March 31 2006

A couple of old guys just sittin' around, bein' relevant....

          After spending the first couple years changing the face of rock and roll, Ray Davies made a career out of sounding like an old man (see the Village Green review a ways down, for further details). Then came the second childhood of 1979-1986, producing a string of truly neat albums stretching from Low Budget to Word of Mouth. Duly followed by nearly 10 years of surprisingly mediocre material. Duly followed by another 10 years of... well, pretty much nothing, actually. And while it was great of VH1 to draw from Brother Ray's inspiration to create the Storyteller series in the late '90s (and the off-the-cuff version of "Harry Rag" done by Ray was priceless), the handful of new songs that came out of it suggested that the tank was, in fact, still dry. And given the catalogue that preceded it, who could really blame him for being creatively overextended?
         But, in the words that open Ray's first solo album in more than 40 years, things are gonna change.
         Other People's Lives is a letter from an old friend, and while maybe the friend's not in his prime anymore, he's in a good place, has some good stuff to share, and definitely has some living left to do. If this album has a parallel to any previous Kinks album, it'd probably be Sleepwalker. No epic confessional "Life on the Road" or radio-affectionate "Juke Box Music" here, but nonetheless a similar sense of maturity -- only, nearly 30 years later, it's not a maturity cultivated and/or thrust prematurely upon the writer but one that's been lived in and learned over time.
         A somewhat surprising wrinkle here is the swampy, Creedence-y feel the Muswell Hillbilly has given some of the tunes here - note "Creatures of Little Faith," "The Tourist," "The Getaway (Lonesome Train)"and the cream of the crop here, "Over My Head" -- no doubt due to much of the material being written in New Orleans. (On a related side note: Those who haven't read Brother Ray's "controversial" (how, pray tell???) commentary in The London Times concerning Katrina, and his own adventures in the Big Easy not long before, should immediately go here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1072-1768247,00.html.)
         That's not to say what's here isn't recognizably Kinks-like. "Is There Life After Breakfast?" and the title song (which, now that I've heard it, really isn't about really the Internet but about the media, more or less picking up lyrically where "Word of Mouth" left off) would've fit well in their oft-maligned (some fair, some not) RCA period. The deliberately vaudeville-with-the-amps-cranked "Stand-Up Comic" probably would've fit well on the latter-day Kinks albums. Et cetera.
         There's no hit-it-out-of-the-park songs here, aside from possibly the taking-stock "Over My Head" (with its subtly clever declaration, "Right now I want some peace of mind, so let it go right over my head"). But it's solid all the way through. Aside from the aforementioned are the openers, "Things Are Gonna Change" (the considerable bravado of its title betrayed by its temporal context: "This is the morning after") and "After the Fall" (wherein Big Sky has become noticeably more terse over the last 40 years: "I cried to the heavens and the vision appeared / I said, 'Can you help?' It replied 'Not at all.'"); the driving "All She Wrote"; and the appropriately titled '80s-Kinks-pop of "Run Away from Time"- you can almost hear brother Dave at his rightful place in the back-ups on the chorus (but alas, it's not).
         And with repeatedly listens, the Davies charm is becoming more apparent. Nearly 30 years later, it remains difficult not to like anyone who offers such encouragement as the following:

Lift yourself out of the doldrums
Make yourself a cuppa tea
Drag your emotions out of the gutter
Don't wallow in self pity
When you wake up, all of a fluster
Thinking life has passed you by
Give yourself a kick up the backside
Jump out of bed and punch the sky

Is there life after breakfast
Full of possibilities
Is there life after breakfast?
Yes there is.

Anyway, why should you break down for this? 'Cause it's Ray Faithin' Davies, that's why. End of story.
And start of the next....

***********
         I was never a big Brian Eno fan. Not by any deliberate choice, mind you -- just had never delved into his solo music. I'm starting to think I have a new and considerable backlog to discover now.
         Not that the odd but affable little bald guy's fingerprints haven't been all over countless albums that have crossed my ears over the years, and particularly at various bands' respective musical peaks: The first two albums by his old garage band Roxy Music (I just like that image.... roll with it...), Genesis' The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Bowie's "Berlin trilogy" (Low/Heroes/Lodger), Talking Heads' More Songs About Buildings and Food through Remain in Light (and David Byrne's The Catherine Wheel, as well as their collaboration My Life in the Bush of Ghosts), U2's The Unforgettable Fire pretty much to the present (OK, this one's post-peak ad nauseam, but it still bears mentioning). Not to mention (at least at length) myriad collaborations with John Cale (Wrong Way Up still gets regular airplay on my car cassette), Robert Fripp and others.
          In recent months though, Eno's been on my radar quite a bit, and it's largely my wife's fault. I came across the extremely minimalistic ambience of Neroli (thank you again, Loveland Public Library), and took it out for Marion as potential good art background music. She loved it. Located Music for Airports. Also fared well. Noticed a new Eno album (with words and everything!), Another Day on Earth, and went for it. This one's getting some abuse from my daughters (Marion's still absorbing), but what do they know anyway? They thought The Killers weren't done by The Cure much better 20 years earlier (but now they know better ).
          Anyway, the music: "This" is a gentle balm for anyone who thinks Byrne hasn't played a relevant note in 15 years. "And Then So Clear" isn't (clear, that is), but there's an icy beauty to it, despite the overly vocoded vocals. "A Long Way Down" and "Going Unconscious" up the disjointed ethereal creep factor even further, but it's a world y'r given safe passage through nonetheless.
          "Caught Between" starts off in the same eery downer vein, but works its way into this really lovely quiet piece. Before venturing back into Creepsville with "Passing Over," of course. (Not to say that this stuff isn't eminently listenable; you just need to be aware that this is very much a late-night kinda album.)
          "How Many Worlds" is probably my favorite cut on the album. Starting with a simple piano riff, our diminutive hero delivers some simple but touching lyrics...

Thinking of a world and the light of the sun
And all the many lives that were ever begun,
Ever begun.
Our little world turning in the blue
As each day goes there's another one new,
Another one new.
How many people will we feed today,
How many lips will we kiss today,
If we wake up?
How many worlds will we ever see,
And how people can we ever be,
If we wake up?

         ...before giving way to this gorgeous symphonic thing over the next two minutes, then at last reprising the opening verse.
         Back to the vocoder for "Bottomliners"; that's really all I need to say 'bout that. It won't change your mind about the album in either direction at this point. The title song is a nice little soft-funk piece that engages well, the groove of which then picks up a couple steps and some dissonance for "Under."
         The closer, "Bone Bomb," is a suitably unsettling rumination on premature death (I've heard famine and AIDS as possible contexts, but it sure sounds like war to me) featuring a persistent uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh riff that'd do Laurie Anderson proud and a sudden stop that brings the message home: It may be just another day on earth, but it's gonna be someone's last. Maybe even yrs.
         Truthfully, six months from now, if I'm still listening to either CD with some degree of regularity, it's probably this one. (But never rule out the power of Brother Ray.) The great thing about Eno's stuff, as discovered thus far, is that you can be as involved or uninvolved as you like (you know, him being Mr. Ambient and all), and it'll pay off at either level.
         Excuse me now, I have a catalog to wade through.

Posted by: burninglight at 17:01 | link | comments (2)

March 24 2006

Olly oxen free...

So here we are, at last. And we're going even longer today. Like, really long. Like, "let's see if motime's got a word limit" long.

But first, let's recap one more time where we've journeyed over the last few months:

#10 - Television. Marquee Moon and Adventure.
#9 - Public Image Ltd. Second Edition.
#8 - The Waterboys. Fisherman's Blues.
#7 - The Velvet Underground. The Velvet Underground (3rd album).
#6 - Genesis. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.
#5 - Vigilantes of Love. Slow Dark Train.
#4 - John Lennon. Plastic Ono Band.
#3 - The Kinks... Are the Village Green Preservation Society.
#2 - Big Star. 3rd/Sister Lovers/Beale Street Green.

So (again), in a list already populated by the likes of Johns Lennon & Rotten, Ray Davies, Lou Reed and Peter Gabriel, why do I now turn to place a songwriter and his ragtag band -- rejected even by the same lame genre (t)he(y) helped create -- atop our pedestal?

For the much fuller story, by all means visit Andre Salles' Tuesday Morning 3 a.m. site (also at left), and this link in particular: http://tm3am.com/article_extra_tst.htm. The shorter version goes something like this:

Daniel Amos (a band, not a person -- a la Pink Floyd, only based on Old Testament prophets instead of latter-day blues singers) got its start in Southern California in the mid-'70s, beginning with an Eagles-style sound, a theological self-inflation that Jesus People gobbled up, and a first eponymous album that was basically disowned by its creators not too long thereafter. (I still think "Don't Light Your Own Fire" is the best song from the first three albums, though.) The second album, Shotgun Angel, introduced some neat Beatles-like touches and generally was a quantum leap from the first album, but still duly kicked Firefall's butt and kept the fan base happy.

The unsettlement -- and veering off into "dat debbil music" -- began with the third and very transitional album, the mostly appropriately named Horrendous Disk. By this time, the band was clearly now the vehicle of founding member Terry Scott Taylor -- a fact that would become a lot clearer after they got out from under the mighty thumb of this album's producer, one Larry Norman (aka the self-proclaimed "Christian Bob Dylan," prompting T-Bone Burnett to quip sometime later that God got so tired of hearing it that He had no choice but to save the real Dylan). But I digress.

The genius of Taylor/DA -- and the advent of a years-long effort to complete alienate their original fan base -- at last emerged with the four albums that followed, collectively called The Alarma Chronicles. Part sci-fi series, even bigger part satire, and yet an entirely new-wave theological treatise that baldly wore its influences on its sleeve, respectively covering the irresponsibility/indifference of the Church (Alarma!), the turning of the knife inward to address the author's own irresponsibility/indifference (Doppelganger), the threat of technology against humanity or anything that looks like it (Vox Humana), and, at last, reunion with God (Fearful Symmetry)....

....the author's self-flagellation for his perceived failure in communicating the latter message resulting in what many consider the band's best (and yet worst-selling) album, Darn Floor Big Bite. Far from being an album that triumphantly sings God's praises, the music is correspondingly raw, edgy, and near-desperate in its attempts to achieve any degree of communicate, either to or from God -- "Language is weak, but I keep on speaking," Terry declares on "The Unattainable Earth." (The album's title comes courtesy of Koko the Gorilla, describing an earthquake in sign language. Terry renders the phrase a metaphor for our own inability to describe/reach God. Gee, wonder why the American Church Triumphant didn't embrace this one?)

Cut to a few years (and several DA/Terry solo albums) later. A mysterious album, which could best be described as Christian lyrics couched in painfully clever funky frat-house music, appears: Let's Spin. The band is an unidentified bunch called The Swirling Eddies. (Well, they're identified, but with names like Camarillo Eddy, Spot, and Berger Roy Al, it's pretty clear that we're dealing with aliases.) A "Guess the Eddies" contest soon follows, and sometime thereafter our heroes are identified.

(If anyone else is thinking XTC/Dukes of Stratosphear here, you're tracking along great -- I've called DA the Christian XTC on any number of occasions. Musically it's remarkably apt; and obviously both Terry Taylor and Andy Partridge share a God obsession, even though it's from directly opposite sides of the coin.)

Of COURSE, Let's Spin goes on to be their best seller since Shotgun Angel.

Never one to shy away from offending the powers-that-be-CCM (or TBN as well, in this case), the Eddies respond to their newly rediscovered success with Outdoor Elvis, an album that makes the most sarcastic moments from The Alarma Chronicles tame by comparison. (OK, "Autographs for the Sick" still more than holds its own here.) A bloody brilliant album, wherein the rock is rockier, the funk funkier, and the weirdness... well, weirder. All while fighting the system from the inside, with declarations ranging from "I'm just a cynic talking 'bout a white-bleached sepulcher" to "I don't want speak.... interface or link.... with yer little Gawd" to berating a Church who "want to believe the worst / but they'll believe in anything / shoot their own wounded / sacrifice their offspring," destroys its heroes as quickly as it builds them up ("Let's all kill the giants of Tiny Town"), and just plain does the damnedest things, and usually when the cameras are directly on them ("The face of Saint Paul in this butt roast / Assures me that I'm going up to heaven").

You'd have to go 250 years back to Dean Jonathan Swift to get Christian satire this good, my friends, and yet so much more. How else does an album that not only features the most heartfelt love song Terry's ever written, IMHO ("Blowing Smoke") and a dead-serious and affecting acoustic tribute to Billy Graham but also the indescribably obnoxious "Attack of the Pulpit Masters" ("moneymoneymoneymoneymoneyforministrymoneyforsatellitesmoneymoneymoney"), the Barbie-Dreamdoll-on-acid-meets-Revelation "Mystery Babylon," "Arthur Fhardy's Yodeling Party" - which is exactly what it sounds like, the perfect Britpop of the title song and "Driving in England" (taking verbal two-by-fours to idolatry and conformity, respectively), et al., somehow hold together as a perfect tour-de-storm-the-gates-of-heaven-by-force?

And of course, it also featured the song guaranteed they'd never play this CCM town again, "Hide the Beer, the Pastor's Here," a hysterical anti-hypocrisy tirade that sticks in your head like bubblegum (just try not saying "BOB Jooooooooooooooones" or "Bi-oooooooooooo-la" after hearing this) and concludes with a two-minute-long laundry list of Christian colleges with anti-alcohol (but not anti-pride) policies. (Apparently some colleges were also offended that they didn't make the list.)

The album's closer, "Elimination," goes on to answer the band's less-than-imagined critics ("Shut up.... Go to hell.... Get a job... Retire") with, "We're the band that won't go away." Nonetheless, the album pretty much guaranteed that all but the hardcore fans would. And did.

For all that, Outdoor Elvis was literally everything you could have possibly imagined of a Terry Taylor/DA creation - musically off the wall, lyrically take-no-prisoners, and somehow still able to remind you that God was in control ("Bounce him off the rubber sky / And he'll come back to taunt you / A slingshot snap, brings you back / A lover's eyes still haunt you").

And yet, now that the unattainable earth had been completely scorched, the next album had no choice but to go places you couldn't imagine. According to firsthand accounts from the band, members were encouraged to come up with the most off-the-wall song titles imaginable, then Terry & Co. would write the lyrics to accompany them. And the band somehow manages to come up with music to accompany that. And yet, all roads somehow still lead, if not drag you forcibly, back to God. It certainly is the easiest way to explain how the album opens with a song called "I Had a Bad Experience With the C.I.A., and Now I'm Gonna Show You My Feminine Side." And to thereafter explain how that becomes rendered a lyrical treatise on how the mystery of love is best transmitted in secret. And how there's almost no point in trying to describe what it sounds like. Heck, it even explains why Terry looks like a dead ringer for Roy Wood on the cover of this puppy.

Enough already. Our #1 album:

#1. The Swirling Eddies. Zoom Daddy.

Another interesting twist is that the aliases have been dispensed with here. The Swirling Eddies were now officially and openly: Terry Taylor (vocals, guitar), fellow founding DA member Jerry Chamberlain (guitar), literal rocket-scientist (just ask NASA) Greg Flesch (guitar, piano), the late great Gene Eugene of the band Adam Again (keyboards, piano), bass mammoth Tim Chandler (whose peers can be counted on Phil Keaggy's left hand), and drummer David Raven (for some reason founding and continuing DA drummer Ed McTaggart largely didn't participate in the Eddies' pantheon, but Dave turns in a great job here & elsewhere).

Also, this isn't an original thought (thank Fred Sanders, Great Books professor at Biooooooola, for this one), but this album really is the answer to Darn Floor Big Bite. Wherein a half-dozen years earlier, Terry agonized over the ultimate unknowability/indescribability of God, the response to that mystery is written all over this album, in the form and the person of the Incarnation.
It really is the perfect Easter album. And you still have time to get it.

And now for the songs:

The eery, loopy "...C.I.A...." has already been introduced, but it's worth noting that from the opening notes, Chandler makes this album his... well, I can't say it here, but it's a good thing. Having the privilege (and I mean privilege) of exchanging words with him on a number of occasions, I've joked (seriously) that I don't think he's as good as Bruce Thomas, but honestly, that's really about it (and, in fact, you'd have to go back to Elvis and the Attractions' Imperial Bedroom , The Who's Quadrophenia, or far too many Yes albums, to hear a bass player own an album like Chandler does here).

(BTW, I say this not just to suck up. Even Tim (byrnes, that is) can tell you from personal experience that Chandler's as good a guy as he is a bass player. Why he wastes his time with The Choir is beyond me. But at least he got a Grammy nomination out of it.)

But really (and anyway...), the album's only getting warmed up.

It takes a big step forward on "Mr. Sharky." Really, how many songs -- let alone on a "Christian" album -- give props to Charles Bukowski? (OK.... besides Modest Mouse.) But there you are. A song about temptation, and how it always wants more, and always takes more than it gives or even promises:

mr. sharky and the boys are getting restless
they've got junky eyes, and i'm another fix
sharky likes to hear me beg for second chances
so he can tell me that he'll fix it in the mix...
it's a feeding frenzy
we're all fat and friendly
they've got the cash to lend me now
and i've still got some dreams
but it's a cordial slaughter
and gettin' harder and harder
to keep treadin' on in the dangerous waters
and to keep my own nose clean
so fatten up, boys!

Some great screams by Terry on that last line, by the way. So far, things are serious but still fun. And the fun factor gets upped a couple notches on the next song, "Disco Love Grapes," probably the partyingest song about communion y'r even going to hear. Again, some great funky bass by Chandler, and some neat angular guitar (from Flesch?), as Terry invites us all to come join the celebration: "pick some love grapes - drink a little wine from the fruit of the vine / grow love grapes - everybody's gassed, saved the best for last / stomp love grapes - pick a bottle up, fill another man's cup..."

Things turn decidedly dour with the next song, "Nightmare at the Elks Lodge." As opposed to the eternal party of "Disco Love Grapes" is the, um, world party here, that seems like an eternal sigh and sounding every bit of it here. Wine glasses clink over a dreary arrangement as Terry moans, "last request.... the party is ooooooooover now...." Basically, you'll either love the concept and roll with it, or hate the claustrophobic sound collapsing on itself and want out long before the song's over. Again, some great interaction between the bass and guitar on the "chorus," where the invitation is once again extended, even here:

balloons are sad and deflated
the dancing feet tired and numb
the banners and lights have all faded
the party is over and done
and angels, they tap at the windows
their taxis are parked at the curb
and safely back home they will take you
if you would just say the word
say the word

"The Golden Girl of the Golden West" revisits Outdoor Elvis' "Mystery Babylon" and promptly gives her a bumpy limo ride to LA, wherein she jiggles all the way through. About as vitriolic as this album gets, and one of many songs where the lyrical wordplay spills out like Elvis Costello in a meth lab:

She's a corporation raider on the sports bar beat
A giant dodging 49er with two athletes feet....
An earth-shaking quaker with a fundamental flair
There's a method to her madness in that presbytery stare...
She a golden girl, of the Golden West
A liposuckin' diva with a saline chest....

And again, the subject matter gets flipped over on its ear, as the album gets dead-serious -- if still bordering on the bizarre -- in a hurry. We swing from the Whore of Babylon (either literally or figurativelt) to (and where else WOULD we go, given our incarnational subject matter?), the "Sweet Mother of God." The words continue to spill in some form of (to again quote Fred Sanders) "freakishly erudite" glossolalia that captures everything good and bad (and obviously we're not just talking Christian/non-Christian but the deep division of Protestant/Catholic over Mary) and once you're completely rolled over, still leaves you to decide what the heck to do with all of it:

monumental apparition
ornamental grave beautitian
satirized and patronized
undersized and glamourized
matriarchal wisdom seat
sentimental paraclete...

Bride and the groom, sun and the moon
altar queen wonder, suffering lover, covering buffer, hovering mother
blessing and testing, confessing and pressing, inerrant, transparent, domestic, majestic
idyllic, angelic, filling, dispelling, foretelling, compelling, instilling, indwelling
favoring, laboring, savoring, flavoring, healing us, sealing us, stealing us, leading us
ponder her, honor her, venerate, magistrate, bond to her, long for her, sing to her, cling to her

And I'm not so sure there's anything wrong with her.

And no, there's won't be any air to come up for just yet. Just when it couldn't get heavier, it does. "The Twist," which closes Side One, is basically The Passion of the Christ in musical form, filtered through the Chubby Checker metaphor as metal opera and directed right at YOU, whoever you are. But especially the church.

Then look me in the face
At least what's left of it
Tell me that you love me, just a little bit
Or nail me down, break the skin
Hard enough to do me in
But don't leave me hanging, dying, dangling, twisting in the wind...

And when the sun grows dim
This will be your sign and wonder
That soon we'll meet again
Just like we did last summer (remember that?)

Yikes.

Side Two, naturally, opens with a polka. A really happy polka. With yet more stomping Chandler bass.

"God Went Bowling" is beyond a delight. It's no mistake that when the opportunity came to participate in a DA fan tribute album, this is the song I picked. (And several people actually said they "got" it for the first time after hearing the more stripped-down version.) Sorry, no mp3s online anymore, although you can see the clips from the "video" (with complete lyrics) here: http://www.bubbs.biola.edu/~fred.sanders/godbowling.htm.

The basic message -- and really, the most important one I can offer you -- is: God took a chance on us, and still does. The bridge still gives me chills (of the good kind) just typing it:

We want an infinite meddler, a fix-it-quick man
But he gets off his high horse, gets dirt on his hands
And he woos us like a lover, through each bloody cessation
And hangs on the cross with the rest of creation.

"Multipurpose Man" returns to the big-time wordplay, as well as to the Doppelganger theme of our own duplicity and how we try to stuff God into the same box we put ourselves in. "I'm your very own, living multipurpose man / Your cowardly lion and blemished lamb / And I'll be saved and I'll be damned..."

"Pyro Sets a Wildfire" would be the "single" here, such as it is. Kicking off with a "Honky Tonk Women" drum intro, it's somewhere between an genuine apology and a not-so-subtle declaration that the singer'd probably do it all again, given the chance:

i never meant to trip the minefield hidden here in paradise (put stink weed in the bouquet)
i never meant to fire a lethal weapon or to terrorize (put poison in the buffet)...
i never meant to cut my tender fingers on your angel hair (put the sawdust in the gas tank)
i never meant to hide tacks in the cushion of your mercy chair (make a brother walk the gangplank)

i've maybe taken too much on
naiveté and youth is gone
but at least the juice is still turned on
i'm dancing on a live wire
i've summoned up a thunder cloud
i always meant to do you proud
still certain things are not allowed
like setting off a wildfire
wild-fire....

"Some Friendly Advice" would be my least favorite here - as opposed to the lyrics elsewhere, the laundry list here is basically just that. Still, there's DA/Eddies fans who obsess over it, going as far as take up the suggestion in the band's liner notes to do as many of the 200+ activities here as possible - anywhere from picking your nose to feeding the hungry to milking a cow, going to confession, walking around nude, to eating a corn fritter. It's basically a goofy encouragement to stop and smell the roses: "Something that you wouldn't ordinarily do / Something just a little bit different for you / Like forgiving a friend, and an enemy too...." And, as I've said enough times elsewhere in this list, it's a (in this case, proscribed) time to catch your breath, before the charge to the end.

And I mean THE End. The last three songs are nothing more and nothing less for a cry for God to drop the damn curtain already.

And the charge starts with "Art Carney's Dream." Indescribable. But I guess I have to try anyway. Over a funky melo-opera, with some driving climbing guitar along for the ride, Terry presents a rather unique vision of heaven and what his arrival would appear like:

I saw the humble and the meek passing by with the proud and important
but I kept my distance from them 'cos I smelled like Ed Norton
and I kept cutting my feet on the blades of sharp diamond grass
and all the sick and indecent things I'd done went by in just a flash...

then I caught sight of you, and your beauty broke my heart
I hung back in the deep shadows 'cos I was stinking to high heaven
well what could I do - your beauty broke my heart
wanted to crawl back in my manhole then, 'cos I was stinking to high heaven

well I admired the fine clothes of all the saints that were passing by
in their pretty chiffon gowns, their wings and their silk suits and ties
their language was a foreign tongue, maybe Latin or Greek
but all the prayers I whispered there to you were stupid, obscene and weak

then I got this idea to cover myself in a thorny bush disguise
and laying low I crept along the shores of the river of life
I saw a wondrous city of pure crystal with its streets all made of gold
and then I smoked a camel cigarette and shivered there in the cold

I turned around and saw a beautiful mansion all going up in flames
there was a stone sign in the front yard and on it someone had carved my name
and the angels rolled out a fire hose they were tryin' to save the place
I felt they could probably use my help, but I didn't dare show my face

and when the smoke had cleared, I cried out when I saw that everything was lost
there was no mansion anymore, just a single wooden cross
then an angel tapped me on the shoulder; he said "boy, you sure do smell like sin
and this place is pretty crowded, but I think we can squeeze you in"

then I caught sight of you, and your beauty broke my heart....

If this puppy doesn't chill you to the bottom of yr spine, you probably stopped listening (and reading) awhile back anyway. So since we're alone now, dear friend, let's see this through to the end, shall we?

The dream gives way to "Holy Holy Holy." Far from being the ancient (but nonetheless cool) hymn, it's a declaration tearing down the curtain between the sacred and profane that've done William Blake proud. Safely back on earth, the vision and what exactly to do with it continues:

i was feeling kind of haggard, low, and shadowy
like a ghost involved in assault and battery
just a figment of my own dark imagination
hangin' around backstage for an invitation to
walk the streets of light in new jerusalem
see what in my dreams at night, she had always been...

it's holy - and still a book
I believe it's holy - and still the sky
it's holy - and still tap water
holy, holy, holy

i caught a glimpse of something in someone else's eyes
there in the least likely face, of someone i despised
a trace of new beginnings, when tears are cried no more
and the moment that i knew it, i walked out my prison door
and into golden streets of light in new Jerusalem....

With the title song, the mystery is fully revealed -- "Zoom Daddy" is no more and no less than feminine-side C.I.A. code for "Even so, come Lord Jesus."

Or, if you prefer, the refrain of "olly oxen free" equals "I shall be released."

But not before one more look back. Against the repeated re-introduction of "zoom daddy zoom zoom daddy zoom daddy daddy zoom daddy zoom daddy zoom ..." the plea for delivery becomes increasing focused and distressed, as the song escalates from daily nuisance to personal tragedy to global crisis:

i believe all you've said
i'm tryin' to take your advice
catapult out of my head
rocket to paradise

i'm like my dad (olly oxen free)
this movie's bad (olly oxen free)
i hate that jerk (olly oxen free)
i'm late for work (olly oxen free)...

that child's abused (olly exen free)
those eyes are bruised (olly oxen free)...

under a spell (olly oxen free)
feeling like hell (olly oxen free)
disease and war (olly oxen free)
can't take no more (olly oxen free)

But just like its Revelatory source, we don't end with the bad stuff, and the album ends with -- call it what it is -- a declaration of triumph and an invitation for everyone to show up and join in:

no pain no fear (zoom daddy)
the coast is clear (zoom daddy)
the end is near (zoom daddy)
the time is here (olly oxen free)

Tunnels do have ends, you know. That's why they're not called caves. This album has leveled me emotionally, spiritually, intellectually for that matter, any number of times, and more than likely will do so again sometime soon. Easter IS coming, you know.

So go explore the ridiculously prolific catalogue of Terry Taylor and Friends (DA, Eddies, solo, Lost Dogs, et al.) and help the guy pay off his mortgage. The easiest place to do so (and the place that'll net them the most buckage) is danielamos.com. (From there, boy, y'r on yr own. .)

And until we meet again: Zoom, Daddy.

This was fun, if demanding. Looking forward to some more normal-length posts in the future, and about other stuff. Heck, maybe now I can even post something closer to the original "Intermezzo" I had intended a couple months back...

Posted by: burninglight at 20:43 | link | comments (10)

March 20 2006

I hate it here... Get me out of here....

"This messy room of an album...
Sings songs of the ruined Christmas,
The one that everyone's had.
Songs of praise for the empty.
Lullabies for the mad.
Alien love songs for the breakdown.
Cushions of sound for the broken soul.
68 minutes and 32 seconds of someone losing control,
And finding beauty in the spider webs of broken glass
Behind their eyes.
Dancing with the rhythm of the hypnotized.
Flirting with, but stopping short of suicide
And thereby saving us all.

And if you aren't careful, you can
Sing yourself sane.
Sing yourself sane.
Sing yourself sane."

-- the Tim Byrnes song/poem version of this review, circa 2003 (and still available on Debut CD, kiddies)

The fairly short version of the bio:

Alex Chilton, ages 16-19: Rock (or at least pop) star, as the inexplicably (alright, it was the speed and the multiple takes) gravelly voiced singer of The Box Tops. And as good as "The Letter" remains, "Cry Like a Baby" and especially "Neon Rainbow" are the real ticket. A singles band (in which Alex was pretty much the only one to actually play on the records), to be sure, but one that put out material that still holds up nearly 40 years later. And that's not nothing.

Alex Chilton, ages 24 on: A cult-legendary mess, who until at least recently made his home in New Orleans. Still pops up every few years with a rare flash of brilliance (his contributions playing on/producing the first Cramps EP, the "No Sex" single, and especially its uncategorizable B-side "Wild Kingdom"), a quirky album that never quite holds completely together (Like Flies on Sherbet, Feudalist Tarts, High Priest, et al.), or far, far worse (see also Tav Falco's Panther Burns -- how DOES one gets kicked out of a rockabilly band for bad behavior, anyway?)

It's also worth mentioning that sometime not-so-pre-Katrina, Alex lent the last-week-mentioned Ray Davies his Martin, for use on the just-released Other People's Lives (which I'll probably get to reviewing in a couple weeks, once this list is completed). For that alone, the boy gets props.

Alex Chilton, ages 19-22: (Usual) front man and lead guitarist for the criminally overlooked Big Star. #1 Record (which also prominently featured original co-leader Chris Bell) was the quintessential early '70s pop-rock record (in the very best sense of the word) ... and fell on largely deaf ears. (You can hear the Cheap Trick version of "In the Street" every time you turn on That '70s Show, though.) The second album, Radio City, was arguably even better --although it's worth noting that with the departure of Bell (who died in a car crash only a few years later), this was now totally Alex Chilton's game. A little more rebellious, more than a little more discordant -- and produced the hit that never was (at least for them -- it would have to wait for The Bangles to resurrect it 20 years later), "September Gurls."

Alex Chilton, age 23: Goes in the studio (with only drummer Jody Stephens and a cast of dozens of Memphis studio musicians, including Steve Cropper and legendary producer Jim Dickinson, accompanying him) and self-destructs on tape. Not until four years later, in 1978, would PVC come to the rescue and put out the album that everyone should've (and still hasn't) heard:

#2. Big Star. 3rd/Sister Lovers/Beale Street Green.

This is the sound of things falling apart -- some of it self-inflicted, some not. Most of it is. And yet, there's this overwhelming sense of humanness and/or humanity throughout the entire album. Maybe decency is a better word. Alex Chilton doesn't sound like he knows what's coming next -- and we're talking from song to song here -- but he asks us to trust him, even though he's almost certainly about to self-implode yet again.

And the thing is -- you do.

And with this album at least, that faith pays off in spades.

Musically, it's easily the most ambitious of the three Big Star albums -- string arrangements rise up, rock out, and/or fall apart at will; feedback hovers in the background and nearly drowns the album on its penultimate song (at least on the sequence I'm using -- more on that later). Simultaneously, the singer sounds like he's lost all ambition whatsoever, and is just using whatever little emotional resources he has left just to hold it together. And he doesn't always succeed in holding it together, either. Side Two is basically a descent into chaos. But oddly, it's even more fascinating to hear things fall apart before your very ears.

And when life is doing the same, this is the album to haul out. It may very well be, from end to end, the most honest album ever created -- even more so than the primal-scream-meets-public-soapbox Plastic Ono Band.

By the way, to clarify for any audiophiles out there: The track sequence I'm using (and the tracks themselves, rather than any later "bonus" ones) are from the original PVC version. It still makes the most sense to me, by far. It don't matter that Alex supposedly really wanted to end it with "Take Care" (which makes sense, but where the heck do you put "Thank You, Friends," then? surely, not second), and, more egregiously, open it with "Kizza Me" (which, while certainly fun, is easily one of the least of the songs here). And with that, I'll go right to...

...the "original" and truest opener, "Stroke It, Noel." Yeah, the title's essentially a crude joke directed at one of the several violin players on this song, but the song itself is anything but a joke. Think: Tonio K. doing "The Funky Western Civilization" as a chamber piece, or the generous what-else-are-we-gonna-do band on the Titanic, only this time it's providing the musical accompaniment for a nuclear holocaust rather than an iceberg. (Or heck, byrnes' "Bless My Soul" as performed with the Brodsky Quartet.) A transcendently baroque pop song that sounds almost (ironically?) optimistic amidst its circumstances:

Well, they say that we're the lazy men
Drinkin' our white wine
We could go right insane
'Cause we can buy the time

Oh, keepin' an eye
On the sky
Will they come
Oh, the bombs

Do you wanna dance?

"For You," written by drummer Jody Stephens (the only original member still standing by this point) is a simple love song that continues the baroque feel of this album. And it's a feel that "ain't gonna last"...

...as evinced, at first, by the rockers that immediately follow, the aforementioned "Kizza Me" and "You Can't Have Me." The former is a fairly candid love song to his girlfriend at the time. Alex shouts, "I want to feel you deep inside / I want to feel you / Kizza me / Lesa, why NOT?" The accompanying music sounds like Jerry Lee Lewis and the violin section going West Side Story on each other, while the guitars cower in the corner, before Alex at least snaps delightfully at the end, "That's enough, baby!"

And to employ another byrnesism, the latter song announces that the singer's playing for keeps - even while he knows full well that it's all for nothing (and nothing for all). The details are fuzzy, but the striking images within convey more than enough: "Gymnast, working out on the parallel rails / Cutting trails, screams and wails / Face go pale, never fails / You do steal things, unawares, but I don't care... / The drummer said you were not very clean / And I know what he means... / You can't have me / You can't have me -- not for free."

In all, a strong but not life-changing group of songs (with the very possible exception of "Stroke It, Noel") to open this. But that's all about to change -- and you too, boy.

The raw sense of alienation, failure - any number of feelings we don't want to experience but invariably do - that dominates the rest of the album begins promptly with "Nightime." Think Nick Drake covering The Cure's "How Beautiful You Are!" Strings soar and sour around the acoustic groundwork, as the singer's perspective quickly and quietly shifts from rapture to disgust:

And when you're in the moon
Oh, you look so pretty
Caught a glance in your eyes
And fell through the skies...

I'm walking down the freezing street
Scarf goes out behind
You said, get them away
Please don't say a word
Get me out of here
Get me out of here
I hate it here
Get me out of here

I'd mentioned my "sleeper song" theory back in the Waterboys review -- i.e., that song that lies in wait while you absorb a really good album, then at last kicks in and transforms it into a great album (and/or makes it a great album in a brand-new way). "Blue Moon" is the sleeper on this one. It's "Kizza Me" without any of the wiseassness -- a gentle, bare-souled love song that, when it finally hits you, gladly reduces you to human rubble:

While you sleep, you'll see me there
Clouds race across the sky
Close your eyes, and don't ask why
And I'll be a blue moon in your eyes.

Morning comes and sleeping's done
Birds sing outside
If demons come while you're under
I'll be a blue moon in the sky.

Let me be your one light
And if you'd like, a true heart
Take the time to show you're mine
And I'll be a blue moon in the dark.

While "Take Care" would've been a fine closer for the entire album, I can't imagine putting it anywhere but after "Blue Moon," and thus closing Side One. Having been totally disarmed by the last two songs, Alex now offers some gentle, wise advice for the few thousand people still listening, and especially the more vulnerable among us: "Some people read idea books / And some people have pretty looks / But if your eyes are wide / Then, all words aside / Take care / Please, take care."

A mock cha-cha intro kicks off Side Two, then is abruptly interrupted by the real song, "Jesus Christ." I need to get this on a Christmas mix sometime. An ironically unironic (or is it unironically ironic?) gospel tune, it starts things back up nicely, not to mention a great sax solo at the end. It's a simple chorus - "Jesus Christ was born today / Jesus Christ was born" -- complete with closing invitation to join in, "And we're gonna get born now..." An uplifting moment, before heading almost methodically and certainly headlong into the abyss...

... starting with a cover of the Velvet Underground & Nico's "Femme Fatale." As opposed to the original, related by the Femme Nico herself, this one comes from the perspective of the willing victim. An achingly sad treatment of an already great song, and the irony that then-girlfriend Lesa provides the back-ups here was probably lost on none of the players here.

"O Dana" picks up from there, only this time it's a mea culpa from the singer to the girl he can't seem to make things right with, even if he cared to try, and you're not at all sure that he does:

I'd rather shoot a woman than a man,
I worry whether this is my last life
And girl, if you're listening
I'm sorry, I can't help it...

We seldom know what things are
Two illusions going very far...

At least that song's saved from total darkness by the soulful, almost upbeat arrangement. All pretense of joy, or even motivation, is abandoned by the next song, "Big Black Car." It's here that the album begins to sound like it'll fall apart at any moment, and/or the sound of someone overwhelmed by his own numbness, emphasized by the plodding, barely-in-synch arrangement.

I can't feel a thing
I can't feel a thing...
Nothing can hurt me
Nothing can touch me
Why should I care?
Driving's a gas
It ain't gonna last.

The way Alex hisses "last," though, suggests that despite his deadness, he's trying to make even this moment last -- that somehow, things could become even worse.

And the aptly named "Holocaust" delivers on that suspicion. Arrangements fall apart even further here -- cellos and feedback randomly creak in and out, as some eery female vocals show up just in time for the singer to deliver the emotional epitaph. It's a harrowing song, on the most personal of levels:

Your eyes are almost dead
Can't get out of bed
And you can't sleep
You're sitting down to dress
And you're a mess
You look in the mirror...

Your mother's dead
She said, don't be afraid.
Your mother's dead
You're on your own
She's in her bed...

Everybody goes
Leaving those
Who fall behind
Everybody goes
As far as they can
They don't just care.

You're a wasted face
You're a sad-eyed lie
You're a holocaust.

Things completely fall apart, yet compellingly in the way only a human trainwreck can, with "Kanga Roo." I mean, we're talking post-Floyd Syd Barrett territory here, people. Feedback rushes in, screeches above, rumbles underneath, and those damned strings still won't leave, amidst some lyrics that tell you the singer's got nothing left, no matter what angle you come at it from: "I came against / Didn't say excuse / Knew what I was doing / We looked very fine / 'cause we were leaving / Like Saint Joan / Doing a cool jerk / Oh, I want you / Like a kanga roo." In a way, the album as concept ends right there. And yet the album itself doesn't.

NOW, we get "Thank You Friends." A happy, buoyant "doo-dooooooo" chorus backs up the declaration: "Thank you, friends / Wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you..." Is he being ironic or dead serious? Both, I think -- a kiss-off to his enemies AND an expression of gratitude to those who managed to stick by him: "Without my friends I got chaos / I'm often a bead of light / Without my friends I'd be swept up high by the wind..." Did I mention that Alex turns in a great guitar solo that've fit nicely on the first two Big Star albums? Now I have. And again, I don't think you could end this album any other way.

Since you'll have them on pretty much any re-issue you buy these days, it's worth mentioning the bonus tracks. By and large, that's all they are - two originals even farther down the path of disintegration than "Kanga Roo" (yes, you heard that right) and three covers. "Downs" is flat-out weird - the sound of someone too stoned even for reggae (yes, you heard that right too) -- and "Dream Lover," the last track recorded for this album, sounds every bit of it. "Nature Boy," the Nat King Cole song, is the best of the bunch, capturing at least some of the weariness, alienation and poignancy of the "official" album; and the covers of "Till the End of the Day" and "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" are faithful but not overwhelming (although the former's pretty good).

But take my word for it: Stick with the original scope and sequence above (that's why they give you track programmers, you know). And enjoy the sound of things falling apart, because that's what things do, after all.

Posted by: burninglight at 20:16 | link | comments (3)

March 13 2006

'Til that day can be, don't let it get you down....

I'm not sucking up to the owner of this site. Really. But word has it that this entry will make him very happy, so why not enjoy the occasional side benefits that come with doing the right thing? :)

But first, yet another long story, which hopefully explains a little something in the process:

By the time I really discovered this album, I had already become, in the immortal words of John Mendelsohn, "annoyingly partial to the Kinks," starting with the summer between high school and college. I'd seen The Kink Kronikles -- a still-great compilation from their "lost years" in the late '60s between changing the face of rock-and-roll and reemerging with "Lola" at the start of the '70s -- mentioned in a "top stocking stuffers" article in Circus (am I aging myself here?), and since it also included Talking Heads 77 (another great album I'd bought strictly from reading a review -- in the Passaic Herald News, no less), and subsequently loved it -- alternative FM wasn't yet in my brainframe, but due to the printed word I still obsess over, much of the music was -- I was the first kid on my block with the Pistols album too, after all. (Although to be fair and/or self-deprecating, Queen were still my homeboys -- or as close as a band featuring/flaunting the inimitable Freddie Mercury could get to that -- when I was in high school).

Anyway, to cut to the chase, there was plenty more where that came from - from the great greasy-to-witty early stuff, of course, to the overlooked, brilliant, and about-as-personal-as-Ray-gets Sleepwalker. Heck, I even liked the stuff from the RCA years. (Muswell Hillbillies and Schoolboys in Disgrace, in particular, are grossly underrated albums. And the much-maligned Soap Opera is tons o' fun -- just try to not dance to "Ducks on the Wall," I dare you. Admittedly, Preservation, Act II and Everybody's in Showbiz are pretty hard listens, though.)

And it was solidified when, during my own "lost (first freshman) year" at Rutgers, the Brothers Davies & Co. came to town to push the about-to-be-released Low Budget. Mired as the rest of radio was in the depths (and I mean "mired".... and "depths"...) of the disco era, it was beyond a breath of fresh air. Tons of fun, but also articulate and perceptive in ways that all but a handful of songwriters can still only dream of.

Cut to the fall of 1981 (start of 4th, i.e., junior year of college). The Envelopes were, indeed, resting in pieces. In addition, I was in recovery from one bad relationship, and not yet fully immersed in the next one. At least my drug intake had reduced significantly (alcohol was another matter, but hey, we're talking Ray Davies here, right?), and I was trying to take my studies and/or my future a little more seriously, however clueless I still was. God was a preoccupation but on the outside of my life, not yet on the inside. That was another nine months to two years down the road, depending on where you demarcate it.

My grandmother, a prominent Republican leader in the area (fresh from her gig on Reagan's Electoral College, and no doubt fully recovered from chasing me with a broom up the apartment stairs when I'd informed her I was voting for Barry Commoner instead), had snagged me a gig writing for a state senator. Quintessential old-fogey Republican, to be sure, but a generous man nonetheless. The first big position paper I had to write concerned the proposed completion of Route 287, a fairly large interstate that started at the Hudson in Newburgh, New York, was to complete its half-circle swath through a large part of suburban New Jersey that hadn't yet been fully exploited (but now, 10 years after it finally being completed, has been with a vengeance), then loop back into the mouth of the Hudson (i.e., Woodbridge, NJ/Staten Island).

I don't know how it happened. I really took to absorbing the information. And as I did, in a state of frenzied exhaustion, I saw in a flash exactly what the rest of that portion of New Jersey (which I lived dead in the center of) now sees, 25 years later. And, needless to say, I got deeply depressed in a hurry.

And as all this clicked, the album that I'd been enjoying regularly already (because it WAS a Kinks album, after all) went Technicolor on me. I understood this little world Ray Davies had created, and why it needed to be there. Not to mention had my mind blown over and over by the lyrical depiction of said world and the feelings surrounding it (as well as the feelings it was adamantly keeping at bay).

One could well argue that it helps explain how I finally wound up in a land that sometimes looks uncannily like the New Jersey of my childhood. I'm often tempted to send the town fathers of Loveland and especially Fort Collins pictures of Wayne, NJ, with the caption: "Don't let this happen to YOU." 'Cause it easily could, and sad to say, I'd bet on it. Money talks, integrity (promptly) walks (away). But here's hoping I'm wrong.

Anyone who's familiar with The Kinks is familiar with the comments of the aforementioned Mr. Mendelsohn -- and if they're not, can buy any number of classic Kinks albums from the late '60s (or heck, start with the aforementioned Kink Kronikles) and see them there. For the more naïve but curious among you, I would direct you to the one-stop shopping place review of the first 20 or so albums (up to the beginnings of their nice little comeback of the early '80s) by the inimitable J. Kordosh at www.creemmagazine.com/BeatGoesOn/Kinks/KonvenientKonsumer001.html

I got to go read that article again for myself, for that matter. I may even still have the original article somewhere. Unfortunately, the link is inexplicably blocked here at work. (Who knows? Maybe there's a porn filter that caught and misinterpreted "Creem." Not that some of the contents therein didn't occasionally warrant that. ) Nonetheless, amidst several strategically placed Google paraphrasings, in regards to today's album, this part still comes through:

"Sales figures bottom out as artistic integrity peaks.... This is a puzzling album. It's the first Kinks album to not crack the Top 200 in America. It's sold fewer copies -- 38,000 -- than any Kinks album still carried by Reprise. (****, they probably haven't sold out the first pressing in 11 years.) [Note: I'm sure its increased reputation since 1982 - and the appearance of one of its choice cuts in a recent and appropriately clever HP ad that nonetheless blatantly ignored the entire point of the song -- went a long way toward remedying this. ] Yet it's not only arguably the best album the Kinks ever made. It's arguably the best album anyone's ever made. [This puppy] is replete with examples of vintage lyrical Ray Davies."

I agree wholehearted with the J.-ded one. It's as beautiful as it is painful as it is rocking as it pensive as it is cynical as it is childlike. I don't know how Ray pulls it off either. It's the sound of someone whose pain has pushed him into his own little world, and he ain't budgin'.

But best of all, he invites you in. And asks that you refrain from taking photographs of the moment, just to prove that it really existed.

For the underprivileged among you who still need to be told, that album is:

#3. The Kinks.... Are the Village Green Preservation Society.

Things kick off with the title song, in which all the paradoxes of Ray's World (party on! excellent!) are thrown directly in your face. A deliberately verbose plea for simplicity, complete with winking commendations of custard pie, Dracula, Donald Duck, and virginity. "Preserving the old ways from being abused / Protecting the new ways, for me and for you." What more can we do? indeed. (Hearing them finally get to do this at Madison Square Garden in '83 is a moment I will forever treasure.)

"Do You Remember Walter?" is arguably more relevant to the 44-year-old typing this than to the 20-year-old who fell in love with it. Featuring some crunching bass from the soon-to-leave Pete Quiafe, it's a bopping tribute/accusation toward an old comrade who's presumably given up the fight:

Yes, Walter was my mate
But Walter, my old friend, where are you now?...
I'll bet y'r fat and married and y'r always home in bed by half past eight
And if I talked about the old times, you'd get bored and you'd have nothing left to say
Yes, people often change
But memories of people can remain....

Following this is the HP-famed "Picture Book." Not the last time Ray will diss the art of photography on this album. (And given this, the anti-transplant "God's Children," "20th Century Man," heck, the entire Preservation suite, is anyone really surprised that he's gone on to dissing the Internet on his long-awaited, brand-spanking-new solo album?) As catchy as it devastating: "Picture book / People with each other / To prove they loved each other / A long time ago." If you don't feel the sense of loss in those words as you're dancing in your chair, you've missed the point completely.

"Johnny Thunder" and "Last of the Steam Powered Trains" are largely the antithesi to "...Walter?", taken from two different angles. Both, however, are unquestionable tributes to those who kept (keep?) going, despite their seeming respective anachronisms -- from the no-longer-hip-but-still-rebelling Johnny (whom Ray signs off here with "God Bless Johnny" -- a theme that will be revisited some years later with "One of the Survivors") to that last steam-powered train (Ray himself?), who vows, "And I'm gonna keep on goin', 'til my dying day" along with some great train music that slowly accelerates and threatens to invent punk rock 10 years early by the end of the instrumental break.

And then there's "Big Sky." Perhaps the ultimate deist anthem, and a heck of a lot catchier than Rabbi Kushner. Think XTC's bloody brilliant "Dear God," sans the grinding axe in the background. In Ray's World, God is out there, He cares, but don't expect to see His finger anytime soon. To revisit the words of J. Kordosh, speculate on the kind of mind that could come up with the following:

Big Sky looked down on all the people who think they got problems
They get depressed and they hold their head in their hands and they cry.
People lift up their hands and they look up to the Big Sky
But Big Sky's too big to sympathize
Big Sky's too occupied
Though He would like to try
And He feels bad inside
Big Sky's too big to cry.

Fortunately, that's not whole of the perspective here:

And when I feel, that the world's too much for me
I think of the Big Sky, and nothing matters much to me...

One day, we'll be free
We won't care
Just you wait and see
'Til that day can be
Don't let it get you down.

Hopeful and devastating, faithful and dismissive, all at once. Even if Big Sky's too big to cry (and, as always, that's a whole 'nother discussion), I'M (i.e., One of Big Sky's Many Personal Ambassadors Here on Earth ) not, after hearing this.

The lovely, sweet, and downright goofy "Sitting by the Riverside" follows. It's a peaceful, lazy moment (another Davies theme to be exploited much more ad nauseam in future releases), interrupted only (intentionally or not, and one would have to assume the former) by Sgt. Pepper trying repeatedly, but ultimately in vain, to bust down the doors of Ray's World. If you've heard this song you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you haven't.... well, you'll just need to hear it for yrself. Suffice to say -- and in perfect consistency with the rest of this album -- Ray doesn't want to hear the news today. Oh boy. :P

Side Two opens with another wonderful song (emphasis on wonder), "Animal Farm." No shades of that other great British satirist George Orwell here, just a longing to get away to a better world:

This world is big and wild and half-insane
Take me where real animals are playing...
I wanna be back there
Among the cats and dogs
And the pigs and the goats
On Animal Farm

But lest the childlike wonder become too much here, Ray delivers the bridge -- which, to me, represents the most poignant lines of the entire poignancy-drenched album:

Girl
It's a hard, hard world
If it gets you down
Dreams
Often fade and die
In a bad, bad world.

At which point, Ray charges back into his open invitation: "I'll take you where real animals are playing / And people are real people, not just playing...."

Heck, I wanna be back there too. I'll even be an Ape-mon (be an ape-ape-mon), if that's what it requires.

"Village Green," the first song actually written for this album, would've been quite comfortable on Village Green's more baroque-sounding predecessor, Something Else. Ray finds and loses love, due to his own ambition, and laments the loss: "Although I loved my Daisy, I sought fame, and so I left the Village Green...."

Next is another paean to ambition leading to loss of innocence, "Starstruck." Besides being yet another song that's catchy as all get-out, Ray's treatment of his subject (see also "Polly") is both ruthless and tender:

Baby
You're running around like you're crazy.
You go to a party and dance through the night,
And you'll drink 'till you're tight,
And then you're out on your feet.
'Cause you're starstruck, baby (starstruck, you know that you're)
You're taken in by the lights,
You think you'll never look back,
You know you're starstruck on me.

Baby, watch out or else you'll be ruined,
'cause once you're addicted to wine and champagne,
It's gonna drive you insane,
Because the world's not so tame.
And you're starstruck, baby ....

What follows is about as far into the cosmic stratosphere as Ray Davies ever got, while still ripping off old gospel riffs for the background. (It's a long story; trust me on this one.) "Phenomenal Cat" is a fairy tale, plain and simple, and not a grim one. (Ouch.) Amidst floating Mellotrons and a truly weird nasally lala-lalala-laaaaaaaaaaaaa chorus, Ray tells us a story of a lazy cat that nonetheless travels around the world, discovers the meaning of life, and at last "gave up his diet and sat in a tree / and ate himself through eternity." Really. It's no use to try to describe it. But it's a wonderful song.

Back to something we can comprehend. The wry, bouncy "All of My Friends Were There" addresses a live performance in which the people who get Ray love it and those who don't.... well, don't. And it certainly sounds like your quintessential Kinks koncert experience, to be sure...

It was the summit of my long career,
But I felt so down, and I drank too much beer,
My manager said that I shouldn't appear.

I -- walked - out, onto the stage and started to speak.
The first night I've missed for a couple of years,
I explained to the crowed and they started to jeer,
And just when I wanted no one to be there,
All of my friends were there....

Came - the -- day, helped with a few last glasses of gin,
I nervously mounted the stage once again,
Got through my performance and no one complained,
Thank God I can go back to normal again.

"Wicked Annabella" is essentially heavy-metal Petula Clark. Brother Dave cranks and fuzzes and feedbacks his way through another, decidedly more Grimm fairy tale:

In a dark and misty house,
Where no Christian man has been,
Wicked Annabella mixes a brew
That no one's ever seen.
Relatives have passed her by,
Too scared to even say hello.
She's in perpetual midnight,
She shuts out the day,
And goes about her sinful ways.

Then it kicks into a chorus that sounds more like Eric Burdon fervently jotting down directions to the House of the Rising Sun, as dictated by Austin Powers, than the spiritual dilemma portrayed in the chorus: "I, I've seen her hair, I've seen her face / Look towards mine / I, I've felt her eyes, burning my soul / Twisting my mind."

"Monica" is a light rhumba, to another woman who's more comfortable with the night, but who inspires admiration from the singer rather than temptation, "Under a lamp light / Monica stands at midnight, / And every guy think he can buy her love... / Don't ever propose 'cause Monica knows, you know / She'll turn up her nose and say what a fool you are / I, I shall die / I, I shall die if I should lose Monica...."

Our closer, "People Take Pictures of Each Other" is a delightfully snottier (if not terribly less painful) version of "Picture Book," complete with inexplicable but thoroughly "Hava Nagilah"-type bridge that sounds even snottier than the rest of the song:

Fathers take pictures of the mothers,
And the sisters take pictures of brothers,
Just to show that they love one another.

You can't picture love that you took from me,
When we were young and the world was free.
Pictures of things as they used to be,
Don't show me no more, please.

People take pictures of each other,
Just to prove that they really existed,
Just to prove that they really existed.
People take pictures of each other,
And the moment to last them for ever,
Of the time when they mattered to someone....
Oh how I love things as they used to be,
Don't show me no more, please.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that there's any number of repackaging of this album, with loads of extra songs that you want to own. (Mine's a 3 CD set, in fact, from Sanctuary -- granted, I don't need stereo AND mono versions of the entire album, nor four different versions of "Village Green"; on the other hand, having songs I've never heard before, such as "Creeping Jean" and "Mick Avory's Underpants" as well as such gems as "Days," "Wonderboy," "Misty Water," "Polly," "Mr. Songbird"... .you get the idea... is well worth the overkill.)

In short: God Save the Kinks!

And I gots to get me that new Ray album....

Posted by: burninglight at 19:31 | link | comments (2)

March 7 2006

I don’t expect you, to understaaaaaand…

               But… is it sheer coincidence that three out of the last five albums in our countdown have pain and/or emotional disorientation directly in their crosshairs, and that two of the top four (and today’s album repeatedly) feature songs about the death of one’s mother?
                 Dunno.

                Just asking.
                On the other hand, the first five/six albums weren’t terribly happy either, by and large. Although come to think of it, “Swan Lake/Death Disco”… eerie, really….
             For a while, I’d been wondering (not in a disgruntled way, but out of curiosity) why I’ve been putting myself through this Top-10 exercise. I’m wondering now if it’s not more a God’s-timing kinda thing, since between work on the estate and trying to stay on top on my job between Jersey trips (in the midst of a reorg here that has left a vacancy where my senior editor was standing — don’t worry, he and everyone else still have their jobs; he’s just in a place now where coaching is no longer an option) — and aside from the music and the distraction of writing for myself — I’ve had no other time, wherewithal, or for that matter preparation, to process the events of the past month.
               Just saying.
               And since I’ve discussed this album to some degree already (see the December 8, 2005 entry), I’m not at all sure that a song-by-song analysis is necessary here anyway. So I’m just gonna throw it on and throw it out there and see what comes out, 25 years after declaring this my all-time favorite album (at that time, obviously, but it’s held its own well since then).
               Plus, since this is the one album both byrnes and I have on our respective lists, and almost in the same location (and come to think of it, we now share the thing that started this entry as well), HE can write the kick-butt review of it.
               That all said: Our next selection, if not already discerned, is….

             #4. John Lennon. Plastic Ono Band.
              “Mother” — Your guesses are pretty much there. And again, as I was able extrapolate more than enough just from a divorce when I was seven, well…. (or in this case, well well well…. Speaking of which, if the “Momma, don’t go/Daddy, come home” coda doesn’t raise the hairs on the back of your neck, your head’s probably already been disconnected from yr heart).

                “Hold On” — “When you have yourself, and there’s no-one else…” Been feeling that one a lot lately. Obviously I still have my own family, but in terms of falling back on someone…. See also paragraph #5 above, somewhere around the middle….

               “I Found Out” — Neither the first nor last time I’ll disagree with some of the sentiments here, but no matter. Good scratchy, angry stuff.

                “Working Class Hero” — “They hate you if y’r clever, and they despise the fool / ‘Til y’r so fucking crazy you can’t follow their rules… / you can’t really function, y’r so full of fear.” Still as powerful as ever.

               “Isolation” — Still the centerpiece of the album, IMHO. Forget “Stand by Me” — this is John Lennon’s best vocal ever. “But then again, y’r not to blame / Y’r just a human, a victim of the insaaaaaane….” Ironic, in the context of the rest of this album, that this as probably as close to gospel music as he ever got (with, even more ironically, the possible exception of “God”). Too bad Ian Hunter never covered this one; this one’s down his alley in more ways than I can count.

                "Remember” — A word of reassurance. “And don’t feel sorry / For the way it’s gone / And don’t you worry / ‘Bout what you’ve done.”

                “Love” — I remember coming down the mountain in our backyard after the vigil in Central Park/15 minutes of silence. This was the first thing to come on the radio when the silence ended. Who cares if it was probably written in 10 minutes? It’s still effective.

                 “Well Well Well” — And speaking of visceral reactions…. Have yr own do-it-yrself primal-scream-therapy session. Slap this puppy on 10 and scream along. “We sat and talked of revolution / Just like two liberals in the sun.” Priceless, no matter what side you stand on.

                "Look at Me” — As close to the recently dis-banded Beatles as this gets, this White-Album-ish asks some basic questions: “Who am I? / What am I supposed to do? …. What can I do for you?” Only as opposed to the cries of desperation or bitterness it’ve been on other selections from our list, it’s just some honest questions in search of some answers. And the answer, such as it is, is the same one Lennon offers throughout the album: “Nobody knows but me.” Speaking of which….

             “God” — One by one, John tears down every dream/belief/hero he ever entertained — Dylan, Jesus, Buddha, Beatles…. Again, whether replacing that with “I just believe in me / Yoko and me / And that’s reality” works — or ultimately becomes its own monolith, for that matter — is its own subject for discussion, but whether you agree with all of it or not, this song remains one of the great acts of rock-and-roll iconoclasm ever written.

               “My Mummy’s Dead” — Well, YEAH. What more can you say to THAT?
                Back to something closer to normal next week. One hopes.

Posted by: burninglight at 17:50 | link | comments

March 1 2006

Here’s one more raw emotion, to contend with

One last bullet, to defend the fort with….
And thus begins our #5 album. If you don’t recognize it, your loss. But let me see if I can help fix that.

Before we go there, though, let’s recap the first half of our list:

             #10 — Television. Marquee Moon and Adventure.
            #9 — Public Image Ltd. Second Edition.
            #8 — The Waterboys. Fisherman’s Blues.
            #7 — The Velvet Underground. The Velvet Underground (3^rd album).
            #6 — Genesis. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.

Something that’s struck me kind of interesting is the chronology of these albums. Taking the entire Top 10 into consideration (let’s count both Television albums as one item), there’s two albums from the ‘60s (one still to come), five from the ‘70s (WHO said this era was a wasteland for music?), only one from the ‘80s (and Fisherman’s Blues was ’88, I believe), and two from the ‘90s, the first one of which we’re getting to today (and from 1997, it’s the most recent entry of all of them).

Equally interesting, here [begin mentally locating soapbox here], is the fact that both of the ‘90s albums — and thus, my favorite two albums of the last 15+ years — come from that barren wasteland known as Contemporary Christian Music (aka CCM). Not that either entry here did at all well in that market — today’s entry, in fact, pretty much self-immolated whatever momentum they had going in said market (and my other entry came after THAT band had already cut its collective commercial throat). Honesty doesn’t play well in the CCM market, but the ghetto still has much to offer. And heck, if the religious of the world rejected and crucified Jesus the first time, why should those who wrestle honestly with their faith in Him, rather than the mass-produced crap that gets churned out of NashVegas, expect any better?

Andre Salles (who makes a regular point of asserting his “non-religiousness,” while equally regularly asserting his fandom of said music) has yet another great rant about faith and commercialism in his most recent Tuesday Morning 3 a.m. column (see link to the left). So I guess that means I can shut up for now [put soapbox back into full-and-upright position].

(Too much time spent on planes these past three weeks, I guess…)

OK, so let’s get back to business. To give a bit of personal history: I discovered this CD during another dark period of my life, a couple years after this came out. For those who can grasp it, Marion & I started the church plant from hell in our home. Today’s it’s a congregation of about 120+, but the first year was an unmitigated disaster, starting with the original senior pastor pretty much botching and/or abnegating all duty (and leaving it in everyone else’s laps — the lowlight of which being the day our home was declared “Ground Zero” in front of the original group and all our collective prayer partners, without anyone speaking to us about it first), and ultimately culminating in BOTH original pastors and everyone else originally involved leaving at some point.

In short, it wasn’t a crisis of faith, but it certainly was a test of one. It took about three years for the fog, depression, quiet rage, interminable frustration, whatever you want to call it, to lift. And there was still the work to be done. When I shared this later on, people hadn’t even realized that it took every bit of strength for their worship leader, small-group leader, elder, yada yada, to get through each day. But I was hurting big-time.

D’you know how some albums you just KNOW y’r gonna like, just from the things you hear about them? This was one of them. I had appreciated Bill Mallonee —the man who essentially was Vigilantes of Love — as a first-class lyricist for awhile, but found (and still do find) much of the actual VoL and Bill solo catalogue…. well, kinda whiny. Although I found it more than a little promising that most of the best selections in the VoL compilation album that came out the year before were the ones written specifically for that album (“Double Cure,” “Hopeless Is as Hopeless Does,” and especially, the Revolver-on-steroids-like “When I’m Broken, See What Happens”). Especially since Bill, for whatever reason during this stretch of his career, was clearly singing in a much more full-throated manner.

And hearing the details of this album just fed my curiosity more, so I finally broke down and picked it up. I liked it at first, liked it after 10 listens, then about 20 listens in, I really HEARD it. And for the next eight months, it never left my rotation — by precious little coincidence, I finally gave it a rest about the same time the fog finally lifted.

In fact, whenever I run into a friend who’s hit the wall spiritually/emotionally, I burn them a copy and MAKE them listen to this — a musical prescription, if you will. And they never fail to come away better, or at least a lot less alone. And if that’s not a recommendation for this album, I don’t know what is.

And it’s called:

#5 — Vigilantes of Love. Slow Dark Train.

To give you an idea of the contents herein: Picture Bruce Cockburn fronting the Rolling Stones — without either of their respective hubrises getting in the way of the music therein. Insanely articulate, deeply felt and yeah, rocking its greasy-chorded butt off on several occasions, when it’s not quietly ripping your heart out.

Not that Bill Mallonee doesn’t have some hubris of his own to deal with. In his own words, this album is a “testament to despair.” Shrouded over this entire album is his father's bouts with depression, Bill’s own regular bouts with depression, and a sense of wondering how far down the same path he’s destined to travel. Amidst the poetry (and even a few lighter-hearted moments) there’s plenty of brutal honesty to go around, directed mostly inward. And yet, there is hope.

And very few songs convey all of that as well as the opener, “Locust Years,” which sounds for all the world like “All Along the Watchtower” with a boatload of attitude. A breakthrough in my own depression came when I just sat down at the end of the day and banged out these songs on an acoustic. I had the anger to deliver the opening lines (in our title above) without difficulty, but to come to the chorus — “Come have your way / Come have your way with me / There’s nothing left / There’s nothing left to see” — and realize that, for all intents and purposes, I was singing a prayer for the exact place I was at…. yeah, the frozen rage that is depression began to break up that day.

“Tokyo Rose,” is equally relentless, and noticeably more dour. Mallonee takes the notorious World War II informer and uses her for a metaphor for a full-blown ode to self-deception, for far from the last time on this album:

Everyone wants
to be unopposed;
we leave the straight and narrow
for the lowest of roads.
We all need somebody
to lie to us, I suppose.
That’s why everybody needs
a Tokyo Rose.

“Black Crow” was probably the first song to connect with me, although it still only begins to hint the album to come. The Cockburn/Stones comparison really comes to the fore here, and again, with some lyrics that aren't terribly difficult to sing along with, “I’m breaking down / I’m breaking down / I thank God there’s no one around / To see me, when I get like this / Don’t tell a soul, about my predicament.” Still, the bridge looks beyond the singer’s current “predicament”: “Earth and sky will soon wear out/ Your words will not decay / Yeah, You come with glorious shout / And all tears be wiped away.” Call it faith or call it a crutch, there's no arguing he means it.

The album really gets started with “Only a Scratch,” a fuzz-laden sea shanty/dirge that cuts deeper than any scratch. I’m still not sure whether Bill’s deliberately downplaying the degree of his pain or simply trying to put it into its proper perspective, but it oozes out through every line anyway, even amidst the gospel plea that frames the final verse/chorus:

So come, all ye weary, and you ones that languish
Come , ye disconsolate, and sore distressed
I heard my dad’s voice
Near the river of pain
Near the river of love
They were — one and the same

You can almost hear a pin drop
Where it hurts the most
You hear Dad’s hammer fall after
He finishes His best work

And I know I’m reeling
Life, it goes fast
I know I’m bleeding
But it’s only a scratch.

The struggle for perspective continues in “Taking on Water,” the metaphor being just what you’d expect by now. Contradictions abound, and there’s no attempt to even try to refute them: “Call it catastrophe — or the hand of the good Lord reaching through…. / Call me irresponsible — but baby, call me undeniably true / Well, at least for the moment….”

“Points of My Departure,” just as contradictory, struggles to put a good face on things and can’t quite do it, “I will pray this song and be forever grateful / At least as much as I — am able.” Not much of a reassurance at this point.

Fortunately, the boys rally for the centerpiece of this album, “All the Mercy We Have Found.” Words spill out frenetically over the top of some crunching guitars. But this ain’t too much monkey business — this is the sound of someone trying to talk faster than he can think, just to keep himself sane. How else do you explain someone trying to fit in the entirety of “Please draw near, would You bathe and caress, these equal parts faith and hopelessness / Equal parts joy and equal parts gloom, locked up inside these walls and empty tombs?” into a simple couplet? But it all comes together in one absolutely perfect chorus:

I think about my ship run aground
All of the people I let down
Yes, and the mercy we have found
And the mercy we have found.

Things lighten up for a few minutes with the catchy, harmonica-driven “Version of the Truth.” Largely the same message of “Tokyo Rose,” but playfully poking fun rather tearing everything in the vicinity to shreds: “Fist too tight, tongue too loose / Up on my soapbox with my poor excuse / Everybody’s got their version / Of the truth.”

“Sitting” is the one semi-misfire on this album. On any other Bill/VoL album it’d be fine, but it’s simply not on the level of everything else here. Still, it’s a time to catch your breath before the final run, and the words don’t fail here either: “Rock and roll — what is it anymore? / Youth profound, or profane to endure / Passion in the backseat, or at the foot of the cross / Going, going, gone, and finally lost.”

The final charge starts in with “Willingly,” a melody that’ve done R.E.M. proud, and lyrics that go where fellow Athenian Michael Stipe only dreams of:

Hold the promise bright and sure
Keep your heart pure
As the shovel turns the earth
The elements will have their say
Grace, hope and pain
Tended faithfully

Well, circumscribe that last remark
Carve it down deep in my heart
Where I go — a stone cast in the undertow
Where I go — willingly.

The swaying, arpeggiating “Facsimile” returns yet again to the theme of self-deception, this time without rancor but also without flinching, rather just as a sad statement of truth:

It’s amazing what you’ve sold
Always leaves you feeling old
Less wiser, and more cold
As you try to make your way

Love is just a plea
Deepest point of need
We take a reasonable facsimile
Most of the time.

Plus I just love the line, “Faith pins her corsage / On Easter morning’s new mercy.”

From here we go to the almost anomalous song that nonetheless assured that this album would never see the light of Christian bookstores, “Love Cocoon.” It is, beyond a doubt, the most joyous, raucous tribute to conjugal bliss ever recorded — the problem, for some, lies in the fact that for the singer, the conjugating can’t start soon enough:

Honey, I wanna attack your flesh with glad abandon
I wanna look for your fruits, I wanna put my hands on them
I wanna pump up your thermostat, beneath your skin
Uncover your swimming hole and dive right in…

Add lines such as “There’s an explosion of grace, dripping in my bed” and “Holy flesh, holy mirth / let’s take what’s coming and enjoy every inch worth,” and you can see where the potential for an uproar might’ve existed. (Song of Solomon had to be cited on several occasions during the debate that ensued. ) But no matter: Once you get past the potential eek factor, this song is pure joy, and it was meant to be heard that way.

Back to the down side for the last two. The sad, sad “Hang on Every Word” just drips with a sense of failure, as the hard questions come fast and furious:

You can only play the victim, for a short amount of time
Your own wounds, you’ll have to lick them, ‘til the ambulance arrives…

Hanging by a thread, walking here among the dead — pleased to meet you
What’s with my chemistry? My fallenness that strangles me?
What am I crawling towards?…

Wife asked the other day,
“Where’s your joy — did it slip away?”
I could say — nothing.

And this is only a warm-up for the closer “Judas Skin.” Just Bill and a guitar, self-pummeling until nothing of himself’s left standing:

What is it you need to know, that you don’t already understand?…
What is it that I fear?
Why is it I don’t trust?
Hiding out becomes career
What am I covering up?

But the album refuses to end there, even if the struggle is never really resolved, here or elsewhere:

What is it you need to find?
Love your Spirit working overtime
When I come out of my spin
And I find You’re still my friend

On my own again
On my slow dark train
How is it I am found
In my Judas skin, spinning down?

I’ll shut up now. So buy it. Go ahead, try and prove me wrong.

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