Wax On Wax #1: Playing With Genre
Recently a few of my avid record collecting friends had an idea. What if, as a way for us all to stay in touch during this COVID19 quarantine, we all listened to the same records each week and discussed them over a video call? One of the four of us will pick a theme for the week, and then we each pick a record for the group to listen to and discuss during our video chats. It was a great idea and it’s a great way to expand each others horizons, and turn each other on to great records and deep cuts. This series will follow my thoughts on each of the records we pick leading up to our weekly discussions.
I had the good fortune of picking this weeks theme: Albums by artists known for one genre, who made great records in a completely different genre.
The first album I listened to this week was my pick. Aux Armes et cætera, by the legendary French musician Serge Gainsbourg.
The first time I heard this album was when I was living in Valencia, Spain while studying abroad at Berklee. I had to come up with a thesis for my program and decided on focusing mine around reggae and dub music, specifically how dub music has become kind of a lost and forgotten art form in popular culture. Granted, dub and reggae have their hardcore fans, and many are still making that kind of music today, but it is largely absent from mainstream music culture in the way that it used to be in the 70s. For instance in 1979 Serge Gainsbourg was largely a cult musician in France, but this album went platinum upon release.
What's so surprising about that, is that this is a very traditional roots reggae album. A reggae album that went platinum not released by Bob Marley? And its entirely in French? Its what they call an anomaly.
The sound he achieved was completely divorced from the work he had done earlier in his career with Jane Birken and certainly an entire solar system away from Histoire de Melody Nelson, his masterpiece from 1971. It's as if Gainsbourg just waltzed into a Jamaican recording studio while Bob Marley was recording and said "Hey, can I borrow your band?" And if you read about who played on this album, you'd be hard-pressed to believe otherwise.
This album features a murderers row of reggae musicians. Rita Marley and The I Threes, Sly & Robbie, and Ansel Collins just to name a few. A lot of artists at the time like The Rolling Stones, The Police, and The Clash paid lip service to the reggae genre while essentially doing their own thing. Here, Gainsbourg creates something that sounds truly authentic because it is authentic. He made a real reggae album.
What sets this album apart from other reggae albums before or since is Gainsbourg himself. His French croon over reggae music is jarring at first until you realize how unique and cool the combination truly is. He is pure gold in combination with these players. I'm convinced it would be easier to list the musicians Sly & Robbie haven't played with than those who have. Those two have truly unturned every stone there is.
This album is the hippest party you've never been to, the kind that exists only in the movies. It grooves so hard, and every single aspect of it exudes style and bleeds cool. If you're looking for something truly different, this one is a must-listen.
Next up, is the 1971 self titled album Link Wray. Wray's journey leading up to this album is really interesting. Basically planting the ultimate rock n' roll flag with "Rumble" in 1958, the Shawnee born, Korean War Vet set the standerd for all rockers to live up to since. "Rumble" is so cool. It's the swagger you feel walking dangerous into a bar; it makes you feel like you could walk out onto the stage at any moment. It's the easy, greaser anthem that screams 1950s car culture, rockabilly, you name it.
This album is not that.
This album is swamp rock. It's not sleek, it's not effortless, it's working hard to sludge through the mud it's surrounded by on all sides. Even during sweet songs like "Take Me Home Jesus", there is an undeniable feeling of defiant struggle against the conformity of modern music. There was a movement in rock at the time to move back to basics, back to its southern folk roots. The Band led the way, Eric Clapton followed suit, and rock found itself shaking off its psychedelic shackles by the early 1970s. Many 50s rockers were lost to the trippy 60s, only to re-emerge once the drug haze gave way to the styles that gave root to those forefathers in the first place.
Wray fizzled out after "Rumble" mainly due to his disdain for the corporate, cookie-cutter music machine that absorbed him after his overnight success. He disappeared to Maryland where he took over his brother's chicken farm, and soon after started recording music there. They retrofitted the chicken-coop with recording equipment and musical instruments and dubbed it Wray's Three Track Shack. The minimal setup of The Shack put them in a box that inspired some true creativity. No drumset? Here's a can of nails, and some boards to stomp on. Guitar too loud? Lets put the amp outside the coop and mic the window. These are the kind of wild risks that you couldn't even think to entertain in a lot of modern studios. Songs like "Fire and Brimstone" and "Jukebox Mama" (which holds a special place in my heart) could only have been born of swamp grime. But there are also songs like "Black River Swamp" which shows this album contains the type of serene beauty that can usually only be found in the rose-colored glasses of the displaced.
This album represents a clear delineation between Wray and his past self, but what Wray retains is the volatile energy that made "Rumble" so magical in the first place. Wray was always a country, swamp rocker. It was dressed up as something different in the 50s, and after his journey through the music industry what's left on Link Wray is just that. It's soulful, fun, spiritual, and embodies the underrepresented Swanee corner of the south. If you like music by The Band, Dylan, Bobby Charles, Neil Young, then give this a listen.
I won't say Ringo is my favorite Beatle, I don't know if I could pick one, to be honest. But to me, he is easily the most underrated Beatle by a Nashville country mile. Calling someone a "Ringo" is a derogatory way of saying you're not exactly carrying your weight in musician-speak. No one wants to be the Ringo, and what a shame that is because Ringo is secretly the best drummer of all time. However, my opinions on that particular bushfire that I've started will have to be saved for another time because here comes 1970s Beaucoups of Blues.
Despite my affection for Ringo, I'll be the first to admit he didn't have nearly as interesting of a solo career after The Beatles as the other three. Ringo's All Starr Band felt like a 50th reunion tour about 40 years too early, but that particular project kind of says everything you need to know about Ringo. He gets by with a little help from his friends, the guy is a Beatle and he knows it, and he knows that to not have a blast living life and being thankful for that is an impossibility. Ringo is relentlessly charming and sweet and those two qualities shine through in spades on his second solo album.
Beaucoups of Blues is a Nashville detour, and sounds like Ringo playing with Buck Owens All-Starr Band instead of his own. It's a really fascinating dalliance for a Beatle to take. Ringo didn't have songs piling up in the corner that were pushed aside while John and Paul stole the show, he was always the covers guy in the band, just as he is here. The other Beatles often wrote songs for him, like a director might write a part with a particular actor in mind. Ringo could do several things extremely well, and the other Beatles knew exactly when to pull the Ringo ripcord for a song or two on an album. Here he is given the most serene, pleasant country palette that is right in his wheelhouse.
This album and its spiritual sister album Nashville Skyline by Bob Dylan always give people pause and sometimes cause to skip altogether. Nashville country music was at the time considered very not hip by the tastemakers of the day. It was extremely commercialized and had next to no fingers on the counter-cultural pulse. It is not hard to see how this anti-country sentiment could have carried over through the years despite how much a little time and distance has proven it wrong. What Nashville has always had in spades, and what no one then or now could ever deny, is absolute godlike players. These guys can play this stuff in their sleep, and it's so fun to hear such a quintessential Nashville sound on record. Like Nashville Skyline it feels like a major detour until you realize Dylan and Ringo always loved country. Now freed from the ties of touring as with Dylan or The Beatles with Ringo, they can express their obvious roots and love for this genre. Country music is a songwriter genre, should we really be surprised that Bob Dylan and The Beatles loved it?
All of The Beatles have peculiar early solo work. It's as if they all were desperate to get fame off their backs, and the only way they knew how was just to make something weird. Look up George Harrison's Electronic Sound, or Lennon/Ono's Unfinished Music albums. Only Paul kept mostly to the formula established by The Beatles, and now listening to all this wildly diverse music that the other three released as soon as the demise of The Beatles was on the horizon gives you the sense that it was really his band all along. It's no surprise that Dylan released his own wanna-be career-ending album with 1970s Self Portrait. He probably talked to his buddies in The Beatles who had already tried something similar. However, Beaucoups of Blues is no self-inflicted wound, and unfortunately, it wasn't something much more interesting: a new beginning.
You get the sensation from listening to this album that Ringo loves this and on top of that he's really good at it. He has a very natural country croon that lends itself perfectly to this style, and his charm finds a welcome home in Nashville. This album is for anyone who needs an introduction to what some of us like to call good country music. It's not trying to sell you anything, it's not slick, it's not pretentious or patronizing. It's great songs played on acoustic instruments by masterful players while being recorded with near sonic perfection. This era produced a lot of albums like that, and who better to lead you to them than your new favorite Beatle, Ringo.
Charles Starkweather was a "spree killer", which in the 50s was the catchall term law enforcement would use to call what we now know as serial killers. Charles and his 14-year-old girlfriend spent a year of their lives between 1957 and 1958 killing family members, friends, and anyone else that crossed them all across the midwest. After a high-speed chase straight out of The Dukes of Hazzard in which Starkweather was shot, he surrendered and was later executed via the electric chair. His girlfriend, Carol Anne Fugate, was paroled in 1976 after spending 17 years of her life sentence in prison. As it happens, I just recently watched the amazing Terrance Malik movie Badlands inspired by these events. It's a beautiful, unflinching look at young love and the passions that can quickly devolve into fury and murder. It's very reminiscent of the works of Cormac McCarthy; a stark, unjudging look at the kind of unsavory characters that only America can produce. We have the beauty and splendor and the wide-open spaces, but life can be dark no matter how beautiful the setting.
"Frankie Teardrop" is a song by proto-punk electronic revolutionaries Suicide from their debut album. The song is a 10-minute fable that may or may not be based on a true story about a man at the end of his rope. In the song, Frankie works 10 hour days at the factory and makes very little money to feed his wife and kids. The dour, industrial circumstances he finds himself in as well as his helplessness from not being able to feed his family leads him to kill himself and their kids in violent fashion. The song then follows Frankie to hell where his torment continues for eternity all set to the drum-machine, synth horror of Alan Vega and Martin Rev. Suicide was not properly lauded in their time, but their influence is felt far and wide. Ric Ocasek of The Cars was so enamored by the band's debut that he decided to produce their follow up album for free. Springsteen said in an interview with Rolling Stone in 1984 that "'Frankie Teardrop' was one of the most amazing songs I've ever heard. That’s one of the most amazing records I think I ever heard. I really love that record.”
These are the kinds of subjects and influences found on the 1982 folk masterpiece Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen. When you think of Bruce, you think of a few things. Blue-collar rock n' roll, sung by a simple hard-working guy with a telecaster. Giant arenas packed to the brim with fans for marathon three or four-hour concerts. You think of 80s America. I usually think of New Jersey. What you don't think about is nihilistic, brooding, quiet folk music. At least I don't. I've never been much of a Springsteen fan but this could be the one that breaks the mold for me. This album is packed full of heart, soul, sadness, and grief. It's a strange confluence of feelings and a balance that only the greatest folk music can pull off.
Folk is unique in that it can lift us and inspire us by bringing us down. It often shines a light on subjects that until hip hop came about, were rarely focused on. Inequality, injustice, and tales of everyday life that can paint a picture of an entire group of people. The breadth of folk music can cover something as hopeful as "This Land is Your Land" to a song like "Nebraska"; a song about a brutal murder spree that ended in mayhem. Springsteen is able to walk this line well on this album, and in my mind etches him amongst the 20th Century's best singing storytellers.
The sound of the album is brought to life by a simple 4-track cassette recorder, with every instrument played by Bruce himself. The limitations put on Bruce by the recording medium produced the kind of lightning in a bottle magic that can't be replicated. Listen to Springsteen's vocal performances and choice of vocal delay on some of these songs and compare it to the songs found on Suicide; it's very clear the minimalism of these recordings was a feature, not a bug. Even the full band electric sessions were scrapped in favor of these versions of these songs. It goes to show that a great song recorded poorly can still be much more powerful and long-lasting than a poor song recorded well. Food for thought.
This is a rare perfect album, but may not be something you want to throw on at a party. It takes a long look at the soul of the working class in this country, and it doesn't always like what it finds looking back. Put on some headphones with this one and dive in, I couldn't recommend it enough.
Be sure to check in next week, we’ll be covering protest albums. Be sure to like, subscribe and follow my socials, and for any mixing or mastering work head to the main page of the site, thanks for reading.
