Yesterday's news are still reverberating. I was hoping that the string of deaths of great musicians would have ended, but yesterday, the news that George Martin had died surfaced. As someone with an above average interest in The Beatles even in my childhood, I believe I know how instrumental he was in their success and their growth as musicians and composers.
I remember reading about him in the book Historien om The Beatles (The Story of The Beatles), a biography written for young adults (maybe even children - I don't think I was very old when I read it - I had a phase in elementary school when I was completely hooked on biographies). I think he was the very first record producer I knew about - and as such, he helped spur an unhealthy obsession with reading record covers, and eventually following producers as much as artists in some cases (such as Daniel Lanois, whom you might remember from a track I shared earlier this year).
George Martin was a musical genius, and his experience working with classical music clearly helped The Beatles as they started using string quartets (Yesterday) and orchestras (A Day In The Life). He also knew how to push them - and he came from a place of love for the four musicians that grew into a love for their music as well. His role can never be overstated - including his role in experimenting with studio equipment, which is clearly present in the song Rain, where he took it upon himself to play John Lennon's vocal backwards towards the end, creating an eerie effect that was new to rock music.
Today's song is in celebration of Sammy, who so happens to turn 22 today. She came into my life when I started dating her mother, Christine, in the summer of 2013. I always have a hard time finding the right word for our relationship, but I am considering her my daughter and love her like she was my own flesh and blood. Anyway, I do believe that birthdays should be celebrated with cake, and I am particularly fond of chocolate cake.
"Not everyone in New York would pay to see Andrew Lloyd Webber May his trousers fall down as he bows to the queen and the crown"
A more irreverent way to open an album - and a song - is difficult to find. Andrew Lloyd Webber is as far as I have been able to see the richest musician in the world, outworthing (I like that word... I think it's new) greats like Elton John and Paul McCartney. The band was Crowded House, the album was Woodface, which ranks really high on my list of great pop albums, and the song was Chocolate Cake. They have a nice acoustic sound to them on this album, with great vocal harmonies by brothers Neil and Tim Finn. I think my friend Are was the one who really turned me on to Crowded House and let me borrow (and tape) Woodface. I had heard and greatly enjoyed their first hit single, Don't Dream It's Over from 1986, but I had not heard a full album until I listened to Woodface, which is packed with great songs: It's Only Natural, Four Seasons In A Day, Fall At Your Feet, and Weather With You, to name 4 out of the first 7 songs on the album (5 if you include the song of the day, Chocolate Cake). It is produced by Mitchell Froom, who also produced Elvis Costello's Mighty Like a Rose (from March 5) and Richard Thompson's Rumour and Sigh (yesterday).
The thing about Woodface is that I don't necessarily have any specific memories attached to it, aside from playing it over and over again at Helmen Kurssenter, which was a place that held several conferences and seminars I attended throughout the 90s. The one specific time I am thinking about, Woodface was played side by side with Lou Reed's Magic and Loss, which is a great contemplative album, so it must have been 1992 by the time this happened. However, when I think about Woodface, I always get in a good mood. It's like just remembering the music from the album lifts my mood. It's been a while since I listened to it, but looking at a list of albums from 1991, I saw it again and promptly purchased the digital version at Amazon.com, which happens to be my main dealer - maybe even pusher - of music, which remains my drug of choice. Next to chocolate cake, of course...
Today's song is a real gem in terms of funny lyrics. Richard Thompson has been a favorite of mine since Thomas Ekrene introduced me to him, and in 1991 he released the album Rumor and Sigh, produced by Mitchell Froom, who really was busy that year helping create several very good albums. Richard Thompson is a great guitar player, and while 1952 Vincent Black Lightning is the best known song on Rumor and Sigh - and possibly the best song as well, I have chosen Read About Love as the song of the day. I really like the humor in the frustrated boy/man trying to read his way to the secret of women's sexuality. What better way to recognize the international women's day? I will leave this without any further comment - just make sure you listen to the lyrics.
I am sticking with 1991, probably through this entire week as well - although that is not quite determined yet. But it was a really good year for music, and one of my favorite albums released that year didn't really click with me until a few years later. Mr. Bungle was by many seen as Mike Patton side project to the vastly more successful Faith No More; however, in looking at everything he has said, it is clear that he rather considered Faith No More his side project - he had been heavily invested in Mr. Bungle from his high school days.
Mr. Bungle is not easy music to listen to. I know that I, in my younger years, pretended to like and understand the music more than I did. As a matter of fact, when I purchased this album after listening to parts of it in the record store, I was convinced I was buying a shelf stuffer that would just be collecting dust. However, I took it out from time to time, and when I started working in Studentradioen i Bergen, people started playing the song Carousel often enough that it finally clicked. I found their second album, Disco Volante, in 1995, when I was back home in Trondheim, I think for Christmas break. I didn't know they had released a second album, so I still remember the excitement I had for the album - and how that was really difficult to listen to (even more so than the first). February 23, 1996, I went to see them in Oslo at Rockefeller Music Hall, and they barely played anything from the first album, which I knew well, and focused on Disco Volante and experimental interludes. Needless to say, I had a very different experience than I was hoping for - it would have been quite different today, 20 years later.
However, Mr. Bungle is well worth the time to listen to, so here is today's track: Carousel from their self-titled debut album released in 1991. Call it circus metal - call it what you will - I just call it good music.
Can't avoid Nirvana when talking about 1991. And for the record: While Nevermind is a good record, Kurt Cobain is extremely overrated. Maybe he would have proven himself to be as consistently great as his legend, but it one great and two good studio albums isn't enough for me. Oh well. Whatever. Nevermind.
I don't think I ever want to let 1991 go. After I started looking back at it, there was so much good music released that year, music that I almost started forgetting about. One album that I didn't discover in 1991, was Elvis Costello's Mighty Like A Rose. I think my interest in Elvis Costello started in 1994, when I picked up a copy of The Very Best Of Elvis Costello & The Attractions. Of course, my good friend and fellow immigrant Svein Ola had been listening to him for a long time by then, and he had tried convincing me of Costello's greatness years before (in particular I remember him pointing out King of America and Imperial Ballroom as great albums), but it wasn't until I was at a book- and record store in Molde while I was at Hustad Leir as part of the community service I did as a conscientious objector to military service.
After picking up the compilation album, I started doing what I so often do, which is to dive deeper into the artist's discography, and I eventually got to the solo albums, Spike and Mighty Like A Rose, released in 1989 and 1991, and the adventurous music they contained. Today's song is a fairly lamenting song that lifts the minor to the major in the chorus. I hope you like it as much as I do.
While many people found religion in Nirvana in 1991, I was not a convert. I have already covered my love for Soundgarden, but there was another band out of Seattle that was almost as important and powerful for me, and that was Pearl Jam. I remember driving in my dad's car, listening to Ungdommens Radioavis, the main radio program for youth in Norway at that time, and they presented this new album by a new band. The album was Ten, and the band was Pearl Jam. I don't remember if they did a feature presenting the album, interviewed them, or reviewed the album, but I remember being blown away by what I heard, and I promptly purchased the CD and taped it so I could listen to it in the car.
Pearl Jam was different than both Soundgarden and Nirvana. Their music was intensely emotional, yet powerful, and while I didn't pick up on it then, their love for The Who and their approach to music is evident even on Ten. However, rock journalists were trying to put a name to all the music that came out of Seattle, and labeled it grunge, which I believe has to have been one of the worst descriptors of a so-called music scene in the history of rock journalism. In my eyes, what appeared to have happened was that there was a very active music scene in Seattle, and Sub Pop records (regarded as the "grunge" label) was the main label that was willing to back the different bands that were emerging - and rather than having a unified sound, they had a unified passion for what they were doing (if you ever want to get an idea of the diversity of the Seattle music scene in the early 90s, listen to the soundtrack to Cameron Crowe's movie Singles - there is a huge difference between Soundgarden's Birth Ritual, Pearl Jam's Breathe, and Screaming Trees' I Nearly Lost You). But regardless of what I might think about the music scene or the grunge label, I really connected with Pearl Jam.
Beyond my personal connection with Pearl Jam, I believe that Ten simply is one of the all-time best debut albums of any band. I know I am not alone in believing this - a Rolling Stone Magazine readers' poll ranked it at #1 along with Appetite for Destruction by Guns'n'Roses. I am hard pressed to find fillers on the album, as the low points still are high - and the peaks... Just wow.
At any rate, Ten was a huge part of my soundtrack of 1991 and 1992. I think I wore out the tape I made of it, and the CD is well worn to the point that when it was rereleased a couple of years back, I picked up a new copy. One of my favorite tracks on the album is Black, which I decided to share today.
So it was 1991, and one of the releases that year was from a veteran rocker named Neil Young. He had taken his backing band Crazy Horse on tour, supported by Sonic Youth, and a live document from that tour was released in the form of Weld, a double live album. When it was first released, it also featured the album Arc, which was a mix of feedback and distortion (read: noise) that was mixed together greatly inspired by (and suggested by) Sonic Youth. I purchased the double cassette and listened to it very heavily on my Walkman. It may seem strange now to hear that I purchased a lot of my music on cassette, but it really was a cost-saving measure. I preferred CDs, as I had just purchased my first CD player in January 1991, and I still loved vinyl, but I didn't have a portable player for either of those media (and, come to think of it, an LP Walkman would have been quite unpractical), so I would have to tape the albums to listen to them on the go, and blank tapes was an added expense I couldn't afford. So some of my favorite albums I did purchase on the inferior cassette medium.
However, 1991 was a very transitional year for me. It was the year I graduated high school and started the first of my attempts at getting a university education. It was also the year I really started being very active on the national level in DNTU (Norwegian Teetotaling Youth Organization), accepting the elected position of rusgiftpolitisk leder, which meant that I was responsible for looking at drug and alcohol policy as a part of the elected board. This was a 2-year position, but the other big thing that happened at this year's national convention was that DNTU voted to start the merger process with NGU, another teetotaling youth organization, a merger that was scheduled to be finalized (or turned down) at a joint national convention in 1992.
As a member of the national board, I was invited to a ball at a Swedish castle, celebrating our Swedish sister organization UNF's anniversary - at least I think it was an anniversary, my memory is a little fuzzy, and internet was not yet prevalent (and I haven't found any records indicating what really was going on - I think I might have more information buried in my parents' basement, but it might also have been pitched). We stayed downtown Stockholm at a small hotel, and I remember playing Weld on my Walkman, for the first time really starting to see the magic of Neil Young, who really balances the "pretty" and the "ugly" in his music really well. A great example of that is Like A Hurricane, a beautiful song wrapped in very noisy guitars. Crazy Horse always play on the edge, sounding like they can fall apart any minute, which really adds to the frailty of Like A Hurricane, and Neil Young's voice has the high and shaky pitch that really moves me almost to tears every time I hear it. I hope you like it too.
I had planned on staying in 1991 for a while, and I am sure I will be back in 1991 again sooner rather than later, but after spending yet another day in the hospital, I thought it would be appropriate to celebrate my favorite opiate, morphine, as I am hoping it will help Christine sleep through the night. Now I am only advocating the medical use of morphine as prescribed and monitored by a physician, but Mick Jagged and Keith Richards were looking at completely different uses when they wrote Sister Morphine back in 1968. It was originally released by Marianne Faithful in 1968, but a version found its way to my favorite Stones album, Sticky Fingers, back in 1971.
1991 was quite the year for music - and for me, the new influences Sissel brought with her from her stay in the US really helped broaden my horizons. Primus was the second band that I really started clicking with, although the date for the release of Sailing the Seas of Cheese really is challenging my memory that she brought it with her from the US. Since she also brought a boyfriend with her, it might have come with him a little later, but I am still 100% positive that I was introduced to Primus through Sissel.
Primus had a lot of the qualities I sought in music. They were quirky, they were spectacular instrumentalists, and the rhythm section took care of both the rhythm and the chords used, which freed up the guitar to experiment with sound and structure in its own time and space. It's not a coincidence that the other band that I know that can pull this off also is a trio - albeit a Canadian one: Rush. Primus's connection with Rush is clear on their first album, where the intro to YYZ is used as the intro to the fantastic John the Fisherman.
However, I did not come easy to Primus. There were aspects I liked, but Les Claypool's voice is an acquired taste. I liked that they used Tom Waits on one of their songs, but then there were weird songs as well, such as Eleven. In the end, three songs really won me over: Tommythe Cat, featuring Tom Waits, Fish On, and American Life, and today it's time to listen to American Life!
