CLOSURE! (part 3)

Depeche Mode: Songs of Faith and Devotion
Drugs are bad. Drugs are used to alter ones state of mind. Some people use them to “find new artistic places in themselves”. Many musical artists do this today, but very few stop. Too many drugs can kill such an artist, such as Shannon Hoon of Blind Melon, the guy from Sublime and numerous others. Too many drugs are bad, but just the right amount? Now that can produce some amazing shit. The specific amazing shit I refer to is Depeche Mode’s album Songs of Faith and Devotion. During the writing and recording of this album, Dave Gahan (the lead singer) was chasing the dragon, performing oral sex on Lady H, sucking the horse’s dick etc. This album, of the dozen or so that Depeche Mode has put out n over 20 years is their best. Plus, his hair was the sexiest during “Songs”. The themes of this album are religion compared and contrasted with love and sex, but outside the theme of the album is the fact that all three main members of the band believed this would be their last album. The heroin was destroying them all. The music on the album is years a head of its time in my opinion and it all has a heavy, dark feeling to it. The instruments are nothing special but it all comes together so well in forming the theme of the album and the feeling of impending nothing outside the album. There is one track, sung by Martin Gore called “One Caress” where he is alone in a studio with a live orchestra and he is conducting and singing along with them, very good stuff. The track Condemnation is amazing. The quality of Gahan’s voice is so clearly affected by emotion and drug use that you can’t help but feel every word he crows. These songs all have some sort of religious feel to them, either a personification of God or a hymn-like feel to it or something along those lines. In the end, Gahan has asked for forgiveness, rallied against God and finally, given up. This would have been a sad ending to the career of Depeche Mode, but luckily it wasn’t. They made three or four albums after his one then broke up a few months ago. Their solo shit sucks, but hey surprise, surprise. At least we’ll always have Songs of Faith and Devotion.

Guns N Roses: Use Your Illusion II
I was given this album on my 10th Birthday by Will Marsh who later died. He gave me Use Your Illusion I and II on tape. I put it into my tape player the moment I got it and the tape player ate the tape and self destructed at the same moment. I was pretty pissed off, but I didn’t have there words to express how angry I felt. I had to use my father’s stereo that was in the living room to listen to the album. Once I listened to it, I suddenly found my vocabulary expanded by about 7 words: motherfucker, cocksucker, shit, piss, ass, fuckhead and pussy, I have NEVER taken to a set of words more swimmingly in my life. Suddenly, I was getting in trouble at school, mortifying my older cousins and impressing my schoolyard chums. Did I know what all these words meant? No, but that didn’t stop me. Thanks to W. Axl Rose, my life was changed.
Onto the album. I love Guns N’ Roses ability to be mature one moment and then revert to grade school insults the next. It’s refreshing to see a band be so popular yet so offensive. This is without a doubt their best album. Lies and Appetite for Destruction had the hits and the catchiness and the staying power, but they lacked nuance and variation. Not just on the album as a whole, but in most of the songs, you’ll find a change in tempo and tone. You can actually FEEL Axel going from sad to frustrated to angry to pissed off in Civil War. And the cover of Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door?! Jesus, Dylan must be pissed, he was totally shown up. Get in the Ring provided most of the explicit language on the album and I say thank you again to W. Axel for the pleasure of hearing people I don’t know get cursed at. Then…the album is going well, you might not like all the tracks but there is a definite sense of continuity and cohesion to the whole thing…until…My World. I can’t even describe this song…actually I can. Throbbing, pulsing, marching, stomping synthesizer (that you’ll find NOWHERE else on the album) chew your face along with screeching subway noises and the sound of women moaning. Then…the lyrics:

You wanna step into my world
It's a sociopsychotic state of bliss
You've been delayed in the real world
How many times have you hit and missed?
You cat-scan shows disfiguration
I wanna laugh myself to death
With a misfired synapse
with a bent configuration
I'll hold the line while you gasp for breath
You wanna talk to me
So talk to me
You wanna talk to me [7 times]
You can't talk to me
You don't understand your sex
You ain't been mindfucked yet
Let's do it [3 times]
Oh my distorted smile

Guess what I'm doing now

Yeah, wow. Think of early Nine Inch Nails, but much more angry and creepy. Total mindfuck (as coined by Axel in said song). The working formula for G’N’R for me involves Axl’s screeching/nasal/downright fucking irritating vocals, Slash’s numerous guitar solos (try counting them some time) and the use of the piano in kick ass hard rock. Great combo. And how about tat amazing indecipherable video trilogy they released with the albums? What the fuck was going on there? I thought I had an idea up until the final video (Estranged, which is one of the most excellent songs they do) in which everything just kind of fell apart. I love almost every track on this and it still remains one of the only albums I can just put on and enjoy even if I can’t understand half of what Axel Rose says. Knowing, at this point in my life would just ruin something, so fuck it, as Axel himself might say. The downside to the whole thing is that what makes this album so much greater and me so much sadder is that this was the last good thing GNR did. After this (which came out in 9/91) they released The Spaghetti Incident? (question mark is their idea, not mine) which was a cover album of punk songs. It sucks. The problem was that GNR has the ability to create stuff with so many nooks and crannies that it’s like a musical English muffin, but the music they were covering had no dimensions to t. It was flat. After that everyone died or left but Rose, and his recent appearance at that MTV thing was fucking ridiculous. His voice, looks, and songwriting abilities are gone. As is Slash. God what a downer. This is the most tragic of my favorite albums because of what it represents: the first great album of the 90’s and the last great Guns N’ Roses release.

Wu Tang Clan: Enter the Wu Tang (36 Chambers)
This was the first release from the Wu. It came out in 1993 and I had the cassette. This was when rap was good, but starting to get too focused on bling and hanging out. Also, rappers were polishing their albums to the point of slick, same soundingness. Then there was the Wu Tang. Nine different members with nine different voices and nine different styles of rapping. And for a kid 13 years old, how cool is it to talk about guys with names like Rza, Ghost Faced Killa and, of course, the one and only Ol’ Dirty Bastard- god bless. They used samples from old Hong Kong action movies and it added so much to their music and the feel of the album. Everything felt so prophetic. Plus, you never got bored because there were 9 different people who could jump in at any time. To give you an idea of how attached to this album I was, I had every song memorized word for word. I had their vocal intonations down. God damn I was White. This album made me respect Black people and their culture. See, I don’t consider rappers like Puff Daddy and Ludacris and any of the other popular ones out there today Black people. They are Celebrities. There’s nothing real about them or creative about their music. But the Wu’s first album was so real. So gritty. They were Black people talking about friends of theirs that had died, who they had to do to survive growing up on Staten Island which isn’t very different from shit that’s out today, but it was a lot more sincere back then. They didn’t need to fucking sample a Sting song to express sadness, they used their voices as empathetic tools, not celebrities listing the makes of their BMW’s and the type of champagne they like to spit on naked women. I heard the Wu Tang and thought, this takes so much effort and ability, these are some of the most talented people I have ever known of. Anyway, like most artists, they went downhill from here. Before they put out their second album in 1997, pretty much every one of them released a solo album. None of them were very good save Method Man’s and ODB’s. And you can really only listen to ODB for so long before you realize he’s serious and get freaked out. The second album was a double album and had some cool stuff on it, but it also showed indications of the Typical seeping in. The third album was pointless and the fourth even more so. By the fourth, ODB was in jail and the Wu Tang without Big Baby Jesus is like Depeche Mode without Personal Jesus or Christianity without Regular Jesus. Oh well. At least we’ll always have Enter the Wu Tang.

Cake
These guys are so formulaic, you could compile a mix CD consisting of tracks from all five of their albums (released in 1994, 1996,1998, 2001 and 2004) and not be able to tell which was which or even that the songs were from different albums. Why the pissy shit would someone like me who likes albums and bands such as those listed above like something so predictable and unchanging? Quite simply because these guys know what they’re doing and I like what they’re doing. On almost every one of their sixty-two songs, you will find acoustic guitar, electric guitar, a trumpet hook, smart, cynical, allegorical lyrics and an unenthused John McCrea singing/speaking/reciting them. On about half you might find a drum machine beat and a distinct feeling of “almost Country” that aspect of Beck’s Sea Change possess, but all in all you will think that Cake put out a five disc set with slight variations to the aforementioned formula. But the formula doesn’t stop there… each album has one “out of character song” namely Mr. Mastodon Farm (first album), Race Car Ya Yas (second album), Cool Blue Reason (third album), Comfort Eagle (fourth album) and End of the Movie (fifth album). Each album has an “accessible to everyone” track that is usually released as a single. Each album has a sad, “leave you feeling down” song at the end and each album title seems to have something in common with the others, but I have yet to put my finger on it. Something on a subconscious level: Motorcade of Generosity, Fashion Nugget, Prolonging the Magic, Comfort Eagle and Pressure Chief Only true fans can determine what each song is within the first 10 seconds and believe me it is a lot harder than it seems. Also, Cake is perfect driving music. 90% of their tracks go perfectly with the turning wheels of a motor vehicle, although a semi-trailer or pick up truck are the types of vehicles that pop into my head. The band just seems to have so much disdain to share with the world it’s a wonder they have any fans at all. The perfect Cake song that really sews them up, quirky, sarcastic, disdain for American society, tounge-in-cheekedness and all is called “Wheels”. It’s the first track of their brand new album.

In a wooden boat in the shipping lanes with the freighters towering over me
I can hear the jets flying overhead making lines across the darkening sky
And when the sun is going down I can take a taxi into town
And the waiter at the restaurant sets a table just for one

Wheels keep on spinning round spinning round spinning round
Wheels keep on spinning round spinning round and round

So I hired a plane to take me to a place so far away from you
Eventually we began to see that we could be completely free
And I could get away from you and you could get away from me
And we could live each separately in our cities in the sun

Wheels keep on spinning round spinning round spinning round
Wheels keep on spinning round spinning round and round

In a seedy karaoke bar by the banks of the mighty Bosporus
Is a Japanese man in a business suit singing ”Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”
And the muscular cyborg German dudes dance with sexy French Canadians
While the overweight Americans wear their patriotic jumpsuits

Wheels keep on spinning round spinning round spinning round
Wheels keep on spinning round spinning round and round

(I don't know)
Why you say you are not in love with me
(I don't know)
Why you say you are not in love with me
(I don't know)
Why you say you are not in love with me

So to the point, I have no favorite Cake album, so I’m going to pretend they did release a five disc set spanning their whole career, call it “Smarm”, that’s my favorite Cake album. To finish up with Cake, I recall the very first interview conducted with them around the release of the first album over ten years ago. The lead singer said something that also describes them perfectly and still holds true today. . John McCrea (lead singer) looks right into the camera and says, “We’re here to make sure bands stop having fun.” He wasn’t smiling.

eels: Electro Shock Blues
This was a tough one. Eels has five albums and three of them were up for favorite, but I had to go with this one. First off, eels is actually one man with a pretty constant drummer and other musicians he gets to play this and that. The lead singer and songwriter is Mark Oliver Everett III also known as E. His father, Dr. Hugh Everett III, was a quantum physicist who authored "Everett's Many Worlds Theory" in the 1950's, Everett inspired countless science fiction books, movies and Star Trek episodes with the concept of parallel universes. As a young teenager he traded letters with Albert Einstein, debating whether it was something random or unifying that held the universe together. He was a certified genius. Long story short…E began writing songs when he was about 6. When he was older to he moved to L.A. and worked shitty jobs during the day while writing songs during the night. He did this for seven years. Eventually he got someone to hear a demo and put out a solo album in the early 90’s. He put out another after that then met Butch, the drummer for eels. Anyway, this album “Electro Shock Blues” is centered on the events of basically everyone in his life dying. He found his father dead, his sister killed herself and his mother died of lung cancer. This album is the saddest and most sincere thing I have ever heard. Yeah Trent Reznor feels the pain of the world in his blood or whatever, but E’s entire family dies and he’s left to deal with it. So he does by writing this album. The first track is called “Elizabeth on the Bathroom Floor” and has lyrics like “laying on the bathroom floor/kitty licks my cheek once more/and i could try but waking up is harder when you wanna die

My name is Elizabeth
My life is shit and piss

The album also has songs like “Baby Genius” that addresses his father and the pressure he felt being a genius and the pressure E felt having to live up to that and “Dead of Winter” which is about his mother and her cancer.

so i know you're going pretty soon
radiation sore throat got your tongue
magic markers tattoo you
and show it where to aim
and strangers break their promises
you won't feel any
you won't feel any pain.

Aside from songs about his family there are also songs about his mindset and reaction to everything. The impressive thing about this album is it isn’t just E standing there crying the whole time. There are barbs of satire and humor throughout it. And, the final track, after all the tears are dry and you feel like joining Elizabeth on the bathroom floor, E’s includes a song called “P.S. You Rock My World” that opens with the line “I was at a funeral the day I realized I wanted to spend my life with you” and the whole masterpiece ends with the hopeful line “maybe it’s time to live” showing that even though these terrible things happened to him, he found a away to go on and thrive in the face of blah blah blah. It’s really less sappy if you listen to it.