I got a lot done yesterday, accompanied by the music of three 80s gals.
Starting out with Annie Lennox’s Eurythmics, the 1985 album Touch. Who’s That Girl?
Then Suzanne Vega’s Retrospective, with this awesome 1986 single. Left of Center.
And winding things up with Tina Weymouth’s Tom Tom Club, eponymous first album from 1981. She just so happens to have some French-Breton heritage. L’Elephant.
In the outskirts and
In the fringes
In the corner
Out of the grip
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This brings me back to when I wanted to take a special course on prosody: the metrics of poetry, the rhyme schemes, the rhythms, and all the technical stuff that went into this subject, captured best by reliable textbooks of the 19th century I used to own and peruse. A professor, uninterested, dissuaded me saying I could learn it on my own, implictly hinting as well that it likely wasn’t worthwhile. As a writer of poetry and student of older poetry especially, I was a bit disappointed, but did teach myself a thing or two.
How strange to think about that time and this topic after such a long time away from “home,” but the simple, deliberate poetic choices of “The Sun and the Rainfall” of our parallel post brings me back.
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Ask me in the 80s, or 90s, or 00s, and I never thought I’d be writing about a Depeche Mode song. Despite some comments I’ve seen elsewhere, and realizing we all have filters for taking in everything (especially art), I think Martin Gore wrote a love song here. My thoughts in [brackets].
The Sun and the Rainfall
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In the heat of every August, I hearken to my days walking the close corridors of the U of IL’s Armory, bursting out into the glancing sun and high summer blaze, The Zombies’ Odessey and Oracle pulsing in my head. This album was released posthumously yet lives on, more than most.
“Time of the Season” was the big hit, and it occurred to me the other day, that notwithstanding this sometimes dubious distinction to album connoisseurs, that it could be the best song of the 1960s, one that captured its decade and pushed forward into future ones as well as transmitting a feeling of great scenery and poetry.
What’s more, the music, the music. Each part grabs me, and it is my favorite fade-out of all the songs I play. Blunstone’s usual breathily menacing vocals, Argent’s backup vocals and his scintillating keyboard jabs and stabs, the flourishes calling to mind late summer city hazes and streamside mists rising over the morning fields. Atkinson’s cicada-drone guitar line and jabs and ehtereal strums, White’s bass rather quiet but starting things off and looping underneath it all.
And then, the king of all of it, grabbing you at the beginning, and bringing it all home—Hugh Grundy’s percussion parts. The initial exotic combination of sounds that permeate the whole song, the heavy, bracing drum fills, and foremost of all: the syncopated ride cymbal driving everything, rearing its head in the instrumental moments especially. Like I said, it’s my favorite fade-out I can think of, and one I turn up as loudly as I can, although my car speakers are old ones in an old car. As it goes along, the song gets better and better, and so it does in my mind too, each time I listen.
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No Doubt: Return of Saturn
An album listen. A rough record of my thoughts while listening.
Ex-Girlfriend: Guitar strings, then a driving beat. Smart, sharp, but romantic and vulnerable. So this album begins, with its mysteries to me when I first listened to it, a decade after it had come out. But it brought me back to when it came out, when Gwen Stefani and I (of similar age) were similarly looking at our futures. She had plans, me I had never really paid much attention to nailing things down—and I suppose that’s what this album and lead-off song are all about, one person with a clear wish for settling down, the other not feeling as much urgency despite wanting the same thing. Here’s the bridge, a little of the whine of Tragic Kingdom when she’d enamored me with “I’m Just a Girl” and “Spiderwebs” in the mid-90s, just five years before this leap.
Simple Kind of Life: Super transition to this crunchy song. This is a new No Doubt and the band is going along with her lyrics, not ska-ing it up constantly, which made Tragic Kingdom a hit or miss. Gwen at her most vulnerable and honest. Who wouldn’t want just the simple kind of life? If we’d opted for that, would we be happier now, would we have been happier then? “I’m covered in shells,” I love that cryptic image. “Oh, I always was the one with all the love, you came along, I’m hunting you down / Like a sick domestic abuser looking for a fight,” I love those lines. She understands young love in its all its aspects. I love how she adds that “oh” between lines. Gorgeous layers of sound, drum fills, her voice at its finest. It’s all really simple enough, this song, but No Doubt had and never has surpassed it. How she turns over different modulations of the refrain at the end, “A simple kind of life….”
Bathwater: Notwithstanding the performance that brought me this song, cue up Sanjaya on AI, this one hangs with the previous two in a gorgeous hat trick. Comical, music hall, yet still touching and effective for all its ooky, okay gross, chorus image. Yes, we do really feel that way when in love—we’d wash in their bathwater. In fact that may be the clearest sign of love, being more than willing to more than tolerate others’ bodily functions and fluids. Gwen is once again led down the primrose path, not thinking about the future, thinking through what dating this person would be like, would it come to anything, would it just work out somehow despite everything? The comical girl voice at the bridge, it’s junior high all over again. She’s almost tripping over the complex alliteration here, but it’s working as the song traipses to its final chorus. The little girl voice returns again as she relishes her wash in nostalgic disregard, like a kid with a serious crush.
Six Feet Under: The hat trick that starts the album ends, and this song’s alright, but nothing special, a return to the old No Doubt. Good beat, the melody and lyrics not quite up to the previous three. Would the album return to form or is this another case of a 50/50 album like Tragic Kingdom—50/50 being what I call an album that is half great, half virtually skippable. There are a fair number of these even in the albums I’ve kept, and it shows how hard it is to make a great cover to cover album.
Magic’s In The Makeup: An instant return to the first three super songs, amazing! Her voice pretty again, sentiment open, vulnerable, trying to overcome her girlhood ways. “I’m a chameleon,” how fun to sing along with that. “Makeup’s all off, who am I, the magic’s in the make up, who am I?” What a chorus, what a chorus! (I always thought she was saying, “Makeup’s all wrong,” also good) The magic in the makeup on her face, the making stuff up in her mind about who she really is and what she really wants. What is her true make-up? Again, amazingly touching, and the chorus and voice and accompaniment all work together startlingly well. Lovely modulations of the lyrics and melody. “I wanna be the real thing,” and she wants the real thing when it comes to love and relation to the world as well.
Artificial Sweetener: Sister of the previous, a little more aggressive, more sexual. “The return of Saturn,” amazing to sing along with. The mystery of the phrase before I learned what it referred to. Still, not knowing exactly what it meant, there was a menace to it, fitting for the raw assessment of her life, the “second guessing,” and the artificiality of all she does and has done. “I’m only sure that I’m not sure.”
Marry Me: Another contemplative little tune, confessing again her humble, conventional side. I had this too, I have it, I never cried out to be an artist, but here I am in my current situation with those writerly dreams at least half my humble ambitions. Echoing her earlier self, teasing to remind us of her first hit song, beginning a verse singing “A girl in the world…” Echoing when she wasn’t thinking who would be the one to marry her, but proclaiming her grrrring independence in that song that grabbed me: “I’m Just a Girl.” Nothing wrong with wanting a conventional life and still freedom to choose our way, independent identity even in a close relationship. She is both the woman of “Marry Me” and “I’m Just A Girl,” and maybe that’s why everything seems askew in her experience of this world.
New: Immediately catchy, starting with the chorus. Caught up in the immediate rush of “different than the former,” has she abandoned the wishes of the previous slew of songs or is this new guy the one who will fix up the mess of wishes that has become her life?
Too Late: Churning guitar, then back to the wistful, whimsical Gwen, wanting to parade her new love from the previous song (apparently about her Bushy future and now past husband—this song fittingly begins like a famous Bush song). Again “Fulfillment just adds fuel to the blaze,” hard to pick out, fun to sing, more alliteration. Her wordiness is fun on this album and she had it in Tragic Kingdom too. The butterfly lines, gorgeously described. Is it another relationship that will end without marriage, in sheer disappointment after initial fervor? She can’t get past the indifference that can come after lust is sated. It seems so. :(
Comforting Lie: Another wonderful melody for her to play her voice on. Great, frantic chorus. So fun to sing along with “Oh build a bomb and blow it away blow it away ” ending with a lovely guitar bit back to the verses. On and on and I would love it. And it seems the reationship of the previous few songs is gone in dramatic fashion, with a joy in blowing it up. Sort it out, toss it away, just give up, but she can’t decide…. “I’m feeling weak, yeah……” Amazing how the album keeps yielding such precious moments to feel and sing and revel in.
Suspension Without Suspense: Clever title and wonderful working through of the chorus, the story of her life and this album as she wrestles with finding what she really wants and falling into traps along the way. I’ve had a relationship or two or like this: “We get so far and then it just starts rewinding, and the same old song we’re playing it again, suspension without suspense, intention without intent.” I find myself singing this couplet often. We can’t get any further in this relationship, it’s stuck, it cannot build any higher, but I don’t want to lose it, why can’t things stay the same?
Staring Problem: Instant turn-off once one starts to notice it, and maybe starts skipping it, but why skip a weak tune on a top-tier album? I got over skipping it and kinda like it now. It has a goofy fun to it, especially with her little piped-in voice in the background of the break, itching to fight saying crazy stuff and that little girl voice joining her in the chorus, and then the shouts at the end. “Predisposed cat fighter.” Seems shorter than its 2:44 and the gamelan ending way cool, shades of my 1998 first experience of that music, not long before this album came out!
Home Now: Jam-type (well, Style Council and Crowded House too) beginning with station waiting room announcement voices, maybe she is hitting the road. Seems like the final song of the album, but it’s not. Only downside is the intervening of the old No Doubt and its a-melodic ska stuff in the break. It’s catchy and weird here, a semi-weakness of an awesome song. These last two songs again somehow return this album to genius. so well over half of the songs are top top tier with nearly all the others good to very good. “What you givin’ up for me, what shall I give up for you? I love the “shall.” Wondrous chorus, delayed: “If you lived here you’d be home now.” Sweet voice, driving chorus to the extreme with the layering and keyboard stabs, guitar lacing around the affair. Horns, “casual light days, part of the furniture,” guitar lacing again. Could go on another ten minutes musically, with more chorus please please.
Dark Blue: Enticing title and use of “dark blue” in the lyrics, giving a cosmic tone to Return of Saturn. Cool harpsichord, it’s too bad you’re so sad, “Unlike you I had it easy, you’re dark blue.” I never did catch that first phrase; I thought it was a garbled “moonlight blue.” Suburban, nice family me and Gwen vs. whoever she’s with and his dark blue past. Wanting to heal her loved one. So much love to give and no one to give to…
Piano Coda, Too Late: The Cardigans did this, Madness too in a way, but not so affecting as here. But here it lets her be alone with her thoughts, and I’m alone with mine.
As I said before, nothing else captures the feel of that time for me even though I didn’t know the album then. The late 90s, when I wound down grad school and found new work and then struggled subconsciously to settle down, trying to get over and get started with things that didn’t work out. Truly staggering. Time travel through one of the most important albums of my life.
Saturn from 1996 to 2000, by NASA Hubble
Posted in Music, My Life's Rich Pageant | Tagged 1990s, 2010s, albums, altie / alternative, family / friends / personal, hat trick | Leave a Comment »
There was a time when reading about music was enough to set it in your mind and eventually lead to a purchase, songs unheard.
The Jam—who emulated much and in turn produced much to emulate—was probably my first example of this. I still remember the thrilling ride all the way up the tedious highway to Woodfield Mall to visit a music shop that had such alternative/British stuff. I bought the cassette of their second album, This Is The Modern World, and listened to it on the drive home.
It was the first scrap of music I’d ever heard by The Jam, but reading about them I had to check it out; I had decided they were for me. Thought of as a rushed, mediocre second album, it remains a favorite for this association, not to mention the music being damn good too. Critics. Interesting knowing what the first song you heard by a band was: “The Modern World” in this case.
In the mid 2000s, I read snippet (p)reviews of albums or concerts by CSS and Blonde Redhead. The former was a cheeky comet in the night that holds up pretty well (the album’s still in my “best albums” storage case). Blonde Redhead, the beginning of an intoxicating latter-half-of-my-life relationship. (More on them another day, for sure.)
Cansei de Ser Sexy, with clipped art that intro’d me to the group.
It’s hard to capture how many singles and albums were dreamed of and bought thanks to the Encyclopedia of British Beat Groups & Solo Artists of the Sixties by Omnibus Press. I learned of The Flowerpot Men, a zippy Salvation Army Band, and true obscurities like Beau Brummell (“I Know Know Know”) and Bruno (who produced “a brace of singles”). There was Forest with their “gentle, swirling music”—an only partially applicable description of their brace of albums.
There were cool low-tech images: a gorgeous pelvic-thrust of a picture of Elkie Brooks (still never listened to her music) and a dot matrix masterpiece of a laughing Freddie Garrity.
Record catalogs had an effect too, with names of songs sticking in my head and often ending up purchased and revolving on my record player—the only way to hear the lyrics to these tantalizing scraps of music history. There was really no other way to hear an obscure song unless you wanted to pester a local DJ who just might have a dusty record lying around somewhere. And what if the song was embarrasingly bad?
And then there’s songs you’d hear on the radio. Usually one song was all it took, and maybe a little sampling in the record shop. It was acquired—purchased, or a copy obtained from a friend. Ahhhh, good old days.
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I remember you by
thunderclap in the sky
The feelings that surge in this one, more than any of our previous five Post-its. A certain M introduced me to Split Enz on those two celebrated mix tapes, and a certain L will forever come to mind first when I hear this group sing, as they do here more than almost anywhere else.
If you’re wondering what this is all about.
This is the most visceral of my Post-its, thunderclap in the sky, for me, someone who celebrates rainstorms, and used to thrill over being caught in them in grad school in Virginia, leaving the library as they moved in, being drenched while walking, then simply changing clothes when I got back to my apartment. Another time there, one struck at 8 or 9 pm and I dodged lightning bolts escaping my office with a female colleague of mine, we two laughing it up under a small wooden pavilion when we needed a break. Then there’s the morning thunderstorm when I was drawn to driving out to a great marsh and watching nature take its course seemingly ignoring the weather in what many imperceptive humans would describe as hell all round.
And then there’s that Louis MacNeice poem that led to a story with the same title.
Some memories of storms, and though I am more conscious now, sadly, of the chance of being struck by lightning, I still hope to be caught in them despite my mutated self. This song invariably brings me to L. The thunderclap of the lyric makes me think of her every time, so, it’s the lyric, the song, that brings her to me, not an actual thunder. It’s all the same—she reappears to me in moments to treasure. The venture I took to go out and see her: tyranny of distance didn’t stop the cavalier.
* * *
This song is part of what I call a “hat trick.” This is a misnomer, but trifecta sounds too cheap, trilogy to lumbering. In hockey, not that I am a fan of that either, a hat trick is three goals scored in one game by the same player. I have co-opted the phrase to mean a span on an album where three songs in a row sustain a rarefied air, something well above and beyond, ten minutes of bliss. Why this matters I am not sure, but it’s hard to sustain such excellence and I make mental notes whenever I notice one. One the brain’s many parlour games. Time to share.
The practice started with Split Enz’ first album, Mental Notes, where three songs near the album’s end reach that peak, one I’m not sure has ever been matched. The hat trick we’re talking about today is not as intense, but the song “Six Months In A Leaky Boat” was prefaced by an instrumental called “Pioneer” on the Split Enz collection where I first heard it; and this was as it was on the Time and Tide album release. “Pioneer” sets the stage with smooth, swirling synth zest for “Six Months” and its video which has a touching, albeit outdated, nostalgia to it, bringing to mind initial contact and lost love.
The song is followed on Time and Tide by the first Split Enz I ever heard, “Haul Away.” This was on the mix tape M made for me, the one that introduced me to so much music of my future and present. So from “Pioneer” to “Six Months” to “Haul Away” it is a fantastic, very personal hat trick, even a triptych. (Maybe I should be calling these triptychs, but triptych implies a feature piece flanked by two lesser.) How the songs fold into one another: the instrumental setting the stage, the big impact of the main song, then the jaunty jig of a “nervous breakdown” ending things. More than ever, I feel the “lapping at my heels,” “love goes all wrong,” “it’s all we can do to carry on.” Listening to them all again yesterday, it’s amazing all the loving detail that goes into music, all eventually swept away by Time and Tide as the world stops listening and moves on to something new.
(Maybe I should go with three hares instead of hat trick. I am reading Watership Down for my big summer novel this year. That is a more circular symbol, though. But maybe that’s fitting for someone like me whose internal life is like being on a merry-go-round.)
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The Go-Betweens, another group I could write a volume on, or at least threaten to. Links to a handful of people in my life, with initials like M, J, S, A, L, R.
Your hair frames
the perfect face…
It seems it is actually “a” perfect face, but “the” is more unique, is it not? And that’s how I heard it. Another beautiful thought and image, matching the freshness, almost naiveté amid the sad experience, of the Go-Betweens last two albums, Tallulah and 16 Lovers Lane, where romance and diminishing romance shared the space with four of the band members. I always pictured this face as almost literally framed by the bobbed or flipped hair I admired from my 1920s phase that I’m not sure has ended.
“You Tell Me” has those rare, ethereal high harmonies of Waterloo Sunset. And, the beauty, the confidence of the woman being sung about: “Then you tell me, I have a choice, you you, you you.” The album is named after her—Tallulah.
And I remember one of those afore-initialed people in my life telling me her favorite line in the song—can you guess it? There was the drive to a wine-tasting that took place under a tent in summer rain with a shaggy dog dashing around the grounds and a little jazz combo. Many many little Go-Betweens memories.
Too bad to some now it’s a textbook, with a cool cover at least. Feeling the songs naturally as they came along into my life, that was remarkable and why they’ve had such an impact.
Driving one recent day, thinking about these associations, another interfered when “Brown Eyed Girl” came on the radio. I think we all know that gorgeous masterpiece, still strong although I’d heard it multiple times nightly for a solid year blaring outside a bar across a creek from a grad school apartment. It brought to mind the person I got to know then, enriching and ruining my life in equal dose. Yes, the past is quite dead to those who don’t remember it, and how many have I forgotten about or have forgetten about me! But when it lives, whether it’s healthy or not, it can be good company.
One more to go.
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