#310: Count Basie - The Atomic Mr. Basie (1958)

Emily: I've spent a lot of time over the past couple months listening to jazz. While outlining and working on other stuff for exams, I needed some noise in the background that was pleasant but not distracting. Cue the Jazz Pandora station. That worked for a while, but then they started including songs with words and other things that were definitely not jazz. Around that time, I was out to dinner with a group of friends and one mentioned how she had been listening to a lot of John Coltrane recently. Aha! I thought. That's the solution to my Pandora problem. I definitely like Coltrane and other jazz musicians of his era, and those songs definitely don't have words. The next day I tuned in to John Coltrane Pandora and it was the perfect fit for end-of-semester studying. Count Basie probably came up on that station, but if not his music would have fit in seamlessly. Jazz from the '40s, '50s, and '60s is definitely my favorite - all horns and riffs and improvisation, without words to get in the way. Count Basie embodied that aesthetic, alternating between cool, slow songs and peppy up-tempo jams. It's the kind of album that when you want it to be in the background it'll stay there, but when you pay close attention there is so much to hold your focus. This will definitely go into my studying rotation, and maybe I'll even switch Pandora to a Count Basie station.

Favorite Tracks: Flight of the Foo Birds; Midnite Blue; Teddy the Toad

Zack: I am certainly a lot more into jazz than I was before we started this endeavor, although I still have no idea how to write about it. With every other genre, I at least have enough of a prototype in my head for what “good” sounds like that I can compare to, should there be nothing unique that jumps out about that particular recording. No such thing with jazz. I go entirely by instinct; did I like this or did it make me feel bad in my ears. Count Basie did not cause me ear-pain, which is certainly a net positive. And I can easily see it sliding into the Birth of the Cool-Love Supreme rotation of background jazz while I code do files. But I’m not sure what it is about it that I liked. It was smooth and balanced between up-tempo, swingy songs and slowed-down, somber songs. The trumpets sounded crisp. That’s about all I got, and all of those were about as vague as an undergrad’s essay about the strengths of American democracy. Since I have no clue how to explain why I liked Count Basie, you’ll have to take my recommendation on pure faith alone. Hopefully that will be sufficient.

Favorite Tracks: Fantail; Flight of the Foo Birds; Li’l Darlin’

#309: Culture Club - Colour By Numbers (1983)

Zack: You might be surprised to know that we intentionally paired Wu-Tang and Culture Club together on our listening odyssey since RZA was so inspired by Boy George. We would also be surprised to know that, since it is not even remotely true. It’s interesting going straight from an album crafted to sound like swords clashing to one that seems to have been crafted to sound like androgynous lollipops. Overall, Colour By Numbers sounded to me like the songs I like the least by The Cure. It has some really popular radio hits, but I just found it sort of silly. It was better than a lot of the New Wave we’ve come across before, but that’s about all I have to say about it.

Favorite Tracks: Miss Me Blind; Karma Chameleon; Stormkeeper

Emily: Culture Club put me back into more familiar territory than Wu-Tang, namely the territory of artists who showed up on I Love the '80s. Boy George had his day back when he was in Culture Club, then got into drugs and got arrested a few times and then showed up with his head painted like this on various Vh1 nostalgia shows. I think he's gotten his shit back together now, but no one really cares about that. What they do care about is Boy George circa 1983, singing and shimmying to Karma Chameleon. Songs like that, and really all of Colour By Numbers, seem to made for singing along in the car by yourself. They're kind of embarrassing to have blasting out of your speakers, but you can't help but sing and bounce along as you're driving home from work and it comes up on your local 80s-90s-and-today radio station. It's not  that many people outside of 1983 would queue up by choice - most likely, anyone who listened to it in 1983 has all but forgotten about Culture Club by now - but it's a fun, welcome distraction when heard by chance.

Favorite Tracks: Karma Chameleon; Miss Me Blind; That's The Way (I'm Only Trying to Help You)

#308: Wu-Tang Clan - Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (1993)

Emily: Zack has been hyping Wu-Tang Clan to me for a really long time. Multiple conversations/explanations about the group, its members, and their various group and individual efforts. Various Wu-Tang related messages of things he found on Reddit like this. And a lot of time passing between the previous album and this one because he wanted to make sure he spent sufficient time documenting his thoughts and feelings about Enter the Wu-Tang so that he could sufficiently convey his love and respect for it. Through all this hype, however, Zack has steadfastly maintained that he didn't think I would like Wu-Tang at all. So when it came time to listen to this album, I decided to not read Zack's review, talk to Zack, or even listen to the album with Zack until I listened and wrote my review. So I listened the other day, after returning home from a Christmas visit with Zack's family, and after the hour I had no idea what I wanted to say. I listened to it again today, and still don't have much of an idea. I didn't hate this album as much as Zack primed me to think I would, but I didn't love it either. The idea of combining soul-based beats with both hardcore rap and samples from kung-fu movies seems insane on its face, but actually made sense when listening to it. I know now that Cash Rules Everything Around Me (dolla dolla billz y'all) and that you should protect ya goddamn neck. But do I really appreciate Wu-Tang, in a way that at least approaches Zack's appreciation? Not yet, but maybe that'll change once I see what he has to say about it.
Favorite Tracks: Da Mystery of Chessboxin; Bring Da Ruckus; C.R.E.A.M.

Zack: This album turned 20 a year ago, so there’s not really much of a point saturating the internet further with a reflection piece about what 36 Chambers means to rap music or anything like that. I can’t talk about how it changed my life or anything dramatic like that since I was 2 when it came out. I don’t even remember the first time I listened to it. What I can say that it is one of the few hip-hop albums that I play in its entirety ALL THE TIME. From start to finish, this is an absolute masterpiece. It sounds like an entire Tarantino movie turned into rap. It’s grittier than a pile of grit. And it has an incredibly ability to bring people together. A few years ago, I moved into an apartment with a kid I’d never met before. The first night, he and I got to talking about hip-hop and it came out that he’d never listened to any Wu-Tang anything. I got my laptop, he got his stereo, and we blasted this and organized the kitchen. Wu-Tang is for the roommates. Wu-Tang is for the kids. Wu-Tang for president. Wu-Tang for everyone. Well, maybe not everyone. I have no idea if Emily will like this at all. My guess is no. It has literally 0 of the elements she is usually drawn to in hip-hop music. At a certain point, you start to think that maybe an album is sooooo good that it’s undeniable. But the two other times I thought that might apply (Illmatic and Me Against the World), the music was greeted with a resounding “meh,” and this album is a lot rougher than either of those. I really hope this one is different. I can’t speak for anyone, but the second I hear Ghostface on Bring da Ruckus, I change. I. Get. Fucking. Amped. Happens every time, without fail. Maybe the same thing will happen for her. Maybe she will be terrified for an hour. No one knows for sure, with the possible exception of GZA. He is a genius after all. I should mention that I’ve listened to enough Wu-Tang and affiliates to legally be considered a Wu Tang expert. Raise your hand if you’ve listened to an entire album by Inspectah Deck. How about Masta Killa? Hell, anyone here check out anything by Killah Priest, the notable Killer Bee and almost-main-clan stoner-religious zealot guy? Just me? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Because of these excellent credentials, I’ve spent a lot of time contemplating what sets this album aside from anything else, other Wu Tang albums included, and I’ve come up with two distinct traits. First, pretty much every clan member, Ghostface just barely exempted, has a bit of a penchant for burying 45 minutes of great music into 70 minutes of an album. They’re hardly alone in rap music for that little predilection. But that’s exactly what makes this album so incredible. It is an hour of just nasty beats and razor-sharp lyrics. You can feel a certain desperation in the way everything is done. It’s 9 guys who are willing to do whatever it takes to be on top of the rap game, and there isn’t any track where that isn’t palpable. Second, what they made is so impossible to copy that no one could ever hope to imitate it at all. Seriously, other artists are able to capture 80% of what makes other classic rap albums what they are. There are those out there who can imitate that street scholar swag of Illmatic or the ferocity of Straight Outta Compton. Who has ever managed to capture any semblance of the vaguely unhinged, just plain rough-ness of 36 Chambers? No one. So maybe we shouldn’t be too upset that the Wu hasn’t exactly been able to replicate it either. Anyway, hopefully Emily will like this album, because it’s easily one of my top-5 favorite rap albums of all time. We have another four Wu-tang albums to go through for the blog (one each by Method Man, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, and Genius/GZA), and I’m with the listmakers in the ones they choose (although I could easily be talked into Iron Man or maybe even Supreme Clientele over Fishscale and the oversight of Method Man and Redman’s incredible Blackout! is certainly acknowledged here). I’ll have plenty more to say then, but for now perhaps it’s best that I wrap up this manifesto with the impossible task of picking 3 favorite tracks from an album where I gave 10 or 12 songs 5-star ratings.

Favorite Tracks: C.R.E.A.M.; Wu-Tang: 7^th Chamber – Part II; Bring Da Ruckus

#307: Buzzcocks - Another Music in a Different Kitchen (1978)

Zack: I honestly can’t imagine a less punk rock cover for an album than what the Buzzcocks got going on above. They’re getting dangerously close to boy band with those poses. Punk from the 70s has easily been my favorite variation so far, and Buzzcocks kept that going. Honestly, I was listening to it while I coded a dataset about US newspapers, which led me to only giving it a cursory first listen. From that first listen, I’ve easily deduced that it’s worth relistening to again and again. But I can’t say where it stacks up against the other titans of that era or update the running tally of which region produced the punk I like the best (it’s probably London in first and NYC as a close second, but I’ll have to get back to you on that).

Favorite Tracks: Sixteen; No Reply; Autonomy

Emily: We've once again had to take a break as our semesters got increasingly hectic and listening to music fell to the back burner. Well, I finished my last final yesterday and Zack will be done in a few days, so back to blogging we go (at least for a few weeks). After a rough few days consisting of studying, exams, and some family stuff going on back home, Buzzcocks ended up being a great way to tune out everything that's been going on around me. Another Music in a Different Kitchen is a straight-up punk album - no serious themes, nothing slow, nothing experimental or even truly novel - just a bunch of short, fast, guitar-and-drums-driven songs jammed into 45 minutes or so. It's the kind of music you (or at least I) would want to jump up and down and thrash dance and yell along to in a basement or small club in high school. Not that I was that cool in high school, but you get the idea. Punk is music to ignore your stress to, at least for me, and Buzzcocks definitely delivered on that. But even beyond that, I would definitely listen to this album at less-stressful times. It's fun no matter what, even if you look like a fool jumping up and down in your living room.

Favorite Tracks: I Don't Mind; Sixteen; Love Battery