She gets it while she can

I finally got around to watching that new Beatles documentary.  I admit that, even for a Beatles nut like myself, it felt daunting: 8+ hours of them sitting around smoking and drinking tea and playing “I’ve Got a Feeling” a thousand times and fracturing under the tremendous weight of who and what they were. Did the world really need more Beatles content?

The pre-marketing of Get Back promised to “set the record straight” about the original Let It Be project.  Peter Jackson and co. would show us that their break-up really wasn’t the acrimonious, Yoko-induced feud that we’d been fed, that there was still sublime musical collaboration going on, that they hadn't lost their Liverpudlian cheekiness, that The Beatles were still The Beatles. And yes, the film checks those boxes. We feel the tension (especially when George bails for a while in Part 1), but we also see how much they loved playing music, and loved the creative process, and loved each other.

But the joy of watching Get Back is not about seeing something new. It’s about seeing everything that leads up to all the magical stuff we already know is going to happen. We know that pretty soon, Billy Preston’s going to show up and breathe life into the sessions. That George is going to stop passive-aggressively noodling around with his wah-wah pedal and come up with the sublime descending lead part during the verses of “Don’t Let Me Down.”  That Ringo’s eventually going to change his drum part on “Get Back” from a straight 4:4 to the sly gallop that propels the song. That these snippets of “Something” and “You Never Give Me Your Money” and “Carry That Weight” are going to coalesce into the miracle that is Abbey Road. 

We also know what will happen to John 11 years later.

The ostensible climax of Get Back is the rooftop concert in Part 3. It isn’t really much of a “concert:” they only play a few songs, and the people down on the street below can’t even see them, and John forgets some of the words, and his fingers are too cold to play the solos well. But they are still glorious, and people down on the street stop and look up and try to see this music that seems to come from the heavens. 

Playing amplified rock music in the middle of London is noisy, and at a certain point the cops show up. “Is this really necessary?” one of them asks, with a British politeness that is almost laughable (one suspects that the Minneapolis PD wouldn't react to a similar situation in quite the same way). He repeats the question a few times, as do the few (mainly older) people out on the street who are complaining about the noise. "Is this really necessary?"  

I wonder if any of those people are still living, and if they saw this movie and thought about the question they asked. What exactly did they think was more “necessary” than stopping what they were doing and listening to the vocal harmonies on “I Dig a Pony?” Catching the next bus? Getting home for dinner? Sleeping? Making sure the wheels of commerce continue to turn undisturbed? 

As I’ve mentioned before, it feels like it gets harder to complete my Critics Poll with each passing year. Between work and doing the dishes and amateur epidemiology, it’s not easy to keep up with what new music has come out, much less to listen to it critically and try to put a year-end list together. I can’t say that I did a great job of it this past year. I crammed most of my listening into December and January, so I’m sure I missed a lot of good stuff. But I keep doing it because all these artists will be gone one day, and so will I, and so will you. Because there are more important things than the next Zoom meeting. Because music is more than entertainment or a sound bed for an Applebee's ad. Because music and the artists who make it and the emotion and meaning it carries are, indeed, necessary. 

 Top Ten Albums of 2021

10. Miranda Lambert, Jack Ingram & John Randall – The Marfa Tapes

Lo-fi country replete with tape hiss, beer cans cracking open, and what sounds like a campfire, or maybe a horse nibbling on straw. These are bona fide Country Music Stars, so you suspect that the casualness itself may be produced, but there’s no denying the songs and the performances.      

9. Tyler, the Creator – Call Me if You Get Lost

What in God’s name is Tyler, the Creator doing rapping about Geneva, Switzerland?  I suspect that he hasn’t ventured too far away from Quai Wilson, but in any case it’s refreshing to hear an American call his passport his most valuable possession.  

8. St. Lenox – Ten Songs of Worship and Praise for Our Tumultuous Times

Andrew Choi brings the confessional indie-pop heat. This deserves more than a one-line summary, especially given the “spiritual” leanings of this here website, but I haven’t listened to it in a while, and I don’t want to do it injustice. Trust me on this one. 

7. Juan Wauters – Real Life Situations 

Like a long Saturday afternoon ride on the 7 train; at each stop, the doors part to reveal a pure, gorgeous glimpse of life in the city.  The protagonist is a very likeable Uruguayan transplant, who breaks the 4^th wall mid-album to say he hopes we’re enjoying ourselves.

6. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – LW  

Melbourne's favorite microtonal freaks release the 7,000^th album of their career.  This was my first foray into the “Gizzverse” (eew), and I can imagine how easy it is for young impressionable types to venture in there and never find their way out. 

5. Black Country, New Road – For the First Time

Progressive Klezmer played by some uni-types from Cambridge, UK.  RIYL: Morphine, The Lounge Lizards, John Zorn. The vocalist, who does more of a basso profundo spoken-word thing, might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I dare you to sit still through this one.  

4. Espanto – Cemento

As if someone had commissioned Kraftwerk to score a Spanish-language version of Teletubbies directed by David Lynch.  No, that’s not right: the synths might feel cold and distant, but Teresa and Luis are coming with mucho joy and love and warmth here. Recalls Dead Media by Hefner, come to think of it.

3. Bad Bad Hats – Walkman

Groovy, well-structured, sympathetic female lead singer, even more sympathetic guitar tones. Aspiring pop music producers, take note: pulling out the bass guitar for the verse and then bringing it back in for the chorus is a very useful maneuver.

2. The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die – Illusory Walls

Triumphantly captures the vertiginous bridge between prog and emo. Like Muse without the stadium pretense. I think having a female vocalist helps. Drums like cannon fire. 

1. Kiwi Jr. – Cooler Returns

I find myself wanting to apologize for putting these dudes from Toronto at the top of my list. There are certainly other acts with better chops, more thematic consistency, more scrutable lyrics, (certainly) more sex appeal.  I think I compared them to Pavement last time out, and the lead singer does indeed bear a timbric resemblance to Stephen Malkmus. But these guys don’t have the same need for irony or archness. Sometimes good songs, played well with winning energy are enough. Being Canadian probably helps too.

Story Time

 

Twitter is the Lust of Dante’s Circles of Social Media. It’s still hell, but things could be a lot worse.  Amongst the trolls and doom and Capital One promotions, one does find some interesting stories and glimpses of humanity. Maybe a better metaphor is Twitter is the Marshalls of social media: it’s not a pleasant place to be, and you're going to wade through an awful lot of crap, but there are a few decent items to be found.

One such decent item is Story Club by George Saunders, which came to me courtesy of Maria Bustillos. It’s essentially an English class held on Saunders’ substack. It’s behind a paywall, but it’s great value for money if you’re a fan of the written word, and/or if you believe that engaging with stories in a thoughtful way might be an important and helpful thing to do, especially at this particular moment. We started by reading a Hemingway's “Cat in the Rain,” one paragraph at a time over the course of a week: kind of the antithesis of the Twitter experience.

There are writing exercises as well. Last week, the assignment was to write a story of 200 words (exactly 200, not 199 or 201) using only 50 unique words. So you keep a running tally of the words you’ve used, and once you get to 50, you have to start re-using words (or go back and swap out another one, but the grand total can’t exceed 50). And you're supposed to do this in only 45 minutes. Judging from the comments, many of my fellow students had the same experience I did: you hit 50 words pretty quickly (I think I was at around 90 total words), and then you find yourself in an awkward spot.  But then some interesting things happen as you wriggle free.   

My attempt:

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking, and I am happy to welcome you aboard on today’s flight to Oahu. Our flight time today will be only two hours, and Connie and her team are here to make your flight as pleasant as possible.

And I would like to go ahead and welcome you newlyweds aboard today! Congratulations! Time flies. I remember. A good time. A pleasant time. 

A time you would think would go on and on being good and pleasant. Right, Connie? Go ahead and remember. Our time was good and pleasant. This was our time. You think you are happy today, but I would like you to remember. You and I are right. You and I are a team. We would be happy. I am speaking here. Your captain is speaking to you. 

And to you newlyweds: your time is like this flight. Be happy here, but the hours will go and go. Hours and hours. You are here. This is possible. Today will welcome you. You have this today and you think you are happy, but remember: today is only today. Today will go. Make your today right. Go ahead.      

Have a pleasant flight. Mahalo!”