Popless Week 28: True Believers

By Noel Murray
July 14th, 2008

Metallica, "Killing Time"

The local album rock station in my area used to play the syndicated show Metalshop late on Saturday nights in the '80s, and if I was still awake, I'd listen. Heavy metal wasn't really my thing—and still isn't—but I was impressed with how many metal bands in the mid '80s had more in common with punk than with Twisted Sister. I first heard Metallica on Metalshop, and they became for me an example of the kind of "pure" metal band that I respected a lot, even if I had no interest in buying their records. In fact, aside from my DVD of Some Kind Of Monster (one of the greatest rock docs of all time, in my opinion) the only Metallica record I own is the double-disc Garage Inc., which puts the band's full-on assault in service of punk and metal cover songs that are more… I don't know, is "fun" the right word?

The Meters, "Cissy Strut"

M.F.S.B., "Sexy"

Mickey & The Soul Generation, "Up The Stairs And Around The Bend"

Here's a trio of funk/R&B instrumentals, custom made for crate-diggers and retro revivalists. When it comes to bands like The Meters (from New Orleans) and M.F.S.B. (from Philly), the regional affiliation is as significant as any of the fluke hits or sample-worthy grooves they laid down. The Meters were integral to Louisiana's rootsy soul scene (there were Nevilles and Toussaints involved, for heaven's sake), while M.F.S.B. helped codify the string-soaked "sound of Philadelphia" that would eventually become the framework for disco (and David Bowie's Young Americans album). As for Mickey & The Soul Generation (from San Antonio), they were the kind of near-forgotten, niche-y local legend that modern bands like The Dap-Kings pay homage to. They cut sides that made clubs and low-wattage radio stations across the southwest come alive.

Mew, "Apocalypso"

Mew's offbeat 2005 song-suite And The Glass Handed Kites is a seamless set of billowing Euro-pop, spiked with thick, elastic bass and a sound as resounding-yet-claustrophobic as the inside of a bell. Songs like "Apocalypso" roll through like a cold front, dropping electric pulses of guitar, synthesizer, and big-beat drums. What it lacks in variety—or, honestly, melody—it makes up in the windswept mystical air and triumphant tone.

Mia Doi Todd, "The Last Night Of Winter"

I was so impressed with Todd's 2005 album Manzanita that I dug up some of her earlier records, from when she was a fairly straightforward coffeehouse folkie, and frankly, if I'd heard Todd from the beginning, I probably would've bailed on her as an artist long before Manzanita rolled around. Those first few albums are spare to a fault, while Manzanita siphons some of the folk away from "the new folk," aiming for a sound at once forward-thinking and classically rooted. Todd has a smoky mysticism and freeform beauty that recalls Nick Drake, Tim Buckley and Joni Mitchell—with some of that sound supplied by members of neo-psychedelic outfits Beachwood Sparks and The Brian Jonestown Massacre. The easy-gliding "The Last Night Of Winter" in particular makes a long-distance relationship sound like an act of romantic heroism.

Michel Legrand, "The Jitterbug Waltz"

Given how dedicated the French New Wave directors were to learning the techniques of classic cinema and then chopping them to pieces, it was inevitable that they'd gravitate to the music of Michel Legrand, who took what he learned from working with American jazz legends in Paris and applied it to orchestral music that sounded at once sentimental, lush and subtly disjointed. This track comes from Legrand's classic 1958 album Legrand Jazz, which features Miles Davis, Bill Evans and John Coltrane (among others). It's alternately lovely and jolting, not unlike the techniques he'd later lend to the films of Godard and Demy.

Mike Douglas, "The Man In My Little Girl's Life"

My little girl is going to be four this August. The other day she told me that she was allergic to boys. I'm hoping she stays that way.

Mike Post, "Hill Street Blues"

Post is one of the few TV composers whose themes have gotten radio play and have even become hits. The full-length version of the Hill Street Blues theme (featuring Larry Carlton) arguably helped vault that series from ratings-challenged critical fave to Top 10 show. At the least, it served as an overture for what viewers would see each week. The bluesy and jazzy notes spoke to the show's gritty cops-and-robbers milieu, but the plaintive piano introduced the depths of character and emotion that were always in play. At a certain point, you didn't even need to watch the whole show to get it what it was going for. The theme was enough.

The Millennium, "It's You"

The Millennium were arguably the best project that sunshine-pop stalwart Curt Boettcher was ever involved with, showing a sonic sophistication and maturing approach to the vocals and lyrics. Sadly, The Millennium bombed out on the radio just like so many other Boettcher-fronted outfits. But they left behind songs like this one, which I can almost imagine the participants in The Elephant 6 Recording Company discovering in a used record shop—lightbulbs popping over the heads the whole time.

Milton Nascimento, "Anima"

My wife and I didn't have a band or a DJ at our wedding, but I made a tape of some our favorite songs—the kind of gentle, romantic ones that wouldn't scare off the oldsters—and we played it on a boom box in the corner of our reception hall. For people in that corner of the room, the music was too loud.† For those anywhere else in the room, the music was inaudible. Ah well. The tape included a good chunk of Beleza Tropical, including this early '80s Nascimento classic, which exhibits a little but of awareness of the influence Brazilian music was starting to have on American and British art-pop at the time, and seems to borrow some of that influence back. What instruments are playing over the bridge? Pan flute mixed with wood-blocks, or something else entirely? Whatever it is, those little runs never fail to delight.

Minibar, "Choked Up"

My first exposure to this Ryan Adams-penned song—easily the highlight of the pre-release version of Pneumonia—came via its cover by Minibar, a British band that briefly aspired to join the American alt-county movement. Reviewing their 2001 debut album Road Movies, I wrote: "Is there such a thing as British Americana? The UK quartet Minibar claim the quintessentially Yankee rock band Wilco as a primary inspiration, and have hired T-Bone Burnett—who has spent over two decades producing such rootsy Americans as Counting Crows and The Wallflowers, not to mention writing neo-folkie tunes of his own—to produce their debut album Road Movies. The band's songs do, in fact, sound as though they emerged from the rolling Western plains of the US, rather than the narrow streets of their original home. Over the plaintive piano and slide guitar of 'Choked Up,' bandleader Simon Petty delivers a marvelously modulated melody in a raspy voice that sounds like a sober Paul Westerberg, circa 1989. In track after track, the tunes cascade across pristine arrangements, draped in tastefully rough guitar leads and filigrees of acoustic instrumentation from harmonica to banjo. It's all very neat and nice: dusty, but a clean kind of dusty."

Ministry, "Thieves (Live)"

I'm not sure why but Ministry's hybrid metal and electronica has so often thrilled me, when I have minimal interest in either genre on its own. In my pre-iPod days, I used to blast Ministry over my Walkman while taking long walks through campus, feeling a destroyer of worlds.

Mink DeVille, "Let Me Dream If I Want To"

This pastiche of Lou Reed and Television by their NY contemporary Mink DeVille sounds like what would've happened if all those CBGB art-punkers had tried to write a hit song. This song never actually became a hit—and it tends to be left out of the "Blank Generation"/"See No Evil" canon—but in some ways represents the smart, streetwise attitude of the early American punks than the more rarified music to come.

Minus The Bear, "The Game Needed Me"

Modern indie-rockers have been increasingly leaving behind the careening, bellowing, eccentric-studio-rat model of the '90s for a sound that's tighter and slicker. Seattle's Minus The Bear is one of those remodeled indies, taking an approach that's at once poppy and subtly progressive, in the mode of The Police and latter day King Crimson. "The Game Needed Me" works with insinuating rhythms and string-bending guitars, while frontman Jake Snider mutters and moans a set of declarative statements in the voice of a generation: "We're all just selling time," "We've got a lot to lose," and so on. The song might be a critique of materialism, but what lingers are the spooky atmospherics and clattering percussion. "The Game Needed Me" is the aural equivalent of a shadowy, deserted street, and a moment of existential terror.

The Miracles, "Ohh Baby Baby"

This may be the best slow-dance number in the Motown catalog, and a great sex song too (though I guess that's redundant). The lyrics has Smokey Robinson asking for a second chance from a girl he wronged, and doing so in such a smooth, faux-sincere way that you just know that he's already on his way to bed as he's singing. He's holding her hand and kissing his way up her arm. He's unzipping the back of her dress. She's not saying no. Musically, the song works because of the deliberate pace and the way that the backup Miracles harmonize with the quavering strings. Robinson's in full control, too, maintaining his standard fragility without giving into to quavering. He sounds like a guy who you wouldn't know was sad unless you leaned in a bit.

The Misfits, "Where Eagles Dare"

I've always been more a Cramps man than a Misfits man, but every time I hear this song, I think about switching my allegiance. How come there are so many great rock songs that use "son of a bitch" as a key line? Is that phrase just inherently "rock?"

Missing Persons, "Windows"

There are any number of fascinations surrounding Missing Persons, from songwriter/drummer Terry Bozzio's association with Frank Zappa to his wife Dale's photo spreads in Hustler to the way the band poured all its creativity and commercial moxie into the stellar debut album Spring Session M and then quickly faded, two albums later. This song is one of my favorites from the American new wave—between Dale Bozzio's orgasmic hiccup and the lilting synths, "Windows" lurches awkwardly and endearingly from sexual come-on to genuine yearning. I'd like to think that this is the song that runs through the heads of exotic dancers while they're stripping to "Pour Some Sugar On Me."

Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels, "Shake A Tail Feather"

Ryder was an inspiration to Bruce Springsteen's stage persona and Bob Seger's early career, and in some ways he could be called Patient Zero for the idea of taking garage rock and R&B party records and turning them into frugtastic frenzies, played at warp speed.

Moby, "Flower"

I understand the criticisms that say Moby is little more than an appropriator and a canny self-promoter, and that his wildly successful mash-ups of old blues/gospel records and modern dance tracks are just ways of making Starbucks patrons feel hip and mod and connected to the past, all at once. There's truth to all of that. It's also true that Moby's records wouldn't have been so successful if they didn't fill some deep need for cutting futurism with traditionalism that existed in people at the end of '90s, even if they couldn't have articulated that want exactly.

Molly Hatchet, "Flirtin' With Disaster"

When I think about the current (and under-acknowledged) diversity in southern rock, I reflect on Molly Hatchet, a hard rock band—practically heavy metal—considered southern rockers primarily because of their accents and subject matter. Molly Hatchet were southern, but not bound by any expectations they didn't make for themselves. You've got to give it up for a band with such a dogged commitment to their presentation that they were still slapping the same Frazetta paintings and banner logo on their records as late as the mid-'00s.

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Regrettably unremarked upon: Merle Haggard, Metric, Mice Parade, Michael Franti, Michael Penn, The Mighty Lemon Drops, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, The Mills Brothers, Minnie Ripperton, The Minus 5, Missy Elliott, Mix Master Mike, Mobb Deep, Moby Grape, Modern English, moe., Mogwai and The Moldy Peaches

Also listened to: Meredith Brooks, Merv Shiner, Messer Chups, Metal Hearts, Metallic Falcons, Mezzanine Owls, Mgmt, Micah Blue Smaldone, Micah P Hinson, Michael And The Messengers, Michael Brook, Michael Hall, Michael Hurley, Michael Johnson, Michael Kelsh, Michael Manring, Michael Sembello, The Michael Shipp Xcursion, Michael Snow, Michael Yonkers, The Michaels, Mick Farren & The Deviants, Mick Jones, Mick Taylor, Mickey & The Milkshakes, Mickey Newbury, Micky Jupp, Midfield General, Midnight Bowlers, Midnight Movies, Mighty Mighty, Mighty Purple, Mighty Walker Brothers, Miguel Mendez, Mike Bloomfield, Mike Dillon's Go-Go Jungle, Mike Downey, Mike Farris, The Mike Flowers Pops, Mike Ireland & Holler, Mike Johnson, Mike Selesia, Miles, The Miller Sisters, Milosh, Milton Banana Trio, The Minders, Mindy Smith, Ming Tea, Minipop, Minmae, Mint, Mint Royale, Minute, Mira Billotte, Mishka Shubaly, The Missing Links, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Mississippi John Hurt, The Moaners, Mobius Band, Mocean Worker, Mochipet, Modey Lemon, Modjo, modlang, Mofongo, Mofro, Mohair, Mokie J.J. & R.O.B., Moleque De Rua, Moloko, Money Mark, Mongo Santamaria and The Monitors

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Next week: From The Moody Blues to Neil Young, plus a few words on "dark albums."

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