2340. Shrapnel
2341. Bunny Sigler: "I've Always Wanted to Sing...Not Just Write Songs"
2342. Silver Convention
2343. Horace Silver Quintet: Song for My Father (Cantiga Para Meu Pai)
2344. Karen Silver
2345. The Best of Carly Simon
2346. The Best of Joe Simon
2347. Paul Simon
2348. Simon & Garfunkel: Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.
2349. Simon and Garfunkel: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme
2350. Simon & Garfunkel: Bookends
2351. Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits
2352. Simply Red: "Holding Back the Years" 12-inch
2353. The Amazing Nina Simone
2354. Joyce Sims: All About Love
2355. Zoot Sims: One to Blow On
2356. Zoot Sims: Zoot!
Mixworthy: "Song for My Father," #2343; "That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should
Be," "You're So Vain," and "Anticipation," #2345; "Mother and Child Reunion," and "Me
and Julio Down by the Schoolyard," #2347; "Scarborough Fair/Canticle," and "The 59th
Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)," #2349; "Mrs. Robinson" and "At the Zoo," #2350;
"Holding Back the Years," #2352.
Spent: "Sounds of Silence," #2348.
I like "You're So Vain" more right now than I ever have; "That's the Way" and "Antici-
pation" I've loved for a long time, but it's only within the past year--helped along
by one of those early Saturday Night Lives that are currently in syndication--that I
finally started to come around on "You're So Vain." I think it was killed early on
for me by an unbelievable amount of airplay when it was on the charts; logic says that
it wasn't any more overplayed than any other #1 from the time, so maybe the ingenious-
ness of its gimmick just made it seem that way. "That's the Way I've Always Heard It
Should Be" pairs up well with Simply Red's "Holding Back the Years"; neither has any
critical standing whatsoever, but I'd be hard-pressed to think of two bleaker songs
ever to come out of mainstream Top 40 radio...The Simon and Garfunkel stuff is pretty
ingrained in me from high school, the gateway to which, of course, was The Graduate.
I guess I should have long ago started to recoil from the monumental simpiness of
something like "Scarborough Fair," but it just never happened. It's easier to defend
the other three songs I've listed, any of which is catchy enough for the Shins...So,
do you think I came to Horace Silver through Steely Dan, or to Steely Dan through
Horace Silver? If you don't know the answer, you haven't been paying attention. And
if you have been paying attention, I know who you are.
________________________________________________________________________________
2357. Frank Sinatra: Rare Recordings 1935 - 1970
2358. Frank Sinatra: Rarities: The Columbia Years
2359. Frank Sinatra's Greatest Hits: The Early Years
2360. Frank Sinatra: In the Wee Small Hours
2361. Frank Sinatra: Songs for Swingin' Lovers!
2362. Frank Sinatra: 20 Classic Tracks
2363. Frank Sinatra and Count Basie: An Historic Musical First
2364. Frank Sinatra: September of My Years
2365. Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music
2366. Frank Sinatra: Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back
2367. Sinceros: Pet Rock
2368. Siouxsie and the Banshees: The Scream
2369. Sister Sledge: We Are Family
2370. Skinny Boys: Skinny (They Can't Get Enough)
2371. Skinny Puppy: Remission
2372. Skinny Puppy: Bites
2373. Skrewdriver: All Skrewed Up
Mixworthy: "Nancy (With the Laughing Face)," #2359; "In the Wee Small Hours," #2360;
"It Was a Very Good Year," #2364; "Hong Kong Garden," #2368.
Spent: "We Are Family," #2369.
The most meaningful thing I can think to say about Frank Sinatra is that far from
venerating him, I don't care for the person much at all. I've always been a little
defensive about anyone who treats rock and roll with condescension, and the first
thing that comes to mind for me with Sinatra is the way he was so contemptuous of
the music he lost his teenage audience to in the mid-50s (from Ray Coleman's Sina-
tra: A Portrait of the Artist, 1915 - 1998): "It smells phony and false. It is
sung, played, and written for the most part by cretinous goons, and by means of its
almost imbecilic reiterations and sly, lewd, in plain fact dirty, lyrics, it manages
to be the martial music of every sideburned delinquent on earth." I think he more or
less went into the same tirade when the Beatles came along a few years later. I know,
standard-fare through the ages--most every rock star who's ever been supplanted by
something new has reacted much the same way--and even almost charmingly petulant
when you think about the mastermind behind such highbrow fare as Ocean's Eleven and
Robin and the Seven Hoods complaining about the world's descent into cretinism (or,
from what I understand, one of the great fuck-machines of his era fretting about
lewdness). Much less charming is old Rat Pack footage of Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr.
doing all their Negro schtick--no matter how many times I hear about Sinatra's great
dedication to Civil Rights, that stuff just totally creeps me out. (I also realize
that it was a different world, that an argument can be made that they were subvert-
ing racial stereotypes in the only way permissible at the time, and that it's very
easy for me to sit here in 2005 and be critical. I understand all of that.) I won't
spend a second trying to diminish his stature as an artist, but my problems with the
person do interfere with how much I value his music (which, relatively speaking, I
have very little of). In the Wee Small Hours is pretty great, although all I've got
is an abridged budget version (I didn't realize how abridged till I checked the
Coleman book--only 10 out of 16 songs), and "It Was a Very Good Year," where, in-
stead of carping, Sinatra transforms his sense of the world passing him by into
something majestic and profound, is in the pantheon--so good that even Homer Simp-
son's "It Was a Very Good Beer" makes me sad. The rest of what I own, I appreciate
at arm's length.
________________________________________________________________________________
2374. Slade Alive!
2375. Slade: Slayed?
2376. Slade Smashes
2377. Percy Sledge: When a Man Loves a Woman
2378. The Best of Percy Sledge
2379. The Great Adventures of Slick Rick
2380. Slits: Cut
2381. Slovenly: Thinking of Empire
2382. Slow: Against the Glass
2383. Sly & the Family Stone: Greatest Hits
2384. Sly & the Family Stone: There's a Riot Goin' On
2385. Sly and the Family Stone: Anthology
2386. Sly & the Family Stone: Small Talk
2387. Sly & the Family Stone: Back on the Right Track
2388. Sly Fox: Let's Go All the Way
2389. Small Faces: Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake
2390. Small Faces: Greatest Hits
Mixworthy: "Gudbuy T'Jane" and "Mama Weer All Crazee Now," #2375; "Merry Xmas Every-
body," #2376; "When a Man Loves a Woman," #2377; "Everybody Is a Star," "Everyday
People," "Hot Fun in the Summertime," and "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin),"
#2383; "Family Affair," #2384; "Lazy Sunday," #2389; "Itchycoo Park," #2390.
My first instinct was to list "When a Man Loves a Woman" as spent, but I think I some-
times overcompensate in that direction. I heard "What's Going On" on the radio over
the weekend, and I was reminded once again that if enough time goes by, songs that I
may have once been sick of (and assume I still am) can catch me by surprise and sound
good again. It was Norman Otis Richmond's show, a well-known local DJ on the same sta-
tion that carries mine. While talking about the songwriting credits on "What's Going
On," he let slip a malapropism worthy of my dad: "San Frandisco"...One of the trage-
dies of classic rock radio--not a real-life tragedy; you know, more like the Marlins-
winning-the-'97-Series tragic--is the virtual obsolescence of Slade thanks to that
useless Quiet Riot cover. I can't say for sure that Slade would be getting airplay
today if there'd never been a Quiet Riot--in their heyday, they never made it higher
than #68 Stateside on the singles chart, and I know they never got played on CHUM at
the time--but my guess is they would have eventually found their natural home. I was
aware of them when I was 12 for the same reason I was aware of the New York Dolls:
I'd seen Slayed? in record stores, and it's a cover you don't forget. Every September
I take photos of my students for a running album I keep--mostly straightforward head-
and-shoulders shots, but one year I had everyone hold up a favourite album of mine,
and last year I had each one of them pose with my Nixon bobblehead. I think I might
shoot groups of four next year and instruct them to give me some Slayed? action...
J.D. Salinger and Syd Barrett may be the world's two most famous recluses, but I'd
be much more interested in hearing from Sly Stone one of these days. There's always
been a very stark split with me between the music of his I don't care for--"Dance to
the Music," "I Want to Take You Higher," most of Riot--and the stuff I've listed, all
of which I'm in awe of. I called Carly Simon's "That's the Way I've Always Heard It
Should Be" bleak a couple of entries ago, and it is. The word isn't sufficient for
"Family Affair"--that such a song would have made #1 says something about the mindset
of the pop audience in 1971, although I'm not sure what.
________________________________________________________________________________
2391. The Smashchords
2392. Frankie Smith: Children of Tomorrow
2393. Huey "Piano" Smith and the Clowns: Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu
2394. Patti Smith: Horses
2395. Patti Smith: Radio Ethiopia
2396. Patti Smith: Easter
2397. Stuff Smith Quartet: Swingin' Stuff
2398. The Smiths
2399. Smiths: "Hatful of Hollow"
2400. Smiths: Meat Is Murder
2401. The Best of Hank Snow
2402. S.O.S. Band: Just the Way You Like It
2403. S.O.S. Band: Sands of Time
2404. Gino Soccio: Outline
2405. Martial Solal: Le Jazz en France: Volume 7
2406. Solo Brothers
2407. Sonics: Original Northwest Punk
Mixworthy: "Gloria," #2394.
Lots of cultish stuff here that might inspire a lot of words from someone else--Huey,
Frankie, and Patti Smith, the Smiths, the Sonics--but it all just languishes on the
shelf, unplayed and uncompiled. It was only a school assembly devoted to the '70s a
few years ago that got me excited about "Gloria," one of the highlights of a tape I
compiled for the occasion; I'd also list the Smiths' "Panic" if I had it on vinyl
(ditto Morrissey's "Tomorrow"). Martial Solal did the soundtrack for Godard's Breath-
less--I saw him play in Toronto sometime during the late '80s. When I attended St.
Michael's College a few years before that, "Gino" was a derisive term for young sub-
urban Italian guys who were still living the Tony Manero life long after the fact. I
don't believe the term traced back to Gino Soccio, and if it did, I don't remember
any "Sylvester"s, "Monti"s, or "Felipe"s so christened at the time.
________________________________________________________________________________
2408. Sonic Youth
2409. Sonic Youth: Confusion Is Sex
2410. Sonic Youth: Bad Moon Rising
2411. Sonic Youth: Evol
2412. Sonic Youth: Daydream Nation
2413. Ciccone Youth: The Whitey Album
2414. Sonic Youth: A Thousand Leaves
2415. The Best of Sonny & Cher
2416. Sons of Champlin: Loosen Up Naturally
2417. Soul Asylum: Made to Be Broken
2418. Soul Asylum: While You Were Out
2419. Soul II Soul: Keep on Movin'
2420. Soul II Soul: Vol. II - 1990 - A New Decade
2421. Soup Dragons: Hang-Ten!
2422. Soup Dragons: This Is Our Art
2423. Joe South's Greatest Hits, Vol. 1
2424. Spagna: Dedicated to the Moon
Mixworthy: "Teen Age Riot," #2412; "The Beat Goes On," #2415; "Keep on Movin',"
#2419; "Games People Play," #2423. (I'd also be listing Soul II Soul's "Back to
Life," but the album version is very different than the hit single.)
Between vinyl, store-bought CDs, and what I've downloaded, I probably own a third to
a half of Sonic Youth's recorded output. "Teen Age Riot" is perfect: all those weird
tunings they invented may as well have been brought into existence for that one song
and that one moment, an eloquent and fortuitously timed farewell to something that
had been plugging along for 10+ years at that point (or 20, or 35--depends whether
you hear the farewell as being for punk, guitar-rock, or rock and roll in general)
and appeared to be dying with a whimper just as hip-hop was beginning its ascendancy.
Which is a very simplistic equation, of course: a) the song seemed to have been in-
tended more as an "All the Young Dudes" rallying cry than as an elegy, b) much of
that hip-hop was harder than the standard guitar-rock of the mid-to-late '80s (cf.
#2417...)--i.e., was more rock and roll than the rock and roll it was replacing, and
c) Guns N' Roses was situated on one side of the song, Nirvana on the other (the rel-
ative merits of which I won't get into, because it's 2005 and who could possibly be
interested in continuing to argue about such stuff?). In any case, it felt like an
elegy then, and still does today, and they carried it off brilliantly. My other two
favourite SY songs are Sister's "Cotton Crown" and Dirty's "Theresa's Sound-World,"
both of which I'd list, "Kool Thing" is great in whatever Hal Hartley film it turns
up in, and I like some of their odd cover versions, "Personality Crisis" especially.
After that, there's a lot of waste and not too many surprises. I'm happy to own a
vinyl copy of A Thousand Leaves, which I got for $15 at a half-price sale out in the
east end of Toronto. I'm confident it will forever retain its distinction as offici-
ally the last chronologically released album (1998) in my collection. Maybe I'll
eventually connect with whatever it was that inspired Christgau to give it an A+--
so far, based on a single once-through when I bought it three years ago, no...My
inability to accurately remember lyrics from my favourite songs has been accelerat-
ing steadily the past few years. Here are a couple from the mixworthy list above
that are still lodged in my mind: "Why do people choose to lead their lives this
way?" and "E-lec-tri-cally they keep a baseball score." (Ah, who am I kidding?
I had to Google the second one to double-check--I initially thought it was
"electronically.")