Pages from the Music Journal 10

Ted Waldbillig

Undergraduate/English

Frank Sinatra In the Wee Small Hours (1955 LP)

June 2008 - In today's world of hearts wrenched with a wide variety of bands aiming to pull just about any teenager with teenager feelings, songs of bad or unrequited love are a dime a dozen. But the truth is, you see, the best singer to take this subject on whole heartedly did it well over fifty years ago. Frank Sinatra requires no introduction, but In the Wee Small Hours does; it is quite simply the most lonely and straight forward love collection ever.

Know that I am not a natural fan of lounge or even jazz singing. I'm pretty selective about what I like because I never listened to it up until about two or three years ago. Being so used to what Dashboard Confessional's idea of emptiness is, Sinatra's style didn't strike me as immediately compelling the first time I really listened to him a few years ago. More frustrating than this lack of connection was the fact that, as I had read in blogs and magazines and books, most of the world thought otherwise about Sinatra. I'm sure you're familiar with this feeling. It's the feeling you had when your friend played Björk for you and you wondered why everyone thought she was so great. The truth is, nobody ACTUALLY likes Björk, everyone just assumes that everyone else does; it's textbook Bradley Effect. And thus is her popularity is artificially self-perpetuated... I'm just kidding of course, but back to Sinatra.

Sinatra felt alien to me. Songs like "Glad to Be Unhappy" didn't sound really sad (it was something in the timbre). But slowly each song separated from one another and even the aforementioned song turned around, blooming into something devastating. "Can't We Be Friends?" itself has become something of a jazz- and lounge-singing standard. What hurts more about these songs is that each holds an unfamiliar tale. If these songs still seem original now, imagine what they were in 1955. "Can't We Be Friends?" asks a simple question. It's not a rant on "her" supposed imbecility. It's not Frank feeling lost or wondering why his love won't go away... the saddest part of In the Wee Small Hours is that most of the songs strive optimistically; these aren't songs of downed romantic love, they are more like unashamed songs of the real. It's all about dealing with reality. And moving on from a dream of love with an open mind despite torn feelings. Just listen to "I'll Be Around."

Sonic Youth Syr 8 Andre Sider af Sonic Youth (2008 LP)

September 2008

Ahh, the everlasting SYR Series' 8th installment features the relaxing sounds of Sonic Youth, Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, and Japanese electronic harsh-noise guru Merzbow... o.k., fine. Relaxing? absolutely not. Nauseating? yeah yeah.

This recording is an hour long odyssey that starts with mostly Sonic Youth's guitar expertise and Kim Gordon's brooding voice. While all three entities are almost always present, the middle section moves into Mats Gustafsson's saxophone splurges and then the last part finishes purely with Merzbow's knob-turning radio-static aesthetic. It's a mind blowing experience and I would personally congratulate anyone who has the audacity to sit through all of Andre Sider af Sonic Youth without distraction. This is because the album is so vision inducing that it equates to a severe drug trip, except there is little else so sobering as a harsh noise experiment. It regenerates my sensation of humanity's simultaneous organizing and persistent self-destruction in fifty-seven and a half minutes.

To get accustomed to this type of audio is frustratingly difficult. When I first started listening to Merzbow, I was constantly wondering why I subjected myself to it. It's some rare musician that causes physical pain to your ears and head. But there lies the transcendence. Merzbow plays especially with the line between audio aesthetic and tactile physicality.

Mats Gustafsson doesn't play his sax as much as he tortures the instrument, and it in turn produces a bone-chilling agonized noise. The timbre is visceral and affecting. It unsettles the soul and clears your slate, dropping all your defenses in preparation.

Come to think of it, the performance order makes sense. Sonic Youth plays the most accessible of the three sections. SYR 8 is ordered to ease the listener into mania. Listening to this recording is like watching horror. You can't look away, though it disgusts you. But the truth is Andre Sider af Sonic Youth is too real. The cross cultural combination adds to the overall sense of humanity involved in producing this audio.

Richard Wagner  Der Ring des Nibelungen (1967 set)

5 June 2009 - The most dramatic and romantic work of music in history.

People have died performing Der Ring.

2 July 2009 - (excerpt from Ted's MusicBlog 2.0)

Richard Wagner “Zur Burg führt die Brücke": I know it’s not really a "song," but this finale to Das Rheingold, the first installment of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, manages to sound like the world is beginning and ending at the same time. At least for Wotan…

Iggy Pop New Values (1979 LP)

22 June 2009 - What were his old values?

Fuck Buttons Tarot Sport (2009 LP)

23 October 2009 - Signed, sealed and delivered.

This time around with less horrrrsing and fucking, but more street and buttons.

Girls Album (2009 LP)

27 September - 18 November 2009 - Exactly 100 ratings, eh?

Sounds like a good, round number for the cool surface of tin face.

So atrophy is this new word to me 'n it sucks, because it's the knuckle I can't bend;

I can't caress those long golden locks. I can't hear the swish and sing of "I love love love you." Don't get startled, I'm nice and light.

I'm not such a "Big Bad Mean Motherfucker."

"Lust for Life" cooks up a flurry of strums and a whine so skinny, it's in the very tone that you already know he can't have a pizza and a bottle of wine. There's no Beach House for him with that stuffed nose + thumbing chords to the tragic jingle jangle morning on "Summertime."

This whole album is possible in grandma and grandpa's time if The Fall tumbled into a time machine and accidentally tipped it to Kennedy's presidential race, just months before The Ronettes really lit-up/soak-in-the-sunshine-with-you and grew brighter in the great burning spotlight.

...But you can't get too attached to that two and a half minutes. "Laura," the album's second track and second glory, comes bopping down step-by-step on the terraced school lawn, a lunchbox full of six string judo chops slipping beneath that plushy red, white & blue headband while you make it big back then: Garvy high varsity track 1959.