Magic Time

On the off chance you need a birthday or Christmas gift idea (they conveniently converge for me), the live recording from Van Morrison’s concert this week is a great one.  Prompted by the (incredbily slow) buildup of popularity, Morrison will be at the Hollywood Bowl the 7, 8 and 9 of November reprising the album live with the original players.

Astral Weeks is by far my favorite Morrison album; from the titular track, with its crisp autumn-like tension, to the full tumble of ‘Sweet Thing’ and the electrical swirls on ‘Ballerina’, Astral Weeks is also an album I rarely listen to broken apart into songs.  As Sean O’Hagan for The Guardian put it,

Astral Weeks is that rare thing in pop music, an album that lives up to its own legend. Its singularity lies, as Costello points out, in its vaulting ambition. It is neither folk nor jazz nor blues, though there are traces of all three in the music and in Morrison’s raw and emotionally charged singing. There are no solos save for the ethereal flute and soprano saxophone improvisations that are woven through the last, and shortest, song, ‘Slim Slow Slider’, the album’s elegaic coda. Throughout, there are interludes of breathtaking beauty when the music surges and subsides, rises and falls, around Morrison’s voice.

It may not be the best album ever made – even I admit a preferance for Morrison’s earlier take of ‘Madame George’ (released on the New York Sessions ‘67 album) – but every time I listen to it, it takes me to one of the most blissfully impressionistic places I can imagine.

Cheeseburger In Paradise

David Browne for this week’s Rolling Stone (RS 1054) writes about the return of vinyl as a desirable (and, increasingly, profitable) medium for listening to music both old and new.  According to the article ‘Vinyl Returns in the Age of MP3‘, the groovy format has jumped 15 per cent in sales from 2006 to 2007, and could double in sales to 1.6 million pressings retailed by the end of 2008.  Recently spurred by creative marketing strategies (Radiohead’s release of In Rainbows in special discbox pushed 13,000 copies, Elvis Costello’s April release of Momofuku was available only on LP for the first few weeks), people realizing how shitty MP3s actually sound, and a good bit of nostalgia, vinyl is staging a definitive comeback.

I can certainly agree.  This past year I purchased at least ten copies of both favorite albums and new releases on vinyl.  The sound is irreplaceable, even compared to ripping CDs with Apple Lossless or AIFF.  Plus, I really enjoy listening to entire albums; I love the ritual associated with appreciating album art, taking the time to set the needle and turn the disc, as well as appreciating the warmth vinyl innately brings to the house.  That, and I can empathize with Browne’s state of mind:

There’s also something less technical lurking behind vinyl’s mini-renaissance.  Whether it’s inspecting a needle for dust or flipping the record over at the end of a side, LPs demand attention.  And for a small but growing group, those demands aren’t a nuisance.  “There’s nothing like putting the needle into the groove of a record,” says country singer Shelby Lynne.  “it’s about as real as you can get.  You got your vinyl, your weed, your friends, and while you’re rollin’ they’re pickin’ out another record.  We’re all taking music for granted because it’s so easy to push a button.  I mean, come on, music should be fun.”

Jesus Walks

Just in case anyone missed the cover of Rolling Stone this week, I’ll bring you up to speed: Barack Obama is the second coming. He is the Cristo Redento, the latest incarnation of Horus, will probably give birth to the next Dalai Lama, and clearly, the Big Cheese. Even the homosexualites want to lick his pretty face (wait, what was the question again, Sullivan?).

‘Salvation’ and ‘redemption’ both reflect really dangerous rhetoric in political spheres where discursive complexity is minimal (blogosphere aside–generally speaking, we have three candidates, and about two or three mass media outlets). Although Obama has done surprisingly well at resisting the temptation to slide into populism, the discourses of redemption that orbit his campaign are not helping to envision solutions to our fucked up postmodern imperialism, or our current financial meltdown. A frenzied populace, who fear decisions and critical assessment of the America in which we live, would rather double-down on ‘hope’? That’s called externalizing democracy. There’s an incredible amount of political agency we abandon when, for starters, the economy overruns both the government and its constituents… If Obama wants to be a leader, he needs to earn that now through action, and not just give us a poetic IOU.

Saying that, the one *ahem* redeeming aspect of Rolling Stone’s Obamagasm was Bob Boynton’s interview with Cornel West. Asking about “handing the reins of power” to someone inexperienced, West replied:

There is a certain freshness and newness that people confuse with inexperience. I don’t think Obama is actually inexperienced when it comes to governing as president. He’s going to choose a high-quality team, and he has shown he is capable of excellent political judgment… I told Obama that when he wins–which I think he will–I will celebrate for one day. I’ll break-dance in the morning and party in the afternoon. But the next day, I’ll become one of his biggest critics.

Also, suck my balls Hilary Clinton. Suck ‘em.