"Sonic Reducer" by Dead Boys
I'm writing this from sunny, gaudy Las Vegas, where the first thing you learn when you step off the plane is how to say "no." The first time an official-looking person hands you a flyer, asks where you're from, and offers to set you up with a good deal on dinner and a show, you might be curious enough to listen to the pitch. But once you realize that it's all a scheme to get you to hear a time-share presentation—and that every other flyer-slinger on the strip has the same goal—you start saying "not interested" even if someone just smiles and waves at you. That's the problem with the whole salesman/prospect relationship: it corrupts the very notion of "friendliness." Salesmen start by asking about your family and in no time flat, their questions forge a syllogism designed to make it impossible for you not to buy a side of beef—even if you don't have the freezer space.
When people ask me how this project is going, and whether I miss listening to new music at all, my usual response is that the pangs come and go. Every week or two an album comes out—or I get a press release for an album that's about to come out—and I start to pine for that old feeling of opening up a much-anticipated CD for the first time, and listening to it cold, not knowing whether the songs that stand out immediately will seem too obvious a month from now, or if the common reaction of mild disappointment will gradually transition to grudging affection, and then fiercely protective love. Listening to a new album is kind of like moving someplace new—or even just going on vacation—in that it takes a day or two before you can orient yourself, and realize where you're going to be spending most of your time
And yet, this week in Vegas, while surrounded on all sides by machines and people working to turn my head and pluck my wallet, I realized that there's plenty about keeping up with new music that I don't miss. I don't miss the off-balance release schedule, which has critics and editors struggling to find material to fill the space one week, and then having to compress and oversimplify their thoughts on a stack of worthy records the next. And I don't miss the steady flow of hype and pitches that often determine what's worth writing about. When this project ends, I'm going to take my time to pick-and-choose what I'd like to catch up with, with no sense of obligation beyond my own curiosity and natural inclinations. Because whether it's buying meat, looking at rental property, or falling in love with a new album, it's really better to move at your own pace, without getting swayed by the promise of a free buffet.
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Since I'm technically on vacation and would rather be floating on an inner tube down the man-made concrete river behind my hotel, this week's column will be a short-ish follow-up to Week Seven's "The State Of The Popless," answering some recurring questions that have come up in the comments and in my conversations with friends:
"You've said this project is partly about what you can get rid of. So how's that part going? How much are you deleting each week?"
I'd say I'm eliminating about a fifth of my collection, give or take. But it's hard to pin down exactly, because I'm mainly transitioning the way I store my music. Some of the artists that haven't received a "strikethrough" notation on the "also listened to" list, I've still dumped their actual CDs, and am only keeping their best songs on my hard drive. And some of the artists that have gotten stricken only had one or two songs on my hard drive the first place. When this whole project is done, I expect that my physical CD collection will be cut roughly in half, and will contain only box sets, albums I consider good-to-great, and hand-picked compilations burned onto disc for backup purposes. And nearly everything in that collection should fit on my hard drive.
"You've only made it through F, and the year's almost a third of the way done. Are you going to be able to finish listening to your whole collection by December?"
Well, there may have to be some adjustments made to the timetable down the line. If I've crunched the numbers correctly, even though I've only gotten through six letters of the alphabet, I'm still about a third of the way through my collection. (Yes, 6 x 3 = 18, not 26, but there are some dud letters yet to come.) But I took this week off, and I've got another vacation coming in June, and the Toronto film festival for a week in September, so there will be some setbacks. I've been thinking up some contingency plans in case I need to go into overtime in '09.
"What's surprised you most about the project so far?"
Mainly how much I've learned from you readers, and how the Popless comments section has become a fairly relaxed, not-too-obnoxious place for people to talk about their favorite bands and to grill me about what's been left out or unremarked upon. I'm always surprised to see which acts you think I've missed the boat on—some of which I've heard and have never given much time to, and some of which I've never even heard of. I've tried to be comprehensive in my music-listening life, but like everyone, I have gaps.
Then again, some of those missing artists are only absent for clerical reasons. Until last week, there were about 40 or so multi-artist anthologies and soundtracks that I'd never gotten around to loading onto my hard drive, and though most of the artists on those sets I only have one or two songs by, some of them are well-represented in my vinyl or cassette collections, and so one song would've been excuse enough to write a little something, or at least to acknowledge that I'm aware of them. Now that all those comps are loaded—along with some full albums I mistakenly missed during my weekly pass through my physical CD collection—there should be fewer accidental gaps.
But as a way of nodding to completism (as well as giving me an easier workload this week), here's a rundown of some great songs I've missed over the first 15 weeks—some of which are by artists that I'd always meant to write more about. At the end of the rundown you'll find an abbreviated list of other "name" acts that came up in this week's sweeping-up process.
The Missing
Al Green, "Back Up Train"
"Back Up Train" by Al Green
I had Green on the "also listened to" list way back in Week One, and left him out of the mix primarily because the only song I had on my hard drive at the time was "Let's Stay Together," which I figured everyone already knew was awesome. I was still establishing a process back then, and when I was doing my weekly sweep for CDs that needed to be added to my hard drive, I forgot my Al Green anthology, because it didn't occur to me to flip through my CDs all the way to the "G"s. Now I flip through my entire collection every few weeks, and then stack a big block of CDs behind the couch in our living room—thereby adding to the clutter that this project was supposed to help eliminate. And I've finally gotten around to adding more Green. This track pre-dates his big '70s hits, and I picked it because it stands apart from the sonic unanimity of those sultry, slow-simmering soul tracks of the '70s "Back Up Train" is a fairly routine late '60s R&B number, but Green presides over it like the genteel preacher man he is, even though he's unable to keep his ecstatic inclinations tamped down for long.
B.B. King, "I Got Some Help I Don't Need"
"I Got Some Help I Don't Need" by B.B. King
King's another one I intentionally skipped the first time around because I didn't have his anthology loaded onto my hard drive. Also, I wasn't really ready—and I'm still not—to write about the blues, and rock music's appropriation thereof, and where my sympathies lie. (Here's a preview: When it comes to trad, I'm pro-adulteration.) Anyway, if I'd written about King a few months ago, I would've pointed out that some of my favorite music by the classic blues guys—King, Muddy Waters, et cetera—comes from the late '60s and early '70s, when the attention of bands like Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones made old-school electric blues commercially viable, giving the masters the chance to head back into the studio and record classic-sounding songs in somewhat modern styles. In this 1972 single, King generates a late-night, urban vibe, giving the proper frame to his technical proficiency and emotional remove.
Banda Black Rio, "Maria Fumaça"
"Maria Fumaca" by Banda Black Rio
I got this one off a terrific compilation called Samba Soul 70, which pulls together songs from the post-Tropicalismo movement in Brasil, when artists were borrowing from American R&B more than rock and psychedelia, and the result was songs like "Maria Fumaça," which sound like the theme song to some syndicated late afternoon talk show, given a Latin twist.
The Bar-Kays, "Son Of Shaft"
"Son Of Shaft" by The Bar-Kays
With all due respect to Isaac Hayes' original "Theme From Shaft," this riff on Hayes' hit recorded by his labelmates The Bar-Kays is an ideal way for people suffering from "Shaft"-burnout to rediscover what makes that song so amazing. It's not just the bad-ass patter; it's that wickedly snaky guitar riff, which uncoils dangerously across a floor of brass.
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