Michelle Shocked
Years Of Operation 1984-present
Fits Between k.d. lang and Ani DiFrano
"5 A.M. In Amsterdam" by Michelle Shocked
Personal Correspondence From what I'd read about Michelle Shocked when she first started getting press, she really didn't sound like my kind of musician. Mumbly, trilling, lo-fi songs about kicking around trainyards in B.F.E.? Not really my thing. But then I saw her open for Billy Bragg in Atlanta—a set I was dreading before it started—and I was so charmed by her playful stage banter and tuneful songs that I scooped up The Texas Campfire Tapes and Short Sharp Shocked the next day. Neither of those records gets talked about as much as they once did, but they hold up well: Campfire for the intimate, off-the-cuff beauty of songs like "5 A.M. In Amsterdam" (a song I think about whenever I hear the name of my friend Scott's daughter, Isabel…or "Isabelle Ringing," as I'd like to call her), and Short Sharp for the way it translates Shocked's quirks and political preoccupations to a more polished country-rock format. I still hear "Anchorage" every now and then over the satellite services that restaurants and grocery stores use, and I wish Shocked had held to the simplicity, directness and wit of that song, rather than starting to take herself, her music and her message so seriously. (One more thing about Shocked that I can't shake: I had a girlfriend for over a year in college who looked a lot like her, especially when she cut her hair short and started wearing more hats.)
Enduring presence? Writing about the trifecta of albums Shocked released in 2005, I tried to put her career into perspective, noting, "Michelle Shocked has often accused the music industry of treating her wrong, but then, she's the kind of iconoclastic, rootsy artist who tends to fall between the show-business cracks. It was easier for Shocked in the late '80s, when 'the new folk' movement was ascendant and her itinerant-punk Woody Guthrie shtick caught the fancy of the college-rock crowd. By the time Shocked shifted from the hummable protest songs and character sketches of her early albums to the semi-strident 'history of Americana' that followed, her casual fans had moved on to Tracy Chapman and/or Ani DiFranco. So Shocked went the indie route, self-releasing albums that ran her traditional folk moves through filters of gospel and island rhythms." I've been deeply disappointed in Shocked from the '90s on, but I haven't abandoned her either. I keep picking up—or requesting from publicists—the albums she puts out every few years, and I usually find a song or two on each that are so good it almost makes me angry.
Midlake
Years Of Operation 1999-present
Fits Between Dire Straits and Fleetwood Mac
"Head Home" by Midlake
Personal Correspondence I had one of those Life Without Buildings-type epiphanies the first time I heard Midlake's The Trials Of Van Occupanther back in 2006. It was just another record in the promo pile, but when I popped it in and "Roscoe" came on, I stopped what I was doing and called my wife into the room so she could hear it. A week later, I wrote this gushing review: "Just the opening half-minute of 'Roscoe,' the lead track on Midlake's sophomore album, generates the kind of knowingly resigned, darkly ritualistic mood that was all over FM radio in the mid-to-late-'70s, in the era of Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, and Dire Straits. The mellifluous, murmuring double-tracked croon of bandleader Tim Smith spirals through echoing piano, muffled drums, and quietly slashing electric guitars, all so commanding that there's no better way to react to it than to find a window to stare through—preferably one facing a grove of trees, swaying in an autumn wind. It's the kind of song worth stopping everything for. Then again, so is 'Bandits,' which marries an archaic-sounding melody to humming organ and rippling piano, and 'Head Home,' which builds to a dramatic guitar solo that sounds like a tin shack beset by storms, and 'Van Occupanther,' a steady piano march leavened by the sound of a Mellotron and Smith cautioning, 'I must be careful now in my steps.' With The Trials Of Van Occupanther, Midlake has built a fragile fantasy world out of pieces of American history, the resonant sounds of churches and small-town music halls, and a basic sense of compassion. Songs like 'Young Bride' and 'Branches' practically tremble, as they pulse along on steady keyboards and woven-silk guitar, keeping Smith braced while he sings lines like, 'It's hard for me, but I'm trying.'
Van Occupanther's spell finally breaks a little more than halfway through its 11 tracks, when the songs begin to feel more fussed-over and conceptual and less organic, but the warmth never fades. When Midlake reaches the album's brief, moving conclusion, 'You Never Arrived,' it's earned the pangs of recognition it'll get from those listeners who grew up with this kind of music seeping into the mystery-infatuated compartments of their collective subconscious."
Enduring presence? All I have to add to the above is that I no longer think Van Occupanther fades down the stretch; I love the album from start to finish. Also, I picked up the band's more rudimentary Bamnan And Silvercork and think the songwriting has a lot to recommend it, even though the production and playing are rougher, and lack the gossamer beauty of what was to come. There's reportedly a new album due later this year, hopefully around the time I get to pop my head back up and listen to new records again.
Midnight Oil
Years Of Operation 1973-2002
Fits Between INXS and U2
"Kosciuszko (Live)" by Midnight Oil
Personal Correspondence Anyone who grew up in Nashville in the '80s and liked alternative rock went to pretty much any show that seemed remotely cool, even if the band in question was more "mainstream" than snobby alt-rockers usually preferred. It was the summer between high school and college when I saw Midnight Oil at The Cannery, almost on a whim. It was a hot night, and the large-ish club was packed so tight that I didn't get admitted until about four songs into the headlining set. I didn't know much about Midnight Oil at the time. One of my cousins was a fan, and a few years earlier, when I spent a weekend with him in D.C., he showed me an episode of Thicke Of The Night on which Midnight Oil performed a handful of songs from 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, including the incendiary "The Power And The Passion." By the summer of '88, the band's Diesel And Dust album was a hit, so I headed up to the Cannery with the singles in my head. But I wasn't prepared for the sheer force of a by-then-well-road-tested touring band, or for the larger than life personality of frontman Peter Garrett, whose freakish charisma was really too big for that Nashville club stage. He pontificated, he jerked about, he howled to the rafters. As I recall, the show ended with an extended version of "The Power And The Passion," during which Garrett patrolled a miked-up, metal-festooned stage set with a drumstick, turning everything he could find into part of an unstoppable beat. I saw them live again two years later on the Blue Sky Mining tour, in a big outdoor amphitheater, and less was lost in translation than you might think. In fact, I tend to think of Midnight Oil as a live act first and foremost. I like the trifecta of 10, 9, 8, Red Sails In The Sunset and Diesel And Dust (the latter just reissued in a nice package, by the way) quite a bit, but at the moment my favorite Midnight Oil album is Oils On The Water, a live album drawn from the Red Sails tour that captures the range and rage of the Oils at their peak.
Enduring presence? Have Midnight Oil been forgotten? Do people just think about Garrett's bald head and skeletal frame, and the band's punchy singles, and forget about how well-crafted their albums were, and what a presence they were on stage? True, their last couple of albums weren't so great, but during their first decade, they were among the most powerful rock bands in the world. Why aren't they talked about more?
Miles Davis
Years Of Operation 1944-91
Fits Between Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk
"Miles Ahead" by Miles Davis
Personal Correspondence When I was first getting into jazz, Miles Davis loomed as an imposing, daunting figure, because of the sheer volume of his output and its reputation for being sometimes hard to parse. One of my roommates dove into Davis with Bitches Brew, which isn't exactly a clean way into the catalogue. I bought Sketches Of Spain and In A Silent Way (paired on a 2-for-1 cassette) and liked them both, even though neither of those records well-represent Davis' body of work. It took me a couple of years to work my way to the Davis album that most reasonable people start with, Kind Of Blue, and I got there because of one scene in the Wolfgang Petersen/Clint Eastwood actioner In The Line Of Fire where Eastwood's character listens to "All Blues" while unwinding. From there I moved into the large body of work Davis created in collaboration with Gil Evans, and I confess that I've been kind of living there ever since. There's something about the lushness and smokiness of those Davis/Evans recordings that supplies what I'm frequently looking for in jazz: miniature narratives, sketched in mood.
Enduring presence? One of my goals for next year is to renew my jazz education, starting with Davis and his post-1970 work. But I acknowledge that I'll probably never be more than a dabbler when it comes to jazz and especially to Davis. You could dedicate the rest of your life to collecting and studying Miles Davis, and never exhaust the subject.
Minutemen
Years Of Operation 1980-85
Fits Between Wire and Big Boys
"Anxious Mo-Fo" by Minutemen
"Pedro Bound!" by Mike Watt
Personal Correspondence Of all the bands that I got into thanks to Michael Golberg's 1985 Rolling Stone article "Punk Lives!," the one that I've had the longest, most fruitful relationship with is the Minutemen. Reading about Double Nickels On The Dime was intriguing enough—A band playing 90-second covers of Steely Dan, CCR and Van Halen, in between punky, jazzy, haiku-like songs about political action and popular culture? I want in!—but the descriptions alone didn't really tell the story about that record or the band. Minutemen were born outside the proper Los Angeles punk scene, and developed an ethos based on openheartedness, working-class politics, and artistic adventure, rather than any codified notion of cool. D. Boon, Mike Watt and George Hurley were self-taught, and gravitated to punk because it let people like them get on stage, even if they were more into jazz, funk, and Credence Clearwater Revival than thrash. And once they got to the stage, they stood out from the rest of the west coast punk pack. Everyone else may have tried to look outrageous, but the could rarely match the oddity of Boon strangling his guitar and bellowing, Watt popping his bass and puffing, and hulky Sean Penn look-alike George Hurley tapping at his drum kit like it was a typewriter. (Some week I'm going to have to dedicate a whole Popless essay to drumming.) I dug the band's brevity, their good humor, their willingness to try anything and their utter lack of concern about whether they're particular interests would be seen as "with-it." They got a pass for being classic rock guys playing punk, because they came from the sticks, worked their asses off, and were just genuinely good dudes. No one could hate them.
Enduring presence? Double Nickels isn't just in my Top 10 albums of all time, I think it's arguably one of the 5 best albums of the '80s. (Not that I have a list handy.) Just like Meat Puppets' Up On The Sun, Double Nickels encapsulates the follow-your-dream spirit of SST Records and the post-hardcore scene, and it's also a cluster bomb of musical and lyrical ideas, popping off 40 times an hour. Post-Nickels—and especially following the death of D. Boon—Mike Watt has become increasingly idiosyncratic, developing his own lingo full of dropped "g"s, guttural profanity, and references to "spiels," "jamming econo" and "hellrides." His solo albums have been ambitious and strange, and aren't recommended for neophytes. But for those who've followed his career with congenial interest for decades, Watt's open-hearted dispatches from Pedro about parents, friends, music, sickness and death have more appreciable gravitas than some emo kid whining about how his ex-girlfriend never called him back.
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