We may be the last generation to give tangible tunes for Christmas
With uncertainty, doubt, poverty, environmental devastation, looming scarcity, and event-level extinction staring us down in the distance, I personally find it comforting that the current number-one single in the country has a chorus that goes “I’ll gas up the jet for you tonight, and baby we can go wherever you like.” Why? Because as ridiculous as T.I.’s sentiment is, the role of our pop stars has never been to address serious issues: it’s been to further our own ridiculous ambitions, to dream the impossible dream, to live our life as if there’s no tomorrow, and ultimately, to give false hope to those that need it most.
And you know who needs false hope right now, among others? The major record labels, who are pulling out all the stops to release a plethora of new and re-issue albums in the hopes that they can pump some blood back into what is increasingly looking like a moribund anchor for their business model — the physical recorded musical album.
What does this mean for you, Joe or Jane Consumer, as you run to the shops to spend your ever-dwindling disposable income on frivolous rock and pop music? It means that you live in historic times: you get at least one more chance to ride on a dinosaur, to be the last generation, perhaps, to say “I got this incredibly rad box set for Christmas” or “I stood in line at midnight to pick up a copy of Chinese Democracy.”
When you look at it that way, it’s almost your duty — nay, destiny — to at least peruse this list of year-end musical offerings and appreciate it for the end-of-civilization fire sale it represents. Excelsior! Carpe diem! The future is yours!
Box sets and re-issues: The end of the end of music (with an extra bonus disc of demos and rarities)
When I was an adolescent, in the late ’80s and early ’90s, wading knee deep through box sets in my bedroom, casually using disc four of Eric Clapton’s Crossroads as a drink coaster, I would sometimes think,”How did my parents ever survive without all of the classic-rock lexicon neatly bundled, archived and annotated, with outtakes and bonus tracks?” Twenty years later, it is sometimes surprising that there are still musical nooks and crannies left to be made into box sets. But this season, a plethora of crazy re-issues is hitting the shelves — and some of them are (gulp) collections of artists who emerged post-box-set-era themselves.
The Complete Motown #1′s Box (Motown/Universal) Often, box sets add unnecessary supplements to well-known material, but the best ones pare down limitless musical material into a comprehensible canon. So it is with the Motown label’s legendary discography. Universal off-shoot Hip-O Records is in the process of exhaustively issuing 12 box sets containing every single ever put out by the label, but there has to be some middle ground between that kind of obsessiveness and the Murphy Brown soundtrack, right? Well, here it is — and it’s a statement to the insane success of Hitsville U.S.A. that even just limiting the scope of the box of number-one pop singles still leaves the listener with 191 tracks to wade through.
All the joy, pathos, and drama is contained within a miniature replica of the original Motown building. You can listen to the joyous music and just imagine, within those hallowed halls, the backing musicians getting screwed out of a living to the beat of a generation coming of age. “How Sweet It Is,” indeed!
Genesis: 1970-75 (Rhino) For prog-rock fans, the recent Genesis deluxe- treatment remasters have been torture — even greater torture than the constant humiliation and self-hatred that comes with being a prog-rock fan in the first place. Inexplicably moving backward chronologically so as to put off the Peter Gabriel–era material for last, it’s almost as if Rhino took to heart the scene in American Psycho where the titular ’80s serial killer, in a lengthy monologue on the enduring legacy of later Genesis and solo Phil Collins, dismissed Gabriel’s Genesis as “too artsy, too intellectual.” And there is a certain logic to that. The Peter Gabriel of Genesis, before he became an inspirational godhead of world music in the ’80s, was a complete and utter loon, painting his face white, wearing his hair in an inverse mohawk and squawking songs about hermaphrodites and killer plants on top of overly busy polyrhythmic mumbo jumbo. But at the same time, the band had a power and naive over-ambition that peaked with the watershed prog twofer The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, which is included here, along with every other Gabriel-era album and a cornucopia of live video footage.
New Order: Movement / Power, Corruption, & Lies / Low-Life / Brotherhood / Technique (Collector’s Edition) (Word Entertainment) When the three surviving members of Joy Division transmogriphied their anguish over their lead singer’s suicide into dance-floor abandon as New Order, they also ushered in a new era of the pop single. They released song after song that became massive hits with no corresponding album. “Blue Monday” became the best-selling 12-inch single in UK history, and yet if you just bought New Order’s albums, you’d be in the dark on a huge part of their legacy — which is why these reissues are so crucial to re-contextualizing the groundbreaking new-wave band’s music.
Each album included is accompanied by a second disc of non-album singles and B-sides, and in many cases the bonus disc practically eclipses the album itself. Their 1981 debut, Movement, for example, is a dark and ephemeral work, from a band discovering themselves through an embryonic membrane. Hearing the clarion chime of “Ceremony” after the dreariness of Movement closer “Denial” is like waking up from a nightmare to a sunny day. Similar epiphanies await on the rest of these crucial re-issues.
Pavement: Brighten the Corners, Nicene Creedence Edition (Matador) Pavement were not the only ’90s band of self-styled musical amateurs to be put on a pedestal by a burgeoning alternative fanbase, only to disappoint with actually learning how to write a song and play their instruments on the way to becoming professional musicians. This double-disc re-issue of 1997′s Brighten the Corners, removed by 11 years from the context of alt.rock’s crumbling final moments, reveals a rough-and-tumble band of record collectors turning into accomplished songwriters on par with their classic-rock idols. The re-issue includes a truckload of live and radio sessions from the time, as well as essential B-sides, such as “No Tan Lines” and “Cherry Area” from the Shady Lane EP, that showed chief Pavedude Stephen Malkmus crawling out from underneath his Mark E. Smith worship to crystallize his own idiosyncratic and vaguely creepy classic-rock-weirdo vibe.
Neil Young: Sugar Mountain — Live at Canterbury House 1968 (Reprise) There’s still plenty of time for Neil to pull a Lucy with the football on us with The Archives Vol. 1. Rumors began swirling around this set literally 20 years ago; it’s (finally) allegedly scheduled for release in January as a set of 10 Blu-ray discs (for now). In the meantime, you can tide over the Neil fan you know with this oft-bootlegged solo acoustic Ann Arbor, Michigan, set that predates Young’s eponymous debut.
My Bloody Valentine: Isn’t Anything / Loveless (Sony BMG, Import) Any long-time MBV fan is, by nature, a human punching bag. Waiting 17 years for anything from a hero — a sign, a word, a thought — is just pure debasement. They might as well scream to the world, “Go ahead, abuse me all you want, you can’t possibly be as cruel to me as MBV guitarist/frontperson Kevin Shields.” So what better way to acknowledge your friend or loved one’s true nature than to give him or her an envelope containing an IOU that states, in late January, if there are no further delays, you will order them the UK import remaster of MBV’s two classic long-players, and that said collections may perhaps contain bonus material and/or liner notes from Kevin Shields himself. The remasters may even sound better, or just different in some way, from the same boring old CDs that he or she’s been wearing out since college. Either way, by the time it comes out, the pound sterling might have come down enough for this not to cost you a month’s rent in US dollars.
Hot album stocking stuffers, or on the couch: what do we mean when we give the gift of music?
You know what? You need to know someone pretty well to get them a box set. Because box sets are so expensive, the programming has to be pretty much on the money. My wife and I have a euphemism for an expensive gift someone gives you that shows how little the giver knows you and your tastes: “The Winger Box Set.” Your aunt would get you that, thinking, “Oh, he likes rock music, he’ll love this,” not understanding the nuanced difference between the lameness of Kip Winger and the relative awesomeness of, well, pretty much anything else.
Psychologists say it is often the giver, rather than the recipient, who reaps the biggest psychological blessings from a gift. In the case of post–baby boomer music snobs, these psychological gains come in the form of a sort of musical one-upmanship, where the gift one gives says more about the one giving than the one receiving. It’s like an unspoken inner dialogue between giver and getter. So in the spirit of the holidays and the deep psychological dysfunction that will surely come to the surface when families get together to exchange pleasantries, here are some of this holiday’s hottest new albums, with the transcripts of those unspoken dialogues.
Fall Out Boy: Folie À Deux (Island)
Father: I don’t understand you, son, but these fellows seem to wear similar eyeliner as you. Plus, their new album features someone uncharacteristic and unexpected guest appearances by Debbie Harry, Elvis Costello, and Kanye West, which should be interesting to you for at least a few seconds before you go back to your video games and other electronic avoidance techniques.
Son: Um, I haven’t been into these guys since I was in middle school, but thanks for the drink coaster.
Cat Power: Dark End of the Street EP (Matador)
Sensitive Boyfriend: Since this is our first Christmas together, meeting your family and all, I’m giving you this record to show that I have a deep affection for eccentric chicks. Also, Cat Power, a/k/a Chan Marshall, does unrecognizable covers of the Pogues, Otis Redding, and Creedence, among others.
Girlfriend-until-after-the-Holidays: First, who are you calling crazy? And second, thanks for springing for the between-major-albums low-budge covers EP. Once we’re out of eggnog land, you’re history.
Kanye West: 808s & Heartbreaks (Roc-A-Fella/Island/Def Jam)
Long-suffering Husband of Artificial-Intelligence Scientist: Perhaps if I get her the new Kanye, the album’s unusual juxtaposition of doomed romantic love and an almost irrational fascination with auto-tuned vocals will remind her of the husband back home that she never sees. Perhaps the album’s 808 drum-machine orthodoxy will make her pine for the beat of another human heart next to hers. Ultimately, Mr. West’s strange treatise on the merging of man and machine and their shared heartbreak over the fleeting nature of love will cause her to flee her studies and return to the one thing that is a constant in this crazy world: me!
Scientist Wife: Ugh, as if I don’t hear enough vocoder’d voices at work — when will this trend end?
Guns N’ Roses: Chinese Democracy (Geffen)
Rip Van Winkle: My, I certainly do feel relaxed and rested after having been asleep these past 17 years! And look, here I am, amid a throng of Christmas shoppers in front of some store called Best Buy, whatever that is, where they are apparently exclusively selling a new Guns N’ Roses album — crazy, didn’t those guys just put out a new album? Oh well, I think I will purchase a copy of Slash & Co.’s new masterpiece for my wife and children, wherever they are!
Wife and children: Didn’t we download most of these tracks on a torrent two years ago?
Nickelback: Dark Horse (Roadrunner)
Music Snob One: I think my friend, Music Snob Two, will be happy to receive this platter in his stocking. Either he’ll love it ironically for its jarringly predatory sexual overtones that are as uncomfortable as your uncle hitting on your girlfriend at a holiday party, or he’ll love it genuinely because he can appreciate how the band, on their sixth album, have finally broken with their typical cookie-cutter overmelodramatic grunge-lite to create a work of quizzically dancey-yet-anthemic shit-kicking hard rock that isn’t that far from, say,Eliminator-era ZZ Top.
Music Snob Two: Good fucking lord, and to think I got you that awesome IOU for those My Bloody Valentine import CDs — our friendship is over.
Daniel Brockman promises to be grateful for anything he gets, even a best-of–Norman Greenbaum re-issue. He can be reached at brockman.daniel@gmail.com.
