ich bin ein auslander

Yesterday’s listening was Zenyetta Mondatta… the last of the silly names albums. Thus begins the serious alienation and darkness, and when I start to like the “filler” over the singles. Opens up with Don’t Stand So Close to Me, which is a great song, and then just starts getting really depressing. In a good way. Driven to Tears, When The World is Running Down… even the more upbeat musically songs like Canary in a Coalmine have pretty dark lyrical content. Check out these lyrics:

The President looks in the mirror and speaks
His shirts are clean but his country reeks
Unpaid bills
In Afghanistan hills

Written in 2005? No, from “Bombs Away”, 1980. Some things never change.

Anyway… a few grips when listening straight through. De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da was a big hit, and it’s a fun song… but it sounds like it’s beamed in from another planet compared to the rest of the album, and it’s sequencing just throws off the whole vibe. Behind My Camel is a really crap instrumental and never should have seen the light of day - the only reason I can see for it being there is a transition from “De Do..” back into the general bleakness of the rest of the album, but that’s not quite what happens - we go into “Man in a Suitcase”, which is another throwaway song that probably shouldn’t have been in there. Finally, we get Shadows in the Rain, which is good but Sting did a much better version of solo a few years on… and the Other Way of Stopping, which is a pretty kick ass instrumental. I would have dropped that right after De Do and ended with Shadows, but that’s just me.

Yesterday was album 2, Regatta de Blanc.. white reggae. oh dear. not the biggest fan of reggae music but the album really is incredible. opens up with message in a bottle, probably one of my favorite songs of all time. main thing i noticed listening to the whole album is stewart copeland’s drumming… he’s simply amazing. boom boom de whap boom boom whap. all over the place. stunning, really… hard not to focus on it. Bring on the night, another great song… i used to love it so much i named a bbs i ran when i was twelve after it. Now, twenty years on, i’m being paid to build very similar community sites for bands. If we had gotten the sting site, that would have been a full circle. strange.

Walking on the moon… bed’s too big without you. great songs, really moving away from any lingering punk impact and embracing straight forward pop/rock songwriting. No Time This Time is killer, Does Everyone Stare could be a bauhaus b-side. Still a lot of throwaway filler tracks, but listening to it now, you can hear almost every major indie band of the late 80s and 90s in them.

I’m doing at least an hour a day at the gym or riding a bike or whatever these days, and I’ve really been running out of things to listen to. Or at least finding it difficult to pick something… so today I’m embarking on a new project. There are a number of bands that I pretty much own the entire recorded output for, and obviously I like them quite a bit. So I’m going to attempt to listen to their entire recorded output, in chronological order, while exercising. Why? Why not. See how the bands that I love have evolved, watch the progression in songwriting, etc.

I thought I’d start with the Police, simply because “Ghost in the Machine” was the first tape I ever purchased for myself, Sting’s “Nothing Like the Sun” the first CD, Sting on the “Dream of the Blue Turtles” tour, my first concert. The first band I ever really got into.

So today I loaded up the iPod with “Message in a Box”, the complete Police boxset, as well as all the Sting albums. I’m leaving live concerts and bootlegs out of the mix at the moment; that would just be overwhelming, particularly when I get to the Cure. I’m including Sting because he’s obviously continued to develop as a songwriter (more on that below), but not Andy Summers or Stewart Copeland’s solo work because, well, I want to follow the main songwriting thread.

No guarentees I’ll make it all the way through Sting’s solo work, because, frankly, the last few albums have been wretched.

Anyway, today I hit the elliptical and make it through most of the first Message in a Box disc. All the pre-first album singles and the first album, “Outlandos D’Amour”. Impressions? they were pretty fucking punk rawk on the first few singles; interesting to hear Sting screaming “fuck” and “cunt”. Outlandos is a pretty decent album as well; they’d definately embrassed musicality and pop sensibilities in time for the album. Next To You, So Lonely and Can’t Stand Losing You are all great songs… and I love Hole in My Life. But there’s definately some serious filler… a habit they were to keep for all their albums. Be My Girl - Sally has a great melody, but the fucking stupid-ass spoken word part is just wretched beyond belief.

Still, overall, the album has stood up pretty well… it sounds very dated, but in a Clash/Sex Pistols/late 70s guitar rock way, which is ok. Nothing classic here (well, maybe Roxanne was until Sting pimped it out) but you can tell there’s something pretty serious happening here.

Tomorrow I’ll be starting off with second album Regatta de Blanc, which I’m looking forward to it. I used to really love that album and haven’t listened to it in years.

some news and a little update

wen will be doing a show at the albright knox as part of that whole thing… her own damn room. pretty groovy.

Thanks to Dave for the link…

Stop Ashlee Simpson

Unfortunately, you can’t appeal to the record label when they’re still making money. You need to go to the source. Stop people with bad taste from breeding.