Saturday, December 29, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Thirty Six: Go West by The Village People

A snapshot of a time long gone, and a band that doesn't
get the credit for its subversiveness...

Oh, boy...this is a strange little choice to close out 2012.

Doesn't matter.  I'm gonna write the stuffings outta this song, because it's actually pretty cool.

I don't think I have to explain The Village People--the bifurcated alter ego of expert disco songwriter (and poor disco singer) Jacques Morali, do I?  What I do think I have to explain to those of you who did not live through disco is how enormous the Village People were.  There was a time when these five cosplaying session musicians were everywhere.  Hell, I remember a time when I was attending Benjamin Cardoza High School in Bayside, Queens where my classmates and I were summarily hustled out of our class and into a giant tractor trailer truck kitted out by the U.S. Navy as a recruiting station.  Once inside, we were treated to a rather...aggressive recruitment film that predominantly utilized the Village People hit 'In The Navy' as part of its pitch.  I imagine that once the U.S. Military Complex figured out what the Village People were really thinking about, they dismantled that rolling recruitment station something quick.

What amazes me, and fills me with admiration for Morali, is how he was able to get all these songs about gay rights and the gay lifestyle into the American mainstream for several years.  Listening to 'Go West' and the other Village People songs now, it's hard not to see what they were about right from the start.  Even though he outfitted his singers as several idealized gay fantasies, he unwittingly created a sense of friendly fun to his group, allowing kids and families to groove to songs about meeting potential boyfriends at the Y and, in the case of this song, moving out to the more tolerant at the time west coast to live your lifestyle openly.  Hell, this was a band that a major motion picture studio felt could support an entire movie, the stunning-in-its-awful-strangeness Can't Stop The Music.

Of course, it's hard to deny that Morrell would not have been able to pull this off if he didn't know how to write a dance song, and 'Go West' is a textbook of how to make a disco tune that would get you out on the floor and moving your hips.  The bongo beats that serve as the melody line practically demand your butt-wiggling, and the vocals of Victor Willis are a perfect compliment (Ray Simpson, who is generally credited as the lead singer of the group, didn't join until the year after this single was released).  If anyone ever wondered why disco music worked during its brief ascendancy, you just have to give a listen to any of the band's late 70's output.

A version of the Village People containing only three original members (Felipe 'the indian' Rose, Alex 'the G.I.' Briley, and David 'the construction worker' Hodo) still roams the Earth, presumably playing state fairs and street festivals around the country.  And I'm willing to bet that wherever they are right now, there are young people who weren't even born when they were kings of creation dancing their asses off to their music.  God bless 'em.

Here's a video.


Thus ends the 30Ss, 30Ds cycle for 2012.  When I meet you on the other side of this year, what I'm going to do is remove the numerical requirement and just call it 'Song Of The Day.'  You know, so I don't get stressed out if I let it go fallow for a few weeks.  See you then.

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Thirty Five: We Are The Fallen by Pennywise

Almost 25 years old and still standing up for the little guy...

It's a hardcore Christmas everyone!

Now keep in mind that outside of the songs on this album, All or Nothing, the only things I knew about this band was that it was named after the evil clown from Stephen King's It, and that its once and future lead singer Jim Lindberg once threatened Adam Carolla with something ominously referred to as 'Poo Poo City' during a taping of Love Lines back in the 90's.  Hell, until I heard All or Nothing, I thought Pennywise was a ska punk band, which is why I decided to sample it.

And on top of that misinterpretation, there's the fact that All or Nothing is something of an anomaly in the band's discography, as it's the only album which featured vocals by Jim Lindberg's 'permanent replacement,' Zoli Telgas--'permanent' apparently meaning only 'a year or two' in Pennywise terms, as Teglas bowed out after injuring his back and was replaced by Lindberg.  So what I experienced in this album is not the 'pure' Pennywise experience.

As for the song--this is certainly a band that wears its influence on its sleeve, in particular the band Bad Religion.  Even though Teglas' vocals have a quality that evoke no less than Dexter Holland of The Offspring (which is a band probably as diametrically opposed to Pennywise as any band can be without being pop or reggaton or something outrageous like that), the vocal phrasing of the lyrics themselves is extremely reminiscent of Greg Graffin's.  Plus drummer Byron McMakin's fills at times evokes the older band as well.  Add in that Pennywise's subject matter, social and moral injustice, is also the main part of Bad Religion's playbook and....well, you've got something really similar.  I can almost close my eyes and picture a young Graffin penning this call to activism amongst the 'warriors of sorrow' back when he was a younger man and not the elder punk statesman he is.

(Of course, to be fair, Pennywise is about to celebrate its 25th Anniversary, so maybe it's time to consider Lindberg and co. elder statesmen in their own right!)

Now I like Bad Religion, which is right up there with The Fall in my mind as one of the more cerebral punk bands ever.  Pennywise is not exactly my cup of tea, partially because they don't have the intellectual element I enjoy in Bad Religion, and partially because listening to them only makes me want you, you know, go listen to Bad Religion.  But since this is not the 'pure' Pennywise experience I would have had listening to their previous albums, maybe I should hold off on writing them off until I hear the band fronted by Lindberg.

2013 will see Pennywise hosting a show at the Hollywood Palladium to commemorate their aforementioned 25th Anniversary.  God bless them for lasting that long in a cultural world that has written off this style of music.

Here's the song.  Come back here in a few days for the wrap up of this year's cycle and news on what's in store for 30Ss, 30Ds for 2013.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Somewhere There Is Music Playing....by Early Spring

Yes, I took this photo my ownself...but that's Early Spring...

I did something I haven't done in years this weekend.

I went to see some live music.

To be more specific, I took a trip three stops down the L line to the wilds of East Williamsburg and Brooklyn Fireproof East's modest performance space to see Early Spring, a band that includes among its number my friend James Dye and his wife Adalena Kavanagh.

Early Spring (you can stream two tracks at their bandcamp page)is a lo-fi band who specializes in painting these very dense aural landscapes, walls of noise that at times sound like early Television played through blown out speakers, other times like a much mellower Jesus and Mary Chain.  Perhaps the most unique thing about them is the tension between the music itself and the vocals of its lead singer, who actually has a throaty, Leonard Cohen quality to him that turns the songs on their ear.  This is chill out music for the perpetually paranoid; easy going, meandering but set within a clashing sonic soundscape.  I'm not saying it's for everyone, but it is certainly compelling.

Early Spring is gigging in and around the New York area, so if you're interested in lo-fi music with a bit of a bite, watch out for them.

(And if you're in a band in the New York City area and would like me to check you out, let me know; I'll plug you right here on this blog!)

Thursday, December 20, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Thirty Four: Down By The Water by The Decemberists

The umbrella Colin Meloy holds up doesn't exist...and
that's the best metaphor I can think of for The Decemberists'
music.

Given where we are in the year, this is a pretty appropriate band to be talking about, huh?

And one of the reasons I love The Decemberists is because, in their way, they are carrying on the tradition of one of my heroes, the late Warren Zevon.  Colin Meloy and his crew are storytellers first and foremost, their songs weaving elements of history and folklore to create a mystic soundscape where reality and unreality dance about in dark capers.  Even though the band's feel is more folkie than rockist, the gothic nature of much of their subject matter makes them perfect compliments to Zevon's criminals, junkies and losers.  One could easily see the likes of the Crane Wife co-existing in the same world as The Excitable Boy; The Decemberists' creations just live in the rural areas outside of Zevon City.

Of course, this song (taken from the band's album The King Is Dead) may owe more to Springsteen than to Zevon.  The lyrics seem to hit all the beats of a classic Springsteen 'I feel trapped by this town' song--the restlessness, the looking outward from the small town our POV character presumably dwells, the references to misdeeds. Although I don't recall Bruce ever making references to Leda, the woman who was seduced by Zeus who, in typical Zeus fashion, took the appearance of a swan (yep, Zeus was a kinky lil' god, he was) in Greek mythology.  But then, myths and history are Meloy's thing, and that's what makes the Decemberists so unique.

Given the Leda reference, where Meloy ties that figure to 'pier nineteen,' I wonder if what Meloy is talking about isn't a person's desire to get out of his town, but a nostalgia for a past way of life--namely, Portland's position in the 19th Century as a major port.  Leda's family in certain interpretations of the myth never quite got over her rape by, ummm, a swan, and maybe what Meloy is talking about is the way Pier Nineteen's transformation over the years from being a vital port to a recreational tourist spot--it's apparently, among other things, a skatepark according to reports I uncovered with a little Google-mining--reflects Portland's changing face over the decades.  And maybe what Meloy is yearning for when he sings these lyrics isn't an escape from his town, but an escape into the past where his hometown mattered.

The Decemberists are still out there making their brand of cerebral, intellectual indie rock right now.  And the world is better for it.

Here is a video from a 2011 performance of the song....

Friday, December 14, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Thirty Three: Baby Don't Stay (Demo) by Voice of The Beehive

Don't call them baby..because even if you wanted to, they're
long gone.

And now...yet another Obscure Band That Only Released A Few Albums I Really Liked.

The Voice of The Beehive lasted roughly a decade, founded by sisters Tracy Bryn and Melissa Brooks Belland in 1987.  They never really got the fame I think they deserved, as they drowned in the morass of similar 'led-by-two-women-who-do-harmonies' bands that flooded the music market in the late 80's and early 90's.  They even got stuck with the 'dream pop' label that was affixed to people like The Darling Buds and Lush, even though I think their work owed more to harder 60's era rockers.

And you can kind of hear it on this song, which I first heard as part of a fan-made rarities compilations (that you can still locate at the apparently now abandoned blog GirlBandGeek).  There is a chunkiness to the guitar riffs in this breakup anthem, and a definite Chrissie Hynde-like sneer to the vocal delivery...and yet, there's also a melodic nature to this band that's very flavorful especially given what's surrounding those voices.  It's the sort of thing that made them so damn appealing to me, a sort of bitter-with-the sweet that I adore.

Even though the band did have some success with their single 'I Say Nothing' and their cover of the Partidge Family's 'I Think I Love You,' they never got the proper footing in the tumultuous early 90's music industry...although apparently the band didn't implode due to The Great Signing Massacre that felled so many indie acts of the time.  It seems they simply imploded all by their lonesomes, thank you very much, with all but the Belland sisters surviving for their last album, Sex And Misery in 1996.  After that, save for a few shows where they opened for The Wonderstuff in 2003, Tracy has been teaching and Melissa runs her own company.  Do I think there might've been more music in them?  Yeah...but maybe it's best that the Sisters Belland allowed their venture to expire naturally rather then keeping the corpse alive.  At least now I have a rather nice collection of wonderfully snarky and witty pop songs to enjoy.

And you know, I wish that the little girls of today had the equivalent of a Tracy and Melissa to look up to rather than a Katy Perry or a (Am I A Man Or Am I A) Lady Gaga.  These girls rocked, they were sexy without being objects, and they actually wrote songs that had, you know, actual thoughts expressed in them.

Thus ends the editorializing.  Here's the song....


Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Signs Of the End Times: Taylor Swift Thinks We're All Stupid

She knows she should smile at you..but she doesn't
want to...
Since the second death of 101.9 WXRP, I've been stuck in the store listening to a variety of pop and dance-oriented pop radio. That's the only choices you have if you're interested in English language music in New York City, unless you like hearing rock music from thirty years ago while a succession of old grey haired white people start pontificating on music history endlessly. The incursion of sports talk radio onto the FM dial here, beginning with WEPN and ending with WFAN has driven modern and alternative rock music off the dials save for weird pockets where, let's say, Mumford and Sons and Goetye show up on 102.7, the adult light contemporary station 'Fresh FM.'
 
It's listening to Fresh FM that made me come to this conclusion...namely that Taylor Swift Thinks We're All Stupid.

No, really.

You see, apparently Ms. Swift decided this year she needed to reposition herself as a pop star. No longer happy with being a country-tinged folkie with some mild pop crossover appeal, she's gone full out in her new album, Red to make herself on the level with Katy Perry, Pink, and all the other pop tarts in the modern firmament. And her first step towards pushing her peers aside was 'We Are Never Getting Back Together.' It's a female empowerment break-up anthem, which is a pretty safe bet for a mission statement when becoming a pop diva--Alanis Morrisette managed to squeeze a several album career out of one song where she equated breaking up with movie theater blow jobs, and some would say that Pink's entire later career is built around her insisting she's through with her ex-husband.

And it's a thoroughly, absolutely wretched misfire of a song.

I feel bad for this guy...and I shouldn't.
There's a number of reasons why, as an artifact out of the context of the times in which Ms. Swift had it released, it fails. Her vocals are awfully artificial, wavering back and forth between a strange mannered sing-songiness and very snotty plainspeak. The melody is just a repetitive drone punctuated by Swift's 'ooooooo'ing--and it frequently stops and starts, most significantly towards the end when everything pauses so a lo-fi Taylor can 'act' her way through a brief soliloquy that ends with her reciting the song title for the nineteenth time. And the lyrics are supposed to be pump-the-air-cause-gals-are-doing-it-for-themselves....but the POV character comes off as nasty and borderline sadistic. By the time the song is over, you have sympathy for that Kennedy boy, or John Mayer, or whoever it is this song is directed at. That's right; this song is so obnoxious it makes me feel sorry for John Mayer, a man I have utter loathing for.

But what may be the worst sin is the way the rise-and-fall repetition ends up earworming us--because it's just drones round and round, and Swift's vocals amplifies its hypnotic quality that it settles in your reptilian brain and kicks your frontal lobe for a couple of hour before the melody finally fades.

Look, I know Taylor Swift isn't the first country folkie who tried to cross over into mainstream pop. But what makes her bid for the Big Time so wrong-headed is how....calculated it is. Say what you want about, let's say, Jewel's 'Intuition,' but at least it was concretely a Jewel song, albeit one that featured her dancing around in a spangly dress (I think it helps when looking back at that moment in Jewel's career that she did it not because she wanted to be a Big Stah, but because she was curious if she could). 'We Are Never Getting Back Together' is soulless, a breakup song written by someone didn't want to get anything off her chest, but wanted to write a breakup song. And in trying to emulate the perfect Dance-Oriented Pop breakup song, Ms. Swift inadvertently strips away the thing that sets her apart from the other pop stars of this age--that delicateness and genuineness that made everyone want to root for her. The Taylor Swift of 'We Are Never Getting Back Together' is fake and false and cynical...and expects you to not care that she didn't put a lot of effort into this song, because all you care about is the beat and how pretty she is.

Which is why Taylor Swift thinks your stupid. And you shouldn't let her continue to do so and turn your back on her.

But you probably won't. Which is why These Are The End Times.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Another Music Dream

I've had another music dream I want to share with you. As before, I invite you to interpret the dream in your way, and ask you to share some of yours.

I wake up lying on a floor in a strange barracks-like room. I am told by someone that this is my dorm room, which seems odd considering my dorm room was a small, monk-like room that was barely large enough to contain me. After trying to get some more sleep, I hear some faint playing of music and head out through the window.

Funny, he doesn't look like a blimp...
I move through the streets of Queens County in the direction of the music. I eventually find my way to what appears to be a basketball court. People are gathered around the basketball court sparsely, but what alarms me is that in the middle of the court, performing with a small band, is Kurt Wallinger, who was in The Waterboys and World Party. Wallinger, however, has apparently ballooned up to extraordinary proportions (in this dream reality, he's easily 350 pounds, if not heavier), and he's breathing heavily as he bounces around like the aspiring Bono he used to be and singing some of his more well-known songs. He's wearing a mumu, and looks a horror. The people are all laughing and mocking Wallinger, and I try to move forward to dissuade him to stop....but then I wake up.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Thirty Two: Murder For The Money by Morphine

Yes, they're dwelling in darkness...and that's totally appropriate.
This week, as we rapidly approach the end of this year's cycle and begin the special Seasonal Round...it's one of my favorite avant garde bands.

I sadly got into Morphine at the end of this band's life. A number of my horror writer friends had recommended this Massachusetts-based group for its dark soundscapes and the quirky lyrics of vocalist Mark Sandman. Based on these recommendations I picked up their latest album, The Night--just days before Sandman collapsed on stage in Italy and died. I was so entranced by the weird mix of film noir crime stories, swinging 50's orchestration and sometimes moody as all Hell gothic sensibilities that I ended up determined to discover their entire ouvre. Luckily, the legendary jazz music store J&M down on Park Place had a rather massive Rykodisc sale that allowed me to pick up the bulk of their albums, and they're still treasured items in my collection.

It's hard to describe Morphine to someone who has never heard them. This was all going on during the time when I was a freelancer. One of my last jobs as a freelancer, and one of my favorite overall due to the rapport I had with my client, was at a financial reporting firm located in the World Trade Center. I was working late one night to help close out some outstanding accounts when my client came over to where I was set up. I had Like Swimming, the album from which this track comes from, on my Discman. He listened for a second and chuckled to himself before saying, "What are you listening to, Tom? It sounds like jazz for serial killers." Another descriptor came several years later from Jennifer, a girl I was engaged to, who dismissed it as 'stripper music for hipsters'...and then proceeded not to talk to me because obviously I liked thinking of strippers.

It's both and it's neither. Take this song. It's certainly in the crime novel sensibilities of Sandman and company, and yet it's not telling a complete story. There's something larger on Sandman's mind, and he's reducing it to its lowest common demoninator. I can't help but think that what's 'murder' in this song is life itself--to the singer, life itself is pain, it's horror, it's...murder every single moment of the day, every inch that you move forward. It's a slow slog that will not let up, and it will always, always hurt. And while Sandman may have avoided the ultimate termination of this perpetual Hell, he's seen enough people felled to know that it's a matter of time for him to fold.

Members of Morphine still perform sporadically as...well, The Members of Morphine. And to the best of my knowledge, all these albums are still out there, floating around, waiting for another poor sap with a passion for darker matters to discover them when he least expects it.

Here's a video....


Tuesday, October 30, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Thirty One: These Days by R.E.M.

Do we look like Shiny Happy People
to you?
I'm surprised it took so long for another R.E.M. song to pop up in this series...the last time--the only time--I discussed the band from Athens, GA was in the very first 30 Songs, 30 Days series in 2009!

This is actually a live recording of this second track of Life's Rich Pageant, taken from a performance at the Olypmia in L.A. prior to the release of what would be their penultimate album, Accelerate. It features some banter by Michael Stipe where he mentions he wrote this song after emerging from a particularly dark time in his life when he was 25. It's interesting hearing him talk about this at that point where he was pretty well-adjusted, a few scant years before he and his mates decided to call it a day.

Life's Rich Pageant, which came fresh off the problematic sophmore album Fables of The Reconstruction, is a very political album, and I think some of this is political--but the true meaning lies in what Stipe tells us at the very beginning of this live recording. This is a song written by a man who was at turns angry and morose, and the lyrics can be seen as both an indictment of the laziness of the youth of the early Reagan era and a call to arms. Stipe is actively upset at the inactivity of his fellows, mocking them ('we have many things in common/name three'), threatening them ('I wish to eat each one of you') while also moving away from the listless masses, urging them to follow him into activity. After all, there is some hope in what he's saying, however dim--like him, his listeners are 'young despite the years' and he wants them to fly metaphorically to take this joy with them. I can't help but think that this is the morose, dark Stipe finding some purpose in activism and asking--nay, berating--his fans to follow him into this brave new proactive world.
It's a great song from a great album, one that I think marks the line between 'indie rock' R.E.M. and the 'mainstream arena pop' R.E.M. of their later years. Of course, the great trick of the band was how it slipped back and forth across this line several times throughout its career, which made them problematic to the mainstream who wanted just endless iterations of 'Shiny Happy People' and 'Stand' instead of the more nuanced, experimental and problematic stuff that made up Up and Automatic For The People and other great albums.

I don't miss R.E.M. now that they're gone; that would be silly given the massive body of music they left behind when they finally called it quits. But hearing songs like that makes me glad they were around.
 
Here's a video...

 

Saturday, October 13, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Thirty: Peaches by The Presidents of The United States

Portrait of a band about to become a footnote...
Hey, look--it's a Seattle alternative band from the 90's that wasn't grunge!

The Presidents was part of that 'college rock' movement--you know what I'm talking about, power pop with odd, comedic lyrics full of double entendre, wacky videos and eccentric vocals, like Weezer only...not. I always suspected they were done in primarily thanks to the massive success of their first album, which spawned this song as well as 'Lump' and 'Kitty.' Based on that one album, they ended up playing for President Clinton at a 1994 fundraiser (man, those were weird years). And I'll even admit that I actually was one of a number of New Yorkers who pre-ordered their second album, II, so I could gain floor admittance to a free concert they played at the long-gone Virgin Records in Times Square; if you have their rarities and demos collection Pure Frosting, you might be able to pick me out in amongst the screams of the crowd (man, those were weird years). Somewhere around here is a guitar pick guitarist Dave Dederer signed for me at the autograph session that followed.

I don't doubt that Chris Ballew, Dederer, and the others in the Presidents were good musicians; just listen to the guitar playing on this single, and that wonderful bridge that signifies a time change toward the end. But I do wonder if the band suffered due to the path it chose to walk down musically. The problem with college rock is that it invites consignment to novelty...and novelty invites consignment to the ephemeral. And unlike other college rockers like Weezer, who seemed to have some deeper meanings in their goofiness, The Presidents seemed to think the lyrics were the thing in and of themselves. They kept embracing that strange little niche--we are talking about a band whose lead off single from it's second album was a paeon to smashing up toy cars in your backyard--and by the time they realized the Top Forty Bus had passed them by, they were unable to reconfigure enough to recapture the public's attention. To be fair, it also didn't help that the band broke up and reformed about three times in the last fifteen years--if you're not putting out music constantly, you're forgotten in modern pop.

I personally always liked this song, partially because of the time changes, and partially because of the sheer bizarreness that this became a Top 40 Hit at one time. This song's vague smuttiness does take a rather...frank turn about the minute and a half mark, with the whole thing about Chris mangling a rotten peach while fantasizing about a woman, but it doesn't really alter the not-quite-innocent fun of the song. And the greatest thing is that it is under three minutes (as are a number of the songs The Presidents released as a single), making them an acolyte of the true pop single. It's not as annoying as some of their other singles were--wanna try to listen to 'Lump' again ?--and it's a shame it's sort of forgotten.

Apparently, The Presidents are still together, albeit with the addition of guitbassist Andrew McKeeg to the line-up, playing Husky half-time shows and producing new music sparingly.

Here's the video for the single...and yeah, it's got ninjas...
 



 

Saturday, September 29, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Twenty Nine: NYCUFOs by NYCUFOs

..because Omaha UFO's doesn't have the same ring to it...
I want to say up front that I know absolutely nothing--and I mean nothing--about this band, save that their album, Newer Stations, was available (and still is available) for free on bandcamp and that they're a quartet. The picture to the left is the only one I could find of them. I have to assume they're from my hometown, but I guess even that supposition is based on potentially spurious assumptions (i.e. if they were from Green Bay, they'd be Green Bay UFOs).


Given the lack of information, I have to go on the song itself. And the song itself is a strange Frankenstein's monster of influences. I can get snatches of The Jesus and Mary Chain, a variety of early 80's pop bands, some Velvet Underground, and The Replacements in there.

...actually, I get a lot of The Replacements, especially in the vocals and the guitar riffs. Someone must have really listened closely to Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson in their youth, because Joe Haller and Chris Auger are obviously striving to imitate (or 'hommage') the band. What separates them from their heroes is the hazy distortion that they obviously borrowed from the J&M Chain. This doesn't separate them completely from the 'Mats influence, however, as what ultimately results sounds like a Replacements cover band playing their songs through seriously blown speakers.

The song itself is in the tradition of the 'band theme song. Oddly enough, when I sussed this out I got a whiff of another possible influence--They Might Be Giants, who wrote a theme song for The Replacements that remains one of my favorite songs of theirs early in their career. Half advertising (the chorus' last line exhorts us to 'Go and See The NYC UFOs') and half tv show jingle, the song does have a strange charm to it. And it also makes me wonder, given that they haven't produced anything new since the release of this album in 2010, what happened to them. After all, there is some promise amidst this influence soup, and there is always the possibility these four would slough off the obvious imitations and find their true nature down the line.

Here is a link to get Newer Stations.
 
....and since this song has no video, here's a live performance of 'Hi, We're The Replacements,' the They Might Be Giants song I was talking about, at a Barnes and Nobles..



Friday, September 14, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Twenty Eight: Cloud Nine by Pairs

They may like to refer to themselves as a bitch and a dickhead...
but man, these cats can play!
And today...Chinese Punk Rock!

No, really. I first became aware of this band when I downloaded a collection of rock bands from Shanghai from bandcamp. On the bandcamp page was a link to Summer Sweat, a full album by the group and hey, it was free, so I downloaded it as well.

This is the first track on that album, and...yeah, it's pretty much a Mission Statement. I have to be honest; while Pairs does sing in English, I can't understand half of what is going on here. Guitatist 'f's' highly distorted guitar rifts burst through the speakers as if she's actively and gleefully trying to blow them while drummer/vocalist xiao zhong alternates between screaming and growling his lyrics. This creates an undeniable energy--while I can't figure out the lyrics entirely (words seem to pop up to the surface from this bed of noise, and the phrase beginning with 'I'll be the best Johnny Rotten in the ground' seems to be the chorus), there is a definitive propulsion to it. You keep listening, even when xiao takes a few moments to start moaning as if in pain.

I'm not 100% sure if this is the kinda of thing I'd want to hear all the time, and I'm not sure if it's this track is the best entry point to this band; there are other tracks on this album that are less distorted and more melodic that might serve to ease a newcomer into their exuberant style. But it sure is fun in its anarchistic, crazy way. If you want to try them out for yourself, check out their discography on bandcamp.
 
Here is the band performing the song live.
 
 


Thursday, September 6, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Twenty Seven: Dangerous Boys by Paul Westerberg

He's looking at you, kid...
I find it really odd that I've been doing this for four years, and never once has one of my favorite bands ever come up...namely, the greatness that is The Replacements. And it still hasn't come up, although its leader just has.

There is something so primaly wonderful about The Replacements, a band where the fun was just as equally wondering if the night you went to see them was the night they'd finally implode, or the night they'd be too drunk to play, or if they'd just be a cover band for shits and giggles. I loved how they moved from straight on punks to power poppers in the mode of Paul's hero Alex Chilton to actual Top 40 troubadours before finally falling apart...and yet the chameleon-esque transformations continued, as Paul went through his 'ZuZu's Petals' phase of writing AOR sludge with now-wife Laurie Lindeen, then became a little bit of a Nu-Folkie before his most recent period of being a sort of rock-n-roll recluse, going about his life in quiet obscurity only to surprise us every once in a while with an EP of new songs at a ridiculously low price or a brief reunion with his Replacement bandmates for a pair of new tracks on Rhino's anthology of the band.
 
This song comes from one of those EPs, PW and The Ghost Glove Cat Wing Joy Boys, and I have to say that I like this weird period of his life. These later songs have taken on a strange sort of 'happy accident' quality to them, primarily because of the space between these missives from Paul (Something I discussed with Maurice Bursztynski in relation to Fiona Apple). And I'm fascinated by how his career has almost come full circle. This is recognizably the same guy who played on Tim and Pleased To Meet Me (even though I was aware of The Replacements because of my love of the greatest anthem of my college years, 'Bastards of The Young,' Pleased was my favorite 'Mats album because of the one-two punch of 'Alex Chilton' and 'IOU', the later with its seemingly endless break in the middle, as if the entire band was holding its breath underwater)--that guitar riff is unmistakably--but it's a strangely different kind of song.
 
I'm not sure if this song should be taken at the surface level, as a song about a woman who likes to bring 'dangerous boys' to her bed because she gains some power over them until she meet the one boy who 'breaks like a wave/waif.' Or, and I suspect this might be the true interpretation, it might be an elaborate metaphorical song about his relationship with his wife. After all, if we assume the 'boy who breaks like a wave/waif' (there's an argument for both interpretations on the Westerberg message boards) is Paul himself, then the fact that the boy is not put back together like all the others before him who shared this woman's bed can be looked at as representing Paul's musical transformation into something different from what he was with The Replacements. This song may very well be, in some weird and twisted, Westerbergian way, a love letter to his wife attributing his growth as an artist to her.
 
Regardless, it's a great lil' track, and I am probably not alone in waiting for the day when Paul comes out of his home to release another bunch of tracks....which might not be so far off, as there are reports on his official website that he and Tommy Stinson are collaborating on a song for a series of limited edition seven inch singles to benefit Slim Dunlap, a project that will reach fruition this fall.
 
Since there's no video for this song, here's one for the single off his last album, Suicide Gratification, which was directed by one of my faves, and notorious geek culture whipping boy Zack Snyder...
 
 

Friday, August 24, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days, Day Twenty Six: Open by Regina Spektor

Remember...the Big Bad Wolf came out of
a forest as well....
Some time ago, before I decided to finally join the technologically savvy '00s by getting a primitive version of a smart phone (what I referred to as my 'mentally challenged phone' to my friends), I had a ringtone based on the Ben Folds song 'You Don't Know Me.' And the main reason I chose that ringtone was so I could hear Regina Spektor sorta half-sigh 'you don't know me/at all' to herald every phone call I got.

Spektor is another strange figure in my personal musical firmament. She, much like Fiona Apple, sits in my mind as a ghostly (dare I say 'spectral') figure besides Tori Amos, representing an alternate universe version of that artist I respect so much. Unlike Apple, who seems to be Amos if Amos decided to study jazz instead of classical music, Spektor is the Tori Amos who gave into her darker urges. I frequently find her music more gothic and nasty, as if she is using it to disturb the demons in her soul without dispelling them....

And boy, is this song indicative of that. It's one of the numbers from her most recent album, What We Saw From The Cheap Seats, and it actively frightens me. There's an overpowering sense of claustrophobia to this song. The lyrics are simple but unsettling, as the singer tells us of how she waits in a room she made herself, apparently restrained in some way, suspended but open. Now I know that I could take this literally, but I like to think what our POV character is saying is that she is suspended in time--she has become this thing in amber for others to examine, for others to 'open' and interpret as they wish.

Of course, the lyrics don't account for those gasps--shuddering struggles for breath that make this song seem all the more terrifying. If this is a metaphorical imprisonment, it is a horrifying and stifling one, one that's literally choking the life out of her. When I first heard this song, I jumped when she started making those noises.

In reading some of the interpretations of the song online, there is a tendency to claim it's about Anne Frank, a subject Spektor has mediatated on through her music before. I don't know if it was intended to be this specific, though; in my mind, there's something universal to her pleas. After all, don't we all at one point feel confined, feel as though wires are pulling us back from the life we can lead, suffocating in a malaise of the everyday?

Regardless of whether this is about one specific person or a certain kind of isolation, this is powerful stuff. And it's one of the reasons why I find Regina Spektor both so attractive and intimidating as an artist, even amongst all the beautiful piano playing.
 
Here is a live performance of the song....


Wednesday, August 15, 2012

30 Songs, 30 Days, Day Twenty Five: Dress (High Fashion Remix) by P.J. Harvey

She's looking at you looking at her...do you really want to
know what she's thinking?
This one's for you, Fil....

And let's be honest, it's not just my friend Fil (maven of the Pogo-A-GoGo Blog) who went insane for Miss Polly Jean back when she first grabbed hold of our collective shirt collars, announced her arrival and threw us down on the floor so she can walk all over us. She wasn't the first female artist to take the male gale and turn it back on her audience as part of her onstage persona; hell, she wasn't even the first one who did it in the 90's. But unlike many of her contemporaries (I'm looking at you, Liz Phair), Harvey has never softened to the point where she was Safe For Lite-FM. Sure, she's softened, and she's cast her musical net much wider than she did when she fronted the P.J. Harvey Trio....but she's kept her output more or less consistent. Much like Tori Amos, the impression I get is that Harvey writes for herself first and foremost, and worries about whether other people will care to listen later.

This is a remix of the very first single Harvey released with the Trio in 1991...and even in this dance-friendly form, it's an angry little song (But then, weren't most of the songs she released as singles from this period? I can't imagine anyone thinking 'Sheila-Na-Gig' a good time anthem, after all). It's about how the female body image is shaped by the aforementioned male gaze, with Harvey at turns hoping the dress she's wearing will make her 'clean and sparkling' for a man when she goes out dancing...all the while being very aware of how uncomfortable the garment is, and how difficult it is to move in the constricting thing, and how it results in her 'spilling out like a heavy loaded fruit tree.' It's the sort of thing Harvey did a lot in her early career, making the listeners uneasy by grinding our face in a reality most similar song scenarios won't give us.

I think it's telling that Harvey continues to be able to do what she wishes musically while others of her class have surrendered to a softer, more commerical sound. While an argument can be made that there was a slight immaturity in these early songs, they are still the seeds from which later, more complex and nuanced albums have sprung from. She has continued to stretch her musical muscles both on her own and with frequent collaborations with other artists. And I always look forward to what she's going to pull out of her bag of tricks next.

Here's the video....

Sunday, August 5, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Twenty Four: No One Listens by Ray Davies

"Now where did I put my creativity?"
Ahhhhh, Ray Davies. A personage I sometimes love deeply, and sometimes I look upon as the 60's version of Alex Aleakis.

And there's no denying whatsoever the role Ray Davies has in the history of rock music. His band The Kinks should rightfully be considered part of the Holy Trinity of 60's Britpop, and should be looked upon as one of the Grandfathers of my beloved power pop. When he's good--large chunks of Kontraversy, Something Else, Village Green, Arthur, that 80's revival of interest heralded by State of Confusion and the highly underrated Word of Mouth--there is simply no one as good a songwriter as Davies....

However, the sad thing is that the bulk of Davies' work is at its best lazy and at its worse downright, cringe-inducing awful. The smirking obviousness of Low Budget and Muswell Hillbillies, the imitativeness of Destroyer, even the downright radio baiting of Think Visual paints a picture of Davies' muse as fickle, callous and even cruel in its reduction of his vision. I sometimes wonder if Ray needed the out and out hostility of his brother Dave (or, during the 80's, his similarly conflicted romance with Chrissie Hynes, the disintegration of which led to both the adorementioned Word of Mouth and his first solo album, Return To Waterloo) to keep his tendency to muse on English cliches and obvious wordplay in check and drive him to greater heights...because when he's on his own, Ray Davies can frequently fall into a rut. Witness how, of the albums that are considered his post-Kinks solo career, four of the six albums are either composed whole or in part of previously released, reworked Kinks material.

This is from Davies' last solo album composed of original songs, 2007's Working Man's Cafe, and--unlike many of the other tracks on this otherwise middling-to-okay album--it's indicative of the obvious, imitative part of Davies' brain. It's one of an increasingly large body of songs by older rockers railing at the increasingly digitized world, and it's....not very insightful. While it mines the themes of alienation that Davies has found gold in before, there's none of the wonderful wordplay and sarcasm that makes Davies a rock maven here. Instead, it's a crotchety guy complaining that because we're so dependant on computers, no one listens to him. I find it fascinating how Davies cites a lot of older forms of communication--writing to City Hall, calling authorities--and then whines that the breakdown of new technologies results in no one listening to him, his complaints stuck in the system. Even the melody seems tired, as if it was slightly tweaked from a previous Kinks composition...from the 60's, naturally, since it'll evoke warm fuzzies of nostalgia from us older fans while seeming coolly retro to the newer fans.

Since the release of Working Man's Cafe, Davies has released an album composed of choral arrangements of Kinks classics and the true kiss of creative death, an album where he re-recorded Kinks classics with a selection of modern, new artists like Mumford and Sons to prove how 'with it' and 'influential' he was. And the ironic thing is how if he hadn't dove into the same 'see, we mattered' pool that Art Aleakis has been swimming in, his reputation might have improved--instead of having it tarnished with the crappy green fakey-gold patina of greed, opportunism and desperation.

I love Ray Davies, and will always honor his songwriting talents for what they were and for the way he helped shape power pop. But stuff like this makes me want to scream at him. It's a dichotomy I have grown to live with.

Here's the song in the popular 'shot of the album cover' format....

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

30 Songs, 30 Days (2012 Edition), Day Twenty Three: Completely Conspicuous by The Pursuit of Happiness

It's a Coulda-Shoulda-Been Bigger Band circa
the recording of the song discussed...
The Pursuit of Happiness remains one of my favorite bands, and it's a fine example of The Band That Is Killed By Its Early Success.


Pursuit--or TPOH as it was colloquially known by its fans--was an Edmundton-by-way-of-Toronto powerpop unit devised primarily as a vehicle for the idiot-savant-like genius of Moe Berg. While it's inherent Canadianness gave TPOH a little bit of a higher profile in its native country, we here in the States first became exposed to them through 'I'm An Adult Now,' a snarky, partially spoken word ode to struggling with growing old. It became something of a hit, wandering around the lower parts of the Top 40 in 1986....and then the follow-up single, "She's So Young," was launched, and most people realized that this wasn't a Funny Band Whose Lead Singer Made Jokes About Impotence, but a legitimate band with a real insight and a good trade in male/female harmonies. Berg and Co. struggled with their label, Chrysalis, and were dropped after the disappointing sales of their (admittedly artistically disappointing) second album, Two Sided Story. This led to their signing with Mercury, scoring another very minor hit with 'Cigarette Dangles, and then a spiraling out of control with two albums on Iron Music, a never-really-official break-up, Berg going off to write a rock opera, and the band kinda, sorta re-emerging in the last few years to record covers of Prince and do scattered shows in their native Canada. They never quite got over the disappointment most Americans had that they weren't the band 'I'm An Adult Now' promised, and is now a footnote in books about power pop and bad movies, as they were the featured legitimate band in the ill-advised sequel to Rock N' Roll High School, Rock N' Roll High School Forever.

Unlike the rest of Americans, I liked TPOH as a whole and sought out and eventually acquired all their albums. This song is from Where's The Bone, the first of the two Canadian-only albums they recorded for Iron. I actually feel that Bone is their best album (unlike everyone--including Razor And Tie--who toe the party line and claim that first album, Love Junk, is the only one worthwhile), containing a selection of songs that I get the impression are very personal without getting too personal like their final one, the embarrassingly confessional The Wonderful World of Pursuit of Happiness.

One of the reasons I liked Moe Berg's songwriting is the persona he adopts in most of his songs of the horndog who doesn't have the degree of control over his life he thinks he has, and 'Completely Conspicuous' is typical of that persona. This song takes the structure of Berg trying to defend himself to his significant other when he is caught talking to another woman. Berg's trademark whine jumps from protest to protest, coming up with justifications seemingly out of thin air (this is the 'modern world' of equality), then throws the situation back in his girl's face with his accusation of inequality when it comes to their social guidelines and the way she denigrates the woman he's speaking to, points out that this is why their relationship is in crisis...and yet, there are hints that the woman he's defending himself to has justification. This is demonstrated not only in the lyrics, but in the way we get female counterpoints whenever he stumbles back to the choral justification of 'she's just a friend'--followed by his admission that yes, he wishes she could be more.

I've always said that the female/male harmonies are something that makes TPOH stands out. Most line-ups--Berg has never seemingly been able to keep a female vocalist for long (I suspect Kris Abbot, who joined in 1988 is the only one who's last more than one album)--contain not one, but two female musicians who help him with this. And in the case of this song, the harmonies serve another purpose, namely to be the whisper in Moe's ear that reminds him that yes, he does have some nefarious purpose in talking to this woman. It's the typical Berg persona getting him in trouble again, and trying to scamble to recover when it all goes wrong.

I'm pretty sure everything TPOH is out of print, although the albums are available at some sites, including iTunes, digitally.  And if you're curious about the band, you can visit Incompletely Conspicuous, the official fan site, that contains a wealth of information including a massive amount of rare and live mp3s....

No video for this one...but here's one from the single for this album, the nasty 'Young And In Love'....

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

30 Songs, 30 Days (2012 Edition), Day Twenty Two: Bull Black Nova by Wilco

"Hey, you!  Yeah, you!"
Hey, it's a murder ballad! It's a pop song about anxiety! It's both!

I'll be upfront in telling you I am not as enthusiastic as some people are about Jeff Tweedy and his band of musical misfits. It's not that I hate them; they just don't jump out at me the way some other bands do. Most of the Wilco tracks I have in my hard drive dedicated to media are cover songs (I recall a blog actually releasing a massive zip file of all of them, which I downloaded), since Jeff seems to delight in being eclectic when it comes to choosing what he'll cover.

Doesn't mean I can't like one of his originals. And I like this one.

I've always had this weird fascination for America's enjoyment of the murder ballad. After all, there was this weird period in the late 50's and early 60's where something like two dozen songs about people dying due to horrific tragedies and their loved ones pining away for them or--in some extreme cases--committing suicide to join them became Top 40 Hits. That obsessive need to see lovers torn asunder by the grim reaper has faded away from the 70's to now, but that hasn't stopped occasional examples of this time-honored tradition from breaking through to the pop charts periodically. Hell, Maroon Five--Maroon Fucking Five, the most boring pop band on earth--managed to get a Top 40 Hit out of 'Wake up Call,' a song about Adam Levine coming home and finding his wubbie in bed with another (assumably more interesting) man and shooting them dead.

On the surface, 'Bull Black Nova' is in this tradition. We have our POV character watching from the titular muscle car as 'they'--presumably the police--approach. We learn that something is all over our guy and his car....and his sofa, and his sink, and you get the idea. He's aware that whatever he did can't be undone and can't be outrun. Sounds like a man who murdered someone, maybe a girlfriend, and realizes he can't go back on this. He's snuffed out a life, and it's going to be with him the rest of his days; ultimately, judgement--whether flesh and blood or spiritual--will catch up to him. The melody, with its aping of a police siren through repetitious piano/synth chords, emphasize that this judgment will happen sooner rather than later.

Except....

There's a definite change of the tonality as the song progresses. The siren chords get higher, becoming somewhat playful. The filling out of the melody, particularly in the bridge, give the song, eases the tension somewhat until you realize....you never get any real specifics. Hell, the only reason we presume it's the police that are approaching is because of the connection we make with sirens when we hear the chords of the first part. There is a very strong chance that Jeff Tweedy is playing a little game with us, and that this is a metaphor for something less dire, but no less life or death to our POV character. Maybe this isn't a physical murder but an emotional one--his lashing out at a girlfriend that leads to her leaving him. Or maybe it's not a murder but a physical trauma, like a car accident, that is causing our guy so much anxiety. Jeff's not telling, and I respect him for it; after all, it seems it's not the event but the after-effects he's interested in.

I like this song because of its ambivalence and the slow way it introduces doubt to our system. It's up to us to decide if this is the murder ballad it seems to be on the surface, or something a little more ethereal. Unlike some other recent practitioners of this form, Jeff doesn't want to spell it out, trusting that the scenario we build with his music will be much more satisfying to us than anything he can spoon feed us.

Here's the song....

Friday, July 6, 2012

30 Songs, 30 Days (2012 Edition), Day Twenty One: Lavender by 50 Foot Wave

Is she smiling at you, or is she just smiling?
Just so you know, I just upgraded my MP3 Player with a new 8GB microcard--that's an extra 6GBs of stuffage that should mix things up even more...


Anyway...this week it's the half sister of one of my first really intense musical crushes, Kristen Hersh and her present project, 50 Foot Wave.

I first became aware of Ms. Hersh through her first project, The Throwing Muses...and I became aware of The Throwing Muses solely because I wanted to do evil, evil things to Tanya Donnelly. Incidentally, this is the one musical crush that had the weirdest arc of all. Back in the day, the Muses were an incredibly accessible group of people; when they toured, they hung with the civilians and didn't get all creepy-weird if you approached them and said hello. This led to one night at Maxwell's in Hoboken where my friend at the time Lorne and I endeavored to score an interview with someone from the band. Not only did we succeed in netting about forty minutes with Dave Narcizio and a few minutes with Kristin, I actually got to stand in front of Tanya, profess my adoration and got a laugh, a hug and a few minutes of genuine warmth.

(Which led to me getting interviews with Tanya both when she fronted Belly and when she struck off on her own, including one in the very cramped storage room of Maxwell's where our knees were touching; an answering machine message she gleefully did with me, chanting 'do it! do it!' when I asked people to leave their message; and always a few moments of conversation whenever I saw her after that....but those are stories for another day)

There are a handful of musicians I met when I was running Sticky Carpet Digest and writing articles for other fanzines and magazines who seemed genuinely interested in connecting with me as more than an opportunity for publicity. The Throwing Muses were prime amongst them.

And I get the sense that Hersh has never lost that desire to connect with people directly I saw in her and her bandmates that one night in Hoboken, which might explain why so much of 50 Foot Wave's backcatalog is available for free here...although given the massive amount of stuff she's giving to you, I encourage you to give her a little something back by visiting her website.

50 Foot Wave is definitely a shout back to that earliest version of the Muses, where Kristin and Tanya were exploring the crossroads where punk and folk met. It's a harsher sound than both the later Muses albums and Hersh's own solo work, with lots of fast guitar strumming and hard drumming--apparently the group was designed as a power trio--all designed to couch Hersh's ambivalently sinister lyrics in a dissonant context. It's funny how this latest project of hers, done after she has managed to keep her bipolar disorder under control, is the best musical expression of her bipolarism since those first few EP's put out by the Muses.

And the lyrics to this song represent what kept me a Throwing Muses fan past my lust for Ms. Donnelly. Hersh is really, really good at writing these little portraits that are like rorschach tests for the listeners. In this song, which begins with her waking up to find a lavender stain on her lover's mouth, what does that stain mean--is it evidence of adultery? The aftereffect of strenuous lovemaking? Hersh isn't telling, seemingly throwing contradictory phrases about whores and freedom at us to muddy the waters. But that's her game, and has always been so; to obsfucate what she's really saying because she knows deep down inside that what we think she's saying is much more interesting that what she is telling us.

Apparently, Kristin Hersh is a busy woman these days. In addition to 50 Foot Wave, she's continuing to write essays, is working on new songs for a solo project....and has reunited with Dave Narcizio to create a massive new, listener-funded Throwing Muses album that is rumored to have 38 (!) songs on it. Try to keep up with her at her website; the link is above.

And here's a video from a live performance....

---------------------------------

By the way---for those of you who missed out, I guested last weekend on Maurice Bursztynski's excellent podcast Love That Album. This biweekly podcast sees Maurice, usually with a guest host, discuss and dissect one album that one or both of them like on a song-by-song basis. The episode I was on tackled one of my favorite musicians, Ben Folds, and put forth the idea that his album Songs For Silverman is the first proactive breakup album, seeing as how it was released before the break-up actually happened. Plus we talk about the cult of Fiona Apple, the general sadness of Art Aleakis, 're-recording' albums, and more. Check out the episode on his website...and while you're there, check out his other episodes because all of them are fun and a half, and come highly recommended.

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

30 Songs, 30 Days (2012 Edition), Day Twenty: Radio Heart by The Futureheads

I love The Futureheads. I really, really do.

I first became aware of this Sunderland band the way a number of people did, when I came across their amazing cover of Kate Bush's 'Hounds of Love.' I've mentioned before that I'm a sucker for people with voices that aren't conventionally attractive, that wear their homes on their sleeves, and that's Ross Millard in spades. I don't know if I would categorize this as 'post punk,' as the band's influences seem to lie more in that weird space where new wave began to slowly transform into 'alternative rock'....but what The Futureheads do have in common with the punk bands of the first wave is an enthusiasm for their music. You can tell that the band is putting a lot of muscle into their playing--there are times when Dave Hyde seems to be pounding the drims so hard you're surprised they're still in one piece when he's done--and they're loving the chance to play for someone, anyone, because playing music is fun.

This is the second single off their third album, This Is Not The World, and it's a love letter to something I suspect most people don't do anymore--namely, listening to the radio at work, feeling a connection with a DJ and reaching out to make that connection closer with a request. In this day of iPods and MP3 players, where the connection between a person and his/her music has become both more personal and more isolated from a greater community, where people interact with their fellow fans through message boards and social media, the concept of the request line must seem alien. If services like Spotify can make you your own radio station, why do you need the terrestrial radio stations that you can physically call into and ask for your favorite song? In the context of today, the idea of Ross calling in to a DJ seems...quaint.

But then, we are talking about a band that decided its latest album would be an acapella album...which is one of the many reasons why I love them. They're fearless in their experimentation, doing what they want to do musically not because it's commercial or would make for good download sales, but because it sounds like fun.

The Futureheads are presently touring in support of their acapella album, Rant, around England. I kind of hope they'll end up here soon.

Here's the video...


Wednesday, June 20, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Nineteen: The Ballad of John and Yoko by The Rabeats

"We are bettah than Ze Beatles...for we are FRENCH!!!"
Well I guess that eventually I'd be writing about a tribute band.

The Rabeats is a French Beatles tribute band--and to be fair, you can detect the Gaelic accent buried amidst the faux Liverpudlian voice the vocalist puts on. It's a decent recreation for what it is.

I've sometimes wondered about tribute bands like this. New York City being one of the seats of the music industry, you can pretty much find tribute bands playing every single night here. They're especially common in the outer boroughs, where you can find failed session musicians paying tribute not only to the usual suspects (Elvis! The Beatles! Springsteen! The Stones! The Doors!), but such peculiar choices as The Stone Temple Pilots, Neal Diamond and Billy Joel. Hell, Queens--the borough of the city I live in--sports two Billy Joel tribute bands, Big Shot and Captain Jack.

It's a weird phenomenon, if an understandable one. As the hipsters of today age and become the parents and old folks of tomorrow, there's always that pang to recreate the world you used to live in...and I think Tribute Bands allow us to convince ourselves on some level that yes, this is what it was like to catch Bruce at one of his small concerts at the Bottom Live in the 70's, or see the Beatles at Shea Stadium (apparently the Rabeats are France's equivalent of Beatlemania!, the notorious Beatles Tribute Band that sold out Broadway theaters in the 80's). Yeah, eventually reality will sink in and we'll realize we were just watching session musicians playing 'Let's Pretend', but for that moment...that moment....

I have to assume that the people who populate these bands start out with aspirations of making music of their own. I sometimes look at these cheap flyers in the windows of bars and pubs in my environs and wonder what makes these folks give up being their own artist to become echoes of the greatness that might have inspired them. I'm sure some of it is money--it's gotta be easier to get gigs and demand a larger payday when you're Faux John Lennon and not John Wilson, let's say--but I also wonder if there are deeper motivations in play. Do some of these people feel that the ritualistic recreations of these songs will give them insight into songwriting, enabling them to write songs as brilliant on their own? Do they feel that becoming their heroes will bring them closer to those heroes? Do they convince themselves that the applause and whooping and hollering they get after they perform 'Born To Run' or 'Light My Fire' is for them and not for the iconic performer they're doing a weird karaoke version of?

But then, I probably shouldn't be too hard on these people. After all, we've got evidence of established musicians retreating into assumed personas to become cover bands--there's the infamous case of The Click Five gigging as The Lowe Beats, a Nick Lowe tribute band, for example. And here in NYC, there was a nightclub who ran an annual fundraiser that invited established musicians to pose as their heroes for a night. So maybe that desire to become your idols doesn't go away when you yourself become big...maybe it stays with you, only coming out to play when you decide to do a cover song or play dress up for charity.

This is becoming a disjointed, rambling post, so let me leave you with this one thought...if the people playing in these tribute bands got the chance to talk to their inspirations, would those iconic figures consider it a more fitting tribute if these people did their own music, or if they continued their career of imitation?

No video for the song specifically...but here's one of The Rabeats performing a Beatles medley...

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Eighteen: Answering The Door by Rachel Yamagata

Coming soon to a CW series near you!
It's a song by television show soundbed perennial Rachel Yamagata!

For those of you thinking I'm joking, you should check out her Wiki page, which lists a seemingly endless stream of credits for her songs appearing on a number of prime-time soaps and comedies. Hell, I think her work has appeared on every single Pretty White Kids show the CW has ever produced at one time or another.

And it's not hard to figure out why. Yamagata has one of those lush, sexy voices that sounds perfect under Pretty White Kids angsting over their love lives. Add that she's this hot part Asian chickie (who doesn't look too Asian for marketing purposes) who plays piano like Tori Amos only, you know, not so confrontational or scary....and you have the perfect voice for your soap opera designed to sell twenty-somethings iPads and sneakers and other essentials for their shallow lives.

Now granted, this list I referenced stopped at 2010, so I don't know if this song got picked up to soundbed an episode of Gossip Girl or something, but if it hasn't, I'm surprised it never did...because this is tailor made to be one of those songs. It's about not wanting to be the fall-back girl for an ex in an abusive relationship, and having the courage to say, 'No, I'm not going to heal these wounds, you have to find that comfort on your own.' Yamagata literalizes this viewpoint by making it a scenario where that ex is right outside her door, asking for help....and she refuses him. She is able to verbalize the ambiguous feelings going through her head--there's still a deep desire to help him, to be with him, stated right at the beginning--but she knows this simple act of refusing to let him back in is for the best. But even that is done with slight selfishness, because 'she's leaving inside even more.'

I'm pretty sure Ms. Yamagata doesn't write songs like this to get wide media play; she seems to have a very rare joy in performing that has led her to play on tracks for a wide array of artists...and it's not like she's capitalizing on it. I think it might just be a case of the music she wanted to play lining up with a particular aspect of the pop culture zeitgeist that has given her this odd position right now.

But hey...the song's pretty, even if the singer's background makes it hard for me to get the Caucasian Wankery Network house style out of my mind.

To my surprise, I can find no related video for this.  Hopefully I will find something fun for the next song.