I said I was crazy busy, right? That’s why I’m not even going to try and dress this up: Look! It’s my new Time essay, this week about political conventions and comic conventions. It’s another one of those that turned out being written multiple times; the first time I wrote it, I ended up going out on an entirely different journey than I’d intended to and, more importantly, than what I’d pitched to the editors. It wasn’t a bad journey, but it wasn’t what I’d promised, and that was a problem. Sometimes, such things happen, and occasionally they’re a good thing – I love the happy accident of writing, I promise – but I always wish that they’d take less time when they do happen…
366 Songs 249: Funky Fanfare
I am way too backed up with work, deadlines and preparation for life in a cabin this weekend, and so instead of a traditional song, you get Keith Mansfield’s spectacular “Funky Fanfare,” a piece of music created to be of use for radio shows, television shows, commercials or whoever else wanted it, as long as they could afford it. Mansfield did a lot of these types of pieces, but this one for whatever reason really caught the imagination of people in recent years; it shows up in Grindhouse as the “coming soon” music before the fake trailers, and was also sampled for Danger Doom’s “Old School”:
Mansfield is one of those forgotten geniuses of pop culture. One day, he’ll get his due. Here’s more of his work, the spectacularly-titled “Young Scene”:
366 Songs 248: Rude Boy Rock
Pop Quiz time! Is this track:
The answer, of course, is (C), but I suspect that the David Holmes thing is somewhat accidental seeing that “My Mate Paul” is, after all, little more than a version of “Smokey Joe’s La-La” by Googie Rene:
Holmes’ track definitely samples the Rene track; I’m not sure if the Lionrock track does, but I’d be very surprised if it didn’t, considering the beat and the horns it uses – I feel that it’s pretty much a direct translation, but your mileage may vary, as ever. I love the Rene song that seems to be at the heart of both subsequent tracks, and love even more the idea that two different producers rediscovered the song months apart, and used it as the basis for their latest dancefloor fillers. If only more forgotten classics had such impact.
Odd but true; the single version of “Rude Boy Rock,” almost 90 seconds shorter, is by far the superior because of the edited opening:
See? Isn’t that better?
366 Songs 247: She Cries Your Name
For all that I will complain about William Orbit’s production on Blur’s 13 – and I will, just be glad I haven’t really started here – his involvement in “She Cries Your Name” almost absolves him of any aural sin in my book; the swooping strings, double bass and shuffling drums in this song gave Beth Orton’s solo career the best launchpad it could get, and a far more interesting surrounding than almost everything that appeared on the following album, Trailer Park. There’s a jazz influence at play in this song that matches and sounds wonderful next to Orton’s at-times-overwhelming folk meandering, giving the song a snap and drive that, judging by her other songs from the same period, it may have missed otherwise. If only Red Snapper had been her backing band for that first album…
“He Was Operating, Most of The Time, Without A Safety Net”
Lehrer’s transgressions are inexcusable—but I can’t help but think that the industry he (and I) work for share a some of the blame for his failure. I’m 10 years older than Lehrer, and unlike him, my contemporaries and I had all of our work scrutinized by layers upon layers of editors, top editors, copy editors, fact checkers and even (heaven help us!) subeditors before a single word got published. When we screwed up, there was likely someone to catch it and save us (public) embarrassment. And if someone violated journalistic ethics, it was more likely to be caught early in his career—allowing him the chance either to reform and recover or to slink off to another career without being humiliated on the national stage. No such luck for Lehrer; he rose to the very top in a flash, and despite having his work published by major media companies, he was operating, most of the time, without a safety net. Nobody noticed that something was amiss until it was too late to save him.
From here, an article by Charles Seife, the man hired by Wired.com to look into whether Jonah Lehrer’s (unedited) blog posts for the site contained the same kind of recycling, plagiarism and lies that he has been found guilty of in his books and at the New Yorker. Short version: Yes, so much so that Seife suggests that Lehrer’s “moral compass” may be broken when it comes to journalism. Which, you know, is kind of a bold thing to say, really.
Over at Poynter, Seife is interviewed about the article, and he says something that really resonates with my experience as a blogger-turned-journalist (If that’s what I am?):
Seife worried that this sort of instant publishing “is a double-edged sword.” Editors might have slow you down as a writer and robbed you of some freedom, but “at the same time they protected you,” he said.
“They made sure they challenged you. They forced you to think harder about your work, and if you screwed up, they kicked your ass. Lehrer, I think it’s really sad because I do think he’s a very clear writer, he’s able to distill ideas very well.
“And I think that if he had a bit more oversight early on in his career, if he had a good editor or two to kick his butt, I think he might have become a star that would never have fallen.”
I remain compelled by this whole thing, for selfish reasons. I can’t stop myself hoping that someone writes a book about it, weirdly.
366 Songs 244/245/246: Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End
If you look past the growly vocal from Paul McCartney, there’s a sense of age evident in the final three tracks from the final Beatles album (Except, in both cases, not really; although recorded last, Abbey Road was followed by Let It Be in terms of release, and “Her Majesty” follows “The End” on the album, anyway); it’s in the grandiose orchestral arrangement of “Carry That Weight,” with the horns parping their importance before the song segues into an unbilled reprise of “You Never Give Me Your Money” from earlier in the album, or the strings surrounding the band as they sing “You’re gonna carry that weight, a long time” afterwards, like some John Barry Bond theme gone wrong. There’s a syrup-y sound here, something that feels at odds with the way the band had treated their arrangements before this point.
The age thing makes itself apparent in the lyrics, too; “Once there was a way/To get back homewards/Once there was a way/To get back home,” McCartney sings, with the clear implication that that’s not there anymore. Everyone joins in to remind themselves that they’re gonna carry that weight a long time, and McCartney goes on to admit, “In the middle of the celebrations/I break down…”
(That the “Boy! You’re gonna carry that weight” part is a group vocal has always made me wonder whether it’s meant to be supportive or taunting, the sound of the Beatles talking to Paul with disdain or understanding. Chances are, even McCartney himself didn’t know when he wrote it, so complicated were his relationships with the band at the time.)
And then, before everything gets too maudlin – because this is a sad suite, a collection of melancholy and loss, of the bad kind of nostalgia where you look back with regret that things aren’t the way they used to be – “The End” kicks in. Oh yeah! Alright!
Here, let’s listen to the track as released on the Anthology album decades later, without the “Oh yeah!” introduction, just to hear the band jam their little hearts out, but also with the orchestral elements more noticeable (And, yes, the final chord from “A Day In The Life” added at the end):
I love “The End,” in either version. Again, it’s very un-Beatles in a lot of ways, because when did they do solos like this? Because, at its heart, that’s what “The End” is: A collection of solos, whether it’s Ringo’s drum solo to start off, before John, George and Paul trade lead guitar lines as the race to the vocal pay-off. There’s a sense of playfulness, of trying to outdo each other with the music, of fun, in “The End” that almost balances out the sense of loss in the earlier two chapters of this medley; despite everything, they can still communicate through song. And then, the lyrics, again the work of someone feeling old, addressing a conclusion. What makes the end of “The End” so emotional for me, though, isn’t the “And in the end/The love you take/Is equal to/The love you make” by itself, but the harmonies immediately following, soaring upwards. It’s so sad, and so optimistic, at the same time.
I love that above animation (from the end of the Beatles Rock Band videogame); it’s very informed by the iconography of the ’60s and of the Beatles themselves, but it’s also… I don’t know. Empty enough, silent enough, to get something about the melancholy present even in those final notes across in a beautifully subtle way.
“People Are Always Scared of New Technology”
We don’t go through life talking in text speak, just like in the age of the telegraph people didn’t talk like telegrams. Some of it makes its way into the language like “OMG,” but we saw the same thing with proofreading terms like “stet” and “ibid” or things like that.
People are always scared of new technology. On the first trains, people had nervous breakdowns, because they were going too fast. When the first bicycles came out, people were warned about getting “bicycle face.” [Atwood pulls back the skin on her face to demonstrate, looking like the victim of a bad plastic surgeon.]
What people were really worried about was that it could enable sex, because you could get away from the home and parental control. There were similar concerns about the automobile. And a similar uproar was caused by the zipper. People preached sermons about the dangers of zippers. And now we have velcro! That’s even easier.
From here. Margaret Atwood is awesome.
366 Songs 243: Nighttime
It took years – Genuinely, more than a decade – to realize that Alex Chilton sings “Air goes cool” in this song, one of the more fragile and beautiful from the mythical third album from Big Star. This song is one of those that changes as I get older, and what originally sounded haunted and upset when I heard the song for the first time in my early twenties now sounds peaceful and contented years later. There’s a feeling that this is a song unwinding, breathing slowly and softly and enjoying the lack of horror and anger that happens in each of the other songs that surround it on the album. There are worse songs to listen to as the sun sets and you find yourself wandering through the city on a summer evening.
366 Songs 242: Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Pelvis
As far as I’m concerned, this is the shining moment of Jarvis Cocker’s career, and it happens on a guest shot for someone else’s album. Officially, this song is credited to Barry Adamson, upon whose Oedipus Schmoedipus this comes from. But, whether it’s the spectacular arrangement behind Cocker – The vibes! The “Rocks”-esque drums! The thudding of the bass guitar! The strings! The choir! – the wonderfully desperate lyrics (“So please/So please/Don’t leave me alone in this double bed/It smells of damp towels and asthma inhalers,” while the choir plead for sexual release without masturbation, “Save me from my own hand!”) or just Cocker’s breathless performance, at once pathetic and (faux-)seductive, “Set The Controls For The Heart of The Pelvis” has long been the best thing Cocker has ever done, the fulfillment of all the promise of his Pulp themes performed with far more verve, gusto and humor than that band ever managed to achieve by themselves. It’s a very specific experience, this song, and one that may only appeal to those with furtive teenage sexual fumblings and unrequited desires, and yet… Yeah. This song is the real thing, for me.
366 Songs 241: Oh! You Pretty Things
Another of those songs that sounds to me like some kind of pop perfection, “Oh! You Pretty Things” is about way that vocals play off each other in the chorus; it was the first thing that caught my attention, the call-and-response, the swinging of the lead against the sturdiness of the backing vocals (The way that “Driving your mommas and papas” builds to support the landing of Bowie’s swoop, mirroring the fall of their earlier “Oh, you pretty things” as it climbs down). Even before my attention was sworn by the words being sung (“Homo sapiens have outgrown their use,” indeed) or the piano instrumentation that collapses into full band for the chorus. There’s a lovely balance of delicateness and swagger in this song that I find irresistible, but even cover versions that pretty significantly change the sound of the song make me swoon more than slightly: