Cultural Detritus, Reviews, and Commentary
Sun Ra – Space Probe El Saturn 527 (1974)
Another interesting one from Sun Ra. Side 1 is an extended experiment with electronics. It is more of an exercise in knob-twisting than a pure keyboard performance. Side 2 hearkens back to the way Sun Ra’s albums were sequenced in the 1960s, with almost the entire second side devoted to the kind of exotica his band recorded extensively in the 1950s. But then “The Conversion of J.P.” turns into a very warm and consonant piano number by the end.
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis – The Heist (2012)
My first encounter with Macklemore was when he appeared on the “Saturday Night Live” TV show. I thought, “Who is this Vanilla Ice motherfucker?” I was not impressed with his performance. At some point I heard “Same Love” on the radio, and thought it was local group Atmosphere. I loved that song. Eventually, I put two and two together and realized the song on the radio was actually Macklemore.
His breakthrough and success is quite fascinating. He and Ryan Lewis have put out what is arguably the most successful independently-released album in U.S. history (though the duo did hire a mainstream company to do promotion, after the album met with initial success). Although it is hard to assess such things, some try. One of the most well-known music sales charts (I’ll let it go nameless, but you know it) changed its method of calculation shortly before the release of this album, which as much as anything allowed independent artists like Macklemore to sneak onto the “charts” and thereby gain credibility in the eyes of the establishment that ignores other measures.
There are a lot of detractors out there though. My take is that they fall into two main camps. The first are part of the deeply conservative core of hip-hop audiences. The sound here is a little more melodic than certain hip-hop and is therefore dismissed by the reductionist essentialists that seem to be helping ensure the genre dies out. Forget them, though. There’s good stuff here, even if The Heist has only about an EP worth of good stuff and a fair amount of filler. The second camp is more insidious. These folks cling to the failed doctrines of identity politics, which posits that minorities and the oppressed should claim their own personas, and essentially guilt the majority into accepting minority power over the majority on the basis of the strength of their personas. In simpler terms, this is the foundation of the “politically correct” movement. It fails, largely, because those in power, or their lackeys, often act like borderline sociopaths — they have no guilt. That, plus identity politics tends to be neutralized by tokenism, something as simple as hiring a minority (“sellout”) to be the lackey. This camp thinks Macklemore shouldn’t be speaking for the LGBT community, or whatever, because he’s not speaking from within it. This sort of view fails because it contradicts itself — if minorities can only speak for themselves because the majority doesn’t understand them, then the majority doesn’t understand them and the “authentic” minority representative will never be understood. It is why Johnny Cash and Marlon Brando made effective champions of Native American causes decades ago (surpassed only by the disruptive power of groups like AIM). Looking at Macklemore, he proves surprisingly articulate here with the amazing, long-overdue “Same Love”. I like to think that if somebody like Macklemore can reach out and make statements like this, in an era when in my state (in the United States) young people turn out in droves to vote down a bigoted, homophobic proposed constitutional referendum while not even bothering to vote for a presidential candidate on the same ballot (true!), I think the future looks like it has promise. Macklemore engages real issues here with compassion and a refreshingly positive attitude.
Hopefully America and the rest of the world can find more ways to make room for independent voices with something to say. The Heist makes an interesting case study of how it was possible for an instant.
Iggy Pop – Skull Ring Virgin 80774 (2003)
Well, I checked this out from the library and popped it in a CD player without paying much attention to what was on it and what it was about. It started okay. It felt like a solid if uneventful rock album, like a latter day counterpart to New Values. There definitely were signs that Iggy was making overtures to the wave of post-Screeching Weasel spastic pop-punk that bands like Sum 41 and Green Day were riding. I couldn’t really dislike what I was hearing thanks to Iggy’s blend of genuine interest and detached irony. Well, soon enough I realized that both Green Day and Sum 41 make guest appearances here. Things start to take a turn for the worse as the sense of irony falls away, leaving something that feels a lot more like pandering. Most disappointing is that Iggy doesn’t pull out any songwriting that matches the best of his last album Beat Em Up. Anyway, for what it’s worth, the tracks with a reunited Stooges lineup are a lot better here than on the truly horrible Stooges reunion disc The Weirdness. Iggy would come back strongly with an entirely new more “mature” pop sound on Préliminaires a few years later.
Iggy Pop – New Values Arista SPART 1092 (1979)
Pretty much state-of-the-art 1970s rock, comparable to The David Johansen Group‘s The David Johansen Group Live, Lou Reed‘s Street Hassle or even the harder parts of Harry Nilsson‘s Nilsson Schmilsson. Iggy is reunited here with two former Stooges, James Williamson and Scott Thurston. Things are somewhat uneven, coming up a little short in the songwriting department more than anything. Still, a few songs like “Five Foot One,” “Girls,” “Tell Me a Story,” and “Curiosity” are decent. Iggy has certainly done better, but he’s done worse too.
Link to a brief by Oxfam International:
Prince & The Revolution – Around the World in a Day Paisley Park 9 25286-1 (1985)
A revealing album in that it foreshadowed the self-indulgent character of a lot of Prince albums to come. Now, this one is still a lot easier to take than the later stuff. It has its moments, as well as a mega-hit in “Raspberry Beret,” but stacked next to Prince’s best work of the 80s this is a little underwhelming.
O(+> – Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic NPG 07822-14624-2 (1999)
Very uneven, but, that’s almost a given in this stage of Prince’s career (he was using the moniker “O(+>”). The opener makes this seem quite promising; it’s a solid tune catchy enough to recall his 80s heyday. Well, that fades fast with a tedious amount of guest spots and lame crossover attempts with whatever was considered “hip” that week. But, then again, a lot of this is pleasant enough filler. If trimmed down by about half, this might have been a lot more listenable. As it stands, it’s a bit frustrating.
Bob Dylan – Blood on the Tracks Columbia PC 33235 (1975)
In a way, isn’t this album everything that New Morning failed to be? What I mean is that New Morning always seemed like Dylan trying to sound contemporary and relevant by making overtures to the California singer-songwriter movement. The problem was Dylan didn’t really fit well into that genre (even if he had moved to Malibu). Blood on the Tracks turned things around and had a more bitter and angry tone, more stripped down instrumentation, more of a narrative lyrical approach, and less demands on Dylan’s limited vocal abilities. The newer approach suits Dylan a whole lot better. One thing that is striking when comparing these two albums is that New Morning seems like it is trying to be personal, while Blood on the Tracks seems like it can’t help being personal. The latter is far more compelling.
Dylan’s marriage was headed for divorce when this album was recorded. That says volumes about the subject matter. These are break-up songs. The protagonists seem hurt, recently, and still hurting. These songs speak from a place too close to the pain to be past or above it. Was the whole relationship wrong from the beginning? Who caused it to go wrong? Who was to blame? Him? What will he do know? Dylan had relocated to California a year earlier, but this music was a return, or sorts, to the kind he had made back in New York, before the move, before things kind of fell apart. He’s looking back to make sense of the past before moving on into the future. There is catharsis at work here.
This isn’t the kind of album that makes for easy listening, at least not on any kind of regular basis. It’s rather surprising it was so popular. But it is a success, and perhaps the last really great album Dylan would make. One of the essentials of his storied career.
Elvis – Good Times RCA CPL1-0475 (1974)
Anyone paying attention to Elvis’ career in the early 1970s, well, more accurately, since his 1968 TV special comeback, should have noticed some fierce music coming from The King. His live shows were rightly a spectacle worth witnessing, and his albums were every bit as good. But all that came to what in hindsight seems like a grinding halt somewhere in late 1972 or early 1973. It was around that time that Elvis performed his historic live via satellite “Aloha from Hawaii” concert, which was good but seemed to still find Elvis starting to slip a little. He wasn’t recording in the studio to speak of, and crummy offerings like Elvis (Fool) and Raised on Rock seem kind of like a slap in the face for fans. Oh, and they hadn’t even been hit with 1974’s scathing tribute to Roe v. Wade Having Fun With Elvis on Stage yet!
So along comes Good Times, recorded at Stax Studios in Memphis, and on paper it looks like Elvis is actually trying again. But then the music plays. This album makes for an excellent case study in how every conceivable decision can be made wrongly during the recording process. The songs, for the most part, are sappy and stupid, the strings and backing vocals treacly and overbearing, and Elvis seems adrift. Case in point is Tony Joe White‘s “I’ve Got a Thing About You Baby,” a song actually suited to Elvis perfectly, but for which there was a superior outtake version that only appeared posthumously on a few collections. The version here has Elvis almost hidden behind strangely echoed vocals, random string passages, dripping piano runs and depressingly satin guitar riffs. Crap-ola like “My Boy” and “I Got a Feelin’ in My Body” seem like the sorts of songs that would be forced on Elvis if he was doing a weekly TV variety show and was running low on material, but an army of largely talentless orchestral arrangers were on hand to adapt cop show background music at the King’s behest. Elvis had, suddenly, become a self-parody. Or so it seems. The same recording sessions produced material for Promised Land, which simply blows this out of the water by comparison, even if Promised Land is no classic. And that really is the final knock on this album. Faced with superior material, it was, for the most part, passed over to release this garbage first. The middle-of-the-road “Talk About the Good Times” sounds alright mostly in comparison to the terrible stuff elsewhere on this platter. But that’s a small consolation. From here on out, Elvis’ problems would be many, both personal and professional. His albums would only intermittently succeed on the strength of a few heartache ballads and down-and-out weepers, on those occasions when his band didn’t spoil the sadness and loneliness in his voice. The good times were mostly over.
