Friday, June 26, 2009

Return of the Friday Ten!

Strange to say this - Michael Jackson never came up in all the time I was posting random ten lists - not that I have a lot of his stuff on iTunes, but I have some - some of it pretty well rated. You'd have thought, somewhere in there, Don't Stop Til you get Enough would have come up - that is a hell of a song. The guitars at the end - damn... Skimming through all the posts about his death - most of the talk is about Thriller - but, while I admit, Thriller is a good record, full of handsome, well crafted pop songs - it's the beginning of his decline, I think. It's so slick, so professional - produced within an inch of its life. It's packaging first, music (good music, yes) second. But not Off The Wall - which remains everything he could be and was. Great songs, slick, but still alive, human - it's one of those records (quite a few of them) I liked more than I would ever have admitted at the time, and in retrospect, without the pressures of being a teenager with a reputation to maintain, I can love the hell out of now...

So let's use that as a departure point - start with Michael, and see where we are led...

0. Jacko - Don't Stop til you Get Enough
1. Jefferson Airplane - How do you Feel - I own this, and I don't think I have ever heard it before...
2. Sonic Youth - Thunderclap for Bobby Pyn - I haven't heard this before either, but at least I have a better reason, having just bought the new Sonic Youth record and loaded it in this week... first impressions, I have to say, are very positive -
3. Wilco - Shot in the Arm (Live) -
4. Gist - Love At First Sight - god only knows what this is - from one of those Mojo compilations...
5. Devendra Banhart - Water May Walk - nice song
6. Brian Eno - Some of them are Old - lovely, odd tune, but that's Eno in a nutshell
7. Tortoise - Tin Cans and Twine - cool, bass driven post-rock, though it kind of sounds like Boston in the 80s - Morphine or one of those groups...
8. The Soft Machine - Pataphysical Introduction Part II - uh oh - guilt! I post twice on Jacko, and let Hugh Hopper's demise go unmarked? I've listened to a lot more Soft Machine in the last few years than Jacko - certainly listened to them on purpose, which I can't say for Michael all that much... Oh well - we can't pretend we don't live in the World....
9. Big Mama Thornton - Hound Dog - an Elvis tie in!
10. Soft Machine - Pig - yeah! my computer is making up for my neglectfulness! with a great little song, too...

Well? Leave you with another Jackson song - from Thriller, Wanna Be Starting Something - but a live video, the Bad tour (oh god, look at the hair! the clothes! oh god!) - and pretty sharp, the raw, human quality that disappeared with the Thriller record....



And for good measure - Soft Machine, 71, with Hopper getting some nice moments....

3 comments:

Ed Howard said...

Can't say I've ever felt too strongly about any Jacko song, but the rest of that list led you some interesting places. Love the Eno, Wilco and Devendra songs there; Banhart is probably one of the best, most eccentric songwriters around these days, a real joy to listen to (and to see live). That Tortoise song is cool, too, but if you really want to hear them go all 80s, Standards is the album to beat, a very underrated record just bursting with energy.

weepingsam said...

It is kind of an anti-Jacko list, isn't it? I should probably check into "Standards" - I have a few Tortoise records - I like them, without quite committing to them... a bit like Wilco, actually, though I have taken to buying WIlco records sight unseen, probably mostly hoping for some nice Nils Cline moments... Sonic Youth and Eno and Banhart and even Soft Machine are all well represented on the iPod so they are likely to come up now and then - all coming up together here is - you know... a neat coincidence...

Ed Howard said...

Yeah, not exactly what I would have thought of as an MJ tribute list, but then that eclecticism is probably better than just doing an all-MJ tribute.

Standards is the only Tortoise album I can really say I love. I know others disagree, but I dig the tension between the slick overproduction tendencies and the more experimental bits. It's trying to mix together 80s pop and Aphex Twinisms and the band's jammy roots and coming up with this weird and strangely funky pastiche. The only other Tortoise-related disc I like as much is the great Remixed collection, especially the Jim O'Rourke and Springheel Jack tracks.