed. There's nothing offensive about them, and no need for me to by their records.
I liked them better when they were the Irish Clash. The cover of War is startling, with layers of complexity sitting just beyond. We see a young boy, his eyes furious, a scab on his lower lip. We see here the reduction of all conflict to an immature response to pain: battling for blocks in kindergarten. But look again. Note how androgynous the boy's appearance is, even angelic. He's got no shirt on, his hair is tousled and flowing. And what is that background behind him? Council Flats, like as not, but whose to say they aren't the layers of Hell? Really, what's the difference?
Maybe I'm reaching, but Bono's devout Catholocism should be pretty well known to anyone with more than a passing familiarity with the band. Maybe bono intended nothing Miltonic by the cover, but the connection is still striking.
It's said that until an hour before he fell, Satan was beautiful in Heaven, and according to U2, it only "takes a second to say good-bye". The second song on this album is a much better early-80's lament on the possibility of nuclear war than was usual, better by a mile than Sting's mewling blather about how the Russians loved their children, too. The lyrics aren't about telling anyone to get along, merely describing the Apocalyptic horror, the reign of Death. This is depicted not by what it says as what's left out: not burning cities, bodies turned to ash, radiation vomit, but merely "good-bye"; Finalilty.
Lighting flashes across the sky
From East to West you do or die
Like a theif in the night
You see the world by candlelight
The song structure is likewise a pleasing back-and-forth; the bass line lurches while the Edge's trademark guitar scratch punctuates the phrases. It's a bizarre sound for an Armageddon jam, but there is a payoff: in the middle of the song the documentary "Soldier Girls" is sampled, a call-and-response of an instructor leading female recruits in "I Wanna Be an Airborne Ranger" and ending with martial shrieks. Basic exists to transform citizens into killers, and this microcosm of that transformation is scary even to those of us who favor a big military with spiffy uniforms and lots of dangerous toys. As this freakiness fades out, that bass line pumps back in, and the song's rythmn fits the recruits howls, and the whole tune is a lot darker for it.
Look, I figured out when I was about eleven that the bombs weren't coming, because if everyone else could see that Nuclear Smackdown was M.A.D., then surely Reagan and Gorby could. But the central message of the song remains intact, if we flit back to Milton: it only takes a second to kill something or someone in your heart, and it is there that death can still reign o'er us. Walls built across cities can be brought down with some hammers and drills. The other walls can come down, too...as soon as we admit that they're there.
#10
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Greatest Songs #10
Sleater-Kinney - "Words and Guitar" (1997, from Dig Me Out
It's not easy keeping Rock n' Roll alive. The music is infinitely repeatable because it jolts right to the reptilian brain. But it's not infinitely replaceable; Chuck Berry Fan #9584675937 making a record that moves no different from "Maybelline" will not be considered as good as "Maybelline," it will be considered trash and made fun of. So there's a handful of tricks that the industry has been bombarding us with more or less since "Maybelline" was released.
The easiest is to re-package: squeeze the same sound out of a crew with different clothes and a different image and give the style a different name. This works best if your group slags whatever happens to be popular at the moment. Instant controversey equals instant attention, and if the record doesn't suck, it'll sell. For bonus points, wait for somebody else's repackaged movement to run into its third or fourth generation of bands, at which point mockery at the lowest common denominators of the movement will weigh it down like a lead weight. You can then sing the praises of your new repackaging of something you used to like, complete with boisterous homages to the Great Bands of Yore.
For those slightly more daring, There's making an actual effort to write songs that sound new, with structures that don't settle into predictable routines, with lyrics that aren't about sex, lack of sex, or how angry you are at stuff.
Sleater-Kinney's Dig Me Out was an album-length attempt to do just that. The gang were all veterans of the Riot Grrl movement of the late-80's-to-early-90's, and while the sturm-and-drang of that is still very much present, the true revolution is not something promised, but something delivered, in the songwriting, the lyrics, and the deliciously explosive, unstable wanderings of the two guitarists. "Words and Guitar" is the perfect example.
We start with a simple walking (or perhaps, running) treble riff, that starts bell-clear but sinks into distortion just as the fuzz of the other guitar (SK is bass-less, way before the White Stripes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs made it cool) reaches up out of the muck, and the drums roll in a staccato punch that seems to be trying to silence the shrieks, only to stop every measure, frustrated. Things settle down in choruses that seem smoother, but only because the playing is gentler, not less complicated; the beats and notes still tumble as though pouring out of the very hearts and minds of the bandmates.
The singing gives off this impression as well. As with the guitars there are two vocal themes: one yowlingly dominant and over the top, one low and sardonic, making up in speed and tone what it lacks in volume. When they crash together, they overwhelm, laying too related but divergent trains of thought into your head, an experience with which the honest among us will relate.
And what has them so excited? Loss? Death? Damning someone from an Olympian height?
Nope:
Meanwhile, the low voice punctures the later lines with:
Yeah, they're singing about Rock, about how they love it, about how it feeds them, about how the fact that they can play it "till there's nothing left" is freedom. All this fury is neither a lament nor a phillipic but a celebration and a clamoring for more.
'Cause in the end, the simplest way to save Rock n' Roll is to rock you till your good and dead.
#11
It's not easy keeping Rock n' Roll alive. The music is infinitely repeatable because it jolts right to the reptilian brain. But it's not infinitely replaceable; Chuck Berry Fan #9584675937 making a record that moves no different from "Maybelline" will not be considered as good as "Maybelline," it will be considered trash and made fun of. So there's a handful of tricks that the industry has been bombarding us with more or less since "Maybelline" was released.
The easiest is to re-package: squeeze the same sound out of a crew with different clothes and a different image and give the style a different name. This works best if your group slags whatever happens to be popular at the moment. Instant controversey equals instant attention, and if the record doesn't suck, it'll sell. For bonus points, wait for somebody else's repackaged movement to run into its third or fourth generation of bands, at which point mockery at the lowest common denominators of the movement will weigh it down like a lead weight. You can then sing the praises of your new repackaging of something you used to like, complete with boisterous homages to the Great Bands of Yore.
For those slightly more daring, There's making an actual effort to write songs that sound new, with structures that don't settle into predictable routines, with lyrics that aren't about sex, lack of sex, or how angry you are at stuff.
Sleater-Kinney's Dig Me Out was an album-length attempt to do just that. The gang were all veterans of the Riot Grrl movement of the late-80's-to-early-90's, and while the sturm-and-drang of that is still very much present, the true revolution is not something promised, but something delivered, in the songwriting, the lyrics, and the deliciously explosive, unstable wanderings of the two guitarists. "Words and Guitar" is the perfect example.
We start with a simple walking (or perhaps, running) treble riff, that starts bell-clear but sinks into distortion just as the fuzz of the other guitar (SK is bass-less, way before the White Stripes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs made it cool) reaches up out of the muck, and the drums roll in a staccato punch that seems to be trying to silence the shrieks, only to stop every measure, frustrated. Things settle down in choruses that seem smoother, but only because the playing is gentler, not less complicated; the beats and notes still tumble as though pouring out of the very hearts and minds of the bandmates.
The singing gives off this impression as well. As with the guitars there are two vocal themes: one yowlingly dominant and over the top, one low and sardonic, making up in speed and tone what it lacks in volume. When they crash together, they overwhelm, laying too related but divergent trains of thought into your head, an experience with which the honest among us will relate.
And what has them so excited? Loss? Death? Damning someone from an Olympian height?
Nope:
Words and guitar
I got it
Words and guitar
I like it
way way too loud
I got it
words and guitar
Meanwhile, the low voice punctures the later lines with:
(can't take this away from me
music is the air I breathe)
Yeah, they're singing about Rock, about how they love it, about how it feeds them, about how the fact that they can play it "till there's nothing left" is freedom. All this fury is neither a lament nor a phillipic but a celebration and a clamoring for more.
'Cause in the end, the simplest way to save Rock n' Roll is to rock you till your good and dead.
#11
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Greatest Songs #11
The Ramones - "Judy is a Punk" (1976, from Ramones)
"Oh, for God's sake," I hear you saying. "What, The Exploited, Minor Threat, Sonic Youth, etc., weren't enough to bottom out the punk stylings? You had to finish off the bottom ten with a Ramones song? You fanboy! Had to hop on the 'they're dead, they're great' bandwagon, didn't ya?"
Fair enough. Now shut up.
Anyone who likes the kind of music I do is going to eventually run into certain indispensable bands. These are the ones who kicked it off, who were playing against the grain when that wasn't something you got rewarded for. The Velvet Underground is number one on such a list. The Stooges are a close second. The Ramones were most definitely working off of a Stooges riff, and could therefore be considered the lesser band. The Stooges were certainly more creative.
Unfortunately, the last Stooges album came out in '73. I was born in '76. So, on with the Ramones.
I'm fully aware of the criticisms. This is a band that basically wrote the same song over and over and over again. You could take songs of the last album and put them on the first album, and vice versa, and only the geeks would know the difference. They made minimal effort to grow as songwriters, and barely any at all as musicians. Et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum.
But what band today casts a longer shadow? The simple, monotonous, fasterlouder style will never go away. There'll always be someone along to sweep it up and take a couple of chords and roar their way through to people's eardrums. That reality is largely the creation of the Ramones, who got in ahead of any of their contemporaries, reached more kids worldwide over the course of their careers, and managed to last the longest even though they didn't really care much for each other. They earned their legacy, and the hard way.
What's more, they remain superior to the majority of their descendants in one key element: their songs are FUN. They could write a tune about sniffin' glue, going to the beach, President Reagan, or anything else under the sun, and make it sound like an absolute blast, simultaneously giving off the impression that they didn't much care about it. Name one "punk" band in the last two decades who've managed to pull that off. You can't, can you? The self-serious little twerps ruined it, turned themselves into a lot of ersatz barricade boys, completely ignoring the fact that the music is itself the getaway, the escape. Sure, it's a temporary escape, but what isn't? In the end, we all go to the same place.
"Okay, okay, windy, we get it. But why 'Judy is a Punk'? Shouldn't you go with something more epoch-defining? 'I Wanna Be Sedated'? That song from the cell phone ads?"
No, I shouldn't. Because "Judy is a Punk" is the first song they ever wrote.
I think we're done here.
#12
"Oh, for God's sake," I hear you saying. "What, The Exploited, Minor Threat, Sonic Youth, etc., weren't enough to bottom out the punk stylings? You had to finish off the bottom ten with a Ramones song? You fanboy! Had to hop on the 'they're dead, they're great' bandwagon, didn't ya?"
Fair enough. Now shut up.
Anyone who likes the kind of music I do is going to eventually run into certain indispensable bands. These are the ones who kicked it off, who were playing against the grain when that wasn't something you got rewarded for. The Velvet Underground is number one on such a list. The Stooges are a close second. The Ramones were most definitely working off of a Stooges riff, and could therefore be considered the lesser band. The Stooges were certainly more creative.
Unfortunately, the last Stooges album came out in '73. I was born in '76. So, on with the Ramones.
I'm fully aware of the criticisms. This is a band that basically wrote the same song over and over and over again. You could take songs of the last album and put them on the first album, and vice versa, and only the geeks would know the difference. They made minimal effort to grow as songwriters, and barely any at all as musicians. Et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum.
But what band today casts a longer shadow? The simple, monotonous, fasterlouder style will never go away. There'll always be someone along to sweep it up and take a couple of chords and roar their way through to people's eardrums. That reality is largely the creation of the Ramones, who got in ahead of any of their contemporaries, reached more kids worldwide over the course of their careers, and managed to last the longest even though they didn't really care much for each other. They earned their legacy, and the hard way.
What's more, they remain superior to the majority of their descendants in one key element: their songs are FUN. They could write a tune about sniffin' glue, going to the beach, President Reagan, or anything else under the sun, and make it sound like an absolute blast, simultaneously giving off the impression that they didn't much care about it. Name one "punk" band in the last two decades who've managed to pull that off. You can't, can you? The self-serious little twerps ruined it, turned themselves into a lot of ersatz barricade boys, completely ignoring the fact that the music is itself the getaway, the escape. Sure, it's a temporary escape, but what isn't? In the end, we all go to the same place.
"Okay, okay, windy, we get it. But why 'Judy is a Punk'? Shouldn't you go with something more epoch-defining? 'I Wanna Be Sedated'? That song from the cell phone ads?"
No, I shouldn't. Because "Judy is a Punk" is the first song they ever wrote.
I think we're done here.
#12
Saturday, November 05, 2005
Greatest Songs #12
Joy Division - "Heart and Soul" (1980, from Closer)
I hated the 80's when they were going on. And so did everybody else, as far as I remember. Every time someone mention the 80's in any kind of serious context, it was never flattering. Conservatives hated the cheapening popular culture, the complete mindlessness of sexn'drugsn'rockn'roll without even the pretense of Romantic ambition to justify it. Liberals hated the laissez-faire economics and cold-warring of the Reagan Administration. Hippies hated getting old. Punks hated being ignored. When New Years Day 1990 came around, everyone was ecstatic that the old bad days were over.
Heh.
I especially hated the music of the 80's. I didn't like metal, heavy or glam, I didn't like New Wave, I didn't like rap. Everything was either limp-wristed, sybaritic, or psychotic. Where could a kid find a nice simple Rock sound, unadorned and unashamed?
We've gotten plenty of that in the ensuing years, more, perhaps then ever we really wanted or needed. But I eventually came to peace with the music of my youth, by the simple method of discovering and appreciating its antecedents. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, boys and girls; New Wave will invariably fall on deaf ears until you've heard and absorbed the Old Wave. So it is, by following grunge back to punk and following rock from the 50's through the 60's and 70's, I stumbled upon Joy Division, and heard the soundtrack to my youth that I'd missed.
"Heart and Soul" begins with a throbbing bass line, is joined by drums that seem to pop and crack open when hit, like machine guns at the bottom of a well, and then meets up with chilled guitars and Ian Curtis' trademark voice-from-beyond-the-grave. The result is 5 minutes and 51 seconds of speeding, pumping melancholy.
So why pick this one from the wealth of Joy Division's catalogue? It ain't like they have a shortage of good tunes. Mostly because this song is a rumination on one of the subject matter of one of the most popular cliches in pop music: the heart, source of love, and the soul, which gets noticed whenever it's being tortured. There are a plethora of songs by a variety of artists with exactly this title, But this is the only one that seems to stand up to the weight of the material. Most of them toss away the heart and the soul like freeway tolls: "I fell in love with you, Heart and Soul," "My Heart and Soul are yours," "Take my Heart and Soul, Please!" Here's Joy Division's take:
Which is real, the blood valve whose stoppage means death and decomposition or the ethereal ghost in the organic machine? Is there an answer? If not, why not? And can we even begin to find our way out of asking such questions as these?
For Joy Division, and for most of the New Wave, there wasn't, which made it all the easier to dismiss the questions as a pose, but one helix of the music industry business cycle. And by the time we got to the aforementioned Kajagoogoo, such criticism may even have been just. But it wasn't always so. And if I can admit that, then just about anyone can.
#13
I hated the 80's when they were going on. And so did everybody else, as far as I remember. Every time someone mention the 80's in any kind of serious context, it was never flattering. Conservatives hated the cheapening popular culture, the complete mindlessness of sexn'drugsn'rockn'roll without even the pretense of Romantic ambition to justify it. Liberals hated the laissez-faire economics and cold-warring of the Reagan Administration. Hippies hated getting old. Punks hated being ignored. When New Years Day 1990 came around, everyone was ecstatic that the old bad days were over.
Heh.
I especially hated the music of the 80's. I didn't like metal, heavy or glam, I didn't like New Wave, I didn't like rap. Everything was either limp-wristed, sybaritic, or psychotic. Where could a kid find a nice simple Rock sound, unadorned and unashamed?
We've gotten plenty of that in the ensuing years, more, perhaps then ever we really wanted or needed. But I eventually came to peace with the music of my youth, by the simple method of discovering and appreciating its antecedents. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, boys and girls; New Wave will invariably fall on deaf ears until you've heard and absorbed the Old Wave. So it is, by following grunge back to punk and following rock from the 50's through the 60's and 70's, I stumbled upon Joy Division, and heard the soundtrack to my youth that I'd missed.
"Heart and Soul" begins with a throbbing bass line, is joined by drums that seem to pop and crack open when hit, like machine guns at the bottom of a well, and then meets up with chilled guitars and Ian Curtis' trademark voice-from-beyond-the-grave. The result is 5 minutes and 51 seconds of speeding, pumping melancholy.
So why pick this one from the wealth of Joy Division's catalogue? It ain't like they have a shortage of good tunes. Mostly because this song is a rumination on one of the subject matter of one of the most popular cliches in pop music: the heart, source of love, and the soul, which gets noticed whenever it's being tortured. There are a plethora of songs by a variety of artists with exactly this title, But this is the only one that seems to stand up to the weight of the material. Most of them toss away the heart and the soul like freeway tolls: "I fell in love with you, Heart and Soul," "My Heart and Soul are yours," "Take my Heart and Soul, Please!" Here's Joy Division's take:
Heart and Soul
What will burn?
Which is real, the blood valve whose stoppage means death and decomposition or the ethereal ghost in the organic machine? Is there an answer? If not, why not? And can we even begin to find our way out of asking such questions as these?
For Joy Division, and for most of the New Wave, there wasn't, which made it all the easier to dismiss the questions as a pose, but one helix of the music industry business cycle. And by the time we got to the aforementioned Kajagoogoo, such criticism may even have been just. But it wasn't always so. And if I can admit that, then just about anyone can.
#13
Friday, October 28, 2005
Greatest Songs #13
Sonic Youth - "'Cross the Breeze" (1988, from Daydream Nation)
Sonic Youth is self-consciously art-rock, and usually the first band that my generation thinks of when the term is mentioned. So it's natural that something off of one of their albums would make the cut on my list. But why this one? If avoiding the obvious demands that I eschew "Teen Age Riot" for one of the deeper tracks from Daydream Nation, why not something more difficult to absorb, like "Candle" or "Rain King"? Hell, why not go all the way and nominate the album-closing "Wonder/Hyperstation/Eliminator Jr." trilogy?
Simple. The Riff. Good enough?
I thought not.
In order to have art-rock work, it's got to balance both. Too much art, and the song spins its wheels trying to get where it's going. Too much rock, and it's pretentious. What you need is a noise that fits your inarticulate desire, your overarching telos "'Cross the Breeze" is that song for this album.
Daydream Nation is an attack, a jujitsu flip over the back of the mannered pop tedium of the 80's, reaching for something grand, sprawling, infinite, a Grand Tomorrow for Music and Culture. Yes, the further away from music it gets, the sillier and more irritating it becomes, but that's just more to the point that musicians should stick to what they're good at.
So: what track is the most running, screaming, explosive? Duh. Just listen to Kim Gordon bellow "I Wanna Know!" at every chorus. That's not just asking for the answer to her questions, she wants to "know" in the ancient sense of the word, to feel and sense and see from the inside out, to grok in fullness, as the Man from Mars would put it. And the way the tune's basic structure is approached over the course of the song's seven minutes, from every concievable tempo and distortion-level, you have the match to this metaphysical quest for fire.
Plus, the riff is awesome. Seriously. It's like Dick Dale on steroids.
#14
Sonic Youth is self-consciously art-rock, and usually the first band that my generation thinks of when the term is mentioned. So it's natural that something off of one of their albums would make the cut on my list. But why this one? If avoiding the obvious demands that I eschew "Teen Age Riot" for one of the deeper tracks from Daydream Nation, why not something more difficult to absorb, like "Candle" or "Rain King"? Hell, why not go all the way and nominate the album-closing "Wonder/Hyperstation/Eliminator Jr." trilogy?
Simple. The Riff. Good enough?
I thought not.
In order to have art-rock work, it's got to balance both. Too much art, and the song spins its wheels trying to get where it's going. Too much rock, and it's pretentious. What you need is a noise that fits your inarticulate desire, your overarching telos "'Cross the Breeze" is that song for this album.
Daydream Nation is an attack, a jujitsu flip over the back of the mannered pop tedium of the 80's, reaching for something grand, sprawling, infinite, a Grand Tomorrow for Music and Culture. Yes, the further away from music it gets, the sillier and more irritating it becomes, but that's just more to the point that musicians should stick to what they're good at.
So: what track is the most running, screaming, explosive? Duh. Just listen to Kim Gordon bellow "I Wanna Know!" at every chorus. That's not just asking for the answer to her questions, she wants to "know" in the ancient sense of the word, to feel and sense and see from the inside out, to grok in fullness, as the Man from Mars would put it. And the way the tune's basic structure is approached over the course of the song's seven minutes, from every concievable tempo and distortion-level, you have the match to this metaphysical quest for fire.
Plus, the riff is awesome. Seriously. It's like Dick Dale on steroids.
#14
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Greatest Songs #14
Minor Threat - "Cashing In" (1983, from Out of Step)
No one becomes a Rocker without accepting its limitations: three-chords, three-minutes, usually about sex or the lack thereof. Perversely, though, almost everyone who becomes a Punk rocker thinks that they've stumbled over the Rosetta Stone, a way to make pure aggressive music that's about something. And, to a degree they're right. Sometimes I like to annoy the more preachy spike-heads by comparing Punk to Christianity: no matter how many times it's declared dead, the sumbitch never manages to belly-up. But that persistence is the result of a stylish musical perversity: deliberately making songs that are un-lovely, raw to the point of amateurishness, fit only for a declaration of ephemeral rage that only adolescents, with their complete lack of self-awareness, are capable of.
Added to that is the fact that Punk lost it's spiritual purity, whatever that might have been, some time ago. People like to fling feces at Hot Topic for commodifying the genre's image and ersatz rebellion, but frankly, that's all poppycock. Yes, someone who walked into a Hot Topic one day a straight-laced jock and walked out a harDCore Goth Punk would be a doofus, and deserving of every slur that could be marshalled against them. But almost nobody does that. Plus, 90% of the music sold there is stuff you can't find at the Sam Goody at the other end of the mall, all on indie labels and unavailable otherwise to the market they serve. And where else in the suburbs am I supposed to find Misfits records on vinyl?
Besides, Hot Topic is but a descendant of commerical enterprises that have been selling Punk style from the masses since the beginning: from Commander Salamander to Malcom McClaren's Sex, there have always been stores offering instant punk uniforms. Nor were they ashamed about it: shifting the culture was the whole point. The Clash didn't form their own record label and sell their stuff out of the back of the tour van; they signed to CBS Records in 1976 for £100,000. This DIY-purity, we-hate-every-band-that-more-that-50-people-know-about routine didn't come until the early-to-mid 80's, after British Punk had imploded and American Punk utterly failed to make it on the radio.
A lot of people like to edit that out of their thinking, and in most cases that leads to a lot of treacly diatribes as a part of a lot of formulaic songs by a lot of punk-by-numbers bands. But occasionally a band will dismount its high horse and take a righteous slash at its own self-righteousness, and so did Minor Threat, by all accounts one of the preachiest bands of a preachy genre, do in '82 with "Cashing In."
First off, the song starts with a bouncy, almost hilarious bass line that indicates a departure from the wholesale ranting that's come before. Ian "My Coolness Weighs Upon Me Like An Albatross" MacKaye starts mock-laughing, and we could be sure he'd be pulling his moustache if he hadn't had all hair as completely removed from his body as an Egyptian priest. And then the swirling guitars come in, and our song is complete: awaiting only the words of Ian the Great, Gatekeeper to Henry Rollins' Scenemaster (enjoy that image for a moment before pressing on):
Yes, it's a first person song, which means SARCASM writ as large as a movie promo. But it's a first person song about himself, which means MacKaye is being sarcastic about himself and his work, which is a damn fine thing for any rock or pop star to be doing, and for which he should be commended. After a somewhat garbled line about "making money out of every set," we have the chorus:
This last is song by what appears to be the whole band, or at any rate, multiple voices, giving the impression of mass input. No more is merely the Magnificent Ian to be subject to the acid disdain of a harDCore song, nor even merely the band Minor Threat, but the whole harDCore scene, and, by implication, the whole punk movement, promising solidarity but still competing for the necessities of their careers.
Now if the song went thusly for a few turns and then stomped on the brakes, it would already be one of the better tracks in Minor Threat's catalogue, but it doesn't do that. Instead, the song dramatically shifts, in tempo and style, into an elongated outro, and in function from a satire to a requiem:
This repeats, with slightly different emphasis on different syllables each time, until the instruments climax and drain away, and Ian actually sings the last line, actually uses his voicebox as a mutual intrument instead of a megaphone, and the self and the band and the scene and the movement fade away, the Jeremiad that this song has been dead with them, leaving only a desolate wasteland, fit for Lamentations.
Naturally, Minor Threat were done after this. Saint Ian of the Community Center does not tarry with things that he deems impure. But for a brief shining moment before running with the eternal experiment Fugazi, His Punkness actually destroyed his adolescence so that he could grow into something else, and missed it as it went. That's more up-front honesty than any pop song has dared in a long time.
#15
No one becomes a Rocker without accepting its limitations: three-chords, three-minutes, usually about sex or the lack thereof. Perversely, though, almost everyone who becomes a Punk rocker thinks that they've stumbled over the Rosetta Stone, a way to make pure aggressive music that's about something. And, to a degree they're right. Sometimes I like to annoy the more preachy spike-heads by comparing Punk to Christianity: no matter how many times it's declared dead, the sumbitch never manages to belly-up. But that persistence is the result of a stylish musical perversity: deliberately making songs that are un-lovely, raw to the point of amateurishness, fit only for a declaration of ephemeral rage that only adolescents, with their complete lack of self-awareness, are capable of.
Added to that is the fact that Punk lost it's spiritual purity, whatever that might have been, some time ago. People like to fling feces at Hot Topic for commodifying the genre's image and ersatz rebellion, but frankly, that's all poppycock. Yes, someone who walked into a Hot Topic one day a straight-laced jock and walked out a harDCore Goth Punk would be a doofus, and deserving of every slur that could be marshalled against them. But almost nobody does that. Plus, 90% of the music sold there is stuff you can't find at the Sam Goody at the other end of the mall, all on indie labels and unavailable otherwise to the market they serve. And where else in the suburbs am I supposed to find Misfits records on vinyl?
Besides, Hot Topic is but a descendant of commerical enterprises that have been selling Punk style from the masses since the beginning: from Commander Salamander to Malcom McClaren's Sex, there have always been stores offering instant punk uniforms. Nor were they ashamed about it: shifting the culture was the whole point. The Clash didn't form their own record label and sell their stuff out of the back of the tour van; they signed to CBS Records in 1976 for £100,000. This DIY-purity, we-hate-every-band-that-more-that-50-people-know-about routine didn't come until the early-to-mid 80's, after British Punk had imploded and American Punk utterly failed to make it on the radio.
A lot of people like to edit that out of their thinking, and in most cases that leads to a lot of treacly diatribes as a part of a lot of formulaic songs by a lot of punk-by-numbers bands. But occasionally a band will dismount its high horse and take a righteous slash at its own self-righteousness, and so did Minor Threat, by all accounts one of the preachiest bands of a preachy genre, do in '82 with "Cashing In."
First off, the song starts with a bouncy, almost hilarious bass line that indicates a departure from the wholesale ranting that's come before. Ian "My Coolness Weighs Upon Me Like An Albatross" MacKaye starts mock-laughing, and we could be sure he'd be pulling his moustache if he hadn't had all hair as completely removed from his body as an Egyptian priest. And then the swirling guitars come in, and our song is complete: awaiting only the words of Ian the Great, Gatekeeper to Henry Rollins' Scenemaster (enjoy that image for a moment before pressing on):
How do you do?
I don't think that we've met
My name is Ian,
I'm in Minor Threat
Yes, it's a first person song, which means SARCASM writ as large as a movie promo. But it's a first person song about himself, which means MacKaye is being sarcastic about himself and his work, which is a damn fine thing for any rock or pop star to be doing, and for which he should be commended. After a somewhat garbled line about "making money out of every set," we have the chorus:
We don't care
We don't pose
We'll steal your money
We'll steal your show
This last is song by what appears to be the whole band, or at any rate, multiple voices, giving the impression of mass input. No more is merely the Magnificent Ian to be subject to the acid disdain of a harDCore song, nor even merely the band Minor Threat, but the whole harDCore scene, and, by implication, the whole punk movement, promising solidarity but still competing for the necessities of their careers.
Now if the song went thusly for a few turns and then stomped on the brakes, it would already be one of the better tracks in Minor Threat's catalogue, but it doesn't do that. Instead, the song dramatically shifts, in tempo and style, into an elongated outro, and in function from a satire to a requiem:
There's no place like home
There's no place like home
There's no place like home
So where am I?
This repeats, with slightly different emphasis on different syllables each time, until the instruments climax and drain away, and Ian actually sings the last line, actually uses his voicebox as a mutual intrument instead of a megaphone, and the self and the band and the scene and the movement fade away, the Jeremiad that this song has been dead with them, leaving only a desolate wasteland, fit for Lamentations.
Naturally, Minor Threat were done after this. Saint Ian of the Community Center does not tarry with things that he deems impure. But for a brief shining moment before running with the eternal experiment Fugazi, His Punkness actually destroyed his adolescence so that he could grow into something else, and missed it as it went. That's more up-front honesty than any pop song has dared in a long time.
#15
Friday, October 21, 2005
Greatest Songs #15
The White Stripes - "Ball and Biscuit" (2003, from Elephant)
"'Natch," think anybody who reads this and knows me personally. I've made no bones about being a big Stripes fan, ever since I got White Blood Cells. I liked them at the time because they were Rock and they were sharp, and they had good gimmicks (boy/girl, no bass, etc.). I started to love them after Elephant, a slab of gutbucket Rock n'Roll that was much more focused than White Blood Cells, which wandered in the second half. I had to laugh at the poor denuded bastards who bought the album on the basis of "Seven Nation Army" the dance-club single, only find themselves awash in feedback and other bluesman blowtorchery. Caveat Emptor, ya dinks. It ain't like it's hard to find out what a band sounds like before you plunk cash down.
But back to that bluesman blowtorchery. "Ball and Biscuit," has long been my favorite song from a) this album, b) this band, c) the whole rock revival of the early 00's. It's not hard to understand why. It's Jack White giving carte blanch to his lust for guitar wankery, 5 minutes of pure distorted sonic clash. Does the riff and chorus repeat? A little. Does it demonstrate a whole lotta imagination? Not too much, no. Do I care? Nah.
The Stripes are a glorious example of rock primitivism, not of the Rousseauist noble-savage free-your-mind school of someone like the Fugs, but true primitivism, that seeks art in the dirt of the land, for its own sake. How else would you explain the opening lyrics?
Coming from Julian Casablancas, or even Howlin' Pelle Almqvist, this would be at best inconspicuous and at worst risible. Coming from the guy who sang "I can tell that we are gonna be friends," it's attention-getting, hearkening back to folk myths and the Bible (King David was a seventh son), a statement of power.
If you understand that, then you understand that Get Behind Me Satan isn't a departure, it's a logical progression of their sound, bringing in marimbas and mandolins and sweet chimes to explore the other connections of folk and rock and blues music. Jack and Meg will never have the polish of an REM, nor will they be burdened with the same secondhand Voice-of-a-Generation status. While the Stripes are working a similar heartland-rock melieu, everyone understands that they speak for no one but themselves. Frankly, that's refreshing to see.
#16
"'Natch," think anybody who reads this and knows me personally. I've made no bones about being a big Stripes fan, ever since I got White Blood Cells. I liked them at the time because they were Rock and they were sharp, and they had good gimmicks (boy/girl, no bass, etc.). I started to love them after Elephant, a slab of gutbucket Rock n'Roll that was much more focused than White Blood Cells, which wandered in the second half. I had to laugh at the poor denuded bastards who bought the album on the basis of "Seven Nation Army" the dance-club single, only find themselves awash in feedback and other bluesman blowtorchery. Caveat Emptor, ya dinks. It ain't like it's hard to find out what a band sounds like before you plunk cash down.
But back to that bluesman blowtorchery. "Ball and Biscuit," has long been my favorite song from a) this album, b) this band, c) the whole rock revival of the early 00's. It's not hard to understand why. It's Jack White giving carte blanch to his lust for guitar wankery, 5 minutes of pure distorted sonic clash. Does the riff and chorus repeat? A little. Does it demonstrate a whole lotta imagination? Not too much, no. Do I care? Nah.
The Stripes are a glorious example of rock primitivism, not of the Rousseauist noble-savage free-your-mind school of someone like the Fugs, but true primitivism, that seeks art in the dirt of the land, for its own sake. How else would you explain the opening lyrics?
It's quite possible that I'm your third man, girl
But it's a fact that I'm the seventh son
Coming from Julian Casablancas, or even Howlin' Pelle Almqvist, this would be at best inconspicuous and at worst risible. Coming from the guy who sang "I can tell that we are gonna be friends," it's attention-getting, hearkening back to folk myths and the Bible (King David was a seventh son), a statement of power.
If you understand that, then you understand that Get Behind Me Satan isn't a departure, it's a logical progression of their sound, bringing in marimbas and mandolins and sweet chimes to explore the other connections of folk and rock and blues music. Jack and Meg will never have the polish of an REM, nor will they be burdened with the same secondhand Voice-of-a-Generation status. While the Stripes are working a similar heartland-rock melieu, everyone understands that they speak for no one but themselves. Frankly, that's refreshing to see.
#16
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Greatest Songs: #16
Television: "Glory" (1978, from Adventure)
Jon Savage wrote in England's Dreaming that after Punk, "pop time became forever splintered, post-modern". What he means by that is that not only do the classics never go out of style, nothing ever does, not really. Deep within the shaggy fury of the Grunge 90's, for example, 80's New Wave was merely sleeping, waiting for its chance to revive blazers and treble. I have students who weren't even born in the 80's who get very offended and hurt when I say bad things about Journey. And why shouldn't they? Journey's still releasing CD's (of Greatest Hits) and DVD's of Concerts all the way to 1997. They haven't really gone anywhere, except from the Latest Edition of What's Cool Now!, which you could argue they were never really on.
The truth is, there are only four Styles of Rock: Mod, Rocker, Hippie, and Geek. Rocker is the oldest, and has a direct line of descent from Chuck Berry straight through to the Hives, in which it has deliberately changed hardly at all. Hippie is anything involving folk styles, acid dreams, and spiritual ponderings. Geek runs the gamut from the virtuoso noodlings of a Steve Vai or Jeff Beck to the almost religious fervor that bands like Rush, Weezer or the aforementioned Journey evokes from the nerd set.
Oh, shut up. I'm getting to the song.
These four styles can be freely used by bands or even scenes; the Jam Band movment, for example is equal parts Hippie and Geek. Punk was a lot of Rocker and a bit of Mod. New Wave was mostly Mod, with a touch of Geek. Metal is Rocker attitude, Geek stylings, and a lot of neo-Classical pretensions. Et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum.
But what is Mod? Mod is Urban Rock, cool and detached, poetic and trebly, sharp and oddly sad. The Beatles were a Mod band before they turned Hippie, and even then they could never completely shake their Pop roots. The Who are the archetypal Mod band, who went down the Beatles path, then tried to be Rockers, and stopped being interesting a long time ago. Early Mod owed much to Rocker, and current Mod bands like Interpol and the Strokes owe a lot to Television.
"Glory" from their second album, is especially noteworthy as a forerunner of sounds to come. You can tell that the Strokes copied their guitar antics from Verlaine's and Lloyd's up-and-down, theme-and-variation routine. The rythmn section however, is not ignored, indeed, the soft funk of Fred Smith's bass and Billy Ficca's drums are propulsive and soothing throughout. The combination of these creates a joyful noise. It's pretty, the way Kind of Blue or Radiohead is pretty; it twinkles and grooves and smirks.
Tom Verlaine regarded himself as a poet, and wanted his lyrics to be a step forward in the movement of Rock Poetry. However, his voice reminds one of a tortured goat, so I've never paid much mind to his lyrics. I recall phrases like "lips so red" and "blah blah blah", but the real standout is the chorus:
Hardly genius, but it's got a certain touch to it; the longing for the eternal, the beautiful, the true, the 1/3 More FREE! That puts it outside the mostly self-involved subject matter of New Wave. For that, and for it's sweet tone, it makes the list.
#17
Jon Savage wrote in England's Dreaming that after Punk, "pop time became forever splintered, post-modern". What he means by that is that not only do the classics never go out of style, nothing ever does, not really. Deep within the shaggy fury of the Grunge 90's, for example, 80's New Wave was merely sleeping, waiting for its chance to revive blazers and treble. I have students who weren't even born in the 80's who get very offended and hurt when I say bad things about Journey. And why shouldn't they? Journey's still releasing CD's (of Greatest Hits) and DVD's of Concerts all the way to 1997. They haven't really gone anywhere, except from the Latest Edition of What's Cool Now!, which you could argue they were never really on.
The truth is, there are only four Styles of Rock: Mod, Rocker, Hippie, and Geek. Rocker is the oldest, and has a direct line of descent from Chuck Berry straight through to the Hives, in which it has deliberately changed hardly at all. Hippie is anything involving folk styles, acid dreams, and spiritual ponderings. Geek runs the gamut from the virtuoso noodlings of a Steve Vai or Jeff Beck to the almost religious fervor that bands like Rush, Weezer or the aforementioned Journey evokes from the nerd set.
Oh, shut up. I'm getting to the song.
These four styles can be freely used by bands or even scenes; the Jam Band movment, for example is equal parts Hippie and Geek. Punk was a lot of Rocker and a bit of Mod. New Wave was mostly Mod, with a touch of Geek. Metal is Rocker attitude, Geek stylings, and a lot of neo-Classical pretensions. Et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum.
But what is Mod? Mod is Urban Rock, cool and detached, poetic and trebly, sharp and oddly sad. The Beatles were a Mod band before they turned Hippie, and even then they could never completely shake their Pop roots. The Who are the archetypal Mod band, who went down the Beatles path, then tried to be Rockers, and stopped being interesting a long time ago. Early Mod owed much to Rocker, and current Mod bands like Interpol and the Strokes owe a lot to Television.
"Glory" from their second album, is especially noteworthy as a forerunner of sounds to come. You can tell that the Strokes copied their guitar antics from Verlaine's and Lloyd's up-and-down, theme-and-variation routine. The rythmn section however, is not ignored, indeed, the soft funk of Fred Smith's bass and Billy Ficca's drums are propulsive and soothing throughout. The combination of these creates a joyful noise. It's pretty, the way Kind of Blue or Radiohead is pretty; it twinkles and grooves and smirks.
Tom Verlaine regarded himself as a poet, and wanted his lyrics to be a step forward in the movement of Rock Poetry. However, his voice reminds one of a tortured goat, so I've never paid much mind to his lyrics. I recall phrases like "lips so red" and "blah blah blah", but the real standout is the chorus:
When I
see the glory,
I don't
gotta worry.
Hardly genius, but it's got a certain touch to it; the longing for the eternal, the beautiful, the true, the 1/3 More FREE! That puts it outside the mostly self-involved subject matter of New Wave. For that, and for it's sweet tone, it makes the list.
#17
Monday, October 17, 2005
Greatest Songs: #17
The Reverend Horton Heat - "The Devil's Chasing Me" (1992, from The Full Custom Gospel Sounds of the Reverend Horton Heat)
Pop genres are stupid. The difference between Muddy Waters and Franz Ferdinand is utterly minute, scarcely more than a nuance, yet they are treated as though one is watercolor and one is expressionist sculpture. And subgenres are even stupider. How anyone is supposed to tell the difference between hardcore, slo-core, grind-core, or death metal, and black metal, or electro and hip-hop, and talk about it intelligently for more than two minutes is beyond me. They're all marketing categories, and while they may be useful for communicating to consumers, they're meaningless in terms of evaluating artistic merit.
For example, "the Devil's Chasing Me" by the Good Reverend H.H. Some call it Rockabilly, some call it Psychobilly. The latter name exists because people associate Rockabilly with the 50's, and the 50's are bad, mmmkay? Also, Psychobilly is low-fi, dark-imaged, and makes gleeful noise about unpleasant things, which is why Screamin' Jay Hawkins is Psychobilly. Except he's not.
Right, the song, the song. Beautiful reverb guitar wash, great swingin' backbeat, and a tone that shifts from Robert Johnson horror-of-the-soul-on-the-lost-highway to winky-wink devil-in-velvet imagery. Most of the Reverend's tunes are about being delightfully naughty, a big heaping plateful of sex, drugs, and big fast cars burning a hole in your eardrum. This one isn't. It's about the cost for all that wild living, the sinking suspicion that no matter how much you stuff into yourself, it will never be enough, that you'll lose the taste for everything you thought you wanted, that no matter how fast you run from the devil, if you don't change yourself, you'll run right into his mouth.
Do I contend that RHH had such in mind when he penned the song? No, but I don't contend otherwise, either. For all I know he heard Jimbo lay down a baseline, felt chills up his spine, and then listened to some old blues 78's to get ideas. It's such a well-worn groove that anyone could probably come up with something along those lines. But if Good Charlotte did it, it would be a parody, unintentional or not, and it would sound terrible. This one doesn't, because it has too much soul, which Good Charlotte confuses with volume.
That's "soul" in the sense of bouncy groove and soul in the sense of rational principle of life, and soul in the sense of that which remains after death. This song has it, in spades. It may be a sorrowful, lamenting soul, that sounds like it won't ever escape what it's done to itself, but sometimes that's the only way to know a soul is there.
#18
Pop genres are stupid. The difference between Muddy Waters and Franz Ferdinand is utterly minute, scarcely more than a nuance, yet they are treated as though one is watercolor and one is expressionist sculpture. And subgenres are even stupider. How anyone is supposed to tell the difference between hardcore, slo-core, grind-core, or death metal, and black metal, or electro and hip-hop, and talk about it intelligently for more than two minutes is beyond me. They're all marketing categories, and while they may be useful for communicating to consumers, they're meaningless in terms of evaluating artistic merit.
For example, "the Devil's Chasing Me" by the Good Reverend H.H. Some call it Rockabilly, some call it Psychobilly. The latter name exists because people associate Rockabilly with the 50's, and the 50's are bad, mmmkay? Also, Psychobilly is low-fi, dark-imaged, and makes gleeful noise about unpleasant things, which is why Screamin' Jay Hawkins is Psychobilly. Except he's not.
Right, the song, the song. Beautiful reverb guitar wash, great swingin' backbeat, and a tone that shifts from Robert Johnson horror-of-the-soul-on-the-lost-highway to winky-wink devil-in-velvet imagery. Most of the Reverend's tunes are about being delightfully naughty, a big heaping plateful of sex, drugs, and big fast cars burning a hole in your eardrum. This one isn't. It's about the cost for all that wild living, the sinking suspicion that no matter how much you stuff into yourself, it will never be enough, that you'll lose the taste for everything you thought you wanted, that no matter how fast you run from the devil, if you don't change yourself, you'll run right into his mouth.
Do I contend that RHH had such in mind when he penned the song? No, but I don't contend otherwise, either. For all I know he heard Jimbo lay down a baseline, felt chills up his spine, and then listened to some old blues 78's to get ideas. It's such a well-worn groove that anyone could probably come up with something along those lines. But if Good Charlotte did it, it would be a parody, unintentional or not, and it would sound terrible. This one doesn't, because it has too much soul, which Good Charlotte confuses with volume.
That's "soul" in the sense of bouncy groove and soul in the sense of rational principle of life, and soul in the sense of that which remains after death. This song has it, in spades. It may be a sorrowful, lamenting soul, that sounds like it won't ever escape what it's done to itself, but sometimes that's the only way to know a soul is there.
#18
Friday, October 14, 2005
Greatest Songs: #18
Beastie Boys - "And Me" (1998, from Hello Nasty)
The great thing about the Beastie Boys, on their first five albums, anyway, is that they always shifted their sound. Having birthed rap-rock on Licenced To Ill, they begat the Sample Age on Paul's Boutique, became a real band with real instruments again on Check Your Head, and gave us the Buddha-Booty-Shaker with Ill Communications. Yet each one is definitively a Beastie Boys album, and a handful of tracks would be at home on any one of them.
Hello Nasty, depending on who you ask, is either the Beastie's Exile on Main Street, or their Goat's Head Soup, either their peak or the beginning of the inevitable decline. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference (isn't the peak, by definition, the start of going down?), and sometimes, it's harder to care. At any rate, their are several choice cuts here, and I've picked the one that did the best.
Oh, but surely not. That two-note vamp? The reverbed vocals? The cartoony sound effects? Yes, yes, and yes. We've all heard the party-to-the-break-of-dawn club grooves, you know, "No Sleep Til Brooklyn" Parts 2, 4, 5, and 6. On To the Five Boroughs they filled a whole album with it. I love them as much as the next man, but they aren't the best things the B-Boys have done. This is.
First of all, it's mellow. Thirdly, it's funky. Sixth and lastly, its lyrics express a simple idea with vast possibilities; the definition of poetry. And to conclude, it's all of these at once.
The first is achieved by the aforementioned two-note vamp. The shifting beat and phased-in effects accomplish the third. The sixth depend on iterations of "Once again I'm all wrapped up in me," a commentary on the great human paradox: the more we focus on ourselves, the weaker and weaker we become. It is only when devoting the self, at least in part, to something held in higher value (truth, justice, freedome, country, God) that we tap into our potential. It's a good deal more persuasive than the Earth-mother rants they subjected us to on Ill Communications (remember, rhyming "commercial" with "commercial" is a sign of your PASSION, not of your STUNTED VOCABULARY).
Like the best of their work, the song doesn't stay put, but constantly grows and gurgles and horns into a wonderful piece of fusion. And you know what? I DO wish I could be outside playing basketbal, in the reign, and not get wet. Wouldn't that be great?
#19
The great thing about the Beastie Boys, on their first five albums, anyway, is that they always shifted their sound. Having birthed rap-rock on Licenced To Ill, they begat the Sample Age on Paul's Boutique, became a real band with real instruments again on Check Your Head, and gave us the Buddha-Booty-Shaker with Ill Communications. Yet each one is definitively a Beastie Boys album, and a handful of tracks would be at home on any one of them.
Hello Nasty, depending on who you ask, is either the Beastie's Exile on Main Street, or their Goat's Head Soup, either their peak or the beginning of the inevitable decline. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference (isn't the peak, by definition, the start of going down?), and sometimes, it's harder to care. At any rate, their are several choice cuts here, and I've picked the one that did the best.
Oh, but surely not. That two-note vamp? The reverbed vocals? The cartoony sound effects? Yes, yes, and yes. We've all heard the party-to-the-break-of-dawn club grooves, you know, "No Sleep Til Brooklyn" Parts 2, 4, 5, and 6. On To the Five Boroughs they filled a whole album with it. I love them as much as the next man, but they aren't the best things the B-Boys have done. This is.
First of all, it's mellow. Thirdly, it's funky. Sixth and lastly, its lyrics express a simple idea with vast possibilities; the definition of poetry. And to conclude, it's all of these at once.
The first is achieved by the aforementioned two-note vamp. The shifting beat and phased-in effects accomplish the third. The sixth depend on iterations of "Once again I'm all wrapped up in me," a commentary on the great human paradox: the more we focus on ourselves, the weaker and weaker we become. It is only when devoting the self, at least in part, to something held in higher value (truth, justice, freedome, country, God) that we tap into our potential. It's a good deal more persuasive than the Earth-mother rants they subjected us to on Ill Communications (remember, rhyming "commercial" with "commercial" is a sign of your PASSION, not of your STUNTED VOCABULARY).
Like the best of their work, the song doesn't stay put, but constantly grows and gurgles and horns into a wonderful piece of fusion. And you know what? I DO wish I could be outside playing basketbal, in the reign, and not get wet. Wouldn't that be great?
#19
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Greatest Songs #19
The Rolling Stones - "Shattered" (1978, from Some Girls)
It's fitting that the most punk of the Stones' tunes is the one with the most dominant bass line. In early punk, in the form of Pere Ubu, the Ramones, and the Clash, the bass carried the melody while the guitar(s) created a whirl of ringing noise. So it is with "Shattered", an apres-moi-le-deluge screed from what many consider the last Stones album of true artistic merit, and doubtless the one which encouraged Mick to copy Bowie's Young Americans soul-music phase, resulting in a slew of records for CBS that even stalward apologists loathe.
But enough history. "Shattered" transcends its album, dribbling contempt on the rotting corpse of late-70's New York City ("Bite the Big Apple...don't mind the maggots," sneers Mick), the sycophants of the rock scene, and even the self, without sounding weary at all, merely weathered. I almost went with "Respectable" from the same album, but "Respectable," good as it is, sharp as it is, is too much of a kiss-off song to really approach the awareness of "Shattered." In '78 the Stones were being (justly, based on prior product) derided as dinosaurs, 60's leftovers. Some Girls was meant to be the rejoinder to such. But the last song on the album has the singer describing himself as torn up, run over, food for the mindless. Meanwhile, the rest of the band chimes in with the kind of tongue-in-cheek doo-wop ("Doop, Sha-dooby, Shattered, Shattered") the Beatles employed on "Revolution 1".
It's a joke, but who's getting it? The honkies fleeing as the crime wave's goin' up, up, up, up, UP? The friends' comin' round to flatter, flatter, flatter? The Puerto Rican Girls who are just DYIN' to meetchoo? Methinks not. Methinks I hear the Stones hitting the end of their idea train, and just deciding to "Pile it up, pile it high on the platter," and keep serving it hot.
Which, according to many, they've been doing. And we've been buying. And but few of the bands that have come since have done more, either.
Can't say they didn't warn us.
#20
It's fitting that the most punk of the Stones' tunes is the one with the most dominant bass line. In early punk, in the form of Pere Ubu, the Ramones, and the Clash, the bass carried the melody while the guitar(s) created a whirl of ringing noise. So it is with "Shattered", an apres-moi-le-deluge screed from what many consider the last Stones album of true artistic merit, and doubtless the one which encouraged Mick to copy Bowie's Young Americans soul-music phase, resulting in a slew of records for CBS that even stalward apologists loathe.
But enough history. "Shattered" transcends its album, dribbling contempt on the rotting corpse of late-70's New York City ("Bite the Big Apple...don't mind the maggots," sneers Mick), the sycophants of the rock scene, and even the self, without sounding weary at all, merely weathered. I almost went with "Respectable" from the same album, but "Respectable," good as it is, sharp as it is, is too much of a kiss-off song to really approach the awareness of "Shattered." In '78 the Stones were being (justly, based on prior product) derided as dinosaurs, 60's leftovers. Some Girls was meant to be the rejoinder to such. But the last song on the album has the singer describing himself as torn up, run over, food for the mindless. Meanwhile, the rest of the band chimes in with the kind of tongue-in-cheek doo-wop ("Doop, Sha-dooby, Shattered, Shattered") the Beatles employed on "Revolution 1".
It's a joke, but who's getting it? The honkies fleeing as the crime wave's goin' up, up, up, up, UP? The friends' comin' round to flatter, flatter, flatter? The Puerto Rican Girls who are just DYIN' to meetchoo? Methinks not. Methinks I hear the Stones hitting the end of their idea train, and just deciding to "Pile it up, pile it high on the platter," and keep serving it hot.
Which, according to many, they've been doing. And we've been buying. And but few of the bands that have come since have done more, either.
Can't say they didn't warn us.
#20
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Greatest Songs: #20
Pursuant to Yesterday's entry, Here's the first song on my list of the 20 greatest from my lifetime and my collection:
The Exploited - "Race Against Time" (1984) (From Don't Forget the Chaos)
Mid-80's offering from one of several loud, laddish mohawk bands of that era, most of which I've never bothered with. The Exploited, best known for squeezing a whole song out of three words ("Sex and Violence"), squeezed a ferocious, nightmareish groove onto this particular track, rendering it heavy and fast without descending into the unlistenably distorted, brutal wankery for which so many hardcore bands are justly derided. It's the perfect kind of song to get you going in the morning when you'd really rather not, and to keep you awake when you're zipping up the NJ Turnpike at 9 pm on a Friday, trying to make the city before the evening is all gone.
Some might complain that you can't understand the lyrics, which is true, but which is also irrelevant. I'm not going to pick songs for a deftly-rendered bon mot snuck in at the end of a stanza. 90% of pop lyrics are banal, 5% are unintelligible, and 4% are so esoteric as to contain no meaning worth exploring. Sure that remaining 1% are great, but to me, they're an occasional bonus, not a criterion. So Wattie's shouting about some Race Against Time, and lacks the consonants to make anything else clearer. So what? The song itself is racing, letting up only at its abrupt end. Racing in the song, racing in the lyrics. What else do you need?
The Exploited - "Race Against Time" (1984) (From Don't Forget the Chaos)
Mid-80's offering from one of several loud, laddish mohawk bands of that era, most of which I've never bothered with. The Exploited, best known for squeezing a whole song out of three words ("Sex and Violence"), squeezed a ferocious, nightmareish groove onto this particular track, rendering it heavy and fast without descending into the unlistenably distorted, brutal wankery for which so many hardcore bands are justly derided. It's the perfect kind of song to get you going in the morning when you'd really rather not, and to keep you awake when you're zipping up the NJ Turnpike at 9 pm on a Friday, trying to make the city before the evening is all gone.
Some might complain that you can't understand the lyrics, which is true, but which is also irrelevant. I'm not going to pick songs for a deftly-rendered bon mot snuck in at the end of a stanza. 90% of pop lyrics are banal, 5% are unintelligible, and 4% are so esoteric as to contain no meaning worth exploring. Sure that remaining 1% are great, but to me, they're an occasional bonus, not a criterion. So Wattie's shouting about some Race Against Time, and lacks the consonants to make anything else clearer. So what? The song itself is racing, letting up only at its abrupt end. Racing in the song, racing in the lyrics. What else do you need?
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