nothing exceeds like excess
maybe i'm getting old or something, but da-amn, they just don't make big rock rekkids like they usedta.
i mean, gimme a break. in these days of 80-minute cd's, when every band seems ready 'n' willing to release every fart, belch, and sneeze they've ever ever ever recorded, it's easy to forget that there once was a time when anytime an artiste took the time 'n' trouble to grunt out over an hour's worth of musica, it was a _big statement_, a bona fide _event -- think only of the beatles' white album, exile on main st., electric ladyland, for chrissakes london calling.
not like nowadays, when the only way to get in the paper for making a rawk rekkid is to pull a move like wilco did a couple of yrs ago and flip the bird to their big-conglomerate label by suing to get the rights to their own masters, then having 'em released by yet another arm of said big conglomerate (in this case, the one that usedta be known for releasing product like baroque music for the recorder an' like that). or to be "controversial," like whimpering brit donkeys coldplay who claimed in print that the stockholders of _their_ big-conglomerate label were "evil." or to dare the dreaded "releasing two albs simultaneously" gambit (already perfected by '80s brontosaurs broooce springsteen and guns 'n' roses) like conor oberst (in his case, the two albs being one of unlistenable electro jive like he was his generation's bob mould or something and another on which the presence of emmylou harris makes it pretty clear that he's pandering to the boomer mom 'n' pop audience, conor perhaps sensing that his sell-by date among other 20somethings with bad haircuts is approaching as inexorably as, well, his 30th birthday).
but i digress.
my fave big rock rec of all time: quadrophenia by the who. unlike its acid-addled predecessor in the "rock opera" sweepstakes tommy, quadrophenia came complete with a quasi-coherent storyline, the universality of which surprisingly wasn't undercut by its very time/space-specific subject matter (to wit, the early '60s english mod cult from which the 'oo drew most of their early audience and the, um, personalities of the individual bandmembers, all of which was supposed to be some kind of commentary on the band's mystical bond with their audience, released right around the time said bond was nearing _its_ sell-by date as the band trudged around the sheds, culminating in the death of 11 whofans in a cattle-like stampede preceding a show in cincinnati a few yrs later). myself, i spent innumerable months in the devastating aftermath of my own first acid trip listening to quadrophenia in the company of some agreeable hooligans from my neighborhood, who'd meet every thursday night at the house of the one with a fake i.d. we'd each bring our 80 cents for our own personal pint of md 20/20, which he'd ride his bicycle to the liquor store to buy. when he came back, we'd sit in his mother's limo and pretend we were rockstars. (she had a hack license and was in fact the airport limo service my dad used whenever he'd travel on business; we were, in fact, the reason for the "puke smell" in the limo he'd always complain about when returning from a business trip.) sometimes our host would get out the super 8 projector and we'd watch one of a series of grade-z porn flicks he'd illicitly procured, entitled hot pussy nos. 1 through 18. mostly, though, i just sat in the corner listening to quadrophenia, not speaking to anyone and feeling overwhelmed by both my own shattered psyche and the fact that the ppl on the rekkid were _singing about me_. and my fellows, bless them, left me alone to do that.
in later years, i haven't gone back and listened to quadrophenia very much. a lot of the music seems pompous and overblown compared to most of what i like to listen to, and there's even something laughable about the high drama of the concept. then again, i put it on not long ago and found myself digging it more than i had any right to expect after, um, 30 yrs. i mean, if we _must_ have classical-influenced rock music, better townshend's britten and purcell pastiche than, say, emerson lake & palmer or one of those horrors. and as my wife points out, it's entirely appropriate that a music purporting to describe the inner world of a teenager should be filled with overwrought emotionalism. anything less would seem, well, a little _inauthentic_. if you don't believe her, just ask phil spector and brian wilson, why doncha?
i mentioned earlier that the clash's london calling was one of those "big statement" albums (and the one on which that band's two key personalities began reverting to type: joe strummer to the rebel rock and personal politics he practiced with the 101'ers, mick jones to the rockstar wannabeism of the true mott the hoople fan he was), but their _real_ magnum opus was sandinista!, the sprawling, self-indulgent mess, a full two hours long, that they produced at electric lady studios in nyc around the same time they played a whole week of shows at bond's casino, a danceclub in times square, instead of playing to the same number of ppl in two nights at madison square garden -- a supremely self-defeating gesture that proved once and for all that, cbs' bullshit-ass "only band that matters" hype aside, their hearts really were in the right place.
sandinista! was the same kind of gesture. the clash's fans might have wanted a tight, punchy platter of two-minute punk ditties; what they got instead was a surfeit of sketched-out ideas and experiments, a coupla sides worth of dub reggae, painfully trendy spector-via-meatloaf operas from mick jones (including a cameo by his careerist 'meercun g-f ellen foley, whose signing to epic i _think_ might have preceded her liaison with the dentally-damaged brit punkboy, i can't remember), timon dog (think johnny-rotten-as-fiddling-leprechaun), and paul simonon's "guns of brixton" sung by children. some choice stuff, too: "the magnificent seven" (at the time el clash combo were swallowing noo yawk city whole, the sound of said metropolis was early bronx hip-hop), the nawlins chestnut "junco partner" reimagined by strummer as cartoon reggae sung by a drunken parrot, "something about england" (the clash as the kinks? unlikely, but it worked).
what i really liked about sandinista! was something strummer said to an interviewer who remarked on its inordinate length: "it's supposed to take you a year to get through." the idea that, for the listener as well as for the creator, a rekkid (or by extension, a book, a painting, a photograph, a film) is a _process_, not an _event_, was heady stuff for me back in 1980. now it's, um, the way i think. and for bringing me that insight, i can _almost_ forgive the clash combat rock.
i mean, gimme a break. in these days of 80-minute cd's, when every band seems ready 'n' willing to release every fart, belch, and sneeze they've ever ever ever recorded, it's easy to forget that there once was a time when anytime an artiste took the time 'n' trouble to grunt out over an hour's worth of musica, it was a _big statement_, a bona fide _event -- think only of the beatles' white album, exile on main st., electric ladyland, for chrissakes london calling.
not like nowadays, when the only way to get in the paper for making a rawk rekkid is to pull a move like wilco did a couple of yrs ago and flip the bird to their big-conglomerate label by suing to get the rights to their own masters, then having 'em released by yet another arm of said big conglomerate (in this case, the one that usedta be known for releasing product like baroque music for the recorder an' like that). or to be "controversial," like whimpering brit donkeys coldplay who claimed in print that the stockholders of _their_ big-conglomerate label were "evil." or to dare the dreaded "releasing two albs simultaneously" gambit (already perfected by '80s brontosaurs broooce springsteen and guns 'n' roses) like conor oberst (in his case, the two albs being one of unlistenable electro jive like he was his generation's bob mould or something and another on which the presence of emmylou harris makes it pretty clear that he's pandering to the boomer mom 'n' pop audience, conor perhaps sensing that his sell-by date among other 20somethings with bad haircuts is approaching as inexorably as, well, his 30th birthday).
but i digress.
my fave big rock rec of all time: quadrophenia by the who. unlike its acid-addled predecessor in the "rock opera" sweepstakes tommy, quadrophenia came complete with a quasi-coherent storyline, the universality of which surprisingly wasn't undercut by its very time/space-specific subject matter (to wit, the early '60s english mod cult from which the 'oo drew most of their early audience and the, um, personalities of the individual bandmembers, all of which was supposed to be some kind of commentary on the band's mystical bond with their audience, released right around the time said bond was nearing _its_ sell-by date as the band trudged around the sheds, culminating in the death of 11 whofans in a cattle-like stampede preceding a show in cincinnati a few yrs later). myself, i spent innumerable months in the devastating aftermath of my own first acid trip listening to quadrophenia in the company of some agreeable hooligans from my neighborhood, who'd meet every thursday night at the house of the one with a fake i.d. we'd each bring our 80 cents for our own personal pint of md 20/20, which he'd ride his bicycle to the liquor store to buy. when he came back, we'd sit in his mother's limo and pretend we were rockstars. (she had a hack license and was in fact the airport limo service my dad used whenever he'd travel on business; we were, in fact, the reason for the "puke smell" in the limo he'd always complain about when returning from a business trip.) sometimes our host would get out the super 8 projector and we'd watch one of a series of grade-z porn flicks he'd illicitly procured, entitled hot pussy nos. 1 through 18. mostly, though, i just sat in the corner listening to quadrophenia, not speaking to anyone and feeling overwhelmed by both my own shattered psyche and the fact that the ppl on the rekkid were _singing about me_. and my fellows, bless them, left me alone to do that.
in later years, i haven't gone back and listened to quadrophenia very much. a lot of the music seems pompous and overblown compared to most of what i like to listen to, and there's even something laughable about the high drama of the concept. then again, i put it on not long ago and found myself digging it more than i had any right to expect after, um, 30 yrs. i mean, if we _must_ have classical-influenced rock music, better townshend's britten and purcell pastiche than, say, emerson lake & palmer or one of those horrors. and as my wife points out, it's entirely appropriate that a music purporting to describe the inner world of a teenager should be filled with overwrought emotionalism. anything less would seem, well, a little _inauthentic_. if you don't believe her, just ask phil spector and brian wilson, why doncha?
i mentioned earlier that the clash's london calling was one of those "big statement" albums (and the one on which that band's two key personalities began reverting to type: joe strummer to the rebel rock and personal politics he practiced with the 101'ers, mick jones to the rockstar wannabeism of the true mott the hoople fan he was), but their _real_ magnum opus was sandinista!, the sprawling, self-indulgent mess, a full two hours long, that they produced at electric lady studios in nyc around the same time they played a whole week of shows at bond's casino, a danceclub in times square, instead of playing to the same number of ppl in two nights at madison square garden -- a supremely self-defeating gesture that proved once and for all that, cbs' bullshit-ass "only band that matters" hype aside, their hearts really were in the right place.
sandinista! was the same kind of gesture. the clash's fans might have wanted a tight, punchy platter of two-minute punk ditties; what they got instead was a surfeit of sketched-out ideas and experiments, a coupla sides worth of dub reggae, painfully trendy spector-via-meatloaf operas from mick jones (including a cameo by his careerist 'meercun g-f ellen foley, whose signing to epic i _think_ might have preceded her liaison with the dentally-damaged brit punkboy, i can't remember), timon dog (think johnny-rotten-as-fiddling-leprechaun), and paul simonon's "guns of brixton" sung by children. some choice stuff, too: "the magnificent seven" (at the time el clash combo were swallowing noo yawk city whole, the sound of said metropolis was early bronx hip-hop), the nawlins chestnut "junco partner" reimagined by strummer as cartoon reggae sung by a drunken parrot, "something about england" (the clash as the kinks? unlikely, but it worked).
what i really liked about sandinista! was something strummer said to an interviewer who remarked on its inordinate length: "it's supposed to take you a year to get through." the idea that, for the listener as well as for the creator, a rekkid (or by extension, a book, a painting, a photograph, a film) is a _process_, not an _event_, was heady stuff for me back in 1980. now it's, um, the way i think. and for bringing me that insight, i can _almost_ forgive the clash combat rock.
posted by stashdauber at 6:51 PM
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