Jahnke's Record Collection: In Search Of The Perfect Album

Over at his MusicTAP website, my friend Matt Rowe regularly posits intriguing discussion topics and music-related surveys. I don’t participate in each and every one, although I do end up spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about all of them. For example, he recently concluded a poll of underrated guitarists. Sure, there are plenty of guitarists whose work I love. John Fahey is way up there, as is David Gilmour. But I don’t really know enough about the subject to know if these guys are generally considered underrated or overrated. Still, I had a good time thinking about guitar players for a day or two.

Every so often, Rowe, magnificent bastard that he is, will casually toss out a question that gnaws at me for days on end. In his innocence, I’m sure he simply thinks it’s an interesting little poser that will illicit several immediate gut reactions. For the likes of me, it becomes an unsolvable mystery not unlike the Riddle of the Sphinx. It starts an internal debate that rages on long after Matt has moved on to other worthy subjects. About a week or so ago, he asked one such deceptively simple question.

What do you consider to be a perfect album?

Now if he’d asked what are your “favorite” albums, there would be no problem. I can rattle a list of those off without blinking. But it’s that word “perfect” that makes things so difficult. “Perfect” means that there isn’t a false note or a mediocre song to be found. I quickly realized that very few of my favorite albums are in fact perfect. Maybe part of the reason that I love them so much is that they are imperfect.

Born To Run is a phenomenal album, one that I return to again and again. It’s the source of many of my favorite Springsteen songs, including “Meeting Across The River”, “She’s The One” and the more famous tracks like “Thunder Road” and the title tune. I wonder if I would love those songs quite as much if the album didn’t have “Night” stuck right in the middle of it. I’ve always thought “Night” was a terribly boring, generic song and whenever it comes on, I either can’t wait for it to be over or I skip it entirely, depending on how charitable I feel. But maybe all those other great songs seem even better in contrast to it. I hate that song but I can’t imagine the record without it.

I suppose I would consider Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to be perfect, although it’s not my favorite Beatles album. It was, however, the first Beatles album I ever heard and I listened to my mom’s original vinyl LP obsessively when I was a kid. The record even had the Sgt. Pepper cut-out figures still intact. I suspect Mom watched me playing with those with a mixture of panic and delight, though to her credit, she never yelled that those toys weren’t for playing with. It was probably the first album I knew by heart. Even the much-maligned “Within You, Without You” expanded my horizons and struck me as a mystical, transcendent musical journey, which is probably what George Harrison intended in the first place. He just didn’t realize that his ideal audience would be eight-year-old boys growing up in small-town Minnesota in the mid-70s.

Most of my favorite artists, folks like Tom Waits, Warren Zevon, The Pogues, and Nick Cave, don’t have any albums I’d consider to be absolutely perfect. Cave comes closest with Murder Ballads, which is pretty close to an absolutely pure distillation of everything that makes him and the Bad Seeds so compelling. From Mr. Waits, I love Rain Dogs, Bone Machine, Mule Variations and Swordfishtrombones but I’ve never felt the urge to listen to any of them exclusively for any length of time. Zevon’s last album, The Wind, is made perfect by its imperfections. They are constant reminders of the ticking clock Warren was working against to complete the record before his death. As for The Pogues, part of what I love about the band is how one second they can be completely in control of their sound and the next, they sound exactly like the bunch of unruly drunken Irishmen they appear to be.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized I don’t care much for perfection in music. Music is both universal and deeply personal. If you can record one song that means something to people, you’ve done something to be proud of. If you can put five or six of them together, it’s downright remarkable. But an entire album where every song hits you in just the right way?That may be nothing short of miraculous. And that’s when I realized that there was one album like that for me. One album that still grabs me from start to finish, sounds constantly fresh but can also transport me back to when I first heard it. The first time I heard it, it was like nothing else I’d been exposed to before, and its arrival in my life did strike me as something of a miracle.

I came late to London Calling. When the album was first released, I was all of ten years old, so the British punk scene wasn’t exactly high on my radar. If I had to guess, I’d wager my first exposure to the band came somewhere around 1983, most likely by seeing a video for “Rock The Casbah” or “This Is Radio Clash” on Night Flight. Even then, it would be another couple years before someone specifically steered me toward London Calling. The first song hooked me, filling my head with apocalyptic visions. But it was the way the album built on that foundation that really grabbed me. I’d never before heard an album that felt so electric and spontaneous, but also so perfectly controlled. Every song leads into the next with laser-sharp precision. Even today, if I hear one song off this album, I immediately want to listen to the whole thing so I can place it in its proper context. Hearing “The Card Cheat” by itself without “Koka Kola” leading in to it seems somehow wrong.

London Calling was a revelation for me and a gateway album to countless other bands. I’d never heard a voice like Joe Strummer’s before. I’d never heard a band use instruments this way before. After this, everything I’d been listening to sounded too slick, too professional, too controlled. It led me to explore punk music more in-depth and while I liked much of what I heard, it often sounded too chaotic, like a lot of these bands honestly had no idea what they were doing and if they recorded something great, it was kind of by accident. There was nothing accidental about London Calling. It’s a passionate, sprawling record full of songs I’m always tempted to listen to again as soon as they end, but before I have the chance, the band has already grabbed my attention with something even better. It’s an album I can’t listen to just once and I can’t listen to in pieces. It’s all or nothing. Death or glory. And that, to my ears anyway, is perfection.

It Was Twenty-ish Years Ago Today...The 100 Best Movies of the 90s!

In my recently completed 100 Best Movies of the 00s feature over at Jahnke’s Electric Theatre, I made a couple references to a similar project I’d undertaken ten years earlier. Much to my surprise, several people asked to see my 100 Best Movies of the 90s. Unfortunately, the complete essay has been lost to the vapor of defunct computer storage. I probably still have it somewhere…most likely on an unlabeled floppy disk. One day I’ll go through all that stuff and if the essay turns up, I’ll post it in all its glory (with the caveat that it was written with an intended audience of about five).

But even without my scintillating prose to jazz it up, I thought it might be interesting to post the list of titles. Looking at my picks today, I still think it’s a pretty strong lineup. Primarily though, it helps put the whole idea of these lists in context. There are some major omissions here, including Audition and Being John Malkovich, neither of which I’d seen when I originally came up with this list. If I were to redo the list now, some titles would move up (notably Magnolia and The Big Lebowski), others down (I still think The Rapture is a great movie but is it really top ten material?). There’s nothing on here that embarrasses me, as in, “Gawd, did I actually try to argue that The Phantom Menace was a great movie?” (For the record, no…I never did.) I could still make a case for every movie on this list, even those that would have to fall away to make room for new favorites.

What interests me the most about this list is how it transports me back into my early 2000 mindset. Back then, I didn’t have a cyber-soapbox for my half-baked ideas. I was just a movie fan working a job that left him with waaaaaaaay too much time on his hands. Looking at these titles in this context, I can instantly remember the way I felt about them at the time. Those feelings have changed over time but it’s valuable for me to remember what my feelings were then. Obviously you won’t get that but I hope seeing this list will be of some interest nevertheless.

Since I already revealed the number one pick, I’m dispensing with the whole countdown schtick and presenting the list in order. For the record, my pick for the top spot has not changed in all this time. And I apologize in advance to Elijah Olson and anyone else who feels I should not have grouped all three Lord Of The Rings movies into one. This list is really gonna drive you up the wall.

1. The Three Colors Trilogy (Blue, White, Red - 1993-94, Krzysztof Kieslowski)

2. Barton Fink (1991, Joel & Ethan Coen)

3. Edward Scissorhands (1990, Tim Burton)

4. Ed Wood (1994, Tim Burton)

5. Babe (1995, Chris Noonan)

6. Breaking The Waves (1996, Lars von Trier)

7. The Rapture (1991, Michael Tolkin)

8. Fight Club (1999, David Fincher)

9. Heavenly Creatures (1994, Peter Jackson)

10. Joe Versus The Volcano (1990, John Patrick Shanley)

11. The Double Life Of Veronique (1991, Krzysztof Kieslowski)

12. Unforgiven (1992, Clint Eastwood)

13. The Reflecting Skin (1990, Philip Ridley)

14. Magnolia (1999, Paul Thomas Anderson)

15. The Big Lebowski (1998, Joel & Ethan Coen)

16. JFK (1991, Oliver Stone)

17. Husbands And Wives (1992, Woody Allen)

18. Out Of Sight (1998, Steven Soderbergh)

19. The Straight Story (1999, David Lynch)

20. The New Age (1994, Michael Tolkin)

21. Bullet In The Head (1990, John Woo)

22. American Beauty (1999, Sam Mendes)

23. A Simple Plan (1998, Sam Raimi)

24. Chasing Amy (1997, Kevin Smith)

25. Fargo (1996, Joel & Ethan Coen)

26. Babe: Pig In The City (1998, George Miller)

27. Pecker (1998, John Waters)

28. La Belle Noiseuse (1991, Jacques Rivette)

29. Lone Star (1996, John Sayles)

30. Run Lola Run (1999, Tom Tykwer)

31. The Fisher King (1991, Terry Gilliam)

32. GoodFellas (1990, Martin Scorsese)

33. Reservoir Dogs (1992, Quentin Tarantino)

34. Queen Margot (1994, Patrice Chereau)

35. Paradise Lost: The Child Murders At Robin Hood Hills (1996, Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky)

36. Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993, Francois Girard)

37. Fast, Cheap & Out Of Control (1997, Errol Morris)

38. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993, Henry Selick)

39. Delicatessen (1991, Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro)

40. King Of The Hill (1993, Steven Soderbergh)

41. Mars Attacks! (1996, Tim Burton)

42. Lost Highway (1997, David Lynch)

43. Flesh And Bone (1993, Steven Kloves)

44. Twelve Monkeys (1995, Terry Gilliam)

45. Brother's Keeper (1992, Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky)

46. There's Something About Mary (1998, Bobby & Peter Farrelly)

47. Last Night (1999, Don McKellar)

48. Crumb (1994, Terry Zwigoff)

49. La Femme Nikita (1990, Luc Besson)

50. L.A. Confidential (1997, Curtis Hanson)

51. Schizopolis (1996, Steven Soderbergh)

52. Grosse Pointe Blank (1997, George Armitage)

53. Darkman (1990, Sam Raimi)

54. Army Of Darkness (1993, Sam Raimi)

55. The Quick And The Dead (1995, Sam Raimi)

56. The City Of Lost Children (1995, Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro)

57. Bitter Moon (1992, Roman Polanski)

58. Waiting For Guffman (1996, Christopher Guest)

59. The People Vs. Larry Flynt (1996, Milos Forman)

60. Hard-Boiled (1992, John Woo)

61. Olivier Olivier (1992, Agnieszka Holland)

62. The Iron Giant (1999, Brad Bird)

63. Proof (1991, Jocelyn Moorhouse)

64. The Grifters (1990, Stephen Frears)

65. Men With Guns (1997, John Sayles)

66. American Movie (1999, Chris Smith)

67. Smoke / Blue In The Face (1995, Wayne Wang & Paul Auster)

68. Crash (1996, David Cronenberg)

69. Secrets & Lies (1996, Mike Leigh)

70. Big Night (1996, Stanley Tucci & Campbell Scott)

71. Boogie Nights (1997, Paul Thomas Anderson)

72. L.627 (1992, Bertrand Tavernier)

73. Dead Man (1995, Jim Jarmusch)

74. Wag The Dog (1997, Barry Levinson)

75. Wild At Heart (1990, David Lynch)

76. Strangers In Good Company (1991, Cynthia Scott)

77. Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990, Joe Dante)

78. Ruby In Paradise (1993, Victor Nunez)

79. Naked Lunch (1991, David Cronenberg)

80. Cemetery Man (1994, Michele Soavi)

81. The Silence Of The Lambs (1991, Jonathan Demme)

82. The Player (1992, Robert Altman)

83. Pulp Fiction (1994, Quentin Tarantino)

84. The Usual Suspects (1995, Bryan Singer)

85. eXistenZ (1999, David Cronenberg)

86. Dead Man Walking (1995, Tim Robbins)

87. Leon - The Professional (1994, Luc Besson)

88. Shakes The Clown (1991, Bob Goldthwait)

89. Defending Your Life (1991, Albert Brooks)

90. Simple Men (1992, Hal Hartley)

91. Exotica (1994, Atom Egoyan)

92. Election (1999, Alexander Payne)

93. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992, David Lynch)

94. Matinee (1993, Joe Dante)

95. Summer Of Sam (1999, Spike Lee)

96. The Matrix (1999, Andy & Larry Wachowski)

97. Frankenhooker (1990, Frank Henenlotter)

98. Freaked (1993, Alex Winter & Tom Stern)

99. The Kingdom / The Kingdom II (1994-97, Lars von Trier)

100. The Wrong Trousers / A Close Shave (1993-95, Nick Park)

Sorry Haters

Jahnke’s Record Collection will return soon but this week, I’d like to turn the blog over to more serious issues. Namely, language. I recently read an article that stated that thanks to social networking, email, blogging and what-not, people are reading and writing more than ever. This is wonderful news indeed. However, much of what is posted online is written in haste. This means that once a phrase enters the collective consciousness, it quickly gets repeated ad nauseam until you never, ever want to see or hear it again. At least that’s the case with me. Your mileage may vary. (See? Aren’t you sick of that?)

There are five of these language-killers that especially annoy me. Every time I see them, it’s like a tooth-ache that you can’t help sticking your tongue in to make it hurt a little more. I can’t stand these things and so, in the vain hope of making you equally tired of them, I spotlight them this week. With your help, we can make the internet a better place.

“Haters”

This one really drives me nuts. Anytime someone feels the need to defend something they like, whether it’s a movie, singer, president or their own blog, the quickest way to end all discussion is by describing everyone who feels differently as a hater. First off, nobody’s asking you to defend yourself. We’re not all going to enjoy the same things. If you like Britney Spears, isn’t it enough for you to just enjoy her music without trying to convince the rest of us to do likewise? I also hate the term “guilty pleasure” for similar reasons. If you like Xanadu, like Xanadu! Don’t be ashamed about it. I sure don’t.

What’s troubling about “haters”, though, is that it implies that people who dislike whatever you’re defending do so irrationally. You have essentially refused the possibility that there may be some very good reasons why people don’t like the movie, singer, president or blog in question. And in so doing, you have just become as closed-minded as the people you’re against are supposed to be. Nice work, Mr. or Ms. Hardcore Fan! You’ve just discovered the topsy-turvy world of the paradox. Hope you enjoy your stay.

“Fail!”

OK, time for English class. “Fail” is a verb, not a noun. Something CAN fail but it can only BE a failure. You can’t have an epic fail or a pile of steaming fail and you can’t load a dumptruck full of fail.

“Gobsmacked”

Americans have a terrible habit of picking and choosing whatever British slang they find amusing and trying to use it themselves. When they do, they always sound stupid and vaguely pretentious. Here’s a test. Unless you naturally and without thinking tell people to “shut their gob” as opposed to “shut the fuck up”, you have not earned the right to use the term “gobsmacked”.

“Frak”

James Gunn pointed this out awhile back on Facebook and it drives me just as crazy as it seems to him. “Frak” equals “fuck”. We all know that. So just say “fuck”. The same thing with self-censoring words by putting asterisks or other symbols in them. We all know what you mean when you say “sh*t” or “@$$hole” and just because you’ve lamely disguised it, doesn’t make it any less offensive to people who are going to be offended. So either just use the words themselves or, if you’re worried about breaking a commandment, don’t use them at all.

“Cheers!”

I’ve hated this for years now, so I know I’ve lost this battle and the word is here to stay. That doesn’t mean I’ve got to be happy about it. If someone is handing you a drink and you say “cheers” instead of “thanks”, that’s just fine. No problem. But now it’s everywhere! People use it at the end of emails or to say goodbye. What the fuck are you talking about? Frankly, I don’t think you even know yourself any more. “Cheers” has been used for so long to mean so many different things, it no longer means much of anything. We may as well get rid of it altogether and replace it with a nonsense word that can mean whatever you want, like “geef” or “zoon” or “qwerty”. That’s a good one. It’s easy to type and is fun to say. Go into your email signature right now and replace “Cheers!” with “Qwerty!” The world will be a happier place in no time.

OK, I feel much better now. More music next time out. Until then, pay attention to what you type. Your readers will thank you for it.

Qwerty!

Jahnke

Jahnke's Record Collection: Whitney Houston

Usually with these blogs, I can jump right in and pinpoint when the album in question entered my life, what it meant to me at the time, how my relationship to the music changed over the years, and other such burning questions. But occasionally, we’ll have an album like this one: Whitney Houston’s 1985 self-titled debut. In a case like this, there’s really just one question to answer right off the bat.

Why the hell do you have a copy of this in the first place?

Please believe me when I say that in this instance, I really don’t remember. I can justify owning all sorts of weird crap. Say it was a present or I was interested in exploring a specific musical style at the time or whatever. This was not a gift. I bought it my own damn self in ’85 and, if I’m to be completely honest, this back cover probably had a lot to do with my purchase.

Hot-cha-cha! Hey, I was 16. Teenagers, both boys and girls, are allowed to make musical decisions based purely on hormones. How else can you explain the career of David Cassidy?

Anyway, I was obviously aware of the fact that this alluring package included a record album and Ms. Houston’s music was pretty good for its type. “Saving All My Love For You” was and is a perfectly enjoyable radio-friendly tune. “How Will I Know” is dopey fun. In fact, of all the big hits on the album, the only one that I never liked was probably the biggest. “The Greatest Love Of All” does absolutely nothing for me…never has and never will.

This is not a style of music that necessarily appeals to me but what I enjoyed about this album, and what has been all but forgotten thanks to Whitney’s very public downward spiral into crazytown, was her voice. Unlike so many other pop stars past and present, there has never been any question that Whitney Houston can sing. She has a remarkable voice and typically uses it to good effect. “You Give Good Love” shows her at her best. The song itself is kind of a forgettable mid-tempo ballad. But Houston sings the hell out of it. Significantly, she’s in control of her instrument. This doesn’t have the kind of show-offy vocal acrobatics she’d later have in hits like “I Will Always Love You”.

I never bought another Whitney Houston album, although she’d continue to churn out well-crafted, very listenable hits for the next several years. But they were all very similar to each other and I felt this one album was the one example of her work I really needed.

Whitney’s on the comeback trail now, older, wiser and cleaned up, but even with Oprah on her side, I doubt she’ll ever hit the levels of cross-pop-cultural phenomenon she once did. This is no slight against her. I don’t think Michael Jackson would have either had he needed to rely on new music. He had to die to become the biggest star in the world again and I think we can all agree that Whitney is better off than MJ in that respect. Rather than trying to reach out to all audiences, I’d like to see the new, mature Whitney Houston try to reconnect with her original fans by continuing to record the slick, slow ballads that defined her debut, maybe get back into movies eventually. Her career’s second act could mirror that of Barbra Streisand. She might not win a lot of new fans but, as Barbra will tell you, catering to your core fan base can be very, very lucrative.

Jahnke's Record Collection: Best Of The J. Geils Band

This one’s for Matt, since he asked.

In the early 80s, my mother moved to New York to pursue her lifelong ambition of becoming a professional actress. I know, I know…her and about a million other people, right? Unlike some of those others, however, my mom had some reason to be confident. She had just received her graduate degree from the University of Michigan and was by all accounts an extraordinarily talented performer. Of course I’m going to say that, being her son and all. But I’m just repeating what I’ve been told. I only saw her act a handful of times.

Anyway, to pay the bills she took a job working for a guy named Ken Kragen. Kragen was (and still is, as far as I know) a music manager. He’s apparently one of the folks who helped put together the roster of talent on the USA For Africa song “We Are The World”. I’ve no idea what my mom’s job actually was. Kids in their early teens don’t often trouble themselves with details like that. I assume she was an assistant or something like that.

She was never particularly happy working this gig, which should surprise absolutely no one. I think it’s written in the Struggling Artist Bylaws that you must despise your soulless day job, no matter what it is, how much it pays or how much freedom it allows you to pursue your own dreams. But for me, living thousands of miles away with my father in Montana, it was the coolest job ever. For one thing, she was in New York City, which may as well have been Mars to me at the time. Even more important, I got free records out of the deal. Lots and lots of free records.

A lot of these freebies were 45s, promotional singles sent out by record companies to radio stations and apparently everybody else who worked in the music industry. It seemed like I’d get a new batch of 45s every couple weeks. I hoarded them at first but when I realized how many I was getting, I started a new routine. I’d listen to each new batch and separate them into two piles. The ones I liked, I kept. The ones I hated became target practice. If you want to feel like Hunter S. Thompson, go into your backyard and play skeet with a stack of crappy REO Speedwagon singles.

I also got free albums from acts that Kragen represented. At the time, these included the likes of Kenny Rogers, Naked Eyes and…The J. Geils Band. The J. Geils Band was at the height of their commercial popularity when my mother worked for Kragen. The album Freeze-Frame came out and the single “Centerfold” was inescapable. Mom sent me a copy of Freeze-Frame and I must have mentioned that I liked it because the next thing I knew, a large box arrived with about half a dozen catalog albums on vinyl and cassette.

Now I liked Freeze-Frame just fine but it wasn’t as if these guys were my new favorite band, so I didn’t dig into the records immediately. But my mom kept asking if I’d listened to any of it during our weekly phone calls. This was unusual. She hadn’t cared one way or another if I listened to any of the Kenny Rogers albums she’d sent me. I figured I’d better give it a shot and decided the best place to start was a greatest hits compilation, 1979’s Best Of The J. Geils Band.

As soon as the needle hit the vinyl, I was taken aback. It was unquestionably the same band that I was familiar with. Certainly Peter Wolf’s distinctive growl of a voice was instantly recognizable, albeit even growlier. But the 80s pop sheen of “Centerfold” was gone. This was grungier, looser and steeped in R&B and the blues. My ears perked up from the first track, “Southside Shuffle”, but I stopped whatever else I was doing and really paid attention when “Give It To Me” came on. It starts as a perfectly enjoyable pop-rock song, then shifts gears midway through to become a fierce, funky band free-for-all. From then on, I was hooked.

In retrospect, Best Of The J. Geils Band is kind of an awkward and clumsy compilation. There’s virtually no flow to the track sequencing and live cuts appear with no warning next to studio tracks. But the album still holds a special place in my heart. This is where I first heard great songs like “(Ain’t Nothin’ But A) House Party”, “I Do” and “Musta Got Lost”. It also showcases some of the best harmonica work ever, courtesy of Magic Dick. One listen to Dick’s virtuoso performance on “Whammer Jammer” will make you forget everything you think you know about the harmonica.

After the success of Freeze-Frame, Peter Wolf left the band and Seth Justman took control for their follow-up album, You’re Gettin’ Even While I’m Gettin’ Odd (more on that curiosity in a future installment of Jahnke’s Record Collection). After that, the band broke up, unfortunately before I had a chance to see them live. However, there is hope. The full band, including Wolf, has recently reformed to play a few gigs, mostly out east. It sounds as if they’re enjoying being back together and, more importantly, their live performances are just as powerful as ever. My fingers are crossed for a more extensive reunion tour. If they come out to LA, you can bet I’ll be in the audience, getting down with “Detroit Breakdown” and thoughts of my mother dancing in my head.

Jahnke's Record Collection: Metallica - Ride The Lightning

This may come as a shock, considering my well-known reputation as the hardest of hardcore bad-asses, but I was never much into heavy metal growing up. I liked some of it but I was mainly interested in bands with monster connections: KISS, Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, that kind of thing. I dismissed most of the 80s hair bands out of hand and only tuned into MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball when I was more than usually bored.

Metallica didn’t enter my life until I started dating a young woman named Tisha in the early 90s. Tisha was, and is, a bona fide hardcore bad-ass. She grew up on metal and Metallica was her favorite band. She was such a devoted fan that, in high school, she had a personalized license plate with the band’s name. For most bands, I’d think that was a really stupid thing to do. But somehow, with Metallica it’s beyond cool. I even thought so at the time when I didn’t really know much about the band.

The first Metallica album I heard was their self-titled 1991 blockbuster, known familiarly as The Black Album. The success of that album made it kind of difficult to avoid if you were listening to any popular music at the time. Still, I was impressed. I’d unfairly dismissed most heavy metal as an impregnable wall of noise and Metallica was definitely not that. This was a controlled, precision aural attack. I liked it.

I worked backward from there, familiarizing myself with the band’s earlier albums and generally found that I enjoyed them even more. Naturally, I soon gravitated toward the band’s 1984 album Ride The Lightning. I looked at the track listing, saw the album closed with a tune called “The Call Of Ktulu”, and my monster-lovin’ brain got all excited. As it turned out, the song is an epic instrumental and I may have dug it all the more for that. I could shut my eyes and easily envision Lovecraft’s Elder Gods being summoned to spread hell across the planet.

I continued to be impressed by the seriousness of Metallica’s lyrics. While other metal bands I was familiar with tended to sing about the most primal urges in the most idiotic way possible, these guys wrote songs about suicide, war and capital punishment. Sure, it didn’t have the literary aspirations of Nick Cave but compared to most of what was out there, it was downright poetic.

More important than the words, I was learning to listen to the music. Songs like “Fight Fire With Fire” and “Fade To Black” still had the sonic overload I was familiar with. But a closer listen showed method to the madness. Everything was tight, precise and done with purpose. The music was primal yet sophisticated, hitting a part of the brain that had gone untouched for too long.

My appreciation for metal has continued to grow to this day, although once a band gets too close to sheer noise I tune out. As for Tisha, she eventually became my wife, then amicably my ex-wife. Learning to appreciate Metallica is probably the least of the valuable life lessons I learned from her but I thank her for it nevertheless. I still go back to these early Metallica albums, turning the volume up as loud as I dare. Of course, a real fan would turn it up as loud as they could and never mind the neighbors. I guess I’m just more of a soft-spoken, considerate bad-ass. I hold the door for chicks at the biker bar and if I have to shove a broken bottle into somebody’s face, I always ask before I grab yours.

Jahnke's Record Collection

There is no “Frequently Asked Questions” section on the Electric Theatre website for the simple reason that I am not asked questions very frequently. However, one that has come up on more than a few occasions is, “Why don’t you write music reviews more often?”

The question always surprises me since, if you’ve actually read any of the few music reviews I’ve done for my buddy Matt Rowe’s MusicTAP site, I would think it’s fairly obvious why I don’t do more of them. I’m not very good at it. Don’t get me wrong. I love music with a passion. All kinds, from classical to country to rock to the hippity-hop that’s so popular with the kids these days. I recently did an iPod purge. I tend to listen to the thing on shuffle, so I got rid of hours worth of music that didn’t really work in that style. That still left me with over 5,000 songs.

I feel as though I know a little bit about music. I’ve co-written a few songs, there are a couple of instruments I can pick up and make sound like something (although I’d never say that I know how to play them), and I’ve immersed myself in a relatively diverse range of music over the years. In other words, I know just enough about music to realize that I don’t really know shit.

Movies are a different story. I can review a film and explain why I liked or disliked it. If someone asks how I’d improve it, I can come up with an idea or two. I can’t do that with music nearly as well. If someone asked me how I’d make a song that I didn’t like better, I’d just shrug my shoulders. I can do fairly well if the topic is someone whose work I admire. I could explain why Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness On The Edge Of Town is a better album than Lucky Town, for instance. But I’m not sure that I could tell you why I think Lucky Town is a better album than Garth Brooks’ No Fences, other than to say I like Bruce Springsteen and hate Garth Brooks. Why do I hate Garth Brooks? I dunno. I just think he sucks, that’s all. That’s not exactly an insightful critique.

Recently, I’ve wanted to experiment with more music reviews. Sure, part of the reason is because I like getting free CDs. But the bigger reason is it’s a challenge and gets me out of my writing comfort zone. Since I clearly haven’t been able to come up with a better use for this blog, this seemed like the best place to do it. But these aren’t going to be your ordinary music reviews.

Jahnke’s Record Collection is meant to be a magical mystery tour through all of the recorded music I’ve accumulated over the past few decades. Every so often (ideally once a week but we’ll see how that goes), I’ll pull an album at random off the shelf and give it a listen. Occasionally I’ll be talking about the music but primarily, I want to explore why I have this crap and what it means to me. I’m fascinated by how our relationship to music changes over time. An album can require repeated listenings before it begins to grow on us. Contrarily, a record that was once a favorite can suddenly turn into utter garbage. I have a tendency to hold on to stuff for…oh, pretty much ever, so I’m sure there’s going to be some truly embarrassing gems in here.

One more thing. Most of my collection is on CD but some of it is still on vinyl and cassette (I used to have some 8-tracks but regrettably got rid of them years ago). Regardless of the format, I’m still calling this Jahnke’s Record Collection. As far as I’m concerned, the word “record” is simply an abbreviation of “recording”. So yes, CDs are records too. Go split hairs someplace else.

Now then, let’s begin with one of the worst albums by one of my favorite artists…

Bruce Springsteen - Human Touch

I’ve been a die-hard Bruce Springsteen fan since my early teens. Even so, the early 90s was a tough time to remain among the faithful. Bruce had broken up the E Street Band, moved to Los Angeles, and hadn’t released an album since Tunnel Of Love back in ’87. So in 1992, when it was announced that he was releasing not one but two albums of new material, I was understandably excited. Sure, he was using session musicians instead of the venerable E Streeters but it was Bruce! How could it be anything less than awesome?

As it turns out, it could be considerably less than awesome in quite a number of ways. I was never one of those fans who thought Springsteen was incapable of writing a bad song. But up ‘til now, he hadn’t recorded anything quite so…bland. Human Touch committed the worst sin an album could make: it was forgettable.

Which isn’t to say I hated the whole thing (or its companion, the aforementioned Lucky Town). Between the two of them, you could put together a reasonably decent album. No classic, by any definition, but at least something you could listen to and enjoy. But far too much of Human Touch was taken up by mediocre songs that barely resonated in your ear even as you were playing them.

At the time of the album’s release, I was about to get married. Consequently, it should come as no surprise that songs like the title track and “Cross My Heart” appealed to me quite a bit. They still do, truth be told, even if they now seem a little bit more boring than they once did. And Springsteen does offer up at least two keepers here: the truly sad and painful “I Wish I Were Blind” and “The Long Goodbye”, a strong rock song with lyrics that are almost shockingly bleak.

But by and large, Human Touch is dominated by some of the most boring songs Springsteen ever committed to tape. Tracks like “Soul Driver” and “With Every Wish” are just about as dull as music can get before it turns into white noise. And then there’s “57 Channels (And Nothin’ On)”. “Weird Al” has written better songs on this subject before. No slam against Mr. Yankovic, whom I admire quite a bit, but when Bruce Springsteen can’t out-do “Weird Al”, something’s out of whack with the musical universe. To be fair, Little Steven did the best he could with his remix of this song and he joined Bruce for a blistering live version on Saturday Night Live. It’s the only performance of this song I’ve ever enjoyed.

Human Touch was still an important album in my musical development in that it was one of the most disappointing records I’d ever heard up to that point. It and Lucky Town were released on the same day but I was so underwhelmed by what I heard here that I didn’t bother to pick up the other one until months later. The album made me consider perhaps for the first time what it was that I responded to in Springsteen’s music in an attempt to figure out what was lacking here. The fundamental element was passion. For the first time, I was hearing Bruce Springsteen simply go through the motions. It would happen again. I’m still a fan and have found much to enjoy in later albums like The Rising and Working On A Dream. But I’m still waiting for another album of all-original songs that blows my mind the way Darkness On The Edge Of Town or Born To Run did. It may never happen but that’s part of being a fan. The hope that it might.