The Flaming Lips = Gods among men

Here's a picture I took tonight of a Mr. Wayne Coyne, of the Flaming Lips. He opened the Lips' set by surfing the crowd in a giant inflatable plastic ball, and there he is.

I'll have more elaborate thoughts on my third Lips show eventually, but for now I'm just going to say that I'm once again dumbstruck with awe and joy at the mere existence of such an amazing live experience. It's impossible to feel down at this point, which for me is saying a lot. Everybody in the world should see them at some point.

I love the Flaming Lips.

Syd Barrett: 1946-2006

On March 24, 2006, I happened to be thinking about Syd Barrett. I wrote this:

"Wouldn't it be neat if, after Syd Barrett (link for those not fully aware of who that is) quietly passes away alone in his home in Cambridge, his family finds and releases a series of mind-blowingly amazing fully finished albums, proving that he never lost his gift after all? One can hope anyway, right? Happy belated 60th, Syd. (Two months late is better than not at all.)"

It's now July 11, and Syd has quietly passed away in his home in Cambridge. He will be mourned briefly by obsessives like me, and will be gone, but not forgotten, much in the same way as he lived for the past 35 years.

As celebrity deaths go, this one isn't particularly tragic, but it's sad because we never got the chance to hear Syd talk about himself. It's every Syd fan's dream to hear from the man himself about what happened to him in the late 1960s, what he's been doing, what he thinks. Our biggest loss is that we have only hearsay, rumors, and stories that may or may not be true told by people three steps removed. Syd will forever be a mystery, in death even more so than he was in life.

This is a shame because Syd is the quintessential musician who's famed more for his legend than for his music. It's a shame because not enough people will ever truly appreciate the ramshackle brilliance of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (not to mention The Madcap Laughs and Barrett). And it's a shame because Syd may have died without ever knowing that there were people who wanted more, not just more music, but more of Syd in general.

In closing, I'm trying as hard as I can not to sign off with "shine on you crazy diamond," but it's hard to find something as appropriate that works as well (for those unaware, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond was written by the Barrett-less Pink Floyd as a tribute to Syd). So go ahead, Syd. Shine on.

A Soccer-stupid American watches the World Cup final

Before Sunday, it had been at least eight years since I'd watched an entire soccer game. I know I was mildly interested in the 1998 World Cup, but even then, I'm not sure if I watched an entire game, start to finish. It's not out of the realm of possibility that I've never seen all 90 minutes of a soccer game.

So I decided on Sunday, with nothing better to do and with my beloved Phillies in a free fall, that I'd watch the World Cup final game between Italy and France. I'd been following, in my own half-assed way, the results of the tournament so far, without actually watching much other than highlight reels; I was aware that many people hated the ESPN announcers, that people were paradoxically concerned with both the excessive yellow- and red-carding and the excessive thuggery and violence (not to mention excessive diving), and, of course, that the United States didn't make a whole lot of ripples (by the way, Ghana, if you think you're so tough, you wanna throw hands, military style?). I also noticed that my buddy Jim Noir is starting to make inroads in America in the form of adidas commercials. You've got to start somewhere, I suppose...

Anyway, the first problem I encountered, which comes up so often in championship bouts in any sport, was that I didn't care at all who wins. Unless you're a die hard obsessive fan, you need somebody to root for to stay interested in the game. Only somewhat arbitrarily, I picked France's side. I'm closer to being French than I am to being Italian (French Canadian blood on my mom's side of the family, no Italian at all), I disliked Italy because of that nasty elbow from a guy whose name I think was de Rossi (no relation to Portia, I'm assuming) into the face of my fellow American Brian McBride, and, above all, the French were underdogs. Plus Zinedine Zidane's name sounds like a James Bond villain, and his sharp widow's peak helps with that image.

Of course, anybody who watched the game knows that there was a good reason to dislike France that came up in about the 110th minute, as Zidane, the superstar... Well, you probably know what he did, and words fail me when trying to describe how absurd, idiotic, and inexplicable his actions were. I guess "absurd, idiotic, and inexplicable" work. (Unintentionally hilarious side note: note that on the linked video, the French announcer immediately begins shouting "Why?! Why?!" after the headbutt.)

So Italy won in penalty kicks. Penalty kicks struck me as a stupid and anticlimactic way to end a game, especially a final game. My thinking was: they just played for 120 minutes to decide on a world champion in soccer. Shouldn't they finish it by, you know, playing soccer? On the other hand, it was clear that both sides were completely exhausted by the time the extra periods ran out. France seemed to have to take out their two best players (not counting the red-carded Zidane) because they were too tired to play on. If the teams had to play any longer, the winning goal would likely have come on a stupid mistake that never would have been made if not for the exhaustion, and that would have been even more anticlimactic. So I guess I'm ok with the penalty kicks.

So did I learn anything? Am I a soccer fan now? My overall impression was pretty much what I had before: for the casual fan, soccer is a game of mind-numbing tedium, interrupted by occasional flashes of brilliant excitement (the two goals and Zidane's oh-so-close header come to mind). I'm sure that there are layers and layers of nuance and subtlety that make the game interesting to the hardcore fans (I'm constantly explaining this to the people who mindlessly say that baseball is boring), but I'm not willing to devote that kind of time or effort to soccer. I'll probably be watching in 2010, though.

Final note: some people may be riled by my constant use of the word "soccer" instead of "football." Here's the thing: In America, it's called soccer, not football. Football means something else here. If you're going to get upset about that, you might as well also be offended by the fact that I call the host nation of this year's Cup "Germany" instead of "Deutschland." Got it?

The Fiery Furnaces/Man Man - Theater of Living Arts, June 27, 2006

If you've ever heard a Fiery Furnaces album, you know how tough it would be to pull that stuff off live. To recreate something that even remotely resembled the albums, you'd need about five guitarists, two drummers, and maybe eight keyboard players. And I knew that the Furnaces only toured with a four-man band, and that their live performances didn't much resemble the albums, but I still didn't really know what to expect. So it was with a high degree of anticipation that I went to see them.

The other reason I was really looking forward to it is because I love the Fiery Furnaces. Every single album they've done is great, and they're one of the most inventive and unique bands in the world. They're one of the few bands who could pick pretty much any song from their entire catalog and make me happy. I love them enough to have written about them one, two, three, and four times at this very site.

But first (actually second, but I didn't get there in time to see the first band), I had to see Man Man. I knew nothing about Man Man going into the show other than that they're from Philadelphia (bonus points!) and that they have a stupid band name (points off!). They started playing, and I hated them almost immediately. It sounded like the Mahavishnu Orchestra trying to be the Mars Volta. It was repellent. Then they calmed down a bit and got into some actual songs, and what do you know! They're actually really good! It's easy to see why the Fiery Furnaces have them on tour with them, because they're just as batshit crazy as the Furnaces are. The phrase that kept coming to mind is "precision train wreck." They walk a perfect balance between structure and absolute chaos, and by the time four of the five members were blowing simultaneously through party favor horns (the fifth member was playing a melodica, of all things), I was smiling with glee. I'll have to check out their albums and see if they bring half the ruckus of their live show.

So then the Fiery Furnaces went on. As I'd mentioned before, I expected something different, but I wasn't prepared for how different it would be. Faced with the unenviable and more or less impossible task of recreating their own music, they did the only thing they could do: they didn't even try. Every song was restructured, often with only the melody left intact, and sometimes not even that. Maybe all those comparisons they got to the Who awhile back were actually referring to their live show, because that was really the closest reference point. If the Fiery Furnaces on record are an unpredictable mash up of every possible instrument, mood, and genre, the Fiery Furnaces live are a driving, power rock outfit with prog-rock chops.

The result was almost like watching a cover band, except no cover band on this planet would touch a song like "The Garfield El" with a 20-foot pole. I was wondering if they'd play anything from Rehearsing My Choir, and they did a three song medley from it, with Matt and Eleanor splitting the vocal duties of their octogenarian grandmother (what? she wouldn't come on tour with them?). If the songs from that album confused people in their recorded versions, I can't even imagine what they would feel like watching them performed live. Hell, even I had trouble following them, and I've heard them a hundred times.

Of course, that's true for about the entire set. The Furnaces' songs tend to take tons of undpredictable hairpin turns as it is, and live they're usually played at double time or more, with completely different arrangements. "Quay Cur" was virtually unrecognizable, as was "My Little Thatched Hut." Even songs that they could have given a fairly straight reading ("My Dog Was Lost but Now He's Found," "Tropical Iceland") were completely different (although "Crystal Clear" and "Chris Michaels" somehow came through relatively unscathed). And I was so busy wondering what they were going to do with the myriad synth parts that I didn't even think about how they were going to replicate all the backwards lyrics and stuff until they started playing "Black Hearted Boy." But ultimately, to wonder about that is to miss the point. This wasn't about replication. It was about reinvention. I should expect nothing less from the Fiery Furnaces.

Overall, I think I'll take the studio versions of their songs over the live ones, and they lack a real forceful and charismatic lead singer (although Eleanor was clearly more comfortable than Matt), but it was hard not to be impressed by the skill necessary to pull off what they did. I'd like to hear a live album from them sometime.

p.s. At the top of the post is a picture I took. I hope it works ok. I'm new at posting photos to this thing.

Thom Yorke - The Eraser

First of all, let's clarify something - Thom Yorke's The Eraser is a solo album. Yorke himself would like you to think otherwise: "I don't wanna hear that word solo. Doesn't sound right." But it's a record made by one guy who usually makes records with a larger group. It's a solo record.

Ok, nitpicking over. On to the music.

The Eraser is either a) a documentation of Thom Yorke in a bit of a slump or b) proof that Radiohead's brilliance is much bigger than Thom Yorke alone. I'm inclined to take b), since Yorke's name hasn't been on a subpar release since way back in 1993 (that'd be Radiohead's debut, Pablo Honey). At any rate, The Eraser is fairly uninteresting, one or two tracks aside, and not a particularly good addition to the Radiohead canon.

All of the nine songs are more or less interchangeable: electronic beats from the Autechre-for-Dummies book (Autechre's manager might want to check that beat from "The Clock" against Autechre's Tri Repetae++; there might be some royalties due), darkly ominous synths (and the occasional piano) from the Brian-Eno-for-Dummies book, and generic paranoid Radioheadisms like "There's no spark/No light in the dark," or "Time is running out for us," or "You will be dispensed with when you become inconvenient."

The most obvious reference point here is Radiohead's Kid A, but The Eraser lacks everything that made Kid A such a revelation: its genius wasn't about the newfound electronic backdrops, it was the sense of paranoia and isolation that permeated every note. It was about the meticulous production and performances that were mechanical and icy to the point of numbness, but always seemed to be on the verge of a complete breakdown. You can't phone that stuff in. Just as bands like Muse, Keane, and Kent have shown how easy it was to get everything entirely wrong with Radiohead's "rock" days of The Bends and Ok Computer, The Eraser shows how fine a line there is between Kid A-like brilliance and derivative mediocrity. I just never thought that the first person to corrupt Kid A's visionary foray into electronic pop would be Thom Yorke.

Happy Birthday Brian Wilson! A list to celebrate...

Since yesterday was the 64th birthday of Brian Wilson (who is obviously my favorite singer/songwriter/person), I thought I'd celebrate with a pointless list. This one took some thought to complete since there were so many brilliant options to choose from. But without further adieu, here are:

Tom's Personal Top 10 Favorite Beach Boys Songs

1. "God Only Knows" - If there's a more beautiful song in the world, I have yet to hear it. Carl's gorgeous vocal and Brian's gorgeous everything else (including the song, melody, harmonies, arrangement, etc., etc.) make for the most gorgeous sound recording in existence, as far as I'm concerned.
2. "Good Vibrations" - Brian's "pocket symphony." One of the most innovative, enduring, and popular songs ever recorded, and with good reason.
3. "Wouldn't It Be Nice" - There are two songs listed above this one on this list, but "Wouldn't It Be Nice" often strikes me as the perfect pop song. A melody to die for, surrounded by the most perfect arrangement and harmonies anybody could ask for. There are at least five different versions of this song on the Pet Sounds box set, a cappella, instrumental, outtakes, alternate versions, and everything, and every one of them is worth hearing to get a full picture of the construction of one of the most perfect songs ever recorded.
4. "Surfer Girl" - You could count on one hand the harmonies ever recorded that are more beautiful than this song (one or two of them might be on this list, in fact). Brian might have lifted the harmonic structure from the Four Freshmen, but they never achieved anything this brilliant.
5. "Surf's Up" - One of the few Beach Boys songs that can said to be a work of lyrical genius (thanks to the wonderful Van Dyke Parks), "Surf's Up" has little, if anything, in common with similarly titled works in the Beach Boys' catalog, other than that it's breathtakingly gorgeous. If you can find the version Brian recorded for Leonard Bernstein (just Brian and a piano), you won't be sorry.
6. "Don't Worry Baby" - Brian Wilson has stated many times that his favorite song ever is "Be My Baby" by the Ronettes (and more importantly, by Phil Spector). What better way to pay tribute to your favorite song than by simultaneously ripping it off and making it much better?
7. "Forever" - This one might have made the list due to sentimental value; when I saw Brian live, he sang this song, dedicating it to his deceased brother (who also happened to be the writer of the song), Dennis. Still though, it's a beautiful song about a beautiful feeling, with a wonderful melody, based around a simple chord progression. There wasn't a dry eye in the house when Brian played this song, and there probably wasn't when Dennis was alive to sing it either.
8. "Heroes and Villains" - Van Dyke Parks makes the list again as co-conspirator, writing the lyrics to this quaint tale of Old West swashbuckling. It's as close as the Beach Boys ever came to the avant-garde, touching simultaneously on decades-old Americana and the burgeoning psychedelic movement, not to mention some chromatic harmonies straight out of the Charles Ives playbook.
9. "California Girls" - Perhaps the quintessential Beach Boys song. Another brilliant melody from the height of the Beach Boys' popularity, this song was the rare culmination of everything that made them popular and everything that made them great artists at the same time. Many a person has tried to listen to this song without singing along. All have failed.
10. "All Summer Long" - This song was the real beginning of Brian's creative peak. For the first time, the Beach Boys made a clean break with both the Four Freshmen's harmonies and Chuck Berry's songs, and it resulted in this, a brilliant predecessor and foreshadower of what was to come 22 months (and five albums, with the pressure Capitol records put on them) later on Pet Sounds.


Runners up (because this list was hard to narrow down):

"Help Me Rhonda"
"Cabinessence"
"'Til I Die"
"Fun, Fun, Fun"
"Sail On, Sailor"

The Billy Preston Memorial Playlist

R.I.P.

1. Billy Preston - "That's the Way God Planned It"
2. The Rolling Stones - "Miss You"
3. Joe Cocker - "You Are So Beautiful"
4. Ringo Starr - "Only You (And You Alone)"
5. Sly and the Family Stone - "Family Affair"
6. John Lennon - "God"
7. George Harrison - "I Dig Love"
8. The Beatles - "Get Back"