cliff hanger (1985) - jimmy cliff: columbia records, FC-40002

Back in the early 70’s the explosion of Bob Marley resulted in the American music industry “discovering” reggae, and like a hunter stumbling across a rare albino tiger, they wanted to kill it. The mere idea of an untapped vein of profit made their mouths water and their avarice grow. So, they decided that reggae was the Next Big Thing and they tried to go all-in to capitalize on it and squeeze every last cent from the buyers.

Unfortunately, most of the American record company execs don’t really “get” reggae, and so throughout the 70’s and early 80’s they engaged in clumsy promotion and ineffective exposure. They treated reggae the way they treated all other music, as just another product to mass-produce, advertise and sell, no different than breakfast cereal or foot powder. It never dawned on them that reggae might have a unique appeal to a select group of music lovers, and when faced with something that didn’t fit their preconceived assumptions it’s no surprise that they fucked it all up.

They packaged reggae the same way they did soul or funk – as an ethnic niche only of interest to Black America. The result? Failure. In the US reggae never Caught A Fire (get it?) beyond Bob Marley, and when he died in 1981 the labels were left with the task of trying to actually raise interest in other reggae musicians.

So, the record companies, as they will do, concluded that the problem was with the music rather than their inept handling, and decided that they needed to “fix” reggae.

The result is the album Cliff Hanger.

Side 1: Hitting with Music American Sweet Arrival Brown Eyes Reggae Street
Side 2: Hotshot Sunrise Dead And Awake Now And Forever Nuclear War

This album is just awful. All of the songs sound like they were lifted from a soundtrack to shitty 80’s cop movie. Not only do they sound dated, they are also painful as well. It’s clear that the intent was to try to reinvent Cliff as some sort of island-born Michael Jackson, so they made an "accessible" reggae album where the actual reggae was almost completely erased leaving songs that felt like something a bad Off The Wall or Thriller cover band would play. In fact, this album was so bad, I almost wasn’t able to listen to the whole thing.

And the sad thing is that, by all rights, Cliff ought to have had more success in the United States. His resume certainly would lead one to believe so: great voice, engaging personality, and reggae bona fides. But Cliff just never resonated with audiences here the way Marley did.

Maybe that was because nobody could ever really connect the way Marley did. In any case, Cliff was a different sort of reggae singer than Marley. Marley was Roots, while Cliff was more pop. Marley brought the spiritual side of rastafari and the struggle to leave Babylon for Zion, while Cliff was more about the here and now. Marley sang about Jah, while Cliff sang about Joe (if that makes sense).

And maybe that’s why Cliff Hanger sucks so much. Because Cliff, being more a pop guy, may likely have been open to changing his music in order to make it more appealing to American audiences. Which, paradoxically, made it incredibly un-appealing.


As a punchline to all this, in what can only be called the irony of just how out-of-touch the Grammy awards are, Cliff Hanger ended up winning the 1986 Best Reggae Album award - despite the fact that there really is no reggae on the record at all. I mean, the Police and the Clash were doing more legit reggae than Cliff did on this thing..

Up next: Prog, soprano style.

clash, the (1977) - the clash: epic records 1979 US release, PE-36060

By the mid 70's music was suffering from a bit of a personality crisis (get it?).  Rock music was being suffocated by corporate mega-bands, while its sibling pillow of disco was smothering funk and r&b.

Something had to happen in order to save music from the suits.

As it turned out, something did happen.  Disco was confronted with rap, while corporate rock got kicked in the nuts by punk.

Although punk has its genesis in American bands like the NY Dolls and The Ramones, it was the British (much like in the 60's), who managed to take the flag and launch the assault.  The vanguard of which was The Sex Pistols, who unfortunately gained notoriety more for the antics and calculated PR stunts of creator Malcolm MacLaren than for their music.  But the band that really gave punk the gravitas needed to be taken seriously was The Clash.

Side 1: Clash City Rockers I'm So Bored With The USA Remote Control Complete Control White Riot White Man In The Hammersmith Palais London's Burning I Fought The Law
Side 2: Janie Jones Career Opportunities What's My Name Hate And War Police And Thieves Jail Guitar Doors Garageland

The Clash is the 1977 self-titled debut for The Clash, but it wasn't released in the USA because, in a perfect illustration of the total head-in-rectum dysfunction of the American music business at the time, the label was afraid that they would be too controversial and not "radio friendly" enough to warrant actually releasing their first album.  However, after the UK version became the best-selling import of the year, and Give 'Em Enough Rope  was voted the 1978 Album of the Year by Rolling Stone magazine, The Clash was finally released in America in 1979 - only with a different, more marketing determined track list. 

The songs are filled with raw energy, passion, and intensity.  The guitars mount a full-frontal audio assault on every song, while the lyrics display a sophisticated dissection of just how messed up the world was at that time.  For example, I'm So Bored With The USA features some pretty in-your-face critique of the ugly image America had around the world:

Yankee dollar talk / To the dictators of the world
In fact it's giving orders / An' they can't afford to miss a word

I'm so bored with the USA / But what can I do?

While White Man In The Hammersmith Palais brings about a pretty scathing condemnation of the malaise and cynicism of things going on in Merry Old England:

Punk rockers in the UK / They won't notice anyway
They're all too busy fighting / For a good place under the lighting
The new groups are not concerned / With what there is to be learned
They got Burton suits, ha you think it's funny / Turning rebellion into money
All over people changing their votes / Along with their overcoats
If Adolf Hitler flew in today / They'd send a limousine anyway

Listening to these songs it's clear why one journalist called The Clash "The Only Band That Matters."  That was true then, and in light of the sort of so-called music that's around at the moment, it is even more true today.

What stands out in the songs on this album, now almost 40 years later, is just how mature they are both musically and lyrically, and how even though the band were transitioning from original drummer Terry Chimes (who appears on all but five tracks) to new drummer Topper Headon, there is no drop in either intensity or consistency.  In fact, they would only get more intense as they went on.

But back in the late 70's when this album came out it was nothing less than getting hit square in the face with a shovel.  The lack of slick production, the genuine power of the lyrics, and the raw honesty of the music made people take notice.  Especially the suits in their offices promoting the mega bands.  Change was in the air whether they were ready for it or not, and it was riding a horse of grinding guitars and gravelly voices.

Up next: A reggae icon sells out in a Big Way

chronic town (1982) - rem: irs records, SP-070502

I remember hearing the song Wolves, Lower on KALX radio in 1982 during my freshman year at UC Berkeley.  There was something about the song that caught my attention so much so that I went down to Rasputin Music on Telegraph Ave the next day, snatched one of the records from the bin, and plunked down my $10 (or whatever it cost back then).  I can still remember it because the clerk - some totally Berkeley looking dude with the serenity of a guy in The Zone - validated my instinct by saying, "Good choice.  You're going to really like this."

In 1982 REM were still almost totally unknown outside of Athens, GA and a few select college campuses, but their name was getting around.  The Chronic Town EP was generating a lot of buzz with it's (at the time) unique musical blend of Southern jangle, rock, and folk.  The combination of unadulterated instruments with Michael Stipe's curiously mumbled singing created an immediate sensation among the cynuical college crowd. 

Chronic Town (Side 1): Wolves, Lower Gardening At Night Carnival Of Sorts
Poster Torn (Side 2): 1,000,000 Stumble

REM's music was uniquely American in the same way so much of the other stuff coming out in the early 80's was not.  So much of the new stuff had a distinct English, if not Euorpean sound.  Even bands like the Ramones, with their retro 'murrcn look of jeans and leather jackets had this whiff of England, especially with the slightly affected accent in Beat on the Brat.  But REM had none of that. They sounded as if they'd never even heard a British band.  More than that, REM (like fellow Georgians, the B52s) sounded Southern, just as Blondie and the Talking Heads sounded New York, and X and the Plimsouls sounded LA.


The other thing about REM was that they somehow had this weight of intellectualism not found in bands like the Plimsouls or Blondie or X or the Ramones or the B52s.  Maybe it was the subdued simplicity of the music, or maybe it was the fact that in 1982 REM was limited to college radio. Or, perhaps (and I think this likely) it was the introverted inflection and mumbled singing of Michael Stipe.  Listening this time around I tried to pay as close attention to the sound of the vocals as I did to the instruments and the actual lyrics.  Maybe it's just me, but the volume, inflection, and register of Stipe's singing sounds more like something you'd hear on an NPR discussion than on a rock song.  And it's a good thing, too, because the lyrics for these songs are, to put it plainly, kind of silly.  That, or so deep that I'm unable to dive far enough to grasp them.

Consider this from Gardening At Night:

We echoed up the garbage sound but they were busy in the rows
We fell up not to see the sun gardening at night just didn't grow The yard is nothing but a fence the sun just hurts my eyes somewhere
It must be time for penitence gardening at night it's never worked

 Or these from Carnival Of Sorts:

There's a secret stigma, reaping wheel / Diminish, a carnival of sorts
Chronic town, poster torn, reaping wheel / Stranger, stranger to these parts

If there is deeper meaning here I'd certainly like to know it, because it seems to me that clothing these lyrics in cautious muttering was a way to make the music match the mocking gargoyle on the cover.  And that's pretty cool, too.

Up next: The eponymous debut from "The Only Band That Matters"

cheap thrills (1968) - big brother and the holding company: columbia records 1970 reissue, KCS-9700

One of my favorite books is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and it contains a fantastically melancholy quote (heavily edited here):

San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of [...] no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world.

[B]ooming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end  [. . .] but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now […] you can go up on a steep hill […] and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

One of the things not explicitly mentioned in that quote, but made clear by the constant musical references within F&L, is that music played a huge part in the whole atmosphere by the Bay in those days. And putting Cheap Thrills on the platter while considering Dr. Thompson's words was like getting battered by the wave he described.

Side 1: Combination Of The 2 I Need A Man To Love Summertime Piece Of My Heart
Side 2: Turtle Blues Oh, Sweet Mary Ball And Chain

Cheap Thrills just feels like pure 100% summer-of-love San Francisco.  Geek up the volume, close your eyes, and open your mind to really feel as if I you're right there in the Fillmore grooving to the heavy acid-blues and Janis' vocals.

And what vocals.  Janis had some serious pipes, and I doubt there will ever be another singer able to belt out Ball & Chain or Piece of My Heart with the same insane power that she did.  She was a force of nature - a mutated super singer with a direct line to the very souls of her forebears. She could channel Etta and Big Mama and Bessie and others.

This is the music that tortured Spiro Agnew and kept him awake at night quaking with rage and fear.  To the squares, albums like Cheap Thrills were a soundtrack for long-haired freaks running wild, raping wives and daughters and feeding LSD to the family dog.  To them it wasn't music as much as the sound of the very foundation of America's moral purity being ground into a fine powder to be injected into a godless junkie's vein.  It symbolized an American Ragnarok - an age of chaos in which children are torn from their parents arms and forced to endure non-stop orgies, while Good, Decent, Law Abiding people are marched from their homes, shaved bald, stripped naked, tattooed, and made to harvest hemp or work in factories manufacturing illicit narcotics.

Of course, the paranoia was unfounded and in reality Big Brother & the Holding Company just played basic blues with a bit of embellishment and extra grindy guitar. The kind of stuff Zeppelin and Rory Gallagher and others would end up doing.  Something that could have come out of the juke joints and honky tonks of the chitlin' circuit. Nothing to threaten the American way of life at all.  In fact, the most subversive part of the entire album may have been the cover artwork (done by underground comic artist R. Crumb), particularly the stoned, one-eyed space Jeebus, or the crowd of hippies and heads (with a cameo by Mr. Natural) waiting for the show:

The funny thing is that today, Cheap Thrills is almost classical music.  The sounds that froze the blood of middle-class America in the late 60's now sounds as harmless and quaint as Vivaldi.  And all those stoners and smack-heads and revolutionaries and pinko anarchists that were in the crowd that night in 1967 to see Janis wail are now in their late 60's to mid 70's, worrying about the dangers of rap and complaining about the temperature of their soup. The record keeps spinning ...

But playing this album sure does remind one of what music meant back in the day.  And, with much apology, to paraphrase Dr. Gonzo himself, today you can put a disc of vinyl on a turntable and with the right kind of ears you can almost hear the crescendo—that place where the music finally broke and rolled back.

Up next: Four geeks from Georgia fire up College Radio

brain salad surgery (1973) - emerson, lake, and palmer: manticore records, MC-66669

Prog rock fans have always been easy to mock because a very select but vocal minority of them take it all so very, very seriously.  For these arrogant few, prog bands don't play "music" - they create ethereal artistic moments.  They don't write "lyrics" - they plumb the depths of human existence and greater universal truths.  And these annoying prog fans fancy themselves as having the depth and intellect required to be able to comprehend the subtleties and sophisticated nuances within the compositions (never songs, of course!) that normal nose-picking slobs could never grasp, giving them the attitude that they are better than the rest of us.

In short, these smug dingbats view prog rock as an exclusive domain populated by a bunch of intellectual elitists gathering together in a ritualized group jerk session.

And that totally sucks, because those folks give prog bands and fans a serious image problem. Sort of how that really aggressive Star Wars dork fan will engage in lengthy, pointless arguments regarding the defensive prowess of Imperial Star Cruisers when matched against the maneuverability and speed of Rebel X-Wing fighters, and the divergence of the Sith from the Jedi.

It sucks even more when prog bands themselves contribute to the perception that prog is nothing more than a pompous collection of pseudo-intellectual claptrap filled with self-indulgent musical conceit and gaudy lyrical grandiloquence. Sort of like this paragraph.

Enter Emerson, Lake, and Palmer and their pridefully flamboyant album with perhaps the single best title in all of music history, Brain Salad Surgery (although, to be fair Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy certainly merits consideration).

Side 1: Jerusalem Toccata Still ... You Turn Me On Benny The Bouncer Karn Evil 9 (1st Impression, Part I)
Side 2: Karn Evil 9 (1st Impression, Part II) Karn Evil 9 (2nd Impression) Karn Evil 9 (3rd Impression)

I actually really like this album but I can still see it for what it is, and I simply can never listen to it without just thinking that it is a parody of itself. Everything from the cover (which is an amazing HR Giger piece that simply demands lengthy and intimate examination) to the songs are so incredibly pretentious and overdone that I honestly do wonder whether the boys intentionally decided to go over-the-top on this one.

I mean, this album has all the trappings of prog parody: orchestral score, pipe organs as the lead instrument, ridiculously dramatic lyrics, and the toffee-nosed singing of someone who considers their voice and interpretive skill as being somehow touching the mind of god.

All that out of the way, however, this album really is good. There is quite a lot going on musically, ranging from the weird futuristic interpretation of Toccata (giving it the feel of a soundtrack to a cheezy 70’s B sci-fi movie), to the ragtime piano of Benny the Bouncer, to the soul/funk guitar driving the otherwise saccharine ballad Still … You Turn Me On. And all of it does showcase the fact that everything else aside, Messrs Emerson, Lake, and Palmer are very accomplished musicians. And their willingness to premier the Moog Apollo (the first polyphonic synthesizer) shows that the boys embraced new technology.

The centerpiece of the album is Karn Evil 9 – a 30 minute song rendered in three “impressions” spanning the last 9 minutes of side one and all of side two. Karn Evil is both the best and worst of prog in one go: a song about a dystopian future featuring complex musical passages fused with ludicrously ostentatious lyrics.  Just consider this excerpt from Karn Evil 9 - 1st Impression, Part I (I mean even their song titles drip with pretense!):

Cold and misty morning / I heard a warning borne in the air
About an age of power / where no one had an hour to spare
Where the seeds have withered / silent children shivered, in the cold
Now their faces captured / in the lenses of the jackals for gold.

Or this bit from the beginning of Karn Evil 9 - 3rd Impression

Man alone, born of stone / will stamp the dust of time
His hands strike the flame of his soul / ties a rope to a tree and hangs the Universe
Until the winds of laughter blows cold.

I mean, come on! These make the lyrics for songs like Supper’s Ready or Stairway to Heaven seem subtle and understated. But they save the best for last. The album ends with this musical dialogue between the machine-voiced overlord and the piteous but defiant human:

(Man) I am all there is
(Overlord) Negative! Primitive! Limited! I let you live!
(Man) But I gave you life
(Overlord) What else could you do?
(Man) To do what was right
(Overlord) I'm perfect! Are you?

That reads like the journals of some angst-ridden freshman philosophy major whose girlfriend just broke up with him and who now finds himself questioning the mechanics of the universe.

But still and all, this is a cool album with cool music, cool cover art, and a cool title.

Next up: Heavy acid-blues sung by one of the most soulful voices ever

box office bomb (1987) - dramarama: questionmark records, QM-009

The late-80's post-punk era was a weird time in both society and music. The raw honesty, energy, and confrontational anger that drove the musical overthrow of corporate rock and disco had burned out, and was co-opted by suits into non-threatening ways to sell breakfast cereal.  The

mohawks, leather jackets and unnaturally colored hair that were once seen as a threat to the placid suburbia of Reagan America, became little more than fashion accessories.

And made-for-TV musical acts like Ratt and Madonna and Whitesnake and Debbie Gibson became the center of rock through slick videos featuring sexy dancers, careful lighting, quick-cut editing, and meticulous choreography. A song could suck eggs but still be a "hit" so long as the video got a regular play on the MTV.  It was a perfect distillation of the cheap shallowness of the 80's. Image ruled and substance ... well that became a dirty word.

But somewhere in the ashes of punk and the shadows of the soulless Top 40 there was still a fringe where real bands with real songs and no budget for slick videos with sexy dancers played and recorded.  There were bands like the Lemonheads and the Replacements out there playing genuine music.  And one of those bands was Dramarama.

Side 1: Steve and Edie New Dream Whenever I'm With Her Spare Change 400 Blows Pumpin' (My Heart)
Side 2: It's Still Warm Out In The Rain Baby Rhino's Eye Worse Than Being Myself Modesty Personified

The problem was there was very little outlet for these fringe bands.  Radio and MTV were now saturated with the major acts and the big labels controlled airplay, making it tough for these indie bands to find an audience outside of college radio and the rare station dedicated to promoting genuine rock.

That was the situation in which Dramarama found themselves.  Formed by John Easedale and Chris Carter, they struggled to get traction until Rodney Bingenheimer (who is one of the most unsung but important heroes in music) heard their 1985 album, Cinéma Vérité, and played it on his Rodney on the Roq show on LA radio icon KROQ (another unsung hero in music).  That led to Dramarama finally getting some much-deserved attention, and eventual commercial success.  It's clear that  Easedale and Carter appreciated this because the liner notes for Box Office Bomb (which are awesome, by the way) end with a very large, bold statement dedicating the album to Rodney.  In fact, the entire "dedication" section of the liner notes are pure gold, including such names as Jed the Fish, Richard Blade, & Poorman (other kroq deejays), Peter Buck, Ian Hunter, Chris Stein, Mickey Dolenz, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Joey Ramone, and Mick Ronson.  That's quite a list of musical influences, right there.

Dramrama is one of those band without which there may never have been a Nirvana.  Because of their time, they, along with other bands like Dinosaur Jr and the Smithereens, were essentially caretakers, bridging the mid 80's and mid-90's from the previous generation (i.e. the Plimsouls, Blondie ) to the next (Nirvana, Pearl Jam).

Unfortunately as caretakers Dramarama ended up being not only undervalued, but neglected and dismissed.  Which sucks, because Box Office Bomb is a great album, with a strong songlist including a killer cover of Patti Smith's Pumpin' (My Heart).

Box Office Bomb turned out to be one of the last albums I ever bought new.  By 1987 I was well into investing heavily in CDs, and in any event new releases on vinyl were becoming more and more scarce in record stores. In many ways the change from analog to digital was a reflection of the change in music back to more mainstream AOR.  There was still good stuff out there, but the landscape had definitely shifted.  The next so-called revolution in media (from CD to MP3) would also be reflective of a change in music - and much like the shift from vinyl to CD represented a small step backwards, the drop from CD to MP3 would be a major decline in quality.

Up next: The album with perhaps the greatest title ever.

born to run (1975) - bruce springsteen: columbia records, JC-33795

By the early 70's the center of the rock universe had not only moved to, but had taken out a 30 year mortgage and started a family in England.  Bands like the Stones, the Who, Zep, Tull, Yes, and Genesis had taken over, and for every Hendrix coming out of America, England answered with a Clapton, Beck, and Gallagher.  Not only that, but American rock performers - like Joplin, Hendrix, and Morrison - had decided to take up the annoying habit of dropping dead from overdoses of drugs or drink or both (something the Brits would begin to do in the mid to late 70's), leaving the softer folk-rock singers like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and James Taylor to fill the void.

Things were looking grim in the birthplace of rock until a short kid from New Jersey with a gravelly voice and a Fender Telecaster stepped into the void.

Bruce Springsteen caught the attention of the music world with a pair of albums released in 1973, Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ and The Wild, The Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle, but it wasn't until his 1975 album Born To Run that Springsteen finally managed to bring back some serious rock cred to the US of A.

Side 1: Thunder Road Tenth Avenue Freeze Out Night Backstreets
Side 2: Born To Run She's The One Meeting Across The River Jungleland

Look at that track list.  Six out of the eight songs on this album are hits, and four (Thunder Road, Tenth Avenue Freeze Out, Jungleland, and Born To Run) are absolute iconic songs.  That's more than most bands get out of a career, and Springsteen managed to toss those off on one album.  There is a reason that the acclaimed LA Times music critic, Robert Hilburn, used Springsteen as his barometer for all other acts.

But this album also stands out as a fantastic example of what the full vinyl experience was like. The cover is a gatefold photo of Bruce, guitar slung over his shoulder, leaning up on Clarence Clemons just blowing his sax, with the both of them looking like a couple of rock gods who are cooler than the rest of the world combined can ever be:

The best part is that the music is just as cool (if not cooler) than the cover. This is one of those albums that I can listen to again and again, and always enjoy, even if it is a bit dated.  Springsteen's use of sax and piano was anachronistic even in the 70's, and it's even moreso today (unless, of course, it's some millennial hipster douchebag trying to be intentionally ironically cool).  But even though the songs show a little grey at the temples, they still have the vitality and impact they did when they were new. Or maybe that's just me projecting...

Of course, in the interest of being fair, I do have to mention a pet peeve of mine when it comes to Springsteen lyrics: his giving the characters in his songs names.  Yeah, I know he's not the only songwriter to do that, but unless a song is really about one specific person, giving the characters in it names sort of kills the universality of them.  For instance, Born to Run should be one of those songs that resonates with anyone, anywhere.  But when Springsteen sings this:

Beyond the Palace hemi-powered drones scream down the boulevard
Girls comb their hair in rearview mirrors / and the boys try to look so hard
The amusement park rises bold and stark / kids are huddled on the beach in a mist
I wanna die with you Wendy on the street tonight / In an everlasting kiss

It sort of kills it.  Suddenly only dudes fingerbanging some chick named Wendy can really relate.  Now maybe Bruce really did date a gal named Wendy with whom he wanted to run away.  But by simply replacing Wendy with Baby, he makes the song universal.  And this happens in many Springsteen songs.  Ah well, like I said, it's just a pet peeve of mine.

The really important thing, however, is how in today's climate of music manufactured via a formula and teams of image consultants and choreographers, songs like Thunder Road and Tenth Avenue Freeze Out are even more relevant than when they were released by the very fact that they are so non-corporate.

Besides, there's nothing wrong with a bit of nostalgia, and Born To Run is exactly the tonic to the stuff one is forced to endure whenever going outside and hearing today's music.

Up next: A caretaker band finds success in LA

blondie (1977) - blondie: chrysalis records, CHR-1165

When Blondie released their first album they caught the music establishment off-guard.  They didn't seem to really fit in to the established music scene and since they emerged at the same time as the Sex Pistols and the Ramones, it was convenient to put them into the same "punk/new wave" category.  Besides, Debbie Harry's peroxide white/jet black hair was too confusing and frightening for the squares for them to really be anything else.

Of course, Blondie was never punk.  Nor were they really "new wave" (whatever that term means).  Their music, especially on their first album, was a throwback to earlier, simpler rock.  Guitar to drive the sound, drums and bass to keep the beat, and some keyboards to fill it all out.  Nothing complicated, nothing elaborate, nothing too far out. Just good, very tight, no song longer than 3 1/2 minutes, rock.  

And they did that very well.

Side 1: X Offender Little Girl Lies In The Flesh Look Good In Blue In The Sun A Shark In Jets Clothing
Side 2: Man Overboard Rip Her To Shreds Rifle Range Kung Fu Girls The Attack Of The Giant Ants

I've been a huge fan of Blondie since I first heard this album way back in 10th grade.  And even though the music is great (Chris Stein's guitar, Clem Burke's Drums, and Jimmy Destri's keyboards made Blondie flat out rock), the real magic behind Blondie was the fact that Debbie Harry had enormous sexual magnetism.  She just dripped sex.  And so did many of the songs on the album.

X Offender is a song about a gal who just wants to get laid and in turn unleashes her insatiable passion:

I think all the time how I'm going to perpetrate love with you
And when I get out, there's no doubt I'll be sex offensive to you

Look Good In Blue goes for some decidely un-subtle entendre:

I could give you some head ... and shoulders to lie on

A Shark In Jets Clothing retells Westside Story in a more graphic manner:

Of all the girls you've played and you laid / why did this one have to be white?

Complementing Debbie's raw manipulation of the libido was some incredibly versatile music.  The style ranges from retro 50's doo-wop of In The Flesh, to pseudo-surf  of In The Sun, to the nearly experimental of Giant Ants (the ending of which is reminiscent of the end of Zappa's America Drinks And Goes Home).

Interesting side note: even though it isn't a case of a misheard lyric, whenever I listen to Little Girl Lies I always want to hear it as Little Burl Ives.  Weird.

Unfortunately, Blondie suffers from the same malady of a lot of earlier music - it sounds a bit out of place and dated when one listens to it today.  The songs still kick ass, but there is no mistaking the era in which they were recorded.  But that is easily forgiven, especially since Blondie was one of the bands who helped take music back from the suits. At least temporarily.

Up next: A fella from New Jersey makes American rock relevant again

big science (1982) - laurie anderson: warner brothers records, BSK-3674

The late-70's and early 80's saw an explosion of different music styles, all trying to fill the vacuum of the death of disco and corporate mega-rock.  In many ways is similar to biological evolution (to use a very extreme example) where every once in a while there is a great die-off of the predominant "type" allowing other forms to move in and occupy the now vacant space.

It happened way back about 225 million years ago during the Permian-Triassic extinction, when nearly all invertebrates disappeared, paving way for vertebrate populations.  It happened again about 65 million years ago during the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction, which took care of the dinosaurs and allowed mammals to flourish.  And in music it happened in the late 70's when people finally woke up to realize that there is something seriously wrong when KC & the Sunshine Band and Toto could be mega stars.

One type of music that found new success was the experimental sort of ambient electronic music  pioneered by folks like Brian Eno and Robert Fripp.  That style led to a new form of electro-prog (David Bowie, Peter Gabriel), synth new-wave (Devo, Wall of Voodoo), geek rock (Talking Heads), and weird minimalist artsy-fartsy rock, like Laurie Anderson.

Big Science is Anderson's first album, and was culled from her eight hour (performed over two consecutive nights) stage show, United States, and featured her 1981 nerd-hit O Superman.

Side 1: From the Air Big Science Sweaters Walking and Falling Born, Never Asked
Side 2: O Superman (For Massenet) Example #22 Let X = X It Tango

Right from the opening it's pretty clear that this is an artsy-fartsy album.  Many of the songs are half-spoken and insinuate the pretense and snobbery of artists doing things that normal people just don't get.  The music is most definitely minimalist, with somewhat brooding overtones and repetitive loops.  But even with all that baggage, the album is quite endearing because the songs each have their own personality.  For example, because of the bagpipes, Sweaters has the nasaly sound of a Chinese opera, while the accordion, sax, and clarinet on Example #22 give it a klezmer vibe.

Lyrically, the songs range from the philosophical (Walking and Falling):

You're walking. And you don't always realize it / but you're always falling.
With each step, you fall forward slightly / and then catch yourself from falling.

To the absurd (Example #22):

The sun is shining slowly / the birds are flying so low.
Honey you're my one and only / so pay my what you owe me.

To the flat out weird (Big Science):

You know. I think we should put some mountains here.
Otherwise, what are the characters going to fall off of?

This combination of pointy-headed pretentiousness with curious sounds and silly lyrics positioned Big Science to be a favorite of weirdos, academics, disaffected artists, and pseudo-intellectual poseurs.  In other words, it was destined for college radio success, and took Laurie Anderson from the relatively unknown world of the self-absorbed dense experimental artist and brought her into the comparatively broader atmosphere of the self-absorbed dense experimental student.  It may not sound like much, but that actually is a step up.

There is a lot to like about Big Science, and it's an album that I find myself revisiting on a regular basis since I first bought it way back in my freshman year at college.  Back then, its artsy-fartsy origins and facade of selective appeal gave me a bit of nerd-cred and helped in getting the attention of the cute geek girls in the dorm.  Today, it's a nostalgic return to a time when there was no such thing as "too weird" in music.  The old boundaries were gone and musicians were allowed to just let themselves go, pushing the limits of what they wanted to do and expanding the territory of sound.  It's a sharp contrast to the scene today, where music is again constricting into a limited range, making albums like Big Science sound even more bizarre and revolutionary than whey they were originally released. 

Up next: "New Wave" explodes on the scene