A spin-off from the Pop Kulcher website, dedicated to the 50 Greatest Rock & Roll Albums Of All Time (in my humble yet largely correct opinion), the Pop Kulcher Blog is my attempt to keep things relatively current, time permitting.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Night Of Chill Blue
Been a bit quiet, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy burning useless mixes.
Can't say I've listened to a whole lotta Chills lately, but, ah, back in the day... For those who blinked and missed 'em, the Chills were part of that holy triumvirate of wonderful postpunk bands from New Zealand who appeared on the Flying Nun label back in the early and mid 1980's, alongside The Clean and The Bats. Where the Clean were pure garage band rawk with a healthy dose of the Velvet Underground in the mix, and the Bats were a more acoustic, poppy band reminiscent of mid-period Feelies (and thus, also, with a touch of the VU to them as well), the Chills dosed that lofi sound with some keyboard-driven melancholy and melodicism. (Other fine bands of the era included the Verlaines, Straightjacket Fits, and Look Blue Go Purple.)
Their early ep's, captured on 1986's fantastic Kaleidoscope World collection, are pretty amazing and age well. Their first full-length, 1987's (now out of print) Brave Words, had a few more great songs, though some of the pop songs got buried in a very murky mix. They cured that with 1990's (also out of print) Submarine Bells, a catchy indie pop album that blended well with what was dominating the pre-Nirvana alternative radio/MTV 120 Minutes airwaves; the lofi garage sound was gone, and while it may have been a bit too polished, there were a handful of truly catchy tracks. I kinda lost sight of them after that, eventually picking up 1992's Soft Bomb but not their 1996 swan-song Sunburnt. Anyway, all the highlights are here, reminding me of this band's unique charm. They're still apparently kicking around, returning after a decade-long hiatus with an EP (don't have it) and maybe some more on the way.
Got one of those chain letter rock tests via email today. I don't usually take the time but, hey, it's Sunday night, nothing's on.
1. What was the last CD you bought?
The Chills, Soft Bomb (planning a Chills mix, and had a hole in my collection).
2.If you had the choice of only downloading songs or only buying CDs:
Buying, absolutely. I’m old fashioned that way.
3. What artist do you have the most CDs?
If you count live discs, the Grateful Dead, by a mile (with Phish running right behind). If proper studio releases only, probably Guided by Voices, but I'd have to check.
4. Your Favorite CD.
The Clash, London Calling.
5. What do you consider the greatest Album of all time?
Not sure I get the difference between this & the previous question – I assume the test’s author is distinguishing between what’s viewed through the critical eye as great, and what you just happen to like more than anything else. I think London Calling is my favorite albumbecause it’s the best album ever recorded, but, if push came to shove, I might have to give a slight edge to the Beatles’ Abbey Road, or maybe the Stones’ Exile on Main St., or possibly Who’s Next, or maybe Dylan's Blonde On Blonde.
6. What's the most you ever paid for a CD?
I don’t think of any cd’s I own as particularly expensive. But one standout purchase I remember is a Genesis bootleg, Gabacabriel, a 3-lp vinyl bootleg capturing the lone “reunion” show with Peter Gabriel and Genesis in 1985. I paid around $50 for it at the time, which was a lot for a kid (I was probably around 17 or 18 at the time). It sounded like crap (I’ve since replaced it with a cd version, and the sound isn’t much better), but damn was it cool.
7. What was the last concert you saw?
Drive-By Truckers this summer, I think. Been a very slow fall for me.
8. Have you ever sold a ticket for more than face value?
Nope. Had some big offers for Dead cover band Dark Star Orchestra a few months back (couldn’t make it), but still sold ‘em at face. Just a matter of general principles for me.
9. Have you ever traveled to a different time zone or country to see a concert?
Nope.
10. Best live band ever.
Tough one. I think a toss-up between the Who (’68-’73) and the Stones (’69-’73), though I never saw any of those shows in person. Of the bands I’ve actually seen live (not counting the Who, who I only saw well past their prime), I’ll go with Yo La Tengo.
11.What's the most you ever paid for a concert?
Don’t remember. Probably one of those all day festivals like Fleadh or the Bridge show.
12. Who had the greatest impact on popular culture, Elvis or The Beatles?
The Beatles. Elvis may have gotten the ball rolling, but the Beatles had more lasting impact. I’m pretty confident that rock & roll as we know it today would still be here without Elvis, but I don’t think I could say that about the Beatles.
13. Can you breakdance?
You must be kidding. I'm still struggling with the two disco moves I learned in junior high.
14. Favorite song you don't have.
I’m pretty sure I own all my favorites.
15. Favorite album cover.
King Crimson, In The Court Of The Crimson King, or maybe Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures.
16. You find the person of your dreams, everything you ever wanted in a person and their favorite band of all time is Poison, what do you do?
I married her. (Not Poison, but she likes primarily music that I hate far more than Poison. Love is blind, or at least deaf.)
17. If you could reunite one band with all its original members who are still alive, which band would you reunite?
Once Joe Strummer died, this became far less interesting for me. I suppose I’d like to see the Stones play a show with Mick Taylor.
18. If you could bring back one musician who died prematurely, which musician would you bring back?
John Lennon. Because then the previous question would have an obvious answer.
25. If you could hang out with any musician, who would it be ?
Ira Kaplan (Yo La Tengo). He just seems totally cool.
The version I received has another 25 questions, but they're all of the "Beatles or Stones" and "Bono or Sting" variety, which I don't find terribly interesting or illuminating, for the most part. (Uh, Beatles and Bono, for what it's worth.)
I’ve always wavered on the quality of Ben Folds’ music, both with his original Ben Folds Five trio and as a solo artist. On the plus side, his piano-based indie rock has always had a distinctive sound that sets it apart from most semi-mainstream left-of-the-dial pop from the past decade. He has a gift for melody, and, when not drowning in smarminess, the lyrics have an entertaining bite. On the minus side, there is a bitterness (and, let’s admit it, some misogyny) that can be distracting. And for all his songwriting gifts, he’s never really recorded an album that’s truly consistent from start to finish (though his solo debut, Rockin’ The Suburbs, came close, and the Ben Fold Five's Whatever & Ever Amen has a better-than-average ratio of hits to misses).
His latest, Way To Normal, is no great departure from this track record. A few jaunty pop songs, a few ballads that haven't quite grown on me, a few eccentric songs whose novely wears off halfway through first listen. If Rockin' The Suburbs was his joyous return to the fun, upbeat sound of the first few Ben Folds Five albums, and solo follow-up Songs For Silverman was a more ballad-heavy, lushly adult album along the lines of the Five's swan-song Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, Normal seems like an attempt to straddle both sides of his stylistic range. Album opener "Hiroshima" (something of a rip-off of Elton John's "Benny & The Jets") starts off with a merry romp, and stays in the same mood for "Dr. Yang." After that, though, it's kinda all over the place. I liked the duet with alt-folkie Regina Spektor, and was reluctantly taken in by the unfortunately-named "Bitch Went Nuts," a catchy pop track dragged down by yet another excursion into Folds' well-worn hate-the-ex rantings. Otherwise, not so much. And the album doesn't really have a killer stand-out track approaching the sweeping beauty of Silverman's Brill-building-inspired "Landed."
All told, there were probably as many (or more) solid tunes on his recent soundtrack from Over The Hedge. Seriously, I'd pick that up first. Stuck within the confines of a children's animated film, Folds had to resort to clever lyrics that are bitch-free; plus, hey, a nifty middle-of-the-road cover of the Clash's "Lost In The Supermarket," can't go wrong with that.
Fortunately, the general unevenness of Folds' albums, plus a steady flow of worthwhile tunes on various ep's, b-sides and soundtracks, makes him ideal for mixing. Picking up Way To Normal and Over The Hedge gave me an opportunity to expand my old single-cd mix into a double-cd deluxe edition, and it looks something like this:
Not a political blog, not a political blog (he keeps reminding himself)...
But, hey, here's the celebratory mix I assembled late Tuesday night while taking a break from watching the results roll in.
Just a little feel-good-ish music for the Wednesday commute. Mostly the kinda joyous, tuneful stuff that I can yell along with in the car. Because what I really want to do is take a (temporary) break from listening to the news and the pundits on the car radio and just feel all kinds of awesome. Barack freaking Obama.
Incidentally, the Shazam's fantastic "Super Tuesday" included here as the best (if not only) song about losing election, with a shout-out to America's new BFF Sarah Palin, you betcha! Say hi to Uncle Ted, apparently still holding Alaska's Senate eat, felony conviction notwithstanding.
The one last-minute addition to the mix, a bit out of sync but still necessary, is Rogue Wave's "Eyes" -- a song (and band) that had evaded my radar screen until recently, when my son & I started watching Heroes reruns on DVD and the track was featured prominently in the pilot episode. Sure, it borrows the initial guitar lick from Zeppelin's "Going To California," and is your basic Starbucks-friendly dad-rock acoustic folk-pop (see also, e.g., Matt Pond PA, Josh Ritter), but damn if that ain't the purtiest little song I've heard in a long, long time.
The big downer of the evening, alas, was the victory of ignorance and bigotry over equality and justice in California's marriage battle (as in two other states as well). I really appreciate that the religious wingnuts are fighting to save marriage and family -- yet, for some inexplicable reason (and despite having multiple gay neighbors, friends, and coworkers, and despite attending a beautiful wedding last week between two dear friends who just happen to both be women), my marriage seems to be holding up just fine. And, no, my kids have still not turned gay. Maybe we're doing something wrong?
Anyway, another battle, another day. Meanwhile, here's the happy:
And here's that Rogue Wave song... my apologies, but you WILL be humming this sucker all day.
Updated the Guilty Pleasures page of the Pop Kulcher website. This time around I've added Genesis' 1980 mainstream-breakthrough Duke, my favorite album of the post-Gabriel era. (I suppose I like 1976's Trick of the Tail nearly as much, but that was a far less dramatic break from the early prog sound than the polished, radio-friendly Duke.)
It's always hard to say exactly what constitutes a guilty pleasure. I mean, we're not talking the Archies (or even Abba) here. Duke sold a veritable shitload of copies, and by any measure it's a pretty decent album (if one overlooks some of those ballads, at least). Still, for those of us who thrive on the artsy prog of the Gabriel years -- and I'm a diehard fan of those albums (particularly 1973's Selling England By The Pound, but the others as well, even the underrated Trespass) -- confessing to an appreciation of the Collins era (particularly after the first 2-3 albums) is a bit anathema. Hell, I even like the still-poppier follow-up Abacab, though after that I called it a day.
Of course, I remain loyal to the Gabriel era, and I'm counting the days 'til my pre-ordered copy of the 1970-1975 box set arrives in the mail. Probably the third or fourth time I've bought some of these, but (despite some highly negative reviews of the remastering job done on the Collins-era reissues) I'm hopeful for some sonic improvement (particularly on Trespass, my copy of which sounds like it was recorded in a wind tunnel) and excited about some of the bonus tracks and video extras.
The Replacements never saved my life. They didn't really open up a new whole world of music to me. To the extent my musical mindset was largely shaped during my mid-80s college dj days, it was largely the early albums of R.E.M. -- Murmur, Reckoning, the initial Chronic Town EP -- that I hold responsible. But the 'Mats (perhaps alongside, say, Sonic Youth and my 15-years-late discovery of Big Star) were strong contenders for second place. 1984's Let It Be wasn't life-changing... it was merely riveting. Great rock & roll, fun and rebellious and loud. I imagine that if I'd been born 20 years earlier, the Beatles would have been the band that drove my late-teen/early-adult lifelong love of music, and the Stones would have been what I turned to when I just wanted to rock. Instead, I had R.E.M. and the Replacements. (Not sure where exactly the Who and the Kinks fit into that analogy... maybe they would have been my Sonic Youth and Husker Du, or something like that.)
In any event, as the past two decades wore on, with the Mats long relegated to the dustbin of history (albeit with Westerberg carrying on with a solo career that never resonated with me the way his old band did), my time with the band's old work ebbed and flowed. (In contrast, R.E.M. is never far from my stereo.) Fortunately, the rerelease of the band's back-catalog this year (with the early Twin-Tone albums released last Spring and the later Sire albums coming out a few weeks ago) gave me an opportunity to reconnect with the band. Not surprisingly, my two best-loved Mats albums sound every bit as wonderful today as they did back in 84-85. Let It Be, their final indie release on Twin-Tone, was the work of a band evolving from a reckless, thrashing hardcore/punk-inspired band to a more mature band with a sublimely gifted songwriter at the helm, rough in places but surprisingly polished in others (most notably the timeless pop of "I Will Dare," the updated "Satisfaction"-themed young angst of "Unsatisfied," the powerful post-punk straightforward rock of "Favorite Thing," and the beautiful balladry of "Sixteen Blue"). And 1985's Tim, their major-label debut, saw the band taking a step forward in consistently strong songwriting, increasingly radio-friendly but still edgy, particularly on "Bastards of Young," "Left of the Dial," and "Little Mascara," perhaps three of the most well-written yet still-rocking college radio songs of the decade.
I'm less partial to the albums that preceded Let It Be, though they had their moments ("Shiftless in Idle" from the debut already showing Westerberg's remarkable lyrical gifts). In contrast, while I recognize the weaknesses of the post-Time albums, particularly their increasingly staid sound in a bid for mainstream acceptance, unlike some longtime Mats fans I think Westerberg continued to churn out a handful of timeless tracks per album right up until the end. (Though this wasn't enough to inspire me to pick up the reissues of the last two albums; my original copies are just fine, thanks.)
In terms of the reissues themselves -- a fair number of bonus tracks per release, of mixed quality (though having an official version of the solo acoustic b-side "If Only You Were Lonely," available on the debut, is alone worth the repurchase); the sound is cleaner than the originals, if a bit shrill in spots (a recurring problem with remasters), and, unfortunately, can't really fix the production deficits on the otherwise wonderful Tim (i.e. drums that sound like wet lasagna noodles slapped against the drum heads).
I ended up tossing together a 2-cd Replacements mix, pretty much all the Mats I'll ever need. As noted above, I've never quite felt connected with Westerberg's solo work (though there are some bright spots to be found), and thus only included a single solo track, plus a couple new "Replacements" tracks (really just Paul & Tommy) from last year's greatest hits package. It came out like this:
Now, how about that timeless anti-video for "Bastards of Young"?
Marc Fagel is the author of the rock lover's memoir Jittery White Guy Music, available on Amazon.com. (You can read more about it on Fagel.com. Just for laughs, each day he blogs about one of the randomly-selected albums in his embarrassingly oversized music collection.
