Take Five: I remember holding on to you
A playlist to keep you on your toes, with R.E.M., the Alarm, Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, and Third Coast Percussion, or as R.E.M. says, 'A little bit of Uh Huh and a whole lot of Oh Yeah
“Take Five” is posted each Friday, and offers five things I spent some time with over the course of the previous week. No criticism, no in-depth analysis, just a few things I think you might be interested in checking out. When the spirit moves me, I’ll post other things at other times.
1. R.E.M. — ‘Ages of You’
REM’s Dead Letter Office, “a compendium of oddities collared and b-sides compiled,” was the first of the band's albums that I actually bought when it was new. It is perhaps the oddest record in the band's catalog, capturing completed tracks that weren't selected for albums, hastily recorded covers (with at times inaccurately remembered lyrics), and goofy studio horseplay never intended to be heard. It humanized a band that was still murky and mystical for this teenaged listener, cementing my fandom as someone on the inside who bought the myth. In this age of Bandcamp and the ability to release anything at any time, it’s amazing things like this aren’t more common. B-sides aren't really a thing because A-sides aren't either, but surely bands are still creating odd little pieces of music their fans would love to hear. This one introduced me to the Velvet Underground, revealed an Aerosmith beyond the cheesy MTV fodder of the time and showed a band with enough good material to have left a gem like "Ages of You" off of an album. Superstardom was around the corner, but with this, the band still felt like a small bright thing that was ours, not yet theirs.
2. The Alarm — ‘Shelter’
Early in its career, the Alarm benefitted from sounding a lot like a band that was taking its time between albums, which is surely a big reason why I became a big fan while in high school. Between the time of U2’s The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree, I discovered the Alarm’s Declaration and Strength. These Welsh rockers, like their Irish counterparts, wrote anthems that all were performed like they were the final song of a sweaty concert, full of strident lyrics and martial guitars. By the time the band’s third album, 1987's Eye of the Hurricane arrived, The Joshua Tree had been out for months and left the Alarm in a long shadow it never escaped. Lead single “Rain in the Summertime” sounded like half-baked U2, but there was still vim and vigor in tunes like my favorite, “Shelter,” which should have been a single. Singer Mike Peters’ singular rasp sounded like that of a guy who truly needed shelter. Peters died this week after a decades-long battle with lymphoma, and what I thought would be a quick spin through a few tunes in remembrance became a couple of days of spent with albums that meant an awful lot to me nearly 40 years ago.
3. Emmylou Harris — ‘Goodbye’
Driving back from a Nick Cave show in Milwaukee this week, I curated a playlist derived from things I had thought or talked about over the previous 24 hours. While browsing the excellent Lilliput Records in Milwaukee, I came across a Steve Earle record that led to our group talking about the fact that most of us kind of lost track of Earle, not paid much attention to his latest records or seen him perform live in a while. That meshed with me having listened to a recent podcast interview with producer Daniel Lanois, who discussed his 1998 record with Willie Nelson, Teatro. I listened to some of that, which made me want to hear Emmylou Harris‘s Wrecking Ball, which is the first album I recall that carried that distinctive echo-laden, drum-heavy Lanois sound (I wasn't familiar with Bob Dylan's Oh Mercy at that point). The second track on Wrecking Ball is her great cover of Earle‘s “Goodbye., released just a few months after his version. Earle claims it was the first song he ever wrote clean. It appeared on the album Train a Comin’, released as Earle emerged from a dark time punctuated by a jail term for drug and weapons possession. In the hands of Harris and Lanois, this plaintive acoustic tune becomes a haunting highlight from one of Harris’s best albums.
4. Steve Earle — ‘Feel Alright’
The year after Emmylou Harris covered "Goodbye," Earle issued his first studio album of new material since his incarceration. It was a clear statement of defiant purpose. Earle started out in country music as a sort of bridge between the ‘70s outlaws and the ‘80s new traditionalists. Here, he leans more toward the outlaws, offering a clutch of songs that candidly discuss flaws and failures, while sounding, even 30 years later, crisp and vital. The title track, “Feel Alright,” begins things with an acoustic strum and a snare crack that settle the listener at the table and then immediately upend it. “Be careful what you wish for, friend, because I've been to hell and now I'm back again,” he sings. With a typical “this leads to that” run through some of his catalog highlights, I realize I’m overdue for a deep dive, with plenty to catch up on over the past decade.
5. Concerto for Violin with Percussion Orchestra
I usually like to go into a concert cold, not knowing the set list or, if it is an artist or work unfamiliar to me, with no sense of what I'm about to hear. I wish I had been able to break that self-imposed rule last week for a performance by Third Coast Percussion and Jessie Montgomery at Hancher Auditorium. Though co-billed, violinist Montgomery only appeared on one of the five performed pieces. I was not in the right headspace for what preceded her appearance, and thus was not prepared for what was to come: Lou Harrison's “Concerto for the Violin with Percussion Orchestra.” I had listened to the piece during the pandemic when one of my 10-page-per-morning reads was Alex Ross's excellent The Rest is Noise. When his description of a composer or a piece intrigued me, I wrote it down and sought it out to listen. Harrison's piece is on that list, but I had no recollection of this one when I heard it last week. It is best known for the use of odd “instruments,” including brake drums, damped plumbers' pipe, dustbins, and flower pots. Had I been better prepared, I would have gone into this thinking about how it compared with other versions I had heard, not about the fact that the percussionists were finally using the implements that took up three-quarters of the stage while also finally welcoming their co-star on the stage. Listening now to a recording of the piece without that baggage, I'm stirred by this 65-year-old composition that feels as current as ever, and wish I could go back and better appreciate what was being performed right in front of me.1
The performance above is by Third Coast Percussion, but featuring violinist Todd Reynolds, from 2018.