Mixed Results: Scott New York (Spring 2005)

There are some questions we may never know the answer to... who built Stonehenge? What killed the dinosaurs? Why so much KoRn?

Okay, in all of those cases, we can at least make an educated guess. It was Spring 2005 and I was assembling a Mix CD to bring with me on a school trip to New York City. For whatever reason I deemed it appropriate to create only one 17-track disc featuring the songs that, for whatever reason, I would absolutely need to hear over the course of the five-day trip. Some of these songs are bona fide classics. Some are then-recent faves. Many are bizarre entries that just fascinated me at the time. And three of them are by KoRn.

As I've said before, prior to starting this blog, I was a bit of a musical scavenger. I wasn't plugged into any scenes, especially not in high school, and in many cases I actively avoided listening to the music that my friends liked. Part of the listening experience was that sense of discovery, that moment when you heard a song that you knew you needed over and over, after hearing it somewhere, anywhere, in the world. In many cases, the source of the song was the radio: the classic rock station my dad always played in the car. Even then it was rare to hear anything for the first time on that station, so one morning when I heard the precious, self-important piano plinking and somewhat overwrought, melodramatic delivery of Bob Geldof in the Boomtown Rats' "I Don't Like Mondays," I was intrigued. Learning the story behind it, that the title was a quote from a girl who had shot up a playground (the event being summarized by the song) sealed the deal, because I was a sucker for a good backstory in a song, it helped reaffirm that a real weight could be borne by lyrics and melody. To this day it's the only Boomtown Rats song I've ever heard. I don't think I need to hear another.



Likewise, "For Your Love" was the first Yardbirds song I ever heard, despite hearing them get namechecked in every biography of Eric Clapton and Led Zeppelin (and other bands they influenced, like Aerosmith.) It didn't really carry the rough-hewn blues sound I expected, being a dark, ominous pop song built around a thundering harpsichord and a chirpy-yet-nervy harmony vocal. This was not a band that seemed comfortable being pop stars. Still, it's a weirdly dynamic tune. Then there's U2, who I was trying somewhat seriously to start liking after years of feeling they were overrated during their All That You Can't Leave Behind era. I still can't tell half of their pre-Achtung Baby songs from each other before the chorus, but I got a kick out of "I Will Follow," their first single. I liked the idea that the first thing they did was also the best. The song also has a couple of big brothers on the record: the undoubtedly great "Comfortably Numb," and "She Sells Sanctuary," which was at the very least familiar to me from car commercials, but I don't know why it was on my mind in 2005.



There are earnest, high-spirited moments on the mix, like The Spoons' "Romantic Traffic," a delightful bit of 80s Canadiana Pop Fluff that was always being played on MuchMoreRetro, and Paul McCartney's "Maybe I'm Amazed," which I can't even remember having a particular fondness for, but also there was a great deal of misery in the mix. There's the gloomy "So Far Away," one of my favourite Dire Straits songs (as it invokes a mood without trying too hard to tell a story.) Then at the end comes the Zombies' enigmatic "She's Not There," a tune I didn't realize I had been looking for since my youth, after hearing it remixed in Kill Bill Volume 2, and at the beginning is those is "We Gotta Get Out of this Place." I first heard this lesser-known Animals track in, of all places, Fahrenheit 9/11 the previous summer, where it was used for comedic effect. This is such a cool, beaten-down song, a perfect Animals vehicle. It's striking how many of these songs relate to place, travel, or distance. This is almost certainly not intentional.





There's definitely no sequencing going on here. I think this list was assembled by literally going down the list of my mp3s alphabetically. The reason there are two Rolling Stones songs separated by the Cult is that "Honky Tonk Women" was probably listed as being by "Rolling Stones" while "Rocks Off" was listed as "THE Rolling Stones." As I said, I was all about first impressions back then, and I still remember the first time I heard "Rocks Off" (again, in my dad's car.) Not only were those raggedy, lopsided horns striking, but it was memorable because there just weren't that many Rolling Stones songs you were likely to encounter out in the world for the first time. You'll hear "Sympathy For the Devil" a hundred times before "Rocks Off" once.



All told, this mix CD represents every decade from the 60s to the then-current 2000s, in the form of a recent Beck song, the speaker-busting, booty-shaking "Epro" and a tune off the Killers' debut album. I was slow to embrace the Killers, maybe I haven't even, but I first heard "Mr. Brightside" when I was traveling for a funeral. That shit sticks with you. That context makes everything seem deep and poignant. You know what else I once heard on the way to a funeral? "Reelin' In The Years" by Steely Dan. How's that for a mindfuck?



(Note that the "Mr. Brightside" I wound up with was a weird, stripped-down alternate version, because that was a thing that happened back in the early days on downloading. Not that I ever knew the difference, until last year. I like mine better.)

Which brings me to the KoRn issue. They already had a whiff of "been and gone" by 2005, when I was 17. They were popular with angsty teens in the late 90s, when my older brothers and cousin needed something loud to blast. And I went along with them, like the bratty little brother. But when you're 17, and your sense of the passage of time hasn't fully evened out yet, anything more than a few years old is fucking OLD. So when I was in the car with my friend Josh, and he popped KoRn's Greatest Hits into the CD player, I thought he was fucking kidding. I may have been an angsty teenager (as angsty and acne-prone as they come!) but I had standards.

But, like most angry music, it was a convenient thrill: something loud and abrasive and faux-deep I could plug into my ears to drown out the world. It's not like I was suddenly a baggy jeans wearing nu-metalhead, a convert to the gospel of Jonathan Davis, I'm not sure if I ever decided whether I thought "ADIDAS" was meant to be a joke or not. But as a pure listening pleasure, I had no problem putting it in there between Dire Straits and Pink Floyd and Paul McCartney and the Spoons. It was a concrete thing, not a trend I was following. I made a choice to reach back and pull them forward into my 2005 mix. (Besides, I've already praised their "Word Up" cover elsewhere.)



The fucked up thing is that it largely all seems to hold together. Listening to it all now, it has a strange mix of the cool, the overblown, the ragged, the quirky, brutal and the soft. What I like about this mix, exemplified by that weird fistful of KoRn in the middle, is that this is the music that a teenager chose for himself. It has very little to do with the year 2005 (and the songs from that year held up quite well.) It has no care at all for the original context and contradiction between the various songs. It's just a bunch of shit I picked up, like a musical magpie, and kept in a bag together, whether they sat well or not.

Nowadays, I get music from word of mouth, from internet links and workplace buzz. And it's helpful... but boring. There was such a treat in having a private stash for myself.

Serious Contenders: Rolling Stones, "Ruby Tuesday"

With the release of the Rolling Stones' 3 disc (or more) retrospective, it occurred to me just how many different things the Rolling Stones did. The standard narrative was that whatever the Beatles did, the Stones had to try too, and did worse: The Beatles used strings on "Yesterday" so the Stones used them here. The difference is that the Beatles were that versatile, that whenever they would try something, they would become it wholly. It can be hard to pin down the exact nature of the Beatles after 1965 because of all the different stuff they threw themselves into. The Rolling Stones, by contrast, never weren't "The Rolling Stones." When they used baroque arrangements, they were still fronted by Mick Jagger's lumbering, dirty white blues vocals. The balladry was not a change or an adaptation or a new identity, it was a reference: the tough guy breaking down, reality crashing into the fantasy backdrop created by the musical arrangement. And because of that, the Stones' ballad work has a different effect than the Beatles'.

The Beatles were method actors, immersing themselves in their current role. The Rolling Stones were character actors, there to be themselves in whatever situation required it.

Serious Contenders: Rolling Stones, "The Last Time"

We don't often see changes as they are happening. From 1963 to 1965, the Stones morphed from a bunch of skinny, messy-haired dudes covering Chuck Berry to generators of their own material, masters of their own destiny. It started with this one, the first Jagger/Richards song to be released as a single. While the Stones were cultivating their stage presence as a "dangerous" alternative to the Beatles, they needed songs to go along with it. "Satisfaction" was the ultimate realization of that pursuit, but "The Last Time" was a great first try. The guitar riff, played by Brian Jones, is as impossible to ignore as a Chuck Berry intro, but it continues under the verses as well, electrifying them. Jagger's vocals are in fine form, really starting to his his stride with his trademark yowl, and lyrics that carry an undercurrent of non-specific gloom ("May be the last time, I don't know.") and Keith Richards brings a damn fine solo to the table.

"Satisfaction" is the better song, of course. It's better than most songs. But this features is decidedly not called "Obvious Choices." So there's that.

Serious Contenders: Rolling Stones, "Miss You"

You could call it a Disco song, if you need to, but the Rolling Stones have a good enough sense of the veins of musical history that they know where the common root is between rock and Disco. It's pretty funky, but it's also lascivious and worn-out, very urban and dark, in its way bluesy. Like Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust," (another Serious Contender) it creates a context for itself outside of trends and genres. It's more like Michael Jackson than it is ABBA. Mick sounds like a slithering sexual predator, and that bass riff, that harmonica, the whole deal all backs him up. I love songs that seem to come from the fringes, and this one is definitely out there. It's a pretty popular song, and yet, I don't think anyone would call it one of the Stones' very best. But if reminded, they would.

Covers: Devo, "Satisfaction" & Talking Heads, "Take Me To The River"

It's a peculiarity of my tastes that I can't fucking stand YouTube videos I can't embed. I like to be able to have the video right damn there for you in the article so it all becomes one part and parcel. It's so distracting to have to ask you to open a link in a new tab while enjoying my site, even though it's the prerogative of the video's owner to do so. But since the only versions of these videos I could find have that setting, I decide I'd rather make do than ignore them completely.

A while back I was scouring the net, as I usually do, for stuff to post here, when I remembered Devo's cover of "Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones. I always notice how mechanical and unhuman their electrofunk disco-tech sounds, probably on purpose -- not for nothin', they are the type of band that would wonder about the nature of humanity and its place in the world of machines, of televisions and cigarette ads. Mark Mothersbaugh sounds like a man on the edge, trapped in a hostile world with no choice but to live it. "Babybabybabybabybabybabybabybaby..." sounds like pure submission to frustration. Resignation.

But weirdly enough, this made me think of Talking Heads' take on "Take Me To the River." Now, there's no way David Byrne can match Rev. Al Green for raw sex appeal and soul, but he finds his way. The recorded version sounds like a looming threat of being swallowed whole by desire: real ominous and threatening. The version captured for their classic concert film Stop Making Sense, however, is pure release. Every moment of that film is life-affirming, and this performance marks its culmination. You could say Byrne's suit was growing around him, but I thought it looks more like he's shrinking inside it as it threatens to overtake him -- but in this performance he sheds the jacket (and finds a neat ballcap) and shakes his way through those giant pants to become human again, to be reborn, along with the rest of the band as he introduces them by name (note the giant pop for bassist Tina Weymouth, who had earlier performed "Genius of Love" as the Tom Tom Club and is the prototypical sexy female bassist.) Talking Heads augments their sound throughout the film with funk musicians (coincidentally all African-American, if that makes a difference.) I don't know whether Bernie Worrell or Jerry Harrison is playing that organ riff, but that's a real celebration of life. If Mothersbaugh was trapped on the edge, Byrne had gleefully plunged over and howled all the way down.