Music Writing by Carson Arnold
Music Writing by Carson Arnold
GREENSLEEVES TO VERNON REID
(1 pm: Phone rings.) It happened like this. A few friends and I were all driving in this car together one warm evening, all of 'em basically clueless to who Iggy Pop is. "I don't think I've ever heard Iggy Pop before," one girl curiously admitted to me from the backseat. "Well," I grinned, "check it out." SO, naturally I woofed along good 'ol Raw Power among a few other hyenas in some surrendering hope or persuasion that the waxy aroma of poodle-powder that groomed our way to 4th July Fireworks would be at least rioted up with a little of "Search And Destroy" opening stampede of lion juice. Why? Why not? WRONG. 'Twasn't. Too bad, too, cos' for a bunch of Marilyn Mansoners, the reissue of Raw Power could be one of the most VOLATILE, SINISTER storms of JIG-SAW-SLING leveled into the core of the earth. To clarify, the good boy was paddled down, and as the air-conditioning sprayed louder than Iggy himself right around "Gimme Danger" a few miles up the road, the whole entire yowl was killed indefinitely. Dig that?? When arriving some half hour later among a chain-smoke-hulk of parked cars and fried-dough mania, I glimpsed, yelping, "eh, where's my Iggy cd?" They all laughed, "on the floor...where he belongs!" And on we boogied into the kerosene carnival of disco-cotton, hot-pants, and old probation friends gathered underneath the lit broiler of exploding confetti and mascara drooze. My god, pour us all into a cello now and let 'er weep. (8 pm: "I'm tellin' you, Carson, you're crusty and cynical," she began. "Are you recording me?" I said: "I dunno, someone's having a cookout over there, look. We could go over there and just...".) Lesson One: you don't need to go to fireworks in order to see them. Really. They exist and rest within the flush of every swelling eye- it is alive, and better, it is real- and Iggy, the mother bee of this human sting, was one to tell you this. A screaming tire o' fire outta the vast melting-pot...Whatever that meant...Anyway, we love our friends, and I coughed up a fine soar-throat cos' apparently I talk about it too much, and later on that night vividly dreamt about whether the neon of our sacred rock 'n roll was indeed, well, dead or finished, and the lash we were currently succumbed to now was just a deprived scheme of repeatedly running-the-bull 'round the block; without end, without definition or bloom, nor silence. Like leaving a scarecrow to remind you of the remnants of the garden it all once was...Stuffing the ol' huggy teddy-bear 'neath the stained mattress...Ah, pretending people really care.
"Where are all the hitch-hikers this time of night?" I remarked, chuckling as they ushered me home 'round midnight. Silence.
"Hey, maybe I should git out and walk, why not, you know?"
Silence. Then: "Why would you wanna do that?," one of 'em sneered. "It's dangerous. You could get hit by a car or something."
"Uhh...Not at all. These are dirt roads anyway, you can see. Plus, you'll experience something. Meet something or somebody, you know."
Pause. "So...wait- you would really get out of this car? Really? Why?"
"...For the spirit of it, I guess. Just to get out of this whole...air-conditioning way-of-life, I suppose. Live a little. Fresh air. Something." I clutched Iggy.
Silence. "Yeah, but like, when you get picked up by another car you'll be in air-conditioning, won't you?" Their victory laugh resumed, and I, parched and wasted, could do no more than hum along. "Right."
How 'bout it, Iggy, shall there be life prevailing beyond this dashboard? How 'bout it, Son? Don Giovanni? Vernon Reid? You. Me. SOMEBODY!!! Lesson Two: Always sleep naked. (8:01 pm: "I don't like that word... crusty," someone near us cringed. The sun went down in galoshes. Boom.)
There's a quiet moment y'all may remember during Monterey Pop where Hendrix, before he swallows his guitar into a turkey of yellow flames, love-massacres it up the stage, each smash erecting a ghastly siren of thuds, and carefully tossing all shattered remains into one stunned jello of an audience, he crouches down to kiss its stained neck, specking his lips with streams of lighter-fluid he had previously doused it with, great minutes earlier warning the crowd with fingers drilled to his ear, that this hereupon "Wild Thing" of-all-songs-on-soil was gonna be, cats, LOUD. So huddle close, children, and grab yer ears, loved ones. Shhyea', not only was it loud, not only was it an umbrella of atomic thunder, man, it was artery napalm, and if not that, then amazing, unheard juice from the rock 'n roll bible pocketed within the sashing hips of every girl, boy, man, and woman ACROSS THE UNI-VERSE. Look here: Hendrix was never neural, never cosmic, or any of that sonic slop...never mind that, you and I really don't know what he was, so cool it; just a bleeding aurora that stepped and emerged behind us as we clued around the wall of the impeccable. Let's just say, gang, 'Drix was the absolute Wonka Bar, and it's okay to admit Jimi's your damn hero, dude. After all, spelled backwards, it's "Imij" (J. Morrison scrambled is "Mojo Resin": an excerpt of "LA Woman"). And to borrow a petal from Jimi's performance at the Pop chillin' to the crowd before shredding into "Foxy Lady", he shovels over this wise, ranting chant: heh, as ya can see my fingers are movin' right here, man, but there's no sound as you can see...But DIG THIS...Phu-Vam, instantaneously he rockets the volume skyward into an 'olatern of meowing, sick kittens, where anybody, if-you're-anybody, is spellbounded how this same guitar had the capability to formerly deliver us The Association's tid-winks earlier one night, where the moon-went-down and the sun-came-up for the moon to jaw us into a blazing oblivion the following night with this exploding cake of appeal, electricity, and indestructible charge (or, just one perpetual acid creation. I dunno). 'Frisco and the rings of this world would still never recover from its bevies fox-fire, no way; not a generational vestige as Scott McKenzie's weeping "If You're Going To San Fransisco" song, but a glow, dueling within the racing carnage of all free runners. Check it: mute Hendrix's on yer tv and dub over Alan Hovhaness' "Andante espressivo" (a guy who was composing Debussyian scores far, far more beautiful right as Cage was on his deathbed; atonality is against nature. Proving it is purely possible for harmony to sojourn in a land of noise mischief), and with a patient, floating mind, you just may discover and wed the drama of these quiet, feeble frames of rock n' roll's weightless twilight. The same goes for listening to June Carter Cash while under hypnosis of a street bustling with lunch-hour pace. That, man, or just gaze into Janis Joplin's blue lizard-wine eyes and find yer ice color of choice there. Yeah, it blew The Who's act to bits, man. Axls SO bold as love and Pete Towneshend SO determined he was an ass-kick better guitarist than Jimi and Jeff Beck binded together on Clapton's fret-board, and he knew he wasn't, you knew he wasn't, and the whole raisin of the summer-of-love knew he wasn't, and thus totally ego-raged and distraught into C-chord grag, leaving really the only remedy for Petie bagged to boil: he should've died a long time ago. The Who, sure, they were cool. Keith Moon, though, way cooler. Criminally insane to the wits. Like Muddy Waters, Handel, or even Rob Zombie, he lived the "imij" of rock to its highest petroleum, siege, and hunt, and actually, now that I think of it, The Who, despite their why dont'cha all f-f-fade away tomahawk ooze, foretold a far more holy and divine chapter into the unsigned circuit of our future: YOU ARE FOR-GIV-EN! (Later. 11:30 pm: "No, it doesn't make me 'wonder' about all these people," she replied, "it just makes me care.") Like Jim Shepard's cackle-fist with WE-ARE-THE-UNDERGROUND! or Curtis Mayfield's IF-THERE'S-HELL-BELOW-WE'RE-ALL-GONNA-GO! AHHHHH!, there are only a handful of lyrics like this in rock, and they commonly derive outta the humid, juke tremor of the Blues (Skip James) or outta some angel remorse of the opera whoop (Puccini, Verdi- romance!!- Berlioz was too confound. Mozart, too humorous). Kid yourself not, kid, you ain't safe wherever you stand with this one. A real Cupid molotov, where the queer image of flower-power hung under a booth of confession somehow- don't ask why- reminds me of my friend Bert who had a lyric that sang "roses, wet with rain" in one of his songs he recorded winter tapes back on a rusty child's toy. And trekking back to Jimi, it's more than ironic to warn a stung-alive audience 'neath the chimed coda of '67 that they should primarily censor their ears while here ad mist was a black man with an icon volcano of sparkling sex, feedback, and overdrive hack. Cover your ears? Why not your eyes? But hey, then again, as we speak, I know plenty who have and do. (Once back in seventh-grade during band rehearsal a girl leaned back from her trumpet, shaking her head: "Jimi Hendrix sucks, Carson. Don't you own any other t-shirts?". Bizarre enough, she lent me careful instructions on how to kiss a month later and was notorious for painting all her finger-nails with wet white-out). No more for a second will they tolerate the natural collision of someone kissing their guitar before torching it twisted, no way, nor a black man unless of course he's rappin', and thus, a-okay, but only under leathered auto-restrictions. So if you ask me, I have no clue to why I mentioned any of this, but, who really knows why anyone chooses to play a guitar solo either. They don't, man, they just do. (Composer Carl Ruggles spent a lifetime dwelling over our instinct between notes and why. The quest for such quality led him to be quite an old man with very little scores to show. Born some years after the Civil War, best pals with Charles Ives, dying when The Beatles broke-up...a damn life. Here's a toast.) One thing's for certain, though: Flip your radio on, dial it to the skids, and try to locate some fresh, echoing guitar solo within the sizzling kasper...and you won't. Trust me. Not anymore. Farewell old parlor jukebox. Hand me that i.v, crank the ventilation, kill yer local Iggy, and let 'er cruise 'till ya snooze...
On any account, we of rock and abroad should thank our stars for Vernon Reid. (8:15 pm: giggling.) He has the soul ability to prevent us from falling asleep at the wheel, knows why-to-the-sky a guitar-solo has been dearly invented, and yes, reminds us that oceans do indeed exist on this round earth of fumes and fury. Especially the raunch with his former band Living Colour. More especially on his '96 solo-break Mistaken Identity. Most especially on the track "Saint Cobain". And quintessential when you're splattered in the middle of some bubble of a situation and all that relentlessly rockets through your mind as they speak of fluff is: How-In-The-World-Did-I-Get-Here-And-Who-Are-These-People-And-Should-I-Smile-Or-Scream-And-Why?: Vernon's six-string zuni will fawn catastrophe almost like watching the first grave dug in a brand new cemetery yonder up blueberry hill. It can be safely said that Rock Music- and oh, you know it well- has succeeded by the nursery of rifts like Vernon's, and in return, has been enslaved by the great odyssey for such a mammoth thing, and foremost, promise. Thus, the damnation; the noise, the industry, the talk, and all the clever words in attempt to guarantee that such a land so easily seen and heard ain't no myth at all. But it's all a joke; the whole road and crew of it; a joke. A false, silly, imaginary stockpile of lame minutes. So with a guitar right now, do us a favor, blow it all sky high, dig those fireworks, and allow me to finally baptize Mistaken Identity into the endless night.
(Explosions everywhere. 8:30 pm: "Happy New Year, Carson," she smiled. I had said earlier, "4th of July makes more sense than New Year's, I think." And...) I can tell you from first-hand experience it is utterly embarrassing to blast Nirvana's lyric HERE WE ARE NOW ENTERTAIN US! within a public square of a sort; driving in cars through stoned parking lots, crow-magnum face outward. Humiliating. I would never feel this, though, for Vernon's album, or better, his snarling tooth with ol' Living Colour. Yet, even despite the leadership led by the howl of Corey Glover's black-man-know-your-place verses, their sound always fell short of being anything beyond the disfigure of pop n' rock that trails back into the XXX-joyride recess of Guns n' Roses (A day earlier: "Guns' is wicked," he said. "Yeah, right here, right now," I said. "Turn it up!"), Motley Crue, and probably a little closer in smokin' shells to Bad Brains housing. LOUD guitars and sweaty beats- it all makes us squirm, but tends to border on a narrative of flim-flam amusement and ground-control-to-major-Boo-yah, that, in short, is fun 'n stuff, but screams we're a SON-OF-A-BITCH!! for rightly thinking so. Cool. From there, I can only assume and perhaps lie, that Vernon wasn't too satisfied as the steel scrooge behind this act; too much Pete Towneshend and not enough Ornette Coleman makes jack a dull boy, right? The remedy? Snowball outta there so incredibly fast the lightning arouses a wet hatchet of never-ending guitar solos and licks that cornerstone one hellofa' miracle album. Backed by the torn shackles of his new band Masque- ousted with clarinets, theremins, with DJ Logic scratching the ink-to-wink- it consists mostly of instrumental sex, binded by a cohesion of sailing guitar notes every-which-way, rhythms so bad they bite, and heaved by the blood of our rock 'n roll fable, embodied by the lips of jazz, rap, and Afro spear. It is indeed the primordial whiplash, where, for perhaps in one of the very few times in any recent paradox, the initial kin of rock- the blues- has circled back 'round to reveal and retribute its original traces of stolen glory. Yes, I would mug Chuck Berry if he didn't own this one, cos' I would like to know what Brian Jones died for! You dig? The blackface statue on both the cover and the inside jacket should enforce this without any further mural, and the music, most certainly- god yes- with all sixteen werewolf tracks, should speak non more than the clashing fur which sheds like an Ann Peebles flick overturned by Mississippi John Hurt. Tank this electric unicorn until you buzz. Music, resilient, guitars so unhabitual, the whole thing SCREAMIN' at you in a devoured escape, like five various symphonies all slamming into one other at the crossroads in one heaping calamity. But the sun above weds thee true, and the devil's pitchfork never tasted sharper to stab and kiss right-on. I love this album. Among opening up the rest of the cover and exclaiming a mirage of voices and herds, listening to the music with modest samples of Lightning Hopkins and John Lee Hooker animated in, I myself was not but a pip when my father first introduced me to Mistaken Identity back in its arrival of '96, and while presently in the most bewildered stage of incredulous youth ("New Years?!," they shouted. She then later replied, "Carson, you 'are' a bit jaded...Here, put this ribbon on, you'll look like Kurt Cobain, you will."), the album's bonfire has yet to voyage from the intimacy of past. I love this album. It's like good Count Basie, or a warm thunderstorm without rain. I already said that, I know, but from what I can bounce off the dribble of today's geisher, Vernon Reid, and anything like him- anything- has the incubus to savage pass and avoid such a conversation I recorded with a kid off the street some year or so back, where he doped:
"Man, I was in the trees, protecting them, you know, from the great injustice of ourselves...on the impact of us coming out of the trees and using our opposable thumbs...and...and going away from appreciation...and...this point where there was Jesus and Zero...that point where Zero became...and is it better for Jesus to exist to save some, then for God to have never made people to come off the tree...like...like allow Satan to like, talk people down from the tree."
I have no clue. I am not here. I just like music. Scary, but that might be all I like. Consequently, I noted his girlfriend carried a Mazzy Star record in her hip satchel. I handed out my whereabouts, but never heard a thing but strange days preceding. Another incident of tape-ribbon water, was a bongo player walking up the street. I had previously exited out of a parking-garage experimenting with various sound muckings and was in the present mink for a little foul or lovely rant to bud. He slapped his drum under a jig, did a chant, and hollered: "What's this for anyway, man, a commercial or something??" I smiled: "Nah, it's for music, an album, I guess." He laughed and replied: "I wanna hear my voice on an album someday!! Make sure!," and then handed me a pink flyer where I was promised to receive ten-percent off any bongo of my choice until so-and-so date expired. Well, there you are. (8:43 pm: "I didn't mean to call you jaded," she added. "I consider you one of my better friends, Carson. You're the only one I don't get annoyed with, okay?" The Bee-Gees played behind us as we sat down on the grass where I turned to...)
For a thicker crust: Take this record and play throughout the halls of any given music conservatory, and be alert to AT LEAST give a prepared speech to how Mistaken Identity is just as relevant to Sidney Bechet. I ain't kiddin' ya'! More so, Haydn and Mussorgsky to Metallica. Holy mother's cat, whaddaya' mean you haven't caught on to "Night On Bald Mountain"? It's absolute heavy-metal! Not because it should, but because it is. Even the film Fantasia latched on to that much. Same goes for Mendelssohn, whose open-curtain to most pieces are identical in structure to much of speed-metal's crock, psychotic bridges. Even if you gleam over any Pantera rift, they are strictly reminiscent to much of the Baroque period of rifle wizardry. Not Rachmaninoff, though; he belongs to a far different beam of melodious exotica very rare in metal, found elsewhere in the arches of earlier psychedelia (his seven dawning preludes esp.). (8:50 pm: "All I meant by it, was that there are some real cool people in this world that you may overlook, that's all," she responded. "I'm talking to one right now," I answered. We smiled on. Two days prior: "I wonder what it would be like to be a fish.") Anyway, even outta the most morose, velvet requiem comes a dove. A harp plays, a cello listens. That's how a heart gets its wings, dont'cha know. We feel not the composer or artist- not the skill or even music for that matter- but the honey, the baby, the earth, for whom it was written and dedicated to and if indeed anybody truly feels the same for you.
So how you've walked alone through some crowded exhibit of a sort, heart beating, your mind mad with a towel of secular frenzy, "Saint Cobain" juiced within every sound in flesh. It's by far the most lethal of tracks on the album, if not hormonal, derailing in just three minutes, steaming with enough four-chord brew to sludge us into a world of waking shadows. Somewhat unusual for Vernon to plague open such a sound of innumerable garage-hash, but considering it's eulogy for Kurt (indeed one of the more haunting ones next door to Nico's version of Tim Hardin's tears to Lenny Bruce), the swamp-of-grunge is MEAT, maternal to its opening hymn (a sample perhaps of Nelson Mandela) sputtering: y-y-y-you promised me when I'm gone...That you'd do this: And off-balance, outta the pocket of the ear, arises what must be a hundred demonic guitars dragged like armored bats, cindered more lower in tune than even Jimi's burnt guitar- escalating to the mirror of attack- is where the drums jam into the aneurysm somehow thereby emerging one raw fusion of hope for a crying, maybe betrayed, music. Grab your goggles, the hunt for the snake skin is on. Similar in grind to R.L Burnside's later works of back-door sin, the song is definitely the crux of the record, the overture; the point of no return where, by this eighth cut, we've either gone blooming loco, confused, or just well happy to be alive and hearing such a maze at work. Ornette lives, so do you, and you catch a glimpse that so does all of Africa. Hear yourself breathe, people! But the kettle-drum rolls a finale: Shall this record behold for you the next Revolution- Anarchy and the rot? Or shall it rhythm and appease as just another Rock album in your collection, as your friend, lover, and guardian for life? And man...'tis there really a difference between any of this at all?
(9:30 pm: "It's okay, I forgive you," I said to her. "How 'bout ice-cream then?," she tempted. The violins left, we nodded merrily and strolled through the laughter. Just then, an urge came over to run to the side of the road and rap into a tape recorder that none of these people knew anything at all. Nothing 'bout Iggy, nothing 'bout rock, nothing 'bout you or me. I thought I would write a whole piece 'bout rock 'n roll and Vernon Reid- the last innocent chord and what not. 'Greensleeves To Vernon Reid' I would call it. Or maybe 'Get Out Now'. Something. I rapidly spoke, but never got past the line 'it happened like this'." And the moon, as always, rose.)
--Carson Arnold - July 17th, 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]
Thanks and enjoy!
See other music reviews at Track
Home / About Longhouse / Books for Sale / Reviews and Resources / Contact Us/To Order / Write Us