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I Love Rock & Roll...Writing (the sequel)
5 years ago
General
More of my musings on hits from the 33-1/3 series:
AC/DC'S HIGHWAY TO HELL by Joe Bonomo
Australia's Game-Changing "Punk" Band
Reading this as an interested outsider rather than a committed AC/DC fan, I wanted an answer to the question on the back cover blurb: "Why does HIGHWAY TO HELL matter to anyone beyond non-ironic teenagers?"
I'm not sure that question can really be answered. A classic album of loud, headbanging songs about rough sex and the pursuit of more of the same doesn't stand up to deep analysis, and why should it? It's music for the body, not the mind, and it can be performed and recorded well or badly. The energy and sincerity of this music was caught live in the studio by an engineer and producer who knew enough to get out of the band's way and let them rock out, and that it turned out to be singer Bon Scott's drunken last will and testament is one of the ironies of pop art.
Writer Joe Bonomo does an excellent job of analyzing these tracks, arguing for what works (or doesn't) for him, and goes on to muse on some telling photographs of the band in their up-and-coming years, and to ask for his high school friends' recollections of this music, and what it means to them now. He has little use for AC/DC's records with Brian Johnson as the frontman; Bon Scott's perpetual adolescence, however damaging, was both genuine and irreplaceable.
[Note: AC/DC has just released POWER UP, their first new album since the death of rhythm guitarist/co-founder Malcolm Young in 2017.]
MILES DAVIS'S BITCHES BREW by George Grella
So Who Needs Swing?
BITCHES BREW is called a fusion record, but a fusion of what? It's played by top-drawer jazz musicians who aren't even trying to swing; it's full of electric instruments, but without anything resembling a rock beat. Author George Grella calls it a funk record, albeit a funk record informed by the avant-garde music of such European composers as Edgard Varèse and Krzysztof Penderecki. It's deep, danceable grooves layered with ear-stretching improvisations, an in-the-moment ritual music blatantly subjected to studio manipulation like any other pop record. No wonder so many listeners just didn't get it; there was no shortage of reactionaries content to label it anti-jazz and call it a day.
Grella asserts that the album's influence is "everywhere and nowhere," a hazy nod at the John Zorn-Talking Heads-Sonic Youth Downtown art scene, but what can you say about an album that doesn't sound like any other musical recording, and was a clear and unambiguous influence on only one band, Weather Report? This is an outstanding book in the 33 1/3 series: Grella packs an amazing amount of cultural, historical, and technical analysis into a little over a hundred pages, and will make you eager to listen to these six demanding, unsettling, and deeply funky musical collages all over again.
BOBBIE GENTRY'S ODE TO BILLIE JOE by Tara Murtha
"If you can't be free, be a mystery"
Bobbie Gentry tried on a lot of musical styles in her two-decade career, from Tiki lounge novelty act to sultry swamp rocker, from MOR duets with Glen Campbell to the musical theater-style production numbers of her final Capitol album. What it comes down to, though, is a four-and-a-half minute voice and guitar demo recording, sweetened with strings, that became the monster pop hit of the summer of 1967: "Ode to Billie Joe," the most mysterious of all teen suicide songs.
Gentry herself has remained a mystery since quietly fading from public life in the early 1980s. Journalist Tara Murtha certainly hasn't solved THAT puzzle -- that of a pop artist who now seems to care for little besides her privacy -- but she does give us the definitive book about the genesis, reception, and meanings of Bobbie Gentry's great story-song. The singer herself is a prismatic figure: a talented writer and performer, a hard-headed businesswoman, a pragmatic feminist who exploited her good looks, a Vegas headliner who could've earned the title "the hardest working woman in show business," if anyone had thought to give it to her. (Elvis was an enthusiastic fan of Gentry's rock 'em, sock 'em tribute shows to himself.)
Murtha grapples with the long-forgotten 1975 movie, "Ode to Billy Joe," whose frustrated screenwriter added a whole new layer to the story ("Now that I know why Billy Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge," began Roger Ebert's review, "I almost wish I didn't."). A fascinating book about a fascinating song, and in both of them, solving the mystery isn't really the point after all.
AC/DC'S HIGHWAY TO HELL by Joe Bonomo
Australia's Game-Changing "Punk" Band
Reading this as an interested outsider rather than a committed AC/DC fan, I wanted an answer to the question on the back cover blurb: "Why does HIGHWAY TO HELL matter to anyone beyond non-ironic teenagers?"
I'm not sure that question can really be answered. A classic album of loud, headbanging songs about rough sex and the pursuit of more of the same doesn't stand up to deep analysis, and why should it? It's music for the body, not the mind, and it can be performed and recorded well or badly. The energy and sincerity of this music was caught live in the studio by an engineer and producer who knew enough to get out of the band's way and let them rock out, and that it turned out to be singer Bon Scott's drunken last will and testament is one of the ironies of pop art.
Writer Joe Bonomo does an excellent job of analyzing these tracks, arguing for what works (or doesn't) for him, and goes on to muse on some telling photographs of the band in their up-and-coming years, and to ask for his high school friends' recollections of this music, and what it means to them now. He has little use for AC/DC's records with Brian Johnson as the frontman; Bon Scott's perpetual adolescence, however damaging, was both genuine and irreplaceable.
[Note: AC/DC has just released POWER UP, their first new album since the death of rhythm guitarist/co-founder Malcolm Young in 2017.]
MILES DAVIS'S BITCHES BREW by George Grella
So Who Needs Swing?
BITCHES BREW is called a fusion record, but a fusion of what? It's played by top-drawer jazz musicians who aren't even trying to swing; it's full of electric instruments, but without anything resembling a rock beat. Author George Grella calls it a funk record, albeit a funk record informed by the avant-garde music of such European composers as Edgard Varèse and Krzysztof Penderecki. It's deep, danceable grooves layered with ear-stretching improvisations, an in-the-moment ritual music blatantly subjected to studio manipulation like any other pop record. No wonder so many listeners just didn't get it; there was no shortage of reactionaries content to label it anti-jazz and call it a day.
Grella asserts that the album's influence is "everywhere and nowhere," a hazy nod at the John Zorn-Talking Heads-Sonic Youth Downtown art scene, but what can you say about an album that doesn't sound like any other musical recording, and was a clear and unambiguous influence on only one band, Weather Report? This is an outstanding book in the 33 1/3 series: Grella packs an amazing amount of cultural, historical, and technical analysis into a little over a hundred pages, and will make you eager to listen to these six demanding, unsettling, and deeply funky musical collages all over again.
BOBBIE GENTRY'S ODE TO BILLIE JOE by Tara Murtha
"If you can't be free, be a mystery"
Bobbie Gentry tried on a lot of musical styles in her two-decade career, from Tiki lounge novelty act to sultry swamp rocker, from MOR duets with Glen Campbell to the musical theater-style production numbers of her final Capitol album. What it comes down to, though, is a four-and-a-half minute voice and guitar demo recording, sweetened with strings, that became the monster pop hit of the summer of 1967: "Ode to Billie Joe," the most mysterious of all teen suicide songs.
Gentry herself has remained a mystery since quietly fading from public life in the early 1980s. Journalist Tara Murtha certainly hasn't solved THAT puzzle -- that of a pop artist who now seems to care for little besides her privacy -- but she does give us the definitive book about the genesis, reception, and meanings of Bobbie Gentry's great story-song. The singer herself is a prismatic figure: a talented writer and performer, a hard-headed businesswoman, a pragmatic feminist who exploited her good looks, a Vegas headliner who could've earned the title "the hardest working woman in show business," if anyone had thought to give it to her. (Elvis was an enthusiastic fan of Gentry's rock 'em, sock 'em tribute shows to himself.)
Murtha grapples with the long-forgotten 1975 movie, "Ode to Billy Joe," whose frustrated screenwriter added a whole new layer to the story ("Now that I know why Billy Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge," began Roger Ebert's review, "I almost wish I didn't."). A fascinating book about a fascinating song, and in both of them, solving the mystery isn't really the point after all.
"Selected Ambient Works Vol 2" is more...aural paintings. Whilst it doesn't include vocals like "I Am Sitting in a Room" some of the pieces do sound similar in style to the second half of that recording. If you like artists such as Nurse with Wound, Brian Eno, Carbon Based Lifeforms, or perhaps Basinski's "The Disintegration Loops" then you might get something out of it.
It's not an easy album to get into, but I find it more rewarding with each listen...especially in a darkened room with headphones. On the surface each piece is a fairly simple looping pattern, but if you listen closely you gradually pick up slight variances and counter-rhythms that ebb in and out...
Plus you might have heard the first three tracks used as background music in countless documentaries and fan-games
Oh, and MAKE SURE you get a version that has "Track #19" aka "Stone in Focus". It's my favourite piece, but was left off CD issues for space reasons, though it's on SOME (but not all) digital downloads. It's 10:11 and should appear about half way through the second disc.