Genius at Work

True genius knows no bounds.


The title of this post is "Genius at Work", and it in no way reflects the author, but people the author considers genius.

There's something about people that produce great things (whether they be works of art, music, literature, etc.) that I find completely compelling. In fact, I have no problem DVR-ing an hour-long documentary about the making of the Sydney Opera House (Jorn Utzen you clever bastard!) or full length features on the evolution of 8-track recording (about that rapscallion Tom Dowd, see "Tom Dowd and the Language of Music") or the making of Duran Duran's Rio on VH1 Classic.


Duran Duran: Genius comes a-yachtin'.

What intrigues me about these endeavors is the process involved. We look at something like the finished product of the Sydney Opera House, for example, and we see a cool looking building with some spheres and cones and shit. Pretty sweet. But what's more interesting to me, is how in the hell:

1. They came to that design.
2. They actually made it!


The Sydney Opera House, which its architect has never seen in person.

I think we take for granted the process of execution when we see the finished product. I don't have to be a world-famous (or relatively obscure) architect to appreciate how f***in' hard it must have been to create those spheres out of concrete, put them up, and make sure the building didn't crash down around them!

So, yeah, I'd say that's pretty genius. Now, that's genius by committee, but still pretty bad ass.

The same can be said for the way I approach music. Now, this is not to say that all musical endeavors are genius (see Michael Bolton, The Jonas Brothers, and Soulja Boy), but there are some that certainly are.

To wit:
"Wouldn't It Be Nice" by The Beach Boys.

	BEACH BOYS - 01 - Wouldn t It Be Nice .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Now, it seems rather innocuous on its surface, as a lot of Beach Boys' songs do, but I ran across this, and it helped further embed Brian Wilson as a genius of popular music and music production. Take a look:



Listening to Brian Wilson direct that assemblage of studio musicians (that's the "Wrecking Crew" who played on just about every song that came out of LA in the 60s/70s) I am blown away at how he can put those layers together.
Keep in mind that this is also 1966. At most they had 8 tracks (if Tommy Dowd was there, see supra note), but they probably had 4. So, they had to have all the music played live, no room for overdubs, no individual tracks to punch in and out of, and according to [*ahem*] Wikipedia, it only took 21 takes...pretty amazing. Then you've got the tight harmonies of the vocals, that blend with that overall production. It really is amazing (and this is before The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper, too, an album that everyone tried to replicate once it came out in 1967...yet that album and Pet Sounds, from which "Wouldn't It Be Nice" comes, sound like peers).

My appreciation for it skyrocketed once I saw/heard the process of recording. There is so much value to the end product that is not seen because the end product is so good! The process is invisible, and you're left with a work of art. Also, I find this stuff incredibly interesting. To see Brian Wilson's process is to peer inside of his creative mind a bit. Obviously, he's not the best communicator, but the ends justify the means here, for sure.

I also think the construction of the song itself is pretty genius. To me, as is said in that short tube YouTube documentary above, it's "a happy song about not getting what you want". That's pretty apt. And pretty genius. Brian Wilson wrote a song that could come across happy, and yet be pretty depressing when you look at it through that lens.


Robert Smith of The Cure did not invent 'happy to be sad', after all.

That's how I've always viewed the song. Though, in my frame of reference, I don't even think it's all that happy.

Wouldn't it be nice if we were older, then we wouldn't have to wait so long,
And wouldn't it be nice to live together, in the kind of world where we belong?

That's not really that "happy" of a sentiment, you know? It's framed by the "Wouldn't it", which really makes it a song that laments the current state of the singer, while couching it within an upbeat context. He's saying, it's not great or nice right now, but wouldn't it be if the following things happened? Really, it's no different than the lamentations of say, "Somewhere Over The Rainbow", "I'll Follow the Sun" by The Beatles, or "I Wish" by Skee-Lo.


Skee-Lo probably wishes he had 8 'D' batteries.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could wake up, in the morning when the day is new,
And after having spent the day together, hold each other close the whole night through?

Ouch. That right there is heart-wrenching, isn't it? I mean, if you've ever loved and lost (author's note: check that box, 'yes'), then this is a kick-in-the-stomach kind of line. When you find yourself in that category of people then that's how you feel: it would be nice to do those things, but they are past. So this can also be read as a lamentation of the past, when things were better, and you wish you could return to them (see also, "I Wish" by Stevie Wonder, and "Glory Days" by Bruce Springstein). And yet the music remains pretty happy throughout. Damn you Wilson!


5 out of 5 experts agree: getting dumped feels like this.

Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true,
Baby then there wouldn't be a single thing we couldn't do
We could be married
And then we'd be happy

Wouldn't it be nice?

Again, taken from the perspective of the singer that wants these things but can't have them, or has lost them along the way, this takes us further down the spiral of depression. He says "maybe if we wish and think and hope and pray"...so he's trying to be positive about the possibility of all these future things out of reach that might make him happy, yet he really can't bet on it. How true is that, Brian Wilson?

And again, it closes out with "wouldn't it be nice", which is a question, not an answer to all the problems the singer has presented us with throughout the song. Does the person he's singing about know he feels this way? Does that person want these things, too? Does the singer even want them, or is it just a comfortable nostalgia for a relationship that never was? At the end of the song, there isn't an answer to Brian Wilson's question; we don't know if it "would be nice". We think it would, but instead of answering definitively, he just lets it linger.

I'd call that genius.

Further proof of the powerful juxtapositioning this song can provide can be seen in Michael Moore's film, Roger & Me, a fantastic little piece about my depressing hometown of Flint, Michigan. Seen in the clip below is Ben Hamper, an auto worker who had a bit of nervous breakdown the day he lost his job and heard "Wouldn't It Be Nice" on the radio on the way home. He recounts a bit of the story below, and then Moore uses that to jump into a montage about the Flint of 1985. Check it out:



So, yeah, that's kind of what the song embodies for me, too: a lost ideal that we will still hold on to, even when everything around us begs us to question the ideal's very existence. But for me, I believe it does exist - and it would be nice.

Genius.

Free cover tonight!

Ok, so that's a cheap trick to get you to read this new post that has nothing to do with paying/not paying $5 to get into a bar that is too crowded/loud to have fun/enough drinks in. With it being St. Patrick's Day, though, I figured there would be some expectation for pub-related titles.

This post, however, is about covers, though. Covers of the musical variety, and covers of a musical giant, no less. As I was listening to the iTunes recently, I think what has become my favorite cover song of the moment came up: Stevie Wonder's "We Can Work It Out".

Now, you've got two things going against you here:

1. No one should really cover The Beatles, right? I mean, they pretty much got it right the first time around. To me, they're an entirely un-fuckwitable band. Plus, "We Can Work It Out" was one of those perfectly blended Lennon-McCartney gems, to wit:

• Paul writing the verses, John getting in there on the chorus/bridge with some sweet harmonies;
  
• an inordinate amount of harmonium (the thing that sounds like an accordion) that does not sound cheesy (even 40 years later);
• the song is in 3 bar phrases, instead of 4 bar phrases, giving it a totally different feel than most pop-songs;
  
• those 2 bars of quarter-note triplets that end each phrase of the chorus/bridge that sound like they're in 3/4 (because the tambourine plays the 2nd and 3rd triplet like they've become quarter notes), but aren't;
  
• the song was a double A-side with "Day Tripper", and it went to Number 1 quickly.

2. Stevie Wonder is pretty un-fuckwitable himself, so what's he doing covering somebody else's song? Especially one as popular as "We Can Work It Out"?

Well, let me assure you, these two factors are quite diminished in the resulting cover:



Yeah. That's pretty great, right? Some highlights for me (this might get a little technical...):

• the opening fuzzy clavinet/electric piano...you know you're in for something funky, ya'll;
  
• the "Hey!"s on beat 4 of the first and last bar of each phrase of the verses. Reminiscent of all those current hip-hop songs that have the annoying "Heeeey" in the background (see also, T.I.'s "Live Your Life", most Lil' Jon club bangers);
• the fact the he starts the "We can work it out" line on the '&' of 4, and not the next downbeat like Paul did;
• the fact that Steven Wonderland forgoes the quarter-note triplet-not-3/4 bars and keeps it straight ahead;
• the incredibly high parts that Stevie is singing in the harmony, bridge, and the harmonica solo (those, "ah - ah - ah" parts)!;
• the harmonica solo itself;
• the general badassery of the Motown sound and backing band ('nuff said).

So, yeah, Stevie got it right. And it earned him a Grammy nomination.


"No big deal that I didn't win this time, I've got 25 others." - Stevie Wonder

Are there other good Beatles covers, you might ask? Not many. Again, I think trying to cover the Beatles is pretty pointless - if you stray too far from the original, people won't like it because it's not like the one they know; if you just try to play it like the Beatles play it, then people won't like it because they'd rather listen to the Beatles version. Catch-22, indeed.

A couple that I dig, though:


Rufus Wainwirght, "Across The Universe"


This one works because Rufus Wainwright is a good singer already, and he has taken the more direct approach on this cover. I also love the fact that he added harmony to the second chorus and subsequent verses (probably his mom, Kate McGarrigle singing). [*note: I had never seen this video before...not sure about the Rene Magritte imagery (see, "Le Fils De L'Homme"), but is that Dakota Fanning? Somebody (the director) certainly has a hard-on for French art!]

another:

Ramsey Lewis, "Cry Baby Cry"


This one works because it is a departure from the original, but then it's not. It's familiar, but doesn't get too out there to still be the song you know (how 'bout that vibra-slap!)? Plus, soul jazz usually doesn't come out this good (the string arrangements are great, and the drums stay hard). Ramsey recorded a whole album of Beatles' covers called, "Mother Nature's Son", and it's worth checking out.

one more?

William Shatner, "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds"


This is not a joke. This is real. Musicians were hired, producers sat at the controls, marketing execs had the album distributed. Money was spent. Oh, what a time 1967 must have been.

The worst? Maybe this:



That's Kylie Minogue, singing "Help!" at a concert for John Lennon. Why Milli and Vanilli are up there dancing so close to her is unknown. Why the concert promoter decided to get Kylie Minogue to do this embarrassing version of a pretty great song is further unknown. The rapping bridge had to be included, however, to complete the affront to a musical legacy that this is. I think the inclusion of a dance break is pretty obvious, too.

So, that's just a sampling of what's out there. Be careful on your journey through Beatles cover songs, for every Aimee Mann/Michael Penn "Two of Us", there's usually twice as many Bee Gees "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" original motion picture soundtrack cuts.