KENTUCKY MEAT SHOWER 17.1: ALL GOOD THINGS COME TO A PAUSE, BUT FIRST A WAY TOO LONG MUSIC ISSUE (SONGS OF THE YEAR AND FAVORITE SONGS LIST UPDATE)
Ten Songs of the Year--Hiding Songs
Happy New Year, I guess. It’s time for another Kentucky Meat Shower.
I need a break.
That’s going to sound odd. I haven’t wrote anything in awhile for this project, which would sound like a break. But it wasn’t. There’s struggling to get anything done and then there’s taking a break to come back and give a project the attention it deserves. I haven’t given this project the attention it deserves. I’m choosing the latter.
The truth is when I work on this, it gets very tempting to get something out quick based on some thing or another that just happened. One of the better things I wrote all year was about fucking Tiger King, for Christ’s sake. But I’m not a quick writer.
I suppose if it’s all I had to do, I could be. But count it: moving, changing positions in my company of two years, a global pandemic, becoming a call center employee again, catching epididymitis, sitting on my couch watching the country go up in flames with the same intensity as my extremities (hey Updike), having a nervous breakdown in the middle of everything when the company instituted mandatory overtime, moving, leaving my job, getting another job for exactly a day, and then leaving it the minute I got a call for a better job, which was a contract position lasting two months, and then finally another go around on a big ferris wheel labeled PTSD, coming to grips with the denial of yet another unseemly fact that ruined my personhood for a number of years. You try writing about Barack Obama comparing rap music to Donald Trump with the 6r above going on, especially considering nobody will remember it in five years.
Thus: I need a break.
I’ve written before about how a Kentucky Meat Shower isn’t just me throwing an intro essay, a body essay, and then picking a song at the end. There’s a latticing behind every decision made, and body essays are picked for how much they’ll reverberate into the first. Without the latticing, the theme is just “me”. I don’t think I’m that interesting. The hope is interesting things happen around me and the hope then is I reflect on them interestingly. All the things I listed above, all the jobs, all of that, those are life. Even if we considered them hard, which believe me, they were, I don’t think they’re necessarily worth the spit.
If there is anything interesting about me, it’s the view of the world that has been built upon because of those experiences. I would write about the Tire and Auto Place across the street catching on fire quite a bit differently than my neighbors would, as I should. And when I don’t have anything interesting to say about anything, again, I’ll save my spit. Nobody needs to read my thoughts on 2020.
Let me give you an example of what I mean, by this view of the world. I recently watched How To with John Wilson. The general lay out of each episode is John Wilson gives you instructions on how to deal with some facet of modern life: small talk, putting up scaffolding, protecting your furniture, etc. However, from there, he totally transcends the initial premise, with these pretty basic issues turning into thoughtful existential reflections. Small talk becomes a rumination on the unknowability of strangers and the private pain you carry, scaffolding becomes about protection from calamity, improving your memory turns into a discussion of how New York changes so rapidly. A How To episode isn’t just “pick something to give instructions on”, “shoot some random nonsense”, “throw in a surprise”, and “cap”. It becomes as natural as breathing. Thus, an issue of this here project isn’t opener, body, pick a song. From the first word I write, we are doing what we can to establish tone and give you an experience. If you want to just read random articles, go hit the random button on wikipedia three times.
Without anything to segue to or build to, there’s no point, and if I’m not finding the surprising connections between Shoko Asahara and Belle Delphine with the rash of those fucking interminable bolt scooters, then no point in subjecting you to it to clear my throat or fulfill some invisible contract.
Thus, a new schedule. I get about 6 issues a year of the quality I want. Expect to see me on this project in June. Meat Season then will be upon us. In the mean time, I’m going to pursue other things. You might get lucky and see those.
However, it is the end of the year and I have some stuff to update.
END OF THE WORLD MUSIC LIST
This is probably a symptom of me working from home near the end, but I think I listened to the most new music I’ve ever listened to in a year. Then again, I was stuck inside in some way most of the year.
Let me start by saying I’m only an authority on my taste and what I think works. If I think it works, I’m the final word. If you agree with me, you’ll like this list. But I make no claims that I listen to everything that comes out in a year. That requires a level of work that I don’t get paid enough to do. That’s likely why the list is going to be shorter than most of these lists. You might get surprised, or you might just get disappointed. Let’s start with the songs. There’s no order here, however read all the bias you want into this you want.
Top Ten Songs of the Year
Refrain by Boris and ZOA
It’s an album and it’s a song! Sorry I didn’t get anything off the Merzbow joint release. Welcome to my twisted little corner of the internet. I’ll have more about this tomorrow.$500 Ounces by Westside Gunn (feat. Freddie Gibbs and Roc Marciano)
Arguably the father-son-and-holy ghost of traditionalist but forward looking rapping, together on a lush Alchemist beat that everybody get theirs on. Pray for Paris felt like an aspirational fashion show I’d see all over tumblr, back when I was dressing like Virgil Texas. While Westside Gunn does his snide nasal-drip thing, Freddie Gibbs gets into blues mood, rapping unhurried about having skeletons in his closets next to Balenciagas. But when Roc starts his verse after a sing-song bridge, we hear the progenitor of this traditionalist thing remind everybody there’s not a person on the planet who can out rap him when he gets into his bag. Roc Marciano raps like he’s trying not to step on his fur coat while he’s pulling off an art heist. When I first realized he said “sacrifice living beings to please deities” I got a UPS message that I had a package I needed to sign for. It was a Faberge egg full of cocaine I am still having appraised.Lockless by Greg Dulli
Funereal trip hop swan songs to listen to at one a.m. while you crave a cigarette even though you never started smoking. Greg Dulli’s treaded this path before, particularly in the early days of his solo career. But the punkish snarl has now been replaced a steady howl and on this album, there was less razor thin Gang of Four guitar and instead a stately procession.
In a year full of empty streets and late nights sleeping on a couch because I couldn’t handle knowing I’d be sleeping with my body like a crescent moon around notebooks and other bric-a-brac, no song felt more like living than this. 2020 made corporeal what was always deeply felt: it’s lonely and all you have is whatever you take to bed with you.Lovelock by The Necks
It was a twilight of a year, and it took two songs with the words “lock” in the title to recognize it. It felt like we were all villagers plagued by a werewolf; get in before dark and be safe. While Greg Dulli’s “Lockless” was for the solitary amongst us, “Lovelock” sounded more cosmic and even older, back when we thought stars were the eyes of a thousand beings staring at us. What mysteries The Necks conjure out of a piano, bass and drums fit in both Chandler novels and in starless black, nights.
“An Idea is A Work of Art” by R.A.P. Ferreira
Milo, the earliest incarnation of R.A.P. Ferreira, felt more like mumbling than Future’s imitators. Not any more, however: Ferrerira’s taken the mantle of Freestyle Fellowship’s jazzy utopian machine gun rapping and put it to his own uses. That makes him a virtuoso to these ears. Put him over Kenny Segal’s gentle trumpet and we have a song that sounds like waking up from a nap to find yourself in world that has been totally transformed. I don’t like a lot of optimistic music, because it ignores struggle. I don’t think Ferreira does either. As his verse ends, he says “We built better answers”. Whether or not it’ll answer ultimate questions is a different question entirely.Slew Foot by Armand Hammer
Did the world catch up to Armand Hammer, the fire and brimstone New York rap duo, or did we start listening to them? It’s a good question. A lot has been made of calling the group “dystopian”, but they’re only dystopian because we live in a dystopia. What they are is Old Testament prophets. They write slyly amusing lamentations of life under a dying, racialized capitalism. During this year, when the streets gnashed their teeth, there was no line that made me chill more than “we are bored of the apocalypse”.
However, one of the biggest mysteries (and frankly, one thing that makes them very hard to write about for me) of Armand Hammer is the way each rapper’s verses play together in one song. While Elucid’s verse on “Slew Foot” felt like a rallying cry, billy woods tells a story of athletes with their brains in jars, with the brain worm couplet “Colin Powell had to get you dirty/Colin Kapernick on the jersey”. Maybe it’s a reference to Pat Tillman. But like Ghostface Killah before them, they pass the rap test: get some official beats and say fly shit over them.For Her by Fiona Apple
I always liked Fiona Apple, but I always associated her with a quiet, steely fury (the very thing that mad her nail the living shit out of “I Want You” by Elvis Costello). But it’s hard to get more nightmarish than the bridge, where Fiona sings “Good morning/you raped me in the same bed your daughter was born in”. This has been the nightmare of these four years and the last however many: a prima nocta for the moral exemplars of our age, and the utmost terror brought upon those who do not follow their stringent, self serving rules. It takes strength to live with a quiet fury. I know what bit of it I have almost kills me.
Sarah’s Flame by The Drive-By Truckers
Forget try-hard twitter threads. You need Mike Cooley, the unholy love-child of John Prine and Charles Portis, to lay out the exact genealogy that the American right wing has bloomed into. You don’t need Russia when you have Sarah Palin. And while I might quibble with the line “got half the working class clapping on ones and threes” for not being the world’s most accurate political rendering, I actually was rooting for McCain in 2008 (in my defense, I was 16 and wasn’t even aware cunnilingus existed). And the idea of Sarah Palin saying “what’s a girl got to do to get a little credit” for her place amongst America’s right-wing hagiography is worth a chuckle.Fights Don’t Matter by Drakeo the Ruler
You’re not escaping the influence of the world’s politics on this year’s music, especially when the prison industrial complex swallows lives for profit. Drakeo the Ruler was almost a casualty: a vengeful pair of cops like those that followed Joseph K in The Trial watched videos with pretty stereotypical gangsta rap tropes and wove together a fan fiction that’d put a Tumblr kid from 2014 to shame, then he sat in jail for years during a pandemic. But the criminal actions of the Los Angeles D.A. got all the attention in the world and Drakeo dropped a classic rapped over jail phones. All it took was Jackie Lacey losing and Drakeo was freed. It felt like the first thing he did was go to the studio where he cut “Fights Don’t Matter”. A spit in the face of crooked cops and a racist criminal justice system, you can sense the sly smile in lines like “Plug told me 10 a piece/I started paisa dancing.” Some fights do matter.
Emma Durutti by The Alex Jonestown Massacre
No link. Go buy the fucking album or the song. Google works.
Alright, full disclosure: I’ve organized and lived with the lead singer, I live with the guitarist and bassist, and play Magic: the Gathering with the drummer.. This is not a favor. I actually welled up at this song; they’re a band that gets the political connection between folk and punk, and I don’t want to throw bars of soap at them like most folk punk groups.
It’s a simple folk song that follows from a William Van Sporensen, who committed an act of sabotage at an ICE camp, to Ahed Tamimi, to Malala Yousafzai, to a friend’s mother tortured in Iran, to Chelsea Manning, to YPJ fighters in occupied Kurdistan. I am not as brave as any of those people. But their music reminds me it’s not about one person being brave, it’s about creating a situation where people can be brave. And if you’ve ever been in a mosh pit or beat a mile while listening to your favorite song, you’ll know how inspiring a song can be. I’ll end on a quote from James Connolly:
"No revolutionary movement is complete without its poetical expression. If such a movement has caught hold of the imagination of the masses, they will seek a vent in song for the aspirations, the fears and hopes, the loves and hatreds engendered by the struggle. Until the movement is marked by the joyous, defiant, singing of revolutionary songs, it lacks one of the distinctive marks of a popular revolutionary movement; it is a dogma of a few, and not the faith of the multitude".
HIDIN’ SONGS: 29 YEARS OF LIVING
I’ve accidentally been calling myself 29. If you’re not scared of 30 there’s no difference between 28 and 29, and if you’re scared, why? 30’ll pass through you like 31.
But the general lay out of the hiding songs (credit to Nick Cave for this idea, who has never appeared on this list through no fault of his own) is I pick a song for every year I’ve been alive that would be considered my “favorite songs”. There’s a ballot situation, here. I’ve done the list three times. The more a song gets mentioned, the more solidified its place is. But that doesn’t mean there’s not new wrinkles and songs fall off depending on moods. I’ll only update write-ups if I think there’s a reason to, and new essays will be written for new songs. Outside of the first five songs, this is all pretty loose. Again: what’s the difference between my 7th and 8th favorite song.
But let’s get the stuff that stayed from last year.
Little Red Corvette- Prince
Tumblin’ Dice- The Rolling Stones
Gilgamesh- Billy Woods
When We Two Parted- The Afghan Whigs
ATLiens- OutKast
O Death- Ralph Stanley
Nothin’- Townes Van Zandt
Codeine Crazy- Future
Bloxk Party- Sada Baby feat. Drego
Saeta- Miles Davis and Gil Evans
Random Rules- Silver Jews
Ava Maria- Franz Schubert
Bridge Over Troubled Water- Aretha Franklin
Desperadoes Under the Eaves- Warren Zevon
Brando- Scott Walker and Sunn 0)))
Blue Factory Flame- Songs: Ohia
The Shy Retirer- Arab Strap
Hit It and Quit It- Funkadelic
Diamonds and Wood- UGK
The Drowners- Suede
Angel from Montgomery- John Prine
Anvil Will Fall- Harvey Milk
Untitled (How Does It Feel)- D’Angelo
Please Stay (Once You Go Away)- Marvin Gaye
That leaves us with five. Which brings us to our newest additions.
FIVE NEW ONES
Protect Ya Neck by Wu-Tang Clan
You’re cleaning your room as a lonely 15 or 16 year old. In order to break up the monotony you put on VH1 while you clean. The top 100 songs of the 90s comes on. They do 5 bubble songs. You hear drums that sound like a soap party and a descending piano conveys Carpenterian menace. You’ve heard Public Enemy, who you like, but you’ve never heard people rap to create the object of a “verse”, which is an abstract formation like an conceptual sculpture, collage. At your dad’s house you play this and “Ain’t Nothin’ But a G Thang” and “By the Time I Get to Arizona” on youtube computer speakers in the background. When you download torrents for the first time you grab Illmatic, too. At a football game you half brag you’ve considered making your Myspace slogan a quote from “NY State of Mind” to a girl you’re testing the water with until she mentions she finds the starting tight end of your football team hot A year later your garage-rock band frontman calls Wu-Tang Clan a cult. He wasn’t wrong. Your life isn’t the same anymore. You become a White Guy Who Is In To Rap. And it all started with VH1 slagging off the start of the greatest rap group of all time’s most primal song.
I Must Have Done Something Bad by Merle Haggard
Heartbreak that sounds like the hawk that tore out Prometheus’s liver. No country song so exhibits the principles of duende to me. It’s irrational in its belief past actions are paid back by heartbreak. The fiddles and simple language supply the earthiness and the diabolic rears its head when Merle sings he’d sell his soul, cut off his arm, and steal from the poor and the blind just to please the you in the song. And when he sings he could lay down and die, there is the admission that death would be better than this.Hey Jude by Wilson Pickett
The older I get the more the Beatles grate on me. As great as they are, they’re too tidy and too conceptual for me to love the way I did. In a word, they’re cute, and I can’t abide cuteness in my music the way I did. Why the hell would you listen to a bunch of na-na-nas when you can listen to Wilson Pickett scream a scream that sounds like ripping velcro, horns that sound like comfort food, and Duane Allman tear the living shit out of a triplet laden solo? It might be a sign of talent the Beatles wrote good enough songs to be covered, but there’s still the malingering cuteness, with which Muscle Shoals never had any truck.The Band Played Waltzing Matilda by the Pogues
There is no better song about the uselessness and frailty of trauma. You will lose your legs and the life of a rover and your ability to enjoy a parade and gain only the ability to ask questions of country, life, and your own usefulness. We love killing our enemies and hate the people we use to do it. They get repaid by learning there’s worse things than dying, all for these useless wars. And there are wars beyond the wars, the wars you fight when you’re on your porch watching people celebrate the original ones.
Willy, The Wandering Gypsy and Me by Waylon Jennings
Obviously I’d prefer it if Billy Joe Shaver said anything other than gypsy. He didn’t. I also can’t lie about what’s had a profound effect on me. Consider this an apology.
I’ve had my eyes towards the exit sign because in the dark it’s the easiest thing to see. Inside the neon whole futures can be conjured. Whenever things get too bad, there’s always some other city where you can reset your fortune and heal. Or so you’d think. Hemingway wrote in The Sun Also Rises that “you can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.” But isn’t it pretty to think so?
The truth is there’s no escaping anything anymore. As the world got more connected the places where you can reset disappeared. Everywhere now is everywhere. It’s fitting that, in the end of the big revisionist western Blood Meridian, the epilogue is a man putting up telegram wires. While that may have slowed the worst excesses of the Glanton Gang (may, if anything Blood Meridian asks “do you really think the West was won so innocently?") those territories Huckleberry Finn and Suttree lit out for are places with Wal-Marts now.
So there is Willy the Wanderer, a temptation of the life you could lead. But the supreme irony is depending on when you listen to the song, your makings don’t matter, whether you’re a wanderer or not. There’s just your life. Whenever you listen to it, Willy can be the whale Jonah spent three days inside or he can be the boat he hopped on to escape God’s will. As for me now, I know I can only dream about running away.
For today, that’s it. We’ll post the albums list tomorrow and the Roky Erickson essay soon. Until then, hang in there.