In My Song

Praise Jah! I don’t know very much about the Rastafarian religion, honestly, so it’s hard to judge, but it seems like a pretty fun one.   If nothing else, its music has been outstanding. I presume that most faiths come with their own musical heritage, but the phenomenon of reggae is unique. Reggae is not exclusively religious music the way gospel is, but it’s deeply entwined with faith and with political belief. Whatever an artist like Peter Tosh chooses to sing about – love, justice, good times, bad times – it’s implicitly from the perspective of a devoted Rasta, a man of faith. Are there any celebrated reggae artists for whom their Rasta identity is not a central part of their message? I don’t know of any, and no, Matisyahu does not count. It is indeed unique that reggae, a musical style inexorably linked to a very specific and to most of us exotic cultural identity, has such widespread appeal. What sounds on paper like it should be a niche genre at best has gained popularity around the world and made superstars of Tosh, Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff, Sly & Robbie and many others. Part of the thanks for that can be put on the enormous talent and charisma of Peter Tosh and Bob Marley. I also think that it’s the very spiritual nature of reggae music that makes it appealing, along with positive messages of love, social justice and equality.

In a Manner of Speaking

Up until five minutes ago I thought Nouvelle Vague’s In a Manner of Speaking was the most perfect, sexy, dreamy thing ever. I also thought it was a Depeche Mode song. Both those things I was partly right about; Nouvelle Vague’s recording is undeniably seductive, and Depeche Mode do have a quite wonderful version of their own. But it is not originally a Depeche Mode song. It is originally a song by Tuxedomoon, who I have never, ever heard of until Wikipedia clued me in just now. Gee willickers, and I thought I was good at knowing stuff! Secondly, the original version is markedly better than both of the others. Its ghostly minimalism makes Nouvelle Vague sound cloying and puts Depeche Mode utterly to shame. Now I have no choice but to find out who they are and what other music they have available, and if I find anything to my liking I will get back to you.

Iki Maska

The more you learn about Nina Hagen, the more you realize that she really is as insane as her music suggests. For example, she married a seventeen-year-old when she was 32. Wouldn’t we all like to do that? Or, on a less inspiring note, she believes that UFOs are a real thing and AIDS isn’t. All in all, she’s probably an extremely interesting and fun person, but you wouldn’t trust her to operate heavy machinery or coach Little League.

If It Be Your Will

Sometimes there’s ambiguity in Leonard Cohen’s lyrics. Sometimes he seems to have the Almighty confused with one of his lovers. Not here. Here there are no loves and nothing profane. This song is about kneeling before God, plain and simple. Some of us have a hard time praying. We don’t like any of the words we learned in Sunday school and we can’t think of any new words to say to God. May we adapt some Leonard Cohen songs into a new modern prayer book for the young modern beautiful losers? And just in case the power of Cohen himself doesn’t reduce you to a quivering mess, check out Antony Hegarty’s version.

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will
If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing

If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well

And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night If it be your will

If I Was a Blackbird

How about a Scottish love ballad? I’m sure you must be tired of all these posts on people you already know about.  So therefore, Silly Wizard, a band I myself don’t know much about except that they were part of the British folk music revival of the seventies. While bands like Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention gave their arrangements of old folk songs a modern rock sound with the addition of electric guitar, Silly Wizard played in a more traditional style with more emphasis on banjos and fiddles. Consequently, they were less popular and today remain less well known. I understand that traditional folk music can be hard to get into, even when leavened with guitar solos, and the purity of Silly Wizard’s music may even be alienating to listeners weaned on drum machines. People tend to associate folk music (and especially the Irish variety) with all sorts of cheesy things from Riverdance to Ren Faires to movies starring Daniel Day-Lewis. Also, most of us here in America have trouble distinguishing the particulars of Irish, Scottish and English traditions. Still, it’s very much worth taking the time to explore, for the musicianship, storytelling and culture.

If I Should Fall From Grace With God

If anyone’s spent their life testing God’s graces, it’s Shane Macgowan. While I’m certain there are many terrible sins he has not yet committed, he’s definitely gone around the sin block enough times to royally piss off at least the Catholic conception of God. Yet he remains, in good health and spirits, even sporting a shiny set of new dentures. His persistence in staying alive must surely mean that God does indeed favor the drunk and hapless. I’m not great student of theology, but the fact that the worlds still contains Shane Macgowan, along with Keith Richards, Iggy Pop, Ozzy Osbourne, Marianne Faithfull, Courtney Love and many other famous toxic chemical aficionados, is a clear sign that the He doesn’t so much care what you imbibe or what you do for sex, but rather your ability to positively impact the world in some large or small way. If it were otherwise, those characters would have long ago fallen from all grace. Or maybe they were all just damn lucky in dodging His wrath all those years, which doesn’t speak too well of His competence.

ICUROK

You may not instantly recognize the name of Klaus Nomi, but be assured that on a subconscious level, you do know him. Nomi died in 1983, alone and forgotten, like many of the first wave of AIDS victims, in a quarantined hospital bed. (Partly because of the stigma of  the “Gay Men’s Plague” and partly because his personality was such that he’d alienated practically everyone he’d ever known.) He died a failure, he never made it big is an opera singer, pop star, television chef or performance artist, all things he’d tried his hand at. His one brush with fame was a single gig singing backup for David Bowie. He was no more than a tiny, weird bleep on a music scene already teeming with outrageous characters. And yet, since his death, his influence has stealthily invaded pop culture, to the point where his singature silhouette has achieved genuine iconhood. If you’ve seen the parade of triangle-suited Nomis walking the runway at this season’s Balmain show, you can see how the ghost of him lingers. And it’s not just the fashion flock that, finished digesting 80′s Claude Montana and Madonna’s pointy bra, now hungers for more esoteric reference points. Klaus Nomi’s music – an icy cocktail of operatic vocals, machine made disco beats and irony – has cycled from bleeding-edge avant-garde down to piddling novelty and straight back. What was once unpalatable weirdness now, finally, hits the bullseye. Listen to this song and tell me you couldn’t mistake it for something from Daft Punk. Nomi’s style, his sense of camp and his taste for mixing the highest elements with the lowest are suddenly, just like that proverbial stopped clock, right on time.

I’ve Seen That Face Before

Grace Jones is a Jamaican who spent years living in New York and Paris. All of those places can be heard in her music. Jones is mostly thought of as some kind of a nightclub act. Not entirely off target; a lot of her music is great for dancing, and she’s one of the icons of the Studio 54 era. But it’s wrong to think of her as ‘a model who made disco records’. Jones always had more force of personality than mere modeling could express. All that charisma had to go somewhere, and what better place than the stage for a world-traveling clubland habitue? Jones had a great image, which is a fine way to start a musical career, but not enough to carry it through. Lucky for her she’s also a fantastic singer. Her music is a sophisticated balance of elements, and this song is a fine example. Recorded in the Bahamas with reggae luminaries Sly & Robbie, it combines traces of reggae, rock and pop, and makes it all sound impeccably European. The other common perception of Grace Jones is that she’s incredibly avant-garde, a walking art installation. Again, that’s not exactly wrong. Jones very much used her image as a means of artistic expression, and still does. But you couldn’t call her pretentious for all that. She was just expressing herself, and the diverse elements in her style and her music were natural reflections of her life experiences. She lived in Paris, so she sang in French and played accordion. She partied in New York, so she used disco beats. She went back home to Jamaica and picked up some steel drums. And for an artsy avant-garde art person, her music sure is broadly appealing.

I’ve Got Mine

Slow motion partying in a tropical paradise. What better way to illustrate a reggae song? UB40 can be a strongly political band, but party songs are important too, and even the most socially conscious among us sometimes need to frolic on a beach. Also, points for great racial sensitivity in showing people of all colors being terrible at dancing. Because shuffling and gracelessly flapping your elbows is what equality is all about. YAY.

I’m Your Man

If there’s some small part of me that believes in romance, it’s thanks to Leonard Cohen. With Cohen, you’re never sure if he’s addressing a lover or speaking to the divine. There are so few things to remind me that love and desire may be profound rather than mundane and stupid. I guess it’s that momentary conviction that your base feelings are somehow important and larger than yourself are what people mean when they speak of romance. I’ve honestly always struggled to understand the concept. Maybe I’m just born with a cynical nature, or maybe it’s my own bad luck. Or maybe I missed that part of my education where the ladies are programmed like Pavlov’s poor canines to feel mushy and teary-eyed at certain culturally agreed-upon signifiers like flowers, sunsets and movie stars embracing in slow motion. Maybe the forcible romanticizing of romance is the only thing that’s keeping the wedding industry in business anymore. It’s Leonard Cohen who makes me believe in the possibility that there may be some road to emotional redemption, one that’s paved with love and lust and romance and tears. Is it possible there’s some Gemini-like duality in a lover’s unwavering devotion and the faith of a believer? Could they be expressions of the same thing or do they cancel each other out? Perhaps those are two paths that lead to the same door.