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Thursday, January 03, 2008
I'M BEGINNING TO SEE THE LIGHT
The Duke Ellington Orchestra
1944
Available on : The Complete RCA-Victor Mid-Forties Recordings
RCA : 2000
[Buy It]
I'M BEGINNING TO SEE THE LIGHT
Duke Ellington & Louis Armstrong
1961
Available on : The Great Summit: The Master Takes
Blue Note : 2001
[Buy It]
BEGINNING TO SEE THE LIGHT
The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground
Polydor : 1969
[Buy It]
BEGINNING TO SEE THE LIGHT
The Velvet Underground
The Legendary Guitar Amp Tape
1969
IN THE BEGINNING GOD
Duke Ellington
1965
Available on : The Centennial Edition: Complete RCA Victor Recordings
RCA : 1999
[Buy It]
WANNA BE STARTING SOMETHING
Michael Jackson
Thriller
Sony : 1983
[Buy It]
WANNA BE STARTING SOMETHING 2008
Michael Jackson feat. Akon
Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of Thriller
Sony : 2008
[Buy It]
DON'T STOP THE MUSIC
Rihanna
Good Girl Gone Bad
Def Jam : 2007
[Buy It]
So, Happy New Year. But along with the celebration, a complaint: the beginning of a year is such an illusion that it's almost not worth remarking upon. The same disappointments that were present on December 31 are present on January 1. The problems that were on the table on December 31 are still on the table on January 1. The same events that were current on December 31 are current on January 1. The only thing that begins as the new year dawns is hope, and since it's traveling by itself, it is, by definition, false hope. I have a friend who called me to compare our New Year's Eve parties. Hers was okay, she said. Her skirt was very short. She then told me that she was drawing up a list of goals for the new year, making a point of alternating between substantial resolutions (be a better person; renew faith in faith) and trivial ones (return to very short skirt with some regularity). I said I might jot down some resolutions, but I won't, unless they start with "Don't make any more resolutions," and that's a cheap ticket.
Though I don't think the new year starts anything, I am well aware of the importance of fresh starts. Without them, it's all middle or end, and that's hard to endure. So where are the real beginnings? There's Husker Du's "New Day Rising" or the Breeders' "New Year," although they're kind of generic, one in a revolutionary key, one in a pantheistic one. I was thinking of something more specific, and that's how I found my way to Duke Ellington's "Beginning to See the Light," a song about the genesis of romantic awareness:I never cared much for moonlit skies
I never wink back at fireflies
But now that the stars are in your eyes
I'm beginning to see the light
I never went in for afterglow
Or candlelight on the mistletoe
But now when you turn the lamp down low
I'm beginning to see the light
Used to ramble through the park
Shadowboxing in the dark
Then you came and caused a spark
That's a four-alarm fire now
I never made love by lantern-shine
I never saw rainbows in my wine
But now that your lips are burning mine
I'm beginning to see the light The song was composed by Ellington and Johnny Hodges and fitted to lyrics by Don George and Harry James. It was one of the first records that Ellington made after the lifting of the American Federation of Musicians' recording ban, which was called in August 1942 as a result of the union's belief that mechanical reproduction of records was ruining the careers of performing musicians. Record companies were asked to pay royalties to the union, and eventually did --Decca relented in September 1943, followed closely by Capitol and then, a year after that, by Columbia and Victor. Recording artists had a new beginning, and Ellington was eager to set down a version of the already-popular song. He did, with vocals from Joya Sherrill--soon enough, he was joined by nearly every other performer of standards, from James (his version charted higher than Ellington's) to Ella Fitzgerald to the Ink Spots to Bobby Darin. Louis Armstrong took a crack at it when he and Ellington recorded together in 1961, and he turned in a typically brilliant vocal that is, typically, both earthy and empyrean.
Within a decade, the title of the song, and some of its sense, had migrated from jazz to rock. Lou Reed's lyric quickly points to an epiphany that is at once broader and deeper:Well, I'm beginning to see the light
Well, I'm beginning to see the light
Some people work very hard but still they never get it right
Well, I'm beginning to see the light As it rolls along, it sidesteps the difficulties of modern existence ("there are problems in these times but whoo none of them are mine") before breaking euphorically into its predecessor's space: "How does it feel to be loved." The second version is an instrumental, sort of: it's from the Legendary Guitar Amp tapes, which were the result of a tech at the Boston Tea Party plugging directly into Lou Reed's amplifier. It's very difficult (and very foolish) to say that one Velvet Underground song is the best, but in certain moods, such as the mood produced by the false beginning of a new year, this is the best.
Locating new beginnings within light and light within love isn't a bad idea, but it has its limits. Duke Ellington, later on, located some of those limits with his aggressive exploration of faith and devotion. These were his Sacred Concerts, the first of which premiered in San Francisco's Grace Cathedral in September 1965. The centerpiece of that first Sacred Concert was the first piece, "In the Beginning God," a twenty-minute epic that starts with a piano solo, gives way to a baritone-saxophone solo by Harry Carney, begins to move with the power you might expect might be needed for a Genesis--whose first four words, of course, give the piece its title--and then arrives at a fleet, jivey monologue by Brock Peters:No heroes no zeroes
No naughty no nice
No limit no budget
No bottom no topless
No cows no bulls no barracuda no buffalo
No birds no bees no beetles Or is it Beatles? Ellington began to write the text after he learned that Billy Strayhorn, his collaborator for nearly thirty years, was dying of cancer. Maybe he was making a stand for jazz against rock-and-roll, which must have seemed like a new beginning at the time, or a novelty, or a step backwards, depending on who you were.
You can begin to see the light. You can try to see God's first light. You can work very hard and try to get it right. Are all useful ways of exposing the artificiality of the new year, although the meaninglessness of arbitrary beginnings already has an anthem, and an excellent one at that: Michael Jackson's "Wanna Be Starting Something." It's a song about gossip, give or take: Billie Jean is always talkin'
When nobody else is talkin'
Tellin' lies and rubbin' shoulders
So they called her mouth a motor
Someone's always tryin' to start my baby cryin'
Talkin', squealin', spyin'
Sayin' you just wanna be startin' somethin' Anyone who doesn't think Michael Jackson is one of the two or three finest singers in pop music history should listen to the way he sings "So they called her mouth a motor." But then listen to the rest of the song, and realize that it rapidly and intentionally devolves into a song about how gossip is not only malignant but meaningless, and not just gossip, but everything else: existence, maybe, when you're stuck in the middle and the pain is thunder. The final resolution of the problem, when he decides to lift his "head up high, and scream out to the world 'I know I am someone,' and let the truth unfurl," is a nice sentiment, until it, too, devolves into nonsense: mamase mamasa mamakossa. (Of course, it's not really nonsense. It's the chant from Manu Dibango's "Soul Makossa," from 1972, but here it's nonsense, and the best kind.)
It's now twenty-five years since Jackson released the album that started with "Wanna Be Starting Something" (it was called Thriller -- you may have heard of it), and the record industry is trying to give one of its best-selling properties a new beginning by re-releasing it with five special modern remixes. Here's the thing about special modern remixes: they are usually so bad that calling them terrible is insulting to terrible things. Most of these are no exception. Kanye West redoes "Billie Jean," somehow subtracting all that's exciting about the song, which is pretty much the entire song. Fergie defangs "Beat It." Will.I.Am applies some wit.le.ss trickery to "The Girl Is Mine." The only version that doesn't qualify as a botched plastic surgery is Akon's remix/remake of "Wanna Be Starting Something," which transforms the song from a battle challenge to a bedroom come-on. It's smooth and seductive and even a little bit menacing. And it's not the best remix of the song. That would be Rihanna's "Don't Stop the Music," which knows that if you never stop, you won't need to fool yourself with the illusion of starting.Labels: ben, jazz, rock and roll
posted by Ben
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