Three Albums

PHUTATORIUS
So we're promoting the site now through Facebook. We're finding now that we have 20+ "fans" — some of whom aren't even Facebook friends (!) — and on that basis we're talking ourselves round to thinking we have readers. In the hope of dispelling that delusion, I'm writing today to solicit "reader input" on a cultural exercise of great importance:

Brothers and Sisters, name the recording artist with the three best consecutive albums (Three Albums, for short). And, of course, name the albums.
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I've been thinking about this question for a while, and because I'm a dork, I've raised it over drinks with friends (who are also dorks — dorky friends, I'm relying on you here). I have some ideas, but before I get to them, first some Rules and Guidelines.

☞ Rule: A greatest hits release doesn't count as an Album, for these purposes. That Steve Miller abomination with the Jordache logo is not an Album (and for that matter, it sucks anyway).

☞ Rule: A live release is not an Album, either, unless it's substantially comprised of new songs written specifically for the release. Thus and so, Under a Blood Red Sky is not an Album. Rattle & Hum? Yeah, probably.

☞ Rule: No EPs or singles compilations, please. We're talking strictly about studio albums. Hatful of Hollow, Louder Than Bombs, and the World Won't Listen are not studio albums. I know this pretty much dooms the Smiths, because it leaves no room to maneuver around Meat Is Murder. This breaks my heart, but it's increasingly clear to me that the Smiths were a singles band, anyway.

As for Guidelines, I figure I'll throw out some general principles you can choose to accept or reject. Obviously Quality comes first, but we might favor as well Three Albums that reveal significant Growth or Refinement on the part of the artist. I'd be inclined to credit Three Albums delivered in a short span of time — say, yearly releases — over a series of three that span a decade or more. It shows me more. Variety would seem important to me. It's the spice of life, after all, and a sign of an artist's versatility. If the Three Albums don't reveal the aforementioned Growth or Refinement, Sustained Level of Brilliance might carry the day. Don't come to me with Two Sandwich Albums on Either Side of a Fair-to-Middling Third. That's not Three Albums. And don't tell me an album is so good it ought to count as Three. I've been in that place. I've considered The Violent Femmes and The Stone Roses. They belong in another contest.

Everybody got it? Good. I submit the following Three Albumses for your consideration:

Start with the Beatles. Get 'em out of the way. You could conceivably do Five, Six, or Seven Albums here, given that we're talking about the Beatles. But Three is the order of the day. I say Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's, and the White Album. But wait, Phutsie: The Magical Mystery Tour came after Sgt. Pepper's and the White Album. Yes, it did, but as I understand matters, it's a soundtrack built around re-released singles ("Strawberry Fields Forever," "Penny Lane"). I won't say I can't be convinced otherwise, but for now I'm excluding TMMT on the ground that it is a compilation.

Some other obvious candidates occur to me. The White Stripes: [self-titled], De Stijl, White Blood Cells. R.E.M.: Life's Rich Pageant, Document, Green. The Clash: [self-titled], Give 'Em Enough Rope, London Calling. And of course an old and enduring favorite, James, for whom I propose two Three Album possibilities: Strip-Mine, Gold Mother, Seven and Gold Mother, Seven, Laid (I see Strip-Mine and Laid as substantially equivalent).

I'd like to nominate My Aim Is True, This Year's Model, and Armed Forces as contenders, but the first album was recorded by "Elvis Costello" (who recorded with an uncredited backing band), whereas the next two were by "Elvis Costello and the Attractions." Can I get a ruling here?

I am what I am, and I'm a Man of Enthusiasms Others Do Not Share. On that score, I submit to you probably my favorite Three Album set, Stereolab's Mars Audiac Quintet, Emperor Tomato Ketchup, Dots and Loops. What Stereolab accomplished between 1993 and 1996 — in terms of the distinctiveness and layered complexity of their sound, their complete overhaul of that sound, and just overall excellence from the standpoint of writing damn good songs — rivals any comparable three-year period from the Beatles' career. Roll your eyes. Laugh. I'll pull a gun on you, I swear. You'll sit down at gunpoint and listen to these albums, and you'll come around. Camper Van Beethoven, of course, falls into My Unshared Enthusiasm category. [self-titled], Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart, Key Lime Pie. Eat it, skeptics! And just to push the envelope in this quarter, I'll throw out the Boo Radleys' Giant Steps, Wake Up Boo!, and C'mon Kids!, although the last of these grates on me a little (which was, I've read, the Boos' intention).

Some final ideas before I open up the floor for comment — Liz Phair: Exile in Guyville, Whip-Smart, Whitechocolatespaceegg. They Might Be Giants: Lincoln, Flood, Apollo 18. The Stooges: [self-titled], Fun House, Raw Power. The Flaming Lips: The Soft Bulletin, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, At War with the Mystics. You can accuse me of grasping at straws here by this point, but it ain't easy. Understand that I've considered and had to reject Joy Division, the Pogues, Green Day, Black Sabbath, Oasis — even Led Zeppelin and Blondie, any of whom have Two Albums better than anything I've listed in this paragraph. But for one reason or other (front man hanged himself, III wasn't all that, what the Jaysus happened with Be Here Now?) they don't have Three. And of course I've left it to Mithridates to argue for the Police.

Anyway, we all have our Enthusiasms and Prejudices, and we all have distinct record collections. E.g., I've only got one Bob Dylan album, so someone else will have to post an entry on his behalf. Write a comment, make a case, so we can threaten or laugh at you.

Rock Me, Amadeus!

MITHRIDATES
I went back to Dave's Records yesterday for the third time this month. OK, I may have a slight addiction. Fair enough. But yesterday I raided the Classical/Opera section and am now listening to an almost scratch-free seven-dollar double record of The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Tutto è gioia, no? Well, no. You see, this Eastern Despot didn't read the fine print — or actually the big, bold print right on the cover. What I'm listening to right now is a bunch of fat sopranos, accompanied by the music and singing to the tune of Die Zauberflöte — but IN ENGLISH!

With all due respect to the geniuses at The Metropolitan Opera Club, there are reasons we want to listen to this exquisite music in its original Deutsch. And it's not just snobbishness. Snobbishness is why I don't like the supertitles at the Met. I like being slightly less in the dark than the bridge-and-tunnel crowd (welcome again, Whitecollar Redneck).

And it's certainly not the inherent beauty of the German language. It's simply that we don't want the sheer stupidity of the plot and inanity of the dialogue made so plain and obvious. If it's in some foreign language we can only partially understand then we can pretend that the libretto is as sophisticated as we (think we) are. Instead we know that one of the great musical triumphs of all time is as mind-numbing as a Bollywood blockbuster and as pointless as Terrance and Phillip's Asses of Fire (and for the time, probably as tasteful).

Red said it best after Andy got sent to the hole for blaring Mozart over the Shawshank loudspeakers:

I have no idea to this day what them two Italian ladies were singin' about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I like to think they were singin' about something so beautiful it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it.

But it's over and done with sooner than I could finish this post. And so blaring over the speakers in my living room — much to the dismay perhaps of my rock 'n' roll neighbors — is the overture to Le Nozze di Figaro. And for those of you who might not be classical music fans, anything that opened up Trading Places can't be all bad, right?

Some of us do love classical music, though. Do you remember intermission at the Chicago Symphony on our second date, a mere 48 hours after we first met, and you said, "I am perfectly happy right now"?

But let's not get carried away with ourselves here. This is a rock 'n' roll country and this is a rock 'n' roll blog. And so I contend that it really doesn't get much better than this . . .

Some Thoughts on Echo & the Bunnymen

PHUTATORIUS
And now, from the How To Destroy the Blog Before It Ever Bloomed Department, I'm going to share some of my thoughts on Echo & the Bunnymen.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! you cry. Don't do it, Phutatorius! Vercingetorix is AWOL, Mithridates is absent WITH leave — on a two-week trip to India (we expect regular travel journal entries) — you're minding the store alone. There's absolutely no reason, at this point, for you to pester us with your overwrought musings on defunct 1980s wrong-side-of-mainstream British post-punk acts, the Stateside exposure of whom has been limited to soundtracks. For the love of God, Phutatorius, Blogger's post-label software won't even tolerate the band's ampersand!

Message received, Good Reader, and disregarded. It's E&tB Night here at Feigned Outrage. Bring the love, or take a hike. Here goes, then:

I'm going to challenge the orthodoxy here. I'm going to take the heretical position — at least in the mind of those of us who romanticize defunct 1980s British post-punk acts — that Echo & the Bunnymen probably weren't all that great a band. And, what's worse (and likely to get me flayed and fileted), Ian McCulloch was probably holding them back.

Dare I write these words? Dare I suggest that these Alt-Rock Elder Statesmen are more myth than substance? And how presumptuous is it for me, a mere sub-recognizable Internet Personality, to undermine E&tB's exotic, iconic frontman? Well, let's consider the evidence: let's play the records.

I'll be the first to admit that certain tracks are just gorgeous. "Crystal Days," "The Killing Moon," "Lips Like Sugar," "Bring on the Dancing Horses" — they're the complete package. Songwriting, instrumentation, lyrics, production: it's all there. When the Bunnymen were on, they were sublime. But they were never interesting. McCulloch's writings were modestly poetic. Sergeant's guitars were modestly psychedelic. These two were the core of the band. For crying out loud, the drummer, Pete de Freitas, replaced a drum machine (called Echo, by the way). He wasn't exactly breaking new ground.

(I don't mean to demean the memory of de Freitas, who died tragically in a motorcycle accident in 1989. This same de Freitas helped kick-start the Wild Swans' recording career, and for that he'll always have a soft spot in my heart.)

Contrast E&tB's contemporaries and greatest rivals in art rock, the Smiths. The Smiths were a no-frills four-piece, too. They wrote and recorded beautiful songs. They also had a signature sound and aesthetic, but these were distinctive and compelling. The Smiths had an artistic mission, and they took significant risks. Love him or hate him, Morrissey threw himself open for the world to see — and even if that wasn't his true self, he surely dreamed up and delivered a fascinating stage character. As terrific as some of the Bunnymen's work is, there's no edge there, no identity, no risk. Is it any coincidence that this band is best remembered in black and white, if not silhouette?

I have just two more bits of evidence to submit, before I hang McCulloch for these crimes. First, the band's cover of the Doors' "People Are Strange" for The Lost Boys soundtrack. Growing up in the time and place that I did, I heard the Bunnymen's version before I heard the original. I don't fault the Bunnymen for allowing the Doors to blow them away (although I regard the Doors as overrated, too). I fault them for doing nothing remotely interesting or interpretative with the song. It's a straight recording, without the organ. Second, I saw a reformed, reconstituted version of Echo & the Bunnymen play in Boston several years ago. They were touring with the Psychedelic Furs. The contrast between the two shows was striking. Echo was all smoke machines, dry ice, and back lighting. McCulloch appeared in silhouette the entire time (I wondered if he had been disfigured, or he didn't want fans to see his age lines). He barely moved as he sang. They were clearly trying to sell "lush soundscapes" and "mystique." I wasn't buying. The Psych Furs were triumphant. They seemed absolutely thrilled to be playing to a crowd of sleepy thirtysomething fans in the wee weeknight hours. The enthusiasm gap was dramatic, and it favored the Furs. The Bunnymen won on pretentiousness by a mile.

So that's my take on the band generally. On to McCulloch.

Now here's where I go completely off the reservation. I'm going to have to insist that Echo & the Bunnymen's best album is 1990's Reverberation — you know, the one the band recorded without Ian McCulloch. The one they recorded with a guy named Noel Burke (remember him?), the one that appears in AllMusic without a cover and is granted a non sequitur-ish 2.5 stars by the reviewer, notwithstanding his generally glowing writeup on the album?

As best I can figure it, the AllMusic writer docked the album points not on its merits, but because it differed from the rest of the Bunnymen's back catalog:

Reverberation would have been a great debut had Sergeant and bassist Les Pattinson decided to operate under a different moniker. Who knows if Sergeant thought McCulloch would someday return to the band, but it would have made more sense for these ten songs to have been released under a new band name, because whether one likes or dislikes this album, Echo & the Bunnymen doesn't exist without the distinctive voice of Ian McCulloch, and it seems rather unfair that Burke had to go up against the enigmatic legacy of McCulloch.

Hell, yeah, it was different. It was better. The band actually did something interesting with its sound. Rather than continue plodding along with his usual nondescript, half-psychedelic guitar, Sergeant — the band's creative leader at this point, surely — decided to go the whole hog. Maybe he was responding to the trippy trends of the day; maybe McCulloch's absence opened up greater possibilities. The first line of the first song, as it happens, is "My head is like an unblocked drain." Reverberation is not necessarily dignified: the flipside of "distinctive" is "gimmicky," after all. But what should rock 'n' roll be, if not gimmicky? Reverberation might have been the sort of product that was beneath McCulloch's dignity to release (at the same time he was serving up his own solo album, the two principle characteristics of which were adequacy and dignity), but it's the closest this band ever came to rocking.

Burke had his lyrical excesses. For example, I have no clue what it means "To counterfeit my salad days/And split the difference." But he more than makes up for this with "Let me take you/to the hell where all the freaks dwell." I would put the likes of "Enlighten Me," "Cut and Dried," and "Senseless" right up in the canon with the McCulloch-issue tracks I singled out earlier. No doubt about it. "Senseless" in particular, with its repeated, defiant refrain — "I will not wait/I will not see/The things you claim/Are lost on me" — shows more of Burke's soul than you're likely to find in all of McCulloch's work. McCulloch's poetics just seem so distant. By the end of the track, Burke is ranting: "All our voices out of tune/All our graveyards full too soon/All your money in the bank/How it festered, how it stank . . . Stupid, senseless, make it stop!" Maybe all that's too much and too silly. I think it's terrific.

Full disclosure: I may have some ingrained biases here, based on memory associations. Probably the single most traumatic moment of my adolescence came when I crashed my car in the parking lot of the Eastwood Mall, ten days after I got my driver's license. One of McCulloch's songs, "The Cutter," was playing in my tape deck at the point of impact. Whereas I distinctly remember playing tracks off Reverberation in my dorm room on the night I met my future wife — in fact, I may have forced her to listen to "Freaks Dwell" when we stopped by my room after leaving the dance.

Still, I think that if McCulloch weren't so closely identified with the band (and the centerpiece of its marketing), if his lack-of-aesthetic didn't carry quite so much momentum — and, most importantly, if Burke had stuck around — there was the potential here for an AC/DC-style reawakening, with McCulloch and Burke playing the roles of Bon Scott and Brian Johnson, respectively. McCulloch would have been fondly remembered, but Burke would have led the band to new heights. As it happened, and given the circumstances, the project was doomed to failure. It's just too bad that was the case. This band was better with Burke than it was with McCulloch.

UPDATE: I found the Reverberation album art on Amazon. Here it is in old-school CD "longbox" format.