Makes Me Weak and Knocks Me Off My Feet. .

"Good morn or evening, friends. . . Here's your friendly announcer. . ."

I skipped March's "album of the month" - I was just too busy to finish my exploration of Lyle Lovett's I Love Everybody, and ultimately was not that happy with it. However, rather than retreat a bit from this project and tackle something a little smaller, I went in the other direction and decided to write about Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life because 1) It is one of the best albums of the 70s, if not all time, and 2) it has been on serious heavy rotation for me lately. It feels like a springtime album to me, and I have been craving some springtime. However, I will only write about the first half of it for now, saving the second half for a latter date, because 1) it is a double album and 2) because I've been listening to the first half more than the second. It is important to keep in mind, that I am discussing the songs here as they are broken up on the CD set. On vinyl, there was an additional EP with 4 songs which were split up and put in pairs at the end of each disc.

The thing about listening to Stevie is that for the most part what you hear is what you get. There are rarely any subtexts or irony in his songs, but everything has that earnestness of soul music - even his metaphors are obvious and his talk of love is unapologetic. But as far as I am concerned that is what I am looking for when I put on Stevie Wonder, and as long you know how to avoid the real cheese (basically most of his stuff from the 80s and beyond), you'll be okay. Songs in the Key of Life may threaten cheese at times, but it is totally mitigated by the earnestness, the funky dynamic grooves and that warm analog production. The album is from 1976 and I think you can tell that by listening. The problem is that sometimes that works in its favor and other times it feels a little dated, both in sound choice and in particular lyrics.

"Love's In Need of Love" opens the double album. Those lovely opening "oohs" are something I find myself singing a lot in the shower, or just walking to the train on a lovely spring day. The opening line "Good morn or evening, friends" speaks to the medium of an album - the listener deciding when to put that vinyl on (Yes, I own this record in both CD and vinyl form) - taking the role of a radio announcer giving a warning over just very soft and solid electric piano and great subtle drumwork with cymbal flourishes and the soft snap of the snare doesn't even come in (along with the backing vocals) until the second time the chorus comes in. There is a real palpable sense of restraint in this song. As Zooey once said when I played him this album, "He sure likes to take his time," and this song is a perfect example, because after those two verses he just plays on a repetition of the chorus over and over, adding little vocal ad-libs while the backing vocals (Stevie overdubs) stretch out the sounds and reinforces that feeling that the song might explode at any moment into some epic paean to love and the need to value it - "Did you ever think that love would be in love?", but it never does. Instead, it tumbles back down to perfect softness, "Just give the world love."

"Have a Talk with God" has a moderate groove that is accentuated with some awesome harmonica work. Hell, if it weren't for the fact that it was the mid-70s I would think it was sampled because of the way it plays with repetition of a phrase. The song is lyrically problematic for me. I mean, I cringe a little every time I hear the lyric, "Well, he's the only free psychiatrist that's known throughout the world / Solving the problems of all men, women, little boys and girls." Which problems is God solving exactly, Stevie? I think of violence, starvation, other forms of suffering and scoff - not to mention how at odds this message is with his more social progressive descriptive songs on the same album (like the following track, "Village Ghetto Land"). However, as someone who finds "talks with God" a helpful exercise, despite my skepticism and belief in a random and absurd universe, I appreciate the message. I can relate to it. The groove helps.

"Village Ghetto Land" has a simple repetitive melody over a bed of synthed out strings sound that is some of what I was talking about when I said that sometimes this record sounds like it is from 1976. It is like Stevie got a new toy when he recorded this song and could not help but use it in a way that is a little overwhelming - baroque even - and the synthed strings gives that impression of the baroque as well. Lyrically, it is a descriptive song that gives us views of life in the ghetto - it particularly gives me feel of the urban deterioration of the 70s. "Broken glass is everywhere / It's a bloody scene / Killing plagues the citizens / Unless they own police." And then there is the conclusion that I feel is at odds with the afore-mentioned, "Have a Talk with God": "Now some folks say that we should be / Glad for what we have / Tell me would you be happy in Village Ghetto Land?"

"Contusion" is a poorly thought out instrumental fusion piece that I guiltily admit I skip almost every time I listen to this album.

"Sir Duke/I Wish" - These two songs are so well-known and so classic, I feel almost as if I don't need to write about them at all. They also go together in my mind, thus my listing them together. "Sir Duke" is one of those songs about music that I love. It is just so fresh and lively and sincere and speaks of music in a way I can deeply relate to - but more than anything it is the horns on this song that make it work, and the guttural encouragements that Stevie gives them, telling them to "Go!" The flourishes they give at the end of the lines and of course, the repetition of that melody on horn while the high-hat keeps time. . . You can't help but "feel it" just like the song says we do, "They can feel it all over!" - The bassline and plucky guitar of "I Wish" comes right out that last call to the horns to play that line again capped off with two hard staccato notes of ending/transition. (Though interestingly on the vinyl Side A ends here and Side B starts with "I Wish") It is the that electric piano groove that really carries this song. It is subtle, but holds aloft the wordy descriptive lyrics of unrepentant nostalgia - and that is exactly what it is, unrepentant. Singing of childhood, "I wish those days could come back once more / Why did those days ev-er have to go? / Cause I love them so." Again, to me this song is about good feelings and I don't like to undermine that too much by considering the fact that we do ourselves (and those that still suffer from it) an injustice when we sentimentalize poverty. So when Stevie sings of Christmas, "Even though we sometimes would not get a thing / We were happy with the joy the day would bring" I can't help but think that for a child suffering want, it might not be so easy to understand or appreciate that joy. Or on a more personal, less political level, I think that childhood, as wonderful as it can be, can also be a time of deep frustration and lack of choice. I think a lot of adults who express a desire to be young again forget how much of their lives were determined by others and institutions in those years, and how typically your resources are severely limited in terms of changing that. But whatever, it is still a great song, especially if you can forget the travesty that was Will Smith using it as the basis for the "Wild, Wild West" song for that awful movie. . . Stevie even agreed to be in video. . . Did I mention the movie was awful? I mean, giant robots in the old west sounds good until actually happens - I am all for remakes of mostly forgotten mash-ups of genre - but ugh! The highlight of the movie is the flash of Salma Hayek's butt you get in one scene, but not worth the price of admission even when played on cable.

"Knocks Me Off My Feet" - I have been listening to this song obsessively lately, and if you don't already own Songs in the Key of Life then you need to get off your ass and go buy it, or if you are into the whole downloading thing like the kids are these days, keep your ass in the chair, open up a tab on your browser or go to iTunes and get the album! And if not the album then this song. (Or I guess you can just listen to it on You Tube here). I am not going to say much about it except that I feel it lately. It is in some deep rotation for me - and despite its warning that its message may cause boredom, the repetition and earnestness work for me every time, especially when that syncopated high-hat comes in for the chorus near the end, to give it that underlying disco feel despite its soulful ballad origins, with the soft touches and the drum hits that parallel the melody that build to that beautiful chorus. Listen.

"Pastime Paradise" - People recognize this song because Coolio used it as the basis for "Gangsta Paradise" for that awful Michelle Pfieffer movie, whatever, whatever it was called. . . I forget. I don't care. Or, perhaps you prefer Weird Al's "Amish Paradise" (the beef between Coolio and Weird Al is legendary! - the former getting pissed at the latter for parodying his song! Uh, Coolio? Let me play something for you. . .) Anyway, again the lyrics of this song seems at odds with both "I Wish" ("They've been wasting most their time / Glorifying days long gone behind") and "Have a Talk with God" ("They've been spending most their lives / Living in a future paradise / They've been looking in their minds / For the day that sorrow's gone from time / They keep telling of the day / When the savior of love will come to stay"). It is a simple song and the refrain repetition of words that end in "-tion" seems like perhaps it may not really mean anything, "Dissipation / Race relations / Consolation / Segregation / Dispensation / Isolation / Exploitation / Mutilation / Mutations / Miscreation / Confirmation...to the evils of the world." But again, the song works. Strong music and earnestness can overcome weak lyrics for me, and in this case the string quartet (is it a synth? - don't think they sounded that good in '76 - it is.) over the moderate latin groove on the conga and a guiro more than make up for it.

"Summer Soft" is another song I have been feeling particularly lately because of April's inconsistent inclemency and unwillingness to get progressively warmer like I remember spring once doing, but maybe it never did that. . . Anyway, the song is the most poetic of the album, and while the metaphor of the unpredictability of the seasons/weather with love is pretty obvious it is still not as transparent as typical for Stevie's lyrics. The verses are as softly sung as what he is singing about, and the piano is quick, sprightly even, but with a strong build of rhythm accentuated by the rimshot snare until the gush of the refrain hits.

Summer soft ....
Wakes you up with a kiss to start the morning off
In the midst of herself playing Santa Claus
She brings gifts through her breeze

Morning rain ....
Gently plays her rhythms on your window pane
Giving you no clue of when she plans to change
To bring rain or sunshine

The second set of verses gives winter a male gender and I love how there is a bit more forcefulness and menace with this seasonal personification: "Winter wind..../ Whispers to you that he wants to be your friend / But not waiting for your answer he begins / Forcing dangers way with his breeze," suggesting that masculine aggression we all know so well.

The refrain is, as I said, a powerful gush, an accepting lament in tune with the inevitability of the changing of the seasons - the inevitability of lost love.

And so you wait to see what he'll do
Is it sun or rain for you?
But it breaks your heart in two
Cause you've been fooled by April

And he's gone
And he's gone
Winter's gone

You find it's October
And she's gone
And she's gone
Summer's gone

The organ work in the is song is amazing, but like many of the songs on this album it is the drums that seem to carry it on - the rhythms are strong and driving with melodic flourishes that accentuate and syncopate. Amazing to think that Stevie played most of the instruments on all of these tracks. Wanna see/hear Stevie jam it out on the drums? Click Here.

"Ordinary Pain" is a wonderful dyad of a song - the first portion being a lament of lost love and the second being a reply by the object of that love that gives the listener new insight, or at least a different point of view, on the situation. The first part of the song is sung by Stevie, sweet and soulful carried by a crisp electric guitar rhythm and vibraphone (or is it a xylophone?) melodic accentuations that parallel every time the oft-repeated phrase "ordinary pain" is sung. The laconic delivery really works for the song, the sense of trying to hold back real anguish with reason - the realization that the feeling of loss from a ended romance is normal, "ordinary," and to think that it is more than ordinary, to privilege your feelings over those any other person might have felt is to appear more than a little foolish. And it is about appearances, because the authenticity of feeling is never in doubt to the person feeling it, to everyone else the authenticity is beside the point, displays of that kind of emotion are slightly distasteful to even the most sympathetic person.

When you by chance
Go knock on her door
Walkin' away
you're
convinced that
it's much more
Than just an ordinary
pain in your heart
It's more than just
An ordinary pain in your heart

Don't fool yourself
But tell no one else
That it's more than just
An ordinary pain
In your heart

The second portion of the song is sung by a woman (Shirley Brewer), and its sentiment is a lot harsher than the sad, slightly pathetic voice of the first part. Shirley's voice has a scolding tone emphasized by a chorus of women repeatedly hitting every syllable with staccato fury "or-DIN-ary pain / or-DIN-ary pain!" It becomes clear that the woman he sings of in the first part might have had reason to treat him so unkindly, "You're cryin' big crocodile tears / Don't match the ones I've cried for years / When I was home waiting for you / You were out somewhere doing the do / You know I'd really like to stay / But like you did I've got to play." The tempo of the music picks up and there is an off-eighths high-hat that gives it kind of pre-disco groove with a spacy guitar further back in the mix accompanied by an alto sax, and Stevie's electric piano keeps it altogether. Back when I used to DJ I used to sometimes play just the second half of this song.

"Saturn" comes in right after "Ordinary Pain" with epic sounding synth sounds over piano chords meant to emulate the strains of royal horns, or perhaps God's heavenly band blowing their brass. I can imagine that it may sound tinny or cheesy to 21st century ears, but there is something about the smallness of the sound juxtaposed with what it is trying to convey that works for me still, as if the hope in the song is beyond the confines of Earth - and rightly so, because here Stevie is so thirsting for a better more just world that he imagines his people coming not from somewhere else on this planet, but from Saturn where things make more sense through compassion and wonder. The longing in this song hits me every time from the very first line, "Packing my bags / going away / to a place where the air is clean / on Saturn." However, the song is as much an accusation as it is a vision of hope, because there is a "you" addressed in its verses that can be interpreted broadly as those in power on Earth, though honestly I tend to think of the "you" as white people and people of color being the people from Saturn - like hey, maybe things are set up the way they are because we are from another planet after all -

We have come here many times before
To find your strategy to peace is war
Killing helpless men, women and children
That don't even know what they are dying for
We can't trust you when you take a stand
With a gun and Bible in your hand,
With a cold expression on your face
Saying give us what we want or we'll destroy

But the chorus is a shout out to the vision of Saturn's wonder, "Going back to Saturn where the rings all glow / Rainbow moonbeams and orange snow / On Saturn / People live to be two hundred and five / Going back to Saturn where the people smile / Don't need cars cause we've learn to fly / On Saturn / Just to live to us is our natural high." Again, Stevie's lyrics are not his strength necessarily, it is the power of his voice, the emotion, the earnestness of soul that elevates his work. I love this song.

"Ebony Eyes" - This song begins with a recording of a group of girls playing double-dutch, singing one of those songs that end with a reciting of the alphabet, with the letter where the jumper messes up indicating who their crush, or true love or whatever might be. The scene ends with the girls screeching at the jumper, "Paul! Oh Paul!" and then the piano that carries the song comes in. It is beautiful and bouncy love song that references the "Black is Beautiful" movement, "She's a Miss Beautiful Supreme / A girl that other wish that they could be / If there's seven wonders of the world / Then I know she's gotta be number one / She's a girl that can't be beat / Born and raised on ghetto streets / She's a devastating beauty / A pretty girl with ebony eyes." It is a positive and uplifting way to end the first part of the album, closing on a soft roll of abrupt drums.

The second part of the record opens with "Isn't She Lovely" and while I said I was only doing the songs on Disc One here, I figured I would mention a little about some of them as who know if and when I'll ever get to a closer overview of it. Anyway, "Isn't She Lovely" is a sweet song to his daughter Aisha, but unfortunately it is made overlong by the addition of a recording of her in the bath. I guess there must be a radio edit, and sometimes I wish I could have the option of that one when I put the record on. I mean, I respect the love and joy that led Stevie to write the song and to include her baby-voice and cooing parental tones to the end of it - but it gets to be a little much. "Black Man" is a song to celebrate 1976, the Bicentennial. There are aspects to this song I really love, despite its problematic use of terms like "yellow man" to speak of Asians, or the fact that despite the little swell of pride I am meant to feel when he sings "I know the birthday of a nation / is a time when a country celebrates / but when your hand touches your heart / Remember we all played a part / in America to help that banner wave" I know that what we were all helping to was steal land from the people already here and that a lot of that building was done on the backs of the enslaved. "If It's Magic" is just voice and harp and a heartbreaking song that speaks to the inevitability of love lost. "If it's pleasing / then why can't it be never-leaving?"

"As" is one of my favorite Stevie Wonder songs of all time. The last time I was convinced of the existence of God was when he performed this song at the end of a ceremony in his honor on BET I managed to catch six or seven years ago. There was a halo of divine light emanating from him and I thought I saw God peek his out from behind Stevie and wink at me. Finally, "All-Day Sucker" reminds me of "Ordinary Pain," or at least I used to get them confused. "I'm an all day sucker / Coming to give something to get nothin' / I'm an all day sucker / Coming to give something but to get none of your love." It has great groove and an unlikely wild electric guitar part in the middle of the mix with the repetition of a distorted singing of "all day sucker for your love / all day sucker cup for your love."

Like I said at the beginning "Songs in the Key of Life" feels like a spring/summertime album for me (in a long list of summer/spring albums I love to listen to - like XTC's Skylarking and a lot of hip-hop records) and I am sure I will listen to it in part and in full dozens, if not scores, of more times between now and September. I think you should, too.

Me Upon My Pony On My Boat

Just one song today, though I may be doing a whole album by this artist in March as my "album of the month."

Lyle Lovett is one of my favorite songwriters. It is about his quirky way of expressing the simple and his way of exploring that area where country, blues and gospel intersect and overlap. It the discovery of his music that gave me what I needed to fearlessly explore country for what there was to appeal to me there, and eschew the final shackles of genre that were holding me back from appreciating music in a completely free way.

"If I Had a Boat" (off of Pontiac (1988)) is a song of the bitterness of lost love though it may not seem that way from a superficial examination of its lyrics. Musically it is a simple song, a finger-picked progression high-up on the fretboard with a walking bass-line that does not change really for the refrain or verses - just reinforcing the last line of each that delivers the little punch or point of the song/verse with a pleasing resolution of the progression. There is a dobro in there and some simple drumming as well to develop the ambience of the song.

It opens with the refrain as if the song had already started, had been being sung perpetually.

(and) If I had a boat
I'd go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony
I'd ride him on my boat
And we could all together
Go out on the ocean
Me upon my pony on my boat

It is silly, and I think it was meant to be - this image of a man riding a horse on a boat. I imagine not too big a boat, actually - though I guess there is nothing in the song to say one way or another. I always imagine a boat just big enough for a horse with a man on it, though I guess for it to be able to "go out on the ocean" we'd hope it'd be a boat of sufficient size to deal with those oceanic swells - but I am being too literal in my imaginings. It is beside the point. The point is the silliness, a man on a pony on a boat. What does this even mean? Perhaps the verses can shed light on it for us.

If I were Roy Rogers
I'd sure enough be single
I couldn't bring myself to marrying old Dale
It'd just be me and Trigger

Here is where we get to understand what this song is about. The lyrics suggest a retreat from a(n even legendary) romantic relationship, preferring instead the steady companionship of a horse. (Note that Roy Rogers had Trigger stuffed when he died). The desire for the boat and the ability to escape across the ocean that it represents and the companionship of the pony is a retreat from more complex adult desires. There is something child-like about wishing for a boat and pony, and in their absurd combination. It sounds like something a kid would say, and the rejecting Dale Evans underscores that infantilism - an urge to return to sexual latency - in other words, "Girls? Yuck!" The cowboy allusions in the song also have the same effect. They are the superheroes of the mythical West.

The cowboy references continue in the second verse where the replacement figure for Dale becomes Tonto. . . Kind of. . . Actually, the allusion gets kind of mixed up and turned around and it is less clear who the singer is meaning to associate himself with. He does not say "The Lone Ranger," but he says that the "Mystery masked-man was smart / He got himself a Tonto." Here it seems that "a Tonto" is like Trigger for Dale in the first verse, a replacement for a woman (which has that homoerotic undertone that I like). Yet, by verse's end, it seems to have switched, because "Tonto he was smarter / And one day said kemo sabe / Kiss my ass I bought a boat / I'm going out to sea." Again, a relationship is dissolved in favor of escape and retreat, out of bitterness for doing "the dirty work for free." The replacement figure in this lyrics becomes the one who needs to escape the relationship. The phrase "dirty work" is also pregnant with meaning, referring literally to whatever violence and violations the Lone Ranger and Tonto committed in their adventures, but I am convinced there is a sexual reference there as well. "Dirty work for free" can totally refer to sex (again with that homoerotic undertone between the Lone Ranger and his sidekick) and the resentment stemming from lack of recognition and being a sideline character - that is, being taken for granted.

The third verse is the hardest to parse, I think. The reference to being "like lightning" is easy enough to figure out, ephemeral, powerful, quick, uncatchable. The reference to not needing sneakers is about how as lightning he could "come and go wherever [he] would please" not having to slip or sneak off, but could be free of the obligations of relationships, coming and going boldly, without worry or regret. Again, the primary desire being expressed here is to escape the potential complexity and loss of adult relationships, preferring the more base emotion of fear ("And I'd scare 'em by the shade tree / And I'd scare 'em by the light pole") as means of establishing control of the situation. "But I would not scare my pony on my boat out on the sea" he sings, reinforcing that control, the safety and separation of being on his pony on his boat - fulfilling a childish desire.

I love this song. Simple and quirky in the way that I love many of Lyle Lovett's songs, but still obfuscating what might be an unhealthy desire, but an understandable one nonetheless - a lament for something simple and pleasurable and reliable, but ultimately unattainable and (for me at least) too isolated and insulated from the pleasures of adult relationships.



As for the video (which is equally simple), I love the disruption of the "video illusion" in certain scenes where Lovett's lip-synching is ruined by his laughing. I also love the reminder of what his hair used to look like. I remember a time when his hair was what people most mentioned about him (well, that and his marriage to Julia Roberts).

Nothing But Blue Skies. . .

I love them sweet blues.

I think the blues get a bum rap because they are associated only with sadness, with loss commonly reinforced by a repetitive 12-bar structure and the often equally repetitive call-and-response of the lyrics, or the four-line lyric structure where the first line is repeated three times and then resolved with the rhyming third line and that repetition can seem morose, like a form of wallowing in grief - But it is in that repetition that the subtly and beauty of the form - the joyousness of it - emerges.

There is joy in the blues. The suggestion of it resides deep inside its lament. Sure, sometimes it is more obvious than other, sometimes it can be noted in the humor of the blues, the hyperbole of sadness that bursts grief and blooms in the form of a smile or the spontaneous hiccup of laughter. (And sometimes the blues becomes a joke, which is okay in small doses, I guess - but too often the simplicity of its structure allows for severely unfunny untalented people to drive it into the ground. It is okay to makes the blues into a joke, but you have to respect it, too - whatever respecting it means). But leaving that aside, there is still joy in the blues. Every feeling has within it the suggestion and reminder of its opposite, and everything we grasp has the potential to be lost - so when we express that loss there is an implicit expression of what it was we had or want again. In a way to sing of loss, of grief, of hurt is to celebrate the feelings whose loss gives them meaning - give them a horizon of significance to be measured against.

I cannot listen to the blues without feeling that, and even longing for something you have never had - might never, probably will never have - is something that total lack is not - it is something that allows for song to emerge. Music makes even sadness beautiful.

I love them sweet blues.

The glissando of blues singing drips with that sweetness, and the cadence of the flattened third, or fifth or seventh brings delicious tension that is resolved with the turn-around from that 12th bar back to the first (though don't let me fool you into thinking that all blues are 12-bar blues, it is just the most common, the most familiar to most people - but blues in a minor key, for example, often is built around 16-bar progressions).

And I love that shuffling rhythm of blues, that feeling like you can just keep walking, like the rain doesn't touch you (it ain't called a walking bassline for nothing).

The blues make me hopeful. They make me say, "This is what life is" and enjoy it - and while that joy may be problematic politically (didn't think I could get through a post here without using that phrase, did you?) it is no less joyous, wonderful, beautiful in the feeling it.

5 Songs I'm Feeling

Here are 5 songs I been really feeling lately:

"Darling Nikki" (off of Purple Rain) is just such a great song. There is always a lot of emphasis on Prince's lyrics on this song, and rightly so. I mean, there are countless people of my generation that had whatever they were doing arrested at age 11, 12, 13, 14 by hearing "I met her in a hotel lobby masturbating to a magazine." And his groans and screams, the desperation in his voice and the unintelligible sections ("Nikki's love willakickayourbehind / Oh just show ya no mercy!") all make the song work and conveys everything the lyrics only suggest, but listening to the song lately I am struck by what the Revolution are doing in the background. They are riding this almost mechanistic self-arresting orgiastic groove. The drums are so fragmented throughout the song, just occasionally falling into an almost tic-toc two-feel, before stuttering on the cymbals. Really, it is Wendy and Lisa's guitar and keyboard work that carries the song, especially Wendy's little flair that serve to ornament Prince's singing. Then again, I am attributing this stuff to the band, but according to Purple Rain's liner notes, Prince played all the instruments on the recording.

It is really the stops that make this song work, the sexual tension they emulate, until the keyboards hit that hard coda over and over, like a relieving rush. The backwards singing at the end of the song over the sound rain is the calm of post-orgasm. The backwards recording is a play on the fears of satanic messages recorded backwards on rock records, except true to Prince's occasionally creepy Christianity, played forwards it says: "Hello, how are you? I'm fine, 'cause I know that the Lord is coming soon. Coming, coming soon."

"Love Dog" is off of TV on the Radio's Dear Science which I have been listening to with an obsession I have not had for a record since Radiohead's In Rainbows came out. More than any other song on the record (so far) "Love Dog" seems to hit it right both lyrically and musically, from the perfect "Ooooh ooh ooohs" to open the song, to the tight drum part, perfectly and crisply recorded. And the mellow electric piano sound that buoys the prayer-like delivery of the lyrics. The straining backing harmony that sometimes comes in also helps to convey the plaintive sadness of the song's subject. The whole song has a very subtle build as more and more elements join it, soft horns - filling out the sound, eventually joined by strings and whirring electronic sounds.

At one point they sing:

Nameless you above me
Come lay me low and love me
This lonely little love dog
That no one knows the name of

Curse me out in free verse
Wrap me up and reverse this
Patience is a virtue
Until it's silence burns you

. . . and it speaks to me in a way I cannot quite articulate.

Speaking of In Rainbows, "Nude" is a haunting song that never quite escapes me. "Haunting" is the perfect word, because the "ooohs" here do sound like ghost whispers, and there is a sense of disorientation from what sound like some kind backwards effect on the keyboard, maybe even the snare hits might be brushed with the effect. The bass is so stripped down and bouncing along perfect and dub-like when it comes in to carry Thome York's strained voice. "Don't get any / big ideas / they're not / gonna happen," he sings, holding back the syllables to create tension and build up the anticipation. All there is for that first verse is the bass and voice with some ghostly keyboard way back in the mix until a guitar comes in to echo the bass notes with some soft chords. "Nude" seems to capture the ineffiability of the ephemeral perfectly, "Now that you've found it it's gone / Now that you feel it you don't." All the musical elements come together perfectly with a subtle build similar to that I described in "Love Dog" - and that final accusatory "You'll go to hell / for what your / dirty mind / is thinking" the last syllable drawn out back to the "ooohs" that die down and then rise back up to something almost heavenly - a soul fleeing its mortal vestments and ascending in contrast to the sad pronouncement of the final lyrics.

I think the reason this song started hitting the nail on the head for me was because at the time that I started listening to the record I was going on a lot of first dates that were serving more to disappoint me than to give me hope of meeting someone that could burst my ambivalence.

"For You" is off of Greetings from Asbury Park, a record I have been listening to with some obsession (along with other early Springsteen) since the Super Bowl. I am so easily influenced when it comes to music getting into my heavy rotation - all it takes is one listen to a particular song or artist in a particular setting and something clicks in my mind and I won't be satisfied until I have gone back to plumbing their discography. "For You" is much more of a straight-up rock song, and as such I feel like I have little to say about its instrumentation. It just starts with the snap of drums and the little piano rhythm and the acoustinc strumming that accompanies Bruce's voice. Really, this song is all about Springsteen's crammed lyrics and his delivery. . . I remember the first time I heard this song it was the mid-90s, when I was standing out front of a bodega on Flatbush avenue waiting for the bassist of my band to come out with beer, and Zooey leaned over and began to sing it into my ear.

To me the song speaks of the impossibility of "saving" someone no matter how you might desire it - and how it martyrs the savior as they absorb the abuse of it "like some soldier undaunted." The strongest part of the song is the refrain which is savored by the fact that it is only sung twice, as after the second verse instead of returning to it the song builds out the anticipation as if it were to come and instead has a brief acoustic guitar break and then a bridge with descending chords. Bruce sings then screams, "And your strength is devastating in the face of all these odds / Remember how I kept you waiting when it was my turn to be the god?" But what I was talking about was the refrain that is arrived at by means of the music moving to feel as if the band were trying to put on the brakes but somehow the momentum will not be restrained, until the drums tap and the Boss sings, "I came for you, for you, I came for you, / but you did not need my urgency / I came for you, for you, I came for you, / but your life was one long emergency / and your cloud line urges me, and my electric surges free." I am not even sure what "my electric surges free" is supposed to mean. The "cloud line urges me" makes sense because of that urge to rescue, to cast aside the storm clouds of someone else's life.

There may also be a suggestion here that the "you" in the song doesn't want to be saved, "you did not need my urgency," which makes sense when your life is one long emergency, since the very idea of what an emergency is loses its meaning when stretched out indefinitely as timeliness is part and parcel of its definition. A little bit of organ ends the song. . . Ultimately, it is the very unneeded urgency of how the song is delivered that makes it work and that gives the sense that perhaps the speaker is the one who feeling an urgent desire to be saved. I mean, it is the "you" in the song that is compared to Superman: "Didn't you think I knew that you were born with the power of a locomotive / able to leap tall buildings in a single bound?" I don't know. I just feel it.

"Sometimes I Forget," by Loudon Wainwright III (of off History) is another song that is more about the feeling and lyrics than any particular musical achievement. Written for his father that passed, whenever this song comes on I cannot help but think of both my nephew and mi abuela who died in 2007 and 2008 respectively. The song is just Loudon singing accompanied by nothing but his guitar, and explaining how a person's absence is most strongly felt in those moments when we forget that the person is "gone and not coming back."

It's as if all you've done is go out of town
You'll be back soon, that's just how it looks
But your suitcase is empty, it's right here in the hall
That's not even the strangest thing
Why would you leave your wallet behind?
Your glasses, your wristwatch and ring?

The song is just sparse and sad and raw - and when I hear, "And there was something I wanted to tell you so bad / Something I knew that you'd want to know" I am overwhelmed by the thought of all things I would have liked to tell my nephew and never got a chance to. And when I hear "Momentos, memories, tell me what good are they?" I think of all the things mi abuela left behind and the process of going through to clear out what wasn't needed, what could be donated, what could be thrown away and what we would each keep to remember her by. And while the song ends with a hopeful note, "Sometimes I forget that you've gone / Sometimes it feels like you're right here / Right now it feels like you're right here," ultimately, the feeling the song leaves me with is irrecoverable loss.

what was yours is everyone’s from now on

Welcome to the Future.

I have been writing with some irregularity about music on my personal blog for some years now, and since I am trying to do it more regularly, I figured I would start a blog that was for nothing but these posts about music - mostly "classic" albums I will always love and particular songs I am particularly feeling at particular times. When I say I am "feeling" a song, I just mean something about its sound and/or lyrical content is resonating with my general mood, and since I am obsessed with articulating why I like the things I like (and don't like the things I don't like) usually my writing about music emerges from the strength of this "feeling."

I wanted to date this entry way into the future (my 40th birthday, so I guess not that far - but this explains my opening line here, "Welcome to the future".) so it would always be the first one (at least until that date when maybe I will set it ahead to my 45th birthday), but I cannot figure out how to do that and have it appear before that date. . . So, when I transfer over some of my music posts from my older blog I am going to try to backdate them - so some of the dates are going to range back four or five years - try not to get confused.

Recently, I began a little project where I try to write about one of my favorite albums each month. So far, I have January (Prince's 1999) and February (The Police's Regatta de Blanc) 2009, and I will definitely be transferring those over and the rest of them will go on here from now on. I have not decided if I will cross-post, but it is likely.

The name for this blog comes the Wilco song "What Light" from Sky Blue Sky, in which Jeff Tweedy sings, "And if the whole world’s singing your songs / And all of your paintings have been hung / Just remember what was yours is everyone’s from now on." This captures my feelings perfectly on all art forms - once it is created and put out there it doesn't belong to the artist anymore and they really have nothing to do with it. I am also a strong believer in music being free, so while I myself have not illegally downloaded music in many years, it is only because the sound quality of those Mp3s do not satisfy me and my obsessive need to collect requires album art (even if it is a lost art) and liner notes. I need to own the physical object. I don't trust computers to hold onto that info indefinitely. It has nothing to do with the dubious (im)morality of doing so.

Comments and questions are welcome.

Just a Castaway. . .

I started writing this month's essay on one of my favorite albums - Ben Folds Five's Whatever and Ever Amen, but the close-listening just confirmed what I had been considering for a while, which is that the record does not do it for me the way it once did. Perhaps I have "outgrown it," or perhaps I am just not in that same bitter recently broken up moving through a weird relationship mode like I was when I first became enamoured of it. And while I wrote more than half of it and at first I was going to just muddle through and finish examining it, this morning I put Regatta de Blanc by The Police on my iPod and it struck me that this is a classic album that my appreciation for has deepened in the 20+ years I have been listening to it. This was the album I should write about.

I started listening to this record at the end of my freshman year in high school, so 1986, seven years after it had been released. My Police obsession had penetrated my bubble of hip-hop, soul and R&B that I lived in then when Synchronicity came out while I was in 7th grade, but it would not be for a couple of years before I began to explore the rest of their records. For a good part of my high school years if you asked me what my favorite bands were I would have replied, "The Police, Prince and Pink Floyd," and true to teen-aged obsession with obscure meaning, I used to try to figure out what it was about the letter 'P' that made me like the bands - or maybe I was just high. . .

When I first started listening to the Police it was probably the lyrics and the reggae feel that drew me in ("Regatta de Blanc" is supposedly some bastardized French for "White Reggae"), but like any good band as time went on different aspects of the music appealed to me. For a long time it was (and to some degree still is) Steward Copeland's phenomenal drumming, but more recently I have come to feel that Andy Summers' guitar-playing is underrated and is just as phenomenal. I mean, it is so understated and perfect as to blend in and be almost forgotten, but when you train your ear to break the parts up and really listen you can hear both the intricacy of the progressions and the deceiving simplicity of the rhythms he plays. He is not a shreddy lead-guitar kind of guitar player (though he can do that), but rather his rhythmic flares keeps things moving over Sting's journeyman basslines and Stewart's expressive drumming.

The opening track is an example of a song that I might have just heard too many times in my life to still have the same effect on me. "Message in a Bottle" may just forever be one of those teenage songs to me, expressing the collective alienation I was beginning to sense at that age and that is so easy to wallow in at 15 or 16. If anything, it is definitely one of the most straightforward of their songs with the pounding snare and the driving descending progression, but Copeland's fills and his ever-excellent cymbal work fills it out nicely. Of course, I shouldn't discount Sting's ability to carry the song vocally. Sometimes I forget what he was once capable because of the intervening years of his mostly stinky solo records (with some exceptional tracks).

While the title track is nothing impressive lyrically with some fake "world music" nonsense words and sounds, the instruments themselves are excellent from Copeland's great rim-taps to Summers' airy slow appregiating of chords to open the song and just showing how much you can do with nothing but rhythm (even if the bass parts are rather simple and repetitive). "It's Alright For You" might be the weakest track on the record (perhaps second weakest depending on how you feel about "On Any Other Day") with its psuedo-punk approach and rapid-fire lyrics. It just has no depth and musically is not all that interesting - I guess the little "turn around" riff between the verse on the guitar is vaguely interesting, but I can't help but wonder what this song is really about. Hmm, take it back about being completely muscially uninteresting, I guess the guitar break a little more than halfway through the song shows some interesting effects on the guitar making it sound like two different instruments.

"Bring On the Night" would be my favorite song on the record if it weren't for the first song on the second side. I just love how it builds with the high-hat hits and the nearly helicopterish guitar that transforms into one of the most interesting chord progressions in any of their songs, almost behind the beat and finger-picked I can spend 4+ minutes of the track doing nothing but listening to that part alone, but when the chorus comes, the bass is that simple boucey feel that carries you through and perfectly expresses the relief of the night's arrival, aided by the reggae strumming that comes on the guitar. Copeland plays the highhat almost throughout and again, Sting's voice is perfect here, perfectly expressing both the desire and relief. According to wikipedia, the song is supposed to be about the execution of Gary Gilmore, but I never knew that until recently, and I don't know the source for that information. Seems irrelevant. "Deathwish" has no chorus. Just three verses sung amid what is mostly an instrumental. In fact, it is easy for me to forget there are lyrics at all. Like a lot of these songs it has a driving rhythm that is accented nicely by Andy Summers' guitar (great mix of struming, arrpegiating and use of echo). I like the lyrics.

Deathwish in the fading light
Headlight pointing through the night
Never thought I’d see the day
Playing with my life this way

Gotta keep my foot right down
If I had wings I’d leave the ground
Buning in the outside lane
People think that I’m insane

The day I take a bend too fast
Judgement that could be my last
I’ll be wiped right off the slate
Don’t wait up ’cause I’ll be late

Side Two begins with what is probably my favorite song by the Police, "Walking on the Moon." From the instantly recognizable bassline to the echoing guitar chords and jaunty reggae feel that imply some loss of gravity, the song's simplicity is its strength. Again, this song displays Stewart Copeland's excellent highhat work, but it is the feeling it more than adequately describes that is the best part of it. Or perhaps it is just me, the silly romantic that I can be - but the sensation: "Walking back from your house / Walking on the moon / Walking back from your house / Walking on the moon / Your feet they hardly touch the ground. . ." I know it so well, and I love it. It is a moment divorced from the future, just like you'd feel divorced from gravity making giant steps across the moonscape. The song ends with more of Copeland's great cymbal-work and the echoing "Keep it up" suggests not only a common call out in ska and reggae, but also the weightlessness itself. The song is just as close to perfect as you can get, if you ask me.

"On Any Other Day" was written by Stewart Copeland and he does most of the singing on it. It starts with him saying "The other ones are complete bullshit. . " which suggests not only that his other offerings are worse, but that they think this track is bullshit as well to some degree - and I cannot disagree. It just has a jokey sophmoric feel that just doesn't sit well with me and doesn't age well. I guess the horrible things listed in the song are happening on the protagonist's birthday. . . But really, I don't care. It isn't even very interesting musically and ultimately not all that funny.

"The Bed's Too Big Without You" on the other hand is another of my favorites off this album. A kind of reggae ballad that puts the guitar, bass and drum pieces together beautifully. The song fades in from the left channel and then comes in stereo (I have heard a mono version), and has the perfect tempo for Sting's languid lyrics.

"Contact" is a weird song with a droning bassline and obscure lyrics, though I like the chorus. "Have we got contact, you and me? Have we got touchtone? Can we be?" It not a very long song, and neither is the song that follows it that at one time I would have probably said was my favorite on the album, "Does Everyone Stare?" This song is unique in that it starts with piano and Stewart Copeland singing a kind of muffled lead that echoes the verses to come until the song really starts up and Sting takes over the lead vocals - just before he does there is a sample(? - can I call it a sample?) of a man's operatic voice further back in the mix, not sure what is up with that, but it works. Again, this is a song that I think my teenaged self related to because of the awkwardness it conveys (reinforced by the purposefully slightly off-time kind of marching drum that goes along with the the trotting piano chords). "I change my clothes ten times before I take you on a date / I get the heebie-jeebies and my panic makes me late / I break into a cold sweat reaching for the phone / I let it ring twice before / I chicken out and decide you're not at home." Of course, the very idea of staring at a woman reinforces the awkward creepiness of it.

The closing track is "The Other Way of Stopping" is a fast-paced frenetic song with some amazing drumming.

Overall, I find Regatta de Blanc to be the Police's best album, though I am leaving aside the problematic aspect of cultural appropriation that come along with the idea of "white reggae," mainstreaming it beyond even the broader popularity that Bob Marley gave it. Reading this over I also find that my enthusiasm for the record is lacking compared to what I wrote about 1999 last month. I think that might because of my recent discovery of TV on the Radio's Dear Science, and right now everything I am feeling about it is what Regatta de Blanc is not. It fills that bottom middle in a way that the sparseness of the Police's tunes do not, and while I love that sparseness, the negative aural space that it creates, right now I am appreciating that fullness contrasted with the falsetto voices and the frequent handclaps. I have also been kind of obsessively listening to some early Springsteen records and they too have a "full" sound laid over with that cramped lyricality with endless eternal rhyme that Bruce was into back then. I may have to write about Greetings from Asbury Park next month, that is, if I am not still so into Dear Science that I just have to write about it.

Read Instructions Before Assembling

One of my favorite things in music are meta-instructions to the band in a song or descriptions of what the band is doing or about to do. . . Especially when it is on a studio recording and thus has to be a very self-conscious (and unnecessary) thing - as compared to a recording of a live performance where it might actually be serving to instruct/direct the band. I am talking about when the singer/bandleader just announces "bridge!" and the band breaks to the bridge (like James Brown might). Prince does this a lot (like on "Mountains" when he says, "Guitars and drums on the one," or "Superfunkycalifragisexy" when he says, "In seven measures I want somebody to scream," and then someone does. . . him), but I have written a lot about Prince lately so I won't focus on him.

Another common example is a lot of the older salsa I listen to (my taste in salsas and rhumbas ends in the 70s somewhere, basically the music my mom exposed me to growing up). There are a lot of call outs to particular instrumentalists in the recordings, giving them instructions or announcing their solos. This might be jazz influencing the music.

On Taj Mahal's song (or his version of it anyway) "Cluck Old Hen" he says, "And this is what the cluckin' sound like on the banjo. . ." And then he plays it. The whole song has the banjo sounding like a bunch of clucking chickens.

This reminds me that sometimes these instructions or explanations are for the audience, as he says later "Now listen to them hens!"

Dance songs of course are the most common example of instructions for the listeners, often describing the dance that goes along with the song. But still, that is not quite what I meant when I started writing this. Live recordings are also a very common example of this, with the band imploring the crowd to clap or sing along or to cheer out or scream. I remember many years ago a friend of mine admitting that he felt a little embarrassed when he heard recordings of crowds acting that way, but I scoffed. "They are at a concert. They are just really into it. . ." I guess I am empathetic since I can get that into it just listening to my ipod waiting for the train to go home from work. Once at a Flaming Lips show, Wayne Coyne implored us to pump our fists as they played "The Gash," saying "Yeah, I know it's cheesy, and you feel like just some follower - but that is what we come to concerts for. Forget yourself! Play along!" I appreciated that moment of awareness of audience participation and his jab at the too-school-for-school alt-rockers who would never be caught dead pumping their fists in time to the music along with everyone else.

I guess, the most common example of instructions or guides in a song is just counting off to begin a song, "1. . 2. . 3. . 4. ." Or I guess sometimes in the middle when there is about to be a change or some new instrumentation is about to come in.

Boogie Down Productions' song "Nervous" off of By All Means Necessary is a particular cool example. Hip-hop is full of self-reflective instructions/descriptions, but on this particular track KRS-ONE actually explains the things he is doing "on the 48-track board" while he doing it. For example, "There's two ways to do this, you see what I'm sayin? / If you feel the board, you feel around / We got tracks one to track 48 / We find track seven, and break it down!" And of course, the beat breaks down at the moment. . . This is an example of a song I used to not like and would skip, but over the years of listening to album that meta aspect began to appeal to me.

Another variation is when little snippets of instruction or conversation are kept on a cut and becomes just part of how you think of the song. For example, the version of "Revolution" on The Beatles (aka "The White Album") has a little flub at the beginning and Paul McCartney saying "Take two" with John's response "Okay!" And then there is the infamous "I'VE GOT BLISTERS ON MY FINGERS!" at the end of "Helter Skelter," a song that proves the Beatles could rock when they wanted to - though I guess there is plenty of evidence of that in their earlier stuff that is more influenced by early American rock n'roll music. . . But anyway, that lamentation is more of a tangential outburst referring to the playing/recording of the song, rather than the song itself or some detail about how it is played. Who knows how many takes it took? Those blisters probably really hurt! One of the things I liked about the Beatles Anthologies that came out in the 90s were the alternate takes with the flubs and mess ups which included a lot of those tidbits - like Paul chuckling through to the end of a fucked up version of "Rocky Racoon." ("Sminking of gin")

So, now I am giving you instructions for listening to music, listen for these instructions and try to decide what they add to the song, or perhaps you think they diminish the recording in some cases? What does it acommplish to make the seams of a song transparent?

I Only Want You To Have Some Fun. . .

1999. "Don't worry. I won't hurt you. I only want you to have some fun. . ."

So opens an underrated classic, underscoring the sense of menace that is so often present in Prince's music, but that can be easily overlooked. Even if you don't want to characterize it as menace, there was an underlying tone in those early Prince records of the forbidden, of the taboo - like you are saying or doing something that might get you hurt - and that is appealing to me.


It must have always been appealing, because as I wrote once before, I first heard "1999" when I was about 11 years old over the Christmas break, and I think it is for that reason I always associate it with winter and the new year. I guess the title track is playing on millennial fear, even if it was 18 years before the threat of Y2K appeared to make people stress out about apparently nothing.

(Note that throughout this essay when I refer to "1999" (in quotes) I mean the song by that name, and when I use 1999 (in italics) I mean the album as a whole).

1999 is a different kind of record and a culmination of some of the new-wavey keyboard and drum machine stuff Prince had been experimenting with on Dirty Mind and Controversy, and while Purple Rain (which followed 1999) still has some of that keyboard-y stuff, the live drums and guitar rock gives it a totally different feel. There is an interesting contradiction in this collection of songs because while he certainly has a pop sensibility to his use of these electronic elements (in some cases riffing off Kraftwerk and in others pre-figuring Timbaland) and there some hooky-ass hooktidity hooks ("Delirious," "Little Red Corvette"), at the same time the songs are long - while "Delirious" clocks in at exactly four minutes, most of the songs are six or more minutes long with "Automatic" passing the nine-minute mark. The thing is that these were also dance songs, so that explains the length - but Prince has always been an artist that is unafraid to be self-indulgent (with varying levels of success) - so he is willing to spend two minutes of a song softly cooing over the drumbeat, or just groaning and moaning and making those Prince sounds that he manages to make. The dance music aspect also explains the melange of styles, because popular dance music often alludes to and plays with different styles and makes allusions to fragments of melody of other songs. So "Delirious" swings a bit, and both "Little Red Corvette" and "Let's Pretend We're Married" have a blues-rock base - and live versions of these songs I have heard sometimes emphasize these influences. In fact, despite the heavy synths throughout the record, almost all of it (save perhaps on "Automatic" and "Something in the Water (Does Not Compute)" could easily be arranged for horns, and most of the live versions I have heard of these songs do exactly that.

The title track evokes a common Prince theme, the idea that the world is in bad shape and his only reaction to it is to experience as much pleasure as possible before he goes on to the next life. "War is all around us, my mind says prepare to fight / So if I gotta die I'm gonna listen to my body tonight". Simultaneously, however, it does seem to ask questions from a particular (perhaps pacifist) political point of view. I mean, when the song closes "Mommy? Why does everybody have a bomb?" with a vocal effect that makes Prince voice seem child-like, the ghost of war and reality of imminent self-destruction rises up out of a danceable party hit.

Lyrically, like a lot of Prince records, 1999 is uneven. Prince has never been what I consider a master lyricist, but as time went on he seemed to feel more comfortable being playful with language and using certain reversals and purposeful mispronunciation of words that really work. And sometimes his incredibly explicit lyrics are delivered with more success than others. But I have to admire someone who can sing "Girl's got an ass like I've never seen / And the ride. . . I said, the ride is so smooth, you must be a limousine!"

In "Let's Pretend We're Married" he displays total willingness to disrupt his own rhyme schemes and the meter of his lyrics to cram in what he wants, how he wants (something that will become a signature of his songs to those with more than a passing familiarity with them - in that sense I think the occasional Dylan comparisons I have heard are accurate, but only in that very specific sense). For example, one repeated lyric is "My girl's gone and she don't care at all / And if she did, so what? Come on baby let's ball. . ." But before that is even established, he doesn't sing it that way, instead of "let's ball" he says "let's fuck, aw!" pronouncing that "fuck" with three squeezed syllables that take some kind of verbal gymnastics to make work. In the same song he dares to say, "I'm not saying this just to be nasty / But I sincerely want to fuck the taste out of your mouth." I never thought of this before, but the opening lyric to this song is "Excuse me, but I need a mouth like yours / To help forget the girl just walked out my door." Maybe there is even more of an oral sex theme in this song than I thought (though not like Dirty Mind's "Head" - great fucking song).

"Let's Pretend We're Married" ends with a spoken tangent, which these long songs allow for, total drifting away from the song's theme. (Perhaps this is the "going astray" mentioned in the title track), and sometimes become really weird and kind of stream of consciousness. All of "All the Critics Love U In New York" is like this - just strange lyrics that make little sense over an electro-funk groove. "Look out all you hippies, you ain't as sharp as me / It ain't about the tripping, but the sexuality / Turn it up!"

Speaking of funk, "D.M.S.R" (which was omitted from the original CD release of 1999) has a great groove that is reminiscent of the afore-mentioned "Head." It is a total party funk song with call and response and with the bass, drums and shakers pumping along to the hooky refrain that you can imagine a packed dance floor calling back to. The backing vocals are brushed liberally with chorus in the mix to give that crowd feel. And like most funk songs, the lyrics don't have to be great, they just have to be fun. But don't get too comfortable, when he asks for "All the white people clap your hands on the four," he counts it out for them, mockingly. Also, the song ends with a distressed woman's voice begging, "Somebody call the police! Somebody help me please! Somebody help me!" There is that menace, that discomfort I was talking about.

As I mentioned before, Prince's guitar is not as present on this record as we would come to expect from his post-Purple Rain period. In fact, "Little Red Corvette" is the only song on the album that has any real guitar solo to speak of (though "Lady Cab Driver" does have a synth and guitar trading off a lead at one point). Rather, in most of these tunes the guitar is light and rhythmic with little funk flares and tinkling progressions. We also get the mechanistic groove of "Automatic" - another dark dance tune that goes on and on, allowing Prince to play with computer sounds (including what sounds like a sampled staccato airplane engine on take-off that punctuates the song's development towards the end) and for some murmured call and response between him and the girls (Wendy and Lisa) "I pray that when U dream / U dream of how we kiss / Not with our lips, but with our souls."

"Something in the Water (Does Not Compute)" takes up the mechanistic feel, but at a much more frenetic pace in a way (like I said) that seems to channel Kraftwerk by pre-figuring Timbaland. This is a tune I didn't feel as much back in the day. While some of the soundss and words of the other songs are discomforting, the jerking rhythm of this song is not exactly "pop" friendly - at least not for that time period. It is one of those bad lover songs. "Some people tell me I got great legs / Can't figure out why you make me beg."

One of the things I love about Prince is his (seemingly) casual use of gender-specific words or sayings. I mean, is it all that common to compliment a man on his legs? Saying someone has "great legs" is usually reserved for women, but in this case it doesn't matter (Similar to how on Parade's "Do You Lie?" he talks about lying awake in his "boudoir," he seems to not know or not care that by definition a boudoir is a lady's private bedroom or dressing room).

Anyway, "Something in the Water (Does Not Compute)" conveys a sense of frustration and desperation that really works for the song, and the computer-y synthesized sounds help the human frailty of the lyric stand out in stark contrast. Again, this is an example of lyrics that aren't that strong on their own "I'll buy you clothes / I'll buy you fancy cars / But you gotta tell me who the hell you think you are" - but Prince makes them work with the raw delivery and willingness to scream. It is the kind of thing he would perfect on Purple Rain's "The Beautiful Ones" and "Darling Nicki."

The weakest song on the album is the ballad "Free." I must admit to skipping past it most of the times I listen to the album these days (though I listened to it this morning on the way to work and again right now as I write this). The lyrics are definitely the weakest "Don't cry unless you're happy / Don't smile unless you're blue / Never let that lonely monster take control of you." Lonely monster? Ugh. Makes me a little nauseous with embarrassment just thinking about it (though interesting, some poor lyrics in "International Lover" don't have the same effect on me (see below). "Free" is an example of Prince's strangely conservative political side - or at least what comes off as superficial patriotism - something that shows up rarely and that changed later in his career - but songs like "Ronnie Talk to Russia" (off of Controversy - 1981) and "America" (off of Around the World in a Day - 1985) are also examples (by the time we get to "Family Name" off of 2001's The Rainbow Children he is veering more towards a dissenting view on race in America that basically pits all the racial minorities against white America in a powerful way). But "Free"? Again, ugh! The refrain "Be glad that you are free / Free to change your mind / Free to go most anywhere anytime / Be glad that you are free / There's many a man whose not / Be glad for what you have, for what you've got." The plodding ballad's monotonous melody and the "rousing" anthemic repetition of the chorus at the end of the song doesn't help either.

"Lady Cab Driver" is another funky mid-tempo one. It is marked by a bridge that features the orgasmic moaning of woman in response to Prince saying "This one's [for this], this one's [for that]" and those "this" and "thats" range wildly and some make no sense as far as I can tell - "This one's for Yosemite Sam and the tourists that didn't land"? What the heck does that mean? My favorite one is "This is for how I wasn't born / like my brother handsome and tall" - I think I can just relate. Interestingly, only one of these orgasms he is "giving" the lady cab driver in question is for her. Again, there is that weird sense of menace - as if orgasms were being inflicted upon her, rather than some loving shared experience. He is venting some aggression sexually "This is for politicians who were born to believe in war," or "This one's for discrimination and egotistic things supreme / This one is for whoever taught you how to kiss in designer jeans."

After the long and bizarre "All the Critics Love U in New York" (which segues from "Lady Cab Driver" nicely with traffic noise that alludes to New York City), we get that classic Prince lover-man ballad "International Lover" - which is ridiculous and awesome as you'd expect. There is a great tradition in soul music of taking gospel songs and influences and making them into love songs. "International Lover" takes that one step beyond and (in classic Prince style) makes it into nasty playful rave-up that plays up the whole dramatic presentation and winks all the way through with an airplane ride metaphor that was alluded to in "Automatic" and as does the smooth "limousine" ride of "Little Red Corvette." For some people, Controversy's "Do Me, Baby" is the classic song of this type, but for my money "International Lover" is better because it seems to have a little more awareness of its own absurdity, and is winking all along.

Sure this song suffers from some poor lyrics, like Prince's penchant to rhyme "girl" with "diamonds and pearls" (something he would do as the title track of the 1991 album of the same name, e.g. "Diamond & Pearls) - but as I've said before, sometimes Prince can more than make up for a weak lyric with the pliability of his voice. Just listen to the way he sings "Baby" halfway through the second verse, or the way he pauses knowingly after the word "come" when asking "Don't you want to come. . . inside."

But really to me, where this closing track shines most is in the spoken part that is in the guise of a airline pilot, but delivered like a pastor half-singing his sermon while the choir bolsters him with their voices (all of which sound like Prince overdubs). "Good evening. This is your pilot Prince speaking / You are flying aboard the Seduction 747 / and this plane is fully equipped with anything your body desires." And then it goes into these amazing faux-instructions like those a flight attendant gives before take-off.

For any reason there is a loss in cabin pressure
I will automatically drop down to apply more
To activate the flow of excitement
Extinguish all clothing materials
And pull my body close to yours,
put your lips upon my mouth and kiss, kiss
In the event there is over-excitement
your seat cushion can be used as a floatation device.

And later, as the song reaches its climax, he announces, "We are now making our final approach to satisfaction / Please bring your lips, your arms, your hips to the up and locked position / for landing." And particularly wink-wink at the end, "Please remain awake until the aircraft has come to a complete stop."


As someone who believes in the power of having music playing when you make love (and it is for that reason alone that I own a 5-disc CD changer), 1999 ranks up there are one of the best for that purpose. Overall the flow of the record is condusive to getting your groove on (sometimes slow, sometimes fast, grooving, crooning, jerking, shaking, hollering. .. ) - and maybe that is another reason why I think of this as a winter-time album (in addition to when I discovered it and the millenial nature of the title track that suggests New Year's Eve), it makes me want to stay in all day with a lover, listening and getting it on - staying warm and safe while playing dangerously - while the world outside freezes over.

Still I Remain Tied to the Mast. . .

I am always looking for the language with which to explain what it is about particular music that I like. I understand that for many (most?) people music is a purely visceral experience – they either like it or they don’t, get used to it or not – but I like to think about why certain music appeals to me or doesn’t appeal to me, and sometimes in that thinking songs I once despised grow worthy of some kind of eccentric love, or songs I once loved unequivocally take on a tarnish that in time I work through and love because of the tarnish, not despite it.

Steely Dan is one of those bands people seem to have strong feelings about one way or another, but for me Steely Dan was one of those bands I grew to love as I learned to listen to it. Yes, it can seem like that breezy vapid bougie pseudo-jazz, and if you ever hear it as background music at a party then that is exactly what it is – It can serve that purpose. Easy. But I think any band that names itself after a dildo from Naked Lunch deserves an open-minded listen, and Aja is one of the finest albums ever produced. Period. It is just fine layered music with a kind of aplomb darkness at the center of that breeziness. The title track is just fun to listen to.

I love how each verse has its little airy intro, almost tricking the ear into thinking the whole verse will be like that, but then picking up the tempo to finish the verse and go on to the refrain “Aja / when all my dime dancing is through / I run to you” and then the whole thing kind of dissolves back into that very tenuous melody of the intro section of the next verse. What I really love about the chorus is how the piano is doubling the vocal melody using rich chords, and the tom-toms on the drum-kit are tuned to them adding the perfect rhythmic harmonic weight to the words.

The bridge, a long instrumental section after the second verse, has this perfect and simple two-chord progression that starts out on the guitar which uses repetition to upset aural expectation. A lead guitar plays over it with almost banal excellence, but it is those two chords that do it for me. It is just so languid, lazy, just barely keeping time. There is tension there, and the whole thing builds on that tension until the piano and those tuned toms I mentioned before are all hitting those two chords back and forth, forth and back, while the sax cuts in improvising over the top of it. The whole thing almost completely dissolves, again it threatens to become so fractured melodically it might disappear, but then little intro section of the third verse and back to the that picked-up tempo – but this time instead of dissolving again, the chorus takes up the two-chord refrain from the bridge in recapitulation, building on it more and more as the song fades out.

But Aja is potent stuff. It is not an album I can listen to too often or too much. It is an album that demands attention, and as its slides into the background it almost becomes obnoxious. I mean, Michael McDonald’s harmonies on 'Peg' can be nauseating, and I mean that in a good way – I just have no other way of explaining it. Like yogurt, curdled and delicious… Perhaps it is schizophrenic music, and that is the reason for the strong reactions to it. Because if I am honest about it, as much as I love it in this moment of listening, I know there have been times I have had it come on one time too many in a given time frame and have felt sick of it, disgusted with its baroque pretensions – but again, in those moments I still know how good it is. Maybe it is too good…

Heavy Rotation, Discerning Ear

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Listening. . . Remembering

I love waking up on a Saturday morning fixing some coffee, and just putting on albums. Album after album, running through my collection of CDs and LPs, sometimes going by artist, feeling like listening to nothing but Prince - a sampling of his records from the self-titled one with "I Wanna Be Your Lover" on it (I really detest his first album "For You") all the way up through "The Rainbow Children" or "Musicology". Other times it is just albums I feel I haven't listened to in a long time. Ben Folds Five's "Whatever and ever, Amen" or Taj Mahal's "Giant Step/Old Folks in De Home". When was the last time I listened to Fishbone's self-titled first record? Or how about Boogie Down Productions' 'Criminal-Minded' or Public Enemy's 'It takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back'? (How can you not love that title?) Those records just pop out to my eyes as I scan the titles, so I load up the 5 disc changer and let it rip - just laying on my sofa with my eyes closed, listening closely - sometimes sitting up and singing along, sometimes standing and dancing and singing along - sometimes my mind wanders and the next thing I know more than half the song that was on has passed - sometimes I back that shit up and listening again from the beginning - sometimes I let slide.

It is such a lovely way to spend a Saturday morning/afternoon. Experiencing the music in the moment of listening and occasionally letting yourself slip away into the nostalgia of some of those albums. I will never be able to listen to This Mortal Coil's 'Filigree & Shadow' without thinking of lying in the dark in my loft bed in my freshman college dorm room with girlfriend at the time, awkwardly fumbling to undo the buttons of her blouse to reveal those forbidden breasts. I remember having my smooth moment foiled by the size of them. You see, I got great practice unsnapping bras when I was growing up.

My mother would come home exhausted from her job and call me into the bedroom and she'd be standing there, back to me, her blouse hiked up in the back, so I could unsnap her bra, too tired to reach back and do it herself. When I was very young I never thought of it as weird, but when I was little older I always did it reluctantly - but one does not refuse my mother lightly - anyway, at around 11 my older brother told me that I should start practicing doing it one handed as the skill might come in handy one day. I became an expert. I could undo those two snaps with a quick flick of three fingers. And after I got good at doing it right-handed, I started doing it left-handed.

But that two-snap bra was the only kind of bra I had any experience with. I just assumed they were all like that, so that first night as a freshman, as I drew off her blouse and reached to the back of the bra, I did my deft flick and undid two snaps. . . But there were three! I even said, all confused, "There are three?" And suddenly shy again, she folded her arms about her breasts and looked down as This Mortal Coil's version of Judy Collins' 'Ohio' came on. It is emblazoned in my memory.

Don't worry we overcame the awkward moment and I got to behold her in all her double-D glory.

I am never going to be able to listen to Big Black's 'Hammer Party' without thinking those blue-dot blotters I took with my roommate later that same school year. Damn, I used to gobble that stuff up like it was nothing. I was used to it, but it was his first time and I was called away to deal with a 'girlfriend situation'. There I was arguing with her about tripping while I was tripping in a study lounge in her dorm. I trying to alleviate the situation and told her it was no big deal (she was a small town girl. She didn't have experience with this kind of thing - Oh, and I am talking about a different girl here) and succeeding, and even getting her to laugh and fool around a little when her roommate comes to knock on the door of the study lounge. My roommate had called their room. He was listening to Big Black and freaking out. I begged off and ran back to my dorm to rescue him from the mental horrors he was inflicting on himself, lying balled up in one corner of the futon mumbling, "I'm a steel worker. I kill what I eat." He was okay. I just needed to come back and remind him to have fun. The funny thing is I have never really liked Big Black before that - but from that moment on I was a fan, and still am. I think none of the music that it spawned of various industrial modes ever surpasses it for pure snide unfocused expression of anger and dissatisfaction with everything. We are talking 1989-90 here folks. I had a lot of that. Come to think of it, I still do.

It is hard to come up with more recent examples. I mean, music was so much a part of my development as a person, especially in my teens and early twenties, when an album could mean so much. I will never be able to listen to Kraftwerk's 'Trans-Europe Express' without thinking about being about 7 years old and sneaking my older brother's records when he wasn't home and trying to mix two copies of them. I really think that track was the perfect introduction to electronic music and those kinds of beats for a kid because it was about a train, and what seven year old boy doesn't love trains? And how many times did I listen to Pink Floyd's 'the Wall' at age 15 lying in my bunk bed feeling sorry for myself and thinking myself an eternal outsider? It is for that reason it is hard for me to listen to that record these days without associating it with that self-obsessed melodrama that would be embarrassing if it wasn't excused by the fact that I was only 15 years old.

But I hope that that is not the end of such experiences and memories regarding albums. And, now that I think of it, I know it won't be - because I just remembered the repeated listening of the Flaming Lips' 'Soft Bulletin' when I was sick with the flu in early 2003, and becoming overwhelmed by the sounds of it, and the yearning in Wayne Coyne's voice that echoes my own (yearning, that is - not my voice). And those repeated listenings of those albums that come to mean so much and have such strong associations also reveal new aspects to the music every so often, some track or trick of production, some other voice or sound deep in the mix that I had never noticed before.

Ah, the Taj Mahal record just ended. . . I love that I've forgotten what comes on next. . . Oh! 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot'. I love it.