I’m a fan of overreaching, but this tune goes large and ends up super creepy. As if George Harrison, without a sense of propulsion, actually had to make grand promises to attract birds.
Category Archives: video
Lunch Break: Freddy Martin, “Pico and Sepulveda”
Pico and Sepulveda 2008
One staple of the show was a tune called Pico and Sepulveda, which starts out like Cab Calloway and ends up like Devo. As fine as the tune is, the video is just as fine.
Breakfast Blend: Elvis Costello on Letterman 1982
The Attractions were touring supporting Imperial Bedroom, the album that Columbia promoted with the headline, Masterpiece?
I saw the band on the pier by the Intrepid, and then got a call from my friend Robin. Her neighbor was a writer on the Letterman show, and she had tickets to see them in the studio on Letterman’s show. We went. You can see them here. Thanks Robin.
The reason I landed on this is I’ve been playing that album a lot lately. I hadn’t revisited it for years, partly because of that Masterpiece? dodge. The weird overselling and the record’s effete literary musicality caused a problem. You can’t say you love this record without saying you’re some king of fancy boy. Unless you’re brave.
I love this record. The Attractions were a fantastic band, and the songs and arrangements on this elpee push them to create lively melodic music that can only, sometimes, be called Beatles-esque.
But the record really doesn’t rely on pretension. This isn’t XTC. There’s lots of air and delicious melody in the arrangements. Beatles engineer Geoff Emmerich produces this one, and the sound is precise and rich, full of detail, but each layer adds nuance, not complexity. This is art rock that is art, but doesn’t sacrifice the straight forward perspective of rock, even if the tunes mostly rock only in spurts.
And then there are Costello’s words. He’s a writer of too many words, sometimes, but when they’re pared back, as they actually often are, especially on Imperial Bedroom, he’s also a writer of uncompromising personal directness and vividness. The two songs on this Letterman clip are lyrically bold and personally revealing.
And this live version of Beyond Belief shows the rock heart at the core of Imperial Bedroom.
Birthday Greetings: Mike Fenger
A little Little Feat on the Old Grey Whistle Test, for our friend Mike Fenger. Have a great day!
Lunch Break: London Calling
This seems to be from a Grammy Awards show, not that long ago. Notable because the front line of dudes is Stevie Van Zant, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, and Dave Grohl. That Grohl dude is everywhere.
Presumably this was a tribute after Joe Strummer died, in 2002, though I’m not sure how to look that up quickly, nor if it is important. Could have been 2003 (Strummer died in 2002). I like the way the guys do the share-the-microphone singing thing, and how big and veiny the Boss’s throat gets when he’s singing. It’s also cool how they trade lines, and how cacophonous the stomp gets as they go on. Loud counts.
It’s a nice tribute.
TRAILER: Death Metal Angola
This movie opened in NYC today, and is available on iTunes.
The Times review says it’s moving, but surprisingly sweet and without enough music, like the trailer, which may have been an attempt to make it a movie for non-fans of that particular style of singing.
Breakfast Blend: Another Distant Planet World
Okay, I didn’t know about this 1979 U2 song, and its humiliating video. But it’s U2 and they weren’t yet famous, so they were working it. Hard to blame them. Still…
A year before that The Only Ones released this tune, which is one of the great romantic tunes of all time. Disambiguated, of course. But please dare to compare not only the hook, but the ambition and imagination.
Night Music: U2, “Out of Control”
I liked the first U2 album, in large part because of this song, which feels like it is going to spin out of control, but it never does, all the while rueing the day that control was lost.
This live version doubles down on that conflict, and maybe signifies why this rock band has always come across as more in control than ecstatic. I love the way Mr. Vox yanks his sweater out of the public’s hands, and uses that as a way to wade gently back into the fray topless.
Breakfast Blend: More Trio
I waded in and these videos are so goofy and the songs rock in the most unenergetic ways I thought it might be fun to share. If you hate them, turn it off.
What’s with the wood chopping? On this one the drums are also abstracted.
Night Music: Trio, “Da Da Da”
My buddy Moe moved to Germany to get married. He was one of the Warren Street All Starz, our stickball team, which convened every Sunday in a parking lot on Warren Street and Greenwich Street back in the days when nobody lived down there near the World Trade Center.
We all had nicknames. Moe’s was the Name Changer. If you had a nickname and wanted a different one, or if someone thought someone should have a different nickname, Moe had to approve.
Moe sold books and spent a good part of his time traveling around the world, going to book trade events. Moe worked for a book company, Schocken, that had the rights to Franz Kafka’s novels, and we called our parking lot ballfield Kafka Park. When Moe wasn’t in New York on a Sunday he would phone in to the pay phone across the street from Kafka Park. Collect. We always accepted the charges.
Moe fell for a German woman named Julie, and they married. Moe moved to Hamburg, where he learned German by watching TV and going out to eat with Julie’s friends. At some point he sent me a 45 of a record by a group called Trio. It was a goofy bit of catchy electronica, in German, that was utterly lightweight and internationally jaded (read: louche) at the same time.
The chorus translates as I love you not and you don’t love me. Too sexy for my turntable.
A few years later the song popped up in an ad for the Volkswagen Golf.
Will the All Starz get back together?