Link to an interview with Wolfgang Streeck conducted by Jonah Birch and George Souvlis:
“Social Democracy’s Last Rounds”
Streeck’s comments about inflation might be questionable.
Caetano Veloso – Transa
Caetano Veloso – Transa Philips 6349 026 (1972)
Here is an album for which its greatest strength is a sense of indifference, with the most recognizable features resembling an aftertaste. Caetano Veloso seems distant on Transa. The music has lyrics that are ostensibly personal, but the music throws together many different styles, from different cultures and geographies, rather carelessly. This stands in contrast to Veloso’s own description. He considered it very deliberate, an album that reflected what he tried for. Veloso has named this as a personal favorite of his own work. This also frequently is named one of the best Brazilian rock albums.
The folk-rock of Richie Havens‘ Richard P. Havens, 1983 (1969) seems a fair comparison, though Veloso is inherently more musical in how quickly he shifts from one sound to the next and how disparate and diverse his influences are. Perhaps even Love‘s Forever Changes (1967) is a fair comparison too, if nothing else because of the sense of inward reflection and the confluence of disparate styles. But Transa is a more fluid mashup. For instance, the opener “You Don’t Know Me” suddenly shifts from a mellow guitar line to a quickened pace interrupted by a stark and haunting ascending chord progression lifted from Hendrix‘s “The Wind Cried Mary” on electric guitar, then back to the opening pace, then driven to more intense singing bolstered by propulsive drumming, then by the end of the song the rockish instrumentation is dominated by flamboyant acoustic guitar noodling that inverts the buildup, allowing the song to wrap up with staccato rhythms that blend all the instruments together with Caetano singing in his most didactic and dramatic tone like a deathly serious European chanson à texte or poezja śpiewana singer. The epic progression of the song is completely undersold, especially the way the very conclusion of the song seems to be an unresolved melodic figure, yet it is also the crux of how the song works.
You might say this is a completely existential album. Albert Camus in “The Myth of Sisyphus” wrote, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” For Camus, this meant embracing the absurd, unreasonable world, without any guarantee of meaning, and accepting the need for revolt, freedom, and passion in the face of absurdity. That is more or less what Caetano attempts here, privileging nothing and holding out no hope of any kind of transcendence. This is, ultimately, what separates Transa from Richie Havens, Love, or any of the hippie artists of the North Atlantic region. The song “Neolithic Man” has the lines “I’m in the silence that’s suddenly heard / After the passing of a car.” What is this nonsense! Indeed! This is an album that requires acceptance that Caetano will ramble on about listening to reggae music and what nine out of ten movie stars will make him do (answer: cry), then turn to bongos and kitschy bass lines on a song that is a dirge for his home state in Brazil — he casually asserts that any music, commercial or artistic, can be used to make any point, all without any overt claims to experimentation with form or content. Such acceptance does not come so easily. And so, Transa may not be immediately appealing. Yet it is an album for which an appreciation can grow. I still prefer Veloso’s second self-titled album (AKA Álbum branco) from 1969, but Transa is nonetheless another excellent platter.
The Walker Brothers – Nite Flights
The Walker Brothers – Nite Flights GTO GTLP 033 (1978)
What to make of this? The first four cuts are by Scott Walker, and they are pretty good — especially “The Electrician,” which is an unclassifiable melange of gothic classical, pop crooning, rock and more. The rest of the album borders on the unlistenable. Nothing balances out in the end.
Weather Report – Heavy Weather
Weather Report – Heavy Weather Columbia PC 34418 (1977)
“Sellouts,” “boring,” “pandering,” “overly slick,” “crassly commercial,” “unchallenging.” You’ll find all those criticisms and more about Weather Report. At least with Heavy Weather they are pretty much all true. Yet you’ll hardly find more well-played schlock anywhere.
The Music Room
জলসাঘর [Jalsaghar; The Music Room] (1958)
Arora
Director: সত্যজিৎ রায় [Satyajit Ray]
Main Cast: Chhabi Biswas, Gangapada Basu, Padmadevi, Kali Sarkar
Satyajit Ray was a director who mostly followed the lead of cinema in other countries. The Music Room is basically an Indian re-make of Sunset Boulevard (1950). It is the story of a Raj (Chhabi Biswas) who admires music, but whose royal estate has dwindled due to some sort of flooding (the explanation in the film is cursory and implausible). He is nearly broke. A nouveau riche moneylender (Gangapada Basu) arrives and as a matter of pride the Raj spends the small remainder of his funds on a concert held in his palace music room, to show up the businessman and assert his hereditary superiority. The culmination of the film is a lengthy music and dance performance. But the best individual moment is perhaps when a servant is shaking incense or something at the concert guests, and when the businessman recoils the servant makes a point to shake some more of it at him. The film suffers from having no likable characters. The aging Raj seems like a fool, and the sniveling businessman is insufferable. The servants and musicians offer no significant independent perspective in the film. Most significantly, though, the film’s exploration of social class is considerably less daring when set in a caste-based society than when Sunset Boulevard explored class conflict and social prestige in a society that denies the existence of class. The Music Room takes much too much for granted in casting archetypes: the Raj, the moneylender. As a study in the vices of pride and hubris, this doesn’t offer much in the way of depth. But the big musical number has its own value independent of the film.
The Best of Johann Sebastian Bach
Various Artists – The Best of Johann Sebastian Bach Excelsior EXL-2-4217 (1993)
Some of the individual recordings here can be sloppy at times and the sound quality is only fair, but I think this budget-priced Bach “sampler” album maintains a more authentic Baroque feel than many others. That said, even while this may not be an ideal collection of Bach recordings, I find myself listening to it quite regularly. The performance of Italian Concerto in F Major BWV 971 by Christiane Jaccottet on harpsichord is the highlight for me.
Jim O’Rourke – Bad Timing
Jim O’Rourke – Bad Timing Drag City DC120 (1997)
If you followed what Jim O’Rourke was up to with Gastr del Sol, his fascination with John Fahey so evident on Bad Timing should come as no surprise. It’s a decent album, perhaps a bit bland. The thing is, why not just listen to a Fahey album instead? Anyway, O’Rourke would go on to bigger and better things in the next few years, particularly the magnificent Halfway to a Threeway and Insignificance.
New York Dolls – One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This
New York Dolls – One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This Roadrunner 168 618 045-2 (2006)
Can’t say this is likely to ever please me to the extent the album title implies. Now, I’m certainly not opposed the the idea of the New York Dolls reuniting with a drastically different lineup, decades later. In fact, I rather like Cause I Sez So (especially its title track and “Better Than You”) and Dancing Backward in High Heels. The secret to this band is undoubtedly David Johansen and his songwriting and vocal presence. Here the focus is a little nostalgic, with a sound updated but still rooted in that of the classic Dolls. I just prefer the change for the next studio outing, with its emphasis on a more mature and contemporary sound, complete with bolder attempts to take chances messing with the formulas old and new. And I much prefer the overtly pre-Dolls retro pop of Dancing Backward.
Hud
Hud (1963)
Paramount Pictures
Director: Martin Ritt
Main Cast: Paul Newman, Patricia Neal, Melvyn Douglas, Brandon De Wilde
One of those rare times Hollywood delivers a movie worth watching. This might be seen as an early warning shot of the “New Hollywood” movement. The drama involves an old fool rancher (Melvyn Douglas) in a state of desperate denial, clinging to old values as the world changes around him. He disavows his sanctimonious nature, which forces his son Hud (Paul Newman) to become everything that Douglas’ character hates. On Turner Classic Movies, Robert Osborne describes it as Douglas’ morality vs. Newman’s amorality. That seems like a ridiculous view. Newman has morality, of a kind, it is just antithetical to everything Douglas’ character stands for. Hud is a womanizing drunkard, and hardly a conventionally likable character. But he’s a character true to his circumstances. He highlights how Douglas’ character denies his oppressiveness and closed-mindedness, by revealing how Hud sees no other option to preserve his dignity. On the surface, Hud creates problems, but as the movie progresses, he comes across as someone fighting back — perhaps in a futile, excessive way, but fighting back nonetheless. The cruelty of the human characters is underscored by the casual animal cruelty on the ranch. Everybody leaves Hud in the end, but that suits him just fine. The ending is kind of fitting. Hud wins out. He gets no real satisfaction in it though.
This is just a really well-made film too. There is music in the film, but usually the stark black & white cinematography speaks for itself. Much of the music comes from characters turning on a radio or jukebox. Of course there is great acting throughout. Osborne called Patricia Neal’s performance one of the best of the decade and he’ll get no major argument here even for such a bold claim. And this might be Newman at his very best. He throws all the charisma he can behind a character that seems to deserve none of it, and that underscores the tensions and contradictions of the character’s situation eloquently.
Nick Drake – Bryter Layter
Nick Drake – Bryter Layter Island ILPS 9134 (1971)
If you will bear with the analogy a bit, Nick Drake’s music in some ways represented an alternate path from that of Neil Young. Both artists represented ways of dealing with the failure of the 1960s counter-cultural movement. In Young’s case, he did two main things. One, he played scuzzy, grungy electric guitar in a way that scared off those not attuned to the counterculture. That approach proved difficult to maintain though the drug-fueled hedonism of the 1970s. He made a good go of it though! Second, he incorporated country music into his sound, suggesting that he looked for support beyond urban environs, toward the rural dispossessed. All these things had Young carving out a separate space away from mainstream culture.
Nick Drake approached conventional pop music unabashedly. In a way, he was adapting to and working with mainstream pop. But he was also reformulating it. Bryter Layter, frequently described as an extension of his debut Five Leaves Left and the most hopeful of his three albums, comes closest to radio pop. But his attitude toward mainstream pop is to wonder about his place in it. His pop music innovation is his reflexive approach to it. Most of these songs are about the hope and promise of the future, approached with trepidation and uncertainty. Drake sings with a breathy, waif-like voice. He seems to pursue a very radical christian program of fighting his battles with weakness. But unlike Neil Young, Drake heads right for mainstream music with his deeply personal take on it. What links the two seemingly disparate performers is that neither can accept the extroverted world as it is. What differentiates them most is the lack of catharsis in Drake’s music — that is kind of the defining trait of Young’s music. Making music seems almost to deplete Drake, but he makes his music anyway.
There are a few songs on this album that seem a bit saccharine: “At the Chime of a City Clock,” “Bryter Layter” and “Hazey Jane I.” But there are more that weave a richly compelling sonic fabric: “One of These Things First,” “Northern Sky,” and “Hazey Jane II.” Drake may have the qualities of a poor little rich kid, but his music also stands as an example of the best that can come of such circumstances. This isn’t Drake’s best album — that would be Pink Moon. It is still a pleasant one, and Drake doesn’t have a bad album to his name.