Music Writing by Carson Arnold
Music Writing by Carson Arnold
DUCK HUNTING FOR RECORDS
Back to basics. The following list are the results of when I unexpectedly decided to throw pool darts, that's right pool darts, at my record collection and randomly annotate which ever album they hit. Let's go!
Vanilla Fudge-- Actually, I lied, I'm gonna do a whole essay entitled: "Doris Day/Dorothy Day-- Sisters??" Nah, just kidding, the needle of the dart went straight through the plastic of both this and their The Beat Goes On album. And ahh, the 'ol Goldfinger cover, real swank (Va-nil-la Fudge, baby) blessed by their song-fungus of Lennon/McCartney covers and whatever else pop-psych these four gifted dorks could travel within the summer of love and falling leaves. I find this one for a buck all the time, and am still amazed by its juice and rocketeer. You got that whole fuzz-box twist going here; organs, loud, lumpy sound, penetrated by the "leak" of sixties Lord. Rock 'n roll, all but killing us.
The Good, The Bad And The Ugly; soundtrack by Ennio Morricone-- "Eh, Blondie, I'm your friend, Blondie." Shucks, Ennio's a genius composer, what can I say? Possibly insane, but under a perception of distinct instrumentation and knowing-- a fiddle? a triangle?-- where to place each glass of sound under whatever dramatic image was belonging on the screen. That opening track-- the beat, the whistle, the slicing guitar, the whop-whop chorus, that weird-ass guy screaming a-ya-yayya-- some crazy rhythm of Spaniard jinx. Nothing comes close to the heft of Morricone's versatile notes, those arrangements, raging through you like the dust of Man, where in a rare moment, the avant-garde and Debussy orchestration collided into one thing...the cinema. That bloody world. A film about three macho men duping one another to the kill. Gold, brother.
Eric Dolphy, Other Aspects-- Damn it all! Tore into the jacket when I threw this last dart! Now what? Found it for ten bucks once and thought I was scoring a sweet deal. Maybe I can sell it back and scoop up this Sarah Vaughn record I've always dug (In The Lonely Hours). I dunno. Everybody's down to the legend about how this record was kept in private storage until decades following Dolphy's death, but no one ever peeps a pop about the wide experience, which to me, like a lot of jazz, is best told with either the tv muted or spacing out from a window within some silent commotion, where in that happening, the quakes of Dolphy's alto retreat feelings of a brave, new passion. Real New York City, you know? "Jim Crow"-- that stairway rip of the sax-- suitable to some early Cassavettes street flick. Or not. It's hot in here! Zip/Zap/Sqeee/Pop/Whap/woooh...
The Doors-- I was talking to this kid once who now works in a factory. We were all sitting in a trailer at two in the afternoon on a Tuesday, playing somebody else's rap music, where he was telling me all this new rock music are all a bunch of faggots and silly queers. "Nirvana sucks, Beach Boys suck, Beatles suck, Pantera rules". Etc. I go, "So what about The Doors?" He looked at me, stunned, almost as though his mother had once pampered him with "Light My Fire" playing somewhere behind on a junked radio-- I had barged into an intimate mold. "The Doors are cool," he slowly nodded. Damn right. I know a lot of guys who all pretend to be Jim Morrison (though it's usually Val Kilmer), and they always fail to grasp one depiction: that voice. The hoarse haunting. But listen, I really can't tolerate "Light My Fire" anymore. Jesus. Maybe Ray's organ windings in the middle, and no way, "The End"?! The opening minute moves like a phantom, the rest (the killer woke before dawn/he puts his boots on), uhh...AND HE WALKED ON DOWN THE HALL! Apocalypse-pop all reefered out on Freud, Greek mythology, and L.A. groupies. Ain't that a recipe? Oh, but lordy, gimme gimme some "Twentieth Century Fox" or "Back Door Man" any day. Real crunch, splashy rock, hexed and loved by California's coastal glory and natural lyric...maybe you even saw it yourself back then if you were able to sneak into the Whiskey. And since we all still like to investigate at high volume if Morrison actually did say the f-word racing outta the "The End", I'll say it for ya. Fuck, that's an amazing record.
Bob Dylan, The Basement Tapes-- Funny, I was just over in Woodstock, New York, roughly where this spook was recorded, where ya can still grasp a sense of exotic chaos strapped in the buckles of the town-- and the odd loops-- very much a heart of these Basement Tapes. Overall, the most interesting aspect of this whole ordeal is all the freaked characters on the front cover; Rick Danko, midgets, ballerinas, fat women; like some organ-grinder convention housed 'neath the streets of asphalt and reality, of which Dylan-- smack at his zenith at that point-- was fleeing from in an attempt to digest the "sensitivity" it took to execute songs like "Desolation Row", and more so, the entire burning bridge of his career. The material here (one big sloppy party with The Band) presented him not as an icon, but your vulnerable pal, undisguised, willing to show signs of weakness, and once again, toying with relation of his listener. But hey, who were they? Booing him at Newport?? You could never tell. Even the plumbing pipes that circulate all through the room emphasize what's going on here: escape, surrender, and failure away from the land of pointing fingers. The music, though? I dunno, perhaps it's an obscure, ugly-duckling of Dylan's image, enabling it to be a cult cracker for anyone willing to play hooky from the "real world" for an hour or two. I'm down with that. But all the maneuvers of Dylan and that fabulous time clash in a kind of idle commotion. The same man who produced "Ballad Of A Thin Man" is here with a blonde nun sitting on his lap; a rash glam of what?...mockery? anarchy? perversity?...It's all good in the end. After all, I did steal this album from my friend's dad who had just dragged it outta...the basement.
Prince, Controversy-- Let the entire 1980's shag its freak-flag against the synth-meat of Prince's keyboards, that bass, that corn-ball melody, the whole rhythm so spangle to that era of confetti and sex of which I was born into. Everything about Prince-- Controversy and 1999, his two best-- extends from a musical and cultural fiasco of that point (later documented in Leonard Cohen's "The Future"), of where instead of petering out into aerial disco, averted into producing excellent, if not perfect, pop songs that were both new and creative as well as enlightening and comical. It was a show, or cabaret, of just how far music could dance. This was the potion far more expensive than entertainment-- no one had to reconsider or redeem what they were hearing, even if ya didn't dig it, it was simply running through yer vessel like wax. Whenever I let the needle sag on to any opening seconds of a Prince record I know I've just stumbled into some frightening, glittery world that can only be exited by riding its rainbow paths straight to its ending slam...never mind the fact that Prince could play the guitar like a devil, too I mean, christ! it's the only thing black folk and white folk can safely agree upon without anybody blowing somebody's head off! Controversy. What a rush-- candy vacuum bubble tease. I'll let Prince throw tha funk to whatever that meant.
Curtis Jones; Super Black Blues, Vol. 2-- Sounding like Lightnin' Hopkins tweaked on some blend of helium, Curtis Jones' piano rolls and lonesome floundering were a weird and sometimes standard mixture to the blues. I like him 'cuz it's as though no one's listening-- no one cares-- like the whole earth is rotating on some deranged spiral of moonshine and all one can do is merely wail across the piano in turn. Honkytonk boogie and 12-bar swigs of illness and must-haves straight outta the scrag voice of a Texan. Time for some Blind Lemon Jefferson. But first...
Ramones, End Of Century-- Yesterday I went and toasted myself to a new rock band, advertised, wrapped in plastic; come get me. So I'm standing there, clueless if I should pay the 12 bucks or not, and so begin asking every customer in the store to what they thought of it. "Not as heavy as their first, but decent." I trust them. I'm alone. I bring it home...it sucks. Bombed. Though in the middle of realizing this and figuring out a quick way to gamble up $12.47 by next week, it occurred to me the one fortune of The Ramones was they couldn't play...and they knew you couldn't either. That was the poetry, the choir of punk, and the sudden impulse of The Ramones, heard like an exploding blister in "Danny Says"; the Spector sound, the doo-wop worship; so classically beautiful, so goddamn dangerous. When you think about music-- "the entire bag"-- and all the catering illusions and drama we sit through under the scope the sound will shift us down to that one final level of essential truth we all crave (love and freedom), and though it often cages us, The Ramones were one of the few artists, yes artists, who could surrender these emotions to the raw, ripped flesh. What fun. May the end of century go down by the grapes of rock 'n roll.
Leonard Cohen, Recent Songs-- (I can see it now:) Hi Leonard...It's Carson again. I was hoping you might accept my proposal for doing an interview. I tried your agent but I think she's changed her address. Anyway, as you well know, you're the only person with whom I'd care to talk to, or in better words, the only "famous" musician I'd ever be half way interested in to discuss "the life"-- the music. The reasons are clear. The impact is out there. "The Partisan"-- you've thrown the document of the world into the eye of the earth, but where are the answers? The things I'd bring up: solitude, the whole collision of Songs In A Room, and most so, the spirals since Recent Songs. I mean, 1979-- people were half dead or half alive, no? I've always detected a sense of happy loathing in Recent Songs, or any of your records, of: where it was exactly you fitted into the seasons. Or maybe it was the same 'ol jury. The dreamer and gypsy, you know? For some reason your voice sounds younger than before, too, even with all the instruments. Sorry, I'm just listening to it right now and can't help but try to contact you, 'cuz you know, ya can hear the lyrics-- those lyrics. I'll be here this evening. Only on Side One, so...Okay, maybe hear from you. Bye.
Alice Coltrane, Transcendence-- Supreme harp melodies of the ancient now feathered by various neglected quartets of classical, jazz, and spiritual levitation, gone blind and lovely. Where were you when this was playing in my head? Her posture is highly underrated, especially those early recordings with Pharaoh Sanders, and though the mood of this record is divided between transparent ice and ritual bends, it floats high above its own stunning arrangements. I have that image of everything starting with Alice-- the sad sitar swaying, bing-bong-wong, bells galloping, pianos humming, soon her hands rowing across the mouth of the harp in circles of complete, lingering joy that is either escaped and never protected more.
Brian Eno, Here Come The Warm Jets-- This record I never listen to and it's a damn classic. When was the last time? A year? When I scraped it up for a buck next to The Eagles? When I listened to one track and threw on Discreet Music instead? I'm a barfly for Eno, I'll admit this, quintessential to his further ambient works in land and stars of sonic, ethereal, and terrifically languid interplay. The marrow of our minds there, the tones, are captured in a weightless fever of, if not, empty architecture. I love it. But this record, his debut...about urination...is a far more innocent cheek to the potholes of glam overture, it's unexpected. Right before he loses his hair and it all goes inward, still horny from the post-Roxy Music adventure, coolly experimenting, rapidly changing, the identity not yet sure. First track with Fripp's guitars, like a dying car battery in a junkyard of other dying cars, the corny melody-land later featured on "Baby's on Fire". Yessir, crazy solo albums like these are endangered in today's value. That distinct twang of pure screwing around that with the right touch could perform miracles upon the slap-happy-- where is it? Bound and gagged? Eno's voice is crisp here ("kaleidoscopic", as some might say), and a breath away from the astral orbit that would crater one year later, herein endured by ten songs of broken sound sentences and loud glee...I am now fully electrocuted, folks.
Nat King Cole, Stay As Sweet As You Are-- Whoa, where am I? Riding a poof of clouds through the ears of a white dining hall? As I am soul attracted (if not turned on) by the genre of "mood (cocktail, lounge, and wallpaper) music", I love Nat for a few reasons. His patience, for one, and that voice-- each phrase climbing to the out-of-breath-- and with this album (god knows where I found it, some bin), it is one more symphonic and vocal mist into the musical sublime. Everything ending in a kind of sad and silent overt. But perfectly. How did they do this, man? Hush...hush...hush...
Pantera, Vulgar Display Of Power-- I hate: rednecks, their gun-racks, the state of Florida, jocks, cops, drunks, golf, green berets, racists, wardens, snowmobiles, people who wanna be called "coach", and anything with a clipboard...As I hate: elitists, politicians, bimbos, priests, lawyers, snobs, snitches, mini-vans, white kids thinking they're black, coffee, rhetoric, gossip, Jay Leno, and people who then ask: "...don't you eat enough?"...And they all hate one another. Thus spoke Pantera. The vulgar display of power and conflict in sheets of suicide and swipe. Monsters. Killer metal. But hey, nothing was heavier than The Beatles. Roar.
Wonderwall Music By George Harrison-- Escape. Music of a heavenly and lovely abort. Sitars, drone flowering sound, fuzz guitars, a soundtrack, and the giddy craziness of being alive under it all. Harrison was so far beyond the steam-roller of the fav four at this point, and in retrospect, those few years in the sixties, was living and producing the very methodical individual that latter Lennon was aching his soul for, if not killing. The Kafka-esque figure on the cover with the umbrella stumbling parallel to a brick wall, with one single brick removed to a hidden world of vixens, lilies, and eternal paradise-- so enchanting (am I invited, George? Really? Permission to leave this planet?). It was as though the unrelated mystery of George in The Beatles was finally here, in crest, in bloom, and visible to all. A toast of raga glimpses from the heart of a rock 'n roll romantic.
--Carson Arnold - September 28th, 2003
copyright 2003 Carson Arnold
H(ear) is an online music column consisting of interviews and articles written by Carson Arnold. As an independent writer and musician living in the woods of Vermont with his family, Carson widely encourages one to submit their art, writing or any interesting piece of material that you would like to share. H(ear) is accepting both promos and demos for review or any other valuable music-related subjects. If you wish to make a comment or would like to receive H(ear) weekly by email please contact Carson at [email protected]
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