The video is vaguely disturbing. Okay, maybe it’s just flat-out disturbing. But the musical arrangement is awesome. It’s like the Thompson Twins, the Tom Tom Club, Madness, and Elvis Costello & the Attractions got together and made a song.
It’s like an updated 1982 sound, which is about the only thing that could make me nostalgic for middle school.
And there was stuff like this(disclosure .. this was done way after I first discovered Shabba Ranks .. when I went to college .. thanks to college being a lot less white bread then where I went to junior high & high school .. but I had to post it .. since he uses a riff of another song I hope everyone hear remembers):
“… nostalgic for middle school.”
Four words I don’t think I’ve ever used in the same sentence.
yeah, other than a couple friends I made, my first girlfriend, and a bunch of cool music, I was miserable in middle school, as I think almost all kids are at that age.
The Wild Belle thing?
Brilliant!!!
On any number of levels.
Mostly in the dissonances.
Cultural dissonances.
Racial dissonances.
Sexual dissonances.
The dissonance between the words of the song…which if there was no vid would be taken as simply another “difficult love affair” song…the South African-looking mise en scene and the casting of a barely post-pubescent-looking black kid with an undecipherable accent as the “love interest” of the blonde goddess-type.
And…the “dissonaces” of real musicians playing real instruments. I will guarantee that at least the drums and baritone sax were played by human beings in real time. The swing is there. The funk. The vocals also sound “real.” No pitch correction, because w/pitch correction notes are not natural sounding when pitches are bent. This singer knows how to sing, I’m thinking.
“Oh, the humanity!!!”
A very interesting new band. Watch ’em.
AG
The swing is kind of mesmerizing. I heard it on the radio and didn’t notice that she was singing about “a little man.” What I did notice is the baritone sax that reminded me of early 80’s ska bands like Madness and Selecter, the synthesized portions that reminded me of Tom Tom Club and the Thompson Twins, and the pace of the reggae beat which was slower than typical ska and reminiscent of Costello. Maybe it is the modern production or the singing style that makes it feel modern and fresh rather then retro or some kind of tribute music.
As to the video, it is certainly provocative on many levels.
One reason that it sounds fresh and new is that it has been very carefully (and quite minimally compared to most pop shit) “produced.” In a way, it’s libertarian. No Big Daddy behind the purple curtain pulling levers. Just the real stuff, maybe polished up a little.
It’s not “retro” or “tribute music” any more than say truly great contemporary jazz players are “retro.” They’re doing what they hear and feel internally on a very high truth level, and to tell you the truth…my truth, anyway…it no more relates to those other tracks you posted than does Robert Crumb’s work “relate” to Archie and Veronica comic books.
“What are you drinking, the cup or the water?” as one Zen koan goes.
Similar cup…if you don’t look carefully at the workmanship…but entirely different water.
Bet on it.
AG
P.S. Y’all were unhappy in middle school? Hell, I was in hog heaven. Asshole teachers to bedevil, pretty girls to chase and a whole world of music, art and literature opening up to me? My only problem was dealing with the tougher guys in the class, and I pretty well held my own there too. By hook or by crook.
So it goes, I guess.
Never heard Wild Belle before, but love this song.
Apart from the other inspirations you mention, I also hear quite a bit of “My Jamaican Guy” by Grace Jones in it.
The Tom Tom Club thing? Totally mechanized. No funk. Robotic on purpose. Yawn.
The Thompson Twins? It all rings false. The faces, the singing, the dancing, the images? Boilerplate dumb pop. They all look like someone I would take pains to avoid in a social gathering of any kind. Narcissism squared. Ick
Madness? Show biz energy backed up by live musicians. Live musicians who can’t play much. When musicians move like that, it’s a sure sign of bullshit. Modernized Louis Prima, only Prima and his musicians could really play. Like Count Basie said (I paraphrase.) “After 30 years of leading a band, I can tell if somebody can play or not just by the way they carry their case. Me too. Just by the way they move.
The Selecter? Better. Some real funk in there. Love the Hammond organ. Real passion. Ignorant, but it swings. My sister could iron to it. (A quote from the “American Bandstand” TV show long ago and far away.)
The Wild Belle thing?
New art. Multidimensional.
Coltrane or Bird compared to Clyde McCoy, Guy Lombardo, Lawrence Welk, Fred Waring and the other second-rate swing bands of the ’30s + ’40s.
AG
P.S. I guess this might be called “music criticism.” But it’s not, really. Not most of it, anyway.
Why?
Because:
1-Most of that shit ain’t music. Or just barely, like chewing gum is food.
and
2-The really good stuff…Wild Belle in this instance…is way beyond being just “music.” It’s visual narrative poetry with a great soundtrack.
The thing about second-generation (Two-tone) ska like Madness is that it has one foot in punk rock – not the sound, obviously, but the sensibility.
It makes no more sense to judge them by the musicianship of the people playing the instruments than to use the same rubric to judge the Ramones. It’s DIY big band, and that straight-forward, let ‘er rip sound that comes out, without the elevated noodling, is the point.
I’d say that the weakest connection is to the Thompson Twins for all the reasons that you mentioned. The thing is, though, that there is a certain “sound” to that era of British music that you can hear very clearly in that Thompson Twins song. Unlike the Madness and Selecter which share the ska/sax element, or Costello’s in-between reggae and ska pacing, it’s the ambient sound in the Thompson Twin song that I hear in the Wild Belle tune.
Now, the Tom Tom Club was an interesting project. Tina Weymouth and Adrian Belew could flat out play. I’m sure you are familiar with their work, whether with the Talking Heads or King Crimson or Frank Zappa or whatever. But Tom Tom Club was dance music for clubbing. Nonetheless, it had the same ambience and British feel of the music of the time. Maybe another example will be clearer on this point, because it retains the ska form.
Well…yeah. There’s a certain “sound” to a cement mixer or a traffic jam as well. That doesn’t mean it’s good listening. Now a certain sound that relates to certain periods of one’s life? I suppose, if nostalgia is your thing.
Ain’t mine, though.
AG
Middle school is a miserable time, but it’s when you discover music for yourself, rather than have it imposed on you. My brother Andrew was 10 years older than me and he had good taste in music, so I didn’t have to go searching for good music until he left for college. Right around that time is when punk and ska and New Wave and reggae all got popular. So, yes, I definitely have a nostalgic feeling when I hear that stuff in the 1978-1983 period.
Even some of the empty-calorie stuff like Duran Duran or the Go-Go’s or the Waitresses or, slightly better, The Police.
I had my bespectacled heroes Elvis and Marshall Crenshaw. Locally, we had this:
Then there was Joe Jackson:
Throw in Tosh, Marley, Jimmy Cliff, Gregory Isaacs, Black Uhuru, Steel Pulse.
And Stiff Little Fingers, the Clash, The Jam, Human Sexual Response, 999.
The ska bands we’ve already discussed.
Most of the time, I was listening to older stuff, recorded in the early 1970’s or late 1960’s, but I loved the new stuff from the Talking Heads and Peter Gabriel.
Today, that sounds like crap compared the Gabriel in his prime.
That, is freaking genius.
Middle school???
If I remember right it was about this time;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIVe-rZBcm4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WANNqr-vcx0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGmAmJFUvzM
Which is partly probably why I cannot remember it very well at all.
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