monsoonmartin

The Desert Island Discs list is a concept that dates back to the 1940s, when it was created by Roy Plomley on BBC Radio—and still runs to this day (though Plomley is now shuffling around on that great Desert Island in the sky). Public figures are asked to name the eight pieces of music they consider indispensible, and at the end of the hour, they are also asked to name one book and one luxury item they’d take with them.

So here’s my spin—no pun intended—on the Desert Island Discs format.

First, whereas the participants on the BBC show often chose pieces of music or individual songs, I will confine myself to entire studio albums. I realize that the studio album is an endangered format in the age of iPods, when so many music lovers can simply buy individual songs rather than having to get a whole album. But I would argue that the studio album, as a coherent, fully-fledged musical statement, is inherently valuable. On an album, an artist can draw in a listener with a single straight-ahead rock and roll tune, for example, and then expose him or her to blues, to folk, to bluegrass. An album lets the artist explore a range of influences and experiment, to engage the listener with more expansive ideas and expound upon musical themes.

The album is really a creation of the 1960s, and the heyday of vinyl platters lasted into the 1980s, when cassette tapes, and later CDs, supplanted records as the dominant format. Technology actually broadened what could be offered on one release—albums can generally hold 25 minutes or so per side without loss of sound quality, while CDs can hold more than 70 minutes of data—and now, with low-cost mp3 files, has truncated what most music fans hear from a single artist.

The changes in format are quite staggering to consider: since I became aware of (and in love with) music in the early 1980s, the way music is consumed has undergone several major transmutations. I can think of albums, like U2’s War, that I purchased in vinyl format, then got the cassette because it was more convenient and portable, then got the CD because it was supposed to be clearer and more durable (meanwhile, I still insist that vinyl usually has the fullest sound, but that’s a rant for another time), and now I’m ripping the tracks off the CD and onto my computer in mp3 format in anticipation of the purchase (someday) of an iPod.

Because I believe in the primacy of the studio album, I have limited myself further: no “greatest hits” or “top singles” compilations (eliminating the work of such artists as Bill Withers, Dionne Warwick, and the Commodores, which I would like to have with me on the island, but their strongest output was scattered throughout their careers rather than on a single album. Maybe another series of posts will focus on my favorite songs of all time). In addition, I considered no posthumous collections of unfinished or unreleased material, which eliminates more than half the catalogues of artists like Jimi Hendrix and Tupac Shakur.

And I have decided to eschew live performance albums, so Live by Bob Marley and the Wailers, the Rolling Stones’ Get Yer Ya-Yas Out, and even comedic masterpieces recorded live, like Richard Pryor’s Is It Something I Said? or Bicentennial Nigger, must be removed from consideration.

Other favorites of mine that didn’t quite make the cut include Living Colour, G. Love & Special Sauce, Robert Cray, and the Dave Matthews Band. The Skatalites aren’t here because they primarily released singles and backed some of the greats of ska and rock steady in the germinal days of Jamaican reggae; Neil Diamond isn’t here, and neither is David Hasselhoff, because their greatness really transcends one album, one list—or one career, for that matter. Not sure what that means, but we’ll forge ahead.

Lastly, I realize the whole Desert Island Discs notion is a conceit—if I am stranded on a deserted island, I am overwhelmingly unlikely to lack the electricity and the equipment necessary to enjoy these discs, in whatever format. (The D.I.D. show began talking about phonograph records, of course, and modern participants are generally referring to compact discs.) And furthermore, anyone who knows me at all understands that if I were actually stranded on a deserted island, I would not be sitting around thinking about which CDs I wish I had brought; I would be alternately curled up in the fetal position, screaming for Wet-Naps to combat the ubiquitous sand, and bemoaning the fact that the only thing to eat or drink is coconut, which is about my least favorite thing on earth. So do me a favor, folks, when it comes to the D.I.D. thing: just go with it.

I’ve ditched Plomley’s eight D.I.D. selections in favor of 20. (I know, I know. When have you ever known me to be disciplined, or precise? But I’ve divided that number into two lists: second-tier D.I.D.—included in today’s post—and top-tier D.I.D., which will be posted next week.)

Before I reveal the second tier, I want to unveil a Monsoon Martin contest: email me at monsoonmartin@gmail.com with the list of albums you think I will include on my D.I.D. top tier next week; the person with the most correct guesses will win one CD of his or her choosing from my D.I.D. list. Deadline for entries is Friday, June 26^th, 2009, at midnight EDT; winner will be published in the next posting...

Here goes the second tier, in alphabetical order by artist...

The Black Crowes – Amorica (1994) 

The Crowes have always seemed a bit anachronistic—a group of southern-fried hippies making music that would not have seemed out of place alongside the Allman Brothers, The Band, or even Little Feat in the early 1970s. And yet there is a modernity to the Black Crowes in its employment of Middle Eastern influences, its inventive blending of seemingly disparate guitar lines and rhythm time. Chris Robinson’s souful, smoke-wrapped vocals are deeply evocative, and among the most recognizable in rock; his brother Rich turns in piercing, wickedly effective lead guitar work.

The first thing one may notice about Amorica is its cover—and many hand-wringers, so-called patriots, and inveterate prudes surely did. As the illustration shows, the cover depicts a woman wearing a skimpy, stars-and-stripes thong while wisps of pubic hair poke out of the top of the draws. It’s actually from a bicentennial issue of the magazine Hustler, and the record company capitulated to complaints by cropping the skin and hair around the flag image.

Here on Amorica, the Crowes more completely explore the heartbreak of “She Talks to Angels” (from their debut album) and tighten the arrangement evident on such messy, seemingly slapdash songs like “Thorn in My Pride” and “Sometimes Salvation” from 1992’s The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion. Standout tracks include “A Conspiracy” and the sweeping double-ballad, “Ballad in Urgency” / “Wiser Time.” The album’s concluding track, “Descending,” is a dirge for the addict’s helpless repetition of mistakes—a plea for steadfastness and against sanctimony in the face of self-destruction: “No sermons on ascending / No verdict on deceit / No selfish memorandum / No confusion for me.”

Dead Kennedys – Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables (1980)

The early and mid 1980s were my punk/hardcore period, and I still listen to a couple of artists from that period whose greatness transcends any genre or craze: The Minutemen and the Dead Kennedys. The nimble, furious guitars of East Bay Ray and the uncompromising, manic vocals of Jello Biafra are unnerving and enthralling. The Dead Kennedys’ influences are as diverse as the Ramones and the Mothers of Invention. 

I will admit that song titles like “I Kill Children” and “Let’s Lynch the Landlord” were jarring for my parents, and that I only gradually came to appreciate in Biafra’s deft lyrics the irony he had clearly intended. With an unmistakable wink to Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, in which he suggested that the Irish address their financial dire straits by selling their children to by eaten by the UK’s rich, Biafra wrote lyrics that sought to question United States foreign and domestic policies from the far left; this was particularly meaningful during the Reagan administration.

One of my favorite DK songs is on this album; it’s called “Kill the Poor” and centers around the notion that the U.S. could deploy nuclear bombs domestically to address its poverty crisis: “The sun beams down on a brand new day / No more welfare tax to pay / Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light / Jobless millions whisked away / At last we have more room to play / All systems go to kill the poor tonight.” Jello Biafra continues to disseminate his trademark satirical wit and storytelling prowess via a series of spoken-word albums with such titles as I Blow Minds for a Living.

Digable Planets – Blowout Comb (1994)

Doodlebug, Ladybug Mecca, and Butterfly had a brief run (they released only two albums, of which Blowout was the second), but their impact on hip-hop is immeasurable. Digable Planets burst onto the scene in 1993 with the single “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat),” which featured a walking bass line with a sly beat and lounge horns. The rapping was self-assured, but also understated: the rhymes were floated to rather than spit at the listener. Their debut album also included the masterful pro-choice study called “La Femme Fetal.”

Expectations were high for the Digables’ 1994 follow-up, and the resulting masterpiece was disappointing only in the commercial sense. The album instantly immersed the listener in an aural landscape that recalled spy movie soundtracks from the 1960s, blending jazz and political hip-hop in ever more sophisticated ways: the opening lyrics of the first song are “One time for your mind / Two times for Mumia’s saint crew.”

[Check out the music video of "9th Wonder (Blackitolism)" from this album.]

Digable Planets also revolutionized the nature of sampling; while rap artists had been sampling the likes of James Brown and Curtis Mayfield since the genre began in the late 1970s, the Digables sampled from jazz greats like Roy Ayers and Miles Davis, hip-hop pioneers The Last Poets, and funk/soul stalwarts like The Crusaders and The Ohio Players. All of this was reimagined in an urgent, incisive, and fiercely independent creation. The resultant work, Blowout Comb, is remarkably seamless and compelling.

Isaac Hayes – Hot Buttered Soul (1969)

Isaac Hayes began his career as a songwriter for the legendary Stax records, where he and writing partner David Porter turned out a string of hits that included “Soul Man” and “When Something is Wrong with my Baby.” Hayes was invited to record an album for the label, but his first effort resulted in commercial and critical failure. He decided to reinvent his music and his image for the next album—while insisting on complete creative control in its recording—and the results were wildly successful.

Hot Buttered Soul turned Isaac Hayes from an unknown songwriter to an African American icon—who would become known as the “Black Moses”—in just a few short years. The arresting album cover, which featured a bird’s-eye shot of Hayes’ clean-shaven head and the thick gold chain that graced his neck, was as instrumental in creating the Isaac Hayes mythos as were its contents. The album itself contained only four tracks, starting with a half-time, orchestral, rhythm-heavy reimagining of Burt Bacharach’s “Walk On By.” The next track is an original, “Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic,” a blistering up-tempo funk ensemble piece propelled by a repeated wah-wah guitar and Hayes’ breathy bass vocal. His backing band, the Bar-Kays, really shine here.

Side B (remember, this was the time of vinyl platters, folks) begins with a rather pedestrian ballad about love and loss, yet what makes the song work is Hayes’ admixture of vulnerability and toughness. The album closes with a reinterpretation of the country classic “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” a song which opens with a seemingly ad-libbed monologue and builds to a crescendo of lament. Hayes, of course, is known for his starring appearance at Wattstax, but may be more well-known by today’s audiences for his role as Chef on TV’s “South Park.” But Hot Buttered Soul is where the legend began.

Linton Kwesi Johnson – Tings an’ Times (1991)

LKJ pioneered the “dub poetry” genre of reggae music, which consists of speaking over a dub, or reggae track. His first albums, Dread Beat an’ Blood and Forces of Victory from the late 1970s, are his most well-known, and dealt with racist police brutality in Britain and the struggle for autonomy among the African diaspora. Johnson’s work paved the way for other well-known practitioners of dub poetry like Oku Onuora and Mutabaruka.

His 1991 release on Shanachie Records, Tings an’ Times, redefined the genre. The album features his most sophisticated musical arrangements and his most biting, accomplished lyrics. Musically, the dub of longtime collaborator Dennis Bovell hinges mostly on a mid-tempo rock-steady beat, but also includes such disparate instruments as accordion, flute, and violin to provide a foil for the urgency of LKJ’s lyrics, delivered in a measured Jamaican patois.

The best song here is “Sense Outa Nansense.” In this cut, LKJ ponders the difference between the innocent and the fool: “Di innocent an di fool could pass for twin / ... / Yet di two a dem in common share someting / Dem is often confused an get used / Dem is often criticized an compromised / Dem is often vilified an reviled / Dem is often foun guilty witout being tried / One ting set di two a dem far apart, though / Di innocent can harbor doubt, check things out, and maybe find out / But di fool ... tsk!”

Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin IV (1971)

Sometime in the early 1980s, when I was 9 or 10, we were visiting my uncle and his family up in Red Hill (where my dad grew up) and I was hanging out with my cousin Troy, who was a couple of years older than I. To say we were opposites would be a gross understatement: he liked to ride dirt bikes in the mud, while I felt bitchin’ jumping my Huffy over a low curb; he liked to play army games in the marshes and creeks near his house, and I liked to organize my baseball cards or arrange my Star Wars “people” into dramatic battle scenes; he and his friends liked to make me ride up to the McDonald’s drive-thru window and try to place an order, then laugh hysterically when I was informed that sort of thing is not allowed, and I liked to avoid any such potentially embarrassing situations. (Come to think of it, he was kind of a dick.)

Anywho, on the aforementioned visit he turned on some AC/DC and when I did not readily begin nodding my head in approval, he asked, “Don’t you like AC/DC?!” Having only heard the racket he was playing, and seen their videos on MTV in which the guitar player bobbed his frizzy mop so insistently that I took to asking questions of the screen—“Are you a jerk? Does your music suck?”—and he would just keep nodding in the affirmative, I said no. “Well, who’s your favorite band, then?” he asked. “The Pointer Sisters,” I heard myself reply.

Now, I was a little dork, to be sure, but even in that moment I knew that was not going to go over well. I mean, the Pointer Sisters? It’s the first thing that popped into my head. At least he didn’t ask me what my favorite song was, or I might have blurted out “Slow Hand” or “He’s So Shy” and sent him into another paroxysm of derisive laughter. As it was, Troy now felt it was his duty to introduce me to music he found acceptable. And so, a few years later, he yanked me out of our grandmother’s funeral as it was wrapping up, took me to his older brother’s car, and played a cassette recording of the song “Stairway to Heaven.”

Putting aside the obvious inappropriateness of my cousin playing me a hard rock epic about drug abuse while I was mourning my Nannie’s death, the song did stay with me, and before long I sought it out among my dad’s massive record collection.

I could have easily selected Led Zeppelin I or Led Zeppelin II here—and almost did—but Led Zeppelin IV is really the supergroup’s most accomplished and well-crafted album. Obviously the cut I mentioned above is hauntingly beautiful and one of the most popular and enduring hard rock songs of all time, but the album has so much more: the ethereal “Battle of Evermore,” the fierce, straight-ahead “Black Dog,” the plodding blues “When the Levee Breaks.” Led Zep co-opted the motifs, the arrangements, and sometimes even the lyrics of its blues and soul heroes, but the band always paid tribute to these influences. Led Zeppelin IV represents the band at its most consistent, incorporating the best of the sonic experimentation, exploration of American musical traditions, and impeccable musicianship of its first three albums.

Meshell Ndegeocello – Bitter (1999)

Neo-soul icon Meshell Ndegeocello has experimented with dance, drum-and-bass, spoken-word, R&B/funk, ambient, rap, hard rock, and much more in a mesmerizing oeuvre that now spans more than a decade. But her most coherent release is the gorgeous Bitter. It is an album of spare, folk- and soul-inflected arrangements, orchestral accompaniments, and sweeping emotional turmoil. The songs center on the themes of love and loss, trust, loyalty, and faith; and the austere, seemingly simplistic lyrics belie a depth and insight that is revealed by Ndegeocello’s deep, versatile voice.

The album’s crowning achievement is the closing pair of songs, “Wasted Time” and “Grace.” On the former, Ndegeocello sings an unconventional duet with indie artist Joe Henry (though for all these years, I could have sworn it was Marianne Faithfull singing with her). “Wasted Time” is a five-minute lament of unrequited love set over orchestral flourishes, steel guitar, and an insistent, dirge-like beat: “You rarely notice but I hang on your every word / Everything you say / You’re much too busy to notice me / You turn and walk away / Into another’s arms, hopeless ashamed / I wish I could hold you that way / Brokenhearted I dream for you to notice me.”

When it ends in the middle of a word (they don’t quite get out the words “broken-hearted” in a later verse), the song “Grace” begins. Over an acoustic arrangement and a metronomic beat, Ndegeocello ends the album with a statement of renewed hope in finding love: “Your love’s my only saving grace / You caress my heart, kiss my face.”

Augustus Pablo – East of the River Nile (1977)

Augustus Pablo (born Horace Swaby) was a progenitor of dub reggae, and one of the first (and only) musicians to prominently feature the melodica—an instrument which is basically a combination harmonica and keyboard and had theretofore been used primarily to teach music to young school children. Pablo’s albums typically consisted of instrumental explorations of Rastafarian truths set in an almost trance-like sonic milieu. The “dub” label meant that echoes, reverberations, loops, and cut-outs (abrupt removal of certain instruments) were used liberally while emphasizing rhythmic elements to create a composition that is both unpredictable and fluid.

East of the River Nile was no different, and yet it ascended to new heights in terms of its melodic structure and continuity. Produced by the great King Tubby, it featured Pablo not only on his trademark melodica, but also on organ, clavinet, synthesizer, and other keyboards. Also included were some of the greats of Jamaican musicianship, such as Family Man Barrett and his brother Carlie; the Soul Syndicate’s Chinna Smith; and Robbie Shakespeare (one-half of the celebrated dub/production team Sly & Robbie). The songs are imbued with Pablo’s “far-east” style, an eclectic blend of Asian influences and dub reggae. The album’s best song is the title track, a crucial, atmospheric track propelled by a nimble bass line, exhibiting these Asian inflections.

On a personal note, listening to this album is like entering an ancient dimension. For a long time I would only listen to the album when it was raining (seriously) and at one point in my early teens I even had a nature sounds cassette (“Thundering Rainstorm,” I believe it was called) that I would play at the same time in my dual-cassette stereo. Dweeb.

Rage Against the Machine – The Battle of Los Angeles (1999)

Rage burst on the hard-rock scene in the early 1990s with such iconoclastic anthems as “Killing in the Name” and “Bullet in the Head,” boasting the guitar pyrotechnics of Tom Morello and the relentless, politically charged lyrics of Zack de la Rocha, who hollered his words with anarchic abandon. The band had both deepened its ideas and broadened its sonic palette by the release of its third studio album—and its last featuring original material—The Battle of Los Angeles. Named after the infamous 1942 incident a few months after Pearl Harbor when Los Angelinos were awakened by air-raid sirens and a barrage of anti-aircraft artillery—only to later find out it was a paranoia-induced false alarm—the release explores the abuses of U.S. power, the efficacy of protest, heritage and the plight of illegal immigrants.

Here on Los Angeles, the creative tensions that ultimately undid them—the band broke up in the late 1990s, unforgivably going on hiatus during the criminal Bush administration, when we needed them most—are laid bare, with thrilling results. This is perhaps nowhere so evident as on tracks like “Mic Check,” which skews heavily toward de la Rocha’s hip-hop preferences, and “Sleep Now in the Fire,” a straight-ahead rock song that reflects Morello’s hard rock inclinations. The almost hymn-like “Voice of the Voiceless” pays tribute to Philadelphia journalist and cause célèbre Mumia Abu-Jamal, but the most biting comments about Abu-Jamal’s case appear in the song “Calm Like a Bomb”: “There’s a widow pig parrot / A rebel to tame / A whitehooded judge / A syringe and a vein / And the riot be the rhyme of the unheard.”

Rage put on one of the most electrifying live shows I have ever seen (circa 1997, in Camden). I think what appeals to me most about RATM is that they are uncompromising and direct in their criticism of government, of industry, of the justice system, of religion. Most people with strong opinions are forced to tone them down, make them more palatable, sugarcoat them. Rage is a release, a furious cry against these stultifying forces.

Red Hot Chili Peppers – Freaky Styley (1985)

This remains the best album—even better than 1991’s breakthrough Blood Sugar Sex Magik or 1999’s Californication—by one of my favorite bands ever, Red Hot Chili Peppers. After their self-titled debut album failed to capture “the groove of who we were all the way,” the Chili Peppers decided they needed a producer who could harness the seemingly disparate musical directions the band seemed to want to take: punk and funk. Soon the band had its answer in George Clinton, the legendary architect of Parliament-Funkadelic, whose musical sensibilities could help the boys achieve maximum funkitude while staying true to their hardcore/punk roots and indefatigable energy.

The result is Freaky Styley, a loosey-goosey funk masterpiece distinguished by Flea’s snapping bass lines and the wah-wahs and nimble harmonics of guitarist Hillel Slovak (who died of a heroin overdose a few years later). I remember back in 1985 when the album came out, my friend Mark Shewchuk played the album for me, and I was immediately hooked. The music fell into a hypnotizing groove, but also wore its eccentricities (off-time beats, psychedelic guitar diversions, affected vocalization) proudly. This is apparent even on the outstanding covers that appear on the album, the Meters’ “Africa” and Sly Stone’s “If You Want Me to Stay.”

[Check out the music video for "Jungle Man."  Be warned that there is brief nudity; it seems the boys' penchant for performing nude with only sweat socks covering their genitals dates back to this period.]

Maybe the most recognizable aspect of Freaky Styley—aside from George Clinton’s knob-twirling—is Anthony Kiedis’ employment of gleefully bawdy lyrics: one relatively mild example from “Sex Rap” runs “I can tell you’re like a horny bloodhound / Feel the bass line hump the ground.” The most amusing lyrical story here, though, might actually be the one surrounding the song “Yertle the Turtle.” The song itself is a languid interpretation of the Dr. Seuss book bearing the same name, but the truly incredible part comes at the beginning and throughout the song, when George Clinton’s drug dealer says, “Look at the turtle go, bro.” Yes, that’s right: Clinton owed money to his drug dealer but couldn’t pay up, so offered him a part on the Chili Peppers’ album.

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Well, that marks the end of my “second-tier” Desert Island Discs, with the top tier forthcoming. Remember to send in your guesses about what albums might grace that list; the winner gets a choice of any of the 20 D.I.D.s...

Monsoon