The Random Ten #20

Welcome back to the Random Ten. This was supposed to be a Random Twenty, with Mr. Steele collaborating, but prior engagements prevented him from doing so. He’ll be back with his own Random Ten next week.

#1) Peter Gabriel – “Mercy Street” – So (1986)

So, featuring songs like “Sledgehammer”, “In Your Eyes” and “Big Time”, was one of the biggest albums of the 1980s. “Mercy Street” is a lot different than those songs, replacing their intoxicating exuberance with a toned-down seriousness that doesn’t work quite as well.

Gabriel’s sound is interesting because it is so synonymous with the 80s. “Mercy Street” has a plodding, brooding, and vaguely computerized/vaguely foreign beat that date the song but don’t make it feel old. Peter Gabriel was ahead of his time, and even though his then-state of the art methods are now antiquated, there’s still a vibrancy and contemporaneousness to his music that continues to stand out.

“Mercy Street” isn’t very good, though, clocking in at around 6 ½ minutes but containing a boring intro and outro that take up almost half of the runtime. It’s bland, but Gabriel had a way of making even his bland songs sound interesting.

#2) String Cheese Incident – “Hotel Window” – On The Road: Louisville, KY 4/17/02 (2002)

“Hotel Window” sounds like it might be originally written by someone else, but I couldn’t find any information online. Anyway, I don’t listen to “SCI” too much anymore, but I’m always happy when they show up on a Random Ten. They have the capacity to play some balls-out jams, they play some interesting covers (such as Talking Heads’ “Naïve Melody” and Paul Simon’s “Under African Skies”), and then they can come with a traditional rock ballad like “Hotel Window”.

As with many jam bands, would-be strengths of more straightforward rock acts are sacrificed to lengthy instrumentation and improvisation. Bill Nershi is not a very good singer, and his vocals on “Hotel Window” don’t fit well; they’re nasally and low, where the lyrics and music call for a singer able to hit a more soulful note.

There isn’t much else I can say to the negative. Of course, an extended jam fills out the middle portion of the song, bookended by a couple of quick verses. The music matches the lyrics nicely, creating a hopeful but lonely aura around a person watching over a city from their hotel room window. It’s a nice listen.

#3) U2 – “Twilight” – Boy (1980)

“Twilight” is from U2’s first album, released back in October of 1980. The sound here is post-punk, with Bono providing a snarling slant on his vocals and staggered, direct guitar riffing from The Edge.

There is a lot of force to the early work of U2. Their new material is so layered and purposefully larger than life that it is able to replicate through engineering what they were effortlessly able to do in their beginning. Not to say their new material is bad, but “Twilight” has amazing vitality and raw strength readily apparently thirty years later. If you couple that sound with some monolithic hit singles, it’s not hard to hear how U2 became U2.

#4) moe. – “Plane Crash” – Tin Cans & Car Tires (1998)

It is an undeniable fact of life that studio albums from jam bands are not as good as their live work. Jam bands are great at improv and experimentation, two traits that don’t fit the rigid structures of a studio record.

We just discussed String Cheese Incident, who were able to cobble together a couple of half-decent studio albums due to their bluegrass/country background and traditional, old-timey songwriting. Bands like moe., on the other hand, come up with a really cool guitar riff and then play endless variations on it for eight minutes. Live, while on drugs? Fine. On a record? Boring.

Tin Cans & Car Tires is moe.’s best studio album, though it still falls into those riff-heavy, repetitious trappings described above. “Plane Crash” is the album’s standout. The song is about being deathly afraid of a plane crash and it is forceful enough in both lyrics and music to get that feeling across. Some of the lyrics are a bit foolish, but their simplicity is also effective. Consider the chorus:

Strap me in, tie me down
And roll me a bone
I’m getting on an airplane
And I’m flying home

Strap me in, tie me down
I’m learning to fly
Drive across the country
I get too fucking high

The chorus rightfully explodes with energy and an appropriately desperate and frightful vocal style. The song concludes with a rolling jam and what sounds like an instrumental panic attack, with a violin added to complete the foreboding effect. This might be moe.’s best song.

#5) Leo Kottke – “Echoing Gilewitz” – A Shout Toward Noon (1986)

I know Leo Kottke best as the classical guitarist who has collaborated with Mike Gordon, bassist of Phish, on two albums. This was a library pickup that I’ve never listened to, so let’s learn more about him together!

“Echoing Gilewitz” is Kottke playing an acoustic guitar with no accompaniment, and it is appropriately beautiful. It’s soft, contemplative, and slightly sorrowful; it’s like the guitar equivalent of watching a sunrise by yourself. Not for everyone, but quite good.

#6) The Beatles – “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away” – Help! (1965)

You probably know “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away”, or at least I hope you do. It’s a timeless pop rock classic.

The Beatles made everything sound so simple. This song is haunting, mesmerizing, hopeful and tentative at the same time, all while sounding great and coming in at barely over two minutes. A flute accompaniment shortly before the song’s conclusion pushes it into “brilliant” territory.

The lyrics aren’t very complex, but they match the music to a T. The Beatles did the “I miss my baby” songs to death in their early days, but they managed to not only make them sound fresh and interesting, but made them some of the best songs ever produced by anyone.

#7) Iced Earth – “Vengeance Is Mine” – The Dark Saga (1996)

I gotta be honest. I was digging this list so far, and I don’t really feel like listening to a metal song I haven’t heard in ten years and which I only keep on my iTunes for the sake of posterity. Matt, you want to help?

But seriously, let’s give it a whirl. This is from a concept album based on the Spawn comic book (really), and the lyrics are predictable violent babble and forced rhyming:

Profaner to humanity menaced by flesh and bone
Screams of the unknown youth to him the sweetest tone
Undying in his will to kill his bloodlust is profound
For the blood of the lamb I’ve got to bring him down

But…BUT…the guitar riffs and blast beat drumming are definitely awesome. It’s hard not to like some of the thought that goes into the music here. The melodies are complex and often legitimately harmonious, making “Vengeance Is Mine” childish but enjoyable.

#8) Robert Johnson – “Traveling Riverside Blues” (alternate take) – King Of The Delta Blues Singers (1961; song originally recorded 1937)

Ah, Robert Johnson. You sold your soul to the devil just so Led Zeppelin could make a more famous version of your song. Zeppelin may have lengthened and electrified “Traveling Riverside Blues”, but the song undeniably remains Johnson’s.

From 1937, this recording obviously sounds old. Johnson’s legend casts a shadow over his work, and due to the crackles and tininess of the original recording, you’re almost listening for hints of a diabolic influence in the music. His legend shines through, and the song is simply great.

#9) Beastie Boys – “Live At P.J.’s” – Check Your Head (1992)

Another raucous outing from the Beastie Boys, with the three rappers passing off verses and punctuating each other’s lines throughout. A lot of what the Beastie Boys do sounds awfully similar to me, but “Live at P.J.’s” is greatly aided by a funky beat, nice tempo changes and some inventive rhyming. “Live at P.J.’s” is very raw; it sounds like a live performance at some dingy night club, which is the song’s premise. Two songs from Check Your Head have showed up on the Random Ten over the last couple of months and I’ve liked them both. Perhaps it’s time to give the record a serious listen?

#10) Little Feat – “Cold, Cold, Cold” – Waiting For Columbus (1978; the song was originally released on Feats Don’t Fail Me Now [1974])

“Cold, Cold, Cold” appeared as part of a medley on Little Feat’s seminal album Feats Don’t Fail Me Now. This is culled from their Waiting For Columbus live album of a few years later.

Little Feat has an unmistakable southern rock sound. Like so many other 70s southern rock bands (Lynyrd Skynyrd, Allman Brothers, even the Band, to name a few), their music pays homage to the past while adding muscle and inventiveness to their influences. Now Little Feat sounds almost traditional, but for the time this was advanced stuff. The guitar flourishes, organ, and horn flares sound right at home. The songs of Little Feat, including this one, are infectious and fun, the way southern rock should be.

John Lacey

People Play Games #3: Monopoly/Battleship

People Play Games is back, taking another look at old video games that are uniquely terrible for one reason or another. Today, we’ll discuss video games based on board games, looking at the examples of Monopoly and Battleship, both for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

It’s hard not to like a good board game. They’re inexpensive, they’re easy to learn, and they provide simple but competitive fun. Additionally, most of the classic ones have been around for like a hundred years, so board games like Monopoly and Battleship are ingrained in American culture. Even if you’ve never played a game of Monopoly, you probably know how it works and what it’s about.

For some reason, video game companies thought that consumers would want to spend $50 to play these age-old American institutions in a newer, shittier way. Never mind the fact that a copy of the real Monopoly is probably in the area of $20, that a board game is inherently more interactive and fun because you are actually rolling the dice and moving the pieces, and that no one has any need or desire for a digital Monopoly game.

This miscalculation could be forgiven if the video game sported amazing graphics or put a new, fun slant on the original game. Of course, it doesn’t. Unless I see the thimble and the iron popping out of my television set or unless I’m getting real money to play it, I think I’d rather play the real game with real people.

But does it feel like the real Monopoly? When playing board games, there is inherent and constant shit-talking, especially when some poor sap just landed on your deluxe hotel property and now has to fork over all of their cash. In the NES Monopoly, the game moves so fast you hardly have any idea what the fuck is going on. The computer rolls the dice, lands on a property and purchases it in the space of four seconds.

Yeah, that looks just as good as playing the real thing, right? So Monopoly for Nintendo offers no discernable reason for playing it over the real board game and it costs $30 more. Why was this made?

If Monopoly is the baseball of board games (a patient and strategic game, takes forever to play, has been around forever), Battleship is the football. The action is violent and quick, players slowly squeeze the life out of each other once they get a “hit”, and the game can turn around in an instant if your opponent gives you an opening. Again, this sounds more exciting in real life, right?

Battleship for NES adds some insane “wrinkles” to the classic game, allowing the player to use “depth charges” and shoot five missiles at once. I point to this as evidence that the game didn’t need to be made in the first place. Everyone loves Battleship. I don’t think you can find a person who knows what Battleship is that doesn’t adore it. People like it the way it is. The only justification for its existence on Nintendo is that the programmers piled some stupid shit on top of it and claimed it was a new game.

In past articles on the Musicarium, we’ve discussed media that claimed to promote family values while simultaneously undermining them. The Tamagotchi allowed kids to raise a virtual pet when a real life pet is much more fun and rewarding. TGIF told families to sit and watch other, better families on TV and passed this off as a family activity. Board games can be played by anyone, but I’d wager the first thing you think of when you think of the term “board game” is a family sitting around a table playing one. In this instance, board games are perfect the way they are. The idea of improving on them by making a group of people perform yet another activity where they sit around a television is a tad insidious.

Although, it is cool to see the enemy battleship actually blow up.

John Lacey

People We Hate #1

This is pretty self-explanatory. We post a picture of someone we dislike or find annoying. You comment on it. Caption the photo, say whether you agree or disagree with the hatred, etc.

John Ratzenberger

Ryan Bingham & The Dead Horses - Junky Star

Ryan Bingham & The Dead Horses
Junky Star
2010 Lost Highway

Junky Star is the latest release from Ryan Bingham, the Americana-country-folk-rock fusion artist known primarily for his amazing guitar work and raspy “beyond his years” vocals. Junky Star is the third official album from Bingham and his Dead Horses backing band, following 2007’s Mescalito and 2009’s Roadhouse Sun. Bingham also contributed to the soundtrack for the 2009 film Crazy Heart, penning the Academy Award-winning track “The Weary Kind” for that movie.

His previous efforts are strong throughout and provide many reasons to be excited about his emergence. They don’t quite put it all together at once, but there were enough inspired moments to believe that Bingham was capable of creating a masterpiece, and it was hoped that Junky Star would hit the home run that fans had been waiting for.

In order to create such a cohesive, strong album, Bingham is forced to walk a tightrope between his two styles. He has one hand in traditional acoustic country-folk and the other in stampeding hard rock, and these styles often manifest themselves from song to song or sometimes within one track. The first two songs, “The Poet” and “The Wandering”, are both harmonica driven tunes displaying this dichotomy between the two styles of Bingham’s music. “The Poet” is direct and controlled, while “The Wandering” is fast and loose.

Bingham has the ability to go dark, as evidenced by the twangy, desperate and paranoid “Strange Feelin’ In The Air”, perhaps the album’s best song. This track contains a fine example of Bingham’s oft-employed breakdowns, where the song deviates from verse-chorus conventions and explodes into a multi-layered groove. Some of Bingham’s material, like the title track of the record, can be sparse, but it often works in reflection of what he’s singing about, especially on his Springsteen-esque stories of the dusty downtrodden.

Junky Star covers a variety of styles without problem. The record moves from contemplative acoustic folk to riff-heavy Americana to road house bar blues and back again, and neither the music nor the album’s structure suffer for it. The record strikes a much better balance between his tones than his previous work and keeps things on an even keel, eschewing the jarring transitions between tracks that disrupted his other albums and allowing things to fit together more seamlessly.

Bingham is only twenty-nine, but we get a sense that he is the real deal, and it’s not just because of his rootsy music. His gruff voice and stories of the dust covered back roads of the country ring authentic. He’s a trustworthy guide, knowledgeable of the material he’s singing about despite his young age. There’s a Bob Dylan quality about Ryan Bingham; someone who tells human stories with authority and who is talented enough to back up those stories with his music.

I’m not certain that this is the breakthrough that Bingham was hoping for, however: there really isn’t one knockout song in particularly that carries the rest of the record on its back. But there are a number of good songs not discussed above (the eerie “Hallelujah”, the sorrowful “Self-Righteous Wall”, and the raucous “Direction of the Wind”, to name three), and Junky Star represents a collection of music featuring a number of improvements over his previous two albums. Better lyrics, better structure, and evidence of an improved songwriter jump to mind. Maybe he’ll hit the grand slam next time around.

B+

John Lacey