Monthly Archives: July 2013

“Vinyl. But why?”

“The discovery. When I was a teenager and didn’t have a clue about how much music was actually out there, just sly smoking cigarettes with my countryside friends, hanging out with my football friends, being that ”weird classical music dude” playing the first violin in the local symphony Orchestra, listening to and playing Nirvana at home—all of a sudden my grandmother showed up one day with one of those ancient things called an LP.

Fortunately my parents had a record player (which they occasionally used for their sparing CD collection.) But there also was a turntable, and that became my new third best friend—next to my acoustic guitar and my brother’s shitty electric bass—apparently and unfortunately not my violin. This day I don’t remember which record it was, but she’d later give me her whole Beatles collection. That was pretty cool.

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It’s been forty-five years since Van Dyke Parks released his amazing debut LP Song Cycle, a record that was the huge first step in the career of one of the USA’s most reliably interesting cult artists. Now he’s back with Songs Cycled, and it just might be the best record Parks has released since his ’72 masterpiece Discover America.

There’s no use beating around the bush, so let me just state it up front. The first two albums from the sui generis American institution Van Dyke Parks form one of the most hallowed nooks in this writer’s entire record collection. His enthralling ’68 debut Song Cycle and its delightful follow-up from ’72 Discover America combine into an ideas-drenched, warmly eccentric combo punch, the first perhaps best (or at least, succinctly) described as Baroque Americana, the second a love-soaked Calypso tribute that also serves as a shrewd, non-didactic commentary on the country of its title.

Two perfect records, in my estimation, and they also sit securely amongst the most individualist of masterpieces. That basically means not everybody digs ‘em, but this guy sure does. I also happen to dig The Clang of the Yankee Reaper, Parks’ third album from ‘75. But while still a masterful statement, it does continue to impact these lobes as a somewhat lesser achievement than its predecessors, mainly because it’s far more grounded than his first and registers as simultaneously less ambitious and tangibly more accessible than his second.

On The Clang of the Yankee Reaper, Parks’ talent was still in total abundance, but an ear could also detect a desire to actually sell a few records; his first was critically acclaimed but stiffed, and his second was largely ignored by writers and listeners in roughly equal measure. In retrospect this shouldn’t be a surprise, for Parks’ uniqueness has never been an easy sell.

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“Odyssey Records in Las Vegas, NV, 1978, me and my buddy Al Rumley in Junior High.”

“We would save our lunch money all week and every Friday night we’d sneak out of our bedrooms and walk the mile up to Odyssey Records and buy a rock record. He would keep it Monday thru Wednesday, and I’d get it the rest of the week.

Odyssey was open 24/7, one of the perks of growing up in Vegas.

There were only two genres of music back then—rock and disco! If you lived through the rock vs. disco wars of the late seventies, you should have received a medal.

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After twenty-seven years of making music, you’ve earned the right to a “Greatest Hits” album or two. But the Goo Goo Dolls keep making music that’s ridiculously popular. They’ve just released their tenth album—the sunny, unabashedly summery Magnetic—and the band’s picked up a new generation of fans who are snatching up tickets for their co-headlining tour with Matchbox 20. How did the ’90s alt-rockers get to this point? 

Magnetic is notable not only as the band’s tenth album, but also for the impressive roster of producers brought in to craft the sound and songwriting. For those expecting alt-rock-lite, Magnetic might surprise you. The word “upbeat” is bandied around in the press when talking about Magnetic, and I can’t find a better word to describe it. These are some happy dudes, and at a time when it feels like the world is working against everyone, maybe a happier sound is just what we need. It certainly seems that way; Magnetic is their fourth Top 10 album in a row. 

Bass guitarist Robby Takac agrees that it’s time to turn the spotlight on some good stuff for a change. He waxed nostalgic about his musical influences, his thoughts on being in a band for almost thirty years, and reveals that Magnetic is the first Goo Goo Dolls album to be released on vinyl in years.

A popular band experiencing a creative renaissance deciding to put their newest record down on vinyl? Now that’s some upbeat news.

I think many music fans would be surprised to learn that you’ve been together for almost 30 years. Does it feel strange to hear about “new generations of fans” listening to your music?

Yeah, it’s pretty cool! I mean, to see kids comin’ to these shows at the same time with people who are older than me… it’s interesting to see that cross-section of people. It’s interesting to see that part of the result of sticking around for a while.

It’s probably more surprising to many people that most of the bands that have “made it” have actually been at it for decades.

Yeah, yeah. We’re pretty lucky, though, I think. We’re pretty fortunate that we came in at the end of a different kind of record business and managed to make that transition, before the industry became a different beast.

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The soundtrack to the film Stuck in Love includes songs from such well-known figures as Elliot Smith and Conor Oberst, but the LP’s best qualities come via portions of Bright Eyes-members Mike Mogis and Nate Wolcott’s original score. Overall, this short, polished dose of mainstream indie studies ultimately shoulders a disparity of quality, but as the record plays the good moments do outnumber the mediocre sections. The result is a solid effort with minor charms that should mainly please fans of the film and the artists involved.

Indie film and indie music are two “scenes” that are seemingly custom-made for each other. And certainly there are movies where the intersection provides for thoughtful and energetic art. But just as often (or possibly even more frequently) the combination can be highly underwhelming and at times even annoying.

Part of the reason concerns a certain laziness that becomes palpable rather quickly after sitting down to engage with the work of some budding young auteur. For what the filmmaker might’ve considered purity, quite possibly in the service of “realism,” ultimately connects in such an uninspired way that it burdens the entire affair with the scent of cliché.

And sometimes it’s so blandly formulaic that it starts to feel like marketing. While I consider myself an unabashed indie supporter in both ocular and aural terms, it’s also impossible to deny that rather huge industries have been thriving around each for a few decades now. In itself that’s not a really a problem. What can be bothersome is the accompanying promotional buzz that attempts (and rather predictably, at this late date) to shape the product as deriving from a reservoir of artistically angelic impulses.

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“My family immigrated to Australia in the early 80s, so I spent the first few years of my life in Panama, where I was born. When we moved to Australia, mum and dad brought their entire vinyl collection with them.”

“My dad is from Chile and grew up on a diet of folk music, so he had an amazing collection of early Joan Baez and Bob Dylan records as well as original pressings of Chilean folk artists like Victor Jara and Violeta Parra. Amongst dad’s folk and mum’s treasured Celia Cruz collection, they also had a copy of The Beatles’ Help and Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall.

I remember dad teaching me how to use the record player when I was about five and I would spend hours and hours sitting cross-legged in front of the turntable, switching between the different records in their collection.

On my sixth birthday, my dad took me to the record store and for the first time, let me pick any record from the store that I wanted. I chose Banarama’s WOW, naturally. I also picked up a 12” of Madonna’s “La Isla Bonita” single. I would go to sleep with both records, along with some of my faves from my parent’s collection under my pillow, because I was scared someone would break into my house and steal them.

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