Those are words of wisdom from Peter Tosh, which would probably make a bigger impression for being shorter. Tosh always has something to say. He didn’t bother putting out songs with no message to impart. (For which dedication, some say, he took a bullet.) However, he usually propelled his words with funky reggae beats. This one, though brimming with spiritual solace, is nine minutes of abstracted flute noodling. Not to say that it doesn’t create an atmosphere which in some moods is bewitching, but it does lack the instant appeal of a more uptempo reggae tune. You may find the very long and slow rewarding, or may sit up saying “what is this dirge?”.
We could argue about the inherent quality of Styx music. I know lots of people find them insufferable. And they are cheesy. But in a good way. As a rule I don’t have much use for that whole platoon of bombastic power ballad wielding arena monsters like Rush, Journey, Kansas, Boston, Foreigner et al. Why they’re suddenly cool again I have no idea. Like why do radio stations that play top 40 hits also have Don’t Stop Believin’ on their playlists? Why do I see movies in which bros bond over karaoke Rush songs? I mean, those guys weren’t cool when they were topping the charts in 1980, so they’re exponentially even more uncool now. Except for Styx. Not that they ever passed for cool in any sense of the word, but sometimes cool isn’t the point. There’s something about how over-the-top they were. I love how all their best songs are actually horrible, horrible numbskull bad ideas – Come Sail Away is nothing less, nothing more than a really long power ballad about an alien abduction, Too Much Time On My hands contains the line “is it any wonder I’m not the President?”, Mr. Roboto is self-explanatory, Fooling Yourself is like a self-help book with guitar solos – and yet they’re so friggin’ catchy, and sung with so much conviction, that they just cycle round to being awesomely good when they should just be awful.
A classic by Buddy Holly. What never stops amazing me about Holly’s songs (and classic fifties rock songs in general) is the sheer simplicity. It’s not just that he always said what he had to say in under three minutes, though that’s a rare and kingly gift. It’s the way things were done back then that put musicianship ahead of gimmicks and let the performances speak for themselves. They just went into a recording room and played their songs and then they went to press. And it was brilliant. Being undesirably used to today’s ways of recording; where the producer has more power than God and the artist whose name is on the album barely even contributes and everything has to be overloaded with samples and exotic instruments and robot sound effect. It’s such a pleasure to hear music that is simple in its essence - just plaid old great songwriting and great playing, no tricks, no computers, no dozens of layers of track. I guess if something is crap it needs all the gimmicks the studio wizards can pull out of their asses, but with a well-written tune you can dress it up or not, it stands either way.
The Fool on the Hill has always been one of my favorite Beatles songs (though I have so many favorite Beatles songs that it’s almost meaningless to say). Besides that it’s a beautiful little tune, in the best McCartney tradition, I always found it particularly meaningful, especially when I was younger. The theme of feeling like an outcast and watching the world from a remove is something everyone can relate to, and that feeling is most pronounced for adolescents. For me feeling ostracized and misplaced was pretty much the default setting, and I’ve only recently started feeling at home in the world. I’m still pleasantly surprised to find myself feeling comfortable with a group of people. That’s a function of growing up and growing in confidence, of course, and everyone goes through that. But I did feel very misunderstood in my younger years, and there was something very gratifying in the message that being ‘the fool’ is a noble position. That’s not just some cheap idea about ‘empowerment’ that Paul McCartney happened to think up one day. For one thing, the pop psychology of personal empowerment didn’t become a selling point until fairly recently. For another, the idea of the wise fool is an ancient one. It’s one of the biggest themes in folk tales from around the world. There are infinite variations on the story of the youth who is labeled an fool or an idiot for being different from his brothers, but he always uses his wits to outsmart whatever villains he meets, makes his fortune and marries the beautiful princess, proving in the end that it was the brothers with their conformity and lack of imagination who were the idiots. That story has been told so many times, in so many ways (right along with the equally popular Cinderella, who is rewarded for her kind heart and her beauty). So it’s a deeply ingrained idea that the weird and seemingly foolish have their own wisdom and see the world differently than regular folks. All of which I’m certain Paul McCartney is erudite enough to know about. If the idea for this song was a deliberate decision to take inspiration from a folk tradition as old as the 1,001 Nights, or if it bubbled up form some unconscious place, I have no way of knowing, but I find it magical that such a simple song can carry centuries of storytelling behind it.
Duffy isn’t the only lovely British chick reviving American Motown styles from the sixties. The lush, slightly campy, unabashedly emotional sound of sixties girl-groups is all over town right now. The original girl-groups were all about big lashes, bigger hair and chintzy matching outfits, but underneath the glam they were built on the best songsmithery and the amazing voices of singers like Diana Ross and Ronnie Spector. It was glamour, personality and emotion. The new retro movement was probably started by the late Amy Winehouse, who took as much from jazz and blues records, and now Adele’s catchy tales of woe are all over the radio. Duffy distinguishes herself by her helium infused voice, both gorgeous and slightly weird.
Who’s to say rock music and refinement can’t mix? Bryan Ferry is so refined I think I’ll kill myself (to paraphrase a movie line.) It takes a figure of suave sophistication to bring the Aching Romantic archetype back into action. That characterization had its heyday in the great Romantic poets of yonder days (the late 1700′s) and hasn’t been all that cool in meantime. We have today’s emo youth, but they’re not quite up to the task of making yearning a desirable condition. The Romantic makes yearning and pining look noble and glamorous, when in our time we tend to see those things as pathetic and possibly creepy. In disclosure though; I haven’t actually read much Romantic poetry (except for Pushkin) and merely have the commonly held image in my head of Lord Byron, who holds the golden standard for wringing one’s hands in romantic anguish whilst still appearing manly. (Speaking of Romantic poets, there’s a wonderful movie about John Keats called Bright Star, which I highly recommend you seeing.) It may seem like the fine art of walking the moors (metaphorically or literally) doesn’t have a place in rock’n'roll, which is the art form of libidinous, rebellious youth, often more interested in the groin than the soul. But then there’s Ferry, who’s created an image for himself as a yearning romantic in the classic tradition, elevating (through means of mildly ironic delivery) the long dark pining of the broken heart from whiny to dignified.
If, like me, you never could make out a word of this UB40 song, here’s some lyrics. The title is right, it’s something to think about. Now that I can see the words it seems to be a commentary on something political, most likely the famines that Ethiopia had been experiencing. Though the disaster most people think of as ‘the Ethiopian famine’ took place throughout 1984 and ’85, the country had been going through droughts and crop failures as early as 1973, so it’s quite plausible that a song released in 1980 could be referring to that. Wikipedia backs me up on this theory, though it’s also possible that Ali Campbell was referring to some other politically incited tragedy – after all, there were plenty, and still are.
Ivory madonna dying in the dust,
Waiting for the manna coming from the west.
Barren is her bosom, empty as her eyes,
Death a certain harvest scattered from the skies.
Skin and bones is creeping, does`nt know he`s dead.
Ancient eyes are peeping, from his infant head.
Politician`s argue sharpening their knives.
Drawing up their Bargains, trading baby lives.
(Chorus)
Ivory madonna dying in the dust,
Waiting for the manna coming from the west.
Hear the bells are ringing, Christmas on it`s way.
Hear the angels singing, what is that they say?
Eat and drink rejoicing, joy is here to stay.
Jesus son of mary is born again today.
(Chorus)
Ivory madonna dying in the dust,
Waiting for the manna coming from the west.
Ivory madonna dying in the dust,
Waiting for the manna coming from the west.
Today, in the art of video, a highly cool one, and a cool song too. Though I don’t know what the song is about or what that bonked-out Seussian landscape has to do with anything. I guess you either like Modest Mouse a lot or you hate them, they’re one of those. We all know that being defensive is one of the joys of fandom. Sometime’s it’s nice to like something universally agreed upon, or nearly. But it’s equally great fun to get your hackles up and take the “you’ll never understand because you’re a Philistine” position. I really like telling people they’re a Philistine. In my self-appointed post as a web critic, I get to do that a lot. So yeah, you’re all damn dirty Philistines for not agreeing with me.
I guess maybe it’s surprising to some people that with my obsessions with glam rock, new wave, and the sixties (and generally impeccable taste, and generally snobbish attitude) I have a big thing for electronica and dance music. Those things are so mindless, you say. I agree that it’s true – a lot of dance music is mindless. But nevertheless, I like to dance, and I don’t see electronically generated music as less valid than more traditional genres, as long as it’s done well. The way I see it, all music is by necessity produced by instruments, be it synthesizers or banging two rocks together. And how do you think music is reproduced? The act of recording a performance is artificial in and of itself, and take into account that nowadays it’s very rare to tape live in the studio and most records are in fact an audio collage of separately recorded parts digitally spliced together. The only true instrument is the human voice, and even that, again by sheer necessity is also recorded for posterity in unnatural electronically enhanced ways. With that in mind, it becomes harder to make a distinction between ‘authentic’ old fashioned live instrument based musical styles and newfangled computer generated ones. It’s a slippery slope, true, between human creativity and just cutting out the middleman and letting the algorithms take over, but we’re not quite there yet. Take this song by Goldfrapp. It’s fairly typical dance music. It’s unapologetically electronic, but still anchored in the realm of the human by Alison Goldrapp’s voice. What she’s saying isn’t supposed to matter, yet there’s feeling in her voice. Those are robot drums, but they compel you to dance just as surely as two rocks being banged together. Is is artistically valid? Is it not? Do you like it? Are you tapping your foot? If you are, do your ideas about artistic value even matter? Because what, in the most primitive sense, is the point of music if not to bypass your judgemental frontal lobes and cut straight to the pleasure center. The same pleasure center that tells infants to rock to their mother’s heartbeat makes you move when you hear a drum. It doesn’t matter if it’s a live or electronic drum, the response is the same. Whether you this kind of music or not, or if you make fine distinctions between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ electronic music is arbitrary. I’ll admit I hold on to some arbitrary judgments, and I do make distinctions of when dance music is bad or good enough for me because, being a judgmental modern person, I have to rationalize the responses I can’t control.
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