Tears for Fears: Songs from the Big Chair (Mercury, 1985)

Ten aperçus:

1. Gawd, this album is boring!

2. And I claim this with "Pale Shelter" as my 94th fave single of the 1980s. 

3. Average song length = 5:19. That merits a "tsk-tsk" from a popist perspective.

4. Best song = "Mothers Talk" cuz it's the most disco

5. Worst Song = definitely the ironically titled "Listen," although "I Believe" runs a close second in unlistenability. They're both water-logged, excrescent ballads. Blech!!!! And that's over a quarter of the album right there!

6. If "Shout" were a package, it would cost hundreds of dollars to send. And that's just the single version. The album version would have to spend a week in a shipping container and get held up at customs for another week. 

7. They had big mouths...physically big mouths, especially in the "Shout" video. 

8. The Seeds of Love is even worse. Who the hell needed ever more Pepperisms in 1989? I wisely stopped listening to them after that and given such Rick Wakeman-like titles as Raoul and the Kings of Spain and Saturnine Martial & Lunatic, it was not a moment too soon.

9. They were the INXS of the 1980s.

10. Oh wait a minute - we already had an INXS in the 1980s. Ok the Procol Harum of the 1980s. 

Grade: C+ 

Peter Gabriel is Okay! And That's Bad!

To paraphrase myself, the only thing worse than a bad album is an okay one. Of course, Peter Gabriel is a musical artist of more substance than, say, Sha Na Na or Burt Reynolds, to choose two recent horrors I've accessed via Apple Music. But where Sha Na Na enrage me and Reynolds's sole album makes me guffaw, Gabriel's discography hangs in the air moist with solid intentions, waiting for you to honor it. Plenty of music lovers have honored it such that it compels you to wrestle with the oeuvre. But for me, despite the occasional arresting moment or even entire song, the music remains suspended in mid-air, rarely traveling down my auditory canal and into my musical memory hole. Across a discography, such inoffensive ambience soon becomes irritating and that's when okay shades into bad.

The bland masala of Gabriel's oeuvre derives in part from a neutralizing of source genres. No authenticity queen, I get itchy invoking a genre purity that doesn't exist. Nevertheless, on the first four self-titled albums, it sounds as if Gabriel aimed to prog out within tighter new wave and post-punk structures but failed to achieve the highs in any of the respective genres.* That's why I'm constantly longing for something with more foreground spritz, something punkier or funkier and just weirder, when listening. 1978's "D.I.Y." may have been his tribute to (parody of?) punk. To the extent that it's not, it's a perfectly nice number with a lazy piano that rolls more than it rocks (at least in the chorus). To the extent that it is, then lawd gawd why not listen to (gulps) the real thing? Or even the unreal thing, e.g., Blondie's "One Way or Another" from the same year. "San Jacinto" has a creepy coda...that starts 5:20 into a 6:34 track of trebly tinkle. "I Have the Touch" is a slinky dance track that unfortunately stays at "Safety Dance" levels of speed and the nifty section when Gabriel mirrors the rhythm with the "Pull my chin/Stroke my hair" verses again comes near the end of the song. I love "Shock the Monkey" unreservedly, "Solsbury Hill" is a roving classic, and "Games Without Frontiers" dazzles despite Kate Bush's hideous French pronunciation. But too much of his oeuvre through 1982 passes by respectfully in the background. It's no surprise that he soon became a soundtrack maestro. 

I assumed 1986's So was where Gabriel took whatever miasma he'd been working up for the past near-decade and whipped into shape. But even at the time, I couldn't stand "Sledgehammer" and "Don't Give Up." Revisiting again after almost thirty years, I'm nevertheless stunned at how much I cannot stand his (American) pop breakthrough. The former trudges by at 96 BPM, a lynchable offense on most dancefloors, never mind the grody lyric that allowed the thing to wink-nudge its way to number one on the Billboard Hot 100. The latter raises the suspicion that Gabriel was trying for a pop-new age fusion, damn near inaudible in its wispy, detail-free atmospheric(s). It's a charge that could be leveled against baffling ILM fave "Mercy Street" and even John Cusack fave "In Your Eyes" as well. That's over half the album's running time right there. Thankfully, "Big Time" picks up the pace. But it's the only sign of life on this multiplatinum appliance. 

He should've stuck with soundtracking after that point. Us, the belated follow-up, is damn near unlistenable, punishingly slow and with a pathetic attempt to match "Sledgehammer"'s chart position in "Steam." And just as I wisely never bothered listening to those Sha Na Na and Burt Reynolds albums in their entirety, I cherry picked Gabriel's post-Us oeuvre, taking in only the focus cuts of 2002's Up and appreciating his 2010 cover of the Magnetic Fields' "The Book of Love." Last year's I/O came out in various mixes and I quickly got sleepy trying to determine which I should listen to. What little I heard demonstrated that he was still atmopshering around too much for my ever-unsettled ass. 

Peter Gabriel 1 - I'm in a Car: B

Peter Gabriel 2 - I'm Scratching: B-minus

Peter Gabriel 3 - I'm Melting: B

Peter Gabriel 4 - Security (Ok this is one of the coolest, creepiest album covers ever): B

So: C

Us: C-minus

* This is how I explain other okay 1980s artists who become annoying in their okayness. INXS fused dance and rock and blanded out at both. U2 melded arena rock with post-punk and then tried to meld that mélange with pop and wound up with edge-less bloat or blurry wallpaper.

Smashing Pumpkins: Siamese Dream (Virgin, 1993)

This landmark alternative album sounds better once you place it in a 1970s hard rock tradition instead of lineage closer to 1980s goth/post-punk. Makes it easier to forget the speed and power of the Pixies and swallow the slower, sludgier moments when a power chord sustains and sustains instead of getting on to the next measure. Billy Corgan justified his control freak status with a generous display of guitar-god posturings. The production is so luscious and high-relief that you can hear the windings on each of his six strings. 

But Siamese Dream epitomized why “alternative” became such a joke. What alternative was it providing? Quite to the contrary, one could chalk up its popularity to a blandification of shoegaze. Even rejecting a comparison with a truly landmark album like My Bloody Valentine’s 1991 Loveless, one must concede that Siamese Dream makes few demands on the listener. Lovers of "Mayonaise" [sic] [rolls eyes], often voted the best song on the album, claim that the feedback squeal amounts to a hook; others will wonder how something so brief and infrequent could be called any such thing. Listen to the flutter at around 0:22 in "Rocket." THAT'S your hook, Billy (or Butch Vig or Alan Moulder)! Bring it to the fore more clearly! Then repeat it! Why is it buried so deeply in the mix? Compare a song from the same year - Yo La Tengo's "From a Motel 6." There you have a fetching descending guitar figure that gets installed in our hum jukebox via...wait for it....repetition and foregrounding. And yet the Pumpkins sold buckets more records. Why? Because their music requires only minimal investment. In fact, with all the non-snarkiness I can muster, I assume that’s precisely why millions of alt.folk love them so much, just as with Coldplay and Tom Petty  

One more thing: Plug-ugly cover and font     

Grade: B-minus 

 

Simon & Garfunkel: Bookends (Columbia, 1968)

Simon & Garfunkel: Bookends (Columbia, 1968):

1. "Bookends Theme" - Who cares?
2. "Save the Life of My Child" - Unlistenable. I always thought folkies dug these guys because of their crystalline harmonies/production. But this is messy as muck, a Whimsy Suite in desperate need of a sweeping. Why didn't Yes cover this one? Too close to the prog edge?
3. "America" - I already forgot this one and I'm writing this in the middle of side two. I'm sure it's crappy, though.
4. "Overs" - The musical equivalent of a run-on sentence. Or a paragraph that goes on for almost two pages. I don't care if it's only 2:14. Edit, dude! Get to the point!
5. "Voices of Old People" - Really? When I want bullshit musique concrète, I'll take Yaz(oo)'s "I Before E Except After C." P. S. I had to listen to Upstairs at Eric's to cleanse myself after listening to this very bad album.
6. "Old Friends" - Aw ok this is pretty. Could work as an Eno-esque tangential listening experience. Modest strings. Modest Paul. Alright, Paul, pull back a bit. You're making your presence felt a bit too much. And pull back on those strings too. And now you're amping up the strings?!? ARGH!
7. "Bookends" - Who cares even less?
8. "Fakin' It" - Ooh strong start. Mildly rockin'. Aw you had to go wuss it all up by singing! Oh gawd, more whimsy. Can't you leave a good song alone?
9. "Punky's Dilemma" - Best thing about this one is that Streisand recorded it and Xgau got an amazing article out of it.
10. "Mrs. Robinson" - The best American feature-length film of the 1960s is not The Graduate.
11. "A Hazy Shade of Winter" - Best song here, duh. But The Bangles own it now. Sorry 'bout it.
12. "At the Zoo" - You did NOT just say "somebody told me it's all happening at the zoo."

Grade C+. The plus is for the fact that's it's under 30 mins. That's pretty remarkable, actually. Even I can swallow whimsy at that length. 

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band: Grow Fins: Rarities (1965-82) (Revenant, 1999)

Here's a contemporary review I wrote for MTV.com of the Grow Fins consumer fraud (aka box set). I had the opportunity to take a potshot at it in an Elizabeth Nelson Ringer article about box sets for which I was interviewed. But here's the full takedown. In terms of a letter grade, I'd give it a C-minus, docked a notch for the usurious price ($199 on Amazon but a copy can be had for $35 on Discogs as of this writing) and for the continued practice of ripping off even the most discerning music fans with pointless, infuriating reshuffles. If you want to know why Joan Crawford invented Napster, then read on.

 

Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band: Grow Fins – Rarities (1965-1982) (Revenant) 

Rating: ** 

Songs To Record: “Bellerin Plain” (CD 5, Track /4), “Electricity” (CD 2, Track 1), “Untitled 28” (CD 3, Track 28) and “Frownland” (CD 3, Track 17). 

Grow Fins suffers from the same problem as last year’s X anthology, Beyond and Back. Both are larded with inconsequential demos, outtakes and live cuts that do little to serve their legacies. No doubt this is a self-conscious strategy. If X went beyond and right back in their quest for a popularity they foolishly thought they deserved, then Captain Beefheart had to grow fins to prevent himself from drowning in the corporate chicanery that plagued his recorded output since the very beginning. These collections, then, come across as a sour grapes “Fuck you!” to the status quo that wouldn’t have them. In short, they’re astonishingly unlistenable for two artists whose recorded legacies are as endlessly listenable as any in pop music history.

Listenability is not a quality often associated with Beefheart. Ever since the talismanic double album Trout Mask Replica in 1969, he took the rock combo about as far out as it could go exploding his song structures with free jazz chaos. Not helping the medicine go down was the Captain’s own smokestack lightnin’ blues roar (pay no heed to gush about his “five-octave range” – he has about as much color as Joe Strummer). Yet the few adventurous listeners willing to scout through the music’s overwhelming density discovered a totally unique and, at times, absolutely frightening retreat not just from convention but from the very order of things. 

But even at his most uncompromised, Beefheart still provoked some sort of reaction (if only “ugh, turn that racket off!”). The saddest thing about the Beefheart Advanced Placement study guides on Grow Fins is that they’ll barely make an impression on unsuspecting neophytes at all. That’s fine by Revenant - trading attitude for étude, Grow Fins wasn’t compiled with neophytes in mind. But it doesn’t even seem to be for big fans like myself (scholars and obsessives aiming to refine their sensibility to the point of nauseum are more the target). From bland garage R&B demos to the first scrapings towards atonality (CD2’s live 1968 Cannes “Electricity” is fine but it’s only marginally better than the live 1968 UK version two cuts later), the first four CDs will teach you what you already know over and over again. 

CD3 is particularly obnoxious in this regard. It’s a complete run-through of a little more than half the songs on Trout Mask Replica with almost exactly the same arrangements but without Beefheart’s vocals. Don’t be fooled by the twenty-nine “Untitled” numbers – they’re mostly in-between song shuffling, doodling and silence. The four-second “Untitled 28,” for instance, is just a single guitar note. The purpose of this instrumental nightmare is to demonstrate how rehearsed and exacting the tumult actually was. Now that you know that, you don’t have to listen.

The last CD starts out strong towards the beginning with three excellent live songs from 1971. Here the Howlin’ Wolf/Ornette Coleman fusion is perfectly realized – the silence immediately after Beefheart’s sax-led finale to “Bellerin Plain” is literally breath-taking. But the disc soon devolves into drum solos, piano solos, guitar solos, voice solos, mellotron solos, etc. 

Worst of all, Grow Fins, which lists for around $90, could easily be winnowed down to four discs if not three. CDs 1 and 2 total 79:44 and while CD 4 has the enhanced live footage on it, the 12:33 of chit chat with the Capt.’s neighbor on the audio part is a total rip-off. So artist-run excavating indie labels are only in it for the art, huh?

 

Ellen Foley: Spirit of St. Louis (Epic/Cleveland International, 1981)

Ellen Foley: Spirit of St. Louis (Epic/Cleveland International, 1981)

I wonder how many Clash dorks have heard this album of Jones-Strummer copyrights and instrumental support from the band. If this is sides seven and eight of Sandinista! (as is often said), then there can no longer be any doubt concerning which Clash album is the worst. New wave, my ass! More like evening news bumps, stillborn artsong, music for an empty cabaret, the like. Foley Cannot Sing (well), the band are lost, and one song is called "The Death of the Psychoanalyst of Salvador Dali." Save your horrified, contemptuous laughter for this botch if you can make it through. 

Grade: C-minus 

Melissa Manchester: Hey Ricky (Arista, 1982)

Melissa Manchester: Hey Ricky (Arista, 1982)

There was probably room for only one Better Midler in the post-1960s rockscape and this album proves it. Not that it proves it uniquely; all of her releases evince the limited chart reach of the cabaret mode. I singled out this one simply because it leads with "You Should Hear How She Talks About You," her biggest hit and judged by Manchester at the time as a betrayal of Adult Contemporary destiny. A new wavey aerobics stomper that Peter Brown mopped for "Material Girl," it bests Charlie Dore's tepid original. But it's the only item salvageable on an album full of the usual overworked session men (Porcaro, McCracken, etc.) and hackwork from the likes of Carole Bayer Sager, Bernie Taupin, Eric Katz, and Allee Willis. The promising "Hey Ricky (You're A Low Down Heel)" is lost without its non-existent Broadway show. And the biggest crime is "Race to the End," a most unwelcome reminder that Jon Anderson appended lyrics to Vangelis' Chariots of Fire theme.
Grade: C