Stephinsources

Build a nest in the sand dunes, lay our eggs and walk away

2006-02-14T00:00:00.000-05:00

I kind of short-changed the Human League the first time around, so here's another attempt. In the 69LS interview booklet, after Daniel Handler pointed out the apparent Phil Oakey (Human League front man) influence on "I Can't Touch You Anymore," Merritt stated that "The Human League are second only to Kraftwerk, in my mind." The band started out in the late seventies when Martyn Ware and Ian Craig-Marsh, two computer programmers, invited Oakey to sing for them. Their first single was "Being Boiled," a dark, menacing song with mentions of "slaying," "torture," and yes, being "boiled alive." Synth player Adrian Wright, who ran the slide projector during shows, hooked up with the trio around this time. After two albums, Ware and Marsh departed and formed the group Heaven 17, and Oakey assembled a new lineup to embark on a European tour, for contractual obligations.

The band finally found success under the producer's hand of Martin Rushent (who worked with Buzzcocks, Altered Images, XTC, and many others) with the release of Dare (Dare! for the US release) and the subsequent EP Fascination! For their 1986 album Crash, they took a more Top 40-friendly approach and employed the producer duo of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. That duo (which produced several smash albums for Janet Jackson) even wrote the album's single, "Human" - a number one hit. On the Human League tribute album Reproductions, the 6ths (Merritt with singer Lloyd Cole) covered "Human" in a low-key style, and well-aware of the song's laughable earnestness, Merritt tackles the mid-song spoken word passage with just a hint of a British accent (and his falsetto delivery of "I am just a maaaan" is pure cheese.)

I also short-changed John Foxx, so here we go. Foxx (real name: Dennis Leigh) started out in art school, playing around with synthesizers, and eventually he formed the band Tiger Lily (inspired by the Velvet Underground and the New York Dolls) which evolved into Ultravox! (more! exclamation! points!). This outfit made three albums for Island Records, the first of which was co-produced by Brian Eno, and these records would be a big influence on Gary Numan. After Island dropped the band, Foxx left to start his solo career, and his replacement, Midge Ure, helped lead Ultravox (no "!" at this point) to fame and fortune with tracks like "Vienna" and "Reap the Wild Wind."

Foxx wasted no time and released his debut album, Metamatic, in January of 1980, full of icy synth sounds and modern urban imagery. Concerning Metamatic, Foxx commented, "At the time it felt dangerous, as if I'd thrown the baby out with the bathwater. I stripped things down to the point where I might have gone too far. In retrospect I did exactly the right thing." He enjoyed modest success - several of his singles charted, and he even created the score for Michelangelo Antonioni's film Identification of a Woman. However, in 1985, he put his music-making on hold, citing disinterest, and fell back on his art background, working in graphic design and photography. His return to music ten years later came in the form of a collaboration with Louis Gordon, yielding two albums, and the duo toured churches and botanical gardens across Europe. "Underpass" is originally from Metamatic, but here is the single version, available on the excellent career-spanning compilation Modern Art: The Best of John Foxx.

The 1965 entry on the list is "You Don't Know" by Ellie Greenwich, the Brill Building songwriting partner of Jeff Barry. Greenwich helped write some of the greatest pop songs ever, like "River Deep, Mountain High" for Ike and Tina Turner and two featured on Stephinsources, "Then He Kissed Me" (Crystals) and "Be My Baby" (Ronettes). She saved one of her best for herself, though - a soaring, heartbreaking song about the despair of unexpressed love. Her vocals are up for the task, and she just nails the line "I can't let her know" (near the one minute mark).

Growing up in Brooklyn, then Long Island, Greenwich had a mini-revelation when she heard "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" by the Shirelles, because the melody was similar to that of a song she had written. She established herself, along with boyfriend (later husband) Jeff Barry, with the Brill Building songwriting crowd via Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Also, Greenwich and Barry recorded song demos that impressed Leiber, Stoller, and Phil Spector so much that they were turned into an instant band, the Raindrops. I Can Hear Music: The Ellie Greenwich Collection has three charming tracks by the Raindrops (two were hits for other bands), and it includes the stunning "You Don't Know" - but it also includes the album Let It Be Written, Let It Be Sung... from 1973. With soft rock versions of old and new songs, it was intended to be similar in style to Carole King's immensely popular Tapestry, but the arrangements are just dreadful to my ears. A better way to own "You Don't Know" is by getting the unbelievably great One Kiss Can Lead to Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost & Found boxed set on Rhino, released late last year. Other Merritt favorites are on it, like Dolly Parton, Petula Clark, and Dusty Springfield, and it's totally worth the dough.

I'll end with Merritt's thoughts on race and music, from this interview for Barnes & Noble:

What I'd like to see in the year 2000 is the abandonment of music being categorized by the race of the artist, or the perceived race of the audience. It's disgusting, and I would like to be amazed that it's still happening. [Eliminating] racism and sexism would be major improvements, and it would make an enormous difference in the music industry. It would be really nifty if black people were allowed to make records that didn't have to constantly refer to very recent traditions of black radio. It's absurd, and at this point, it's as though the only thing the American public were allowed to hear were "coon songs" and ragtime. It's worse, I think, than it was in 1899.

And he goes into it more in this Flagpole interview:

Merritt: I think music is one of the most segregated industries in the U.S. I gather it's different in Britain.
Flagpole: It's kind of across the board in the entertainment business, though, not just in music.
Merritt: Well, if you go see an action movie, it's most likely going to have one black male star and one white male star and kind of randomly assigned races for the female romantic leads. Often you'll have multi-racial couples. That vanishes when you move to comedies, and it's incredibly rare when you move over into music.

Flagpole: Do you think your music serves in any way to rectify the situation?
Merritt: Only in as much as I don't make those distinctions. Smashing genre is a lot of what I'm about.

On that note, I leave you with a track by Public Enemy, a group that has more than a few things to say about race issues. With members Chuck D, Flavor Flav, Professor Griff, and Terminator X, the pioneering hip-hop group made a huge impact in the late 80s with its political and socially-relevant (and sometimes controversial) lyrics and adept turntable scratching. From Fear of a Black Planet (selected for preservation in the Library of Congress in 2005), here's "911 Is a Joke," which is Merritt's selection on the list for 1990.

Human League - "The Sound of the Crowd"
Human League - "Human"
John Foxx - "Underpass"
Ellie Greenwich - "You Don't Know"
Public Enemy - "911 Is a Joke"

There was a request for the Alvin Lucier tracks. Ubu, which had been out of commission for a while, is now back up and running, and you can get the 15 minute version of "I am sitting in a room" on that site, here. Here's the 1980 version excerpt I had previously posted:

Alvin Lucier - "I am sitting in a room" (fragment, 1980)

Well, folks, that's the last post. Many thanks to Chris Heschong, Robey Pointer, and Britton Ware for helping me obtain certain tracks, and special thanks to Chris for the bandwidth and server space. Thanks for reading, and if you have requests for re-posts, I can probably work something out - just email me. See you on Stephinsongs (and if you're not on Stephinsongs, join today!)

There are no more lovers left alive; no one has survived

2006-02-06T23:58:00.000-05:00

First earning mainstream success in the mid-to-late '80s, Pet Shop Boys are giants in the electro-pop world, and after 20+ years, they're still feeding devoted fans and dance aficionados their combination of carefully crafted synthpop and smart lyrics. The duo of Neil Tennant (vocalist, lyricist, and keyboard player) and Chris Lowe (keyboards) hit number one around the world with the sophisticated half spoken/half sung "West End Girls," and other hits followed like "Opportunities" and "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" which featured guest vocals from Dusty Springfield. The aloof, slightly nasal vocals from Tennant and the cheerfully artificial synth arrangements mark the Pet Shop Boys' catalog, and they've been able to shift and adapt enough to endure in the capricious realm of dance music. In 2001, Pet Shop Boys had ambitious plans for a festival tour, called Wotapalava, that would feature gay musicians including the Magnetic Fields, but the plans were scrapped after headliner Sinead O'Connor backed out. The band created a score (released last year) for the 1925 silent film Battleship Potemkin, a film school necessity, and they performed it at a live screening in Trafalgar Square in September of 2004. This spring, they plan on releasing a new album, entitled Fundamental.

After the release of Very in 1993, Tennant came out, and not surprisingly, the band is popular among the gay community. However, like Merritt, Tennant often writes lyrics that are intended to be of an ambiguous sexuality, though some have particular resonance with gay listeners. One such song is "Being Boring," which Tennant has stated was written about a friend who was dying of AIDS. In it, he reflects on earlier times when he'd "bolted through a closing door" before singing "...all the people I was kissing, some are here and some are missing." The song's title comes from an essay written by Zelda Fitzgerald called "Eulogy on the Flapper," in which Fitzgerald wrote on the titular figure: "...she refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn't boring."

In Chickfactor #11, Merritt named Tennant as being "the best lyricist in an electropop group," along with himself and Gary Numan, and he and Claudia Gonson have repeatedly asked him to be a singer for the 6ths (to no avail, so far). As Gonson explains, Pet Shop Boys were highly influential for Future Bible Heroes, and she speaks specifically about Memories of Love in Chickfactor #10:

"I think it's largely influenced by the Pet Shop Boys - it's kind of a Pet Shop Boys meets Martin Denny kind of thing. I give it the Bananarama treatment, and Stephin gives it the vernacular Neil Tennant treatment."

"Dreaming of the Queen," which was Merritt's pick for 1993, comes from the album Very, and it's about a peculiar dream involving having tea with Lady Di and the Queen, contemplating "why love had died." Also included this week is the forementioned "Being Boring" in its single form, taken from the compilation Discography.

Pet Shop Boys - "Dreaming of the Queen"
Pet Shop Boys - "Being Boring"

Shifting gears a bit...
Magnetic Fields vocalist ld beghtol will be writing a book about 69 Love Songs, and he is making an open request for "anecdotes, images, and other stuff related to the record, its songs and how it's affected people's lives/art/etc." - this also goes for live performances of 69LS. If you'd like to contribute something, contact him at this address: tmf69lovesongs at aol dawt cawm

Once is delicious but twice would be vicious or just repetitious

2006-01-30T22:54:00.000-05:00

A peerless composer and lyricist in the Broadway realm, Stephen Sondheim has been in the biz for over five decades, creating huge hit musicals that are continually revived. During his rocky childhood - his father abandoned him and his mother was clingy and smothering - he became a friend of the son of Oscar Hammerstein II (the musical giant behind such shows as Show Boat, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music), who was a profoundly influential mentor to Sondheim. After graduating from Williams College in 1950, he studied under the composer Milton Babbitt, known for his bold forays into electronic music.

Sondheim first found praise as a lyricist, penning West Side Story in his mid-twenties and Gypsy in 1959, and his first Broadway production as both a lyricist and composer, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, opened in 1962. His next success was Company in 1970, centered on a bachelor's 35th birthday and his married friends, "middle class people with middle class problems" as Sondheim calls them. Based on the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night, A Little Night Music (Merritt's 1973 entry on the list) was another hit, featuring one of Sondheim's most famous songs, "Send in the Clowns." Other productions include the gruesome Sweeney Todd from 1979, which is currently experiencing a revival, Sunday in the Park with George about the pointilist painter Georges Seurat, and the psychological fairy tales of Into the Woods from 1987.

One of the most well-known versions of "Send in the Clowns" is Barbra Streisand's take, and the title refers the circus practice of dispatching a team of clowns to distract the audience after something goes awry. Streisand was actually pursued by Merritt and Claudia Gonson to be a singer for the second 6ths album; Gonson said, "I wrote a lot of letters to Eartha Kitt and Liza Minnelli and Barbra Streisand, and I got a lot of responses that were kind but noncommittal." The second track this week is "I Never Do Anything Twice," originally written by Sondheim for the 1976 film about Sherlock Holmes, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (by the way, the title isn't an "I've solved it!" solution, but instead refers to a 7% cocaine, 93% saline solution.) The Three Terrors performed it as part of their "...Go Hollywood" show in April of 2001.

Barbra Streisand - "Send in the Clowns"
Julie Wilson - "I Never Do Anything Twice"

It was fun for a while, there was no way of knowing

2006-01-23T23:58:00.000-05:00

Almost comically, Avalon is a notorious seduction aid, the musical equivalent of Spanish Fly: Any bachelor who plays it risks announcing his depraved intentions in neon letters, ALL CAPS.

- Rob Tannenbaum, Village Voice

Roxy Music's Avalon, Merritt's pick for 1982, is indeed a swanky album, and it's one of the few Roxy Music releases that doesn't feature a trashy woman on its cover. It makes one imagine white-tie affairs with socialites straight out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel mingling and having torrid, consequence-free trysts at beach houses on the French Riviera. It just oozes sophistication, with Bryan Ferry's suave voice singing unabashedly passionate lyrics like "I'd do anything to turn you on" (or, more smugly, "All the world, even you, should learn to love the way I do.") This world overlaps with Merritt's world, full of attractive and brooding people (see the cover of Get Lost), hopeless romantics who dance among chandeliers and avoid hard labor.

With an art school background, the group was formed in the early 70s by Bryan Ferry with a lineup that included Brian Eno, whose synth stylings added an experimental side to the band's glam rock. Eno was gone from the picture after two albums, and the outfit continued their furious pace of recording, releasing a total of five albums between 1972 and 1975. They gradually moved away from their rock tendencies, with more emphasis on soul, and by the time Flesh + Blood was released in 1980, their edge was practically gone. This led to the smoothness that is Avalon, the band's 8th and final studio album; after a tour to support that album, Bryan Ferry ended the group and focused on his solo career.

This week, we have two selections from Avalon, and it's an album that is hard to describe without making it sound like some insufferable adult contemporary release. True, it is lite rock, and it does feature saxophone flourishes, but they pull it off with taste and finesse.

Roxy Music - "More Than This"
Roxy Music - "Avalon"

Blue is my world now I'm without you

2006-01-16T23:55:00.000-05:00

"I don't know why Whitney Houston doesn't do one of my songs. A lot of them are blank enough for her to play around with and have bland enough lyrics for the meaning to be in the singing rather than the lyrics, which is what she seems to demand from a song. I do that sort of thing pretty well, and I'm actually surprised that I haven't been taken up by that group of people."

That first sentence of Merritt's sounded a little flip back in 1998, with just a hint of indignation (although I have no doubt that he was being serious), but that was before 69 Love Songs and being signed to Nonesuch Records. Many indie-friendly bands have covered Merritt's songs, and a few of those groups were a bit more popular than the Magnetic Fields at the time, like Lush (who covered "I Have the Moon") and White Town (who covered "Famous"). However, Peter Gabriel's cover of "The Book of Love" (on the Shall We Dance? movie soundtrack album from 2004) is the first example of an artist that is significantly more well-known than Merritt tackling one of his songs. (And see this page for a rundown of some other recent and not-so-recent covers - add the Shins' live cover of "Strange Powers" to that list.)

As explained in this Wikipedia entry, "cover" songs were probably so named because decades ago, when a song became popular, other musicians would quickly release their own versions of the song to capitalize on its success, thus "covered" like a football carrier at the bottom of a pileup. The dynamics of the music business have, of course, changed substantially within the last hundred years, and whereas the "cash in" covers of the early-to-mid 20th century were based on a certain song's popularity, in the last few decades, such covers were often based on a certain artist's popularity.

For their Lonely Days EP, Future Bible Heroes recorded an English version of "Love Is Blue (L'Amour Est Bleu)", and it's somewhat astounding to read that in 1968, there were four different versions of that track on the charts, the most popular one being the non-vocal one by Paul Mauriat and His Orchestra. Time magazine analyzed this song back in 1968:

For those whose idea of an oldie is pre-rock 'n' roll, there is still hope. A record called "Love Is Blue" has become a hit without any of the ingredients that pop musicians have considered necessary for the past few years: the juggernaut beat, the vocalisthenic performance, and the strain of novelty. "Love Is Blue" is concocted according to an entirely different recipe. Its rocking rhythm cradles a plaintive, folklike melody swathed in lush strings and horns. It is an all-instrumental number, the first to become a bestseller since 1963.

(By the way, that forementioned instrumental bestseller was "Telstar" by the Tornados.)

"Love Is Blue" has three composition credits: André Popp (who composed the music), Pierre Cour (who wrote the French lyrics), and Brian Blackburn (who wrote the English lyrics). Popp was a French arranger, composer, and bandleader who made highly unusual spage-age pop in the 50s, using various tape manipulation techniques - comparisons to Esquivel are fair, as both had playful and bold arranging styles, and Popp also reminds me somewhat of Perrey and Kingsley (although Popp's work predates theirs), with their ever-changing sound effect-ridden pop madness. (This page and this page have a few brief Popp sound samples.)

Versions of "Love Is Blue" are plentiful, and this week, three renditions are featured. The forementioned version by Paul Mauriat and His Orchestra was a tremendous smash, staying at the #1 spot (USA charts) for five weeks. The proto-waif, whisper-voiced Claudine Longet, known for marrying Andy Williams and shooting a boyfriend, gives us a French language version, with a spoken English middle section. And finally, we have a version by Arthur Lyman, who played the vibes in Martin Denny's band and was a prolific and notable figure in 50s and 60s exotica.

Paul Mauriat and His Orchestra - "Love Is Blue"
Claudine Longet - "Love Is Blue (L'Amour Est Bleu)"
Arthur Lyman - "Love Is Blue"

By request, the Wild Stares track is back up:

The Wild Stares - "Babies Falling"

To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die

2006-01-09T23:46:00.000-05:00

Morrissey is a bit of an easy target for mockery, being unabashedly effeminate and seemingly eternally sad, and I can't help but think of an episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 where he emerges from a giant Tupperware container (to lock in pop star freshness) and says, "This is a song I wrote at a time of my life when I was...very, very sad. Breakfast, actually." He is, however, a fascinating songwriter, often channeling Oscar Wilde, who can tap into adolescent despair and loneliness like few others can, and his voice, high and pleasant, can deftly carry any melody he takes a stab at.

It's often mentioned that Morrissey attended the legendary Lesser Free Trade Hall show by the Sex Pistols in 1976 (recreated in the film 24 Hour Party People), but as documented in letters to various music mags, he wasn't really impressed with them. He much preferred the proto-punk New York Dolls and glam singer Jobriath. In 1982, he formed the Smiths with Johnny Marr, who gave the band its distinctive jangly guitar sound, and the group had an incredible five-year run of singles and albums on Rough Trade Records. There was a bit of friction between Morrissey and Marr, and Allmusic.com's band bio says that Marr "...was frustrated with Morrissey's devotion to 60s pop and his hesitancy to explore new musical directions." After Marr left in 1987, Morrissey disbanded the Smiths and promptly started his solo career. Starting off with the pop-friendly Viva Hate, certainly easy on the ears of Smiths fans, he drifted into guitar rock territory (Your Arsenal) and even into prog rock for later releases.

In a review of Morrissey's album You Are the Quarry for the New York Times (alternate link here), Merritt called Morrissey "the best lyricist in rock," and there are obviously similarities between Merritt's "how utterly over-the-top depressing can I get?" songs and Morrissey's "nobody loves me and I want to die" songs. At one performance by the Magnetic Fields, Stephin and Claudia discussed how someone referred to one of their songs as being Morrissey-esque, and then one of them responded that "Summer Lies" had to be their most Morrissey-esque song, particularly the lyrics "hiding in my room, wasting away, cutting myself." And so this week, we feature Morrissey at his most Morrissey-esque, with two of his classics: the majestic, wistful "Everyday Is Like Sunday" (do notice, as that site's commentary points out, that it's "everyday" and not "every day") and one of the ultimate morbid pop songs, "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out."

Morrissey - "Everyday Is Like Sunday"
The Smiths - "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out"

I'm on my way and I won't turn back

2006-01-02T23:29:00.000-05:00

Folk singer and guitarist Odetta turned 75 this last New Year's Eve, and there's a 51 year span between her first album from 1954, and her latest, Gonna Let It Shine, released a few months ago. In those five decades, she's blown minds with her powerful voice and influenced many notables in the folk music biz, including Joan Baez and Bob Dylan; Odetta gave Dylan encouragement early in his career (before he was in NYC), and her album Sings Ballads and Blues inspired him to switch from an electric to an acoustic guitar. Stephinfans know Odetta from her astounding (and markedly non-indie) singing for the 6ths track "Waltzing Me All the Way Home"; her voice demands attention, being commanding and husky yet elegant. In an interview for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Merritt recalled witnessing the recording session:

"I think I actually cried at the recording session because it was so unexpectedly beautiful. Hearing Odetta sing my song for the first time was like hearing an orchestra play my symphony for the first time, I imagine."

And in an interview for NY Blade, Merritt explained Odetta's unique interpretation of the song:

"She told me that she saw the song ‘Waltzing Me All the Way Home’ as being about two gay black soldiers in World War II, which is completely different from what I thought of the song being about. I don’t generally think of my characters in visual terms so I didn’t have any race in mind. I also don’t really think of singers in visual terms."

Merritt has admired Odetta for a long time, as she (along with Jefferson Airplane) performed at the first concert he ever attended, and in the 69LS interview booklet, Merritt named her as one of the great vocalists in the pantheon. At one of the Magnetic Fields performances at Town Hall in NYC in 2004, Claudia Gonson placed a copy of Odetta's At Town Hall album at the front of the stage; apparently, they saw it for sale by a street vendor that very day and took that as a good omen. *(see footnote)

"Gallows Tree" (a.k.a. "Gallows Pole") is a tense song from the point of view of a person trying to stall his own death by pleading with the hangman. It's a traditional song that was included in Leadbelly's repertoire, but I'm partial to Odetta's version (from her 1957 album At the Gate of Horn), which demonstrates her impressive guitar chops. (By the way, the person playing bass on that song is Bill Lee, film director Spike Lee's father.) Odetta's "Spiritual Trilogy" comes from the forementioned Sings Ballads and Blues album from 1956, and it's a stirring medley, to say the least. By the time she gets to "I'm on My Way," she's practically barking out the words, passionately, and she ends each sustained note with an exhausted wilt - it gives me the shivers every time.

Odetta - "Gallows Tree (Gallows Pole)"
Odetta - "Spiritual Trilogy: Oh Freedom / Come and Go with Me / I'm on My Way"

Note: just so it won't be startling news when the time comes, I'm going to be wrapping this blog up probably at the one year mark - around Valentine's Day. While theoretically I could write about every last artist Merritt has ever mentioned, I feel like I've kept things fairly relevant so far to the task of unlocking his tastes and influences. I have artists picked out for the last six weeks, but if any of you have some suggestions or requests, I'd be happy to read them.

* footnote added 1/9/06: my remembrance was somewhat incorrect. Here are my notes from soon after the performance:
Stephin brought a copy of an Odetta album (a live performance at Town Hall!) and displayed it in front of him. He said that someone bought it on the street for him that day.

I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes

2005-12-19T23:55:00.000-05:00

The British band the Troggs, of course, are best known for their 1966 #1 hit rendition of "Wild Thing," but that sludgy, unexpectedly influential garage rock oddity, with dramatic pauses and an ocarina solo, is just one side to the band. They had a number of hits in the U.K., but they only had one other big American hit, "Love Is All Around," a flower child-friendly song with pastoral strings and a gentle simplicity. Between these two extremes, what brought it all together was Reg Presley's vocals, delivered with his distinctive, snarly voice, and the embrace of basic pop aesthetics. In addition to inspiring garage bands, punks, power-popsters, hippie love rockers, and Jimi Hendrix (who covered "Wild Thing"), they also (allegedly) inspired a cinematic moment. The infamous (and NSFW, mind you) "Troggs Tapes" (linked page includes an MP3) is an 11-minute recording of some sailor-mouthed studio dialogue, reminiscent of a Derek & Clive sketch, and apparently this leaked swear-fest was the basis for the scene in This Is Spinal Tap where the band attempts to record some new material in a studio. I should point out that This Is Spinal Tap inspired the line in "Time Enough for Rocking When We're Old" that goes "There'll be time enough for sex and drugs in Heaven, when our pheromones are turned up to 11." And, close to thirty years after they had formed, the group experienced a slight comeback with the 1992 album Athens Andover, recorded with help from members of R.E.M. (who had covered "Love Is All Around") and the dB's.

In the Raygun interview with Merritt, he mentions the Troggs in his discussion of bubblegum music, and in Chickfactor #6 he lists the Troggs compilation Archaeology as an essential pop recording. And, I'm willing to bet that it's no accident that the titles of the Troggs' two most popular songs are found within the lyrics to two Magnetic Fields songs: "I miss doing the wild thing with you" from "Come Back from San Francisco" and "Desert island, love is all around" from the Holiday track. This week's first selection, "With a Girl Like You," is overshadowed by the two biggest hits in the band's history, but it was a British chart-topper during its time. It's just one big marvelous hook, with proto-Big Star guitar bursts, staccato singing, and irresistible "ba ba ba"s.

The Troggs - "With a Girl Like You"
The Troggs - "Love Is All Around"

Stephinsources will return on January 2.

Originality is passé

2005-12-12T23:58:00.000-05:00

The Onion: What do you yourself listen to most?
Merritt: What I listen to most would probably be ABBA. An important band. And basically the people who are doing what I'm doing, which is plagiarize. Stereolab, for instance. [...] I think records should sound somewhat familiar. They should grapple with what's gone before. Right now, there's been no new technology in music for the first time in a long time. [...] There being no new technology, we have only the old stuff to recombine all the time in hopefully slightly new ways.

Plagiarize? Yes, plagiarize. The line between homage and theft gets crossed - so what? Anyone who claims to be doing something totally original in the realm of music should be approached with deep skepticism. Whether it's reusing folk songs collected by Alan Lomax or sampling, mimicking distinctive production styles, or throwing clichés around, Merritt has never shied away from appropriation.

So, there's an obvious legal issue with plagiarism, but there's a way to deal with that. A Time article mentioned Merritt's encounter with the book The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way) (well worth the read!), and inside it, there is a discussion of copyright laws and the concept of groove:

...gangsters of the groove from Bo Diddley on down believe they have been ripped off, not only by the business but by all the artists that have followed on from them. This is because the copyright laws that have grown over the past one hundred years have all been developed by whites of European descent and these laws state that fifty per cent of the copyright of any song should be for the lyrics, the other fifty per cent for the top line (sung) melody; groove doesn't even get a look in.

Lyrics are 50%, and the top line melody is the other 50%. That's it! Anything else - rhythms, accompanying melodies, chord progressions - doesn't count.

Merritt's beloved Stereolab has several obsessions, including vintage keyboards (Moog and Farfisa, especially), lounge music, and 70s Krautrock. Many Stereolab songs use the bass drum-abusing motorik beat (a.k.a. "Apache beat"), directly lifted from drummer Klaus Dinger of Neu!, and astute fans have noticed that Stereolab's groove on their epic-lengthed "Jenny Ondioline" is pretty much identical to the one on Neu!'s track "Hallogallo." Similarly, Stereolab borrows heavily from another Krautrock classic, "It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl," by Faust, for two different songs: "Animal Or Vegetable (A Wonderful Wooden Reason...)" and "Anemie," available on their stellar radio session compilation, ABC Music.

Auxiliary Stereolab member Sean O'Hagan has his own band, the High Llamas, which is an outlet for his own pop yearnings and enormous Beach Boys fixation. In O'Hagan, Merritt has a kindred soul, as both share a complete disinterest in writing lyrics that are personal, not to mention the 60s fetish. With sparkling, intricate arrangements featuring a variety of strings and electronics, the High Llamas build upon their influences and make possibly some of the most underappreciated pop music today. Merritt is particularly fond of their 1998 album Cold and Bouncy (which features this week's first selection, "The Sun Beats Down"), one of his TimeOut New York picks for that year, and in an interview in 1999, he mentioned that it was "...the only pop record from the last year that I’ve played more than ten times."

The High Llamas - "The Sun Beats Down"
Stereolab - "Anemie"

By request, the Young Marble Giants tracks are up for another week:

Young Marble Giants - "The Man Amplifier"
Young Marble Giants - "N.I.T.A." (demo)

I want to change my seat just so I can step on everybody's feet

2005-12-05T23:46:00.000-05:00

The versatile entertainer Eartha Kitt has led an unusual and extraordinary life so far, one that has crossed paths with such characters as Orson Welles, Secret Service agents, and Batman. But the most memorable thing about her is that unmistakable voice - agile, articulate, and *ROWR* super-hot. Her best-known persona as a live performer is that of a sex kitten cabaret singer, acting the part of a pampered temptress. After humble beginnings, Kitt joined a dance troupe which took her to Europe for a tour; while filling in for an absent singer in Paris, a club owner spotted her talent and then hired her. Orson Welles had caught her act and was quite taken by her, and he cast her in a stage adaptation of Faust. Upon her return back home, she hit the club circuit and Broadway, and in 1953, she recorded her first album for RCA, hitting the Top Five. With great success on the stage, in nightclubs, and on records, Kitt expanded her career by acting in films, and in 1967, she played the role of Catwoman on the Batman TV show.

In the next year, Kitt was invited to a White House luncheon with Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson, where she spoke out regarding the Vietnam War, allegedly making the First Lady cry. This event caused Kitt to be blacklisted in the States and also to be investigated by the F.B.I., and she lived in Europe for the next decade to escape scorn. Kitt returned to the United States in 1978 to a more welcoming public and government (President Carter even greeted her) and resumed her singing and acting careers. Her recent productions include The Wild Party, Rogers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, and Nine (a show which you might remember being mentioned in the Magnetic Fields song "Promises of Eternity").

Why yes, Stephin is a fan, citing her Eartha-Quake boxed set and also seeking her as a vocalist for the second 6ths album. The first song this week is a fun little spazz-out called "I Wanna Be Evil!" which demonstrates Eartha's range as a performer - coy and reserved one minute, crazed and wicked the next. This version is taken from Eartha Kitt in Person at the Plaza from 1965, which reportedly is Kitt's own favorite album. Did Stephin have this song in mind when writing "I Wish I Had an Evil Twin"? Someone should ask him. The second song this week is a "charming Rodgers and Hart tune" from the musical Spring Is Here entitled "Why Can't I?". It's available on Kitt's 1994 album Back in Business, which earned her a Grammy nomination.

Eartha Kitt - "I Wanna Be Evil!"
Eartha Kitt - "Why Can't I?"

Sing me the kind of song you hear in an operetta

2005-11-28T23:59:00.000-05:00

The work of Victorian era duo Gilbert and Sullivan (lyricist/stagewriter William S. Gilbert and composer Sir Arthur Sullivan) served as the inspiration for two songs by the Magnetic Fields: the harpsichord-bound "For We Are the King of the Boudoir" and "In an Operetta." Together, the pair created comic operas which often demonstrated "topsy-turvydom," the ever-present state of wacky complications and the mingling of diverse characters from varied backgrounds (hence, the name of the Mike Leigh film Topsy-Turvy, about the production of The Mikado.) Written over a century ago, their operettas continue to be performed today, including their three most famous ones, H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado and serve as influential precursors to the modern stage musical. Now, Merritt sings of an operetta, and perhaps a little definition is in order. An operetta is kind of like opera lite, typically light-hearted and comedic, and not all of the words are necessarily sung; players are usually selected for their singing abilities rather than their acting abilities. A musical, however, tends to be more like a play that is interspersed with songs, therefore acting takes a greater importance.

On first listen, "In an Operetta" might seem like a trifle, but it's actually quite a clever song with several literary and musical references, twisted around into a sort of meta-Victorian plot. First off, Violetta is the main character in Verdi's opera La Traviata, first performed in 1853, a tragic story about a courtesan who faces disapproval when she falls in love with an aristocrat. The "cross-dressing female sailor" plot line was used in traditional Irish seafaring songs, and the most popular one, "The Handsome Cabin Boy," was covered by Kate Bush, Frank Zappa, and Jerry Garcia, among others. The protagonist of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, first serialized in the early 1860s, is an orphan named Pip, and the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Pirates of Penzance is centered around a band of orphaned pirates who are softies at heart.

Richard D'Oyly Carte was an important figure in the professional life of Gilbert and Sullivan, as he produced most of their operettas and built London's Savoy Theatre in 1881 for performances of their works. His D'Oyly Carte Opera Company is still around today, although they have ceased productions since May of 2003, waiting for better economic conditions. This week, two tracks performed by the Company are featured: "Never Mind the Why and Wherefore" from the nautical love story H.M.S. Pinafore and the spooky "When the Night Wind Howls" from the "supernatural opera" Ruddigore.

The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company - "Never Mind the Why and Wherefore"
The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company - "When the Night Wind Howls"

Life is more than going to see things, and that's too bad

2005-11-21T23:58:00.000-05:00

In an interview with Merritt in The Independent, he mentions two concerts that each made a lasting impression upon him - one was seeing Einstürzende Neubauten perform their first NY show in 1984, and the other was a set by the falsetto-voiced ukulele player, Tiny Tim. Merritt said, "Both were life-changing shows, although for opposite aesthetics."

Formed in West Berlin in 1980, Einstürzende Neubauten pushed music to the limits of listenability with its cacophony of guitar noise, power tools used as musical instruments, and rhythms banged out on pieces of metal. Their live shows were legendary for being utterly chaotic, and Merritt wrote the following for Time Out New York about the concert he witnessed:

"...Einstürzende Neubauten, the German difficult-listening group that ruined my hearing 15 years ago (and left me with spark burns on my neck for weeks); the construction-site-as-music-ensemble is so loud without amplification that no one could tell when Danceteria turned off the sound system; the band that commanded its followers to 'listen with pain' and destroyed whatever stage it played on with buzz saws and jackhammers; the group whose name means 'collapsing new buildings,' which perfectly describes its sound."

It's plain to see why Merritt would be drawn to Tiny Tim, as both are avid ukulele players and have a commanding knowledge of early American pop music. With his thick, six-foot frame, unruly long hair, and high singing voice, Tiny Tim was often dismissed as merely a kitschy novelty, but his love for late 19th century/early 20th century music was completely sincere. The Allmusic biography for Tiny Tim says, "...he was an avid collector of 78 rpm records and sheet music, and often scoured the New York Public Library's musical archives for material." Gaining a modest amount of recognition in the Greenwich Village scene in the early 60s, his big break came with an appearance on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, and soon he became a television variety/talk show staple. Some attribute the birth of trash/tabloid TV to a single event in 1969: his televised marriage on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson to his girlfriend, Miss Vicki.

In Chickfactor #11, Merritt recalled the forementioned Tiny Tim show:

"Tiny Tim did a show at the Rathskeller in Boston in the late '80s with five band members and five audience members, he played for two hours. Mr. Tim would play the same three chords on his ukulele for 15 minutes, so the band could easily play along (they'd never rehearsed), and trill in falsetto every standard he could think of with those chords, from 1880s Stephen Foster to 1970s Donna Summer. After a while he'd change one of the chords and go off on a new set of songs, never stopping for applause. His enthusiasm for songs of the early 20th century was really touching, and of course he was such a freakish person and so adrift in time, that by the end all eleven of us were blubbering and sobbing along with 'Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree with Anyone Else But Me.'"

Einstürzende Neubauten - "Krieg in Den Städten"
Tiny Tim - "Tip-Toe Thru the Tulips with Me / On the Good Ship Lollipop" (live)

Love, you're such a sweet thing, good enough to eat thing

2005-11-07T11:40:00.000-05:00

Merritt: The only genre that I can say I love is bubblegum - but I can say that because I feel free to define what is and what isn't bubblegum: Ramones, Kraftwerk, Abba, the Troggs. I'd like to have a bubblegum store.
Raygun Magazine: You could call it blow pop. [Merritt doesn't laugh.] Define the bubblegum aesthetic.
Merritt: Celebration of simplicity of form, lack of high art intentions and brevity.

The popular conception of bubblegum is disposable, sing-songy pop music churned out by faceless musicians and marketed to prepubescents (and this is certainly true in many cases), but Merritt's own definition distills what really makes bubblegum pop's best moments so memorable. Keep it short and simple (three chords, verse/chorus/verse/chorus/chorus), and make it insanely catchy.

According to Merritt, the cheerleader chant that begins the Magnetic Fields track "Washington, D.C." was intended to channel the Bay City Rollers' track "Saturday Night." The Bay City Rollers were a Scottish, tartan-wearing teen sensation, perhaps a prototype for boy bands, and Merritt told Chickfactor that they were the first band he saw in concert "by choice."

The Ohio Express had a brief existence during the early part of the classic bubblegum period (late 60s to early 70s), and as cited by Claudia Gonson for Caught in Flux, Stephin was a fan. The producer duo of Jerry Kasenetz and Jeff Katz were the masterminds behind the outfit, along with another successful bubblegum group, 1910 Fruitgum Co. Their arrangement was an odd one (and I highly recommend the book Bubblegum Music Is the Naked Truth for more), as their first hit was not even performed by them - it was the track "Beg, Borrow & Steal" by the Rare Breed (available on the Nuggets compilation) simply re-released. To clarify: it was the same exact recording, not a cover, released again under the Ohio Express name. While the band was out performing and making appearances, studio artists would create their new songs, including their biggest hit, "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy."

Responsible for fifteen top-40 hits in a five year run, Tommy James is best known for his work with the Shondells, including songs like "Mony Mony" and the dumb garage rock of "Hanky Panky." But, it's his pure pop like "I Think We're Alone Now" that earned him a spot in the bubblegum hall of fame. His track "Crimson and Clover," a chart topper, slowed down the pop formula and used wah-wah guitar and a tremolo vocal effect for a psychedelic feel. Regarding the vibrato guitar on the Magnetic Fields track "All My Little Words," Merritt said:

I took great pains to get the vibrato almost at tempo but not quite. I've always liked "Crimson and Clover" by Tommy James and the Shondells, where the vibrato - "crimson and clo-o-o-ver, over and o-o-o-ver" - is not quite in time. I think it's supposed to be in time.

When asked to select "the perfect song" for NPR's All Songs Considered, Merritt's pick was "Sugar, Sugar" by the Archies, a song for which I couldn't imagine a single note being in a different place. Merritt writes:

This laidback three-chord anthem full of sweet double entendres and soulful hand-clapping enthusiasm is recorded with minimal guitar and maximal two-finger Farfisa organ. The pinnacle of bubblegum music, if not pop itself, S.S. was performed by cartoon characters on a Saturday morning television show, and went to #1 with no band to back it up on the road.

The Bay City Rollers - "Saturday Night"
The Ohio Express - "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy"
Tommy James and the Shondells - "Crimson and Clover"
The Archies - "Sugar, Sugar"

Stephinsources will return on November 21.

When we go dancing underneath the city in the catacombs

2005-11-01T22:44:00.000-05:00

Rob Levy: What is your songwriting process? Do you set aside specific time to write, or does it just come in bursts of creativity?
Merritt: I sit around in gay bars with a pencil in one hand and a drink in the other, my little black notebook in my lap, listening to thumping disco music and eavesdropping.

(from Playback St. Louis)

Stephin speaks fondly of various dance clubs from his younger days in Chickfactor #11, and although loud throbbing dance music was probably responsible for much of his hearing loss, it serves an essential role in his songwriting. Though Merritt is primarily a pop songwriter, dance rhythms are used in various tracks, from "The Desperate Things You Made Me Do" to "You Can't Break a Broken Heart," and a handful of Merritt tunes have been remixed for dancefloor action, including "Hopeless," "I Thought You Were My Boyfriend," and several tracks on The Lonely Robot.

Merritt's pick for 1987 on the list is by an outfit which has the unique distinction of being a one-hit wonder and also being hugely influential in the dance world. M/A/R/R/S was a collaboration between two bands on the 4AD label, Colourbox and A.R.Kane, around the time when American house music was arriving in British clubs. The driving track, "Pump Up The Volume," was considered the first house hit made in Britain, and it inspired, for better or for worse, numerous sample-heavy dance tracks for the next few years, bringing sampling from hip-hop circles out into the mainstream. In the 4AD catalog, the song is considered a bit of an anomaly, as the label's early-to-mid 80s output gravitated toward the gloomy and dark.

One enduring band that joined 4AD's fold during the early 80s was Cocteau Twins, who are responsible, more than anyone else, for the popular conception of "the 4AD sound": a sort of structured ambience, using chorus-laden guitars and synthetics. This pigeonholing is unfair to the majority of 4AD bands who sound nothing like Cocteau Twins, but on the other hand, you can always spot an Ivo production (Ivo Watts-Russell being the label's founder) a mile away. The Twins' third album Treasure is oozing with artificiality, which Merritt would undoubtedly appreciate - it's his selection for 1984 on the list. The drum machine, the guitar effects, and the synth flourishes are all distinctly unnatural sounding, and even the non-language in which Elizabeth Fraser sings is of her own invention. And that voice...Fraser is simply one of the most amazing singers around, capable of making astoundingly beautiful sounds.

November is a big month for 4AD, as they celebrate the 25th anniversary of the label with ten nights of performances in London and the releases of a retrospective label compilation and a Cocteau Twins boxed set.

M/A/R/R/S - "Pump Up The Volume"
Cocteau Twins - "Lorelei"
(sorry, again, for the delay!)

I could dress in black and read Camus

2005-10-24T22:59:00.000-05:00

Chickfactor: Are you a participant in the goth scene of New York?
Merritt: So much so that I wrote the book on it.

I can imagine Merritt delivering that line with a sly smirk, but indeed, Merritt is a goth at heart. In a Chickfactor interview with Claudia Gonson, when asked if Merritt and she were new wavers together back when they were teens, Gonson responded, "Yeah, we were goths." Browse through Merritt's songbook and you'll find lots of over-the-top, depressing lyrics with plentiful references to suicide, vampires, and death. And, he has an entire band, the Gothic Archies, devoted to mixing gloom and doom with bubblegum pop. Their official site states: What makes this band different from The Magnetic Fields is that any glimmer of hope is absolutely extinguished.

When assembling the goth canon, several bands quickly come to mind: Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Cure, the Sisters of Mercy, Joy Division, and the quintessential goth band, Bauhaus. Formed in 1978, Bauhaus made a sinister, sometimes terrifying kind of post-punk rock, marked with Peter Murphy's harrowing vocals, Daniel Ash's fuzzed-out, dagger-sharp guitar licks, and the nimble yet menacing rhythm section of David J on bass and Kevin Haskins on drums. The band's appearance (black clothes, make-up) and record artwork (for example, grainy stills from silent films) helped define the goth aesthetic, but their own music was influenced by glam/art rockers like T. Rex, David Bowie, and Brian Eno.

"Bela Lugosi's Dead" is the mother of all goth songs, clocking in at nearly ten minutes, with a bassline so simple it's brilliant, creepy guitar noodlings, and Murphy unnervingly chanting "UNDEAD UNDEAD UNDEAD!" It's a song that the Magnetic Fields performed as a encore at an Atlanta show in 1997. "Dark Entries" was one of the earliest singles on 4AD Records (actually, it was called "Axis Records" at the time), a label that was home to other bands beloved by goths, like Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, and the Birthday Party. Back one evening in 1998 while on tour in the Pacific Northwest, Merritt commented that instead of performing that night, he'd rather be attending the Bauhaus reunion show that was happening that night in that same town. Well, Bauhaus are back on tour, so pull out your deteriorating Bauhaus shirt, Stephin.

Bauhaus - "Bela Lugosi's Dead"
Bauhaus - "Dark Entries"

Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?

2005-10-17T22:41:00.000-05:00

Experimental composer John Cage was a controversial figure who studied under Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg during the first half of the 20th century and invented some of the boldest artistic approaches in modern music. He favored using modified instruments, such as his "prepared piano," which was a grand piano with small objects (nuts and bolts, screws, bits of rubber, spoons, etc.) wedged in between its strings. Inspired by Zen Buddhism, Cage often used indeterminate techniques for his works, for example using the outcome of a coin toss to shape a piece.

Cage's most notorious piece has to be 4'33", which is a piece where the performer plays no notes at all, and all of the ambient noises in the performance space constitute the work. One event in Cage's life that influenced the creation of this piece was his visit to an anechoic chamber, which is a special soundproof room. Rather than hearing complete silence, Cage heard a high sound and a low sound; the sound engineer present told Cage that the high sound was the sound of his body's nervous system and the low sound was his blood pumping through his circulatory system. Cage's conclusion was that total silence was an impossibility, as long as he was alive.

4'33" is Merritt's 1951 entry on the list, and track eleven on Merge Records' reissue of The Wayward Bus and Distant Plastic Trees, being four minutes and thirty-three seconds of digital silence, is an homage to this piece. The Magnetic Fields also performed it as an encore, related by Claudia Gonson and Chris Ewen in this article in The Independent:

"It's like when The Magnetic Fields performed 69 Love Songs at the Lincoln Center over two nights," adds Christopher Ewen, Merritt's partner and the third Future Bible Hero, "and at the end of the second night, the audience wanted an encore!" With no more songs in their armoury, the group opted for a performance of "4'33"", John Cage's celebrated silent piece.

"The applause after the 69th song was hyperactive and crazy," recalls Gonson, "but then you sit for four minutes and 33 seconds, and afterwards the applause is really mellow and relaxed - John Cage would have loved watching what happens to an audience after it: they're a little disappointed."

(I'm being nit-picky here, but actually the 4'33" encore was at their Somerville show in late 2000, not their Lincoln Center show.)

One of Cage's pieces for the prepared piano is the eerie "Sonata XIV," performed here by Maro Ajemian and recorded in 1950 under Cage's direction, and it was included on the Orbitones, Spoon Harps & Bellowphones compilation, beloved by Merritt. The second track this week is a short excerpt from Radio Music, a work which requires each performer to tune a radio to various frequencies, and the result is what just happens to be on the various stations at the time. Finally, we have a performance of 4'33" by the BBC Symphony Orchestra (a full video, with commentary, is available here.)

(SPOILER ALERT! In case you are wondering about the audience laughter around the 2:00 point and are unable to view the video, it's when the conductor, between the first and second movements, pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipes his forehead.)

Maro Ajemian - "Sonata XIV"
John Cage - "Radio Music" (excerpt)
BBC Symphony Orchestra - "4'33""

Pineapples, guavas, mangos, Martin Denny playing tangos

2005-10-10T22:45:00.000-05:00

If you've ever wondered about Merritt's obsession with Hawaii, which brought us "My Blue Hawaii," "Oahu," and "Volcana!", I can think of two sources for it. First, Merritt lived in Hawaii while growing up - one of the many places in which he lived during his childhood. Second, he has a deep appreciation for exotica and its master, Martin Denny, who passed away earlier this year at the age of 93. Denny's trademark sound was an amalgam of distinct musical styles, playful and elegant, in an easy-listening package; in this interview, he discusses the development of his sound in the 50s:

"Well, the way that started was that part of my training was how to make a small group sound larger than it really was. So I would use a lot of different percussive effects, and then I started collecting instruments from the South Seas and from the Orient, also from Latin America. The music became a quasi-mix of music from the South Pacific, the Orient and South America. We were always experimenting, and trying out new ideas. Of course, that's when we added the birdcalls on 'Quiet Village.'"

This article about Future Bible Heroes clears up the story about the band's formation, which happened when Merritt and Chris Ewen "...were drawn together by their appreciation of exotica by masters like Martin Denny, members of the electronic vanguard such as Enoch Light, and musical masterminds such as Lindsey Buckingham."

Like Denny, Merritt has a fondness for collecting musical instruments (see the 69 Love Songs instrument list for evidence of this), which is mentioned by Claudia Gonson in this article for Sound on Sound:

"Stephin has really been involved in collecting and using exotic and interesting and weird instruments," explains Claudia. "Chris, too, has not only collected cool instruments, but become sort of a connoisseur of '50s and '60s technology from the earliest days of electronic production. So when you hear the beginning of a song like 'Doris Daytheearthstoodstill', which is like a looped bubble, basically, you think about Enoch Light, or Martin Denny and the earliest stages of making music with electronic things, and there's a kind of integrity. There's a real artistry to it."

"Quiet Village" was composed by Les Baxter, another huge figure in the exotica scene, but Martin Denny's version (complete with birdcalls and frog sounds) was the one that made it into a hit. Regarding the frog sounds, as the story goes, when Denny's band played in Hawaii in 1956 at the Shell Bar, which featured an amphibiously-populated pond near the stage, frogs would croak along with the music. The band thought that these flourishes matched well with their sound, so they incorporated the croaking sounds (recreated using a guiro) into their songs. The first version is from Denny's debut album for Liberty Records, entitled Exotica and released in 1957. The second version is from the 1969 album Exotic Moog, and although it was released under the Martin Denny name, Denny doesn't actually play on it. Still, it's a great version, blending electronics with exotica in a way that I think Merritt and Ewen would approve.

Martin Denny - "Quiet Village" (1957)
Martin Denny - "Quiet Village" (1969)

There's only cliché to get across this feeling

2005-10-04T20:29:00.000-05:00

Going from punk to off-kilter lo-fi bedroom pop, Chris Knox has had a career that's impossible to overlook when discussing New Zealand's musical history. Starting off in the late 70s Kiwi bands the Enemy and Toy Love, Knox and Alec Bathgate then teamed up for the duo Tall Dwarfs, one of the most beloved bands on the Flying Nun roster. The geographical separation of the two has put time constraints on their collaborations, despite the band being the most prominent project for each of them. Knox has recorded quite a catalog of solo work and also creates animated movies, draws cartoons, and writes columns. Merritt fans will recognize him as being the vocalist for the 6ths track, "When I'm Out of Town," and he was cited by Merritt as being one of the "best contemporary lyricists in English" in Chickfactor #12.

Chris Knox's "Not Given Lightly" was Merritt's favorite recording of 1989, and it's an intimate and completely charming song, written as a love token for Knox's wife. In 2001, members of the APRA named the track as being New Zealand's ninth best song of all time, and it's available on the album Seizure (FYI, Knox sometimes suffers from epileptic fits), which is a good starting place for diving into Knox's solo material. There's a bit of uniformity within the solo Knox catalog, with a typical song being built up from a rhythm loop, a rhythm guitar riff, and maybe an Omnichord (a sort of electronic autoharp). Knox has an odd, sometimes naughty sense of humor, yet he also has numbers that are totally heart-wrenchingly sincere, sometimes to the point of discomfort (take for example "Young Female Caucasian," during which Knox actually weeps.)

Some tracks by Tall Dwarfs are compatible with the Chris Knox solo formula, but Bathgate and Knox feed off each other's weirdness and often go into stranger (yet listenable) territory. They are unafraid of the grotesque (speaking of which, their self-portraits are the most unflattering likenesses ever), in terms of both lyrics and sounds, and have a low-tech recording style that lends much to the Tall Dwarfs listening experience. Merritt has expressed his admiration for Tall Dwarfs, in particular the album Hello Cruel World, a compilation of the duo's first four EPs from the early 80s. From the opening twin guitar chords of "Nothing's Going to Happen" (which would be re-recorded for a grand Phil Spector homage called Wall of Dwarfs), you know you're onto something amazing. Hello Cruel World, which includes this week's second selection, is a great entry point, and you can't go wrong with 3 EPs and the Dogma EP (bundled with Fork Songs), too.

Chris Knox - "Not Given Lightly"
Tall Dwarfs - "Crush!"

(sorry for the late post, folks!)

I hear a new world calling me

2005-09-26T22:57:00.000-05:00

The entry for 1962 on the list is "Telstar" by the Tornados, a rousing and poignant tribute to a satellite, and it's the most successful and enduring song recorded by Joe Meek, the tragic oddball producer and songwriter. Strangely enough, Meek wasn't a musician and was actually tone deaf. Sometimes referred to as "the British Phil Spector" (which is only accurate in the fact that both had distinctive sounds that were immediately recognizable), Meek's production techniques were unusual in his day, as he used liberal amounts of reverb, compression, and delay effects and employed the fruits of his electronic tinkering.

In several ways, Merritt has a kinship with Meek, with their shared affinity for pop music and experimentation. Until recently, Merritt recorded his music in a home studio, and Meek used his home at 304 Holloway Road in London to record numerous acts. The Wikipedia entry for Joe Meek describes the recording of "Johnny Remember Me": "...he placed the violins on the stairs, the drummer almost in the bathroom, and the brass section on a different floor entirely."

Meek productions are often peppered with unusual sound effects, and Merritt himself has an arsenal of odd techniques for making sounds. In this interview for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Merritt describes one of his favorites:

Bay Guardian: Please explain the Slinky Guitar.
Merritt: It's an appropriation of two guitars. You connect them with a slinky and block, or let [the slinky] oscillate between them. You plug in both guitars and pan them left and right, and you get a sound from the spring. I usually use it for percussion.
Bay Guardian: Do you like Joe Meek?
Merritt: I obviously identify with Joe Meek.
Bay Guardian: Have you read his biography?
Merritt: I can't imagine someone who spent his life in the recording studio would have a very interesting biography. Except for the last five minutes, which would be pretty interesting.

Merritt is referring to the disturbing conclusion to Joe Meek's life, documented in this excellent article by John McCready. In 1967, the paranoid and mentally ill Meek murdered his landlady with a shotgun and then turned the gun on himself.

The first selection this week is from the proto-concept mini-album I Hear a New World from 1960, which Meek described as "An outer space stereo music fantasy" and involves chipmunk-voiced, blue-skinned inhabitants of the moon. "Telstar" was Meek's sole American hit and one of the biggest selling instrumentals of all time; it's simultaneously epic and cheesy, and by the way, that reedy keyboard you hear is a Clavioline. This page features an MP3 (track #10) of Joe Meek singing the "Telstar" melody over a different song (I wasn't kidding about him being tone deaf), along with a number of other Meek demos. The 4-CD boxed set Portrait of a Genius: The RGM Legacy was released a few months ago, but a more reasonably-priced introduction is the sterling 2-disc compilation Joe Meek: The Alchemist of Pop, which I recommend highly.

Rod Freeman and the Blue Men - "I Hear a New World"
The Tornados - "Telstar"

I like candy when it's wrapped in a sweater

2005-09-19T00:18:00.000-05:00

According to ld beghtol, quoted on David Jennings's 69 Love Songs site, "I'm Sorry I Love You" was intended to be a tribute to the band Bow Wow Wow, but "...it didn't quite come out that way." Merritt elaborates on this in the 69LS booklet:

"It was originally supposed to be one of those Carter Family sort of songs, but we discovered in the studio that it worked well with a Bo Diddley beat."

One of Merritt's picks from the early 80s, Bow Wow Wow was assembled by Malcolm McLaren, taking Adam Ant's backing musicians and adding one Annabella Lwin, an adolescent Burmese girl who, as the story goes, was discovered by McLaren singing in a London dry cleaners. A typical BWW song has several distinct features, notably a tom-heavy Burundi beat and utterly enthusiastic vocals from Annabella. Though they're often relegated to "one-hit wonder" status for their cover of "I Want Candy," they have a number of tracks even better than that one. The 1996 compilation The Best of Bow Wow Wow probably has all you need, with the terribly catchy "C30, C60, C90, Go!", "Do You Wanna Hold Me?", and "Go Wild in the Country" being the highlights.

Tracing "I'm Sorry I Love You" back to Bo Diddley isn't a direct path. We can start with Bow Wow Wow's "I Want Candy" cover - it was written and recorded by the Strangeloves and released in June of 1965, but the rendition that McLaren used to reference the song was the one by Brian Poole and the Tremeloes (also known for their "Here Comes My Baby" cover) from July of 1965. The original version by the Strangeloves indeed uses Bo Diddley's trademark rhythm and borrows substantially from his song "Hey Bo Diddley."

Possibly the best place to get the original "I Want Candy" is on the generous Nuggets boxed set, which expands the original Nuggets double-album compilation from 1972 to a 4-CD set. The full title is Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968, and it's jam-packed with guitar-driven garage rock numbers ("Psychotic Reaction" by the Count Five, "You're Gonna Miss Me" by the 13th Floor Elevators) and psychedelic pop songs ("Incense and Peppermints" by the Strawberry Alarm Clock, "I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)" by the Electric Prunes). The last track on the compilation, "Blues' Theme" by Davie Allan & the Arrows, is from the film The Wild Angels; this movie featured a character named Mike (played by Nancy Sinatra), referenced by Merritt in "Papa Was a Rodeo." Really, if you have any interest at all in 60s pop/rock, then don't hesitate to get this, and Nuggets II (which concentrates on non-American bands) is amazing, as well. And, tying it all together, Merritt named it as one of the best releases of 1998 in Time Out New York.

Bow Wow Wow - "I Want Candy"
The Strangeloves - "I Want Candy"

The captive, pushed and shoved, was given leather boxing-gloves

2005-09-12T22:55:00.000-05:00

Handler: What other songs do you get in your head?
Merritt: There are two things that I always, for decades, have gotten stuck in my head while walking down the street. One of them is a beautiful song by the Red Krayola, "Plekhanov:" "Neither anticipation / nor fulfillment / is realistic / in dialectic / Who's learned the language of the Internationale? / Our conversation / for seventeen years / has volunteered / Plekhanov / a priori / Who's learned the language of the Internationale? / Who was ever disowned by his Granma?"

Handler: What's the other song?
Merritt: The jingle for Bumble Bee tuna: "Yum, yum Bumble Bee / Bumble Bee tuna / I love Bumble Bee / Bumble Bee tuna..."

Handler: I always get "Dude Looks Like A Lady" stuck in my head.
Merritt: I love that song.

Continuing on with another band on Rough Trade, we have the Red Crayola (later changed to "Krayola" due to obvious legal reasons), a ridiculously diverse and inventive outfit centered around the singer/songwriter/artist Mayo Thompson. The group started out in the late 60s playing freaky, noodly psychedelic rock, but later recordings, while still experimental and challenging, aren't as easy to place into a certain time period. Thompson also mined subjects such as art, political history, philosophy, and psychology for his pointedly non-rock, non-pop lyrics. His fascinating songs earned him a spot on Merritt's short list of "best contemporary lyricists in English" in Chickfactor #12.

In the 70s, Thompson began collaborating with Art & Language, a collective formed in Great Britain in the late 60s that focused on conceptual art. Together, they made three albums: Collected Slogans (1976), Kangaroo? (1981), and Black Snakes (1983). Kangaroo?, which was released on Rough Trade, featured an amazing line-up of post-punk musicians: Gina Birch from the Raincoats, Lora Logic and Ben Annesley from Essential Logic, Epic Soundtracks from Swell Maps, and Allen Ravenstine from Pere Ubu. It's an incredible album, one that is constantly shifting and sounds fresh upon repeated listens, and although the lyrics are plainly written out, the unifying themes (Communism, language, Gestalt theory, and others) make it somewhat of a puzzle. This week, two songs from Kangaroo? are featured: "Plekhanov," cited above, and the opening track, "Kangaroo?" which was played by Merritt on WFMU when he was a guest DJ on February 25, 2000 (RealAudio stream here - "Kangaroo?" starts at 22:16).

Thompson was busy as a producer during the late 70s and early 80s, and he even served as Rough Trade's label manager for a little while. Still, the Red Krayola continued making making music through the 80s, and in the early-to-mid 90s, the band teamed up with Drag City Records, facilitated by huge Krayola fan David Grubbs, which released new Red Krayola releases and also re-issued a considerable amount of their backcatalog. And to this day, they're playing live shows; this page shows details for performances in Chicago and California in the upcoming weeks.

And if you're wondering about the Bumble Bee tuna jingle, go here for a sound file and an unbearably cute TV commercial from the 70s.

The Red Crayola with Art & Language - "Kangaroo?"
The Red Crayola with Art & Language - "Plekhanov"

In love is so tough on my emotions

2005-09-05T22:54:00.000-05:00

"They will not remind you of anything."

This statement was written in the N.M.E. in 1979 about the Raincoats, and indeed, they defy comparison. While first inspired by 70s icons like the Clash, the Sex Pistols, and Patti Smith, the four-woman band cast aside the constraints of punk music. Using guitars, a violin, and drums, they created music that is simultaneously energetic, unpredictable, and often affecting; though their music sounds odd, it's a natural weirdness that's never forced. Their self-titled debut album is one of Merritt's favorites from Rough Trade's early days. It was reissued in the 90s thanks to the advocacy of Kurt Cobain, but sadly, the album has again fallen out of print.

One of the striking things about the debut album is the unpolished, yet completely exhilarating drumming by Palmolive (real name: Paloma McLardy), who was an original member of the Slits. Palmolive was an inspiration for Claudia Gonson, who cites her as her favorite drummer, and in Chickfactor #10, Claudia names the Raincoats as her favorite band of all time. She even recounts a trip to England in order to track down the band in the mid-80s: "I was going to give them a tape of Buffalo Rome, which became the Magnetic Fields' Distant Plastic Trees."

The first track on the debut album, "No Side to Fall in," is a manic little number featuring frantic fiddling and what sounds like an aluminum can being beaten. (Note: the Geffen reissue of the album includes the track "Fairytale in the Supermarket" as a bonus song, but instead of being added at the end, it is used as the opener.) "In Love" is a disorienting song, apparently mirroring the dizziness of love with abused guitar and violin strings and repeated syllables. Though it too is out of print, I also give high marks to the second Raincoats album Odyshape, which is even stranger and more removed from its contemporaries than the debut.

The Raincoats - "No Side to Fall in"
The Raincoats - "In Love"

Things you had forgotten, things that couldn't last

2005-08-29T22:28:00.000-05:00

In this remembrance, Claudia Gonson explains how Merritt profoundly influenced her musical tastes in the early 80s and how they loved music from the early days of Rough Trade. Rough Trade began as a shop in 1976, and two years later, Rough Trade - the record label - was spawned; the shop and the label separated into two distinct entities in 1982. The discography of Rough Trade Records is sprawling, eclectic, and frequently mind-blowing. It was home to several bands mentioned previously here, including Young Marble Giants, Rainy Day, the Dream Syndicate, and Opal, and several 6ths singers had releases on Rough Trade, like Robert Scott (with the Clean and the Bats) and Dean Wareham (with Galaxie 500). Merritt has expressed his appreciation for several Rough Trade artists, including Morrissey (of the Smiths, of course), Mayo Thompson and the Red Crayola, the Raincoats, and Weekend.

After Young Marble Giants disbanded in 1981, main songwriter Stuart Moxham formed the Gist while singer Alison Statton teamed up with guitarist and fellow Cardiffian Simon Booth to form Weekend. Soon after, they were joined by Spike, on guitar and viola, and the outfit recorded three singles and an album (plus a live mini-album) for Rough Trade during their brief career together. Upon listening to this week's selections, it's immediately apparent that Weekend sounds nothing like Young Marble Giants, as Weekend uses a breezy jazzy approach with layers of nylon-stringed guitars, saxes, and strings.

Alison describes the band's sources in this article excerpt from 1982 in Sounds:
"...we have three different influences coming through, I'm still very into folk music and ballads, as I was in the Giants (though now I'm playing bass too), whereas Simon's into the jazz thing and Spike's off on a tangent all his own."

Simon explains, in the same article, that while he worked in a London jazz shop, he cultivated an appreciation for jazz from the be-bop era of the 50s. This may be true, but the pop jazz that Weekend plays reminds me more of the laid-back Brazilian bossa nova of Antonio Carlos Jobim and Astrud Gilberto, rather than 50s be-bop.

With one of the most gorgeous guitar intros ever, "The End of the Affair" begins La Varieté, the sole (proper) album by Weekend and one of Merritt's favorites. Thanks to Vinyl Japan, if you buy their re-issue of La Varieté (which includes the '81 Demos EP) along with the singles/live compilation Archive, then you have nearly everything. "Drumbeat for Baby," another track off La Varieté, is presented here with its slightly longer 12" version, which is available on Archive.

Now, if you will, take a look at the cover of Archive (which was originally the cover of the "Past Meets Present" 7" single). Look familiar? The watercolor painting was made by Wendy Smith, who also created the cover art for...Distant Plastic Trees and The Wayward Bus by the Magnetic Fields. Smith is also responsible for the cover of La Varieté and the photo on the cover of Colossal Youth by Young Marble Giants.

Weekend - "The End of the Affair"
Weekend - "Drumbeat for Baby"

Staring at the ceiling, wishing she was somewhere else instead

2005-08-22T22:58:00.000-05:00

69 Love Songs is chock full of ersatz genre pieces - some resemblances and hints are there, but seldom does a song on it convey any sincere claim to authenticity. One might think that "World Love" would attempt to blend all non-American/European musical styles, but instead it ends up sounding like something off Paul Simon's Graceland. "Punk Love" uses the familiar Ramones chord progression and the vocals have a bratty snarl to them, but other than that, it sounds little like punk. It's about as genuine as a chimpy-sounding Casio keyboard rhythm/accompaniment preset. Mind you, these aren't complaints - it's apparent that Merritt did this all intentionally, and it's another side of his love for artificiality. So, what happens when he makes an (off-kilter) imitation of an imitation? You get "It's a Crime."

Stephin Merritt: I think of it as that small genre of Swedish reggae. Ace Of Base have done reggae, sort of reggae, ABBA has done sort of reggae. I'm sure a-ha have, but I don't remember.
Daniel Handler: I'll ask my wife. She's a big a-ha fan.

ABBA have dabbled in various genres - "Fernando" and "Chiquitita" both have Latin touches, and "Ring Ring" and "Dance (While the Music Still Goes On)" are tributes to Phil Spector's girl group pop - but perhaps their most unexpected genre choice is reggae. "Tropical Loveland" is a cute trifle - the drums and guitar utilize the standard reggae rhythms, sure, but the song is incredibly white bread. It's too clean and not sweaty enough to be authentic, but that's hardly the point - ABBA are in the pop business. Six years later, they used a vaguely reggae beat for their track "One of Us," which seemed to serve as a prototype for the career of Ace Of Base.

Also, I should point out that when it was performed live, "It's a Crime" had a Motown-esque chorus of backing singers. Swedish reggae, Motown soul, electropop...man, that is so freakin' meta.

ABBA - "Tropical Loveland"
ABBA - "One of Us"

Fling them from the top of the Brill Building

2005-08-15T22:47:00.000-05:00

The Brill Building, referenced in "Epitaph for My Heart," was a one-stop pop song factory, located at 1619 Broadway in New York City. In the building during its heyday, in the late 50s and early 60s, you could obtain a freshly written song, have it arranged, assemble studio musicians and singers, record a demo, and then try to sell it to various record companies, all without stepping outside. At its wall-busting peak, it housed 165 music businesses.

This sort of division of labor may not sit right with modern audiences, but it's unreasonable to demand that songwriters also be musicians and singers, not to mention models. Merritt has stated that he despises touring (their tours are referred to as "tourettes"), and his band the 6ths demonstrates his desire to be known, first and foremost, as a songwriter by having other people sing his songs. Several of his recordings from the last half dozen years don't even feature Merritt as a musician or singer, like "Acoustic Guitar" and "Waltzing Me All the Way Home."

The Onion: Then how do you actually go about writing Stephin Merritt songs? Do you consider yourself primarily a lyricist?
Merritt: I suppose I consider myself primarily a songwriter. I'm involved with both lyrics and music, intertwined, usually. The lyrics are about the same thing the music is about, usually. They comment on each other, and if I wrote one without the other, like I did on the Future Bible Heroes record [Memories of Love], it wouldn't mean the same thing. Which it doesn't on the Future Bible Heroes record.

The Onion: Do you prefer to sing yourself, or have other people sing?
Merritt: I prefer to have other people sing, because it's a lot easier to judge how well they're doing. Everybody hates the sound of their own voice when it's played back.

69 Love Songs itself seems to be, also, a tribute to the industrialized songwriting process. It's self-consciously packaged like a generic product, using the most bland font of them all, Courier, and the title also brings to mind other store-bought products, like a box of 64 Crayola™ crayons or maybe even 2000 Flushes™.

Including the Bacharach/David duo (featured last week), the Brill Building was associated with several prominent songwriting teams, among them Carole King/Gerry Goffin, Jeff Barry/Ellie Greenwich, and Barry Mann/Cynthia Weil. Wall-of-sound producer Phil Spector made many Brill Building songs into hits, and all three songs this week are Spector productions from the highly recommended Back to Mono boxed set. "I Love How You Love Me" written by Barry Mann and Larry Kolber, Merritt's entry for 1961 on the list, sounds innocent upon first listen, but a second listen will put a knowing grin on your face if you have an unclean mind like mine. On the other hand, "He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss)" (a Goffin/King composition) is not at all subtle, and it's actually quite disturbing - the Three Terrors covered it for one of their performances. And finally, one of the most glorious moments in pop music is "Be My Baby" (penned by Barry/Greenwich), which has an unforgettable drum intro that was borrowed for countless other songs, including the Magnetic Fields track "Candy."

The Paris Sisters - "I Love How You Love Me"
The Crystals - "He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss)"
The Ronettes - "Be My Baby"

You get enough germs to catch pneumonia

2005-08-08T22:55:00.000-05:00

It's unfortunate that most of the younger set probably know Dionne Warwick best as the shameless shill for the ($3.99 a minute) Psychic Friends Network, formerly a late-night infomercial staple. Burt Bacharach, who has made cameos in the Austin Powers movies and collaborated with Elvis Costello, fares much better among youngsters in reputation and recognition. But who remembers Hal David, who completed the once unstoppable pop trio? Poor Hal.

Burt Bacharach (composer), Hal David (lyricist), and Dionne Warwick (singer) had their best success when working together in the 60s, with an incredible string of twenty Top 40 hits over a decade's span. These songs alone would guarantee the Bacharach/David songwriting duo a spot in heaven, but they also penned a number of hits for other artists, among them "The Look of Love" (Dusty Springfield), "(They Long to Be) Close to You" (the Carpenters), and "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" (B. J. Thomas). The pair met while working in the Brill Building in New York City and started collaborating in 1957, and Warwick joined the team in 1962. Bacharach's arrangements are both breezy and sophisticated, doling out just the right amount of hooks and unshakable melodies. David's lyrics alternate between pathos and (often naïve) optimism, sometimes within the same song, and Warwick sings with a sweet pop voice that can turn on the moxie on demand.

"Walk on By" (Stephin's selection for 1964 on the list) is a gently devastating broken-hearted song, with a simple and perfect weeping piano break, mirroring the singer's tears. Astute Merritt fans will recognize the title "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" being quoted for the final line of "Summer Lies" on The Wayward Bus, and also I should point out that the Three Terrors performed a cover of the theme song for the film The Blob (written by Bacharach and Mack David, Hal's older brother) as part of their "The Three Terrors Go Hollywood" performance in 2001. The Dionne Warwick collection on Rhino Records (Her All-Time Greatest Hits) was listed by Stephin as one of his favorites in Chickfactor #6, and with twenty-four solid tracks (twenty-three of them being Bacharach/David compositions from 1962 to 1970), that compilation is the one to get. The three-disc Bacharach boxed set The Look of Love has a lot of high points, but there's a tendency on that collection to include the hit recordings, instead of the superior renditions. (Herb Alpert really shouldn't be allowed to sing, even if he owns the damn record company.)

Dionne Warwick - "Walk on By"
Dionne Warwick - "I'll Never Fall in Love Again"

By request, "They Were You" is back up for another week:

"They Were You" from the Fantasticks

Oh married girl, she rocks the cradle and cries

2005-08-01T22:42:00.000-05:00

Daniel Handler: We move to "The One You Really Love" in which you and LD are a sort of traveling yodelling cowpoke duo.
Stephin Merritt: We're the Carter Family. I borrowed Brian Dewan's autoharp for several of the songs, chiefly this one, to be more like the Carter Family...

The most influential outfit for both country and bluegrass music, the Carter Family has a wide-ranging legacy that has inspired many folk and rock artists, too. The trio of A. P. Carter, his wife Sara, and his sister-in-law Maybelle formed the original incarnation of the Carter Family back in 1926, although A. P. and Sara had been performing together for years. The Carter Family songbook (including staples "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" and "Wildwood Flower") was mostly assembled from tunes and lyrics that A. P. had gathered throughout Appalachia, and in a shrewd move, he even obtained copyrights for his arrangements of those songs. Sara would sing and play the autoharp, A. P. would also sing, and Maybelle would play the guitar; Maybelle's style, which involved picking bass notes while strumming treble chords, with the familiar "BOOM chick-uh BOOM chick-uh" rhythm, was often imitated.

"Single Girl, Married Girl" was recorded in Bristol, Tennessee back in 1927, as part of the first ever recording session for the band. The group's popularity grew, despite the Great Depression, with recording contracts with Victor, ARC, and Decca Records, in that order. They were aided by certain radio stations that were located in Mexico, just across the border; unhindered by American broadcasting laws, they transmitted Carter Family songs with ridiculously high wattages, allowing them to be heard across the Midwest and beyond. Three of their songs, including the two tracks featured this week, enjoyed new life on the essential Smithsonian/Folkways Anthology of American Folk Music compiled by Harry Smith in 1952 and re-issued on CD in 1997. This compilation was cited on the list and was mentioned by Merritt as being a representative musical document of the 20th century, in addition to "any Carter Family compilation."

Legend has it that A. P. met Sara for the first time when she was on her porch, playing the autoharp and singing the song "Engine 143," a grim ballad about an overzealous engineer who didn't understand the concept of "work/life balance." Though "The One You Really Love" channels Merritt's appreciation for the Carter Family the most, their influence can be felt indirectly on the country music/railroad obsessed album The Charm of the Highway Strip and tracks like "Tar-Heel Boy" and the Susan-sings version of "Plant White Roses."

The Carter Family - "Single Girl, Married Girl"
The Carter Family - "Engine 143"

I am going to play it back into the room again and again

2005-07-25T22:47:00.000-05:00

Daniel Handler: Well, onto "Experimental Music Love." Tell me exactly what you did there. It sounds like early Steve Reich stuff to me, "Come Out" and "It's Gonna Rain." Is that what you did here?
Stephin Merritt: No. It's just fifteen tape bounces from the first track, with a certain delay each time, a tenth of a second. In headphones it's pretty difficult.

I, too, initially thought that "Experimental Music Love" was an homage to Reich's early tape pieces (an MP3 of "Come Out" is available here). One writer suggested in an article in the Independent (thanks to David Jennings for the tip) that "'Experimental Music Love' is the love song that the avant-garde composer Alvin Lucier never wrote." I think we're getting warmer.

American composer Alvin Lucier has created, since the 50s, experimental music that often deals with the possibilities of resonance. Some of his pieces involve vibrating wires, hand-held echolocations devices, an amplified teapot, pure wave oscillators, and even "enormously amplified brain waves". In this interview, Lucier discusses his fascination with echoes and his piece from 1968, Vespers, "...in which players really make sounds that echo off ceilings, walls, floors." But while Lucier's works frequently involve natural acoustics, the bouncing in Merritt's "Experimental Music Love" was most likely created with computer technology - that's okay, since we should expect artificiality from Merritt (and take note that Lucier has explored digital effects and sampling as well.)

On the list, Merritt includes "I am sitting in a room" as his selection for 1970, a track which is possibly Lucier's best-known work. The process is simple: record several sentences of speech (which happen to describe the piece itself) onto tape in a room, play that back while recording it onto another tape in the same room, and then repeat the process until the original words (and his stuttering) are unrecognizable and the room's resonant frequencies emerge as the prominent sounds in the final recording. The first sound file is a fragment from the 40 minute version recorded in 1980, containing the entire monologue in its unaltered form. The second file (21 MB!) is a 15 minute version from 1969, taken from the magazine/record SOURCE: Music of the Avant Garde.

Alvin Lucier - "I am sitting in a room" (fragment, 1980)
Alvin Lucier - "I am sitting in a room" (complete, 1969)

Knife to my head when she talks so sweetly

2005-07-18T22:24:00.000-05:00

Continuing last week's discussion of "When My Boy Walks Down the Street," in the 69 Love Songs interview booklet, Stephin said that he intended the song to sound like the Three O'Clock. However, he admitted that it sounds more like the Jesus and Mary Chain, the glorious Scottish outfit known for their treble-heavy pop songs with piercing feedback, overdistorted guitars, and primitive drumbeats. The band centered around the brothers William and Jim Reid, and their debut single "Upside Down" from 1984 (available on the recommended compilation Barbed Wire Kisses), with its abrasive guitar sound bordering on white noise, was one hell of an entrance. Their first album, Psychocandy (cited on the list) is an undisputed classic with fourteen tracks following the style of "Upside Down." They toned down their approach for later efforts, leaving out the feedback, with mixed results, before breaking up in 1999.

In an interview with Elisabeth Vincentelli, Merritt said:
"I'm continually irritated by every record having the same production idea -- false realism. The only record of the last ten years that isn't trying to sound 'live' or 'real' (in an idealized form, since no recording is actually live) is the Jesus and Mary Chain's Psychocandy."

Like Merritt, the Reid brothers admired particular 60s music figures like Phil Spector (his "Be My Baby" drumbeat was borrowed for three different songs on Psychocandy) and the Velvet Underground, whose White Light/White Heat album is a good point of reference. Looking through Merritt's songs in guitar tab form, one sees that he often embraces three-chord simplicity, an aesthetic to which the Jesus and Mary Chain also subscribe.

In this amusing anecdote, Merritt states (in his typically droll manner) "We disapprove of rock and Christianity, especially in combination." He also believes, as revealed in this article in the Advocate, that rock died twenty years ago with the Jesus and Mary Chain's Psychocandy. Regarding a performance he witnessed in 1986, Merritt wrote in a Time Out New York article: "It was the last time anything new was going to happen in rock as such, and everyone knew it."

Despite the anti-rock stance, I'd say the Magnetic Fields did have a few rock songs. Well, two come to mind: "I'm Sorry I Love You," with its Bo Diddley rhythm, and the unrelenting loop song, "Famous." This week's first selection from Psychocandy is "Inside Me," a tune which bears several similarities to "Famous" with its noisy guitar washes and identical drum pattern. "Taste of Cindy" is a track that is essentially a bubblegum pop song, with blankets of fuzz attempting to subvert that notion.

The Jesus and Mary Chain - "Inside Me"
The Jesus and Mary Chain - "Taste of Cindy"

Shadows of echoes of memories of songs

2005-07-11T22:56:00.000-05:00

Merritt: ["When My Boy Walks Down the Street"] was supposed to be like the Three O'Clock but it didn't turn out at all like the Three O'Clock.
Handler: I'll say.

(from the 69 Love Songs interview booklet)

With its ringing guitars and cutesy, wide-eyed (with dilated pupils) lyrics like "Butterflies turn into people" (and "Maybe he should be illegal" surely being a drug reference), "When My Boy Walks Down the Street" was intended to be a tribute to the bands of the Paisley Underground. These groups were based in California in the early/mid 80s and reflected a reverence toward the pop sounds of the 60s with a touch of psychedelia. Perhaps the groups that epitomized the Paisley Underground sound the most were the Three O'Clock, the Bangles, the Dream Syndicate, and the Rain Parade.

In Chickfactor #10, Claudia talked about obtaining a fake ID, along with Stephin, in order to catch a performance by Game Theory, a band that fell in with the Paisley set: "For one glorious year, we got in to see all our favorite neopsychedelic bands like Game Theory, the Bangles, and the Three O'Clock. I adored them." And in Caught in Flux #3, she explained how in her teens, Stephin helped "...to teach me the difference between Rainy Day, the Rain Parade and the Raincoats."

The fey, gender-neutral singer Michael Quercio came up with the term "Paisley Underground," and his band the Three O'Clock is considered to be the quintessential Paisley group. However, if there is a meta-Paisley album, it definitely has to be Rainy Day, a sort of studio party album full of 60s and early 70s cover songs. Several major Paisley Underground figures are on it: Michael Quercio, David Roback (the Rain Parade, Opal, Mazzy Star), Kendra Smith (Opal, the Dream Syndicate), and even Susanna Hoffs from the Bangles. It has been out of print for ages and is in dire need of a re-issue, so this week I'll feature two songs from it. "I'll Keep It with Mine" (vocals by Susanna Hoffs) was originally tackled by Nico on her debut album (see last week's entry) and allegedly written for her by Bob Dylan, while "Flying on the Ground Is Wrong" (vocals by Kendra Smith) was a Buffalo Springfield song written by Neil Young.

The Three O'Clock - "Jet Fighter"
Rainy Day - "I'll Keep It with Mine"
Rainy Day - "Flying on the Ground Is Wrong"

Her future died in someone's past

2005-07-04T22:44:00.000-05:00

You couldn't have invented a more perfect cult icon - a model, singer, actress, and goth precursor, Nico had a fascinating life that intersected paths with a number of equally fascinating people. She had her initial glimpse of fame as a supermodel in Europe; her face was unmistakable and unforgettable - eerily skeletal, often with a blank, piercing stare. In the film world, she had a minor role in Fellini's La Dolce Vita, worked with Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey in their film Chelsea Girls, and also had a child with the French actor Alain Delon.

Merritt had listed Nico's debut album Chelsea Girl in Chickfactor as being one of his favorite albums, and one can see how he would be attracted to its nimble string arrangements and gloomy subjects. But much of the appeal (or distaste, for its detractors) of the album is due to Nico's vocals. English was a second language to Nico, who was born in Cologne, Germany, and this is immediately apparent in her husky voice - a voice which whimsically fell in and out of tune and was completely free of vibrato. For his band the 6ths, Merritt takes pleasure in utilizing vocalists for whom English is a second language: Dominique A, Ayako Akashiba, and Miho Hatori. In fact, he's even mentioned that he (perhaps sadistically) gives songs to Japanese singers that have lots of Ls in them on purpose, like "Winter in July" or "Lindy-Lou."

I had previously suggested that the Magnetic Fields' cover of "Heroes" was also somewhat of a tribute to Nico. She, too, had covered the song, and she had perceived the song to be about Bowie fantasizing about kissing her beneath the Berlin Wall:

"Heroes" was written for me. I know that as a fact. I was living in Berlin at the same time as Bowie was there. He recaptured my past, I guess. I can hear it from the lines 'Standing by the wall, the gun shots above our heads and we kissed.' That didn't happen of course. That was his fantasy.

(The generally accepted story for the song's inspiration, however, is that Bowie had witnessed two lovers standing by the wall, but this page offers two additional explanations.)

In the 6ths track "Yet Another Girl," Merritt namechecks the Chelsea Hotel (featured in the forementioned film Chelsea Girls) and even calls the sun a "Chelsea Girl" in the song "Amnesia" (a song that has only been performed live, to the best of my knowledge.) And finally, the Three Terrors performed a cover of "Chelsea Girls" live, so I would be remiss to not feature that song this week. Nico sang lead vocals on three tracks on the debut album by the Velvet Underground (the 1966 entry on the list), while VU members Lou Reed, John Cale, and Sterling Morrison co-wrote and performed on several songs on Chelsea Girl. The three most listener-friendly tracks on Chelsea Girl, however, were written by Jackson Browne, Nico's squeeze at the time: the oft-covered "These Days," the sublime "The Fairest of the Seasons," and this week's second selection, "Somewhere There's a Feather."

Nico - "Chelsea Girls"
Nico - "Somewhere There's a Feather"

Fracture my spine and swear that you're mine

2005-06-27T22:50:00.000-05:00

When Merritt was asked how he came up with the idea for 69 Love Songs, he said (in the interview documented in the 69LS booklet):

...I had been thinking it would be good to get into the world of musicals, and probably easiest to get into it through a revue of songs along the lines of An Evening [Wasted] with Tom Lehrer or Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, two revues that don't need any narrative to be wildly entertaining.

Tom Lehrer is a peculiar figure in music; a satirical songwriter in the 50s and 60s, with a penchant for lyrics about twisted subjects and Cold War paranoia, he only released around 50 songs and gave up performing in public in 1967. Growing up in New York, Lehrer enjoyed musicals as a child and took piano lessons from a rare teacher who actually taught him popular songs instead of classical music. Skipping several grades, he enrolled at Harvard University at the age of 15 in 1943 and eventually attended graduate school there while teaching mathematics courses to undergrads, something he continued to do for decades.

In 1953, Lehrer recorded the short-but-bittersweet Songs by Tom Lehrer at a cost of $15; though the initial pressing was 400 copies, word-of-mouth advertising helped it become popular beyond the Harvard campus (but one might argue that by having songs about Boy Scout pimps and a love memento in the form of a severed hand, the album practically sold itself.) After a stint in the Army, he released a new batch of songs in 1959 as both a live recording (An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer) and as a studio recording (More of Tom Lehrer); this new set included perhaps his most infamous track, the gleefully sick "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park." Arriving in 1965, his next album That Was the Year That Was contained definitely his most politically and socially biting material and featured some material that was first used on the television show That Was the Week That Was. After that? Not much - he recorded several ditties for the children's show The Electric Company in the early 70s and a few more scattered songs, and more or less everything (except the unnecessary stereo re-recording of Songs by Tom Lehrer) is compiled in the boxed set The Remains of Tom Lehrer.

On the occasion of the boxed set's release in 2000, Merritt actually interviewed Lehrer, but unfortunately Lehrer was repulsed by the idea of 69 Love Songs. Merritt said in this article by the Independent:

"I love Tom Lehrer, but he doesn't love me. He said that three love songs are quite enough for any stage show and, while love songs are a necessary evil, the idea of doing 69 of them was morally repugnant to him. He tried to listen to them, he said, but he just couldn't stand it."

And in this interview, he relates more about his encounter with Lehrer:

"He didn't approve of my fudged rhymes," Merritt said, laughing as he munched wheat crackers before a recent Magnetic Fields show at the University of Pennsylvania's Irvine Auditorium and described what turned out to be some of the most useful criticism his long-form missive received.

"He thought it was lazy...My [response] was, it's inevitable in an album of maximum variety like that. You almost have to, just to make things work. But I took it to heart, and made a kind of arbitrary decision to rhyme formally on [the Magnetic Fields album, i]."

69 Love Songs made a sort of dividing line for Merritt's works - none of his previous releases was as massive and diverse, the ukulele was the dominant musical instrument instead of the synthesizer, and a bolder sense of comedy emerged. Before 69 Love Songs, I had never witnessed an audience actually laugh out loud upon hearing Merritt's lyrics. And Merritt even encouraged laughter; a few songs into their two-night stint in Carrboro, NC, to perform the entirety of 69LS, he mentioned to the audience (which was polite and rapt) that it was okay to laugh. The live moments that usually killed were, "A pretty girl is like a violent crime / If you do it wrong you could do time," "Acoustic guitar, if you think I play hard, well you could have belonged to Steve Earle or Charo or GWAR," and the entirety of "Yeah! Oh, Yeah!" among Merritt's questionable love songs. Being a "necessary evil," several love songs pepper Lehrer's songbook, including "I Hold Your Hand in Mine," "She's My Girl," "Oedipus Rex" ("...a loyal son who loved his mother") and "When You Are Old and Gray," this week's first selection.

In this excerpt from Neil Gaiman's journal, he wrote:

"The first time I met Stephin Merritt we wound up talking about Lehrer, as Stephin had just interviewed him for Time Out New York. I remember at one point talking about the way that time changed the songs: 'When he wrote the Masochism Tango,' I said 'It was the masochism that was the transgressive element...'

'Whereas now, it's the Tango,' finished Stephin."

Tom Lehrer - "When You Are Old and Gray"
Tom Lehrer - "The Masochism Tango"

Love that's fresh and still unspoiled, love that's only slightly soiled

2005-06-20T22:37:00.000-05:00

MONICA: There've been a million articles where people refer to you as the Cole Porter of your generation.
STEPHIN: Actually, I'm not big on Cole Porter. And I don't think comparison is a good idea -- it's misleading. But Cole Porter is shorthand for a good lyricist, so I take it as a compliment.

(from an interview by Monica Lynch, Index Magazine)

It has come to the point where every other article or music review related to Merritt brings up the Cole Porter comparison, and it's obvious that he is a bit weary of it. Despite saying he's "not big on Cole Porter" and calling Porter's songs "formulaic," he has cited the songwriter in several of his best-of lists. While Merritt says that Porter is "shorthand for a good lyricist," I'd go a bit further and say that it's shorthand for a clever lyricist. I can hear Merritt grumbling, miles away, "Clever? *sip of tea* *long pause* Nonsense."

STEPHIN: Cole Porter was cheating on his songs that people think of as having great lyrics. "You're the Top," etc. They're list songs. Anybody can write a list song.

Sure, that may be true, but there are bad list songs and good list songs, and I would say that Merritt's "Technical (You're So)," "Alien Being," and "Fear of Trains" fall in the latter category.

So, Cole Porter. Born into a rich family, Porter had a childhood filled with music lessons, and he even went on to study music at Harvard, before serving in the French Foreign Legion. He led the life of a playboy while in Paris and met his future wife, Linda Lee Thomas, there. Everyone points out that Porter was bisexual, and this often comes up when comparing him to Merritt, who is openly gay, but this is an irrelevant point. From the late 20s through the 50s, he scored numbers of successful musicals and films, among them Anything Goes, High Society, and Kiss Me, Kate.

Merritt describes the final song of 69 Love Songs, "Zebra," as being "...more or less a Cole Porter parody [...] It's taken to extremes. The couple actually own everything in the world." True, Merritt is clearly poking fun at the leisurely lifestyles of the wealthy, and possibly Porter himself. "Almost every songwriter you've ever heard grew up rich and spoiled, actually. That's how people can afford to become songwriters."

Listed as Merritt's favorite song of 1930, "Love for Sale" shows the slyly suggestive side of Porter. This version is by Julie London whose Sings Cole Porter album is held in the same regard as Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper by Merritt, as cited in the 69 Love Songs interview booklet. Ella Fitzgerald, beloved by Merritt and "one of the major singers of the twentieth century," sings the second track this week, "I'm Always True to You in My Fashion," a song that bears certain similarities to "The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side" in my opinion.

Julie London - "Love for Sale"
Ella Fitzgerald - "I'm Always True to You in My Fashion"

Just like his wife when she was beautiful

2005-06-13T22:38:00.000-05:00

In various articles and interviews, Merritt has consistently named Kate Bush as being one of his favorite contemporary songwriters. Kate Bush is a rare artist who has been able to find a wide audience with music that is highly eccentric and imaginative and doesn't follow a musical formula. Her fans remain rabid (chalk me up as one, though I'd probably cringe if I re-read my old posts from the early 90s on rec.music.gaffa), even though she hasn't released a new album in twelve years. She occasionally borrows from literary classics, but her own songs are often like short stories, featuring diverse characters, locations, and plots. As a teenager, she found instant success with her track "Wuthering Heights," which was a number one hit in England, and her work became even more challenging and intriguing over the years, with her creative peak being the incomparable and essential albums The Dreaming and Hounds of Love.

When I read the lyrics to Merritt's track "Maria Maria Maria" on the Eban & Charley soundtrack, I realized that the story was a bit similar to the one told in "Babooshka," but with a gender switch. In "Maria Maria Maria," two lovers meet for an extra-marital affair, but in the final plot twist, after his lover departs, the protagonist removes his disguise and ponders, "I wonder if she ever knew her lover was her husband too." The wife in "Babooshka" decides to tempt her husband, as a test of their marriage, under the titular assumed name; first, she writes him letters, and then eventually she meets him incognito. Of course, he decides to be an unfaithful bastard. But, the situation isn't so simple: the husband is attracted to this mysterious siren because she was "just like his wife" before she became weepy, frigid, and dumpy.

The Magnetic Fields track "Wi' Nae Wee Bairn Ye'll Me Beget" has two main sources: the folk songs of Scotsman Robert Burns (David Jennings's page has links to MP3s of Burns songs) and the "shape-shifting couple" theme common to folk legends and songs, including "The Two Magicians." For example, this version by Steeleye Span is practically a (Wonder)twin to Merritt's ditty, lyrically - the chorus even ends with the line "A maiden I will die." As pointed out by Jennings regarding "Wi' Nae Wee Bairn...," "In live performance Stephin and Claudia...alternate in singing the lines in each verse, which brings out the dynamic of the song in sharper relief." Kate Bush's "Get Out of My House," a disorienting song about retreating and avoiding confrontation, also uses the "shape-shifting" theme. The woman turns into a bird to escape, but the man turns into the wind to hold her back and also to blow her a kiss. Then they both turn into mules, sterile and stubborn creatures, and bray until the song's conclusion.

Kate Bush - "Babooshka"
Kate Bush - "Get Out of My House"

It's not the note I sent you that you quickly burned

2005-06-06T22:41:00.000-05:00

It's silly that it has taken me several months to get to Irving Berlin, a songwriter intensely admired by Merritt. The similarities between the two are apparent - both are incredibly prolific (Berlin wrote well over a thousand songs) and both have an affinity for simple, catchy melodies. Heck, Stephin even named his chihuahua "Irving." As a Russian immigrant on the Lower East Side, Berlin faced a "sing or starve" situation while growing up, singing in saloons as a teen for spare change. After his teen years, he worked as a lyricist on Tin Pan Alley, and his breakthrough hit was the song "Alexander's Ragtime Band" in 1911. From Broadway songs (like "There's No Business Like Show Business" from Annie Get Your Gun) to Hollywood film scores (like "White Christmas" from Holiday Inn) to insufferable patriotic tunes (like "God Bless America"), Berlin covered the gamut during the first half of the 20th century, and his work has been canonized into jazz standards (like "Blue Skies"), too.

Merritt has made it clear that he would like lots of people covering his songs. Readers of his music criticism know him to sometimes be harsh and unforgiving; however as a rule, he (mostly) refuses to comment on renditions of his own songs, because he doesn't want interpreters to be discouraged by the possibility of receiving a critical drubbing from him. When asked by Chickfactor what song he wished he had written, his response was, "Happy Birthday to You." Why? "It's the song in the entire world that is sung the most; everyone knows it." Today, although the "standard" is a quaint idea, Merritt is using Berlin's career as a model for re-vitalizing this lost notion. Also, Merritt said that he identifies with Berlin, "...for being an artistic hack, but making a show of hackdom."

One of the grandest of the 69, "A Pretty Girl Is Like...," is a deconstructive answer song to Irving Berlin's "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody." Merritt had been reading Ulysses, and considering how writers objectify women in metaphors. In the lyrics ("A pretty girl is like a violent crime / If you do it wrong, you could do time"), he celebrates, mocks, and critiques song similes, adopting "an exaggeratedly sexist, male point of view. It's a lot of baggage for one song," he acknowledges, "but that's part of why it's funny."
(from an article/interview by Rob Tannenbaum in Village Voice)

"Be Careful, It's My Heart" was cited by Merritt in this interview with Terry Gross (start listening at the 8 min 26 sec mark) as being one of his favorite love songs. Merritt's own "Epitaph for My Heart" seems to be a sort of epilogue for the Berlin track, describing the consequences of improper handling.

Bing Crosby and Al Jolson - "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody"
Rosemary Clooney - "Be Careful, It's My Heart"

In your electronic arms

2005-05-30T22:41:00.000-05:00

"Bubblegum and experimental music and nothing in between" is how Merritt had described the Magnetic Fields in the pre-69LS days, before a more consciously theatre-centric songwriting approach began to poke its head out of the shell. If you change "bubblegum" to "pop" in that statement, you might describe the music of his labelmate Laurie Anderson, the incomparable spiky-haired figure who boldly introduced the avant-garde to wide audiences. Her work is incredibly imaginative, using a variety of unusual violins and heavy electronics, and often expresses tones of apprehension and curiosity through both her fictional and non-fictional narrations. Several key features of many of her songs include the use of pitch-shifting for her vocals, an embrace of musique concrète, and frequently alternating between speaking and singing. Her concerts are quite involved affairs, leading many to call her a "performance artist," but that term is too constricting to include the astounding variety of visuals and sounds and unclassified elements.

Merritt has been a longtime fan of Anderson's, along with Claudia Gonson, who made Anderson a subject of her senior thesis at Harvard. The track "Technical (You're So)" is partially a tribute to Anderson, perhaps noting her distinctive gender-neutral appearance with the question "Are you a boy or a girl?"

In the 69 Love Songs booklet, Daniel Handler and Merritt discuss the track "Grand Canyon" and the Benjamin Britten opera Paul Bunyan:

Handler: ...it's a wonderful opera and it has a sort of similar fussy abstraction of cowboyness that the Magnetic Fields seem to enjoy.
Merritt: Which is stolen from Laurie Anderson, who probably got it from Benjamin Britten, I suppose. I love Laurie Anderson for being able to write heartbreaking melodies with words that make fun of heartbreaking melodies.

The track "O Superman (for Massenet)" is the song that put Anderson on the map, even reaching the top ten in Great Britain in the early 80s. It's a hypnotic and unsettling song, presenting an eerily technological maternal figure as a questionable source of comfort. (For more on "O Superman," listen to this radio program from the American Mavericks series.) When asked what he considered Laurie Anderson's best work to be, Merritt quoted from "Hiawatha," from the album Strange Angels, perhaps the most accessible of Anderson's albums. For newbies: if you lean towards pop, then try Strange Angels. If you leans towards the experimental, then try Big Science (or if you have the cash, the massive 4-CD United States Live, one of the best recordings in the history of everything.)

Laurie Anderson - "O Superman (for Massenet)"
Laurie Anderson - "Hiawatha"

We design synthesizers

2005-05-23T22:58:00.000-05:00

A name wasn't given to the bouncy instrumental track that begins Holiday upon the album's original release (on Feel Good All Over), but the track was dubbed "BBC Radiophonic Workshop" on the album's re-issue in 1999 on Merge Records. I don't know if Merritt had the name in mind when he composed the tune, but it's an absolutely perfect title and a fitting (albeit brief) tribute.

The BBC Radiophonic Workshop was created in 1956 to provide electronic music for radio and TV programs, as an alternative to more familiar-sounding orchestral music. Until its demise a decade ago, due to budget cutbacks, it produced a mind-bogglingly huge amount of music, as it sometimes scored over 150 programs annually.

Easily the most popular tune from the Workshop is the Doctor Who theme song, composed by Ron Grainer and realized by Delia Derbyshire with Dick Mills in 1963. This page is fascinating reading, describing the painstaking recording techniques that were employed for the song. Using tone generators, oscillators, and a white noise generator, Derbyshire and Mills would create unusual sounds and record them to tape. Tape loops were made and played back at varying speeds until the desired pitches were obtained, and then recordings of these sounds were spliced together meticulously. Holy cow.

The 1975 compilation album The Radiophonic Workshop provides the second selection this week, a strange and disorienting fanfare from Malcolm Clarke, mixing dubious synthesized praises with clangs and clops of percussion. Those of you lucky enough to get BBC Four on the telly can watch the documentary Alchemists of Sound about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop this Saturday.

Delia Derbyshire with Dick Mills - "Doctor Who (Original Theme)"
Malcolm Clarke - "La Grande Pièce de la Foire de la Rue Delaware"

By request, the Doris Day tracks are up for one more week:

Doris Day - "Secret Love"
Doris Day - "Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)"

There's a world where I can go and tell my secrets to

2005-05-16T22:47:00.000-05:00

"Brian Wilson, 1960 and Vine, summer kisses
In a Pendleton shirt, songs and gentle words, granted wishes."

One of the most giddily joyful Magnetic Fields songs has to be "You and Me and the Moon," in which Merritt name-checks Beach Boy Brian Wilson, who functions as a sort of shorthand for Those Carefree Summer Days of Our Youth™. The Future Bible Heroes track "Real Summer" references the Beach Boys, but in this case, they are regarded with scorn. Their cheery representation of summer doesn't ring true with the singer, who can't recapture her one real summer, even with a new squeeze and a tall mint julep. The song is so deceptively upbeat that it took me a few listens before I realized that third verse ends with the kiss-off "Summer, my ass."

It seems wholly appropriate that Brian Wilson and Stephin Merritt are now labelmates, each having found a home with Nonesuch Records. While Merritt has frequently expressed his admiration for the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson, this article in the Guardian reveals that Brian Wilson is a fan of Merritt's work, as well.

A number of groups - the High Llamas and Saturday Looks Good to Me come immediately to mind - have borrowed elements from the Beach Boys in obvious ways, but the band's influence on Merritt's music is a bit more subtle. I hear similarities between the dense, intricate arrangements on The Wayward Bus and those on the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds (one of Merritt's favorite albums), particularly on the former's "Dancing in Your Eyes" and "When You Were My Baby." Both acts also have a keen sense of timing, regarding when instruments should enter and depart. Listen to "Dancing in Your Eyes" and "Sloop John B" back to back, and notice when the drums come in and fall out - just perfect. Also, those "DO DO, do DO DO"s that emerge during the last chorus of "When You Were My Baby" sound like those at the one minute mark of "Sloop John B."

"In My Car" from the Magnetic Fields album Holiday may be a tip of the hat to the Beach Boys song "In My Room", since both share the theme of escaping, a theme which was explored further on the album Get Lost.

The Beach Boys - "Sloop John B"
The Beach Boys - "In My Room"

There's a place on my arm where I've written her name next to mine

2005-05-09T22:31:00.000-05:00

"I wrote the song 'Kissing Things' thinking that I would try to get Tom Waits to sing it. Instead I got Sarah Cracknell to sing it, who has more or less the exact opposite voice of Tom Waits. She sounds like a choirboy, whereas Tom Waits sounds like he eats choirboys."

(A quote from Stephin, from an article on VH1.com)

As much as I adore Sarah Cracknell, her almost-cheerful delivery of "Kissing Things" doesn't quite paint a convincing picture of a chain-smoking barfly. Tom Waits, indeed, was born to play such a role. He's a beatnik wannabe born twenty years too late, bellowing songs about alcoholics, criminals, and heartbreak with his distinctively raspy voice. His songs overflow with vivid imagery: snapshots of endearing low-lifes in his early-to-mid work, Bosch-esque apocalyptic landscapes later in his career. Merritt's protagonists have a definite kinship with many of the personalities in Waits's songs - losers, lushes, and the lovelorn. Waits's characters might go to the same bars that Merritt's characters do, but Waits's guys probably beat up Merritt's guys in the back alley.

In a review of Waits's album Mule Variations for Chickfactor, Merritt writes:

Tom Waits as usual sounds like an erudite wino, who finds it so easy to write classic songs that he rarely bothers to do so, pounding on trash cans and singing/shouting short stories like Raymond Carver with repeated choruses. Heard one album, you've heard 'em all, but they're all good. [...] Also he remains one of the best lyricists in this increasingly difficult language...

Waits's musical career takes more directions than I can properly cover with only two songs, so I've picked a narrow focus this week: the piano ballad. This is a genre with which Merritt is quite comfortable - take "Busby Berkeley Dreams," "He Didn't," and "Is This What They Used to Call Love?" for example. One of the tracks this week is appropriate for Mother's Day; the other is not.

Tom Waits - "Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis"
Tom Waits - "Johnsburg, Illinois"

Hear them laugh, watch them turn on me

2005-05-02T22:27:00.000-05:00

"It was early one morning in someone's flat...I was half-sleeping and I heard this album, which turned out to be [Gary Numan's] Telekon. The melodies were oddly beautiful and had a lot more emotional impact than his influences, such as David Bowie and Kraftwerk. Gary's approach to melody is very interesting because he never over-sings. He also has an amazing way with rhythm, such as using drum machines that sound really old and rundown."

Thus began Merritt's interest in the music of Gary Numan, as recalled by him for a Numan bio written by Steve Malins. Often unfairly written off as a one-hit wonder for his track "Cars," Gary Numan was highly influential in the late 70s and early 80s and helped make the synthesizer an essential instrument in new wave pop. His glam-inspired, make-up wearing image and sinister lyrics were also imitated by more than a few musicians back in the day.

When asked in a Chickfactor interview who the best lyricist in an electropop group was, Merritt replied:

Me. Neil Tennant. Gary Numan's lyrics are underrated. People assume they're science fiction and they're really not usually, and they actually do tend to make sense and a lot of them mean things that are evidently personal to Gary Numan.

These two quotes are particularly interesting, as they counter some misconceptions of Gary Numan: that his songs are emotionless and impenetrable, and that they are mostly sci-fi stories. Well, some of them are sci-fi stories - in the Chickfactor interview, Stephin named "I Dream of Wires" as one: "He's the last electrician alive and there's a completely new technology tantamount to magic, not involving instrumentalities." But a close examination of the lyrics of, say, Telekon reveals a theme not of the future, but of things breaking and crashing.

"I Die: You Die" was covered by the Magnetic Fields and released in 1997 on the Numan tribute double album, Random, which is worth tracking down for that song alone. The arrangement features the banjo and cello prominently, with only a few synthetic accents, and it is every bit as dark and menacing (perhaps more so with Merritt's deep baritone) as the original. Numan's version was released as a single and also on the U.S. release of Telekon, but oddly enough, it was not on that album's original U.K. release. Most likely, you've heard "Cars" scores of times already, but when it starts playing, it's hard to turn it off. Also: listen to that tambourine! Flange! It was cited as Stephin's favorite recording of 1979 in the list. And let's not forget that Mr. Numan contributed vocals to the 6ths song "The Sailor in Love with the Sea" on Hyacinths and Thistles.

Gary Numan - "I Die: You Die"
Gary Numan - "Cars"

I've gone as pale as Doris Day

2005-04-25T20:38:00.000-05:00

MONICA: Can we talk about Doris Day for a moment?
STEPHIN: I’ll talk about Doris Day for as long as you like. I would say she’s probably my favorite singer.
MONICA: Why Doris Day? Why "Dodo?"
STEPHIN: Well, her voice fascinated me. I would sing along with her, trying to catch the subtle way she sang the words. In turn, Doris Day’s favorite singer is Ella Fitzgerald. I tend to like a more conversational tone.

(from an interview by Monica Lynch, Index Magazine)

At first, I didn't know what to make of Merritt's admiration for Doris Day, whom he namechecked in his songs "Is This What They Used To Call Love?" and, obviously, "Doris Daytheearthstoodstill." Doris Day: that wholesome, bright-eyed singer and actress, seemingly cemented in the Leave It To Beaver era in our minds. After all, she doesn't really have a shtick, unless "squeaky-clean" is a shtick. But after listening to her, I realized that she has an absolute command of her voice - an extremely clear and pretty voice - and can control her modulations in ways that we can't entirely comprehend. I'm serious.

Doris Day started out in big band swing outfits, winning audiences in the wartime era, and then branched out into film, where she found further success throughout the 50s and 60s. Conveniently, several of her films had prominent hit songs, sung by Day, naturally. The first selection is one of Day's biggest hits, "Secret Love," from the film Calamity Jane ("...and I was Wild Bill.") It's a song that Stephin said made him fall in love, although he admitted, "I'm not sure I wasn't in love beforehand." The second track this week is "Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)" which was featured in a climactic moment of the Hitchcock film The Man Who Knew Too Much, with Day passionately belting out the tune. This song was covered by the Three Terrors (Merritt, Dudley Klute, and ld beghtol) in 2001 for their special Hollywood-themed live performance.

Doris Day - "Secret Love"
Doris Day - "Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)"

We are programmed just to do anything you want us to

2005-04-18T19:31:00.000-05:00

Without Kraftwerk, we would have no hip-hop beats, no dance music as we know it, no electronica; rock and country and jazz and even folk would have withered and died with nothing to react against. We'd probably all be listening to bad gospel, Irish acoustic guitarists and increasingly overplayed soggy orchestral pomp. Possibly we'd be living in caves.

You read that correctly. Caves. This is certainly high praise from Stephin, in an article written for Time Out New York, and he is only slightly exaggerating. Kraftwerk's influence on pop and dance music (among other genres) is immense, and Stephin enthusiastically shares their musical philosophy: to embrace artificiality.

In this dialogue between Stephin and Claudia, they discuss "false realism":

Stephin: When I scroll through the radio...it seems that everything is recorded in the same way, what I call "false realism," where all the instruments, real or synthesized, are trying to sound like real instruments. Then, in rebellion, there are bands like Kraftwerk who make the music that is self-consciously synthetic.
Claudia: But modern-day disco isn't trying to be real. It all sounds canned.
Stephin: That's not the point. Those instruments are still designed to imitate the usual instruments. The point is not whether it's real, but that it shouldn't be an issue if it's real. An acoustic guitar shouldn't have to sound like an acoustic guitar; it can, but it shouldn't have to.

And in this interview with Elisabeth Vincentelli, he says:

I am proud of the fact that my records have nothing to do with the sounds instruments happen to make. The guitars aren't guitars, the synthesizers aren't synthesizers, the drum machines and drums aren't drums. In general, you are unable to tell with conviction what anything is. This I can do because I have about 70 instruments and a room full of electronics, but so do a lot of studios.

False realism is like Cinema Verité. As Cinema Verité should be left to academic documentary filmmakers, false realism in music should be left to those making demonstration recordings of historical instruments.

The members of Kraftwerk claim to be robots, and they have disowned their first three albums from the early 70s which feature (*gasp!*) non-electronic musical instruments. A backing band composed of robots seems to be exactly what Stephin is looking for. In this Salon interview, Merritt says:

Robotics would be great. If we could have an easily used robot guitar, for example, we could do lots of nifty things that have not been done. Computer-assisted songwriting would also be great.

Then, when asked by the interviewer, "Would you want a world in which everyone played perfectly metronomical drumbeats all the time?", Merritt replied "Yes! Yes, I would!"

And in an article by Randy Silver, Stephin discusses replacing human voices:

So what piece of technology would Merritt's dream studio come equipped with? "A really accurate voice synthesizer," he ruminates, "One that would sing lyrics you typed into it according to notes that you played into it. Something that would allow you to control the singing style and the inflections from a computer. That would be very useful to me."

Possibly, the song that sums up the Kraftwerk aesthetic and manifesto best is "The Robots," with its catchy Vocoder chorus, strict rhythms, and synthesized beeps and bloops. The second selection is the irresistibly upbeat "Airwaves," from the album Radio-activity, which was Stephin's favorite recording of 1975. I should also point out that the band will be touring Europe and the U.S.A. in late May through July (tour dates are on the official site), and they will also be releasing a two-disc live album called Minimum-Maximum in June.

Kraftwerk - "The Robots"
Kraftwerk - "Airwaves"

Some of us can only live in songs of love and trouble

2005-04-11T22:44:00.000-05:00

In an interview printed in Chickfactor #10, Stephin said:

Most of my dream vocalists are imaginary. I like to think up new vocalists who have never lived before and imagine their characteristics. This is of course how I make friends as well.

In the non-fictional world, one of Merritt's favorite vocalists is Billie Holiday, whom you may remember was beckoned to be his "only friend."

Referring again to the 69 Love Songs booklet, Stephin was questioned about singers:

Daniel Handler: Billie Holiday, a.k.a. Lady Day, joins what other vocalists in the pantheon for you? [...] What about Ella Fitzgerald?
Stephin: She doesn't have much shtick.

I hesitate to call Billie Holiday's life a shtick (and I don't want to imply that that is what Stephin is doing), but for sure, she is the person who first comes to mind when you think "tragic jazz singer." Holiday's insanely turbulent life, marked with enough troubles to fuel two dozen Lifetime movies, undoubtedly provided an extra layer of emotion to her performances, and she would be certainly at home in Merritt's lyrical world of alcoholics and sad lovers.

The chilling "Strange Fruit," mentioned in the Magnetic Fields' "Love Is Like Jazz," was Holiday's signature piece - a powerful and disquieting song about lynched African-Americans, who were the "strange fruit hanging from poplar trees." The line "Hanging in the willow trees like the dead," from "Summer Lies," brings up similar disturbing imagery. The second selection this week is "God Bless the Child," a song co-written by Holiday and cited as Merritt's favorite recording of 1941.

Billie Holiday - "Strange Fruit"
Billie Holiday - "God Bless the Child"

By request, "Le Tourbillon" is back up:

Jeanne Moreau and Bassiak - "Le Tourbillon"

She said her life was like a motorway: dull, grey, and long, 'til he came along

2005-04-04T22:34:00.000-05:00

Stephin's favorite recording of 1994, a song which he said moved him to tears when he first heard it, is Saint Etienne's "Like a Motorway," one of the band's finest and saddest moments and a fan favorite. Saint Etienne represents all that is right about full-on, unabashed dancey pop music. Although they are a bit more popular over the ocean than in the States, most American Stephinfans probably know lead singer Sarah Cracknell's silky vocals from the 6ths' track "Kissing Things."

One notable thing about "Like a Motorway" is that it lifts, note for note, the melody of the traditional song "Silver Dagger," which has been covered by many, including Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Dolly Parton. (Another tip of the hat is the line "In her right hand, she clasps a letter" which shadows the latter's line "In her right hand is a silver dagger.") This practice of borrowing elements from public domain songs is not uncommon, and even our own favorite songwriter does it. In a conversation between Stephin and Claudia, documented in 1994 in Chickfactor #6, Stephin said:

...I used to write songs by going through Alan Lomax's Folk Songs of North America and lifting the best parts of these folk songs [which are in the public domain], and I use samples. Welcome to 1994, darlings, originality is passé.

"Like a Motorway" is from the nearly-flawless album Tiger Bay, and I recommend obtaining the fifteen-track European version (which has bonus songs that are actually great, has superior sequencing, and doesn't tack on unnecessary remixes like the U.S. version.)

In the 69 Love Songs booklet, Stephin says:

There's an incredible Aphex Twin song, on the new Experimental Musical Instruments album, where he explores the sounds of bouncing [...] It's beautiful on speakers, but on headphones it's one of the major achievements of the 20th Century. Amazing. It's the best piece of electronic music I've ever heard.

Actually, the Experimental Musical Instruments album to which Merritt is referring is the Orbitones, Spoon Harps, & Bellowphones compilation, named by Merritt in TimeOut New York as one of the best releases of 1998. It's full of strange tracks performed on unusual musical inventions, and I recommend it to just about everyone including the most jaded listeners.

Just listen to Merritt's instrumental piece "Tea Party" from the Eban & Charley soundtrack album and tell me that it wasn't inspired by that Aphex Twin track - in particular, the sound of plastic cups succumbing to gravity.

Saint Etienne - "Like a Motorway"
Aphex Twin - "Bucephalus Bouncing Ball"

Drowning in the sea of love, where everyone would love to drown

2005-03-28T23:20:00.000-05:00

"['No One Will Ever Love You'] is an attempt to be Fleetwood Mac's Tusk rolled into one song, concentrating on the Stevie Nicks theme in the lyrics. It's all oblique lyrics. All of Tusk is oblique lyrics referring to unexplained romantic situations."

So says Merritt in an interview with Daniel Handler, documented in the 69 Love Songs booklet. Although not nearly as popular as its predecessor, the gazillion-selling Rumours, Tusk is gradually being recognized as the gently outstretched masterpiece it is. Camper Van Beethoven covered the album in its entirety, the band Ida performed most of it for an amazing show last May, and other notables have declared their admiration for it. It's an odd album, with some wandering, laid-back Californian tunes, punctuated with curious (sometimes markedly lo-fi) Buckingham moments and Stevie Nicks's long hair/long dress earthy mysticism.

"No One Will Ever Love You" isn't exactly the whole album rolled into one song (I hear no marching band or cardboard box being beaten), but it certainly does capture the wistful, mellow tone of roughly half of its songs. The Magnetic Fields' distillation of Fleetwood Mac has the trademark metronomic drumming, the milky guitar flourishes, and the forementioned ambiguously romantic lyrics. (Though, perhaps, the line "When things go wrong, I sing along; it is the nature of the business" is a clever nod to Fleetwood Mac's intra-band relationship turmoil that was reflected in the album Rumours.)

Regarding Mick Fleetwood's drumming, Stephin said, in a semi-contentious interview with Salon:

"One of my favorite drummers is Mick Fleetwood, who keeps incredible time, but is always doing interesting variations on the beat, and in the most repetitive songs, he never seems to play exactly the same thing twice, and yet he sounds very simple, so I think he's a genius..."

Earlier, Merritt tore the interviewer apart for claiming that Björk was innovative because of her use of non-rhyming lyrics and unusual phrase structures. After Stephin recalled Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams," the interviewer wrote:

Then, with deep sarcasm and great pleasure, [Merritt said] "I would say that Stevie Nicks is an important precursor to Björk, perhaps surpassing her in artistry."

I didn't want to leave anyone out, so this week I have posted three songs from Tusk: one by Christine McVie, one by Lindsey Buckingham, and one by Stevie Nicks, in that order.

Fleetwood Mac - "Over & Over"
Fleetwood Mac - "Save Me a Place"
Fleetwood Mac - "Sara"

I love you...neither do I.

2005-03-21T21:26:00.000-05:00

The liner notes to Pop Romantique, a collection of French covers and originals by (mostly) indie popsters, begin with a quote by Djuna Barnes: "There are moments in the lives of all of us, or shall I say some of us, that must be lived in French." So true. There are also many musical moments that only really make sense in French, and a comprehension of the language isn't at all necessary to enjoy them. For example, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg would be pointless and possibly unbearable in another language. In addition to the French geographical and historical references (Paris, the Champs-Elysées, Napoléon and Joséphine, etc.), for a few choice moments, Merritt's lyrics appropriately slide into French: the chorus of "Underwear" and the spoken word section of "Smoke and Mirrors."

For the forementioned Pop Romantique compilation, the Magnetic Fields breezed through "Le Tourbillon," with the magnificent Dudley Klute (formely of Kid Montana) singing lead vocals. This track was originally featured in the French new wave film Jules and Jim in a scene with Jeanne Moreau singing the song, accompanied by Bassiak, for friends in a country shack. Movie buffs will be pleased to know that the film, directed by François Truffaut, will get a Criterion Collection release this May.

The irresistibly and ridiculously steamy "Je T'Aime...Moi Non Plus" from the perverted mind of Serge Gainsbourg was Stephin's selection for the best recording of 1969. It's really quite a brilliant tune, disguised as a novelty song, with Jane Birkin's unforgettable...uh, well, just listen for yourself. I'm not sure that I can think of a way this song has influenced Stephin directly, but who knows - maybe a future Magnetic Fields track will feature fake orgasmic gasping. We can only hope.

Jeanne Moreau and Bassiak - "Le Tourbillon"
Serge Gainsbourg with Jane Birkin - "Je T'Aime...Moi Non Plus"

By request, the Wild Stares track is back up for one more week:

The Wild Stares - "Babies Falling"

The guns shot above our heads, and we kissed as though nothing could fall

2005-03-14T22:59:00.000-05:00

Excerpts from an interview by Monica Lynch, from Index Magazine:

MONICA: Do you dance, Stephin?
STEPHIN: I love to dance. I will dance again when I can find the shoes in which to do it. I am very disappointed with my feet. But I took dance in high school.
MONICA: Really? Did you have to wear leotards?
STEPHIN: I don’t remember what I wore. But I was liable to be wearing leotards in high school anyway. Or jumpsuits. There was one point when my entire wardrobe was jumpsuits.
MONICA: It was interpretive dance that you took in high school, I suppose.
STEPHIN: Yes, we would invent dance routines to various Bowie songs.
MONICA: Like what? "Ashes to Ashes?"
STEPHIN: Oh, no, no, no. "Moss Garden" from "Heroes". We were into "Heroes", and side two of Low.

The albums cited, Low and "Heroes", were two of the three albums (the third being Lodger) on which David Bowie collaborated significantly with Brian Eno, while living in Berlin in the late 70s. Merritt's earlier synth-based recordings sometimes evoke the distinctive atmospherics of those albums - for example, Merritt's effervescent synths in his arrangement of "Babies Falling" are reminiscent of the gentle gurgling sounds at the beginning of "Neuköln" on "Heroes".

The Magnetic Fields covered the track "Heroes" for the Bowie tribute album Crash Course for the Ravers, lovingly compiled by Claudia Gonson's sister, JJ, on her Undercover Records label in 1996. While not as passionate as Bowie's own version, the cover has a soothing yet relentless momentum to it and is easily one of the best interpretations of "Heroes" I've heard. It's a hard song to cover well - there are several really bad covers out there, as evidence of this. The second track this week is a two-in-one bonus of "Moss Garden" and its subsequent track, "Neuköln" (which starts at the 5 minute, 5 second point.)

While listening to "Moss Garden," imagine, if you will, an even smaller version of Stephin bouncing about in an unpredictable, animated fashion, wearing a jumpsuit.

David Bowie - "Heroes"
David Bowie - "Moss Garden" / "Neuköln"

You're haunting me because I let you

2005-03-07T21:40:00.000-05:00

In an Onion interview, Merritt refers to Distant Plastic Trees as "...a small record, intentionally small, influenced by the Young Marble Giants, an electro-pop record." Small is exactly how I would also describe the sole (proper) album from the misleadingly-named Young Marble Giants, Colossal Youth, made in 1979 by three Cardiffians in the post-punk era. For some reason, I imagine the members huddling around a space heater and a tape recorder in a shed in the woods; then they bury their cassette in a tiny glazed pot in the ground and make a kettle of tea. Colossal Youth employs very sparse instrumentation: a crisp bass, a feeble drum machine, and either a warbly organ or a hand-muted electric guitar. Its simplicity gives it an unplaceable, timeless sound - something unmatched even to this day - and many tracks on Trees indeed take a cue from its basic structures and arrangements, like "Smoke Signals" in particular.

Stephin has mentioned that he admires the way Susan Anway can sound happy, sad, or blank, while he laments that he can only sound sad - and would like to be able to sound blank. The lead singer of Young Marble Giants, Alison Statton, is one probable blueprint for Merritt's desired singing style. In this interview, YMG member Stuart Moxham says:

"It's really weird, because what happens is I write the melody and sing it, and then Alison sings it back. But when I sing it, it tends to be emotional because the lyrics are mine. Alison on the other hand is really laid back and unemotional sounding. It's a strange paradox, a disinterested voice singing about something emotional."

And in this interview with Future Bible Heroes, Claudia Gonson says:

"I try to sing in a way similar to Astrud Gilberto, or Alison Statton of the Young Marble Giants, where you use your voice more as an instrument and it’s less about expression than tone."

The first track is "The Man Amplifier" off Colossal Youth, a song that the Magnetic Fields covered for the b-side of the "Why I Cry" 7 inch single, which was intended for a Young Marble Giants tribute album that never materialized. (In the forementioned interview, Stuart also comments: "Philip [Moxham] wrote ['The Man Amplifier'] after seeing a programme about a robot you strap yourself into and it amplified your movements, so that if you want to pick your nose and it isn't programmed to do it, it'll pull your head off.") The second track is the demo version of "N.I.T.A." from Salad Days, possibly the most hauntingly memorable YMG song of all. I dare say that Salad Days is strictly for fans, but everybody should definitely own Colossal Youth. Also, note that Stuart Moxham sang lead vocals on the 6ths song "Yet Another Girl," which was only included on the Wasps' Nests 6 6/6" boxed set.

Young Marble Giants - "The Man Amplifier"
Young Marble Giants - "N.I.T.A." (demo)

You can watch your friends through this tiny lens

2005-02-28T21:16:00.001-05:00

Merritt frequently cites John Foxx's debut solo album Metamatic as one of his all-time favorites, and after hearing its chilly layers of synths and seemingly detached vocals, it's easy to understand why. Every instrument makes no attempt to sound natural, something that Merritt aims for on much of his work. The selection, "Touch and Go," demonstrates the use of non-drum sounds to keep the beat, a technique Merritt likes to use (listen to "Smoke and Mirrors" or "You Love to Fail" for starters), and pay attention to the lyrics, which paint a dreary picture of a possibly futuristic cityscape ("grey-blue haze," "motorway sparks," "moving stairway," etc.), sharing a kinship with "In the City in the Rain," "Tokyo Á Go-Go," and "Rats in the Garbage of the Western World."

Stephin appeared, in different incarnations, a total of three times on the Human League tribute album, Reproductions (on March Records). The contribution from Future Bible Heroes was a cover of the 80s nostalgia staple "Don't You Want Me?", which featured the trademark Merritt gender-switch trick (recall, for example, Susan Anway singing, "I can't be the man they want me to be.") It's almost comical the way Stephin emerges with his deep baritone, singing that famous line, "I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar." The original is from Dare, another of Merritt's favorite albums from the new wave era.

John Foxx - "Touch and Go"
The Human League - "Don't You Want Me?"

Bleeding from the waist, or kissing to be chaste

2005-02-21T20:56:00.000-05:00

I venture to say that not a whole lot of people have heard the original version of "Babies Falling" by the Wild Stares, and I also would guess that many Magnetic Fields fans will be startled when they hear it. The brutally artificial-sounding drum machine, the tense vocals, the plodding Swans-esque bass lines, and the atonal guitar skronking are miles away from Susan Anway's gentle vocals and Stephin's bubbling synths.

The Wild Stares were active in Boston during the time Merritt lived in Massachusetts, and also, the band's Propeller record label released music by the band V; whose lead singer was...Susan Anway. For more on the Wild Stares, read this article/interview from Perfect Sound Forever.

A discussion of Merritt's influences is impossible to conduct without mentioning ABBA, whose mastery of catchy pop has profoundly influenced his songwriting and recording methods. Merritt says:

"The first songs I wrote down, at the age of ten or so, were clumsy imitations for my then and now favorite band, ABBA. The lyrics concerned marital problems against a background of European history, and mentioned breakfast tables."

Elements of ABBA imbue many of his songs, but arguably, the track that demonstrates his ABBA-love the most is "Here in My Heart," by the 6ths on Wasps' Nests, which is quite similar to "Take a Chance on Me" in structure, chord progression, and overall sound.

"They knew what they were doing to such an extent that they often lapse over from high emotion into actual psychotic dream states - for me."

The Wild Stares - "Babies Falling"
ABBA - "Take a Chance on Me"

I saw shining lights, but I never knew they were you...

2005-02-14T20:26:00.000-05:00

The first song is "They Were You" taken from the Original Cast Album of The Fantasticks. In an interview with Terry Gross (Fresh Air) five years ago exactly, on Valentine's Day, Stephin says:

"I think my favorite love song at the moment is 'They Were You' from the Fantasticks, the show, the longest running show in theatre history...

I heard it as a kid, but it was reintroduced to me in a romantic situation...and I've used that as a template for 'good love song.'"

He even honors Terry's request to sing a bit from it (start listening at the 7 min 23 sec mark). Also, recall that the Magnetic Fields track, "I Don't Believe You," features the line, "You may sing me 'They Were You,' and I start crying halfway through."

"The Saddest Story Ever Told" on The Wayward Bus very obviously borrows the main melody of "Then He Kissed Me," which epitomizes Phil Spector's distinctive "Wall of Sound," with every instrument and voice fighting for attention. On the topic of recording, Merritt says:

"As a producer, I'm not looking for a 'realistic' effect. I like Phil Spector and ABBA records because they aren't striving for realism. I can't hear individual instruments, just the notes."

"They Were You" from the Fantasticks
The Crystals - "Then He Kissed Me"

Introduction

2005-02-14T04:12:00.000-05:00

Hello, fans of Stephin Merritt, the man behind the Magnetic Fields, the 6ths, the Gothic Archies, Future Bible Heroes, and let's not forget Stephin Merritt soundtrack man.

Every week, I will post two new MP3s for your listening pleasure, each of which will fall into one of the following categories:
1) Songs that Stephin has covered.
2) Artists who have inspired and influenced him.
3) Artists/songs he has expressed liking (from his "best of" lists, interviews, etc.)

This blog will never, I repeat - never, post music that was actually made by Merritt. It will be updated every Monday, and each song will be available for 10 days.