JImmy Cliff

Back and desitively kicking ass. I heard this on the LOFT following Jimmy Cliff's "Struggling Man" (1972), and prefer the new stuff! How often does THAT happen with a veteran performer?


"Struggling Man" :

And here's "Reggae Music" (2012). I could only find the live version on YouTube, but this gives you the idea: 

RETROMANIA

Summer's here and the time is right for -- catching up on your reading before the Fall Semester hits you like a ton of bricks! I've finally had a chance to start reading Simon Reynold's latest book, Retromania, on the meaning of the nostalgia fetish evident in recent pop music. 


Reynolds' book addresses our current situation of music overload, now that digital media has made it possible to both access and archive music in vast quantities. This technological capacity means that the musical past is always with us, and in fact, Reynolds argues, has become a killing burden on the present. One consequence of accumulating music is that it's become, as Mark Paytress notes, "increasingly detached from everything but itself." Disconnected from any social reality other than the desire of "exquisitely discerning consumers" (Reynolds), pop music has become literally monstrous, i.e., no longer existing on a human scale. 


It's not just that pop musicians have given up on originality; they've also renounced the attempt to imagine the future. Such progressive projects used to be the pop singer's raison d'etre (think of David Bowie in the 70s). Currently, Reynolds argues, pop music at its best recasts the musical past, and at worst, merely recycles it. 


I will try here and in future posts to consider some of the broader implications of Reynolds' argument. If Reynolds is right, I think we need to reconsider the claims Simon Frith puts forth in Performing Rites (1998). Here Frith argues that behind every music genre lies "an implied community." Music serves a primary social function, binding the individual listener to a larger collective. Yet does looking over the virtual shoulder of your Facebook friends to discover what they're listening to on Spotify constitute community building in any meaningful sense? Frith's sociology of genre would seem to presume a now outmoded psychology of listening. It no longer describes the  current moment, where music mostly refers to itself, not the world. I incline more to Reynolds' opinion, that we mostly listen to music in ways that tend to isolate us. 

Reynolds combines his argument about pop nostalgia with a fascinating alternative history of rock music, relevant to my own work on 60s British rock. Reynolds make a point of differentiating hippie subculture from the genuinely progressive moment of British rock circa 1965-66, represented by the Yardbirds, the Who, and UFO era Pink Floyd.  


By the feedback solo here: 

Or this long form improvisation: 

Or the sonic collage/guitar solo here:

Severing the Who from hippie makes sense given that band's always ambivalent relation to the movement, despite their having played the two signal festivals of the hippie era. 


Contrary to a consensus that maintains that hippie looked forward to utopia, Reynolds maintains that the subculture was nostalgic: for "authentic" indigenous cultures, fin-de-siecle graphic art, and "vintage" clothing. And despite received notions about punk as anti-establishment, Reynolds argues that Malcolm McLaren was as nostalgic as the hippies he vilified. Before there was SEX, McLaren's first business venture was Let It Rock, a vintage clothes store specializing in Teddy Boy fashions. The self-declared pop Situationist was also looking back, obsessed with the Teddy Boys he recalled from his boyhood in the late 1950s, revering them equally for their style and hooliganism.   
If you don't know what the Teds were about, click here: 

(end part one)

Just sharing, and slightly re-arranging a set of songs I heard on Deep Tracks Sirius yesterday. These fit together surprisingly well: at least it surprised me. 


From the wonderful, and wonderfully diverse, Untitled (1970) by the Byrds:

then this, from Led Zeppelin III (both released in October 1970--whoa, I think we're having a Crowley moment here)

Finally, this from Get Your Wings, four years later.

Put 'em all together, and you have: I'm not sure yet, but I like it. 

Hearing "On Your Own" by the Verve on satellite radio, it flashed on me that the British group, the Verve, ended up in a very interesting place on their last record, Urban Hymns (1997), achieving a remarkable blend of indie rock and early seventies mellow soul. You can hear the transition in "On Your Own" from Northern Songs (1995); I hear Curtis Mayfield in the resigned lyric, the melancholy vocal, and above all, in that silky-smooth groove that you want to go on endlessly. Unlike so many of the countless other attempts by white rock bands to do something soulful, it doesn't seem self-conscious at all.   

In the same vein, from Urban Hymns: 

Not that I don't equally admire the style of the early Verve, and their mash-up of U2 (U2 trying to sound like Zeppelin that is, i.e., "Bullet the Blue Sky) and Can. It's just that I don't feel the mellower Verve is any less powerful. 

Not a Hater

The title says it all; I feel bad my last post, hating on the Boss and All. I would delete it, but it gave my friend Tim some pleasure to see my getting all worked up for no reason. 


The truth is, there's so much great music to think about that it makes little sense to dwell on the negative. So today, here are some inspirational words from Lewis Shiner's short story, "Steam Engine Time," about a young kid, modeled on Robert Johnson, who invents "blue music." Turns out the world isn't ready for it, and a woman asks the guitarist:


"Was that supposed to be some kind of minstrel song?" ...
"No," he says, "it wasn't no minstrel song."
"Ain't heard nothin' like it before," she says. 
"Not supposed to have. Things everybody heard before is for shit. 'The Little Old Cabin in the Lane.' Songs like that make people the way they are." 

How does Bruce Springsteen Get Away With This Shit?

So: I haven't posted a blog in like, forever.  Now that I'm finally writing a new post, it's not even on topic; in fact, it's just a rant.

Welcome to the Blogosphere, friends.

I heard Bruce Springsteen's "American Land" today on SiriusXM: it's from the new record, Wrecking Ball. How does Bruce get away with this shit? It sounds like he knocked it off in ten minutes: or at least I hope he didn't take longer than that to write it.  It's a tale of immigrants in America, with Bruce singing like he's a Clancy Brother. Except that he's not. It's a second rate rewrite of the Pogues' "Sally MacLennane."  It's official: Bruce now sounds like his copyists. Except that he's not as good. Not only is the song second rate Pogues:  it's second-rate Gaslight Anthem.

Apparently Bruce can get away with all this because he's the Last Rock Populist Standing.

And they call it democracy.

Listen to this instead:

sickle clowns in Notting Hill

Heard this the other day, and it was a revelation. I had forgotten how wonderfully loose and fluid the Pretty Things were circa Parachute (1970; Rolling Stone's record of the year).  It's also a great curio from a particular time and place: Notting Hill, late 60s. The Pretties were hanging with the  new hippie bands in the 'hood: with the Pink Fairies, the E. Broughton Band, the Deviants, and Hawkwind.  the hippie dream was still alive, but just barely: it was altogether an edgier, angrier,  aggressively anti-social crew.  But as you can hear here, the Rock was doing just fine. Something in the water or the dope seemed to have made for wonderfully loose, effortlessly expressive playing. This track percolates nicely all the  way through: no mean feat, for a seven minute song (I never realized the length till now, which tells you something):