March Madness: Part 2

"Unusual behavior tends to produce estrangement in others which tends to further the unusual behavior; thus, the estrangement [is heightened] in self-stoking cycles until some sort of climax is reached." - Robert M. Pirsig



6) Brian Wilson (The Beach Boys) "Sloop John B"

Good clean fun is ephemeral.  Even well-coiffed former quarterbacks that form seminal pop groups with their brothers can dabble in drugs and insanity. At one time the very archetype of the innocuous "boy-next-door", Wilson didn't only dabble in rock-star insanity, he helped re-write the book. Otherworldly vocal harmonies celebrating the nascent Southern California surf culture made his group instantly popular in the early Sixties, but by the mid-Sixties this musical savants' taste for the party had grown to epic proportions.  Like most addled leaders, he was reportedly an unyielding tyrant in the studio - it took him thirty-five years to fully realize and release Smile.  Wilson fell into inexorable depressive states, didn't wander too far from an expansive bedroom for years at a time, and was diagnosed with acute mental illness.  (Nota bene: I couldn't help but include the Beach Boys early take on the traditional "Sloop John B", with its prescient refrain - "This is the worst trip I've ever been on.")



7) Daniel Johnston "Impossible Love"

Another offering from the mad jewel of Texas, this quirky Austin singer-songwriter has been making off-kilter bedroom-rock tapes since the early Eighties.  Almost improbably, Johnston has slowly settled into his own beloved niche in the pantheon of music history while struggling with manic depression, bi-polarity, and what Nick Cave would basely christen the "No P*ssy Blues".  His introspective lyrics about everyday absurdities are delivered with an unparalleled childlike earnestness.  Innovative in a completely non-predisposed manner, it is worth delving into his rich catalog.  And if his minimalist Casio + guitar instrumentation doesn't suit you, there is a long line of musicians (Beck, Wilco, Sparklehorse, the Flaming Lips, etc.) that have reverently covered his tunes.



8) Lee "Scratch" Perry - "Dread Lion"

News flash: The godfather of dub reggae is also plumb crazy.  At a time when most Jamaican musicians fell neatly into two camps (thoughtfully withdrawn, philosophical Rastafarians or brash, boisterous dancehall "toasters"), Perry was a singularly strange and original personality that redefined the island's music in the Seventies. A sound production pioneer, Perry laid sheets of echoing overdubs and ominous chants over the top of traditional roots songs, effectively creating a new hybrid of organic/electronic music.  He also ingested copious amounts of cannabis and booze, referred to himself as "Pipecock Jackxon", and publicly participated in idiosyncratic activities such as fervently worshiping bananas and eating money.  The apotheosis of his eccentricity was reached when Perry apparently burned down his own studio (The Black Ark) in a psychotic rage.



Following a common trend in rock-star insanity, Perry has decidedly settled down in his twilight years.  He is still marvelously weird during interviews however.

9) Ian Dury - "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll"

The ebullient Ian Dury was never insane by any means, but the "English Punk-Poet Laureate" crafted a truly original and moving existence out of very humble origins.  Afflicted by polio at an early age, Dury spent much of his working-class childhood being ostracized for his awkward gait and frail countenance.  Luckily for the rest of humanity, he spent his adulthood fusing disparate styles of music (funk, pub rock, minimalist disco, etc.) with irreverently brilliant lyrical poetry spat out in a rich and often unintelligible Cockney accent.

 

"Spasticus Autisticus" is his unabashedly forthright ode to those that society has deemed mentally and physically disabled:

"So place your hard-earned peanuts in my tin,

And thank the Creator you're not in the state I'm in,

So long have I been languishing on the shelf,

I must give all proceedings to myself."

Originally wrote as a sardonic response to the U.N.'s decision to designate 1981 as the "International Year of Disabled Persons", the BBC didn't accept Dury's uncompromising look at disabilities and refused air-play.

While a widely recognized and respected iconoclast in the UK, Dury never received a good deal of fame outside of the fair isle.  Was his subject matter too parochial for Americans or maybe his anti-aesthete sensibility turned us off?  Nonetheless, Dury was a superbly odd character that deserves to be lionized for his contributions.



10) Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band - "Moonlight in Vermont"

When the statement "A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast 'n bulbous, got me?" is posed during the introduction to "Pachuco Cadaver" (from the seminal Trout Mask Replica), one can't help but to sub-consciously answer "No, Captain. I don't get you."  Abstract, abrasive, and immensely gifted, Don Van Vliet emerged from the LSD-drenched California scrubland  and forever changed avant-garde music.  Rolling with our theme, he was supposedly a punch-drunk dictator in the studio that once kept a group of musicians under lock-and-key for eight months while recording an album.


Trying to describe Beefheart's thought-provoking music is futile, but here's my attempt for Trout Mask Replica:

Irascible revivalist-blues laden with proto-punk ferocity, deftly organized musical chaos, and stream-of-conscious bark-shouts. Basically, it is inaccessible to the majority of people on Earth who cherish melody and tonality in their music. But for those who like impossibly heady and cryptic songwriting coupled with angry instruments... 

Van Vliet consciously sought an existence out of the spotlight for many years until his passing just months ago.  His vast influence on contemporary music can never be understated and he was a bit of a kook, so he takes the final spot on this humble list.



Thanks for reading if you made it this far. Check out March Madness: Part 1 if you're interested in more strange fellows.  Also, thanks to the world wide web for providing all of the media.

March Madness: Part 1

"Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most." - John Michael Osbourne

Most brilliant musicians are part of an idiosyncratic tribe: playing to a different beat, living in self-constructed microcosms, breathing a rarefied air, etc. Yet, haplessly mirroring the remainder of our society, a certain percentage are petulant drug-addled lunatics or truculent fiends.  This month's playlist has nothing to do with collegiate basketball and everything to do with the impact of mental illness on popular music.  The good: Seminal albums are created by singular personalities.  Indelible artistic imprints are left for posterity. The bad: Lifetimes are spent languishing away in psychiatric wards. Monstrously decadent expenditures inevitably lead to penury. The ugly: Premature death.



1) Roky Erickson (The 13th Floor Elevators) - "You're Gonna Miss Me"

After gobbling down countless hits of LSD throughout the Sixties, this Austin pysch-rock pioneer started peppering his conversations with alien references and was institutionalized by the friendly folks at the Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.  Electroshock therapy and Thorazine injections ensued.  He spent the next couple of decades making music about extraterrestrial life and obsessively reading and responding to junk mail from his bleak suburban home.  Happily, over the past few years he has experienced an overdue resurgence in his career thanks to a younger breed of Austin musicians - touring with neo-pysch rockers The Black Angels and releasing a rousing, introspective folk-rock album with Okkervil River.




2.) Phil Spector - "Love" (John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band)

A sordid life that has its beginnings in the hackneyed pages of Horatio Alger.  Born to a modest Russian-Jewish immigrant family in the Bronx, at nine years old Spector's family relocated to Los Angeles after his father's suicide.  After forming some bands and dabbling in songwriting, Spector found a greater interest behind the boards and went on to become one of the most important producers of his time.  He created many of the biggest pop-radio hits of the Sixties and as the quintessential anti-minimalist created the "Wall of Sound" production technique in which multiple layers of instrument overdubs create an all-enveloping mass of sonic frequency.  While churning out hits, Spector internally struggled with manic-depression and would liberally dole out tongue lashings to colleagues both near and far.  His bipolarity coupled nicely with his affinity for firearms and he terrorized a legion of musicians while simultaneously earning them mountains of cash.  Spector's mad-genius saga continues to spiral uncontrollably: he is currently appealing a guilty verdict of second-degree murder in the case of a B-movie actress and a bullet in his hillside estate. (Nota bene: Although absent for most of the recording sessions, John and Yoko wisely chose to avoid conflict and Spector was still credited with production on Plastic Ono Band.  He did indeed play the piano melody on "Love".)

3.) Syd Barret (Pink Floyd) - "Lucifer Sam"

Long considered one of the main creative forces behind the English psychedelic movement in the mid to late Sixties, Barret ascended and burned out with the same rapidity.  LSD casualty or simply born bonkers? Impossible to know, but a popular discursive topic at pubs the world around.  He deftly bridged the blaring sonics of Mod garage bands with a nascent exploration into psychedelia and space travel.  However; his relative sanity peaked with the release of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (Pink Floyd's groundbreaking debut) and the godfather of space-rock began experiencing intermittent psychotic episodes.  After tuning out from our dismal modernity around 1972, he pulled a Salinger and escaped to a quiet, reclusive existence until his death in 2006.  (N.B.: The "toytown-pysch" whimsy of his classic "Bike" has been interpreted by some as a prime example of a musician on the brink of clinical insanity)



4.) John Frusciante "Poppy Man"

A musical prodigy turned guitar virtuoso, Frusciante quit one of the world's biggest bands in 1992 after presumably tiring of Anthony Kiedis' marbles-in-mouth babbling/rapping.  He subsequently spent the next six years shooting, smoking, and snorting a veritable cornucopia of drugs in a trash and modern art-strewn Hollywood Hills manse.  The excessive amounts of substance abuse left him dessicated and gaunt, spotted with weeping abscesses, and toothless.  Never completely eschewing his artistic gifts during this otherwise dismal time, Frusciante made an esoteric short film called Stuff with some buddies (Gibby Haynes and Johnny Depp) and released a couple of equally esoteric and strange albums.  His dexterous and inimitable guitar work is typically brilliant, but his vocals (especially on Smile From the Streets You Hold) can be harrowing - ranging from a feline caterwauling to banshee-like shrieks. (N.B.: Not one for obfuscation, Frusciante's "Poppy Man" is a stellar instrumental from an album that was admittedly released solely to feed his insatiable appetite for opiates.)

On the luminous side of things, Frusciante kicked habits and had a much better decade this last time around.  Re-joining his beloved mega-band, releasing a few noteworthy solo albums, and keeping a gentleman's deportment through thick and thin. Below, an offering from Curtains, a 2004 album that delves into the age-old tale of physical and emotional recovery without sounding trite.



5.) Phil Spector - "Don't Go Home With Your Hard-On" (from Leonard Cohen's 1977 offering Death of a Ladies Man)

His work is so influential and his psychotic antics so memorable, that Mr. Spector landed on this list twice.  Spector co-wrote and produced the entirety of Death of a Ladies Man, yet Cohen still dismisses this album as his least favorite in his vast body of work and Spector reportedly physically barred him from any post-production work.  "Don't Go Home With Your Hard-On", featuring backing vocals on the chorus from Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg, is a strange, raucous gem.

Take a gander at "Memories" below.  Spector's doo-wop influence and orchestral overdubs add a striking contrast to Cohen's intimate, dead-pan lyrical phrasing.




March Madness: Part 2
featuring Daniel Johnston, Brian Wilson, Ian Dury, Capt. Beefhart, and Lee "Scratch" Perry
will appear on this blog shortly...