What English Sounds Like To People Who Don't Speak English

Here is the Italian artist(e) Adriano Celentano with the song "Prisencolinensinainciusol," released in 1972. I'm also posting an mp3 at the bottom. The song rocks. Thx to polkadot for the tip.



Adriano Celentano -- Prisencolinensinainciusol [mp3]

A (Medieval) History of Dead Can Dance

A recent essay worth reading here, communicating eloquently and without pretension why Godspeed You! Black Emperor is such an anomaly in the world of pop music. The writer notes that "Godspeed brings to mind trains, that beautiful symbol of tangibility." And also: "One reason no one has filled the void Godspeed left is that no one else could gain a foothold while simultaneously coming over as so pretentious. I have no reason to think the band members aren't all good people, but in terms of presentation, these guys get away with murder, and it's wonderful."

Which all brings me to another "band" from the good old days, Dead Can Dance, now barely remembered, tossed into the dustheap of unhip history. But they were an important track in the soundtrack of my life in the late eighties and nineties. How to describe Dead Can Dance without using tired descriptors? Their early (and better) stuff encompassed everything from Gregorian chants ("De Profundis") to straight renditions of 13th century songs ("Saltarello") or 16th century Gatalan tunes ("The Song of the Sibyl"). Apparently their music was Neo-Medieval, whatever that means. They had a song called "Echolalia" and used glossolalia in their music.

Later in their career, they moved more into what folks today call "World Music" and away from their medieval roots. But it still holds up remarkably well. They were an important aesthetic influence on my musical education, especially in the late eighties but also into the nineties when they (first) broke up. I learned to be cautiously open to intellectual pretension. I understand that there's a thin line between intellectual aspiration and pathetic (and bathetic) parody but for some reason, I never placed Dead Can Dance in the latter category although many other bands were not spared by scorn. Dead Can Dance felt incredibly earnest even as they collapsed time (centuries) and space (continents) into tidy album-sized chunks with lyrics that would not be out of place in Chaucer.

Brendan Perry, one half of Dead Can Dance, was someone who played in punk bands as a kid but having been influenced by the post-punk of P.I.L. and Joy Division took a complete left turn into more expansive music. Lisa Gerrard, the other half, is someone who you imagine should have done her Ph.D. in Medieval Studies in a small liberal arts college in New England. She looks tiny, frail, wispy, and proper. She later scored the music for the film Gladiator.

Here then, are three random selections from the Dead Can Dance oeuvre.

Here is "Saltarello" from the album Aion (1990), first referred to in Napoli in the 13th century:



Here is "Echolalia" from the album The Serpent's Egg (1988):



Here is the band in the latter day / world music phase with a song called "Rakim," actually only released in a live version on the album Toward The Within.

Despicable

Feeling mellow and happy today

Note: John Lennon never played better guitar than on this. He rips the shit out of the guitar. Jimi Hendrix had nothing on this.

Real Estate

Go to the song at the three-minute mark. And tell me that it doesn't want to make you sway and dance and remember what good times they were. They are a young band from New Jersey. Oh and one more thing: elc = awesomeness.

Real Estate -- Beach Comber [mp3]

A Little Big Star

A lot of musical deaths recently: Jay Reatard, Mark Linkous (of Sparkelhorse), and now Alex Chilton. For some reason Linkous' death really saddened me. I have/had this attachment to Sparklehorse's music that's more emotional than casual (or cognitive). I first heard of Sparklehorse the night I saw them in concert, opening for Mercury Rev in a little bar in Pittsburgh in 1999 or so. I remember Linkous' frail body and the music that they made, it seemed like music made by insects or something. Later, a friend gave me their Distorted Ghost EP which succinctly combined all the disparate moods of Sparklehorse in one powerful and short package. There was the rock'n'roll blowout of "Happy Man" followed by "Waiting For Nothing." Linkous didn't seem like a happy guy but he did produce some awfully beautiful music.

The same could be said about Alex Chilton, whose records for Big Star are without compare. Again, for me, listening to Big Star is indelibly linked to my time in Pittsburgh in the late '90s. I remember discovering both #1 Record and Radio City in a budget 2-for-1 disc at Paul's Records out in Bloomfield. I played them a lot in Pittsburgh driving around, feeling young, and momentarily lightened. I put those songs in every mix tape I made for anybody. One word comes to mind: gorgeous music. Chilton often gets slotted into "power pop" but he was much more than that, and could veer off into his own little dark world of proto-goth or avant garde or Memphis soul anytime he wanted.

Like many people, I first heard of Big Star because of "Alex Chilton," the Replacements song off of Pleased To Meet Me. Later, when I saw them, they covered "September Gurls" in concert and I tracked down a bootleg that communicated the thrilling joy of that song. Like church bells chiming into heaven or something.

From top to bottom, Big Star's brief catalog is fantastic. They wrote fantastic songs, played well, and were without peer. Alex Chilton was a central part of that equation, producing song after song of pop genius, little three minute gems that were constructed, played, and sang perfectly. The fact that they were completely ignored and unloved for decades only adds to their mystique but that's not really the central point of their career. Chilton himself seemed completely uninterested in fame and money, just going from thing to thing as it pleased him. At its core, Big Star created the kind of music tapped into some deeper level, where melody and words and singing don't need to be explained. Just felt.

Anyway, here today, I'm writing from very far away, out of the country, 10 time zones away from New York. I've had some wine and I am missing a little big star of my own, a polka dot in heaven. And therefore I've been listening to Big Star's "Thirteen." More than any song I can think of, "Thirteen" captures perfectly the rush, ennui, and yearning of falling for someone when you are young:



And here is "September Gurls" by Big Star:



And Congressman Cohen paying tribute to Alex Chilton in Congress:



And probably the greatest single power pop song ever written, the Replacements' "Alex Chilton":

Feeling Low

I saw the band Low a long time ago, opening for the Swans in Philadelphia back on January 26, 1997. They used to successfully capture that odd combination of ennui, navel gazing, loneliness, and melancholy ether that I would imagine my life being but never really was. If I tried hard enough, I would imagine that my life's banality hid some deeper meaning. This was, of course, self-deception on the grandest scale. But upon reflection, it's not so bad to think that way. And music is often my ticket to that self-deception.

Tonight I post two songs from Low, both of which I've posted before.

The first is a song called "Sunflower" which is possibly one of the most beautiful songs recorded in the last decade or two. I don't know what the song is about but it's a mini-story involving a death, a crime, and perhaps a betrayal. But it's also about a dream lost.

The lyrics are:

When they found your body
Giant X's on your eyes
With your half of the ransom
You bought some sweet, sweet, sweet
Sweet sunflowers
And gave them to the night

Underneath the star of David
A hundred years behind my eyes
And with my half of the ransom
I bought some sweet, sweet, sweet
Sweet sunflowers
And gave them to the night



The other song I'm posting is "Shame." The lyrics are:

A long time you waited
You thought it had abated
Shame of it all
The harm that it causes
Pours down like a faucet
Shame of it all



Tonight these two songs capture my mood.

Happy Birthday

So, on this day, I thought I would post one of my favorite songs from last year. For a few minutes, life becomes exciting, dreamy, endless, mobile, full of possibility.

The song is "Quick Canal," the band is Atlas Sound, the album is Logos, and the woman's voice is that of Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier. Atlas Sound is the 'side' project of Bradford Cox, he of the band Deerhunter, another one of my favorite bands of the last few years. Turn it up.

Enjoy.

Joy Division's Pop Moment

For some reason, people consider Joy Division above criticism... in the same way that for baby boomers, Jimi Hendrix is beyond criticism. They are artists who share similar trajectories and legacies, death punctuating their careers (I say "punctuated" because their careers have continued long after the deaths of Hendrix and Curtis). I'm not a terribly big fan of either, but I do understand why people tend to eulogize and worship them.

My discovery of Joy Division came with their compilation album Substance, which was basically a collection of random songs and singles which had not been featured on their two proper albums, Unknown Pleasures (1979) and Closer (1980). I loved Substance, partly because it had a clear arc from its punk-ish first song ("Warsaw") to the inevitable and obvious concluding song "Love Will Tear Us Apart." People not into Joy Division but who are somewhat familiar with the name will know the latter song. It is famous for many reasons. The singer, Ian Curtis, after all, committed suicide only weeks after recording the song which ostensibly captured some inescapably poignant moment in his descent into desperation. But the song is also hummable, with a melancholy and maddeningly catchy melody, not difficult to dance to, aided by a propulsive drum beat advancing the minutes along. It's first and foremost a pop song, even if it emerged from the heart of the post-punk moment when discord and dissonance were the central aesthetics. "Love Will Tear Us Apart" was for people who didn't really like or take to punk (or post-punk) but who could claim some modicum of hipness. Sort of like when liking R.E.M. in the eighties made you "edgy," you know, so you didn't actually have to listen to Husker Du or Mission of Burma. The song was made for a movie featuring John Cusack.

Yet, yet, yet, the song is undeniably beautiful and brilliant. It's not the best Joy Division song (probably "She's Lost Control" or "Isolation") but it may be the only song they ever recorded which had an emotionally vulnerable center. Ineffably sad. Like Polka dot sounded on the phone.

Here, then, is Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" followed by a version by (the?) Swans. The latter has been completely disavowed by Michael Gira as a horrible misstep but I find it strangely poignant in itself. Maybe it's because I know Gira's story too, which while not as terminally dramatic as that of Ian Curtis is still a story of sadness.

Joy Of Speed EP (song 1)

Invisible

In my first science fiction novel
I wrote myself cartwheeling over a deserted highway
In a brand new spaceship
That flew over my father's car

He drove for miles past the lights
In the backseat I rolled down the window just a little
Pushed my nose against the glass
But I couldn't make out any stars

And then the boy left his home
He grew arms as big as his memories
But they never could reach far enough
when he looked down from his spaceship
He was now invisible

I need to get up, I need to wash my face
I need to make constant plans to travel from place to place
Arriving and departing all at once
I fall asleep the moment I wake up

And in my dreams, I'm with my dad again
Packed into the backseat on a trip across the state
I'm blowing air on the window
Blotting out the sky outside up above

And then the boy left his home
He grew arms as big as his memories
But they never could reach far enough
As he looked down from his spaceship
I was now invisible

Joy -- Invisible [mp3]