Flipping This Quarter

Release Date: March 1971
Date I Got: 26 March 2005
Best Track: Debris
Other Notable Tracks: Stay With Me, Miss Judy’s Farm, That’s All You Need, Memphis

Historicity, I believe, is a key component in determining "good" music. This makes new music reviews exercises in prognostication, guesses at the direction of popular and not-so-popular trends. It’s much easy to write and think and deal with a thirty-six year old album than a six month old one. Writing and thinking and approaching, say, The Beatles or The Eagles, carries a certain amount of baggage, but you know where they stand in history. So, you don’t like the Beatles, but it hardly changes the fact that they’re the predicate for a whole bunch of modern music.

Historicity cuts both ways. Time has that habit if cutting and discarding the chaff as being unimportant or unnecessary. Today’s second-tier band is still worth listening to, but will that be true for my kids? Is a second-tier band from my parents’ generation worth spending time with? Not all that is cut away is bad, but not every hidden gem shines.

I am assuming Faces–and early Rod Stewart in general–to be second-tier, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fuckin’ amazing, because it is. My point is this: age doesn’t make a whole lot of things better and music isn’t one of them.

But whatever. If I’d been around with this came out, it’d probably be counted among my favorites. Even so, I do have friends that count it as such. I find it hard to really get into this album despite how great it is. I think age has a lot to do with it. It’s an album that has, if you will, potential contextual energy while a lot of newer music (and the great old stuff) has more of a kinetic contextual energy. What I mean is: no one cites Faces or Rod Stewart as influence. Maybe this is sad–I’m willing to hear arguments–but it doesn’t worry me all that much.

This is the only Faces/Rod Stewart I have, which probably is sad. If you’re looking to get into it, this is a great start, as every track is excellent. The production isn’t great, but that’s a personal issue I have with a lot of late 60’s/early 70’s rock albums.

Still, I’m not going to crank this in order to enlighten the neighbors as I do some other music.

Addition: You really have to love youtube. Watch both of these live versions, then tell me I’m wrong about all the above, because I am. Right now I’m adding "Seeing a Faces Show" to the list of things I’m going to do when I build a time machine. Were the 70’s really this fun?

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[Live - Stay With Me] [Live - Miss Judy’s Farm] [Live - Memphis]

Release Date: 8 December 1976
Date I Got: 2 August 2007
Best Track: Hotel California
Other Notable Tracks: Wasted Time, The Last Resort

What’s the best way to approach the Eagles?

Being an artist my parents liked, I grew up with the Eagles, but they don’t carry the same nostalgic level as, say, Billy Joel. They’re not an artist I identify childhood with.

And the critical consensus, it seems, regulates the Eagles to secondary status in music history — if even that high. Chuck Klostermann once wrote an essay where he argued that Billy Joel is "cool" precisely because he is so "uncool." I don’t see anyone making the same argument about the Eagles.

So here it is: coming at the Eagles from a familiarity, but not of fondness; from critical indifference, but not hostility: from thirty years after the fact, on the bad side of the 80’s which always messes everything up.

I say this about most artists that have achieved a place in the public consciousness, but it’s nonetheless true: the Eagles are better than you thought and not as good as you think.

What I mean is, like all the other artists of their stature, the Eagles are revered at a level beyond what they deserve. And through whatever machinations the indie kids use to critique they have decided there’s nothing of value to be found here. They are wrong.

The reason I point all this out is simply to say that it’s difficult to come at the Eagles without some sort of baggage, be it positive or negative. It’s partly for this reasons that I find the best tracks on this album are the non-hits.

Sure, everyone knows "Life in the Fast Lane" and "New Kid in Town" and "Victim of Love" and they’re okay, you can sing along with them while cruising down the interstate. But for whatever reason–I chalk it up to the baggage, but I’m probably wrong–they aren’t the best tracks. Maybe it’s because, being hits, they are indelibly tied to a time period, but they don’t sound as vibrant as they probably should. Age has got a hold of them, though I do kinda dig the semi- proto-metal of the verses for "Victim of Love."

What that leaves us with, then, are a few pretty great tracks: "Wasted Time" is the ballad the Eagles should be known for. One of the more delicate pieces, it’s almost on almost-on-the-edge; there are times where you can hear it almost break apart in some sort of emotional catharsis. It never quite reaches that point, but it’s the closest Glen Frey (I think it’s Glen Frey) ever got to convincing me he knows what he’s talking about.

"The Last Resort" is over-the-top in a hippie sort of way, but it’s cool (maybe because it’s so uncool?). I mean, the pity and anger mix we get by the "Jesus, people bought ‘em" line, is something to admire. Rock Stars have all the answers, but some things even they just can’t understand: "They called it paradise…I don’t know why."

But yet, the reason this album appears on top-100 lists is not for any of the above reasons or songs. It’s because of the title track, which is indisputably the Eagles best track, if not one of the best mainstream tracks from the 70’s. I’m not going to get too much into it because it’s been gotten into too much as it is. I’ll just say that I love the feeling the song gives off, portraying the lethargy of resignation towards things outside of your control. It’s a different sort of tension, one that doesn’t really provide much angst, just a sense of: yeah, that’s how it’s got to be.

Ask me tomorrow, though, and I’ll tell you something different. That’s why it’s great.

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Release Date: 25 March 2003
Date I Got:  26 June 2003
Best Track: Ladies Man
Other Notable Tracks: Rock and Roll Motherf****r, Get Loose

Why, given the relatively easy access to the classics would you choose to listen to a band that is derivative musically and adds nothing lyrically? For this reason, I lump The D4 into the same category as The Hives, The Vines, The Strokes and maybe even The White Stripes (though not to the same extent). Simply put, everything I may like about this album I can get–and get it better–from the Stooges.

I got this album at the same time as the Trail of Dead album, but I think I listened to this one maybe twice, and not once in the last 4 years. I made a mixed CD that summer of the new stuff I was getting and I included Ladies Man. That’s about the only lasting contribution this album had made to my life.

But some people like the Hives, and somebody must have liked this album to release it in the States (The D4 are from New Zealand). I’d like to believe that those who love this just don’t know their music history. It’s not that this is bad, just that it doesn’t give or tell us anything new.

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[Video - Get Loose]
[Video - Party]

Release Date: 24 July 2001 (Columbia)
Date I Got: 27 September 2007
Best Track: Short Skirt, Long Jacket
Other Notable Tracks: Shadow Stabbing, Commissioning a Symphony in C, Long Line of Cars

I can’t be sure, but I think this is the first album I ever "professionally" reviewed. I had friends throughout college that held editor positions on the campus newspaper, so I wrote a few music reviews and a few movie reviews and, later, op-eds about campus life. If you think my music writing is insufferable and long-winded and whatever else, you should see those op-eds that no one read. (Those that I know did, though, liked or at least respected it. Alas.)

So this, I think, was the first music review I did. I have no idea what I said, but I think I didn’t care for it all that much, finding it mostly mediocre. Which is essentially how I feel about it now.

In a lot of respects it is better than Fashion Nugget. The lyrics are not as memorable, though they are not as determinedly ironic, so I’m okay with it. The music is stronger overall, but not as good as on The Distance. Musically, Commissioning a Symphony in C is the best track, creating a nice little chord progression with some staccato strumming. The words leave a lot to be desired.

Long Line of Cars is this album’s "Stickshifts": another song that has the potential to actually say something worthwhile, but falls short.

But Cake lives and dies by the catchiness of their tunes. Consider the first single: Short Skirt, Long Jacket –  easily the catchiest of the bunch. It’s a simple song in which the singer tells us the traits he desires in women, beginning many of the lines with "I want a girl with…" I love this rhetorical device; it’s an effective formulation that allows self-containment and easy internal comparisons within the song which build on all the other comparisons. In other words: by writing the song this way we can easily contrast the different traits he wants to gain some complexity and insight into the human condition.

That said, it doesn’t fully work, but works well enough. Additionally, it’s hard to argue with his perfect woman. Really, I think it’s a song about making the transition from "high-school girlfriend" to "real-life girlfriend;" having a relationship that is reflective of a growth in, well, maturity. There’s also, I think, an undercurrent of ruthlessness which, if you sort of maybe have a crush on the Lady Macbeth types, you understand. Now I’ve said too much.

Check out the video (linked below): like much of Cake’s music, I like the idea, but it doesn’t completely succeed.

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[Video - Short Skirt, Long Jacket]

—–
BONUS COVERAGE!!! Sheep Go to Heaven

Prolonging the Magic came out in between this album and Fashion Nugget. I’m surprised I don’t hav it, as it contains easily my favorite Cake song: Sheep Go To Heaven.

The song came out when I was in high school, and that’s probably why I loved it: going to a high school in a very politically and religiously conservative area when you are neither makes…actually, it would take to long to recount why I hate my hometown so much (and I’m spending Christmas there! Yippee!) so I’m not going to try. Goats go to hell.

Nonetheless. I’m down with any indictment of conformity (given the appropriate context and actions, etc.) The video (linked below) puts a finer point on this despite its South Park-esque animation. It’s pretty great and includes a murderous rampage as an extension of existential angst (Camus? Camus?), dude being cast from Heaven for ill-timed jumping jacks, and a dog committing suicide. Best part, though, is the jury of his "peers" telling him to Go to Hell.

[Video - Sheep Go to Heaven]

Release Date: 17 September 1996 (Capricorn)
Date I Got: Summer 1999
Best Track: The Distance
Other Notable Tracks: Nugget, Stickshifts and Safteybelts

You know "The Distance" just as everyone knows "The Distance." It came out about the time I got into popular music, though I don’t have the memory of hearing it on the radio the way I do with other songs of those months. I liked the song well enough and eventually picked up the album used for cheap.

Although, I gotta say: listening to it again for the first time in a couple years, I’m at a loss as to why it got big. The insistent baseline and story of single-minded determination are good, but the song feels like it lacks a foundation. It is a novelty song.

And it would be on a novelty album, if the other tracks were catchy enough to be memorable. The songwriting isn’t strong enough to support the "cleverness." The two almost exceptions, not including "The Distance", are "Nugget" and "Stickshifts and Safetybelts."

The latter doesn’t fully succeed because it’s still too tongue-in-cheek, but it’s pretty decent lyrically and the jaunty guitar work doesn’t detract. In the hands of a better (by that I mean: more earnest) artist, it would take a trivial disconnect — lovers isolated in personal bucketseats — and make it into a lament on the barriers technology erects to discourage human bonding. I give points for trying.

"Nugget" is a different beast. The copious uses of "fuck" seem out of place on an album that is, more or less, kid friendly. Indeed, while I’d like to claim that I liked this song back in high school because of it’s funk-like rhythm, it’s really because the chorus is: "Shut the Fuck Up!" (I’m no better than you.) I think it’s aged better than the other tracks, partly because the universal and timeless sentiment, and partly because it makes no sense:

Heads of state who ride and wrangle
Who look at your face from more than one angle
Can cut you from their bloated budgets
Like sharpening knifes, two Chicken McNuggets
Shut the fuck up.

Indeed.

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Release Date: 24 October 2000 (Sony)
Date I Got: December 2000
Best Track: 2129
Other Notable Tracks: Wade Into the Water, Too Sick to Pray, Sinking…

My misgivings about the previous album concerning A3’s earnestness (or lack thereof) are less valid on this release. The humour is less overt and the satire–if it is indeed satire–is less severe. It is darker because of a diminishing of levity, as if the title and album cover didn’t give it away. Though it has nothing that hits like "Woke Up", this is the better of the two albums.

I didn’t like the album on first listen. I bought it shortly after my conversion to the way of the music geek. For a couple of months there I bought one of those New Music Magazines that came with a free sampler. One included "Too Sick to Pray." I liked it well enough to take a chance on the album. I don’t think I listened to it again for six months.

What brought me back to it I don’t know. But I’m glad it happened, and I ended up with quite a fondness for it. It’s not perfect by any stretch; it’s not an album I would expect anyone else to like it like I like it. There are a few tracks here that I think are great.

"Wade Into The Water" is one of the few tracks that let up on the darkness, though there’s still a touch of uneasiness about it–perhaps it just seems from context–but an uneasiness that you can dance away. It’s about something like salvation-as-love or love-as-salvation (and I always get those confused). A sample lyric:

We got brighter than Heaven
And, oh lord, we shown like the stars
I got us drunk as Bogart
You were smokin’ like Bacall

It’s not my favorite track, though. And neither is "Sinking…", the closer. My British poetry knowledge is rusty, but it seems to be aping from "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." I could look it up, but so could you and I’m pretty lazy. But yeah: a ship cursed due to a downed albatross, ship crashes, the usual. It really doesn’t seem that out of place with songs about cocaine and fires and Bad Stuff. But I’m a sucker for themes of salvation and damnation and redemption, and the song’s second half shifts into a major key and provides all three:

Just as we started sinking
The harbor lights came on
Arms of angels carried us
From the rocks that we broke upon
Swam into still water
The band began to play
I heard again that sweet refrain,
Oh Lord the Happy Day:

It’s Gonna be…alright

The best track is "2129." It walks the line the previous album tried but failed: it’s not "funny" or "satiric" or anything the that album is, but it does take effort to stay in the music. What I mean is: the song’s lyrics almost challenge you to willfully abandon any attempt to parse them, primarily via copious name-checking and a response of "Hey I know who that it!". Those include (but not limited too) Jesus, John Lennon, Robert Johnson, Judas, Mary, Sgt. Pepper, JFK, and the album’s only mention of Lenin (or maybe it’s another Lennon?). The songwriting here–and by this I mean the music and the sound of words, primarily, though the words are still pretty interesting–overcomes this limitation. Even this isn’t entirely accurate. The interplay and challenge between these elements allows for a greater song than it would otherwise be.

And in 2129 I’m going to meet you in a cantina in Carleta
I’m gonna put Bessie Smith on the Jukebox all night long
When the Spanish sun comes up on our empty cups
I’m gonna take you dancing deep down into the dawn
One bright morning when we meet St. Peter
I ain’t gonna give a damn if he don’t let us in

Or maybe I’m just a damned romantic.

—–
Related: Alabama 3 - Exile on Coldharbour Lane

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[Video - Too Sick to Pray]

Release Date: 26 February 2002 (Interscope)
Date I Got: 26 June 2003
Best Track: Source Tags and Codes
Other Notable Tracks: Another Morning Stoner, How Near How Far

Summer 2003. Living in an antiseptic nearly-new campus apartment. We didn’t pay utilities so kept the temperature absurdly cold: I wore socks all summer. No one would visit. I’d enter a room and close the blinds. My roommate would enter and open them. Three months of this.

I spent a lot of time that summer listening to Source Tags & Codes. I picked it up in a trade. I liked it right off, thought it was pretty good. I read Pitchfork’s review (linked below) and agreed with most of it, but was surprised at the 10.0 rating. This, being relatively early in my music geekdom, led me to many re-listenings in attempt to hear what the reviewer heard.

I don’t quibble with the rating, but it’s not something I hear. I like the album–a lot, actually–but there is a disconnect between me and it. In an alternate time-travel induced world where I’m still more or less me, this could be my favorite album. If I heard it at a slightly different time in my life, it would still be in the constant rotation. It is a soundtrack to events I never participated in.

And that’s sad, and one of the reasons I wanted to undertake this project. It had been probably a year since I last listened. There are just too many good albums and albums that play a bigger part in my personal narrative that good albums like this can’t compete against.

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[Video - Another Morning Stoner]