Bjork, MoMA, and Pagan Poetry

I've been a very big fan of Bjork, as I said before, ever since I saw her on 120 Minutes and saw "It's Oh So Quiet."

Lots of people have been telling me about the show about her at MoMA.

I'm planning to go, although it sounds like it's very poorly executed - this review is typical:


'Björk' at MoMA Is a Beautiful, Ill-Conceived Disaster

Short version: The show doesn't really do her justice.

Which is too bad, because she's a singular artist. Unique in the sense of having no one to really compare her to.

Here is one of my favorite songs of hers, from Verspertine - the song "Pagan Poetry." Kind of a sad counterpoint given that her current album is about breaking up with the person who inspired this song. But the song is powerful, all the more so for the ephemeral nature of love.

The song is SFW, but the video features a topless (and very pierced) Björk, which probably is NSFW but seems to fly on YouTube.

Television - See No Evil

The band Television had a pretty short career, although they've since re-united and do some touring. But they pretty much came and went in a flash.

They had some outstanding songs, though. This one is my favorite:

See No Evil



I like the lyrics, the rhythm, and especially the guitar over that baseline.

I recently stuck Marquee Moon on my MP3 collection for the car and was struck by how sharp and new this song sounds even today. It's like a sharper Strokes song, a more killer Killers song - you can hear its influence decades and decades on.

Layla, dismantled

This is a very cool post about Layla - with the layers of tracks separated. You can hear the backing tracks peeled away from the main part of the song.

Layla Isolated Guitar/Vocals & Separate Backing Track

That coda at the end always makes me think of a different song, but not one I can identify. It just brings up the edge of a song I think I heard when I was young but never fully registers.

Also, it makes me think of Goodfellas, but Scorsese song usages always do that. Janie Jones is linked to Bringing Out the Dead now, too, pretty much forever.

Faith No More - Epic

I first encountered this song in writing, actually - in an issue of the Dirty Pair comic, where Kei and Yuri get drunk and sing Epic at karaoke.



A friend who knew Faith No More told me which song it was when I finally heard it on the radio. So I was pre-disposed to like it.

Still, when I hear it I don't really think of Kei and Yuri. I think "And Sir James Martin of Faith No More......founder of the Faith No More Spiritual and Theological Center." Thank you, George Carlin and Bill & Ted.
.

More Naive / Наив

Here is my second favorite Naive / Наив song.

Fuck You (I'm Not Your Candy). Unlike Tanks-Punks, this is all in English, and while it lacks that Pretty Vacant-esque ending that Tanks-Punks has, it has a lot of early Pistols showing in it.

Naive - Tanks-Punks

I have to thank my friend for this. Way back in high school, we heard about this Russian punk band called "Naive" - with an upside-down A and two dots over the i like the o in Motorhead. He plunked down some money to buy it direct from Maximum Rock N Roll.

This is the standout track on an album full of good stuff:

Tanks-Punks
Танки-Панки


Thanks to studying Russian for a bit, learning way too much Nadsat (I too slooshy Sex Pistols real horrorshow), and the lyrics sheet, I could follow along to this.

I hear Naive (it's Наив in cyrillic) have a bunch of other albums that I haven't heard yet - that from here/ And there are (very good) live versions of Танки-Панки on Youtube. The rest of the album is worth it.

Good stuff.

Misfits - Where Eagles Dare

Reason #1 to love the Internet: Everything is out there somewhere.

Back when I was in High School, I got a ride . . . somewhere . . . with a friend of a friend. On the trip, he was blasting some hardcore the whole trip. All I could remember from the whole soundtrack to the trip was "I ain't no goddamn son-of-a-bitch." Decades later, that popped back into my head and I searched for it on Google.

Misfits, "Where Eagles Dare." Makes sense. He was a big Misfits fan, now that I think back. Also, the parking brake was how he stopped the van.


Good song, good stuff, and the Internet is pretty amazing if only for that one reason. It's all out there, somewhere, and even a single line from a half-heard hardcore song is enough to hear the whole thing over again.