2007 list, Joe Carducci

These aren’t all of the year exactly or by a long shot but I’ve spent good time with them in the past year and recommend them:

FILMS:
Ford at Fox, Silent Epics: Just Pals / Four Sons / The Iron Horse / Hangman’s House / Bad Men. This is a four-disc John Ford mini-box that is available separately from the massive complete collection. The films are from the 20s and are in excellent condition and Ford’s eye for setting up a shot is even better here when he was in his early thirties. And the title cards don’t allow for as much malarky.

Spirit of the Beehive, 1973 (Victor Erice)
Cria Cuervos, 1975 (Carlos Saura)
Two great Spanish films from the late Franco years reissued to dvd, both starring non-professional child actress Ana Torrent as the death-haunted little girl both filmmakers seemed to require to look at their own culture clearly. These and recent Iranian and Chinese films suggest there might be worse things for art than censorship.

TCM whenever they’re showing anything made between 1920 and 1935; just leave it on.

BOOKS:
It’s hard to keep my head above the newspapers and magazines to get to the books but these two are great:

–Monsters from the Id – The Rise of Horror in Fiction and Film, by E. Michael Jones. Pull quote: “To recapitulate the past forty years of film history, which was in its way a recapitulation of the past two hundred and fifty years of the Enlightenment: they wanted sex but got horror instead.”

–Wittgenstein’s Vienna, by Allan Janik & Stephen Toulmin.
Lightbourne forced this one on me; pull quote: “After studying nineteenth-century Habsburg history, one can hardly deny the charm of Hegelian dialectic, as a mode of historical explanation; for in it one continually sees situations begetting their own opposites. The effort to introduce German in place of Latin, so as to streamline Imperial administration, begat Hungarian and Czech cultural nationalism by reaction, and this in due course developed into a political nationalism. Slav nationalism in the politics and economics in turn begat German economic and political nationalism; and this in its turn begat anti-Semitism, with Zionism as a natural Jewish reaction. All in all, it is enough to cause one’s head to spin.”

NON-RADIO TUNES:
-Grandpa’s Ghost “Bardot I-IV”
Finally in release as part of the GG document dump of 2 double albums, a quadruple album and an ep last month. These four rock drones roar along and can make even Nebraska look like Wyoming going by; I just tried it.
-Michael Hurley “Knockando”
A perfect Hurley solo tune as its clockwork-like melody hinges on its pokey rhythm. Seems to be about some kind of Michael Finn.
-Darker My Love “Post Mortem Post Boredom”
Blurred fuzzed trudge; be nice if there were a twenty minute version.
-The Places “Program Ten”
From Amy Annelle’s earlier Places album this piece of folk strum is run against noise interference and a backing vocal chorus that seems to come in via bleedthrough from a shortwave band, yet perfect to kick it into another dimension.
-Souled American “Libertyville”
It’ll be on their next album they say. I heard it twice at the Upland Breakdowns last August. I’m guessing its about a stone casualty: “He, he must have seen it all” is the chorus punchline.

RADIO TUNES:
-Miranda Lambert “Famous in a Small Town”
This is about as much as Nashville will concede to Memphis and that’s pretty good.
-Tim McGraw “When the Stars Go Blue”
Ryan Adams delicate ballad on Nashville steroids; ham-handed, maybe even gruesome, but awesome as well.
-Good Charlotte “Don’t Wanna Be in Love”
Its keyboard-imbued guitar chords reprise hair metal pop strategies. There’s always a classic or two in any genre haystack but don’t tell them that.

RELAPSES:
Robin Trower in the 21st century. You can’t read about these or hear them on the radio but when I checked one out I bought all his recent stuff:
-“Go My Way”
This is his best album, even better than 1973’s “Twice Removed from Yesterday.” Very clean under-driven psychedelia that starts with a nine minute work out over great drumming.
-“Living Out of Time”
Almost as good; a ten minute song is at the end of this one.
-“Another Days Blues”
Without the wah wah pedal it’s Albert King trending Brit blues-rock although Trower was always pretty intimate for arena rock.

-Black Sabbath “The Dio Years”
I saw this at Wal-Mart in a nice package and since I don’t pull out the vinyl often I bought it. It’d be hard for this to have the same resonance that it does for we who lived within earshot of Black Flag, Global and SST. But “Heaven and Hell” and “Mob Rules” were their second wind and this comp has three new tunes to launch their third wind which puts them right up there with Anita O’Day or somebody, right? It was common knowledge around Global that Carmen Appice’s little brother Vinny was the better drummer and the title track from “Mob Rules” displays beautifully how he could trade a dropped beat for massive pick-up power. And Geezer’s little prelim bend is just unfair; it’s up there with “Supernaut” as musical thuggery (to use Jeff Beck’s term).

LAST TOWER RECORDS PURCHASES Dec. 2006 in Las Vegas, where they never quite got the café opened in the Wow Center, and in Torrance:
-“Legends of Country Blues” (5xCD, JSP, $22): Son House, Skip James, Bukka White, Tommy Johnson, Ishmon Bracey.
-Memphis Minnie “Queen of Country Blues, All the Published Sides 1929-1937 in Chronological Order” (5xCD, JSP, $22)
-Lonnie Johnson “The Original Guitar Wizard” (4xCD, Proper, $22)
-Secret Hate “Vegetables Dancing” (CD, .50). Lost gem from the Minutemen’s New Alliance label; nice to see it on CD. I could have bought 50 of them.

Joe Carducci, a former A & R force at SST, is an advisor and contributor to Arthur; he wrote an essay on contemporary culture in Arthur’s very first issue back in fall 2002, and “Charles Bronson, Dark Buddha” in Arthur No. 10. More importantly, he is the author of the justly celebrated “Rock and the Pop Narcotic,” recently reprinted on Carducci’s own Redoubt Press, and the new sorta-memoir of his SST Years, “Enter Naomi: SST, L.A. and All That.”