This isn’t the only excellent Yes song.
But when I put on their History of Yes set, sorted randomly, I was quickly shunted into despair.
All the talk about virtuosity here, the reason we thought these songs were rock songs were because the drums spoke to us. The bass, too.
Wakefield. Capes. Pawns. As rock fans in the day this came out, it wasn’t exotic. It was music that evolved naturally out of Traffic and the Moody Blues and whatever.
Facebook friend Darren Viola posted some Christgau clips of 1977 live show previews of the B-52s and Fleshtones shows at Max’s, which are fun, but down in the comments was a link to this tune from 1980.
I didn’t know this one, which is great fun.
Listening to the whole album. Good!
I loved ELP’s version of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.
I loved Yes. I liked the Moody Blues. Fucking King Crimson.
Kelefah Sanneh wrote about prog rock in the New Yorker earlier this year. You can read his excellent piece here.
I loved much of this music. Virtuosity was important, but so was a big bottom. In my memory this was music that pounded was aggressive, like rock, but also exulted in notes and playing, and felt really good.
Sanneh gets that, which is why I’m here.
One thing I remember was that Scott Muni, the program director of WNEW as well as DJ, would often put on a whole side of Yes or the Moody Blues in order to take meetings while DJing. That usually worked, though WE knew.
There are lots of good suggestions about what you should listen to in Sanneh’s story, so go and listen to them. I’ve had three conversations in recent weeks about the Mahavishnu Orchestra. As Sanneh says, not prog, but passing.
And more than anything, you should listen to Bitches Brew.
Okay, hijabs elevate the novelty, but these clips don’t rely on novelty alone. That these young women are putting themselves at risk from all sides makes this music seem all the more potent. But I like it as music. Excellent.
This excellent clip gets Ray Davies at his most nostalgic and his most forward looking. Maybe not a great song, but it holds parts of great songs and the germs of psychology that matters. In other words, rock.
Live in 2009. The music is good, but do the Specials seem like a multiracial band? And is Amy really a part of all this?
I like the music, I love the song Ghost Town, and I’ve become a huge Winehouse fan. She is amazing. But there was a missed opportunity here (and it was a bit odd just how the crowd was). Not blaming the band, but wasn’t the goal a more integrated following?
Never lived there, and yet this old one seems to get it right. For live on Long Island as well.
That’s what Lawr posted about. I’m with him on Locomotion. Here’s his post about songs that grabbed him immediately. That’s a great idea, and I’m with him on Complete Control, maybe the greatest of the great Clash’s cuts.
I think he’s out of his mind on the Peter Gabriel, but that isn’t my call. What is my call is this is No. 1, without a doubt. Changed my life. Really.
But the Beatles were huger.
I tried to write about this song as politics, because clearly Buck’s perspective on the benefits and costs of welfare in 1966 were courtly and open-armed. At least until he got a hug in and a kiss. But clearly Buck’s metaphor is romantic, not political, and it better serves this funny novelty to remind us that there was a time, say 1966, when the basic idea of government services providing a safety net and a leg up were not seen as some sort of political litmus test. Even if he’s driving a Cadillac.
I don’t think the general population disagrees with this any more than they did back then, but the schism is much more sharp today.
In any case, back in those simpler times a crazy extended metaphor could spend ten weeks at No. 1, and Big Government looked a lot like busted love.
So likeable, and pretty revealing, too. Which goes together.
