February 2024
Writer's Check-in
Hello everybody! I hope you all had a good last month. Sorry for the late update: it took some time (and energy) to upload my new reviews on the blog, so I delayed writing this up by two days. Speaking of which, I might as well talk about a project I've been meaning to do for, uh, two years now. I am planning right now to review every single song on the
Atlantic Rhythm & Blues 1947-1973 and
The Complete Stax / Volt Singles: 1959–1968 compilations along with putting some extra songs I think are great and should have been included on either. It's going to be a massive project that might take roughly about 1-2 years to complete, but it is a) something I have wanted to do for ages and b) will be a project I can do alongside my regular schoolwork. So, I've decided to do it! Some of you who either follow my RYM or this blog itself might have seen the first 13 reviews (which makes for an average of nearly a review per day since it started, not bad eh?), which those reviews might have not been too exciting (generic pre-50s R&B isn't a terribly interesting subject anyways and I've written so much about Professor Longhair that nobody probably wants to hear me rave for a billionth time). BUT we are now approaching
"Teardrops From My Eyes" and the golden age of '50s Atlantic R&B very soon, so those reviews should be fun to read or at least will give some good recommendations. Anyway, I hope the project will be interesting to some of you, and if I end up completing it, I might do one for Motown as well!
In other news, I think I said something along the lines of last year that if my full enjoyment of music hasn't come back by February, I am probably dead. Well, I'm clearly not dead, and yes, it came back! I think taking a break and listening to a lot of stuff I hadn't heard in ages did the trick, which is why I even had the motivation to start a new music-writing project to begin with. I am very happy things came back to normal...except that happening also killed a lot of my motivation to check out new movies. I'll probably make some efforts to get back into it, but for now, I am happy that I, at least, have my primary hobby back.
Anyway, not much else for me to say. I had a lot of fun this month between music and my life in general, and I look forward to being about to write more for this blog in the upcoming weeks!
Best/Surprise/Disappointment
I enjoyed doing the new format, so let's do it with both music and movies!
Music
Best album: You're Living All Over Me - Dinosaur Jr.
The album that really kicked off me getting back into music. An album that somehow can become a loud and terrifying beast drowning you in an ocean of distortion and still has quite a sensitive and warm heart. And one has to admit that few indie rock albums before and after had nearly as many impressive guitar solos. A lot of people talk about Dinosaur Jr. as merely an influence to the grunge and indie rock that would follow it, but that does a disservice to the masterpiece that this album really is.
I have been a fan of
Scott 3 and
Scott 4 for a long time and had heard a couple of songs from his time with the Walker Brothers (which few people know that the band was, in their prime, nearly as big as the Beatles in the UK!), but doing a proper dive into their early singles blew me away with how much of Scott's performing and songwriting genius was present from the first singles. Yes, this material will by syrupy and heavily orchestrated, but with some of the stellar compositions and Scott's deeply humanistic vocals, it becomes some of the most tasteful and beautiful music ever recorded in the '60s. From the booming despair of
"In My Room" to the chivalry of
"Make It Easy On Yourself" to the irresistible catchiness of
"(Baby) You Don't Have To Tell Me" to the near-spiritual catharsis of
"The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore", these singles are simply golden material that deserve just as much respect as what Scott would do after (hell, would have
"Archangel" fit perfectly on
Scott 4?). Technically, my favorite two Walker Brothers songs are actually from the '70s (
"No Regrets" and
"The Electrician"), but to ignore any of these great '60s singles would be a travesty. Fans of
Phil Spector,
Pet Sounds,
Forever Changes, and
Days of Future Passed don't know what they are missing out on if they haven't heard this compilation top-to-bottom already.
Worst album: Uhh...well, I don't think I listened to any bad albums this month. I guess
The Clovers self-titled compilation was maybe the weakest one, but that's because the compilation was not fully representative of their prime material (I mean the bastards didn't even put
"One Mint Julep",
"Fool Fool Fool", or
"Good Lovin'" on there! What the hell?). I even still enjoy that compilation anyway because how could anybody ever get tired of listening to
"Crawlin'" or
"Ting-A-Ling"? Whatever, let's just move on to movies.
Movies
Best film: Citizen Kane - Orson Welles. I mean how could this not be the winner? This movie is approaching being nearly a century old, and it is still a stunning piece of visual eye candy with a mysterious aura, still absolutely thrilling and entertaining, and can still cause you to empathize with Kane even as his arrogant-driven thirst for power slowly destroyed his life. It's so good that I cannot imagine how somebody could be bored with this movie: I can even imagine this movie being made today and still finding a very dedicated audience among indie moviegoers. The people who call this the greatest film ever made are really not kidding about this one.
I know that the Coens make a lot of movies that aren't meant to be comedic (
Blood Simple,
Miller's Crossing,
No Country For Old Men), but I really didn't expect this movie to be the bleakest and most morose Coen brothers film I've seen thus far. In a way, its philosophy is even scarier than nihilism: a higher being who gives messages to their children but speaks in ways that are too oblique and confusing for the followers to attain any refuge from the troubles the material world brings. This seems to be a common theme among many great Jewish artists (Randy Newman's sinister portrayal of the creator in
"God's Song", Larry David's troubled existentialism in
Curb Your Enthusiasm's fifth season, David Berman's hopeless portrayal of materialistic life in
"Margaritas At The Mall"), but somehow, this one manages to hit me a bit harder than any other explorations of that theme I've seen. A masterpiece I highly recommend to anybody who has the stomach for it.
Not a bad movie, by any means, but I watched 5 movies last month and this was definitely the weakest one. A decent piece of entertainment, especially when watching with friends, and while it didn't really make a big impact on me, I don't think it takes itself that seriously either, so criticizing it would feel rather pointless. I also might be the wrong person to be writing about this since this movie is not really my type of sense of humor either. Again, didn't hate it, but not something I was crazy about either.
Reviews
I've been writing the reviews first on
this RYM list and then uploading them here. Here are the links to the reviews I wrote this month, bolding the songs I consider truly excellent or great:
Monthly Playlist
Even if it is quite a different playlist than normal, I'm very happy with it (try to guess where this title is from!). It's a funny mix of songs, evenly split between classic R&B and 80s-90s indie rock/post-punk with a bit of the Walker Brothers sprinkled in for good measure. Hey, that was pretty much what my listening looked like this month, and I think nearly all the songs on the playlist, save maybe "The Electrician" and "Deeper Into Movies," should be accessible to anybody. Hope you all enjoy it!
Here is the tracklist:
- "My Generation" - The Who
- "Crosseyed and Painless" - Talking Heads
- "Sludgefeast" - Dinosaur Jr.
- "Pay Day" - Mississippi John Hurt
- "Silence Kid" - Pavement
- "Tarpit" - Dinosaur Jr.
- "Stop Breathin'" - Pavement
- "The Lung" - Dinosaur Jr.
- "Favorite Thing" - The Replacements
- "Stagger Lee" - Lloyd Price
- "No Regrets" - The Walker Brothers
- "The Ghetto" - Donny Hathaway
- "Hard Times" - Baby Huey & The Baby Sitters
- "In My Room" - The Walker Brothers
- "Crawlin'" - The Clovers
- "I Thank You" - Sam & Dave
- "With A Little Help From My Friends" - Joe Cocker
- "The Electrician" - The Walker Brothers
- "Deeper Into Movies" - Yo La Tengo
- "Well All Right" - Big Joe Turner
- "'Cause I Love You" - Carla & Rufus Thomas
- "La La Love You" - Pixies
- "Push" - The Cure
- "Rock The Joint" - Jimmy Preston
- "Wait A Minute" - Barbara Stephens
- "Soul Man" - Sam & Dave
- "Big Bird" - Eddie Floyd
- "Kuschty Rye" - Ronnie Lane
- "Chinese Checkers" - Booker T. & The M.G.'s
- "Happy Birthday" - Stevie Wonder
All right, that's all for now! Thank you anybody who is still reading these write-ups I do, and here's a great March! Keep checking in for more reviews of Atlantic R&B.
