Magic Jewball

Or, how I spent my five day summer vacation, written during the pouring rain.

It’s been a long time since I felt what the last day of summer felt like. When I was a kid, I loathed school, so much so that I ran away from Kindergarten and regularly played hooky from middle school to either hide in the woods or in the bathroom of my private school’s lower school building. In high school, I would go to the public library or to work at the record store (they never asked questions). Summer was the sweetest, most wonderful time of year. Not only did I have no school but I had my summer camp, where I had some of the best experiences of my life.

Nowadays, I love school. And, as I’ve said, I consider it a vacation from the real world, i.e. Monday through Friday, 9-5 work. The ability to stay up till the wee hours, get up late, handle the day exactly as I wish, and have no one to report to but myself has been like a dream. And well, at some point you have to wake up. I decided to stay in school another year partially because I couldn’t bear for that to end but in doing so, I knew that I’d need additional funding which meant work which means that in order to have that lifestyle, I have to not have that lifestyle. I know, it seems pointless. But there were other reasons I did it too, like getting more education and being better prepared for my new career. So here’s what this year will involve:

a. Part-time job, 3 days a week.
b. Fieldwork 1 day a week.
c. Special project 1 day a week.
d. Classes 2 evenings a week.
e. Thesis in any spare moment.

Yes, it’s going to be a challenge and the hardest part will certainly be the first one, which begins in a mere twelve hours (yikes). I am not good with bosses. I am terrible at doing things that other people tell me to do. Naturally, I did not bring this up in the interview. But I’m going to try my best because for a part-time job, it’s well-compensated. I know. I’m the first person ever to put up with a boss telling me what to do so I can pay my bills, right? But beyond that, I think I’m just going to miss my leisurely student life of getting up, puttering around making a hot breakfast, spending time playing on the Internet, reading for school in the quiet mid-afternoon, and then going off to class. Now I’ll have to fit those readings in when I can and go back to jumping out of bed via cranky alarm, scarfing something down, and running for the train, still half-asleep. I can hear you all playing tiny violins for me right now. I have a Facebook friend who works at a university and is off every summer. All summer long she posts about fun things she and her family are doing at their vacation home in the mountains. Then, in late August, she posts status messages whining about the end of her three-month vacation and I always roll my eyes. So I feel you if you’re rolling your eyes. But it’s been a lovely year, it really has.

Speaking of people complaining about lifestyles others envy, I’ve now had about five days without either school or work (kind of the vacation from my vacation) and finally had time to read the Agassi book (I’m not quite done… and I only have 12 hours left!). I remember when it came out last year there was lots of talk about the revelations: that he wore a hairpiece, that he never really loved Brooke Shields, that he used crystal meth and lied to the ATP about it. But for me, the biggest disillusionment was that he hated tennis. That was really hard for me to deal with. He says that he could never understand people who loved the beauty of the game. I suppose I am one of those people and watching the US Open series on TV these past few weeks has been wonderful. But now I kind of watch people play in a different way. Do they love the game as much as I do or did they feel it was the only thing they knew how to do?

It may be hard to believe, but I only became a tennis fan in the mid-90′s when my then-company gave me tickets to the US Open and I fell in love with both tennis and the story that a tournament is. The first match I ever saw Agassi play live is described in the book; it was during his comeback and the other player, Karol Kucera, was acting like a moron. I remember laughing when Agassi sarcastically reacted and in the book, Agassi mentions that the crowd laughed. This is just to tell you, hey, I’m in the Agassi book! But don’t get me wrong, it’s an amazing read and hard to put down. I suppose they’d frown on me reading at my desk at work, huh?

Also during my five days off from everything, I saw Tears For Fears. It was great to see a band I have loved for a long time and never experienced live, but the show failed my two criteria for excellent concerthood: decent view and good song selection. Being that it was at the Hammerstein Ballroom and I am not the tallest of women, I could occasionally glimpse bits of either member’s head but not often. Also, not enough from their two good albums and, naturally, no hint of my favorite song by them, since it wasn’t a hit. This is the sorry state of concerts today: other people hold up their cameras so that you can see even less and then you have to go to YouTube to watch shaky videos of the concert for which you paid.

Lastly, I got fingerprinted by the Department of Education, so that I could do my fieldwork, even though I don’t yet know if it will be in a public school. But my school makes you anyway, just in case. Everything you ever experienced with government bureaucracy (think of your last trip to the DMV) existed here: long lines, people who went on break just as they were about to take you, requirements sprung on you (duh, don’t you know that you get your school ID when you get fingerprinted and thus need your picture taken?) which lead to yet more lines with no one being taken, and lots of words spoken to you in a tone of voice which makes sure you understand that it is the thousandth time they have been spoken by that person this week. WelcometotheDOEpleasefollowthosearrowstooffice17takeanumberandsitdown.

Then I left and went to Ikea where I bought $40 worth of things I didn’t know I needed in the marketplace. Because once you’re at Borough Hall in Brooklyn, what else are you supposed to do? It was one of the last days I could just go to an office in the middle of the day and then go shopping. I will miss you, sweet unemployment.

Onward and upward.

Title comes from my second favorite Tears For Fears song, which they did, thankfully, play.
Tears For Fears – Pale Shelter

About how many things can you say, “I have been obsessed with that since I was a child?” I think some things are just inborn and they follow you around throughout your life. For me, one of these things has always been “this song sounds like that song.” I remember being fascinated by the George Harrison My Sweet Lord/He’s So Fine case as a little kid and just about any other music plagiarism case I came across. I just find it freaky and strange when two songs sound remarkably alike. By a stroke of luck, when I grew up and ended up in the music business, I sat for ten years in an office next to the one of the legal clearance person, who had the job of both clearing our artists’ samples (those are the pieces of other songs that an artist will deliberately build his/her song upon) and reaching out to the violators of our copyrights. What I found from sitting there is that the legal department counted on the honesty of the artist in reporting whose work the song was based on… to a degree. But then the clearance person would sit and listen to all the songs and try to figure it out. if she couldn’t, the song was sent to a musicologist. So there was always a lot of repeating of passages of loud music and a lot of me jumping up and running next door to say, “this sounds just like Paranoid Android!” and so forth. Since it wasn’t my job, I found it great fun.

Today is my mother’s fifth yahrzeit, the anniversary of her death, and as usual, I like to impart a lesson from her. My mother was something of a Led Zeppelin fan. These days, it isn’t unusual to say, “my mother is a Led Zeppelin fan” because mothers today had the chance of growing up in the late 60′s or in the 70′s or 80′s. My mother grew up in the 40′s and 50′s and liked classical music. And Led Zeppelin. She was proud of the fact that she liked something hip with the young people and once corrected a student who mixed up Jimmy Page and Robert Plant in a picture. She told that story all the time; she loved that she was able to do that.

But she wasn’t really a metal or hard rock fan. She liked the Middle Eastern melodies and she liked Robert Plant’s lyrics. In fact, she started to build a lesson plan around Stairway to Heaven but never finished it, which is too bad, because that would have been this post. But it’s OK because I still have a something to say about what she taught me and have it relate to Led Zeppelin. You may have heard (and if you know me, you definitely have heard) that Jimmy Page is finally being sued by Jake Holmes over the song Dazed and Confused. Now, I should first say that I have always loved Zeppelin and that Dazed and Confused has always been one of my favorites of their songs. I liked LZ so much that I went to see The Firm in concert in the mid-80′s just so I could say I had seen Jimmy Page on stage. Wow, was he…. in concert. So you can imagine my dismay when in the age of the Internet I found that LZ had “borrowed” many of their songs from others, including lots of poor Folk and Blues musicians.

Several of them have sued and won and now appear on the credits of LZ’s songs. But I simply can’t begin to describe the chutzpah of taking someone’s music or lyrics, basing your song on it, and then simply putting your own name as the sole credit. And I think the most egregious example of this is the Jake Holmes one. Jake Holmes was a folk singer in the 60′s (and later a jingle writer – he came up with the “I’m A Pepper” and “Be All You Can Be” commercials) and when you listen to his version of Dazed and Confused, which came out a few years earlier, it’s clear that the LZ version is simply a copy with new lyrics, a different arrangement, and some instrumental additions. Further, he was the opening act for Jimmy Page’s previous band, the Yardbirds, who proceeded to do a cover of Dazed and Confused live with Jake Holmes’ original lyrics. Awkward! I am not sure why it took Holmes so long to sue. He has expressed bitterness and dismay over the years in interviews and said he attempted to contact Page to no avail. I hope he comes forward and explains but in the meantime, I am cheering for him.

Many people say that this was something artists of the 60′s did all the time: reference roots music in their songs. “Variations on a theme,” if you will. Not to mention, as Kohelet says in Ecclesiastes, there’s nothing new under the sun. All songs kind of sound like some other song. But here’s the important part: since I knew Kohelet said that and I know where it comes from, I began my sentence with “as Kohelet says….” Luckily, I don’t owe Kohelet any royalties. But this is something my mother taught me and it comes from Pirkei Avot, or “Ethics of the Fathers” in the Mishnah. The maxim goes, “whoever says something in the name of the one who said it brings redemption to the world.” We learn this from the Megillah of Esther (you remember that one from Purim, I’m sure) where Queen Esther tells the King in the name of Mordechai, that traitors are plotting against him.

My mother never quoted anyone else without saying, “I have to say this b’shem omro [in the name of the one who said it].” It was hugely important to her that the original writer or speaker got credit. Writing papers every week as I do, I constantly have to be aware of this and I wish Led Zeppelin had been, too. Because it’s OK to base our work on that of others; that’s how our society has always functioned. You just have to say so and let the world know who said it first.

Hear Jake Holmes’ Dazed and Confused on YouTube.
Hear Led Zeppelin’s Dazed and Confused on YouTube.

Title adapted from the Led Zeppelin version.

בזכות מרים נחמה בת הרב יצחק
זכרונה לברכה

The set-up: while I was doing all that research on the two Talk Talk posts, I repeatedly came upon mentions of the No Doubt version of It’s My Life but I tried hard not to think about it or remember how it went because a. I dislike No Doubt b. I dislike remakes of songs that were already great and c. it was hard enough to erase it from my brain the first time around in 2003. So not only have I not heard it since then, I have been pretty good at forgetting it now.

Fast forward to tonight/this morning, when, as is my habit, I’m up during the wee hours and am hungry. So I started to make peanut-sesame noodles since I had all the ingredients… except I didn’t, which I discovered midway through and too far along to go back. So I ran out to the bodega on the corner in my skater shorts and Local H t-shirt, where, naturally, I was the only one there and thus had the full attention of the grocer. After about 30 seconds of scanning the racks, the song on the sound system ended, I heard a syncopated beat, and then – you know what comes next – Gwen Stefani started singing It’s My Life. I actually burst out laughing right in the middle of the store before remembering that the elderly Korean grocer was looking right at me. He was utterly expressionless and impassive. I guess this is far from the weirdest thing he sees at 3am.

In conclusion, I lead a dull life and you can’t escape No Doubt.

And no, there will not be a music link!

Hey, you know what’s better than one random post about Talk Talk? Two. Yes, we’re giving Talk Talk the Depeche Mode treatment this week here on JBall. But see, I wasn’t satisfied after the last post. I realized I know so little about a band I like very much. For starters, I don’t own any of their records and while I know now that their lead singer had the kavorka, I didn’t even know his name until I looked it up for that post. Why do I know so little about them and what should I know about them?

Let’s start with what I do know. I know that they have lots of songs I like but none of them sound the same. That’s pretty amazing, isn’t it? I mean, Talk Talk (the song) doesn’t sound like It’s My Life which doesn’t sound like Dum Dum Girl which doesn’t sound like Life’s What You Make It which doesn’t sound like…. wait, what came after that?

That’s the really important question with Talk Talk. If you’re a student of pop music (well, a pretend student), you can probably name ten or twenty bands that had big hits and then there was that one album that didn’t sell and maybe one more that sold even less and then they started fighting and then their label dropped them (or in reverse order) and they they broke up. But that’s not really what happened to Talk Talk. I mean, ostensibly it did, in a literal sense, but the story is more complicated than that. And after extensive research in the wee hours of the morning, I have the answers, as much as we know them, anyway.

So Mark Hollis turns out to be a pretty interesting guy. And the reason Talk Talk songs don’t sound the same from one album to the next is the same reason Radiohead songs don’t; because the writers want to try new things and they progress. And that’s not a coincidence because lots of people think Radiohead were influenced by Talk Talk. Now personally, I try not to take everything I read about labels vs. bands at face value because I’ve worked at labels and quite often, in fact most of the time, the goal of the bands and their labels is the same: to sell a lot of records. So when the label gets blamed, as they invariably do, I take that with a grain of salt. But this time, it seems like the band did get the short end of the stick.

Talk Talk had troubles with their label from the start. The label, EMI, who happened to be Duran Duran’s label too, thought they had another band in that vein and tried to fit Talk Talk into the same mold. They brought in Duran’s producer, sent them on tour with Duran, and molded their image into one they didn’t especially recognize. But after that early experience, each album Talk Talk made was a little more experimental and moved further away from the band EMI thought they were getting. They dropped the synthesizers in favor of organic instruments. They made their sound a little jazzier. Life’s What You Make It, my favorite song by them, if you recall, has no chorus and is actually just the same bassline repeated over and over. But it worked and was a hit so no one seemed to mind too much.

In fact, that album, The Colour of Spring, was such a big hit around the world that the label gave them a lot of money and all the freedom they wanted to create the next record. If you know the scene in 24 Hour Party People where the label has sent the Happy Mondays abroad to record their next hit album and after much time and expense they send back a cassette with a rambling, vocal-free tune and the label people go bonkers, well, I can only imagine what it was like for the staff at EMI. See, Talk Talk went away for fourteen months and recorded a haunting, glacially-paced, multi-instrumental, freeform, genre-busting, unclassifiable, single-free suite of six long tracks (imagine a Yes album, but even less commercial). I mean, have you heard It’s My Life? No Doubt covered it! I certainly couldn’t have seen this coming. And I can’t imagine any label in 2010 allowing an artist to have free reign in a studio for over a year on the company’s dime without any sort of feedback of what they were doing. Amazing.

Now if you’d asked me what happened to Talk Talk after the Colour of Spring last week, I think my answer would have been, “I believe they put out an album or two that were really bad and then they got dropped and now work at carwashes.” But in fact, they put out an album that’s considered a huge, genius masterpiece! If you look up reviews both formal and by regular joes, you get things like “a singular experience,” “one of the greatest albums of all time,” “sounds like no other record ever,” “the most remarkable piece of recorded music in my experience,” “the album I listened to while my child was being born,” “changed the way I listened to music forever,” and so forth. Pretty freaky, huh?

But you know, EMI weren’t all that entranced. And as a person who was part of the formula of marketing records (single to radio, video to MTV, etc.) I absolutely know why. I think I love this line from a review best, “it is the kind of record which encourages marketing men to commit suicide.” They say the A&R guy cried when he heard it, and not in that good way, more in that “I’m going to lose my job” way. And one of the things you count on is the band’s promotional efforts and this band didn’t want to promote it at all. I read lots of interviews with Mark Hollis from that release and mostly he answers with things that all mean, in effect, “the music speaks for itself and I have nothing to say.” And he didn’t want to have pictures taken or to do videos or tour either (Talk Talk never toured again after 1986).

This is all really staggering to me. The record didn’t stiff because it was bad, but because it was too good! It was gorgeous but simply unmarketable and maybe a little difficult for the casual listener. In fact, I’m listening to it right now for the third time in a row. It’s hard to describe and I am not a reviewer by nature. I point you instead to all the rapturous reviews on Amazon. One person even came back a year later to say he still listened to it every day.

Later, as you might have predicted, Mark Hollis and Talk Talk went through several lawsuits with EMI (including one suit by the label on the basis that the delivered album didn’t sound enough like Talk Talk) and eventually moved to another label. They then put out another, even less commercial record which some people say is better but others say is not quite as good. After that, they broke up. In 1998, Mark Hollis put out a solo album and then was never heard from again. Well, maybe not that dramatic but apparently, he no longer makes music, lives in obscurity with his family, and almost no current pictures of him exist.

What I think is amazing about Mark Hollis is that, more than Frank Sinatra or Sid Vicious, he did it his way. And when people asked him about his old music, he wasn’t ashamed of it, he just had moved on and had new things to say. And when he felt like making music, he made brilliant music, and when he didn’t, no commercial pressure has made him do it. When the label made him make a commercial video, he lip-synched ridiculously. When they put out greatest hits and rarities packages without his approval, he made the artwork a bird in a cage and a bird in a noose sitting on a golden egg.

Everywhere I looked for things about Talk Talk, places like Rolling Stone and Mojo and other critics would all say, “one of the most underrated bands ever” and “we pray they come out of retirement.” Lots of bands of that era are: the Pixies, Yaz, PiL, OMD, etc. But somehow, I don’t anticipate that Talk Talk will be hitting your local shed this year or next.

So what do I think of Spirit of Eden, the unmarketable Talk Talk masterpiece? On the third listen I will say that it’s not like anything I’ve ever heard and I certainly wouldn’t have dated it to 1988. It’s really, really beautiful…. we’ll see if it changes my life.

We all know the usual level of commentary on YouTube, but I swear to you, the comments on the below six tracks are different. And man, this post is a lot longer than it looked in my text editor. To explain this, I quote the following YouTube comment on the last track: “Anyone else think its funny that Talk Talk videos have an inordinately high concentration of posts that essentially make an attempt to provide some musical-historical analysis of Talk Talk’s growth as a band? Talk Talk really has scholars for fans.” I guess I throw my hat in that ring.

Stream Spirit of Eden on YouTube: 1. The Rainbow, 2. Eden, 3. Desire, 4. Inheritance, 5. I Believe In You, 6. Wealth

And now, a bleed from my other blog, the video one with all the 80′s songs. I barely remember this song from back in the day and I absolutely never saw the video because I’m fairly sure I’d remember it. But I heard it the other day on Radio Nigel and instantly realized I’d missed out, because it’s such a great track. Then I added the video and ladies and gents, I have to admit to you that I watch this video every day. Every day. I don’t know why I find it so riveting, and so I’m going to attempt to explain it to myself through blog.

My favorite song by Talk Talk is not the one everyone knows, It’s My Life, but actually, Life’s What You Make It, which is certainly one of the most played songs on my iPod. And I do know that video fairly well, I think because of all the bugs. It’s not even my favorite video with bugs in it, that would be Matthew Sweet’s Time Capsule. But I digress. Here’s a still from Life’s What You Make It:

Hope you weren’t eating lunch. Here’s another frame.

The first one’s a bit more memorable, no? Even if there weren’t lots of creepy-crawly insects to distract me, I don’t think I could pick the lead singer of Talk Talk, pictured above, out of a line-up. He’s not exactly in the limelight here, so to speak.

This other video actually came first but having seen Life’s What You Make It, as well as It’s My Life (that was the one with all the nature documentary footage) and Talk Talk (that’s actually one of the first videos I ever saw on MTV and is, I believe, next to “early 80′s video” in the dictionary), for years and years, I wasn’t really prepared for this one which consists mostly of Mark Hollis, the lead singer with the, er, hobbit-like appearance, having nearly the whole video focused on his face. And, not only is he unusual looking, but I think he gives the word expressive new meaning. I’ve read that he did this exaggerated version as a sort of protest against the record company’s demand for lip-synching but who knows.

And who cares, really, because either way, I am utterly fixated on this guy’s face as I watch this video, which is a feat in itself given my short attention span. Maybe it’s the intercutting of scarf Mark with open-collar Mark and various other Marks to form a sort of one-man play. Maybe it’s the impish look of mischief and humor. Maybe it’s because this is the way we all used to sing into our hairbrushes half-seriously, half-cracking up, as kids. I don’t know. I think he just has the kavorka, as they say on Seinfeld.

But so, without further ado, the video I view every day in utter fascination, Such A Shame. You get down with your bad self, Mark Hollis!

Title is the second line from Talk Talk – Such A Shame