Tuesday, May 31, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days(2011 Edition), Day Three: Bone Broke by The White Stripes

Hey, it's one of Jack Black's, like, fifty eight bands...some people turn on the television or buy a magazine when they get bored--Jack Black starts a band.

And while I like the really crunchy guitar riffs and the pounding drums of the melody...I can't get the nagging feeling out of my mind that this is another one of Jack's songs where he's figuring out new, more perverse ways of talking about sex without actually saying, 'hey, let's fuck.' He's done this before--hell, my favorite White Stripes song boils down to 'I am waiting here pushing you for sex in hopes that you'll give in.' I don't know if lyrically this one works as well as 'My Doorbell,' because it seems to suffer from a form of ADD--in one moment, Jack is telling the object of his affection that she should look at how long he's been running his penis....then he's talking about liquor stores and how her mom's put money into platinum. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear he's telling the woman he's singing to that his parents paid for him to have sex with her (and he was cool with it because, you know, he's 'bone broke')

What it comes down to is a problem I sometimes have with The Stripes--namely that while their musicianship is without question, nasty and down and dirty....their songs can quite frankly be hit and miss, disjointed and going down creative dead ends that White's passionate singing and the overall instrumental competence manages to conceal.

(Oddly enough, this is a problem I have with what most people deem 'pop' music--save that people like (Am I A) Lady Gaga don't even have the competence musically and have to rely on their producers to hide their lack of creativity, originality or flair).

So...it's not a terrible song. It just doesn't live up to the obvious skills this pair has.
 

Sunday, May 29, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Two: Whenever I'm With Her By Dramarama

Ahhhh, one of my favorite bands-that-aren't-around-anymore....

I first discovered Dramarama on the then-named WLIR, a Long Island based freeform alternative rock radio station whose signal came in iffy at best to my Woodhaven-then-Corona home in Queens, when they began playing the first single from their first album, Cinema Verite, the whimsical-but-desperate 'Scenario.' I loved it when I heard it, and located the album in a cut-out bin in one of those shady music stores that used to line Fifth Avenue in the 80's. I picked up every album in a succession of now-gone music chain stores throughout the band's existence (Stuck In Wonderland in a Kim's Video satellite store on 2nd Avenue; Live From The China Club, Box Office Bomb and Vinyl from the 72nd Street HMV; and Hi-Fi Sci-Fi from the 4th Street Tower Records). And its fitting that these stores and that radio station no longer exist, because vocalist John Easdale has always been, to me, one of the premiere voices of loss. He's got this strange quavery quality to his cadance that makes him sound like he's perpetually afraid, and the best songs from Dramarama's catalog--"Anything, Anything," "Last Cigarette," "Questions," even the otherwise whimsical "Work For Food"--take advantage of that quality of Easdale's voice as they explore the lives of people about to fall into the abyss emotionally and/or physically.

This is from the latter part of the spectrum, off their second album, Box Office Bomb...and in it, John is trying to verbalize the rage he's experiencing due to a relationship that's going sour and threatening to become destructive. The singer confesses to us that he doesn't want to resort to violence, doesn't want to bite and hit this woman if only, only she'd just change her ways...

But the brilliance of the song is how Easdale manages to let us know that this horrific situation is as much his fault as her--somewhere in the song he admit that he's 'thinking with his zipper' whenever he's with her...which means he stays even when he knows what will end up happening. He is unwilling to take the final step and walk out of this situation even as he knows where he is going into a dark place, and all because of lust.

Supposedly, Easdale and an ad hoc group is recording a new album to be dropped in 2011.
And because I'm perverse, here's a contestant on Rockstar Supernova butchering the band's greatest hit....I like how she seems to be wanting to channel Ozzie so, so badly with those 'I's nutty' stares and weird stances, and ends up looking like a parody of a rock star...

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Cover-versies: 'Hackensack' by Katy Perry

As you know, elsewhere on this blog I'm discussing one of my favorite bands, Fountains of Wayne, by discussing how I grew to love them item by item. I'm about to discuss the second FoW song I ever really grooved on...but before I do, it occurred to me that there's a Cover-versies attached to that song I wanted to write on.

The song in question is "Hackensack," a rather sad song that appeared on The Fountains' third album Welcome Interstate Managers. I'll be discussing this little three minute gem in the second segment of Me And...The Fountains of Wayne a little later, but here's a video of Adam and co. performing it so we can set up the compare and contrast....
So last year, Katy Perry decided to cover this song on an episode of MTV Unplugged. Here is her take on it...
.....

I hate this version.

No, really. I can't fucking stand this version.

And it's not just because I can't stand Ms. Perry as a whole, one of those idiots who seem to feel that it's okay to be unbearably cruel to people under the guise of 'keeping it real.' I honestly feel that Ms. Perry gets a pass frequently because she is, to quote my partner on BiTD 'Zoe Deschanel's Head On A Porn Star's Body' (I don't see this comparison, but so many people do I will let it stand). But this is a person who calculatedly took a page out of Scott Stapp's playbook and started her career as a 'Christian Contemporary' artist so she could grab a sizable, gullible fanbase; whose first single was a half-assed, atrocious tune that she was able to bull onto the Top 40 charts because of some ham-fisted 'controversy' ("Hey, she's hawt...and she's talking about being a lesbian!"); who said with a straight face that her so-fluffy it'll float away single 'California Gurls' was an answer song to Jay-Z's love letter to New York, 'Empire State of Mind' (so your answer to 'I love my hometown' is...'oh, yeah, well we're hawt?'); and whose newer singles are built around metaphors and imagery so torturous that in other circumstances they'd be considered out-and-out parodies.

And the thing is...I almost find her more detestable because you get the sense, unlike with (Am I A) Lady Gaga, that she might actually have some sort of songwriting talent. But she's so aggressively stupid and lazy in expressing that talent that I just want to pummel her.

(And let me just say that as far as I'm concerned, Perry and that mean-spirited grotesque Russell Brand deserve each other...and I don't mean that in a positive way.)

However, a lot of people who would tear her apart overlook her lack of artistry and her clumsy bids to be a STAH overlook at it because...well, she's 'hawt.' Don't take my word for it--just wander through the intrawebs and see all the comments about her. Not a lot of comments about her songwriting, is there?

Anyway, this cover....she takes a subtle, borderline creepy song about a sad man escaping from the misery of his life by fantasizing (and maybe even planning to stalk) a classmate who has achieved fame as an actress and butchers it. The simply fact that she opens up the orchestration destroys the sense that the original is an interior monologue from the singer late at night as he watches one of his obsession's movies. And check out that awful vocalization--the way she seems to swallow the last syllable of each line drives me up the wall. It's so mannered that, once again, you have to wonder if in a parallel universe this is a parody of a Fountains of Wayne song. On some level, even though Perry is affecting a 'sad puppy with cancer' voice, the song sounds...brighter, less desperate.

Quite frankly, given Ms. Perry clumsy career choices, I know exactly what this is supposed to be...this is the mainstream Top 40 pop stah trying to get a little 'sensitive artist' cred by covering a non-single track by a band known for being a little cerebral, a little culty. I give her credit for going with FoW as opposed to other, rather more obvious choices--I shudder at the version of 'Landed' or 'Brick' or 'Hallelujah' we could've gotten. But this is another bald-faced attempt to win over a few people she hasn't impressed yet by acting all 'quirky' and showing that yes, she likes lesser known artists, too.

Of course, it occurs to me that if she chose 'Brick' or 'Suzanne' or any of a number of better-known culty songs, she couldn't count on the oblivious segment of her fanbase insisting that 'Hackensack' is her song that she wrote and performed herself--thus giving her more cred for being a 'deep and sensitive artist.' And the fact that I know deep down inside that this move worked with more people than I care to imagine.

Fuck you, Katy Perry, and fuck this cover.
 
I've complained more than once about alternative artists doing 'ironic' slow jam covers of hip-hop singles to give them some hipster street cred. This cover is cut from the same cloth--an artist playing at being real bo-ho and smart by aping a great song in a way that is designed to glorify how bo-ho and smart the singer is.

Yeah, I can take some solace in knowing that once her looks start fading, Katy Perry will disappear into the reality TV hosting limbo she belongs, while The Fountains of Wayne will endure long after. But it's little solace. For now, all I can do is grit my teeth and put on Traffic And Weather in an effort to drown her caterwauling out.

40 Songs, 40 Days, Day One (2011 Edition): When The Ground Is Numb by William Ryan Finch

Okay, so I fell down pretty badly for last year's edition...so as punishment, I've tacked on the ten days I didn't do during 2010 onto 2011, and I'm starting right at the beginning of the year. I figure if I can't put aside 40 days to write essays on 40 songs throughout an entire year, I should stop doing this and, I dunno, take up knitting.

The rules are this: once a day, I am going to put my expanded 6GB Sansa Clip on Random and press play. I am obligated to write something on the first song it plays. There is no cheating and no do-overs with one exception--if you've covered two songs by an artist in the same cycle, you have the option of writing about the next one. I also invite anyone who is reading this to do their own '30 Days, 30 Songs' this year (I'm not going to make you do the extra ten)...so consider yourself tagged.

And first up is something from last year's Asthmatic Kitty Digital Sampler. I'm one of the people who really enjoy finding, downloading and perusing these independent label samplers. Yeah, a lot of the stuff I find may prove to be not to my taste, even risible, but there's also the chance I might find a little nugget of yumminess. Asthmatic Kitty in particular is a label started by Sufjan Stevens, an artist I'm not particularly enthralled with...and this track is a puzzler.

See, it's an instrumental done by a film composer--and boy, it does sound it. This is the sort of thing you'd hear in a late 90's indy psychological thriller: some atonal strings, some nondescript choral work, a drum machine pounding what I guess could be called a counter-beat, and a weird oscillation tone to end it all. It's all about setting a mood of unsettlement, but it's so generic in its progressions that it fails to direct the listener in any emotional direction. I'm sure in the movie it was intended for, it might be effective, but devoid of the visual context it's....well, it's annoying.

And that's not what you want in a movie soundtrack. The best movie music not only creates a mood, but can be evocative of the core concepts of the film even when the music is divorced from the film itself. You can't not listen to John Williams' work on films like Superman and Raiders of The Lost Ark without swelling up with heroic pride, you can't listen to Danny Elfman's Batman score without a sense of mysteriousness, and you can't listen to Harold Faltemeyer's work for Beverly Hills Cop without getting a taste of the bouncy, kinetic flow of that movie. It's one of the reasons some composers get connected to certain directors...Howard Shore reflects the sensibilities of David Cronenberg perfectly, for example. I can't see Fitch's work rising above the generic, and that's sad...

No youtube video for this one, so you'll have to take my word for it.

So a sad launch to this year's exercise. I am filled with dread.

Friday, May 27, 2011

30 Songs, 30 Days (2010 Edition), Day Nineteen: Change by Young Veins

And up today...the Echo Park, California garage rock throwback The Young Veins, a band that features two former members of Panic! At The Disco and sound nothing like that band.

Now don't get me wrong--I rather liked Panic! At The Disco's rather dramatic emo-core pretentions, which had strange resonances with previous 30S30Ds subject Harvey Danger. But this newer band...I might actually like them better. For one thing, the vocalist has a better tone--poppier, nowhere near as dramatic and over the top as P!@TD. The song itself does seem to mine the same territory conceptually, as it's a portrait of the singer's romantic feelings--or is it just attraction--to a woman who used to trade on her looks and now has become a tragic figure, begging for change outside the grocery store. And the singer is regretful about how the relationship has shaken out...but in what way is left ambivalent.

More importantly, Young Veins have managed to capture that garage feel while also feeling modern. This band does not come off as play-acting like Panic! always did...they seem genuine in their recreation of that esthetic, and equally genuine in their desire to bring garage rock sound into the modern era. I look forward to seeing what else they might have up their sleeve.

Here is the video for the song which, not surprisingly, continues to carry on their desire to recreate the feel of a certain genre while also bringing it forward into the 00's....
 

30 Songs, 30 Days, (2010 Edition) Day Eighteen: Swamp Thing by The Grid

Hey, it's some European techno! This is an electronic dance number built primarily on a banjo riff...and it works surprisingly well. I think there's something about the downhome strumming contrasted with the electrobeats that I find really appealing--especially the moment where the beats stop and we get the banjo just picking away...

Okay, so I don't have much to say here. It's just a cool little instrumental. I promise I will have more to say next time.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

30 Songs, 30 Days, Day Seventeen (2010 Edition): Well All Right! by The Hives

It's rather amusing that, not long after I discussed Joe Jackson, who frequently skipped across genres to amuse himself, I end up with this example of the Garage Revival of the early 00's...

And of the Garage Revival bands, I rather like these guys best of all because they don't seem to have the winking irony of some of their contemporaries like Franz Ferdinand. This is from The Black and White Album, their most recent album, and I rather like it because--well, it sounds more than a little bit like some long lost descendant of the kind of old school jive and blues Jackson was essaying for his album Jumping Jive (discussed briefly in this entry for this year's cycle. The drum line, the call-and-response chorus, even the momentary time change all seem to be designed to get you and your gal up and jitterbugging. And when Howlin' Pelle Almqvist....well, howls at roughly the two minute mark, it's just a great moment. This is the kind of song that, with some regression, could have been blared out on the dancefloor during the Roaring Twenties, which might be another reason I like it so much. All of their work is like this--thoroughly unpretentious and not trying to assure us it's all a big put-on.

Okay, so lyrically we're not talking much--it's at its most basic a celebration of the loser, of endeavoring to accept all the setbacks life throws at you with some semblance of cool. And thanks to the energy throughout (except for that minute-forty-five time change that ends in that two-minute mark howl I was talking about) and it's adherence to the three minute rule, it acts as an antidote to all the emo-sad-puppy stuff that clogs the airwaves. We're all losers in some way, Pelle assures us...so let's dance!

No video...but here's the track itself for you to enjoy...and enjoy you will.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

ME AND....THE FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE PART ONE: Stacy's Mom

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30 Songs, 30 Days, Day Sixteen: Step On by The Happy Mondays

Wow! Two in a row! Who would've thought it...

...and we've got a song from the Manchester Factory school, and a song that has grown on me quite a bit. I remember when they first emerged from the Manchester scene--this was their first American single, from 1990's Pills, Thrills and Bellyaches--I was not impressed much at all. I found them kinda weak, like New Order without the sheen of gloom and regret. Admittedly, I didn't know that it was a cover of 'He's Gonna Step On You Again' by John Kongos originally intended for Rubiyat, the 40th Anniversary Elektra Records album that had their present roster of acts covering songs by their original roster. But even by that standards, 90's me would probably have written the Happy Mondays off as a not very funny joke...

'00s me, however...sort of likes the breezy, funky feel of it. This band would get a little darker as it progressed through the 90's, but here it's all about having fun and making you dance...and there's nothing wrong with that a'tall. It's not for nothing that the Mondays became a significant act in the creation of rave culture, which was a dominant form of youth culture for years. And it's got a little more substance than what passes for dance music these days (I'm looking at you, (Am I A) Lady Gaga....). Is it something I'd want to hear every day? No. But it is something that stood up to the ravages of time and is still listenable twenty years later, something I guarantee you won't be the case with 90 percent of the autotuned, shallower than a drop of water, dance music we're suffering through right now.

Here's the video. I rather like how, even though it's a performance video at its core, it manages to exemplify the easy-groove attitude of the band at the time....


Saturday, May 21, 2011

30 Songs, 30 Days, Day Fifteen: Goin' Downtown by Joe Jackson

Another Jackson song, this one from an interesting period in his career. 'Goin' Downtown' is from Laughter and Lust, the album for which Jackson gave up on his stance to no longer do videos (he objected to the way that A&M Records has issued a video for the song 'Breaking Us In Two' without his permission).

Apparently, after willfully working the rest of his contract with A&M with a series of increasingly uncommercial (but still listenable) albums--one that featured his aborted soundtrack for the James Bridges film Mike's Murder, a mock jazz album, the impressive recorded-live three-sided album Big World that's a personal favorite, and an album of instrumentals--he signed with Virgin and produced Laughter and Lust, a screed about how unhappy Jackson is with the world and the career he's chosen disguised expertly as a pop album.

And that's the greatest trick of this album. Every last one of these songs is soaked in vitriol and anger, and yet they're sweet, upbeat and exciting numbers--hell, the song that was the single for the album, "Obvious Song" was just one complaint after another done in that pulsing, jazzy Jackson style. Even the cover, which has Jackson dressed up as Buster Keaton dressed as a prisoner complete with ball and chain, speaks of the snarkiness with which he viewed his then-present condition.

This song is one of a number of songs that explore Jackson's love/hate affair he has with New York City. He's lived here off and on since 1982 (he presently lives in Berlin, although he still maintains a place in this city, as well as Portsmouth, England). As in keeping with the teeth-bared nature of the album, Jackson talks about the habit some New Yorkers have of traveling to Greenwich Village, Soho, and Chelsea under the pretense of 'hanging out'--but actually to watch the various 'freaky' people who live there go about their lives and mock them. It has the usual upbeat and happy tone--but with a sneering resignedness underneath, as if Jackson wants to break the habit but just can't. It's the flip side to some of his previous New York-centric songs, like 'Chinatown', the side that shows the shadows that dwell in the corners of the bright lights....

After Laughter and Lust, he did one more pop album, Night Music before signing with Sony Classical and producing a pair of symphonies and returning to his roots as a singer/songwriter with jazz tendencies with his albums from Rykodisc. He also released some amazing live albums (one, released by Sony Classical, features a blistering cover of 'Summer In The City,' adding to his suite of New York songs) which I recommend you do pick up.

No video for this one, but here's a live performance of the number from a 2008 performance in Vancouver. In some ways, I've felt Jackson's work is best experienced live, where the raw honesty of his voice, and his true love of jazz stylings come to the fore....so enjoy.

Friday, May 20, 2011

30 Songs, 30 Days, Day Fourteen: Temptation by Heaven 17 and La Roux

This is a peculiar one...an old new wave standard redone by the original act in collaboration with an act that can be considered its inheritor for BBC 6's Live early this year.

And it's...shrug. I do think there is something here about a passing of the torch--BBC 6 has apparently done a number of these old/new pairings, like when they threw Gary Numan together with Little Boots, and Paul Weller with Adele...but there's not much that makes this rendition anything other than a 'recreation', like a comic book cover redone by its original artist. If anything, it says more about the increasingly collapsing window of the original becoming a participant in its own cannibalization in the name of nostalgia. Heaven 17, much like INXS is doing with its upcoming album of 'reworkings' (mentioned here), seems to feel it can stave off the obscurity of the nostalgia circuit by being at the forefront of this wave of people who are emulating them now. Lord knows when this collaboration surfaced in January of this year, it was the buzz of the net's various music blogs...for a few weeks before this band melted back into the shadows of playing to their old fans on their website and festival dates. Martyn Ware and Glenn Gregory, judging from their website, do seem to be doing a successful 30th Anniversary tour...but it seems to be primarily confined to the UK. And they seem to want to move into the future, promising an upcoming podcast--which seems at turns bizarre and quaint given the very 80's design of the site.

When all is said and done, this is prolly going to end up being a curiousity--something that plays to the fans of electropop, and not something that shocked the world into awareness of a new genre like the Run DMC collaboration with Aerosmith...and if Martyn and Glenn are thinking otherwise, they're fooling themselves. Here's a recording of the performance that started it all...

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

30 Songs, 30 Days, Day Thirteen: Meetings With Remarkable Men by Harvey Danger

Boy, am I falling down on this year's cycle...

Anyway....Harvey Danger. A Seattle band that bucked the then-popular trend of being 'grunge,' most people would remember them as one-hit wonders thanks to the snarky, snarling, ska-tinged "Flagpole Sitta." Me, I actually loved them because of many of the things that earmarked them as commercially unviable--the absolutely ungainly vocals of Sean Nelson, the very stutter-stop nature of their lyrics, the noisiness of the melodies that came off as power pop songs that had guzzled too much coffee and wouldn't sit still--and this is a live recording of one of the signature songs from their ill-fated second album, King James Version.

It's a great little number, with a kicking bass line and a mocking lyrical screed about how heroes always sort of pass on, whether they're Jesus Christ, Morrisey or Kip Winger, while still believing in their own relevance. And the last twist of the knife, when Nelson reminds us that 'your mother loves you, don't be proud, she has to,' has a particular sting considering that this was the lead single on an album that fell prey to the corporate reshuffling of the music industry in the late 90's, consigning it to limbo for over a year--at which point the bounce the band had gotten from 'Sitta's' notoriety has long faded away. It's a wonder that the band limped on, breaking up, reforming as a trio, putting out another album (the rather graceful and mature Little By Little), re-releasing that third album, creating one of my favorite Christmas songs ever ("Sometimes You Have To Work On Christmas (Sometimes)"), finally breaking up for good...and still having time to release a final single as a free download this past month.

I wonder if somehow Harvey Danger is another plank in that bridge of bands with really unschooled vocalist in them that I love--a bridge that presently leads me to one of my favorite still-extant bands, The Hold Steady. They certainly don't deserve to be lumped together with the novelty acts and also-rans of the one-hit wonders...

The song never got to be a single (The lead off single from King James Version, a serio-tragic portrait of a woman who escapes from her dull, grey life into a wild west fantasy called "Sad Sweetheart of The Rodeo," tanked)...but here it is in YouTube-y glory...

30 Songs, 30 Days, Day Twelve: Places by Fountains of Wayne

Ahhhh....another song by a band I really like. One of my all-time favorite bands, in fact.

This is a very short one by a band that is perhaps best known for its uncanny Cars tribute, "Stacy's Mom." The thing many people don't realize is how lead singer/songwriter Adam Schlessinger has this amazing talent for writing sweet, tiny little songs that are gentle little landscapes...and this is one of them, a paen to watching the world go by in Camden, New Jersey during the fall and realizing how transitory your life is...

And only someone of Adam's talents could turn the lyrical orientation of this song from 'isn't this a nice place to be?' to 'wow, maybe what we're joking about now will become immortalized on our tombstones' without once breaking the wistful, atmospheric melody. This is the sort of tension that I just adore--a tension between the way the music feels and what it's actually saying that very few bands can get right. The Jam got it right, The Connells got it right in spades...and so do FOW when they want to. This, "Fire In The Canyon," "Mountain Valley Song," "Barbara H.," "Fire Island"....all exhibit that sort of sounding good/being bad structure.

Here's the song playing over a static picture of the flag (its the only video of the song I can find)....

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

30 Songs, 30 Days, Day Eleven: Original Sin by INXS

I know, I know...I have been falling down on the job. I promise I will make it up to you. There might be cake involved.

But at least, after that disappearing act I pulled, my mp3 player managed to drag out a good one. This is a fairly popular single from what was a fairly popular band at the time, Australia's INXS.

Oddly enough, an earlier INXS song was discussed in the final 30Ss30Ds of last year, a song that prompted me to go off on a screed about how INXS lead singer Michael Hutchence is defined by the scandal of how he died, whereas other pop singers have their scandals washed away by their deaths (If you're interested in visiting that previous discussion of "Keep On Walking," just go here.).

This single addresses interracial romance--something was in the alt-rock water back in 1984, because a lot of other musical acts started telling us that interracial relationships were Not As Evil As We Thought--and it's pretty blatant in hammering its agenda home. Hell, the whole song equates how some people think of races mixing as the original sin! But, unlike other songs in this issue-music sub-genre, the ultimate outlook of the song is hopeful. Hutchence, in between all the yelping and vocal gyrating that were a signature of the band's later albums, tells us of his dream where the 'black boy, white girl' dreaming of a brand new day will get it...and guess what? His dream was right--to the point where it's been speculated that the biracial portion of the world's population may be the dominant portion in a couple of generations.

Not surprisingly, the band got death threats for expressing this sentiment. Andrew Farris talks of a fan throwing a gun up onstage at one show, telling them they might need it.

Comparing this song, done as the band was reaching the pinnacle of its creativity (its next two albums, Listen Like Theives and Kick, would contain a number of Top 40 hits, plus a couple of songs like "New Sensation" that are still rock radio standards), to the earlier "Keep On Walking" shows a marked improvement in their musicianship. Granted, they still don't hook up with the man who'll be their production magician, Chris Thomas until next album, but they're experimenting with different styles and textures to their benefit. Hell, this song is produced by Nile Rodgers, which explains the multilayered sound, the undeniable funky rhythm guitar and bass lines and the way the choruses seem to soar in from the rafters (incidentally, that's Darryl Hall doing background vocals). And I think the band benefits from the fuller arrangements of these later albums--although even I will admit that they go overboard with the orchestration once the 90's hit. The wildly overproduced Welcome To Wherever You Are should probably have been the last album, and is pretty the last time the band did anything listenable with Hutchence at the helm. And sadly, the Farriss Brothers and company have embarrassed themselves time and again since Hutchence's death in 1997, from naming Jon Stevens their new lead singer just months before he left for a solo career in 2002 to allowing a reality show to find its lead singer, J.D. Fortune in 2004 only to fire him after the release of that incarnation's one and only album, Switch, to getting into a public war of words with Fortune in 2009. And this year, they're prepping that last resort of a band that has become the musical equivalent of the walking dead, an album of 'reworkings' of their greatest hits with big name celebrity singers.

It's sad when people won't acknowledge that a missing member cannot be replaced....

Here's the very....ummmm....peculiar video, which makes it look like the boys were auditioning for a teen version of the ludicrous Michael Douglas movie Black Rain. The video is credited to Yasuhiko Yamamoto, a Tokyo advertising director. According to Kirk Pengilly on the official site, it was intentionally meant to be very, very Japanese.

Thursday, May 12, 2011

30 Songs, 30 Days, Day Ten (2010 Edition): Last Word by Jane Siberry

sigh

There was a time I was totally in love with Canadian singer/songwriter Jane Siberry. I remember picking up The Speckless Sky on the same day I picked up Peter Gabriel's seminal album So while I was still in college, curious primarily because it was a pop music album that was being released by New Age Mongers Windham Hill...and absolutely loving the weird, quirky soundscapes and songs about maps and sending your lover off in a taxi and extremely large hats. It prompted me to seek out her two previous albums on Canadian labels and uncovering new bizarre songs about Waitresses and executives who kept grouper fish....man, she was the precursor of such female quirkmeisters as Tori Amos and Fiona Apple, willing to tackle serious things straight on but also not afraid to get totally odd. We are talking about a woman who, on her American major label debut, 1987's The Walking, compared a woman to a piece of furniture--and followed it up with Bound By The Beauty, arguably her most gonzo album ever, with songs where she gleefully sings about everything reminding her of her dog, trains, and how life can compare to a red wagon....

I followed her career and bought her albums for roughly ten years...and as a fan (let's not forget that 'fan' is short for 'fanatic') I overlooked the way her music was getting more and more inaccessible, being more and more obsessed with quasi-religious minutiae. I lost track of her shortly after the befuddling Teenager, a collection of songs she claimed to have written as a teenager.

Earlier this year, Siberry offered her fans her entire back catalogue for free on her website. I downloaded all the albums I was missing and....

God, her later stuff has strayed far, far afield for anything I originally liked about her. This song, taken from her 1999 album Lips, and its indicative of the mish-mosh of religious ideas modernized for modern listeners...and it's actually grating on my ears. It's hard for me to reassociate the woman singing now with the one who captivated me back in 1985, and after suffering through this and a number of her later numbers, I don't know if I want to. These newer compositions are actually making me doubt the pleasure I took in those earliest album of hers.

Incidentally, as bad as her late 90's stuff is, it pales in comparison to the two albums she recorded after she changed her name to Issa in 2006. It comes off as a parody of the stuff she recorded in the 90's.

I guess it goes to show you that, while I am always for an artist evolving and growing...I have to also accept that sometimes an artist will evolve and grow into something I won't care for.

From happier times, here's the first cut from that first Siberry album I bought (and in case you ever wondered what would happen in Uma Thurman and Meryl Streep ever had a baby...well, there you are....)

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

30 Songs, 30 Days (2010 Edition), Day Nine: Q by Inara George

I know, I know...I took a day off. Give me a break; it's the last few days before it's Back To School, and I work retail. Retail as in children's shoes. So it's understandable that I was too exhausted to continue this annual experiment.

So let's get to what would have been yesterday's pick, an original number by Inara George. I first became enamored of her thanks to Brian Ibbot's Coverville. Brian played her sublime cover of Joe Jackson's "Fools In Love," and I was hooked. She's definitely taking her cues from the easy listening lounge revival that threatened to blow pop culture wide open in the 90's--her songs are low-key, her melodies laid back and her vocals have the steamy class worthy of a Bachrach woman. Incidentally, she's also extremely busy--in addition to her solo work, she's one half of The Bird and The Bee, one half of Merrick and one third of the Living Sisters.

And this song? It's pretty cool. The Q in the title stands for questions...namely, the questions Inara asks the listener that never get answered. As the song goes on its own mellow way, we learn more about the question and what Inara paints is a strange tableau of someone climbing into her bedroom window and sleeping in her bed, where she finds him/her. We never learn what the question is (although we can certainly infer it from the circumstances), but we do learn the results...the breaker-in says nothing, and our heroine is stunned into silence.

For me, what makes this song so charming is what happens at the end--namely, we get a false stop, a pause...and then we get a strange, atonal, hypnotic humming and whistling that ushers in the real ending...I don't know why, but I love this affect, as it's the songwriting equivalent of those little scenes that filmmakers have been tucking away in the middle of the credits as an incentive to stay in the theater until the very end.

No video for this one, but here's a fan made one for that cover of "Fools In Love" I mentioned....
 

Monday, May 9, 2011

30 Songs, 30 Days (2010 Edition), Day Eight: Iron Man by Adam WarRock

Okay, another musician from the intrawebs, Adam WarRock is prolly getting the most attention by being lumped into the category of 'Geekcore,' that spin-off of hip hop headed up by people like MC Chris who do rap songs about subjects of interest to geekdom--hell, this song is from WarRock's West Coast Avengers mixtape.

And I'll be the first to admit that the reason I downloaded this mixtape was because of my geek tendencies--especially since I write a fanfiction series about the West Coast Avengers over at Altered Visions. But, just as I thought yesterday's Hugo was inaccurately categorized, I think Adam WarRock is a much different artist from people like MC Chris, or MC Frontalot, or others of their ilk. Listen to this whole mixtape, and you'll see that Adam uses the characters not as subject, but as inspiration. Thus, the song about The Living Lightning becomes a defiant show of solidarity for gay civil rights; the song about USAgent is about the American tradition of standing up for your fellow man; and the song about the Scarlet Witch is actually a sweet love ballad that just happens to have some mutant references in it. Adam's thoughts and concerns are cast a lot wider than other Geekcore artists (and I think he knows it, judging from the way he clearly tells visitors to his blog that his geekcore content is only a third of his output), and it's strong, strong stuff.

This particular song is a classic shout out, the kind of opening track that rappers use on an album to stoke the listener up. It's got a relentless beat, Adam's vocals are fierce and hard...and it's one of a number of great listens on this mixtape. I strongly recommend this artist, this song, and this mixtape. Sure, it's geekcore...but there's so much more to this artist than dropping comic book heroes names.

This is a recording of a medley of Adam's song on the WCA mixtape.  Enjoy.
 

30 Songs, 30 Days (2010 Edition), Day Seven: Mudsmilin' by Hugo

This is an interesting case. A while back I had made an allusion to my love of Ben Folds somewhere. A few days later, I found a message in my Facebook mailbox from this gentleman. He told me that he was a musician with a style I might find similar to Mr. Folds, and would I like to listen to some of his work? Never being one to turn down stuff for free, I said yes...and that brings us here.

And you know what? It's not bad. I don't know if I would make the Folds connection with him, though--this song, like the others I've listened to, owes a lot more to ragtime and old-school jazz than Folds' overriding affection for Bacharach pop, and his lyrics and vocals owe a lot more to the late, lamented Harry Nilsson. Hell, the similarity at times in this song about how he's having a tough time (as if 'mud's smiling' on him) to Nilsson's phrasing is absolutely eriee. And as one who thinks the world needs more people who are inspired by brilliant eccentrics like Nilsson, I can only approve wholeheartedly. And given that he looks quite a bit like Albert Brooks, it makes me like him even more.

Sadly, there is no video for "Mudsmilin'," which appeared on his most recent album, Uncommon Courtesy. The album, and others, are available on his website. But here's a video for his most recent track, "Make Out With Me," you might like. I happen to like its consciously stagey ambience, myself.

30 Songs, 30 Days (2010 Edition), Day Six: Strange Town by The Jam

And here we have another one of those bands that helped build my love of power (and other guitar-based) pop.

The song is fairly straightforward, with its lyrics about being the new kid in town, still being thoroughly clueless about your surroundings even after being 'here for three weeks now.' But what makes this is the signature Jam upbeat, uplifting melody acting as a place setting for the singer admitting to his feelings of isolation, confusion and awkwardness. And not just physically--there's a sense that the POV character is awkward socially as well, judging by the way he has to struggle to fit in, even if the music's too loud in the clubs and he can't find the kind of music he likes in the music shop. That tension between simple upbeat melodies and complex lyrics aren't as sublime as my own personal favorite Jam song, "A Town Called Malice," but it is effective.

The Jam sort of dissipated because Paul Weller wanted to get deep in touch with his inner white soul singer, but I think this band's music hold up today...

And here's the video....

30 Songs, 30 Days (2010 Edition), Day Five: Happy by Insane Ian

This is one of the songs that came from the irregular 'Master of Song-Fu' contest that was run on Kevin Smith's old site, QuickStop Entertainment. These contests took a number of up-and-coming musicians (mixed with some internet faves like Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm), gave them a subject and challenged them to write a song about it.

It's....okay. As someone who followed all six of these competitions, I can safely say there is some real gold in the mix, and also some crap....this is neither. The Baltimore based comedian's paen to ignorance being bliss doesn't really show any creativity--hell, it even ends with a joke stolen from Tom T-Bone Stankus' excellent novelty song, "Existential Blues."

I did make a trip to his website to see if I can glean more about his musical stylings. A quick scan of his web site makes it clear that he's something of a Weird Al manque, producing such novelty numbers as a Beatles parody about House, a Ke$ha parody about the old school video game DigDug and other,similar easy jabs at pop culture. Nothing really made me want to investigate further.

Damn....that's two songs out of five that have been disappointing so far. I fear this year's cycle of 30 Songs, 30 Days may be a rougher ride than I thought....

No video for this one...but here's Ian performing the above-mentioned House parody live...be prepared to be unimpressed.

30 Songs, 30 Days (2010 Edition), Day Four: What's The Use Of Getting Sober (When You're Gotta Get Drunk Again by Joe Jackson

And now, ladies and gentlemen--one of my favorite musicians, in one of his most idiosyncratic periods.

I have been a fan of Joe Jackson from the start. Part of it is because while he may not be the most learned or accomplished singer, his voice is rubbed raw emotional. When he's singing, you're getting the real deal--no mannerisms, no vocal tricks to hide weaknesses, just a man who lets you know what he's feeling at all times. During those early blooms of the New Wave, Jackson found himself lumped in with the 'Angry Young Men' of pop music--but, much like fellow Angry Young Man Elvis Costello, Jackson branched out quickly to explore other aspects of his personality.

Which brings us to this song, and the other reason I revere Jackson--this is a man who doesn't stop exploring and challenging himself. In his career, he's done a reggae album, a collection of instrumentals, a full blown choral piece, two albums of film music...and an album of swing standards, Jumping Jive, which is where this song comes from. That last album is right up there with I'm The Man as one of my favorites of his work, and the reason for it is that this is not standards done ironically (like when David Johannson briefly transformed into Buster Poindexter), or as an attempt to keep his waning career vital (as any number of aging rockers--I'm looking at you, Rod Stewart). He made this album at the height of his career, a year before what is arguably his most famous album, Night And Day was released, because damnit, he likes this music.

As such, this is a painstaking recreation of Louis Jordan's 1942 novelty song bouyed by the love Jackson has for the source material and that aforementioned emotionality of Jackson's voice. I love this song, I love this album, and I wish more people would discover this.


Saturday, May 7, 2011

30 Songs, 30 Days, Day Three: I Wanna Be Like You by Jeff Pianki

Like I have to tell you what this song is...it's a cover of a famous ditty (sometimes subtitled 'The Monkey Song') by a Michigan based alt-folker...

It's been far, far too long since I watched The Jungle Book. I was a child at the time, and saw it at the Sunrise Drive In, so we are talking a couple of decades. But I do recall it being a more...raucous number than the interpretation, which seems to approach it with a sort of softshoe jazz styling. I don't know what to make of it, to be honest--shorn of Louie Prima's rather broad reading or the , the song sort of just sits there lifelessly, without meaning or humor. It's almost like the way it was written demands a weird reading--which it gets in other covers by The Big Bad Voodoo Daddies, Smashmouth and others.

Far too often, I find, alt bands/musicians take rocking, rollicking tunes and give them an 'ironic' twist by slowing down the melody and subduing the line reading. The problem with that is that it doesn't work all the time. Hell, it doesn't work half the time...like here.

No video for this song...so here's one of Jeff doing one of his originals...


30 Songs, 30 Days, Day Two: Suspicious Miracles by LeeDM101

Okay, a confession to make: I love mash-ups.

Alright, maybe not every mash-up; many of them, quite frankly, are relatively pedestrian in their constructions...but sometimes, like those thoroughly insane DJ Earworm 'United States of Pop' annual productions, they end up being rather cool commentaries, making connections between songs you might not otherwise get. That's what makes the mash-up a legitimate musical genre. When done correctly, both elements (or more than two--the aforementioned 'United States of Pop' mash-ups contain elements from every single song that hit #1 on the Billboard Pop Charts for each year) are transformed by their proximity to each other, changing them into something strange and unique....

So what we have here is a mash-up from British DJ LeeDM101. It's one of the many, many tracks available as part of his three disc set Medicine Eyes: Works 2006-2008. Not surprisingly, the a capella elements in this mash-up is Elvis Presley's "Suspicious Minds." The dub element is from "Tosca's Miracle," by German dance project Fragma...and it's a smooth meshing.

And here's what I was saying about the best of these making connections--by imposing Elvis' twang on this swirling, soaring electronic muck, LeeDM101 shows us how there are some people like Elvis who would have been a success no matter what the genre he would have worked in. Elvis seems perfectly at home here, in the middle of a song released some decades since his death.

You can find this, and many other mash-ups by LeeDM101 by visiting his audio blog...and here's the official video. Just a heads up, though...it's pretty monotonous....


Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Cover-versies: The Smithereens

Last week, The Smithereens released 2011, their first album of original material in years.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

Like many of the bands I've enjoyed throughout the years, I remember vividly when I firest encountered this New Jersey band. I was sitting in Hunter College's old lounge watching MTV when the video for "Blood And Roses" came on. This video was a tie in for the Albert 'He Puts The Peee-yew in Movies' Pyun Dangerously Close, and it had a touch of the strange to it. Still, I eventually picked up their albums in the various used CD stores that dot the Village and liked them.

The thing I enjoyed about The Smithereens is that even though they're an 80's band from New Jersey, it's obvious that lead singer/songwriter Pat DiNizio's head dwells in an old garage in California circa 1968. Hell, the band spent the early years of its fame defending itself from charges that their songs were nothing but rip-offs of The Byrds and The Beatles. I liked how the band was able to keep their influences alive while putting their own spin on it, bringing those old movements forward and recasting them into meat-and-potatoes modern power pop.

And to be fair, The Smithereens never hid their influences from people. Throughout the height of their fame, bolstered by the popularity of alternative rock and 'new music' formats, the band would throw out covers from time to time. Most of these were of the 'respectful recreation' which I can take or leave, but every once in a while they came up with something like this reworking of their early song, "Behind The Wall of Sleep" they did with Graham Parker on MTV Unplugged. A recording of that version later popped up on the rarities album Attack of The Smithereens.

Here's the video for the original version....
And here's the MTV version...I couldn't find an isolated version of it, so it occurs at the 3:40 mark...
What makes the latter version so amazing is that it serves as a form of reverse engineering. By replacing DiNizio's voice with Parker's, it pretty much lays bare the blueprint for The Smithereens' success. It also, quite frankly, gives us a more desperate narrator, as Parker's voice sounds more lost that DiNizio. This is one of the reasons I love cover tunes; when done right, they reveal new things about the writer of the song, and the performers.

So The Smithereens have had the capability in the past to use the power of the cover tune wisely...but then in the '00s, they went and did things like this...

That's The Smithereens' video for "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," from the detestable Meet The Smithereens. This was the first of three albums (Meet The Smithereens; B-Sides The Beatles; Perform Tommy) where this smart and intelligent band ended up acting like those 'Tribute Bands' that play every third pub on Friday nights. These albums are nothing but the band aping their idols painstakingly...and all I hear when listening to these things are a band with no more pride in their own direction, who are perfectly happy to play pretend and grab the money thrown at them by their old fans, fans of the Beatles and The Who who look at this as a fitting tribute, and ironic hipster doofi. And the fact that a band whose original work I used to enjoy forwent this for three years to play pretend.....man, it pissed me off.

But then, maybe the reason they did these three albums is so they can get themselves together and scrape up material for what has become 2011...although I like to think that producer Don Dixon showed up at their collective houses, screamed at them, returned their balls and made them get to work.

30 Songs, 30 Days (2010 Edition), Day One: Destiny Calling by James

Another year, another cycle of 30 Songs, 30 Days.

The rules are this: once a day, I am going to put my 4GB Sansa Clip on Random and press play. I am obligated to write something on the song. There is no cheating and no do-overs with one exception--if you've covered two songs by an artist in the same cycle, you have the option of writing about the next one.

And we start out with this warning about how popularity and how fading it is...ironically by James, who wrote one of the greatest songs about obsessive love ever, 'Laid.' It's a peculiar song, with its martial beat and its ambivalent POV that seems to condemn those the singer sees as being complicit in their lives as pop darlings--the record label, who's 'playing roulette with lives'; the fans who seem to categorize the band members ('she likes the black one/he likes the posh one/Cute ones are usually gay')--while also being complacent as to their exploitation ('Tell us when our time's up/show us how to die well/show us how to let it all go'). Is it any wonder why it was one of the original tracks on their first Best Of compilations--which marks the very beginning of the end of the band. It's almost a Cassandra-esque warning that James was slowly coming apart, and to prepare for the worse.

Now, granted...James has since come back together, as have a slew of 90's era alternative rockers. But, much like "Laid" was eloquent in its honesty about self-destructive relationships, this one is brutal as a portrait of a band that is realizing it's run its course.

Monday, May 2, 2011

30 Songs, 30 Days (2009 Edition), Day Thirty: Just Keep Walking by INXS

And for our last song, something with a little resonance given what's been going on in pop culture right now.

Mention the name Michael Hutchence, or the band itself, and what do you get from people? 'Oh, the guy who hung himself while jacking off.' The fact that this was a band with a long, long history with a rather extensive set of hit singles--all of them bolstered by Hutchence's distinctive vocal tones--never, ever enters into it. Yet if you ask people about Michael Jackson right now, he's exulted as 'The King of Pop' (a phrase used to refer to him only because it was in every contract he signed in the last fifteen years of his life that he had to be referred to as such in all publicity materials) who's an 'Icon Of Music' (I'd argue that Prince had a bigger influence on the direction of pop music). There's no mention whatsoever of the bizarre behavior that included an addiction to plastic surgery (skin disease, my rosy rear end; a skin disease doesn't cause your nose to thin out like that), a pathetic desire to not be black, and pedophilia--something the man as much admitted to on National Television back in the 90's! It's as if everyone believes that the second before his heart stopped, the grotesque of today suddenly switched places with the Michael of 1987, before the man's mental illness took over his life.

(and before the cries of racism come up, I looked askance at the way Elvis suddenly went from being a fat, drug-addled man who paid underaged girls to wrestle in their underwear with a stool sticking out his butt to Comeback Elvis when he died on the toilet in the 70's...and I expect the same disgust to come over me when Jerry Lee Lewis finally dies and his history of erratic behavior and spousal abuse gets ignored. I can respect the art while damning the artist, that's for sure)

So why does one artist get defined by his sin while the other gets off scott free? I think that maybe, in Hutchence's case, his death defines him because its so unlike his music. Listen to this, a single from INXS' first album; its message is decidedly pro-life, arguing for action over discussion, for finding your way under your own power rather than letting others guide you.

And we also have to take into consideration that, at least here in America, Hutchence's time in the spotlight was relatively brief. Even though alt-rock fans like myself knew of INXS' jazz-touched beats as far back as the dawn of MTV, where "The One Thing" made eating fun again, most people only became acquainted with the band with the advent of their one major hit, "What You Need"--I'm sure most of these same people look at INXS as a one hit wonder regardless of all the other magnificent sax-heavy songs they've put out. And maybe because of that limited time in the spotlight, the weirdness of his death is all people know about him.

But still...you can't revile one person as a freak while forgiving the other of far worse sins. It's time to end the double standard and pick one or the other...and whether you choose to separate Michael Hutchence from the peculiar nature of his death and recognize that he was a good artist in his own right or finally acknowledge that Michael Jackson did terrible things, I'm good either way.

30 Songs, 30 Days (2009 Edition), Day Twenty Nine: Thanks by The Wedding Present

For our penultimate edition of 30 Songs, 30 Days....David Gedge and his fingers of steel.

Hey, you kinda have to have fingers of steel to play the guitar that fast and that hard. This is from Bizarro, an album I picked up from a Salvation Army thrift store around the corner when I was living in Flushing. It wasn't the first time I had encountered Mr. Gedge and his bright, fast musicianship; that would be when I bought a vinyl album of the band from St. Mark's Sounds with a footballer on the cover because I was into picking up random albums in those days and seeing what they sounded like. I'm not sure, but this might very well have been George Best, the band's first album; to be honest, I misplaced it in one of my many moves before I situated myself here in Ridgewood and am only recalling from memory.

And I really, really liked The Wedding Present. Which I guess is not surprising given my adoration of a band that is usually cited as an inspiration for them, Mark E. Smith's Manchester-based shifting coalition The Fall. There's something so invigorating about the too-fast-for-the-freeway guitar licks even as Gedge himself is singing about the sudden realization that he's become a dim afterthought to his ex-girlfriend, that the new man in his life has so rearranged her existence that there's no space for him anymore. More of that 'bright melody/downbeat lyrics' thing, although I've always felt that the way Gedge does play has a razor's cut of anger to it, like he's trying to beat his guitar into submission to avoid facing what he's singing about.

The Wedding Present did break up in 1999. Gedge and his girlfriend founded the band Cinerama...and then decided to rebrand itself as The Wedding Present again. They're still out there performing and recording, and it should be interesting to see what these guys come up with next.
And for good measure, here's the present line-up performing "Interstate 5"....
You'll notice that Gedge's voice has softened along with his guitar playing...but I don't think either has lost their power.