Countdown #29 - the thrill of it all

Broadcast July-28-2012 - podcast available here.  All comments are from Philip Random's notes (with some editorial diligence).  The full countdown list (so far) can be found here.  Links are not necessarily to the exact same recordings we played on-air, but we tried.

555.

Devo - Wiggly World

Cool and wigged out masterpiece from from Devo's second album, Duty Now For The Future, which the experts tell me is their best. And certainly nobler words have never been spoken. Than "duty now for the future", that is. Because the past is done, the present merely "is", and a sadly devolved "is" at that – but the future, that's where the wiggle is. Not black and white, not straight up and down – it's stranger than that, impossible to hold down. 

554.

Dead Kennedys - too drunk to fuck

Nasty bit of genius from 1981, Ronald Reagan's America at full boil, assholism not just on the rise -- boiling over. Fortunately, we had the DKs to help us focus our rage, antipathy, spite. Not at anyBODY in particular – just the general, clean-cut preppy crowd. The so-called "good kids", all dressing the same, looking the same, drinking the same shitty beer, getting too drunk to fuck, puking their repressed, conservative, neo-fascist guts. 

 

553.

Rolling Stones - starfucker

Often known as Star-Star in realms where you're not allowed to speak the truth. I remember hearing this at a friend's place when I was maybe fourteen. He'd bought Goats Head Soup (now there's a title for a pop album) because he liked Angie, the big deal single. But Starfucker quickly became the essential track, cranked as loud as possible, even when his uptight, churchgoing parents were around. Which still sort of puzzles me. Did they just not hear it? Or maybe that's just what all rock and roll sounded like to them in 1973, just one long invocation to fuck like ragged. For some decent folks, the world has always been ending. 

552.

Beatles - and your bird can sing

Beatles at their absolute pop peak, cranking out perfection at a faster rate than the culture could even begin to handle. And Your Bird Can Sing didn't even make it onto the North American version of Revolver. got stuck on Yesterday and Today instead, the one with butchered meat and torn apart baby dolls on the cover. It quickly got pulled, of course, the forces of decency in full combat mode. Oh those loveable moptops.

551.

Dukes of Stratosphear - my love explodes

In which parody transcends itself, becomes sublime, the Dukes being XTC in disguise, 1985 being about as far from the spirit of everything that was cool, essential, classic about the psychedelic 60s as the culture ever got. By which I mean, you really couldn't do something like this with a straight face – it had to be taking the piss. Which was wrong. And all of us were to blame. Yeah, the 60s bath needed emptying at some point in the late 70s, early 80s,, but we went and dumped the baby as well. Fortunately it survived the sewers. Tough baby. 

 

550.

Jean-Michel Jarre - ethnicolor

Early mid-80s techno-smorgasbord of now possibilities. And it was epic. I had no time for Monsieur Jarre at the time, his previous stuff being way to Euro-Easy-Listening (cosmic lite). But with hip names like Laurie Anderson and Adrian Belew on board, this one was hard to ignore, and a darned good thing, because it really goes places. Samples before we called them that, great crescendos and unearthly howls. The future definitely sounded cool. 

549.

Supertramp - the meaning

The classic God-I-hate-that-band-Oh-wait-a-minute-that's-a-great-song syndrome. So let me correct myself. I hate what Supertramp became, the huge record sales for the wrong records (which I won't mention here). I loved what they were in the middle, the mid-70s, still not that well known, delivering smart, innovative, ambitious pop … and beyond. Crisis, What Crisis? stands out now because it seems to be their most forgotten album, thus the least likely to induce allergies. The Meaning gets the nod, because it's damned important. Assuming there is one. A meaning, that is.

548.

Bauhaus - all we ever wanted was everything

A generational anthem if there ever was one. Not that I ever really paid attention past the title. It's 1982 and everything's pretty much gone to shit. Slimy and/or demented conservative types in power pretty much everywhere, the rich getting richer, the poor getting eaten. What is it that you unsatisfied young people want? Oh, not much. Just EVERYTHING. 

 

547.

National Health - squarer for Maud

I mostly hated so-called jazz-rock fusion at the time – so many of my fave progressive heroes indulging themselves, getting caught up in technique, forgetting to actually make interesting, astonishing music. But not National Health. They kept it smart, innovative, fun. And with Squarer For Maud, even a bit epic. And then there's that rap about Numinosity (a word I'd never heard before). Of or relating to a numen; supernatural. Filled with or characterized by a sense of a supernatural presence. Hell yeah. That's exactly what music is, the good stuff anyway.

544.

Viv Akauldren - censored

They were from Detroit, I think. I seem to remember smoking a joint with the guitar player, then wandering the sidewalks of downtown Vancouver, mid-80s sometime. He was overwhelmed by how peaceful it all was – how safe. They were gigging in town that night. The booking agent was a friend. So I guess I was being hospitable. Anyway, it all speaks to how lost so much of that era is. So many indie outfits coming and going, cranking out powerful stuff, leaving little or no trace. Of course, I did manage to hang onto a copy of one of Viv Akauldren's albums – Old Bags + Party Rags – nice and dark, paranoid, political, psychedelic. Except I don't remember them actually sounding like that live. They were more forgettable, for lack of a better world.

543.

Sly + the Family Stone - Africa talks to you [the asphalt jungle]

No doubt about it, Sly Stone's There's A Riot Goin' On is one of the best albums period. A seamless flow of barely post-1960s truth-telling, most of it kind of grim. And Africa Talks To You is the strange dark heart of it – not a song so much as an excursion, a side trip to a multi-dimensional galaxy, dub before we had a name for it, but more than that anyway. And yes, that is a drum machine keeping things in line, a good decade before it was the hip thing to do.

542.

Neil Young - tonight's the night

It says 1975 on the cover, and most of the album was actually recorded a couple of years earlier. But I didn't find Tonight's the Night until at least the mid-80s. And grimly perfect timing at that, given all the darkness, shadows and murk. The title track's about heroin and the damage done, souls swallowed, faces turned blue. There was way too much of the shit going down in the Terminal City in the 80s. Still is probably.

541.

Chicago - I'm a man + liberation part 2

Maybe you had to be there. Chicago 1969. Only a year earlier, the hippie revolution had crashed and burned in those very streets during the riots at the Democratic National Convention (at least, that's what the historians say). But the energy was still percolating in 1969, such that a big fat band could erupt from it all, even earn the name CHICAGO. True, they'd be awful before long, lost down that deep sewer where all the schmaltz goes. But not in 1969. In 1969, they still had the noise. 

540.

Roxy Music - the thrill of it all

I try not to regret things. Life's way too long, offers up too many options. But I do deeply wish I'd somehow managed to be cool enough as a teen to actually see Roxy in around 1974, when they really were about the coolest band in the world. And not just in terms of look. They also had the chops, the songs, the SOUND. But then I guess, I wouldn't have had the latter day pleasure of rediscovering it all a decade and a half later. By which point, I was fully adult, owner of a broken heart or five, able to fully grasp what was going on, thrill and all. 

Countdown #28 - I walk a thin line

Broadcast July-14-2012 - podcast available here.  All comments are from Philip Random's notes (with some editorial diligence).  The full countdown list (so far) can be found here.  Links are not necessarily to the exact same recordings we played on-air, but we tried.

 

573.

Rolling Stones - fingerprint file

For a solid ten or twelve years, no matter how messed up things got in their camp, no matter who was dying, getting arrested, nodding off, almost choking on their own puke, there was always at least one album, every year, and it was at least good.  But it should have all ended in 1974 with It's Only Rock And Roll.  Not that they didn't still have a few choice moments left in them, but what a send-off, what a swan song, with Fingerprint File notable for how it caught the temper of the times, not just in terms of subject matter (surveillance, paranoia, all secrecy, no privacy) but also feel.  Like a long tense night, maybe a little pleasure, but no sleep, no end in sight.     

571.

Talking Heads - with our love

My introduction to Talking Heads went something like this.  Maybe 1978, artist guy I sort of know walks up to me at a party (obviously high on quality drugs) and says, "Where does everybody live?  In some kind of building.  What does everybody eat?  Food.  More Songs About Buildings and Food is about everybody."   And you could dance to it.

569.

Pavement - silent kit

I actually saw Pavement at their mid-90s peak, but I guess I wasn't paying attention (stumbling through personal shit) because they made no particular impression.  But jump ahead maybe five years (time well out of joint by now) and I finally did catch their genius via a copy of Crooked Rain Crooked Rain somebody left lying around – everything crystallizing in the lead-off track Silent Kit (Kid?), a minute of sloppy, stoned mucking around before the song finally finds itself (and in fact, the melody's a direct rip-off of an old Buddy Holly tune).  But man, it all clicked anyway.  Crooked and enchanted.

 

568.

Sons of Freedom - dead dog on the highway

My friend Charles had ambitions of being a big deal rock video maker back in the 80s, but the closest he ever got to anything of substance was knowing somebody who knew somebody that maybe had some pull with Sons of Freedom. I remember him getting all excited, telling me his killer concept for Dead Dog On The Highway.  To be shot out in the desert somewhere – the band playing at the side of the highway with every shot taken from passing vehicles, moving fast, so all you ever caught were quick glimpses, lots of dust.  Meanwhile, a bunch of corporate types were crucifying Jesus in the distance.  It never got made.

 

567.

Funkadelic - groovallegiance

There's not enough Funkadelic on this list.  I'm sorry.  It's not my fault.  Seriously, try to find any Funkadelic used on vinyl in metro Vancouver that isn't either hacked to shit or filed as COLLECTIBLE (ie: out of my price range).  It doesn't exist.  But I did finally steal a copy of One Nation Under A Groove from someone whose name I can't divulge (for obvious reasons), but trust me, he's an asshole.  Jesus himself guided my hand here (red wine was involved).   By which I mean, if I do end up going to hell, it won't be for this.  

 

566.

Al Stewart - Roads to Moscow

Minor British folkie on his way to becoming a bland soft rock contender writes a song about a young Russian soldier in World War 2 and his ultimate betrayal at the hands of the Great Stalin, and it's so beautiful, so epic, so sad it pretty much stops time.  They should teach Roads To Moscow in high school.  I'm sure I learned more from its eight minutes than I did in all Grade 10 History.

 

563.

Doors - soul kitchen

Yeah, Jim Morrison was a cosmic asshole who died for his own sins, nobody else's.  But damn, the Doors were a strong band, and they were nothing without him.  And that first album in particular – well, somebody had to do it, in 1967,  Summer of Love, at least hint that there was a darker side to things.  Soul Kitchen makes the list because it's remained well hidden over the years, hanging out in the back, cool and raw.  

 

561.

King Crimson - industry

As the story goes, Robert Fripp shut King Crimson down in the mid-70s, claiming an overall disgust with the music industry.  Then he suddenly kicked things back into a gear in 1980-81 with a fresh new line-up (though he retained Bill Bruford on drums), a new look and sound, a new DISCIPLINE.  Which was maybe starting to wear a bit by 1984's Three of a Perfect Pair.  But not Industry.  That's what the world actually sounded like in 1984.  Everything grinding, droning, erupting with savage, maybe malevolent urgency, then settling again.  Droning, hissing, giving off toxic vapours.  Lurking, ready to erupt again at any second.

560.

David Bowie - Aladdin Sane

As I've heard it argued, Aladdin Sane (the album) is song-for-song the best thing Ziggy-era Bowie ever did.  Yet as a whole, it somehow doesn't add up the way the previous two albums did, and thus didn't get heard as much.  Which is great for our purposes as it gives us a bunch of cool underheard gems, like the genuinely insane title track.  Of course, it was stratospheres over my barely teenage head at the time, but I listened anyway.  It was David fucking Bowie.  

 

559.

Sonic Youth - expressway to yr skull

EVOL is LOVE spelled backward, which is pretty much what was going on in 1991, Pacific Coliseum, as Sonic Youth warmed up Neil Young + Crazy Horse, choosing not to pander even slightly to all the aging hippies in the house, but rather deliver a profound and beautiful and heartfelt tidal wave of noise and provocation.  The climax would've been maybe two-thirds of the way through the set when they'd just played Kool Thing (the closest thing they had to a hit at the time) and the crowd was maybe starting to warm to them slightly.  Expressway to Yr Skull killed all that.  Beautifully. 

 

558.

Fleetwood Mac - I walk a thin line

Tusk was the big deal double album that came after the mega-platinum hugeness of Rumors and thus it was bound to fail.  Which is cool.  We love it when the Music Biz fails, throws huge piles of cash and cocaine at something that ends up being art, particularly when it includes little treasures like I Walk A Thin Line – Lindsey Buckingham not just close to the edge, right on it, and walking it just fine.   

 

557.

Grateful Dead - box of rain

It's 1970 and the drugs aren't so much wearing off in Grateful Dead land as imposing a desire for something a little more grounded, relevant to the reality of things like gravity, the ground itself, the stuff we stand on (unless there's concrete in the way).  Anyway, Box Of Rain's just a beautiful song.  Even my mom likes it.  I don't know what it's about and I don't really care.  The sun is shining and the dark star has crashed.  What more do we need?

 

556.

Isaac Hayes - by the time I get to Phoenix

This is the middle distance selection on this list.  555 down, 555 to go.  So I figure it has to be something that arguably (and I love to argue) could also be Number One on a different day, different weather, different levels of love and chaos reigning over man and his world.  So yeah, there's depth here, and distance.  And SOUL. By which I mean, soul is infinite, soul is eternal, once soul gets a hold of you, all the normal rules don't apply anymore.  Space and time become meaningless.  A three minute easy listening pop song can become a twenty minute journey into the truth of man, god, love, everything.   Of this, I have no doubt.