Playlist Week of 7-03-10

* Hesperion XXI (Savall): Orient-Occident 1200-1700 (Alia Vox SACD)
* Buxtehude: Sonatas, Op.1 (Holloway/Mortensen/ter Linden) (Da Capo/Naxos CD)
* Buxtehude: Sonatas, Op.2 (Holloway/Mortensen/ter Linden) (Da Capo/Naxos CD)
* Buxtehude: Six Sonatas (Holloway/Mortensen/ter Linden) (Da Capo/Naxos CD)
* Handel: Concerti Grossi, Op.3 (AAM/Egarr) (Harmonia Mundi SACD)
* Rebel: Violin Sonatas (Manze/Egarr/ter Linden) (Harmonia Mundi CD)
* Beethoven: The Revolutionary (Orch. Revolutionaire/Gardiner) (Archiv Prod. CD)
* Bobby Hutcherson: Stick-Up! (Blue Note CD)
* Bobby Hutcherson: Oblique (Blue Note CD)
* Bobby Hutcherson: Total Eclipse (Blue Note CD)
* Bobby Hutcherson: Medina (Blue Note CD)
* Sun Ra: Slug’s Saloon, New York, NY 8-19-71 (AUD 3CDR)
* Anthony Braxton 12+1tet: 9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006 (d.5) (Firehouse 9CD+DVD)
* John McLaughlin & 4th Dimension: Stara Salen, Uppsala, Sweden 5-08-10 (FM 2CDR)
* Aretha Franklin: Aretha Now/Lady Soul (Atlantic/MFSL CD)
* George Clinton & the P-Funk Allstars: T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M. (Sony CD)
* Jimi Hendrix: Valleys of Neptune (Experience Hendrix/Sony CD)
* The Yardbirds: Ultimate! (Rhino 2CD)
* Jeff Beck: Blow By Blow (Epic LP)
* The Who: By the Numbers (Polydor/Classic LP)
* Bob Dylan: Blonde on Blonde (mono) (Columbia/Sundazed 2LP)
* Bob Dylan: John Wesley Harding (mono) (Columbia/Sundazed LP)
* Bob Dylan: Nashville Skyline (Columbia SACD)
* Grateful Dead: Winterland June 1977: The Complete Recordings (6-09) (GD/Rhino 9+1CD)
* Grateful Dead: Dane County Coliseum, Madison, WI 12-03-81 (SBD 3CDR)
* Grateful Dead: Madison Square Garden, New York, NY 9-12-91 (SBD 3CDR)
* Grateful Dead: Madison Square Garden, New York, NY 9-13-91 (SBD 3CDR)
* Chicago: Chicago (II) (Rhino 2LP)
* Chicago: III (Columbia 2LP)
* Genesis: Live (Charisma – UK LP)
* Genesis: Seconds Out (Charisma – UK 2LP)
* Genesis: ...And Then There Were Three (Atlantic LP)
* Genesis: Three Sides Live (Atlantic 2LP)
* Phil Collins: Face Value (Atlantic LP)
* Peter Gabriel: [1] (a/k/a “Car”) (Atco LP)
* Peter Gabriel: Plays Live (Charisma – UK 2LP)
* Peter Gabriel: So (Geffen LP)
* U2: The Unforgettable Fire (Deluxe Edition) (d.2) (Island/Universal 2CD)
* U2: The Joshua Tree (Deluxe Edition) (Island/Universal 2CD)
* Robert Pollard: Moses on a Snail (GBV, Inc. LP)
* Circus Devils: Mother Skinny (Happy Jack Rock Records LP)
* Animal Collective: Strawberry Jam (Domino CD)
* Animal Collective: Water Curses (Domino CDEP)

Commentary:

I was seventeen years old when Phil Collins’s first solo album, Face Value, was released in February, 1980. I very vividly remember hearing “In the Air Tonight” for the first time on my dinky clock radio late one night in my upstairs bedroom. Even through its tinny one-inch speaker, the song was eerily captivating; but, wow, when that pummeling drum entrance came blasting through the bucolic Connecticut stillness, I was completely devastated. So were you the first time you heard it, weren’t you? Come on, admit it!

Genesis had enjoyed a moderate hit single with “Follow You Follow Me” in 1978, but nobody had ever before heard anything quite like “In the Air Tonight” on the radio. The next day, I was on a mission to somehow scrounge together the money to buy a copy of the album so I could hear it again and again and again! So, that’s what I did, me and a zillion other people. The record transformed Phil Collins into a mega-super-star -- and deservedly so. But while Collins (and Genesis) continued to enjoy phenomenal commercial success over the rest of the decade, “In the Air Tonight” represents his finest artistic achievement. In fact, it might have been a fluke. While Face Value is a fine album, most of it is middle-of-the-road, mass-market striving, sophisticated but maudlin MOR balladry and slickly polished R&B, worlds away from the artsy-fartsy, prog-rock roots of Genesis’s first several albums with Peter Gabriel (which is whole other subject).

“In the Air Tonight” is markedly different from your average radio-ready single. Let’s face it: it’s a pretty creepy little song; and when that drum break finally comes in -- no matter how many times you’ve heard it before -- it still feels as psychotically cathartic as ever. There is a menacing tone about it that makes it an unlikely smash hit, or so it would seem. Whenever I hear the song on the radio someplace, it sounds just as strange and out of place today as it did in 1980 -- yet also as immediately compelling. What is it about this song that makes it so widely popular? Is it just those 10 seconds of amazingly well-recorded drum thwacks? Or is it truly sui generis? Was it the result of mere cunning? Or just dumb luck? Or does the song somehow actually tap into our shared ill-defined paranoia and helpless sadomasochism and give it safe outlet for a few minutes so we can get on with our miserable lives? I don’t know the answers to these questions -- and the fact that questions like these can even be asked of this pop trifle makes me admire the song as a singularly powerful work of art. I do know one thing: while listening to “In the Air Tonight” on a nice big stereo offers a lot of hi-fi kicks, it will never sound as mind-blowing as it did when I was seventeen, hearing it for the first time on that crummy little clock radio.