Sic Semper Tyrannis

Car Caught Fire by The Bears (2001)

A Random CD Review from the Stutzman Memorial Library

Car Caught Fire by The Bears (2001)

Well, I’ve got the time, why not another randomized CD commentary? Today, the Excel spreadsheet spit out the number 25- Car Caught Fire by The Bears, which was quite fortuitous, since I happen to have the CD up here at work. For those of you not in the know-The Bears is the band that Adrian Belew works with when he’s not doing solo stuff or King Crimson stuff. To grossly generalize, The Bears’ music is a little bit closer to straight-ahead pop than the other music associated with Adrian. More on that in a sec.

As far as this album, about half of it-I love! The other half, I’m kind of “enh” about. As I was looking through the liner notes, I realized that the songs I’m crazy about are the ones written by either Belew or Rob Fetters.

The second song, “Under the Volcano,” sounds like what 80s music was supposed  to do- Rob’s voice is just so…haunting, singing this really long melody of sustaining notes over a busy little arpeggiated clean guitar line. His voice reminds me of the bass player from Blink 182, (not the whiny punk-rock voice, the other one.)

Another highlight is Adrian’s “Mr. Bonaparte,” a little more aggressive and angular than the last one, but still really catchy and very appropriate production choices for the choruses: a distant voice singing “I live in my lonely mind,” with a lot of room reverb around it. It really does sound like a lone voice crying out.

Right now I’m listening to a song called “Dave,” the “sad song” on the album, featuring a typical sustain-ey guitar solo by Crimson founding member Robert Fripp.

The last song I really love on this disc is “117 Valley Drive”- an up-tempo song about youthful, early days of playing music in the backyard. This song has some nice delineation of parts by Belew and Fetters trading off lead vocals. Another nice trick is a shift of feel in the drums in the chorus as well as faster harmonic motion in the guitar chords. Takes it to another level.

I think I’ve probably talked about how influential King Crimson was in my musical aesthetic development and an offshoot of that was an appreciation for the talents of Adrian Belew, both in his role as KC frontman and on his solo albums. Adrian is able to hold two seemingly contradictory elements together. On one hand, he is a maker of strange, avant-garde guitar noises and play-er of difficult “heady” music. For an example of this, one need look no further than KC’s album Discipline. On the other hand, he is a crafter of beautiful, mostly Beatle-esque melodies with a lot of soul in them, (see the album Salad Days- an album of some of his best songs in mostly acoustic form.)  He is exactly the kind of musician I aspire to be.

Plus, he seems like a nice, regular guy, who just happens to have been a professional musician working with some big names like David Bowie, Trent Reznor and Frank Zappa for over thirty years.


***APB---if I have loaned you my copy of Adrian Belew’s CD called Inner Revolution, please let me know. I have been mourning the loss of it. As you were.***

posted by Mike @ 3:20 PM