114. Naked Pictures (Of Your Mother)

Electric Six: Fire (XL Recordings, 2003);
composed by Tyler Spencer

There may be another recording act that got dropped by their label after their debut started selling too well, but this is the only one I know about and, in retrospect, it sort of figures. Masterminded by Detroit weirdo Tyler Spencer, Electric Six specialized (and still does today) in perhaps the only genuinely funny non-parody rock, insofar as it actually rocks in an appealingly disco-metal sort of way. And whereas Dylan or Lou Reed would stick embarrassingly mundane phrases in their songs just for texture, this particular number successively rhymes “dropped a bomb on Japan,” “hostage in Iran,” “ugly Ameri-can,” and “government man,” as though that last was a major money gig the singer had gladly sold his soul for, just so he could go to Taco Bell in a limo and set it on fire. The naked pictures in the title (and the chorus) do not appear to connect to anything else in the song. And Spencer cues the guitar solo by bellowing, “Solo!” Not everything on the album peaks so high in ridiculousness, and XL probably knew that Spencer would never quite get there again. But they have their audience, and they will take it to their graves.

Note: Secular essays about individual songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day (or at least regularly) until Donald goes away.

113. Gli impermeabili

Paolo Conte (CGD, 1984);
composed by Paolo Conte

Occasionally, it occurs to me how scary Leonard Cohen would have been if he had gone to law school, because such thoughts usually occur only because I happen to be listening to this ex-avvocato: a Piedmontese composer, pianist, and singer (sort of) who does the chansonnier-roué bit with a resonating sarcasm that inheres just a shade more musically than it does lyrically, which latter it unquestionably does, very much, also. This tune is proof of concept. The title, loosely translated, is “Raincoats.” A dulcet instrumental refrain intoned by massed cellos and single line guitar over a brisk four. On a rainy morning, Conte broods on romantic nights gone by and excuses himself to go get coffee. Key line: “But how well it rains on raincoats / And not on the soul.” Sound dopey? Conte evidently thinks so, too. He separates the lines with the deadest-possible-deadpan scat of “dah, dah-dah, dah-dah” like a dumb imitation of raindrops. Then on the last refrain he joins in on kazoo. It sounds even prettier. And the more ridiculous the juxtapositions, the more genuine the despair seems. People I play this for often tell me I must be joking to extol something so sweet. Probably.

Note: Secular essays about individual songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day (or at least regularly) until Donald goes away.

112. Composition 23B

Anthony Braxton: New York, Fall 1974 (Arista, 1974);
composed by Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton's discography is intentionally vast, which some skeptics view as of a piece with the obscurantist diagrams he uses for titles (see above), but non-skeptics (like me) take it all as the price of the oddball ticket, and unlike Sun Ra, the more of his oeuvre you get to, the more it coheres. This was not the first time an AACM luminary hooked up with a major label, but his Arista deal would be unusual at any time. Somehow Clive Davis authorized the release (however briefly) of nine incredibly varied and challenging albums, ostensibly underwritten by Barry Manilow's grosses. It could never last, of course - these deals never do - and Braxton made as much as he could out of it, while saving his 3-LP four orchestra piece for next-to-last. This opening track on the first of them might have been his signature number, if he went in for that sort of thing: a no-piano quartet playing a boppish head at light speed, with stop-time variations that sound just as load-bearing as the ostensible themes, which is like Charlie Parker rising from the dead, telling you to pull his finger, and having “Cherokee” in Z-flat major come out.

Note: Secular essays about individual songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing not daily - but at least regularly - until Donald goes away.

111. Cannonball

The Breeders: Last Splash (4AD, 1993);
composed by Kim Deal

By the early 1990s, “Indie” and “Alt” meant bupkes to me. A real war was when Journey or Eagles had been the enemy, but that was already way back then, back then. Rather, this was a time when thoughtful young people had gotten their heads around digital recording in a way the ‘70s holdovers never could, which unleashed a whole lot of possibilities for distorting aural scale. But whereas Soundgarden (for example) used the added definition to rev the guitar overtone saturation way up (a worthy goal), Kim Deal emerged from the disintegrating Pixies with her own counterintuitive synthesis. Instead of Jimmy Page’s analog trick of making Led Zeppelin’s human-scaled signifiers (voice and drums) as galactic as the electric ones, she did the reverse. You perceived the loud punky guitar bursts as just another logical part of a conversational grammar, abutting the unaccompanied light drum taps, acoustic chugs, and Kim and Kelley Deal’s just barely audible murmurs about splashes, bongs, and whateveryouwant. I was amused when journalists started asking Kim why the Pixies had never done any of her songs, after the Breeders outsold them. Because you need your own band to come up with something this perfect is why.

Note: Secular essays about individual songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day (or at least regularly) until Donald goes away.

110. Two Sevens Clash

Culture: Two Sevens Clash (Joe Gibbs Record Globe, 1977);
composed by Albert Walker, Errol Thompson, Joseph Hill, Roy Dayes, and Vincent Gordon

One of my proudest possessions is a scratchy Jamaican 45 of “Beat Down Babylon,” by Junior Byles, that features the sound of a repeatedly cracking bullwhip with no apparent attempt made to sync it to the music – undoubtedly Lee Scratch Perry’s point: why should there be? Scratch’s colleague Joe Gibbs (also an occasional fill-in Wailer) intended a similarly aggressive aesthetic configuration in his production of this ultra-Roots vocal group’s debut, the title track of which details a long bus ride during which Joseph Hill espies a cottonwood tree destroyed by lightning (next to a police station, of course) and recalls a Marcus Garvey foretold cataclysm said to break over Babylon on 7/7/77. Supposedly, Kingston came to a near halt that day. “Wat a liiv an bambaie / When the two sevens clash,” or “How do we live by and by” when the world ends. “It dread” is the answer. Burning Spear had a similar vibe, but protean and primal as the truly great Winston Rodney sounded, he is almost Alan Lomax compared to the you-are-there gestalt here. It sounds like a crashing airplane’s black box recording, if the pilots just took their hands off the controls and sang Jah’s praises.

Note: Secular essays about individual songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day (or at least regularly) until Donald goes away.

109. The Red Telephone

Love: Forever Changes (Elektra, 1967);
composed by Arthur Lee

Hardly anyone bought this album in 1967, but it has never gone out of print and probably never will. Occasionally, I like to picture an alternate 1960s in which Arthur Lee and his cohort(s) had monster hits, which many of their songs sound like they had to have been. Until of course I once again listen closely and cannot help noticing that under all of Arthur’s (apparent) whimsy and (bodacious) (and jerry-rigged) tunecraft were beefs and paranoia aplenty (which ruled out doing any promotion, let alone touring outside of L.A.). And which makes it somewhat miraculous that three albums into what was already a doomed four-album contract, Elektra mysteriously shelled out for string arrangements to which Love responded with eleven perfect (and perfectly weird) songs that just samba right over your head - each one courting enlightenment while archly noting the blood coming out of their bathroom faucets. This tune ends (what was) side one, opening with a solemnly lyrical vision of nuclear devastation, followed by a playfully dilatory existential disquisition, and ending with a demand apparently copped from the Bonzo Dog Band, “We are all normal and we want our freedom.” But are we not vaporized? Maybe. So what?

Note: Secular essays about individual songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day (or at least regularly) until Donald goes away.

108. Spanish Tide

Family: Fearless (United Artists, 1971);
composed by Charlie Whitney & Roger Chapman

What most annoys me about the notion of “classic rock” – apart from it being yet another opportunity for nostalgic white boomers to congratulate themselves and bemoan the cultural poverty of the present day – is that it does not accurately describe a period when “rock” really did provide an avenue to all sorts of ambitious and genuinely heterodox gambits, because no one was really sure what it was supposed to sound like – even as late as 1971. Prog was just the all-too-obvious high-concept version of this hustle. More interesting were bands like this one: five Brits in a seemingly conventional rock-band configuration, except that the vocalist, Roger Chapman, sounded like he was having a seizure whenever he revved up, and Charlie Whitney’s music kept zinging in a different direction every few bars without losing overall focus or taking on any untoward symphonic airs. Or jazzy ones, for that matter, although you could tell these guys had the ears for it. John Wetton left to join King Crimson a year later, but he never sounded better with anyone than he did here – supplementing Chapman with his own foggy hoot and doubling up on bass and 12-string. But Crimson never sounded better, either.

Note: Secular essays about individual songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day (or at least regularly) until Donald goes away.