Wednesday, September 03, 2003

A couple of musical comments, apropos of nothing:

I've been listening to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band a lot lately, for some reason...and the two songs I'm getting the biggest charge from are McCartney's "Fixing A Hole" and Harrison's "Within You Without You". Of course, I've grooved on these songs, and all the others in varying degrees, for many years...but "Hole", especially, is one of the lower profile cuts on that landmark album, so it's odd that it's jumping out at me right now. While listening to it, from its prissy harpsichordish intro to it's jazzy, shuffling tempo and it's wonderful harmonies, two things came to mind: one, I'll bet if you asked him Brian Wilson would cite this as one of his favorite tracks...and two, the actual sound and arrangement of the song presages many of the cuts from McCartney's 1971 solo record Ram. "Hole" could have fit on Ram quite nicely. Hell, it would have raised the quality of that uneven record, no doubt. Harrison's mystical opus always gives me a charge in the instrumental middle section, where tablas drone and percussion is percussed and the sitar chimes while swirling strings dart in and around, intricately carrying the melody in front of all the Eastern trappings. One of the finest moments, in my opinion, on that album.

Also, I like the Pharrell Williams song "Frontin". Nice old-school R&B. But is there a law in hip-hop land that states that P. Diddy and Jay-Z have to be on everything?

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