What makes people interested in reading something? A clever lede, one that draws readers in and keeps them intrigued to continue.
In other words, something utterly unlike the above.
At any rate, here's my wrap-up of the year in music, 2004. Curiously, two of the best albums released in 2004 were released in slightly different versions in 2003 (and in fact, both made my 2003 list). The Fall released its 5,372nd album...for the second or third time; the US version (on Narnack Records) adds a couple tracks, subtracts another one or two, and alters the mix slightly. Between this version, the British version, and the version originally intended for release which Mark E. Smith scotched (widely available online), I'm not sure which I like best. But as a registered Fall Geek, I of course have them all.
While Lilys' discography is nowhere near as chaotic as that of the Fall, main Lily Kurt Heasley did his best in 2004 to confuse everyone, by releasing an album called The Lilys (the band name has no article; the album title does), which is last year's Precollection with a few tracks remixed or with new parts added, plus three new tracks. So far it's available only as a British import, on Rainbow Quartz.
Onto the top CDs, sans asterisks. These are grouped in tiers of quality, alphabetized within tier:
John Cale Hobo Sapiens
Interpol Antics
Ted Leo & the Pharmacists Shake the Sheets
Macha Forget Tomorrow
A.C. Newman The Slow Wonder
At this point, it was surprising that John Cale could put out a solid song-oriented release. I wasn't that impressed with his previous effort, 1996's Walking on Locusts. And it's still more surprising that Cale could put out a release incorporating sampling and ProTools and sound like neither a dilettante nor a desperate old fart trying to keep up with them kids these days.
The Arcade Fire Funeral
The Magnetic Fields i
John Vanderslice Cellar Door
Wilco A Ghost Is Born
Brian Wilson Smile
Yes, that Arcade Fire album is getting raved about everywhere. And yes, it's overrated...but that's mostly because, to read a lot of reviews, it'll cure Jesus's acne and alter the earth's rotation so it's summer year-round everywhere. What it is is a fine, impressively passionate and intricate debut album. Speaking of impossible expectations, Brian Wilson finally got around to finishing Smile (perhaps you'd heard...). True, his voice isn't what it was, and some of the lyrics are...well, if you didn't know the terrible toll of bicycle riders on Native Americans, here's your chance to find out. Still: what's brilliant about the album is the way it emphasizes musical relations among tracks that were originally released on several separate albums - such as the rhythm that shows up initially in "Heroes and Villains" and continues on through "Child Is Father to the Man" and culminates in the bassline to "Good Vibrations."
All Night Radio Spirit Stereo Frequency
Björk Medúlla
Elvis Costello & the Imposters The Delivery Man
Franz Ferdinand [s/t]
Guided by Voices Half Smiles of the Decomposed
Robyn Hitchcock Spooked
Mission of Burma ONoffON
Modest Mouse Good News for People Who Love Bad News
The Björk album is probably more admirable than listenable: I'm still not sure what to make of it, except that the variety of sounds and textures she achieves using primarily voice (her own and those of others from a multitude of styles) is pretty astonishing, and ambitious as well. I was a bit disappointed by Mission of Burma at first...but mostly because at their peak, they were only one of the best rock bands ever. This is just a very fine album. I really shouldn't complain, should I.
Honorable Mention:
Air Talkie Walkie, Blonde Redhead Misery Is a Butterfly, Statuesque Choir Above, Fire Below, TV on the Radio Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes.
CDs I Would Probably Like Better If I'd Had More Time to Listen to Them:
Clinic Winchester Cathedral, Sam Phillips A Boot and a Shoe, Chris Stamey Travels in the South, Ken Stringfellow Soft Commands.
I didn't buy many EPs this year, but two are worthy of mention: William of Orange by The Caribbean, and Bliss Descending by Jason Falkner.
Finally, a special category for Excellent CD I Can't Be Objective About Because I'm Friends with the Guy Who Made It: John Sharples' I Can Explain Everything. Sharples has been around for a while (read: he's even older than I am) and is best known as a drummer, but on this record, his solo debut, he also plays guitar and the occasional keyboard and takes a turn at the mic. He's roped a cavalcade of talented friends into writing songs for him (he's also a lawyer, did I mention? I'm sure there's no connection), such as Matt Keating, Jules Verdone, Paula Carino, and Bradley Skaught.
As much as I still believe in the album as a format for presenting songs in a complementary context, the proliferation of mp3 websites has made it way easier to hear songs without either plunking down fifteen bucks or risking the wrath of the RIAA (well, maybe). My favorite sites are listed in the links at right, and from them (mostly) I've drawn the following list of top "singles" from 2004 (or at least, that I first heard in 2004):
Boyskout "Back to Bed"
The Chap "(I Am) Oozing Emotion"
Nimbus Coleman "Who Is the Governess?"
Great Lake Swimmer "I Will Never See the Sun"
I Monster "Who Is She"
Momus "Jesus in Furs"
The Owls "Air"
Andy Partridge "I Wonder Why the Wonderfalls"
Popsicle Thieves "Touch You Natalie Jane"
The Andy Partridge song is, of course, the theme for the late, lamented TV series Wonderfalls (but - complete series DVD out in March!) and certainly deserves to be more widely heard than that show was viewed. And that Popsicle Thieves song (they sometimes record as the Bicycle Thieves)? Yet another proof that from nowhere at all, with utterly marginal acclaim, perfect songs can spring forth. The band is primarily the project of a guy named Brian from New Orleans, and this track showed up on a compilation of music featuring musicians subscribed to the Robyn Hitchcock mailing list. But damn - it's nearly a perfect pop song: melody, clever chord structure, witty lyrics, and wonderful, compelling arranging. A lot of the rhythms seem developed from the sound of the name "Natalie Jane," for example - and listen to the way the drum part develops over the course of the song to increase momentum and tension. Oh, wait...you can't really hear that, because the song's not generally available and I don't currently have mp3 hosting space. Sigh...
In the interests of completeness, and of proving how out of it I am - or rather, further proving - the following is a list of CDs that I'm quite likely to like but either hadn't purchased until a few days ago or haven't bought at all yet - and therefore, I can't really judge how well they'll eventually stack up in a long-term ranking of 2004's best:
American Music Club Love Songs for Patriots, Camper Van Beethoven New Roman Times, PJ Harvey Uh Huh Her, McLusky The Difference Between Me and You Is That I'm Not on Fire, Elliott Smith From a Basement on a Hill, Sonic Youth Sonic Nurse, Tom Waits Real Gone.
12.31.2004
12.28.2004
my favorite Christmas gift
I got the coolest digital camera. It's a monopixel camera - every image is either solid black or solid white.
12.22.2004
sheer brilliance...
Reprinted in its entirety, as written by one Lawrence Swan of Brooklyn, NY and printed in the Letters column of the December 27, 2004 issue of The Nation (online here):
A fool is my shepherd. I shall not think. He maketh me to bog down in a quagmire. He leadeth me beside dirty waters. He destroyeth my ozone. He leadeth me down paths to the extreme right, for his lobbyists' sake.
Yea, though I walk through relatively safe streets, I do fear evil (the threat level is orange), for thou hast scared me. My assault rifle comforteth me. Thou anointest my car with oil. My deficit runneth over. Thou preparest my table with fast food in the presence of my television.
Surely paranoia and resentment will follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in this Empire of Fools till I die, uninsured.
A fool is my shepherd. I shall not think. He maketh me to bog down in a quagmire. He leadeth me beside dirty waters. He destroyeth my ozone. He leadeth me down paths to the extreme right, for his lobbyists' sake.
Yea, though I walk through relatively safe streets, I do fear evil (the threat level is orange), for thou hast scared me. My assault rifle comforteth me. Thou anointest my car with oil. My deficit runneth over. Thou preparest my table with fast food in the presence of my television.
Surely paranoia and resentment will follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in this Empire of Fools till I die, uninsured.
12.19.2004
three books with one footnote
Three book recommendations:
First, Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? A bit obvious, perhaps...but I think Frank nails the way the cultural divide in the US plays out politically, including its roots in our national aversion to economic and class issues. Read carefully, also, Frank demonstrates that the somewhat overstated "moral values" factor in the last election is intrinsically linked to social conservatives' views on security and the war: essentially, the great crime of "Liberals" in this view is that they have neither understanding nor respect for social conservatives' conception of the world, and social conservatives see that both in the sex, drugs, rock'n'abortion lifestyle of "Hollywood liberals" and in those liberals' supposed willingness to abandon "American" values to the moral haze of decadent, European cosmopolitanism. And it's the supposedly effete nature of those values (Rumsfeld's infamous "old Europe") that, in their view, led to the lax security and vigilance that allowed 9-11. Liberals, in other words, are too morally lazy to recognize evil, and therefore cannot protect America from the evils that threaten it. (That history doesn't bear this out, at all, is irrelevant: social conservatives tend to value "the heart" and decisiveness over endless intellectualizing, theorizing, and nuance-mongering. The latest issue of Left Business Observer points out that at least some evidence suggests that Democrats have done much better with the economy than Republicans have; and historically, conservative isolationism has meant that the Democrats were believed to be the stronger party on foreign policy and security.)
A particular strength of Frank's book is the way he grounds the current power of social conservatives in time and place: Kansas (Frank's home state) serves as a microcosm of the changes whereby the rural poor have ended up largely going for Republicans. He does this in part by providing essentially a miniature lesson in Kansas history, but more importantly by letting many social conservatives speak. And in doing so, he also shows that they're right about one thing: the powers-that-be in American culture really don't think much of them, despite their blathering about NASCAR and Jesus. They only pretend to care about them - evidently, since their policies continue to impoverish and destroy the lives of the working poor who are Frank's subject. The problem, though, is that the Democrats have all but abandoned economic issues, leaving social conservatives with no real home. And it's been the Republicans' genius to use the erasure of economics, and the phantom of liberal cultural dominance and depravity, to win over those folks on social issues, even though economically the party's policies are far worse for them than those of the Dems.
I do wish Frank had spent more time pointing out a certain obvious hypocrisy in the social conservative worldview. If it's "Hollywood liberals" who are forcefeeding good, decent Americans their diet of sleaze, how does that reconcile with a belief in the free market? Or to put it another way: given the numbers of social conservatives, and given the popularity of "sleaze," who's buying? Pretty clearly, a lot of social conservatives protest the adult bookstore publicly but sneak in the back door with porn videos privately. Or do they think it's only latte-sipping "liberals" who watch Jerry Springer?
***
When I first heard about Kevin Murphy's A Year at the Movies, I figured, okay, should be funny: Murphy was, of course, one of the writers for the late, beloved Mystery Science Theater 3000 - so I expected a bunch of cutting remarks on a series of lame movies, this time rooted in Murphy's shtick that he would see at least one movie (not on TV) per day for an entire year.
And indeed, the book is funny...but it's much more than that. In the end, it's a love letter to movies; a love letter written trying to patch up a relationship that had grown a bit stale, tired, and taken for granted. So yeah, funny - but also heartfelt, witty, intelligent, charming, and even occasionally, wise. Murphy's clearly a thoughtful man, and while one wouldn't really expect the guy who voiced Tom Servo to approach profundity, at times - through the unexpected vehicle of, say, the consequences of dressing like Santa to see a movie - he comes quite close.
***
Finally, a book I'm not yet finished with: Scott Huler's Defining the Wind. I've written before about my fascination with the Beaufort Scale, so when this book came out, of course I had to read it. Huler begins by exploring the origins of the wind scale...but along the way, following where those explorations lead, he ends up having quite a bit to say about fascinating arcana as mapmaking and nineteenth-century naval navigational devices. What makes these explorations more than just idle wonderings is Huler's capacity to make us realize how these things worked for actual people. For example: the sheer ingenuity of navigation, and of the devices created to assist it, as well as the underappreciated magnitude of seafaring's importance to history. Aside from the poetry of the Beaufort Scale, none of these things were of particular interest to me before reading this book. I count that a triumph for Huler: that he's able to draw me in despite my lack of readymade enthusiasm for his subjects.
***
Finally, an update to one of my earlier musings: Turns out the "remove glasses to change tone" gesture is much older than I'd thought. We'd rented the DVD of Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner - and two minutes into the bonus feature (a 1940 documentary called "A New Romance of Celluloid: The Miracle of Sound"), "Douglas Shearer, sound engineer of the MGM Studio," stands up from his desk, removes his glasses, and launches into his narration on the history of movie sound - exactly in the way in which a contemporary pitchman might do to ask whether you, the viewer, know that there's something you can do to solve the problem of male endurance issues.
First, Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? A bit obvious, perhaps...but I think Frank nails the way the cultural divide in the US plays out politically, including its roots in our national aversion to economic and class issues. Read carefully, also, Frank demonstrates that the somewhat overstated "moral values" factor in the last election is intrinsically linked to social conservatives' views on security and the war: essentially, the great crime of "Liberals" in this view is that they have neither understanding nor respect for social conservatives' conception of the world, and social conservatives see that both in the sex, drugs, rock'n'abortion lifestyle of "Hollywood liberals" and in those liberals' supposed willingness to abandon "American" values to the moral haze of decadent, European cosmopolitanism. And it's the supposedly effete nature of those values (Rumsfeld's infamous "old Europe") that, in their view, led to the lax security and vigilance that allowed 9-11. Liberals, in other words, are too morally lazy to recognize evil, and therefore cannot protect America from the evils that threaten it. (That history doesn't bear this out, at all, is irrelevant: social conservatives tend to value "the heart" and decisiveness over endless intellectualizing, theorizing, and nuance-mongering. The latest issue of Left Business Observer points out that at least some evidence suggests that Democrats have done much better with the economy than Republicans have; and historically, conservative isolationism has meant that the Democrats were believed to be the stronger party on foreign policy and security.)
A particular strength of Frank's book is the way he grounds the current power of social conservatives in time and place: Kansas (Frank's home state) serves as a microcosm of the changes whereby the rural poor have ended up largely going for Republicans. He does this in part by providing essentially a miniature lesson in Kansas history, but more importantly by letting many social conservatives speak. And in doing so, he also shows that they're right about one thing: the powers-that-be in American culture really don't think much of them, despite their blathering about NASCAR and Jesus. They only pretend to care about them - evidently, since their policies continue to impoverish and destroy the lives of the working poor who are Frank's subject. The problem, though, is that the Democrats have all but abandoned economic issues, leaving social conservatives with no real home. And it's been the Republicans' genius to use the erasure of economics, and the phantom of liberal cultural dominance and depravity, to win over those folks on social issues, even though economically the party's policies are far worse for them than those of the Dems.
I do wish Frank had spent more time pointing out a certain obvious hypocrisy in the social conservative worldview. If it's "Hollywood liberals" who are forcefeeding good, decent Americans their diet of sleaze, how does that reconcile with a belief in the free market? Or to put it another way: given the numbers of social conservatives, and given the popularity of "sleaze," who's buying? Pretty clearly, a lot of social conservatives protest the adult bookstore publicly but sneak in the back door with porn videos privately. Or do they think it's only latte-sipping "liberals" who watch Jerry Springer?
***
When I first heard about Kevin Murphy's A Year at the Movies, I figured, okay, should be funny: Murphy was, of course, one of the writers for the late, beloved Mystery Science Theater 3000 - so I expected a bunch of cutting remarks on a series of lame movies, this time rooted in Murphy's shtick that he would see at least one movie (not on TV) per day for an entire year.
And indeed, the book is funny...but it's much more than that. In the end, it's a love letter to movies; a love letter written trying to patch up a relationship that had grown a bit stale, tired, and taken for granted. So yeah, funny - but also heartfelt, witty, intelligent, charming, and even occasionally, wise. Murphy's clearly a thoughtful man, and while one wouldn't really expect the guy who voiced Tom Servo to approach profundity, at times - through the unexpected vehicle of, say, the consequences of dressing like Santa to see a movie - he comes quite close.
***
Finally, a book I'm not yet finished with: Scott Huler's Defining the Wind. I've written before about my fascination with the Beaufort Scale, so when this book came out, of course I had to read it. Huler begins by exploring the origins of the wind scale...but along the way, following where those explorations lead, he ends up having quite a bit to say about fascinating arcana as mapmaking and nineteenth-century naval navigational devices. What makes these explorations more than just idle wonderings is Huler's capacity to make us realize how these things worked for actual people. For example: the sheer ingenuity of navigation, and of the devices created to assist it, as well as the underappreciated magnitude of seafaring's importance to history. Aside from the poetry of the Beaufort Scale, none of these things were of particular interest to me before reading this book. I count that a triumph for Huler: that he's able to draw me in despite my lack of readymade enthusiasm for his subjects.
***
Finally, an update to one of my earlier musings: Turns out the "remove glasses to change tone" gesture is much older than I'd thought. We'd rented the DVD of Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner - and two minutes into the bonus feature (a 1940 documentary called "A New Romance of Celluloid: The Miracle of Sound"), "Douglas Shearer, sound engineer of the MGM Studio," stands up from his desk, removes his glasses, and launches into his narration on the history of movie sound - exactly in the way in which a contemporary pitchman might do to ask whether you, the viewer, know that there's something you can do to solve the problem of male endurance issues.
12.14.2004
a mandate for...incompetence!
Not as major an issue as some, and overplayed relentlessly in the media, but...the Kerik flap certainly indicates that Bush's election didn't suddenly grant him and his staff stunning new powers of competence. Here's a transcription of White House media flak Scott McClellan desperately flailing about trying not to acknowledge the obvious fact that any reasonable investigation into Kerik's background would have immediately made it clear he was a dubious choice for head of Heimland Sekuritat...
12.13.2004
cum now
Out of the gutter, you. No, I'm talking about the Latin-derived preposition meaning "together" or "with" that's used typically to link attributes; "artist-cum-promoter" from this article, for example. If I were Dictator of the Universe - or just an editor - I'd ban this pointless word altogether. It's pretentious - and I'll bet a good portion of readers are rather puzzled by it, assume it's not what they think it is (it's not), and move on, with no loss of meaning whatsoever, since "artist-promoter" or "artist/promoter" conveys exactly the same thing. I rather doubt any actual human has actually spoken the word - not that speech is the sole arbiter for writing, but it can certainly be a guideline. And of course there is that distracting identity of the spelling to the porn world's favorite term.
It does seem sometimes as if journalists use "a-cum-b" as shorthand for "thinks he's an a but he's really only a b" - but maybe that's just my impression, colored by the context of the article linked above. (Automatic demerit points for using only one name; and the guy should go back to designing junior-high girls' social-studies folders.) But really: doesn't the phrase "artist/promoter" rather convey the same impression all by itself - with greater subtlety and less potential for confusion?
It does seem sometimes as if journalists use "a-cum-b" as shorthand for "thinks he's an a but he's really only a b" - but maybe that's just my impression, colored by the context of the article linked above. (Automatic demerit points for using only one name; and the guy should go back to designing junior-high girls' social-studies folders.) But really: doesn't the phrase "artist/promoter" rather convey the same impression all by itself - with greater subtlety and less potential for confusion?
12.10.2004
new peeve companion
Please, let us nip this CD packaging trend directly in the bud. (Why am I using what I presume is a horticultural metaphor when plants regularly commit suicide in my presence? Ah - I think I've just answered my own question.) I speak of this deal with the cardboard gatefold packaging, with two pockets facing the center, one of which holds the CD and the other of which holds either notes, a second CD, or nothing at all. The problem? The pockets are deep enough that the CD cannot be grasped by its edge and pulled out (or perhaps it can, if you have the same microfingers that the people who assemble hard drives have - although blessedly you do not need one of those triple-angled screwdrivers), which means either you bend the packaging all the way backwards, and try to flop the disc out that way (which doesn't work: the bending creates enough tension to hold the disc in place, usually...or if there's slack, and there's two CDs, the second one wants to fall out as well) - or you figure, well, if I compress the packaging a bit so I can reach in to pull out the disc...dammit, just tore the packaging near the middle, at its weakest point. On two of these that I've bought recently (Arcade Fire's Funeral and the Frank Black Francis album), that's exactly what happened: both are now slightly torn. With the Arcade Fire disc, at least the packaging is attractive enough, and uses cardboard's three-dimensionality to positive effect, so it doesn't seem totally pointless - but the FBF disc is just somber black-and-white tinted photos.
Here's my suggestion: go ahead and do fancy engraved, embossed, or diecut artwork in cardboard - but either package that in such a way that the discs are easily removed, or put the fancy cardboard in a jewelbox (The Long Winters did that with their glossy, 3D ink-laden packaging for When I Pretend to Fall.
While I'm at it: do the plastic slipcases surrounding the reissued early Brian Eno titles really need to be so damned tight?
Next, I will complain about how I can't get the damned container open to get at my meds. Nurse! Nurse?
Here's my suggestion: go ahead and do fancy engraved, embossed, or diecut artwork in cardboard - but either package that in such a way that the discs are easily removed, or put the fancy cardboard in a jewelbox (The Long Winters did that with their glossy, 3D ink-laden packaging for When I Pretend to Fall.
While I'm at it: do the plastic slipcases surrounding the reissued early Brian Eno titles really need to be so damned tight?
Next, I will complain about how I can't get the damned container open to get at my meds. Nurse! Nurse?
12.09.2004
unzeitgeisty
On a mailing list I'm subscribed to, someone mentioned the newish pop-sociological buzzword "Generation Jones." After I removed my finger from my throat, I did some googling - evidently, I'm hopelessly uncool since I'd never heard of this term until now...even though, theoretically, I belong to this demographic.
I was going to write a withering screed about the pointlessness of this phenomenon, its patent absurdity and inaccuracy (as in: almost zero about its supposed key traits resonates with me), and the sheer idiocy of the term...when I discovered someone else already had.
All I have to add to that is: the guy who supposedly coined the term? Just look at that ridiculous ponytail...
(Full disclosure: I did, at one time, wear a ponytail. That was in the early '90s, however. I apologize heartily.)
I was going to write a withering screed about the pointlessness of this phenomenon, its patent absurdity and inaccuracy (as in: almost zero about its supposed key traits resonates with me), and the sheer idiocy of the term...when I discovered someone else already had.
All I have to add to that is: the guy who supposedly coined the term? Just look at that ridiculous ponytail...
(Full disclosure: I did, at one time, wear a ponytail. That was in the early '90s, however. I apologize heartily.)
12.04.2004
through stars, through nights, and back, through you
You've probably been there. For whatever reason, there's an enormous alcohol-shaped hole in your heart (or so its outline suggests to you), and you've been diligently filling it, working toward a state of bar zen, spirits having lifted you from your body, which you observe impassively as the world rushes around the stillness that remains. You observe, empirically, that the universe is an enormous wheel in motion, at whose center you are, as objects near you move at a magisterial pace, while the further away from you things are, the more they revolve into indistinctness, turning to mere blurs at the room's penumbra. Maybe there's a band playing, or a jukebox, or maybe it's just a song in your head, but music crashes periodically in waves at an indeterminate distance. Someone is yelling at you, or maybe at someone else; somehow you're on the street, walking; and then at home, or not at home; you blink, and it's twilight.
Most of the time, CDs with twenty-minute bonus tracks full of random noise or silence are merely annoying. If the "bonus" is a separate track, you program it out, and if it's not, you think you should probably burn a copy of the CD without the annoying twenty minutes, particularly if there's an actual song after the endless noise. For a long while, this is how I felt about Maki's Tears on the Blastshield (one of the most appallingly overlooked CDs of recent years: googling the title reveals a couple hits from the label that released it, Lunch Records, a couple random lists that mention it, and its entry in my own 2002 best-of list). The album's last track, curiously entitled "Distressors Ring on 5" (presumably something an audio engineer might say in the recording studio), runs nearly thirty-seven minutes, half the length of the CD, and its middle twenty minutes is, at first listen, a field recording of some night out at a bar, with a few stray and indistinct passages of music popping up now and again. The first few times I played the CD, I turned the CD off after the first nine minutes or so of the track, which is an actual song. For a while, I just fast-forwarded through the middle twenty minutes directly to the song occupying the track's last six minutes or so. So I certainly didn't expect what happened after one evening when, letting the CD play in the background while I distractedly did something else on the computer, I heard the whole thing again, and realized that the last song was in fact a much better song when it came after that twenty-minute interlude.
It would make a better story, of course, if I'd said that the track clicked for me when I listened to it in a drunken haze like that it seems to depict. No such poetic justice here - but certainly the distracted state of non-listening helped, in that I wasn't actively expecting something to happen during that twenty minutes. Taken on its own terms, then, the track suddenly was no longer an annoyance; in fact, in many ways it's the album's boldest and best track.
I'm sure most people aren't going to agree, and I'm sure part of my response is personal, for one reason because, as I suggest, I've been there. But also because this band and I have a history of sorts. As the Lunch Records website linked above notes, the band members are Milwaukee expats, and for a time in the early '90s, the band Tim Buckley and John Daniels were in, Wobble Test, was not only my favorite local band but one of my favorite bands, period. It was frustrating to me that they didn't receive the acclaim I felt their music deserved, even though I recognized that "deserving" had little to do with actual acclaim. It was also frustrating to see the band in that often, they succumbed to a Replacements-like belief in the virtues of being utterly blotto - particularly, it seemed, Buckley. The band's raggedness could be a virtue, to be sure - but there were times it seemed they were going to fall to pieces right in front of you. And I remember one night, at a Buckley solo show in some decrepit cheapo Riverwest pit of a bar, he was so drunk he could barely stand or speak - and yet, even though he rarely finished a song and his voice was ravished, there were nevertheless moments of transcendent musical beauty there.
Perhaps because the band's other half is studio pros Alan Weatherhead and Miguel Urbiztondo (of Sound of Music Studios), Maki lacks that quality of dancing blindfolded on the edge of a cliff - but they make up for it by a subtle layering of sounds, along with Buckley's impressionistic but impassioned lyrics. The bandmembers' impressive list of connections (Mary Timony, David Lowery, Crooked Fingers, Sparklehorse, the Blow Pops, and lesser-known but musically fab Koester, for whom Maki has served as backing band) serves as a reasonable ingredients list for their own sound, but they've received far too little critical notice on their own. Unfortunately, that lack of notice translates to little info on the web: whether they're still a going concern or not is unclear.
At least there's the one CD. I'm past worrying that my favorite local act isn't as successful as they deserve to be (and there's been at least one fave band of mine in the last three cities I've lived in that are every bit the equal of their far-more acclaimed peers locally and nationally), I'm only happy that I'm able to hear the recordings that do exist.
Most of the time, CDs with twenty-minute bonus tracks full of random noise or silence are merely annoying. If the "bonus" is a separate track, you program it out, and if it's not, you think you should probably burn a copy of the CD without the annoying twenty minutes, particularly if there's an actual song after the endless noise. For a long while, this is how I felt about Maki's Tears on the Blastshield (one of the most appallingly overlooked CDs of recent years: googling the title reveals a couple hits from the label that released it, Lunch Records, a couple random lists that mention it, and its entry in my own 2002 best-of list). The album's last track, curiously entitled "Distressors Ring on 5" (presumably something an audio engineer might say in the recording studio), runs nearly thirty-seven minutes, half the length of the CD, and its middle twenty minutes is, at first listen, a field recording of some night out at a bar, with a few stray and indistinct passages of music popping up now and again. The first few times I played the CD, I turned the CD off after the first nine minutes or so of the track, which is an actual song. For a while, I just fast-forwarded through the middle twenty minutes directly to the song occupying the track's last six minutes or so. So I certainly didn't expect what happened after one evening when, letting the CD play in the background while I distractedly did something else on the computer, I heard the whole thing again, and realized that the last song was in fact a much better song when it came after that twenty-minute interlude.
It would make a better story, of course, if I'd said that the track clicked for me when I listened to it in a drunken haze like that it seems to depict. No such poetic justice here - but certainly the distracted state of non-listening helped, in that I wasn't actively expecting something to happen during that twenty minutes. Taken on its own terms, then, the track suddenly was no longer an annoyance; in fact, in many ways it's the album's boldest and best track.
I'm sure most people aren't going to agree, and I'm sure part of my response is personal, for one reason because, as I suggest, I've been there. But also because this band and I have a history of sorts. As the Lunch Records website linked above notes, the band members are Milwaukee expats, and for a time in the early '90s, the band Tim Buckley and John Daniels were in, Wobble Test, was not only my favorite local band but one of my favorite bands, period. It was frustrating to me that they didn't receive the acclaim I felt their music deserved, even though I recognized that "deserving" had little to do with actual acclaim. It was also frustrating to see the band in that often, they succumbed to a Replacements-like belief in the virtues of being utterly blotto - particularly, it seemed, Buckley. The band's raggedness could be a virtue, to be sure - but there were times it seemed they were going to fall to pieces right in front of you. And I remember one night, at a Buckley solo show in some decrepit cheapo Riverwest pit of a bar, he was so drunk he could barely stand or speak - and yet, even though he rarely finished a song and his voice was ravished, there were nevertheless moments of transcendent musical beauty there.
Perhaps because the band's other half is studio pros Alan Weatherhead and Miguel Urbiztondo (of Sound of Music Studios), Maki lacks that quality of dancing blindfolded on the edge of a cliff - but they make up for it by a subtle layering of sounds, along with Buckley's impressionistic but impassioned lyrics. The bandmembers' impressive list of connections (Mary Timony, David Lowery, Crooked Fingers, Sparklehorse, the Blow Pops, and lesser-known but musically fab Koester, for whom Maki has served as backing band) serves as a reasonable ingredients list for their own sound, but they've received far too little critical notice on their own. Unfortunately, that lack of notice translates to little info on the web: whether they're still a going concern or not is unclear.
At least there's the one CD. I'm past worrying that my favorite local act isn't as successful as they deserve to be (and there's been at least one fave band of mine in the last three cities I've lived in that are every bit the equal of their far-more acclaimed peers locally and nationally), I'm only happy that I'm able to hear the recordings that do exist.
12.02.2004
12.01.2004
God save Hopkin Frog, vaudeville, and variety
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