a coherent collection of random statements regarding God, words and tunes

14er #1

So, before I get to the next musical entry, the next shameless plug before that, or possibly other things in between, thought I'd drop in a fluffy post of impending accomplishment. Yrs truly hikes his first 14er Saturday morning, in the form of Mount Bierstadt. (For non-Coloradoans, a 14er is a mountain of higher than 14,000 feet. Mind you, the trail starts at 11,600 feet (a height I hadn't even reached until last year), and it'll take almost as long to drive there and back as it will to climb it and get back to the car. (Further educational note: All but one of the 14ers -- and that one should be my 2nd, in a few weeks -- are south and obviously west of Denver.) Still, a 2,500-foot climb/8-mile round trip ain't nothin'.)



Anyway, let's see what next week -- heck, the rest of this week -- brings. Lots of interestingness swirling around, both inside and outside of work, that I may detail soon enough. But there'll definitely be Shameless Plugs next week, and what I think of the new Ian Hunter album sometime soon (for now: it's good).

Posted by: burninglight at 08:24 | link | comments (1)

Songs to Make You Smile

Yes, this IS me typing. Why do you ask? And let's just get to it....

The Duckworth Lewis Method.

Some people say that life is a game
Well if this is so, I'd like to know
The rules on which this game of life is based.
I know of no game more fitting than the age-old game of cricket.
It has honour. It has character. And it's British.
—The Kinks, “Cricket”

Sure, it’s almost certainly a one-off, but it’s a truly spiffy one.

In this corner: Mr. Duckworth, aka Thomas Walsh of the Irish pop band (the good kind) Pugwash – one of Andy Partridge’s favorites, which ought to tell you quite a bit right there. To be fair, though, Pugwash reminds me more of Jellyfish than XTC – it’s big, BeachBoyesque pop, but without the wit of an XTC (and for that matter, the bombast of a Queen that’s laced through, when not entirely overwhelming, Jellyfish’s output). Which is to say, really well-constructed but a tad boring if you’re a lyrics guy (and I am).

And in this corner: Mr. Lewis, aka Neil Hannon, aka The Divine Comedy. Have I told you lately that I love him? And, as you might recall, he writes lyrics. Really incredible ones.

The result: The best ELO album ever, with Neil playing Roy Wood to Walsh’s Jeff Lynne. It sounds way more like the lighter-hearted Pugwash than the heart-gouging DC – this is clearly more Walsh’s album -- but Neil’s melodic and especially lyrical senses take Walsh’s already well-developed melodies places they probably wouldn’t have reached otherwise. And in return, Walsh takes all the melodrama out of Neil's DC persona. The end result is just plain fun.

I’m still awaiting the DC album later this year to blow this (and every other album better than this so far this year, of which there are only two – and the other one’s on deck) completely out of the water, but wow, this is an unexpected treat. And yes, the entire thing’s about the game of cricket. But it’s so freaking witty and catchy, even without knowing the historical context, that frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn. (But if it helps, go here: http://dlmethod.com/crickipedia). So to help you along in the meantime:

The single “The Age of Revolution” sounds like a musical conversation between Beck and XTC (“Andy, I’ve found this great new place to rip off to add to my melting pot of musical influences. It’s called 1920s dance hall.” “Oh yes, Beck, I do know a little about that.” “Yeah, I’m gonna funk that motha’ up. You with me?” “Why yes, Beck, I’d like that very much.”) The cover of the single is worth mentioning too, as Walsh looks like a cross between Pavarotti and Trotsky, while Hannon splits the difference nicely between Che Guevara and Eric Idle. (And yes, this IS about cricket.) Anyway, it’s a neat tune – would that it DOES reach “from Bangalore to Kingston.”

The second single HAS to be “Meeting Mr. Miandad.” Again, if you’ve ever missed ELO (especially anytime after the first three albums, although those “Mr. Blue Sky” vocoder noises pop up slightly at the beginning and end of the album), yikes, you’re gonna love this. SO catchy. Further on the sublime-pop side of things are the wonderful “Gentlemen and Players,” “Flatten the Hay” (great opening line: "Finding the sun in an Irish summer  / is somewhat akin to Russian roulette”), and the absolutely gorgeous “Mason on the Boundary.”

The most DC-ish tune here would be “The Nightwatchman,” and if it’s any indication, the new CD’s gonna be good. Even in this lighter context , there’s more than a hint of heartache here: "All that I am is yours / I would give all that I have and more / To be by your side, in the morning light."

Not that this is a serious album. Not by a long stretch. Aside from the brief narrative pieces (because, after all and again, this IS a concept album about a cricket game delayed by rain), “The Sweet Spot” is prime double-entendre material milked for all it’s worth. And to put “Jiggery Pokery” (clearly all Neil's) in baseball terms – it’s “Casey at the Bat” as a nursery rhyme told from Casey’s perspective, and one which won’t leave your head – delivered in only the way the Noel Coward of rock-and-roll could deliver it:

It was jiggery pokery,
Trickery, chokery,
How did he open me up?
Robbery! Muggery!
Aussie skull-duggery!
Out for a buggering duck.
What a delivery!
I might as well have been
Holding a contrabassoon
Jiggery pokery
Who is this nobody,
Making me look a buffoon?
Like a blithering old baboon
(baBOON -- baBOON-- baBOON-- baBOON-- baBOON-- baBOON-- baBOOOOOON
baBOON -- baBOON-- baBOON-- baBOON-- baBOON-- baBOON-- baBOOOOOON...)

Oh, just take my word for this. If you like the good kind of pop music at all, you’ll enjoy this.

Cracker – Sunrise in the Land of Milk and Honey. And speaking of very pleasant surprises – the latter-day David Lowery refuses to die.

It’s no secret to most that I’m a huge Camper van Beethoven fan, and that I haven’t thought Cracker could hold a candle to them. But in recent years, that’s changed. One needs go no further than the (until now) most recent albums by both. New Roman Times (2004), the Camper reunion album, tried hard to reproduce the gypsy garage band feel (or, to use their own self-designation, "surrealist absurdist folk") of the original Camper albums, and has its moments, but 20 years of chops has a way of betraying your ambition to sound as if you have a lack of ambition.

Greenland (2006), on the other hand, was the first Cracker album that could proudly stand alongside the Camper pantheon. I can only guess it’s Lowery’s trouble-on-the-farm album, because he ditches the self-conscious hipness that plagued the early Cracker stuff and delivers some moments that are genuinely affecting (when he’s not being the lovably weird, freewheeling songsmith we know him to be). So in addition to the typically Lowerian “Everyone Gets One for Free” (“I was driving in my car; it was filled up with yams / For no obvious reason -- that’s just who I am.”) and the self-explanatory “I Need Better Friends,” you get drop-dead perfect imitations of Pink Floyd (Barrett AND Meddle eras) in “Sidi Ifni” and “Minotaur.” And then there’s the aforementioned trouble-on-the-farm stuff – “Maggie” features the great chorus, “You’re everything I’ve every wanted / But I’m half of what you need”; you'll actually shed a tear over “Night Falls” as Lowery sings, “Lay me down and pull the arrows out / Let night fall again / So love is everywhere -- but you’re not with me, dear… my heart cannot contain this misery,” and clearly MEANS it; and the wonderful closer “Darling, We’re Out of Time” is a truly bitter/sweet breakup song.

Which brings us to Sunrise in the Land of Milk and Honey. It’s not Greenland, but it’s good. Really good. In fact, in a perfect world, this would be the breakthrough album David Lowery’s been trying to write since the original Camper swansong Key Lime Pie. It won’t be, but it’s by far the most radio-friendly album since the first couple Cracker albums, and easily twice as good.

Actually, I liked the way the eMusic reviewer put: David Lowery sounds ornery. And an ornery David Lowery makes me VERY happy. In some places, it’s positively punky (see also “Hand Me My Inhaler” and "Time Machine," the latter about a riot at a Dead Kennedys concert -- and to think I thought the one I witnessed from punch #1 in Staten Island was the only one; silly me). But most of the time, it’s the first real rock-and-roll album since the last one by some then-67-year-old whose new one hits tomorrow (no, not tim -- scroll down further ).

And it starts off with a great 1-2-3 combination. The stomping “Yalla Yalla (Let’s Go)” describes the plight of an Iraq vet: “There were no chocolates, no pretty flowers / Just kill them all or we die… At bombaconda the hajis missed me / Send them on their way to paradise / Whiskey Tango Foxtrot gunners / Too many pogues in the way… / No r-&-r in Kuwait City / Abu Dhabi, Dubai / I want my boots on / My battle rattle / When it's my time to die / Ya la la, yalla yalla.” Which, of course, doesn’t stop David from wrapping up the song with a series of limericks I shan’t repeat here (let’s just say that yes, Nantucket is cited here).

“Show Me How This Thing Works” is loud, catchy, and funny. All we know about “this thing” is that it fell out of the sky and that it’s made of chrome with red lettering, meters and a volume knob (a guitar?)  but that doesn’t stop Lowery’s relentless, hysterical questioning: “Will it glow at night? Will it make it hum? Will it make the girls think that I’m less geeky?...  Will it get me high? Will it look good with the rest of my furniture?... Will it make me rich? Will it make me wise? Will it give my empty life a little bit of meaning? Will it make the lions lay on down with the lambs? Will it cure this rash? Will it give us cash? Will it do all this without a serious side effect? Show me how this thing works…”

And then there’s the single which BEGS to be their comeback hit, “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out.” It puts a smile on my face every time, with an arrangement that Tom Petty wouldn’t kick out of bed and yet all the obscurantist wiseass paranoia that makes David Lowery… well, David Lowery:

I'm shopping in town for our homemade agrarian fortress
You're texting: Corian, granite or tile kitchenette in the gun nest?

Well, we'll find a little meadow high up in the Cascades
Baby, we won't ever come down
Turn on, tune in, drop out, give up with me…

Well, I'm not paranoid, there is no conspiracy
But I swear Big Brother's watching me
Turn on, tune in, drop out, give up with me

So you're serving aperitifs to the local survivalist militia
In camouflage you're fine, but the locals still call you Morticia…

Buy a little cabin in the Adirondacks
Baby, they'll never find us
Turn on, tune in, drop out, give up with me

“Friends” written by guitarist (and Loveland resident!) Johnny Hickman, is shit-kicking country with once-more-than-ample dollops of wiseassness: “So when you're on a date and you finally bring that girl home / You put a little Captain Beefheart on the stereo, and you disconnect the phone / I'll show up drunk and raving, and then I'll pass out on the spot / ‘Cause that's the kind of friend that you've got…. A bit dysfunctional, some folks might say / I’ve got the dirt on you / and you’ve got plenty on me, too / So I pray we stay together all our days.”

“Hey Bret (You Know What Time It Is)” is a more smirking-yet-still-snarling “Street Fighting Man”: “We live like serfs / In this new Beulah Land / We pay the bills and fight the wars / I ain’t no woman / No pinko commie / Let’s start the end times right now / Hey Bret, you know what time it is?!?!?”

The closing title song keeps the nasty Stones vibe (the good kind) going as Lowery rages against the night, not least of all his own: “Sunrise in the land of the Pharaohs / I see my broken arrows, scattered ‘cross the plain / Well sunrise on the river in the city / I’m feeling pretty shitty, in the wreckage of my life / So if you wanna live, let’s live together… / ’Cause dying is easy -- it’s living that’s hard.”

To paraphrase Pete Townshend, Sunrise won’t make you forget your problems, but it will let you dance all over them.

Next time, probably: The second-best septuagenarian rock-and-roll album ever made (IF you count The Man Comes Around), hot off the presses....

Posted by: burninglight at 15:54 | link | comments (4)