---------- Finley Breeze Issue #4 May 15, 1995 Compiler: Sean Murphy ---------- What is soul? I don't know... Soul is a hamhock in your cornflakes. Soul is a joint rolled in toilet paper. Soul is the ring around your bathtub. Soul is chitlin-foo-yung. Soul is me. Soul is you. - Funkadelic If love, as the immortal P. Benatar says, "is a battlefield," then middle school is absolute doomsday. Not only with gross genetic defects such as 95% of one's body weight being one's head, or the ritualistic sacrifice of all people unimbibed with raw coolness (NOT feathered hair, parachute pants, Chimp skeletal M.J. red leather zippered ladened jacket... but Toughskins, red velour sweaters, humongous dental headgears). There were the the spots at which one's soul was put to the true test. First and foremost: the skating rink, where not only visually (ruthless fashion comments) but physically (extreme uncoordination/motor skill difficulty due to head size, toughskin tightness), one had to endure the moment where it was "Skate partner pick time" and invariably... we J Krew members remained idly wobbling alone by the video games. In the few seconds of happiness, though, spinning listlessly in circles (when not on the floor, fallen, getting our fingers crushed beneath rubber treads), there was THE BEAT. The power of a reverberating BASS ...in the mix, the words, "freak-a-zoids, robots, report to the dance floor" and we did. Only we heard the real message, only the truly cool: that we wouldn't always be at these morons' mercies. The beat saved us (as kids stomped that very song in pep rallies), sneaking in our headphones and reminding us we weren't totally powerless (it may sound stupid, but...), in a seemingly infinite night, we were led by one midnight star, alone and aching in the heavens. -M.C. Crawdad and D.J. Castle Grayskull, King G and the J Krew The articles: 1. Rebuttal to Finley #3 - Julian Lawton 2. Soul Train of Thought - Mark Bunster 3. Soul? - Rick Sanford 4. Ode to Joy - Rob Thornton 5. Even Richard Nixon Has Got Soul - Steve Silverstein 6. Liar, Liar - Scott Puckett 7. The King of Souls - Dann Medinn plus some mumblings from yours truly, and the ever-popular "Coursing Through The Wires" spotlight segment. ========== Rebuttal? Response? Julian Lawton Re. Finley #3: I'd like to pick up on Lise LePage's points against theory as a tool - while cultural/political theory offers little to listening to music, other than to make some things a guilty pleasure, I have found cases where intelligent, 'theoretical' criticism has often helped 'unlock' a band's music for me, in the same way that a decent art critic can unravel a painting and make it understandable/accesible, or at least reveal things you missed. For me, the foremost writer in this field has been Simon Reynolds, and the magazine _The Wire_ - while I often dispute their tastes, they're often spot on in identifying what it is about certain types of music that gets you in a specific way. Although it's my ears/brain that have to 'get' it, good theory can ease, & speed up that process, by indentifying the elements that maybe I'm finding unusual, or interesting. And certainly it's possible to write a review in a 'theoretical' way that makes me want to hear a record, as much as a subjective heart-on-sleeve review would. . . ++++++++++ Soul Train of Thought Mark Bunster Is Elvis a soul hero to most? He never meant nothing to me. Who stole the soul, and who did he steal it from? Couldn't he afford his own soul? Is being soulful the same as having soul? Interesting questions I won't answer. It sure took a long time for white people to discover what soul is, didn't it? Our first steps at mainlining soul here in the States were so tentative and pathetic--Pat Boone does Big Joe Turner, and can't bring himself to sing "When you wear those dresses/sun comes shinin' through," so he comes up with some awful substitute I won't even repeat. Elvis was a bigger step--he learned the moves and listened to a lot of "race records" (a race black musicians were clearly losing at the time), and was charming enough on his own to keep from being too scary. As Marge Simpson said to the town's streetcorner saxman, "Please don't be offended, but I fear the unknown." The whole while, companies like Motown in Detroit and Stax/Volt in Memphis, as well as a zillion smaller labels in the Deep South, were churning out A-side upon A-side chockablock crammed full of more than a little bit o soul. Chicago and the Delta had the blues, but they too had soul. It took the Brits to slap us into buying the stuff en masse, but it was on the musician to fess up and admit he was copping licks from Buddy Guy and Muddy Waters and BB King--otherwise we never would have known. It still happens--ask your average 16-year old who Otis Redding was, and I'll bet you lunch he won't say, "The guy who broke the Black Crowes with an obscure B-side of Hard to Handle." But this is old news, and I'm starting to get a little tired of the self-flagellation the semi-soulless among us go through when they create their own music based on "music a brother didn't get paid for." Who does Jon Spencer have to apologize to? Nobody. Beck, or the Beastie Boys, or Elvis (Costello) have their own thing going, even if it is gleaned from streetcorner shuffle music or Rapper's Delight or swinging 50's R&B. Sometimes we forget that the styles we worry about ripping off are ripoffs of ripoffs of ripoffs. You can't own soul--you've got to get it from someone else, let it flow through you like a shot of butterscotch rum, and leave the feeling out where somebody else can pick it up and pass it on. Soul is like a virus made of white blood cells--it infects you, but it does your body good. ++++++++++ Soul... Rick Sanford The topic for FB/4, "SOUL", reminds me of the working title for one of my records, "Intellectual answers to emotional questions". Given the cerebral nature of text and writing in general, I'm not so sure this isn't a setup, but I've been a popular fixture at many a setup afore and shan't be a'fear'd now. Being that I am who I am and the age that I am, of course (or not, but in this case), my first thought at the term is radio / chart genre. I recall soul, pre-food-prefix, as being used to describe in a socially respectful (read capitalisticly efficient) way, the black-American art form, post jazz. While it seems to have centered around ballads, the up-tempo likes of James Brown, Ike Turner and Sly Stone allowed some variety amongst the top-40. And Soul Train. And so on. But more to the point, generic (non racially specific) soul. The kind we all have, even the bugs under your feet, if you choose to believe so, and related to the expression of music. I am interested in the circular nature of these (fashion, mostly) stylistic matters. It would appear that there is room again within the college radio (white) charts for folks bearing their soul through music. Has to be a good thing. Of course I see no surprise in the acceptance by white middle-class youth of gangsta rap, though am not sure how much of it appeals at a soul-reaching level? This may become more about choice than about soul, if so, pardon my lack of design. But it looks to me as though when I had a few (in this case radio, but could just as easily apply to TV) stations to choose from, the choices were clear, and the number very small. There was a clean line between pop (youth) targeted stations and MOR (adult) targeted stations. The youth stations necessarily had to encompass more styles, as there were not enough of them (stations, not styles), or presumably enough advertising dollars or even AM frequencies to permit the narrow casting we have/enjoy/tolerate today. On either of my two(!) choices (talking AM radio here, circa '67) I could, and in fact would have to hear black, white, red, yellow, green and blue music. The commonality wasn't so much in the genre per se, as it was in the target: youth. Youth = energy (dance music), hope (love songs), ignorance (the shameless recycling and presentation of older musical styles as new), and optimism/intolerance (protest songs). Youth = $$. Be young, have fun, drink soda water. The other option, the alternative targeted audience was the adult market which was evolving from nostalgia to necrophilia. TV, while it had its youth programs on the major networks, didn't have any MTV yet. Again not because such a format may not have been commercially feasible, but because there weren't enough stations to go around. (Now there are too many frequencies and they've run out of content, and so are repeating themselves - ESPN, ESPN2.) But what about soul? The point, at last, perhaps, is that when confronted with music that has a large amount of soul in it, on a regular basis, because in order to hear that white pop idol sing his new hit again you may very well need to sit through another playing of the other new soul hit song, it (the soul-ful nature) becomes less foreign and even white boys felt the groove. Not, perhaps in exactly the same way as black boys, but just as genuinely (to them). And with this exposure, we all became able, over time, to feel we belonged to the human race, together, and the differences presented opportunities and curiosities. We may even start to look forward to the next soul record being played, even if it was the Rolling Stones covering Howling Wolf (or whoever), or the Beatles covering the Isley Brothers. We began to see that even such white white kids as the Beach Boys had soul (not all of which was taken from Chuck Berry). I wonder if it is different today? Is Beck a soul singer? Why do we tolerate Vanilla Ice? Who is more "soul", Julie Andrews or Whitney Houston? And that leads to the very roots of soul (music), gospel (the elder Ms. Houston). Will we again see the day when the Staple Singers share the same radio chart as Nancy Sinatra? And who were those righteous Brothers? Will the term "soul(music)" be, as the term Negro before it, replaced by the more acceptable (less black) "ethnic(music)" thereby enveloping other forms, Asian or Hispanic based. What about native Americans? As full of soul as anyone. While I can accept my soul-ness, I cannot say I would have the guts to do a record of Marvin Gaye covers. Why is that? Because it would be bad? Because it would be insulting? Because it would be opportunistic? Soul, as a descriptive term related to music, has fallen, it seems, to the level of the Blues Brothers playing Sam and Dave or middle-aged post-yuppies wispy-eyed at the soundtrack to the Big Chill (or the return of the seacaucus seven). Perhaps it should be replaced. The term, in the long run, needn't matter as much as the concept. I see more soul in today's music than in that of the immediate past. I can only hope it is true and continues. What it is and whether it's good or bad and how to get it/use it/show it off is more the point. It isn't, I would submit, what you do when you've had enough drinks to conceal your inhibitions. It isn't even what you get when you go to church and get all "feeling god-like". It's what you are in the end, underneath everything you've been coerced into hiding behind since you were born stupid helpless and naked. It is, for our purposes, the expression (through music, but could be any art or discipline) of you, as when you were born, as when you die. It is what happened to you this morning when you were aced out of a parking spot and made late for an appointment (lame analogy, sorry). It is the sharing of what it is to be me to you. It is the ultimate in intuitive spontaneity, and the longest term goal you could envision. Rick Sanford rsanford@gun.com ++++++++++ ode to Joy Rob Thornton Last year, I carefully yet casually asked about Joy's whereabouts on a fine summer evening out in front of Temptations, the local home-made ice cream shop. This guy named Ben stared and said, "What, you hadn't heard? She got killed in a car accident last year." He told me the details, but they weren't important, because I was numb. I never ever said thank you, not at all. My mind fell back to the days when I was a proud student of Richard Montgomery High School. Back then I couldn't tell that Joy had a crush on me, but she gave me a tape that would change my life. No, it wasn't anything by L. Ron Hubbard, Jello Biafra, or the eminent Rev. Sun Myung Moon. She gave me a copy of "Atlantic Rhythm and Blues Classics: Vol. 5 1962-1969." I smiled, looked down at the tape, and turned away from her. My musical affections were reserved for the mind candy that poured out of WMAL-AM, a station that combined show tunes with easy-listening dreck from the '70s. Chicago had been my favorite band, and I was still partial to Christopher Cross and the theme from "Tootsie." A sixth grade memory comes back to me: Howlin' "something's tellin' me it might be yoooo...." as I sat out in the hot sun in my Scout uniform, parking cars at the County Fair near the Tractor Pull. Then I started to listen to that classic soul tape. My life began to change as soon as I heard Wilson Pickett yell "ONE TWO THREE!!!" on the very first track, "Land of 10,000 Dances." Horns blared as the good-time vibes flooded my room. I didn't even know what he meant when Wilson sang "do the mashed potato," and I didn't really care. It was something good, I was sure of that. Next came Eddie Floyd's "Knock On Wood," followed by Sam & Dave's "When Something's Wrong With My Baby." Then Otis Redding's "Try A Little Tenderness" came hot on their heels. The raw feelings and deep down grooves flew free from the fixed magnetic patterns on the tape and shamed my record collection, which included the four-volume "Chicago at Carnegie Hall" set. The bare powerful truth of "Chain of Fools" stripped away pretension and pretense, and "Hard to Say I'm Sorry/Hold On" suddenly became weepy mush. Any music that didn't punch me in the gut like Aretha Franklin's "Baby I Love You" wasn't worth my time anymore. I didn't know it then, but I had taken the first step away from Peter Cetera and was headed toward Sonic Youth and Camper Van Beethoven. Right then and there, I began to search for music that would match Aretha & Co. It eventually led me to the local used record store, where I asked for some good music. The guy at the store told me to get Husker Du's _Metal Circus_. My Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz had been gathering dust in a corner, but it was pulled out and I started to absorb Charlie Parker, Theolonius Monk, and Duke Ellington. By the time I graduated from college, the transition was complete. Then I looked back and tried to figure out how I had developed such a deep love for good music, and it all led back to that R&B tape. But there I was, at an ice cream store on a fine summer night, trying to absorb the impossible.... Soul music saved me. Thank you, Joy. ++++++++++ Even Richard Nixon Has Got Soul Steve Silverstein OK. So, I could do the obvious thing and talk about why listening to James Brown the other day made me so happy. I don't think I have enough to add about James Brown and soul. With a title from "The Campaigner," I could spew about why Neil Young is soulful, but that would actually be fairly boring. I also could talk about why everyone should own the first Cypress Hill album, but I'm guessing (hoping?) that most of you have that one already. I'm not enough of an expert about things conventionally called soul music to have anything to tell any semi-knowledgeable person, which I'm guessing much of the readership of FB is (if you're not, shame on you; time to go shopping). On to what I do want to write about. I was lying on my bed listening to Skullflower's _Carved Into Roses_, their recent album on VHF. I had this wonderful epiphany that this record would make a wonderful topic for a talk (write) about soul. Why? In short, Skullflower bare their souls on this record unlike any other I've heard in a really long time. Through the waves of feedback and beating, you feel a mood unlike any other I could fathom. This is a band with nothing to hide. All of their feelings are bared on to their 4-track, and if they don't bring out similar feelings in you, you're either trying too hard to shield such feelings, or you're far happier than about anyone I know. When I listen to _Carved into Roses_, I know exactly how these three guys felt. It's not anger, and it's really not sadness. It's an emotion that I don't really have a word for, just the beautiful textures that they produce. Amazing how music can do these things, isn't it? This is, in the end, why the music we today call soul has earned that name. So often soul refers to a funky beat or something, but that's not what it's about. Soul was James Brown revealing all in his grunting and shouting. He was baring his soul through his vocals, and the band was following along, and the end result was pretty damn powerful. Funny how today the word "soul" can often be applied to really soul-less imitations of this process. What James Brown led with his vocals (and the band joined in) parallels what Skullflower achieve with their weird noises. Both strategies in the end result in, essentially, a photograph of the artist's feelings. Their soul. Back to _Carved into Roses_. Why is this record so horrifying? Why when I just need to be jolted, I can lay down, engulf my body in this cavern of weird noises that fills my room, and experience such raw emotions right from the music? How through what "normal" people find noise do I find peace? Why at loud volumes does this make me fall nearly asleep? What about the artist's soul do I feel, and why do I relate to that? So, probably not my most profound piece of writing, and definitely among the shortest. I could go on longer about _Carved into Roses_, but it's such a hard record to turn into words. I could try to tie everything together more nicely. But, in the end, I'm just going to skip all of this. I'm also going to leave its relation to Neil Young or even Richard Nixon up to you. -Steve ++++++++++ Liar, Liar Scott Puckett What exactly the fuck is soul? Is it some ineffable quality music possesses which is an attribute ascribed by dint of certain definable characteristics, i.e. horns, deep basslines and the like, evidenced by labels like Stax and Motown, or is it something deeper than the superficial qualities which are generally used to categorize it and file it in record stores, something so fundamentally intertwined with music that any attempt to separate one from the other would result in the death of both? That's a question for philosophers to tackle, because the operating definition of soul I will use in this piece is as follows: soul is passion for music and passionate music, passion for the subject of a given song, that discernible vitality, energy and emotion a musician brings to a work and conveys to the audience through his/her words/music. It is a spirit of sorts, albeit an undefinable one. As Paul Williams once wrote, "You gotta have soul, baby, which just means it's gotta be you you're passing on, people receiving parts of people, living matter, animate stuff. The medium and the messages it contains are just so much nothing, trees falling in the forest with no one to hear, unless there is human life on both ends of the line, sending, receiving, transferring bits of human consciousness from one soul to another." This is seems to be as useful a means of coming to grips with Guided by Voices' "Liar's Tale" as any. While it may seem odd to consider this song to be a representative of soul music, there are several commonalities it shares with soul. First and foremost, from the earliest forms of soul music (for sake of argument let's set a rough date somewhere in the mid-1950s with various a cappella vocal groups laying the groundwork for Berry Gordy's later experiments) to the most contemporary, soul music has commonly addressed "blue" (which is to say depressing or themes found in the blues) topics -- breaking up is hard to do and it seems like everyone from the Platters to the Four Tops to All 4 One and Boyz II Men knows that. If soul musicians were carpenters, it seems they would build a relationship from scratch with the partner of their choice, or so they swear. It seems the most common topic found in soul music is, then, love. It infuses each song, torments the vocalist as they attempt to exorcise their visions and dreams of their beloved, search for a new love, lament the loss of an old love, or at the very least spit out those words which are so often so hard to say -- I love you, I need you, I want you, but you're not here, you're off with someone else ... maybe Sam Cooke put it best when he sang "Another Saturday night/ And I ain't got nobody." That seems to sum up soul music fairly well. So why, then, is "Liar's Tale," a song created by some brilliant if eccentric indie-pop-rockers from Ohio, an excellent representation of soul music? First and foremost, GbV vocalist Robert Pollard embodies everything a good soul vocalist should. He expresses his emotions through words and other, less obvious means of communicating meaning -- pitch, tone, crooning pure sound which fits into the context of the song but carries no discernible meaning, only an emotional effect. Admittedly, "Liar's Tale" is anything but a standard soul song. The reverbed guitars, the witty, self-referential lyrics which comment on the title, the form the song takes and other elements of the tune -- these contribute to separating it from soul. However, at a deeper level, Pollard's soaring vocals and gospel inflections ensure this song carries more impact than the run-of-the-mill wise-ass pop band writing about smoking pot. For starters, Pollard attempts to tell a story in this song, a story of love and loss and longing, which is thematically similar to soul music which also tries to tell a story, witnessed by "Macarthur Park," "Tracks of my Tears," "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" and "(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay." As Pollard sings in the first verse, "Let me tell you a story/ The truth is based on fact/ Long ago, in the morning/ She left, did not come back." The narrator of the song, who may or may not be Pollard, expresses how little he cares at the end of each verse, yet continues his tale, thus proving himself a liar. With each passing verse, it becomes more readily apparent exactly how deeply the narrator loved the individual he is singing about. Cathartic yelps, riffs taken from what sound like Delta Blues songs, and the narrator's desire to "Tell you a story/ About the way she was" all point to one simple thing: The narrator is the liar, but, much like the narrators in other soul songs, is only lying in an effort to protect himself from being further hurt. In other words, the facade of apathy thrown up by the narrator is nothing more than a wall trying to block out pain and the anguish which accompanies someone leaving. It is also true that the form of the song, the actual music behind Pollard's words, has little in common with more traditional forms of "soul" music -- the lush orchestration provided for the Supremes, Phil Spector's legendary "Wall of Sound." Instead, this song sounds as if it's being transmitted, to use Williams' word, to the listener via a distant AM radio station somewhere across the desert in the middle of the night. The sound, while clear, is just distorted enough that it sounds as if it's coming from some faraway, exotic locale where all the lonely people go to nurse their wounds in commiseration and empathy. While on a superficial level, "Liar's Tale" has very little to do with the Temptations, Otis Redding and other musicians treading the same ground, on the most important level -- giving part of the singer to the listener and receiving that part -- it is nothing less than the most pure form of soul which was ever created. --Scott Puckett ++++++++++ how i became the king of soul: a treatise on aristotle's favorite indie rockerz Dann Medinn "you gotta have soul... if you didn't you wouldn't be in here" james brown "so voice is the impact of the air breathed on the so-called 'windpipe' and is caused by the soul in these parts of the body" aristotle jeez, i got myself into a mess this time. where does one start? it's not like the soul hasn't been discussed fr years and years in philosophical circles. if you read my article in finley #2, you already understand my feelings towards the definitions of classification (i'm punk, no I'M punk, NO! I'm PUnk... etc.) in music. so where to go, what to say? i suppose that james brown was an obvious choice fr a quote... no other name (besides maybe aristotle, der der) seems to fit the word as spontaneously. which probably says something fr my sense of definitions of classification. stop the hypocracy, let this essay simply be about what s-o-u-l (in relation to music) means to me. when talking on an independent level (especially this year), it seems to me excessively common to hear about certain genres being dead. first, let's attempt to examine the reasoning behind this. if, fr instance, disco was dead, we must assume that at some previous space in time, such an entity as DISCO was alive. perhaps, one might remark as an example, john travolta's fabulous dancing in the late 70s as cultural proof that this same entity not only breathed but thrived in low lit bars and dance floors. a time eventually came, perhaps w/the arrival of reagan's presidency (everything of course being fun-and-games under carter), that disco's era ended, and in ceasing to exist went on to greener pastures; today being preserved in memory through various high school socials and eggs songs. thus, the life and tragic death of a genre. we all know that souls are immortal (we DO believe that all of the important bearded white males of history were correct, don't we?)... it appears that disco must have only been a temporal sort of "housing" fr this essense. when the body died, the soul escaped and re-entered another genre of music... what we today regard as 80s music. since the 80s were such an important decade fr thinking about ourselves, madonna was our material girl; NOTHING could break matthew wilder's stride. shit. but if james brown was the first unmoved mover, how could the soul survive in such superficial entities? hell, this essay is shot. if soul was/is truly regarded as a pureness of the expression of emotions (note definition promised not to appear. haha.), then james brown would be an inaccurate choice. listen to classical... stravinsky, beethoven, etc. (while namedropping, allow me to say nabakov, caterpillar, j church, denise levertov. now i'm cool and have lots of credibility. thank you very much.) wait, no, that was pretty western anthropocentric of me. natives in africa and north america were playing meaningful music years and years before they were forced to speak english or be shot. and be shot. and then came the record industry (you know that had to come in somewhere). what do you hear when you listen to your local commercial oldie station fr good ole james brown? we hear "i feel good." anyone that knows any other music of his will instantly agree that that particular song sucks, especially in comparison to most of the material written before he took too many drugs and ended up writing songs fr rocky soundtracks. as the 80s seems to have proved, music does not have to be either sincere or good to be popular. what happened to those that refused to compromise sincerity fr dollars and became famous? coltrane & charlie parker died young. jimi, joplin, kurt... either that or fugazi. of course there's the billions of inbetweeners too, i never said that i was right about all this. hell, i already mentioned the unmentionable (kurt), which is pretty much faux pax nowadays. but supposing that i knew a microcosm of what i'm talking about (holy mixed tenses. good thing i don't that fuck a give about grammer no.), this would leave us w/those that existed today w/the immortal almighty soul inside them demanding only the best from their poor unfortunate hosts (especially if yr trent reznor, or that guy in magnetic fields that never seems to be happy). it is among my personal tastes in this range of musicians performers i enjoy to listen to the most. especially if they're creative ones. being the dorky hyperactive sensitive 90s boy i be, music means the most to me when i can feel it. it's nice to listen to ann peebles when i wanna throw out my chest and dance. rites of spring when i'm frustrated and desperately seeking catharsis. charles mingus in a walkman on a sunny day in the woods. sunny day real estate fr melancholly pensive sleepless nights. beat happening fr phat inevitable crushes. crayon fr the ones that don't work. tito peunte fr motion. drive like jehu, rodan, and unwound are all good fr mood swings fr the worst. digable planets or de la soul fr relaxing and toe tapping. enough w/the names, an open approach to exploring music beyond (while not automatically rejecting those w/in the realm of) corporate music on majors as well as traditionally defined limits of genre has allowed me to relate to the point of having something to listen to fr just about every mood. which makes some of the tougher responsibilities of our temporal and mortal existences more bearable. bad relationships, bills, and political oppression can be quite disheartning to one's soul (especially if yr plato, who believed that the soul was innately inclined to do good; good being the just and right way we today label as politically correct. which is really funny, cuz plato didn't include women in his theory, which is politically _and pretty honestly_ incorrect. there you go!)... it's nice to have a distraction; something sartre attributed (art in general) as, like we assume the soul to be, immortal and everlasting. if we can be certain that our bodies will cease to exist, the music we can produce (or at least its essense; fr example mozart's sheet music still exists hundreds of years after his death) can defy that. which we seem to like. especially if it means john travolta in tight white jump suits. ========== Coursing through the wires... Mark Bunster : While palefaces can make good conduits, the keepers of most of the soul share a darker pigment. Articles of exhibition for the soul apprentice: o Coltrane--A Love Supreme o Otis Redding--Live at Monterey o any Stax/Volt box set o Miles--Kind of Blue o any Parliament/Funkadelic o Stevie Wonder--Songs in the Key of Life o Jimi Hendrix-Blues o Billie Holiday--pick one o Ella Fitzgerald--early years o Bessie Smith--box set o Nat King Cole--any trio sessions o Spearhead--Home o Barry White et al, ad jubilum. One last tip: soul is a team sport. Play it with someone you want to love. ++++++++++ Steve Silverstein : 4 recent albums I've bought of late and really dig... o Wingtip Sloat, Chewyfoot (vhf) o Ladybug Transistor, Marlborough Farms (Park 'N' Ride) o Flying Saucer Attack, Further (Drag City) o Helium, The Dirt of Luck (Matador) 4 old albums I've recently acquired and like... o Gang of Four, Songs of the Free (?, 1982) o Renaldo and the Loaf, Songs for Swinging Larvae (Ralph, 1981) o Felt, Let the Snakes Cringe Their Heads to Death (Creation, 1986) o Tyrannosaurus Rex, A Beard of Stars (Blue Thumb, 1969) One more comment... Three years ago, I started into Greil Marcus's Lipstick Traces. I didn't finish. I'm trying again, and it makes more sense and has more relevance to me than when I last read some of it. While Marcus gets a bit carried away once in awhile, the breadth of his studies and his sharp analysis make them truly fascinating. If you've never plowed through Marcus's writing, as dense and academic as it can be, you really owe yourself to do so. ++++++++++ dann medin : dann's soul endorses... o sonic youth reissues (especially daydream nation & sister) o clikatat ikatowi lp on gravity records o vitapup dragonfly 7" o the lune/karate split 7" o jane hohenberger (from vitapup) spoken word tape & 7" o long hind legs tape & 7" o candy machine (this cd never dies!)'s "collectors" from 'modest proposal' o eric dolphy's "out to lunch" lp o syrup 7" o pinball live o first shows w/supportive friends o chesterfield kings (unfiltered) o drum (but only after you learn how to roll them) tobacco o full nights of sleep after weeks of under 2 hours. (funny dreams) o carolyn forsche's "the angel of history" is without a doubt one of the most intense books of poetry i've ever read. o anything printed by curbstone press... o caffiene, organic fruits, old james brown, and noticing the buds on trees blooming in the woods. o satyrday nite fevuh. fuck yeah. o mom's cool too. ++++++++++ Eric Sinclair : o Band of Susans "Here Comes Success" (Restless Records). In particular the track Pardon My French makes me chair dance at work, alarming my coworkers. o Silkworm "Slipstream" 7" keeps finding it's way to the turntable at home, trading places with... o Palace's new 7"s for dominance. o Beer Frame is in residence (along with the back issues) on our coffee table for all to see and enjoy). o Managing Internet Information Services (O'Reilly Publishing). I'm a geek. Sue me. o Chicago FastMap o http://astro.ocis.temple.edu/~callahan/joyce.html is worth checking out for all the present and ex-english majors out there. ++++++++++ Sean Murphy : o Beat Happening and Screaming Trees, "Polly Peregrin" (Homestead 12", 1988) o Black Sabbath, _Master of Reality_, side two (Warner Bros., 1971) o Neil Young, _Harvest_ (Reprise, 1972) o Flaming Lips, "Jesus Shootin' Heroin" (from _Hear It Is_, Restless, 1986) o Simon & Garfunkel, "At The Zoo" (from _Bookends_, Columbia, 1967) o Silkworm, "Into The Woods" (from _In The West_, C/Z, 1993) o Grenadine, "This Girl's In Love With You" (from the _Wakefield Vol. 1_ compilation CD, TeenBeat, 1995) o Tim Buckley, _Peel Sessions_ (recorded 1968) o knowing that the Dead C are playing in my part of the world very very soon... ================= In Closing... ================= First, thanks to all those who have inquired about the status of this little project. I've had too much work and randomness happening of late to get it out "on time" and I apologize. But here it is - I just hope people are still reading. I decided to save my remarks to the end, since I realized a little while ago that I wasn't going to write about the topic. I had planned to compare and contrast Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions ca. 1988, or to write about rap and why it has apparently fallen out of favor in the "independent rock community" (a gross overgeneralization, of course, and therefore presumptively invalid). I gave both up for various reasons, and realized that I had little to say this time around. In any event, I wrote some stuff while wandering through eastern Virginia on a lovely Greyhound bus about a week and a half ago, and what follows are transcriptions of that material. The first section is roughly about the "direction" behind and in front of Finley. The second explains plans for future editions (no, I'm not pulling the plug yet, even if I am having trouble keeping up with it). Hope it helps to see some of the thought processes that happen between editions (when I'm not engaged in arguments with people on other mailing lists or working so hard that I can't log in for 3 days and have to wade through 170 messages at a time). ----- 10:25 am. 5/3/95. On a Greyhound bus, pen to paper, on I-64 between Richmond and Williamsburg, VA. I'm starting to wonder - are people writing to meet what's perceived as my expectations? Does anybody know what I expect in a given issue of Finley? [Did people know what I expected in reviews when I "edited" the Indie-list? I certainly didn't know what to expect, which is why it was fun to do...] What I'm trying to say is that there are no "right" responses to a topic. I've always hated the term "brainstorm," but ideally that's what an issue of Finley should look like. Any number of people offering their free-associative thoughts and ideas. Not "what does Sean want to print." Not "what's gonna relate to what Sean's writing." (Hell, I skipped writing on topic altogether this time. Just go listen to _It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back_ within the next week.) Sometimes we reach pretty close to that ideal - the punk issue, for example. This time, we're somewhere in the middle. As some of you might have noticed, I'm hesitant to say I "edit" Finley. I see my role as one of facilitator, administrator, compiler - not editor. Editors have clearly defined visions of an end-product, and cajole or brainwash others into sharing that vision. Other than presenting an open forum of opinions in something approximating standard written english, there's no vision to Finley. (This may appear to contradict my remarks above re. "brainstorming." It doesn't - I see it as multiple aspects or factes of a muti-dimensional reality.) ----- 5/3/95, 7:14 pm, on another fucking Greyhound, this time from Richmond back to DC. Future topics... I just unpacked my milkcrates full of books that I mostly didn't read during college, realizing that I _am_ actually interested in some of the stuff. First one I've actually started reading is Raymond Williams, _Marxism and Literature_. Exceptionally dense stuff - he warns the reader up fron that he's skipping the examples and applications of the theory he's expounding 'cause it's already in his earlier writings. So, after wading through a couple chapters, I started toying with applying his analysis (or a simplified variant of it) to this thing we call the independent rock scene. Replace "scene" with "culture." Then question the nature of culture, how it develops and how it's defined and what it defines, and a whole bunch of interesting possibilities start floating about. Is independent rock different from dependent rock? What _is_ dependent rock? And then we get to the economic parts, and then it all runs off into a soggy mess. But I'm afraid that's too high-falutin' pseudo-intellectual for its own good - I don't want to encourage the next Andrew Ross... so, backing off from the Marxist possibilities of independent music, there's another area I'd like to consider - what is independent-rock culture? What brings these people together, whether in bands or as DJs or lebels or clubs or fans? Is it the commonality of flannel, piercings, and Doc Martens? The neo-hippie H.O.R.D.E. contingent can match that, and yet I'm not about to call Blues Traveler anything but a bad Van Morrison/Cat Stevens/Grateful Dead wannabe. For one reason or another, I'd rather identify independent rock culture than analyze it... or at least formally identify it _before_ analyzing it (buying back into the scientific method... passes the _Daubert_ test...). If we're not slackers, and we're not MTV-heads, and we're not Gen-X, then what does set apart and differentiate independent rock and its culture? (or should I say independent music... shit. of course we're not limited to "rock" and especially not a form of "indie-rock" which values practiced incompetence and intentional lack of skill almost more than the result of said behaviors...) ----- Back to real time (which is 12:10 am, Saturday May 13)... I'm not ready to announce a topic for Finley #5 yet - that will come in about a week or so. There's a bunch of possibilities for the summer, including joint projects with other folks, projects which emphasize my coordinatory roles instead of my incoherent writing, and other stuff punctuated by my gradual move back to scenic central New Jersey and the eminent migration of the patent-pending bloofgamatic mailer to Chicago. But there will also be at least one "conventional" issue, too... probably #5, for that matter. Rebuttals and extended commentary on any or all ideas raised in this issue are welcome, whether private or for publication in Finley #5. (this is true of all back issues, but it's easiest to respond to or write about the issue most recently received, right?) Thanks again to everyone reading... special mad shouts and props to the crazy kids (most of whom don't even receive this) who helped me work through the last couple months without letting me totally lose my shit - reb, lara, katie, jennie, sarah, dan, guy, paul, karine, jen & mike, erin, and many others... thanks also to JBM and TWM for trusting me enough to let me come back to NJ even though it's probably not the best strategic move for our company right now... This issue, as well as all future issues of Finley Breeze, is dedicated to BRR (1955-1995) and RLB (1973 - 1994), who had far more soul than I could ever hope to envision again, and will continue to inspire me, probably without ever realizing they had an impact in the first place. OFFICIAL INFORMATION SECTION: DISCLAIMER: All material contained within is the responsibility of the original author, as identified by name and electronic address. If there is no clear attribution, then I probably wrote it, and you can bitch at me. This may be reproduced freely, but I'd ask that those doing the re-distribution give credit where it's due. QUESTIONS, complaints, comments, etc. about the publication as a whole are welcome. Submissions are even better. Subscriptions are cool, too. All should be directed to: grumpy@access.digex.net As I get a lot of random mail each day, please make it clear at the outset that you're writing about FB, not just for your health or to see if you can send mail from your net-site to mine. Finally, as the inheritor of the Telegraphic mission specifications, I'm also holding onto the Telegraph archives. All three are available from me if you want 'em.