Category: Music

McLusky
McLusky Do Dallas
Beggars Banquet/Too Pure, 2002

My love is bigger than your love
We take more drugs than a touring funk band (Sing it)
My love is bigger than your love (Sing it)
My love is bigger than your love (Sing it)

My band is better than your band
We’ve got more songs than a song convention (Sing it)
My love is bigger than your love (Sing it)
My love is bigger than your love (Sing it)

And we’re all going straight to hell

My dad is bigger than your dad
He’s got eight cars and a house in Ireland (Sing it)
My love is bigger than your love (Sing it)
My love is bigger than your love (Sing it)

When we gonna torch the restaurant? (Sing it)
When we gonna pay the guide dog? (Sing it)
My love is bigger than your love (Sing it)
My love is bigger than your love (Sing it)

And we’re all going straight to hell

When we gonna torch the restaurant? (Sing it)
When we gonna get excited? (Sing it)
My love is bigger than your love (Sing it)
My love is bigger than your love (Sing it)
And we’re all going straight to hell

As I drove in this morning listening to KEXP, I was thinking how it was interesting that you could interpret just about any song as war commentary. Example to follow: McClusky’s “To Hell With Good Intentions.” Then John (In The Morning) put on War on War and I realized that I wasn’t the only one hearing it that way. Heck of a playlist today, starting at 6 am. In fact, I’m half tempted to submit it to Art of the Mix and see how it gets voted.

Playlist so far:

• Billy Bragg, “Rumours of War”, Don’t Try This At Home
• Coldplay, “A Rush Of Blood To The Head”, A Rush Of Blood To The Head
• Echo & the Bunnymen, “The Killing Moon”, Songs To Learn & Sing
• Massive Attack, “What Your Soul Sings”, 100th Window
• Moby, “The Sky is Broken”, Play
• The Fading Collection, “Grief”, Interactive Family Radio
• Jakatta, “American Dream”, Indian Summer
• Stars, “Death To Death”, Heart
• Smog, “Morality”, Supper
• The Cure, “Killing an Arab”, Boys Don’t Cry
• The Postal Service, “Brand New Colony”, Give Up
• Belle & Sebastian, “I Fought in a War”, Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant
• New Order, “Love Vigilantes”, (the best of new order)
• Butterglory, “The Sklls of the Star Pilot”, Crumble
• Cat Power, “He War”, You Are Free
• Longwave, “Wake Me When Its Over”, The Strangest Things
• The Godfathers, “This Is War”, Unreal World
• Ted Leo & The Pharmacists, “Dead Voices”, Hearts Of Oak
• Beatles, “Revolution 1”, The White Album
• Junior Ross & The Spear, “Rough Way Ahead”, Babylon Fall
• Jurassic Five, “Freedom”, Power in Numbers
• Marlena Shaw, “I Wish I Knew (how it would feel to be free)”, Black & Proud Vol. 2
• Public Enemy, “Louder Than a Bomb”, It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back
• Gus Gus, “Gun”, Polydistortion
• The Future Sound Of London, “We Have Explosive”, Dead Cities
• Sigur Ros, “Viorar Vel Til Loftarasa (good weather for airstrikes)”, Agaetis Byrjun
• Clinic, “For the Wars”, Walking With Thee
• Wimbledon, “That’s What I Like to Call Collateral Damage”, Cumershl
• Grand Mal, “1st Round K.O.”, Bad Timing
• Mclusky, “To Hell With Good Intentions”, Mclusky Do Dallas
• Sleater-Kinney, “Combat Rock”, One Beat
• Wilco, “War On War”, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
• Willie Nelson, “Darkness on the Face of the Earth”, Crazy: The Demo Sessions
• Bob Dylan, “Paths of Victory”, The Bootleg Series Vol 1
• Ben Harper, “With My Two Hands”, Diamonds On The Inside
• Johnny Clarke, “Love Your Brothers and Sisters”, Dubwise & Otherwise 2
• Gomez, “Army Dub”, In Our Gun
• The Notwist, “Consequence”, Neon Golden
• Joseph Arthur, “Ashes Everywhere”, Come To Where I’m From

Early spring is also Lent. For years I celebrated Lent, and especially Holy Week, with the Suspicious Cheese Lords. We would provide music for a Tenebrae service at a church—including, over the years, the Church of the Epiphany, St. Matthew’s Cathedral, and the Franciscan Monastery—generally the Tallis Lamentations. We would also host a Tenebrae service at the Georgetown University chapel.

What great music. Over the years, we debuted members’ original compositions, sang Allegri’s Miserere, Byrd’s “Ave Verum Corpus,” Pärt’s “De profundis” (my directorial debut), and dozens of other works, including my introduction to Gregorian chant.

This year, with Mæstro di Capella under their belts, the group is branching into radio gigs, including a live performance on XM radio a week ago and a coming episode of Millennium of Music. Should be good listening. I wish I could be there to sing.

Tony reminds me that last night was the induction of the first New Wave class into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Meaning the Clash, the Police, and Elvis Costello. Damn. Oh, yeah, and AC/DC.

Anyway, Elvis Costello and me you know about. Except, like anything else, there’s always more to the story. I had never heard of Elvis Costello until “Veronica.” Sad, I know. But I absorbed Spike through my pores, even “Deep Dark Truthful Mirror.” Then Mighty Like a Rose came along and I slowly got disenchanted. Then The Juliet Letters and I fell back in love. Then Brutal Youth and… well, you get the picture.

The Police? Entirely different story. Synchronicity was one of the first rock albums I ever heard, thanks to a babysitter and my parents’ old turntable. That, and the fact that if you left your house and rode in the car of someone who listened to rock instead of classical, you couldn’t escape “Every Breath You Take,” “King of Pain,” or “Wrapped Around Your Finger.” I learned the lyrics, I learned to sing like Sting. I went on to dig into the Police’s back catalog with Rob, learning about the oddities and the brilliance on Outlandos D’Amore and Zenyatta Mondatta. It was a musical formative event that wouldn’t be equalled until I discovered Nirvana, then Parliament, taking me away from the arch writing of Sting into anarchy and funk.

But I never really left. How could I? Singing like Sting was the first public (non-choral) singing I did. Scenario: talent show at the summer Governor’s School for Science, after my junior year of high school. Sting’s “Sister Moon” from …Nothing Like the Sun. I pull together a guitarist and saxophonist for a jazz trio, but they can’t make it to the rehearsal. An empty auditorium except for the counselor in charge of the talent show…and two attractive girls, talking to each other, who hadn’t been giving me the time of day, and whom I had written off totally. So I put the tape on quietly, grab the mic, and start singing. Nervous because I don’t know how to sing with a mic, until I look up during the second verse and see two attractive mouths hanging open staring at me listening.

After that it was all downhill. The violin had already gone; the piano went soon after. If I could have that effect with an instrument I had with me all the time, why bother with anything else?

Thanks, Sting, for immeasurably improving my social life.

And thanks, Rob, for enriching my back catalog.

Currently playing song: “In A World Gone Mad…” by Beastie Boys on www.BeastieBoys.com. Yeah, you read that right. Free Beasties download. New antiwar song. A few choice rhymes:

Mirrors, smoke screens, and lies
It’s not the politicians but their actions I despise…

As you build more bombs, as you get more gold
As your midlife crisis war unfolds
All you wanna do is take control
Put the Axis of Evil bullshit on hold

Citizens rule number 2080
Politicians are shady…

Well I’ll be sleepin’ on the speeches till I start to snore
Cause I won’t carry coal for an oil war…

Now don’t get us wrong cause we love America
But that’s no reason to get hysterica
They’re layin’ on the syrup thick
We ain’t waffles we ain’t havin’ it

If ever there was someone who should be paid to write about music, it’s Joe Gross. Thank God the Austin American-Statesman had the good sense to employ him. This week he writes about everyone’s favorite leftist band that no one knows, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and finds them “calcified” but still full of promise:

…At the center of all this despair there remains unexploded faith, however overwrought and pretentious. As the sleeve puts it, “hope still, a little resistance always maybe stubborn tiny lights vs. clustering darkness foreverok?” Their ambitions are vast, their music even more so and, to paraphrase Bruce Cockburn, Godspeed seem determined to drone into the darkness till it bleeds daylight.

—Of course, all this reminds me of two things:

• I need to write about some more music.
• I need to go listen to “Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven” again.

Two quick updates:

1. Tara reminded me that Folk Implosion are playing the Crocodile on Sunday night. Go forth and lo-fi. I’d go but I have a feeling I’ll be too tired from:
2. The Cascadian Chorale’s War and Peace concert, at St. Thomas Episcopal in Medina. Tickets here or at the door. Program will include classical and contemporary reflections on war, including:
   • Haydn’s Mass in the Time of War
   • An excerpt from Tippett’s “A Child of Our Time”
   • Howells’ “O Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem”

Go forth and enjoy.

The first annual Critiquees awards for Music have been announced over at BlogCritics. Cool differences between the Critiquees and the Grammys? In-line links to interviews with the artists and honest reviews of the albums, for starters, plus a best albums list that includes Wilco, Beck, and Sonic Youth, but also Norah Jones, Interpol, Bruce Springsteen, and Sigur Ros. Plus, for some reason, a Buffy soundtrack compilation. Neko Case’s Blacklisted got a nod as one of the top five Country-Americana album of the year.

What’s interesting is how when you poll a bunch of wildly opinionated bloggers you get something that looks like the Pazz and Jop listings in the Village Voice. Resolution: must be more obscure next year in my nominations.

Does anyone else remember that funny moment in the early 90s when the hot sound of the decade was the Hammond B3 organ?

Yeah, I thought not. But it was for real. It was the Charlatans, from Manchester, later renamed the Charlatans UK (my suitemate said puzzled “why is it the “Charlatans Suk?’”) to avoid copyright confusion in the US, who brought the noble Hammond back from its lingering slow death on thousands of late sixties Verve recordings into its proper place. As, um, a rhythm instrument.

So I’m listening tonight to their first album, Some Friendly. And it is an album. As in, vinyl. As I had to explain to Lisa tonight, WTJU was having a fundraiser. And the pledge prize was an LP. I got to rifle through boxes of LPs outside the studio, in the basement of Peabody Hall. The irony was, I had to find someone in the dorm with a record player to make a copy on tape, because I couldn’t listen to it otherwise.

So the sound. It stands up kind of well, in a nostalgic kind of way.

George Clinton has a website. Do you want to trade your funk for what’s behind the third door? Why yes, George, I do, if you’re it. Incidentally, the design was done by Luis Castanon, who won a contest… The only thing that’s missing? Discussion…

So BlogCritics is doing its first critics’ poll for the best music of 2002, and as a registered BlogCritic I’ve submitted my ballot. (It was harder than I thought, mostly because there’s no authoritative list of which I’m aware for what music was actually released in 2002.) Anyway, for the curious, here’s my list (five nominees, tops, in each category):

album of the year

• Sea Change, Beck
• (), Sigur Ros
• Murray Street, Sonic Youth
• Blacklisted, Neko Case
• Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco

song of the year

• 45, Elvis Costello
• Deep Red Bells, Neko Case
• Disconnection Notice, Sonic Youth
• All We Have is Now, Flaming Lips
• Fell in Love With a Girl, White Stripes

songwriter of the year

• Beck
• Tom Waits
• Neko Case
• John Vanderslice

rock album

• One Beat, Sleater-Kinney
• When I Was Cruel, Elvis Costello
• White Blood Cells, White Stripes
• Blood Money, Tom Waits
• Life and Death of an American Four-Tracker, John Vanderslice

country/Americana album

• American IV, Johnny Cash
• Blacklisted, Neko Case
• Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco
• Jerusalem, Steve Earle

r&b album

• Don’t Give Up on Me, Solomon Burke
• Higher Ground, Blind Boys of Alabama
• Power in Numbers, Jurassic 5

jazz album

• Footsteps of Our Fathers, Branford Marsalis

electronic album

• 18, Moby
• Kinda Kinky, Ursula 1000

soundtrack album

• About a Boy, Badly Drawn Boy
• Long Walk Home (Music from the Rabbit Proof Fence), Peter Gabriel

best re-issue or compilation [box sets, re-mastered, or bonuses]

• Nirvana, Nirvana
• Best of 1990-2000, U2

best new artist

• Interpol

Laurie Anderson
Big Science
Warner Bros., 1980

O Superman, O Judge, O Mom and Dad, Mom and Dad.
O Superman, O Judge, O Mom and Dad, Mom and Dad.
Hi. I’m not home right now. But if you want to leave a
message, just start talking at the sound of the tone.
Hello? This is your Mother. Are you there? Are you coming home?
Hello? Is anybody home?

Well, you don’t know me, but I know you.
And I’ve got a message to give to you.
Here come the planes.
So you better get ready. Ready to go.
You can come as you are, but pay as you go. Pay as you go.

And I said: OK. Who is this really?
And the voice said:
This is the hand, the hand that takes.
This is the hand, the hand that takes.
This is the hand, the hand that takes.
Here come the planes.
They’re American planes. Made in America..
Smoking or non-smoking?
And the voice said:
Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night
shall stay these couriers from the swift completion
of their appointed rounds.

’Cause when love is gone, there’s always justice.
And when justice is gone, there’s always force.
And when force is gone, there’s always Mom. Hi Mom!

So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.
So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.
In your automatic arms. Your electronic arms. In your arms.
So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.
Your petrochemical arms. Your military arms.
In your electronic arms.

Run, don’t walk, to your nearest web browser and place your order at Amazon for the first recording by the Suspicious Cheese Lords, Maestro di Capella: Music of Elzear Genet. Being a huge fan (and former member), I had to post a review. Here’s what I said:

Elzear Genet, also known as Carpentras, was a prolific composer in his day who is relatively little known and little recorded these days. Hopefully this recording will help to change that. The Cheese Lords have selected a program of a never before recorded mass (Missa “Se mieulx ne vient”) and previously unrecorded motets to inaugurate their recording series.

The recording, made at the Franciscan Monastery in Washington, DC, is spacious and resonant, but the ensemble’s precision and nuanced dynamics are in evidence throughout. The motets show off several facets of Genet’s musical style, from chant-influenced polyphony to the rhythmic, almost dancelike “Jubilate Deo” and the haunting “Haec est illa dulcis rosa.” The mass is largely without the contrasts in tempo or style that a Josquin or Byrd would have brought to the form, but the prismatic unfolding of the music from the stately Kyrie through the more urgent Credo into the resolute Agnus dei is still a glorious exemplar of the art. Highly recommended for a window into the music of this era.

(Disclaimer: I am a former member of the group, but have not sung with them for quite some time.)