I Hear The Sound Of The Whitecaps

The Platform On The Ocean-Arthur Russell

It was not easy to pick exactly which Arthur Russell song to write about (I was torn between "A Little Lost" and his song "Go Bang" under his Dinosaur L. moniker). So I went with my favorite and the one that best illustrates all his talents.

Arthur Russell was an avantgarde cellist and musician who found most of his success as a dance artist. I think know he would get labelled an electronic artist...in a more general sense. Although some of his tracks are danceable, many are not. He released entire albums that didn't contain a dance song.

I think the qualities that all his productions share are that they are incredibly introspective and contemplative in nature. To me, almost all of his productions are embued with a sense of melancholy. (I could be projecting I suppose) I find them all very insular. Arthur was painfully shy and had a hard time venturing out into the nightlife that his tunes soundtracked. He apparently was very self conscious about his looks...he had facial scarring from really bad acne. The fact that one's physical appearance means so much in a bar setting, let alone a gay bar setting, probably didn't help.

This 8 minute song is absolutely beautiful. Everytime I listen to it, I hear something else going on. Its almost classical in nature the way it is layered, although I suppose you could play it in a club (maybe as an end-of-the-night song). Its very dubby and filled with echo and fragile and melancholy. It an a career of many massive highpoints (all mostly appreciated after he died of AIDS in 1992), this is a zenith. Makes you wonder what he would have produced had he not died so young.

Being Boring-Pet Shop Boys

This is the first Pet Shop Boys song I've written about. It won't be the last. Not only do I think they are one of the most underrated bands of all-time, brilliant lyricists as well as an English treasure, they are one of my favorite bands of all-time.

I picked this song in a sort of a tribute to Arthur Russell. This is by no means the most famous Pet Shop Boys song, nor their biggest hit. Its simply one of their most devastating. In it, the narrator talks about living through different decades, the 60's, the 70's and how "we were never being boring, we had too much time to find for ourselves."

Its when he reaches the 80's that it becomes very clear what he is talking about: survival.

Now I sit with different faces
In rented rooms, in far off places
All the people I was kissing
Some are here
But some are missing
In the 1990's
I never dreamt
that i would get to be
the creature that
i always meant to be
but i thought
in spite of dreams
you'd be sitting somewhere here with me

Its a beautiful elegaic song and one of the first times that the Pet Shop Boys wrote openly about AIDS (notice the decade they skip). It's a tribute to all the people who didn't make it through, "who were never being boring, we were never being bored." Simply stunning. So I picked this for Arthur Russell.

Crimson And Clover-Joan Jett

I know its not her most famous song. Nor her biggest hit. And yeah, it's a remake. I don't know if its even my favorite. But I listened to it today and there are a couple of parts that I find simply amazing. I'm a big fan of the ending, where she sings the refrain over and over. But frankly, the song's best moments (or seconds) are in the first few....Joan sings "Ahhh" then the guitars "but I don't hardly know her"...then the guitars "but I think I could love her" more guitars "crimson and clover" and then the drums kick in and the song rocks but never betters its opening moments. The opening moments are all fuzzy badass sexiness. Its like Stephen Merritt wrote "heaven in a black leather jacket, hit me like a hurricance, heaven in a black leather jacket, I don't even know your name." Exactly.