#91

Throbbing Gristle

20 Jazz Funk Greats (1979)

Some people never get over the thrill of adolescent rebellion.  Some people, for whatever reasons,  mistrust anything that isn't deeply, deeply cynical.  Some people like industrial avant-garde music, which is what 20 Jazz Funk Greats is, despite its idyllic album cover  (the back of the album is the exact same image, but with a naked male corpse on the ground in front of the band.)  I think people who like industrial music are usually born in very large cities, or Europe.

I love stickin' it to the man.  I love adolescent rebellion and practice it with regularity.  I can definitely see the appeal of self-righteousness and being avant-garde because life is just so boring and you get so mad at all the sheeple baa baa baaing their lives away, happily being torn to blood and guts by the gears of capitalism let's do some coke

You are supposed to get over this though.  You are not supposed to base your whole life around smoking in the boys room and William S. Burroughs.

If there is one thing that I do not enjoy, it is antagonism for its own sake.  Go ahead and make me think, I love it.  I love that whole thing, where my conceptions of things are challenged.  But if you have to invoke graphic depictions of violence or sex to "comment on the human condition" you are faking it.  You are faking it so hard.

The human condition is built to respond to these things at a base instinctual level.  Flee violence or potential violence, and sex is the thing you want.  When you mix them up, when you call on those instincts in the name of "art" all you are doing is pulling the fire alarm in the school hallway of everyone's psyche because your mom forgot your birthday and you can't think of any other way to get attention.

Tim Buckley's Starsailor comes up at #50, and it is challenging, maddening and noisy, but beautiful and haunting, not fucking juvenile, like 20 Jazz Funk Greats is.

There are a few tracks that are pretty good, though.  If your kid swallowed an earring and the doctor told you just to wait it out, waiting for these two songs on this album is like when you have to get that earring back.

MIX TRACKS:

(if you right-click and open the links in new tabs, you go to youtube and then you can listen to what I am writing about without navigating away.)

Walkabout

Please believe me when I say that the rest of this album is not like this song.  The rest of the album is pretty much the opposite of this song.  This song is good atmosphere.  I can see myself doing a lot of things to this music and being happy and saying to myself "I still cannot believe this song is off that god-awful album" as I dice garlic for dinner sometime in the future.

Hot On The Heels Of Love

Kate Bush basically stole the second half of Hounds of Love from this song.  You could dance in a European club all night long to this song and not feel stupid about it.

NEXT:

#90

Fela Anikulapo Kuti & Africa '70

Zombie (1977)