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This is your iPod on Crystal Method:
Any questions?
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Before I moved from the great Midwest to the great West Coast, before I heard Negativland's Over The Edge records and programs, before I even knew what "freeform" or "chill out" meant, I was doing it, mixing it, creating it. Every Monday from what-the-fuck o'clock to just-shoot-me o'clock in the morning for thirteen weeks I pulled double unpaid shifts at the community college radio station; splicing sound effects records into incongruous spoken word samples and crossfading them between tracks of ambient industrial confusion, experimental no wave, organic drone power, and extended-play comedown house.
The nights were long to begin with: the lead-up was the local Brazilian music showcase, the host of which had recent gone through some recasting and I was tagged to act as technical trainer, which eventually led to a few enlightening gigs as a sound engineer for live jazz festivals. But after the steel drums were packed and the dead fly by the clock on the wall read middle night, there was an interlude of three hours where I could retire briefly to the production studio and experiment with sound. Some didgeridoo laid over the sound of someone langorously brushing their teeth, an attack dog record intermixed with tribal percussion, Japanese and American voice-overs espousing the miracles of Philips technology while a decidedly evil machine ka-chunked and harrumphed behind them, a harrowing sandstorm receding only to allow vaguely male and female voices gasp and exhale, snatches of Prokofiev slammed up against random dialogue from Miami Vice. These telescoped environmental mash-ups became theme songs after a fashion, and different one introduced the freeform happenstance when it launched at three o'clock in the stupid morning.
The FCC used to call the six-hour span between 10 in the evening to 4 the following morning "safe harbor;" a haven where the usual restrictions were loosened and all-night radio show hosts were given a little more leniency with the material of their programs, allowing them to present provocative topics and potentially offensive guests without fear of prosecution. All that's changed now, but at the time, I thought of this "safe harbor" as something different; given the relative dearth of listeners, and therefore the absence of critics, one could construct avant-garde programming around the idea that if no one is listening but night watchmen, insomniacs, and the occasional traveling salesman caught on the road between gigs, then anything goes.
And while "anything goes" often has a prurient connotation attached to it, for me it was more of an opportunity to explore avenues of expression; musical and otherwise, melodic and otherwise, coherent and otherwise, and present them as a cohesive whole, a soundscape of atmospheres of concrete darkness and formless light, a soundtrack for a midnight ride down a lonely rural route, a mix for sleepless, loveless, hopeless chains of moments.
That was in 1993. I called the program "Earth Noise." And until now, I didn't think anyone else listened to it. The airchecks are long gone, as are probably the paper playlists, but the legacy remains, from my incompatible tastes in music to my inability to embark on a road trip for longer than an hour without getting sleepy, even at high noon. It's both weird and thrilling to receive a pingback from so long ago and know that someone else besides Your Humble Narrator was able to use the arbitrary score from a voice on the radio as a security blanket, as an audio privacy echo, as a source of comfort.
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At least they don't call them "memes" on Facebook, although they do call them "albums" and not "records:" the "Top 15 Albums" survey, which sounds better when it's called the "Top 15 Formative Records" survey:
Think of 15 albums that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months and years. These are the albums that you can use to identify time, places, people and emotions. These are the albums that no matter what they were shaped your world.
I've listed mine in chronological order, which is pretty much the timeline of discovery, so the evolution of taste can be more closely observed:
- Prince: Purple Rain. (1984) For most people my age, demographic, and tax bracket, this was the album you most likely lost your virginity to. Simultaneously lustful and pious, gutter-minded and earnest, explicit and dada. Not to repeat anything that's already been said better before, more purple prose here.
- Talking Heads: Stop Making Sense. (1984) A live album from a band that favored strength in performance and energetic expression over rigid syncopation or aimless improvisation. Paired with the unpretentious, bare-bones, off-the-cuff direction of Jonathan Demme's companion concert film, it stands as a fairly high watermark of quality, even for a group who didn't seem to take themselves very seriously most of the time. I had obviously heard Talking Heads songs before, but this was the first full-length record I had bought from them, and for a while after listening to the live sequences over and over again, the studio versions sounded oddly inferior in comparison; lacking in passion, energy, joy.
- The Art Of Noise: In Visible Silence. (1986) Absurdist manifestos and dalliances with Max Headroom notwithstanding, Trevor Horn's studio band always pushed the envelope that separated experimental pop and new-wave art; if not in their endless creative samples, then at least with the most expensive synthesizers available at the time. For listeners who only know AON through "Kiss" or "Dragnet," their second proper long-player can come across as fussy, ("Paranoimia") ridiculously technical, ("Opus 4") even pretentious at times, ("Instruments Of Darkness") which it is. But it's also gently nostalgic, ("Eye Of A Needle") epically wistful, ("Camilla: The Old, Old, Story") and downright cheeky. ("Legs")
- Negativland: Escape From Noise. (1987) They've had funnier records, (Dispepsi, Moribund Music of the 70s) they've had more relevant records, (Guns, Free) they've had more notorious records (U2, Helter Stupid), they've had more experimental records, (Deathsentences of The Polished and Structurally Weak) and they've had more poignant records; (The Willsaphone Stupid Show) but there is no more crucial record than this, Negativland's SST swan song. Most of the tracks are cobbled together from home recordings and found sound, glued together with homemade synthesizers: the dead pool list-reading of "Michael Jackson," the heart attack-inducing soundscape of "Car Bomb," and the eerie ambient history lesson of "Time Zones," to name a few. The handful of structured pop efforts range from the oddly evocative "Nesbitt's Lime Soda Song" to the iconically iconoclastic college radio staple "Christianity Is Stupid." Challenging collage music for an unchallenging world.
- They Might Be Giants: Lincoln. (1988) The album that shouldn't have happened, from the godfathers of nerd-rock. The sheer improbability of TMBG's debut should have sealed their fate as too niche, too "college," and not serious enough to have any kind of future as accomplished musicians. But true to any sophomore effort, their charming sloppiness is tightened up and overarching absurdism tempered without compromising their inherent core as two Brooklyn goofballs with a guitar and an accordion. The hilariously quotable lines, ("Lie Still, Little Bottle") pop parodies, ("Santa's Beard") and instances of surprising honesty ("Ana Ng") belie the seemingly bottomless reservoir of geek love that the two Johns have to draw upon.
- XTC: Oranges & Lemons. (1989) Ignoring the inescapable inevitability of history, if the Beatles had survived into the 80s, they probably would have made music similar to XTC's output at the time, and not just because they adapted the same regiment of noodly instrumentation, lush layered production, and quirky, brainy lyrics. From heartfelt pop ("Mayor Of Simpleton") to twangy ethno-rock, ("Poor Skeleton Steps Out") faux-hippie anthems ("The Loving") to apocalyptic marches, ("Across This Antheap") a less-serious version of "Dear God" ("Scarecrow People") to odes to masturbation, ("Pink Thing") this is a record of sacred and profane proportions.
- De La Soul: De La Soul Is Dead. (1991) If Living Colour wanted to let people know that rap music was for pussies, then De La Soul was out to prove that nerds could make hip-hop, too. Shedding the pseudo-hippie sensibilities of their debut, as well as a few questionable samples, their second record is just as listenable musically, with plenty of hooky loops and sing-songy, backwards-talk rhymes. And while the MCs take equal turns name-dropping each other like any other hip-hop side, the majority of their words are self-deprecating, introspective, and surreptuously romantic; a refreshing respite from the blustering, delusional, megalomaniacal product it would eventually devolve into. Geeks can rap, and they need love, too.
- The Future Sound Of London: Accelerator. (1991) They may have been overstating the fact, but FSOL's music certainly was true in its eponymous respect. Similar to George Lucas' paranoid THX-1138 in execution, Accelerator sounds less like a science fiction soundtrack or music about the future than it sounds like music from the future; or at least the future we hallucinated in the early 90s. From the dirty bleeps of "Expander" and the spooky percussion of "It's Not My Problem," to club darling "Papau New Guinea" and penultimate trancer "Pulse State," (not to mention the Tangerine Dream homage "Central Industrial") this record was at least a dream we could revisit if we ever started to miss the hovercars and off-world colonies we were promised in books and movies.
- The Orb: The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld. (1991) The record that introduced a generation of impressionable clubbers to the oxymoron of "ambient house." Some nights you've just had one smart drink too many, your mouth is dry from that glowstick you've been holding between your teeth, and all you want to do is chill out for a bit, but you don't necessarily want the beats to stop. Beyond the sheer charm of "Little Fluffy Clouds" and ten-minute-plus sonic planetariums like "Into The Fourth Dimension," The Orb's debut also came in two flavors: U.S., chock-full of edits, and U.K., bulging with extended mixes and a completely different version of club favorite "Perpetual Dawn." Not terribly risky when compared to the scope of house music at the time, but definitely innovative and defining.
- 808 State: Gorgeous. (1993) Free from the "Madchester" influences of their early releases and the pop sensibilities of Ex:El, 808 State's musical nadir is a rapier-sharp, Tupperware-seal-tight, ten-ton techno monster. True to their namesake, drum and percussion loops are crucial as the engines of each track, whether it's the pounding gospel keys of "10 x 10," the jungle-ragga of UB40's "One In Ten," or the explosive rat-a-tat shimmy of "Colony." The only thing more important is the use of synthesizers, masterfully meshed with the beats; from the menacing blare of "Nimbus" and the electro-shock therapy of "Timebomb," to the ambient house waves of "Southern Cross" and the crowd-pleasing syncopation of "Sexy Synthesizer." A myriad of mad styles.
- Charlie Hunter Trio: Charlie Hunter Trio. (1993) Charlie Hunter was the guitar player for The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, which eventually spawned Michael Franti's Spearhead. Hunter recruited tenor sax player Dave Ellis and former Primus drummer Jay Lane to create a "punk-jazz" record in everything but name. Jazz guitarists are a maligned bunch, but Hunter fuses the three of them so that no one plays over anyone else, and all solos are seemingly played at the same time. This is one of the first jazz records I can remember "needing" to have, and in retrospect I can understand why; it speaks my language. All jazz records have a language created by the musician, and this language barrier is what keeps squares from "getting" jazz like Coltrane and Braxton and Ornette. Hunter's language is no less complex, but maybe it just has a more rock or pop dialect.
- Orbital: Orbital 2. (a.k.a. "The Brown Album") (1993) The world's first techno concept album. The hardest working brothers in electronic music wring every possible variation out of the standard bleeps, bloops, and loops, and the result is a dizzying cascade of perpetually mutating sounds, embedded in an amber wall of deeply challenging percussion loops. The alien whispers, attention signals, and attack warnings of "Planet Of The Shapes," the dark treated guitar and wordless vocals of "Lush 3," and the crushing palimpsest of synth, decay, and crescendo that makes up "Remind." It's literally a record that is more than the sum of its parts, but listening to the sum as a single part is pretty powerful, too; it's rare that any kind of musical recording will move me and speak to me and touch me on normally walled-off levels, but it's especially unique when that record is one of electronic music, a genre with a reputation for being cold and detached and inhuman. This record is organic and lush, full of fear and wonder, and it still gives me chills and leaves me short of breath when I listen to it. In a word: massive.
- Soul Coughing: Ruby Vroom. (1994) Of all their wildly uneven records, this is the most consistent in its delivery of jangly rhythm guitar, hyper hip-hop beats, idiosyncratic synths and keys, bulldog bass lines from Hell, and nasal stream-of-consciousness poetry. Any Soul Coughing collection will run the gamut from peppy mutant pop, ("Casiotone Nation" "Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago") laid-back jams, ("Sugar Free Jazz," "True Dreams Of Wichita") and mad, sample-driven epics; ("Bus to Beelzebub," "Screenwriter's Blues") but only this one has the jaunty, bouncing, plinking, "no-no-no," howling nonsense of "Down To This:" "You get the ankles and I'll get the wrists!" The remainder of their catalog has its moments, and songwriter Mike Doughty has found his own voice with his solo efforts, but for sheer, mashed up, New York slacker jazz, you could do worse than this debut.
- Daft Punk: Homework. (1997) Before the Franken-disco of Discovery and the cyber-Lovecraft torture of Human After All there was this record that skated the boundaries of brilliance and idiocy, ("Around The World") trance and techno, ("Alive") hip-hop and glam rock, ("Rollin' & Scratchin'") filthy funk and daft punk. ("Da Funk") Early repeated spins reveal only a short list of core sounds used in the creation of all the tracks, and yet there continue to be unrevealed Easter eggs every time you hear it again.
- DJ Shadow: The Private Press. (2002) Closer to a true hip-hop concept album than a hundred other records with a hundred thousand more words. Thousands of samples from countless basements packed with crates of moldering wax come together into a seamless, flowing, cohesive whole; even after repeated listens you still can't feel the edges of where one sound stops and a new one picks up. A soundtrack for more than a few personal lives.
Close seconds: Leftism by Leftfield, Boomerang by the Creatures, Los Angeles by X, The Low End Theory by A Tribe Called Quest, Seal (1991) by Seal, Green by R.E.M. Close thirds: Protection by Massive Attack, Thriller by Michael Jackson, The Trinity Session by Cowboy Junkies, Bonk by Big Pig, So by Peter Gabriel. You may now stop listening to music forever... again. ⎋
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I hate the blues.
The music, that is; the actual emotions I can deal with. This is kind of a disappointment, as my middle years were spent in Chicagoland, just a few miles from the blues hub itself, so while I was exposed to blues music as much as I was to the ambient radiation emanating from the ground, it never latched onto me like it did my Mom, who spent just as much time in the Midwest as me. It's not for lack of trying; at Alma Mater myriads of worlds of music were opened up to me, and of the stacks of blues records I took home, a majority of them I kept in my collection up until the very day I realized that they just didn't speak to me the way reggae or jazz or electronic music did.
And then they went straight to Mom.
But that's not the point.
During to-day's aimless errands, I tolerated the irregular blues show on the local college station, because I knew I wasn't going to be in the car for that long. On the one hand, this was a mistake, if one subscribes to the harebrained theory that the level of one's productivity is directly proportional to the energy level of their accompanying soundtrack; anyone who's survived a long, boring, solo road trip can attest to the benefits of a hyperactive mixtape. The problem with blues music is that it...
...can be...
...
...very...
...
...slooo...
...
...ooo...
...
...ooowww...
...
...some...
...
...
...times. Which goes towards explaining why I came back to Monkworks this afternoon with nothing but a sack of baker's sugar and a bottle of canola oil for my trouble.
On the other hand, five fingers: I did manage to catch a song that provided a little insight into real-life relationships, both past and present; "Make-A-Man Kit" by E.C. Scott. The actual lyrics are little difficult to locate, but suffice it to say that the intent of the song is against the idea of a bare-bones companion that you have to accessorize yourself with initiative, forethought, cojones, etc.; rather, it's better to find someone who is as close to a complete package as possible.
This naturally begs the question of what is better for a person; a companion that needs to be molded in order to match one's needs and wants, or a companion that comes with all the options and requires little to no modification? Of course, we're talking about people here, not cars or computers or furniture, but like optional equipment on a car or additional memory for a computer or Scotchguarding a new loveseat, we only get out of something as much as we are willing to invest in it, whether that investment is financial, emotional, or otherwise.
Of course, it'd be even better if people could come together and embrace and work through their differences, instead of railing against them and being jerks about it.
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Ruby: ok, so.
Ruby: have you ever seen 'say anything'
me: long time ago, yah
Ruby: so you know the infamous peter gabriel scene, then.
me: yesh
Ruby: if that were you in that scene, what song would you have played.
Ruby: doesn't matter what genre/era/whatever
me: hrm
me: the first thing that comes to mind is "Carondelet" by Ruby
me: "When I say I love you, I know that I lie/But it feels so good to scream it out loud"
me: not a very up song, tho
Ruby: i don't know what i would play
Ruby: but for some reason i had a burning need to ask everyone that question the other nite, heh
me: sounds like the beginning of a beautiful meme
me: or "Protection" by Massive Attack
me: "Now you can lean on me/And that's more than love, that's the way it should be"
me: kinda slow, tho
Ruby: that's ok. whatever you think would win her back!
Ruby: or him, depending on who you ask.
me: just nothing by Ben Folds Five
me: that band is responsible for more break-ups than "Beth" by Kiss
Ruby: if someone played ben folds five for me i'd break up with them too.
me: "Born Again" by Badly Drawn Boy is a good one too
me: Daisy Mae was throwing a lot of good ones at me last nite, actually
me: good NYE/prom nite songs
Ruby: i am mad at jeeves, he never plays what i want to hear.
me: O I KNOW
me: "Deep Water" by Seal
me: that's what I'd play
me: "And when you hurt someone so much that still they die loving you"
me: SOB
Ruby: hehe
Well? What's yours? What goes in your boom box at the crack of dawn?
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Is it too early for one of these? Too late now. As was the case at around this time last year, the contents of the following lists do not always reflect the current year's release dates, nor are they included because they rank above and beyond the majority of general releases of dubious quality. Rather, these compilations are meant to showcase the most notable items to come across Your Humble Narrator's desk.
Music: 2008 may not have been a banner year for music progression, but it certainly came more into its own as an all-you-can-eat buffet of offerings from bands seemingly unafraid to merge disparate styles and blur the borders between genres even further than before. And because of the iNtArWeBz, it really is a situation of all-you-can-eat; whether you want something or not; and this is a good thing, because all-you-can-eat breaks paradigms and penetrates preconceptions, which ultimately leads to music discovery.
- The Black Mages: Darkness and Starlight: More cock-rock covers of video game boss battle themes; the nostalgia factor is just strong enuf to overpower the fundamentally derivative nature of the idea. Highlights: "Bombing Mission," "Assault Of The Silver Dragons," "Grand Cross."
- Daft Punk: Alive: The robotheads take their own catalog of of disco-flavored techno, tear it apart, rewind it back, and remix it all on the fly. A rock n' roll record in everything but name, and one of the best live albums ever. Highlights: "Touch It/Technologic," "Around The World/Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger," "The Prime Time Of Your Life/The Brainwasher/Rollin' & Scratchin'/Alive." (More daft electronic experimentation here.)
- Mike Doughty: Golden Delicious: The farther Doughty moves out from under the shadow of Soul Coughing, the more legitimate his once-quirky style becomes. While not nearly soul-plumbing, still evocative with a verbal scrapbook of nostalgia. Highlights: "Navigating By The Stars At Night," "27 Jennifers," "Fort Hood."
- Scarlett Johansson: Anywhere I Lay My Head: The idea of the actor covering Tom Waits tunes is not nearly as anachronistic in practice; production is tight with some creative instrumentation, and Johansson's voice has a pleasant (if somewhat tuneless) Alison Moyet quality to it. Highlights: "Falling Down," "Anywhere I Lay My Head," "Who Are You."
- The Killers: Day & Age: Your Humble Narrator is admittedly ignorant of this band's supposed post-punk roots, (the only exposure to "Somebody Told Me" coming from a mash-up with The Clash's "Rock The Casbah") so the deduction that this third record is highly evolved in comparison may be interpreted as either completely presumptuous or just very perceptive. Highlights: "Human," "This Is Your Life," "The World We Live In."
- The Legendary Pink Dots: Plutonium Blonde: If Andrei Tarkovsky had directed Blade Runner in black-and-white and silent, the soundtrack might sound something like this. Broodingly electronic at times, wildly abstract in others, and trippendicular enuf to save you on recreational drugs. Highlights: "Torchsong," "Oceans Blue," "Rainbows Too?"
- Madonna: Hard Candy: Hardly a return to form, and not exactly an evolution, but more of a redeclaration of independence, reminding the world that Madonna's still around and the world is still her bitch. Like we could forget. Highlights: "4 Minutes," "She's Not Me," "Beat Goes On." (More mad Madonna musings here, here, and here.)
- My Morning Jacket: Evil Urges: (suggested by
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) hips_lips_tits) A weirdly appealing mash-up of country, rock, honky-tonk, and blue-eyed soul, with songs that would sound at home both on a jukebox or a slow dance scene in a teen sex movie. Highlights: "Librarian," "Highly Suspicious," "I'm Amazed," "Touch Me I'm Going To Scream."
- Negativland: Thigmotactic: Less of a true experimental Negativland record than the product of founder Mark Hosler's bedroom studio noodlings, the result being the collective's most pop-structured offering in years. Plenty of ad hoc samples and bizarre lyrics, all delivered with Hosler's everyday voice, sometimes matter-of-fact, other times strained and mocking. Highlights: "Your Skin Is Gelatin," "Jack Pastrami, (Flower Bum)" "Pork In The Store."
- Nine Inch Nails: The Slip: A real scalpel of a record, coalescing two decades of scattershot rock and experimental electropop into a precise and tactical musical delivery system. Highlights: "Letting You," "Discipline," "Demon Seed."
- The Orb: The Dream: (suggested by deathboy) Rave music may only be a quaint hangover in the 21st century, but no one told Alex Paterson, who never lost the goofy sensibilities that fueled so many previous Orb records with the power to move one's butt while tripping balls, and The Dream is no different in that respect. Highlights: "Vuja De," Mother Nature," "Orbisonia."
- Portishead: Third: Deliberate, spartan, and beautifully paranoid. If electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire was alive to-day, she might be making music similar to Portishead. Highlights: "We Carry On," "Machine Gun," "Threads."
- Radiohead: In Rainbows: Eventually, people will get used to Thom Yorke's weird happy/sad voice and Radiohead's tendency to change musical horses midstream; maybe some of us already have. In Rainbows may stand at a crossroads for the band, a point where they can comfortably continue to churn out consistently challenging records with little to no detriment to their supposed rock n' roll reputations. Highlights: "15 Step," "Bodysnatchers," "Reckoner."
- Rilo Kiley: Under The Blacklight: While Your Humble Narrator still isn't sold on the appeal of these child stars turned singer-songwriters, I like to think I have an open enuf mind to give them the benefit of the doubt. That said, while this record is strongly and slickly produced, it also features some of the weakest, lamest, most contrived lyrics I've ever heard. Highlights: "15," "Smoke Detector," "The Moneymaker."
Film: 2008 was a severe dry spell for Your Humble Narrator when it came to the local multiplex, even more so than last year. (I didn't even get around to The Dark Knight) Monkworks' Netflix queue fared little better, delivering mostly sci-fi television serials and yakuza movies from the 60s. Links lead to more in-depth reviews, where available. - American Hardcore: A very short documentary about the very short history of the post-punk hardcore scene in America. Not comprehensive, but a decent primer.
- Cloverfield: Like all ambitious monster movies, too many humans get in the way of the world being destroyed.
- Eastern Promises: A low-concept effort from David Cronenberg, with high yield from Viggo Mortensen.
- I Am Legend: Will Smith as the last actor on Earth.
- Iron Man: Makes Peter Parker look like a whiny little bitch...which he is anyway.
- The Kingdom: Manipulative, contrived, propagandist crap.
- Michael Clayton: Multilayered and knotted, but also lucid and emotionally trying.
- No Country For Old Men: Dreamlike and engaging at first, then muddled and truncated by the end.
- Pan's Labyrinth: Gorgeous set-dressings and makeup that harken back to Tim Burton's heyday, but hobbled by predictable plot twists and flat characters. It ends well, however.
- Sunshine: 2001 vs. Friday The 13th: Fight!
- There Will Be Blood: Hypnotizing and flowing at times, but ultimately psychotic and pointless.
- Who's That Girl: Madonna's worst movie, and therefore, her best.
Books: A tragic side effect of being a bibliophile is that if you neglect to track your books; the ones you have, the ones you've read, and the ones you no longer have, they will crawl over your back. As is the case here, having opted out of this year's ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) 50bookchallenge, I have no idea how many of the following I actually read this year or on the cusp of this year and last year. which is one of the more unique properties of books as media. You can see a movie or listen to a record in the space of a day, and afterwards you immediately get credit for it; most of us don't read that quickly, and the duration of our time in a certain book can often spill over into successive months or years. The solution here, however, turned out to be easy and logical: simply remember the books I've read over lunch at work, because I've been at GDI since the first of the year. - The Long Tail, Chris Anderson: The celebrated field guide to the "new economy" of online commerce that shaped the thinking of Google, eBay, and other companies' CEOs. Not all of it is spot-on, but enuf of it is.
- Heat, Bill Buford: A spiritual companion to Anthony Bourdain's restauranting exposés, Buford is the guy with no expertise in professional cooking who voluntarily jumps into the fray of Mario Batali's kitchen and cuts his teeth badly.
- Another Day In The Frontal Lobe, Katrina S. Firlik: Firlik is one of only a handful of women neurosurgeons in the world, and has a human, conversational style of writing that gently lifts the mask from a few corners of a misunderstood school of medicine.
- Good Omens, Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett: (suggested by xellyfer) Old-school and new-school fantasy masters combine their relative superpowers and create a darkly hilarious account of the end of the world. Pratchett's bone-dry quirkiness is tempered nicely by Gaiman's poetry-as-prose.
- The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell: Gladwell may excel in pointing out the obvious, but that doesn't keep this landmark book from opening your eyes to the way the world is influenced by the smallest things.
- V For Vendetta, Alan Moore: Regular readers are no strangers to Your Humble Narrator's acrimony towards the film adaptation of this seminal graphic novel, therefore my opinion that the comic book sucks just as hard should also come as no surprise.
- Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World (a gift from ratherunlikely) and Veganomicon, Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero: As a fledgling vegan, cooking for yourself becomes more and more important, and these cookbooks, along with a legion of food bloggers, make the transition that much easier.
- The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan: If you haven't read this by now, it's a moral obligation to do so. Pollan does for the rest of the industrial food complex what Eric Schlosser did for drive-thru culture with Fast Food Nation.
- Stiff: The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers, Mary Roach: Absurdly educational and petrifyingly macabre at the same time. Not everyone who dies ends up with the Six Feet Under treatment; this book will let you know what's in store for people's bodies when they donate them to science.
- The DC Comics Encyclopedia, Dan Wallace, et al: Rife with typos and questionable Golden Age costumes, but also rich in history, with seemingly no limit to how way-out storylines can stretch. Nowhere near an exhaustive reference, but an excellent launch point for the comic book neophyte.
- The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett: To think I wasted so much time slogging thru Robert Jordan's horseshit when I could have been breezing along the edges of Pratchett's fanciful Discworld instead. O well.
- Extras, Scott Westerfeld: Westerfeld takes the Douglas Adams route with his Uglies trilogy and continues the hijinks of parahuman teenagers rediscovering a newly liberated Earth society, where your status in the world is judged by your online "facerank," à la MySpace.
Every year these lists get harder to refine, for the same reason that every year there is that much more media to input into the brain. Every year there are also generations of young people who are put upon to ingest not only the new releases, but the predecessors that influenced them, layers and layers of media history to pick apart. And even if you dedicate yourself to become a book nerd, a movie snob, a music Nazi, you may only be able to grasp a fraction of a fraction of the whole history; you may never be able to see the big picture except in snatches. It's never been more important to know what we like and grow from those facts, lest we take in too much and sicken ourselves. But then, who will read the small-press book? What about the art house film? Whither music discovery? ⎋
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[i.]
Listen to the first track from the Basil Poledouris score to Conan The Barbarian, "Anvil Of Crom." Then listen to the first track from Jerry Goldsmith's score to Total Recall, "The Dream."
Goldsmith ripped off Poledouris, they sound virtually identical. Goldsmith may have added electronic sequencing and had a Berklee-trained orchestra compared to Poledouris' brassy confab, but it's still all parroted. The menacing horns, the kettledrum percussion, the staggered rises of strings, etc.
Remember, when one writer steals from another writer, it's plagiarism. But when one artists steals from another artist, it's diffusion.
Or, to put it into music snob terms, all musicians are thieves and magpies. (Elvis Costello)
[ii.]
WE HAZ NEW FUDZ!
SO HUNGERY! SO FRUSTERATED!
WHY ARE YOU STARVING US!?
[iii.]
The days are like palimpsests; layers lost under layers.
Ideas and notions and bits and pieces come and light upon the neurons, only to be overwritten by the gentle demands of pedestrian life.
Shave and shower trumps sweetness and light, sweep and dust before sword and stone, toil and timecards over introspection and elevation.
Layers upon layers, concrete laid over dreams, nacho cheese on top of your peanut butter sammich.
You have so much to be thankful for, so much to live for, so much that you are so lucky just to have and hold and harness.
But you choose to hem and haw and harp; because either way, if you stay silent, you will explode.
And the nights are filled with the amnesia of the day, with only the precognitive memory of the morning to guide you along.
⎋
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With musical tastes this questionable, who wouldn't get a sick little thrill from a Concrete Standard-themed podcast?
People Like Us into Michael Jackson into Squarepusher?
Aphex Twin into Ornette Coleman into Madonna?
Justin Timberlake into Kid 606 into Godspeed You! Black Emperor?
Which is not to say that all possible combinations would be cringeworthy.
Morcheeba into RJD2 into The Legendary Pink Dots?
It could happen.
⎋
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More pumpkin muffins:
Not terribly exciting, but they were a request from a friend who doesn't care much for chocolate.
Also made to-day, but not pictured, Vegan With A Vengeance's Chickpea Broccoli Casserole, which was a complete pain in the ass to make because it asks for a shitload of garbanzos and a truck full of broccoli and an asston of carrots, and the biggest bowl in Cat Spit Kitchen wasn't nearly big enuf to hold it all, so stirring it all together soon became a war of attrition between even integration and losing bits and pieces to the sink and floor.
Only later did I figure out that I could have used my twelve-quart stockpot as a mixing vessel.
I also forgot to add the onion and the chives.
Still good, tho.
But that's not the point. The point here is the recipe asks for bread crumbs as a binder, and while Cat Spit Kitchen has panko readily on hand, I thot I'd scout out the corner megamart and see if a more pedestrian version was available.
All I can say is Thank Dog I'm a vegan, because being a vegan (or a vegetarian for that matter) conditions you to instinctively check the ingredients of anything that isn't a whole food. What I found is that of the commercially available bread crumbs (an absurd concept to begin with, I mean, if you have bread, you already have bread crumbs; buying prefab bread crumbs makes as much sense as buying gravel or potting soil or bottled water) at the corner shop, all of them were adulterated with something; egg, milk powder, HFCS. (!?!)
The list of ingredients on the side of my box of panko? Whole wheat.
What's the big deal?
Also:
- The new Legendary Pink Dots record sounds like how a Tarkovsky film looks.
- When The Dust Brothers were forced to change their name to The Chemical Brothers, it was the beginning of the end. Problem is, that end has turned into an excruciating fifteen-year slow death of big beat electronic music. It will be missed, once a worthy successor of a genre can be found, but so far, no luck. So the world is left to deal with the undead remains of the techno equivalent of cock-rock.
- After five years, Groove Armada's "I See You Baby" is even more vapid and annoying than before.
⎋
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Last nite a DJ saved the election.
Let me explain.
Four years ago, I was thinking a lot of the same things I was mulling over this year; (admittedly tempered with the sensibilities of early West Wing repeats) the idea of a country as an experiment and the long evolution of its society, the senses of duty and responsibility, and recognizing the impact of our actions, as seemingly insignificant as they might seem. Not to mention the bitter aftertaste of a hard letdown.
I don't even remember what I was doing eight years ago. It's been a long eight years, eh?
Anyway, a few days ago yesterday on linkphasia I posted a link to a story about the soundtrack for Barack Obama's campaign, full of the usual patriotic floor-fillers, but tempered with just as many, if not more, PMA (postive mental attitude)-themed tunes. Not to sound like one of the spacey, airheaded, lovey-dovey hippies I've grown to mistrust, but I believe, to a certain extent, that your PMA helped propel our new Chief Resident to his future seat of power just as much as your ballot did.
Think about it. And while you're at it, recall your own soundtrack for last nite. I'll show you mine, but as usual, there's some explaining to do.
For the last two years, it feels as if Your Humble Narrator has been living life with a clenched sphincter; both in terms of terrible anticipation but also out of fear of somehow indirectly queering the deal by ingesting too much information. For the last six weeks since my ballot went in the mail, in fact, the filters have been set to maximum and very little news, good or bad, slipped thru. For the most part it worked, on only a few occasions was my mellow harshed by bulletins from a world that turns more and more into a reality TV show every day. Knowledge is power, sure. Information is nutrition, okay? But after getting burned in 2000 and 2004, who can blame me for being a little gun-shy? A lot has changed in the distribution of data, fact, and truth since, almost to the point of, in Your Humble Narrator's humble opinion, that the wrong kind of information can be poisonous; poisonous not only to the consumer, but to everyone and everything under their immediate influence, an influence that stretches exponentially across the entire network of spheres.
Plus, a vacuum of news can make Election Nite feel like Xmas Eve; go to bed, wake up, there's a new President under the tree!
After last nite, I can finally relax that long-suffering muscle, (and so can you) drop the shields, and stand down red alert. Now we can get to work.
At one point last nite on Twitter I said, "Every song you hear for the rest of the night is going to remind you of your senior prom." Truth be told, a number of the songs I was spinning up to that point more closely resembled the vamps one would expect to hear at an Obama rally rather than the PMA-infused pop heard on the eve before you were released into the wild:
- Bobby Byrd: "I Know You Got Soul"
- Black Harmony: "Don't Let It Go To Your Head"
- The Gap Band: "You Dropped The Bomb On Me"
- Sir Joe Quarterman & Free Soul: "I Got So Much Trouble In My Mind"
- Maceo & the Macks: "Soul Power 74" (incorporates MLK's "I Have A Dream" speech)
Still, there was such a relatively positive vibe generated with this mix, I almost feared I would jinx the nite's progress with a change in tempo, (the same second-guessing kept me from posting several snarky tweets) but change we did; from slow jams and conscious dancehall to...the Transformers soundtrack. Okay, now I really have to explain. When I say Transformers, I refer to, of course, the 1986 animated feature Transformers: The Movie; which, as you may or may not know, and despite recent grumblings about the state of cinema, is Your Humble Narrator's favorite movie. And why not? It's got action, it's got pathos, it's got death and destruction, redemption and rebirth, and a girl robot. It's got all the original voice actors, including Peter Cullen and Casey Kasem, (plus Judd Nelson) and Orson Welles in his final credited screen role. I've seen it ninety-nine times. And it has a killer cock-rock soundtrack. But it's the words you need to pay attention to. The film's anthem (barring the insanely transmogrifyed version of the main theme) is "The Touch" by Stan Bush (a song also featured, bizarrely enuf, in Boogie Nights) and showcases the usual battery of stick-to-it-tiveness characteristic of hair bands who just couldn't quite extricate themselves from the new-wave movement of the Eighties: You never get hit when your back's to the wall/Gonna fight to the end and you're takin' it all
You got the touch/You got the power
When all hell's breakin' loose/You'll be riding the eye of the storm
You got the heart/You got the motion
You know that when things get too tough/You got the touch Less friendly, but no less ambitious, are the words from "Nothin's Gonna Stand In Our Way" by the hilariously named Spectre General: We want it all/And tonight we got the call
We're running high but we won't fall/We want it all
We won't be denied/Like a breaker at high tide
We're gonna take this sweet joy ride/We won't be denied The rock-with-your-robot-cock-out cover of the Transformers theme by Lion (sometimes erroneously credited to White Lion; hah! You wish, guys) neatly summarizes the story arc, and tellingly ends with this bit of prescience: The battle's over but the war has just begun
And this way it will remain 'til the day when all are one (The "until all are one" mantra [an obvious influence on Battlestar Galactica's "so say we all"] is a recurring theme in the film, reflected upon the scattering of the Autobots and the loss of their leader, which is also a nice parallel to post-9/11 America and Obama's underlying message of unity.) The soundtrack's high point, other than Vince DiCola's piledriving electrorock score, comes with Stan Bush's second song, "Dare;" which connects not just with its energizing synthpop rhythms, but with simple, evocative, PMA lyrics: Everybody's trying to break your spirit/Keeping you down
Seems like it's been forever
But there's another voice if you'll just hear it/Saying it's the last round
Looks like it's now or never
Out of the darkness you stumble into the light
Fighting for the things you know are right
Dare, dare to believe you can survive
The power is there at your command
Dare, dare to keep all of your dreams alive
It's time to take a stand
You can win if you dare So cheesy. And so spot-on. O, it hurts. Gawd, this is embarrassing. But, there's more. As "Dare" winds down into its final loop of choruses, the words are changed, from "dare to keep all of your dreams alive," to "dare to keep all of your love alive." Now, it's evident that a number of you Gentle Readers, as well as a large portion of the population at large, found yourselves with something in your eye during Obama's acceptance, possibly even both. With shields down but filters still operating, Your Humble Narrator was unable to participate in the evening's gestalt of relief. But with the right soundtrack, I still felt every ripple, every spasm, every howl. And I know you howled. So this is what is really feels like to be an American? What a rush. ⎋
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Thanks to xaotica's generous offer of free mp3s from emusic, La Norme Concrète will easily be pushed over the 18K cliff in short order.
There's a tiny tangle, however. This sub-project requires the adaption of the web economy's sweetheart, the singles-based model, which is in direct conflict with the album-based structure of The Concrete Standard and La Norme Concrète. This is not to say that the two systems are incompatible, but the stripping of mental gears required for Your Humble Narrator to downshift from thinking about what records I'd like to try to what songs I'd like to hear is a difficult one, for several reasons, not the least of which are that my recent heavy filtering of popular culture has left my pop sensibilities somewhat stunted.
Sounds like it's music discovery time.
Music discovery is one of the most powerful forces the music lover/snob/geek has at their disposal, but it is notoriously fickle with its targets, frustratingly slippery to pin down, and since the burial of Alma Mater and its rivals, even more difficult to experience, now that the browsing experience has, for a large number of people, moved inside. One of the more common questions we were peppered with during Alma Mater's final days was, "Are you guys closing because everyone's downloading their music now?" At the time, the answer to that would most likely have been about fifty percent "To a certain extent, yes," and fifty percent "Not necessarily;" the argument being that despite the encroaching dearth of profit stemming from filesharing, legitimate and otherwise, the numbers still said that most consumers (around 75%) were still buying their music from brick-and-mortar establishments. The problem was just that there were significantly fewer people in that 75% than there were five or ten years ago.
Now, when that question comes up, (hypothetically, since there are no more customers to abuse) the answer is different. Yes, the number of people downloading their music is growing and the number of people buying physical media is isn't, but convenience and cost are only some of the reasons. In Chris Anderson's The Long Tail, he mentions the different kinds of shelf space stores have, both online and off. Brick-and-mortar stores only have so much physical space to balance against the cost of renting that space and keeping it filled with a product that has high turnover, while online stores have virtually unlimited shelf space. What this means is that a store with infinite room for product has the potential for an infinitely "deep catalog," an attribute that endeared Alma Mater to collectors and esoteric music lovers, simply because somewhere in the stacks, if you took your time and dug deep enuf, would be a very special record; either a record you've been chasing after for a while, or even better, a record with the potential to lead you to another record, and another, and another; either by way of shared music personnel, common stylistic threads, similar but skewed iterations of a song, or other threads that join one record to another.
That's music discovery.
That's also a pretty shitty way to describe it. An Alma Mater associate (whose material I've reprinted here previously) demonstrated it more clearly this way:
"Another foolproof method of building a jazz collection is to buy records that include the same personnel as the records you already have. Remember that the most important thing to consider when rating a jazz record is the quality of the interaction, and by that logic, who really cares who the leader is on a particular session?
"For example, you have Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue, including Miles, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderly, and Bill Evans. You decide, 'Hey, I think I'll check out some more records by this Cannonball guy,' so you go out and get a record by the Cannonball Adderly sextet, unwittingly discovering Yusef Lateef in the process!
"It's just that easy. There's great stuff out there, it's up to you to go get it." Anyway, if you'd care to throw a recommendation or two in my general direction for a single or a song that's moved you or caused you to move, you could do worse. It should be noted that despite my tendencies for harsh, elitist, criticism, I also believe in the adage " Homo sum, humani nil a me alienum puto," or "I am human, nothing human is alien to me," which is a fancy way of saying that everything is valid. That said, I've been wasting daylite hours recently listening to first-wave ska, late 90s progressive house, and minimal techno/dub techno; but I'm just as amenable to disco-rock, airbrushed bubblegum, sleepy dreampop, cut-and-paste hip-hop, or electro jazz. Thank you in advance for your speedy reply. ⎋
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It almost makes Your Humble Narrator want to just assign the blanket label of "Jamaican" to the whole mess and be done with it.
Let me explain.
At this point in La Norme Concrète's growth, the issue of capacity is, for the moment, moot, thanks to the advent of Gaia. With the recent influx of ska*, rocksteady, dancehall, ragga, dub, and straight-up reggae, one might assume that pigeonholing would become a problem, especially when it comes to discerning one musical style from another. Believe it or leave it, this is not the case, at least partly. The only issue with fractal genre pigeonholing is the absolute organizational nightmare that results when such an organic system is foisted upon an established hierarchy, such as that of Proteus, who hosts La Norme Concrète in tandem with Gaia. That is to say, why label something as "Bollywood" when it can go under "Vocals?" Why tag something as "Punk" when it can go with the rest of the "Rock?" Why bother with meaningless permutations like "Darkstep," "Jump-Up," and "Neurofunk," when they're all slightly, barely perceptibly different styles of "Jungle?**"
The problem is twofold. Firstly is the issue of assigning a style to a single artist, a method that arguably makes database-aligned music collections such as La Norme Concrète easier to browse and organize, as long as the artists in question are reasonably consistent as they grow and progress and mature. Linkin Park is rock, Madonna is pop, Ludacris is hip-hop, etc.; easy-peasy. The trouble starts when artists start to edge towards the fringes of their home genres, (Ray Charles, Johnny Cash) cross already gray borders between subgenres, (Aphex Twin, Banco de Gaia) or completely disregard the pigeonholing structure altogether. (John Cage, Cecil Taylor) When it comes to Jamaican music, there are numerous artists who ride the mutating waves of change and manage to stay legit and produce music true to the style, which is the crux of the issue: splitting genre assignments between single artists. Does Gregory Isaacs' dub work go under "Dub" or with the rest of his catalog in "Reggae?" Should ska from Toots and the Maytals be separated from their rocksteady stuff? These may seem insignificant, nitpicky issues on the surface, but they belie the second part of the problem:
While Your Humble Narrator may put on the airs of a music maven, I am by no means versed in its more scholarly aspects; the closest I've gotten to reading music was faking my way thru trombone tootlings in high school band. (or maybe that was just a dream) This is important to mention because when it comes to the art (or drudgery) of pigeonholing, discerning one musical style from another often comes down to the smallest detectable changes in one song or another. Maybe my ears just aren't sophisticated enuf, but minutiae like time, whether a keyboard is an electric piano or a Hammond organ, or even which stroke is considered the downbeat, are generally lost on me. Fortunately, and perhaps in part to possessing a more visual mind, the partitioning of one Jamaican musical style from another is made somewhat less painful when you look at the overall evolution of styles as progressive, parallel to burgeoning technology, and equatable to "Western" styles of the same time periods:
Consider: ska is to skiffle, as rocksteady is to doo-wop, as reggae is to rock. That is, if it sounds like it was made with a bunch of amateur musicians playing homemade instruments, it's probably ska. If the songs are slower, revolve around love, (lost or otherwise) and are heavy on falsetto vocals, it's probably rocksteady. If the sound is more modern, the production values tighter, and the lyrics more introspective and "conscious," it's probably straight-ahead reggae. In addition, dancehall is to house, as ragga is to drum n' bass; dancehall relies more on electronics and vocals, while ragga is even faster in BPM and more staccato with the MC's delivery. The closest thing dub comes to is remixing in general, as you can issue a dub "version" for just as many styles as there are to record for.)
The idea isn't bulletproof, of course. There are songs with a definite ska rhythm but with mushy vocals, downbeat rocksteady instrumentals, and reggae records produced in 1960s Britain that sound like they came straight out of Detroit. Not to mention the relatively brief period of time that rocksteady itself inhabited, (two years at the most) so it's no surprise that one person's ska is another's rocksteady is another's reggae, especially when it comes to the "wave-riders" mentioned previously. This porousness of the rules that define one style from another is what makes pigeonholing Jamaican music so frustrating, and the temptation of lumping anything that even vaguely resembles the sound into a single bucket all the greater. And while listening to music critically is seldom painful, the idea of sifting thru single after single trying to pick up on tiny changes in tempo, the ratio of instrumentals to vocals, or whether the tune has a "chicka-chicka" refrain sounds like more than a little tiresome.
Also, the playlist for the "jazz is dead" mixtape "There Are No More Masters" was successfully recovered:
Side A:
- Critters Buggin: "Sheets."
- Squirrel Nut Zippers: "Lugubrious Whing Whang."
- Elvis Costello & Bill Frisell: "Weird Nightmare."
- Caspar Brotzmann Massaker: "The Tribe."
- Frank Zappa: "Duke of Orchestral Prunes."
- MC Solaar & Ron Carter: "Un Ange en Danger." (from the Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Blue project, ten thousand times better than Guru's comparatively crap Jazzmatazz series)
- Medeski Martin & Wood: "Nocturne." (Automator mix)
- Henry Threadgill: "Laughing Club."
- Don Byron: "Furman."
- David Tronzo & Reeves Gabrels: "A Night in Tunisia." (Gabrels is better-known as the maddeningly talented guitarist in David Bowie's Tin Machine side project)
- Mark Ribot: "Nature Abhors a Vacuum Cleaner."
- Jimi Tenor: "My Mind."
Side B:- Steve Reich/Pat Metheny: "Electric Counterpoint." (movement #3, fast)
- Machine Gun: "Cybercat." (who?)
- Cassandra Wilson: "Time After Time." (as in the Cyndi Lauper song, and it's almost unrecognizable)
- Squarepusher: "Our Underwater Torch."
- Ben Neill: "After The Gold Rush." (Neill's "mutantrumpet" invention is parts of three trumpets welded together with synthesizer parts)
- Tom Waits: "The Piano Has Been Drinking. (Not Me)"
- Morphine: "Let's Take a Trip Together."
- Neuwirth: "Famoudou's Bone." (who?!?)
- T.J. Kirk: "Damn Right I'm Somebody." (a brief side project of Charlie Hunter, they used to play, exclusively, the music of Thelonious Monk, James Brown and Rahsaan Roland Kirk)
- Steve Tibbetts: "Hellbound Train."
Recreating this and "The One True American Invention" will require some nips and tucks, as a number of the representative singles have had their parent records pawned during previous "decimations." Just like music itself, The Concrete Standard changes and evolves and is never static, for worse or for better. EDIT: The majority of the recent Jamaican glut comes from the reasonably-priced Trojan box sets, which raises a slightly thorny concern, one that is just as easily dispersed. While anal-retentive purists and moldy old-schoolers might bemoan the privilege of acquiring such a large chunk of the genre's rich history in so few swoops, the ease in acquiring these remarkable sides hardly invalidates the value of the music itself. As if spending weeks scouring used record shops and filthying ones fingertips browsing thru endless melanges of cracked wax would make a record by The Uniques or a single by Sir Lord COmic sound any different or better. Besides, I don't have a turntable anymore. Progress: it's a bitch. *"Ska" in this sense refers to late-50's "first-wave" ska; not 2 Tone ska, ska revival, or "third-wave" ska punk.**In the sphere of La Norme Concrète, drum n' bass, jungle, and its myriad iterations are categorized under "Breakbeat," which is both right and wrong in its usage. Breakbeat is derived from a 'break," which in hip-hop turntablism, is sampling the point in a piece of music where the front end of the band steps back to let the rhythm section jam for a bit, usually defined by a sharp hit of percussion or brass. Break loops are the cornerstone of modern hip-hop instrumentation, and since drum n' bass is, at its very core, little more than sped-up hip-hop, the pigeonhole term "breakbeat" is not entirely inappropriate, if a little inaccurate.⎋
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Yesterday was also a new music day.
The last time Your Humble Narrator pawned a portion of The Concrete Standard it was not, for once, for sheer monetary gain, rather it served the dual purpose of extra scratch and clearing out technically "obsolete" items that had already migrated to La Norme Concrète and possessed little to no sentimental value. While at the local reseller of choice, the aftereffects of the sea change in American music buying habits over the past near-decade were painfully obvious in the half-deserted aisles of bored downtown whiffle-ball moms and obsessive-compulsive collectors, and it was no different this time.
Not to mention that the object of this weekend attention, used drum n' bass and/or ambient compilations, were lacking to the extreme in the inventory. I decided last time that it would be a long time before I came back for whatever reason, and it seems that I returned too soon. So, with still half a morning to murder and only a fistful of glossy Hallowe'en-themed rave flyers to show for it, a course correction was made for the local competing reseller of choice, where things were much different.
'Different' not necessarily in the sense of 'better;' while the selection was deeper, organization left a little something to be desired. (A hopeful peek at the pitifully diminutive ska section quickly turned exasperating when asshole acts like Goldfinger, Less Than Jake, and Reel Big Fish were found filed amongst questionable second-wavers Operation Ivy and Bad Manners, with no Skatalites, Maytals, or Specials in sight. [At least our beloved No Doubt was nowhere to be seen.]) Despite these shortcomings, we did locate several decent scores in the bargain clearance bin:
- Artificial Intelligence II. The
second eighth in WARP Records' seminal IDM series.
- Electronic: Electronic. Bernard Sumner (New Order) and Johnny Marr (The Smiths) form the first great 'supergroup' of the 90s.
- Global Underground: Arrivals. The second in GU's sampler series (the fist being Departures) from the initial dozen or so DJ mixes.
- Kid 606: Down With The Scene. Sick MacBook-based drum/drill n' bass/mash-up hooliganism.
- One A. D. First in Waveform Records' ambient dub series.
- DisneyMania, vol. 1. Squeaky pop covers of Disney properties; features "Reflection" by Christina Aguilera (from Mulan) and Hilary Duff's version of "The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room."
Add to that the day's round-up of downloads: - Dusty Springfield: Complete A and B Sides: 1963-1970. Because you can only hear "Son Of A Preacher Man" so many times.
- The In-Kraut: Hip Shaking Grooves Made In Germany, 1967-1974. Three volumes of swinging German mod pop.
- Sabres Of Paradise: Sabresonic. Trippy techo-dub with a murder-mystery-soundtrack twist.
- B12: Time Tourist. Neo-Blade Runner-esque ambient house.
- Le Pop 2: Les Chansons de La Nouvelle Scéne Française. Second in the series of modern French pop.
It's no wonder it seems like there isn't enuf spare time in the day; it's as if I'm back working at Alma Mater or something. Plus, as an direct/indirect byproduct of rescreening the Jazz documentary, I was reminded of a pair of mixtapes submitted to a community site called Art Of The Mix. (which has since been flagged as an attack site by Google) Approximately a hundred years ago, when file-sharing was still embryonic, en masse hosting was more trouble than it was worth, and not every household had a CD burner, AotM users would post the raw tracklistings of their latest D.I.Y. compilations, and yes, in the beginning a large percentage of those did come from actual mix tapes. The first of the jazz mixes was a result of a request from a then-co-worker, who wanted to get more into jazz, but was understandably clueless as to where to start. And while Your Humble Narrator is far from an authority on jazz, I like to think that I know enuf of the genre's zig-zaggy history to pull together a listenable ad hoc primer from The Concrete Standard, even if it was skewed towards more high-energy sides: Side A:- Raymond Scott Quintette: "Dinner Music For A Pack Of Hungry Cannibals."
- Charles Mingus: "Hora Decubitus."
- Cal Tjader: "Guachi Guaro. (Soul Sauce)"
- Benny Goodman: "Madhouse."
- Cannonball Adderly Quintet: "Walk Tall."
- The Montgomery Brothers: "Delirium."
- Don Byron: "The Dicty Glide."
- Rahsaan Roland Kirk & Jack McDuff: "Kirk's Work."
- Clifford Brown & The Max Roach Quintet: "The Blues Walk."
- Sonny Rollins & The Modern Jazz Quartet: "The Stopper."
Side B:- Fats Waller: "Your Feet's Too Big."
- James Carter: "Lester Leaps In."
- Chico Hamilton: "For Mods Only."
- Chet Baker: "Pro Defunctus."
- Art Pepper: "Smack-Up."
- Annie Ross: "Twisted."
- Glenn Miller: "American Patrol."
- Charlie Hunter Trio: "Dance Of The Jazz Fascists."
- Lonnie Smith: "Think."
- Coleman Hawkins Quartet: Go Li'l Liza."
- Oliver Nelson: "Ricardo's Dilemma."
It was called "The One True American Invention," and while most of the content was culled from the endless dump of promotional samplers one is exposed to at Alma Mater, it still managed to cover a respectable number of subgenres, from boogie-woogie to bebop, swing to fusion, young lions to punk jazz. (And before you ask, Art Pepper's "Smack Up" is about exactly what you think it's about.) In retrospect, a revision or two wouldn't be that difficult to pull off, with the leaps and bounds The Concrete Standard's jazz section has made in the interim. But while a rough guide to jazz is interesting, and the tracklisting easy to skim from the original cassette's J-card, it's the follow-up mix that's regrettably lost to history. Titled "There Are No More Masters," it was a companion collection of musicians whose art was influenced by and reflected the values of traditional jazz, whether it sounded like jazz or not: Critters Buggin, Morphine, guitarist Reeves Gabrels, Tom Waits, Squarepusher, etc. The idea was not to make two separate programs of music, one that said "jazz lives" and the other "jazz is dead;" but rather to show in the second mix what a lot of jazz mavens and critics have said before, that jazz hasn't been killed by the latest wave of popular music, instead it's just lying in a semi-dormant state, waiting for someone to come along and reinterpret it in a way no one has before. It's a pattern that jazz has enjoyed in the past: Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, and James Carter have all lent their own unique voices to the genre, and since these mixes were published, Diana Krall, Norah Jones, and Brad Mehldau as well. Or, as Frank Zappa once ignominiously said, "Jazz isn't dead, it just smells a little funny." ⎋
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"Rock Me Amadeus" is overrated.
"The Sound Of Musik" is underrated:
For obvious reasons.
Thanks again for the mix, xellyfer.
⎋
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Crow: "S-E-X-X-Y" isn't bad, but I like "She's Actual Size" better
Crow: it's nuttier
me: TMBG are like Rush
me: there's a line that separates old-school fans from everyone else
me: kind of like pre-full-band fans and post-full-band fans
Crow: LOL
⎋
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[i.]
Is it any coincidence that just as you only really need three knives at any time in your kitchen, (chef's knife, serrated knife, paring knife) you also only need three books in order to run a Dungeons & Dragons campaign? (Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual)
[ii.]
Spotted to-day:
[iii.]
Recent music discoveries:
- The Undertones (stripped-down, who-gives-a-toss-about-the-establishment-let's-impress-some-chicks pre-post-punk; via Dolly Mixture, v. good)
- MGMT (future retro pre-postmodern "rawk;" via hips_lips_tits, a.v. good)
- Ulrich Schnauss (dreamy My Bloody Valentine meets Boards Of Canada cascades of sound; via ratherunlikely, d.p. good)
More no doubt to follow. La Norme Concrète now stands at 16,693 individual items. The last section of The Concrete Standard to be added was jazz, which bulked up the total by between 100 and 120 albums; it's difficult to tell exactly as there were a modicum of established records already residing in Proteus when the flight to Gaia was executed. What next? Classical? DJ mixes? That's all that's really left. And after that, we can finally stop listening to music forever. But until then... ⎋
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Non-Madonna pop notes:
After a lengthy deliberation period and a cursory examination of their primary discography, Your Humble Narrator is still having some trouble getting behind the music of Rilo Kiley.
Help us out here a bit:
- It's not just because they say 'fuck' at inopportune times.
- It's not because their mash-up style of country, blip-hop, and what used to be called "indie" doesn't work; on the contrary, it's one of their most endearing qualities. More bands should challenge established genre sensibilities like that.
- It's not because Jenny Lewis' vocals are toneless at times, brassy at others, and forgettable for the remainder; as mentioned previously in this forum, we don't listen to rock n' roll singers because they have good voices, we listen to them because they have interesting voices.
- Is it because they tend to skirt the line between brilliant and ordinary so finely as to be annoying? Sometimes it seems like all it takes is one little push and they'd be on either side of the fence, either massive or unremarkable.
- To their credit, their earlier records are better composition-wise, while later releases have deeper instrumentation. However, records like More Adventurous and especially Under The Blacklight maintain their minimalist structure alongside encroaching production values, while previous long-players such as Take Offs And Landings or any one of the three releases of their first EP show off a more intimate, cobbled-together, D.I.Y. vibe. Same band, same style, different sound.
Perhaps it's just something one has to get used to; like the one record in your collection that takes the longest to grow on you sometimes turns out to be one of your favorites. Or maybe we just have Madonna on the brain. ⎋
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O, the pains Your Humble Narrator has gone thru in researching a deconstruction of Madonna. And while it's easy enuf to compile another requisite "top ten" list of ubiquitous hit singles, core albums, and recommended movies, it may be more telling to list the number of Madonna singles in highest rotation from the past week:
- "Music:" 47 plays.
- "Express Yourself:" (album mix) 36 plays.
- "Into The Groove:" (album mix) 31 plays.
- "Human Nature:" 25 plays.
- "Like A Prayer:" (album mix) 22 plays.
- "Vogue" (remix) 21 plays.
- "Causing A Commotion:" 19 plays.
- "What It Feels Like For A Girl:" 17 plays.
- "Papa Don't Preach:" 15 plays.
- "Open Your Heart:" 13 plays.
However, if minimally required Madonna records exist, one could do worse than to consider the following suggestions. Core albums: - Like A Virgin: Why not True Blue? Because Like A Virgin straddles (pardon the term) the dividing line between the blushing debut and the pure pop sensibility of True Blue; a hybrid of scattershot bubblegum and efficient production, without the naivete of the former or the stolidness of the latter.
- Key singles: "Angel," "Dress You Up," "Into The Groove," "Like A Virgin," "Material Girl," "Love Don't Live Here Anymore."
- Like A Prayer: For obvious reasons; the first real turning point in songwriting, instrumentation, and rock-oriented pop.
- Key singles: "Like A Prayer," "Express Yourself," "Cherish."
- Ray Of Light: The post-Evita reëmergence; nothing would really be the same after this record.
- Key singles: "Frozen," "Ray Of Light," "The Power Of Good-Bye," "Drowned World."
Advanced listening: - True Blue: Very pop, very professional, also very pressed, pleated, and polite. Despite the incremental maturation of lyrical content and musical canonizing, still a safe, inside-the-lines record.
- Key singles: "Papa Don't Preach," "Open Your Heart," "Live To Tell," "La Isla Bonita."
- Bedtime Stories: Shadows of funk and soul, overtones of hip-hop, and a collaboration with Björk. A record that, at times, can't seem to decide if it wants to be spanked or just doze off.
- Key singles: "Secret," "Human Nature," "Bedtime Story."
- Music: Pared down, experimental instrumentation, challenging, interpretive lyrics, but still shaped into traditional verse-chorus-verse parcels. Not exactly electropop, nowhere near bubblegum, but not quite rock n' roll, either. Also features complex layers that reveal Easter eggs upon repeated listenings.
- Key singles: "Music," "Don't Tell Me," "What It Feels Like For A Girl."
For experts/fans only: - Erotica: Madonna mashes up sex and disco into a concept album, with mixed results. An adventuresome record, brave in its instrumentation and words open to interpretation.
- Key singles: "Deeper and Deeper," "Fever," "Bad Girl," "Erotica," "Why's It So Hard."
- American Life: Madonna versus Madonna; or, the two Madonnas. Bleeding edge electronics and voice treatments abound underneath self-deprecating, self-parodying, acid-tongued lyrics. Another record that reveals more the more you listen to it.
- Key singles: "American Life," "Hollywood," "Die Another Day," "Love Profusion."
The raw data:- Madonna has commercially released 59 singles in the U.S. to date, 87 overall and worldwide. Save her first two releases, (1982's "Everybody" and 1983's "Burning Up") every commercially released single through 2004's "American Life" has charted on Billboard's Hot 100.
- Her most successful chart title is 1994's "Take A Bow," spending seven weeks at No. 1.
- In 2000, "Music" became her 12th No. 1 on the Hot 100, tying her with The Supremes tally of chart-toppers. Only Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, The Beatles, and Elvis Presley have more.
- 2002's "Die Another Day" was her 35th single to hit the top ten on The Billboard Hot 100. Only Elvis has more, 38.
- 2003's "Me Against The Music" (with Britney Spears) was her 46th top 40 hit on the Hot 100. She has the most top 40 hits of any female artist, tied with Stevie Wonder for fourth place among all artists with the most top 40 singles on the Hot 100.
- Madonna has placed a single in the top 40 of the Hot 100 every year since 1983, except for 1988, when she had no releases.
- Madonna has 24 gold singles (defined as 500,000 units shipped) to her credit, the most for any female artist. This ties her with The Beatles for second place and just behind Elvis Presley among artists with the most gold singles.
- Madonna's discography proper covers eleven studio albums, seventeen of which have breached the top ten, and seven of those that have reached No. 1.
Final thots:Is Madonna still relevant? She's a veteran of the 80s, a survivor of the 90s, and unlike a number of her colleagues who came up the ranks parallel to her, she's still making records in the 2000s, still touring, and, for lack of a better term, still pushing the envelope of generally accepted popular culture. Along the way, she's acted as a locus for economic changes in the music industry, weathered the requisite weather systems of controvery that inevitably surround a life lived in public, and influenced and inspired a laundry list of contemporary artists. What keeps her from quitting, from imploding, from knowing when enuf is enuf? Perhaps, altho doubtfully; maybe, despite the touchy-feely factor; it could be, but it probably isn't, really all for the fans: Ruby: I don't know what, but there is something about Daft Punk that makes me want to take my clothes off.
me: Just as long as it isn't like the video for "The Prime Time Of Your Life."
me: Funny, tho. I get a similar feeling when I listen to Madonna.
Ruby: Oh Lord, no.
me: Okee, maybe not that bad, but bad enuf.
me: I'm re-watching Who's That Girl and it's seriously the BEST EFFIN MOVIE EVAR LOL
Ruby: Sheesh. Well, no getting naked with you then, obviously.
me: This from a woman who gets weepy at Morrissey shows.
Ruby: Dude, apples and oranges!
me: Explain.
Ruby: Madonna and Moz do not compare.
me: But we both have emotional reactions to them, so I think they do.
Ruby: Yeah, but he doesn't necessarily make my loins twitch.
Ruby: Don't get me wrong. He's sexy. But i don't know why. Who wants to hang out with a guy who whines all the time?
me: Well, there are different shades of being a fan, and wanting to jump the object of your desire in either a friendly or unfriendly way is extreme.
me: Ideally we should benefit from a median adoration and a feeling that what they create speaks to us personally in some way.
me: Whether it's a whiny dude, a blonde MILF, or a couple of French robots. The audience, fanatic and casual members alike, have always been an integral part of any art, even to the possible detriment of the genre; the old question of whether art is still art if it has no audience. It could be that Madonna's fanbase sticks with her out of sheer habit, or in a devotional pattern similar to the way an entire generation of Catholics grew up not knowing a day when John Paul II wasn't the pope. Not to draw any parallels between the God's man on Earth and Ms. Ciccone's own namesake, but the situation is just about the same: for some of us, Madonna has no beginning, she was there when we started and we know of no other world but one with her in it. A heavy burden for any pop star. You may now stop listening to Madonna forever. ... Coming soon: Madonna, the selected film reviews. ⎋
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As anyone who has invested in the "greatest hits" compilation of any given recording artist can attest to, what does and does not qualify as a hit single is a subjective crapshoot, dependent upon the rabidity of the listener's fanaticism. (One is reminded of Bjork's mediocre singles collection, the content of which was allegedy voted on by fans themselves) That said, Madonna's The Immaculate Collection (1990) is only a mild rip-off. The chronology up to that point in time is more or less fully representative; yet it suffers from completist omissions, (early singles "Everybody" and "Burning Up" are missing) pointless radio edits, ("Open Your Heart," "Papa Don't Preach"), passable remixes, ("Into The Groove," "Express Yourself") and lame "enhancements." ("Like A Virgin" features a synthy shooting star effect, "Material Girl" is marred by extra-annoying reverb)
Still, like a good jazz record, the worst greatest hits collection can also prompt you to seek out alternate versions, which can in turn, if you're lucky, lead to music discovery.
Here, we can compare and contrast some key singles from Madonna, examine their individual components, and see how they influenced other singles:
"La Isla Bonita" vs. "Who's That Girl:" Essentially the same song in two different costume changes; right down to the high synths, syncopated percussion, fake horn section, bass line from Hell, and bad Spanish. Catchy as anything, tho. Plus, speaking of costumes, two very pretty, if somewhat confusing music videos. Madonna is completely fuckable courtable flouncing around in a Barbara Mandrell-sized red number for "La Isla Bonita," but plays the tomboy in "Who's That Girl." Adding to the mix, as most embryonic videos for movie music were little more than clip montages, "Who's That Girl" has Madonna in her newsie getup reflected against her Nikki Finn character with blinding big hair, bulletproof fire engine lips, eyelashes sprouted with spider's legs, and, most memorably, clad in a wavy, off-the-shoulders, cream-colored silk evening gown, clutching a bottle of champagne. Just one example of what she means when she claimed later in "American Life:" "I tried to be a boy/I tried to be a girl."
"Borderline" vs. "Music:" Madonna's 1983 breakout hit has a fatal flaw, which also happens to be its hook of painfully primitive synthesizers. The only difference between these plaintive bleeps and the seizure-inducing bloops of 2000's "Music" is that on "Music," the sounds are rustic on purpose; itself a statement of the times. If you've progressed to the point where you can take the pains to make your new hit single sound nearly as amateurish as your first, and stil have it work, then you've truly come full circle.
"Into The Groove" vs. "Causing A Commotion" vs. "Vogue:" Two practically perfect pop singles, with a criminally underrated doppelganger in the middle; even tho "Causing A Commotion" charted respectably at #2 in the U.S., it's still the other two Madonna is known for. Perhaps if it was attached to less of a stinkbug of a movie, (Who's That Girl, 1987) this might have been a golden hat trick of hits. Still, give the song props for aping "Opportunities" by Pet Shop Boys from only a year earlier:
- "Causing A Commotion:" I've got the moves baby, you got the motion/If we got together we'd be causing a commotion.
- "Opportunities:" I've got the brains, you've got the looks/Let's make lots of money/You've got the brawn, I've got the brains/Let's make lots of money.
Of the two bookends, "Into The Groove" is the more perfect, but again, only nearly so, just because it's so difficult to find something wrong with it that one is almost convinced there must be a defect hidden in its electropop layers. What makes "Vogue" the superior single, if only by a nose, can be partly attributed to its sheer monstrosity, but also because of its melange of house keys, disco synths, new wave snaps and handclaps, soul choruses, a classic spoken "breakdown," all crystallized around Madonna's new Swiss Army knife Leatherman of a voice; she growls, she purrs, she serenades, she raps, it's as if she has the Word of God caught in her throat. At the same time, note the lyrics; both are silly dance songs, and hardly anyone searches for instrospection or hidden meanings when they're on the floor, but they tell their stories of dancing in subtly different ways: - "Into The Groove:" Only when I'm dancing can I feel this free/At night I lock the doors, where no one else can see/I'm tired of dancing here all by myself/Tonight I wanna dance with someone else.
- "Vogue:"It makes no difference if you're black or white/If you're a boy or a girl/If the music's pumping it will give you new life/You're a superstar, yes, that's what you are, you know it.
"Into The Groove" is told in the first person, from Madonna's point of view. "Vogue," for the most part, is second person omniscient, as if someone is looking over Madonna's shoulder. And if anyone needed more evidence that "Vogue" is premium-grade pop, just recall the killing stroke of the song's breakdown: Don't just stand there, let's get to it/Strike a pose, there's nothing to it. Come on. Other singles of note: "Cherish:" This unassuming dark horse from Like A Prayer only sounds like a wad of puppy-love bubblegum. Not only is the music as tight as a drumhead, (featuring a literal menagerie of instrumentation: synths that resemble a chorus of ducks, fake horns trumpeting like elephant seals, guitar noodling that sounds for all the world like a stray cat) but Madonna phrases the lyrics in a staggered pattern, sometimes sounding like a limerick, other times like the stop-and-go style that hip-hop rappers would adapt early in the new millenium. Plus, as the song winds down, the final minute is taken up by a literal canon of cascading snatches of choruses, which sounds simple enuf to pull off, but really isn't without everything getting mashed together. Done right, it should sound like a serving of audio lasagna, and "Cherish" oddly satisfies. "Express Yourself:" Barring myriad reworkings, Like A Prayer's second single came in two primary flavors: the album mix, (heavy with horns) and the remix, (bristling with synth) both of which could be encountered randomly when the music video came up in rotation on MTV. In addition to the base changes in the rhythm section, the background singers are also swapped out; male on the horns mix, and female on the synth mix. At the risk of playing favorites, it's the album mix that rocks the house harder; not just because the male choruses lend a feeling of conversation to the song, but the combination of a mad bass line, triple-funk guitar, and Madonna's post-punk-pointing vocal punches are all driven home by unrelenting dramatic hits of brass. In comparison, the techno version just sounds cold. Not to mention the step-down breakdown of "told you so" lyrics: And when you're gone he might regret it/Think about the love he once had/Try to carry on, but he just won't get it."I'll Remember:" A one-off single from the above-average movie With Honors, and a puzzle to boot, because there's really not much to the song, other than the closing vocal layering cannibalized from "Cherish." "Like A Prayer:" Madonna's Bolero. With each pass of call-and-response during the first half, another subtle layer is added to the verse and chorus; a distant church organ, tickled pieces of percussion, sleepy gospel harmonies. In the second half, it all coalesces into a thick mass, launched by Madonna's staggered reading of the refrain into the chorus ( I hear you call my name/And it feels like/Home, just like a prayer) and anchored by the empassioned trepedation of the follow-thru. ( Just a like a muse to me/You are a mystery/Just like a dream/You are not what you seem) Like "Express Yourself," it also comes in different mixes; the free-flowing, organic, AOR-style rock version from the album and the remix for the music video. Unlike "Express Yourself," both versions are equally powerful in excecution, the remix possibly more so, but that all depends on how synthesizers affect you emotionally. Plus, as good as she looks as a blonde, Madonna has always looked better as a brunette. "Live To Tell:" A paradox of a song, a ballad with balls, a slow dance in work boots. Another length of razor-sharp production with no wasted notes, even in its extended album version, and a complimentary framing of Madonna's calm and steady mezzo-soprano. Plus, in contrast to the proactive, self-confident, proto-girl power of previous singles, not only do the words in the "tale" that Madonna skirts around suggest uncertainty and doubt, but they also all but project a paralyzing fear: If I ran away, I'd never have the strength to go very far. Madonna's schoolmarm dress and wan face in the music video only amplify the feeling, making this a unique, if somewhat aberrent, one-off. "Open Your Heart:" A dizzying palimpsest of interlocking sounds, worthy of any record put out by Orbital. An airtight rhythm section features a hidden bass line from Hell(disguised as a sequencer beat), evocative synths, classic (if contrived) funk guitar, layers of ubiquitous breathy background choruses, and an adorable hook of tiny keyboard bells. Idealistically the spiritual sucessor to "Lucky Star," it's both equally joyous and twice as overt, ( I hold the lock and you hold the key.) all with half the weight of "Borderline" and just as much aggression as "Into The Groove." ( Don't try to run, I can keep up with you.) Now, what to make of Madonna's eleventh record proper, Hard Candy? Peek into anyone's digital music collection or browse the nearest file-sharing node, and you'll find any number of niche genres attached to Madonna's music; Pop, Rock, Techno, Dance, Soul, etc. If the analogy wasn't so borderline blasphemous, one might dare to compare Madonna's kaleidoscopic lazy susan of styles to that of another musical vanguard, Ray Charles, who also stretched himself across soul and pop to country and jazz. Ray got a little too dug in to explore more modern and experimental avenues, a limitation that never affected Madonna, but it still begs the question: should a woman who just turned 50, pop diva or not, be making a hip-hop record? First off, why not? Secondly, Hard Candy isn't really a hip-hop record; it's more hip-hop flavored than anything else, most of the real hip-hop chores are handed off to collaborators Kanye West and Pharrell. The record as a whole has the sound of a companion piece to Confessions On A Dance Floor, its unapologetic predecessor, as well as sporting shades of 1992's homage to disco, Erotica. With this in mind, and with the clarity of her backcatalog at one's disposal, does Madonna even have a definitive style? Or does her strength as an artist lie in her adaptive ability to take on the style of any given project and roll with it, like a block of tofu, like a sex-changing frog, like a Borg drone? A cursory pigeonholing of Madonna's primary discography to date reveals some interesting musical vectors over the years: [bracketed terms are fractal subgenres] - Madonna: (1983) pop [bubblegum]
- Like a Virgin: (1984) pop [bubblegum]; electronic [dance]
- True Blue: (1986) pop [bubblegum]
- Like a Prayer: (1989) pop [rock]; soul [blue-eyed]
- Erotica: (1992) electronic [dance]; soul [brown-eyed]
- Bedtime Stories: (1994) soul [brown-eyed]; hip-hop
- Evita: (1996) pop [vocals]
- Ray Of Light: (1998) pop [rock]; electronic [electropop]
- Music: (2000) electronic [electropop]
- American Life: (2003) pop [rock]; electronic [electroclash]
- Confessions On A Dance Floor: (2005) electronic [dance]
- Hard Candy: (2008) electronic [dance]; soul [brown-eyed]; hip-hop
Without sounding judgemental or elitist, it can be considered safe to say that Madonna has no real core style, in the same sense that "pop" is too broad a term to be an accuate descriptor of a style of music that appeals to such a wide demographic; which, ironically, makes it the most suitable label for her. At the same time, let's not forget that nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, the musician is at the mercy of a producer, a label, a manager, etc., in order to steer them in the most efficient, most appealing, most profitable direction. Just as Nile Rodgers made Like A Virgin sound like fresh and clean disco, and Patrick Leonard layered Like A Prayer with rich, lush instrumentation, so did William Orbit bring organic electronics and deep house to Ray Of Light, and Timbaland lent a slinky, sparkly, dirty shuffle to Hard Candy. Like it or not, these relationships are responsible for some of the highest-quality pop music to emerge from the last quarter-century. Madonna may not have invented, reinvented, or even returned the genre to form, but it's also a forgone conclusion that the world of pop wouldn't shine quite as brilliantly if it hadn't been for her trodding its surface. It's also comforting to know that, while styles may come and go, bad Spanish never goes away: 'Yo soy loco' means 'You drive me crazy.' (from Hard Candy's "Spanish Lesson") Actually, it means, "I'm crazy." Next: Madonna by the numbers. ⎋
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If a musician survives past their first hit single, their first smash record, their first world tour, and manages to regroup long enuf to initiate a series of sophomore efforts, they may eventually find themselves pining for the salad days of their flash-in-the-pan fifteen minutes. No doubt there are days that the Grand Dame of Superpop herself, Madonna, feels this way. But because she's been in the public eye for so long, feeding the superficial culture needs of the masses, when she pulls another David Bowie move and flips a bitch within her own sphere of influence, it can often pass right thru the public consciousness like a cosmic ray, leaving nothing behind but a bad taste in the mouth. This is probably the reason behind why so many people didn't "get" zingers like American Life, which was actually a Tom Wolfe-style parody of all things Madonna disguised as a pop record; the "Che Madonna" cover art should have been enuf of a tip-off. (Besides, it's not like she hasn't tried to rap before, remember the breakdown from "Vogue?") It's a pity that more people, aside from hardcore fans, don't recognize that a record that is difficult to listen to the first time is probably worth listening to ten more times; it might be hiding something.
Madonna's voice has never been her strongest attribute, so choosing singing as an occupation may have seemed like an odd choice; but of course, Madonna's ultimate ambitions lay far above and beyond the realm of just a pop squawker. It's just as well that she took such pains to surround her celebrity with a bleached-blonde persona, as her image has almost always overshadowed her below-average alto. What Madonna does possess in her voice is reliability; a stable middle ground and natural limitations that, for better or for worse, frees her from some of the more demanding challenges that exist in the realm of pop vocals. While it's never memorable when she sings, it's always recognizable; everyone knows Madonna when they hear her.
From a more reptilian point of view, a lower register of notes can be just as attractive and evocative as the higher portion, maybe even more so. When Madonna drops an octave during "Into The Groove" and invites potential partners to "Fill out your fantasy here with me," it comes across as sultry and seductive, despite the electropop noise accompaniment. When she chants "You're gonna bring your love to me/I'm gonna get you," on "Deeper and Deeper," it carries more weight as an alto, and she sounds like she means it. When she wonders, "How would they hear the beating of my heart? Will it go cold?" in "Live To Tell," her voice borders on mahogany with its layers of dun mystery. Eventually, if a little late in the game, she would recognize this expression of her voice as an asset, and exploit it in a string of late 90s ballads.
Which is not to say that her pseudo-mezzo doesn't hobble her at times; there are moments in her releases from the late 80s and early 90s where she is noticeably struggling to utilize a range of octaves that she simply does not have. Critics like to point to 1989's Like A Prayer as Madonna's artistic peak, (which it is) but it also marks the beginning of an active effort on her part to become more than the sum of her parts; a transformation that wouldn't become entirely overt until Evita in 1996.
For further insight, let's consult a pair of singer's ears and the person attached to them:
me: What did you think of Madonna's voice in Evita?
Boom-Boom: It was good. I liked Patti LuPone's better, but Madonna did a good job. There were some songs, like "Rainbow High:" I need to be dazzling, I want to be rainbow hiiiiigh; that she obviously had trouble with, because there are just so many notes that were out of her reach. But there were others, like "Buenos Aires:" Hello, Buenos Aires/Get this, just look at me dressed up, somewhere to go; you know, a song written to be belted, that she totally nailed, because that's what she does best with her voice, is lower, more...guttural singing, I guess you'd call it.
me: How would you characterize her voice in the records she made before Evita?
Boom-Boom: She sang a lot thru her nose. I mean, she's a pop singer, and I don't know if she even knew how to breathe properly or anything when she started. But still, she was good at the more seductive singing, like the parts on Erotica when she kind of talk-sings, you know, in kind of a speaking voice or pillow talk? And "Secret?" I really like that whole record (Bedtime Stories, 1994) because again, she uses what she has, and it sounds better than when she tries to be Mariah Carey or something.
me: I was going to mention "Vogue" as another example, but...
Boom-Boom: Well, "Vogue" really is something totally different. There's still plenty of places where she sounds all nasally, but she also projects and sings from her chest, and that really brings a lot of depth to that song.
me: But as a whole, she doesn't seem to have a whole lot of range.
Boom-Boom: No, she doesn't. Anything above a low 'B' and she starts to sound like Snow White. And that's why she fought and fought for Evita. It's funny, I have both those CDs in the car with me now, the one with "Vogue" and the Evita soundtrack.
me: Everybody should.
Boom-Boom: Haa!
me: What about after Evita? Was there any carryover into her pop records?
Boom-Boom: Definitely, her voice was a lot more mature. I mean, she was already halfway there before that with Bedtime Stories, but it was especially noticeable on Ray Of Light. Plus she had those voice lessons, and she learned to play guitar and actually started to write her own songs instead of just collaborating. She also just had a baby, and that changes everything.
me: You can't keep on making the same records you made ten or fifteen years ago. You see that with bands like Green Day; their music changes as they grow up.
Boom-Boom: Right.
me: So, Madonna learned to be a musician?
Boom-Boom: Well, she always was a musician. It's just that Evita allowed her to finally to come into her own. Everything that came before Evita was just pure, raw talent; as rough around the edges as it was. After Evita, she was able to discard a lot of the stuff that made her a star, and start creating stuff that came from within her, from her own experiences.
me: She started making a different kind of pop?
Boom-Boom: Exactly. She was able to start making pop with technique, instead of just talent and flying by the seat of her pants.
The extensive voice training Madonna underwent in her campaign to secure the role of Eva Perón could be seen as the axis upon which the evolution of her singing voice rotated, and 1998's Ray Of Light as the tonal evidence of that turning point manifested. Being a more mature and introspective record, there is no shortage of downtempo grooves on its tracklisting where she can fit snugly into her established skill-set, ("Frozen," "Drowned World," "The Power Of Good-Bye") there are also sides with complex or delicate mappings that she probably would have flubbed ten years prior. As evidenced before, Madonna has never had trouble sustaining notes, it's getting to them in the first place and developing new ways of expressing them that's the hurdle. Not to mention that everything changes in the course of a decade; some things fade and sag and break, but with or without encouragement, the voice can often become richer, elastic, more versatile.
Madonna was able to make the transition from singing songs about being a boy toy to writing songs about being Madonna ("Human Nature," "American Life") because she finally had that history to pull from. Her audience has changed since 1983, but the core of that audience has more or less remained the same; the same could be said for Madonna's talent. In a world dominated by relatively "dumb" ears, there will always be a place for simple, one-two-three, verse-chorus-verse pop, if only because most people who like pop music, or even music as a whole, don't know a whole lot about its interior gears and quartz movement. Compare this idea to that of the casual art lover, who might not know anything about art, but "knows what they like."
As chameleonic as she is, it might still be relatively easy to delineate Madonna's career to date into discrete parcels of time; the "Boy Toy" years, the "new Madonna," etc. But these merely address her external image, from belly-button-baring mop-top to pixie-headed newsboy, from platinum blonde to backwoods brunette, from material girl to Kabbalah mama. As a celebrity, as a tastemaker, as a trendsetter, as a trailblazer, as a pop icon; these watermarks are certainly more than valid. But as an artist, as a singer, as a musician, as a creator, as an inspiration for her contemporaries, one could do worse than to use a singular criteria such as a voice to partition her public existence.
Next: a comparative survey of singles and styles.
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