Fresh-frozen Friday Random Ten


 


1. Moby & Heather Nova - Straight To Hell
2. Butthole Surfers - Cough Syrup
3. Steve Coleman And Five Elements - metaphysical phunktion
4. Jimmy Webb - I Will Arise
5. Infinite Mass - Area turns Red
6. Jeff Beck - Angel (Footsteps)
7. Cowboy Junkies - First Recollection
8. Junkie XL/Don Davis - Red Pill, Blue Pill [Animatrix Soundtrack]
9. Al Rose - All Make Out
10. Sheryl Crow - Anything But Down

And number 11: Yes - Clap.
Gosh it's cold.
Oh, and I know Al Rose, like, personally: he writes songs like nobody else . Not Ironic, not degenerate, not trippy--just off base and stretching for third.

And Jimmy Webb writes them right up the middle, again like nobody else. Pure romanticism, coupled with utter mastery of his craft, both words and music. And along that fine wire he can thread just about anything: he can meke a transcendent song out of a Heinlein title (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress), can write the best country and western song ever written about reincarnation (The Highwayman), wrote the best solo piano song about interstellar travel (if ships were made to sail) Play three different pop songs on top of each other and turn them into one whole new thing (Let It Be Me / Never My Love / I Wanna Be Free) and make the 150th Psalm into a catchy tune.
If i emphasizee his sparks of bravura, it's because it they can get lost in the melodic bliss and unrepentant beauty of his work. It's one thing to write love songs: it's another to be able to turn anything into a love song. And Jimmy Webb can.
And I even come down in favor of cakes left out in the rain.

And Webb;s Tunesmith is an incredible book--the sort of book Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth Catalog was devoted to: a complete, ni-vapors, no-foolin' tool for songwriting--fleshed out with his own life. Rather than wrap himself in mystery and talk about inspiration, he talks about the craft in systematic detail. I would have picked up a Jimmy Webb memoir anyway: I was astonished by what the book actually was.
(If this book had been out in the Seventies, the two musicals I wrote would probably not have sucked as badly as they did.)

Posted: Friday - February 16, 2007 at 12:15 PM        

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