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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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