Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Song of the Day

35-for-35: 1993 – Rid of Me by PJ Harvey

by

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]This is where the choices are going to get really painful for me. I have a dozen favorite songs from 1993, at least.

Ace of Base’s “The Sign” and how it marked the end of my pop music fandom for the better part of a decade. Janet’s genre-bending “If” full of sex and squalling guitars. “River of Dreams” and the one time I could connect with my father over a piece of current music. Sheryl Crow’s Tuesday Night Music Club, a front to back listenable record that is so obviously the work of a collective of songwriters rather than a singular voice.

Juliana Hatfield, Liz Phair… I can keep going.

But, if we are going to talk about songs that really changed my whole damn life, we need to be talking about Polly Jean Harvey’s breakthrough album, Rid of Me.

All of it.

I didn’t come around to Harvey until a few years after Rid of Me, when I saw Tracy Bonham cover her “50ft Queenie.” Being a voracious consumer of female-vocal rock, it didn’t take much to convince me to head down to Borders to pick up the album that contained the original.

I was not prepared for what I heard. Rid of Me is a powerful and at-times terrifying album. This had all the rawness of Hole but the measured perfection of Tori Amos. It had guttural strength that stood up to anything on In Utero and spectral power that made it seem like a spiritual sister to Bjork’s Debut. While many fans and critics prefer her To Bring You My Love, the raw power of Steve Albini-produced Rid of Me remains her seminal work in this household.

I can’t pick just one song to highlight, so let’s just talk about half the record.

“Missed” never fails to stun me. It’s a lost track from Jesus Christ Superstar, Mary’s lament to a lost Jesus kept away in a tomb after Mary Magdelene insisting “Everything’s Alright.” It’s beautiful – takes my breath away on every play even after listening to it for 20 years.

The biblical theme continues on Bob Dylan’s famous “Highway ’61 Revisited,” the title track of his 1965 record.

Oh, God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”
Abe said, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”

Who on their second album decides to take a mid-record break to cover Dylan’s strutting country-rock paean to the famous road as a squalling, foreboding rock song? The Dylan original and faithful covers sound trite next to this muscular, paranoid version. The surging power chords, the surprisingly nuanced drumming, the jangling single note riff.

I’ve always felt this ought to be the credits tune to an adaptation of The Stand, with its depiction of God sparing Abraham’s son at the start to a roving gambler trying to start the next world war just to see if god would stop him in the final stanza. [Read more…] about 35-for-35: 1993 – Rid of Me by PJ Harvey

35-for-35: 1992 – “Tear In Your Hand” by Tori Amos

by

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]tori-amos-little-earthquakes-alt-cover-photoI stopped seeing Tori Amos live because of “Tear In Your Hand.”

It is one of my favorite songs of all time.

It is one of my favorite songs of all time, and after seeing Tori Amos five times she had played it at every show. When the next tour rolled around, I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing her and breaking the streak.

(Of course, that was probably her best tour since 1998. And she did play “Tear In Your Hand” in Philly. Oh, well.)

I cannot entirely explain my fascination with “Tear In Your Hand.” It’s not the most memorable song on Little Earthquakes, by far. Yet, it has a hypnotic quality to its constantly circling chords that draws you in and than keeps you spiraling.

Tori redraws the same piano figure again and again – a B suspended fourth to major to suspended second that then puts the fourth in bass for the same figure and returns back to the top – as she rambles through a stream-of-consciousness that starts when all the world just stops and rambles through reading Sandman comic books, liking the same ice cream as a serial killer, and how that other girl might just be another side of herself.

I think the entire song exists in that stopped-world moment. He says he doesn’t want to stay together anymore, and as she takes a deep breath he touches a hand to her cheek to wipe away the first tear and when he does her life just flashes before her eyes in an instant, like a forever dream sent from Morpheus himself.

tori-amos-denim-chair-1991Meanwhile, the arrangement is a beautiful puzzle of pieces tugging at your ear drums. The sighing backing vocals are pulled right from “Crazy For You,” while a chugging woody bass sound hints at indie rockers like R.E.M., and the increasingly intricate tangle of guitars begins to obscure the initial piano line – plus, the headbanging bridge, one of the hardest rocking moment on Little Earthquakes.

She knows him better now than she used to, and she knows it never could have been – even if that other woman is just the pieces of herself she hadn’t yet revealed. And so it’s time to say goodbye.

I don’t think it’s a marvelous song, especially without Steve Caton’s beautiful guitar arrangement. Yet, there’s something undeniable about its unspooling narrative that became synonymous with seeing Tori Amos live, and I’m half afraid she’ll skip and half afraid she’ll do it and that fragile magic will be gone.

Here’s a 2005 live version from VH1 – perhaps its only major TV broadcast: [Read more…] about 35-for-35: 1992 – “Tear In Your Hand” by Tori Amos

35-for-35: 1991 – “Vibeology” by Paula Abdul

by

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Oh, yes, we are going there. I have another Paula Adbul song on this list of all-time favorites from the same year Nirvana released Nevermind. Come ahead and fight me.

Spellbound is a much stronger LP than Forever Your Girl. It signaled this clearly on each of its first two singles – “Rush, Rush,” a ballad with Abdul’s finest recorded performance (crazy, since it’s reportedly an early scratch vocal) and the unpolished and new age-y “Promise of a New Day.” The third single was the marginal ballad “Blowing Kisses In the Wind.”

That meant that the core of this album had yet to be heard by the general listening public. It included a sexy, sultry, witty set of songs that paired well with Prince’s 1991 effort Diamonds and Pearls. Songs like “Spellbound” or “U” would have made terrific singles that could compete on the radio. (“U” was even written by Prince! How do you pass that up as a single?!)

So, of course, the fourth single was “Vibeology.”

This song… I really have no words. I love it so much. How can I possibly express my feelings to you other than through dance?

“Vibeology” sort of takes the position of, “What if Paula’s duet with MC Skat Kat was the best thing on that first record?” And, well, “Cold Hearted” aside … maybe it was? While Spellbound was pretty evenly split between ballads and more sultry numbers, paula-abdul-1991-spellbound-album-cover“Vibeology” alone stood in the center as the one batshit crazy dance-capade full of horns and also Paula Abdul screaming “horny horns!” to introduce said horns.

If you listen to it next to the Prince-penned “U” it seems to be imitating the New Jack Swing sound with dancehall flourishes. It’s just so damn manic it’s hard to take it as anything other than a novelty song. I mean, all the different voices, the lack of a discernible verse, the croaked slam poetry section, the “Go Paula!” chants, the horny horns.

Yet, there is something I unabashedly love about this song. It’s basically built from the same pieces as “Vogue” – check out the bounding low bassline and the clanging piano chords. If you stripped away some of the silliness here and moved the “you got the vibeology” rap further into the song, it would actually feel a lot like “Vogue.”

Only, you know, with horny horns.

Honestly, I think this song single-handedly killed Paula Abdul’s career – maybe specifically her low-rent “Express Yourself” video, sexy frumpy circus-with-feathers aesthetic, and subsequent pitchy MTV Music Video Awards performance. When she came back with an even sultrier follow-up in Head Over Heels it seemed like a desperate grab for attention in a post-pop, rock-oriented world – but, that’s only because it was never set up with the right singles from Spellbound.

Here’s that so bad it’s bad MTV VMA performance: [Read more…] about 35-for-35: 1991 – “Vibeology” by Paula Abdul

35-for-35: 1990 – “Pump Up The Jam” by Technotronic

by

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Yes, “Vogue” was released in 1990 and this post is not about Vogue. You’re on to me, I’m actively avoiding using this series to just gush over Madonna. I can do that any day.

“Vogue” was part of a trend – maybe its apex – of bringing elements of popular club music to the mainstream (in this case, House music). The popularity lasted only a brief period and had few popular antecedents before going underground again thanks to the radio takeover by alternative rock in the following years. You could hear it again on Cathy Dennis’s “C’Mon Move This,” Ce Ce Peniston’s “Finally,” and all over the next albums by Paula Abdul and Prince.

While those tracks are all glossy, radio-ready examples, a lot of the significant songs of the period weren’t so polished. Some of those fell into the sub-genre of “hip house,” a subgenre born in Chicago which fused hip hop break beats and bassline samples with house elements. One of the bigger crossover hits was “Pump Up The Jam,” by Technotronic – who I saw open Madonna’s Blonde Ambition tour in 1990!

technotronic_-_pump_up_the_jam-_the_album“Pump Up The Jam” is really stripped down. Its drum machine sounds cheap and is almost all snares and hi-hat rides. It eschews the clanging piano of House completely and inserts only the most passing of synths to dress up its bass loops. The vocals from Ya Kid K are half spoken and half sung, tinged by the inflection of a hip hop MC (though she does not appear in the video – the singer there is model Felly Kilingi, who also graced the cover of the LP).

I played the hell out of this song on tape in 1990 and I cannot explain why. I liked all of those House singles I listed above, but I wasn’t remotely into hip hop or anything with the bracing starkness of this song. But, as Mother of Krisis would say, “Does it have a good beat? Can you dance to it?” Both answers were yes.

Thus, at sundown I would drag my boombox out to the edge of my grandmother’s postage-stamp urban front lawn, pull on my denim jacket, turn this song up to 10, and execute my choreography in the middle of the street for all to see.

(Seriously, was there any doubt that I was going to be on stage later in life? What the hell was everyone in my family waiting for.)

35-for-35: 1989 – “Deadbeat Club” by The B-52’s

by

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]b52s-cosmic-thingI was drawn to the B-52’s Cosmic Thing by the ubiquitous “Love Shack” and the magnificent “Roam,” the latter of which captured that Atlanta sound in a perfect female-lead analog to the increasingly popular R.E.M..

I didn’t like R.E.M. at the time, but I loved the B-52’s. They were whacky and whimsical. They wrote songs about aliens in the oval office and love shacks on the side of the road.

The thing I loved about them the most is that they were a real band – maybe the first rock band I really loved that wasn’t The Beatles. I was obsessed with reading liner notes at this stage in my life, constantly scanning the co-write credits and musicians.

Most of the artists I listened to were just singers, although by this point Madonna had wised up and garnered a co-write on every track of Like a Prayer.

The B-52’s were different. They wrote the songs and played the instruments. I pictured them in the studio, arguing over the sounds of their chiming guitars and high, sighing harmonies.

The leading edge of Gen-Xers were just graduating high school when Cosmic Thing was released, still several years away from the sorts of failures defined in Reality Bites. Yet, “Deadbeat Club” perfectly aligns to that misanthropic, listless future, constantly mocking the happenings “down in NormalTown.”

It’s a song full of atmosphere and images – dancing in torn sheets in the rain and heading down to the bar for their cheapest beer. None of these settings are pictured in the plain video for the song, but I can see them clearly to this day.

The B-52’s were also a band with caché. My family knew who they were and didn’t look down their noses at them the way they did my other 80s pop. I remember standing on the porch of my grandmother’s house, listening to my aunt and cousin talk about the B-52’s riotous earlier records.

“Ah, but it’s a shame about what happened with the guitarist,” one of them said.

“What happened?” I asked, wide-eyed. I hadn’t been aware that the guitarist in my liner notes wasn’t the original guitarist.

“Ricky Wilson, the blonde one’s brother. He was… you know. He died of AIDS.”

b52s-deadbeat-clubThis was still early in the AIDS epidemic, but I knew what it was and the implication of the words. He was gay and he died. I filed that information away. Maybe it’s part of what lead to the blowout with my tiny, conservative Christian school a few years later, where in a debate about AIDS in biology class was told by the teacher it was a plague sent to punish the immoral.

I didn’t have a club to call my own when I first heard the song. My only friends were classmates of whom I was only close to one. Yet, as I think back on the clubs I joined and that formed around me in life, this could have been the theme song to many of them.

In my mind, this was what it was like to feel one with your friends – a group that would otherwise be outcasts. Sitting around, stalking through town, and looking over our noses at the norms.

If we were the deadbeats and reject, who’d want to be normal?