Living Stereo

...I was working in a record store in the East Village, NY. Each morning the new CDs would come in and Scott Walker's Tilt was tucked in the batch. My boss vaguely knew who he was but I had only heard the name in reading that David Bowie was a big fan. So, the morning goes by and there's a rotating selection of rather dubious (late 90s)new music playing in the store. I was in the back, stocking folk and country and this otherworldly music begins and just arrests me... a voice like I had never heard, a sound I couldn't classify, echoing through the store. I stepped out from behind the aisle to see that my coworker had done the same. He was standing in the middle of the store looking up at the speaker- a point of origin from where Scott was now washing over him. He looked over at me, seeing that I was similarly enthralled, both of us fixed under the same spell. I shook my head in disbelief. My coworker answered the gesture with, "I know...Amazing." There was only that single copy of Tilt in the store. I hid it in the folk section so that I could buy it when I clocked out, took it back to my apartment, turned out the lights and played it all night. And the next night, and many nights since. It is my most profound musical memory. After that, I began collecting everything he had done. There is not an era that I don't like but Tilt is buried deep inside. 

“I feel I’m writing for everyone, but they haven’t discovered it yet. They will – I’ll just be six feet under.”

The Stage Names, Okkervil River

This is a concept album that explores masks and myth making - more specifically, looking at the iconic, celebrated persona of “rock star" from all angles to see if such a thing is still ( or was ever) worth believing in. Even the band’s name, Okkervil River, is a reference to this idea, founded on a Russian short story about a man who has the opportunity to meet his lifelong musical obsession, only to see she is a rather simple and vulgar human being, just like him.

It is territory that the band mined on the previous masterpiece, Black Sheep Boy, where one Tim Hardin song was tortured and twisted into an album’s worth of ideas about addiction, isolation, and bifurcation between performer and persona. It was hard for me to choose between posting Stage Names and Black Sheep. Okkervil River is a band with four perfect albums to pick from and the rest are just really good… check them out.

Having performed a bit in younger days, I remember the awkward anticipation in the eyes of audience smuggled back stage. It was startling to feel that expectation, as if the gleaming aura of the stage had promised something that could never be delivered. And I have also met a few heroes and been on the expectant end of that.  Someone once told me, “ If you grow up loving magic, don’t become a magician.” If you have to choose, loving magic is so much better.

So, preamble over, The Stage Names is about the magician and the child who still believes, or wants to. It manages to deconstruct, puncture, and celebrate all at once. If this sounds a bit heady or dense, it also sounds really good. Will Sheff is one of those few writers who can seem to have it both ways- a sharp mind and wide open heart, pulsing at once. The intellect never eclipses emotion, or, as the second song says, “What gives this mess some grace unless it kicks?”

Both lyrically and musically, the songs are filled with sly references to celebrated pop music of years gone by, pieces that the OR demographic would likely pick up - Seven Chinese Brothers, TVC-15, 96 Tears and 99 luft balloons. T- Rex hoots and dirty Stones swagger.

A Hand To Take Hold of the Scene bounces along with a Motown groove with brain teaser lyrics like,” I’m a band in a show 'bout a boy being buried alive,” Each verse takes the singer a bit further from the tragedy at its heart, as if the onion’s layers are being anxiously taped back on. Finally, the singer sees past a life of constructed artifice to name what he is really hoping for, "love that is innocent of that old cynical, covetous, cancerous vibe and a beauty that annihilates all life.”  Perhaps a life of lying can lead to a deeper truth. Of course, the love described is probably a myth, as well.

Savannah Smiles is a simple, devestating little scene where a father dares to read his porn-star daughter’s diary, remembering the 8 year old girl, then sees her grown up photo on the wall and wonders if he ever actually knew her.

A Girl in Port is a kind of reference to Dion’s The Wanderer, only this time the touring singer is reflective and empathetic about his many conquests, not bragging. Or is it just another pose- each girl is special, but a conquest, nonetheless.

Later, in You Can’t Hold the Hand of A Rock N Roll Man, one former paramour confronts him with some hard truth and calls him out, “ She said, I'm done with looking back, and you look your age, which is thirty-seven, by the way, and not twenty-eight.” This bitter pill is inserted in a litany of worst-tour-ever lyrics. This is not glamorous or fun or rollicking- but cold touring vans running out of gas, scraping enough money together to buy a bit of weed…heading to another show that you don’t really want to play- knowing that conjuring, night after night, is getting pretty hard to pull off.

Title Track follows hard… in a private aside, he confesses that he needs her (any her) to hold the mirror up to his face and really only exists in that reflected adoration. And what happens when no one looks at the rock star with magic in their eyes? What is really behind the stage name? Or is it not a singular identity at all, but a collaboration between two? I will believe i’m Elvis if you do.

Finally, closing out the album, perhaps the best song in Okkervil River’s quiver of amazing songs. Certainly the most uplifting song about suicide that I have ever heard. John Berryman was the pen name of John Allyn Smith, famous poet and narrator of this song who promises, “ By the second verse, dear friend, my head will burst, my life will end..”

First he sets the stage to explain why he is voluntarily sailing downward toward obliteration… picture a boy in his bed,  knowing he’s not quite made for this world ( too impressionable, too up-settable) trying to make his own heart stop before his parents get home. Next verse, he’s halfway to death, life flashing before his eyes, then projecting himself into the future, the hollow words at the funeral from those who only appreciated the poems, never the broken man behind them.

Until he hits ground and flies into the "brightest winter sun”  joined by a familiar tune from one of the Beach Boy’s (!) greatest hits:

"So hoist up the John B. sail See how the mainsail sets I'm full in my heart and my head And I want to go home... This is the worst trip I've ever been on.”

One final musical echo, these words are repeated and repeated, gathering emotional velocity, each time. However, it is not remorseful, but rather defiant, jubilant, and entirely transcendent.

Okkervil River bit off a lot, here- complex ideas that they kept chewing on through the next two albums, but the Stage Names is their definitive statement. And it kicks.

Jagaguwar, first pressing.

The Bravest Man in the Universe, Bobby Womack

This is a strange autumnal record where an old soul legend is produced by a young(ish) modern producer who wants to midwife that "one- great- album-left." Rick Rubin did it for Johnny Cash, pairing down his arrangements, bringing him tunes by Nine Inch Nails to cover. What Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz) does for this legend is the same idea but using a very different strategy, achieving quite different results.

This is a record that thrives on - needs, in fact- a wide soundstage to appreciate the juxtaposed musical geography. Albarn (along with Richard Russel) supports Womack’s weathered voice and soul baring lyrics with a bed of trip-hop beats, digital sound clouds, and choppy old text from when Womack wore a younger man’s clothes.

There are many fine albums about mournful regret, looking back at loss and mistakes  - Blood on the Tracks and The Boatman’s Call are coming soon- but the very mix and arrangement, here, sounds like a man’s past is being swallowed by the insouciant now. Side one, anyway.

There’s a party going on but Mr. Womack will not be attending. He is alone with a piano or strumming a guitar while the rave down the street is wafting in through the window. Out there it is summer, in here it is raining in his heart. Then Lana Del Rey pops over for a drink, on Dayglo Refelction, but she sounds so spectral, more like a waxy memory of love than a visit from flesh or blood.

Left alone again, crudely echoing Rod Stewart’s, “Do you think I’m Sexy?”on casio-tone, while the death march from “Biko”closes in, Whatever Happened to the Times admits that he’s only looking for some memories to hold on to, but when he finds one its too much to bear.  Real strings might at least supply some grandeur to the pain, but the canned electronic strings just push it further inward. The last notes fade to another dialogue clip, “People like to know that I’m not by myself, I’m not alone.”

Side Two: “ He came on television and told everyone he had seen God…and God was broke," says Gil Scott Heron, announcing a turn away from a side of private pain to larger issues like the church merchandizing faith. If he’s about to meet God, he doesn't have time for such bullshit. 

The rest of the album starts to feel more integrated, like Bobby finally stepped out for a stroll, and is reminded of things worth living for... Love is Gonna Lift You Up doesn’t sound as emotionally authentic as anything on side one, but it is nice to finally shake the stereo a bit. Jubilee( Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Round) bubbles with religious fervor. It sounds like life is good and he kind of means it. And in an album filled with unlikely samples… does anyone else hear a Pac- Man video game?

Backing up to one soul stirring track, Deep River, leaves out all the looping and magpie mix taping, paring back to only the man and his guitar. It is a familiar (Sam Cooke, Odetta) and haunting traditional hymn, delivered with such sparse conviction, it almost doesn’t belong among the rest. However, as this was Bobby Womack’s final album and final musical statement, this song, more than the others, stands alone and fittingly embraces fullness and finality. It sounds like someone facing a life of struggle that is worthy of (and sure of) the coming reward, that promised land where all is peace.

First pressing, XL records.

This is why I love collecting vinyl. Foraging through a dusty box in the two-for-a-dollar bins at a local shop … dirty hands, and tired knees ( why are these boxes always on the floor?)I came across Lullabies of Birdland on Brusnwick records. Heavy vinyl, not a scratch.

This is a compilation of recordings made after her years being trained and tutored by Chick Webb. Ella was orphaned at a young age, impoverished, and discovered by Webb in an amateur talent show at the Harlem Opera House. Webb recognized a unique talent and brought her up, housing her, teaching her how to swing.

That swing is evident all over this disc, especially on the tracks where Ella scats in lyric-less riffs, moulding standards in her own image, pulling apart melody and piecing it back together until the familiar feels new. She even goes as far as to ape Louis Armstrong on Basin Street Blues, paying homage to the man who started it all. Its a lovely gesture, a classy thing to do, but also terribly fun. Air Mail Special, where she backed by the Ray Charles Singers is almost frantic, a kind of catch me if you can delivery that sounds unmannered or even intoxicated. She has the talent and daring to cut loose but always pulling back just in the nick of time.

Oh Lady Be Good is just a hoot, she plays with notes like a child in a sandbox.

When her voice relaxes into the more vulnerable numbers, the music really gets under your skin. Lullaby of Bird land, a signature song for her, is forever husky and haunting but the real gem is Angel Eyes…

Sy Oliver’s film noir orchestration could tip the balance of the whole thing, but Ella pulls it all back to a trembling human scale with elegant sophistication. The syncopated horns, bouncing against each line, until blooming all around her in the bridge, feel like that nagging memory of love that you wish would leave you alone but are afraid to live without.

Then the musicians drop out, entirely, leaving her voice, alone in the wilderness (or alone at the bar) singing, “ Oh, where is my angel eyes…'scuse me…” Horns swell, not quite letting go….“ while I disappear.”

Her grace and sophistication of phrasing on Angel Eyes makes one wonder why anyone has bothered to sing it, since.

Sometimes microgroove can cause echo and a bit of sound degradation, but thats not the case on this vinyl, made at a time when companies knew how to press records.

I know many people have the obilgatory Billie Holiday LP in their music collection- nothing wrong with that, babies- but, if you haven’t heard enough of her, prime time Ella Fitzgerald is hard to top. And she’s in bargain crates on floors, everywhere.

Sometimes ( like this week) I look at the state of the nation and wonder, “What would Phil Ochs think about all of this shit?”

Indeed, we seem to be living in the lines of one of his more absurdist topical songs.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Phil was a 1960s protest singer in the way few can honestly wear that label- Capital P. He not only sang the songs, he named names. He made enemies on the right and the left, suffered a spiritual/emotional/mental breakdown, and when he finally died- by his own hand- his FBI file was the size of a Manhattan phone book. 

His best songs explore political power with a sharp nuance, entangled with myth, metaphor, and stark honesty that included his own troubled humanity. There was no separation between his politics, his art, or personal life- seeing that the personal is always the political. When his beloved movement- both anti war and civil rights- devolved into ( as he saw it) hedonism, tribalism, free love, drugs and drop-outs, it took a toll on his work and his soul. 

The last gasp was the 1968 Chicago democratic convention, where the anti war protesters, who found themselves with no anti war candidate, tried to nominate a pig. The Chicago police were not amused, the Democratic party wanted to keep the convention optics clean and the crowds controlled, so the protests turned into street riots and very public violence.

Phil Ochs was there with the rest, gassed, beaten, watching his beloved movement die in the streets.  Rehearsals for Retirement is an elegy for that ideal, the belief that many voices (or few) crying for social justice can force change.. that they could actually end a war. 

Once Phil lost that faith, he began to slowly die. And he isn’t shy about you knowing this, the album cover is the stark image of his own gravestone ( Died 1968) though he would inhabit his body for a few more years.

Though perhaps not the most gifted or eloquent of his musical generation, Phil was the most active and the most brave. He would take on anyone and everything in his songs, his everyman voice so clear and quick-witted and confident. He would accuse his one time friend and fellow protest singer, Bob Dylan, of hiding behind garbled and obtuse lyrics.  Phil did not hide. When the movement moved on, he had nothing to champion but his own despair, and his honesty can be direct to the point of uncomfortable. When protest culture abruptly changed and the acoustic guitar went from killing fascists to singer-songwriter romantic melancholy, Phil turned his weapon on himself. 

Pretty Smart on My Part and I Kill Therefore I Am are tributes to American white male paranoia, once a temporary fear is put down, each new one is answered with outsized violence. Not violence as last resort, violence as identity. See him pictured on that gravestone in a cowboy hat, flag, rifle slung over his shoulder?

The Doll House is haunting and dreamlike where he is, “ Lost in a valley of vaults, I fell from the path, it was nobodies fault.” This is one of many such songs where the quest has ended and the hero wanders along some sort of absurd landscape where literary allusions abound, but the experience is devoid of meaning. The only sour note is when he literally mocks Dylan’s voice, reducing the song to little more then a put on.

William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed, My Life, and the title track, Rehearsals for Retirement, are more than personal- desperate and honest in a way pop music rarely explores. These three songs are the narrative spine. First, the most immediate recounting of what Ochs witnessed in Chicago- the beauty of the music, colliding with lyrics recounting when “the fog rolled in and the Gas rolled out,” and the young man narrowly escapes but loses his lover in the riots, now she lies in stone and he lives with guilt.

My Life is like “My Way” if Sinatra was an enemy of the state. Ochs sings of regret, looking back at a life, once full of promise, then flatly asking the powers that be to “leave me alone, take the tap from my phone.” 

Finally… Closing out the album, he sings of the days growing longer with smaller prizes, his friends and fellow activists have moved on, they “ do not know me.” Then, he admits… “ I tell my daughter that it doesn’t matter.”

But we know it does matter. It matters a lot.

I don’t know if this is available on CD, but the vinyl can be found for a few dollars.

This might not be the best introduction to Phil Ochs ( try his first soaring, fearless live album) but this a powerful collection of songs. Haunting, naked, often beautiful.

David Bowie has already made some discrete appearances on previous posts, as his work looms large in my musical development.

He was a gateway drug to all sorts of styles, those he influenced and those who influenced him. Without David Bowie, I may not have found my way to Eric Dolphy, Sonic Youth, the Pixies, or Steve Reich… even Live At the Apollo, a record he made Nile Rodgers consume before starting Let’s Dance. His many influences and nervous shedding of persona and style was- at one time- pathological and thrilling.

So much has been said about this, his final statement, already. And I could write pages about almost any Bowie album ( even Tin Machine) but Blackstar holds a unique power. It is a record that I tend to avoid unless I have the emotional bandwidth available. It is impossible to separate the music from the heavy cloud of Bowie’s approaching death, so I won’t try. Rather, this a long goodbye, intended as such, to all of us who he’s reached- a transmission ( transition) from beyond the grave.

He uses language of all previous incarnations, managing to sum up the many- headed dragon of his career in just seven songs.

Blackstar has the structure of Station to Station, allusions to Space Oddity, the funky bit that feels like Young Americans, the Burroughs’ future myth-making of Diamond Dogs, all bundled up in the Space-as- metaphor- for- isolation that was the nucleus that all else revolves around. Isolar, anyone?

The stuttering drums and delicate lattice work of guitar and horns is the audible tension between the ethereal and pedestrian, as Bowie sings a whispered incantation about some ritualized love/execution that is performed for the grace and beauty of “your eyes.”

The song breaks down and windy ghosts invade, until the being rebuilt as a narrative about what happened on, “ the day he died.” His spirit rose a meter, then he stepped aside. Major Tom, meet John Henry.

Bowie is already mythologizing himself, something he’d been doing since 1972. However, this feels like the last story or final summation- something I felt for the day I had with the album before his death was announced. The end was evident, somehow.

A “Black star”is apparently a kind of cancerous lesion. Also, a reference to the esoteric, dark Planet that is floating out there, quietly bringing our doom. Or it is a play on the idea of outsider fame and cultural appropriation, something that Bowie had surely been accused of.

Next, ‘Tis A Pity She Was a Whore… lest you think Bowie has lost any charm or wit, facing down a certain death. “ Man, she punched me like a dude,” or “Black struck the kiss, she kept my cock.” It’s like the girl from Suffragette city finally took him down. Musically, this reclaims some of the territory that Bowie explored in the nineties, only with more sure footing. Whatever genre bending goes on, it serves his song, rather than overtaking it, as sometimes happened in those Prodigy flavored years.

You don’t get more direct and autobiographical than Lazarus, “Look up here, I’m in heaven, I’ve got scars that can’t be seen.” There is the apparent Biblical reference, being raised ( a meter) from the dead. However, Bowie was also referencing Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus.” So, it could be lonely and tired Lady Liberty, weary from decades of welcoming the lonely and the tired. Why have one meaning when a song could have two or three? Only a handful of pop writers can operate on such a level.

Sue ( or in a Season of Crime) is a bumped up take of the noir- jazz 12 inch, released the previous year. This version looses some mystery and menace, but is made more memorable by context- “ the clinic called, the x-ray is fine.”

Girl Loves Me. Having witnessed someone enduring cancer treatment, this song sounds like the jumbled mess of a brain that can come with chemotherapy ( where the fuck did Monday go?!). The indecipherable lyric is Nasdat, the invented language from A Clockwork Orange, along with street slang from 70s Gay clubs (apparently). Sounds like he’s barely hanging on, decades worth of characters, rattling around in his head, certain of nothing, except for the simple fact that his girl loves him. Daughter, wife? Someone was there, thank god.

Then, ugh, the beating heart of the whole shebang. The two final songs- not counting posthumous releases- of any David Bowie album, Dollar Days and I Can’t Give Everything Away.

It starts with what sounds like frantic scribbling in a journal, looking back. Remembering. A mournful saxophone… “ If I never see the English evergreens I’m running to, it’s nothing to me. It’s nothing to see.” The song is breezy guitar, whimsical. Until the thudding base brings a more immediate and direct confession. “Don’t believe for just one second I’m forgetting you… I’m trying to, I’m dying to (too?)”

The saxophone crescendo blazes out into the familiar sound of the lonesome, rail- hopping harmonica from Low’s, A New Career in a New Town.

He is moving on, shuffling off this mortal coil, and making peace with it. “Seeing more, feeling less. “

Then, he says, “I can’t give everything… away”

… he has given quite a lot. He has managed to hold a few private secrets, not easy for someone who had been dissected and studied as much as anyone in the public eye. He shared his passions, his fears, his loves and complex sexuality.

He told stories for lonely outsiders and people who never fit in. Music for Aliens.

I recently visited the David Bowie Is exhibit in Brooklyn, awed and reminded that all of this came from only one man. The final station of the exhibit is dedicated to only one piece of work- Black Star, Bowie’s great disappearing act.

And, standing there, looking at the ephemera dedicated to this record, after just confronting the humanity behind the many masks and phases, I thought, “Well, maybe he really was from another star. Maybe he has just gone home.”

T.Rex Reprise, first pressing

If you can get past the mystical hippie Tolkien-isms, this is basically a stripped-down rock and roll record. Like sun sessions Elvis. Mysterious and slinky, with Marc Bolan’s teddy boy guitar strum meeting Micky Finn’s campfire bongo.

It doesn’t sound like much, but the air between them is filled with just the right hand claps, fuzztone, crystal bell, or cello.

This was a transition between folk duo and the all out, trashy, glam rock to come. It both sits comfortable in the background of your dinner party and entices your rapt attention on the sofa. Seducing like few albums I’ve heard. Of course, if anyone can sing “come hither” it’s Marc ( Lady Stardust was apparently about him) Bolan, sounding like he discovered some rarer form of masculinity, or was he the Rock-N-Roll lover-man who ate his baby, whole, and now seduces by imitating her, draped in echo. He’s not a boy or a girl, just sex. Something Prince later perfected.

I sound like a broken record ;) but the vinyl just brings out the space in the recording. Digital versions still capture great songs, but they sound rather anemic, the vinyl beefs it up with a wider soundstage and fullness to the few instruments- at times just two-track guitars, bongos, and vocal overdubs.

James Brown paid for this recording out of his own pocket, as his record company didn’t see the point. Brown felt that something was happening in his live show that needed to be shared, and he was right.

Live at the Apollo is often cited as the greatest live album of music’s modern era ( probably is) but here is the problem… the recording is just not very good. The music is vibrant, essential, but I’ve heard three pressings, two original King records- stereo and mono- and this 2017 remaster on DOL. If they all sound rather bad, this is why the DOL is my favorite. The 11 minute version of Lost Someone is reconfigured to take up most of side two, rather than split between sides. That’s not the running order of the show, but any interruption to that performance is just tragic.

I recently watched a video of Queen playing Live Aid, marveling at how Freddie Mercury could play that massive crowd, holding thousands in his spell. James Brown is how. This album is the blueprint for musical crowd control- the sound of a packed room of beating ( bleeding) hearts, all twisted and contorted at the whim of, “Mr. Dynamite.”

It’s like great Jazz music where the players are so tight, breathing together, even though the music is largely unscripted. In this case, the two primary collaborators are James Brown and the Apollo Theater audience. The musicians create an architecture for intercourse, then James Brown plays them like an oboe.

Often, he won’t sing an entire song- not even his hits- only enough to create the desired frenzied response, then quickly move along.

“ Let me hear you say yeah.” Crowd: “Yeah.” “ Let me hear it louder.” Crowd: “ YEAH.” “Let me hear you say Ow!” Crowd: “ Ow!!!” … “ I believe my work is done.”

He’s not there to sing songs or entertain, he was there to make them feel. And despite time and shoddy recording, it still works on us. This seems to be what James Brown knew couldn’t be captured in a three minute pop song. After the success of the record, King Records saw the light. Many more live shows were recorded. And often, DeeJays would just put on Live At The Apollo and let it play out.

It’s that good. The DOL pressing can be found all over in record bins and every collection should have this.

Daryl Hall, Sacred Songs. RCA original pressing.

Perhaps one of the most underrated or misunderstood musical acts was Daryl Hall and John Oates. This is largely due to their early eighties MTV run, which turned them into a kind of technicolor, pop-cartoon, bromance.

In reality, they had been making fine music, experimenting with style and genre-mashing for almost a decade before those silly videos.

The story of Sacred Songs goes that Daryl, tired of duo-pop stardom, living in Greenwich village, studying Alastair Crowley, soaking up Talking Heads and Television, decided to make an experimental art-rock album with Robert Fripp, but RCA got nervous about messing with the hit formula and shelved this for three years. In 1980, this music sounds less groundbreaking than in 1977. Also, by then Hall & Oates we’re starting their five year run as chart topping hit makers, so Sacred Songs- once planned as part of a trilogy with Peter Gabriel and Fripp- was kinda lost.

This isn’t Low, of course. The nervous angularity and soundscapes are always balanced by Daryl Hall’s penchant for Philly funk and soul.

It is an album of extremes. Side one is rather meta, where Hall explores the tension between art and commerce, or rationality and the chaos of blind creativity. Babs and Babs may be about a bifurcated brain, or two lovers who are chained together, forever forced to negotiate extremely different world views. Babs- the one who speaks- doesn’t understand the other. “Your silver dreams don’t move me.” Babs, the one who can’t speak, well, “she says nothing.”

In the first song, Daryl sings about sacred music, backed by a barroom thump- well, if it’s a bar where you can almost hear the patrons missing the point.

Something in 4/4 Time is the record company voice, only asking for another hit. Funny, considering that the record company didn’t hear a hit and ultimately vaulted these tapes.

The beautiful ambience of Urban Landscape shifts into the manic anxiety of NYCNY. Anyone who has lived in NYC gets that couplet.

Side two is where things become more personal. After the assault of the first side’s end, it floats in on a dream.

Daryl Hall had sung about heartache, being left, leaving, and looking back ( usually in anger) for years. Loving hard and losing bad are the broad strokes of most soul music. This feels like the first time he’s really been confessing some blues.

The Farther Away I Am is a mantra for flying away from a lover, “is it just a cloud passing under, I don’t want to lose you.” It is mournful and achingly lovely, and then it just burns out in the hazy sunlight.

Why Was it So Easy - Robert Fripp is so sparse and delicate, here. Forcing Hall, whose lungs could tear the paint off Daryl’s house, to sing like he’s trapped in ether. They are so well balanced. Rumor is that Fripp asked Daryl to front his new incarnation of King Crimson, this song almost ( almost) makes me wish he’d said yes.

Don’t Leave Me Alone With Her, is a call and response where he answers each prompt- “Levels,” or “Stages” with examples of a lover’s insecurity. It’s inscrutable like a good Talking Head’s song or some of the tracks off Lodger.

Then, Survive. Gosh, this one is good. The antidote for anyone whose suffered too much Maneater.

It starts simple enough, like one of the folkier tracks from Abandoned Luncheonette ( listen to that, too) with a kind of cloudy summer groove about a ( or the) lost lover. He always thought she was built to last, but …” I never saw anything fall apart so fast.” It’s a love in the rearview mirror song, the kind Hall does very well… then it erupts into the bouncing swagger of, “seasons change, people get old and die.” As Daryl sings this, becoming more and more unglued, it elevates the song to a rumination on losing all, even the point of life, itself. Even heartache is rendered entirely insignificant. The world turns, loves are lost, great cities are built and torn down… so how could you (she, we) ever survive?

The rest was quaint romantic blathering in the face of a detached universe. Time heals all wounds, maybe, but time also kills all love. And lovers. And who really cares at the end?

Then- “ I’m not asking for much,” he sings,”only for time to stop. History to go unrecorded.” And the song shifts again, beginning a slow crawl of half-steps, downward. Like we are finally getting to the bottom of everything, he chants… he wants, “people not to be people.” And that swaggering phrase is repeated as Hall literally loses his shit in the background- shrieking, “ how could you, how could you… survive, survive, survive….” like he’s finally cracked up. Bewildered. Remember three minutes ago when this was just a love song?

Without Tears is a soft coda to all of the drama in Survive. This is why- perhaps- Daryl has learned to pull his heart out, “without tears.” Though it’s also a Crowley reference and ends with the mantra,”Earth Magic, earth magic.”

Pretty dense for the guy who wrote Kiss on my List.

In my fantasy of a parallel musical universe, Sacred Songs is released in 1977, and it is reviewed and received well enough that Daryl Hall spends the next twenty years making such challenging and exciting music.

Here is a thought experiment. Can you pretend that U2 never existed and this album was, instead, made by any other warbly gang of sepia-toned, post-punk mullets? Echo and the bunymen, Icehouse, Big Country? Imagine that, and this might be fully experienced for the music, not the bands outsized persona.

Even the guitarist doesn’t know how to classify this part of the bands canon - music from another dimension.

Lyrically, it is as naked as Bono ever let himself be. All bleeding heart, no hiding or shaded irony or blowing up delicate ideas to stadium sized slogans.

Bad, in particular, written for a friend battling heroin addiction, is delicate as a poem. Not a poetic lyric set to music, but sound and words blending as poem.

Before Live aid, before Bad turned into a psychological gesture in concert, it felt profoundly invasive- more like the song was sharing its own private pain:

“If you twist and turn away, if you tear yourself in two again…if I could, yes I would…if I could, I would… let it go… “

He would do anything to save you, if he could, but he can’t, and so he watches it all go from bad to badder. Then, either imagining liberation, or actually setting his own soul free, he calls out to the heavens that he is finally, “wide awake.” Over and over and over, again. Talk about catharsis.

The song that I sort of wish was excommunicated is Pride ( in the name of love) not that it’s bad, quite the opposite- It’s almost too massive and complete in its own right. It tends to overpower everything around it. However, it does ask the album’s major dramatic question: what could you sacrifice for love?

If those are the towering twins- Pride and Bad, there is a thrilling, overlooked gem: Indian Summer Sky.

Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, master architects of the album, sort of do battle on this one. Eno’s ethereal, sky bound ambience vs. Lanois’ war party (or chain gang) thump. “Give yourself to this, the longest day,” says Bono, “give yourself, give it all away.” … then, dropping his weary hands and contemplating the sky… “Some wind blows into my heart, some wind blows through my soul.”

Just amazing. Do they ever play this live? This song could burn down the Garden. And- it’s true- they knocked me out, seated in the very last row of Madison Square.

Digital or CD can make a sometimes swampy ( or smokey ) sounding record too dense to breathe. The vinyl makes it all CinemaScope, though U2 would expand their sound, even more. This is music not larger that life, but as big as life.

This is a big one, gonna be long.

I don’t even remember what side one of Tattoo You sounds like, as I am so enamored and convinced that side B is the best stretch of songs on any Stones album. Controversial? Perhaps.

From what I’ve read, the record was cobbled together from demos and half cooked tracks in the studio. You would never know it, as the flow of one song to the next feels more song-suite than the second half of Abbey Road to me.

Maybe it’s my personal bent to see narrative in things, but there are two stories that The Rolling Stones like to tell- let’s say the party ( hedonism, debauchery, life with the maenads) and then the morning after, where you realize all the midnight parties in the world won’t erase her from your soul.

Side two feels like that. Cycling through one badass heartbreak. Starting with Worried About You ( she’s out there, maybe just as lost as me) to Tops ( Plenty of fish) No Use In Crying ( you done me wrong and Its really over) To … Waiting on a friend. Sigh.

Again, maybe it’s me but I think the “friend” is the same old lover. Not Keith.

Music, though…

The side starts with a falsetto whisper, beat and guitar in a sort of hesitation syncopation, until he confessed that this is not just about her( I’m worried and I just can’t seem to find my way) and the track becomes full bodied, only to sulk back into the previous vulnerability.

Tops is just a half- hearted hustle. Being out and using those same old pickup lines, cause nothing is waiting at home. Charlie Watts… that just behind the beat playing makes the whole thing feel inebriated.

Heaven is miraculous. The guitar floating in on a cloud and Mick taking a stab at Barry Gibb.

“The smell of you baby, my senses, senses be praised..” Is this a dream of her or a one -night reunion? Either way, he now praises every small part of him that was privileged to experience her.

Well, he woke up and he ain’t never going back. The next song is filled with cliched moments of a lovers return: train platform, glimpse from a kitchen window, but don’t bother looking. The basic blues structure of the song, as well as the firmly ( this time) syncopated beat, communicates resolve.

Finally, arriving at the end, with the comforting saxophone( so often used to cry, to wail) solo from none other than Sonny Rollins. Mick sings in his most natural voice- finally, it’s him. Familiar. Lovable scamp. The guitar is full throated and assured, but gentle. This was the hit, cause this sounds like the Stones. Return to form, return to self.

Echoing through the finale like the camera is craning up ad out, credits rolling. This has been just one lonely story in many, and somehow that’s a good thing.

Steely Dan, The Royal Scam ABC records, first pressing. I had this for about three years before I ever properly listened. A cartridge upgrade led to finally pulling out ”the Dan” for serious listening, wanting to see what all the fuss was about. Any time there is a band who is both widely respected or completely dismissed, I try to look beyond any sort of casual assumption or dismissal. And just as I once dismissed the wonderful Beach Boys for their matching shirts and too many songs about hot-rods, my Steely eyes have finally opened.

So, for those on the “yacht rock” side of the fence, try this record. Here, you have all the musicianship and complex composition of Aja, without the cultural bloat. No FM staples. Nothing to cloud the mind.

In truth, Steely Dan has so much more in common with Lou Reed than the Doobie Brothers. And even the hits, upon closer inspection, voice the outsider narrative of washed up dealers, pimps, perverts, broken lovers… those who know their potential never added up to much and there is no,”reelin’ in the years.”

And the music… If, after closer reading, the songs escape defeatism, it’s probably because the music is so thrilling. However, you do really need to hear it in proper context with decent equipment. The sound is immediate. Kid Charlemagne leaps from the speakers, just like everything that follows, gathering up a handful of 1970s - Wonder funky keyboards, Michael McDonald, Larry Carlton, even that strange Framptony mouth guitar thing- and produce music that sounds unique, fresh and born of whatever time you happen to be listening. And it really does help if you like Jazz a little.

Shearwater doesn’t really sound like this anymore. Rook is sort of the second act in a trilogy, sandwiched between Palo Santo and The Golden Archipelago ( you should probably hear those, too). I miss them this way.

When the hired drummer in your ten member collective is named Thor, and your cover looks like a lost Pink Floyd album, you better make music to match. They really do.

Massive or whispered, Jonathan Meiburg can go from lost choirboy to Greek chorus wrath in seconds and the musicians elegantly support both extremes.

The familiar loud, quiet, loud dynamic- a tension on which much of Nirvana and the Pixies was based- has never met the explosive chords that end the whispered prayer of On The Death of the Waters. I saw Shearwater play this live and the record on my stereo is just as alive.

People who love vinyl talk about the superior dynamic of an analogue record - how even the best digital source does not capture or express the full range of experience, intended in the music.

Rook would be my exhibit A.

Matador, 1st pressing.

Talk Talk, Laughing Stock Remastered vinyl from 2015. This is one of those records that the audiophile community can endlessly argue about- what is the best pressing. The reason why there is such attention to the sonics is because this music is staggering, cinematic, and fairly beyond categorization… post-punk, free-jazz, new romantic, ambient pop chamber music? Aside from Talk Talk’s other masterwork, Spirit of Eden, which I still don’t have on vinyl, this music stands alone.

“Myrrhman” sounds like standing alone in a thicket at midnight, until the strum of a trembling guitar chord just slices through the night. The song is a lullaby that somehow keeps threatening to erupt, but never does. Not until “Ascention Day”breaks out.

It is an album of extremes and nuance. I think this vinyl pressing does the music justice. I hear there is an even better one to hear. Hard to imagine.

The Cowboy Junkies, Trinity Sessions. Original RCA vinyl from 1988. What a strange message from another star this was in 1988. Even then, young enough to like Whitesnake, old enough to have two copies of Station to Station, this record felt like a genre unto itself. Brooding and deep in way that nothing else on Mtv had ever been. Like some sort of dark angel was let through the pop music gates. For a while I thought she was singing ,”sweet chains.”

So, the vinyl… here’s the thing- you lose a whole track ( Blue Moon revisited/Song for Elvis) that was CD and Cassette only, but you get close enough to hear the soft inhale of Margo Timmins, taking one delicate breath just before singing,” We are miners, hard rock miners…” Or you hear the depth and space of the church where it was recorded. In fact, this is a record about space. You don’t listen to this casually.