Rolling Stones - Under My Thumb/Sister Morphine/Rocks Off/Torn and Frayed

It's easy to imagine why the Beatles might have felt like squares next to the Stones. Don't get me wrong, the Beatles were incredible, but some of the Stones' songs were just so... evil. I try to avoid using the word evil, because it feels so one-dimensional and flat, but the Stones just give me that feeling at times. Take a song like "Under My Thumb." It is definitely the coolest sounding song ever, but the lyrics are the most brutally misogynistic I've ever heard. They make gangster rap sound like "Lady in Red."

The Stones never sounded like they were posing, and if they were it didn't matter, because the music was just so g*ddamn great. "Sister Morphine" is a charming little hallucinatory tale about overdosing, but the mood of the song is so dank and desperate that it never descends into parody. The combination of the acoustic guitar, Mick's weary vocals, the sinister tone of Mick Taylor's guitar, the piano, and the drums that kick in at 2:42 just gives me chills everywhere. The Exorcist on vinyl.

Exile is my favorite Stones album, cause it just feels the most cohesive. And it's loaded with classics, including the great opener "Rocks Off" and the amazing "Torn and Frayed." If I had a gun to my head, I might pick "Torn and Frayed" as my favorite Stones track. But with a gun to my head I might be really nervous and totally choke and pick a song off that really lame 80s Stones album where they're dressed in pastels on the cover.

Bat For Lashes - Glass

I like my music to have a little drama to it. It's why I love Bowie, Roxy Music, Kate Bush, etc. They're great musicians, but there's also a lot of theater thrown in there.

I'm certainly not comparing Bat for Lashes to these groups, but some of her music has a similar flair to it. As the drums and bass come in on "Glass," things seem to be getting really serious. And then when she belts out the chorus, I see her standing next to her liger on the edge of a cliff, wearing an ornate headpiece as she belts out lyrics about crystal towers and heavenly spirits.

The rest of the album is solid. She seems to channel a few of her favorite artists at times (Tori Amos, Bjork), but she does it well enough and adds twists like disco beats and Scott Walker (!), so it never sounds too derivative.

In other news, I'm back from NYC and happy to be in San Francisco. Humidity is the devil's work!

Ultramagnetic MCs - Ease Back/Dr. Octagon - Halfsharkalligatorhalfman/Bear Witness/98 Year Old Refrigerator

Kool Keith is weird. At one point there were rumors that he was a schizophrenic, though those were later shot down. From the beginning his lyrics were a little out there, and by the time he got to his "Dr. Octagonecologyst" album, his lyrics were borderline asinine. But! While he has since tried to distance himself from the album, I still happen to think it rules. Sure, it's filled with crass and borderline offensive lyrics, and the album's concept of a twisted alien gynecologist doesn't really pack any emotional resonance. But it doesn't change the fact that the production is ridiculously amazing, and Kool Keith/Dr. Octagon's flow is stellar.

Ultramagnetic MCs was Kool Keith's earlier group, and Critical Beatdown is a classic album. A lot of the beats are sort of samey, but better to all be samey and great than samey and shite, I suppose. Dr. Octagonecologyst, on the other hand, has creative and varied production on all the tracks, sick scratching, and is great from start to finish. The instrumental "Bear Witness" showcases Q-Bert's scratching, and the phrasing of "IS HE WEIRD?!" at 1:06 in "Halfsharkalligatorhalfman" is just perfect.

The "98 Year Old Refrigerator" youtube is just an example of how amazing Kool Keith is. Really out there, but out there in a way that makes me stop and wonder if he is in fact the second coming of the messiah.

Pere Ubu - Street Waves/Waiting for Mary

I'm almost halfway through my NYC trip. So far I've gone to a Mets game, seen a David Mamet play, done some shopping and seen a bunch of family and friends. These are the highest priorities, but after them comes an attraction that, while not highly publicized, is one of the greatest things this city has to offer: people watching.

Now I'm not talking about sitting on a bench in the mall, watching an exasperated mother drag her cranky three-year-old into Macy's. I'm talking about seeing a 6" 3', emaciated man with premature jowls and a green velvet suit walking down Columbus Avenue. Or sitting on the subway watching an infuriated twenty-something-year-old girl trying to smack her friend out of a vegetative state so she won't have to frantically drag her dead weight body off at the next stop. Or walking by a late-eighties socialite (still dressed to the nines) trying to keep up with with her two Yorkies scurrying down Madison Avenue.

If the entire country is words typed on a page, then someone definitely highlighted all of New York City and clicked bold. Everything is more sharply defined, for better and worse. It's definitely a magical place.

Pere Ubu reminds me of New York City, cause I can easily picture Dave Thomas (the lead singer, not that dude in the Wendy's commercials) walking down Broadway having an impassioned conversation with himself. Cause that's pretty much what he does on stage, as evidenced in the second Youtube I posted. But first things first. Street Waves, the first song posted, just rocks. The breakdown at :30 is perfection. The bass is amazing throughout, but is especially highlighted during the section from 1:41-2:30. Then Thomas barks and it goes back to kicking all sorts of *ss. The Modern Dance album is just a phantasmagorical heap of amazaliciousness.

In my scramble to find a live performance to illustrate Dave Thomas' otherwordliness, I stumbled upon Waiting for Mary. Fun performance, and hey! That's Debbie Harry! And Phillip Glass! And a superfluous saxophone! Yay 80s!

Scott Walker - The Old Man's Back Again/Marvin Gaye - Inner City Blues/Beach Boys - Sloop John B./ Joy Divison - Transmission

I like chunky bass. Bass can be great when it's the glue that holds a song together, but sometimes I love when it reaches out its chubby fingers and grabs me by the throat.

The bass playing in Scott Walker's "The Old Man's Back Again (Dedicated To The Neo-Stalinist Regime)" (how's that for a title! whatever happened to "My Boyfriend's Back"?) is of the second variety. To me it sounds like the bass is strung very loosely, but I'm not gonna speculate cause I don't really know what I'm talking about! It sounds great, and Walker's vocals are haunting. I'm not sure who plays the bass on this track, but my congratulations go out to him or her for a job well done.

James Jameson is one of the best bass players there ever was, and he really shines on "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)" by Marvin Gaye. You could say his playing is more glue and less "intrusive," but damn does it sound good. One of my favorite vocal moments on any song ever is at 2:49 when Marvin sings, "Oooh, make me wanna holler, throw up both my hands." The way he sings "hands" is so perfect.

Carol Kaye was one of Brian Wilson's favorite session musicians, and just a badass bass player. I love how the bass seems, to my non-musician ears, to be moving in the opposite direction of the rest of the song when it comes in at :11. I always turn up the bass in my car when this song comes on. It sounds so amazing. I still can't wrap my head around the fact that Wilson was 23 when he wrote this album. I love how in the Pet Sounds box set you can hear Wilson talking between takes with Kaye, drummer Hal Blaine, and about thirty other musicians playing trumpets, xylophones, and Cheerios boxes. So cool.

What can you even say about Joy Division and bassist Peter Hook? One thing you can definitely say is that Peter Hook is about the greatest name you could ever have in a rock band. Joy Division were one of the tightest bands ever, and Hook was the driving force behind them. Flawless.