Isley Brothers' 'Go For Your Guns' and cultural ubiquity

No. 1264: Isley Brothers - Go For Your Guns

The Isley Brothers, who have been making music for six decades(!) have achieved something near cultural ubiquity. Their music has been licensed a lot—in TV, movies, commercials and so on—which has made them a constant presence in popular culture even long after those individual songs’ moments. “Shout” is maybe the biggest one, played at every wedding in America for the past 50 years. “It’s Your Thing” is another big one, funky as hell and still used in detergent commercials despite its message of sexual liberation. And then there’s “That Lady”, as well as “Between the Sheets,” which you know if you’ve heard Notorious B.I.G.’s “Big Poppa” (or Jay-Z’s “Ignorant Shit,” or so on). Hip-hop is a big reason why the Isleys’ music remains part of the culture, but so is Madison Avenue. It’s complicated, maybe? But also when you write songs that enduring, well, they have a tendency to, you know, endure… 

Go For Your Guns has another one of those songs: “Footsteps in the Dark.” It’s also been sampled a lot, most famously in Ice Cube’s “Today Was a Good Day.” Its beat was also used in Thundercat’s “Them Changes,” and almost certainly in a bunch of other stuff. I’m not motivated enough to check Whosampled, but I know it doesn’t end there. And it makes sense—its slow, melancholy groove seems custom-fit for some g-funk. But it’s far from the only standout here. In fact, the album on the whole is wall-to-wall grooves. Four out of its seven songs are two-parters, which essentially means that they’re half pop song and half extended funk jam. And that fucking rules, especially on the wilder funk-rock freakouts like “The Pride” and “Climbing Up the Ladder.” They’re cookin’. (Also that cover art? Amazing. That looks like a show I want to see.) 

This is the first Isley Brothers album I’ve bought on vinyl, and so far the only one though I have a lot on my Discogs wantlist. I assume I’ll just find them in the wild though that hasn’t actually happened, other than once or twice. (Why I didn’t buy that one or two at the time? I dunno.) But I was pretty heavily getting into the Isleys during the pandemic along with about a hundred other artists, so I wrote up a little beginner’s guide for Treble in addition to doing my own deeper dives. They released great music in the ‘60s and ‘80s, but at a minimum, every album they released in the ‘70s is worth listening to, and about 80 percent of them are great. So yeah, I guess I should get on that. Rating: 9.4

No. 1265: Fred Neil - Fred Neil

On the note of songs you almost certainly know, Fred Neil’s written one of those: “Everybody’s Talking.” Granted, you might not know his version but rather the recording by Harry Nilsson, as heard in Midnight Cowboy. You also might know “That’s the Bag I’m In,” or some version of it, which was uh….covered?....by Ty Segall. (It’s loud and sloppy and the lyrics are only kinda-sorta there, but sure, it counts.) But nonetheless, there’s a reason people cover Neil’s songs: They’re fantastic. 

Neil didn’t release that much music in his lifetime—just four albums, one as part of a duo, Martin & Neil, and one called Sessions that’s not so much a proper album as a kind of in-studio jam session (but it’s great, regardless). But his self-titled album is his best known and most celebrated record, simply because it has 10 fantastic songs on it, including the two above. It also includes “The Dolphins,” a shimmering and gorgeous folk opener, as well as “Cynicrustpetefredjohn Raga,” which is kind of a rollicking folk-raga jam with harmonica. Weird but awesome. And everything in between is fantastic—bluesy, soulful, driven by Neil’s deep and powerful voice. It’s one of the best albums of the ‘60s that never achieved the fame of records by the likes of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, but is every bit as good.

Not long after this record he essentially retired from music. He didn’t want to tour and he spent the rest of his life working in dolphin preservation, as “The Dolphins” maybe sort of clued at. Fascinating dude. Great record. Rating: 9.4

No. 1266: Jose Mauro - Obnoxius

I’m a big fan of Brazilian music, and I can probably draw that interest back to Stereolab. Their late ‘90s records borrowed heavily from bossa nova greats like Jobim (but with post-rock arrangements and lots of electronic squiggles), which led me to listening to his music, and then tropicalia and then a lot of Jorge Ben, and well, it just kept going. Jose Mauro has a much stranger legacy than artists like Ben or Jobim. He died earlier this year, which made some of this story resurface, but I’ll retell it for those who might have missed it: Mauro released some music in the 1970s, and then just sort of disappeared. After five decades, people assumed he was dead, possibly a victim of the military junta in Brazil, or possibly from a motorcycle accident. So Far Out reissued this album (they do great work, btw) with the assumption that he had died. But it turns out he was still alive, living a life out of the public eye in Rio, and thus Far Out tracked him down in the hopes that he might be able to perform in conjunction with the reissues. (He declined because of symptoms of Parkinson’s preventing him from being able to do so, though he said if his health had permitted, he would have.) 

It’s fascinating how that kind of legend grows. There have been other artists like that, presumed dead, only to resurface later. Rodriguez was another famous one (and he also died recently, which sort of reinforces how unfortunate it is that so many amazing artists go nearly entirely undiscovered for most of their lifetimes). Still, this late in life rediscovery of Mauro was a blessing for those who love this kind of music, which is in the vein of songwriters like Chico Buarque or Caetano Veloso. It’s stunning music, beautiful and intricate, sometimes intense and powerful. The leadoff title track is one such song, opening with layers of horns that sound curiously like something from a big band record in the ‘40s, but it quickly turns into a fiery, orchestral MPB song. 

Naturally, some professional crate diggers found Mauro’s music before the rest of us, so some of the material, like “Apocalipse,” might sound oddly familiar out of context. But that song was sampled by Madlib, who along with his brother Oh No, introduced me to a lot of obscure music from international archives without me realizing it. God bless the beatmakers. Rating: 9.2

No. 1267: Sandy Bull - Fantasias for Guitar and Banjo

American primitivism is one of those areas of music where I have a lot of interest but I admit that my knowledge could use some fleshing out. I know the key figures, like John Fahey and Leo Kottke and Robbie Basho (who’s great but I can’t say I love it when he sings). And I’ve gotten into some more recent artists like Steve Gunn and William Tyler. Though the space between those is mostly unknown to me, so in my expanding of ‘60s-era records in my library I decided to pick up this Sandy Bull record, which I discovered on some AmPri deep dive. (Is that an abbreviation? Should it be? Probably not. Please ignore.) 

Now, this is a weird record. It’s great record. But you know, weird. As I mentioned recently, ‘60s era records prior to Revolver and Pet Sounds had a tendency to just be a bunch of songs recorded together without an overarching concept or unifying thread, though for some reason it worked out a lot better in jazz than rock. (Probably because as early as the ‘50s, jazz records were already pretty cohesive in terms of their content, particularly under the right bandleader.) Given that this is instrumental folk music, I’m not sure what rules apply, but here’s how it breaks down: One side-long psychedelic raga, three classical solo pieces played on banjo, and then a 10-minute rockabilly jam session. Does it make sense? Kinda, but it’s all fantastic, so it sort of doesn’t matter.

The banjo pieces are what you might call the slightest material here. They’re good, but shorter, like his take on Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana Fantasy”, which if the name doesn’t ring a bell, you’d almost certainly recognize if you heard it. (Though the composer, like Wagner, had some unfortunate Nazi connections—such is the complicated nature of early 20th century culture!) The closer, “Gospel Tune,” is basically a full band rockabilly jam sesh, kinda like Duane Eddy or someone like that, lots of tremolo effects and animated instrumentation. But the real treat is “Blend,” a 21-minute side A piece that essentially ascends into a higher psychedelic realm with its droning folk-raga arrangement. Listening to this, you can hear where an artist like Six Organs of Admittance took influence, not to mention various other contemporary psych and folk artists. (Notably, he shared an apartment in the ‘60s with Egyptian artist Hamza El Din, which is a fun fact and maybe worth exploring further.) Amazing piece and overall great record, however unusual the sequencing.

Apparently, according to Discogs, this is an “unofficial release.” It’s been repressed by a couple of European labels that pick up albums that have entered the public domain and make them available again (this has become pretty common of late, and some people object, since the sound quality isn’t always great, but this one works just fine for me). This is neither here nor there—there’s no “official” pressing that’s been available for over a decade, so this works just fine for my purposes. Rating: 9.2

No. 1268: Nag - Observer

If you were to prompt me to tell you where Nag were from, without any prior information, my first instinct would be to say somewhere like Berlin or Manchester. Somewhere with gloomy weather and a historical record of bands that make top-notch goth and punk music. Which Nag absolutely does—perhaps a little more punk than goth, but definitely dark, plenty gloomy and with an undeniably vampiric sensibility. 

But nope, they’re from Atlanta. That’s not necessarily a big shock—Atlanta’s produced tons of great bands over the years, but Nag has such a specific vintage deathrock sound, and a singer whose affectations lean toward the Brit-esque, that it’s not the first locale that comes to mind. Nonetheless, Observer’s a fantastic album, of a piece with the many goth-leaning punk records I started snatching up throughout the pandemic era (see also: Poison Ruin), with most of its songs running about 90 seconds apiece. I picked this up from a recommendation on Bandcamp’s always fantastic monthly punk column, which is a recurring article I read every month, no matter what pretty much, and it rarely leads me astray. You haven’t seen the last of its rewards in this newsletter/blog/whatever. Rating: 8.9

No. 1269: Jackie McLean - Destination Out!

There’s a whole canon of Blue Note Records in the mid-’60s—roughly 1963 to 1966, but with a particular concentration in 1964—that comprise sets of avant garde jazz made more eerily cool through the vibraphone of Bobby Hutcherson. This era of far-out, ambient-ish druggy lounge jazz is some of my favorite music ever, and it includes records like Eric Dolphy’s Out to Lunch!, Grachan Moncur III’s Evolution and, of course, Bobby Hutcherson’s Dialogue.

Jackie McLean’s Destination Out! is one of those records, released in—you guessed it!—1964, it features a similar lineup as on Evolution (McLean on sax, Moncur on trombone, Hutcherson on vibes), and it’s structured similarly as well, with four long-ish pieces. I won’t go too deep into this one, but basically if the haunted suspense of a vibraphone mallet rattling is your idea of how to start a record, then you’ll love this. It’s mine and I do, and now I realize there’s a lot more records from this era with similar lineups of musicians that I need to hear. Rating: 9.2

No. 1270: Thelonious Monk - Solo Monk

I had to double check to see if this was the first Thelonious Monk album I bought. It’s not. When you get this far north of 1,000 records you have to rely on your own bookkeeping to clear that up. Funny thing: I basically started this whole thing because I was able to remember when and where and how I ended up with every record that I have. Now? Well, I still remember most of it, but it’s a bit complicated.

That said, I do remember why and how I got into this specific album. In the spring of 2020 right when pandemic was really starting to reach tedium, maybe about a month or two after it was just kind of scary, I spent a significant chunk of my week just listening to albums I never had before. I already knew and loved the music of Thelonious Monk, but for one reason or another I hadn’t heard Solo Monk, which is one of his acclaimed records from his prolific streak in the ‘60s. And uh, yeah, this is amazing.

It’s also exactly what it says it is: Thelonious Monk, performing solo, on piano. No bassists or drummers, no saxophone or trumpet. Just Monk playing largely old-timey stride piano style versions of standards and originals. And some of them, like “Ruby My Dear” and “Sweet and Lovely,” also appear on other albums in much different form. What makes these versions so great is the playful flourishes that Monk adds in, the color and character he gives them through making the piano speak for itself. As a performer, Monk had a tendency to pretty much never play things straight, and he certainly doesn’t here, though it’s not as offbeat and aggressive as his playing could be on his wilder recordings. This is a bit more subdued, but nonetheless maintains his stamp on it. Listening to a record like this, where it’s just him, doing his thing, you really get a sense of how amazing a musician he was. Rating: 9.3