Wednesday, May 30, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Sixteen: Under The Bridge by The Red Hot Chili Peppers


Yeah...we're having fun!  Or Drugs!  No, it's fun!
And now....the band that tells you you're not a fan if you don't like their songs...which, I guess, makes sense.

This is a live version from a performance in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1999. And here's where Anthony Kiedis and Flea and them get to tell me I'm not a fan because....

I've got to admit, I never much cared for this song.

And I like loads of The Red Hot Chili Peppers work once they matured. There was that very early, very sloppy period at the very beginning of their careers where the funk and rock aspects sounded as if they were actively fighting each other (and when the band members seemed more concerned with misbehaving on purpose)...but then the death of original member Hillel Slovak seemed to act as a slap in the face of the rest of the group, and subsequent work showed a darkness and a sense of maturity--without losing the chaotic feel of those original albums--that suited the band to a 't.' Hell, one of my favorite songs of theirs still remains 'Knock Me Down,' where we are witness to Kiedis literally working out his feelings about Slovak's death in musical form. There are still moments where I think the group gets its head way too far up its own collective asses--the massive mess that was Stadium Arcadium, which was at its core a really, really great EP and some b-sides trying to fight its way out of a two record set that was intended to be a three record set, is a real sore spot, criticism of which prompted Flea to sneer the aforementioned comment about not being a fan if you didn't like their songs--but overall they've been consistently entertaining ever since the release of Mother's Milk.

But this song simply never grabbed me, which has always baffled me. I know it is an extremely sincere number, written by Kiedis to express both feelings of loneliness as he struggled with sobriety and his love of his home town of Los Angeles. But I've always felt the key changes and the choral break by his mother's church choir, and the general theatrics always serve to push me away rather than draw me in. And the funny thing is I suspect Kiedis felt something similar to how I feel about the song; according to stories, he resisted putting it on Blood Sugar Sex Magic and felt that the decision to release it as a single was a bad idea. But then, it might just have been that this particular song is so personal for him, so intimate, that the idea of throwing it out to the masses to embrace or reject on their whims was too painful to contemplate.

Obviously, I'm in the minority here, as this is one of the band's signature songs. And to be fair, it continues to mark a maturity of songwriting that falters a bit once John Frusciante left and came back and left and came back. So while I don't appreciate the song itself, I certainly appreciate the impact its success had on this band.

Even though I'm sure you've seen it by now, here's the video....

Friday, May 25, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Fifteen: Hallelujah by Renee Fleming

Welcome, my friends, to the Realm of The Overcovered Song!

I can understand the compulsion so many artists have to cover the Great Great Man who is Leonard Cohen, just as much as I find said compulsion so puzzling. Cohen, to me, is one of those people who writes music so infused with his personality and--more importantly--his vocal strengths and quirks that it's almost impossible to leave another artist's imprint on them. People who try to cover Leonard Cohen more often than not sound like they're imitating Leonard Cohen...which makes covering said Cohen song a moot point. After all, if I'm going to be listening to someone trying to imitate Leonard Cohen, I might as well just, you know, listen to Leonard Cohen.

Now there have been people who have broken away from that stigma--Hell, the song we're discussing right now was covered by Jeff Buckley so sublimely that many people believe he 'owns' the song the way Johnny Cash 'owned' Trent Reznor's 'Hurt.' One of my favorite examples of this is a version of 'Everybody Knows' that was turned into a bluegrass rave-up by Canadian folk act The Dukhs. But more often than not, the long, long line of artists trying their hand at a Cohen composition end up going down this path of Imitation Begets Flattery, and what results is a pale ghost of an original that maybe the imitator shouldn't have tried to duplicate.

Of course, the thing that puzzles me the most about People Who Cover Cohen is that there's a smallish grouping of songs Cohen wrote and performed that are a lot more adaptable to reinterpretation--a lot of the stuff off Death of A Ladies' Man, for example, seems to be ripe for covering due to the way Phil Spector's production seems to mask and/or minimize a lot of Cohen's quirks as a singer--that are almost always untouched. When a new artist approaches his canon, it's always 'Suzanne,' or 'Bird On A Wire,' or...well, this song.

What makes this interpretation unique is that it's done by opera singer Renne Fleming for her album Dark Hope, which is a pretty odd album to begin with. Dark Hope is composed of Fleming, a full lyric soprano, covering rock and pop songs, mostly of the indie variety. Not surprisingly, many of these songs she chooses to cover are, like this one, 'safe' crowd pleasers like Peter Gabriel's 'In Your Eyes' and Death Cab For Cutie's 'Soul Meets Body.' And her version of 'Hallelujah' is, sadly, exactly what I expected. There was a moment at the very beginning where Fleming's producer David Kahne chooses to do this massive instrumental intro that threatens to transform the song into something apocalyptic...and then those plinking strings come in and the inherent Cohen-ness of the composition comes crashing in. And what follows is another case of nothing new under the sun. Sure, it's musically accomplished, but it's no different from the fifteen other covers of this song.

That being said...and this might be the biggest flaw of this version...it's an awfully cold interpretation. According to Wikipedia, the Dark Hope project was put together with the intention of not making a crossover album, but of creating a collection of modern songs without any hint of operatic vocal strength. But it's hard to escape that while this is a version that is difficult to find fault with, it's also difficult to find it anything other than an exercise. Fleming's voice never infuses the lyrics with any sort of emotionality, leaving us with just a really well crafted recreation of a beloved song. I may never have liked Jeff Buckley as a whole, but I'll take his version over this one every day because at least there's a sincerity and a sense of love and desire in his voice that Fleming lacks.

You know, I'd be perfectly happy to never have to hear a cover of this song again. I've talked in the past about how artists should be banned from doing certain songs because of their overuse by lazy bands who think a by-the-numbers cover of an instantly recognizable song is a great way to jump start a career. I think 'Hallelujah' is one of those songs, and Ms. Fleming's mannered version has done nothing to convince me otherwise.

Well, I can still hold out hope that somewhere in America or Canada or England or Australia, some band in some garage is even now listening to Death of A Ladies' Man and thinking that it'd be really cool to cover 'Don't Go Home With Your Hard On.'

Here's Fleming doing the song on BBC One...


 

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Three Dreams About Music (including one with a picture of an adorable puppy)

Like all people whose interest in music borders on obsessive, I have had strange dreams where music plays a part. Here are three on mine; what are yours?

1) I am attending Hunter College. I dream that I am wandering down Third Avenue in midtown Manhattan after school has let out. I am being followed by The License To Ill-era Beastie Boys. They are singing a Beastie-ized cover of the Eurythmics single 'Missionary Man.' It is a very, very good version.

2) It is the mid-90's, when I am making a living as a freelancer. I am invited by a client to go to another city to attend a Barry White concert. When I get to the concert, Barry comes out--but instead of doing his many R&B hits, White proceeds to sing a number of Nirvana's songs. Maybe due to Kurt Cobain's tendency to undersing much of his work, White's voice works surprisingly well in this performance.

3) It is a few years ago. I am in the music store that used to exist in the middle of the Times Square train terminal, right outside where the N and R train entrances are. It should be brought up that said music store closed down some ten years previously during the city's renovation and expansion of said Times Square terminal. I am sorting through the dusty racks of CDs and come across a new Morphine album. It should be brought up that Morphine disbanded some time ago after the death of Mark Sandman. The album improbably has as its cover a drawing of an adorable puppy that looks up at the viewer with luminously large eyes.

(I should point out that dream three prompted me to attempt to put together an album of Morphine cover songs for charity. Given that I have almost no experience putting together albums, it was a miserable failure.)

Share your musical dreams in the comment section. Confession is good for the soul.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Fourteen: Toxic by Yael Naim

Not all things go better with a ukulele...
Yes, that 'Toxic.'

This is a live cover version of Britney Spears' Theme Song For A Bond Movie That Doesn't Exist done by the French Isreali singer perhaps best known for those MacBook Air commercials some time back. Naim's instrument of choice is the ukulele, although I admit that I can barely discern it here in this mix.

And it is...odd, and not in a good way.

Britney Spears is not exactly what you call an insightful lyricist--let's be honest, she's five degrees of braindead, her music being carried (like pretty much all 'pop' music these days) by its dance beat. And in the case of this single, Spears layered in a bit of hipster nostalgia by giving in to her inner Bond Girl and adding fills and instrumentation that evokes memories of vintage 60's spy culture. It's probably that later aspect that makes the original work for me, that attempt to evoke a period other than the here-and-now in what was up until that point an ephemeral musical catalog. Without that weird attempt to connect this fluffy little dance number with another musical period, 'Toxic' would be as forgotten like eighty percent of Spears' material.

What Naim has chosen to do is discard that aspect entirely. Her arrangement slows down the melody to such an extent that it takes on a dirge-like quality. This isn't the sprint through Spy-World of Spears' version; this is a slow march through an alien swamp, and that methodical plodding kills the kinetic forward momentum pretty much all of Spears' songs have. Naim tries to provide some form of fill by duplicating the swooping Bernard Herrmann-esque strings with her own voice, but the effect doesn't approximate the effect on the original. It's quite the opposite, in fact; it serves to push the listener away, as if this is some future Bad Girlfriend cornering you at a party trying to impress you with her many versatile, ummmm, talents.

Many times on this site I've talked about the hazards of alt acts covering hip hop songs in an 'ironic' way. I don't know if Naim is attempting this--certainly the cat noises at the end followed by laughter indicate it is, but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt--but it really doesn't work. This cover represents the flip side of my contention that a cover needs to rejigger the original in some way as to give you a new perspective on said original. Naim has moved this song so far afield that it's damn near unrecognizable, and is forced to stand on its own...and on its own, the strange artifice and conscious quirkiness just doesn't work.

Here is Ms. Naim performing this cover for French television....


 

 

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Thirteen: Nothin' by Reel Big Fish

You see that object out of the corner of your eye?  It's your lack
of record sales catching up with you....
Wow...I guess we're on a ska kick for this cycle.

And here is one of the acts that seemed to break into the mainstream during that last Third Wave revival. Hailing from Huntington Beach, California, this combo made its way onto radio airwaves with a single from its fifth album, Turn The Radio Off, 'Sell Out'....and then promptly sank from view, becoming a one-hit wonder in most people's eyes. Of course, as with anything relatively geeky and faddish, Reel Big Fish gained something of a cult following and has managed to survive on increasingly smaller record labels--although through this plummet down the charts, they've ended up producing an impressive thirteen albums over the last twenty years.

This song is from the thirteenth of those albums, A Best of Us For The Rest Of Us, which has a particularly peculiar pedigree. A greatest hits compilation, A Best of Us.... was originally available only through Best Buy stores in 2010. However, in 2011 it was re-released to other outlets as a three-disc set that contained not only the original greatest hits compilation but a disc of the band's favorite cover performances and, ummmm, Skacoustic. And this is the 'skacoustic' version of 'Nothin', from Turn The Radio Off. The song itself is a pretty simple affair, a sort of surrender song that sees the singer giving up after what is presumably another bad break-up--he tried so hard to make this work, and he comes up with nothing, see? Not a very deep little number...but the way it's presented here, however...

I really don't know what to make of this, and the other songs off of the Skacoustic album. More than almost any other subgenre of pop or rock music, ska more about the presentation of the song than it is about the song itself. The strong beat, the rhythm and the brass section is vital to this particular genre of music. After all, this is reggae by way of Big Band with the relevance removed...even the darkest ska songs have a strange sort of shiny wrapping surrounding them, giving them a gaiety no matter what their intentions. Stripping out the horns and the drums makes 'Nothin'...sound like any other song. And evaluated as if it was 'any other song,' it's slight and shallow. Without the ska arrangements, it actually comes off as something some amateur high school student would write in his garage deluding himself into thinking he was like, you know, deep, man.

I know on paper the idea of 'skacoustic' versions might have sounded intriguing...but ultimately they're not.

Supposedly, Reel Big Fish do have a new album of original songs forthcoming this summer. I applaud them for thinking outside the box a little--but I hope they got this idea out of their system, because abandoning traditional ska instrumentation while playing ska songs just doesn't make any sense.

But don't take my word for it...check the damn thing out yourself...

Sunday, May 6, 2012

A Parting Glance: Adam Yauch

I find it so strange that Adam Yauch passed away on that abortive 'holiday' laughingly referred to as Star Wars Day. All day I've been seeing the internet all a'twitter with 'fourth' gags and puns, people celebrating this selfish, greedy man who apparently only had one thing to give to the world and has proceeded to tinker with it over and over again while fostering this fetishization of it by his fanbase, a man whose does not deserve lionization for pumping a load of derivitive dross that killed any hope of an intelligent mainstream American cinema.

...and in the middle of this mastubatory celebration, a man passed away who, along with his two friends, saw the potential greatness in a musical genre that was developing in New York and embraced it. This man was a founder of one of the acts (along with Run DMC, Public Enemy, Afrika Bambaataa and others) that reached out to the mainstream and helped popularize that genre, in his case by producing work that was equally popular in urban contemporary and rock formats. The first album he participated on was the first hip hop album to hit the Billboard pop charts.  He collaborated on a number of songs that have become legitimate hip hop standards, beginning with his band's very first single. He helped produce vital, exciting music up until the day of his death while also promoting his philosophical beliefs and philanthropic interests. He should be the man people honored this past May 4th, not George Lucas sitting in his ranch in California.

It's not like we didn't know MCA might pass on--even though we thought he had conquered it, his struggles with cancer was well documented. It's just that it happened so suddenly, so quickly, and so soon after The Beasties had been inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame that his death came as a shock. And given that it happened after two other people so intrinsic to the history of popular music, Dick Clark and Levon Helms...it seemed like, as the Popdose eulogy posted this Saturday said, that the three represent some passing of rock as a whole, with each man providing a side of that triangle.

I can't see the other two Beasties continuing on after Yauch's death--the magic this act produced was dependant on all three contributing to their music. What I can see that worries me is that with time they'll become nothing but their first album, with oldies stations playing 'You Gotta Fight For You're Right To Party' and 'No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn' ad infinitum while ignoring all the great music that came after License To Ill. That's effectively what happened to such great acts as The Kinks and Warren Zevon and the like such before them, and I pray that their impact was great enough that people who consider themselves true music fans won't let that happen.

I have said multiple times that I prefer my artists to evolve. A number of times I have said that when writing about artists I love who evolved into things I didn't care for. The Beasties never stopped evolving; each album was different from the one before it, and part of that was because as a human being Adam Yauch was always evolving, taking in new music genres to better inform his sensibilities.

Last night, I went to The Avenue, a local bar owned by a dear friend of mine.  It was the bar's second anniversary, and its traditional karaoke night.  While I was there to celebrate this milestone in my friend's career as a business owner, I made sure to get up on stage and sing two of Adam Yauch's songs, giving it my all for a man who I respected, and whose work I loved.  I hope his friends, his family, and his bandmates know how much he changed the face of this world, and how much he will be missed.


Friday, May 4, 2012

And Now...A Word From Ben Folds...

NOTE: This showed up on Ben Folds' FB page on Friday night, May 4th.  I've mentioned before how much admire the man, and I hope I am not in any way besmirching his intentions by posting this for all of you to enjoy and share....but let's be honest; it's a great musician offering us an insight into his work--and free music!--so let's give him a listen.
 
(And if spreading the word about one of my favorite musicians makes me a VP of Promotion....well, hey, I'd be pleased.)
 
And now...Mr. Folds, you have the floor.
------------------------------------------
 
OKAY! Let's try once again.

Have an unmastered track from the new Ben Folds Five album. It's called "Do It Anyway". The intensity of the track is typical of the rest of the album, but each song is quite different. That always was the way with our records I suppose. We're nearly done and I think it's a cracker.

http://bit.ly/IR7qg1

Posting this track, preaching to our online choir along wi...th a few select interviews - I'm thinking Nerdist - will be the extent of the album promotion for the run up to the September release.

I realize that it's a luxury for us to promote only to fans. We've had the help of labels for years which gave us a leg up. The years of traditional promotion, soul draining as they might have been, affords us that luxury now. A start up band cannot easily do it this way. Our intention is not to 'stick it to the man'. He's quite stuck enough. We don't care to create a new model. We're just doing it the way it feels best this time around and quite honestly, making it up as we go along.

Please consider joining our label as Vice President of Promotion - There's unlimited room for vices. We'll credit you each in the LP vinyl album art somehow and if it won't all fit then we'll make poster art of names.

I recall being very excited to have had my name put on a knife in a glass case at a restaurant for being a frequent customer. I am one of many but I still beam with pride to point it out. Once had a star named after me too. I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff. I digress...

As Vice President of Promotion, all you have to do is put up with my tweeting and facebooking in the run up to the release, and recycle and retweet as much as you can deal with. I'll run ideas past you all, feel free to chime in.

We're not signed at the moment. We may sign a distribution deal or even a record deal if it all coincides with the way we want to work. Or not. We're chewing over plans. In any event, we'll go ahead and put the album on pre-sale soon ourselves and tweet like the wind.

We just need everyone to spread the word up to the release and put up with a few extra transmissions from me. I've got some more long winded blogging to do anyway.

Happy Friday, or maybe Saturday Morning.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Twelve: The Shark Fighter! by The Aquabats

It's another return to the shores of ska....and you'd think I'd be pretty excited.

Welllllll.....

Some time ago, I said when writing about Jane Siberry , "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." 

These words come to me again as I listen to this, without a doubt the best cut off of the Aquabat's latest album.

The Aquabats are a ska outfit from California, and I first became aware of them when the great cartoonist and ska aficianado Evan Dorkin namechecked them in one of his many cartoon strips. Not surprisingly, the first song of theirs I heard was their theme for Welcome To Eltingville, the aborted pilot for Cartoon Network based on one of Dorkin's creations. I liked that song so much I sought out a lot of their work and liked much of it. It was ska, plus it had that proto-geekcore obsession with the ephemera I tended to love--let's be honest, people, third wave ska was geekcore before geekcore was even invented yet. And I even liked the strange affectations of MC Bat Commander, who always sounded like a game show host who lost his way. Yeah, this is one of those bands that changes its line-up more than some geeks change their underwear, but for a long time their music was consistently satisfying.

But this year, when Hi-Five Soup came out, I had an odd feeling picking it up. Maybe it was the way every single cut on the album had an exclamation in its title. Maybe it was seeing long time guitarist Chainsaw, Prince of Karate's name absent in the line-up.

Of course, maybe it was just because the songs, well, sort of sucked.

I guess while I wasn't paying attention, as The Aquabats divested themselves of their horns and brass, they were quietly transforming into what we used to call a 'college rock' band back in the 90's, only one with serious geek intentions. You know, like Weezer....only not.

This is probably the most Aquabats sounding song on the whole album, which is why it's probably my favorite. A sort of television pilot in song form, 'The Shark Fighter!' is the story of a Shark Fighter (well, duh) who has been on a crusade to eradicate sharks ever since a shark killed his girlfriend. Even though the brass is noticeable in its absence, the band still manages to simulate a ska-like sound through some really bright guitar work from new addition Eagle 'Bones' Falconhawk, vigorous drumming and a really compellingly odd backing vocal. It's goofy fun that's exactly what I used to expect out of this band, and if there were more songs like this, I'd be singing a different tune.

Look, I can understand why the group seems to have moved away from its ska roots and repositioned itself as a geekcore outfit. It's not like a fourth wave ska revival is coming anytime soon. But I can't help thinking that this particular song showed that the Aquabats were capable of positioning themselves thusly without abandoning what made them unique and, yes, fun. But instead of the band that did 'The Shark Fighter!', I've got Weezer...Only Not.

...sigh...

Here is a fan-made video for the show.
And because I think it's cool, here's the Welcome To Eltingville theme I mentioned above....