Category: Tunes

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Best tunes of 1990: #1 Depeche Mode “Personal Jesus”

<< #2

Happy new year all!

I figured the first post of the year was a good time to finish off the first series I started this blog with and this song certainly ends it with a bang. Back at number eleven, I proclaimed “Enjoy the silence” as one of Depeche Mode’s biggest hits. Well, at number one, we have what is surely their biggest: “Personal Jesus”.

And I’m well aware that it was technically released as a single in 1989 but I feel it belongs more in 1990 for two reasons. Number one, it was the cornerstone for their 1990 smash hit, “Violator”, a near perfect album, and touched off a string of great singles and pure magic the band hasn’t been able to replicate. Number two, the use of guitar as primary instrument and the driving force behind the song signalled a turning point, a seismic shift for the group from their new wave/synthpop roots into alternative rock, a path they would tread throughout the 1990s.

By all accounts, the song was inspired by Martin Gore’s reading of Priscilla Presley’s memoirs, “Elvis & me”, and the idea of that when you love someone, that person can be your everything. Another twisted love song then. Gore certainly has strange ideas about love but he’s honest, and this alone, this ‘honesty’, is how classics are written. That iconic opening line, “Reach out and touch faith”, for instance, evokes so many ideas about how scary it can be to open up and totally trust someone. Is it as religious as he infers by invoking the idea of your partner being your personal Jesus? I suppose it could be.

Or maybe I’m reading too deeply into what is really at its heart a great pop song for your liking? I sense that could possibly be true as well.

When this song was released, I was in high school. My musical tastes had yet to mature and so I hadn’t yet become the music geek whose words you read today. And I definitely wasn’t reading too deeply into the words sung by the ever enigmatic David Gahan. The title smacked of religion, something I was starting to rebel against at this time, my parents’ enforcement of church attendance each Sunday, and so something that sounded even vaguely sacrilegious was appealing. The heavy beat of the song also didn’t hurt. It made my step fall in line with it whenever it came on over my Sony Sports Walkman ear phones and got me up to dance whenever the DJ inevitably played it at our high school dances.

Yeah, I don’t mind saying that “People are people” was my first introduction to Depeche Mode but that “Personal Jesus” was my real gateway drug. It’s the reason why “Violator” was among the first compact discs I ever purchased, even before I had my own CD player. And it’s likely one of the main reasons why “Violator” was among the first of my vinyl purchases when I started collecting records again, even before I got my new turntable. It’s all rhythm and twangy guitar. It’s rage without the anger. It’s sadness without the tears. It’s passion without the physical touch. “Lift up the receiver, I’ll make you a believer.” It’s like new age blues. But these are all just words. It’s a great song that should be danced to, rather than be written about.

So press play and dance away your first day of 2018.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1990 list, click here.

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Best tunes of 2010: #10 Steve Mason “Boys outside”

<< #11    |    #9 >>

A belated merry Christmas to everyone out there! It’s Boxing Day here in Canada, a day where a great many people venture out into mall madness to take advantage of the ‘sales’. If you are one these (or if you aren’t), I share the following for your consideration:

Rob Gordon: I will now sell five copies of “The Three EPs” by The Beta Band.
Dick: Go for it.
[Rob plays the record]
Customer: Who is this?
Rob Gordon: The Beta Band.
Customer: It’s good.
Rob Gordon: I know.

The above exchange constitutes the breakdown of what is one of my favourite scenes in film history. And I’m reasonably sure that I’m not the only music geek that went out immediately after seeing “High fidelity” in the cinemas to also get a copy of The Beta Band’s “The three EPs”. (I’m talking about those of us that didn’t already have it in our collections, of course.) Yet try as I might, I was never, outside of a few tunes, ever able to get into the group. Unbelievably, I had better luck with The Aliens, the band made up of former Beta Band members, Gordon Anderson, John Maclean, and Robin Jones, and then, when former frontman Steve Mason released “Boys outside”, his first solo work put out under his real name, I was completely enamoured.

Just one of those things, I guess.

Some music writers have said that the album, “Boys outside”, sounds like The Beta Band replayed through a magical, adult alternative filter and I suppose that makes sense. It and its title track, which I love to pieces, feels infinitely more mature. It bears the weight of Mason’s financial and general life struggles, as well as his battles with depression. The bleak black austerity of the cover is certainly a reflection of all this, as is the often claustrophobic production.

“Boys outside“ is lilting guitars and breathtaking washes. It is Mason singing his pain, despair, and hope in a voice that was often overlooked in discussions about his old band’s worth. It is heartrending at its quiet moments and glorious at its apexes. It’s one of those songs I slip on when I want to be reminded of beauty in world.

And perhaps this post won’t sell five copies of Steve Mason’s “Boys outside” but maybe one or two. And I’d be happy with that.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2010 list, click here.

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Tunes

Best tunes of 1990: #2 The Charlatans “Sproston green”

<< #3    |    #1 >>

Here we are at number two on this best of 1990 list and we find ourselves back on the dance floor. But we must’ve travelled back in time because it’s “Sproston green” by The Charlatans, their second appearance (the other being “The only one I know” at #14) on this list.

I mention the time travel bit as a personal joke between me and my friend Tim. We wandered into one of our old haunts, The Dance Cave in Toronto, after a bunch of drinks on my birthday a few years ago. After a few more, Tim went up to the DJ booth to request this tune, or any Charlatans tune, really, and was denied. The DJ didn’t care that it was my birthday and that we had danced many times to that same tune on that same floor, a decade or two earlier. He wasn’t having any of it. He gestured to the crowd of millenials that made up most of the drinkers that night and said that there was no way they would dance to it.

Now maybe I’m getting old and stubborn but I disagreed then and still do today. This is a song that can’t be ignored, you just have to dance to it. It’s a song so immense in scope that the band has continued to use it over the intervening decades to close out their live shows, much to the joy of their fans. It is definitely a personal favourite. And why not? At just over five minutes, “Sproston green” builds perfectly from the echoing, just beyond earshot guitar intro to a more a solidified onslaught once the rest of the band joins in the fun, led by that muscular bass and crazed, swirling organs, all the way to its crashing, ecstatic finale.

I’ve read somewhere that the words are based on the frontman’s first sexual experience and I suppose that could be true: “This one knows she comes and goes, and when she goes she goes.” It’s as deep as they get… But you don’t really listen to the Charlies for the lyrics, do you? No, no, no. It’s all about the groove and this particular tune has that bit down solid.

Go ahead and disagree. I’m ready for you.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1990 list, click here.