40 Songs, 40 Days(2011 Edition), Day Three: Bone Broke by The White Stripes

Hey, it's one of Jack Black's, like, fifty eight bands...some people turn on the television or buy a magazine when they get bored--Jack Black starts a band.

And while I like the really crunchy guitar riffs and the pounding drums of the melody...I can't get the nagging feeling out of my mind that this is another one of Jack's songs where he's figuring out new, more perverse ways of talking about sex without actually saying, 'hey, let's fuck.' He's done this before--hell, my favorite White Stripes song boils down to 'I am waiting here pushing you for sex in hopes that you'll give in.' I don't know if lyrically this one works as well as 'My Doorbell,' because it seems to suffer from a form of ADD--in one moment, Jack is telling the object of his affection that she should look at how long he's been running his penis....then he's talking about liquor stores and how her mom's put money into platinum. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear he's telling the woman he's singing to that his parents paid for him to have sex with her (and he was cool with it because, you know, he's 'bone broke')

What it comes down to is a problem I sometimes have with The Stripes--namely that while their musicianship is without question, nasty and down and dirty....their songs can quite frankly be hit and miss, disjointed and going down creative dead ends that White's passionate singing and the overall instrumental competence manages to conceal.

(Oddly enough, this is a problem I have with what most people deem 'pop' music--save that people like (Am I A) Lady Gaga don't even have the competence musically and have to rely on their producers to hide their lack of creativity, originality or flair).

So...it's not a terrible song. It just doesn't live up to the obvious skills this pair has.

　

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Two: Whenever I'm With Her By Dramarama

Ahhhh, one of my favorite bands-that-aren't-around-anymore....

I first discovered Dramarama on the then-named WLIR, a Long Island based freeform alternative rock radio station whose signal came in iffy at best to my Woodhaven-then-Corona home in Queens, when they began playing the first single from their first album, Cinema Verite, the whimsical-but-desperate 'Scenario.' I loved it when I heard it, and located the album in a cut-out bin in one of those shady music stores that used to line Fifth Avenue in the 80's. I picked up every album in a succession of now-gone music chain stores throughout the band's existence (Stuck In Wonderland in a Kim's Video satellite store on 2nd Avenue; Live From The China Club, Box Office Bomb and Vinyl from the 72nd Street HMV; and Hi-Fi Sci-Fi from the 4th Street Tower Records). And its fitting that these stores and that radio station no longer exist, because vocalist John Easdale has always been, to me, one of the premiere voices of loss. He's got this strange quavery quality to his cadance that makes him sound like he's perpetually afraid, and the best songs from Dramarama's catalog--"Anything, Anything," "Last Cigarette," "Questions," even the otherwise whimsical "Work For Food"--take advantage of that quality of Easdale's voice as they explore the lives of people about to fall into the abyss emotionally and/or physically.

This is from the latter part of the spectrum, off their second album, Box Office Bomb...and in it, John is trying to verbalize the rage he's experiencing due to a relationship that's going sour and threatening to become destructive. The singer confesses to us that he doesn't want to resort to violence, doesn't want to bite and hit this woman if only, only she'd just change her ways...

But the brilliance of the song is how Easdale manages to let us know that this horrific situation is as much his fault as her--somewhere in the song he admit that he's 'thinking with his zipper' whenever he's with her...which means he stays even when he knows what will end up happening. He is unwilling to take the final step and walk out of this situation even as he knows where he is going into a dark place, and all because of lust.

Supposedly, Easdale and an ad hoc group is recording a new album to be dropped in 2011.

And because I'm perverse, here's a contestant on Rockstar Supernova butchering the band's greatest hit....I like how she seems to be wanting to channel Ozzie so, so badly with those 'I's nutty' stares and weird stances, and ends up looking like a parody of a rock star...

Cover-versies: 'Hackensack' by Katy Perry

As you know, elsewhere on this blog I'm discussing one of my favorite bands, Fountains of Wayne, by discussing how I grew to love them item by item. I'm about to discuss the second FoW song I ever really grooved on...but before I do, it occurred to me that there's a Cover-versies attached to that song I wanted to write on.

The song in question is "Hackensack," a rather sad song that appeared on The Fountains' third album Welcome Interstate Managers. I'll be discussing this little three minute gem in the second segment of Me And...The Fountains of Wayne a little later, but here's a video of Adam and co. performing it so we can set up the compare and contrast....

So last year, Katy Perry decided to cover this song on an episode of MTV Unplugged. Here is her take on it...

.....

I hate this version.

No, really. I can't fucking stand this version.

And it's not just because I can't stand Ms. Perry as a whole, one of those idiots who seem to feel that it's okay to be unbearably cruel to people under the guise of 'keeping it real.' I honestly feel that Ms. Perry gets a pass frequently because she is, to quote my partner on BiTD 'Zoe Deschanel's Head On A Porn Star's Body' (I don't see this comparison, but so many people do I will let it stand). But this is a person who calculatedly took a page out of Scott Stapp's playbook and started her career as a 'Christian Contemporary' artist so she could grab a sizable, gullible fanbase; whose first single was a half-assed, atrocious tune that she was able to bull onto the Top 40 charts because of some ham-fisted 'controversy' ("Hey, she's hawt...and she's talking about being a lesbian!"); who said with a straight face that her so-fluffy it'll float away single 'California Gurls' was an answer song to Jay-Z's love letter to New York, 'Empire State of Mind' (so your answer to 'I love my hometown' is...'oh, yeah, well we're hawt?'); and whose newer singles are built around metaphors and imagery so torturous that in other circumstances they'd be considered out-and-out parodies.

And the thing is...I almost find her more detestable because you get the sense, unlike with (Am I A) Lady Gaga, that she might actually have some sort of songwriting talent. But she's so aggressively stupid and lazy in expressing that talent that I just want to pummel her.

(And let me just say that as far as I'm concerned, Perry and that mean-spirited grotesque Russell Brand deserve each other...and I don't mean that in a positive way.)

However, a lot of people who would tear her apart overlook her lack of artistry and her clumsy bids to be a STAH overlook at it because...well, she's 'hawt.' Don't take my word for it--just wander through the intrawebs and see all the comments about her. Not a lot of comments about her songwriting, is there?

Anyway, this cover....she takes a subtle, borderline creepy song about a sad man escaping from the misery of his life by fantasizing (and maybe even planning to stalk) a classmate who has achieved fame as an actress and butchers it. The simply fact that she opens up the orchestration destroys the sense that the original is an interior monologue from the singer late at night as he watches one of his obsession's movies. And check out that awful vocalization--the way she seems to swallow the last syllable of each line drives me up the wall. It's so mannered that, once again, you have to wonder if in a parallel universe this is a parody of a Fountains of Wayne song. On some level, even though Perry is affecting a 'sad puppy with cancer' voice, the song sounds...brighter, less desperate.

Quite frankly, given Ms. Perry clumsy career choices, I know exactly what this is supposed to be...this is the mainstream Top 40 pop stah trying to get a little 'sensitive artist' cred by covering a non-single track by a band known for being a little cerebral, a little culty. I give her credit for going with FoW as opposed to other, rather more obvious choices--I shudder at the version of 'Landed' or 'Brick' or 'Hallelujah' we could've gotten. But this is another bald-faced attempt to win over a few people she hasn't impressed yet by acting all 'quirky' and showing that yes, she likes lesser known artists, too.

Of course, it occurs to me that if she chose 'Brick' or 'Suzanne' or any of a number of better-known culty songs, she couldn't count on the oblivious segment of her fanbase insisting that 'Hackensack' is her song that she wrote and performed herself--thus giving her more cred for being a 'deep and sensitive artist.' And the fact that I know deep down inside that this move worked with more people than I care to imagine.

Fuck you, Katy Perry, and fuck this cover.

　

I've complained more than once about alternative artists doing 'ironic' slow jam covers of hip-hop singles to give them some hipster street cred. This cover is cut from the same cloth--an artist playing at being real bo-ho and smart by aping a great song in a way that is designed to glorify how bo-ho and smart the singer is.

Yeah, I can take some solace in knowing that once her looks start fading, Katy Perry will disappear into the reality TV hosting limbo she belongs, while The Fountains of Wayne will endure long after. But it's little solace. For now, all I can do is grit my teeth and put on Traffic And Weather in an effort to drown her caterwauling out.

40 Songs, 40 Days, Day One (2011 Edition): When The Ground Is Numb by William Ryan Finch

Okay, so I fell down pretty badly for last year's edition...so as punishment, I've tacked on the ten days I didn't do during 2010 onto 2011, and I'm starting right at the beginning of the year. I figure if I can't put aside 40 days to write essays on 40 songs throughout an entire year, I should stop doing this and, I dunno, take up knitting.

The rules are this: once a day, I am going to put my expanded 6GB Sansa Clip on Random and press play. I am obligated to write something on the first song it plays. There is no cheating and no do-overs with one exception--if you've covered two songs by an artist in the same cycle, you have the option of writing about the next one. I also invite anyone who is reading this to do their own '30 Days, 30 Songs' this year (I'm not going to make you do the extra ten)...so consider yourself tagged.

And first up is something from last year's Asthmatic Kitty Digital Sampler. I'm one of the people who really enjoy finding, downloading and perusing these independent label samplers. Yeah, a lot of the stuff I find may prove to be not to my taste, even risible, but there's also the chance I might find a little nugget of yumminess. Asthmatic Kitty in particular is a label started by Sufjan Stevens, an artist I'm not particularly enthralled with...and this track is a puzzler.

See, it's an instrumental done by a film composer--and boy, it does sound it. This is the sort of thing you'd hear in a late 90's indy psychological thriller: some atonal strings, some nondescript choral work, a drum machine pounding what I guess could be called a counter-beat, and a weird oscillation tone to end it all. It's all about setting a mood of unsettlement, but it's so generic in its progressions that it fails to direct the listener in any emotional direction. I'm sure in the movie it was intended for, it might be effective, but devoid of the visual context it's....well, it's annoying.

And that's not what you want in a movie soundtrack. The best movie music not only creates a mood, but can be evocative of the core concepts of the film even when the music is divorced from the film itself. You can't not listen to John Williams' work on films like Superman and Raiders of The Lost Ark without swelling up with heroic pride, you can't listen to Danny Elfman's Batman score without a sense of mysteriousness, and you can't listen to Harold Faltemeyer's work for Beverly Hills Cop without getting a taste of the bouncy, kinetic flow of that movie. It's one of the reasons some composers get connected to certain directors...Howard Shore reflects the sensibilities of David Cronenberg perfectly, for example. I can't see Fitch's work rising above the generic, and that's sad...

No youtube video for this one, so you'll have to take my word for it.

So a sad launch to this year's exercise. I am filled with dread.

30 Songs, 30 Days (2010 Edition), Day Nineteen: Change by Young Veins

And up today...the Echo Park, California garage rock throwback The Young Veins, a band that features two former members of Panic! At The Disco and sound nothing like that band.

Now don't get me wrong--I rather liked Panic! At The Disco's rather dramatic emo-core pretentions, which had strange resonances with previous 30S30Ds subject Harvey Danger. But this newer band...I might actually like them better. For one thing, the vocalist has a better tone--poppier, nowhere near as dramatic and over the top as P!@TD. The song itself does seem to mine the same territory conceptually, as it's a portrait of the singer's romantic feelings--or is it just attraction--to a woman who used to trade on her looks and now has become a tragic figure, begging for change outside the grocery store. And the singer is regretful about how the relationship has shaken out...but in what way is left ambivalent.

More importantly, Young Veins have managed to capture that garage feel while also feeling modern. This band does not come off as play-acting like Panic! always did...they seem genuine in their recreation of that esthetic, and equally genuine in their desire to bring garage rock sound into the modern era. I look forward to seeing what else they might have up their sleeve.

Here is the video for the song which, not surprisingly, continues to carry on their desire to recreate the feel of a certain genre while also bringing it forward into the 00's....

　

30 Songs, 30 Days, (2010 Edition) Day Eighteen: Swamp Thing by The Grid

Hey, it's some European techno! This is an electronic dance number built primarily on a banjo riff...and it works surprisingly well. I think there's something about the downhome strumming contrasted with the electrobeats that I find really appealing--especially the moment where the beats stop and we get the banjo just picking away...

Okay, so I don't have much to say here. It's just a cool little instrumental. I promise I will have more to say next time.

30 Songs, 30 Days, Day Seventeen (2010 Edition): Well All Right! by The Hives

It's rather amusing that, not long after I discussed Joe Jackson, who frequently skipped across genres to amuse himself, I end up with this example of the Garage Revival of the early 00's...

And of the Garage Revival bands, I rather like these guys best of all because they don't seem to have the winking irony of some of their contemporaries like Franz Ferdinand. This is from The Black and White Album, their most recent album, and I rather like it because--well, it sounds more than a little bit like some long lost descendant of the kind of old school jive and blues Jackson was essaying for his album Jumping Jive (discussed briefly in this entry for this year's cycle. The drum line, the call-and-response chorus, even the momentary time change all seem to be designed to get you and your gal up and jitterbugging. And when Howlin' Pelle Almqvist....well, howls at roughly the two minute mark, it's just a great moment. This is the kind of song that, with some regression, could have been blared out on the dancefloor during the Roaring Twenties, which might be another reason I like it so much. All of their work is like this--thoroughly unpretentious and not trying to assure us it's all a big put-on.

Okay, so lyrically we're not talking much--it's at its most basic a celebration of the loser, of endeavoring to accept all the setbacks life throws at you with some semblance of cool. And thanks to the energy throughout (except for that minute-forty-five time change that ends in that two-minute mark howl I was talking about) and it's adherence to the three minute rule, it acts as an antidote to all the emo-sad-puppy stuff that clogs the airwaves. We're all losers in some way, Pelle assures us...so let's dance!

No video...but here's the track itself for you to enjoy...and enjoy you will.