Speedfreaks - Naked City (1990) What it would be like to be trapped in a room adjacent to John Zorn, Yamatsuka Eye and a transistor radio while the two fight over the dial. Naked City are avant-jazz short song heroes if you have the stomach for them. Their aptly named Torture Garden album from which this is taken, has songs as short as 8 seconds, with the longest song topping out at one minute fourteen seconds. A compilation of hardcore miniatures, as Zorn calls it. John Zorn is the project’s ringleader, a man with such a checkered and impossibly strange musical career that I can’t even begin to summarize it. Shortsongs guest performer Fred Frith played bass for them. Overall, most of Naked City’s output is too stomach-churning for my tastes, but then I like shit like this. Look them up. If you want. Make your own decisions. Live your own lives.
Moisture - The Residents (1980)
Figured it was about time that we once again paid tribute to our patron saints The Residents and The Commercial Album.
We’ve posted from this well of one minute wonders before, but it’s such a monument in short song history, we’d be amiss if we didn’t pepper as many of these tunes as possible throughout the time we have this blog-a-thon going.
So here is Moisture, m’dears. Prepare yourselves for a guitar solo like no other from Henry Cow alumnus Fred Frith, along with many other aural goodies.
This June, The Berkley Art Museum is holding a video retrospective of all The Residents work, including their outstandingly odd and brilliant One Minute Movies, which contains a music video for Moisture. They’ll also be giving an exclusive performance in the gallery.
If anyone wishes to provide the funds to send the entire iloveshortsongs staff out to CA to be ambassadors to the showing in the name of tiny tuneage, just reblog with the dollar amount you wish to contribute.
Or at least just recommend us. It’s Tumblr Tuesday!
Perfect Love - The Residents (1980)
Everybody’s favorite eyeball buddies have a kind of hate/hate relationship with pop music. In 1976, they released what could possibly be deemed the first punk record, a mangled and distorted version of (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction. Also in ‘76, they released The Third Reich N’ Roll, an album as devious and hellish as its title suggests. More pop songs from the 50s, 60s and 70s warped and twisted until nearly unintelligible — yet fascinating to listen to.
So time marches on and the Rez form some very compelling theories about pop music. They posited that essentially every pop song, when distilled of all its unnecessary baggage, such as repeated choruses and bridges, has about one minute of actual content to its name.
With that in mind, they set about writing and recording the wondrous Commercial Album. With help from avant-pop luminaries such as Andy Partridge, Lene Lovich and Fred Frith, they formed their very own Top 40 of one minute compositions.
Uncle Willie’s Highly Opinionated Guide To The Residents had this to say of the tunes:
Due to the self-imposed time limitations, the lyrics for each song usually consist of no more than two to three sentences and last about thirty seconds. In spite of this economy of words, bright, bizarre, disturbing, languid, sad, ethereal, and silly images abound. The ability to create such complete and compelling images with so few words is an extraordinary talent indeed.
Another innovation that accompanied the release of the album was the creation of One Minute Movies. The collaboration with filmmaker Graeme Whifler was some of the earliest programming on a fledgling MTV and is now part of the film/video collection at the MoMA in New York City.
