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Pssst . . . we need to talk. Apparently, despite a Bare Necessities II containing The Stooges’ Raw Power, Sweet’s Desolation Boulevard, and Howard Tate’s Get It While You Can, you’re still up to your old tricks. Just take a look at these items from the Billboard 200 for the week ending July 8:
Josh Groban: Closer — 22,386 copies sold
Celine Dion: New Day: Live In Las Vegas — 20,465 copies sold
Wilson Philips: California — 18,172 copies sold
Phish: Undermind — 8,797 copies sold
Lionel Ritchie: Definitive Collection — 7,638 copies sold
Toby Keith: Unleashed — 7,055 copies sold
Wha? Look, if you want to take your hard-earned cash out with the trash, please do us a favor: Hand it over here, cause we’re pretty damn sure we can find plenty of wonderful ways to blow it for you . . . most of which we’d rather not get into right now, as they might require some explanation . . . not to mention a quick brush-up on California State law . . . Er, where were we? Oh, yeah! Look, if you’re gonna continue blowing Tommy’s college fund on the likes of the crap mentioned above, we’re gonna have to do one of two things:
A) Become the CD Collection Gestapo, visiting your home on a regular basis, making ourselves sandwiches from the lovely selection of cold cuts and condiments in your well-stocked fridge, and rifling through that thing you call a CD collection. Whatever crap we find—and we’re sure there’ll be plenty—we’ll sell back to the record store, blowing the cash in some of the ways we still feel a little uncomfortable discussing.
B) Start rolling out The Bare Necessities with greater frequency, seeing as time lapses seem to call up the old demons, compelling you to run out and gobble up Rush’s latest. (In the case of July 8’s Billboard 200, Feedback—48,006. Inexplicable. Unforgivable.)
We’re going to go with Door #2, seeing as we’re trying to a) cut back on carbs and b) steer clear of blowing too much cash until we review a California State law or three. That said, without further ado, our latest installment of The Bare Necessities. Please, take notes.
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Police & Thieves - Junior Murvin
If you’re like us, ’70s FM radio (and its inexplicably enduring legacy) slapped the proverbial brick of C4 to any fond associations you might’ve had with reggae. Hell, if Eric Clapton didn’t flip the switch his damn self with his murderous-rage-inducing cover of Bob Marley’s “I Shot The Sheriff,” then radio saturation of the music’s Holy Trinity—Marley, Jimmy Cliff, and Peter Tosh—pretty much made the whole thing positively unbearable. Which is why we give thanks and praise to the unearthly falsetto of one Junior Murvin. Together with crazy-genius producer Lee “Scratch” Perry, Port Antonio, Jamaica’s favorite son saved the genre from the clutches of high-as-a-kite U.S. program directors. And he saved it with one album, 1977’s Police & Thieves. Recorded at Perry’s legendary Black Ark Studio, Police & Thieves bears the producer’s trademark oceans of reverb, which give Murvin’s eerie voice apocalyptic weight on the collection’s ten intense jams, including the classics “Roots Train,” “Lucifer,” and, of course, the title track, later recorded by The Clash. And you’re in luck: In 2003, Def Jam remastered the album, adding five bonus tracks, featuring a chilling cover of Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready,” plus extended mixes of “Bad Weed” and “Roots Train.” If nothing else, Police & Thieves—one of only three albums Murvin recorded in 25 years—serves as a much-needed reminder that your assessment of reggae needs some dusting off.
Here Come The Warm Jets - Brian Eno
Yes, Brian Eno had a career—and a nice one, to boot—prior to producing the biggest albums of U2’s career, not to mention Talking Heads’ first three releases and Devo’s Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!. After building Roxy Music into one of the world’s biggest and most respected glam bands courtesy of 1972’s Roxy Music and 1973’s For Your Pleasure, and subsequently falling out with singer Brian Ferry, our second-favorite he-she in feather boas and velvet corsets went his own, freakish way, launching one of the most celebrated solo careers in electronic/experimental music, beginning with 1974’s landmark Here Come The Warm Jets. With the help of ex-Roxy pals Phil Manzanera and Andy Mackay, plus King Crimson’s Robert Fripp, Eno turned his newfound freedom from Ferry’s far more conventional ways into a no-holds-barred experiment on the limitations of pop music. At its root, Jets is composed of ten whimsical, free-associative, fantastically catchy pop songs, including “Needles In The Camel’s Eye,” “Baby’s On Fire,” and “Cindy Tells Me.” It’s what Eno did with those whimsical, free-associative, fantastically catchy pop songs via sound processing that makes this album a classic: Manipulating his voice, treating the guitars and keyboards so as to elicit otherworldly sounds, he took the familiar and made it avant-garde—exciting, groundbreaking, still fresh to this very day. Kids, modern electronic music has its origins right here.
The Specials - The Specials
Spot-welding dancehall rhythms and punk rock attitude to timely socio-political commentary and smart mohair suits, The Specials burst onto London’s post-punk scene with their October 1979 debut album, launching the British ska revival in the process. Released on group keyboardist Jerry Dammers’ 2-Tone label (also home to Madness, The English Beat, and The Selector) and produced by none other than Elvis Costello, The Specials was exactly the right album at the right time for a music scene tiring of the same old punk rock sneer but still charged with enough electricity to light up WWII London. Boasting covers of Dandy Livingstone’s “A Message To You Rudy,” The Maytals’ “Monkey Man,” and Prince Buster’s “Too Hot,” the platter also features a dozen originals, including the white-hot “Concrete Jungle,” an ode to the violence of inner-city life; the group’s cautionary tale of teen pregnancy, “Too Much Too Young”; and the self-explanatory “Little Bitch.” Few LPs in the history of rock capture the anger, alienation, and frustration of a youth culture on the verge of exploding quite like The Specials. The band’s image, their message, and their impact have yet to be matched. Unfortunately, over the ensuing quarter-century, their torch has been carried by a bunch of suck-ass poseurs who wouldn’t know Terry Hall-cool if it mugged them at gunpoint. Carbon copies of carbon copies of carbon copies . . . It’s a wonder one of the fifth-generation also-rans hasn’t named itself Please Add Toner. But we digress . . . The Specials is a magical album capturing a magical moment in modern pop music. Skank like your life depended on it.
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So, there you have it—another chapter in the ongoing saga that is your CD collection. We know it hurts, but at some point Eye Of The Tiger: The Very Best Of Survivor has got to go, if only to make room for something that might actually change your life just when your life desperately needs the changing—or simply something that’ll impress the hell out of that girl who really requires impressing. Call it tough love, but it’s love nonetheless. And to think—it didn’t even cost you any cold cuts.
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