Aside from Oliver Stone's film, I fucking hate The Doors. Mostly because they are as overrated as Bob Dylan. The more you try to push something in my face, the more I will openly detest and ridicule it. That attitude has connotations far beyond music but I don't wanna open that particular can of worms here.
I borrowed a Doors album from the library when I was a teenager. It was painfully dull. I'm gonna try to open my mind on this but, y'no, good intentions and everything.
To say I fucking hate The Doors is to be a little misleading as I am quite happy to sing along to the radio or the jukebox when Light My Fire, Riders On The Storm or the opening track on this deluge of shit, Break On Through is playing but here's the thing. The songs are just not good enough.
Morrison writes a short poem and maybe the band has a jam that he fits that over. It doesn't really matter. There has been no thought put into developing the idea any further than the core hook and its lead up. There are plenty of songs I love that are structurally very simple but a ton of work has been done on the arrangement to keep them interesting.
Break On Through's opening keyboard sound is gutsy and the riff is as strong as any Ray Charles or AC/DC intro you can name. Words start, singer can sing, what's the problem? Why is it that by the end of only two and half minutes I've already switched off? It's the keyboards. The cunt wants a solo on everything. Is he the only guy that can? Or is he the only guy who _thinks_ he can? If you don't have players who are adept at soloing then don't put solos in your fucking songs. Play to your strengths.
The keyboard solo on this is pitifully inept. He insists on using this high reedy organ noise that passes thru my ears like a knitting needle doused in drain cleaner. He then just stabs hamfistedly at the keyboard or plays these widdly widdly patterns - they're not even runs - just very small 3-5 note things that are normally used as ad hoc ornaments to embellish a wider tune.
On Soul Kitchen, he keeps jabbing away at the keys like as if he's got nothing to say but feels he has to talk to be present. He keeps doing this while there's a guitar solo going on that I can't hear cuz he's playing an accompaniment with a soloing voice and it's too loud in the mix. It's just fucking atrocious.
So much for my restraint but barely six minutes in and I'm already on the edge of rage. The Crystal Ship is only bearable cuz it's a piano solo not that infernal organ but it is at least a track I sort of like all the way thru.
Another couple of songs in and I realise I've been sold a pup on the vocals as well. He can sing in that he has a strong voice but he doesn't actually have any feel for key. This is why when he begins any tune, he's coming in on the same note (relatively speaking).
Light My Fire is no exception. Quite aside from it being a strained and eventually awkward trip thru the rhyming dictionary, that good old minor third vocal is hammered well and truly into the ground so far you'd have a better chance of finding Keith Bennett. The keyboard intro is proficient and tuneful and the mix is okay but then it goes into that extended instrumental section and keyboard solo (which I'm sure everyone is familiar with) and I'm just ready to peel, chop and cook these motherfuckers.
And it doesn't let up. The latter half of this flagrant blasphemy of any musical term applied to it continues to needle my brain with that clingy, wittering girlfriend of a sound from Back Door Man all the way to Take It As It Comes.
The definition of ambivalence is the relief I felt knowing I was on the last track and the realisation that it is eleven minutes and forty three seconds long.
Its title, "The End" is dripping with irony, for it seems not to have one. After about two and a half minutes of Morrison's directionless moaning, the guitar attempts a sitar impression that more readily puts me in mind to check him for signs of a stroke. By four minutes, I am on the verge of tears. The drums are doing the most work. They are at least staying in time. The twat on the keyboard is just aimlessly wiping his fingers across the keys with no real care or attention to what the drummer is doing. The bass player could be unconscious for all we know. Over all this, Morrison defies all rhythm, meter, tone and expression with words I don't even want to listen to. You know when you hate someone so much and every word they speak just makes you want to smash their stupid face in with the nearest thing that weighs more than a shoe?
Eight minutes forty. Drums speed up. Do not kid yourself into thinking this will somehow cause the remaining three minutes to pass any more quickly. The piece comes to a cataclysmic crescendo at ten minutes and should stop there. But Morrison comes back in with one more verse. Couldn't tell you if it's a repeat of the first or not cuz I'm sitting in a pool of my own piss right now, waiting to be sectioned.
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Thursday, July 09, 2015
#0092: Frank Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim
Okay, let's get this done with the minimum of fuss. I don't have any issues with this, really. It's perfectly pleasant dinner music but giving it your full attention is a big ask for more than one track. That's cuz it's all the same.
All the same elegant orchestrations, all the same lugubrious vocals from Frank Albert Sinatra and, when he shows up, all the same breathy, Latina vocals from Antonio Carlos Jobim. All the same clutch pinch chord picking in that slow bossa style.
It's beautiful. You can stick it on and drift away. You can love it. It can be your desert island disc. But I defy you to have the energy to rave about this album. It seems unkind to call it boring cuz it is so....well, nice. But boring is what it is. Nice/boring.
"So what do you think of that Sinatra album with the Latin dude?"
"Well, it starts off with the Girl From Ipanema and has this--"
"Nah - just gimme the elevator pitch."
"Okay. Yeah, you could play it in an elevator."
All the same elegant orchestrations, all the same lugubrious vocals from Frank Albert Sinatra and, when he shows up, all the same breathy, Latina vocals from Antonio Carlos Jobim. All the same clutch pinch chord picking in that slow bossa style.
It's beautiful. You can stick it on and drift away. You can love it. It can be your desert island disc. But I defy you to have the energy to rave about this album. It seems unkind to call it boring cuz it is so....well, nice. But boring is what it is. Nice/boring.
"So what do you think of that Sinatra album with the Latin dude?"
"Well, it starts off with the Girl From Ipanema and has this--"
"Nah - just gimme the elevator pitch."
"Okay. Yeah, you could play it in an elevator."
#0091: The Velvet Underground & Nico []
Nico? This Nico? Why do I get the feeling this is gonna be a looooong 40 odd minutes?
It begins with a hangover. Okay, Sunday Morning's lyrics don't explicitly cite nausea, headache and suicidal thoughts but it's Sunday morning, for the sake of a fuck. The twinkly keyboard works better for me if I'm thinking about doing the walk of shame on deserted streets under a cloud of bewilderment.
I'm Waiting For The Man is possibly the most famous Velvet Underground song. Whether that's cuz it's their best or cuz it's about waiting for a drug dealer, I couldn't possibly say, but here it is and it's good to be reminded. Vanessa Paradis covered this in the 90s and her version was the first I'd ever heard. The original is dirtier, more like a scummy crackhead, tense and itchy, twitching on a street corner. But I do prefer Paradis's.
Conversely, the original version of Femme Fatale is the one I favour over the Duran Duran cover. What's more notable is that Nico does the vocal. But her listless, slightly flat singing, achieved thru apathy rather than failure, is perfect for this material. It's a crazy, mixed up world, alright.
Three tracks in and I'm feeling hopeful this could be a keeper. But these hopes are immediately dashed by the constipated straining of Venus In Furs. This is followed by an attempt at roadhouse blues called Run Run Run that fails on the first change. Seeing the chance to form a trilogy of horror, Nico then dives in on vocal with All Tomorrow's Parties; a song whose travesty of an arrangement is outshone only by the breeze-block-down-a-lift-shaft vocal.
If that's not enough, I'm then treated to a 7 minute pedicure with a rusty pliers called Heroin. Never did it myself. Had a cup of opium tea once, tho. It was mellow but I didn't like it. I was bored and there was nothing I could do about that even if I wanted to. Yet Reed extols its virtues with evangelistic nihilism.
"'Cause when the smack begins to flow
And I really don't care anymore
Ah, when that heroin is n my blood
And that blood is in my head
Then thank God that I'm as good as dead
And thank your God that I'm not aware
And thank God that I just don't care
And I guess I just don't know
Oh, and I guess I just don't know"
All this you'd think would go against a dull, samey acoustic strumming pattern that's not too taxing for your average smackhead. Instead it's all clanging and shrieking violins. Kids, beware. Don't take drugs cuz it only leads to shitty music.
There She Goes Again is a fucking awful tune but after Heroin, it's a refreshing lift. Nico returns on I'll Be Your Mirror and for the most part, it's pleasant but as soon as she hits a note longer than half a second[1] it just spasms out of tune like a moment of eye contact that goes on too long and gets weird.
The Black Angel's Death Song is Dylanesque with its atonal, conversational vocal but that's not being completely fair to Dylan. His accompaniments are half decent. The violin on this sounds like somebody has its family hostage and is playing under duress.
The finale, European Son is almost 8 minutes of the most godawful racket. I think the engineer must've either gone for a shit or just killed himself, leaving these completely cunted reprobates to their own devices with the tape running. It's a fucking outrage that anyone should be allowed to make a noise like this at all, let alone have it recorded and then mass produced. Was this track part of the Cold War? Did the communists think they could infiltrate the West by concealing messages in this?
Shit. There's still a minute and a half of it left and I just want to die. This is absolutely unbearable. Fuck. Ing. HELL! Who _are_ these _cunts_? I would rather have the hairs individually tweezed from the between the cheeks of my arse than hear this. I was gonna give it two stars for the good tracks but I don't wanna run the risk of someone else hearing the rest. No, giving this a rating would be like leaving broken glass on the playground floor.
[1] - you can't use technical terms like quaver or crotchet to describe actual duration, obviously.
The Black Angel's Death Song is Dylanesque with its atonal, conversational vocal but that's not being completely fair to Dylan. His accompaniments are half decent. The violin on this sounds like somebody has its family hostage and is playing under duress.
The finale, European Son is almost 8 minutes of the most godawful racket. I think the engineer must've either gone for a shit or just killed himself, leaving these completely cunted reprobates to their own devices with the tape running. It's a fucking outrage that anyone should be allowed to make a noise like this at all, let alone have it recorded and then mass produced. Was this track part of the Cold War? Did the communists think they could infiltrate the West by concealing messages in this?
Shit. There's still a minute and a half of it left and I just want to die. This is absolutely unbearable. Fuck. Ing. HELL! Who _are_ these _cunts_? I would rather have the hairs individually tweezed from the between the cheeks of my arse than hear this. I was gonna give it two stars for the good tracks but I don't wanna run the risk of someone else hearing the rest. No, giving this a rating would be like leaving broken glass on the playground floor.
[1] - you can't use technical terms like quaver or crotchet to describe actual duration, obviously.
Wednesday, July 08, 2015
#0090: The Who - Sell Out [***]
I am a fan of The Who insomuch as my brother was obsessed with the Tommy film when it came out. He had a compilation album called The Story of The Who and that had all the biggies from the back catalogue. I don't remember him having anything pre 1970 tho. It was just Quadrophenia, Tommy, The Kids Are Alright. So those are what I know.
This I'd never heard. It's a cheeky little album. In between the songs there are these radio jingle parodies and the album actually opens with one - sort of. It put a smile on my face immediately.
It is no surprise to me to discover that when the songs start, they have memorable melodies, an infectious nature on the grooves and that driving momentum on the rockier tracks. The band have their own distinct harmonic sound that is clearly distinguishable from The Beatles, The Beach Boys, etc and that's only one of the things that puts The Who in the rundown of Greatest Bands Of All Time.
There is that quintessential Who-ness about all of the songs that makes me feel like I already know them. Tattoo, for example is reminiscent of I'm A Boy but if you played them next to each other, you wouldn't say they sounded the same. At all.
Exactly on the halfway mark, the bar gets kicked up a good few notches. Even on compilations, I Can See For Miles is a stand out track. I don't know if it was an experiment staying on the same note and finding all the chords that harmonised it but it provides a thrilling crescendo for the already trademark, chuckachangtastic verses dripping with those confrontational lyrics. The song manages to keep raising the peak up to a harmonic finale that just knocks me senseless.
But if you thought the bar was set too high, that impudent jingle pops in and relieves the tension. Devious bastards!
After this point, tho it does get a bit samey. There's nothing wrong with the songs that a few more listens won't fix but this is about first reactions. The latter half just isn't as strong. Medac is another of those faux advertisements but it's too long and feels more like a song they (he?) was unable to finish and so they just dumped it on here disguised as a joke.
Silas Stingy is just stupid but it has the words "there goes mingey stingey" in it so, y'no, there's that.
I'm relieved they dropped the gimmicks for the last two tracks. Sunrise is an exquisite piece. I dare say there's a few guitarists who have focused their attention on cracking this one with as much wide eyed ambition as Blackbird or Never Going Back Again.
It was lumpy there for a bit but we've got to the last track in pretty good shape. Rael 1 is sort of a surreal bit of social commentary as a miniature epic, to coin an oxymoron. It didn't start well for me, but then it picks up considerably and I'm sure the riffs used he then went on to deploy in Tommy. Amazing Journey? Yet I don't feel critical of that. It's like watching Better Call Saul and hearing him say "S'all good man."
Yeah, this is a tidy album but it's not a four.
This I'd never heard. It's a cheeky little album. In between the songs there are these radio jingle parodies and the album actually opens with one - sort of. It put a smile on my face immediately.
It is no surprise to me to discover that when the songs start, they have memorable melodies, an infectious nature on the grooves and that driving momentum on the rockier tracks. The band have their own distinct harmonic sound that is clearly distinguishable from The Beatles, The Beach Boys, etc and that's only one of the things that puts The Who in the rundown of Greatest Bands Of All Time.
There is that quintessential Who-ness about all of the songs that makes me feel like I already know them. Tattoo, for example is reminiscent of I'm A Boy but if you played them next to each other, you wouldn't say they sounded the same. At all.
Exactly on the halfway mark, the bar gets kicked up a good few notches. Even on compilations, I Can See For Miles is a stand out track. I don't know if it was an experiment staying on the same note and finding all the chords that harmonised it but it provides a thrilling crescendo for the already trademark, chuckachangtastic verses dripping with those confrontational lyrics. The song manages to keep raising the peak up to a harmonic finale that just knocks me senseless.
But if you thought the bar was set too high, that impudent jingle pops in and relieves the tension. Devious bastards!
After this point, tho it does get a bit samey. There's nothing wrong with the songs that a few more listens won't fix but this is about first reactions. The latter half just isn't as strong. Medac is another of those faux advertisements but it's too long and feels more like a song they (he?) was unable to finish and so they just dumped it on here disguised as a joke.
Silas Stingy is just stupid but it has the words "there goes mingey stingey" in it so, y'no, there's that.
I'm relieved they dropped the gimmicks for the last two tracks. Sunrise is an exquisite piece. I dare say there's a few guitarists who have focused their attention on cracking this one with as much wide eyed ambition as Blackbird or Never Going Back Again.
It was lumpy there for a bit but we've got to the last track in pretty good shape. Rael 1 is sort of a surreal bit of social commentary as a miniature epic, to coin an oxymoron. It didn't start well for me, but then it picks up considerably and I'm sure the riffs used he then went on to deploy in Tommy. Amazing Journey? Yet I don't feel critical of that. It's like watching Better Call Saul and hearing him say "S'all good man."
Yeah, this is a tidy album but it's not a four.
#0089: Pink Floyd - A Piper At The Gates Of Dawn [****]
To me, Pink Floyd are Schrodinger's Band. And in more than one way. The music is both awe-inspiring genius and whimsical drug-addled shite. The men are both the elder statesmen of psychedelic rock and a clutch of bickering teenage girls. The moment I discovered them was both in my childhood and my decadent 20s.
When I was around 9 or 10, I suppose, I found my brother's cassette copy of Dark Side Of The Moon. It had fallen down the back.of.the MFI unit where our parents kept their "music centre". The labels had been torn off both sides so I didnt know what it was. I didnt say anything to my brother about it. I'd found another tape back there some months previously - Tubular Bells - and had been listening to.it.regularly. I don't wanna get into it but he didn't take kindly to.my.finders keepers approach to.the situation. The tape had been.lost.for.years. It was.covered.in dust when I found it. Anyway, that was the possibly the first time I'd heard Pink Floyd.
I've wanted to point this out for quite some considerable time but I decided to wait until now cuz I suspect Floyd are the first band most people would name in connection with Psychedelic Rock. The word psychedelic, actually means "to manifest the soul". Yet, if you had asked me a week or two ago to define it, I would've said "to dress, draw or play music that makes people think you're on drugs, even if you're not."
I discovered the definition in an article I read recently. The article was about a scientist - Dr something (that oughta narrow your list of scientists down) - who is conducting LSD trials for the first time in decades as a possible treatment for schizophrenia, depression, anxiety etc. Some would argue using LSD to solve mental health problems is like fixing an ingrowing toenail by cutting one's leg off. But I digress.
This is the first album by one of my favourite bands of all time. I wanna be able to bestow upon it glory and honour, endow it with healing and magical powers. I want to. But for all my ageing hippy bluster, my taste just isn't that psychedelic. So, remember that.
Astronomy Domine is one of those tracks that gets[1] trotted out to please the Syd Barrett devotees and perpetuate this loyalty to their fallen comrade. A mate of mine thinks it's all a fallacy that Syd did too much acid, spun out and lived out his days as a basket case in his mum's basement. This report was perhaps exaggerated but he was a recluse and he did live with his mum and sure as hell consumed a metric fuck tonne of lysergic acid diethylamide during his comparatively brief time with the band.
He had a definite penchant for chromatic chord changes that slide eerily along and together with his distinctive English singing accent, he created an undeniably unique sound. To be singing about star formations and planets and tying those in with emotional themes is certainly something I've not heard while listening to these albums. The melodies are beautiful and the lyrics interesting but the extended space sequences even in a tiny song like Flaming lose me completely.
On Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk we've got a much more rock-centred piece, which contains a keyboard solo of sorts. Richard Wright, not a fancy player by any stretch of the imagination was perhaps ill advised to go for the Jon Lord (and those of his ilk) runs but perhaps he was not aware of his strengths at this point. It would be several years before Dark Side of the Moon would give him one of the most iconic piano introductions in the history of Rock.
Interstellar Overdrive is another that stayed in the band's set right up to their last tour. It's the epic of the album; a 9 minute holocaust[2] of chaotic discord. Most of it you can shove up your arse as far as I'm concerned. It is the most unequivocally shit thing I have ever had the good fortune to fall asleep in. But the main theme, once again built on a chromatic descent, is extraordinarily powerful. If you can imagine yourself going on a journey through space - like when they go thru the wormhole in the film, Interstellar[3] - you are voyaging through the unknown and many strange things will occur and at the end you would not be the same. Cleverly, when the theme returns at the end of this albeit deliberately cacophonous wank, it is itself twisted somewhat - revealing, perhaps, the intended narrative.
There are a few more great ideas in The Gnome and Chapter 24, cluttered by the bloody bonkers sound effects but thankfully the songs are short enough that not much perseverance is required to get to the ingenious harmony work that climaxes on Scarecrow. I'd say this song was the album's peak for me but it can't be.
It can't be because this album closes with Bike. Bike is silly. Bike is innocent. Bike is eccentric in tune and lyric. Bike is anthemic with its rallentando and recovery after the change. When I first heard this knowing I was listening to Pink Floyd, I nearly cried. I had been singing this song from when I was a small boy, thinking it was one of the many daft things my brother had made up to entertain me, the small, pink, bull-in-a-china-shop who came into his life when he was half way to his ninth birthday. It seems, I'd found his tape of Dark Side of the Moon but never his tape of Relics, a compilation that included this song, released shortly before the stunning Meddle in 1971. So, it appears the first Pink Floyd I ever heard wasn't DSOTM but Bike.
Much of the album sounds like a collection of kitchen hardware going round in a cement mixer. It has merits, but these can't lift it any further than 3 for me. Nevertheless, Bike is a big emotional trigger for me so I have to give it one more. Just for my ridiculous big brother.
[1] - should be past tense. I don't see Floyd touring again.
[2] - oh fuck off. holocaust - noun: an act of great destruction and loss of life.
[3] - why didn't they use this in the soundtrack?
When I was around 9 or 10, I suppose, I found my brother's cassette copy of Dark Side Of The Moon. It had fallen down the back.of.the MFI unit where our parents kept their "music centre". The labels had been torn off both sides so I didnt know what it was. I didnt say anything to my brother about it. I'd found another tape back there some months previously - Tubular Bells - and had been listening to.it.regularly. I don't wanna get into it but he didn't take kindly to.my.finders keepers approach to.the situation. The tape had been.lost.for.years. It was.covered.in dust when I found it. Anyway, that was the possibly the first time I'd heard Pink Floyd.
I've wanted to point this out for quite some considerable time but I decided to wait until now cuz I suspect Floyd are the first band most people would name in connection with Psychedelic Rock. The word psychedelic, actually means "to manifest the soul". Yet, if you had asked me a week or two ago to define it, I would've said "to dress, draw or play music that makes people think you're on drugs, even if you're not."
I discovered the definition in an article I read recently. The article was about a scientist - Dr something (that oughta narrow your list of scientists down) - who is conducting LSD trials for the first time in decades as a possible treatment for schizophrenia, depression, anxiety etc. Some would argue using LSD to solve mental health problems is like fixing an ingrowing toenail by cutting one's leg off. But I digress.
This is the first album by one of my favourite bands of all time. I wanna be able to bestow upon it glory and honour, endow it with healing and magical powers. I want to. But for all my ageing hippy bluster, my taste just isn't that psychedelic. So, remember that.
Astronomy Domine is one of those tracks that gets[1] trotted out to please the Syd Barrett devotees and perpetuate this loyalty to their fallen comrade. A mate of mine thinks it's all a fallacy that Syd did too much acid, spun out and lived out his days as a basket case in his mum's basement. This report was perhaps exaggerated but he was a recluse and he did live with his mum and sure as hell consumed a metric fuck tonne of lysergic acid diethylamide during his comparatively brief time with the band.
He had a definite penchant for chromatic chord changes that slide eerily along and together with his distinctive English singing accent, he created an undeniably unique sound. To be singing about star formations and planets and tying those in with emotional themes is certainly something I've not heard while listening to these albums. The melodies are beautiful and the lyrics interesting but the extended space sequences even in a tiny song like Flaming lose me completely.
On Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk we've got a much more rock-centred piece, which contains a keyboard solo of sorts. Richard Wright, not a fancy player by any stretch of the imagination was perhaps ill advised to go for the Jon Lord (and those of his ilk) runs but perhaps he was not aware of his strengths at this point. It would be several years before Dark Side of the Moon would give him one of the most iconic piano introductions in the history of Rock.
Interstellar Overdrive is another that stayed in the band's set right up to their last tour. It's the epic of the album; a 9 minute holocaust[2] of chaotic discord. Most of it you can shove up your arse as far as I'm concerned. It is the most unequivocally shit thing I have ever had the good fortune to fall asleep in. But the main theme, once again built on a chromatic descent, is extraordinarily powerful. If you can imagine yourself going on a journey through space - like when they go thru the wormhole in the film, Interstellar[3] - you are voyaging through the unknown and many strange things will occur and at the end you would not be the same. Cleverly, when the theme returns at the end of this albeit deliberately cacophonous wank, it is itself twisted somewhat - revealing, perhaps, the intended narrative.
There are a few more great ideas in The Gnome and Chapter 24, cluttered by the bloody bonkers sound effects but thankfully the songs are short enough that not much perseverance is required to get to the ingenious harmony work that climaxes on Scarecrow. I'd say this song was the album's peak for me but it can't be.
It can't be because this album closes with Bike. Bike is silly. Bike is innocent. Bike is eccentric in tune and lyric. Bike is anthemic with its rallentando and recovery after the change. When I first heard this knowing I was listening to Pink Floyd, I nearly cried. I had been singing this song from when I was a small boy, thinking it was one of the many daft things my brother had made up to entertain me, the small, pink, bull-in-a-china-shop who came into his life when he was half way to his ninth birthday. It seems, I'd found his tape of Dark Side of the Moon but never his tape of Relics, a compilation that included this song, released shortly before the stunning Meddle in 1971. So, it appears the first Pink Floyd I ever heard wasn't DSOTM but Bike.
Much of the album sounds like a collection of kitchen hardware going round in a cement mixer. It has merits, but these can't lift it any further than 3 for me. Nevertheless, Bike is a big emotional trigger for me so I have to give it one more. Just for my ridiculous big brother.
[1] - should be past tense. I don't see Floyd touring again.
[2] - oh fuck off. holocaust - noun: an act of great destruction and loss of life.
[3] - why didn't they use this in the soundtrack?
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