Sic Semper Tyrannis

Whatcha Listenin' To?

As always I’ve been listening to a ton of music lately. I’m just going to get right to it…

The Smiths The Queen is Dead

This is one of those “Best of All Time” albums and it really brought one thing into sharp relief- I didn’t hang around with cool enough people when I was in school. Granted, I was only ten years old when this album came out, but I remember the kids who wore their Morrisey T-shirts in junior high and high school. I was not one of them. They were sensitive, outcast, artsy types whose parents didn’t love each other. I was a band nerd.

There is a group of people who take their pop music very seriously. This is the group that would burn me at the stake for having been in a band and never heard this disc or really any songs by The Smiths.

But now that I’ve heard some I gotta say I really don’t get what the big deal is. They seem to value two things: jangly guitars and strangely stream-of-consciousness lyrics. Their sensibility reminded me of early REM- pleasant enough, but not world-shattering. Maybe if I revered Morrissey as poet or prophet I could get more out of this.

XTC Skylarking

They are about as poppy as you can get, all Beatles-based and what-not, but unlike The Smiths, XTC is apparently doomed to suffer from the problem of expectations for me. The first two albums I got from them were Nonsuch and Apple Venus Part 1. I loved both of them as if they were silvery, disc-shaped children. But the two albums I’ve heard since, this one and Oranges and Lemons just didn’t (or couldn’t) live up. This is very strange because in many ways XTC is the ideal band for me—melodic, intelligent, polished, fairly adventurous harmonically and arrangement-wise…I don’t know why I can’t get into this album. (And no, the oft-mentioned “Dear God” is not the reason.)

But isn’t that the way it usually goes? You discover this new band that you like but nothing you hear from them compares to that first album you fell in love with all those years ago.

Television Marquee Moon

It’s another one of those famous albums and I went into this one not knowing what to expect. Here are some cool things you get with Television: a two-guitar attack; angular, tight, funkish arrangements that open up into improvisational jams when you least expect it. And when these guys go off into solos, it’s not the same old tired blues or pentatonic-based stuff you might hear from Southern rockers. It’s more cosmopolitan and slightly more avant-garde than that.

I could tell just by listening that this was a wine produced from the same soil as your Talking Heads and your Blondie, (if it were possible to make wine from New York City concrete.)

There is something to be said for the lost art of the clean electric guitar sound, just barely loud enough to break up into distortion, and it’s all over this album. I need to hear this one again! But I’ve got a hunch it might be deserving of the hype.

Ornette Coleman The Shape of Jazz to Come

One of the most amusing musical moments I’ve seen on television was on the Grammys a couple years ago. (I haven’t watched this show in many years so I don’t really know how I happened to be flipping through channels on that night for this interesting moment.) In between presenting awards to beautifully plastic, hip, urban young people I had never of, they came to the odd thirty seconds of the show where they presented a “Thanks for being great in the past” lifetime achievement-type award to Ornette Coleman, who looked as out of place as an elephant in a petting zoo. I felt sorry for him, this guy who set out to change conceptions of what jazz and music should sound like. To see an aged, “outsider” mind like that spiritlessly applauded by an industry and customer base which alternately didn’t care about him or didn’t even know who the hell he was…well, it was just kind of sad to me. Ornette’s music is about as far-removed from today’s Grammy scene as you can get.

But let’s get to the album. First of all, the way I see the history of jazz, the title of this album turned out to ultimately be a lie, only in that very little jazz now sounds like this. Ornette’s big breaking-off point here was getting rid of chord changes altogether. There is not even a piano player on the album. The big idea is that, without a harmonic scheme to tie you down as a soloist, supposedly you are free to explore melody more freely.

I’m not sure what to think of this. In the world of big ideas, sign me up. I’m up for experimenting and re-imagining music. In the world of sounds, however, this album didn’t really do much for me, possibly due to Coleman’s penchant for playing out-of-tune on tutti sections. It’s pretty jarring, especially when trying to drive at the same time. And I think there may be something to the be-boppers’ idea about the symbiotic relationship between melody and harmony, each one implying and fueling the other.

Al Green Greatest Hits

It seems like cheating to me when a Greatest Hits album winds up on a Best of All Time type list. But I realize that’s because of two biases of mine. 1) I still like the idea of short-term brilliance. I respect the idea of someone getting their artistic act together for a fitful few months of inspired creativity and producing ten or so great songs that just “fit” together. That idea is somehow more interesting to me than someone who over a 10-30 year career amasses ten or so great songs that don’t necessarily “fit” together. Friend of the blog Steven and I recently were talking about composer-worship. I think I might worship a Romantic view of composer or songwriter—riding momentary fits of inspiration like a lightning rodeo horse. (Did I really just write “lightning rodeo horse?”) 2) My other bias is my preference for album-length statements, concept albums or achievements longer than the length of a song. But if that’s the case, that a sustained mood is something to strive for, this album delivers. If you’ve heard one Al Green song you’ve kind of heard them all, in my opinion. Which is why I can only hear the melodies to two of these songs in my head: “Let’s Stay Together” and “I’m So Tired of Being Alone.” Both are great horn-infused soul, if you ask me.

The Doors The Doors

When I was in high school I had a class with this guy Curt who was the biggest Doors fan I believe I’ve ever met. I’m pretty sure he owned one shirt- a black Doors t-shirt. It was all the guy ever talked about in music theory class. (Strangely, when we had to write a Christmas carol for a project, his wound up as white-boy rap. I can still hear his voice rapping “One little donkey, plodding toward town…”)

I’ve always been ambivalent towards the music of The Doors, never really caring for much beyond the radio singles. As much as I like the idea of organ in rock music, (what an odd pairing) I’ve just never really gotten them as music-makers, most likely because I pretty much eschew anything blues-based these days. I tend to like the Doors’ music that sounds the least like a stumbling bar band: “Riders on the Storm,” “Touch Me,” etc. And I’m pretty sure that Jim Morrison’s legend as super-sexy-rock-poet-icon alone would have established them into the rock canon. You don’t just let a life like that wither into obscurity.

P.S. The song “Twentieth Century Fox” off this album sounds like a song my friend Jeff Logan would have improvised, maybe in one of his turns as “The Minstrel.”

That’s about all I’ve got the stamina for today. Hopefully that’ll be enough. What more do you people want?

posted by Mike @ 6:53 AM