One More (?) Go Around: A Hundred Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#307) "Shake Hands With Beef" by Primus - I have to admit, it took 20 years, but I finally get it. For a long, long time - too long - Primus was just "that guy", the one who plays the bass and wears...what, like a blue Sgt. Pepper uniform and dark glasses...er, right?  I never cared much, never listened, and routinely chose other bands over them to fill out the soundtrack of my life - Guns and Roses, Metallica, Alice in Chains, Black Sabbath, etc.

But this spring, in my mid-40s, I simply started listening, decided to get crazy with my Napster one Saturday morning, and now, the story of how Les Claypool auditioned to replace Cliff Burton in Metallica in the mid 1980s, and was rejected because, according to James Hetfield, Claypool was "too good", makes perfect sense. A better way to describe it: Les Claypool isn't Metallica....he's Primus. Make no mistake, there's absolutely nothing wrong with Metallica. But Les Claypool isn't Metallica.

He's fucking Primus. 

Of course, it's also true that Primus isn't just Claypool playing lead on bass. Where would the singularity that is the band's musical phrasing, the airtight intonation, innovation, the humor, the fright, the astonishing live performances, be without Larry LaLonde? Seriously, sometimes I'm not sure what language his guitar work is speaking...less a language, more like tongue.  The drumming is also top notch (would have to be), although they've switched drummers over the years, gone back and forth, even, between Tim Alexander and Jay Lane, the original drummer, among others, which begs the question, what must it be like to audition for Primus? To go before LaLonde and Claypool knowing all you can do is play the best you can...?

"Shake Hands With Beef" is ferocious, but the good sexy kind of ferocious, not the self-indulgent aggression that leads some performers to screaming out like the asshole in the bar I wish only to avoid at all cost. In the real world, I've spent most of my adult life doing everything I can to avoid anyone screaming, and I certainly don't find it entertaining.

This I find entertaining, wholly rousing, funny and a little retarded...as all great rock and roll should be.




#308) "Puddin' Taine" by Primus - "I will not be jumping out into the audience this evening, for one very good reason...I am a pussy." - Les Claypool, 1997




#309) "Jilly's on Smack" by Primus - Live version, Bonnaroo, 2011. (Mind bending, seriously, all of their 2011 performance at Bonnaroo)

I could go on and on, spanning three decades..."Mr. Krinkle", "Kalamazoo", "Lee Van Cleef", "American Life", "Winona's Big Brown Beaver", "Poetry and Prose", "Jerry Was a Racecar Driver", "Southbound Pachyderm", "Silly Putty", "Frizzle Fry", "Tommy the Cat", "Groundhog's Day", "Over the Electric Grapevine", "My Name Is Mud" ...

My name is Primus Fan. 

One More (?) Go Around: A Hundred Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#305) "Jack and Diane" by John Mellencamp - John Mellencamp (Cougar...whatever...) is a true artist, one of the last in pop music, for my money. Yeah yeah, there is still good music being made, still talented young people coming up and doing interesting things, but I believe we've lost something, collectively, from pop music/rock and roll over the decades. Songs like "Jack and Diane", that so artfully bridge the crevasse between rock roll and folk music, offering something to be absorbed in what's not being said as much as in what is, are not being written these days, or recorded, OR (and perhaps this is really the point) they don't wind up reaching number one on the Billboard charts in any case, as "Jack and Diane" did in 1982. And that's a shame. I'm sure they don't think it, or realize it, or give a shit, but for a long time I've thought that kids these days - Millennials and younger (although the first Millennials are barreling toward 40 at this very moment!) - are getting shortchanged when it comes to their music.

To hear Mellencamp tell the story, "Jack and Diane" was not an easy song to record, and throughout the process he was more than once ready to scrap the whole thing. The hand clapping, so integral to its sound and vibe, was never intended to be part of the finished product, was only done so the musicians could maintain the tempo as they recorded (or something to that effect). At some point, Mellencamp and crew wisely decided to keep that part in.

But the notion that the song came together more or less by accident makes perfect sense, because you can't fashion the greatness of "Jack and Diane" intentionally. It does tend to just happen, when and if it happens. There are precious few songs out there that withstand the scrutiny of changing tastes and styles, and remain as true today (that is, relevant) as they were nearly forty years ago, quite as heartily as this one does.

And it's not just that takeaway line about life going on after the thrill of living is gone, it's everything that happens before that in the lives of Jack and Diane - football stars and debutantes in back seats and hanging out at the Tastee-Freeze, talking about running off to the city, Diane's overly-cautious wisdom reining in (squelching?) Jack's teenage boy bravado.

Mellencamp really encapsulated a universal truth about being that age, about being bored and at the same time fatally restless, a truth that has not only spanned generations, but circumstances. It doesn't matter if you're white or black, or whether you grew up in the "heartland" or on the coasts, city or country, or if you were a jock or a prep or a nerd or a slut or a dirtball in your teenage years, or a brainy kid, or the weird kid who wore trench coats and thought he could hear poetry being read whenever it rained...every kid at some point between the ages of 13 and 17 goes through some version of "Jack and Diane". And what's brilliantly reflected here is not just that restlessness, but also a certain creeping apathy.

And yeah, the restlessness has a way of vanishing as the years peel away, leaving only the faint, ineffectual warmth of memories on an ashy Wednesday afternoon....so watch that apathy, kiddies. "...as long as you can..."

"Diane says, 'Baby, you ain't missing nothing...'"

#306) "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" by Billy Joel - "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" is what people who love Billy Joel's work love about it.  I made a similar assertion last week about a Pink Floyd song, but I think it's more significant with Billy Joel, because I think Billy Joel's influence is more far-reaching than Floyd's. Yes, in a way it's comparing apples to oranges, and no question I prefer Pink Floyd, consider them a bigger part of my jam (er, whatever that means...). Nevertheless, I think Joel's body of work, as it pertains specifically to songwriting and musicianship, and contribution of same to the annals of late 20th century music, is more impressive.

But unlike last week's Pink Floyd song, "Scenes..." also contains many of the things that people who hate Billy Joel's music hate about it.  I'm not sure what that is, exactly... I guess a certain level of schmaltzy-ness, a little too slick and polished...finger-snapping musicians fleet-footedly treading that line between "rock and roll" and West Side Story.

But Billy Joel is a gifted songwriter, one of the greatest of the 20th century I'd venture, and like "Jack and Diane", I think - intentionally or not - he really taps into a universal (and durable) truth about being young in "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant". This time it isn't about being in high school, it's being just out of high school, freshly launched into the adult world, a couple who rush into things, who get married and get "an apartment with deep piled carpet and a couple of paintings from Sears..." (which I know from experience is exactly how it goes down). It could be considered the next chapter in Jack and Diane's life, after they've graduated and were unable to hold onto 16...or didn't bother trying.

"Then the king and the queen went back to the green, but you can never go back there again..."

One More (?) Go Around: A Hundred Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#303) "Fearless" by Pink Floyd - Everything that people who love Pink Floyd love about Pink Floyd can be found in "Fearless", a deep track from 1971's Meddle whose sum of parts is worth more than the whole. That is not meant to denigrate the whole, only to acknowledge, to celebrate, how that whole's various auditory layers - administered in medically conscientious doses - conspire to create an energy that keeps it aloft and traveling mightily through space and time, impervious to the elements, both terrestrial and interstellar.

As in most Floyd songs, there would appear to be a formula at play: the general spacey-ness you might expect is reined in by heady lyrics you'd be well advised not to allow yourself to get too spacey to pay attention to. There is a sadness, a melancholy, continuously being harassed by an underlying sense of anger and menace, the source of which can be reliably traced back to the lyrics. "Fearless" doesn't try too hard to achieve any of this. Its components simply blend into a musical ambrosia lightly dyed with delicate shades of terror brought on by breathless harmonic changes and mind-bending keyboard effects delivered at precisely the right moment. It's a tonic that might cure something but might also make you sick, a simultaneously soothing and unnerving lullaby delivered by a band that - in their best moments - knew as well as any that came before or would come after what sounds good together.

Pink Floyd's craftsmanship was first rate, but more importantly, they used only top shelf parts.

"Just wait a while for a right day..."

#304) "Silent Lucidity" by Queensryche - Because of "Silent Lucidity", I got into the habit of referring to Queensryche as the "poor man's Pink Floyd", which was neither accurate nor fair to either band. "Silent Lucidity" isn't as polished as any Floyd song, but it was a foray into something new for Queensryche, so probably needs to be graded on a curve. It's a song that does try too hard to be whatever it is it's trying to be, as though you can hear the brushstrokes while the picture is being painted. But there's definitely a general similarity, and I've always thought much of the song's sweeping orchestral arrangement comes straight from the Floyd arsenal. In fact, there are a few short measures in which I swear I can hear "Vera" from The Wall … but hey, I could be wrong.

I first heard this song when I was eighteen, working at McDonald's in the winter of 1991, the tail end of the hair metal era. A co-worker came up to me and asked what the word "lucidity" meant, then directed me to the TV in the break room, on which the video for the song was playing.

I don't know that "Silent Lucidity" holds up for me all these years later, but I still enjoy listening to it. It reminds me of my senior year in high school if nothing else, being moved to find out what "lucidity" meant and intrigued by a song that sounded different, "tasted" different than others of the day. It almost seemed like Queensryche had a notion to take the hair metal genre, specifically the "power ballad", in a different, more introspective direction. Of course, within months, Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" would start blowing up the airwaves, and that would be that for nearly all things musical that weren't "Smells like Teen Spirit". Overnight we were looking back on the whole hair metal scene the way Baby Boomers, by then in their mid-30s, were looking back at bell bottoms and tie dye - with a deep cringe





"I'm standing next to you in silent lucidity..."

One More (?) Go Around: A Hundred Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#301) "Nightshift" by The Commodores - I was twelve when this song was released, and before I knew what it was about, before I knew anything about Marvin Gaye or Jackie Wilson, before I could wrap my head around what a truly touching ode to the two performers and their untimely deaths it really is, its quiet, contemplative mood appealed to me. I remember listening to it on the radio after I'd gone to bed, and associating it with the static glare of the streetlight outside, which would lay itself across the wall over my bed when I turned out the light, making it impossible to go to sleep. Not because it was keeping me awake, but because it was making me restless.  More than three decades later, I think this interpretation is still very apt. For all its "quiet, contemplative mood", "Nightshift" is a very restless song. It's good restlessness. The kind that spurs anticipation, rather than longing.

"Gonna be a long night, it's gonna be all right, on the nightshirt..."

#302) "Drinking My Baby Goodbye" by Charlie Daniels - One thing that can be said about Charlie Daniels is that he and his band have always been, first and foremost, consummate musicians. Over the last 50 years, they've brought a sound to country music that is exceptionally airtight, sometimes downright innovative, and most notably, uniquely their own. (Daniels himself has said he never thought of himself as an "outlaw" country artist so much as an "outcast".) It's a sound that guarantees his status as a (living) legend will continue, and flourish, long after his passing.

"Drinking My Baby Goodbye" has all the elements for the quintessential Charlie Daniels song: rhythm meshing seamlessly with vocals and instruments, particularly (of course) the fiddle, an instrument which Daniels has at certain moments in his career managed to break the sound barrier with. It's all stitched up right nice into a song you simply cannot help tapping your foot to, and again, a song that couldn't be anyone else but Charlie Daniels.

"Pour me another one, I'm finished with the other one..."