Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Norman Bates and this is my listening log for this week. Welcome.
Monday, April the 14th, 2014.
8:50 a.m.
I just got up and while I take a cuppa and greet my good lady who's unfortunately off to work whereas I am on holiday, the first thing I do is open Spotify and play Madonna's Like a Prayer.
Although I have not developed a passion for Madonna, she is one of those artists I have somewhat ended up spending most of my life with - others have Dylan, or Springsteen, or Michael, or Johnny Hallyday (hi mom!), I have Madonna and Prince and The Cure, artists that have been there as long as I've been been frantically listening to music, and are still around. And so I listen to a Madonna album now and then.
Side A has two strong moments: the Prince-written "Love Song", albeit lazy for a Prince song, is definitely better than your average Madonna ballad, a genre in which I often find her to be lacking in depth. And it will satisfy the hipster in you who wouldn't for all the gold in South Africa listen to a Madonna song - but hey, there's Prince on it, so that's OK, relax. It is followed by the best song on the LP, "Till Death Do Us Part", some sort of slightly pumped up art pop affair, very childlike in a way, very pleasant and much less dramatic than, say "Promise to Try" or "Oh Father" - very personal songs probably, but I'm not quite sure Madonna is at her best when the song topic is very close to her heart. Anyway, "Promise to Try" still is a solid piece of 80s cheese, like a subdued Ryan Adams affair, it sort of works.
Side B starts with "Cherish", typically the type of song you expect to hear when you think "Madonna" and "80s" - I'm not sure you think about this often, I sometimes do though. "Cherish" has that "True Blue" post girls-group feel that I so easily and shamelessly enjoy. It could be better if a bit shorter, granted. "Dear Jessie" is Madonna and Patrick Leonard's take on baroque pop - I kid you not. It's hilarious and charming. God these people were not afraid, see what I mean? "It's a holiday inside your love parade" good God. Lovely. "Oh Father" is gruesome. It's got that weird time signature though. If you don't know "Oh Father" you're missing on one of those essential era-defining 80s track. I mean, in 89, there's that and "Debaser" and maybe "I Wanna Be Adored" and "Eye Know". 1989 in 4 songs for you. That fucking cathedral of pathos is the "You Made Me Realise" of pop. "Keep It Together" has that awful "slapped" bass soundalike everybody thought was so cool at one stage. It's the weakest track on the record. It's not even that bad, Madonna goes DeBarge, if that's your idea of fun listen to that song. "Pray for Spanish Eyes" is detestable. I have nothing against Spanish guitar, but Spanish guitar as an alibi for some sort of touristic take on heartfelt third-world problems is totally unacceptable. It comes with your customary synthetised castanets too. Truly awful. Jimi Hendrix makes a welcome cameo in the intro to the record's closing track, "Act of Contrition", another piece of evidence to be versed to the "Christian" subfile in Madonna's case. It's an interesting closer. Basically, Madonna and Leonard rip off Prince's guitar sound in "When Doves Cry", with some sample of a live audience, and Madonna rants along these lines. This is totally unexpected, and as such, is of course a nudge to her postmodern audience that will find this last track so cool. Frankly it's a ridiculous little affair, but hey it's better than closing on "Pray...".
All in all, what do we have here people. "Uneven" isn't quite enough to describe that landmark record, as all Madonna albums are uneven, it's constitutive of what she does. No news here. It's a good Christian pop record, the highs of which are in those little pop unpretentious feel good summer hits. The cheesier number are interesting but honestly very hard to take. I prefer True Blue and Like a Virgin and, of course, Music, but that's a different story. Is Patrick Leonard a genius? That one re-listening is inconclusive. However, it is enough to say that Stephen Bray, for his part, is not a genius.
1. Open a bottle of Bourgogne
2. Pour some, for courage.
3. Peel three small potatoes per eater.
4. Drink a glass of bourgogne, you've worked well so far.
5. Heat some olive oil in a pan, melt a big chunk of butter in this.
6. The fire is strong
7. Put your potatoes in there, add some garlic and parsley. Shake your pan from time to time. Keep the fire burning hot.
8. Drink some more Bourgogne. You're on roll like a boss.
9. Slice a shallot.
10. Fry it.
11. Add a little vinegar (balsamic is my vinegar of choice).
12. Add three spoons of mustard and 25cl of cream.
13. Garlic is an option.
14. Bourgogne is another, pour yourself some.
15. Grill your andouilllette.
16. Pour the mustard sauce on your andouillette and patates sautées.
17. This dish is best eaten with a Bourgogne. Pour yourself some.
18. All the while, listen to this:
Which is awful and typically the sort of metal I detest. Give me "Banned in D.C." back, this is terrible. RATM-type political slogans sung to totally uninspired funk-metal shit. The best track is the reggae one. Avoid BY ALL MEANS NECESSARY. Spit on the guy who'll suggest chilling out to this. Kick him in the face. Go back home, leave him to his RHCP LPs, forget you were even friends once, and move on with your life.
A drastic move was compulsory. So I put on Prisonnier de l'inutile by Gérard Manset. Manset is an old favourite but is difficult to apprehend for non-French speaking music lovers, so much relies on lyrics and how you relate to the very secret persona he's built for himself. Manset is more or less a travelling poet (with very disputable tastes for, er, 'young Asia' if you will) and has consistently kept a very low profile on the French chanson scene. He is however a very big influence on a host of contemporary French artists I like a lot, including Murat and Dominique A.
Not all his albums are excellent, as exemplified in this sometimes too long Prisonnier. Basically what it lacks is what its predecessor, the splendid Lumières, had: one or two very strong songs ("Entrez dans le rêve", "Lumières") that will shed light (pun intended, remember I'm half-drunk already) in a catchier way on the rest of the album's thematics. Still interesting of course.
I then moved on Above The Law's Livin' Like Hustlers, a first listen (and then a second). I won't elaborate a lot on this, just know that it's an excellent hip-hop record, produced by an inspired Dre, and it's very varied (ranging from post P.E. hardcore to proto-G Funk), sounds a lot like NWA, and is perfect for cooking andouillettes.
And before the Bourgogne I have ingested finishes to convince me a siesta is my next step forward in life, I am currently crying while singing along to an early version of Curtis Mayfield's "Power to the People" on Love, a 1997 comp featuring outtakes and demos. That version of "Power to the People" is one of the most beautiful things I've heard in my entire life - and we're talking 41 years and a half, people. But more about this comp later.
This is just to tell you that I've just finished a second listen of ZNR's Barricade 3 (1976), it's awesome and you should check it out.
ZNR are actually Hector Zazou and Joseph Racaille, and their first LP together is entitled Barricade 3 because it's a follow-up on two other projects they had together under the monicker Barricade, projects which never were released (although Barricade played live).
This utterly absurdous record is a masterpiece of pataphysics, post-Satie minimalism and analog synth composition. It may sound very intellectual and #abstractqualities when it's actually very playful and good fun. The titles in themselves are already a treat : "Espelisoun d'un ribambello d'evenimen espetaculous Valentin Biot", one of 4 titles written in what seems to me a mix of Catalan and Esperanto-type universal language; the second movement of "La pointe de tes seins est comme un pétale de pavot" is entitled "Mezzo, mezzo, censuré au montage" and therefore does not exist; the "Boston mexicain" (in three parts) are aptly punctuated by some awful-sounding "Caramba!" of the best effect ; "Prélude aux mémoires d'un chien" was evidently ripped-off by Sébastien Tellier later on for his minimal pop debut (when he was good); A side is actually the "Snake side" and B-side is the "Rat side"; etc.; as you can see, all in good taste.
The music is extremely varied, from typical Satie influence to chamber rock not totally remote from RIO-type bands ; avant-electronics prog very much in the manner of what was made in Germany at the time ; stupid childlike electronic lullabies ; Wyatt-influenced singing (very rare in a mostly instrumental album) ; a free saxophone pops in ; all sounds have the naive beauty of people realizing how exhilirating it is to feel that in spite of your influences you are absolutely free.
Check it out if you would like to hear something different, a bit dated for sure - post-Soft Machine dreamy pataphysics basically, very much a post-68 thing in France (the impact of Soft Machine playing a lot in France, and the consequent creation of Gong, cannot be insisted upon enough: the "Canterbury scene" reshaped the underground musical France). Beautifully strange.
Well my day has certainly taken a strange turn all of a sudden.
The light is dark orange/red, almost to blackness, as if the orange gleams came from far away in the same space I'm in and trying to break the darkness but renouncing. I am tied to a chair in large room in a factory. Noise of activity nearby reach my ears: somebody's working, melting steel or carrying iron in an old wagon along a rusty rail in the factory or something, or wielding. But that noise is covered by the noises myriads of roaches make in the room. They're closer to me than the workers are. And anyway I'm bound and gagged. The beasts sound like they're eating at each other or fighting for some rotten piece of edible stuff or maybe a greasy piece of cloth or something. They sound as if they were getting closer, they probably are wondering if they would not be better off having a go at that gagged creature motionless in its chair. And while I'm listening to these monsters devouring each other and covering the steelworking in process somewhere, I think about swedenman and his recent vorarephile confession. I think of swedenman disguised as a cockroach and turning his vorarephile, blood-injected black eyes at me, and opening his vorarephile, toothless mouth. I feel a sudden urge to stop THAT FUCKING RECORD.
Ladies and gentlemen I was listening to Ecobondage by Merzbow.
Getting ready for the night, i.e. drinking beer; in this case a bottle of blonde du Vézelay, solme organic local shit from up north. Good too. The type of beer you'll find at my local executive ghetto Franprix shop, for bobos only. I am one. Cheers fellas.
Getting ready for the night also means I've got to make a little round-up on this end of day's listening, as I most probably won't be able to do it later, on account of sheer drunkennes and friends being invited over to watch Top Chef and eat some souris d'agneau - tomates à la provençale, saucisson for apéritif, with of course that nice Bardouin pastis my beloved brought me from Marseilles where she was staying for the union's national congress.
We'll prolly listen to some more music, but I won't be able to post, if however I manage to keep track of what was played I promise to tell you, dear ULL, in the morning.
After that fascinating Merzbow listen, I wanted to move on to something lighter; besides, milady was coming back home from work and she would veto anything remotely indus or harsh-noise. This is what I found:
I always like me some Caetano, but I never love me some. He's elegant, and so are his albums, which generally contain one or two killer/very moving tunes, but overall (apart from his debut maybe), I end up being slightly bored. Yes, he masters all sorts of different genres, from bossa to tropicalia to psych to ballad to whatev'. Yes he is charming. But in the end I always end up feeling I've listened to a brilliant guy showing off and not putting himself into it. The avant-garde closer to this one didn't do much to change that opinion, he had to close it like that. Still mostly nice for sure.
Migala is (was?) a slowcore band from Barcelona that I loved at one stage. I still like them and this is a good album. Say you mix some Tindersticks (this voice) to some Constellation sound (those guitars) and sing it sometimes in English, others in Spanish, and you get this. There's always at least one earth-shattering tune in every Migala album (here: "Cancion de Gurb"). Always a pleasure, albeit a glad-to-be-sad one, to re-listen to those old friends of mine.
and this is where I must admit my opinion has no value whatsoever. I'm a total ignorant when it comes to hard rock/metal/doom/sludge/stoner/nameyoursubgenre, having only listened to the first three Black Sabbath, one Mötorhead (or is it Motörhead?), and one Metallica, plus the odd album I picked from games around this beautiful forum.
Anyway, I really liked this. Due for re-listen very shortly. What I particularly appreciated was the heviness of it, its implacable, slow sound riveting you to the ground and slowly unfolding in all its noisy majesty. The lyrics not being screamed or grawled is always a bonus for me. I'll come back to this. If I liked it when I'm not all a connoisseur or even a metal amateur, I suppose it means it's very good rather than good.
Anyway, enjoy your evening, see you later, warm kisses to all.
Before our friends showed up, I played some mellow masterpiece I thought was going to set us up in the right mood before Top Chef started and while Emma was cooking that lamb roast. Thus i played this:
About which I wonder why it's not on any of my charts yet. Soon will be though, check it out by all means. The most striking thing about this live album is how effortless it sounds, which is no little compliment considering the quality of what's being played. Check out "Blues Five Spot" before everything if you're lazy. You're doing yourself a favour.
Then my friends arrived. We watched the show, drank some pastis, ate some apéritifs (saucisson just like I promised, plus crisps and various other treats), and after that, and after the roast lamb, and after we'd drunk two bottles of wine and three of beer, and were opening some more, I decided I should play some rock in honour of my good friend Thomas who was here and is into punk/guitary post-punk acts. But not sung by girls, I'll come back to that interesting point I teased him about. This was a reflection he made when I first played this:
I remarked that among the tracks he said he was enjoying, some were sung by Kim Gordon, to which he replied he had a problem not so much with girls singing, as with girls yelling. To which (I was drunk already) I responded by another question, i.e if he thought his preventions were driven by some sort of sexism, remarking he'd said he didn't like girls yelling in rock when so many of the records he liked had some guys yelling. The gender, rather than the yelling, seemed to be the issue, said I. I thought I'd made a fair point, but he dismissed it all with a nod, by saying something I don't remember but seemed somewhat convincing then, but isn't now (because I don't remember it, mostly).
EDIT: I remember now. he said that post-hardcore stuff was mostly treble-oriented, and that he needed a lower, more bass-oriented voice to counterpoint it, in order for him to like it. Semmed fair at the time, and silly now.
I then entered a conversation with his girlfriend who was evidently getting bored. Which I gently remarked to her, and which she politely denied. We then rambled on for like 15 mlinutes about how that musical obsession of mine had become an obsession, when she was not at all interested and Thomas, her boyfriend , was very interested in music but not as obsessed as I was. We sort of agreed it was a teenage thing that was to be settled by a professional, I answered that I'd never go see a shrink, and then I put on
at which point my friend's girlfriend started to glance nervously at her watch. So I skipped to "Sister Ray" because that's what Thomas and I wanted anyway, and good night to you all beautiful people, I'm tired and drunk.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
