Daily Listen by Brian Brock

Michael Jackson - HIStory - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE - Book I

Here’s a really good remembrance of Michael Jackson from a guy who was involved in creating this album: Michael Jackson at the Hit Factory.  Random quotes:

One morning MJ came in with a new song he had written overnight. We called in a guitar player, and Michael sang every note of every chord to him. “here’s the first chord first note, second note, third note. Here’s the second chord first note, second note, third note”, etc., etc. We then witnessed him giving the most heartfelt and profound vocal performance, live in the control room through an SM57.

He would sing us an entire string arrangement, every part. Steve Porcaro once told me he witnessed MJ doing that with the string section in the room. Had it all in his head, harmony and everything. Not just little eight bar loop ideas. he would actually sing the entire arrangement into a micro-cassette recorder complete with stops and fills.

At one point Michael was angry at one of the producers on the project because he was treating everyone terribly. Rather than create a scene or fire the guy, Michael called him to his office/lounge and one of the security guys threw a pie in his face. No further action was needed … . .

If you can enjoy the style of music, taken outside of the context of the intensely artificial newsscape built around him, it’s an incredible work of mankind, a product of a huge number of people focused on one goal, working intently without rest to achieve it, like Star Wars or the Statue of Liberty.

If you can’t enjoy the music, or can’t ignore the context, then it’s just “wacky Jackson” or whatever.

NPR Music - Guest DJ Bjork

s’Groovy.  I like her defense of Northern singing against the bosses of the world.  I’m pretty happy with her new live album, too.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106054569

Sonic Youth - The Eternal

Sonic Youth throws another one on the pile.

Scenario: a band can consistently create really good albums in the vein of this one, Murray Street or A Thousand Leaves, or for that matter, EVOL, Sister, and Washing Machine.

Question: do they have a duty (to themselves, to God, to me) to do anything else?  Should they risk it all on a colossal mistake?

Consider The Whitey Album, from “Ciccone Youth,” the stunted Madonna-wallowing alternative path they took in 85 or so.  It is huge fun to listen to.  Thurston Moore’s folk-rocky solo album Trees Outside the Academy, featuring Steve Shelley, was a great follow up to Rather Ripped, which itself was a revelation that SY could successfully drop the distorted tone-clusters, edited freakout jams, and sucker-punch vocals in favor of beauty, structure, and really excellent singing from the usually murky Kim Gordon.

Is it dictated by the popular music market?  Look at Beck, whose innate appeal to frat boys and hippies (to the extent there’s a difference anymore) means his core audience is much larger.  He took pretty much the opposite approach, creating a unique sound-world for each of his albums, at least up until Guero.  Even if this was an artistically worthy choice, with Odelay and “Loser” looming in his discography, every move he made was considered not on its own but in terms of what that crazy Beck was going to do next.  Since Guero, he has relied more or less on his old formula.

Why can’t Sonic Youth do something like Trees Outside the Academy? More to the point, why don’t they make something that will really clean clocks and take out the trash?  They may be unable as a group to cooperate in any other endeavor.  Perhaps it’s a business choice, to create a consistent brand.  Maybe they are imitating modern artists who make an endless string of “Untitled #” paintings, all the same sampling of colors and shapes.

Tied with Bill Callahan’s Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle for best sounding record of 2009.

Norah Jones - Austin City Limits (2007)

This concert strikes me as really odd sounding.  It’s like listening to a really good band playing a bunch of songs they’ve never heard before.  Jones’s voice is by far the most interesting thing happening, but the songs are so light and, really, almost unsophisticated that it’s not really enough to just have a singer.  Of course, a voice is not a singer, and maybe Nina Simone could have found more in these songs.  Perhaps Jones is just distracted by the odd fit between band and song.

Then there’s this:

Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III

Meat and potatoes.  Delicious.

Common - Universal Mind Control

I’m not sure I can make it through this album all the way.  It sounds like spiders are eating into the back of my brain.  I need to hear some Missy Elliott or something else similar that I like, to make sure I’m not coming down with mind-shingles.

The problem is that the mixing/mastering of this music is designed to force us to hear it.  It’s distorted, and as loud as is physically possible.  Just as Mencius asks if there is anything you value more than your life, and just as businesses should recognize that profit is only a desirable second effect of accomplishing a good purpose, musicians should ask if attracting attention at all costs is wise.

Yelle - Pop Up

I get the idea that if this was in English, the lyrics would be the sort that utterly distract me from the pure joy of the music.  She’d be all, “my man-a wanna me-a eat-a his banana” and “one two three four egg drop soup” (all rights reserved for my next album).  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, except for possibly a small amount of damage to the psyche, about as much as a can of Coke Zero does to the body.

But it’s in French, so it just sounds groovy.  I guess “Je Veux Te Voir” was her “I Kissed A Boy” - or whatever, the song that brought her to attention before her album was finished.  It has a less bassy, more pop sound than the rest.  I guess it was/is a “you are not by nature well endowed for procreation” type of song, but again, it’s in French, so my awareness is mediated.

Bachelorette - The End of Things

It’s interesting, because it sounds very generic and synthetic and derivative, like music that a committee of robots would make trying to replicate Bjork’s pre-Vespertine music - yet it is very listenable, for example while washing the dishes and reading Wittgenstein.

The lyrics are kind of good.  “My Electric Husband” has some clever lines about a blender and a juicer.