Saturday, Jul 19, 2008
Nov 29, 1999 | 1) Macy Gray "On How Life Is" (Epic)
An almost old-fashioned soul record, with tunes that draw from surprising sources ("Do Something" from the Wailers' "Kinky Reggae," "Caligula" from the Beatles' "Come Together," "Still" from the Rolling Stones' "Shine a Light") and a voice that recalls Eartha Kitt, Shirley Bassey and Tasmin Archer -- for that matter, Gayl Jones -- more than anyone on Atlantic or Motown. There's a thinness, a lack of glamour or costuming, in Gray's tone; you can imagine these songs as ordinary if acrid talk as easily as you can see them as performances. Soul music was about appearing to reveal all, and Gray is plainly holding back, but that's part of what draws a listener in. It's as if something has been beaten out of the singer, and the real goal of the music is to get it back without giving up anything else. But that's just a notion; there are mysteries here. Momentum builds in "I've Committed Murder" until you can feel the sound won't escape the song; the last cut ends with a banjo, which is to say in the 19th century.
2) Nik Cohn & Guy Peellaert "20th-Century Dreams" (Knopf)
Like their 1973 "Rock Dreams," cool fantasies of juxtaposition from writer Cohn, lurid realization from photo-collagist and painter Peellaert -- as in Federal Agent at Large Elvis Presley smashing into a Yale dorm room to bust doper law student Bill Clinton.
3) Cellos "Rang Tang Ding Dong (I Am the Japanese Sandman)" on "Bringing out the Dead: Music from the Motion Picture" (Columbia)
Doo-wop, and one of the most ridiculous records ever made. Plus, a backup singer revolts, stopping right in the middle of the song: "All you guys say the big things! All I ever get to say is, 'Ah he goes ...'" A hit in 1957, and hard to find ever since.
4) ZZ Top "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear" on "XXX" (BMG)
Speaking of 1957, not to mention songs with parentheses, this cute Presley No. 1 was once described as Elvis "selling out to girls." Done here as a stripper blues, with new lyrics about cheetahs and rhinos, it's more like cash on the bed.
5) Laurie Anderson "Songs & Stories from 'Moby-Dick'" (Zellerbach Auditorium, Berkeley, Calif., Oct. 29)
My friend Andrew Baumer reports on a show I couldn't make: "If I were as self-consciously clever and downright arch as Laurie Anderson, I'd probably say something like 'How can a supposedly respectful and intelligent revision of "Moby-Dick" manage to be completely devoid of any reference to Freemasonry, castration or buggery?' The Edith Ann chair was silly and the much-vaunted Talking Stick was just a digital rehash of her magnetic-tape violin bow, but she's really hooked up with a killer bass player this time: Skuli Svernisson, who, despite his birth in Iceland, not Kokovoko, played like he should be coated in full body tattoos and eat nothing but beefsteaks. The high point came 20 minutes in, when the astounding Thom Nelis, over a diabolical funk bass line, did a whirling peg-leg tarantella with and on crutches, all the time screaming, 'Have you seen the White Whale? He looks like NOTHING!'
"The oddest, and in retrospect most interesting, aspect of the whole performance was Anderson's unapologetically female take on this whale of a book. Maybe her ignoring the savage phallocentrism of it all in favor of celebrating the yearning, nurturing, healing elements I confess I'd ignored during my 20-plus rereadings throughout my adolescent and adult life might have been just a trifle disingenuous, and perhaps a teeny bit forced, in keeping with her elfin, ain't-I-clever persona, but so what. It never occurred to me that Melville's intention was to compose a meditation on the search for the secret love and beauty hidden within the human heart, but if Anderson sees it, it's obviously there."
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