What Are You Listening To Lately (Part 11)?

Sly & the Family Stone - Stand!
If it were not for the just-OK "Somebody's Watching You" and the slight excess of "Sex Machine," this album would be perfect - the absolute inverse in its brightness, drive, and optimism of There's a Riot Goin' On's murk, languor, and pessimism. There's nary a hint of the darkness that would consume Sly a year or so after the making of this album - it's all hope and optimism and direct confrontation of problems, none of the resigned negativity he'd essay on the next record. And it's beautiful for most of its length, with "Everyday People" standing as not just one of Sly's best songs, but one of the best pop songs of all time. A true, indelible, A+ moment. But it's only one standout of Sly's grand statement of purpose - or at least of the purpose he espoused in 1969. On nearly any other record, "Everyday People" would be a career-topper the artist would try forever to recapture. On Stand! the song, brilliant as it is, finds at least three others on par with it - the bruising funk of "Sing A Simple Song," the tense equality plea of "Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey" and the nearly-surpassing-it masterpiece of "I Want to Take You Higher." It's a landmark album, kept half a star short for me only by some minor flaws which in truth never cross my mind while it's playing, only in reflection afterwards.


Meat Puppets - II
In a way, their best because it's got the most breadth but it's also a little on the side of wild youth - they got wiser as they continued, and I for one appreciate that. But even so, they're pretty damn smart even this early on in their career and I don't think they were ever more fun, singing however they feel it without worrying about, y'know, pitch and stuff and playing their wacked out guitar/bass/drums the same way. Which just means that Kurt & co. cleaned them up a bit for their respectable stab at the MTV crowd, not that Nirvana improved on the melodies or the words. Cobain was right to pick three songs from this album for their big acoustic special because it's the Puppets' catchiest, their easiest to absorb (especially in the cleaner Nirvana versions) and he knew as well as anyone that "grunge" fans fans not acclimated to the underground that spawned Nirvana would be able to glom on to these shoulda-been hits more readily then the thrash of the first record or the wide-eyed (or should I say wide-pupiled?) psychedelic wonder of some of the later ones. So yeah, I guess it really is their best, a repository of melodies, riffs and memories, even though I find that I don't always go to this for my Puppets fix, which just means there are more great ones lurking out there.


Various Artists - Produced by Trevor Horn
Before I had any idea who Eno was, before I made any connection between Phil Spector and the multitude of hits he produced, I could identify a Trevor Horn production within a few bars. So his 80's material collected here holds a special place for me. He's the magic link between ABC, my heroes in Art of Noise, my favorite Pet Shop Boys song, the wacko "Buffalo Gals," and my otherwise inexplicable attraction to Yes and Godley & Creme. I don't necessarily need his 90's and 00's stuff the way I love his 80's, but neither do I mind hearing how he's developed (though I have yet to develop my own tastes enough to enjoy t.A.T.u for more than 2.5 minutes at a time.). Like the key AoN releases, like "Buffalo Gals," like "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and "Cry," the bulk of the 80's material here takes me to a sentimental place that I enjoy visiting. And if I don't love it all equally, this is a fundamental piece of my musical development. Eno and Spector came later and I can't in truth say that they've meant more to me.

What's in the Bin? - October 19th, 2008

One of the sheer joys of being in an indie record store is browsing the bins. Just starting somewhere, flipping through things, pulling out items that catch your eye, giving a few of them a test spin. So in the second of a hypothetical series, I've decided to browse the "New Arrivals" bins here at Twist & Shout, pick out a few things, and give them a listen. The nature of used record stores being what it is, I can't promise these items will still be in the bin by the time you get here. But hey, browse the bin anyway. You might find something else of worth.


CD - They Might Be Giants - Apollo 18
Not one of this geek-rock band's well-remembered CDs, probably because it didn't spawn a hit like "Don't Let's Start" or "Birdhouse in Your Soul." And you can probably blame the lyrics - this may be the last time that the Giants were so...out there. But this isn't a CD to be avoided - not by any means. Because whether the band sings about dead people intruding on everyday life in "Turn Around," the biology lesson "Mammal," or the food-related stream of consciousness that is "Dinner Bell," they're delivered with such catchy hooks and great instrumentation that you actually find yourself singing along by the second (weird-ass) chorus. Mixed in with these twisted pop songs are a few quickie bits of calculated oddness ("Spider," "Hall of Heads") which will get you ready for the suite "Fingertips." There, the band quickly runs through twenty-one fragments that were never fleshed out into full songs. So one after another, you get ten-second intriguing tidbits like "Come on and wreck my car" and "What's that blue thing doing here?" The band has said they envisioned "Fingertips" as "the sort of thing you hear during a late-night commercial for Connie Francis's Greatest Hits." Be that as it may, it does make listening to the CD on "shuffle" a truly interesting experience, as all the various "bits" of "Fingertips" are assigned a separate track.


CD - Various Artists - Pure Reggae
Many of us are interested in expanding our musical palettes, but the difficulty usually is "Where to start?" Many people have a modest interest in reggae, but once you pick up a copy of Bob Marley's Legend (or the soundtrack to The Harder They Come), where to next? It's impossible to sum up a genre on one CD (or even a hundred), but this disc does a good job at giving a quick overview. It opens and closes with a couple classic Bob Marley songs - "Stir It Up" and "Exodus" - which should help set the mood for the entire set. Many well-known reggae and reggaesque songs are here - Eric Clapton's take on "I Shot the Sheriff," Eddy Grant's "Electric Avenue," Inner Circle's "Bad Boys." There are several undoubted reggae classics - Jimmy Cliff's "Many Rivers to Cross," Desmond Dekker's "Israelites," Lord Creator's "Kingston Town," and "Rivers of Babylon" by the Melodians. Rounding out the collection are more modern (and, to my ears, lesser) numbers by Aswad, Apache Indian and Big Mountain. The disc doesn't flow all that well - you may as well listen to the thing on shuffle - but it does do a good job at providing a "big picture" overview of the genre. Presumably, after listening to this a few times, you not only will know whether you want to continue exploring reggae, but perhaps in which direction. And for that alone, it's worth picking up.


45 - Art of Noise - "Legs/Hoops and Mallets"
"Peter Gunn" was still a few months away when the Art of Noise released this as their first single after leaving ZTT Records. If ever there was a "standard" Art of Noise single, this may be it. A walloping drum sound, a catchy bassline and hook, and minimal vocals (just various readings of the word "legs") combine into four minutes of dancefloor fun. The B-side "Hoops and Mallets" is basically a simple tick-tock beat, with a repeating bassline and an occasional keyboard "wah" on top. Various sounds and a sampled "Couldn't sleep at all" (from Bobby Lewis's "Tossing and Turning"?) add a bit of color. And that's it. But listening to two sides back-to-back, the song makes a bit more sense. As a band that didn't write songs so much as assemble sounds into what passed for songs, the Art of Noise's creative process was somewhat different than most. They'd start with something simple - a rhythm, a beat, a sound. They'd add things, tweak things, take things out. And eventually they'd end up with a "song." Keeping that in mind, "Hoops and Mallets" changes - it's now the "Legs" beat pushed in a different direction, slowed down a tad, different things added. "Legs" from a parallel universe, perhaps. Maybe it was a hit there.




- Mondo Gecko