Melodica Watch May 2011

Annoying, unfairly discounted (man, instrument, respectively)

During my brief period of melodica-ownership, I noticed most people reacted to it as kind of a joke. Fair enough, I suppose; it’s got these silly little keys, and sounds kind of honky and funny. And given the way I played the melodica, it kind of was a joke.
    But the melodica in the right hands is a wonderful, dynamic little instrument. Sure you can’t tune it, but to banish it to “quirky for the sake of quirky” along with instruments like the moonshine jug or the timpani is only doing yourself a great disservice. I’m going to stop short of saying that a mutual love of the melodica brought reggae musicans and post-punk musicians together, resulting in the white-hot dubstep of today-- but that’s probably true if you’re willing to overlook things like chronology.

Four songs I’ve been listening to lately that prominently feature the melodica: 

1.    New Order—Love Vigilantes. from Low-Life
2.    Bob Marley- Sun Is Shining. from African Herbsman.
3.    Television Personalities—A Day in Heaven. from Mummy You’re Not Watching Me
4.    Gang of Four- 5.45. from Entertainment!

NOTE: GANG OF FOUR WAS CAUGHT BY SOUNDCLOUD AS COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. AS SUCH IT DOES NOT APPEAR ON THIS MIX. MY BAD. SORRY, GANG OF FOUR
Melodica Watch 5/31 by benj

Love at 33 1/3 RPM: A 25 year old’s love letter to an archaic medium

At the risk of confirming everyone’s suspicions that millennial are all waxing nostalgic for a time we didn’t know—we’re getting used to baby boomers projecting all of their self-loathing on us—I’d like to explain why we millennials pretty much only pay for music when it comes on vinyl—a format that arguably was surpassed before we were born.

For those who don’t know, the LP is still marching along, the musical format that refuses to die. In 2010, vinyl sales were up 26 percent. Contrast that to CDs, which fell 21 percent, and the music industry saving-digital download sales that crept up just 2.1 percent. Records are becoming so mainstream that the counter-culture has revived cassettes.
Some of this can probably be attributed to retro-pastiche. Vintage turntables and dusty LPs, like books on a shelf, have looked natural and attractive in the American home since the ‘40s.

But surely there’s more to it than that. People are fanatics about their records. There’s an entire “Record Store Day,” that—in Chicago anyway—saw droves of young dudes (of every age and gender) flipping through crates. Stores with names like “The Dusty Groove” were packed. People were squeezing through aisles, even as outside the freezing rain made a compelling case for downloading. Why?

There’s an obvious and less-obvious appeal. Let’s start with the obvious: Records just sound better than mp3s.

For all the popping and crackling, records can be cleaned. The mp3’s damage is inherent in the design. I’ll admit there’s a really complex way of explaining how an mp3 is made, and then there’s this one. It’s reductive and without nuance, but as you’ll see, this is how mp3s are made. It’s appropriate to the format.

The mp3 caught on because unlike older digital music formats (.wav’s for example), the mp3 takes up very little hard drive space. The nature of creating an mp3, or AAC or any other “lossy” format causes certain sound frequencies to be eliminated. The AAC, Apple’s default format, is especially sharp at eliminating frequencies that are outside of the hearable spectrum, or being covered by another instrument like a heavy bass, anyway. In theory, everything you would hear should be there. It’s not as wide of a spectrum of sound, but if you’re listening to music via earbuds on the subway, the difference is probably negligible.

Additionally, as the audio is encoded, a decision has to be made as to how detailed the digital representation of the audio wave will be; this is where “kbps” is introduced. Think of it visually if it helps: How many pictures of this horse running do you want to take per second, to recreate the visual experience of seeing it run? Think of the choppiness of not having enough frames per second. If you’re a really visual person, draw a sound wave rising and falling (go ahead, I’ll wait). Now draw a staircase going up (and down) the wave. This is the digital version of the sound wave.  Note the corners. Note how right angles are just so much less.... organic. To be fair, good mp3s should have around 320 bits per second (contrasted with the typical Hollywood which has only 24 frames per second). It’s a clever way to get a lot of music on a small hard drive. So what are we missing?

To test just what differences these compressions and eliminations might make, I devoted an entire afternoon to comparing the sound quality of an album.  I opted for Blood Sweat & Tears’s 1968 debut album Child Is Father to the Man because I thought its diverse musical styling—orchestral overtures, ‘60s pop, folk, R&B, jazz—would provide a broader scope for comparing formats. Also I had found a cheap copy at the record store, and hadn’t really had a chance to sit down and listen to it.

The experiment, which took place on a cold drizzling Sunday, was so indulgent and enjoyable that I’d recommend everyone buy a turntable just for conducting it. I sat down and listened to each track twice through the same stereo—once off my laptop at 256 kbps, and once off my turntable—alternating which format played first.
From a sound standpoint the difference is definitely noticeable. The organ especially, here played by Al Kooper of “Like a Rolling Stone” fame, has a full, thick, angelic quality on vinyl. On the computer the same organ parts are present but sound much smaller and airier. Via LP, the bass parts are much more textured, almost purring on the record. The cymbal splashes from the drum kit sound light, never shrill. Overall everything sounded much more realistic. Instruments were easier to distinguish on vinyl: I could hear the long decay of hits on the vibraphone, which on the digital recording I thought was a Rhodes piano; for the first time in my life I thought “What a fine lute part this song has!” Your ear may not hear the frequencies that are present, but they still make a difference in how everything sounds.
In a direct comparison, the mp3 sounds fine but not as good. Audiophiles will argue that I stacked the deck by using a “lossy” format. Yeah, I could’ve found some FLAC files, which preserve CD quality, but are thus immense. And perhaps in technology’s forward march, they will figure out how to preserve the highest quality recording but find a manageable way for you to listen to it portably and conveniently. It seems for the time being, “cloud streaming” is two steps back, but if consumers decide they want higher quality, I’m sure someone will figure out how to sell it to them.
Apart from my slight audiophile tendencies (okay, full-blown epidemic audiophilia) there’s something else about vinyl records. The less-than-obvious advantage.  

Child Is Father to the Man has some of the most amazing production I’ve ever heard—really exciting horn parts, big apocalyptic choirs, lead vocals oscillating through a spinning Leslie speaker, just a whole album of interesting and cool choices. I don’t usually evaluate albums based off of these merits, and this brings me to perhaps vinyl’s most enduring strength.

I sat listening with my notebook in hand and the record jacket next to me. In between notes (usually on the second consecutive listen of a song) I read the back of the jacket. The cover of Child Is Father to the Man is silly and kind of disturbing (each band member is next to a child with said band member’s head imposed on the little shoulders. Each one is creepy in a unique way). At one point in the fourth track, “My Days Are Numbered,” a big Revolver-style backwards guitar solo just rips in. It’s a great moment, which the jacket credits it to Ztak Evets. Immediately I wanted to figure out what else this Dutch guitar master had done, but my computer was of course in use, so I contented myself with noting to look it up later.
In the past that moment—that whoa—would’ve been the jumping off point, and I wouldn’t have finished the album. I would’ve been off on a wild Google, YouTube, iTunes hunt, trying to consume another musician or style I didn’t know, rather than actually listening to music at all. In this case I probably would’ve gone back to Blood Sweat & Tears after realizing that Ztak Evets doesn’t exist, it’s just the BS&T guitarist Steve Katz, spelled and played backwards. Nevertheless, an mp3 is easily turned on, and easily turned off.
The limitations of vinyl—its lack of portability, its dependence on the user to flip it every 25 minutes or so, the fact that record players can’t go online—all serve to create a space for music.

The mp3 player and the computerized music library allow you to have music going all the time; this is their strength. You can come home with your earbuds in, slam the iPod onto the iPod dock and hear only the slightest interruption. Everything we do can be soundtracked, and that’s cool! Rather than walking up the street to the sound of cars and traffic, I can walk up the street listening to The Cars and Traffic. With the slightest movement of my fingertips I can get more, put more on, play it in any order I want, even repeat one song infinitely (That “Play One Song Forever” button has been on every version of iTunes since the beginning, and I can’t for the life of me imagine why).

But vinyl won’t go for a walk. It sits in my living room, in a specific place, sort of set apart. When shopping for records, I can curate to a specific room. There’s a whole ritual of taking the jacket out of the dust cover, the sleeve out of the jacket, and the LP—carefully!—from the sleeve, lining up the hole, and moving the needle in place. Calling these actions holy or liturgical in some way is overstating it, but it is an act of reverence. It takes away the everydayness (or every-momentness?) of now-ubiquitous recorded music and reminds you that it’s a privilege, a treat. Creating a space for music, giving it attention. It is (a lesser form of) the difference between a poster of a Van Goghon your wall—novel at first, and eventually peripheral—and going to see “The Old Guitarist” in a museum.  You prepare yourself to let the art in. It sounds over the top, and yeah, it kind of is.

Think of it like the slow-food movement: vinyl lovers are enjoying music’s ritual, and quality—all served up on a platter. All of this is possible with digital music, sure. Of course, airplanes could just be driven around on the highway. Just as the merits of paintings, aside from being just “a permanent record,” became clear with the birth of photography, the merits of vinyl in an mp3 world are only now coming in clear. Warm, punchy, and clear.  

Music for watching snow fall in March

Soon and very soon.

Self Truth on the Play Count

Ben's Favorite Beatles Songs Based on iPod Play Count

1. Here Comes the Sun (George)
2. Across the Universe (John)
3. Carry That Weight (Paul)
4. Sun King (John?)
5. Why Don't We Do it in the Road (Paul)

Why: My iPod is full and I was trying to decide what I could live without so I could get this Serge Gainsbourg psychedelic anthology on there. But also, I never know what my favorite anything is. Here's a way of finding my favorites over 3 or 4 years or however long I've had this iPod.
Method: Organizing songs based off play count, and typing in various artists, or just scrolling and seeing which albums are all up in 20s, which artists I don't think of myself as liking that much but go to pretty frequently (I guess I like Simon and Garfunkel), which are only on there for sentimental but not listening reasons (Radiohead, especially Hail to the Thief to the present.), etc.
Critique of Method: Obviously a million different factors play into what songs you play on your iPod (I own the White Album on vinyl, but not Abbey Road or Let it Be, making my affection for Why Don't We.. all the more puzzling and suspicious), but it's an interesting test of which songs you're drawn to, even unconsciously, as you listen to music around town. My affection for Paul, while often difficult to defend, comes through pretty earnestly in a scan of the top 10. The highest Ringo song is "Don't Pass Me By" at 16th most played.

Skip All the Lou's: Part II, The Mask of Blue

Which is what brought me to The Blue Mask- often regarded as one of Lou Reed’s best solo albums, what he should have made in 1972, instead of Transformer (which isn’t terrible). It seems like taking Lou Reed solo albums as whole entities is a disappointing and embarrassing endeavor, so let’s go song by song and see if we can find more Lou Reed Greatness.

The Blue Mask: A quest for Greatness
1. My House-
a. Arrangement: Bass is a little cheesy, but the build at the end is cool.
b. Worst Lyric: “I've really got a lucky life
my writing, my motorcycle and my wife
And to top it all off a spirit of pure poetry
is living in this stone and wood house with me” Ugh. Wow. That first part of the verse sounds like someone’s overly earnest dad, which would be bad, but becomes unforgivable with his spirit of pure poetry shit.
c. Overall: Well, the build and repetition of “Our house is very beautiful at night” is pretty good. Can it overlook Lou Reed getting out the ouiji board and letting a spirit soar across the room? Maybe. And maybe this album isn’t so bad...

2. Women
a. Arrangement: These guitars are dripping in some lame effect, but their minimalism and chiming conversation is nice. The bass moans like it belongs in the background of the Little Mermaid’s Kiss the Girl though.
b. Worst Lyric: “A woman's love can lift you up,
and women can inspire
I feel like buying flowers and
hiring a celestial choir”
c. Overall: That worst lyric only won by a hair. The whole thing is embarrassing and terrible. A stanza about how Lou Reed used to look at women in magazines when he was in his teens. Maybe the worst Lou Reed song. Maybe the world’s worst song. My opitimisim takes a hit.

3. Under the Bottle
a. Arrangement: Kind of a bar band-lite. Does he need to borrow a distortion pedal?
b. Worst Lyric: Ooh woo weee son of a b.
c. Overall: Something about the concise quality of this song (and being next to the black hole of “Women”) make it seem okay. It’s forgettable, like bad radio rock. And it’s neatly composed if a little lazy. Not about to join “Heroin” in the substance abuse pantheon of rock and roll.

4. The Gun
a. Arrangement: Cool. The guitars are reminiscent of Galaxie 500, the bass is out of the way. Good groove all the way through.
b. Worst Lyric: This one’s got some of Lou’s good economical writing. I won’t pick out a lyric. I love when he says “I wouldn’t want you to miss a second.”
c. Overall: Yeah, alright. It doesn’t really go anywhere, but hey, neither do debates about the right to bear arms. Let’s keep going, with hope.

5. The Blue Mask
a. Arrangement: Sweet! It’s a little cheesy, but there’s a whole minute and a half of guitars squealing and stuff at beginning.
b. Worst Lyric: I’m not going to nit-pick. The delivery of muscle-rock isn’t the cool I go to Lou for, but this song is sweet and at this point I’m not complaining.
c. Overall: Yes! Yes! This has a sick ending. I’m on board, taking from the Station to Station playbook never paid off so well.

6. Average Guy
a. Arrangement: The distortion pedals are glowing, and even though this progression is nothing new (most of Coney Island Baby comes to mind), it’s still got a Bowie sheen that keeps it from veering into forgetablitly.
b. Worst Lyric: Um. So the whole thing is a little... inconsequential. Let’s go with “I worry about my health and bowels”
c. Overall: Things are taking a turn. This is about on par with Under the Bottle, in that it’s traditional grounding keeps it from being too hateful or likeable.

7. The Heroine
a. Arrangement: Just a great sounding electric guitar and vocals.
b. Interpretation: Um, so the love of a good woman will keep you together?
c. Overall: Another in the catalog of forgettable attempts at love songs I think. Something about the plaintive melody gets undercut by the repetition and overt self-seriousness.

8. Waves of Fear
a. Arrangement: Awesome. The ending is sweet. Two stallions trading leads and rhythm. Thundering along. Well done everyone. The bass is given something constructive to do as opposed to just ruining everything like it did for the first half of the album.
b. Best Lyric: “I curse at my tremors I jump at my own step!” The mic is maxing out and stuff. The whole part is awesome. And bizarre. Also “What’s that on the floor?”
c. Overall: This song is the most triumphant tribute to freaking out I’ve ever heard. I love it, and it makes no sense. Why is this song about being afraid of everything around you? Drugs, I would assume. Anyway, for what it is, with a skidding shuddering left channel guitar making the case, it’s more than passable. It’s funny though.

9. The Day John Kennedy Died
a. Arrangement: Ugh, the world’s most annoying bass sound is back to rule the middle of your mind. And who’s the lady back-up singer in here. Like these little cymbals clipping along though.
b. Baby Boomer Unbearablitiy: Big Time. I understand this was a monumental event, but this song is more insult than homage.
c. Overall: If we’re to believe this moment meant that much to LR, then we’re allowed to wonder if there’s a better way to phrase it than “I dreamed that I could somehow comprehend that someone
shot him in the face.”

10. Heavenly Arms
a. Arrangement: Big and broad. Great melody. Perhaps the only Lou Reed song that could use more instrumentation.
b. Does the delivery live up to its ambition: Well, he says “Heavenly Arms” a lot. But the melody holds up where the writing’s weak. It’s a really pretty song.
c. Overall: A fitting send off to an album of songs with narrow and specific concepts, that, if broadened, could’ve been a lot better.

So, it’s not Loaded Part II, but it was unfair to expect that. Safe to say Mr. Reed doesn’t really know what he does best, and at this point thought furrow-brow seriousness and earnesty was the way to go. And for... like 3, maybe 4 songs the instruments do what his writing does erratically at best, and we’re with him. For the rest, it kind of feels like someone’s cleaned up former biker-dad bashing it out on a Friday in Rockford. And I guess that has a place.

Skip All the Lou's: A Quest for a Decent Solo Album pt. 1

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of Lou Reed to our musical landscape, and larger culture. Those Velvet Underground albums are the bedrock upon which the ideals of avant-garde rock were lovingly placed, and it would be hard to think of a worthwhile band (from, say, 1970 onward) that isn’t largely indebted to them. Just as Jonathan Richman predicted in 1970, in a way the Velvets have become as important as The Beatles. I have a simple test to prove this to be true: Name a year both bands released an album: Go ahead. 1967? Okay The Beatles- Sgt. Pepper’s. Whoa, hard to top right? Bam! Velvet Underground and Nico! How do you like them bananas? To even argue their importance seems redundant. Let’s move on.

The only real problem is that there are only those 4 VU albums (let’s disregard the Lou-Reedless and unavailable fifth album, as I haven’t heard it, and this is mostly about Lou Reed). Where does one go after she or he has shredded with the Black Angel, eagerly waited with Waldo in the box, closed the door, and watched that train go ‘round the bend? I, myself, will still have periods where I’ll listen to one of these albums, and even though I’ve heard it many times, I’m still impressed, I still enjoy it. But there’s less than 40 songs.

Here is the interesting thing about both the VU and The Beatles. After you’ve really listened to their canons, and really made them something you know, you should probably switch to listening to Bowie. He’ll safely get you through to the 80’s and then it’s time for American Indie to come and save your bloated soul. I know there are solo albums from all of these songwriters (hell, both Moe Tucker and Ringo Starr have albums. God help us all), but I’m increasingly convinced that try as you may, the solo albums merely tarnish the image of the songwriter, especially the further you get from their seminal band.

And for no one is this more true than Lou Reed (well maybe George, certainly Paul, and of course John...well Lou Reed for now). Listening to his solo work turns him from brilliant writer, to likely idiot savant, who merely was around an era we now think is awesome, and happened to write shit down, probably on accident. The arrangements, which seemed so sweet as dark and shrill, all turn into Las Vegas schmaltz with such a swiftness and consistency you can’t help but wonder if maybe Sterling Morrison doesn’t get enough credit (this suspicion is confirmed if you ever hear John Cale’s Paris 1919).

But there are still green shoots. One gives up on Lou Reed only to hear “Walk on the Wild Side,” “Street Hassle” and “Berlin” and wonder if maybe there’s still more Reed-brilliance out there. And you want to believe! You want your mind blown again! You want a brilliant beat-poet-avant-garde-leather-rock-hero! Of course you do! We all do!

Coming Soon! A track by track break down of The Blue Mask, an album that is known as the heir to the Velvet's sound!

A Review of Reviews of Bitte Orca, and Kind of A Review Too.

By now the merits of Bitte Orca have been expounded at length: Dave Longstreth is really brilliant, and this album is so sweet.
Of course it’s shortcomings are also flushed out and rationally articulated: That guy’s voice sucks.
I would like to first point out that neither of these opinions have anything to do with my own opinion on the Dirty Projectors, but rather what I have culled from reading the Pitchfork review, the Stereogum review, and the comments after the Stereogum article titled “Wait is Bitte Orca the Best Album of 2009?” (My personal response was “Wait, Is that The Worst Headline of 2009?”)
Then I would like to note that the praise of this album as previously stated still begs the question of why he is brilliant. The answer seems to be that he makes concept albums. No, no, not like Tommy, like, art-rock concept records. Dude’s got one about Don Henely. Wild right? Like how I just said “Dude”? Not an article to be seen. Street.
The detractors actually engage the music a little more, but kind of also miss the mark. Dave Longstreth has a really good voice by indie rock standards, he just seems either incapable, or more likely just uninterested in writing an actual melody (In my worse moments I think, Christ does he even plan? Has he ever sang a song the same way twice?). But his voice is fine, the best description is that he’s not Bjork, and someone needs to remind him. His guitar lines are also given to this proclivity. He’s a completely atonal shredder. Is this any more or less impressive than someone who creates more linear lines? For the moment let’s allow it.
Here’s where the real divide comes: if it’s art rock, all sins of atonality are forgiven. If it’s held to any other standard, Dave Longstreth probably needs fewer people to say that he’s brilliant, because what he actually is is unfocused. And yeah, the unfocused occasionally produce a DaVinci, but more often they give us golden retrievers. Here is where I propose that all music is art, and to call something “Art rock” tells us nothing about a music other than “You’re not going to like it the first [couple] times you hear it,” and this album is praised as being the DP’s most immediately likeable album, so you know, the statement’s kind of vacuous. As long as you accept that good music takes attention, and music should give back what you put in, the title “Art rock” should be written off as an insult, saying that the album in question is deficient in the category of “First Impressions.” It’s a shallow category, one that has more to do with someone’s mood, and even more to do with what they’re used to.
Music criticism most often seems to follow the formula of “back story, then comparison,” (except in the golden age of Pitchfork when it was more like “Personal anecdote + virtuosic string of contemptuous statements”), and to a degree I’ve gotten used to that, and can interpret fairly well what’s going on from this formula. But the reviews of the Dirty Projector’s new album were especially deficient. Can I for a moment try my own hand at reviewing?

Good effort, but the lack of [a linear] melody, in both the vocals and guitar lines amount to even the cathartic moments still being kind of tense. I think ideas here drag on a little too long, and that the instrumentation is only surprising in how little it surprises. So if you want a fun record, it’s occasionally kind of fun, and if you want to challenge your assumptions of rock music, this is about on par with the Red Eye’s crossword.

I'm rooting for them though. B minus. I know you can do better.