The Right Song at the Right Time

It's been over three weeks since I last posted a feature. In that time I haven't really listened to much music, let alone written about it. Work, family, and everything between have combined so that although there hasn't been any catastrophe I can point to and say it's made my life impossible, I still feel like I have been treading water lately. We've had a lot of issues with the house we are renting (MOLD-- ended up not being the bad kind, although it looked pretty scary), work's been kicking my butt with paper grading and syllabus crafting, my son recently had pneumonia, for the second time, and might now have Lyme disease (although, again, seems to be doing fine). The stress level has been high.

Like everything, though, the last month has had its ups as well as its downs. A couple weeks ago I went to see party-rocker Andrew W.K. (the link goes to the song where I crowd-surfed for the first time), which was the first show I've gone to since I saw Bon Iver last August. Also, my brother was just here and it was great to talk to him and hang out (and listen to music, of course). And everyday my son surprises me with the stuff he can do: catching bugs, pretending to cook us pizza, learning how to play hide-and-seek.

What happened over the past week was the music seemed to be exactly what I needed at all times. Sometimes when I am depressed, I want to listen to something depressing: Beck's Sea Change and Elliot Smith's self-titled album are favorites. Other times I want to listen to something to cheer me up; Paul Simon's Graceland is a good example. Madonna's Ray of Light falls into neither camp, so I had to be in the right frame of mind to spin it.

Artist: Madonna
Album: Ray of Light
Recording #538
Stream album here

I took over a week to listen to this: I saw it was up next, and I couldn't bring myself to put it on. Finally, one night after dinner, I stepped up and powered through. It wasn't so bad: it sounded exactly as I thought late '90s Madonna would sound. Cheery beats, reedy voice... I'm still a bit surprised at this selection, as I don't see it having more merit than her Immaculate Collection. "Little Star" was a surprisingly good track, and I actually listened to it twice. The thing was, I was in a good mood that night, and slogging through a mediocre pop record wasn't too tough.

Artist: Madredeus
Album: O Espirito da Paz
Recording #539

The next night I was dragging. I pulled up the next recording on the list, Portuguese group Madredeus. From the soothing opening track, the music was trance-inducing, worthy of a religious experience. The music is closely related to the Portuguese fado, which I discovered earlier in the book and love. The sound is melancholy, but in a way that it wouldn't be out of place in the lounge of a spa. It was just what I needed.

Artist: Magic Sam
Album: West Side Soul
Recording #540
Stream album here

Later in the week, again after a rough day, I put on Magic Sam's West Side Soul. I had never heard of this guy. but but by the opening track's guitar solo I felt my clenched jaw relax. The rough blues, reminiscent of George Thorogood, transformed my mindset. The troubles of my day seemed to fade as I sank into the wicked guitar work.

Artist: The Magnetic Fields
Album: 69 Love Songs
Recording #541
Stream album here

Finally, I came to the Magnetic Fields. It was a weekend, and I was in a great mood for the first time in a long time, so I was prepared for the three discs of inconsistency that make up 69 Love Songs. The first time I heard the Magnetic Fields was in 2008 while I was in Japan. I had a Paste Magazine sampler with a song on it called "California Girls." I hated it the first time I heard it. I popped the CD in my alarm clock, and as I lay in bed in the morning, slowly waking up, the song grew on me. I didn't particularly like the production, wasn't impressed with the lyrics, and pretty much hated the voice (I'm prejudiced against baritones, I will admit. It took a long time for me to appreciate Cincinnati natives, the National). But the melody became a worm in my brain.

I'm not sure how to keep any "indie cred" when I say this, but I just am not a fan of 69 Love Songs. As you can see by my infographic above, it seems like every time lead singer Stephin Merritt hits upon a great hook, he fills the song with inane lyrics. "Time Enough for Rocking When We're Old" is a great example. The song is cruising along for the first few verses, and then he throws in the line "There'll be time enough for sex and drugs in heaven/ when our pheromones are turned up to 11." What? What are you talking about, dude? You couldn't find a better way to rhyme with "heaven"? "The Book of Love" is one of his most famous, and the first time I heard it, it was as a cover done by former-Soul Coughing singer Mike Doughty. Not knowing it was a cover, in my review of Doughty's album I called the song out as some of the worst lyrics he had ever written. "Fido, Your Leash is Too Long" has a cool jittery, off-kilter beat, and the song is unlistenable due to the lyrics. More often, though, he writes killer lyrics and then covers them with jarringly bad music. "Love is Like Jazz," "The Things We Did and Didn't Do," and "Sweet-Lovin' Man" should be hits, but I can't listen to them more than once.

When he does get it together, the songs are shockingly good. Out of 69 songs, I loved three: "Wi' Nae Wee Bairn Ye'll Me Beget," and "Yeah! Oh, Yeah!" are standouts on the third disc, and "Papa Was a Rodeo" is on the short list for songs I'd love to perform at an open-mic night. The stark and shocking tale shows what Merritt can do at his best, describing a life that sounds all too real and harsh. Was it worth slogging through almost three hours for 10 minutes of great music? Well, on that particular day, yes. But that's the importance of mood when you're listening to music. Sometimes it's just the right combination.


Read Moon's entries here: Madonna, Madredeus, Magic Sam

NEWS: Levon Helm, Drummer for the Band, Dies at 71

Courtesy www.levonhelm.com

Yesterday, Levon Helm, drummer and co-founder of 1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die artists the Band, died yesterday of complications from throat cancer. He sang some of the Band's most famous songs, including "Up on Cripple Creek" and "The Weight." I honestly didn't know anything about the Band or Helm until I picked up his 2007 album Dirt Farmer, his first release since 1982, at the library. I was floored: this guy was basically told he would never sing again after his cancer treatment, and here he was just laying it down. My coworker lent me his copy of the DVD The Last Waltz and again I was amazed to see the Band in action. And then finally I heard the book entry, The Band, and I loved it. In conducting my interview with the Beau Brummels' Sal Valentino we discussed Helm's solo work and how much we loved his voice and songwriting (I preferred Dirt Farmer whereas Mr. Valentino was a fan of Electric Dirt).

I often hear about famous celebrities dying, and I feel unaffected. Yes, I feel for their families, I mourn the loss of their art, but today I feel a pit in my stomach hearing about the loss of Helm. His singing was so down to earth, the songs he sang ringing so true with their hard-luck stories (check out "Growing Trade" from his Electric Dirt), that I feel his loss on a more personal level than I ever have for someone I never knew. Counting Crows' song "Richard Manuel is Dead," about the keyboardist for the Band, sums up the dumbstruck feeling I have now. My thoughts and prayers go out to Mr. Helm's family, and my thanks to him for all the wonderful music he's left us with.

Listen to The Band here.

Buy Dirt Farmer here and The Band here.

NEWS: 2Pac is Back

When it rains it pours. I hate going weeks without updating the blog and then doing multiple updates all in a row, but this is just too.... weird/good/really freaking weird to pass up. 1000 Recordings artist Dr. Dre closed out the Coachella music festival on Sunday night, and he evidently had a slew of guest stars (including 1000RTHBYD artist Eminem) but the most surprising was late rapper (and 1KRTHBYD included artist) 2Pac. Folks have been recording with 2Pac for years now since his untimely death in 1996 (a fact Dave Chapelle and 1KRTHBYD artist ?uestlove riff on here and that I wrote about on this Pink Floyd cover), but this has to be the first time he showed up in 3D for a gig. In fact, is this the first time anyone has come back from the grave as a hologram? Is this awesome, creepy, or just sad? You have to tell me, because I can't make heads or tails of this. It's certainly groundbreaking. Watch "2Pac" do his thing in the video below.



Listen to 2Pac's All Eyez on Me here.
Listen to Dr. Dre's The Chronic here (an album that helped launch Snoop Dogg's career). 

COVER: Counting Crows Rock Out on Gram Parsons

I am actually still alive, despite my two week absence from the blog. I'll cover some of the reasons for the delay in my next feature post, which I am working on, but in the interim, I wanted to drop a cover on here and mention that my "Stream Recordings" list just hit 500 albums linked (halfway for all you non-math types).

Counting Crows (my favorite band) released a new album of covers this week. Part of me was disappointed that it was a covers album because they hadn't released a studio album since 2008, but I still couldn't help but be excited. Lead singer Adam Duritz and his band sure know how to do a great cover. Based on their tracklist and the songs they have been playing live forever, the band loves to listen to music. In fact, in the liner notes, Duritz says "As much as I love our band, and I DO love our band, we were just one of a thousand bands, in one city among a thousand cities, and a lot of those bands were great or amazing in one way or another... I've never stopped being a fan." Really, one of their best skills is song selection, and they picked one of the 1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die on the tracklist for this one.

"Return of the Grievous Angel" by Gram Parsons is one I discovered through Moon's book, and I can't claim that it really left much of an impression. I am way more into Parsons' work with the Byrds than his solo stuff. The Crows version was much more memorable to me, as they pick up the pace and get pretty rowdy on this one. The great lyrics are highlighted by the immediacy of the arrangement, the live energy of the band, and a couple kickass solos (one mandolin and one guitar).

Listen to the song here, then buy the whole album here.
Buy Gram Parson's GP/Grievous Angel here.

Classical Training

You may have noticed a trend in the recordings I tend to write about. I am not much of a fan (let alone expert) of jazz, showtunes, opera, or classical. While showtunes and jazz would be fun to see live, I don't care much for listening to them at home, and opera is a whole different challenge for my not-classically trained ears.

When it comes to classical music, I have no problem enjoying it. I have a problem distinguishing between the pieces: I wouldn't know Bach from Beethoven or Brahms, Mozart from Mahler or Mendelssohn. In fact, I often tend to "tune out" classical music, which makes it great for grading papers or reading, but not so much for "hearing" in the sense of 1000 Recordings to HEAR Before You Die.

My wife listens to a lot of podcasts because, as I've mentioned before, we spend a lot of time putting my son down for naps/bedtime, and after the "routine" (bath, pajamas, books, etc), all that is required of us while my son falls asleep is our presence. So while I often listen to music while I wait for him to stop thrashing around, she listens to NPR's This American Life and Radiolab.

She told me about a month ago that she heard a Radiolab episode she thought I might enjoy. I don't spend a lot of time listening to podcasts, but I started getting into listening to the 1000 Recordings Podcast while I wash dishes, and since there was none this week, I browsed the podcasts I had downloaded for her. As I was looking I came across the one she had suggested for me.

First, I highly recommend checking out this episode. It's well worth the 20 minutes. But here's the Cliff's Notes version if you don't want to commit the time. This guy, Bob Milne, claims to be able to hear two complete symphonies in his mind at the same time. When pressed by a neurologist, he upped that to four. I had the same response as the show's host, Jad Abrumrad: "That's total bull****." So the whole episode focuses on how they tested this claim.

What really amazed me was not just that this guy can do this, but the way he does it. He literally sees the orchestra playing the pieces as a 3-D movie that he can zoom in and out of, increase the volume of certain sections, change the speed. He also gets certain "emotions" from chords. As Abrumrad protests, everyone has a strong emotional relationship to music (although more and more I am realizing there is a large variance between people on that one). But Milne's experience sounds much closer to synesthesia (for example, how Tony of the 1000 Recordings Podcast sees colors when he listens to music).

Well, damn, if I could do all that then of course I would be able to discern between all the classical pieces. I could probably even differentiate between different orchestras! Here's the bottom line: I'm really jealous of Milne's brain, and Tony's, and anyone whose relation to music is that organic and natural. Because I feel like I have to be an intense listener. I study my music collection like a textbook: I know how many 5-star songs I have (133), how many of the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs of All Time are on my iPod (316) vs Pitchfork's list of 500 Best Songs of the Decade (185). I know songs by the first second of guitar feedback on a track. Songs that reference other songs are my favorite, because I feel like I'm in on a secret (check out "You Were Right" by Built to Spill for a great example) which may be a reason I love covers so much.

My brain is analytical about something that really should be, I feel, more emotional. I have a very good memory, not just about music, and I am into statistics (my brother and I used to keep stats while we played Nintendo's Major League Baseball, for entire seasons). I have a strong passion for music, but I feel like I am working extra hard at something that some people have a natural ability for. I hear a song and the first thing I notice is, logically, the lyrics. In 5th grade I excitedly memorized my first song ("2 Legit 2 Quit" by MC Hammer), but if you asked me to play the notes on a piano I'd be nearly hopeless. I'd probably get there, because I have an obsession with this stuff, but I'm without talent.

All this is to lead up to the four composers listed in the Radiolab podcast; Schubert, Brahms, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn. Two I've heard, two I haven't gotten to yet. My ears have adapted since I heard Beethoven's Missa Solemnis (the only notes I wrote in the book were "slow and boring") and Brahms' Four Symphonies (for which I wrote no notes at all, probably wasn't paying close enough attention). I think I'm getting better at identifying the patterns in jazz, taking pleasure in the lofty voices of opera, and finding the common threads that tie all the pieces in the book together, but for some reason, I still have a bad habit of drifting off when I listen to classical. Hopefully, by the time I get to Schubert's Ninth Symphony and Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto (listed in the book under violinist Yehudi Menuhin), while I may not have 3-D, technicolor ears, I'll hear something in this genre that grabs my full attention.

I'm not sure what it's going to take, though, because it sure hasn't come naturally to me.

NEWS: Facebook Discussion Group and Challenge

A new Facebook group was just created by a group of friends under the title "1,000 Recordings Challenge." Each day the group listens to a new recording (or at least the "Key Tracks") and discusses their thoughts. Sounds like a pretty good idea, because, like watching Mystery Science Theater 3000, I think this book is better when read as a group. I have learned so much about music through the blogs/podcasts/conversations of others as I journey through this list.

Join in the conversation here. And hey, while you're already on Facebook, like my page. You'll get super fast up to the minute updates when I post something new, so you don't have to sit there and hit the refresh button over and over (F5, if you didn't know). Also, sometimes I share interesting news I find on Facebook that may not get its own post. 

COVER: Mike's 1000 Cover the Recordings

Last week the 1000 Recordings Podcast guys hooked the ultimate interview: the book's author Tom Moon. Before you read any further, I recommend you go check it out, and at least listen to the opening, where Moon talks about how he compiled the book.

After listening to his criteria (imagining that he is trying to introduce the world of music to a very receptive teenager rather than "The Best" or "The Most Influential") I have had to reevaluate my own "Mike's 1000" choices. I think I would still include the ones I have, but I think Moon's list has become even more subjective than it already was. It's hard to argue against playing any particular entry for someone when you are just trying to expose them to music (although, in some ways this has helped me think of more entries that I feel are missing).

Regardless of where my "Mike's 1000" list will go in the future, the three acts I've picked so far, Sun Kil Moon,  Iron & Wine, and Sublime, have all covered a recording that appears on the list. SKM and I&W, in particular, may be more well known for their covers than they are as originators. All three of these covers are fine tributes, and in the case of Iron & Wine, possibly better than the original. Check out the covers below, and then compare them to the originals at the bottom of the page.

Sublime - "Rivers of Babylon" (The Melodians cover, filed under Jimmy Cliff' in the book)
Sun Kil Moon - "Send in the Clowns" (written by Stephen Sondheim, sung by Glynis Johns in the book)
Iron & Wine - "Waitin' for a Superman" (The Flaming Lips cover)

The originals: