PREFACE
Hey! I’ve missed you. I know you’re not tracking the exact days, times, and frequency of a free newsletter, but I have. I won’t tug the boat with too much self-flagellation, but know I’m constantly thinking about, planning, and reworking Definitive Answers in my mind. I’ve picked up a bit of work recently (still available for more if you want writing/one-person show coaching or audio editing!), and while it’s a HUGE relief, it has pushed the newsletter to the back seat. I’ve been under-organized while under-employed, and I’m crawling out of that hole toward habits that help me balance all I want to do.
I know the ideas—words and images and music—are what’s most important, but I think about the structure, accessibility, and clarity of What This Thing Even Is a lot. If you’ve got sections of Definitive Answers you particularly love (or don’t!), I’d love to hear that. If you have things to say about the function this newsletter serves in your life, why you read, or what keeps you coming back, you can always reply or email me at thisisdavemaher@gmail.com.
Zombie/Zombi 2 (1979), director: Lucio Fulci. I just love someone strapping scuba gear over their naked titties and thong.
I’m thinking about third albums.
A consistent theme of this newsletter has been, “I’m not performing live! This is a pillar of my sanity and identity, and I’m not doing it!” Granted, a lot of that’s from COVID, and taking it seriously. But recently, I’ve seen ways to start performing but still shied away from it.
I’m turning the corner by starting work on my third one-man show. And the fun & easy way to do that is research, which for me just means searching for inspiration, free writing, and doing little thought experiments.
So I’m looking at third albums, how artists/groups approached them, and how they fit into the artist’s body of work. I’ve thought about doing a series of one-at-a-time explorations here, but I don’t want to do a Sufjan Stevens style overcommitment. Right now, I’ve got a playlist of just under 40 third albums I find interesting for one reason or another. Themes are emerging.
Theme 1: Masterpieces. A lot of third albums are! OK Computer, Master of Puppets, The Moon & Antarctica. This isn’t particularly instructive for creative purposes, thought, since it’s impossible to pre-plan a masterpiece.
Theme 2: Perfection of the Formula. Seems similar to the masterpiece, but it’s more process-focused, so it represents more of an actual path to follow. Think the Ramones’ Rocket to Russia, the 1975’s A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, Prince’s Dirty Mind.
Theme 3: Overstuffed Double Albums. Your Wowee Zowees, Zen Arcades, Double Nickels on the Dimes. I find these charming, and certainly appealing from the perspective of following their lead. It’ll be interesting as I dig deeper into reviews and articles about all these records to see what organizing principles undergird the double albums, aside from throwing everything into the bag.
Theme 4: Course Corrections/Returns to Form. Beastie Boys’ Check Your Head is the standard here to me. First album is a down-the-middle, mainstream establishment of their frat boy party-rap characters. The second (Paul’s Boutique) is a well-respected excursion into the more experimental corners of the genre. For the third, they reigned in the experimental impulses but came out more mature and interesting for their time spent indulging those impulses.
Theme 5: Left Turn After a Left Turn. The opposite, or inverse, or converse (I can never tell which) of the Course Correction. Following up an experimental second album with another experiment. Liars’ Drum’s Not Dead is the gold standard for me here. Starting as an early aughts New York dance-punk band, they made their second album a dark, inaccessible concept album about witches, and critics hated it. For Drum’s, they tried another experiment: focus on drums, vocals, and a super clean guitar sound on an album with an even harder to parse concept than the witch album. Not a streamlined, accessibility-first followup, despite ending on a Top 50 Prettiest Song of All Time.
There are more themes, but I’ll leave you with these. Like I said, I’m in research mode, and I’m excited to share my process for the creation of a one-man show in this space, something I’ve not done before! So expect more Third Album Thoughts soon.
THIS IS MY PODCAST, THIS IS YOUR AFTERLIFE
Tiffany Topol’s debut album, Sophomore Effort, is bubbly, swooning, nostalgic pop. She has a full-on psychological epiphany on my show.
Content warning: seeing NSYNC live as a 14-year-old, sensory deprivation chamber, friend’s death, crying to Beyonce's Lemonade, how reliable is your memory?
Listen:
READ, WATCH, DO
The Hideout is a beloved Chicago venue. Mykele Deville is a beloved Chicago rapper, poet, and curator who worked at the Hideout. A couple weeks ago, he wrote on Instagram about his terrible experience working there, which gave way to scrutiny, discussion, and boycotts. Chicago music critic Leor Galil wrote “What the Hideout means to me now,” and it’s a good starting point with plenty of links if you’re interested in thinking through what it means for a scene to be truly inclusive.
Would you like to enlist in Comedy’s Crowd-Work Clip Civil War? I’ve got so many thoughts about this phenomenon, and I keep meaning to write them here. But rather than pressure myself to write a perfect distillation of those thoughts, I’ll point to Vulture’s survey of the trend. I might weigh in later, but if you’ve got thoughts in the meantime, I’d love to hear them!
MAY I PLAY YOU A SOUND?
Here is my living, breathing playlist of third albums, in rough order I would explore them in some kind of written or podcast series if I had the resources (time, energy, money, etc). Poke around, see if your favorites are there, find new favorites, quibble with my choices (I winnowed 100ish albums down to these 40ish).
And a bonus, De La Soul’s Buhloone Mindstate, because it’s not on streaming. This playlist is a bit out of order, but I had to include this record because it’s one of my favorite 3s.
Left,
DM