Words and Guitar, Vol. 9: Minute To Win It
The ninth entry in a weekly column by Terence Cawley.
When I write about music for The Boston Globe, I have to keep my articles under a pretty strict word count, which has taught me the difficult but valuable skill of concise communication. While it’s been fun going in the complete opposite direction with the long, basically unedited rambles I’ve been writing for this column, there’s something to be said for keeping things tight, in music as well as in writing. Which brings us to this week’s theme:
Top 5 Songs Under One Minute
As always, “top” is strictly a matter of personal taste. I tried to avoid picking anything too obvious (sorry, “Her Majesty”), and also decided not to include any instrumental intros, interludes, or interstitials (though this and this came very close to making the cut, the former because it’s just plain awesome and the latter because it’s so hilariously boneheaded that it’s also kind of awesome). Mostly, what I’m trying to do here is highlight songs that feel like complete songs, and great ones at that, despite their extremely brief runtimes. Let’s get into it!
- De La Soul – “I Can Do Anything (Delacratic),” from 3 Feet High and Rising (1989)
So this is kind of breaking the no-interludes rule, but I wanted at least one representative from the strange world of hip-hop skits. Skits have mostly fallen out of favor in the rap world, and not without reason; they break up the flow of albums while bloating their runtimes, they don’t tend to have much replay value, and most of them just aren’t funny. Yet the skits on De La Soul’s game-changing debut album have an infectiously fun goofiness which enhances and complements the record’s eclectic, optimistic potpourri. My favorite is the beatboxing-and-non-sequiturs silliness of “I Can Do Anything (Delacratic).” Sadly, because 3 Feet High and Rising was made before samples had to be cleared and therefore is stuffed to the gills with them, the prohibitively high cost of clearing all those samples means that the album will probably never be available on Spotify. But you can still listen to the song here!
- The Shins – “Pam Berry,” from Wincing the Night Away (2007)
On the off chance that anyone who doesn’t know me personally is reading this: The Shins are my favorite band, and Wincing the Night Away is my all-time favorite album. This is largely, I admit, for sentimental reasons, as it came out when I was 13 and more or less got me into music. It still holds up every time I revisit it, though, and I never quite understood why wasn’t as widely acclaimed as The Shins’ first two albums. Not only is Wincing the Night Away more compositionally and thematically ambitious than Oh, Inverted World and Chutes Too Narrow (both of which, to be clear, I also love very much), it’s every bit as melodically memorable. But this column’s about brevity, and I could talk about The Shins forever, so: “Pam Berry”!
Given the formative age at which I heard it, “Pam Berry” may have been my first exposure to a sub-one-minute song. In a mere 57 seconds, and over little more than some ominous tremolo picking, James Mercer gives us a main character (“This lass/Some fifteen odd years”), action (“Is widely known/To have spat/In her teacher’s lap/And will not take it back”), and a denouement (“And now I see/How after all their crap/She rightfully came to that”). While mostly a lead-in to one of the album’s best songs, “Phantom Limb,” “Pam Berry” also stands alone as an ode to that evergreen indie rock protagonist: the defiant, alienated teenager.
- Black Flag – “Spray Paint,” from Damaged (1981)
No genre has produced more excellent sub-one-minute songs than hardcore; I could have just as easily picked, say, “Straight Edge” by Minor Threat, or any number of songs from subgenres like powerviolence and grindcore where tracks rarely exceed the two-minute mark (though I’m admittedly a novice in this realm, Violence Violence by Ceremony and Friends. Lovers. Favorites. by The Hirs Collective are two albums I would recommend to the curious). “Spray Paint” was one of the first, though, and arguably still one of the best. 34 seconds, and the assistance of Greg Ginn’s controlled-chaos noise guitar, is all an audibly foaming-at-the-mouth Henry Rollins needs to spit out three and a half verses and three repetitions of that shout-along chorus: “SPRAY PAINT THE WALLS!” It’s as pure a blast of raw, unfiltered aggression as has ever been put to tape- no wonder other bands have spent whole careers trying to bottle that same energy.
- Local H – “Manifest Density, Pt. 1,” from As Good As Dead (1996)
Short songs tend to pop up a lot on concept albums, where they’re put to good use amping up dramatic tension or easing the transition between sections. With the foreboding ring of Scott Lucas’ arpeggios and the wary drawl in his voice, the 51-second “Manifest Density, Pt. 1” perfectly sets the mood for As Good As Dead, a misanthropic ‘90s hard-rock masterpiece which wallows in the misery of growing up “a one-trick pony in a one-horse town.” The track ends suddenly with the line “And it will be back soon,” teasing the album’s grand finale, “Manifest Density, Pt. 2,” where the opening line from “Pt. 1,” “You’re on to something good/But I can’t believe it’s all that matters to you” morphs into the much more desperate “You’re on to something good/But it can’t be all that matters!”
Full disclosure: Local H are another one of my favorite bands, and As Good As Dead is another one of my all-time favorite albums. Anyone who knows me will understand how much self-control it took for me to wait nine columns to write about this group. Every music obsessive has that one band they’ve adopted as something of a personal cause, and Local H are mine; I will not rest until they have escaped the ‘90s-nostalgia purgatory of the Summerland tour to take their rightful place as not only one of the best bands of their era, but one of the only ones still releasing great music to this day. Check out their ferocious new album Lifers if you don’t believe me!
- Quarterbacks – “Knicks,” from Quarterbacks (2015)
Honestly, this list was mostly an excuse for me to gush about “Knicks.” It’s the kind of song you just can’t stop listening to, the sort of small miracle that justifies all the time people like me waste trying to find new music. Quarterbacks released one album of short-and-sweet twee-punk which you can get as a pay-what-you-want download on Bandcamp, and while the whole thing’s a lot of fun, “Knicks” is far and away the best song they ever wrote. It’s kind of a shame that the band ended before getting to build on the potential they showed here, but then again, there’s something beautiful about the fact that they’ll forever be frozen in time, a snapshot of a moment in these kids’ lives.
The music to “Knicks” is so simple: just a basic chord progression strummed on an electric guitar while the drums and bass gently pound away before everything swells in volume for an inexplicably moving five-second crescendo and then stops entirely. It’s the lyrics that really make “Knicks” special, though they’re also incredibly simple. Basically, the protagonist’s friend is heartbroken, so they invite them over to hang out. Maybe they’ll watch the titular basketball team on mute while listening to records and drinking beer. Every little turn of phrase feels perfectly measured; I’m particularly fond of the pivot point in the line “Head over to Mobil/Pick out a sixer/Pretend you don’t miss her/Not anymore,” where it becomes clear why the singer is asking the friend to come over. The unassuming way the pronouns shift in the next verse (“How was your weekend?/Did you get a new boyfriend?”) is a nice touch, too. But it’s the final line that really kills me: “Why don’t you come over/Same time tomorrow/And every day after/Until you feel better?”
“Knicks” is a tender vignette, a dedication to the sort of small gesture of support friends do for each other all the time, but which is almost never memorialized in song. At its core is a genuinely valuable life lesson, one that feels particularly relevant given how many people are going through hard times right now: sometimes, the best thing you can do for someone you care about is just be there for them, for as long as they need it.
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Well, I don’t know if this column was actually any shorter than usual, but at least the Spotify playlist won’t take up too much of your time! Check that playlist out below, and I’ll see you here next week.