The Rolling Stones. Their Satanic Majesties Request (1967).

You have to be of a certain age (okay, you have to be old) to remember that before being the “world’s greatest rock and roll band,” the Rolling Stones were for a time restlessly looking for an identity, going broke, and repeatedly facing ridiculously harsh penalties for possession of pot. And then they lost the leader of the band. (Sadly, who today remembers that musical genius and multi-instrumentalist, Brian Jones, actually started the Stones?). The Rolling Stones began as an R&B cover band forced into writing their own material by their manager, who actually quit during the making of Their Satanic Majesties Request because the band insisted on producing themselves.

Viewed at the time as the Beatles’ only competitors, in reality, Lennon and McCartney barely took a look over their shoulders to see what the Glimmer Twins were up to. Rather, they were taking notes on Brian Wilson’s latest vocal miracles with the Beach Boys.

So, in 1967, as The Beatles were dropping Sgt. Pepper, Jimi was unleashing Are You Experienced, and we saw the debut albums by The Doors, and The Velvet Underground, the Stones released their contribution to 1967, Their Satanic Majesties Request. Long thought to be the nadir of execrable self indulgence, few admit to having any regard for this most anomalous of Stones releases.

But is it really all that bad? Let’s talk about "Sing This All Together (See What Happens)." No, we really can’t talk about that one. Mick said, “Anyone let loose in the studio will produce stuff like that.” Maybe, but no one would release it. As Keith put it, in an absurdly obvious understatement, "There is a change between material on Satanic Majesties and Beggars Banquet.” Oh, you think?

However, we do have "She’s A Rainbow." Ingeniously arranged, it features prominent piano work by Nicky Hopkins, who plays beautifully articulated sections of swirly, filigreed Baroque figures. The silly but stylish lyric is about a girl arrayed in lots of different colors. They nailed the zeitgeist on that one. And who can forget the fractured string quartet at the end playing like some parody of a Ligeti nightmare? The strings were arranged by John Paul Jones, who would become the bass player for Led Zeppelin the following year. Great stuff.

Then there’s "2,000 Light Years From Home." A palpable description of alienation with the sound of a rocket engine slowing down and some of the best creepy Mellotron ever recorded, as played by Brian Jones.

So, Their Satanic Majesties has some classic highlights, among a few missteps symptomatic of the times.  One would have thought Jagger was responsible for the experimentation here, as he often admitted to being bored by sticking only to rock & roll.  But, oddly enough, accounts have suggested Keith leading these sessions, most often aided by close collaboration with Brian Jones, who apparently was able to play any instrument he could lay his hands on. 

The truth is, the badass Stones never fit into the hippy dippy flower power era of the 60’s. Just look at the cover of Satanic Majesties.  They seem to be saying, "Yeah, we're down with all this groovy psychedelic stuff.  Well, actually, no, we're not."

The Stones didn’t really come into their period of greatness until the brackish dawn of the sleazy, disenchanted 70’s, after the disillusionment of the Altamont tragedy. Suddenly, with the Beatles disbanded, and the death of 60’s idealism, it seemed nobody did naughty better than the Stones, and they found their niche just by being themselves.

Every Stones fan and rock critic will tell you Exile On Main Street is their masterpiece and pinnacle. Seeing things differently, I would call Exile the beginning of the end. For me, Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, and Sticky Fingers were the unbeatable trio of albums from conception to execution that they would never surpass. On Exile, I can hear them start to imitate themselves, which is usually the first glimpse of creative downturn. But I’m probably alone there.

I love their now more neglected work from 1966, like "Mother’s Little Helper", "Paint It Black," and "Lady Jane," all from Aftermath, as well as "Ruby Tuesday," from Between The Buttons. These were baroque, chamber pop songs based in social commentary on the hip, new middle class trends in London. It was the pithy and unflinching criticism and fashionable depictions of the latest empty fads in these tunes that made the Stones seem like enlightened and intelligent observers.

But would anyone, I wonder, agree that perhaps their greatest achievement was "Gimme Shelter?" It’s a portrayal of desperation overcome at the very last moment by redemption (“Love, sister, is just a kiss away”). Here, the Stones pull off a brilliant and heartfelt balance between the dark and the light that remains remarkably mature and untouchable. It summarizes for me what the Stones, at their best, were really all about. The studio recording features the harrowing vocal by Merry Clayton, which takes the performance into a realm of profound spiritual terror.

"Gimme Shelter" live (live vocal anyway, but a fine performance nonetheless by Mick):

The Bird and The Bee. Diamond Dave (2009).

Here's a band I never give a thought to, which is unfair because every time they show up in a shuffle play on my iPod I remember how much I like them.  They epitomize much of what I esteem in music I most cherish: beauty and style, humor, and skillfully meticulous arrangements.  Greg Kurstin has worked with some of my most favorite artists, such as Kylie, and Sophie Ellis-Bextor.  Inara George's voice is rare; utterly relaxed but precise as a laser.

The duo wrote an implausible tribute to David Lee Roth, which is hilarious:

Japan

After the Punk movement reduced popular music to its essential building blocks, bands were free to design their new sounds from scratch.  They could be post-punk, new wave, new Romantic, whatever, as long as they weren't Prog (of course).  

One of the bands ahead of that curve was Japan.  They were already glamming it up during the Punk explosion, so they were not initially successful, except in, well, Japan!  Luckily, they stuck with it until everyone else caught up with them.  It didn’t hurt that the band was full of musical geniuses.  The lovely David Sylvian stole the show, looking like a wax mannequin of Warhol, and sounding like Bowie with seasonal allergies.  But one cannot possibly speak of Japan without acknowledging the fluid and idiosyncratic fretless bass work of Mick Karn.  Karn was a self-taught bassoon player who actually won an audition to a symphony orchestra without knowing how to read music. He made his own fretless bass in the 1970’s simply by removing the frets.

Here’s the band performing The Art of Parties (the groove here is absolutely wicked, and it’s live!):



From the same concert, Still Life In Mobile Homes:



Sadly, Karn lost a battle with cancer in January of this year at the age of 53, having only been diagnosed about six months earlier.  Safe journeys, Mick.

Beaumont. this is... Beaumont (2000).

Keith Girdler, who had recorded originally with the band Blueboy, on Sarah Records, and subsequently in Arabesque, Snowdrops, and Lovejoy, put together Beaumont in 2000, with Lorraine Carrol (vocals), Dick Preece (keyboards), Leigh Saunders (trumpet, keyboards), and two former members of Blueboy: Martin Rose (drums, percussion) and Cath Close (vocals).

Unspeakably twee, the songs refer to plimsolls, tank tops, teardrops, and sipping cherry soda through straws.  Brief instrumentals punctuate the disc, sounding like outtakes from the soundtrack of some lost Julie Christie film.  It evokes, but does not directly imitate, the mid-1960’s, and it drips with wistful charm and beauty.  

Keith Girdler was diagnosed with cancer in 2004 and died three years later, at the age of 46.

For those of you who feel even Belle and Sebastian is too testosterone-fueled and macho for your delicate sensitivities, Beaumont might be just what you’re looking for.

Girls and Maths:

Caramel Snow. Laboratory Glassware (2011).

Shoegazey pop with lyrics from a Spam email.  More info on Myspace.

Bryan Ferry. Olympia (2010) ...and why it’s not the second coming of Avalon (1982).

Ex-Roxy members convened this past year for Bryan Ferry’s new album, Olympia.  The official press release states, “Bryan Ferry reunited on record with members of Roxy Music, including Brian Eno.”   But don’t expect an updated version of For Your Pleasure, or Avalon.  The press release doesn’t even mention Manzanera, Mackay, or Thompson by name and, try as you will, it’s pretty challenging to identify what Eno is doing on the record.  As Mackay says on his Web site, “I have read that I played on Bryan's upcoming record Olympia.  Just for the record I may have done but I am not sure!”  It seems Olympia started as a Roxy reunion, but got bogged down in Steely Dan proportions of perfectionism, and eventually became another Ferry solo outing.   

For those of us that have Avalon burned in our memory, the first track of Olympia starts with a shock of recognition: it’s the same pulsating string sound from “True To Life.”  That seems to tease us with the idea that Roxy is now reformed, picking up where Avalon left off.  But this is not the case.  In fact, the opening is a red herring.  Olympia has, to my ears, nothing to do with Avalon.  Olympia is more burnished wood than polished pearl.  It’s smooth, but you can see the grain underneath.  Avalon was many shades of sleek cool. Olympia has some brightness, but it’s mostly darker and tougher.

Without the co-writing contributions of Mackay and Manzanera, Olympia forgoes harmonic complexity in favor of groove and texture, which is typical of Ferry’s solo work. The core band, supplemented, as usual, with lots of guest players, creates under, one would assume, Ferry’s direction, a weighty bed of swirling layers for Bryan’s observant ruminations.  Practically every track has that now definitive Ferry ending: no fade, no chord, just a single unison note, a device we first heard at the end of “While My Heart Is Still Beating,” from, of course, Avalon.

The collaboration with Groove Armada on “Shameless” provides Ferry with a newer, updated and welcome context, but the track is marred by the distracting borrowing of the bleeping synth from Annie’s “Greatest Hit” (1999).  On Annie’s original it has a bit more filtering, more of a “wah” sound on the attack, and it’s a semitone higher, but it’s essentially the same motif.  Otherwise, the tunes are layered with guitar parts that creep like the roots of trees looking for water.  Ferry is able to orchestrate atmospheric yet muscular arrangements that generate heft without overpowering the etchings of his vocals.

At 65, Bryan’s voice is now fragile and frayed.  With Avalon, Ferry completely dropped the artifice of weird vocal mannerisms that had made his voice so distinctive and strange, and oddly appealing.  Since then he has crooned to us, close to our ear, with something just more than a whisper.

Roxy fanatics tend to express disappointment over Avalon because it’s perceived as less experimental, too safe and soft compared to their idiosyncratic earlier work.  True, it is pretty easy on the ears.  But it’s the work of an adult who had been through some hurt and heartbreak (Bryan was in his late 30’s when he recorded it), and Avalon is all about reflection of the past, or even the present as it fades right in front of us.  It’s a monument to beauty, nuance, and poignancy.  From moment to moment, Avalon presents itself as an elegant flow of meticulous detail; there’s not a single jarring event, or questionable note.  In that regard, it’s the first of the Bryan Ferry solo albums to come, and indeed there are the minimum of co-writing credits on Avalon.

But on stage at least, Roxy Music has reunited, as Ferry is touring with Manzanera and Mackay as a group (original Roxy drummer Paul Thompson having fallen out due to poor health), visiting Europe, Japan, and Australia.  And they sound (and look) pretty darn good doing the old stuff:

50/50 - various artists (2010).

Jon Nelson at Some Assembly Required put together an astounding compilation this year called 50/50.  Sound artists were invited to create 50 second compositions using at least 50% recycled sound from broadcast media.   

References to social and political commentary are mixed with collages and mashups of popular music.  Jon did a fantastic job of sequencing and making sense of the wide variety of the 50 tracks.  Although you would expect a lot of experimentation with this kind of thing, I was surprised at how entertaining, and frankly hilarious, this comp is.  Apparently, there is something about sampling broadcast media that brings out the sense of humor in sound artists.  

My own track, Lifetime Pop Head (#30), is a mashup of fragments from Kylie’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head, Once In A Lifetime by Talking Heads, and an EZPop popcorn TV commercial from the 1950’s.  I was a little concerned that my submission might be too whimsical, but I needn’t have worried.  The chilled austerity or barrages of noise often associated with a term like “sound art” is nowhere in evidence here.  50/50 is clever, goofy, ridiculous, thought provoking, and full of inspired creativity.  It’s never boring. The time limitation required composers to basically get in, make a coherent statement, and then get out in less than a minute.  I was impressed at the consistent level of wit and skill displayed by the dozens of composers involved.  It’s guaranteed to bring a smile to any music lover, not just fans of experimental electronic music.

After 12 years of hosting his radio show,  Jon is has recently made the tough decision to retire Some Assembly Required.  50/50 is an impressive way to close this portion of his career, which will certainly continue in some other form, we hope.

It’s worth ordering the CD for the cool artwork, or download it from the usual suspects.