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

Now the Party's Getting Started!
(or, the 20th-Century Rock-and-Roll Literary Curmudgeon Refuses to Die, or Even Take a Well-Deserved Old-Man Nap)

You know, it IS a little weird that most of my reviews involve older artists. In some ways it makes sense, as a lot of them are artists I grew up with and have an emotional attachment to and/or history with. Still, you'd think I could find some younger artists to enjoy. Not that I haven't tried. (Have I mentioned my disappointment in the latest Modest Mouse CD lately? )

On the other hand, there's something thoroughly gratifying about seeing people way older than me create music that's still viable and vital. (That's a compliment, by the way.) It's a needed kick in the butt for whenever one thinks he's too tired or used-up to keep up. I mean, this column features a 68-year-old man who's kicking butt like he's still in his 30s, for crying out loud. Who cares if these guys haven't been considered "pop artists" for a few decades (and/or ever)? They still speak volumes, and I'm still more than happy to read those volumes.

Anyway, next entry I'll probably get to a couple newer artists I've discovered (both releases were 2006, but as not too many people are aware of either it won't hurt to give them a little more exposure). This week, however, is reserved for a Phil-Keaggy-handful of rock artists with brains and hearts that clearly haven't given out on them just yet. So, in keeping with the spirit of this, let's do beauty before age.... OK, let's put that another way: youngest to oldest....

Tim Byrnes -- The Instruction Manual of Love. (Sorry about the image. Tim'll have let you know when it's officially available, as the link at his site is now expired.)

Our favorite mo'timer (no doubt gratified to be the young'un here) is back with his first release since 2005's Debut CD (which was only in the sense that it was actually a CD), and this one's full-length and everything. 12 new songs, which cover the fairly rough odyssey tim's been on the last few years (you can read his own past punk rock blues entries for the details).

The usual caveats: 1) No-one will be mistaking this for a CCM album, so if you can't hear the beating heart for the self-avowed atheism don't bother (and if so, yr loss); 2) As this is a transfer from a home cassette, this is a decidedly lo-fi affair. And for the first few tracks, the -fi is even lower than usual. Bear with it. Not only the sound quality but the songs themselves get better as it goes along. That's not to say that the melancholy, self-mocking "I Know What You're Thinking" and the decidedly "Watching the Detectives"-ish "The Murder Weapon" don't have merit, just to say that what comes afterward moves past what we already know.

"On Rock & Roll," tape squeals and all, begins to take things up a notch, but not until about halfway through, when Tim declares:

We did the cool jerk in the basement, singing "yeah, yeah, yeah"
As we got taller, we all got too hip for "yeah, yeah, yeah"...
I guess I'm bitter, 'cause I didn't die 'fore I got old
I guess I'm bitter, 'cause I bet my life on rock and roll.

Which then gives way to some particularly cool guitar work. Which continues well into the great-titled  "Burn Down the Internet," a quiet rant that lets the guitar do even more talking.

Now that y'r sitting up and taking notice, "Benediction" begins. The start of the song is just that, a quiet blessing: "Let there be light, in dark corners / Let there be warmth, in the coldest heart.... Let there be trust and understanding / Of our brothers and sisters, in all their flaws..." To which Tim abruptly pulls the rug out from underneath at the end, "It'll never happen / 'Cause we're too f***ing dumb."

"Lurid" is actually more funky than lurid, although if Tim's not addressing a past self he's addressing someone a lot like it, "Oh there, little brother, what hey you, why are you so dazed and shaken? / Was it some book or the drugs you took that makes this mess y'r makin'? / Was it the myth that you phoned in with, you know the sound of yr black heart breaking' / Or was it your anti-dance romance stance that left you here forsaken? / You and me, boy -- outside, anytime." Which then gives way to some more fun guitar work, and lots of it.

The title song is "Benediction" in reverse, in more ways than one. Wall-of-sound guitars slap you right from the get-go, and the lyrics follow closely behind: "The soul is dead, the flesh is weak... Morning prayer becomes hate speech / What we can be is still just out of reach... God is dead, but I cannot / Take blame or credit for that gunshot... You are nothing but a thought / and I am nothing but a thought / I am nothing." There's even a reprise of the old Tension Envelopes song "Theatre in a Crowded Fire" in the lyric "confessions of a chronic liar...."

It comes down a notch from there, though not way down. "Who Had Who" is a Hendrix-like blues (and I've mentioned the guitars already, right?), while the wall of sound returns for the dirgier "I Don't Know." Things lighten up for the playfully self-mocking "Punk Rock Blues": "Guess I got too old for punk rock, so now I gots to play the blues / If you want to work in this town, buddy, play some songs that we can use." The Randy Newman-like asides serve the song well too, before Tim shrugs, "Things ain't all that bad -- I just want to play the blues." Which is then answered editorially by "Blues Punk Rock," which sounds more like the Sex Pistols than Randy Newman, especially given its "don't it suck, don't it suck, don't it? " chorus.

Which leaves us with the closer, "To Give You Love," which could've closed any number of Lou Reed albums with dignity. It's a simple confessional of the writer's failings, laid bare for all to see in the space of two minutes, before giving way to the riff that becomes a rather majestic coda for the last three-plus minutes:

I don't go deep enough
I'm not true enough, to give you love....
I don't go near enough
I don't fear enough, to give you love...
I don't go long enough
I'm not strong enough, to give you love
I don't go straight enough
And I hate too much, to give you love.

 Easy listening? No. Rewarding listening? Yep-PERS.

 Graham Parker -- Don't Tell Columbus. Take Tim's God-stance, keep the anger but substitute biting, dismissive cynicism for the introspection and raw nerves (and pub rock for guitar hero-dom), and you kinda get where Graham Parker's been coming from for most of his career. I daresay it thus gets in the way for me more than Tim's approach, but likewise, one can choose to sigh wistfully over the top of those moments and keeping bearing down on the considerable honesty and wit therein.

And Don't Tell Columbus is another good collection. There's nothing here quite on the level of "Dislocated Life" from 2005's Songs of No Consequence, but there's a lot that's close, and it's a much more solid collection from beginning to end.

Interesting also to note that for the rest of this column, everyone here's either got an America song, an Iraq song, or both. With Graham -- who relocated from Britain to upstate New York 20-plus years ago -- we get the former in the autobiographical and triumphant (in a damn-I'm-resilient kinda way) "I Discovered America":

With my bony-chested t-shirt, some stolen guitar licks
Navigating by dead reckoning in 1976
And when the mighty chains of darkness had me on the ropes
Everyone said "quit now" - that's when I found hope

So please don't tell Columbus
Don't tell his queen, for sure
That I had the accurate compass
And I discovered America.

.... and the latter in the skiffle-rocking, delightfully snippy "Stick to the Plan":

Don't pay no attention to what the experts say
Too much intelligence gets in the way...
Put on your uniform and go to the front
Don't be too sensitive
That's a stunt you don't need when you're stripping them naked
And attaching the wires
Because it's only a frat party and all Arabs are liars

Good things are coming if we stick to the plan
Good things are coming if we stick to the plan...

 Elsewhere:

"England's Latest Clown" takes Graham's trademark sinister soul sound and directs it back across the Atlantic at British pop celebrity: "They threw him into Wandsworth for a month of penance / He nearly got molested by the other tenants / But he came out looking handsome with a ton of pride / With muscles on his muscles and Kate Moss by his side."

On the other end of the spectrum are two paeans to love and faithfulness into old age (and heck, how many musicians can claim a successful single nearly-30-year marriage?), "Somebody Saved Me" (marred slightly by the God-slurs but nonetheless undeniably and affectingly grateful for the love he's received -- "I can't calculate what that's worth") and the understated acoustic-only closer, "All Being Well":

I'll see you when the leaves are falling, all being well
And when our hearts are all but stalling, all being well
I'll hold you in my arms and tell you that nothing can break this spell
I'll see you when the road stops winding, all being well.

And then there's the quiet epic "The Other Side of the Reservoir" (seriously -- this might be the first eight-minute song in his 30-year career), which takes us back musically to such ancient classics as "Watch the Moon Come Down," and personally takes me 1,800 miles back east, and to those annual late-April trips to the Catskills right past the Ashokan alluded to here. Delivered in a way half-condemning-half-envious, it captures both the moment and the bitterness of a lost friendship:

Well, time has a funny way of doubling back on itself
And showing the things that really last - was it just yesterday
You left for greener pastures -- or was that way back in the past?
I got some photographs of a long lost valley
Now filled with water shore to shore
That rolls under miles of land right down to New York City
But at least no one's thirsty any more...

So what were they thinking when they dug that hole
And flooded the meadows green and fair
Was it so satisfying, they didn't hear people crying
As they watched their lives get moved elsewhere...
 
I heard you live there now, and that you've settled down
And accepted the vastness of it all
Maybe I'll get in touch, I've heard that there's so much
On the other side of the reservoir.

Really, that's enough evidence to go on, and I have miles to go before I sleep, so moving on....

Richard Thompson -- Sweet Warrior. Yes, the best guitar player in the universe has plugged back in, and yes, it is cause to celebrate. And yes, his own Iraq song has stirred up quite the controversy already. But the real reason you should get this is.... well, because it's a Richard Thompson album. And a Richard Thompson album means great guitar (in any form), acerbic if nonetheless deeply felt lyrics, and a melodic style that turns Anglo-Celtic folk on its Middle Eastern head (or is that Middle Eastern folk on its Anglo-Celtic head?).

That said, it's probably his best album since 1999's Mock Tudor, certainly since 2003's The Old Kit Bag. And yes, for pure guitarishness, this just might be his best performance since his solo masterpiece Across a Crowded Room (that'd be 1985, boyos, and that one had a boatload of post-divorce bitterness to drive it). At 70 minutes, it might be a little long (see also "Sneaky Boy"), but not by much.

Let's just jump into the "official" controversial Iraq song, The minor-keyed shuffle "Dad's Gonna Kill Me" (short for "Baghdad's," that is) is the lament of a soldier who doesn't want to be there and is pretty sure he's gonna die there, which finally explodes in an barrage of not-so-friendly guitar fire:

Dad's in a bad mood, Dad's got the blues
It's someone else's mess that I didn't choose
At least we're winning on the Fox Evening News
Nobody loves me here...

Another angel got his wings this week
Charbroiled with his own Willie Pete
Nobody's dying if you double-speak
Dad's gonna kill me.

It's not hard to hear similar sentiments woven into "I'll Never Give It Up" ("There's no halfway with you / You see red, white and blue / What holds your head on could use another screw... You're someone I can't help betray / Because you built me up that way") and especially the arguably more controversial "Guns Are the Tongues." Albeit a slap in the opposite direction, and intended more for Northern Ireland than Iraq, the scenario still isn't difficult to transfer:

They said he was just nineteen
A headcase but his record was clean
Just the kind they were looking for....
The car was a rolling bomb
Blew all to Kingdom Come
They marveled how far
His boots had traveled...

Guns are the tongues, Little Joe
The only words we know
The only sound that'll reach their ears.

Not that it's all strum-and-dang here. "Take Care the Road You Choose" is a pretty love song from someone who knows he's too preoccupied with the gallows:

If I ever get out of my mind
Guillotine myself to stop me dreaming
And let me heart go where it will
Without those other voices screaming...

With my radar I'll find you, darling
No regrets to blind you, darling
And never look behind --
Take care the road you choose.
 
On the other hand, "Mr. Stupid" might win the award for verbal slap of the album: "When your friends point out you're stuck with / a Neanderthal for an ex / Don't fret about it, darling / I still sign my name on cheques." And on the guitar side, "Bad Monkey" sounds like it could've come off the aforementioned Across a Crowded Room. The boy shreds it big-time.

Anyway, buy it. Get depressed and have fun with it.

Ian Hunter -- Shrunken Heads. I repeat: Sixty-freakin'-eight. (OK, 67 when it was recorded. Point being....) What I said about Patti Smith a couple weeks ago goes double here. Granted, Ian Hunter's never been the best technical vocalist (think: if Dylan really WAS a rock singer), but he's never had trouble conveying boatloads of emotion, and he doesn't here either. Shrunken Heads is his first album in six years, and while he's mellowed a little, you wouldn't know the Original Shaded One was even half his age here (some deliberate and all-too-typical self-deprecating lyrics aside).

To employ a byrnesism, Ian Hunter's music (especially at his peak with Mott the Hoople -- who remain, I also repeat, one of only three real rock-and-roll bands to have ever walked the earth) has always been full of those moments when faith and faults collide (i.e., here's another guy that oughta tour with Mike Roe), and the mea culpas start early here, with the greasy, stomping and absurdly likable "Words (Big Mouth)":

I owe you an apology about last night
Well I was just letting off steam
Black Dog lurking in the alleyway
Alcohol arriving with the key
Open up the floodgates and out it comes
Like a river full of gravity

Words... Nasty little lizards...
Grammatical bacteria
One thing's for certain, baby
I got a big mouth.

"Fuss About Nothing" is another fun rocker (more cowbell!!!) initially about a con man, but possibly a different one than first suspected: "I got a bridge I can sell ya / I got a pyramid / I got a time share in Florida / How'd ya like a piece of it?... Never forget: I'm doing my best / I am a man with a vision / But if it's left to the left / There won't be nothing left / You're making a fuss about nothing."

The anthemic ballad "When the World Was Round" decries a life dictated by those things and people we avoid than the things we purport to live for:

Timing your life to the monsters, the monsters that won't go away
And you win some, you lose some, you ain't got much choice 
so you choose one (what have you done) 

Everybody lies 'n' we're stuck in the middle 
I think I liked it better when the world was round
There's too much information but not enough to go on ...
And I don't think we deserve this 
No, I don't think we deserve this
I think I liked it better when the world was round
Give me a reason to believe it
Give me a reason to believe it
I think I liked it better when the world was round
Maybe we can make it better
Maybe we can make it better 
I think I liked it better when the world was round.

And at the coda, I once again say: Sixty-freakin'-EIGHT. Put that in your pipe, smoke it, and breathe deep. I mean, crap. And I mean that in the best of all possible ways. It's a great, great moment.

And there ain't a lot of nuance in "Brainwashed," just a great rock-and-rant: "Don't forget to accessorize, makeup by the gallon.... If you walk like a duck, quack like a duck / Baby you been brainwashed.... / Who's that over-made-up clown, twisting my religion / Brainwashed, brainwashed, they're still falling for it / You're still falling for it." Likewise, "Stretched" is a Mott-like piano/guitar-dueled accusation hurled at a wayward comrade: "Drain that poison from your mind / Or it's gonna take you down / Stretch -- fish outta water -- ya' swim against the tide / Ain't no talkin' sense to ya' / Jekyll 'n' Jekyll 'n' Jekyll 'n' Hide..../ I loved you like a brother -- deep down sad / You were the best friend -- I ever -- I ever -- I ever -- had."

The one hint we get at the singer's age comes in the fun (c'mon, call it what it is -- shitkicking), "I Am What I Hated When I Was Young." Just when you think you know where it's going -- "I don't wear designer clothes / I ain't got pins in my nose / I ain't got a tattoo on my bum / I am what I hated when I was young" -- it turns the tables: "I'm the original mixed-up kid / I ain't proud of what I did / Now I'm older, calmed down some / I hate what I used to be when I was young / I hate what I used to be when I was young / I hate what I used to be when I was young."

And then there's them America songs again (from yet another British emigre from the '70s). The thoroughly Mellencampy "Soul of America" starts at the base of the Twin Towers and ends up metaphysically protesting on the White House lawn:

And the Manhattan skyline blew my mind the first time
We went down to the scene of the crime
Lookin' for the soul of America...

The sins of the fathers revisit the sons
The toil of tradition, the roar of the guns
It's a God-awful job, but it's gotta be done
Protecting the soul of America
And them good old boys in their three-piece suits
Feathering their nests while they're rallying the troops
They cut off the flowers, don't worry 'bout the roots
Eroding the soul of America

There's souls in the city, there's souls in the sand
Putting up with the latest indignities
You can find soul all over this land
Except in the places it oughta be.

"How's Your House?" keeps the rant domestic, from the perspective of a Katrina victim trying to keep the faith: "Now the reason I believe in the good book still / If FEMA won't help me, I know the good book will / So if anybody asks yuh, how's your Mom and them / Just tell 'em I was asking / Where are ya when ya need 'em?"

No Ian Hunter album is complete without an elegy or two, and this one's no exception. The title song grieves over a fallen society and the leadership taking it further down: "Nothin' matters anymore / The rich get richer, and the poor get sorer / This house is haunted and the streets are dead / We're all the mercy of shrunken heads."

And the closer, "Read 'Em and Weep," is more than a little like the classic "Irene Wilde" -- and after all these years, it still just about reaches that height:

On a warm summer day, in the hour of my youth
I walked the four miles to your door
You wore a straw hat, high heels to match
And the whitest cotton dress I ever saw
When I tried to hold you, you turned away
You don't have to tell me, it's all over your face
I can see the writing on the wall
And there's a distance in your eyes that says it all...

I wanted you so badly, but I failed
Now all I got's these little paper trails.

Read 'em and weep indeed. But don't forget to crank up and enjoy before that.

Posted by: burninglight at 21:04 | link | comments (9)

Comments:

#1  22 June 2007 - 17:57

 

Ian Hunter rocks like Cleveland. Richard Thompson's like the left hand of Jeff Beck. Graham Parker is a kindred spirit in spite and I thank you.
tb

Anonymous

#2  25 June 2007 - 19:27

 

Burned out light..!
your comments on Shrunken heads were right on!
A terrifice little review from One of the Boys to another-
thanks for the spark
JiminY CricKet

Anonymous

#3  12 July 2007 - 16:51

 

Carl,
apart from Mot, who are the other 2 real r/r bands to walk the Earth?

Anonymous

#4  16 July 2007 - 19:06

 

The Kinks and The Replacements, of course. :)

burninglight

#5  18 July 2007 - 16:37

 

Kinks and Replacemants, of course, of course. I actually gotta go along w/you there. Hey is there any chance I could get the original cassette of 'Instruction' back. My buddy Rob has 'misplaced' the only other mixed copy I gave him to copy for me, and the copies he made are missing the left channel. I've found another person in town who can make CDs from cassettes, but as I now have no cassette .....

Anyhoo, the 'former self' I'm addressing in 'Lurid' was, in my intent, Lou Reed (Lou Reed/Lurid get it?) but since both you and Lynn assumed I was trashing myself I gotta go along w/that, too.

The 'confessions of a chronic liar' self ripoff was purely for Ted Haggerdy's hypocrisy and, what? no denouncement of the 'burn down the Vatican....' verse?

Never mind, if you've read the latest prb, you know I've got a lot of crap on my mind and shouldn't be taking it out on you.




I'm gonna write to Jim....tb

timbyrnes

#6  18 July 2007 - 16:52

 

Hey Tim:

Respectively:

1) I need to get them back from Dork, but yes. Bear in mind that I have Instruction digitally here & can make CDs at will from that. As for Rough Night, there's three tracks here: http://www.bigdork.org/carl. I'm still waiting for the others. In short, if you want me to rush the cassettes themselves, I'll pester Dork. If CDs of Instruction will do, I can burn those right away (& should either way). E-mail me yr address again; I want to make sure I have the most recent one.

2) Re "Lurid" -- Well, that's what happens when you "take a junkie and a liar for a role model," isn't it? :P

3) Re: the title track -- Works for me. And why would you think I'd be defending Rat-Man, anyway? He sure as heck isn't defending me as of late.

4) No harm, no foul. Besides, tim, I KNOW you. ;D

5) Good luck with THAT. :o

burninglight

#7  18 July 2007 - 17:36

 

P.S. Tim: I responded elsewhere to yr thread; I didn't want to be indirectly responsible for violating yr wishes there.

burninglight

#8  20 July 2007 - 16:29

 

Thanks. CDs of Instruction? Sounds good to me. I'm such a luddite (my asst. boss is buying me a tracphone for all the extra crap I've been doing at work lately so plz resend me yr phone info at anti and I'll call w/all my stupid questions as well as catching up and all.

PS: What thread? Where elsewhere? What wishes? Where? VIOLATE???!!!!!!!!!

Gosh I'm confused.

Anonymous

#9  20 July 2007 - 16:45

 

Dude: Dorfboard. ;D

burninglight

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