Shoes - Black Vinyl Shoes (1977)

My friends in Merlin Wall seem to have gotten quite a few ideas from this Shoes album. Which also happens to boast one of the worst covers of all time. This is distant-sounding power pop with the hooks and melodic sensibility that discerning consumers demand from their catchy rock music.

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Patrick Stump Interview

I interviewed Patrick Stump not too long ago when he played at Schuba's in Chicago, and I present here the un-truncated transcription. If you're interested in the mind of a pop song genius or two guys nerding out about Michael Jackson, keep reading. Also, his EP Truant Wave, is, as expected, weird, super-catchy, and vaguely reminiscent of Prince, so track that down.

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Bottled water? Pillaging the earth of its resources?

Actually, I’m super against the bottled water. But, on this tour, logistically it was kind of rough. I was going to get the water bottles that have the filter in them. I figured I’d take water off the rider, because, even if it’s coming out of the pipe brown, if it’s going through a filter, it’s going to be fine. I couldn’t find it in time.

Consumer ethics on tour are tricky.

It’s rough, man!

Eating at McDonald’s and…

Well, I still don’t break that rule. I won’t eat at McDonald’s on tour. I will occasionally in other countries out of morbid curiosity. I just want to see what happens there.

What does happen there?

Everything is regionalized. Everything is regionalized. If you go into Canada, you can get poutine. You go to Japan, and you can get wasabi for the nuggets. They have lobster in Maine. Sometimes it’s cool to try it. Well, I haven’t done the lobster, since Maine is in America and that breaks my rule, but…

[laughs] You’ve got to draw the line somewhere.

So let’s get into this a little. One of the things that I’m very curious about is that, since you’re doing this by yourself and there’s a lot going on in the songs…is this all a fully-formed product in your head that you then pick out or do you create something then layer it?

It’s hard to describe, because it kind of is a fully-formed thing in my head. It’s just a matter of what sounds am I going to use to achieve that. Somebody like Michelangelo, you know, somebody huge….was saying that he starts with a rock…well, “started,” he’s been dead for awhile now…Anyway, he would see his finished product in there, and it was his job to get it out. It’s kind of like that, in that I know what I want to get, and I know what I want it to sound like.

Actually, you can go overboard trying to get it, too, since you’re by yourself, and there’s nobody there to stop you, and you can layer on as many things as you want. There is a lot of experimentation, but I usually have a pretty good idea of what I want it to sound like.

I imagine a lot of details like that come out in “jamming,” but you can’t really just “jam” if you’re doing it by yourself.

That’s interesting because I don’t really “jam” that well. Sometimes I have creative dreams where I’ll get flashes of it, and then I just have to figure out how to do that. That happens to me a lot. A lot of these songs are things that I heard it in my head pretty much as it is, and then I have to go back and reverse engineer it to get it that way.

Similarly, something like Prince, where that dude is just a maniac…

And I know for sure that he just does kind of screw around sometimes and he is just experimenting with things.

I think in some other interview you referenced Timbaland.

Yeah, yeah! His drums are huge to me!

So, something like that is just layers upon layers. So, you have a pretty good idea of the rhythm you’re looking for?

Yeah! I’ll know the general groove. Lyrics come last in that context. They might be written beforehand, but they get applied to the song last.

On my version of Thriller, it has the home demo of “Billie Jean,” and I was blown away because it has the little violin part [at the end of the chorus]. I was like, “whoa, that dude was planning on doing that all along!”

That’s what’s crazy, because there’s so much you think is maybe Quincy Jones. But it’s really just Michael just going nuts. Or the home demo of “Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough.” You can hear him talking to Janet because she’s in the background singing harmonies, and he’s like “I need more cowbell in the phones.” But the song as a whole sounds pretty remarkably like the album version.

Speaking of which, did you hear the new Michael Jackson record?

Yeah, I did. It was a tough decision, because I was like “do I listen to this and commit sacrilege?” But, at the end of the day, it’s still a new Michael Jackson record, and that’s amazing.

“Behind the Mask” is insane.

There’s a few songs on there that I’m like “if he were still alive, that would have been a hit.” Like “Hollywood.” There’s that one song that they released first…”Breaking News,” which is just scathing.

He’s pissed!

He’s so pissed off! I was psyched on it, because it’s like hearing him yell. He’s mad. I was like “killer!”

Although he didn’t drop any racial slurs in that one.

[laughs] Next time, next time.

So, at some level, these new songs of yours sound like hip-hop, where the focus is on a beat or a groove. However, Fall Out Boy is much more melodic.

Everything has always been rhythm to me. Even in Fall Out Boy where it’s more melodic. I always kind of wrote music like a hip-hop beat where it’s kind of separate from melody. You leave space for it to be melodic, but it’s more or less thought out before the melody was there.

And sometimes it was even separate. I would read Pete’s lyrics and have a melody without any music. And I would find songs that I had already written the groove to that it would fit over. It was always different. I still rarely ever do the thing where you freestyle the melody and come up with the words later. Words are everything to me. If I don’t have the words first, then there’s no song.

One of my biggest struggles in writing songs is combining my gibberish words with actual lyrics.

That’s the thing! I find that it’s easier to take words first and make a melody out of them rather than trying to go the other way around. I kind of learned the way that I do it now by accident, because that’s just the way that Fall Out Boy wrote. It’s really rewarding for me as a writer. I’m always happier with the lyric when I spent some time on it just as words first, and then later found a place for it.

Speaking of that, Saves the Day’s Through Being Cool is really hard to sing along with because of that phenomenon. You can tell that dude had his melody, and just kind of jammed lyrics into it.

There’s a lot of strategically placed “whoa”s that fill in those gaps.

People will put on “Shoulder to the Wheel” and sing along with every word, and I’m like “how are you even doing that?”

You just love that song that much. You just know it. [laughs]

In a lot of your songs, I find the pre-chorus to be catchier than the chorus. Do you ever do that on purpose?

[laughs] Yeah, sometimes. Speaking of Michael Jackson, his choruses are almost never choruses. When you look at “Billie Jean,” it’s all about the [sings]”People always told me be careful what you do.” Also, Prince! Look at “Controversy.” [sings]”Some people want to die so they can be free” is the catchy part. There’s almost no chorus in that song.

It’s not usually conscious. I’ve tried a lot of different types of song-writing, and that’s kind of the A-B form that’s been sticking with me lately.

Even something like “Spotlight” where the chorus is kind of big, the part of the song that actually sticks with me is the pre-chorus.

And that’s what I wrote it around, too. In fact, they may have been two separate songs originally. I think I might have been singing the pre-chorus, and then just threw in the “Spotlight” at the end. And I was like, “Oh, that could be more of a hook!” And I made it into a whole song.

How did you become such a good singer? Just listening to your discography, you get markedly better throughout time.

I got less scared of my own voice. I did get better, but I also think that I was better than I was singing. I started out, and I was in this punk scene with all of these pop punk bands. I was a drummer and I always wanted to sing back-ups, and all of my bands were really disparaging of my voice. They were all like, “Ugh, your voice is so pretty.”

So, I was really scared of it. I was kind of ashamed of it. I wasn’t trying to sing in Fall Out Boy, I was trying to be the drummer/songwriter or whatever. So, when they asked me to sing, I was like, “Ok, I guess you want me to sing ‘pop punk.’” So I affected my voice a lot more. I was still really hiding behind that.

I never really sang the way I actually sing in front of them for years. I did a little falsetto at the end of that song “Saturday,” and I was just messing around, and Pete was like, “Do that! That’s awesome!”

They embraced the way I sang, and that got me to relax a bit and be more honest about the way I sing. And it’s not even like I was dishonest, I was just terrified. It’s a lot easier to do an impersonation of what you think a singer is supposed to sound like than to go out and be yourself.

That’s one of the things that my mom said when she heard this new EP. She’s like, “You finally, totally sound like you.”

That’s a good compliment.

That’s a big compliment. That’s a huge compliment. That made me feel really happy.

I’ve worked with a lot of really amazing singers in the studio, too, who have these really amazing voices, but they’re kind of hiding behind something affected. The biggest lesson I ever learned is just let it out. You singing in the shower? Do that. That’s better than all the other stuff you do.

But also the shower just has really nice acoustics.

It does! It just makes you want to sing.

What do you sing along to?

You know what’s weird? I used to sing along a lot. I used to sing along to everything. To Michael Jackson records, to R&B records, to punk records. Now, when I’m not making music, I don’t listen to music. I just relax. It’s weird. It’s a totally different thing now.

I said this once to somebody, and I was like, “You’ve gotta think that porn stars might have the most vanilla sex lives.” And this guy was like, “Actually, I know Nina Hartley and she’s very prominent in the swinger’s scene.” And I was like, “Sorrrrr-ry. I don’t go to a lot of those parties, I’ll be honest. And I didn’t know that.”

[laughter]

When I go home, it’s kind of quiet. I can’t be very passive, when there’s music around. It’s hard for me to watch shows, because I want to play. I can’t dance because I want to play. So, I don’t sing along anymore.

So, when you write songs, do you steal? I know I have a list of songs that I want to take an idea from, be it a chord change or…

I think everybody does something akin to that. Some people outright steal, some people pay homage…I’ve done all of it. There are songs that happen where you don’t know where they come from, and there are songs that happen that you know exactly where they come from.

There’s a song that I’ll play tonight that’s on Soul Punk, and it’s called “Everybody Wants Somebody.” And I know that I built that song around wanting to play live drums like an old Linndrum from Minneapolis. Like Prince, or The Time, or Vanity 6…something like that. I wanted it to sound like those kind of drums. It’s kind of a composite groove of the best of those drum grooves. Sometimes there will be simple things like that, and that’s what starts the song.

Everybody steals. It’s important to know…how to be comfortable with it. Fall Out Boy, early on, took a lot from Saves the Day and Green Day…some Lifetime, a couple Kid Dynamite things. Just as Green Day is fairly open about taking from The Who and The Ramones. You take from your heroes, but you’re you, so it’s going to sound different.

I also feel that the more further removed the genre is, the more comfortably one can steal.

That’s one of the things that’s funny…I was reading something about Prince. A jazz musician said he saw Prince at the show, and he did this one drum fill…a very signature drum fill that was his drum fill…and then Prince’s record came out, and there was his drum fill. And it’s like “whatever.” It wasn’t on MTV so no one knew it unless you were at that show. But everyone does it. And most of us don’t even know we’re doing it half the time. It’s just being open to the experience, I guess.

You did vocals for the new Weekend Nachos LP. Are you still in touch with any hardcore or metal?

Yeah, yeah. It’s one of those things where…it’s not one of those things where it goes away, where it’s not part of my life anymore. I was really attracted to a lot of the political bands, you know? Tim from Rise Against…I was always into all of his bands. I was really into Racetraitor. You know, I was into a lot of the political hardcore bands in Chicago.

And right when [Fall Out Boy] started, a lot of the people were abandoning it and making different music altogether, like Pelican. Then you also had a lot of the really tough guy crew hardcore bands. I always dug that stuff, but I didn’t feel as communal with it. I didn’t feel like I could hang so much.

So, it’s cool now seeing bands like Weekend Nachos. Weekend Nachos in the first place kind of started out as a joke then got really good. They weren’t taking it seriously, then got kind of awesome.

So yeah, I still keep in touch with some of my friends, but it’s hard to keep in touch with anybody anymore honestly. I’m kind of an outsider now. I’m kind of back to being a mailorder kid. [laughs] I came full circle.

Sending away to Asian Man Records.

Yes. Or what was it?

Hopeless?

No, no. Very Distribution.

I don’t think I ever ordered from them.

Very was this giant catalogue, and it would just be full of…they had every hardcore record you could ever want in there in like five different colors.

My money all went to Asian Man, Hopeless, Lookout!, and Dr. Strange.

Absolutely. I sent a lot of money to Asian Man. I sent a lot of money to Lookout!.

So, you have a mainstream audience at this point. But you’re still someone who came out of this subcultural scene. I think this is really interesting because, speaking of those political hardcore bands, it’s like “oh yeah, all the kids in black t-shirts can hang out in the corner and be mad about stuff together.” But you get to talk to people outside of that group with your music.

Which is something of a….something of a plan. Definitely not a full on plan, but it’s something that I’m not going to shy away from. I was always attracted to making more or less pop music. But I’m still as into the things that got me into the punk community in the first place. I’m still as into the politics.

So, I get to say a lot of things to an audience…Well, I would have gotten to say these things to a punk audience, but they would all agree with me so that’s whatever. I think that’s potentially more powerful.

See, but that’s the thing. Fall Out Boy got slammed a bit for leaving politics behind. We were a vegan straight edge band when we started. There’s one straight edge vegan in the band now. We ended up not singing about that stuff as far as people know. But, we really got into metaphor, and disguising a lot of things. Especially on the last two records [Infinity on High and Folie a Deux]. They were very political…openly political. And people were like “oh, they’re talking about being famous.” And I’m like, “Fuck man! That’s not even close!” Especially on the last record.

I could be accused of the same thing when you listen to Soul Punk. On the surface, a lot of these things sound like I’m talking about girls and parties. I’m not. Ever. Everything is something else, and that’s kind of the point. And I get to do that. I get to say really extreme shit, but I’m disguising it as a girl. I’m disguising it as a drinking song. I can say pretty left wing shit.

So you are actively using your “fame?”

Yeah it’s not like…not in a contrived way. Artistically, that’s how I want to say it now. I don’t want to scream anymore. I’m tired of proclaiming it. I want to express what I’m thinking, and that’s the way that’s been cathartic for me to express it. I feel better after writing this way. Not to sound too posi. [laughs]

So, even as a celebrity…I mean how many Twitter followers do you have? When you say something, people are going to pay attention.

Yeah, well...sometimes. Sometimes they listen, sometimes they don’t. I wrote about rescue animals. I wrote something about making an effort to get rescue animals a home. I also wrote about having never seen an episode of Jersey Shore. I’ll give you two guesses which one got retweeted more.

But then again, if you blog or anything like that, you can sort of figure out how to push people’s buttons so they comment or whatever.

Yeah, and there’s definitely some psychology to it. But, I always just try to be honest and say what I’m really thinking. I never want to be full-on contrived, but I do want to say things to people.

And…this is actually one of the things that I think I’ve learned. This is a big difference between me now and me ten years ago. I used to be so angry that the only way I could handle it was confrontation. I had to confront you about what you’re doing wrong. About how fucked up what you’re doing is. Now, I’m just as pissed off, but now I’m going to empathize with you and force you to empathize with me so you understand where I’m coming from. So we listen to each other and actually get something done. Because I really do believe in this shit.

Yeah and that perspective…it’s sort of like when you’re sixteen and you get all mad about bands “selling out.” Then you get a little older and you’re like, “oh wait.”

Yeah, and with selling out…I used to believe that it was this thing that you had a choice in the matter. But you don’t! You have no choice!

I remember sending an angry letter…[laughs]

Tell it! Tell it!

I’m having a hard time speaking because this is so funny to me. I sent an angry e-mail to Thursday when they signed to Victory Records. [laughter]

The thing is…there’s perception that somehow going indie is more legit or whatever. There are dishonest douchebags everywhere. That’s another really dark lesson I had to learn. The indie dudes aren’t cool, either. They’re all trying to cheat you.

We [Fall Out Boy] didn’t think anyone was going to come to our shows. We didn’t think we were going to be a big band. You don’t really make these choices.

And the thing that fucked us up, is that on each record, we actually did try to get more and more weird…more and more out there. Because we were really scared of being this big band. And somehow we got even bigger. And I was like, “Well, shit…”

I’ve got one more thing I want to ask you. So, you have this EP. You have this LP. I assume you have years of weird backlogged material. How do you approach this? Are you releasing an album? Are you releasing a compilation of your best material?

The first thing I tried was recording my “best of.” Recording all my best songs that hadn’t been released yet. I tried that and it sucked. I was happy with all the songs, but it didn’t make any damn sense as an album. So I went back, and scrapped most of it. I picked a couple songs that made sense with each other and made an album around that.

Which, again, is why the music and the lyrics got to be so distinctly metaphorical. The songs that I thought really worked together had that vibe. There were some songs that had that angry political vibe. And there were some songs that were musically very different. So, it is very much an album to me.

And that’s the other thing is where do I go now? I have a potential second record that is totally different. Maybe more poppy. But I don’t know that any of that is ever going to come out. By the time I make record two, what am I going to be doing?

Hall & Oates - Voices (1980)

A recent comment on this blog called me a cross between SR Prozak & an effeminate hipster, which is really cool to me. Also, according to people who I know, "hipsters" are really into Hall & Oates these days. If this is true, this is the greatest thing that hipsters have ever done, because Hall & Oates are the epitome of genius.

This is Hall & Oates's best record, and this is their most "rock" record. Some of this kind of sounds like Buzzcocks and I also hear quite a bit of the power pop of the 70s creeping into these songs. Either way, choruses are super catchy, but the verses and pre-choruses of these songs often offer the most interesting twists, regularly catching me off guard with wildly unexpected melodic phrasing. Check out the aggressively successful hit single "Kiss on my List" for a perfect example. That pre-chorus, man. That pre-chorus makes me want to become a better person.

In a cool "connect the dots" moment, one can see how the chords at the beginning of "Hard to be in Love with You" became "Out of Touch" a few years later. You've gotta lotta nerve, Daryl Hall. (got-ta lot-ta)

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Buzzcocks - Singles Going Steady

My rock band aka Pagan Youth aka Pagan Diaper is playing a Halloween show as the Buzzcocks, because the fucking Buzzcocks are one of my biggest songwriting influences. I'm doing double-duty with Like Rats is playing as Black Flag, so be on the lookout.

As a young youth*, I remember checking out the Buzzcocks and being sorely disappointed because they weren't that punk, you know? I was into The Broadways & Rancid & NOFX & assorted skacore bands and had started to dig into The Clash & The Ramones. I thought the Buzzcocks were stupid, but I was actually the one who was stupid. Why can't I ever do anything right please help meeeeeee.

Anyway, these are extremely, phenomenally catchy pop songs played with just a little bit of punk edge. What I care about are the little melodic tricks that elevate these hooks to transcendental status. The key change in the hook of "Ever Fallen in Love..." is the most obvious example, as is the major to minor chord change in "Everybody's Happy Nowadays" (total Beach Boys rip on that vocal melody; not just cuz it's falsetto although that makes it more obvious; I know because I also ripped off "Keep an Eye on Summer") as is the sharp five going into the chorus in "I Don't Mind." Another band known to always be doing cool stuff like that is THE BEATLES. So tite.

*link removed*

*First time I've ever seen this video. Weird.

September - Dancing Shoes (2007)

My Kylie Minogue post got taken down, so, here's this September record to fill the void.* This is really along the same lines: disco dance pop that bangs it from top to bottom. Bang bang bang. You probably remember "Cry For You" from the radio a few years ago. "Just Dance" was popular around the same time, and these two compositions are eternally linked for me as "songs where I like the pre-chorus more than the chorus."

The melodies on this record tread the epic dance pop path, but defy expectations just enough. The beginning of the chorus of "Can't Get Over" bites a well-known pop song that I can't quite get off the tip of my brain right now,** but the second part of the phrase takes an epic twist that really gets the endorphins flowing. The real strength of this album is its focus, though. The tempos stay up, and there aren't tons of syrupy bullshit ballads buffering the singles.

Also, I was listening to mainstream urban radio today, and they transitioned from Mobb Deep "Quiet Storm" into some fucking stupid-ass Black Eyed Peas song, and it was unbearably jarring. Evan Parker into September is my blogger tribute to this upsetting transition.

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*Just kidding, nothing can fill the void.
**FINE YOUNG CANNIBALS, bitch.

The Verlaines - Juvenilia (1987)

I'm posting this record because I've been obsessed with the long phrase that makes up the verse of the first song. That chord progression relentlessly forces all of my hairs to stand on end. If I can ever write a pop song that has a similar melodic effect, I will just pee in my own pants all day because that is all that there is left to do.

This is a collection of The Verlaines early EPs, and is chock-full of that good, nice, wonderful & catchy white-guy rock. Those Flying Nun white guys were really cranking it out in the 80s. Get obsessively into it.

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Kylie Minogue - Fever (2002)

Flawless dance/disco record. Bangers and mash front to back (not a bad track on here). This thing has burned the disco in my head out over and over and over again. Maybe I will post a September record at some point too, hmmmm. Not much to say here other than get this immediately and fuck life-haters.

Who'd like a banger in the mouth.

*link removed*

Marshall Crenshaw - Marshall Crenshaw (1982)

Yeahhhhh it's that catchy white guy rock. Anyone who has liked any of the same catchy white guy rock as me in the past (The Pointed Sticks, Buddy Holly) is gonna want to like this as well. And I've got to give credit to Erik B for getting me into this record many moons ago.

I bet that Someday, Someway sparks a flame of recognition. Hey look this song has even been performed live in concert.

The chorus is certainly the focus of these song structures, but the interesting thing is how smooth all of the transitions are. There are very few breaks or rests or abrupt shifts or anything like that. Even though the chord progression is always changing from part to part, these shifts are barely noticeable. There are also pretty active arpeggios going on all of the time that whites such as The Smiths have also used to great effect over the years. But Marshall Crenshaw, unlike Morrissey, is no bitch. You won't catch him crying about some bullshit. Just kidding, you probably will.

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Stevie Wonder - Hotter Than July (1980)

If you're anything like me, you regularly worship at the genius altar of Stevie Wonder's early 70s output. And if you're not doing that, you need to leave because I don't even like you. Walk away from the computer and stab your eardrums with a pencil because you fucked up. Since everyone still reading already has all of those records, I'm posting up Hotter Than July which falls outside of the Wonder canon, but is still obviously the work of a complete godhead genius.

Definitely fewer ii-V-I's than in the past, as the feel of this record is a bit less jazzy and a bit more all over the place. Stevie's forays into Reggae and disco-tinged sounds aren't gimmicky or po-mo or anything annoying like that. This shouldn't be surprising, given the plethora of hits Stevie wrote for other artists of varying styles.

You know if I were a normal person, I would say something like "the vocal performances on this record make me want to drink acid and never sing again!" Instead, they make me get really competitive with Stevie Wonder and say to myself "if Stevie Wonder can do this, why can't I?" This is an insane pipe dream, but I am just trying to be honest.

Also, notice the nod to "Rocket Love" in GZA's "Cold World." Wu-Tang Clan: men of impeccable taste.

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Brigitte Fontaine - Brigitte Fontaine Est... (1970)

My posts have been testosterone heavy recently, which makes sense as I am a guy who loves working out. However, in the interest of fulfilling quotas, here is a Brigitte Fontaine record.

Many of the other internet reviews that I've found of this album focus on the "quirkiness" of the sounds texturing these songs (Bird calls! Glockenspiels!). And hey, in a way opposite of dumb Pitchfork bands, these extra things are actually pretty cool. However, the actually interesting part is, no surprise, the songs themselves. . Le Beau Cancer is a wonderful pop song, with an instrumental hook that my subconscious is almost always humming. The way that the phrases of Une Fois Mais Pas Deux leave tension in the vocal line then resolve with a rest and a chord change is a blessing to my earthly existence. And hey, it's got something in common with one of my favorite France Gall songs, too!

There are certainly parallels to be drawn between Tropicalia and this brand of French pop. Something about expertly crafted pop songs with plenty of space behind the vocal melody for an abundance of idiosyncrasies, that, while prevalent, are not distracting from the elegance of the song. You know, all of these flavors and hooks and implied key modulations actually create some sort of world for me. Maybe it makes me feel like I am into steampunk and goggles on my head and full-length jackets and shit like that? Maybe. Come fly away with me and Brigitte F, and Brigitte B in our airship. Brigitte Bardot: the original Steam Punk.

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Camp Lo - Uptown Saturday Night (1997)

I've been listening to "Pot Casts" of my brother Stephen C. Kane's radio show recently, which has been a really good experience for me. Motherfucker had a 90's hip-hop "Cast," which is as directly up my alley as one can really be. So come into this alley with me. I'm not lonely, but I do want some company.

On said "Cast," Joel played Camp Lo's Luchini and it really got me thinking. As a youth into rap music, I really only liked the super dark, raw production of RZA, Mobb Deep, Boot Camp Clik, etc. I was familiar with Camp Lo, but, like a true countercultural teen, I found them boring & mainstream. However, since I'm now a much more eclectic consumer of music, I was surprised by how much I really really liked that dang Camp Lo song.

This is a different type of post for me, since I'm posting about something that is relatively new to me. I haven't listened to this record dozens/scores/baker's dozens of times. In fact, I'm listening to it for the second time as I type this, and I'll probably have played it a total of three times when this post "goes live." As such, I can't really isolate my favorite moments of the record and dissect what's happening because, man, I don't even know what my favorite parts of the record are! This shit is new to me, dogg! I will say that the production is phenomenal, and at least a few lines made me smile. Listen to this BIG BANGER, love it, download the record, live my life for me.

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Prince - Dirty Mind (1980)

It's time for the best album from one of my musical heroes. I decided the other day that I'm going to get into hanging out with celebrities. I mean, my friends are cool, but there are probably way cooler people out there, such as Prince, Ben Affleck, and Heather Graham (bombers). So yeah, attention all celebrities, why don't you come over and listen to records.

Prince's absurdly prolific output from the early 80s is unbearably, appallingly consistently great - a real monsoon of musical creativity and weird-ass grooves. I don't even know what to say about this other than if you don't like it, come over and I'll gladly cut your ears off for you. Idiot.

Underneath the layers of synth tones and guitar embellishments, these songs embody a stark "less is more" philosophy. Notice that Uptown is based upon the same chord progression for the entire song, broken only briefly for a pre-chorus, and structuring changes are brought about by changing instrumentation. As in the construction of human language, a collection of basic rules gives rise to infinite variations in meaning through recursive groove structuring and adolescent incest fantasies.

I usually hate the lyrics to just about everything, but I truly envy the voracious, animalistic sexuality represented here. Prince wants to bang more than I've ever wanted anything in my life, and that is something that rules. Another cool thing about these lyrics is that they are very offensive to those with morals and values. Here is a funny video of Zappa and other whites on Crossfire discussing censorship in the 80s. Sister features prominently in the discussion, which is actually one of Prince's best choruses, home to one of the catchiest, non-diatonic notes of all time.

Also I back Prince singing in falsetto almost the whole time. Really good move; totally maxes out the androgyny.

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Beach Boys Collection

So, I mostly thought that it was impossible to offend me, but, the other day, I realized that I am offended by several of the songs on the pre-Today Beach Boys albums. I had a craving for Custom Machine, but I decided, in truly non-Western fashion, to take in all of Little Deuce Coupe and delay my own gratification. Several times, my mouth dropped slightly open, and my neck cocked suddenly: I was offended.

So, what I did was take all of the best songs from those albums and put them in one spot, because, believe you me, the songs here are fucking transcendental.

Structuring is similar to that described in my recent Buddy Holly post, in that extended chord progressions are used to build up to a specific point ("Surfin' USA!") while contemporary verse/chorus arrangements are largely absent. These songs are also super-fucking short, which rules, because I don't always want to hear the half-time chorus/vocal histrionics at the end of a song (sometimes I do want to hear this).

Pick out some voice-leading harmonies! Shut Down and Catch a Wave both have some keen-ass contrary motion, which makes me wonder if the Boys were thinking in terms of chord inversions or some weird-ass sibling mind-meld counterpoint shit, being very neglectuful of equal temperament, etc. Either way, what we end up with is a viscous musical texture pulling at the edges of reality, with the shockingly banal lyrics and more apparent-in-hindsight melancholy only adding to the surreality of the experience. The contrast between the basic rock pentatonic scale framework and the lushness of the vocal melodies (see also: The Beatles, Motown) is sometimes more appealing to me than the more cohesive blending of instruments and vocals found on Pet Sounds and later works.

Also, check out the lyrics to Be True to your School. Whoa!

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PS: Can any more knowledgable bloggers explain why the hard returns in my posts keep getting all fucked up? I can't make sense of this!

Midnight Star - No Parking on the Dance Floor (1983)

Super-wet sounding bass, all oiled up and flopping around. Fortunately, sterile vocoder vocals and Kraftwerk synths offset what would otherwise be a shockingly organic sounding 80s cliche.

Cheesy ad-lib lines like "Let me plug you in, baby" on Electricity bring to mind the question: which is responsible for more creeps, sleazy R&B one-liners, or Hollywood-style romantic comedies rewarding male awkwardness/desperation with the love of babes?

Freak-A-Zoid is the unquestioned star of this record, with its thickly layered, highly syncopated robot beat that would make Timbaland proud. Oh and the cut-up, black metal vocals in the intro (probably really a James Brown sample). The melting pot of weirdos/geniuses like Kraftwerk, Prince, James Brown, George Clinton & Giorgio Moroder is what this blog is all about. That and really stupid mid-song skits about how to spell "freak-a-zoid;" typical of uptight, British squares not to know how to spell "zoid."

Guys, I would have been "out" all of the time in the 80s. Is this what bro bars played instead of Flo Rida, because that is pretty much my dream. Imagine the frattiest bro bar just playing Prince and Prince rip-offs. As much as I rag on civilization, that would make up for just about all of its wrongs.

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PS: Two of my closest friends have recently updated their online presences. I don't pretend to know anything about non-auditory forms of art, but I do pretend to like guys:

John Friel

Daniel Shea

The Four Tops - Reach Out (1967)

This is what I think about when I write songs. If you ever hear one of my songs and think "man this is totally a Funk Brothers idea," that's because it is. Joaquin posted a cool video the other day of Ne-Yo, Smokey Robinson & Jamie Foxx doing a Four Tops medley at the Grammys, which gave me goosebumps and inspired me to make this post.

Please pay special attention to Reach Out, which should be very easy to do since it is a fucking behemoth of a song. Laying waste to urban centers, enslaving the strong and massacring the weak. Resolving the end of the chorus with one of my favorite runs from the major third to the fourth to the fifth of the chord.

Build up huge for the chorus, then drop the beat for a subtle bassline, HAH! Right when the verse kicks in, HAH! Now if only Tom G Warrior was in the Motown studio the day they tracked this song...

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The Shangri-Las - Myrmidons of Melodrama

Hey chances are that I've probably made fun of some band that you like for having teen angst. Man teen angst can actually be pretty cool when it's not all done up in false poetry. Also it helps when you have a genius song-writing and mad scientist style production.

That's one of the coolest things, when you have some ostensibly silly teenage love songs coupled with Lolita style sexuality, but also fucking godhead songs. The classic example is Phil Spector with The Ronettes and The Crystals, but George Morton was operating on a similar level here. See also: France Gall & Serge Gainsbourg, Britney Spears & whoever produced Toxic.

The Beatles stole a lot of ideas from this era of girl group pop, and you can hear it in the way that the verses of a lot of those songs have a beginning, middle and end then adjust to lead smoothly into the chorus, rather than just repeating the same vocal idea four times. We've got layers and layers here in these songs, but, as is expected of great writing, it's never distracting. You don't have to hear all of the syncopated percussion if you don't want to, but if you do you might just stuff your bra and keep a diary. God I hope I don't get my period in gym class.

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Note: I deleted the final tracks of this collection, which was a make-up advertisement and other things, so the ish would fit on mediafire. If you are offended, I am not sorry. Find something better to care about.

Giorgio Moroder - From Here to Eternity (1977)

Some people might make up ideas about the relative value of art music and dance music, but Giorgio Moroder is here to show you that, in the future, all such distinctions melt away under the austere pump of his drum machine. Chunks of this album are mixed together as a long track, enabling you to pretend that you are at a cool sunglasses party with ladies, and that the thump of the bassdrum is blood flowing to your big boner.

The opening/title track is structured like a conventional pop song, but then the coolest thing is that the next two tracks are free-form disco bombardments of variations on a main theme from the first song. After a quick little upbeat boner-tickler which functions basically in the same way as a conventional bridge, the first song is brought back for a final jam out. Also, I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone is not only a showcase for clever wordplay and vocoder overuse, it is another great pop song based on a variation of that same theme that keeps popping up. This record is an example of having a vision, and fucking executing it. In the future.

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EDIT: As Aesop, the highly knowledgable and well-respected driver of the Cosmic Hearse points out, Giorgio also did music for the movie Scarface.

The Time - What Time is It? (1982)

This is basically a Prince album except Morris Day sings instead of the Purple One. You guys remember The Time from Purple Rain, especially The Bird. Well, What Time is It? features The Walk, which, although it doesn't have the memorable and brilliant squawk, does have a really nice minor chord progression and a skit about a woman with an ass so big that it is difficult to take her jeans off. What do you think about this skit, Steve? Ignore what Morris Day has to say at around ~3:30 and realize that this is the anatomy of a Prince groove. He just brings everything in and out, and you can pay attention to which parts are most important and which parts are just flair.

This really shows how to maximize an idea. Most of these songs are just based on one groove with lots of vocal tracks extra instrumentation for the chorus. Also, there are extended jam outs that are kept interesting by the liberal use of weird doubles on the hi-hat and really silly synth tones.

And there is another skit about a pre-internet SIF, reminding us that the world wide web is merely an enabler in these sorts of things.

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The Pointed Sticks - Part of the Noise

Here is a nice collection of stripped-down pop songs with guitars. Now, you might be thinking "Huh, I have listened to a lot of boring, insincere white people playing this type of music." I am sorry that had to happen to you, but that is not what The Pointed Sticks are about. They are about using the same chord progression for both the verse and the chorus of their songs. Any time you can effectively do that, you are winning.

I listened to What Do You Want me to Do? like 100 times in a row yesterday. I accidentally put the song on loop while I was doing my important things, and I was like, "Man dog, I've been listening to really good music this whole time!" There is a really great internal dialogue between the two phrases that make up the verse on this song. Also, listen to Man of the Crowd to try to understand what I'm talking about.

Stuff like this makes me think of how fun it was to be a teenager and like scanning the classroom for THO. Then I remember teen angst, late onset puberty, and existential crises, and I feel good about my current life.

If you like Screeching Weasel and/or The Replacements, get this. This is what it sounds like to like music:

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Note: I couldn't find a linkable copy of the actual album artwork, so you get this weird cover to The Pointed Sticks' LP Perfect Youth, which is contained within the walls of Part of the Noise.

Moby Grape - Moby Grape (1967)

What the fuck going on here, I'm doing this.

We're starting this off with a record that I really enjoy recommending, because people always love it.

Moby Grape's self-titled debut from 1967 is a fucking shining example of melody and songcraft. The hooks on this thing are so perfect - Grape mastered the quick build-up into a nice rhythmic vocal break. Take notes on Come in the Morning and Hey Grandma. Also, consider the call and response arrangements of Omaha and Fall On You. I love songs that are written like this. Super catchy next level hooks, but song structures with much more flow and subtlety than the arena rock "man this chorus has got to be huge" agenda that's become the standard for pop music today.

There's also a steady flow of busy but tasteful lead guitar riffing. But hey, unlike many other records by white dudes from this time period, this is not a manual on how to be really boring at playing the blues. This is a manual on how to turn my brain into a pleasure factory.

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