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...

30 Songs, 30 Days (2011 Edition), Day Twenty Two: Addicted To Me by The Click Five

And here we have a band that I thought was dead and buried, another carrier of the power pop banner, another band from Boston, who I originally wrote off because I found their biggest hit loathsome.

You see, when I first started working in the store, there was this one employee I came to know as 'The Penguin' due to his longish torso and stubby legs. The Penguin always insisted on putting on his own mix of music from the moment he arrived to the moment he left, and his taste in music was hideous. Generic techno and that modern sludge the record labels try to pass off as rhythm and blues, bands like Train led by doofuses who obviously wrote their lyrics in college to get into the pants of freshmen girls and bands like Guns and Roses who equate loudness and brashness with importance...and most importantly, bands with a certain type of vocalist.

It was from this last category that I threw The Click Five due to the fact that The Penguin only played their one hit, 'Just The Girl' in his rotation. 'Just The Girl' is one of those songs which falls apart once you listen to the lyrics--when you realize what I total sadistic jerkhole the woman the POV singer is talking about, and what an even bigger jerkhole the singer is for putting up with all this terrible abuse with a smile on his face, the song stops being fun. This isn't like, let's say, The Offsping's 'Self-Esteem,' which presents us with a POV character who recognizes his inability to leave his abuser as pathetic, or Fountains Of Wayne's 'I'll Do The Driving,' where the POV character stays with a desire to lead his girlfriend out of her small-minded habits...this is a guy who seems to crave this abuse with a smile on his face and open arms.

(Imagine my surprise, incidentally, when I learned that 'Just The Girl' was co-written by Fountains of Wayne maven Adam Schlesinger, and that the FoW had a hand in convincing Atlantic to sign The Click Five.)

Eventually, The Penguin moved on, and I went about my life...until the Music section of the excellent Popdose website ran a story about The Click Five and their struggles with their original label Atlantic (a struggle apparently built around their desire to move away from their original proto-Mod gimmick) and their search for a new label. The article came with a rather generous sample of songs from their two Atlantic albums, so I downloaded and sampled them...

And they're good. They're damn good. Great harmonies, excellent melodies that sometimes evoke the classic new wave of the 80's, sometimes the overproduced-on-purpose denseness of the Phil Spector school...and even though their canon contains songs similar to 'Just A Girl,' they show a greater deal of self-awareness and wit than that song I hated so much.

This song is from the new wave end of the Click Five pool; that skronky keyboard is definitely from the early days of MTV. And it's about a classic power pop delimma--namely, the boy who wants the girl who is attracted to him but embarrassed by his un-coolishness. And unlike the willing victim in the cycle of abuse that is the singer of 'Just A Girl,' this POV character is taking the high road...he's acknowledging how he's been used, how his lack of status is what's keeping them apart. But, he warns the object of his affection that he's under her skin, that even as he lets her go off on her own, he knows she'll return to him...and he won't sit in a corner by the phone, but he will be waiting. And the song has so closely melded the vocals with the melody that it's hard to separate them.

Apparently, The Click Five has been quietly touring New England and cultivating their big followings outside of America...and unbeknownst to us, a new album, TVC, is out and waiting for our purchasing....