Sunday, January 25, 2009

Island Top Ten continues...


7) Brian Eno - 'On Some Faraway Beach'

Besides being the most aptly named song for this list, it is one of the most perfect. There is nary a note out of place (nary), the music is perfect, the lyrics lovely, the production divine. From Eno's first solo album, Here Come the Warm Jets from 1973. The band is essentially Roxy Music without Bryan Ferry but throwing Robert Fripp into the mix on guitar. Eno split from Roxy right before this album and he's finally doing what he wants with the music...still arty, damaged pop but lots of atmosphere and texture and no crooning vocals. Some of the vocals on this album are pretty nasally but I think Eno's voice sounds great on this track. He is probably the most influential music-maker in my world - playing in and/or producing some of the best albums from Roxy Music, Talking Heads, Devo, U2, Coldplay, David Bowie, and David Byrne. I'd say his next solo album Taking Tiger Mountain (by strategy) is in my top couple albums ever list.

Plus, if you were the coolest person ever, you could arrange to play Uno with Eno, Yoko Ono, Bono, (Sonny) Bono, and Emo (Philips) and that would be really funny, no?


I don't know why the video is of Iwo Jima but, it is.

Friday, January 23, 2009

More Songs from the Top Ten Island List...


The next installment in my list of the ten songs - and only ten - I would have on my iPod when stranded on a deserted island. If you're not checking out Adam's list too, Do It. This couple of songs I am truly still wowed by and listen to often but are loved nostagically too...these go back a couple years for me.


6) Tom Tom Club - 'Wordy Rappinghood'

Really the first 2 T.T Club albums are incredible. This is one of my favorite songs of theirs and one that would be fun to sing along with really loud on the beach (seeing as how I'd be alone and all esp.). Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth from the Talking Heads, Adrian Belew, and a bunch of others went to the Bahamas in the early 80's - right after the Heads Remain in Light came out and recorded the extremely fun Tom Tom Club album. The tunes are goofy but the musicianship is great...the second side of the album is actually a lot more atmospheric and dark, similar sound but like they did the second side late, late at night or something.
I picked this up on vinyl in Jr. High, probably 8th grade, and still have it today...and still put it on every month or so (much to Emily's astonished chagrin). I also Highly recommend their second one, Close to the Bone.

The video, I'll admit, is a bit much - don't be too distracted by the blinding neon or the tight moves...




5) Sonic Youth - 'Shadow of a Doubt'

Had to have a Sonic Youth song on this list and, out of all the incredible ones over the past 26 years!, this remains one of my faves. I picked up EVOL, the album its on, when it first came out in 1986 after I saw the video on Night Flight (I hope people remember this great show)...and I still have it too (on cassette).
This song has Kim singing, which I love, and has everything I love/evol about SY - the slow burning tension, the release and cacophany, the simmering undercurrent of menace, sex, violence, and beauty.
Plus, the first thing I did when I moved to Mpls. was go to the Sonic Youth outdoor show at the Walker. Walking down the hill on Groveland and hearing the first chords of Schizophrenia and later meeting the Choses (just Nicole and Chose back then) and going to the Red Dragon for mega-drinks...good times!

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Immaculate Queen of Heaven Support Me Always

Songs on an Island list continues with a sad but gorgeous one:

4) Henryk Gorecki - Symphony No.3 (Symphony of Sorrow)

This was only composed in 1976 (just a year after Muskrat Love came out!..). I didn't know too much about it before I recently read up on it, knowing it was on my list. I've found the piece, especially the 2nd and 3rd movements to be some of the most hauntingly gorgeous music I know. The focus is a minimal ebbing of strings and some woodwinds with a woman's Soprano singing in Polish. I knew it had something to do with sadness and, presumably, the Holocaust which turns out to be sorta the case. The second movement (my favorite) is based on the text that an 18 year old girl wrote on the wall of her cell in a Gestapo prison - "O Mamo nie płacz nie—Niebios Przeczysta Królowo Ty zawsze wspieraj mnie" (Oh Mamma do not cry—Immaculate Queen of Heaven support me always). Gorecki spoke of how he was moved by the tone of the plead...
"In prison, the whole wall was covered with inscriptions screaming out loud: 'I'm innocent', 'Murderers', 'Executioners', 'Free me', 'You have to save me'—it was all so loud, so banal. Adults were writing this, while here it is an eighteen-year-old girl, almost a child. And she is so different. She does not despair, does not cry, does not scream for revenge. She does not think about herself; whether she deserves her fate or not. Instead, she only thinks about her mother: because it is her mother who will experience true despair. This inscription was something extraordinary. And it really fascinated me."

The first and third movements are from the perspective of a mother who lost a child, one a lament of Mother Mary and one a mother who's son died in a war. The restraint and gentle ebb and flow of the music seem to speak of a resignation and acceptance of the sadness - maybe a coming to terms with it - and then, as the piece comes to a close, a quiet peace is all you're left with as the violins so softly fade out, repeating their note like a mantra.

If you listen to some more contemporary 'post-rock' types of music like godspeed You! black emperor, Mogwai, or Explosions In the Sky, you'll hear a very familiar swell and atmosphere to Gorecki's music. All the loaded history of the symphony aside, it is mournful but absolutely moving and undeniably beautiful to listen to.


Saturday, January 10, 2009

~~ Stuck On an Island Top Ten Songs (S.O.I.T.T.S.) ~~

I decided to follow in the footsteps of the inestimable Adam Chose and post a couple songs at a time. The challenge was to come up with the ten songs that you'd most like to have on your iPod if you were crashed on a weird island ala' Lost. Here's a couple of my must-haves:


1) "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)" by The Talking Heads

From their 1983 Speaking In Tongues album. They had put out 2 great albums with Brian Eno playing a crucial role and delving into some afro-rhythms and really textured atmospheres (Fear of Music and Remain In Light - probably my fave all around Heads album), but they were a bit oh-so-serious and intellectual. This album, and esp. this excellent song, were a welcome breeze of fun and sunny(-esque) hope. It's the song that I would pick to be the Jonathan Theme Song...the one that plays whenever I walk down the street in the opening scene from some un-yet filmed movie of which I'm the star (this actually happens in my head pretty often). There is also a great version of this song on Stop Making Sense - the rockumentary that Jonathan Demme filmed in 1984 - that I'm including here for your pleasure.




2) "Birdland" by Patti Smith *

From her debut album, Horses, in 1975. This is/was undeniably punk - from the 'Godmother of Punk' - but not like anything that'd been heard before. Even now, we've heard P.J. Harvey or Liz Phair but, Patti had the poetry, the jazz, the coolness, and the Balls to yell:
"...He's gonna run through the fields dreaming in animation
It's all gonna split his skull
It's gonna come out like a black bouquet shining
Like a fist that's gonna shoot them up
Like light, like Mohammed Boxer
Take them up up up up up up
Oh, let's go up, up, take me up, I'll go up,
I'm going up, I'm going up
Take me up, I'm going up, I'll go up there
Go up go up go up go up up up up up up up
Up, up to the belly of a ship.
Let the ship slide open and we'll go inside of it
Where we are not human, we're not human..."

...and when you listen to this, very loud for heaven's sake, possibly while driving on a winding road through the forest, you may cry or yell or orgasm but you will definitely be taken up and if you can imagine hearing this in 1975 (the year Emily was born, the year of Thank God I'm a Country Boy by John Denver, One of these Nights by the Eagles, and this incredible gem that you really have to watch at least up 'til the 1:00 mark...Muskrat Love) well, then you can imagine how startling it may have been. It Still is more intense than most music I know of and is almost more of an experience than a song.

* (this link is to a pretty good live version)



3) "The Sea" by Sandy Denny

Sandy Denny sang in Fairport Convention (with Richard Thompson singing and playing guitar) and Fotheringay in the late sixties and early seventies. She also was the only person to ever provide guest vocals on a Led Zeppelin album (on Battle of Evermore from Zep IV). Sandy D. has one of the greatest voices I know of...some may think her stuff sounds dated but I say No Way...just gorgeous. I also love how this song sounds like the sea...it's expansive, open and the instrumentation ebbs and flows and crashes with her voice just floating above it all. There are a couple songs of hers I could've picked - esp. "Autopsy" from Fairport Convention's Unhalfbricking but 'The Sea' is one of the most perfect folk-rock songs, nay - Songs, that I know.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Obviously, the cutest canine...vote for me!

(Update from 1/9/2009 - Sorry Fozzy, guess you're not so cute after all. Thanks for voting...)


You can vote often (seems like once every 5 or 10 minutes) until the first round is over January 8th. Help Fozzy earn his keep...and Happy New Year!



P.S. pass this onto any of your friends who care about cute-ness in the world.



(sorry if you liked the snow pic....removed to focus energies on the one that is winning big at this point.) thanks for voting!