#146: john lennon - crippled insisde (1971)
speaking of phil spector, i think i’d rather listen to the cokey, crispy, screamy, boozy solo albums he produced for john lennon in the 70s than some shiny happy beatles albums. and i’d rather listen to the last ten seconds of crippled inside than almost anything in the universe.
truly, the greatest thing in the world happened to me just now: tom wolfe phoned to talk about that interview i did with aby rosen (who basically called the writer an anti-semite). tangerine-flake streamline tom!! kool-aid pump-house bauhuas our hosue mauve glove mau-mauing wolfe!!
i told him that “the first tycoon of tean,” his essay on phil spector from 1964, is one of my all-time favorites. (it’s on my facebook profile, so, yeah, it must be true.) then he asked if he could tell me a phil spector story, and this is what came out of tom wolfe’s mouth and through the telephone and into my ear:
“we were having coffee or something to drink, i forget, at 2 a.m. at the plaza hotel. phil had this long hair, down to his shoulders—he’s a very strange looking guy—it’s, well, anyway, this was before longish hair was everywhere, it goes back. i could see at this table nearby, there were two couples, i remember, they were older people, at least in their 60s, they’d whisper at each other and look at phil and whisper at each other. finally this lady, tanked, comes over to phil and says, ‘alright, sonny, what’s your problem?’ and he said, ‘premature ejaculation, what’s yours?’ he didn’t bat an eye! he came back with it so fast.”
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes. then i told mr. wolfe about that amazing leonard cohen/phil spector ‘i love you’ quote, and mr. wolfe laughed, and then we said goodbye, and then i sort of wept with glee.
#145: lee dorsey - working in the coal mine (1966)
lee dorsey, once a prize fighter named kid chocolate, was the funkiest motherfunker to ever make funky new orleans pop.
devo played his songs, the beastie boys reference him, and for some reason jools holland made this video in 1985, 20 years after dorsey recorded working in a coal mine, four years after devo did their creepy new wave cover, and one year before dorsey died.
and the little film proves that lee dorsey, even a year away from death, was so funky that he made air-shovelling look cool.
#144: r. kelly - trapped in the closet, chapter 15 (2007)
NOT GUILTY! now i’m going to go celebrate r. kelly’s acquittal the only way i know how: watching the genius episode of trapped in the closet that features bonnie ‘prince’ billy as a mustachioed policeman.
from the wire report: “kelly dabbed his face with a handkerchief and hugged each of his four attorneys after the verdict—not guilty on all 14 counts—was read. the grammy award-winning singer had faced 15 years in prison if convicted.”
#143: sigur ros - gobbledigook (2008)
it’s a new sigur ros song! the video is (sort of) by the nude-loving hip photographer ryan mcginley! there’s nudity! a lot of nudity! the song is beautiful! it sounds like animal collective with less echo! anything written about the song should probably have a lot of exclamation points! there are la la las! very fast percussion! the new album is called með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust which means with a buzz in our ears we play endlessly! koogidelbbog is gobbledigook backwards!
also am i crazy or does that opening acoustic guitar riff sound like that bad dave matthews band song tripping billies? why do i remember the dave matthews band? they were awful! this song is great! nudity! lots and lots of nudity!
#142: nick cave & the bad seeds - stagger lee (1996)
in 1959, when lloyd price went on american bandstand to sing his smiley version of the 19th-century folk song stagger lee, classy dick clark thought the nice normal listening audience wouldn’t handle the song’s murder story, so lloyd had to take the death out.
luckily a few decades later the world got nick cave, that oft-mustachioed vessel of vamped-up, ominous, insomnious fury, who did his version of stagger lee on british television—without taking out probably the dirtiest line in the history of the world, which begins with “i’m a bad motherfucker” and finishes with something about children that would probably make dick clark throw up in his mouth.
i really wish i was the bad seeds bandmember playing the maracas in the background.
#141: yo la tengo - a teenager in love and everyday (1988)
puppylove pop songs from 1957 and 1960 sound best when they’re sung in 1988 by a punky married new jersey couple in their living room.
#140: townes van zandt - pancho & lefty (1975)
if i can go through life without ever knowing the true, bottomless, tar-colored misery that cakes the music of townes van zandt, i’ll be a happy man.
after all, this is the human being that said “being born is going blind and bowing down a thousand times,” and who rhymes “free and clean” with “kerosene.” he’s the only texan i know that could make a song about two southern outlaws into a eulogy about cheap cleveland motels and the fake kindness of gray-haired federal agents.
also, i’m not sure if this film was shot in the tennessee cabin (with no phone or plumbing) where he lived as a recluse throughout the 70s, but either way i’m going to go weep now.
#139: son house - death letter (1965)
a man born exactly in the middle of 17 siblings—who becomes a preacher at age 15, leaves the baptist church for blues music, gets sentenced to fifteen years in a mississippi prison for killing a man that had opened fire in a bar, marries five times, and has to be given alcohol in order to remember how to play when he’s one day found by two blues fans in an upstate new york apartment in his 60s with no guitar—can sing about suitcases, judgement day, burrying grounds, the blueness of love, and dissatisfaction better than everyone else in the whole sad little world.
#138: son house - john the revelator (1965)
i was seriously going to do a highly emotional, super-philosophical post (with lots of long-lettered words) on the highlights of handclaps in the history of popular music, but instead i’ve been listening and listening and listening to son house clap and clap and clap like a motherfucking god as he sings over and over about the good word.
he puts his mississippi-born two hands together and heavenly thunder bolts come pouring out.
#137: peaches - fuck the pain away (2000)
i can’t listen to this song anymore without thinking about how the electro-clash star peaches (actually i just made up a better word for the genre, and it’s gauche-raunch) used to share an apartment with feist, another monosyllabic canadian star.
but feist makes rose-water, gap changing-room, i-think-i-love-you-so-much soft rock, while peaches writes songs referencing intrauterine devices then makes upsetting videos for them in which she humps andy griffith and kind of maybe sort of rubs herself next to a child.
which is to say that i like peaches more than her one-name ex-roommate, who has lyrics like, “1, 2, 3, 4, tell me that you love me more!”
#136: steve earle - mercenary song (1975/1981/1995)
this is a song about the 1910s, filmed in the 70s for a movie (heartworn highways) that wasn’t released until the 80s—and the song wasn’t recorded on an album until the 90s (train a comin’, which will tear a hole in your heart the size of lubbock, texas).
besides the fact that it’s the best tune ever written about violenet guys named bill and hank driving to durango to fight with pancho villa, it’s an epic plesaure to watch steve earle (un-bearded, un-fat, un-drug addled, still working at a pizza shop) mess around with the west texas songwriting god guy clark and johnny cash’s ex-son-in-law rodney crowell.
west texas kitchen sing-a-longs make me cry.
#135 pixies - here comes your man (1989)
even if it’s a song about train-traveling winos who die in californian earthquakes, it’s the happiest single from a terribly unhappy band. and the fish-eye video proves that when a lead-singer stands with his mouth open throughout an entire song, instead of pretending to sing like he’s supposed to, it’s incredibly creepy.