Word: listening
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...sweat. The sweat that salts the beers and the crowd sucks in every guitar lick. Yes, yes, yes, they want more. They are jumping and rocking their seats, pounding the table and singing out of key, and they don't want to do anything in the world but listen to this song...
Consider: the album is ostensibly a story, a kind of opera, like "Sergeant Pepper." Everything sounds happy and clean and pure and good, but listen to what they're saying and the heavy drug overtones come through unmistakably. On "Kinda Looks Like Christmas," for example...
Sorry. The album does tell the story of Snoopy fighting the Red Baron at the climax of World War I, but we stopped following it somewhere. You've heard it before, and you don't care. Listen to the great sound effects: whole squadrons of fighter planes taking off overhead, artillery shells bursting, Snoopy keeping warm behind the lines with the German frauleins (thanks to Donna Summer here), great aerial dogfights. Like Sensurround, only smaller. And quieter...
Inspiring. We all know Bing is dead. It's hard to listen to the music of a dead man, especially because on this album, he sounds so alive, just like he almost did when he was alive. He could be standing right next to you. Same crooning voice, sincerely telling you to "do drugs"--which you hear in the background if you play the cut "When You Trim Your Christmas Tree" super loud and with the bass turned down...
...have to listen carefully to get the Jesus symbolism, but it's there. "Ave Maria" is a highly veiled reference to Mary. "The Day That Love Began" refers to a manger in Bethlehem that sounds suspiciously like the one Jesus rented for his debut. And there are angels doing background vocals like so many divine Pips. Wonder's own cuts at the beginning and end are good. The rest of the album sucks...