Pop Music: May 2004 Archives

Anybody want to make a record with me? Okay, here's the premise: we're siblings from a mid-western factory town circa 1967 with no formal training, but tons of heart. The music is sort of unimportant, as long as it's sort of pop, sort of psyche (without particular reference), and incredibly rudimentary. and the L.P. sleeve is KILLER. We then milk the "Songs in the Key of Z" and "lost masterpieces" markets for all they're worth before blowing the lid off the whole thing, as the Greatest Grift of All Time.

The previous paragraph wasn't as successful as I had hoped. What was I getting at here? Oh yeah, the curio fascination of the 90s/00s. Weird scene. And I, seemingly more susceptible than most, get a little embarrassed jumping on the re-issue train every so often. Your Shaggs and your Langley Schools and your Michael Yonkers' and your New Creations and your Free Designs. Vanity projects resurrected for the kitsch contingent as the Most Important Record This Week. But they are, aren't they?

Anyway, before this gets anymore convoluted: Margo Guryan was the benefactor of similar circumstances, when in the late nighties a Japanese company released a bootleg of her single forgotten commercial recording, 1968's mind-blowing Take a Picture, and promptly sold several thousand copies. This prompted an official reissue in the year 2000 (with a few extra tracks), which further prompted Guryan's name to be dropped by millions of music snobs officially "in the know." Regardless of the particular game of telephone it took to see today's light, I feel blessed to be able to have it in my life.

Margo Guryan grew up in the suburbs of New York, where her interest in music took its initial shape. Unlike the majority of the "lost masterpiece" crowd, Guryan was an incredibly well-versed musician, studying classical and jazz piano from Grade School to College, where she studied with the likes of Ornette Coleman, Bill Evans, Max Roach, and Gunther Schuller. Sometime in the mid-sixties, so the story goes, Guryan's friend and fellow Jazz musician Dave Frishberg played her his copy of the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows", altering her path completely.

Composing a handful of original pop songs, Guryan was awarded a record contract in 1968, which produced her lone solo album, the aforementioned Take A Picture. Rich with her disparate musical knowledge, Take A Picture reinvisions the feather-weight chanteuse image of the sixties with an hulking undercurrent of jazz rhythm and melancholy delivery. It's incredibly realized for a debut, each song a mini-masterpiece of lilting pop structure and performance. Despite positive reviews, Guryan's crippling stage fright (she once sacrificed a piano degree when she learned she would have to perform for the senior recital) left the album unpromoted, and relatively forgotten. She continued to write for other artists (including Dion, Harry Nilsson, Jackie DeShannon, Glen Campbell, the Lennon Sisters, and Mama Cass) through the '70s, eventually becoming a music teacher.

Thanks are due to the reissue/repackage revisionists, who allow us to revisit the forgotten autumn 1968, when, for a brief instant, Margo Guryan was the Greatest Band of All Time.

The critical revisionist history of Weezer isn't really limited to that Pinkerton recordand while I'm not really one for musical martyrdom, it's only in recent years that the subject of my affection for Weezer and their assorted side projects has been breached without slight embarrassment and hesitation outside of my immediate devote peer group. But along with the public deification of the "Old Weezer" (albums which came under such critical decent upon initial releaseRolling Stone "worst album of the year," etc.) upon the onslaught of crummy ol' new Weezer, comes by strange extension, a similar critical acclaim for Matt Sharp's Rentalsor at least for their debut, Return of the Rentals. A quick google on the record yields showers of praise, some relatively reputable sources crediting this weird one-off for the return of synthpop. Though upon its release I seem to recall a much less warm reception, I do appreciate that nearly everyone I know holds a universally warm spot in their hearts for Return, a simple, nostalgic pop record that still comforts nine years later.

I'm not saying you have to be an asshole not to like Return of the Rentals, but it would probably help.

But this leads us to the real point of contention between myself and seemingly everyone else on earth: that the Rentals brilliance didn't simply end with Return; that the trainwreck that is Seven More Minutes, the band's follow-up, is a worthyand occasionally superiorsophomore effort. It's something of a contrarian stance, as I will admit that Seven More Minutes is unforgivably indulgentthe result of listless globe hopping, hobnobbing, and obscene over-workingbut to a certain extent, it couldn't have been any other way.

Let me first address all of the record's immediate short-comings: Yes, Matt Sharp's vocal delivery does make him sound like an asshole. Yes, the album is diffused by its lack of sonic focus, especially after the genre-specific Return. Yes, the Britpop cameos (Blur's Damon Albarn, Elastica's Donna Matthews, Lush's Miki Berenyi and Ash's Tim Wheeler) do all feel tacked on. Yes, the early demos of these songs are in large part all superior. and yes, "Big Daddy C" is sort of unforgivable.

Granted.

But Let me also propose, with full awareness of how ridiculous this sounds, that Seven More Minutes is in fact a failed concept recorda record as much about indulgence as it is itself indulgent. It's clear, whether Sharp was aware of it or not, that his lackadaisical life styleall on Madonna's (Maverick) dime had taken a toll on his acumen, and is evidenced in the bulk of the album's lyrical content. Every song is essentially about being comfortably bored, with living a lifestyle of underachievement, and indulging in the simplest of urgeslike riding the snooze bar for just seven more minutes of sleep. Now whether this is a worthy topic for a concept record is up for debate, but it must be said that if you're gonna make a record about indulgence, you had better not make it sound like a streamlined Gary Numan album. You better make it sound stupid indulgent. MISSION: ACCOMPLISHED.

I suppose it's impossible to defend an album that I've already called "unforgivable" twice in the preceding paragraphs, but I do confess to actually preferring Seven to Return as an album. plus, this lady sings on it:

which, honestly, is enough to make any band the Greatest Band of All Time.

Sub Pop, the purveyors of all things grunge, were lambasted pretty heavily in 1995, for their percieved overnight and very awkward shift in music from said grunge rock to a much more diversified and pop based lineup. This shift was not so overnight as they had been putting out records by House of Pain , Stereolab, and Ween all along. It all came to a head in 1995 though with the release of full lengths from Velocity Girl, Combustible Edison, and Zumpano. It did seem like Sub Pop was trying very hard to do anything that wasn't grunge. I mean, Combustible Edison!?!? My teenage self was eating it up, thinking "All this stuff is weird. Weird stuff is cool." Sub Pop went some tough financial years that coincided with those musical focus shift and didn't fully recover till the turn of the millenium.

Zumpano is one of the most forgotten (Eric Matthews, anyone?) of any Sub Pop band as their entire career spanned two albums in only a year and a half. Zumpano, from Vancouver BC, was a power pop band heavily influenced by 60s pop. They wore these somewhat controversial influences (soft rock, jangle pop, the Zombies, Jimmy Webb) on their sleeves but were not derivitive. They had a hand on making these influences much more acceptable and even very popular in the years after they broke up. Zumpano songs are smart and catchy and complex pop with many parts and solid emotional context. Their debut CD Look What The Rookie Did was highly influential on me in opening up my eyes to pop music of the past and pop not having to be vapid verse/chorus/verse drivel and only sugary positive music. They are more well known for what their lead singer and songwriter, Carl Newman, went onto do as he is now the primary songwriter in The New Pornographers, and while I like The New Pornographers I think Newman's best work came in Zumpano, and it seems weird that this little awkward oft forgotten band would be The Greatest Band Of All Time but today they truly are.

Ellie Greenwich spent the better part of her twenties writing the most memorable (and occasionally infuriating) songs of the second half of the twentieth century, and for some reason, you've probably never heard of her.

Beginning her recording career as Ellie Gaye at the age of 18, Greenwich produced a single for RCA in 1958 entitled "Cha-Cha-Charming," which failed to chart. After graduating from college she met songwriter Jeff Barry, and the two soon married.

The couple quickly went on to spend the bulk of the 1960s penning a daunting percentage of the Girl Group era's Gold and Platinum records (among them "Be My Baby," "And Then He Kissed Me," "The Leader Of the Pack," "Da Doo Ron Ron," "Do Wa Diddy Diddy," "River Deep, Mountain High," etc, ad infinitum) as intrigal figures of the original Brill Building set.

The two also recorded a number of factory singles as the Raindrops (and alternately as the Butterflies)--a studio concoction that would tour the country with lip-syncing stand-ins--and would later go on to comprise a good deal of the Archies ("Sugar, Sugar," and all that). In 1965 Greenwich wrote and recorded the gorgeous Shadow Morton-produced single "You Don't Know," releasing a record under her own name for the first time. It's a brilliant example of understated Brill Pop, and deserved considerably more attention than it was ever afforded.

During this time she also began to produce records, becoming one of the first women to do so professionally for major labels, working with the likes of Neil Diamond and the Dixie Cups. In 1968 she released her first album, Ellie Greenwich Composes, Produces & Sings, which quickly disappeared at the end of the Girl Pop era. Five years later, with the success of Brill Building contemporary Carole King, Greenwich made the unfortunate decision to volley her career as a songwriter into one of a "singer-songwriter," re-recording some of her greatest compositions made famous by other artists just a few years too late as Let it Be Written, Let it Be Sung... something of a disaster.

And as this is beginning to sound like something of a book report, let me digress from this clunky history lesson to explain exactly what moves me to tout the spotty recording career of a less-than-one hit wonder who probably shouldn't have stepped in front of the velvet curtain to begin with. though there are literally dozens of Girl Groups whose singles deserve to be celebrated, the medium was so SONG based that it's difficult to pick one group for specific exploration--and with The Greatest Band Of All Time blog meant as a means of exposure of some kind of depth, those groups' limited discographies don't really offer a wealth of music to explore. So for all of her misfortune as a performer, the sprawl of Ellie Greenwich's career acts as sort of a reasonable glue for so much of the medium's disparate brilliance. For this, and for one of the era's greatest forgotten singles, we logically afford Ellie Greenwich the title of The Greatest Band Of All Time.

Seamlessly sequenced to ease atop itself over and over again forever. Again and again and again. That which was once bridged in relief with a contemplative rewind or lift of the arm is now a standard automation on any respectable digital media device. And for no practical purpose outside that of self-pity and modern dance rehearsal. Same song on repeat. For weeks. Relief made obsolete.

In darker days I discovered a way of listening to music in a way that is sort of akin to turning a portrait upside down to finish its features. In an experiment of patience and despair, a very teenaged manifestation of myself rode the repeat button for an evening, a night, a morning. At roughly 4:09, Asleep cycled somewhere around 132 times in those nine hours, and upon waking, I didn't recognize the words anymore. The piano was gone. All that remained was the ghostly canned wind stretching from either end of the song, and the music box that so affectedly ends it. A song I had listened to so endlessly for so many years, a song about sleep, made anew by sleeping inside of it. The experiment was escalated roughly two years later (at an age where such things had long since grown indefensible) in an evening of deep decadence: bathing, reading to, sleeping with, and waking against Christmas Song. Now, using the same conservative estimates (9 hours), this leaves roughly 166 (and a two-thirds) listens of a song composed entirely around a five second refrainor, 64.8 loops per song, or 10,799 total listens. Sleeping inside of it. Bathing in it. A song inverted on itself, becoming two separate, symbiotic halves--one of watery piano, guitar plucks, ambient chords, and glockenspiel accents, another of rise and decay, of impact (percussive pedal clicks, metal scraps and clanks) and resolve (washing reverberation).

Its mostly about using obsessive compulsion to your fiscal and emotional advantage: two for one.

Caution: this is not a recommendation.

(Later on the Smiths as The Greatest Band of All Time, to be sure.)

Mary Weiss forehead has never, ever seen the light of the sun. I imagine a tanline in the form of a right triangle skirting from her right eyebrow to her left temple in a perfect (if somewhat sloping) right angle, framed by impossibly straight, blondeactual blondehair resting on her barely discernable breasts. And despite a somewhat interchangeable cast of characters calling themselves The Shangri-Las (including those apish bookends the Ganser twins, and Elizabeth, the elder Weiss sister), there is nothing but Mary. Sweeping, immobile bangs angling her doed eyes, face rounded in a palpable navetMary was calamitys little girl.

You know who The Shangri-Las are, right? They're one of those faceless girl groups that were so popular in the 60s. Yeah, what was their song again? "Be My Baby"? "My Boyfriends Back"? Oh, right: that abhorrable "Leader of the Pack" song that you've become so accustom to ignoring. You know them. But as happens to so many other brilliant, brilliant singles played in endless rotation on marginal oldies stations, youve been stripped of the capacity to actually hear the Shangri-las, without the burden of pitch-shifted chipmunks in animated malt shoppe montages, right? What?

Anyway, back to the point: The Shangri-Las. The Greatest Band of All Time.

BACKGROUND:

Just barely seventeen years old, Mary Weiss (and the others, I suppose) met by chance her life's opportunity in the form of a man named Shadow. An acquaintance of Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry, the Brill Buildings Midas couple, George Shadow Morton had grown somewhat envious of the duo's empire, candidly boasting that he could write and produce a song that would easily rival their own. An associate of Mortons suggested he record a four-piece from Queens who had released a bland single of his the year prior. Morton commissioned the group, The Shangri-Las, to record his sprawling masterpiece--a seven-minute opus called "Remember". With the help of Greenwich and Barry, the song was paired down to become what is indisputably one of the greatest singles of the 1960s, the slightly less sprawling opus "Remember (Walking in the Sand)." This began a consistently profitable relationship between the group and the visionary Morton.

But again, were swaying from our focus here--that the Shangri-Las are clearly the Greatest Band of All Time. And more specifically, Mary Weiss is the greatest performer that has ever lived. Ever.

Sullen, self-assured, and defeated--all in a single syllable. Little Mary Weiss voice bled itself over a handful of the most soul-crushingly dark 45s to ever grace the top 40. Blessed with the megalomaniacal production of Morton, the Shangri-Las formula was a simple one: melodrama in monologue, hushed whispers, minor chords, and most importantly, death. A formula begun with the biggest hit of their career (and, incidentally, a song worthy of a second chance), Leader of the Pack--and peaking with the darkest of death discs, the ridiculous(ly beautiful) "I Can Never Go Home Anymore." Sullen, self-assured, and defeated. Weiss voice trembling atop throaty, nursery rhymed coos--an incomparable snapshot of pure, untarnished despair made only the more absurd by its melodramatic context. Teen girl heart.

Not just the Rolling Stones to the Ronettes Beatles, the Shangri-Las were more than street tough bubblegum. They were so much creepier than that--something that only sounds more sinister through the annuls of time. A creepiness paid tribute by much of New Yorks punk scene--see: the New York Dolls (whose David Johansen, incidentally, seemed to use the Cro-Magnon Ganser sisters as personal style models), Blondie, Sonic Youth, etc.--who even saw fit to spark an early 80s reunion at CBGBs.

The moral of this story, though somewhat poorly illustrated, is that The Shangri-Las made what was the greatest music of the 1960s, bar-none. Eff a bunch of Beatles. Eff a bunch of Rolling Stones. The Shangri-Las are the greatest band of all time.

For more evidence, see "Past, Present, Future", Shangri-Las last great single.