Quintessential Songs: Reducing a Band's Essence to Just One Song (PART 2)

Welcome to Part 2 of this little series of posts where I try to choose the one, and only one, song that encapsulates all there is about some of my favorite bands. I won't belabor the point by rehashing the "rules" for this little thought exercise...if you want to refresh your memory, you can read them at the beginning of Part 1. With that out of the way, let's jump right in to Part 2!

Blur: One of my favorite bands ever, and really the only band from my own generation (although others are close) that I place in the same rarefied air as all of the 1960s bands I have in the top tier of my rock music pantheon. If you want to talk about a band that constantly changed and evolved their sound from one album to the next, Blur will be near the top of that list. While this factor is one of the things that has made them so successful, both critically and commercially, it also makes my task here that much harder. How on earth do I choose just one song that covers all of the different aspects of their sound, which encompasses everything like classic British pop and rock, American lo-fi, English Music Hall, electronic, and world music? Like any great band, they have an instantly identifiable sound but no two albums sound alike and they've spent their entire career constantly pushing forward. It took me a really long time to come up with that one song that captures everything about them, but I think I made a good choice with...

Beetlebum. It's probably my favorite Blur song of all time anyway, and the more I thought about it, it seemed like it was the right choice for this little game we're playing here. With that muted guitar intro before launching into a memorable riff, it grabs your attention right away. The chorus is gorgeous, catchy, and very Beatle-esque...in fact, the entire song is. I've read it described elsewhere as the darkness and light of the White Album all in one song, and for me that's a perfect description. It's the ideal mix of Blur's melodic gift, their edginess and experimental tendencies, imaginative production, and fabulous musicianship.  While Blur's entire career is chock full of superlative moments on both the single and album scale, in my mind "Beetlebum" has always been not only their best song, but their quintessential song.

Rush: Rush is one of those bands you either love or hate...there doesn't seem to be any middle ground. Their fans tend to be predominantly male, musicians themselves, geeky (ie into sci-fi, philosophy, science, technology), and in many cases highly intelligent. Indeed, as a massive Rush fan myself I fit all of those criteria, as do 99% of the the fellow Rush fanatics I've met over the course of my life...the amount of guys I've known in my career as a chemist who are also Rush fans is huge. Musically, all three of the guys in the band are virtuosos, and lyrically they are very smart, philosophical, and playfully humorous. Even with a career spanning 40+ years and millions of records sold, people either love these guys or despise and dismiss them. Putting all of that aside, the biggest challenge for me in choosing just one Rush song to represent their long career has to do with all of the different musical phases they've had. First was the hard rock power trio prog era of 1974-1976. Starting with 1976's breakthrough album 2112  through 1984 they were one of the finest rock bands on the planet, melding hard rock with progressive rock's virtuosity and ambitious concepts and compositions. From 1984-1988 they heavily incorporated synthesizers into their sound, while from 1989 to the present they've returned to a more stripped down, heavier sound. There's an awful lot of ground to cover, although in the end my final choice wasn't as surprising to me as I thought it would be...

Red Barchetta. It's the second song off of their biggest selling and most well-known album, 1981's Moving Pictures, a record chock full of hits like "Tom Sawyer," "YYZ," "Limelight," and "Vital Signs." "Red Barchetta" is a fantastic song, but probably only known to hardcore Rush fans, so why did I choose it as my essential Rush song? There are a variety of reasons, the first being that it comes from an album smack dab in the middle of the period in their career when they were transitioning from the long, elaborate song-suites to leaner, more streamlined songs. Moving Pictures was the last Rush album to contain a long, 10+ minute song ("The Camera Eye") and they still had one foot (barely) planted in their prog past as they looked toward the more stripped down, synth-laden 1980s. "Red Barchetta" straddles this divide as it's nearly 7 minutes long and progresses through several distinct sections, yet is such a complete, unified song that it never seems that long. It's got tasteful yet essential synthesizer parts woven within the musical tapestry, but is still mainly reliant on the virtuosic instrumental abilities of Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart. The lyrics are based on a short science fiction story set in a future when the simple freedom of driving a car is illegal and the world lives in fear of a despotic communist government who controls its inhabitants every move. It's an adventure tale of a young man who, along with his uncle, keeps an old antique sports car (the titular vehicle) hidden in a barn and takes it out occasionally for joyrides. On this particular day, the young man is caught by the police force and uses his driving ability and the smaller size of the car (when compared to the "gleaming alloy air-cars...two lanes wide" used by the police) to outrace them and return to his uncle's farm, where they laugh about the incident by the fireside that night. It's catchy, a fun story, some killer playing (that guitar solo!) and captures everything great about Rush, including their humor, something they have always had in abundance but which the uninformed tend to overlook. If you're not a Rush fan, give the song a listen...you just might like it!

The Smiths: They were one of the most legendary indie rock bands of all time and almost single-handedly kept guitar-based music alive in the UK and Europe during the dark musical times that were the 1980s.  Splintering right on the cusp of international stardom in the US (where they already had a huge and devoted cult following), the Smiths' reputation has only grown and grown since they acrimoniously disbanded in 1987. They never strayed too far from their very British lush and powerful sound that owed so much to the great 45rpm singles and albums of the 1960s and the punk records of the 1970s Morrissey and Johnny Marr loved so much, but there was definitely a progression on their albums toward a more mature, powerful, and exciting sound. The debut album, while solid, is a bit underwhelming, but from there through their next few albums, as well as all of those fabulous non-album singles and B-sides, there's a veritable cornucopia of stuff to choose from in deciding which single song is worthy of encompassing the essence of Smiths. My choice...

There Is a Light That Never Goes Out. If you're a Smiths fan, this is perhaps not a surprising choice, but even so, how can you go wrong with such a fantastic song as this one? It's buried as the penultimate track on what is widely considered to be their masterpiece album The Queen is Dead (for me, as much as I love that album, I actually prefer Strangeways Here We Come or even Meat is Murder) but it's worthy of far better. The fact that such a song could have been sequenced on the album that way speaks volumes as to the quality of the Smiths' output. The song has an instantly recognizable hook kicking things off that is repeated throughout the song and its beautiful, lilting melody and rhythm is propelled by excellent performances from Marr, Andy Rourke, and Mike Joyce. On top of this all is one of Morrissey's finest vocals and lyrics, chronicling the doomed romanticism of the lovesick narrator who is too crippled by shyness and insecurity to express his feelings: he'd rather he and the object of his affections die together in a car crash and be linked together for eternity in death than to risk rejection. The Smiths (well, okay, Morrissey) are often mocked as being perpetually dour and depressing by those too unfamiliar or lazy to actually listen to more than one or two of their songs, but this song melds Moz's tragic story (along with his humor, far too often dismissed throughout his career) with the gorgeous musical backdrop written by Marr and brought to life by the three instrumental Smiths. It's everything special and unique about the Smiths in one three-minute song.

R.E.M.: It's ironic that I decided to choose an R.E.M. song to immediately follow the Smiths, as the two bands ran eerily parallel careers on opposite sides of the Atlantic during the 1980s, the main difference being that R.E.M. was truly more of an all-for-one-and-one-for-all band, whereas the Smiths were more of a creative partnership (Morrissey and Marr) and two subordinates. The other major difference between the two bands it that R.E.M. went on to achieve massive worldwide stardom and critical acclaim upon finally signing with a major label (Warner Brothers) in 1988, whereas the Smiths split before ever recording a note for their major label (EMI). Because of this difference, R.E.M. went on to have an extremely successful 31 year career as opposed to the Smiths' mere 5 years. R.E.M.'s music covered the gamut from jangly guitar rock, folk, punk, country, glam rock, Americana, and every other genre that influenced them. Even among R.E.M. fans, there are many who only prefer the earlier jangle-pop, some who prefer the later, lusher material, and some like me who love it all. Because of this last fact, I thought it would be difficult to choose just one song to represent them, but in fact the more I thought about it, all roads led back to my favorite R.E.M. song which I also think crystallizes their essence perfectly.  

Man On the Moon. Yes, it's one of their most well-known songs and comes from their most commercially and critically acclaimed album, Automatic For the People. Even though it might seem like a safe choice, I really think it does everything it's supposed to do for this little thought exercise. It's got a ridiculously catchy chorus, showcases all four members' musicianship, and integrates multiple aspects of their sound such as rock, country, Americana, and pop. It's also got lyrics that are at once nonsense yet meaningful and funny, often at the same time. Coincidentally, it comes almost in the middle of R.E.M.'s career and covers all of the musical ground in a way I can't really explain any more. Just listen for yourself to see what I mean, unless you're a fan in which case you'll already get it.

Suede: Shifting gears back to the other side of the pond, I've already written a feature on Suede here on the blog, so I won't get into too much detail regarding their career. Briefly, though, while they've been around for 25 years, they've only released six albums (in addition to a host of superb non-album singles and B-sides).  They certainly changed their sound up from album to album, but they definitely remained true to their roots, with all of their music drawing heavily upon 1970s David Bowie, the Smiths, and Pet Shop Boys. They did foray into more straight-ahead 1960s-tinged pop with 1996's Coming Up and electronic experimentation on 1999's Head Music, but by and large the sound they established on their 1993 self-titled debut has remained the foundation upon which all of it is built. That being said, Suede still managed to pen songs that rocked in equal proportion to dark, achingly beautiful and despairing ballads. Perhaps that's why my go-to song for Suede is none other than...

The Wild Ones. Repeatedly cited by Bernard Butler as his favorite Suede song ever, I find it hard to argue. A beautiful ballad with an incredibly complex guitar part running throughout, it also contains one of Brett Anderson's best vocals and lyrics and is at the top of the list for the best of the Anderson/Butler songwriting partnership. A romantically doomed ballad of a love rapidly slipping through the singer's fingers, the extended version has another fantastic Butler guitar solo (is there any other kind?) which was inexplicably edited out of the album version on 1994's Dog Man Star. For me, this only adds to why this song is definitive Suede and why it's the only choice if you have to choose only one song of theirs.

Frank Zappa: Perhaps Zappa is too weird or ambitious a choice for this series of posts: the man's career spanned 30 years and almost 100 albums before he died, and dozens more releases have appeared after his death, drawn from his almost endless vault of studio and live tapes. If ever one artist truly tried to, and oftentimes succeeded in, bringing just about every style of music in existence into his own work, it was Zappa. Blues, rock, jazz, classical, avant garde, spoken word, concept albums, doo-wop, electronic, and many more styles were all amalgamated into his music. As I've written in more detail previously, he was also a keen and wicked social critic and commentator, and there was usually an element of humor to his songs as well. Frank is probably the one artist of whom I'm a fan that is probably impossible to reduce down to one song, but I'm committed (or should be, hah!) at this point, so what the hell...

Montana. Yes, my choice is a song about a fictional dental-floss farmer in Montana who rides a pygmy pony in the moon-lighty-night, rustling his crop with a pair of zircon-encrusted tweezers in his hand. No, there's no cutting social commentary buried in the lyrics to "Montana"...it truly is just Frank having some fun and coming up with a silly, bizarre story. However, it never ceases to bring a smile to my face or elicit a chuckle even after having heard it hundreds of times over the years. Beyond the lyrics, musically this is as complex and rich a Zappa song as you'll hear. Some of the lines the horns, vibraphone, guitar, bass, and drums have to play in unison are staggeringly difficult and showcase the always fantastic musicianship Frank demanded of his band members, no matter who came and went over the years. The vocal arrangements are inventive and harmonically interesting, and of course when you're talking about Zappa, you can never leave his guitar playing out of it..."Montana" has one of the great FZ solos on record, with his snarling, nasty tone achieved through playing through a small amp at maximum volume. His inventive and wholly unique guitar style and technique come through loud and clear...this solo is but one of the numerous reminders that Zappa was a one-of-a-kind master of the guitar. "Montana" doesn't cover all of the musical ground FZ managed to cover in his career, but it incorporates enough of them that in my opinion it's the perfect song for showing anyone who has never heard him what he was all about.

So that's Part 2 wrapped up...I hope you enjoyed reading my picks and would love to hear from you on some of yours. If you're a fan of any of the above musicians, which tracks would you choose for them? And if you've never listened to any of these bands, how did you like these songs?

(stay tuned for Part 3, which will be coming soon!)

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Frank Zappa

Visionary. Genius. Iconoclast. Provocateur. Madman. Mad scientist. Guitar hero. These are just some of the ways Frank Zappa has been described since he first burst onto music scene and the public consciousness in the mid-1960s.  Impossible to pigeonhole and ridiculously prolific, FZ has always defied categorization. His canon can be intimidating to the uninitiated, and he had so many phases of his career that people can and do like, all, some, or none of his work.  The music of Frank Zappa can seem impenetrable to the outsider, and he's rightly been mischaracterized as someone who writes "comedy" or "novelty" songs, who was needlessly vulgar (he was, sometimes), and "dangerous," but those who have an open mind, a sense of humor, and are willing to really pay attention to the music  will find that most of the above labels do apply to Frank, and they will be richly rewarded.

Frank Zappa was born on December 21, 1940 and, after moving around with his family for a while, grew up and graduated from high school in the Los Angeles area.  From a young age, he developed an interest in music, but not the typical rock and roll that other teenagers in the 1950s were going crazy over. Instead, Zappa had an interest in classical, jazz, avant garde, blues, and doo-wop music, all of which would eventually find their way into his subsequent career. After initially starting off on drums, he moved to guitar as a teenager, which is the instrument he would become famous for. After high school, Frank started working at a studio, eventually taking it over and dubbing it "Studio Z" before it closed down. He finally got with a serious band in LA in 1965; calling themselves the Mothers (later changing it to the Mothers of Invention at the insistence of their record company), he embarked upon the career that we all know and love.

I think from here that it's most convenient to discuss Zappa's career by phase, starting with the first one. This is his classic Mothers phase that ran from 1965 through 1969.  One thing to note is that throughout his career, Frank had numerous different band line-ups. All of them were comprised of incredible musicians; they had to be in order to play the complex music he wrote. Many of them went on to successful careers after their tenure with him, such as Steve Vai, Terry Bozzio, George Duke, Adrian Belew, Mike Kenneally, and many others. All of his bands had their own unique identity and sound, both of which neatly corresponded with the particular phase Zappa was in. So, getting back to the original Mothers, this was the lineup that announced to the world that this wasn't your run of the mill American rock group of the mid-to-late 1960s. They certainly couldn't have burst onto the scene with a better debut than 1966's Freak Out!, which was a double album showcasing Zappa's eclectic style, with songs ranging from pastiche and parody to social comment and scathing teardowns, all of which would remain a staple of his entire oeuvre. Songs like "Trouble Every Day" ruminated on the 1965 Watts Riots in LA while the more avant garde and musique concrete songs, especially "Return of the Son of Monster Magnet" predated the Beatles' own forays into this with "Carnival of Light," "What's the New Mary Jane?" and "Revolution 9." The album was, in fact, a favorite of Paul McCartney's and one of his inspirations when coming up with the concept for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Further albums such as Absolutely Free, Uncle Meat, and 1968's brilliant piss-take of Sgt. Pepper, hippies, and the commercialization of the Summer of Love, We're Only In It For the Money, showed that Zappa and the Mothers were a band to which attention must be paid. However, internal struggles and band members bristling against Zappa's dictatorial control led to the disbanding of the group in 1969, giving way to phase two of his career. Beginning with the excellent Hot Rats album in 1969, Zappa began stretching his instrumental chops and embarked on a more theatrical phase of his career. A new band, fronted by Flo & Eddie (really Mark Vollman and Howard Kaylan, formerly of the Turtles who had to assume stage names for legal reasons) recorded and toured their version of an rock and roll vaudeville troupe, with extended song suites that told stories, like "Billy the Mountain," the hilarious "Groupie Routine," culminating with the 1971 film and album "200 Motels," about life on the road in a "typical rock band" (which they certainly were not!).  An incident in 1971 almost killed Frank, however, when a deranged fan who was paranoid that the band were going to steal his girlfriend away rushed onstage during  show at the Rainbow Theatre in London and shoved Zappa off the front, into the concrete orchestra pit below. His injuries resulted in a broken back and leg and a crushed larynx. The broken bones led to him being confined to a wheelchair for a while and the incorrect healing of his leg led to it being shorter than the other, resulting in a lifetime of back pain. The crushed larynx resulted in his voice being lowered by a third for the rest of his life, which is most pronounced on his first non-instrumental album after the injury, 1973's Overnite Sensation (which we'll return to later...).

During his convalescence, Zappa and his band recorded two instrumental big band rock/jazz albums, both of which are excellent: Waka/Jawaka and The Grand Wazoo.

Once he was fully healed, the next (and my favorite) phase began, with the aforementioned Overnite Sensation. Starting with this album and running all the way through 1979's Sheik Yerbouti, this was the closest Frank came to mainstream success. This was due to a more accessible sound, where he pared down the avant garde leanings while still retaining the ridiculous musical complexity he was known for. This is also the stretch where he really began to flex his muscles as a guitarist, with a soloing style and tone that was wholly unique. The apotheosis of this prowess was three albums of instrumentals focusing on his various guitar solo styles: the albums Shut Up N' Play Yer Guitar, Guitar, and Trance-Fusion. There are so many great albums during this stretch of the 1970s (and Frank was so damn prolific) that it's almost impossible to cover them all in a reasonable-length post, but my favorites are Overnite Sensation, Apostrophe('), One Size Fits All, Zappa In New York, Sheik Yerbouti, and Lather. 

After Sheik Yerbouti, Frank continued his prolific pace with some excellent albums, like the scathing rock opera Joe's Garage and the complex music contained on the albums Studio Tan, Sleep Dirt, and Orchestral Favorites. However, it was also around this time when he seemed to get unnecessarily vulgar and puerile, and while his lyrics still meant something, he was often saying it in ways that were so obscene and juvenile that it got tiresome. I'm certainly not someone who gets offended easily, and being offended is not the reason I feel this way; it's just there, whereas previously Frank did it sparingly and cleverly for maximum impact, by this point it was his default position and just got boring after a while. The nadir of this approach is 1984's ThingFish album, which I've only been able to listen to a handful of times.  It was also during this phase where Frank scaled back his relentless touring and focused instead on composing his classical pieces, mainly on a new piece of technology called the Synclavier. Honestly, there is very little of this period of his music that I listen to on a regular basis. The lone bright spots (for me) are the live recordings released that come from his penultimate tour in 1984 and his final tour in 1988, both of which featured perhaps his most technically accomplished band. However, this tour ended abruptly in acrimony due to band infighting and FZ's worsening health. He had been diagnosed with inoperable prostate cancer in the mid-1980s, but he worked until he literally couldn't work anymore. Frank passed away surrounded by his wife and kids at the age of 53 in December 1994.  However, he left behind mountains of recorded music (he recorded EVERYTHING), much of which has been released since his death and is quite good.  A lot of this is live music, and on a good night, Frank and his band were unstoppable. He also encouraged audience participation, making the concerts truly interactive. They look and sound like they were a blast and it's one of my regrets that I was born too late to ever see him live.

Beyond his writing, guitar playing, and relentless productivity, FZ was also a pioneer as a producer, inventing and developing several studio techniques that led the way to wholly unique and interesting sounds and which are now taken for granted. His extensive use of overdubbing and varispeeding allowed him to make clarinets and saxophones sound like string symphonies and various percussion overdubs to sound like monstrous drum kits. He also created and developed a technique he called "xenochrony," where he would lift passages from live performances, drop them onto a reel of studio tape, and build entirely new songs around them. In most cases, it was a guitar solo from one of his songs that he would lift, put onto a new tape, and build an entirely new song around.  If this sounds daunting, it is...think of the different time signatures and keys that a single guitar solo track would be played in. It's a testament not only to Frank's genius but the skill of his band members that they could play what he wrote so well that the songs sound fully formed and cohesive. Most of the Joe's Garage album was constructed this way, as well as the song "Rubber Shirt" from Sheik Yerbouti, which was put together by taking a drum track from one live song and a bass guitar track from a totally different song and blending them together. Different time signatures and rhythms, but it worked.  FZ was also the master of introducing what he called Conceptual Continuity into all of his albums, where everything he ever recorded was somehow connected to what he'd done before and what he had yet to do. This was done via musical passages, vocal melodies, lyrics, in-jokes, and album artwork and has led fans to spend years digging for every link they can possibly find between songs and albums.

Despite the public perception of Frank Zappa as a musical mad scientist, from everything I've read and heard about him, he was a fairly normal guy (relatively speaking). A lifelong cigarette smoker, he hated drugs, having admitted to trying pot a few times in the 1960s but disliking it, and he never touched any illegal substances. He strongly discouraged his band members from doing drugs, although he certainly used some of their road exploits as fodder for his songs (see: 200 Motels). He was married to the love of his life, Gail Zappa, for nearly 30 years until his death, and they had four children (Moon, Dweezil, Ahmet, and Diva). He had an intense dislike of organized religion and the education system and politically, he was a hardcore libertarian. He hated both Democrats and Republicans equally and believed in small government, personal freedom, and self-sufficiency. He was also an ardent anti-censorship advocate, famously testifying before Congress in the mid-1980s. 

So how did a normal middle-class kid in New England become such a big FZ fan? I had heard a few Zappa songs as a kid, such as "Montana" and "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow," but it wasn't until I started high school in 1993 and a friend of mine played me a tape of Overnite Sensation that I was hooked. It was also around this time when one of the guitar magazines I routinely read had a multi-page cover feature on FZ and his playing, which led me to explore his discography and start buying all of his albums. As a teenager learning guitar, playing trumpet in jazz and symphonic bands at school, and trying to absorb as much music of any genre as I could, it was a revelation.  There was always something new to discover, and even now in my mid-30s, I find new musical quotations, conceptual continuity clues, and interesting aspects to his compositional and instrumental styles when I listen to his music. Certain songs that I must have heard hundreds, if not thousands of times still make me laugh out loud when I hear them now, and much of his social commentary has not only not dated, but is as applicable now as it was then. The targets of his words may no longer be with us, but the words themselves still resonate.  People typically have two opinions on Frank Zappa: they either love him or hate him. All that I would ask is, if you want to give him a try, is to have an open mind and pay attention to the whole package...the music and the words. He bristled against the notion many held that he only wrote "comedy music" (even sending himself up on 200 Motels regarding this). He was funny, yes, but he was a true musical visionary, genius, and a one of a kind talent that the world sorely misses. He died too young, but he left such a staggering body of work, both in terms of quality and quantity, that those interested will continue to discover, explore, and enjoy it for decades to come. 

If you're new to FZ and want any advice on where to start discovering his music, or if you're a big fan like me and want to talk about his music, let's talk in the comments section below!

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