In a trance, in a trance, I can dance this night away…
—Alarm!—
Oh, that’s right, I can’t dance.
Rats.
Still I’m sleepwalking my way through this haze.
—(unarmed)—
Haze is for horses,
Cats.
Listen for warped words in the real world.
Whistle in other worlds and make up a word for it —
Scat.
Hypnogogic hipster logic
Can be fun.
Don’t sleepwalk;
Run.
The song is supposedly about the intersection between the conscious and the subconscious, with the latter gaining a surprise advantage with a late surge. When it was written, Duran Duran had already achieved worldwide fame beyond any reasonable human necessity. I was late to the party (see last post), and it wasn’t until the band had plunged into an eddy of drugs and glamour that I caught on. I only heard what was played over the small town radio station on the school bus on the way to school. I had never seen the videos. I had never read the tabloids. It was only the music for me.
When “The Reflex” hit, it transformed my summer. When “The Wild Boys” hit, I made my way to the record store. It was my first ever purchase. I bought three cassettes: Rio, Arena, and Seven and the Ragged Tiger. Seven especially was what I was after. I experienced my first thrill of ownership, and the sanctity of the package. I caressed that cassette J-card and memorized its folds. I drank in the smell of the plastic and cherished the nuances of blank tape at the end of side two and the series of high-pitched tones announcing the Dolby XDR (Expanded Dynamic Range). It was the same thrill Morrissey must have had when he bought his first record (a Sandie Shaw 7″ perhaps?). But this was all my own.
I’m too embarrassed to center this post around those first few months, because I didn’t know what I was listening to, and my tastes were crude. I actually liked a lot of the live Arena versions of the songs better than the originals. My interest grew, and naturally I sought out others who shared the fever. I started hanging out with a few girls at my school, Betsy, Heidi and Robin, all of whom sported badges, t-shirts, and suitably dyed locks. They introduced me to teen mags, lyric books, rumour and gossip. I was giddy, yet at the same time I felt uneasy. This wasn’t the other world I had heard in the music. This was pedestrian.
My subconscious had been tapped into, and I was looking for a cryptic rendering of what that meant. What I got was stories of screaming girls, wrecked cars, and yacht races. Success fell upon the members of Duran Duran before they ever had a chance to grow up. Under the direction (in my opinion) of the goal-oriented Nick Rhodes, the group dedicated itself to excellence in both musicianship and fashion. The fashion part has stumped many in the audience. Hordes of zombies took to it like moths to a flame, while anyone fancying themselves a “thinker” (members of the critical establishment especially) was self-righteous in indignation. What both groups missed was the music.
The music is textured, colorful and evocative. Evocative of lens flare, dark chambers, strobe-lit back rooms in the mind. Ennui 1980s style. I didn’t like to acknowledge it at the time, but the truth was the lads were flush with success, unprepared, cramming in as many shags and lines of coke as they could fit in a single sitting. I think they knew fame was fleeting. I think they lived in denial. I think they forged ahead, and I think they tried to find that one single moment when the belief that it wouldn’t end overshadowed the essential human dilemma of mortality.
Duran Duran recorded the demo for “Union of the Snake” in the south of France, where they rented a hideously huge mansion and partied nightly in their efforts to follow up their last album (still regarded as their best), Rio. At this point they were preposterous individuals. At least Rick Wakeman’s visions of world tours on ice were routed in noble intentions of serious achievement; Duran Duran on the other hand wanted spectacle for the sheer sake of having said they could. They flew in a real tiger for the album’s photo sessions, but the smoke bombs spooked it too much and it wouldn’t pose properly.
All the same, they were human beings, fallible and gauche. A sense of hysteria was setting in, as the human beings realized they couldn’t live as gods forever. Seven and the Ragged Tiger is an insane album, full of torrid dreams and mad screams. “There’s a fine line drawing my senses together and I think it’s about to break.” Or from another song: “Shackled and raised for a shining crowd / They want you to speak but the music is louder than all of their roar / And the heat of the planet’s core.” Yegads, why bring the flippin’ planet into it? Also from the same song (“Shadows On Your Side”): “Scandal in white on a tangled vine / With everybody to say that you’re having the time of your life / When your life is on the slide.”
Having experienced only the ascent, Simon Le Bon knew instinctively that privately, a “slide” is inevitable. The “union of the snake” was a creepy crawly portending slide that threatened to bring the whole party crashing down. The snake lived in the back corners of the mind, where Simon and the lads had tucked away that knowledge of mortality. “Give me strength, at least give me a light / Give me anything, even sympathy,” Simon’s subconscious mind pleaded.
I was young, too, when I first heard these songs. I didn’t understand the knowledge of death then and I understand it only slightly better now. But Duran Duran’s music, in spite of the humans behind it, served for me as a channel to the unknowable networks of the subconscious and the fine line that hovers over us all.
Duran Duran: Union Of The Snake
Duran Duran: Secret Oktober (Original B-side)
Duran Duran: Union Of The Snake (The Monkey Mix)
Those of you who know me knew this was coming eventually. Hopefully you’ve prepared yourselves for it. I don’t jump into this sort of thing halfway, either. This is a full blown tribute to my first, and most enduring, favorite band: Duran Duran.
They’re supposed to be a “guilty pleasure” or whatever, but they’re the reason I’m writing about music today.
As a kid, I was always running around the playground, breaking my glasses and losing my gloves; I wasn’t the usual “sit still and ponder” type of individual that I am today. But I had caught the wave of the power of music before this, in glimpses. I’ll lay my low cards on the table here: I remember feeling a pang when the airwaves announced we were “reunited and it feels so good.” Another pang with the declaration: “Hector believe we are magic” (a misheard lyric from Olivia Newton-John). And I was knocked out by that bright, funhouse organ in “Funky Town;” Yes! please take me there! My ears were unsophisticated, but each new sound created a parallel world that I knew I would one day explore.
Fast-forward to 1983, at Magic River Skateland, and the large video screen. I had ogled Sheena Easton (where can I board this “morning train?”) and softened half-heartedly to Boy George, but nothing prepared me for Simon LeBon’s wail in “New Moon On Monday.” So much about it drew me through a wormhole, far from the small town I lived in. All I remember are shadowy scenes and lots of torches waving, but the visual was never the point for me. It was the unseen visual that came through the music. This wasn’t the usual romp through fast times America, burgers and fries. This was something other. It felt vaguely evil to me, like the Occult, and it didn’t happen on the literal plane. On another channel was Billy Joel, working at some freaking car wash or other, taking the baton from the prosaic brightness of “Crocodile Rock,” chasing after an uptown girl. On my channel was something I had never seen before.
Looking back, I can’t quite pin down the reason why this particular tune did it for me, as there were plenty of New Wave oddities and faux-Gothic bug-eyed absurdities to choose from during the time. But here is where it sunk in, and perhaps the irresistible melody placed on top of the bizarre scene was what pulled me in. Duran Duran knew how to write a chorus. Their verses (and this song is a perfect example) often ramble, keeping you in a mood, slightly off balance, setting up the chorus. Then it’s Simon at the top of his range, whining and chirping about satellites and lizards and stuff that has absolutely no earthly reference point. The lyrics are naff, but to a young, surprised mind, they served their purpose.
I was taken in by that melody and the sound of that whine. I was taken in by the guitar (or is it a keyboard, I never can tell during the 80s…) arpeggio during that chorus, and the elevation of the suspended fourth made me soar, long before I knew the term. And the lads, for all their insistence on surface matters, could approach their music with depth and even subtlety. During the instrumental bridge (featuring “thunder” sounds courtesy of Nick Rhodes crumpling newspaper) and in the final chorus fade, Roger Taylor hits his snare just a sixteenth note earlier than the usual downbeat. It took me years to actually hear that was what was happening. It makes you lurch slightly, disorienting the ear.
“New Moon On Monday” was then, and is now, considered one of the group’s minor singles, and there are much better examples to illustrate why Duran Duran are an underappreciated talent (don’t worry, I’ll get to those later). But it came to me at the right time in my life, caught my ear, and a few months later led me to purchase my first album and started me on a path that eventually led here to Subanimal Sounds…
Duran Duran: New Moon On Monday
Duran Duran: Tiger Tiger (Original B-side)
Duran Duran: New Moon On Monday (Catbirdman Remix)
A year ago yesterday a senseless tragedy occurred, when a man who lived for rock and roll died the same way. Christopher Tucker was only 37 when it happened. I don’t feel right in disclosing the details, but let’s just say the police were involved. Christopher was always trying to live larger than his immediate confines, and he always imagined himself into a higher state of being. Drugs would assist his efforts, but he didn’t really need them. He had a natural swagger, an edgy hint of melancholy, and a devotion to coolness like no one since Ian McCulloch.
I worked with Chris on and off (he kept quitting to dive headlong into music, then he would come back to pay a few bills), in the early ‘Aughts. I was drawn to him right away. Here was a man who brought a sheen of grandness to everything he did. Even mundane office tasks were mythologized the way he carried them. It was as though every meaningless moment became transformed into yet another moment in the glorious biography of Christopher Tucker, rock star.
I don’t mean this to sound snooty; I am being sincere. He just carried things that way. He was a thinking man, a sensitive man even, and as such he could view himself objectively. But his never-ending belief in his music fueled him always.
I always believed in him. Our co-workers thought of him as just another office tech, slapping together direct mail for a reasonable wage. But I was inspired by him and his pursuit of cool, and even before hearing his music, I rooted for his success. I’m not usually one to get caught up in “being cool,” knowing that as many people as you can squeeze in a barroom, that’s the same number of definitions of the term you could find. But coolness to Chris was a must; it meant you were stepping up your game, living each day like it was the last, or some other bunk you might see on a motivational poster. That kind of sloganistic nonsense was coopted by Chris and done real. It meant breathing deeply, inhaling the world, and then exhaling in a measured sneer, with a few well-chosen rhyming words.
I used to go out on the town in Wilmington with Chris from time to time. I remember driving down to the swollen banks of the Brandywine Creek on a day we all had off work due to flooding. Chris just wanted to get as close to possible to the breaking point. He would always call you on it if you were being a dork. He took it as a personal affront, actually. I remember once he confided to me about a guy who had started hanging around him and how he started “acting uncool.” He actually wanted my advice, how to handle it. The guy was just being stupid and wankerly I guess. This bothered Chris. It was like this time when I played poker with him (I used to go over every Friday night for a while), and I had too much to drink, and I started playing sloppy and dancing like a maniac. That to Chris was insulting. Be cool, man. Looking back, I see he was just trying to save me from myself, trying to encourage me to embrace my own dignity which he knew I had. He was right.
The first time I went out with him, he inspired me to bring my A-game to the situation, and amazingly, I carried myself like a hipster par nonchalance. To this day I don’t know how I did it (I usually am far from hip), but every word out of my mouth was dripping with sardonic absurdity and class. I ordered the right drinks. I laughed at the right times, and never too vigorously. I referred to the right music. I dusted everyone in darts. Christopher’s roommate, Jonathan, was an ex-Liverpudlian, and we talked Bunnymen and La’s. That’s when I learned that Chris’s favorite group was the La’s.
It was Chris that made me actually get Lee Mavers. Before meeting him, I thought of Mavers as just a marginal guy who led a fleeting group that wrote some catchy tunes. But Chris spoke of him in hushed tones, claiming he was the greatest genius Liverpool ever produced, and that the whole history of the world was in that one La’s album. I made a few protests about the lyrics, saying they weren’t quite up to that level of greatness, and claimed that a few of the tracks were “iffy.” “You’re crazy,” was all he would say. He was right. Every track the La’s produced sounds like it comes from another world, and the transcendental fight for awakeness and with-it-ness that Chris embodied came straight from Mavers’ mouth. I have since become a sycophantic disciple, and every time I get slain by the La’s I think of Chris. Every time. I miss him and wish he were around to hear some of the previously-unheard BBC sessions and studio tracks that have surfaced since his death.
When I got the email about a year ago today saying Chris had died, it really hit me. I hadn’t seen him for about four or five years, and had lost track of his career, but I felt a real loss. I felt like some of my own better instincts, my own coolness, was mourning his death.
My half-remembered rememberings barely scratch at the surface of who Christopher Tucker was. For a more proper biography, please check out this tribute on the Girl About Town blog.
Here are some bitchin’ tracks. The 2002 Reece Nasty EP is my favorite, with these three tracks standing proudly (in my mind) alongside what I’ve heard from Oasis (another group that inspired Chris in music and life). Listening to them now brings too much emotion to contain. When I told him that “Why I Can’t Relate” reminded me of the La’s, he nearly hugged me. He said that’s exactly where that song came from, and I was the only one to recognize that. (I felt proud.)
The Situation: Don’t Wait For Me
The Situation: The Best Prescription Pill Available
The Situation: Why I Can’t Relate
And here’s a few from the self-titled full-length album. You can hear the growth in the lyrics, as Chris fuses a Dylanistic surrealism and a parade of characters and spinning scenes with a hard-footed Britpop football anthem mentality. I wish I had more room to go into these, maybe some other time…
The Situation: Amoralia
The Situation: Modern Dances
The Situation: Cherry
The Situation: Let It Go
Rest in peace, la.
And with “Old Hairy Eyebrows,” we’ve saved the best for last. Here’s a queasy sea shanty tale about a man lost at sea. It begins with a slow motion image of an Egyptian boy laughing amidst the waves. Let go the aft. After this talispin, we visit the hard-snorting crew, keeping us afloat. And then the heart-breaking bridge, which is worth quoting at length:
If you bob among the waves, the bonny bonny waves
And if you’re last among the lost you’ll be lost the same.
If you bob among the waves, the bonny bonny waves
And if you’re lost among the lost it ain’t the same as being saved.
As our singer leans left, weaves right, and searches the horizon, we wade along, beautiful losers all.
Last Thursday was filled with events and nuanced moments. Looking back, I see it as a dot-to-dot. First dot: people lost their jobs. Next dot: working until 10:00 PM. Next dot: the need for release, and the chance meeting with a few tiers of bosses, all with beers in hand. The rest of the dots came too quickly to connect.
There is no sense behind this post. I’m only six or sixty dots in, and the image to be revealed is a changed world. I just don’t know what that’s going to look like. There’s a restaurant two blocks from my house, and I’m there often, just staring down at the copper piping underneath the glass of the bar surface (pictured above). I fight insomnia at night and exhaustion in the morning. I still have a job.
Back to Thursday night. Like a series of nonsensical dreams, I popped in and out of numerous amalgamations of scenes: I ran into another ex-coworker who was laid off months before, just walking down the street. I made it into a cab twice. Then I was at Butts and Betty’s. I was the listening ear for a man coping with a loss. A man named Paul introduced himself and told me his whole life story on the spot. Then someone was asking for money. Then I was solving the Rubik’s cube in my neighbor’s living room, pontificating about the changing world we live in. I was fading in and out. I was hypnogogic. I was Mr. Sleepyhead.
Passion Pit: Sleepyhead
Passion Pit: Sleepyhead (Landau Wake Up Remix)
Catbirdman with a Vivian Girl
The Vivian Girls make an awful racket, and they’re not stopping anytime soon. Check out this taster from their upcoming album Everything Goes Wrong, due out September 8.
This fantastic shot of a desolate Baltimore city street was taken by Patrick Joust, and is used with his permission and patience. Thanks to him; please see more of work, starting here.
The first five years of our lives define our path, irretrievably some say. I work with young adults that have been pretty well screwed in the nature and nurture department. You’d be surprised how everything from the presence of a father to the presence of lead paint can affect a child’s development. Studies show that crime spreads with the migration of criminals. Studies show that America is a dangerous country to live in. Studies show that the human brain is an organ. Studies show nothing of morals.
These days, I’d trade my skin for a clean escape. Dan Philips is a man who once wrote a song called “Dreams of Vagrancy;” perhaps he felt the tenuous nature of a priveleged white upper-class existence. Perhaps he felt the ghastly lure of addiction round the unseen corner. Perhaps he felt his blood beat boldly in his veins. Dan Philips is a man of the blood.
Without wanting to reveal all his cards to the prying public, I will volunteer this information: Dan Philips was nurtured by caring, educated stock. He was encouraged to become whole, and he was swamped in ol’ time religion (as was I). Maybe that revival tent seemed dangerous. Maybe the long stare of the evangelist cast the same spell of the cold precision of the mobster. In “Grunts N Groans,” Dan lays out the human animal in its barest form, and connects the dope fiend to the slain believer. He pulls no punches when it comes to human motivation, and our reptilian brians fight or flee when faced with hunger and entrapment. Dan’s music pits the human animal against the elements, and divine grace is legendary and fleeting at best. The best we can hope for in Dan’s grim world – the fragile we, with outstretched arms – are cagey parental expressions of love in the form of long stares and coded silences.
“Dan’s grim world:” that sounds patronizing and cheap. This is a rich and traveled man. He and his old hairy eyebrows (see tomorrow’s post for more on that) have poured more love and grace into the grim world than almost any other saint I know. He is both welcoming and private, and I fear I am intruding with my words. I hope to go on more in this direction tomorrow, but for now let’s stick with the music. Have a listen for yourself, absorb the country piano and the backwoods drawl, and contemplate your own private life of crime and your own brushes with calamity.
John Martin: "Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah" (1852)
Dan Philips writes about “Calamity,” but it strikes me that the disasters alluded to are either feared, half-remembered or illusory. He paints a barren scene of Old Testament wandering and scorched earth, and you can almost taste the dust in your teeth, and you can almost feel the textured canvas and the oils. It feels like oral tradition handed down beyond memory, but told by a new prophet. Like Josiah breathing life into the recovered scrolls of Deuteronomy, but without the forced public acceptance, and without any received application or interpretation. Dan Philips is the voice of hunger, and his words are half-starved. “Here’s having hunger that scorns food.”
As long as I’ve known him, Dan has had the ability to stare down the most harrowing corners of existence more than any songwriter I’ve known. He continues to inspire and stupefy me.
I can’t quite qualify exactly what Dan’s relationship with calamity is. All these allusions to Biblical losses: is he counting them as loss? Is the Gomorrah within depraved or noble? Did Esau actually get a good deal? I wonder if Dan’s internalizing all of history, from the tales of Genesis (“Here’s to your birthright for beans”), to the conquests of Alexander the Great (“Here’s to the phalanges march”); he claims all these as the “wasteland within,” and he ends up with “a hambone I longingly clutch” and a longing to have “something you’re born to.” In just three verses, he brilliantly roams amongst multi-layered and multi-sourced oral and written legend, and ultimately brings it back to a solitary picture of a man in the desert.
In the morning I listen to the Ed Norris Show, but in the evening it’s usually tunes to carry me home. Here then are three songs that have emerged as favorites during my evening commute this week. All have gotten the repeat treatment, and all have taken the edge off of the congestion. All are from relatively high-profile 2009 indie rock releases, hyped on many blogs for months before I ever got around to them. Subanimal Sounds makes no claim of being on the cutting edge of obscure. My hope is that I have some readers who are likewise on the fringe and can benefit from these recommendations:
Phoenix: Fences
Grizzly Bear: Two Weeks
Dirty Projectors: The Bride
I am asking for readers to comment and list three recent commute favorites of their own, and I might even listen and follow up in a “From A Friend” post.