• Rating:
«Boh!... Boh… Mah!... Mah... No! Pride and dignity... Dignity and pride... No! Pride... and... »
«Dignity... »
«Dignity... Dignity, bravo!
Eh... I don't care about dignity. I don't care if someone comes and asks me: "Do you want to change person, do you want to become someone else?" Do you know what I would answer? "Yeees, certainly".
What would I answer? »
«Yeees, certainly...» Ricomincio da tre. Dir. Massimo Troisi. 1981
Becoming someone else. But who?
They asked me this for the first time, at a job interview, one of those psychological motivational ones conducted in groups, amidst planning methods to sell defective copiers, handling unfaithful salespeople, and devising strategies to survive in unspecified forests after plane crashes.
I asked myself a similar question when, entering here, I had to choose a username.
«What would you like to write about?» I asked myself.
It had just been reprinted and was missing on DeBaser: X-Dreams by Annette Peacock.
«Good, then I will be Annette!»
So, here I am, after only (!) a little over a year, translating into writing the thought that made me DeBorn here among you.
One of the fundamental reasons why I love X-Dreams is the same that makes me unsuitable to review it: this album is musically light years away from me.
In fact, to categorize it, one would have to use labels such as fusion or jazz-rock, and if you wanted to place Annette Peacock in a conceptual map, you would find her close to jazz, electronics, avant-garde (even though, for me, she is a province to herself).
I, on the other hand, usually hang out in a little corner between singer-songwriter, Americana, and folk.
In short, for a “whine-rock” lover, falling in love with Annette was a totally unexpected and therefore extraordinary event. Because, of rock, Annette has more of the attitude and really nothing of the whine!
The story between us began in the most classic of ways, a friend acting as a go-between and a love-at-first-sight struck after just 20 seconds, when Annette presents her sarcastic pink business card, whispering to me «my mother never taught me how to cook» and then, with a high note, «that's why I'm so skinny».
My Mother Never Taught Me How To Cook, the song that opens the album, presents itself as a bildungsroman in funk sauce, where in an alternation of whispers and high notes, accelerations and tactical pauses, unfolds the story of a miseducation and its effects on the protagonist’s personality and “virtues,” ironically specified according to conformity/non-conformity to the main “male user requirements”:
I’m not big in the kitchen, I’m not big at cleaning
[…]
But I’m a fantastic ride
Just to clarify her placement within the “dualism of Ferribotte”.
The obstacle course for self-esteem described in the song begins with the family and ends with meeting men.
And I’ve had men say, «Hey babe, your love is the greatest show on earth, and hey baby, I’m your man with the perfect plan and I’ll give you everything your heart desires, […], hey baby, I want to suck your honey, I wanna cop your conception, take your energy, absorb your vibe, preach your philosophy, I wanna become you, I want you and I want you to die so I can be you. Hey, come over here and give your sweet vampire some love. I’m your man. Come over here and pay your landlord some dues. And hey babe that’s what I call love and that’s what I call a relationship—-now do you want to get it on?»
The song closes with a sax and an unexpected happy ending, where a hard-earned awareness of one's value proves an effective antidote against toxic relationships
And I say, «Hey man, my destiny’s not to serve. I’m a woman. My destiny is to create.»
Musically, My Mother Never Taught Me How To Cook is surprising: a free-form song performed anarchistically in which nothing is where you expect it to be, a strange syncretic object straddling different genres. Lyrically, it is characterized by deliberately provocative language and content defused, in their potentially disturbing effect, only by the great personality and proud demeanor of its performer.
It's 1974 when Annette Peacock begins recording X-Dreams, she has divorced her second husband, jazz musician Paul Bley (the first, whose surname she retained, had been bassist Gary Peacock) and moved to Europe. Two years earlier, she had released for RCA her solo debut I’m the One, which had earned her the admiration of labelmate David Bowie. The White Duke had proposed a collaboration; Annette had declined but accepted the offer to use his recording studio in London free of charge.
In the UK, it would take 4 years and 22 musicians to complete this work, among them leading names in the English jazz and rock scene such as Mick Ronson, Bill Bruford, Chris Spedding, Peter Lemer, Jim Mullen, Brian Godding.
Unlike previous albums, in X-Dreams, Annette does not play; she “limits herself” to composing all the tracks (except for one cover), singing them, and producing them (for the record, the production could have been by Brian Eno if Annette hadn't declined this other kind offer as well).
The inspiration for the album is declared right from the Title, in that X which refers to the double chromosome that makes us splendid and at the same time condemns us to monthly hormonal swings. At the center, the complexity of dynamics in relationships between the sexes and the ambivalence of an extraordinarily gifted and independent woman’s feelings towards men.
The first side, the most beautiful but also the hardest towards the "poor little men," in addition to the already mentioned opening track contains the other most representative piece of the album, Real & Defined Androgens: about 11 minutes of erotic tension. On a repetitive harmonic carpet, daring instrumental improvisations and an obsessive rhythm accompany Annette's spoken word, who with a low, detached but sensual voice and crude, realistic language, describes a man masturbating and his fantasies.
And oiling his machine he works it... hard...
Rides himself to foam...
As the narrative progresses, one gets the feeling that the volume gradually increases while the solos become increasingly complex, all contributing to give the impression of a growing excitement.
The scene of autoeroticism becomes a symbol of a male's escape into cold sex with neither contact nor intimacy, where the woman is just a shell onto which to project his fantasies
A magazine in the other hand betrays the airbrushed dream of perfection
A connection which demands that the soul of femininity
Supplant itself into the shеll which offers itself to the fancy
But more than a sociological critique of the objectified woman, the aim seems to be the depiction of male discomfort in relating to the complexity of the feminine.
After all the tension, one gladly surrenders to the sound of the saxophone that dominates the beautiful Dear Bela. In a night atmosphere, the theme of the vampire lover from the end of My Mama Never Taught Me How to Cook returns. Here, according to some, Annette's singing takes on "a Billie Holiday pose"... Well!
Ignoring the fact that I believe Billie Holiday has been unjustly invoked for every jazz (and non-jazz) singer who has taken the stage from '59 to today (a bit like Joni Mitchell for every girl who picked up a guitar), the comparison, though in my opinion musically somewhat off, seemed nonetheless interesting as emblematic of the contrast between two antithetical female approaches to relationships (justified in part also by the different eras).
One of the first songs I heard sung by Lady Day, and one I tend to associate with her, is My Man. In my mind, My Man is the friend who keeps you up all night describing how despicable her man is and how much he makes her suffer. And when you, at five in the morning, between sleep and wakefulness, are convinced she's going to say: «I've decided, I'm leaving him», she comes out, like Billie, with «but I love him». Then you, forgetful of all the times you've preached understanding and empathy, of the horror you feel in front of violence or the fact that you've loved her since kindergarten, would just want to beat her savagely like Alberto Sordi does with Monica Vitti, in the final scene of Amore mio aiutami.
Well, for me, Dear Bela, but the entire album, is the antithesis of My Man. Annette is not willing to endure or justify anything in the name of a misunderstood feeling. She knows that vampires, tormentors never truly act out of love, although they often claim or are convinced they do.
And is it love you feel at all?
Or is it the fear that makes you so mean to me baby?
Or is it the hate that gets you off?
A long guitar moan welcomes us on side B, sweeter and languid, where the strong woman from the beginning of the record surrenders (though still fearful of losing herself) to love.
Among the titles on the second side, the only cover stands out. As in the first album, here too Annette chooses to remake an Elvis hit, Don't Be Cruel. Made unrecognizable by the Peacock-Ronson treatment, the track, consistent with the unresolved spirit of the album towards men, sits halfway between homage and desecration of a masculinity emblem (Elvis, the Pelvis).
I won’t say anything about the other songs except that they are all worth your time. I will only note that the album closes with a track titled Questions. Because, let’s admit it, there's nothing more feminine than asking questions on questions (often obsessive) about relationships.
Explicit, ironic, creative, bold, shameless, provocative, strong, sensual but also delicate, romantic, sweet. Ultimately, irredeemably “Female.”
Who wouldn't want to be Annette?
Loading comments slowly
