lost socks' politics & indie music blog: lost socks' indie music blog

Pitchfork's Top 100 Albums Of The 70's and The Making Of Lists

Sun, 04 Jul 2004 14:38:45 GMT

   I'm halfway through Pitchfork's top 100 albums of the 70's and I'm contemplating the inherent dilemmas of compiling such a list and conflicting feelings felt when reading it. What is the purpose of making a list like this? Perhaps it's all for the best of reasons: to illuminate the listening experience of the populace. Of course, this is an inherently flawed concept giving that most people will already have heard the vast majority of the records on the list (given the intended Pitchfork reader) and already have their own opinions on them. Still, some records will be new to people of course so there's still some learning to be taken from the experience: just not that much.
   Perhaps the reason to compile this is just to get people talking. Everyone will inevitably disagree about the records on the list and complain how -record X- got left off, serving to make us all feel good about ourselves for knowing so much more about music than the pompous folks who had the nerve to put the list together. I mean...as pointed out here, the whole country genre is forgotten. Maybe it's overly ambitious to try to compile a decade's top 100 albums list across every genre...it's essentially impossible to do without leaving out a lot of worthy contenders if not whole genres.
   Of course, as always, non-English language releases are almost completely absent. That always happens when the list is compiled by people who just so happen to speak English. It's pretty unlikely that only people who sing in English make a decade's best music! Also, in this case you have primarily a bunch of twenty-somethings choosing what makes the cut. How much music could these people possibly learn about in the ten or even fifteen years that they've been truly digging for musical knowledge? This is not to denigrate their impressive analysis or how much they have absorbed in such a short time; they obviously have spent most of their lives truly searching for musical knowledge and have acquired a lot of it.
   It's just that most of their historical analysis would have to be learned long after the fact. I'm not sure that even matters really...should it matter that people are passing judgement on the merits and placing the historical contexts of records released before most of them were born? I'm not sure. All I know is that the longer I live and the more I hear, the more I realize I just don't know about music. There's so much I'll never know...and just because I don't know it sure doesn't mean it isn't important! I guess I feel like the more I learn the more I know I'd never really feel comfortable making a best-records-of-the-decade list: especially across genres and times I wasn't around to truly experience as they happened...
   Maybe I just lack the guts of these Pitchfork folks! Either way, I commend them on their efforts and well...I'm going to enjoy the rest of the list. The sooner I finish the sooner I can complain about what they forgot/got wrong/etc! Perhaps that's the whole point! Here goes!...

Political Music and Livin' In The 80's

Tue, 15 Jun 2004 01:50:36 GMT

I know that usually political music kinda sucks. The lefty stuff is too preachy and the righty stuff is too stupid. I just don't know that singing about nothing is the right answer these days when the world's on the brink of disaster. In the late 60's lots of people released topical or at least generally topical songs. Now there's few people doing so. Perhaps it doesn't help much that the radio stations are owned by pro-Bush fanatics of course...but that makes change all the more necessary does it not? I have no answers but at least I have some serious questions...

Sometimes you get a record that seems like everyone should own...Last week I finally got a copy of The Desperate Bicycles' Remorse Code LP! Here's a band who many consider the first DIY band and they had it all...They did more that just put out their own records...They had great songs...catchy hooks ...intriguing lyrics...an AMAZING sound...

Music used to be so ALIVE! It seemed like anything was possible and that things could change...I guess it shouldn't bother me but it seems like all the most exciting music now is music that tries to sound like the past. I don't think Josef K were really trying to sound like anyone else...but the most hyped group of today, Franz Ferdinand, clearly wants to sound like Josef K/Scars/Fire Engines/etc...and who can BLAME THEM!??! I just don't know why music stopped being new and individual. When you hear the Shins it just makes you wonder why there can't be many other groups who are blazing their own trails and are not trying to be anything but just ARE...In the 80's there were a whole lot of groups who JUST WERE. They had influences of course but it wasn't so contrived and planned out.

I'm not trying to put down Franz Ferdinand; they're pretty cool and all from the songs I've heard...I just feel like the music actually from the early 80's is so good that it seems sad that bands who want to be from then are all hyped up but no one has ever heard of Disturbed Furniture or Those Helicopters...I'm losing focus now...sorry...more later!

Remember Musical Chairs?...Me Neither...

Tue, 15 Jun 2004 01:27:25 GMT

Perhaps a couple of people might have wondered what ever happened to Connecticut indie pop (or indiepop) group Musical Chairs. I can say emphatically that there's a website here...I can't say it's been updated much of late but hopefully things are going to change soon...I'm following in the footsteps of Salinger and Shields I guess...

Soft Boys and Split Enz Follies...

Fri, 23 Apr 2004 13:41:59 GMT

OK...I recently found an original pressing (1980 on Armageddon) of the Soft Boys' well-known classic Underwater Moonlight. Despite the fact that I already owned the 1986 pressing on Living Cream and the expanded Matador CD, I picked it up. Little did I expect, the mix is totally different to the recording I was used to! Not just the mix...but actual vocal takes and lyrics...It's so odd! Here's one of the top LP's of the 80's and it's available in totally different versions!?!!? Which would be the "real" one then? Is there a definitive one? Matador seems to have used the later version for the cd. Did Robyn re-mix it in '86? It may be totally different sessions altogether, the versions are so different. The earlier one is also way reverbier. How often does this happen? What's the story here????

The only other one I can think of right now is the Split Enz Frenzy album. Curiously described as an album made on the cheap, the Australian release IS totally different recordings than the US one as well as each containing songs the other doesn't have! For a small budgeted recording, the band managed to record and mix different versions of most songs and record extra songs for different countries! I always found that strange too. Hey...I just wrote a music post again finally!

My 80's Rant And Much Much More Part 2

Sat, 06 Mar 2004 15:34:01 GMT

It's interesting how all music of the past always gets this kind of irony factor later. No matter what, nearly everything seems funny, yet hip somehow, from a past decade just ten or fifteen years on. The time it takes for things to this to happen seems to get shorter and shorter too. As nothing new of interest happens musically, it seems like everything from the past is in. The 60's are still cool...perpetually it seems...maybe it's because the music from 66-69 was actually good I don't know. There seems to be less of an irony factor going on there too perhaps for the same reasons. The 70's and 80's are both in also but with more of an ironic tinge. I can't generally defend the 70's as a musical whole (obviously there was some great stuff going on but mostly underground) but I feel like the early 80's deserves a bit better than to be lumped in with the 85-89 era.

Perhaps much of the irony factor concerns fashion and hairstyle. The pre-hippie 60's were glamourous and stylish and classic. Haircuts from then still look great. The 70's had the bell-bottoms and hippie hangover fashion which is easily mocked and the 80's are too with the mousses and gels and the pastels and flourescent colors. I'm not sure what the 90's was fashion-wise...The 90's was pretty blah...just a bunch of designers' names on shit. Of course that trend continues today with the Abercrombie & Fitch/Aeropostale name-on-thing trend. It's all as hollow as the music itself. (I've heard Huey Lewis and Peter Gabriel which are certainly not too exciting as they're so overplayed...and right now is Depeche Mode's classic "Just Can't Get Enough" into Bowie's "Let's Dance"...Why is the only song by OMD anyone knows that crappy song "If You Leave"...I know it's because it was on some soundtrack but why couldn't people pick a good song by them for a soundtrack instead?)

Where the late 80's was saturated with sexist joke hair-metal that had a sense of humor and personality at very least if not much musical quality, the 90's really had no identity of its own in mainstream music. Sure techno was something new and all but lacked the ability to really cross over as it was so faceless. That left us with the Pearl Jam ilk...This was serious music as a polar opposite in intent to the hair-metal bands. These bands were all ANGRY and from damaged families and bullied childhoods. They sang about their pain while dating porn stars like the hair-metallists did. The bands wanted to sound like Nirvana and Pearl Jam and a few mixed that with hip-hop. Of course those bands were the worst of all...not able to be like Nirvana the same way indie bands couldn't be like Pavement and thinking they could just do hip-hop without any real affinity for it.

Trying to sound like a band doesn't make you the band. Oasis tried to sound like the Beatles and thought for some silly reason that it made them as good as (or better than!) the Beatles. Likewise, people missed the point of what made Nirvana great. It was the genuine emotion and good songs! All these non- rap-rock bands did was end up sounding like Pearl Jam who basically were just another rock band who wanted to sound like Black Sabbath and Neil Young. Music stopped having any quality of newness or timeliness. Bands all sounded the same. Of course, nothing has changed! The past ten years have essentially seen music go nowhere. In the span of time the Beatles made ALL THEIR RECORDS, bands still sound like Pearl Jam. Pretty lame.

OK to be fair, the Neptunes are pretty snappy but to me most hip-hop doesn't really compare to the stuff from the 80's. In rock, bands try to sound like the past. I like The Strokes ok and all but they're trying to sound like a specific thing from the past. They clearly want to have guitars that sound like Television. I love Television so I love those guitars and think the Strokes have a great sound. I just think it's possible to have influences and strive to do something new and there's no movement of bands who either have a new style or sound like THEMSELVES! Where are all the groups with instantly indentifiable sounds? Certainly in mainstream music there aren't any. When you hear say...The Go-Betweens you KNOW that guitar is them. Not that they were mainstream or anything but the point remains the same.

My 80's Rant And Much Much More part 1

Fri, 27 Feb 2004 20:28:43 GMT

A lot of people have begun (well...it's been going for a while now) to do retro 80's shows. They'll play music from the 80's on both commercial stations and college stations and fine I'm biased on this but I think they do it all wrong. For one thing, the prevailing tone is "ooooo I'm soooooo ironic" but there's no reason people can't do a show of GOOD songs from the 80's and not just treat the decade like a funny joke. I'm listening to a show now. It started with the Go-Go's "Our Lips Are Sealed" and was followed by friggin' Miami Sound Machine and now Billy Ocean. After IMing the DJ it seems she really likes the Ocean and Machine songs she played and it wasn't to be ironic. Perhaps it's just a sign that the kids today just don't know good music from bad. She was probably born in like '83 so she didn't live through this stuff knowledgeably the first time around. Either way there's really no excuse for a college radio station (WHUS if you must know-which is a station I quite like overall) playing the same freakin' overplayed songs other top 40 stations always play...(The Church's "Under The Milky Way" plays now....certainly an improvement)...

First of all, as far as commercial radio goes, there are two distinct halves of the 1980's. The good half and the bad. Obviously the good half was 80-84 and the bad the latter half. New wave invigorated the radio in the first half and the soulless production of the latter half killed it. (Asia's "Heat Of The Moment" played...followed by Kenny Loggins' "Footloose" of all things...She's going to play my request for the Red Rockers' "China" up next!) OK...China might not have the best production but it beats the crap out of the mediocre shlock people often play on 80's shows. Why don't people play this song more? Or Icicle Works' "Whisper To A Scream"? There are a lot of GOOD songs from the 80's and they're predominantly from the first half. The decade shouldn't be treated as a uniform entity. It's ok to pick the good songs and not treat everything like it's the same.

Sat, 07 Feb 2004 02:42:26 GMT

Has there ever been a better song than "Fell From The Sun"?...This classic track picks up where Rain Parade's "Emergency Third Rail Power Trip" left off...David Roback's beautiful overdriven leads piercing through acoustic guitars with Kendra Smith's detached reverb-drenched vocals over it all...Roback is an unheralded production genius. I just listened to the Clay Allison version but it was also done by Opal on the Early Recordings LP (both groups led by Smith and Roback)...when Kendra sings "just like the sun" at the end of the first chorus...the way the word "sun" loops into a beautiful melody and just soars away...such are the moments for which I listen to pop music.

I first heard the song on the Pale Saints' version on their debut The Comforts Of Madness before I ever heard Opal. That's a great album too. See...bands like the Pale Saints are why shoegazer music was the real Britpop. It didn't push its Britishness on you or anything, it was just British bands making great pop music. It just happened to be fuzzy music but the songs were stronger than those by Blur or Oasis any day. I'd take "The Sight Of You" over "Live Forever" certainly. My Bloody Valentine's "Thorn" is so superior to any Britpop era song it's almost silly...It's more interesting sonically and the song just unfolds effortlessly. The band is better, the harmonies are purer, it has more energy and it's just so much more confident without the annoying swagger...If ever a band was not overrated it was MBV. If ever a band WAS it was Oasis.

MBV's known primarily for the mindwarping production of the Loveless era and that deserves recognition certainly. But listen to all the great songs! True we all know there should be so much more music from them but what they did accomplish is amazing enough. Despite their changes in sound they always kept their own identity. From The New Record By...through Loveless...Their songs are filled with original melodies...each verse has such swooping graceful melodies it seems like they must write themselves from Kevin's subconscious.... Deb's basslines could stand on their own but in their natural context they comment on the song that surrounds them. She doesn't merely follow root notes; she picks notes that mean exactly what the song is getting at at each moment...and they're locked down perfectly with Colm's unparalleled timekeeping. His fills seem like they defy time and space-how can he play so fast?-he could never be confused for any other drummer. The band truly play as one. I really don't know of another band who seems so perfectly in tune with each other. They seem to share a brain.

Also, there is no other band whose music has THAT mood...the sort of happy giddy drunk on what seems like love feeling but deep down knowing that in a few hours the sun will come up and reveal what a horrible mess it all really is but denying it to oneself as much as possible...it's a rather twisted mood and it defies all easy categorization of a "happy" song or a "sad" song...it's just a My Bloody Valentine song. Sometimes nothing else will do.

Mon, 02 Feb 2004 23:03:59 GMT

Hartford! It's Gotcha Covered!

Anyone who lives in the central Connecticut area is probably used to driving out of state to see any decent shows. Well...that is non-punk or ska shows. There used to be a pretty thriving punk and ska scene around here though it never seemed to really get any real coverage in the Hartford area. None of the bands seemed to actually be from Hartford and the Hartford Advocate never wrote about the scene much at all. The city has not exactly been a hotbed of indie music and it's become the joke that every band here is a cover band; if there's a popular band somewhere they probably have a cover band living in Hartford area.

Well...I guess Hartford's finally admitted defeat altogether with this year's Advocate Snow Slam being completely dedicated to cover bands. You think things can't get any more pathetic and they do. I've never understood why people here only want to hear covers. Don't people realize that if nobody ever wrote songs there would BE no beloved cover tunes to PLAY? It's not a scene for original bands to even try to play shows...if they fall in the indie category especially. How can a city this size have no indie scene at all and worse be ruled by cover bands? In other places cover bands are sort of kitsch at least right? What's the point of being in a cover band? Why do people want to go see cover bands? If you're going out to hear music that's too loud to talk over, wouldn't you rather hear something original?

Anywhere that's tried to have original music pretty much goes out of business. The Hartford Brewery...The Municipal Cafe...even Studio 158 which was a DIY punk club ended up closing and not re-opening in Manchester as planned. I've always felt that nothing cool can happen here because everyone up and moves as soon as they can. It's kind of sad. Even the hipper area of New Haven where some decent bands HAVE come from has trouble keeping clubs open. Now there's very few places for bands to play there too. Nonetheless, I wonder if anywhere in the world has a worse music scene than Hartford...The town's musical claim to fame is that The guy from Dashboard Confessional lived in West Hartford till like sixth grade...I guess it's no wonder why the Hartford area can't support an independent record store. Maybe if one sold tapes of cover bands...

That said, Integrity 'n Music (specializing in jazz) and Records And Things (random used lp's and a few cd's) are still plugging away in Wethersfield. Go east of there and there's NOTHING............You have to go to Mystic to find an independent store (Mystic Disc) and beyond there to Rhode Island or Boston. Why does Waterbury have the two best stores (Phoenix and Brass City) east of Danbury (whose Trash American Style is the anchor of the Danbury scene: probably the healthiest indie scene in the state over the past 15 years). Between Waterbury and Mystic there isn't any place to buy indie cd's that aren't stocked at Borders or Best Buy and indie vinyl...HA! It's pretty sad that touring bands have had to play for donations (for legal reasons) at Brass City over the years since there are NO FRIGGIN' CLUBS. Thomas Pizzola has clearly tried to help the scene out by writing about non-cover bands in the Local Motion column in the Hartford Advocate but one has to wonder what the point is when the paper itself is stooping to a cover band celebration for it's Snow Slam. It's just WEAK. Thanks Advocate.

The Great CD-R Test

Sat, 24 Jan 2004 01:30:31 GMT

So I tried to get in touch with the goings-on in the music world by downloading a bunch of songs from groups tapped as making the best records of the year...this being on a mailing-list I'm on for indie stuff. Of all the 23 songs I put on a CD-R, there was probably only one whose CD I have plans to pick up. I'll give the cd a couple more listens and admittedly some of the track selections were random, but I must say the bands generally didn't move me too much. I wonder if it's just me...but I recall reading a post about this band The Shins and downloading a track burned from a 7" I think and being very impressed. The track was "Eating Styes From Elephants' Eyes" in fact. I knew nothing about this band and now they're one of my favorites. I don't see why it should be impossible to be impressed by new bands some more.

That said, the lone track I really like a lot from the cd is by Oddfellows Casino. It's certainly a very British song; it could only be by a band from the Isles. It has that quaintly old-fashioned pastoral countryside vibe and the sort of character-sketch observations that were popularized in late 60's British pop-psych. It has a kind of skewed melody and nice organic production. Nice work lads! It doesn't sound however like the band is trying to be anything other than themselves though. It isn't knowingly smirky or self-satisfied. It isn't trying (to my ears) to BE a 60's song. It just has a nice craft to it that is often lacking now. It seems like too much stuff now is trying to be something instead of just being itself. Just because we've lived through so many different eras of music shouldn't mean we have to be so conscious of it. Things don't seem to happen quite so naturally these days.

I don't expect any shockingly NEW music or anything groundbreaking...I just want to hear bands with their own identities who sound like THEMSELVES. In the 80's there were TONS of them. What has happened I don't know. People seem to have forgotten you can be informed by the past without trying to sound just like it. There are exceptions of course like Belle and Sebastian. Sure they have a few songs that pay aural tribute to heroes but overall they sound like themselves and not like they want to be in another time. They harken back to old-time QUALITY but can't really be mistaken for a 60's band. I think the Decemberists have their own thing going and are getting better and better. Their last record was my favorite of 2003 (Her Majesty, The Decemberists) and they were probably my favorite live show of the year (though there wasn't much competition admittedly!). There are bright spots but there used to be years where almost everything right below the surface of mainstream was at least pretty good. Well...I'll keep listening. I'm working on CD-R #2 now...

Another Casualty in the Indie/Major Wars...

Sat, 17 Jan 2004 18:28:45 GMT

There have been many bands who have signed to major labels and suffered both artistically and otherwise for the choice. One recent example is the band Wheat (or Wheat* as they now write it). Somehow Pitchfork gave the new record, Per Second Per Second Per Second... Every Second a positive review (a 7.8 out of 10) but I'm not sure how consistently they measure the criteria for what makes a record good. The first record seemed like a band who while they would gladly experiment was confident in their indentity as a BAND. They sounded like themselves. The second record was ok if not as distinctive as the first, but the new album sounds a little too close to being the Goo Goo Dolls. Is it any surprise that this is their first for Columbia/Aware?

If this record were not by a band with proven hipster credentials would Pitchfork have liked it at all? They gave the Goo Goo Dolls' Dizzy up The Girl a 3.2. This record has the same reaching-for-a-hit vibe of the Dolls. Wheat sound way too tentative now and unsure just who they are anymore. The record had been done for well over a year and the label sat on the thing and finally put it out in the fall. It sounds overthought and maybe it has been tampered with and re-mixed along the way. It sound like too many cooks were in the kitchen. So now a pretty cool band has comprimised what made it great for a chance at making a few bucks. Why does everyone always do this to themselves? No one ever seems to learn that whenever a good indie band signed to a major label, they ALWAYS end up either drastically worse musically or break up in frustration from having to deal with the pressures and annoyances of the business. Please provide examples of this NOT being the case as it'd be nice to find some.

I really like the Meat Puppets' Too High To Die but they fizzled soon after which they hadn't done when on SST, so it just took them a little longer than most to fall. Maybe the signing didn't impact their situation but the pressures could have led them to even more extravagance than they had been prone to before, I'm not sure. All I know is most groups don't even last that long once they sign...

The Future Of POP?

Fri, 02 Jan 2004 15:20:57 GMT

It's true that most pop music isn't what I would consider POP with a capital P. You don't hear what I consider to be great pop music on contemporary radio and the people writing my favorite songs never will get on there. I don't really understand peoples' tastes but it seems that we live in a time when faux emotion is seen as real sincerity. I don't know WHY people find Korn and Puddle Of Mudd and such to be filled with anything real but if those things resonate...well...I suppose it's the direct musical punch-in-the-gut of it that must hit people...Still, generally sales are way down and something obviously is needed to refresh things if the industry plans to stick around very long.

This article (which I found through a link in a blog here) discusses the need for a longer pop music form than the three minute variety. The author sees how that could be difficult to accomplish, but he longs for a pop form with invigorating influence by the musical, as musicals lately have been informed by pop. One problem is though, that the listener isn't going to hear it. There remains no outlet for longer pieces to be presented on radio. Also, listeners generally aren't going to be interested in that. Sure, maybe a small audience would be but I'm afraid few other than the critic himself would find the idea so appealing. It sure won't save the industry nor I would think the artistry of the song.

What makes for me a great pop song is something with a burst of inspiration that crystallizes a specific moment or emotion and makes the listener feel it...I've never gotten chills from a song from a musical and I'm not sure that for ME, the influence of musicals on the pop genre would be a GOOD thing. The emotion is what makes a GOOD pop song so good and to me, musicals are too indirect to be as emotional. By their very structure they tell rather than make the listener feel and that would seem a detrimental influence to the pop format.

The author laments the bombast of the progressive era and longs for something other than "the concept album," but I fail to see how the pop form can really EXPAND to a longer format without resulting either in one of the two things. The idea of a pop songwriter collaborating with a composer of longer form and musical scores is a good idea in theory maybe (well...not to me I guess) but it would be hard to imagine it as anything other than a mess. Pop songs are generally concise for a reason. When too many people get involved in making a film the film ends up a mediocre mess with no vision. This seems pretty much a recipe for a musical mess.

Mon, 01 Dec 2003 02:22:46 GMT

Blue print means music Black means politics but this post has both:

See...the reason people are reaching back to the 80's to be inspired from is because of the greatness of the music...Take Magazine for instance...In a time where people are getting arrested essentially for disapproving of the president and his policies and refusing to hide their unpopular view in a "free speech area," music like this seems too appropriate. A song like "Song From Under The Floorboards" for example...this is the soundtrack for the cockroaches of discontent to nibble away at the foundations of a corrupt system and sneer at those who try to ignore them...the lyrics might not reflect that exactly but the vibe of the song is so defiant and is so disdainful of the general lameness and fakeness of the status quo...Howard Devoto's world is an ugly one and you're invited! The truth is ugly and he wants to rub your face in it and dance with you when the pianos kick in at the end of the song and you're all filthy and covered in truth...

Maybe I'm just reading all this into the music but...I'd love to see Donald or Dick or their other assorted cronies' faces when listening to Magazine...I bet they probably don't like music...It'd be pretty sweet to blast it at them and watch them run away and keep it blasting until their only escape is a one way ticket to the Cayman Islands (or wherever it is they hide the riches they've found some semi-legal way to swindle from the American taxpayer) and they never feel safe to come back to oppress free speech and DEMOCRACY in our country or in any other for that matter...