Recent Posts
Forever changes is the ultimate beautiful, paranoid, dissonant, end-of-the-decade suicide note from the city of broken dreams. A gang of earthlings fronted by ethereal, handsome, tragic Arthur Lee, Love summed up the late sixties, somehow embodying the promise of that decade (the success of the civil rights movement, the stirring of subcultures, the politicisation of youth and the explosion of pop culture and music-as-art) and the flipside - the fin-de-siecle nightmare (LA gothic - Altamont, 'nam, the demise of the Kennedys, acid burnout, excess and disillusionment).
Forever Changes feels like an open-roofed drive along the wide promenades of Los Angeles, with its haciendas, its carparks, its canyons, its diners, chain stores and gas stations, its festering underbelly, its grotesque wealth, its oppressive open space, its lost souls and its casualties. The city of the Mamas and the Papas on the one hand and Charles Manson on the other.
On this album it's a city recalled by the melancholy flamenco trumpet solo of Alone Again Or, the deceptively upbeat opening track; the menacing conscript's lament A House is Not a Motel; the psychedelic psychobabble of The Red Telephone and the shimmering existentialism of You Set the Scene. And through it all, the young Arthur Lee, at the height of his beauty and power, singing:
This is the time and life that I am living
And I'll face each day with a smile
For the time that I've been given's such a little while
And the things that I must do consist of more than style
This is the only thing that I am sure of
And that's all that lives is gonna die
And there'll always be some people here to wonder why
And for every happy hello, there will be good-bye
There'll be time for you to put yourself on
Everything I've seen needs rearranging
And for anyone who thinks it's strange
Then you should be the first to want to make this change
And for everyone who thinks that life is just a game
Do you like the part you're playing
The story of Love is only more poignant 40 years later, because we all know how the dream ended.
PS: Forget The Doors. They weren't in the race.
Shared on
I have to admit I'm a late convert to this band. I have been so close to picking up one of their two albums in record stores, but put them down again because of their 70's prog looking cover art and highly dubious name.
After being drenched in their ridiculously radio friendly pop one too many times, I had to get an album and see if they're stayers or merely the sweet soundbites on so many car adverts* and film trailers.
Like their Sub Pop stablemates The Shins, their sound is straight-faced, shimmering, fearless falsetto Carl Wilson vocals - vulnerable, sweet, right-on-the-note; jangly guitars, layers of keyboard and lush production and just a blue hint of that ubiquitous alt-country sound. There's even a genuine southern twang to Ben Bridwell's vocals and the timeless Springsteenesque lyric about a screendoor slamming in Window Blues. Needless to say, I can't help myself. It's the sort of stuff that fills my eyes with tears.
No One's Gonna Love You is, musically and lyrically, so arrestingly sentimental that you feel it must be taking the piss at first. But Bridwell plays it so straight that you allow him to melt your frosty, cynical heart just a little and start imagining it soundtracking a particularly momentous occasion in your life - the likes of which don't often occur in this worker bee's life, so it just gets played on the Mac while you type out a review.
My favourite track is Ode to LRC. It's the first song of theirs that really made me take notice. There's something so summery and nostalgic about it you remember you're human. I know, I know, they do commercials. I'm still trying to get my head around that... but they've supported the utterly brilliant Iron and Wine. They can't be all bad. And musically they get to you (and probably make you buy stuff) in a way that other horrendous bunch of soul-less car advert types with an equally dire name (the New Radicals) could never hope to. That is enough for me.
They may not have the social conscience of their musical forebears (Neil Young, David Crosby and friends), but they've got the sensibilities of everyone who ever got a shiver hearing the strains of slide guitars sounding from a cabin up in the canyon where these sounds were first pioneered.
*Horror of horrors, they have pawned their stuff to flog SUVs of all things - but it's like love, you've got to know that your beloved has committed a crime before you fall. After that it's way too late... you love 'em anyway.
Shared on
Slip Sliding Away...
'Music to play at my funeral' has always been a lively topic of conversation among my friends, and it seems to have been done a fair bit (to death, if you will) in the media lately. Ultimately, I suppose, who the fuck cares what gets played? You're no longer around to enjoy it. It might as well be something faintly ridiculous or a bit edgy. I used to say it would be something like 'Me I Disconnect From You' by Gary Numan, or 'Fade to Grey' by Visage.
I mean, we all get a bit sick of the emotionally manipulative stuff that gets played at a lot of funerals - you know, designed to wring every last tear out of you when you're either 1) wrung dry with the genuine exhaustion of grief or 2) on the periphery and embarrassed by your limited acquaintance with the deceased - in which case a bit of emotional lubricant (in the form of 'The Way We Were' by Barbara Streisand or something) can be useful in helping you squeeze out a tear and feel like less of a fraud... well, less of an intruder, anyway.
In death, the mass populace are as predictable as they were in life, which accounts for the life-endingly dull list of 'most popular' funeral songs, which are almost as bleak as the 'most popular' wedding songs (which usually include nauseating doses of Bryan Adams or Mariah Carey). I don't like to judge the final selections of the departed, but let's just see a selection of some of the worst (and, discouragingly, most popular):
My Heart Will Go On - Celine Dion
Hero - Mariah Carey (weddings, funerals, you can't escape her)
The Wind Beneath My Wings - Bette Midler
Goodbye My Lover - James Blunt (enough to raise the dead in indignation)
Angels - Robbie Williams (this one falls into the tear-wringing category - it's not a bad song, but it's an all-purpose, calculating, commercial weepy)
But I suppose that, while your own funeral is distinctly hard to care about, short of hoping it's a long way away, it's important for the loved ones you'll hopefully have acquired and might want to soothe. It becomes a pretty important tribute and you want it to say something about your life. A friend told me a darkly humorous story about a funeral where the schlep who put the Simply Red CD in the player (that was the first obvious mistake, but again, who am I to judge) cued up 'Money's too tight to mention' instead of 'Holding back the years'. This prompted outrage and tears from the deceased's family of entirely the wrong sort... which makes it all the more funny. Funerals are pretty surreal at the best of times, which is probably why there's so much fun poked at them in popular culture (Death at a Funeral etc.). You've gotta laugh... and all that.
Anyway, the purpose of this post is to tell you that, these days, there is a song I would like played at my funeral that isn't jokey or ridiculous or 'edgy'. It's lovely and human and sad and I can imagine it will actually achieve its primary objective of making the liggers (who don't know me but will inevitably rock up to my funeral out of curiosity) cry (and you can't say fairer than that of a funeral song):
Slip Sliding Away by Paul Simon.
It's the perfect choice, and I wonder why we don't hear more of its funereal application. More about it in my next post - along with my other funeral songs.
Shared on
Foreword: 2007 was the year of films about Joy Division, or, more specifically, Ian Curtis. And so, to use his own words, the Atrocity Exhibition continues. Perhaps this review would not be as caustic had I not been suffering from a bit of Joy Division retrospective fatigue following the admittedly excellent film based on Deborah Curtis’s depressing book*, but I can only call it as I see it. So here goes:
Okay all you simpering 2008-minted Joy Division fans – let’s have it out here. New Order was a far superior and more influential band than Joy Division ever were, but many of you will never be exposed to that brilliance except through films about their former incarnation. And that is a damn shame
[ Click here to read more ]
Shared on
If you really love music, you listen to it as you might watch a film - you sit down and absorb it. Or you jump around the room to it. You let it flood you for that moment - at least, that's what I have always done if the music is worth listening to. There's certainly no "multi-tasking" allowed when you sit down to watch a film, so why is it that the scourge of our age - marketers - are trying to identify what it is we like to do when we listen to music? The short answer is they want to package the music we listen to into neat little genres which have nothing to do with influences and styles, and everything to do with the consumer's needs - preferably allowing them to listen to music 'products' while they're consuming other items.
A recent survey in the UK, commissioned as part of a "re-branding" of classical music for the younger generation, found that various age groups liked, amongst other activities, to drive, to wind-down after work and to do the housework to classical music. Each question had an activity linked to it - after all, who just listens anymore? You've got to be caught up in a frenzy of other activity which the music helps you achieve... at least, that's how this clumsily designed and patronising market-research would have it. But it's not just classical music being flogged as activity music. If it can't be packaged neatly into a 'lifestyle category', it can't be sold
[ Click here to read more ]
Shared on
Welcome to Rock n Flicks! Here's a (by no means exhaustive) list of the things you can expect to find now that I'm at the helm:
Gig reviews
[ Click here to read more ]
Shared on
Diminutive Liam Finn, with his engaging, affable manner, fisherman’s beard and leprechaun-like appearance, is well suited to the low stage and informality of the Northcote Social Club on a Thursday night. There are lots of shout-outs to the audience, and good-natured banter and horsing about with fellow rock progeny Eliza Jane “EJ” Barnes.
Musically though, it’s straight down to business. Finn is a maestro who manages to be every member of the band rolled into one dynamic if slightly crazed operator, peering intensely over that beard and darting about to twiddle knobs and dodge the obstacle course of wires and microphones around him. And there is something endearing about those pristine white ‘dad’ trainers tapping furiously on the effects peddles
[ Click here to read more ]
Shared on
The last time Billy Bragg played Melbourne he brought a full band which included legendary Small Faces keyboardist Ian McLagan. Many of his best-known anthems had been completely rearranged, for better or worse, and set to rockabilly and calypso rhythms. Billy even danced.
This time it was, as the title of his 1987 collection puts it, back to basics – nothing but the man, his electric guitar and a familiar vulpine reflection cast by the single spotlight on the far stage wall. A return to vintage Bragg – and the man needs no adornment
[ Click here to read more ]
Shared on
The Drones – the group dubbed ‘Australia’s most important band’ – took to the stage at the Corner on Saturday night to a capacity crowd, in one of their final performances before they head to the States to showcase their considerable talents. Velvet Underground-esque support act Snowman set the agenda with a set of haunting, richly layered noise using sax, violin, wide-eyed chanting and at times almost operatic vocals to build a wall of defiant, experimental sound.
The Drones peddle a brand of simple, yet sophisticated dark rock, pioneered by the likes of The Birthday Party and The Dirty Three and energetic front man Gareth Liddiard channels the ghosts of every disgruntled, black-clad loner who ever sat down with his guitar and a chewed pencil
[ Click here to read more ]
Shared on
With their swag of classics like Hold the Line, Rosanna and the ubiquitous Africa, Toto have become synonymous with slick, well-produced pop rock from a time when image and visual trickery was less important than how you sounded on FM radio.
As they approach their 30th anniversary tour, the band join the ranks of a select few – the Stones and U2 spring to mind – who have been together and touring for all that time
[ Click here to read more ]
Shared on
|
|
|
Add Comments
Read More
Comments (4)
Comment by Anna Neon
on Airport Security vs Privacy: new devices may humiliate transgendered
Rock n Flicks