nixsight

A bit of a diversion this week, because… well, because the urge took me, and I had to take it back…

I’ve loved They Might Be Giants for such a long time, but it’s a peculiar kind of love. They are the loyal, cute and intelligent friend that I forget about from time to time, but when something reminds me of them, I have to seek them out instantly, nervously concerned that they won’t remember me. A quick search reveals that so much has changed in their lives – like a new album that I knew nothing about. I wonder how much they’ll have changed.

Then, of course, it turns out that they do remember me. And even though they’ve got more stories to tell, we easily fall into the same old conversations.

Oh, god, They Might Be Giants are my Cookie.

Anyway, people know the band for a lot of things that the band aren’t. It isn’t their fault, or the band’s, really. The closest they ever got to fame were with two songs that could easily be described as novelty hits, and that’s the sort of peculiar celebrity that can kill an otherwise long-lived group.

In fact, those two songs – “Birdhouse In Your Soul” and “Istanbul” – though characteristic of the band’s output musically, and a lot of fun, aren’t typical TMBG tracks, though Birdhouse comes close. If all of their output had that same crowd-pleasing infectious appeal, and that was all they had going for them, I would have loved them for the length of the glorious summer of 1990, but I don’t know if they’d still resonate with me as much as they do today.

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Not going to be able to write this up as well as it deserves, but if I don’t write a few things about the gig last night right now, I never will.

[edited to add: Though both Rol and Swiss Toni do better - and more uplifting - jobs here and here.]

It’s actually last-last night, now, technically. There, that’s a useless fact that you get for free.

My thoughts on the gig after the jump. If you were at the gig, or know the venue, or have any comments at all, as always they are most welcome!

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As we all already know, I am no music historian. So you can take it as read that I don’t know what the real key moments in the crossover of rap into other genres of music were.

I could probably take a stab at a few names that might be close to right. I’d be just as likely to make the argument – and even believe it! – that right thinking people shouldn’t be thinking in terms of musical genres “crossing over”; that the whole music thing is by necessity fluid, and as such, genre is by definition a limiting concept that cripples the creative endeavour.

Because frankly, I can be a really pretentious twat, sometimes.

But a more valid, less pompous point of view would be that rap and hip-hop grew out of a bunch of different styles and cultures, right from the start, like funk and soul, and that at the point where pop music and the vinyl revolution in recorded music first started, all of those genre structures were kind of mixed up in each other, with distinctions less defined and precious than they are now – and if you take that view, the point at which guitar rock and rap and everything else started feeding into each other was just a return to primal forms, anyway.

Regardless of all that, here are a few of my favourite moments of musical mind-meld hip-hop genius. These are in order of how much I think they’re awesome, rather than chronological or anything like that, and I’ve missed out other really important stuff, like Pop Will Eat Itself, The Beastie Boys, and the super-great “Walk This Way” by Run DMC and Aerosmith, because they’re either obvious or they deserve a post all of their own.

It’s a long one, this week, so it’s all hidden after the jump – as always, your opinions are welcome in the comments…

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Three favoured tracks from this week:

3: Big Jumps – Emiliana Torrini

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I had never heard of Emiliana Torrini before reading This Recording. This is something I have now addressed. I am struck by the variety of her songs, and her ability to carry off all styles convincingly, but this is the perkiest of the songs I have heard, and cheers me greatly.

2: Something Changed – Pulp

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I recently rediscovered “Different Class”. This used to be constant listening – how did I manage without it for such a long while?
Jarvis Cocker’s world really is unrelentingly real and cynical. I picked this song because it’s about the most optimistic one on the album. Even that isn’t saying much – the telling line is at the beginning – there is potential for this to be some big yarn that he’s spinning, and as such it is suspect throughout.

1: You Woke Up My Neighbourhood – Billy Bragg

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Not, by any stretch, my favourite song by Mr Bragg, but all cheery and up-tempo in your face, and I play it in honour of the REM gig, as two of them are on the song.
Also, we’re seeing him soon, n’all.
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IF YOUR LIFE WAS A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE?
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that’s playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool …
(I had to shift past film snippets and such but otherwise stayed true to the meme… because I have nothing better to do at nearly 1am, obviously…)

Opening Credits
“Yachts” – A Man Called Adam

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