MUSIC PAIRINGS

Note: This piece was originally published in the January 21st, 2021 issue of the Copper River Record.

The concept of "pairing," where one identifies flavors that go well together, commonly applies to food and drink. Music is just the same, working with whatever is going on in front of you, like singing "Sweet Caroline" at Fenway, listening to Jimmy Buffet at a cruise ship buffet, or looking up the tune to "I'm a Little Teapot" while writing the intro song to Jeopardy! In this new column, Music Pairings, I will sum up the charms of a great album, then recommend particular activities to pair such albums to. All album pairings have been tested first-hand by the author, but does not necessarily promise the same level of joy for the reader. Also included are hypothetical bad pairings, because no album or song works in every context and, if paired poorly, can ruin both song(s) and event at hand. Such well-known examples include any cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" after 2009, that time your cousin cranked "Jump Around" by House of Pain at a funeral, and blasting "American Pie" at a French-Canadian bakery.

Scenery- Ryo Fukui (1976)

After teaching himself piano at the ripe age of 22, Ryo Fukui released his debut album, Scenery, just six years later. Japanese critics and listeners warmly received its masterful offering but America didn't even bother to shrug. Popular jazz in the States was, by this point, sailing out from common listenability as other genres took the mantle of "music you could dance to" or, at least, "listen to in polite company without eyebrows raising."

With a forceful style reminiscent of- nay, indebted to- Bill Evans, Fukui merges hard bop, modal and cool jazz into a lovely formalist stew, making some indelible jazz standards his own. It's a trio. Bass is performed with swagger aplently by Satoshi Denpo, and Ryo's brother Yoshinori (a family affair) plays drums like he was born in the pocket. The album starts off full-heat, with an excitable rendition of "It Could Happen to You" in the vein of the Miles Davis Quintet. The other song choices are tasteful and flow well with each other. It's essentially the best kind of lounge music, and it's no coincidence Ryo and his wife Yasuko owned a jazz club (Slowboat) in Sapporo. Music for a pleasant evening and appealing to non-jazz listeners, often to jazzheads' chagrin.

The album cover is striking. A red background with SCENERY descending on the left, Fukui's head in profile- scraggly beard, tufted hair and large-framed glasses- looking deep in thought or concentration, filtered through dot-by-dot comic printing, and photographed and designed by album producer Matasaki Ito. Green kanji characters sit on the top-right. This album cover piqued my curiosity. It wasn't at a record store, or someone's house, but, like much of our lives now, online, wandering around YouTube.

I wasn't the only one. In a strange and modern twist of fate, YouTube's algorithm brought many millions of listeners to Scenery in the past half-decade, giving Fukui's debut a strange and improbable second act. Sadly, Ryo Fukui died on the Ides of March in 2016 at 67, right before this explosion of popularity. One thinks he'd be pleased. Last year, Scenery was reissued on vinyl and CD, with an ardent fan base worldwide who make posters, cassettes, mugs, and other merch of its cover. Scenery has lived up to its name in more ways than one.

PAIRS WELL WITH Cooking, especially dinner Dinner parties

Writing

Reading Lively Conversation

PAIRS POORLY WITH Running

Working Out

Experimental Jazz Listening Groups

Flood- They Might be Giants (1990)

They Might Be Giants' most iconic album, Flood lives up to its title. The songs pour out in excess, about particle men, racist friends, plastic bags and the eternal duality of women and men. Famed rock critic Robert Christgau's short, unimpressed review opined, "tunes, aarghh, tunes--please not more tunes." I disagree. Sometimes, more actually is more, and Flood delivers the goods in spades. It begins with a self-aware theme song ("a brand new record! For 1990!") and leads into their best and most popular song, "Birdhouse in Your Soul." Between its earworm-filled hook-ridden catchiness to its technical precision of dynamics and sound engineering, from its weird and memorable lyrics (an ode to a nightlight. Seriously) to its musical boldness (18 key changes modulating between four different keys), "Birdhouse in Your Soul" is a masterpiece.

Other songs include two songs featured on the early 90's cartoon Tiny Toon Adventures, thereby ensuring an entire generation being able to half-remember its lyrics reflexively. "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)," a cover of a 1953 novelty song that is now the de facto version, and "Particle Man," an absurdist song that songwriter John Linnell says has no secret message and is completely on the surface. Sure.

Be sure to listen to "Minimum Wage," a rousing instrumental that sounds like Frank Sinatra's version of "Downtown," or the Rawhide theme song. The vocals are simple and short. "Minimum Waaaaage!" bellowed like a Grand Ole Opry songster followed by the crack of a whip. A more poignant commentary on being broke than every self-serious bearded folk singer combined.

PAIRS WELL WITH:

Driving

Chores

Fun Outdoor Activities With Friends or Alone

Running

PAIRS POORLY WITH

Serious conversations

Studying/Reading

Activities Requiring Concentration

Self-Serious Edgy Folk

Scott 4- Scott Walker (1969)

Scott Walker (born Noel Scott Engel) was Andy Williams drenched in battery acid, a baritone crooner who came up as the heartthrob singer of the Walker Brothers, none brothers nor real last name Walker. Sun-soaked Californian boys, they headed to England in the mid-60's and became overnight sensations, with a fanclub bigger than the Beatles in 1966.

Scott had a lovely voice, the kind of big thing you'd hear in variety shows and Vegas extravaganzas. The Walker Brothers' sound was the most uncool kind of pop, that lush music of middle-aged London housewives. They hit it big with "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore," a weeper about lost love. They had a rift with the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger once spitting on Scott. Being interviewed in 1976, Jagger, explaining his stagecraft, said, "I certainly don’t want to go on stage and just stand there like Scott Walker and be ever so pretentious."

Walker went solo in '67 and released four albums in quick succession, all named, simply, Scott, with a subsequent number designating each new iteration. Scott 4 was the last of this trek. The album's cover of a moody Walker looking downward, bathed in dark light, tells you all what to expect. The back has a track list and a telling quote from Albert Camus: "a man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened." Ever so pretentious.

Scott 4 starts with mariachi horns like a sample out of an Ennio Morricone theme song for a spaghetti western. Scott bellows, "Anybody seen a knight pass this way? I saw him playing chess with Death yesterday. His crusade was a search for God and they say it's been a long way to carry on,"

This is based on the Ingmar Bergman film The Seventh Seal, and Scott 4 is rife with this kind of cultural immersion. Remember, this is 1969, when hippiedom was at its zenith (or tyrannical reign) and stuff like European art-house cinema, existentialist lit and beat hipster style was all an older generation's idea of cool. This is strange artsy baroque pop at its best, but it may not be for you. It certainly wasn't for a lot of listeners. Scott 4 bombed, and Walker disappeared until he came back, transformed entirely. It makes sense audiences didn't respond. Lyrically, stuff is very dense and off-putting. Musically, it's not of its time at all. One exception is the absolutely funky bassline on the "The Old Man's Back Again (Dedicated to the Neo-Stalinist Regime)," a grim, poetic protest of the then-recent Operation Danube, aka the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia of 1968, complete with a scat singing outro. Paradoxically, the most accessible song on the album is "Duchess." Its tune is country-tinged, all guitar twang and shimmering strings. Interesting, the lyrics are some of the least coherent of Walker's early career, with impressionist gibberish that sounds beautiful on a sheer syllabic level: "With the Persian sea running through your veins/you shed your names with the seasons/ Still they all return with the last remains/ and they lay them before you like reasons." Perhaps one day it'll get its due on a singing competition show.

After years of hard living and seclusion, a renewed Scott returned with the Walker Brothers on the album Nite Flights in 1978. writing dark synthy, avant art-pop songs that wowed his contemporaries. In 1984, Walker released Climate of Hunter, critically acclaimed and reportedly Virgin Records' worst selling album of all time.

Walker didn't release another album for 11 years. Tilt (1995) was consciously avant-garde, completely a modernist composition far removed from anything resembling popular music. His old fans were incensed and confused. In 2006, Walker released The Drift, and ended his trilogy in 2012 with Bisch Bosch, containing a near-22 minute long song named, "SDSS1416+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)."

Throughout his career Walker rarely gave interviews, never reminisced, never bragged. His lack of self-promotion and ego was striking in an industry drowned in both. He was, by all accounts, a down-to-earth guy who just happened to make stuff far from it. Walker died on March 26, 2019 at the age of 76. He left behind the most unique path in modern recorded music, and influenced the likes of David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, and Radiohead. Scott 4 represents the bridge between the two selves, the teen-pop idol and the hidden, enigmatic composer. Ever so pretentious, ever so remarkable, Scott 4 is a grand excursion into something new.

PAIRS WELL WITH

Headphones Alone

Folding Laundry

Household Chores

Driving

PAIRS POORLY WITH

Dancing

Running

Gatherings

Conversation

Dinner