Loud Family - Music: What Happened?

1989
by Scott Miller

"I Want To Be Adored" - The Stone Roses
I couldn't not include a Stone Roses song in 1989, just because English people love them so much. Between you and me, I don't quite, totally, 100%, get it; but, you know, I love the English. I think musically we somehow owe them one. This is very decent ("She Bangs the Drums" is also very decent). "I don't need to sell my soul/He's already in me" is most of the way to being a very clever line. Did I really carry out due diligence to see if there was another more deserving song for this slot? I don't believe I recall.

"Good Thing" - Fine Young Cannibals
In a way, this is the perfection of what Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" was trying for. It's a more right-on Motown pastiche, and just a tighter, higher-energy dance groove all around. The clean guitar in verse two is playing some truly crazy, unwise stuff; I like it.

"Pastoral" - The Jesus Lizard
The lyrics are mumbly, but I once formed the impression this is an ode to a dead animal in a field; if so, with the harmonically sophisticated arpeggios here, it's, uh, up there with the best of those ever. One of the more disturbing phenomena in rock journalism is the way the Jesus Lizard are recommended in terms of some act of violence or needling offense carried out by David Yow. I can believe from some pieces—like this—that they were exceptionally good, and maybe that combined with a repeatable stage behavior story added up to magic, but maybe insiders should be informed that to as much of an outsider as myself it usually comes off sounding a little cold blooded.

"Disappointed" (edit) - Public Image Ltd.
I'm positive that in 1977 I'd have bet that in twelve years' time it would be Peter Gabriel sounding punk and not Lydon sounding like "Solisbury Hill"—and for a couple of years I would have looked savvy—but look how wrong I was. Yet, the more-eighties-than-the-eighties world beat disco that is late P.I.L. is also what I'd rather listen to. Lydon is like Dylan in that he projects unmusical priorities, yet he has undeniably compelling musical instincts and skills. Consider the fancy run at "Disappointed a few people," resolving in the simple, emphatic "Well, isn't that what friends are for?"

"Wicked Game" - Chris Isaak
He got songs in both David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick movies, so I feel far too much jealousy toward him to expend effort here formulating nice things to say.

"Waiting For Mary" - Pere Ubu
After projects like New Picnic Time and The Art of Walking—which I also liked—it was an ear-opening and welcome surprise to hear Pere Ubu return to pop styles hinted at in "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" or "Street Waves." Only David Thomas can do the Goofy voice on the chorus or the arty yelping in the bridge and pull it together with the "What are we doing here?" hook as a coherent commercial venture; I hope Cloudland actually sold some; it surely deserved to.

"Knock Me Down" - Red Hot Chili Peppers
My band got a little indie-music award in 1984 (at an event held at Studio 54!), and the presenters were the Peppers, who did their famous thing of walking out naked except for redeployed socks. I tell the story every couple of years, and each time it's a little more prestigious to have been thus honored in full dress uniform. This is my favorite Peppers cut, nailing 1974 funk with a little hint of Steely Dan thrown in.

"The Devil's Coachman" - Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians
If you want to play a friend some Robyn Hitchcock and you don't want to run interference for content that is too graphically horror-film or too ponderously meditative, you just want to get across what an entertainer he can be, this is the one. "Yesterday I saw the devil in the nude/It was embarrassing"; "I remember everything as if it happened years ago." Andy Metcalfe's fretless bass work is a big part of the show, too.

"This Woman's Work" - Kate Bush
My wife Kristine played this for me. Without question it's an intensely emotional piece. I listened to it for some time thinking it was about the death of a husband, remembering a note on James Joyce's Ulysses that somehow glossed "woman's work" as dressing a corpse, or vice versa. Then I learned it was for the film She's Having a Baby, and there's the line "Now starts the craft of the father," so that seems to settle in favor of new parenthood, right? Then I don't ultimately know what to make of "I know you've got a little life in you yet/I know you've got a lot of strength left" and "All the things we should have done that we never did." It doesn't really diminish the sheer grand-piano-in-a-spotlight power this song wields, though.

"Last Of the Famous International Playboys" - Morrissey
The song itself is fantastic enough to shine through any performance shortcomings, which here are legion: the tempo seems to drag, the synthesizers doing the glissando octaves are artless, and there are some not quite ignorable tuning problems, just to get started. I wouldn't have paid attention to it at all if it weren't for the blazing cover of it I saw John Easdale play live. This is in fact one of those few songs—and two of them came out in 1989—where if you cover it live, everyone in the room will love it, whether they've heard it or not. In the lyric, an apprentice serial killer seems to be attempting a postal rapport with an incarcerated serial killer, as if they shared a sense of accomplishment and carefree attitude fading in these times. "I am not naturally evil/These things I do/Just to make myself more attractive to you/Have I failed?": to be that good as both social criticism and character development is unimaginable at my level of craft.

"Veronica" - Elvis Costello
The results of the Costello/McCartney collaboration were pretty eagerly anticipated, and perhaps somewhat surprisingly, they included this excellent song that was also a hit. It's sing-songy and story-telly, and has a little "Penny Lane" trumpet part—honorary Beatlehood. At the end of the eighties, record producers didn't want big snare and lots of reverb anymore, but in a sense everyone was left wondering what to do with their hands; T-Bone Burnett comes up with a too cracky snare drum sound that in hindsight is amusing, although I remastered a little to take the edge off.

"Twenty-Five Forty-One" - Grant Hart
Besides "Playboys," the other 1989 song you can play for any room full of people and they'll love it is Grant Hart's "Twenty-Five Forty-One." Marshall Crenshaw did a bold and successful cover that actually changed the chorus melody and chord feel to something different but equally satisfying. The song really captures that feeling of getting your own place, recalled from the later perspective of giving it up due to some social rupture among the coinhabitants. "2541/Big windows to let in the sun" is a great chorus. Intolerance, at least for the first five songs or so, is a remarkable and somewhat underappreciated record.

"Rockin' In the Free World" - Neil Young
This is well-known enough that I don't feel the need to go into detail. The part about the abandoned kid who will "Never get to fall in love/Never get to be cool" slays me every time. It's funny, though; I listen to the political commentary here and do a double-take kind of like: "uh, we had problems in 1989?"

"Waiting Room" - Fugazi
There is a winning tension between precision and chaos in this field holler-style post-punk anthem. Did I just say "post-punk anthem"? Wow, becoming a bad rock critic just happens to you and you don't even notice. I'd call attention to this as a precursor to "Cannonball" by the Breeders.

"Roam" - The B-52's
Unarguably pretty, "Roam" seems to also have some undefinable weight of feeling beneath the surface. I want to imagine it's infused with perspective brought about by the death of Ricky Wilson, but I have nothing rational to base that on whatsoever; there's just some extra edge of emotion and longing in the vocals and in the way the harmonies soar and reach.

"The Mayor of Simpleton" - XTC
"Dear God" was a cute song, but in a world where that becomes a fairly huge hit and "The Mayor of Simpleton" does nothing, I just shouldn't be talking to people with any air of authority about musical value. The way "I may be the mayor" moves to "of simple-ton," modulating the last note in the pattern up, then going to "but I know one" with the glorious high seventh on "one" (it feels like a seventh—don't make me check) is what music is all about.

"Leah Hirsig" - The Ophelias
Top-secret market research indicates that among material with whom this blogoid project brings first-time infatuation, the Ophelias will be putting up big numbers. Front person Leslie Medford was a multi-instrumentalist eccentric who had a wild singing style; Michael Quercio and I idolized him. An indie band on Rough Trade, the Ophs had as much pro impact as any late eighties SF band, and their recordings have the most modern punch of any I can think of in retrospect. One secret weapon was David Immergluck, a true ace guitarist who eventually wound up in the Counting Crows—the wrong place to figure out how great he is. This is the right place; the solo here is just on the verge of being wanky, but reins it into the realm of charged-up personal expression. The lyrics channel the occultist moonings of Aleister Crowley for a muse of his, events I know about only because of the song. "Night after night/Sweet mother of the living light" is a devastating payoff chorus, and the verses showcase Leslie at his off-the-leash best.

"Debaser" - Pixies
The Pixies caught fire the hottest with the Gil Norton produced Doolittle. My nineties band was in a pattern of doing one cover per tour of some song that was not quite old enough to have revered classic status, and this was the one we did on the 1996 tour (it's on our only live CD); thanks Mr. Francis and company for helping us strike gold with that decision. There's something pretty insightful about the mania of a would-be artist screaming "I am oon chien andalusia"—mangling details of the phrase perfectly—and wanting to grow up to be a debaser. The past century's artists know nothing so surely as that they want to break rules, and strip polite society of its fragile gentility. They want to grow up to be debasers. Ho ho ho ho.

"Free World" - Kirsty MacColl
Listening to Live 105 in SF in 1989, the earth quaking and the Berlin Wall coming down, this song stood out like a Rembrandt among velvet matador paintaings. The cascading images and pronouncements are a beautiful kiss-off to unredeemable social irresponsibility—"And I will see you baby when the clans rise again, women and men united in a struggle"—catching a glimpse of how one day this all will break down (and we're now seeing worse symptoms)—"It's cold, and it's going to get colder... Going down with a pocket full of plastic." Jonhnny Marr dips into U2's Edge's style just a bit for a chiming, screaming, percussive rhythm/lead, and Steve Lillywhite's production funnels often static eighties elements into the very essence of momentum. One of the hundred best songs of the rock era.