Author: Syd Fablo

The Rolling Stones – Emotional Rescue

Emotional Rescue

The Rolling Stones – Emotional Rescue Rolling Stones Records CUN 39111 (1980)

Like Black and Blue, this is one of those Stones albums that lacks any certifiable “hits” but is nonetheless pretty decent all the way through, for the most part.  It’s rather light fare, vaguely bluesy rock with little undercurrents of disco, ska/reggae, and punk circulating throughout.  Probably not the first Stones album that comes to mind and yet this has to be near the top of the second tier in their catalog.  I do rather like “Let Me Go” and “Dance (Part 1).”  This one has grown on me through the years and it is one of the better later period Stones albums.  Oh, why not say it, “Let Me Go” deserves to be considered up their with the band’s best songs too.

Walt Mink – Bareback Ride

Bareback Ride

Walt Mink – Bareback Ride Caroline CAROL 1737-2 (1993)

Solid 90s alternative rock.  Reminiscent of Smashing Pumpkins, Matthew Sweet, and that sort of thing.  Good guitar.  But thing is, these kinds of records grew on trees back then.  Also, John Kimbrough‘s vocals — super nerdy like They Might Be Giants or The Dead Milkmen — just…don’t work.  It was really the lack of an effective vocalist that kept these guys an underground phenomenon.

Sufjan Stevens – Come on Feel the Illinoise

Come on Feel the Illinoise

Sufjan Stevens – Come on Feel the Illinoise Asthmatic Kitty AKR 014 (2005)

The darling of college radio and the American “indie” rock press, Sufjan Stevens’ Come On Feel the Illinoise  (often mistakenly identified as Illinois) is a sedative for the youngest national public radio demographic. That said, the album is even still a bit of a disappointment. It marks a significant downward slide from Stevens’ wonderful, if flawed, Greetings from Michigan: The Great Lake State. It’s also a lesser effort than his inconsistent but rewarding Seven Swans. The problem, in short, is that Stevens has become the Cole Porter of christian rock. Now, many might say that comparing someone to Cole Porter would be a complement. Understand that it is no complement here.

Cole Porter wrote finely crafted lyrics that wandered aimlessly and unwittingly amid the melodramatic. Porter’s sense of harmony was extremely limited, and he often dwelled on the same harmonies across countless songs. His only redeeming quality really was his blunt use of melody. He could, after all, write some memorable refrains from time to time. Delivering those, without any dressings, was about his only talent.

Sufjan Stevens fairs much the same. Come On Feel the Illinoise is his second entry into a purported series of albums inspired by and ostensibly about each state of the United States. Moving beyond the borders of his home state of Michigan, here he muses on historical persons and events in an effort to pull sentiments from isolated events. Mostly, these quaint attempts overplay the basic implausibility of constructing something genuine in set pieces built around historical tidbits that are the equivalents of popular newspaper headlines. The album also underplays any sense of unity in the subject matter, so that the songs feel like a journal entries documenting a loose tour of the most peripheral regions of the state of Illinois. The pessimism inherent in that approach is only addressed, if at all, through periodic invocations of christian dogma.

The songs tend to recycle ideas from Stevens’ previous albums. Familiar rhythms and harmonies return again and again. In those respects, Stevens works from a limited palate. Repeating himself has offered only slight improvements over his earlier work. This leaves his melodic sense to carry the album. Rather, it carries a few of the album’s songs. The magical “ Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Step Mother!” is buoyed by soft and lively guitar and banjo phrases that gently sway and gently ascend. “The Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders” also comes alive with a lively tempo. “Come On! Feel the Illinoise!” adds lovely counterpoint to the vocals through recurrent string arrangements. Unfortunately, these are rarities. Most other songs are ultimately too ambitious for Steven’s songwriting skills.

Sufjan Stevens has talent. That much is clear from his previous albums. Yet when it comes to songwriting, and historical research, he has proven to be a bit of a philistine. He should get less of his history from the likes of children’s books and newspapers and more from Howard Zinn.

Come On Feel the Illinoise relies too much on an assumption that history offers an escape from reality. On its own merits, the album seems like just another “inoffensive” pop album. It’s a better pop album than most, sure, but not on the level of achievements of the greatest American pop songsmiths. Sufjan Stevens’ self-satisfied righteousness is holding him back from becoming a mature songwriter. It’s time for him to grow, musically.

Don Cherry – Symphony for Improvisers

Symphony for Improvisers

Don Cherry – Symphony for Improvisers Blue Note BST 84247 (1967)

Cherry leads an all-star cast through a “suite” with plenty of space for raging solos.  Some bag on this album because Cherry refined and perfected the style later on Eternal Rhythm, etc.  But taken on its own this is still fine stuff.  The uniformly excellent performances make it worthwhile.  Saxophonist Gato Barbieri has hardly sounded better, Karl Berger is stunning on vibes, and bassist Henry Grimes is sublime.  Count this among Cherry’s best.

Johnny Cash – The Johnny Cash Show

The Johnny Cash Show

Johnny Cash – The Johnny Cash Show Columbia KC 30100 (1970)

Thanks to the mega-success of two live albums recorded in different prisons at the tail end of the 1960s (At Folsom Prison and At San Quentin), Johnny Cash was offered his own TV show on the ABC network that premiered in June of 1969.  It was filmed at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, the former home of the Grand Ole Opry.  Cash had been banned from the Opry a few years earlier after he smashed out all the stage lights with a microphone stand in a drug-fueled fit.  But now he was back as the main attraction.  The show marked the absolute pinnacle of Cash’s popularity.  Broadcast to millions of homes across the country (and rebroadcast internationally), he went from being a star to a cultural icon.  It was a whole new level.  The program was a musical variety show, sort of a country music counterpart to The Lawrence Welk Show.  A lot of big stars appeared on the show over its run.  A sampling of recordings from guests — and Cash — was posthumously featured on The Best of The Johnny Cash TV Show: 1969-1971.  There were country stars, but also rock, folk and comedy performances.  There were regular appearances by familiar supporting musicians like The Carter Family, The Statler Brothers and Carl Perkins.  An orchestra was regularly featured too.

Cash met Kris Kristofferson on the set.  Kristofferson was working as a janitor at the auditorium at the time, yet to really make it as a musician.  Cash performed Kristofferson’s great “Sunday Morning Coming Down” and made it both a hit and the definitive reading.  It’s the clear highlight here.

Cash did a regular “Ride This Train” segment on the show, named after Cash’s 1960 concept album, that featured medleys and stories about Americana themes.  It was a part of the show that Cash felt strongly about, but the Network tried to cut it to please advertisers.  Cash did more religious content over time, and even went so far as to make announcements about his christian faith.

This album, The Johnny Cash Show, only scratches the surface of what was on the TV show.  Only a small fraction of the series has been released on album.  It’s a shame because there were actually many great and interesting performances on the show, worthy of attention.  But what is here is good stuff.  “Sunday Morning Coming down” is definitely the highlight.  Yet every last track is enjoyable.  There is a kind of smoothing over of Cash’s routine.  Don’t expect his trademark rock-inflected boom-chicka-boom rhythm or any joking around.  This is clearly “professional” music aimed at as wide an audience as possible.  Though it doesn’t really lose much, if anything, in cleaning and polishing every facet.  But it is a different side of Cash’s music than just about any of his other albums — even if some video releases into the 1980s have more similarities.

The show ended in March of 1971.  Cash later wrote that he was exhausted from the schedule and felt he had done everything he could with it when it ended.  But it was the network’s decision more than anything, as rural-focused programs were dropped in favor of more urban programming, not to mention Cash’s refusal to cave-in to advertiser demands.  The show did give Cash tremendous exposure, which enabled him to tour incessantly in the following years.  His touring act picked up much of the content and form of the TV show, resembling a sort of traveling Vegas show.

Ironically, while “The Johnny Cash Show” was one of the major successes of his career, and the entire reason many fans knew him in the first place, it became a sort of forgotten aspect of Cash’s legacy for younger listeners.  This album going out of print probably has something to do with that.  While it might not be everyone’s favorite side of his music, it deserves more attention than it has tended to receive.

Gary Burton – Alone at Last

Alone at Last

Gary Burton – Alone at Last Atlantic 1598 (1972)

Excellent solo outing from one of the biggest innovators of the vibraphone.  Burton’s greatest contribution was proving that a jazz musician could take the ostensibly fixed-tone free bar instrument and produce bent notes (by pressing one mallet into a bar to change its natural frequency while impacting it with another mallet).  Alone at Last is something of a template for other great virtuoso solo albums like Bobby McFerrin‘s The Voice and Sonny Sharrock‘s Guitar.

Slavoj Žižek on Law

“The illegitimate violence by which law sustains itself must be concealed at any price, because this concealment is the positive condition of the functioning of law.  Law functions only insofar as its subjects are fooled, insofar as they experience the authority of law as ‘authentic and eternal’ and do not realize ‘the truth about the usurpation’.  That is why Kant is forced, in his Metaphysics of Morals, to forbid any question concerning the origins of legal power: it is by means of precisely such questioning that the stain of this illegitimate violence appears which always soils, like original sin, the purity of the reign of law.”

Slavoj Žižek, “The Limits of the Semiotic Approach to Psychoanalysis,” from Psychoanalysis and… (Feldstein and Sussman, eds., Routledge 1990).

See also, Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852) (“Historical tradition gave rise to the French peasants’ belief in the miracle that a man named Napoleon would bring all glory back to them. And there turned up an individual who claims to be that man because he bears the name Napoleon, in consequence of the Code Napoleon, which decrees: ‘Inquiry into paternity is forbidden.’ After a twenty-year vagabondage and a series of grotesque adventures the legend is consummated, and the man becomes Emperor of the French. The fixed idea of the nephew was realized because it coincided with the fixed idea of the most numerous class of the French people.” [This refers to Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, who was rumored to have been an illegitimate son]) and Walter Bagehot, in The English Constitution and Other Essays (“[The British monarchy:] Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic. We must not bring the Queen into the combat of politics, or she will cease to be reverenced by all combatants.”) and David Hume, Essays, Moral, Political and Literary, Part II, Essay XII “Of the Original Contract” (1758) (“Yet reason tells us, that there is no property in durable objects, such as lands or houses, when carefully examined in passing from hand to hand, but must, in some period, have been founded on fraud and injustice.”)