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.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Seventeen: If I Had A Million Dollars (Live) by Barenaked Ladies

This is like one of those photos in a horror movie the
charaters take just before everything goes to shit, right?
Hey, look...for the third time it's Scarborough, Ontario's own Barenaked Ladies.

This is a live version of one of the singles from the Ladies' first album, Gordon. It's not the most famous live version, though--that would be from their first live album in 1996, Rock Spectacle--but from Talk To The Hand Live!, a DVD/CD set that served as the last adult album to feature band founder Steve Page. Page did appear on their children's album Snacktime! before a horrific twentieth year resulted in Page's departure and the reformulation of the band as a quartet headed by the band's other founder, Ed Robertson. And, as such, it's an odd, bittersweet little artifact.

In the past, I've written about how Barenaked Ladies have been saddled with this rep as a band so fluffy in its pop-songiness that they pretty much float away on their own lack of musical weight....and I really think this thing is the main reason that rep got started. I mean, listen to it for a second. The lazy melody, the acoustic guitar, the harmonica, the archly twee lyrics all indicate 'hey, look, we're inoffensive! Fun for the whole family! Buy our album! Buy merchandise we tacitly endorse! You know, Like Kraft Dinners!' It's totally devoid of any of the glimmers of melancholy that, to me, makes this band work. And for us New Yorkers, it's got an extra-sour taste to it, as it became the theme song of a particularly risible series of ads for the New York State Lottery some years ago--in a world where The Arcade Fire, Feist and Death Cab For Cutie are being used to coerce you into buying high-end merchandise, there's something really skeevy about using BnL to coerce the really poor into throwing away non-disposable income into the boondoggle of scratch ticket riches.

Looking back at this performance now knowing what was about to happen to the band makes me feel kind of weird. After Page left, the Robertson-led line-up produced one album of original material, All In Good Time, which was actually a pretty good collection of mature pop songs; a second greatest hits compilation, Hits From Yesterday and The Day Before, which duplicated most of the tracks from their last greatest hits album save for two tracks from Everything To Everyone, one track from Barenaked Ladies are Me, one track from All In Good Time and the theme song to that blot on all geek culture, The Big Bang Theory; and Stop Me If You've Heard This Before, a collection of rarities and unreleased tracks. While there are some rumblings of the band providing the score for an upcoming musical based on National Lampoon's Animal House, I am beginning to wonder if they are about to slide into the same oblivion we've seen other bands with this kind of history slide into. My fear is that they will become alt-pop's version of Everclear, producing cover albums and re-recordings of their greatest hits while protesting that yes, they were major players in alternative music of the 90's, just you wait until the history books prove them right.

Of course, maybe there's something else that needs to be admitted--that sometimes a band is the fusion of two or more people, and is not just defined as a corporate/cultural entity. Maybe, by listening to the off-the-cuff banter between the lines of this performance (involving a weird plan to sell corporate sponsorship of a YouTube video of one of the band members gacking up spoiled milk), we get the indication that BnL was the fusion of Steven Page and Ed Robertson together. Splitting Page off may give us a band that capable of some really good pop--I will stand by All In Good Time as an excellent album that pays off on some of those glimmers of melancholy I saw in such singles as 'Call And Answer' and 'Pinch Me' and even as early as 'Brian Wilson'--but not a band as capable of being as fun as Barenaked Ladies was at the height of its power.

Here's a video, taken from 'The Bathroom Sessions' series of YouTube clips with Page and Robertson...