Hello, technology. Assuming this works, I am writing this on a Kindle; it was a birthday present and an attempt for me to get off the laptop as I know it but still be able to check the Internet, email and whatever in evenings and weekends. I made myself a promise, awhile back, to GET OFF THE COMPUTER when I wasn’t working, if only because I spend so much time working and need to change my environment some time without going crazy. It’s been good for me, but having this Kindle has been really nice to just do fun things online without feeling like I should work. Plus, it’s gotten me obsessed with the format of Kindle Singles and other cheap, short digital books. More on that later, I suspect.
366 Songs 281: OK
Presented to demonstrate the value of a good remix, here is (above) the album version – ie, the original – of Talvin Singh’s “OK,” from the album of the same name. It’s a really nice track, and it’s something that very clearly knows what it wants to do and gets there relatively painlessly.
And then, someone – A record label executive? Singh himself? I have no idea – apparently decided that, if they were really going to want to release the track as a single, it needed a little bit more punch. So, they reached out to Bjork collaborator Guy Sigworth, who just tweaked a few things and ended up with this irresistible juggernaut of a floor filler:
This, I would like to suggest, is what an outside voice can bring to a project. And so, thank you to all my editors, who make my work better with their comments and objections. Those who make it worse…? Well, we’ll talk about you another time.
366 Songs 280: Girl From The City
I have never heard another song by the fantastically-named Strawberry Alarm Clock – That is, I promise, the name of the band who perform this song – and, to be honest, I am in no rush to do so anytime soon. But nonetheless, I really love this song, in large part because of the movie it comes from, Beyond The Valley of The Dolls. A kitsch classic that’s as much a cheesecake disaster as it is a parody of the ’60s pop- and counter-cultures, BTVOTD is also gifted with some genuinely wonderful music, such as this great mid-tempo song that sounds like the Loving Spoonful trying to rock out an early Beatles number (Listen to that ending, with the bass climbing up). It’s one of those times where someone trying to create an intentional rip-off of a particular thing ends up, accidentally, creating one of the best examples of it. If more 1960s rock sounded like this, I’d like more 1960s rock.
This Is What 38 Feels Like
My birthday gifts to myself: Catching up on deadlines (I think? This is where I discover there’s something that’s slipped through the cracks) and stopping for the weekend. Seriously; I have been working on weekends for the last few weeks, and that’s just meant that I’ve been working seven days a week for varying amounts of time. That is, as the kids say, bananas and I’m taking happy advantage of the chance to, you know, relax over the next couple of days.
We’ll see how long it is until I get bored.
Oh, and I’m also going to shave finally, and maybe buy myself a book to read on my Kindle or something, too. That’s not too ridiculous, right…?
(To everyone who sent me birthday wishes on Facebook or Twitter: Thank you very, very much. I’m genuinely kind of humbled by them all.)
366 Songs 279: Another Day
I don’t know what it says about me that I woke up, on my birthday, with this song in my head:
The Rutles are, of course, the parody band that managed to somehow be so good that you can listen to their songs as songs and not jokes. Sure, there are some funny lyrics in here – “You’re so pusillanimous, oh yeah” isn’t something that many pop songs would try to work in, let’s be honest (Here’s what pusillanimous means, by the way) – but it all works as a song; the melody is wonderful, and it’s amazingly catchy. Neil Innes, who wrote all of the songs for both Rutles albums, really was a heavily underrated musical genius.
The song is, according to the Rutles’ fake chronology, something that belongs in the White Album era, and yet it’s arguably more durable than a lot of Paul McCartney’s contributions of that time, whom it most closely resembles; somewhere, there’s a universe where the Rutles were real, revolutionized pop music and had a very different, and somewhat happier, ending than the Beatles. Or, at least, they had the good sense to do a farewell album with this song on it:
(The Rutles’ parody of the Beatles’ “Free As A Bird” was also better than the real thing, for what it’s worth:
Still over-produced – Maybe that was the point? – but at the heart of it, this is a better song than “Free As A Bird,” let’s be honest…)
366 Songs 278: Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat
There’s something very playful about Bob Dylan’s “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat”; it sounds like a parody of the blues, in some way, with such a traditional backing and basic riff playing under Dylan’s usual whining (Although, this is from Blonde On Blonde, one of “the” classic Dylan albums, so maybe it sounded more fresh and exciting back then), and there’s a fun bounce to the whole thing. You can imagine everyone having a good time playing it, even as Dylan complains about an unfaithful lover who apparently was very into her headwear. This, however, wasn’t the way that I discovered the song.
No, I found it through a cover by Beck from a couple years back that has an entirely different vibe to it:
This is… bouncy, yes, but it’s a more glam rock stomp, and performed in such a way that recalls Beck’s music from the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack, so much so that I wonder if it was recorded at the same time; definitely, the fuzzy bass and cymbal-happy drums feel very similar to, say, “Garbage Truck” or whatever, and the beeps and blops at 1:27 are, I’m sure, lifted from the Katayanagi Twins battle from the movie:
I far prefer the Beck version; it’s a cover, yes, and it’s as much as unfaithful rip-off of other people’s music as the original, and yet… I don’t know. It sounds more fun, more exciting to listen to, and more into the joke behind the whole thing, if that makes sense. Like his Sex Bob-Omb tracks from Pilgrim, it’s a song that makes me wish I was twenty-years younger and able to play guitar.
366 Songs 277: Clint Eastwood
It’s funny to look back at this, Gorillaz’ second/first single (It was the first official single, but they’d snuck out a “Tomorrow Never Comes” ep before that), now; the animation seems hilariously basic compared with what followed, and the song seems very… clean, I guess, and repetitive in a way that later Gorillaz tracks aren’t (It took Demon Days for Albarn to realize what he could do with the Gorillaz concept musically, I think; the first album is much more of a tentative thing, with Dan the Automator more present than Albarn at times). And yet, the singalong quality of Albarn’s part is irresistible, and Del tha Funkee Homosapien’s contribution remains a high point for all of the Gorillaz’ material to date, matched perhaps only by Andre 3000 in “Do Ya Thing.” There’s no way to hear “Finally, someone let me out of my cage” without a smile breaking out on your face and a realization that someone has appeared without the tentativeness that’s been holding the song back until that point. What makes “Clint Eastwood” a classic is the confidence that Del brings that takes it beyond the showgazing and humility of what has come before.
366 Songs 276: Strange News From Another Star
Coming late into the Blur album that saw Damon Albarn et al abandon the Britpop sound for something more influenced by British music of the 1970s than that of the ’60s (People at the time pointed to an American Alternative Rock influence, but this is David Bowie through and through), “Strange News From Another Star” is a song that sounds as delicate as the lyrics suggest (“I don’t believe in me/I don’t believe in me/All I’ve ever done is tame/Will you love me all the same?/Will you love me though it’s always the same?”). The album version of the song is almost determinately oppressive and dehumanizing, with the synthetic noises broken with the acoustic guitar only occasionally, sounding like a retro-future where the good guys lost, but I have long preferred this live version, performed solo by Albarn:
It’s far, far more melancholy than the original, but also prettier; it feels more hopeful than defeated, as if the news is strange now, but not necessarily permanently, and not necessarily the end of everything. “I’m lost, I’m lost” Albarn sings, but there’s a feeling in this performance that he could be found before too long.
Late, But…
So thrown was I, yesterday, by work, off-site meetings and Presidential Debates (Obama lost, but it was an ugly, boring debate), that I completely didn’t have time to link you to my Time essay of the week, about women and sitcoms and why that means that we can finally stop asking if women are funny or not thankyouverymuch. This one was a beast to write, and I still didn’t stick the landing in time for deadline.
366 Songs 275: Tomorrow
More Sean Lennon from Friendly Fire, and the song that I find reminds me most of Elliott Smith from the album, whether it’s the shuffling drums and slowly loping guitar (Both of which remind me very strongly of “Stupidity Tries,” from Figure 8, for some reason) or the slightly off-kilter arrangement that makes the whole thing sound a little like a space-age lounge act that is slowly evaporating while their singer croons his pain away into the ether. It lacks the soul-burning qualities of Smith’s best stuff – and even his worst, let’s be honest – but there’s something more easy to relate to with Lennon’s relationship misery. After all, who hasn’t wished that they could put a break-up on hold just for one night to feel a little less lonely…?