IF YOU BELIEVED THEY PUT A MAN ON THE MOON

OK, first there was this.

And now this:

The Mets just completed a three-game sweep of the first-place Phillies, tossing shutouts in all three games. This is something the Mets have done once before, against... you guessed it... the Phillies, in... wait for it... 1969.

Again, just saying is all...

FLICK TO KICK

I realized today that I have two songs with the word "Subbuteo" in the lyrics: All I Want for Christmas is a Dukla Prague Away Kit by Half Man Half Biscuit, and My Perfect Cousin by The Undertones.

Not sure if I've cornered the market yet: drop me a line if you know of another.

WE WON'T BE SEARCHIN' ANYMORE

Word of the day:

exLostion (n): the quality of langour that attends on a Monday after having stayed up until 11:30 on a Sunday to watch the series finale of a beloved show. (See also, Sopranorific.)

MAKE EVERY SONG YOUR FAVORITE TUNE

OK, so I worked through my hissy fit, and decided to go ahead and buy the 3 genuine alternate Exile tracks: Loving Cup, Soul Survivor, and Good Time Women (protozoan Tumbling Dice).

So now when my Amazon package with the new LCD Soundsystem and Janelle Monae shows up, I can just get on with my life...

DON'T NEED NO JEWELS IN MY CROWN

Exile on Main Street didn't really make much sense to me until I was 18 or 19.

But it's been with me-- and vice versa-- ever since.

Of course I was thrilled when I heard that the Stones were compiling a “deluxe” version.

Now, I'm not enough of a trainspotter to go chasing after outtakes and such, but I'd certainly be a willing consumer of Exile-era flotsam if it showed up on a silver platter.

And if the Beatles could squeeze three double-disc anthologies out of their archives, surely the Stones could support at least one disc's worth of interesting 1971-2 material.

But the Stones being the Stones, they apparently decided we couldn't handle the rough stuff, so they went and added new vocals and such to a bunch of the old tracks.

And again their legacy is ill served.

Well, that's $20 that will stay in my pocket, at least...

ARC OF A HOLY DIVER

To us dwellers outside the gates of Heavy Metal, Ronnie James Dio means Holy Diver.

Plus, we know he was a replacement for Ozzy in Black Sabbath. But we only know this because we once had friends on the inside...

So yeah, it's a reductive view, but it's the best I can do.

RIP, RJD...

PROUD TO BE A PART OF THIS NUMBER

Saw The Doors Soundstage performances last night. These have been out on DVD for years, but I’m long past the point of spending money on The Doors.

Still, it was an interesting watch.

The first footage was from 1967, before Light My Fire blew up. They performed The End in front of a group of slightly baffled teens and twenties.

The next clip was When the Music’s Over from 1968. Even though there was no audience, Jim played to the camera with that reptilian charisma he had, leather panting and lip licking for a solid 10 minutes.

The last segment was the PBS footage from 1969. This was post Miami, and feels like it. Jim seems drunk, disinterested, and demeaned as he works his way through some old stuff and inconsequential new tunes (Tell All the People, Wishful Sinful).

But he snaps to life about halfway through The Soft Parade, and it’s like seeing a jet fly with one engine out…

THE TIME TO HESITATE IS THROUGH

Used to be that unless you were Like a Rolling Stone or Hey Jude, you were cut down to 3 minutes for a 45. No need to prattle on with your moon/June/spoonisms for 7 minutes. Hence, this:



This logic prevailed into the video age. So unless you were Thriller...

Hence, Stereolab made a video of the single version of Jenny Ondioline, and not the 18 minute album version. After all, 18 minutes is 15% of 120 minutes.



So now that both radio and MTV are long dead, I find this hard to explain. Titus Andronicus goes and makes a 3 minute single/video out of a 7 minute track...

THIS GREAT BIG WORLD

When I look for a song that best demonstrates the genius of the Beach Boys, I tend to land on one I don’t actually like very much: California Girls.

First the bad stuff: it’s callow, insipid, and it’s got too much Mike Love by a mile. But then…

The great early Beach Boys songs are additive-- they accrete and grow, melodically and in their narratives. And by this measure, California Girls is a great early Beach Boys' song.

The first verse is spare: Love’s vocal, a bouncy little keyboard line, and a discreet rhythm section. The lyrics are descriptive, observational: East Coast girls are hip, Southern girls are knock outs, Midwest farmer's daughters make you feel alright, and Northern girls keep their boyfriends warm.

Then comes the chorus, which like many Beach Boys' choruses might cloy, were it not for the activity and temporal growth happening in the verses.

The second (and last) verse kicks in, and the drums are perkier. Backing vocals have been added, first smooth and steady, and then contrapuntal (oo-wa-oo-wa-oo-wa)-- the effect is one of pure forward motion. Likewise the lyrics, which pick up initially where the first verse left off, and then make a crucial shift from simply cataloguing to catapulting-- a shift to action: “I couldn't wait to get back in the states [oo-wa-oo-wa-oo-wa]... ”

It would probably sound ungenerous to call this a formula, but it really is the essence of great early Beach Boys' songs. It is why I Get Around and Don't Worry Baby are great songs. It is also why Help Me Rhonda and All Summer Long are merely very good songs-- they run, but they run in place.

Oh, and we'll talk more later about the prelude that opens California Girls, OK?

CONTROLLER SPHERE

How do I love thee, Hissing Fauna?

Enough that I tossed my dusty old 128 kbps files for some fresh 320 kbps files from the Polyvinyl site this past weekend.

Five bills, and they threw in a PDF of the CD art, and most of the Icons tracks.

And you can bet I'll be dropping cash on the whammo-blammo 10^th anniversary injectable edition come 2017...