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Inside: Cultural Sausage. ~ Ludic Lists. ~ Skullbucket. Outside: Is they rockin' it, or rockin' it? "teeth plaque conspiracy Metallica" "big boners" "moral clarity phrase" "pictures of crack whores" "housewives at play" "nutrition facts for Chio Chip" "grudge fuck" "naming a boom town" |
08.27.2004
Inspired by this post by the brilliant Nate Patrin (who was himself inspired by this post by Jess Harvell, who was inspired by a post I can't be bothered to find of ILM -- don't call it a meme, yo, it's been here fa years), I present an incoherent list of little moments, little choses, little sounds (and some not so little) that I like a lot in music. Note that I know a lot less about music of any kind than either of these motherfuckers, but y'all gone have to deal. In no order, with no claims of superiority...these just turn my crank, is all. There's (I think) 50; I'm sure I could do more, but we've all suffered enough. - the way that some artists (like DJ Shadow on "What Does Your Soul Look Like Part 2" and Public Enemy on "Bring the Noise") can drop a million samples, at least half of which come from records you own, but they're so expertly cut and threaded that you can't identify a single one. - the way that, conversely, some artists (like BDP on "Ya Slippin'" and the Coup on "Busterismology") can pretty much rip off a complete song wholesale but it somehow works so well you just don't give a shit (and fuck P.Diddy anyways). - moments in a lot of rockabilly and bluegrass songs where you can actually hear the band think "fuck it" and decide to kick the speed and intensity through the stratosphere, like on the version of "Shady Grove" by Bill Monroe where they all start playing so fast you think their heads are gonna come off. - similarly, a lot of old hillbilly songs (here I think specifically of "Woo-Hoo" by the Rock-a-Teens and a lot of Gid Tanner & the Skillet Lickers) where they're recording live and they're all probably loaded and they're having a good time, and suddenly someone just starts hollering and whooping. - the crazy drunken B-flat clarinet in klezmer songs, which has got to be the most definitive and inextricable linkage of instrument to genre in any type of music. - any guitar-rock band (usually one being recorded by Steve Albini or containing Steve Albini) that has mastered the hard-soft, stop-start dynamic; no matter how many times I tell myself this trick is old hat by now, it gets me every fucking time. - black metal drummers who sound like someone pressing the same key on an old IBM Selectric typewriter over and over again. - Vast Aire's slow-build, snaky flow, when he sounds like he's just wandering down a hallway drunk and then next thing you know BAM! he's coshed you in the back of the head with an Essence Award or something. - the moment in "Farewell Blues" by Flatt & Scruggs where Earl Scruggs, already the best banjo player who ever lived, suddenly goes completely bugfuck and starts playing harmonics right in the middle of this insanely intricate breakdown. - the moment the bow first hits the string of a minor-chord cello piece. - all of the vocals on the Ass Ponys' "Hey Swifty" (the song that saved my life), but especially when Chuck says 'Goddamn, goddamn, goddamn it, man', and the end, where the background vocals stop being sung and start being screamed in desperation. - the crushing, triumphant-sounding horns in Japanese monster and sci-fi flicks, most obviously the theme from "Godzilla", but also the completely over-the-top "Mosura (Mothra's Theme)", which sounds like some totally insane national anthem. - the way that almost every John Carpenter movie theme sounds like it was written specifically to be sampled into a gangsta rap song, but somehow no one has gotten around to doing it yet. - fast songs where the drummer gets so carried away that he gets utterly out of control and the rest of the band has the spend the whole song catching up to him: Bad Brains' "Pay to Cum", Flat Duo Jets' "Theme 2", the live version of the Knitters' "Call of the Wrecking Ball". - music that sounds like it was composed and performed by aliens from another planet who don't have any idea what music is supposed to sound like: Keiji Haino, Hella, Jandek. - insane, overcomplicated polyrhythms. Like the stop/start dynamic, I know this is kinda played, but I'm a total sucker for it: the New Year, D.J. Bonebrake at his best, mid-period Sonic Youth, the Feelies, and any band fronted by Dave Brubeck. Also, anything in five. - listening to D. Boon play one of his jagged, nasty 'solos' and thinking: this guy is either the best guitar player in the world, or the worst, and genuinely not knowing which. - KRS-One kicking it roughneck. - the exact opposite of KRS-One kicking it roughneck: the 'raving derelict' style of rapping, personified by Busta Rhymes and ODB at their best. Especially Busta demanding to "turn the music up PLEASE!" on a track from the otherwise forgettable Space Jam soundtrack. - Lee Perry loading so much gain and reverb on the snares and bass drums (I think here especially of Super Ape and In Dub Confrontation that you eventually don't even know where the rest of the song went. - Songs where the vocalist sounds like he's so depressed that he literally won't live to see the end of the song, like Hank Williams on "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" or Joe Pernice on the Scud Mountain Boys' "Scratch Ticket". - The way that Nore kicks it so hard that you don't even care how shitty his lyrics are. - Really amazing female vocal harmonies in new alt-country/Americana/what the fuck ever you want to call it. Like, well, like Neko Case and anyone, but especially the Corn Sisters ("This Little Light of Mine", for example), and Freakwater in general but particularly the way they deliver the line "some people are born too soon" in "The Waitress Song". - The way that Dead Prez sounds a little like Bauhaus sometimes. - Songs with an electric violin where the player just goes absolutely nuts, like Dirty Three's "Red" and not like anything by Camper van Beethoven. - When the Fall would build a song around a ramped-up acoustic guitar riff, which always seemed to me the perfect accompanying sound to Mark E. Smith's deranged ramblings, and then add a pounding kick drum that made it sound like the Incredible Hulk was trying to bust into the studio. - Glenn Gould playing the piano, just quietly enough for the mics to pick up everything. - The way Polly Harvey played the guitar, back when she played the guitar. - Pretty much every element of the Modern Lovers' "I'm Straight", from the deceptively simple drumline to the faint background buzz of the keyboard, to the stupid adenoidal half-pleading, half-threatening vocals to how at the end of the song it really sounds like Jonathan Richman is having to force the band to sing the chorus. - An electric organ, played fast, with so much delay that you're not quite sure what instrument it is (see Laika & the Cosmonauts' "Delayrium" and everything the Lyres have ever recorded, especially "How Do You Know?"). - Marduk's Panzer Division Marduk, which embodies everything you could possibly hate about black metal, from the cartoonish outfits to the ridiculous song titles to the insane overblown excess of it all, and yet which still sounds like it could be the best album ever made if you listen to it in the right frame of mind. - the way the rhythm section sounds on some nomeansno songs (particularly around the 0+2=1 album), like they'd wandered in from a really tight session of avant-gard funk-jazz and been forced to play punk songs. - how Queen's "We Will Rock You" is totally made by the slow-riding buzz that leads to the guitar solo at the end of it. - the fact that the Ramones come right after Rammstein in my collection, and how they're very similar insofar as they both actually only had one song, but it was a pretty good song. - when a male country singer nails the chorus of a song so perfectly that it gives you the feeling that this is what the whole genre is supposed to be about, like Robbie Fulks on "Tears Only Run One Way" or Porter Wagoner on "A Satisfied Mind". - the first cut followed by the drop-beat on Roc Raida's "You Know Who You Fuckin' Wit'?". - how Keith constantly demonstrates that he's not only one of the best rock lead guitarists ever, but also one of the best rhythm players when he feels like it, such as the acoustic playing on "Country Honk". - Roxy Music before Bryan Ferry decided he was a crooner, and there was this insane swirl of guitars and synth and sax around his amazing, clear, unaffected voice, like on "Do the Strand" and "Virginia Plain". For that matter, any crazily out-of-place sax that nonetheless totally makes a song (see also "1970" by the Stooges and "I Know What Boys Want"). - the call-and-response flow invented and perfected by Run and D.M.C., which they did so well that for the most part, no one else has even bothered to imitate it -- which is incredibly rare in rap, where anything even mildly innovative attracts more biters than all-you-can-eat fish fries at St. Ben's. - that one same goddamn breakbeat that Schoolly D used in at least half of his singles. - Slayer, especially when they were showing off like with the huge shift you get off the guitar break in "Angel of Death" or the pulverizing velocity of "Altar of Sacrifice". - A long, drawn-out, breath-control-straining whoop, like in a high-and-lonesome bluegrass song, or the final lead-vocal call in a klezmer song when the tempo has gotten as rapid as it can possibly get. - Swing bands which are allegedly meant to get you dancing but which actually play such crazy rhythms and weird, off tempos that you can't imagine anyone really cutting up to it, like Stan Kenton's band from the 1940s. - Stompin' Tom Connors' flagrant Nucker accent; Laibach's flagrant fascist intonation; Mr. Eon's flagrant sleazy-guy-on-a-street-corner-selling-you-Phillies-tickets delivery. - when certain late-'80s/early-'90s bands (see: Thin White Rope, Camper van Beethoven, the Sun City Girls) would take about twenty kinds of world/ethnic music and whip them all together in a blender just to see what it would sound like. - Tennessee Ernie Ford's voice in general, but also his stranger moments, like his bizarro lounge-jazz cover of "Nine Pound Hammer". - the Gristle-izer. - Venom's first three albums, probably the best metal albums since Sabbath's heydey, even though the drums are so muffled it makes them sound like they were being played from inside an air-conditioner. - the moment in "Triumph" where Masta Killa has just delivered his hamhanded, awkward, typically awful verse, and in hops Raekwon and says "yo, fuck that!" - the combination of Poly Styrene's voice and Lora Logic's sax, probably the most amazingly perfect noise ever committed to record. |
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| TODAY'S DRIFTWOOD: "The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds." (Will Durant) |