After 17 years of professional music-reviewing, Noel Murray is taking time off from all new music, and is revisiting his record collection in alphabetical order, to take stock of what he's amassed, and consider what he still needs.
"Margin Walker" by Fugazi
Every time I tuck in my kids at night, I'm filled with love and envy—but mostly envy. I wish I could settle into a comfy bed at 8 p.m., surrounded by stuffed toys and pretty music. I also wish I ate as healthy and simply as my kids, who could happily subsist on grilled cheese sandwiches, apple slices, carrot sticks and cold ham, so long as they get a cookie at the end. Mostly though, I envy my children's ability to plop down in front of a new toy and—within seconds, and with no trace of self-consciousness—start making up characters and voices and rules for some elaborate game. Because if I had the willpower and the work ethic, I could eat better and get plenty of sleep, but that last gift—the ability to slip easily out of one's self, and disappear completely into the imagination—is one that most of us start to lose right around the time that puberty chases any non-sex-related fantasy out of our heads.
Rock critics like use the word "transcendent" to describe music we like—I used it twice last week, in fact—even though, in a critical sense, it's as vague a term as "beautiful" or "interesting." It really says more about the writer than the music. It says, "This moved me." And unless the reader happens to be the writer, that's not exactly helpful information.
But it is pertinent information. It's hard to think of any quality music has that's more important than its power to sway our moods, and let us get lost for minutes on end—like children playing make-believe. Some of my strongest musical memories are of walking around with headphones on, losing track of myself while listening to Patti Smith's "Gloria" or Pulp's "Common People" or any number of rock, pop, dance and soul songs that build and build until they reach a state of near-unbearable intensity. These are songs that understand the rhetorical power of repetition followed by inevitable change—the great lifting-up that comes from a structure that goes "this-this-this-this-this-THAT." When people ask what kind of music makes me cry, it's usually not sad music. It's music where the rhythms are transporting and I start to feel a surge of emotion that's all-but-impossible to control.
The problem with this kind of "transcendence" is that's hard to isolate and explain. My friend and fellow critic Bill Friskics-Warren wrote a whole book about it, called I'll Take You There: Pop Music & The Urge For Transcendence, in which he tried to focus specifically on the spiritual messages inherent in the music itself, while not getting hung up so much on the words sung out in front. But even Bill found himself getting distracted in the lyrics while writing about some of the artists he used as case studies, because it's hard for a critic—a writer—to ignore completely how words are put together. If I fumble for a way to explain why Fugazi's "Margin Walker" is so exciting, it's just too easy to latch on to phrases like "I'm going to set myself on fire," and break them down for their shock and metaphorical values.
Would I still get a charge out of "Margin Walker" if Guy Picciotto and Ian MacKaye were singing about the deliciousness of Coca-Cola? Hard to say. (I do kind of get worked up when David Byrne sings about Pizza Hut in Talking Heads' "(Nothing But) Flowers," for what that's worth.) Certainly there's enough spark in the music itself that the lyrics' stammering expression of painful, possibly all-consuming, possibly criminal desire may not be necessary. But just like the right title on an abstract painting can give a museumgoer something to focus on, so the right lyrics can seem to give a transcendent song a direct purpose. It completes the fantasy: I'm not just all-worked-up, I'm all-worked-up because there's something I want, and I might be willing to hurt people to get it.
Ultimately though, even offering a detailed explanation for why "Margin Walker" gets my blood pumping won't persuade anyone who doesn't hear it the same way. If my favorite comedy doesn't make you laugh, there's no way you're going to think it's a good comedy. If The Arcade Fire's The Neon Bible doesn't make you feel panicked and fragile and a little bit angry, you're not going to buy my arguments for why it's a great album. Talking about music with other people can be like talking about religion with the devout. I have a friend—a sharp-eyed film critic with excellent taste—who loved Mel Gibson's The Passion Of The Christ, in large part because he's a committed Catholic who felt like he was seeing the reasons for his faith come to life in every frame of that film. He wrote about The Passion eloquently, but in the end his defense of it came down to, "This is who I am."
If you see arts criticism as one big debate, then those kinds of arguments are never going to count for much. But if you see criticism as a way to get to know other people—to see the world through different eyes for a while, then return to yourself with a better understanding—then those may be the most important arguments. If you put a Thomas The Tank Engine figurine in my hand, it'll take a lot of effort to imagine that I am Thomas, chugging down the track. But if you write—or even better, sing—about being Thomas, and lull me with a good rhythm, I might just follow you.
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Program note: I'm taking a vacation this week, from Wednesday through Sunday, so Popless will probably post a little late next Monday, and be a little shorter. It's also going to follow a slightly different format, as I go back through 700-odd songs from the A-F artists that I've somehow missed so far. Wondering what happened to Eric B & Rakim and The English Beat last week? Well, I just found their CDs this week, so they'll be part of the "Backtrackin'" catch-up.
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Pieces Of The Puzzle
fIREHOSE
Years Of Operation 1986-94
Fits Between Creedence Clearwater Revival and Blue Öyster Cult
Personal Correspondence When I attended the University Of Georgia between '88 to '92, I could mark the passage of time by certain recurring events: The Georgia-Florida game in the fall, the Twilight Criterium bike race in the spring, and twice a year, a gig by fIREHOSE. I was a rabid Minutemen fan back in high school, so I never stopped being completely jazzed that I got to see Mike Watt and George Hurley (arguably the most underrated rhythm section in rock history) up close, even though a large part of Watt's appeal was the way he shrugged off that kind of hero worship. Watt's always been an accessible dude, sticking around after a show to talk to fans and sling merch. I once tagged along with a friend who was assigned to interview Watt for a fanzine, and when we walked backstage about two hours before showtime, we saw Watt walking down the hall, and when my friend shouted "Watt!" the man walked up, shook our hands firmly, and sat right down to chat with us for about half an hour, even though he probably had no idea why we were there. fIREHOSE will never get the kind of critical attention that Minutemen got, and for good reason—Minutemen were brilliant, eclectic, witty and wise, and when their frontman D. Boon died, the proletariat Watt and surfer boy Hurley lost their burly, charismatic counterbalance. So rather than trying to replace Boon with someone as strong, they gave a break to devoted Minutemen fan Ed "fROMOHIO" Crawford, a likable youngster with a sweet voice, a jangly college rock sensibility, and the kind of ambition that led him to write guitar parts for himself that he lacked the skill to play. fIREHOSE never broke any ground; they just gave Watt an excuse to hit the road when the weather got temperate, and to extend his run of songs stacked with quirky Watt-slang and sometimes embarrassingly open sentiment. I once made a list of the most awkward rock lyrics of all time, and the band that landed on there the second-most was fIREHOSE. In first? The Police.
Enduring presence? I can't think of too many bands where the gap between the live show and the record was as wide as fIREHOSE's. Watt even apologized for that on-stage once, telling his fans not to worry about the albums so much, because the band made their money from touring. And fIREHOSE's curt little funk-jazz-pop-punk concoctions really did come to life on stage, strung together in 90-minute sets that featured Watt puffing and bobbing like a cartoon steam engine, Hurley hitting a variety of percussion instruments in the proper succession, and Crawford struggling to keep up, in a way that was charmingly human.
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