Short Circle

...for whatever reason, and I can cover this in another post later, I've been listening to a lot of music from old musicals, and jazz singers who interpret such stuff. I'm just dazzled by the degree of wit, literacy, and inventiveness when it comes to lyrics, not to mention the melodic genius behind much of it. The fact that most folks were either lyricists or music writers, but not both, probably had something to do with it -- although folks like Cole Porter and Frank Loesser seemed to do just fine all by themselves.

Anyway, I popped into one of my favorite used record stores a week or so ago, and found a lot of music that fit this description -- much of it at bargain prices. I picked up some really rare stuff, like the now-deleted CD of Cole Porter demos and the very rare CD of Yip Harburg singing some of the songs he co-wrote, songs like "Over The Rainbow," "If I Only Had A Brain," "Old Devil Moon," "It's Only A Paper Moon," and more...I love hearing songwriters sing their own stuff, especially when they aren't known as performers, and those disks are a treat.

So, I came back with a big stack of records and CDs, all in the great American songbook vein. I noticed that many of them either had some handwritten dates scrawled on the jacket or a little imprinted insignia, like what a notary uses. Here's a picture showing both:


The name on the imprint said "Karl Van Duyn Teeter." The man clearly was an fan of early jazz and musical theatre, from the records...I punched his name into Google, and things get interesting. It turns out that Dr. Teeter was a very highly regard linguistics professor at Harvard, who had done extensive research on indigenous and endangered languages. There is a great obituary of him here. According to his obituary, he was also a noted jazz buff, coronet player, avid cyclist, and cook. I think I would have liked this guy, had I the chance...

Things like this are what make collecting records fun and intriguing. On one level, they are just vessels for sounds. That alone is wonderful...but on another level, they are artifacts, passed on from person to person. While I don't know how Dr. Teeter's records got to me, it seems to have the makings of an interesting if sad story. His widow maybe didn't want them around...couldn't bear to have them in the house anymore. Maybe his children didn't share his passion. Either way, they wound up on the racks, at 1.99 each...I hope he knows a handful of them found a good home.

Reissue Wednesday: Wrong Way Up

Wrong Way Up
Brian Eno and John Cale
Opal, 1990
Reissued on All Saints/Hannibal, 2005

I can’t believe this thing is 18 years old. This album could vote. It could legally marry albums of the same sex in certain parts of the country. I’m not that old, and I’ve had the same copy of it for probably fifteen years or so – a promo CD with a hole-punch in the right-hand corner of the booklet. I recently upgraded with the 2005 reissue. More about that later.

Wrong Way Up is a record that can almost be as defined by what it isn’t as what it is. When it came out, I was fourteen or so. I knew Eno from his role in the second through fourth Talking Heads albums, which were already dear to my adolescent heart (and you couldn’t pick a better drummer to match your heartbeat to than Chris Franz). I knew the Velvet Underground, but Cale represented everything edgy and weird about them to me – the scraping viola, that profound extra-rock element that, even more than Lou Reed’s perverted outlook, separated them from the perceived boomer blandness of much of ‘60s rock. I didn’t know either man’s solo careers yet…so what would this be? Jerky electro-acoustic rhythms with harsh viola harmonics? Ambient electro synth blips? Neo-classical mood music?

Sigh of relief. It’s pop music. Sigh of astonishment. It’s playful, jovial pop music. It’s actually fun. Maybe I was just 14, but I knew these were characters known for being a bit on the dry and theoretical side at times. So how cool is it to hear them aping the Beach Boys on “Empty Frame,” or giddily rocking out on “Been There Done That”?

This was a disk I wore out back in ’93 or so. My friend’s step-dad had it, and my friend nicked it and played it for me…I bought a promo for five bucks at one of those god-awful record swap-meets at the Radisson hotel (the one that looks like a castle) in Atlanta. I learned the chords to pretty much all the songs. I tried to imitate Eno’s rhythm programs on the primitive keyboard I had. Every time I picked up a violin, I hacked away at the “Lay My Love” riff, which is in F, not an easy key for a novice fiddler.

I had sorta forgotten about this one for the past five years or so…then a reissue quietly snuck out. It had a pair of extra tracks – an unreleased instrumental and Eno’s version of “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” which had been on the Married to the Mob soundtrack, I think. But more importantly, it had a lyric sheet – which was not included in the original package. Deciphering the lyrics through the haze of multi-tracking and reverb on the album was never easy…reading through them for the first time was pretty revelatory – like running into an old friend on the street that you haven’t seen in years. You talk, you catch up, you are overwhelmed by new information. Once the shock of the new dies down (the lyrics), you are left with the warm familiar glow, unchanged (the music). It’s particularly great to know exactly what they are saying in “One Word,” a song in which Eno and Cale sing different things at the same time, beautifully folkishly intertwined.

I’ve been fascinated by these sessions, and tried to get every bit of music that emerged from them. In addition to the album tracks and the two bonus cuts on the reissue, I’ve found these nuggets:

- “Grandfather’s House”: A pleasant Cale-sung number, included on the “One Word” maxi-single (remember those?)
- “Ring of Fire”: A surprisingly bland and disappointing Eno-sung version of the Johnny Cash classic, released on a promo-only clear-vinyl 45.
- “Shuffle Down to Woodbridge”: An instrumental credited to Cale, also on the clear-vinyl 45.

Clearly the good stuff is on the record! I’m not sure if there is anything else…there’s so little Eno vocal material out there, I’m sure every morsel is relentlessly documented, and I’d know if there was any other stuff.

I guess a good record is like an equation: two sides balanced by an equal sign. On one side is this disk, with all it’s wonder and playful questions. On the other side of the equal sign are my fourteen-year-old ears, unencumbered and ready for something, anything. I’m not sure if I played it for my friends if they’d laugh at me or not, but Wrong Way Up still sounds good to me now…

Hold Steady on the iTunes path...

...or supersize that album...no, seriously, do it.

The new Hold Steady album came out two Tuesdays ago. Like literally tens of thousands of Americans, their last album Boys and Girls in America took me by surprise and instantly infatuated me with its musically widescreen Springsteenism and the wry examination of the intersection of adolescent hedonism and adult responsibility. It sent me back to the ramshackle glory of their first two disks…though it must be said that, for whatever reason, Boys and Girls in America doesn’t seem to be aging well. I’m not sure what it is, but I listened to it on the way home from a party the other night (seems like the perfect time, right?), and it just wasn’t grabbing me the same way. I don’t know.

Either way, if you are interested in lyrics, you need to pay attention to the Hold Steady. From a purely mechanical level, Craig Finn is a virtuoso, dazzling with half-rhymes, twisted internal rhythms, and some surprisingly compelling resolutions that really shouldn’t work, but do.

But there’s enough critical mumbo-jumbo jaw-wagging about Finn and company on the interwebs. That’s not why I’m doing this…there’s an interesting reversal about Stay Positive – a reversal of industry practices and how labels are pushing artists.

A little background is in order…we are now in the digital age, where online retailers like iTunes are accounting for more and more sales. In order to entice consumers, every major retailer (or coalition or retailers) wants what they call “exclusive content.” Buy this CD at Best Buy and get an exclusive DVD (which may very well be shit shot on a crappy home camera and edited on someone’s Mac)! Buy this album as a digital download on iTunes and get an exclusive unreleased track (which was probably left off the album for a reason)! When an artist delivers a project to a label now, they are also encouraged (may be forced) to deliver this dubious bonus material. Frankly, it undermines the artistic process in two ways:

1. If you, the artist, have a good song that just doesn’t work as part of the album, you are expected to let the label use it as a bonus track for iTunes (or another retailer) – thus isolating and limiting the track’s potential. Sure, once the window of exclusivity expires, you can put it somewhere else, but chances are it will be difficult to make it part of a coherent statement and will wind up on some odds’n’sods compilation down the road.

2. If you, the artist, have a song that is a steaming pile of horse pucky that you don’t want anywhere near your album, you are expected to let the label use it as a bonus track for iTunes (or another retailer) – thus exposing your soft creative underbelly to the kind of people who buy your album on iTunes to get the bonus material because they want everything you’ve done. In a nutshell, you are rewarding your most loyal fans with your worst music.

I’m amused.

So, back to Minneapolis’s finest (now Brooklyn’s finest, because that’s what you do – you move to Brooklyn), the Hold Steady. I am not sure of the entire tale, but basically the new album Stay Positive was released on iTunes early…two or three weeks before the street date of the CD. Maybe copies had leaked, and the label wanted to combat file-sharing and such. Because the iTunes version was released early, retailers were getting the shaft – people who were big fans, buy it on street-date kinda fans, were already going to have the album. So the label put the bonus tracks on the full-scale physical release, instead of bundling them to the digital release. The first 50,000 copies of Stay Positive come with three extra tracks (inexplicably stuck together as one long track on the CD). Kinda cool, but it made me thing a great deal about how the content-mad culture out there may be driving a dagger into the heart of the album as a medium for expression.

Maybe I’m overthinking this.

As for Stay Positive? It’s good. It’s darker than Boys and Girls in America – it’s the morning after, perhaps. That said, I feel like the band feels a little stuck. They’ve made three great albums, and expectations continue to inch upwards. There are moments when I get the feeling they are unsure of what to do, of how to wrap up songs and phrases, when to let an idea lapse and when to pursue it. Then again, one could take that very uncertainty as an artistic expression – we’ve all been there.

New Release Monday: Chris Difford

The Last Temptation of Chris
Chris Difford
Stiff Records, 2008

If a heart breaks in the forest, will anyone hear it? What if it sounds this good? Thus, the Difford dilemma. I’ve always said that the best lyricists, in any genre, should make it look easy. Should make you want to pick up a pen and start writing, blissfully unaware (at least initially) of the degree of craft, wit, style, and syntax one must possess to be at all effective.

There should be no dissent that Chris Difford is one of pop’s very best lyricists. Yet his gifts are tempered by a relentlessly self-effacing personality, insuring that he is under-represented when it comes to anything but penning great lyrics for others to sing and write melodies for. With vocalist/multi-instrumentalist/melodicist Glenn Tilbrook, Difford was the bedrock of pop juggernaut Squeeze. A recent Mojo review went as far as to say that Difford was the band’s big talent – that Tilbrook’s genius for Beatle-esque hooks was often mired by a short attention span, a fondness for trendy production techniques, etc. It was a daring statement, and upon much reflection, I think it’s right. Lyrically, Squeeze have been consistently brilliant…musically, things have been hit or miss.

I’m too young to have experienced the heyday of Squeeze, but I did see them do an acoustic performance at a local record store when I was a kid – I think it was winter of 1993. Pete Thomas, of the Attractions, was playing drums, but since this was an acoustic gig, he played tambourine. Still a thrill, to think of one of pop’s finest skinsmen diligently tapping. He did a fine job. I was unfamiliar with the band, and immediately taken by the upside-down harmonies – with Tilbrook’s glorious tenor on top and Difford’s gruff baritone coming in just right, often in perfect unison.

It has been interesting to watch the Squeeze principals go their separate ways…Tilbrook’s two disks have seen some really glorious melodic flights trapped in a mess of ADD-addled skatter, some childish humour, and half-baked lyrics. Difford’s, beginning with I Didn’t Get Where I Am in 2003, was something else entirely. Thoughtful, quiet, bittersweet musings. Almost defiantly middle-aged, Difford does not insist on recapturing his drunken youth. It’s a bold decision, and leads to some provocative music.

Glenn Tilbrook couldn’t resist getting a dig in a Difford’s direction, offering this couplet on his second solo album: “Your folksy noodlings have petered out / they didn’t raise pulses or your bank account.” Yikes…but Difford’s music repays careful attention, and Tilbrook has never been one for sitting still for more than four minutes twenty.

Squeeze is back to being a going concern, which is surely good for everyone’s pocketbooks, but I do hope it doesn’t draw attention from The Last Temptation of Chris, Difford’s wondrous new solo disk. Pairing up with songwriting ace Boo Hewerdine was a stroke of genius, underpinning Difford’s prose with subtle but infectious melodies. Difford, always timid about his singing, bounces back with performances that are intimate and conversational, yet tuneful. He seems to be singing a bit higher than normal, and sounds great doing so.

The subject matter, and how Difford explores it, is typically brilliant. “Reverso” is, yes, a song about a man having his vasectomy reversed upon experiencing a late-in-life romance…not a true story, Difford assures us, but a great idea for a song, gathering themes of love, youth, aging, agony, and renewal together for five minutes of masterful storytelling. “Come On Down” is about the intersection of love and finances, another rarely touched-upon subject, and is rendered exquisitely. It’s ultimate lines, where Difford brings to a head the issues at hand are among my favorites:

I said I know the problem, you’ve seen it many times.
You think you have it sorted, but then you’ve crossed the lines
That blur the very image you’re trying to preserve.

He loves her, but he keeps borrowing money and behaving irresponsibly. Denial has run its course, and now things are on the surface…

I could dissect, dismantle, and discover endlessly on The Last Temptation of Chris, but I’ll resist. Alas, I haven’t seen a single copy in a retail store. I had to mail order it. Don’t let retail indifference lead you to an in-Difford-ish experience…