Velvet Underground

(From 2003. Check out the song and artist links via iTunes.)

In a classic case of retrospective predestination, I was talking to a friend a few months ago about the dearth of good albums lately. Note the use of “albums” rather than “music.” There is some awesome music being produced, some great songs, nowadays. But I was lamenting the lack of latter-day Joshua Trees, Neverminds, Siamese Dreams, and Vs’ses.

Then fate intervened with The Strokes: Is This It? The various copies of iTunes I have tell me I’ve listened to the entire album well over 50 times in toto (if one adds in CD and iPod listens), over the past few months. I cannot get enough of it. This is a Good Album.

Robert Hilburn, LA Times Music Critic and Ye Olde Bob Dylan Comparer, had an article in the Times: Strokes delight, but is this it? Managing to not mention Bob Dylan once in this (admittedly short) article, he asks,

One of the more intriguing questions in pop these days, however, is whether the Strokes will eventually be a chapter or a footnote in this movement.

“The movement” of course refers to The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Vines, The Hives, and numerous other less-MTV‘d bands who, for whatever reason, don’t suck as much as their immediate predecessors on the conveyor belt. Somehow, Hilburn manages to compare The Strokes to both The Velvet Underground (agreed) and The Cars (borderline).

The reason these four bands in particular Don’t Suck is that you can hear actual emotion in their songs. That’s right, folks, real-life emotion, not Emotion® or Emotion© or Emotion: My Story (as told to my ghostwriter).

Hilburn decries the lack of depth in The Strokes’ freshman effort, and I can hear what he’s saying. These are not complicated songs with complicated stories, nor needing complicated deconstruction to understand. However, I would point out that most old-school rock is not too complicated (something which Hilburn talks about a bit in the article; could it be more wishy-washy?). And I could write another 1000 words on how important music+emotion is to me/us/everybody. But instead, I’ll leave it to a stanza in that U2 re-make of a Dylan song,

All I got is a red guitar / Three chords and the truth.

Or better yet, how about this from the Velvet Underground:

Jenny said, when she was just five years old
There was nothin’ happening at all
Every time she puts on the radio
There was nothin’ goin’ down at all, not at all
Then, one fine mornin’, she puts on a New York station
You know, she couldn’t believe what she heard at all
She started shakin’ to that fine, fine music
You know, her life was saved by rock’n’roll

Despite all the imputations
You know, you could just go out
And dance to a rock’n’roll station
And it was all right, hey baby,
You know, it was all right

The Strokes rock. That is it, and that’s all right.

The year was 1988.

Sometimes when you go back into the shadowy past, lantern held high, you’ll come across books or movies or music that are best left alone in the darkness there. Protected in the hermetic environment of memory, else turned to dust in the starkly fluorescent present.

Other times, though, you’ll re-discover an item that not only survives the trip, but you’ll wonder why you left it behind. The Trinity Session album is one of those for me. (Check out The Trinity Session in iTunes.)

The 80s

In context, it was still the excessive 80s when this came out. Looking up 1988 on wikipedia reveals the last year of the Reagan presidency, the Iran-Iraq War ending, conflict between US and Iranian forces (including our shooting down of a passenger plane), George the First defeating Dukakis, the Soviet Union withdrawing from Afghanistan, terrorists blowing up all kinds of stuff including Flight 103 over Scotland. 1988 in music reveals both horrors and treasures. What stands out in my mind for those last years of the 80s, say beginning in 1987 with The Joshua Tree, is a reaction against the excess, the greed, the over-production, the assemblyline.

The albums released that year are mostly dreck, of course, but there are some gems heralding a reaction that was hitting the mainstream—

• Camper Van Beethoven’s Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart
• R.E.M.’s Green
• Melissa Etheridge’s debut
• Tracy Chapman’s debut
• U2’s Rattle and Hum (both excessive and stripped-down)
• N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton
• Sinéad O’Connor’s The Lion and the Cobra
• Jane’s Addiction Nothing’s Shocking
• Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

Amidst all the noise, however, there emerged this amazing album, The Trinity Session by the Canadian band Cowboy Junkies. A gorgeous lead singer with a smoky voice deliberately held back and quiet, restrained guitars and percussion, a harmonica at times. And it was recorded live in a church (with a single mic if I remember correctly), giving it expansive tones despite the lack of production. There are cover songs and originals; perhaps the most famous was “Sweet Jane” from The Velvet Underground, which still gives me chills.

Looking back at that list of albums, I can find stuff I liked at the time that shall remain unnamed. But there are certain items that I can put on at the end of 2005 and find solace, meaning, resonance. In fact, even moreso with the intervening years of living and experience.

Sometimes, of course, nostalgia can be mistaken for quality — which explains my enjoyment of Best of the 80s compilations ;) (Even fast food tastes good occasionally.) But if you’re venturing into the past or decades into the future, it’s best to remember those items of true quality, and leave the fool’s gold in the darkness.