Music Reviews

I've learned more about music from one guy than from everyone else in my life put together.

George Starostin.

The guy's a Russian. Half my age. Still lives in Moscow. And a genius in more ways than one.

His prizes are bitterly clever putdowns of crappy music, but they come in a contex of providing an far deeper appreciation of stuff you already liked..but didn't necessarily understand what it was you liked. Try this regarding the pleasant, but not-considered-deep song "Calfornia Dreamin'", by Mamas & Papas:

Lately I've been trying to imagine something. I've been trying to imagine how a song like "California Dreamin'" would have sounded like if sung by just one guy/gal with an acoustic guitar. And eventually I cam to the conclusion that it wouldn't have sounded interesting at all. Basic folksy chord progression, a stable, simple vocal melody that never shifts - where the heck is the chorus? - away from its one-line pattern. Boring, to cut a long story short. Boring and unremarkable.
But the vocal harmonies aren't there just for the sake of adding pretty decorations. They form a conversation - a male-female one - that makes the final result lively and agitated where it would have been stiff and cramped. Normally one tends to view "backing vocals" as exactly just that, backing vocals; here, every time I get convinced to sing along, I find myself trying to keep up with all the singers until I'm panting as a racehorse, and it does not enter my mind that I could just follow John and Dennis (or Michelle and Mama Cass, for that matter). That is the song's melody and the song's backbone, and that is the complex, jaw-droppingly beautiful and elegant sonic construction that makes the band - if only for a short while - the first-rate artists they could be.