Anachronistic & Impulsive, Part I
I haven’t written much of anything about music since starting this blog. Those of you who’ve known me for a while know that I was once an avid music fan. But over the past several years, between other, overwhelming demands on my time, and an increasingly jaded music sensibility (I think it just comes with age), I haven’t been listening to much that’s new.
Maria just bought herself an iBook, and it turns out I got an early birthday present at the same time: an iPod. I’ve occasionally gone online to search for new music, but listening while at my computer isn’t practical for any length of time, and converting tracks and burning CDs is possible, but a real chore with my antiquated equipment (gasp, it must be 7 years old!). So maybe the ease-of-use the iPod is known for will get me listening to new music again.
Before receiving the iPod, for the first time in years I burned a music CD of favorite tracks. The key to a successful mixed CD isn’t just coming up with good songs, it’s putting them in the right order: to build a mood or a certain energy, and then (usually) slowly or (sometimes) quickly transform it to something else as you go on. To me, the goal is to take the listener on a journey through a variety of musical genres and emotional states. I named this one “Anachronistic & Impulsive”:
1. Big Country - The Sailor: I sang this at my wedding reception, so how could it not be the first track on the disc? A song about ending your wanderings, love, timelessness, and commitment.
2. Peter Murphy - Crystal Wrists: breaking free, understanding yourself, and seeing the beauty in the world
3. NoMeansNo - Lifelike: as usual with NoMeansno, a song with a double-meaning: a celebration of life, with overtones of duplicity. Unlike usual NoMeansNo however, this track is neither bass-heavy nor guitar heavy; it instead features some kind of whacky-sounding keyboard instrument (I’m not sure what it is, but it’s not a piano) that lends a circus-like atmosphere to the song.
4. Ed’s Redeeming Qualities - How Come No One’s Dancing: a song about lost love, and not being able to let go, but not letting it get you down either. ERQ is no longer together, but their sound has been described like this: “Imagine Jonathan Richman and They Might Be Giants hanging out together at the Newport Folk Festival.”
5. Ed’s Redeeming Qualities - Driving on 9 (live): a sad but quirky song about a man driving to visit his about-to-be remarried ex-wife and a daughter he hasn’t seen in years. The song ends with the lines: “turn off your headlights, this is just like stage fright, coming back home.” This song was later covered by the Breeders.
6. Tarnation - Do You Fancy Me: a quiet, twangy tune about a woman afraid to leave her lover (who won’t make a commitment), and then finds the strength to walk away from him. Tarnation’s music is hard to describe - at first it seems like country music, but then you encounter a bunch of psychedelic and punk influences that leave you scratching your head (I like music that does that to me).
7. Big Country - Ships: a grim but beautiful song about being abandonded by your friends in a time of need. This song is remarkable in a few respects: it’s one of the only good songs on the otherwise lousy Big Country album “No Place Like Home” (which never got a US release); it’s the only song the band ever recorded with just piano and voice; it’s one of the only songs the band ever re-recorded for a later album, and in doing so they managed to horribly butcher their own song (in the Buffalo Skinners version, they removed most of the piano arrangement and turned it into a lame country tune). But this original version is quite moving.
8. Bob Mould - Wishing Well: I’ve seen Bob Mould in concert at least half a dozen times over the past dozen years, and he always opens with this song. So I think he knows it’s the best song he ever recorded. I saw a picture in a magazine which captured the one and only time Bob Mould, Jello Biafra, and Johnny Rotten all met. The caption simply read: “Rotten Jello Mould”
9. And Also the Trees - The Oblivious: a cool little 50s noir-sounding track with very psychedelic lyrics delivered in a spoken word style (my favorite line is “they tell me that all that they know is the obvious, and if I stay with them for a while, maybe I can learn it too”). The AATT career has had an interesting arc: from sonic minimalism, to gothic, to their current 1950s jazz/coffee house sound.
There’s still 11 more tracks to describe….stay tuned for Part II.
