Side A: Europa Live It Up Here’s Looking at You The Tide Is High Angels on the Balcony Go Through It
Side B: Do the Dark Rapture Faces T-Birds Walk Like Me Follow Me
Autoamerican is probably my favourite Blondie album. I certainly played it the most, and I didn’t really keep up with them after. It’s my favourite despite the two inescapable singles. While The Tide is High and Rapture did boffo business (both hit #1 in the US), at least three other songs would have done well as singles (IMHO), T-Birds, Do the Dark, and Live It Up. (The previous two albums, Eat to the Beat and Parallel Lines had 10 singles released between them.) The crazy thing about Autoamerican is that it shouldn’t work, at all.
From the atmospherics of opener Europa, through some disco, some new wave, the reggae and hip hop of the two singles to Lerner and Lowe’s Follow Me (from Camelot), there’s nothing holding the damn thing together.
Live It Up is almost punk in its lyrics, but closer to disco in execution. Here’s looking at you is closer to jazz. The Tide Is High started life as a reggae song. Angels on the Balcony is a ghost story with a pop interlude. And side one closes with Go Through It, which is almost country. Those rolling drum fills are gorgeous.
Do the Dark is sort of a disco rock thing. Rapture is the song we all know and love – first hip hop (ya don’t stop, go out to the parking lot) song played on MTV. Of course it was white folks doing it because it would be several more years before Yo! MTV Raps hit the scene. Faces is a slow beautiful strangeness about the underclass on the Bowery (the neighborhood where CBGB was located), a tribute to the folks living on the street there.
T-Birds, about roller derby of all things, is still (45 years later) my favourite song on the album. It’s rock and roll (with an amusing spoken interlude) that simply works. Walk Like Me continues the rock and roll – its hard edge makes it possibly the one song on the album that wouldn’t have been out of place on Eat to the Beat (or Plastic Letters).
And then the whole thing drops into a little echo chamber with their take on the Lady of the Lake’s song, Follow Me, from Camelot. It closes the album out beautifully.
As I said, it shouldn’t work – but it manages with panache.
When I lived in that commune in Marin back in the 70s, we had a deck where we did aerobics. My clearest musical memory of that deck is of running in place and listening to the soundtrack to Tommy which we had on a reel-to-reel tape, for some reason. I don’t recall that we had any other tapes to play on that machine. (I also recall that that tape broke and someone spliced it.) My clearest song memories are of Elton John’s Pinball Wizard and Tina Turner’s Acid Queen. Oddly not Clapton’s recording of Eyesight to the Blind (the album’s only cover, though other Mose Allison songs were in the running, according to the Pinball Wizard episode (part 1 of 2, here, though the investigation of Tommy itself is in part 2) of A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs – the impetus for this blog entry) or several other memorable tracks. I’m sure Cousin Kevin and Uncle Ernie affected me given my own experience of abuse at Synanon and were worthwhile things to excise from my brain until later.
The key thing is that here was one of my formative experiences of rock and roll. We listened to a lot of music in the commune, but my other memories are of the MOR stylings of San Francisco’s KFRC, the only good station we could get in that far north. Silly Love Songs, Boz Scaggs’ Lowdown and Lido Shuffle, Love Will Keep Us Together, Knowing Me Knowing You, Don’t Go Breaking My Heart were all in heavy rotation in the year before I left in the Fall of ‘77. None of these had the sheer force of The Who’s music, even in the weird forms it took on the film soundtrack. I’d have the LP later on, and the original Who album as well. The original rock opera never grabbed me in the same way, though Daltrey’s rendition of Acid Queen certainly made its own impression.
I’m sure I’ve seen the movie all the way through at least once, maybe twice. All Ken Russell movies are strange, but the 70s stuff is out of this world. (Noting that his Altered States [1980] is one of my all time faves.) That said, watching a few clips on YouTube is enough to assure me I don’t really need to watch it again. In addition there are a dozen or so recordings of The Who performing Tommy in its entirety – this started no longer after their LP was released and continued through most of their subsequent tours, it seems. In general, I’m more interested in how they handle their other songs live than these. There was also a stage musical that I’ve never checked out either. That said, I’m now downloading the soundtrack and the original album.
Weirdly, my current book club reading is Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union which has an interesting plot point about a possible messiah that speaks in an odd way to Tommy’s own messianic aspect.
It used to be that my daily listening included audio drama, music discussion, book discussions/audiobooks and a lot of politics. These days I’ve dropped to politics for the most part and have happily found more music discussions.
Discord & Rhyme has been running for seven years (164 episodes as of this writing) and is one of several music panel shows I listen to regularly. The format is usually three or four out of a group of seven regular panelists (plus occasional guests) discuss an album that one of them has chosen for the episode. The person who chose it tells the history of the artist up to that point and why they picked the album. They then talk individually about their histories with the album/artist (if any) and then dive in, talking about the album song by song. Finally, they suggest to listeners where to go next if they liked the album in question.
All of the panelists have a great love for a fairly wide variety of music, though most of the albums they’ve covered are in the pop realm to some degree (with a fair helping of prog – including seven (and counting) Moody Blues episodes). Once they get down to the tracks it’s primarily a matter of ‘I love/don’t love this track, and here’s why.’ And they really dive in – recent episodes run well over an hour. They took two for Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral and over three (divided into two episodes) for Prince’s Sign O’ The Times. The thing that makes this podcast even more interesting for me is the various digressions into the sources of songs, who played what on each track, where a track has been sampled, and so forth.
The discussion of Prince’s The Cross is a good example of the variety of opinion they bring to bear. One panelist commented that he didn’t like the song because there’s no musical development in it – it’s the same short piece of music over and over. Another (John McFerrin, I think) went into how it appeals to him because it accumulates, like Ravel’s Bolero. It starts with something very quiet and then the instruments just pile on one by one until there’s this grand explosion of sound. And I always joke that as a Jew, it’s weird that The Cross is my favourite song on that album. While I’d never thought about it that way, I’m quite fond of that kind of music as well, no matter the genre.
I’ve mostly listened to episodes on albums I know but I look forward to going back into albums I don’t. They clip generously so even a newcomer to an album can get what they’re talking about.
Another interesting thing that comes up in their discussions is what makes a perfect album opener, what makes for a great track two. The idea of a good album having a statement of purpose that sets up what’s to come. For many pop albums this is an ideal rather than something put into practice, but given the entire crew’s love for progressive rock (probably the genre that set the stage for this kind of musical analysis), this comes into their discussions pretty regularly. In considering my own efforts (some on this very blog) into album reviewing, this isn’t something that has come to my mind before. At least not in so many words.
I have a variety of responses to their analyses based on how well I know or love an album or an individual track, but that’s not surprising. The hosts are all about my same age (mid 50s) and part of what I enjoy is the common experiences we have with the albums that came out in the 80s and 90s. There’s something comforting in that. Or amusing when one of them might say, ‘My first experience with this album was when that week’s host chose it for this podcast.’ The fresh ears they sometimes bring helps to open my ears to things I may have forgotten.
Last night’s adventure was the first date on Italian progressives The Watch’s ambitious tour alternating performances of Genesis classics The Lamb Lies Down On Broadwayand Foxtrot/Selling England by the Pound. And they pulled it off admirably, save for the occasional opening night glitch. The tour also celebrates the 50th anniversary of the release of The Lamb.
The Watch currently consists of Simone Rossetti (lead vocals, flute, keyboards, synthesisers), Valerio De Vittorio (keyboards, synthesisers, guitars, vocals), Mattia Rossetti (bass, guitars, vocals), Francesco Vaccarezza (drums, percussion, vocals) and Andrea Giustiniani (lead guitars). My friend Cheryl and I were stood right at the front of a mostly sold-out venue (Boerderij in Zoetermeer, a pretty friendly room that hosts a lot of prog/tribute acts) just to the right of Rossetti with Vittorio and Vaccarezza in clear sight.
Now, I listened to The Lamb a lot as a kid, though mostly the first two sides of this double-album set. I read the notes and lyrics assiduously, and the way Cheryl tells it, she listened a lot as well. It’s a daunting, musically ambitious album that had a lot of appeal to me for the crazy storyline (found in small print across the inside of the gatefold; if you only had the CD, it was impossible to read) and weird theatricality. For those unfamiliar with the plot, Rael, a small-time Brooklyn hood, finds himself trapped in a weird fantasy world, one step ahead of or behind his brother John. Each experience is told more than shown, but that’s fine, it’s prog rock. At certain points of the show, a voiceover gave the audience occasional snippets of that text.
The whole show was an admirable recreation of the album with no effects, save for lighting and a backdrop reminiscent of the album’s cover.
The sound mix from my perspective was good, but Giustiniani’s recreation of Steve Hackett’s intricate guitar work was too low. This may have had something to do with how close to the stage I was. Simone’s vocals took a little while to get up to the task – this might also have had to do with mixing, but he was also, I think a little nervous. After the third or fourth song, he was in full Peter Gabriel form. Extra shout-outs for backing vocals from Mattia and especially Francesco from behind the drum kit. Simone, as an Italian performing for a Dutch audience, didn’t do much of the between song banter that Genesis-era Peter Gabriel was known for. The exception was the introduction to Counting Out Time, a tale of teenage pre-sexual experience angst, solved with the help of a book on the the erogenous zones. This he read out from a sheet with admirable Dutch pronunciation. (This, however, was also an opening night glitch – he read it before Back in NYC, the song that precedes Counting Out Time. Whatever. He still gets points.)
The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway is an attempt at a rock opera (released not that long after Tommy and Quadrophenia), and makes attempts at theatricality in its bombast. The Watch held our attention from an otherwise bare stage for the duration. While the story might bog down a bit in the second half, the recreation was fantastic. And this music (prog, after all) is not easy. I spent much of the show watching Francesco’s drumming. There was a moment during The Waiting Room which brought me joy – he was concentrating on a pretty complex figure and when he completed it, his face had a huge smile. Whatever the phrase ‘nailed it’ is in Italian, he did.
After a fair amount of musical meandering, Rael emerges into daylight and the main show concludes with the pure 4/4 rock and roll joy of IT.
For the main set (broken by a short intermission), Mattia only played one instrument, a double neck bass/12-string (and several effects pedals). However, there were two more guitars on stage. What else are they going to play. After another short break, the band came back and Simone looked confused for a second, then tapped the tablet on his music stand before saying something like ‘ah, that’s the encore.’ Yes, he had a tablet and a couple of notes at his side, but barely looked at them through the whole show. Not that I blame any singer with a massive piece of music to sing the crutch of the occasional lyric sheet. The band kicked into The Musical Box, a multi-part epic from 1971’s Nursery Cryme (and possibly my favourite Genesis song, though there are other candidates) which they hit out of the park. (Here’s The Watch performing it at Boerderij two years ago.)
I left the venue with a massive grin on my face – Seeing this formative soundtrack of my adolescence performed in full by stunningly talented musicians who obviously also have a love for it was definitely one off the bucket list.
The other night I had the time to finally watch Marco Porsio’s 2019 Swans documentary Where Does a Body End. First off: Five stars. Well done. Rock docs follow a certain pattern that this didn’t really deviate from – interview the principals, interview their comrades present and past. In this case the principal is Michael Gira, who founded Swans in 1981 or so and has been the only consistent member across 40-plus years. He was generous with his time and his own assessments of his strengths and faults. I was excited early on that there was a clip of Einsturzende Neubauten’s Blixa Bargeld expressing some praise. Alas, he only gets the camera once more near the end. Other key interviewees included Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth (who toured with Swans at the beginnings of both bands’ histories), and Jarboe. Jarboe drove up to NYC from Atlanta in ‘85 or so having written a fan letter (shared in the doc) to the band after hearing an early recording on college radio. She joined as keyboardist and occasional vocalist appearing first on the 1986 releases Greed, Holy Money, and Time is Money (Bastard). We learn from the doc that she and Gira were partners from that period until Gira disbanded Swans in 1997. (He would reignite Swans in 2010 without Jarboe. An impetus for the film was Gira’s announcement that the newer incarnation of the group would halt after four albums and the accompanying 2017 tour. Last year, a new lineup released an album and are touring – I’ve seen them twice this time out.) Her participation in the documentary is generous and alone worth the price of admission if you’re interested in how bands work.
Thurston Moore’s memories of their bands’ tours together is poignant in the descriptions of just how difficult life on the road was/is for independent acts. In his thoughts on the re-invigorated version of Swans, he admits to a little jealous that Gira’s band was still going, ‘He’s got Swans. I don’t have Sonic Youth.’ (This is a little disingenuous – Moore and SY’s bassist Kim Gordon had been a couple/married for 27 years until Moore fathered a child with their nanny. That put paid to SY.)
One of the most interesting thing about how the film is constructed is the wealth of live footage of the band, both their earlier incarnations and the more recent tours. I was amused of a clip from their 2011 appearance at the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in London because I was there. Not that I could have picked myself out in the audience. My favourite clip (which I hope to find online) was Jarboe joining the new lineup in 2016 or so to perform Blood On Yr Hands (a highlight of the ‘95/‘97 tours.)
And of course I can write paragraphs and paragraphs about the interviews and the clips and so forth, but as always, it’s a case of dancing about architecture. Swans have always been about the intensity of the musical experience and their music isn’t for the faint of heart. I think Screen Shot is representative.
Joe Jots 