Emily's Albums A to Z

Listened: Thursday June 3

Fran and Andy are two guys from Travis, one of my favorite bands. Chronological Acoustical Journey is acoustic versions of their greatest hits, with assorted anecdotes told extremely endearingly by Fran. These include the horrors of a small Scottish man trying to rap, poor naming conventions of Scottish small towns, heterosexual man-crushes on Jake Gyllenhaal – the list goes on – all told with a very cute Scottish accent.

Through a scheduling cock-up (as a Scot might say) I missed the live tour when they came to town, so I’m glad they released this album, though the hilarity of it makes me even more sad I missed it!

Listened: Thursday June 3

Nico is an acquired taste. Someone I was sharing The Velvet Underground and Nico with said he was bothered by her voice too much to appreciate the album – he said it reminded him of a drag queen singing(!!). I was bummed out that someone didn’t like an album I happen to love, but I had to laugh.

Chelsea Girl is her first release, which heavily involved members of the Velvet Underground both lyrically and musically. Jackson Browne also wrote several songs on this album and participated musically as well. I love her version of Bob Dylan’s I’ll Keep It With Mine – a song he gave to her and never officially released himself.

It’s kind of a bizarro-world folk album. Which works with the Velvet Underground connection, since they were the bizarro-world rock band of their time.

Listened: Thursday June 3

I have no idea why I decided to include Chants of India in the project – it is a beautiful album, but it’s the antithesis of work music. My mind and body wanted to be doing yoga instead of working.

Listened: Wednesday June 2

Until I bought Catch A Fire, similar to Pink Floyd, I dismissed Bob Marley as music for stoners. Which, like Pink Floyd, is not entirely inaccurate. All the songs they used to play on Live 105 when I was in high school were the feel-good stoner party anthems you find on the “best of”.

This album totally turned me around. I bought it used, quite cheaply, because I remembered hearing tape of vintage Paul and Linda McCartney saying that they loved it, and though I assume they were probably also stoned at the time, I respect their musical taste. The deluxe version includes 2 versions of the album – the longer, less produced, unreleased Jamaican version and the commercially released version. Both have their merits.

Critically, it showed me the best Marley songs are the challenging unpleasant songs about struggle and the travesties of history. Concrete Jungle is my favorite Marley song – a gripping picture of someone living in gritty circumstances but striving and knowing there is something better out there for him. The driving bass and guitar work only increases the appeal. Oh, the love and party songs are here – Baby We’ve Got a Date, Stir it Up, Kinky Reggae – which are catchy and fun, but then I’ll get pulled into the absolute spookiness of a song like Midnight Ravers (“I see 10,000 chariots, and they’re coming without horses. The riders they cover their face, so you could not make them out in smokey place”). Is this fantasy? History? The present? I don’t know, but it conjures up a great image.

I’ve gone on to collect other Bob albums as they’ve been remastered in deluxe versions, and they’ve only deepened my opinion that the stoner fetishism image really doesn’t give Bob the credit he’s due musically and especially lyrically.

Listened: Wednesday June 2

OK, this is where I start cheating. I don’t actually have a real Cat Stevens best-of album. I’ve made my own out of songs I downloaded over the years. It includes: The Wind, Trouble, If You Want To Sing Out, Don’t Be Shy, Peace Train, Another Saturday Night, I Think I See The Light, I Wish, The First Cut Is The Deepest, Here Comes My Baby, Where Do The Children Play, Wild World, Miles From Nowhere, Tea For The Tillerman, and Morning Has Broken.

My love affair with Cat Stevens’ music began in high school when we watched Harold and Maude in AS English class. There are 7 or 8 of his songs in that movie and it just wouldn’t be the same without them (though it’s also a great movie on its own merits). The songs are so important, Cat is almost a character in the movie.

I think he’s one of the most underrated pop songwriters ever. No one realizes  he’s the one who wrote First Cut or Wild World! I haven’t heard any of his new music since he’s come back to releasing albums again, as Yusuf Islam. I should check them out and see if he’s still got it.

Listened: Wednesday June 2

The Carbon Bubble was a free download. If you aren’t familiar, Carbon/Silicon is Mick Jones and Tony James, two grizzled, seasoned punk rockers. The music is old school punk in tone. The lyrics are extremely liberal and political, which can sometimes be amusing (Don’t Taser Me Bro), but I think in 10 years people won’t get many of the references.

Listened: Wednesday June 2

Idlewild is one of my favorite bands – I’ve listened to them for years and still enjoy listening to them. Captain is their first album (really a mini-album), which I didn’t hear for a long time after becoming a fan, since it’s hard to find outside of the UK and it took some time to track down. I probably got it in college at Mod Lang or on eBay; I don’t remember at this point. It was one of those items I had to get my hands on for cred (same idea with most of the Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci catalog I own) – since it was so hard to get, having it meant you worked for it because you cared THAT much about being a completist! Does anyone in the music world even do that anymore?

This being said, I haven’t listened to it much – it’s really hard-sounding and messy compared to their later work, and Roddy Woomble (one of the most un-rock names ever) hasn’t found his voice yet. I can hear the beginnings of their later style that I love so much, but it’s hard to hear over the shredding guitars. It was nice to go back and revisit my shock upon hearing it for the first time!

Listened: Wednesday June 2

I love how much I’m learning because of this project. Apparently “bwyd” means food in Welsh. I had never bothered to look it up before.

As you can see from the cover, Bwyd Time is more acidhead craziness from early in GZM’s career. There are a couple of nice instrumentals on this album (they set the mood of spooky ancient Wales pretty well) and one of my favorite GZM songs, “Iechyd Da” which means “Cheers!” Definitely this album veers into Pink Floyd/Lord of the Rings territory a bit – there’s a bunch of fantastical spoken word creepiness/storytelling on a couple of tracks.

My big complaint  is that they have the worst-sounding synthesized drums on this album. Methinks this was too early for them to have a proper drummer or drumkit. But luckily it follows that since drums aren’t big priority to them at this point, you don’t hear them too often or too far in front of the mix.

Listened: Tuesday June 1

Modest Mouse is another touchstone band in my life.  Building Nothing Out Of Something is their album of “castoffs” – vinyl singles, B-sides, and rarities.

This band has some of the best “castoffs” I have ever heard.

All these songs are amazing and so much fun to sing along with. Modest Mouse has a tendency to write really long songs, but somehow they make them seem short and you never want them to end, especially on this album. Interstate 8, Broke, Grey Ice Water, Sleepwalking, and Other People’s Lives are in my top songs of all time list.

Isaac Brock loves his driving metaphors and they abound here – Interstate 8 is about a freeway in the shape of the number 8. The music in Broke is beautiful, plus “Sometimes I’m so full of shit it should be a crime” is a great lyric. Ditto “Other people’s lives are more interesting cos they ain’t mine” – one of my mottoes in life.

Listened: Tuesday June 1

Buddy Holly is ear crack. You can’t get his songs out of your head. The influence he had on the Beatles is also immediately clear. My favorite song of his is Rave On, mostly because of its use in Pleasantville as the song that busts everyone out of their stupor, as a good rock song should.

I recently learned from Radiolab what a cry break is – Buddy Holly is one of the rare practitioners of this (sometimes to a ridiculous extreme) in pop music versus country music, where it normally occurs. In fact, I believe at heart Buddy is actually a country singer.

(Side note – from the same radio show I also learned who Ahmad Zahir is. I wish I could find his CDs in the US, but it seems difficult. Music fans should definitely give a listen to the show – you will learn something).