Popless Week 15: Taking You Higher

By Noel Murray
April 14th, 2008

Fugazi

Years Of Operation 1987-2002

Fits Between Gang Of Four and Bad Brains

Personal Correspondence One of the great regrets of my peak show-going years is that I never saw Fugazi—a lapse for which I don't really have a decent excuse. For some reason, Fugazi were never really on my radar screen when I was in college, probably because the people I knew who were Fugazi fans generally had fairly regressive taste. (They were mainly ex-skaters still listening to the same anti-authoritarian punk they liked in high school.) I didn't pick up my first Fugazi CDs until after I graduated, and by that point I'd already begun making the transition from the kind of guy who rocked-out in public to the kind of guy who rocked-out in my car (and then exclusively in my head). But as with Fishbone, fIREHOSE and Five-Eight above, I feel like I probably missed a crucial element to Fugazi fandom by not seeing them play.

Enduring presence? I hope that Fugazi is still an essential part of every young punk's musical diet. From the band's rigorous DIY ethos to their belief that punk rock can contain subtlety and complexity, they're an inspiration. I just wish their albums were more consistently great.

Stray Tracks

From the fringes of the collection, a few songs to share….

Fine Young Cannibals, "Johnny Come Home"

As '80s music grew increasingly synthetic, audiences and critics started gravitating to acts that, at the time, seemed to have a kind of retro-authenticity: Fine Young Cannibals, The Honeydrippers, Sade, Anita Baker, Stevie Ray Vaughan, etc. Now though, looking back, most of these acts sound thoroughly of their time, with only an element here and there—a guitar, a vocal—that really calls back to the classics. It would've been interesting to hear the kind of music FYC would've made if they'd recorded their first album five years earlier, or ten years later. Aside from the awful, awful "She Drives Me Crazy," they had a flair for pop/soul songwriting, but man, Roland Gift's voice was sure swallowed up by the oppressively modern production.

The Fixx, "Sunshine In The Shade"

Here's another no-rep/no-cult '80s band that, unaccountably, racked up nearly a decade's worth of pretty good pop singles. I don't know that I can pin down The Fixx's personality or genre, beyond noting that they extracted the poppier elements of the post-punk and new romantic movements while shedding the more arty and/or conceptual elements. Still, reading down the tracklist for The Fixx's One Thing Leads To Another: Greatest Hits always surprises me, because it contains one song after another that I honestly like—though none I love. (I even had a hard time picking one song to spotlight here.) The Fixx are like a sitcom that you watch because it's in a good timeslot and it makes you laugh reliably—even though you'd never think about buying the DVDs.

Fizzbombs, "Sign On The Line"

Here's a wondrous artifact from Britpop's late-'80s, post-Jesus & Mary Chain, DIY era. I know jack-all about this band, or how well-known this song is, but it buzzes along pleasurably—too poppy and jittery to be a shoegazer track, and too noisy to fit alongside the pretty jangle that dominated the scene at the time.

The Flamin' Groovies, "You Tore Me Down"

As much as I dig this song—and Yo La Tengo's sweet cover of it on their album Fakebook—The Flamin' Groovies are a critics' darling that I've never been able to get into. Their early boogie records sound too one-note to me, and their later power-pop records sound too derivative. Even their best-loved single, "Shake Some Action," strikes me as too long and too tinny. I get why people like them, but for me, they're a "not quite."

The Flamingos, "I Only Have Eyes For You"

I spent two summers as a teenager working as a costumed character at Opryland USA, dressing up as Lucky Charms and entertaining children in the General Mills kids' area of the park. (I wasn't always Lucky; sometimes I was Trix, or Count Chocula, or the Honey Nut Cheerios' Bee.) The kids' area was tucked right off Opryland's "New Orleans" section, so most of my meet-and-greets were scored to Dixieland, but first thing in the morning, the costumed characters always did "a show" (which didn't involve any actual antics beyond standing and waving and posing for photos) at the front gate, and then we'd walk back through the park's "'50s" section. I tried to linger there long enough to hear this song over the PA, which in that section played the American Graffiti soundtrack on a continuous loop. In my little leprechaun suit, I'd do elegant little twirls around the lampposts—or as elegant as a teenager can get while wearing fuzzy gloves and oversized foam shoes.

A Flock Of Seagulls, "Space Age Love Song"

Two things come to mind when I think of A Flock Of Seagulls. (Well, three if you count the hairstyle.) First, while I was at UGA, a fraternity got busted for serving alcohol to minors and violating fire codes at a party where the featured band was, yep, AFAS. (Lo, how the mighty, etc.) Second, I used to get annoyed when A Flock Of Seagulls were lumped in with other one-hit wonder synthpop bands of the '80s, because they actually had several hits—including this one, which I always liked better than "I Ran"—and anyway, they relied on guitar as much as synthesizer. Maybe I was just defensive because AFAS were one of the first of the "new British invasion" acts to woo me. Hey, I was 12, and their music was perfect for 12-year-olds: guileless and easy to sing along with.

The Flying Burrito Brothers, "Hot Burrito #2"

There'll be more about Gram Parsons in a future week, but first, a little taste of the band that launched Parsons to minor fame, and (in my opinion) encompassed a broader, more exciting vision of Americana than Parsons carried with him when he went solo. (Though I'm not knocking those solo albums, which I'm going to be lauding duly soon.) Reducing this song to "country rock" doesn't really do justice to the inventive ways the FBBs integrate gospel, R&B and psychedelia here. This is a song—and a band—with a lot to give.

The Folk Implosion, "Free To Go"

There'll also be more about Lou Barlow later on, most likely via Sebadoh, a band that resonates with me more than The Folk Implosion. I like The Folk Implosion, but the beauty of Sebadoh is the way they combine dreamy balladry with dissonant pop-punk, so The Folk Implosion's near-total emphasis on the former (backed by light electronica) sounds incomplete to my ears. That said, Barlow's recorded some fine songs as The Folk Implosion, including this catchy number from One Part Lullaby, an album I would've told you nine years ago was Barlow's finest hour. Listening to it again this week, I'm not sure why I ever felt that way. But I do know why I liked this song: it's got a well-fleshed-out arrangement, behind poignant lyrics about surviving a broken home.† In other words, it's a song, not an exercise.

Foo Fighters, "All My Life"

I ain't braggin', but I saw Foo Fighters on their first tour, before the debut album came out, when they were opening for Mike Watt's guest-star-laden Ball-Hog Or Tugboat? shows. My first impressions: Stupid name, decent band. In the years since, Grohl and company have become sort of become mainstream rock's de-facto "good" band, beloved by many and loathed by few. But I tend to be a distant admirer myself. When each album comes out, I rip the two or three songs that interest me, and file them away for later, but I rarely play them. (There's no need, since I'll hear them anyway, all over the TV.) The major exception is this lead track from the otherwise fairly weak One By One. "All My Life" is all I look for in machine-tooled modern rock, from the cleanly metallic sound to the spectacular series of miniature explosions. (Aside: At the moment, Foo Fighters are also a source of mutual amusement for my wife and myself, because we were both taken aback when we went to a birthday party with our three-year-old daughter a month ago, and noticed that her preschool teacher was wearing a Foo Fighters T-shirt. A week later, I went to another birthday party with my six-year-old son, and his 1st Grade teacher—who's best friends with that preschool teacher—told me that they'd both gone to the Foo Fighters concert in Memphis, and that their husbands were on their way to Fayetteville to see them again. All at once, my wife and I realized how strange it is to live in a world where your kids' teachers are your peers.)

Foreigner, "Cold As Ice"

Throughout the second half of these '70s, the FM dial was choked with bands like Foreigner that became instant superstars, almost as though they were created in collaboration between record executives and radio programmers. As a kid, I knew nothing about corporate rock, payola or any of that. I just knew that "Cold As Ice" was easy to sing along with and sounded bad-ass. As a grownup, what interests me most about the song is that it almost sounds like a reprise of "Feels Like The First Time," the song that precedes it on Foreigner's 1977 debut LP. I wonder if at the time rock critics thought that was emblematic of a bankrupt imagination, or a neat bit of thematic extension. Knowing the rock critics of the '70s, they were likely too disgusted by the whole endeavor to care either way.

Fossil, "Tim"

People say we're living in the information age, but the internet was no help in trying to track down what happened to this here-and-gone major-label modern rock act, who released a very good EP and LP in 1995, following an echoing Britpop vibe even though they were apparently from Jersey. I'm not sure I would've pegged them for greatness, but those records were much more fully realized and tuneful than a lot of the murky rock that dominated the grunge era. And somehow they ended up on Sire, where they were quickly forgotten.

Four Mints, "Row My Boat"

The Numero Group's good-reason-to-keep-on-living "Eccentric Soul" series made a stunning debut three years with a volume dedicated to the mid-Ohio-based Capsoul label, whose signature act was this mellow post-doo-wop band. Digging up treasures like this lovely ballad—as good a song as anything else in the R&B arena at the time—is why I think The Numero Group is doing the Lord's work.

The Four Seasons, "Beggars Parade"

In 1968, The Four Seasons would throw in with their contemporaries and record their very own hippie-dippy concept album: the semi-wacky Genuine Imitation Life Gazette. But two years earlier, Frankie Valli and company were still relishing being part of the pop establishment, so they recorded this hilariously reactionary anti-protest song. I might be going to see Jersey Boys when I'm vacationing in Vegas this week. Somehow I doubt this song is part of the show, but I'd love to be proved wrong.

Frank Black, "Los Angeles"

The burning question: If the Pixies hadn't broken up, would their albums have become as increasingly irrelevant as Frank Black's? I like Pixies' swan-song Trompe Le Monde quite a bit, but even that's more a conventional alt-rock record than anything the band recorded in their first few years. Since going solo, Charles Thompson has been ridiculously prolific, and yet while I'd rate most of his albums as "good," they don't hold up to close scrutiny. Black Francis had his shtick: Weird surf-rock suffused with exotic psycho-sexual and sci-fi imagery… like the subtext of every '50s B-movie come to giddy, terrifying life. As Frank Black, Thompson started out even nuttier, on freewheeling songs like "Los Angeles" (an actual rock radio staple in the early '90s, believe it or not). In the 15 years since, he's tried to normalize way too much, by leaning more towards folk ballads and other roots-music exercises, in between blatant Pixies rehashes. Thompson's talented enough to make all his records listenable, but when it comes down to it, why would I want to listen to pale imitations over the real thing? Out of loyalty?

Frankie Goes To Hollywood, "Relax"

Speaking of transcendence and childhood, I still have a bad memory of my mom walking in on me while I had my headphones on, dancing around my bedroom to this song, completely blissed-out and oblivious. I was so into "Relax" that I bought (and loved) FGTH's very weird double-album debut Welcome To The Pleasuredome, with its pornographic Picasso gatefold cover and string of in-jokes. I also bought the cassingle of "The Power Of Love," which contained three different mixes of the song and "a Christmas message from Frankie" in which the boys camped it up while talking about what toys they wanted for Christmas. I didn't really understand any of what I was looking at our listening to: Not the openly gay imagery, or the British-ness of phrases like "dead festive" on the Christmas record. And while I was old enough to know what "come" meant when "Relax" was a hit, it was because it was a hit that I was certain that the band didn't mean what they seemed to mean. Mainly, I just liked the way their bass guitar thumped.

Freakwater, "Lullaby"

There's something about two (or even three) female voices singing folk ballads together that always strikes me as devastatingly beautiful. Even if the subject matter of this song—which is all about extreme poverty—weren't so sad, I think I'd still be heartsick listening to it.

Fred Neil, "The Dolphins"

Fred Neil is one of those cult artists that I didn't know I already knew until I started digging into his catalog last year. I knew he wrote "Everybody's Talkin'," but I didn't know what a profound influence he'd had on David Crosby, and I hadn't realized he originated "The Dolphins," one of my favorite late '60s crypto-folk ballads. I first heard the song via Billy Bragg's cover on Don't Try This At Home, though I didn't realize at the time that the song was a cover. Then two years ago I heard Tim Buckley's gorgeous version, and thought, "Huh… I guess Bragg was covering Buckley." Then last summer I caught up with the first half of The Sopranos' sixth season and was entranced by the sequence where Christopher shoots up at an amusement park—a psychedelic delight scored to Fred Neil's original "Dolphins." In my usual "nothing by halves" style, I bought the complete Neil discography the next day, and spent a happy couple of weeks working my way back and forth from his early days as a trad folkie to his later journeys into the mystic. But to be honest, I don't know that Neil ever topped this song: an eco-minded call to arms that almost says more about the natural order in its dreamy style than in its lyrics.

Free, "All Right Now"

This may be the most obvious Free song to pick—and in a way, it's fairly untypical of the kind of spare, booming blooze-boogie that dominates the band's albums—but I can't not nod to it. For one thing, I'd be willing to argue that this is the seminal rock song of the '70s, laying down a formula that aspiring arena rockers would follow for the next decade, from the clean riff to the contrast of wailing vocals and a primitive groove. For another thing, I've always imagined that if I could sing a lick, and I were picked for one of those TV talent shows, I'd sing this song and I'd sail through to the next round.

The Free Design, "2002: A Hit Song"

I'd never heard of these cult sunshine-poppers until the remix album The Now Sound Revisited came out in '05, and I was so taken with it that I tracked down a Free Design anthology, and then started digging further with the help of eMusic, which has the complete Free Design discography. This song was kind of an inside joke for the band, who were a little tired of trying to figure out why they recorded such radio-friendly songs yet couldn't get on the radio. So here they mock the hit-making process, while providing the weird little avant-garde touches that probably explain the real reason why they languished in obscurity.

The Fun And Games, "The Grooviest Girl In The World"

This song comes from an anthology called 25 All-Time Greatest Bubblegum Hits, a disc which kind of bookends all the sunshine-pop albums in my collection, showing the ultimate endpoint of all those happy, simplistic, semi-psychedelic acts I like. With the psychedelia sucked out and glib generational references inserted, you get bubblegum. Still, it's hard not to like this song, as silly as it is.

The Futureheads, "Fallout"

Though Field Music is my favorite band from the Sunderland scene, The Futureheads are a pretty close second, falling short mainly because they sound a little more derivative and a little less forward-thinking than some of their colleagues. Still, they turn their XTC/Big Country/Cure influences into the kind of chirpy guitar-pop that's never unwelcome in my house.

Regrettably unremarked upon: The Finn Brothers, The Flatlanders, Flatt & Scruggs, The Fleshtones, Flipper, The Frames, The Four Tops, Franz Ferdinand, Fred Eaglesmith, Freedy Johnston, Freelance Hellraiser, Frightened Rabbit and The Funk Brothers.

Also listened to: The Finger, Finian McKean, The Finns,

Fionn Regan, Fire, Fire Engines, Firefall, Firefly, First Baptist Bells, First Choice, First Nation, Fischerspooner, The Five Blind Boys Of Mississippi, The Five Echoes, The Five Stairsteps, Five Times, Fizzle Like A Flood, Flash Cadillac & The Continental Kids, The Flatmates, The Fleetwoods, Floatation Toy Warning, Floetry, Floraline, Floyd Jones, Flugente, Fluid Ounces, The Flying Machine, FM Static, Fog, Foghat, For Squirrels, Forever Changed, The Format, The Fortunes, The Forty-Fives, Forward Russia, The Foudry Field Recordings, Fourplay, Foxhole, Foxymorons, François Couperin & Reitzell, The Frank & Walters, Frank Howard, Frank Lenz, Frank Myers, Frank Wakefield, Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers, Fred Anderson, Fred Astaire, Fred Hughes, Fred Van Eps, Freddie & The Hitch-Hikers, Frederick Knight, Frederick McQueen, Free Sol, Freez, French Kicks, Frente!, Fridge, Frog Eyes, Frontier Index, Frou Frou, Fruit Bats, Fu Manchu, Fuck, Funky Nashville and Future Pigeon

Next week: A Popless-On-Vacation special, checking in on the state of the project so far, and picking up on songs and artists missed, from A-F.

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