A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector was released the day John F. Kennedy was shot. I'm not gonna blame Phil Spector for that. I'm not blaming him for commercializing the Christmas song; that distinction has to go to Bing Crosby's 1945 White Christmas or Elvis' 1957 Christmas Album, both of which better deserve a place on the RS list than A Christmas Gift... , at least in an historical sense. I'm not going to blame him for the over-produced holiday drivel like Trans-Siberian Orchestra or Mannheim Steamroller although I really want to. Hell, I'm not even going to blame him for breaking up the Beatles and messing up the Ramones.
What I want to blame Spector for is how his "Wall of Sound" over-production has infected hip-hop. How computer programs like Pro Tools and Fruity Loops have made it far too easy for Joe Hip Hop Producer to play mini-Phil. And how a legion of largely white male mini-Phils have descended locust-like onto an African-American art form and turned it into A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector.
That was the plan. Exhibit A was to be some song by the Runners. They are so Wall of Sound. Multiple sirens, mass overproduction, epic atmospherics, sound affects, lots of artists, and far too much song stimuli. Computer programs birthed these hit machines. I thought about what their newest hit track would be and guessed on the "I'm So Hood remix" (see above NSFW), which sounds pretty similar to their other hit songs, like "(Everyday I'm) Hustlin", "We Takin' Over", "Reppin' Time", etc...
It's gotten to the point where other people's songs sound just like theirs. See Exhibit B (see left), Rick Ross' (yes he of the Runners' "(Everyday I'm) Hustlin" fame) new single "Street Money"which evidently was produced by someone named J-Rock the Rock Monsta.
At this point the Phil Spector-The Runners' defense team would take the stand and show you Exhibit C: a chart of my browsing and youtube listening history from the past few hours. Multiple replays of all their tracks, searches for more tracks, and even a viewing of The Runners' themselves speaking on a Streets Talk DVD about their aim of becoming "super-producers". Was Phil Spector the first rock/r&b/rap super-producer? Probably.
They might even have hidden camera shots of me smiling, bobbing my head, and calling the wife over with "I can't believe how great the first four verses are." and continuing with "I love Young Jeezy." Decidedly something no man should ever tell his wife.
I would then be forced to admit that despite my sanctimonious orthodox-hip hop bluster I love the Runners' Wall of Sound and by extension have to grudgingly admit that there is a wonderful place in pop, rock, and rap for the many Sons of Spector be they Springsteen's "Born to Run", My Bloody Valentine's Loveless or Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. And you know what, I might enjoy the Arcade Fire every now and then. What's wrong with epic cinematic overblown overwrought wonderment. You can't listen to Pavement everyday, can you? Maybe Phil Spector isn't so bad. Sometimes more is more.
Ronny Spector's vocals...well, that's another story altogether.
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December 31, 2007
The Many Sons of Spector
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December 29, 2007
What's Past is Prologue
Gifts, indeed! The images and sensations that this album evokes for me are purely commercial. Instead of sugarplums, I start visioning malls, chain stores, poorly planned parking lots, bags of goodies in my back seat, stacks of receipts….And that’s ok. You see, I don’t really buy into the True Meaning of Christmas as the birth of baby Jesus. I’m not dissing baby Jesus; I just think that folks forget that an earlier version of this winter holiday was all about the presents. The celebration of the Roman feast Saturnalia was "marked by the making and giving of small presents (saturnalia et sigillaricia) and a special market (sigillaria)". Phil Spector has provided a perfect soundtrack not for Christmas, as many claim, but for Saturnalia.
To celebrate here is my free association between each song and the special market or activity that it calls to mind:
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December 25, 2007
With the Beatles
With the Beatles, The Beatles, Rolling Stone Magazine's #420
exile staff consensus: Top 1000 album
the breakdown:
2.5 cannons - the angryyoungman
1.5 cannons - lenbarker and eurowags
1.0 cannon - venerableseed
the essays:
12/24 @ 3:00 p.m. - The Ancient Scientist bats clean up and knocks it out of the park once more ably answering his question: "What was it about the Beatles and this time - 1963/4 - when they took over the American imagination and launched themselves as icons of an era?" Read on to find out!
12/23 @ 6:00 p.m. - Len Barker encapsulates many of our feelings (at least me and the mrs.) about the Beatles. "We love 'em but why does Paul have to be so corny?" Want musical proof? Listen to his Music Man cover on these albums.
LB also brings us into the Christmas season with a rousing youtube video of Paul's Simply...Having...a Wonderful Christmas Time. You want to sing, you know you do!
Next week this blog moves onto the only Christmas album on the list. Phil Spector's A Christmas Gift From Me To You.
Happy Christmas everyone!
12/20 @ 9:00 a.m. - The Angry Young Man belies his name with a terrific, sweet post about his Beatlemania and what makes the Fab Four so great: the songs.
12/19 @ 9:00 a.m. - History and nostalgia have changed how we view the Beatles and their Ed Sullivan Show performance. The usual culprits being "it ended our post-JFK assassination malaise" and "it asserted the Baby Boomers place in the world." Let's read what the NY Times said the day before that famous show as well as the day after.
12/16 @ 9:00 a.m. - I wonder how Beatlemania happened? And what would Meet the Beatles! have been akin to if it had been released in 2007, 2000, or 1976.
***
the introduction (done with Meet the Beatles!):
On the surface Meet the Beatles! and With the Beatles appear to be the same album. The covers are nearly identical and a quick look at the track listing reveals nine duplicate songs. Meet the Beatles! was released in the United States in January, 1964 while With the Beatles saw a November 1963 UK release.
End of story, same two albums, two different releases. Right? Wrong.
Now look through your Beatles CD collection. Odds are you have you UK release With the Beatles. How could that be? Well, when the Beatles albums were first released on CD in the 1980's Capitol standardized their CD output with only UK releases. Hence Meet the Beatles!' digital disappearance until 2005.
What did this CD standardization do for multiple generations of US music lovers? It erased the first great self-produced and self-written rock 'n roll album ever released on American soil from our memory and musical conscience. Meet the Beatles! is a juggernaut of Fab Four songs broken up by only one cover while With the Beatles trips and falls over seven non-Beatles tracks.
Does the "new" (to younger American ears) Meet the Beatles! belong in the Beatles pantheon alongside Rubber Soul and Revolver? Is it really the first great rock album Americans ever heard? And why exactly is With the Beatles on this list? Let's listen again and find out.
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Meet the Beatles
Meet the Beatles!, The Beatles, Rolling Stone Magazine's #59
exile staff consensus: Top 200 album
the breakdown:
4.0 cannons - venerableseed, polchic
3.5 cannons - the angryyoungman
2.5 cannons - lenbarker
2.0 cannons - eurowags
the essays:
12/24 @ 3:00 p.m. - The Ancient Scientist bats clean up and knocks it out of the park once more ably answering his question: "What was it about the Beatles and this time - 1963/4 - when they took over the American imagination and launched themselves as icons of an era?" Read on to find out!
12/23 @ 6:00 p.m. - Len Barker encapsulates many of our feelings (at least me and the mrs.) about the Beatles. "We love 'em but why does Paul have to be so corny?" Want musical proof? Listen to his Music Man cover on these albums.
LB also brings us into the Christmas season with a rousing youtube video of Paul's Simply...Having...a Wonderful Christmas Time. You want to sing, you know you do!
Next week this blog moves onto the only Christmas album on the list. Phil Spector's A Christmas Gift From Me To You.
Happy Christmas everyone!
12/20 @ 9:00 a.m. - The Angry Young Man belies his name with a terrific, sweet post about his Beatlemania and what makes the Fab Four so great: the songs.
12/19 @ 9:00 a.m. - History and nostalgia have changed how we view the Beatles and their Ed Sullivan Show performance. The usual culprits being "it ended our post-JFK assassination malaise" and "it asserted the Baby Boomers place in the world." Let's read what the NY Times said the day before that famous show as well as the day after.
12/16 @ 9:00 a.m. - I wonder how Beatlemania happened? And what would Meet the Beatles! have been akin to if it had been released in 2007, 2000, or 1976.
***
the introduction (done with With the Beatles):
On the surface Meet the Beatles! and With the Beatles appear to be the same album. The covers are nearly identical and a quick look at the track listing reveals nine duplicate songs. Meet the Beatles! was released in the United States in January, 1964 while With the Beatles saw a November 1963 UK release.
End of story, same two albums, two different releases. Right? Wrong.
Now look through your Beatles CD collection. Odds are you have you UK release With the Beatles. How could that be? Well, when the Beatles albums were first released on CD in the 1980's Capitol standardized their CD output with only UK releases. Hence Meet the Beatles!' digital disappearance until 2005.
What did this CD standardization do for multiple generations of US music lovers? It erased the first great self-produced and self-written rock 'n roll album ever released on American soil from our memory and musical conscience. Meet the Beatles! is a juggernaut of Fab Four songs broken up by only one cover while With the Beatles trips and falls over seven non-Beatles tracks.Does the "new" (to younger American ears) Meet the Beatles! belong in the Beatles pantheon alongside Rubber Soul and Revolver? Is it really the first great rock album Americans ever heard? And why exactly is With the Beatles on this list? Let's listen again and find out.
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December 24, 2007
British Invasion
When that really bad 'Star Wars' prequel came out a few years ago... the one with Jar Jar Binks and all that horribleness... it caused people that weren't besotted completely with the brand nostalgia of George Lucas to hate not only the new piece of crap on the screen, but also to question whether their 'Star Wars' love of youth had really been because of some greatness inherent in the movies, as we had always assumed, or whether it was naive buying into hype in a more innocent time. Like LenBarker said in his musings on Macca, the later product inevitably went back and tarnished the long ago loved object of love and hope and excitement.
So the inevitable question is: were the Beatles great because of hype or because of their own genius? An examination of this question is done best when looking at their early material, when they burst on the scene.
What was it about the Beatles and this time - 1963/4 - when they took over the American imagination and launched themselves as icons of an era? Instead of looking at the Kennedy assassination and the needs of America for hope and all that nonsense, let's just look at what the Beatles offered in more musical/cultural terms.
First off, as has been noted, 'With the Beatles' and 'Meet the Beatles' are quite different: the former was the earlier UK release to a public already Beatle-crazy, featuring a lot more RnB covers, etc. 'Meet the Beatles' was a later release (Jan. 64) to the US market just getting its first real taste of the group, with more original songs. The titles are enough to tell you of the first major factor in the Beatles' stateside, rather than English, success. The English were already 'With the Beatles' but the Americans were meeting them for the first (real) time. This is important, a conscious part of their stateside marketing: the thing that the Fab 4 did so well was take that American love of personality and increase it by an order of 4. US rockstars had mostly been individuals, these great powerful figures that captured the imagination like Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis and such. Sure, there were groups like Phil Spector's groups and the Coasters and stuff, but they did not peddle the same cult of personality that the Elvi of the world did. The Beatles, in the public appearances and on the record itself, were 4 distinct personalities, and the Americans loved it, talking about who was the cutest, etc. Whereas before these rockstar comets of personality, like Elvis, represented an undeniably cool hoodlum renegade, the bad kid in the back of the classroom throwing spitballs they could be contained, extinguished by their own dangerous desires like James Dean, locked up for bullshit like Chuck Berry, tragically killed like Buddy Holly, sent off to the Army like Elvis, and so on. Here were 4 of them - not an isolate-able hoodlum presence but, in their number, a veritable movement, un-containable. 4 individuals, coming together as one. This was the lesson of the English, who always excelled, quite logically, in the group dynamic of rock n' roll. They always have the better groups and we have the better individual stars (exceptions, like Bowie, exist of course). This was the first element of the British Invasion, and they KEY to the British Invasion if you ask me, that would continue even up until Led Zeppelin stomped around the stage like rock gods... gosh, only 6 years after this album. The social, lads-quality of the Beatles a path for a communal merging of egos, a first 1960's lesson.
As I said, this is not only reflected in their public appearances full of joshing and cheekiness, but also in their songs. John sang John songs; Paul sang Paul songs, and they already have that different feel. Both are exuberant, exciting young singers, but Paul has that sweetness, John that edge, already.
Then there is the other thing about their image. People have commented in the past about how the 1963-4 Beatles offered this watered-down, innocent version of rock n' roll sexuality, with the tepid covers (yeah, that's right) of Chuck Berry and others on the 'With the Beatles' and their originals saying stuff like 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand' and shit like that, much more innocent than the clear-and-present danger of Elvis and Chuck Berry and Little Richard (for god's sake not him!) to the little girls and wannabe hoodlum boys of America. And, sure, that's there, these Beatles were a bit soft, palatable for the moms and pops watching Ed Sullivan. But at the same time you gotta remember that the seat cushions at a Beatles concert would be wet - such that they had to wiped off - from the adolescent pussy juice from the teenage girls screaming (and creaming) and bouncing in their seats as the boys sang about hand holding. "She was just 17... if you know what I mean..." Yeah, we know Paul, and so did the 17-year olds you were singing to. So the sexual power of rock music was there, in a different form, and the kids knew all about it even if their moms smiled and quietly thanked God Elvis and his hips weren't up there anymore. The sexual language of rock music had become so ingrained that the Beatles could send 2 messages at once: the innocent one to the world at large, and the sexual one to the kids craving it. This sort of double-voice message would be a feature of their music forever (Paul is a Gemini remember), they invited interpretation of their minds, their messages, there's always something going on. Paul's sweetness next to John's bullishness created a well-rounded artistic vision, making each of them much cooler than they would have been alone. How could they be so corny and yet so lovably sincere at the same time? How did it work?
And another key thing, more overlooked in the RnB-to-rock evolutionary history of rock n' roll that is over-emphasized. The Beatles took a lot of their energy not just from Elvis and Chuck Berry, but also from a different place. Look at that cover: 4 brooding, turtleneck-wearing beatniks! And that hair! If the Beatles were bringing a white-boy cultural quality to RnB, they weren't bringing a Ricky Nelson suburban thing, but a European-ish poet vibe as well. The Beats and the folk revivalists were also doing this, but hadn't plunged into the mainstream like the Beatles would with ease. This represented a new force in popular music, the voices of individual poets, subjectivities telling their piece to the listeners. Of course, previous rock music had had great, poetic lyrics (Chuck Berry was a master sound-smith), but this was different. This element would add a whole new dimension to rock music in the coming years, and the Beatles are making the world (relatively) safe for Beatniks and Freaks.
The Beatles, then, were particularly interesting because they plugged effortlessly into a marketing formula that worked. Safe, English, cult-of-personality rock for celebrity-consuming culture, but with enough integrity and real edge to pull it off without flaming out quickly. The hype was real, it came from a real sense of novelty and personality that the boys represented, and what was really interesting is that they didn't get crushed under the hype machine and the powerful brand identity that they knew they had cornered, they actually built off of it and got better as the years went on. Too bad George Lucas couldn't figure that one out.
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December 23, 2007
Macca Moment
I do not love the Beatles as completely and unconditionally as I should, and I lay the blame squarely at the feet of Paul McCartney. Yes, I have plenty of Beatles albums, and even a decent collection of live and unreleased material, so it’s not like I despise them, far from it. Rather, I’ve gained a grudging love for them over the years as the guys who did it first and, arguably, best as fully in evidence on the brilliant, energetic With the Beatles/Meet the Beatles!, despite the cognitive dissonance that still disrupts my affection at times due to Paul’s ridiculous crap since the disbandment.
Exhibit A: Since the holidays are upon us now, I might as well be seasonal and bring up this ridiculous turd first, “Wonderful Christmas Time”.
Why, Paul? We already had a great Beatles Christmas song! Lennon had already taken care of that. Were you just trying to one up him? Well, thanks for ruining a few minutes of my holiday season every year when I have to hear this stinker!
Exhibit B: Maybe it was Linda’s fault. Since we are now a marriage removed from her undeniably sad, untimely passing, I guess that it’s safe to deliver criticism without sounding like an asshole: she had no business being on stage with you. She has forever ruined “Hey Jude” for anyone who cared. Bad call, man.
Exhibit C: “Say, Say, Say”, “The Girl Is Mine”, and “Ebony and Ivory”. The Jacko duets are awful enough, and “Ebony and Ivory” may have ruined Stevie Wonder for me, if In Square Circle hadn’t nearly completely destroyed my respect for him later. I’m just glad that you could never managed to line up studio time with Kiki Dee.
Exhibit D: Still trying to be “The Cute One”, aren’t we? That’s always grossed me out.
Rock stars, please guard your legacies better than this. You may think that you should not have to worry about it, that you can have your wife in the band, even if she doesn’t have musical ability, because it will make things easier at home, that you can appear with Hanson or Puffy just because you think it’s fun, that you can appear on Oprah, because it may help you sell tens of thousands more albums, even though you really don’t need the money, but it can and will be used against you in the court of youth. Your old fans may forgive you, since they’re already hooked, but, if you don’t maintain your integrity, then the kids will smell bullshit and turn on you, endangering that unimpeachable immortality that you’ve been striving for since you first strapped on a Hofner.
A long time ago, a friend of mine pointed out that you always hear music differently once you know that an artist is deceased, that it colors the experience to some degree, no matter how absorbed you may become in the music. I have always found this to be true to some degree, but Paul’s cheesiness continues to overwhelm my Beatles experience, even in the wake of Lennon and George’s deaths. I envy those who are able to overlook it.
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December 20, 2007
It All Starts With the Songs. Those Great Songs.
I had Beatlemania when I was little. It was years after the fact and I was maybe 5 or 6 years old, but from the moment I first heard 8 Days a Week, I was hooked. My friend and I used to take wooden tennis raquets, hold them like guitars and play along to that and I Wanna Hold Your Hand, with a little Can't Buy Me Love thrown in. He always pretended to be John. I pretended to be Ringo. I had no idea Ringo was the drummer, I just thought his name was cool. To this day I have no idea what we were listening to. 45s? LPs? An 8-track? And if it was an LP or an 8-track, what album? A hits compilation of some kind? The songs I remember singing are not all on the same album. Or any album in some cases. I would love to know.
Some years later, my family and I frequented Chuck E. Cheese. In one dining room that had no video games there were 4 large, animatronic dogs dressed as the Beatles on Ed Sullivan only in red sequined jackets. Put some quarters in a machine on the wall and an Ed-Sullivanesque voice introduced The Beagles, who sprang to life and pretended to play instruments and sing as early Beatles tunes played. I was sorely disappointed when, after only a year or so, the Beagles were replaced by The Beach Bowsers. (As you might guess, they were the exact same dogs, just in different clothes). I never took to Help Me Rhonda and Surfin USA the way I did to All My Loving.
Even now I feel like getting up grabbing a fake guitar and belting out I Saw Her Standing There. Which is really the difference between Bealtemania and most of the phenomena Kid Seed has tried to compare it too...with Beatlemania, it all started with those great, simple songs. It was about a lot more but it was always the songs that roped you in. Or so it seemed to me jumping around in my friend's basement and strumming my tennis raquet and dreaming of being Ringo Starr.
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