Music, Sweet Music, I Wish I Could Caress

Well, hi peeps. I’m Erica, and I’ll just come right out and say it: I am a very, very, very bad guest poster, who has been absolutely yanking her hair out from their follicular roots, trying to figure out what to write while Mark is yukking it up with Mrs. Wife in Shanghai.

Anyhow, I was sitting here at my job thinking to myself, “I really gotta put a post up — but what??,” even though, to channel Langston Hughes, my own blog is beginning to “crust and sugar over — like a syrupy sweet,” but still…no excuses. I need to figure out what to write.

And then, it came to me.

Mark — who I was “introduced” to by Eric, and who is also a fellow newspaper peep (I work for a chain of local weeklies here in Brooklyn, USA) — has the unusual distinction of being only one of two or three other bloggers on my blogroll who are younger than me, and a fine blogger he is, and yet, we both count ourselves among the throngs of young music listeners around the world who deem The Fab Four a favorite music group.

I refer not, of course, to Pete, Roger, John and Keith, the respective members of The Who, my favorite group growing up, nor John and Michelle Phillips, Denny Doherty, and Cass Elliot of The Mamas and the Papas (I have it on good authority that John Phillips was a total dooshbag), but rather I speak of John, Paul, George and Ringo, The Beatles.

And so, sitting here on a rainy deadline day, banging out my myriad mess of photo captions and press announcements for our Southern Brooklyn papers, and trying to keep my sleepyhead from inadvertently slamming down onto the keyboard with a mighty thwack, I try to get through it all by listening to Pandora Radio, “an automated music recommendation and Internet radio service created by the Music Genome Project.”

The entry continues (this figures prominently in my tale): “Users enter a song or artist that they enjoy, and the service responds by playing selections that are musically similar. Users provide feedback on the individual song choices — approval or disapproval — which Pandora takes into account for future selections.”

So say, even if I enter, as an example, “Franz Josef Haydn” into the search box, Pandora will probably play me some early Mozart symphony, and maybe even a little pre-Romantic Beethoven, which is musically somewhat reminiscent of Mozart.

But back to The Fab Four. After having gone on a somewhat lengthy hiatus from them, we’re talking years and years, suddenly I craved The Beatles, which I typed into the “create a new station” search box, and not only have I been able to satisfactorily scratch my niggling Beatles itch, with Pandora providing me with a plethora of awesome classic rock tunage, but I also got to hear lots of other “musically similar” songs, such as John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy,” Led Zeppelin’s “Bron-Y-Aur Stomp,” and a buncha stuff by The Hollies, a very cool band; this is one of my favorites from them, though the video is a mite creepy.

As I hinged nearer and nearer to a comatose state at work, barely able to focus, it occurred to me in a rather abrupt, yet lucid, moment, that of all the Beatles songs Pandora has gifted me with over the past few weeks, including “A Day In The Life,” “Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight” (the first song[s] I ever got stoned to, back when that was a thing I used to do), and “Paperback Writer,” the one song I have not yet heard — the Holy Grail of Beatles love songs, the modest little ditty which somehow slipped through the cracks of being queued amongst the mélange of other classic rock tunes — was “In My Life.”

WTF? How can such a travesty even be?

I know what you’re thinking: “Geeeeeez, so what?? Get to the friggin’ point already!!” And I will, no need to be tetchy, but anyways, here’s the point to my loooong story, which I thought was really weird and kind of even a little magical: The minute I thought to myself, while listening to “Wild Horses” by The Stones, “Why don’t they ever play ‘In My Life?,’ right after “Wild Horses” ended, guess what song came on? I scheisse youse not.

And since I’m the only person who could A) hear my inner thoughts, and B) hear what’s playing on my headphones, although I am told by coworkers to turn the volume down every once in a while, especially when AC/DC (another of Mark’s faves) or Metallica comes on, I couldn’t exactly SHARE my special private moment with anybody else in the room, ya dig? I mean, yes…technically, I could have, but I could have just as easily made the whole thing up, even though, honest injun I didn’t, but also…would anyone really have cared?

Probably not.

Yannow what, though? I never met Mark, but I have met the aforelinkedto Eric, and they two are good buds (I’m sure the AC/DC video Eric posted, right after he came back from Scotland, had somewhat to do with his falling under Mark’s influence), and one thing us thirty-somethings have in common (wait, Mark…are you even 30 yet? Or did you just turn 29?) is that we take our music very seriously, and I just know Mark would have cared.

And that, children, is only part of why I am a loyal reader of Groanin’ Jock. The other reason being, I just fancy the way the guy looks in a kilt.

Lost Classics II: The Music - The Music

Briefly, at the start of the 21st Century, a handful of British bands threatened to throw off the shackles of Britpop and emerge as heirs to the thrones recently vacated by Blur, Oasis, Suede and Pulp.

Starsailor, Turin Brakes, Alfie and The Cooper Temple Clause were all bestowed with the tag of "the next big thing". And, for one reason or another, none truly ascended to the level which had been predicted of them.

Amongst those bands were The Music. Four teenage upstarts from Leeds, their sound was a mix of The Stone Roses' early guitar somersaults, heavy beats and Robert Harvey's high-pitched rock howl.

All 1,000 copies of the band's vinyl-only debut single Take The Long Road and Walk It sold out almost instantly. The song encapsulated The Music's sound in one five-minute burst: one scintillating guitar riff backed by a disco beat and Harvey's screaming, barely-decipherable vocal.

The single was followed by the You Might As Well Try To Fuck Me EP and The People EP, both of which suggested that a classic debut album was in the offing.

But, when debut album The Music arrived, it was distinctly underwhelming. (As an aside, is it strictly true that if an album has no title, it is simply given the name of the band that recorded it? Or should it just remain untitled and be referred to as "the band's debut album"?)

The first disappointment was in the track listing. Neither You Might As Well Try To Fuck Me - a great, rollocking, rock'n'roll tune - nor electronic masterpiece Karma was included on the record - a terrible oversight on both counts.

But the biggest travesty was in the production. Live, The Music are powerful performers, the rhythm section to the fore and Harvey breakdancing and bodypopping between lines. However, on the album, the production is muddy and fails to bring any of these aspects to the fore.

Listening to the album on the way into work this morning, I had to crank the car stereo up way beyond its normal setting just to hear what was happening. On a record that could have had a huge aural impact, that's inexcusable.

Setting aside the production gripes, the quality in the songwriting is plain to hear. An inferior, re-recorded version of Take The Long Road and Walk It is included, with the closing slide guitar refrain masked by unnecessary layers of guitar. The track follows opener The Dance, which stands as one of the record's strongest moments. Glacier-like walls of guitar open, to be joined by a Harvey mantra and delicate cymbal taps. Then, almost a minute in, the bass thunders in and the band is off at a gallop. Of all the tracks on the album, it is The Dance that is most reminiscent of The Stone Roses, and it is the track on which the band sounds most confident.

Elsewhere, there are hints at what the record could have amounted to in different hands. Human, which follows Take The Long Road and Walk It, fails to properly test the band's strengths, relying on guitarist Adam Nutter's best John Squire impression to carry a weaker than expected Harvey vocal.

Stand out track from the record is The Truth Is No Words, a furious bass groove combined with Harvey's most absorbing vocal. And it is on moments like these that it becomes most apparent that poor production severely limited what should have stood as a landmark record.

Part of the record's problem is that the band sometimes can't seem to decide whether they want to write a dance record, a rock record or an acoustic record. When they weld the guitar histrionics to the disco beats, such as on Float, The People or Getaway, they are peerless. When settling into a slower-paced ballad such as on Turn Out The Light, they fail to capture the imagination.

As it opens, Disco could almost be vintage Black Sabbath, so towering is its riff and assured its vocal. Two minutes in, the band accelerates into a Led Zeppelin rock storm and Harvey is given free reign to indulge his inner rock god. But, instead of using the track to close what could have been an outstanding record, the band follows it with the ponderous Too High.

Whilst Elastica's The Menace could never have been considered a classic by any stretch of the imagination, The Music's debut record should have been. The strength and tightness of the band and the quality of their songwriting could have seen them elevated immediately to the rock'n'roll A-list, their debut sitting comfortably alongside Definitely Maybe, The Stone Roses and A Storm In Heaven.

Instead, it merely hints at what might have been.

Lost Classics I: Elastica - The Menace

In what will probably be an occasional series on this far-flung outpost of the worldwide interweb, I've decided that there are some records out there that are deserving of more recognition than they've been given in the past.

Some of these records will truly be "lost classics". Others may simply be records that I like that have been much-maligned by others. And some will be records that, whilst they are no classics, show a new or interesting side to an otherwise popular band, or have a handful of great tunes hidden away amongst the dross.

Elastica's second album The Menace, released in 2000, fits into the latter category. Released five years after their barnstorming Britpop debut, the album was almost unanimously panned by critics. In fact, it proved so unpopular that I managed to pick up a second-hand copy for two pounds just a few months after it had been released.

And in truth, it's not a great album - not even a very good album. But amidst Justine Frischmann's half-baked tunes and Trio covers, there are two or three small hints at the songwriting smarts behind Connection, 2:1 and Line Up.

It's easy, more than ten years later, to forget that Frischmann was Britpop royalty in 1995 - a former member of Suede who was half of the scene's number one couple as Damon Albarn's squeeze. Liam Gallagher's promise that he would shag her was one of the many incidents that sparked the Blur v Oasis feud.

But there was a five year gap between albums, and Britpop had long since died a death by the time The Menace was released.

Nonetheless, opening track Mad Dog sounds like Blur's later work, with off-beat drums and yelping vocals. Miami Nice could almost be The Cooper Temple Clause, with sparse electronic percussion and throbbing bass, and penultimate track The Way I Like It successfully blends acoustic guitars with Frischmann's disinterested drawl.

The final track on the album is a cover of Trio's Da Da Da, as unexpected as it is unnecessary. But strangely, amongst the irritating electronic bleeps and Damon Albarn's keyboards (Albarn was credited on the album under the pseudonym Norman Balda) what emerges is the track on the album that sounds most like the Elastica of old - spiky punk-inspired Britpop melodies that sound like a band enjoying themselves.

Elastica are long since a footnote in rock'n'roll history, consigned to the Britpop scrapheap alongside Sleeper, Menswe@r and countless other indie chancers. Oasis and Supergrass may continue to fly the flag for the class of 1995, with Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon ploughing their own post-Blur furrows and the reformed Shed Seven and Dodgy attempting to recapture former glories.

But, with the benefit of hindsight, Elastica's debut album deserves to be recognised as one of the hallmark records of that brief time when Camden seemed to be the centre of the rock'n'roll world. The Menace falls a long way short of that standard, but at times it acts as a small reminder of what Elastica were capable of. We should mourn the fact that, unlike Jarvis Cocker and the rest of the 1990s indie gliterrati, Justine Frischmann is no longer recording.