Pure Punk Picks
Fa Ce La – The Feelies
This song screams newness to me, it screams creativity. It screams pushing a shopping cart too briskly down an aisle with your hair on fire as robots from Outer Space descend and dissect delectable parts of your body. You fend them off for the most part, feeling confident you’ll get through your task and that your coupons will have not expired, will remain intact. But the music also urges you, back safe at home, to stick a knife into your toaster oven, causing sparks while you dance around the kitchen, like the flames are dancing now, causing a wild, electrical fire.
This song screams of breaking out of the current, restrictive mold society has placed upon you.
It also, screams brevity of artistic statement. It screams art but I am lucky enough, to place my hand across it’s mouth when it yells this.
It screams about a point, that I look back upon, in my life when I was longing, lusting for something that gave me some true meaning. And this wasn’t when I was a teenager but more like eight years old. Life was like my television then, it was black and white, it was colorless and dreary.
And then music and art and later, literature entered my life and suddenly, life was vibrant, colorful and exciting. And this song reflects that feeling to me.
France is always connected with art to me and probably, many others. So just reciting French words seem to suggest say, the French Impressionists. Or maybe eating croissants while sipping absinthe in a Parisian cafe, discussing existentialism.
This song has French sounding words but I could find no translation. It also, sounds like the Otis Redding song “Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa (sad song). Plus, the Talking Heads song “Psycho KIller” when the lyrics quote that Otis Redding Song.
So, I guess I’m suggesting to you to put Otis Redding, the Talking Heads, everyone who ever served in the French Foreign Legion or anyone who ever played the French Horn- just corral them all up, together, and answer, then, the question that they might most want to know- “Why did Slimedog drag us into his review? Can you tell us? What is the meaning of this? And what is the meaning of life?”
But never mind that, I have no time for any forthcoming responses- we have greater gooses to cook, more chickens to bash, more pretentious French phrases to emit from our vocal accoutrements.
This song rocks like a mind that is wind too tight, like a clock whose hands are moving forwards and backwards at the same time. Like someone going downwards on the upwards escalator at the airport terminal as the flight you booked comes crashing into the glass barriers off the runway, but just on time!
Lots of The Modern Lovers here, I think- a dash of Iggy, too. With the minimal, sustained guitar lines we have The Velvet Underground, look towards that bands’ “Rock’N’Roll” or their great tune, “I Heard Her Call My Name.”
This song explodes with the energy of punk and expands into nerd rock that was, perhaps, sparked by The Modern Lovers and Talking Heads, that continued, perhaps, onwards with The Violent Femmes.
The pure, manic excitement of the first guitar note thrust forwards along with the energy, the rhythm of what sounds like, the two coconuts clucked together lay the foundation of a lot of the music that was to follow.
It may have been punk to begin with but was soon transformed into indi- Please think of The Pixies when you hear that term and not the countless, whimpering fools that inhabit indi, nowadays.
I feel this song energize and ignites all that is pure and true and creative, that is bright and exciting and right- not only in music but colors our, sometimes, black and white life.
And if I could put Otis, Talking Heads, Jean Paul Satre and Claude Monet in the same room. I’m fairly certain they would all agree with me.
Or probably, I guess, more likely they’d say, “Slimedog, why are you dragging us all into this?”
(Slimedog)
