After Hours Music Club – X

“See How We Are” is one of those songs by one of the greatest American bands you never heard of.  X hailed from Los Angeles, back at the height of the punk era.  Unlike many punk acts at the time, theirs was a mix of punk and rockabilly with ample amounts of Woodie Guthrie thrown in for good measure.  “See How We Are” was the last album before X broke up in 1987 and sums up everything about the band.  And it still says as much today as it did nearly 25 years ago.  Enjoy.

After Hours Music Club – Pet Shop Boys

The song is a protest song about the introduction of biometric ID cards into the UK and the National Identity Database.And, given the Pet Shop Boys, extremely well executed. 

After Hours Music Club–Thomas Dolby

For those of you who don’t know, Thomas Dolby is more than just “She Blinded Me with Science”. He has worked with diverse artists from David Byrne to Lene Lovich, to George Clinton (of Funkadelic fame) and since 2001 has acted as Musical Director of The TED Conference, an annual event in Long Beach, California that attracts some of the world’s foremost thinkers, inventors, and speakers. During all that, he founded the company Headspace (BTW, remember….Thomas invented the ringtones you use in your cellphones) and is often a major speaker at technology conferences such as Comdex, Websphere, and Nokia.  So much for the sex, drugs and rock and roll. 

But on to the music.  The song is “Flying North” which I seem to be doing a lot of these days.  This version is a little softer and a little more world-weary than the original.  I think it sets the song better.  Enjoy

After Hours Music Club – Bryan Ferry

“To Make You Feel My Love” is a Bob Dylan song that Bryan Ferry wears on his sleeve in this version.  A song that can make you cry.  Enjoy.

After Hours Music Club: Black Flag

First, I find it amazing that this song is nearly thirty years old.    Second, the song is still relevant. So, sit around and have a couple of brews.  Enjoy. 

After Hours Music Club – Everlast

Take a sample from Cypress Hill’s “Insane in the Membrane”, mix with Johnny Cash, let Everlast front it and you have one hell of a mix.  Enjoy

After Hours Music Club – Mashup Time

Take one part Beatles “Get Back”, mix with LCD Soundsystem’s “Daft Punk is Playing at My House”, throw in a pinch of the Kinks “You Really Got Me” and this is what you get.  Thanks to FAROFF for a great mash.

After Hours Music Club – Favorites of the Decade – Final

Ta-Dah – Scissor Sisters
2006
If you might want to dismiss Scissor Sisters as a novelty act, be be forewarned – this band knows what it is doing. For those who would put down the campier aspects of Scissor Sisters, I would ask exactly where would Queen be if it had not been for "Bohemian Rhapsody"?  This is a band that is not afraid to show that its roots are more in the glam 70′s of rock instead of the serious 60′s.  While Ta-Dah gives loving treatment to the late 70′s/Studio 54 set, it does not fetishize it. This is modern fun for the next generation of 24 hour party people crafted in the old tradition.  Like the lyrics to "Kiss You Off". Ms. Anna Matronic tells a soon to be ex. "Kiss you off my lips, it’s standing room only for a piece of my pigment/ so excuse me a minute while I supply demand." Consider yourself dissed and dismissed. This is not a band out to change the world.  This is a band that those changing the world can dance to.  And that is perfectly OK. 

Release – Pet Shop Boys
2002
One of the best kept secrets in music is that the Pet Shop Boys make great music that you don’t have to dance to. While Tennant and Lowe have been the top dance-pop musicians for over twenty years, it was sounding like it was time to push the envelope in another direction.  They did so and changed their game with Release. Bringing Tennant’s Electronic partner and former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr for several songs, Release is still pop, but with the club in the background.  This is the album you play when you get home from the club. It is poised, relaxed, mature and quite elegant. As the haiku from "The Samurai In Autumn" attests  – "It’s not as easy as it was / or as difficult as it could be / for the Samaurai in autumn". 

Morph The Cat – Donald Fagen
2006
back in 1982, Donald Fage put out a masterful album called "The Nightfly", an album set in the late 50s/early 60′s.  It was an album that was filled with the hope and enthusiasm of that period, viewed through the lens of the early eighties.  Fast forward to 2006.  Donald Fagen puts out and album called "Morph the Cat", an album that viewed the present time, from the view of someone who was born and raised in that earlier, more optimistic period. And the view is not pretty. This is a dark album, but it is more sardonic than mawkish. On "Mary Shut the Garden Door," he writes "Paranoia blooms when a thuggish cult gains control of the government." No missing that point. "Security Joan" is a clever love song of sorts directed to a TSA official.  The music however is light, and that makes a great counterweight to the lyrics and puts "Morph the Cat" up with "The Nightfly."       

Contraband – Velvet Revolver
2004
Sorry Axl.  Slash and Duff found another high maintenance front man and made an album that kicks Chinese Democracy’s ass to the curb and put it out five years ahead of you.  What makes me love this?  Simple.  This is straight forward take no prisoners music with Scott Weiland’s vocal that evoke Jim Morrison on a ‘roid rage. "Went too fast I’m out of luck and I don’t even give a f*ck," Weiland spits on "Do It for the Kids," and Slash’s screaming guitar backs up the line in spades.  The first twenty minutes are nothing but pure, unadulterated force that pins you back and only lets up for a beautiful four and a half minutes before throwing you back into the hurricane.  Even the power ballad "Fall to Pieces" packs more power than anything slow GnR ever did.  These guys sound like they had nothing to lose when making the album. That’s what makes it great.

Speakerboxx/The Love Below – Outkast
2003
Aquemini stole my musical heart and Stankonia made a clear intellectual statement for me.  But Speakerboxx/The Love Below really hit it out of the park.  It is hip hop, pop, jazz all rolled up.  It refuses to be pinned down. It is a drum’n'bass version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s "My Favorite Things" that works exceedingly well.  It is fun, experimental, classic. In this case, the parts are as great as the sum of them.  Whatever is lost by Andre 3000 and Big Boi not performing together is more than made up by the individual effort.   But What could have turned out to be a total bust now looks in hindsight as an easy winning gamble. This is hip-hop that refuses to be dated or rated.  It has remained fresh all this time.  Someone called it hip hop’s "White Album" and I consider that an excellent analogy.  Outkast did more on this album than just mine music history – they bent, broke, trampled and rebuilt the rules of the genre. The rest of the players are still trying to catch up after all this time and they still have a long way to go. 

A Rush of Blood To The Head – Coldplay
2002
While U2 tried to save the world and Radiohead created some magnificent experiments, Coldplay stepped in and stole the spotlight. From the hammering intro of "Politik" to the stunning guitar-driven "God Put a Smile Upon Your Face" the shimmering piano of "Clocks" to the bittersweet title track, A Rush of Blood to the Head is a complete tour de Force.  There is a new found maturity in Martin’s voice on this album, with considerably less yodeling, and much more power. The fact that the band had it in them to put out an album as assured, as exquisite as this one had to be one of the biggest surprises of the year. The fact that it still stands up makes it one of if not the best of the decade.

 

WordPress Tags: After Hours Music Club, Best Of

After Hours Music Club – Favorites of the Decade Part 3

Fleet Foxes by Fleet Foxes
2008
Simply put, a stunning debut album. The harmonies echo the best days of CSNY, specifically on Tiger Mountain Peasant Song.  There are liberal sprinklings of flute, banjo and accordion throughout to give a sense of a band that are at odds with the 21st Century. Nevertheless, there’s nothing here in the way of instrumental noodling, and collective egos are set aside – as they should be – in support of the song. An album you’ll play again and again.

The Town And The City – Los Lobos
2006
There are writers who want to write the great American novel. They need to listen to "The Town and The City" by Los Lobos. It’s an album about people — the hard life of outsiders in a new place — told without moralizing or sentimentality. The album’s standout, "The Road to Gila Bend," is a classic Lobos anthem, powered by David Hidalgo’s smoky vocals. The music is tight, the rythym section adds weight that has been missing and overall, it’s the best work they’ve done since Kiko.  And, its an album that stays around after playing – you find yourself humming songs from it and wondering why the tunes are so new, yet familiar. 

The Dirty South by Drive-By Truckers
2004
I like the Drive By Truckers because I was born and raised in the South and while I am proud of my heritage, I know that where I am today  is because of the struggle with and against that same heritage. I am not afraid to look directly at the past because I know there is a wealth to be learned from it. In my mind that sums up Drive by Truckers – a group that celebrates and deconstructs what it is to be from the south. Plus they rock out like nobody’s business, especially on songs like "The Day John Henry Died," "Carl Perkins’ Cadillac," and "Never Gonna Change".  The album sums up southern rock for this decade.  It hasn’t been forgotten and it trust me, it will rise again..    

Funeral – Arcade Fire
2004
This is Rock at it’s most verbose.  It was big, ambitious, theatrical, sweeping, and unlike anything being sold at the time.  The band sounds like they’ve played for years, yet this is a debut album. It’s heart was right there on its sleeve, tackling the ‘big’ issues; Life and Death and its crushing inevitability, yet keeps a comfortable distance from the pretentious and overblown.  The underlying melancholy is never unbearable because another life-affirming moment is always around the corner. And strangely, like a funeral itself, this is a life-affirming album. A reminder that time is short and transient. That each second is precious.

Two Against Nature – Steely Dan
2000
Steely Dan reunited in 2000 as if the twenty years between "Two Against Nature" and "Gaucho" never happened. Some might call it a blessing, some a curse. After so many years between albums, doing anything out of the ordinary would have looked as ridiculous as Pat Boone in leather.  In the end, Two Against Nature is not a bold move or even a calculated move, but the correct move.  If anything, the years have not dulled their sense of macabre humor – "Gaslighting Abbie" is a song about a man and his mistress plotting to drive his wife insane.  Even darker is "Janie Runaway", about a very young runaway and the older man who "befriends" her.  “Cousin Dupree” is a sly take on incest.  All this and the signature Steely Dan sound behind them, Becker and Fagen prove that time is indeed relative.

100 Days, 100 Nights – Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings
2007
Sharon Jones owned Amy Winehouse’s sound before Amy Winehouse even existed.  Remember that little nugget when you listen to 100 Days and 100 Nights.  Sharon Jones is a survivor and she has the voice to prove it; devoid of the modern diva’s histrionics, restrained when it needs to be, powerful when the music churns up; it’s truly a joy to hear, really.  While the Dap Kings may have made Winehouse a name in America, you get the feeling they saved the choice cuts for Ms. Jones herself.  Tracks like "Tell Me" and "Something’s Changed" shine with years of life lessons and when she tears sweetly into "Humble Me" it only reminds us how anyone but Sharon Jones sound more like a retread than the Real Thing.

Final Bits coming up

WordPress Tags: After Hours Music Club, Best Of

After Hours Music Club – Favorites of the Decade Part 2

Bachelor No. 2 (or, the last remains of the dodo) – Aimee Mann
2000
Aimee Mann has long boasted one of power pop’s most delightfully poisoned pens, fueled as much by her nuanced take on matters of the heart. Her third solo effort, finds Mann’s world as lyrically edgy as ever. While most of the relationships on the album are between people, Mann’s pen manages to draw some blood from her rocky relationship with the record companies as well. When the Burt Bachrach piano vamp leads into the line "Let’s assume you were right" to start off the song "Satellite", you know that you are in for a master’s class in picking apart a decision or two concerning the business of love or even the business of music.  The music itself is never out of bounds, and you are very capable hands all the way through.

The Grey Album – Danger Mouse
2004
It was a startlingly, shockingly wonderful piece of pop art.  It was an act of lawlessness.  It was proof that the Internet could be used to circumvent control over a product.  And for some, it was an act of pure genius.  The Grey album was all that and more.  On the most basic level, who would have thought that the Beatles and Jay-Z could work together so well?  And by working together, I mean having someone as resourceful as D.J. Danger Mouse mixing Jay-Z’s "Black Album" together with the Beatle’s "White Album" so effortlessly. Every sound here, aside from Jay-Z’s rhymes, was sampled painstakingly from the original LP. That turned out to be a problem for EMI who quickly threw around all sorts of injunctions to try to stop its release. But their efforts backfired and, god bless the Internet, inadvertently propelled The Grey Album into the international spotlight (according to download estimates), making it the most listened to album of 2004. It literally synthesized everything that the internet had been to the music industry for the previous ten years. It made several statements that had nothing to do with music per se and everything to do with artistic liscense.  And it never sold a single copy. One of the best albums you’ll never find.

Extraordinary Machine – Fiona Apple
2005
There are actually two versions of Extraordinary Machine-One that was produced by Jon Brion in 2003 and never released, and one produced in haste by Mike Elizondo and released by Sony after word got out on the internet that Sony had a great Fiona Apple album produced by Jon Brion in 2003 that it was refusing to release. You with me so far? The backstory should win an Oscar for Best Drama. Fortunately, due to the internet, one can find both versions and decide for themselves if they could be a Sony Executive.  I happen to like both for different reasons. Brion’s production is more raw, while Elizondo’s version is subdued.  The good thing is that Apple’s contribution shines through both versions.  The keeper that shows the difference is "Red, Red, Red".  In Brion’s version, the Perry Mason-like orchestration points up the song’s confusion and raw anger, while Elizondo’s handling takes the same song and makes it a world-weary statement.  When she closes with the line "I don’t understand/ I’ll never understand/ But I’ll try to understand/ There’s nothing else I can do”, she no longer sounds like the little girl from Tidal, rather, she’s a full grown woman who suddenly has gone through every option left to her. 

Bang Bang Rock and Roll – Art Brut
2005
There’s something about the way lead singer/speaker Eddie Argos talks about landing in Los Angeles, stripping naked to waist and riding a motorcycle up and down the Sunset Strip and drinking Hennesy with Morrisey that really hits me. It is astounding that Art Brut can reel off so many downright enjoyable songs that it almost hurts. ‘Formed A Band’ is a renewed, nearly Pixies-esque shouty vigour, no longer as much a call to arms as a celebration that they’re still together over a year later. ‘Emily Kane’ says more about unrequited teenage kicks than any textbook on the hormonal process could.  And doing this, not as some kind of joke, but completely and thoroughly sincere.  Art Brut just wants to have fun, charge head down at a stray Matisse, be bored with the Velvet Underground and play Rock n’ Roll while doing so. And they do. This is not ironic. This is straight-ahead wear it on your sleeve music that is not afraid to be fun and serious and clumsy and everything a young guy is in real life.  Hooray for honesty. 

More later…

WordPress Tags: After Hours Music Club, Best Of