Past Prime

On episode 25 of ⁠⁠Past Prime⁠⁠, we travel through The Mystic to the other side, where, in 2022, lockdown Van was consumed with "the data," Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab (head of the World Economic Forum). In Van's hard to explain new phase, however, Matty and Steve discover an unexpected new frontier -- Past Past Prime. Past Past Prime Van Morrison is part freedom fighter, part scientist and part Don Quixote. Steve, who believes that Van is his "twin flame," wonders if there is radical honesty and vulnerability in these curious songs. Matty (and the rest of the world) is less convinced. "What's It Gonna Take" sold poorly and was alternately ignored or reviled by critics. In this -- our twenty-fifth episode -- we return to the artist who inspired our Past Prime project way back when. Van's forty-third studio album is confounding, infuriating, trolling and -- yes -- daring. It may be performance art. It may be dangerous. But, for avowed fans, it cannot be ignored. This is the work we do. To read more about Van Morrison's "What's It Gonna Take?", check out the full essay at ⁠⁠Past Prime⁠⁠.

On episode 24 of ⁠Past Prime⁠, we go full “Sad Dad.” In 2017, after a decade being carried in the arms of cheerleaders, The National were disoriented. Their unexpected stardom was bumping up against their middle-aged domesticity. There was the scary new President. Members of the band even dared to leave Brooklyn for “the ru-burbs.” “Sleep Well Beast” was the band anxiously experimenting their way through the malaise of middle-age complacency. In this episode we discuss the contemporary compulsion for change (“Kid A Syndrome”), modern farmhouse architecture & the fine line between anxiety & depression in The National’s seventh studio album. To read more about The National, check out the full essay at ⁠Past Prime⁠.

On episode 23 of Past Prime, Steve and Matty revisit The King of Pop's penultimate album, which was really a double album, consisting of one greatest hits record and one lavish, eighty minute, fifteen track selection of new songs. "HIStory" was made while Jackson was being investigated by the Santa Barbara District Attorney for child abuse & endangerment, while he was also in the midst of his brief, mind-exploding marriage to Lisa Marie Presley, and while every aspect of his public and private persona was being obsessed over by paparazzi, headlines and gossip. Suffice it to say, it's a lot. The credits for "HIStory" name 260 individuals, including R. Kelly, Janet Jackson, Quincy Jones, Notorious BIG, David Foster, Shaquille O'Neil and Elizabeth Taylor. It features defiant New Jack Swing, goopy ballads and thinly veiled defenses and threats. But, most of all, it features the most famous man on the planet assuring us that he could never hurt a child because he is the true victim and the true savior. Though it's perhaps the saddest, angriest and least relatable album Michael ever made, it is also luxurious in its arrangements and quite fierce in its rhythms. There will never be anything else like it and while Matty cowers from its tawdriness, Steve is more than a little fascinated by its psychological thrills. Buckle up -- Wacko Jacko is Backo. To read more about "HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I," check out the full essay at Past Prime.

On episode 22 of Past Prime, and with the passing of Tom Verlaine still very much a recent event, Steve and Matty return to the third (and final) album from New York proto-punk legends, Television. Released in 1992, fourteen years after the band had broken up, but just before the world wide web became a source for instant information, "Television" arrived as a titanic surprise to fans of the band but as a non-event for the other 7.8 billion people on planet Earth. Matty, an avowed devotee, and Steve, a reluctant victim of his co-host's aesthetic intimidation, reflect on the merits of the album and the enduring significance of its elusive frontman. Though Television soldiered on right up until Verlaine's death (albeit without Richard Lloyd for many of those years) and though Tom Verlaine released two modest solo albums in the Aughts, "Television" is the band's swan song. Whereas Matty received this arrival breathlessly, eager to decode its poetry, its noir and its horror, Steve found it to be a "Low T," tossed off fade out. Where Matty heard beauty, Steve heard depression. Where Matty noticed invention and precision, Steve saw a bunch of middle-aged guys dozing off. This album that united two friends decades ago as college freshman, threatens to divide them decades later. Will they find common ground? Will they resolve the mystery of Tom Verlaine? Stay tuned for another episode of Past Prime! To read more about Television's self-titled reunion album, check out the full essay at Past Prime.