Posts tagged Lost Classics
Neutral Milk Hotel – In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
Feb 23rd
OK, it’s kind of cheating to file this under “Lost Classics”, Neutral Milk Hotel’s In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is regarded by many music fans as one of the most important indie/lo-fi/folk albums of all time. As a side note, it also happens to be one of Mrs. Giant Panther’s favorites of all time as well. Some may be turned off initially by the sound, but most will quickly realize what a jaw dropping experience it can be to listen to this album front to back.
Originally released in 1998, this album was way ahead of it’s time, and one could hear now just how many bands this album must have influenced, The Decemberists come to mind, Sufjan Stevens.
Not many can argue with the absolute beauty of this album, and the real trick is winning the beauty contest while being the ugliest contestant in the pageant. Most would not label band leader and mastermind behind NHM Jeff Magnum’s voice as one of the technically great of our generation. Some would even go so far as to label his voice something just short of “shouldn’t be singing”. But for others, this is one of the finely cut puzzle pieces that make this album a true masterpiece. I could go on all day about all the little nuances that make this album tick, the overdriven guitar that if misplaced, could go horribly wrong, or the musical saws in harmony, the horn sections, the list goes on and on.
Like most masterpieces, the creator himself would never be able to go back and do it again. That’s part of the magic, that brings a series of intentional moves, unplanned mistakes, and inspired improvisations together to form something near perfection. That’s not meant to discount the genius it took to make this album, the songwriting, especially the lyricism is pure genius.
There are songs on this album that strike a chord differently with every listener. For me, it’s “The King of Carrot Flowers”, leading into the title track “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea”. It brings me back to when I was a young, only child, sitting under my favorite tree and asking so many questions, wondering what the hell I was here for, when were my parents going to split, what was happening to my grandparents, what happens when you die. Then to the first time I started learning about some of the things I had to look forward to between my time under my tree and my last few breaths, realizing these are the things that make up for the cruel fate I often dreaded. Like the face of the first girl you kiss, learning how amazing sex was, before we took it for granted, the time you realize you’re looking at the face of the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. Realizing the only true way to enjoy life is not to look back or to look forward, but just to look at the exact moment your in and enjoy the hell out of it.
OK I’m starting to trail off, the beauty of this album is it does just that for so many, evokes for each listener a very specific memory or emotion, or new appreciation for the painful beauty of life.
If you’ve never heard this album, or maybe it’s been a few years since you sat down and just listened, I hope you enjoy as much as I do every time you put it on. I’ll leave you with my favorite line from the album.
“And one day we will die, and our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea. But for now we are young, let us lay in the sun and count every beautiful thing we can see.”
MP3: Neutral Milk Hotel – The King Of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1
Album Review: Talking Heads – Speaking In Tongues
Dec 3rd
The great debate. What is the best Talking Heads album of all time? Everybody who loves music has one -- More Songs About Buildings and Food, Remain in Light, 77, Fear of Music, all classics to choose from. For me, it gets no better than 1983′s Speaking In Tongues. If you have never done it, take a cruise through the Talking Heads albums, first to last (feel free to stop around Little Creatures/True Stories if you are short on time). It’s quite a trip to listen to this band progress and shift styles from album to album, the changes are quite noticeable and dramatic. From their punk roots 77, slowly moving into funk influences with More Songs, pushing the barriers of modern production style with Remain in Light, and landing, at the end, towards what some consider more pop/radio friendly, and finally the world music influences that would shape much of band leader David Byrne’s later solo career.
Let me pause for station identification. John usually does the throwback writeups, and does a great job putting down in words what so many of us love about the questions music asks us. Where were you when you heard a song/album. Who were you kissing. What car were you driving. What was going on in with the world around you at the time this song was coming out of your radio and into your ears. What did they close with the first time you saw the band play live. It’s one of the truly great things about music, it’s like our sense of smell, it can always trigger an exact point in the catacombs of your mind, even if it’s buried in an area you were sure you had mostly killed off all but a few of the brain cells.
I’m at a slight disadvanage. When Talking Heads 77 came out, I was -2 years old. I can’t vouch for CBGBs. I tend to learn about bands through great friends like John, or by chance in my never ending quest to keep finding great music. Forgive me if I butcher history or speak out of turn! Someday I will be lecturing some young whipper snapper on how to properly discuss the merits of Dr. Dre’s The Chronic.
I still remember the first time I heard the Talking Heads, it blew my mind. I knew of them from obvious radio hits -- “Once in a Lifetime”, “Burning Down The House”, “And She Was”, but that was pretty much it. I have the local “classic rock” radio station and their 25 song set rotation to thank for that. Reminds me of a great argument John and I often have. I “hate” many songs, but there are two kinds of hate -- 1. I hate this song because it’s terrible, and 2. I hate this song because I’ve heard it five thousand times. But I didn’t know the real Talking Heads. I started with Remain in Light. Blew my mind. Brian Eno produced the album, it had a fresh, innovative sound, even for me, a listener who was hearing it for the first time probably 15 years after it was pressed to vinyl. Then I dug deeper… 77, More Songs (my runner up), Fear of Music. Before I knew it the Talking Heads had become my favorite band.
But for me, the true pinnacle and the best of the Talking Heads progression came with 1983′s Speaking In Tongues. Some may disagree, but for me this tops it. Making Flippy Floppy, Girlfriend is Better, Slippery People, unstoppable classics. Disjointed rhythms while simultaneously being extremely tight. Verses building tension that finally burst and spill into amazing hooks (see Making Flippy Floppy for example). And last but not least, literally my favorite song of all time, This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody). I will butcher any interpretation/analysis of this song, it just is what it is, the beauty of it is what you take from it. I will never tire of this song, every time I play it DJing it never fails to bring one like minded music lover up to the DJ station to thank me and tell me it’s their favorite song, yet I would wager the general public has never heard it. Raw, exposed, fragile, while still a driving force. This song kills me, so many unforgettable lines…. “Love me til my heart stops, love me til I’m dead”. Classic. There is a great live version of it on Stop Making Sense, which also happens to be in my opinion the greatest concert film of all time.
I loved Speaking In Tongues so much, I even bought the limited edition Robert Rauschenberg vinyl LP on ebay. I keep it displayed at my house and am too nervous to play it. It’s clear vinyl (though slightly yellow after all the years, with three rotating clear discs in the sleeve that change the image displayed on the record. I was lucky enough to catch David Byrne playing the music of Byrne and Eno live last year, what a great show. He was in an all white suit, still rocks and his voice is still perfect.
Drop us a comment, what’s your favorite Talking Heads album? It’s always great bar conversation because there are so many different answers.
MP3: Talking Heads -- Making Flippy Floppy
Alt Link YSI: Talking Heads -- Making Flippy Floppy
MP3: Talking Heads -- This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)
Alt Link YSI: Talking Heads -- This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)
Download/Buy Speaking In Tongues
Added bonus: Check out Byrne on Letterman talking about this album, he looks insanely nervous. I love how Letterman struggles to get him to give more than one word answers. Best line on the words not making sense “Well they do, but not if you try and figure them out”
To read John Jay’s earlier post on this same band go here.
My Insipid Record Collection – Graham Parker
Oct 25th
Another one of my favorites from Days of Future Passed is Graham Parker. He had a couple of different backing bands over the years, but there is no mistaking his voice. I have remarked in the past about my college years basically transforming what I thought were my musical tastes. Graham Parker & The Rumour were a British “New Wave” (I get so tired of adhering to the labeling of bands, but if nothing else it gives it a bit of a time stamp I suppose) act that had three relatively well known records by 1979′s Squeezing Out Sparks. All I know is that when I was leafing through famous used record store Nuggets in Kenmore Square in the early 80′s I saw a lot of these album covers; Heat Treatment, Howlin’ Wind and Stick To Me. The argument could be made that the more you saw particular records the poorer the quality or they wouldn’t be there. Respectfully disagreeing I always went home and tried to find out more about artists that had more records in their section than most. There was no Internet, obviously, in those days so I had to go back to my DJ friends at the restaurant where I worked to get the skinny on some of the UK bands I was really just learning about.
The thing is, I went home to New Jersey for the summer of 1979 and worked in a factory that made those horseshoe things you see on the back of big truck cabs. They’re called fifth wheels. It was a filthy disgusting job that I worked with other so-called respectable college kids home for the summer. I’ll bet I was making $4.50 an hour tops to assemble these monstrosities on big chains hanging from the ceiling. If you did 25 a day you were considered a hard worker. I will say that since college kids are often too stupid to stay home the night before a 7:30 AM factory job, there were many days that seemed like weeks to this clock puncher that summer. The regular year ’round employees basically had a good chuckle at our expense and we knew we didn’t want to end up like them so it was a volatile three month mix as the foreman chased us around trying to make sure my friends and I weren’t dogging it (which we were as often as possible if memory serves). The reason I relay this intensely boring tale of 1979 is because the kids I was working with didn’t all necessarily come from the same school district. Many times we were gladiators on the sports battlefield of The Delaware River Conference (DRC) in rural NJ. Once we put that aside there were always interesting exchanges about music. We used to sit in our cars during our fifteen minute breaks or half hour lunches and listen to, gulp, eight track tapes. One kid I didn’t know at all before I started working at this factory played Squeezing Out Sparks and I liked it. I remember he was big Tom Petty guy too so maybe he started me down that path as well. I still love “Listen To Her Heart.”
In 1979 some of the top records, not really counting The Clash’s London Calling since it came out with a couple of weeks to spare in the decade, were Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures, Gang of Four’s Entertainment!, The B-52′s debut album, The Police’s Regatta de Blanc, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers Damn The Torpedoes, Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Elvis Costello’s Armed Forces, Neil Young’s Rust Never Sleeps, Public Image Limited’s Second Edition, David Bowie’s Lodger, Supertramp’s Breakfast in America, Joe Jackson’s Look Sharp, Talking Head’s Fear of Music, AC/DC’s Highway To Hell, Nick Lowe’s Labour of Lust, Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, Blondie’s Eat To The Beat, The Cars’ Candy-O, The Eagles’ The Long Run, Led Zeppelin’s In Through The Out Door, Cheap Trick’s Dream Police, Roxy Music’s Manifesto, Iggy Pop’s New Values, The Patti Smith Group’s Wave, Gary Numan’s The Pleasure Principle, Marianne Faithfull’s Broken English, Ian Hunter’s You’re Never Alone With a Schizophrenic, The Kink’s Low Budget, Wire’s 154, Frank Zappa’s Joe’s Garage, The Jam’s Setting Sons, The Cure’s Three Imaginary Boys, Dire Straits’ Communique, XTC’s Drums & Wires, Prince’s debut album, Tim Curry’s Fearless, Van Morrison’s Into The Music, Bob Dylan’s Slow Train Coming, Molly Hatchet’s Flirting With Disaster, Van Halen II, The Alan Parsons Project’s Eve, The Undertones debut album, ZZ Top’s Deguello…and that doesn’t include Michael Jackson or Donna Summer and others that weren’t my style.
Why did I list them all? I know I’m old, but does it strike anyone else that the top 100 records in this day & age just don’t seem to measure up? It might be a case of the older I get the better it was, but that is one heckuva lot of great music concentrated in one era for some random year thirty years ago no? Maybe it’s just me, but I’m not somebody who says “in my day” contrary to the occasional Giant Panther eye roll as I wax poetic about a long lost body of work. I love today’s music just as much as if I grew up on it if it strikes me, but explaining what struck me in my formative years in here on this blog is very difficult to do without sounding like some clueless middle aged guy. Which I’m not…clueless that is…
The first time I heard “Local Girls” by Graham Parker I was on the bandwagon no questions asked. But Squeezing Out Sparks has other great songs like “Passion is No Ordinary Word, Nobody Hurts You, Discovering Japan, You Can’t Be Too Strong, Saturday Nite is Dead and Love gets you Twisted.” Anyone who followed Graham Parker’s career knows full well this guy has a boatload of great songs like “Soul Shoes, Don’t Ask Me Questions, Heat Treatment, Stupifaction, Temporary Beauty, You Hit The Spot, Mercury Poisoning, Don’t Let It Break You Down, Get Started, Start a Fire and countless others. His Passion is No Ordinary Word compilation is a nice place to start if you would like more information about Graham Parker. For now though don’t bother with the “Local Girls.” Here endeth the Rumour, er, lesson…
