Spins 2024, vol 1
Bygones, Interstate Daydreams, and Canyon Songs
I returned from my latest extended trip to Florida about 3 weeks ago. With no turntable down there, my record collection, 1200 miles north, is one of the few things I always miss about my Brooklyn life. And by few things, I mean often one of the only things. I mean, the difference between FL and NY in the view out my front door is pretty stark:
vs.
Ok, not fair, I know. Egrets are smart enough not to try to cross Brooklyn streets. Because yes, in the Brooklyn pic, those are cars using the sidewalk as a traffic lane to go around a USPS truck, idling in the middle of the street as it awaits a loading bay in a post office to the left of its cab. And yes, there was an elementary school letting out about 200 yards down at the end of the block. And yes, the furthest car to the right on the sidewalk is a USPS supervisor’s parked car (as she does every day). And, yes, the delivery e-cyclist on the right was on the sidewalk, until he had to move into the street to avoid the cars on the sidewalk. Lol, NYC, amirite?
In any event, when I spend long enough time away from my stuff, I will forget a lot of what I own. It’s bliss. After all, in the end, very few possessions have any utility. Whenever I come home and am reminded of this, I enjoy the healthy revelation that, as a rule of thumb, set forth by futurist and science fiction author Bruce Sterling, at any given point, probably 80% of everything around you is worthless to you, and okay to junk.
A lot of my possessions have stories, of course. I imbue meaning into a lot of objects around me. Many were gifts that embody relationships with their respective givers. Many were actively collected and/or saved. But even with that, I must accept that almost nothing I own is central to my truth. My story doesn’t depend on the objects I keep, and on only a few of those that I create.
Because, really, what is art worth, except doing?
“You can’t take it with you,” is a trope of the highest repetitive order, but the underlying concept in that wry observation goes beyond material possessions.
How do you pack up a memory?
You can’t put it in a sack.
> Nick Lowe / Bygones (Won’t Go) / 2001
To think your memories and love won’t follow you to the great beyond, any more than your record collection, can turn you into a nihilist pretty quick. At the same time, though, the trope is not about death, or the things you that won’t come with you when you’re done-zo.
“You can’t take it with you” is about the now, not the future. And it’s a reflection on time, not space. And an affirmation of life. “It” is this moment, and it won’t be with you an hour from now, when (most likely) you’ll still be here.
In any event, upon returning from long sojourns, I always see home with fresh eyes. “Do I really need that?” I can ask myself with relative ease, looking at just about anything in my apartment. Except Luna. :^D
It’s always a kick to track what I throw on the record platter on returning home from trips of any length. With, well, the internet all around me, of course, I can listen to (almost) any album I own while I’m away. But there’s something about the flow and process of listening to vinyl that centers me. Upstream, spinning vinyl arrives you to a heightened consciousness of your choices. You can’t mindlessly play a record, no matter if you have 30 or 30,000 albums (fwiw, I own around 800).
In a vinyl listening session, you can’t skip randomly album-to-album without picking yourself up off a couch (or off the floor, or up from whatever you’re buried in), and walking across a room to replace what’s playing. Once spinning, a record cannot be skipped through or played in random order without, again, traveling to the turntable to pick up a needle and jump it across the record’s surface. Good luck dropping the needle perfect into the dead space, too (unless you’re Paul Oakenfold, or Jam Master Jay, or LP Giobbi…).
Vinyl is an adventure in listening to inanimate objects made active. They don’t become conscious, of course. Your records don't know you. But it’s not a totally one-way relationship. Records are the stuff of utility. They are sonic tools as much as they are audible art. So, yeah, I miss my records dearly when they’re not around. Whether they miss me is a whole other mushroom.
Peace,
Westy
08 Feb 2024
Nick Lowe — The Convincer (2001)
I came way late in musical discovery to the Nick Lowe party, which is weird because his songwriting is impeccable and his deftness with cover songs is basically unparalleled. So, my loss for not orbiting his world in my formative writing years.
His cover of Johnny Rivers’ Poor Side of Town on 2001’s The Convincer is beyond sublime. He smooths out the track by abandoning Rivers’ oh-so-1960s post-chorus guitar fills in favor of sweeter soul riffs and double-stops, and reaches his hand out in the outro so as to tell us we’re all going to make it out. Absolute genius.
The whole record is a master class in eloquence, wit, and melody, and also contains Bygones (Won’t Go), a Lowe original that first hit me at a moment I needed it, and now pierces my heart anytime I hear it.
Maybe you need to be a bit seasoned to appreciate Lowe’s songwriting arc, but he embodies timelessness. You forget your age whenever you spin a Nick Lowe track. I guess I’m unsurprised he was peripheral to my songwriting in the way back then. When I was younger, I did everything I could not to forget my age. You drink youth like, well, Red Bull and Hennessey. “Timelessness” is irrelevant when “time, time, time is on my side,” you know? Maybe that’s why he hits me so hard now. You are who you are, and who you thought you were is who you still can be, until the day your light goes out. Thank you, Nick.
Turnpike Troubadours — Diamonds & Gasoline (2010)
I’ve never been to Oklahoma, but through these guys I can dream a drive straight through the state (lol in contrast to The Flaming Lips, who let me dream of taking peyote on the panhandle). 7&7, which haha I first heard on a Peloton country ride with Denis Morton, is a track to which I return a lot. I love covering it, too, and sing it to myself a fair amount. Lost love doesn’t get better expressed as “nothing but an interstate daydream,” where you’re “just a fool in a supermarket aisle.”
The Troubadours execute Americana’s collision of country, rock, soul, and folk to near-sheer ragged perfection on Diamonds & Gasoline. That I may never write songs of wry-heartbreak and dusty-road living so mint as this keeps me coming back.
Miles Davis — Plays For Lovers (1973)
A collection of a few of Miles’ sweetest mid-50s jams. John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, and Horace Silver grace a few of these sessions. Paul Chambers backs them all. Davis was on the cusp of redefining jazz at the time of these recordings (Kind Of Blue hit in 1959), and you can tell on this record that standard space and time would never contain him. The thing with Miles Davis — kinda like with Michael Jordan on a basketball court — is not only how every note he plays is flawless, but how his presence causes everyone else to play to their event horizons of perfection, too.
Sparks — In Outer Space (1983)
Sometimes “dated” is the best thing you can say about a piece of work, especially if that piece of work is something archetypal. It’s wild how Sparks has been just ahead of every age into which they’ve unleashed their creativity. Listening to them, you realize how much other musicians have always looked to them to figure out what’s next. David Byrne wore his big white suit in Stop Making Sense a year after Sparks appearance on American Bandstand above. Coincidence? Who knows not me.
Popularity kicks off In Outer Space, and is quintessential Sparks. Almost in secret, they helped invent the New Wave, in a way as much as bridge between Glam and New Wave as The Cars. They never ever get enough credit for their influence, but in a way, isn’t that the point of influence?
Sparks’ iciness is their overt weapon, but it’s also their acquired taste. The only caveat is they can get too salty at the expense of sweetness. They don’t give a hoot what you think, though, so just give in to it.
Four Tet — Pink (2011)
The kind of record you spin to remind you of feeling 3am electric. You lose count of the influences and styles that collide here, and then just lose yourself to the danceable and tranceable pure atmosphere. Not a trace of melancholy, either. Just kinetic energy, neither judgmental nor heavy.
It’s not an over-and-over-and-over spin for me, but it’s not a record I’ve ever been able to let go. The last two tracks (side D on this 1/2-speed VMP remaster), Peace For Earth and Pinnacles, float me away to a time of boundless blithe illusions and harmless delusions. Bonobo and Loscil, for two, exist in a similar space. Experimental enough to scratch a Richard James itch, but accessible enough to fade the chaos around you and not wonder what’s on the other side of existence.
The track Pinnacles does it for me. House dough, electronica icing, jazz filling. This is music that never needs to be more than you need it to be.
Joni Mitchell — Archives — Volume 1: The Early Years (1963–1967) / (2020)
In a burst of fortunate synchronicity, I tuned into The Grammys last week at the moment Joni Mitchell took the stage to perform a searing, elegiac, powerful, iconic version of Both Sides Now (no embeds from the Grammy site, of course).
Idk, I run out of words to describe Joni. Like anyone with a catalog so vast, there’s soaring highlights next to curious moments of “hmm, yeah, okay,” but there’s a quiet power in every piece of art she’s ever graced with her creativity — visual, aural, written, etc…
Fwiw, in 2018 I recorded the acoustic demos for my (still unrecorded) album Paper Streets in a Laurel Canyon cottage, perched on the other side of the hill from Joni’s old house on Lookout Mountain Rd, where she wrote Both Sides Now. I named the Seagull guitar that I bought for my LA adventure Joni to honor the spirit I felt in the Canyon.
The morning after the Grammys, I told Catherine, an even longer-term Joni die-hard than me, that the performance was essential viewing, and she got equally gutted as me watching it. Later that night, she pulled out Archives — Volume 1: The Early Years (1963–1967), a 2020 collection of Joni’s early demos and live radio performances I picked up at a Record Store Day event at Psychic Records in Brooklyn in 2022.
The album is anchored by a spare and ethereal Both Sides Now that opens Side 2, recorded in 1967 during a live solo set at Philadelphia radio station WHAT-FM. The version is a poignant counterpoint to the one at the 2024 Grammys, as it’s a window into the moments she first wrote and shared the track.
“New one?” the DJ asks her as her final strum decays.
“Yes.”
“How new is it?”
”About three days,” Joni offers.
Wow, wow, wow.
In 1967, the character in the song looked forward, almost too young to have seen both sides, but extrapolating all she’s seen into what she believes life will bring. The Grammys performance last week, by contrast, is the same character, 50+ years-on, confirming all she suspected.
How a Joni so young communicated that much pain and regret, and yet that much hope and insight, in a single track is testament to her as a force of nature. She always belied her years. What a gift she is.
Bonus Canyon (featuring Joni the Seagull guitar):