New Year's Resolution: Fewer Posts Like This One
The Cables, "Baby Why" - I can see now that 2007, despite all my most fervent hopes to the contrary, is poised to be full of exactly the same bullshit that I'd been praying I'd be able to leave in 2006, mostly because life keeps conspiring to strong-arm me into a front-row seat facing one personal apocalypse after another. Last Sunday, for instance, I rang in the new year by attempting to first drink, then bite (no joke) myself to death before ultimately giving pretty much the same concession speech I've been giving since, well, forever; I'd go into more details if they were germane to the story in the least bit, but I assure you that the specifics of the situation pale in comparison to the manner in which I was forced to bow out of it. If you're reading this, Josh What's-Your-Face who went to TIP at ASU with me twelve years ago (jesus) and who hijacked V@ne$@ F@rley right away from my side at almost the exact moment when life first afforded me the opportunity to go "Hey whoa wait hold up, really?" to a girl, thanks a billion; if the next world's fairer than this one (and at this point, I'm hard-pressed to believe it couldn't be), get ready for a billion lifetimes' worth of steel-toed kicks to the nuts courtesy of yours truly for condemning me to a lifetime of conceding that some other dude is the better man and yielding the right of way. Believe you me, I was practicing my free kicks every time I tried to sink my teeth into my wrists last weekend.
The worst part, or at least the most infuriating, is the realization that the actual real-world arguably-still-actionable circumstances prompting such an Oberstian hue and cry barely even show up as a reflection in the surface of the real problem, namely my all-consuming inability to act in my own benefit whenever it happens to come into confluence with anyone else's. Part of me almost wants to stick around to see if this is going to be a common condition among children of yuppie privilege in the years to come (because good lord am I ever set up to make Hornby money if this turns out to be the case), but for the sake of the rest of the world's sanity (lost cause, I know), hopefully it's just me, because I doubt I've got a single voice in my head that sounds more like a hanging judge passing sentence than the one that won't let me forget that I did enjoy advantages by the fistful that I'm an asshole if I neglect to factor them into my judgement; basically, I'm shackled to the idea that I've been given enough breaks in this life just by being born, and consequently the burden of decent behavior that falls to me necessitates my tying my self-interest up in a sack and throwing it into the river like a bag of kittens whenever it becomes a point of contention. This is, of course, unmitigated retardation in both the most figurative and literal senses of the word simultaneously; even setting aside the book-length list of legitimate horrors I've been through (which, to be fair, makes me absolutely no different from anyone else on this planet), there's still the not-insignificant fact that knowing how to effectively marshal your own self-interest can reasonably be judged to be a pretty crucial component of maturity which, in the process of going through the aforementioned (well, unmentioned, but let's not slow down to split hairs) horrorshows, I just seem to have skipped past. Of course, realizing this sure doesn't do a goddamn bit of good when the time comes to silence that gentle-yet-firm voice admonishing me to make sure I'm showing the world as much generosity as it's showed me; I suppose I should just be thankful that the voice doesn't belong to Julia Roberts.
By this point, some of you might be (quite reasonably) asking what, if anything, this has to do with a decades-old reggae song, and sadly the answer (or at least the direct answer) is "not much". It's got plenty to say about other things, most notably the Kremlinology necessary to navigate your way through Soul Jazz' constitutionally formidable approch to compilation-assembly, for instance (you don't even want to know how many Soul Jazz comps I've bought over the years that basically boil down to jazzy muso wankathons before figuring out which terms mean which - the presence of the word "Groups", for instance, as in Studio One Groups, the comp from which "Baby Why" was taken, hints at a lot of celebration of stuff like multi-part harmonies and a lot less tedious excursions into dub), but in terms of the actual situation at hand, it's pretty much a non sequitur; for starters, the guy(s) singing the song actually got the girl in the first place. And yet this song's been more or less on repeat since I walked in the door yesterday; it would only take moderate modifications in decor (and some pretty substantial ones in gender) to wake up in the middle of Fallen Angels tomorrow. I've written before about how one of my very favorite classifications of music is whatever you want to call that particular brand of reggae that shares signifiers with American soul music; call me a paternalist or accuse me of perpetuating wafer-thin racial/aesthetic prejudices if that's how you see it, but there's just something incomparably sad about the way songs like this play out. I mean, soul music's certainly not wanting for songs about being at the mercy of the way things work out, but even my best examples have the kind of participatory histrionics that indicate some level of involvement; Otis Redding's "I've Got Dreams To Remember" may be the single most mournful song I've ever heard in my life, but by the time he gets to the "GOOD dreams! BAD dreams!" bit towards the end he's practically losing his composure in person. "Baby Why" practically sounds like a eulogy for lost love by comparison; Keeble Drummond's vocal will absolutely wreck a motherfucker, but it never turns into a fireworks display, instead remaining content simply to stand out from Jackie Mittoo's lilting keys and the brass section's effortless underpinning and oh god all that harmonizing. It's a song that only becomes poignant in the way it holds itself back from becoming a living, breathing, uniquely self-actualizing work of art, and you'll have to forgive me if that pretty much hits the spot right about now. Stupid fucking world. (Click here to buy Studio One Groups from Amazon.com)
Fear Of Flying, "Three's A Crowd"
The Video Nasties, "I Wanna"
But just because I seem to be marching inexorably towards a date with a belt, a doorknob, and a forward lean into infinity doesn't mean that everything else has to stay the same; take, for instance, British haircut indie pop, which had one hell of an invigorating December, arguably moreso than any other genre or scene had over the course of one month in 2006. Admittedly, this is perhaps a slightly self-serving pronouncement to make since it dovetails so neatly with my purchase of a turntable and approximately half the stock of Piccadilly and Rough Trade combined, but I'm still pretty convinced of its accuracy; Britpop may have spent most of 2006 beating its most beloved (or at least fashionable) tropes into plowshares, but at the last moment we got these two singles, among others, wherein The Kidz finally seemed to wake up and remember how to have fun with all the signifiers all over again. The more immediate of the two is probably Fear of Flying's sophomore single, a three-and-a-half minute summation of everything Bloc Party forgot to do on their upcoming back-alley abortion of an album; if all the shimmering guitar lines and out-of-the-blue HEY-HERE'S-THE-BIG-PART parts start to sound like a put-on, just remember that (1) it's a put-on of a completely different (and arguably exponentially more artistically successful) stripe than their first single, and (2) the relentless attention that went into both put-ons (not to mention both the b-sides) bodes awfully well for the prospects of the debut album they're rumored to be at work on. But to be perfectly honest, I think I prefer the Video Nasties' "I Wanna", if only for the fact that I'm always going to have an easier time commemorating the loss of another album like the Futureheads' debut than one like Silent Alarm, and "I Wanna" may actually sum up that disc's forsaken strengths even more adroitly than Fear of Flying tackled those from its counterpart. That's not to say that you can expect any complex multi-part harmonies or Oh So Delicious nods to other bands from the Nasties, of course; their aesthetic goal seems to be simply to approximate the Futureheads' breakneck speed and the almost (almost) unmoderated pacing of their songs, and given the heights to which they're able to escalate the song's rocket-propelled thunderous beat over the course of two friggin' minutes and eleven fruggin' seconds (not to mention the way they keep piling on more and more of the song's taunting refrain and synth line), I'm hard-pressed to say they haven't succeeded. More than damn near anything else to come off The Island last year, both of these songs sound like triumphs - and not a moment too soon, either. (Click here to buy the "Three's A Crowd/Forget-Me-Nots" double a-side from Rough Trade; as for the "I Wanna/3 New Ideas" disc, it seems to be sold out worldwide at the moment, so either hit up eBay or, more practically, check out their MySpace for more downloadable songs.)
The worst part, or at least the most infuriating, is the realization that the actual real-world arguably-still-actionable circumstances prompting such an Oberstian hue and cry barely even show up as a reflection in the surface of the real problem, namely my all-consuming inability to act in my own benefit whenever it happens to come into confluence with anyone else's. Part of me almost wants to stick around to see if this is going to be a common condition among children of yuppie privilege in the years to come (because good lord am I ever set up to make Hornby money if this turns out to be the case), but for the sake of the rest of the world's sanity (lost cause, I know), hopefully it's just me, because I doubt I've got a single voice in my head that sounds more like a hanging judge passing sentence than the one that won't let me forget that I did enjoy advantages by the fistful that I'm an asshole if I neglect to factor them into my judgement; basically, I'm shackled to the idea that I've been given enough breaks in this life just by being born, and consequently the burden of decent behavior that falls to me necessitates my tying my self-interest up in a sack and throwing it into the river like a bag of kittens whenever it becomes a point of contention. This is, of course, unmitigated retardation in both the most figurative and literal senses of the word simultaneously; even setting aside the book-length list of legitimate horrors I've been through (which, to be fair, makes me absolutely no different from anyone else on this planet), there's still the not-insignificant fact that knowing how to effectively marshal your own self-interest can reasonably be judged to be a pretty crucial component of maturity which, in the process of going through the aforementioned (well, unmentioned, but let's not slow down to split hairs) horrorshows, I just seem to have skipped past. Of course, realizing this sure doesn't do a goddamn bit of good when the time comes to silence that gentle-yet-firm voice admonishing me to make sure I'm showing the world as much generosity as it's showed me; I suppose I should just be thankful that the voice doesn't belong to Julia Roberts.
By this point, some of you might be (quite reasonably) asking what, if anything, this has to do with a decades-old reggae song, and sadly the answer (or at least the direct answer) is "not much". It's got plenty to say about other things, most notably the Kremlinology necessary to navigate your way through Soul Jazz' constitutionally formidable approch to compilation-assembly, for instance (you don't even want to know how many Soul Jazz comps I've bought over the years that basically boil down to jazzy muso wankathons before figuring out which terms mean which - the presence of the word "Groups", for instance, as in Studio One Groups, the comp from which "Baby Why" was taken, hints at a lot of celebration of stuff like multi-part harmonies and a lot less tedious excursions into dub), but in terms of the actual situation at hand, it's pretty much a non sequitur; for starters, the guy(s) singing the song actually got the girl in the first place. And yet this song's been more or less on repeat since I walked in the door yesterday; it would only take moderate modifications in decor (and some pretty substantial ones in gender) to wake up in the middle of Fallen Angels tomorrow. I've written before about how one of my very favorite classifications of music is whatever you want to call that particular brand of reggae that shares signifiers with American soul music; call me a paternalist or accuse me of perpetuating wafer-thin racial/aesthetic prejudices if that's how you see it, but there's just something incomparably sad about the way songs like this play out. I mean, soul music's certainly not wanting for songs about being at the mercy of the way things work out, but even my best examples have the kind of participatory histrionics that indicate some level of involvement; Otis Redding's "I've Got Dreams To Remember" may be the single most mournful song I've ever heard in my life, but by the time he gets to the "GOOD dreams! BAD dreams!" bit towards the end he's practically losing his composure in person. "Baby Why" practically sounds like a eulogy for lost love by comparison; Keeble Drummond's vocal will absolutely wreck a motherfucker, but it never turns into a fireworks display, instead remaining content simply to stand out from Jackie Mittoo's lilting keys and the brass section's effortless underpinning and oh god all that harmonizing. It's a song that only becomes poignant in the way it holds itself back from becoming a living, breathing, uniquely self-actualizing work of art, and you'll have to forgive me if that pretty much hits the spot right about now. Stupid fucking world. (Click here to buy Studio One Groups from Amazon.com)
Fear Of Flying, "Three's A Crowd"
The Video Nasties, "I Wanna"
But just because I seem to be marching inexorably towards a date with a belt, a doorknob, and a forward lean into infinity doesn't mean that everything else has to stay the same; take, for instance, British haircut indie pop, which had one hell of an invigorating December, arguably moreso than any other genre or scene had over the course of one month in 2006. Admittedly, this is perhaps a slightly self-serving pronouncement to make since it dovetails so neatly with my purchase of a turntable and approximately half the stock of Piccadilly and Rough Trade combined, but I'm still pretty convinced of its accuracy; Britpop may have spent most of 2006 beating its most beloved (or at least fashionable) tropes into plowshares, but at the last moment we got these two singles, among others, wherein The Kidz finally seemed to wake up and remember how to have fun with all the signifiers all over again. The more immediate of the two is probably Fear of Flying's sophomore single, a three-and-a-half minute summation of everything Bloc Party forgot to do on their upcoming back-alley abortion of an album; if all the shimmering guitar lines and out-of-the-blue HEY-HERE'S-THE-BIG-PART parts start to sound like a put-on, just remember that (1) it's a put-on of a completely different (and arguably exponentially more artistically successful) stripe than their first single, and (2) the relentless attention that went into both put-ons (not to mention both the b-sides) bodes awfully well for the prospects of the debut album they're rumored to be at work on. But to be perfectly honest, I think I prefer the Video Nasties' "I Wanna", if only for the fact that I'm always going to have an easier time commemorating the loss of another album like the Futureheads' debut than one like Silent Alarm, and "I Wanna" may actually sum up that disc's forsaken strengths even more adroitly than Fear of Flying tackled those from its counterpart. That's not to say that you can expect any complex multi-part harmonies or Oh So Delicious nods to other bands from the Nasties, of course; their aesthetic goal seems to be simply to approximate the Futureheads' breakneck speed and the almost (almost) unmoderated pacing of their songs, and given the heights to which they're able to escalate the song's rocket-propelled thunderous beat over the course of two friggin' minutes and eleven fruggin' seconds (not to mention the way they keep piling on more and more of the song's taunting refrain and synth line), I'm hard-pressed to say they haven't succeeded. More than damn near anything else to come off The Island last year, both of these songs sound like triumphs - and not a moment too soon, either. (Click here to buy the "Three's A Crowd/Forget-Me-Nots" double a-side from Rough Trade; as for the "I Wanna/3 New Ideas" disc, it seems to be sold out worldwide at the moment, so either hit up eBay or, more practically, check out their MySpace for more downloadable songs.)
posted by James at 6:06 PM
![[Valid Atom 1.0]](valid-atom.png "Validate my Atom 1.0 feed")
1 Comments:
dates with belts always end in disappointment. i can't think of a single person who got some from a belt, so i say skip it altogether and stick to egregious amounts of wii-love.
also; the video nasties song makes me want to run very fast for some reason. and in a blissful excitement way, not an exhausting 'fitness' kind of way. nice pick.
Post a Comment
<< Home