Johnny Dowd - A Drunkard's Masterpiece (listen) Wow. How come nobody before has told me how weird Johnny Dowd is? This thing is Captain Beefheart abrasive, Christmas tree dazzling, Vulcan chess complex. It's going to take some time to wrap my head around it, really. It's kind of a perfect thing to listen to on Bloomsday, since taking on some Joyce seems even more forced right now than taking on some Joyce any other time would be. And I like Joyce, but my reading him is always forced and usually quickly abandoned. This record is dense enough to bear that resemblance. More on this later, but here is a taste.
Prince - Lovesexy (listen) I never listen to Prince. I'm not sure what about the Johnny Dowd album made me want to listen to Prince. Nothing really against Prince, but he's someone I feel has gotten enough of my time. I can't remember the last time I listened to a Prince album not in a review capacity. Lovesexy is genius and insipid at the same time. Maybe it is a sound architectural decision to make this one track; as a tableau, it is impressive, but the individual tracks fall apart on their own. It would be like seeing one flimsy float going down the road instead of a rag tag parade.
Miles Davis - Tutu (listen) But if we are talking pop ideas taken down rabbit holes, one would be remiss to not bring up Miles' bland-n-weird records in the 80's. I remembered his super smooth Michael Jackson and Cyndi Lauper remakes, but I'd forgotten he covered electropop intelligentsia touchstone group Scritti Politti's "Perfect Way."
Happy Bloomsday, everybody!
Prince records always wipe me out, whether or not they're any "good." I have no idea whether or not this applies to "Lovesexy," one of three of his 80's records I haven't heard, but often his mixture of the brilliant and insipid produces some sort of sublime madness (in me, I think, maybe not in him - I don't dare speculate about Prince's psychology.)
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