Fishbone
Years Of Operation 1979-present
Fits Between Sly & The Family Stone and Red Hot Chili Peppers
Personal Correspondence Last week I mentioned my seemingly lost blog post "Seeing God In Concert." Well, this week our tech guru Paul found it for me, and just in time, since that post fits the theme of transcendence I explored above—and besides, three of the bands I'm covering this week, I also wrote about then. For those who don't want to click on the link, here's the gist of what I wrote about a Fishbone gig I saw in Athens back in '89: "Fishbone took the stage like a New Orleans brass band conducting a jazz funeral, trudging on one at a time, blowing their horns and stomping. Then, when everyone was in place, they sounded the opening notes of 'Question Of Life' and they were off. My head almost exploded. My pulse raced. I've still never seen a more exciting opening to a show. It felt like what watching Sly & The Family Stone in 1968 must have felt like, or Prince & The Revolution in 1983, or Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band in 1975, or The Clash in 1980. Here was a band fusing rock, R&B, reggae and punk, distilling the joy of each genre, but keeping an element of anger and sagacity that gave the performance an edge. The tragedy of Fishbone for me is that they were never as amazing again as they were on that night: not on the records I ran out and bought, nor in the times I saw them live afterward. Theirs is a story of potential energy, perpetually dissipating."
Enduring presence? I'll never forget watching Fishbone on Saturday Night Live shortly before The Reality Of My Surroundings came out, and just after raving to my roommates about the band's awesomeness. They were extra-awesome on SNL, where they played "Sunless Saturday" and "Everyday Sunshine," both of which seemed like surefire hits to everyone in our apartment that night. And I'll never forget our collective disappointment when the album came out a few weeks later, and we gradually realized that between the slick production and the sloppy material, something hadn't translated. Fishbone was one of the best bands of my lifetime, and one of the biggest flops.
"Question Of Life" by Fishbone
Five-Eight
Years Of Operation 1988-2007
Fits Between The Jim Carroll Band and The Replacements
Personal Correspondence I wrote about Five-Eight in that "Seeing God" post too, saying: "Five-Eight must've played some Athens venue or another nearly once a month during the years I was at UGA, and I don't think I missed too many of those shows. Of the local bands I was devoted to back then, Five-Eight is probably the second-biggest 'what might've been,' after The Jody Grind (which is a whole other story). As I understand it, after I graduated in '92, Five-Eight took a shot at the bigs, fell short, went through some tough times, and then had a comeback in recent years as elder statesmen of the Georgia rock scene. (I really liked their most recent, self-titled album, which came out in '04.) But they were so gloriously erratic back in the early '90s, playing two-hour-plus shows that sometimes peaked in the first 10 minutes, and sometimes didn't get rolling until an hour in. Bandleader Mike Mantione would usually start each set with just himself and his electric guitar—frequently singing his self-loathing anthem 'Weirdo'—and then the band would join in, sometimes struggling to keep up with whatever frenetic pace Mantione had set for himself that night. Strings would break, tempers would flare, and statement-of-purpose covers of The Velvet Underground's 'Cant Stand It' (or Led Zeppelin's 'Communication Breakdown,' or Hüsker Dü's 'Celebrated Summer') would stretch on and on, getting faster and louder than a power trio could sustain. I could dissect why Five-Eight never caught on during that magic window when alt-rock bands across the country were getting a fair hearing—too basic in sound? too unpredictable in concert? too naïve in business?—but their failures had nothing to do with me. They were great when I needed them to be great." To that I'll add that a few years back, I pitched an A.V. Club feature on great local bands that never made it big, but the idea never took off. I pitched it mainly because I wanted to get back in touch with the Five-Eight guys—with whom I'd been friendly enough to have them crash on my floor when they toured through Nashville, though I always tried to retain some critical distance—and talk with them frankly about why they never found the sweet spot. But I think you can probably get the whole story from the song below, "The Ape," a Five-Eight staple from their earliest shows, and one that captures Mantione's flair for melody, his sweaty passion, his grappling with male anxiety, and his difficulty sustaining and recording a fully realized rock composition. Live, "The Ape" always killed. On record? Well, you may just have to trust me that this sloppily played, overlong song is actually pretty amazing.
Enduring presence? It was strange after I moved away to buy new Five-Eight albums and hear songs I hadn't already heard two dozen times. Without that original context of hearing them live, I found it harder to connect. According to Wikipedia, the band is currently on an indefinite hiatus, after nearly 20 years of line-up changes and second chances. If this is really the end, I hope Mantione gets a chance to mount one final show, which someone will record for posterity. I'd love to buy back my memories.
"The Ape" by Five-Eight
The Flaming Lips
Years Of Operation 1983-present
Fits Between Pink Floyd and Butthole Surfers
Personal Correspondence And here we complete the triumvirate of "F" bands from the "Seeing God" post. (Last week's heroes The Feelies were in there too, by the way.) I won't repeat what I wrote on the blog this time, because it had more to do with recovering from my dad's funeral than it did about my relationship with The Flaming Lips—which has been just as rocky in its way. I first heard The Flaming Lips on Vandy's college radio station in 1987, when "Everything's Exploding" off Oh My Gawd! was in fairly steady rotation. I bought that album, which at the time sounded like a typical late '80s college-rock hodgepodge of sloppy noise and fitful guitar-pop, to be filed alongside my Phantom Tollbooth, Butthole Surfers and Squirrel Bait records. When the band got it together for a fluke hit in '93, I chalked it up to the general weirdness of the post-Nirvana era, and though I bought the 45 for "She Don't Use Jelly," I didn't bother buying Transmissions From The Satellite Heart. Six years later, when my editor sent me an advance copy of The Soft Bulletin to check out, I stuck it in my CD slush pile, planning to skim through it quickly and then set it aside. But then "Race For The Prize" left me dumbstruck, and I tentatively pulled my finger off the "skip" button. A couple of songs later, my wife said, "Wow. What is this?" And I had to pull the CD sleeve back out, muttering, "It's supposed to be The Flaming Lips, but I don't know." After turning The Soft Bulletin into a fetish object—seriously, I must've listened to that record at least once a day for about three solid months—I finally went back and filled in the gaps in my Flaming Lips collection, and realized that The Soft Bulletin didn't exactly come out of nowhere. (I wish now that I'd bought Transmissions at the time… that's a hell of a record too.) My live Flaming Lips experience was in some ways the culmination of that intense period of catching up, and the beginning of a long downturn in my Lips fandom. I played the hell out of Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots too, but the returns had started to diminish, and watching the band do the same stunts over and over again in live footage on TV and DVD (and on countless movie soundtracks) became like hearing a comedian tell the same joke. After a while? Not so funny.
Enduring presence? In retrospect, Yoshimi was more a rehash than a refinement of The Soft Bulletin, no matter what I may have argued in print at the time. And even The Soft Bulletin mainly built on the inspirational dream-pop of Clouds Taste Metallic, an album I didn't hear until after I'd fallen in love with Bulletin. (Even so, I think Bulletin is the better record.) And then At War With The Mystics was a dispiriting mess, sporting only a few flashes of brilliance. It may be time for bandleader Wayne Coyne to stop swinging for the fences and prove again that he can lay down an effective bunt. An acoustic album might be a good start.
"Placebo Headwound" by The Flaming Lips
Fleetwood Mac
Years Of Operation 1967-present
Fits Between Traffic and The Mamas & The Papas
Personal Correspondence Part of the reason I'm so taken with the idea of "shadowing" popular music is because when I try to trace the lines that connect Cole Porter to Fats Domino to Buddy Holly and onward, I always come across a few outliers. In a general way, I get where Fleetwood Mac came from: They were one of many British blues-rock bands, and had already begun developing a clear pop sensibility by the time they moved to L.A. and invited the obscure folk-rock duo of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks to join the act. And I can generally understand where Buckingham-Nicks came from, too: He was a Brian Wilson disciple with lightning-fast fingers, and she was a mellower descendent of Janis Joplin and Grace Slick. But none of the above adequately explains where "Rhiannon" came from. Yes, I can hear traces of Eric Clapton's poppier singles, crossed with Jefferson Starship's "Miracles," crossed with The Beach Boys' "Surf's Up," crossed with Bob Dylan's up-country folk excursions, crossed with Steely Dan's it's-just-past-midnight-in-Paranoiaville mood-spinning. And I can hear the bands who later made hay with aspects of this sound, from Dire Straits to Tom Petty. But there's an uncanny power to "Rhiannon" (and "Over My Head," and "Gypsy," and "Silver Springs," and "Walk A Thin Line," and so many others) that seems to stand beyond creation myth and questions of influence. Nevertheless, part of me thinks that if I listen to enough of what came before, and what came after, I'll finally decode "Rhiannon"—even if I'll never be able to demystify it.
Enduring presence? Unlike most of the other '70s soft-rockers, Fleetwood Mac has always been fairly well-respected by critics (at least post-'75). A lot of that probably has to do with Tusk, one of the rare let's-follow-up-our-smash-hit-LP-with-something-personal-and-pretentious efforts that sounds genuinely interesting and entertaining, not just dickish. And a lot probably has to do with the balance of songwriting personalities in the band, from the post-CSN mystic Nicks to the mad scientist Buckingham to the sweetly tuneful Christine McVie. Left unchecked, any one of them could (and often does) prove insufferable, but together, they give what pitching coaches and modeling agencies call "a lot of different looks." The only comparable trio of entertainers I can think of is—I kid you not—Louis Prima with Keely Smith and Sam Butera. But they'll have to wait a few months.
"Rhiannon" by Fleetwood Mac
Fountains Of Wayne
Years Of Operation 1996-present
Fits Between Cheap Trick and The dBs
Personal Correspondence After Fountains Of Wayne's overly snarky, almost excessively poppy '96 debut, I had no expectation that they'd become one of my favorite bands of the modern era, but damned if '99's Utopia Parkway didn't knock me sideways. (Between that and The Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin, it was a hell of a year.) At the time I wrote, "The group's immensely pleasurable second album is a series of songs about suburban New Jersey, where the kids aren't exactly born to run, but they are born to drive around listening to 'Born to Run.' The album's opening lines rival Tom Petty's best: 'Well, I've been saving for a custom van/And I've been playing in a cover band.' For the next 45 minutes, Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood sing about Coney Island, tattoos, strip malls, laser shows, proms, and other teenage kicks. The music is blessedly effortless and sounds how '80s Top 40 might've sounded if '70s power-pop had been more commercially successful—if Pat Benatar and Loverboy had drawn their inspiration from The Shoes and Big Star rather than following in the footsteps of Aerosmith and Boston. With their big beats, buzzing guitars, spacey organ fills, handclaps, and lyrics about .38 Special, FoW evoke the joy of great rock songs while simultaneously performing great rock songs. They're singing about the pleasures of recreation while having a great time themselves." The only real problems with the two albums that have followed is that they no longer carried that charge of the unexpected, though I've found that both have aged just as well as Utopia Parkway. I've especially underrated Traffic And Weather, which (aside from a couple of duds) is as big-hearted, observant and catchy as anything else in the FoW discography.
Enduring presence? For some reason, I'd always assumed Fountains Of Wayne were universally beloved by our readership, until we tapped Adam Schlesinger to write a tour diary for us, and the anti-FoW vibe of the comments caught me off-guard. Maybe the success of "Stacy's Mom" gave some people the wrong impression of who Fountains Of Wayne are. To me there's always been a strong conceptual element to the band: The music is bright and fun, and the lyrics are about people who need bright, fun music to get through another annoying day.
"Red Dragon Tattoo" by Fountains Of Wayne
Frank Sinatra
Years Of Operation 1935-95
Fits Between Bing Crosby and Eddie Cantor
Personal Correspondence It's only right that Frank Sinatra would come up a few days before I take my first-ever trip to Las Vegas, though to be honest, I'm no longer all that interested in Sinatra's Rat Pack persona—maybe because it became such an overused touchstone for hipness when I was young man in the '90s. I was as captivated as anyone by the swaggering, mobbed-up Sinatra when I was first introduced to that character, but I've seen enough Rat Pack movies and heard enough live recordings to know that some kinds of fun don't stay fresh for long. Anyway, I'm more fascinated by the Sinatra who overcame his hardscrabble background to become a capital-A "Artist," trying to record songs and albums that said something about his state of mind and the enduring value of pop. One of my favorite Sinatra albums—albeit not really one of his best—is 1968's Watertown, written and recorded in collaboration with The Four Seasons' songwriter Bob Gaudio. (I wrote a little about it in this Inventory, from back in the days before every Inventory drew 500 comments.) Like a lot of pop artists, Sinatra always tried to stay current, and Watertown was his attempt to keep up with The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Moody Blues, and every other rock band making pretty-sounding records that also told stories. But in typical Sinatra fashion, Watertown comes off more maudlin and abstract than what everyone else was doing. To Sinatra, an album wasn't artful if it didn't bum people out a little.
Enduring presence? Sinatra's place in the culture—and in my record collection—is secure, but I wish people gave him more credit for helping to define "the album." Sinatra was far from the first to unify a group of songs under a single theme, but throughout the '50s, he helped popularize the concept of "the concept," and he was admirable in his willingness to group songs together that listeners might find depressing or off-putting. The Vegas Sinatra, who delivered almost comically lackadaisical performances of pop standards, stands apart from The Studio Sinatra, who nearly always strove to take his fans on little adventures.
"What's Now Is Now" by Frank Sinatra
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