It's New Year's Eve, people! Get out there and party like it's 2009! Shake your tailfeather and move your feet! If you've got no place to go, just head on down the block, 'cause I'm the DJ tonight, and I'm playing this song.
His friends and family brought lawyers, guns, and money, 'cause the shit had hit the fan, but it couldn't keep lung cancer from taking the Excitable Boy, the Werewolf of London, the satirical singer, always just this side of cynical, from us in 2003. This recording, from Zevon's last album, is his plea for all of us who loved him or his music. It lets us know--as if we didn't already--that he was a sentimental fool at heart, as are we all. But we all couldn't rock so righteously--and with such wit and honesty--as he.
Rest in peace, Mr. Zevon. We'll keep you right here.
Singing an old Fats Domino song, transforming the New Orleans R&B/blues shuffle to a country/folk back-porch sway, Strummer--co-founder & lead singer of the Clash, one of the best bands rock and roll (or punk) has ever produced--sounds meditative, yet loose and hopeful, on what's essentially a demo that his then band (and they're great, here), the Mescaleros, put to disc posthumously, as Strummer died of a congenital heart defect in December of 2002. Strummer's death was no more tragic than anyone else's nor more heartbreaking, but the timeliness of it--dying not too long after he recorded this take--makes this record all the more prescient and harrowing. Of course, Strummer didn't know, but you wouldn't know that from listening to this record, 'cause even though he sounds (fairly) upbeat, the Mescaleros play as if they knew, 'cause this is the best they ever sounded, their playing so empathic, sounding like The Band at their best, which is, pretty much, as great as any rock band ever...even the Clash.
Rest in peace, Mr. Strummer. Hope you got a chance to do everything you wanted, 'cause London's calling you now.
I could not only eliminate the Flash (should he ever come running 'round the corner), but anyone else, too. And I tried. It didn't work on my little sister, and it didn't work on my mom when she came running after me when I drove my bicycle too far down the sidewalk near a busy street. I stopped opposite Conn's Mini-Mart, and I kept touching my finger to the ground, but she kept coming (though once I got off my bike, she had stopped running, so I thought at the time that maybe it partially worked).
What's more evil than Nazis? Why, Nazi gorillas, of course! I had to have a primate pick on my list, and I was tempted to go with Bernard Baily's bizarre Gorilla Witch from Strange Adventures # 186, but I didn't want to step outside the silly parameters I set for myself (only including covers that grabbed me when comics first grabbed me), and this one's a much more powerful piece, anyway.
Sure, the cover bears no drawing or inking, but those snapshots of Wildboy and Cindy (from the Bigfoot and Wildboy segment), the wildy-rockin' Dr. Kool and the Kongs (who--along with my dad and KISS--were my inspirations to become a musician), the cooler-than-Speedy talking-car Wonderbug, and the magical genie Mongo made my little heart a'flutter with joy, as I knew the comic had to be as exciting as the show. Right? Right?
Christmas is over
And we have gotten fat
Please let's now recall the ghosts of Christmas past
The title track from the most controversial album of his career (much more on that--and Earle himself--later in the countdown), Earle takes Nick Lowe's cynicism and tempers it with honest optimism, because peace, love, and understanding are nothing to be sneered at--you have to have some hope. On Christmas day today, the Pope will send to the world over the same message Earle sends here, and though his voice is just as ragged, the Pope just can't hold a tune the way Earle can. So, I'll mirror that sentiment: Peace on Earth, goodwill to men, and keep on rockin' in the sectarian cease-fire world while you can.
"Who's Gonna Save My Soul" is an elegy to James Brown and a personal call to action from Cee-Lo to himself. A few years ago--after Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" had hit worldwide--the Godfather of Soul asked Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo (the two members of Gnarls Barkley) to be guests at one of his concerts; however, they were unable to attend, as they had a concert of their own to perform. A couple of months later, Brown died. Cee-Lo sat down and examined the incidents and then peered inside himself, deciding to no longer look to others for inspiration, that he had to depend upon himself. And he doubts. That's what this song's about. But the first several times I heard it (on Gnarls' second LP, released this past March), that's not what I heard. Not exactly.
Then, I didn't know of the James Brown connection; I heard the song as Cee-Lo examining himself and not liking the results of the examination. I heard it as his "Notes from Underground;" a soul/hip-hop Dostoyefskian joint, but with the narrator so distraught--or not distraught enough--that he's lost his sense of humor (as "Notes from Undeground" is nothing if not funny) as well as his sense of direction. I saw Cee-Lo as a modern-day Scrooge at the point when he's just been shown his own grave by the Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come. Cee-Lo's looking into his own personal abyss, and he finds he's been greedy and selfish, and wondering if he'll be damned to eternal torment, ready yet scared to die. It's a sobering record; it's not fun; you can't dance to it. It's a cry of despair, one coming straight from the midnight hour. Soul music rarely delves this deep (well, at least not since the heydey of the Four Tops) into introspection. And I understand why--it's a downer. It's depressing. It's harrowing. And it's emotionally intense drama that ranks with the greatest soul records ever produced.
Two questions then--
One: if it's so great, why have I ranked it so low? Answer--because it's Christmastime, and this list will be finished before Christmas rolls 'round next year, and since this is a blog and not a book, relevant timeliness matters.
Two: Other than the (tenuous-at-best) Scrooge allegory, why is this song a Christmas song? Well, I'm a somber and morbid (and at times morose) sort (if not a bit Dickensian in my sentiments), and--I don't know about you--but late on Christmas Eve, after all the presents from Santa have been constructed, arranged, and displayed, I linger upon the night, wondering if I've forgot anything, and this wondering leads to worrying, and the worrying over Christmas gifts leads to pondering over Christmas past, and--though the memories should bring joy--I'm left ruminating over thoughts of my parents, and about how much love they've shown me, and about the multidinous ways I've disappointed, saddened, and angered them over the years; I then think about how in the world would I ever attain the ideal they had imagined me when I was my son's age, about how I've done so much wrong, about how I've underachieved and lived in fear of failure, and about what my son will think of me? Will he be disappointed, too? What would my late maternal grandparents think? I live in their house, and at times--times like these, the witching hours--I can still see the house as it once was, and I can see my grandmother smiling at me like I was the best boy in the world...and I know I'm not that boy...not now, not anymore. Were their expectations too great? Were they unfair?
I wait for an answer. It doesn't arrive. It never does. Just the silence. And the big, colored lights on the tree, the only illumination in the dark house. I stare, and the lights glow, and they daze, and my tired eyes glaze over, and I start to nod, and my head jerks me awake, and I look around, and I'm alone. Is this what it will be like? I listen again for an answer, and again nothing, and I head to bed, and my wife wakes me early, and the children are happy, but a feeling still lingers--as it always has--that what I'm seeing is even more fleeting than it truly is. I try to blink the sleep away, and I'm in that dark room again with the Christmas lights, alone. Only for a moment, though. It's only the Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come just brushing me on the shoulder on his way out of my house. He turns and winks at me on the way out the door, though. And then the smiles and cheer return.
Merry Christmas, kiddies. God bless us, everyone.
Christmas comes early at the Atomic Blawg this week, as I've listened to your pleading (to the tunes of over one-hundred e-mails and messages a week for the past month) to give you a hint as to at least one song that's in my top forty somewhere. Well, here it is. It's "The Christmas Song" by that Danish duo the Ravonettes (but more about them later on in the chart--much later on). Originally, this record--the best Christmas pop song I've heard in the past ten years--was slated in my top forty (though I won't tell you where), but as a special Christmas bonus, I've decided to let you open just one present early by bumping this one down 175 notches or so, just so that this Christmas, we can all sing and remember the time(s) when the one(s) we loved were not with us when we wanted and missed them the most. This song is for you, and it's for them, and the Raveonettes have covered it for us in the monochromatic wrapping paper that Phil Spector gave them a few years ago, and they tied some reverb in with the sleigh bell bows, and they sing with typical reserve to underscore the lonliness in the lyric, and then they turned out the lights in the house, so that the lights from the Tannenbaum would remind us of the fading stars in our memories where some of our lost loved ones still linger.
So...what are you waiting for? Here's your present? Open it!
It's a jazz song, it's a torch song, it's a power ballad, it's a girl-group love song, and it's powered by the most powerful, most controlled voice anywhere on the charts: Nicole Atkins's voice. The gal can wail like nobody's business--deep, full-throated alto, forceful enough to shatter glass--and then as quick as you can say "David Lynch," she can bring it back down to a whisper, a sultry vibratto, riding the notes and the scales like Liszt on his keys, with expert pitch and a master thespian's sense of dramatic timing. She counts Angelo Badalamenti and Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash and the Ronnettes as influences, and they all show up here, on this perfect vehicle for Atkins's vocals, and the ghost of Phil Spector shows up, too, with sleigh bells--just in time for the Christmas season, kiddies--and chimes and strings and electric guitar all over the place, and even then, the kitchen sink approach doesn't overwhelm her, her vocals strong and adept enough to overcome whatever her producers throw at her. Crank up the speakers on this one, loud enough to drown out the sound of your own voice as you sing along with her. Heck, you could even go caroling around the neighborhood with this one. I know I'm going to (if my wife lets me).
The American alt-rock/pop trio The Flaming Lips are renowned (in some circles, for they've never had massive mainstream success) for two recordings: their mid-'90s song "She Don't Use Jelly," and their 2002 album, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Of course, this list concerns records released this decade, so the aforementioned single doesn't qualify. The latter LP, though....no. I think it's a dandy of an album, as not since the Beatles had any band created a pop concept album of any critical (or monetary) significance. It's an important piece of pop, but it's a true album, not just a long-playing collection of randomly-sequenced songs; being an album that works best as a whole, the individual songs that comprise that album don't stand alone very strongly, and I'm not including any in this list for that reason.
The best single song--maybe the only single song--The Flaming Lips have recorded this decade has been the single version of "It Overtakes Me." The album version--from the Lips' At War with the Mystics--logs in at over six minutes, so this mix is a true single in the old-fashioned sense, meaning that (here) the Lips reconfigured an album track for use on the radio (or for other commercial use). By reducing the length of the album track by half, the Lips move the focus of the record from the noodling sound effects at the end to the noodling sound effects within the song proper.
This compression truly enhances the sonic impact of the song, giving the record more bounce, more punch. The effects--and part of the Lips' acclaim come from their use of effects--used are jaw-dropping in their variety: theramin, dive-bombing synths, extreme fuzz, a Darth-Vader-lowering background vocal, a Chipmunk-raising background vocal, a mix-and-scratch turntable, handclaps, and some of which I'm stil not sure the origin, and rarely do any two drop at the same time. The production is--in the best sense of the word--Beatlesque. The insanely catchy, follow-the-bouncing-ball melody's worthy of one McCartney might have composed forty years ago, and the chorus...well, the song's almost all chorus, and it's repeated ad infinitum, but the chunky guitar lines keep the song from being too airy, so--if it doesn't drive you up a wall--you'll be wanting to hear the record again and again and again. And even if it does drive you batsnit crazy, you'll still find the song in your head.
Possibly the strangest song (at least lyrically) on my chart, Philly band Man Man's "Engrish Bwudd" documents the fable-like journey of a protagonist who was stolen as a baby by a seagull (straight from his Mama's hands) that dropped him in the jungle, where he...well, the story only grows stranger, and ultimately, no lesson is taught nor learned, though we do get to hear who taught Man Man what they learned. The band takes its lessons from John Kander, Paul McCartney, Captain Beefheart, Tom Waits, and the oom-pah rhythm of Volkstümliche Musik, and they filter it through the absurd, through Dadaist concepts, through a protagonist made up of equal parts Jonah, Job, Gulliver, and Jim Dandy. It's experimental music for sure, but it's experimental pop music, and Man Man have fashioned a keen melody to ensure that the less musically adventurous can still follow the song and perhaps have their ears and minds open to the possibilities of music that's not primarily designed to sell: in other words, this is art for art's sake, but it's art that's not completely indulgent, as it's makers have too much pop smarts for that.
Though the melody is absurdly catchy, the singer Honus Honus (the other members are named Sergei Sogay, Pow Pow, Critter Cat, and Chang Wang) uses his serrated bellow to assault, landing just this side of obnoxiousness, thus balancing out the sweet with the sour (which means critics can appreciate it, too). The band plays a bevy of instruments here: barrelhouse piano, kazoo, mandolin, tuba or trombone (I can't tell which), theramin (or something that sounds like one), possibly a French horn, and a few other instruments the origin of which I can't quite discern. The arrangement mixes all these disparate elements slightly beneath the main mix of the oom-pah of piano and bass so that the strange instrumentation complements, adding a richness (albeit, a strange one) of sound that'll have you plumbing the song's musical depths again and again just to catch all the different sounds Man Man throws our way.
And then, there's the drumming--it's wild! Pow Pow plays all over the set during the verses, rolling and filling and crashing sporadically, accenting the music, more chaos than control, letting the piano handle the rhythm. It's jazz drumming in spirit (though definitely not in letter), and Pow Pow's sense of abandonment gives the record a manic sense of excitement, that makes this one more than just typical alterntive/indie chamber pop.
In every review I've read of their work, The Mars Volta--who are, basically, just the re-christened remains of At the Drive-In--have been described as a progressive rock band (or some variant thereof); what's never mentioned, is that no prog-rock band of the past thirty-five years has had a vocalist with anywhere near the power nor range as the Volta's Cedric Bixler-Zavala; in fact, his banshee-wails are so phenomenal that his vocals come close to overwhelming whatever noise and velocity his backing band--and any band with Omar Rodriguez-Lopez at guitar is a great backing band--may produce. With those vocals, and the Volta's use of electrified power chords, the Mars Volta more closely sounds like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin than they do Yes or King Crimson--and they're the better for it.
As much as they venture off into the sci-fi Galaxy of Excessive Noodling and Ephemery, Bixler-Zavala's delivery always bring the songs back to Earth, for as loud and as much as he can scream, Bixler-Savala knows how to connect, knows how to dial it down during the verses, knows how to use breathiness to intimate intimacy. His use of vocal dynamics is expert; he can build to a crescendo like nobody's business, then float back down, seemingly spent. This technique--one that professional public speakers use--can be evidenced (how sloppy a sentence construction was that?!?) in capsule form (as most of the Volta's songs are of epic length) in "The Widow," a song that actually made it to the Billboard Hot 100; how it charted there, I'll never know, for it sounds nothing like any other rock song that charted at the time (which means it didn't sound like as if it were cloned from a Nickelback record).
Not only do we get Bixler-Zavala's rise-and-fall wail all over the record, we also get some cryptic and creepy lyrics, ostensibly about someone who stays up with someone dying from lung cancer--or in a coma--and unable to rid himself of the nightmares caused by whatever strange things happen when the narrator's in the room with the patient. Rodriguez-Lopez's frenetic soloing adds to the paranoic frenzy, as do the spare (but effective) use of strings, and the acoustic strumming during the verses, and some subtle, strange effects used throughout the song, mixed in (and mixed in well) simultaneously with the other instrumentation. There's even a trumpet--played by Flea! It's Pearl Jam's "Jeremy;" it's Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven;" it's all these, but it's scarier, and weirder, and it's got a strange backstory.
In the prepartaion of the album (Frances the Mute) on which this song would appear, sound tech (and one-time member of At the Drive-In) Jeremy Ward found a diary from a car he repossessed, and the diary--and its characters--inspired the creation of all the songs on the album. This song--"The Widow"--was, of course, inspired by one of the characters in that diary, but it was also inspired by Ward himself, as Ward died from a drug overdose in 2003, not long after he had given the band the diary he'd found. So...you've got those undercurrents running through the song, as well as the fact that both Bixler-Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez vowed never to use opiates again after Ward's death.
Listen to this song, and then ask yourselves, "If this is what the Mars Volta sound like when not influenced [directly] by drugs, I wonder what they sounded like when they were?"
In her sixteen years as a professional recording artist, Tori Amos has had six albums chart in the top ten of the Billboard Top 200 Album charts, one gold albums, two platinum albums, and two multi-platinum albums. She's also never had a Top 40 single hit the chart. What does this mean? That she's an album artist, thank you, that her material is bought by the folks who don't listen to Top 40 radio. Or, it could mean that she's not very pop-smart. Or that she doesn't care to cater to the whims of Top 40 radio. Or all of the above.
It's a rare (though not unique) feat, though, as Tori Amos has never been really an underground artist. From her first album onwards, she's been relatively high-profile, much of the publicity she sought herself (and I don't mean that observation to be a pejorative statement, either). In fact, on her last studio album, she recorded the songs under the narrative guises of five different facets of her personality/of popular conception of women/of mythological Greek goddesses/heroines. I delve into any further detail, for I am a chickensnit, and I fear I may irk and offend some if I offer my true thoughts on Ms. Amos's concepts, one of which--the one I do find intriguing--is the concept Ms. Amos has of herself.
She calls this character/persona Tori, and she writes "Big Wheel" from Tori's perspective (no, really). Here, she addresses and lambasts her critics, her audience, and herself, sometimes all at the same time: it's a sliding narrative point-of-view technique, and that technique is tricky to pull off successfully (pioneered by William Faulkner, and Tom Waits and Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello do it well, but they've had years thirty-plus years experience), as much depends upon expecting the audience to at least subconciously understand the general message.
Often with Amos, this p.o.v. technique doesn't work well, as her lyrics are often obscurant to the point of inscrutability--'cause no current recording artist writes abstract as well as Amos can. Her lyrics often strain for clarity--in fact, they'd work better as poetry*, 'cause Amos isn't known for her way with a hook or a strong melody, and--her first album withstanding--she's never had the raw, stark sound or pop production--nor the aforementioned sense of strong, pop-melodic writing--to make most of her lyrics resonate so that the hidden meaning is brought to the emotional fore.
Sure, Amos sings as if she feels something--she's never been less than dramatic, and that's both a strength and a weakness of hers--but exactly what the feeling means...I've rarely understood it. Amos doesn't marry lyrics to music very well, but I think this is more of a musical failing, which is ironic, 'cause what Amos's talent lies at the piano. She was an early prodigy, was granted a scholarship to a prestigious school for her piano playing, and played the piano bar circuit for years. You'd think she'd be able to roll off memorable melody after memorable melody, much like an American Elton John or a gender-reversed Billy Joel. She's got the chops, but...well, maybe it's that she takes herself too seriously. Or has in the past.
On "Big Wheel," though, she showcases a wicked sense of humor, calling herself a "M.I.L.F./Don't you forget," telling herself "Get off the cross/We need the wood," calling out "Gimme eight/Gimme seven" to the band. This self-satire works in her vocal delivery as well, as she--at times--sings with a sense of freedom, pouring some pouty-mouth pronunciations into some lines, speak-singing others. Perhaps looking at herself from a distance like this, from a satirical perspective, gave her a renewed sense of, I don't know, fun. Maybe. One thing, though: the beat certainly helps. It is--by far--the best pop sound she's ever managed on record. The handclaps; the slide, electric, distorted guitar; the dancing bass, playing and popping on the down beats; her barrelhouse style of piano playing: all seemingly geared toward radioplay.
The record, alas, never got any. Not surprising, considering Amos's track record, but I believe if given a chance--and I can't say this about every record on this countdown--this one could have been top ten. Number one, even--if Kanye had remixed it. Wonder what Amos would think of that? Fifteen years ago, I think I know what the answer would have been, but now...who knows?
NOTE* - Seems the folks at Image Comics thought highly of Amos's lyrics, as they produced a gigantic (sucker weighs fifty pounds easy) tome called in which eighty different artists take the words to Amos's songs and create a graphic story from them. It just came out this year, and the book is called Comic Book Tattoo. In many instances, Amos's lyrics work better graphically in this book than they did as songs. That's not necessarily slamming the songs; the book's just that good (and the artwork is--in most cases--stunning). It'd be a great Christmas present, especially for those who like pretty coffee table books. Don't get one for me, though, as I've already bought one, and it sits right next to the door to my office, and when I'm not reading it, I use it as a home-defense weapon. If anybody tries to break into my house, then they're getting a big helping heap of Tori upside the head. Guaranteed concussion.
Made famous by its inclusion/cover in the "It's Cool to Be Teenage and Pregnant" movie Juno, "Anyone Else but You" had been on my radar ever since 2001, when The Moldy Peaches released their (still-to-this-day) only studio LP, 'cause one line from the song--which (though cute and fragile and disheveled as a hangdog puppy) treads familiar low-fi folk ground, paved by Captain Beefheart, Jonathan Richman, Pavement, and the Velvet Underground (whenever drummer Mo Tucker sang)--was inspired by an incident my brother (a booking agent for several indie bands) witnessed and later related to Adam Green and Kimya Dawson. The line: "Shook a little turd out from the bottom of your pants." The incident: my brother was working at a grocery store, and he saw a man--who had been standing in the restroom queue for quite a long time...well, you can finish the rest of the story yourself.
Love story (that resembles my own, so perhaps I'm a bit biased to the song) that's perhaps an allegory of her love of hip-hop; read it however you want to, but Badu's vocals need no interpretation or inspection, as you can just slide on her smooth tones and her half-jazz, half-slang delivery around the '70s soul groove (with the post-Bitches Brew era keyboard tones), and later fall into the love story of Badu and guest-rapper (and one-time Badu romantic partner) Common, complete with an allusion to Streisand's "The Way We Were." Of course, if those sentiments seem too sweet and sickly, then you probably don't dig love songs in the first place, but you'll still tune in for some prime Baduizism.
Sure, this record--the one new single from Ice Cube's 2001 greatest hits album--is only a compendium of, uh, Cube's greatest hits, lifts and twists from some of his most famous lines, and it's all braggadocio, and lyrically it's not very inspired, but the Neptunes provide some slinky funk, and they keep it fairly loose, not overwhelming the record, all of which provides Cube room to attack the mike like no other rapper this past decade. Sure, at this late date, especially after Cube has set up shop in Hollywood, the lines don't carry much bite (except for the ones about the cops that act differently toward him now), but Cube's bark is fierce enough to overcome whatevery lyrical weaknesses the record might have. When he's on his game, no other rapper--now or then, Chuck D. included--can forcefully and convincingly attack the mike the way Cube can. He spits, full-throat, and he never backs down. His righteous anger and spite and confidence seethes like no front man--no matter the genre--since Johnny Rotten thirty years ago. Cube's force of will holds sway to no one, and he proves it again on this record.
Sharon Jones--born in Georgia, raised in New York--spent her Sundays singing gospel in the church, but listening to this song, we can guess how she spent her Saturday nights...and the toll they spent on her. It took Jones forty years before she began to sing professionally, but listening to this record, you can tell she's got enough experience in heartbreak to make up for all those years when she should have been putting her soul on record. Sounding like a world-weary Etta James, Sharon Jones offers a bit of apocryphl wisdom to other women regarding her own interpretation of how, as Stephen King said, a man's heart is stonier. Then, halfway through the record, Jones invokes the ghost of Elvis (who, after a few bars of slow blues in the Sun Studios' song "Milkcow Blues Boogie," told Scotty and Bill, "Hold it fellas!/That don't move./Let's get real, real gone for a change," and then quadrupled the time signature, thereby helping to create rock and roll) by stopping the song cold, telling her impeccable band The Dap-Kings to "Wait a minute!/ Baby, I need to slow it down a little./Take my time." Jones then transforms the record from a mid-tempo soul joint in 4/4 to a slow 12-bar blues, complete with haunting, gospel-like background vocals, all-the-while witnessing, going from soul to blues to gospel, changing from the general to the specific in order to make the message universal, and that's no easy task. The song's a cautionary tale not only to women, but also to men, who--if they listen closely--might see a sliver of themselves, enough to shame them--Jones's Marley to our Scrooge--into watching how they behave, lest their inamoratae give up the ghost.
We go from an upstart singer with a record full of regret and the willingness to admit failure that could have been a country-music hit forty years ago, to a once-upstart singer with a record full of regret and the willingness to admit failure that doesn't sound dissimilar to country-music hits he made forty years ago. Both songs share the same lonesome, honest, self-revealing lyrical theme, and both don appropriately forlorn music, but Hag's got the much better voice, so we'll notch the venerable one's record one place higher than the punk's, and I think--considering the fantastic county music Haggard's made throughout his career, steadily producing quality song after quality song, even through his multiple albums this decade--that maybe Hank would have wanted it this way.
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