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.

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.

Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle

The recording is fantastic. It’s like Callahan has finally left the lo-fi bugaboo behind and tried to make an album that just sounds great. Here’s a link with some stuff about the recording:
Bill Callahan - Progress Report - Stereogum

The songs are good, a significant return to form after the last one. I haven’t been blown away by them yet, but Smog Knock Knock sat on the shelf for a while before I discovered it.

Starts with a classical guitar, similar to a River Ain’t Too Much to Love - perhaps a conscious reference, given the kind of repudiation of the last album’s themes/sounds.

of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?

Of Montreal* has a tendency to “leave it all on the track”, as they say. No idea goes unturned, and turned, and turned. With Kevin Barnes’s bountiful ideas for basslines, synth noises, and backup vocals, this can induce overwhelming delirium. The lyrics, however, generally should have been scraped off the track and disposed of somewhere.

Eva, I’m sorry, but you will never have me
To me you’re just some faggy girl
And I need a lover with soul power
And you ain’t got no soul power

Oh really?  And where can I obtain some of this, this… this “soul power” which is of such value, dear sir?

On Metacritic you can find someone describing Barnes as “one of indie rock’s most gifted songwriters.” Are we seeing the end of writing? Brilliant production is not songwriting, dude.

Of Montreal’s and Why?’s (below) albums show the immediate effect of the home-studioizing of popular music.  The real audio engineers with their fancy hats and pretty ears have been whining for years that music would no longer sound awesome, like Prince or Fleetwood Mac, or the Hampton Grease Band for that matter.  Well, they were right.  Few people can master disciplines as divergent as singing, running audio software, writing songs, and fixing broken electronics.  But that’s not the point, really. Most of these new bands simply would not have existed 20 years ago.

* Surely you capitalize uncapitalized names when they begin a sentence, as with any word.  Let us try limit ourselves to beginning sentences with these abominable self-imposed cutenesses.