Vitamin C!

Vitamin C - Can
That's Vitamin C! It's also called L-asorbic acid. Vitamin C is essential for human life. Some animals, strangely, make their own vitamin C internally, most notably all bats and tarsiers and monkeys and apes. I'm glad that we do not make our own vitamin C internally because I enjoy having an excuse to eat lots of kiwis and grapefruits and tangerines.

Here is a picture of some citrus fruits:

They look delicious, don't they?

I am assured that vitamin C has biological significance. Here is a quote from a fairly reliable source: "SVCT2 is involved in vitamin C transport in almost every tissue, the notable exception being red blood cells which lose SVCT during maturation. Knockout animals for SVCT2 die shortly after birth, suggesting that SVCT2-mediated vitamin C transport is necessary for life." The complicated and unfamiliar language assures me that vitamin C is, indeed, biologically significant. While I do not understand the quote I provided, I am curious about some of its claims. I feel a certain pathos for red blood cells who lose their SVCT after they graduate from, presumably, adolescence. I guess life (with all its dependence on vitamin C) is tough for everyone. I am also curious about what a "knockout animal" is. I am also saddened to learn that they die quickly after they are born. God is cruel.

While vitamin C is essential for life, "Vitamin C" (please note the helpful quotation marks) is also a song by a German band called Can. Like the scientific language above, they are complicated and unfamiliar. When they were a band in West Germany (the democratic sovereign state on the right side of the Iron Curtain, which is a metaphor for the divide between communist states and democratic states), Can recorded a few strange albums with strange names like and Tago Mago and Monster Movie and Ege Bamyasi. The album from which "Vitamin C" is taken is Ege Bamyasi, which means "Aegean okra" in the Turkish language. Okra is also good. However, it is not a citrus fruit, so do not expect it to deliver any vitamin C (please note the lack of quotation marks) to you. I also like the song "Father Cannot Yell" by this band, but I am not writing about that song. I am writing about "Vitamin C."

The song "Vitamin C" is a very good song. I would say that it is the best song on the album. I make that claim because the song that should be the best song (the next song on the album, "Soup") is over 10 minutes long and only 5 of those minute are really good. I sometimes lose my patience with the last 5 minutes of "Soup." I do not lose my patience with "Vitamin C" because it is an important song. I think the song is a PSA (or public service announcement) for the importance of receiving vitamin C. The singer of Can reminds the listener of the song that he or she is losing his or her vitamin C. Since vitamin C is important for life, the singer's message about the importance of vitamin C is an important message.

Losing your vitamin C is a scary proposition. Think about this when you are thinking about not getting your vitamin C by eating a citrus fruit: vitamin C deficiency is the cause of a disease called scurvy. To illustrate the danger of scurvy, please look at the helpful picture below:


When you have scurvy you have loss of teeth, pale skin, and sunken eyes. Since you probably like to not lose your teeth or have your skin be pale or have your eyes sunken, then you would be wise to heed the warning of the lead singer of Can to get your vitamin C by eating citrus fruits.

On a historical note, many pirates had scurvy because they did not have access to the vitamin C-rich citrus fruits that we decadent Americans take for granted every morning at breakfast while we read USA Today and sip hot beverages like tea or coffee. Also, many sailors (who were people who ferried commercial goods over vast oceans) had scurvy too. If you will excuse the pun, they were in the same boat as pirates with regard to their vitamin C consumption. Sometimes, pirates wanted to steal the commercial goods that sailors were transporting. The pirate captain would order his ship to ride beside the commercial freighter while his men stormed aboard. The pirates would take the commercial goods because they could use those commercial goods or they could sell the commercial goods on the black market. Think about this fact: men with scurvy (pirates) often fought other men with scurvy (sailors). God is cruel.

I want to say one last thing about the song "Vitamin C." My favorite part of the song is the noises made at the end. At first it sounds like someone breathing with a deviated septum. But then you think it sounds like the moment right before a tea kettle begins its full whistle. Then you think it sounds like seagulls, which just backs up the scurvy/pirate theme I mentioned earlier. At the very end of the song, though, it is clear that it is some kind of digital sound, perhaps made by a keyboard or a computer. Keyboards/computers are remarkable like that. They make our lives sustainable, which is what vitamin C does.

Fuck The Security Guards

Fuck the Security Guards



Sorry I didn't get one up yesterday—got a little busy. As recompense, I give you “Fuck The Security Guards”, by Niggaz With Hats, the fictional rap group from the sadly forgotten mockumentary, Fear of a Black Hat. Made in the early 90's, the genre hadn't really been played out yet—this was way after Spinal Tap (to which it is clearly homage--the go through a series of white managers, each one of who gets murdered), but still before Guffman and the recent spate of Office clones. The premise, basically, is to follow around a send-up of NWA as they get famous, break-up, and eventually reunite. Why NWH? Because it was a lack of hats that kept the slaves down, of course, they were too tired to escape at night because they had the son beating down on their heads all day. The music, while all parodies, is actually not that bad—in this case, the security guard riff seemed a lot fresher back then because it was long before the Mall Cop meme entered our national lexicon. Highlight of the movie, perhaps, is Ice Cold trying to explain the deep social importance of their misunderstood mega-hit, Booty Juice, or Pet That Pussy:

Ice Cold: "P", Political, "U", Unrest, "S", Stabilize, another "S", Society, "Y", Yeah.

"I Say Fever" Ramona Falls, "I'm That Type of Guy" LL Cool J

"You're the type of guy to call me a punk, not knowin your main girl is bitin my chunk."


I Say Fever
by Ramona Falls, Intuit, 2009.
I'm That Type of Guy
by LL Cool J, Walking With a Panther, 1989.

I am completely addicted to "I Say Fever" right now.

It's amazing to me how loaded those opening hard guitar strums and piano tinkles are. The opening lyrics all about waiting five years make no sense whatsoever to me, nor does the response, "I say fever," but Brent Knopf seems pretty fucking thrilled to be saying it. The heights that he stretches that moment to are astounding. It's nonsensical catharsis.

Brent Knopf is a member of Menomena, a band I don't particularly care for (even though I love their name), but I love Intuit and it will end up on my year-end lists (if you like this song but aren't completely sold, listen to "Clover" as well).

As far as I can tell, the song is about a guy who's trying to figure out when to either marry or have sex with a lady. His contention is, there's no time like the present. You know, drop it like it's hot, or as he sings at some point, "Hold my heart like a hot potato."

About three and a half minutes in it goes into that very weird Wizard of Oz Emerald City Guard chanting, which is different from the militaristic chanting of R.E.M's "Orange Crush" or Kayne's "Jesus Walks" (which I think is a sample of the R.E.M. maybe?) but it did remind me an awful lot of a song I loved twenty years ago, Mr. James Smith's "I'm That Type of Guy," which couldn't be any more clear what it's about: LL Cool J will do your girlfriend, love her pudding (I'm not sure if that's a metaphor or not, I hope not because pudding IS delicious), go down on her (seems like if that's what he meant by pudding he wouldn't repeat himself, right?), takes her to breakfast, lunch, dinner, and breakfast (okay, maybe he would repeat himself).


Delicious sexual metaphor, Cool James!





Later LL Cool J seems to run out of metaphors, and this is where the song gets hilarious. "I'm the type of guy/ That lets you keep believin it/ Go ahead and work/ While I defrost it and season it." Uh, yep. Unless her boyfriend is Jeffrey Dahmer, this seems like it's stretching a bit. Why is he putting on a pamper? (yes, I understand he might be talking about pampering in the other sense, but it doesn't sound like it, "put on a pamper"? It sounds more like fetishistic acts, which, hey, cool, I guess.) Why is leaving his drawers in their hamper a good thing? So the dude's girlfriend has to do the laundry? How does that appeal to the ladies? Get ready to wash my filthy underpants! I don't know if we find the type of guy he is appealing any longer. Also, he threatens an excellent ring and run or whatever you called it when you were six. When you start threatening to ring someone's doorbell and leave, you've truly run out of gas. Of course, I shouldn't question the workings of one LL Cool J.

But "I'm That Type of Guy" separates itself from some of what was going on in hip-hop at the time with this slinky production (courtesy of L.A. Posse, which included DJ Pooh and Muffla). That opening machine-gun beat sets the tone. Reversing notes, flipping bass lines, dropping in heavy pianos, and then, of course, bringing in a chorus to chant the piece from Wizard of Oz is the coup de grace. I would give my life savings (admittedly a negative number) to be in the studio while they were explaining to a bunch of dudes what they were there to do.

The absolute best part of this song, and maybe any rap track by an established artist, comes around 3 minutes in, when LL just sits out for half a bar for no reason. He kind of matches it on the other half of the verse, but not really. Just awkward silence and the track runs on without him. So, uh

The Dark End of the Street - Percy Sledge

The Dark End of the Street


If Dave brought us two (very different) versions of the same street story, then I would like to present a third telling in this little romantic Rashomon: Percy Sledge's "The Dark End of the Street."

Bill Withers has just stomped by with Percy's girl. Percy has tried to give Withers the stare down, but he doesn't have it in him. Percy's a lover, not a fighter. Look at that man over there. A man with curls like that isn't worried about posturing because while you're flexing down at the corner bar, tapping your feet to Arthur Conley, he's busy whispering sweet nothings in your girl's ear. This is a man who has only ever curled his fist around a microphone.

But Withers' return look, a dead-eyed look of unnamable recriminations, stops Percy cold in the street. He watches Withers walk away with his girl, listening to him ask her pointed questions. Who is he to her!? Only her truest love! Then, the strings begin to tighten around the girl in question and Withers' massive arm pulls her closer. That tambourine sounds ominously like a fist being punched into the palm of his hand. Someone's seeing the business end of that fist tonight, dadgumit.

Percy's paralyzed. He feels his heart breaking as their history together on this very street comes back in the wavy notes of a guitar. Here, on this street, at the dark end down there, he used to meet her. They didn't belong there, but then again they didn't belong anywhere. Now here come the waves of guilt. Percy might be a ladies man, but he's right with Jesus. Everything he has done in the name of love is framed as erotic iniquity. His paranoia threatens to get the best of this lover man: Withers knows, his wife knows, everyone down at Muscle Shoals First Baptist Church knows. And they're going to find Percy and his girl. And it's going to end. With some of the unbrassiest horn backing in all of soul, Percy almost loses it.

But a voice rises up from the graveyard organ haunting Percy's song. A voice so sonorous and pure that it can only be the lonely call of his girl. She's still in if he is! He won't give up. He won't be a martyr for love. Percy ain't going to let Bill 'The Cuckold' Withers stand in his way. This man has a plan. Should this happen again, she is to be cool. She is to be much cooler than she was today ("Clearing your throat? Are you kidding me!?"). Just walk on by. Don't give anything away. Don't cry because we'll meet later. We'll work on your excuse. We'll meet down at the dark end of the street, and then we've got the world open before us.

Bode

Julianna Barwick "Bode"


Every six to eight months I wake up totally uninterested in guitars. I don't want to hear them strummed; I don't want to hear them belt out impressive solos. Shit, I don't really even want to hear someone even accompany a guitar. This lasts, at most, for a week or two or three. I woke up 4 days ago with this feeling. I have no interest in listening to guitar-based music. Which is unfortunate because I was planning on writing about VU's "Oh Sweet Nuthin'."

The last time this happened, I ended up stumbling upon Julianna Barwick's Florine EP, which contains this stunner. My most recent discovery is something entirely different, but it's going to require a thesis-level analysis before I'm ready to present it. Honestly. This post, which I'll throw up some time this weekend (maybe even tomorrow night), is probably going to be epic.

Aside from the one moment of textual interpretation needed (I think the lone lyric is "I'm going to take you on," a uniquely beautiful sentiment in its own right), there's basically nothing that needs to be said about this song. You should know, I guess, that all the sounds are generated by recording and/or processing Barwick's voice (the song works best on headphones, by the way). That's nice to know because it makes this epically beautiful song more humble. I'm actually afraid to talk about this song too much because it's like dissecting a joke or describing a flower: the more attention paid to it only ruins it. Just let it be said, then, that these are the prettiest (and I mean every syllable of that word) 5 minutes of music I've heard all year.

Who Was That?

apologies for missing my last post. we're in the midst of an apartment renovation, and truth be told, i ought be patching plaster. however, there is no electricity in the apartment right now, and the lack of the light would make mixing ratios a gamble. i can't even continue research for components, as i'm really tired of looking at ceiling fans--the final frontier for modern design...

i've been cursing my music library of late, with everything feeling tired and me being shy the time to find new stuff (this blog has been a nice gift, with clinic entering the mix). i also noted that i initiated my contributions with the white stripes and the misfits, which while thoroughly enjoyable, don't exactly provide a wide glimpse at what i'm listening to. so, having cursed at my ipod's selections, i was hit with some bill withers, and he suggested a paired offering that will provide us with many opportunities to say "pips" in an earnest fashion. breath 'bated, we carry on.

on to bill withers. i love bill withers. this guy repeated the words "i know" 26 times in a row, and we ate it up. you ask people "how many times does bill withers say "i know" in "ain't no sunshine"?" people often offer in the low teens. twelve, thirteen times, maybe fifteen...that's what we assume to be the longest repetition endurable before terming it "droning" or "grating." bill withers can double you up on that. (footnote: thom yorke and his 46 "the raindrops" are sitting smugly, stage right.) bill withers was making toilet seats for 747's when he consumed a jack lemon movie and crapped a grammy. and he refused to resign his job at the toilet factory. that's bill withers. al green and d'angelo covered his song and it's still his.
so we got bill withers.

and we got gladys knight and the pips. a girl, her brother, and two of their cousins. an institution in cleveland assures us that they could craft a pop song. "midnight train to georgia" is in the grammy hall of fame. the wu-tang catalog would be thinner minus the pips. if you ask gladys knight, she'll tell you that diana ross herself removed the pips as the supremes opening act on tour in '68 because they were too good.
so we got gladys knight and the pips.

this may not have the headlines of otis vs. aretha, but we're in for good times with gender roles.

bill gets right to it. the driving bass sets him off like a shark. a guy on the street gives bill the stinkeye, and he checks his girl. he looks at her and the strings come in to send a shiver up MY spine. she's sunk. it's bad enough that his woman is sneakin around on him, but damn, life at the toilet seat factory is tough enough without having dudes in the neighborhood flexin on him due to no fault of his own. this is gonna stop right now. bill withers will not be played.
the assured sing song in his "(i don't know who he is) but i think that YOU DOOOO" makes me laugh, but not her. no, she is gonna share her information. now. do not play the coincidence card. the throat thing? that was cute. do you think bill doesn't know that game? still, dadgummit, he's a respectful man. you will have an opportunity to explain.

break for the bass. he is cirlcing tighter, nosing closer.

he comes in with a mathematic puzzler to show how calculating he can be. he stretches out the "i get confuuuused" because her math is so much more advanced than his and to rhyme it off the aforementioned playground "you DOOOOO". bill's subtle. he gets crafty with homonyms, using exasperation to set up his own punchline--she's "too much...for one man but not enough for two." he throws her snides back at her. he may be a dumb ol' baloo of a man, but he's got enough intuition to know what she's up to. this girl knows he isn't dumb, and convincing herself otherwise hasn't worked to convince him of it. so it's in the room now, or on the street as it were, which leads to a big finish: "Before you leave your old home / be certain of the new." dadgummit, bill will maintain his dignity. do you have any? who was he, and what is he to you?


given the origins of the song, gladys will henceforth face comparison with bill. such is the nature of the cover song. where bill withers is smooth, gladys and the pips are sassy. bill's in the song at 8 seconds. there are 36 pips before gladys makes an appearsnce. here, the drum and high hat set it off like a pair of heels on sidewalk and the bass throws some hips on it. they build something funky while gladys tries to compose herself. the organ whines an "aw HELL no" just before she starts hyperventilating words. there is potential for hunt-like explosion here, but she is in control. (at least until vocal pips at 55 seconds make me giggle.) the something in her heart seems a little bigger than bill's, a little closer to the clutch in her neck, so she clears her throat at his cue.

she plays it pitch perfect around 1:50, letting go of a yell that releases into a sob and an exhalation.

gladys can figure sums, too. there's a bit more separation between her "i think you do" and her arithmetic confusion, so rather than bill's elongated smugness, she is going to play her 1+1=3 with a grinned "hm". this woman is acutely pissed. her "dadgummit," gets an "mmhmm" as a comma, indicating it is not an exclamation so much as an interjection, a breath before an eruption. then she lets loose with the question at hand, a "who the fuck is THAT bitch?!" that would make ice cube smile. there are times when i wish the pips had stopped squeaking in here and punctuated gladys with some horns.

she regroups. gets control. she reminds him of his cracks on her intuitive skills, and she slaps him with a brisk "ISTHATREALLYWHATYOUTHINK?" "HMM!?" to remind the dumb motherfucker that she is no exception to the commonly held regard for women's intuitive abilities. and when it comes to the send off, she lets loose with a dismissive "boy" to remind him to respect his home and his mama. coming from an atlanta-based group in the 70s...ouch. she will chase him away before she is walked over.

bill withers carries his song with a quiet strength, but gladys is full of head-shakin, wrist-wavin punch. i ended up listening to these songs all night, and i'm up beyond bedtime, so, to bring this back around to home renovation, i provide this pairing as eye candy.

a: the pips



b: a fan from the modern fan company's "ball hugger collection"

"Who Was That Man (And What Is He to You)"

"Who Was That Girl (And What Is She to You)"

A Sadies Sampler

Wolf Tones


The Land Between


The Trial


As far as I'm concerned, this is the most underrated band going today. As in, I think they kick a tremendous amount of ass, but no one seems to have heard of them. But, you've probably listened to them before—they're the backing band for Neko Case, or at least they used to be. They've got a legitimately unique sound. I guess you could say that they fit loosely into whatever is left of alt-country, but it's really more surf-country—or something like that. Like if Dick Dale had scored a Sergio Leone film. Still, it ranges a decent bit—from sweeping instrumentals to more desolate pieces where you can almost hear a tumbleweed passing through. Then there's a lot of CS&N or Byrds influence—of the legit and non-sucky sort, Blitzen Trapper, you self-important, hippie-chic, blowhards. Anyway, I'm a fan.