Music Music Music

[poorpete]

Lady Gaga: The Fame (#126) great first impression. Unexpected.

[Phoebe]

I love most of that album and used to listen to it obsessively - and now since you mentioned it, it has become #47 on the List. My favorite track is Beautiful Dirty Rich; sessions of playing it on an hours-long loop have occurred. But there are other songs I totally can't stand, like Money Honey, which is doubly insulting because you know she likes AC/DC and ... why? Why do that? The lyrics are mostly beyond idiot level - I don't know how to explain the vastness of difference between the good and bad songs.

The same is true of ArtPop, which I guess everyone hated, but it's similar with a half-dozen great songs and then a bunch of ???? boring schlock. I actually really like ArtPop.

One morning this week I had the unfortunate experience of driving down the highway with Rihanna's Umbrella on the radio, and I couldn't turn it off, and then it was really and truly stuck in the head - still is now, even. Ugh!

However, that is not why I'm here - coincidentally I'm here to discuss AC/DC. Basically I have always liked them a lot - always a top-ten kind of thing, you know? But they had some bad songs and dumb songs and I felt overall it was simplistic and rough and not as awesome as other things, because I was stupid at that time. I was a virginal white girl who liked mysterious vikings and animal fairies or some dumb shit like that, so I felt deeply and earnestly that Led Zeppelin was actual high quality music and lyrics, lust objects, etc. (Husband does look like the young version of Robert Plant, let's be fair, that hasn't changed.)

Then one day after I had gotten married and was a more toughened and capably fierce sort of white girl, I was sitting out on the balcony of our little apartment late in the night when the 19-20 year olds above were absolutely blasting this song repeatedly, enough to make the whole building tremble:



Note that in my opinion this is basically a perfect musical composition. It is a perfect rock song in every possible way. If you wanted like, the ideal form of Rock Song, and you wanted aliens or people who had been living in a cave for decades to understand what that is, you would play this and , which my daughter learned to sing when she was in preschool, not because of me, but because her little friend, the son of a professional drummer, was doing the same and I was like, well, you might as well understand the source material. There is pretty much nothing funnier than 4 year olds singing this together.

After a round of this, we ran upstairs and pounded on the door (so as to be heard over the din) and asked what was going on, and after an initial misunderstanding where our neighbors apologetically promised to turn down the stereo, we were like, NO, turn it back up, where is your beer? And they gave us some awful beer, like Busch. This was a good neighbor relationship, but I'm glad we no longer live there because when people were NOT sitting on the balcony to supervise, the cars would be broken into.

Anyway, this was the first moment of Realization that AC/DC is the superior band of our times and that it was vital to dig back into their oeuvre and absorb thoroughly. Every so often one has to do this again as a kind of purgative to the soul, and thus we have:

48. Back in Black
49. High Voltage
50. Highway to Hell
51. Let There Be Rock
52. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
53. The Razor's Edge

[Phoebe]

Yeah, kind of a whiplash going from AC/DC to Josh Groban in rapid fire sequence, but seeing Beauty and the Beast put certain things in the brain. This was a good addition, especially as counterpoint to the new song with Belle and the other one with the whole cast. I felt sad for the poor beast, ya.

[poorpete]

Todd Rundgren "Something/Anything" (#121)

Love the songs where it sounds like he's having the time of his life. Enjoy how he tries different things and changes up the tempo, even finds a bit of hardness in what is very-much a 70s soft rock milieu. Hard to pick a fav yet, but surprised by "Song of the Viking" which would perfectly fit in a late 60s album by the Beatles or The Beach Boys.

[akiva]

Great song. It has come to have a terrible meaning for me, though not because of the song itsef.

[Phoebe]

Ya, that's a good one! Trapped in vehicle with Destiny's Child, have had SAY MY NAME DADADA DADADA DADADA BLABLABLA DADADA BLOP! BOPBOPBOP SAY MY NAME SAY MY NAME x2 over and over again in the head. It's a problem, you're trying to have serious conversations, serious meetings, and you're like
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE IT IF
I CAME OVER WITH MY (how would we even spell that the way ... oh whatever).

[poorpete]

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOklahoma where we pretend that reservations don't exist,
the land was stol'n, from the natives here,
all after forcing them from their orig'nal home!

OOOOOOOOOOklahoma there's a Persian guy named Ali,
He's a scoundrel of sorts, but that's not the worst, you'll see:
he's played by the guy from Green Acres!

OOOOOOOOOKlahoma where the plot leaves a lot to be desired
Where the hero tries, to bully a guy,
he doesn't like into hanging himself!

but the music was great, and the opening song can't be beat
Oklahoma OK! Yeehaw!

[poorpete]

My pick from Gaga's solid debut album. It was between this and the great rock ballad, "Brown Eyes." Like the Gwen Stefani-ish disco vibe here. Hmm, probably should add some Gwen to my list too.


Meanwhile...
Tom Petty's "Damn the Torpedoes" is great, but that wasn't unexpected given half the songs are classic rock staples. Then again, maybe it was unexpected, as Eagles "Hotel California" half the songs are classics but the other half are meh.

Ray Charles' "Genius Loves Company" is ok -- a septuagenerian singing "you give me fever" a poor decision. Nora Jones, Gladys Knight and Van Morrison songs were my favs.

Nora Jones won a best album Grammy in 2003, featured on best album winners in 2004 (Speakerboxxx/Love Below), 2005 (Genius Loves Company) and 2008 (River: The Joni Letters). That's a damn good streak she had.

[Phoebe]

That Brown Eyes song is a good example of how Gaga can take a simple ballad and make it something a little crazy and interesting. Love that song.

Anyway, I recovered from my AC/DC binge, sort of, since it's ongoing, and took time out for:
54. PJ Harvey - White Chalk
Wow, good album, but a very intense reflection one shouldn't listen to on any day when one might have cause to feel depressed. .

[poorpete]

125. Nas - Illmatic
Lives up to its reputation as an essential 90s rap album.

"It Ain't Hard to Tell" is ace for "magmatize" alone. No it's almost all ace, though the MJ dadada does get a bit after a while. One of those rare songs where the verses are so much better than the chorus.

[Phoebe]

55. (Heyyy, nearly two months' worth! Creeping along...) The Faint - Fasciinatiion
Love this but it's not even their best work. So then I had to listen to
56. Wet From Birth
I like that last song "Birth" much more than I used to. It grows on a person, ha ha ha. But my favorites are the same - I Disappear, Paranoiaattack, and Phone Call. It's like a perfect holy trinity of music, all interconnected and prescient in a glorious fashion.
At least some of these people are still making music, still planning some performances this summer, so I hold out hope we may see another album one way or another.

[akiva]

TONIGHT!

There's 2 sticks in the powderworks
I think it's gonna blow today

[poorpete]

128. Sinatra - Strangers in the Night

This album appealed to me more than most the others and it's not just because there's some good variety in musical styles. It's because, although Sinatra's music is arranged to the millisecond, even if technically proficient, it always feels like vocals with accompaniment instead of a cohesive band featuring a lead singer. In this album, Sinatra, age 50, still sounds great, but he shares the stage for once.

If "September of My Years" was the growing-old concept album, and "Come Fly with Me" was the vacation concept album, "Strangers in the Night", minus the title track, is the electric organ album. The organ gets solos, gets to play the melody (most notably in "Summer Wind"), and even when in the background (like in the song below) it still sets the tone.



Exciting percussion and saxophone solos? Yay!

Wikipedia says the piano is played by the legendary rocker Leon Russell, which I assume they mean the "electric organ", but I haven't found confirmation elsewhere. Weird how many people were uncredited, in film and music, back in the day. Unions are good.

[Phoebe]

How lovely that this would be your pick for #128, since this is my parents' music, without which would I even exist? I actually have that album here, the old original vinyl version. I'll have to listen to it now, yes! I keep having to shut off my music due to the carnival of phone calls and crises going on at work, but hopefully tonight is a two-album minimum kinda night!

[Phoebe]

'Twas not such a night. Alas, I started reading Harry Potter to the kids, had one of those experiences where nonsense words began emerging and I had to be prodded back awake, and then next thing you know it's 2:30 am and I'm laying there freezing and fully clothed! Then heard Sia's The Greatest in the car and now that's stuck in my head. It makes me think of Mohammad Ali, of course. Wonder if that's what she had in mind, though.

[Phoebe]

Finally got to listen to Strangers in the Night - forget what number I'm on. 57? It's so great. I listened to it at lot when I was a kid - I mean, like, an under 5 kid. Very formative stuff, eliciting strange distant emotions from that time. (Or from the memory chip they inserted...) On a Clear Day was always very magical to me - I remember taking it very literally but wondering about the possible figurative meanings implied, and finding that quite mysterious and enthralling. Downtown was obviously a major +++ given that it was also The Rollerskating Rink Song (along with things like YMCA). I've always preferred his version to this day, now because in his vocal range it becomes singable again, and because his "ewws" or whatever those are make it very strange! All-night clubs downtown - shocking, Frank! I believe at one point I had to do a baton routine to Yes, Sir, That's my Baby - I LOVED that song! So jazzy. Was it, the routine, actually a jazz dance? Something crazy. Baton was definitely New York, New York - that one I remember. I can't believe I took baton lessons, frankly. Frankly. I'm just going to stop here now that I've achieved everything in life.

[poorpete]

Quite easily those "ewwws" in Broadway were my least favorite thing about the album. People claim he was the best at phrasing, but this makes it seem like he has no idea. But glad you liked them.

132. Marvin Gaye - Let's Get it On
I was too much of a prude to like the title track when I was younger. I'm still too much of a prude to like "You Sure Love To Ball." "Distant Lover" is a classic, liked how a lot of these songs sounded a lot like they could have been on "What's Going On." Love his phrasing throughout here (much better than "Broadway")

[Phoebe]

[akiva]

For a couple of hours last night, I could believe in the goodness of man.



Note--these guys are in their 60s and they played a high energy 2 hour set.

[Phoebe]

That's great, did you get to see them live???!!!