The Pleonastic Hussalonian

Untitled (Live): Bit Shifter (2009)

I’ve always felt that creativity thrives on limitations. It forces the mind to do the real work. Give an artist an infinite amount of resources, and what you’ve just done is created a terrifying, labyrinth, a winding path with infinite forks. Only the strongest of artists will not be left paralyzed with possibility, or worse, unreachable to his or her audience, lost in a quest for self-knowledge. The less an artist has, the greater challenge there is to do what seems impossible.

Bit Shifter is one of the many artists working within the 8-bit music scene. 8-bit artists limit themselves to instruments with 8-bit central processing units, usually “primitive” or outdated computers. Bit Shifter hacks old Nintendo Gameboys to make his music. The result is intriguing to me because one is always reminded that 8-bit was once futuristic, cutting edge technology. And now, it is perceived as endearing, innocuous, cute, embraced for the nostalgia it induces. And the music of 8-bit artists always seem to acknowledge this dichotomy. It plays with our sense of time. It is music of the future from the past.

“Untitled (Live)” comes from the free online EP Live at the Blip Festival 2009. I’ve seen Bit Shifter perform before and I’ll be honest here, I have no idea what he is doing to do the Gameboy to make this music happen. My instincts tell me that the music is composed in advance, and yet there he is onstage, frantically pushing buttons and thrashing around. I shrug and add it to the mysteriousness of what he does. Because, c’mon, listen to this song; there is no way that it could have ever been composed for a video game. It’s so sad sounding, and yet, owing to it’s 8-bit limitations, not capable of sounding maudlin or overly sentimental. It is science. It is reason. It is logic. And it is dreaming. Oh, the pathos! Bit Shifter’s bending notes have finally given us the sound of a computer weeping.

Finally, we are accustomed to hearing 8-bit music and associating it with some faceless corporation, background music anonymously created for a silly, recreational amusement. But here, we know that the music has not been commissioned. It is a personal expression, and it refuses to be background music, and it refuses to be associated with a game. It revolts against the very tools of its creation. And if that isn’t art, then what is?

Download the free EP here.

Jerome: Ruth Ruth (1996)

Anything worth wanting to know is probably unknowable in the first place. It’s the element of mystery that makes worthwhile stuff worthwhile. And I’ve been attracted to mystery since I was old enough to want to know anything. I must enjoy being suspended in that place between knowledge and ambiguity. I’m too logical for faith; illusion is my only home.

And then I’ve always enjoyed a good self-destructive impulse. Achievement is not enough. Any artist worth his or her weight in magic must be willing to light the fuse and walk away while the audience looks on in horror. On a generous day, I can attribute this to a need for balance – beauty needs terror, creation needs destruction, blah blah blah. But on clearer days, I fear this impulse may simply be residual juvenile angst, a cocktail of hostility meant to punish everyone for no good reason at all.

Can we admit that Salinger acolytes are hopeless melancholiacs who revel in their states of arrested development? Like Holden, we have decided that it’s probably better to be lonely and troubled and ornery than it is to be a goddamn phony. It’s a reactionary position, cynicism. A hardened shell to protect the overly sentimental idealist whose been burned a few times.

Well, whatever. I can sit and think about all the reasons why I love Salinger’s published work, and all the reasons why I love the Salinger myth, and all the reasons why I hope that we finally get to read what he’s been writing all these years, and all the reasons why I hope there’s some clause in his will that calls for all his unpublished manuscripts to be burned or discreetly shredded or extravagantly blown up, and all the reasons why I hope – more than anything I’ve ever hoped for – that someone actually respects his goddamn wishes, but honestly, any answers I’d arrive at would more than I really want to know.

As Long As I Live: Jane Russell (1947)

I think it odd for songs to acknowledge mortality. Generally, songs are popularly liked because they have a way of eliminating the unpleasant aspects of life and redirecting our attention to a very exclusive, if completely false, interpretation of our existence. Me? I’m obsessed with death. But bring it up at a dinner party – you know, the fact that the only thing we truly have in common with each other is the eventuality of death – and you’ll feel the room get a little tighter.

What’s stranger than a pop song about death, is a physically endowed movie star singing a pop song about death. Look at the Jane Russell of 1947 and she is a picture of health, quite literally bursting with vigor, a fertility goddess reminding us all why we are here and how we arrived here. She looks immortal, and because she is forever preserved on film, she is immortal. And so it is complete nonsense to hear her sing, “I never cared, but now I’m scared I won’t live long enough.”  Nonsense, but also a little disconcerting. After all, Jane Russell is now 89 years old. Like the rest of us, she is going to die.

The truth of the matter is that we will never live long enough to love our loved ones. There is a small window we poke our heads into for a few decades. We look around, say a few things, and leave. The best we can hope for is that someone else pops their head in, looks you in the eye, and says, “I love you, too.”

I’m Just a Lonely Guy: Little Richard (1955)

What an oversight - over 170+ posts and not one Little Richard song! It seems impossible to me, but then if I think I think about it, it all makes sense.

I listen to a fair amount of Little Richard, but not the hits. I’m a fan of the Little Richard that rock and roll left behind, circa 1965-1972, when his hair got huge and his ego even bigger. There are no hit recordings from this era. Here, Little Richard is a cartoon character, a flamboyant prima donna who talks smack about his peers and maniacally rants over generic rockers and re-recordings of his hits. He’s out of his mind, for sure, and that’s why I love him. If I ever considered posting a Little Richard song before, it was most certainly one these later, less popular, unhinged recordings. But how to decide on just one song? It’s like selecting a picture of a lover who just doesn’t photograph well.

Well, this settles it once and for all. “I’m Just a Lonely Guy” is not from the loose cannon years, but primo, top-shelf, A-list Little Richard – recorded in the same session as “Tutti Frutti” in 1955. It sounds like it was recorded with one mike – his vocal mike. And it’s part of what makes this recording so magical. This is, I’m convinced, his greatest vocal performance ever captured on tape. With the vocal being so disproportionately loud, his screams feel like they’re coming from within your head. And they are the most raw, heartfelt, and strikingly original rock and roll screams you will ever hear. The band, being so distant, sounds as if they are haunting Little Richard, a kind of supernatural sadness. It is everything I love about old recordings – the character, the fuzz, the warmth. I can almost feel the heat of the overworked tubes on my face. Put this one on my short list. A hair-raisingly amazing performance and recording.

So there you go, Penninman. A proper tribute. You may be bat shit crazy, but you are, indeed, the king of rock and roll.

I’m Bob the Blob: Bob the Blob (1983?)

My wife asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and after much deliberation, I told her to buy me anything and tell me that it was hard to find.

What does my penchant for the obscure say about me? Why am I so attracted to the discarded and the outdated? Is it a matter of identification? Do I see myself in the neglected and peculiar dusty junk left curbside? Or is it the opposite, a manifestation of inflated ego? In other words, am I just being difficult?

It took me almost ten years to find Bob the Blob Finds a Shape. And throughout that decade quest, Bob’s minor keyed anthem, with its haunting bass clarinet counter-melody, regularly resonated the halls of my memory. Bob’s absence of shape reflects post-modern anxieties regarding identity. A shapeless blob he does not want to be, and yet, his very name identifies him as a shapeless blob! This is not a children’s pre-school record about shapes; this is an existential quandary.

I’ve always admired the children’s gallantry in the vignette preceding the song. While Bob’s authoritative knock alone would be enough to rattle my aging nerves these days, the children allow him into their classroom, marveling at his tragic amorphousness. This is why Bob turns to them for help. Only young children possess this level of self-assuredness.

My wife did indeed buy me some hard to find stuff, much appreciated and duly added to my museum of shapeless substance and misfit matter. It is in these gestures, when our loved ones are able to trace the outline of our desires and define us with a gift, that we cease to feel so formless.

Fantastic: Will.i.Am (2007)

I have no idea what makes one song really popular and leaves another virtually unheard. I don’t listen to a lot of Top 40 radio, but then, I’m no stranger to it either. I borrowed a copy of Will.i.Am’s Songs About Girls from the public library when it first came out. I can’t say that I was wild about “I Got it From My Mama,” but his production work on Nas’s Hip Hop is Dead was interesting enough that I wanted to hear a full album of his work (sans Fergie). Two years later, I don’t remember anything about Songs About Girls except for this song. And what a great song! At the time, I was so convinced that it was going to blow up. I would have bet money on it. And then, nothing happened.

I suspect that “Fantastic” revolves around a sample from the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back.” I hear a tiny snippet taken from the major pentatonic guitar part, found in the left channel of the original song, best heard at the 1:25 and the 1:55 mark.

Ah, but what the hell do I know?

Pretty Lady: Lighthouse (1973)

What? You’re telling me that you won’t listen to a band with nine long-haired members on a matter of principle? But the singer sounds like a cleaned up Lou Reed fronting the Raspberries! With a horn section! In Vegas!

I heard this song for the first time yesterday. In a record store, of course. I think it’s a perfect record store song because it embodies so many things that record geeks are into: Lou Reed, power pop, pretty ladies, complete obscurity. And yet, the odds of even your most fervent record geek having actually heard it before are pretty slim. I think this is because any reasonable shopper would pass on this album based on the cover image alone. Sorry, dudes. I can’t feel it.

Doesn’t it remind you a little of Sloan’s “Everything You’ve Done Wrong”? (Both bands are Canadian!)