War, Hate, and Misunderstanding: The Best Albums of the Late Sixties

Who ya gonna call?

I've never been a particularly groovy guy.  I don't believe that smoking pot makes you smarter or more creative.  Nor do I believe in the magical properties of pyramids, magnets, or crystal deodorant.  I don't think that the position of the stars at the time of our birth influences our personality or that the human race was seeded by extra-terrestrials.  I maintain that the government's decisions to put fluoride in the water supply and inoculate infants against deadly diseases were good ones and not conspiratorial plots to poison us or track our whereabouts.  I also bathe regularly, I don't recycle, and I refuse to pay three times as much for eggs or produce because it has a sticker on it that says "organic."

Basically, I'm not a hippy.

Fox News Headline 1967:
Police dog defends self against taunting Negro.
"Boy was eyeballin' me," dog explains.   

Along with Vietnamese children running down the street with their skin on fire and police beating the shit out of black people for daring to want the civil rights they actually already legally had, hippies are among the first things that come to mind when people think about the sixties.  For me, it's the image of a dirty, lazy, stinky, hairy, Tommy Chonger falling out of a VW bus in a cloud of bong-smoke, face-first into a pile of dogshit, then getting up, adjusting his poop-smudged granny glasses, and mumbling, "oh, wow, man.  Far out," to no one in particular.

Down South, Santorum is still all over the place,
but elsewhere things have pretty much dried up.

Though I blame the hippies for much that is wrong with the world today, I still have mixed feelings about them.  Kind of like I do about Christians.  I mean, hey, Christians built the Sistine Chapel and Chartres Cathedral.  They include among their members some full-on, shitkicking motherfuckers like Dante, and St. Francis, and Leonardo da Vinci.  Then again, they also tore down the monuments of the ancient world, destroyed most of its art and literature, and plunged western civilisation into a dark age for over a thousand years.  They also gave us the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, witch-burning, and more recently, Rick Santorum.

The hippies, contrary to their inflated opinion of themselves, are obviously less historically important.  Nonetheless, few special interest groups have had a more pervasive influence on contemporary culture than Jerry Garcia and his patchouli-stanking ilk.

Let's start with the good stuff, which can be summarized simply, easily, and most importantly, obscenely:

Fucking.

One, no, make that two of the things
I like about hippies.

The hippies brought an awareness of fucking, in all its forms, into the forefront of popular culture: fucking each other, fucking the Man, fucking the dog, and getting all fucking fucked up.  Since then, AIDS, the war on drugs, and the rise of the religious right have pretty much put the kaibosh on all this, but hey, I still dig it the most, Daddy-O.  Calling in sick to work, laying in bed all day, getting high, playing with one another's peepees, and plotting the overthrow of the military-industrial complex is some groovy-ass shit.

Fuckin' A, man!

However, aside from championing the obvious merits of zonking and bonking, the hippies' emphasis on wishy-washy open-mindedness pretty much boils down to a philosophy in which the willful suspension of critical thinking is deemed a virtue.

And it is this unwillingness to recognize qualitative distinctions between things, much more than sex, drugs, and revolutionary sentiment, that has had an altogether pernicious effect on contemporary culture.  Since the sixties, people just don't seem to value or even use their reason much anymore.  Besides the harmless stupidity of mood rings, liking Pink Floyd, and thinking its okay for white people to have dreadlocks, we now live in a world where someone can have misgivings about the moon landing, the origin of species, and whether the holocaust happened, while remaining a steadfast believers in ESP, the trans-substantiation of communion wafers, and the reality of pro-wrestling.  And then run for elected office.  And win.  I mean, in Canada, the current science minister is a fucking chiropractor and a young-earth creationist.  The hippies made it okay for all of us to be entitled to our own opinions, even our own truths, regardless of whether they're contradicted by every shred of evidence anyone has ever found.

It's like, all relative, dude.

 At Nuremberg, Donald insisted he was "just
following Walt's orders."  

Okay, maybe you can't totally blame the hippies for the fact that people have seemingly become more irrational and retarded over the last forty years.  But even the best and brightest of them haven't exactly done much about it.  Throughout the seventies and eighties, while their enemies were out there in the world dismantling the welfare-state, breaking labour unions, bombing abortion clinics, and conducting a full-scale war on Blacks and Hispanics masquerading as a war on drugs, the hippy intelligentsia were sitting in their ivory towers, listening to Enya, while they whined about insensitive pronoun use, racist imagery in Disney movies, and how porn makes fat chicks feel shitty about themselves.  Not that these issues don't matter, it's just that, when the Man's ass-raping you, the first thing you do is try to get that dick out of there, not criticize his cocksmanship.

Anyways, despite all that, the late sixties was a great time for music, even if you're like me and not all that into The Beatles, The Stones, or Led Zeppelin.

...And some of it was even made by hippies.

Enjoy.

10.  The Shaggs: "Philosophy of the World, 1969"

Song Selected: Who Are Parents?"

Imagine a crazy old lady in rural New Hampshire has a premonition while reading her young son's palm.  Her gypsy intuition tells her he will marry a strawberry blonde and have three daughters.  The three girls will form a band and become famous musicians.  The son takes the old bat seriously, especially when the first two predictions came true.  When his daughters become teenagers, he buys them instruments and, even though the girls couldn't play all that well and have absolutely no knowledge of musical structure or convention, he gets them to write an album's worth of songs and books studio time in order to capture their sound "while it's still hot."

Crazy, right?  The really crazy thing, though, is that this actually happened.  The girls are The Shaggs and the album they recorded is "Philosophy of the World," one of the most delightfully demented albums ever made.


9.  The Mothers of Invention: "Freak Out! 1966"

Song Selected: "Hungry Freaks Daddy"

A lot of people hate Frank Zappa.  Even hard-core fans of the Z-man, such as yours truly, have some difficulty disputing that his fusion of Edgar Varese, doo-wop, and sophomoric locker room humour is sometimes, well, kind of retarded.  But Zappa at his best and Zappa at his worst occasionally overlap in a sublimely ridiculous sort of way, as they do on this debut offering by The Mothers of Invention.  As well as being credited by many as being the first rock concept album and influencing both The Beatles' "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and The Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds," on "Hungry Freaks Daddy" and "Wowie Zowie," it also features the best use of xylophone and kazoo in the history of rock 'n' roll.  Let the Mothers help you get your freak on, bitches!


8.  The Fugs: "The Fugs' Second Album, 1966"

Song Selected: "Dirty Old Man"

The "Fugs' Second Album" evokes the all of best things about the sixties counterculture.  It's kind of like a Robert Crumb comic set to music:  an LSD-addled orgy of ejaculating cocks, hallucinatory gobbledeegook, dirty jokes, rabble-rousing faux-Marxist propaganda, and big, bouncing titties.

I could say more but I don't think I have to.


7.  Mississippi Fred McDowell: "I Do Not Play No Rock 'N' Roll, 1969"

Song Selected: "Good Morning, Little School Girl"

Mississippi Fred McDowell is actually from Tennessee, not Mississippi, but he's still the shit as far as authentic Delta blues goes.  He was an old man by the time he was discovered by Alan Lomax in 1959 and had never recorded before.  Instead, he'd made his living share-cropping and busking outside a candy store in Como, Mississippi for extra cash.  What's great about this album is that you get to listen to old-time Delta blues recorded with modern techniques and equipment.  It's like getting to hear Charley Patton or Robert Johnson without having to aurally squint through the hissing crackle of a shitty 1920s or 30s recording.  It's also cool to hear McDowell babble almost incomprehensibly about all sorts of shit.  Like why he don't play no rock 'n' roll:

Because it sucks.


6.  Bob Dylan: "Blonde On Blonde, 1966"

Song Selected: "4th Time Around"

At the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, Dylan basically stuck his middle finger up at the American folk audience by going electric.  He got booed, but in typical Dylan fashion, he didn't give a rat's ass, and recorded a couple of raucous folk-rock albums, "Bringing It All Back Home" and "Highway 61 Revisited," to rub their folky faces in it.  "Blonde On Blonde" is a much less grating and angular affair, softened as it is with C&W warmth and R&B soul.  Besides the ultra-irritating "Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35" that opens the album (otherwise known as "Everybody Must Get Stoned"), every track on "Blonde On Blonde" is either, poignant, or interesting, or sublimely beautiful, or all three, as in the case of "Visions of Johanna," "One Of Us Must Know," "I Want You," "Just Like A Woman," and the above-mentioned "4th Time Around."  With the possible exception of 1975's "Blood On the Tracks," this is Dylan's best shit.


5.  Aretha Franklin: "I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You, 1967"

Song Selected: "A Change Is Gonna Come"

Though her career as a recording artist goes all the way back to 1956, Aretha didn't really begin her reign as the Queen of Soul until she recorded "I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You."  Then she busted out into the popular consciousness like a pair of double Ds out of a B-cup bikini top.  "I Never Loved A Man..." is often cited as the best R&B album of all time and it'd be tough to dispute this, packed as it is with songs of sexy sin, sultry salvation, and full-on I-am-woman-hear-me-roar-type female empowerment.  Limp-dick, do-wrong motherfuckers beware!  The Queen'll bite that shit right off.  Respect!


4.  Sly & The Family Stone: "Stand! 1969"

Song Selected: "Everyday People"

James Brown may have been the first to hit it on the one and vamp it 'til it bleeds, but Sly Stone and his supergroovy family perfected it, tossing heaping scoops of rock, psychedelia, and utopian interracialism into the funky mix.  Sly later became rock's most notorious unfatal drug addict and scam artist, regularly ripping off promoters by getting advanced for performances he was always a no-show to, but for a few years during the late sixties and early seventies, he was probably the coolest and funkiest man alive.


3.  Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band: "Trout Mask Replica, 1969"

Song Selected: "Moonlight On Vermont"

Featuring songs about the holocaust ("Dachau Blues"), the nocturnal hallucinations of aquatic invertebrates ("Neon Meate Dream of an Octafish"), and a two-movement homage to the female pudenda ("Hair Pie: Bake 1 & 2"), needless to say, this Zappa-produced offering from Don Van Vliet and his merry band of hippy freaks is truly one of the weirdest albums ever made.  It's also one of the best.

2.  The Beach Boys: "Pet Sounds, 1966"

Song Selected: "Hold On To Your Ego"

Ask yourself what kind of music Ludwig van Beethoven might make if he was reincarnated as a fat, ultra-uncool California kid who couldn't surf, was deaf in one ear, and was ruthlessly bullied by his dad.  The answer would be "Pet Sounds."  Brian Wilson here creates a rhapsodic symphonic soundscape in which to act out his own unrequited California dreams.  Though always seemingly but a swoon away, the fulfillment of these longings remains ever-elusive, like a hallucination of happiness you know in your heart of hearts isn't real, but that you refuse to give up believing in.  A heartbreakingly beautiful ode to joy from a man that madness and sadness would keep silent for almost forty years afterward.

1.  The Velvet Underground: "The Velvet Underground, 1969"

Song Selected: "What Goes On"

Many would argue that this eponymous third album by The Velvet Underground, while undoubtedly great, still pales in comparison to their Warhol-"produced" debut with the German chanteuse, Nico.  They would be wrong.  "The Velvet Underground & Nico" is unquestionably a revolutionary album and it sounds as such, replete with all the paradigm-overturning highs and frustratingly dated lows of what 1967's avant-garde thought the new world would sound like.  "The Velvet Underground," on the other hand, is the sonic equivalent of the perfect fuck: bursting with anticipatory swellings, sweaty, communion-inducing interplay, and climactic discharges of energy.  And it ends by snuggling up against you like a groggy lover while you drift off to a deliciously dreamy sleep.

Given a choice between fucking and fighting, I'll take fucking, and so should you.

***DICK'S PICKS*** 

for the week of March 11, 2012

New Shit:

Tennis: "Young And Old"

Song Selected: "My Better Self"

Great story about this band.  Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore met in college, fell in love, dropped out, bought a sailboat, and decided to spend a year exploring the eastern seaboard on it.  When they were done, they figured they'd write and record a bunch of songs about the experience.  The result was the fucking fantastic "Cape Dory," which beautifully commemorates their adventure of love on the not-so-high seas.  While the theme of "Cape Dory" is, as you might expect, largely nautical, "Young and Old," though slightly more earthy, is no less sun-soaked.  Kind of like a premonition of springtime during these darkest, coldest days of the year.  Check it out.


Old Shit:

Chic: "Dance, Dance, Dance: The Best of Chic"



Song Selected: "Good Times"

Though Disco is, with some justification, the most maligned of R&B's many incarnations, only the seriously boogie-averse can resist the shit shaking appeal of Chic.  Chic was the brainchild of guitar and bass duo Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, who also created Sister Sledge and all that funky shit you used to hear on Sesame Street.  The twelve-inch singles collected here offer a utopian vision of a boogie wonderland where the champagne flows like the crystal streams in heaven and the cocaine never runs out.  Combined with a handful of Tylenol 3s, a bubble-bath, and a vigourous session of masturbation, "Dance, Dance, Dance, The Best of Chic" is also the best cure for a hangover I can think of.

Learning To Love The Bomb: The Best Albums of the Early 1960s

Is that a Mark 24 High-yield thermonuclear
device between your legs or are you just
happy to see me?

A couple of nights ago, I was startled from a deep and dreamless sleep by a piercing shriek reverberating repeatedly through my bedroom.

"Goddamn it," I thought, still only half awake.  "I must've miss-set my alarm again."

I don't know why or how, but this happens pretty often, and ever time, it always scares the shit out of me.  I don't know about you, but being jarred to consciousness in the middle of the night by the beep! beep! beep! of a cranked clock radio triggers an almost primordially violent reaction in me - an almost lizard-brain-like spasm of blind and mindless hate.  It's like being awakened by someone pissing in your mouth or jamming something up your ass.

Oh yeah?
Well you're all a bunch of fucking faggots!

Your eyes snap open.  The rectum recoils.  Arms lash out, again and again, like cobras lunging at imaginary mongeese, until finally - finally! your flailing fingers crash down upon the snooze bar, and the miserable, evil fucking thing falls venomized, and silenced.

But after I whacked at the alarm clock half a dozen times, I realized that it wasn't the source of the ungodly squeal.  It took me a minute, but I finally figured out what was doing it.  

It was my apartment intercom buzzer.

I threw on my kimono and bunny slippers and shuffled furiously toward the front door, all the while preparing a caustic blitzkrieg of profanity to unleash on whatever fuck-tard was on the other side of it.

I threw open the door, but before I could commence my torrent of abuse, a buddy of mine who, for legal reasons, shall remain nameless, stuffed a picture in my face of two naked, fake-titted hoochies dyking out in the back of a corvette, and then yelled, at the top of his lungs:

"Look, Dick.  Look!  The end is fucking nigh!  The end is fucking nigh!"

My buddy isn't campaigning for Rick Santorum, so it wasn't the mere fact of people engaging in a Biblically unsanctioned sex act that was making him lose his shit.  But it was only after a smoke or two and a calming couple of PBRs that he was finally able to wax coherent and tell me what the fuck was going on.

Its the end of the world as we know it,
and I feel fine.

Apparently, he'd been perusing the magazine section at the 24 hour Adult's Only Video store, when Penthouse's "2012 Girl + Girl Calendar" caught his leering eye.  He thumbed his way lasciviously through the monthly instalments of red-hot, girl-on-girl action, but when he got to December, a big, icky wave of fear and horror came crashing over him like a deluge from on high.

The calendar ended suddenly and inexplicably on December 31, 2012.

This could only mean one thing:

The Mayans were right, if a little off on their dating.

The world will end in late 2012!  Penthouse says so!

Ha, ha.  Mucho funny, gringo.
But on December 21, you will all die.

This may seem ridiculous, but it really isn't any more so than thinking the world will end because some ancient Mexicans left a job unfinished.  I mean, let's face it, working on a calendar is the ultimate exercise in futility.  In some ways, it's even worse than the degrading shit their descendants have to do nowadays for the all-you-can-eaters at the resorts in Cancun.  I'm thinking at some point the Mayans just said, "fuck this mierda," threw down their chisels, hopped into the 14th century equivalent of their El Caminos, and andele andele arribaed on home.

Anyways, my late-night visitor got me thinking - both about the end of the world and about the last time we actually had to worry about this.

Oh really, Nikita?  You ever fuck Marilyn Monroe?
No?  I didn't fucking think so.

It was way back in 1962.  JFK and Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev decided to have a "whose got the biggest dick" competition, or, as history remembers it, the Cuban Missile Crisis and gambled the lives of every living thing on the planet on it.  For thirteen days in October, terrified schoolchildren learned how to "duck and cover" from a nearby atomic blast by hiding under their desks, while Kennedy and Kruschev wiggled their peepees at one another and brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation.

As it turned out, JFK had, and was, the biggest dick.  Lee Harvey Oswald thought so, too, and about a year later put a bullet in his head for good measure.

Kruschev was deposed for being a pussy, retired to the countryside, and wrote his memoirs in which he snivelled and moaned about what a bunch of traitors and ingrates his commie comrades were.  Then in 1971, he died of heart disease like a little bitch.

Assholes.

Sorry son, but we're out of food,
and I'm gonna need your sister as a breeder. 

But now for the really important question.

As Americans hoarded canned goods, cowered in their backyard bomb shelters, and thought about which of their daughters they'd like to begin repopulating the planet with, what kind of tunes were they listening to?

The truth is, the early 60s wasn't a great time for rock 'n' roll in general and the rock album in particular.  In fact, the album really didn't become a bona fide rock 'n' roll artform until 1966 when the Beach Boys and the Mothers of Invention released "Pet Sounds" and "Freak Out!", respectively.

After the halcyon days of its youth, rock 'n' roll had a bit of an adolescent slump in the early 1960s, partially due to severe cutbacks in top-notch personnel.  Elvis was drafted into the army.  Little Richard abandoned rock 'n' roll altogether and became a minister.  Jerry Lee Lewis' Kentucky-fried marriage to his twelve year old cousin didn't go over all that well up north and his career went down the outhouse hole.  These young marble giants, hewn like gods from the quarries of Mount Rockmore were replaced with singing Ken-dolls like Fabian and Frankie Avalon.  With a predictable diminishment in quality of output.

The truth is, the half-decade between 1960 and 1965 was still basically a jazz age, with Miles, Mingus, and Coltrane releasing mature and musically sophisticated masterpieces that exposes the early Beatles and Stones stuff for the bubble-gummy girly-pop it actually was.  But while rock suffered through its first growing pains, this period also saw the emergence of folk, the blues, and Brazilian bossanova, as major crossover forms.  All in all, it wasn't the best of times, but it wasn't the worst of times either.

Here are the top ten albums of the early 1960s (1960-1965).

10.  Glenn Gould: "Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, 1965"


















Song Selected: "Prelude and Fugue, Nos. 1 & 2"

Along with Wayne Gretzky, Neil Young, and Bret "The Hitman" Hart, Glenn Gould is one of The Great White North's all-time bests.  He was instrumental virtuoso of the highest calibre, the 20th-century's most important interpreter of the music of Johan Sebastian Bach, as well as being a fine composer in his own right.  He was also totally batshit crazy.  But unlike a lot of wack-jobs, particularly in the classical milieu, you can actually hear his insanity manifest itself on record.  Listen closely, and you can hear Gould humming, mumbling, and babbling to himself, creating a subtle, but delightfully kooky counterpoint to an utterly masterful solo piano performance of Bach's "The Well-Tempered Clavier."  It's crazy good.


9.  Johnny Cash: "Bitter Tears, 1964"

Song Selected: "White Girl"

Southerners often get a bad rap for being rednecked, racist sons of bitches, and not without some justification.  I mean, hey, they fought a war in order to defend their right to keep people as property and then when they got their asses handed to them, they took it out on their former slaves like a bunch of fucking sore losers.  But then there's Johnny Cash.  While many of his Dixieland compatriots were still getting their lynch on, the Man in Black was recording a tender and heartfelt elegy on the plight of the American natives.  The songs on "Bitter Tears" include ballads about racism, cultural genocide, and how assholes like Colonel Custer get what they deserve.  Fuck the Lone Ranger.  Cash is the real Kimosabe.  


8.  Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto: "Getz/Gilberto, 1964"

Song Selected: "Corcovado"

Although Getz's previous recording with Charlie Byrd, "Jazz Samba" was the first, this was the album that ignited the bossanova craze in American, which is the main reason the "Bossa 1" and "Bossa 2"  remain built-in rhythms on every electric keyboard.  It also introduced the non-Portugese speaking world to the beautiful songs of Antonio Carlos Jobim, the loping, sleepy guitar and vocals of Joao Gilberto and the uber-cool, deadpan singing of his wife, Astrud.  A bachelor-paddy classic.      


7.  Bob Dylan: "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan"



Song Selected: "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"

Unfortunately, this is a live video version of Dylan performing the song at the CBC in 1964.  Apparently Dylan or Sony records doesn't want his studio shit on YouTube.  Neither would surprise me.  The cunts at Sony, like all major-label douchebags, are well-known enemies of free-speech and Dylan is a notorious asshole.  But he's also a genius, arguably the greatest songwriter who ever lived.  Ironically, this was the album that channeled folk music into the mainstream of American culture.  Ironic in that, besides "Corrina, Corrina," none of the songs on this album are actually folk songs: they're Dylan songs - written in a traditional style, sure, but they're original compositions rather than tunes passed down through an endless chain of anonymous folkies.  And like the folk songs they so expertly mimic, "Blowin' in the Wind," "The Girl From the North County," "Masters of War," "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" and "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" will no doubt remain alive in the American consciousness long after the asshole who wrote them has been forgotten.


6.  Junior Wells' Chicago Blues Band: "Hoodoo Man Blues, 1965"

Song Selected: "Snatch It Back And Hold It"

Although the blues remained largely a singles artform through the early sixties, there were some great albums during this period.  Howlin' Wolf's eponymous debut and "Muddy Waters at Newport" come to mind.  However, my favourite blues album of the early sixties is this gritty, funky, super-soulful debut from Junior Wells' Chicago Blues Band.  Wells' sex-charged vocals and sinewy harp lines wind their way around the snaps and pops of Buddy Guy's guitar and the shit-stomping rhythm section of Jack Myers and Billy Warren.  If you like the blues and don't have this album, get it.  Now.

5.  John Fahey: "The Dance of Death and Other Plantation Favourites, 1965"

Song Selected: "On The Banks of the Owchita"

I fucking love John Fahey.  Pretty much all of his albums reward a close listener with an utterly unique aural experience and this album is certainly no exception.  Although his 1963 recording of "Death Chants, Breakdowns, and Military Waltzes" contains his first recordings of some of his finest tracks, I prefer his 1967 re-recording of the album, for the simple reason that it sound better.  Anyways, this makes "The Dance of Death..." in my opinion, both the best of his early albums and also one of the best albums of the early sixties.  Its a dank and haunting stew of bluesy folkishness from the best guitar player ever.

4.  Charles Mingus: "The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, 1963"

Song Selected: "Stop! Look! And Listen, Sinner Jim Whitney!"

A much more challenging album than his earlier classic, "Mingus Ah Um," but what "The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady" lacks in easy-listenability it makes up for in passion and full-on ferocity.  In many ways, its a blues album, not structurally, but emotionally.  The thick and densely-layered arrangements of the four tracks that make up the album create an almost living sonic texture - one that moans, groans, sings, sobs, snarls, and slouches toward Bethlehem to be born.  A rough beast, indeed, but a fucking beautiful one.

3.  Miles Davis: "Sketches of Spain, 1960"

Song Selected: "Concierto de Aranjuez (Part 2 Ending)"

Miles Davis was a shitty human being.  He was among other things, an unrepentant drug addict, a cruel and abusive husband and lover, and a deadbeat dad (his first wife actually had him thrown in jail for not paying child support while she and her children starved and he spent his money on drugs and hookers). But like other dastardly characters in the annals of art, its important to separate the man from his work and, quite frankly, Miles is the greatest artist of the twentieth-century and one of the greatest of all time. Here, on the fourth of the five amazing albums he made with arranger, Gil Evans, he explores the "Spanish tinge" that Jelly Roll Morton spoke of as jazz's essential seasoning, the spice that distinguishes it from all other musical dishes.  One of Miles' tastiest.


Bill Evans: "Waltz For Debby, 1961"

Song Selected: "Some Other Time"

Of all those who have laid fingers to ivory in the history of jazz, Bill Evans is perhaps the greatest and most influential.  On Sunday, June 25, 1961 Bill Evans, bassist, Scott LaFaro, and percussionist, Paul Motian performed their legendary last performance at the Village Vanguard in New York (which also produced the "Sunday at the Village Vanguard" album).  Ten days later, LaFaro died in a car crash.  What makes these sessions special, though, besides the incredible artistry of the players, is Evans conception for both his trio and the recordings that commemorate them.  Unlike your typical piano trio, this is not merely a keyboardist soloing over top of a rhythm section.  Here, the musicians are equally great parts of a even greater whole, communicating almost telepathically with one another to create an example of ensemble playing that, at least philosophically, harkens back to the early days of jazz before it became a soloist's artform.  Revolutionary at the time and still extremely influential.  Nightclub jazz at its best.


1.  John Coltrane: "A Love Supreme, 1965"

Song Selected: "Resolution (Part 2)"

For most of his career, John Coltrane was a talented but totally unreliable junky.  Though its arguable to what extent the monkey affected his actual playing, there's no doubt it caused him innumerable personal and professional problems, most notably getting him kicked out of the Miles Davis Quintet, where he both came into his own as an artist and did some of his best of his early work.  Then in 1964, he found God, kicked his habit cold turkey and in 1965 recorded "A Love Supreme," one of the most lyrical and sublimely beautiful performances ever captured on tape from this often skronky angry man of the tenor.  Its also Coltrane's best album, the second best jazz album of all time, and the best album of the early sixties.  Almost makes you want to believe.      

***DICK'S PICKS***

for the week of February 26, 2012

New Release:

Cloud Nothings: "Attack On Memory"

Song Selected: "Cut You"

2012 is still very, very young, but this is the best album I've heard so far this year.  Cloud Nothings do nothing new, really, (their overall sound is equal parts 80s hardcore punk and 90s indie rock) but they do it really well.  They're particularly good at transitioning from emotion to emotion: from moody brooding to suffering to full-on rage, to a cathartic outpouring of joy.  Kind of like the Descendents meets Slint, if that means anything to you.  If it doesn't, check out "Attack On Memory" anyways.

And then check out the Descendents and Slint.

Past Classic:

Taj Mahal: "Taj Mahal"

Song Selected: "Leaving Trunk"

Taj Mahal is essentially a bluesman, but one influenced almost as much by rock and pop as he is by the sounds of the Delta.  As such, his music is both funkier and more hook-laden them than that of many more traditionally-fixated contemporary players.  On this, his self-titled debut, Taj stomps and swaggers through some deep down and dirty territory, emerging stanky but smiling.  And I think you will, too.

Shit Your Grandma Liked: The Reverend Dick Picks the Best Albums of the 1950s

I don't know which I like best:
cooking, cleaning, or intercourse.
Cooking, I guess.

I hate Canada Geese.  They're nasty, miserable, filthy, stupid, vicious fucking things and if it wasn't for the demented laws protecting them as some sort of Canadian national symbol, I'd set up a non-profit association whose sole purpose would be to wipe them off the face of the earth forever.

Every Fall they migrate south, but the other day while I was riding my bike along the Seawall here in Vancouver, I noticed they were back, lunging at children, hissing at tourists, and shitting all over the place like the nasty, miserable, filthy, stupid, vicious fucking things they are.  As I passed by a small flock of them and extended my leg so I could give one or two of them a kick in the ass as I zipped by, it occurred to me that their return, though unfortunate, is not without it's upside:

It also means Spring is on its way at last.

Johnny Gill: Yo Bobby,
what you get Whitney
for Valentine's Day?
Bobby Brown: A coffin.
Ralph Tresvant: That's cold, bro.
Bobby: That's my prerogative.

I should have sensed it.  The return of the geese to their nesting grounds on the Seawall coincided almost exactly with the death of Whitney Houston, an event which also had a bit of a Springtimey vibe about it - kind of like when Dorothy's house landed on the witch in the Wizard of Oz and all the Munchkins started to sing and dance around.  For those of you with delicate sensibilities and terrible taste, I apologize, but I really can't get all that weepy about the death of a crackhead millionairess whose music makes my rectums recoil.

Quite frankly, she was dead to me already.

Anyways, with these seasonal themes of growth and change in mind, I've decided to spruce up the look of the Gospel a little bit.  Look closely and you'll note that I've switched the previous black background for a oh-so-slightly different black background.

Chuh-chuh-chuh-changes!

I've also added a new feature called "Dick's Picks," which you can find by scrolling down to the bottom of the page.  Each week, I'll administer a two LP-length dose of the good stuff I keep behind the counter: a recently released album that I think is worth checking out, as well as a forgotten or under-appreciated classic from the past.

I know four inches doesn't sound
like much, but it's thick.

Starting this week with the 1950s, I'm also going to take you bitches on a magic carpet ride through the history of the Long-Player Album.  Though there's obviously a shitload of recorded music prior to the invention of the LP in 1948, when your talking about albums, as I will be, the 1950s are pretty much where it starts.

Though rock acts really didn't start putting out great albums until the mid 1960s, almost immediately, the LP became pretty much the standard format for jazz.  Frank Sinatra also embraced the LP by the midway point in the decade, after Elvis and other rock 'n' roll acts began to eclipse him on the pop singles charts.  The result was a handful of albums that were among pop music's first masterpieces in the format.

Truman: Psst. Hey Joe.  Now that we've carved
the world up between us here, what say
we ditch fatso and go get us some bitches?

Anyways, here goes: the top 10 albums of the 1950s.
















10.  Ravi Shakar: "Three Ragas, 1956"

Song selected: "Raga Jog"

Though unfortunate associations with acid-headed hippies emerge almost as soon as you start listening to Indian classical music, there's actually a good reason why people started going all gaga for raga gurus like Ravi Shankar in the 1960s: he's a full-on shitkicking motherfucker of a sitar player.  No one ever has, is, or likely ever will be any better than him.  I mean, fuck, There are more ideas in what's called the alap or opening, free improvisation section of "Raga Jog" than Jimmy Page or Pete Townsend came up with in their entire lives.  This album probably would have ranked higher, but I had to knock Ravi down a couple of spots for fathering Norah Jones.


9.  Sun Ra & His Arkestra: "Sound Of Joy, 1956"

Song selected: "Ankh"

Sun Ra is one of jazz's great weirdos.  Sometime in the 1950s, he became convinced that he was an extra-terrestrial from Saturn, changed his name to Sun Ra, and developed a world view and personal philosophy that combined Egyptian mythology with some totally crazy-ass space alien shit.  Seriously.  Later on, his music would occasionally sound like it was made by someone suffering from mental health issues, but this earlier effort is just a top-notch, modern, big band swing album, one of the best ever, in fact.  Exquisitely arranged, beautifully performed, richly textured: a great example of swinging, space-ace, bachelor pad music.


8.  Ray Charles: "Ray Charles, 1957"

Song selected: "Sinner's Prayer"

No one sings gospel songs about fucking quite like Ray Charles, and his 1957 debut is one of the best examples of smutty soul I can think of.  It's hard to understand just how subversive a song like "I Got A Woman" or "Hallelujah, I Love Her So" were back in 1957 when they came out: nowadays, it'd be kind of like jacking off in public to a picture of the Virgin Mary.  This album also laid down the blueprint for much of the soul music of the 1960s: groove-oriented, gospel-inflected blues songs about - what else?  Love and sex.  Which for Ray Charles, seem to be pretty much the same thing.


7.  Thelonius Monk: "The Genius of Modern Music, Volume 1, 1952"

Song Selected: "Ruby, My Dear"

It's hard to underestimate the greatness and importance of this album.  For one, this 1952 release by Thelonious Monk is the first masterpiece of the LP format.  It also documents one of the architects of bebop's first recording sessions as a leader.  Not to mention that the album contains the Monk compostions "Off Minor," "Ruby, My Dear," "Well, You Needn't," "Epistrophy," and "'Round About Midnight,"all of which would become standards and among the most recognized tunes in the jazz catalog.  Must-have music for any jazz collection.


6.  Ornette Coleman "The Shape Of Jazz To Come, 1959"

Song selected: "Congeniality"

The release of Ornette Coleman's 1959 Atlantic debut is a watershed moment in the history of jazz.  It is the birth of Free Jazz, a subgenre of hard bop that basically dispenses with the harmonic underpinnings of the music altogether, emphasizing instead the relationship between the melodic lines.  On his previous two releases, the largely ignored "Something Else!" and "Tomorrow Is The Question," Coleman was not entirely successful in realizing his new and altogether game-changing conception.  Both records still retain lingering traces of many of the harmonic and structural elements that Coleman would abandon completely on "The Shape of Jazz To Come."  Coleman's choice of sidemen have a lot to do with both his past failures and newfound success.  He stopped using a pianist after the first album, and in Billy Higgins and Charlie Haden, he finally finds a rhythm section that was open-minded and sensitive enough to follow him and Don Cherry outside the box, without losing touch with reality altogether.  Not all jazz to come would be shaped as Coleman suggests here, but like it or not, the music would never be the same again.


5.  Elvis Presley: "Elvis Presley, 1956"

Song Selected: "Blue Moon"


There's probably no album more historically important in the history of pop music than this one.  Elvis Presley's self-titled debut kicks off the rock 'n' roll era, and does so with blue-suede boot to the ass.  People often accuse Elvis of racistly appropriating black culture in order to sell a watered-down version of it to middle America, but that's a bunch of bullshit. This is to confuse him with his pigmentally-challenged imitators and with the suits who got filthy stinking rich peddling his funky white ass to America.  Elvis didn't invent rock 'n' roll, he WAS rock 'n' roll - its living, breathing embodiment.  Equal parts Country, R&B, and Gospel, The King is the real fucking deal.  Long may he reign.

4.  Frank Sinatra: "Songs For Swingin' Lovers, 1956"

Song Selected: "I've Got You Under My Skin"

In the 1950s, Frank Sinatra was the undisputed master of the album.  Between 1955 and 1959, he released 7 or 8 albums that are all fantastic, some dark and depressing: "Only The Lonely," "In The Wee Small Hours," "No One Cares," and "Where Are You?"; others upbeat and swinging: "Come Fly With Me," "Come Dance With Me", and "A Swingin' Affair" to name a few.  My favourite of them all, though is "Songs For Swingin' Lovers."  This is Old Blue Eyes at his rat-packy best: smooth, cool, loose as fuck, and yet in complete and total control.  Few, if any artists have mastered their medium the way Sinatra has the American Songbook.  The best crooner ever.


3.  Charles Mingus: "Mingus Ah Um, 1959"

Song Selected: "Better Git It In Your Soul"

With the possible exception of "The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady," "Mingus Ah Um" is the best, and certainly the most immediately appealing of Charles Mingus' large and excellent body of work.  The album is both musically forward looking and conscious of its history: nodding to past greats like Duke Ellington and Jelly Roll Morton on "An Open Letter To Duke" and "Jelly Roll" while remaining very much a modern and progressive jazz album.  Not at all a bad place to start if you want to check out jazz in general or Mingus in particular and aren't into the skronky shit.


2.  Dave Brubeck Quartet: "Time Out, 1959"

Song Selected: "Take Five"

Largely because of its enormous popularity (Brubeck even graced the cover of Time magazine not long after its release) "Time Out" is often reviled as gimmicky, soulless, and almost self-consciously caucasian.  It's none of the above.  Among Brubeck's innovations here include the use of unusual time signatures like 5/4 and 7/8 as well as experimenting with contemporary avant garde compositional techniques like phasing and minimalism.  Although Miles Davis laid the foundation for the style on "The Birth Of The Cool," Brubeck's work, particularly on this album, along with that of Stan Getz, Chet Baker, and Gerry Mulligan is what became known as West Coast Cool Jazz, a softer, less rhythmic, one might say, loungier version of jazz than the east coast Hard Bop of Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, or Charles Mingus.  This shit is too cool for school, Daddy-O.


1.  Miles Davis: "Kind Of Blue, 1959"

Song Selected: "So What?"

"Kind of Blue" is almost unequivocally cited by jazz-heads as the creme de la creme of the idiom and, quite frankly, I cannot help but concur.  Perhaps the most astonishing thing about the album is that the music on it is completely improvised: the musicians (who included John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderley, Paul Chambers, and Jimmy Cobb) actually had nothing to work with prior to recording other than some rough sketches of modes that Miles had scribbled down on a napkin before the session.  In terms of what is attainable when a small group of inspired and highly gifted artists gather together to make something beautiful, it is an unparalleled masterpiece.  This is not just the best album of the 50s, or of all time, it is, quite possibly, the greatest music ever created by human beings.  If you don't like it, there's almost undoubtedly something seriously fucking wrong with you.


Make sure to check out the Gospel next week for the top 10 albums of the early sixties (1960-65)

*** DICK'S PICKS *** for the Week of February 19, 2012.

New Release:

John Talabot: "Fin"

Song Selected: "Oro y Sangre"

Imagine your at a club, all fucked up on E, shaking your shit and your glow stick like it ain't no thang, when suddenly the ceiling splits open above you, letting in the blinding brightness of a fierce, Ibiza-like sun.  Indeed, the sunstroke electronica that Spanish DJ, John Talabot creates here almost seems better suited to a day at the beach rather than a night at the club.  "Fin" has a bit of that drugged out, sunshine supermanish feel to it that many, including myself, have found so appealing in the work of artists like DeLorean and Caribou, both of whom are worth checking out if you haven't already.  It may require some chemical supplementation in order to appreciate fully, but "Fin" is still one of the best new releases so far this year.  Although the year is still very, very young.


Past Classic:

Various Artists: "The Indestructible Beat of Soweto"

Song Selected: "Ohude Manikiniki" by Umahlathini Nabo.

That music such as this, so brimming with life and joy, could come gurgling up out of the tyrannical oppression and abject squalor of the apartheid-ravaged townships of South Africa is a testament to the indestructibility of the human spirit as well as of the Mbaqanga beat of Soweto.  Here, hopefulness emerges from a hopeless situation through an authentic and heroic engagement with the things that matter most.  If listening to this compilation of gloriously soulful psalms about life, love, and the struggles that abound does not make you ashamed of our culture's snivelling predilection for bitching and moaning about shit that in the great scheme of things is almost laughably petty, it is only a matter of time before you discover the dark and horrible truth about yourself:

You are a cyborg.

Movin' On Up: Maximum Condo Rock

George: Move it on up, Weezie.
Weezie: Like that, Daddy?
George: That's it...  Yeah... that's it.
You know what Big Poppa likes.

So the two of you are finally ready.  After years of prudent choices, rigid self-control, and saving, saving, saving, you're gonna do it.  You empty your joint account, mortgage yourselves to the hilt, and take the plunge.

You're in way over your heads and terrified as fuck, but you now have what you've both always wanted: your own domain of neutral taupes and muted pastels.  As you hold hands, glancing about the living room, you note with pleasure how the large framed print of Klimt’s "The Kiss" that you got at Costco picks out the subtle accents in the drapes and carpet.  The new matching couch and loveseat are like the two of you dancing, that is to say, stiff and angular, and conspicuous, despite being colour-coordinated with their equally insipid surroundings.  Both are oriented around an enormous, white, particleboard entertainment centre, which houses a super-sized TV, a leather-bound set of Reader’s Digest condensed novels, and a small assortment of empty, tinted-glass vases, placed strategically about the unit to provide a daring splash of primary colour.  Overall, the room has about as much personality as a wooden Indian, and there isn’t a single item in it that has any real meaning to either of you.  Your pasts have been relegated to the storage locker.  They don't belong here.  The whole place is like this – the bedroom, the one and a half baths, the kitchen – you are now living in an Ikea catalogue.

Now that I bought us the condo,
Denise is considering
having sex with me again. 

And you love it!

You don't have any actual friends anymore, but you're looking forward to having work colleagues and your new neighbours over for an awkward dinner party.

You will cook a pot roast together and splurge on a spinach dip and a cheese platter from Whole Foods.

The wine?  OMG!  Everyone's favourite: Yellow Tail Shiraz!

After dinner entertainment?  Um, Pictionary of course!  Your guests will frickin' flip!

But then suddenly a cloud falls over your giddy planning.

What about the music?

You stare blankly at one one another.

Chris Martin insists Coldplay's next album
will be a edgier, more sexually-charged effort:
less condo, more well-lit basement suite.

Neither of you has listened to music in years.  In fact, you don't really care for it anymore.  It's so... noisy.  But there's always music at dinner parties.  It always used to be Portishead or Coldplay.  Have things changed?  You have no idea.

Panic ensues.  What the fuck are you going to do?

Don't freak, yuppies.  The Reverend Dick was put on the earth to help people, even people like you, and that's exactly what he's going to do.

No, go ahead as long as she's into it,
but watch the rug, would you?  It's Persian.

The most important thing to keep in mind about Condo Rock is that it must be rhythmic, mildly interesting, but utterly inoffensive.  There can be no yelling, no distorted guitars, and no overtly sexual overtones.  Remember, this is an awkward dinner party - not an orgy.  It's often best to avoid music with lyrics altogether, as they can often confuse or even offend your guests.  Light, catchy Electronic music works best.  In a pinch, you can sometimes get away with instrumental funk if you're careful, or soft, neutered rock music.  You know, like Coldplay, but not quite so openly gay.

And when in doubt, keep it caucasian.

There's very few things white people do really well musically, but one of them is making stuff that is mildly pleasant and totally non-threatening.

By the way, the albums listed below are not lame.  Far from it.  But they're great albums that even lame people will like.  Or at least ignore.

Enjoy.



The Incredible Bongo Band: "Bongo Rock!"

Song selected: "Apache"

This great compilation of the best tracks on the two Incredible Bongo Band albums is perhaps the funkiest thing that whitey has ever done.  Michael Viner, an A&R Executive at MGM records, would poach unused studio time in the middle of the night, call up label session musicians, and record bongo-heavy, Latin-tinged versions of rock and R&B songs.  The Bongo Band was also a fucking gold mine of samples for early hip-hop artists like Afrika Bambaataa.  Incredible.


















Air: "Moon Safari"

Song selected: "Remember."

One of my personal favourites.  Soft, groovy, cool but never, ever abrasive, The French band, Air's lushly textured Moon Safari is a gentle masterpiece, one likely do get even the stuffiest dinner guests bobbing their heads like they're giving a poltergeist a blowjob.  Thirteen years after its release, this may still be the best electronic album of all time.  Tres bon.

DJ Shadow: "Endtroducing..."

Song selected: "Building Steam With A Grain Of Sand."

Josh Davis a.k.a., DJ Shadow is well-known as being one of the great "diggers," people who rummage through piles of old records looking for forgotten relics and undiscovered gems.  On this, his 1996 full-length debut, Shadow creates an almost symphonic hip-hop soundscape, not because he uses orchestral instruments, but simply because of the dense layering of his samples and beats.  Be forewarned: Endtroducing... might be just a tad too funky for the condo crowd, and may elicit a raised eyebrow or two from guests and an unhappy frown from your eager-to-please partner.

The Budos Band: "The Budos Band."

Song Selected: "Up From The South."

The Budos are a contemporary instrumental R&B big band whose sound, though by no means revolutionary, is thick, brilliantly arranged, and funky as the dumpster behind a Bangkok fish market.  Their two follow-up LPs simply entitled, The Budos Band II, and The Budos Band III, are of equivalent quality, but my preferential nod goes to this, their self-titled debut, for having just a touch more pep in its hep-cat step.   

Lemon Jelly: "Lost Horizons."

Song Selected: "Closer."

Of Lemon Jelly's three fantastic albums, Lost Horizons is, in my opinion, the best fit for your typical petit-bourgeois dinner party.  LJ's other two albums,  KY and 64 - 95 (which is my favourite, in case you care), have moments on them that are just a touch too raucous and, therefore, may not be entirely condo-appropriate.  No need to rile everyone up and risk a red wine spill on the berber.  Play it safe.  I mean, for Christ's sake, you're home owners now.

Rock Me Sexy Jesus: The Reverend Dick Lays Bare the Smutty Soul of Rock 'n' Roll

Sexy Jesus: What are you crazy bitches doing?
Cray Bitches: Unto you as we would have
you do unto us.

Next week, the big dick playas of the music industry will gather in Los Angeles for their annual self-congratulatory circle jerk.  So today, I decided to check out the official 2012 Grammy Awards website and take a look-see at the nominees.  Surprise surprise, not a single one of the artists on my year's ten best album list were nominated by their peers for the music industry's most prestigious award.  As consolation, I did come away from my browsing experience with some knowledge I didn't have before.

For example, did you know that Eddie Vedder released an album of ukulele music last year, which got him a Grammy nomination for best folk album?  I sure as fuck didn't.  Rumour has it that on one one track, he's joined by David Lee Roth on recorder and Zach dela Rocha on triangle for a grade five music class-style rendition of "Alive."

Maybe guys, but just barely.

To celebrate her recent Grammy nomination,
Babs had her personal assistant, Ms. Pompon
bring two of the kidnapped children to her.
 And then made them love her in exchange
for food.

I also discovered, much to my dismay, that Barbara Streisand put out a new album last year.  Barbara Streisand?  "Fuck," I thought, "is she alive, too?"

"And if so, why?"

Perhaps even more disturbing than Babs crawling up out of her crypt of cultural irrelevancy to menace humanity with her sounds-of-the-slaughterhouse vocal stylings, is that, instead of constructing a giant, fire-breathing robot to attack and rid the world of her forever like on South Park, the music industry decided to reward her reappearance by giving her a Grammy nod.

What the fuck is the matter with these people?

Um, I don't.

Despite all this, let's face it, watching awards shows can be fun.  It helps us answer important questions like will Christina Aguilera wear a weight-appropriate evening gown?  Or, will Kanye make a caucasian co-presenter uncomfortable by not reading off the teleprompter and ad-libbing a simple-minded political message instead?  Or, perhaps most importantly, will the villainous Kool Moe Dee come out of hiding to renew his feud with longtime foe, and this year's Grammy host, LL Cool J?

Nowadays, such things seem to matter.  Tune in February 12 and find out.

I would, too, but Sunday's masturbate in the bubblebath night for the Reverend Dick.

Anyways, when I've watched these sorts of music awards shows in the past, one thing I've often wondered about is this:

why the winners almost always attribute their victories to God rather than to their own talent?  Or to the executives at their record label putting the fix in?  Or, even to mankind's seemingly insatiable yen for shit?  Why?

The cynic in me wants to chock it up to the desire to pander to an audience of millions, most of whom are believers themselves, but I don't think this is actually what's going on.  Your typical winner appears genuinely convinced that God is personally responsible for his or her success and wants to give credit where credit is due.

After leaving the Holograms,
Nicki Manaj broke her ties
with Jem and Kimber but
took with her their love of pink
and off-kilter sense of style.

This has always struck me as strange.  I mean, even granting the existence of a supreme being, it seems unlikely to me that He'd bother involving Himself in the affairs of say, Nicki Manaj for any reason other than maybe to smote her ass down.

Please God, please kill
that skinny bitch.

Are we to understand that Adele is sitting around right now wondering whether God will bless her with the Record of the Year Grammy for "Rolling In The Deep?"  Or, maybe she's worried that He, like every other man out there, will pick that skinny little bitch, Katy Perry instead?

Don't worry, Adele.  Jesus Christ, girl, look at the year you've had!  You've shot to the top of the pops like a... like a plus-size model to the front of the buffet line!  The big Guy loves this sort of Disney movie shit.  And he loves you, too.

God's on your side, babe.

The boys begin running out of patience
 waiting for the Rohypnol to kick in.

Come to think of it, the mere existence of most of this year's Grammy nominees (and that of most past nominees as well) may, in itself, be a compelling reason NOT to believe in a higher power.  Personally, when I envision a world created by an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving creator, it is one without all the terrible things that have plagued us.  It is a world without war, without poverty, without AIDS and spinal meningitis, and most importantly of all,

It is a world without Motley Crue.

But that's not the world we live in.  We live in a world where, for example, one might, without surprise, watch a Gangsta rapper thanking the Lord for the Grammy he just won for a song in which he brags about how many bitches he's infected with gonorrhea.  And in seeming good conscience, to boot.

But why?  Why do our pop stars seem completely oblivious to the dissonance between what they preach from the award show podium and what they practice in their actual work?

I came as the Lamb,
but I return as a member of Megadeth.

One answer is that they're a bunch of fucking hypocrites.  This is true in part, but not the whole story.

The main reason is because American music, which is to say, the Blues, Jazz, Rock 'n' Roll, Country & Western, R&B, and even Hip-Hop, is basically religious music.  And the people who do it well, or at least well enough to become rich and famous from it, tend to get this, whether consciously or not.  Think about other awards shows for a second.  You don't often see people thanking God at the Emmys or at the American Comedy Awards, do you?  Music is different.  That's because God, in his Holy Spirit persona, is the main ingredient in pretty much all American popular music.  The reasons for this are largely historical.  Almost all American music of any importance comes from the South, and the one thing the people on the losing side of the Mason-Dixon line have in common besides their racial animosities and affinity for having sex with immediate family members is the Gospel music of the Baptist and Pentecostal churches.  It is, for lack of a better word, the soul of rock 'n' roll.

Right before his first fall,
Our Lord cried out: "My hands are shaky
and my knees are weak.  I can't seem
to stand on my own two feet."

In his 1968 Comeback Special, no less of an authority than the King of Rock 'n' Roll himself described what he called "our music," as a mixture of rhythm and blues, country, and most importantly, Gospel music.  And it's not just rock 'n' roll that's inspired by Gospel.  This southern church music is the rosetta stone of American musical culture.  You cannot really understand it without it.  In a sense, it IS American music.  It's its essence.  It's where it's foundational aesthetic comes from.  It's in the Blues.  It's in Jazz.  It's in Country & Western music.  And its definitely in R&B, Funk, and by extension, Hip-Hop.  When we talk about music having soul, this is where it comes from.

But there's one other ingredient that Elvis, cagey devil that he was, certainly knew about, but failed to mention.

Sex.

American music is religious music, yes, but with the fucking put back in.  This is the great paradox of the music and has often been a source of torment for its artists.  Jerry Lee Lewis, for example, whose cousin was the evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, was convinced of his eternal damnation and throughout his life wobbled between abject despair and an almost Satanic revelry in his uncleansable sinfulness.  Many others abandoned secular music and returned, repentantly, to the bosom of the church: Little Richard, Son House, and Al Green even became ministers.

The soul of rock 'n' roll?

Those who rocked on, had to maintain a balancing act between the sacred and the profane: the Bible in one hand; their cock in the other.  The American troubadour became a latter-day Rasputin.  A kind of inspired imposter, half con artist, half Real McCoy.  He'd come to your town, preach the Good Word, whip everybody into a frenzy, and then take off in the middle of the night, stinking of cash and poontang, leaving the townfolk wondering, "was any of it even real?", before they ultimately realized that it didn't matter to them one way or the other.  They only wished that he'd come again soon.  

Is it Fake?  Real?  I don't know.  Who fucking cares.  Like Mick Jagger says, "it's only rock 'n' roll (but I like it!).

Anyways, here's a little Godrock for you, kids.

Enjoy.


















Johnny Cash: "God's Gonna Cut You Down."

One of the best things about believing in God is the hope that He will purge the world of fucking assholes.  Jesus may have been all about the love, but his Dad was fucking Old Testament, man.  He'd smote your ass down for masturbating like he did to Onan, or even for just touching his shit like when Uzza handled the ark of the covenant.  The moral is a comforting one for those righteous motherfuckers who still always seem to get the shit end of the stick.  They can look out at their more sinful, successful neighbours and think, watch out fuckers, like Johnny says, "sooner or later God'll cut you down."

The Beach Boys: "God Only Knows."

It's hard to believe now, but in 1965, Brian Wilson's taking the Lord's name in vain in the title of his legendary love song to God was considered radical.  Despite being in violation of the seventh commandment, this is, in my humble opinion, one of the most beautiful pieces of religious music ever written.  

Stevie Wonder: "Evil."

Stevie Wonder personifies the darkness here and sings to it with all the soulful passion of a heartbroken lover to his cruel mistress.  And for Stevie, evil is indeed the cruelest mistress of all, one whose very nature is to destroy both God and Stevie's love.  And in the end, like the cruel mistress that she is, Evil leaves Stevie totally fucking baffled and defeated.

Blind Willie Johnson: "I Know His Blood Can Make Me Whole."

Unlike a lot of bluesman, Blind Willie Johnson remained in the church, eventually becoming an ordained minister.  His music brings the sinewy, overtly physical power of the blues slide guitar to what are mostly otherworldly-themed songs of redemption through Christ.  On a sad note, in 1945, the little church in which Blind Willie lived and preached burned to the ground.  Being blind and having nowhere else to go, he stayed there in the ashes, sleeping on a wet mattress until he died of pneumonia.

And people think Stevie Ray Vaughn had the blues?  Give me a fucking break.

Pharoah Sanders: "The Creator Has A Master Plan."

The original version of this piece is over a half an hour long, but this 15 minute version will give you the gist of it.  Sanders is a bit like Coltrane in his mastery of both the super lyrical and super skronky capacities of his instrument.  Where their music differs however, is in Sanders use of sweeping, hypnotically repetitive arrangements from which to set off on his melodic explorations.  Such things take time, much like the Creator's master plan.  Some may find it's slow development boring, but I think this is some super-groovy shit, man.  Give it some time and just let it wash over you.  The Pharoah works in mysterious ways.