When I worked in a guitar factory (No. 29)
PLUS: Is Jay-Z's post-Black Album unretirement better than MJ's?
Welcome to How to Drob, where we combine memoir with music. If you want to skip the lost art of reading, this edition’s playlist is below.
I broke my wrist playing softball recently so typing is not as easy as usual, given the extra limb/cast. Good news for you all though is that means I’ll be less of a windbag than you’re used to.
The hands are so important, the very symbol of making things1 - everything from a piece of woodworking to typing to doing house chores. I learned a lot about making things from my Dad, who is both an excellent carpenter and a musician who shared his interest in acquiring, building, and repairing guitars. When I look at and think about my hands, I remember two times in life: right now (please see: immobility) and the two summers in college I spent working for Ernie Ball, the music company known for their strings and electric guitars.
Every day I’d carpool with a friend into the factory, clock in like it was the 1930s, and sit down with a mostly complete guitar neck (including frets and finishing) and we’d get to work with our hands.
We used buffing machines for shine, electric sanders for the bodies, and files for the frets. They all made your hands turn a very odd shade of green - not something natural like forest green or tropical like neon but something that might make your friends say “wow, your hands look like they’re rotting”.2 I also worked in set up, where I’d take a completed guitar neck and a completed body, put them together with an electric drill, string them up, and play every note to ensure they sounded right. Then I’d stick the paper order through them and send them off for completion - more often than not they were custom made for bands on tour and the orders were an absolute murderers row of names.3 It was hard work I was not likely to do for a long time (and frankly I wasn’t all that good at - I still remember the crippling fear of getting it right) but to this day I can also remember the excitement and satisfaction I felt sticking an order through the strings.
The first thing you feel when you learn to play the guitar? Like your wrist (left for a righty, right for a lefty) is going to explode. It’s torture and very unnatural to hold your hand basically upside down. And even though I rarely play anymore, I still have big feelings when I think about all the hours I spent up and down those frets, ensuring other people would have a smooth experience and get a chance to make something (while I made something). And the connection between what it felt like to create a guitar and what it felt to play myself is still palpable.
My hands might’ve been rotting but my brain was developing and I’m grateful for that time, however hard it was to work 10 hour days inside breathing in who knows what, under significant pressure. The excitement of holding music in your hands, people.
Drobbits & Bobs
I know I’ve used a lot of real estate on them through just 28 editions, but we got a chance to see LCD Soundsystem yet again, this time at Hollywood Bowl. The setlist from our show (Thursday) was quite a bit different than the following night, which of course I threatened to buy a last minute ticket to until I finally backed off. We missed Tribulations, Tonite and Losing My Edge, all favorites. But nobody got Daft Punk Is Playing At My House, which, tragedy. That first album, 2005’s LCD Soundsystem is overflowing with comedy and tongue-in-cheek references to everyone in the music scene trying way too hard to be cool. It’s my favorite record of theirs, in part because it honors the comedy crossover that so many of their predecessors perfected - Frank Zappa, David Byrne / Talking Heads, Debbie Harry / Blondie and of course tons of hip hop’s early pioneers like Kurtis Blow, Slick Rick, The Furious Five, Run D.M.C. and many others. If you’re dancing, rocking out and laughing, you may in fact be having a very good time.
Shoutout Charles, who asked if I thought Jay-Z’s post-Black Album output / un-retirement tour is as good as Michael Jordan’s famous ‘95-’97 three straight titles.4 My answer was that it’s about as good - are there at least three ‘championships’ in the discography post-unretirement? I think so. For those counting at home:
2006’s Kingdom Come - there was a period where I really loved this album but in retrospect everything else he’s done (including the pre-Black Album stuff), really outshines KC. It sounds a lot like what you’d create to dust yourself off and start the un-retirement, not the thing you’d create if you were just going to up and retire again immediately. Verdict: definitely not a title. More like a first round playoff loss.
2007’s American Gangster - probably his most underrated and most unheralded album. The production is classic old soul Jay, he sounds like he’s growling out the side of his mouth at the haters (like we knew of him), and of course the symbolism of the gangster (the real ones with guns and felonies) and gangstas (the ones with microphones, yachts and girls) is real. Verdict: a title. Maybe an easy run to the Finals but still, an undisputed championship.
2009’s The Blueprint 3 - I’m not a huge fan here. There’s a good argument that with 6 singles (including one of the most recognizable songs of his catalog in “New York State of Mind”), a couple million domestic in record sales and energy way beyond his 40+ years that this is a title. But it’s simply not good from a production or rapping standpoint. Verdict: pretty sure he didn’t make the playoffs with this one, despite a gigantic payroll.
2011’s Watch the Throne (with Kanye West) - I will not be going out of my way to describe why this is the biggest and best of his unretirement albums. Just listen to it. Verdict: championship.
2013’s Manga Carta Holy Grail - I like this album a lot. Most others don’t, and I get it. Verdict: Second round playoff loss.
2017’s 4:44. I know what you’re thinking - ‘that was released so he had a way to publicly apologize to his cheated-on wife, who had just (even more publicly) eviscerated him with the release of Lemonade.’ Fair enough - if you listen closely to the lyrics, there are a few moments of slight insincerity in his apologies (he hasn’t released a solo album since then, so, yeah, there’s something there). The music kicks ass though. And the rapping is really fantastic. Verdict: Championship. Book it. That’s four to MJ’s three.
Happy 63rd birthday to one of the best jazz albums of all time, Duke Ellington and John Coltrane’s Duke Ellington & John Coltrane. A behemoth and one of the best ‘put this album on anytime, anywhere, with any type of company’ albums ever.
Speaking of artists I’ve probably given too much airtime to, Bad Bunny is officially hosting the Super Bowl halftime show.5 Obviously I don’t need to mention the symbolism given this country’s absurd political climate, of a Latin superstar headlining the nation’s most-watched 20 minutes of airtime.6 He’s also hosting SNL this week, for any fellow pop culture gluttons out there.7
The Nina Simone imagery and sampling on this album makes me weak,
DROB
Yet another lost art - making things with your hands!
Shoutout Amy for coining the phrase ‘the summer your hands were rotting’.
Check out the full list here - I have distinct memories of making many for Steve Lukather, of Toto fame. The man featured prominently on the entire Thriller album, FFS. I was nervous.
In case anyone cares, this conversation started because I was re-listening to Rick Ross’ breakout 2010 album Teflon Don and thinking about how much Jay wanted Rick Ross to be a protege of his. Jay’s un-retirement began in 2006 with Kingdom Come (a widely recognized flop) and continued with 2007’s American Gangster (a widely acclaimed super album).
Of course, he deserves all of it. If there is a scandal coming involving Benito, I simply do not want to know about it. Just don’t tell me.
That is a fact, by the way. The Super Bowl is consistently the most-watched TV event every year and the cultural capital that - *checks notes* - Jay-Z and Roc Nation who have produced the event for roughly a decade - put on is absolutely massive. Shoutout to Jay-Z who is absolutely owning this edition.
I have a weird pre-retirement Jay Z opinion which is this: Unplugged is my favorite album.