Wednesday, December 28, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Thirty Four: Punk Rock Princess by Something Corporate

Amongst the reasons to break up a band. 'I have leukemia'
is pretty high up there...
I usually don't have much respect for emocore bands....but there's something about Something Corporate that has always attracted me. To the best of my knowledge, it's the only band that I turned the Penguin onto, and it's one whose finiteness is part of its charm.

I first discovered the band when I was sorting through a collection of holiday themed songs I had downloaded. In amongst the dross that I have long since forgotten was 'Forget December,' the band's paen to acknowledging that Christmas cheer doesn't heal familial dysfunction...and I loved the dark, moody composition, as well as the expressive vocals of Andrew McMahon. Unlike the other emocore bands I have heard, whose vocalists seem to be affecting their angst, McMahon seems thoroughly sincere. It helps, of course, that some of SC's songs take joy in a life that all their peers seem incapable of; I defy anyone to listen to, "I Woke Up In A Car," or "She Paints Me Blue" and not be a lil' uplifted by the nugget of hope McMahon's vocals hold out.

The band only put out three albums and an EP before going on a hiatus. Initially that hiatus was supposed to be temporary so McMahon and the other band members could explore other avenues. Hell, McMahon formed his own side project, Jack's Manniquin, that...well, I wasn't as thrilled with...and then was diagnosed with leukemia. This made the hiatus permanent, although in light of McMahon's remission the band has recently reunited to tour in support of a greatest hits album.

"Punk Rock Princess" is the first single off their first major release, Leaving Through The Window, and it's one of my favorite tracks of theirs. At its core it's a natural descendant of those silly pop singles where a guy or a girl (or both in duet form) pledge his or her love to the romantic interest of their choice...only this is Love In The Oughts, which means that this star-struck teen's perception of puppy love has been filtered through the dirty glass of a post-modern world...so he's not pledging to hold her hand and buy her an ice-cream soda; he's pledging to let her 'think him whole' and to be her 'Garage Band King.' And throughout all this, he's not even sure this is the love of his life--he's accepting, even looking for, things missing in her that he can't replace. He's accepting that this is not going to be forever, that her very nature assures that the relationship won't last, so all he wants is to be her, ummmm, heroin....

And I have to admit--I personally don't think that this song would hit me so hard if it wasn't for the work of both drummer Brian Ireland and guitarist Josh Partington. The licks these two put down fills out the song, amplifying the desperation in McMahon's vocals. I like to imagine the rhythm created by those two are McMahon's heartbeat as he's confessing his attraction to the object of his affection, ready to be shot down even after he assures her he is not expecting more than a brief respite from their respective loneliness.

I think it's telling that while there are one or two songs from Jack's Manniquin that I tolerate, even like, I have never had the sheer mania for that later project that I have for Something Corporate. But then, even with McMahon promising a fourth album sometime soon out of nostalgia, I kind of wonder if Something Corporate is better served by just being a band that existed for three years, put out a consistently great body of work, and then disappeared forever.

Here is the official video....
 

Monday, December 26, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Thirty Three: Chantilly Lace by The Big Bopper

"Auto-what?"
Yes, that song...

There's a reason why this song has endured for so long. I've talked in the past about certain songs that have been so imprinted by their originators, and this is one of them. The way the man originally known as J.P. Richardson keeps sliding between spoken word, conventional singing, and idiosyncratic shouts and noises is very unique in and of itself. Sure, you could argue that all The Bopper was doing was borrowing from then-peers such as Little Richard, but I think what makes this song endure is the simple exuberance in his voice. Listening to it now, I get the impression that this is a guy who was loved being up on stage acting like a goofball--he was apparently a ham in all the best possible ways, someone who gave it his all whether on a record or live.

And the other great thing about this pop song--unlike the so-called pop that we endure on stations such as 'the Now' or Z100, which just goes on and on, twisting itself into all sorts of permutations in an effort to convince you that the thin musical concept it's presenting is worth four or five minutes of your time, this song is done after two minutes. And that's all it deserves; at its core, this is a song about a girl the Bopper is going out with tonight that, you know, he thinks is swell. It's a very basic concept to grab, and the Bopper presents it, let it wiggle a bit for our enjoyment, and ushers it off stage. That's all pop music needs to be. It's the reason I believe, as many pop music aficionados do, that the ideal length for any pop song should be three minutes. I shudder to think what Richardson would have produced in this landscape of autotune and over-the-top epicness; it would most likely be so bloated that I wouldn't be able to stand it.

As it is, this is a little bite size nuggest of pop rock, and that's all it needs to be.

Here's the video!

Saturday, December 24, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Thirty-Two: Last Christmas by Idiot Glee

"Do I look out of focus to you?"
Here it is, Christmas Eve, and I've exceeded thirty songs this year...but it doesn't look like I will complete the goal of forty. It's enough for me to be encouraged to embark on a 2012 cycle, and I will once again add the shortfall to the total. I will conquer this thing yet...

And here's the third of our Christmas Novelty Songs--hell, it's a cover of a Christmas Novelty Song that I cited in my last entry as The Last Great Perennial Christmas Single.

Idiot Glee is from Kentucky, and are apparently the alter-ego of James Friley. Idiot Glee has also apparently made it a habit to produce a Christmas covers EP ever year; this rendition of the Wham! UK cover is from their first, An Idiot Glee Christmas. The female vocalist you hear is Ashley Crawford...and I guess as a cover, it's okay. It really doesn't do much to make it stand out. There is the sleigh bells, the Casiotone synth does give it a strange, swirly feel that's at turns very open and very claustrophobic, and Crawford's vocals have an odd quality all their own--when the male vocals come in for harmonic support, they're very startling...and to be fair, they also serve to give the rendition a slim golden chain-like anchor to that original 1980's version.

I don't know what else to say. As I was saying to a friend yesterday, the biggest reason who so many people (you know, like me) have grown to loathe Christmas music is that there are these three dozen or so songs that have been ossified into an Acceptable Holiday Canon...and musicians have spent literally decades just picking from this Canon and reworking them with only minimal exertion of creativity. And that's what Mr. Friley has done.

Incidentally, the EP is still available for a dollar here.

Sorry our little sidetrip into Christmas Music didn't end on a more epic note...but maybe next year....

No video for this one...but here's Mr. Friley and Ela Orleans from the same EP collaborating on the 'delightful' Christmas paen to Date Rape, "Baby It's Cold Outside."

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Thirty One: Without You by Hey Monday

When your lead singer's previous band was named after her
middle name....well, you know who wears the pants in
this one, right?
Hey, look!  I managed to break thirty this year!  There might be hope left after all....

...and we're back to the Holiday Novelty Song--well, kinda. Unlike our last dip into this pool, which tried to make its way onto the perennial Holidays Playlist by doing a paen to an end-of-the-year festival that isn't Christmas, this one tries to crack that list by giving us a song that makes Christmas incidental.

And make no bones about it--in the last handful of years, there's a lot of these Christmas-Songs-That-Aren't, usually presented by these pop rock bands that sprung up in the wake of the Disney-sponsored Tweener-pop revolution. These are songs that are for all extents just plain ol' songs addressing the usual pop music themes--I Miss My Significant Other; I Love My Significant Other; I Wish To Have Physical Intercourse With My Significant Other; I Am Going To Use Metaphor To Describe An Incident of Physical Intercourse With My Significant Other--and sprinkles in references to mistletoe and Christmas decorations and caroling to convince us that yes, this is a Christmas song. Now granted, this mode of attack has produced successes in the past--an argument can be made that the Last Great Perennial Holiday Single was 'Last Christmas,' which is the prototype for all these songs, The Killers have made a cottage industry out of doing these strange and dark Christmas singles that seem more about mayhem than the holidays, and one of my favorites songs from the emocore band Something Corporate is 'Forget December.' But sometimes you get, well, 'Without You.'

There are too many jokes I could make about this photo,
and all of them would be inappropriately rude...
Hey Monday, the Florida band that has given us 'Without You' has only been around since 2008, have only been recording since last year and boy, do they want to be Paramore badly. Just like Paramore, Hey Monday builds its image around its lead singer and guitarist, Cassadee Pope. And Pope is striving so hard to be a clone of Hayley Williams, it's not even funny....except that her attempts to fashion her image thusly has resulted in her coming off more Ashley Simpson (remember how she liked to proclaim that she was a 'rock chick' during that brief period when pop culture treated her singing aspirations seriously?) than Williams, or Avril Lavinge, or any of a dozen pop-rockettes that have come down the pike. If anything, Pope is a lumpen Plasticine statuette of a pop punk diva, something kids draw in their art classes when asked to draw a rock band.

As for the band itself....in spite of their posturings (which includes the self-conscious 'radical' misspellings of the band members' names, and the weird fetishization of Pope's tattoos by their fans), Hey Monday comes off as the sort of band that's featured on a Disney Channel sitcom because, you know, Paramore rocks too hard.

'Without You' is from an entire EP of Christmas songs called, imaginatively, The Christmas EP. And the fascinating thing? There are four songs. One is a cover of 'O Holy Night.' Of the three originals, only one ('Mixtape For Christmas') bothers to mention Christmas or anything Christmas-y in the title. And those originals use Christmas not as an inspiration, but as a backdrop. Take the references to snow and mistletoe out of 'Without You,' and you still have a pop song that's perfectly workable. And there's something sad about that. I may be a pretty cynical bastard when it comes to Christmas, but at least I know that when I sit down to watch something yule-ish, I want it to actually have a whiff of the Season to it. Listening to this, all I can think of is that Pope wants to be Hayley Williams, and she wants to have her generation's version of 'Last Christmas' under her belt. And she fails on both counts.

Every year I see more and more of these kind of songs. And it saddens me because I see it as a further indication that in most people's mind Christmas has drifted so far away from the things it was supposed to represent and more about the trappings. And I can't see this trend stopping in the future.

Here's the song....


Wednesday, December 14, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days, Day Thirty: Flash Gordon Theme by Tenacious D

I've discussed the idea of the joke band that found themselves being larger than the joke they started telling--I've covered it pretty extensively when I talked about The Zambonis--and today, we're going to be talking about a joke band whose largeness is probably only exceeded by Spinal Tap...Tenancious D.

And don't argue about it--as originally conceived by Jack Black and Kyle Gans, Tenacious D was meant as a joke. To be more precise, the band was a hobby until the duo decided to use it as the central conceit of a series of short films they made for HBO back in 1999. Those short films led to them supporting bigger acts on the road, which led to them cutting their first album, which led to their Top Ten hit 'Tribute,' which led to them actually making a movie....which thankfully did poorly (and deservedly so), thus stopping the band from becoming world leaders or something. They may very well be the most successful joke band in recent memory.

This cover of the classic Queen theme to the campy as all Hell movie is...well, it's delivered pretty straight, and to be fair Queen is tailor made to Black's overdramatic, bombastic vocals, even if the single acoustic guitar acoustic is rather strange. But hearing this live rendition makes me wonder if Black and Gans are now at that point in their musical career that Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer and Michael McKean were at when I wrote that earlier entry, that point where they want people to know that they can write and perform, you know, actual songs and not just take-offs and parodies. This might very well be why that third album, referred to at different times as Tenacious 3-D or Rise of The Pheonix has been in limbo for so long. Are Black and Gans unsure about whether they want to continue down the jokey high-concept path that gave them the most success or try to mature a bit and find new paths to explore.

Of course, it could just be that the two thought the Queen song was kick ass. It wouldn't surprise me if that was all it was.

Anyway, this is not the live version I have on my Sansa Disk...but it's still a cool rendition that slides ever-so-easily into one of my favorite songs of theirs, 'Wonderboy'....

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days, Day Twenty Nine: Hanukkah Hey Ya! by Smooth-E

Blame This Guy...
And as I try to race to the end to minimize the amount of bleed over for 2012...our first Holiday Novelty Song.

The Holiday Novelty Song has a long and storied history--after all, what is 'Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer' or 'Frosty The Snowman' but a holiday novelty song that has drifted into the realm of The Standard? Of course, what fascinates me are those novelty songs that become perennials but never quite break through to Standard status; here in New York, every Christmas time we are tormented with repeated playings of 'Dominick The Christmas Donkey,' the saga of the donkey Santa uses to bring toys to the children of Italy sung by Lou Monte but apparently never getting much traction outside of the tri-state area.

To be honest, it is amazing to me how many of these songs do end up clawing their way into the playlists of lazy radio stations everywhere. Every year we get dozens, if not hundreds of songs from various artists bidding for the same sort of immortality Frosty and Rudolph and That Reindeer That Ran Over Grandma have achieved...and for every 'Last Christmas' or 'Merry Christmas, Baby (Please Come Home)' or 'All I Want For Christmas Is You,' there are dozens which don't make it.

Which I guess brings us to Eric Schwartz, a.k.a. Smooth-E, an Oakland native who tries with this song to break into that hallowed holiday playlist by taking The Adam Sandler Road. Sandler guaranteed himself Holiday Novelty Immortality by sidestepping the overexposed Christmas and writing his HNS about Hanukkah. Actually, he cemented it by writing about Hannukkah three times over. And this prompted a whole group of other artists to do a little 'me, too' creating their own paens to Other Holidays That Take Place Around Christmas. As I write this, there's one artist who has actually produced an EP of Atheist Christmas Songs...no lie.

Not surprisingly, the biggest group of alternative HNS's are about the Festival of Lights, and to be fair, some of them are pretty good.

Not this one.

Mr. Schwartz, in creating his Hanukkah-themed parody of Outkast's smash hit of several years ago, falls into one of the pitfalls of the Novelty Song--namely, mistaking stereotyping for celebrating. Even thought Schwartz at one point proclaims 'Oi is just Yo backwards,' he brings nothing more to the table but a series of surface impressions of what Hanukkah is--hey, look! Menorahs! Driedels! Matzoh Balls! Latkes!'...and ending with the whole 'hey, we get eight nights of presents compared to you guys' getting one'...a point made better by, among other people, Adam Sandler in the songs that started this all.

Here is the video, which is just as cheap and surface as the song itself (Hey, look! These jews are accountants!). My apologies...

Friday, November 25, 2011

Cover-versies: The Sing Off...Get One Coffin Ready?

There's nothing official yet, but word is that The Sing Off, the NBC a capella singing competition that's wrapping up its third year this Monday, may be cancelled.

The reason given is the disappointing ratings for this season. Of course, if you put your modest little show directly up against the gaudier, shoutier and more heavily publicized by the media Dancing With The Stars, and also against the gaudier, shoutier start up competition The X Factor, which had former American Idol judges as well as one of your former judges...well, don't be surprised if your ratings dip quite a bit. That being said, I am going to miss it, for it will mark the end of seeing the a capella tradition in America being represented in a nationally available way.

I fell in love with the collegiate a capella tradition purely by accident. I was searching for cover versions of, I think , Sheryl Crow songs on the file sharing service I was using back when file sharing services were still questionable-but-perfectly-legal and stumbled across UPenn Off The Beat's stunning version of 'Anything But Down'. Now I had a vague idea of a capella pop music before--I had a brief doo-wop phase fed by WCBS when I was a teenager--but this discovery opened my ears to the whole American collegiate a capella tradition, where schools all over the country had a capella group devoted to creating all vocal arrangements of pop songs. I downloaded a slew of Off The Beat songs in the day following, and then started seeking out and downloading songs from other a capella groups. It remains one of my favorite cover genres because so many of these groups manage to do the uncanny trick of making the songs both familiar but alien, recognizable but somehow strange and new.

So you can imagine my excitement when The Sing Off was announced, an excitement that was amplified when I learned that Ben Folds was going to be one of the judges. Besides being one of my favorite musicians, Folds is a long standing aficionado of collegiate a capella--the man even got his label to finance an album where acapella groups covered his songs.

And the show itself did not disappoint. The Sing Off is my favorite singing competition--not just because I love the genre, but because Folds and his fellow judge Shawn Stockman (formerly of Boys II Men) were actively smart. Unlike many other judges who tend to play down to an audience that they think are stupid, Folds and Stockman are unafraid to explain to you why something works or doesn't work for them, and while their talk of blends and harmonics and beat boxing might confuse many people, anyone who listens can pick up the theories of a capella pretty quickly and understand what they're trying to get at. I wasn't so thrilled with female judge Nicole Scherzinger in the first two seasons, who seemed to be up there primarily because they wanted a hot chick, but for this third season swapped her out for Sara Barellis, who had enough of a background in a capella that you understood why she was there. Folds and Stockman are so knowledgable about music that I would pay good money to see an American version of Later With Jools Holland, with the duo interviewing and jamming with musicians; it'd be fascinating viewing.

There are a couple of things that seem to have dictated Season Three's drop-off. For one, there's the aforementioned crossfire it suffered from being scheduled to compete with both Dancing with The Stars and The X Factor. The previous two seasons were broadcast in December, when most shows are on their holiday hiatus and it wasn't fighting for attention with any big ticket competition shows. The second is that since last year, NBC got a surprise hit in The Voice, a more conventional singing competition with greater star power in Christina Aguilera, Cee-Lo Green and others. That show is where the bulk of NBC's attention is at now, to the point where I wonder if the only purpose the network had for broadcasting this season is so they can show adverts for The Voice down our throats.

Which is a pity, because there has been some great acts this season. The Sing Off has always been conscious about including all aspects of the American a capella tradition, and this season included a spiritual group (Messiah's Men from Milwaukee via Nigeria), a family act, several collegiate groups, a jazz scat group, a professional group that performed daily in Bramford, and a senior doo wop group  called North Shore that, in the biggest surprise of all, produced what ranks one of the the highlights of this season, a stunningly good rendition of Bruno Mars' "Lazy Song."


Did you watch that? To me, those five guys managed to tap into what made the song great while making it thoroughly unique to themselves. And that, to me, is at the core of what makes a capella great.

Okay, there were a couple of acts that really didn't feel like they belonged beyond the first round including two 'super groups,' Kinfolk 9 and Delilah, who were composed of losers from previous seasons. Kinfolk 9 bugged me tremendously because it was obvious they were all about their lead vocalist, and Delilah....Delilah was an all girl group that started out with this massively powerful version of Bruno Mars' 'Grenade'...


....and then seemed to be gambling on their uniqueness as an a capella group composed of hot girls to carry them through to the finals. And the scary thing is that, through rounds of lackluster performance, it looked like they'd succeed; I was beginning to have nightmares of Delilah facing off against Urban Method in the finals.

Who?

These guys...

And I'll be honest with you...Urban Method is good, with some really great lead vocalists...but I can't get past the fact that they're more about their 'rapcapella' gimmick than anything else. It doesn't surprise me that this Denver, Colorado unit is in the finals, but I don't see why they think they need this, as their gimmick could net them a recording contract right now. Don't be surprised if you see them with a contract even if they don't win.

The most frustrating thing is that even though the show celebrates the collegiate a capella traditions, collegiate a capella groups tend to drop off very quickly. I was very heartened this season to see three of these groups go to the semis, including Afro Blue from Howard University, who utilized jazz vocal traditions to great effect, like in this medley of Janet Jackson songs...



I understand why they didn't make the finals, as some of their performances were maddeningly uneven. But I was sorry to see them and Brigham Young's energetic and fun Vocal Point go...both groups brought something unique and compelling to the competition. If this is the last season, I do want to see a collegiate a capella group, who for long stretches carried the vocal tradition on their backs, take it. Luckily, the collegiate group represented in the finals are these guys...



The Dartmouth Aires. My God, listen to Michael's voice! These guys have so much energy, so much power, so much creativity that I actually believe they could take it....unfortunately, they're up against....


Pentatonix, who is looking to be the team to run away with it. And it's quite deserved. At first I really didn't appreciate their whole 'vocal-only-dance-music' schtick...and then they started putting in these amazing performances for the phases in the competition outside their comfort zone, and I became sold. They really do these things vocally to simulate scratching and other production effects that floored me sometimes, and their energy is infectious. And when you think they've done everything, they do something like mash up Cee-Lo and Kelly Clarkson into what amounts to a little mini-musical...


I really want the Aires to win, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't rooting just a little bit for these kids as well.

(and yes...for those of you who followed my Facebook comments on the show--the little latin girl is the infamous Kirstie Maldondo, whose crooked sideways smile I have been crushing on all season.  But it's not because of her that I sing this group's praises).

I sincerely hope that NBC continues to air the series--maybe if it moved the show back to its December berth, it will cope a bit better--but if this is its last season, I will mourn it. It's the only singing competition I watch from beginning to end, and it would be a shame for a proud American tradition to go unrepresented in the wide world of television.  You can still watch episodes on Hulu, and can still vote until Sunday for the final three...

Saturday, November 5, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Twenty Eight: The Insane Girl by Big Dipper

And now it's time to delve once again into the Bands Tom Loves That No Longer Exist File (although I need to move them out of that file), and the Bands That Died In The Great 90's Signing Frenzy...although this one has had a little more fame.

Big Dipper was something of a mini-supergroup, being formed from members of Boston bands The Volcano Suns, The Embarrassment and Dumptruck. I first encountered them at the old Ritz, opening for--I think--Oingo Boingo (it's kind of hard to remember exactly when you're rapidly becoming more salt than pepper in the hair department), and I was instantly taken by their strange, quirky lyrics, reverb heavy guitars and eccentric vocal stylings. I scoured the used record stores of Greenwich Village to locate their three albums, which I did at, of all places, the old 4th Street Tower Records.

Sadly, though, Big Dipper was one of the many, many many indie bands that found themselves snatched up by a major label in the wake of the overwhelming success of Nirvana's Nevermind. And, like such bands I discussed before like Tribe and Harvey Danger, Big Dipper put out one album with Epic Records, Slam, and promptly broke up when Epic dropped them over poor album sales. Thankfully, in 2008 Merge Records put out Supercluster: A Big Dipper Anthology, which featured not only highlights from their three indie albums, but the songs that would have become their second album with Epic, A Very Loud Array.

"Insane Girl" doesn't quite have the humor that I felt marked many of the band's best works (those that cringe when humor in music is brought up shouldn't worry; this is a much darker strain)--but to be fair, a lot of the songs from Craps, their third album, leaned more toward the soberer part of the spectrum. I love how in much of Big Dipper's work there's a sense of ominous foreboding, like something bad is just on the horizon. Even when the song is as innocuous as this one, depicting the universal problem of struggling with a girlfriend who may, quite frankly, be off her rocker emotionally, the bass line and the apocalyptic drum playing makes it clear that this relationship may get worse before it gets better.

Thankfully, Big Dipper reformed around the time of Supercollider's release, and continue to perform together to this day. Hell, they've got a song on the soundtrack to the new indie comedy Loser Takes All...about a group that gets together in a way that's suspiciously similar to the way Big Dipper formed way back when! You can even be their friends on Facebook. Lord knows I am!

Here is the song in question--


Monday, October 31, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Twenty Seven: A Hard Day's Night by Billy Joel

This is going to take a while.  You've been warned.

This is a live performance taken from the the old VH1 series Storytellers. You remember Storytellers, don't you? From when VH1, like its brother station MTV actually was interested in showing music-related programming? What the show did was take a big name musician, place him or her in VH1's tiny studio on Eleventh Street, invite a slew of fans to come in, and let them perform for an hour, telling the stories behind their hits. I loved Storytellers; at their best, they serve to illuminate the artist in ways I never considered before. But sometimes that isn't for the best.

What's strange about the Billy Joel Storytellers is how little of Billy Joel's songs are in that episode. He spends a lot of time talking about all the songs that influenced him, what it was like growing up to be Billy Joel, why his favorite songs worked for him....pretty much anything but why he wrote the songs he was famous for. When he does get to his own songs, he tends to only play a small snippet and return to stuff like, 'hey, weren't the Beatles great?'

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. After all, I have a very complex relationship with Mr. Joel. Bouyed by discovering Piano Man in Junior High and The Stranger in High School (hell, one of my teacher actually bought me a vinyl copy of this one to encourage my interest in music), he was my favorite artist through much of my formative years. My first live concert was seeing him at Madison Square Garden on New Year's Eve in support of The Nylon Curtain...

And then An Innocent Man happened, and my feelings changed...I speculated at the time that Joel's then-recent marriage to Christie Brinkley had somehow sanded off the edges of Joel's 'angry man with a piano' sound I admired. But to be fair, if I listened more closely to that album's 'Christie Lee,' I should have realized what was happening is I was discovering something about him I didn't care for...something that pretty much is at the core of all his music.

Namely, that Billy Joel's music boils down to one statement. It's Not My Fault.

Think about it. Every one of his songs seems to be about how he doesn't get what he wants, and how dare the world do that? It's not his fault that Virginia won't sleep with him; it's her Catholic upbringing. He's not like the denizens of that piano bar in L.A. he's earning nickels and dimes playing for; even they recognize he doesn't belong here. He's not responsible for his romance breaking up; it's the fault of the woman he's in love with and her mercurial, childish ways. Billy Joel wants the world to return to the time when he was the 'king of the Village Green,' his teen years when he was still chewing sin-sin and getting gals were easy. And while the world continues to evolve, he refuses to accept any part of it--after all, he didn't start the fire...it was there when he got there.

I haven't bought a Billy Joel record since An Innocent Man, but I have kept up with his career, and it's almost sad seeing him become more and more the kind of person he used to sneer at in those early songs. And in the context of him as a person struggling with how popular music has changed (this episode was recorded to promote Stormfront, Joel's last commercially successful album), it doesn't surprise me that he spent the lion's share of his time reminiscing and playing the songs he wished he wrote when he was a kid.

I know, I know. I haven't said much about his interpretation of this early Beatles classic. It's a meticulous recreation, adding nothing of Joel's....but then, maybe that's the point. Maybe what's being added is Joel's envy.

Here's Joel performing this song during the sad-in-more-ways-than-one concert at Shea Stadium...

Saturday, October 8, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Twenty Six: Soup by Blind Melon

And we return to this annual slog through my MP3 player with a song that's actually painful to listen to.

Don't get me wrong--it's not painful because it's bad. Truth be told it's alright, if not particularly remarkable...which could pretty much be a description of how I feel about Blind Melon's output as a whole. It's painful because of the context of the song. This is, after all, a song that may have been intended as the title track for the band's second album recorded during a time when vocalist Shannon Hoon had fallen so far down a hole emotionally and physically that it's hard not to see this, and the other songs on that album, as a massive suicide note. Hell, it's hard not to listen to Hoon's railing about his life as a bowl of bitter beans and his vow to 'pull the trigger and make it all go away' and think that this was a man who knew his life was going to end a little over two months after this album came out.

One of the saddest things about that brief blip on the radar of pop culture that was grunge--a musical form that, with each passing day, has been shown to be nothing more than a dead end, the last gasp of complexity and grey before the autotuned and shallow sludge of present dance pop came along to consume us all--is how many lives were lost during its heyday. I don't think Blind Melon would have been anything other than a footnote on the history of that genre; even his one contribution to pop culture, 'No Rain,' comes off as a mishmosh of borrowed ideas spurred into the consciousness by a clever video. And I suspect that if he hadn't let drugs overtake him, he would never have amounted to more than a faint echo of other greater bands (or worse, someone like Art Alexakis, who has devolved from an artist I admired into a deluded shell of a man insisting Everclear was relevant, dammit). But we're never going to know because he ended his life. All the potential for him to prove me and other people who looked at Blind Melon with askance wrong is now gone. Hell, an argument could be made that he ruined four other people's lives, as his band mates have drifted aimlessly, forming and unforming the band a number of times and never making the splash they did with Hoon at the front.

If it's okay, I think I'll just stop now before I get any more depressed. Here's a live version of the song...

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

30 Songs, 30 Days, Day Twenty Five: The Amazing Chan And The Chan Clan by Don Kirshner (?)

This is the sort of thing you don't see in Saturday Morning
Cartoons anymore..wait a minute...you don't see Saturday
Morning cartoons anymore!
Hey, first thing that comes out of the Sansa, right?

This is the theme song for the 1972 Hanna Barbera cartoon series of the same name--and, as with so many of these shows of the time, it followed the Scooby Doo formula that H-B found so successful. Namely, there was a group of kids (and a family pet) running around in a van solving crimes when they weren't rocking out as members of a rock group. What made this series unique was that it was ostensively based on the Charlie Chan series of novels by Earl Derr Biggers, and it was arguably the first American cartoon series to feature a primarily Asian cast. Now granted, I can see H-B deciding to do this project because this was the early 70's, which means there was a whole movement (ultimately manifested by Action For Children's Television) that tried to make children's television more culturally sensitive, but it still was pretty wild to see people who didn't look like me not being the sidekicks but starring in their own cartoon series when I was a kiddie-winkie of eight years. Hell, H-B was so sensitive to making sure the Chan children were good role models they recast most of the voices because the original actors apparently affected thick 'Chinese' accents.

Oh--incidentally, you know who provided the voice for Anne, the tomboyish Chan girl? One Jodie Foster, who went on to become a great actress and LiLF.

I have no idea what's going on in this still....
As for the song itself...I've ascribed it to Don Kirshner, who was the musical supervisor for this show (as he was for Filmation's Archie family of cartoons, and The Monkees before it), but I guess we may never know who wrote this kinda cool, kinda jazzy little number. And, quite frankly, I dig it. It doesn't overdo the ethnicity, although it is there (that chopstick-y plinking of the piano keys at moments), and it's definitely a sort of light rock aesthetic going for it. Add in the whispery voice repeating the cartoon's title, and you've got a prime example of the 70's cartoon theme song aesthetic. This is the sort of crazy cool music you got exposed to on Saturday morning TV back in the day, before theme songs got loud and shouty and obtrusive on your frontal lobe.

Here's the title sequence for you to enjoy...

Oh--and is it just me, or is that drum set far too small for that guy?

Sunday, July 31, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Twenty Four: Moon Knight by Adam WarRock featuring Tribe-One

And we return again to a member of the geekcore movement I truly enjoy, Adam WarRock, and another song from the West Coast Avengers mixtape I wrote about a while ago.

And just like with that Iron Man song I wrote about last year, this song works because Adam doesn't rely solely on name dropping. Yes, Adam and his guest star Tribe-One (who starts out the track by doing the equivalent of a station ID, telling us what we're listening to before assuring us he'd give us a cupcake and a hug even though he's a villain) do rap about Marc Spectre, making oblique references to Moon Knight's status as a minor hero, but they also make connections between Spectre's status as a mercenary with the tradition of the regulator...which they then use to compare the present materially-obsessed strain of popular rap with their own personal status.

This song only strengthens my own feelings about how Adam uses his geek tendencies as a departure point. Unlike so many other geekcore acts, Adam is unafraid to admit that he's interested in other things than comic books. And while it may not be among my favorite tracks of his, like the utterly amazing 'Top Wobble' (which summarizes Inception in roughly five minutes) or 'Fantomex (Weapon Plus)' or 'I Never Watched An Episode of Doctor Who' (about the 'all or nothing' snobbishness of geek culture), it's still eminently listenable.

Given how Adam has gone on to release mixtapes inspired by other 90's teams like X-Factor and The New Warriors, I'm looking forward to see what else he has up his sleeve. I hear he's about to drop a mixtape based on, of all things, Firefly. I may be the only geek in the world who can't stand that show, but you better bet I'll be downloading it when it drops.

You can learn more about Adam WarRock here, his blog. He frequently posts free music, so what's not to love?

Friday, July 15, 2011

Radio Radio: The End Of The NY Rock Experience

This morning is the first morning New York City is without WXRP.

Right now, 101.9 FM is beginning its new format under Merlin Media--the sale is still pending FCC approval, but the organization is operating the station via a local marketing agreement--on Monday. Randy Michaels, the brains behind Merlin, has yet to reveal what he has in store for the latest attempt at an alternative rock station in the largest media market in America, but the common belief is that 101.9 will introduce an all talk/news format (the first on the FM band in NYC) with an emphasis on female listeners.

WXRP built its programming around Matt Pinfield and
Leslie Frann's morning show..I was Not A Fan.
I still don't understand how this city, which still can boast one of the greatest rock and alternative scenes in the country, cannot support a radio station that plays current rock music. I mean, we support three Top 40 Stations of varying annoyance, four urban contemporary stations, two spanish-language music stations, two light music stations, and an oldies station...surely we have enough fans of contemporary guitar-based rock and related popular music in this great metropolis to support a single station that plays current rock and alternative music. Oh sure, as far as I know we still have 'QRock' a little further up the dial from 101.9, but that abomination manages to combine all of the worst aspects of the classic rock format in a way that makes it impossible for anyone not stuck in 1979 to appreciate it.

I have loved alternative rock since I stumbled across a faint signal from 92.7 WLIR back in 1982 while looking for something to listen to while I took a bath. And yet, ever since WLIR--which became WDRE, then WLIR back again as it switched hands over and over again and weathered legal battles left, right and center--finally faded away in 1996, the city has never quite been able to hold onto an alternative rock station. And it frustrates me that once again I have no place to go to listen to music I can tolerate, where the DJs don't have to work off a computer generated playlist of sixteen songs every hour (or, in the case of WXRK, the dance-oriented top 40 station that replaced the last great alternative rock experiment--an experiment that collapsed when Howard Stern finally took his ball and went to his new home of Sirius Radio--five songs every half hour).

This, however...this was a great attempt to bring a college
rock feel to the early evening shift....
(And for those of you--and I know you're preparing to say it right this moment--who will start singing the praises of WFMU...well, I can't get a signal from that station and I'm not willing to carry my laptop back and forth to my store, so shut up...)

WXRP wasn't perfect. I quite frankly found their morning team of Matt Pinfield and Leslie Frann really boring, and their refusal to acknowledge that certain artists had more than one or two well-known songs infuriating. But I enjoyed such OAPs as Brian Phillips and Nick Carter, loved their respect for music history via such features as their 'This Day In Music History' segments, and enjoyed the fact that they rarely repeated current hits in a five hour block. More importantly, I appreciated that they actively sought out and supported newer acts, including local bands, and gave them publicity. The station really tried to create a community feel for its audience, which was something I missed ever since WLIR/DRE was handed over to the Pheonix Media Group in the mid-90's to become something a little less freeform in its programming. I felt I was listening to a living, breathing entity and not a computerized pre-programmed piece of luncheon meat forced down my throat by marketers.

And then there's Rich Russo...who managed to do a weekly...
gasp...freeform radio program every Sunday!
I guess this is partially a further reflection of how FM radio has bled out its audience so that only the very young and very old remain to consume its product. Doesn't make it hurt any less that I lost a station I grew to claim as my own.

Doesn't mean I have to like it.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Twenty Three: When You Come by Crowded House

This is a live performance from a concert given in Koln, Germany in 1993, when Crowded House was about to enter the end run of its first bout of existence. And Crowded House, of course, is perhaps the single most popular phase of the colorful career of the Finn Brothers, Tim and Neil.

And to be fair, even though I didn't twig onto what made Crowded House so good until they were at the end of their lifespan--well, kinda, as we'll see later--I always had a soft spot for the Finn Brothers. I really grooved on their original band Split Enz's work, and not just 'I Got You,' the song that marks them as one-hit wonders in the eyes of the uneducated. I also really, really liked Tim's solo work. But for a long time, I looked upon Crowded House as a sort of soft-boiled version of the Finn's work with Enz, a sort of rejiggering of their power pop sensibilities to appeal to a baby boomer, MOR audience.

It wasn't until much later, when I started coming across their lesser known output, that I appreciated them not as a sell-out, but as an evolution. And it wasn't until I decided to listen to this concert--offered by the  Popdose Music Website as part of their Bootleg City series--that I realized the true strength of this iteration of the Finn Brothers' pop genius lies in those song's live performance. In Crowded House, The Finns translate the energy of their Split Enz work into pure passion--romantic, sexual, optimistic--which results in songs that sound perfect being played to an audience. Just listen to how this song, with all its imagery about voyages and the sea and the great outdoors, and imagine how it must sound in some outdoor venue, where it can coax your own yearnings for a voyage out of you. It prolly explains to me why I found so much of their studio work so lackluster--these are songs not meant for studio composition.

Crowded House has splintered, reconfigured and broken apart numerous times (which is why I choose to look at it in the context of the Finns' career as a whole)...and they're back together. A new album, Intriguer, dropped last year, and I'm sure the band will splinter and reform at least twice more before it's ultimately done.


Monday, July 4, 2011

30 Songs, 30 Days (2011 Edition), Day Twenty Two: Addicted To Me by The Click Five

And here we have a band that I thought was dead and buried, another carrier of the power pop banner, another band from Boston, who I originally wrote off because I found their biggest hit loathsome.

You see, when I first started working in the store, there was this one employee I came to know as 'The Penguin' due to his longish torso and stubby legs. The Penguin always insisted on putting on his own mix of music from the moment he arrived to the moment he left, and his taste in music was hideous. Generic techno and that modern sludge the record labels try to pass off as rhythm and blues, bands like Train led by doofuses who obviously wrote their lyrics in college to get into the pants of freshmen girls and bands like Guns and Roses who equate loudness and brashness with importance...and most importantly, bands with a certain type of vocalist.

It was from this last category that I threw The Click Five due to the fact that The Penguin only played their one hit, 'Just The Girl' in his rotation. 'Just The Girl' is one of those songs which falls apart once you listen to the lyrics--when you realize what I total sadistic jerkhole the woman the POV singer is talking about, and what an even bigger jerkhole the singer is for putting up with all this terrible abuse with a smile on his face, the song stops being fun. This isn't like, let's say, The Offsping's 'Self-Esteem,' which presents us with a POV character who recognizes his inability to leave his abuser as pathetic, or Fountains Of Wayne's 'I'll Do The Driving,' where the POV character stays with a desire to lead his girlfriend out of her small-minded habits...this is a guy who seems to crave this abuse with a smile on his face and open arms.

(Imagine my surprise, incidentally, when I learned that 'Just The Girl' was co-written by Fountains of Wayne maven Adam Schlesinger, and that the FoW had a hand in convincing Atlantic to sign The Click Five.)

Eventually, The Penguin moved on, and I went about my life...until the Music section of the excellent Popdose website ran a story about The Click Five and their struggles with their original label Atlantic (a struggle apparently built around their desire to move away from their original proto-Mod gimmick) and their search for a new label. The article came with a rather generous sample of songs from their two Atlantic albums, so I downloaded and sampled them...

And they're good. They're damn good. Great harmonies, excellent melodies that sometimes evoke the classic new wave of the 80's, sometimes the overproduced-on-purpose denseness of the Phil Spector school...and even though their canon contains songs similar to 'Just A Girl,' they show a greater deal of self-awareness and wit than that song I hated so much.

This song is from the new wave end of the Click Five pool; that skronky keyboard is definitely from the early days of MTV. And it's about a classic power pop delimma--namely, the boy who wants the girl who is attracted to him but embarrassed by his un-coolishness. And unlike the willing victim in the cycle of abuse that is the singer of 'Just A Girl,' this POV character is taking the high road...he's acknowledging how he's been used, how his lack of status is what's keeping them apart. But, he warns the object of his affection that he's under her skin, that even as he lets her go off on her own, he knows she'll return to him...and he won't sit in a corner by the phone, but he will be waiting. And the song has so closely melded the vocals with the melody that it's hard to separate them.

Apparently, The Click Five has been quietly touring New England and cultivating their big followings outside of America...and unbeknownst to us, a new album, TVC, is out and waiting for our purchasing....

Sunday, July 3, 2011

30 Songs, 30 Days (2011 Edition), Day Twenty One: (I Know You) Shake It by The Elvis Brothers

Okay, we're over the hump...so let's move on with this amazing number by an amazing band you've prolly never heard of.

I first encountered this Illinois trio when they opened up for Big Country during their Crossing Tour at the Roseland Ballroom. They had just released Movin' Up. the first of two albums from Epic subsidiary Portrait, and this was an early date I had with a woman I was involved with briefly. She wore a red dress that night--and oddly enough, the first single off the album was called "Red Dress." I loved pretty much everything about these guys, from their rockabilly-meets-power-pop music to their Retro 50's dress...hell, I may actively have liked this band more than the one we had originally come and seen.

I haunted the record bins of St. Marks Records to uncover vinyl versions of both Movin' Up and, two years later, their follow-up, Adventure Time. And after that...

Nothing. They were dropped by their label after a regime change and that was the last I ever heard of them until recently, when I discovered a blog that posted not only these two long out of print albums, but a third the group made for indie label Recession in 1992.

I wonder why this band never got any bigger. I suspect part of it is because they might have been lumped in with the other Rockabilly Revival bands and--as such--got overshadowed by The Stray Cats and, later, The Reverend Horton Heat. It's a shame, because this is a great, meat and potatoes pop band. "(I Know You) Shake It" may not be a groundbreaking piece of music, but it does successfully capture what made rockabilly so great--a danceable beat, an upbeat set of lyrics and a sheer energy that makes you want to move. That this trio were also able to produce more nuanced work like "City on Fire" only made them all the more valuable.

The three albums that comprise The Elvis Brothers' discography are now ultra-rare...even the two-in-one reissue of Movin' Up and Adventure Time can go for upwards of a hundred used on Amazon.com....but if you go to the excellent blog Power Pop Criminals and know where to look, you might find some samples.

Here's the video made for this song for the Now See This Video EP the Brothers put out...

Friday, July 1, 2011

30 Songs, 30 Days (2011 Edition), Day Twenty: Killing An Arab by The Cure

Okay, we're at the halfway mark....

And we mark this moment with a classic song--one I really like--from The Cure.

You know, I can understand some people who look askance at Robert Smith and company, still putting on the facepaint and black clothing even though they're well into middle age, their doughiness becoming more and more of a problem. But me, I have to give them credit for walking that very thin line that lies between being stuck in the past and evolving past your fanbase. If you listen to the last few Cure albums, you will see a steady-but-slight progression in their music; the Robert Smith who sang this song couldn't sing the stuff on Disintergration with a straight face. And because the evolution has been such a slow, slow crawl, I wonder if some of their hardcore fanbase even realize it's happened.

And there's another thing I have to give them credit for--when they want to write a song about a novel by Camus, they write a song about a novel by Camus. This song hit some time before that brief craze in the 80's for naming songs after famous works of fiction--that right, I'm looking at you, Motels--and unlike those songs, which were unconnected to the actual novels they were supposedly inspired by, this song is a concise, Cliff Notes version of the main action of the novel on which it is based. And it grasps the fact that The Stranger is about power, and feeling something in the face of nothing. All in all, this is a much deeper song than its length and simplistic lyrics give it the right to be. Even such a simple thing as using an Arabian arrangement for this two-and-a-half minute number creates a tension a lesser, dumber band might not think to provide.

Of course, that simplicity also allows other people to look at purely as surface. I'm old enough to remember how a student was expelled for playing this song on his college radio station because it was, like, racist and stuff. Those school administrators should have turned in their badges right there and then, as they displayed a severe lack of understanding of how colleges are about ideas and debate. I'd rather hear this song, which is actually about something than the stuff that passes for popular music these days, which is apparently about nothing but having money and having attitude.

Wow. I went a little off the reservation there. Anyway, here's the video for the song.....

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Nineteen: Toxic by Uncle Monsterface

Okay....this is just...weird. And it makes me sad.

Uncle Monsterface is apparently a rock band composed of sock puppets. Don't take my word for it; got to their website and see how I'm sooo not joking about this. And if sock puppet rock bands are your thing, you can get the album this cover of Britney Spears' hit single comes from just for signing up for their mailing list.

Given that this is a...sock puppet rock band, Uncle Monsterface's take is a little peculiar. Musically, they seem to be a bit of a mash-up of several 'geekcore' concepts--the melody line seems to be done in a way that emulates 8-bit video game cues (an earlier ep of theirs featured songs inspired by classic Nintendo games), the vocals seem influenced ever-so-slightly by the mannered-but-dorky stylings of such Geekcore bands (and geekcore pioneers) as Lemon Demon and They Might Be Giants, and they utilize unusual instruments for a rock band, like a banjo. It's not entirely unpleasing, although it does come off as overmannered; I can only imagine what watching these guys live is like. And a quick walk through their discography reveals the typical geekcore subject matter--video games, comic books, breakfast cereals, the sort of things other rock bands wouldn't think twice about.

There would have been a time several years ago where I would have looked at something like Uncle Monsterface and went nuts for it. But the problem is this--take away the geeky crap from a band like Kirby Krackle or a rapper like Adam Warrock, and you still have legitimate music. Adam Warrock in particular has made it clear that the music comes first, and he only gets geeky with it when a geek theme is evident within. But strip away the 8-bit psuedo-midi bullcrap and the sock puppets and the silly vocals from Uncle Monsterface...and you've got nothing. It's this sort of project that makes me worry that Geek Culture's time in the sun is approaching faster than we realize. Popular cultural trends end when the also-rans and the not-very-goods rush in to get all 'me too' about that culture. When the crap to gold ratio increases beyond a certain point, the casual fan just moves away, ready to embrace the next trend. And Uncle Monsterface--while not as terrible a band as, let's say, Hungry Mouth (a 'grunge' band that CBS tried to force down our throats towards the tail end of that movement), it's not that great and is bound to strike people with ennui. Being weird just for weird's sake is guaranteed to plummet us back to being a niche.

(And need I remind you of how the end of grunge and britpop led to a popular music scene that embraces the emptiness of 'Am I A Man Or A' Lady Gaga, Ke-Dollar-Sign-Ha, Kanye 'I Loves Me Some Autotune' West, and the concept of the 'feMC'? If that doesn't put a chill in your bones, I don't know what will.)

So, ummmm, yeah. Sock puppet geekcore. I think I'll pass....

Here's a live performance of this cover, sans the sock puppets, which makes the concept seem even sadder still....

Sunday, June 26, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Eighteen: Soul Love (ATOM's Pink Innards Mix) by David Bowie

This is a version of the classic Ziggy Stardust track from the project that saw modern mash-up DJs remix the classic album. And it's....odd. ATOM has done a lot to submerge Bowie's vocals except at very key times--in many spots, it seems like he's playing with the gain too much to give Bowie the sound of someone trying to keep his head above water--and has done something that makes the drum line sound distorted by blown speakers. I have to say that I don't think it does Bowie's song about the way the meaning of love can change from person to person (a mother's love for her son, who lost his life for love of country; new lovers discovering each other; the love of God being used by a priest for comfort) any service. It's too busy, drawing attention to the mix more than the song itself.

A good remix, like a good cover song or a good mash-up, should illuminate the original in some way. I fear that the art of the remix is lost when it comes to genres outside of hip-hop. There was a time not that long ago when even the most inconsequential single got a 12 inch remix--Hell, I have very vivid memories of listening, with some incredulity, to a remix of Warren Zevon's "Leave My Monkey Alone" on that aberration of a radio station we call Z100. Don't get me wrong, there are mash-up DJ's who do some great straight remixes--I've talked briefly about DJ Earworm before, for example--But ATOM's efforts here do not give me much hope that art will return.

If you're curious about the whole project, which also includes remixes by other famous mash-up stars like A Plus D, ToTOM and the project's compiler, DJBC, go to The Ziggy Remixed Page.

No video for this one, but here's one for the more effective, pure mash-up that A Plus D put together for the very same project, "Stardust Kids."

Thursday, June 23, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Seventeen: I Put A Spell On You by Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra Featuring David Gilmour and Mica Paris

And here comes another cover song that grew out of a British show...

The show is question is Later With Jools Holland, a talk show featuring the former Squeeze member interviewing and then jamming with musical guests. This show has been going on for years--I seem to have some vague remembrances of seeing older episodes broadcast on the peculiar neither-fish-nor-fowl cable network Trio back when I still had cable. As a fan of Holland's reaching back to his Squeeze-y days, I found it a fun watch, especially given the nature of guests he used to pull down.

Not surprisingly, given the musical nature of the show prompted Holland to form a band for touring during his off time, which in form prompted the creation of the Small World Big Band series of CDs, where the band did covers with some of Holland's favorite guests. This is a cover of the Screaming Jay Hawkins standard with Hawkins being channeled by soul singer Mica Paris. And, of course, the lead guitar is played by Pink Floyd member David Gilmour.

It's pretty interesting how 'I Put A Spell On You' is one of those songs that have resisted reinterpretation; even when the cover artist changes the tempo or the arrangement, the long shadow of Hawkins' distinctive style will always result in the vocalist belting it like his or her life depended on it...and Holland and company simply doesn't resist. They embrace the primal nature of the song, of the lyrics and only interpret it on the basic level...and what results isn't bad at all.

Usually I am resistant to covers that just mimic the original, but even I have to acknowledge there are certain songs that were designed to be portrayed exactly the way they sprung forth into the public conscienceless. And when I'm confronted with one of those, I have to use different tools to evaluate the cover, look to the way the individual performers play their part. And using those tools, I have to say...this works.