My Top 10 Albums of the 80s: (9) Sign "☮" the Times - Prince

[This is the second in a series of ten posts. The list'll be revealed as entries are written.]

Though few would ever have mistaken Prince's music for something other than the work of the man himself, all of his albums beginning with the breakthrough hit 1999 were co-credited to his backing group, the Revolution. By 1987, Prince had run out of patience with the band. In the beginning of a series of challenges to his established identity - one which would notoriously culminate in replacing his name with a ubiquitous, unpronounceable symbol - Prince disbanded the Revolution and embarked upon a mission to demonstrate the all-encompassing nature of his virtuosity. In the tradition of all great double albums, Sign "☮" the Times is a sprawling hodgepodge of genre and mood which eschews continuity in favor of glorious mess. The low-key foreboding of the title track abruptly gives way to the rollicking psychedelia of "Play in the Sunshine," and before the album is finished, Prince has touched upon every facet of black music that predated him. As ever, The Artist's refusal to be pigeonholed is more than musical: the genuine, austere gospel of "The Cross" lives alongside the bedroom funk of "It" primarily because both, incongruously, are important parts of the man's identity. Indeed, the many sides of Prince's personality are perhaps more prominently on display here than anywhere else in his vast discography. Sign "☮" the Times includes songs from the abandoned Camille project - which was to feature Prince vocals treated to sound (even) more feminine than usual - and as such, it's hardly a surprise that the album has Prince pushing the already exaggerated boundaries of his androgyny to confusing new heights. What is unexpected is the degree to which these tracks manage to transcend their novelty, and moments like the disarmingly (if unsettlingly) insightful "If I Was Your Girlfriend" speak to the quality of his songwriting at the time. Of course, as with all of his classic albums, they bear the distinct stamp of their time: the spartan electronica of "Housequake" is certainly a mark of the 80s, while lines like "Your face is jammin'/Your body's hecka slammin'" smack of 1987 worse than a Mötley Crüe music video. Beyond his ordinary, remarkable range, however - be it on guitar, vocals, or almost any one of the other instruments heard anywhere on the album - Prince imbued the proceedings with the energy of a man who finally felt free to express himself fully. This air of reckless freedom liberates the aptly-titled Sign "☮" the Times from its temporal anchoring, elevating what would otherwise have been simply another great Prince album and making it timeless.

Out of Print Gems: Sidney Bechet - Days Beyond Recall

Sidney Bechet led a remarkable life. Like many other turn-of-the-century New Orleans Creoles, he was born into a family that considered music a reprehensible profession (outside the opera) but a highly respectable vocation. Sidney played in his brother Leonard's band during his youth and quickly proved his superior; while his brother would settle down, Sidney continued playing full-time, eventually becoming perhaps the most famous of Dixieland clarinetists and a pioneering jazz saxophonist. Bechet's musical career spanned five decades, the last of which he lived as a celebrity in France - a country he adored as much for its relaxed attitude on race as for its appreciation of hot jazz. He played, among others, with Louis Armstrong and Freddie Keppard, and tutored future Ellington standout Johnny Hodges. Among these notable career highlights, an often overlooked landmark was a series of recordings Bechet made in the late 1940s and early 50s for Blue Note. Though the label would shortly become legendary as the preeminent home of hard bop, Bechet's recordings for Lion, Wolff, and co. were, if somewhat out of place in retrospect, nonetheless among the finest of his career.

Among the many Bechet Blue Note titles sadly languishing out of print was Days Beyond Recall, a collaboration with New Orleans contemporary Bunk Johnson. Johnson - a colorful character whose life was little documented, but whose trumpet prowess had been advertised by Armstrong and others - had been rescued from obscurity only three years earlier, when donations had enabled him to purchase the new dentures and horn required to resume playing and begin recording. Days Beyond Recall also included bassist Pops Foster, and the three Dixieland greats are in terrific form throughout. The band sounds lively as they stomp through "Blame It on the Blue" and album opener "Milenberg Joys" (written by Jelly Roll Morton, whose last recording session Bechet had already contributed to), while allowing themselves ample time to stretch out on the title track and "Weary Way Blues." The carefully-controlled vibrato that had made Bechet famous is on full display, and his interaction with Johnson suggests more familiarity with his musical personality than should have been allowed for by this (lamentably) one-off recording. With any luck, Blue Note will someday compile and reissue the many 10" records Bechet recorded for them, as they're truly deserving of reevaluation. Until then, Days Beyond Recall can be downloaded here.

My Top 10 Albums of the 80s: (10) Swordfishtrombones - Tom Waits

[This is the first in a series of ten posts. The list'll be revealed as entries are written.]

At least as early as 1982, in an article reporting on his involvement with the soundtrack to the Francis Ford Coppola film One from the Heart, Tom Waits was referred to as a "Hobo Laureate." The honorific has followed him throughout his career, and must be among the most appropriate in all of popular music: everything about Waits' stage persona, from his appearance to his voice, mannerisms, and subject material, suggests either a personal history of homelessness, or else a consistent fascination with the subject. In 1982, Waits found himself at a crossroads, having been dropped from Asylum Records and seeking a new musical formula. Coincidentally, 1982 also marked the last recorded output of the closest thing American popular music had to a Waitsian precursor, Captain Beefheart. Waits and Beefheart had always held much in common: beyond the bottom-of-the-ribcage growls heard throughout their catalogs, both artists had shared an interest in the blues in their most brutal and elemental form, as well as a fondness for spinning musical yarns about the dwellers of societal margins. Prior to signing with Island Records, the music accompanying Waits had always been fairly conventional. The result had been albums like 1975's Nighthawks at the Diner - strong showcases of a highly original talent that nonetheless sounded as though they'd been produced by a peculiarly unhinged Billy Joel.

1983's Swordfishtrombones fulfilled all of Waits' promise in one fell swoop. Abruptly, the bed on which Waits' music rested was found to be as attention-grabbingly bizarre as the artist himself. The result was an exotic exploration of the world’s castoffs, from members of a subterranean society (the lurching stomp of "Underground") to a man who snaps under the pressures of suburban mediocrity (the painfully funny "Frank's Wild Years," later expanded into a concept album). Appropriately, most of the proceedings are very percussion-heavy. Waits sounds invigorated on the album's title track over the marimbas, whose ringing cadences provide an intriguingly shifty soundscape without sacrificing the atavistic sound integral to the artist's appeal. Elsewhere, melodic instruments serve a similar function. The bagpipes of "Town with No Cheer" and the Gary Lucas-esque guitars that ring throughout the album certainly echo latter-day Beefheart, but they also help announce Waits as a musician who's finally perfected accommodating his own eccentricities. Indeed, Swordfishtrombones represents perhaps the pinnacle of Waits' songwriting: his ballads, such as the superlative "Soldier's Things," maintain the sterling quality found throughout his Asylum years, while songs like "16 Shells from a Thirty-Ought-Six" show him to also be uncompromising on harder-edged material. The critical acclaim of Swordfishtrombones and its outstanding follow-up, Rain Dogs, would reinvigorate Waits' career, and he has scarcely released an album over the last three decades to anything less than universal acclaim. Swordfishtrombones, however, continues to mark the boldest jump of Waits' career - an album that propelled him permanently into the vanguard of popular music, and one of the most impressive, cohesive statements of the decade.

(A) Man on the Moon

On August 25, the world lost one of its titans, Neil Armstrong - a man singular in his defining accomplishment, as well as his refusal to live his life on anyone else's terms. His stark refusal to be caught in the spotlight for most of the last three decades of his life seems especially striking in an era of internet-driven overexposure of erstwhile celebrities. (It should be noted that refusing to take credit for his feats in space hardly set him apart as an astronaut: one would be hard pressed to find one who doesn't automatically credit his accomplishments primarily to countless engineers, mission control, and the other members of his crew.) Yet to call his list of accomplishments staggering would, if anything, be an understatement. Needless to say, he was the first man to set foot on the moon, and his deeply touching (if erratically delivered) "one small step for (a) man" quotation was heard live by 450 million people - more than 12% of the population of a world that was still widely devoid of radios and television sets. Often forgotten following what he did once on the moon, though, was his manual landing of the module on a site he had deemed safe on the spot while flying with less than 30 seconds' worth of fuel remaining in the tank. His legendary eight days aboard Apollo 11 also overshadowed a career in which he logged nearly 2500 hours in experimental aircraft for the Air Force and flew in both the Gemini 8 and 11 missions to space.

More recently, two years nearly to the day before his death, Armstrong made a rare decision to broadcast his feelings when he criticized the Obama administration for its decision to surrender the forefront of American space exploration to private firms. Speaking before the Senate, he described the contemporary state of NASA funding as one that "presents no challenges, has no focus, and in fact is a blueprint for a mission to nowhere." It is curious that spaceflight has been so thoroughly neglected over the past (precisely) forty years. For a government so long committed to profligate spending - the best record of any American president over the last 70 years in providing balanced budgets was Dwight Eisenhower, at 3 years out of 8 - what was once perceived as a tenet of national (and indeed, earthly) pride has been reduced to only 0.5% of our larger-than-ever national budget. I hope that Neil Armstrong's greatest legacy may one day be his having taken part in the resumption of American predominance in manned space exploration. For now, as a small tribute to a man I admire as much for his few, well-chosen words as his grace under fire, I have digitized the long out-of-print CBS LP Man on the Moon, which was narrated by Walter Cronkite and documents the history and journey of Apollo 11. It's a beautiful reminder of man's all-too-fleeting capacity for genuine, transcendent accomplishment. You can download it here.

In Memoriam: Jack Bennett

My dear friend Jack Bennett was killed on the afternoon of June 24 in a boating accident on Stillwater River, just south of Columbus, Montana. He was 31 years old. He died attempting to help others on the river whose raft had become wrapped around a bridge pylon.

Few of the handful who regularly read this blog will have known Jack, nor are many from among his family and friends likely to ever find this post. Instead, I'm throwing these words out into the void of the internet just so that they'll be there, and so that I'll have at least said them. Jack was a kindhearted man with a tremendous sense of humor: a pleasure to shoot the shit with, a capable conversational partner in discussing the heavier aspects of life, and a willing and talented participant in countless gif wars on Facebook. I bonded with him over movies, music, beer, and the joys of the internet. We helped each other through our postbac science marathon, and he was one of the few whose natural grasp of physics (in particular) positively dwarfed my own. He returned the infinite love of his delightful dog with an affection that came as close to a matched level as surely any owner could muster. Though I was just under seven years his junior, he treated me with the respect of a peer in both science and life - an honor, it was clear, that he was much more sure I had earned than I was. I'd always been looking forward to another beer with him, and now it seems there can never be one. I wish I'd gotten to know him further, but I'm very grateful for the time we did spend together. I'll leave this video here for him: a song we'd discussed before as one we both held dear, and one whose bittersweet sentiment seems to perfectly capture both the terrible waste of his death and the celebration of a life that was truly well - if all-too-briefly - lived.

10/27/1981 - 6/24/2012

זכרונו לברכה

May his memory be a blessing

8-Bit Radiohead

There exists a small but devoted world of musicians who produce 8-bit covers of popular music. One of the most well-recognized such projects was 2007's 8-Bit Operators, a major-label, full-length compilation of Kraftwerk covers. Surely, even among the lofty company of Brian Eno and Kraftwerk's krautrock associates, there is no band more synonymous with the rise of electronic music - and so, more deserving of the NES treatment. Yet among contemporary bands, no one has been more singly responsible for pushing electronica towards the forefront of popular music than Radiohead, particularly on their initially controversial 2000 masterpiece Kid A. Appropriately, then, YouTube user QuintonSung has produced full-length 8-bit covers of both Kid A and its equally astounding predecessor, OK Computer. His attention to detail is amazing, and the overall quality of the production is embellished with delightful 8-bit touches, thrown in clearly for good measure, but never gratuitously (witness the particularly ingenious Super Mario coin effect at the end of "The Tourist"). Both the OK Computer and Kid A cover albums have graciously been offered for free download by their creator (available here), and you can listen to them in their entirety below.

My Bloody Valentine - "We Have All the Time in the World"

The first James Bond theme song came in the second outing, From Russia with Love, and it was in part indicative of the series' still-maturing formula. It appears in instrumental form throughout the film and is played properly over the end credits, rather than accompanying a vibrant opening credit sequence, as would later become the pattern. However, the song is a telling, if embryonic, precursor to the theme songs to come: though it doesn't quite match the sheer bombast of the Shirley Bassey themes (among others), instrumentally or vocally, it's nonetheless a sweeping affair that complements the outstanding film nicely. The question of how any given one of the other Bond themes measures up is largely a question of individual taste. "The Living Daylights," for instance, is a quality entry assuming a tolerance for the über-80s stylings of a-ha; by the same token, someone must have enjoyed Madonna's appalling "Die Another Day" for it to have reached the Top 10 on both sides of the Pond.

A rare exception to the debate is "We Have All the Time in the World," a lovely song penned by longtime series composer John Barry and sung by an ailing Louis Armstrong in his final recorded performance. The song accompanies a superb and unfortunately maligned entry in the Bond canon, 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The film is, of course, the only outing as 007 for Australian actor George Lazenby, replacing a Sean Connery that producers Saltzman and Broccoli deemed too old to return for a 6th time. OHMSS is nonetheless tautly constructed, and it serves as one of the rare films in the franchise to provide some character development for Bond via the cruel murder of his recent bride - an event whose scars remain with Bond forever after, particularly in the hands of the series' more adept screenwriters. The weight of a love submitted to by an emotionally distant man and subsequently shattered prompted Barry to seek out a vocalist he considered capable of delivering both aspects of his bittersweet theme. Though he was too weak to play his trumpet at the session (leaving a tepid sounding substitute in his place), Armstrong's wistful vocal registers every last note. The result is certainly the most profound piece of music associated with the Bond franchise - and perhaps the best - but also one of the highlights of Armstrong's storied career, and an astounding (if tragically premature, even at age 67) note for him to leave the world on.

24 years later, in the wake of their masterpiece Loveless, My Bloody Valentine released a cover of "We Have All the Time in the World," recorded for Peace Together, a 1993 charity compilation devoted to ending sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. The song is, in fact, one of only two new tracks the band has ever released post-1991 (the other being a cover of "Map Ref 41°N 93°W" for a Wire tribute album). It's an odd choice, but a logical one: the ethereal wash that raised songs like "Soon" to such heights is equally appropriate here, though it's decidedly scaled down by comparison. The arrangement is virtually indistinguishable from that of the Armstrong original, striking a particularly strong contrast to the guitar tsunamis with which the group is primarily identified. The song is nonetheless an artistic success, and given the contemporary state of the band's affairs - on the heels of the disintegration of guitarist Kevin Shields' relationship with bandmate Bilinda Butcher, and the release of an album that was, after all, called Loveless - may have served much the same purpose for the artists as had the original. The rest of Peace Together is, as one usually finds on charity albums, pretty middling stuff, featuring a bland cover of "Satellite of Love" by U2 with a croaky-sounding Lou Reed and a fine cover of "Oliver's Army" by Blur. All of the songs are available for download from Peace Together itself, on a site whose awkward Flash design makes them difficult to extract. "We Have All the Time in the World" can be more conveniently accessed here, while both versions of the song can be heard below.