Robert Christgau: 'The most beautiful song in the english language'
Personally I wanted to give that to 'Sunday Girl' by blondie but to each his own I guess - and Christgau deserves props for being the Critic With a Brain, and stunningly astute on many things unrelated to music, which informs and credibilises his criticism. I do actually read his reviews for sheer entertainment value and informativeness.
Also, I love this tune.
Dirty old river, must you keep rolling
Flowing into the night
People so busy, makes me feel dizzy
Taxi light shines so bright
But I dont need no friends
As long as I gaze on waterloo sunset
I am in paradise
Every day I look at the world from my window
But chilly, chilly is the evening time
Waterloo sunsets fine
Terry meets julie, waterloo station
Every friday night
But I am so lazy, dont want to wander
I stay at home at night
But I dont feel afraid
As long as I gaze on waterloo sunset
I am in paradise
Every day I look at the world from my window
But chilly, chilly is the evening time
Waterloo sunsets fine
Millions of people swarming like flies round waterloo underground
But terry and julie cross over the river
Where they feel safe and sound
And the dont need no friends
As long as they gaze on waterloo sunset
They are in paradise
Waterloo sunsets fine
Wednesday, September 16
Saturday, September 5
Kim
At the suggestion of my dear friend, I have christened my new guitar Kimberley, after my heroes Kim Deal, Kim Gordon, and the Pink Ranger.
adam
adam
Friday, September 4
Kudos
go out to Lady Gaga, whose aesthetic coherence is nothing short of stunning. I can't say I'm a huge fan of electro-pop et cetera, but this woman will be something big, just you wait and see.
adam
adam
Thursday, September 3
Led Zeppelin - the stupidest band ever to make Great Music.
Let's face it - Plant was no Lennon, Page was no Hendrix and JPJ sure as hell wasn't McCartney. Hendrix's medievalism was at least more colourful. McCartney's love songs were playful, not creepy. Simon and Garfunkel managed real folk by leaving out the machismo, something which Plant shamefully neglected to do on tracks like 'Going to California' which really reads like a mid life crisis for guys who like both Bob Dylan and shooting things.
No, Led was not a lyrics band at all. They failed in the lyrics department - and the closest they got to greatness in that department was a sophomoric dance track 'Rock and Roll' which unfortunately predates our modern club music in its subject matter. 'Stairway to Heaven' is another great failure of lyrics - it's pseudo medievalistic pagan claptrap that doesn't have the sense to be clever. In many ways they predated the regrettable trends in what was later called 'prog' and then 'neo-classical whatever' - medievalism, paganism, classism (all the isms, they're causing schisms).
And despite all the bashing I've been doing, I truly feel that they were one of the seminal acts in rock and roll after the 60s. No band today is without a deeply fundamental debt to everything they did - and though they didn't do many things well, what they did they did bloody well. And what they did well was this: a ham-fisted talent for making noise in the lower frequencies, and an clumsy (but entirely accurate) understanding of the blues. In fact, 'clumsy' is probably the best word to describe their style of ponderously repeating riffs and thundering drum beats. It was clumsy, but shockingly effective, and for this I credit that second thing, the blues, which gave Jimmy Page all the songwriting chops he needed. The blues gave them the simplicity needed to deliver the heaviness, and the result is satisfying in the gut the way the blues should be.
As the case study I pick 'When the Levee Breaks', a track in which Plant abandons his medievalism, Page abandons his progressive tendencies, and John Bonham abandons any remaining vestiges of subtlety. He opens the track here with what would become (I think) an iconic beat with the anticipated first beat of the second bar on the bass drum. As with all Led Zeppelin music, the key to heaviness (which I define as the 'insistence' that we so prize in rock music) is repetition. He does not vary the hi hat pattern, and plays sparsely so the reverb is audible. He sets a slow moving but unshakeable tempo for the song to begin, and it begins on a note of steadiness, steadiness that soon develops into inevitability. Inevitability is the real theme here - 'If it keeps on raining, the levee's gonna break/ If it keeps on raining, the levee's gonna break/ If the levee breaks, I'll have no place to stay'. Notice how even after the the first line is repeated a la traditional blues, the words 'levee breaks' happen one more time in the third line, as if the first two times didn't make it clear enough. This slow build of paranoia is one of the rare successes of their songwriting. The guitar intro is played with a slide, like the real bluesmen did - only he plays the same thing over and again, only three notes - the root (and harmonised fifth, making it the 'heaviest' chord playable on a guitar at any pitch), the flattened major third or 'blue note', again harmonised, and the fifth. Aside from the blue note, these notes are colourless, being the fundamentals of the harmony. The nature of the notes is not lost on the listener - he only hears the blue note, the 'colour', the root which is the resolution, and the fifth which is tension. The slow ululation of tension-resolution over the steady drum beat, always with exactly the same notes, is another element that adds to the growing paranoia prevalent in the intro.
The next part of interest is the sudden instrumental refrain, which modulates to the major key. The tone here is almost triumphant - I say almost because the blues is never triumphant, and Page proves his facility with the idiom here - but the resolution from the 7th chord makes it uneasy, almost terrifying in a Gothic sort of way rather than satisfying. The chorus of multi-tracked guitar parts adds to this cathedral-like atmosphere, hinting infinitesimally at the sound of a wind orchestra, and the associated grandeur. It is a terrifying grandeur.
The second half of the refrain is a motif played distorted with slide guitar. Again, the three phrases are variations of the same melodic motif, and the repetition serves to create a feeling of insistence and intensity. It should be noted that this part of the refrain is not played in the intro, only after the first verse. Again, Page plays only simple chords. The accompaniment plays a root and a fifth, which reminds us of the band's perennial medieval obsession - certainly, it sounds like a drone note music, tonally resembling bagpipes or violin, both of which are often used to play drone notes in traditional scottish, irish, and indian musics. The medievalism here is subtle at least, and they get away with it - it only adds a not unwelcome colour to their straight-ahead blues.
TBC soon!
adam
No, Led was not a lyrics band at all. They failed in the lyrics department - and the closest they got to greatness in that department was a sophomoric dance track 'Rock and Roll' which unfortunately predates our modern club music in its subject matter. 'Stairway to Heaven' is another great failure of lyrics - it's pseudo medievalistic pagan claptrap that doesn't have the sense to be clever. In many ways they predated the regrettable trends in what was later called 'prog' and then 'neo-classical whatever' - medievalism, paganism, classism (all the isms, they're causing schisms).
And despite all the bashing I've been doing, I truly feel that they were one of the seminal acts in rock and roll after the 60s. No band today is without a deeply fundamental debt to everything they did - and though they didn't do many things well, what they did they did bloody well. And what they did well was this: a ham-fisted talent for making noise in the lower frequencies, and an clumsy (but entirely accurate) understanding of the blues. In fact, 'clumsy' is probably the best word to describe their style of ponderously repeating riffs and thundering drum beats. It was clumsy, but shockingly effective, and for this I credit that second thing, the blues, which gave Jimmy Page all the songwriting chops he needed. The blues gave them the simplicity needed to deliver the heaviness, and the result is satisfying in the gut the way the blues should be.
As the case study I pick 'When the Levee Breaks', a track in which Plant abandons his medievalism, Page abandons his progressive tendencies, and John Bonham abandons any remaining vestiges of subtlety. He opens the track here with what would become (I think) an iconic beat with the anticipated first beat of the second bar on the bass drum. As with all Led Zeppelin music, the key to heaviness (which I define as the 'insistence' that we so prize in rock music) is repetition. He does not vary the hi hat pattern, and plays sparsely so the reverb is audible. He sets a slow moving but unshakeable tempo for the song to begin, and it begins on a note of steadiness, steadiness that soon develops into inevitability. Inevitability is the real theme here - 'If it keeps on raining, the levee's gonna break/ If it keeps on raining, the levee's gonna break/ If the levee breaks, I'll have no place to stay'. Notice how even after the the first line is repeated a la traditional blues, the words 'levee breaks' happen one more time in the third line, as if the first two times didn't make it clear enough. This slow build of paranoia is one of the rare successes of their songwriting. The guitar intro is played with a slide, like the real bluesmen did - only he plays the same thing over and again, only three notes - the root (and harmonised fifth, making it the 'heaviest' chord playable on a guitar at any pitch), the flattened major third or 'blue note', again harmonised, and the fifth. Aside from the blue note, these notes are colourless, being the fundamentals of the harmony. The nature of the notes is not lost on the listener - he only hears the blue note, the 'colour', the root which is the resolution, and the fifth which is tension. The slow ululation of tension-resolution over the steady drum beat, always with exactly the same notes, is another element that adds to the growing paranoia prevalent in the intro.
The next part of interest is the sudden instrumental refrain, which modulates to the major key. The tone here is almost triumphant - I say almost because the blues is never triumphant, and Page proves his facility with the idiom here - but the resolution from the 7th chord makes it uneasy, almost terrifying in a Gothic sort of way rather than satisfying. The chorus of multi-tracked guitar parts adds to this cathedral-like atmosphere, hinting infinitesimally at the sound of a wind orchestra, and the associated grandeur. It is a terrifying grandeur.
The second half of the refrain is a motif played distorted with slide guitar. Again, the three phrases are variations of the same melodic motif, and the repetition serves to create a feeling of insistence and intensity. It should be noted that this part of the refrain is not played in the intro, only after the first verse. Again, Page plays only simple chords. The accompaniment plays a root and a fifth, which reminds us of the band's perennial medieval obsession - certainly, it sounds like a drone note music, tonally resembling bagpipes or violin, both of which are often used to play drone notes in traditional scottish, irish, and indian musics. The medievalism here is subtle at least, and they get away with it - it only adds a not unwelcome colour to their straight-ahead blues.
TBC soon!
adam
Monday, August 31
Sunday, August 30
A bit late for Beatlemania
This would've been so much cooler if I could've done it 40 years ago when the whole world was doing it too. Now I just get ridiculous looks on the MRT because i'm headbanging to 'Drive my Car' instead of oh, Akon or something. At least, I think they're ridiculous looks because I feel silly inside. But the music will not let go!
Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been clear
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it's alright.
adam
Saturday, August 29
New Guitar
On track with the New Things trend we've been seeing, I finally caved and bought another guitar - partly cos my crappy cheap strat is starting to fall apart, and partly just for the heck of it. I managed to find a red Gibson '61 reissue SG at guitar connection, and immediately fell in love.
I won't gush about it here because only two people probably in my entirely hypothetical readership (i'm not quite convinced any of you exist anymore - my blog is an exercise in solipsism) would understand what I mean by 'the pickups are just the right temperature' and I DON'T mean they were toasted for eight and a half minutes before installation.
So - quite a bit poorer now, have to figure out how to use this thing (it's NOT the same...) and I'm accepting bids for names. Although I'll probably ignore all suggestions anyway. Hypothetical names are okay too.
adam
Friday, August 14
I'm (mostly) back from my temporary brush with insanity, with the help of a few friends and four englishmen who happened to be called the Beatles. I guess this is a bit (very) late to be realising, but having listened to some(not enough) of the canon of popular music in this century, this must be the most sacred music ever to grace the realms of human creation. It isn't perfect music, but it is hallowed in every sense of the word that means anything to human beings.
adam
adam
Monday, August 10
Sparrow
Desdemona brought me a dead sparrow this morning - at some level I deeply enjoy being the recipient of these animal sacrifices.
adam
adam
Friday, August 7
Stupidity
I have become the connoisseur of stupidity. I have seen it in every possible form, and naked in its Platonic manifestation. The stupidity of others has confounded, frustrated, awed and bewildered me. But no stupidity is ever as all-encompassing, as immense, as brilliant and diaphanous and unstained as my own. This particular time I have outdone myself by leagues by the simplicity, the humility, the selflessness... the sheer purity of the act. For a few minutes there I was a man transmogrified like Jesus on the hilltop into the very incarnation of stupidity, made beautiful by surrendering my entire soul to its all-consuming force.
adam
adam
Wednesday, August 5
Loneliness
is not a philosophical problem - it's a biological reaction. I feel like my responses have been hijacked by chemicals - but that's an illusion - my responses aren't much more than chemicals. I just wish there was something I could do about it.
adam
adam
Tuesday, August 4
Sanctuary
After the week of non-commitments and half-eaten fantasies, it's nice to be back in the real world. I put on 'Sanctuary' from Miles's Bitches Brew album, and realiset that that was what I'd been needing all week.
adam
adam
Monday, August 3
Hey ho, let's go.
This is going to be one of those intractable posts about my continuing inability to be at peace with the world. Incidentally, I'm at the mess computer in camp and it's been a long week.
My capacity for responsibility has worn thin. I've pretty much stopped caring about anything that happens in the army, for the good reason that it's mind-crushingly pointless. But I used to be able to do my job... and I consider that one of the attributes a non-useless person must have in this world. I am slowly losing my grip on non-uselessness. Don't get me wrong, I love my men, but it's a different sort of relationship with them, mostly based on trading insults and comparing penis sizes - not all in all a fulfilling existence. I miss having a real conversation. I miss talking for hours about pointless (but interesting) philosophical quibbles. I miss not having to walk around in a protective shell made out of belligerence. And I've resorted to more and more outlandish (and often destructive) ways of coping with this.
I mean, this is truly pathetic, that I can't seem to handle a little thing like this without becoming self-destructive. It was alright when I was just content with destroying my body. But that barely seems like enough now - I fear I've started to play games with my mind and my heart that no sane person would attempt. It is worrying.
On the dubious upside, I know I should make it through alive. My family is composed some of the most arrogant, stubborn people on this planet. And I won't give up even if (and especially if) it kills me. I just hope I don't drag too many people down on the way.
So - bring it on, motherfuckers.
adam
My capacity for responsibility has worn thin. I've pretty much stopped caring about anything that happens in the army, for the good reason that it's mind-crushingly pointless. But I used to be able to do my job... and I consider that one of the attributes a non-useless person must have in this world. I am slowly losing my grip on non-uselessness. Don't get me wrong, I love my men, but it's a different sort of relationship with them, mostly based on trading insults and comparing penis sizes - not all in all a fulfilling existence. I miss having a real conversation. I miss talking for hours about pointless (but interesting) philosophical quibbles. I miss not having to walk around in a protective shell made out of belligerence. And I've resorted to more and more outlandish (and often destructive) ways of coping with this.
I mean, this is truly pathetic, that I can't seem to handle a little thing like this without becoming self-destructive. It was alright when I was just content with destroying my body. But that barely seems like enough now - I fear I've started to play games with my mind and my heart that no sane person would attempt. It is worrying.
On the dubious upside, I know I should make it through alive. My family is composed some of the most arrogant, stubborn people on this planet. And I won't give up even if (and especially if) it kills me. I just hope I don't drag too many people down on the way.
So - bring it on, motherfuckers.
adam
Thursday, July 30
New Phone
With the plan renewal comes new handset time (it's about time, I say - my k800i is now 3 years old and starting to grey around the temples). I could have opted for the really sexy HTC model, or god forbid an iPhone, but for budget and perhaps camp security reasons I went for the archaic (and indeed, arcane) nokia e71 - a model that, while clunky and quite hideous (I got mine in a manhood-approving shade of red), appeals to me in its sheer, almost medieval brute force approach to design. I like that there is no touch-screen, there are no stylish symbols, just a don't-fuck-around-with-me qwerty keyboard on the front, an i-don't-give-a-fuck tiny LCD display, and a why-am-i-even-bothering 3.2 camera, which used to be huge but now isn't. This is a phone for people who get the job done the messy way. I love the features, too, which it sure doesn't fall short on.
adam
adam
Tuesday, July 28
Saturday, July 25
Odd
I just re-discovered a blog that I started two(!) years ago and promptly left to die. It's RTVOODOO, my music blog - and I've gone and updated it just to keep up with the general spirit of necromancy that seems to be prevalent.
rtvoodoo.blogspot.com
adam
Friday, July 3
Are and Gee
I'd just like to take a moment to plug a play which I won't before because I'm in the army, but which my friends are producing/acting in, and which I think is a fantastic endeavour. Tom Stoppard's 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead' will be on 17th-19th of July. You can contact me, Terence Lee, Ryan D or Chengyi for info.
adam
Further Impressions
Okay, I've not had much time with Closer, but I have spent many ecstatic hours listening to Rising Down, and it is definitely worth the critics' hype. I can't say I know much about hip hop, but I know a little about music - and this album shows a band (and a crew, let's not forget) at its prime, basking in the sheer joy of inventiveness, whether it be ?uestlove's manic drum beats or Black Thought's flow (eat shit, Kanye!). Mos Def opens the lyrics with an apocalyptic tableaux. Dice Raw carries on with the protest song 'Get Busy' before Black Thought commits vocal murder with freestyle @15 and burns his competitors hard on '75 bars (Black's Reconstruction)'.
They break out the gangsta rap for 'Criminal'.
The two closers on the international version ('Birthday Girl' was left out in the American release, sadly) function like the closers on 'London Calling'. 'Rising Up' is nothing short of apocalyptic, with a flaming fusion beat, choir and modulating chords banging on the electric piano. 'Birthday Girl' brings things to a personal level - this is the 'Train in Vain' of rap right here and it closes the album on a slightly sentimental note - but don't mistake this for mush. It's the cleverest song on the album. 'I just let you inside cos the line was so heavy/But i shoulda know better cos now I feel like america's underbelly/R. Kelly, gutter smut peddlers, internet predators, chat room irregulars', Black raps. It's also stunning for making actual musical use of Fallout Boy's singularly talent-less lead singer. I doubt if he wrote this himself, but the final chorus is (and I turn a little teary here) quite stirring, and quite witty
'They can't really seem to look away
so they tried asking her to stay
fake ID you won't get turned away
you look lovely tonight
Now you're old enough to buy a gun
so many better ways of having fun
right now I can only think of one
You look lovely tonight'
Some of the reviews blamed Black Thought for rapping too seriously on this album. It's not funny, says Rolling Stone - they're probably right. But just when you think he's starting to become Jesse Jackson, the band turns a hairpin and reminds you that they sure as fuck are having fun.
adam
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