A Splash of Her

"A Splash of Her" is a new project put together by myself and Patrick Suddath, a zine that features a subject near and dear to each of our hearts:  women in music.  We put quality time into making this a mini-masterpiece.   Below, check out the promo video and if you are so moved, a link to purchase the zine.  Thanks, and enjoy!

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Glamour Boys: Duran Duran in the 1980s (Pt. 3--The Model For All Years)

11/21/1983

(I'd have posted a hi-res pic if everything from the title to the uncomfortable relationship between the colors to the random strip of tiger pattern didn't piss me off so much.  Then there is of course the title of the album itself.)

Duran Duran brought in producer Ian Little to cultivate the foxy music babylon.  The completely unappealing title refers to the band members and the two men it took to manage them at the time, with the "ragged tiger" representing success.

Yeah, they'd reached that point.

Hanging with Warhol, getting hospitalized for "nose problems," dancing barefoot on smashed vodka bottles, publishing alleged art books, pursuing models then dumping them after a fortnight with no hoo-hah, and even taking wives...t'was the Duran era.

Music was still somehow at the center of it all, and after an album which managed to be both brilliant and popular, it was time to see how much heat the band could take without cracking.


"The Reflex"--The "so-gouda-it's-good-huh?" remix is the one most folks know (which made popping the cassette into the deck for the first time real interesting).  The band was not happy with the original's lack of "hit potential" (whereas I could give a toss) and sent the tracks to Nile Rodgers with a plea to work magic.  After waving around some steel drums, wooden blocks, and vox trickery, a rabbit came out of the hat, and the Duran boys had a #1 smash on both sides of the pond.

Nineteen years on, I can say confidently that I prefer the original version.  The things about the single remix that helped endear me to "The Reflex" as a young girl simply haven't aged well.  The fade-in is lightweight.  The "why-yi-yi" breakdown is superfluous filler.  Simon LeBon's words are ridiculous enough on their own.  I like them that way.  The man acknowledges his absurdity:  "Every little thing the reflex does/Leaves you answered with a question mark."  In other words, the song doesn't mean shit.  Thank you, good night, drive safely.

Now what to dig about the original?  The intro, with the guitars trying to mask their burps and groans.  The refreshing lack of steel drums, the one instrument along with French horn that has absolutely no place in a rock song.  And of course, at no point during the original version do we get:

WHY-YI-YI-YI W-W-WHY-YI-YI!

I love Nile Rodgers, I mean just this weekend I watched Coming To America and marveled at his soundtrack work, but sometimes a red wheelbarrow is just a red wheelbarrow.

"New Moon On Monday"--The video--which the band despises, as it makes them look like derelict ponces--is overlong and confusing.  Whereas the song is perfectly structured and confusing.  (And the very beginning reminds of me of Red Rider's "Lunatic Fringe," so, another check in its column.)  Despite no overhead handles to grip, "New Moon" is still a smooth ride, with a strong rousing rebel chorus that is in competition with "Hungry Like the Wolf" for Best Duran Chorus Ever (and by default, Best Pop Chorus Ever).  Songs like those you don't listen to just the once.

"(I'm Looking For) Cracks in the Pavement"--"My head is full of chopstick."  Just the one, then, sweetie?

"If I had a car/I'd drive it insane."  Now that I wish I had written.

This one's about thwarted ambition, which LeBon knows nothing about at this point in his life.  Once upon a time he did, but after a certain amount of records sold, money earned, and vaginas entered, a man's hardscrabble past is instantly expunged from the permanent record.  None of which invalidates the song.  It's fine.  But whereas the pair of tracks prior to it sounded like lush condos, "Cracks" is a one-bedroom walk-up.  LeBon's a sex-god Pynchon, you see, too distracted by his own fabulous brain-games to play well with others.

"I Take the Dice"--One could only hope that Andrew Farriss taking Jerry Casale's place in Devo would ever sound this good.

"Of Crime and Passion"--Seven falls short of Rio in the "pop masterpiece" stakes, but certainly not for lack of effort.  "Of Crime" stumbles about in the manner of "Dice" just before, but this one has weight behind it, and a gleam of cognition in its eyes, so it deserves some attention paid to it.

"Union of the Snake"--Duality is the theme.  First, the boys take inspiration from two sources:  Bowie's smash comeback "Let's Dance," released earlier in the year, and the Tantric lore of Shiva and Shakti.

Imagining that Shiva (male energy) is at the head and Shakti (the female energy, represented as a cobra) is at the feet, Shakti uncoils and slithers upward, meeting Shiva at the head.  This melding of the male and female energies can be understood as the actualization of the soul, a conciliation of one's passive and aggressive strengths; but I suppose it's more fun to see the word "Tantric" and apply the sexual union sticker on this one.  And it is pop pop pop music after all, where all songs are about fucking, except the ones about fucking, which are actually about fame.

The actual song does it up big-style, managing yet again to eroticize synthetic sounds, and topping it all off with a Stay-Puft Marshmallow Monstrosity of a chorus.  I am at it's beck and call forever.

"Shadows On Your Side"--The subject is fame.  Write about what you know.  Write about what you know you can hammer into the fucking ground till the Earth's core begins to bleed.

The music would fit tidily in with the Ninja Gaiden series of video games.  Oh those fucking birds!  Duran Duran will kick their asses whilst leaping over tigers whilst decapitating mercenaries with kitanas whilst breathing fire whilst retrieving the ancient golden demon statue of ancients!  'LET'S FUCKING GO!

"Tiger Tiger"--An instro to show off chops.  And, presumably, sticks.

Dedicated to the tigers in Ninja Gaiden, and the fun to be had jumping over them.

"The Seventh Stranger"--Originally the title track, until some kind of sanity prevailed.  Pity it didn't stay around.

All the sounds bouncing around here intrigued me as a kid--less so now, which is par for the course, but it's still a minor gem--expertly threaded, keenly pressed, and worn oh so well.  Seven would have benefited from a few more songs in this vein.

The singles are spectacular, but the first two records laid waste to the conventional wisdom that 80s pop couldn't sustain a long-player.  LeBon is in the pocket so snug you'll never want to take your jeans off, and the band are on top of their game still, but too often the melodies are unchallenging to mind and body.  The malaise of massive success has taken up space in the guest bedroom, and unfortunately, it would not vacate the premises until long after another resident of the palace Duran already had.

Glamour Boys: Duran Duran in the 1980s (Pt. 2--Musical Photoshop 101)

5/10/1982

Widely considered to be Duran Duran's full-length apex, Rio was a smash, eventually selling over ten million copies.  Television screens were awash with the outlandish curves and colors of their infamous-on-arrival music videos; pop radio couldn't go more than a couple of hours without sending another hit onto the waves; sold-out concerts reeked of girls and women screeching, swooning, and imagining Mr. LeBon-vivant was serenading them and only them.

Robert Christgau had very little time for the music of Duran Duran in his heyday as the Village Voice's dancer-in-chief, once dismissing their phenomenon thusly:  "Sometimes I think the little girls don't understand a damn thing."  Or sometimes, we realize not all art has to be understood to be valid.  Context is most, but not all, and if lingo-bots like Bobby Christ ever once in their lives eschewed the urge to describe something as "Roxy Music's worst moments meshed with the most mediocre offerings of Chic," and just told us why they enjoyed it, then dancing about architecture wouldn't be demeaned as one of life's ultimate futile efforts.  There would be throngs, fucking throngs I tell you,  fox-trotting in front of the Tower of Pisa.

"Rio"--If you start in such grandiloquent style, does the ending matter so much?  If a couple at their wedding ceremony decide to just say "I do" first things first, shunning such silly sacraments as the ring exchange and vow recitations, won't all the guests remember that twenty years afterward and not so much the acrimonious, permanent separation?

There are a thousand things, or so I imagine, to love about "Rio."  There's the fact that it was a rewrite of one of the demos recorded with Andy Wickett three years prior, itself a pretty crackin' tune even without a distinguishing vocal.   The intro (redolent of Queen's "Play the Game" recorded a couple years earlier) created by Nick Rhodes recording small metal rods being dropped onto the strings of a grand piano, then reversing the captured audio; John's mischievous bass shuffle (which proved quite influential to a young D'Arcy Wretzky...but let's forget that); keening guitar; cryptic imagery ('Cherry ice cream smile/I suppose it's very nice" is a line that only a Brit could write, forget about it); and perhaps greatest of all, double LeBon for the chorus.

Of course I can't forget the bubbling build to that chorus, which feels like an officer of the court just knocked on my door and informed me that all the city's denizens are to be slaughtered posthaste, except for me, for reasons that shall be explained in great detail once I've been evacuated to my new duplex in New York.  By the third time the dude's come 'round, I'm shouting every word of my inexplainable reprieve along with him, word for word.

Andy Hamilton shows up to do his best Kirk Pengilly, and Simon's derring-do post-solo is a nutshot to Grim's bits.

"You make me feel alive alive aliiiiive!
I'll take my chance!"

Of course, video and song are inextricably bound to one another with golden handcuffs designed by Anthony Price and Russell Mulcahy.  Duran Duran sold their product like no act at the time, showing off a stunning visual vocabulary and a sincere knowledge of--and willingness to have casual fun with--color and intensity, line and texture, rhythm and movement.

Soon, MTV would be suffused with vids by acts who followed by the example the boys had set.  In many cases, the style suffocated the substance and nowanights those bands and clips are fortunate to be footnotes.  But the best--Duran Duran, Madonna, Prince, Michael Jackson--had the complete package.  Life was not as grand as these videos would have you believe.  If you turn your lover into a lion, you will not be so unaffected as to sing your anthem of defloration with no fear of your life (or yourself, 'cause how did you pull that off?).  Zombies are unlikely to be so well-choreographed.  And, Nick Rhodes felt putridly seasick for the entirety of the "Rio" video shoot.  But it was all a sight better than some racket-gang of barely-theres content to play along to a recorded track confident that the editing team would do some nifty effects tricks to try and fool the viewer into thinking that while the song sounded like crap when you heard it on the radio, it's really actually very good, look, saturation!  Smoke machine!  See, acts like DD already knew their songs were excellent and could have stood on their own.  But why, when there's yachts to be rented and martinis to be drank underwater?

I was very envious of the pastel phones in the vid, as well.  They cast the ones in my own home in an uncomely light, for sure.  And the women, well, those warpaint bitches also made quite the impression on li'l Jenny Lee.  Did I want to be them?  Just be around them?  Was it possible they were even cooler than the Duran guys?  'Cause I knew what the Duran guys did, they were rawk gawds, they made music and toured the world and shagged the most pulchritudinous babes.  But those women...I knew nothing of the modeling world, a realm that once penetrated left me nauseous.  But back then, I could pretend these were for-real soldiers of the islands.

"My Own Way"--Well, that's a precipitous drop!  Not a fave of the band, either.  It's funk-rock in clear, actually translucent imitation of their beloved Chic.

"Lonely In Your Nightmare"--Doesn't come off particularly unnerving, unless you would describe the sound of early INXS as such (the surviving band members would likely share your belief).  There's a lightweight spray of solace to be enjoyed underneath the colors of John's bass parts.  Man, a talented broomsman and he caught that TD pass from Joe Montana to win the Super Bowl!

"Hungry Like the Wolf"--One of their biggest hits, and one of the songs that defines its time.  The Juicy Lucy of 80s pop music, supremely tasty and sloppy in equal measure.  VH-1 viewers named "Wolf" the third greatest song of the decade, behind "Pour Some Sugar on Me" and "Livin' On a Prayer."  (A swifter pendulum swing from brilliance to idiocy you will be hard-pressed to locate.)

This is my favorite Duran Duran song, and like "Rio," it has an infamous video that it can exist quite comfortably away from.  The percolating synth is a near-constant presence without infringing on the song's essence, and the same can be said for the Marc Bolan-esque guitar swaths.  The chorus is one of the stickiest of all time (and varies; my favorite is the second, which gives the impression of a more formidable predator).  Simply, I can't think of a greater testament to DD's power as an actual band.  During each instance of the aforementioned refrain, for example, the bass switches up in subtle ways.  First time, it's a pretty basic bedrock pattern.  Then, when it comes 'round again, John pops an octave and I kinda pop a blood vessel.  Almost as good is when (around 3:14, give or take a half-second) suddenly John switches to eighth notes, making the song even more minatory.

The video is a faithful recreation of the tune's subject matter:  the condensation of male/female relations into a trusty metaphor of the lusty hunt.  Does it stunt progress or insure propagation?  Can't the answer be both?  And can't you just enjoy the song?  I was 5 when this thing came out, what the hell did I know about the carnal urges that both facilitate and complicate our lives?  I mean even if I did have those feelings when I was young I just transferred them to food anyway.

Another vixen with facepaint!  Is she a metaphor for Spandau Ballet, and Simon a metaphor for his own band? Why don't more people randomly flip over tables in diners?  And with all due respect to Spandau Ballet, I can't get over the fact there was an honest to Jebus rivalry between both bands.  Mind you it was only relevant in the U.K., 'cause over here we recognized straight away which band was legendary and which was good for one smash hit...just sayin'.

I wonder if the members of Duran Duran liked leaving the lights on during sex so they could gaze upon, and gain further stimulation from the sight of, their own immaculate duds strewn on the floor.

"Hold Back the Rain"--It may not be as evocative as setting fire to it, but it's equally as preposterous.  Given that LeBon's inspiration was John Taylor's worsening drug addiction, however, I can forgive him the indulgence.  This is a thoughtful plea from one imperfect person to another, and if it made any impression on Taylor (per LeBon, the pair have never spoken about the song) it wouldn't make itself manifest until many years later, when he finally cleaned up.

The backdrop is peppy, which might be unfitting for the topic at hand, but completely in step with Rio's single-bodied dedication to dance or die.  Physicality uber alles.

"New Religion"--Per the liners, "A dialogue between the ego and the alter-ego."

Translation:  Fuck Spandau Ballet.

"Women don't care about the lyrics," goes the conventional wisdom.  Yeah, 'cause sometimes the lyrics are pants.  So we focus on the beat and the bass like it's the snap of bones and the thump of the heart and move our hips in a time-old rhythm 'cause "I'll bring my timing in/Seagulls gather in the wind" doesn't do it for that part of me that aches to have something done to it.

"Last Chance On the Stairway"--To get off a witty riposte?  (LeBon does have French Huguenot ancestry, after all.)  To get a handjob while burning the candle at both ends?  (LeBon is a rock star, after all.)  The seismic shifts in mood, tone and speed keep "Last Chance" enjoyable.  Really, Rio is an album of hits.

"Save A Prayer"--Another well-deserved smash.  "Save A Prayer" is a musical muffuletta:  best enjoyed after sitting at room temperature for a few hours, all the better for the olive oil to soak into the roll and for the salami, cheeses and mortadella to curl.

The bending allure of Nick's synth is enough to suck the listener into a very human tale regarding the swells and ebbs of the string-free relationship between two people whose first language is kinetic.  Forget society's code of behaviors and expectations of emotional etiquette.  One person's miasma is another's, well, paradise.  All you have to do is call it such.

"The Chauffer"--Dear to many Durannies (and still a live staple).  The music vacillates between faux-horror and foxy sci-fi.  Proof that Simply Simon is not only capable of relatively straightforward lyricism, he can even excel at it.

The drums aren't missed for the first two minutes because everything else is so damned enrapturing like the greatest conversation you've yet to have, but when they do finally materialize and begin the journey forward with their admirable steadfastness, it only accentuates what has already proven itself to be a class tune.

The gent in question has always struck me as an unwitting yet punctilious escort, hoping the singing blue silver can one day somehow deliver him from the evils of banality.  I don't think it ever panned out, but I hoped secretly it did.

Glamour Boys: Duran Duran in the 1980s (Pt. 1--Discover Your Distraction)

DURAN DURAN
6/15/1981 (U.K.)
4/25/1983 (U.S.)

Ladies and gentlemen--but mostly ladies--Duran Duran.  And there was much rejoicing.

Look at that cover.  Gaze upon those poised bastards.  One hundred million records sold worldwide absolutely could lie, but in this case they don't.

Please note that this review concerns the American reissue, which replaces "To the Shore" with "Is There Something I Should Know?", the single whose presence on the U.S. charts facilitated such reissue in the first place.

"Girls on Film"--Band manager Paul Berrow had himself a Nikon camera, and it never took a picture so grand as this:  all foreground, no background.  The uncensored music video was apocryphal for MTV viewers who couldn't or wouldn't venture out to the much less-private dance clubs.  In retrospect, it was fortunate that this five year old girl didn't see the band's other, seedier version.  I mean, nipples getting iced down, greasy grappling, and multiple instances of women rendering men unconscious via acts that really shouldn't render men unconscious...I just wasn't ready.

The impressionist blaze of "Girls on Film" is undeniable.  When I confessed to a friend that Duran Duran were my so-called "guilty pleasure," I expected some playful ribbing.  Instead, I got a pithy, "Hey, they did 'Girls on Film.'"

They had first done it in 1979, when Andy Wickett was still out front.  The demo has a wicked romp to recommend it--and harmonica!--but Wickett's performance goes through all the metal dangling off the chain and has to pick the lock before he freezes to death.  When Simon LeBon put his vagabond Huguenot poetry to the revamped tune, he had the good sense to recognize and retain the one great quality about Wickett's original--the chorus.

"Girls-on-film!  Girls-on-film!"

Make the guitar 98% funkier, and there! You have a classic.

LeBon claims it's a feminist statement, lost in the ensuing hubbub over the indecent visuals.  Well, if he wasn't sympathetic to the struggle of women back in the 80s, I can guarantee fathering three daughters years later did it.

"Planet Earth"--The first single, "Planet Earth" reached #12 in the U.K., but it doesn't possess the gravitas of "Girls on Film," which is one of those small shames one must simply learn to live with. They did get to lip-sync it on every music program on European TV, though.

The band sounds like they're encased in a smokey cube, bop-bop-bah'ing a New Romantic manifesto (they even namedrop the movement in the lyrics; self-awareness and an attendant sense of humor helped to separate the guys from the pack early on).  Its swirl and snap is disco-ready, but while the cocaine remains, the names and places have been altered to ensure the guilty parties don't get crashed.  The transition from bridge to chorus--"Can you hear me noooowwww-oowww?--is reminiscent of biting into a caramel-coated apple and discovering that the center is...even more caramel.

"Is There Anyone Out There"--The riff here is supremely listenable, one that's more of a loop than a line.  It stresses the third note each go-round, but it's the first two notes I'm most enamored by, as they can be either eighths or sixteenths depending on my mood when listening.  The keybs are ready to dunk heads back into the water, and if "Planet Earth" suggested  John Taylor was a bad-ass on bass, irrefutable proof is contained within these few minutes.

"Careless Memories"--The wit of the staircase; a whit of the heart.  The guys watch an Adam Ant video while dressed as the cast of a spaghetti Western.  Heavy on the bread, heavier on the balsamic vinaigrette.

Save for the chorus, the voice-work is a celebration of mumble-mouth.  The music is abrupt in a manner that nicely mimics a disintegrating connection.  My mind always hears the deadening horror of domestic violence in the lyrics.

"Is There Something I Should Know?"--Hitting the top of the charts in the U.K., and placing within the American Top 5 two years later, here we have a standard fantastic Duran single.  Lyrics nothing more or less than richly-angled sketches, hooks smeared with exotic jellies, a friggin' harmonica solo that enlists the help of a lazily-arpeggiating guitar to stretch the melancholy.  Stealthy as kept, their knack for small touches as a song progresses--knowing what, knowing when--cannot go unappreciated.  The "ohhh-ohhh"'s after the first chorus don't last long, and don't need to.  The "jungle drums" need poke their head out from behind the bedroom door when called.  Duran Duran know that you should eat all the fish by day two.

"(Waiting For the) Night Boat"--It's Night Boat!  The crime-solving boat!  Whenever it seems that the bad guys are gonna triumph, whenever it feels like all hope is lost, just remember:  there's always an inlet.  Or a peninsula.  Or a fjord.  There is always...Night Boat.

After two minutes of build-up, Simon begins singing about moaning water (the first line is "quay," an invitation to a Scrabble game if I've ever heard one).  The idea of sentient natural elements freaks me out.  The theme would seem to be stasis.  The vessel could be an extraterrestrial one in its other life, and the emotional and physical dissonance it emanates is rubbing off on the nearest humanoid.

"Sound of Thunder"--Thunder sounds like Blondie fronted by a Bowie wanna-be.  Who knew?

2:20 to 2:35 could have been excised and encouraged to birth another full song.  Simon continues to dawdle:  "Waiting for the sound of thunder."  It's all tasteful, if not quite timid.

So there it is:  minimalism reigns, here and throughout the album.  Just as LeBon is uncertain at this young stage who he wants to sound like (and just how much he wants to sound like them), his clearly-talented bandmates are still playing with visors on. This is down to greenness, which necessitates a gentle treading.  They had those superstar ambitions almost from day one, and they knew one fulfills said ambitions by being able to fill every available crevice, but they couldn't do that until someone actually knew and cared about who they were.

"Friends of Mine"--The boat arrived, finally, took off and docked at an ungodly soiree thrown in the mansion later used for the film Octopussy.  The attendees, like the hosts, are the dregs and lees of their generation, buzzing about what they or someone they know saw this and did that, but it's all bullshit, and no one's fooling anyone.  But there's finger foods to be ducked down throats, alcohol to be quaffed, and powder rooms to overcrowd, so what's the 100% truth matter?

LeBon's disgust with the scene's pervasive toxicity is evident.  "I'm not waiting anymore," he announces in a jarring chorus that steals the show by a fair pace, a harmony-rich treat over a mortal thump.  The name "Georgie Davis" is dropped, which meant nothing to me as a child.  Davis was wrongfully convicted of an armed robbery in East London sometime in 1975.  Naturally, he became a cause celebre, with rock luminaries and ordinary protesting citizens united in the quest to see justice served.  Sure enough, Davis was freed within a year.  Two years later, he pled guilty to another charge of armed robbery.  No one took to the streets or shouted him out in song over that one, or maybe they did and I just don't care.

"Tel Aviv"--LeBon had words for this one, inspired by his time as a volunteer on an Israeli kibbutz, but the decision was reached that it worked best as a five-minute instrumental that just missed its calling as a Miami Vice interlude by a few years.

What's key to the ear is the way the band's individual elements blend without becoming bland.  That's chemistry, and a collective either has it or hasn't it.  For all the baby steps and juvenile missteps, those five guys had to come together at that time to share those goals and write/perform those songs.

It would change the world.

Glamour Boys: Duran Duran in the 1980s (introduction)

Birmingham, England is an enormous city/metropolitan borough that, like many a patch of Earth that has a surplus of mouths breathing within its borders, has produced an impressive number creative people who have followed their passion and cultivated their skill in a desperate attempt to get the hell out of there.  The list of musicians is especially noteworthy, for variety and quality in equal measure.   Black Sabbath, who revolutionized so-called “heavy music” by belching up foul factory smoke; Judas Priest, whose revved-up operatics were almost as influential (and who can still lay claim to featuring the greatest frontman in the history of heavy metal); Led Zeppelin and their too-imitable BASHCRASH; the scummy seconds of Napalm Death; the ludicrous ponderings of the Moody Blues; Electric Light Orchestra’s unabashed ascension from stolid re-imaginers of George Martin as spirit-sipping studio professor to self-effacing re-imaginers of George Martin as Studio 54 DJ.

And there’s that many more.

Such as…Duran Duran.

A quintet of rouged rogues, Duran Duran are as good a candidate as any to represent “the music of the 1980s.”  Their (shrewdly attained) status as pin-up phenoms attracted critical invective, and for a time they were the go-to whipping boys for professional fault-finders.  Duran Duran were a boy band, most certainly, but in the way that the Beatles were two decades prior.  They were not mashed together by some decrepit, decaying svengali nor were they puppets for an assembly line of songwriters.  The Duran boys  wrote their songs, performed those songs, controlled their own image, and drew up their own unique blueprint for world domination.

The original lineup of John Taylor, Stephen Duffy and the erstwhile Nicholas Bates (his rock godnom de plume Nick Rhodes was either inspired by a Greek island or brand of keyboard, depending on which story one chooses to believe) came together in 1978.  Duffy and Rhodes bonded over Kraftwerk and the two Elvises, influences that would reverberate even after Duffy had departed within a year.

Lineup changes were inevitable, but eventually they picked up–and decided to keep–drummer Roger Taylor, who was neither the drummer for Queen or related to John Taylor in any way.  Former TV Eye vocalist Andy Wickett hopped on board, and the four-song “1979 Demo” was recorded.  Two of the songs–vastly worked over, vastly improved–would become classics in the band’s catalog.  

Classics that, of course, would not feature Mr. Wickett.

DD were basically adopted by the Rum Runner club as they shed and grew  their skin, and it was RR barmaid Fiona Kemp who recommended her boyfriend, aspiring actor/vocalist/lyricist Simon LeBon as a possible replacement behind the microphone.  LeBon showed up wearing pink leopard-print trousers, hoisting a notebook of original poetry, and bearing a cool-ass name that was not a nom de plume.  The scenario reeks of sordid legend.

Duran Duran crashed the shores of North America like it was their birthright. They had the tunes, the ‘tude, a highly-stylized substance and a substantive style (New Romantic frills and thrills).  They were garish in all the best ways, pouty Englishmen who glammed their way into the hearts, minds and beds (and couches, and floors, and showers, and walls) of girls the world over.  They were clotheshorses, certainly, and you can even read essays devoted to Nick Rhodes inadvertently inventing metrosexuality if you’re positively gagging on your ennui, but above everything else, Duran Duran mastered pop music.  It was that aspect of the band that enamored me as a six-year-old girl in Western Maryland watching their canny, polished, and controversial videos flash across MTV.  I was too young to comprehend the lupine carnality, nor could I appreciate the art of androgyny other than to recognize as something “different” that I just didn’t see walking around my neck of the woods, careful not to move too fast lest I have another asthma attack.  

As the 80s dissolved into the next decade, my interest in the boys had waned, but their influence never would, hanging in there like the posterized kitty cat.  When they made an unexpected comeback with 1993′s so-called “Wedding Album,” and the singles “Ordinary World” and “Come Undone” were dominating radio, it was like revenge–for the band, whose multitude of naysayers had rejoiced at their dwindling sales and concert draws–and validation.  I remember feeling immense satisfaction that a group I was so attached to and entertained by was back on top…and, best, that the music they were releasing actually deserved the success.  

This new wave of Duran inspired me to revisit the music of my childhood (hey, Sonic Youth were between albums).  To my pleasant surprise, so much of the inescapable, alleged “disposable pop” held up to scrutiny (even if their creators didn’t).  No one’s records stood more solidly, chest out and chin up, than Duran Duran’s.  I don’t mean simply the singles, although they are among the greatest pop songs of any era.  I mean Duran Duran actually made great albums.  Their music sold their image, rather than the other way around.

You may say I’m naive.  I say, “Doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo, doo doo doo, doo doo doo, doo doo.”

DD are of course still an active recording and touring unit.  However, their full-length releases of the past twenty years have been mixed at best and dreadful at worst.  Singles aside, even “The Wedding Album” was vastly forgettable.  Thus, this discography review series is dedicated to their first five albums, all released by the band during the greatest decade known to man, the 1980s.  When everything they touched turned to flaming liquid cocaine.

Neither Elegy Nor Effigy: The 30 Greatest Sonic Youth Songs...And the 10 Worst (Part Three)

Pretentious preamble sucks.  Yer gonna smile, sneer or shrug at these choices no matter what.

10.  "Kotton Krown"
APPEARS ON:  Sister (1987)
PREVIOUS RANKING:  Not listed

Love song definitely, but what's the object of affection?  A person?  A city?  Heroin?  Is it heroin?

Thurston's interview-speak supports the non-opiate theory ("It's a fine line between sensuous and sleazy").  Giving credence to the more sordid take is that a cotton ball can be used to filter the heroin solution just prior to shooting up.  Only one person knows for sure, and it's possible he's actually forgotten by now.

Lyrically, I can't but want to bake it muffins:  "Angels are dreaming of you," "Your carnal spirit's spraying," "I'm a Care Bear."  Wait...misheard that last one.  But yeah, who the hell writes like that?  This is back when Thurston was a true poet, long before he felt compelled to adopt the affectations of one.  "Angels are dreaming of you" floors me to this day.  I'm serious.  Don't try picking me up either.

Musically, it's a roaming zoo packed with pandas and komodo dragons.  2:12 to 3:51 is the aural manifestation of an orgasm having an orgasm.

"White Kross" comes screaming right after "Kotton Krown," short and sweat-splashed in sharp contrast.  It educes this very unnatural desire in my heart--to escape my body.  First it eyes what would seem the easiest route by attempting to burst from my chest, then up through the throat, and finally it pushes laboriously against my spine.  No such luck, ticker o' mine.

9.  "Rain King"
APPEARS ON:  Daydream Nation (1988)
PREVIOUS RANKING:  29

Sonic Youth's most woefully underappreciated song. The stream-of-consciousness lyrics pop up through SY's version of classic rock like the eternally cool observations of a man who has seen enough to know you shouldn't see it all.  "Crossfire rain king with his cadillac kid/Marries every dictionary from his trainyard bliss." Are you fucking serious, Ranaldo?  A writer needs some gelatinous cognitive processes happening in his head and deeply-stained blood rushing through everywhere else to scratch those words out.  Amazing, amazing language. 

I already explained why I chose "Hey Joni" over "Eric's Trip," so why "Rain King" over "Hey Joni"?  Letter-chain magic.  Work it just right, and the world will volunteer to be your assistant.

8.  "Hoarfrost"

APPEARS ON:  A Thousand Leaves (1998)

PREVIOUS RANKING:  13

Lee's best song as a member of Sonic Youth; his upcoming solo album may or may not have a track to better it.  No song, save for the gently falling "Skating" by the Vince Guaraldi Trio, evokes winter with more sure-footed vision.  It's tempting to melt into the nearest surface when "Hoarfrost" fills the room.

With this song and "Karen Koltrane," Lee shines on what I feel is SY's best album.  So wherefore art the damn thing then?  On the cusp.  Just "Hoarfrost" is more in my mind these days, is all.

7.  "Starfield Road"

APPEARS ON: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star (1994)

PREVIOUS RANKING:  15

Give grown men zap-guns and they'll regress in record time.  It's all fun and games till the spacecraft lands.  The invasion will be brief and devastating, thankfully.  Meticulous planners, those so-called "aliens." 

My dear Patrick and I were in attendance to witness the reappearance--after twelve long years--of this song in concert.  When Steve busted out the BOOM BOOM PISH BOOM BOOM BOOM PISH, we were hopeless to do anything other than erupt.  Just another memory for the friendliest bank I'll ever do business with.  

Also?  Best introduction in the history of anything.

"Bull in the Heather" is Neptune, "Starfield Road" is Saturn.

6.  "The Diamond Sea"

APPEARS ON:  Washing Machine (1995)

PREVIOUS RANKING:  3

Stands with "Kool Thing," "Schizophrenia" and "Teen Age Riot" on the shortlist of songs that can claim the title of SY's signature tune.  At 19:35, it is the longest song to ever appear on a Sonic full-length.  

It is possible to experience a positive crisis, which seems to be the case for the protagonist of "Diamond Sea," a lucky soul experiencing the first wondrous days of romantic love in bloom.  Thurston's words are solicitous and kind, but it's the extended instrumental section that does the most to quell the anxiety threatening to derail a beautiful journey.  The method so used expresses an entire lifetime spent in thrall to the heart.  Life, to death.   In between, don't be afraid to share a secret or two.

Before "The Diamond Sea"'s appearance at the end, Washing Machine's title track was the longest song on an SY record--nine whole minutes!  Kim rides the blissful memory of sippin' a soda and rolling her eyes at the future while the jittery kid in the orange/red down vest a few tables over inadvertently makes his mom crush on him.  

5.  "Massage the History"

APPEARS ON:  The Eternal (2009)

PREVIOUS RANKING:  Not listed

To hear Kim Gordon tell it, you need to really lean in.  Once at optimum position to discern words, she'll gladly tell your her dual inspirations for "Massage the History":  Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the dying record industry.  Definitely explains the blood-sucking references, and also why Kim sounds like she's pale and shaking the entire time.  

Except isn't about a TV show or gasping monolith.  I mean that's cute and all, Kim knows how to work a soundbite and make the idiot fishermen happy with their catch, but this song is probably the most personal she's written since "Sweet Shine."  

The band make us wait 100 seconds before Kim starts singing. The lead in is a magnificent melding of Thurston's acoustic and Lee's electric slide guitar. The resultant mirage melts bones.  

2:51 to 2:54. Three seconds where the best parts go taut against each other. Lee's mournful slide; Kim's yearning voice. It seems almost impossible for such a rapturous concurrence of sounds to exist. That it does is testament to the rewards of the journey.

"You're so close/Close to me."

If this was the last song Sonic Youth ever recorded…brilliant.  Standing fucking ovation till my hands become raw.

Putting another song against this one isn't fair.

4.  "Inhuman"

APPEARS ON:  Confusion Is Sex (1983)

PREVIOUS RANKING:  22

And if this was the last song I ever saw Sonic Youth perform live….

How powerful is a blow that breaks your tongue and makes your teeth bleed?   Funny how I even see it coming and can't (or won't) stop the assault.  Sick, sick puppies all around.    

Thurston's rumble-fuck bass instills in me the very mistaken notion that I can dropkick a brick loose from a wall.  

"(She's In A) Bad Mood" is analogous to "Inhuman" in that both traffic in sketchy menace, but the chick Thurston's yakkin' about doesn't scare me.  She can borrow some of my Midol and deal with it.

3.  "Theresa's Sound World"

APPEARS ON:   Dirty (1992)

PREVIOUS RANKING:  4

We all know a Theresa; maybe you're fortunate enough to be one.  In touch with worlds beyond, privy to sounds and visions that escape the limited purview of the huddled masses yearning to be, a gracious host and compassionate friend…even if she doesn't seem to have a filter on her thoughts.  Her unabashed, uninhibited spirit emboldens some, repulses others, and affects everyone deeply.  

She is not a sex symbol, and cannot be swayed by the crackling come-ons of silly boys.  I like you, "Sugar Kane," but you aren't a Theresa.

2.  "Silver Rocket"

APPEARS ON:  Daydream Nation (1988)

PREVIOUS RANKING:  2

Flat-out rock and goddamn roll with patented feedback break, all in the aid of electrical edification.  Flashing, smashing, bending, upending, mighty usurper of gruesome thoughts, "Silver Rocket" tells me that space travel is kinda crap when so much potential exists down here with astral travel still.  

"Teen Age Riot" is a true anthem inasmuch as a self-aware, highly intelligent band will allow.  But it never changed my life.

1.  "Star Power"

APPEARS ON:  EVOL (1986)

PREVIOUS RANKING:  1

Still the champion of my Sonic heart, and always will be.  I'll put it in writing and notarize that baby. 

"Star Power" isn't forever linked in my mind with some pivotal life-event, it doesn't put me in  mind of a special someone--I just fucking love the song.  EVOL was SY's first album with Steve Shelley behind the kit, and "Star Power" is their first true attempt at "pop," with the new kid laying down a martinet beat that allows Lee and T to tentatively explore melodic fields.  Kim takes her (then) husband's words and recites them in a voice that gives the impression she's several hundred paces from the boy party, reflecting on idol worship with a promethazine passion, somehow sounding alluring despite her deliberate remove.  

"Everything turns black to blue."  Everything.  Hell, even the truncated acoustic version they recorded in 2009 for some show I don't care about was dipped in honey.

I have waxed so rapturous over what happens from 1:02-1:16, likened it to shaving mountainsides with nylon strings, claimed it was the closest any of us will get to attaining "sensory sponge" status without the use of illicit drugs, and most drunkenly proclaimed it would be the first song Snoopy played at a pizza party.  I ain't wrong about any of it.

I know many of you will bemoan that I did not place "Shadow of a Doubt" anywhere in my top 30.  Well, I gotta be in the mood for sexually-charged murder plots playing out on accelerating vehicles.  I am always in the "Star Power" mood.

Okay, on to the controversy.  Why do a "Worst" list?  Well, I've written so much about my favorite band, and as their chapter seems ready to come to a close, so is mine.  Writing about SY has done more for me than I can tell you. So if I'm about to call it a day,  might as well cover all the bases.  I've never done a "Worst of SY" before (frankly 'cause they don't have very many bad songs over 27 years of recording music) so this is new territory for me and my pen.   And also, they're a band of human beings, not the Four Sublime Lords come into Being.  They fuck up sometimes.  Ten times, in fact.  

10.  "Do You Believe In Rapture?"

APPEARS ON:  Rather Ripped (2006)

What a waste of harmonics.  The American people sure as fuck didn't deserve eight years of aw-shucks Godboy Bush anymore than the people of the world deserved three minutes of soggy faux-protest poetry.  

9.  "Satan Is Boring"

APPEARS ON:  Bad Moon Rising (1985)

Song is boring.  Drugs make music better except when they don't.  

8.  "Lights Out"

APPEARS ON:  Rather Ripped (2006)

I swear I don't hate Rather Ripped; NYC Ghosts and Flowers is still their least impressive album.  But Jesus, the nadirs on Rather Ripped are just jaw-droppingly bad.  It's okay for Thurston to sing along to the guitar line so long as said line is interesting.  Don't meander and call it menace.  OOH IT'S LIGHTS OUT FOR ME I'M SO SCARED.  Pfft.

7.  "In the Mind of the Bourgeois Reader" 

APPEARS ON:  Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star (1994)

What a waste of an amazing title.  Thurston coulda saved this one by pulling a Gadsby of sorts:  no use of the letter "o" anywhere in the lyrics.  I vaguely remember liking this one when the album was first released, but I was sixteen and easily impressed.

6.  "Peace Attack"

APPEARS ON: Sonic Nurse (2004)

Thurston's heartfelt desire for a just world is commendable.  Writing songs that bore me a hole allowing me to fall to my death, not commendable.  Maybe an additional verse would have given the track some variety and thus spice and thus life?  I dunno.  When Thurston's in putrid-poet mode it's best not to give him any more room.   

5.  "My Arena"

APPEARS ON:  "The Diamond Sea" single (1995)

Advice:  Write sober, edit wasted.  Not the reverse, which is clearly what happened here.  Soft as chow mein noodles.  Quick repetition of the last word in a line helps make any song 25% more "what the hell is this shit?"  It's befuddling how it starts off with Thurston's envelope poetry ("You smell like a rosary/And you like a Jew") and then some Jet Set-style Kim takes over.  Her refrains are mildly pleasing, but go on for far too long.  "Nowhere to go, nothing to do," and nothing to say atop it all.

"You drunk all my wine girl."  Yeah, well you clearly got hold of all the crack, my dude.

4.  "Self-Obsessed and Sexxee"

APPEARS ON:  Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star (1994)

Another song where I admire and appreciate Thurston's sentiments while utterly loathing the overall execution.  The only interesting part of the song is the "party all the time" refrain, which just makes me want to listen to that Eddie Murphy song.  

3.  "Stalker"

APPEARS ON: "Drunken Butterfly" single (1992)

I would rather have a stalker than listen to this song.  "Got me prowlin' like a police car."  Dude, how did this happen?  

2.  "Sleepin' Around"

APPEARS ON:  Rather Ripped (2006)

A promising instrumental chug turned fatuous throwaway thanks to--

"Sleepin' around/Sleepin' around/What would the neighbors say?"  

Oh, I have some ideas.  Post-K & T split this song makes me even more squeamish.  It's enough that their separation has tainted a good song like "Titanium Expose," but turning this one from piss-poor to crappy is just beyond the pale.

1.  "Small Flowers Crack Concrete"

APPEARS ON:  NYC Ghosts and Flowers (2000)

I have a love/hate relationship with this song.  It's about as enjoyable to listen to as synchronized puking, but man is it fun to scribble out some parodic poetry in its dishonor.  Give me some aimless hippie drivel and I'll work like Rumpelstiltskin on that shit.  

Some songs should be accompanied by a list of possible side effects.  "Small Flowers Crack Concrete" is one of them.  "May cause shortness of breath, nausea, rash, drowsiness, loss of appetite, heartburn and narcotic squads to sweep through your poet den."  Poetry for the sake of poetry, oh ghost of T. S. Eliot won't you save us from poetry for the sake of poetry!   On the title track, Lee does it right.  He delivers his carefully-chosen words casually at first, then lets the emotion build up naturally.  The end result is an actual song, as opposed to, your band came up with some music, and you threw a poem you had laying around on top of it.  

Now, then...that wasn't so bad, was it?  

Neither Elegy Nor Effigy: The 30 Greatest Sonic Youth Songs...And the 10 Worst (Part Two)

20.  "JC"

APPEARED ON:  Dirty (1992)

PREVIOUS RANKING:  Not listed

Kim and Thurston each wrote a song to memorialize their friend Joe Cole, a roadie who had slogged it out with Black Flag and later the Rollins Band.  He was murdered on December 19, 1991, shot at point-blank range outside the home he shared with Henry Rollins, victim of a botched robbery attempt.  Both tracks found a place on Dirty--Thurston's fried-pig squeal "100%" and Kim's "JC."  The former was released as a single and remained a perennial live favorite.  The latter was never put out for the public as a digestible representation of the album that was supposed to break SY in the mainstream, and was dropped from concerts after 1993.  

"JC" doesn't have the high profile, true, but so what.  It squeezes my bones.  You know how infrequently that happens?  For years Dirty was my favorite album, and while it's actually fallen in my estimation in the twenty years since, "JC" has risen.  

Adolescents think they know anguish, and they do--but rarely as intensely as they imagine. I'm in my 30s.  A lot has happened since I was 14 and playing Dirty incessantly.  My father died.  I had not one but two medical crises, the last of which was just a couple weeks ago.  I can now grasp and visualize a world where I do not exist.  How many teens can say that?  Come on, the world still revolves around your self-important ass at that stage in life.  As you mature, certain base facts of life finally hit and spread out in a sticky web over the brain.  I used to get so into the resplendent anguish sighing out of "JC" that it invigorated me--I thought I could relate!  Ha.  No.  Now I can, and it doesn't excite me.  

I get why Kim rushes her delivery; she's taking control by testing the elasticity of her lungs,  heart still aching over an unfair trial.   Or is it the fact that some eulogists need time to compose themselves between sentences, to catch their breath before it leaves forever, to soldier on and "do right by" their loved ones, while still others just want to get the process over with, so they unleash a torrent of emotions, vacillating between blunted desolation, hysterical disbelief, and grievous acceptance.  To hear the usually self-possessed and imperious Kim Gordon reveal her heart like this is still a shattering experience.

Adversely, "100%" is a raucous tribute that gives insight to Cole's character.  It is distinctly how a guy would see his friend, and how he would honor his buddy for the benefit of outsiders.  

19.  "Orange Rolls, Angels Spit"

APPEARED ON:  Dirty (1992)

PREVIOUS RANKING:  10

More Dirty, more Kim.  Empirical evidence indicates that this is indeed the very fucking filthiest thing on that record.  Kim told an interviewer way back when that "Orange Rolls" was about "drug craziness," and given that until a few years ago I understood approximately 8-10 words in the whole damn thing, I could buy that explanation.  The way Kim forces the words through gritted teeth, the revving guitars…it's craziness, at the very least, sizzling through the floor to collapse in a sweet sweaty heap.  The process is repeated till the Earth's core is reached.  From that point on--all bets are off.

"Orange Rolls" is just more terrifying a listen than the other Kim "rocker" on Dirty, the classic rock-pilfering "Drunken Butterfly."  Oh, that one's a basket of honey biscuits, no question.  I've spasmed something silly to it at many an SY gig.  

18.  "I Love You Golden Blue"

APPEARED ON:  Sonic Nurse (2004)

PREVIOUS RANKING:  19

Wow, I sure like Kim.  Yeah, she's kinda the hero.  

The description I wrote for "Golden Blue" in my review of Sonic Nurse cannot, for my multi-colored money, be improved upon.

Like watching a loved one, or maybe even the loved one, slowly slip away. Before the color drains away completely, before functions cease and respiration expires, there's the moment when that which animates us,that essence, reaches the pinnacle before continuing on its peregrination. "Is it time to go? It's a place I know."

Kim's voice is barely there and all the more beautiful for it. She illuminates the chilled terror, the hysteria felt whenever caught in that space between awareness and oblivion. "I can't feel the thrill. I don't have the will."

"I Love You Golden Blue" sounds so precious, so fragile. The introductory instrumental feels like a shroud but when it's finally lifted there's just even greater mystery shimmering underneath.

"I don't glitter like the stars above. I don't glow like neon alone. Don't blush. It's just the wind outside. Don't rush to be by my side." 

"Golden Blue" is the second in a so-called "trilogy" of Kim epics that were either the ultimate or penultimate tracks of three of Sonic Youth's last four albums, the others being "Sympathy for the Strawberry" from Murray Street, and "Massage the History" from The Eternal.  "Strawberry" is the only one to miss this list, but I love it, believe me, all red and white and leafy green, just dying to land in some sugar.

17.  "Beauty Lies in the Eye"

APPEARED ON:  Sister (1987)

PREVIOUS RANKING:  14

Over calming acoustic strums and scattered lion yawns, Kim captures the echoes of passionate abandon as they ricochet off the walls and recreates them in her divine image.

"Do you want to see the explosions in my eye?"  I'm already hearing them just fine, but…sure.  Why not?

Kim's other stand-out turn on Sister is "Pacific Coast Highway."  Problem with that song for me nowadays, when the band brought it back live in the early part of this century, Kim busted out a trumpet for some decidedly non-marching band heroics during the Beach Boy breakdown.  I keep waiting for that on the record, and it's not there!  Aw man.  You know else isn't there?  The drums.  Poor Steve!  Wait a second, he just played drums on an early contender for album of the year, poor Steve nothin'.

16.  "Cross the Breeze"

APPEARED ON:  Daydream Nation (1988)

PREVIOUS RANKING:  Not listed

Heroes are disposable and promises are broken records, made to warp over time.  There are many methods one can use to soothe the savage beast…music is the just the most popular one.  You can never chase the demon off, though.  It's as much a part of us as our tongues.  

Hearing both "The Sprawl" and "Cross the Breeze" back-to-back at certain latterly SY gigs (including the Daydream Nation concert in Brooklyn, 2007) was like a fangirl dream come true.  So much time spent cursing my fate in being born too late, and they go and play the whole friggin' thing front to back.  Some shows I couldn't stop moving…other shows I seemed to forget how.  "The Sprawl" lives up to its title a little too much, though; "Cross the Breeze" measures out the moods expertly.  Hence, my decision.

15.  "Stereo Sanctity"

APPEARED ON:  Sister (1987)

PREVIOUS RANKING:  Not listed

Oh hi Thurston!  I didn't forget you.  You got the magic, most tall one, and great taste in sci-fi lit.  Reason #23 To Adore Sonic Youth:  one of 'em'll read a book, hear a song, see a film or a painting that makes 'em write a song, that in turn makes someone else write a song, read a book, shoot a film, splash a canvas, etc.  Gold connections.

For lifting from Philip K. Dick, using the word "field," and rocking sans any discernible remorse, "Stereo Sanctity" takes the crown over "Catholic Block," which hits the red just as strongly, but oh man does Catholic guilt kill my girl-chubby.  Thurston's not even explicit in that regard, but it doesn't matter, not one whit, man.  Spending your refractory period in sullen contemplation of whether or not your recent orgasm has doomed your soul is the opposite of "sexy."

14.  "Hey Joni"

APPEARED ON:  Daydream Nation (1988)

PREVIOUS RANKING:  Not listed

And look here, it's Mr. Lee!  

Of the three songs on Daydream Nation featuring Lee Ranaldo on the mic, three of them kick ass.  This one, most fabulously.  Is it about Joni Mitchell?  The '70s cop flick Mitchell, starring international sex symbol Joe Don Baker?  "Hey Joe"?  "Hey Bulldog"?  Heroin?  Is it heroin?!

You wanna solve mysteries, go find Encyclopedia Brown and tell him Sally owes me money.  "Hey Joni" is both a devastatingly beautiful renunciation of nostalgia and a word-sick embrace of the here and now.  My favorite line in the song is, all of them.  

Moreso than his bandmates, Lee loves to use his songs to reflect on the meaningful fragments people leave behind of themselves.  The line between stranger and friend is thin as floss, filaments tensed and loosened at an almost-unnerving rate.  Some folks detach themselves and watch the process impassively, while there's some who just can't help but jump into the fray, frothing hearts and minds, seeking kindred spirits--even if just for a little while.    Even in "Eric's Trip," which borrows dialogue from Warhol's Chelsea Girls, Lee makes it sound like he's reciting original lyrics, like this dude Eric is his high school buddy or something.  Fooled me, dude!  "Eric's Trip" is super-beloved by the fanbase as well, and I like it just fine.  I've seen it live about, uh, 900 times.  It's all about the Drifter, dude, can't forget Thurston bustin' out that rode-hard-put-away-harder Drifter.  Drumstick delirium.  But no moment in "Eric's Trip" approaches, even tenuously, Lee's putting the motherfucking "Hey!" in "Hey Joni."  

13.  "Sweet Shine"

APPEARS ON:  Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star

PREVIOUS RANKING:  8

Really thought this would stay in the top ten, but hey, I gotta rank 'em honest.

Another one that's hard on the heart nowanights.  I'm likely off by several paces in all directions, but "Sweet Shine" played to me like Kim's reflection on her (then) decade-long marriage to the world's tallest 12-year-old.  I broke it down on the old list, and I'm sure it was exhilarating for me to write all that out at the time and pull at my brain like so much soda-flavored taffy, but considering revisiting all of that exhausts me.  

Do not let your babies grow up to be cowboys, is all I'll say.  

Alongside "JC" and "Massage the History," "Sweet Shine" is part of the what I call my "tearful triumvirate" of Sonic Youth tunes.  Each of them can get my eyes to well up at least, and more than once they've been responsible for some embarrassing full-out bawling.  Kim's voice is far from delicate and soaring, but where other female singers phonate at a level that wins competitions and tops charts, she's doing what she must in order to serve the soul of the song.  Too many vocalists aim for the skies; Kim knows the truest target is much closer to the middle.

She hits a little lower than that on "Skink," a lullaby about having sex by an aquarium.  Lotsa blue, lotsa green, lotsa vision gone black to blue, and oh God I hope neither of them kicks the aquarium.  Freedom will kill the fish, you know.

12.  "Rain on Tin"

APPEARS ON:  Murray Street (2002)

PREVIOUS RANKING:  Not listed

Never shall the rot set in, "Rain On Tin" will endure for the ages.  A kind, thoughtful reflection on fragility in the wake of September 11, 2001, Thurston's lyrical economy is surpassed only by the medicinal effect of what comes after, when the last word vanishes into the polluted air and the music begins its loom work.  Thurston, Lee and temp worker Jim O'Rourke are not showing off; how gauche to assume otherwise.  Yes, it's all very impressive.  The three of them sound like they've been playing together for longer than two albums worth of material, that's for sure.  But how does it feel?  A stitch in the heart.  A gentle thought for harsh words. Embracing the inexorable as invaluable.  Forward motion always.

"Rain on Tin" dissolves pain.  I've needed it so much lately.  And I know, it's just a placebo.  But as far as phantom treatments go…I've never had one go further.

The next album's "Pink Steam" gets it all back-assward.  Extended instrumental intro, then lyrics.  Oh, the lyrics!  "I'm the man who loves your mother."  Well, the average woman would want that special guy in their life to feel fondness towards their mother, right?  Makes Thanksgiving much more tolerable, anyway.  But it's nothing to put in a song!

11.  "Mote"

APPEARS ON:  Goo (1990)

PREVIOUS RANKING:  21

I played the liver-loving onions outta this song and "Titanium Expose" in the days immediately after my brother let me borrow his CD of Goo.  Lee's lyrics never float so high above the listener that we are unable to make out their distinguishing features, just one of the qualities that endears him to fans who bemoan his dark horse status in Sonic Youth.  To pull off such a feat amid a blanket of mosquitoes is another one.

The last four minutes are akin to slurping from a bottle of Makers Mark in between bouts of vomiting into the toilet you're leaning against lest you get sucked into a wormhole and die.  And yes…that is a compliment.  Wordless debauchery and paranoia for the flawless victory!  

If "Mote" is not Exhibit A in the case for Sonic Youth arranging dates between love and rackets with a proficiency matched by no other sound-makers, it's comes no later than "D."  Further down would be "NYC Ghosts and Flowers," the glaring highlight on the underwhelming album of the same name. Ten years after "Mote," Lee would put some more vagabond vandalism in front of a wailing torrent.  Although "NYC" remains stirring--again, it is far and away the best thing about the album--it lacks "Mote"'s motion and color.