Music

Went and saw Iron Maiden at Madison Square Garden, with Dio and Motorhead opening up. The last time I saw Dio was also at the Garden, but he was headlining, with Accept opening. That was in 1986. Times have changed; he doesn’t have a robot dragon shooting lasers from its eyes anymore.

Motorhead were great, though slightly sloppy and almost painfully loud. When they began playing, the house was only half-full, so their sound was roaring and bouncing off the concrete. They played nine songs in 40 minutes—”We Are Motorhead,” “No Class,” “Metropolis,” “Doctor Rock,” “RAMONES,” “Killed By Death,” “Sacrifice” (with drum solo), “Ace Of Spades” and “Overkill” (the long version). A fast, tight, punishing set. Shame they didn’t play anything from Hammered; it’s a great album. Go buy it, you fuckers.

John McWhorter wrote a piece in the City Paper a few years back about hip-hop, and that’s what I want to talk about today.

Most of it is poorly aimed, ill-considered boilerplate. McWhorter criticizes Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message” for its bleak lyrical tone, but cuts off the verse he quotes before getting to the “punch line,” in which Melle Mel warns the listener not to turn to crime, that it’s not glamorous, and that it brings nothing but destruction. “The Message” is actually one of the best examples of rap’s potential for imparting lessons, but McWhorter (possibly on purpose) misses that.

However, he does make one reasonable point:

16, Zoloft Smile
Cryptic Slaughter, Convicted
Cryptic Slaughter, Money Talks
Deftones, s/t
The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Are You Experienced?
Hank Mobley, No Room For Squares
Lee Morgan, The Rumproller
Hilton Ruiz, Enchantment
Sonny & Linda Sharrock, Paradise
DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, Optometry
Vader, Revelations
David S. Ware, Third Ear Recitation

I was listening to the Miles set (Disc 1) on the train this morning, and early in the ride I shut it off and put my walkman in my bag and sat there reading, enfolded in the actual sounds of the world around me. There was just too much noise to tolerate in the subway, so I plugged in Kousokuya (Japanese heavy psych-guitar-assault w/female vocals), but when I got to the office I realized I didn’t want to listen to anything that demanded concentration. Instead, I wanted sonic comfort, a buffer to fill the room, and very little else. So I’m listening to all six Van Halen albums, in order, on MP3.

Today’s stack of CDs:

Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O., Electric Heavyland
Antipop Consortium, Antipop vs. Matthew Shipp
Art Ensemble of Chicago, Americans Swinging in Paris
John Coltrane, In Europe, Disc One
Dimmu Borgir, Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia
Farmersmanual, Explorers We
Opeth, Deliverance
Cecil Taylor, Conquistador!
Yes, Yessongs

I bought the two-disc version of Jimi Hendrix’s Blue Wild Angel: Jimi Hendrix Live at the Isle of Wight on Tuesday, as my final CD purchase of 2005. I haven’t finished listening to it yet, but so far it’s…well, it’s pretty ordinary. In a way, it’s kind of cool to know that The Greatest Human To Ever Finger A Fretboard had off nights just like any other musician. To take but one example, did “Machine Gun” really need to be 22 minutes long? And did it need a drum solo? No, and no. There’s some typically fine music on the double-disc, but overall it really doesn’t show Hendrix in the best possible light. Some of his run-throughs of “classic” tunes like “Purple Haze” are perfunctory, a fact which shouldn’t surprise anybody; he’d been playing the song for four years at that point—anyone would have gotten bored with it. I’m not sure this is a concert that should have been edited down to a single “highlights” disc the way it has been, though—it seems to me that Hendrix’s divine status virtually demands that his stuff be heard in full, fuck-ups, toss-offs and all. But I know most people only want the good stuff. So maybe they should stay away from Blue Wild Angel entirely.

It’s important to start a new year off right. So I’m spending today listening to the first six Black Sabbath albums, in order.

Black Sabbath Lyrics

Released: February 13, 1970 - A Friday, no less!

1. Black Sabbath (6:16)
2. The Wizard (4:18)
3. Wasp, Behind the Wall of Sleep, Basically, N.I.B. (10:40)
4. Wicked World (4:42) / Evil Woman (3:22)
5. A Bit of Finger, Sleeping Village, Warning (14:20)

This morning I’m listening to the Plastic Ono Band’s Live Peace In Toronto. I bought it for the Yoko Ono stuff; I really don’t like the Beatles. I never did. But I like Yoko’s voice atop a raucous guitar-rock band. I think she should do an album with Keiji Haino.

I guess since it’s the 31st, I should make some comment about The Year In Music. Well, I’m not going to instead I’m going to reflect on 2002 instead.

As I type this, I’m listening to the Taylor. It’s a solo piano disc from the mid-70s, and the CD reissue has about twice as much material as the original vinyl did. (So it’s not one of those mastered-from-vinyl ripoff jobs I was talking about a few days ago.) It’s one of his most traditionally beautiful records - his playing doesn’t have as much bombast or assaultiveness as on many other records. In fact, it would be an easy entry point for someone whose tastes run more to classical than avant-garde jazz (and I don’t really think this counts as a jazz record, either). A damn fine way to spend an hour and fifteen minutes.

I’m just gonna post this article, instead of linking to it. It’s from this week’s New York Times Magazine 2002, the issue in which they run articles about people who died during the year, and it’s one of the best pieces of music-related writing I’ve read. It makes me want to go listen to Ratt again. (It’s been a long time since I’ve wanted to listen to the Ramones.)

The Ratt Trap
By CHUCK KLOSTERMAN