Settling The Score
Track 050: AC/DC, Annie Lennox & More
*Outside of the usual updates, Settling The Score is a Stan-specific update noting some of the sounds he’s using to soundtrack the adventure + any/all audible memories the week brings. All songs are linked via Spotify if you want to listen along. Volume up!
Welcome back! For my 50th entry of Settling The Score, I’m back in Europe where all this began— now with a smaller sense of purpose. Berlin has proven to be a clash of quiet and brash; calm and cataclysmic. Having had two full weeks here now, I had a bit of time to start off slow and regain my bearings musically before kicking things into high gear as we prepare to get into the nitty-gritty of our visa process. There’s no business-as-usual in Berlin and that seems to reflect in the high contrasts of this week’s tracks. Grab a beer at the corner store and let’s get into it:
“Anyone Who Knows What Love Is”- Irma Thomas
As I was laying there on our first morning in Berlin, the jet lag still working its way through my body, there was only stillness. Kyle was still asleep next to me and the only sound I could hear in the early stirrings of dawn was a vast silence. My brain felt like it was quiet for the first time in what felt like months— no jangling or rattling, at long last. In that seemingly endless nothing, I heard the opening to this song trickling like rain. The 1964 track should have skyrocketed Irma Thomas into the stratosphere— the silky smooth vocals, the lush orchestration— all had the makings of a song that could stand toe-to-toe with the greats of her generation. It’s almost easy to hear how neatly this would fit alongside Etta James or Bettye Swan; their melding of polished R&B with the grit that comes from being a woman in the industry at this time. Not granted the airtime that someone like Aretha Franklin would receive, Irma Thomas’ catalogue of music had to stand firmer on its two feet to withstand the test of time. I was shocked to find out the song had been co-written by a 19 year old Randy Newman and all at once, not surprised at all. The song is heavy in all the right places and is the type of moody, atmospheric shade of music I find myself drawn to when the world goes a little silent. Laying there, I felt like I didn’t know exactly what I was getting myself into with this latest stop. Unsure of what would happen next, I trusted that love had likely brought me here.
“The Poet Acts from The Hours”- Phillip Glass
Something about walking with groceries on cobblestones conjures up Meryl Streep in Stephen Daldry’s 2002 The Hours for homosexuals far and wide, myself included. The grey skies darkened, the mist settled in and my shoes clicked on the ground as I quickly ran my errands. I can own up to the fact that I am, incredibly, dramatic when it comes to music and the role it plays in my life; drawing on every film reel or every scored art I’ve ever encountered as though it were the missing piece in my life’s soundtrack. It’s the ability of music, however, to not simply color in the image but to add the depth or shading that motivates me to continually keep consuming it. Phillip Glass, in short, is one of the greatest living composers— his work spanning over 60 years and whose oeuvre includes but is not limited to: operas, symphonies and scoring one of the canonically gay movies every made. I found myself considering his minimalistic approach as I fussed with my bag of fresh vegetables, how just weeks ago I was lost in a sea of lights and sound and now I was in the middle of something so mundanely routine. Glass’s repetition in his composed works now mirroring the seemingly boring daily activities I’d longed for— with so much more happening just below the surface. Things seemed simple again, however fleeting.
“Don’t Get Around Much Anymore”- The Ink Spots
I want you to imagine someone who rode on the back of a vespa through Saigon earlier this year or someone who was doing karaoke on the 8th story of a complex in Tokyo. Now I want you to imagine them simply eating tortilla chips on a couch and watching YouTube clips of news bloopers. While the same person (it’s me, you guessed it) there’s sometimes a stark, almost alarming, difference between what was just mere weeks ago and what is. Can the person who really went bar hopping in Taipei really just be going to bed at 9pm? Their hands moisturized, their fridge fully stocked and their bags unpacked? On what must have been my 30th tortilla chip, I started to giggle as this song floated into my headphones as I sat there like a disheveled house cat. Originally penned by Duke Ellington, it wasn’t given words until 1942 and recorded shortly thereafter by The Ink Spots— a quartet from Indiana that predates a lot of what R&B would become in the next 20 years or so. Part jazz, part swing, all vocal, the group would define the doo-wop genre at the time —with contemporaries being fabulous company, like the Mills Brothers. It’s the pitch-perfect montage song, as many of their early 40s tracks tend to be (see: The Gypsy or perhaps their claim to fame If I Didn’t Care.) I found myself recharging my batteries while still suddenly somehow missing some of the chaos the past year had been full of. I opened a fresh can of salsa to compliment the chips, eager to mull it all over.
“Walking On Broken Glass”- Annie Lennox
A public holiday in Germany is no laughing matter. (Germans, not always known for their sense of humor, of course.) Still, it’s a semi-serious business when a city like Berlin takes a day off; the machine that steams and heaves comes to a stop— alerting to people like us that today, if just today, we aren’t bothering to keep up the charade of “functional humans” and rather projecting an air of “fraternity party.” By noon, most of the city had spilled out into the streets— the only businesses open were liquor stores and corner bodegas, ready to make an absolute killing that day. Every person walking past our balcony on the sidewalk below had a beer in their hand and the weather just so happened to resemble the ideal summer day that comes to mind if I asked you to imagine one. In the early afternoon, the bar downstairs had set up a DJ booth and the block party had begun; our street being just one single block in this sprawling metropolis. By sundown, the energy of everything around us resembled that turning point in every party where the music is somehow never loud enough. Glass bottles were pilling up at each trash can and in separate piles everywhere else. The blur set in, the city washed by. By morning, Berlin was a quiet ghost town with only the shards of the night before as a reminder it ever happened at all. Naturally, I started humming this song as we cautiously made our way across the city to lay in the park— dodging bits and pieces of sharp bottle bits. Off her 1992 solo debut, Diva, Annie Lennox takes a depressing subject matter and turns it into a dancehall anthem— as only she can. The orchestration on the song is uncomfy in the way that dissonance is awkward; seemingly mismatching tones across the board. The facade of being human got let down for just a single Friday and energetically, broke every glass along the way.
“If You Want Blood (You Got It)”- AC/DC
I jolted awake just yesterday, as though someone had splashed cold water on me. We had begun to wade in the comically murky waters of the visa process in Berlin and each thread we pulled seemed to pull at another. Even with months and months of research in our pocket, the actual doing was already off to a messy start— the rosy colors we had painted broadly with for our first two weeks here were rapidly wearing off; deflating like a birthday balloon. Contrasting the beginning of this weeks entry, I found myself in a new mindset by the weeks end— staring down the choice we had made to attempt to relocate abroad with some definitiveness. The German system, staring back at me, smelling blood. From their 1979 album, Highway To Hell, Australia’s AC/DC came to the US with five previous albums under their belt and zero airplay. The laborious process of creating a new album under the leadership of Robert John “Mutt” Lange wouldn’t be an easy process: months and months of recording, the band second guessing each musical choice made and being pushed to the brink in order to gain a wider, mass appeal. The effort it takes to produce a genre or decade defining piece of art is often a small war waged— the missteps part of the process. For me, AC/DC has always sounded un-polished in the best way; singer Bon Scott’s raspy wail making it seem as though it lacked the rehearsed, measured technique of other artists. Its wildness, however, a choice. Its messiness, the blood-pumping glue that holds it all together. I woke up energized and agitated at the pile of German bureaucracy waiting just outside the door. I’d come here to try something new, to un-polish some of my own varnish off and see what I could make out of the murk. Germany was taunting me to get into the water and jumpstart my life. You got it.
Other notables:
“Walk On By”- Issac Hayes
“Mouthful Of Grass”- Free
“I Bloom Blaum”- Coldplay
“Welcome”- Harmonia & Eno ‘79
The full Settling The Score playlist is here on Spotify and here on Youtube + I’ll be adding to it every week(ish) when this is published- in case you’d like to follow along.
Happy listening!
- Stan