1973

Life on Mars is a pretty good TV show. It's only on its second episode and I'm quite interested to see how it turns out. I mean, there's faults in it (television is rarely perfect), but on the whole, it's entertaining.

The synopsis, for anyone who hasn't seen it, goes something like this: a New York detective is hit by a car and, when he wakes up, finds himself thirty-five years in the past - in 1973, of all years. Harvey Keitel plays his "new" police chief, and Michael Imperioli also makes the scene as a fellow detective. Good casting.

Sometimes, I wish I could go back to 1973. You can't help but love 2008, but 1973 would also be great. Why? Because you could counterfeit money and probably not get caught; fly on planes without a hassle; and get good photo finishing in any drugstore!

There were also record stores! You could walk into a music store and it was filled with racks and racks of sealed vinyl - a weird idea. My friends and I salivate over buying used, ratty vinyl - I can't imagine walking into a record store back then and buying those same records brand-new and sealed, waiting for you to open and play them for the very first time. That'd be very close to heaven, I imagine.

Of course, that'd probably be the best reason to go back to 1973 - the music. The early '70s were a crazy time for good albums. Many of my favorite artists were at the top of their game in 1973. I mean, this came out:




Need I say more?

There was also this:



Listening to this makes you kind of a dork, though. I'm spinning it now, so that says a lot about your boy Shane.

My buddy Dallas had done one of his drawings, and when he was at my house, he pulled it out and asked Jeremy: "Dude, would you wear this on a shirt?"
Jeremy says: "No dude, I wouldn't wear a shirt with poetry on it," and walked away. Jer was referring to the three lines of poetry on the bottom of the drawing. I can't remember what those lines were, but I have to admit, they probably weren't shirtable.
So, this led to a conversation between me and Dallas a few days later, online. He said that he agreed - his three lines of poetry were not worth printing on a shirt. I brought up that ANY poetry would probably look horrible on a shirt.
"I mean, my favorite poem would make a pretty tacky shirt," I said.
"Which poem is that?"
"This one:

And did those feet, in ancient time, walk apon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God on England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the countenance divine shine forth apon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here, among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold;
Bring me my arrows of desire;
Bring me my spear, O clouds unfold;
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

I mean, you could put some wolves and trees on that shirt, and sell it at RenFest," I remarked.
Dallas agreed with me - even my favorite poem, and one by William Blake, would look crappy on a shirt. And it's true - can you think of any serious poetry that would look absolutely badass printed on a T-shirt?

"That poem is kind of heavy-handed, but good." That was Dallas' opinion of it. The heaviness of it is what makes it work for me - the first stanza refers to the story that Jesus visited England as a young man, but oddly enough, doesn't affirm it. All four of the lines are simply questions - maybe he did visit England, and briefly create a heaven on earth here. Maybe he didn't, though - but does it matter? Shouldn't England, becoming quickly choked by the "Satanic Mills" of the beginnings of the Industrial Era, be as good as that anyway? Well, screw it - we'll work to make England as best as it can be, and not think of stopping until it is.

And, honestly, shouldn't one treat life like that? Religious beliefs aside, it's a good way to think about life. When everything is shitty and horrible in your life, only you can really start the chain of events to make it better - and not effing stop until life is what you want it to be.
Cheesy? Definately. But it works for me.

Anyway, some smart guy decided to turn that poem into a hymn in 1916. I've never heard that version, but Keith Emerson, the keyboard genius of ELP, decided to persuade his two bandmates to cover it.



Would you trust this pretencious, two-keyboard-simeoultaneously-playing shaggy-haired English dude? Two other equally pretencious guys did, and henceforth created of my favorite songs of all time.

And "Jerusalem" opens this record, Brain Salad Surgery, which hit the shelves in November 1973. I can't speak about any kind of innovation the band might have made up to that point, having heard nothing else of theirs, save their very first album ("Barbarian", anyone?).

This album actually came into my house a full two or three years before I listened to it at all - my brother Ryan had bought the vinyl for a buck, purely because the cover was interesting. The sleeve is die-cut across the middle, and it opens to reveal an H.R. Giger painting, which must have amazed some serious prog nerds back then.

"Man, her skull is attached to some kind of robotic vise! How awesome!"

Anyway, a couple of years later found me spending most of my free time on a Pink Floyd message board, talking to people. Of course there were some serious prog guys hanging around, and one of them mentioned ELP to me. "Ever heard them?" Nope - "but I do have that one album with the cover that opens up." As soon as I said that, this certain guy wanted me to listen to it, immediately. "DUDE, IT'S AWESOME. BRAIN SALAD SURGERY." So, dredging up my "grab the thistle" mindset, I believe I ran to my room right then and stuck it on. I didn't really pay attention to it - I read a book while it played. But, my curiousity was perked enough, so I stuck it on a few more times over the next week or so. And... I got quite into it.

And this brings me to a question - why did prog bands always shoot themselves in the foot?

Let me explain. We all know that ELP are positively good musicians. Keith Emerson is the only guy I've heard who is a better Hammond organ player than Jimmy Smith; Carl Palmer is a tight-rolling drumming monster; and Greg Lake is probably the only bassist who could keep up with Keith Emerson, which says a lot about his style. But why, oh why do they have to know that they're good?!?!?!?! Them knowing that fact was terrribly dangerous to their group. In fact, it's still terribly dangerous to numerous bands today, all of whom are slowly drowning in good musicanship. The Mars Volta is one of them, and a lot of what I'm about to say also applies to them.

For instance - this record starts off amazingly. "Jerusalem" is as powerful as the poem is, and is quite a heavy experience when listened to loudly in a car - like I said, it's one of my favorite recordings of all time. They follow this with "Tocatta", which, as an adapted classical piece, might have the casual listener duck away from it. But no - it's entirely instrumental, and entirely badass, a musical hodgepodge that flies at you with reckless abandon.

But, like I said above, their musicanship begins to smother them here. They try for a Greg Lake ballad, "Still... You Turn Me On", which, following the previous selection's fast, almost military ending, is kind of like having your Coke turn into Vanilla Coke - too sweet, and sadly arranged. It also has some of the most trite lyrics ever written, I imagine. Still, you can swallow it, if only expecting more musically-challenging badassness to follow.

And then... "Benny the Bouncer"? They've turned your Vanilla Coke into rusty nail water, and any kind of respect that you might have gotten from your friends about liking ELP was just thrown out of a speeding car window, landing in a ditch, never to be seen again. Damn.

If you sat through that, you might be rewarded with the Hammondalicious intro to "Karn Evil 9" and the complexity of something they decided to call the "First Impression, Part One" of the same title. But, past this point, you're reminded of thirty-five years' worth of "Roll up, SEE THE SHOW!!!" imitations and treated to increasingly vague and appalling prog musical arrangements - over an entire side of vinyl, some twenty minutes. Eventually, in the "Third Impression", you're given computer voices to deal with: Keith Emerson, no doubt filtered through a MiniMoog, intoning futuristic verse:

"STRANGER!
DANGER!
LOAD YOUR PROGRAM.
I AM YOURSELF."

Does it matter at this point that the entire "Karn Evil 9" has a theme, which is about a society in the future that eventually gets so smothered in technology that computers take over mankind's existence? Does that make this entire thirty-minute song worthwhile? Or do you feel like me, when you collapse in a heap after trudging through this huge chunk of musical pretentiousness - overwhelmed and a little embarrassed?

And this is what I mean. ELP was, simply, too talented for their own good. They took those talents seriously - way too seriously - and basically ruined what could have been a thouroughly amazing album. Regrettably, they took it apon themselves to write serious music, which, to them, had to be filled with bleeping synths and confusing lyrics. It's no coincidence that my favorite ELP material - "Jerusalem" and "Tocatta" off of this album, and "The Barbarian" off of their first - are covers. They had the musicanship to turn a piece of serious music on its head, but didn't have the foresight to make their own material as timeless, which is frustrating, when you get down to it. They were amazing musicians.

And, in a nutshell, that is what prog does, both yesterday and today. This makes it one of the most challenging genres of music to listen to, and, consequently, one of the hardest to really like.

In this space, for the next few days, I'm going to review different albums from 1973. I'd do another, but I have to go to bed - peace.