Talk Talk - Spirit Of Eden

It's rainy and cold and rather miserable with the possiblity of snow, which happens about once every 20 years in my neck of the woods. Perfect weather for this.

Though Laughing Stock was their pinnacle, their perfect moment, Talk Talk didn't get there in a single leap. It took this gem to transition. Spirit of Eden cost them their record contract. It never sold. It alienated their fans. And, as their penultimate effort, it ranks only behind Laughing Stock as their finest accomplishment.

Fueled by Hollis's attempt to get the heroin needle out of his arm, the album is wrenching. It was the terror that accompanied that act - and the lack of control he felt - that inspired the cavern-like sound and melancholia of the record.

Less pop music and more Davis's Sketches of Spain, this is where the foundation was laid for the masterpiece that followed. Unstructured and magnificient on its own terms, it deserves some respect.

amg:

Compare Spirit of Eden with any other previous release in the Talk Talk catalog, and it's almost impossible to believe it's the work of the same band — exchanging electronics for live, organic sounds and rejecting structure in favor of mood and atmosphere, the album is an unprecedented breakthrough, a musical and emotional catharsis of immense power. Mark Hollis' songs exist far outside of the pop idiom, drawing instead on ambient textures, jazz-like arrangements, and avant-garde accents; for all of their intricacy and delicate beauty, compositions like "Inheritance" and "I Believe in You" also possess an elemental strength — Hollis' oblique lyrics speak to themes of loss and redemption with understated grace, and his hauntingly poignant vocals evoke wrenching spiritual turmoil tempered with unflagging hope. A singular musical experience.

Graham Coxon of Blur has said that he's never met anyone who likes this album, and if someone did they didn't like it as much as he did. I think he's probably mistaken about that last part.

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Ultravox - Ultravox!

In 1982 a bad, cult, sci-fi, porn movie was released called Cafe Flesh. The premise revolved around a post-apocalyptic future where the majority of people could no longer engage in sex themselves without becoming violently ill. Instead, they do so vicariously through shows at clubs where they stare, zombie-like, at the remaining few who can still fuck and not puke. The stars of these "acts" attain a celebrity status and are much sought after for productions of increasing complexity. The best line in the movie comes as an established star bemoans the up and coming new blood: "Every stud that comes down the pike thinks he's Jack Lord." I always thought this album would have been the ideal soundtrack to the movie.

The final nail in the coffin of Glam. The first shot fired by the apocalyptic New Romantics. The crest of the Punk movement. John Foxx, et al, mainlined it all into this firey little beast of a record that swaggers through the ruins and rubbish as if the smell wafting up was cologne and not the odor of decaying flesh.

Big swinging dicks, indeed.

amg:

Depeche Mode claimed to be punks with synthesizers, but it was Ultravox! who first showed the kind of dangerous rhythms that keyboards could create. The quintet certainly had their antecedents — Hawkwind, Roxy Music, and Kraftwerk to name but a few, but still it was the group's 1977 eponymous debut's grandeur (courtesy of producer Eno), wrapped in the ravaged moods and lyrical themes of collapse and decay that transported '70s rock from the bloated pastures of the past to the futuristic dystopias predicted by punk. Epic tales of alienation, disillusion, and disintegration reflected the contemporary holocaust of Britain's collapse, while accurately prophesying the dance through society's cemetery and the graveyards of empires that were to be the Thatcher/Reagan years. "Saturday Night in the City of the Dead," "Wide Boys," "The Wild, the Beautiful and the Damned," "Dangerous Rhythm," and "Slip Away" all simultaneously bemoaned and celebrated the destruction of Western culture; "I Want to Be a Machine" and "My Sex" warned of and yearned for technology's triumph. And it was these apposites and didactic emotions that so pierced the zeitgeist of the day, and kicked open a whole new world of synthesized music.

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I should note that the actual soundtrack to Cafe Flesh was composed and produced by Mitchel Froom and wasn't bad.

Chesterfield Kings - Here Are The... & Stop

Wake up and smell the 60's (from the 80's)!

Chesterfield Kings were throwbacks and damned good ones. They did that 60's garage band thing like few others that slip into the wayback machine. They aped, but did it well and without a tongue in their cheeks.

Their first, Here Are the Chesterfield Kings, released in 83 was nothing but covers of willfully obscure songs from the genre. It's dirty and mono and buried deep in the grime - and they mean it.

Their second, Stop, came out the 2 years later and was originals, a little cleaner, had some hooks - and they still meant it.

Both crunch and swirl. And they are the best things they ever did.

amg:

Upstate New York's Chesterfield Kings landed upon the growing punk/new wave scene in the late '70s with an unbelievably raw '60s rhythm & blues sound that borrowed heavily from pre-1966 Rolling Stones. The group, so unlike any other underground sensations of the period, arguably kickstarted the entire '80s garage rock revival, which flourished in small circles until the end of the decade.

Here Are the Chesterfield Kings
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Stop
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Godspeed You Black Emperor - Slow Riot For A New Zero Kanada

Hey, it's the first snow of the year today in middle Amerika. Guess what that means? Alcohol and seasonal affective disorder and fatty foods! Y'alls stoked?! What better to accompany the annual psychological bottom-hitting than some apochalyptic string-driven crescendo end of pain n suffering type jams from Montreal's finest!

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Slow Riot for New Zerø Kanada is the first EP released by Godspeed You! Black Emperor on the Montreal-based record label Constellation Records in 1999 (catalogue number CST006) and was re-released by Kranky Records.

The album packaging makes only sparing reference to either the band or the album title: the outer packaging does not make any reference to Godspeed, but mentions them in the liner notes; the album title is only shown on the spine of the album cover. The song titles are not listed anywhere on the cover.

The cardboard album case is unusual in that it opens in the opposite direction of a conventional CD case; this is due to the Hebrew text being read from right to left.

The front of the album contains Hebrew characters, in transliterated form, "Tohu va bohu" (תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ). This phrase Tohu va bohu is used in both Genesis 1:2 and Jeremiah 4:23, and carries no agreed-upon meaning among theological circles. It could mean "wasteland" or "nothingness."^[1] The King James Bible translates it in Gen 1:2 as "without form, and void." The dots and dashes above the letters are called trope. They dictate the tune and intonation and are found in the Torah as well as the rest of the Hebrew Bible. On the inside cover, this text is put into greater context, with Jer 4:23–27 provided in both Hebrew and English (seemingly the Jewish Publication Society version):

²³ I beheld the earth,

And, lo, it was waste and void;

And the heavens, and they had no light.

²⁴ I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled,

And all the hills moved to and fro.

²⁵ I beheld, and, lo, there was no man,

And all the birds of the heavens were fled.

²⁶ I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful field was a wilderness,

And all the cities thereof were broken down

At the presence of the LORD,

And before His fierce anger.

²⁷ For thus saith the LORD:

The whole land shall be desolate;

Yet will I not make a full end.

The back of the EP contains a diagram with instructions in Italian on how to make a molotov cocktail.

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A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector

The last line of this wiki entry says it all.

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A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector (originally released as A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records) is an album of Christmas songs, produced by Phil Spector, and originally released as Philles 4005 in 1963. Spector treated a series of mostly secular Christmas standards to his trademark "Wall of Sound" treatment, and the selections feature the vocal performances of Spector's regular artists during this period. It is one of only twelve long-playing records released on the Philles label, peaking at #13 on the Top Pop Albums chart. The album was reissued by Apple Records in 1972, with different cover art and retitled Phil Spector's Christmas Album; this version went to #6.

However, the album was a relative failure at the time — it was unfortunately released on 22 November 1963, the same day as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In subsequent years, the album grew in popularity, considered now to be a holiday classic. Several of its tracks became iconic Christmas songs for generations, such as the original (and flop) single "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)," and the well-known "Ring-a-ling-a-ling Ding-dong-ding" background vocals in The Ronettes' "Sleigh Ride." The arrangement of Bruce Springsteen's version of "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" is based in part on the Crystals' version of the song , and U2's late 80s cover of "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" that appeared on the first "A Very Special Christmas" album is patterned after the Darlene Love original that appeared on the Spector LP . The Ronettes version of "Frosty The Snowman" and "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" also usually get some radio airplay during the holiday season .

In 2003, the album was ranked number 142 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The album has been released several times on different labels: the original release on Philles and the 1972 reissue on Apple ( the issue on Apple, the label owned by the Beatles,probably came as a result of Spector producing LPs for John Lennon and George Harrison and remixing the Beatles last album "Let It Be" and was assumed to have been done as favor to Spector seeing that that the LP hadn't been available in several years , and may have been an "dry run" as a possible, although never followed through, re-release of some of Spector's other out of print Philles label LPs and singles on a possible proposed Spector/Apple label ) were followed by additional reissues on Warner-Spector (1974 - the first version to feature a stereo mix of the songs), Pavilion (1981), Passport (1984), and Rhino (1987). The first CD issue was also on Rhino in 1987, co-credited to Phil Spector International RNCD 70235 and restoring the album's original mono mix. The second CD issue was in 1987 as well, on Chrysalis (CCD 1625) in monophonic for the UK market. This one is co-credited "Spector Records International" and features the slightly different international artwork. The more common third CD issue came in 1989, a remastered release on ABKCO which restored the original title, artwork, and mono mix. The album also appeared as the fourth disc of ABKCO's 1991 Spector box set, Back to Mono, and as the second disc of the 2006 UK-only ABKCO compilation The Phil Spector Collection. As of 2007 both the Back to Mono box and the standalone CD version of A Christmas Gift for You had been taken out of print by ABKCO. Sony Music recently took over distribution rights to the Philles Records catalog and re-released the album on its Legacy Recordings imprint on October 27, 2009.^[1]

Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, well-known as a fan of both the Ronettes and Spector, has cited this album as his favorite album of all time.

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Merle Haggard - A Christmas Present

Christmas is hard. Merle knows this. Of course Merle knows this. He's fucking Merle.

Not a short hair of irony here, ole hipsters. Strap on your sentimental shields and weather the Haggard seasonal storm.

Touched & touching and so fitting for our 10% unemployed during this holiday season.

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AMG: While Hag keeps the mood light with selections such as "Santa Claus and Popcorn" and more traditional fare, he also has some bite with the high and lonesome "Daddy Won't Be Home for Christmas." His matter-of-fact tale about layoffs at the factory, "If We Make It Through December," has become timeless in tough times.

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Starpower - The Petting Zoo

A friend/filmmaker/musicman (Shaka King aka Mauby Bitters) e-mailed me U.K. producer Bullion's Beach Boy's/J. Dilla-inspired instrumental mash-up ("Pet Sounds: In The Key of Dee") knowing that I was the one person in the world who could make outstanding, unique songs out of these extraordinary and unusually short musical compositions.

So a few months later I sat down in front of my computer for about a full workday, and wrote each song. I then took them to the studio, and with the help of Mercury, recorded all of them in about 4 hours. He mixed them the next day, Cavalier created a cover, and I just decided to hand all of my triumphs, vulnerabilities, and perspectives over to the world with no disclaimers. It all took less than a week to go from creation to dispersal.

The result is a 22 minute album (or mixtape, if you will) that sounds like the soundtrack to someone's very intimate autobiography - mine. Twelve deeply personal, hilarious, inappropriate, emotional, unforgiving quirky narratives. Ridiculous stories, true stories, scathing social commentary, fantasies, braggadocio, reflections, apologies, it's all there with no filter or discretion. The response has been far greater than I imagined it would be, I hope we can continue this movement by telling a friend or a stranger. Y'all just go ahead and download the sh-t out of this album, please. Thank you and peace.

-StarPower


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