documents - Joan Maeda's Scritticizm

Songs To Remember

Asylums In Jerusalem
This bouncy pop-ska hybrid is immediately likable, and Green should get some kind of poetry fellowship for rhyming "hospital" with "popsicle".

A Slow Soul
A saxy mood piece that can be quite cathartic; one of my personal favorites. Good for late-night black-coffee bliss-of-solitude listening.

Lions After Slumber
Catalogs the items that make up his world, from "My diplomacy, my security, my hope and my ice cream" to "My bottle and my drugs". Nearly six minutes in length, it is very self-indulgent, but never boring. Green in a nutshell.

Faithless
A deliciously off-kilter ballad with weird electronic vox effects. Is Green heterogeneous, or a hetero genius? Probably both.

Sex
Over a boppy synth rhythm, Green discusses his favorite leisure activity, using not four-letter words but four-syllable words (like "indiscretion"). In the background, Lorenza, Mae, and Jackie chant "sex, sex, sex" like giddy cheerleaders. Not only is this song completely entertaining, it isn't the least bit cheesy. Quite an accomplishment.

Rock-A-Boy Blue
On selling out: "Don't they wanna make the money / Don't they wanna be the Beatles?" Green always was too eccentric to fit in with the mainstream pop world, and he knew it even back then. But he couldn't resist the temptation. And we got Cupid & Psyche '85 out of it -- not a bad deal.

Gettin', Havin' & Holdin'
A charmingly manic-depressive contemplation on love; it alludes lyrically to both Percy Sledge and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and sounds like a 2-tone ska band on quaaludes. Weird enough for you?

The Sweetest Girl
Green's best song outside of Cupid & Psyche, this one has all the earmarks of a classic Scritti ditty. The real subject of the song is Green himself, not the title character, but he's always more interesting talking about himself than talking about girls anyway. And when he wails, "The sickest group in all the world / How could they do this to me?" you really feel for him, poor self-obsessed thing.

Cupid & Psyche '85

The Word Girl
Would it be wrong to call this song a transcendental meditation? It's got a great mantra: "oh how your flesh and blood became the word." (much sexier than "om")

Small Talk
"Ooh baby it's so inconsequential / Everybody heard enough about your big potential" is about as close to an insult as Green ever gets. I wonder what he says to people who cut in front of him at the Versa-Teller, or who write bad reviews of his records

Absolute
The first few hundred times I listened to this song I didn't even notice the Absolut Vodka reference. Under layers of power-drive beats and complex synth arrangements, there lies a classic melody.

A Little Knowledge
Scritti's prettiest ballad by far, a worthy successor to "The Sweetest Girl". Lesser artists would have turned it into a sappy generic love lament. B.J. Nelson, whose attractive background vocals are an integral part of this album, shares the lead here.

Don't Work That Hard
Green makes the phrase "drowning in my teardrops" sound like a higher state of consciousness. He also pronounces "I submit for approval" in the most original way I've ever heard.

Flesh And Blood
Sets Ranking Ann's strident chanted vocals and feminist lyrics to the beat of "The Word Girl", making it a fitting answer to whatever Green was proposing in that song. An intriguing artistic foray as well as a totally cool song.

Perfect Way
Everybody's favorite Scritti Politti song. It used to be mine, but my mom ruined it by telling me she thought it sounded like Michael Jackson (as if!). "I got a perfect way to make the girls go crazy", a factual statement for Green, would sound obnoxious soming out of anybody else's mouth. Especially Jacko's.

Lover To Fall
Throughout the album, and particularly on this song, Green really seems to be getting off on the sound of his own voice. He sounds so happy about finding a new hermeneutic and a new paradigm, you can't help but share the joy.

Wood Beez
Scritti's theme song, if ever there was one. More infectious than Ebola, it boasts some of the album's best lines ("There's nothing I wouldn't do, including doing nothing"), and will get stuck in your head every time you hear someone end a sentence with "would be".

Hypnotize
Builds to several climaxes within the space of three and a half minutes, with Fairlights jingling, keyboards chiming, and Green's and B.J. Nelson's voices sliding breathlessly into and out of each other. This song exists in four different versions, all excellent. I wanna forget how to remember with you, Green!

Thanks, Joan!
Anyone care to give us your track-by-track thoughts on Provision or Anomie & Bonhomie?

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