Category Archives: I Like This Song

Night Music: Matumbi, “Point of View”

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After college I had an office job, working as projectionist and advertising manager for an independent film distributor. Maybe not your typical office job, though I did a bit of filing, too.

Our offices were in the Lincoln Building, across the street from Grand Central Station. It was a weird job, perhaps because I really had no idea what it meant to work in an office. And spend part of my time in the projection room, recommending movies that would become classics (but were rejected), like Ms. 45 and Diva, to company owners who made some smart choices on their own, like Breaker Morant and Eating Raoul.

matumbi-povOne of the distractions of the day was hitting the Disco-mat store across the street on my way home from work. I bought the US version of The Clash there, and the Rolling Stones Emotional Rescue. I also found an album by a band I’d never heard of that seemed promising because of the cover, which was a thin-collared brown suit on a field of green and yellow. It was the opposite of two-tone, and yet seemed unheard of a piece. Perhaps more importantly Dennis Bovell, producer of the Slits, was in the band.

The second Matumbi album is a brilliant commercial roots reggae move. It has giant ambition stamped on it, though it landed like a cult item among US reggae fans who didn’t mind the polish. And this song charted in 1979, for obvious reasons.

Night Music: Queen, “I’m In Love With My Car”

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I was reminded of this one tonight while reading Karl Ove Knaussgard’s third volume of My Struggle, which was about his Boyhood. At one point he says this is the record he loved most as a third or fourth grader.

This is the song I loved most from this album. Lots of Brian May (and how do I remember that?) and less Freddie, but the same grand style, travertine and fountains really, but also big rocking ovals of pleasure.

Hans Condor, Something Happenin’ Here

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Screenshot 2015-02-06 21.03.13I’m playing this album every day. I’m in love.

These guys have heard the old guys, they know the Stones, but they know the 12×5 Stones, and the Gloria Them, and they know a lot more. And they’ve heard the new guys, like the Replacements (ha ha), and the White Stripes. But they don’t sound like any of them, exactly. They constant work through each song to add more riffs, change up the rhythms, take it to another level. They have synthesized all kinds of stuff into an ideal rock amalgam, full of classic riffs but stumbly, loud and exhuberant, like it was all brand new.

If I had a band it would sound something like this. Could I be their Andrew Loog Oldham?

What you won’t find much of is YouTube material, but the whole album is available on Google All Play, which I subscribe to, and today I found this page at MySpace.com, which seems to be the whole album. I’m sure they’re on Spotify and Rhapsody and all else.

The song I want you to listen to is this one.

But listen to them all. These guys are old school, but they’re not nostalgic. They’re too young to be nostalgic. They’re making great music, is all.

Night Music: Smashing Pumpkins, “Bullet with Butterfly Wings”

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Ok. I’m just going to say it. This video is super awful and super powerful, but the song is mostly just powerful.

In other words, the video lowers the median score, unfairly I think. It’s a song!

Dynamics, explosive language, heavy guitars and propulsive rhythm, lots of bottom as it were, and some swing, too. The Pumpkins were feeling it, they weren’t machines, not by half.

So much of our appreciation and hatred for tunes comes from context. Smashing Pumpkins’ legacy has been colored by the declines of the band’s personalities, especially head genius Billy Corgan (who loves cats). But sorry, this isn’t fair! He loves cats! And dogs, too. We need to be fresh about these canards that are too easy.

As an antidote, here is this. I make no claim about the character of the artists, but the fact that they made this song (not the video) is worthy of massive respect.

After that, let God sort them out.

Palate Cleanse: It Didn’t Matter To Me

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With the exception of Jones/Costello, things have been on a dismal streak here at RR, from Beaver Brown (seriously? John Cougar-copy Beaver Brown?) to Super Bowl po(o)p and related other pop shit (does anyone actually click on those songs?). Proud to say I still don’t know the lady who sang the national anthem and I didn’t know who Missy Elliot was when she showed up either – I thought she was a man.

What I give you here is from the album I listened to on the way to my Super Bowl party yesterday. A lesson in iambic pentameter, the way the title rolls off the tongue makes the song all by itself.

Just say no to Shit Pop Remnants.

Night Music 2: Chin-Chin, “Stay With Me”

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I like this one even better.

I’m trying to put this in context. This music sounds like contemporary bands like the Dum Dum Girls, who mine the same influences (girl groups, punk rock, jangly guitar harmonies) only 30 years later. Were there other bands in the mid-80s and before who sounded like this?

The standard line seems to be the English C86 sound made similar noises, but it’s far from direct. I’m making no claim for Chin-Chin’s originality, but they sound so much like they could be playing today, it confuses me. Which end is up?

Lunch Break: Midnight Oil, “Stars of Warburton”

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I could have sworn I posted something on Midnight Oil before, but a search of the archives suggested otherwise.

If you know Midnight Oil at all, it is from their hit Beds are Burning from the Diesel and Dust disc.

That song was ok, in my opinion, but did not do a lot to make me a fan of the band. Although, I heard through circles that Midnight Oil had honed their skills by playing a shitload of bar dates for years, and as a result were a really hot live act.

So, when they toured on top of Blue Sky Mine, I think in 1990, I bought the disc and got tickets to see them at the Greek Theater in Berkeley, a nice outdoor venue (with, if memory serves, Hunter and Collector).

They were indeed one hell of a tight band, and put on a terrific show, holding their notch of the notion that they were a much better live band than studio one.

On the heels of Blue Sky Mine, came their live disc, Scream in Blue which is a killer set and displays just what a crisp live act the band was (they disbanded in 2003).

Part of what made the band interesting, too, was their lead singer Peter Garrett, an environmentalist and artist who had quite a life as a politician in Australia, as well as that of a rocker.

This song, Stars of Warburton, is subtle in that it is not really a cranked-out song in tempo, but it drives and builds and is just so well executed that it is sick.  Although, also note that this particular version is not from Scream in Blue. I chose it because it at least flashes on pics of the band and the outback and environment that the band wrote about (Garrett once said it would be silly for them to do love songs, as that just wasn’t what they did).

Check it out. The song–and album–really smoke.