Radiohead – OK Computer

OK Computer

Radiohead – OK Computer Parlophone 7243 8 55229 2 5 (1997)

Ah, Radiohead.  OK Computer is an album I would analogize to members of the American Democratic political party.  They both present a basic premise that they never really live up to.  They are supposed to be something on one side of the spectrum, but end up being merely a superficially distinguishable version of the same-old, same-old thing on the completely opposite side of the spectrum.  And just as with the Democrats, its hard to understand why the committed don’t recognize this.  For one thing, this album is just The Bends with lesser songs and noticeable electronic effects draped over the top, in an attempt to sound “current”.  Almost all of the best parts of the album are derived from more interesting sources.  I always get the distinct impression that most British rock of the 1990s, like this and Britpop, was just for people who didn’t get the kind of grunge and alternative rock coming out of America but had no better rock to offer.

Anyway, the appeal of Radiohead seems to rest mostly with Thom Yorke‘s voice, which has a frail quality that evokes a helplessness against the weight of the world.  Karl Marx famously said that “Religion … is the opiate of the masses.”  Another guy said, similarly, “Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze, in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man.”  Both meant that religion was a kind of coping mechanism that alleviated symptoms and thereby obviated the need to act to improve material circumstances, that is, to find a cure.  Radiohead fit into much the same framework.  They sell a kind of shared sense of hopelessness as a coping mechanism in lieu of something deeper.  In more concrete terms, they tend to take old music and kind of repeat it, as if there is no possibility of original expression anymore.  Take “Airbag,” which obviously follows the same format as the music of CAN.  And many of the songs, like “Airbag,” start one way then have a changearound part near the end, a gimmick which frequently deploys a lot of electronics, overtures to turntablism, and such.  This gives the impression of a kind of deus ex machina saving grace to the otherwise despairing overtones of the songs.  It is like waiting around for somebody else to swoop in and solve all the world’s problems, and the listener just has to wait for it (and take no affirmative actions in the meantime).  I guess I just fundamentally object to the self-induced hopelessness that this music seeks to foster, and, while I do admire Yorke’s vocal tone most of the time and the production is good when it avoids the electronics, this mostly just can’t hold a candle to the power of its sources of inspiration.  And I can’t help but kind of snicker when people hold this up as intellectual music….  But, frankly, Radiohead has better music out there, for what that is worth.

Overall rating: mostly harmless.

Rage Against the Machine – Rage Against the Machine

Rage Against the Machine

Rage Against the Machine – Rage Against the Machine Epic ZK 52959 (1992)

Basically, no matter how much the politics here (and there are definitely politics at work here) are basically well-intentioned, even correct, it is hard not to think of these guys as complete and total failures.  I mean, almost all my friends loved these guys back in the day.  But did any of my friends really agree with the politics here?  Maybe one, who wasn’t exactly the biggest fan.  It is fueled by adrenaline (and testosterone).  Put this on and just try to sit and listen to it, and it comes across as pretty corny.  Even if Zack de la Rocha‘s vocals are sort of the iconic angry-person’s vocals for its era, the musicianship is sort of barely there across the album.  There is this overt attempt to be the 1990s version of MC5.  But it doesn’t quite get there.  I mean, this all boils down to a rap-metal version of 1970s cock rock.  It’s fist-pumping, high energy stuff, but, isn’t a lot of quite reactionary bullshit just the same?  What draws people to this music is the rather politically neutral raw energy behind it, which can be used for any ends.  And, yeah, plenty of people have pointed this out, but it’s hard to avoid being labeled hypocrites when you name your band “rage against the machine” then sign up with a record label owned by one of the biggest multinational corporations in the world (oops).  These guys could have pulled a Fugazi and maintained some integrity, but they didn’t.  So, that brings us back to the politics, which must be considered either ineffectively conveyed, a mere ploy, or just random shit (though its hard to believe it’s pure random shit given how long these guys have stuck with it).  But whichever it is, this kind of cheapens the politics by making them an irrelevancy.  Damn shame too.

Tina Brooks – True Blue

True Blue

Tina Brooks – True Blue Blue Note BLP 4041 (1960)

No, it doesn’t break any new ground.  But Tina Brooks’ True Blue is probably THE quintessential Blue Note hard bop album — though Sonny Clark‘s Cool Struttin’ deserves a mention in that conversation.  I feel a little sorry for people drooling over Coltrane‘s mediocre Blue Train when they could spend their time with this beauty.

can – Rite Time

Rite Time

can – Rite Time Mercury 838 883-1 (1989)

CAN’s reunion album Rite Time — their final studio album — is often derided by fans.  That is somewhat unfair, as this album is decent, even if it isn’t as nearly as good as their very best.  It is actually best compared to their mid-70s output where more conventional commercial rock crept into the music alongside ambient soundscapes.  Original vocalist Malcolm Mooney initiated the reunion and (re)assumes vocal duties.  “On the Beautiful Side of a Romance” opens the album, and it establishes the unmistakable 1980s production values: compressed drums, a synthetic, trebley feel.  There are a couple of jokey novelty songs up next, which incorporate some sound collage elements.  “Like a New Child” is more ambient, but then “Hoolah Hoolah” goes back to novelty music.  “In the Distance Lies the Future” is the album’s highlight, though it was omitted from the original LP (appearing only on the CD version), a song that bassist Holger Czukay said “became one of my favourite CAN pieces of all time.”  I happen to like this album more than most fans, perhaps because the goofy songs don’t put me off and the 80s production values don’t phase me either.

Johnny Cash – Sings the Ballads of the True West

Sings the Ballads of the True West

Johnny Cash – Sings the Ballads of the True West Columbia C2S 838 (1965)

Listening to Johnny Cash’s double-LP concept album Sings the Ballads of the True West, it’s hard not to think of Marty Robbins‘ legendary album Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs.  Both are thematically focused on the American “wild west” of the late 19th Century.  Cash made attempts to research the era, and locate suitable material.  But like Robbins, Cash ends up with something more like a Hollywood Western than the genuine article, because he’s often backed with an orchestra or modern vocal chorus.  Which is to say that the authenticity found here, if any, lies in the lyrics and the song selection, not so much in the performance.  Still, he manages to convey something of the times, or at least the great historical myth of the times.  A wonderful banjo helps with that feeling.  If The Man in Black developed something of an outlaw’s image, then the tales of gunfighters and hard times on display here did their part to build it in earnest.  He’s definitely interested in this stuff.  More than most of Cash’s concept albums, this one maintains a focus on the underlying theme quite rigorously.  But like pretty much all of these concept albums, quality of the individual tracks varies, and some probably won’t care for the between-track narrations at all.  This still ranks as a solid second-tier Cash album, with the caveat that the pronounced old-west themes might make this less amenable than others to repeated plays — you kind of have to be in the mood.  An abridged, single-LP version of this album was released as Mean as Hell.

The Caravans – The Best of The Caravans

The Best of The Caravans

The Caravans – The Best of The Caravans Savoy DBL 7012 (1977)

In many ways, Albertina Walker‘s Caravans (a group originally founded by Robert Anderson) were the gospel equivalent of Art Blakey‘s Jazz Messengers in the jazz world.  Both worked like a “grad school”, finding and training a huge number of musicians who would go on to notable solo careers.  The number of star vocalists that came through the ranks of the Caravans is quite astounding.  There was “Tina” Walker of course, but also Cassieta George, Inez Andrews, Bessie Griffin, James Herdon, and the big stars Shirley Caesar and James Cleveland.  There were few gospel groups that managed to cultivate such rosters of great singers for such a long period of time.  The Caravans also heralded the stylistic trends that dominated the sound of contemporary gospel in years to come, with bright solos and slightly muddy backing harmonies.  Their style also lent itself to a kind of Vegas-style showmanship too.  The group was definitely a little weaker than some of their contemporaries in terms of arrangements.  This twenty-three song set is exclusively material recorded for the Savoy label in the late 1950s and the bulk of the 1960s (though the liner notes are skimpy as to recording and release information), and there isn’t a tremendous amount of variety.  At a superficial level, though, this is satisfying stuff.

Black Sabbath – Vol 4

Vol 4

Black Sabbath – Vol 4 Vertigo 6360 071 (1972)

It rocks hard.  Very hard.  If ever there was proof that being a great rock band doesn’t require much in the way of musical proficiency, just a lot of style and a good enough singer, then Black Sabbath would have to be it.  Definitely some classic stuff here, with the band in their prime.  Their best album, Master of Reality, is only slightly better.  Aside: listening to this in my CD changer, when “FX” came on I had to check that the player hadn’t switched to Sun Ra‘s Secrets of the Sun suddenly.

The Can – Monster Movie

Monster Movie

The CAN – Monster Movie Music Factory SRS 001 (1969)

Nobody in rock in the late 1960s really approached recording like The CAN (Jaki Liebezeit said the name’s best meaning was as a backronym for Communism Anarchy Nihilism).  No two CAN albums sound alike. On Monster Movie, it is a kind of garage rock drive and primal rhythm that ties much of the album together.  This album sounds like CAN recorded it in a modified garage — though the original album jacket noted that it was actually recorded in a castle. It has that rawness you can’t fabricate if you try. There is a little more substance to CAN’s next few albums, maybe, but Monster Movie is on roughly the same level as their next few albums with vocalist Kenji “Damo” Suzuki.  This is an important facet of CAN’s sound. They could rock out with somewhat straightforward sounds without sounding straightforward at all.  They key was the unabashed interest in rock music as something the equal of modern classical music, which was the background numerous band members came from.

“Father Cannot Yell” ignites the album from the start. It was the first track the group recorded for Monster Movie.  Malcolm “Desse” Mooney laces his incredibly musical fuming into the mix — his overdubbed vocals were basically his audition for the band.  Mooney — a visual artist really — had an innate talent for shouting/chanting lines with cryptic, ominous, and, yes, obnoxious implications.  In live performances he would sometimes pick out an audience member and make him or her uncomfortable by making up lyrics that impugned the character of that person (see “Your Friendly Neighbourhood Whore (1969)” from The Lost Tapes).  On “Father Cannot Yell,” there is kind of a proto-feminist undercurrent, with Mooney seeming to take the side of a young woman against a domineering father.  This is kind of the template for a lot of Mooney’s singing.  He goes into sort of an attack mode, seeking to win listeners over to his position in the process.  Call it a kind of “performance art” or, perhaps, purposeful and noble bullying.  Mooney just had a great vocal intonation for this sort of music: coarse, deep but still a bit nasal.

“Yoo Doo Right” is an “instant composition” (the group didn’t call it improvisation because what they improvised was form). It’s an unusually long (20 minutes) song for 1960s rock. The group had only minimal equipment. They played and when one of the pre-amps started smoking Holger Czukay decided the song was over.  It is the last song on the album, taking up the entire second side of the original LP.  But it is also the clear highlight.  Mooney is less aggressive than on some other songs, and more pensive, but he still is a catalyst for others to launch into furious solos and interludes.

“Mary, Mary So Contrary” is easily the weakest offering.  Mooney chants something from a nursery rhyme, but it lacks the confrontational heroism that is present in most of his best performances.  In hindsight, replacing it with something from the vault-clearing collections Unlimited Edition (“The Empress and the Ukraine King”) or The Lost Tapes (“Millionenspiel (1969),” “Your Friendly Neighbourhood Whore (1969)” or “Midnight Sky” (1968)”) would have improved the album considerably.

“Outside My Door” is the most conventional rock song here.  At least, it isn’t too far from underground rock coming from New York City and maybe San Francisco around this time.  There is a harmonica that weaves a kind of familiar, bluesy melodic thread through the song.  It may not match “Yoo Doo Right” or “Father Cannot Yell,” but neither is it a liability to the album.

Monster Movie was the first album the group released.  Though they did previously record another, tentatively titled Prepared to Meet Thy PNOOM.  The shelved recordings were later released as Delay 1968.  It was difficult to find anyone who would release The CAN’s albums. They resorted to releasing Monster Movie in a limited fashion (it was later re-released internationally on United Artists).  But the rest, as they say, is history.