95 North. . . The Newspaper

Great music is like good conversation, it begins without beginning—as if you’ve been dropped smack-dab in the middle of an ongoing dialogue, having skipped all the boring niceties of “How are yous” and “Where ya’ froms.” It’s organic and fluid. When done properly, both music and conversation provide refuge from the dangers of normalcy. Fulfillment through sound, if you will. Let’s briefly explore the uniqueness of songs that seemingly begin at their musical zenith and lack a finite ending; or what we’ll call, “Escher Songs,” in tribute to the artist M.C. Escher whose work explored notions of infinity and illusion. One of the best examples is Bob Dylan’s “Changing of the Guard,” a song which opens as if it began yesterday. When you first push play on Street Legal the rational assumption is that you’ve had the volume turned off. The second assumption is that there’s been a horrible production error and the first 20 seconds have been accidentally spliced out. Instead of introducin...

I’ve been using the same toothpaste for the last 30 years. I’ve been showering the same way for as long as I can remember. I still enjoy the cereals of my childhood. I tie my shoes in the same order and with the same technique as I did when I was six. I am a creature of habit. Like all humans, I crave consistency and predictability. I like Jeff Lynne for the same reason I like Lebron James—both are the embodiment of certainty. When I shuffle through the Electric Light Orchestra catalogue, I know exactly what I’m getting. There are no surprises, and rarely ever any disappointments.  “Mission (A New World Record)” is the title song off ELO’s seminal album and another Jeff Lynne masterpiece. The opening bars could easily be mistaken as something off Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon . The intro lyrics are eerily spoken to the accompaniment of synthesizer chords and a passing siren. Lynne takes on the persona of a visitor from outer space who is describing his observations of...

By Abe Orabi As the story goes, Eric Clapton was once asked, “What is it like to be the greatest guitar player who ever lived?” His response, “I don’t know, you’ll have to ask Prince.” It’s a great one-liner. It’s also completely made up. Another urban legend spawned from the information cesspool now known as the internet. Yet, while the anecdote may be false the overarching premise is spot-on. Prince most definitely was (and is) one of the greatest guitar players to ever strike a chord.   Price: Rockin' in the free world For most of us, Prince’s musical persona was shrouded in extravagance and mystery. His fashion trends, music, and death all shared a common thread—unpredictability. Prince routinely abandoned convention in favor of the egregiously unconventional.   His birth-name (Prince Rogers Nelson) was truncated and changed, then changed back, then truncated once more until all that remained was a symbol, difficult to draw and impossible to pronounce. Ultimat...

By: Abe Orabi I’m just gonna come out and say it: Jeff Lynne may be one of the most u nderrated, underappreciated, underpublicized musicians of all time. Let me go one st ep further and use the ‘G’ word. Jeff Lynne is a genius, period—and you can forget the qualifiers. Jeff Lynne, member of the Traveling Wilburys. Most underrated musician of the 70s? The criteria for defining genius is simple yet elusive. If you had to put it into words you might say that genius is the violent mastery of complexity; or, put another way, genius makes the intricate seem infantile. How ever you frame it, there is one universal truth: to know it, is to see it—and it only takes a moment. “Telephone Line” by Jeff Lynne is one of those defining moments of genius. It is both tantalizing and deeply satisfying on a physiological level. We are greeted with a long string of boops and beeps akin to C3PO, which ultimately coalesce into coherent synthesizer/piano chords. Lynne’s voice comes throu...