I'd Love to Turn You On #204 - Nellie McKay - Normal As Blueberry Pie: A Tribute to Doris Day

Nellie McKay is a jazz-schooled, showtune-raised singer-songwriter whose stylistic tour-de-force debut double-album Get Away From Me was recorded when she was only 21 (or possibly just 19, depending on what reports you read), released by Sony Music after a bidding competition with other labels, with the Beatles’ engineer Geoff Emerick producing. That’s a lot to live down on future releases. And sure enough, the failure of the album to go gold despite the record’s widespread acclaim and dazzling diversity (or maddeningly hyperactive eclecticism, depending on your point of view) meant that she wouldn’t coast as readily into a music career as her talents deserved.

And talented she definitely is - a multi-instrumentalist and piano player with jazz chops, a singer of pure and natural ease and a big voice, a lyricist with sarcastic wit and strong feminist and progressive ideas, a songwriter who knows jazz, Broadway, varied styles of pop from classic to modern, and yet isn’t averse to dropping rock and rap into her music when it suits her. But her métier is the classic pop vernacular where songsmiths use whatever means they choose to get their point across - melded, of course, with her interest in jazz and pre-rock era pop music.

After fighting her label to release her first album a double album, she fought yet again to make the second a double album and Sony balked – one double album that could’ve fit on a single CD was made by the label under duress, but they weren’t about to do it again and they dropped her, so she released it on her own label. The next time out she tightened things up to an excellent single disc, Obligatory Villagers, tightened the arrangements as well, and traded in pop guests from the last album, like Cyndi Lauper and kd lang, for jazz cats, like saxophonist Dave Liebman and the sadly, recently deceased pianist/vocalist Bob Dorough (best known nowadays for his work on Schoolhouse Rock). And it seemed like a perfect fit – her crafty, jazz-school arrangements and witty, smart lyrics were tailor-made for musicians like these, but the album still didn’t break her through.

It was after the release of this album that I saw McKay live at the now-defunct Trilogy Lounge in Boulder. After three albums of her eccentricity I wasn’t sure what to expect, and I got this (if memory serves): McKay with keyboard and ukulele only, a great voice, great song selection across all three albums, and a kookiness that bordered on ADD behavior, her mind and between-song banter flitting from topic to topic until she lost her train of thought and got back on with the next song where she focused her energy until the next break. During one break she called her brother on her cell to wish him a happy birthday – or pretended to maybe as a piece of performance art? Hard to say for sure, but it’s what she does – jumps from idea to idea, never sitting still long enough to get pigeonholed. So what came next in her career? A tribute to Doris Day, naturally, released by the jazz-associated Verve label, which had put in a bid for McKay’s contract in the first place.

How does Doris Day’s image as a mild and complacent Midwestern housewife fit in with McKay’s world of parental advisory stickers, hip-hop influence, and explicit feminism though? Aside from a love for the verbal wit of classic pop (as well as a longtime commitment to animal activism), McKay’s got a basic love of melody and the voice to pull off the kinds of tunes that Day wrapped her big voice around. Taking on a dozen songs that Day recorded during her long career (only one of them, “Sentimental Journey,” was a big hit for Day) and adding one original, McKay tackles tunes from such lauded songsmiths as Rodgers and Hammerstein, George & Ira Gershwin, Johnny Mercer and others, and, unexpectedly enough, plays it straight throughout. She’s not here to mock, but to celebrate the direct beauty of these melodies, the craft and (sometimes) sentimentality of these words. In short, she’s playing it “normal as blueberry pie” here and it sounds great. If you compare to Doris Day’s versions, Nellie McKay’s are sleeker, wilder and looser, unburdened of Day’s orchestral backings and given jazzier, more rhythmically exciting readings, but readings where McKay shares Day’s clear diction and enunciation and, of course, her big voice putting the songs across. So from love songs like “The Very Thought of You” (on which McKay plays every instrument), “Mean to Me” and the album-highlight “Wonderful Guy” over to dance tunes like “Crazy Rhythm” and “Dig It” to a novelty tune like Calamity Jane’s “Black Hills of Dakota,” Nellie McKay doesn’t update, undercut, or do anything but sing (and arrange, and perform) these tunes. Maybe there’s a wink here and there, as in the sotto voce asides in “Dig It” but she’s never making fun – she’s just loving the songs. This puts the focus on the songs and the words themselves, which means that those coming to this expecting a sendup can learn not only what made these songs popular, but also what made Day popular – there’s a smart, strong woman performing them and she’s easy to identify with. And though McKay’s arrangements may go further than Day could or would have gone with them at the time, they do no disrespect.

            And where has Nellie McKay gone since then? Another album of originals for Verve (Home Sweet Mobile Home) followed in 2010, then McKay disappeared for a bit, returning in 2015 on yet another label with an excellent album of renditions of 60’s classics, My Weekly Reader. She was quiet again for a while but I got inspired to write this up only to find while I was writing that her new album, Sister Orchid (a collection of jazz standards on, again, another label), comes out in three weeks. Be sure to check it out, but start here with what may well be her best album.

-         Patrick Brown

I’d Love To Turn You On At The Movies #190 - Pink Floyd - Live At Pompeii

     When first released in America in 1973, Pink Floyd Live At Pompeii was a moderate success, playing in art theatres, on campuses and at midnight movie showings. That was where I first saw it - at the Vogue Theatre on old South Pearl Street (now condos) at a midnight showing. Beginning with a heartbeat pulse in blackness, the scene finally opens with a camera shot above the ancient ruins of the amphitheater at Pompeii. The title wasn’t hyperbole or poetic nonsense -this was actually psychedelic, art-rock rock band Pink Floyd playing in the audience-free remains of a 6^th Century Italian ruin – an absolutely mind-blowing conceit from the word go. The ruins themselves make for the most cosmic of backdrops, yet director Adrian Maben goes further, filming Pompeii’s famous active volcano spewing lava and boiling mud, and having the members of Pink Floyd stroll through this alien landscape. Maben also includes shots of the world-class statues, tiles and frescos (some highly erotic) found in the ruins of Pompeii. These elements, along with some additional footage of the band playing in a French studio are masterfully woven together to encapsulate everything that Pink Floyd was at this time; inventive, powerful, ambitious, and uniquely standing on the precipice of world superstardom. Yes, remember, this was before their groundbreaking Dark Side Of The Moon album. In fact, in some ways, the overwhelming success of that album blunted some of the movie’s impact on public consciousness. The director’s cut of the movie includes extended scenes of the band working on Dark Side in the studio, which, while fascinating, change the vibe of the film.

For me, it is the original hour-long version of the film that I go back to over and over. It is an important milestone in my personal understanding of why, ultimately, rock music matters. To see one of my favorite bands, and one that has stood the test of time, in this context, shoulder to shoulder with the great artifacts of Western art and culture was both humbling and thrilling. Musically, Pink Floyd play some of their most adventurous music with authority and improvisational abandon. Numbers like “Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun” and “Careful With That Axe Eugene” are the perfect combination of musical convention and cutting-edge, avant experimentation to match the timeless setting. The scene during the song “A Saucerful Of Secrets” where Roger Waters stands in front of and strikes giant gong as the sun sets behind him in the ruins of an ancient stadium while guitarist Dave Gilmour sits barefoot and shirtless in the ancient dirt of Pompeii drawing the most extraordinary sounds out of his instrument are about as memorable and historically impactful as any scene in any music movie.

The musical heart of Pink Floyd Live At Pompeii are the three numbers drawn from their 1971 masterpiece Meddle. The film is bookended with their side long epic “Echoes” which pretty much defines forward-thinking ambition in modern music at this point in history. Again, the historical surroundings meld perfectly with Floyd’s intense, throbbing composition. “One Of These Days” finds the production team down to one working camera, thus the shots revolve around drummer Nick Mason, providing a dizzying swirl of movement that beautifully illustrates the excitement of the song.

I definitely recommend watching the entire director’s cut of this film, because it offers such a rare glimpse into the studio magic (and sometimes tedium) that goes into making a classic album, but, ultimately, it is the actual footage of Pink Floyd playing in the ruins of Pompeii that provides the life-altering experience in this movie. I’ve never gotten over it. To this day, every time I hear that heartbeat opening I am transported back to the body of a 16 year-old sitting in a darkened theatre about to be shown that popular music could be about something deeper than “ooh baby I love you.”

-         Paul Epstein

I'd Love to Turn You On #203 - Jamie Lidell - Multiply

        The only thing I knew about Jamie Lidell in 2005 was that he was on Warp Records and he made a lot of bleep-bloop electronic music that was not for me. I liked a few artists on Warp at the time (like, Autechre and Aphex Twin and that’s pretty much it), but for the most part, that style of electronic music did nothing for me. Still does nothing for me, really. So when Multiply came out in that year, I decided to put it on for in-store play at the record store where I worked at the time. I figured that it would be filled with random computer noises that I could easily ignore, and maybe we’d sell a copy in the process. Little did I know that when I hit play that day that it would become one of my most listened to albums of all-time.

      

Allow me to explain: Multiply is not just a change in direction for Lidell. With one prior solo full-length under his belt and a handful of releases from his duo Super_Collider with fellow electronic artist Christian Vogel, Lidell had already made a name for himself in techno and electronica circles. However, on Multiply, he makes a complete 180-degree turn into a new genre with the addition of vocals to these new compositions. What makes this addition so striking is that the man had evidently been hiding an incredibly soulful crooning voice and a knack for writing clever lyrics all these years, giving this album the soul and spirit of classic Motown or Stax. He puts these hitherto unknown skills to use with a dynamic blend of acoustic and electronic instrumentation, while still retaining his unique ear for modern dance styles.

            It takes a minute. The opener, “You Got Me Up,” is a short little dance number with some effective disco-style vocals. But it’s not enough of a departure to really predict what’s in store with the rest of the album. It’s only when the second track, the stellar and infectious title cut, kicks in with its abrupt drum break intro that you realize that this guy is decidedly not fucking around. The influences here span across decades and across genres. There are elements of Funkadelic (“When I Come Back Around”), Otis Redding (“What Is It This Time?”), Night Beat-era Sam Cooke (“Game for Fools”) and Prince (“New Me”). Where his prior talent as a turntablist/laptop artist really comes into play are in tracks like “A Little Bit More” where he effectively uses a loop of his own vocals to act as a layer of percussion throughout the song. The Motown-esque “Music Will Not Last” showcases his uncanny ability to harmonize (albeit, with himself), and the closing track “Game for Fools” is quite possibly a better version of an Al Green ballad than even the Reverend himself could do these days.

            And let’s back up a second. Again, a mere three years before the release of Multiply, Lidell was pretty much doing straight-up IDM exclusively and playing second stage on festivals like Sonar with no name DJs. Since Multiply, he’s released four more phenomenal neo-soul records that would put Harry Connick Jr. to shame. On his most recent, 2016’s Building a Beginning, he’s even ditched the electronic instruments altogether in favor of a live band.

These days, you can’t spit without hitting a nerdy-looking white guy trying to sound like a classic soul singer.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a new release within the last few years that sounded like Rufus or like Cameo, and then looked up the artist and found that he was a bespectacled white dude mugging to the camera like a total asshole. It would be kind of funny if it wasn’t so infuriating, even more so when I find myself actually digging some of these artists. I’m not saying that in 2005 there wasn’t any of this. Hell, Sean Tillman was doing his Sean Na Na/Har Mar Superstar thing long before 2005. Nor am I saying that Jamie Lidell was the first to successfully mix electronic music and R&B. There was a time in the 90s when I couldn’t get away from that shitty Jamiroquai song to save my life. What I am saying is that Multiply spoke to me in a way that I hadn’t to been spoken to before. And I am forever grateful that I gave this album a chance and didn’t see the Warp Records logo on the back of the album and ignore it like I’d done so many times before.

-         Jonathan Eagle

I’d Love To Turn You On At The Movies #189 - Elevator to the Gallows (1958, dir. Louis Malle)

"Anything's good for an alibi. Wives, girlfriends, bartenders, childhood friends, deceived husbands - but not an elevator. That's ridiculous. It's totally harebrained."
 - Commissaire de police

The most succinct way to express how I feel about Elevator to the Gallows, Louis Malle's feature length directorial debut, is to say that it exudes the essence of cool. It can often be difficult for a director, especially a new director, to innovate within a strict genre such as that of Film Noir. Often such directors will simply rest on the easy and clichéd conventions inherent to the "noir." However, Malle seems to have effortlessly skirted the traps of the genre and created one of the most brilliant and beautiful noir films of all time (I know, I know, a very bold statement, however it's true...).

Within the first 15 minutes of the film a few very specific events occur and choices are made that trigger all of the dark events to follow. Thrown into the middle of our story, the film opens on Florence Carala (stunningly portrayed by Jeanne Moreau) as she professes her love for Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet). Through reading the clues left for us we discover that the two are lovers, and they have concocted a plot to kill her husband (Simon Carala, played by Jean Wall), who also happens to be an arms dealer and Tavernier's boss. After they get off the phone Tavernier leaps into action, stealthily making his way to his boss’ office under the guise of giving him a report. He then pulls a gun (Carala's own gun) and kills him, staging the scene to look like a suicide and sneaks back into his office just in time to leave with the only other two people left in the office. In the moment that he is about to be home free and drive to meet up with his love, he notices that he's left the hook and rope that he used to scale the wall to get into his boss’ office, thus negating the carefully left suicide scene. He rushes back into the building, leaving his car running, to try and grab the evidence, only to be trapped in the elevator as the attendant shuts down the power. Just as he is being trapped, a small time thief, Louis (Georges Poujouly), and his girlfriend Veronique (played by Yori Bertin, who has a bit of a crush on Julien/Mr. Tavernier) hop in his car and take off, running away to their own absurd sequence of events, but not before Florence sees Julien's car driving away with a young girl in the passenger seat.

In that brief few minutes three separate yet surreally tied narratives commence; Julien Tavernier stuck in the elevator frantically working against time as it seems to stand still, Louis/Veronique as they descend madly into their criminal downward spiral, and Florence as she walks sullenly through her desolate thoughts and fears. The future of all of them is uncertain, the only certainty is the inevitable passage of time. I won't spoil the suspense for you, you'll simply have to watch to see what comes of these three intertwined stories.

Other than this fantastic and brilliantly peculiar story and Malle's masterful development of the tale, there are many other reasons that this film has made its way firmly into my personal top ten. However, in the interest of brevity I will only elaborate on a few of those things. First and most prominently, the film was shot by the French cinematographer Henri Decaë, who crafted a gritty and yet luminous aesthetic, playing with the conventions of noir while metaphorically utilizing a novel lens. Secondly Jeanne Moreau's portrayal of a reflective woman scorned, which has become one of the most lauded performances of this era of French cinema. Thirdly, though the use of music is somewhat sparing, it is certainly impactful when utilized, since it happened to be improvised by none other than Miles Davis and a few other musicians in the heat of a single night in Paris. If you look further into the story behind the soundtrack it only solidifies that this film exudes "cool." Fourth, and finally, I love the fact that I always find myself at the edge of my seat the entire time as the characters are hurled blindly through the insane narrative, the suspense in this film is killer and you can practically cut the tension with a knife!

In the end, this is a film that screams to be seen. I can't fully provide a sufficient description of why you must see Elevator to the Gallows so I will simply wrap up this edition of I'd Love To Turn You On-At The Movies. I implore you to take the time to watch this important film!

-          Edward Hill

I'd Love to Turn You On #202 - Elliott Smith - From a Basement on the Hill

I was very much a latecomer to Elliott Smith’s music. I’d been aware of his rise in popularity in the late 1990s and had a lot of friends who loved his music but for whatever reason it didn’t appeal to me then. Working at an independent record store in fall of 2004 during the release of Smith’s final and posthumous album, From a Basement on the Hill, proved to be a surreal and transformative time for me. The album came out almost exactly a year after Smith’s tragic and mysterious death and in some ways I felt like an usher at a funeral; I’d guide customers to Smith’s last album and listen as they discussed their sense of loss and connection to his music. A few customers even confessed that during the era of rampant downloading they felt compelled to come into their local record store and buy a physical copy of the album. That experience introduced me to From a Basement on the Hill, a heavy, messy, and ultimately beautiful document of Smith’s artistry that has survived as one of the best rock albums of the last twenty years.

A few weeks ago in preparation for writing this post, I sat down and listened to From a Basement on the Hill from start to finish and came away not only impressed once more with the strength of all of the songs on the album, but also excited to have the chance to celebrate this remarkable work. Unfortunately a lingering, limiting perception of Elliott Smith’s music that has become increasingly common is that it is sad and only sad. The album’s opener, “Coast to Coast,” subverts this view by slowly building from an abstract introduction of soaring, overlapping notes into an arresting, ramshackle tempo before Smith launches into a defiant assertion of independence. At the end of the song, Smith’s righteous willfulness slowly gives way to a morass of dueling voices that could belong to poets, preachers, or talk radio hosts. This device allows Smith an opportunity to reflect humorously on his music getting lost in the commentary of others as well as to establish the album’s sound-collage aesthetic that binds and unites these fifteen songs. A few songs later “Don’t Go Down” stutters through a false start and then coalesces into a spiraling guitar riff before Smith kicks off a narrative of a doomed relationship with a brazen, devastating opening couplet: “I met a girl, snowball in hell. She was hard and as cracked as the Liberty Bell.” Later on, “King’s Crossing” ambles through over a minute of interwoven conversation, ambient instrumentation, and dissonance before culminating into a piano figure and layers of wordless harmony. This subdued preamble soon gives way to playful, yet nightmarish imagery reminiscent of Charles Bukowski’s writing as Smith’s ragged, distorted guitar amplifies the proceedings into one of the album’s most powerful moments. Although I’ve highlighted a few of the album’s heavier and more deconstructed songs, From a Basement on the Hill finds its enduring balance with a number of Smith’s gentler and more conventional songs including “Let’s Get Lost,” “A Fond Farewell,” “A Passing Feeling,” and “Memory Lane.”

Posthumous albums will always be a dodgy proposition in part because we as listeners will never know if the artist would have wanted us to hear this music. The already tricky equation of posthumously released music became even more suspect in 1990s and early 2000s after a trend of frequent releases by recently deceased artists that often seemed more commercially calculated than artistically substantial. Ultimately once these works have been released, it’s up to the listener to judge the music’s merit, but untimely death can cast a shadow of confusion and doubt over the album’s release. At the time of Elliott Smith’s death, From a Basement on the Hill was a work in progress, but it wasn’t finished. It is very possible that this may not be the album Elliott Smith would have released had he lived, but fourteen years later it’s hard for me to imagine life without this album.

-         John Parsell

I’d Love To Turn You On At The Movies #188 - Ten (2002, dir. Abbas Kiarostami)

Director Abbas Kiarostami in the documentary 10 on Ten: “The subject of Ten is based on everyday life. Undoubtedly many serious viewers as well as some critics, mainly the advocates of modern cinema, will find such a subject dull.”

Roger Ebert, in his 2-star review of Ten: “...his films--for example his latest work, "Ten"--are meant not so much to be watched as to be written about; his reviews make his points better than he does.”

Ebert (who also hated Kiarostami’s Palme d’Or winning A Taste of Cherry) makes a valid point of course, though obviously nothing that Kiarostami was not already aware of. Some people will not respond well to this film, and I get that. It consists almost exclusively of static shots from digital dashcams of a woman driving around Tehran with different passengers - her son, her sister, an older woman en route to worship, a younger woman leaving worship at the same mausoleum, a friend in tears over a relationship falling apart, and a prostitute who has mistakenly gotten in her car believing her to be a man - in ten segments, counted down at the beginning of each segment like an old film reel. Anyone could make this film, Ebert opines elsewhere in his review, and I start to think of folks saying the same “My kid could do that!” thing about Jackson Pollock’s drips or Cecil Taylor’s piano banging and I know he’s wrong, because nobody else would A) conceive of such a film or B) be in a position in their career as an internationally famous filmmaker to make such a radical shift to make this kind of film, and that has meaning in itself. Kiarostami had already explored more plot-oriented films, and shot dusty roads and urban landscapes of Iran with a stunning eye for composition, rather than something “anyone” could make. But what does the film mean? If we’re literally watching two people driving around and talking, what’s interesting about that?

It gets more complicated. Reduced to the simplest mechanics of plot, yes, that’s what happens (and all that happens) and you probably have a good idea already if this film is not for you or if you’re thinking “Hmm… tell me more.” Kiarostami coached his actors (none of them professionals) about the subjects they’d talk about, made suggestions about where to go with their conversations, put them in the car, started the cameras, and let them go, ultimately editing many hours of footage down to the 94 minutes of the final film. So what happens?

1) The driver (Mania Akbari, whose character remains unnamed throughout the film) talks first with her son, Amin (played by the actress’s actual son), arguing about her divorce from his father and recent remarriage to another man. He feels angry, accusing her of abandoning the marriage and lying about her ex-husband’s shortcomings; she says she was trapped in a loveless marriage and had to tell the courts that her husband was an addict merely to be granted a divorce. Such are the laws that women face in Iran. For almost the entirety of this segment the camera remains on her son (showing only one side of a conversation is a common Kiarostami tactic), letting us see the woman only at the very end of this lengthy segment. 2) The driver’s sister waits in the car for her to return from a bakery with a cake for her husband. They discuss how difficult Amin has been lately with the rest of the family. Unlike the first segment, the film cuts back and forth between them. 3) It opens on the driver offering an old woman a lift to a mausoleum to worship. The camera sticks with the driver the entire time while the woman talks about the importance of faith and prayer in the world until she is dropped off to go worship.

And so it goes. Roads fascinate Kiarostmai, and so do cars. Many of his films feature his characters driving around from one place to another. In the first segment of this film, Amin says to his mother “You talk as soon as we’re in the car.” Kiarostami has said that one reason he uses the car as a regular setting is that in cars people can speak freely and openly – they also can’t leave the conversation once it’s started. Going further, the driver discusses love, sex and marriage openly with a prostitute (actually an actress portraying one – Kiartostami couldn’t find an actual prostitute willing to appear in the film), she discusses the pros and cons of marriage with a young woman whose boyfriend won’t commit to their relationship then later gives her another ride after things have fallen apart in her relationship and the woman has taken the drastic step of shaving her head to symbolically move on, she also talks with her friend who’s upset about her relationship disintegrating, and she give Amin more rides (and more opportunities to appear as obnoxious as her sister had said he’s been).

For the film’s supporters (of which I am an enthusiastic one), the privileged opportunity to be present for these conversations is remarkable. Ebert worries that viewers can’t connect to the characters, only to Kiarostami’s ideas on an intellectual level, but I’d disagree. I’m drawn in from the first minute of the film to the day-to-day life of a seemingly average woman in modern Tehran, hearing from her mouth and those of her passengers about both the lives and problems we all face (relationship woes, a shaky relation to her faith, and so forth) and those more specific to her position as a woman in Iranian society, where talking openly with a prostitute (who says of women in marriages: “You’re the wholesalers. We’re the retailers.”) or showing an uncovered female head challenges Iranian laws. It engages me knowing that Kiarostami has made a film that feels as immediate and real as any documentary, but he’s created the narrative so craftily that it could be mistaken as being made with a hidden camera. It’s fascinating to get a glimpse into the society that we in the West may have preconceptions about, prejudices about, and see how a typical woman functions in that society. It’s also fascinating for an artist to make such a drastic change from the area he’d been working in and have it be successful, even if there are clear precursors for what he does here (conversations in cars, blurring of the lines between documentary and fiction, experimental techniques, etc), and its seemingly simple surface hides the deep layers of craft and thought that went into the making of the film. For me, it’s a masterpiece, plain and simple – or layered and complex. 

- Patrick Brown

I'd Love to Turn You On #201 - Wayne Shorter - Juju

Looking at contemporary jazz saxophone I believe one can trace the influences back to three saxophone players from the late fifties and early sixties. Those players are John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and Wayne Shorter. John Coltrane studied and played with Ornette Coleman, as Wayne Shorter studied with John Coltrane. It is amazing how they took each other into consideration rather than trying to evolve inside a vacuum. Juju is a glimpse of Wayne Shorter dealing with the evolving legacy of John Coltrane’s impact upon jazz. As he was developing as an artist he had to assimilate, process, and learn to mature with the musicians around him. The result is one of his most powerful Blue Note releases, recorded in 1964 and released in 1965. I chose Juju for I’d Love To Turn You On because I think it is a great portrait of an artist as he is growing and evolving, reaching for that next step. This is what makes Wayne Shorter such a vibrant player, from his days with Art Blakey through his days with Miles Davis and up until today. He continues to make relevant music, lending a rounded perspective that few can match.

The band of McCoy Tyner on piano, Elvin Jones on drums, and Reggie Workman on double bass is two thirds of the classic Coltrane Quartet. Elvin Jones has a rolling and bubbling swing that interacts perfectly with Tyner’s bombastic chords on the first song “Juju,” laying a perfect bed for the melody. It is only after a few times through the harmonic structure that the frame of the tune, which is fairly simple and repetitive, becomes evident. This reveals the skill of the players, this ability to conceive of dense interlocking textures from simple source material and lay a cohesive bed that Shorter and McCoy Tyner can both solo in. Shorter’s solo seems patient to explore long tones at points, then work long phrases, and then hover on one note, not going any one place. It is the tone of the playing that makes the solo worthy of keeping; even if the solo is a little directionless the spirit of the playing has great zest. The spirit is in the exploration.             

“Deluge,” the second tune, is a textbook Blue Note Swing. After the first somber statement by Shorter the entire band joins in for a cohesive, unstoppable demonstration of mid-sixties jazz. Elvin Jones in particular seems to be at the height of his powers, so relaxed that the drumsticks can just bounce on the snare or toms and do no wrong, while at the same time laying down a thick wall of impenetrable cymbals. Shorter then starts a solo with lengthy statements, taking his time working out his ideas and leaving time for the rhythm section to respond and fill space. The quarter note lock-up underneath Tyner’s solo between Reggie Workman and Jones’ ride cymbal is perfect, allowing Tyner to play single note fills or lay down big pedal point chords with his left hand and cascade massive fills with his right hand. The pocket on this tune is so great anything could happen.

“House of Jade” is a downtempo number that eventually picks up a little more speed. It has a ballad feel and the bridge, or middle part of the song, has a pedal point where the harmonic motion holds still in the rhythm section. This allows for increased activity on the melody instrument. It functions much the same way a zoom lens might, to bring greater detail to a certain part of a photo or frame in a picture or movie. The drums eventually double time under the sax solo propelling the rhythmic motion forward even when it drops back to the original time.

“Mahjong” starts with a playful drum solo and piano statement and then Shorter plays the melody which is supported by Tyner’s trademark quartal tones. Tyner is really the perfect piano player for these type of tunes because he can fill the space in songs that have two or three chordal areas in them and still make it interesting. As Tyner fills the space, Shorter plays the melody, and then this happens again. They play a bridge, restate the original melody and then repeat the whole thing. Tyner supplies a thick texture of harmony for his own solo that he can nestle in. While McCoy Tyner fills the space, it might be the opposite of what Shorter was experiencing in Miles Davis’ group where Herbie Hancock would boil a piano voicing down to one or two notes, a chord cluster, or lay out and let space and Tony Williams take over.

“Yes or No” is a real burner of a tune. The melody starts out with a flurry and ends with Shorter holding a long tone as Tyner, Workman, and Jones cruise below it banging out comping chords and flurries of color. This motif repeats several times before the bridge, in which Shorter plays out the song’s title in an up-and-down and back-and-forth manner. Jones’ ride cymbal is a constant North Star of precision during this song, one that all can look to as a guide in direction and meter. Shorter warms up on the first chorus but after that really opens up and plays his most technically demanding and passionate choruses of the record. Tyner takes over but takes a minute to regain the intensity of where Shorter left off, as if maybe he was not ready for Shorter to actually end his solo and was caught off guard having to begin his. A definite high point of the record. They end the record with “Twelve More Bars to Go,” a hard-swinging modified blues. Shorter really works the changes from inside to out. He is the only soloist and the band sounds great. In terms of innovation this has to be the most standard tune on the album. It doesn't have the passion of “Yes and No” or the catchiness of some of Shorter’s other tunes.

Juju was released in 1965 and recorded in 1964. Speak No Evil was released in 1966 and also recorded in late 1964. These are both great Wayne Shorter records. I think they are notable because they illustrate the process of one contemporary dealing with the legacy of another contemporary successfully. By this time John Coltrane was recording Crescent and A Love Supreme so he was continuing to innovate. Both of these artists are moving forward on their separate journeys. Shorter would have more Blue Note records and Miles Davis recordings, and then he would eventually become a founding member of Weather Report.

Hopefully I am turning you on to the fact that yes, Juju itself is great, but looking at it in context of Wayne Shorter’s evolution is the truly fun part. For me that has always been the amazing part of jazz records is how they link together, historically, via recording labels, or band personnel. Have fun listening!

-         Doug Anderson

I’d Love To Turn You On At The Movies #187 - Honkytonk Man (1982, dir. Clint Eastwood)

I’ve mentioned in previous posts here my affinity for the Western genre. When I was little, my brothers and I would spend entire weekends watching them on television with my father. At the time, I don’t think I really paid much attention to them and didn’t really care either way. But Westerns on the TV meant Saturdays with my dad, and those were pretty special to me. Eventually, I grew to appreciate them for what they are and now when I watch them, I tend to get transported back to third or fourth grade, staring at our giant old wood-framed console TV that didn’t have a remote. I wasn’t in fifth grade in the 60s or anything, this is just the dirtball TV we had in 1986. But that is neither here nor there.

The point is, I loved to sit around watching Westerns with my dad and among our favorites were Clint Eastwood movies. But I’m not going to talk about The Man with No Name franchise, as the point of this column is to suggest things that you, the reader, may have missed. It’s not very likely that you’re a fan of Westerns and have never heard of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Nor am I even going to talk about an Eastwood Western film for that matter, because if you’re like me, if you even think the word “Western,” an image of Clint as the titular Outlaw Josey Wales probably pops into your head. Today I’m going to talk about Clint’s 1982 film Honkytonk Man.

It took me a while to come around to Honkytonk Man, actually. For the most part, I preferred Clint Eastwood as a Western outlaw. Even the Dirty Harry series, which I love now, I had a hard time with for a while. I just didn’t have any interest in seeing him try to be tough guy in the modern world, I guess. But Honkytonk Man was the first movie I remember enjoying Clint in that wasn’t a Western.

Set in the 1930s during the Great Depression, Clint plays Red Stovall, a singer-songwriter and alcoholic drifter who is trying like hell to get to Nashville so he can try out for the Grand Ol’ Opry as a country singer. In the opening scene, Red drunkenly careens up onto the front lawn of a rural Oklahoma farm house just moments after it is hit with an aggressive dust storm. The farm belongs to his sister and her family who are all too familiar with this kind of behavior from Red. The family, discovering that Red has an advanced case of tuberculosis, take him in. While there, he forms a bond with his nephew Whit, played by Clint’s son Kyle Eastwood in his film debut. Red decides to take Whit with him on a road trip to Nashville so that Red can finally pursue his dream. The two share a series of adventures, including robbing a poker game, performing at a juke joint, a brothel visit, and a jailbreak. When they finally reach the Opry, Red is too sick to finish, botching his audition with a series of coughing fits. The performance is, however, caught by a record executive who offers Red studio time to record his songs.

What I love about this film, aside from the killer country soundtrack by the likes of Porter Wagoner, Ray Price, Marty Robbins and Eastwood himself, is that the character of Red is such a different kind of role for Clint. While he does have some of that familiar gruff, icy exterior (particularly when sleeping off a hangover), there is a vulnerability to the dying man that really sets Red apart from other Eastwood characters. A child of the Depression himself, perhaps Clint saw something in the story that struck a chord with his own childhood when he decided to take on the role (and the director’s chair). Whatever the reason, Eastwood brings the melancholy of this character to life with the help of his evolving relationship with the young boy. Red gets the boy involved in some unsavory practices, but there is a real family bond there that is at times very touching. In Honkytonk Man, Clint is given the chance to prove to the world that there is more to his acting than just violent thuggery.

As a director, Clint really shines here as well. The film is visually stunning, filmed on location in various parts of Northern California and Nevada, which act as the Middle America backdrop for the duo’s family road trip. Again, in every way, the film is very different from the usual gun porn fodder that Clint is known for, but take a chance on Honkytonk Man. It’s a true character study of the traveling troubadour, perhaps a character you’ve heard about before in some of the best country songs.

-         Jonathan Eagle

I'd Love to Turn You On #200 - Mountain - Climbing

Let’s talk about hard rock and heavy metal. Exactly where and when it started is a subject of much debate, and there is probably not a real definitive answer. In England, most indications seem to point pretty clearly to Cream, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath as the forefathers, but here in the U.S. of A things aren’t quite as clear. In the late 60’s The Stooges, MC5 and especially Blue Cheer made some critical first steps, but the more recognized conventions of heavy music started to come into focus around 1969 and 70 when two bands in particular started to forge the raw materials into something now very familiar. From Texas, Z.Z. Top emphasized a blues-based form of the guitar fronted trio. Billy Gibbons’ guitar style and tone would help define the southern strain of hard rock until this day. From the stage at Woodstock though, came an East Coast band whose incendiary, guitar-driven sound mixed with a headier style of songwriting to make Mountain a potential peer to the best of the English bands.

Although lead vocalist and certified guitar monster Leslie West had already released a solo album entitled Mountain in 1969, the album Climbing (released in 1970) was the first album with the band itself (now featuring well-known producer Felix Pappalardi on bass and double bass drum pioneer Corky Laing on very muscular drums) now going under the name Mountain. With Pappalardi (and then-wife, later murderer) Gail Collins’ sophisticated songwriting and experienced and intelligent production, Mountain quickly transcends the competition to offer one of the great hard rock albums of all time.

Opening with a bona fide anthem, “Mississippi Queen” is THE song about which the much discussed penchant for cowbell in hard rock comes from. No song has used it better (except maybe “Low Rider"by War), and combined it with the almost Zeppelin-esque crunch of a classic lead guitar riff. “Mississippi Queen” really doesn’t need a lot of discussion because of its unquestioned status as a classic of all rock. Used effectively in movies and T.V. advertising, it has passed beyond the mortal sphere. And that would be that, except for the fact that is followed up by a far more ambitious and equally iconic song by Cream bassist Jack Bruce. “Theme For An Imaginary Western” is another stone classic with mysterious lyrics, a great arrangement enhanced dramatically by Steve Knight’s able Hammond organ work and, of course, thunderous guitar work and mournful vocals by West. Again, this song is followed by another heavy classic. Leslie West unleashes a master class of heavy guitar and really exercises his unique vocal howl, which would be copied by virtually every metal singer in decades to come. “Never In My Life” would fit in on records coming out now - it does not feel dated yet it is years ahead of its time. Side 1 of the original LP closes out and side 2 opens with songs that would have fit beautifully on a Traffic or Procol Harum album. “Silver Paper” and the gorgeous Woodstock memory “For Yasgur's Farm” are both smart, melodic songs benefitting much from Pappalardi’s experience producing Cream (among others) to allow him to create songs that transcend any genre. “To My Friend” finds West proving his acoustic chops ala Zeppelin’s “White Summer.” The album remains strong to the end, with “The Laird” especially offering some prime navel-gazing opportunity. Yes, Mountain does fit the bill as proto-metal based largely on West’s guitar work and shrieking vocals, but no, they were no one trick pony. Climbing ticks many other boxes. Like their British counterparts, Mountain were reaching for the stars.

In the end, perhaps it is the fact that Climbing satisfies the specifics of so many genres - hard rock, soft rock, psych, pop - and even produced a stadium-rock anthem, which makes it such an enduring album to my ears. The totally boss image on the back cover of Felix Pappalardi, the more experienced music legend, giving Leslie West a congratulatory hand slap really says it all: job well done!

-         Paul Epstein

I’d Love To Turn You On At The Movies #186 - Brick (2005, dir. Rian Johnson)

For a couple of years I lived in a small town in southern Vermont within walking distance of the Latchis Theater, an art deco movie house built in 1938. The Latchis remains one of the coolest, most inviting, and remarkable theaters where I’ve regularly watched movies. During that time I saw a lot of movies at the Latchis, but an offbeat mystery from a first-time director left one of the strongest impressions on me. Despite my best efforts to enter any movie theater knowing as little as possible beforehand, I must have known on some level that Brick would combine the genres and styles of film noir and high school movies, but that knowledge did not prepare me for what I was about to experience. Rian Johnson’s directorial debut isn’t merely an exercise in style and form; through merging film noir with the tropes of teen movies established in the 1980s, Brick prevails as something far more substantial, engrossing, and memorable than the sum of its parts.

As writer and director Rian Johnson pitches the language and look of Brick squarely between hardboiled crime dramas of the 1940s and sunny, southern California teen movies of the late twentieth century. The characters speak in a clipped, idiosyncratic lingo that may seem anachronistic, but mimics the impenetrable local slang of a high school’s in-crowd and adds to the movie’s snappy pacing. Johnson grew up in San Clemente, California and filmed Brick at locations throughout the area including the high school he attended. Johnson seeks out the forgettable, in-between spaces that tend to attract groups of bored teenagers and frames his story within the sidelines of this sprawling, shabby ocean-side town. When Joseph Gordon-Levitt made Brick, he was nearing the point in his twenties (and in his career) when he was about to age out of teen roles but playing the protagonist Brendan allowed him to demonstrate that he was fully capable of tackling challenging, dynamic, and emotionally complex roles. As Brendan, Gordon-Levitt renders himself almost unrecognizable through a physical bearing marked by a clenched jaw, tousled hair, hunched shoulders, and relentless forward motion. Gordon-Levitt beautifully inhabits the pent-up posture of the high school misfit with a chip on his shoulder and a list of grievances that remain a mystery to all but himself. By setting a murder mystery within the realm of the frenetic solipsism of youth, Johnson somehow manages to amplify the sense that his characters are facing matters of life and death. As heavy as things get (and they do get pretty heavy), Johnson inserts playfully sly humor into the proceedings like a delightfully satisfying confrontation between Brendan and an assistant vice principal played by Richard Roundtree.

Over a decade after Brick’s release, it persists as the kind of movie that can be summed up in just a few words, but lingers powerfully in the minds of many who have seen it. Rian Johnson spent several years working on his debut and you can tell that he was staking his forthcoming career on both this novel concept as well as his distinctive, efficient skills as a filmmaker. Johnson’s sophomore effort, The Brothers Bloom, differs greatly from Brick in nearly every observable way. In contrast to Brick’s taut stylistic minimalism and succinct narrative, Johnson embraces a busy and bright extravagance to tell the rambling, globe-trotting tale of The Brothers Bloom. In 2012 Johnson teamed up with Joseph Gordon-Levitt again and aligned his ambitions more directly with some of the most successful elements of Brick for the existential time-travel crime thriller Looper. A couple of months ago, I went to the theater to watch Johnson’s fourth film, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and despite the forty years of franchise history, I picked up on the kinds of themes and artistic choices that make Brick such a breathtaking experience. 

 -         John Parsell

I'd Love to Turn You On #199 - James Booker - Resurrection of the Bayou Maharajah

It’s 1982. Let’s say you’re visiting New Orleans and you want to get out of the touristy French Quarter, past the scammers telling you they know where you got your shoes and into some less dressed up version of the city. Maybe you find yourself heading a little bit west to the Uptown neighborhood of Carrollton and you drop into the legendary Maple Leaf Bar on Oak Street. Maybe you weren’t even planning to do it, but the sounds of a piano spilling out into the street and a wild, high, bluesy voice drew you in. And there, inside the small and loosely crowded bar, a vocally enthusiastic crowd is swinging, clapping, and snapping to the loopy rhythms of a skinny man with an eye patch seated at the piano. That man, you find out, is James Booker, and he’s been the house pianist here from the mid-70s until today.

Asking around a bit you find out that he is, to be kind, a bit of an eccentric with a widely-acknowledged drug problem. Sometimes he’ll stop mid-song and stare forward at something nobody else can see, sometimes he won’t touch the piano but will sit there talking into the mic (much to the consternation of the crowd who are there to hear him play), sometimes he doesn’t show up at all. But tonight he’s there showing off his prodigious, classically-schooled chops and it’s a hot set, bouncing from classics like “Junco Partner” (which he absolutely owns and could’ve written about himself) and “St. James Infirmary” to Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona to Chopin’s “Minute Waltz” in the blink of an eye. And those are just the songs he plays in their entirety; there are also the medleys.

Normally, you’d think, a medley is a showcase meant to edit down familiar hits the artist is tired of playing to satisfy their regular fans. Not so, here - they’re the highlights, with Booker’s broad tastes (and humor, definitely his sense of humor) in full effect as he makes associations that lead him through a nearly 10-minute grouping that hits two Larry Williams tunes, a Stax staple followed by a Motown staple, and then ends on his own “Classified.” The title? - “Medley: Slow Down/Bony Maronie/Knock On Wood/I Heard It Through The Grapevine/Classified.” And it’s a glorious demonstration of his dazzling timing, his vocals that veer from resolutely soulful to a wild yodel, his ornately filigreed piano style, and once again, his timing, with its deep-in-the-pocket funk even when it’s lurching or careening forward at a rocketing tempo. And that crowd, oh, the crowd – they’re with him for every beat, eating right out of the palm of his hand. It’s a masterful way to kick off the album and it rolls right into the seven and a half equally rollicking minutes of “Tico Tico” mixed with Booker’s own terrific “Papa Was A Rascal.” And then it just keeps going for 72 minutes total.

And now it’s 2018. This CD, with every aforementioned performance (and more), was released 25 years ago, collected from over 60 hours of performances recorded on the Maple Leaf’s house system between 1977 and 1982, the year before Booker passed away at only 43. Somewhere in there while playing at the club Booker met Harry Connick Sr. and took a very young Harry Connick Jr. under his wing as a student and protégé, teaching him piano technique, sometimes inviting him up to play alongside him on the piano bench. Dr. John was once heard to describe him as "the best black, gay, one-eyed junkie piano genius New Orleans has ever produced." And though his recording career was sporadic - a few studio sessions and some live (mostly) European dates interrupted by stretches in jail - Resurrection of the Bayou Maharajah (and its nearly-as-good all-instrumental companion piece Spiders on the Keys) showcase Booker’s genius in a succession of high points without the inconsistencies that nearly everyone who talks fondly about Booker notes as a result of his problems with drugs and alcohol. It’s how you can imagine he would be on a good night, and you can easily put yourself right into the Maple Leaf on a warm night in 1982, listening to him masterfully work the keyboard with his over-the-top flourishes skirting right on the edge of absurdity, but somehow keeping it all right in the pocket. It’s a beautiful thing and a great tribute to this troubled genius.

-         Patrick Brown

I’d Love To Turn You On At The Movies #185 - My Dog Skip (2000, dir. Jay Russell)

The qualities of a great family movie are very different than those required to make a film primarily for adults. Many of the conventions associated with “serious” movies simply don’t apply to a movie meant to appeal equally to children and their parents. Needless to say most films land wide of the mark. My Dog Skip is a movie that speaks clearly in the syntactical language of children, but it lands a mighty emotional wallop to any adult with a beating heart. The thing that My Dog Skip gets so beautifully right is that the sad details of our childhoods can be made right for the rest of our lives by the presence of one true friend. Of course, as many of us know, there is no friend like a dog.

Based on the memoir of acclaimed author Willie Morris, young actor Frankie Muniz (at the same moment he was breaking out as Malcolm In The Middle - 2000) is perfectly cast as Willie, a scrawny, shy, only child in WWII-era Yazoo, Mississippi. His Father (Kevin Bacon) lost his leg in the Spanish-American War and young Willie finds himself without a strong mentor. His next-door neighbor Dink (Luke Wilson) is the local sports hero, whom Willie idolizes, but he too is made unavailable to Willie when drafted. Willie’s insightful Mother (Diane Lane) overrides his Father’s objections and gives Willie a Jack Russell puppy for his ninth birthday. From the moment the dog enters the scene things start looking up for Willie. Problems don’t go away, but having a companion offering unconditional love makes anyone’s load easier to bear. In addition, Willie starts to see that his dog, Skip, helps him navigate many socially and emotionally difficult situations. In one fashion or another, Skip helps Willie deal with bullying, meeting girls, understanding racism, finding empathy for his own and other peoples’ frailties, and even breaking up a gang of bootleggers. The details are dealt with superficially and only somewhat believably, but it is entirely beside the point. Because, as these things happen, the bond between Willie and Skip becomes more and more believable. Towards the end of the movie, Willie loses his temper and hits Skip in front of the whole town and Skip runs away. This pivotal moment forces Willie to recognize exactly what he has in Skip. He muses, “I was an only child and Skip was an only dog.” Any person who has experienced loneliness, or a fractured parental relationship, or confusion about his social station, or the love and then loss of a best friend can relate to Willie’s agony as he frantically rides his bike around town looking for his lost dog. He finds him, but while helping bust up the bootlegging operation, Skip is badly injured. Get the hankies out folks. The movie’s tone becomes more serious at this point. Skip survives and Willie fully realizes what he has, yet a sweet melancholy creeps in as Willie (and the audience) begin to recognize the inevitable. Willie will grow up and go away to college, and Skip will stay behind and eventually disappear.

The things that work in My Dog Skip work so spectacularly well that it falls into the classic category to me. The story is told in a warm voiceover supplied by Harry Connick Jr. which, when combined with the nostalgic view of a lost small town America, swelling music, and honeyed lighting, reminds one of the most heartrending aspects of To Kill A Mockingbird. Casting is fantastic. Skip himself is the perfect screen match of sentience and doggishness, irresistibly guileless and conniving. Some of his human counterparts do alright as well. Kevin Bacon and Diane Lane can add their fine and nuanced performances here to resumes already filled with memorable characters, and Frankie Muniz gives a remarkably sophisticated and complex performance of a little boy - clearly a testament to his and the director Jay Russell’s talents. As the movie winds toward its inevitably poignant conclusion, there is an overwhelming sense of loss in the viewer. Like any successful art, good movies make us yearn for the past or aspire toward the future. My Dog Skip is the former. It will make you pine for your childhood, miss the loving dog that was your best friend, and ultimately, an America that was better, or at least kinder, than the one we have now.

-          Paul Epstein

I'd Love to Turn You On #198 - The Jesus Lizard – Liar (1992)

In the summer of 1993, I finally mustered up the courage to ask this girl I had been crushing on for a long time out on a date. To my surprise and discomfort, she actually agreed to it. The day of the date, I was so nervous and uneasy I didn’t know what to do. As a fourteen-year-old, I hadn’t exactly been the Casanova that I clearly am now, and I had convinced myself that asking was the hard part. But now I actually had to go on the date and be engaging. I was terrified. Usually, I could put on some music to put myself at ease, but for some reason, nothing in my collection was doing the trick. I decided to head down to the coffee shop where I was supposed to meet her. I was early but there was a record store downstairs in the basement of the building, so I figured I’d kill some time beforehand with my favorite pastime, record shopping. (Coincidental side note: This is the same building in which I would eventually open my own record store twenty years later and two floors up.) Anyway, the impending date was still giving me butterflies and I was kind of angry at my music collection for not pulling through for me. So, I decided I was going to buy something new. I picked up a Flaming Lips album I had read about in Alternative Press and a cassette copy of Liar, the newest release by a band I wasn’t familiar with, The Jesus Lizard. I went outside to smoke and put the tape into my Walkman.

I can’t really explain what happened next. One thing is for sure, though. My life was changed indefinitely in that moment. Liar, though it may not be my favorite Jesus Lizard album, will forever be the most important one to me as it was my entry point into their world. You see, musically-speaking, I was a bit torn in the early 1990s. Having grown up to that point as a die-hard metal kid, the newer “grunge” bands (as the radio and MTV were calling them) were killing my beloved’s reign. On the other hand, there was something about the Nirvanas and the Alice in Chainses of the world that I truly could not deny. Still… it seemed like something was missing. I was at a musical crossroads. When I hit play on that Walkman, suddenly I had it figured out. And I do mean suddenly, because right out of the gate, Liar takes off at breakneck speed with “Boilermaker,” perhaps one of the heaviest songs ever written. This segues into “Gladiator” and “The Art of Self-Defense” for a violent one-two-three punch. Side A ends with one of the highlights of the album, the phenomenal “Puss,” which would also later appear on a split 7” with Nirvana.

This was exactly what I was looking for. It was heavy, but it wasn’t metal. It was angular and strange, the guitar tone was bizarre and machine-like, the rhythm section was more precise than anything I’d ever listened to. And then there was Yow. The frontman to end all frontmen. Hoo boy… I don’t even know where to begin describing him. David Yow’s vocal delivery is not so much sung as it is retched at you, hollering with a kind of terrifying urgency about such topics as mental depravity and chemical dependency (yes, there are actual lyrics in there). Yow sounds like a man in trouble. Guitarist Duane Denison’s leads have a personality all their own on this album, ranging from the jackhammer speed of “Rope” to the slow, Slint-like crawl of the album’s closer “Zachariah.”

I just spent two paragraphs describing Liar to you and I still feel as though I haven’t done it (or the band, for that matter) enough justice. The truth is, I’ve never known how to describe The Jesus Lizard. They’re noise-rock, sure, but that label wasn’t even really around when I first discovered this album. In a way, they kind of represented a middle ground between the metal I adored so much as a kid and the “grunge” that inevitably usurped the limelight from them.

In case you’re wondering, the date went really well. I was charming and funny, and I even got to make out with her a little at the end. Had I not bought Liar immediately beforehand, who knows? I may have still been stressed out about the date, pacing back and forth in my room trying to mellow out to my Tool records or something. But any reason that I had for being nervous was out the window the second I heard that first note of “Boilermaker.” I bet I listened to the album three times in a row that day. The Jesus Lizard are one of my all-time favorite bands still, 25 years later, and I feel very fortunate that every time I listen to them I get to recount this story.

-         Jonathan Eagle