Near Perfect Albums: Funky Kingston -- Toots & The Maytals

Reggae has been winnowed down to a one man genre. There is no question that Sir Nesta Robert Marley took reggae to every guy-who-sold-weed-in-college's dorm and tacky beach town t-shirt kiosk, but as is often the case, when a multifaceted musical tradition that covers half of a century is placed on one man, the titans on which a genres shoulders stand, are forgotten.

It's sort of confounds the extent to which reggae gets devalued. I blame the 80's (a decade that murdered balls out guitar solos, the saxophone, and authentic sleaze-bag rockstars), because awful production and a charisma vacuum swarmed on the Jamaican music genre following a decade that was the fully realized apex of a golden age. Bob was dead, rich organ tones were traded in for cheap Casio winces, and percussion, the secret...or not-so-secret soul of reggae, went from crisp rim taps and fat down beats to those weird hexagonal synth drums that sound one dimensional no matter how much echo effect is glossed on top. After that, reggae became a caricature of itself. It was all drinks with umbrellas, red-yellow-green hats with dreads stitched in them, and cone sized joints. One of the most important genres ever, reduced to a gift shop curio.

There are few international genres that have such easily recognizable character as the four subsets of Jamaican music, and it's not possible to overstate the importance of the Islands contribution, but if not for the musical perspicacity of an island smaller than Connecticut, we probably wouldn't have remixes, cover songs, punk rock, and rap music, at least not as we know them.

History:
Toots and his Maytals, a backing band that I would put up against Booker T and the MGs, The Funk Brothers, and The Spiders from Mars any day, laid down Funky Kingston in 1972 for Mango records. There's a whiff of confusion around this particular album because there are two separate pressings in circulation. One was released in Jamaica and England in 1972, and a second from 1976 that was released in the US with more tracks added and a different track order. The additional tracks were harvested from the follow up album to Funky Kingston called In the Dark, but I like the flow and construction of the original 8 songs intended for Funky Kingston. People seem to think that "In the Dark" is the better record, but people also think that the movie The Graduate is 'brilliant', so yeah, decide for yourself. But all of those words later, it's a totally moot point. If you buy this album now, in a lazy but enjoyable compromise, it's sold as a 21 song album titled Funky Kingston/In the Dark that features the original 8 and 12 song track orders respectively plus the addition of the always critical "Pressure Drop". Which, quick aside here, if your life is about to collapse in on you and you refuse to abide by those circumstances; blast this track, sing as loud as you can, and dance with out compunction. Feeling bad will never feel so good.

Sound:
This is a vintage roots reggae blueprint. It's an inelegant and simple formula: one drop rhythm, staccato punches on guitar, warm brass flourishes, organ honeyed tones to shade the edges, and Toots' wild snarl punctuated with the Maytals crystalline call-and-response harmonies. Within that frame, this album crosses moods from ebullient, to militant, to solemnity without conceding an inch of the danceable charm that is the blood and bones of reggae music. The ragged edges of these gritty sessions show, but the pure soulful will still blossoms around the indomitable grooves. Equal parts soundtrack to the revolution and dance party tableau, Funky Kingston sticks to your ribs like a good plate of food.


Signature Track:

Funky Kingston -- The title track for a reason, one of the best reggae tracks ever written, and a tune that rests comfortably in my top tier of all time songs. The structure is flawless. A snare crack like the cadence of a battle march and a militant piano line form the bristling nucleus of this song. Toots howls and snarls as the music churns around him. This is Toots war cry. The war for music, the war for his purpose, the war for himself, the war for his beloved home. The lyrics play like instructions for a primordial dance, but the appeal to 'shake it, shake it, baby' aches with a sense of urgency. Toots has torn his angry heart from his chest, begging to give it away, because to not do so would be his death, he would defy his purpose and his gift, but that thing, once cut out of him can never be replaced. Toot's calls for the funky guitar, grunts possessed by the sound, cues the piano, chokes out half-syllables, a dense crescendo rises, and erupts over a hard scrabble growl. This song may be Toots transcendent effort from his musical peak, but that notwithstanding, this track is one of those moments where a movement, a time, and a sound are distilled down to their purest essence.

The Space Between the Notes:

Pomp and Pride -- Toots is grossly underrated as a songwriter. Reggae is charged and political and socially relevant, but where others press the urgency of immediate issues, Toots seems to espouse a wider view of the whole self. Not just the struggle of the man that's hungry in the streets, but the importance of the man who is hungry in his soul. In that regard, this is one of those refrains that I always keep in my heart shaped locket.

Everybody's just crying crying
sighing sighing
dying to see the light
and when they see it, they see it's not bright
can this be right?
Everybody just
calm down (calm down)
Off your pomps and pride

The measure of enlightenment can be the size of a whisper, and sometimes it might be easier to miss than it is hard to find.


That One Moment:

Redemption Song --Why do we love music? For moments like the one between the 1:27 and 1:38 mark. Words aren't gonna get us there, and listening to it out of context won't do it either, you should just treat yourself to a listen. Because it really is the words that God speaketh from his mouth that hurt our hearts... (And easy there, outlaw. Everyone knows you own a copy of Legend, but this song was record eight years before Bob laid down his mega classic that has towered over three decades of smelly-white-kid-sing-a-longs)

Subcutanea:

Louie, Louie/I Can't Believe -- As influential as reggae is, it is very much beholden to America's black music culture. In that tradition, reggae is home to some of the most inventive and colorful 60's rhythm and blues covers in existence, and Funky Kingston features two nut-cutters. "Louie, Louie" is a 5 minute 46 second dance party built around a skin tight session style jam where the Maytals really get to flex their muscles. If you have a sense of this sort of thing, the next time your dance party is almost at a rolling boil, and hips and thighs are about to careen into each other like waves into tidal walls, turn off the A/C, turn up this jam, and watch the sweaty grind fest unfold. Also, bonus points for the solo at the 5 minute mark that sounds like it was recorded underwater...in outer-space. "I Can't Believe" is one of those catchy 'don't think about how sad and painfully autobiographical it really is' Ike and Tina songs. Toot's offers a pretty faithful rendition, and though it's undisputed fact that Ike Turner is a piece of shit, he can write some damn catchy songs. Need a playful rendering of that halfway in, halfway out summertime fun relationship? Toots has got you covered. 

Simple. Pure. 35 minutes of unfettered, sun dappled sincerity. This album was perhaps one changed note or rephrased line away from sublimation, too good for us to have, but instead it's just flawed enough to be profound, and that's what is so special about a near perfect album.

Junk Culture Hoarders

I was watching TV the other night, and like any good child of the 80's I had it on in the background with my iTunes playing and at least six tabs open in my web browser. Now my gut says it was Cake Boss (they make cakes...on TV!), and there's a fair chance it was that lottery winner shit-show, but after awhile I looked up and noticed that not only was I tuned into TLC, but Hoarding: Buried Alive was on.

Hoarding is my nightmare. I can barely keep a calendar for twelve months without fighting the persistent urge to throw it away, much less comprehend the compulsion to keep everything. After two-hours of free-fall through a Hoarders wormhole, images of stuff run amok haunted my visage for days. Narrow walkways carved into walls of consumer debris. A woman's pristine toy horse collection nestled in her fort of chaos. The nervous shift in their eyes when the threat of trash bags moves in. I'm frowning so hard right now I have to stop, but during the show my nails were dug into my desk to keep from howling at the TV "Just f*cking throw it away already!". But for whatever reason, it's not that simple.

So flash-forward in a context free digression, but I'm at work. Work has some nice tidy piped in music set to Hot FM or some other pleasing name they've conjured up for it, and 80's cover song 'X' came on (does it matter?) and as I drifted away on her comfy strains, my hoarding daymare terrors seized and I was felled with a paralyzing realization. I, we, have become junk culture hoarders.

Nothing ever goes away anymore. When the lens of exposure was much more narrow, things had a life-cycle, a parabolic arc of acceptance and dismissal that was critical to forward progress. A movement starts as a generations underground, it becomes a generations mainstream culture, and then the next generation rejects those values with a new subculture. But in the post-internet/24-hour-cycle universe, fifteen minutes of fame feels a lot more like ad infinitum.

Junk culture hoarding is remakes and reboots, it's ironic tees, it's memes, it's mash-ups, it's decades old tongue in cheek references, it's lousy 80's TV shows, it's the detritus of pop-culture, and the piles are stacking up at an alarming rate.

So before this devolves in to one of my little "talks", I have a confession to make...I'm a junk culture hoarder. I have devoted countless hours to write not one, but two screenplays that are simply ham-fisted nerd genre ploys turned inside out. I have chased down novelty records like a junkie after drugs (It's a vinyl copy of Pac-Man Fever by Buckner and Garcia! Get it?!). I sat through all of Zardoz just so I could use the reference to its full snarkitude later. There is no album too un-listenable . There is no title too obscure. There is no allusion deep enough in the cut. There is never enough. It's cost me money and time and isolated me from others, but I'm trying to understand my addiction, and let the healing begin.

Of the top 100 grossing films of 2010, 15 (15!!) were remakes, reboots, or 80's TV takeoffs. If you count franchise sequels, that figure swells to around 30ish. So let's say 20% of the films that were gobbled up in 2010, which of course sets the tone for what studios will greenlight next year, were recycled ideas.

Girl Talk has 33 upcoming shows where thousands of people will pay money to watch a guy play tracks from a laptop, tracks of which he has not created a single iota. Because it's that one song I know...and that other song...together!

The hottest new fall show, or so the talking box tells me, is Hawaii 5-0, a remake of a 70's TV show. And don't you worry, a Wonder Woman reboot is in the works.

A literary classic hewn from social mores and the aching repression of class versus the passions of our humanness had zombies plugged into it and sold over 1,000,000 copies. And Hollywood has called for the movie rights.

I don't want to belie the effort of these individuals. In fact, its the marvel of output and creativity that causes my jaw to grind into a meaty pulp. If you can wield a sword, why cut down daisies? (yeah...I know I make that reference like every article...but...still) Would the unseen artistic endeavor be more fulfilling than fast-food art admired by millions? I can't say. I can't speak to the artistic character of anyone, but I will say this: it's a lot easier to be famous than talented. The path of least resistance slicked with pop-culture's poisonous nostalgia is easy to exploit, but when a creative individuals artistic onus is reduced to "Get it? You remember that one thing? Nudge, wink, am I right?" the burden is passed back only to the artist themselves. Their own sincerity becomes their worst enemy. The moment an unproven idea is offered up, genuine frailties on display, there is no more illusion to live behind. The flash point pops and the legion of admirers who foisted them to notoriety expose them as either the contributor an artist strives to be, or a circus act hammering out a familiar tune on a toy piano as amused onlookers toss pennies into their cup.

It's an irony bender that has become an addiction, our insatiable love/hate of popular culture collapsed in on us. There is an harrowing and poignant beauty to the shit heap of what was once cool and fashionable, but alas, a landfill is still where we put our garbage. We're beginning to forget how forgettable things are. We're losing sight of the fact that the beatification of the pop-culture that cobbles together the cable-TV-generation has more to do with some idealized version of our youth than those things being works worthy of merit. Nostalgia has become a stand in for quality. Familiarity is being confused for brilliance. We've become so bloated on pop-culture-in-references that they are beginning to eat their own tail. As Patton Oswalt (in an excellent article well worth your time) calls it, ETEWAF or "everything that ever was available forever". There will never be a time when we aren't picking strange bits from the pile and trying to mask and reinvent them through our creative lens, but when do the looming spires of junk arch so high above us, that we can no longer find the creative spark buried in their ruins?

But of all the strangeness in this post-ironic reality, the most grave might be that every one understands exactly what's happened. Hoarders know their lives are in ruin, but they justify the reason for every piece of litter that forms their prison. My fear is we've conceded the point that there are no new ideas. The focus has been pulled back to infinity and every creative notion you've cherished as your very own is a Google search 100 pages deep, and this is our illogical, extreme reaction. Since we can't have original ideas, we revel in the easiest to digest of the re-used ones. Sure, it's satire and the crass commercialism of a bygone era turned against itself and the boorish realities of genre spun on their heads, but it's still junk, and seriously... just f*cking throw it away already.

The Black Keys -- Everlasting Light: Singin' bout Jesus

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I think fire is magic, and it scares me, and within this esoteric world view, I think the Black Keys are a blues band. Not white boy, Blueshammer blues, but something built more around blues DNA as opposed to a specific subject matter or lyrical content. It is a feeling as they say... I mean, if you want to mete out their credentials in an are-you-in-a-blues-band type checklist, here goes: Blind Lemon says blues ain't nothing but a good woman on your mind. Songs about chicks doin' ya dirty -- Lots of them. Check. You have to do an interpretation of "Stagger Lee" . "Stack shot Billy" -- check. An authentic bluesman (which is a dwindling herd, hang in there Pinetop!) has to pass the torch in some way. The 'Chulahoma' album -- check. A song about the Devil. "Sinister Kid" -- check. And finally, a song about Jesus...


First, peel it back to it's elegant simplicity. A fuzzy guitar tone gnaws on a three-chord ditty, falsetto vocals hover above, and, in a deft touch, the percussion track eschews drums for hand claps and a tambourine jangle. If you cross your eyes and unfocus your ears, you can feel a purple robed gospel choir breaking this track down in effulgent four-part-harmony. Maybe ramp it up a few RPMs, because we all know that Jesus likes that bizz with a little bit of bottom on it.

Second, in an almost painful bit of obvious interpretation, the lyrics are about as straightforward as they come. There is a bible verse from the book of Isaiah 60:19 "The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but the LORD shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory." (Is my religious upbringing showing?) So we've established some common phraseology, which in itself is relatively flimsy, but if you poke around the lyrics a bit more, it starts to make sense. Here is the song's four stanzas:

Let me be your everlasting light
The sun when there is none
I'm a shepherd for you
And I'll guide you through
Let me be your evelasting light

Let me be your everlasting light
I'll hold and never scold
In me you can confide
When no one's by your side
Let me be your everlasting light

Oh darling, can't you see
I'm shining just for you
Loneliness is over
Dark days are through

Let me be your everlasting light
A train going away from pain
Love is the coal
That makes this train roll
Let me be your everlasting light

There are several themes very close to the Christian ethic that permeate these simple lines. Christ is often portrayed as the shepherd to 'guide you through'. Also, I think in a more forgiving idealization of God, he is an entity that would 'never scold' and someone who 'in me you can confide' free of judgment. Even the line that refers to being 'the sun when there is none' echos the passage from Isaiah. A life filled with Christ is often portrayed as the exodus from pain and loneliness and a symbolic departure from darkness, because babe...he's 'shining just for you'. At first blush it could be seen as a love song, which is true, but instead I think it's a hymn to a spiritually fulfilled life. The appeal from a higher power who wants you to bask in the warming glow of his/her/its everlasting light.

Me, I'm not a religious man, I'm just a guy who likes the blues. This is not an appeal to make Jesus seem cool, or even the Black Keys seem pious, but it's what I hear when I listen to this song. I have a complex and at times wary relationship with a higher power, philosophy notwithstanding, but music is the closest thing I have to my religion. This song, which I believe to be about Jesus Christ, applies to me in that same way. Music is my guide and my companion and my confidant who has never caused me harm and only gives of itself. My life would be incomplete without that food for my soul, and I think that would be the fulfillment we hoped for from those things that exist outside of ourselves and make our lives whole. After all, if music is good enough to be God's language, then three-chord blues can be my sermon.

PS. This isn't me or my photo, it's just the first thing GIS returns when you search "Jesus Black Keys". And yeah...I think it's pretty effin' cool.