Boxed and ready

PHOENIX MUSIC STAFF — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:08:34 GMT

The cream of the season’s CD/DVD crop

THE BEATLES | HELP! | Capitol | 2 DVDs | $135
The unchanging critical line on Help! has for years been that it’s in every way inferior to A Hard Day’s Night. That first Beatles film melds the beauty of silent comedy that Dwight Macdonald saw in it with the spontaneity of the French New Wave. Help! was Richard Lester’s attempt to put the Beatles in the same “Zap! Pow!” pop universe of Batman and 007. And that to me is what’s so moving about it. The Beatles aren’t trapped in dressing rooms and hotel suites: they’re trapped inside the pop creations they’ve become. Of course, all pop creations should be so luscious. The plot is a bit of hokum about Ringo wearing a great honker of a pinkie ring that marks him as the next sacrificial lamb of some mumbo-jumbo Eastern religion. The filming of the numbers (by David Watkin), particularly “Ticket To Ride” and “You’re Gonna Lose That Girl,” remains among the most elegant treatments ever given rock and roll. This is the first-ever home-video presentation of Help! in its correct aspect ratio. If you opt to spend the $135 for this set (rather than the standard two-disc version that goes for around $30), you’ll get a reproduction of the original shooting script, a hardcover book illustrated with production stills, and scaled-down reproductions of both the American lobby cards and the British poster. It’s an indulgence, but if you can’t fetishize the Beatles, who can you fetishize?

— Charles Taylor

MILES DAVIS | THE COMPLETE ON THE CORNER SESSIONS | Columbia/Legacy | 6 CDs | $140
This is the eighth in Columbia/Legacy’s “metal-spine” deluxe editions of Miles. Not all of them have been essential — the Jack Johnson and In a Silent Way extended those original albums way beyond usefulness. But for the most part, these ’72-’75 studio sessions (the last before Miles’s six-year hiatus) are ripe with exploding rhythm: a thousand wah-wah pedals set sail, and from guitar and cello and sitar to Miles’s trumpet, everything was plugged in, with two or even three drummers at a session, congas, tablas, a chattering rhythmic shitstorm. There’s plenty here that’s been heard before on individual albums, including the serene, uncharacteristic 32-minute dirge for Duke Ellington, “He Loved Him Madly.” But there’s plenty of new stuff that’s crucial, too, like “Chieftain,” which begins with a superfast, hard, relentless clave beat that Miles answers with fierce electrified blats and brays, as direct and speech-like as anything he put on record. Throughout, electric-bassist Michael Henderson lies back in the pocket while the drums push ahead, and all around is the collective shout.

— Jon Garelick

EMMYLOU HARRIS | SONGBIRD | Rhino | 4 CDs, 1 DVD | $75
Although her more esoteric recordings of the past dozen years have shed her of some previously loyal fans, Emmylou Harris has really never cut a dud album, a remarkable feat given that she’s released well over 20 of them. With the essential stuff already available on the three-CD Portraits box and the double-disc Anthology, Songbird is for the hardcore, a place where the leftovers gather. At four CDs and a DVD, the potential for abuse in a set subtitled “Rare Tracks & Forgotten Gems” is high, but Songbird never goes there. The various collaborations — with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt, Mark Knopfler, Gram Parsons, Steve Earle, Elvis Costello, etc. — are smartly considered at worst and inspired at best, and the various outtakes and oddities, some stretching back to the beginning of her career, present something of an alternate Emmylou universe. The set is roughly divided into halves, with the first two discs offering up material from the Reprise-era solo albums that may have been overlooked. But it’s the other half, the sundry live tracks, appearances on others’ albums, etc., that prove Emmylou Harris has never put less than her entire being into anything she’s done.

— Jeff Tamarkin

ROBYN HITCHCOCK | I WANNA GO BACKWARDS | Yep Roc | 5 CDs | $58
As its title implies, this handsome five-disc set traces British art-rock eccentric Robyn Hitchcock’s solo career back to its genesis on 1981’s Black Snake Diamond Role, which was released a year after he dissolved his daffy new-wave act the Soft Boys (for the first time, anyway). I Wanna Go Backwards offers three of Hitchcock’s early solo albums — Black Snake, 1984’s I Often Dream of Trains, and 1990’s Eye, each padded out with bonus tracks — as well as two additional volumes of home-recording detritus indelicately titled While Thatcher Mauled Britain. The material prizes post-punk idiosyncrasy, though never at the expense of post-Beatles tunefulness: “The Man Who Invented Himself” bops along on a bright Rubber Soul beat that makes it clear Hitchcock never viewed history and the future as mutually exclusive propositions, but even the in-studio lark “Uncorrected Personality Traits” — a tight-harmony a cappella ditty about the dangers of indulging your kids — foregrounds hooks where others might’ve feared them. Most of the bonus stuff has languished in a vault for a reason, though highlights are there for the curious. Which Hitchcock has always been.

— Mikael Wood

BILLIE HOLIDAY | RARE LIVE RECORDINGS 1934–1959 | ESP-Disk | 5 CDs | $85
The core Holiday discography from Columbia/Decca/Verve has been repackaged and re-released umpteen times. But even for those whose shelves already groan with Billie — like this year’s four-CD, 80-track Lady Day: The Master Tracks and Singles (Columbia/Legacy), which is itself drawn from 2001’s lavish 10-CD, 226-track The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia and should not be confused with Hip-O’s two-disc, 2005 Billie Holiday: The Ultimate Collection — this Rare Live set is essential. ESP-Disk, which is better known for its documentation of the pre-1972 avant-garde (especially Albert Ayler), here consolidates scattered live performances — concerts, clubs, TV, an exuberant, profanity-laced rehearsal with pianist Jimmy Rowles — as well as the seven tracks of music and dialogue from Billie’s role in the film New Orleans. Don’t expect the posh production quality of the bigs: the accompanying notes and discography are informative but bare-bones. Yet the sound quality is surprisingly good — and that includes the ambient noise, which ranges from a female fan at Clark Monroe’s Uptown House in 1941 screaming as Billie launches into her hit “Fine and Mellow” to an airplane flying overhead and all but obscuring “Good Morning, Heartache” at the 1958 Monterey Jazz Festival.

— Jon Garelick

RAMONES | IT’S ALIVE 1974–1996 | Rhino | 2 DVDs | $20
When you watch the Ramones perform “I Want You Around” outdoors in front of the San Francisco Civic Center in 1979, it’s impossible not to feel the same. How could sweet, gangly Joey, hapless Dee Dee, and curmudgeonly Johnny all be dead? Sure, the two DVDs of It’s Alive 1974–1996, the most comprehensive collection of Ramones stage performances so far, do provide a rush of nostalgia. But from a 1977 “Blitzkrieg Bop” at CBGB’s to a 1996 “Blitzkrieg Bop” at a Buenos Aires stadium, there’s no let-up in the exhilaration of their music. Even at the end, Joey spat out lyrics like machine-gun bullets, with an occasional tracer of irony. And nobody ever made a wall of Marshall amps growl with more purpose than Johnny. There’s so much fun and pure rock-and-roll spirit in their delivery — especially during early shows in New York, Austin, and Germany — that even after seeing all 124 of the song performances here, you want more. At the tail of disc one, you get it. The “extras” are interviews, three rare videos including the creepy “The KKK Took My Baby Away,” a goofy guest turn on Sha Na Na’s 1977 TV show, and five galleries of beautiful photos.

— Ted Drozdowski

Chairmen of the boards

PHOENIX MUSIC STAFF — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:47:24 GMT

Our critics pick the 14 producers with the fattest, meanest beats
Not unlike Swedish, Tagalog, and Esperanto, music is a language, with its own conjugations and (lewdly) dangling participles.

Lucky 13: Our producers Hall of Fame. By Matt Ashare

Not unlike Swedish, Tagalog, and Esperanto, music is a language, with its own conjugations and (lewdly) dangling participles. A snare drum that sounds like a fiend pounding the bottom of his cauldron is an expression meaning “metal.” Brief eructations of melodic, refrigerated keyboard mean “pop.” A man mumbling close to the mic while combing his beard with a toothbrush means “freak folk.” And so on.

But who writes the language? Not the artist. The artist is in a perpetual stupor, where every day just might be Wednesday. Or Thursday — who the fuck knows? (If the artist is wearing matching shoes, he’s having a great day.) Forget the artist! The man who writes the language of music is the producer.

We live in a fallen world, of course, which means that most producers are terrible — hacks, copycats, enemies of inspiration. Here at Phoenix HQ, for example, we will always associate the violent blare of Phil Collins’s “Sussudio” (produced by the artist himself, with the help of a man named Hugh Padgham) with a kind of minor soul-death. But from time to time, according to the elemental law of creativity, a producer emerges who either so rewrites music’s language or phrases it with such precision that certain modes of terribleness are no longer possible. Sam Phillips was an earthquake; George Martin was a forest; Brian Eno was Sigmund Freud; and Phil Spector was (and possibly still is) Napoleon.

So here’s our list of the 14 current moguls of noise whom we consider to most powerfully rule the musical roost. Like Matt Squire, the newest member of the class, their names are now part of the language of music. They live in its addled, poly-rhythmic bones. Where a finger squeaks on a fretboard, where a keyboard demurely farts out a squiggle, there they are — the producers.

Matt Squire

Matt Squire
Landmark work Panic! At the Disco, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out; Boys Like Girls, Boys Like Girls
Ass-kicking current release All Time Low, So Wrong, It’s Right
Wrestling name Emo Boy!
Just a few short years ago, Matt Squire was an apprentice, working under producer Paul Q. Kolderie at Camp Street Studio in Cambridge. Even though he lives in LA now, he’s still got a 617 cell number. But over the past two years, that number’s been bringing in business from across the country, as Squire’s rapidly become the go-to guy for mainstream emo-punk. Because, along with having strong ties to Fall Out Boy and their Fueled by Ramen label, Squire’s sound has helped launch two of the bigger left-field rock-music breakthroughs of recent years: Panic! At the Disco’s 2005 A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out and Boys Like Girls’ self-titled 2006 Columbia debut.

Guest lists

PHOENIX MUSIC STAFF — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 18:51:17 GMT

What 30 of the Phoenix 's music critics liked this year
What small, private lists like this remind us is that big, honking institutional lists are largely fictions, mirages of a consensus that no longer exists, if it ever really did in the first place.

PHOENIX FAVES I: Clipse

The most amazing thing about the Phoenix’s first annual music critics’ poll is that almost everyone – almost! – somehow kept their list to 10. Having done these for 12 years (whether anyone asked for ‘em or not), I’ve almost never to keep a top 10 list under a dozen. My poor editors will vouch for this. I’d pat myself for coloring inside the lines this year, but I’m cheating: my list-making compulsions have already been satiated by the list of 100 singles we’ve got waiting to be uploaded for a blog post in a few hours. And yes, that one’s a Top-100 list that as of now is hovering around, oh, 127 tracks. Sigh. Anyone wanna help me cut it?

What small, private lists like this remind us is that big, honking institutional lists are largely fictions, mirages of a consensus that no longer exists, if it ever really did in the first place. And even within their personal lists, you’ll generally find critics in Whitman mode -- contradicting themselves, containing multitudes. Feel free to post your own top 10 (or 100) in the comments section: beats waiting for someone to invite you to vote in Pazz and Jop.

-Carly Carioli

Jeff BREEZE
1. Various, THE STUFF THAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF (Yazoo)
2. The Red Krayola, INTRODUCTION (Drag City)
3. Emily Haynes and the Soft Skeleton, KNIVES DON’T HAVE YOUR BACK (Last Gang)
4. Charles Mingus, MUSIC WRITTEN FOR MONTEREY, 1965 NOT HEARD . . . PLAYED IN ITS ENTIRETY, AT UCLA (Sunnyside/Sue Mingus Music)
5. Seekonk, PINKWOOD (North East Indie/Tongue Master)
6. Arnold Dreyblatt and the Orchestra of Excited Strings, LIVE AT FEDERAL HALL NATIONAL MEMORIAL 1981 (Table of the Elements)
7. MV and EE with the Bummer Road, MOTHER OF THOUSANDS (Time-Lag)
8. Helms, SECRET DOORS (Plants and Brains/History Major)
9. Sparks, HELLO YOUNG LOVERS (In the Red)
10. Tara Jane O’Neil, IN CIRCLES (1/4 Stick/Touch & Go)

Franklin BRUNO
1. Mecca Normal, THE OBSERVER (Kill Rock Stars)
2. Scritti Politti, WHITE BREAD BLACK BEER (Nonesuch)
3. Ornette Coleman, SOUND GRAMMAR (Sound Grammar)
4. Kelis, KELIS WAS HERE (La Face)
5. Mission of Burma, THE OBLITERATI (Matador)
6. Jason Moran, ARTIST IN RESIDENCE (Blue Note)
7. Erase Errata, NIGHTLIFE (Kill Rock Stars)
8. De La Soul, THE IMPOSSIBLE MISSION MIXTAPE (AOI)
9. Wussy, FUNERAL DRESS (Shake It)
10. Tom Verlaine, SONGS AND OTHER THINGS (Thrill Jockey)