Top 10 Revelatory Musical Moments, 2007 (Part 1)...
(1) Hearing Okkervil River for the first time. The lyrics to "John Allyn Smith Sails" are better than anything I ever came across sitting around a graduate roundtable, sipping cheep Cabernet and munching on brie, talking poesy and fallacy. The song has more layers than a slab of filo dough. It's hard now that I've listened to it seven hundred and twenty three times in a row to know what grabbed me so much the first time: Was it the heartbreaking, meta-lyrical foreshadowing that opens the suite ("By the second verse dear friends my head will burst my life will end")? Was it the appropriation of the Beach Boys' raucous "Sloop John B" and the refashioning of it as a somber suicide sendoff? Or was it the cleverness of using real monikers and surnames so as to nod and wink-wink that Sloop John B in this case could be John Berryman?
Whatever it was, it's the same thing that grips me the 724th time and makes me lift the needle and put it back on that vinyl groove.
(2) So sure certain bad trips don't warrant repeating, but that ain't the case with Dr. Dog's "Worst Trip." The sojourn may have blown ass but the song detailing said awful experience is pretty damn stupendous! And seeing Dr. Dog live last...March...was it? Redonculous!
Speaking of something I said in the last entry, the Dog really did blow the doors off the Troubadour. (Splinters of sticker-spackled wood lying hazardously across Santa Monica Blvd. and Doheny). WeHo'd never seen anything like these psychedelic liberty-riders outta Philly. And when they performed "Worst Trip" I felt like they were channeling all that was great in Peter Cetera-era Chicago.
(3) The Magic Numbers at the El Rey in August. The Little Ones opened for them (and y'all know how I feel about my lil' bro Ed Reyes and his band of misfits...and if you don't, an entry on them is forthcoming...I just realized that El Rey and Ed Reyes are like sight-rhymes, and they sorta match, if like El Rey was the singular version and Ed Reyes the plural). At any rate, towards the end of The Magic #'s set, they broke outta one of their tunes and into "Nighttrain" by G n' R. To use a word that I don't throw out lightly (see the nod to Thoreau in yesterday's entry), the moment was TRANSCENDENT. The bassist, a lovely lass from the UK, dug her heels in and just straight went for it: "Loaded like a freight train, flying like an aeroplane, feeling like a space brain one more time to-nigh-eee-ight"
(4) The Books. Their sound is melodic, cerebral, kitchen-sink-ish; picture dying and discovering that Heaven is this really cool synesthesia-drenched Salvation Army where the soundtrack coming over the speakers mixes the pulp from your dreams with the mash of your iTunes library and refills are free.
(5) Starting an e-mail correspondence/ongoing thread with an old college buddy who's now some type of bigwig radio personality in Seattle where, no jive, the following words were bandied back and forth: "Do yourself a favor, take 90 minutes out of your day sometime, play the entire Lamb Lies Down on Broadway album, read long with the lyrics and follow the story of Rael through the underground world. It was Gabriel's last album with the band... I used to have every word memorized -- but that was 15 years ago." In 1992, I had every word of Richard Marx's "Endless Summer Nights" memorized and I'd perform it from the top of my staircase and my mom swore that I could sell out stadiums with such force. Ho, ho, ho. At any rate, I do share the same enthusiasm for Genesis when P.G. was guiding the ship. Phil Collins turned the band into some kind of mushy top 40 uncle to hyperactive nieces Tiffany and Debbie G. Ah those were the days...
Whatever it was, it's the same thing that grips me the 724th time and makes me lift the needle and put it back on that vinyl groove.
(2) So sure certain bad trips don't warrant repeating, but that ain't the case with Dr. Dog's "Worst Trip." The sojourn may have blown ass but the song detailing said awful experience is pretty damn stupendous! And seeing Dr. Dog live last...March...was it? Redonculous!
Speaking of something I said in the last entry, the Dog really did blow the doors off the Troubadour. (Splinters of sticker-spackled wood lying hazardously across Santa Monica Blvd. and Doheny). WeHo'd never seen anything like these psychedelic liberty-riders outta Philly. And when they performed "Worst Trip" I felt like they were channeling all that was great in Peter Cetera-era Chicago.
(3) The Magic Numbers at the El Rey in August. The Little Ones opened for them (and y'all know how I feel about my lil' bro Ed Reyes and his band of misfits...and if you don't, an entry on them is forthcoming...I just realized that El Rey and Ed Reyes are like sight-rhymes, and they sorta match, if like El Rey was the singular version and Ed Reyes the plural). At any rate, towards the end of The Magic #'s set, they broke outta one of their tunes and into "Nighttrain" by G n' R. To use a word that I don't throw out lightly (see the nod to Thoreau in yesterday's entry), the moment was TRANSCENDENT. The bassist, a lovely lass from the UK, dug her heels in and just straight went for it: "Loaded like a freight train, flying like an aeroplane, feeling like a space brain one more time to-nigh-eee-ight"
(4) The Books. Their sound is melodic, cerebral, kitchen-sink-ish; picture dying and discovering that Heaven is this really cool synesthesia-drenched Salvation Army where the soundtrack coming over the speakers mixes the pulp from your dreams with the mash of your iTunes library and refills are free.
(5) Starting an e-mail correspondence/ongoing thread with an old college buddy who's now some type of bigwig radio personality in Seattle where, no jive, the following words were bandied back and forth: "Do yourself a favor, take 90 minutes out of your day sometime, play the entire Lamb Lies Down on Broadway album, read long with the lyrics and follow the story of Rael through the underground world. It was Gabriel's last album with the band... I used to have every word memorized -- but that was 15 years ago." In 1992, I had every word of Richard Marx's "Endless Summer Nights" memorized and I'd perform it from the top of my staircase and my mom swore that I could sell out stadiums with such force. Ho, ho, ho. At any rate, I do share the same enthusiasm for Genesis when P.G. was guiding the ship. Phil Collins turned the band into some kind of mushy top 40 uncle to hyperactive nieces Tiffany and Debbie G. Ah those were the days...
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