I grew up listening to AM pop music on a little transistor radio. WINX, Washington, DC, in the 1970s. I was far from an audiophile. I just liked songs with a strong beat, hooky melody, and clever lyrics. So did all my friends.
As we got into our teens, those tastes diverged. Two of the most popular albums when I was 15 were Boston’s self-titled debut and Peter Frampton’s ground-breaking live set, Frampton Comes Alive.
I hope fans of those two famous discs, as well as fans of late decade Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan, Rush, and Yes, and so many other popular acts of the day, will forgive me when I admit that I found all of that music exceedingly boring and lifeless. Actually, I already know from past experience that you will not forgive me. It’s OK. I’ve learned to live with that.
Of all its many components, music thrives on energy more than anything else
I wasn’t really a fan of the arena rock behemoths of the day either. Reo Speedwagon and Kansas, Foreigner and Styx. I did like some of their music, but never quite got the passion my friends felt for those bands.
"“Music that’s flawless is usually uninspired.” "Paul Westerbeg
I began the decade reserving that kind of passion for the Beatles and the Who. Those were my older brothers’ bands. One of the hallmarks of hitting adolescence is that we all want our own thing – our own music that no one older than us quite gets.
For me, that began as an infatuation with the twin poles of Little Feat and J. Geils but had morphed by decade’s end into a new kind of music. Elvis Costello. Ramones. The Damned. Music that was fast and loud and filled to the brim with attitude.
Music that was recorded in 20 minutes, not fussed over for three years.
When I first heard My Aim is True, Costello’s 1977 debut, it instantly became my favorite album. It still ranks way up there for me. I remember being surprised a few decades later when I learned it was routinely ranked behind several of his subsequent albums by the rock and roll press.
Stereogum, which calls it “one of rock music’s great opening salvos,” nonetheless has it as his sixth best, behind most of the albums he released over the next five to ten years. The most commonly cited explanation for knocking it down ever so slightly is that Elvis had yet to assemble the Attractions, his kick-ass backing band.
He recorded My Aim is True with Clover, a largely anonymous Bay Area bar band. The sound, according to people with better ears than mine, wasn’t quite as full and tight… and whatever other adjective you care to use to capture something that can’t really be captured in language.
To that argument, I say “screw it.” My Aim is True is a brilliant collection of rock and roll songs delivered with raw power enough to rival … well, Iggy’s Raw Power, which I had yet to hear, but would eventually enter the same class in my personal rankings.
Were those albums perfectly produced and performed? No. That’s one of things that makes them as great as they are.
Many years later, I would come to find out the rock press considered John Prine’s self-titled debut much the same. Everyone recognized it as a work of rare genius, but it wasn’t quite as good as some of Prine’s later material because it was raw. Prine’s voice was not as confident as it would become, nor was the recording as finely-tuned.
Malarky! (Forgive my language.) John Prine, like My Aim is True, is simply a near-perfect collection of songs performed by a real voice that is not perfect. That’s why I love it.
To me, the endless in-studio tinkering of Tom Scholz harmed Boston’s music. And though this one angers my friends more than anything else I will ever say, the same impulse from Walter Becker and Donald Fagen sucked the very life out of the genius that once was Steely Dan. Aja may have won the Grammy for its pristine engineering, but that is the exact point at which I stopped listening.
Besides, that was the year the Clash’s debut came out. The year Richard Hell moaned his way through “Blank Generation.” The year Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers put out their one and only album.
None of that music was perfect. It was far better than that.
Just to prove that I don’t reject highly crafted music out of hand, I will also admit to loving a lot of Pink Floyd and Alan Parsons Project from the late 1970s. If the songs had life and energy and said something interesting, I didn’t care one way or another how well or poorly they were recorded.
The gothic nightmare beauty of Turn of a Friendly Card registered with me, as did the ramshackle, slovenly volume of Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take the Trash Out. It’s hard to imagine two albums with a more different vibe, but they had melodies, passion, and life. That was enough for me.
I have continued to prefer messy screamers to measured self-importance to this day. I would rather listen to Mark Hoppus struggle to sing “Dammit” than to Eddie Vedder sing almost any Pearl Jam song. (There are a few exceptions to that.)
I am in a much happier place today hearing Missy Dabice, Amy Taylor, or Eloise Wong scream out their passion than listening to Billie Eilish’s insanely overproduced breathlessness.
Last month, I caught a show by a folk singer I like very much. His name is David Wilcox, from Asheville (not the Canadian David Wilcox). He has been recording smart folk songs for decades. Hearing him live, he is warm, funny, offbeat, and even pitchy at times.
In the studio, that all gets ironed out, along with his unique human sound. I don’t listen to his studio albums because they strive for perfection. I greatly refer to the living, breathing imperfection of one of his concerts.
I love the way James McMurtry closes his live shows by eschewing amplification and singing “Blackberry Winter” while wandering around the venue. He has to shout to be heard, and he doesn’t have the most operatic voice to begin with. It is so much better than perfect that I kind of wish all artists did something similar.
Wilcox and McMurtry aren’t even rockers. Folk rockers maybe. For genuine rock and rollers, I can’t think of any bigger sin than smoothing out the imperfections in your sound. That robs it of its life. It may bathe your ears in a fuzzy glaze, but my ears were never all that sensitive to begin with.