Television – Live at the Old Waldorf

Live at the Old Waldorf, San Francisco, 6/29/78

Television – Live at the Old Waldorf, San Francisco, 6/29/78 Rhino Handmade RHM2 7846 (2003)

Television could walk a fine line between long and winding but still captivating and intense guitar soloing and slightly tedious guitar wankery.  You get some of both here.  The sound is pretty clear, but for raw power this can’t touch The Blow Up (which excises all of the wankery).  This is reminiscent somewhat of all those Grateful Dead live discs that may amuse obsessive fans but just seem superfluous to most everyone else.

The Beach Boys – M.I.U. Album

M.I.U. Album

The Beach Boys – M.I.U. Album Brother Records MSK 2268 (1978)

M.I.U. Album is not quite as bad as its reputation suggests.  That isn’t to say it’s a particularly good record.  The first two songs and even “Pitter Patter” have some good energy, but this is slight at best, and typically quite nondescript.  The band sounds rather disinterested and unmotivated most of the time.  The vocals can be downright lazy.  There is nothing memorable here — except maybe the so-weird-it’s-funny “Hey Little Tomboy”.  But slight or not some of the songs are good fun, and the production is serviceable.  This doesn’t induce quite as many cringes as say, The Beach Boys seven years later.  Make no mistake, though, there definitely are still cringe-worthy moments here, particularly at the end (“My Diane,” “Match Point of Our Love,” “Winds of Change”).  Truthfully, if the Boys had taken the best material from this album and their next one L.A. (Light Album) and made just one album from it, they would have had something decent, or at least better than either one individually.

The Beach Boys – The Beach Boys

The Beach Boys

The Beach Boys – The Beach Boys Caribou FZ 39946 (1985)

Where to begin?  For better or worse, but usually for worse, this sounds like a mainstream lite pop record from the mid-1980s, heavy on synths and drum machines.  The problem is that it sounds extremely dated now, and much of the material is exceptionally poor.  The first two songs aren’t bad really, with “Getcha Back” echoing the group’s old sound recast with 80s textures and “It’s Gettin’ Late” being a convincing take on contemporary — if average — pop.  From there, it’s just varying degrees of embarrassment, including a song aping Stevie Wonder‘s then-current sound.

King Geedorah – Take Me to Your Leader

Take Me To Your Leader

King Geedorah – Take Me to Your Leader Big Dada BDCD051 (2003)

Take Me to Your Leader is an unusual hip-hop album. Rapping from the assortment of guest MCs isn’t the focus. Instead, MF Doom (a/k/a Daniel Dumile, the man behind the mask, the curtain, and this album) floats monster movie sound clips across a gently flowing mix of cartoonish pop samples. This creates a dense soundscape that is more cinematic than average b-boy fronting.

When lyrics are present, the theme of a three-headed monster from outer space definitely emerges, among resolute sentiments of hope, determination, and wonder recalling Curtis Mayfield. The abundance of the orchestral strings samples only reinforces the likenesses to Curtis Mayfield. Move on up! Hostile tyrants, attackers, and outright monsters won’t stop the good and determined ones. This triumph over adversity is palpable.

MF Doom uses lethargic tempos to his advantage. Placing easy listening schmaltz — complete with mushy strings and syrupy guitars — on an indistinct bed of murky beats takes the music out of the typical rap battle arena.  Take Me to Your Leader is a fight where all elements conspire together, as one amorphous mass. I wanted to reach out, place my finger on this album. To have control over how a single part of it makes me feel. Instead it stupefied me: “Take that.” I almost expected to hear that spoken.

If I weren’t a decayed, empty being, I might love comic books, video games, and monster movies. Whatever is missing in me, replaced by dead matter, I can still recognize that King Geedorah, or MF Doom, has his own loves to champion. Recurrent obstacles won’t dog him too much. He will save this planet! Or at least will he convince me to save someone myself?  Or just save myself?

Jodi Kantor and David Streitfeld – Inside Amazon

Link to an article by Jodi Kantor and David Streitfeld:

“Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace”

Bonus link: “Amazon’s Brutal Workplace Is an Indicator of an Inhumane Economy” and “Undercover at Amazon: Exhausted Humans Are Inefficient So Robots Are Taking Over” and “Amazon Must Be Stopped” (this stops well short of suggesting [inter-]nationalization, which seems quite appropriate) and “Giving Amazon’s Side of the Story”

The Incredible String Band – Wee Tam & The Big Huge

Wee Tam & The Big Huge

The Incredible String Band – Wee Tam & The Big Huge Elektra EKS 74036/37 (1968)

The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter is their best, but Wee Tam & The Big Huge may well be my favorite — it’s the one I reach for most often.  Robin Williamson emerges as a strong songwriter.  As before, there is still a lot of worldly post-modern folk eclecticism at work.  Maybe a bit fewer improvisational surprises.  But even a streamlined “Log Cabin Home in the Sky” is a pure delight.  Looking back upon ISB’s two albums from 1968 it would be hard to argue they weren’t the pinnacle of psychedelic folk.

Pere Ubu – The Modern Dance

The Modern Dance

Pere Ubu – The Modern Dance Blank Records 001 (1978)

Pere Ubu made music in bold, sweeping motions. Their full-length debut The Modern Dance is a freewheeling album. It puts Allen Ravenstine‘s tape manipulation precariously in front of the rather isolated guitars. This album is much easier to decipher than its follow-up Dub Housing. The Modern Dance is quite open about its motivations. It looks for something new. The dang thing holds up because it found something new. But also because it makes a sincere effort to preserve the group’s own identity.

The Modern Dance still has a lot in common with the group that spawned them, Rocket from the Tombs. The Rocket song “Life Stinks” by Peter Laughner keeps the old energy alive — for the most part. Refined as it is, “Life Stinks” is still one of those songs that can rile even the most hardened listener.

I respect any band that refuses to fabricate straight answers. Sometimes there are none.   Sometimes there are only mangled lies showing the appearance of truth. Take “Humor Me” for example. It takes aim at the biggest joke in human history: western “civilization”. And with no apologies! While these continuous attacks on the social bell curve kept Pere Ubu an underground act, they also elevated the group to a level worthy of their namesake (the name Pere Ubu was drawn from Alfred Jarry‘s play Ubu Roi).

There are many levels of understanding the world. Some people just “get it” in a way others don’t. That’s what “The Modern Dance” is all about. Many things happen on levels that some march right past. Pere Ubu wasn’t just some band that heads for easy results-oriented nonsense. They came from Cleveland. So of course despair, isolation and suffering are the most familiar themes. More surprising though is how fatalistic The Modern Dance is. References to concrete destiny are everywhere.

The album’s best songs are full of many intricate layers. “Chinese Radiation” bleeds with sentimental washes from an acoustic guitar, running over the electronic background. A carefully deployed piano resonates with slowly pounded chords.

“Non-Alignment Pact” is genius as an album opener. It starts with a looping, screeching blast like a siren. Only after the noise has its time out front do the guitars and the rest of the band join in. “Non-Alignment Pact” is a great twisted take on a love song. Actually, I’m not sure it’s supposed to be a love song, but I hear it as one. Other love songs speak in the positive. This one is about not making other allegiances. What matters is what is excluded. A punk love song would almost have to be that way.

Pere Ubu’s next two albums (Dub Housing and New Picnic Time) improved on some of the stranger experiments of this debut. But The Modern Dance has its own kind of tightly channeled manic energy, and, frankly, somewhat more consistently catchy songs as such. Experiencing it is consistently refreshing.