My Alphabetical iPod Diary (Day 2)
“Absolutely Cuckoo” by The Magnetic Fields (from 60 Love Songs, Vol. 1)
The first song, on the first disc of Stephin Merritt’s sprawling, genre spanning concept album. “Cuckoo” is a terrific opening track and it really sets the tone for the album’s near perfect first disc.
I first heard the album after my mom bought it for me while I recuperated from some extensive jaw surgery in grade 12. I had seen the band a month or so prior at Bumbershoot and had been impressed by Merritt’s pop craftsmanship. My good mother, always willing to make her boy happy, purchased the entire 69 Love Songs box set and gave it to me while I was in my hospital bed, mouth wired shut and unable to pee because of the funny drugs I was taking. I spent the next month at home in bed, unable to eat solid foods, unable to take a shit, unable to talk coherently, unable to stop drooling. While friends would often come by to visit, they had to be at school a lot of the time, so I had plenty of “Carson time” to deal with. My friend Mitchell lent me his PlayStation and I would sit around all day listening to this album and playing Tony Hawk.
For the first couple of months, I stuck with pretty much only the first disc of this set. Songs like “I Don’t Believe In The Sun,” “All My Little Words” and “The Luckiest Guy On The Lower East Side” playing over and over again on my stereo. One thing that 69 Love Songs does so well is it captures every emotion related with love – elation, horniness, shyness, boldness, excitement, coyness, misery, depression, loneliness. Those last three stuck with me the most around this time and looking back I realized that this album that I now truly cherish was the source of a six-month funk. I forgive it, though. 69 Love Songs was the album that commiserated with me when I felt like commiserating, and laughed with me when I felt like laughing. It was all things to all moods.
“Absolutely Cuckoo,” a generally minor, pleasant song, was that initial gateway. The opening “Don’t fall in love with me” pulled me, and often continues to pull me, into Merritt’s idiosyncratic world of genre explorations and emotionally packed rhyming couplets. “Cuckoo” is one of those rare songs that signifies so much more than its minute-and-a-half runtime would suggest.
“Absolutely Sweet Marie” by Bob Dylan (from Blonde On Blonde)
Folk purists nearly shat a brick when Bob Dylan started getting all “electric” on their asses. Dylan and his band (The Band. Yes, The Band) cut some pretty funky jams on this here album. I can’t tell whether it’s Garth Hudson or Richard Manuel behind that stabbing organ, but it’s certainly the hook of the song. It’s kind of an old-timey rock n’ roll sound, but (okay, I’m just going to assume it’s Garth) Hudson really lets her rip. I’m not the hugest Dylan fan – I like him, I just couldn’t tell you the first minute detail of his life – but I like the song’s uptempo feel and Robbie Robertson’s little guitar twirls are fantastic. Dylan, for me, is like Tom Waits or Captain Beefheart. I know, as a rule, that they are great, but I rarely feel compelled to listen to them. They’re all on my iPod, so maybe this little diary will force me into greater appreciation.
“Abstraktions” by Unwound (from New Plastic Ideas)
Allmusic.com calls these guys “perhaps the most musically abrasive band in the world of indie rock.” Um, okay. “Abstraktions” is one of those evil, impenetrable instrumentals that garnered the band early comparisons to Sonic Youth. The active bass moves purposefully while trebly, discordant guitars slash and swipe through the rhythm section’s holes. This is a nightmare soundtrack, circa 94.