March 2008
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Watch#82: eric b. & rakim - paid in full (1987)
hidden within the mind-boggling hodgepodge of paid in full, the title track on erib b. & rakim’s debut album, is an all-american story about class aspirations. and if you listen close, maybe you’ll hear hints to why half the duo eventually moved on from hip-hop to proudly owning 47 restaurants—from jersey to florida to texas.
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“what are we to think of a band whose best song is based on albert camus’s...”
– robert christgau, writing on the cure’s debut (and killing an arab)
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Watch#81: the cure - 10:15 saturday night (1978)
before they became an iffy, angsty 80s pop band (not that that’s always bad), coated in red lipstick and white foundation and bad black hair, the cure was a massively cool trio. when i listen to early cure songs like this one, i don’t think of adolescents crying in their bedrooms, i imagine dehydrated supermodels crawling through deserts, or...
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Watch#79: kinks - waterloo sunset (1967)
if i had ten songs to take to a desert island, this would be one of them. the lyrics are hermitic, claustrophobic, cold and slightly creepy (“i stay at home at night”), but the music is feathery, sweet, and angelically harmonized (especially the sha la las). and that quiet clash makes for the loneliest song about love ever written.
but it’s...
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“at a certain point phil approached me with a bottle of kosher red wine in one...”
– leonard cohen on phil spector, who produced cohen’s death of a ladies’ man… see monday’s spector posts for more.
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“in the worst periods of migraine suffering, in particular during the making of...”
– jeff tweedy, writing this month in the new york times’ migraine blog
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Watch#63: the byrds (with earl scruggs) - you ain’t going nowhere (1971)
druggy country music is the best thing that ever happened to me. gram parsons, the harvard drop-out who took gobs of morphine and lcd and then basically invented the idea that grungy rock and roll could be be played with a honky rural twang.
and before he died in 1973 at age 26, he introduced the byrds, the rolling stones,...
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“record producer phil spector, awaiting trial for murder, is being sued for more...”
– ap news report, 2006. (i was feeling guilty that the two spitzer jokes below had nothing to do with phil spector, today’s subject, so i wanted to find a bridge. and i found it.)
leon n: the joke is spitzer swallows, btw
me: what???
leon n: like in general
leon n: that's the joke
me: how so?
leon n: wait for it
me: I GOT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
leon n: yaaaay
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“never talk when you can nod, and never nod when you can wink.”
– governor eliot spitzer, in 2006, giving advice on breaking the law. (he should have added that taking high-priced hookers to hotels while federal investigators are listening in is always a bad idea too.) doesn’t the governor’s quote sound like a lil’ wayne lyric? and both spitzer...
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Watch#60: billie holiday - fine and mellow (1957)
if the doris day video below is corn syrup, then this is liquid morphine. and even though music that’s haggard and devastating isn’t necessarily grander or truer than the kind that’s glossy and blonde, this recording happens to be one of the best performances in the history of the world.
that’s because billie holiday was...
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Watch#58: bjork - it’s oh so quiet (1995)
did you know that i once made love to bjork? it was like swimming up to heaven in a three-piece suit made of baby hair, while eating marshmallows that had been regurgitated by rainbow-colored bald eagles.
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Watch#57: bjork - hyperballad (royal opera house, 2001)
it’s theoretically potentially possible to dislike bjork. she wears funny outfits, has a funny little face, sprays her songs with funny blips and beeps, and sometimes she gets a little too techno and maybe a tad too arty too.
but michael jackson is the only other pop singer i can think of that has bjork’s ability to create an entire...
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Watch#53: the band (with neil young) - helpless (1976)
wouldn’t you know it, martin scorsese made this film while handling a serious cocaine addiction. and was the band using with him? actually, backstage there was a room painted white, decorated with noses from plastic masks. an audio tape of sniffing sounds played on a tape. seriously. really. truly.
when neil young came out to sing helpless,...
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Watch#52: the band (with van morrison) - caravan (1976)
at the onset of every serious relationship i’ve ever had, all 109,028 of them, i’ve watched martin scorsese’s documentary the last waltz with the special lady, just to make sure that our interests were appropriately aligned. if she didn’t cry with happiness at any point in the mega-extraordinary movie about the...
