1973

Well, this has certainly been the toughest "best of the era" post yet. 1973 would certainly be up there if I were to do a "best year in music history" sort of list. The top two on this list have would have been the same if I'd made this seven years ago but that shouldn’t take away from the stiff competition. True classics. For the first time, I have an honorable mentions section at the end.

Gold Medal: Houses of the Holy by Led Zeppelin

My favorite album by one of my favorite bands. More than any other, HH shows the true mystique of the Hammer of the Gods. As great as each one of Zep’s first six albums is, this is the only record where every track is flawless. The word epic gets thrown around far too much nowadays but for this album the adjective is fitting. One of the greatest electric guitar monuments we’ve witnessed, this varied record flows perfectly from the stunning “The Song Remains the Same” to the rocking, 15/8 time strutting “The Ocean.” Listening to this album, you can’t help but feel the magic of Led Zeppelin.

Silver Medal: Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd

Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you’ve ever spent any time looking at rock music criticism or blogging, you’ve read enough praise for this album to last many lifetimes. This isn’t my favorite Pink Floyd album (that would be the follow-up, Wish You Were Here) but like the first album on this post, this set of songs is a sort of a mythical sonic experience. Was there divine inspiration in the creation of this record? Probably not but there was enough pot smoke in the air to warrant some uncanny similarities to the first forty-three minutes of The Wizard of Oz. “Time” is one masterpiece of a song, and the rest of the album isn’t far behind. One of the legendary albums that undoubtedly lives up to the hype.

Bronze Medal: Dixie Chicken by Little Feat

The U.S. of A had to be represented right? Roger Waters and Jimmy Page are very talented but Lowell George more than holds a candle to the creative forces behind the above two albums. The frontman/songwriter of L.A. band Little Feat was a master craftsman of grooving Cajun-like Americana who found his stride here in 1973 but tragically passed away only six years later from a drug overdose. Dixie Chicken is one of the most underappreciated albums in existence. The smooth voice and inspired slide guitar of Mr. George along with some top-notch piano, back-up vocals, bass and percussion makes a fantastic piece of work. I’ve listened to it countless times and it just gets better and better.

Honorable mention: Quadrophenia by The Who, Paris 1919 by John Cale, Selling England by the Pound by Genesis, Countdown to Ecstasy by Steely Dan, The Captain and Me by The Doobie Brothers Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John and Innervisions by Stevie Wonder

Next up, 1985-8.

Busy Doin' Nothin

A Beach Boys reference seems appropriate for this Saturday in July.

I’ve had this blog for sixteen months now and I’m still not sure what to write about and when to write about it. So…I’ll just give a good ol’ fashioned life/music update rambling.

It’s summertime and I’m working 25 hours a week at the PLU library, which means I get to spend lots of time listening to music on my headphones. On the average day, I usually listen to about three albums, which is fantastic. I’m really quite blessed to have the job I do, as boring as it is sometimes. $9.40 an hour, with no stress and lots of quality music listening? I’ll take it…

Listening to music is a very difficult task for an indecisive, mildly OCD person like myself. My “era of the month” thing has been helpful when I can’t decide what to listen to (side note, “Best of 1973" is coming soon) as well as my humongous backlog of music I’ve acquired over the last year or so that I’ve yet to listen to. And of course, sometimes I can be semi-normal and listen to a certain album just because I want to listen to it.

I haven’t had any particular revelations over the past month or so. I’m as optimistic about the future of music as ever thanks to the excellent crop of 2010 albums. I’m going to start reviewing more records and possibly writing more artist profiles here on Page 43. I haven’t started intensively studying rock criticism yet but I hope to get on that this summer before I embark fully on my capstone project in the school year. I’ve written five songs this summer as well and hope to do some recording in August.

The last five albums I’ve listen to have been: The Mission Soundtrack by Ennio Morricone, Nursery Cryme by Genesis, Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven by Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Meat Is Murder by The Smiths and Destroyer’s Rubies by Destroyer. A nice mix of sounds there I think. If I had to take one to a desert island, it would probably be Meat Is Murder. I’m not totally enamored with any of the aforementioned records but songs like “Nowhere Fast” would be appropriate for that kind of isolated setting I think.

I’ve also become obsessed with NPR Music recently. Every music media outlet has some sort of bias but I feel this might be one of the most open-minded yet thoughtful sources out there. If you haven’t already, tune in to an episode of All Songs Considered sometime. Really great stuff.

Music History

At the end of this school year, I completed my third and final semester of music history classes. I think the last (Twentieth Century Music) was my favorite of the sequence. Over this last year and a half, I did serious research on one composer each semester; these composers were Henry Purcell, Scott Joplin and George Gershwin and perhaps someday I'll write more about them. Overall, I’ve digested lots of names and dates over this time and have really enjoyed the brief overview of musicology.

I think some of the most important concepts I’ve learned over the past year and half have had to do with philosophies on why we have music. There was the Medieval era, where universities taught music as one of quadrivium or “four ways”, along with arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. Despite its study as an academic subject, music in this time was usually composed for liturgical purposes. Then came the humanists and their Renaissance celebration of humanity in polyphony shortly followed by the complexities of Baroque counterpoint. Soon the pendulum swung back to the simplicity of melody in the Classical period, which was followed by rejection of strict rationality with the emotional intensity of the Romantics. And about a hundred years ago, everything split open. Soon, we would have Schoenberg creating tone rows, jazz, Debussy’s impressionism, Gershwin’s hybrid of show tunes with classical and everything in-between. Later in the century, people like John Cage, Aaron Copland, Milton Babbitt and Steve Reich would present their vastly different opinions of what music should be. And though I didn’t agree with all of these, each was fascinating.

For Twentieth Century Music, we read a book called The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross that was incredibly informative and fun to read—a killer combo for certain. The book helped me realize how vast the geography of Western music has been just in the last century alone. And going back to what I said earlier, Ross did a fantastic job outlining why each composer did what he/she did.

Part of why music is endlessly intriguing to me is that each composer has a slightly different reason for writing the music he/she does. So much thought has been devoted to music and the only real certainty is that music is important. For no one can deny that music has, does and will exist in every culture in human history. These classes I’ve taken have shown me the winding evolution of the art form and confirmed that this is a worthwhile vocation. We’ll see if I feel the same why if and when I decide to go to graduate school.

1962-5

For me, this set of years is entirely dominated by two artists: Bob Dylan and The Beatles. Of the 26 albums I own from this time, these two legends produced ten of them, and every single album in my top six (or so). The early sixties was a real turning point in pop music, as this time was sort of the second wave of rock and roll after Holly, Berry and Presley no longer were the dominant forces they had been in the previous decade.

Gold Medal: Rubber Soul by The Beatles
The Fab Four's first in their long string of masterpieces, Rubber Soul is extraordinary. I can imagine that tons of naysayers were forced to embrace the mop-tops after hearing songs like "In My Life" or "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)"; this was undeniably mature stuff. It's clear that the Beatles spent substantially more time in the studio on this record than any of its predecessors and that the group's three songwriters were developing into uncommon talents, particularly John Lennon. There are enough classics here to drop the most skeptical of jaws. "Drive My Car", "If I Needed Someone", "I'm Looking Through You", "Girl" and, oh yeah, "Nowhere Man." This is the album that inspired Pet Sounds. And arguably, this is the album that turned popular music into an undisputed art form.

Silver Medal: Highway 61 Revisited by Bob Dylan
You don't have look very far to find a review calling this one of the most important records ever made. I'm particularly fond of Bruce Springsteen's quote about the opening track, "Like A Rolling Stone": "...on came that snare shot that sounded like somebody'd kicked open the door to your mind." After writing folk songs that inspired a generation of protesters, Bob decided to crank up the volume. After the half electric/half acoustic Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 was entirely plugged in, save the closer, "Desolation Row." This album is the product of a visionary poet on top of his game. It's abstract ("Tombstone Blues"), scary ("Ballad of a Thin Man"), goofy ("From a Buick 6", "), chillingly gorgeous ("Desolation Blues") and everything in-between. After the door to your mind is opened, you hear the ragged arrangements that suit Dylan's voice and attitude perfectly. And of course, like just about all Bob Dylan albums, the lyrics are too good to be real.

Bronze Medal: Help! by The Beatles
The third album was an incredibly tough choice but I ended up going with Help! as it continually fascinates me as much as any of records from the glorious catalogue of the Fabs. Sandwiched between the middling Beatles For Sale and the perfect Rubber Soul, Help! is like the awkward adolescent of the Beatles albums. It's not quite developed into brilliance but there is a whole lot of promise starting to show. Starting with the title track, the first original Beatles song to have nothing to do with romance or love, Help! is packed with great melodies and a new sort of melancholia never expressed by the band before. For example, "Yesterday", "Help!" and "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" all reach a sort of poignancy far removed from the happy-go-lucky days of "Twist and Shout." The Beatles had always written or covered sad songs, but they never sounded quite like this. And it's clear to see John and Paul getting comfortable with their yin and yang songwriting voices, e.g. "Another Girl" (Paul's bouncy optimism) followed by "You're Gonna Lose That Girl" (John's acidic pessimism).

2002

This is a bit later than expected but here nonetheless.

Gold Medal: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco

It’s hard to believe that the stars aligned for this one. The band was in turmoil, the record label situation was sketchy, the official release was delayed forever. But somehow, we have Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, with all its echoing pianos, strange industrial noises and poignant lyrics. On this release, Jeff Tweedy proves himself as one of the finest living songsmiths with tracks like “Jesus Etc.”, “Radio Cure”, and “Ashes of American Flags”. It’s lines like “Distance has no way of making love understandable” that resonate for so long after hearing them delivered by Tweedy’s husky baritone voice. With two towers on the cover and an intended release date of 9/11/01, this album is a frighteningly prophetic work of art.

(taken from my October “Best of the 2000s” post)

Silver Medal: Brainwashed by George Harrison

So often when great artists try to make albums in middle/old age, the result is a crusty, pathetic attempt to recapture the spark of thirty years ago. Either that or it’s just sentimental and gross. Brainwashed is neither. In fact, it is more of a template for albums by aging rock stars. Recorded during the final years of his life, George Harrison created a masterful collection of superb songs brimming with wisdom. Yet it doesn’t come across as preachy, thanks to the interspersing of playful songs like “P2 Vatican Blues (Last Saturday Night)” or “Between The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.” The record is wonderfully produced thanks to son George’s son Dhani and longtime friend and Traveling Wilbury, Jeff Lynne. If listening to this album is what it’s like to be brainwashed, sign me up. There couldn’t have been a better send off for one of the true greats.

Bronze Medal: Turn On the Bright Lights by Interpol

Right when it seemed like everything that two guitars, bass and drums could do had been done, we get the debut album of this post post-punk quartet, Interpol. Taking a cue from Joy Division and Television, this band churned out an album that’s just plain powerful. Minimal yet huge, Turn On the Bright Lights expresses alienataion through catharsis. While fellow New Yorkers, The Strokes, used their mechanized, guitar-driven patterns to represent a gleeful return to your classic garage band, these guys paint pictures of dungeons with their surging riffs and thumping rhythm section. Paul Banks’ vocals are just part of the architecture, never stepping too far out of the shadows to distract from the overall tapestry of somberness. Too bad they likely set the bar to high to ever return to this level.

Next, 1962-5.

Radiohead

In my last Mast column, I commented that Radiohead was the best band making music today. Soon after I wrote that and read it in print, I thought that I should probably back that up. You can’t just say something like that with no plan of presenting evidence. My apologies.

The truth is, Radiohead does what no other artist—except maybe the Beatles—has done in rock music. They have reinvented themselves countless times yet remain immensely popular, brilliant and on the cutting edge with every record, with the exception of their mediocre debut, Pablo Honey. But hey, everyone needs a bit of time to mature. Even the Beatles.

Their sophomore release, The Bends stands as one of the best alternative rock albums of the 1990s. Songs like “Fake Plastic Trees” and “Black Star” contain a certain emotional power that makes contemporaries like Oasis and Weezer, look, well…silly. The band’s next offering, OK Computer is the album that many music critics thought would save rock ‘n’ roll. Today, alternative music is essentially divided into two eras: pre-OK Computer and post-OK Computer. Just about everything has been said about that 1997 album, so I won’t blather on. It’s a sonic experience that and contrary to what might be assumed from the record’s title, the album is much better than OK. It’s an inspiration.

The Oxford quintet’s next album was the one that Rolling Stone and Pitchfork (possibly the two most influential critical publications in existence) deemed the best of the last ten years. If OK Computer was supposed to save rock music, the follow-up, the year 2000’s Kid A, was the one that would turn the genre upside down. Filled with electronic sounds and other abstract experimentations, the band’s fourth release was one recorded amidst band turmoil but comes out sounding like a focused, revolutionary piece of art. From the spooky “Everything In It’s Right Place” all the way to the ethereal “Motion Picture Soundtrack”, the album Kid A sounds like post-modernism had its first child.

The next seven years saw the release of Amnesiac, Hail to the Thief and In Rainbows, three albums that made fellow British bands like Muse and Coldplay cry softly while continuing to crank out lesser works. I love certain songs by the aforementioned bands but competing with Radiohead is like playing one-on-one with LeBron James. It ain’t gonna happen.

Part of what makes Radiohead so remarkable is the fact that they reach a level of musical depth that is usually reserved for only the finest classical composers, far removed from the low-browness of—gasp!—pop music. Thom Yorke, Colin Greenwood, Jonny Greenwood, Phil Selway and Ed O’Brien combine to create music that hardly fits any genre, assuming that idyllic rock is not a recognizable term yet. There should be a new album released within the next year, though little information is known. If this decade is anything like the last two, Radiohead will rule the roost.

Also, on an unrelated note, check out my recent Belle and Sebastian review.

Atonality

I’m a few weeks away from completing my third and final semester of music history. They’ve gone in chronological order and this one is called “Music Since 1900.” As expected, we’re delving into some pretty weird music; that’s kind of what happened in the classical music world after the Romantic era. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this so-called avant-garde music. I’m talking specifically about composers like Schoenberg, Boulez, Cage, Berio, Varése and Babbitt. The term “avant-garde” comes from the French word “vanguard”, which means the front part of the army, or the soldiers who can see what’s ahead before the rest of the regiment. I’ve never been particularly drawn to experimental music though I have tried very hard. But it hasn’t been until recently that I think I can explain why my love affair with atonal music has never taken off.

Let me preface this by saying that I’m fascinated by these renegade artists, desperately trying to do what hasn’t been done before. That’s the true artistic sprit and I respect that. What I don’t particularly respect is the desire to abandon tonality all together. By the way, in case you weren’t sure, tonality/harmony is our basic system of how notes are put together. Scales, chords, the building blocks of music. Atonality means that there’s no clear hierarchy of pitches. You will hear many C pitches in the key of C, but in an atonal key you’ll probably hear as many Cs as you will F sharps. Here’s an analogy I have for the purely atonal composer:

Western harmony is like the English language—there are infinite possibilities of expression within its rules. It serves as a sort of contract between the reader and writer; I follow the basic conventions of spelling, grammar and syntax and you will try to understand these words. But say I’m bored with the English language and feel that everything’s been said before. Why not abandon the rules in search of a fierce, new method of artistic expression? Dae dgnolsi h cab naits abes nnaho j. That’s why. When you abandon the common practice, it’s very difficult to move the audience to feel anything other than confusion or boredom.

By the way, did you notice that if you read that backwards, it spells “Johann Sebastian Bach is long dead”? Yeah, probably not. Just like you probably couldn’t tell that a piece by Pierre Boulez is organized meticulously in total serialism with no dynamic, rhythm or pitch repeating until you’ve heard all the other eleven possibilities he’s decided to use.

As a dedicated music student, I have always hoped that I would become fully acceptant of avant-garde and appreciate it like all the sophisticated scholars seem to do. Maybe I will when I’m older. But right now, I see completely abandoning tonality as a fruitless effort. After hearing music from soon after we’re born, our ears have learned to associate certain combinations of notes in certain ways, much like words. Thinking of music as a science, trying to make new discoveries through formulas is nothing but exclusive, which is the exact opposite of what music’s purpose has been since the first note was sounded back in the caveman days. Inclusivity is pretty much the most important word in my understanding of the art form.

Another significant word in the above paragraph is “completely.” Completely abandoning tonality is something I’m against but temporarily abandoning it is entirely different. In this circumstance, it becomes an effect. Like how “Revolution 9” shows that the Beatles were aware of the world around them without entirely throwing everything in their past out the window. Or how a particularly crunchy chord in a Sonic Youth song represents a sort of angst-ridden dissonance. I think atonality should be one of the tools on an artists belt, much like a writer can occasionally use unconventional methods to portray a certain attitude when he/she is REALLY F$&%ing craaaaazzzzzzzyyyyyyyyyy and kneeds to gett that aCroSs!

I absolutely love learning about other musicians’ understanding of what music is supposed to be. In a lot of ways, it’s like studying various theologies, forcing you to start challenging your own deep-rooted beliefs. Some twentith century composers have certainly done that for me but this is where I stand now regarding purely atonal music. I realize every composer is different so this is an overarching generalization. Still, I’m pretty confident with these opinions at the moment. Make me change my mind.