Stephin Merritt “Obscurities”

My name is Randolph (Randy) Russell, and more often than I can recall it’s been misspelled—I’ve seen Rusell, Russel, Rousel (and more), and Randolf, Randi (etc.)—so I’m thinking, if your name is Stephin Merritt, you’re pretty much resigned to never seeing your name spelled correctly. A sticker on the still- intact shrink-wrap says: “Rare & Unreleased tracks by The Magnetic Fields, The 6ths, and others”—which I assume are SM’s bands. (I know, pretty well, that Magnetic Fields record, 69 Love Songs—which I was really into until I was, like, overnight, sick of it.) I think when someone has an unusual, highly distinctive, or some might say, annoying, singing voice, it’s possible to very suddenly get sick of them. That’s okay, I still really value those kinds of singing voices. The cover photo is a slightly blurry, almost abstract photo of what looks like an octopus invasion. The back cover is a nice, b&w photo of a guy I assume is Merritt with his head in his hand, looking like he has a migraine. (Is he a migraine sufferer like Jeff Tweedy?) You might get a migraine if you try to read the song credits on back, which are almost the same color as the background. Fortunately, the inner sleeve also has lyrics and credits, as well as a large photo of what looks like a pretty dreamy children’s music room, c. late-nineties. My favorite song on the record, “When You’re Young and In Love,” has a terrific rhyme (carousal and Hell) that ends: “Never even knowing you’re in hell/When you’re young and in love”—which is a great sentiment. It goes on to say, “When you’re not (in love) it almost seems a crime not to go insane.” Which makes no sense, and therefore is, I guess, perfect.

Fleetwood Mac “Tango in the Night”

Now, I know better than to ever put the needle on ANY album released in 1987 (unless I already know it’s one of the very few good ones), but I thought I’d take a chance and against all odds this would be the underrated Fleetwood Mac record of all time. And it is quite remarkable, but not in the way I’d hoped; it is maybe the worst thing I’ve ever heard. How can this even exist? It’s the same lineup on those two classic F.Mac records—there is a picture of them on the back cover looking like they stepped out of the movie, St. Elmo’s Fire (except for Mick Fleetwood, who seems to have grown another foot and is wearing a hat that looks like it’s about to fly off to its home planet)—interesting, because the stoner cover painting of a tropical paradise also features a UFO, no bigger than half a Valium, indeed so small that the same pic reproduced on the CD cover would reduce the UFO to microscopic size.

After suffering through an eternity of songs—each one a punishing barrage of what I guess is the 1980s production style (which reminds me why I stopped listening to ANY popular music in the 1980s)—the last song was actually halfway catchy and kind of pretty, and so against my better judgment I’m putting it on again and taking a look at the lyrics sheet; after all, these are what must be interesting and decent people who wrote some great classic songs, and maybe there is something revealed in the lyrics about what they are going through here—whether it be insanity, drug impairment, or some kind of cultish trip we need to know about. Oh, no—that was a mistake. I won’t get through a second listening. Any record that makes me get up from my chair and remove it from the turntable isn’t likely to see daylight in this lifetime. Right now I’m regretting this brutal sound memory of the most horrible decade, culturally, I’ve yet endured.