jack’s musings

So let me see if I got this straight, DeAndre.  You were recently called out by a legend, you missed the point in your response, and you had the point subsequently hammered into your skull.  After all of that, you appear in the video for this horrific song?

Yikes.  You may be getting paid, but you also appear still to be killing your golden goose.

Most people appear to have a love/hate relationship with electronic music.  We’re bombarded with it with our jock jams and advertising, and for the uninitiated, the genre is at best a novelty generated by geeks with computers and not a viable musical art form.  I occasionally still hear complaints like “Techno sux,” but electronic music has evolved far beyond it’s clubby beginnings.  While electronic music has been around since the days of Kraftwerk, it really began to take off in the mid 1990s as a marketable force. People were finally starting to take notice of this unexplored genre, and it looked like the music was finally going to get some of the credit it needed.

However there was a problem, popular artists like The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers were largely seen as just a novelty. Pioneers were largely left in obscurity in the United States, and the genre’s only popular representation was heavy beat club jams that immediately appealed only to a niche market.  There was no depth, little technical prowess, and above all a bleak future.  The wide assumption was that this burgeoning genre consisted only of artists chugging out throbbing dance songs with a sterile, factory-like regularity, and for the most part, this stereotype was correct.  Worse still, the scene was largely viewed as a haven for drug abusers.  However in 1997, this would all start to change through the efforts of Parisians Guy-Manuel de Homen Christo and Thomas Bangalter.

Daft Punk’s 1997 release Homework came at a time when a great change was needed in the genre if it were to survive, and Homework showed that there was more to this electronic music fad than just vapid club jams.  The first track “Revolution 909″ was designed as a response to the French government’s fearful view of electronic music at the time, and the album only got better from there.  There certainly were heavy influences from the house and club scenes at the time, but there was a certain flair, artistic arrangement, and technical prowess that had been absent in previous popular electronic albums.  (The album also spawned my favorite music video of all time.)  Today, the music may sound dated, but the album served as a critical turning point in electronic music.  While many casual Daft Punk fans will argue that their 2001 release Discovery was better and more accessible, Homework provided the foundation on which Discovery and much of the current electronic musicians today stand.  Additionally, while there are many different sub-genres of electronic music that are quite different than Daft Punk, Homework gave them all the opportunity to earn the respect they deserved.

1972’s Exile on Main Street is probably The Rolling Stones’ magnum opus. I feel like saying, “I love Exile on Main Street” to most music geeks is like saying, “I like breathing.” It’s one of those essential, ground-breaking albums that completely encapsulates one of the peaks of a band’s influence on popular music. It’s an odd album in that it only features a few of the Stones’ all-time hits, and even the hits like “Sweet Virginia”, “Tumbling Dice,” and “Happy” featured on this album are fairly obscure when set against their other major singles like “Gimme Shelter”, “Street Fighting Man”, “Sympathy for the Devil”, “Under My Thumb”, “Start Me Up”, “Jumpin Jack Flash”, etc. It’s one of those rare albums out there that is simply so good that the end-product is greater than any of its individual parts.

I feel like to completely understand both this album and a lot of the Stones’ work at the time one has to understand a bit of what the music culture was like when the Stones were recording. Before the Stones’ formed in 1962, the Rock ‘N Roll, blues, and soul circuits were peaking in the U.S. Acts like Lil’ Richard, Chuck Berry, Louis Jordan, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Fats Domino were in their prime, and the world wanted a piece of it. That deep southern rock n’ roll sound really resonated with people around the world, and a young Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were listening. However music distribution as we know it today didn’t exist back in those days, and the fact that an ocean separated the two scenes only impeded the spread. The result was a small but obsessed Rock ‘N Roll following in Britain in the early 1960s. Artists like Jagger and Richards hoarded whatever records made it across the pond, and while rejecting other popular artists of the day like The Who, they created their own unique blend of southern inspired rock. And that’s what Exile on Main Street turned into, a tribute to R&B and Rock ‘N Roll. It’s hard to listen to this album and not hear the chug-a-lug of the railroad tracks in the rhythm section and the soulful presentation so common in American popular music before the Stones.

Now that all being said, Exile on Main Street stands on its own merits. Recorded both in Villfranche-sur-mer in France and in Los Angeles to avoid taxes in Britain, the album features the band at their song-writing best. It also infamously featured Mick Jagger at the beginning of his plummet down into a crippling heroin addiction. The band (and society as a whole) was experiencing so much turmoil in the early 1970s, and this unrest seemed to be represented through Mick Jagger’s muddled and faded vocals. It encapsulates so raw passion and emotion much that it’s hard to translate it into words. This was one of those albums that defined a period in popular culture, and I feel like it should be in every bar jukebox without exception.

Upon release the album rocketed to immediate success but only received moderate critical success. However as the years went by, many began to realize the significance of this album had on popular music. Even Pitchfork Media, a bastion of music snobs worldwide that would normally scorn anything from someone so popular as The Rolling Stones, rated this album #11 among their top 100 albums of the 1970s.

I feel like there’s not much else to say.  The album is just that good.

I heard Three 6 Mafia’s “Stay Fly” on the radio this afternoon, and it reminded me of a curious lyrical observation of mine from when I first heard the song. Specifically I’m referring to this DJ Paul lyric:

You leave your drink around me
Believe your drink gonna get drunk up

Is DJ Paul implying that he imbibes beverages either people leave around him or he finds around clubs? And is that cool? He at least must have an iron-clad immune system from drinking all that backwash.

XTC was one of those bands that never really found commercial success but developed a strong cult following through their work on the fringes of popular music. The band was all about pop hooks and cramming as many of them as possible into every song. 1979’s Drums and Wires was a major turning point for the band, as this was the first time they took the unbridled energy of their previous albums and focused it into an album stuffed with strong songwriting and catchy tracks. Largely written by guitarist/lead singer Andy Partridge and bassist Colin Moulding, the album genuinely explored the outer realms of the then emerging pop music scene.

Meticulous production was one of the hallmarks of the XTC sound, and Drums and Wires was a great example of their craft. I mentioned earlier that XTC was all about cramming as many pop hooks as possible into their songs, and the fruits of their obession was a very musically complex album. Have a listen to a couple tracks and you’ll notice that just about every musical element in each song is a pop hook of some sort. All of these hooks are in turn layered on painstakingly stacked on top of each other to create a glorious pop overload.

Most of those familiar with XTC or new wave music in general will notice that this is where cult classic “Making Plans for Nigel” first appeared, but this was by no means the only notable track on this album. Highlights of the album include, “Limelight”, “Real by Reel”, “Helicopter”, and “Ten Feet Tall”. While one probably won’t most of the songs on this album on any definitive collection of the band, I’ve always felt that the combination of all the songs on this album produced the strongest offering of the sound that XTC tried to deliver.

The album might sound a bit dated now, but the album was critically important in its time. The pop music scene of the 80s was just emerging, and no one really knew what it would look like. XTC decided to take this new genre and explore it in every direction possible. It was one of the first times that we got a glimpse of the new 80s pop scene before it exploded in decadence and excess. I wouldn’t say they found pop’s limits as I suspect we’ll never find it, but they certainly did their best to look under every rock they could find.

The 1960s were a turbulent time in American history to say the least, but one of the many major cultural developments of the time was the emergence of the monsters of soul music that would play a huge rule in the development of popular music for years to come. The well known legends of the day included Percy Sledge, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Eddie Floyd, Wilson Pickett, James Brown, Sam and Dave, and Ray Charles, but one name often lost in the shuffle was Mississippi’s James Carr. Carr was blessed with the same raw, emotional delivery of Otis Redding, but he was also cursed with crippling bipolar episodes which severely hampered his career. As a result, Carr only released three records, 1968’s A Man Needs a Woman, 1991’s Take Me to the Limit, and the legendary 1967 release You Got My Mind Messed Up.

Recorded in 1966 and 1967 in Memphis, TN for Goldwax Records, the album actually received only modest commercial success, but that did not change the fact that this is one of the greatest soul albums ever recorded. It possesses the same superb combination of excellent session musicians, heart clinching soul, and superb production that made Redding so legendary. In addition to all of these great components, the album features the first performance of my single favorite soul song of all time: “The Dark End of the Street”. Written by Dan Penn and Chips Morman about a love that’s so pure that it could only be forbidden, the song has become one of the most covered songs from the southern soul circuit, and because of the superb songwriting and composition, it’s largely impossible to perform a poor version. The original rendition however belongs to Carr, and his performance of the song is with a delivery that cuts to your core in a way that only a masterpiece of the Memphis soul circuit could provide. However this was by no means the only superb track on the album. Other incredible cuts include the opening “Pouring Water on a Drowning Man” and title track “You Got My Mind Messed Up”; however just about every song on the release just oozes soul and is largely considered to be a masterpiece.

This album truly possesses the fire and passion that so many soul musicians of the 1960s and 1970s tried to capture. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve always felt that if someone ever listens to this album and doesn’t feel that raw soul emotion and power coursing through their very being, they might want to check to see if they even have a soul.

In the realm of hip hop, as in all music genres, there are albums and then there are genre defining landmarks. Wu-Tang’s 1993 release Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) falls solidly in the latter category. In fact, it seems that most critics out there regard this album as not only one of the greatest hip-hop albums ever recorded, but also as one of the greatest albums ever recorded.

At the time of its release in 1993, hip-hop was in a nebulous transitional phase. The jazz influenced stylings of A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul dominated the east cost scene but was beginning to fade, and the gangster rap scene that would later dominate the 1990s was just emerging from Los Angeles. It was in this climate that the Wu-Tang Clan formed. But one has to understand, the purposes of RZA, GZA, Inspectah Deck, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Method Man, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Masta Killa, and U-God were not to solely make one legendary, cohesive rap crew. They wanted to start an empire, and the plan was to release a spring board that all of its members could leap off of into a massive conglomerate of hip hop dominance. And frankly, it worked.

Largely produced by RZA, the album features the entire crew, but the entire crew never appears all at once on one track. (In the entirety of the Wu-Tang’s career, the whole posse has only appeared together on one track, and even on that one, ODB didn’t rap, he just spoke.) How did they select who got to appear on each cut? Why by the most pure decision making process there is in hip-hop, the battle. Members battled each other for recording time at their crowded studios, and the result was a collection of tracks with near perfect placement of talent to lyrics.

The album had a largely unique feel to it for the time. The production elements are clearly inspired by the jazzy elements that were popular in the east cost hip hop scene at the time. However I must emphasize, it was merely inspired by jazz. The Wu took these elements and took them in an entirely new direction that produced a very dark, raw, and authentic feeling album.

As with all Wu-Tang releases, the best way to describe the content of this album is a merging of New York street culture and eastern martial arts. And while at first glance this might seem like a silly combination, further listening to the album and its samples reveals that this implied analogy is actually quite apt. (Just ask Jim Jarmusch) All of this is combined with a healthy dose of humorous pop culture references to notable cultural moments like the 1979 New York cult classic The Warriors and Spider-man. The end result was an album that was so good that it not only set itself apart from all previous hip hop albums, but it also largely defined where the entire east coast hip-hop scene would head.

The Talking Heads were a legend in the popular music scene, and their long lasting influence on music can be best described as incalculable. A group of art school kids who first started in New York, they wrote some of the most important music of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Prior to 1983’s Speaking in Tongues, they released several legendary albums including Talking Heads:77, More Songs About Buildings and Food, Fear of Music, and Remain in Light. Each one is generally lauded as perfection set to wax, however it has always been their first commercial success Speaking in Tongues that resonated the most with me. All of their prior albums had been produced by legend Brian Eno, but Speaking in Tongues was the first one that the band recorded and produced on their own. The result is a pure effort that truly expressed everything the group had learned over the past four albums.

Every song just reeks of pure David Byrne obsession. For the first time, their intellectual art school vibe from past albums merged with the popular dance floor to produce an instant classic. It should be noted however that while this album may be more accessible than previous ones, it by no means that its content is in any way less deep or complex. This was still a Talking Heads album, and David Byrne was in charge. What made this album great in my eyes was the fact that they were able to maintain a well produced, lyrically deep, danceable album without falling into the pit of mundane and shallow popular dance artists of the time like the Thompson Twins. In short, they crossed over without losing their roots.

Some of my favorite tracks on the album include the bass heavy “Swamp”, album mood defining “Making Flippy Floppy”, and the song featured in the closing credits of Oliver Stone’s 1987 film Wall Street, “This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)”. Sure “Burning Down the House” was the gigantic smash single from the album, but there is so much more to explore here than the big song. There was an important merging of art-rock and dance-rock occurring on this album that made it resonate so deeply with me. On top of all of this, the ensuing tour was immortalized in the greatest concert film ever made, 1984’s Stop Making Sense.

I actually went to a Talking Heads tribute show led by The Mathletes a couple months ago, and the covering band insisted on generally sticking to more of the obscure tracks in the Heads’ catalog. However there was someone in the crown who yelled out, “PLAY BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE!!!” Let me establish this right now, it’s a great song, but to Talking Heads fans, yelling something like this at a tribute show is equivalent screaming “PLAY FREEBIRD!”. It’s an unforgivable sin.

Someone who visits my apartment might note my wall of framed records and ask, “Hey Jack, why do you have a framed copy of Remain in Light on your wall but not Speaking in Tongues?” I reply by noting that I absolutely adore all of their albums, and Remain in Light was immediately available when I was scrounging for records to frame! And while I might get chided for liking their most “popular” album the most (and don’t get me started as to how ridiculous that is), it’s my favorite album in their catalog, and I don’t care what you think!

I figure now would be a good time to demonstrate that I don’t hate all hip-hop. Quite the contrary, I actually consider myself to be a huge fan. What I hate are artists who try to hijack such a great genre and try and drive it into the ground. To that end, I figure I’ll give my thoughts on Madvillain’s instant classic, 2004’s Madvillainy.

Madvillain is the collaborative effort of underground legends in MF Doom and Madlib. At the time, there was so much anticipation surrounding the upcoming release of this album that the chances of meeting the hype were slim and none. However not only did Madvillain surpass the hype, they crushed it. The album is a display of some of the best producing, solid songwriting and most obscure samples ever compiled for an album.  (For the record, I’m convinced they were digging through record crates on mars to find their sample sources.)  There’s just a chemistry on this album between Doom and Madlib that never existed on any of their own individual releases that catapults this album from great to legendary.

The underground hip-hop scene has largely been obsessed with finding truth and exploring societal trends. Doom and Madlib delightfully sidestep these themes like they were on the Dick van Dyke show. They were content with just being their quirky, nerdy, forward thinking selves, and it seems like the dominant theme on the album is an charming obsession with comic books and marijuana. There are also rampant obscure references to pop culture throughout the album. Even the cover was a reference to Madonna’s eponymous album.

Madlib and MF Doom are both largely know for their impressive production skills (especially Doom), and their collaborative efforts make this album come off as a clinic demonstrating hip-hop production excellence.  There are many different yet equally valid flavors and philosophies in the hip hop production world, but these two perfected their own.  It’s almost as if they took Phil Spector’s trademark “wall of sound” and translated it to hip hop.  There are so many careful, deliberate musical layers that each listen to the album will likely reveal something new.  The album is just staggeringly brilliant.

At least with some people in the Nashville crowd, I often find myself having to define what makes me like and dislike new music. Really what it all boils town to me is creativity. Art in general, at least in my eyes, is all about discovering new modes of expression and conveyance of meaning. So whenever people ask why I hate the new track from X, it’s generally because I feel whatever X has released has already been explored. (Or they could very likely just suck.)

But where do musical artists go from here? It would seem to most that just about every possible permutation of music out there has been explored. Perhaps that’s why most (especially me) aren’t writing music. It’s acts like The Postal Service and their 2003 release Give Up that remind me that there is still plenty of music and new modes of collaboration and production that are left to be explored.

The glitchy electro indie-pop sound that graces the album was for the most part a fairly new medium at the time. We had a deep electronic music catalog already, but a translation to the indie rock world had largely not yet occurred. It was in this environment that Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie and producer Jimmy Tamborello of Dntel began work on a collaborative side project. There was however one problem, neither was ever really together. As a result, Tamborello largely wrote the music and sent whatever DATs he created to Gibbard through the actual United States Postal Service, hence the name of the band. Gibbard would then edit, add vocals, and then return the DATs to Tamborello for further producing. This process was noted through the band’s name, and continued until Give Up materialized.

The result of this strange production process is a fairly unique sound combined with a completely unique method of musical collaboration. Gibbard wrote lyrics having largely had songs already finished in front of him, and Tamborello had to adjust production to whatever vocals Gibbard added. I’m willing to bet that on several occasions Tamborello played a freshly returned tape to find that the lyrics added completely changed the complexion of the song he originally produced. It’s this dynamic that makes this record truly unique. And on top of all of this confusion, the album is both very lyrically solid and rich with superb, deep production quality. I would highly advise listening to the album with a good set of headphones to fully hear all of the many musical layers entrenched in each song.

Released on Sub Pop, Give Up was only the legendary label’s second album to reach gold status. (The First was Nirvana’s Bleach.) And despite UPS’s best attempt to ruin the big single “Such Great Heights” for me with their horrible, formulaic white board commercials (Sample found below) that feature a douche so colossal that he may warrant inclusion on my “list”, this album still resonates strongly with me.