One of my favorite elements of the classic Motown sound has always been the baritone saxophone. The man responsible for those distinct, swinging lines, Mike Terry, has died.
It was in 1963, with Heatwave and You Lost the Sweetest Boy, that the sound of Terry’s baritone started bursting out of young America’s transistor radios. Restricted by the production team of Lamont Dozier and Eddie and Brian Holland to short interludes before the final chorus, usually no more than eight bars long, he made the most of his opportunity with a heated approach that was short on melodic invention but long on rhythmic drive.
Incidentally, the Guardian obit says he died Oct. 30, which I assume is a typo and should read “November 30.”
As mentioned on Friday, I have a few worthwhile covers from the 1997 Bond theme tribute album Shaken and Stirred to share with you all. This album was produced and masterminded by film composer David Arnold, who has since gone on to score for every Bond film from Tomorrow Never Dies onward. (According to Wikipedia, John Barry, upon hearing this album, recommended Arnold for the job.)
First up, as promised, is a swell version of “Thunderball” sung by ABC’s Martin Fry, who proves here that fops can have a manly swagger of their own.
Next, we have a rendition of “Nobody Does It Better” from Aimee Mann, aided and abetted by Jon Brion, as was often the case in those halcyon days. This track is a pretty wild collision of the Mann/Brion aesthetic with the electronic leanings of Arnold, who has some Bjork credits in his background.
Finally, a track that is obviously close to my heart, Pulp‘s “All Time High.” As I see it, Jarvis Cocker decided to sing this song in the guise of James Bond as an aging, dissolute, has-been drunk pleading some sweet young thing for her time. He has no intention of really taking this relationship beyond a one-night stand, but he’s so suddenly committed to the task at hand — a task that was once effortless — that he finds himself really meaning the things he’s saying, in spite of himself. Incidentally, Cocker maintains this persona on much of Pulp’s album of ’97, This Is Hardcore.
Last night, I hit a Kinks motherlode on YouTube — a collection of promo clips around the time of the release of the Kinks’ least-loved album, 1989’s UK Jive, for which I maintain a cockeyed affection.
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Of particular note is the VH1 documentary contained in these YouTubes. I watched this special when it first aired, and it was where my Kinks obsession began in earnest. It marked the first time I had heard “Waterloo Sunset,” “Dead End Street,” and other mid-’60s gems, and it was like meeting your best friend.
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Of course, there’s some embarrassing footage of latter-day Kinks, full of ’80s shoulder-pads and mullets. But there’s also a fair amount of insight into Ray’s creative process, and they managed to catch him on a day when he wasn’t consumed by bitterness over the band’s lot in life. Enjoy!
Hey everyone, it’s been a while since we’ve discussed a hilariously dorky, minutia-obsessed, Beatles-related issue. Let’s do this!
This is something I used to think about a lot more, for lack of better things to do with my life. But I still think it’s an interesting idea. So much Beatlesque music lazily relies on the same old chord changes, guitar and vocal licks, etc. to elicit a Pavlovian reaction from the fanboys. But who best took the music to new places, to try and express new things? Who was most fearless in their ability to fuck with the form that the Fab Four gave us? I say XTC, specifically Andy Partridge. While I’ve moved on from this band in some ways, I’ll defend their whole catalog to my dying day. I remember an old website, SonicNet.com, where artists programmed streaming radio “stations.” Partridge’s was by far my favorite: Plenty of ’60s psych and pop, yes, but also Charlie Parker, Phillip Glass, and Captain Beefheart. And it all made sense, you could hear how all the artists had informed his sensibilities.
Yes, the band has a slightly scary fanbase, but if you doth protest too much you may need to look in a mirror sometime. Plus, you can’t spend your life following bands who only attract young, good-looking crowds. That way lies madness, and some other maladies I can think of.
In second place for pushing the Beatles’ sound forward, I put Big Star, who upped the anty for bad vibes and emotional intensity.
In a move that happened too fast for most online music news sources to notice, Paul Westerberg released a new, online-only album today, 49:00, for only 49 cents.
Follow the relevant link on the fan site Man Without Ties for the details. At this point, it’s available from Amazon.com and something called Tunecore.com, apparently the only sites that would agree to the 49-cents thing.
Of course, with Westerberg there’s a catch. You get all the songs in one big MP3 file, and no indication of song titles. (Although another fan site made pretty good guesses.)
There’s plenty of other curve balls. Firstly, it’s only 43:55 minutes. 49:00 at times sounds a bit like an old TDK blank tape he saw fit to cram with as many songs and scraps as he could on one side. Some songs begin just before the prior ones abruptly end. Occasional six-second splurges of unrelated songs bridge one “proper” song to the next. You might think this is Westerberg being lazy, but I don’t.
Like everything he’s released this decade, except the Open Season soundtrack, this album is a one-man-band-in-his-basement affair. When he first unveiled this new direction, on 2002’s awesome Stereo/Mono, he seemed to hit upon way to treat lo-fi as a sonic value. It’s as if he realized he could get a better, more unique sound on his own, with rudimentary engineering skills. Rather than hire a bunch of session hands to try and fail to re-create, say, the classic Stones sound, he himself tried and failed to re-create the classic Stones sound. In the process, he found a cool sound all his own.
Based on one listen, 49:00 could be the next step for Westerberg’s evolving aesthetic. The album functions equally well as an endearingly sloppy take on Let it Bleed and Gasoline Alley, or a musique concrete deconstruction of itself.
My take on Westerberg, which has no basis in any real interaction with the man, is that he’s a lot like Neil Young: A curmudgeonly control-freak perfectionist who wants, no demands, that things sound messy. He wants that off-the-cuff one-take vibe, and has little or no compunction about dropping your ass if you can’t supply it. I’ll admit, it can provide a listener with a severe case of cognitive dissonance at times. But it also allows him to tap into that devil-may-care, funny streak that made The Replacements so endearing to a lot of people.
It becoming like flu season now. Indie bar-band The Hold Steady have released a new album, Stay Positive, and critics have unanimously given it high, high marks. Don’t believe me? Check out the album’s Metacritic page, or this summary of the album’s reviews. With extended pieces on the band appearing in places like Salon.com and New York Magazine, it’s clear that they’ve become a rock band worthy of coverage by publications that generally do not give one lousy shit about rock bands.
All of this I find quite compelling, because I completely and totally despise this band.
I’ll be honest. I saw them play Philly in 2005, found it enjoyable enough in a beery, noisy way, and headed to the merch table to buy a copy of their breakthrough Separation Sunday. About a month later, I’d had enough of their tuneless jock-rock twaddle, their boring, overrated fixation with hard-drinking Catholic kids and, especially, frontman Craig Finn’s singular inability to stop bleating out the same arrhythmic note throughout the entire album.
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Also, many of my best friends worship this band, so there’s that.
One more thing: Since those experiences, I’ve managed to wholly avoid any subsequent Hold Steady music (a testament, perhaps, to the fragmentation of American society). Please spare me any “Oh, you just haven’t heard the right album, Oats” posts. This band doesn’t need any more fans. Which brings me to the real crux of this post.
Why won’t rock critics give this band a bad review? Yes, I’m basically asking the same question Mr. Mod posed regarding Peter Gabriel, even if I was one of the most vocal opponents of his central thesis that time. Let me explain.
Now, I’m not hurting for someone to agree with me. This is the ’00s, after all, where the hate flows like fine wine, thanks to the internet. I’ve seen it on message boards and comments sections. I know I am not alone in my Hold Steady distaste.
You might find a bit of tempered praise, perhaps even disappointment in reviews of Stay Positive. But even these reviews denote a deep affection for the band. Matador Records co-head Gerard Cosloy famously derided the band as “later-period Soul Asylum fronted by Charles Nelson Reilly,” which is awesome, though a little unfair to CNR. Cosloy is something of a tastemaker, but still not a rock critic. What the hell’s going on here?
The rock press generally lives to hype ’em up and knock ’em down. Also, rock critics love to take sides. My boys Wilco have engendered deep divisions in rock-crit circles for years now, even with an album as easy-going as Sky Blue Sky. Why are The Hold Steady given free passes from these standard, perhaps even necessary, rock-press rites of passage? (See, guys? Like in Catholicism!) And how can this possibly be good for rock ‘n’ roll? Looks like The Cool Patrol is alive and well, and doing its to best kill any joy a curmudgeon like me might be able to salvage in these dark times.
I couldn’t help but watch the first song of this Styx concert on VH1 Classic. We’ve already discussed the bewildering, inherent contradictions of the classic Styx lineup. This recent Styx iteration — Tommy Shaw, James “J.Y.” Young, and hired hands — raises some new questions. Pay very close attention to the keyboardist’s innovative accoutrement. You’ll first see it 24 seconds into the video. Where can I get one of those?
