At the risk of indulging in both vaguebooking and hyperbole, everything has been too much lately. Just. So. Much. I’m spending too much time on broken social media. There’s a lot of good, wholesome stuff, but that doesn’t pay the bills and them that are running the whole mess have a lot of bills to pay. So, it’s the stuff that provokes that keeps coming and I can’t block it fast enough. That ain’t helping.
Money’s tight, one of the cats is sick, I somehow managed to kill my lawnmower, work remains work, only more so. I made the mistake of checking my income history (via the IRS) vs. the cost of living changes and, whoa boy, that knocked me down for a week. Nicole and I have dusted off one of our projects, but it’s a pretty high risk endeavor that gives me the jibblies just thinking about it.
Being away from home for the weekend may help. The change of scenery, the distance from my distractions and my worries, stuff like that. Let’s see if we can recenter a little bit. Maybe I can sift the good stuff out of the pile and focus on that and not the fact that the whole damn world feels broken right now (which may well be true, but there’s approximately fuck-all I can do about it).
My current playlist is a lot of smaller, less polished stuff that is hitting just right today. But, before I get to that, I’m going to inflict something that’s the polar opposite of that because I’ve been obsessed with it: Michael McDonald’s “Sweet Freedom.” It’s a Rod Temperton song and if you don’t know who he is, well, pardner, let’s fix that. Rod simply owned a big chunk of the radio for a while. He wrote Heatwave’s “Boogie Nights,” Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” “Off The Wall,” George Benson’s “Give Me The Night,” James Ingram’s “Yah Mo Be There,” and so much more.
Slick, simple, and a total earworm, right? Here’s the thing: I don’t understand it at all. My grasp of music theory is incomplete, but just the opening progression is something that I don’t get.
F (I)
Absus2 (flat III sus 2)
Bb (IV)
F (I)
That first F may be an F9, but it doesn’t really matter. What the hell harmonic function does that Absus2 serve. “Oh, it’s really an Ebsus4!” First of all, no it’s not because you can hear the bass walk up to the Bb, and second, that just raises more questions. But…it works. It’s perfect. It couldn’t be anything else. I just can’t explain why it works. Any nerds out there have any ideas? Don’t make me ask one of those YouTube types.
OK, now the fun stuff. Here’s “Janitor” by Suburban Lawns. They’re first-wave new wave, before the genre’s conventions smoothed into something that could be summed up on a “Now That’s What I Call New Wave!” collection.
Thanks to the greatness that is A.C. Newman for bringing them to my attention. Next up are Young Marble Giants and their amazing record Colossal Youth:
I think it was the Phonogram comic that first exposed me to them. It’s a stunning quiet thing that has so much space in it…really fits my mood today.
I saw that Vivian Trimble of Luscious Jackson passed this week, which is awful and way too soon. I went down a rabbit hole and saw that she’d recorded an album with Josephine Wiggs under the name of Dusty Trails, who is probably best known as the bassist for The Breeders and a complete badass in her own right.
Dig that Rhodes! Very “Stereolab” in the vibe department. Now things get a little weird. I saw that Wiggs had also recorded an album with a band called Ladies Who Lunch along with Kate Schellenbach, the drummer from Luscious Jackson.
Yes, that’s a Buzzcocks cover. Let’s stay with Wiggs for one more because she was also in Kostars, along with Jill Cunniff (also of Luscious Jackson) and Ms. Trimble. Let’s get extremely lo-fi with it:
I have no idea if that’s interesting to any of you or even why I find it so interesting. It’s just another thread running through the weave that I didn’t know was there.
The Nerves are one of those bands like Big Star that didn’t get much love during their (brief) time, but their impact all over the early 80s. That’s Peter Case of the Plimsouls on bass, Paul Collins of the Beat on drums, and Jack Lee, whose “Come Back and Stay” became a huge hit for Paul Young. Oh, and wrote and performed the original version of Blondie’s “Hanging on the Telephone,” but I’ll make you go check that one out.
This is so Melancholy-with-a-capital-M, but it’s lovely, it fits a gray day around old women who are only getting older, and Jason’s just a good dude. Really good dude. Thank you, Shadow. This one’s you’re fault.
A little slicker and a little shoegazier, but a great mood tune nonetheless. While I will gladly admit that Usher’s “Yeah” is the song of the millennium so far, this remains my favorite record. Also, fuck predatory record labels all to hell.
And, we close it with some chamber pop and a nod to the aforementioned Mr. Newman. Someday the New Pornographers will make a record that is less than perfect. Hasn’t happened yet, but time makes fools of us.
“Hey Ridley, that’s not a playlist; that’s just some linked videos.” Fair enough. Here’s the playlist. It’s been that kinda afternoon.