4 posts tagged “rock”
Damn. Don't know what happened to the cover art for this song...but who cares--if you want to look at pretty pictures, go the my DeviantArt page!
Anywho, Billy Joel is one of my alltime favorite singer/songwriters: he's an amazing pianist, a great singer with a wonderfully powerful soulful voice, and--most importantly--one hell of a songwriter. I'm a big fan of narrative songs and artists such as John Prine, Bob Dylan, Neal Fox, and Warren Zevon have released some of my favorite storytelling jams. The stories of Sam Stone, Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner, and James Lewis (the Kid With Two First Names) are as gripping as any novel--maybe even more so, because they all have wonderful tunes to back them up.
One such song that both tells a great (if incredibly depressing) tale is, of course, Billy Joel's "Allentown" (from 1982's The Nylon Curtain--my favorite Joel album--or Greatest Hits Volume 2). I've been through Allentown, Pennsylvania--the decrepit old eastern-PA coaltown in which the song's set--and...well, these days it's not quite the post-industrial wasteland of despair, unemployment, and hopelessness that it was in the early '80s (which is when Joel wrote and recorded the song), but it's certainly a place scarred deeply by its industrial heritage. In 1997 when I passed through on my way to new York City, I saw the familiar sight of rusting steel mills and mining equipment looming on the horizon like the skeletons of biblical behemoths: the dead gods of a past age. The homes of those gods' former slaves are all permanently smokestained and sagging beneath the weight of industrial exhaustion and post-industrial depression. Though Allentown has begun to recover--today it might even be a pretty, clean place like Pittsburgh--the wounds of its barbaric mining past are still visible.
Which is why a song like "Allentown" is still viable today: its speaks of a past that's still there over your shoulder. Well, it is if you're from Allentown or anywhere in southwestern Pennsylvania (Fayette County reprazentin' right here, yo!). It speaks of what my grandfather went through from the 1940s through the 1960s: born and bred a coalminer, after the mine closed down he struggled for decades doing odd jobs because he simply wasn't trained to do anything but grub for coal in the hateful guts of the earth. Of course, even had he been a jack-of-all-trades, there still weren't any other jobs to be had in southwestern PA. It was a singularly depressing time.
Joel has done a great job of encapsulating all that what-are-we-going-to-do-now? depression, the sense of betrayal by their employers, that former miners like my grandfather and former steelworkers experienced after the deaths of their respective industries. But what makes "Allentown" a stonecold jam despite its somber subject matter is Joel's masterful melody and the little touches of industrial percussion that tint the song with an aural suggestion of the blue-collar Golden Age's steelyards and coal-tipples. You can dance to this song, or sit back and nod along soberly to it. It's both uplifting and spiritually crushing. But that's a testament to Joel's power as both a songwriter and musician.
Starsailor is one of those bands that have drawn lots of critical praise but have generally been rather overlooked by folks--and I really don't know why that is. Though generally classified these days as "indie rock," Starsailor produces the kind of good ol'-fashioned rock exemplified by Marshall Crenshaw, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, and many other '80s-era straight-up rock bands. Their music is warm and friendly, and--so I think, at least--should appeal to everyone from the most diehard classic rock fans to the most jaded indie rocker. Yet, for some reason, they just don't seem to be generating the buzz I believe they deserve.
OK, OK...sorry for the lack of jams over the past two days. The shoulder/ribs muscle-spasm plus fibromyalgia combo platter really did me in. Couldn't move my head, couldn't breathe...sure as hell couldn't type. Fortunately, a regimen of Vicodin and Valium finally managed to do the trick--even if they left me a painfree, but lifeless, zombie for a few days. Fortunately, things to be back to normal...i.e., nonstop lowlevel pain, not shrieking stabbing agony.
Anyway, this post goes out to my boy Colin in Tasmania, because he so graciously pointed out to me, a while back, that Icehouse's seminal 1987 album, Man of Colours, was back in print with a considerable amount of extra tracks added. I immediately flipped out and grabbed that (and Flowers and Primitive Man, for good measure) and have spent the last few days listening to the album on repeat. I cannot possibly express how badly I wish the 1980s never ended.
Oddly enough, I didn't get into Icehouse in any major way until 2001 or 2002, largely because my buddy Arcane Matt--the guy who really got me into music collecting--exposed me to more of their work by playing "Crazy," the band's first big hit in the United States (and the first track on Man of Colours), and a couple of other tracks by them one night when he and I were DJing together. I was, like: "Holy shit...'You've gotta be crazy, baby, to want a guy like me?' That's, like, the theme song to my life!" The only song I'd known by Icehouse prior to that night was their big big 1988 hit, "Electric Blue" (also from Man of Colours), which I remember loving back when I was in ninth grade and had a whopping big crush on April Trees. Ummm, OK--back to the point: I didn't really get into Icehouse until fairly recently, and I could kick myself in the ass a thousand times for never having looked into them earlier.
The sound of Icehouse is quite literally The Sound of the 1980s: ultra-clean production, soaring melodies, rockin' guitars and swirling synths, reverbed snares and that huge, orchestral sound that made every song sound like an anthem for some element of your life. On Man of Colours, this sound was most mature. This album features Iva Davies' best songwriting since Primitive Man and probably the best production of ANY New Wave/rock album from the later '80s. Those Aussies really had it going on down there in the late '80s with acts like Icehouse and INXS blowing up the charts even here on the other side of the freakin' Pacific. The lead song, "Crazy," is a heart-swelling anthem that every single geek from the 1980s must realize is His Motherfucking Jam--and, of course, "Electric Blue" (cowritten with that maestro of soulful pop, John Friggin' Oates) is a masterpiece--but the real meat of album actually follows those two major singles. DO NOT let the majesty of those two singles overshadow the rest of the album, especially the moving, brilliant title track.
"Man of Colours" is an entirely-synth-driven song whose understated, mournful synths create a lovely atmosphere for Davies' heartfelt lyrics. The hihat ringing like drops of rain falling against a window underscores everything, and provides a backbone for the gorgeous melody. If this song doesn't make you tear up a little, there's something wrong with you--stop reading this and go away, I don't like you anymore. Though musically somewhat similar to, say, Lionel Richie's "Hello" (only in terms of mixing and production), "Man of Colours" is not an exercise in downbeat schmaltz, but an honest exploration of a nostalgic old painter looking back upon the fading colors of his memories. There's something about the melody and the gentle clarinet line that really calls to mind a world of colors whose vibrancy is beginning to dull with time...a feeling I, in particular--obsessed with the 1980s as I am--seem to feel more and more with every passing year.
You know...there's a lot of good music being made today. TONS of good music. But very little of it seems to pack the emotional punch of recordings like this. Were the '80s some kind of Age of Musical Miracles, or am I merely deifying the decade through the rose-tinted window of memory? Ah, who the hell cares--there was so much good music back then, it ain't even funny. Even when you strip away the personal attachments and recollections, songs like "Man of Colours" are eternal just because they're good songs--and it really doesn't matter when they came out: the world of music is, effectively, spaceless and timeless. The awesomeness of a jam like "Man of Colours" or "Crazy" echoes forward and backward through time and across the entire globe. Whether you came upon it the day of its release or twenty years later is irrelevant: the music's power is always there, no matter when or where you encounter it.
Good gods, I love Faith No More. First of all, they introduced me to Mike Patton, which led me to Mr. Bungle, which led me to the hundred-billion other musical projects he's been involved in. But even more importantly, they confirmed for me a long-held supposition: that the more instruments a band uses, the more interesting their music is.
