Music that's really, really white
So I'm sitting here listening to Elvis Costello, and I'm wondering whether or not rahael would like it. After all, from the titular evidence of "Oliver's Army" and This Year's Model alone, one can assume that he's probably the only rock musician on the planet who shares Rah's primary historical obsession. Then I get I get to the line about "All it takes one itchy trigger / One more widow, one less white nigger" and I think of Costello's Ray Charles comments, and I decide to avoid the subject. Perhaps KdS can explicate Elvis in a manner that makes it all cool, but I'm new to this white music thing!
In all fairness, Rah has never let uncomfortable extra-artistic statements to come between her and appreciating pieces -- she likes Wagner -- and she already likes the Buzzcocks and Prince, between whom Costello falls, if my ears are any judge. Listening to Armed Forces reminds me better than anything else that when Prince was first introduced by Warner Brothers, he was marketed simultaneously to black customers as a funk act and to white customers as a new wave artist. "Moods for Moderns" could come off of Controversy, and the start of "Green Shirt" sounds just a little bit like "Darlin' Nikki." In any case, Rah's a big Pulp fan, and Armed Forces reminds me also of Different Class (in that it's very, very British), only with more groove.
In other music news, last Tuesday I picked up Warren Zevon's posthumous album, The Wind. (He's not actually dead yet; some marketing schemes just won't go to plan.) I've listened to it several times now, and I have yet to try it in daylight. It's an excellent 2 am album, but if you have any attachment at all to Mr. Zevon, don't expect to keep a completely dry eye. The circumstances of its recording may have clouded my judgment as to its quality, but I can say with assurance that it's no Mutineer, and may be Zevon's best album since Learning to Flinch, and best collection of new material since Sentimental Hygiene. It lacks a stand-out track like those of his last two albums, "I Was In the House When the House Burned Down" from Life'll Kill Ya and "Sacrificial Lambs" (thanks to KdS for turning me on to this) and "Hit Somebody!" from My Ride's Here, but the pleasures on The Wind seem, though more subtle, more real.
The album kicks off with a couple of country tracks, "Dirty Life & Times" and "Disorder in the House," which sound as if they're straight out of Nashville before Dolly Parton got there. Then comes Zevon's cover of "Knocking on Heaven's Door," which is affecting though too mawkishly obvious a choice. Then we get "Numb as a Statue," pretty much a reworking of Zevon's 1982 song "Looking for the Next Best Thing." It still works, damn it! The rockers on the album make it feel like it's The Envoy again, and the tear-jerkers actually jerk!
You'd probably have to already be a Zevon fan to be affected by this album in the way that I am affected, so I highly suggest going out and getting Warren Zevon, Sentimental Hygiene, Learning to Flinch and one of the various best-ofs, then learning that he's contracted lung cancer and has been given three months to live. Then, a year later, when he's defied fate and lived to see the birth of his grandchild and the release of this album, perhaps you'll understand why I like this album.
Ok, sorry about essaying an incoherent review of an album so few of you care about, but I had to beat KdS and OnM to it! And I had to stand up for non-triliterate Zevon fans! Speaking of OnM's thread, Celebaelin (under the theory that we're discussing musicians in the far reaches of the store) responds to OnM's request for Zevon stories with a long disquisition on Frank Zappa, which reminds me that some minor-league music critic (perhaps Chuck Eddy) once said that there were only two types of people in the world: Zappa fans, and Velvet Underground fans, and that the two groups were completely non-intersecting. I don't know about that: my suspicion is that there are Zappa fans, Velvets fans, and a large majority of people (billions in Asia alone) who couldn't give a shit. But I've been investigating the Velvet Underground, and I have a question. Some have heard Rah speak of my MP3 player, which is now my preferred means of listening to music. Whenever I rip a CD, my media player selects an appropriate genre for the music. This is usually reliable, though sometimes comical. It seems to have especial trouble with categorizing the Velvet Underground: Loaded was assigned "Lo-Fi/Garage," which wouldn't be too bad, were not "Lo-Fi" suggestive more of albums recorded 25 years later that were supposed to sound like Loaded than the actual thing; The Velvet Underground & Nico, on the other hand, came back as "Ambient/Dream Pop," which is just completely inscrutable! So I am despairing of finding a category in which to comfortably fit the Velvets. People keep saying that they're proto-punk, but I can't put "Who Loves the Sun" in the same category as "Search & Destroy"! I don't care about their real-life relationship; on my MP3 player Iggy would kick Lou Reed's ass straight into the "Television Soundtrack" genre. Should I just go with "proto-alternative" or is there some accepted categorization I'm missing?
In all fairness, Rah has never let uncomfortable extra-artistic statements to come between her and appreciating pieces -- she likes Wagner -- and she already likes the Buzzcocks and Prince, between whom Costello falls, if my ears are any judge. Listening to Armed Forces reminds me better than anything else that when Prince was first introduced by Warner Brothers, he was marketed simultaneously to black customers as a funk act and to white customers as a new wave artist. "Moods for Moderns" could come off of Controversy, and the start of "Green Shirt" sounds just a little bit like "Darlin' Nikki." In any case, Rah's a big Pulp fan, and Armed Forces reminds me also of Different Class (in that it's very, very British), only with more groove.
In other music news, last Tuesday I picked up Warren Zevon's posthumous album, The Wind. (He's not actually dead yet; some marketing schemes just won't go to plan.) I've listened to it several times now, and I have yet to try it in daylight. It's an excellent 2 am album, but if you have any attachment at all to Mr. Zevon, don't expect to keep a completely dry eye. The circumstances of its recording may have clouded my judgment as to its quality, but I can say with assurance that it's no Mutineer, and may be Zevon's best album since Learning to Flinch, and best collection of new material since Sentimental Hygiene. It lacks a stand-out track like those of his last two albums, "I Was In the House When the House Burned Down" from Life'll Kill Ya and "Sacrificial Lambs" (thanks to KdS for turning me on to this) and "Hit Somebody!" from My Ride's Here, but the pleasures on The Wind seem, though more subtle, more real.
The album kicks off with a couple of country tracks, "Dirty Life & Times" and "Disorder in the House," which sound as if they're straight out of Nashville before Dolly Parton got there. Then comes Zevon's cover of "Knocking on Heaven's Door," which is affecting though too mawkishly obvious a choice. Then we get "Numb as a Statue," pretty much a reworking of Zevon's 1982 song "Looking for the Next Best Thing." It still works, damn it! The rockers on the album make it feel like it's The Envoy again, and the tear-jerkers actually jerk!
You'd probably have to already be a Zevon fan to be affected by this album in the way that I am affected, so I highly suggest going out and getting Warren Zevon, Sentimental Hygiene, Learning to Flinch and one of the various best-ofs, then learning that he's contracted lung cancer and has been given three months to live. Then, a year later, when he's defied fate and lived to see the birth of his grandchild and the release of this album, perhaps you'll understand why I like this album.
Ok, sorry about essaying an incoherent review of an album so few of you care about, but I had to beat KdS and OnM to it! And I had to stand up for non-triliterate Zevon fans! Speaking of OnM's thread, Celebaelin (under the theory that we're discussing musicians in the far reaches of the store) responds to OnM's request for Zevon stories with a long disquisition on Frank Zappa, which reminds me that some minor-league music critic (perhaps Chuck Eddy) once said that there were only two types of people in the world: Zappa fans, and Velvet Underground fans, and that the two groups were completely non-intersecting. I don't know about that: my suspicion is that there are Zappa fans, Velvets fans, and a large majority of people (billions in Asia alone) who couldn't give a shit. But I've been investigating the Velvet Underground, and I have a question. Some have heard Rah speak of my MP3 player, which is now my preferred means of listening to music. Whenever I rip a CD, my media player selects an appropriate genre for the music. This is usually reliable, though sometimes comical. It seems to have especial trouble with categorizing the Velvet Underground: Loaded was assigned "Lo-Fi/Garage," which wouldn't be too bad, were not "Lo-Fi" suggestive more of albums recorded 25 years later that were supposed to sound like Loaded than the actual thing; The Velvet Underground & Nico, on the other hand, came back as "Ambient/Dream Pop," which is just completely inscrutable! So I am despairing of finding a category in which to comfortably fit the Velvets. People keep saying that they're proto-punk, but I can't put "Who Loves the Sun" in the same category as "Search & Destroy"! I don't care about their real-life relationship; on my MP3 player Iggy would kick Lou Reed's ass straight into the "Television Soundtrack" genre. Should I just go with "proto-alternative" or is there some accepted categorization I'm missing?