Hairy Moody

• RIP Prince

  Hairy Moody

  April 2016

  Big_Stacks said:

  "Crazy You" , 

  You know, I never really paid that song much attention until a number of years ago, when I was hanging out with erstwhile soulstrutters Terry_Clubbup and DCastillo. We were each holding down our respective pieces of overstuffed pleather furniture in Terry's rumpus room, playing winding, expansive records for each other--Ozo's "Kites", that acid-drenched anti-drug gospel record where the Soul Expedition is the backing band, some infinite and cyrillic Gabor Szabo twelve-inch with a pink cover, etc.--not leaned or anything (yet), just kinda sinking in it. And as the evening stood right there at the precipice of becoming stormy and obscure, Clubbup put on "Crazy You" and shit was emerald city in minutes. Transformed. What a gorgeous, gorgeous record. Far too short, though--which I guess is about right, considering.
  
  But yeah, it's hard for me to know what to say, mostly because he is my single favorite musical artist ever, bar none, and I'm unable to really get any distance on him. Talking about Prince is like talking about my arm, you know?
  
  - I had my first kiss the week before the season that started with "When Doves Cry" and ended with "Let's Go Crazy."
  
  - I was in Michigan this past weekend, and the whole back page of the Detroit Free Press was an ad from GM, all black, with a sliver of red split-window visible at the bottom, along with the words "Baby, that was much too fast. 1958-2016." I knew it was cheesy, but I still got a little choked up.
  
  - When I was younger, I found out one sunny afternoon that one of my best friends and I had the same birthday. I'm not as ashamed as I should be to admit that I cherish the memory of this markedly less than the memory of later finding out that Prince and I had the same favorite Joni Mitchell record.
  
  - As much music as I've listened to, and as corny as I am, and as much time as teenaged me spent talking with girls, I've only used lines lifted from songs on two occasions, and one of them was me just letting it ring and saying to her, "Whoever's calling...can't be as cute as you."
  
  - I read a profile of Prince back around the time of Graffiti Bridge, and the reporter talked about how happy Prince was at the critical reception it was getting. The reporter was somewhat confused, because everyone kinda fucking hated that record. But Prince didn't care--he was excited because he the nature of the criticisms let him know that the critics were, at last, finally starting to hear him. That taught me a lot about how being successful can pale next to being understood.
  .
  - (Hissing of Summer Lawns, of course. Fuck you thought?)
  
  - My dear friend Pruitt is a couple-few years older than me, and--with the exceptions of Afrika Bambaataa and my dad--taught me more than anyone about how to find the interesting parts of things that I was sure had nothing interesting about them at all. One afternoon long ago, back when I was at my teenest and my punkest and my most harder-than-thou-est, Pruitt pointed out to me that the solo at the end of "Let's Go Crazy" was played all on one string and was about as hard as it gets, kid. I don't know if that's true about the one string, but the idea behind what he was saying has stayed with me: that even in the top ten there could be these rich, spiky bits, hidden in plain sight.
  
  - Growing up with Prince's music on the radio kinda ruined me, though, as it simultaneously rendered both pop and the underground somewhat suspect. When dude's going Top 10 with a song that constructs this whole horse/jockey/stable metaphor and twists it like a fortune cookie around a line about used rubbers, it makes it a little tougher to get too sprung on pop-apologist shit that insists so aggressively upon the existence of limitations, be they limitations of the pop form or limitations of What The Market Will Bear.
  
  Similarly, I tend to take a jaundiced view of underground shit that is ostensibly, you know, challenging gender or racial norms or whatever, but is content to do so on dedicated platforms in front of true believers, as I grew up on a black dude who not only made a single about him sewing a soft pink coat for his beloved, but went Top 40 with it, muscling that shit into your granny's parlor and your racist cousin's pickup truck and wherever the fuck else. 
  
  Now, I'm not saying that my personally witnessing the ascent of Prince has invalidated everything else for me, but it has made me very hard to please. On the one hand I feel bad about that, but on the other hand I feel like those old socialists from the 20s and 30s: I glimpsed utopia, you know? You kinda can't expect me to forget shit like that.
  
  - True, he lost a little luster in my eyes when it became clear (around the time of "My Name Is Prince," probably) that he wasn't ever really going to have an answer for rap, but I also feel like his fight against it, his denial of that reality and his disgust in the face of it, is what gave a lot of his later work its burn.      
  
  - Look: I was born in 1974, and so grew up as part of a very fearful generation, one that hid behind and atrophied beneath an ironic cool that made us stingy with others and suspicious of ourselves. Some are fighting their way out of it now, but a lot of us spent a lot of time pseudo-cynicized into an almost complete inability to reveal our true red hearts. This is probably why the chorus of a song I musically cannot fucking stand comprises the lyric I've thought about more than any other in the last ten years:
  
  Is someone getting the best of you?
  
  To me, there is in those words some probably unresolvable thing about not only my people's feeling that someone's always trying to scam us, but also our chickenshit tendency to never give anyone a hundred percent of our realest selves, to always hold something back.
  
  To hear and feel those words and that idea recognized, seized, and exploded by someone who has meant so much to me, to have him fire it like a mortar shell out of the dead center of a spectacle a vast and as meaningless to me as the fucking Super Bowl, into my living room and a billion others', it felt like a gift and it felt like a catharsis and I'm still trying to get to the bottom of it.
  
  I think everyone has a Prince story like that--some song or record or episode or thing that everyone knows about, but that has some little facet of it that's elusive enough that you can allow yourself to believe no one understands it all exactly as you do--and that's mine.  
  
  Anyway, this is real hard for me and I'm all over the place and I have to go now.
  
  Rest in power, sir, and sorry about all the cursing.
  
  love,
  
  
  James
  

  

• "FOREVER SHIT" (copyright Ghostface)

  Hairy Moody

  March 2016
  Discuss and/or add on:
  
  - the voice of Sam Cooke
  
  - the appeal of Debbie Harry
  
  - hearing U-Roy come in
  
  - the hair extensions of Al Jourgenson
  
  - college-age Steve Albini being too broke to afford a Walkman and consequently walking the campus of Northwestern listening to a drum machine through headphones
  
  - "I would prefer not to."
  
  - This Heat
  
  - Sly Stone's opening "Ahhh!" on "Skin I'm In." An entire soul examined, expressed, exhaled, and exhausted, all in a single breath.
  
  - George Clinton's excited "Hey, Glen!" from the Houston '77 "Mothership Connection"
  
  - Proper creepers. Fuck the cornball rockabilly shits with, like, zebra stripes or flames or whatever.
  
  - Thin Mints in the freezer
  
  - Jean Toomer's Cane
  
  - Charles Stepney and the drums of Ter Mar
  
  - hearing The Blackbyrds on the radio
  
  - "The 900 Number"
  
  - Fuzzy Jones intros
  
  - the organ sound of Booker T. Jones
  
  - "Tighten Up" by Archie Bell & The Drells
  
  - the sound of The Bar-Kays' "Holy Ghost." Did anything else ever sound like this, ever?
  
  - Iggy & The Stooges' "Tight Pants"
  
  - Farfisa
  
  - the voice of Bobby Womack
  
  - The Phenix Horns
  
  - Denise & Co.'s "Boy What'll You Do Then." How is Jann Wenner still up and walking around after this?
  
  - "Sleng Teng"
  
  - good French filter house
  
  - Built To Spill's "Twin Falls"
  
  - Ultimate Breaks & Beats
  
  - the demo of "Raw," with Big Daddy Kane and Kool G Rap
  
  - Strafe's "Set It Off"
  
  - the "Grindin'" beat
  
  - James Mason / Mae Jemison
  
  - the Coasters' "Shoppin' For Clothes"
  
  - Large Professor, unapologetic but not unsympathetic, in some interview several years back talking about all the crazy shit--beats, music, A-list collaborations, etc.--that he's got on various tapes and that we will never get to hear: "Some things just aren't for sale, you know?"
  
  - the boozy, undead trumpet in Cousteau's "Last Good Day Of The Year"
  
  - Harry Belafonte on The Muppet Show doing "Turn The World Around"
  
  - the panned synth ricochet that opens Inner City's "Good Life"
  
  - Courtial's "Losing You"
  
  - the first minute of David Essex's "Rock On." More abstract, fucked-up, and sonically arresting than ninety percent of the records you own, plus it's playing out loud on some radio somewhere right this very second.
  
  - the audible smile of Lee Dorsey
  
  - Suicide. The band.
  
  - the liner notes of De La Soul
  
  - dinosaurs
  
  - the jingle for Li'l Cricket
  
  - the genuinely patient smile of Kate Bush in all those tv clips where she's on some talk show putting up with fucking idiots
  
  - the "I even let you watch the shows you wanted to see!" in Dramarama's "Anything Anything." For a second it feels small and childish, the belief that letting someone watch the television shows they want to watch will make them stay, but the more you think about it, the more the everyday enormity of it grows. How devoted would you have to be to offer something like that? How desperate would you have to be to expect it to make a difference? How much of a betrayal would it feel like to have it go unappreciated? And how much would it hurt to have to say all of it out loud?
  
  - Joe Jackson's "Steppin' Out"
  
  - "Benny And The Jets"
  
  - ESG
  
  - Fiona Apple impersonating Posh Spice
  
  - Fred Williams & The Jewels Band's "Tell Her"
  
  - that period of time after you knew who Dilla was but before he became a saint
  
  - Jake One's "Home"
  
  - knowing the words behind the M.A.S.H. theme
  
  - James Brown, at the end of his rope, screaming "Wait! Wait!" in "Get Up, Get Into It, And Get Involved"
  
  - LL Cool J's "heeshy!"
  
  - the rainstorm break in "Ojala Que Llueve Cafe"
  
  - Sinead O'Connor doing "Troy" at Pinkpop '88
  
  - Meters 45s with the peach Josie label
  
  - "Planet Rock"
  
  - the last "you" in Little Anthony and The Imperials' "Tears On My Pillow"
  
  - the "I'm trying to be all yours / although I'm ain't answering your calls" from Luomo's "Tessio"
  
  - the seven-trumpets guitar drone that opens "Iron Leg"
  
  - the first verse of "Shook Ones Pt. II"
  
  - Trouble Funk Live
  
  - the tremolo on Magic Sam's West Side Soul
  
  - Mary J. Blige
  
  - that rehearsal video of an embryonic New Edition working out "Candy Girl", with Ralph on the kit, Ronnie on synth drum, Ricky on clavinet, and Bobby Fucking Brown on congas, recorded in one ear and deeeeeep in the red. If you like or have ever liked breakbeats, distortion, r&b, the 1980s, youth, party and/or bullshit, this will never not cook your whole shit down to crystal.
  
  - the moment when the sunny opening clang of "Debaser" capsizes into Black Francis's pinched, murderous vocal. Here is perhaps the secret reason why Nirvana ultimately couldn't even carry The Pixies' shoes: there are reservoirs of frustration, fatigue, resentment, and rage that simply are not accessible to those who grew up skinny. Ask Poly Styrene, De La Soul, David Thomas, Biggie, Damian Abraham, et al.
  
  - Prince
  
  - Outkast's "B.O.B." It took the 1990s and the 2000s just to contain this shit.
  
  - the strange weight of the knowledge that "Boys Of Summer" was first shopped to Tom Petty
  
  - Phil Phillips & The Twilights' "Sea Of Love"
  
  - the fact that "It's All About The Benjamins," in some ways the absolute era-defining pinnacle of nickel-slick Bad Boy/Hitmen big-money rap production, climaxes with a verse rocked over the same swampy loop that opens motherfucking Death Mix
  
  - the "Silver Child" drums
  
  - the voice of Michael Stipe
  
  - the name "Rainy Davis"
  
  - "Satta Massagana"
  
  - "Here We Go (Live At The Funhouse)"
  
  - the disconcerting realization that Sade is not beamed in from some other planet where all is cool and confidential and the color of cafe au lait, but in fact walks among us. This realization usually hits right around the first time you hear "Maureen."
  
  - Santo & Johnny's "Sleep Walk"
  
  - Yellow Magic Orchestra's "Simoon"
  
  - The Spinners' "I'll Be Around"
  
  - driving around to Willie William's "Armagideon Time"
  
  - in Stone Coal White's "You Know," the close-miked "It makes my heart...beats a little faster" slow-drizzling into your ear like liquid syphilis
  
  - Tori Amos's voice fraying in the last verse of "Caught A Lite Sneeze"
  
  - "and all the love and everyone"
  
  - Whitelily's Bottom Of The Universe
  
  - bonus beats
  
  - Rakim
  
  - red-label Polydor
  
  
  What else?

  

• SCANNING THE FRONT PAGE OF THE SS FORUM:

  Hairy Moody

  May 2016
  Dennis Coffey
  Galt McDermot
  Jared from Sound Library
  Ugly Duckling
  Mo Majid
  David Axelrod
  Wax Poetics
  People Under The Stairs
  
  
  
  Q: WHERE WERE YOU IN '01?
  
  A: WHAT DO YOU MEAN "WERE"?!
  
  
  
  

  

• Anderson Paak

  Hairy Moody

  March 2016
  For my TL/DRers:
  The music's all right, but pretty, churchy dudes who flutter their voices and their eyelashes while saying "b*tch" a lot can seldom crack my crust. Pass.
  
  Otherwise:
  Eh, I don't know. There's been a new one of these rap-informed flow/classic-soul aesthetic/"...but the boy can sang!" type dudes every couple years for about the last twenty years (D'Angelo is probably the aardvark of this whole shit). They make a nice bright spot for a little while, women nod their heads while trying to resolve the ambiguities, men nod their heads without trying to resolve shit, the dude discovers that Sly Stone had records before Fresh and/or drops his own two-hour Songs In The Key Of Ego, and he's straight CDBaby by the next time the year turns cold, by which point there's a new dude coming up anyway.  
  
  I can enjoy this stuff in moments and in its cultural moment--in these fragmented and isolationist days and times, I'm almost always happy when some non-trash thing is getting exposed to and enjoyed by a lot of people at the same time (to me, Anderson .Paak on Colbert or whatever is cool just like ninety-nine-cent cd singles of "Caught Out There" on impulse-buy display at Walgreens' counters was cool)--but having lived through so many iterations of this phenomenon, it's a little like cut flowers, you know? I enjoy it for a little while, and try not to think about it too much (I almost always fail on the latter, which almost always queers the former, but oh well).
  
  I fully support, by the way, each year's listenership's renewed belief that This Year's Dude is Thee Dude. This is, in many important ways, what it means to be a music fan, and I'm really not as mad as this is probably making me sound. I'm just maybe gonna check in with dude a little further on up the road, is all.
  

  

• Bambatta Possibly a pedo/nonce

  Hairy Moody

  May 2016

  Jimster said:

  I brought this very issue up a while back.  Someone had just bought a collection to part out.  Amongst the standard fare was some Skrewdriver.  Said poaster was in a quandry as to whether to cash it in or take it out of circulation.  Should emotion be put aside?
  
  I wondered (folll-lish-ly, out loud) as to where the line could be drawn between art and life and cited how it appears to be almost compulsory for Strutteurs to give, for example, MJ a pass (regardless of whether or not any of those stories were true, sheesh) but compulsory to gas face other artists for their public  misdemeanours.
  
  The poaster was most displeased with my "Comparing MJ to Skrewdriver - MJ was mega-important in my life..." - "...How could I?" etc.
  
  That wasn't my point at all.
  
  

  That's interesting, though not too surprising.
  
  The bulk of us here on soulstrut are non-black dudes heavily focused on one or more types of black music. And, race relations between black and white being as historically fucked and imbalanced as they are, I think each of us harbors, as well we should, some ambivalence and/or some guilt regarding this fact of our musical tastes and our commercial appetites.
  
  One of the common ways music dudes address this imbalance, whether we do it consciously or unconsciously, is to give black artists a pass where we might not for white artists.
  
  I think sometimes this double standard is based on a well-meaning if misguided attempt to in some very small way "pay it back," and sometimes it's based on a more wrong-headed belief that "Well, their culture is just, you know, different." And while the specifics might vary depending on where a particular soulstrutter might live--I'm sure the black/white dynamic is different in the UK, for example, than here in the colonies--I think this is something most of us on the board do to a greater or lesser extent and for one reason or another.

  

• Vulfpeck - Are we just gonna pretend this is not a thing?

  Hairy Moody

  June 2018
  I feel like this is music for enthusiasts at the two extremes: Musicians who know and care a great deal about music, and cargo-shorted casuals who just want something to bob to until the next Record Store Day.
  
  As someone who falls between those two poles--I think and care a great deal about music, but have never been compelled to roll my own--allow me to offer the minority opinion: Every lick of this shit needs to be put in a giant sack labelled "CHOPS!," taken out behind Guitar Center, and fed into a fucking wood-chipper, New-Balances-first.
  
  The sheer uterus-withering sterility of this whole strain of talent-rich, idea-poor, and fiber-free YouTube nu-funk makes my lips pucker, and not in the good way. It has nothing to say to the contemporary culture that surrounds it, it doesn't hold a candle to the bygone culture that inspired it, and it doesn't express anything about its makers or ask anything of its listeners beyond "Hey, wanna see my record collection?" 
  
  In the approximate words of fellow hater Miles Davis, I would always rather listen to inferior music that is of its own time than listen to superior music that belongs to another time. That so many of my beautifully intolerant record-nerd brethren have found room in their heart for such Berklee College jam-session runoff is, to me, a real sadness.    

  
  Wherever Philippe Lehman is, I hope he's getting his liver eaten out daily for his role in all this.