"Musical Musings" {Republication from the Negative Progression 'zine}
"Just look at the DJ, baby...don't he think he's great?"
Salutations to all the dedicated Negative Progressors1 out there!
To recap briefly: Negative Progression started as pandemic-era DIY ‘zine project for me to keep busy/stay sane/feel connected with my friends. (One of the many rejected titles was Quaranzine.)
I crossed a fun milestone between editions of this here newsletter/blog - the successor to the ‘zine - which is that there are now more subscribers who didn’t read the original Negative Progression ‘zine than those that did. I’m pretty stoked about that and deeply grateful to everyone whose read an edition, subscribed, etc. It’s very exciting for me and I appreciate you all.
As a result, I’m going to republish here a couple things that were in the ‘zine. Why? Well, mostly because the two new things I’m working on need a little more time to percolate2. So, the ‘zine readers will have to accept my apologies, but (if I do say so myself) these playlists both “slap” and hence stand up to being revisited. I also added some bonus content, so I like to think this is akin the Criterion Collection DVD release3?
The first section presented in the ‘zine was “Musical Musings” and was also the first section I wrote. It covered two things:
The deep power-pop hole I fell into in the “early-pandemic” of Spring 2020
A playlist I’d been slowly (and privately) curating on YouTube that I made public with the release of the ‘zine.
Both pieces are presented below in their original form, so while they were written in 2020 using the present tense, both should now be read in 2021 the past tense, I guess? (Is this a time paradox??)
Some of the footnotes are new, as are most of the hyperlinks. Regular readers have probably noticed that I’m a “heavy linker” and I worked around hyperlinks in the ‘zine by using QR codes, but that limited the number I could add, so I guess the extra ones also count as bonus content.
I hope you dig these playlists. I always think of Power Pop as “summer music” - which is convenient for me given that its always sunny in Los Angeles - but now that it is July it should be summer wherever you are(?), as I believe all current subscribers are in the Northern Hemisphere, (but if you’re an antipodean or otherwise in the Southern Hemisphere, please let me know!)
Also, also: to the American readers, enjoy your holiday weekend. May your hotdog (or meat-free equivalent) be grilled to perfection. And to the British readers: commiserations on your annual reminder of “the one that got away.” See y’all in two weeks!
PS: I still have a couple of the ‘zines left. Lemme know if you want one.
Spring 2020 Playlist: Power Pop Pandemonium
I tend to get into a groove with music, like I’ll end up listening to the same band a bunch, or a handful of similar albums, or sometimes a genre to the exclusion of everything else. Spring 2020 was definitely one of those times, as I went on a full-on power pop kick. Please enjoy the playlist I curated, featuring some of the choicest tracks4 I was jamming in the background of the first few months of quarantine-life5.
Bonus Content: “The Sweet - All That Glitters”. Enjoy this BBC mini-documentary/live footage from 1974 and learn why “it’s not hip to dig The Sweet.”
Peak of Their Powers
The non-contractually obligated live album truly seemed like it became a dead format in the Twenty-Teens, outside of the excellent CastleFace Records “Live in San Francisco” series6.
However, what took the place of the live album seemed to be the endless treasure trove of YouTube. I maintain that my music time-travel tourism business concept is a trillion-dollar idea with a price scale for any budget - for example, ranging from $10k for a night of peak-era Elvis in Vegas with a top-of-the-line suite at Caesar’s to $20 for Suicide and Testors at Max’s Kansas City.
Anyway, until someone gets me a flux capacitor and a pile of venture capital, YouTube will have to do. At some point, I started a playlist – made up of either an entire set of perfection or maybe just a single track’s snippet of brilliance - called “Peak of Their Powers”.
I can’t define precisely the mix of elements involved, but, like pornography, you know it when you see it. It’s the moments when where all the cosmic elements align: the band is in the perfect groove, the crowd is right there with them, there’s an expertly calculated set-list, there’s a sound engineer up to the task (which is perhaps the rarest element of all?)
Or maybe something unexpected happens, like the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion on some Aussie TV show. (Which, if you’ve never seen, is the #1 most must-watch video in the whole playlist.)
Ideally, this will all be provided with the requisite level of audio quality. Or at least, suited to the band’s concepts of fidelity, i.e. The Oh Sees should sound somewhat scuzzy; Fleetwood Mac, not so much.
In the last few months, without even looking for it, I discovered something that met the criteria, and surprised me, given who it was: Arctic Monkeys, live on the radio, in session, right here in Los Angeles, back in 2007. It’s from maybe the last stretch of time before they went “Full Hollywood” - when they were touring the US in support of their second record. That always felt like a so-so set of songs on record, but they really shine in this set.
Have something to add to the list? Let me know. I am ready for the recommendations.
Sidebar: Artic Monkeys are kind of a fascinating band, despite being a band that I mostly don’t listen to or musically have much interest in. I admire that they zig when people expect them to zag. Their records got less and less interesting, but I like they did whatever the hell they wanted to and ignored external whims.
But, if headlining Glastonbury is the metric against which all British bands are truly measured - and I have decided that it is - they’re carrying a brutal played 2, lost 2 record:
2007 was too soon for them, and while the crowd was RABID (one of the best festival crowds ever) and the band played well enough but they were too green to own the moment.
2013 is the opposite, they were ready but they didn’t bring the goods. But, the crowd loves it anyway…so, as always, we may have to consider if I even know what the fuck I’m talking about?
Bonus Content - Random Thoughts on some of these videos:
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion: I’ve been obsessed with this video since Brother Patrick first showed it to me. Just remarkable on every level.
Queen: this is probably the high-water mark of stadium rock? It is impossible to me that anyone wouldn’t have already seen this at least once in their life but if that’s you, please enjoy a truly treasured clip. If you only have time for one song, skip to 2:40 for Radio Gaga and stay for Freddie’s crowd control bit afterwards.
At The Drive In: the video on this playlist has changed since the ‘zine was published!! The version I always wanted to include is this one (them playing One Armed Scissor live on Later…With Jools Holland) which until very recently wasn’t on YouTube, so I used to have a version from Conan. But I was finally able to update it, huzzah! Witness the glorious chaos that lives on the cusp of total collapse without ever quite tipping over.
Nirvana: While this isn’t the whole set, I was happy to find this much of it up in such high sound fidelity, it’s a famously great set. If you only have time for one song, skip to 20:25 and listen to In Bloom, a deeply under-rated Nirvana tune.
Thee Oh Sees: talk about getting locked into a groove. The current incarnation of this band is well and good, but this incarnation had a real specific energy to their live shows and this video captures it perfectly.
Ange Olsen: this era of Angel - the songs, the band, the vibe, the matching outfits - is just wonderful and this set captures it perfectly (I saw a live show on this tour, but this version is even better than that was.) If you only have the time for one song, skip to 31:10 and listen to Sister.
Fleetwood Mac: This one is really Stevie Nicks that’s at her peak, as much as/more than the band as a whole. I could write a thousand words just on this one video, but instead I’ll just add this screenshot of some notes I made about it when I thought I might do video breakdowns7 as a thing on here.
Martha: I’m still waiting to see them in person (I missed them in Chicago when I got food poisoning and I missed them in Madison when the world got covid) but this is excellent. If you only have time for one song, skip to 13:02 for 1967, I Miss You, I'm Lonely.
Arctic Monkeys: see above for the main details8. This one is hard to pick one highlight for, as its really as the whole set in totality that makes it, but if you only have time for one song, skip to 39:44 and listen to Leave Before the Lights Come On, mostly because it’s a hidden gem that was never on any of the albums. (Plus “it’s always hard in the morning” makes me giggle every time…)
The Hives: shout to to Mike Krol for hipping me to this video. I wish it was higher quality, but the raw materials are so good it makes the cut anyway!
Beyoncé: Someone expressed surprise to me about this one being on the list, presumably because it’s not my usual métier. But, Peak of Their Powers crosses all genre lines and this is a superstar absolutely at the peak of her sizeable powers. There’s a bunch of fireworks, the dancers move around her like plants orbit around a star, the crowd goes wild, this is show-woman-ship of the highest order. (Also, I believe this was when she was pregnant, and ain’t none of the men on this list working with a baby on board. Queen B, indeed.)
Dire Straits: I’m low-key obsessed with live versions of this song. Ok, maybe high-key because I have a whole other playlist that’s only this song. I like to throw that one on when I really need to focus on something complicated because something about that riff really helps (for real!)
Elvis: what can I say, the man really was the King.
Need a better name for y’all, but going with this for now!
Entourage is deeply problematic and is aging horribly, but Billy Walsh remains a very funny depiction of the “tortured artist” trope.
A digital release after an analog release being suitably ass-backwards for me.
Yes, Big Star is the forever #1 power pop group, but I haven’t been on a Big Star kick recently, so I did not include them. If your favorites are missing, it just means I wasn’t listening to them, in which case you should send me some YouTube links, as I am perma-horny for YouTube links.
We can talk about if The Sweet is power-pop or glam-rock or just straight up pop, but I’ve been listening to The Sweet a lot and I sure think if I only heard “Love is Like Oxygen” in a vacuum (get it?) and never set eyes on them, I would assume they were a power pop outfit. So, they made the cut.
The White Fence and Blind Shake records are the best recorded versions of both bands, IMHO.
Is this a thing people would be interested in? Breaking down/over-analyzing music videos or live performances like its the key play of a sports game?
What’s not noted in the original write up is just how much of a killer Matt Helders is on drums, both in general and specifically in this set.