Ruins “Reversible Sabbath”

It’s Tuesday, and it’s time to rock.

Honestly, I’d be a totally faking it to pretend I’m a Ruins aficionado. The avant/prog stuff generally intimidates me–if you’ve been paying attention, you can tell I’m much more of a pop fan in my dotage. When I do take it in, I process it as genre music, and really at that point I’d rather throw on some dub or bossa nova or something.

On the other hand it’d be pretty damn ignorant to dismiss the long-running Japanese outfit–a bass and drum duo, with drummer Tatsuya Yoshida serving as the bandleader and only constant member since Ruins’ 1987 debut.

So this is me dipping my toe into much deeper waters, via a track from last year’s Black Sabbath covers comp on Temporary Residence, Everything Comes and Goes. The disc, it’s worth noting, doesn’t actually promise covers, but rather “interpretations and mutations,” which might mean it’s not really for Sabbath fans.

And even on a project that features minimal ambient Sabbath, postrock Sabbath, country-folk Sabbath, spazz rock Sabbath, jazz rock Sabbath, etc., Ruins felt compelled to offer a (tongue-in-cheek?) Engrish almost-apology in the liner notes, “(we hope Sabbath fan will not angry with this song).”

I will claim to be a Sabbath fan, although my fandom to date hasn’t escaped the borders of the original Ozzy years.

I will not angry with this song.

“Reversible Sabbath” is really the disc’s standout–deploying limber yet heavy drumming and bass distortion set to stun for a 2:34 instrumental medley of Sabbath’s greatest riffs. Each riff is repeated long enough to sink in, maybe long enough for a trainspotting/game show moment, “uh, uh, Sweet Leaf, no, uh… OK,” and then it’s on to the next.

When a song engages you on that level, don’t call it a gimmick please, you stand up and notice. It’s rocking and smile-inducing, and also a wonderful tribute, in the truest sense, to the depth of Tony Iommi’s rock riff compositional genius.

My patented five minutes of Google research per post tells me that the riff medley is a trick that Ruins has rocked before, on 2000’s Pallaschtom and 2002’s Tzomborgha. (n.b., “Black Sabbath Medley Reversible” off the latter is not the same as the Everything Comes and Goes track.)

Prog with a sense of humor and brevity–this might be the prog for me.

Everything Comes and Goes at Newbury Comics.

Peter Laughner “Amphetamine” “Life Stinks”"Cinderella Backstreet”

Feeling morose this Monday, so gravitated to the Peter Laughner. Briefly, this is the late great guitarist and songwriter for Cleveland’s Rocket from the Tombs, a recently resuscitated proto-punk outfit that spawned Pere Ubu and the Dead Boys.

Laughner didn’t find a lasting place in either group, and flamed out at 24. (For more, take a look at my second-favorite Lester Bangs piece, “Peter Laughner is Dead.”)

The sadly out of print Take the Guitar Player for a Ride collected a bunch of demos and home recordings of Laughner’s. It captures a wide swath of what made the man so special. Hero worship with heart. Gutter-poet romanticism one moment, bleakest nihilism next. A singer-songwriter with guitar hero chops.

Bangs’ piece tips the hand that the Velvets, and particularly Lou Reed, were a guiding inspiration for Laughner. Not as if you’d need to be told; “Amphetamine” is a bald rewrite of “Heroin.” But perhaps this makes it even more affecting? It’s just a midwestern kid chasing truth in a syringe, mostly on the prescription of his leather-clad poet idol.

And it comes through. Reed’s decadence and transcendence are replaced with something altogether more mundane, and realer for being so. The refrain alone tells us cool requires too much effort–in one turn, “I was so easily overexcited”–and transmits a dead-weight resignation that you’ll never be granted entrance to the things you’ve desired most–”there was always a party/but I was never invited.”

“Life Stinks” starts dada and slides into a demented chant of endlessly resquenced, desperate easy rhymes over stinging guitar scatter. In some ways it feels like more of a coarse trifle next to Laughner’s soul-searching elsewhere. Call it a palate cleanser. What’s scary, or confusing, is that (a) you get the sense he meant it and, furthermore, that (b) the song’s fun.

If you scratch Lou Reed in his classic years, a little bit of Dylan bleeds out, and “Cinderella Backstreet” finds Laughner and his 12-string guitar on a Blood on the Tracks style ramble. This, as much as any other song, shows Laughner developing his own voice and creating his own masterful piece of sad-sack heartbreak while dressing up in the style of his heroes.

Bill Callahan would sing a couple decades later “I’ll never be a rock ‘n’ roll saint…I’ll never be a Bowie/never be an Eno/I’ll only ever be a Gary Numan.” Back-handed diss aside, it’s that same fear of being earthbound, fear of reaching ever in futility for the constellations of the tapped-in and truly worthy, that same self-doubt that makes Laughner’s music so much more than the work of an inspired copyist.

Rarely has a wasted pub crawl, and its attendant catalogue of lost souls, been rendered with such bottomless reserves of sympathy as in “Cinderella Backstreet.” Laughner is perched at the divide–a regular guy, just doing his best, as much or more a character in the song than the beatnik blue troubadour who records the scene for the ages.

And out of this, deepest sadness and a certain kind of genius.

Take the Guitar Player for a Ride is findable but sadly ridonkulously expensive at Amazon,(UPDATE) but lots of tasty Laughner scraps can be found at Handsome Productions.

T. Rex “Raw Ramp”

Before I’d heard “Raw Ramp,” it’d been described to me–fondly–as “like the most misogynistic song ever.” It might’ve been up there at the time it was released as a b-side to “Get It On” in ‘71, but I’ll lazily vote for “Bitches Ain’t Shit” as usurping that title in the meantime. (Maybe that one was just plain misanthropic?)

So yeah, glam godfather Marc Bolan is mixing up his come-ons (”baby I’m beggin’ off ya please”) with his euphimistic/gynecological putdowns (”you think you’re a champ/but, girl, you ain’t nothin’ but a raw ramp”). It might get to the heart of something dark in the male libido, where we go caveman and resent the wooing game, pin the blame on our object of lust.

In any event, it’s not exactly pretty. There’s definitely still the bitter toothy grin of kitsch and the slight, stinging tease of transgression. But I’m not sure why “Raw Ramp” doesn’t feel mean-spirited. In a time when it was a little harder to find, it was pretty sought-after by us T. Rexicans.

It probably helps that Bolan wrote a great song that distills most of the charms of T. Rex’s plugged-in cosmic blues. It probably helps that the song is so goddamn fun.

Or maybe Bolan gets a pass ’cause he was a lovable scamp. And as much as he could put ladies on the pedestal and talk a sweet line of interstellar jive, a good majority of his songs were at base about wanting to fuck. Take a look at “Get It On,” apparently too hot in its frankness for American radio at the time–as the song works its mojo to the coda, Bolan’s loverman is preparing to move on to the next gurl:

“Meanwhile/ I’m still thinkin’…”

Electric Warrior at Newbury Comics. (and iTunes.)

The Bee Gees “Craise Finton Kirk Royal Academy Of Arts”

I’m all false starts today, and finally settled on sharing a Bee Gees tune. These aren’t the Bros. Gibb of white suits and testicularly-constricted falsetto–although, for the record, the official Paper Covers Rock policy states that disco does not, in fact, suck.

In 1967 on the aptly titled 1st, it seems the boys’ highest ambition was to make a really good psych pop record mimicking their heroes the Beatles.

It worked.

Because “Craise Finton” seems to be riding a bouncy, old-timey vibe–call it dancehall/vaudeville–I’m guessing they had the Cute One in mind as a musical template. However, the lyrics artfully, if obliquely, connect the dots between “Nowhere Man” and T.S. Eliot.

All this and a chorus more or less guaranteed to rebound around your brain for the rest of the day. It’s not exactly a revolutionary technique, marrying sad lyrics to happy music–c.f. 60% of Motown–but there’s still something fun about that essential irony.

Although a label like “sad” is a tad bit simplistic. If I’m reading correctly what’s going on here, Mr. Life of Quiet Desperation has shuffled off this mortal coil. He’s travelling on as planned “with a mere step in the mountain to a light.” And why else can’t anyone find him?

The afterlife, it turns out, is a big upgrade for him.

Ah, my shaken faith; I wish I could be so hopeful in contemplating mortality.

The Studio Albums 1967-1968 on Amazon.

Big Daddy Kane “Raw” (Remix)
Big Daddy Kane feat. Kool G. Rap “Raw” (Remix)

I’m feeling a little uninspired today, so we’re gonna go on a brief nostalgia trip. (Marley Marl’s House of Hits has been on heavy rotation in the car, for what it’s worth.)

Big Daddy Kane’s my favorite rapper of all-time, which sort of gives me away as an old fart with a Golden Age of Hip Hop fixation. His time in the sun was kind of brief by today’s standards–two and half classic albums followed by a precipitous falloff in the form of The Prince of Darkness, a wildly ill-conceived R&B effort that derailed his career. That lover-man persona was always his Achilles’ heel. Nonetheless, he’s being deservedly recognized today as a pioneer, innovator, legend.

“Raw,” a 1987 single and highlight of the following year’s debut LP Long Live the Kane, was Kane’s breakthrough. It propelled him out of Biz Markie’s shadow (stop laughing!) and to the forefront of NYC hip hop, which at the time seemed to account, more or less, for all of hip hop. The hot argument would become who’s the Best MC Ever: Kane or Rakim?

So two versions here, the remix that appeared on Long Live the Kane and a remake with new lyrics and a guest spot by Kool G Rap, a Brooklyn fellow traveler whose snarling proto-gangsta style allowed him to totally pull off a lisp, taken from a mixtape by contemporary Boston b-boy Edan.

The backing is a slamming Marley Marl track built from James Brown (and family) samples — the industry standard of the time. Onto this sturdy structure, Kane spills a bountiful love note to himself.

I’ve been marveling at the masterful interplay of sound, meaning and delivery. It’s not that they hadn’t invented choruses by then, it’s just that when you can turn a cutting, clever phrase every bar, there be the hooks. He dives into ego and comes up inspiring smiles, tripping from one allusive simile to the next, restlessly changing up the cadence of his flow again and again.

These aren’t, mind you, unique to BDK, it’s just that he set the high-water mark: precision of science, grace of art, but doesn’t forget that MC means “master of ceremonies,” which means there’s a party going on right here.

Long Live the Kane at Newbury Comics.
Fast Rap at UndergroundHipHop.com.