You can say anything you want to / In your fetching cloak of anonymity

Some­body quite recently referred to this blog some­where and called me a ‘tastemaker’. I was rather taken aback…for a few rea­sons. Firstly I think tucked away in the wilds of rather iso­lated Sanur, Bali, my days to being a tastemaker are long behind me (although I’m not unaware, and appre­cia­tive of the fairly ded­i­cated lis­ten­er­ship I had in my years on 95bFm and George FM.…I’m quite proud of 19 years on Auck­land radio, but that’s kinda ancient his­tory now); sec­ondly it puts a bur­den on my shoul­ders that I don’t nec­es­sar­ily want to have..hell I’ve just played the music I like..nothing more, noth­ing less; and finally, as you get older you do tend to find your­self reach­ing back­wards more and more, and it’s a tough call to be a tastemaker when you are look­ing back­ward.… but I see that as the luck, or joy of hav­ing had forty years of musi­cal explo­ration to delve back into.

With that thought, espe­cially the last bit, in the back of my mind I’m always wary of writ­ing too much about ‘old’ records, or ‘old’ artists.

That of course is stu­pid and the thought only crosses my mind for a brief inse­cure moment, but it was accen­tu­ated by a com­ment I read some­where about those aging Pub­lic Address com­men­ta­tors who try and pre­tend they are still hip!. Per­haps that is me, as I’ve been known to com­ment on PA from time to time…but once again com­mon sense rears it’s pro­tec­tive head and raises a big finger.

So with that in mind (or cast out of my mind) let me say some­thing about three records that I’m lik­ing quite a lot right now.

My friend Danielle emailed me and said she’d not really much liked the new-ish (we old folk remem­ber when a record was still new 6 months after release, now you have a week’s grace before it’s passé) Elvis Costello album, the oddly named Momo­fuku (some­thing to do with instant noo­dles I think). I replied and agreed, but noted that I really liked the first and last tracks, so that at least was some­thing. Then some­thing happened..at the gym of all places. Elvis clicked on the cross-trainer and I feel in love with Momofuku.

I’ve had a strange decade with Elvis Costello. I’ve always been a huge fan, ever since I’d heard Less Than Zero on a Stiff Records sam­pler many years ago, but since the mid nineties it’s not been easy as he careers around gen­res, some­times embar­rass­ingly pre­ten­tiously, and some­times with mixed, rather wooden results. Through­out all that I’ve been quite loyal and there have been moments, such as the alt-countryish The Deliv­ery Man, his last ‘proper’ album, from 2004. But the road for an Costello-phile has not been smooth.

Which is why this album is such a pleas­ant sur­prise and even more so when it hit me with­out warn­ing that morn­ing on that bloody cross-trainer.

As an aging punk, it’s a plea­sure to say Momo­fuku is his most punk album since…well since This Years Model, if you will. What does that mean?…not much to most I guess as the term ‘punk’ was usurped years ago and he was never totally accepted by the unwashed gob­bing masses, but to many of us he encap­su­lated the ethos of the times more than most lat­ter day three chord won­ders. Punk was sup­posed to raise a fin­ger and be smart at the same time and Elvis was just that.

So unpre­ten­tiously for the first time in many years, he snarls and vents his way around songs like the sear­ing Amer­i­can Gang­ster Time and the mighty opener No Hid­ing Place.

I’ll hand­ing some­body a box of matches / and car­ry­ing the can of kerosene

He hasn’t sounded this bru­tally con­vinc­ing or this ven­omously melodic for decades. And he tosses in cute lit­tle throw­aways like Harry Worth which work because they hold together the album as a whole

Unlike the Tou­s­saint col­lab­o­ra­tion or his last ‘rock’ out­ing, When I was Cruel. His vocals don’t sound strained, they don’t sound uncom­fort­ably placed in strange surroundings.

And unlike those ear­lier albums, this is the sound of a guy who has noth­ing to prove. On When I Was Cruel, and The Deliv­ery Man he felt like was des­per­ately try­ing to prove he still mat­tered, and on The River In Reverse he was try­ing to prove he could stand next to Allen Tou­s­saint (miss­ing the point: he can, but only on his own terms, as Elvis Costello, not Tou­s­saint, and he shouldn’t need to try but I guess part of what he is, is that he does).

More please.

And more Paul Weller not try­ing to sound like a work­man rocker and get­ting his sense of humour, & sense of adven­ture back again as he seems to have done with 22 Dreams. Whereas Elvis needs to be less pre­ten­tious, Paul needs more of it. He was always at his best when being an obnox­ious pre­ten­tious magpie..like the for­ever per­plex­ing but always engag­ing Style Coun­cil or the best Jam albums where his influ­ences were obvi­ous but mutated through Paul’s self obsessed lense.

Hap­pily the ever so slightly pre­ten­tious Paul Weller is back and the glum rocker of recent years cast aside, and even if he misses ever so often (God is a huge miss) at least he has some edge again.

No-one could ever accuse Den­nis Wil­son of not hav­ing edge but his prob­lem was, like brother Brian, he sim­ply walked too close to it. I bought Pacific Ocean Blue in 1977 when it was first issued. I think I was one of per­haps a dozen who both­ered in New Zealand as it sat on the shelf oppo­site the till in the shop I was work­ing in as i tried to sell it, with­out luck, to count­less folk. The Beach Boys had long since stopped sell­ing beyond the hits col­lec­tions (even the gig I attended on a sunny after­noon in Auckland’s West­ern Springs around the same time was only sparsely attended..although the day’s after­math is well doc­u­mented as a Den­nis Wil­son burn out, and Brian was so wasted he walked off the stage mid song and didn’t return). The last thing that was going to set New Zealand’s charts on fire was an intro­verted selec­tion of songs from the drum­mer, even if his name was Wilson.

I fell in love with POB on release. And even­tu­ally quite a few boys did…girls never warm to The Beach Boys post surf, and rarely before, they are mostly a male thing….enough to push it into the lower reaches of the US album chart and guar­an­tee its rep­u­ta­tion as a lost mas­ter­piece (since then it’s been largely unavail­able for decades with one brief CD issue in 1991, although plen­ti­ful bootlegs). But now it’s back, in a beau­ti­ful dou­ble pack­age (the sec­ond album is an unre­leased, and also much boot­legged, sec­ond solo album..it was unre­leased for a rea­son, so I’m gonna stick to CD1) and thirty years on it still sounds as dark, con­fused, ragged, hope­ful and beau­ti­ful as it did back then. And the mood of course is tinted fur­ther by the events of the years after and Den­nis Wilson’s death…but then The Beach Boys’ his­tory is one of the more tragic in the rock’n’roll story-book.

It’s not all wonderful…there are gri­mace moments, like the ‘save my rock’roll’-isms of What’s Wrong. How­ever that’s The Beach Boys..every album has those moments. But mostly Pacific Ocean Blue stands up as one of the few high­points in the post 1976 Beach Boys cat­a­logue (non of which appear under the BB name). And it’s rep­u­ta­tion is justified.…if you’re a boy.

I know a car­pen­ter who had a dream / Killed the man but you couldn’t kill the dream / Who said it was easy

Tagged with: music • pop • punk • rock