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.
"We Live As We Dream, Alone" by Gang Of Four
One of the biggest problems with the introduction of "red state" and "blue state" to the American political lexicon is that those kind of either-or terms measure regional political differences with the polling equivalent of a pregnancy test. A woman can't be 55% pregnant, and according to cable news pundits, a state can't be 55% Republican. For rhetorical purposes, it's all or nothing. But then what do you do with a state like—oh, just to pick one at random—Arkansas? The Natural State went for Bush in the past two presidential elections, and has provided the home base from which Mike Huckabee has become a significant player in conservative circles. But Arkansas can also claim prominent Democrats Wesley Clark and Bill Clinton, and the state currently has a Democrat in the governor's mansion, two Democratic senators, and three Democrats in the House out of a possible four. Then again, the political positions of the average elected Arkansas Democrat would likely fall to the right of the average elected Massachusetts Republican. So, Arkansas: red or blue?
Since fourth grade, I've been friends—best friends, really—with a guy whose political inclinations stand about 180 degrees apart from my own. And that's been a rare gift. Over the decades my friend Rob and I have bickered with each other over religion, economics, foreign policy, and the culture wars, and we've come to the point recently where we know each other's positions so well that we don't really argue much at all. Instead, we anticipate what each other might say, and concede points before we even get to the real meat of our disagreement. It saves time, and—for me at least—it's helped me strengthen what I believe in. Rob's skepticism helps remind me what I'm really arguing for, and keeps me from getting hung up on the usual right-wing and left-wing talking points.
Because of that, I've found that I've lost patience with editorials, movies, TV shows, and documentaries that argue "my" positions in petty, one-sided ways. I don't have much use for writers, directors, and actors who smugly spout liberal pieties as though they were common-sense truth, without bothering to "show their work," as it were, and break down how they reached a conclusive, no-room-for-doubt position on, say, abortion, or the war in Iraq. I keep hearing what they say through the ears of my right-leaning friends and family members, who've lived most of their lives with an entertainment industry that paints them as villains or morons (or both).
So I'd probably bristle at a movie that said, flatly, "Corporate America sucks and Dick Cheney is an evil asshole." And yet if I heard that sentiment in a song, I just might whoop. Music is the one form of entertainment where shallow, ill-considered polemics are okay with me. It's definitely possible to write nuanced political songs—last week's Primer subject Elvis Costello has done a fine job with it, especially in the anti-war masterpiece "Shipbuilding"—but by and large, a verse-chorus-verse format is hardly the place to look for careful reasoning. I'm perfectly fine with getting an immediate quick-hit of rage and dissent, because music can deliver a rush of feeling better than almost any other medium, and sometimes I'd rather that feeling be blunt and shallow.
Is that inconsistent? Or hypocritical? Probably. But just as I try not to be one of those movie critics who vets every film to make sure that it fits a set of pre-ordained moral criteria, I also try not to be the kind of music critic who demands all songs fall within certain guidelines of taste. (And please note the word "try" in that sentence; I frequently fail to live up to my own ideals.) I definitely get irritated by bombast, both sonic and lyrical, but if it suits the song and the song moves me, tacky can be beautiful.
More to the point though, the communal aspect of music fandom—which these days includes chatting on the Internet with like-minded strangers as well as singing along in the car with your friends and going to shows with fellow scenesters—yields naturally to sloganeering. Billy Bragg once sang that "wearing badges is not enough in days like these," by which he meant that constraining political convictions to T-shirts isn't much help when the world's in crisis. And he's absolutely right. But a good rabble-rousing song—or a good T-shirt—can make a difference, for the way it raises awareness and even galvanizes.
The truth is that individualism can be hard for some. Coming out in favor of one point of view when all the loudest voices in your community are saying the opposite can seem like more trouble than it's worth. But when the national media pigeonholes an entire region, a "blue" kid stuck in a "red" state can still go to a concert by Bragg or Ted Leo or Michael Franti and learn something inspiring: You are not alone.
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Pieces Of The Puzzle Game TheoryYears Of Operation 1981-89
Fits Between Big Star and The Strawberry Alarm Clock
"The Real Sheila" by Game Theory
Personal Correspondence The short-lived, oft-glorious indie label Enigma Records put out a couple of anthologies titled The Enigma Variations in the mid-'80s, and they were essential listening during my high school years. The Enigma Variations parts one and two brought together disparate threads of the college rock scene—mainstream guitar-pop like The Smithereens, frizzy Americana like Green On Red, paisley underground heroes like The Rain Parade, novelty satirists like Mojo Nixon, and so on—and made it seem like there was a legitimate underground rock movement going on in the U.S., and that it was on the verge of taking over. One of the bands that I discovered via The Enigma Variations was Game Theory, who in my senior year of high school and freshman year of college meant as much to me as the Pixies or Dinosaur Jr. or any of the other under-the-radar acts I'd pledged my love to. Only Game Theory never crossed over to the extent that Pixies or Dinosaur Jr. did, most likely because of what bandleader Scott Miller so aptly described in the liner notes of the band's records as his "miserable whine." It didn't help either that Miller had such a will to weirdness, manifested in subtle and overt nods to James Joyce and the "automatic writing" exercises of the beatniks. He dressed up jangly guitar-pop with buzzy synthesizers (a sound that's always reminded me of the soundtrack to the early-'70s Tarzan cartoons) and diced-up bits of noise. On Game Theory's superb double-album Lolita Nation, Miller dedicated much of side three to a series of song-snippets that lasted less than 10 seconds. Miller continued some of that experimentation with his next band, The Loud Family, but some trends that began with Game Theory's final album 2 Steps From The Middle Ages—most notably Miller's weakening songcraft—continued, and even when The Loud Family straightened up, they never captured my imagination the way that Game Theory's witty, tuneful, puckishly odd music did. For a while, Game Theory were the champions of the minor leagues.
Enduring presence? I have to confess that I cheated a bit this week. All of my Game Theory is on vinyl or on cassette, and I've never gotten around to transferring any of it into MP3 form (even though I bought a tool to do that last Christmas). Nor can I—or you—readily buy any Game Theory on CD, because all the band's albums are out-of-print and fetching a minimum of 100 bucks each on eBay right now. But I didn't want to exclude Game Theory the way I've excluded major acts like Captain Beefheart, Brian Eno and Funkadelic, so I found a streaming Game Theory song on a music blog, and I procured the necessary software to record it and upload it myself. When this project is over and I have the time for such frivolity, I look forward to fiddling with my vinyl-ripper and making myself a Game Theory anthology. For now though, this one song will have to do.
Gang Of FourYears Of Operation 1977-84, 1990-present
Fits Between Shriekback and Clinic
"Natural's Not In It" by Gang Of Four
Personal Correspondence Here's another band—like The Feelies a few weeks back—who were properly introduced to me via Rolling Stone magazine's late-'80s attempts at rock canon-building. All I really knew by Gang Of Four at the time was the college radio hit "I Love A Man In A Uniform," but then I improbably found a cassette copy of Entertainment! in a record store in rural Kansas when I was visiting my dad the summer before college, and there was something strangely powerful about receiving ironically stentorian messages promoting consumerism and exploitation while sitting in the attic room of a tiny house near a wheat field. That album—and Go4's third album Songs Of The Free, to a lesser extent—really transport the listener to a different place, at once vaguely futuristic yet familiar from regressive-leaning propaganda films. The band also stacked beats better than almost any of their dancefloor-minded post-punk brethren. The resulting music can seem a little rigid and chilly, but that was part of the point: to create something equally alluring and off-putting, to help the listener see through fascism at its grossest and pettiest.
Enduring presence? Some Gang Of Four fans were appalled by the band's recent album Return The Gift, for which the band re-recorded a handful of their best-known songs with the arrangements they now use when they play them live. I thought it was great, like a live album without the sonic compromises. What that record mainly proved is that as a performing unit, Gang Of Four are still aces. If they'd applied those chops to an inferior set of new material, I'm not sure it would've been so impressive. As for Gang Of Four's ongoing influence, it's definitely been more pervasive since the dawn of the '00s than it was in the wake of their initial run. I used to wonder why more people didn't rip off Gang Of Four; by 2006, I would've been happy never to hear another Go4 imitator ever again.
GenesisYears Of Operation 1967-99; 2006-present
Fits Between King Crimson and TV On The Radio
"Man Of Our Times" by Genesis
Personal Correspondence So which Genesis suits you best? Do you like Peter Gabriel wearing crazy masks and singing complicated multi-part suites based on folklore and urban alienation? Or do you like Phil Collins singing goofy, overly synthesized songs about immigration and televangelism (in between spooky anthems and tender sap)? Myself, I split the difference. I like the Genesis of Duke and Abacab, still readily able to fall into that familiar proggy cadence, yet able to condense and brighten their sound for radio play.
Enduring presence? Phil Collins' post-1985 solo career hasn't made it easy to be a Genesis fan, and certainly the Collins-led Genesis has had its share of howlingly awful songs too. But at their best and most ambitious, the latter-period Genesis isn't as far removed from the Gabriel era as some purists insist. There's still something grand and fully conceived about the Genesis sound, even as their subject matter remains human-scaled. And Collins has saved some of his best sappy AC ballads for Genesis—"Hold On My Heart," for example—and even though they don't sound particularly "Genesis-y," they're fine on their own. It's hard to craft a fluid, comprehensible Genesis anthology, but it's not so hard to come up with an hour or two of really amazing Genesis songs, drawing from all the eras. (Of course it helps that some of the best early songs are over 10 minutes long.)
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