Funeral to Finish

  Here we have another third rail artist, Stevie Wonder, and in this case, unlike some other third rail artists I could name , it's richly deserved.  I don't think it's hyperbole or overstatement to say that Stevie Wonder is one of the most prodigiously talented, gifted, and enjoyable American artists to ever perform.  No serious music fan would argue with that. That said, this album - released in 1972, his FOURTEENTH album - is more of a prelude than a destination.  By that, I mean that in this album, which is widely considered the first album of his golden phase, the rest of which we will certainly be seeing later, you can hear the musical ideas that will later become fully realized in later albums.  Take a song like "Girl Blue," with its lilting, descending melody of a kind that will show later in much better-recognized songs.  And the harmonica work in "Sweet Little Girl" will undoubtedly remind you of little songs like "Isn't She Lovely....

  This is a wild album that I really can't believe came out in 1973.  The top-selling album in 1973 was The World Is a Ghetto  by War.  Second was Summer Breeze  by Seals and Crofts.  Neither of those albums even faintly resemble this.  In fact, you have to go down to number 11, Dark Side of the Moon , to find anything even remotely as weird as this.   This was the last time Brian Eno and Bryan Ferry could work together, and you can feel their tensions pulling against each other.  There's a driving, almost funky song like "Editions of You" that should have found a home on pop radio and then there's something like "The Bogus Man," with Ferry's vocals over a steady beat with all kinds of swirling instrumentation beneath, going off in strange directions, very Eno-like. We would be remiss if we didn't mention "In Every Dream Home a Heartache," a famous love song to a blow-up doll, which anticipated the film "Lars and the Real Girl...

  When I was a kid - ok, maybe older than "kid," maybe "adolescent," like I'm thinking 12 or 13? - I used to draw these little comics for other kids at school.  I was kind of an awkward kid and wasn't really into playing sports or stuff like that but these comics were a big hit and my first taste of media fame.  I wish I could say they were intelligent or thought-provoking but they were really just gross-out shit.  Like I would come up with the grossest stuff a 12-year-old boy could think of and draw it up and make a story out of it, and it would be like 5 or 6 pages and man, my target demo - other 12 or 13-year-old boys - really liked it.  Stuff like arms getting chopped off and force-fed to their former owners and animals ripping people apart and I don't know, it was just me trying to gross out the other kids, which they fucking loved.  If my school had a Billboard, my Gross Comics would have gone diamond.  They were passed around and I was doing lik...

  There have been albums on here that I know inside and out, and that I love deeply, and both.  But this is the first album where I knew every song (except one, more on that soon) and I've never owned the album.  That's how many straight-up hits and super well-known songs are on here.  I mean, these are the first three songs: Good Times Roll My Best Friend's Girl Just What I Needed You can probably sing some or all of all three of those songs in your head right now.  And this isn't a greatest hits album!  Amazing.  I was talking to a friend about this album yesterday and he said it probably doesn't get the appreciation it deserves but it should absolutely be in the "nearly perfect album" collection. So, the music.  As you already know, it's synth-pop or maybe electronic rock or whatever, I don't know, it's their sound and they invented it.  I know that a lot of what you hear today like MGMT and Miike Snow and Hot Chip and god so many more wer...

  Imagine going to see the Sex Pistols in Hastings on your 19th birthday and immediately putting an ad in Melody Maker looking for "young punx who want to stick it together" and forming a band and then one year later putting out one of the finest punk albums ever made.  This actually happened to Poly Styrene, the young woman who fronted this band and whose voice I am still trying to process.  Friends, there are very few records as powerful and immediate and raw as this one. I think I heard this album once or twice before, probably in high school at my friend who had graduated a year before me's apartment, a slightly seedy and run-down affair that was of course a magnet for the 40-drinking, Camel unfiltered-smoking, ripped jeans wearing crowd that I associated with at the time.  Ah, the fond memories of leaving high school, grabbing a Big Gulp of 7-Up, hitting up the liquor store that was known to sell to the underage, getting a half-pint of Seagrams 7, emptying out h...

  Recorded in one 12-hour session with virtually no overdubs, this album sounds like it was recorded in one 12-hour session with virtually no overdubs.  I'M KIDDING, sort of.  It could use some polish, but it is a fascinating document of the birth of heavy metal.  To my mind, it sounds like guitarist Tommy Iommi was just trying to play blues and accidentally created something else.  Maybe because he lost his fingerips in a sheet metal accident and had to adapt and that led him to create his sui generis sound?  Even the musical background story is metal as fuck. So yes.  Here we witness the birth pangs of heavy metal.  It sounds a lot like blues-psych with extra distortion and some fucked up chords thrown in and dime store Satanism lyrics, which I guess is what heavy metal is.  Speaking of lyrics, let's discuss John Michael Osbourne for a sec.  Ozzy's singing on this album is, to put it charitably, raw.  To be more frank, he, at this...

  You know how kids say things are a MOOD?  Well, this album is a whole motherfucking MOOD and the mood is "backing band at a voodoo ritual in the basement of a New Orleans flophouse."  It is really something, a weird-ass blend of Afro-Caribbean beats, New Orleans funk, some kind of swamp rock, and I don't even fucking know what else.  I wasn't sure what to make of it at first but then I just went with it and was glad I did.  There are songs that are just sort of extended musical ideas, like "Danse Kalinda Da Boom," and songs that more closely resemble what we think of as "songs," like "Mama Roux" and "Jump Sturdy."   Although it was recorded in Los Angeles, where Dr. John (nee Mac Rebennack) was living at the time, this album is so firmly rooted in one place - that place, of course, being New Orleans - that it should have its own post office,  Even by the standards of 1968, though, it was so weird and out there that it was neve...

  Ok I guess.  I mean, if you like Tom Waits I'm sure you like this album.  It's got him doing what he does, that sort of croaky lounge singer meets jazz cabaret thing.  Of course it's all about the downtrodden and miserable: Well, he took a hundred dollars off a Slaughterhouse Joe Bought a brand new Michigan twenty gauge He got all liquored up on that roadhouse corn Blew a hole in the hood of a yellow Corvette A hole in the hood of a yellow Corvette He bought a second hand Nova from a Cuban Chinese And dyed his hair in the bathroom of a Texaco With a pawnshop radio quarter past four He left Waukegan at the slammin' of the door Left Waukegan at the slammin' of the door Jesus, Tom Waits, don't you know any happy people?  How about a "Ballad of the Ice Cream Man" or something a little lighter?  This album is actually kind of a slog.  It feels longer than it actually is and it even sounds grey and dirty.   Oh and there's also "Downtown Train,...

  A while back I was talking to my friend Jason about third rail bands.  We were talking in Gold Cane because he was a bartender at Gold Cane so that's where you were likely to find him.  The crowds at Gold Cane can ebb and flow, leaving adequate time to talk to a bartender. [Remember Zagat Guides?  They used to publish restaurant, and later, bar guides for San Francisco and a bunch of other cities.  The blurbs for each place were taken from comments sent in by readers.  In a way, it was like a well-edited Yelp that existed in the real world.  It seems to now be restricted only to an online presence in Miami .  Anyway, I am proud to reveal that one of the comments about the Gold Cane in Zagat - "where every night is parolee night" - was submitted by none other than me.  I bet I still have that copy of 2007-2008 San Francisco Nightlife around here somewhere.  Ah yes, here it is:] [I want to emphasize that I never found the staff "obnoxiou...

  Influence is a funny thing.  We say stuff all the time like "oh, this band definitely influenced this other band" or "for their new record, Band X was clearly influenced by the sounds of Bolivian folk music," but it's not often that a major influence spreads its way through a huge segment of modern music and is completely forgotten.  Ladies and gentlemen, Radio City by Big Star.  Not only did it directly influence some of the most important bands in the history of American music, like R.E.M. and Cheap Trick, along with lesser-known but still great bands like the Replacements and the Posies and Teenage Fanclub, it more or less (along with Big Star's other albums) created the genre of power pop, a genre that remains close to my heart to this day. Big Star was a miserably-selling and little-known band in their prime.  This album sold about 20,000 copies when it came out, which sounds bad today but was absolutely abysmal when the only way to hear a song you w...

  There is no build-up here.  You drop the needle and BLAMMO you get hit with the title track, a delightful, head-bobbing funk/rock melange with a super hooky chorus.  In fact, everything about it is hooky.  Those drums are insane!  "Initially, all I had was a hook," George Clinton said, “'One nation under a groove, gettin’ down just for the funk of it.' In the studio, once we got a rhythm together, I pretty much ad-libbed the rest. I wanted the silky feel of the Dionne Warwick records with Burt Bacharach – a smooth groove, but funky."  That's pretty much what it sounds like. The next song, "Groovallegiance," is pretty much just a long jam, and you know how I feel about long jams. There's also an inspired, long (all the songs on this album are loooooooong) track called "Who Says a Funk Band Can't Play Rock."  It also has a long jam but it's so insanely hooky and the jam is such an integral part of the song that it doesn't b...

  Get ready to clown me mercilessly, because I kinda liked this album!  This is where most people stop reading, but I have promised to be honest in my posts and I will now live up to that, for good or ill.   So I'm not sure what I was expecting.  I hadn't really heard much My Chemical Romance before.  I sort of had this mental image of them as a Hot Topic mall band that angsty teens loved.  Maybe they are that, I don't know, but this record is like if Queen decided to go in a pop-punk direction or a prog band listened to a lot of Green Day.  Some of the songs are just OK, some are not very good, and some are instantly catchy and earwormy.  Like "This Is How I Disappear": See what I mean?  I would have rocked out to that so hard when I was 13.  The title track is also good in that bombastic Queen way, with a piano intro and overwrought singing and the whole nine. I am given to understand that this is a concept album about death, whic...

  Sometimes with these albums I feel like I'm really just not getting it, you know?  I mean, people who sound like they know what they're talking about said this album was " a watershed moment for the modern R&B genre ," and I'm sure that's true!  But it just did nothing for me.  Vandross certainly has a great voice, and the production is super-slick (if very, very dated) and everything's all right there but it just never clicked for me. I didn't love this album, or even really like it, but there were a few elements I admired: the bass playing throughout is punchy and propulsive; I like the staccato rhythm guitar on "Sugar and Spice;" and the title track has a nice groove.  Part of my problem, think, (as I alluded to) is that this album sounds incredibly dated now.  The production is very 80's, with the 80's elements you expect, and it's disco-adjacent, which is not my fave.  I don't know, maybe if I was more into R&B ...

  Here's my two-word review of this album: Fuck and Yes .  Undoubtedly one of the foundational stones of funk, this concept album continues to reverberate today.  Plus, it's just fucking fun as hell.  If your head isn't bobbing halfway through the first song, "P. Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)," you might be a dead shell of a husk of what was once a person. These songs are so deeply woven not just into African-American culture, but American culture writ large, that if you haven't listened to this in a while, or at all, you'll be surprised by how much you recognize.  I'll bet you've heard that first song, and the second, "Mothership Connection (Star Child)," is probably instantly recognizable, if for no other reason than Dr. Dre sampled it heavily for "Let It Ride" off The Chronic .  And then you get to "Give Up the Funk," Parliament's first gold single.  It will still remain in your head for the rest of the day, so...

  I remember not really connecting with this album, or really with the Talking Heads in general, for the most part, although I maintain that "This Must Be The Place" (from Speaking in Tongues ) is one of the best songs of all time.  So when I listened to it again, [here there's supposed to be a big turn, like "I couldn't believe how much I loved it" or "I was shocked at how wrong I had been" but WAIT] it still didn't really do much for me.  BUT what I realized was how influential this album was.  I mean, this came out in 1978, and I can hear early 00's dance-punk all over it.  Just listen to, say, "Stay Hungry" - it could almost be a Bloc Party song! There's also "Take Me to the River," the band's first hit.  I don't know what this says about my whiteness or my musical silo but I didn't realize that song was a cover until I was well into my 20's.  Sorry, Al Green, I didn't know!  But I was just th...

  Somehow I whiffed on this completely when it came out, which I will ascribe to some combination of 2004 being an insane year for me (separating from my wife, moving, dating again, drinking too much, other assorted activities) and my lack of any strong interest in hip hop at the time.  I'm glad to discover this now.  I did have a few MF Doom songs on my iPod, but nothing from this album, so I'd heard of him, but I've only learned about Madlib, who collaborated with him on this album, in the past couple of years. This album is insane.  You combine Madlib, who's known for his wild and inventive beats, with Doom, who's known for his, well, wild and inventive rhymes, and it's definitely going to be a trip.  Doom, who sadly passed away earlier this year, shapes his lyrics and rhymes like no other rapper I've ever heard.  Check this out, from "Figaro": The rest is empty with no brain, but the clever nerd The best MC with no chain ya ever heard Take it f...

  Long before they were the MOR/power ballad/"Jamie's Got a Gun"/office E-Z listening nightmare they became, Aerosmith was fundamentally a raunchy blues-rock bar band.  The kind of stuff Matthew McConaughey's character in "Dazed and Confused" would listen to in his Camaro or Trans Am or whatever he had.  In this incarnation, they wrote and put out some incredible rock songs, like "Dream On" and "Mama Kin" (which still fucking bangs hard as hell) and "Sweet Emotion" and "Toys in the Attic."   Unfortunately, none of those songs are on this dreary, mostly boring collection of similar-sounding songs, with none of the verve or style of those aforementioned hits.  This album is really more of a sound than a collection of songs, like a mood board for cock-rock.  I'm not surprised that Kurt Cobain named this album as an influence - a lot of Nirvana guitar sounds you can trace straight here - but thank god Cobain took the s...