I've discussed the idea of the joke band that found themselves being larger than the joke they started telling--I've covered it pretty extensively when I talked about The Zambonis--and today, we're going to be talking about a joke band whose largeness is probably only exceeded by Spinal Tap...Tenancious D.
And don't argue about it--as originally conceived by Jack Black and Kyle Gans, Tenacious D was meant as a joke. To be more precise, the band was a hobby until the duo decided to use it as the central conceit of a series of short films they made for HBO back in 1999. Those short films led to them supporting bigger acts on the road, which led to them cutting their first album, which led to their Top Ten hit 'Tribute,' which led to them actually making a movie....which thankfully did poorly (and deservedly so), thus stopping the band from becoming world leaders or something. They may very well be the most successful joke band in recent memory.
This cover of the classic Queen theme to the campy as all Hell movie is...well, it's delivered pretty straight, and to be fair Queen is tailor made to Black's overdramatic, bombastic vocals, even if the single acoustic guitar acoustic is rather strange. But hearing this live rendition makes me wonder if Black and Gans are now at that point in their musical career that Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer and Michael McKean were at when I wrote that earlier entry, that point where they want people to know that they can write and perform, you know, actual songs and not just take-offs and parodies. This might very well be why that third album, referred to at different times as Tenacious 3-D or Rise of The Pheonix has been in limbo for so long. Are Black and Gans unsure about whether they want to continue down the jokey high-concept path that gave them the most success or try to mature a bit and find new paths to explore.
Of course, it could just be that the two thought the Queen song was kick ass. It wouldn't surprise me if that was all it was.
Anyway, this is not the live version I have on my Sansa Disk...but it's still a cool rendition that slides ever-so-easily into one of my favorite songs of theirs, 'Wonderboy'....
And as I try to race to the end to minimize the amount of bleed over for 2012...our first Holiday Novelty Song.
The Holiday Novelty Song has a long and storied history--after all, what is 'Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer' or 'Frosty The Snowman' but a holiday novelty song that has drifted into the realm of The Standard? Of course, what fascinates me are those novelty songs that become perennials but never quite break through to Standard status; here in New York, every Christmas time we are tormented with repeated playings of 'Dominick The Christmas Donkey,' the saga of the donkey Santa uses to bring toys to the children of Italy sung by Lou Monte but apparently never getting much traction outside of the tri-state area.
To be honest, it is amazing to me how many of these songs do end up clawing their way into the playlists of lazy radio stations everywhere. Every year we get dozens, if not hundreds of songs from various artists bidding for the same sort of immortality Frosty and Rudolph and That Reindeer That Ran Over Grandma have achieved...and for every 'Last Christmas' or 'Merry Christmas, Baby (Please Come Home)' or 'All I Want For Christmas Is You,' there are dozens which don't make it.
Which I guess brings us to Eric Schwartz, a.k.a. Smooth-E, an Oakland native who tries with this song to break into that hallowed holiday playlist by taking The Adam Sandler Road. Sandler guaranteed himself Holiday Novelty Immortality by sidestepping the overexposed Christmas and writing his HNS about Hanukkah. Actually, he cemented it by writing about Hannukkah three times over. And this prompted a whole group of other artists to do a little 'me, too' creating their own paens to Other Holidays That Take Place Around Christmas. As I write this, there's one artist who has actually produced an EP of Atheist Christmas Songs...no lie.
Not surprisingly, the biggest group of alternative HNS's are about the Festival of Lights, and to be fair, some of them are pretty good.
Not this one.
Mr. Schwartz, in creating his Hanukkah-themed parody of Outkast's smash hit of several years ago, falls into one of the pitfalls of the Novelty Song--namely, mistaking stereotyping for celebrating. Even thought Schwartz at one point proclaims 'Oi is just Yo backwards,' he brings nothing more to the table but a series of surface impressions of what Hanukkah is--hey, look! Menorahs! Driedels! Matzoh Balls! Latkes!'...and ending with the whole 'hey, we get eight nights of presents compared to you guys' getting one'...a point made better by, among other people, Adam Sandler in the songs that started this all.
Here is the video, which is just as cheap and surface as the song itself (Hey, look! These jews are accountants!). My apologies...
There's nothing official yet, but word is that The Sing Off, the NBC a capella singing competition that's wrapping up its third year this Monday, may be cancelled.
The reason given is the disappointing ratings for this season. Of course, if you put your modest little show directly up against the gaudier, shoutier and more heavily publicized by the media Dancing With The Stars, and also against the gaudier, shoutier start up competition The X Factor, which had former American Idol judges as well as one of your former judges...well, don't be surprised if your ratings dip quite a bit. That being said, I am going to miss it, for it will mark the end of seeing the a capella tradition in America being represented in a nationally available way.
I fell in love with the collegiate a capella tradition purely by accident. I was searching for cover versions of, I think , Sheryl Crow songs on the file sharing service I was using back when file sharing services were still questionable-but-perfectly-legal and stumbled across UPenn Off The Beat's stunning version of 'Anything But Down'. Now I had a vague idea of a capella pop music before--I had a brief doo-wop phase fed by WCBS when I was a teenager--but this discovery opened my ears to the whole American collegiate a capella tradition, where schools all over the country had a capella group devoted to creating all vocal arrangements of pop songs. I downloaded a slew of Off The Beat songs in the day following, and then started seeking out and downloading songs from other a capella groups. It remains one of my favorite cover genres because so many of these groups manage to do the uncanny trick of making the songs both familiar but alien, recognizable but somehow strange and new.
So you can imagine my excitement when The Sing Off was announced, an excitement that was amplified when I learned that Ben Folds was going to be one of the judges. Besides being one of my favorite musicians, Folds is a long standing aficionado of collegiate a capella--the man even got his label to finance an album where acapella groups covered his songs.
And the show itself did not disappoint. The Sing Off is my favorite singing competition--not just because I love the genre, but because Folds and his fellow judge Shawn Stockman (formerly of Boys II Men) were actively smart. Unlike many other judges who tend to play down to an audience that they think are stupid, Folds and Stockman are unafraid to explain to you why something works or doesn't work for them, and while their talk of blends and harmonics and beat boxing might confuse many people, anyone who listens can pick up the theories of a capella pretty quickly and understand what they're trying to get at. I wasn't so thrilled with female judge Nicole Scherzinger in the first two seasons, who seemed to be up there primarily because they wanted a hot chick, but for this third season swapped her out for Sara Barellis, who had enough of a background in a capella that you understood why she was there. Folds and Stockman are so knowledgable about music that I would pay good money to see an American version of Later With Jools Holland, with the duo interviewing and jamming with musicians; it'd be fascinating viewing.
There are a couple of things that seem to have dictated Season Three's drop-off. For one, there's the aforementioned crossfire it suffered from being scheduled to compete with both Dancing with The Stars and The X Factor. The previous two seasons were broadcast in December, when most shows are on their holiday hiatus and it wasn't fighting for attention with any big ticket competition shows. The second is that since last year, NBC got a surprise hit in The Voice, a more conventional singing competition with greater star power in Christina Aguilera, Cee-Lo Green and others. That show is where the bulk of NBC's attention is at now, to the point where I wonder if the only purpose the network had for broadcasting this season is so they can show adverts for The Voice down our throats.
Which is a pity, because there has been some great acts this season. The Sing Off has always been conscious about including all aspects of the American a capella tradition, and this season included a spiritual group (Messiah's Men from Milwaukee via Nigeria), a family act, several collegiate groups, a jazz scat group, a professional group that performed daily in Bramford, and a senior doo wop group called North Shore that, in the biggest surprise of all, produced what ranks one of the the highlights of this season, a stunningly good rendition of Bruno Mars' "Lazy Song."
Did you watch that? To me, those five guys managed to tap into what made the song great while making it thoroughly unique to themselves. And that, to me, is at the core of what makes a capella great.
Okay, there were a couple of acts that really didn't feel like they belonged beyond the first round including two 'super groups,' Kinfolk 9 and Delilah, who were composed of losers from previous seasons. Kinfolk 9 bugged me tremendously because it was obvious they were all about their lead vocalist, and Delilah....Delilah was an all girl group that started out with this massively powerful version of Bruno Mars' 'Grenade'...
....and then seemed to be gambling on their uniqueness as an a capella group composed of hot girls to carry them through to the finals. And the scary thing is that, through rounds of lackluster performance, it looked like they'd succeed; I was beginning to have nightmares of Delilah facing off against Urban Method in the finals.
Who?
These guys...
And I'll be honest with you...Urban Method is good, with some really great lead vocalists...but I can't get past the fact that they're more about their 'rapcapella' gimmick than anything else. It doesn't surprise me that this Denver, Colorado unit is in the finals, but I don't see why they think they need this, as their gimmick could net them a recording contract right now. Don't be surprised if you see them with a contract even if they don't win.
The most frustrating thing is that even though the show celebrates the collegiate a capella traditions, collegiate a capella groups tend to drop off very quickly. I was very heartened this season to see three of these groups go to the semis, including Afro Blue from Howard University, who utilized jazz vocal traditions to great effect, like in this medley of Janet Jackson songs...
I understand why they didn't make the finals, as some of their performances were maddeningly uneven. But I was sorry to see them and Brigham Young's energetic and fun Vocal Point go...both groups brought something unique and compelling to the competition. If this is the last season, I do want to see a collegiate a capella group, who for long stretches carried the vocal tradition on their backs, take it. Luckily, the collegiate group represented in the finals are these guys...
The Dartmouth Aires. My God, listen to Michael's voice! These guys have so much energy, so much power, so much creativity that I actually believe they could take it....unfortunately, they're up against....
Pentatonix, who is looking to be the team to run away with it. And it's quite deserved. At first I really didn't appreciate their whole 'vocal-only-dance-music' schtick...and then they started putting in these amazing performances for the phases in the competition outside their comfort zone, and I became sold. They really do these things vocally to simulate scratching and other production effects that floored me sometimes, and their energy is infectious. And when you think they've done everything, they do something like mash up Cee-Lo and Kelly Clarkson into what amounts to a little mini-musical...
I really want the Aires to win, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't rooting just a little bit for these kids as well.
(and yes...for those of you who followed my Facebook comments on the show--the little latin girl is the infamous Kirstie Maldondo, whose crooked sideways smile I have been crushing on all season. But it's not because of her that I sing this group's praises).
I sincerely hope that NBC continues to air the series--maybe if it moved the show back to its December berth, it will cope a bit better--but if this is its last season, I will mourn it. It's the only singing competition I watch from beginning to end, and it would be a shame for a proud American tradition to go unrepresented in the wide world of television. You can still watch episodes on Hulu, and can still vote until Sunday for the final three...
And now it's time to delve once again into the Bands Tom Loves That No Longer Exist File (although I need to move them out of that file), and the Bands That Died In The Great 90's Signing Frenzy...although this one has had a little more fame.
Big Dipper was something of a mini-supergroup, being formed from members of Boston bands The Volcano Suns, The Embarrassment and Dumptruck. I first encountered them at the old Ritz, opening for--I think--Oingo Boingo (it's kind of hard to remember exactly when you're rapidly becoming more salt than pepper in the hair department), and I was instantly taken by their strange, quirky lyrics, reverb heavy guitars and eccentric vocal stylings. I scoured the used record stores of Greenwich Village to locate their three albums, which I did at, of all places, the old 4th Street Tower Records.
Sadly, though, Big Dipper was one of the many, many many indie bands that found themselves snatched up by a major label in the wake of the overwhelming success of Nirvana's Nevermind. And, like such bands I discussed before like Tribe and Harvey Danger, Big Dipper put out one album with Epic Records, Slam, and promptly broke up when Epic dropped them over poor album sales. Thankfully, in 2008 Merge Records put out Supercluster: A Big Dipper Anthology, which featured not only highlights from their three indie albums, but the songs that would have become their second album with Epic, A Very Loud Array.
"Insane Girl" doesn't quite have the humor that I felt marked many of the band's best works (those that cringe when humor in music is brought up shouldn't worry; this is a much darker strain)--but to be fair, a lot of the songs from Craps, their third album, leaned more toward the soberer part of the spectrum. I love how in much of Big Dipper's work there's a sense of ominous foreboding, like something bad is just on the horizon. Even when the song is as innocuous as this one, depicting the universal problem of struggling with a girlfriend who may, quite frankly, be off her rocker emotionally, the bass line and the apocalyptic drum playing makes it clear that this relationship may get worse before it gets better.
Thankfully, Big Dipper reformed around the time of Supercollider's release, and continue to perform together to this day. Hell, they've got a song on the soundtrack to the new indie comedy Loser Takes All...about a group that gets together in a way that's suspiciously similar to the way Big Dipper formed way back when! You can even be their friends on Facebook. Lord knows I am!
This is going to take a while. You've been warned.
This is a live performance taken from the the old VH1 series Storytellers. You remember Storytellers, don't you? From when VH1, like its brother station MTV actually was interested in showing music-related programming? What the show did was take a big name musician, place him or her in VH1's tiny studio on Eleventh Street, invite a slew of fans to come in, and let them perform for an hour, telling the stories behind their hits. I loved Storytellers; at their best, they serve to illuminate the artist in ways I never considered before. But sometimes that isn't for the best.
What's strange about the Billy Joel Storytellers is how little of Billy Joel's songs are in that episode. He spends a lot of time talking about all the songs that influenced him, what it was like growing up to be Billy Joel, why his favorite songs worked for him....pretty much anything but why he wrote the songs he was famous for. When he does get to his own songs, he tends to only play a small snippet and return to stuff like, 'hey, weren't the Beatles great?'
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. After all, I have a very complex relationship with Mr. Joel. Bouyed by discovering Piano Man in Junior High and The Stranger in High School (hell, one of my teacher actually bought me a vinyl copy of this one to encourage my interest in music), he was my favorite artist through much of my formative years. My first live concert was seeing him at Madison Square Garden on New Year's Eve in support of The Nylon Curtain...
And then An Innocent Man happened, and my feelings changed...I speculated at the time that Joel's then-recent marriage to Christie Brinkley had somehow sanded off the edges of Joel's 'angry man with a piano' sound I admired. But to be fair, if I listened more closely to that album's 'Christie Lee,' I should have realized what was happening is I was discovering something about him I didn't care for...something that pretty much is at the core of all his music.
Namely, that Billy Joel's music boils down to one statement. It's Not My Fault.
Think about it. Every one of his songs seems to be about how he doesn't get what he wants, and how dare the world do that? It's not his fault that Virginia won't sleep with him; it's her Catholic upbringing. He's not like the denizens of that piano bar in L.A. he's earning nickels and dimes playing for; even they recognize he doesn't belong here. He's not responsible for his romance breaking up; it's the fault of the woman he's in love with and her mercurial, childish ways. Billy Joel wants the world to return to the time when he was the 'king of the Village Green,' his teen years when he was still chewing sin-sin and getting gals were easy. And while the world continues to evolve, he refuses to accept any part of it--after all, he didn't start the fire...it was there when he got there.
I haven't bought a Billy Joel record since An Innocent Man, but I have kept up with his career, and it's almost sad seeing him become more and more the kind of person he used to sneer at in those early songs. And in the context of him as a person struggling with how popular music has changed (this episode was recorded to promote Stormfront, Joel's last commercially successful album), it doesn't surprise me that he spent the lion's share of his time reminiscing and playing the songs he wished he wrote when he was a kid.
I know, I know. I haven't said much about his interpretation of this early Beatles classic. It's a meticulous recreation, adding nothing of Joel's....but then, maybe that's the point. Maybe what's being added is Joel's envy.
Here's Joel performing this song during the sad-in-more-ways-than-one concert at Shea Stadium...
And we return to this annual slog through my MP3 player with a song that's actually painful to listen to.
Don't get me wrong--it's not painful because it's bad. Truth be told it's alright, if not particularly remarkable...which could pretty much be a description of how I feel about Blind Melon's output as a whole. It's painful because of the context of the song. This is, after all, a song that may have been intended as the title track for the band's second album recorded during a time when vocalist Shannon Hoon had fallen so far down a hole emotionally and physically that it's hard not to see this, and the other songs on that album, as a massive suicide note. Hell, it's hard not to listen to Hoon's railing about his life as a bowl of bitter beans and his vow to 'pull the trigger and make it all go away' and think that this was a man who knew his life was going to end a little over two months after this album came out.
One of the saddest things about that brief blip on the radar of pop culture that was grunge--a musical form that, with each passing day, has been shown to be nothing more than a dead end, the last gasp of complexity and grey before the autotuned and shallow sludge of present dance pop came along to consume us all--is how many lives were lost during its heyday. I don't think Blind Melon would have been anything other than a footnote on the history of that genre; even his one contribution to pop culture, 'No Rain,' comes off as a mishmosh of borrowed ideas spurred into the consciousness by a clever video. And I suspect that if he hadn't let drugs overtake him, he would never have amounted to more than a faint echo of other greater bands (or worse, someone like Art Alexakis, who has devolved from an artist I admired into a deluded shell of a man insisting Everclear was relevant, dammit). But we're never going to know because he ended his life. All the potential for him to prove me and other people who looked at Blind Melon with askance wrong is now gone. Hell, an argument could be made that he ruined four other people's lives, as his band mates have drifted aimlessly, forming and unforming the band a number of times and never making the splash they did with Hoon at the front.
If it's okay, I think I'll just stop now before I get any more depressed. Here's a live version of the song...
This is the sort of thing you don't see in Saturday Morning
Cartoons anymore..wait a minute...you don't see Saturday
Morning cartoons anymore!
Hey, first thing that comes out of the Sansa, right?
This is the theme song for the 1972 Hanna Barbera cartoon series of the same name--and, as with so many of these shows of the time, it followed the Scooby Doo formula that H-B found so successful. Namely, there was a group of kids (and a family pet) running around in a van solving crimes when they weren't rocking out as members of a rock group. What made this series unique was that it was ostensively based on the Charlie Chan series of novels by Earl Derr Biggers, and it was arguably the first American cartoon series to feature a primarily Asian cast. Now granted, I can see H-B deciding to do this project because this was the early 70's, which means there was a whole movement (ultimately manifested by Action For Children's Television) that tried to make children's television more culturally sensitive, but it still was pretty wild to see people who didn't look like me not being the sidekicks but starring in their own cartoon series when I was a kiddie-winkie of eight years. Hell, H-B was so sensitive to making sure the Chan children were good role models they recast most of the voices because the original actors apparently affected thick 'Chinese' accents.
Oh--incidentally, you know who provided the voice for Anne, the tomboyish Chan girl? One Jodie Foster, who went on to become a great actress and LiLF.
I have no idea what's going on in this still....
As for the song itself...I've ascribed it to Don Kirshner, who was the musical supervisor for this show (as he was for Filmation's Archie family of cartoons, and The Monkees before it), but I guess we may never know who wrote this kinda cool, kinda jazzy little number. And, quite frankly, I dig it. It doesn't overdo the ethnicity, although it is there (that chopstick-y plinking of the piano keys at moments), and it's definitely a sort of light rock aesthetic going for it. Add in the whispery voice repeating the cartoon's title, and you've got a prime example of the 70's cartoon theme song aesthetic. This is the sort of crazy cool music you got exposed to on Saturday morning TV back in the day, before theme songs got loud and shouty and obtrusive on your frontal lobe.
Here's the title sequence for you to enjoy...
Oh--and is it just me, or is that drum set far too small for that guy?
