Beatles, St. Vincent: Influential Albums

On my FB-inspired list, these get slots #8 and #9. These last three of my INfluential ALbums had their impact this year!
They are a trio of records- and count in the Black Panther soundtrack and Joyner Lucas' mix tapes and singles- challenging me to think of music, to creatively conceive of music, in new ways.
It was high time I got current, so I have put on a lot more top 40 stuff than I did in '17. I made about 18 keeper songs over that year, but it was time to revisit the well. After all, now I had home internet again.

This one's odyssey peeps back to my childhood again- who didn't once live in a Yellow Submarine?

You know me and music and libraries. I can't think of another subject I've used them for, more!

I found a book by Steven Turner, Revolution '66 middle of Christmas holidays, 2017. I devoured it. I finished it- reading all out of order, as is my want- during the first day of my sister's visit from Arizona, as I recuperated. I'd made copious notes- basically outlining key places in the evolution of the BEatles themselves, their culture, their press interactions (yep, this is the year of "bigger than the Beatles").
Two key things here: this is the last year the Beatles toured as a band. It was rough. There's no link, btw, here.

And what they began to synthesize, from home demos brought along more thoughtfully in the studio by George Martin, would get them much more interested in the music they could create, than dragging the tunes out on the road. Giving up the road led to liberation. Pop music, already transmuting into folk rock on the heels of Dylan, was now open to a surprising diversity of topics and aspirations.

Think of how few of the 14 tracks on the full UK version are love songs, and if so, how unconventional now is the conversation. In fact, now children's music and Indian-flavored songs were in the audial mix, so the lyrics could flow any direction. It was cool because now, the Beatles could be oblique like Dylan, while maintaining their quartet chemistry. They probably never worked better together, nor were they ever closer, than in this year of '66, when they began achieving separate identities as young men on a new level of independence. The world, ridiculously, was watching.

The journalist who declared Lennon "the laziest man in England" must've enjoyed "I'm Only Sleeping." That's one of my favorites.
"Tax Man"- protest rock! With cheeky sarcasm! "Eleanor Rigby"- maybe the most famous, evocative tune on the record, and so strange a dancer in the world of 1966 Rock. A story now about someone old, not young, cold, not hot, and surrounded by other lonely people? Wow.

"She Said, She Said" and "Got To Get You Into My LIfe" might be said to be about a first acid trip or a new-found devotion to pot, but a lot of people who never touched these things ended up enjoying and interpreting the songs fine. Those two also have stories to be found in Revolution '66, but if you are a person who doesn't want the inside story so you can have your songs, your way- hey! I get that. We wanted to cover a Rhianna song once until we started questioning singing about 'Molly.' Too bad, that might've gotten some good traffic, "Diamond."

But you know, "I'm ONly Sleeping" is interesting to me as a budding audio engineer, too! George Martin recorded John Lenon for playback, up half a pitch without changing speed. The backwards guitar is, also, I think, a new studio trick, at least for a Top 10-assured album. Then, here comes the sitar! And backing vocals unlike last year's Top 10, to say the least. Somehow, they are innovating ways of recordings, bringing goals to George Martin and experimenting. Same time, they are creating songs that capture- or predict- the new blossoming of adulthood in 1966.

It's those philosophy books Paul's been hitting and bookish John's steps outside pop formula- George, writing more songs than on any album before. I actually think Ringo sometimes helped them be a bit grounded! Like a good drummer.


If you read the book, if you browse it:
The Phillipines Tour tells you all you need to know about how they decided 'f--- touring'
and
"Tomorrow Never Knows" has the best 'recording of'- story. It was the primary track. That and "She Said, She Said" are my favorites. But, an example of what it meant to hear this now that I could do home recording- I picked off my 3rd favorite and spent four hours recording "Yellow Submarine," including the forty five minutes we spent rehearsing it. I was so inspired by the original's improvised sound effects. I didn't set out to copy their methods- I took the idea and put together our version from things around the house, like the dinner bell. Then, I was a bird. I missed the "full speed ahead" part.

9. St. Vincent, Masseduction


I'd been looking for a challenging artist who did more than a pet trend. Who was avant garde, but performed brilliant songs in some fresh way? Where will we go, lyrically? Can you catch me off guard?
Then, I saw St. Vincent on SNL. Yes.

This is her newest, completed in late 2017.
But the soft beginning is disarming. Then, "Pills," we get a frenetic satire, which in closing reveals itself as a hybrid pastiche of Pink Floyd.
Title track? MMmm, it's kinda nasty! Just suggestion. By this point, I'm hooked, because I'm grooving. I'm picking out words and chanting along. More satire, no doubt, but beats taking me back to "Lemon" by U2, guitar gnarl, roboticized vox. Now the beats are off to a house style beyond my knowledge to describe, but she's got so many melodic approaches as a singer, composes in unpredictable textures that fit together surprisingly well. "I am a lot like you," I sang along, won over fully by track 4 the night we bought it.

She starts, with track 6, a quieter tone: the personal letter "Happy Birthday, Johnny" and a soulful sequeway into a song ending as though in a chapel, apropos of 'Savior.' then a ballad with muted city vibe pulses, 'New York.'
Then comes the throbbing walls of sound again: "Fear The Future." Now we've moved back out to the larger existential picture. It's a challenging song. She keeps a very melodic voice throughout the album, while using the music to generate atmosphere, demonstrating the progression to overwhelming forces, but gracefully.


Now she gets back to the beats. "Young Lover." It's in tune with the modern pop song, still braced with passionate guitar riff, ringing. Lyrically, she finds tension in dramas she perceives in unique style. Like most of these tracks, it's not really very abstract subject matter. It's a sort of cerebrally-informed take, but there's a lot of relatable emotion on display. She closes out with two tracks of confessional voice. "Smoking Section" continues this, with dramatic menace poised before Greek choruses...until the coda, St. Vincent assuring the listener (herself, too): "it's not the end." I don't know if this track was written last, but it's positioned last, for a passing irony. But, it's not the end. Hopefully, there's a LOT more St. Vincent to come.

Too bad you need Grandoozy tix to see her in Denver area- if things were going that nicely after a move, I wouldn't recognize Us. You have the dosh, and you see her on the Fear the Future tour, drop us a line. I'd love me some jelly. :-D

St. Vincent's Masseduction provides me a thoughtscape, energetic and provocative. Far be it from me to tell you what the material's about.
But while influences like Carole King, Tapestry, and Joni Mitchell, Blue, did vie for spots, sometimes there are cluster points, like in '94, when music's peaking for me after a few intense years, and I'm back at the origins of what made me embrace making music, so. I wonder what I will think of these song as I get to know them better. I had felt the need to start writing on piano, when writing this year. It's nice to have a trend-setter like St. Vincent assure me it's only too real to unveil one's quieter conversational side over the ivory keys. The virtuoso selection of intstrumentation used to bring the collection together, the producion- there will be a lot of ways to appreciate Masseduction, going forward. That's why it's already one of my Top 10 Influential Albums. Here there be a form of wonderment and mastery.

Starting out as a self-styled songwriter, it took a while for me to keep at the unschooled approach- I didn't want songs made of the same chords as everyone else!
But you need a nearly maniacal level of confidence to keep on that way without an audience's support. I remember being too anxious to even play for fear of my disappointment with mistakes! But you never grow into a musician like Annie Clark without being fearless towards music. This was the vocalist who played guitar for Nirvana's induction into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame!

And that's an old accomplishment. She's been at this. Look her up and try a few songs.

This LP - I spent March with it, regularly. I look forward to where it's going with me now.

There is one tie besides state-of-the-art production. The "Batman TV Theme" reached the Beatles' hands before the show debuted in spring, 1966. "Taxman" owes its chorus backing vocals to a cheeky homage to catchy Nelson Riddle composition. And if you ask me, the intonation and chorusing on the chorused vocals on St. Vincent's "Masseduction" title track aren't so different an idea than those on "Taxman" or "Batman."

Next: that most recent entry of the ten. I found it about three months after it dropped. With its synthesizer-lit layers, Black Milk's Fever seems already slated for a level of companionship parallel with Kid A by Radiohead, when I wrote the first Kolpar chapters in 2001. That work's concepts and plot still operate in the series I introduce with Chrysalis Of the Butterfly. What's a superheroine mystery set in 2022 got to do with a Detroit rapper's sonic masterpiece? Even I will simply find out, but we'll talk, next.

Stay up, players C Lue

Influential Albums: David Bowie and Prince (r.i.p.)

Station to Station

In 1995, this was a cornerstone of our listening- along with his 1971 The Man Who Sold The World. That title song is where the torch passed for me from the hands of Kurt Cobain back to this predecessor he admired. Station To Station is largely about the process by which Bowie survived stardom- the transition from his post-Glam Plastic Soul to the German-influenced synthesizer soundscapes of the Berlin Trilogy.
Not that these things were all plans in place so early on. I wonder sometimes how often he pondered Black Star as his Final Act.

Station to Station was one place where Bowie felt close to death, similarly, his own mortality, that is.
"Jump, They Say" is a Tin Machine-era song he wrote after his brother's suicide.
I had no idea how desperate was the place of Reinvention on Station To Station, when we first passed so many hours dancing and playing card and games, listening.
We weren't clear on the lyrics to "TVC-15"- those misunderstandings produced gales of laughter. "Oh, mighty feces robot" - rock on!

Subject matter in the first track sets the stage for a kind of transmutation. ON this record, we watch Bowie go into the box, then come out sounding little like the Ziggy who took Britain by storm.
"Station to Station" has dual meanings, but I think the trains inspire the rhythm and initial idea David had.
Crackshot team. "Golden Years" charted into Classic Rock territory.
"Word On A Wing" is probably the most profound and interesting track. I realize more often than not, I could see it as my favorite- one of the most interesting, challenging, yet listenable songs he ever made. A prayer from someone outside the spheres of religion, answering a desperate need with the assurance of music: "sweet angel, born once again for me." A salvation within the bars of that song preserved the artist from the overwhelming panic and confusion. It's not simply a song to calm the nerves to stillness: it's lively enough to dance closely, or to your own interpretation. But here's the epiphany to act, and he's "ready to shake the scheme of things." That melodic hook is so funky in its syncopation: you hear a premier beat maker emerging in our enterprising David Jones.

Word On A Wing- if you only give one track a try..here's Bowie's story and a bravura version from '99:
.

Labyrinth remained my wife's enchanted ticket to his world. Discovering the vinyl Man Who Sold The World in the same Aurora, CO, shop where we bought Preacher #1 and the comics I'm using this very summer to gather retrospective interviews? Yes!

I got heavily into Bowie's work as a listener, ravenous like never before, in September, 2015. My pal TJ had died rather young, though not unexpectedly. I marked his passing with music and further friendship in the world of the living. Four months, listening to Bowie at least 50% of the time, exploring the catalog for gems. I was also painting, though in very unschooled fashion. We cheered to hear Blackstar was coming out for his 69th birthday. We were stunned for four days when he abruptly then died.

We had covered his songs in public appearances before- going back to our last open mic in Rome in 2005, which brought a strange friend named J.T. into our life before we zipped out to California. I remember, by the pool out there in Escondido, reading an adolescent biography about him in Spanish. I'd gotten it from the local library. Must have been about this time of year, exactly- I did not wait long to have my libary card. I remember practicing "Space Oddity" and "Changes" with my wife on the never-used tennis courts of Mount Vernon Inn. And "Heroes."

In 2016, we got to pay tribute to him at Schroeder's with a bevy of local musicians. I can't remember having more fun on stage. Dani and Amy, take a bow.

I wrote my most pop-Bowie-influenced song for Integr8d Soul, spring of 2016. "Continue PLaying" is kind of like a song that would've fit nicely on Tonight in '84. The kind of song I want to hear while riding an amusement park ride.

"Word On A Wing" is probably the most-praised track on Station 2. It's a complex record, but it's danceable, both fast and slow, and original in presentation.

Now here's a guy who didn't want any tribute shows played without his permission.

Musicology

2004

Prince was 20 years past blowing the absolute roof off the pop world when he released Musicology in 2004. If you wanted a class on black American music in the 20th century, here was an encyclopedia of sounds in 21st-century production, analog instruments, songs in practically every successful Prince style. But I think as mysterious and mischievous as Prince was from the start, his maturity makes him more interesting lyrically. I like how Prince never quit writing and recording and inventing combos for live performance. Nevertheless, this record was a milestone. For one, I believe it was his biggest hit album since '94. By this point, he was practically obliged to re-play a passel of 80s favorites in the '04 live shows- an entire generation had never heard them live! But Prince himself had ambivalent feelings about some of his lyrical ambivalence- and decided some of that shit was just nasty. He had become concerned with what he represented. Yet, mythology-sized doses of horn dog had distinguished so much of his most famous work! I mean, you stop playing "Cream"?


I am a fan about "Erotic City" deep.
Understand, he may have been less in style for the masses at certain points, but Prince was as driven as any professional musician alive.
I was more of a Prince The Hits 1 & 2 fan when I first bought in- depressed, 20, in need desperately of some funkiness. Prince did what Zoloft alone could not. He outlasted that brief pharmaceutical therapy. I let go pretty soon. He'd been around as I got to finally peep MTV in '87, but '84 was the absolute sweet spot with Purple Rain. "Computer Blue" is my favorite song on there.

But Musicology. I have things happen in my life that bring the songs back to me in pieces. When he admits on the last tune, "Reflections," he'd just been thinking about his recently-deceased Mom, that's a moment that comes to me sometimes when I am maybe not feeling up to providing her company or help, to get off my butt and at least see how she's doing, while we live this close together!
And "A Million Days." As a Prince guitar lover, and who isn't, it was awesome to hear Prince rock.
"Call My Name." See, I don't even have to put the album on: this tune has been part of my long-standing happy marriage.
The one thing I had I wish Prince could've known: a love from early days and on, longer together than apart- grooving big time to "Seven" or "U Got The Look" or singing out our hearts to "Sign O'The Times." And yes, that album 30 years into his recording life, the last one he needed to lock up his legend. But you know that guy. Another decade yet, and no end in sight until, I guess, there it was, spring two years ago.

"Cinnamon Girl"- drawing its story from world politics, setting things right with a heroine in a society that's not free- in fact, bombs fall.
It's actually the more fun riff-rocker.
And "What Do You WAnt Me To Do, Girl?" says Prince is still Prince. He's just married these days. But women can be such nice friends.
The song's bass has stayed with me more than any other riff he made after '94- maybe it just fits into the Soul-Music tinged way I saw San Diego.
"Life OF the Party" is as solid as any Prince dance tune, scoring again on an LP with get-up!
I don't mean to take it track-by-track, it's not meant for so many words. They're a poor cover.
Listen instead!

Musicology.

I remember that title track's syncopated groove like it's still Columbus, GA, fall '04.
We were also into two other LPs at the time:
Indigo Girls, Perfect World.
and Best of Bowie.

10 Influential Albums : the early odyssey 5

10 albums. It's the time of year, I guess. Influential. Sure. That could mean a lot of things.

#1: Bruce Springsteen, Born in the U.S.A.


MIne? Coverless. My one and only bootleg cassette in fifth grade. Doin' cool stuff w/ TJ Jones. He would become, at the end of that school year, the friend of mine who loved music the most, and it would be something to hear!
But here, my own rock tape. Wow. He taped that off over at his house. I picked that over Black Sabbath. I was a socially awkward idiot, lol T J told me maybe I should not go around excitedly telling about getting home to "my Bruce." Though he was glad I was looking forward to my first rock album. Remember what big deal contraband rock music was back, children of Fundamentalism?

Anthemic title track, same time, one of many dark tales you find laced within. It meant so much to me. I don't know if I was ever made anything related to music that hit me harder, but it brings to mind some of the talented folks like Jamison and Bali and the one mixtape from that girl...
But this one. Boy! Forbidden to indulge in Top 40 radio, especially music that sounded "rock" but including that dance music, I was trapped in a world instead of TV themes and jingles and those hit song collection advertisements, and endless Southern Gospel Church Music.
Squire Parsons almost made this list, on account of how much his personal appearance, especially one time, at my church, meant to me: he was the first singer for which I was a true fan. At six.

But I only remember, at best, two songs from the tape his roadie gave me.
Five years later, I was primed to rock out with The Boss. Each song...if I stayed up late for anything, if I went to bed early for anything, it was figuring out which ones of those songs I'd listen to first, was I going to stay awake and play the whole thing? Always, keeping it just quiet enough off in my own bedroom, a happy innovation. My sister, down the hallway on the other end of the trailer, was feverishly taping her own library of radio hits soon afterwards. Slippery When Wet was her Rock Tape #1. She fought hard against Mom and Dad and the church for her right to rock out. It shouldn't have been so hard. Our culture, then.



#2: Elton John, Greatest Hits
or, Captain Fantastic


See, Greatest Hits was the one LP even more important to me than Born In The U.S.A. This Made-in-England tunesmith had this weird commercial- familiarity? Respectability? Homogeneity, that made him, in his Tom Wolfe suit by his piano, unthreatening enough for yours truly to get him in the house without a scowling command against Rock Music. "Your Song" and "Honky Cat," you know. "Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road" didn't even have a fornicatin' beat. Or maybe life was keeping them too busy for my parents to fret over much over their thirteen year-old's yen for some love song writer who dressed in truly crazy outfits.

My favorite, "Rocket Man." The song that pulled me over the line to save up my money and get the cassette, "Bennie and the Jets." "That's him, too!" I said. I'd been hearing these songs over the years, including our 45 rpm 7" single "Don't Go Breakin' My Heart"- which came into my life at 5. And didn't I see him with crocodiles on the Muppets?

So, no, he was not really cool when I found him. But what songs. What a voice. Life.
The following summer, I got the LP I'll include here, because it was created to have an album identity. Greatest Hits went to no. 1, but that was because Elton was selling 2% of the entire world's records, I shit thee not. But Capt. Fantastic. Not only the name of our cat, but the record representing Bernie and Elton at their meridian as creators along that meteoric rise from the days shown in Cap's lyrics, to the absolute top of the world's entertainment.
This record was his response to being the Greatest Hits guy. It debuted at #1- the first LP ever to do so.

(Don't think I missed out on the Beatles, but since I only had the blue and red collections, I saved their spot for an actual meaningful album.)
We are actually going chronolgically, here, from my perspective as a listener.


#3: Def Leppard, Hysteria

Originally missed from the list!
Happy times, friends- some of my 1st times really out "on the loose"! And crushing on ..Angie Melton on the marching band bus. When I came back to Hysteria as a guitar player- w/ my own Angie to sing- rock on!

This is really about my first band camp. Free of adult supervision for one of the first times, I got to ride with the older guys. Allen Kirby may have been the first one to play some of 'Hysteria' for me. Steve McKinney, who took me and the gang for snacks at the convenient store before that year's band practice, may encourage his niece to slow down at the tracks, but Steve abused those shocks greatly, playing this, one of his first two tapes!

Mutt Lange's production triumph. Steve's riff-driven songs, Joe's one-of-a-kind delivery, great backing vox, Phil's lead guitar, Savage to play bass & be Ang's crush and Rick Allen's Comeback of Rock drumming- evoke the best part of being 13 again.

#4: U 2, Achtung! Baby

Modernized the way I heard rock music. Captures being 17 so cooly. I'm on the cusp of adulthood, my friends, great company.
I had an interesting Friend Zone with some very pretty, individualistic, intelligent young women, too.
Not enough idea what to do with my gifts, budding interests though. Not enough of my friends ready to form a band. At least, thanks to Governor's Honors Program the summer before, I was unlikely to close my eyes too soon to look for something besides my father's footsteps. He wouldn't have minded, but he seemed to believe I was meant to do...who knows what. He'd never met anyone else like me. But he would drive me hundreds of miles to Valdosta for a chance to spend six weeks with six hundred other intelligence-afflicted kids they feel will be a decent enough fit to socialize. I came back thinking I might really be something, after all, but man, still playing around, trying to find a love interest, or a set of interesting potentials to feed.
But the soap opera of my senior year is not complete with Achtung! Baby.
I know that's the laziest summary, but I have other things to do, put it on.


#5 : 'Live Rust' came into my life through my 1st college roomie's collection! Pearl Jam's 'Ten' and Matthew Sweet's 'Girlfriend' were my constant companions that semester, but Young arguably was the main influence for them both! Between 19 & 23, his LP's became the backbone of my soundtrack. We even saw him in Atlanta. My 1st guitar? The dealer demoed "Needle & the Damage Done" on her, like he'd read my heart.

Cortez The Killer. That's the jam.
But the duo of Hey Hey My My and My My Hey Hey are awesome. By Like A Hurricane, you are devastated! It's that way live, too, or it was in '97.
I love a whole lot of Neil's songs. Even "A Lotta Love." If you ever made deafening garage rock, this is a record to hear. But then, the acoustic side a of this double LP is as clear and nuanced a solo performance as Neil had on tape, commercially, then. Timeless choices. It was the perfect double record to put on, back in the gas-wasting days when you drove til you were kinda lost, just looking to find, or taking in the countryside beauty and the rush of the road.
But better yet. Pull out a guitar and play along!




I sense themes grouping my remaining posts on this subject. We'll pick up 6 and 7 next: Bowie and Prince.