Before “Celebrate,” These Guys Really Jammed
WILD AND PEACEFUL
Kool and the Gang
When the producers of the TV sitcom Everybody Hates Chris, based on comedian Chris Rock’s adolescence, wanted music to accompany a scene of Halloween bedlam breaking out at school, they turned to Kool and the Gang’s 1973 hit “Jungle Boogie.” It was an inspired choice: The rubbery bassline and taunting, wild-animal horns form a brazen and choatic sound-picture.
“Jungle Boogie” is one in a string of thumping, totally infectious Kool and the Gang gems that arrived years before soft nothings like “Joanna” and the tepid wedding-reception wiggle “Celebrate” made the Jersey City collective into a commercial juggernaut. Like the brass-rock band Chicago, Kool and the Gang started out making credible music: Its early albums were built on uptight R&B rhythms reminsecent of the great James Brown bands, and its live show, documented on a thrilling concert album from 1970, Live at the Sex Machine, regularly attained supercharged heights.
Wild And Peaceful is both a roaring party (the Wild side 1 on the original vinyl) and a more reflective, unselfconsciously sophisticated inquiry (the Peaceful side). The several songs that became hits – “Jungle Boogie,” the similarly feral “Hollywood Swinging” – have energy to burn and melody to spare. But in truth everything Kool did around this time is informed by a sense of invention, and a polished execution later picked up by Earth, Wind and Fire. Spin this to be reminded that sometimes big hits are the worst thing to happen to a group.
Released: De-Lite/Polygram, 1973.
Key Tracks: “Wild And Peaceful,” “Jungle Boogie,” “Hollywood Swinging.”
Catalog Choice: Live at the Sex Machine.
Next Stop: The Ohio Players: Fire.
After That: Rufus: Ask Rufus.
During “list season” at the end of 2009, I participated in the Village Voice jazz critic's poll. I’d avoided the poll for the last two years, in part because of a busy schedule (these things do take time) and in part because there wasn’t a tremendous amount to say where jazz records were concerned.
That wasn’t the case this year: Improvised music is experiencing a creative resurgence that even its most ardent supporters could not have predicted. At precisely the moment Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal chose to ponder the declining health and/or “death” of jazz, a cadre of bold individual thinkers waltzed in, with music of such spirit and drive it all but mocks the journalistic hand-wringing. If jazz is even close to dead, we need to ask those obit-writers (and I’ve been one over the years) to please explain the audacious sparks running through pianist Vijay Iyer’s Historicity, the Voice poll winner.
Suddenly, there are recordings featuring stunning and cohesive trios doing intricate – but, crucially, not overly brainy – original music. Big bands are happening, and those arranging for them wring out wild colors from unlikely combinations of instruments. New and occasionally daring singers are emerging, and their work amounts to more than another light dusting of the Great American Songbook; several, including Magos Herrera, wrote beautiful, achingly lyrical tunes that deserve to be played again and again, in many contexts.
There are probably tons of explanations for this activity, which has been erratic and diffuse and easy to miss unless you regularly prowl the jazz corner of blogland. There is, though, one striking point of commonality: Very few jazz records of consequence from 2009 were brought to you by the major labels. While it’s true that imprints attached to major labels (Blue Note, Nonesuch) continue to document jazz, this year most of the new thinking came from smaller, independent operations, places that don’t need to sell skadillions to remain in business. Places where considerations of art – like, say, a tune that stretches out for more than five minutes – can sometimes trump those of marketing.
Think about that for a minute: The creative burst in jazz happened just a few years after the executives at the majors concluded there aren’t compelling business reasons to pay attention to it.
Following this logic, here’s a modest proposal: To begin to lift hiphop out of its current creative torpor – that dull place where so-called superstars spew routinized nonsense about their alleged greatness (see Kanye West, 50 Cent, et. al.) – maybe it’s time to wrest control of it from the big labels. Bring it back to a more human scale. Return the emphasis to developing voices, not gaming the marketplace to pump up the quarterly numbers. Majors out of hiphop now! It’s worth a try, because, sadly, there isn’t all that much to lose.
Sure, the music industry remains mired in a digital-rights quicksand, but that doesn't mean recording artists have to be: Breezing past those problems, they're developing inspiring works that speak to what it means to be alive right now on our fragile planet, what it means to be a sensitive soul confronting a sea of indifference, what it means to dream. This year there were way more than ten records that got me thinking. These are the ones I returned to again and again.
Mulato Astatke and Heliocentrics: Inspiration Information Vol. 3 (Strut). This collaboration between Ethiopian keyboardist/vibraphonist/bandleader Mulatu Astatke and the British collective Heliocentrics looms as the year's most inspiring left-field surprise. Even those who know Astatke—whose jazz/funk band of the '60s is well documented on the Ethopiques series, and whose music dominates the soundtrack of Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers—will be amazed by the bouyant music here. As he's done forever, Astatke basically spices up folk song melodies with jazz-influenced Western harmonies, and his creations spur the members of Heliocentrics toward grooves that suggest the exuberant gospel joy of Charles Mingus' Workshop one minute and trance-inducing acid house the next.
Blk Jks: After Robots (Secretly Canadian). Fearless prediction (or wild hope): 2010 is the year alternative rock shakes off its Vampire Weekend delusions, and realizes that the real thing—in the form of an inspired, wickedly accomplished rock band from South Africa—can be so much more relevatory. After Robots, the jaw-droppingly great full-length debut of Blk Jks, should speed this conversion along. Its mystical invocations and thoughts on the de-humanizing effects of technology are propelled forward by spinning, tumbling grooves and frightful splashes of guitar dissonance, the likes of which we haven't heard since King Crimson
Dirty Projectors: Bitte Orca (Domino). There's lots going on in here—though the ear might first be enchanted by songwriter Dave Longstreth's off-kilter hookcraft, eventually the more agitated instrumental schemes come rattling along to claim some spotlight. Thing is, the clutter factor is high—at times the juxtapositions sound willfully random, the audio equivalent of an overstuffed antiques emporium. Often what's truly interesting about the songs isn't the primary vocal but the two or three contrasting lines that crisscross it, and that's perhaps why this demanding set has been hailed as visionary and derided as unlistenable.
Magos Herrera: Distancia (Sunnyside). Mexican singer Magos Herrera could easily have devoted this record to nothing but interpretations of classic Brazilian and Latin-jazz tunes. Her readings of "Vera Cruz" and "Inutil Paisaje," two songs immortalized by Elis Regina, show not just consummate poise but a deep understanding of tradition and, crucially, a sneaky sense of invention. Tucked alongside those works are another reason to pay attention to Herrera: Her inviting, super-melodic originals. These describe longing for the archetypical faraway lover in poetic, sometimes astoundingly beautiful terms, and that's exactly how she sings them.
Norah Jones: The Fall (Blue Note). It's a quintessential breakup record, laced with forlorn "come back" cries and refrains that chronicle long nights waiting for the reprobate lover to return home. Happily, though, it's not entirely a croony affair: Jones and producer Jacquire King draw on sounds from the modern hitmaker's toolkit (deep subsonic bass, retro electronic keyboards, haywire electric guitars) yet miraculously retain the intimacy of her previous works. This turns out to be an incredibly effective platform, especially for songs that can seem initially slight. Listen long enough and you realize that the texture (and, occasionally, the busted-apart tone) of Jones' voice sits at the core of these miniature torch dramas, which each illuminate distinct stages in a painful unraveling.
Mastodon: Crack The Skye (Reprise). The only trouble with this, the fourth studio effort from the super-inventive Atlanta four-piece, is that from a distance, it just sounds like run-of-the-mill heavy metal. Dig past the usual elements—the fearsome stack of jacked-up serrated-saw guitars, the thudding bass-drum-driven beats—and you discover intricate prog-rock polyrhythms, chopped up into fine weaponlike slivers and then scattered in all directions. You also discover accounts of a out-of-body experience, thoughts on Russian czars and assorted cosmic notions, these delivered by frontman Troy Sanders with none of the doomy braying that has become metal's most unfortunate cliche.
Maxwell: BLACKSummersNight (Columbia). In this New York Times interview to help launch his first record in 8 years, R&B singer Maxwell declares that he's bored with the pop blueprint—tunes that hinge on a simple theme and an endlessly repeating hook phrase. His solution? He starts with less obvious, sometimes threadbare melodies, and then sets out to alter and embellish them as the tune unfolds. That single shift gives these elaborate productions a pronounced sense of adventure—we follow Maxwell through twisting ad-libbed detours as he searches for genuinely new ways to express devotion, awe, etc. He doesn't find new ways every time, but the search is thrilling all the same.
Mos Def: The Ecstatic (Downtown Music). How bad off is hiphop right now? To my ears, it's almost barren creatively, stuck in such a rut that any reasonably solid offering—like this totally competant, occasionally brilliant set from actor/MC Mos Def—gets hailed as some type of "major statement." The Ecstatic is not that. But it is among a meagre handful of 2009 hiphop records to link exceedingly smart rhyme-saying jujitsu ("Darwin, darlin'") with rhythms that are far more intricate than the typical boom-bap.
Phoenix: Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (Glass Note). The French electro-pop veterans finally deliver the record that some champions have been awaiting forever—a dizzy confection filled with not just one or two catchy lusty pop songs, but a whole delerious album of them. Even when making wacky lunges into faraway realms ("Lisztomania"), Phoenix manage to remain true to the ideal of pop as uplift. Which, these days, is no small thing.
St Vincent: Actor (4AD). This began as just another laptop record. Annie Clark says she turned to programs like Garage Band to break out of old songwriting patterns. Pointing and clicking, she found weird assymetrical melodies, and in the process discovered a taste for unusual combinations of instruments. Her often unsettling songs, which she finished in an old-fashioned recording studio, feature odd constellations of clarinets and violins as well as truly ear-stretching vocal harmonies.
Neko Case: Middle Cyclone; Vic Chesnutt: At the Cut; Bill Frisell: Disfarmer; Rosanne Cash: The List; Monsters of Folk: Monsters of Folk; Keith Jarrett: Testament Paris/London.
Of course not all of the significant developments in music were new releases. There were also great ambitious catalog endeavors. Among them: The remastered Beatles album catalog (tremendous!); Ella Fitzgerald's previously unreleased Twelve Nights in Hollywood from 1961 and 62; the complete Miles Davis catalog on Columbia, a monster set bundled with a terrific live DVD from 1967; Keep an Eye on the Sky, a box collecting the output of the influential and criminally overlooked Memphis pop band Big Star.
Given how much music has floated past (and through) the average person’s ears, and the relentless torrent of releases from labels big and small, it is probably impossible to arrive at anything near “definitive” in such endeavors. Still, we try. Below, some random thoughts on the decade. (I’ll post a ten gems of 2009 in the next week or so.)
Songs We Heard Endlessly and Are Still Somehow Thrilled By
“Crazy”: Gnarls Barkley
“Toxic”: Britney Spears
“Get Ur Freak On”: Missy Elliott
“Rehab”: Amy Winehouse
“Bootilicious”: Destiny’s Child
Artists Whose Contributions This Decade Will Loom Larger Over Time
Norah Jones, The National, J Dilla, Sigur Ros
Artists Who Are Ubiquitous Now But May Not Be Forever
Kanye West, The Black Eyed Peas
Albums That Deserved Wider Attention (And Will Someday Be Seen as Influential)
Juana Molina: Segundo; Vijay Iyer: Reimagining; Jason Moran: The Bandwagon; Nine Inch Nails: Ghosts; Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago.
Albums That’ll Be Studied In Record-Making Schools For Years To Come
Radiohead: Kid A; Outkast: Stankonia; Beck: Midnite Vultures, Sea Change; The Arcade Fire: Neon Bible; Wilco: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot; Coldplay: A Rush of Blood To The Head.
Genre Most in Need of Life Support, Based on This Decade’s Releases
Hip-hop.
Genre Poised For Creative Resurgence, Based on This Decade’s Releases
Jazz.
Most Interestingly Varied Discography of the Decade (includes collaborations, etc.)
Bela Fleck
Most Interesting Collaboration (A crowded field that includes Jack White and Loretta Lynn, etc…)
Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate: In the Heart of the Moon
Most Inventive Launch Campaign
U2: “Vertigo” (Apple)
Most Dismaying Launch Campaign
U2: No Line on the Horizon (Blackberry)
]]>For a while there, at least as long as it took to promote the two respectible albums that followed her monster debut Come Away With Me, it looked like Norah Jones was set for life. She could ride that chanteuse thing forever. She could reel off those luminous, self-pitying torch ballads one after another. She’d established a brand, and like all saavy brand managers, she seemed to know her wheelhouse and exactly how far to stray from it.
Until now.
This week, Jones ditches the cozy cocoon of the torchy cabaret and sets off on a repositioning mission, placing herself somewhere in the vicinity of the present. The scantily-clad shrill-diva present. The ProTools present. The Beyonce/Kanye present. For her fourth effort The Fall, the singer and songwriter wrote and gathered material that is similar in spirit and aspiration (and backbeat!) to the endeavors of our most lavishly overproduced pop stars. The media will seize upon the “risk” involved in this – after all, the Old Coot Society has plenty of members who love Jones just the way she was. And besides, the diva field is a tad overcrowded.
It could be argued that staying put is the best career move for Norah Jones. But apparently with her, the impulse isn’t about dollars or market share – it’s curiosity. As her previous works (including the lively Little Willies side product) show, she’s a seeker, a singer and musician with a restless streak and the confidence to test her spectacularly expressive multi-hued voice in new surroundings. Though some of her longtime accomplices (Jesse Harris) are on board, The Fall is a profoundly new thing – she’s collaborating with a super-successful rock producer (Jacquire King, of the recent Kings of Leon) and a band full of R&B hotshots, on songs that strive to slip some subtlety and dimension into the mostly prefab pop present. That’s an admirable crusade, because it’s not at all clear whether a woman well versed in the Advanced Calculus of Gershwin melodies and the coy come-on (a la Blossom Dearie’s immortal “Lover, peel me a grape”) can connect with an audience for whom “Text me ASAP” qualifies as a profound lyric.
It’s a split-level trick Jones runs here: The tunes on The Fall are more rhythmically assertive, and in terms of production, more contemporary, than anything she’s done before. But her vocal phrasing – that wistful behind-the-beat approach she picked up from the jazz greats – is the same as it ever was. The contrast, it turns out, is sublime and delicious. If you’re tired of divas filling every second of every track with outsized exortations, check Norah Jones here, as she rolls through sweet nothings suffused with yearning and doubt and those deep-in-the-gut tones people emit, involuntarily, when they’ve been wounded by love. This is singing on a human scale.
That duality – the cool chop of modern production providing a foundation for the glowy warmth of Jones’ voice – pretty much defines The Fall, from the slinking opener (“Chasing Pirates”) through a glance toward Fleetwood Mac (“Young Blood”) and a ripe old Texas downer (“Stuck”). The tunes themselves are sturdy, sometimes slight-seeming and a bit unexceptional. Then Jones starts slithering around, singing in that casual, forever-hurt way, and suddenly, unexpectedly, they blossom into something profound. It’s not the words, or the tunes. It’s Jones – and that ache she brushes over the lines, the graceful turns and little twinges that transform ordinary lyrics into expressions of disarming depth.
Richard Thompson, the British singer/songwriter, has mastered this particular gauntlet – his latest songs sometimes follow roadmaps he’s used before, yet wind up in surprising, wholly new, places. He uses the traits we’d identify as his “signatures” – the skeptical voice, the wry observations, the predatory bite of his rhythm guitar – to lure listeners into whatever he’s thinking about right now.
Some truly great artists find themselves trapped by their signature traits. The singer and songwriter Rickie Lee Jones, whose Pirates (1000 Recordings, pg. 410) is a marvel of storytelling, has struggled with this occasionally over a 30-plus-year career: Her voice and demeanor as a singer is so distinctive, every new song can, from a distance anyway, resemble one of her classics. To combat this, she’s changed up lots about her sound and her process. She’s experimented with loops and different instrumentation and spoken wordish poetry, sometimes creating thick and almost disturbing atmospheres (Ghostyhead), sometimes winding up in a faux-boho tableaux that’s a tad too familiar (parts of The Sermon on Exposition Blvd.).
Jones has a new album, Balm in Gilead, in which she “finishes” songs she worked up and then left on the shelf at various times over the years. It begins with a track called “Wild Girl” that’s upbeat and plenty endearing – and to all but her diehards will likely register as just another Rickie Lee Jones tune. But further in, after a few vignettes and a charming softshoe written by her father called “The Moon Is Made of Gold,” Jones slips listeners into a luminous, jaw-droppingly gorgeous six-minute sanctuary.
“His Jeweled Floor” begins in the mists, with groaning sounds. When Jones enters, she could be in church, or warming up for church. There isn’t really a tempo, but Jones implies one -- moving with the measured, steady cadence of a devotional singer, leaning into the chord changes like she just knows the next one brings everlasting salvation. Her warm, been-around lead voice is one of many – also in the multitracked choir is Vic Chesnut and Victoria Williams – and as the song unfolds, the layered voices swell up into a massive cry, and then spread out, scattering little ad-libbed asides deep inside the tangled vocal architecture. The tune ends in the same epic drone as it began, and as it does, you realize this music is totally unlike anything she’s done before. And then the words, which have cycled through a few times, really begin to resonate. “On his Jeweled Floor,” she sings in that wonderfully weary voice, “I am standing now, Can you see me as I am?”
I’ve had lots of questions about this one, and I guess I should start by saying I really like Oasis and regard Noel Gallagher one of the most talented songwriters to emerge in the last 20 years. I considered Morning Glory not because of the commercial success cited above (my mission was to offer portals into as many different worlds as possible, regardless of popularity) or the “pandemonium,” but because of the songs – marvels built on classic pop form and graced with extra-large, almost majestic melodies.
Like many critics, I enthused about Morning Glory when it was released. So, when building the preliminary lists for the book, I had it pegged as a no-brainer. It had to be there. Then I went back and listened again, after not really paying attention to “Wonderwall” or the other songs in some years. I was astonished to find that just about every song was totally absorbing for a few verses and the initial chorus, and then sorta hit a wall, becoming suddenly and unexpectedly dreary. What kind of cough syrup were we all downing in 1995 to stay with these tunes as they plodded dutifully along? How can a tune as structurally sound as “Don’t Look Back in Anger” resonate so powerfully, and then wear out its welcome so quickly?
Check it out for yourself. Cue up a few songs from Morning Glory and follow them closely. You may find that the luster fades long before the song does. For me, this became a big concern, enough to make me rethink the album’s inclusion. (Just because I’m curious, I spotchecked a few later Oasis records and encountered the same thing, though it was most pronounced on Morning Glory.) It could just be that the songs last a minute or so too long. And it could be something about the songs themselves – when you start paying attention to this, you discover that lots of esteemed hits grow tiresome in this way.
Today’s example: To really hear time stand still, check out Madonna’s “Holiday.” It starts out promising a great exotic escape, and a few minutes later, you’re deep in the drudgery of the slow line at the dry cleaners.
There’s no shortage of those – music can reach us in different ways at different moments. Revisit an old favorite after a long absence, and you may discover it’s not nearly as stupendous as you recall. Or it might seem more so.
From time to time I’ll share some thoughts on this, related to specific entries from the book. Today: The decision to highlight an orchestral transcription of Beethoven’s string quartets rather than a traditional quartet performance (see pgs. 66-67).
I heard lots about this from Ludwigphiles, and often their objection was that the material was written for an intimate four-piece ensemble, and therefore should be encountered that way. This is a perfectly logical, almost unassailable point, and I should say that I followed this thinking in making most of the choices. When I was researching that entry, I listened to a few recordings of the master’s late quartets that have been rubberstamped as “essential,” and while they were all competant and in some cases quite spirited, none brought me into Beethoven’s gorgeously unspooling melodies quite the way the Vienna Philharmonic, under Leonard Bernstein, did. I’d argue that for those unfamiliar with the music, the orchestral version can serve as an excellent point of entry.
But it is just that, a novel starting point. In the last year, I’ve heard a few quartet recordings that are flatout amazing. Beethoven’s quartets from his middle period, particularly the oft-recorded C major, Op. 59, exude a fierce animation, with potent themes tumbling over equally potent elaborations. This sense of urgency comes across magnificently in the 2002 recording of the Takacs Quartet.
His later quartets are knottier and more densely textured – qualities seized on and beautifully expanded by the Quartetto Italiano in recordings released in 1997. The group’s colorful, nuanced reading of Quartet No. 12 in Eflat Major (Op. 127) offers all the ammunition needed for an argument about why music written for four musicians should be played by four musicians. And not 104.
* Lots of talk about Net Neutrality. Keynotes from Sen. Al Franken and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski are gettable here.
* Ian McKaye, of Dischord Records and Fugazi fame, talking about how he’s resisted using the computer as a recording studio: He’s out to capture inspiration, not learn a bunch of complex software.
* Peter Jenner, a veteran artist manager, observed the absurdly twisted relationship between artists and radio. In a followup discussion on the WFMU blog , he framed the conversation in stark terms, noting that without recorded music, there’s no modern radio. “We need each other, yet we do not get paid, and even pay sometimes for radio to play the very thing that gives them the audience they then sell to advertisers (or funders).”
* Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune talking about sobering stats on recorded music sales in 2008. That year, more than 115,000 albums were released. Only 110 (!) sold more than 250,000 copies, a mere 1,500 topped 10,000 sales, and fewer than 6,000 cracked the 1,000 barrier. That’s physical CDs, not downloads. Astonishing.
* For me, the most dismaying moment wasn't the Future of Music Journalism panel, where myself, Kot and a few other self-described "dinosaurs" talked about the old-school values that underpin good criticism -- like context, analysis, plain old curiosity -- and how they've gone missing from the Internet discourse of music and really all the arts. No, the low point for me came on the Artist’s panel, when Martin Perna, of the Brookyn Afrobeat band Antibalas talked about the difficulties he had lining up management for a side project, Ocote Soul Sounds. It seems a prospective manager looked at the band’s MySpace page and got cold feet because the group had “only” 72,000 visitors.
You know things are royally screwed up when traffic on a MySpace page is regarded as a reliable measure of artistic merit and/or potential.
]]>It began yesterday at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and runs through Tuesday. I’m on a panel called “Critical Condition: The Future of Music Journalism.” Apt title, though it makes one wonder: Isn’t this patient already on life support? Will report afterward.
For now, though, I’ve been thinking in broad terms about the future of music. Being a dreamer, I find myself believing there will be a future. Here are a few dreamer-ish notions and modest proposals that might pop up in discussions about ways to move music (and the music business) forward. Please add ideas! Think big!
· Metadata. If iTunes loves musicians so much, how come the service – and, to be fair, all download services – are so reluctant to make complete personnel information available to consumers? It’s vital for people to know who’s playing cowbell on their favorite song – that’s one way people explore music. It helps connect dots between things a listener knows and things she doesn’t know. Credits should not be hard to find, or treated as “bonus content.” Right now. Today.
· Rock Star Micro-Financing. With very few exceptions, the folks at the top end of the rock foodchain are good philanthropists, helping causes directly with funding and by raising crucial awareness. And while some are label honchos who involve themselves in the building of careers, many direct their dollars and energy away from the arts. What if someone built a roster of worthy music projects in need of funding, and then followed the model of something like www.kiva.org, and convinced stars to contribute small anonymous loans to launch them? That could be a wonderful, low-impact karmic boomerang situation that just might cultivate interesting music.
· Respect Music Public Service Announcements. Flame away, but our over-mediated world has brought us to a place where the contributions of musicians are not at all obvious and frequently taken for granted. It’s time to stand up for the creators of music as educators and oracles and healers, and to gently suggest that acquiring tons of music is not the same thing as appreciating it, or evolving as a listener. It seems silly, but it might just be constructive to remind an 11-year-old that there’s more to music than the instant gratification of “Look Ma! I’m a guitar hero!”
]]>Rosanne Cash's new album, The List, is made up of songs her father, Johnny Cash, considered vital to the understanding of American music. When she was 18, he gave her a list of 100 such songs; she's recorded twelve of them. The project has inspired many to think about songs as a form of cultural legacy.....
The show is up, with audio and video, here.
I will offer more thoughts on this in the coming weeks....
The great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (1948-1997) was among the most inventive vocal improvisors of all time, the John Coltrane of devotional singing. This (alas, undated) clip from Pakistan TV shows him at peak power, churning simple repetitive expressions into wondrous, beseeching, grandly spiraling phrases.
You can work up a pretty good head of steam thinking about the crimes against music propagated by businessmen. There’s the colossal and collective lack of vision regarding the rise of digital delivery – the entire recording industry somehow missed that one. There’s the fact that record executives are no longer in the business of building careers.
Not to forget an older (but still lingering) crime of negligence: The terrible, awful, no-good, careless, woefully inadequate, done-on-the-fly analog to digital transfers of old music. Every fan has suffered with this on some level – the first CD iterations of classic albums were done super-fast, with little regard for nuances of sound. The inadequacies have become painfully apparent as technology has improved, and the labels have rolled out “upgraded” reissues that force diehards to re-purchase the same works for a second or third time.
This Wednesday, the Beatles catalog returns in upgraded form. It’s a significant step up that will likely re-ignite anger at those deeply flawed 1987 CD versions: Wow, where have those gingerly plucked acoustic guitars been all these years? How come we never quite appreciated that backing vocal before? It’s as though we’ve been listening to the most influential rock band of all time with a thick coating of Marshmallow Fluff covering the speakers.
Finally, the 12 albums that comprise the Beatles core catalog have been treated with the appropriate love and care. For the most part, the audio is spectacular, the soundscape much broader and richer than on any previous version. The individual voices aren’t quite so crowded together, and likewise, the instruments aren’t compressed into a generic blur. Listening to that long sweeping sigh on “Girl” from Rubber Soul – fyi, the new versions offer the track listings and artwork from the original UK releases – I began to think about how the quality of sound has a larger and perhaps more pervasive effect than I’d realized. The earlier CDs didn’t just muck up the notes and obscure the musical details – they also blotted out some of the sheer delight that defines the Beatles. That’s been restored, too. Hearing this music in such detail sent me to a place of pure thrill. In this place, it’s not enough to gape at the inventive nuts-and-bolts craftsmanship of the songs – there’s also wonderment at the love they express and the atmosphere of love they create, and plain old awe at the uncountable ways these songs changed the world.
Well color me surprised: It seems some ambitious soul has set out to blog, Julie & Julia style, with reactions to the music featured in 1000 Recordings. Blair is a first time blogger and the site is here. I've encountered a few others who've used the book as a springboard in this way -- a smart writer named Whit Andrews posted a bunch in the spring. His most recent musing is here.
The research journey of 1000 Recordings involved much more than the final 1000 works. My hope is that anyone who uses the book to undertake a sustained investigation of music will make many more than 1000 astounding discoveries as well. There's so much flat-out amazingness in music, and in this moment when music is so often portrayed as "under seige," it seems crucial to celebrate and spread the word about that amazingness.
To that end, here's a thought for bloggers (Blair, are you listening?) and anyone else: As you share thoughts on essential music, please include your own suggestions for where to go next -- along the lines of the Next Stop and After That headings in the book. Put em below, or in your posts, whereever it makes sense to throw a bit of light onto records other people might not know.
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There’s much to be excited about in the cover story of the August 16 New York Times Magazine, which chronicles the making of the soon-to-launch video game The Beatles Rock Band. Author Daniel Radosh had access to the game’s designers and the living Beatles who approved every screen – at one point Paul McCartney describes himself as “executive tweaker.” The story offers an endearing portrait of a team dedicated to preserving the halo of magic that surrounds the Beatles while tackling the technical and aesthetic challenges of building a video game.
What’s troubling is the story’s underlying assumption: That the video game will help bring the Beatles “into the modern era.”
As though the music can no longer do that alone.
You know this modern place. It’s where music no longer exists for its own sake. Radosh notes that the modern consumer “experiences music differently,” as a kind of “sonic wallpaper.” As a result, plain old audio, even plain old audio by the world’s all-time most influential rock band, is no longer sufficient. It seems the best way – possibly the only way – to get people to dive deeply into the grooves is to hand them a plastic guitar-shaped controller and invite them to “play” along. Progress!
The irony, of course, is that the Beatles were miles ahead of everyone else in pop music in embracing the visual. The Beatles seized the possibilities of animation, and pioneered what became known as the music video – in the process creating visual languages that enhanced the listening experience. The Beatles Rock Band may one day be considered another pioneering achivement, a canny “extension” of a storied brand. Here’s hoping.
Still, we’ll be left with a curious condition: A huge audience for music that regards listening to be an activity that involves the eyes. In this “modern” era, people don’t often immerse themselves in sound, and nothing but sound. They forage for music via YouTube, seeking enchantment through the corresponding videos. They’ve come to expect a visual “supplement.” Some aren’t interested in a song unless there’s a scene attached.
I can’t help but wonder: In this modern age, how much of the delightful audio wonderments the Beatles and countless others painstakingly embedded in their recordings are even getting through to us? What are we missing when we listen with our eyes? Does this type of listening erode our ability to appreciate plain old music? Will we someday lose the ability to process complex ideas, to follow an extended melody around sharp curves and through dense forests? Will we no longer bother to engage such a melody unless it is in some way “illustrated?”
Yikes.