Oh yeah, here’s Mars doing “Puerto Rican Ghost” off of No New York. Brian Eno produced. You probably won’t like it. You probably really really won’t like it, even. There’s only two kinds of music, Duke Ellington said. I’m not sure where this fits in. I know it can clear a room, except for a few weirdos. My kind of people, those weirdos.
And here’s “Tunnel”, also from No New York. I think this used to be my favorite cut on the record back in the day. Who knows how many people I tormented with it at maximum volume. I recall playing it one Halloween and some tiny trick or treaters wouldn’t come to the door. I turned it off. Three and a half decades later it’s still a crazily imaginative piece of music (or “music”), the aural sensation of a hurtling subway is pretty incredible. That had to be Brian Eno creating that sound, knowing what buttons to press and levers to push to get that feel, like George Martin assembling “Tomorrow Never Knows” or Teo Macero editing Bitches Brew from an unholy mess of jam sessions. Back in the late ’70’s and even into the ’80’s “Tunnel” sounded stunningly alien, even scary, but I guess all the crazed electro creations of the past couple decades have sunk in and now this thoroughly analog thing sounds a little more conventional. A little more. As it spins it forms itself into a groove in my head. I can imagine people dancing to it. Weird people, yeah, but weird people dancing. Which is the title of an essay if I ever heard one. Not this one, though, but one full of weird people dancing. What a sight they make.
Brick's Picks 