If you're like me (and I hope this is the only way in which you are like me, for your own good), you go through phases where you obsess on certain songs for days. Recently my musical OCD latched upon Timmy Thomas' “Why Can't We Live Together.” This 1972 hit haunted me during my youth, as its mournful yet hopeful tone and ominous, primitive drum-machine beats starkly contrasted with the bulk of relentlessly upbeat fodder most of the dial offered.

(Don't get me wrong, though: commercial radio during the '60s and '70s—in the Detroit area where I grew up, anyway—was relatively awesome compared to the inane narrowcasting that prevails today. Why, in the early '70s, spacey funk instrumentals by Billy Preston, Deodato and Dennis Coffey could grace prime-time airwaves and somehow the peasants didn't revolt, Mr. Clear Channel executive.)

But let's get back to “Why Can't We Live Together.” Thomas' voice here is like a honeyed balm of essential vitamins and his Hammond organ vamps sting like Muhammad Ali jabs. The words are extremely simplistic and the sentiments unrealistic (even if Obama wins the next election), but, no matter. The song's crux is outlined in these six lines, which are as poignant and timeless as anything ever heard in a chart-dweller (I'll take this over John Lennon's soggy, milquetoast “Imagine” any damned day).

No more war, no more war. All we want is some peace in this world.

Everybody wants to live together.
Why can't we be together?

No matter, no matter what color.
You are still my brother.

As is often typical in popular songs, it's not the lyrics themselves that compel, but rather the way in which they're sung. In Thomas' case, he transforms humble source material into a deathless hymn to human possibility—even as Richard Nixon occupied the White House and the Vietnam War raged. Talk about insurmountable odds... Thomas sure enjoyed a challenge.

New York City in the early '80s boasted one of the most vital music scenes in the history of vital music scenes. In fact, British label Soul Jazz has released three compilations (and a book!)—titled New York Noise—of the Big Apple's underground music, all of which I highly recommend.

One of the major catalysts of NYC's fecund sonic playground were Liquid Liquid. You probably know of them through “Cavern,” whose irrepressible rhythm the Sugar Hill house band replicated for Melle Mel and the Furious Five's club standard “White Lines (Don't Do It).”

Unfortunately, Liquid Liquid's sparse output has been very hard to obtain during the quarter century since the group's 1980-1983 lifespan. Mo'Wax and the defunct Grand Royal reissued Liquid Liquid's EPs plus four live cuts on CD and vinyl in 1997, but that release, Liquid Liquid, has since gone out of print. Luckily, Domino Records is issuing an upgraded version of that collection on May 19, called Slip In and Out of Phenomenon, on CD and triple LP. Hot damn! The songs were taken from Liquid Liquid's three EPs originally released by the 99 Records, plus 10 previously unreleased bonus tracks.

For a change, we'll be obvious with our selection for this Video Savant, because “Cavern” is so infectious and seminal, it can withstand daily airings for decades and not lose its warehouse-gray-lighted luster. The track stands as one of the definitive early-'80s NYC aural signposts. “Cavern” (off 1983's Optimo EP) is minimalist funk at its best, imbued with healthy dollops of that quintessential Lower East Side tension and paranoia. Yet it's also sexy as a motherfucker, thanks largely to a tightly coiled bass line that's ribbed for every species' pleasure.

Tens of thousands of breakdancers have busted moves to this deathless groove over the last 25 years, and if planet Earth can hang on in there for a while longer, tens of thousands more will similarly unleash their repertoire of spins, uprocks, windmills, etc. to “Cavern”'s stark, functionally fundamental bump.

To commemorate Portishead's world-beating performance at Coachella Saturday, this edition of Video Savant focuses on “Machine Gun,” a track off Third, which comes out today.

“Machine Gun” is unlike anything in Portishead's canon, which is indicative of most of Third; all reports point to a reinvention of the group's sound, although I've yet to hear the whole album. The staccato bursts of distorted and martial drums (the titular weapon, it's safe to assume) evoke Nine Inch Nails and Tackhead, while an eerie analog synth (mimicking a forlorn Theremin groan) underscores Beth Gibbons' plaintive, curdled-whipped-cream vocals about AWOL saviors and the poison in her heart. Whereas previous Portishead releases have become coffeehouse standards, “Machine Gun” is more suitable for the battlefield or the abattoir.

Dig the blue-light starkness of this clip. Everything appears to be suffused in a Cold War-era bleakness. The massive Moog and/or Buchla synthesizers only add to the poignant, long-ago aura of this video. But Portishead avoid corny nostalgia and create a gripping work of art (which sounded great on the Coachella main stage, too).

Swervedriver were a late addition to the Coachella lineup (they play the Mojave Tent 5:05 p.m. April 27) and consequently we didn't get a chance to cover them in our extensive preview in this week's issue. So consider this Video Savant an attempt to make amends for that.

Swervedriver were classified as shoegazers, partially because they recorded for Creation Records, home to My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Ride and other fine, introverted guitar bands that favored the gauzy wall of distortion approach prevalent in the late '80s/early '90s underground. But these Brits invested their epic, emotionally powerful rock songs with a brawny metallic sheen that veered more toward Hüsker Dü's artful machismo than shoegaze's more typical receding billows of mauve guitar tones.

Swervedriver's biggest U.S. hit was “Rave Down,” but all the YouTube vids available boast terrible audio quality (in fact, nearly all of the Swervedriver videos on YT sound like shite; it's a travesty, mate). Plus, I hate to be overly obvious with my selections. So we're going with this live version of “Duel,” which may be an even better song. It captures Swervedriver's trademark shifting between pensive and explosive passages, while featuring one of their most beautifully wistful melodies and Adam Franklin's deadpan vocals, sounding invitingly forlorn amid the guitar maelstrom.

It'll be very interesting to see if Swervedriver—like fellow recently reunited, outward-bound U.K. rockers the Verve—can summon what made them special some 15 years ago in Indio's blazing heat five days hence.

“Duel” (Live)

Ah, they don't make 'em like this anymore.

This 1999 cut (on the B-side to the world-beating Windowlicker 12,” whose title track was hailed by this writer as one hell of a sex aid) is one of Aphex Twin's weirder creations (which is really saying something).

The title is a long-ass mathematical equation, which you can view here. The music itself is as hard to figure out as said equation is for numerophobes to solve. This is Richard D. James at his most madly scientific, hermetically experimental and brilliantly inscrutable. “Equation” is the score to a modern dance... for alien insects. It is also, by the way, the sound caroming inside OC Weekly's music editor's head while dealing with particularly stressful deadlines.

If Aphex drops this piece during his DJ set at Coachella (he performs there April 25), expect spontaneous copulating to break out—among the calculus geeks in the crowd. Everybody else will likely be searching the skies for UFOs.

Back before they had to add “the” to their name, before they hit it big with “Bitter Sweet Symphony” (and drew the litigious attention of the Rolling Stones' former manager [Allen Klein, biggest asshole in the history of the entertainment industry] for a crucial sample in it), before lead singer Richard Ashcroft decided to embark on a terminally dull solo career, the Verve were among the world's finest space rockers.

On the 1993 album A Storm in Heaven and the three EPs that preceded it, these northern English souls dispensed sonic bliss capsules with beatific benevolence. (Read my hyperbolic review of the album for Alternative Press here. Don't believe Ashcroft: the drugs do work.)

Following that aptly titled psychedelic masterpiece, the Verve gradually morphed into more conventional rockers with pronounced sentimental streaks, although 1995's A Northern Soul and 1997's Urban Hymns revealed sporadic flashes of brilliance.

The original Verve lineup (Ashcroft, guitarist Nick McCabe, bassist Simon Jones and drummer Peter Salisbury) reunited in 2007 for (sez Wikipedia) "the joy of the music." (Touching, isn't it?) This former awestruck fan fears their upcoming Coachella set could be a mawkish fiasco, devoid of the transcendent fire that marked the group's '92-'95 era. But I do hold out a glimmer of hope that the Verve will summon that gripping, levitational magic (and maybe do the sublime “Man Called Sun”)—which is amply demonstrated in the videos below.

The Verve perform Friday April 25 at Coachella.

“Slide Away”

“All in the Mind”

Before they became the Beatles of electronic music, before they hit upon the surefire gimmick of the man-machine, before they morphed into the funky robots who invented the techno and electro genres, before they became the default soundtrack composers for the Tour de France, Kraftwerk were progressive-rock experimentalists with inventive wild streaks totally in opposition to their mannered, control-freq personae that started with 1977's Trans-Europe Express LP.

Check out the pre-Autobahn albums Kraftwerk, Kraftwerk II, Ralf und Florian and Tone Float (recorded under the name Organisation) for ample proof of these German innovators' bizarre manifestations of experimental rock and avant-garde electronic exploration—and for the creation of the greatest flute sound ever.

One of my favorite Kraftwerk tracks from this period is “Ruckzuck,” off 1970's Kraftwerk. (Founding members Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider disown their pre-Autobahn work for mysterious, maddening reasons, but enterprising bootleggers keep these classics in circulation. Let's hope R&F come to their senses and authorize legit reissues of them one of these years.)

“Ruckzuck” ("translates as 'Very quickly' with a slight connotation of 'Push-pull,'" says Wikipedia) is marked by an unforgettable staccato flute motif that sputters with speed and agility. Farfisa organ and electric violin add to the unusual tonal palette (at least on the album version). The tempo is fleet, but the dynamics are unpredictable. The group abruptly halts the pell-mell groove for some knotty dissonance just as you're getting your mellow hypnosis on. The TV audience in this clip—which is about two minutes shorter than and somewhat inferior to the recorded version—seem unsure of how to respond to this new kosmische musik. You can't really blame them; “Ruckzuck” still sounds ahead of its time—or completely outside of it.

Kraftwerk play Coachella April 26. The chances of them performing “Ruckzuck” there are slimmer than Dick Cheney winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

When the news gets especially grim, as it has in the last couple of weeks (another Great Depression looming? Environmental disaster on the horizon? Jack Johnson headlining Coachella? We're fucked, people.), I turn to Curtis Mayfield's mellifluous voice and uplifting funk/soul symphonies for relief.

However, the tune under review for this week's Video Savant actually reflects the darkness of America's early-'70s socio-political climate (especially the racial tension), and forces us to realize that today's conditions haven't really improved—in fact, they may have worsened (compared to Bush 43, Nixon seems rather beneficent). Same old shit, new flies... Nixon's presidency is justifiably hated, but his reign did result in a lot of awesome music. Maybe it was worth the pain, hardship and scandal after all.

This is one of Curtis Mayfield's greatest songs (which is saying a helluva lot, as his canon abounds with some of the most exciting and soulful music ever conceived). “(Don't Worry) If There's a Hell Below We're All Going to Go”—which appears on the 1970 LP Curtis—promises a misery-loves-company (or is it company-causes-misery?) scenario. The track finds Mayfield at his most ominous and socially aware; it's shot through with a subliminal paranoia and sorrow that strike me as particularly zeitgeisty.

Steve Aoki (yeah, yeah—trustafarian douchebag, a regular Satan in hoodie and headphones, has greasy hair, yadda yadda; get over it) closed a December 2007 DJ set at Detroit Bar with the Jacksons' 1980 hit "Can You Feel It," which I hadn't heard in about two decades. It's a fantastic song with which to climax a set—or to play as December 31 transitions into January 1.

As you can see from this OTT video, there are no self-esteem problems with those Jackson bros. Gods, they are, you'd better believe. And rich gods, to boot. Can you imagine any artist today laying down the sort of loot required to stage a spectacle like this now? Even Michael has had to drastically scale back expenditures in these grim times for the record industry—and for his own scandal-plagued life. This film is so grandiose, I can't even think of a clever simile to use right now. If I still did Ecstasy, I'd definitely want to hear “Can You Feel It” while peaking. I'm sure it would sound like the most INCREDIBLY meaningful song EVER. *tear*

“Can You Feel It” builds with a relentless, positive momentum that you expect to hear on TV promo segments for the Olympic Games. You can't help being filled with an inflated sense of elation and purpose as its six-minute duration (re: the 12” version) progresses. It's totally apt that the album on which “Can You Feel It” appears is titled Triumph and that Jane Fonda snagged it for one of her early-'80s workout tapes. Pop it on and, voilà, instant delusions of grandeur!

(The Jacksons [or their handlers] get bonus points for using Ken Nordine for the voice-over; I could listen to his deep, well-modulated tones till you start appreciating Steve Aoki.)

Four Tops' "You Keep Running Away"—BEST SONG EVER, right this second, and probably for many seconds afterward. Immortality in under three minutes. The video? Meh. However, it's the only one in the YouTube-iverse. But no matter.

The composers of this song, those indefatigable pillars of the mighty Motown hit factory, Brian Holland-Lamont Dozier-Edward Holland, could fuse soulfulness, funkiness and hookiness with unparalleled panache. They found countless clever ways to write about heartbreak, love, loss—the whole hoary ball of cheese and chocolate on which popular music's been feasting for decades—without causing diabetes and eye-rolling. Somehow they eluded the triteness that afflicts most songwriters in the romance-centric idiom. In fact, on “You Keep Running Away,” Four Tops and HDH make romantic longing seem like an incomparably uplifting experience. Play this song on repeat for hours and throw away your Paxil forever... or at least a week.

Even though I came up in the Detroit area during Motown's '60s/'70s halcyon days and was bombarded with the label's output on the radio, I can still listen to HDH's songs decades after their initial release without that all-too-common feeling of burnout from overexposure. Miracles do happen, Smokey.

Four Tops play with the Temptations at the Grove of Anaheim March 13.

Adriano Celentano—who was unknown to me until a week ago—is something akin to the Italian Serge Gainsbourg. This bonkers song is on some Busby Berkeley-esque, proto-glam-disco-rap shit—with a harmonica solo! WTF?! After one listen/viewing, it catapulted into my pantheon of favorite songs ever. Sadly, nothing else I've checked by Celentano comes close to matching the riveting charm of “Prisencolinensinainciusol.” (Carrà is the striking blonde dynamo, of whom I know nothing, except she's a star in this vid.)

This video is madly kinetic and camp as hell and I am hopelessly enthralled with it. The day I discovered it, I must have watched it a dozen times. Other people who have viewed it liken the video to a drug and an aphrodisiac. Warning: Click PLAY on this thing and you will get very little work done today.

[If you're having trouble getting the video to play, go here.]

Welcome to Heard Mentality's newest regular feature, Video Savant.

It will appear every Tuesday, if all goes according to plan and YouTube keeps delivering the audio/visual goods.

Video Savant's concept is simple: I scour the vast cyber tundra (mostly the beneficent expanses of YouTube) for unusual and excellent music-oriented videos and then comment on them, for your edification and entertainment. The goal is to expand your musical horizons in weekly increments, so that in good time you can smugly pontificate about obscure bands/solo artists/DJs to your peers and thus raise your esteem among them. Or alienate yourself from everyone. Depends on how much charm and charisma you possess, really. So, as Marvin Gaye crooned, let's get it on.

We'll start with “Also Sprach Zarathustra.” This track by Brazilian keyboardist/composer/arranger Eumir Deodato was a hit in 1972 and won a Grammy in 1973 for Best Pop Instrumental Performance. This song would not be a hit in 2008. This song would not even be considered for commercial radio airplay in 2008.

If you want a succinct metaphor for declining aesthetics in America, this scenario will do nicely. A jazz-funked-up rendition of an 1896 Richard Strauss tone poem that was inspired by a philosophical tome by Friedrich Nietzsche charted in the early '70s and earned a major industry award; now it would be laughed out of the boardroom. [Record-company mogul: "Too pretentious! And where are the goddamned vocals?!?! Shit, maybe we can salvage a ringtone out of it…"]