MOJO Presents: Sun is Shining
I have always claimed to hate reggae music. The reasons are exactly what you’d imagine: 1) It “all sounds the same” and 2) jocks in college loved it, and most of those guys were jerks. Well, it’s been a long time since college, and since then I’ve tripped over tons of “same-sounding” artists, leaving me with less and less room to speak against reggae. Meanwhile, MOJO Magazine has a way of getting me excited about seemingly any strain of music, and sometime before summer they affixed this Sun is Shining sampler to their cover. With Jah as my witness, I could not stop listening to it. I’m still unsure if I’ll ever pursue whole Toots & the Maytals records, or if this will be my sole detour into this exotic (to me) genre. Either way, this disc was worth an entire year of MOJO, and it made some of those hot, unemployed weeks a little more bearable.
The 4th or 5th Time I listened to Side One of Big Country’s Peace in Our Time
We spent a week in Maine in September. We’d just finished a comparatively light hiking day, and were back at the cabin at 3:30. While Amy showered up for dinner, I sat on the porch with my iPod and a beer. What seemed unnecessarily exploded, so hopelessly eighties before, now sounded spacious, the din of the first three albums clearing space for a single bell’s ring. Maybe the cover’s landscape influenced me, but the songs seemed to collude with the surplus of fresh air, crisp skies, echo and sweet exhaustion.
Johnny Cash as Actual Musical Influence
I know I’m not the only person who’s “really into” Johnny Cash. Like most non-country musicians who’ve claimed the influence, at first I merely meant it as a sort of spiritual or philosophical thing. But with the new batch of songs, I found myself sweating that same Luther Perkins rhythm 5 or 6 times. Listening back during mixing, I was concerned at first. But in the end, as with folk and reggae, the variety in sameness can be astonishing. (Or at least I hope so.)
Lindsey Buckingham, Under the Skin
It’s a solo album by one of music’s most notorious gear-heads, but it feels like this home-made thing, all whispers and strums for the first eight songs. That eighth song, “Shut Us Down,” threatens to boil over, his percolated picking and hoarse falsetto pushing against the “unplugged” vibe he’s been laying down. But then “Down on Rodeo” and “Someone’s Gotta Change Your Mind” burst in, full-band pieces that, if this weren’t an intimate album, surely would have been slotted in earlier…? It’s a brilliant piece of sequencing on this deceptively restrained disc. Beautiful, cracks and all.
Selling Back CDs and Ditching CD-R’s
Slowly, I am learning. In some instances, it feels like remembering, e.g., of course I used to skip tracks on albums. I could tell within one or two listens which songs weren’t for me. If the album was amazing, I’d eventually learn to love even those less-immediate songs–but that was always a ways off. I also used to look at my CD collection and know that I’d heard everything in it dozens of times. About ten years ago that turned into “several,” then dwindled to “a few,” and with the digital glut early this decade, “maybe once or twice.” So this year–before I was laid off, even–I did a massive exfoliation, selling back CD’s that hadn’t sparked my interest after a couple spins, and ditching home-burned* discs altogether. More importantly (and this was due to unemployment, though I hope to keep it up), I throttled my intake dramatically. Because of this, I can say that I like Jarvis and The Trials of Van Occupanther, but that I’m still unfolding their mysteries after a few months. I’m in no hurry to be “done” with these albums, and I have no idea why I ever felt that way about any album. Instead, I’m allowing / forcing everything to grow on me slowly, like it used to be. No compulsory listening: What a concept, what a relief.
*I mean whole CDs that I myself burned, wholesale albums by established artists. Other peoples’ home mixes and CD-R projects I cherish, of course.
Pete Seeger, We Shall Overcome
Just a few decades ago, a mostly-covers artist who wasn’t technically proficient and didn’t even have a band behind him managed to fill Carnegie Hall quite easily. Not only that, he got the whole crowd to sing along with several brazenly left-wing, pro-worker tunes. In our post-folk, corporate-rock world, I find this hard to believe, yet here’s this artifact proving that it happened. The date is right on the cover: June 8, 1963. We’ll never return to those days before I was born, and I wouldn’t want to, exactly. But so many rock shows feel like going to the movies any more, and the way Pete tells stories and sings other peoples’ songs on this album exemplifies the opposite, egoless approach, one I hope to borrow from soon.
Moving the Record Player into the Office
Because music shouldn´t be this weird, squirreling-up, man-cave thing it felt like when the record player was in the attic. It was a cool little tree house, I’ll admit, but the listening up there only felt honest for about an album and a half, though I’d stay much longer. It’s better this way, in there with the CDs and the books, a fully incorporated form of absorption. And, you know, Amy’s got the second Yaz record now, and she shouldn’t have to go all the way upstairs just to check it out. Am I right?
Nick Lowe, At My Age
There’s something to be said for the songwriter whose treasures aren’t buried at all, just out in the open, glad to be above ground. Like in “Hope for Us All,” when Nick refers to himself as “a feckless man.” It’s funny, and apt, and delightful. And how, after a while, you get to anticipate the titles being tucked deep into their choruses, quite tidy and old-school: “People Change,” “Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day,” “A Better Man.” Even down to its short playing time and inclusion of three covers, At My Age shines in its modesty.
The Slow Descent into Springsteen Fandom
Meaning that this year I got and enjoyed both the new album and Live 1975-85. So no, I’m not on fire yet, just sorta digging what he’s about. But is it only a matter of time before I’m all over the Backstreets.com message boards and traveling hundreds of miles to see him? I mean, should I worry?
Wilco, “Impossible Germany”
I used to sneer at the very idea of contentment, but now I know just how precious a commodity it is, how fragile its place in our lives. On a hairpin, these beautiful bird-like guitar duels can simmer down into a melancholy mist. Just like that, the very phrase “sense of it all” dissolves in all these fades and changes. Impossible, yes, but worth it.
The Death of Stylus
In October, Stylus put up a simple line on its site, saying it would be closing its doors forever on Halloween. It came as quite a shock to me. I’d submitted a couple of articles to them, and it was a deep-seated dream to eventually be published there. In the month since their closure, I’ve gone back to Pitchfork, and found that they’ve simmered down the snark to a tolerable level. But I still miss the almost child-like enthusiasm of the best Stylus writers—Ian Mathers, Nick Southall, Derek Miller. They weren’t just hype-men for hip music—they were, as far as I could tell, seekers. They dug for the kernels of wonder at the heart of any music you love. Alas and alack. But even with the retirement of one of our best guides out there, the tour goes on.
