Monthly Archives: September 2018

Four questions: Sarah McLachlan, Touch

[Sarah McLachlan - Touch]

Artist

Sarah McLachlan

Title

Touch

Original Release Date

Oct. 11, 1988

Purchase Date

Approx. 1989

What is the memory you most associate with this title?

I read about Sarah McLachlan in a Pulse! magazine article that linked her with Sinéad O’Connor and Tracy Chapman. I didn’t actually make the leap till I heard Touch playing in Jelly’s Books and Music, and I asked the woman behind the counter who it was.

The woman turned out to be Claudette Bond. In 1992, I recognized her onstage at Pink’s Garage with a band called Spiny Norman. They were opening for another new band called Smashing Pumpkins.

What was happening in your life when it was released?

1988 was my junior year in high school. Before I got into McLachlan, O’Connor and Chapman, I had gotten into … musical theater.

The high school band director floated the idea of programming Jesus Christ Superstar for the football game half-time shows. A rather unconventional priest at my family’s parish had a habit of showing movie excerpts to demonstrate ideas in his homilies, one of which was Jesus Christ Superstar.

I borrowed the soundtrack from the public library and got smitten with Andrew Lloyd Webber. He could clearly write a tune, but in those moments between showstoppers, he had rock bands playing dissonant music straight out of Prokofiev. That was the gateway drug to stronger, weirder stuff.

What was happening in your life when you bought it?

I probably didn’t pick up the cassette till 1989. At the start of high school, I had tried to ingratiate myself with the so-called cool kids by listening to the same music they did. By the end of high school, my tastes had diverted further than some faculty members.

My musical theater phase subsided to make way for more post-punk music. And all the things adults were telling me about how I would eventually feel for girls … wasn’t happening for me.

What do you think of it now?

History has not been much kind to Sarah McLachlan.

Her albums litter the dollar bins and thrift stores, and in the same way I used Carole King as shorthand for milquetoast music of the 1970s, McLachlan has become the same kind of cudgel for music of the 1990s.

But I also followed McLachlan’s albums throughout the ’90s, and I don’t feel the promise of Touch was realized.

Her operatic training set her apart from Chapman and O’Connor, but that smoothness let labels steer her in a safer direction. The last single I liked from McLachlan was “Building a Mystery”, but it was no “Vox”.

Touch is the album you must own if you had to pick up a Sarah McLachlan album.

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Purchase log, 2018-09-25

[Prince - Piano & a Microphone 1983]

I catalog my music purchases on Collectorz and Discogs, but they don’t give me a sense of change over time. So I’m noting them here weekly as well.

New releases

CD
  • Mandy Barnett, Strange Conversation
  • Prince, Piano and a Microphone 1983

Catalog

CD
  • Clannad, In a Lifetime: The Best of Clannad
  • Gabriel Fauré / Giovanni Palestrina, Requiem / Pavane / Missa Papae Marcelli (Choir of King’s College)
  • Julee Cruise, The Voice of Love
  • Metallica, Ride the Lightning (Remastered)
  • Taylor Swift, 1989 (Target edition)

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Looking ahead, October-November 2018

[Bill Frisell - Nashville]

Quite a number of interesting vinyl reissues and deluxe editions coming down the pike …

Cher, Dancing Queen, Sept. 28

I think some gay cultural norm dictates I should show interest in this convergence of iconography, and I do, albeit more from an anthropological standpoint.

Johnny Hates Jazz, Turn Back the Clock (Deluxe Edition), Oct. 5

“Shattered Dreams” is an awesome single, and Turn Back the Clock was a decent album — something I’m glad I encountered but couldn’t consider a must-have. And yet I’m looking forward to this deluxe edition release.

Camouflage, Voices and Images (Deluxe Edition), Oct. 19

I actually like this album more than Turn Back the Clock, and the limited pressing of 1,500 copies for the CD (500 for vinyl) is nudging me to pre-order.

Sasagawa Miwa, Houjou -BEST ’03~’18-, Oct. 31

Has it really been 15 years since Sasagawa Miwa’s debut? This best album contains 10 previously released tracks, 3 new songs and a new version of “Himawari”.

Art of Noise, In No Sense? Nonsense! (Deluxe Edition), Nov. 2

This album doesn’t lend itself to singles as easily as In Visible Silence, but it’s a worthwhile, challenging listen, a period where the band pushed the limits of technology and music.

Dead Can Dance, Dionysus, Nov. 2

Dead Can Dance has always struck me as a band I should have been digging in high school, but at the time, their albums were available only as imports.

Hajime Chitose, Hajime Uta ~Chitose Hajime Amami Shimauta Shu~, Nov. 14

Hajime Chitose returns to her roots as a shima uta singer on this 7-track mini album.

Mikami Chisako, I AM Ready!, Nov. 28

Mikami Chisako starts anew with music reminiscent of fra-foa’s second album, if the YouTube clips on her official site are any indication. I have to admit I’ve missed her, and Chuu no Fuchi is still one of my favorite albums. It’s criminal that it’s out of print.

Vinyl

Living Colour, Time’s Up, Sept. 28

I’d be all over this reissue from Megaforce Records if I hadn’t already found an original pressing a number of years ago. This album doesn’t seem to have had the same impact as its predecessor, but it some ways, it expands and perhaps improves upon Vivid.

YEN TOWN BAND, Montage, Nov. 3

I’ve never encountered a vinyl reissue from YEN TOWN BAND that didn’t immediately sell out.

Utada Hikaru, Hatsukoi, Nov. 7

Any chance for a vinyl reissue of ULTRA BLUE?

Bill Frisell, Nashville, Nov. 9

Bill Frisell had always incorporated Americana, country and folk into his music, but Nashville is the strongest statement of those influences, resulting in one of his most accessible albums. Robin Holcomb shows up on two covers.

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Purchase log, 2018-09-18

[Aretha Franklin - Aretha Now]

I catalog my music purchases on Collectorz and Discogs, but they don’t give me a sense of change over time. So I’m noting them here weekly as well.

I went to Portland for a developer conference, and boy did I go overboard with the shopping.

Catalog

CD
  • Andrew Lloyd Webber / Tim Rice, Evita (concept album)
  • Aretha Franklin, Aretha Now
  • Aretha Franklin, Lady Soul
  • Bananarama, True Confessions
  • Bill Evans, Waltz for Debby
  • Eminem, The Marshall Mathers LP (Clean)
  • Grace Jones, Nightclubbing
  • Midnight Oil, Species Deceases (Remastered)
  • Object Collection, It’s All True
  • Takaakira Goto, Classical Punk and Echoes Under the Beauty
  • The Pogues, If I Should Fall from Grace with God (Remastered)
  • Wire, Pink Flag
Vinyl
  • Clannad, Christ Chruch Cathedral
  • Living Colour, Shade

Vinyl find: The Human League, Crash

One of the first songs I learned to play on the piano was “Human” by the Human League, and I learned it out of a sense of survival.

“Human” was all over the radio in 1986, the year I graduated from eighth grade. I have no fond memories of junior high. I missed being placed in the honors class by a few test points, and the classmates with which I was placed didn’t appreciate my presence.

I was never physically harmed, but my social status was pretty obvious — I had none.

I didn’t have an aptitude for sports, and my school had no arts program. If I was going to turn things around in high school, I had to distinguish myself in some way.

So I learned how to play piano, and I learned popular music as a means to ingratiate myself.

It worked.

I knew I wouldn’t have impressed anyone with classical repertoire — not that I had developed sufficient skills to tackle it — but with songs you heard on the radio? I could at least not look too square.

I wasn’t looking to become popular — I was realistic enough to know that would be dead end — but I wanted to make myself a less-appealing target. My band teacher seized on my ability and kept me busy. Before long, people didn’t mess with me because I had a talent.

I never repaid the Human League this change in status by buying their album. I loved “Human”, but other singles from Crash failed to make a dent in the US. So I moved onto other music.

I picked up a vinyl copy of Crash more than 30 years later at the Lifelong Thrift Shop.

At that point in the band’s career, the Human League had difficulty following up some big hits from earlier in the 1980s. At the urging of their label, the band teamed up with Terry Lewis and Jimmy Jam, the producers who helped Janet Jackson break through with Control.

The resulting album is more Jam and Lewis than Human League, but it’s a rare instance where American funk rubbed against an English art school aesthetic. It’s actually an appealing convergence that deserves multiple spins on the playback device.

If I had listened to the album at the time of its release, I might have found it likable, but I’m not sure I would have appreciated the meeting of Sheffield and Minneapolis.

Crash is not a well-regarded album, not even by the band. “Great experience,” Phil Oakley said about working with Jam and Lewis,”but it’s not our album.”

I’m not familiar enough with the band’s earlier work to know what qualifies as a “Human League” album, so that probably allows me to have a more forgiving perception of Crash.

It’s an anomaly, for sure, but one that ought to be re-evaluated and maybe appreciated anew.

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Purchase log, 2018-09-11

[Grace Jones - Warm Leatherette]

I catalog my music purchases on Collectorz and Discogs, but they don’t give me a sense of change over time. So I’m noting them here weekly as well.

The KEXP Record Fair was on Saturday. I hadn’t known till the clerk at Jive Time asked me if I had gone.

New releases

CD
  • Jake Shears, Jake Shears
  • Renée Fleming, Broadway
Vinyl
  • Parquet Courts, Wide Awake!

Catalog

CD
  • Culture Club, Colour By Numbers (remastered)
  • Grace Jones, Warm Leatherette
  • Keith Jarrett, The Köln Concert
  • Michael Jackson, Thriller (Special Edition)
  • Missy Elliott, Supa Dupa Fly
  • UA, 11 (Deluxe Edition)
  • UA, AMETORA (Deluxe Edition)
  • UA, turbo (Deluxe Edition)
Vinyl
  • Dead or Alive, Sophisticated Boom Boom
  • Doug E. Fresh and the Get Fresh Crew, Oh My God!
  • Franz Schubert, Die schöne Müllerin (Deitrich Fischer-Dieskau)
  • Janet Jackson, Dream Street
  • Joni Mitchell, Ladies of the Canyon
  • Julee Cruise, Floating Into the Night (original pressing promo)
  • Public Enemy, Yo! Bum Rush the Show

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Thrift Store Find: Carole King, Tapestry

[Carole King - Tapestry]

Carole King has been something of a straw woman here on Musicwhore.org. When her name was evoked, it was usually in service of describing milquetoast or overly sentimentalized music. Do a search for Onitsuka Chichiro on old versions of this site, and King probably shows up in a paragraph somewhere.

King released her landmark album, Tapestry, a year and two months before I was born. I would have encountered her music on the radio as I was growing up, probably on KSSK alongside Joni Mitchell and James Taylor.

By the time I was old enough to explore music on my own, King’s music had become fodder for TV commercial jingles. A burgeoning art fag such as myself couldn’t help but hold her in disdain.

Gilmore Girls was one of my favorite shows, but when it aired, I had to mute the opening credits. The overly earnest cover of King’s “Where You Lead” is aural treacle.

But Tapestry shows up on critics list everywhere, and it’s not hard to find old vinyl pressings of the album selling for no more than $10. Before it could be jingle fodder, it had to achieve a level of success to warrant such ubiquity.

So when I spotted a copy of Tapestry selling for $1 at Lifelong Thrift Store, I bought it.

And I like it way more than I expected to.

King’s performances are gritty. Subsequent covers and reimagining of Tapestry’s tracks all polish off those rough edges. Onituska inherited that unfortunate legacy, although her own voice brings back some of that burnish.

I imagine Tapestry was the Jagged Little Pill of its day — an album where nearly every track could have been considered a hit single. While Alanis Morrisette’s breakthrough album took a raw, emotional look at heartbreak, King’s Tapestry holds together with an exploration of camaraderie. In both cases, they’re strong performances driven by an artistic clarity.

But it’s taken me nearly most of my lifetime to appreciate Tapestry. In that sense, the album is also a cautionary tale of music commercialization. Exploit a copyright too much, and a listener with little context may not realize that catchy jingle was actually intended to be art.

 

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Purchase log, 2018-09-04

[Jayne Cortez - Everywhere Drums]

I catalog my music purchases on Collectorz and Discogs, but they don’t give me a sense of change over time. So I’m noting them here weekly as well.

Labor Day sales at thrift stores are a dangerous combination.

New releases

CD
  • Blood Orange, Negro Swan
  • Troye Sivan, Bloom
Files
  • Molotov, MTV Unplugged: El Disconecte
  • Santigold, I Don’t Want: The Gold Fire Sessions

Catalog

CD
  • Anonymous 4, Love’s Illusion
  • Bob Marley and the Wailers, Legend
  • Boris, Akuma no Uta
  • Edgard Varèse, The Complete Works
  • Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes
  • Giovanni Palestrina, Palestrina Masses (Tallis Scholars)
  • Iron and Wine, Around the Well
  • Jayne Cortez, Everywhere Drums
  • John Coltrane, Soultrane
  • Joni Mitchell, Hejira
  • Loretta Lynn, Country Music Hall of Fame
  • McCoy Tyner, Echoes of a Friend
  • Midnight Oil, Scream In Blue
  • Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain
  • Moby, Everything Is Wrong
  • Semisonic, All About Chemistry
  • The Books, The Lemon of Pink
  • The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Axis: Bold as Love
  • Various Artists, If I Were a Carpenter
  • Various Composers, la Quinta essentia (Huelgas-Ensemble)
  • Various Composers, Musica Nova (Consort Veneto)
  • Vivian Green, A Love Story
Vinyl
  • Bananarama, True Confessions
  • Giovanni Palestrina, Missa “De Beata Virgine” (Chorus “Jeunesses Musicales”)
  • Madonna, You Can Dance
  • Rupert Holmes, Partners in Crime

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You Got What?: Cameo, Word Up

[Cameo - Word Up]

Teen-aged me would be very disappointed in mid-life me.

Cameo was all over the radio and MTV in the mid-80s with “Word Up”, and while the first few plays of the hit single were novel, the remaining billion over the course of its shelf life weren’t. That overexposure, of course, made me vow never to buy its namesake album.

But what did I do at the Friends of the Library Book Sale some 30 years later? I picked it up for $1.

What would compel me to turn back on my younger self’s resolve? The answer: “Candy”.

“Candy” was the follow-up single to “Word Up”, and it too became a hit, albeit without the excessive airplay. It was an unlikely candidate for a single, possessing a strange bass line that starts simply but shifts rhythmically in unpredictable ways.

The only hook in the song is the phrase, “It’s like candy”. The rest is a mishmash of an asymmetrical monotone melody and a punctuating guitar riff. Of the eight tracks on Word Up, it’s hands down the most complex.

Over the years, the catchier “Word Up” could be heard piping into public places more often than “Candy”, and as such, “Candy” receded into distant memory … until it appeared on the pre-show playlist at a concert by the Revolution.

When it came on, the oddness of “Candy” struck me, and I appreciated it on a level far more than I could as a teenager. A month after the concert, I found myself at the book sale with a copy of Word Up in my stack of purchases.

It turns out the title track and “Candy” are the most anomalous tracks on Word Up. The remainder of the album’s seven tracks are journeyman funk tracks that would not have sounded out of place a decade earlier, save for all the analog synths.

Word Up front loads its most remarkable tracks, then pulls back and becomes a different album altogether. If I bought it at the time, I wouldn’t have understood it, let alone appreciate it.

And I certainly wouldn’t have enjoyed it the way I do now.

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