Wickedly old school, this one... I first listened to this album just out of high school, maybe current at the time but it felt like a classic already. The friend who gave it to me told me it was an import, not available in the US. I believed him, for a very long time, until I came across it recently at Borders, for nine dollars and ninety-nine cents.
If you don't like the Ramones, you don't like punk rock. If ever there were a litmus test for a genre, this is it. The Ramones defined the American punk rock movement, and anything that came afterwards was a pale imitation, not necessarily lacking but not living up. This is part of the canon, and if you can't see that you should just hang it up and devote your life to Brittany Spears worship.
It's Alive is a live album, as you might have gathered, opening with an inspired version of "Rockaway Beach". The beauty of this album is that it focuses on the bands strengths - heavy guitar, catchy songs, and absolutely nothing else. There are 28 songs on the disc, most less than two minutes long. There's very little excessive banter between songs. For the most part they just finish and plow into the next tune. This is particularly effective during the jaunt between "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker", "Havana Affair" and "Commando", or between "Pinhead", "Do You Wanna Dance", "Chainsaw" and "Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World". There is no break between these songs, other than Dee Dee's shouted "1-2-3-4" - they simply roll from each to the next. The result is about as heavy as you could ever ask for, all within the confines of the "simple is better" format. It's sheer musical energy encountering zero resistance. These excursions abound on this album and the above examples are just some of my favorites.
"Sometimes simple is better". My buddy Keith, a chef, and I sometimes say this to each other, regarding food. The Ramones prove it's true for music as well. These are very simple songs, but, continuing the food metaphor, it's how they are presented that counts. The guitar is hot in the mix, way up front but restrained just enough so as not to drown out the rest of the band. Three chord riffs (and by chord, I mean two-note power chord, harmonically ambiguous) dominate, producing catchy sing-along songs. The vocals are by no means technically skillful yet loaded with charm. The bass never strays from the guitars root and I don't think there is a single drum fill. Somehow it all manages to hit you with the emotional equivalent of a sledgehammer to the face.
The album was recorded on December 31, 1977. It includes songs from their first three albums, Ramones, Leave Home, and Rocket To Russia. At one time I had all of the Ramones albums on cassette, but so far my transition to CD (and iPod) has been limited to All The Stuff, Volumes 1&2, comprising their first four albums, and It's Alive. It's enough, I think - they managed to create an enduring legacy in a very short time on the basis of that work. It's extraordinarily honest music, whereas the later stuff showed more willingness to compromise in an attempt to achieve commercial success.
Sadly, The Ramones are gone forever, with the deaths of Joey, Johnny and Dee Dee shortly after the "end of the century". But if you're looking for an introduction or just a rocking example of the band at it's finest you won't find a better option than It's Alive.
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Monday, June 11, 2007
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Alice In Chains
Rock and roll can never die
There's more to the picture
Than meets the eye
Hey hey, my my
I picked up The Essential Alice In Chains the other day. It's a two disc collection spanning their entire career, with songs from all three studio albums, the EPs, the unplugged album, and a couple of others that I think might have been on soundtracks or compilation discs (I first heard "Right Turn" on a compilation called Genrecide, and I think "Got Me Wrong" was from a movie). Most of Dirt is here. It's a pretty nice set, and if you don't have any Alice this would be a great place to start. I was waiting for the Arctic Monkeys killer - the album that would take back the car CD player from Favourite Worst Nightmare. We have a winner - I only wish I could load both discs in at the same time.
I happen to believe that Dirt is one of the greatest albums of all time. Every song is excellent and when listened to in it's entirety each individual song contributes to an experience that is overwhelmingly greater than the sum of its parts. I never get tired of this album and I've listened to it a lot. I think I was more upset to hear of Layne Staley's death than I was of Cobain's. With Cobain it just seemed inevitable and in a sense righteous - it gave us the time to assess his legend while we were still young enough to martyr him. It just felt hopeless, watching a movie after you've picked up the plot. While Staley was obviously going in the same direction I just kept hoping something would pull him back.
I never felt comfortable lumping AIC in with the whole grunge thing. I always thought they were sufficiently innovative to distinguish themselves. While grunge seemed an alternative to the bloated metal garbage dominating the airwaves Alice In Chains gave metal a way out, a new direction. Certainly they were the best thing to happen to the genre since Metallica and I haven't heard anything nearly as good since. Aside from Staley's sublime vocals, Jerry Cantrell's guitar playing substantially expanded metals vocabulary and was essential to Alice In Chain's sound - it just would have been a totally different band without him. Big, fat, thick, heavy distorted chords, tasteful wah lines, lush, chorused clean tones, melodic, gentle acoustic progressions. He controls dynamics like no one since Hendrix and thoroughly tames dissonance. I've always found his playing interesting and inspiring. If you haven't heard his solo album, Boggy Depot, it's worth a listen.
Ultimately for me it really came down to the vocals. Staley did some beautiful things with his voice. He could express such an amazing range of emotion, sometimes hopeful, sometimes angry, sometimes forlorn, sometimes simply and perfectly ambiguous, sometimes all in the same song. His voice informed the music, brought it to life - the perfect compliment to Cantrell's guitar work.
On a final note: Alice In Chains provided the music for Doom 2, my personal choice for greatest computer game of all time, and just one more reason why Alice is cool as hell...
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Beck who?
Favourite Worst Nightmare by Arctic Monkeys
I've been a fan of Arctic Monkeys since their debut, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not. When I bought that album it owned the CD player in my car for a good two weeks straight. With their followup effort they continue what they started and take it to the next level. The production and musicianship has stepped up a notch, but if you were a fan of the first album you will find a lot to like.
Arctic Monkeys are a rarity among modern punk bands, being one of the few with a truly solid and inventive rhythm section. They never seem content with simply chugging along with a handful of palm-muted power chords like many of their alternative brethren. They liberally use musical spaces to great creative effect, a lost art in popular music in general. The bass player and drummer work very well together, keeping the performances tight despite the fact that they're often quite frenetic.
The band manages to start with relatively simple progressions and massively expand them in a very short time. The longest song on the album clocks in at 4:34 but most of them are less than three minutes. There is very little filler. The album opens with "Brainstorm" and it's absolutely frantic single-note riff, a sign of things to come. Melodically the album is very sophisticated, often eschewing standard rock minor and major scale ideas. Innovative use of elements of surf jump out. They frequently chose notes evoking a Mediterranean or Middle Eastern feel. I haven't picked up a guitar yet to try and figure any of this out but I'm thinking, off the top of my head, that it might be some harmonic minor or maybe the phrygian mode (if I had to take a guess).
The lyrics are clever and gritty. I like the fact that the singer tries to squeeze them into the music rather than abridge them for an easier fit. It lends an energy to the vocals that perfectly compliments the musicianship.
My favorite two songs thus far are "Teddy Picker", a muscular little rocker, and "Balaclava", a frenzied example of Arctic Monkeys at their finest.
Go out right now and buy this album. While you're at it, buy their first one as well. I guarantee you will not be disappointed.
I've been a fan of Arctic Monkeys since their debut, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not. When I bought that album it owned the CD player in my car for a good two weeks straight. With their followup effort they continue what they started and take it to the next level. The production and musicianship has stepped up a notch, but if you were a fan of the first album you will find a lot to like.
Arctic Monkeys are a rarity among modern punk bands, being one of the few with a truly solid and inventive rhythm section. They never seem content with simply chugging along with a handful of palm-muted power chords like many of their alternative brethren. They liberally use musical spaces to great creative effect, a lost art in popular music in general. The bass player and drummer work very well together, keeping the performances tight despite the fact that they're often quite frenetic.
The band manages to start with relatively simple progressions and massively expand them in a very short time. The longest song on the album clocks in at 4:34 but most of them are less than three minutes. There is very little filler. The album opens with "Brainstorm" and it's absolutely frantic single-note riff, a sign of things to come. Melodically the album is very sophisticated, often eschewing standard rock minor and major scale ideas. Innovative use of elements of surf jump out. They frequently chose notes evoking a Mediterranean or Middle Eastern feel. I haven't picked up a guitar yet to try and figure any of this out but I'm thinking, off the top of my head, that it might be some harmonic minor or maybe the phrygian mode (if I had to take a guess).
The lyrics are clever and gritty. I like the fact that the singer tries to squeeze them into the music rather than abridge them for an easier fit. It lends an energy to the vocals that perfectly compliments the musicianship.
My favorite two songs thus far are "Teddy Picker", a muscular little rocker, and "Balaclava", a frenzied example of Arctic Monkeys at their finest.
Go out right now and buy this album. While you're at it, buy their first one as well. I guarantee you will not be disappointed.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Say it ain't so!
I’d like to start off by thanking those of you who emigrated with me from the Kazakhstan of blog sites, MySpace. I’d also like to welcome any new readers.
I’ve been blocked for a while, in part I think due to my disillusionment regarding my MySpace experience and also because I was anxious to choose a topic which set a tone here for things to come. I believe I’ve found that topic based on the emotional conflict I’ve experienced since I came across this information. Apparently it’s old news – I guess the shit hit the fan sometime in 2005 – but its news to me.
Beck Hansen is a Scientologist. I learned this last night in a chilly moment.
There is a part of me that would like to say “so what?” and simply continue to enjoy his music, as I have for years. I first discovered Beck about a dozen years ago, ordering Mellow Gold as one of my twelve selections when I joined BMG’s music club. When I received my order I popped the album into my CD player, heard the intro to “Loser”, a song I had already heard and hated, and quickly removed it. I’m still not a big fan of the song.
Two years later, desperate to find something new in my collection, I decided to give the album another chance. I skipped over “Loser”, listened to the rest of the album, and fell in love. I’ve bought every album since, even wrote a blog over in la-la-land praising his latest, The Information, which owned my car’s CD player for two weeks straight. He has eleven of the one hundred most played songs on my iPod. I don’t actively pursue any other artist with the salivating anticipation I grant Beck.
Beck, in interviews, has tried to portray Scientology as a legitimate philosophy, and addressed questions regarding his adherence to this “faith” as intolerance. The fact is that Scientology is a mind-control cult. Ultimately it’s nothing more than a high pressure sales pitch. It pursues rich Hollywood crackpots because they’re cash-cows and useful pitch-men (and –women) and it financially rapes it’s lower income victims. Its followers simply can’t be trusted as objective. What really bothers me is the number of interviewers I see taking him at his word, accepting Scientology as something legitimate but just misunderstood. One review extolled the virtues of the Scientology drug rehabilitation program, neglecting to mention that a full frontal lobotomy would be equally successful. When I look at the effect the faith has had on Cruise and Travolta, essentially melting their brains (did anyone see Battlefield Earth? Thankfully, no.), I am appalled at the laziness these reporters display in attempting to present the truth.
I’m having a very difficult time reconciling this information. I’ve been a diehard fan for years. In fact, the night I learned of this I had a nightmare. I was on a tram which had recently pulled into a station. My brother was with me. He told me that he had taken a few Scientology courses and he was happy with his progress. I tried to explain to him that it was a scam, but I was interrupted by another passenger, who told me that he too was a Scientologist and I should respect my brother’s right to choose his own beliefs. I told him he was interrupting a personal conversation and I had no patience regarding his input. He persisted to the point that I threatened him violently. When it became clear he wouldn’t heed my warnings I made it very clear I was going to kick his ass. He began punching me but the effects were more irritating than harmful, like someone continually poking you with their finger. Eventually I drove him off but when I turned back to my brother he was gone. I started to search for him but woke up before I found him.
At least a half dozen Beck songs randomly worked their way into my iPod playlist as I drove to work yesterday. I skipped over all of them, not sure how I felt or whether I could ever listen to Beck again. It was as if they were mocking me. It is so hard for me to see Beck in this light. His music is sooo fucking good! This is the apple in my Eden. Because I know I have to give it up or sell my soul and the real internal debate regards the merits of damnation, not the right or wrong.
Trying to rationalize a way to reconcile this it occurred to me that logically what I was engaging in was an argumentum ad hominem, an attack against the person. It’s a fallacy, to imbue a logical perspective with what is known of the individual to invalidate their point, ignoring the merits of what they are actually saying.
But this is art. How can you apply logic to art? Do you separate the individual from their work? I sometimes think our increasing ability to do so explains the sorry state of modern art. Art isn’t anonymous. Does it stand on its own or is it somehow tied to its creator? I think it only gains strength the more we know of its origins. As a musician myself, how can I look to Beck for inspiration now that I believe he is nuts, or worse, simply not in control of his own beliefs? There is a picture of L. Ron Hubbard on the cover of Guero!
I love Ted Nugent’s music but I abhor his politics. I was once a casual fan of Limp Bizkit but I saw them live and realized that their lead singer, Fred Duurst, was an imbecile incapable of speaking to me, and I haven’t listened to them with any enthusiasm since. On the extreme side I have no desire to see any of Hitler’s art (he was a painter). However, if I were a historian specializing in World War 2 I might want to study it in an attempt to gain understanding (I am not in any way comparing Beck to Hitler).
I am foundering already with the passing of my moral compass, Kurt Vonnegut, who spoke more truth to me than any man but my father. Beck is still here, and I am tempted to embrace him as my brother. The problem, I realize, is that I have absolutely no idea who or what he is anymore.
Further reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Secrets/
http://www.lermanet.com/beck/
http://www.alternet.org/story/29534/
http://www.stylusmagazine.com/feature.php?ID=1710http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/magazine/06BECK.html?ei=5070&en=d4911438e2e245fc&ex=1177300800&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1177146649-mPknNwRuhYMy6ie+gsef7g
I’ve been blocked for a while, in part I think due to my disillusionment regarding my MySpace experience and also because I was anxious to choose a topic which set a tone here for things to come. I believe I’ve found that topic based on the emotional conflict I’ve experienced since I came across this information. Apparently it’s old news – I guess the shit hit the fan sometime in 2005 – but its news to me.
Beck Hansen is a Scientologist. I learned this last night in a chilly moment.
There is a part of me that would like to say “so what?” and simply continue to enjoy his music, as I have for years. I first discovered Beck about a dozen years ago, ordering Mellow Gold as one of my twelve selections when I joined BMG’s music club. When I received my order I popped the album into my CD player, heard the intro to “Loser”, a song I had already heard and hated, and quickly removed it. I’m still not a big fan of the song.
Two years later, desperate to find something new in my collection, I decided to give the album another chance. I skipped over “Loser”, listened to the rest of the album, and fell in love. I’ve bought every album since, even wrote a blog over in la-la-land praising his latest, The Information, which owned my car’s CD player for two weeks straight. He has eleven of the one hundred most played songs on my iPod. I don’t actively pursue any other artist with the salivating anticipation I grant Beck.
Beck, in interviews, has tried to portray Scientology as a legitimate philosophy, and addressed questions regarding his adherence to this “faith” as intolerance. The fact is that Scientology is a mind-control cult. Ultimately it’s nothing more than a high pressure sales pitch. It pursues rich Hollywood crackpots because they’re cash-cows and useful pitch-men (and –women) and it financially rapes it’s lower income victims. Its followers simply can’t be trusted as objective. What really bothers me is the number of interviewers I see taking him at his word, accepting Scientology as something legitimate but just misunderstood. One review extolled the virtues of the Scientology drug rehabilitation program, neglecting to mention that a full frontal lobotomy would be equally successful. When I look at the effect the faith has had on Cruise and Travolta, essentially melting their brains (did anyone see Battlefield Earth? Thankfully, no.), I am appalled at the laziness these reporters display in attempting to present the truth.
I’m having a very difficult time reconciling this information. I’ve been a diehard fan for years. In fact, the night I learned of this I had a nightmare. I was on a tram which had recently pulled into a station. My brother was with me. He told me that he had taken a few Scientology courses and he was happy with his progress. I tried to explain to him that it was a scam, but I was interrupted by another passenger, who told me that he too was a Scientologist and I should respect my brother’s right to choose his own beliefs. I told him he was interrupting a personal conversation and I had no patience regarding his input. He persisted to the point that I threatened him violently. When it became clear he wouldn’t heed my warnings I made it very clear I was going to kick his ass. He began punching me but the effects were more irritating than harmful, like someone continually poking you with their finger. Eventually I drove him off but when I turned back to my brother he was gone. I started to search for him but woke up before I found him.
At least a half dozen Beck songs randomly worked their way into my iPod playlist as I drove to work yesterday. I skipped over all of them, not sure how I felt or whether I could ever listen to Beck again. It was as if they were mocking me. It is so hard for me to see Beck in this light. His music is sooo fucking good! This is the apple in my Eden. Because I know I have to give it up or sell my soul and the real internal debate regards the merits of damnation, not the right or wrong.
Trying to rationalize a way to reconcile this it occurred to me that logically what I was engaging in was an argumentum ad hominem, an attack against the person. It’s a fallacy, to imbue a logical perspective with what is known of the individual to invalidate their point, ignoring the merits of what they are actually saying.
But this is art. How can you apply logic to art? Do you separate the individual from their work? I sometimes think our increasing ability to do so explains the sorry state of modern art. Art isn’t anonymous. Does it stand on its own or is it somehow tied to its creator? I think it only gains strength the more we know of its origins. As a musician myself, how can I look to Beck for inspiration now that I believe he is nuts, or worse, simply not in control of his own beliefs? There is a picture of L. Ron Hubbard on the cover of Guero!
I love Ted Nugent’s music but I abhor his politics. I was once a casual fan of Limp Bizkit but I saw them live and realized that their lead singer, Fred Duurst, was an imbecile incapable of speaking to me, and I haven’t listened to them with any enthusiasm since. On the extreme side I have no desire to see any of Hitler’s art (he was a painter). However, if I were a historian specializing in World War 2 I might want to study it in an attempt to gain understanding (I am not in any way comparing Beck to Hitler).
I am foundering already with the passing of my moral compass, Kurt Vonnegut, who spoke more truth to me than any man but my father. Beck is still here, and I am tempted to embrace him as my brother. The problem, I realize, is that I have absolutely no idea who or what he is anymore.
Further reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Secrets/
http://www.lermanet.com/beck/
http://www.alternet.org/story/29534/
http://www.stylusmagazine.com/feature.php?ID=1710http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/magazine/06BECK.html?ei=5070&en=d4911438e2e245fc&ex=1177300800&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1177146649-mPknNwRuhYMy6ie+gsef7g
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