#some of them are out of order - so you have a random Resistance era song in the middle of Showbiz

[sunburnacoustic]

Ultimate study playlist

Someone's collected a bunch of Muse instrumental versions from across youtube and put them in a playlist!

[therainshow]

I made a Taylor Swift Music Education Lesson that covers each album, in order, and my favorite songs from said album. I included bits of each album’s prologue and background information on each album, plus my personal opinions on each. I made this for some coworkers that want to learn more about Taylor, feel free to look it over and pass it on to anyone you’re trying to convert someone into a Swiftie :) There is a Spotify link for a playlist I made that has all these songs. You can find that at the bottom :)

Welcome to your Taylor Swift Music Education Lesson. Please read carefully.

 For your education and enjoyment (hopefully), I have included a detailed track-list of all the songs on your Spotify playlist. These songs appear in order of album, beginning with Fearless and ending with reputation. I did not include Taylor’s debut album in this lesson. It’s a great album, but has a heavy country influence and was written when she was 14, so it is difficult to relate to and/or isolating to those who do not appreciate country music. Within each album, there is no specific order. As I introduce a new album, I provide you with a bit of background information to give you a more thorough understanding. This background information begins with a blurb taken directly from the prologue that Taylor wrote for said album. With each track title I have included my favorite lyric from that song. You may also see some asterisks with notes scattered throughout. I couldn’t resist. The songs I chose are either a) my favorite, b) a fan favorite, c) generally iconic in nature, or c) songs I think, or hope, you will like. My favorite song off each album is indicated with multiple exclamation points. Let’s begin.

 FEARLESS: “To me, “FEARLESS” is not the absence of fear. It’s not being completely unafraid. To me, FEARLESS is having fears. FEARLESS is having doubts. Lots of them. To me, FEARLESS is living in spite of those things that scare you to death.”  Fearless is Taylor’s second album and was released in the fall of 2008 when Taylor was 18. It is actually the most highly-awarded country album of all time. Fearless won Album of the Year at the 2010 Grammy’s when Taylor was 20 years old. Taylor is the youngest person to ever win that award. There are 13 tracks on this album, and 8 were written solely by Taylor. This album cemented me as a stan, and the songs saved my life in high school. I have Fearless tattooed on my back, and I truly believe that I wouldn’t be who I am today without this album. I’d probably be dead in a gutter somewhere. Joking, but seriously, high school was rough. Thank God for Tswift.

1.      Forever & Always!!!!!!!!!!!: “It rains in your bedroom when everything’s wrong. It rains when you’re here and it rains when you’re gone.”

2.      Fifteen: “Back then I swore I was gonna marry him someday, but I realized some bigger dreams of mine. And Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind, and we both cried. ‘Cause when you’re fifteen and somebody tells you they love you, you’re gonna believe them.” *Abigail was Taylor’s best friend in high school, and they’re still friends today.*

3.      Love Story: “This love is difficult, but it’s real. Don’t be afraid, we’ll make it out of this mess.” *This is Taylor’s first #1 song. It went #1 on both country and pop radio. She attributes her career to this song. She wrote the song in 20 minutes solo on her bedroom floor after an argument with her parents over a boy.*

4.      The Best Day: “I’m thirteen now and don’t know how my friends could be so mean. I come home crying and you hold me tight and grab the keys. And we drive and drive until we find a town far enough away, and we talk and window shop ‘til I’ve forgotten all their names. I don’t know who I’m gonna talk to now at school, but I know I’m laughing on the car ride home with you. Don’t know how long it’s gonna take to feel okay, but I know I had the best day with you today. *Taylor wrote this song for her mom.*

5.      Breathe: “People are people, and sometimes it doesn’t work out. Nothing we say is gonna save us from the fall-out.”

6.      Fearless: “We’re drivin’ down the road, I wonder if you know I’m tryin’ so hard not to get caught up now. But you’re just so cool running your hands through your hair, absent mindedly making me want you.”

7.      Tell Me Why: “Why do you have to make me feel small so you can feel whole inside? Why do you have to put down my dreams so you’re the only thing on my mind?”

 SPEAK NOW: “What you say might be too much for some people. Maybe it will come out all wrong and you'll stutter and you'll walk away embarrassed, wincing as you play it all back in your head. But I think the words you stop yourself from saying are the ones that will haunt you the longest. So say it to them. Or say it to yourself in the mirror. Say it in a letter you'll never send or in a book millions might read someday. I think you deserve to look back on your life without a chorus of resounding voices saying 'I could've, but it's too late now.' There is a time for silence. There is a time for waiting your turn. But if you know how you feel, and you so clearly know what you need to say, you'll know it. I don't think you should wait. I think you should speak now.” Speak Now is Taylor’s third album and was released in the fall of 2010 when Taylor was 20. There are 14 tracks, all written solely by Taylor. There are no co-writers on this record. After Taylor won AOTY for Fearless, many of her critics said that it was impossible that she carried her weight in those writing sessions. Basically, the songs on Fearless were so good that a lot of people didn’t believe that she actually wrote them. To prove them wrong, she decided to write the album entirely by herself. This album is the fan favorite, and is my second favorite. I feel like this album was way ahead of its time. Speak Now is the kind of album I’d expect a musician to write towards the end of his/her career once they stop caring about crafting the perfect song, and start making great music for the hell of it. Most of the songs on Speak Now are over 5 minutes in length with many clocking in over 6 minutes. Definitely not suited for radio. Taylor is known for painting stories in her lyrics, and I’d say Speak Now does that the best. I met Taylor during the Speak Now Era, the most lauded of eras amongst fans. To have seen the Speak Now concert is a huge deal in the Swiftie fandom. The concert was absolutely magical. If you don’t believe me, you’re welcome to come over and watch the live DVD. Most of the general public knows next to nothing about Speak Now because none of the songs really charted on radio. However, Speak Now is the first of her albums to sell a million or more copies in the first week (a pattern not broken thus far. #blessed). Speak Now Era was sort of the golden age because she had proved herself to be incredibly talented and cemented her place in the music industry, and yet her PR stunts were at a minimum. Nobody hated her yet, and she kind of went back under the radar despite being at her prime. It was downhill from there, but we were all oblivious to that fact. We were just so blissed out, we couldn’t see the impending doom on the horizon. I could honestly write an entire thesis on Speak Now. Anyway, it was a strange time, indeed.

8.      Mean: “You have pointed out my flaws again, as if I don’t already see them.” *Like I said above, the songs on Speak Now were not widely popular and didn’t chart on radio, with the exception of this one. ‘Mean’ won Country Song of the Year at the Grammy’s in 2012. Taylor wrote this song as a way to cope with relentless and over the top, mean-spirited criticism from a specific music critic named Bob Lefetsz. Suck it, Bob.

9.      Mine: “But we’ve got bills to pay, we’ve got nothin’ figured out. When it was hard to take, this is what I thought about.”

10.  Last Kiss: “How you’d kiss me when I was in the middle of sayin’ something, there’s not a day I don’t miss those rude interruptions.”

11.  Haunted: “Come on, don’t leave me like this. I thought I had you figured out.”

12.  Never Grow Up: “You’re in the car on the way to the movies, and you’re mortified your mom’s droppin’ you off. At fourteen there’s just so much you can’t do, and you can’t wait to move out someday and call your own shots. But don’t make her drop you off around the block, remember that she’s getting older too.” *Taylor wrote this the night she moved out of her parent’s house and into her first apartment in Nashville.*

13.  Sparks Fly: “You’re the kind of reckless that should send me runnin’, but I kinda know that I won’t get far.” *Taylor first performed this song back in 2006 at a random live show when she first started out. Fans recorded it and it went viral. For years fans begged her to record it for an album. She did! Thank you, Taylor! We are #blessed.*

14.  Enchanted!!!!!!!!!!!!: “The playful conversation starts, counter all your quick remarks like passing notes in secrecy.”

15.  Back to December: “It turns out freedom ain’t nothin’ but missin’ you.”

 RED: “My experiences in love have taught me difficult lessons, especially my experiences with crazy love. The red relationships. The ones that went from zero to a hundred miles per hour and then hit a wall and exploded. And it was awful. And ridiculous. And desperate. And thrilling. And when the dust settled, it was something I’d never take back. Because there is something to be said for being young and needing someone so badly, you jump in head first without looking. And there’s something to be learned from waiting all day for a train that’s never coming. And there’s something to be proud of about moving on and realizing that real love shines golden like starlight, and doesn’t fade or spontaneously combust. Maybe I’ll write a whole album about that kind of love if I ever find it. But this album is about the other kinds of love that I’ve recently fallen in and out of. Love that was treacherous, sad, beautiful, and tragic. But most of all, this record is about love that was red.” Oh, Red. I have so many thoughts about you. For starters, Red is Taylor’s fourth album and was released in the fall of 2012. Red is comprised of 16 tracks. Like I said previously, the Speak Now Era was such an incredible time, and Swifties didn’t want to let it go. We didn’t want things to change. I think the Red Era is the only era that Swifties didn’t welcome with open arms. We just didn’t know how to feel, and were afraid of things changing. But Taylor was headed in a more pop direction, and we could all sense it. Of course, Taylor had always been pop, or country pop, but that’s neither here nor there… And so, Red was Taylor’s “pop” debut, because she wrote three songs with pop hitmakers Max Martin and Yohan Shellback. But, it was also her rock debut if you ask me. Red was like a patchwork quilt of music: differently styles, production types, collaborators, producers. Taylor was trying new things and flapping her wings. And it worked. At first, I was hesitant to leave Speak Now behind, but Red quickly became my favorite album and still is. Taylor’s best songs are on Red. That is unanimously agreed upon in the fandom and throughout. Red is Taylor’s crown jewel, her zenith. Unfortunately, Taylor suffered a lot of hate and backlash for her dating life during 2012 and 2013, and that really clouded the success of Red. Like Taylor has said before, she was promoting a massively successful album and touring the world, and all people wanted to talk about was her personal life and it broke her heart. Well, Taylor, it broke mine too. Next to Fearless, Red is the album that helped me most in life. Red chronicles a disastrous heartbreak from beginning to end. The anger, the frustration, the sadness, the regret, the hopelessness, the pining away. You name it, she wrote about it. If you’re ever heartbroken, put on this album. (Except I hope that never happens to you!!) It’s interesting to me that she wrote the songs for Red while she was touring Speak Now, because we thought she was really happy at that time. But, what do we know? We never really know. Well, Red was nominated for Album of the Year at the 2014 Grammy’s and lost to Daft Punk. Whoever announced the winner that night really dragged out the R when he said “Random Access Memories Daft Punk”. So naturally, Taylor thought she had the award and her face lit up. Only to see that she did not, in fact, win. So, she stood up and clapped, although still looking a little miffed/embarrassed. Well, what do you know, the next day the internet is tearing her apart and making fun of the face she made when she thought she had it and then realized she didn’t. She became a gif, a meme, everything. I have seen the waves of irrational, baseless and crude hatred and bullying of her on the internet over the years and that, to me, was the worst. UNFORGIVABLE! So, anyway, it didn’t win the award, but fans and music critics unanimously agree that it should have. Speak Now might be the fan favorite album, due to the attachment to the Speak Now Era, but we all agree that Red is her best work. Alrighty, let’s dive in! Finally, right?!

 16.  I Knew You Were Trouble: “Flew me to places I’d never been,  ‘til you put me down.”

17.  Everything Has Changed ft. Ed Sheeran: “All I feel in my stomach is butterflies, the beautiful kind, makin’ up for lost time, taking flight making me feel like I just wanna know you better.” *Taylor and Ed are best friends in real life. They claim they wrote this song whilst having In n Out burgers on her trampoline in the backyard. I believe them.*

18.   Treacherous: “Nothing safe is worth the drive and I will follow you home.” *This song is cowritten and produced by Dan Wilson from Semisonic.*

19.  Sad Beautiful Tragic: “Distance, timing, breakdown, fighting, silence… the train runs off its tracks.”

20.  Red!!!!!!!!!: “Moving on from him is impossible when I still see it all in my head, in burning red.”

21.  Holy Ground: “We took off faster than a green light go, yeah you skip the conversation when you already know.”

22.  All Too Well: “I’d like to be my old self again, but I’m still trying to find it.” *The original version of this song is over ten minutes long. This is, unanimously, Taylor’s best song of all time. Check any list by any critic and this song will be at the #1 spot. I think, for me, Red and All Too Well are tied for favorites.*

23.  Begin Again: “You throw your head back laughin’ like a little kid. I think it’s strange that you think I’m funny, ‘cause he never did.”

24.  The Last Time ft. Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol: “You wear your best apology, but I was there to watch you leave.”

 1989: “I wrote about moving to the loudest and brightest city in the world, the city I had always been overwhelmed by… until now. I think you have to know who you are and what you want in order to take on New York and all its blaring truth. I wrote about the thrill I got when I finally learned that love, to some extent, is just a game of cat and mouse. I wrote about looking back on a lost love and understanding that nothing good comes without loss and hardship and constant struggle. There is no ‘riding off into the sunset’, like I used to imagine. We are never out of the woods, because we are always going to be fighting for something. I wrote about love that comes back to you just when you thought it was lost forever, and some feelings never go out of style. I wrote about an important lesson I learned recently… that people can say whatever they want about me, but they can’t make me lose my mind. I’ve learned how to shake things off. I’ve told you my stories for years now. Some have been about coming of age, some have been about coming undone. This is a story about coming into your own, and as a result… coming alive.” Oh man. I have a lot of feelings about this one, too. And not the good kind. Let’s start with facts. 1989 is Taylor’s fifth album and was released in the fall of 2014. There are 13 songs. And that’s it for the facts, because now I’m going to dive into my feelings and opinions about this one. Which are basically facts, but anyway... So, like I said previously, Taylor did not win AOTY for Red and that bothered her. She went home to her hotel room, gorged herself on In n Out burgers, and cried (Dramatic much?!? It’s okay though ‘cause it was a rough night. And I’m not making this up, she really told us that’s how the night went down. POOR TAY!). Next thing you know, she wakes up in the middle of the night with an epiphany that she is going to make a sonically cohesive pop album. She said the problem with Red was that it wasn’t “sonically cohesive”. Swifties hate the word sonically cohesive. It hurts me that I am even typing it. If you are in my presence do not say the word sonically cohesive, okay? Moving on. In a way, she was right. Red WASN’T sonically cohesive, but that’s kind of what we loved about it. Every song on Red sounds exactly like the feeling the lyrics portray. We didn’t think it was an issue. But Taylor wanted to hone in on a specific sound and perfect that and keep things neat and clean. And, of course, that sound was going to be pop. EXCEPT SHE’S ALWAYS BEEN POP BUT SURE. So, Taylor decides to try 80s synth pop (I guess?) and go with that. And so 1989 is born. Look, I love the narrative and inspiration behind 1989. I am really inspired by the prologue I shared up there. It was all about independence and friendships and not needing a man because she had stopped dating. But she also said she had to stop dating because the hate got so bad. So, the whole single life thing was kind of forced on her, but whatever, she embraced it. Except we all know she wasn’t *really* single (Hello Karlie Kloss!!). When the first single from 1989, Shake It Off, came out, I cried incessantly. I was inconsolable, and my friend’s dad had to make us grilled cheeses to cope. Shake It Off never grew on me, and to this day it’s my least favorite Taylor song EVER (it’s borderline unbearable), but the rest of the album did grow on me. To a degree. The problem with 1989 is that a handful of the songs are incredible, and the rest feel incomplete/watered down/like filler. I feel like she really worked to perfect a few of the songs and geared them in a way to be popular on radio, and the rest were afterthoughts. 1989 is the only Taylor album where the best songs were chosen as singles (except for Shake It Off). With Taylor’s albums, usually the best songs feel like hidden gems because they’re never chosen for radio, and so the public doesn’t know about them. I’m happy that everyone got to enjoy her songs from 1989, but it also felt like there was nothing left over for the fans that felt special. The best songs on 1989 ended up overplayed and overdone. 1989 is the first tour I did not attend. I can be honest with you and say I regret that. 1989 isn’t a bad album, it’s a good album, but as far as Taylor’s work goes, it’s just not the best. But it did win Album of the Year in 2016, making her the first woman to win that award TWICE.  To go a little deeper, it wasn’t even so much the 1989 album that I disliked, I think it was more the Era/Taylor in general during 1989 that didn’t jive with me. She got obsessed with appearance, and status, and there were some strange business dealings that left fans feeling used and abused. Before 1989, Taylor felt like the “girl next door” (I do realize she’s a celebrity and not the girl next door at all, but her perfected relatability factor became part of her marketing image), but during 1989 Taylor threw that all away to be #squadgoals with the Victoria’s secret models. Whatever, it was a strange time. Glad that is over. ALSO, listen to Ryan Adams cover of this album. It’s better than the OG at times. Aight aight, let’s dig into these sick beats (ugh).

25.  Welcome to New York: “When we first dropped our bags on apartment floors, took our broken hearts, put them in a drawer. Everybody here was someone else before, and you can want who you want, boys and boys and girls and girls.” *Taylor moved to NYC the summer gay marriage was legalized in New York. Thanks for the shoutout Tay.*

26.  I Know Places: “Just grab my hand and don’t ever drop it, my love. They are the hunters, we are the foxes, and we run.”

27.  Clean!!!!!!: “It was months and months of back and forth, you’re still all over me like a wine-stained dress I can’t wear anymore.” *Despite 1989 being my least favorite album, this song is one of my all-time favorites. It’s brilliant how she compares a relationship to an addiction. And Imogen Heap comes through for some dope ass background vocals.*

28.   Out of the Woods: “The monsters turned out to be just trees, when the sun came up you were looking at me.” *Ryan Adams cover is amazing, and so is an acoustic piano version Taylor did for the Grammy museum. Check youtube.*

29.  You Are In Love: “You keep his shirt, he keeps his word.”

30.  Style: “I say ‘I’ve heard that you’ve been out and about with some other girl. He said ‘What you heard is true, but I can’t stop thinkin’ ‘bout you.” I said ‘I’ve been there too, a few times.’”

31.  Wildest Dreams: “You see me in hindsight, tangled up with you all night, burning it down. Someday when you leave me I hope these memories follow you around.”

32.  This Love: “Tossing, turning, struggled through the night with someone knew… Lantern burning, flickered in my mind for only you, but you were still gone and gone, gone and gone.”

 Reputation: “We think we know someone, but the truth is that we only know the version of them they have chosen to show us. We know our friend in a certain light, but we don't know them the way their lover does. Just the way their lover will never know them the same way that you do as their friend. Their mother knows them differently than their roommate, who knows them differently than their colleague. Their secret admirer looks at them and sees an elaborate sunset of brilliant color and dimension and spirit and pricelessness. And yet, a stranger will pass that person and see a faceless member of the crowd, nothing more. We may hear rumors about a person and believe those things to be true. We may one day meet that person and feel foolish for believing baseless gossip. This is the first generation that will be able to look back on their entire life story documented in pictures on the internet, and together we will all discover the after-effects of that. Ultimately, we post photos online to curate what strangers think of us. But then we wake up, look in the mirror at our faces and see the cracks and scars and blemishes, and cringe. We hope someday we'll meet someone who will see that same morning face and instead see their future, their partner, their forever. Someone who will still choose us even when they see all of the sides of the story, all the angles of the kaleidoscope that is you.” Last album?!? I can’t believe we’re here already! Reputation, Taylor’s 6th album, was released in the fall of 2017 and consists of 15 tracks. At the start, reputation was a wild ride. During the 1989 Era, Taylor managed to crawl out of the pit of hate and despair that the Red Era brought, and she soared to popularity. I’ve noticed this happens with Taylor, the love/hate comes in waves. One day everyone loves her again, and then the next they hate her. During 1989 Taylor was flying high. Highest grossing tour, AOTY, “dating” (I have to put that in quotes, but that’s a whole other can of worms) Calvin Harris… but, nothing good can last forever, and so literally everything fell apart. Messy break up with Calvin, even messier drama with Kimye (can’t even get into that). Things weren’t going so well. Taylor had reached overexposure and she went into hiding for almost a year. No performances, no candid shots, no interviews, no mags, nothing. She usually releases a new album like clockwork every two years, but she skipped her typical release season and tacked on another year to the wait. Well, while she was hiding, Taylor was doing what she does best.. making music. At some point during the summer Taylor put all of her music back on streaming accounts, and so I knew then that something was brewing. She finally announced the name of the album and released the first single, “Look What You Made Me Do”. The day she dropped “Look What You Made Me Do” was one of the craziest days for just about everyone, let alone Swifties. It felt like the world was literally collapsing over this song. The internet was breaking. A few people loved it right away, some people thought she had cracked and was finally losing her damn mind, and I was just confused and depressed. The day it was released I spent a large portion of the day crying. I cried and clutched onto my 1989 CD (but I never even liked 1989 that much… which shows how much I was worried….) But, before I knew it, I was bopping along to the song and loved it like the rest. And once the music video came out, I realized that everything was going to be okay. If you haven’t seen the music video, you need to. It’s iconic. It broke Youtube’s record for most views in 24 hrs. A few more songs came out before album release and I wasn’t *that* crazy about most of them. Turns out that reputation is like all of Taylor’s albums before 1989, the best songs were not released as singles. Back 2 Basics, guys. The fans get everything, and everyone else gets the scraps. When the album finally did come out I was overjoyed. Now let’s see why!

33.  Delicate: “Is it cool that I said all that? Is it chill that you’re in my head? ‘Cause I know that it’s delicate.”

34.  Getaway Car: “I wanted to leave him, I need a reason.” *Jack Antonoff produced this song and many others on reputation. We are #blessed. I recently read somebody say that Jack has a stranglehold on pop music. I WISH!!*

35.  Dancing With Our Hands Tied: “I loved you in spite of deep fears that the world would divide us.” *Beginning at some point in 2014, Karlie Kloss and Taylor Swift entered a torrid love affair. It’s possible they are still together today. That’s a discussion for a later date. Anyway, this song is definitely about her. Funny how some people think Taylor hates gay people (why?) when really she writes songs for them. Thanks Tay.

36.  Dress: “I woke up just in time, now I wake up by your side.” *Also for Karlie.*

37.  Call It What You Want!!!!: “I brought a knife to a gun fight, they took the crown but it’s alright.”

38.  I Did Something Bad: “They’re burning all the witches, even if you aren’t one, so light me up.”

39.  Don’t Blame Me: “For you I would fall from grace just to touch your face. If you walk away, I’d beg you on my knees to stay.”

40.  King of My Heart: “I’m perfectly fine, I live on my own. I made up my mind, I’m betting off being alone. We met a few weeks ago, now you try on calling me baby like trying on clothes.”

41.  New Year’s Day: “You squeeze my hand three times in the back of the taxi. I can tell that it’s gonna be a long road. I’ll be there if you’re the toast of the town babe, or if you strike out and you’re crawling home.”

Spotify link:  https://open.spotify.com/user/22xaifvaciqklwgcnidnxuuhq/playlist/7ssFqGusg3Sf1sPe5cS7hR

[quranreadalong]

ARMED CONFLICTS OF EARLY ISLAM PT 5

By the summer of 628 AD, Mohammed is out here feeling like Alexander the Great, sad that there are no more worlds to conquer. He’s dealt with pretty much all of his enemies, barring a few incidents of stamping out dissent. Around this time he is also finally let back into Mecca, courtesy of the treaty, to perform the pilgrimage. And then he looks north, south, and east, and remembers that there is, in fact, a big world out there, and he wants all of it!

This period (late 628-mid 632 AD) begins a dizzying series of raids and conquest expeditions--it’s not clear what the exact chronology here is, because so much happened in such a short span of time. Ibn Ishaq says there were 38 “expeditions” in total from 623 to 632, with most occurring in the second half of that time period; Mohammed personally fought in nine of them.

To avoid overwhelming ourselves here, let’s start with the usual crap: the attacks on various clans in the Hijaz and Najd. In the twenty months or so leading up to the conquest of Mecca, Mo sent some of his top fighters out with forces of a few dozen men each to “spread Islam” far and wide. Umar was sent to harass a Hawazin clan of Turbah (~100 miles east of Taif), who fled before he got to preach the good news to them. Abu Bakr was sent into Najd to deal with some people who persisted in their disbelief. A raid finally took down our spunky Banu Thalaba underdogs.

Some more Ghatafan clans were raided; as per usual, the evildoers fled and the Muslim army grabbed their shit. An attempt to convert the Banu Sulaym with 50 fighters went slightly awry when the clan showered the armed missionaries with arrows. An attempt to convert the Banu Murrah clan near Fadak went similarly awry, resulting in another force coming back later to slaughter everyone they could get their hands on and steal everything they could find. One guy tried to save himself by converting under knifepoint, but was killed anyway, which displeased Mohammed. Some poor Hijazi clan called the Banu al-Mulawwih got murdered to shit for no stated reason. Al-Tabari:

After they had milked the camels, set them to rest by the watering trough, and had stopped moving around, after the first part of the night had passed, we launched the raid on them. We killed some of them, drove away the camels, and set out to return. ... The battle cry of the companions of the Messenger of God that night was "Kill! Kill!"

Al-Tabari’s volume on this time period is called the “Victory of Islam”, and that is really what it is. This whole section is really the beginning of solid Islamic control of Arabia. A few more raids similar to the ones above followed throughout 628 and 629, and during this time period you also begin to see the first clans outside Mohammed’s immediate vicinity start to convert to Islam and ally themselves with Mohammed. The Muslims are seen as the top dogs now, and people think it might be a good idea to join them to avoid the whole Kill! Kill!ing thing.

By the second half of 629, Mohammed’s men had established a pretty firm grip on the entire Hijaz and Najd. It was time for the Muslims to expand their vision. Mohammed began sending letters to various leaders, both Arab and non-Arab, and sent his men to deliver them. Some went to the Gulf coast in eastern Arabia; some went north to the Byzantines and Sassanids; some went across the sea to East Africa. Unfortunately, we do not know what the letters said, as all alleged copies of them have been found to be inauthentic, and the traditions around them are pretty obviously legendary. But the letters themselves evidently were sent.

According to the colorful al-Waqidi, one such letter was given to the leaders of the Ghassanids, who were the northern Arab allies of the Byzantine Empire. They were unenthused by its contents and chopped the head off the individual who gave the letter to them. Ibn Ishaq does not mention this event, but he does mention what happened next: the Muslims tried to attack the Ghassanids and it was a miserable failure. Mohammed’s ex-adopted son (...long story, we’ll see him later in the Quran) Zayd and his cousin Jafar both died in the battle. That was called the Battle of Mutah, which is comically exaggerated (100,000+ people! Including the emperor of Byzantium!) in Islamic sources. More on that later in the surah.

The northern Arab cities, allied with the Ghassanids but living outside their protection, would soon pay for this. Mohammed sent some troops to attack an ally of the Ghassanids, the Banu Quda, who lived north of Wadi al-Qura. Most fled, the others died. Ibn Ishaq also records Mohammed sending a force to attack the northern city of Dumat al-Jandal, instructing his men to “fight everyone in the way of God and kill those who disbelieve in God”, excluding children. Amr ibn al-As, one of the late-arrival opportunists, led an attack on a place ten days north of Medina called Dhat al-Silasil in order to “convoke the Arabs to war on Syria”. (Tabouk, the large conquest expedition, was the following year.)

Other attacks in late 629 involved a comical chase of a coastal Bedouin tribe, wherein the Muslim army lost sight of the fleeing enemy and ended up almost starving to death, only surviving by eating a beached whale; the assassination of a random clan leader accused yet again of “planning to attack Medina” (truly remarkable how many people plotted to attack the city yet none ever did beyond one nigh-bloodless siege); and yet more attacks on Ghatafan clans, convincing many of them to “embrace Islam”.

One event in this era was far more important than anything else. Having firmly established Muslim supremacy in the entire area, Mohammed turned his thoughts to Mecca. Things were fairly peaceful at the moment and the Quraysh were clearly the submissive partner in the relationship, but the issue was that Mohammed was not in charge of Mecca, and this was a problem. He began amassing forces to take the city as quietly as he could, diverting the attention of spies by having his men attack random other targets.

In late 629, the attacks between the Khuzaa and Bakr clans that we talked about in #59 were used as a pretext by Mohammed to accuse the Meccans of breaking the Treaty of Hudaibiyya. Mohammed himself had already broken the treaty several times, of course, and the Quraysh went to Medina to try to settle the matter peacefully, but it was too late. Mohammed wasn’t interested in maintaining the treaty, and he finally had his excuse to get rid of it. He assembled a massive army, said in Muslim sources to be 10,000 armed men strong, and marched on Mecca in four columns, one through each of Mecca’s points of entry.

Abu Sufyan, the Meccan military commander, tried in vain to convince Mohammed not to take the city, knowing that a military confrontation would be unwise. The largest force the Quraysh had ever assembled was smaller than Mohammed’s army, and that included their now-vanquished Jewish allies as well as now-defeated Ghatafan clans. The Quraysh do not seem to have had a standing army of even a third of their enemy’s numbers. The situation was hopeless and the Meccans knew it. They had held out as long as possible, but this was the end of the line.

The conquest of Mecca was fairly anticlimactic for this reason. Minor skirmishes did occur, but by and large the Muslim army simply marched their way to control of the city. When confronted with this inevitability, Abu Sufyan surrendered and “embraced Islam”. Mohammed’s first enemy had been brought low. Mohammed’s home city was now in his hands.

The first thing that Mohammed did after taking Mecca was to purge the Kaaba of all signs of polytheism, destroying its idols. Temples devoted to polytheistic gods were shut down and destroyed. He then executed those few brave, dumb old enemies of his who did not throw themselves at his feet and convert to Islam on the spot, including a slave girl who mocked Islam in songs and an apostate named Abdullah ibn Khatal, who was found clinging to the Kaaba. Ibn Ishaq:

He [Abdullah] had two singing-girls Fartana and her friend who used to sing satirical songs about the apostle, so he ordered that they should be killed with him.

(The other one begged for her life and converted.)

The conquest of Mecca was a big deal. It wasn’t just that Mohammed’s last real enemies were now completely defeated, it was that he won. The Quraysh had always been Enemy #1, even when Mohammed turned his attention elsewhere, and now they were at his feet. That was it--there was no other force in the region able to stand against Mohammed’s men, and everyone knew it. Conversions skyrocketed thereafter.

And the 'Arabs (other than Quraish) delayed their conversion to Islam till the Conquest (of Mecca). They used to say "Leave him (i.e. Muhammad) and his people Quraish: if he overpowers them then he is a true Prophet. So, when Mecca was conquered, then every tribe rushed to embrace Islam

By the time Mohammed marched his men into the downtrodden, half-starved, and frankly pitiful city of Mecca, his ranks were already pretty swollen from the converted and/or conquered tribes. He gained a couple thousand new soldiers from the newly-converted Quraysh and their allies, and various delegations soon came to pledge their loyalty to the Hijaz’s new top warlord. Others resisted, but it was futile. They were beaten down without a second thought until everyone got in line. Dilly-dallying was no longer acceptable; it was the Islam Train or the Death Train for Arab polytheists.

The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said: 'I have been commanded to fight the people until they testify to La ilaha ill-allah (none has the right to be worshipped but Allah) and that I am the Messenger of Allah, and establish regular prayers and pay Zakat.'

And that is the very unhappy ending to our tale and the end of the beginning of the Islamic conquests. Hunayn was shortly after Mecca’s conquest, then more raids and sieges (including the siege of Taif) in an attempt to cleanse Arabia of polytheists, going all the way into Yemen and into northern Arabia. Tabouk was after that. By this point, so many people had been made to “embrace Islam” that a significant portion of Mohammed’s troops genuinely didn’t give a shit about the religion and were just going along with this because the alternative was being conquered by him, and these are some of the people he whines about when he talks about the fighters who didn’t go with him to Tabouk. This whining makes up the remainder of surah 9.

After Mecca was taken, Mohammed sent his men out to neighboring areas to destroy polytheistic temples and encourage people to “embrace Islam”, with the first temple to be destroyed being the temple to the goddess Uzza in between Mecca and Taif. Temples and shrines to various other gods, including Suwa and Manat, were destroyed in short order. Mohammed would send his merry men to destroy temples straight through until the end of his life, with the large Dhul Khalasa temple  (halfway between Mecca and Sanaa in Yemen) being one of the last. He sent 150 men to take down the temple and kill anyone they found inside of it. The surrounding tribes tried to defend it, but were defeated. A poetess of the crushed people memorialized the incident in a depressing poem, according to Ibn Ishaq:

They came to defend their shrine, only to find Lions with brandished swords clamoring for blood. The women of the Khath'am [local tribe] were, then, humiliated By the men of the Abmas [a Muslim clan], and abased.

Al-Tabari offers a typical account of how the remaining holdouts were brought into the loving embrace of Islam:

The Messenger of God sent Khalid b. al-Walid in the month of Rabi' II, or Jumada I, in the year 10/631 to Banu al Harith b. Kab in Najran and ordered to invite them to Islam for three days before he fought them. If they should respond to him [with the acceptance of Islam], then he was to accept it from them, and to stay with them and teach them the Book of God, the sunnah of His prophet, and the requirements of Islam, if they should decline then he was to fight them.

Khalid departed and came to them, sending out riders in every direction inviting them to Islam and saying, "O people, accept Islam, and you will be safe." So they embraced Islam and responded to his call.

The demolitions of polytheistic places of worship are summarized in depressingly straightforward sentences in works like the Book of Idols, written around 800 AD:

The Quraysh as well as the rest of the Arabs continued to venerate Manah until the Apostle of God … he dispatched ‘Ali to destroy her (idol). ‘Ali demolished her, took away all her [treasures], and carried them back to the Prophet.

Allat continued to be venerated until the Thaqif embraced Islam, when the Apostle of God dispatched al-Mughirah ibn Shu'bab, who destroyed her and burnt her [temple] to the ground.

Ruda was a temple which belonged to the Banu Rabi'ah … It was destroyed by al-Mustawghir.

When the Apostle of God captured Mecca and the Arabs embraced Islam, among the delegates who came to pay their homage was Jarir ibn ‘Abdullah. He came to the Apostle and embraced Islam before him. Thereupon the Apostle addressed him saying, “O Jarir! Wilt thou not rid me of Dhu al-Khalasah?” Jarir replied, “Yea.” So the Apostle dispatched him to destroy it … he was met by the Khath'am and the Bahilah, who resisted him and attempted to defend Dhu al-Khalasah. He, therefore, fought them and killed a hundred men of the Bahilah, its custodians, and many of the Khath'am; while of the Banu Qubafah ibn ‘Amir ibn Khath'am he killed two hundred. having defeated them and forced them into flight, he demolished the building which stood over Dhu al-Khalasah and set it on fire.  

The Apostle of God had, after the battle of Tabuk, sent Khalid ibn al-Walid to destroy [the shrine of Wadd]. But the Banu ‘Abd-Wadd and the Banu ‘Amir al-Ajdar resisted Khalid and attempted to defend the idol. Khalid, therefore, fought and defeated them, and then destroyed [the shrine] and demolished the idol.

Al-Fals continued to be worshipped until the advent of the Prophet, at which time 'Ali ibn abi Talib was dispatched to destroy [the shrine].

There are no records indicating that Arab polytheism survived the seventh century. It was entirely destroyed by Islam, and those who resisted its destruction were killed.

During Mohammed’s lifetime, the conquests reached all the way east, into the Gulf island of Bahrain; to the south, into Yemen; and to the north, right against the border between Arab territory and the Byzantine Empire’s lands and vassal states. With the majority of Arabia in the grip of Islam when Mohammed died of illness in 632 AD, the rest of the Divine Mission was left to his successors. Abu Bakr came first, and half of his brief tenure involved beating down various other self-proclaimed prophets and getting breakaway apostasized tribes back in line. When Umar took over two years later, the Islamic armies were able to fully dedicate themselves to the Out Of Arabia conquests, and.... well, you know the rest.

So, that’s it for our depressing history lesson. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. I sure haven’t...  ☹

⇚ previous day | next day ⇛ 

[cwalshuk]

Doctor Who review - Spyfall Part Two

Spoilers! Obviously.

If you haven’t watched the second episode of the 2020 series, then go watch it now. Seriously.

Spyfall Part Two sees The Doctor, Yaz, Ryan and Graham attempt to survive the rather tricky situations they were left in at the end of part one.

You can catch up on it on BBC iPlayer in the UK, check local listings for your own country.

Spyfall Part Two begins with a ‘Previously on’ - it's been a little while since we needed one of those! And, armed with the knowledge from the cliffhanger, we can see C’s murder in a new light. He tries to tell Thirteen and fam that he suspects O! Lovely stuff.

Post-titles, we’re back in that somewhere weird place, temporarily home to Yaz, currently to The Doctor. As she's alone, the Timelord is consoling herself by thinking out loud. And what would she say to Yaz, Ryan and Graham, currently on Daniel Barton’s crashing plane? Don't Panic.

I’m tempted to see that choice as a reference to Douglas Adams, not least because there are a number of references to the work of other writers from past eras of Doctor Who, but ‘Don’t panic’ is pretty good advice anyway, right? Particularly as there really isn't any need to, when you’re friends with someone with a time machine.

Y’see, The Doctor (eventually) uses her Tardis to go back in time and install in the plane exactly what Ryan, Yaz and Graham need to land safely. It's a great funny action sequence, and, whilst this sort of solution will be familiar to a big chunk of the audience, new fans need to know that Doctor Who can do this with it's sort of time travel, and does it with panache. I particularly like the reference to Blink, Yaz calmly realising how Ryan's new app can help, and Graham just being Graham.

Meanwhile, The Doctor is exploring the somewhere weird place, theorising that she’s inside something, noting the electrical pulses snaking about, and hoping she isn't in someone's liver. Not because that’d be eurrghhh, but because people tend to take offence! I love that sort of joke, where we end up wondering what happened all the other times she was in someone’s liver.

But then she hears a voice! Thirteen finds a slightly creepy lady called Ada and deduces with her help that their only way out is via a Kasaavin, the light-up alien spies. Introducing pre-marriage Ada Lovelace this way, but not her full name, was cool, and intriguing, keeping my attention through the next scene with the fam - all exposition, the plane will land itself wherever Barton was intending to go.

The Master’s Tardis is in the vortex! Fantastic! He’s in there, congratulating himself with a less than impressed Daniel Barton, when his console and Barton’s phone clue them in to Thirteen’s escape.

Having The Doctor wake up tasting the time period like a fine wine is a lovely touch. She’s back in Ada’s time, at a 19th Century inventors convention, with Charles Babbage! Who wonders how Miss Gordon and The Doctor appeared in their midst. A magic trick, decides Thirteen, so she can carry on without further interruption. Babbage is still unconvinced, not least because The Doc has to ask him what year they’re in. Confirmation of her exact plight brings Thirteen’s thoughts back to the fam.

Ryan, Yaz and Graham have kept out of sight as Daniel Barton discovers from an airport employee that his plane landed autonomously, but empty. We’re back in Blighty, luckily, and Essex too, as Barton has a speech in London that evening. Graham’s joy at being back in his manor is tempered by Yaz’s fears for The Doc’s safety. And Barton is sending some goons after the fam!

Inquisitive Ada gets brought into the loop by Thirteen (with Babbage eavesdropping), but the trio are interrupted by The Master, who must've dropped Barton in the present before raiding his own Tardis wardrobe for his big entrance. Timelord showdown!

Sacha Dhawan is chilling and funny - ‘Hands on heads!’ - as his Master shrinks random convention goers and orders Thirteen to kneel - ‘Call me by my name!’ He does let slip that he isn't in control of the Kasaavin though, but can't divulge ‘news from home’ because Ada’s commandeered a number of prototype weapons from the convention to turn on him, despite her being ‘a lady’. Ada gets The Doc’s grudging approval with her violence, in a way that brings to mind the Seventh Doctor and Ace. The Master gets to disappear in a cloud of smoke, like a panto villain, though he is wounded.

Ryan, Yaz and Graham don’t get far from the airport before Daniel Barton is turning the full force of his tech empire on them. Yaz gets to call her mum before the three of them smash their phones and scarper.

Back in 1834, The Doctor realises she’s in the company of Babbage and Lovelace and is a little star struck. She gets Charles talking about his Difference Engine, an early ancestor of the modern computer, and decides her presence there is a clue. Also catching her eye is the Silver Lady, a gift to Babbage from The Master. It moves and makes apparitions, says Charles. Piecing together everything she knows so far, she concludes that the Kasaavin have been studying Ada by transporting her to their dimension. And they’ve had the Master’s help stabilising themselves in our dimension, readying themselves for an attack in the present day. Thirteen sonics the Silver Lady to bring out a Kasaavin, explaining to Lovelace and Babbage her hope that she can get it to return her to the present day. But Ada doesn't like the risk The Doc’s taking, so grabs her hand. Thirteen shouts ‘No!’ as they both disappear. Charles, now alone, downs his drink.

And that's the last we see of Mr Babbage, brought wonderfully to life by Mark Dexter, who you might remember as the Dad of the little girl in Stephen Moffat’s River Song introducing two-parter Silence In The Library/Forest Of The Dead.

Graham, Ryan and Yaz meanwhile have hidden out at a building site. They realise how little they know about The Doctor, and Graham states his intention to ask for more, sure that he’ll get the opportunity. Yaz channels Thirteen and both Ryan and Graham admit to keeping hold of some of C’s spy tech, just as the Kasaavin appear outside!

Back to The Doctor, who is surprised to find herself and Ada transported to Paris 1943, where a young woman rushes them inside, out of sight of an approaching Nazi patrol. The music swells, the patrol halts, and out of the car steps The Master, still angry, but this time in full Nazi uniform, Doctor-detecting gizmo to hand.

Fleeing the Kasaavin, Yaz, Graham and Ryan risk using the Laser shoes Graham had borrowed from Q, which holds off the aliens.

Meanwhile, Daniel Barton argues with his mother, who he has tied up. She isn't proud enough of his achievements, apparently. That’s enough for him to set the Kasaavin on her, the first victim on this ‘last day’. Pretty ruthless for the fake-out villain, right?

Back in 1943, the Nazi patrol raid the young lady’s home, with The Master hobbling in behind them. ‘You’re new.’ she notes of the injured Timelord. Beneath the floorboards, The Doctor spies radio equipment, and Ada. The Master orders the Nazis to shoot the floor, with just a tap of his cane, but hearing no screams, and getting nothing from the young lady by staring her down, he leaves with the Nazis. As the young lady frees Thirteen and Ada from their hiding place, the Timelord puts two names to the face. ‘Code name: Madeleine, real name: Noor Inayat Khan. First female wireless operator to be dropped behind enemy lines.’ The Doctor’s a fan! And she has a theory about how they ended up in World War II when she was aiming for the 21st century - Ada grabbing her hand knocked them off course.

Noor and Ada are confused, so after The Doctor explains the time travel stuff, Noor tells Ada of the horrors Paris has suffered through. Ada, shocked to learn that the devastation outside the window has happened twice, is consoled by the Timelord that ‘the darkness never sustains’. After assessing Noor’s skills and resources, Thirteen comes up with a plan.

I’m a big fan of The Doctor meeting real people from history, particularly when they can inspire the younger side of the audience, as Noor and Ada surely can. I seem to recall one or both ladies being suggested as new faces for British currency, an honour both merit, though neither succeeded this time around.

Yaz, Ryan and Graham get the better of Daniel Barton’s goons by revealing their location, accidentally on purpose, and then steal their car with the aid of Graham’s laser shoes.

Back in wartime Paris, The Doctor is tapping out a four beat pattern on Noor’s radio equipment. ‘The rhythm of two hearts’. The Master cannot resist responding, allowing Thirteen to make telepathic contact with her old friend. ‘Old-school’ he notes. ‘You’re not the only one who can do classic.’ she replies. They agree to meet at the obvious place - the Eiffel Tower - though it's less of a date, more like a trap.

I love that Chris Chibnall’s script acknowledges how much influence he’s drawn from past Master encounters. The return of Tissue Compression Eliminator, which the Master uses to shrink people to death, suggests that this incarnation has reverted to a personality last seen in the classic era of the show, but elements of Sacha Dhawan’s performance bring to mind more recent ones. I don’t think we’ve seen The Master’s Tardis onscreen for a while either, but that doesn't narrow it down as much as you might think.

Thirteen and The Master use their Eiffel Tower rendezvous to reminisce, which gives us a subtle reference to Logopolis, and The Doctor a chance to pin down exactly which crimes The Masters committed so far in this story. Intriguingly, he also reveals that the Kasaavin were already a looming threat to Earth before he got started meddling, comparing them to modern day Russia, and teasing that he merely improved upon the aliens’ plans.

Yaz, Graham and Ryan, arriving too late to save Daniel Barton’s mum, but just in time for him to gloat before his big speech, learn that the tech CEO allowed the Kasaavin to experiment on 7% of his DNA, and that he has designs on the entire human race. They gather around the Silver Lady.

Noor, at her base, messages London, but doubts she should be trusting The Doctor. Ada reassures her, though neither understands the device the Timelord left with them - a flip-phone! They search Paris by night, discovering ‘something anomalous’, and alert The Doctor.

Hiding the message from The Master, the pair, still high above Paris, interrogate each other. Thirteen reckons she and Yaz survived their encounters with the Kasaavin due to the artron energy they’re covered with, as time travellers. She gets The Master to gloat about his manipulations of Daniel Barton and the Kasaavin. ‘Win, win, win!’ he reckons. She doesn't understand why The Master doesn't stop his games, after all these years, and although he claims its for chaos’ sake, he also concedes that he wanted The Doctor’s attention. He says he visited Gallifrey, their home planet, and found it in ruins, but Thirteen thinks it's another trick. Before he can continue, some Nazis arrive to confront him. The Master, not best pleased, grabs The Doctor by the throat, pushing her to the edge of the viewing platform. Now it's her turn to gloat! She’d got Noor to send a message back to London describing The Master as a double agent, ensuring it could be intercepted by the Nazis. Now they’ve got him at gunpoint - How’s he going to get out of that one!

Daniel Barton walks onstage for his speech, whilst, in 1943, The Doctor catches up to Noor and Ada, who, thanks to Noor’s local knowledge, have discovered the Master’s Tardis. He hadn't even bothered to change it from its Australian outback home appearance! Breaking in, she uses the console to find out another part of The Master’s plan. He’d helped the Kasaavin to spy on people key to the rise of the modern computer age, so that they and Daniel Barton could collect enough data for something they are working on. Something that is connected to human DNA - experiments of some kind!

Barton delivers his speech. His time to gloat. Humanity has allowed itself to be spied upon through our addiction to tech, and it has left us vulnerable. To being reformatted as hard drives. Barton and a few others will be spared, of course, but the rest of us are finished. The Silver Lady spins and glows ominously as humanity begins to be rewritten. Stolen spy tech can't stop it and now The Master arrives (via the slow path) to gloat some more. But then it stops spinning. So Barton flees and humanity is saved.

In strolls The Doctor with Noor and Ada! Thirteen explains that they traced the Silver Lady from its first owner Babbage right through to Barton, and that she hacked it, to ensure it would shutdown if ever loaded up with a massive amount of Kasaavin energy. Angry at the foiling of their plan, the Kasaavin arrive, but before they are exiled by The Doctor, they turn on The Master when she plays them a recording of him gloating earlier on the Eiffel Tower, of his plan to double cross them. He ends up in their somewhere weird place screaming after The Doctor.

Yaz notes that the Doc has more explaining to do, with Graham worried that Noor and Ada are replacing them, and Ryan asking how the Timelord saved them from the crashing plane. Turns out she hasn't, yet! Quick montage to prepare the plane in advance, then back to her own Tardis - hope she keeps The Master’s one somewhere safe!

Before she comes back for the fam Thirteen stops in 1943 to drop Noor back. After reassuring her that the fascists never win, so long as there's people like her, the Timelord wipes Noor’s mind of their whole adventure, to preserve history. She does the same to Ada in 1834, despite the young lady’s protests, assuring the now unconscious Ada that she doesn't need a preview of future tech, since her own imagination helps dream up those advances.

These mind wipes are presented as necessary evils, but leave a bitter taste nevertheless. Couldn't both brilliant women have been slipped the names of fellow Tardis travellers from their respective eras? Perhaps that would be a little too much referencing to previous stories.

The Doctor decides to visit Gallifrey, hoping not to witness the ruins The Master claims, but is disappointed. Devastated, she discovers a device deposited discreetly in her coat. A message from The Master. He destroyed Gallifrey in revenge at his own species for covering up ‘the lie of the Timeless Child’. His words stir a fragment of memory in The Doctor’s mind, but he won’t reveal more out of spite, she Thirteen can only hurl The Master’s device across her console room in rage.

She stews in this mood for days, ‘five planets’ according to Graham, before she gives in to the fam’s questions. She finally tells them - her home planet, it's constellation, her species and that they can regenerate their bodies. She tells them she ran away in a stolen Tardis, and that The Master was one of her oldest friends, but takes a very different path. That’s enough for Graham right now, but Yaz has one more thing to ask. ‘Can we visit your home?’. So innocent, too perceptive. ‘Another time.’ replies Thirteen before rushing to the edge of the console room, back to her fam, to conceal her sadness, her fear. The camera lingers for a second.

Credits roll.

Looks like next week is a lot less heavy, if James Buckley’s appearance in the Next Time trailer is anything to go by. I think we need it after that!

A momentous conclusion to the story (for now), Spyfall Part Two is a triumph.

Chris Chibnall has succeeded in opening the series with a bang, and kicks off what is presumably a series arc by picking up the remnants of one dropped in series 11.

Let's see what Ed Hime brings us on Sunday!

[jefferyryanlong]

Fresh Listen - Cornershop, When I Was Born for the 7th Time (Wiiija, 1997)

(Some pieces of recorded music operate more like organisms than records. They live, they breathe, they reproduce. Fresh Listen is a weekly review of recently and not so recently released albums that crawl among us like radioactive spiders, gifting us with superpowers from their stingers.)

My early record collection was full of singles. This was far gone from the era of 45′s, though I had a couple of those, too, which I bought for cents at the Kaneohe Salvation Army. Singles in my youth were manufactured as abridged cassette tapes (”cassingles”), packaged in cardboard sleeves with only the most utilitarian cover design (often just a replication of the cover whence the song came). Cassingles had a song on each side, the single itself and a b-side, or sometimes just a remixed version that was inevitably worse. I’d look through where the cassingles were organized in a separate rack on the wall of the record store, if I only had a couple bucks that wee, or lacked sufficient confidence in the powers of an artist or band whose recently released tune I dug.

Because when you’re a teenager, you have to be very selective about what records you spend your part-time job money on. You might catch a new band on MTV, believe that, unlike the many, many others, they had the goods, and throw down twelve dollars on their full-length. When you discovered that the rest of their rubbish didn’t stack up to their single, you were set back a week, cash-wise, rewinding that one song you were stuck with over and over again until you had the bread for something new. 

Myself, I made many of these ill-advised purchases. Spacehog’s Resident Alien (for “In the Meantime”), Fountains of Wayne’s debut record (”Radiation Vibe”), and Electriclarryland by Butthole Surfers (”Pepper”). With singles, though, you only spent one or two dollars on a song you liked--and if the b-side was slid you doubled the value of the cheap but extremely complicated plastic apparatus, audio engineering at its most sophisticated, the tension on each side of the cassette calibrated with such precision that the music played neither too fast nor too slow. In some cases, I grew to love the b-sides as much, or more than, the a-sides. Toad the Wet Sprocket’s moody “All She Said” suited me better as a lovelorn high schooler than their mega-hit “All I Want.” And after Radiohead’s “Creep” (they were on no one’s radar as being the band we know them as today) lost its luster, I got just as much jaded pleasure from “Faithless, the Wonder Boy.” Maybe that band would be headed somewhere, after all.

Cornershop’s “Brimful of Asha” should have been a cassingle buy. It was so infectious, so ridiculous and universally true with its “everybody needs a bosom for a pillow” refrain that I felt the band wouldn’t have anything else as meaningful to say. The song was so clever with its obscure references, each of them mysterious to me. And when he sang about the “brimful of Asha,” I wasn’t sure if the singer (Tjinder Singh) envisioned multi-talented actress/singer Asha Bhosle as a kind of essence that could be smoked or drank as a means of transubstantiation. In other words, I dug the song and its groove, and I felt there was something happening within this odd Cornershop operation that I wanted to be hip to. I bought When I Was Born for the 7th Time in its entirety, sight unseen (or sound unheard). 

While Woman’s Gotta Have It, Cornershop’s previous record, plays as slightly aimless indie rock, When I Was Born for the 7th Time sounds like the work of guitar playing songwriters who moonlight as circumspect nightclub DJ’s, overlaying dance-able rock and roll grooves with unpredictable samples, some of which they’ve invented themselves. The majority of tracks on the album are instrumentals. The band disposes of the half-hearted riffs on Woman’s Gotta Have It in favor of expansive sonic textures that accommodate a musical vision beyond electric guitars and effects pedals. When I Was Born for the 7th Time luxuriates in playful invention. It seems completely removed from the pressures of any mainstream music market, and abides by no rules other than Singh’s imperative to guide the listener through his particular inspirations and influences.

“Sleep on the Left Side” sets the rhythmic template for the album--a heavy bass and drum backbeat hat would sit comfortably on a hip-hop record of the time. Contrasted to the steady meter of the beat is a tricky, slightly offbeat and Easternized keyboard noodle, against which Singh’s unassuming vocal emphasizes ritual as antidote to persistent chaos. “Butter the Soul,” with its interior record scratches resetting old-timey whistle sample, is two minutes of funky fits and starts, returning to the repeated motif like a spell of monomania. “Chocolat” is brief mood piece, where synths play off drums in reverb before an intrepid bass guitar lays into a gnarly riff, driving the track, accompanied by a late arriving electric guitar. “We’re in Yr Corner,” another highlight on an album rotten with ripe musical over- and undertones, is a raga-soaked hard rock sequel to the band’s earlier “6 a.m. Jullander Shere,” a sitar itself sounding like a chorus of instruments, Singh in Punjab calling out from what seems like the top of a mountain in resounding authority. Like “6 a.m. Jullander Shere,” “We’re in Yr Corner” is a wake-up song, relentless in its call, undeniable in its power to transmit meaning in an unfamiliar language. 

Self-awareness saps the desired effect of “Funky Days Are Back Again.” I get the feeling that Singh applied improvised lyrics straight off the dome to the instrumental backing track. But there is little spontaneity in the drag of the vocals on an already lagging progression, with its angular chord structure and surprising changes. Only about halfway through does the outline of a kind of song take shape, and the possibilities it offers to the listener last for a few seconds before “ Funky Days Are Back Again” lapses into its less essential business once more.

On “What Is Happening,” Indian percussion is performed in the manner of a ticking clock, over which found sounds “turkey gravy” and “what is happening” push the conflicting noises toward increased tension verging on anxiety, even paranoia, a temporary bad trip amidst a sea of good vibes. Allen Ginsberg is the basis for “When the Light Appears Boy” invoking his poem against the backdrop of celebratory street music, these disparate sonic materials threaded together to summon transcendence through epiphany. The poem’s prelude is spoken in Punjab by an unidentified man, suggesting a universal quality of poetry across different cultures and languages.

“Coming Up,” a groovy sitar noodle, plays less as an autonomous track and more like an intro to “Good Shit,” which could have been the group’s second big single from the When I Was Born for the 7th Time, if the content, innocuous as it really is, was FCC-friendly. Nothing in the son comes close to obscene--the “shit” Singh references are the ringing vibrations that beautifully warp the air around us, which we should accept not as chaotic noise but as randomized music. The song has the same sense of humor as “Brimful of Asha” and carries with it the distinction of being less an aural experiment than a fully fleshed indie rock song, with guitars and drums and singing and choruses.

A similar imprint--steady drums, light, sometimes non-sensical lyrics, and out-of-the-blue sounds transposed from Singh’s febrile mind--informs “Good to Be on the Road Back Home Again,” a straightforward duet with a country and western sway, about the safety of familiar things, good friends and the beer you love. Less straightforward is the engrossing mindfuck “It’s Indian Tobacco My Friend,” about five or so minutes of simply programmed weirdness. As a song, it resists being too far out or too psychedelic, but there are plenty of implanted blips keep the listening experience compelling. For instance, there is a single tabla drum that occurs once every other measure or so, and when it gets punched in as part of a sample of chanted voices it is noticeably off time, behind the beat. This slow tabla is necessary, even though it’s neither prominent nor melodically noteworthy. It identifies a kind of meta-space that can exist in time between beats, defying all tempos; not to change the time, exactly, but to suggest an infinite number of meta-beats that could be imagined to the left or right of the drumbeat in time.  

After the Beatles recorded “Norwegian Wood,” George Harrison spent the rest of his career atoning for the clumsy appropriation of the sitar on the track from Rubber Soul, diligently studying the intersection of Indian spirituality and music under the tutelage of sitar master Ravi Shankar. Here, Cornershop reclaim the song into the Punjab language, effectively ending the argument of who stole what from whom. Cornershop’s version of “Norwegian Wood” is not performed as criticism or satire. Rather, the song comes across as a reconciliation, a suggestion that, while there may be certain sounds and modes of music available to all, the exchange--of signifiers, instruments, ideas--must go both ways in order to be artistically fruitful.

Released in 1997, When I Was Born for the 7th Time is as crisp and aesthetically applicable today. It is a reminder that, when the hot wave of darkness (that foul temper of a provoked Nature) is rolling over the fundamental notions of our charmed reality, there sometimes may be found “good shit” rising above the forces of cynicism and evil. Cornershop’s message of easygoing transference between the citizens of a globalized planet celebrates an open consciousness, embracing the marriage of different musics, philosophies, and cultures.