Friday, November 24, 2017
My Top 10 Albums of the 80s: (4) Paul's Boutique - Beastie Boys
[This is the seventh in a series of ten posts. The list'll be revealed as entries are written.]
Following an abortive career in punk, the Beastie Boys made an overnight leap to stardom with Licensed to Ill, a tone poem of gleeful idiocy that quickly became the best-selling album in hip-hop. Headed by producer Rick Rubin, and armed with an even more finely tuned version of the rock formula already worked to near-perfection on Run-D.M.C.'s Raising Hell, Licensed to Ill proved an enduring surprise, thanks to the sharpness with which the Beasties skewered the frat culture they had, from the outset, (mostly) transcended. Even those who appreciated the wink behind "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)," though, could never have anticipated Paul's Boutique, which presented hip-hop as a legitimate mode of expression on a scale never before attempted. It honed the wit of the debut and was saturated with a pop culture referentiality presaging nearly 3 decades of post-Tarantino media to come. It retained the signature, labored rhymes that lent the MCs their peculiar charm, but also provided the maturing rappers with genuinely impressive technical showcases. Finally, it lay upon an unparalleled bed of samples assembled by the Dust Brothers; befitting a medium that lives and dies on the spoken word, it not only surrounds and invigorates the lyrics, but complements and occasionally even answers them. Smarter than Licensed to Ill, better produced than Raising Hell, and more consistent than Straight Outta Compton, Paul's Boutique survived a vigorous commercial flop to find acclaim throughout the world of rap as perhaps the first album fully to live up to the genre’s potential. Of course, subsequent to the album’s release, both momentous litigation and a growing awareness on the part of record labels of the potential profitability of sample-based music would ensure that no album could ever be made to sound quite like Paul's Boutique again. Few other hip-hop albums have ever sounded so literate; far fewer have ever been as immaculately produced; and possibly none to date have been so resoundingly successful in both.
Saturday, October 7, 2017
Peak Ringo
The ubiquity and adulation of the Beatles makes it difficult to cover their songs: one tends to mimic the arrangements and fail to recapture the magic, or else stray too far and fall flat (except in the presence of transcendent talent). Likewise, while many artists have revisited old songs late in their career, precious few rerecordings have offered value beyond their inherent novelty. A number of rock's legends are by now far enough into their 70s to have had one, or even a few, releases that have addressed aging with grace, and even elegance. With Ringo Starr recently releasing Give More Love, appended with 4 rerecorded back catalog tracks, it was easy to wonder whether he could follow his contemporaries' lead and produce a late-career curveball.
Ringo's discography features only one overt foray into introspection, which followed on the heels of Paul McCartney's nostalgic Memory Almost Full and borrowed from it liberally, thematically and musically. Almost by definition, it was a kindhearted look at a remarkable early career that offered little insight into its author. There's no doubting the song's sincerity, but it sounds like Ringo attempting a reflective Paul McCartney song, which in its heart it probably is. By all accounts, in Give More Love Ringo has produced his eighth-or-so consecutive amiable and largely indistinguishable studio offering. It was perfectly unsurprising for Ringo to revisit the well for 4 bonus tracks to please old fans on a nineteenth solo album. It is at least a bit surprising that one rerecording offers something different from the original.
"Don't Pass Me By" was written in 1962 and released on The Beatles 6 years later. It's a typical White Album recording, sharply arranged and more than a little frantic (especially in its sped-up mono incarnation). It's a simple song that perfectly suited a 1968 Ringo, earnest and immersed in the lovable sad sack persona he'd cultivated in the band's movies. While it was written as a raucous country and western number, it's been retrofitted into a gentle bluegrass arrangement, in keeping with 5 decades of changes to the genre and years lived by the performer. Where the other 2017 rerecordings are happy to retrace the originals' steps, "Don't Pass Me By" was shrewdly allowed to amble, affording Ringo an opportunity to sound not only laid back, but quietly dignified.
Ringo presumably never will release a Memory Almost Full: it's not just that his musical stylings aren't suited to a statement album, but that statements exceeding "Peace & Love" in complexity are not part of his personality. When he ends his own 55 year old song with a reprise of "Octopus's Garden," he sounds at 77 like a man at peace with himself and still content to sit in quiet safety with his friends. We should all be so lucky.
Ringo's discography features only one overt foray into introspection, which followed on the heels of Paul McCartney's nostalgic Memory Almost Full and borrowed from it liberally, thematically and musically. Almost by definition, it was a kindhearted look at a remarkable early career that offered little insight into its author. There's no doubting the song's sincerity, but it sounds like Ringo attempting a reflective Paul McCartney song, which in its heart it probably is. By all accounts, in Give More Love Ringo has produced his eighth-or-so consecutive amiable and largely indistinguishable studio offering. It was perfectly unsurprising for Ringo to revisit the well for 4 bonus tracks to please old fans on a nineteenth solo album. It is at least a bit surprising that one rerecording offers something different from the original.
Ringo presumably never will release a Memory Almost Full: it's not just that his musical stylings aren't suited to a statement album, but that statements exceeding "Peace & Love" in complexity are not part of his personality. When he ends his own 55 year old song with a reprise of "Octopus's Garden," he sounds at 77 like a man at peace with himself and still content to sit in quiet safety with his friends. We should all be so lucky.
Wednesday, July 26, 2017
My Top 10 Albums of the 80s: (5) Graceland - Paul Simon
[This is the sixth in a series of ten posts. The list'll be revealed as entries are written.]
Paul Simon followed up Hearts and Bones – the biggest flop of his career - with Graceland, which catapulted his star beyond even the heights he experienced as Art Garfunkel's secret mustache. The album was recorded in apartheid-era South Africa in an act of apolitical musical outreach; it nonetheless drew the ire of the UN and ANC, each of whom condemned Simon's breach of the prevailing cultural embargo. The album's mythology is subsumed by its political context, to which the virtual entirety of the official making-of documentary Under African Skies is devoted. As usual, this unfortunately glosses over what made the album truly special to begin with. Graceland was not only the original mainstream world fusion album, it remains unsurpassed 3 decades later in pure vitality. Paul Simon emerged from his messy divorce from Carrie Fisher with a remarkable, incisive set of lyrics, delivered in some of the best performances of his career. The music, meanwhile, was carefully edited down (mostly) from studio jams directed by Simon himself. These infuse the proceedings with a palpable feeling of discovery: that of an already accomplished artist being exposed, in real time, to an entirely fresh musical vocabulary. And indeed, many of the album's most magical moments are borne of instruments alone, from the storied accordion-and-drums opening bars to the ethereal coda of "Under African Skies." (It helps that he found musicians to perform with so uniformly outstanding as Ladysmith Black Mambazo and bassist Bakithi Kumalo.) Graceland remains touching at such a remove from the collapse of apartheid because it's simultaneously a man's lonely journey through personal turmoil and his being opened up to new, reinvigorating worlds of experience. It remains not only the pinnacle of Paul Simon's career, but an enduring testament to our shared humanity.
Thursday, June 15, 2017
254-54 (82.4675%)
The 2017 Warriors were a hyperbolic sportswriter's dream: the first apparent champions in league history simultaneously good enough to ruin basketball and bad enough to be beaten by just about every previous title winner. Of course, the year's storylines were dominated by Kevin Durant's arrival from Oklahoma City. When the season ended on Monday in a second title in three years, the Warriors had tallied more wins in three seasons than any prior team, completed the winningest playoff run in league history, and most remarkably of all, capped a season in which they won 67 games almost as an afterthought. Throughout the year, fans and columnists nationwide downplayed Durant and his team, whose accomplishments invariably would be sullied by their audacious choice to mutually improve. History may bear these arguments out. Several points are nonetheless worth considering in the meantime.
Kevin Durant's decision to join the Warriors was predicated on the team's culture and style of play, both of which are built primarily around selflessness. [1] In the better part of a decade spent as the NBA's preeminent bridesmaid, Oklahoma City failed to add the talent of three future Hall of Famers up to even the sum of its parts, much less anything greater. The Thunder ran a system so impossibly static that pundits somehow felt obligated to ask if consummate teammate Kevin Durant would prove able to share the basketball. Unleashed in Oakland, Durant revealed the breadth of his offensive talents with an efficiency unknown even to him, all while emerging as one of the league's most versatile lockdown defenders. Though he publicly credited Draymond Green and the coaching staff with improving his defensive approach, Durant plainly benefitted from being surrounded by an offense able – and more importantly, willing – to facilitate for him. Freed to take as few as seven field goal attempts in a game (if not called on for more), Durant hounded passing lanes and guarded the basket with ferocity. That a past MVP and 7-time All-Star even had a next level is shocking enough; Durant was wise to recognize the untapped potential few others would dared to have suggested existed.
The aforementioned questions about whether or not Kevin Durant could fit into the Warrior system were put to rest within weeks of his taking the court. Those who did find fault with the Warriors agreeing to sign Durant were concerned less with Xs-and-Os and more with the team's unwillingness to man up and win on their own terms. Though this argument fails to ring quite true in light of past contenders who acquired superstars in successful pursuit of a missing piece (e.g., Malone, Rodman, or even Love), it's worth considering that with the exception of LeBron James [2], KD is the greatest player in history acquired by free agency. It's better, then, to think of the move as the obvious culmination of what I already described two years ago as the best roster engineering in basketball. Since the 2012 Draft in particular, Bob Myers and the rest of the front office have nearly a perfect track record in free agency, drafts, and trades. 2017's roster changes exemplified these decisions even beyond the obvious choice of signing Durant. David West replaced Mo Speights seamlessly. Zaza Pachulia provided the team a body in the low post when it was needed. Most impressively, JaVale McGee joined Shaun Livingston on the Warriors' reclamation list of players who finally reached the potential that the league had seemingly been robbed of. Even if Durant was Bob Myers' (and Draymond Green's) masterstroke, it would not have been possible had not Myers already created the NBA's best working environment – a team whose dynamic (and potential) was so clearly worth enduring an entire year of unrelenting criticism from most people in the world of basketball.
11 teams have won NBA titles since 1980. Prior to these Warriors' first title, in the preceding 35 years the trophy had belonged to only 9 teams. 6 franchises traded titles in 31 out of 35 of those years; in other words, correcting for what amounted to anomalies, the Lakers, Celtics, Pistons, Bulls, Spurs, and Heat had averaged 5.17 championships apiece within recent memory. Remarkably, in their quest to destroy parity within basketball, the Warriors and Cavaliers have slightly improved an average franchise's historical likelihood of winning a title. That, of course, is a meaningless but suggestive statistic. It's more telling to think back on the emotional legacy of recent decades of professional basketball. The 1980s belonged to Bird's Celtics and Magic's Lakers, more or less alone. Literal-minded fans might point to the titles of the Bad Boy Pistons or the '83 76ers [3]; few would even claim to think about the unfulfilled potential of young Hakeem's Rockets or anyone else. The 1990s belonged to the Bulls, and anyone claiming to wish that Michael Jordan hadn't skipped baseball and played in more NBA Finals is either an Orlando Magic fan or a liar. [4] Dominance in basketball is not only old news, it's one of the most cherished aspects of the sport's lore. What's easy to forget is that it didn't feel that way at the time: take the immortal Bulls, whose 72 win season was partially explained away in 1996 as a byproduct of expansion, or MJ himself, who stopped receiving MVPs only because people grew tired of him winning every year.
My takeaway from the above, as an openly biased fan enjoying his just desserts after 2 decades of unrelenting mediocrity, is that these Warriors are good for basketball. They have unlocked the full potential of three generational talents [5] and nearly a dozen other high-caliber players. Their managers and coaches have in every other respect enabled one of the most overwhelming runs in the history of American sport. And between them all, they have shown the way towards a brand of basketball befitting the unprecedented levels of talent and athleticism with which the NBA finds itself endowed. It would benefit both non-Warrior fans and the sport itself if other teams across the league found a way to follow suit; in the meantime, the Warriors fully deserve to reap what they have sown.
KD
Kevin Durant's decision to join the Warriors was predicated on the team's culture and style of play, both of which are built primarily around selflessness. [1] In the better part of a decade spent as the NBA's preeminent bridesmaid, Oklahoma City failed to add the talent of three future Hall of Famers up to even the sum of its parts, much less anything greater. The Thunder ran a system so impossibly static that pundits somehow felt obligated to ask if consummate teammate Kevin Durant would prove able to share the basketball. Unleashed in Oakland, Durant revealed the breadth of his offensive talents with an efficiency unknown even to him, all while emerging as one of the league's most versatile lockdown defenders. Though he publicly credited Draymond Green and the coaching staff with improving his defensive approach, Durant plainly benefitted from being surrounded by an offense able – and more importantly, willing – to facilitate for him. Freed to take as few as seven field goal attempts in a game (if not called on for more), Durant hounded passing lanes and guarded the basket with ferocity. That a past MVP and 7-time All-Star even had a next level is shocking enough; Durant was wise to recognize the untapped potential few others would dared to have suggested existed.
The Warriors
The aforementioned questions about whether or not Kevin Durant could fit into the Warrior system were put to rest within weeks of his taking the court. Those who did find fault with the Warriors agreeing to sign Durant were concerned less with Xs-and-Os and more with the team's unwillingness to man up and win on their own terms. Though this argument fails to ring quite true in light of past contenders who acquired superstars in successful pursuit of a missing piece (e.g., Malone, Rodman, or even Love), it's worth considering that with the exception of LeBron James [2], KD is the greatest player in history acquired by free agency. It's better, then, to think of the move as the obvious culmination of what I already described two years ago as the best roster engineering in basketball. Since the 2012 Draft in particular, Bob Myers and the rest of the front office have nearly a perfect track record in free agency, drafts, and trades. 2017's roster changes exemplified these decisions even beyond the obvious choice of signing Durant. David West replaced Mo Speights seamlessly. Zaza Pachulia provided the team a body in the low post when it was needed. Most impressively, JaVale McGee joined Shaun Livingston on the Warriors' reclamation list of players who finally reached the potential that the league had seemingly been robbed of. Even if Durant was Bob Myers' (and Draymond Green's) masterstroke, it would not have been possible had not Myers already created the NBA's best working environment – a team whose dynamic (and potential) was so clearly worth enduring an entire year of unrelenting criticism from most people in the world of basketball.
NBA History
11 teams have won NBA titles since 1980. Prior to these Warriors' first title, in the preceding 35 years the trophy had belonged to only 9 teams. 6 franchises traded titles in 31 out of 35 of those years; in other words, correcting for what amounted to anomalies, the Lakers, Celtics, Pistons, Bulls, Spurs, and Heat had averaged 5.17 championships apiece within recent memory. Remarkably, in their quest to destroy parity within basketball, the Warriors and Cavaliers have slightly improved an average franchise's historical likelihood of winning a title. That, of course, is a meaningless but suggestive statistic. It's more telling to think back on the emotional legacy of recent decades of professional basketball. The 1980s belonged to Bird's Celtics and Magic's Lakers, more or less alone. Literal-minded fans might point to the titles of the Bad Boy Pistons or the '83 76ers [3]; few would even claim to think about the unfulfilled potential of young Hakeem's Rockets or anyone else. The 1990s belonged to the Bulls, and anyone claiming to wish that Michael Jordan hadn't skipped baseball and played in more NBA Finals is either an Orlando Magic fan or a liar. [4] Dominance in basketball is not only old news, it's one of the most cherished aspects of the sport's lore. What's easy to forget is that it didn't feel that way at the time: take the immortal Bulls, whose 72 win season was partially explained away in 1996 as a byproduct of expansion, or MJ himself, who stopped receiving MVPs only because people grew tired of him winning every year.
My takeaway from the above, as an openly biased fan enjoying his just desserts after 2 decades of unrelenting mediocrity, is that these Warriors are good for basketball. They have unlocked the full potential of three generational talents [5] and nearly a dozen other high-caliber players. Their managers and coaches have in every other respect enabled one of the most overwhelming runs in the history of American sport. And between them all, they have shown the way towards a brand of basketball befitting the unprecedented levels of talent and athleticism with which the NBA finds itself endowed. It would benefit both non-Warrior fans and the sport itself if other teams across the league found a way to follow suit; in the meantime, the Warriors fully deserve to reap what they have sown.
Saturday, May 6, 2017
"Kind of Blue" and Album Sequencing
Previous posts have detailed my interest in musical formats and the effort put into programming music to the structures of those media. In this, the LP reigned supreme, as both the longest-lived format of aural media and – having a flip side – the one most obviously allowing for divvying up music thematically. Famous examples include the symmetrical halves of Led Zeppelin IV and the asymmetrical halves of What's Going On; the Abbey Road medley and the Purple Rain live suite. An example less frequently discussed is an album I've often referenced, yet somehow never written about in detail.
Kind of Blue was released in 1959 to warm (if less than overwhelming) critical and commercial success. It has sold continuously since then and become universally acclaimed. At least 260 variants of Kind of Blue have been released worldwide, yet bizarrely few have done full justice to the album's potential. All releases until 1992 were mastered with Side A at the incorrect speed and pitch, while most releases since 1997 have tacked the excellent alternate take of "Flamenco Sketches" immediately after the original, creating substantial redundancy in a fairly short album. Thankfully, Kind of Blue is now widely available as a 5-track album with all songs playing at their intended speed. The results are sublime, substantiating Jimmy Cobb's famous assertion that the album "must have been made in heaven."
In earthly terms, Kind of Blue was made at Columbia's 30th Street Studio over two recording dates, on March 2 and April 22, 1959. Side A includes – in order – the album's most famous, most catchy, and most controversial tracks. This at first would not appear to leave much for the flip side to lay claim to. What's more, the tracks were arranged by recording date rather than theme, with Side A recorded on March 2, and Side B (mostly) on April 22; little effort was put into sequencing, as was the industry standard in the late 50s. Yet despite being less famous pieces dropped on the end of what was recorded as just another album, "All Blues" and "Flamenco Sketches" form the centerpiece of the medium's most indispensable document.
"All Blues" is the longest track on Kind of Blue, and was by all accounts one of the most difficult to record, with a pulsating foundation that called for more than 11 minutes of precision from the rhythm section. Solos lead off with Miles Davis, followed by Cannonball Adderley, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans. Each is a master class in effortless playing, with Adderley in particular constraining his boundless energy for his coolest moment on the record. Davis, as usual, delivers an impeccable solo, but steals the show with the coda, returning after an already perfect 11 minutes for a subtle final brushstroke. During and after his lifetime, Miles Davis was set apart from other musicians by a magic that was difficult to pinpont: something that extended beyond his musical sensibilities, his understated technical prowess, or even his legendary cool. This master's touch allowed Davis to consistently assemble the greatest bands in jazz, and elevate even the most familiar standards to new heights. It is nowhere in greater evidence on record than as he guides "All Blues" to a close.
"Flamenco Sketches" sustains its predecessor's atmosphere while dropping its insistent pulse. It epitomizes not only the sound of Kind of Blue, but the mood synonymous with its name. Solos are by Davis, Coltrane, Adderley, Evans, and Davis again. This time, the spotlight belongs to Coltrane, who delivers likely the most pensive solo of his storied career, and among the most beautiful. By the time Evans and Davis have completed their solos, the tune is floating on air, and the album dissolves into the ether off of Jimmy Cobb's drum kit.
Serendipity (or divine intervention) is frequently credited in the Kind of Blue narrative. Admittedly, the circumstances were near ideal: Davis' first great quintet, including his all-time most famous collaborator, playing in jazz's greatest recording studio with Bill Evans as a special guest. Yet it was only with protracted effort that Miles Davis assembled that quintet, and it was specifically for his modal album that he included Evans – a pianist whose impressionist tendencies informed not only the band's ability to tackle the music, but even the liner notes. Fortune's greatest contribution to the finished product may ultimately have been the track order. Within a decade of the album's release, Kind of Blue was on its way to canonization, and consciously arranging LPs had become a major focus in jazz and beyond. Intentionally or otherwise, Kind of Blue's sequencing set an example for every album to follow.
In earthly terms, Kind of Blue was made at Columbia's 30th Street Studio over two recording dates, on March 2 and April 22, 1959. Side A includes – in order – the album's most famous, most catchy, and most controversial tracks. This at first would not appear to leave much for the flip side to lay claim to. What's more, the tracks were arranged by recording date rather than theme, with Side A recorded on March 2, and Side B (mostly) on April 22; little effort was put into sequencing, as was the industry standard in the late 50s. Yet despite being less famous pieces dropped on the end of what was recorded as just another album, "All Blues" and "Flamenco Sketches" form the centerpiece of the medium's most indispensable document.
"All Blues" is the longest track on Kind of Blue, and was by all accounts one of the most difficult to record, with a pulsating foundation that called for more than 11 minutes of precision from the rhythm section. Solos lead off with Miles Davis, followed by Cannonball Adderley, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans. Each is a master class in effortless playing, with Adderley in particular constraining his boundless energy for his coolest moment on the record. Davis, as usual, delivers an impeccable solo, but steals the show with the coda, returning after an already perfect 11 minutes for a subtle final brushstroke. During and after his lifetime, Miles Davis was set apart from other musicians by a magic that was difficult to pinpont: something that extended beyond his musical sensibilities, his understated technical prowess, or even his legendary cool. This master's touch allowed Davis to consistently assemble the greatest bands in jazz, and elevate even the most familiar standards to new heights. It is nowhere in greater evidence on record than as he guides "All Blues" to a close.
"Flamenco Sketches" sustains its predecessor's atmosphere while dropping its insistent pulse. It epitomizes not only the sound of Kind of Blue, but the mood synonymous with its name. Solos are by Davis, Coltrane, Adderley, Evans, and Davis again. This time, the spotlight belongs to Coltrane, who delivers likely the most pensive solo of his storied career, and among the most beautiful. By the time Evans and Davis have completed their solos, the tune is floating on air, and the album dissolves into the ether off of Jimmy Cobb's drum kit.
Serendipity (or divine intervention) is frequently credited in the Kind of Blue narrative. Admittedly, the circumstances were near ideal: Davis' first great quintet, including his all-time most famous collaborator, playing in jazz's greatest recording studio with Bill Evans as a special guest. Yet it was only with protracted effort that Miles Davis assembled that quintet, and it was specifically for his modal album that he included Evans – a pianist whose impressionist tendencies informed not only the band's ability to tackle the music, but even the liner notes. Fortune's greatest contribution to the finished product may ultimately have been the track order. Within a decade of the album's release, Kind of Blue was on its way to canonization, and consciously arranging LPs had become a major focus in jazz and beyond. Intentionally or otherwise, Kind of Blue's sequencing set an example for every album to follow.
Sunday, January 29, 2017
Out of Print Gems: David Hentschel - "Startling Music"
The label's first release, an LP by British recording engineer David Hentschel, stands as the most meta release in the notably self-referential Beatle universe: a complete instrumental cover of Ringo's most successful album (Ringo), released as Ring O'Records 2320 101 under the punny title Startling Music. Recorded after (but released before) Paul McCartney's instrumental Thrillington, Startling Music is otherwise a unique entry in the extended Beatle discography. Hentschel himself, in addition to having engineered such albums as All Things Must Pass, was a talented synth artist with playing credits including the overture to "Funeral for a Friend" and parts on five Genesis albums. While his friendship with Harrison led him to Starr's record label, his other connections within the industry enabled guest drumming from future bandmate Phil Collins and other instrumental work by session insider Ronnie Caryl.
Following the collapse of Ring O'Records, the entire catalog fell out of print, dragging Startling Music down with it. Today it stands (along with the first four Splinter albums) as one of the rare projects tied directly to a Beatle to be commercially unavailable. Like Splinter's rich discography, Startling Music deserves and would benefit from a remaster and rerelease; until then, you can download it here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)