If in the past Chelsea Wolfe has been called a “siren” and a “goddess,” atop the stage at Irving Plaza on Tuesday she was a towering banshee. Swathed in lengths of white cotton – with matching, armpit-high gauntlets, might I add – Wolfe commanded the sold-out crowd with pointed intensity. Wolfe’s tour comes hot on the heels of her 2017 LP Hiss Spun, and by the looks of ticket sales and the gargantuan purple tour bus parked outside Irving Plaza, must be going quite well.
Hiss Spun is Wolfe’s latest offering on longtime label Sargent House. The record is deeply varied, textural, and above all else: heavy. Part of Wolfe’s allure is her ability to craft dark and gruesome instrumental landscapes – often craggy and unwelcoming – and then invite the listener in with her radiant voice. It is a contrast that bodes surprisingly well live. Wolfe is one of those singers whose live vocals not only do the record justice – they sound better, somehow, in person.
As one would hope, Wolfe is an austere performer; she barely says a word between songs. Her black-clad backing band do their work with fervor and excitement, but never distract from the great white witch at center stage, piercing us with charcoal-rimmed eyes. They played a generous hour-plus set, bookending favorites from previous records, like “Carrion Flowers” and “Feral Love,” with material from Hiss Spun.
Wolfe treated us to a two-song encore, beginning with a solo acoustic performance of “Halfsleeper,” from her 2010 debut. Her isolated voice was all the more staggering, and even spooky given the season. It was only then that I noticed a large black “sun” suspended above her like a dark totem. Soon Wolfe’s band rejoined her, plunging into the heady sendoff of “Scrape,” awash in distortion. As she floated off the stage, it was apparent that Chelsea Wolfe’s performances allow her to embody many things – she’s a siren, goddess, and banshee all at once.
Last week, after publishing “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town,” I took the train across the East River to see a movie. A bit of distraction seemed necessary in that moment, even if it was in the form of a demonic clown named Pennywise. Sitting on the Manhattan-bound C train, I noticed a man in a grey flannel suit to my left. He, like most modern passengers, was fixated on his smart phone. The glow of its screen did not reflect Candy Crush, Snapchat, or Instagram, however, but a P.O.V. shooter game. The tap of his thumb did not cause hearts of affirmation to burst with confetti, but rather, launched bullets from a high-power rifle, bumping off “bad guys” one by one. I watched as my well-dressed neighbor selected guns, tightened his scope, and fired and rooftop gunmen.
At that moment, it had only been four days since the mass murder of festival goers in Las Vegas, and seeing any gun, whether real, toy, or two-dimensional gave me a swift kick of nausea. It goes without saying that the events that plagued Las Vegas on October 1st still plague us today, and will continue to do so – and it is because of that lasting sickness I write on this topic again.
There were a lot of things that didn’t make the final draft of last week’s Only Noise, in part because I felt there was a hierarchy of importance with certain details – namely pointing out the arcane excuses for assault rifle-ownership in America. What I did not have the word count to include, were profiles on the scores of musicians who have had the guts to protest groups like the N.R.A., and ideologies which uphold the mass armament of US citizens with little to no discernment.
Artists like Harry Nilsson, who, after his best friend John Lennon was murdered by a crazed fan with a .38 revolver, became the official spokesperson for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV). In 1981, a year following Lennon’s death, Nilsson told the L.A. Times, “I’ve never been an activist before, but when I was one of the people who had to hold Ringo’s hand after John Lennon was shot, I became involved. I said to Ringo one night just after the shooting, ‘If I could take this from you, I would. But I can’t.’ I was helpless, and that was the worst time in the world for me.” Nilsson’s life work became twofold: music, and gun control. Eventually he became National Chairman of a campaign called End Handgun Violence Week, which ran between October 25th and October 31st in the early 1980s.
247 people have been fatally shot in this country in the 10 days since the Route 91 Harvest Festival. Perhaps the CSGV could bring back End Handgun Violence Week, although the public faces far more frightening weaponry than just handguns these days.
Despite her recent op-ed in The New York Times, Roseanne Cash is no rookie to the gun control debate. Her activism traces back twenty years. She spoke out in 2015, when a gunman at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon killed nine people. This tragedy coincidentally occurred on the first of October as well – two years to the day before Stephen Paddock wreaked death on Las Vegas. The day after the 2015 attack, Cash urged citizens to sign a petition to reinstate the 1994 federal ban on assault weapons. “If you are as sick of gun violence in this country as I am,” the country artist wrote on her Facebook page, “then let’s stop talking about it and just do ONE simple thing.”
Unfortunately, this ONE simple thing has not appeared so simple to lawmakers. The 1994 assault weapon ban was never reinstated. Assault weapon opposition does continue to grow, however, especially after so many lives were lost at the Route 91 Harvest Festival. Guitarist Caleb Keeter of Josh Abbott Band was one of the first country musicians to completely alter his stance on gun ownership in this country, after the massacre in Las Vegas (he was at the festival when the shooting occurred). “I’ve been a proponent of the 2nd amendment my entire life,” Keeter wrote on Twitter the day following the shooting. “Until the events of last night. I cannot express how wrong I was.” He added, “We need gun control RIGHT. NOW.”
Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a long list of country musicians who have done a 180 on their firearms position since the massacre – but a few do seem to be distancing themselves from the NRA. On October 2nd, the artist roster on the website for NRA Country (an organization linking upcoming country artists with the NRA brand and lifestyle) shrunk from 39 names to 37 – the slots for Florida Georgia Line and Rhett Miller had suddenly vanished.
Of course, more opposition has come from musicians outside of the country bubble. Artists like Lady Gaga, John Mayer, The Chainsmokers, and Vic Mensa have all spoken out on social media, demanding gun control. Ariana Grande, who has seen her fair share of concert-targeted violence, tweeted, “My heart is breaking for Las Vegas. We need love, unity, peace, gun control & for people to look at this & call this what it is = terrorism.”
Moby posted a meme on his Instagram reading, “MAKE IT STOP” above an assault rifle graphic. Below it, the artist wrote, “How many more mass shootings will it take? How many more lives ended? How many more families destroyed? We need sane, rational, sensible #guncontrolnow. The @nationalrifleassociation and every Republican who opposes gun control has so much blood on their hands. Mass shootings are evil, passing legislation that enables them to happen even more so.”
One can only hope that players in the country music scene – the scene most affiliated with the NRA and gun ownership – will eventually put aside the political demographics of their fan base and speak out. Perhaps country artist Will Hoge put it best when he spoke to Marissa Moss for Politico Magazine:
“Will this be the thing where all of a sudden every conservative artist comes out and supports gun control? That’s an unrealistic idea,” he said. “I do think this is the point where country artists are going to have to take long hard looks in the mirror and ask, ‘What’s more important to me: maintaining success at commercial radio, or doing what’s right?’”
Last Saturday, while performing at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom, Marilyn Manson was crushed by a falling stage prop. The assailing object was not a steel cage, nor a neon pentagram, but a sculpture of two massive handguns affixed to scaffolding. Manson was rushed to the hospital with undisclosed injuries.
Though it was a frightening incident (and one that led him to eventually cancel several upcoming tour dates), the knowledge that Manson was not in critical condition allowed a bit of black humor to creep into the scenario. Not 10 days prior, Manson pulled a toy gun on The Guardian’s Alexis Petridis during an interview, and later told him that, “the Columbine era destroyed my entire career at the time.”
Manson was of course referring to the 1999 Columbine High School shooting at the hands of teenagers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. The post-Columbine news media, eager to blame the violence on anything but America’s lax firearms policies and clueless approach toward disaffected youth, found a horned scapegoat in Manson. Countless pundits and members of the religious right made reference to his devil-worshipping ways, as well as his messages of “hate, violence, suicide, death, drug use, and Columbine-like behavior.” In the late ‘90s, Manson became an even greater pariah than he already was. If, before Columbine, his name evoked satanic orgies and platform shoes, it was now irrevocably linked with one of the most terrifying acts of gun violence in American history.
Knowing all of this, it’s hard to imagine Manson – whose wry and dark sense of humor infiltrates most of his interviews – didn’t at least smirk at the irony of two giant handguns pummeling him onstage. I must admit that after learning Manson did not suffer any serious wounds, I smirked, too. Until Sunday, that is.
The very next evening, across the nation from The Hammerstein Ballroom, a lone gunman opened fire on a country music festival in Las Vegas, murdering at least 59 people, and injuring over 500 others. I paraphrase The New Yorker journalist Adam Gopnik when I say that, the word “injured” is not commensurate with the scope of physical harm and psychological scars inflicted on those 500. Acknowledging the dead dozens doesn’t mend the phantom limbs nursed by their families.
Suddenly, one catastrophic weekend fanned the ever-burning flame of America’s gun control debate, and this time, the music world felt the heat. Country artist Rosanne Cash came forward with a powerful op-ed in the New York Times on Tuesday, imploring musicians – especially country musicians, who are so heavily burdened with the identity of the gun-toting American – to stand up against the N.R.A. and the armed culture of this nation:
“I encourage more artists in country and American roots music to end your silence,” Cash wrote. “It is no longer enough to separate yourself quietly. The laws the N.R.A. would pass are a threat to you, your fans, and to the concerts and festivals we enjoy.”
She went on, “This is a moment in American history that can’t be met with silence. According to PolitiFact, from 2005 to 2015, some 300,000 people in the US were killed by gun violence. That’s roughly the population of Pittsburgh.”
Fellow country guitarist Caleb Keeter, who was playing at the Las Vegas festival that weekend, met Cash’s challenge of squelching silence; the artist’s opinion on the second amendment is now altered forever.
“A small group (or one man) laid waste to a city with dedicated, fearless police officers desperately trying to help, because of access to an insane amount of firepower,” Keeter wrote. “Enough is enough.” In another sick twist of irony, the shooter, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, bought most of his artillery at a shop so innocuously named, “Guns & Guitars.”
One might think that the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history – as the Las Vegas massacre has now been classified – would move N.R.A. lobbyists and politicians to the same extent as Mr. Keeter. Instead, the N.R.A. is silent, and President Trump claims that the gun control conversation is, “not for now.”
But the President and the gun lobbyists weren’t at the Route 91 Harvest Festival. They didn’t spend Sunday night dodging hundreds of rounds of ammunition fired from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel by Paddock. They weren’t there to suffer the carnage, and yet they continue to uphold laws which legalize the very implements that allowed Paddock to fire so relentlessly; namely, the easily acquired bump stock, which makes rapid-fire rifles out of semi-automatic ones, and can be purchased for $99.
Considering the coincidence that Marilyn Manson was once again in the news at the same time as a domestic mass shooting (though this time, not as a scapegoat), I couldn’t help but revisit Bowling For Columbine, Michael Moore’s 2002 documentary about America’s relationship with gun violence, in which Manson is interviewed.
When Bowling For Columbine hit theaters, I was 13. It was the first time I’d seen Marilyn Manson portrayed as a human being; sitting patiently in a chair and not writhing in fake blood or riding a potbellied pig. I was struck by his intelligence – by how articulate and gentle this agent of Satan could be. When Manson sat down with Moore, he spoke of Columbine and the media’s subsequent blame game.
“The two byproducts of that whole tragedy were violence in entertainment, and gun control,” he said, “and how perfect that those were the two things that we were going to talk about in the upcoming election. And also, then we forgot about Monica Lewinsky, and then we forgot about: the President was shooting bombs overseas, and yet I’m a bad guy because I sing some rock n’ roll songs,” he continued. “And who’s the bigger influence, the President? Or Marilyn Manson?”
Manson’s 15-year-old point is particularly sharp today, as conservatives strive to foist the responsibility for Las Vegas upon anything but the true culprit: the ease with which almost any American can waltz into a Walmart, and walk out with assault rifles, ammunition, and accoutrements that were never intended to hunt deer, but rather, humans. And for what?
Ask any Libertarian, member of the N.R.A., or gun-owning uncle why they need their AK-47s and TEC-9s, and they will all say the same thing: “for self defense!” But there are many flaws in that answer. First, look at the cold, hard facts about home invasion and “self defense.” Last year, the FBI released its 2015 crime stats, which proved a 7.8% decline in burglaries nationwide. Moreover, in 2010, the Bureau of Justice Statistics released data that in only 7% of household burglaries did a household member experience some form of violent victimization. That 7% is not to be scoffed at, but it also begs a few questions: 1) wouldn’t it be more difficult for burglars to victimize household members if they too, could not readily access firearms? And 2) Does having guns in the home ever truly make you safer?
According to figures from Aftermath.com, no. From 2005-2010, almost 3,800 people in the U.S. died from unintentional shootings. Over 1,300 victims those shootings were under 25 years of age. Additionally, a 2001 study by Miller, Azrael, and Hemenway reported that regardless of age, people are significantly more likely to die from unintentional firearm injuries when they live in states with more guns, as opposed to states with fewer guns. On average, states with the highest gun levels had nine times the rate of unintentional firearms deaths compared to states with the lowest gun levels.
3,800 doesn’t seem like such a high number for a five year period…when you compare it to the 30,000 gun deaths this country witnesses annually. In 2010, 20,000 of those gun deaths were suicides – suicides committed by people who didn’t have too much trouble procuring a gun.
I wonder if gun enthusiasts could use their “self-defense” logic on the victims of Mandalay Bay: could the concertgoers have protected themselves if each and every one of them was packing? No. When someone is shooting from the 32nd floor of a high-rise building, there is nothing you can do except run and duck for cover. Shooting back would do no good from the festival grounds – the man in the tower will always have the advantage. And yet, according to the logic of a Michigan Militiaman who was interviewed early in Bowling For Columbine, Paddock’s victims were ‘neglecting their obligation to be armed.’
“It’s an American responsibility to be armed. If you’re not armed, you’re not responsible,” he said in the film, struggling to buckle his belt. “It’s your job to defend you and yours,” he continued. “If you don’t do it, you’re in dereliction of duty as an American, period.” I wonder if that Militiaman could bear to accuse the Mandalay Bay victims of being “in dereliction of duty” as Americans,” today.
To me, passing legislation that allows citizens to purchase assault weapons and their vicious accessories; passively arming millions, and silently watching this happen again, and again, and again, is far more derelict of American duty than not owning an assault rifle. Raising our children in a culture that applauds and abets the “recreational” use of firearms is far more psychologically questionable, than going to town without your guns.
When the “self defense” argument doesn’t add up, gun-loving Americans turn to the Bill of Rights. “The Second Amendment says: I have the right to bear arms!” they shout. Well friends, there’s a big fucking difference between a musket and an AR-15. The fact of the matter is, most of the weaponry sold today didn’t exist when the Bill of Rights was written in 1789, and therefore should not be protected by it.
It is a nonsensical argument veiled in false patriotism and practicality, as if these trigger-happy citizens need their M16s for Fourth of July marches and weekend pheasant hunting. Their entitled cry that it’s “my right” to own an assault rifle bears the same insipid selfishness as a teenager trying to overthrow their parent’s household rules because they just turned 18. “Yes, legally, you may be an ‘adult,’ but you’re still in my house, eating my pot roast,” that parent might say. It seems that clinging to these weapons like toys and brandishing an irrelevant emblem of “freedom,” is more important to anti-gun control lobbyists than human life.
When Bowling For Columbine was first released, the wound opened by Harris and Klebold was still fresh and bleeding. The atrocity of Americans shooting scores of innocent people seemed at the time like a societal outlier. Now, it has become the hideous norm. And while Marilyn Manson will recover from his gun-inflicted wounds, I sometimes wonder if this country ever can.
I’ve stopped counting the number of times “coffee” is mentioned in Patti Smith’s M Train. The short answer is: a lot; coffee is the lifeblood coursing through the entire book. Coffee is the daily elixir of Smith’s life, and she finds great poetry in every sip – from hand-selected, highland grown beans in Veracruz, to the charred offerings of Styrofoam deli cups – she wants “to write an aria to coffee.” Yet, quite surprisingly, the poet and songwriter never did. Smith’s connotations with coffee result from her caffeine-fueled memoirs and New York coffee shop patronage, and she is therefore one of the artists I most strongly associate with those bitter brown beans. I imagine that her version of heaven is an eternal corner table in her favorite café, where the brown bread and olive oil never run out and the coffee flows black and hot.
Considering today is National Coffee Day, I can’t help but think about the decades, even centuries long relationship between music and coffee. Who are the musicians who’ve paid homage to the drink named Joe? And which artists, like Smith, evoke coffee shop romanticism without needing to sing of a single sip?
Since Smith never wrote her aria di caffè, I can only speculate what coffee represents to her. In M Train it signifies ritual; each day of import is commenced with a description of her coffee and breakfast regimen, but not in an Instagram diary manner. Smith isn’t keeping a food journal for fitness purposes. Rather, it seems that every sip of coffee transports her back in time, where she can commune with her beloved Beat poets, and sit in Mohammed Mrabet’s fictional The Beach Café for a little while. Surely it must also evoke her greatest influence, Bob Dylan, and his early days at the Gaslight Café.
Coffee pairs with Bob Dylan just as well as cigarettes (a classic duo we’ll get to in a moment.) From his Greenwich Village coffee shop days and his caffeinated delivery on songs like “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Talkin’ New York,” to his 1975 ballad “One More Cup of Coffee,” Dylan and java go hand-in-hand. In fact, because of his proximity to the Beats, Dylan was one of the musicians who pioneered the image of a rock n’ roll poet holed up in a café, dousing themselves with free refills and stamping out smokes while scribbling lyrics. Smith merely conjured her idols, and eventually became one herself.
Like Patti Smith, Tom Waits never wrote a song with the word “coffee” in the title – but can you think of a musician more at home on the pleather booth seats of a 24-hour diner? Waits is seemingly made of coffee grounds, burger grease, and cigarette tar. The same year that Dylan released “One More Cup of Coffee,” Waits recorded his iconic live album Nighthawks at the Diner, a jazz-beat-opera to the greasy spoon lifestyle. The most caffeinated track on Nighthawks has to be “Eggs And Sausage (In A Cadillac With Susan Michelson),” which relays the deadbeat clientele and menu options of a roadside-dining joint. “…There’s a rendezvous/of strangers around the coffee urn tonight/all the gypsy hacks, the insomniacs…/eggs and sausage and a side of toast/coffee and a roll, has browns over easy…/it’s a graveyard charade, a late shift masquerade.”
If Bob Dylan and Patti Smith claimed cafés for the poets, Waits reclaimed them for their rightful patrons: nightshift gas station attendants, prostitutes, and aimless drunks. When bars are only open until 4am (2am if you are on the West Coast like Waits), where is one to go in the wee and in between hours? The diner of course, where coffee flows cheaply and liberally. That is the beauty of coffee shops and canteens: they offer refuge for those who don’t have an office or a studio, and can’t afford to wash themselves in fine wine or dine out on the regular. In the coffee shop, you can purchase a single item (a cup of coffee) and sit for hours on end working, reading, or simply sipping. And not too long ago, you could also smoke.
It’s no coincidence that Waits sings of “cold caffeine in a nicotine cloud” in “Eggs And Sausage.” The narcotic pair has been canonized in literature, music, and film for years. Jim Jarmusch’s 2003 flick Coffee and Cigarettes plumbs the eternal relationship between the two vices, and whom does he turn to for much of his cast? Musicians, naturally. Coffee and Cigarettes is comprised of eleven short scenes revolving around the titular pleasures. Three of these scenes involve famous musicians, the most memorable being Somewhere In California, featuring Iggy Pop and, you guessed it, Tom Waits.
The rock icons meet in a corner booth, sipping black coffee and making awkward conversation. Though Pop and Waits both quit smoking long ago, a mysterious pack of Marlboros sits on the table. The marriage of coffee and cigarettes (and coffee and rock n’ roll and cigarettes) is so undeniable, that the smokes have just magically appeared. After realizing that since they’ve already quit, they can now partake every once in a while, Waits and Pop light up and bask in nicotine. “Hey, cigarettes and coffee man…that’s a combination,” says Iggy. Waits nods in agreement. “You know, we’re really like the coffee-and-cigarettes generation, when you think about it,” he says. “Well I mean, in the ‘40s it was the pie-and-coffee generation…”
When Otis Redding recorded “Cigarettes and Coffee” for The Soul Album in 1966, the substances seemed to represent domestic bliss as well as stimulating conversation. “It’s early in the morning/About a quarter till three,” sings Redding, “I’m sittin’ here talkin’ with my baby/Over cigarettes and coffee, now.” Perhaps Redding’s positioning of coffee in rock n’ roll is the most honest – suggesting that its warmth and ceremonial nature recalls home.
Other than booze and blood, coffee has to be the most romantic liquid in the Western Song Book. Cowboys and rappers like it black (unless you’re the Beastie Boys, and must have your “sugar with coffee and cream.”) Blur has it with TV, Squeeze drinks it in bed, and Kate Bush wants it homeground. And in the 1970s, Patti Smith ventured to all the way to Mexico is search of the ideal brew. “It was February 14,” she recalls in M Train, “and I was about to give my heart to a perfect cup of coffee.”
Playing house is one of the earliest and most innate forms of childhood emulation. It is how we pantomime maturity, and begin to learn self-preservation, domestic upkeep, and the treatment of others. From pretending to prepare a meal, to sweeping the tree house, this form of child’s play is our first expression of wanting to “grow up.” For Canadian artist Common Holly, Playing House is an expression of consciously entering adulthood. It is also the name of her debut record.
Helmed by songwriter Brigitte Naggar, Common Holly greets us with a tender and sophisticated meditation on the end of a formative relationship, and the importance of purposeful decision-making. Of Playing House, Naggar said in a press release that the record “is my first real effort to create something that is entirely deliberate—the beginning of my journey of thoughtful action, and of daring to express myself outside of my bedroom.”
“Deliberate” is the perfect word for Playing House – its stunning arrangements and artful production reflect intent and restraint. Opening track “If After All” is expertly composed, commencing with a font of liquid before breaking down into a multifaceted pop gem, somehow incorporating finger-plucked guitar, swelling strings, and minimalist drums without sounding overwrought. Naggar’s girlish voice carries the same melody throughout the song, but the instrumentation blooms from indie folk to sweeping ballad before culminating in hard rock distortion and busy electric guitar. “If After All” is such a strong composition, I almost wish it was buried deeper in the record, as it’s a tough act to follow.
Though less musically intricate, “Nothing” speaks to Naggar’s ability to contrast form with concept. The dulcet vocals and bedroom rock delivery of “Nothing” portray innocence, while Naggar’s lyrics are anything but. Naggar sings of a crumbling, codependent relationship in which every attempt to problem-solve results in suffocation: “If I got you in a room/ if I got you to hold still/it would probably too soon/to hold you there against your will.”
This level of self-awareness is palpable throughout Playing House. Naggar deconstructs a banal yet dysfunctional relationship throughout the album, holding herself accountable as much as possible. Discussing this theme in a press release, she said, “Especially at the end of a relationship, there comes a time when the best thing you can do for someone is to leave them alone even though it might feel like you’re abandoning them. Sometimes trying to resolve things and being over-present is an act influenced more by guilt than by empathy.”
“In My Heart” is yet another manifestation of that concept. A quietly complex country number, it employs pedal steel and neatly placed piano. The song’s softness negates its harsh message of letting someone go: “Don’t try/In my mind, in my mind I can’t help it/With my heart, with my heart I can’t help you.”
Resting midway through the record is the gorgeous “Lullaby” featuring Montreal pianist Jean-Michel Blais. “Lullaby” depicts Naggar at her thematic pinnacle – the anatomy of the song is true to lullabies, indeed, while Blais’ creeping keys suggest the twinkling of a nursery mobile rotating above a crib. Naggar’s lyrics, however, are biting and brutal despite this naïve melody. “If you’re busy undermining all the things I had to say,” she sings, “I know it would have been wrong for me to try to stay.” The track’s closing coda plays on a familiar children’s game, but turns that on its head for a darker finish: “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Naggar intones, before promising: “I will keep away.”
The weighty blues of “The Rose” finds Naggar nodding at The Black Keys. The song is soft to start, but builds up and breaks down into Auerbach-worthy guitar, eventually spinning out with grunge distortion. In keeping with this dark turn, “The Desert” is a painterly narrative with sparse string arrangements evoking The Dirty Three. Hand drums and piano crawl behind scant guitar and Naggar’s reverb-heavy croons, weaving a soundscape strong enough to close the record. Though it seems that Naggar didn’t want to end things on such a heavy note. Playing House’s final cuts resort to sweet and weightless melodies instead.
The title track exudes a singsong, sonic innocence. Its melody is full of childlike “doo doo doos” and lyrics that are one word away from being playful: “I’ll play mama, you’ll play daddy and we’ll ruin us beyond repair/at the cabin, on the lakeside, if we take things too far.” It is a song you can almost skip or swing to, until it dissolves into a foreboding vibration fit for Twin Peaks.
Closing track “New Bed” is Common Holly’s most stripped-down offering on Playing House, and perhaps its most optimistic. It is the song that finalizes the breakup; the hopeful closure and calm after the storm. Naggar is vulnerable and resigned when she sings, “I feel that we will get along just fine/if everything goes the way I have in mind.” The song fades out with rain and faint sirens, but what they’re chasing, we do not know.
Playing House is out now on Solitaire Recordings. Don’t miss Common Holly on her upcoming tour.
September 28 – Nomad Folk Fest
November 2 – Brooklyn Bazaar, New York, NY w/ The Hotelier, Oso Oso & Alex Napping
November 3 – Songbyrd Music House, Washington DC, w/ The Hotelier, Oso Oso & Alex Napping
December 5 – Communion Showcase, Rockwood Music Hall, New York, NY
December 8 – Theatre Fairmount, Montreal, QC w/ Chad VanGaalen[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
Tomorrow marks the first day of autumn. You might not believe it given these muggy 80-degree days, but Fall is upon us nevertheless. Fall is the best for multiple reasons, including turtlenecks, Halloween, and mock-necks; but it is also a time when things die. Leaves. Bar backyards. Your summer tan. All gone. Looking back on this time last year, I was writing about the death (or at least prolonged hibernation) of CMJ. Now I could add the Village Voice, Rolling Stone, and potentially The Deli Magazine to that obituary. Sure, the Voice is only going out of print, Rolling Stone is only up for sale, and The Deli Magazine is only half the size it used to be – maybe “death” is too harsh a word – but that’s what it feels like.
Today I happened upon one of those familiar red boxes and snatched up the last copy of The Village Voice I will ever hold. The cover was nearly text free, save for the paper’s logo and the words “Final Edition” in tiny print at the top. A black and white photo of Bob Dylan giving a salute filled the page. It is a somber image, and almost made my knees buckle on West Broadway. I could only think: “what next?”
And then, in rare moment of attempted optimism, I asked myself again: “yes, what next?” This time, instead of asking with dread, I asked it with the expectation of wonderful things. New York may be missing some iconic music venues, festivals, and print publications, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be a wealth of great music coming our way regardless. So rather than mourn the lost, let’s look forward to the season’s best musical happenings, shall we? We shall. Here are the Fall 2017 record releases I am most looking forward to.
The difficult-to-define, experimental Canadians Godspeed You! Black Emperor will drop their sixth LP tomorrow – the much anticipated Luciferian Towers. Fortunately we don’t have to wait another second to check it out, as the group shared the album in full with NPR last week. In keeping with GY!BE fashion, this record is dense, sprawling, and frenetic. Now we can only hope the band will accompany its release with a US tour sometime soon!
Next week, Detroit post-punks Protomartyr will release Relatives In Descent – their debut LP for Domino Records. After seeing Protomartyr play a dynamite set at Basilica Soundscape last weekend, I’m especially thrilled for this new album, which according to the band’s Greg Ahee, was inspired by Mica Levi and the Raincoats’ Odyshape. Relatives In Descent was co-produced and recorded with Sonny DiPerri, who has worked with the likes of Dirty Projectors and Animal Collective. What’s not to love?
Mercury Prize winner Benjamin Clementine is one of the more fascinating characters in contemporary music. While his debut album 2015’s At Least For Now was a sweeping affair between neo-classical and Nina Simone, I Tell A Fly promises theatrics and a bit of the political. The record’s leading single, “Phantom Of Aleppoville” is an album all its own, volleying from marching snares to parlor piano and soul harmonies. It’s a tour de force, and I imagine the whole LP will be nothing short of the same. Don’t miss Clementine when he plays Carnegie Hall on October 5th.
Two very different records drop on October sixth, one being the long-awaited full-length debut from R&B artist Kelela. Take Me Apart (Warp Records) is the follow-up to Kelela’s 2014 EP Hallucinogen and her 2013 mixtape Cut 4 Me. According to the artist, the album is a blend of personal themes, politics, and genre. “Despite it being a personal record,” Kelela stated in a press release, “the politics of my identity informs how it sounds and how I choose to articulate my vulnerability and strength. I am a black woman, a second-generation Ethiopian-American, who grew up in the ‘burbs listening to R&B, Jazz and Björk. All of it comes out in one way or another.” Catch Kelela November 12th and 13th at Bowery Ballroom.
On the other end of things, Antichrist Superstar Marilyn Manson is back with his first new track in two years. The garage-pop cut “KILL4ME” is Manson’s leading single off his forthcoming record Heaven Upside Down, and it’s far more catchy than disturbing. Perhaps all of Manson’s interactions with Justin Bieber have affected his sound? Manson will perform at the Hammerstein Ballroom on September 30th and The Paramount on October 3rd.
Mid-October treats include the debut duet Lotta Sea Lice from Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile, who make such a natural pair it’s amazing they didn’t cut a record together years ago. The record’s first single “Over Everything” is an expert blend of deadpan romanticism and tangy guitar riffs – elements both artists know their way around quite well. Kurt and Courtney (no, not that Kurt and Courtney!) will play The Beacon Theater on November 1st.
Archy Marshall is set to release his sophomore LP as King Krule. The Ooz is already garnering a lot of excitement from the music community, and if the entire record is half as good as its first single “Dum Surfer,” all the hype will be justified. For those of you who’ve yet to see King Krule live, he’ll be headlining Greenpoint’s Warsaw on October 24th and 25th. Get there early and eat some pierogies while you’re at it!
The first two singles from Destroyer’s forthcoming LP Ken sound completely different from one another. But then again, that’s the Destroyer sound: constantly morphing. Check out the frenetic and haunting “Tinseltown Swimming in Blood,” and keep an eye open for Destroyer’s 2018 US tour.
Right in time for Halloween, Sacred Bones Records will release John Carpenter’s Anthology: Movie Themes 1974-1998. This collection of Carpenter’s film scores (that’s right, he directed the flicks and composed the music to cult classics like Escape From New York and Halloween) will be limited to 500 hand-numbered vinyl LPs, pressed on “Anti-God Green” wax, of course. Get your copy quick, and don’t miss Carpenter’s Terminal 5 set on November 16th.
If that list of killer music-to-come doesn’t dissolve your Autumn blues, then I don’t know what will. Perhaps this list of incredible Fall concerts, happening right here in NYC:
It was native New Yorker Lou Reed who sang, “Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor/I’ll piss on ’em/that’s what the Statue of Bigotry says” in “Dirty Blvd.” The wry piece of poetry was one of many city-centric tracks to grace Reed’s New York LP from 1989. While Reed’s lyrics sound hateful towards NYC, you might consider them more love/hate when you realize that the man who wrote them never left New York (well, New York State, at least). Lou Reed remained a New Yorker when he passed in 2013, and his city praises him still. I am no stranger to the Big Apple ambivalence Reed has put to music since the 1960s. Once you’ve put in enough time here, you tend to make love and fight with this city like a spouse. But good times and bad times aside, New York is hands-down the best boyfriend I’ve ever had.
Today is my first day back in town after being away for more than a month. You can imagine my delight the moment I landed, grabbed my luggage, and ran down JFK Airport’s many moving sidewalks after weeks of sitting. That’s a lot of what you do on the West Coast: sit. I sat in cars, on couches, and at bars, my legs nearly atrophied from disuse. So thirsty was I for the unrelenting motion of this city, and the ability to walk anywhere if you have the time. I longed for efficient but banal things like the Air Train and the MTA, and I beamed when finally boarding them, despite it being 5:38 in the morning. My MetroCard even had $10.50 left on it. Damn, I love this place.
It’s surprising to me that I haven’t written an I <3 NY piece until now, but sometimes you have to step away from something to appreciate it, as the old cliché goes. Fortunately, hundreds – likely thousands – of artists have enshrined their love of New York in song, and that makes things a lot easier for me. Why use my own words, when I can defer to the borough-praising rhymes of say, The Beastie Boys? Their 2004 hit “An Open Letter To NYC” is a sprawling poem to the city, with more New York in-jokes than Seinfeld. But the chorus alone says it all:
“Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens and Staten/From the Battery to the top of Manhattan/Asian, Middle-Eastern and Latin/Black, White, New York you make it happen.”
I can’t boast East Coast origins like The Beastie Boys, but creeping up on a decade of living here, I’m that much closer to earning my I <3 NY t-shirt, and I sure as hell feel all the love for this place evident in “An Open Letter To NYC.”
If you’ve been reading my column lately, you may have noticed a less-than-optimistic taint to my voice. I blame the infernal state of the world, of course – but why the sudden burst of joy? It’s because I am back. And dear sweet New York, I am never leaving you again.
I have just come from Huntington Beach, California, where the idea of culture is bottle-blonde, bronzed, fond of CrossFit. Young professionals can be found dancing to “Margaritaville” and the musical cannon of Pitbull, all while shouting “let’s do shots!” sorority style. One such cultured resident harassed me at a bar a few days ago. She was a former hairstylist-turned-Billabong-clothing-designer and breathing stereotype who proceeded to tell me to shut the fuck up, threaten me with her assault history, and hug me while saying, “I love you” in the span of 10 minutes. Then she flashed me.
If people think New Yorkers are cold, I much prefer our brand of chilliness to the Southern Californian “warmth” I often experience. Everyone makes the assumption that New Yorkers are rude, brash people, but I never get offended more than when I go to other parts of the country, particularly Surf City USA. When the fit, well-hydrated inhabitants of Huntington Beach ask me why I’d ever want to live in such a dirty, crowded city, I just respond with the words of Judy Garland: “The more I see New York, the more I think of it/I like the sight and the sound and even the stink of it/I Happen to Like New York.”
No truer words have been sung. I love New York for its music, and films, and fine art, sure, but also for its sludge, and grime, and smog. When I travel to clean cities, my first question is always, “Where is all your trash?” Cleanliness unsettles me. Dirt=history. Do you think London and Paris would possess the same je ne sais quoi if their cobblestones hadn’t been washed in blood and filth for centuries? No. Filth=character, and if the lyrics of The Rolling Stones’ “Shattered” (“You got rats on the West Side/Bed bugs uptown”) or Fear’s “New York’s Alright If You Like Saxophones” (“New York’s alright if you like drunks in your doorway”) doesn’t convince you of that, I don’t know what will.
You can say what you will of New York. Call our city expensive and wretched and unsanitary. Call us snobs, hipsters, careerists, assholes and aesthetes. We’ve probably been called worse. We don’t mind the hassle or hustle so long as we never run out of music, or museums, or midnight movies to enjoy. And in New York, that’d be pretty unlikely.
Perhaps the countless songs by artists like Leonard Cohen, Grandmaster Flash, NAS, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, and so many others will better encapsulate the sprawling organism of New York City. I certainly can’t do better than them. So here is a playlist of all of my favorite New York songs. If you still don’t like it here after listening to “Chelsea Hotel #2” or “The Message,” get out. No one is asking you to stay, and the subway’s too crowded.
Sometimes, these columns are damn hard to spit out. It’s not always easy to remain enthralled with the music world, especially when the real world seems to be crumbling around us. We don’t have to pretend. 2017 has been a fucking nightmare. We’ve witnessed the inauguration of Donald J. Trump, North Korea launching a missile over Japan, devastating floods in Houston and South Asia, and rallies filled with actual Nazis, just to name few lows.
I’m not a religious person, but I’m starting to expect widespread plague and a swarm of locusts any minute now. Just visiting The Guardian’s World News webpage fills me with terror – especially when the top headline reads: “Armageddon. Scientists calculate how stars can nudge comets to strike Earth.” What the fuck?! I’m a dyed-in-the-wool atheist, but you know what? Maybe there is someone up there, ready to just take us all out with a flaming space rock, because we clearly can’t keep things together down here.
“Um…what does this have to do with music?” you ask.
Here’s the thing: being a music journalist is pretty great. I love it more than any non-human in my life. However, when the world seems to be blazing in what Evangelicals would call “hellfire,” it’s hard to feel motivated to write about anything but serious shit. Rolling out a “think piece” on hidden messages in Taylor Swift’s new video feels like you’re stuffing your soul into a manila envelope and shipping it off to Satan for safekeeping. Even if you understand that it isn’t wrong to write about the VMAs, one still gets the sense that they are ignoring a towering elephant that is not only in the room, he’s bending the baseboards and demolishing furniture.
Of course, when I say “you” and “one,” I ultimately mean “me.” I cannot speak for other music writers. Though I can assume that many of my colleagues, who are intelligent, compassionate people, must feel some of this weight. It’s not possible that I’m the only person who suffers nauseating guilt reporting on Panorama Festival the same weekend journalists discover that North Korean missile tests have the capacity to reach New York.
So what does “one” do? Writing about art and pop culture in frightening times is a delicate matter. To say nothing of the floods, the violence, or the fear seems grossly irresponsible. To mention it only to alleviate one’s own guilt is possibly worse. I would never say making art in times of strife is a waste of time – I will always argue the opposite. I will even go so far as to say that it’s impossible to stall creativity in dire times, as conflict is one of art’s great muses. Critiquing art amidst global devastation, however, can be a task colored with shame. The question often clanging in my head being, “Does it even fucking matter?”
I don’t know. I am unfit to answer the question. Here is what I do know. This is my job. My dream job, really. Artists and the music they make are kind of like my religion (or as close as this godless writer comes to it). Even on the worst of days, when my personal and family misfortunes could inspire an entire season of All My Children, I can still be brought to my knees by the beauty of a song. I know it’s corny. I also know that a song won’t drain the waters in Houston, or rewire the brains of white supremacists (if they have anything to rewire, that is). A song can’t do much when it all comes down to it, let alone a writer writing about a song – but artists can.
While I’ve been distraught by this year’s cruel newsreel, the artists who have leveraged their platforms for good causes have given me some sense of pride in humanity. 2017’s first cry from outspoken celebrities occurred at the Women’s March on Washington (and its sister marches around the world), where the likes of Madonna, Alicia Keys, The Indigo Girls, and Janelle Monáe either performed or gave impassioned speeches denouncing Trump’s election. That same month, Canadian electro-pop group Austra released their third LP Future Politics. The album is revelatory and filled with political insight, proving that pop music doesn’t have to be sugarcoated.
In 2017 there have been countless benefit concerts for organizations like Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and CAIR-New York (Counsel On American-Islamic Relations), to name but a few. Now the charitable hands of artists will extend to Houston. Solange has planned a benefit show later this month in Boston where 100% of proceeds will go to victims of Hurricane Harvey and its destructive floods. Fall Out Boy and rapper Bun B have planned separate but similar benefit shows, and numerous celebrities have either already given money to relief organizations (like $500,000 from Miley Cyrus and the $25,000 DJ Khaled shelled out) or promised to do so in the near future (like Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj, Demi Lovato, and DNCE).
Many of the aforementioned performers are ones I don’t artistically care for that much, but these days I’m elated they’re around. It seems that with their immense command of the public interest and disposable income, artists have taken on responsibilities that our government should have the answers and funds for. It’s a sad and beautiful truth. That these seemingly “frivolous” celebrities go above and beyond their job title in times of crisis is noble; that they even need to in the first place is appalling.
So coming back to that initial question: what does “one” do? Let’s practice some simple logic. Things are bad right now. Things are really bad; and yet, artists both famous and obscure continue to defy the idea that humans are selfish, no-good creatures. If “you” are a music writer – why not write about those artists and their honorable efforts? It’s the least, and sometimes the most “you” can do.
Repeat after me: Loser. Double loser. Whatever. Moron. If you were a certain age in the late 1990s, this insult – when paired with the correct hand motions – was the ultimate dis to peers, siblings, and losers of every stripe. The term “loser” in the nineties and early ‘00s was plastered all over the place, from Beck’s breakout hit, to anti-drug PSAs, and that movie starring Jason Biggs’ trapper hat. The identity of the “loser” in music, however, is a far more complex thing than a girl “with her finger and her thumb in the shape of an “L” on her forehead,” as Smash Mouth sang.
The loser is not simply a spinoff of Jay and Silent Bob, or Bill and Ted, or Beavis and Butthead (as you can see, losers often come in pairs). It seems that the loser of song tradition is more akin to a hero than a villain. A flawed bearer of mediocrity and wearer of slouchy clothes, the loser archetype is as quintessential to rock ‘n’ roll as the rambler and the romantic. Some losers are self-proclaimed, like Derrick Harriott as he sang his reggae hit “The Loser,” and Merle Haggard, who released the gorgeous but self-effacing song “I’m a Good Loser” on his 1971 record, Hag. “Yeah I’m a good loser/Born to be that way/This dog, he never had his day,” croons Haggard, no doubt lamenting a long-gone woman.
Though country stars were often self-critical in Haggard’s era, hearing him sing the words, “I’m a good loser” is still jarring to this day. Who could ever think of Merle Haggard, one of the coolest men in the history of country music, as a loser? Only he had the power to slander his name, illuminating the fact that loss plagues all of us – even rich and famous country singers.
In many ways, Haggard was a loser. He certainly didn’t have a winning relationship with cigarettes, drugs, or alcohol, the combination of which contributed to his many years of poor heath, and eventual death in 2016. The Hag was also known to lose in love, and to the law. He was married five times and served two and a half years at San Quentin prison in 1958 for burglary and attempted escape from county jail. Add all that up, and you might not call Merle Haggard a winner – but he sure lost with the best of ‘em.
The desperate nature of a country music persona made the genre natural loser territory. From Hank Williams singing “You Win Again” to Linda Ronstadt’s “Sometimes You Just Can’t Win,” to the real-life rise and fall of Townes Van Zandt – the songs wouldn’t have been as good if everybody was winning all the time. But music’s hopeless manifesto didn’t reside only in blues and country – pop is full of losers, too. Of course there’s “Three Time Loser” by ultimate sexyman Rod Stewart, “Teenage Dirtbag” by Wheatus, “The Winner Takes It All” by ABBA, and countless others. Even The Beatles, the untouchable Fab Four, had a song about being a loser: “I’m A Loser” from 1964’s Beatles For Sale. “I’m a loser/And I lost someone who’s near to me,” sings John Lennon. It’s hard to imagine John, Paul, George or even Ringo identifying as losers while watching them perform this cut to a crowd of shrieking women, but then again, as the song warns, “I’m a Loser/And I’m not what I appear to be.”
Still, The Beatles don’t quite fit the loser archetype. I mean, look at those suits and those haircuts. Even when they got mustachioed and Sgt. Peppered it was hard to see them as anything but rock n’ roll all-stars. Folks like Roy Orbison, on the other hand, had a tougher time making it as a cool kid. “Roy was the coolest, uncool loser you’d ever seen,” Bruce Springsteen said of Orbison in a 2012 keynote address at SXSW. I doubt Orbison would deny such a claim had he been alive to hear it. The dark genius behind masterpieces like “Only The Lonely” and “Crying” knew much of loss and sorrow.
Orbison, aka, “The Big O” went through numerous catastrophes in his lifetime – in fact, there is even a section of his Wikipedia page entitled, “Career decline and tragedies” – and it’s lengthy. Orbison suffered heartbreak, infidelity on the part of his first wife Claudette (yes, that “Claudette”), and a lifetime of mourning. In June of 1966, Orbison and Claudette were riding motorcycles through Gallatin, Tennessee when Claudette struck the door of a pickup truck that had pulled out in front of her. She died instantly. Only two years later while touring England, Orbison received a call relaying that his home in Hendersonville, Tennessee had burned down, leaving his two eldest sons dead. If to be a loser you must suffer great loss, then perhaps Orbison was the biggest loser in rock ‘n’ roll history.
Where Haggard and Oribson’s losses were the stuff of tragic poems, the loser that rolled up in the ‘90s was cut from a different cloth. Take Beck’s “Loser” for instance – the lo-fi hit that put him on the map in 1994. Far more blasé than self-loathing, Beck traipsed through that music video like a shabby bon vivant rather than a hopeless burnout. He owned his loser-dom in secondhand duds and ill-fitting hats. Beck was the loser we’d never seen in music before: mildly defiant, nihilistic, and chic in his refusal to look to the future. Suddenly, the loser wasn’t tragic – it was cool.
But where have all the losers gone? We’ve seen plenty of pop stars in the past decade donning thick-rimmed glasses and identifying as “geek” (which, by the way, is not the same thing as a loser), but where are the deadbeat, worn-down, desperate stars of today? And please do not mention Ed Sheeran – he has a full torso of professional tattoos, and is therefore stripped of any potential loser accolades. Everyone keeps shouting that “the ‘90s are back!” but I don’t see rock ‘n’ roll losers anywhere. Who are kids supposed to look up to these days anyway, Adam Levine? That guy has far too many abs to be a loser. Mainstream music seems to be populated solely by shiny, auto-tuned sex symbols (and Ed Sheeran), and it’s just not enough. We need our poor, our weary, our roughened-up chumps, too. We need our losers. We are lost without them.
By the time you read this, I’ll be home. Not the home I’ve made for nearly a decade – not New York home. I’ll be “home” with a big “H.” The “home” Carole King sang of in “Home Again,” the home James Joyce fled but could never stop writing about, the home of countless poems and plays.
It’s not controversial to say that most songs are about love in some capacity, but I would wager that music about home – whether leaving or returning – makes up a hefty portion of the American songbook as well. Some say there’s no place like it, some say you can never go back to it, but everyone seems to have an opinion on the matter.
I recently conducted a small and unscientific social media survey attempting to crowdsource peoples’ favorite songs about home. This is something I frequently do for various reasons, including a desire for musical diversity, and plain ol’ laziness. But of all my little studies, I’ve never been met with so many responses as this one produced. Home is clearly a topic that hits, well, home.
But why? The participants in my study don’t have too much in common, so their suggestions were all over the sonic spectrum. The only consistent factor between the contributors is that each of them has left home; none of them currently reside in the place they grew up. That seems to be the defining aspect for music about home as well – the longing needs the leaving. How can you miss something, how can you return to something, unless you’ve left it to begin with? In fact, the only song I’ve found thus far about just staying at home is Dolly Parton’s “My Tennessee Mountain Home.” But only the angelic Ms. Parton could be wise enough to appreciate what she has in the moment – the rest of us must lose it first.
While I love and respect Dolly’s depiction of home, I sure as hell can’t relate to it. “Church on a Sunday” and “June bugs on a string” are foreign things to me, about as foreign as Tennessee itself. Bob Dylan’s 1961 “I Was Young When I Left Home” however, strikes quite a chord. “I was young when I left home,” Dylan cries. “And I been out a’ramblin’ ‘round/And I never wrote a letter to my home.” This early-career track captures a far more familiar feeling than Parton’s jovial country ballad. While Dolly evokes domestic satisfaction, Dylan unmasks guilt.
Guilt, along with a strong cocktail of superiority and shame, seem to be the base ingredients for songs about home. Dylan’s portrayal of guilt came in the form of negligence – the thought that while, and perhaps because you are off making a life for yourself, the people you left behind are suffering: “It was just the other day/I was drinkin’ on my pay/When I met an old friend I used to know,” Dylan continues. “He said your mother’s dead and gone/Your baby sister’s all gone wrong/And your daddy needs you home right away.”
The call home is something many of us will experience at some stage in our lives, and it is always a strange beckoning. Revisiting the point of origin you love or hate, or love and hate, is an exercise in ambivalence. We miss home, and we dread home. We want to pay our respects to the cities that birthed us, but we also want to look good for it like home is an old flame; we want to let it know we’re doing just fine without it. As Dylan sings, “Not a shirt on my back/Not a penny on my name/Well I can’t go home this a’way.” The thought of returning to our doorstep worse off than when we left it seems humiliating.
I was young when I left home, too, but “home” for me has always been a fragmented thing. Before I left for New York, I’d lived in nine different houses, and my parents have since moved into their tenth, then eleventh, abode (oddly enough, I sometimes think I moved to New York to settle down). When I “go home,” it isn’t technically going home. The remnants of my childhood belongings are in boxes, save for some clothing hung in the closet and records parked in my dad’s collection. I don’t really have a childhood home, but this is more of a blessing than you might realize. For instance, my childhood home will never burn down. I will never have to sell my childhood home, or squabble over its title with siblings. I will never watch it decay or become condemned – because it doesn’t exist. Home for me has never been a house – it has never been measured in shingles or siding, but in people and meals and songs. I remember when interviewing Bill Callahan last summer I asked what made him feel at home. “My wife,” he said. “My nylon string guitar if that’s all I got to hold on to. Bob Odenkirk as Jimmy McGill.”
Similarly, my version of home resides more in my father’s jumbo 6-string guitar than any midcentury bungalow or wrap-around porch. My dad hasn’t owned a home since 1998, and his rentals have been numerous. Some were even pretty badass – one had a pool table and a hot tub, but while the billiard balls and Jacuzzi did not travel on, the instruments and 4,000 LPs always have. When moving, the turntable and albums were always the first things to be unpacked and set up properly.
Still, “home” encompasses a lot more than just the nuclear family and its hearth. It’s the surrounding town too, and for me that’s the tricky part. The dissonance of visiting a place you never quite belonged is best depicted in songs like Catch Prichard’s “You Can Never Go Home Again” and Blaze Foley’s “Clay Pigeons.” Songs like these remind us that home is a construct; it is a perfect merging of time and nostalgia that you can never physically return to. Foley was well aware of this fact when he sang, “I could build me a castle of memories/Just to have somewhere to go.”
It’s a troubling thought, but maybe we’re so intrigued by the idea of returning home because we want to be rewarded for escaping it in the first place. Look at movies like Garden State and Columbus, or really, any flick about self-righteous, post-collegiate white people returning home to assert their superiority over the ‘townies’ they left behind. Music has a far more graceful relationship with home I reckon, but one can’t help but notice the conflict residing in cuts like “A Long Way From Home” by The Kinks. “I hope you find what you are looking for with your car and handmade overcoats,” Ray Davies snipes. “But your wealth will never make you stronger ’cause you’re still a long way from home.”
Perhaps it is the artists who fled home so quickly that spend the most time singing about it; those who are never home, who are in constant motion, are the ones continuously pondering stillness. Or maybe home is so appealing because the future is always so uncertain. To quote another Kinks song about home, “This Time Tomorrow”: “I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t want to see.”
Think about the last party you threw. Think about the beer bought and balloons inflated. Remember the quiche you labored over, only to realize no one wants to eat quiche at a party. Now consider the playlist you made. Don’t deny it – we all know you spent three lunch breaks compiling a shindig score entitled “Fiesta Mix.”
Now tell me – was your party (despite irrelevant quiche) a hit? Did “Fiesta Mix” incite a collective boogie? Did hips swing and booties shake, rattling the room with merriment? Well congratulations, my friend; you have accomplished something far beyond my abilities. You’re allowed to pick the music for the party.
“But, don’t you write about music…for a living?“ you ask.
I know. It doesn’t make any sense. You might assume that all these years of music fanaticism, self-dedicated mixtapes, and belabored op-eds would prime me for the simple task of DJing a party – and somehow, the opposite is true.
Proof of such failure lies in every birthday party I’ve thrown since 2012. Each year I, like you, spend hours crafting a party soundtrack featuring all of my favorite “happy” songs. As you can imagine, this is a fairly difficult task for someone whose self-described musical tastes are that of a 45-year-old divorced man. Nevertheless, I press on – crafting my little playlist for my little party with utmost care.
And yet each year like clockwork, usually smack in the middle of “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick” by Ian Dury and The Blockheads, someone pulls the plug on my tunes. Someone (usually my roommate) decides that a grubby punk with polio shouting “Two fat persons, click, click, click/Hit me, hit me, hit me!” is not party-worthy. I beg to differ, but that does no good. Within minutes my entire playlist is cast aside like an empty PBR can, and the bump n’ buzz of Top 40 hits crashes my b-day bash. I’ve gotten used to it, as well as the badge of honor I’ve earned in recent years: World’s Worst Party DJ. If I only had a sash embroidered with the accolade.
Fine then. If I can’t play my music at my own birthday party, I might as well take my talents to other soirees – clearing them out with the most un-danceable sounds. Embrace your strengths, am I right? Sure it takes some skill and intuition to boost the party the mood with music – but what about killing the mood? Doesn’t that take a certain aptitude for emotional sensitivity, too?
If you can’t join ‘em, beat ‘em. Trying to break up a party? Want to ruin a perfectly good game of beer pong? Looking to cock block Steve? Here are some tracks that will ensure record-scratching fun-terruption.
“Rhesus Negative” by Blanck Mass
Nine minutes of unrelenting, furious noise. Employ when the new Justin Bieber hit has begun its rotation, and everyone is dancing in unison. The room should begin to vacate around minute 4:35, when Blanck Mass’s Benjamin John Power starts screaming like a demon.
The entire Colors album by Ken Nordine
Nothing could be less conducive to partying than this 1966 spoken word jazz album by the eccentric Ken Nordine. Each song is dedicated to a color, to the point that it is supposed to sound like the color. Favorite cuts include, “Olive,” “Mauve” and “Fuchsia,” the latter of which contains the line, “we don’t wanna lose ya, Fuchsia.” It will derail any and all sexiness.
“Between The Bars” by Elliott Smith
If angry and awkward approaches don’t work, go with depressing. Who better to aid your mope attack than Mr. Misery himself, Elliott Smith? It will definitely kill the party vibe, but at least that guy slouching alone in the corner will appreciate it.
“Dear God, I Hate Myself” by Xiu Xiu
Pro tip: project the band’s music video (which is three minutes of Angela Seo making herself vomit while Jamie Stewart eats a chocolate bar) onto a nearby wall. Party over.
“Imagining My Man” by Aldous Harding
What says “party” more than a woeful folk singer? Just about anything. Funnily enough, this track comes from Harding’s most recent record, which is entitled Party.
“Japanese Banana” by Alvin & The Chipmunks
Think of this one as a little party favor – something to stick with the fleeing guests. There’s a reason my friend refers to this cut as “mind herpes;” it will be remembered long after it has ruined the festivities.
Pretty much anything by Tom Waits.
I personally like “What’s He Building In There” or “God’s Away On Business,” but let’s face it – no one’s going to be happy with gravelly voiced, vaudeville-inspired rock and if anyone is, marry that person immediately.
“Waking The Witch” by Kate Bush
From the dark side of Hounds Of Love, this number features chopper-like percussion and male vocals that literally sound like Satan. It’s impossible to dance to and sure to terrify everyone.
Whale Songs (various whales)
Any whale will do.
“Leave the Party” by Happyness
If all of your subtle sonic hints to GET THE FUCK OUT are for naught, perhaps a bit of direct lyric-messaging will do the trick. Happyness’ drowsy pop number literally says, “Leave the party, head right home” in the chorus. If guests refuse to hear that, then maybe the words, “kill everyone at the party” will be more audible.
What does summer sound like? For those of you living in respectable locales, it may sound like the buzz of John Deer lawnmowers, or a nighttime orchestra of cicadas. Summer anywhere but New York might hum along to the tune of unfurling picnic blankets and jet skis zipping across lakes. But for New Yorkers, the hot season presents a whole new catalogue of sounds – and smells – to take in.
Summer in New York is unlike summer anywhere else. Where July in, say, Bethesda, Maryland brings the whizzing of Frisbees on crisp air, NYC’s July sounds like asthmatics wheezing from air pollution. As a nine-year New York resident, my personal midsummer song goes something like this:
-The pitter-patter of dripping AC units.
– The rhythmic panting of the Husky next door.
– The raucous block party down the street.
-Wailing sirens.
-The rotund man who whips down Classon Ave on his motorized wheelchair, blaring soul music from a boom box.
– The lowrider bouncing by the Biggie mural on Franklin, blasting “Hypnotize.”
-Gushing fire hydrants.
-Wailing sirens
-Brawling rats
-Brawling cats
-Steaming trash
-Wailing sirens
On percussion: hamster-sized cockroaches, skittering across my bare body as I try to sleep.
I know. It’s gonna be a hit.
All this beautiful music got me thinking: sure, there are songs about summer in the city – i.e. The Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer In The City” – but where were the songs about summer in New York City? Where was the refrain for this special circle of hell we survive each year?
Yes, I am aware that soft rock crooner Michael Franks recorded a track literally called “Summer In New York” a while back, but have you listened to the lyrics of that song? Please tell me if any single summer day of your New York life has EVER resembled this:
“We’ll both review Fifth Avenue/From uptown to St. Pat’s/Indulge our vice: Italian ice/Then walk through Central Park/It’s summer in New York.”
Bullshit. Since when is Italian ice a vice? More like, “We’ll stumble down Kosciuszko/From the bar we just closed out/Indulge our sin: three liters of gin/Then dry hump by a bin/Of steaming trash.”
It’s summer in New York!
The fact of the matter is, there just aren’t a lot of songs that effectively capture the glorious grime of a New York summer – so I’ve found a few that make a comprehensive playlist for the season.
“Hot in the City” by Billy Idol
What’s the first thing you notice about summer in New York? (Certainly not “Shakespeare In The Park” as Michael Franks would have you believe). The heat! It’s hot as balls here – especially in the train cars sans AC. No one knew this better than Billy Idol, who immortalized the suffocating temperatures in his 1982 hit, “Hot in the City.” Idol also managed to pick up on the all-around friskiness that ensues when the temperatures (and hemlines) rise:
“‘Cause when a long-legged lovely walks by/Yeah you can see the look in her eye/Then you know that it’s/Hot in the city, hot in the city tonight, tonight.”
By no means a meteorologist, Idol certainly tapped into the hot-blooded heartbeat of a New York scorcher.
“Rockaway Beach” by the Ramones
People often think that New Yorkers don’t go to the beach, as if we’re “too busy” – well we do go; and just because we don’t all own Priuses to transport us there doesn’t make it any less enjoyable. Some dig Fort Tilden and Jacob Riis, but for me Far Rockaway is the only beach. Sure it may be a bit filthy and drab, but it’s also home to a thriving surfing community, and Rippers, the best beach bar in town. As it turns out, Rockaway Beach was the sandbar of choice for a little band called the Ramones, too:
“It’s not hard, not far to reach, we can hitch a ride to Rockaway Beach/Up on the roof, out on the street/Down in the playground, the hot concrete/Bus ride is too slow, they blast out the disco on the radio.”
“Hot Dog” by Elvis Presley
In a feat of terrible planning, someone somewhere once decided that Hot Dog Season must occur at the same time as Bikini Season. This cruel verdict was clearly authorized by a man, whose bikini bod has never been scrutinized by decades of advertising culture.
It makes no sense that I crave hot dogs every summer, when the rest of my appetite has receded in the grueling heat. But alas, hot dogs I crave – immensely. And thank god I live in New York, where I can literally get a hot dog every corner, 24/7. There’s Sabrett, Grey’s Papaya, and my personal favorite, Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs in Coney Island. Nathan’s is also host to the prestigious Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest – an event so barbaric it belongs in the arenas of ancient Rome, but I’d recommend going at least once.
It’s true, there aren’t a lot of great songs about hot dogs, and even this Elvis song (which is not about a hot dog but ostensibly a woman named Hot Dog) isn’t that good either…but at least it’s Elvis!
“Out There in the Night” by The Only Ones
Many people think this is a love song – and it is, but not about a human. In fact, The Only Ones’ Peter Perrett wrote it about his dear cat, Candy, who ran away from home one night never to return.
“But what does this have to do with summer in New York,” you ask? Well, I don’t know what borough you live in, but where I dwell the title “summer” and “season of the stray cat” are synonymous. They’re everywhere. On the street. In trashcans. Screaming in heat outside my window. Skittering in new litters on the parking lot concrete. Cats, cats, cats, everywhere. It almost makes sense why Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote that ghastly musical about them. Almost.
“Trash” by The New York Dolls
Back in the 1970s, when New York was still dangerous and you could get a dime blowjob where M&M’s World now stands, The New York Dolls were rock n’ roll’s enfants terribles. Surely they had to deal with trash (or, in its summer form: “hot garbage”) far more than we do today. But we still deal with it.
It’s not that there is more or less trash season-to-season, it’s just that the hot sun tends to bake and boil the existing refuse, opening up the pores of all that is rotting so we might smell it more. A LOT more. And don’t even get me started on hot garbage juice, which is the aforementioned boiling refuse in liquid form. Unfortunately the only songs I could find entitled “Hot Garbage” are not too good.
Enter: The New York Dolls. Who could sing about “Trash” better than a cross-dressing miscreant like frontman David Johansen, who, might I add, is from the floating garbage formation itself: Staten Island. No one. I will also ask you: has ever a more New York lyric been penned than:
“Trash, won’t pick it up, don’t take my knife away.” ?
Probably not.
I’m sure I’m missing a few things, but the truth is there just aren’t any good songs about cockroaches or day drinking or swamp ass, which is a pity, because they are all very real things. Especially for summer in New York.
My earliest memories of dance involve ballet – or at least my sloppy stab at it. More than actual dancing, I remember the shined and scuffed Marley flooring; that pleated, boiled-wool skirt flopping over Ms. Burgwin’s sad calves; and most of all, the utter confusion as to why the hell my fellow ballerinas and I weren’t wearing tutus and tiaras at all times. Was ballet not princess training after all? Was I in the wrong room?
Ballet class was a rigid environment that, even at five, I failed to see the point of. I thought I wanted to learn ballet…but what I actually wanted was something far less dignified: to simply prance around while wearing a fluffy pink outfit. Why an overbearing septuagenarian was constantly shouting at us about prancing around in fluffy pink outfits, I never understood. So when my older sister decided to leave the hobby behind, I followed in her pointy pink footsteps. It was only after abandoning ballet that my first memory of enjoying dancing surfaced, featuring my older siblings and I bouncing around in the kitchen to the entirety of Cake’s Fashion Nugget and Prince’s “Raspberry Beret.” I realized from an early age that kitchen dancing was a lot more fun than ballet, and required a sense of humor, to boot.
Perhaps my conflicted relationship with dancing was born of those two polarities: the super-structured, formal lessons vs. the more primal movin’ and shakin’. The former must be rehearsed and perfected, while the latter demands almost nothing of the body. Simply acquiesce to the music, and the rhythm will move your limbs for you.
Somewhere between the ages of 10 and 22 (with the exception of a brief foray into swing dancing) I became a kind of non-dancer. This could largely be blamed on my punk rock leanings, which forbade any attempt at social normality like, say, school dances. Not only had I embargoed myself from musical genres outside of punk music, I had slow-cured and hardened into a person that no one in his or her right mind would invite to a school dance; and no one did… until I moved to a new high school.
Woodinville High School’s Homecoming soiree of 2006 would be the first and last school dance for me. Some of the evening’s most memorable factors were countless Black Eyed Peas hits, dinner at Olive Garden, and my date Kevin’s parents, who chauffeured us around in their totally dope Kia Sedona. While at the dance itself, I almost incited a riot after approaching the DJ and requesting that he play “some swing music,” which prompted a six-minute electro-swing mash up only I boogied to. People were shouting angrily, looking around for the culprit (me) as if someone had let out an acrid fart and its creator had to be identified for purposes of justice.
I didn’t dance in public again for years. You could say I forgot how to dance. This amnesia was a result of a few things. 1) The aforementioned investment in punk music that only allowed for “slam dancing,” in which the word “dancing” is used very loosely. 2) Lack of venues. Where was I supposed to dance as an underage kid in a small town? 3) Music choice. Had I been a tween, teen or young adult in the ‘60s, I could have done the twist. I would have warmly welcomed the discotheques of the 1970s, or the techno clubs of the 1990s. But no, it was the mid 2000s. What was I supposed to think of dance music in a time of The Pussycat Dolls and Paris Hilton’s cover of “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”? I had to become a “Private Dancer,” but not in the way Tina Turner meant it.
I began to dance in secret. In high school, I’d do it before my parents got home from work. In college, I’d wait for all three of my roommates to vacate the apartment, before putting on “Face To Face” by Daft Punk, or “Suspended In Gaffa” by Kate Bush. Those two artists were particularly helpful in getting my body to move, especially Bush, whose sweeping, avant garde pop music lends itself to wild and unstructured flailing quite nicely. I would play entire albums by these artists and dance around my kitchen and living room in the midst of doing dishes, rolling on the dining room table, leaping past the confused cat, and only occasionally breaking something.
It was cathartic, this silly thrashing of limbs. But where could I find this perfect cocktail of adequate space and music I actually liked? Certainly not in da clubs of the Meatpacking District. Where does one go to, as Jamiroquai’s Jay Kay once sang, “just dance”? Not a place to be seen, not a place to meet dudes – a place to just dance.
In an attempt to quench this new thirst of mine, I started trying out a couple of different dance classes – mostly because dancing is the best way to trick myself into exercising. Unfortunately, I found that even amateur classes at the YMCA run on the same, overly disciplined air as my old ballet lessons, and on top of that, they are filled with dancers. Or, as I should say, !!!DANCERS!!!. You know, the chick wrapping her feet at the afternoon Zumba class. She wants you to know, she is no mere Zumba dabbler, but a !!!DANCER!!!. These classes always reveal themselves as a special circle of hell, in which I am not the graceful interpretive genius sashaying across the kitchen while holding a rose whisk betwixt my teeth, but a clumsy lump of flesh that doesn’t know left from right.
So I ask you: is there a secret Kate Bush dance night I don’t know about? Can someone please start one?
There is one place I have found that meets my criteria of good music + people I don’t hate + ample space, however: the wedding. About two years ago, one of my best friends got married, and was gracious enough to make sure her guests were plied with ample booze and good tunes. It was perhaps one of the first times this group of pals had seen me dance, despite the fact that I met them in 2009. Though dateless, I did everything I could to make up for the last decade or so of burying my need to boogie. Half of my friends were horrified and confused (or as I like to think, totally jealous of my moves), but one of them got it. She leaned in, looked me in the eye and said, “You are a dance machine.”
Something smooth is afoot. Suddenly, as if surfacing on the pop charts for the first time, Sade is played, sung, and mentioned in nearly every room I enter. “The Sweetest Taboo” slinks across my favorite coffee shop. “No Ordinary Love” sashays through my kitchen. “Smooth Operator” blares from restaurant speakers…or comes as close to blaring as a song like “Smooth Operator” can.
Have I missed something here? I feel like I’m unhip to some universal punch line – as if the town around me has burst into a choreographed dance routine and I’m the only one who finds it strange. Was there a neglected memo? Has a viral Snapchat eluded me? There must be a reason that only a few months ago, a friend on Facebook posted this ambivalent comment:
This acted as a double Sade nod, as her name was praised both by my friend and the good people at East River Tattoo. Several months later, this surfaced:
These posts were not isolated incidents of Sade-dom. It seemed that overnight everyone was digging these soft, jazz-rock fusion tunes unanimously. Everywhere I went: it was Sade all day. All the livelong Sade.
Not long after the Facebook posts above appeared, my eldest roommate J began playing The Best Of Sade on repeat while cooking, cleaning, rolling joints, and smoking joints. He had installed a groovy lighting scheme that synced with his iPhone a few months back for “ambiance.” As Sade whispered the words to “Jezebel” he would sink the lights to a sensual blue, recline on the couch, and blow a beam of smoke across the living room. I was almost annoyed when a mysterious, hat-wearing saxophonist didn’t appear from behind one of our large floppy houseplants.
I still didn’t connect the dots between these separate instances of Sadephilia – until my other roommate started playing her.
H, my youngest roomie, is hardly ever home. She has a demanding job and a fruitful social life, and rarely plays music through the subpar speakers in our kitchen…the kitchen being the hub of our household mingling. A few weeks ago, H was making a salad. In need of a soundtrack, she hooked up her phone to our shitty kitchen speakers, and out poured Sade’s sultry “Is It A Crime.”
“That’s it,” I thought. I asked H if she had heard J playing Sade not too long ago, or noticed the singer’s sudden ubiquity this year. H could offer no explanation, and I remained puzzled. I grew suspicious of this sudden trend; as I do with all things that I feel, well, left out of. Was Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious at work? Had Sade just collaborated on a fashion line with Kenzo? Did she have a fragrance now (perhaps…Eau de Sade)? Though I’d never discovered why every “hip” Brooklyn bar was playing New Order from 2008-2012, or why every restaurant was playing T. Rex in that same time period, I would damn well find out why everyone was swaying to Sade in 2017.
First, I turned to Spotify – to the record cover I recognized the most; that blue-filtered photograph where Sade is poised au natural, smirking into our souls under twig-thin eyebrows. The Best of Sade.
It was early in the morning, and I pressed play, my mug of un-sipped coffee in hand. About to take the day’s first tipple of holy caffeine, “Your Love Is King” blasted into my ear buds at top volume, its wailing, metallic, sax riff nearly causing my coffee cup to vault across the room. So far, it was the least smooth start to the day I could imagine.
I didn’t know how to feel immediately. This was music, in which the saxophone could be described as passionate, and I hated that…but I didn’t hate what I was hearing. Sade makes the kind of music I’m supposed to dislike, on paper at least. It is oppressively pleasant – the most jarring component being that damn saxophone squawking in and out of measures. Yet on a closer listen, a song like “Hang On To Your Love” stands out as a bouncy pop number, and I find myself anticipating its hooky chorus throughout. Sade’s vocal proficiency has never been questioned, but I realize – perhaps decades after everyone else in the world – the subtle chops of her band as well. But suddenly recognizing the quality in her music doesn’t explain the Sade renaissance. I had to know more.
“Why is everyone into Sade all of a sudden?” I ask J, the roommate fond of fancy lighting fixtures.
“Is everyone?” he asks.
“Yes. Everyone. What happened? Is it the twentieth anniversary of her death or something?”
“What?”
“Didn’t she get shot? And there was a movie? J Lo?”
“That’s Selena.”
“Oh.”
Now that I knew Sade was not in fact gunned down by a rabid fan, I flocked to Google for answers.
“Why is everyone obsessed with Sade in 2017?” yielded no solutions on the search engine, but it turned out that this very question was asked a few years prior.
In 2011, The Guardian printed another story entitled, “Behind the Music: The Secrets of Sade’s Success.” The paper interviewed Sade’s first producer Robin Millar, who said of the singer, “I’ve always thought there are certain voices that make people feel better: Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald. And when I first heard Sade I really felt she had it … She also had an amazing effect on people in the studio, both men and women – her charisma and how she looked.”
That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t tell me anything. Feel-goodery couldn’t be the only explanation for Sade’s unofficial comeback. “Feel-good” does not = hip, and right now, Sade is hip as fuck.
But why now? She hasn’t dropped an album since 2010’s Soldier Of Love, and she certainly doesn’t crop up for interviews or public appearances on the regular. For this reason Sade is often compared to reclusive pop queen Kate Bush.
In 2010, Vulture published a story about Sade’s influence on rappers, citing remarks by likes of Missy Elliott, Rakim, and even Kanye West. Apparently the smooth crooner made big waves in the hip hop scene. Souls of Mischief’s Tajai claimed that, “When I was young, her record was one of the few my mom would play that I would enjoy, too. As a kid, I’d want her to turn off her music so I could hear LL Cool J or someone like that, but Sade and Luther Vandross were two records I dug, too. Sade transcends the age gap.”
Could it be Sade’s mere timelessness that resurrected this smooth jazz siren? I had to admit that no one’s current interest seemed to be a side effect of irony…was millennials’ attention to Sade as sincere as her music? After all, Sade was the woman who sang words of pristine devotion, like “I want to cook you a soup that warms your soul”– how could she possibly inspire sarcasm?
And then, in one final Google search, I found my answer. At the top of the page read:
So this is what it’s all about, eh? The wildly popular skating brand is retailing the screen print tee for well over $100 as part of their 2017 Spring/Summer line. Emblazoned on the front is a vintage black and white photo of the singer, with a gold, “handwritten” message proclaiming:
An email has landed in my inbox. It is an arrow, shot from my childhood – and aimed at my heart. Piercing deeply, it stings me with eight simple words:
Backstreet Boys Las Vegas Residency Starts Next Wednesday
I am reeling, as if a long gone relative has risen from the dead. Backstreet’s back?! ALRIGHT!
To be painfully honest, I was already planning on writing about Backstreet Boys eventually. The email plugging their Vegas comeback was a serendipitous bonus. But was it really a bonus? Or a sign?
A friend recently asked me what the first record I ever bought myself was. I hesitated to answer. While I’d like to join the tradition of music journalists at least claiming to be born with good taste, my first record was not by The Smiths, or Stereolab, or even the fucking Beatles. Sure, I had an older sister down the hall – but she wasn’t exactly listening to The Jesus and Mary Chain, and even if she were, she wouldn’t have let me in on the secret.
I was a victim of Top 40 radio like all pre-internet, rural eight year olds. Despite a few quirks like an aversion to Beanie Babies, Pokémon, and sports, I pretty much liked what everyone else liked. Yes. I too loved Boy Bands. The first record I ever bought myself was not by The Dead Boys, or The Beach Boys, or The Pet Shop Boys. It was Backstreet Boys, by The Backstreet Boys.
I was an avid supporter of BSB. So much so that when fellow Floridians NSYNC cropped up on the scene slightly after, I leapt to the Boys’ defense. It seemed that they had invented the boy band, and I’d be goddamned if some nobody named “Justin Timberlake” was going to steal thunder from my beloved Nick Carter. My loyalty to BSB over NSYNC was an amalgam of childish polarity, Scorpion dedication, and a fear that giving in to NSYNC would count as some sort of infidelity to the former.
This feud didn’t just live in my head. The BSB vs. NSYNC debate was a very real thing, and a quick Google search will liquefy any doubts you have of its existence. I managed to get into several heated disputes regarding the matter in second grade. It wasn’t that I didn’t like NSYNC’s music – I now acknowledge its superiority – but I felt BSB had been flat ripped off. The five-man structure? The cute blonde, the “freaky” one, the sensitive one, the semi-normal-looking brunette, and the one no one will ever be attracted to? NSYNC had photocopied the pages of BSB’s playbook, and like all eight year olds, I hated copycats. But it was ok. I knew in my heart that BSB would rise to legend status. NSYNC would end up in the novelty hall of fame. That guy Justin Timberlake wasn’t going anywhere, so I wasn’t too worried.
When I wasn’t busy asserting BSB’s superiority over all boy bands (don’t even get me started on 98 Degrees!), I was listening to their music – namely, that first record. While my taste was nothing to brag about, my habits as a music listener were well-formed by then, and Backstreet Boys was on heavy rotation on the boombox. Favorite songs included “Quit Playing Games (With My Heart),” “As Long As You Love Me,” and “If You Want to Be a Good Girl (Get Yourself a Bad Boy),” which in its defense sounds like an off-brand Prince song. Not the worst thing. Oh but there was so much more! “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back) with that unbearable “spooky” music video, or “I’ll Never Break Your Heart,” which an eight year old could really relate to. When Brian sings, “Ooh when I asked you out/You said no but I found out,” it was just like the time at school when I labored over a hemp necklace for Jake Allen, but then he gave it to that bitch Katie Summers. At least BSB understood my pain.
The truthful hero of my boy band days was my dad, however, who sat through every spin of my Backstreet Boys’ CDs and not only tolerated the music – he pretended he liked it. My mom and I lived in a much larger house than the tiny log cabin my dad and I inhabited. At my mom’s I could tuck away into my room to rehearse choreographed dance moves to “We’ve Got It Goin’ On,” out of sight and earshot. She was also smart enough to not have a CD player in her car. But dad had to hear it all. I have one distilled memory of us sitting in his car one winter morning before school, waiting for the windshield to defrost, and playing “Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely,” off of 1999’s Millenium. He claimed to particularly like that song.
Although I remember purchasing Backstreet Boys more vividly than Millenium, I recall their equal significance. This presents me with an odd internal struggle I am embarrassed to admit. In weighing the importance of these records, I’ve uncovered a shameful desire to appease the “cult of cool.” Translation: for a split second, I somehow created a hierarchy of Backstreet Boys albums. As if their first LP – their early stuff – has more clout in the same way say, the first Wire record does. Jesus.
I’m learning more and more that in order to write about this kind of music, or simply to fess up about it, you have to suspend disbelief like you would at a play. As much as I am tempted to prescribe critical analysis, or nostalgic rose tinting to the music of Backstreet Boys, the best thing I can do is flatly say that I enjoyed it, and that I still enjoy it. This isn’t just nostalgia at work. Nostalgia didn’t preserve a fondness for Nickelback or P.O.D., both of whose CDs I owned. There is simply no logical explanation for why some music tugs at well-hidden heartstrings. It’s the magical pop alchemy we spend our careers trying to understand. I mean –Backstreet Boys actually have a lyric in their arsenal claiming, “You hit me faster than a shark attack.” I can’t rationalize that! It just is. It just, is very bad. And I love it.
And yet, my snobbery is almost as deeply ingrained as my unabashed enjoyment of BSB. I long to tell you that during my Backstreet Boys phase, I was at least more into AJ. I’d love to tell you that I didn’t just want Nick like everybody else. I want to say that I was the quirky, original girl who dug Howie. But I wasn’t. I wanted to be Baby Spice, not Ginger. I wanted things that were blonde and pink. I wanted Nick Carter. Twas his face, torn from the pages of Tiger Beat, lining my bedroom walls in carefully arranged clusters of blonde mushroom cut. I was just like everybody else.
When Beyoncé so wisely instructed “All the single ladies” (ALL the single ladies) to “put your hands up,” it was a different time. It was 2008. A year of innocence. We had elected Obama. Beach House had released Devotion. And single ladies everywhere felt empowered by Queen B’s anthem for autonomy. I’d just moved to New York, 18 and wet behind the ears. I couldn’t wait to have my own fashion line, a loft in Soho, and to party with The Strokes – all of which happened in rapid succession. (#AlternativeFacts.)
Back then, 99% of my friends were single, and we relished in seasons of not giving a fuck about it. Our lives were spun of work, college, fun…and the impending recession. But still! Life was good. Lovers came and went like party guests. Some stayed longer than invited. Others left before even taking their coats off.
Nearly ten years on, paradigms have shifted, and rightly so. People met cute and moved in. People got married. Some got babied up. Hell, even Beyoncé, Ms. Single Lady herself, got married to Jay-Z – and I hear it’s going really well!
Naturally, my single friend percentage declined. It is in the single digits these days…like, in the 1-3% range. Which begs me to entreat: “All my single ladies (All my single ladies!) Now put your hands up!” All six of them. All six of your combined hands. Put them up, for the love of god. I guess with my hands we have eight. Strength in numbers.
Did anyone ever stop to ask: why are we putting our hands up?? Maybe Beyoncé wanted all the single ladies to put their hands up – because they were about to be shot by a firing squad? Maybe that’s what that song is about…elimination of the single ladies. She did marry Jay-Z that year after all. Perhaps it was meant as a kindness…to put us single ladies out of our perceived misery.
Ok, that’s a bit extreme, but I can’t help being wry. As we approach Valentine’s Day – the preferred holiday of single people everywhere – the commodity of coupling up can be oppressive. The polyester teddy bears lining shelves at Duane Reade. The lingerie ads. 50 Shades Darker.
Valentine’s Day is perhaps the most polarizing commercial holiday; the holiday that cruelly bisects the population into those with, and those without. Those who will dance together in the kitchen to Joni Mitchell’s “A Case Of You” – and those who will sob to it over a box of self-gifted Russel Stover’s. Those who shall feast upon prix-fixe dinners of lamb chops and heart-shape chocolate cakes – and those who SHAN’T!
Parks and Recreation may have given us stags “Galentine’s Day,” and I’m sure Pinterest is rife with “fun alternatives” to drinking an entire bottle of wine in front of the mirror while cry-singing Cat Power, but I say fuck that shit. We don’t need alternatives. The single ladies don’t need saving. I don’t wanna go to the club with “gloss on my lips/a man on my hips,” as per Bey’s example.
Instead, all my single ladies: let’s dwell. Let’s lament. Let’s feel the pain. Love does hurt after all, and so does its absence. But that’s all right. This shit makes the world go ‘round. This Valentine’s Day, I want you to imagine all of the songs that have ever been written. Yup, all of ‘em. How many of those do you reckon are love songs? A pretty big portion I’d say. Finally, think about how many of those love songs are happy love songs, versus the ones that spring from raw, unbridled agony.
You see my point.
Would Roy Orbison ever have written “Only the Lonely” if he were just peachy and happily married? Would Stephin Merritt have written any songs, ever? Would I have any sad bastard music to listen to at all?
No.
Some of the best music comes from good old-fashioned anguish. So when you’re feeling unbearably lonely, remember that you’re in good company – albeit the miserable kind.
I admit: there is a time to “put your hands up” and feel emboldened by solitude. I do it every day, when I eat my lame yet efficient dinner of sandwich meats, mayo, and hot sauce wrapped in a plume of romaine lettuce. Standing up. By the sink. I celebrate the fact that I can make the decision to do so without the democratic process. Without having the “What are we doing for dinner?” conversation. I can eat my sad lettuce wrap in peace. Blaring Pulp and singing along, still chewing. There is always a time to champion sad salad wrap singing, and 2am laundry doing, and in-bed pizza eating. And there is also a time to pour yourself a carafe of merlot, put on a depressing record, and be alone with everyone who’s ever written a song.
This Valentine’s Day, let’s get dismal. Just for one night. No one will even notice! (Because they will be on a date!)
Let’s start with Morrissey’s “Please Help The Cause Against The Loneliness.” A bubblegum number to the uncaring ear; but listen closer: sweet, sweet isolation! Leave it to Moz to wax desolate – this bouncing tune scrutinizes the pity cast upon the unwed…and who better to scrutinize than the infamous asexual himself? “Please help the cause against the loneliness,” Moz croons, as if there is a charity handout for our kind (if only!).
Next turn up some Liz Phair, who knew that you could still be completely alone while lying right next to someone. Phair’s snarky “Fuck and Run” is the quintessential opus for bad decisions. A sloppy, pitchy, honest, pathetic, undeniably brave song. This is diary caliber realism – all about that forbidden bed you keep crawling back into. Phair really hits it home when she asks the simple questions, like:
“Whatever happened to a boyfriend/The kind of guy who tries to win you over?/And whatever happened to a boyfriend/The kind of guy who makes love ’cause he’s in it?/ And I want a boyfriend /I want a boyfriend/I want all that stupid old shit like letters and sodas.”
While we’re reveling in emotional immaturity, let’s listen to “I Don’t Want To Get Over You” by the barons of broken hearts – Magnetic Fields, the band that truly did “make a career of being blue.”
As we’re discovering, a bit of wallowing can be cathartic. Despite all of the song’s clever imagery, one line says it all for me:
“I could leave this agony behind/Which is just what I’d do/If I wanted to/But I don’t want to get over you.”
And haven’t we all been down that dark hallway?
If love’s impact on the history of music, film, art, literature, and war (I’m talking to you, Helen of Troy) isn’t making you feel at one with your solitude – may I throw but one last metaphor at you?
A friend of mine recently returned from a trip to Paris: the city of lights and love and innumerable sauces. She regaled me with tales of part-time lovers and fine meals. At the end of one such fine meal, she chose a dessert to cap off the perfect dinner. She chose framboise surprise. Raspberry surprise. Ooh la la! To append an American dish with “surprise” usually suggests catastrophe (tuna surprise), but the French weren’t gonna fuck this up! It would be exquisite; mountains of frothy pink mousse encasing shortbread and sorbet, the whole thing crowned with gold-dipped sugar lattices. Quelle surprise!
When the dessert was gently placed on the table, raspberries there were. The surprise however, was missing. It was 12 raspberries, up-ended on a plate. 12. Fucking. Raspberries. That’s it. C’est tout.
My point is: sometimes love is all that frothy pink mousse and more. Sometimes a relationship is a rich and mysterious and delicious dessert, worthy of all the pain, paintings, opuses and arias. And sometimes – it’s 12 fucking raspberries on a plate. That you just paid 10 Euros for.
I have considered writing this many times – but I never felt it was ready. It would be ready, I thought, when my mastery of the piano was complete. Or more realistically, when my proficiency at the piano was deemed certifiable. Certifiable by whom, I was never sure. I now realize how silly that would be. The story would never be told.
Two years ago, during a period of prolonged illness, I spent two months in my native Washington State. Words minced: it was a difficult time. A time in which there were few relaxing moments. I was preoccupied, even obsessed with the state of my health, as were the family members who surrounded me in a big, fuzzy love net. One such family member was my nephew-in-law, L, who to this day feels more like a smarter little brother. During some of the most trying moments of my condition, he would by force of habit or tremendous intuition, settle at his family’s piano and begin to play. Improvise, really.
L has been playing since he was tiny, as the framed photo atop his family’s piano depicts. In it he sits – no older than 4 or 5, examining the keys with his grandfather. Due to his musical education, as well as an abnormally elevated intellect, L is a bit of a virtuoso on the keys. He sits at the piano when no one is really paying attention – when everyone is absorbed in work, or a book, or a Twitter hole. When it is the most quiet.
Yet during intensified phases of my malaise, when everything was far from silent, his stunning melodies would split the chaos and fill the room with loveliness. The sound would completely pacify me. It entranced me. L’s compositions are entirely improvised, but somehow sound like oeuvres that have been labored over for months. At the same time they sound effortless. The astounding thing about these arrangements is that they materialize from thin air. The devastating thing is that they are gone as swiftly as they are played – never recorded on paper or garage band.
L’s playing so moved me during those months; I wished I could hire him as my in-house pianist. Though I would never get anything done if he accepted the job. Piano hypnotizes me. If L begins playing while the rest of us read or knit, my activity halts when the first key is struck. My eyes slowly close. My chin drifts upward as if waiting for some higher revelation. I am bewitched.
It wasn’t simply a newfound fixation with piano music that sprouted from my time at home. There also grew an intense desire to play the piano – to command the magical instrument itself.
The latter infatuation lay dormant for months after I returned to New York. I can’t remember if I consciously thought about learning piano. But when I heard the dizzying compositions of Nils Frahm for the first time, I knew that was it. I spent my lunch breaks scouring Craigslist for keyboards, and an affordable teacher. Despite my highfalutin cravings for something fancy, like a Fender Rhodes or a Juno, my budget afforded me a $200 Kurzweil Ensemble Grande Piano, which is a pretty rudimentary model. Within two days of hearing Frahm’s music, the Kurzweil was mine. She’s a sturdy one, and I named her Girtha on the account that she weighs, oh, about 500 pounds.
Locating a compatible instructor seemed even more important; you only pay for the keyboard once, whereas each lesson will strip you of money. I came across a guy named Andrew. He was one of the few teachers who included pictures in their listing, which gave me a sense of ease. I could size him up a bit first. He looked lanky, and a bit like Tom Verlaine from Television – minus the whole heroin-chic thing. At $50 per session the price was right, plus, a bonus: he conducted lessons out of the gorgeous San Damiano Mission in Greenpoint. I was eager to start. New hobbies are a love of mine yes, but I also knew that learning piano would make me a better music journalist…because then I’d be a failed musician too.
On a sweltering August Wednesday, we began.
Andrew was in his early thirties, and hip to the music canon, but he eschewed all of the arrogance often associated with such traits. To pay rent he played church services and taught, the rest of his time spent on various musical projects and writing plays. He was patient, genuine, and kind – albeit a touch awkward. I constantly tried to distract from my musical inadequacies with jokes. This never worked.
I remember on one particular occasion Andrew was demonstrating a technique, and began playing Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright” on the church piano to illustrate his point.
“You working that one up for church?” I asked.
“Whaa?” He looked genuinely concerned. When I assured him it was merely a joke, he laughed nervously and turned back to our lesson.
At first I learned piano quickly. The rush of a new pursuit – and a determination to achieve maestro status by the time I was an old lady – had me practicing for one to two hours daily. I was getting the basics down, and nailing my first song (Nick Cave’s “Into My Arms,” which ain’t that hard, by the way). I wasn’t quite a pianist yet, but I sure was learning piano.
But within months, practicing piano suffered the same fate of every discipline I’ve ever attempted, bar writing – it became a chore. I would halfheartedly cram the night before my lesson and resentfully play pages from the piano book; I much preferred improvisation, which always felt better than it sounded. At my lessons I would use tricks to skip playing from the book, as my sheet music literacy was declining. Asking a lot of questions typically worked.
I became nervous even before practicing at home – afraid my fingers would betray my ears. What was once cathartic and inspiring had become a little prison, built with the absurd standards I hold for myself.
This past August I got laid off from the desk job I hated. It was a bittersweet thing. I was tickled to say buh-bye to the 9-5, but that also meant cutting all recreational spending: i.e., piano lessons. I’d stopped regularly practicing sometime before, but swore to myself that the second I could afford it I would get back in the habit and recommence classes. Andrew understood, but warned me that he might be teaching elsewhere when we next met.
“The friars are renting the church out for concerts and events more and more, so I might have to find a new spot.”
“Wait a minute,” I pressed. “Andrew, it sounds like you’re getting gentrified out of the church!”
“HA!” echoed high to the ceilings. I’d finally gotten him to laugh.
I must admit that the most piano I have “played” since then has been air piano. It was what saved me during some rough turbulence on the last flight I took. Like many, I am terrified of flying, and usually try to knock myself out with merlot as a remedy. But, seeing as my flight was at 8am, even I felt too dignified to get tipsy.
Fortunately, the good people of Delta Airlines now have free, decent music aboard. I listened to Olafur Arnolds’ latest LP Island Songs on repeat, as well as a Bill Evans compilation several times. The piano, once again, took me over and soothed me – especially when I fervently “played” along. I kept my performance underneath my blanket however; just so other passengers wouldn’t think I was a complete nutter.
When I was recovering in Washington, before my lessons ever began, L would sometimes invite me to join him at the piano. “Just play the white keys,” he would say as I fumbled with the naturals. “What happens when I play the black keys?” I’d strike a sharp before he could answer, wincing at its sourness. Eventually I shied away, feeling far too vulnerable in front of someone who has been playing most of his life.
You’d think after a year of piano lessons I’d be less timid, but nothing has changed. My sister constantly offers the piano for me to practice when I visit. A songwriter and music teacher, sis claims that no one in the house minds, and that she uses it for “mediocre piano hour” all the time.
But I can’t do it. I become rigid, stewed in anxiety. I am not proficient. I am not a performer. And I’m certainly not a virtuoso.
It may be difficult to remember what politicized youth culture looks like. Some of us weren’t born in time to witness it at full wattage – in the student-helmed anti-war campaigns of the 1960s. The Civil Rights Movement that marched for the cessation of our own domestic race war. The efforts of second-wave feminists to seal with mortar the gender gap that has plagued most of human history. The Reagan-era LGBT activists, who effectively fought the religious right’s claim that AIDS was solely God’s way of eliminating the gays. Or the more widespread fury Reagan’s cabinet stoked in the poor, the disenfranchised, and the mentally ill when they binned the Mental Health Systems Act just as they were settling into office.
All of these efforts found their way into youth culture, whether directly, or just as an undeniable force of the time. Film, fashion, literature and music reflected the political unrest of their respective era in one way or another. And because youth culture and pop culture are all but synonyms in this country, whatever the “kids” liked was as pervasive back then as it is now.
Despite their history, politics and pop culture have an unsteady relationship. When we look specifically at music and politics, there lies an on-again, off-again affair that is as fickle as a middle school romance. From a zoomed-out, perhaps overly simplified lens, the pattern of their union seems to ebb and flow, with en vogue factions of politically incensed music followed by complacency and nihilism.
The anti-Vietnam War activists were emboldened by the music of Bob Dylan, Edwin Starr, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, to name a few. Seeger and Baez’s politics in particular overlapped with their support for the Civil Rights Movement. While the latter effort inspired the likes of Nina Simone, Gil Scott Heron, and Marvin Gaye, among many. The Black Power Movement and Black Panther Party found an odd ally in the likes of Detroit radicals the MC5, and the proliferation of politico punk during Regan’s reign is undeniable.
Punk was one of the few musical styles that seemed to morph its focus within the same genre. The substance-fueled hedonism of the mid-to-late ‘70s (Richard Hell and the Voidoids, The Dead Boys, The Germs, etc.) eventually gave way to the more substantive and topical songs of bands like Reagan Youth, Dead Kennedys, Youth Brigade, and Crass.
Arguably, the latter camp’s music is less lauded on a critical level, but both have their place in political and sonic history. While first wave punk certainly had many things to rebel against (The Eagles), it was also sprouting out of a time in which youth culture wasn’t as politicized. The Ramones weren’t exactly partisan revolutionaries staging protests and forming their own Weather Underground. First wave punk was more cultural rebellion than it was political rebellion, despite what Malcolm McLaren would have liked you to believe about his Sex Pistols, or his New York Dolls, whom he steered into a phony, late career Communist phase. It was more shock marketing than an actual political statement.
Second wave punk, despite being less inclined to smuggle interesting pop melodies, jazz, and a love of Doo-wop into its songs, had a whole hell of a lot to rebel against. Of course, everybody still hated The Eagles, but the onslaught of Reagan’s conservative policies, the oversold, underperforming promise of a suburban utopia (let alone an urban one), and the apolitical punk movement just before, left more to be desired.
The very aimless debauchery of previous punks inspired D.C.’s Straight Edge Movement, helmed by Minor Threat, whereas bands across the country needed only speed as an impetus for changing the game. Once showing its component parts of rock n’ roll and other beloved genres, punk had grown a thicker skin and put on a war helmet. When hardcore emerged with bands like Black Flag and Bad Brains, it somehow morphed what punk meant for generations. It had literally been hardened, and shined like a weapon. No longer existing for the sake of its own exploratory purposes, but as a vessel for discourse and agitation.
And it wasn’t just the punks who were getting political. The Reagan administration saw criticism from musicians obscure and mainstream both. Let us not forget that despite Reagan’s misuse of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born In The U.S.A.,” as his re-election campaign score, the song is in fact a damning reprimand of Reagan’s mistreatment of American veterans and his economic policies. Even His Purple Majesty Prince used music to criticize Reagan in cuts like, “Ronnie Talk to Russia” and “Sign o’ the Times.”
Sadly, none of this has happened in my lifetime. Though it may not be entirely true, I feel as though I have lived in a time period without its own protest music. I was too young to understand the relevance of ‘90s rap, let alone remember it as it happened. Only now, with detached hindsight can I see that it too was protest music, no matter how much the media tried to demonize it. I remember a smattering of artists, mostly smallish in name, condemn the Bush administration in the early 2000s…but I also remember that when a mainstream band tried to be critical, they got panned.
I will never forget how unexpected country sweethearts the Dixie Chicks nearly lost their fan base when in 2003, singer Natalie Maines spoke out against Bush at the Sheperd’s Bush Empire Theater in London:
“Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.”
I didn’t start immediately loving every song the Dixie Chicks put out, but I was sure as hell proud that a mainstream country act would risk the bulk of their followers to speak their mind.
There has long been a lull in political music. The eight years of Obama’s presidency have left us complacent – and they shouldn’t have. There is always something to improve. Just as the second crop of punks made the genre their own; just as the second wave feminists worked to continue what the first wave had laid for them; just as the Black Lives Matter movement has taken the still blazing torch from the Civil Rights activists; it is the turn of the artists, the authors, and the songwriters, to match the task at hand with cultural inspiration. Fiona Apple knows this, as she’s already given us two anti-Trump tunes. There was of course her Christmas parody, “Trump’s Nuts Roasting on an Open Fire” released just around the holidays. But her new song, “Tiny Hands” is one to march to.
I like many used to work an insufferable desk job. To most people, it sounded very interesting, but it was not. It was bland, canned stew disguised as top sirloin. To paraphrase a brilliant Bruce Eric Kaplan cartoon: I grew tired of clicking things all day. My only refuge was that given the oppressively repetitive, brainless tasks I was to perform, I could listen to music for nine hours straight. So in a sense, without 40 plus hours of weekly tedium, it is quite possible I would have never heard the stunning music of German composer Nils Frahm.
It was Thursday, August 6th, 2015. I was dutifully at my desk, clicking away, and occasionally writing down the names of any great bands I heard on BBC 6 Music, which I frequently listened to. There was much talk on the radio about The Proms…it was Promming season after all. I remembered The Proms, as just two years prior I had been in attendance. The Proms is an eight-week summer streak of daily classical music concerts in London. Founded in 1895 with a heavy emphasis on strict classical, The Proms of today are far more hip, featuring contemporary composers and even deviations into the world of ambient/electronic music. When I attended, the compositions of Phillip Glass were the focus of that night’s performance at The Royal Albert Hall.
Although it sounds fancy, The Proms is one of the most democratic music festivals out there – an appraisal the world of classical music desperately needs. Provided you don’t mind lining up for a little while, you can snag a standing position on the Hall’s balcony for only £5, and hear some of the most renowned orchestras in the world.
Unfortunately, I was no longer in London for the 2015 Proms. I was at my desk, remember? But listening to the BBC broadcast, I pretended I was there. I closed my eyes, and smelled the musty carpet of the balcony floor, and tasted the less-democratically priced gin and tonics my friend Alice and I acquired at the downstairs bar. And as I drank in this memory, I heard something so sparkling and beautiful – the creeping in of quiet piano keys, building and turning over with waves of synthesizer crashing atop them. This was, as I later learned, Nils Frahm’s Proms performance of “Says.”
I was dumbstruck and intrigued, and as it goes with intrigue: I wanted more. I devoured everything I could find that Frahm had recorded. Having never in my life been this passionate about instrumental music, I surprised myself in this devotion. Writers find solace in words, and yet I had finally found something that was all the better for their absence.
At first, I merely listened and followed up with watching countless videos of Frahm performing live, which absolutely did me in. Watching Frahm play is almost like watching an athlete. What other pianist works up a literal sweat during their set? He is dynamic, often hopping between a grand piano, Juno synthesizer, and a Fender Rhodes keyboard, all of which he specially mics and prepares for each individual set. In this 2013 video performance of “Toiletbrushes” and “More,” Frahm is mouthing some unheard gestures, looking a bit like he is in pain…like he is not playing the song, but birthing it. His tendons and muscles are visibly strained as he plays like it’s an extreme sport.
But the most characteristic detail is that he plays half the set with actual toilet brushes, used to bang on the exposed strings of the open piano. This reminds me of two things. 1) That the piano is after all, a percussive instrument, and exploring that aspect can open a world of possibility, and 2) that Frahm is aiding in the democratization of classical music and the piano itself. His approach is curious, inventive, and entirely unpretentious. Whether he is melding the worlds of classical and electronica, or discovering that an overlooked household object can be the perfect mallet for a grand piano, Frahm is truly one of a kind.
At this point in my discovery, I knew very little about Nils Frahm the man. But his compositions so moved me, that within a week of first hearing him I had purchased a keyboard and booked my first piano lesson.
Few things have stirred me to such an extent. When I finally got a gym membership it came from a place of motivation, but not of inspiration. Watching certain movies makes me want to write a screenplay – but I never actually do it. At the most, I will buy up every record an artist has released within a short amount of time…but picking up a new instrument at 25? I was possessed.
After a year and a half of closely following Frahm’s career (and SLOWLY learning the piano), it seems as though the composer’s raison d’être is to captivate listeners to the point of great emotional response. As he told The Quietus in 2013:
“I’m interested in how human beings react in certain situations, and what music does to people’s emotions. How we can change people’s attitudes with tones. After I’ve played a good concert, people leave the room happy. This is something we can give back to the world. When people feel down and like it’s all going to shit, at least we can give them some music and change their attitude so people don’t think it’s all shit.”
It is rare to find such idealism spouting from the mouth of a professional musician. But Frahm’s optimism seems wholeheartedly sincere, and it is reflected in his actions. In March of 2015, Frahm gave us Piano Day, which celebrates his beloved instrument by sharing its immensity with the world.
In a statement on his website the pianist poked fun at his own fixation with the ebony and ivory:
“Beloved planet,
Don´t think I am completely pathetic, but I am here to tell you about a new holiday.”
Frahm proceeded to explain that Piano Day existed to celebrate any and all things Piano, and encouraged participants to create anything in that realm of possibility.
“Please dress up that day (don’t play any guitar) and prepare some presents for us all and don´t forget to share them with us. Any piano related creative idea will be honored and seen by the lovely people around here and myself. Thanks for your participation and spread the word, in a couple years I want PIANO DAY to me more important than Xmas and more stressful than Thanksgiving.
Anyways, enjoy this little present of mine, it is a snippet for more to come.
Yours,
Nils Frahm (has lost it completely)”
Frahm’s “present” was a free release of his 2015 album Solo. I realize now, listening to his annual, hour-long Xmas mix, that Frahm often gives music freely to his fans. It is something he has always done and it has probably been a partial cause of his steadily growing fan base.
The mix is more wintery than Christmas-y, but cozy nonetheless. Snippets of recordings by Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Lee Hazelwood, and Marlene Dietrich seamlessly float in an out, enveloped in the warm crackle of a record playing…or is it a slow burning fire? Either way, it is toasty to the ears.
I’ve been sitting on this desire to praise Frahm in long form for quite some time now. “Should I wait for his birthday?” I ask myself. “What about a new release? How can I make this relevant without simply sounding like a wide-eyed, drooling fan-girl?” But it was the Xmas Mix that did it, because it seems to represent the simple, fervent mission Frahm has of sharing music, and that moves me as much as his playing.
It is evident that this is a man hopelessly in love with music, and devoted to sharing it, whose career reflects a monastic approach to “success.” In 2015 Frahm spoke to Resident Advisor of his booking process:
“I only want to play if someone invites me. Don’t ask for shows.” I don’t want to use the piano as a money-making machine. This is what I tell my whole team: when someone asks, be nice, but don’t try to push people with my stuff.”
He continues by telling aspiring musicians that they shouldn’t focus on getting successful; they should stay at home, get really good at what they do, and wait for someone to notice their hard work.
In his typical, philosophical manner of speaking, he wrapped up his Quietus interview by saying:
“The only thing we can try is changing people’s attitude, but not with words. I don’t want to be Bob Dylan, I can’t express it through words but I can express it through emotional experiences. All the answers you need to know you have inside yourself and all you can do is inspire these sorts of answers, perhaps by conversation or by music or by looking at a piece of art. I only have one lifetime to do it and it feels way too short!”
“What a drug this little book is; to imbibe it is to find oneself presuming his process.” In her latest memoir M Train, Patti Smith speaks of W.G. Sebald’s After Nature with bibliophilic hunger. She is seeking inspiration and therefore turns to a favorite work. Smith continues:
“I read and feel the same compulsion; the desire to possess what he has written, which can only be subdued by writing something myself. It is not mere envy but a delusional quickening in the blood.”
As I read her book with a similar hunger, I realize that I’ve felt this way before, in the precise way she has described it – when I listen to the music I love. “The desire to possess” what has been written, played, and sung. This desire is so strong that it ventures upon wish fulfillment; I often feel as though I am taking communion with the music…eating it, so to speak. For a split second, I near convince myself that I have written it. That it is mine.
I often wonder if this is a personal quirk (a hallucination) or if others experience the same phenomenon. I wonder if it is perhaps the subconscious impetus to cover songs, even. What if instead of mere flattery, or tribute, possession also informed Jeff Buckley’s version of “Hallelujah” or Jimi Hendrix’s take on “All Along the Watchtower?” They certainly made both songs their own. I do not mean a jealous possession, necessarily, but an attempt to be “one with” the song, at the risk of sounding faux-metaphysical.
Cover songs as a genre get a bad rep, it seems. Covers = karaoke, or worse, Covers = Cover Bands. It was after all a throng of home-recorded cover songs that launched Justin Bieber’s career. But cover songs lead a double life. In their pop/rock identity, it is often considered a lowbrow, unoriginal form – sometimes even an attempt at latching onto the search engine optimization of the artists being covered. But in a cover song’s blues/folk/country life it goes by another name: a traditional. Throughout countless genres that could be filed under the umbrella of “folk” or “roots” music, artists recorded their own versions of songs passed down by performers before them.
Much like the poems and fables of oral history, it was common for the original authors of traditional songs to remain unknown. Take for instance the trad number “Goodnight, Irene,” which was first recorded by Lead Belly in 1933, and by many others thereafter. But the original songwriter has been obscured from music history. There are allusions to the song dating back to 1892, but no specifics on who penned the version Lead Belly recorded.
Lead Belly claimed to have learned the song from his uncles in 1908, who presumably heard it elsewhere. “Goodnight, Irene” was subsequently covered by The Weavers (1950), Frank Sinatra (1950, one month after The Weavers’ version), Ernest Tubb & Red Foley (1950 again), Jimmy Reed (1962) and Tom Waits (2006) to name but a few.
The reason so many artists (I only listed a couple) covered “Goodnight, Irene” in 1950 was because that was the way of the music biz back then. If someone had a hit record – like The Weavers, who went to #1 on the Billboard Best Seller chart – it was in the best interest of other musicians to cash in on the trend while it was hot by recording their version of the single. Not as common today of course, but in a time when session musicians were rarely credited and hits were penned by paid teams instead of performers, it made sense.
The history of traditional folk songs or “standards” is a fascinating one because it is like a musical game of telephone. The songs’ arrangement and lyrics change with the times, the performer, and the context. And that same model of change can be applied to both the artist’s motive for covering certain music, and the listener’s reaction to it.
For years I quickly dismissed cover songs, finding them boring at best and unbearable at worst. But in my recent quest to become more open-minded, I have revisited many covers…and become a bit obsessed in the process. The first cover song to move me was The Slits’ version of “I Heard it Through the Grapevine,” which in itself is a pop traditional as it has been covered by everyone from Marvin Gaye, to Creedence Clearwater Revival, to The Miracles. Gaye’s version is the most widely recognized, however, making The Slits’ rendition all the more fascinating. Their 1979 stab at the Motown classic was what taught me that a cover song could be more than just a karaoke version of something. It can become a completely new medium of expression when the artist tears the original apart and stitches the pieces into a new form. The Slits did this so effectively, to the point that theirs and Gaye’s versions are incomparable.
The Stranglers achieved a similar result by reconfiguring the Dionne Warwick classic “Walk On By” in 1978, morphing the lounge-y original into a six-minute swirl of organ-infused punk. Another master of pop modification was the one-and-only Nina Simone, who somehow took the already perfect “Suzanne” by Leonard Cohen and managed to make it…perfecter. I remember a friend playing this cut for me three and a half years ago, and I haven’t gone so much as a week without putting it on since. Nina’s phrasing can make Dylan’s seem predictable, and she dances through Cohen’s poetry in a way that astonishes me to this day, no matter how many times I’ve heard it. I feel that her version is, dare I say, better than the original, though I love both dearly.
But of course, not all covers exist for the purpose of possession. Sometimes the simplest answer is the correct one: that a cover is an opportunity to pay tribute, not ironically, but with reverence. Of course, even artists performing the best reverent covers make the songs their own. Take Smog’s version of Fleetwood Mac’s “Beautiful Child,” which is such a gorgeous recording that I was heartbroken to learn it was a cover, and disappointed upon hearing the original. Ditto Bill Callahan’s more recent take on Kath Bloom’s “The Breeze/My Baby Cries.” Bloom’s take isn’t short on oddball, winsome charm, but Callahan brings a barge full of sorrow, which always wins in my book.
In similar form, Robert Wyatt somehow out-Costello’d Elvis Costello when he covered “Shipbuilding” in 1982, which reaches another dimension of despair with Wyatt’s wavering vocal performance. Another favorite is Morrissey’s interpretation of “Redondo Beach,” an oddly bouncy rendition by the King of Sad.
Though I once turned my nose up at cover songs, I seem to fanatically collect them now. I often dream up cover song commissions that will likely never come to fruition: Cat Power singing Bob Dylan’s “Most of the Time” or King Krule doing “Bette Davis Eyes” by Kim Carnes. I’d pay them to do it myself if I could damn well afford to. Until then, let the covers of others stoke your desire to possess.
No one really wants to be a curmudgeon all of the time – not even me. If Only Noise leans more towards the darkness one week, I strive to be more upbeat in subject matter the following week. But in addition to the numerous tragedies that befell us last week, including the election, the death of Leon Russell and the election, we also lost one of the greatest poets of all time, Leonard Cohen. His name has now been added to a long list of the year’s casualties. The enormity of the musicians 2016 has robbed us of – David Bowie, Prince, Alan Vega – is seemingly colossal, as if the stars were perfectly aligned for the fall of giants. I fearfully wonder who will make it through the year, and dare not speak a word for fear of cursing anyone.
When David Bowie passed in January, I was distraught with the rest of the world. Having just pitched an article to The Guardian the night before his death investigating what Blackstar could teach contemporary musicians about longevity, I felt cosmically complicit in his death after the fact. Imagine the spook I felt waking to “RIP David Bowie” tweets the following morning. That night I sat at my desk, staring straight ahead at the wall, until my phone buzzed, and I boarded a cab to Sunset Park. I entered a sweet-smelling, steamy apartment that felt like it was in another city – in a house perhaps, with books and scraps of paper everywhere. The man who lived there offered me seltzer water and Oreos. A framed Leonard Cohen poster hung to the right of his bed.
I could barely express the overwhelming sadness I felt from the loss of Bowie that night. My companion was less distressed, but had witnessed such mourning all day long as his work was a scant block from Bowie’s SoHo home. “It is sad of course, but honestly, I’ll be more upset when Leonard Cohen goes,” he said gravely.
Ten months after we lost The Thin White Duke, I found myself slowly ascending the escalator of a theater in Times Square, meeting the very man with the Sunset Park apartment for post-election, action movie distraction. Tweets suddenly flooded my phone: “RIP Leonard Cohen,” “Now Leonard Cohen! Fuck this year!” and the like. I was already wobbly from the political climate, but I nearly fell off the goddamn escalator at the sight of such news.
It is only now I am learning that Cohen himself suffered a fall the night he passed, which directly contributed to his death. As the press release from his manager said, Cohen’s death was, “sudden, unexpected and peaceful,” which contradicts the songwriter’s claim in an October interview with The New Yorker that he was “ready to die.”
When Cohen’s parting masterpiece You Want it Darker came out last month, I thought of another pitch idea – one that never made it into an email but that I’d mentioned to friends and family. It went something like: “Is You Want it Darker Leonard Cohen’s Blackstar,” insinuating that the aged poet, like Bowie, knew his fate before we did, and was saying goodbye in the best way he could. Given this pattern, I am now convinced that I am slowly killing my favorite musicians by way of my unsuccessful pitches, which is depressing on numerous levels.
We have lost a songwriter, yes – a poet, of course. But we have also lost an invaluable translator of human emotion, in all its unperceivable complexities. When I came to his music in high school, his abstract yet exacting lyrics left me stupefied. I believe that his words truly altered my approach to writing, and while I am not and never will be anywhere near the caliber of a writer he was, I know I am all the better for being exposed to him.
And isn’t that the point of pop music? Of any kind of music, or art? To better know ourselves, in ways we couldn’t imagine were possible. Cohen’s art, his words particularly, cut so sharply to the core of human experience that you can’t really feel the incision until after his knife is removed. It is a clean cut – the effect of a specter whose impression lasts far longer than its presence in the room. He was a subtle legend. A quiet titan.
As with most musicians who have altered my perception of what makes great art, there is typically one or a few people that I directly associate with the artist. With Leonard Cohen, it is no different. One friend who is much older than I am bears an eerie resemblance to a young Cohen. He was the person who played me his music, despite the fact that a copy of Songs of Leonard Cohen had been nestled in my dad’s record collection my entire life. So when I heard “One of Us Cannot Be Wrong” for the first time, and it effectively floored my soul, that album was waiting for me right at home.
I called my old friend as soon as I could upon hearing of Cohen’s death, and asked him what the poet had meant to him. This friend, who often speaks in florid non-sequiturs, said that to him Cohen seemed like “the standard for effortless grace…you can listen to him over and over and it just keeps opening up. He really is a sort of sacred ground that’s vast, elusive, and hard to talk about.”
It is perhaps even harder to speak of for my friend, who was sired into the lugubrious cult of Cohen by his mother in the ‘70s. Not long after, his mother died when he was only 12, and I sometimes wonder if Leonard Cohen is a signifier for her in the same way that Bowie is for my mother. Memory cuts deep and clean just like a perfect song.
Leonard Cohen, though enormously different than David Bowie, was similar in the sense that he never tarnished. In his decades of writing and recording, he remained at his own golden standard, one that few others have touched. Despite his grave, death-welcoming remark to The New Yorker last month, he adjusted his statement in a later press conference, smirking and clutching a cane with his right hand:
“I said I was ‘ready to die’ recently, and I think I was exaggerating. One is given to self-dramatization from time to time. I intend to live forever.”
Regardless of Cohen’s dry humor as he spoke those words, and the uproarious laughter that met them, there is a peaceful truth within them. Yes, it is eerie that Cohen died not long after redacting his pact with death, but I think he knew exactly what he was saying. And who’s to say that he hasn’t lived forever already?
Perhaps true immortality lies in the ability to look death in the face and acquiesce to its beckoning, imparting one last gift to the world as you leave it.
Earlier this year a gorgeous, baroque, oddball record came out by Welshman Meilyr Jones, formerly of Racehorses repute. The album entitled 2013, was written during a sabbatical in Rome Jones took that very year. In its many rotations on my record player, 2013 continues to stun me, and will certainly be high up on my year-end list. While I still eagerly await Jones to tour the U.S., the best I can do is envy his U.K. fanbase, as he’s just added a handful of tour dates to his schedule. Oh, and I guess I could ask him about God, his Grandmother, and the pros/cons of the contemporary music industry. Read on!
Audiofemme: You’ve spoken at length about the impact of your trip to Rome. Do you have plans for returning? If so how do you think the experience will differ or affect your creativity?
Meilyr Jones: That’s interesting. I will return but I have no idea what will happen. That is the magic of the place.
You recorded 2013 on a fairly tight budget – youʼd never know it from listening – yet you still managed to feature a 30 piece orchestra as well as some unexpected instruments. What would you dream of doing if money were no object in the studio?
I think I like the fact that music/art and what you make doesn’t scale up with money. I’d probably end up making a 4-track record with a small group of people. Haha. Part of the fun was not needing a big industrial model to achieve things. I am really firm in that. Imagination, support, and passion can achieve things of big scale. I was lucky to meet so many able, and kind and talented people that I worked with. It wasn’t an already put-together orchestra; I brought the group together with help from my friends.
Looking back what are you most proud of with regards to this record?
I am most proud of my determination to complete it.
How has Welsh culture influenced your music or your way of approaching your craft? Do you feel a lot of solidarity with other Welsh artists?
I feel very lucky to have grown up in Wales and very fortunate to have bands such as Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci around when I was growing up, who were from down the road in Pembrokeshire. I saw them when they came to the Student’s Union in Aberystwyth. There’s a lot of fun in their music as well as an uncompromising and individual attitude and freedom, I and other bands in Wales were lucky to grow up with that around as an example. I was also lucky to grow up with the Eisteddfod in a way, and Welsh poetry. There was also Ankst Music which was a record label and management company who worked with Super Furry Animals and put out SFA, Datblygu and Gorky’s records who fostered a certain kind of ethos. So from all angles, good.
You clearly have a lot of passion for and knowledge of the fine art world…if music wasn’t your profession what would it be? Perhaps painting or sculpting?
I love it, but I have no skills or much of an aptitude for drawing or sculpture I don’t think. I can’t imagine not doing music. It’s the most natural thing in the world. Perhaps I would be a gardener or something.
There seems to be some discussion about authenticity in art on the record, particularly with the opening track. What does your idea of an authentic artist/work of art look like? Is there such a thing?
I think it will always take a different shape. But something you feel, that makes you want to return to it, that a work of art grows and moves you. Maybe sometimes first by remembering, then revisiting it.
As an artist, what is the greatest thing about the contemporary music industry? The worst thing? Why?
The best thing is the breakdown of it, and the fact that there is less of an attraction for big companies so there is less of a hold. The hard thing is the self-consciousness because there is so much history that we are always around. I think that our history is the best thing and the hardest.
Youʼve worked with a lot of incredible musicians in the past – your own band Racehorses, Cate Le Bon, Gruff Rhys…if you could collaborate with any living musician who would it be?
Kate Bush.
I read in an interview that you consider yourself a religious person. Would you mind expanding on that? What does religion and/or God mean to you?
I’m not sure exactly. I think there is a lot of wisdom in the past that is lacking now, also a dominance of reason and the physical/visual. I certainly believe in more than chaos, and feel more than just what I can see.
2013 suggests quite a bit of Romantic and Classical influence and I know you have a lot of affection for poets, artists, and composers of those eras, but who are some contemporary musicians that you admire?
I like Neil Young and also Serafina Steer.
Iʼm curious about something you mentioned in an interview about your grandmother being a huge source of inspiration for you. Can you tell us why?
Yes. She was full of excitement. She was imaginative and musical and encouraging. Also the character in the way she played the piano came from a different time – wartime and a mix of Welsh chapel music…it’s hard to describe the combination, but I remember it distinctively. She was a link to a past with a really clear and warm feeling. The ‘30s and ‘40s in music…
I loved learning about your reading Hector Berliozʼs autobiography, and the intense passion with which he experienced all forms of art. Sometimes I feel like modern- day audiences or “listeners” are far less engaged in the music they are surrounded by – it is merely background music and no one has the time to listen to an album in full. What is your take on this? How do you reconcile with that as an avid an active artist and art appreciator alike?
That’s a really good question. I find it hard to listen to albums. I think slowing down the pace of life, or at least spending more time doing things without too much of an intention is important. If you see everything as a goal to be achieved, things can’t grow or seep in. When you are a teenager and have fewer expectations it’s easier for things to grow on you, and to be open to listening to things I think. I think we expect to be won over in 10 seconds or we’re on to the next thing. Maybe that’s why a lot of contemporary art is quite bold, and pop music is getting harder and more reactive because the impact is more valued than growing.
A lighter question to follow that one: what instrument are you eager to learn, and why?
Haha. I’d like to learn the violin. I’ve never learned an instrument with a bow.
What other aspects of the music industry would you like to someday tackle? Are you interested in production? Film scores? Musical theater?
I’m not interested in production so much. But continue to do what I’m excited about, wherever that takes me.
Lastly: any plans to tour the U.S.? Weʼre dying to see you live!
Yes! I’m making sorts of plans at the moment for it. I hope to be with you soon.
Check out the video for Meilyr Jones’ “Strange/Emotional” below!
When I first met Sawyer Gebauer – the weighty, valley-low voice behind Catch Prichard – he was called another name. He was in another country, manning a different musical project (the melancholy Europe-based Brittsommar), and far removed from his American roots. He was physically away from home, but also emotionally and culturally. Gebauer has often discussed “home” as a symbol in interviews, namely that you can never return to it in a pure sense. It is a theme so prevalent in his work that it informed a song title on his latest EP Eskota. But in spite of his itinerant past, it seems that he’s getting mighty close to a hearth of his own making.
In the past twelve months, the songwriter has re-tethered himself to American soil after five years gone. Gebauer settled in the Bay Area last fall after a cross-country road trip that centered on the recording of this very album, in a Texas ghost town no less.
That town, was called Eskota.
The story of Eskota’s making is just as mesmerizing as the record itself, to the extent that it’s difficult to examine them separately…much like it’s a chore at times to distinguish Sawyer Gebauer from Catch Prichard, the artist from the person. There is a vague picture, but one cloaked in so much romanticism that it is blurred.
What is clear is the intent. What Gebauer set out to achieve as he drove from Wisconsin to Texas was a simpler sound, one detached from the dense arrangements of his former band. It had to be stripped down and restrained – so in order to facilitate such a mood, he and engineer Brad K. Dollar set up shop for a week in an abandoned mercantile. In the heat they lazed by day and recorded by night, drinking beer to pass the time between.
The record itself bears an authenticity that perhaps wouldn’t have surfaced had the tracks been laid in a fancy studio. Despite its simplicity (the pared down instrumentation features only guitar, pedal steel, drums and the occasional bass and Moog lines), there is a lot to chew on – a soup of intricate production details born of the location. Take for instance “Howl,” ushered in by a creaking chair and built upon the chirping Texas night. “You Can Never Go Home Again” signs off with lilting pedal steel and a faraway cough, presumably that of someone in the makeshift studio. These elements tastefully season the album like a well-prepared meal.
There is a warmth in Eskota I’ve yet to encounter in Gebauer’s music, an openness and vulnerability that doesn’t always show in his previous work. These songs seem both universally narrative and deeply personal, covering heartbreak (“So Close To It), friends remembered (“Eskota”), and becoming a native stranger (“Hometown”). Sonically it sits in a saddle between country, folk and Americana of the early ‘90s. Gebauer’s ten-gallon voice resonates over the brightness of electric guitar and pedal steel, anchoring any sweet feelings we might have with a dose of blues.
Though it’s taken a lot of mileage for him to get here, it seems Catch Prichard has arrived. Maybe you can go home after all.
Catch Prichard will play Rockwood Music Hall on October 26th. Tickets here.
Eskotais out October 21st via Devise Records. Stream the video by Leif Huron below:
I am a scavenger, perhaps an opportunist, although that doesn’t sound very rugged. Ever since moving to New York in 2008, I’ve developed a wild thirst for the “hunt” whenever I return to either of my parents’ homes. The “hunt” occurs when after only moments of being beyond the doormat, all I want to do is rip through bookshelves, closets, photo albums, the garage, etc. It is a side effect of my severe addiction to nostalgia; a dangling carrot suggesting that around every nook I might find something exquisite. And, I typically do.
Despite the virtue of minimalism, I’m grateful as hell that my parents, especially my mother and grandparents (who we called Papa Charlie and Yaya), have saved so much over the years. At times, their collections verge on the side of hoarding. I once opened a drawer in Yaya’s house to find, among other useless knickknacks, a mason jar filled with tiny rosettes she’d fashioned from gum wrappers. There was nothing utilitarian about her “collecting,” but how can you deny the artfulness of such a thing? I couldn’t throw them out.
I could write a book gushing over all of Yaya’s clothing and bizarre creations I’ve acquired over the years, and someday I just might, but as I sit in my grandparents’ living room in Huntington Beach, California, it is Papa Charlie’s record collection that is scoring the evening.
Traditionally, I think of the “musical side” of my family as stemming from my father’s half of the tree, with so many songwriters weighing that branch. But, it was Papa Charlie who upheld the musical fanaticism on my mother’s side. As I flip through the dusty stacks of Charlie’s vinyl collection, my mom stands in the kitchen reminiscing about her wily dad.
“Back in the day,” she says, “after my mom would go to bed, he would whisper, ‘Go get another bottle of wine,’ after already drinking two or three, and we would just sit in the living room listening to jazz and big band, getting smashed. He would say, ‘Oh! Oh! Listen to that! Isn’t that marvelous?! Do you hear that?!”
I’ve certainly inherited Charlie’s propensity to always have a favorite part of a song, and then subsequently shove it down peoples’ throats while listening to it. I also share his need for ritual while playing records-attentively putting them on and just sitting and listening.
Charles Priddy passed away in 2002 near the Texas County he was born in. At the time I was on the heels of 13 – in peak preteen misery. I had relinquished the clarinet for electric bass in the hopes of making it as a punk musician someday. Papa Charlie, who was a devout fan of big band clarinetist Benny Goodman, was noticeably disappointed when I abandoned the woodwind. I couldn’t understand why. I had never thought of Charlie as an interesting person when I was younger. I knew he was a geologist, and one of the few members of my family who went to college. I knew he was an immense connoisseur of wine and rich food. I knew that he used to bury fossils from all over the world in his Orange County yard to “confuse future scientists.”
It was only years after his passing that I came to realize we would have gotten on famously. Today, as I flipped through his vinyl, through Django Reinhardt’s Swing It Lightly, Tex Ritter’sBlood On The Saddle, and countless albums of jazz, big band, bossa nova and flamenco, I wished more than anything I could sit with him, a glass of Syrah in one hand, just listening. I wish I could relay to him that my musical tastes have broadened since we last saw each other, and that with all the “noise” I love, I also dig on Artie Shaw and Art Tatum and Sergio Mendes, just like, and probably because of him. We would have a whole hell of a lot to talk about; food, my Yaya’s native Spain, our collective disbelief in god, food, and of course, music.
One of my favorite finds of today has been The Language and Music of the Wolves, which boasts recordings of actual wolves, narrated by Robert Redford. It is the land-dwelling equivalent to one of my favorite records in my dad’s collection: a collection of whale songs narrated by Leonard Nimoy.
Charlie was someone who was absolutely full of surprises, darkly hilarious, and smart as a whip. I credit all of my sarcasm and black humor to him, for better or worse. After he passed my mother was attempting to clean out a closet filled with cases of wine in his California home. Tucked away in a dirty little corner was a stack of Charlie’s vintage Playboys. The scoundrel.
But his reading habits weren’t solely of the centerfold kind. He was a massive fan of Hemingway, and shared the author’s love of Spain. When he married Yaya in the ‘50s, he quickly learned her native Castilian tongue and would take my mother and his wife back to the homeland often, stopping at as many of Hemingway’s old haunts as he could locate. On more than one occasion in such an establishment, my mother would look around at the bar, quickly noticing the dress of the female waitresses.
“Dad, are we in a brothel?” She would probe. Charlie would glance side to side. “Shh. Don’t tell your mother.”
His love for Spanish culture is evident in his record collection as well, with piles of flamenco LPs and recordings by classical Spanish guitar players such as Andrés Segovia.
My grandfather was a scientist and a romantic all at once. He could easily break things down with materialist logic, but he chose to save that for the workplace. He was a sort of bacchant, relishing in life’s edible and artistic pleasures with a pagan fervor.
My discoveries of the day do not shock me for the most part…though there is one outlier I don’t understand. Throughout my sifting I found a fair amount of German folk music. I ask my mom about it and she confirms that he loved polka in addition to Dean Martin, Mel Tormé and Edith Piaf.
“We used to go to this place in Anaheim called the Phoenix club,” she says. “It was a German spot and they used to have live polka music. One night he and I were quite a few beers in and we were dancing all over the place-so hard, that grandpa fell right on top of me on the dance floor. Yaya had to drive us home, cursing at us is Spanish as we drunkenly sang polka songs in the back seat.”
I continue to dust off albums, and there before me is a record that explains it all: For Singing And Dancing: Beer Drinking-Songs by the Zillertal Band. A nice marriage of interests, at the very least.
I of course cannot turn back time, or resurrect the dead. But I can sit in Charlie’s armchair, and put on Taboo by Arthur Lyman with a glass of wine in one hand, shouting “Oh! Oh! Listen to that! Isn’t that marvelous?! Do you hear that?!” to no one in particular. And sometimes, that’s enough.
Ticket Giveaways
Each week Audiofemme gives away a set of tickets to our featured shows in NYC! Scroll down to enter for the following shindigs.
