Jamwise #26

Featuring: Robyn, The Rolling Stones, Lucinda Williams, John Mayer, Jimmy Cliff & Friends

I always do my best work with music on. It’s been like that since at least college - every study session required a playlist, and without it I was about as productive as my parents’ old housecat Roger who I’m pretty sure I only saw awake like three times in my entire childhood. For writing assignments I’d seek out instrumental or classical music, but for engineering work (math, less words) I could listen to anything and it would help.

Who knows if I formed a dependency or if this is the result of some undiagnosed attention disorder, but regardless a ton of my relationship with music has been formed either at work, in the library, or doing any number of other chores where a little backing soundtrack provided the energy I needed to push through. Heck, right now I’m listening to this song an absolute jam I discovered via

Songletter

) and chasing it down a Spotify rabbit hole. Even though I love to write, I probably wouldn’t be writing without the music. I’d be laying flat on my back with my front paws in the air like Roger used to do, pretending I’d never heard of the idea of a cat actually catching a mouse rather than ignoring them.

I’m sure I’m not alone. But I’ve noticed something pretty interesting - the genre of what I’m listening to doesn’t seem to have as much effect on my mental energy as I’d expect. I love both metal and reggae, and both can be frequently heard in the background of my workday. But it’s not like I hear Rage Against the Machine and immediately start firing off “Best Regards” emails (the corporate version of the middle finger, when used properly). Neither can Rebelution (a college reggae favorite) calm me down after an annoying day, at least not any more than Zack de la Rocha and co.

It kind of sounds like this way of listening to music takes all the teeth out of it, like it’s being sterilized like everything else in the corporate working world. But that’s not what I’m trying to get at. For one thing, I don’t know of any artist I enjoy who sings about desk jobs unironically - and that means that almost every form of music I hear is actively taking me away from my desk, putting me in another time or place or mood, regardless of the genre. But I think there’s also another layer that’s triggered in my brain when I’ve got music on in the background vs. when I don’t. It’s the knowledge that someone put so many hours into creating what I’m hearing, that there was enough of a burst of passion and creative energy to inspire the creation of a song, that both inspires and calms me.

Part of the reason I’m often distracted, I think, is the always-present pressure I put on myself to create something all the time, whether for my own creative endeavors or for my day job. It’s sometimes hard to keep focusing on a spreadsheet when I haven’t finished the last chapter or article I was writing, or (more commonly) haven’t even started even and I’m a week late. Great music, even in the background, is like a contact high that reminds my brain that such creation is both possible and universal, that there are a million different ways to create, and that there are endless ways to get inspired, which means I won’t ever have to worry about having enough creative inspiration. Not while great music exists.

Project BAE - Best Albums Ever

Listening to the greatest albums of all time to see what I’ve missed over the years. Currently listening to every album on the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list.

Progress: 120 / 500 (24%)

Body Talk - Robyn

This album was originally a series of “mini albums,” but the version I listened to is the final compilation, which includes the best songs curated from the smaller releases. 

Swedish electronic dance pop isn’t what I’d normally fill my playlists with. But I was pretty much hooked from minute 1. There were a couple of weird moments in the beginning, but they were weird in a funny way, like “Fembot” and it’s memorable revelations about the feelings of female automatons. But overall, man this was a tightly recorded album, with some songs dominated by electronic dance floor beats, some by Robyn’s pleasant singing voice, and others a combination of both. This is amazing driving music, but use the cruise control to make sure you don’t floor it by accident as you inevitably dance your way down the highway. 

This will go down as one of the more unexpected hits in my personal taste rankings. I’m a proud Robyn fan now.

Jams

• “Dancing On My Own”

• “Indestructible”

• “Love Kills”

• “Dancehall Queen”

Aftermath - The Rolling Stones

This album got me thinking. Is an album great because it contains great songs? Or because it doesn’t contain bad songs? This one is kind of contradictory to me, with all-time greats like “Paint It Black” and “Under My Thumb,” but also all-time stinkers like “High And Dry” and “I Am Waiting” and a whole bunch of uber-derivative, inoffensive blues filler songs. And then the last song drags on for 11 minutes as if they’re just trying to fill up space on the album, which is short at just over 40 minutes anyway. Granted, this might not have been short in 1966, but still - over a quarter of the album was basically a time-killer jam track.

All the creativity and originality that were seemingly promised by “Paint It Black” as the opener are never delivered on. I don’t feel too bad saying this, as I really love the Stones and always have, and it’s not like I’m gonna drive anybody away from such a popular band - but this album is not the band’s best. It plays like a one-hit wonder band’s album. And I have no idea why it belongs on anyone’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Given the chance, I’d retitle it “Paint It Black and the C-Sides.”

I can’t even fully explain the visceral reaction I had to this album. I’m sure it’s an overreaction because I’m extremely hyped on coffee right now, and maybe I’ll change my tune on a second listen. Or maybe it was the high expectations that just never got met - an amazing band I love, a first song that’s an all-time great, and then two more pretty decent Stones jams. But the rest… Just add the three first songs to a playlist and don’t bother with the rest. 

Jams

• “Paint It, Black”

• “Under My Thumb”

Continuum - John Mayer

High school me is just jacked about this one. I used to have a low-key addiction to John Mayer YouTube videos when I was in the midst of my guitar playing obsession. I’d whale on my old Strat trying to keep up with Johnny’s solos on all kinds of blues classics and originals - “Gravity” felt like the ultimate soulful blues guitar song at that point, plus it was coming from a modern artist so it felt relevant to my generation. Only in retrospect did I realize this is a poppy pop album by a poppy pop artist, albeit a masterful one. John Mayer is still a solid guitarist who probably inspired a bunch of younger players like me, but it’s undoubtedly his pop hooks that pay his bills.

It’s full of mass market one liners, a sort of pseudo-clever young folks’ philosophy, but I can forgive that. That’s pop music in a nutshell, isn’t it? 

Jams

• “Gravity”

• “Stop This Train”

• “Slow Dancing In A Burning Room”

The Harder They Come: Original Soundtrack - Jimmy Cliff & Various Artists

This movie soundtrack is ranked #174 on the RS500 list, and I had some questions. But the blurb in Rolling Stone answered them the best: “So what makes this album so great? Well, this is the record that introduced Reggae to the world.”

I’ve never seen the movie, and have no clue what it’s about, but listening to the songs imagining some vague story playing out in the background was pretty fun. And the music was great - I knew very little about Jimmy Cliff, and it’s awesome learning that he had such a huge role bringing Reggae, a genre I love, to the world. 

Jams

• “You Can Get It If You Really Want” - Jimmy Cliff

• “The Harder They Fall” - Jimmy Cliff

• “Johnny Too Bad” - The Slickers

• “007 (Shanty Town)” - Desmond Dekker

Lucinda Williams - Lucinda Williams

Another artist in need of redemption in my personal rankings. I listened to Car Wheels On A Gravel Road several months ago, and I found it perplexing. I’m excited to see if my perspective has changed, as it has for other artists who have made multiple appearances on this list. 

We often talk about older music that sounds modern and relevant, but this album seems like the reverse to me. It’s from 2014, but the songs might have been from the 70’s or even earlier for all I can tell. I can’t decide if the effect is a positive or negative for my enjoyment of the music. And I’m from the American South, so I know a thing or two about modern things that are stuck in a world they remember from decades ago. 

My take before, which I toned down a little, still holds true now. I’m not actually questioning the authenticity of Lucinda’s songwriting, but something about this album sounds like someone writing country music set in a generally Southern small town world who’s never set foot there. It’s kind of like no matter how well-trained an actor is, they never really get a Southern accent right on TV or film if they’re not born with it. And that’s weird, as Williams was born in Louisiana, but that sense just didn’t leave me while listening to this. 

I truly can’t put my finger on the feeling. You could convince me Lucinda was from like, idk, Portland if you tried - nothing wrong with singing in different genres that didn’t originate where you did, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with being from Portland, but the effect totally broke my immersion in the music. I was too busy peeking through the fourth wall trying to figure out if she’s for real to enjoy the songs. That, and the lyrics that invariably include a childishly straightforward repetition of the song’s title, every single time,  just took away the fun for me. 

If I was writing a book where I was worried about lyrical copyrights, this would be a great way to get around that - you can write the title of a song anywhere you want without copyright issues. I don’t have to quote the lyrics to “Big Red Sun Blues” to tell you the lyrics of the chorus. I can just write the title seven times in a row, and boom, no fear of copyright infringement. “Big Red Sun Blues.” “Big Red Sun Blues.” “Big Red Sun Blues.”