Rickenbacker

Some time in June, 1995.

My musical journey began then, in a moderately sized apartment in Connecticut. But that's not important just yet.

First let's introduce the family, by whom the seeds of some sort of musical taste were planted in me some years ago.


My dad, Michael, is a professor of pediatric infectious diseases at Yale, the head of Yale President Rick Levin's World Fellows Program there, and an all around cool guy. Eternally an 80s college student and alternative rock hipster, this fellow introduced me to what became the basis of my musical tastes for years and years, notably R.E.M., Talking Heads, Joy Division, The Clash, The Velvet Underground, X, Paul Weller/the Jam/the Style Council, etc.

Subsequently, he is also a jazz man, and introduced me to many of the jazz greats before my guitar teacher further explicated jazz.


My mom, Kerry, works as the development director of something that I don't understand fully. She's a bit too happy for her, or rather, my own good, so naturally she introduced me to the music she had always been fond of; U2, Everything But the Girl, Van Morrison, 10,000 Maniacs, and Dave Matthews Band, as whatever she heard once that she liked, she would have on constant rotation for weeks. 2000 was especially brutal; having to hear "Beautiful Day" every damn time I was in the car at least twice. But hey, what can you do.



My Grandfather, Peter, is strictly a classical and jazz music aficionado. His multiple full walls of CDs and ridiculously expensive stereo system speak volumes to that effect.


Finally, my Cousin Thomas is one of the coolest guys you will probably never meet. An accomplished multi-instrumentalist and singer, this guy is really just the man. I encourage you to check out his free podcast in which he features some of his tunes (Search Tom Villalon). As an active musician, he comes across a lot of artists who few know about, and then relays them back to me. Great dude. Really great dude. Also notable

With this fairly eclectic background, it was easy to grow my tastes. As a guitarist and then a pianist, I was exposed to blues music as well, and currently I'm focusing on expanding my jazz repetoire as I delve further into guitar music theory. It's a continuing exploration for all of us, music. This can be a bit of a chronicle.

Anyway, that's me and some of my music. I just thought I'd make this thread as a way to communicate with Music Banter my thoughts on all music I listen to, be it an old favorite or a new future classic. Don't expect order. Expect more of a dumping ground.

My last.fm is, as always, in my signature if you want a better look at my tastes.

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last.fm
rym
Talk About the Passion - R.E.M.'s Discography Reviewed

SATCHMO

Dude...yer' mom....seriously. Let me get them digits.

Rickenbacker

INDEED


Time for an underrated track. R.E.M.'s "Underneath the Bunker" from 1986's Lifes Rich Pageant is definitely that. Awesome surf guitar stylings from Mr. Peter Buck are reminiscent of Dick Dale and the like, while Michael (or someone else perhaps, it's difficult to tell) sings from a distance into a megaphone in a classic Stipe mumble.

Don't know what it's about, but it's a trip. And under two minutes at that!

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last.fm
rym
Talk About the Passion - R.E.M.'s Discography Reviewed

Gavin B.

Don't take this the wrong way Rick, but your mom is seriously hot. I'm a sucker for a woman with a great smile and her smile is dazzling.

My mom looks like Betty White on a bad hair day with a hangover. Try to wrap your mind around that horrifying image and realize what a lucky guy you are.

My entire family is so ugly that we hire stand-ins to pose for family portraits. It's reassuring to know that somebody in this forum is the product of a respectable gene pool. I keep praying that stem cell research will level the playing field for me.

I grew up in the swamps of Louisana and my father worked for a civil engineering company that designed many of the highway and railway bridges that are caving in all around the country right now. My mother laid around on the couch watching soap operas and complaining about her bad back all day.

My grandfather was drunken IRA member who fled to America to avoid a weapons smuggling charge brought against him by the Royal Ulster Constabulary. It was downhill from there on.

My mom hates the entire idea of music and my father's idea of good music was Gene Autry's version of Back In the Saddle Again. My parents were too busy yelling at me to turn down the music, to sit down and listen to any kind of music.

From the time I purchased my first Stooges album, music became my parent's mortal enemy. I thought my dad was having an apoplectic seizure when he first watched one of my Bob Marley videos, one day. He thought I'd joined a cult of marijuana smoking wild men and he was dead right. I was attracted to any philosophy or art that was the exact opposite of the conventional notion of good taste.

I don't hold my mom and dad responsible for the outcome of my own life. They didn't even mean to be my parents , it just happened.

Don't take me too seriously, but you need to do an intervention before mom gets carried away with that happiness routine. Happiness is overated and the world's greatest art is produced by dysfunctional misanthropes who lack the social skills and the emotional development to do anything productive with their lives. Happiness is the root of all evil.

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There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

Rickenbacker

Interesting points, but perhaps the idea of happiness as a lesser force in the creation of great art is misguided? It seems to me that we only hear and thus think about the art created by people in emotional or physical distress, along the lines of Joy Division, or as the bi-product of rebellion a la the Clash. However, maybe the idea of happiness creating great art isn't implausible, just never thought about. I'd point to a song like Waterloo Sunset, a great song by all means, and certainly not one written in sadness. I might just be thinking to myself and not making any sense.

My musical relationship with my parents has become interesting in the past few years as I've matured (slightly). As an essential conglomerate of their tastes, plus a lot of other stuff, I'm always asked to put on music for dinner parties and the like, you know, make a little playlist. I'll be talking to my dad about a song or artist that I recently got into, and he'll tell me how he loved them in college etc, and of course then I ask him why he didn't introduce me to them earlier. It's a good dynamic, being able to talk to someone (in real life) about music. Afternoons on the patio listening to a good record with a friend are really something special that everyone deserves to experience.

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last.fm
rym
Talk About the Passion - R.E.M.'s Discography Reviewed

Gavin B.

As I said in the previous post don't take me too seriously. My own philosophy is in constant fluctuation and I was yanking at your chain with my own personal history, all of which is true but not nearly as traumatic my own humorous accounts of it.

I do believe in karma and the rule of karma inevitably demands a payment of dues from those who want to sing the blues. Every artistic accomplishment is born in the state of sufferation. Sufferation is West Indian patios for the price one pays for their social station in life. Blues and jazz musicians believe that those who fear or avoid the pain of suffering don't have a soul, which is about the strongest statement you can make about someone's lack of spiritual status.

You're right about Waterloo Sunset it may be the greatest Kink's song and one of the most poetic songs of the rock and roll era. The song connected with me in a way the none of the Beatles songs did.

I beg to differ with your theory that Waterloo Sunset wasn't composed in a state of sadness. One of my passionate enterprises is uncovering the meanings of the popular songs that shaped my own worldview along with the worldview of my peer group. I can't help myself... I have a Bachelor degree in Critical Theory and an MEd in Clinical Psychology, so I'm always looking for the subtext beneath words the shape a great song.

I was always curious about the meaning of Waterloo Sunset until songwriter Ray Davies publicly commented on the song for the first time a few months ago. I'll get to his comments in a minute.

Ray Davies worked on the song for several years before the Kinks recorded it and spent a lot of the time reshaping the meaning of the song. Davies rarely writes a song that doesn't have a double edged meaning to it. For instance Victoria is a thinly veiled denunciation of British provincialism that initially sounds like an anthem in praise of the colonial age of Queen Victoria. Kinks fans know that Well Respected Man is a song about a man who is the pillar of conservative British society but beneath his veneer of respectability is a man who also has lecherous designs on the girl next door.

There is a melancholy message in the lyrics and Ray's vocal on Waterloo Sunset is a wee bit too somber to be simple song about a person claiming that he's in paradise when he gazes at the sunset over Waterloo Station in London. An urban subway station in the middle of London is hardly a tourist destination of those who love breathtaking sunsets.

Some people still think the two lovers in the song, named Julie and Terry were actors Julie Christie and Terrance Stamp and that Davies was concealing some sort of privileged information about a 1965 romantic tryst between them. The NNDB website which is an extensive and reliable source of biographical data still says the Christie/Stamp affair was the subject of Waterloo Sunset on Julie Christie's profile. Look toward the bottom of the page for the info.


My own idea was that Waterloo Sunset was a wry commentary on how the poisonous nitrogen gases from air pollution, mix with oxygen to create spectacular scarlet colored sunsets in the many polluted urban areas. That would explain the melancholy manner in which the song is sung. The lyrical content of the song matched up very closely to my harebrained theory, which turned out to be wrong.

Earlier this year, Davies finally settled the matter by revealing his inspiration for the song. Davies told Uncut magazine, Davies said the song's characters Terry and Julie are in fact Ray Davies' older sister and his boyfriend who are now married. Ray, himself, is the third character in the song, who is the narrator of the story. Ray is the one who gazes at this lover's rendezvous at Waterloo station while the world passes him by as he lies his hospital sick bed. His coping mechanism for his loneliness is sense of assurance that the Waterloo sunset is his own paradise and he doesn't need romantic relationships or friends like other people do.

John Donne said,” No man is an island unto himself" but Davies seems to be offering the counter argument which is, "John you idiot, all people are islands unto themselves, and creating a fantasy Waterloo sunset paradise may help human beings cope with the existential isolation confronts our lives."

At the end the song even Julie, her boyfriend Terry and the millions of people swarming like flies in the Waterloo Underground are just like him and being part of a crowd on the same island will never immunize people from the pain of isolation. The paradox is that loneliness is the universal bond that unites us all to the human condition. Man for all of his conceptual intelligence has created a social system that dehumanizes him on a daily basis.

What makes the song brilliant is Davies' talent for telling a very involving story with so few words, and ultimately he leaves it up to the listener to figure out the existential sadness of the story he's telling.

All of that being said I copied the lyrics to Waterloo Sunset for your further consideration:

__________________
There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

Rickenbacker

I believe that Davies' true genius was that as the narrator contemplates existence from a hospital bed, he leaves the listener to realize the innocent beauty of not loneliness, but being alone and feeling happiness. Maybe once the narrator felt lonely, but at the point of narration, he has indeed reached a state of happiness in his separation from society.

And that, my friend, may be the saddest thing of all.

__________________

last.fm
rym
Talk About the Passion - R.E.M.'s Discography Reviewed

Rickenbacker

As an American, I've felt almost like it's been my "duty" to like, or at least listen to Bruce Springsteen on a regular basis. And by listen to Bruce Springsteen, I really mean listen to Born to Run, Born in the USA and whatever "Greatest Hits" I have of his, as well as pull a Rolling Stone and praise whatever album he's just come out with. I never really thought about this until a few months ago, when I considered how little impact his music had had on anybody outside of the States. It was then that I actually looked into his discography and discovered why he actually matter(ed).

That said, I think it's unfair how here on Music Banter I find significant dislike not for this man's music, but for who he is or who he has come to embody, that is, the "average workin' class American". I just don't really get it.

Thinking deeper, I wonder if perhaps it is a simple case of judgement by his well known songs and albums on a grand scale that has lead to this misinterpretation of what Springsteen is about. Is it really just that everybody here who dislike's the man so much has only heard "Born to Run", "Born in the USA", "Glory Days", etc.? If that's the case, know that there is a lot more to the man than just the hits.

I point to the album Nebraska, which features heartfelt and humbling songs, a stark contrast from the 80's synth infected trash that was "Born in the USA". Songs like the title track are about more than just "breaking free" and one's "home town". These songs work for everybody, not just the U.S.

When I've asked people in the past why they dislike the man so much, it's for this reason, or that they think he is simply a douche. Well, where does this second point come from? If it is that he's created obnoxious albums, like Born in the USA, I'd reply that while you can't completely discount those albums, one does have to take into account everything else that wasn't so obnoxious.

It's just a little hard to understand, all of it, so I'd like to talk here about why people dislike the idea of Bruce Springsteen, not why people dislike his music.

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last.fm
rym
Talk About the Passion - R.E.M.'s Discography Reviewed

Engine

It's really pretty simple - it's what he represents to a generation who grew up during the Cold War hearing Born in the USA and looking at the guy's arrogantly positioned ass at every turn.


Bruce Springsteen was not cool in the 80s if you were a kid who listened to any kind of non-mainstream music. Not only was his music throwaway Billboard Top 40 fare (as you asked I'm not giving you my opinion of his music here - just an impression of the man himself -- of course, that impression is inevitably tied to his music in some ways) but it was a representation of what was hideous about the Reagan years: arrogance, indulgence, greed and a general my-dick-is-bigger-than-yours mentality.

Rickenbacker

Like I said,

There's nothing arrogant about "The Wild, the Innocent, and the E-Street Shuffle", or "Nebraska" for example. Yet these albums are overlooked because the majority of the American public prefers the "ass in the face" that was "Born in the U.S.A."

My problem with the whole deal is just that, are you, as a dismisser of Springsteen's over the top American antics, also dismissing these albums? Or is it justified for you to say that the worst an artist does represents the true colors of the artist?

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last.fm
rym
Talk About the Passion - R.E.M.'s Discography Reviewed