The only end of the decade list that matters?

With each passing year in the '10's, I became more estranged from whatever passes for the critical albums consensus these days.  In 2009, I scored 2/5 in GAPDY (and was at least mildly interested in the other three) and remained mostly within the loop of the most highly acclaimed music of 2010.  By mid-decade, my top ten lists were mostly filled with electronic music oddities and various experimental projects that hardly anyone else paid attention to.  A quick glance at P&J stats through 2016 (thanks again to Glenn Mcdonald) clearly shows this trend via my collapsing centricity scores.  Or, consider the number of albums in the years 2010-2016 for which I was the sole voter: 1 (notably my #1 album that year), 1, 1, 4, 2, 5, 6.

Tracks lists usually contain a lot of duplication of artists that appear on the albums lists.  A representative track from the most acclaimed albums is chosen, the order is jumbled up a bit to distinguish it from the albums, and you end up with a mostly redundant tracks list that doesn't tell you much that you didn't already learn from the albums list.  

In putting together my 40-for-40 list, I discussed the idea of using my tracks list as a form of autobiography, where the songs don't always match with my "favourites of all time", but signify changing trends, attitudes, and relationships with music and in real life. 

Billboard have taken a similar approach with their "100 Songs That Defined the Decade" list.  They note that the decade can't be summed up by simple catchphrases ("The Drake Era", The Global Pop Era", "The EDM era", etc.).  Instead, the decade consists of countless "mini-histories" and mini-eras, which collectively help to define the music of the '10's.  Implicit in all this is the fact that decade start and end points are arbitrary markers anyway, and cultural labels are always attached after the fact.  All the more reason that ten years can't be summed up with a couple of simple descriptions.

They note that "these [100 songs] aren't our picks for the best songs of the decade, or even the most popular, necessarily -- although a large number of them were widely loved, including by many of us on staff -- but rather, the songs that shaped and reflected the music of the 2010's.  Not all of them defined the decade at its best, but better or worse, it's close to impossible to imagine the decade without any of them."

This is exactly how it should be.  Baauer's "Harlem Shake" was an inescapable cultural meme -- and you won't find a sniff of it on any albums lists.  Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" was a massive #1 hit and arguably the most successful Canadian single ever.  For those reasons, it belongs on a list like this, even if most of her fans insist that her later albums were far better.  Whether you think her best stuff came later or not, whether you are bored sick of "Call Me Maybe" or still add it to your playlists regularly, there's no contradiction between quality and popularity/impact on this kind of tracks list.  On an albums list you'd choose the best album, thereby ignoring most popular hit by far, and skip over a crucial "mini-history" of the decade.  

Billboard's list covers plenty of different genres, and even if you don't listen to albums in many of those genres (which I don't), you're still likely to know some of their most popular songs.  That still counts on a list like this.  There are plenty of mega-hits, controversial moments, and songs with iconic videos.  They even found room for Rebecca Black's "Friday", and it makes perfect sense that they did.   

Each entry features a write-up with input from the producers, artists, and industry insiders responsible for the track.  Some are interviews from years ago, and some are new and refreshing retrospective looks back at what made each song into what it became.  It really comes off like an essential document of music history, and may be the only published "end of the decade" list I can truly relate to.    

Top 10 Albums of 2019

I wasn't consumed by feelings of grief and misery in 2019, although it might seem that way while scanning over this list of albums.  The past year was not a healthy one for me and many people close to me, but while it was going on, it didn't feel like more bad things were happening than in most other years.  In some years time, I may look back on 2019 and eventually grasp how tough things were.  In that case, these ten albums may reflect my general state of mind more than I'm currently able to admit.

Sure, plenty of people are writing about how the year's best music should reflect the chaotic, allegedly historic times we live in.  In some circles it's automatically assumed that music should be viewed through the lens of the politics of the day.  I think that this generation of fans and critics have subconsciously longed for music to have the cultural cache it did in the 60's, when artists working in several musical genres would unite around the Vietnam War and other world-changing problems.  I have never cared about any of that.  I want my music to reflect my tastes, and whether it deals with "important" subjects is irrelevant.  I don't think I'm a miserable person, although this list might make you think otherwise.  No matter the interpretation (and again, perhaps only years of hindsight will lead me to the truth), this list is a reflection of me, and has nothing to do with current events -- in any country.  

This list is really a party of one, because for most of the year, nothing came close to hitting me in my gut like my #1 album did.

10.  PTU, Am I Who I Am, Trip

Bonkers techno that never feels obliged to play by the most basic of "rules" of the genre -- super short tracks, almost no intros/breakdowns/outros, constant mid-track mood swings between squelching beats and frizzy beatless electronic weirdness.  

9. Barker, Utility, Ostgut Ton

Am I the only one who hears this as an album that continues the work that Philippe Cam started nearly two decades ago?

8. The National, I Am Easy to Find, 4AD

The National invited a bevy of guest vocalists to record with them, and it was a welcome change, even the results don't rank among their very best work.

7. BIG|BRAVE, A Gaze Among Them, Southern Lord

The album's title might suggest a pleasant ambient metal/shoegaze hybrid.  In fact, the shoegaze-y guitar blizzard is the decorative icing for the main course of brutally sludgy riffs and apocalyptic vocals.  BIG|BRAVE are hammerfist, steamroller rock and aren't quite metal in a weird, intangible way, even though their music carries the intensity and heaviness of metal. 

6. Alcest, Spiritual Instinct, Nuclear Blast

Blackgaze as a concept is a marriage made in heaven between two somewhat restrictive genres that compensate each other's weaknesses.  This is easily Alcest's most intense record and arguably their most consistent despite peaking too soon (about three quarters of the way through). 

5.  Amp, Entangled Time, Sound in Silence

The sound of 90's Bristol steadfastly refuses to go away, doesn't it?

4.  William Basinski, On Time Out of Time, Temporary Residence Ltd

Basinski has certainly proven his mettle at being able to memorialize history-making events through serene, loop-based ambient music.  Here he turns his attention to the most challenging and profound physics experiment done in my lifetime.  He not only pays tribute to LIGO's accomplishments by sampling the deep, rumbling pulses of gravity waves, but also beautifies the monotony of staring into the furthermost reaches of space, patiently waiting for something to happen. 

3. Fennesz, Agora, Touch

Fennesz remains one of the few artists whose entire output is a virtual must own for me (inasmuch as I can keep track of everything he's doing).  Yet somehow his albums are always growers.  Much like Autechre, he works in a nearly inimitable style that's instantly identified with him, but still manages to consistently defy convention and surprise even his most hardcore fans. 

2. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Ghosteen, Ghosteen Ltd.

The fairy tale world depicted on the album cover symbolizes Cave's method of dealing with death by seeking out the light.  Instead of wallowing in grief, he searches for hope through Buddhist myths and other parables overflowing with rich imagery.   Every note means something, thanks to the sparse instrumentation and glacial pace of most of the songs. 

1. King Midas Sound, Solitude, Cosmo Rhythmatic

"Solitude" is an almost unbearably personal glimpse into one man's loneliness.  Unable to deal with the reality of a difficult breakup, he pores over pointless minutiae of their relationship all while borderline stalking his ex, walking on a knife edge between obsession and madness.  The bleak, haunting music is relentless, the mood never lightens, nothing is resolved.  But in some sense, the album is a reminder that these unhealthy fixations are still a form of surviving, and are better than the alternative.   

  

Musical memories of my father

My father was the record buyer in our family.  The shelves in our family room were stocked full of 50's and 60's rock and soul records.  Along with many people from his generation, The Beatles and Motown records were his favourites, but there's a good reason those records have stood the test of time.  His love of classic rock ended with the 60's though.  Browsing his collection, one might think that rock ended after Cream and the Woodstock soundtrack.  I felt that void much later on, in high school, when I had to play catch up in getting into Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and countless other rock staples.  In fact, my lack of appreciation, and even contempt, for a lot of 70's rock well into the 21st century, is almost certainly related to the lack of exposure through the records we had at home.   

But we had disco.  A lot of disco.  My father used to teach night classes in law at Ryerson University (then a college), and there were a number of record shops in that area in those days.  He'd teach his class and grab some disco albums or 12" singles while he was in the area.  When I think about my earliest musical memories, most of them involve disco.  Donna Summer.  Sylvester.  The disco lessons my mother would teach in the basement, with my father as her demonstration partner.  

The 80's came along, and my father still had his pulse on what was cool.  Long after most of his friends had stopped following contemporary music, my father was inspired by a new, revolutionary way of enjoying music -- via the music video.  There was no MTV in Canada, and Much Music didn't come on the air until 1984.  My father stayed up late on weekends to watch shows that would air music videos, like City Limits, and his finger was glued to the record button on his VCR.  I think this was his greatest achievement as a music fan.  Long before streaming services and the internet, we had video on demand thanks to my father's many sleep deprived nights. He didn't blindly tape whatever they showed either, he only taped the songs he thought were good.  His taste was impeccable.  I had every great video of the 1980's on the tape shelf in our family room.  Song by song, weekend by weekend, his diligent work added up.  He taped dozens of hours of videos over a period of about six years.  Other families had home videos with family picnics on them.  Ours were starring Duran Duran.  

When my parents split up and my father moved out, he left the records with us.  Once in a while he'd ask about them.  Most of them were technically his, either purchased by him or stuff he had before they were married.  He never made a big point about demanding them back though, possibly because when he moved out, he wanted a clean break from things in his former life.  I effectively inherited those records, because I was the only one who really kept listening to them.

I only attended one concert with my father -- the Stray Cats in 1991.  He wasn't a concert goer, and he wasn't a "round up the family and buy tickets to such and such" kind of person.  He didn't buy tickets to this concert either, they were freebees from the managers of the concert hall next to his office, so he took us. Many of the biggest musical acts from 2010 are still big now.  But in 1991, The Stray Cats might have well have been beamed in from another planet.  The music industry had completely turned over since the 80's, and even the megastars would have trouble adjusting (Prince, Madonna, Bruce, and more).  The Stray Cats were awesome that night though, although it was difficult to admit it then.  That was the first and last free show I ever saw there, I never bothered my dad to ask for free tickets even once.  

From then until the end of his life, my father entered into my musical life only indirectly.  He stopped being an active collector for all intents and purposes.  But he was there when my friends and I used his apartment as a home base before and after Suede's first concert in Toronto, at the nearby Palladium on the Danforth.  I have no idea what he was thinking when we returned from that concert, still buzzing and soaked in sweat, babbling about the tiniest concert details.  I crashed at his apartment countless times after staying out late at a concert or club.  

We were not a musical family.  We didn't grow up singing or playing musical instruments, I learned those things in school when I was older.  If my father thought that music was important he might have pushed us to take an active part in it, but he didn't.  He probably thought we'd absorb what we loved naturally, because that's how it was when he was growing up.  So my father was the biggest musical influence I had when I was a little kid.  His tastes were largely my tastes until I was a teenager.  Whether he intended it or not, I learned so much from him.  

2005

Earlier this month, I was binge listening some CD-R's that I burned in 2005 and early 2006.  I've written about late-2003/early-2004 being a transformative time for me, the last stand for brick and mortar music stores as my main source for new music.  I'm only now beginning to appreciate the significance of that 2005/2006 stretch, perhaps as an equally transformative time.

2005 was my peak year, no doubt, for keeping up with the widest variety of new music and criticism. My posting frequency during that time is a clear testament to this.  I listened to about twice as many new releases as I have in a typical year, before or since.  And because I moved in mid-2006, this period had a definitive end point and was extensively archived in the forms of these CD-R's.  

This mini-era was preserved like no other, because with the founding of Youtube in 2005, the growth of other streaming services shortly thereafter, and data storage becoming ever cheaper, it was the end of CD-R's as a preferred medium.  These twenty or so CD-R's now look like lost relics from a forgotten information age.  I carefully handled them and played them as you would a valuable piece of vinyl rediscovered decades later in a hidden attic. 

Besides mp3 copies of albums, I saved a trove of live recordings: lots of Animal Collective, noise artists, some techno, cool rare gems like a "Contino Sessions"-era Death In Vegas gig.  There were also CD-R's of individual tracks that I presumably found via yousendit links and file sharing programs.  Lots and lots of Michael Mayer and Jacques Lu Cont remixes and similarly styled club techno of the day.  This era of techno came to a crashing end for me too, as I stopped buying vinyl and collecting remixes by the usual suspects, and shifted my focus to podcasts and hitting the clubs more often.    

My thoughts on Blur in 2019

Outside of a few scattered mentions, my last post focusing on Blur was over eight years ago.  I can't recall how it started, but this week I fell down the rabbit hole and listened to a ton of Blur, and rewatched the "No Distance Left To Run" documentary for the first time since my initial review back in 2011.

I still stand by everything I wrote about it back then -- it's still a powerful documentary and you won't find a better summation of the band in under two hours.  It's arranged like a sequence of postcards, with each one recalling a specific scene in the history of the band.  There's no narrator and no linear style of storytelling (plenty of important stuff is skimmed or skipped over entirely), which is the film's greatest strength.  Band histories are complex, and this one focuses on the personalities of the players, not their specific achievements, leaving the viewer to fill in the blanks (hopefully by diving deeper into their music).  This is the point they want to drive home, specifically, that the reunion came about because of their need to repair their friendships.  The fact that they were successful in doing so is the main reason that the reunion can work.  To understand this, they had to bare their personalities for the camera, and in doing so, one sees how much they all were, and still are, polar opposites.  And yet the combination works.  On second viewing, I felt even more sorry for Graham, a shy soul who could have been truly happy recording and practicing in a home studio for his entire adult life, yet was swept along into the adventures of Britain's biggest 90's bands.  I was sold on Alex's book, published more than a decade, and really must pick it up. Dave ... didn't say much.  And Damon still comes off as a bit of an arrogant prick.  However, seeing how the Blur reunion has now survived further tours and even a new album ("The Magic Whip", which I still have not heard in full), he comes off more genuine than he did in 2010 or 2011, one can no longer argue that he sees Blur as an ego-boosting vanity project. 

"Parklife", the album, sounds more and more like the product of a specific time and place.  It still has brilliant moments, but the whole is less than the sum of its parts.  The "character" songs are more preening, and very formulaic.  The self-titled album has probably aged the least of all their records.  The Pavement-influenced stuff is still as sharp as it was back then, the Beck-influenced stuff not so much. 

Demos: I finally heard the original "Death of a Party", which was first recorded years before its eventual release on "Blur" and was referenced in Select's well-known "Compleat Blur" articles in 1995.  The lyrics and melody survived intact, but the style underwent a radical overhaul, from bouncy indie pop to the bleak, trip-hop influenced version they eventually released.  The spark is clearly there and it's surprising that they sat on it for so long. 

"Far Out" started as a bouncy pub rocker close to the style of "Intermission".  On its own its really quite brilliant, but s a four minute extended joke on "Parklife" it would have been snowed and forgotten amongst the Britpoppy songs. As a one minute sci-fi spookfest, it's a standout. 

"For Tomorrow" is a monotonic, caterwauling mess and it goes to show how important a strong vocal and arrangement can be for making a song work.     

Yazoo, "Upstairs at Eric's"

Yazoo's "Don't Go" hasn't really left the radio in the thirty seven (!) years since its initial release.  What seemed radical at the time (full throated, bluesy synth pop) turned out to be an idea with some legs.  Strip away the vocals, and "Upstairs at Eric's" isn't too different from Depeche Mode's "Speak and Spell", released just one year earlier.  "Upstairs at Eric's" has richer basslines and cuts back on the twinkly kiddie melody lines, but it's clear that it's the work of the same songwriter. 

"Speak and Spell" has long been one of my favourite DM albums.  It exudes fun and positivity, it's dripping with catchy melodies, and there's rarely a time when I wouldn't feel up to listening to it.  Half of DM's output is dark, sinister stuff that you have to get in a mood for, but "Just Can't Get Enough" or "Photographic" requires no preparation.  My US version of the album even includes "Dreaming of Me", one of the all time great, brighten-my-days tunes.  However, it must be said that besides the aforementioned gems, "Speak and Spell" also contains some of the worst dreck DM ever recorded.  Out of the worst ten DM songs, probably five of them appear on their first two albums (so you can split the blame between Vince Clarke and Martin Gore equally).  Today, DM are the elder statesmen of the era, one of the few UK synth-pop acts that gained popularity as the decade went on, became equally or more popular in the US, and boast a critically and popularly acclaimed catalogue of anthems.   But at the time, they were a boy band, reviled by many harbingers of good taste, and not expected to have any career longevity.  "Speak and Spell" is music by kids and for kids, which is what DM were at the time.  Clarke was the elder statesman of the group at the time, at the ripe old age of 21. 

Once you add Moyet's amazing voice to Clarke's synths, suddenly the combination becomes a bluesy, wise beyond their years, more complete package.  Make no mistake, Moyet is the reason these songs can sound so great decades later.  Her pleading and her pain are the consistent focus in these songs.  When was a teenager, "Situation" was a hot club jam, backed by a number of notable remixes.  I didn't know at the time that it was a US single only, that the duo strongly disapproved of.  I can't understand their mode of thinking, because "Situation" really stands apart from anything else on "Upstairs at Eric's".  It has more in common with electro and breakbeat than early 80's synth pop.  It's genre-straddling, forward thinking nature is undoubtedly why it stayed relevant in clubs for the next decade. 

Springsteen on Broadway

Springsteen fans claim that he can sing in front of a stadium full of people and make everyone feel like he's singing directly and only to them.  If that's not hyperbole, then how up front and personal is his Broadway show?  It's a two plus hour recitation of stories from the Boss' past interspersed with many of his most famous songs, in front of a miniscule (by his standards) crowd of less than one thousand people?

There may never be another musician like him, one who can come off as hypermasculine and so much larger than life, but also personable, sensitive, and not the least bit intimidating.  A show like this wouldn't work in a much larger venue.  This isn't Springsteen Unplugged, it's closer to a literary recitation by a trained actor, and in many ways that's exactly what this is -- stories culled from his autobiography delivered by a performer who's spent more time on a stage over the past fifty years than just about any stage actors.  He's been rehearsing for the part for his entire career!  It seems corny, but how else can you describe it?  Bruce nails every nuance, every furrow of his brow, every smile, every pause, knows when to be funny, when to be serious, when to milk a line, when to swear, when to wander off mike, when to raise his voice and when to lower it to a whisper, every last line is delivered for maximum power, maximum dramatic effect. 

The first ninety minutes are a one man show, a retelling of stories from his youth that open a window into the person he became.  Very much "A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man", in fact.  Even more so, there's a lot in common between the content here and Brett Anderson's excellent memoir, "Coal Black Mornings", that I recently wrote about.   Both men even had similar types of parents -- hard working but brooding and introverted fathers, endlessly energetic, outgoing, and extroverted mothers.  The fathers were stuck in difficult jobs but it was the mothers who dreamed of escape -- Springsteen's mother through her love of dancing (still not faded even years into the throes of Alzheimer's) and Anderson's mother through her eventual divorce from his father and relocation to a quieter life in the country. 

Anderson admits that he subconsciously wrote songs about his relationship with father and could only admit that to himself years later.  "I Don't Know How To Reach You", from the "Night Thoughts" album in 2016 was a conscious attempt to evaluate their relationship, years after his father's death.  Springsteen tells a story about his father being a ghost in his life for such a long time, even while he was alive.  But one day his father drove hundreds of miles to see him, unannounced, just to warn Bruce to not make the same mistakes raising his (Bruce's) kids that he (his father) did.  Bruce's father was trying to make amends, but was also trying to define himself a legacy that would succeed him long after he was gone.  Bruce calls it the greatest moment he ever had with his father, and it's the only moment in this show where he breaks down, wiping away tears before starting the next song. 

Those first ninety minutes cover only eight songs.  By the end of "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out", with it's extended middle section dedicated to (and eulogizing) the late Clarence Clemons, a shift in tone is appropriate and welcomed.  The story thus far has been about a constant struggle, but once Clemons joins the band, all the pieces are in place.  At that point, it becomes a story about realizing his dreams, step by step, and that's not what this show focuses on.  The last hour is more of a "A Special Evening with Bruce" club-style performance, more song heavy rather than story heavy, complete with a special guest (his wife Patty), and blazing performances of "The Rising" and "Dancing in the Dark" among others.     

Ric Ocasek's work with Suicide

I found out about Ric Ocasek's passing via a tweet from Weezer's Twitter account.  I'd forgotten that Ocasek was a producer of some note, known for working with No Doubt, Weezer, Suicide, and many others.  At that point I realized that I'd bought too far into the Suicide myth, lionizing their punk era debut album and neglecting everything they recorded afterward (everything they recorded as Suicide that is, I have a few albums that Rev and Vega worked on as solo artists). 

Suicide had a career similar to that of Jesus and Mary Chain.  The first album is considered the legendary, groundbreaking, extreme work of art.  The later albums saw them mellowing out and settling into a comfortable career as commercial artists.  Again, the myth is a difficult thing to overcome.  I never thought that "Psychocandy" was the best JAMC album.  The concept is the key, and everything surrounding it (the Velvets adoration, love of noise, the fifteen minute gigs) makes for a great story.  It's just that the follow-up albums are far more listenable.   "Darklands" was the favourite of the goths, an intense (but rarely "dark") proto-emo classic.  "Automatic" is simply a great rock and roll album, and probably their most consistent.  On the other hand, I never feel the urge to listen to "Psychocandy".  If I want to hear the early stuff, I go for the singles or the Peel Sessions from that era.

Similar things could be said about Suicide.  The first album is brilliant, but perhaps too over the top, too punishing a listen for one sitting, and too fixated on shock value.  The second album gives off a true real rock and roll vibe even though its entirely electronic and most definitely lo-fi.  The beats are softer, the vocals are smoothed out, more lyrical, and less shouty.  Ocasek deserves his due credit.  I can even imagine these songs as Cars demo recordings, with the electronic bass taking the place of a rhythm guitarist.  Suicide were transformed from provocateurs to a fascinating pop/techno hybrid.  In the pseudo keyboard solos on "Diamonds, Furcoat, Champagne", I hear a lot of Kraftwerk's "Computer World", even though the latter wasn't released until the next year.  I hear the combination of inner city grit and brash electronic pop with which Soft Cell would find great success (but once again, not for another year following this). 

"A Way of Life" is a highly underrated record that managed to keep up with then-contemporary trends while remaining true to their minimal, lo-fi roots.  When you hear the opener, "Wild In Blue", it's easy to understand why Wax Trax released this album.  It's jittery, proto-industrial beats and cavernous echoes fit seamlessly with the material released by Wax Trax at the time.  The next track, "Surrender", is a 60's doo-wop number that Phil Spector would have been proud to produce.   Somehow, Ocasek holds these different styles together, and he didn't stop there.  The slashing guitars and propulsive beats on "Rain of Ruin" predates Ministry and KMFDM's signature styles from the 90's.  "Dominic Christ" could have been a synth-drenched, new wave-y hit for the Cars, very much in the style of "You Might Think".    "Heat Beat" is wonderfully queasy, reminiscent of mid-90's hard house in its insistent rhythm and bludgeoning intensity.  It's the last thing you'd expect from a (nominally) rock producer. 

Ocasek also produced their "Dream Baby Dream" single, and this is one case where I prefer the cover versions to the original -- both Neneh Cherry and Bruce Springsteen have brilliant takes on it, done in totally different styles.    

Shlomo Artzi celebrates 50 years on stage at Live Park Rishon (15/08)

Shlomo Artzi's marathon three hour set was full of missteps.

The first of two shows to celebrate his fifty year career, the dazzling set list included plenty of his decades-spanning hits and a number of highly touted guest spots that didn't disappoint (Natan Goshen, Haim Moshe, Rita, Shalom Hanoch, and David Broza).  But Artzi's frequent improvisations (i.e. mid-song speeches and tempo changes) curtailed the momentum of the set far too often.  With his guests, Artzi resorted to calling out the verse numbers far too many times, directing his duets on the fly as if he was in a rehearsal, rather than in front of 12 000 people in a park.  He and his band are experienced enough to fly by the seat of their pants without letting the entire song go off the rails, but such ramshackle planning doesn't make for the best concertgoing experience.  After playing some of his bigger uptempo hits at the start (e.g. "Nitzmadnu", "Eretz Hadasha"), the set seemed to lose direction, becoming a sort of jam session with his band and his guests, and the various interludes were often charming, but also needlessly stretched out the evening to a nearly 1 AM finish, much to the chagrin of many exhausted audience members.

And yet, none of the above really seemed to matter.  Artzi is a captivating, dynamic performer, one of the best I've ever seen at interacting with a crowd and holding them in the palm of his hand.  He owns the stage even when he breaks the rules, and as he nears age 70, his voice sounds and good as ever and his onstage energy is boundless.  His guests are pros who can craft magic on stage simply with their presence. 

Consider the opening of this concert: quick cuts of Artzi and his family over the years, live shots of the band walking on stage, "Nitzmadnu", a mid-song speech about his lack of nervousness coming on stage and crying when his kids were born (among other things), and a final, powerful coda to the song.  It was a continuous lump-in-throat moment that happens only rarely in concerts, and virtually never in the first ten minutes.   

Billie Eilish, "WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO"; Emika, "Falling in Love With Sadness"

Lil Nas X has managed to fend off Taylor Swift not once, but twice on the way to his unprecedented 19-week run atop the Billboard 100.  And yet, "Old Town Road"'s biggest challenge has come not from megastar Swift, but from Billie Eilish's "Bad Guy", which has spent a total of nine weeks (and counting) at #2.  That's one week short of the all-time record for weeks at #2 for a song that never reached #1 (assuming it never gets there).

My first thoughts about Eilish's debut album were how simple and underproduced most of it is.  That's not a criticism -- I like stripped down, minimal recordings just fine.  It buzzes with life from its deep bass rumbles, and Eilish's strained whispers add a dose of fragility that isn't often heard in electronic music, let alone pop music in general.  I wasn't taken aback by the sound of the album, but rather, that such a thing could be so popular. 

I checked out some message boards and before the breakthrough success of "Bad Guy", there seemed to be a debate about how popular Eilish really was amonsgst teenagers.  Naturally, there were no teenagers actually frequenting these boards, so the discussion was heavily seeped in hearsay.  One person seemed sure (based on the opinion of a sister of a friend or wife or something to that effect) that her concerts are packed with thousands of kids who go all manners of apeshit for her every move.  So I checked out some clips on youtube and ... this person was absolutely right.  And at that moment, I felt the crushing weight of the generation gap, because I didn't get it at all. 

I think Billie Eilish is talented and I like a lot of her songs.  Her debut single, "Ocean Eyes", is probably better than anything on her debut album.  But since its release two years ago, her music has become darker and more blunted.  More importantly, her lyrics have gone from dewy teenage pop to ... something I can barely describe, because they weren't written for my consumption.  "Bury a Friend" is laced with depression and self-loathing, but it's more than that.  It's about the cadence of the lyrics, the way she sounds like she doesn't care but clearly does.  The lyrics are emo, sort of, but they're meant to be empowering rather than inviting your pity.   There are bits of philosophy sprinkled all over the album (in the title for example"), but I think you need to be a teenager to find them profound.  Her singing style is highly unconventional, but it speaks to the soul of a different generation. 

The best comparison that comes to mind is Nine Inch Nails from thirty years ago.  His music sounded catastrophically unlistenable to baby boomers.  His lyrics were puzzling to anyone born before 1970, but for us, it made perfect sense to hate others as you'd hate yourself ("Something I Can Never Have", "Sin", to name just two).  We got it, most others didn't.  And in concert, this wiry, violent brat was a superhero to us.  Similarly, I see something in Billie Eilish that I'm not capable of understanding, but if I was sixteen then I would probably be crazy for her. 

These days, Reznor is entrenched in the upper echelons of the music establishment.  I never thought the day would come when our people would be the gatekeepers and yet earlier this year, Reznor inducted the Cure into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  It's the circle of life.  Reznor is also the co-writer on the most successful song in Billboard Hot 100 history.  Unbelievable. 

Then you have Emika, i.e. Billie Eilish for grownups.  It's also dark electronic pop, but with a clear "made in Berlin" bent.  It's lounge singer sad, not complicated teenager sad.  It's not groundbreaking either, but I know that I get it.  

Reviewing every Eurovision Song Contest Winner (1969)

Finally getting back to this project and jumping straight into the chaos of 1969!

Salome, "Vivo cantando" (Spain). 

There are several notable things about this performance, starting with Salome's mile high beehive hairdo and pale blue dress that looks like a cross between scraggly animal fur and exotic beads.  There's the tuxedo-clad barber shop trio that were beamed in from a completely different, much sleepier song.  There's the way she loses herself in the song and resorts to dancing (against Eurovision rules at the time!), distracting herself from the singing she's supposed to be doing but upping the excitement factor of the song times ten.  All these performance aspects add up to more than the sum of their parts -- this is arguably the first all sizzle, no (or very little) steak performance in Eurovision.  The song doesn't amount to much, jumping between Broadway glitz, flamenco rave-up, and touching ballad, trying to cover all bases at once but never establishing an identity.  Nevertheless, "Vivo cantando" helps establish the Eurovision tradition of putting on a wild performance with flashy costumes, dancing, and other bizarre gaga and hoping people won't notice the deficiencies of the song overlaying it.  6/10.   


Lulu, "Boom Bang-a-Bang" (United Kingdom)

Lulu was a fairly big star when she represented the UK and her team clearly expected that to win the day for them in the contest.  And hey, it worked.  Lulu looked like the cuddly pink precursor to Meghan Trainor in the "All About That Bass" video, she won Eurovision, and "Boom Bang-a-Bang" was a massive hit in the UK and all over Europe.  The song, however, is treacly nonsense that I never want to hear again.  3/10. 


Lenny Kour, "De troubadour" (Netherlands)

I wouldn't have guessed that a straight up folk song with a strong protest/political bent actually won Eurovision exactly fifty years ago.  Political songs are, and I assume were against the Eurovision rules except when the rules are arbitrarily ignored (e.g. when a dictator is rumoured to have fixed the contest to show off to the world).  Certainly no other song in Eurovision channeled the spirit of Woodstock '69 more than this one.  The mostly orchestra-free first minute is a welcome break from the usual bombast of the orchestra, and although the song builds to a rousing climax, I can't help but think it would have been stronger with just the two guitars all the way through.  8/10. 


Frida Boccara, "Un jour, un enfant" (France)  

After hearing this tremendous, almost apocalyptic ballad about an innocent child re-imagining the world, I'm beginning to make sense of this unusual four way tie.  Each song is completely different from the others and would appeal to different voting demographics.  Presumably, the older, golden age of classic songwriting fans would have voted for Frida Boccara and Salome, whereas the younger generation would have been drawn to the reactionary street cred of Lenny Kour and the bubblegum pop of Lulu.  There is no right answer, although I would choose "De troubadour" by a hair over Un jour, en enfant".  Boccara's performance is one to remember for sure, boasting the purest, strongest vocal delivery of any Eurovision winner thus far.  And for trivia buffs, I believe that Frida Boccara was the first Jewish winner (performer, not songwriter) of Eurovision.  8/10.   

Glastonbury 2019

I have been watching clips from the festival all week and what is there to say?  There are dozens of huge festivals all over the world each year, but playing at Glastonbury carries a certain gravitas and historical importance that other festivals can't match.  I think the artists have bought into this too. 

A lot has changed over the years.  Miley Cyrus got into the Glastonbury spirit with a kitchen sink set of her songs, covers, and guest appearances.  Can you imagine Mariah Carey or any of her contemporary female solo stars playing Glastonbury in the 90's?  Or even Alanis Morrissette, to name a 90's artist more similar to Miley?  It was unthinkable.  When it came to festivals, Americans only knew Woodstock, which was a one off.  In the post Woodstock era, festivals were the domain of hippies who liked folksy, countercultural bands that flew under the radar and were never heard on the radio.  Festivals weren't the place for real stars.  Today, Glastonbury is truly a global festival, on everyone's radar.

Glastonbury used to be a platform for underappreciated artists.  Those 90's lineups are littered with bands who were ascending and "deserved" their chance to break through by headlining somewhere.  Pulp's headlining set in 1995 (replacing the Stone Roses who cancelled after guitarist John Squire broke his arm mountain biking) is legendary.  Radiohead's headlining set in 1997 is legendary for different reasons -- they held a huge crowd in a rapture, and made them forget their weekend of misery in horrendously muddy conditions -- and cemented the status they enjoy today.  Skunk Anansie, Ash, and Carter USM all headlined (all three had huge hit albums in the UK but were never quite mainstream). 

This year, that artist in that position was Stormzy.  The Killers were arguably in that position when they headlined ... in 2007.  What changes over twelve years these days?  Didn't that used to be an eternity?  The basis of The Killers' set list hasn't changed a whole lot since 2007, they still sculpt their gigs biggest moments around the hits from their first two albums.  The Killers were classic rock almost upon arrival.  Kylie had to pull out of her headlining spot in 2005 and here she was in 2019, still a legend, and attracting the biggest crowd of the festival and on TV.  When the Stone Roses cancelled in 1995 they lost their chance to regain their spot at the peak of British rock.  That chance was gone forever, the industry changed too quickly in those days, and they were broken up less than two years later. 

Speaking of never changing, take The Cure. This year, everyone was in reverence over how brilliant they still sound after all these years.  NME readers voted them the best headlining set of the weekend.  The last time, they headlined, in 1995, nobody was talking about The Cure, least of all NME readers.  I know because I read the NME nearly weekly in those days and The Cure's headlining set drew about two lines of coverage.  People were giddy about Pulp stealing the festival, and whether Oasis were cracking under the pressure of the spotlight.  The Cure had been inactive for about two years and already felt like antiques from a different era.  They were giants who you had to respect in their spot, but they could no longer define the narrative. 

This year, The Cure are still antiques from a different era, but it scarcely matters.  They can play headlining sets at whatever festivals they want under the earth falls into the sun.  Each time they blow away a festival crowd feels like the first time.  They're as legendary as the Stones, but with a key difference.  "Disintegration" could be released tomorrow, as is, and would still be a huge phenomenon.  The lyrics, music, and production have all stayed current.  Think about that, "Disintegration" is thirty years old (!!).  When it was released in 1989, which 1959 rock god could have had a hit single or album in the then contemporary climate?  Can you even imagine it? 

The Idan Raichel Project at Live Park Rishon (19/06)

On paper, Idan Raichel ticks so many of the right boxes.  His music combines Middle Eastern, funk, klezmer, and a host of other world music elements that I wouldn't even be able to name into a multicultural fusion that few other artists anywhere in the world can compete with.  That approach has made him into one of the few Israel musicians with a legitimate global profile. 

What else?  His "Project" is a true melting pot with a cast of some fifteen people on stage.  His songs are a mix of Hebrew, Arabic, and Amharic. He's a proud Zionist.  He seems genuinely humble and takes his role as a cultural ambassador seriously.  Instead of having an opening band, he plays really long shows, with tonight's gig running about two and a half hours.  He's as comfortable playing solo behind the piano, or accompanying one of his singers on a ballad, as being a cog in a full band churning through steamy grooves. 

And yet, I've never found Raichel's songs to be all that good, save for some of his ballads.  The uptempo stuff shows off a dazzling display of cultural virtuosity without being truly catchy.  Unfortunately, the idea of the Idan Raichel Project is far better than the reality.  I hoped that the spectacle of the live band would breathe more life into the songs -- plenty of bands sound OK on record but slay on stage, and a fifteen piece cross-cultural, cross-generational spectacle seemed like a good bet to fit that bill.  The spectacle is there, but the songs aren't.  It feels like the concert could be best enjoyed via a series of clips, where one can feel the power of the full band without having to press through the entire two hour plus journey. 

The indie/jam band merger

This past week, Chris Richards detailed the slow conversion of indie rock bands into jam bands in an article for the Washington Post.  Certain bands with which he chose to make his point are questionable (The National aren't jammy at all, curating an album of Grateful Dead covers was a side interest and doesn't feed back into their music) but his thesis is sound.  Ten years ago, everyone was talking about "corporate indie", i.e. the commercialization (and/or watering down) of indie as masterminded by major labels looking to capitalize on indie's cultural cachet.  Now?  Indie bands are jam bands.  Liking the Dead is certifiably OK in the indie scene, as noted by Richards, the only problem is that indie (and rock in general) has never mattered less as a cultural force.

The mainstream mostly ignores the jam band scene, except when they rake in obscene amounts of money (see: the 50th anniversary Dead shows), which I guess makes them truly countercultural again after all these years?  At the very least, today's indie jammers can look forward to many more decades of successful concerts if they play their cards right.

I first became attuned to this issue when reading a Yo La Tengo message board probably about fifteen years ago.  Somebody made the point of comparing YLT and the Grateful Dead, and sure enough, they ticked off many of the right boxes -- concerts stretched out to epic lengths, long and improvisational concert jams, different set lists every night, covers, covers and more covers, tolerating and even promoting tape trading of their live shows, etc.  I was slightly horrified, less so because of the Dead comparison, and more because the comparisons were completely on the money.

There wasn't a specific incident that helped the Dead became more "palatable" for indie fans, as noted by Richards, it was a glacial process.  The prior generation of music critics had exhumed and dissected the music of the 60's one too many times, and the Gen Y and millenials were tired of hearing about how nothing would ever be better than the 60's.  They moved onto examining the critically underrated pre-punk 70's, the Dead released their most well known albums during those years, and away we go.  Along those lines, the new Scorcese documentary about Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue (which I am itching to see) couldn't have existed fifteen years ago.  Dylan's "indie phase" ended after his motorcycle accident, and save for "Blood on the Tracks", 70's weirdo troubadour Dylan was too jammy and weird to be taken seriously next to his 1962-1966 output.

Finally, I think Wilco's crossover happened a lot earlier, as I recall them getting a lot of cred with the hippie crowds through their album of Woody Guthrie songs with Billy Bragg.  This may have contributed to their breakthrough with "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" many years later, that is, Wilco had broad, underappreciated appeal beyond the usual indie scenes. Oh, and how did War on Drugs not get mentioned in the article?

The UMG warehouse fire

I don't have much to add to this story beyond expressing the same feelings of shock and sadness as everyone else.  I do think that this may well be the biggest music-related story ever, with no exaggeration.  At the very least it must be the biggest musical *recording*-related story ever.  Between the astounding, beyond all words loss of precious musical data and incomprehensibility of such a thing being successfully covered up for over ten years (in the internet + social media era no less), I can't imagine anything as significant and far-reaching as this happening again in my lifetime. 

People who think that the music "lives on out there digitally and in people's collections so nothing was really lost" are missing the point.  First of all, loss of the master recordings means no more remastering/remixing of any of these works, ever again.  No self-respecting label would ever remaster from a copy, which is why UMG reissues had dried up to nearly nothing in the past several years (now it makes sense why).  And nobody who buys the remastered recordings would want to pay good money to hear something remastered from inferior copies.  Second, and more importantly, the loss of the originals of any work of art is an irretrievable loss of human culture.  Imagine the Mona Lisa burning up in a fire, and someone claiming that it didn't matter, countless reproductions of it live on in print, in everything from art textbooks to postcards, so it's going to be OK.  Imagine all original copies of the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays going up in smoke, and claiming that it's fine because we have the Penguin editions.  Every generational copy picks up omissions and errors that weren't in the originals.  When the originals are gone, a tangible connection to the spirit and intention of the artist goes with it, never to return.         

Brett Anderson, "Coal Black Mornings"

I was somewhat hesitant to buy this book because of its brevity -- 43 thousand words seemed lacking in the value for money department -- and its narrowed scope.  Why tell such a small and incomplete fraction of the overall story?

Fortunately, I was smart enough to take the advice of countless reviewers and online commenters.  "Coal Black Mornings" is the perfect length, it's exactly as long as it needs to be for the story that's being told.  In the preface, Anderson says that he's writing the book for his son so that he'll know who his father used to be.  It's the kind of sentiment that hits you harder when you have a son of your own, as I have recently discovered.  The language is rich and expressive, and I frequently found myself pausing to enjoy particularly flowery lines a little while longer before continuing.  In that sense, "Coal Black Mornings" is far from an easy, quick read.  Wordy snapshots of his childhood home are captured in painstaking detail, everything from his parents small neuroses to what was typically found on their breakfast table.   The minutiae don't bog down his writing at all, on the contrary, they paint everything in a more realistic, relatable light.

In a way, the book is about nothing.  The Andersons were a poor, working class family, there isn't the slightest indication of musical genius at work, no family aptitude for music, no teachers nurturing his talent because he didn't display any.  There are no fortuitous celebrity run-ins, no lucky breaks, no persistent mentors.  It's a book about a perfectly ordinary family.  The language doesn't elevate his early life into something glamorous or extraordinary in the least.  What he does, somehow, is transform the ordinary into something interesting, a type of self-analysis that we can all do, and probably should do.  He frequently notes that even the most mundane things you experience as a child can inform and influence your adult life.  He traces the genesis of specific Suede songs and lyrics back to unexpected sources such as family tragedies and his father's off-colour sense of humour.

Suede were not unjustly ignored until the press and public eventually caught up to their vision, no, Anderson repeatedly emphasizes how bad they were.  But he also stresses the importance of starting bad and finding oneself through the process of becoming good.  I had forgotten that Suede was born from completely unremarkable circumstances.   They were going nowhere until it all suddenly came together, almost materializing from the ether.  Four months before the famous "Best New Band In Britain" cover, they were playing a Xmas show to ten people.

The weakest part of the book for me was the ending, once it stops being a book about a bunch of struggling nobodies and acquires the braggadocio that frontmen of famous bands are known for.  Does this bode well for the follow-up autobiography this fall? 

Reviewing every Eurovision Song Contest Winner (1967, 1968)

I'm not going to finish this project before the start of this year's Eurovision as I'd hoped, but we'll reach the end eventually!

1967.  Sandie Shaw, "Puppet On a String" (United Kingdom). 

After five runner-up finishes in the contest, the UK finally notched their first win with a song so irresistibly catchy, there's no way it could fail to win.   It's one of those rare songs that not only leads off with the chorus, but due to its incessant rhythm -- a half-cabaret, half oom-pah-pah beat that never lets up -- its structured almost like one long chorus.  The verses and bridge funnel effortlessly back into the chorus which funnels back into the absurdly silly yet alluring lyrics of the verses and so on.  On the precipice of the Summer of Love, Sandie Shaw is performing barefoot and wearing a wide flower child dress cut at the knee, completely forgoing the typical formal dress of the competition.  "Puppet On a String" is easily the most earworm-y Eurovision winner thus far.  Oddly enough, Shaw hated the song but it scarcely mattered -- it became a worldwide smash, was re-recorded (by her) in four other languages and by others in dozens more, and was the most popular Eurovision song ever to that point.  "Puppet On a String" completely dispensed with any pretense of being a highbrow entry in a genteel music competition.  It's designed to be as catchy as humanly possible, defying you to change the channel if you heard it on the radio, no more and no less.  That formula would be copied by countless Eurovision entries, not to mention pop radio hits, over the next few decades and up to the present day.  9/10. 


1968.  Massiel, "La la la" (Spain).

The first ESC TV broadcast in colour!  Predictably enough, there was some fallout from Sandie Shaw's memorable win the year before, coming in the form of a near copycat performance.  They checked off all the boxes: young girl in a cropped dress with three cute background singers, simple and catchy chorus repeated ad infinitum, vaguely hippie-ish rock edge, and so on.  Of course, the copy is rarely as good as the original. The plan makes sense in a devious, playing to the lowest common denominator kind of way.  How dumb and mindless can we make the chorus?  Do we even need to write words for the chorus?  How about nothing but "la la la" repeated 9483 times?  It'll transcend culture and language!  There's literally nothing of worth in this song, and your enjoyment purely depends on how much of a kick you get out of the never ending lalala's.  Did the composers get some inspiration from "Hey Jude", released the same year?  "Hey Jude" had a lot more going for it than the one syllable at the end.

Conspiracy theorists believe that Franco fixed the contest this year to improve Spain's image.  "La la la" beat Cliff Richard's "Congratulations" by a single point, denying the UK the first ever back-to-back win in Eurovision.  Indeed, Cliff Richard's frilly collar and incredible charisma blew Massiel off the stage that year. 5/10.   

Reviewing every Eurovision Song Contest Winner (1965, 1966)

1965.  France Gall, "Poupée de cire, poupée de son" (Luxembourg).

In which Serge Gainsbourg fulfilled one of his career goals by bringing his music to the masses, winning Eurovision, and giving the contest the kick in the teeth it sorely needed.  "Poupée de cire, poupée de son" can be credited as the first non-ballad to win Eurovision, but as we've seen, some uptempo, pop-lite songs had won in previous years, so that designation depends on your exact definition of ballad. More importantly, it was the first truly contemporary winner, the moment where the modern pop charts crash landed centre stage in Eurovision, the first song that exuded effortless cool and street cred.  The moment when the drums kick in is like a bolt of lightning that shocks the system after years of sleepy ballads.  The overall arrangement is so breathtaking that you can easily forgive France Gall's somewhat nondescript delivery, she's almost a sideshow within her own performance.  But Gainsbourg would make a career out of being the real star behind the scenes while interchanging his singing dolls as he wished.  One could go on for days about how he schooled all the winning composers from previous years and their "I'm too young to be in love" numbers with his continuous roll of puns, innuendos, and double entendres.  10/10.   

1966.  Udo Jürgens, "Merci, Chérie" (Austria).

And now it's a trip back to the dark ages of sentimental ballads about leaving one's lover, thanks for the memories, bittersweet love oh how it stings, and so on.  This song suffers a lot when you have to listen to it immediately following "Poupée de cire, poupée de son".  It's a safe entry, but it's immediate and relatable, something that could be counted on to score votes in the then contemporary climate.  6/10.  

Weezer (the Teal Album)

It's hard to justify a covers album most of the time. The source material is probably going to be good, so the album won't be bad per se. The collective "why??" is the most common reaction -- any good song played competently won't be worth a bad review, but at the same time there's no reason to care about this new(er)(est) interpretation.

No album in recent memory embodies this reaction more than the latest from Weezer. It's simultaneously of our time and hopelessly dated in and of our time. Artistically, there is absolutely nothing of substance here. There are no hidden gems, no creative reworkings, nothing recast in a contemporary light. The clear intention was to do the exact opposite -- to play some of the most iconic hits note for note, with nearly the same instrumentation in the most straightforward pub rock style. Until very recently (insert year of choice here) nobody would have taken this seriously as a "real" album, it would have been a fan club only release or something exclusively sold on tour. Maybe it would be even be given away as a bonus CD with a proper album or DVD.  There would most certainly be no money in a covers album so clearly half assed, so it would be marketed as a cheeky bit of fun for hardcore fans. 

These days, there's no money to be made in recorded music anyway, albums are more of a touring loss leader than ever before. Still, I expect albums to exist for better reasons than "made on a Twitter dare". 

The art of DJing: Jeff Mills

Courtesy of Resident Advisor, this feature is possibly the equivalent of a mid-90's interview with Eric Clapton about the proper use of guitars in rock.  Lamentations about the sorry state of affairs these days?  Check.  Schooling the young whippersnappers about how things are supposed to be done?  Yes to that too.  It's a sobering thought to consider that techno has been around long enough to produce its share of surly older statesmen just like rock and roll did. 

Nevertheless, Mills is essentially a god and reading this interview firmly established (as if there was really any doubt) that he is on another level completely.  He can detect details in music that would go unnoticed by any ordinary person, and can react and process these details in real time, while DJing.  Two or three minutes to make the subtraction, i.e. to remove a track from the mix completely?  I know the concept and I strive to do the same with some of my mixes.  But cueing three tracks simultaneously, intentionally lagging the beats, and rephasing them in just the right way to build the excitement for the listener?  How do you do that without having it all devolve into, to cop a phrase Mills uses, "a herd of horses"?  Mills can hear differences in calibration between three identical CDJ's, including the effect of room temperature and humidity.  The man simply understands his craft better than most of us will ever understand anything in our lives.  Learning to DJ in Detroit must have been like boot camp, where only the strongest and most talented could survive, and anyone who did was more disciplined than the best DJs from virtually any other place (he talks a bit about this too).  I can't do the interview justice, and literally the entire thing is quotable, you just have to read it. 

My favourite bit actually might have been the part where Mills used to leave records in his crate that he had no intention of playing.  He'd leave a James Brown record in there not to play it, but as a reminder to keep his set funky.  Brilliant.  Or maybe the part about focusing on the last quarter of the track in his mixes, because that's where the track best comes together, where the real groove can be found.  I really must try my hand at that in a future mix. 

Diary of Musical Thoughts Podcast Episode 42

"Its soldiers' daily duties included observing and patrolling the mix", 102 minutes

I can't believe it took me this long to make a long ambient mix with no-gimmicks.  No thirty minute beatless intros to a beats-heavy mix and no noisy ambient interludes (tricks I've used in the past a bunch of times).  Every track breathes deeply, often for ten minutes or more, everything is cloaked in a thick aural haze and the drift speed is held to a glacial pace throughout.   

Reviewing every Eurovision Song Contest Winner (1962, 1963, 1964)

1962.  Isabelle Aubret, "Un premier amour" (France).

With its third winner in five years, France established itself as the powerhouse in the early years of the contest.  "Un premier amour" isn't as grating as "Tom Pilibi" or as dramatic as "Dors, mon amour", but its easily the most nondescript.  Even after multiple listens, I found myself not remembering a thing about it other than the repeated title.  You might never forget your first love, but you won't have any trouble forgetting about this song the instant its over.  Not bad, not offensive, just boring and devoid of colour or character. 2/10.

1963.  Grethe and Jørgen Ingmann, "Dansevise" (Denmark).  

The song leads off with the deep twang of Jorgen Ingmann's guitar, which for this contest, is like an sudden infusion of punk energy.  By becoming the first duo to win Eurovision, the Ingmanns redirected the focus away from the ever present orchestra and towards their own performance.  The orchestra is still there, but for the first time I feel like I'm watching a pair of artists in concert rather than a glitzy singing contest.  It's a simple, mildly uptempo song with a hint of swing and a head nod to rock and roll.  They don't try to do too much with it, which is fine because no histrionics are needed.  By breaking free of wistful balladry, they've done enough to be memorable.  7/10.   

1964.  Gigliola Cinquetti, "Non ho l'eta" (Italy).

Cinquetti was just sixteen years old at the time of her winning performance and became the youngest winner ever (a record not surpassed until 1986).  She sings with a shy, almost awkwardly restrained demeanor, but considering the song is about a meek young girl who's not ready to fall in love, it works for her.  The music has a proto-Spectorian grandeur dating from the years right before Spector nailed his formula.  The best comparison would be The Paris Sisters' "I Love How You Love Me" -- innocent and heartwarming, a grown-up subject matter sung in a manner that's palatable for teenagers.  I can understand why this became an international hit in several languages.  Cinquetti would return to Eurovision ten years later with another great song, but picked the wrong year for her comeback, finishing second to the most famous winning act ever.  8/10.     

Reviewing every Eurovision Song Contest winner (1960, 1961)

1960.  Jacqueline Boyer, "Tom Pillibi" (France). 

Apparently the early years of Eurovision were all about big fluffy ballads and tongue in cheek character profiles of flawed lovers.  Judging by his name, "Tom Pillibi" is likely a rich English philanderer, although the lyrics don't specifically mention where he's from.  The cadence and vaguely ironic tone of the lyrics suggest that Britpop came to Eurovision five or thirty five years early (it depends on which generation you're from).  But the song's plastic charm doesn't extend beyond the first few lines, and somehow I felt like it would never end, as if I was listening to a seven minute lyrical epic rather than a three minute radio friendly song contest entry.  Its cheeriness might be pleasing for some, but I found this song nearly intolerable.  2/10.  


1961.  Jean-Claude Pascal, "Nous les amoureux" (Luxembourg).  

I'm reminded here of a familiar theme in 50's and early 60's balladry -- the young couple who are furiously in love and fight to stay together even though "they" (usually their parents) want to break them apart.  This song is set to light jazz and carries none of the desperation or passion that you'd expect for it to work.  Who "they" are is never explained, we're told they're idiots and haters, but without a personality behind the description, they're just weasel words.  Hating your parents is cool and relatable, anonymous "idiots" might as well be nothing but bad drivers.  Plus, Pascal is no teenager, he's a 34-year old bland singer in a suit.  Yet another new low in the early years of the contest.  1/10.     

Diary of Musical Thoughts Podcast Episode 41

"They mix the path of these strange steps", 55 minutes

My latest attempt at a "fun", super-clubby mix.  Lots of proggy house and techno, tracks with vocals, extended remixes all over the place, 25 years of music represented. 

Two anniversaries: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, "It's Blitz", Animal Collective, "Merriweather Post Pavilion"

This post was inspired by "It's Blitz", which was released ten years (!!) ago this week.  I hadn't listened to the full album in years, but guess what?  If this album was released tomorrow it would still blow minds.  Which rock band working today (indie or not) could combine the pure elation of disco with dramatic string-led balladry while still maintaining their garage rock edge?  Arcade Fire tried a similar thing with "Reflector" and failed miserably.  Nobody could pull it off except Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and as the week came to a close I was wondering how there could possibly be 22 albums better than "It's Blitz" released in the decade of the 00's.

Tenth anniversary pieces for "Merriweather Post Pavilion", released in the first week of January 2009, took on a different tone entirely.  Whereas "It's Blitz" sound better than ever these days, even talking about "Merriweather" feels like reminiscing about ancient history.  It might as well have been released twenty or even thirty years ago.  It sounds so much like a dead concept from an entirely different era.  At the time, I'd been overdosing for over a year on Animal Collective recordings that were based almost entirely on the new songs.  When "Merriweather" finally came out, I hardly needed it anymore, the album already existed for me in a live format, and the recorded version could do nothing but disappoint.  It was not too different from my reaction to GYBE's "Yanqui U.X.O." in 2002.  Animal Collective were a niche indie band whose hype made them and consumed them in quick order.  I live that they've continued to do their own thing and never tried settling into the rut of copying their most famous album over and over.  But I rarely feel like listening to "Merriweather" these days, and in fact, I rarely listened to it in 2009 too. 

Nonetheless, it's a bit sad that many critics chose to remember "Merriweather Post Pavilion" via "hey remember when we all liked this?  LOL" pseudo nostalgia.  But it's more than balanced by the pure joy that comes out of remembering how great "It's Blitz" was and still goddamned is.   

Reviewing every Eurovision Song Contest winner (1958, 1959)

1958.  André Claveau, "Dors, mon amour" (France)

This is ostensibly a lullaby from the singer to his sleepy lover, although the music is fairly upbeat with more than a faint air of Percy Faith's "Theme From a Summer Place" (which would be recorded two years later, but the coincidental similarities are there).  Dramatizations of the eternal love between couples apparently made for great sleep aids in Europe in the late 50's.  Stylistically, I found this inconsistent -- is it a gentle lullaby or a vehicle for the chanson singer's voice? -- but by the end, you've got to fairly hard hearted to say that Claveau can't stick the landing.  6/10.


1959.  Teddy Scholten, "'n Bettje" (Netherlands)

The cheeky sense of humour that characterizes this song works immeasurably better than it did on Corry Brokken's "Net als toen".  First, it's a playful, upbeat song that doesn't take itself too seriously.  More importantly, Scholten gives a memorable performance by clearly having fun with the song, telling the story through her eyes even more so than with her voice, and utilizing a wide variety of coquettish facial expressions to completely immerse herself in the character.  As a song, it's fairly basic, but make no mistake, this was a champions' performance by Scholten, the first truly great performance by a Eurovision winner.  7/10. 

 

Reviewing every Eurovision Song Contest winner

Eurovision is coming to Tel Aviv, and I'm starting to get swept up in the excitement.  As a prelude to the competition, I've decided to review and grade every past Eurovision Song Contest winner.

I'm approaching this as an unbiased outsider who hasn't heard most of these songs and is unfamiliar with many of the artists. I'll make the effort whenever possible to understand the context behind the choices each year, e.g. who was favoured going in and why, how musical or political trends may have affected the voting, etc.  But mainly I'm looking for a gut, first impressions kind of reaction. A song doesn't necessarily have to stand the test of time, because after all, many of them were written with the express purpose of winning a competition and were looking to capture the moods and tastes of the moment.  Crafting a creative tour de force wasn't intended, or expected a lot of the time.  But good songs are good songs, period.  That said, I'll have to figure out some kind of sliding scale for grading the parade of shlocky power ballads, especially in the non English-language early years.

1956.  Lys Assia, "Refrain" (Switzerland)

On first listen, I thought this was a fairly standard mid-tempo ballad.  Then I delved into the lyrics (French being a language I can partly comprehend) and the heartstrings were dutifully pulled.  Upon further listens, it grew on me even more.   For some reason I was reminded of Bobby Vee's "Take Good Care of My Baby" (which was released years later -- this is purely a mental connection in the present day).  The longing for loves of yesterday, dreaming about getting a second chance, it's a brilliant mixture of hopelessness with that small flash of hopefulness.  So much for the sliding scale.  8/10.  


1957.  Corry Brokken, "Net als toen" (Netherlands)

Technically speaking, "Refrain" wasn't about teenage love -- there's a lyric referring to those (long ago?) loves of her 20's.  But remove that line and it's a song that could have been sung by an idealist in their early 20's who frequently fell in love, and far too easily.  On the other hand, "Net als toen" is from the perspective of an older couple.  Lines such as (in translation), "you're getting fat and your hair is turning grey/but you can still flirt, believe me" are likely meant to be in good humour, but they leave behind the most unflattering imagery imaginable for a supposed love song.  Is she playfully making fun of her husband, speaking about their younger days like 80's sitcom parents used to?  Or is she spurned and insulted by his lack of affection for her?  Perhaps I'm not picking up on the composer's sense of humour. Perhaps there's something there musically that wasn't recycled from the 1930's.  But I won't be returning to this song any time soon.  3/10.    

Mark Hollis RIP

 Hearing about unexpected death of Mark Hollis left me shocked and saddened, and my immediate reaction was to play "Spirit of Eden".  For me that album was the peak of his and Talk Talk's career.  Very few albums can touch its emotional palate.  Within its six glorious tracks you can find (and feel) happiness, frustration, liberation, rage, introspection, and melancholy, just to name six, often all in the same song, and sometime all within the space of a few notes. 

If he had passed away 20-25 years ago, the obits would have presented him as an 80's synth pop star who retreated from fame to make challenging, critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful music.  Now, he's presented as a "post-rock pioneer" and the emphasis is on the final decade of his career and subsequent retirement from the music industry.  If anything, Talk Talk's output from 1982-1986 has become criminally underrated in recent years.  People mention almost in passing these days that Talk Talk toured with Duran Duran and had several hits.  It almost comes off sounding like they were bandwagoners who lucked into success by playing the right style of music at the peak of its popularity.  But Talk Talk were an outstanding synth pop band.  Even within the parameters of that genre, they evolved from basic stuff like "Talk Talk" to rhythmically adventurous songs like "Such A Shame" in only two years.  By 1986's "The Colour of Spring" album, they were already branching out into jazz and improvisational music (the band played Montreux that year) and had never been more commercially successful. 

There is so much to love about Talk Talk, and even today, their unconventional career path is no less fascinating than it was at the time.  RIP to a true great. 

Kokhav HaBa L'Eurovision 2019

I didn't watch this season of "Kokhav HaBa L'Eurovision" until the finals.  Whereas Netta Barzelai's win last year was a foregone conclusion for much of the season (but was still very entertaining to watch), this year's competition was very much up for grabs and was filled with twists and turns right up until the finish.  It also featured arguably the most unique collection of talent ever in the final of a music-themed reality show.

Maya Buskila was one of the most popular singers in Israel about fifteen years ago.  In a reality show landscape usually populated by amateur hopefuls with dreams of stardom, this was something entirely different: a former star and gossip column regular looking for her last shot at international superstardom.  Imagine a Jessica Simpson auditioning for The Voice in the US and somehow advancing all the way to the end. 

Buskila made a horrible song choice in the final -- she chose Loreen's "Euphoria", which was the winning song for Eurovision 2012 and subsequently a massive hit all over Europe.  It's a variation of the Whitney-Mariah reality show rule that I always used to talk about in my posts on American Idol.  That is, never sing something that puts you up against an impossible standard.   She finished in fourth place.

Shefita was a subject of controversy all season long.  She had spent years carefully honing her act in Tel Aviv clubs, and had something of a cult following through her Youtube videos.  You see, Shefita isn't a real person, she's a character played by the classically trained musician Rotem Shefi.  She plays a comically exaggerated, yet endearing version of an Arab diva, complete with audacious outfits and a personalized sparkly microphone.  Much like Sasha Baron Cohen took impersonations to another level by completely dedicating himself to the role, Shefi has completely immersed herself in all things Shefita and NEVER BREAKS CHARACTER.   She finished in third place, after being on the bubble multiple times throughout the season and finding a way to survive every time (i.e. the producers couldn't stand to see her go home). 

Katria Pouch is a Sudanese immigrant who cruised to the finals (save a small blip in the semifinals) on the strength of her dynamic, almost Tina Turner-like performances.  She also courted some controversy by finding a way to get accepted onto two reality shows at the same time, which she chalked up to "gathering experiences".  She is unquestionably great, but there is something missing in her act that's hard to put a finger on.  Many seasons of American Idol had an R&B diva type who would reach the top four and then hit a brick wall.  They were brilliant singers, and therefore good enough to avoid getting voted off, but once it was down to the last few competitors, they didn't seem special because they rarely strayed from the standard diva template of the time.

The winner was Kobi Marimi, who was actually voted off before the semi-finals and brought back as a wild card re-entrant.  He has a special on-stage charisma and is a hybrid of Freddie Mercury and Andrea Bocelli.  They'll stick him with a patented Eurovision-style power ballad for the competition.  It's a smart marketing move because nobody's going to out-Netta Netta, so it's better to do a stylistic 180 away from dance pop and choose a singer and song that's completely different from last year in every way.  

The rate of change

Most of this post will be a series of unanswered questions.  

Is the rate of change of music slowing down?  Are new innovations and the emergence of new genres happening less frequently?  Or do I just perceive the evolution of music differently?  After all, time passes faster and faster the older you get.  

Let's pick a couple of representative years.   When I think about how much the landscape of music changed between 1984 and 1994, it's astonishing.  Techno changed insurmountably during that time.  Hip hop matured greatly.  Commercial rock was dominated by glossy reverb-laden synth music with a backbeat, whereas ten years later it was all about grunge and indie genres bubbling into the mainstream.   

How much did music change between 2008 and 2018?  I'm talking once again about the sound and style of music, not the business side that is always rapidly evolving. My own albums of the year lists hardly suggest a sea change in tastes.  Disappointingly perhaps, I still listen to mostly the same genres now that I did ten years ago, although those genres themselves certainly have evolved.

Have my own tastes stagnated, thereby warping my outside view?  That must be part of it.  However, with streaming and downloading being easier and cheaper than ever, there are fewer barriers to discovering and generally getting lost in older music.  If it's "new" to you, isn't that enough to satisfy your need for hearing something you've never heard before.  And obviously the ratio of catalogued music to newly released music will only continue to grow.  

The collapse and merger of the major record companies has led to more homogeneity in the charts, and far fewer long term investment artists getting their shot at reaching a wider audience.  Artists don't hang around on major labels anymore for ten years unless they have a massive hit record, so either you're in the millionaires club with 100M+ hits on youtube whenever you drop a single, or you're a niche artist.  

On one hand, we live in an era dominated by superproducers who dictate the stylistic norms of the pop charts moreso than at any time since the 1960's.  Creatively, they are more of a force in pop music than the artists they ostensibly work for.  They import sounds from the underground and mold them into major pop hits, giving us combinations like Katy Perry + trap and Drake + bounce that would have been nearly unthinkable not long before they actually recorded them.  But on the other hand, with so few major pop artists, and therefore relatively few leading producers, once somebody has a breakthrough hit it gets copied a million times over and rapidly falls out of fashion again.   

I'm actually willing to bet I'm wrong about this.  I'm probably too immersed in catching up with my own back catalog these days.