The Pleonastic Hussalonian

Untitled (Live): Bit Shifter (2009)

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music scene. 8-bit artists limit themselves to instruments with 8-bit central processing units, usually “primitive” or outdated computers.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)

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)

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)

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?)

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 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)

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!)

Cum On Feel the Noize: Slade (1973)

Now, like many American boys in the 80s, I grew my hair out and pumped my fist in the air. I wore patches on my jean jacket. I was a good kid unwittingly listening to astonishingly offensive anthems of misogyny, substance abuse, and demon worship – all in the name of rock. Quiet Riot’s “Cum On Feel the Noize” ranked high, and remains high, on my chart of Rock-dom. It’s the “Let’s Get It On” of heavy metal – one of those songs that everyone in a room can usually agree on. 

Listen to the two versions back to back, and the first thing you’ll notice is that Quiet Riot’s version is far more menacing. It’s in the canon-fire drums and Kevin DuBrow’s vocal that manages to out-banshee Noddy Holder. Ah, but so what? When I first heard Slade’s version a few days ago, I was bowled over by how incredibly fun it sounded – the huge chorus of people singing along, the hand claps, the major key intro, the never-ending maraca shaking, the feel-good Chuck Berry guitar work. But more than anything else, it’s the shifting downbeat of the snare drum that gives Slade’s version its playful wiggle.

It may be because the two versions exist an exact decade apart, or perhaps it’s because one is English and one is American, but the two versions reveal two distinctly different attitudes towards teenage sex and rebellion. Slade’s version is about social outcasts finding solace and a good time in sexual experimentation and rock and roll. Quiet Riot’s version is about those same kids using sex and rock and roll as a weapon. Rather than celebrating the good times, it feels like a threatening message directed at parents, teachers, and anyone else who just doesn’t understand.

Having now heard them both – hands down – I prefer Slade’s version. But then, I just don’t understand.

Running Scared: Roy Orbison (1961)

He was now singing his compositions in three or four octaves that made you want to drive your car over a cliff. He sang like a professional criminal. Typically, he’d start out in some low, barely audible range, stay there a while and then astonishingly slip into histrionics. His voice could jar a corpse, always leave you muttering to yourself something like, “Man, I don’t believe it. (33)

Well said, Bob. But while his voice is crucial to the effect, I’ve always felt that it was the structure of Orbison’s ballads that made one feel so self-destructive. They are pop operas that drive themselves off of cliffs. They are short stories with no denouement. A slow and steady climb to nowhere.

“Running Scared” begins as a march, the anxiety of being left for a former lover a mere seed. One man and his guitar. But as the thought develops, so does the march, reigning in along the way pianos and drums and brass and strings and singers that sing like angels. An army! It is not until the final section (“Then all at once, he was standing there.”) that the spark finally ignites – private anxieties become a nightmarish reality, and the march becomes a full-on trot as if imbued with fight or flight adrenaline. But what of it? The girl chooses him. The hero wins. All that worrying for naught. The final pulses of the march are rich with brass and strings, matrimonial perhaps. We stand on the sidelines, not sure if what we witnessed was love or war, shaking our heads in disbelief and (yes, Bob) muttering, “Man, I don’t believe it.”

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Shake, Rattle and Roll: Santo and Johnny (196?)

Take today, for instance. I was in a camera shop and heard the song “Shake, Rattle and Roll” on the radio. I guess I didn’t even notice it until I was back in the car. I had that line, “I’m like a one-eyed cat peeping in a seafood store” endlessly repeating in my head. How absurd, I thought. A one-eyed cat. Peeping in a seafood store. And I’m like that cat. Strange!

I said it aloud and my wife looked at me like I was insane. She, too, had heard the song a million times and never once thought about the weirdness of that sentence. I used it throughout the day. If I was accused of being cranky, I’d say, “Yeah, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m like a one-eyed cat peeping in a seafood store.” If the dog was doing something funny, I’d say, “Look at him; he’s like a one-eyed cat peeping in a seafood store.” If I needed a metaphor for national healthcare, I’d say, “It’s complicated… like a one-eyed cat peeping in a seafood store.”

I vowed to use the sentence whenever possible. I saw myself saying it to the mayor as he handed over a key to the city. Sir, to be bestowed this honor is privilege beyond words. I feel like a one-eyed cat peeping in a seafood store.  

But then I Googled it. And I’ll say only this: it’s a double entendre. Yuck!

Silkworm: Arlo (2002)

It reminds me of Cheap Trick, while not actually being Cheap Trick nor an overt rip-off of Cheap Trick. And Cheap Trick-ness, to me, is a very good thing.

It has been clinically proven that pop songs with “oooo” as a pivotal lyric are guaranteed to reduce or eliminate depression. “Ooo-wee,” “ooo-wee-ooo,” and variations of “woo-woo” will work also.

For the life of me I cannot figure out what this song means – and this may be its greatest asset. It might come off as a little anti-intellectual, but there is something to be said for subscribing to a good gut instinct every once in a while. By nature, I am an over-thinker, a great follower of reason and logic. But it’s tough! Very taxing on the spirit. Sometimes, the healthiest thing to do is to let it all go and get meaningless.

And if one cannot manage a vast empty void of nothingness, attribute everything to love. I find it the next greatest thing to meaninglessness.

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Do U Lie?: Prince and the Revolution (1986)

It just doesn’t make sense. Prince is a genius – a gifted vocalist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and consummate showman. (So, he’s a mediocre actor – forgiven!) And yet the bulk of his career consists of insipid dance jams about party life.

I know there many avid Prince fans that would disagree (and how!), but from an objective, critical standpoint, Prince just hasn’t lived up to his potential. Yes, he has released some amazing work (Purple Rain, Chaos and Disorder and Crystal Ball are all ambitious and remarkable). But where is the life-changing masterpiece? The genre-smashing experimental work that will forever alter the way music is written and recorded?  He can do it! But why hasn’t he?

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I Forget It’s There: Lay Low (2008)

I prefer to think of Iceland as another planet, a distant place I’d like to go to if only I had a rocket ship to take me there. Lay Low is not only living proof that this planet exists, but also that they have been observing us. “I Forget It’s There” simultaneously invokes Patsy Cline, Howlin’ Wolf, and Mazzy Star. I don’t know about you, but I find this interplanetary exchange of culture inspiring.

But seriously folks, the record is great. Go get it. No rocket ship required.

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Honesty Is No Excuse: Thin Lizzy (1971)

It makes me wonder if rock music hadn’t invented new emotions. I listen to a song like this and try to find a word (or words) to describe the emotion(s) conveyed. Can’t do it. It’s kind of sad, desperate, maybe a little angry, definitely romantic in a tragic sense. But it feels so good in all its head-hanging, indulgent glory – a genuine sense of relief to let all those messy emotions hang out in the open.

It’s in his voice, in the drums. It’s what composers cannot notate – spontaneity, instinct, impulse, reckless abandon. Like it took Western composers one thousand years to finally get honest.

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Electric Stories: Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons (1968)

One could argue that in 1969 The Monkees were occupying the space that was previously filled by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Check the fine print and you’ll likely find the same circle of session players on both group’s records (L.A.’s The Wrecking Crew). The Four Seasons’ sound had become irrelevant. (There are worse things to be.) “Electric Stories” is an unsuccessful, albeit charming, attempt to reinvent, to revive, to rescue Frankie Valli. It seems like it should have worked. Kooky!

I’ll keep this one in a drawer with my Smurf-Berry Crunch box tops. You know, just in case.

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To Keep My Love Alive: Blossom Dearie (1960)

A soubrette, in case you wanted to know, is a stock character in opera and theatre. She is a comedic character known for her sauciness. She will love you and maybe kill you and then light-heartedly complain about where to dispose of your body. The audience will love her.

Blossom’s small, high-pitched girly voice, an acquired taste for some, is absolutely perfect for these songs. The primary color arrangements (by Russell Garcia) display a predilection for piccolo, xylophone, and clarinet. This combination of instruments brilliantly lend the album a nuttiness paralleled only by Raymond Scott. It’s like listening to a psychotic children’s record.

Favorite lyric (courtesy of Lorenz Hart): “Sir Athelstane indulged in fratricide, / he killed his dad and that was patricide. / One night I stabbed him by my mattress side…” Or wait, is that “matricide”? Hmm.

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Jazz: Double Dee/Steinski (198?)

She heaps herself onto the end of my bed as if to climb it. “What’s the difference between lying and when you’re making things up?” she asks.
“I know of none,” I say.
“What about stories in books?”
“They don’t count,” I say. “They’re made of writing.” (45)

- Mary Robison, One D.O.A., One on the Way (2009)

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Honesty (live): Billy Joel (1987)

Everything I have to say about Billy Joel can be better said by talking about mashed potatoes. You see, I love mashed potatoes. In fact, I love mashed potatoes so much that I even like instant mashed potatoes. No, they’re not quite the same thing as real mashed potatoes, but they still possess the same essence of mashed potatoes, the same je ne sais quoi that brought me to the white, smooth, starchy food in the first place. Now, hold on. I wouldn’t want to permanently replace real mashed potatoes with instant mashed potatoes. But as a tasty and quick alternative, I’ll take a piping hot bowl of reconstituted dehydrated potato flakes any day.

While I love Billy Joel, I recognize that he’s largely an imitation of other, more respected, canonical artists. So what? Everyone is imitating someone. Some of us are just a little more transparent (or better at it) than others.

This particular version of “Honesty” bowls me over. The control he has over his voice is absolutely incredible. There are five or six different versions of Billy Joel singing this song – subtle shadings of his voice dispatched to deliver specific lines to their utmost. Listen to the seamless transition into the last chorus (around 3:08). Fantastic! Even the piano playing, though quite simple, is extremely dynamic, inextricably linked to his voice, to the lyrics. How you gonna diss this man? I know, I know. Billy Joel is not cool. But he’s not cool because it’s not cool to be honest or sincere without some ironic, snarky, tough-guy distance. Are you even listening to the lyrics, man? Forget the posturing. Get in touch with the Billy Joel in you. The maudlin, misunderstood, delicately desperate, syrupy sweet, low down lonely you.

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