HATESEXY

The New Soul Music

2011-04-11T09:50:00.000-07:00

At South By Southwest this year, the biggest, most audible buzz (at least for those of us who didn't attend, at least!) was for a group from Silverlake called Fitz and the Tantrums. No angular indie or beardy folk group they -- the Tantrums play what could probably be termed "classic soul" music, heavily influenced by the sounds of Motown and Stax from the mid-to-late '60s.

And they're certainly not alone. Fitz and the Tantrums are part of a larger move back into the vintage soul sound that's been echoing loudly across the R&B genre for the last three or four years (at least in the overground -- even longer in the underground, natch). Indie listeners have slowly been crawling on the bandwagon, too -- the Tantrums, Black Joe Louis and the Honeybears and other New Soul artists have been creeping onto typically homogenous, whitebread indie radio playlists.

Why now? What happened?

As with any musical movement worth its salt, the New Soul started off as an underground revival movement. East Coast indie-soul groups like the Dap Kings and the Budos Band started cropping up five, six, seven years ago, and a largely underground soul revival movement based primarily in New York (and primarily around the Daptones label) began to bubble under the surface.

It could have been one of a thousand short-lived revival fads -- remember the swing revival in the late 90s? The burlesque revival in the early 00's? -- if it wasn't for the emergence of a few mainstream artists who championed this New Soul sound to the masses. Producer Mark Ronson grabbed onto the sound with both hands, and used the Dap Kings to back up Amy Winehouse on the Back To Black LP, the first mainstream New Soul album and still perhaps the finest.

Mainstream R&B was ready for this New Soul. It had been evolving towards a more organic, classic sound for a long time. After New Jack Swing, perhaps the next real "forward" evolution of the form in the late 90s and early 00s was the so-called "Neo-Soul" movement (D'Angelo, The Roots, Erykah Badu), which already embraced some of the New Soul values -- deep, often complex songwriting; influences from the 60s and 70s, organic instrumentation, and a "conscious" vibe that was as far apart from mainstream love-ballad-driven R&B as indie rock was from modern radio pop.

Perhaps the next most important New Soul salvo after the Winehouse album was Raphael Saadiq's exquisite The Way I See It. Saadiq, a founding member of Tony! Toni! Toné!, was already an important writer and producer in the Neo-Soul movement, having worked with D'Angelo on the seminal Voodoo LP and been a member of Lucy Pearl before striking out as a solo artist. On The Way I See It, Saadiq fully embraced the sound of Motown, even going so far as to work with some of the original Motown backing musicians.

What made the album great, though, and more than just a "revival" album or "retro" album, is that he remembered that Motown was more than just a "sound" -- it featured great, memorable, diverse songs. For years, the primary sound of R&B had been sexy bedroom ballads with nary a hook among 'em, but The Way I See It was top-loaded with popping dancefloor classics like "100 Yard Dash" and "Let's Take A Walk," all of which were loaded with great soul beats and memorable hooks.

Saadiq's album, too, was a hit in the indie world -- it received airplay on alternative and indie stations around the country, and received plaudits from normally soul-free "best of the year" lists. In a way, the mainstream success of Amy Winehouse gave the movement a voice, but Saadiq's success gave it cred -- no producer's darling he; Saadiq was a genuine R&B/hip-hop practitioner, and his refusal to sell out to trends made New Soul look like more than just a revival movement or brief side-track or fad.

Since the release of these albums, the New Soul movement has exploded. Artists previously associated with other movements scrambled to keep up, sometimes to excellent effect. John Legend, previously a smooth/adult-contemporary artist, teamed up with Neo Soul hip-hop group the Roots and made Wake Up, an album of fiery, stomping covers of 60s and 70s songs. Even R. Kelly -- known as much for his sex-crime exploits as his batshit crazy song moves -- got in on the action, releasing the excellent Love Letter, a smooth R&B album that channeled mid-70s Marvin Gaye. And improbably, talk-show-host son Robin Thicke released the amazing Something Else, an album of heavy, horn-driven R&B that sounded as gritty and as realistic as anything from the underground.

And what's interesting about the New Soul movement is that, like the Stax label in the mid-60s, it's fully integrated, a word that means more in the '10s than it should -- there are as many white artists as there are black ones, as many male as female, and as many old as young, all equally valid and "genuine." Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings are the perfect picture of this New Soul movement -- Jones is an over-50 African-American woman, fronting a band made up of black and white members of various ages. Fitz and the Tantrums features a white, over-40 lead singer, a mid-20s black female co-lead, and an integrated membership made up of members of various ages. The Budos Band feature no lead singer, a mostly-white membership and yet sound more like the early-70s Meters than anybody ever has. It all, impossibly, works.

And then there's Eli "Paperboy" Reed. Paperboy is a potent, gritty soul belter and one hell of a performer. Close your eyes, and you hear Memphis or Detroit in the mid-60s. But Paperboy's a 20-something nerdy white kid -- almost impossible that such a seasoned, powerful voice could even come from that body, but "Come And Get It" is possibly the best single yet in the New Soul sweeps, a horn-driven rocker that could have just as easily been written in 1965 as 2011.

But what keeps New Soul from being just another revival movement, embraced for a moment but soon forgotten? And why wouldn't you just go on to iTunes and download a bunch of old Motown, Stax and Gamble/Huff records?

I'd argue -- and of course time will either prove me right or wrong -- that its longevity is what makes it a genuine movement rather than just a retro sidestep. It's developing and growing within itself -- the new Saadiq album, for example, sounds like a logical extension of his last one, but with new influences, and an even more pronounced sense of experimentation, while the awesome Black Joe Lewis album sounds even grittier and funkier than its predecessors, an aggressive angle taken from, say, the White Stripes. This evolution means it essentially is R&B right now -- even though it exists parallel with whatever's on mainstream R&B radio at the moment (you know, autotuned electro-pop) it is informing what's happening within the genre and will probably push even further into the mainstream as time moves on and people take more risks.

Too, what does "retro" even mean in this information age? In a time people have absolutely equal accessibility to albums of all vintages and genres, is it even valid to call something out for being "old?" What does that even mean anymore? As information moves at the speed of a blink, genres can be born and die with the speed of a meme, shouldn't we be more concerned with great songwriting, with longevity, with substance, with excellence than whether something sounds "old" or "new?"

I'd also argue that there's quite a few albums within this genre -- Winehouse's, Saadiq's two, the Fitz and the Tantrums, both "Paperboy" Reed LPs, even R. Kelly's! -- that stand quite strongly against whatever Motown you wanna stack 'em against. Again, time will prove me right or wrong, but I'd say you could take Saadiq's album and stack it song-for-song with the Four Tops' mighty "Reach Out" LP and you wouldn't be throwing it out the window. You know?

It remains to be seen how far this New Soul will go. Will it continue to run parallel with mainstream R&B until it produces masterpieces like What's Going On or Innervisions? Will it fade out and be replaced with something utterly else? It's absolutely hard to say, considering how capricious the music industry is and has been lately. But for those of us who love the vintage sound of a horn section, a gospel/soul belter, a funky dance-beat, it's a ride that promises at least a few awesome highlights along the way.

Duran Duran Is Great.

2011-01-02T10:10:00.000-08:00

When I was in tenth grade, my favorite band was Duran Duran.

This, of course, got me an inordinate amount of stick from my classmates, who were ankle-deep in 'Halen and Def Lep (or Hendrix and the Doors for the stoners). Duran Duran were, as everybody "knew," a girls' band. If a boy listened to Duran Duran, their sexuality was suddenly in free-play -- after all, the only possible reason you'd ever want to listen to Duran was because they were good lookin' blokes. There was certainly no musical merit to 'em -- I remember when Guitar magazine did a super-sarcastic piece on Taylors Andy and John. Their lack of musicality was common knowledge. So clearly -- clearly -- my fandom just meant I was a "fag."

The lavender-frosted lipstick and eyeliner I occasionally wore 'cause of Nick Rhodes probably didn't help with that impression either. Somehow it got them chicks. It got me shut into a locker. That can probably be put down to growing up in the London club scene vs. growing up in Crystal, MN.

At any rate, it's 30 years on and I'm still a Duran Duran fan. And despite the fact that we've had thirty years to analyze, re-analyze, retro-chic and RE-retro-chic, ironic-i-fy and de-ironic-i-fy the band, I still get an inordinate amount of stick for liking them.

This, my friends, is not fair.

People's opinions about Duran, if they're negative, are almost always steeped in ancient, outdated pre-suppositions. They're just a pre-fab video band. Or they only had one good record. Or they were just disposable, barely-musical teen idols like David Cassidy. Or they represent a particularly virulent and awful brand of Thatcherism. All of which are the same arguments that were leveled at them in 1984, and ignores the fact that the band has been producing music this entire time. And lots of it has been quite good. And much of it has been very, very good.

They're also completely false. Let's examine them one by one, shall we?

1. They're just a pre-fab video band. Okay, what do you mean just? Duran Duran were one of the first bands to take full advantage of the medium of video to take their music into a visual realm, and if you ask me, that's actually pretty impressive. At the time, of course, MTV looked like nothing less than the death of REAL ROCK AND ROLL MUSIC. Video killed the radio star, dontcha know. Except it didn't -- what killed the radio star was the excesses of the 70s + failure to change with the times or find a new audience -- basically the same thing that killed every radio star that's ever been killed. I think the eventual video successes of just about everybody worth their salt proved that pretty bands like Duran didn't kill anybody. But people are still sore about that.

Duran Duran, though, understood that videos were just an artistic extension of the music -- or could be, if done right. And theirs always were -- take a look at the fascinating and frequently gorgeous videos for all the songs on spin-off band Arcadia's "So Red The Rose" album. Now look at the video for Journey's "Separate Ways." It's clear that more than just "pretty-boy-ness" is happening here -- Duran worked with fantastic and visionary directors and created a complex and gorgeous visual language that was way ahead of its time. That's not a bad thing. That's awesome.

2. They only had one good record. That's not true, but if you're a casual music listener, or even a deep music fan with only one ear on pop music, you might be forgiven for thinking that. The album is, of course, "Rio," the album that broke them in America. It is a fantastic record, and deserves its place among the classics of that decade. But it wasn't their first good record -- the self-titled debut is great too. And it was by no means their last -- despite following it up with the lackluster "Seven and the Ragged Tiger," their career continued for two more decades, and they've got a bunch of records -- "So Red The Rose," "Notorious," "Big Thing," the 2nd self-titled album aka "The Wedding Album," "Medazzaland," "Astronaut" and now "All You Need Is Now" -- that fully stand up to "Rio."

It's just that you probably didn't hear them, because apart from their brief early-90s comeback hit "Ordinary World," they sort of stopped having massive culture-defining hits.

But since when is commercial viability a gague for what's good and what isn't? It sure isn't for any of the other bands you probably like. It wasn't for Duran's ancestors like the Velvet Underground, David Bowie or Roxy Music -- some of those bands' best records weren't their hit albums, necessarily, if they had any hits to begin with. In other words, your unfamiliarity with the band's canon is not a good reason to dismiss it.

3. They were disposable, barely musical teen idols like David Cassidy. First of all, I'd love to argue for the musical viability of David Cassidy with you sometime, 'cause I can, and I'll defend just about ALL the teen idols that have ever been, including the newest ones. But secondly, it's just not true -- they were by no means "barely musical" in the first place. Ask any bassist worth their salt and they'll tell you that John Taylor, to grab a band member at random, is a phenomenal bass player. He understands the principles of funk and disco, and his "walking octave" style has become EXTREMELY influential in this recent wave of neo-80s dance music. But it's not just John -- did you know Nick was one of the first guys to use a computer to sequence his keyboard sounds? And he wasn't even musically trained -- he was making that shit up as he went along, and his Apple-powered keyboard rig might well have been the very first of its kind.

And don't even get me started on Simon LeBon's "adenoidal yelps," as I've heard them described -- first off, he's not the first overly-mannered crooner out there (see also: Scott Walker, David Bowie et al) and secondly, he hasn't "adenoidally yelped" in years. His voice is smooth, strong and powerful, and sounds better today than it ever has.

Plus, they're great songwriters. I'm not sure I can defend Simon as a lyricist -- he's always interesting but occasionally quite silly -- but the lyrics aren't even important in music like this, which is far more concerned with creating a mood and a dance beat, a situation for you to be able to move around in. They've got great melodies and ENORMOUS hooks, and they're far more experimental than they're given credit for. Listen to side two of "Big Thing" if you don't believe me -- it's the slightly-more-accessible version of something like Talk Talk's "Laughing Stock" or David Sylvian's "Gone To Earth" -- it never sacrifices great songwriting or structure like those albums do, but still creates THAT KIND of ominous, sumptuous, earthy mood. And then you flip the record over and side one's full of killer dance music.

4. They represent a particularly virulent brand of Thatcherism. I dunno, dude, I'm from America. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. I don't know them personally, but from what I've read I'd have a hard time believing someone as forward thinking and just all-around kind as Nick Rhodes, for example, would be a Thatcherite. To me, it's like Springsteen representing Reaganism -- the fact that his music was around in the era when Reagan was around is no reason for any kind of connection between the two, seeing as their philosophies could not be more diametrically opposed. Just 'cause Duran were on when Thatcher was in power -- and just 'cause they were played in dance clubs filled with cocaine-sloppy, self-absorbed Thatcherites is no reason to equate the two. They're musicians. They can't help when they came around, or who likes them, or who danced to 'em, any more than Springsteen can control fist-pumping jingoists liking "Born In The USA." If Duran actually voted for Thatcher, I guess that's their business.

I'm pretty sure that my highly enlightened readers don't need the "their music is for fags" impression refuted, right? We can just let that one pass as pure and simple homophobia, and none of your impressions of Duran are based on that, right?

So okay, your presuppositions are wrong, what next?

Well, if you haven't heard anything beyond "Rio," you need to. Let me give you a quick run-down of what you need to get:

Arcadia, So Red The Rose. The thinking-fan's Duran album of choice. While Taylors John and Andy were off with Robert Palmer making "Some Like It Hot," Taylor Roger, Simon and Nick produced this gorgeous, underappreciated, forward-thinking gem. Not a commercial album by any means -- the hit "Election Day" still sounds as weird today as it did back then -- it is never less than beautiful. Even a Sting cameo in "The Promise" can't sink it -- he sounds great, and soaring.

Notorious. The very minute a lot of early, casual fans dropped out, this is a mature, lavish, very slick and very credible funk album, and sounds less dated and "of its era" than any of their albums. Produced by Chic's Nile Rodgers, this album is a horn-powered tour-de-force of great songwriting and phenomenal performance.

Big Thing. Remember how "I Don't Want Your Love" sounded like pre-jungle club-rock six, seven years before anybody'd ever heard those terms? Probably not, since it wasn't a huge hit, but this album's highlights -- especially the aforementioned and rather arty side two -- prove the band were still a viable creative force with one eye on the future of electronic music.

The Wedding Album. The first wave of 80s nostalg came just at the start of the grunge era (Courtney Love was a Durannie, remember!) and "Ordinary World" was a deserved, massive ballad hit -- the rest of the record was great, too, expanding on the slick funk-rock of "Notorious" and adding in some arch hip-hop beats that oddly sound not the least bit dated.

Medazzaland. The group squandered their newfound success on an album of covers called "Thank You" that's far less awful than its reputation suggests, but people dropped off the nostalgia train in droves. Undaunted even by the ship-jumping of John Taylor, the group made this rather odd, chilly, electronic-powered record -- "Electric Barbarella" was a minor club hit, but the rest of the album was too arty for club-goers and too strange for E-gobbling club kids enamored of the Chemical Brothers. It is, nonetheless, a minor classic of the era and one of their most overlooked albums.

Astronaut. A late-period reunion of the "original five" lineup, it manages to suggest the sound of the early albums without aping them, and manages to sound credibly forward-thinking besides. Great songwriting and a couple of club-pumpers the likes of which we'd not heard from the band in 10 years.

All You Need Is Now. Possibly their second-best record, delievered a mere thirty years after "Rio." Produced by Mark Ronson, a man clearly and rightfully obsessed with Nick Rhodes' 80s analog keyboard sounds (see: his own excellent "Record Collection" LP). He reminded the band how cool they were back when they were (and perhaps how influential they'd become in the last few years), this record delivers ample hints of their 80s sounds in the form of retro keyboards and slashing guitars. But far from a sad attempt to snatch past glories, the songwriting is remarkably tight and well-considered, and the band channels their experimental side into concise dancefloor classics that sound not the least bit contrived. One of the only "rediscover-old-sound" records that actually works.

I'm ready for a full-on critical reassessment of Duran. It's time. I'm sick of having to defend my love for them at this stage of the game -- they've more than proven themselves if anybody's paying attention, and you're only missing out on some very interesting, near-classic LPs if you stop at the one album, their latest album among 'em. I'm sincerely hoping that when Jake Rudh does a Duran night at Transmission in a month-ish, he lays some of the lesser-heard classics on y'all, opens your mind, and shows off the ample strengths of a band that deserves more love and more critical consideration than they've yet received. I still love 'em as strongly after thirty years, and that counts for something. Join me, won't you?

(Editor's note: if you've not yet heard Mark Ronson's "Record Collection," and think the guy's just a rich club-kid dilettante with no actual musical ideas, you need to give it a listen. For one thing: it sounds great. For another: he took just exactly the right stuff from the 80s synth stuff he obviously loves. For yet another, he begins Simon LeBon's critical rehabilitation on the title track, and teases us that yet another one -- Culture Club -- is yet to come. And then there's "Bang Bang Bang," which is probably my favorite song of last year. Go. Listen.)

Jonny Blackout's Best Albums of 2010

2010-12-20T09:26:00.000-08:00

2010 was the best year for new music since 2000. I don't know if it's just the optimism of a decade-switcheroo or what, but there was a veritable explosion of fantastic LPs, singles, live shows and direct-to-brain plug-ins this year (wait -- scratch that last one, that's 2020. I get so confused. Timey wimey.). Bands I normally hate put out decent records. The overhyped music was actually pretty good, and almost deserved the overhype. Even the shitty stuff was pretty fun (I mean, who the hell *didn't* catch themselves bopping their head like a ten-year-old to "Whip My Hair"?). The only downside to the year was the continued rise of the "Beards/Banjos" genre (Mumford and Sons et al) -- but I was able, through judicious and prodigious enjoyment of synth-pop, to pretend it didn't exist. I had a hard time trying to whittle down to a top ten, so I'm just going to list a bunch of stuff I really liked in a kind of rough order and let you guys figure out which stuff was better.

Apples In Stereo, "Travelers In Time" -- the best late-70s ELO record that ELO never made. It's as if someone took the best songs from "Discovery" and "Time" that never existed -- hypothetical singles from an alternate universe -- and compiled them together on a batshit crazy future-thinking concept LP.

Tom Jones, "Praise and Blame" -- why was there not more hoopla for this amazing, incendiary record? Tom Jones becoming the angry preacher he always wanted to be, backed by a band with grit and soul -- what more could you want? Astonishing, plain and simple.

The National, "High Violet" -- a record I so didn't WANT to like because I usually diverge widely from hipster musical taste, or at least "mainstream hipster musical taste" whatever that is. But I fell in love nonetheless. What can you do when confronted with a lyric like "I was afraid I'd eat your brains?"

Robyn, "Body Talk" -- of course, pop is a dirty word amongst the bearded and banjo-holding, but there was no finer collection of the pure stuff this year -- a distillation of the early-80s electropop sound into perfect 3-minute gems. If you aren't stirred by "Hang With Me" you need to check your head -- it's sharp, perfectly tooled songwriting, the perfect 1983-channeling radio single that never was. The way that chorus soars should remove all doubt.

R. Kelly, "Love Letter" -- there is NO BETTER SINGER in R&B than R. Kelly, fucked-up past aside, and he's finally applying it to mature, gorgeous soul music that's at once retro and completely modern. If I didn't think he was about to release an album of banging, immature gangsta music (he probably is) I'd say this was a career-remaker for the guy -- it's top-to-bottom beautiful, soulful and perfectly written, including the sumptuous "When A Woman Loves" which I think surprised a lot of people who thought they knew R. Not so much.

Mystery Jets, "Serotonin" -- British alt-pop music the way they don't make it anymore (hell, it's "college rock," full on!), unabashedly romantic and crooned the way Ian McCulloch used to. The title track was my replay of the year -- literally didn't leave my player for a week straight. The rest isn't too shabby either -- it produced four killer singles in the UK, where such stuff is appreciated and not pooh-poohed.

Mark Ronson and the Business International, "Record Collection" -- it's unhip to like Ronson because a) he's prettier than you (probably), b) he's an "international DJ," c) he's rich, and d) he's fucking great. You're just jealous. This album provided the year's best single ("Bang Bang Bang"), brought Boy George out of hiding, produced the best video of the year ("Bike Song," featuring the ever-lovely Rosay Pipette), and generally ruled my turntable.

Black Keys, "Brothers" -- heavy motherfucking rock, but unlike their last couple, completely laden with astonishing, memorable hooks. The album I wish Jack White would make, only he never would because he's far too in love with defying expectations -- a good thing, but keeps his feet hovering five feet off the ground. This thing's planted three feet in the mud with wellies on, and sounds the better for it.

Janelle Monae, "The ArchAndroid" -- a soul record the way they used to make them -- I *think*. Stuff this intergalactic may not have ever existed. Not to say it sounds old-fashioned or retro in the least -- but it's coming from a UFO like classic P-funk, but with the emotional center of classic Motown. Ambitious, occasionally stumbling, always fascinating.

Field Music, "Measure" -- Two boys in love with melody, harmony, and spasmodic rhythms, and how those things can be applied to monumentally great tunes without sacrificing a hint of listenability. Oh, and it's a double album. Take THAT.

New Young Pony Club, "The Optimist" -- skittish and dark, angular new wave played by genuinely weird people with a pop sensibility so far left of center it can't find its way back. Cool the way the first few Talking Heads records were, like AM radio from another planet.

Duran Duran, "All You Need Is Now" -- I love how 80s bands are starting to realize that the young pups are stealing their thunder by sounding like *they* did forty years ago. Duran Duran aren't afraid of any electro-newcomers -- they've been making great records all along, it's just that fewer and fewer people were paying attention. That should change with this Mark Ronson-produced gem, which is a top-to-bottom smash laden with fantastic dancefloor fillers ("Blame The Machines," "Safe," "Girl Panic") and eerie ballads ("Leave A Light On" and "Before The Rain"). A great band rediscovers their strength and sounds like a contender.

The Drums, "The Drums" -- a rare gem, a first album by a totally unproven band that crackles with life. Doesn't sound like anybody in particular, but with echoes of stuff you love. Post-punk, sure, but *happy*. Joyous even. Artsy, sure, but also undeniably accessible, the way, say, the Femmes were in the day (but minus the layer of intense suck). A fist-pumper.

Big Boi, "Son Of Lucious Left Foot" -- of course, Big Boi is the best emcee in the world, and he's a freak besides, meaning his records flow like mad and sound like nothing and nobody else. Too weird for mainstream rap, too scary for indie audiences, he hovers like a pimp ghost over pop music, casting a wide shadow over all comers. Including Kanye. You heard me.

Hurts, "Happiness" -- channeling the unabashed schmaltz songwriters from the late 80s -- Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, Stock/Aitken/Waterman -- and honing it into a sharp, slightly evil point, "It's A Wonderful Life" was the inescapable guilty pleasure of the year.

Robert Plant, Band of Joy -- You wanna tell me how a 60-something dude with poodle hair can still sound like a cocksure bluesman from another planet without sounding a little ridiculous in the bargain? This thing oozed with credibility but was a hell of a lot of fun anyway, and quite pretty besides.

Ne-Yo, Libra Scale -- The best Michael Jackson record this year, including the one by Michael Jackson. "Champagne Life" was my 2nd fave single of the year -- channeled lush, decadent 70s soul and spotlighted Ne's amazing, perfect, crystal-clear voice.

LOCAL:
Satellite Voices, "Scarlet Rays of Future Echoes" -- lead singer Knol Tate DEFINES the word "angular," takes it and twists it into a hard little ball of electric energy and spits it right the fuck back out at the audience on this one, possibly the best local record of the last SEVERAL years. Heavy in the way they USED to mean it -- i.e. full of meaning, brains, soul-churning rock and roll music.

BNLX, "1," "2," "3," "4" -- Okay, I'm a little biased because I'm on their label and I've been an unabashed Ed Ackerson / Ashley Ackerson fan for years, but he's reinvented himself as an I-don't-know-what-exactly, equal parts Big Black, Ministry, Buzzcocks and the Archies, a stirred-in-a-fucking-fast-and-heavy-pot smoking with skittering rhythms, amazing melodies and buzzsaw guitars that'll chop your head off and serve it to you if you're not careful.

RIP Chris Dedrick of the Free Design

2010-08-10T10:11:00.000-07:00

(I just wanted to post this old interview I did with Chris Dedrick of the Free Design. It used to be on my old Beach Boys-and-Sunshine-Pop website the Smile Shop. Chris was a genius and one of my all time favorite songwriters and it is absolutely terrible that he's died at such a young age.)

When Matt Sullivan at Light in the Attic records contacted me about doing an interview with Chris Dedrick of the Free Design, I immediately leapt at the opportunity. "Great," I said to myself, "now's my chance to do the definitive Free Design interview, and ask him everything I've been meaning to ask." Of course, when my questions were all written out and sent, it amounted to about two pages of questions -- a daunting amount for anybody! So Mr. Dedrick will be answering them in installments -- hopefully when all is said and done, it will be the definitive Free Design interview!

Let's get the history stuff out of the way first: obviously with a musical father, you must've all sung together a lot growing up, but where'd you get the idea of starting a group with your family members? Had you played in other groups before starting your own, or was the Free Design your first experience with the group dynamic?

The Free Design was the first real group experience, other than playing in a jazz trio for a summer, or my dad's dance band in my high school days. I had only sung with Bruce and Sandy in church choir. When I attended the Manhattan School of Music, I was for the first time since childhood, in proximity to them; it was mostly Bruce's enthusiasm for folk music that pulled us together for some fun on weekends. We went home for Christmas; I wrote out a song in a three-voice arrangement — we sang it and began to see that we had an interesting sound "identity". That seemed to be the seed.

What kind of an impact did the 60s music scene have on you? What groups do you remember influencing the sound of the early albums?

Just about anything on the radio was going to have some influence. I particularly liked Motown music because it often showcased some very good arranging, had a great rhythmic feel, and the songs had real melodies. In general, melody writing was much more valued than it seems to be in large areas of pop music today. Think of Burt Bacharach, Laura Nyro, Simon and Garfunkel; everytime I see a movie or hear a radio show with some oldies, memories kick in and I realize that there is another song that kind of lives in my bank of references and influences.

You've covered a few Beatles songs along the way -- what did the Beatles mean to you as a group?

At first I couldn't see what all the fuss was about. Their first hit singles didn't excite or move me -- in fact they were like a minor irritation on the thick skin of my youthful artistic snobbery. Then I turned around and when I looked back they were coming out with Yesterday, Penny Lane, Eleanor Rigby...I started to love their music. At one point the Abbey Road album was my number one. They conceived (with help from people around them) of some great musical and lyrical statements, mixed in with cracked humor, appropriate goofing around, and constant change. I was hooked.

How did people perceive you in the 60s -- what other bands did you find yourselves lumped in with, and who in particular did you feel you fit in with? Did you have any contact with some of the "baroque pop" groups like the Left Banke or the Association?

We were simply perceived by too few people. What goes around comes around: we loved the Hi-Lo's, a great jazz vocal group, and it's been said that we were "dug" by the Association and the Singers Unlimited, both having Hi-Lo's roots. It's also been said that the Carpenters liked our stuff. Oh -- that's the next question.

Do you think groups like the Carpenters kind of took the Free Design sound to the bank, as it were? Is that frustrating or flattering?

Neither, really. Music-making is a constant cross-pollination and conversation, translation and fascination, appealing and stealing, re- using and abusing that is endlessly going on amongst everybody. Or on some rare occasion, it's a single act of almost divine inspiration -- still having to be expressed in sounds and languages made available via the above processes.

Did you consider yourselves avant garde or experimental, or were those tags that were applied more later as people went back and listened to your music?

Anyone who thinks they are avant garde is probably too stuck in intellect; music that lasts is usually not an experiment, but an experience. And tags should be endings, not descriptions. I'm grateful the Free Design music is still around and bringing some enjoyment to some people. The labels are just for fun.

"Kites are Fun" and a handful of other songs (and, well, the entire "Sing For Very Important People" album!) espouse a brilliantly naive and child-like worldview. What attracts you to themes like that?

"Beginner mind" as the Zen Bhuddists call it. "Only as a little child..." as Christians like to quote. I was always interested in the connection between what we called heaven and what we saw as earth. I didn't edit myself very much in those days (as I tend to do now) and for better or worse, no one else was editing me either. I wasn't far from being a kid when I wrote much of that material. We're all many- sided creatures -- dark side, light -- morose and funny. Sometimes we have observations or ideas that are worth expressing. The songs always say something about the songwriter, but not usually what you think they say. That pretty well takes care of what I can say to the next question (which regarded the "sardonic side" of the band -- ed.).

That's it for the moment. I'll dig in again soon. Hope these remarks are of some interest!

CD

Rush. Yeah, Rush. You wanna make something of it?

2010-07-08T13:57:00.001-07:00

(one more chapter of the "Camaro Rock" book -- and then you gotta buy the rest, dammit! Er, assuming it will ever be a) finished and b) published. Both of which are extreme wishful thinking.)

I like Rush a whole lot.

I realize that's an incredibly nerdy thing to admit, akin to saying you're a "really big fan" of, say, a theoretical physicist or an architectural draftsman, but there it is. My intro to Rush came via "Tom Sawyer" cranked top volume on a school bus in the mid-80s -- I wasn't what you'd call a huge fan (honestly, my musical taste ran more to Duran Duran) but there was definitely something to the group's odd, crystalline, mathematic brand of rock and roll power.

To begin with, Rush are Canadian. Now, say what you will about Canada and Canadian rock (and you will), there have been some awesome Canadian rockers over the years (Neil motherfucking Young, for one). Sure, the cliche is that Canadian rockers are polite and neatly-scrubbed and lack the danger of their American counterparts, which is at least partially borne out by reality (Glass Tiger, anybody?). But Rush -- despite their rep as mathrock nerds -- are, if nothing, completely impolite. They patently refuse to be pigeonholed into a genre (are they prog? Hard rock? Metal?), they write dense and incomprehensible songs, they don't give a flying how-do-you-do about the latest trends, they made pretentious concept albums when such things were outta favor, and they do what they want when they want. They're basically a gigantic middle finger to everything polite in rock. And yet, legions of teenagers -- from bemulleted dirtballs to nerdy bandgeeks to Joe American -- continue to adore them despite their affront to apparent good taste. To them, I say: good on ya.

Meanwhile, among music fans "with taste," the band is among rock's most despised. No other group in the history of the form (except maybe Lady Gaga) has inspired so much love-'em-or-hate-'em polarization. Few people just kind of like the group. You either love 'em or you despise them with a force unmatched. The focus of the group's ire (and affection!) is twofold -- most people's emotions center around drummer Neil Peart. He's the posterboy for overplaying -- his comically large drumset is adorned with a million drums ranging in size from gong to thimble, and he seldom lets a moment pass in music without throwing in an adornment or filligree of some kind. He's good, but his problem is (or seems to be) that he's too good.

The other issue people have with Rush is Geddy Lee's voice, and the issue they seem to have with him is that he sounds like a girl. Now, people have the same issue with Jon Anderson and Tiny Tim (for example) but while those guys sound pretty, Geddy's strange, adenoidal voice makes him sound like -- well, an alien girl, honestly. It's absolutely an acquired taste, like foie gras or beets -- you either learn to love it or it makes you wanna puke for the rest of your life.

Rush's lucky break came early on in their recording career, when original drummer John Rutsey left (due to diabetic complications, sadly) and was replaced by Peart. Rutsey was a serviceable hard rock drummer, and the group under his sticksmanship was a perfectly serviceable Zeppelin clone with very little to recommend it except bassist Geddy Lee's voice and Alex Lifeson's heavy guitar attack. Their first LP is heavy and generally okay but certainly no kind of masterpiece, and resembles nothing more than a Foghat LP -- second tier metal, with a decent crunch. Peart, on the other hand, is certainly distinctive. Playing twenty notes when one would probably do, accurate to the point of being a living drum machine, and writing a particularly high-falutin' brand of lyrical poetry, Peart gave the band an identity -- he pushed them into the realm of progressive rock while retaining the heavy-hitting smackdown of the first album. Suddenly, Rush were brainy rather than boneheaded. Suddenly, a new audience opened up for 'em -- camaro guys AND the math league loved 'em.

It's on "Fly By Night," the group's second LP, that they become RUSH, all caps, full signifier. The record contains their first radio-ready hit, the catchy and rather wonderful "Fly By Night" which positively soars under a terrific Alex Lifeson guitar hook. Elsewhere, the group veers between the busy, mathematic/architectural heavy rock that would eventually become its stock in trade ("Anthem," "Beneath, Between and Behind") and gentle hobbit-rock ("Rivendell.") "Caress of Steel," its followup, is another step in the right direction, and fans of the band will certainly enjoy the 20-minute epic "The Fountain of Lamneth" while acknowledging that it's still an unformed, nascent vision of what would eventually make the band a beloved entity.

"2112" was the group's first cult classic. Legions of Rush fans who favor their 70s work swear this is the group's apex, but I almost never listen to it. Side one is a futuristic multipart epic, and a far more insightful try at such than anything they'd yet attempted. It's heavy, goes a million places, and generally is a blast to listen to. I find the album's remainders, including nominal hit "Passage to Bangkok," to be only okay -- a bit unfocused, not as radio-ready as they should be, fussier than they are catchy. But millions swear by it, so, as they say, your mileage may vary.

"A Farewell To Kings" and "Hemispheres" find the group expanding their sound gradually, letting in different textures (keyboards! Every guitar under the sun!) and sharper songwriting -- everybody knows "Closer To The Heart" from "Farewell" and the grating-but-amusing "The Trees" from Hemispheres, and the "Cygnus X-1 Book 2" suite on the latter album is probably their best and sharpest sidelong epic. But suddenly on "Permanent Waves," in 1980, the group makes a sharp left turn that would define the group's sound for the next fifteen-odd years: the eventual dominance of Geddy Lee's synthesizer. Suddenly, the group isn't just a pseudo-cryptic mathrock/metal group -- suddenly you can add "New Wave" to that bloated descriptor. Suddenly, Rush sound like "the future." "Waves" is great -- Opener "Spirit of Radio" sounded like nothing else to that point with its burbling synth intro and the group's slam-bang riffery, Elsewhere "Freewill" is tense and taut, "Entre Nous" is optimistic and catchy and sparkles with synth brilliance, and "Natural Science" is a thrilling epic.

My favorite Rush record -- since I tend to favor their 80s pop work, despite its inconsistencies -- is the awesome, epic "Moving Pictures." Even people who hate Rush (most of my friends, in other words) will admit that "Tom Sawyer," the record's amazing, heavy, stone-cold-classic opener is one of the best album kickoffs in history. Geddy's keyboards begin to dominate the group's sound on the rest of the record, but its no less heavy or insightful because of them -- "Limelight" still powers forward on some of the group's best riffery, "YYZ" remains a classic mathrock instrumental, "Red Barchetta" showcases the group's ever-developing pop side perfectly. Not a dud song on the entire album.

Moving forward into the 80s, the group would never manage an album as consistent again. As Lee's keyboards began to dominate the albums (even over Lifeson's guitar attack), the group's songwriting continued to become more pop-influenced and slightly generic, and this would occasionally hobble their 80s output. They were writing sharp and focused -- they just occasionally forgot "memorable." "Signals" is almost entirely great -- "Subdivisions" is one of the group's best songs, awash with New Wavey keyboards, and "Analog Kid" finds the group propelling forward at an almost punk speed. From there, though, it's pick-and-choose (rule: the albums' openers are almost always their best track). "Grace Under Pressure" has "Distant Early Warning" and the remarkable, futuristic, pulsating "Red Sector A." "Power Windows" has "Big Money" and the catchy "Grand Designs." "Hold Your Fire" (the best of the 80s batch) has "Force Ten," the almost Police-like "Time Stand Still," and the gorgeous "Second Nature." And "Presto" has "Show Don't Tell" and the powerful "War Paint."

By the early 90s and "Roll Your Bones," you can tell Rush has become frustrated with being third-tier wuss-pop (and getting stick from their 70s fans for it). The keyboards slowly start to vanish, replaced with a tougher guitar attack, and the pop sensibility fades slowly over time. While "Bones" still has some catchy pop tunes -- "Dreamline" and the title track are my favorites, and the latter has a particularly funny "rap part" to make it relevant -- the follow-up, the shamefully underrated "Counterparts," features a toughened attack borne of the alt-rock explosion of the time. It wasn't so much Rush following trends as it was a gradual return to an earlier sound that better fit the tenor of the times. Or maybe the group just really liked Nirvana. Either way, tracks like "Stick It Out" and "Leave That Thing Alone" (no, this wasn't a sex-themed concept record) hit with a force the group hadn't mustered in years.

Since then, however, the group hasn't managed a consistently great record. 2007's "Snakes and Arrows" came close -- and thanks to a new audience from online games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero, it was their most popular record in a dog's age, too -- but it, like most of "Test For Echo" and "Vapor Trails," is marred by unmemorable songwriting and muddy sonics.

Basically, I like them despite the "taste issues." I think their best songs are terrific examples of smart, catchy hard-rock songwriting. I obviously don't mind a little bit of progginess or mathrock, I have no issue with Geddy's voice (I've learned to love it), and I've learned to overlook Peart's overplaying (by ignoring all but the heavy bits). Whatever you might say about 'em, you have to acknowledge the awesomeness of "Tom Sawyer." And if that's the group's legacy to the world, that is, frankly, enough.

Camaro Rock: I Listen So You Don't Have To

2010-07-08T10:34:00.001-07:00

(editor's note: This is the beginning of a book I'm thinking about writing. Originally threw it up over on the Record Room, my favorite music board, in bits and chunks, and thought I'd throw it up over here for comment as it progresses)

CLICK

Grey day, 1983. You and Randy and Todd, standing in your garage in your prom finery. Randy was rebellious and wore a pink bowtie, remember how Todd called him a fag and he punched Todd in the arm so hard he bruised? Remember how Randy got kicked in the shin later that night by his date 'cause he called her a skank? Good times.

CLICK

You and Sherri, 1982. Hell yeah. Sherri was hot, wasn't she? I heard she's a dental hygenist now, but doesn't matter. Back then she was smokin' -- the curly hair, the off-the-shoulder sweatshirt, the leather jacket with the Halen patch on the back. You're both smoking Marbs. Now you can't quit, and those things'll kill ya, but man, you looked cool.

CLICK

Smoking lounge, high school, 1983. You and Randy and Sherri, leaning up against the wall, looking like cool MFers, puffing on red box, feathered hair all 'round, Randy in a 'stache, leather jackets resplendent. Later that night you and Sherri would go all the way and you'd come super fast and she'd dump you the next day for Todd, and you wouldn't speak to that cocksucker for three years.

CLICK

Ahhh, there she is. Red 1977 Camaro. You polished that sucker until it glowed. You spent every Saturday underneath that thing with the little transistor radio blasting until Mrs. Nelson next door yelled out the front door and you flipped her the bird. That's the back seat where you and Sherri did it. That's the front seat where you and Todd and Randy smoked weed for the first time. Man, you wish you still had that car, don't you? Instead of the god-damn minivan your wife made you get for the kids? THEN Jeffrey at work would stop giving you shit for coming in half an hour late. You might even be able to slip the tongue to Julie in marketing. Shit. The Camaro.

This is you. Or someone you knew. The guy down the street. The chick with the locker two down from yours who used to front you cigs. The dude who used to buy you liquor. Whatever. You knew someone like this.

And if you lived during this time, you listened to the music he listened to.

Maybe you didn't like it. Maybe you were too busy listening to Elvis Costello or the Germs to give a shit, but you couldn't avoid it anyway. You heard "Point Of Know Return" when you were pumping gas down at the Esso. You heard "Don't Stop Believing" at prom when everybody you hated was out in the middle pumping their fists and you were sitting sullen in the corner wishing you were anywhere else and contemplating ways to get revenge by sending them porcelin dolls in the mail COD.

Or maybe you did. Maybe you spent your Friday nights down in your buddy Darren's basement drinking Jack and Coke and listening to Journey or Halen or Styx and talking about that awesome slutty chick who lived in the apartment building across the street who put out and staring at the poster of Farrah on his wall and thinking god dammit what I wouldn't do for a chick like that.

Either way, it was there. It was part of your life.

And right now, you are having a visceral reaction to it. You are either warmly nostalgic or halfway to the bathroom.

This thread, then, is for you, either way.

I've got a mission, see. I'm taking one for the team. I'm going to listen to all the touchstones of this genre of music -- call it "Camaro Rock" or "Arena Rock" or "Corporate Rock." Whatever you wanna call it, you know what I mean. And I'm going to write about it. This means I'm about to become intimately familiar with the ouvres of Journey. Boston. Foreigner. Styx. Kansas. Little River Band. And about twenty others you forgot about. Rest assured, I'm not going to forget about them. In fact, I'm going to listen to every album they ever put out, or at least a reasonable sampling. And I'm going to figure out why they're popular, why the guys with the mullets and the leather jackets liked 'em, and whether you should ever bother to let 'em grace your stereo.

You're welcome.

Think of it this way: If I do it, you don't have to. It's a mission from God. Or the other guy.

Whichever.

Kansas: Where's a tornado when you need one?

In the late-60s and early-70s, too-smart-for-their-own-damn-good British teens figured out something magical: they could parlay their love of classical music, jazz, and impressive instrumental chops into a style of music that not only wouldn't get them shunned by their peers, it actually stood a chance of getting them laid. This was Progressive Rock, shortened (though the name was the only thing that was ever shortened in that style of music) to "Prog."

Of course, too-smart-for-their-own-damn-good American teens wanted in. They, too, spent far too much time practicing their respective instruments in their childhood and they, too, wanted to turn that annoying practice time into actual genital contact. And so American Prog was born.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view and tolerance for such things) American Prog was devoid of some of the things that made British Prog so interesting -- namely whimsy, a uniquely British sense of mysticism (songs populated with Hobbits and faeries and the like), a medieval-obsessed reliance on archaic instruments like flutes and harpsichords and lutes and a genuine sense of forward-thinking experimentation. American prog bands didn't don foam-rubber costumes and prance around, in other words.

Instead, they added uniquely American qualities to the music -- influences from country and left-bank psych rock; a certain by-the-numbers, rural pop sensibility; bigger and bushier beards and a whole lot of "we take this seriously and so should you" attitude.

The prime practitioner of American prog was a band from Topeka named, pragmatically, Kansas. Formed out of several earlier proto-prog combos including Saratoga and White Clover, Kansas rose out of the pack for several reasons -- a decent songwriter in guitarist Kerry Livgren; an arena-ready belter in singer Steve Walsh; the ability to play very, very fast; a zippy violin player named Robby Steinhardt; and a series of very bushy beards indeed.

Their first two albums, the self-titled first and "Masque," have little to distinguish them apart from an obvious love of alternate time signatures and fast up-and-down scale-playing. Sound and fury, signifying nothing but a desire to signify something. It is only on "Song For America" that Livgren's songwriting begins to emerge as a contender. The ten-minute title track, while nowhere near as epic as one of Yes' sidelongs, features passages of notable power, and the melodies show signs of leaning towards memorability. Meanwhile, the band continues their lightning-fast up-and-down scales and the violinist saws away gamely. It's not a pretty sound by any means -- Dave Matthews would later hone it into a fine and hideous art -- but when married with Livgren's evermore potent melodies, it became a force to be reckoned with.

"Leftoverture" is the moment Livgren's songs become so epic and powerful that radio and American FM listeners couldn't ignore them anymore. "Carry On My Wayward Son" is certainly memorable, stuffed to bursting with great hooks and hard rockin' guitar and soaring harmonies. It sounded important. The lyrics portend some kind of yearning or searching, and American teens fell in line in droves. I'm searching too, they said. I want that peace when I'm done with my shift at the Wiener Barn! Unfortunately, the song also features the elements that make Kansas listening as agonizing as it is fascinating -- twinkly, superfast piano, semi-obvious boogie-rock guitar riffs and overearnest vocal wailing.

The rest of the album falls nicely in line behind "Carry On"'s mold. The band was slowly but surely abandoning their prog roots in favor of FM-ready rock songwriting and tunes like "What's On Your Mind" are far closer to Foghat and other bar-band classics than they are to Yes, despite the presence of hammond organ and round-the-bend time signature changes. Fortunately for prog fans, there's still epic, portentious stuff like the eight-minute "Magnum Opus" to accompany their dope-smoking-and-ripple-drinking reveries.

"Point Of Know Return," the follow-up, is actually the superior record, and if you want to own one Kansas record, this is the one. It contains two radio-ready smash hits, the keyboard-and-violin-driven title track (just try to get that keyboard lick out of your head. Go on, try. I dare you) and the morose but pretty funeral anthem "Dust In The Wind." The rest of the album is far less memorable but far less boogie-rock driven than "Leftoverture." Songs like "The Spider" and "Lightning's Hand" wind and weave with considerable prog chops. And "Portrait (He Knew)" actually sounds a little forward-thinking -- it's at least five years ahead of its time, sounding more like a mid-80s FM anthem than something from a late-70s prog record.

Unfortunately, that's where Kansas began to self-destruct. "Monolith," while beefing up the guitar sound and pulling back on the violin hackwork, contains not a single memorable song apart from the awful Queen pastiche "Stay Out Of Trouble," which is memorable only for being an embarassing attempt at marrying guitar beef with urban storytelling theatricality -- unfortunately, the band doesn't have the elan to pull it off. "Audio Visions," the last album by the original lineup, tries to add an even bigger layer of guitar crunch, sounding almost like a metal band in places. It has a few semi-memorable songs, including the Billy Joel-ish "Anything For You" and the hooky "Relentless." It has an equal number of embarassing missteps, like the baffling "Loner" which fails to rock, fails to groove and fails to not sound utterly laughable.

Guitarist Livgren, meanwhile, had long been balancing his born again Christianity with his life as a mid-america Prog rocker. He managed to convert bandmate Dave Hope, and it was this point that Steve Walsh, finally tired of the thin Christian metaphors stretched out across the last couple of records and, most likely, the crimp it put on his lifestyle, jumped ship. The band replaced him with Christian rocker John Elefante, and interestingly, it is at this point that the group actually becomes listenable for a couple of records -- though prog afficianados will find little to like in the group's beefy corp-rock sound.

"Vinyl Confessions" is Elefante's bow with the group, and right away, you can tell this ain't the Kansas you dug in the 70s. For one thing, Livgren's formerly oblique religious metaphors are pushed straight into the open. For another, the violin is virtually invisible. For yet another, the twirling keyboard arabesques take a back seat to a muscle-bound Journey-like corp rock guitar sound. The album is jam packed with radio-ready hooks. Tunes like "Right Away" and "Borderline" sound far more like Journey or even (at times) the Knack than they do 70s Kansas. Not to say Livgren's abandoned the Prog sound entirely -- "Windows" features his scale-heavy pop tune and sounds not unlike a "Know Return" outtake married to an overtly Christian lyric, and "Chasing Shadows" is an attempt to write a "Dust"-esque ballad. But mostly, you can see the Kansas of the 70s shattering apart amongst its grooves.

"Drastic Measures" is almost not a Kansas record at all -- the songwriting is dominated by Elefante, who sounds like he thinks he's either in Foreigner or the Tubes in equal measures, and Livgren's whirly-twirliness is pushed to the far background. The Christian lyrics are in full force, and the guitar sound is at the palm-mutiest it would ever get. It sounds like any mid-American corp-rock band -- and any hint of "Carry On" has been relegated to the dusty past. That said: it's really not a terrible record. "Everybody's My Friend" is a legitimately great pop song, with a magnificent hook and a deeply cynical lyric. "Fight Fire With Fire" is a great corp-rock anthem, and Livgren's equally sardonic "Mainstream" is funny and quite good. There's an odd New Wave sheen over the whole thing that's not common in records of this ilk, and it works both as a good CCM album and a great corp-rock one -- alas, fans of classic Kansas would find very little to like here.

Kansas broke up at this point, and when the band reconvened for "Power" and its follow up "The Spirit Of Things," they were literally an entirely different band. Led now by departed singer Steve Walsh, the group sounded exactly like every other corporate rock band of the mid 80s -- all their uniqueness had departed, and their reliance on power ballads ("All I Wanted" was a mid-decade hit) and generic chunka-chunka rock made them sound like a third-string Journey, four years after Journey themselves had become irrelevant. Kansas soon found themselves equally irrelevant, and the label dropped them soon after. There have been partial and complete reunions since, but nothing that managed to capture even a fragment of the meaty prog-rock sound that had propelled them to the top in the 70s.

If you want to dive into these waters -- and if you like British prog and don't have a total aversion to mid-america corporate rock-and-riff, you might want to at least get a toe wet -- you should head straight for "Point Of Know Return." That one album will give you a decent-sized taste of both the good and the ill of Kansas -- the epic, memorable songwriting and their occasionally tasteless overplaying, both in healthy-sized dollops. If your tolerance for superfast playing, violin virtuosity and strident singing is small then lay low and pray for a tornado.

Styx: The Great White Hope

(dediction: For Styx fan extraordinaire, Ray Puzey)

While Kansas were plying their trade in Topeka, a group of kids in Chicago were marrying what they learned from British prog and American boogie rock to a uniquely workin'-class aesthetic as native to the Second City as Kansas' heartland prog was to its region. Formed from the ashes of a group called the Tradewinds (headlining TONIGHT! down at the Best Western Pump-Room Lounge, get there early for the shrimp platter!), Styx had two weapons in its arsenal that put it ahead of the pack. First, multiple songwriters in Dennis De Young and James Young, both of whom knew their way around a hook. Second, De Young's dramatic, Broadway-ready singing voice, which, no matter what kind of song he was singing, sounded like he was auditioning for the touring company of "Jesus Christ Superstar" (which, unironically and expectedly, he'd later join). This, married with their image -- a bunch of guys from shop class, a guy from the Drama League and two of the Village People -- and their love of the concept album, that uniquely sixties-and-seventies conceit that made ordinary albums seem far more important/portentious/intelligent than they actually were, pushed Styx to the head of the prog-rock class fairly quickly.

Of course, it took two years for radio to notice -- after years of flogging their tunes in shitty clubs and high school dances, a song off their second album (the still-mostly-nascent "Styx II") called "Lady" began to get first regional then national airplay. "Lady" has everything that would eventually come to define the group: De Young's plaintive wail and over-enunciated delivery, loads and loads of stacked harmonies, a "gentle strummed part" contrasted with a "wicked rockin' part," a sense of drama and excitement, virtuoso playing, and an extreme sense of its own self-importance as a tune. It was the birth of "pomp-rock," an offshoot of prog that favored pompous heaviness and dramatic chest-beating over involved instrumental passages.

Styx were already 4 albums into their career by the time they signed to A&M and released "Equinox" (and honestly, apart from "Lady," there ain't much on those first four apart from some interesting garage boogie, some sub-par writing from De Young and the hint that better things were a-comin'). "Equinox" is the beginning of Styx as we know them -- it's got one dramatic, killer hit single ("Lorelei"), a couple almost-prog FM staples ("Suite Madame Blue" and "Light Up") and some filler that veers between dramatic, choir-practice wailing and gentle balladry ("Born For Adventure" for the former, "Lonely Child" for the latter). It's not a bad album -- but the band was missing one element that would propel them into the stratosphere.

When their guitarist, who had an unpronounceable last name (Curulewski -- try saying that ten times fast!), bailed after "Equinox," a hasty search to find a replacement turned up blonde wunderkind Tommy Shaw, who possessed genuine hard-rock chops and cred as well as an even more sharply-honed pop sensibility than De Young. His debut on "Crystal Ball" was the bouncy, Queen-like "Mademoiselle," an excellent little tune featuring some terrific harmonizing by DeYoung and a killer hook. Shaw's hard-rockin' sensibilities perfectly balanced De Young's dramatic wailing and Young's boogie-rockin' to create the perfect 3-headed Cerebrus of Camaro rock.

But it wasn't until "The Grand Illusion" that all the elements came together perfectly. If Styx can be said to have an "album for the ages," it is undoubtedly this one. Though not their best, it contains their most memorable hits, their most enduring FM chestnuts, and their most direct and focused playing. It's got just the right amount of De Young theatricality, Shaw guitar crunch and Young simplicity -- the perfect balance, which would tip too far one way or the other on all future releases. The first four tracks were all hits of one type or another. The title track is a brilliantly dramatic and powerful call-to-arms. "Fooling Yourself" is one of Shaw's best melodies and lyrics, and doesn't descend into rock cliche as some of his later tunes would. "Superstars" has a massive and powerful hook, beautifully sung by De Young. And "Come Sail Away" is the group's "Stairway To Heaven," a study in pompous light-and-dark with a brilliantly silly lyric (it's a boat metaphor -- wait, no, it's a spaceship!!). The album starts to fall apart with Young's "Miss America," and the second half has a tendency to flag ("Castle Walls" is dull, and "Grand Finale" is cheating, just a combo of all the songs up 'till that point), but the first half is memorable, classic, and, frankly, extremely good. It approaches the excellence of mid-period Queen without, alas, that group's winking and sly wit, but with a good deal of jovial, workin' class humor besides.

I actually prefer "Pieces Of Eight," the group's follow-up to "Illusion" -- I think it's a stronger, more consistent album, with higher highs and much less dull lows. It rocks harder and with more cred and conviction, whilst still maintaining the grandiosity that "Illusion" trafficks in so successfully. Everybody's writing sharply and cleverly, and while faulting Styx for overindulgence seems foolish (hell, the group's ABOUT overindulgence) this album contains far less of it than the others. The highlights are plenty -- Young's powerful, anthemic "Great White Hope," De Young's inspirational "I'm Okay" and his amazing Hobbit-rock mini-opera "Lords of the Ring," and Shaw's triumvirate of amazing rockers -- "Blue Collar Man," "Renegade" and the gorgeous, moving "Sing For The Day." The album only flags slightly at the very tail end, with the slightly limp balladry of "Pieces of Eight" and the pointless "Aku-Aku."

Unfortunately, it was all a slow, measurable slide downhill from there. "Cornerstone" shows the influence of limp soft-rock creeping into the group's sound, in the form of De Young's insistance on using ballad-ready electric piano wherever possible. That's not to say the album doesn't have some great moments -- "Borrowed Time" still rocks with conviction, and the bouncy "Why Me" has a kind of Supertrampy catchiness. But the album hinges entirely on "Babe," the massive runaway soft-rock hit -- and your love of the album will hinge on whether you like it or find it cloying and obnoxious. I lean towards the former, despite its obvious limpness and hit-grabbiness.

"Paradise Theater," of course, was a massive, runaway hit with a billion hit singles -- it comes off a bit desperate in retrospect, but of course the high points hit extremely high. It is literally impossible to argue with the awesomeness that is "The Best Of Times" -- that's De Young's best chorus ever, and his gorgeous, powerful balladry is in full effect. And Shaw's magnificently rockin' "Too Much Time On My Hands" is almost as perfect -- you know you do the "clap-clap" when it plays on the juke every single time. Don't pretend you don't. "AD 1928 / Rockin" The Paradise," too, is no more or less silly than any of their other "concept call-to-arms" tunes. Alas, there's much generic stuff here too -- "Nothing Ever Goes As Planned" is faint 'tramp ripoff, "Lonely People" is drab, and there's never been a more earnest, accurate but ultimately dry cocaine anthem as "Snowblind." Still, though, "Best of Times." You can't argue.

Alas, "Paradise Theater" was the group's last hurrah. "Mr. Roboto," the first single off the group's into-the-80s try, portended a changed group, and was a strange, intriguing blend of New Wave synth-plying and hard-rock pomposity. It sounded like nothing before and since and should/could have been the harbinger of a newly revitalized Styx. Alas, the entire rest of the album is nothing like this song. "Cold War" is one of Shaw's least realized and least catchy tunes, "Heavy Metal Poisoning" was silly and not the least bit metal. "Haven't We Been Here Before" was limp balladry, and only "Don't Let It End" was the least bit good.

After that, the group disbanded. A brief early-90s resurfacing gave us the "Edge Of The Century" album on which Shaw was absent -- and for some odd reason De Young's generic "Show Me The Way" became a first-Gulf-War anthem. A 00s resurfacing, this time with Shaw and Young in charge and minus De Young, gave us the bland "Cyclorama" album which had none of the elan of the earlier group, and in fact sounded like nothing so much as Nickelback.

(Mention should briefly be made of De Young's 2009 solo album "One Hundred Years From Now," which, if nothing else, sounds like Old Styx in most places, and contains a few great songs including the bouncy "This Time Next Year" which approaches the power of his mid-70s stuff. It's not all great -- it too frequently veers close to extreme cheese -- but it has definite moments.)

My recommendation: I'm a bit more forgiving of Styx than I should be, perhaps, but I think everybody should, if nothing else, own "Grand Illusion," "Pieces of Eight" and, if you're still not repulsed or freaked out by the pomposity and drama-kinging, "Paradise Theater." The first two are solid albums that border on magnificence, and the latter has "The Best Of Times," which you need and then need to hear in context.

Stone Temple Pilots and my strange relationship with grunge music

2010-06-02T09:51:00.000-07:00

Stone Temple Pilots, Self Titled
Atlantic Records

I've always been weirdly fascinated with grunge music, in the same way one gets fascinated with a plane crash or an open wound on one's arm: a strange mix of pleasure and brain-churning pain. As the first musical movement that I "didn't get" (I was all of 21 when it hit, and painfully out of step with my own demographic), I was absolutely hide-bound and determined to know everything there was to know about it -- even moreso than if I'd "gotten it," since I figured there was something I was missing.

The end result being I've probably heard more grunge music than most people who generally hate the stuff. And of course there wasn't anything I was missing -- grunge music was nothing more than heavy metal with somewhat more masculine trappings than hair metal, but, ultimately with worse songs. Hair metal was a combo of hard rock and bubblegum (meaning it had hooks); grunge thought it was Zeppelin but it was really Foghat (meaning it really didn't).

But as always happens when I explore a musical genre, I always come away from it liking more of it than I probably should. Weirdly, the stuff I like isn't the stuff most critics do. I hate Pearl Jam, for example. Po-faced, over-serious bullshit, the Grape Nuts of rock and roll (good for you, tastes like gravel). I can't stand Mudhoney, either, and Soundgarden actually sends me into spasms of anger. Especially "Black Hole Sun." God, I hate Black Hole Sun. And I still have mixed feelings about Nirvana -- I love "In Utero" but I still think "Nevermind" sounds like a hair metal album, and I notice all the cut-and-paste work Butch Vig did to clean it up to a radio-friendly sparkle.

No, the stuff I like from that genre is the stuff that doesn't pretend it's more important than it actually is. Alice In Chains, for example, seems well aware that it's a Camaro-metal band and makes really good but completely shallow Camaro-metal records for today's heschers. I have no problem with them because, oddly, they're good at what they do, even if what they do is kinda awful. But my favorite grunge group is the band I used to call the Strawberry Alarm Clock of the grunge scene (because they seemed like bandwagon-jumpers that accidentally did a better job of encapsulating the scene than the main practitioners) -- Stone Temple Pilots.

STP always seemed like they took themselves way less seriously than their compatriots. They wrote songs with massive, catchy hooks and seemed unabashed in their love of pop music. They switched gears mid-stream and made a record that sounded like it wanted to be T.Rex's "Electric Warrior" (1996's "Tiny Music", which still sounds completely left-field even today). Unlike 99.9% of the other grunge bands, they were a little bit sexy, which was something most of those bands were too busy bitching about how famous they were to comprehend the necessity of. Sure, they haven't ever been able to write a lyric to save their lives -- but does it even matter? I'd rather have total nonsense than Vedder's po-faced tripe.

Still, there was no reason a new STP album should be any good. Their last (2001's "Shangri-La Dee Da") was only okay, and Scott Weiland's last gig as lead singer of Slash's Velvet Revolver was a total bust -- not a single memorable song across two albums. Nevertheless, their brand-new self-titled album is kind of awesome anyway -- more hook-laden than anything they've yet done, still just as silly, but, oddly, still just as sexy and righteous. It sounds like grunge + bubblegum, which, if you see my previous paragraph about hair metal, kind of rights a couple wrongs.

Most interesting is Weiland's continuing fixation with glam rock; namely, early-to-mid-70s David Bowie, whom he channels quite effectively on the album's two best songs, "Hickory Dichotomy" which roils along on a spung Bowie cockney, and the positively astonishing "First Kiss On Mars" which is easily the best song the group's ever done, with a lovely melody and a mammoth hook.

Elsewhere, the band channels great hard-rock hooks into tightly-written songs that almost always resolve to righteously fist-pumping chorii. My favorite is "Take a Load Off" -- the shift from minor to major in the chorus is one of those delicious "sigh" moments that just automatically brings to mind summer-day drives under bright blue skies. "Hazy Daze" sports a wicked boogie-rock groove, while "Cinnamon" sounds like New Order filtered through the the Osmonds.

The band only stumbles a couple of times -- lead single "Between The Lines" sounds like an attempt to write an archetypal Stone Temple Pilots Hard Rock Single, which unfortunately means its a bit drab, and "Dare If You Dare" tries a little too hard at Beatle balladry, arriving somewhere at Klaatu territory.

In terms of ongoing grunge concerns (there ain't many left -- Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam, the newly-reunited Soundgarden), STP rests comfortably way at the top in terms of actually remaining both relevant and highly entertaining. "Stone Temple Pilots" is a terrific album -- fantastically heavy and surprisingly optimistic. Grunge, even though I hate you, you continue to amuse.

Rock and Roll: A Young Person's Game?

2010-05-25T12:37:00.000-07:00

My least favorite lyric in the history of rock music is "Hope I die before I get old" from the Who's "My Generation." Not because it's particularly bad -- in fact, it's great. I admire Pete Townshend's hell-with-it nihilism and despite the fact that he obviously didn't die, I don't doubt that he meant it at the time, at least inasmuch as he intended his old-self-euthanasia as a gigantic, idealistic "fuck you" to the 50s pre-boomer generation and their closed-minded attitudes. It's punk, sure.

No -- I hate it because of its contribution to armchair criticism, especially as regards the notion of rock and roll musicians aging.

It goes like this:

• An older rock musician does something. I don't care what it is -- he played the SuperBowl, say, or released a new album. Doesn't matter what, he just did something.

• Somewhere on the internet, there's a message board or comment thread started about this older rock star event.

• People comment that they thought it was pretty good / great / life-changing.

• Some yahoo -- usually followed by a chorus of imitators -- arrives and starts shouting about how much it sucked, demands that the old rock star "hang it up," and inevitably -- inevitably -- quotes that lyric. Especially if the old rock star is, in fact, Pete Townshend.

Basically, "Hope I Die..." is the Godwin's Law of the "old rock star discussion" -- it prevents coherent discussion of something I find both interesting and utterly false; namely, the notion that rock and roll music is a "young man's game," by allowing the user to just jump to a false conclusion -- that Townshend, as a vital arbiter of cool, has declared for all time what is true regarding the allowable age / continued functionality of rock stars.

I'm here to posit that nothing is a young man's game, really, and that age and avarice are at least equal to youth and enthusiasm, as they say, or at least should be.

There are myriad reasons why rock music is viewed as a young man's game. Let's examine them, shall we?

1. We still canonize the 60s, and in the 60s, when rock was still relatively young, there were no old rock musicians yet. Rock, in the 60s, was 100% viewed as "young people's music" because that was the demographic that was buying the stuff and making the stuff. Because the 60s was rock's formative decade in terms of attitudes, a lot of the attitudes that were born during it carry over to today.

2. Punk rock cemented it: old people suck. This was the first time there was a real serious culture-clash in rock music -- the "youth" rebelled against the "dinosaurs" (who, ironically, were far younger on average than I am now) and the youth won -- Yes disappeared from teh charts (they didn't really) and punk ruled the earf (it didn't really, but for the sake of argument).

3. The 80s were rough for the 60s musicians. I think the way some of the 60s musicians attempted to adapt to the changing climate of the 80s -- by gracelessly trying to update their sound to "fit in," by writing songs about being old as if they were already 80 years old when they were only, like, forty, by churning out awful, formulaic tripe -- effected how we view old people in rock in general. Even though it was only one batch of musicians from one particular era, IN one particular era, which, frankly, was rough for everybody for technological reasons -- even some younger rock bands didn't know what to do or where to turn once MTV and synth-pop hit.

4. Our society doesn't exactly value older people to begin with. It's not just in terms of rock music, is it? I mean, we live in a "pretty young people" culture where youth and beauty are valued far above wisdom and intellect. It makes absolute sense that rock music, as with all arts, would follow along. We just think old people suck in general.

Let's take it out of an artistic context altogether for a moment. A surgeon. Who would you trust more: a guy fresh out of medical school, wet behind the ears, hasn't really done a lot of surgery? Or the older guy who's been a resident for 30 years? You would so clearly trust the guy with a ton of experience under his belt because he's had a chance to hone his skills over the years. You wouldn't think the recent graduate was somehow "closer to the source" because he just got out of school, would you?

Why do we have the opposite notion for artists? Why would the years not hone and season their craft songwriting-wise? Why do we assume that their wet-behind-the-ears work is somehow closer to the source than the later stuff, when the later stuff is done with the benefit of years of experience in songwriting/production/whatever? Do we assume that passion will eventually give way to a sort of genial workmanship? Habits will form that will remove spontaneity? Is that a bad thing, always? We associate a sort of energy/vitality with young people -- does that always vanish with older people? What does that say about our general attitude about age -- are we saying that at a certain age people stop mattering?

Do you think maybe preconceived notions regarding these ideas colors how you view the work of older artists rather than the other way around?

I'd argue that it does. I'd argue that people are more likely to negatively view the work of old people based on their own set of preconceived notions that the work will necessarily be inferior simply because it is done by an older person. I think this frequently leads to the underrating of lots of art, not only music but film and visual art as well.

Let's examine, but let's take it out of the context of pop music for a second. Let's look at the art world. One of my favorite artists is pop artist Roy Lichtenstein. You know his stuff -- he's the guy with the newspaper dots who paints comic strips. Here's a painting done when he was young.

It's full of his typical bright, bold colors, and there's no question it has an energy and a vitality born of youthful hubris -- he was one of the first guys to take comic strips and drag them over into the fine arts arena. It's about as exciting as a painting can get -- it's an explosion, fergodsake, in bright primary colors. It's iconic, it's pop, it's the same kind of destruct-o-art that the Who trafficked in musically.

Now let's look at Lichtenstein when he's older.

It's a far less iconic or explosive work, but what it loses in vitality, it absolutely gains in subtlety. Instead of using comic art as a means in itself, he's taken techniques from comic art -- the newspaper dots, primary colors, bold "ligne clair" -- and applied them instead to a work far more influenced by the cubists (Braque, Picasso) in terms of form and composition. In other words: this ain't pop art, but isn't it damn interesting?

Does somebody want to argue that Beethoven's Ninth ("Ode To Joy") is somehow less good than his First because he was younger and more vital when he write his First?

Let's bring it back to pop music -- specifically Pete Townshend.

Here's Pete when he's younger.

Great song, no? It has a lot of really desirable qualities. It has energy, grit, honesty. Youthful vitality. Power. Potency. It is, however, quite simple -- the chord progression is repetitive, the melody unsubtle, the lyric quite simplistic and blunt, and the structure by no means complex.

Now let's look at Old Pete, from what I think is an exceptional record, the Who's "Endless Wire" from a couple years back:

It is amazing, but for wholly different reasons. That youthful energy and vitality that almost wholly informs "Can't Explain" is no longer present. It is replaced instead by a melodic and chordal complexity and subtlety -- listen to the way the melody/harmony/counter-melody winds itself around one chord on the chorus, especially on the lovely "snowflakes falling" part. The lyrics are tremendously subtle and poetic. And most interestingly, the song uses a synthesizer theme from an older song, "Baba O'Reilly," in an attempt to bridge this album thematically with "Lifehouse," the album "Baba" was intended for. It's a work, I think, of tremendous power, and while it isn't as immediate or in-your-face -- visceral -- much like the work of Older Lichtenstein, it's good for other reasons, no less interesting or vital reasons.

That's all very interesting.

Of course that's not true of every piece of music by an older person, any more than it's true that all young people have youthful energy and vitality -- I could point you to a couple of Dave Matthews albums from when the guy was young where he sounds about as youthful and energetic as the most feeble geriatric. But in terms of development, I think it can safely be said that:

- People's songwriting develops as they get older, and as it evolves, particular qualities are replaced by other qualities, no less desirable.

- Society has been basically trained to prize the earlier qualities because they value youth, almost cultishly

- Therefore, as people's music evolves and youthful qualities are replaced by other qualities, people falsely undervalue this music as they falsely believe that these other qualities are less desirable aesthetically.

What you will find if you visit a Who message board, say, or really any place where music is discussed, is a lot of people quoting "My Generation" rather than examining these qualities. And a lot of discussion about how Pete should "hang it up."

And that's really my least favorite thing about the general prejudice against older people -- the notion that not only are they undervalued, that they should "go away," stop making art and stop contributing to the general cultural landscape when they reach a certain age (probably 40) where their "youthful vitality" starts to fade.

Think about that: This is essentially saying that what these people are saying no longer matters at all, simply by dint of their calendar age. This is ignoring the fact that artists, in general, are compelled to make art -- that they're doing it because they must; not, as in the case of many 9-to-fivers, because they have to. You're basically saying "I don't care if you make art because you love to, I have ceased to find it interesting, so please retire and do not do the thing you love because it makes me uncomfortable/irritated."

That's bloody awful, isn't it? And yet, otherwise intelligent people say this all the time.

Frankly, and I know I'm in the vast minority, I find songwriters more interesting when they get older. I like seeing how they evolve their songwriting skills, and how experience and a new and more intelligent set of feelings, plus a sense of mortality, of course, inform their songwriting. I am especially finding this true of some the boomer artists, who have gone through the 80s growing pains and come out the other side still alive, still making music, and, interestingly, still growing and developing as artists and pushing boundaries, at least within the confines of their own stylistic limitations. I'm also finding that the artists who began in the 80s are having an easier time staying true to themselves, and as they age and develop they're still making albums absolutely as vital as their prime-era work (see: The Cure, et al).

You all know I hate preconceived notions about rock and roll music, right? I hate hang-ups and bullshit and prejudices that keep people from enjoying stuff, because all of those hang-ups and prejudices have to do 100% with the observer and not one jot with the art itself. And as an artist, that bothers me -- that people are approaching my art with a whole mess of preconceived notions that will prevent people from enjoying or even understanding or even listening to what I'm trying to say.

After all, I failed to die before I got old. And I'm getting older, and so are we all. So, as oldie George Michael said, listen without prejudice, and give the old people a chance, will ya?

It's like the last 20 years of my life didn't happen

2010-05-12T08:12:00.000-07:00

So first, watch this trailer for Rick Fuller's forthcoming documentary on First Avenue.

First off, a disclaimer: not to REMOTELY discredit what is obviously an excellent documentary that I have not seen yet. I know Rick Fuller is a great filmmaker, he's telling this from his point of view, and I'm sure it's going to be interesting, well-shot, well-edited and full of lots of great footage if you're a fan of that era or the various styles of music covered therein. And obviously there are lots of people IN the documentary and in the scene in general who are passionate about this music, and not to remotely discredit their passion.

It's just -- well, this.

Fauna, whom I wrote about yesterday, used to do a song called "Who Killed Flannel Rock?" The answer to the question is that nobody killed flannel rock. It keeps rising, zombie-like, from the grave every time anybody sits down in an editing suite or puts pen to paper to talk about First Avenue and what it "means" to "people." I have no problem with this on the surface: it's obvious to anybody who listens to music that punk rock and its offspring are an important thread in the development of rock music (duh) and that Minneapolis and First Avenue played an interesting and important part of that development (double-duh).

My problem is the notion that punk (and it's close buddy, alt-country) were the only things happening in that time.

Listen to Steve's voice over: He talks about how Jayhawks fans would sometimes listen to the Gear Daddies, and sometimes Gear Daddies fans would listen to the Jayhawks, and then there were Rifle Sport fans and whatever and whatever -- other punk rock bands I don't even know, really -- and then that's it, closed circle. Certainly everybody around at the time listened to some form of punk rock music because that's what the press wrote about lots and that's who the First Ave management loved and coddled and nurtured from the git-go, right?

Well, no.

I've never been a punk rock guy. I remember in college when I worked at WMMR (before there was a radio K) and the punk rock guys would sit in the room next to the control room and mouth the word "F-A-G" at me whenever I played Echo and the Bunnymen or whatever instead of the Descendants or Minor Threat. They hated me. They hated me so much, in fact, they actually formed a legit University group called the "I Hate Jon Hunt Fan Group" at the University of Minnesota because when I wrote for the Minnesota Daily, I ragged on punk music in my articles and columns just to piss them off.

You know why I did that? Because, to me at the time, punk rock was no kind of underground. They always set themselves up as this vital counterculture but to me, they seemed like a bunch of loudmouthed bullies who hated fags or people who looked like fags, and that sure wasn't discounted by the people I worked with. In other words: they were the popular kids within the counterculture. I'm sure, now that I'm older and wiser, that's absolutely untrue, or at least partially untrue, and I'm pretty sure I was unfair to punk at the time, just like they were unfair to me.

But I will say this: punk, in Minneapolis, is still no kind of underground, and this documentary proves it, because while trumpeting how Important! That! Stuff! Was! it completely ignores the existence of another scene that was happening parallel to punk that, I think, is ultimately just as important as an evolutionary thread and contains a lot of people you know if you're following local music. Did it have the sheer numbers? Packed Mainroom once a month? Maybe it didn't. But in terms of influence, it's a thread that started sometime in the mid-80s and continues unabated to this day, meaning that it self-perpetuated, meaning that as an influence it was probably just as important as punk rock.

I don't even know where it started, really, so I can't even quite exactly trace the history of it. I know that when I came into it, in about '89 or '90, it was already in an early full flower. I know that as a college kid madly in love with post-punk / psych groups like the Bunnymen or the Church and 60s psychedelic and garage records, it spoke directly to me in a way that punk never did. I know that groups like the 27 Various and the Blue Up! and the Funseekers and Something Fierce and the Sedgwicks and Fauna and the Hang-Ups weren't hung up on LOUDFASTRULES like the local punks were and actually gave a shit about things like melody and songwriting. I know that they looked cool and a little freaky and like maybe they bathed once in a while. I know that in retrospect, despite the retro trappings they wrapped themselves in, they were actually way more forward-looking than Soul Asylum were.

And I also know that, as an influence, that thread continues completely unabated to this day. A lot of the people who jumped into that scene during that time are still around, still doing stuff, still vital, not just reforming once every five years for a big mainroom show so everybody can pat themselves on the back about how cool they were back in the day but are actually still making new, forward-thinking records. It's not a closed circle, a "back when" thing, but a still-evolving, still alive thing, which is far more than I can say about flannel rock, which is the proverbial dead horse that's been flogged and flayed until its carcass is rotting and bleeding.

I'd love to try to trace things chronologically and thoroughly at some point to show how these bands sprung up, influenced the next generation, died out, reformed, evolved, joined up with the next generation, moved ahead, moved on. From the perspective of someone vaguely within the scene, it seemed to come in multiple waves. I'll try to draw up a loose outline, here, just so you can see what I mean. And please note: I will forget bands. Okay? Do not take offense if I momentarily forgot your band because, as you'll see, there are a lot of them.

PROTO-WAVE: This is the wave I know the least about, because it was a little before my time. I was still listening to Howard Jones and trying to make my hair go into a Flock of Seagulls poof. The only band I really know much about is The Dig, and I'm pretty sure there was an early version of the Blue Up! back then too, right? Someone needs to help me fill in the blanks for this stuff, 'cause I wasn't there.

FIRST WAVE: '86-ish through about '91 or '92, maybe '93 at the outset. This was bands like the 27 Various, the Funseekers, the Blue Up?, the Sedgwicks, and I know there were a bunch of others. This was where I started going to local shows, so again, there were tons more and I'd love to have someone fill in the gap.

SECOND WAVE: '92-ish through maybe '95-ish. This was where I jumped on. Bands included the later 27 Various, the Blue Up?, Colfax Abbey, Shapeshifter, Deep Shag, Polara, Fauna, Hovercraft/Shapeshifter, Green Machine, Overblue, the Romulans, and what my friend calls the "Elfin Magic Set" such as the Hang-Ups, Autumn Leaves, Dearly, Jim Ruiz etc. Lots of bands on the Prospective/Clean labels and then lots of bands associated with Minty Fresh.

THIRD WAVE: '96-ish through maybe '02-ish. Polara (still), Lunar 9, February, Myriad, the Makeshift, Landing Gear, Passage, Faux Jean, Ousia, Idle Hands, the Meg, 12 Rods, Bec Smith, Basement Apartment, I guess you could count Semisonic though they're kind of in a space of their own -- lots of others I'm forgetting. Astronaut wife probably represents the last burst of popularity of this particular scene, including as it did lots of people from these other bands -- the first scene "supergroup."

FOURTH WAVE: '03-ish through now. The Susstones bands like Two Harbors, Polara, Blue Sky Blackout (yes, that's us), Mercurial Rage, the Mood Swings, plus the still-very-vital Idle Hands, the Melismatics, the newly-regenerated Fauna, BNLX, StrangeLights, First Communion Afterparty, Sun In The Satellite, etc.

I know I'm forgetting a lot of bands, but that's still a pretty impressive list of groups, and that's more than 20 years worth of amazing music, and a long chain of influence that has continued unabated. So why do people keep forgetting about them? Why, whenever people write about First Avenue and the local scene, does this pop / psych / dream / whatever chain of groups constantly get forgotten about? I think there's several reasons.

1. The winners write the history. There were a few bands out of this group who flirted with national success -- Polara, certainly, Semisonic, definitely, plus groups like Shatterproof, Jim Ruiz, the Hang-Ups and others who came damn close -- but of course none of them got to where the Replacements and Husker Du and Soul Asylum and the Jayhawks and the Gear Daddies did, and so those groups and their friends and the people who worked with them and hung out with them and wrote about them -- i.e. the flannel rock set -- got to write the history, and I think a lotta those bands were so insular and close-circled they didn't even know that the pop scene kids existed. And if they did, they didn't much like 'em. I remember the look Tommy Stinson gave me when Shatterproof played Edge-Fest. Let's just say he didn't look happy we were there.

Of course, this is talking about sheer numbers popularity which isn't often a measure of a band's or scene's importance, see also: THE VELVET UNDERGROUND.

2. The music press likes to suckle at the teat of punk. It's so true, and has always been thus. If you read the content of this here blog, you know I'm agin' it for a lot of reasons. It's not always true -- I'd say one of the heights of this scene's popularity was when Simon-Peter Groebner or Danny Sigelman were writing about it and trumpeting the bands on Radio K. But it's mostly true.

3. For some reason, punk was far more documented than this scene. Which is odd, as there are so many media-geeks in our scene, but I don't think anybody ever filmed any of my old bands in action -- there's zero Deep Shag footage, zero Lunar 9 footage, zero Medication footage, almost no Shatterproof footage. I'm guessing I'm not alone, either, and I really have no idea why. I mean, I'd love it if there was a video out there of some packed-house Various/Shapeshifter/Deep Shag show from the early 90s or a Makeshift/Myriad/Lunar 9 show at Sursumcorda or something from the late 90s -- but that shit doesn't exist.

And a lot of our records are out of print, too -- the labels folded, or we got dumped from our major labels, and you just can't GET, say, a Hang-Ups retrospective, or "The Best Of Fauna." The 2nd Polara record, which I played two billion times, isn't on iTunes probably because Interscope doesn't see any reason for it to be. And it's not like reissue programs are imminent to allow people to rediscover this stuff or properly rank and rate it. And that's a god-damn shame.

4. The music press, and the scene in general, perpetually regenerates young and caters to the progressively younger folks. And if you combine numbers 1 through 3 with that fact, you get a music press and a music fandom who weren't aware of this stuff at all, and probably, thanks to #2, think it sucks anyway.

I have to disclaim right here: I am by no means saying that the punk/flannel scene wasnt important, okay? So before you blow up at me for not liking the Replacements enough, please understand: I love those bands. I really do. I was always a Husker Du guy over the 'Mats, mind, but no question I loved those bands lots. I would never denigrate the importance of that scene locally and nationally. Okay?

My point is just that there was other shit going on, and every few years the entire city has a bout of amnesia and it was like none of it happened at all and we (the people still in that scene) have to come along and remind them that yes, there is a pop scene in Minneapolis and yes, it's important and pretty popular and quite damn cool and you should probably, if you're a member of the local press, notice it and occasionally nod to it. And then two years later, you'll all forget about it again and the cycle will repeat itself. And I'll be here to remind you, promise.

NOTE: My friend Brian correctly points out that these documentaries/articles/whatever never, ever mention the electronic and dance music scenes either, which is even more ridiculous in a way, considering a) how many people WENT to dance music nights at First Ave, and b) I'm guessing that's how they made their money for a long time, moreso than flannel rock shows if you know what I mean. That's a topic for someone else's blog but let me just say: I totally hear ya, dance music scene, we're there too.

Why Fauna Should Matter To You

2010-05-10T07:40:00.000-07:00

For some reason, the reunion of early-90s Minneapolis noise/dream/psych-pop band Fauna last week at a special Sussed! night at Sauce did not cause the local press to go apeshit, and this bothers me. There should have been a City Pages cover story, a profile piece in VitaMN, and a twittersplosion the size of a small thermonuclear device. But there wasn't, and I need to fix this. Dear local press: Fauna should be super-important to you, and here's why.

The early 90s in Minneapolis saw the rise of a group of noisy, gloriously psychedelic bands, inspired by the shoegaze movement in the UK and the slow explosion of noisy indie-rock in America. Equally in love with their copies of My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless" LP and obscure garage-pop of the 60s, groups like Shapeshifter, Colfax Abbey, Hovercraft (and your author's own Deep Shag) and more began plying their trade in Minneapolis, charming the local press and attracting crowds of Brit-noise-obsessed fans.

To me, two of the very best bands of the scene, its Beatles and Stones if you will, were Polara and Fauna* -- which makes sense since Ed Ackerson and Tommy Roberts were production partners and shared common influences and enthusiasms. When I went to write a song for my band, Deep Shag (we were like the Gerry and the Pacemakers of the scene, or something, to continue the analogy), I always spent a half an hour with either the first Polara record or Fauna's awesome "Feral" first, just to get in the mood -- Polara had the melodies, the earth-shattering hooks, the sense of structure and exploration, while Fauna had a darkness, a kind of on-the-verge thing that made 'em a little scary. And both had slatherings of awesome, beautiful noise that turned my head in a different direction every time I heard 'em.

Apparently you can still order "Feral" direct from Twin Tone here: http://www.tt.net/trg/projects/89266.html

...and better, you can listen to sound samples there, so you, too, can see how amazing the record was in 30-second chunks. How powerful and driving "Songone" was, or what a monster hook lived at the center of "Psychic Repeater," or how noisy and freaky and scary "Who Killed Flannel Rock" was. It's both a gorgeous, sonically amazing record and one that should give you a vague sense of unease or queasiness in the best possible way, the same way a record like "Their Satanic Majesties Request" does.

And they were a hell of a live band, too. I remember playing a gig with them at the Red Eye Theater (I wanna say Shapeshifter were the other band? I just don't remember) and being so bowled over by the layers of ever-shifting guitar noise that I wondered whether I'd gotten extremely high and just forgotten about it. 'Cause it was that brain-shifting and cool, really, and it seemed effortless, almost tossed-off, which was what infuriated me -- I was trying so fucking hard to be cool, and Tommy just reeled that shit off like it was easy.

The last Fauna song I remember hearing was a track called "Ultraviolet." You know how people describe having that moment of epiphany while they're driving and listening to a song where they have to pull the car over because they're so astonished? That's what happened to me with "Ultraviolet." I heard the song on Radio K -- I think it appeared on a benefit CD that you can't get anymore, so I only ever heard it that one time. And I had to pull the car over and just listen. I kept saying "That's the best song Tommy's written, I can't wait until the next album."

But the next album never came. Instead, Tommy Roberts became Zachary Vex (power letters -- it makes sense, yo) and morphed into one of the foremost producers of guitar pedals in the world that I can't afford:

www.zvex.com

He'd taken his love of gorgeous noise and went practical with it. Which was awesome, and just about everybody I know swears by 'em, and it's so great to see him succeed to such a large degree with a self-run business that's that cool and legendary. But I missed Z-Vex the songwriter and Z-Vex the producer. And when I moved back to Minneapolis from Los Angeles and noticed that he was out and about and hanging out, I thought "I bet ten bucks he returns to the live arena at some point, and I wonder if I can get a smegging copy of "Ultraviolet" from him finally??**"

And I was right -- he's back, and Fauna's back, and really, fifteen years has been far too long. They've got a proper gig coming up in June, and this time I had better see some local press falling over themselves, because they were one of the most important bands in town at one point, and were certainly one of the two or three seminal members of a scene that largely defined Minneapolis in the 90s.

Got it?

*...and the Hang Ups were the Hollies, and there's naught wrong with that.

** I couldn't. He doesn't have it, and nobody else does either. Does anybody here have it? Can you send it to me? Please?

The Apples In Stereo, "Travellers In Space and Time"

2010-04-23T09:21:00.000-07:00

A few thoughts about the new Apples in Stereo LP, "Travellers In Space and Time."

- I have been singing the praises of disco-era Electric Light Orchestra for a long time. Conventional wisdom has the band starting to suck on "Discovery" (which snarky ex-band members refer to as "Disco Very" -- ha ha ha, assholes, you were the ones in the wide-collar suits, not us) but that's just leftover anti-disco sentiment bleeding through into a modern era that really should be beyond those prejudices, considering all the crap that's happened in the interim. Pre-"Discovery," ELO were a "headphone band," i.e. the kind of group you enjoyed whilst sitting on your beanbag chair with a bag of maui wowie and a pair of bulky 'phones, staring at the UFOs on their album covers and wishing our alien overlords would finally take over. On "Discovery" and "Time," you could either headphone 'em or dance to 'em, because they retained all the qualities (fiddly arrangements, nifty mixes, spacey ring-modulated vocals) that made 'em hi-fi geek fodder AND they inherited a highly passable four-on-the-floor. It sounds like music from the future, but a late-70s future -- imagine Gil Gerard as Buck Rogers boogie-ing in a flashy outer-space disco and you're halfway there. It's nifty stuff.

- Let's talk about pastiche music for a moment. Brief pause to define terms, from Wikipedia: A pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre that is a "hodge-podge" or an imitation. Rock and roll has always been about progress -- or at least, there's an element who would have you believe that rock music must always retain forward momentum. The music of NOW must sound like NOW and anything that sounds like THEN is pastiche and therefore less desirable or less interesting. Never mind that certain great rock songs -- "Come Together," say, or "Bohemian Rhapsody," to grab a couple randomly -- are basically pastiche. Never mind that ELO as a band basically trafficked in pastiche which at the time was called a pale Beatles imitation and now is recognized as forward thinking and entirely of its era. It's still seen as less desirable than music that sounds like TODAY (even though of course music of today is really just a series of influences filtered through modern technology or production techniques...but anyway).

I've always been quite forgiving of pastiche, obviously. To me, exploring a past or particular musical genre is just a vehicle for song delivery, and if you have the songs to back it up, how they're arranged -- if they feature instruments from a past style, like sitars or vintage synths -- is less important than whether the song is worth a great god-damn. In other words: if you have some killer hooks and great melodies, I don't care if you wrap your song in a chamber orchestra or tibetan throat singing. The key is the song.

- That all said, I have possibly underrated Apples In Stereo in the past because I didn't think they had the songs. To me, their albums sounded like exercises in genre exploration more than a collection of great songs. Sure, they occasionally produced excellent tunes -- I particularly loved "Signal In The Sky" off the Powerpuff Girls soundtrack, I played that over and over at the time -- and god knows Robert Schneider is revered as both a producer (Neutral Milk Hotel! Apples In Stereo!) and an outspoken proponent of cool music (The Smile-era Beach Boys! The Zombies!) but I've often found their stylistic imitation somewhat less good than the music they were imitating, which to me is a sign of unsuccessful pastiche.

- However, this new record? DOES NOT HAVE THAT PROBLEM. Basically, it sounds like the great lost ELO record from the "Discovery" / "Time" era, and drags in elements of other groups (Styx, Journey, the Cars, "Off The Wall"-era Michael Jackson) that I love, but manages to back that up with easily the best songs they've ever written. I mean, that's a tough one, trying to sound like unhip late-70s future-disco; you really have to have some magnificent songs to back that up, and if you're trying to create a dance groove, you also have to be totally comfortable with the elements of dragging people to the dance floor otherwise (I'm looking at you, BECK HANSON) you come off looking like a dilettante white boy, and that's bad.

But oh, the songs! There are six songs on here that should have been out-of-the-box #1 hits in some kind of alternate future where ELO's sound totally stuck and punk never happened. The best is "Hey, Elevator," which is every bit as good if not better than, say, an ELO dance classic like "Last Train To London" or "Shine A Little Love." But there's also "Dance Floor," "No One In The World," "Told You Once," "Nobody But You," and the left-field ballad hit "Wings Away," each one completely amazing, with unimpeachable melodies, fantastic hooks, totally plausible dance beats, and every detail in place from the vocoder backing vocals to the synth blips and bleeps. They're perfect. That's the only word for 'em. Successful pastiche? Yeah, when you actually manage to surpass the albums you're aping, I'd say that's successful.

Furthermore: even the filler tracks are great. "Dignified Dignitary" takes the riff from "Do Ya" and mutates it into a mod barnstormer. The bouncy "It's Alright" takes bits from sunshine pop and combines them with dancefloor breakdowns. And the brief, a capella "Strange Solar System" features Dalek harmonies singing one of the most sublime melodies I've yet heard this year. It's seriously fantastic.

- That all said, this album is so fucking fantastic it's making me think I might have underrated the Apples In Stereo's past work. I think I may have unfairly dismissed them as the Neutral Milk Hotel / Olivia Tremor Control's twee little brothers -- in fact, I know I did. And while I realize there isn't a precedence for this kind of disco/pop hybrid in their back catalog (it's far more 60s psych-pop based, if you don't know 'em), I wonder if I missed out on some melodies and hooks while pooh-poohing them. Once I'm done with this album, I'm gonna go back and re-listen and re-evaluate.

- Meantime, if you have any fondness for this type of music, or if you need some shit to get a party started, you need to check out this album pronto. It's the first album this year I can 100% wholeheartedly recommend.

A little bit about the new songs I've been writing

2010-04-16T08:12:00.000-07:00

Tonight at Voltage 2010 -- you're all going, aren't you? Of course you are. That is, the ones that live in Minneapolis, everybody else I will forgive this time -- you will hear three newish songs. They stand out a little bit from the heavy psych guitar crunge on our single, and people have definitely noticed and mentioned 'em to us. There's a reason for that.

See, I've always been entranced by John Hughes films from the 80s. It's not just the films themselves, which of course can be assailed from all kinds of critical perspectives but are, as they say in the Rutles, elevated from beta-potential films to the primary proponents of aeolian cadenzic musical form (ha) by the fact that they were essentially our lives in miniature. That is: they're how we wished our lives were, or a kind of capsule version of 'em with hollywood gloss and wittier dialog and less puking into toilets and hoping your parents wouldn't hear.

But for years and years and years, it has been so damn uncool to admit that you liked the music from that era, and most particularly the music from those films' soundtracks. It has slowly become okay to admit you like, say, Echo and the Bunnymen, but to actually admit their influence into your songwriting is still uncool. Take a look at reviews from some of the bands that do like, say, the Editors or White Lies or Sweden's awesome Mary Onettes: to a one, they're all about "derivative" and "aping the sounds of the 80s" or whatever. Do a record that sounds like it was cut in 1968 and you're FUCKING AWESOME (hello, MGMT!). Do a record that sounds like the self-titled Echo and the Bunnymen record, though, and you're "derivative."

I guess it's 'cause we're not far enough away from that era to think that stuff is "forward-thinking" instead of "backward-thinking," or something, because that's what everybody does -- channel their influences into their songwriting in one way or another. Nobody exists in a vaccuum. It's just down to which influences are cool at the moment.

So what I'm doing is very specific: I'm writing the soundtrack to an imaginary John Hughes film. THE BEST JOHN HUGHES FILM EVER. It exists only in my imagination (and yours, if you want it to!), but it stars everybody from those films that you love doing awesome stuff that you wanted them to do. And it has a prom in it. There is definitely a prom in it. And the soundtrack is all Blue Sky Blackout, but of course it has to have the characteristics of the music of that era which are, in my opinion:

- Overarching romanticism
- Heaping dollops of sexy melancholy
- Either brilliantly post-punk major chords or achingly post-punk minor chords
- Swank, low-sung vocals
- Dance beats, so Molly Ringwald can do the "white-girl sidestep"
- Chiming, soaring guitars and thunking, driving bass.

So far I've written three songs: "Don't It Drag You Down," which traffics in the kind of optimistic psychedelic that Echo and the Bunnymen did in their heyday, "Figurehead" which is a kind of post-punk angular disco song like an aggressive New Order or something, and "Breaking Windows," which sounds like the prom song that the Psychedelic Furs never wrote.

I have more either demoed or coming down the creative tube into my head. But just so you know what you're hearing tonight -- I thought I'd throw my manifesto out there.

New Blue Sky Blackout single!!

2010-04-13T09:00:00.000-07:00

For those of you keeping track (and still reading this blog!!) I have a new band, called Blue Sky Blackout. That's them above -- from left to right, Mykl Westbrooks, my former Landing Gear cronie on guitar, Christian Erickson of Astronaut Wife, Passage and Judgement of Paris on lead vocals, Brandon Dalida who was in Medication with me (and is currently also in our sister band Mercurial Rage), Tim Ritter who was in Astronaut Wife and the last incarnation of Lunar 9, Marc Iwanin, also from Medication, and yours truly.

We recorded a new 3-sided single, out now on Susstones, called "Clear From A Mile Away." Go now and get it! IT'S FREE. Just click the link and download!

Go now and get it!

Why Yacht Rock Is Good

2010-04-07T10:17:00.001-07:00

Okay, so with all this recent controversy about whether or not a Yacht Rock Night at King's Wine Bar is musically justified, I felt the time was right to lay down why exactly I like the stuff. Because I do genuinely like a lot of the music, divorced entirely from irony, and I have thought a great deal about why this music is so critically vilified, at least by a certain generation of music fans, and why it is, in fact, absolutely musically justifiable in many ways.

First off, to define terms. Yacht Rock is music from the late 70s characterized primarily by it's "smooth" sound, a combination of white-boy funk and soul and session professionalism. Heard the Doobie Brothers fronted by Michael McDonald doing "What A Fool Believes?" That's Yacht Rock.

Its recent resurgence in popularity comes from the folks behind "Yacht Rock," a Channel 101 web program that ran weekly a few years back but which has never once dipped in popularity since it was canceled. The guys behind the show -- J.D. Ryznar, Hunter Stair, "Hollywood" Steve Huey -- genuinely love this music while realizing also that there's an inherent hilarity to the rich-white-guy scene behind it. First, go watch all 11 episodes, then come back.

I'll wait.

It's entirely possible that after watching those that you might already have developed a new-found appreciation for the music contained within. Those episodes are some of the best/funniest stuff on the web, and those guys definitely give the stuff a humanity and humor that divorces it from your memories of overplay on FM radio and gives it a new context, which may be all you needed. You might have been a closet Yacht Rock fan all along and just didn't know it (that was true for me).

It's entirely possible, too, that after watching those episodes you simply said "but that stuff still sucks, any amount of funny shit doesn't conceal its absolute, objective suckiness." It is to you that I speak, now.

Any discussion of Yacht Rock, like any discussion of any critically reviled music (say, Phil Collins) has to start with why we DON'T like it, because there are so many layers to the revilement -- many of them knee-jerk and false, many of them "true" but only from a certain point of view -- that they have to be knocked down before we can build up anything new. So let's start knocking. And the easiest way to examine why Yacht Rock is so reviled is to take one particular part of the genre and examine it closer. So let's take a look at Michael McDonald.

So why do we hate Michael McDonald?

1. I mean, come on, LOOK AT THE GUY. Okay, really? Because why is he any more physically objectionable than any other prematurely-white-haired bearded guy, of which there are many in this world? In this picture, he's no different physically than, say, Carl Wilson from the Beach Boys or the beardy hipster downstairs listening to "Meriwether Post Pavilion." So let's just take out that particular complaint, because, c'mon, reviling someone based on how they look is pretty stupid, unless we're talking about the lead singer of Train.

2. I can't stand his voice, because it's adenoidal, soulless and awful. Okay, fair enough, that's a matter of taste, and I can't really tell you that your taste is wrong per se, but I will ask if you've ever gotten angry for people using that particular argument about why they don't like this guy here:

Or this guy here:

Because I know I have. Or not angry, but I've thought "but those guys have done so much great songwriting, I can't believe they're being reduced to just a nasal, adenoidal voice." I will also ask what your qualifier for "soulful" is? Because to the naked ear Michael McDonald sounds quite soulful in terms of his inflection and technique. Are you putting something behind the qualification of "soulful" i.e. genuine pain or a perception that there's "something deeper" that he lacks? In which case I'd say that's entirely subjective and based entirely on observation which may indeed be false -- unless you know Mike McDonald, and I bet you don't.

Furthermore, a lot of the things McDonald is vilified for vocally are things that are done by other 70s artists people like -- most of them black soul singers, who are definitely not vilified. I'd argue that a double standard is applied to McDonald's voice based partly on #1 and partly on just the knowledge that he's a white guy singing soul music, which makes him vilifiable, if that makes sense.

3. His music is slick and corporate, and he's a shill for the man. This all boils down to what "corporate" means exactly. By "corporate" do you mean "he's signed to a major label?" Because so were lots of other people including those two guys I showed you above, so I hope you don't mean that. What you probably mean is that his music sounds "jazzy" and extremely well-constructed, and you are trained to think these particular characteristics are anti-rock, which necessarily must be gritty and simplistic rather than slick and overconstructed. But, okay, does that mean that all jazz musicians are also "corporate?" Just certain ones? Is all jazz-inflected rock necessarily "corporate?" Were the Soft Machine corporate? Is being anti-rock a bad thing? Is all rock necessarily supposed to be blues-inflected instead, and if so, where does that leave, say, Pink Floyd, who were not necessarily blues-inflected and frequently very, very slick? Where does that leave someone like, say, Peter Gabriel or Robert Fripp who were also very very slick and anti-rock and who spent a great deal of time polishing their music in the studio but who you probably don't characterize as being "corporate" per se?

Just asking questions here. I'd argue that "corporate" says a lot more about your perception of a person or a scene rather than the actual person themselves, their drives, their musical influences, etc. It says a lot about several constructs you've learned to believe regarding punk rock, other musical styles, and who is "real" and who is "not real," and I'd argue these are just that -- constructs, not at all based on reality but how you've been taught to perceive reality. Again, unless you know Mike McDonald and can tell me you've had talks with him about how he was making purposely soulless music to make cash, which I bet you haven't. It's a rock-crit party-line, nothing more.

4. His songs suck. This is purely subjective. How do his songs suck? They're enormously well-played, frequently clever melodically, do unexpected things harmonically (that falsetto bit in "What A Fool Believes" comes sorta out of nowhere, and it gets up there), frequently have a rather interesting groove (listen to "How Do The Fools Survive" off "Minute By Minute" -- that's almost funk) and always have great, memorable hooks, which is why they're frequently hits. They're smart and don't play to a lowest common denominator despite being sort of universally liked across many demographic groups. And thirty years down the line, they're still getting played and argued about, a lot, moreso than certain lumpen blandments from the 70s and moreso than certain very "hip" artists. There are lots of characteristics of his songs that I'd argue strongly make them "good" or at least assailably bad. Really all this means is "I don't like the kind of music he plays," and fair enough.

5. He's bland. I dunno, I find his music rather exciting at times -- his work with the Doobies, his solo work (at least his early solo work, during the Yacht Rock era) and his guest spots with the Dan. Which of us is right? Who could ever know? How do you define "bland" exactly? See #3. Construct / opinion.

6. He's unip. And I'd argue this is probably the #1 reason for his critical revilement: the Doobie Brothers have never been hip, probably never will be hip. They're not avant garde particularly, they're not cool and they're not really trying to be. They're very talented, knowledgable, musically-talented white guys from LA playing slick, constructed, soulful music to make people happy, exactly the kind of people-pleasin' music that got people up in arms and caused punk to be invented in the first place. The problem is that I think hipsters, in particular, tend to believe that music that's unhip is also necessarily bad music, because they live in a little bubble and are really unable to see outside that bubble and take in the notion that perhaps music they're unfamiliar with (because it's unhip) might be interesting or good. Anyway, "hip" is the biggest and falsest construct of all.

The point is: most people don't really think much about WHY they don't like something. "It's not because it's unhip, it's because it sucks." I hear that a lot, and it annoys, because "sucks" is not a valid criticism. "That song has an awful melody, the arrangement is poorly-constructed, the lyrics are godawful" -- those are criticisms, and possibly valid ones, depending, but "sucks" is not.

So you're saying: "what is there to LIKE about Yacht Rock, if most of the reasons I didn't like it for so long are supposedly "invalid" according to you? Give me something I can actually hold onto, here, or I'm outta here and back to my Arcade Fire LPs."

Let's go group by group:

Steely Dan: As the Yacht Rock guys say, the main reason to like the Dan are their "dark, sarcastic" lyrics. My friend Chris DeCrocker and my friend Brian Mattson both correctly like to say that the Dan are more subversive than the Sex Pistols, and I tend to agree. Because the Sex Pistols marry their dark sarcasm to angry music, which is totally expected. You listen to the Pistols, you completely expect to hear songs about abortions and hating the Queen and shit. The Dan lull you with their brilliantly-constructed, studio-bound smooth jazz-rock and you expect shallow lyrics to go with it -- but what you get, instead, is some of the most abstract, angry lyrics of all time. Have a listen to "Time Out Of Mind," for example -- the music marries a disco beat to a sparse, smooth piano groove that's so spare it's barely there. Perfect for a lyric about love, or the joys of a great martini. Instead, they deliver a bitter, brutal song about heroin use. It's that kind of left turn that makes 'em so interesting. I mean, sure, their arrangements are fantastic, minimalistic and funky, and Donald Fagen's voice is a far better delivery mechanism than it's given credit for, and both Fagen and Becker are geniuses at getting the most out of the least groove-wise, but it's all about the dark sarcasm.

Hall and Oates: Despite being portrayed in Yacht Rock as the nemeses of all things smooth, Hall and Oates are actually some of the smoothest and best of the Yacht Rock crew. I'd argue that their greatest hits -- "Maneater," "I Can't Go For That," "Private Eyes," "One On One," "Sara Smile," "Kiss On My List" and about five others -- are some of the most enduring classics from the early 80s, and will continue to be beloved in the far future. Hall is a winning, likeable singer who neither has to force the soul nor become affected in any way to work perfectly, and Oates is...Oates, with one of the best rock 'staches ever. Their melodies are uniformly fantastic and near-perfect, the lyrics are neither stupid nor cliched and frequently fully clever, and their songs are always awesomely arranged. And as proved by a harpsichord-rock version of "Maneater" I did ten-ish years ago (ahead of the zeitgeist, thanks!), you can take their songs out of context and they still absolutely work as fantastic songs. Plus: much like the Bee Gees, try playing a Hall and Oates song at a party. Seriously, try it sometime. Watch your party INSTANTLY kick into gear.

The Doobies and Mike McDonald: I hit on this earlier, but let me also point out, as the Yacht Rock guys did, that there's some genuine grooves in these guys' music. There's a reason Warren G. sampled "I Keep Forgetting" for "Regulate" -- that song is genuinely funky and relies on a brilliant, rather genius keyboard groove.

Christopher Cross: I'm listening to Radiohead's "House of Cards" as I write this and I'm wondering why their keyboard-wash smoothness is okay, but something genuinely atmospheric, washy and weird and conversely beautiful in ALMOST EXACTLY THE SAME WAY like Cross' "Sailing" is not? Also great: his driving, conga-driven "Ride Like The Wind" which propels itself along on a nifty piano engine.

LOGGINS: It's hard to justify Loggins like I can with the Dan and McDonald because I *do* realize, believe me, how schlocky Loggins can get. I mean, there really isn't any justification for "Footloose" unless it really is about dismembering Jimmy Buffett fans like Yacht Rock #11 would have you believe, and "Danger Zone"'s slap bass is really some of the worst stuff ever. And yet...I'm a total sucker for "This Is It"'s slick grooves, and the moment where Loggins comes in with his gritty "Are you gonna wait for a sign" is genuinely nifty and not unpassionate. And "Keep The Fire"'s primal screams (ha) are pretty great too -- if you divorced that song from its cliche-ridden arrangement and schlocky lyrics I think it'd actually be a pretty phenomenal song with a magnificent and rather soaring hook.

Basically: so much of why so much music is reviled has more to do with the mindset of the listener, learned constructs of what is supposed to be good and what isn't, what's okay to like and what isn't, and subjective taste-based complaints that freqently have nothing to do with the music itself. Approach Yacht Rock with an open mind, listen to the songs as SONGS, and listen to the qualities that make some of it some of the best music ever (Dan! Dan!) and you might actually find yourself wearing a captain's hat at the next Yacht Rock night Jake Rudh hosts.

Like, er, me.

In which I argue that Christianity has a serious PR problem.

2010-03-19T09:51:00.000-07:00

I, the author of this blog, have a "faith" and a "belief in a higher power."

I've kept that purposely vague. What does that statement tell you about me? Not much -- it perhaps suggests that I see a great number of mysteries and unanswered questions in this vast, wide universe and that knowing I cannot possibly answer some of them, I therefore refuse to accept mankind as the highest order of intelligence in it. I haven't told you *which* higher power, for all you know it's this guy, and why not?

You probably don't have any prejudices about me -- LOTS of people have a vague, agnostic belief in a higher power. You might suspect I'm an AA member, because who the hell else uses the term "higher power?" But that's about it.

Now let me narrow a little bit. I now tell you that I am a "subscriber to a religion."

I'm still not telling you which one. But I bet you begin to develop some prejudices about me. You think, well, this is a guy who needs an "opiate," who probably doesn't like to free-think and prefers to kind of be told what to do, as part of a "mass," if you will. But not having told you which religion, you might think I'm part of one of the interesting religions, ones that have strong ties to, say, an ethnicity or cultural heritage, and so as part of your training to be sensitive, you'll kind of nod politely and acknowledge that deep heritage while at the same time thinking vaguely that I'm a little silly.

Now let me narrow it down a little bit more -- I am a "Christian."

Oh boy. Now what presuppositions have leapt into your head? Well, your first thought is probably that I'm a political and social conservative, right? Possibly a Tea Party member? I bet you go back and replay conversations you had with me to find clues that I'm trying to push my religion onto you, or signs that I displayed homophobic tendencies you didn't notice before but now stand out clear as day. I bet you start to question whether I'm intelligent at all. I mean seriously, who could believe that crap?

How do I know you probably think these things? Because I do it too. And I actually am a Christian, and I still do that. And I like to think I'm a pretty open-minded person generally, but you bet I have preconceived notions about Christians. I'm not proud of it, but I absolutely do, and I know I'm not alone.

Of course, if you actually know me, you know that none of those things are true. I'm about as liberal as you could possibly get. I voted Democrat in precisely every election I've been eligible to vote in, except the one where I voted for one Green Party candidate (and no, it wasn't Nader -- that wasn't my fault, I voted for Gore). I don't push my religion on anybody -- I have great respect for other people's religions and their atheism and agnosticism and prefer to let living my life according to my set of moral beliefs derived from my religion speak for itself. I'm an outspoken proponent of gay marriage ("proponent" means I'm fur it, not agin' it, in case you were wondering). And I'd like to think I'm smart. I'm probably not, but I can fake it pretty well.

But okay, it's this. Let's say you're on a message board or comment thread on the internet for something you like -- let's say it's "Avatar" for the sake of argument, since you've all seen that movie. You really like it, you can't wait to discuss it with people who also love it. But you get there, and it seems like everybody's being extremely negative. All you find is post after post of people ripping the movie to shreds, and talking at great length about how much they hate it and how awful it was and how James Cameron is destroying filmmaking for the rest of eternity. I thought this was a fan board? you think. Where are the fans?

Well, of course, the board membership is 40,000 (or something -- this is a hypothetical board, who the hell would join an Avatar message board anyway? Snork.) but the negative comments come from the same fifteen people over and over again. Why?

BECAUSE THEY'RE LOUD. It's true we have free speech in this country. But while everybody has a voice, from the largest to the smallest of us, the LOUDEST VOICES GET HEARD THE MOST. Not because they have the best argument or because they're the smartest, but simply by virtue that they're the loudest and they NEVER SHUT THE HELL UP.

So what it boils down to: Christianity has a major public relations problem, and that's because the LOUD SHOUTY PEOPLE are turning everybody the hell off of it.

Now, I am not going to talk down the Tea Party readers if, in fact, I have any. Well, okay, a little. I suspect I have one or two, but I know you're not the majority, so to you I will simply say this: I do not agree with you politically, but you absolutely have the right to believe whatever the hell you want to believe. I happen to think your political philosophy is the equivalent of this:

...but I would never say you don't have the right to believe what you believe. So go on and continue to do what you wanna do. I couldn't stop you even if I wanted to.

What I will say is this: CHRISTIANS AREN'T ALL LIKE THAT.

There are other Christians who have strong faith, who believe in the same tenets of that faith but somehow, MAGICALLY AND MIRACULOUSLY, are not led by that belief into things like homophobia (like posting "God Hates Fags" on Facebook), social injustice (like bludgeoning a health care bill to death), money-grubbing (or war profiteering!) or watching Fox News. In other words, we believe that the tenets of our faith (and those of Jesus H. Christ -- the "H" stands for "Horatio," in case you were wondering), encourage us towards things like conservation of resources, helping the less fortunate, making sure that there's general justice and fairness and that nobody gets dragged behind a truck for being a "fag".

Amazing, isn't it? That the same book could be read two such very different ways? And yet, it's true. Not all Christians are right-wing redneck idiots. Not all of them want to eliminate Thomas Jefferson from history books. Not all of them think Adam and Eve had pet dinosaurs. Not all of them stand in front of government buildings holding misspelt signs.

The problem is, there's kinda no way to get that message across.

I feel bad for Christianity as a whole, not that there's any governing body that gets together and represents "Christianity" (that would, of course, be impossible, as God would strike them down with a punishing tornado because some of them believed in having gay folks behind the pulpits! We all know that). There is no way for the churches who ARE, y'know, lefties, to not put too fine a point on it, or who are just maybe reasonable, non-virulent, non-hate-mongering folks who are of whatever political point of view, to get the message across that "Hey, we're not like those folks over there who promote a message of hate while carrying an American flag, a cross and a picture of Glen Beck."

Because they would get shouted down. Not because they're a minority -- I suspect they're probably quite a comfortable majority, though I have no poll numbers to back this up -- but because the other people SHOUT LOUDER. Because they're represented by people like Glen Beck or Rush Limbaugh, or the people of the Westboro Baptist Church -- people who use the press to basically SHOUT. They don't have the most intelligent or rational message -- you could rip 'em to shreds with a tiny bit of logic, even if you DID agree with their point of view generally -- they're just the loudest. The left fail when they try the tactics of the right -- they don't make good fearmongers, they can't really use hate or jingoism as weapons -- so they try to make smart arguments or use sarcasm, and that's not as loud a voice as someone yelling about how we're slowly turning into NAZI GERMANY because Obama wants health care for everybody in America and that the founding fathers wanted us to be a Christian Nation and that's the end of it.

So my only point is rather a sad, pathetic one: I know it's tough, but don't let THOSE PEOPLE (points to the right with thumb) make you think that EVERYBODY who calls themselves a Christian is either a) stupid or b) hateful or c) stupid. That's not as potent a message as "HOLY SHIT OUR COUNTRY IS GOING TO HELL" but it's an important one. Believe it or not, the aforemented Mr. Christ had a message of kindness, compassion and love -- it wasn't tucked in amongst a bunch of doggerel about how America is the best country evah, either, it was right out there in big red letters. Believe in Him, and be nice to other people. That was it. Super simple. The other stuff the hate-mongering Christians believe? It's bullshit. Or rather, it's what THEY believe, and I respect their ability to believe it, I just happen to believe myself that it's bullshit.

(Meanwhile, I'm recommending He get in touch with a good PR agency. I think I know one.)

SIDE NOTE: Interestingly, you could rewrite this article and substitute the word "Republican" for the word "Christian" and not change much else (except the bits about Jesus Christ -- maybe you wanna throw another name in there? Lincoln? Teddy Roosevelt?) and it would probably still be true. The only other group that's been as badly effected PR-wise from the rise of the Tea Party conservatives is Republicans. I know quite a few of them who are reasonable, intelligent people who believe in smaller government and such (supposedly the tenets of the Republican party! Believe it or not!) who wish their party didn't ALSO stand for gay-baiting, abortion-stopping, health-care-bill-killing and lots of other things.

Information Overload. Brain in Shut-Down Mode.

2010-03-03T10:34:00.000-08:00

I know your attention span is short, so I'll try to keep this brief. Hell, *my* attention span is just as short, so I may have no choice but to keep this brief. By the time I get to the end of this paragraph, I might have lost focus and moved onto other things, like looking at an article about Roger Ebert or reading my Twitter feed or seeing what's happening on Facebook or...

...nope, I'm still here. But it's seriously a wonder, because I've been feeling the SERIOUS crunch of information overload recently. In any given half-hour span, I'm probably connected to three social networks, my iTunes, whatever project I'm working on, a couple of articles I found on Google -- okay, I just seriously blanked out there. I'm not kidding. That's about how long I can focus without moving onto other things. That long. Long enough to compose one and a half paragraphs of this blog.

Which is why I haven't been blogging recently. I'm a member of at least one message board, check two others. I have a Twitter feed, I have a Facebook page with 600-plus people on it (I checked: all but TWO of whom I actually know). I have two emails I have to check on a regular basis, plus a phone that only rings anymore once in a blue moon, because everybody knows I won't answer it anyway. I have iTunes and an iPod that I use constantly to try to focus out the XM radio and the sound of the other people in my office talking and clicking and looking at THEIR Twitter feeds and Facebook pages and whatever else.

And that's AFTER peeling back, people. I don't have a cellphone anymore -- which sounds insane, because why wouldn't I have an iPhone?? It's an iPod and a phone and an internet browser ALL IN ONE and that means I could browse the net when I'm out walking or on my bike or WHATEVER! And I don't have cable television either, because I realized at some point that everything on television is either crap or something I can get in DVD box sets or on iTunes without commercials.

But that's still too much! But even if I eliminate, say, Twitter -- which I tried to do, but I couldn't even, because I was reminded that I have to market my band online and participate in the fifteen-hundred online conversations I'm part of every single day -- or Twitter AND Facebook -- which I'm not sure I *could* do, because now that I'm reconnected to every family member and school chum I've ever had, my absence would be like a slap in the face -- there's still a GIGANTIC BARRAGE OF DISTRACTING INFORMATION COMING AT ME.

Plus, it strikes me evermore that everything is completely transitory. There is no permanence anymore. Everything I do vanishes off into the ether. In my meatworld job as a Creative Director, I'm not designing physical stuff like book jackets or CD covers or whatever, I'm designing crap that sits in an imaginary fantasy world and the minute someone pulls the plug on it, everything vanishes into the ether. I write blog entries and Twitter posts -- and poof, there it goes off into an Info-Realm that no more exists than Wonderland. My music collection sits in a series of fingernail-sized microchips. My friendships exist as a series of bytes and blips and they're no less real than the meatworld one. Everything feels impermanent, plastic, digital, false.

The end result of this is that I spend MORE THAN HALF MY DAY tied to this damn computer taking in a CONSTANT STREAM OF UNENDING INFORMATION and my brain is fucking SICK OF IT. It is seriously rebelling. It is saying "shut this shit the fuck off NOW." But come on -- that's not possible, anymore, not if I wanna live and make money and be creative. I can't stand on the corner and hand out flyers for my band. I can't design with pens and paper. It doesn't work that way. I'm stuck here, and my brain is getting fuller and fuller and fuller and there's no end in sight.

I mean, even my little rebellious dike-plug efforts like tossing out my cell and getting rid of cable -- they can barely stem the flood. The flood is ever-coming. The flood is good. Embrace the flood. Without the flood, you would not exist.

And you know what ends up happening to me? What's happening to Millenials around the world, according to statistics -- a nostalgic yearning for simpler times. It's not so much that I wish it was 1979 anymore -- it's more that I wish it was 1979 in terms of the way my brain dealt with stuff. I wish I had a rotary-dial telephone and a record player with vinyl records and a library full of REAL BOOKS and an encyclopedia and four channels of TV that came via an antenna and my bike and the great outdoors and *that's it*. I mean, if I want information, I've got it -- it's called "a library." But it has one input PER TIME. My eyes, a book. My options are "pick it up" and "put it down." It's binary information collection -- "on" or "off," not "off" or "HOW MANY FUCKING CHANNELS DO YOU WANT AT ONE TIME YOU SEXY LITTLE MONKEY?"

It's not that I wish I was young again. I just wish there was less input. Does that make sense? Are you even still with me?

So the weird-ass thing I've been doing recently is listening to ELO. Why? What does that have to do with the price of tea in china? Well, a couple things. For one thing, it reminds me of "those days." Which for some reason I find very zen. It puts my brain back in 1979 mode and for a few seconds I can pretend it's not full of knowledge about who SNOOKI FUCKING SNICKERS IS. For another, the album covers -- that's the future I wanted, dammit. I wanted neon and bright colors and airbrushing, NOT the apple white-plastic-and-cathode-ray-tube-future we actually got. For yet another, I can pretend I'm listening to it on an 8-track and not on my super-impermanent iPod that risks getting wiped at any second.

So what the hell do we do? HOW DO WE RECLAIM OUR BRAINS FROM THIS BARRAGE OF BULLSHIT WITHOUT SHUTTING OFF THE INTERNET ENTIRELY LIKE NEO-LUDDITE IDIOTS?

I'm totally open to suggestions, here.

Eight Hundred Record Reviews

2009-10-23T11:44:00.000-07:00

The Flaming Lips, Embryonic

I could use this review as a vehicle for my rap about how the Flaming Lips are really just Phish for hipsters (nonsensical lyrics meet an overweening sense of whimsy, rabid fan followings, silly costumes on stage, too many drugs, records that fail to capture their live sound) but I won't, considering this record actually decimates that reduction by being a) not very whimsical, b) fucking strange, and c) actually important (unlike the most recent Phish record, which is a gigantic yawn). To get it out of the way: yes, it sounds exactly like Can. I mean, honestly, go find a copy of "Tago Mago" and then play this next to it -- it's so clear that Messrs. Coyne and Co. spent a LOT of time recently listening to the way the solid, robotic, polyrhythmic drumming of Jaki Leibzeit nails down the crazy frippery of the rest of the band, and virtually duplicated it across at least half of this record. But that's not a bad thing, really -- if you're gonna pick a band to rip off, definitely pick one that harnesses wild mercury in a live setting, because it's gonna make you at least try to do that yourself. Sure, there's still a lotta bullshit lyrics about turning into a frog or whatever, the band hasn't lost their occasionally vomit-inducing sense of cute, but unlike their last few, this one actually sounds sorta dangerous and weird, which renders it less Nickelodeon and more Adult Swim, if that makes any sense. In other words: they're still a cartoon, but a far more interesting, darker, weirder one with tits. A-, with the possibility of a long-term upgrade/downgrade.

Echo and the Bunnymen, The Fountain

On which the Bunnymen, after years spent churning out slight, disposable, unmemorable Bunnymen-by-numbers, actually discover that they remember how to write magnificent pop songs, and turn out a record that sounds like nothing so much as Echo and the Bunnymen just after their mid-80s prime, updated with some slightly crispy modern production. The guitars jangle and soar like you want 'em to, Ian McCulloch sings in his one-foot-from-the-grave cigarette rasp, and the hooks drill their way into your fucking skull and stay there. "The Fountain" contains one absolutely, staggeringly perfect song, just like their mid-80s highlights did -- I DEFY YOU, mid-80s-rock-fan, not to fall ass-over-teacup in love with "Everlasting Neverendless." It is scientifically impossible: the hook's too strong, the performance too perfect, the guitar playing too crystalline. The album's full of stuff appraching that, too -- "Shroud of Turin," lead-off single "Think I Need It Too," the title track, all amazing. Best of all, they sound alive, like the young, hungry, in-love-with-themselves punks they were in the early 80s, full of their own talent and the power of epic pop music. Dunno what's revitalized the band after years of sounding tired and worn-out and half-drunk, but here's hoping they don't lose that elusive spark too soon. Solid B.

Tokio Hotel, Humanoid

The weirdest record I picked up recently, if only for the fact that it's something engineered solely to appeal to the kids, and as a nearly-40-year-old record geek I firmly, absolutely do not understand WTF is going on here on so many levels. Tokio Hotel look like creepy fratkid B-boy raperock douchebags EXCEPT the lead singer, who looks like fucking Pete Burns from Dead or Alive. Gothy teenage girls love him, as you'd figure, but he seriously looks like he was built from spare parts from dead mid-80s transvestites. The band play music that sounds like a cross between the Jonas Brothers, Depeche Mode and Metallica (seriously) and everything is whipped around with SLATHERINGS of autotune, the way shit is anymore, but so much that you notice it. Oh yeah, did I mention they're from Germany? They'd almost have to be, they're so batshit inexplicable. And yet, I do not hate it, not at all. I find it far more appealing than 80% of generic, faceless indie rock solely on the basis that at least it is not generic or faceless -- it is fuckhead insane and, like, some of the worst, weirdest, wrongest stuff from the 80s condensed into one fucked-up little package, but it is not generic. Also, it is catchy as shit: lead-off single "Automatic" does some of the same stuff the last Jonas record was trying for, i.e. giant hooks and defiantly wussy, emotive vocals, and it digs deep, for sure, and doesn't sound like anything else on grown-up radio at all, though not a million miles off from some of the Disney camp on mescaline. Frankly, not being twelve years old, I'm not supposed to get it, and that's kinda the way it's supposed to be with this stuff. I have to whip this one a C+ on the basis of my inability to snap to, but I bet I listen to it more than I probably should.

Kid Cudi, Man On The Moon

Rap music has been stagnant stagnant stagnant STAGNANT for the last, what, eight years? When's the last time you can remember hearing a rap single and going "Holy shit, what the fucking fuck was that?" Was it maybe Outkast? I know I've had my ear to the ground with under- and over-ground rap, and haven't heard a single thing in years that's made me prick up my ears and go "okay, now this is different." If anything, rap sounds like it's moving backwards, and while love of vintage R&B is my thing, too, it's nice to hear something like this Kid Cudi record, which does sound like nothing else, so much so that rap hardcores are declaring it "not rap." Scratch that, it doesn't sound like nothing else -- it sounds like if you took Kanye's "808 and Heartbreak" and peeled off the autotune. This guy is singing his flow, which is what's causing hip-hop nerds to blanch (probably because most of 'em can't sing). It's nifty, though -- he's not the best singer, but who gives a shit? Just hearing modulating pitch in a flow is, as you'd figure, smooth. Also, he totally gets what's happening in nerdy white-guy electro rock in the way that Grandmaster Flash was digging New Order, and thus has MGMT and their ilk providing intriguing tracks to back up his interesting delivery. The whole thing is great -- and occasionally approaches fantastic pop music, as on "Soundtrack 2 My Life," or the gorgeous "Up Up & Away." When's the last time you called a rap song "gorgeous?" I mean, fuck yeah. It's not perfect by any means, but at last, a surge forward. A-.

Kiss, Sonic Boom and Ace Frehley, Anomaly

Okay, first off, to get this out of the way: fuck you if you don't like Kiss. Okay? You can take your high and mighty platitudes about how this stuff is just juvenile, second-rate, amped-up cartoon bullshit and tell me what rock and roll is supposed to be, if not exactly that. Right? I mean, sure, we can pretend we'd rather be listening to early-70s Van Morrison records (and some days we would), but if you want a distillation of the music of Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley -- simple to a man, cartoon bullshit to a song, juvenile DEFIANTLY -- you can look straight to Kiss, who manage to take that, package it up nice and neat in some awesome gift-wrap, and shove it straight up your fat, Chicago-music-critic ass.

Okay, that out of the way, we are talking about Kiss here, so even within the framework of that, removing "Kiss suck anyway" from the equation, there is an extreme variance in quality across their output. So where does Sonic Boom stack up, Gene and Paul's insistance that this stuff is "as good as Rock and Roll Over" aside (very aside -- they've been saying that about every album since "Creatures of the Night" in 1980)?

Good news: Sonic Boom does not suck. It's nowhere near perfect, it occasionally veers into generic mid-80s territory, the band (while finally sounding like an actual band rather than an aggregate of session jerks) can occasionally regress to the lowest common denominator arrangement-wise -- but it does not suck. Best thing: while Paul Stanley is still writing songs that sound like Def Leppard outtakes (which isn't a bad thing, given the Lep's hook-to-dud ratio), Gene Simmons is 100% revitalized and writing at the top of his game. "Russian Roulette," "Nobody's Perfect," "Hot and Cold" and "I'm An Animal" are all on a par with the Demon's mid-70s trashrock classics, not a hint of grunge or death-metal or rap amongst 'em. If only for that, the album would be guaranteed non-suck status, but even though he's still in cheeseball mode, Paul Stanley whips out a few great singles -- "Modern Day Delilah" should charm all but the most cynical curmudgeon -- and even new guy Tommy Thayer manages a great showpiece, "Lightning Strikes," cannily drawing on his predecessor's love of the electrical.

Speaking of Space Ace, he's got a new record out, too, and how does that fare in the Frehley continuum between his magnificent 1978 solo LP and his mediocre 80s comet output? Well, the good news continues: his album doesn't suck, either. The axeman's in far heavier mode than his bubblemetal compatriots-in-arms, though, and he's not holding back any punches. "Foxy and Free," "Outer Space" and the mega-epic guitarbastard asskicker "Genghis Khan" all hit super-hard the way you want 'em to. He even finds another glam-era single to update -- the Sweet's "Fox On The Run," which he actually manages to better, much like he did in '78 with "New York Groove."

I will concede, even being a rabid fan, that neither album is remotely perfect -- but I'm still giving "Sonic Boom" a solid B, and Ace a B-.

Omnibus Blog Post #3: Wal Mart vs. The Music Industry

2009-09-02T07:31:00.000-07:00

Let me begin this one with a brief disclaimer: Wal-Mart is evil. I am fully aware of their loathsome, unconscionable business practices. I know that they destroy small towns, suck the soul and life out of rural America, and have killed the idea of a central downtown business district around which a community grows, thrives, and evolves. They're awful. They're cheap and nasty. And they smell.

I offer this disclaimer because I'm about to use words like "smart" and "sharp" to describe a particular segment of Wal-Mart's business, and I don't want the comments to be filled with exhortations about Wal-Mart's suckiness. I know they suck, I promise: they suck. (That said, if anybody here hasn't shopped there for, like, drapes, or towels, or Three Wolf Moon T-Shirts, let them step forward. Nobody? Uh huh.)

That all having been said: their music division is "smart" and "sharp."

When Kiss announced a couple months ago that their latest album, "Sonic Boom," was going to be released exclusively by Wal-Mart, the Usual Suspects amongst my friends objected. "Oh, that's such a sell-out move," they said. Of course I raised the objection that signing in blood to, say, Warner Brothers or Sony was hardly the heart and soul of indie, but there's something so un-rock-and-roll about putting out your record at Wal-Mart. It's like painting a glorious fresco and hanging it at the 7-11 store down the block.

But consider these facts:

- AC/DC put out their latest record as a Wal-Mart exclusive. Fans crowed -- but somehow, miraculously, the album sold better than any AC/DC record had since, like, 1980. I believe, though I'm too lazy to open a new browser window, that it actually set sales records of some kind. It might have even been one of the best sellers this year. Anyway, it sold, which, for a band like AC/DC, is kind of miraculous.

- Journey put out their last record as a Wal-Mart exclusive. They have a lead singer they found on YouTube. He's from the Philippines. Despite the fact that he probably sings a far cry better than Steve Perry does these days, those are two MAJOR strikes against them where fans of the classic lineup are concerned. Yet, against all odds, it sold. It went platinum. It was in the top 20 for, like, SEVERAL MONTHS. When's the last time a Journey record sold more than copies to the band's dentist?

- Across the parking lot, Prince's Target-only album debuted at #2 on the charts, whilst Paul McCartney's Starbucks-only album debuted top 10.

- And of course, THE EAGLES. I need only say that -- "The Eagles." I mean, it's no miracle that their album sold bucketloads -- they're the fucking Eagles, everybody and their mom like the Eagles. But it, too, was a Wal-Mart exclusive.

See, the odd thing about this whole sales glut Wal-Mart exclusive thing is that, SUPPOSEDLY, the whole "baby-boomer-and-70s-music" thing was over. Dead in the water. I think I started thinking it was dead when ELO put out a record in 2000 that I would call "pretty damn good," and it sold, like, ONE COPY or something. Nobody, including me, bought it. But this is ELO we're talking about! Chart-toppers in the 70s, and led by Jeff Lynne, who produced the Beatles and was a Traveling Wilbury, and nobody bought it. According to the record industry, Nobody Was Buying Records By Or For Old People Anymore. It was all about marketing to The Kids, who were the only ones Still Buying Records.

But somehow, weirdly, Wal-Mart figured out that it wasn't true. The problem wasn't that old people and old people music fans weren't buying records. The problem was that they weren't being marketed to properly. Wal-Mart, if nothing else, understands marketing. They correctly gleaned that the Mainstream Record Industry sucked donkey balls when it came to marketing. The Mainstream Record Industry, you see, knows how to sell one thing: pretty people. It knows how to sell them to one group, too: other pretty people. And that's it. When it comes to marketing a band who have fuzzy grey hair and beards and a new lead singer they found on the internet -- they go blank and start shuffling their feat and sweating.

But Wal-Mart figured out a couple things:

1. People who like bands from the 70s still like those bands, for the most part.

2. People who like those bands either don't know or don't really care that they have new lead singers, or other weird young members that look like the original members' illegitimate children. They simply like those bands, full stop.

3. People who like those bands don't really follow them, like on the internet or in Rolling Stone, but they are still open to buying shit by those bands if they happen across them on, say, an endcap in a Wal-Mart store. Or in a Sunday circular. Or whatever.

4. Those people, first and foremost, shop at Wal-Mart.

Somehow those simple, easy-to-understand truths eluded the brilliant businessmen in the Mainstream Record Industry for ages, and someone at Wal-Mart saw an opportunity to metaphorically close another small town down, and leapt on it. And created a brilliant business model for the record industry which goes like this:

IF YOU CAN FIND YOUR AUDIENCE, YOU CAN SELL TO THEM.

Which is brilliant and simple and elegant, if you think about it. I mean, you're at Wal-Mart buying some paint or whatever, and you happen to notice that Foreigner have a new album out. Shit, you love Foreigner, remember how you made out with Susanne White at the dance in 1979? Okay, it's only 9 bucks and it's on the endcap on the way out of the store, why the hell wouldn't you pick it up? Or to upscale the example for you: you're at Starbucks buying a double soy decaf vanilla latte on your way to work, and there's a rack of CD's and you notice that hey! Paul McCartney from the Beatles has a new record out! And again, it's only 9 bucks, low risk investment, why the hell wouldn't you pick it up?

IT'S RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF YOU, RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE. It's not on the internet. It's not even in an electronics store. It's where you buy your paint. It's the same business model that worked in the 50s and 60s and 70s -- do you remember the record section of your local grocery store? I sure do! -- but somehow was totally neglected during the subsequent decades.

And here's the thing: if you're in a band, why the hell wouldn't you want to sell records? That's the thing that baffles me when people cry "sellout." It's like -- I'm releasing a record. What's my goal? If my goal isn't "to make that record heard by as many people as I possibly can," why don't I just make it a free download or put it on MySpace or just hand out cassettes to my friends? If that is my goal, why wouldn't I go with the people that can sell as many copies as possible directly to my target audience, whoever that may be?

Finally: the one thing I'm leaving hanging over this discussion is that target market. In reading this article, you're making assumptions all over the place about the people that shop at Wal-Mart. You're thinking they're a) rural, b) probably not educated, c) probably lower-middle-class-to-lower-class, and d) unspokenly, you're thinking they're white trash. And, y'know, you're probably right, in the same way you can make assumptions about who shops at Target, or Starbucks, in the same way you can classify large groups of people based on demographic means. But -- who has ever been the audience for rock and roll music? If you think rock music was invented/played by/for educated intellectuals, you need to go back to your Elvis and Jerry Lee records, 'cause it wasn't never no-how. There has always been a rural contingent to rock and roll, and they don't all listen to Daughtry, either. Heck, some of 'em, it turns out, listen to Journey. Anyway: these bands know their audience, and if their audience is blue-collar, I bet they're just fine with that as long as it keeps 'em in Pop-Tarts, yo.

The very interesting thing is that Miley Cyrus -- a young, pretty person! -- is putting out a Wal-Mart exclusive next. I mean, again, who listens to Miley? Young kids of Wal-Mart shoppers, I suppose, but she cuts across wider demographic lines than that, I'd wager, so it will be interesting to see how that fares. Will people from Upper Middle Class Homes whose kids watch Hanna Montana venture out into the outer-ring suburbs to hit the Wal-Mart? Will they download it from walmart.com? Will they just cross their fingers that it comes to iTunes or the local Virgin Mega-Store or whatever?

The thing about this that interests me is that I am a college-educated, middle-class, white-collar guy who just happens to have a streak of Camaro-driving redneck Bud-swilling blue-collar suburb-dweller inside him who is kind of, like, excited that these bands -- hoary old favorites, all (well, 'cept the Eagles, and even them I'll defend a little bit, at least the first three/four albums) -- are actually managing to make a late-period comeback. I mean, it kind of warms the cockles of the heart that Journey are suddenly huge again, 'cause I was pumping my fist to "Seperate Ways" and the "Escape" album back in 7th grade and I'm so not ashamed to admit it. Or that Kiss are probably going to finally achieve a chart hit this time out the ballpark. Or that Foreigner and AC/DC are suddenly MAJOR PLAYERS again. 'Cause they're old. And I'm getting old. And it's swell that we're not putting these people out to pasture just 'cause of their age.

So anyway: retailers sell music now, and that's just something you're going to have to deal with. It's a new age, a new business model, a new paradigm, the record labels are dying, and music's gotta get out there somehow.

Omnibus Blog Post #2: You wanted the best? You got the best!

2009-08-25T13:53:00.000-07:00

If you were to ask me which band I loved the most -- like truly loved and was undyingly loyal to all through my entire life, either openly or behind closed doors -- my answer wouldn't be the Beatles or the Beach Boys or the Rolling Stones, all groups I totally love but don't *love*, not in that, ahem, special way. My answer *might* be the Monkees. But if you preceded the question with a couple glasses of Jeremiah Weed and a cigarette, I bet I'd tell you the truth.

The answer, my friends, is Kiss.

You always remember your first, they say, and the two bands I ever loved were Kiss and the Monkees. But while the Monkees were awesome in every possible way, and made me gleefully happy to listen to (and still do), my love of Kiss bordered on obsession. Just like almost every other pre-adolescent boy in America in the 1970s, I had every single one of their albums, including "Double Platinum," even though I already had all the songs elsewhere. I caught 'em on the Paul Lynde Halloween Special and the Mike Douglas Show. At school carnival every year, I got my face painted like whatever member I liked best at the time -- usually Ace Frehley, but sometimes Paul Stanley. I had it, folks, and bad.

Whenever Kiss did anything, it was a major event amongst kids. Like -- when they put out their four solo albums, we all knew our folks would never buy us all four, so everybody got assigned one album to buy and we figured we'd pass 'em around amongst ourselves, like Bart and Milhouse and Martin did with Radioactive Man #1. I got Paul Stanley, which, y'know -- I wanted Ace, and spent most of my time listening to my pal Tom Nynas' copy, spinning "New York Groove" over and over and over again.

Or when they did the "...Meets The Phantom Of The Park" special, I wouldn't let my parents change the channel for an hour BEFORE the show, just in case they decided to air it earlier.

Or when they put out the comic book where the red ink contained some of their VERY OWN BLOOD, and I begged my folks to get it for me but they wouldn't.

Kiss were HUGE, capital H-U-G-E. They were a combination rock band / superheroes, they were demi-gods, cartoon characters writ large. They were absolutely everything to me, and everything I listen to comes from them (well, and the Monkees). They were the proto, the dinosaurs, the first thing, alpha AND omega.

And part of the reason they were so cool to me was that they were the forbidden fruit. My folks, at the time, were heavily involved in the Evangelical movement, and Kiss couldn't have been more against just about everything it stood for. Or at least it seemed like they were -- they were like the cartoon devil, their songs were vague euphemisms for terrible, awful things, and their very name itself was an acronym for Kings (or Knights or something else with a "K" that fit awkwardly) in Satan's Service. So over and over again I heard "Son, KISS are bad news" from my dad. And even for a little kid, forbidden fruit tastes so good.

Sadly, tragically, I eventually was scared out of listening to Kiss. I attended a service by the Peters Brothers, a St. Paul-based ministry who traveled around from church to church with a seminar entitled "Why Knock Rock?" You've heard about this -- they were the ones who espoused the theory of "backmasking," the notion that rock bands were recording demonic messages backwards on their albums. Their seminar was terrifying to my ten-year-old mind -- they convinced me that my very SOUL was IN JEOPARDY, RIGHT NOW, and I'd better go home and smash my DEMONIC ROCK RECORDS and BEG for Christ's forgiveness.

So I did. The last Kiss record I bought was "Dynasty," and then they all went under the hammer. I'm embarassed about it now, because I pride myself on always having been kind of a free-thinker, but man, they made it sound scary. I'm sure I'm not the only 70s kid that worked on. I made puppy-dog eyes at "Unmasked," when it came out, but for a while at least, my Kiss fandom kind of faded away. I eventually came back to rock, a couple years later, but the 80s were in full swing, and I was all about Duran Duran (oddly, another makeup-wearing band). Kiss, the hair metal version, seemed so horribly passe.

But look! Kiss are releasing a new album! And even though the last truly great record they put out probably happened during the early stages of the Reagan presidency (well, except "Unplugged"...er, and hunks of "Revenge," from '92) suddenly everybody who ever liked the band is talking about them again! There's excited, breathless posts on Facebook! The message board I'm a part of has a TWENTY PAGE THREAD devoted to the group! The buzz is palpable. Even cynical, jaded people are pulling out their battered vinyl and rediscovering the joy that is Kiss.

The timing is just right. All of us who used to like the band, or who liked them, fell away, and came back, or who just liked them all the way through, are now old enough to not give a crap about what anybody else thinks about our Kiss fandom. Part of it is nostalgia, sure, and part of it is just love and devotion. And part of it is just a genuine hope that Gene Simmons' rhetoric about "the best album in 30 years" and "a renewed creative spark for the band" isn't just bullshit hyperbole. I mean, it's possible, right? Right?

'Cause that's another thing about Kiss: their music holds up super frighteningly well. I mean, it's just as back-to-basics rock as the Pistols and the Ramones, but it also has a nice dark heavy edge like Zeppelin and none of it really sounds dated -- well, except disco experiment "I Was Made For Loving You," and we all know disco is cool, now, so who cares? If you're thinking about revisiting the group, here's a quick rundown of some essentials:

Destroyer: A genuine hard rock masterpiece. Bob Ezrin's production adds a bombastic sheen to the group's already humongous sound. Highlights: "King of the Nighttime World," "Shout It Out Loud," "Detroit Rock City," and the weepy, awesome Peter Criss-sung ballad, "Beth."

Rock and Roll Over: The best album cover houses, IMO, their best album. The sophisticated sheen is muted, but the songwriting is strong. Highlights: "Calling Dr. Love," "I Want You," and again, a Peter Criss-sung ballad, "Hard Luck Woman."

Self-titled: The first album, pound for pound, song for song, is probably their most important. A sheer rock and roll blast from top to bottom. Highlights: "Strutter," "Firehouse," "Cold Gin," and the awesome "Black Diamond" -- again, sung by Peter Criss.

Alive and Alive II: Neither TRULY live in the strictest sense of the word (both feature extensive re-records/overdubs, and "II" even has a studio side), both absolutely capture the raw, potent quality of the band's music better than the studio slabs. Essential.

Unmasked: The "pop" album. Closer to Cheap Trick than you'd care to admit. The underrated gem of the catalog -- check out how smooth "Shandi" is, or how pop "Tomorrow" is, or what a massive hook "Two Sides Of The Coin" is swinging. It's a great album, maybe my favorite of my recent discoveries.

Gene Simmons solo: Of the four, I've always liked Ace's best. On re-listen, I suddenly note how damn Beatlesque parts of Gene's is. Check out "Man of 1,000 Faces" -- full of lush, full, 60s-influenced harmonies, or the gorgeous, sweet "Mr. Make-Believe," which could live on a Left Banke LP.

So what does Kiss mean to me, really? I could talk all day about how their pure, innocent (yes! innocent!) rock and roll blast hits right to the soul in a way that other, more intellectual bands can't, or how a sense of shared community with other folks my age gives me a sense of place and context within history like I'm sure the Beatles were for the generation before me, or how surprisingly awesome their music is, and how full of twists and turns you wouldn't ever expect. But that's to over-intellectualize something that shouldn't really be intellectualized. Really, Kiss just is rock and roll. They're what I like about rock and roll music. Riffs. Hooks. Melodies. Harmonies. Big things. Explosions. Whatever. EVERYTHING. It's that simple. It's that boiled down.

So, um, yeah, you can bet that just like it's 1978, I'm going to be the first in line (at WAL MART of all places, see Omnibus Blog Post #3, coming later) when "Sonic Boom" comes out. And I want so badly to buy tickets for the show so I can take my lovely then-to-be-wife and daughter. And you can damn well bet I'm not going to tell her they're "bad news." Which probably makes 'em less appealing to her, but heck, the explosions'll get her anyway. Right?

Check these out, and get rid of your preconceived notions about Kiss, yo:

Omnibus Blog Post 1: Heavy vs. Light

2009-08-25T07:39:00.000-07:00

I noticed recently that I'm drawn to extremes in music. The stuff I like -- and by that, I mean the stuff I really like, the stuff I'm obsessed about -- is usually either really heavy or really light. On the one hand, we have stuff like Zeppelin, Sabbath, Kiss (see: Omnibus Blog Post 2, coming soon), the Cult, Wolfmother, Jet. On the other, things like the Free Design, yr. various Yacht Rock groups, Joe Raposo, Carpenters, certain Beach Boys albums, whatever. Heavy as an anvil, couldn't possibly be heavy enough, or so light it's in danger of floating away into the stratosphere. Extremes.

I've also noticed recently that nowadays, you can't really get either. Oh, there's a couple (literally just a couple!) of bands doing Really Heavy -- particularly Wolfmother, they're nicely heavy, and really really good. And a couple bands doing Really Light, too (though I'm hard pressed to name 'em -- certainly nobody doing the Carpenters, or something that blissfully airy). But for the most part, everything's straight down the fucking middle. Think of a band like -- I dunno, Modest Mouse. Good band, I suppose, but they're Middle of the Road in every possible way in the old-school use of the term. Straight down the middle. And safe. Very, very safe. Good songwriters, I'm sure, but they're just kind of...the same. All the time. Not fast, not slow, not hard, not light, just THERE.

And that's why I hate everything nowadays, I think. And not just music, but everything. It's not just that people are AFRAID of extremes, though they clearly are -- "we want to," goes the logic, "appeal to a majority of people, and the way to do that is to never go too far in any direction, to play to the widest tastes, to offend nobody." This goes for every artistic media, from movies to television to music to whatever -- and hell, even in politics and conversation and fashion and everything. Can't be too heavy. Too light. Too theatrical. Too big. Too flashy. Too gay. Too whatever.

But it goes beyond simple fear -- it's almost like people are embarrassed of extremes. Like -- okay, let's do this. Imagine you're in a club and a band is getting on stage. They've got makeup on, and are wearing -- I dunno, purple velvet jumpsuits and feather boas. And they light into music that's loud and heavy and they posture all over the stage. What do you think? What's your first reaction? Ten bucks it's to get embarrassed and laugh.

But I mean -- double-you tee eff? That's cool, isn't it? When did we stop desiring that? Are we afraid that expressing an extreme means it'll reveal something about you? Provoke strong emotion? Strength or weakness?

What's weird is even when artists these days GO extreme -- think of, say, Marilyn Manson -- it seems so half-assed in some way. His music wasn't terribly extreme, for one thing -- it was second-rate watered down Nine Inch Nails. And all he was doing was adding more cock and blood to something Alice Cooper had done already. It was a real sort of SAFE extreme. Like climbing up onto a diving board, yelling "Hey, look at me, I'm going OUT THERE!" and then tiptoeing up to the edge and then climbing down.

And the end result is that there's no band that provokes the kind of SLAVERING ADMIRATION AND ADULATION that groups used to, y'know? Like -- can you imagine 30, 40 years down the line being a part of the Modest Mouse Army? The Daughtry Army? I dunno. I just feel like lack of extremes also means lack of enthusiasm. You like. you don't love.

So, y'know, that's my challenge to you, artists. Go balls out. Do something risky, big, splashy, stupid, loud, quiet, long, super-short. Do something that goes to an extreme, and don't feel like you gotta slide it straight down the middle. That's all.

BUBBLEGUM EXTRAVAGANZA

2009-07-14T09:52:00.000-07:00

Today -- I hate people, but I love music. So I'm gonna post a whole smattering of great bubblegum and teenybop music. This stuff -- remember it was mostly critically reviled in its own era, but in retrospect how much better does "Yummy Yummy Yummy" sound than some of the more "serious" (i.e. ponderous, boring) efforts of the era, huh?

I've decided that there's two kinds of music: "Broccoli Music" and "Ice Cream Music." Me? I like to eat my dessert first. Even if it's not good for you, and rots your teeth.

Not technically bubblegum, but man, does this rock:

Review: The Jonas Brothers, "Lines, Vines and Trying Times"

2009-06-29T15:19:00.000-07:00

There are three utterly fantastic songs on the new Jonas Brothers album. That is not to say the rest of the record is crap, or that there's anything particularly unusual about good songs on a Jonas Brothers album -- their last LP "A Little Bit Longer" was sort of remarkable, and better than this one, and was a better and more convincing try at power-pop than anything that's come out of International Pop Overthrow, possibly ever. It's just to say that there are three songs on the record that oughta knock you out if you're open to such things. They are these: "Paranoid," which is maybe my favorite song this year so far, and has a hook as big as the wide open spaces, "Much Better" which is as good a take on the 80s as anything M83 is doing (seriously), and "Don't Speak" which is called out in the liner notes as the group's try at a Muse song and is better than anything on the last Muse LP, easily and handily.

What is kinda remarkable, though, is that these songs, and most of the other songs on the record, are written by the group. Didn't know that? S'true. There's a couple co-writes from local producer John "Strawberry" Fields, who has become the sound of Teen Pop America, but you can hear an actual *songwriting voice* from these kids, who aren't even out of high school, mostly. You can mock 'em if you want, and you will, but let me know when you come up with something as good as the hook on "Much Better," okay? Good luck on that front.

I mean, though, is this a great record? No, it isn't, but it sure as hell has its strengths. As I mentioned, their last one, "A Little Bit Longer," actually was a great record, filled to bursting with some utterly bubblegum punk-pop and a few magnificent ballads. This one's a try at a more "serious" sound, which for some odd reason means mentioning Neil Diamond a lot in the liner notes (!) and adding a Chicago-ish horn section to most of the songs (!!) and a little bit of misguided funk that brings the record grinding to a halt (!!! -- Common appearance FAIL). I usually hate "serious sound tries" -- especially from bubblegum groups, that's the kind of wrong-thinking that leads to records like "7 And The Ragged Tiger" (sorry, Jess, that's their worst album).

But even though there's a few monumental stumbles, and more than its share of okay-to-awesome filler (I'm quite fond of "What Did I Do To Your Heart" which sounds oddly like a Shania Twain choon by way of Mutt Lange, which is never a bad thing, and the Miley duet on "Before The Storm" is pretty good too) the mere fact that there are three songs on here -- hit singles all of 'em, I betcha ten bucks -- which actually knock me on my ass and make me wanna play 'em multiple times says something. Or other. About the nature of bubblegum music, probably, and how it's usually more important/more interesting/a better gague for where music is going/should go than so-called "indie rock" which is too apt to disappear up its own ass most of the time to do anything interesting. Gimme a good HUGE SINGABLE HOOK ANY GOD DAMN DAY over, y'know, a Modest Mouse song or something. Or something about how "Red Light, Green Light" is better than CSN. I dunno. You know what I'm getting at, I don't wanna spell it out, I'm way to under a sugar-high from listening to this stuff.

It's immaterial, really. What's important is that there are three unbelievably killer songs on this record, and even if you're not a thirteen-year-old girl, you might like 'em. Why the hell not? Closest correlate: the Osmonds, and you'd do well to check THAT stuff out too.

(addendum: I'm pretty sure the ballad "Black Keys" is awesome too. It's a slower burn than the others, but upon second/third listen, its kinda kicking my ass.)

Star Trek

2009-05-08T07:05:00.000-07:00

I have this friend who -- rightfully, I think -- fears and despises all things remade, reinvented and rejiggered. Too often, that path leads to dismal failure. Witness, please, every horror film made in the last, oh, three or four years -- they're all awful, unnecessary remakes of *better films*, lacking the original's style, wit and verve in every sense.

Star Trek itself has been the victim of the reimagining/remaking syndrome over the years, and just about every attempt to retool the creaky old vessel has been met with resounding, painful failure. "Next Generation" started good but ended up in the realm of new-age fol-de-rol. "Deep Space Nine" was nifty, but got bogged down with political metaphor and over-seriousness. The less said about "Voyager" the better, and "Enterprise" was only interesting to the geekiest of fangeeks. That's not even to mention the movies -- there's a few ("Khan," of course, and "Undiscovered Country" surprisingly) that still hold up ten, twenty, thirty years down the line, but the rest seem dated, corny, ironic, and at worst, extremely stupid.

That's because along the way over-intellectualizing nerds missed the point of what the show was actually about. "It's about complex geopolitical metaphor," they'd say, or "it's wonderful how in the future, everybody gets along." As a result, there were far too many flakey plots about Big Wars, or Deanna Troi's feelings or how sad it was that Data couldn't express emotion. Meh. The truth is much simpler: the original Star Trek, though it was most certainly awash with metaphor (usually silly ones -- the "Yangs" and the "Komes?" Oh, Yankees and Communists, I get it!), was about two things: the awesome characters (mostly, though not confined to, Kirk, Spock and McCoy) and whipass, plain-and-simple fun. The latter is what's been sorely missing from every Trek movie since forever -- did you have any fun with "Insurrection?" It was more like dental surgery than anything else.

Which is why J.J. Abrams' new Trek film is such a wonder. Despite the fact that his studio, Paramount, hasn't made a decent movie in two hundred years, and is well known for colossally missing the fucking point just about every effort out of the gate, he's managed to distill Trek down to its basic essence. We get the characters -- mostly, though not confined to, Kirk, Spock and McCoy -- and they are, for the first time since Khan, vital, interesting, alive and REAL. And most importantly, we get pure, unmitigated, smile-all-the-way-through-the-film FUN.

The main reason this film works so well is that Abrams took his god-damn sweet ol' time casting this sucker, making sure every single character was not only adequately represented, they were the best possible actor for the role. Which, thankfully, meant that stunt casting was chucked out the window (did anybody really want to see Matt Damon as Kirk? Me neither) and a youthful, vigorous cast of relative unknowns were put in place, all of which somehow managed to drill straight to the heart of each character.

The movie really belongs to two of 'em -- Chris Pine, who plays Kirk the way you've always wanted to see him, as a rules-are-for-pussies maverick that likes to bed green women, and Heroes' Zachary Quinto, who correctly plays Spock as a man in torment, stuck between his feelings and his people. The film's main arc throws the two, intially, into conflict, then into a sort of forced alliance that evolves into a friendship, and it feels, oddly, real -- we've all been there, no? At work or whatever? That person you hate at first but reluctantly have to admit does a damn good job and eventually becomes your friend? Every beat of this feels right and non-forced, and it's really the heart of the Trek films, that Kirk/Spock fanslash friendship.

Of course, the troika wouldn't be complete without the good Doctor Leonard "Bones" McCoy, and a youthful DeForest Kelley plays him marvelously. Wait -- I mean Lord of the Rings' Karl Urban, who freakin' channels De Kelley from the grave. Seriously. He's not just doing an SNL impression, either -- he clearly gets the character, but he looks and sounds so much like De that you'll positively swoon when, at a crucial moment, he bellows at Spock, "are you out of your Vulcan mind?" in that gritty southern accent. Trixi and I agreed: Star Trek II better have a hell of a lot more Bones in it.

The other actors are damn fine, too -- special mention must be made of Zoe Saldana's Uhura, who is a) properly gorgeous, b) totally strong, and c) is deservedly a larger part of the plot than she ever was in maybe the entire series. Simon Pegg plays Scotty, as has been mentioned elsewhere, as a Scottish Simon Pegg, which is pretty much what you want to see (if you like Simon Pegg, that is -- I love the guy, and he's hilarious here). John Cho's Sulu swordfights, which rules, and Anton Yelchin's youthful Chekov is the boy genius that Walter Koenig's was supposed to be but wasn't. And there's been mixed emotions on the web about Eric Bana's workingman's villain, Nero -- I dug him, and I liked his "Hello, there, hi" greeting to the bridge crew, it felt like a miner who'd gone off his nut, and that's about what he was supposed to be.

And was it fun? Holy crap, yeah. It was more fun than I remember ever having at the Star Trek Cinema, and that includes "Wrath of Khan" which was good and thrilling but such a downer in the end that it didn't really feel like the kind of pure, unmitigated fun the best episodes of the O.G. Series were. This one's no downer -- it's thrilling from the git-go, completely optimistic in the end, and never, ever dull, not even for a moment. Does the plot make sense? I mean, yeah, if you kind of let them doubletalk you about the time-travel-ness and just accept that such things are possible, the rest of it makes a linear kind of three-act sense, if you view it more as a movie about Kirk's ascendancy and Spock's self-actualization than a Plot About Big Ideas.

I mean, and much like "Spiderman" or "Iron Man," there's a lot of setup involved here -- I can't wait for #2, when we'll get to see Actual Captain Kirk and Actual First Officer Spock in their familiar roles and uniforms kicking ass against someone, but for now, the "origin story" actually works because Abrams never lets the film get bogged down in overexplanation or mawkishness or maudlinity or whatever -- and he never lets it get stupid, either. Any fears about how dumb "Baby Kirk" or "Baby Spock" might be can be erased by the young Spock's snide remark to his Vulcan classmates: "I imagine that you have a new batch of insults for me today," or by Cadet Kirk calmly eating an apple during the Kobayashi Maru test (spoiler: he cheats, and beats the system. Big surprise, eh?)

This could have gone so wrong. I mean, so many people worried that it could become "pretty people in space" or "Trek 90210," and it so easily could have, in the wrong hands. This could have been shallow, hollow and extremely stupid, a reboot designed to draw in the teens but completely alienating anybody who actually gave a shit about Trek in the last forty years. But somehow, magically, Abrams has not only pulled it off but has made an actual good movie for people who dig exciting summer popcorn action films, maybe the best one since "Raiders of the Lost Ark," honestly. Let go your fears. Join with me. Become one. Go check it out. You won't regret it for even a moment.

Back to where you once belonged

2009-02-11T09:43:00.000-08:00

Well, it can finally be officially announced: We are moving back to Minnesota next month.

See, it's like this: when I moved out here, I had stars in my eyes and a head fulla stupid dreams. I had this mental picture of LA life that was a composite of what I'd seen on television and what I knew from my *very, very few* visits out here -- I figured it would consist mostly of sitting around a pool with a tropical drink in my hand and my laptop on my lap, doing very important artistic things while enjoying a life of stress-free, peaceful contemplation. In stunning contrast to my life before I left Minneapolis, which basically was comprised of a shitty job that made me want to bash my own skull in, a lot of drama from mah baby mama, and a lotta cold weather -- a lotta cold weather -- it sounded like something close to heaven.

But then a funny thing happened on the way to the forum: I got my heart broken. In a million, billion pieces. It's like -- you're gonna run a long-distance race. You're at the starting line. The guy's got the gun up in the air, he's ready to fire. And then some guy comes rushing out of the crowd and KICKS YOU IN THE NUTS, REALLY HARD. BANG! GO! RUN! It sets you waythehellback, y'know? I can honestly say, with no reservation: the worst pain I've ever felt in my entire life. Bar none.

But in the midst of all that Trixi and I fell in love, and you know the rest of the story. We were two people with our hearts broken in a billion pieces. And as I'm fond of saying it doesn't make it all better -- you still gotta heal on your own terms. You gotta find your own way to peace. It takes time. It ain't magic. But it does help when you do it together. It helps a lot.

So we rebuilt, right? And this next point is an important one to get across to a few people, especially the person who thinks I "blew it, famously" and the one who thinks I'm not quite smart or clever enough to cut it, or the one who thinks Trixi's, like, some dippy airhead, or the dorks from Trixi's last job in Minneapolis -- guess what? We DID fucking make it out here. If I'd stayed, I woulda been a Creative Director at my company, which by the way is the best job I've yet had (holla to my work peeps, esp. Andrew -- keep fightin' the man, brotha!). And if Trixi'd stayed, she woulda had a career either in the costume department of a Major Television Show or as a producer, 'cause she got actual OFFERS to do that stuff, and like twenty go-to people in the industry said that's what she *should* be doing. And I found a band out here made up of three of the most talented people I've ever met, and the kindest too -- if somebody doesn't give a band featuring Patrick Cleary and Cheryl Caddick a record deal in the next few years there is no justice in the world. And we made good, good, GOOD friends out here -- I reconnected with a friend from the "olden days" who is now one of my best friends ever. And our homeys Loren, Prince, Gabe, Donovan, Joanne -- I love them like I love my own family. And props to mah homegirl Ash too -- we'll miss her!

So, look, that's not it, okay? Important point to stress. Not moving because we "couldn't hack LA." Although if I never EVER have to drive on an LA freeway again, it'll be too soon. And yeah, as beautiful as LA is, there's stuff here that drives me batty. Like: the crazy people. There's just lots of 'em. It's like I'm working at Ralph and Jerry's in Dinkytown 24-7, and that'll make sense to the three people (Marcy, Beques, Trevor etc) who read this from that era.

No, we're moving back for other, extremely compelling reasons. Like: my daughter. That's numero frickin' UNO. I miss her. Lots. The original intention, just so nobody thinks I'm the type of guy who just galavants out to Los Angeles without ever considering my own daughter, was to get her mom to move out here with her. That simply is never gonna happen. Plus: originally, it wasn't terribly cost-prohibitive to fly back and forth to see her. Now, with airline ticket prices as high as they are, and with two people to go back and forth -- it IS. LOTS.

Another reason is: money. We go to the local supermarket to get food every night, right? And guess how much that costs, just for two people to get, like, VERY CHEAP FOOD to eat? That's more than 30 bucks a night. Seriously. And I have a house back in Minneapolis, too, which is gonna foreclose if I don't get back to it. It's just sitting there. It ain't gonna sell, not in this market, and so why not frickin' live in it?

AND I got a totally great job at a tremendous company as an ASSOCIATE CREATIVE DIRECTOR. Woo hoo! I'm psyched beyond words.

But of course, the main reason (besides the kiddo!) is our dear friends. We miss you. I didn't know how much I'd miss everybody, but I sure as hell do. Like: I miss my Musical Brothers In Arms like Chris (and Belsum!) and Marc and Jay and Ed and Mykl and Brandon and Mike Grey and all the other people I've dug or hung out with and gotten drunk with. And I miss the Karaoke Crew from the American Legion, one of the best groups of friends I've ever had. And I miss my family, my mom and dad, and my other NEW family that I just met a couple years ago (Gigi, Frank, Brett, Charisse, and everybody else!!).

And I miss the TOWN too! I miss trees! And green! I miss the stupid Crystal Shopping Center, and the Legion in Robbinsdale (my local pub!) and I miss Northeast! And I miss THE DALES! And the warehouse district! And Uptown! I miss the comic book store on 36th and Winnetka and Cheapo records where I can get used vinyl for ACTUAL CHEAP and Down in the Valley! I just miss all that stuff.

I guess it's a combination of practical good sense and homesickness that's drawing us back. Either way: we couldn't be more happy. I'm gonna toss my hat in the air like Mary Tyler Moore. You can have a town, why don't you take it? You're gonna make it after all.

Bruce Springsteen, "Working On A Dream"

2009-01-28T09:53:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I hate record critics.

Seriously: go out and google the reviews of Bruce Springsteen's latest, Working on a Dream. Almost to a one*, the reviews lead with mention of Obama's election, saddling Bruce with the impossible-to-live-up-to title of BAROMETER OF OUR TIMES. And almost to a one, they decide that since the nation's mood is optimistic (Is it? Was it when he recorded the thing? Shit, everybody I know just got laid off!), Bruce has made a happy and therefore "slight" album, since he apparently can only reflect the mood of the nation. And then they dismiss it based entirely upon the expectation that Bruce should only make ominous, elegiac albums.

That's such goddamn lazy, half-assed criticism. First off -- why does Springsteen have to reflect the political tenor of the times? Why is he so damn special/unspecial that he's not allowed to just make a record about what he wants to make a record about, i.e. who he's in love with or what happened to him yesterday or what he had for breakfast, a luxury we afford every other musician ever? Second: why wouldn't you listen to this record on it's own merits rather than stack it up to whatever came before, or whatever you think it's supposed to sound like? And third -- has Springsteen ever been about living up to your expectations? Hasn't he always charted a difficult and rather fuck-you course through rock music, and hasn't that been what's interesting about him to begin with?

RIght now, Springsteen doesn't always wanna be the political John The Baptist, crying in the wilderness. Right now, Springsteen's in love with melodies and harmonies. Right now, Springsteen's enraptured with the great pop albums of the 60s like the Byrds' "5D" and the Beach Boys' "Smile." RIght now, Springsteen's enamored of the sweep and scope of Jimmy Webb's work with Glenn Campbell or the over-the-top pomp and circumstance of Scott Walker's records. And that is the kind of record he's interested in making, and a magnificent job he's doing of it, too. Viewed as a pair with late-2007's astonishing Magic, Working on a Dream is no less than the Revolver to that album's Rubber Soul -- a multi-layered tapestry of sound that works more often than it doesn't and always shocks and surprises.

The album leads off with a gigantic, almost incomprehensibly strange middle-finger -- "Outlaw Pete," an EIGHT-MINUTE try at a western mini-opera a la "Heroes and Villains" off the Beach Boys' Smile. And like that song, "Pete" is bolstered an amazing, spiky string section that evokes the old west while still remaining forcefully modern. I'm not at all sure the song works in toto (the lyrics are funny, which is an odd but kind of wonderful vibe for Springsteen to tackle, and I'm still on the fence about 'em) but as an album kick-off it's kind of wonderfully mystifying.

From there, just like on Revolver it goes every-which-way-but-loose, from Byrdsian pop ("My Lucky Day," the sweetly psychedelic "Life Itself," the very pretty "Surprise, Surprise") to sweeping Beach Boys/ Jim Webb majesty (the frankly amazing "This Life," the tear-jerkingly-gorgeous "Kingdom Of Days") to weirdly-electric blues ("Good Eye") to the kind of Tom Joad folk that people want him to do, over and over again ("The Last Carnival," which ends with a gorgeous, surprising harmony turn, or "The Wrestler," tacked on as a bonus track and not really fitting). It only stumbles a couple times -- I love the melody of "Queen of the Supermarket" and I'm okay with the gentle gibe of it's lyric, but I'm not sure it works as a whole. And the country shuffle of "Tomorrow Never Knows," as pretty as it is, feels a little out of place amongst such staggering works that surround it.

The key, I think, to enjoying this album is to manage expectations by ditching them entirely -- which, to be fair, is how you should listen to every album ever but I know that's not always possible. Listen, though: unlike most of Springsteen's work, this isn't about the grand importance of the lyrics, although he manages some magnificent and poetic turns as always, especially on the rather darkly gorgeous "Life Itself." Instead, it's about something entirely other -- phenomenally pretty melodies, harmonies and arrangements. Like -- do we batter Gene Clark for sounding "too slight" on the first two Byrds records 'cause he's singing sweet songs about love? Do we dog Brian Wilson for being "facile" on "Pet Sounds" for the same reason? We do not, but that's because those writers are about melodies and arrangements more than lyrical depth, and Bruce isn't supposed to be. But, see, now he is about melody, suddenly, and he's doing it better than pretty much anybody else in rock these days. You have to be willing to accept the notion that a songwriter simply cannot do the same thing over and over -- that sometimes they want to do something very, very different, and how cool is that, really, especially if they're doing it well? That's the sign of someone great rather than someone merely good, and the sign of someone really great is that he doesn't seem to give a fuck what you think about him doing something different. He's just gonna do it.

Taken at that level, Working On A Dream is a glorious pop album. It's richly layered; filled with production twists and turns courtesy Brendan O'Brien, who seems to have turned Springsteen into the kind of glorious studio craftsman he's always wanted to be (see: his Spector love on "Born To Run"). Its filled top-to-bottom with the kind of magnificently-written songs that don't even really exist these days. And it rewards repeated listens, each song stacked with hidden details (a harmony part here, an organ line there) that only reveal themselves after you've already digested the stunning melodies. It isn't perfect, but it's highs hit extremely high, and it's lows are merely confusing, overly-ambitious missteps, which are always the best kind of failures, really.

I think, even if I'm the only armchair critic who thinks it, that Working On A Dream represents the second (maybe the third?) in a rather stunning late-career renaissance for a man who's never really made an altogether bad record, and whose career is really a series of highs of various heights. Give the album time to worm its way into you. It will reward your repeated listening, and you will find something to love.

*Including, of course, Chicago's Tweedle Dee of rockcrit, Greg Kot -- honestly, seeing both him and Tweedle Dum (Jim DeRogatis) give the album a negative review filled me with hope, since I almost always have exact opposite taste to these clueless bozos.

Facebook is weird.

2009-01-26T10:51:00.000-08:00

So: we're all on Facebook. Isn't it strange? When I say "we all," I mean literally we all -- everybody, except a few of your odd curmudgeon friends, are on there. MySpace was never like this. Did people you've wished you could talk to for twenty years from high school come out of the woodwork to reunite with you on MySpace? Maybe a few of them, sure, but all of them, like is happening on Facebook? Did MySpace allow you to post odd, semi-coherent statements and have people comment on your brilliant wit? It did not, and how cool is that? And Facebook doesn't look like the dashboard of a shitty low-rider car -- it's one size fits all, and its readable and makes sense, and you can keep track of friends you'd lost track of since you were, like, nine years old. It's cool. It really is, I must admit, despite my earlier reservations.

Okay, but Facebook also has created some...unusual...social situations that have never, ever existed before. There's no Hints from Heloise to advise you how to navigate 'em, either -- you're out in weird cyber social-freakout-land, and you're on your own, and if you mess up your Facebook etiquette (or whatever!) you feel just as stupid as that time you got really drunk on wine cooler at that high school party and vomited on that girl you had a huge crush on. It really feels that awkward, and since half the people you're interacting with are from High School, it feels even more odd.

LIKE:

- You get friended by someone who, in high school, you had no interaction with other than them occasionally elbowing you in the hallway, calling you "fag" or threatening to beat the shit out of your best friend. What do you do? I mean, you're old now. That was a long, long time ago. Do you forgive and forget? Do you let it go? Do you ignore? What's the right thing to do, there?

- You run across your ex's sisters. You have since (mostly!) made amends for whatever horrors you inflicted upon your ex (in my case, being an immature moron the entire time we were together, and then breaking up with her for no reason at all -- seriously, I could not have sucked more) and you figure "ah, my ex and I are friends, now, and that was ten-plus years ago, so maybe her sisters will want to friend me." And so you try. But then they don't. And now you feel stupid!

- You friend someone you thought you were good friends with, and they don't respond. Or worse yet -- they reject your friendship! Your entire feeling of well-being is suddenly thrown into question.

I'm sure you've run across a few yourself, in your effort to build a friend-list and reunite with people in your life that you've missed. Right? I mean, there needs to be a guidebook.

And what's more -- what is Facebook doing to BLOGGING? It used to be whenever I had a whim to discuss something or pontificate about something, I'd come over to the blog and post a line or two. I'd maybe get three, four, five comments, and think "wow, my post made a difference in people's lives." But now? I can go over to Facebook, post my clever little comment or my YouTube video or my thought about this band or that, and get FORTY comments. But those are all just my friends -- and my gigantic ego wants random strangers to be able to read my "deep thoughts." What will happen? Will blogging get folded into the Facebook Experience? Or what?

I dunno. I'm interested in everybody's thoughts on this. Part of me thinks I should just post this on Facebook but I'm trying to be a gap-bridger, here. DISCUSS.

"It's too bad she won't live! But then again -- who does??"

2009-01-20T14:48:00.001-08:00

I think I've said it before, but it is absolutely awesome being engaged to Trixi, the ultimate Hot Chick Geek. Because not only does she like some uber-geeky stuff that I like too that nobody else likes (80s Yes albums (!!!), Doctor Who, Twin Peaks -- stuff you'd be surprised if your S.O. liked one of, let alone the whole batch), she also totally loves my all-time favorite movie, Blade Runner. When we were a-courtin' back a year-some ago, I got a text from Trix apropos of nothing quoting Rutger Hauer's "tears in the rain" quote from the end of the film. My response? "Oh, we have to get married." And then, y'know, I proposed to her. 'Cause come on.

So this weekend, when we found ourselves downtown for no particular reason, it struck me: we're right near the Bradbury Building, which is where genetic scientist J.F. Sebastian lived in the movie. I didn't even have to ask twice -- Trixi was as excited as I was. It's an astonishing building, more astonishing considering it was designed by someone who'd never designed anything before in his life, at the behest of the ghost of his dead brother. I'm not even kidding. It's been lovingly restored, recently, and there's even a plaque up in the lobby talking about its use in Blade Runner, which is cool.

Check it out -- isn't it amazing and complicated and cool??

Last bonus shot: me and Trix at the mod night this weekend, dressed in our mod finery:

I'd tell you all what we did on Sunday night, but then I'd have to shoot you.

Belated New Years Blog!

2009-01-16T16:23:00.000-08:00

Okay, so -- I promised, and here 'tis. On New Year's Eve, we kind of *inherited* a party -- that is to say, a couple friends of ours found that they had to beg out of hosting a party, so we figured, heck, we're in a borrowed house and the kiddo's off with Grandma for an evening, I think we can maybe host the thing. Problem was: it was *supposed* to be a costume party, with the theme of "rock and roll history." Our friends had this awesome rock-history playlist planned, and everyone was gonna be dressed like their favorite rockstars. Well, when the plans shifted, apparently everybody decided to toss the costumes aside, because we were the only ones dressed like *anything*!

S'alright, though, 'cause our costumes were RAD. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you: Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks!

Note attention to detail: the baby powder doubling as cocaine dusting Trixi's nostrils! My gold Pegasus necklace!

Pretty close, eh??

If I could grow a white-man's afro, I WOULD. I swear.

RIP Brookdale Mall

2009-01-13T16:33:00.000-08:00

(Yeah, I promise to blog about the holidays SOON -- some great pics and such, but this is IMPORTANT.)

It was with much trepidation that I received the news of the closing of the Brookdale Center Macy's store in Brooklyn Park, MN. Brookdale has always been the kind of red-headed stepchild of the "Dales" chain (Ridgedale being the tony preppy girl, Southdale the snotty Radcliffe sorority girl, Rosedale the slightly trashy teen looking at a pregnancy test) but man, it is headed for Apache Plaza territory. Stores are dropping off like flies, with only Barnes and Noble, now, still alive and active. That whole area, formerly at least KIND of awesome (you know, a Ground Round, some toy stores, a couple interesting malls) is basically dead as a doornail.

This depresses me, and I don't know why. Sure, I spent a lot of time at Brookdale mall as a kid -- my first job was at the Record Shop on the Sears end of the mall, and my friend Adam and I used to "scope chicks" there a lot. Oh, and I went there with my mom a ton when I was *really* young, and ate at the Brothers Deli that used to sit on the far end of the mall that doesn't exist anymore, or the snack shoppe that was in the central courtyard near Dayton's.

But I dunno, it isn't just that -- its something specific about edifices and buildings and areas and reasons why a place like a mall can go from hot to cold to Dead Alice, and that has to do with the Passage of Time, and thinking about the Passage of Time *always* kind of depresses me, y'know? When Apache Plaza (the "holy crap, if everybody lamenting it had actually *gone* there it wouldn't be gone" dead mall) died, and the area around it with it, I was sad, even though I didn't ever *go* to Apache Plaza. It was like -- it isn't the 70s and 80s anymore, and Things We Used To Need In the 70s -- cheese boxes, toys, interesting clothes, vinyl records -- we don't need anymore. Because We As A People have changed so much past that.

And so malls die, and leave these barren husks behind filled with memories and ghosts and pasts and time, and it makes me sad. I know malls are just MALLS, just these ugly retail boxes, but for those of us in Minnesota, where winter lasts half the year and Indoor Shopping Malls were the weird Logan's Run future that wasn't, they were our Village Square, such as it was, 1970s style, and so I mourn them more than folks would in, say, California, where, y'know, why would you go to a mall when you can BE OUTSIDE?

I found these photos on Dumpy Strip Malls, a new blog I'll be visiting on a regular basis. The author of the site grew up near Brookdale, and I can tell she feels the loss of that mall -- and that area, and that past -- pretty keenly, which is nifty. She's documenting dead and dying malls (well, and some living ones too!) and trying to get complete pictures of who was there and what they looked like, which is a damn neat project.

The courtyard near Dayton's. To the left was a restaurant of some kind. I have a hard time remembering which stores even LIVED at that end -- the memory's been replaced, now, with the shoddy Dollar Store-type establishment that now occupies this section of the mall. I *do* remember that if you turned around, headed left before you got to JC Penneys, and walked to the end of a dark hallway, you'd come to a hobby store. That was my mall tour circa-late-70s-and-80s -- I can tell you where each hobby store lives.

And here's the Dayton's front entrance. I remember sitting on this fountain with my friend Adam, our shopping bags filled with, like, parachute pants from JC Penneys, dressed in our members only jackets (his was light blue, I think mine was probably the less-fashionable tan, or possibly even -- gahhh! -- maroon!) watching blonde girls with feathered hair and short-shorts walking by, and being very very happy.

I have my fingers crossed for Brookdale like I would for a dying relative -- its hooked up to the machine, someone's ready to flip the switch and turn her off forever. Do malls go across the rainbow bridge to Pet Heaven? Maybe someone can finally save this mall -- can we throw a Best Buy in there?? Is there any salvation for it? Can we pray?

GONE FISHIN'

2008-12-29T11:18:00.001-08:00

Goin' OFF THE GRID like Jason Bourne for a week or so.

Be back Tuesday, Jan 6th -- have a good new year, Hatesexy peeps!!

2008 Geek Film List

2008-12-19T10:34:00.001-08:00

So: I'm a film geek. Not a FAN so much as just a GEEK. I've been criticized in the past for not seeing enough quote "grown-up" unquote movies. But I think you guys, my loyal and humble readers, all know i prefer science fiction / fantasy / superhero crap / horror films / stupid comedies / spy movies / cartoons to, y'know, films about relationships and costume period dramas and that kind of thing. You also know that, every year, that my list is mostly gonna contain those types of films. I haven't seen "Milk" or "Gran Torino" yet, and I'm sure I will at some point, and I'm sure when I do I'm gonna love 'em or at the very least appreciate them. I have, however, seen Iron Man twice.

So -- you know me, you know what I like. My name is Jonny. I'm a geek. Here's my list.

(*note* -- I notice I didn't see any comedies this year, or barely any, and certainly none that make the list. I didn't see Tropic Thunder. I didn't see Zach and Miri. I will at some point, and then we can talk again.)

Iron Man. Sorry folks, for my money, the best superhero film of all time -- okay, mayyyyybe barring the original Superman from '79, or at least the first half of that film before Luthor enters the picture -- is Iron Man. Mah friends, it is pitch perfect. It FEELS like the original comic book in every way. It isn't overwhelmingly dark like a certain other superhero film this year, and it isn't overblown or occasionally stupid like, I dunno, Daredevil or Spider-Man 3. And best of all, it exists in a larger universe where there are actually other superheroes, and they interact and connect, which is like frickin' geek catnip, y'know? Robert Downey, Jr. is amazing casting, I'll watch Jeff Bridges act the fucking phonebook, and I even liked Gwyneth "Fishstick" Paltrow. FUN. It was great, great fun, the most fun I've had in the movies in a long, long time.

Wall-E. Just -- wow. A feast for the senses, a gloriously funny and heartwarming film that never descends into maudlinity. I'm glad the film critics across the country are acknowledging how amazing this film is, too -- usually animated flicks get shoved into the "kids' films" bucket and ignored come awards time (except, of course, in the technical arena -- whee!) The main character doesn't even SPEAK except a few noises and to say his own name, and yet you fall madly in love with him, and that's an accomplishment. Possibly the best Pixar film thus far (but then, I have weird tastes -- my second favorite is Cars, with its love of Route 66-ania).

Cloverfield. Somewhere between the knocked-out audience we sat with for this film and eight months later, public opinion shifted on this film. Don't know why, don't know how. Totally undeserved, too -- for my money, the best pure scares I had in the movies this year BAR NONE. This was what I wanted all the "giant monster ravages the countryside" movies of the 50s to be like -- all assault and terror and never-ending twists and turns and peril (if they'd had budgets that allowed for more than MAN IN SUIT! maybe they would have been!) J. J. Abrams took an old cinema staple, turned it on its ass and whooped it up for the cynical digital age, and managed to scare the fucking beejezus out of me while only BARELY EVEN SHOWING THE MONSTER IN QUESTION. Y'know? Amazing. Creepy-crawly and scary and amazing.

Burn After Reading. Okay, fair's fair -- I love Los Bros. Coen. I think, although "No Country" was one of the best films I've seen in the last 10 years, that I like them best when they write little unassuming stories like this one full of extremely stupid people that fuck each others' lives up. Their "big" movies are great, but when they shoot low they end up hitting high anyway. Those who saw it: tell me you didn't jump TWENTY FEET IN THE AIR when, smack in the middle of the movie, it suddenly takes a huge left fucking turn that leaves you completely stunned. And Brad Pitt's performance is best-supporting-actor Oscar-worthy, methinks.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I stand by my original opinion -- in fact, if anything, this film was better upon second viewing. Apart from a couple wobbly moments at the very beginning -- it takes Harrison a minute or two to find the heart of the character again, and can someone please keep George Lucas away from cute CGI creatures for the rest of eternity? -- it hits the mark, over and over. And again: the original films were the serial adventures of the 30s, THIS film was all about 50s sci-fi, and that is why there's aliens in it. Okay? Are we settled on that point?? The script coulda been a little punchier in places, but I still think this film will age well. Talk to me in ten years.

Quantum of Solace. I just wrote the review for this one, so you know how I feel. Bond has never been about the gadgets and broads, and winky-winky double entendres do not "sexy" make. A taut, fascinating, slightly mystifying, visually-fascinating thriller, and an intriguing addition to the series. Next time: Moneypenny. Please.

The Incredible Hulk. Wondering: how come nobody was talking about this film? Again, saw it twice, better even the second time, part of the same "larger universe" thing that Iron Man is, and perfectly nails the comic book in question. Great casting, great acting, great CGI (WAY better than the last Hulk film, like way way better), and some terrific action. One slight misstep: Tim Roth, whom I normally adore, seems mismatched. Not quite as fun as Iron Man, but I still had a total blast.

The Dark Knight. FINALLY I get to the Dark Knight, and honestly, I wasn't sure if it was gonna make my list, because I have some serious misgivings about this one. Yes -- Heath Ledger's performance was career-defining, and it is a tragedy beyond tragedy that he won't be able to reprise the role, nor be recognized for it in his lifetime. But in the rush to congratulate this film, there are some serious problems with the film that have been overlooked. #1: doesn't anybody mind Bale's "gritty Batman" voice? #2: the tone is unrelentingly dark, almost to the point where it becomes funny. #3: it's overlong by about half an hour. #4: I'm not sure the two-face arc works, and did we really need to kill off Rachel? What was the point of that, exactly? ISSUES. I have issues. I recognize the achievements of this film, but I think the first one was far better, visually and plotwise and acting. It's GOOD but I think there are two other superhero movies this year that far surpass it.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. I know, I know -- its so unhip to like The Big Jesus Lion Story with its anvilicious allegories and bright-sunny-happy mood, anymore. But I get so sucked into this world in a way I don't with, like, Lord of the Rings or (sorry!) Phillip Pullman's. I remember reading these books as a kid and maybe they didn't make me think like LOTR or hate God like the Amber Spyglass but man, did Lewis get where kids wanna be when the real world gets 'em down. And I think the films do a damn fine job of capturing that -- visually enrapturing, faithful to the source material, beautiful and airy-light and fun.

The X-Files: I Want To Believe. We just saw this last night, and I have a question: Do you all, like, not like the X-Files anymore or something?? Why did nobody go see this? I fully anticipated, from the numbers it did and the reviews it got, to suck, or at least be totally mediocre, but it, like, DIDN'T. It felt like a great, well-developed X-Files episode, and maybe that doesn't make it a great movie but it sure makes it a good something or other. It's creepy and scary and has great character arcs for Mulder and Scully and at no point did I go "man, this is stupid" or "man, I'm so sick of the "mytharc" crap" or whatever that I did at the low points of the series. As Harry Knowles points out: these characters are our friends. I missed them, and this was FAR, FAR, ***FAR*** better than it got credit for. Give it a rent, without fear.

MOVIES THAT DISAPPOINTED ME:

Speed Racer -- LOOKED astonishing, like visually one of the coolest films ever. Feather-light plot-wise. Fun, but not ENOUGH fun.

Hellboy II -- I just blogged about this and still, GAHHHHHH.

Get Smart -- not actually disappointing -- can any movie with Anne Hathaway be TRULY disappointing?? -- and I *did* laugh, but it didn't go NEARLY far enough into screwball territory. Buck Henry, come home, all is forgiven.

The Ruins -- the book gave me the SERIOUS CREEPING HEEBIE-JEEBIES for weeks. The movie wasn't scary at all. FAIL.

LA Denizens: upcoming Silver Phial show!

2008-12-18T17:06:00.000-08:00

My Mixed Emotions vol. 453: Phil Collins

2008-12-18T09:32:00.000-08:00

I so desperately want to hate Phil Collins. I mean, duh, right? There's really nobody in the history of rock I should hate more, is there? Nobody more despicably commercially-minded, nobody more kind of icky and British-'cause-it's-cute and bald and horrible. Nobody who is more the exact antithesis of everything that's good and right and rebellious and angry and dark and cool about rock music. He is a black hole of hip -- he actually sucks OTHER musicians' hipness in with him. When he played with Led Zeppelin at Live Aid in '86 or whenever, he actually made THEM less hip. And they're a fucking bulletproof tiger. He's twenty-five shades of wrong, thirty-two fucking flavors of wrong. He's Phil Fucking Collins, motherfuckers, and he's a pariah non pareil.

Except -- my problem, folks, is that I can't. I just can't hate him. I've managed to fix my inability to hate Coldplay (that lyric about Roman Catholic choirs singing made me so physically ill I was on bed-rest for a week just to recover, and I'm glad Joe Satriani is suing them for it, 'cause they were askin' for it) but even WITH the soundtrack to Tarzan, I can't fix this. It's a problem.

Let's examine, for a moment, why, exactly:

1. He was in A Hard Day's Night and you weren't. Unfortunately, this automatically makes him cooler than you. Maybe not cooler than most other musicians of that era but definitely cooler than you. So that takes away the "high and mighty" defense, i.e. "I was in the Brian Jonestown Massacre for ten minutes so I'm cooler than Phil Collins." Were you in A Hard Day's Night? You weren't? Case closed.

2. Early Genesis was indisputably righteous. They may not have the cache they did back in the 70s, but even still, people will qualify their hatred of Genesis and Phil Collins with the phrase "...but they were good when Peter Gabriel was in them." And it's true, they were. And Phil's drumming plays no small part in that -- if they'd had a wimpy, tempo-less drummer like, say, a Carl Palmer, they'd have about 1/10th the power they did have. I mean, Steve Hackett ain't exactly Tony Iommi, so why'd they rock then? A: Phil Collins. Plus, dig his harmonies with Peter Gabriel -- they have the identical voice and there's times you can't tell who's singing what.

3. Early-late period Genesis is better than you think it is. I ain't talking about the just-post-Gabriel era of "Trick of the Tail" because frankly, without Gabriel, their prog-rock noodlings lacked, y'know, intellectualism and eccentricity, which is kinda why the group was good to begin with (well, that and Gabriel's foam-rubber costumes -- it was like watching the prog-rock Rock-A-Fire Explosion!). It's just lots of long noodly guitar solos. But there was a brief, shining moment when Phil's commercial leanings merged perfectly with the still-present progressiveness of the group AND the just-developing new wave influences of the early 80s. I'm talking about the Duke and Abacab albums, and a few surrounding singles.

Let me prove it to you:

4. You like "Against All Odds." You do. I mean, maybe you don't think you do, but I bet you really do. Flash back with me to the mid-80s -- that is, if you weren't, like, a zygote at the time. You're at a high school dance. That pretty cheerleader you've been eying is sitting over in the corner. You wanna dance with her, but they're playing Van Halen, and what's the good of that?? Suddenly "Against All Odds" comes on. Ah -- it's your in, my friend. You approach her. "Um -- care to, uh, dance?" you stammer. She looks coyly up at you, beautiful in her feathered hair and geometric-patterned dress. "Okay," she shrugs. Good enough. Phil Collins says: you're welcome.

5. There is at least one other Phil solo song you secretly like. Late at night, when nobody's home, you've got that one Phil Collins song on your iPod, and you play it, and maybe cry a little bit. Maybe it's "Sussudio," and you wonder, endlessly, what does it mean? Maybe it's "In The Air Tonight" -- did he watch that guy drown, or didn't he? For me, it's an obscure little low-level hit called "I Cannot Believe It's True," which has the power to take me RIGHT BACK to 1982, and my very first kiss with the lovely Eithne Daire. Sigh!

6. He is a good drummer.

Get past the minute and a half of Peter Gabriel pretending to mow the lawn, and listen to Phil's playing. He's solid like Bonham, but then fills like Bill Bruford, and he never ever ever gets in the smegging way, and he grooves. And any way, you probably haven't heard this song, so give it a go.

So end result: I hate Phil even less and maybe you do too. Or maybe you still feel a deep, abiding loathing for him, in which case only sixteen hours of Miami Vice will help you, and that isn't on YouTube.

Year end addendum

2008-12-17T11:22:00.001-08:00

How the heck could I have forgotten the Cure's "4:13 Dream?" HOW?

It's phenomenal, and if you don't have it, GET IT.

WLOL listeners and Hines and Berglund fans!

2008-12-15T13:01:00.000-08:00

I didn't even remember this song EXISTED but Trix mentioned it last night, and then Max blogged it this morning, and WOW did it bring back a flood o' memories. Morning DJ's Hines and Berglund on now-defunct radio station WLOL 99.5 in Minneapolis played this until it became actually disturbing.

I think it is actually *impossible* to feel shitty when you listen to this.

(PS: The little YouTube link has the title wrong -- it is HUBBA - HUBBA ZOOT ZOOT. Not Hubba Bubba. Hubba Bubba's the gum. Got it? Good.)

FUCK

2008-12-14T22:19:00.000-08:00

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Some Albums I Liked In 2008

2008-12-09T10:14:00.000-08:00

Okay, so my rant goes like this: I've read so many year-end lists, now, and have been utterly *appalled* at how much awful, ball-less music is contained therein. Indie Rock reigns supreme these days -- playing music that lacks actual, honest-to-christ rock is cool, and being completely intellectual and up in your own head (vs. enjoying rocking your balls off) is, like, totally in. As much as I try, I can't get it up for, like, Vampire Weekend. Or Death Cab For Cutie. Or Likke Li, or British Sea Power or or or or - GAHH. GAHH! Ball-less! And drab, and so totally NOT SEXY, if that makes any sense.

That said: there's lots that DOES turn me on, and you'll notice a preponderance of actual, sexy ROCK. I'll leave the R&B list to friends of mine who know more and listen more -- there was a lotta great THAT this year, too, but this is my expertise:

Glasvegas, S/T -- sounds like the Jesus and Mary Chain fronted by the bloke from the Proclaimers. And if that frightens you, and it probably should, you'll be pleasantly surprised, methinks. The songs are magnificent, epic, big, sweeping, great, fun.

Black Angels, Directions To See A Ghost -- one chord and the truth, or something like that. Dark, evil psychedelia, from the Spacemen 3 region, filtered through a bit of freak-folk sensibility, but not the icky bits, if that makes any sense.

Black Mountain, In The Future -- dark, ominous, HEAVY rock and roll. Stoner rock to be sure, but damn smart, mysterious stoner rock.

Glen Campbell, Meet Glen Campbell -- in which the man proves that he's STILL FUCKING GOT IT, as witness his ability to turn my very least favorite Foo Fighters song (do I have a favorite? I do not!) into something transcendent. I could listen to him sing the phone book. Swear to god.

Darker My Love, 2 -- would be on the list if it contained only "Two Ways Out," my favorite single of the year, hands down. As it happens, it contains ten other magnificent songs, and a healthy smatterin' of pure fuzztone bliss.

Duffy, Rockferry -- THAT VOICE! THOSE SONGS! THAT PRODUCTION! I mean, you'd have to be, like, *dead* to not appreciate how cool this is, and how righteous. If yr. sad that Amy Winehouse will never make another album, Duffy should at least ease your pain a little.

Flight of the Conchords, S/T -- comedy rock that actually, y'know, rocks. Most comedy records have very little replay value -- once the joke is done, YOU'RE done. Meanwhile, I played "Motha'uckas" about two hundred times this year and still love it.

Foxoboro Hottubs, Stop Drop and Roll!!! -- pure, unmitigated, hook-laden garage-rock glory from a disguised Green Day. Who knew they had it in 'em? Best song: "Red Tide," which appears to be a Kinksian ode to a woman's "special time."

Magnetic Fields, Distortion -- hated it at first. STILL hate the sound. Like, HATE. Meanwhile, the songs have grown on me, BIG TIME.

Oasis, Dig Out Your Soul -- in which our esteemed Mancunian heroes turn in an album with only two dud songs. Its a fairly magnificent work, and if this list was in any order, would reside near the top, if only to piss off Jim DeRogatis, who continues to (as always!) miss the point.

Primal Scream, Beautiful Future -- the fuck? Did nobody buy this record? Did nobody notice its strange and unholy combination of fuzzrock and 80s new wave pop?? It's magnificent. Go back, relisten. It should be in EVERY critics' top ten.

Raphael Saadiq, The Way I See It -- Motown revivalism at its purest -- but oddly, it doesn't just wallow in soppy balladism, it actually ROCKS. A magnificent album that gets better with every listen.

The Raveonettes, Lust Lust Lust -- my SECOND favorite single of the year was the fuzz-laden "Aly, Walk With Me," a mysterious spy-music slab. Elsewhere, there's enough three-chord pop to make the ghost of the Primitives happy.

Ryan Adams, Cardinology -- discussed in these very pages. I shan't reiterate other than to say its my favorite breakup record.

The Verve, Forth -- one shitty hit single and an entire rest-of-the-album of cool psych-rock stoner jamz. It was far better than it was given credit for, and deserves a relisten.

Polara, Beekeeping -- their best since the 2nd, or even the 1st -- a magnificent slab of angry, fuzzy, uplifting, rip-snorting songwriting, one of THREE (!) albums auteur Ed Ackerson put out this year, ALL of which are totally worthy listening. Maybe my second most-played album this year.

AC/DC, Black Ice -- if it wasn't so perverse, and if it wasn't five songs too long, I'd let this one top my list of the year just for being, y'know, so damn PURE. It's AC/DC, it's heavy, it rocks, game over.

Brian Wilson, That Lucky Old Sun -- in which our man finally delivers an entirely solid album of pop glory in the form of an odd conceptual ode to California, the less boosh-wa version of his Van Dyke Parks collabo "Orange Crate Art."

Kings of Leon, Only By The Night -- Amazon.com let this album top their list, and power to 'em for it. I think I would too, if this list had numbers. "Stadium rock?" Sure, if you define the term as meaning "songs with tremendous hooks and power." A killer album, and CRIMINALLY underrated.

Paul McCartney / The Fireman, Electric Arguments -- in which our other man delivers a fully experimental, loose, fully awesome psych-rock album for the first time in years. If you'd wondered where "Pepper"-era McCartney went -- here he is, like *really, fully is*.

MGMT, Oracular Spectacular -- yeah, okay, this one IS indie, but its magnificent. Here's a group that writes great disco-pop-dancey-whatever songs, perfect for indie radio play, but with INSIGHTFUL, INTERESTING lyrics and great arrangements and hooks.

REM, Accelerate -- who knew they had it in 'em? I certainly didn't think they had a jot of actual rock left, and they managed to turn in a non-sucky album that's about, oh, 2/3 great. This one is tending to hover at the bottom of official polls, like they feel they should nod to it so REM doesn't think its okay to go back to writing bad Beach Boys pastiche -- but I think it stands on its own.

PS: Oh, I forgot Gary Louris' "Vagabonds!" A phenomenal, gorgeous little record -- modest, homespun charms, to be sure. Better even than the last batch of Jayhawks records -- and that's saying something, the group never managed anything close to a bad record. Oddly, the best track is the bonus track "Three Too Many" which is the very best song Gene Clark never wrote.

Holy crap! I got reviewed by Pitchfork!

2008-12-07T11:17:00.000-08:00

...last year, for a ten-year-old recording, but HEY! I'll take it.

Shatterproof: "Prozac Melody" [from Splinter Queen; MCA; 1996; r: Catlick; 2007]
In a different 1996, Shatterproof would've been a success story-- maybe a modest one, with a single enduring alt-rock chart entry á la Spacehog or fellow Minneapolitans Semisonic, but a success story nonetheless. In the actual 1996, MCA didn't find anything compelling in Shatterproof's grandiose college-friendly Badfinger/George Harrison-style power pop, and the band wound up being purged from their Fort Apache imprint before their sophomore record could be released. Shatterproof were repeatedly denied a shot at releasing their second album's recordings elsewhere and eventually broke up, and when I heard this song for the first and only time on college radio a year or two later, it was credited to two of the ex-members' subsequent band, Lunar 9. Some 10 years later, in the middle of a period spent listening primarily to rap, dubstep, r&b, and the odd bit of stoner rock, I stumbled across this song again on an otherwise lukewarm reissue of Shatterproof's indefinitely shelved MCA recordings. For a song I'd spent so little time actually hearing and so much more time trying to reconstruct inside my head, "Prozac Melody" was surprisingly close to what I thought it should've sounded like: a leisurely but massive-sounding guitar overlaid with a bed of pseudo-orchestral keyboards and a warmly Anglophilic borderline-falsetto lead vocal. The one thing that I forgot: the weirdly mordant, mournful-slash-cheerful cast to the lyrics: "I get my sunshine from a pill/ It's my Prozac melody/ I fell in love with someone ill/ It's my Prozac melody." It's even got a huge anthemic build-up at the end, which I really wish a festival crowd could've gotten the chance to sing along with. [Nate Patrin]

One thing I disagree with: "Splinter Queen," which is available on iTunes, is nowhere near lukewarm, its fucking genius and you all should rush over and download it IMMEDIATELY if you haven't already, 'cause its kinda fucking great. The combination of my erstwhile nemesis/songwriting-partner/best-friend Jay Hurley's melancholic but extremely celebratory melodicism and my Brian-Wilson-By-Way-Of-The-Mid-90s arrangements makes for what *I* think is a lost gem of the era, and to my mind, "Mum's The Word" is the best thing on there. As for the rest -- heh, sure! FEED MY EGO. It needs it. (Thanks to Ashley for finding that review!)

PS: I am ALL ABOUT "weirdly mordant, mournful-slash-cheerful." Its kinda awesome that he LIKED that, so many other people in my life have had a problem that I write these extremely cheerful songs that always have the saddest, most depressing lyrics, but that's kind of what I'm about. Like a piece of rich chocolate candy filled with arsenic.

(EDIT) PSS: I should mention that the "massive singalong coda" was written by Chris Hill, auteur and songwriter for Mercurial Rage, and its always been my fave part of the song.

So when did it become uncool to like Oasis?

2008-12-01T09:42:00.000-08:00

I remember in, like, '94 or '95, when "Definitely Maybe" came out, it was so goddamn cool to be an Oasis fan. Ed Ackerson from Polara, who was and still is the coolest guy I know, hipped me to them early on -- I remember him telling me they were like the Stone Roses only more rock, "and what the hell is wrong with rock?" he asked. When my old band Lunar 9 got accused of "aping Oasis" -- which we never did, it's the same reason Oasis get accused of aping the Beatles, its so easy to pigeonhole melodic rock music with whatever's the handiest and easiest correlate -- it didn't really seem like an insult. In fact, I took it as quite flattering -- it meant my songs were, y'know, memorable if perhaps a bit easy at times (true!) and that we had pudding bowl haircuts.

Then, at some point, the tide fucking TURNED, and boy did it turn hard. I suppose Oasis didn't help matters by making "Be Here Now" which is the very definition of rock n' roll coke bloat (but, then, do we fault Fleetwood Mac for making Tusk? The Stone Roses for making Second Coming? The Stones for making Goat's Head Soup? No, we do not, or should not). They followed it up with "Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants" which got more attention for the title typo than the music within, and "Heathen Chemistry" which didn't get any attention at all for anything. At that point, saying you liked Oasis was just about like saying you liked Matchbox 20 -- it meant you sucked. It wasn't even cool anymore to say you liked the first two albums, which I think we can (or should!) all agree were fucking great albums, top to bottom. It wasn't even cool to have pudding bowl haircuts anymore.

Meanwhile, though, it was really quite okay to still like the Dandy Warhols (for a while) or Black Rebel Motorcycle Club or the Brian Jonestown Massacre or any number of other fuzzy/melodic bands with interesting hair. In fact, it was actively encouraged. If you were in a band, and you had Oasis influence you buried it deep under a layer of dark black fuzztone and sang in a really LOW REGISTER (see: my heavy metal post) and that pretty much covered it up like a thick layer of pancake over a zit.

And like, for a time, I was Oasis Fan #1. And I'm not usually prey to Public Opinion about SHIT -- hell, I'm the guy who'll stand up and say he likes JOURNEY, full stop. I'm not afraid to express an unpopular opinion if, in fact, I believe strongly in it, and I'll defend it eloquently. And yet, even I fell prey to the anti-Oasis sentiment. When someone likened my new batch of songs, which are far more fuzzy and rawk, to Oasis, I remember being a little stung. Hell, I'd been trying to do the Dandy Warhols or the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club or the Brian Jonestown Massacre, why the hell do they think it sounds like Oasis?

Then it struck me, and I'm about to express an unpopular opinion: Oasis are basically those bands, only they write better songs. It's true. Honest to god. The difference between a Darker My Love or a Morning After Girls and Oasis are really quite minimal. I bet they have the same batch of influences -- the Beatles. The Stooges. The Small Faces. Psych-rock in general. The Stone Roses. Ride. My Bloody Valentine. The Velvet Underground. They probably dress the same (only the American bands have beards, now) and they probably think the same and maybe they do slightly different drugs (coke vs. heroin, or coke vs. heroin, coke, whiskey, more coke, and some pot) but they're basically the same type of bands. And its not like the Cool Bands write better lyrics -- shit, the lyrics on the Dandy Warhol's best record fucking quote "Charlotte Anne" by Julian Cope, and I'm hard pressed to understand the sentiment behind Darker My Love's excellent but really-equally-lyrically-vacant-to-Oasis "Two Ways Out," as much as I adore it. They aren't even more consistent -- was there even half a good album in the Brian Jonestown Massacre's latest, "My Bloody Underground?"

The crime Oasis seem to have committed, then, is simply that they write songs with memorable hooks. They're those bands, only with Memorable Hooks.

For some reason, this has Fallen Out Of Favor with the hipster contingent. It is now far more cool to write long droney songs with maybe one or two notes involved in the melody. Unfortunately, this does not result in More Better Songs. It might bring more to mind the Velvet Underground and the long bits of "Sister Ray," but what it alas means is that you can go to shows by lots of these bands and go home without remembering a single song. This is not good, people. This is bad. The Velvet Underground, I'd like to remind you, also wrote "Sweet Jane" and "Who Loves The Sun" and "What Goes On" which are nothing if not big gigantic hooks.

Meanwhile, the new Oasis record is receiving the predictable "best album since..." type of reviews, and their star is rising ever so slightly as a result. Most American critics fall back on the usual "they suck 'cause they ape the Beatles" trope -- which has never really been true except in the occasional ballad, if anything the group started out aping T. Rex and moved onto louder things -- and treat the band as a kind of hysterical British joke, like the rock equivalent of a Roger Moore Bond film or something. They somehow failed to notice that "Don't Believe The Truth," their album previous to this one, was also mostly great, or that "Mucky Fingers" on that one was a more believable and likeable Velvets rip to ANYTHING on the latest Brian Jonestown, or that "Lyla" was the great comeback single that never was. Never mind, though, "Dig Out Your Soul" is as good as some of the critics who listened to it are saying it is -- you'd have to be braindead not to feel a thrill from "Shock of the LIghtning" or to feel the awesome psych-groove in "Falling Down." And c'mon -- if "I'm Outta Time" isn't Liam's prettiest, best singing ever, I'm a Monkey (Man)'s Unkle, okay? There's great songwriting all over the thing, and great playing, and great production, and its subtle and psych and kool and dark and all other manner of adjectives and its time you took another look and maybe realized its cool and maybe they always were rather cool, okay?

I realize, though, that at the end of the day it is still basically pop music, and if you have a problem with pop music IN GENERAL, like songs with hooks that are 3:30 and get played on the radio, you're not gonna get turned on to Oasis. No matter, though, next time someone says my songs sound like Oasis I'm gonna be more than okay with that, thank you very much. I've come to terms with it all.

Yay! New Miyazaki film!!

2008-11-26T13:35:00.001-08:00

I am a massive, massive fan of genius filmmaker/animator Hayao Miyazaki, and you should be, too. If you haven't seen the master's films -- and I don't use the term "master" lightly; he is absolutely, without question, the finest animator working today -- you need to, now. Every one's a gem, from his 80s masterwork "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind" to the gloriously adorable "My Neighbor Totoro" to the magnificent "Princess Mononoke" to my personal favorite, 2004's "Howl's Moving Castle" and everywhere in between, he doesn't have a single dud in his catalog, nor is he likely to, ever. His attention to detail is astounding -- every texture, every cloud, every mountain is lovingly rendered with absolute care, and it makes his films a joy unparalleled.

His new film is called "Ponyo On A Cliff By The Sea," and it's due to be released domestically sometime in 2009, though it was already a runaway hit in Japan. I've read that Miyazaki took special care to render water and waves in this one, which takes place mostly at sea. It's the story of a goldfish princess who wants to be human -- kind of a twist on the "Little Mermaid" myth. It is heart-meltingly adorable.

When it comes out, go see it. And rent every single one of his other films, if you haven't already.

Why I Hated Hellboy 2

2008-11-25T11:50:00.000-08:00

Let me preface by saying what a willing audience I was for this film -- I love literally EVERY OTHER FILM Guillermo Del Toro has done (except I haven't seen "Pan's Labyrinth" 'cause, well, I'm fragile, sorta, and i *know* it's gonna make me bawl, but c'mon -- we can all agree that its great, even if I haven't seen it, right?). I loved "Mimic" even, I've seen it like ten times. I loved the first Hellboy movie. I loved all of Mike Mignola's Hellboy comics. I even have all the ANIMATED Hellboys that came out between the movies. AND you guys know me -- I'm the guy that finds something positive to say about *loads* of crappy films. I *like* crappy films, even -- hell, how many times did I see "Flash Gordon?"

And yet -- I wrenched the film out of our DVD player halfway through. 'Cause, see, the mix of humor and dark superhero action was ALL WRONG, like jarringly horrifically gut-wrenchingly wrong. The first film was dark -- not, like, BATMAN dark, but it had a moody surreality, and you had the feeling there was some genuinely menacing spirituality going on, y'know? Like -- you wanted to believe Hellboy was gonna kick some serious ass, 'cause the freaky Nazi guy with the metal mask was fucking terrifying and if he was gonna fuck with you, you were GOING DOWN, in a really ugly way. But it was still funny, y'know? It had plenty of laughs, and they felt like RELIEF when they happened.

THIS time, though, the EMPHASIS was on the laughs. I mean, any film that starts with a teenage Hellboy on Christmas Eve is already starting on a kind of bum note (and wtf with the shitty makeup in the ENTIRE MOVIE???) but then to make whatsisname from Arrested Development a MORE MAJOR CHARACTER and frame the thing with his desire to get Hellboy to like him? Yuk yuk yuk, only not really. None of the humor is actually funny -- witness Hellboy and Liz Sherman's jarringly awful fight at the beginning, or the introduction of Krauss' character, played with the most ridiculously off-pitch German accent EVER (performed by Seth McFarlane, that should have been a no-no RIGHT THERE).

And none of the darkness felt -- well, DARK. The elf-dude was lame, and LOOKED lame, and all the sort of underworld stuff felt really CLEAN and muppety, like the stuff in Return of the Jedi, and while I appreciate makeup effects instead of shitty CGI, this stuff didn't feel DIRTY enough, or GRUNGY enough, and every five-minutes there's a horribly ill-timed attempt at a joke, and by about halfway through we were like "do we care about ANY of the characters? Is this as horrible as I think it is?" And yeah, it WAS.

So we didn't get all the way through, but man, if it gets SUDDENLY REALLY LOTS BETTER halfway through, maybe I'll be sorry, but WOW.

I still love Del Toro and Hellboy as a kind of concept or whatever, I hope he can do a third, but MAN ALIVE, that almost was bad enough to ruin everything for me.

Weekend Photo Bolg

2008-11-24T11:58:00.000-08:00

Ahh -- a relaxing weekend for once! I could blog about the strange gig we played on Friday at 2AM at a gallery downtown that smelled like fresh spray paint but I think the brain cells covering that memory were killed by the fumes. So let us move onto the REST of the weekend, which was lovely.

First off, we hit the Schindler House, a fantastic 1920s residence a few blocks from us which has the distinction of being the first piece of architecture built in the Modern style in America. It was designed by Rudolf Schindler, a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright and nemesis of Richard Neutra. It's been lovingly cared-for and restored, and is used currently as an art gallery. Fans of modern architecture, check this out (all photos, of course, by the talented Miss Trixi B, except the ones she's in):

This is an awesome view of the back of the house. Notice all the wood -- and notice how low-hanging everything is, the ceilings were only about 6'5", meaning my friend Jay Hurley would be banging his head all the time if he lived there.

'nother view of the back. That viney thing up near the top left? That's the SLEEPING QUARTERS. They're open air, up on the roof of the building.

This fantastic shot is one of the open-air fireplaces in the backyard.

For Trixi fans (and there are many): The lovely Miss Trixi B in the kitchen of the Schindler House.

...and in amongst the bamboo in back of the house!

On our walks 'round the neighborhood, we also discovered THIS house, about which I know absolutely nothing:

...then, we visited the set of The United States of Tara, the Spielberg/Cody program for which Trixi works. Here she is sitting in the chair of one John Corbett, whom you may remember from Sex In The City and Northern Exposure:

Coming soon: my review of the HALF of Hellboy 2 that we made it through before WRENCHING the fucking thing out of the DVD player.

Relationship Post #423456: Healing From Shit

2008-11-20T13:43:00.001-08:00

Dear folks who've been dumped, been through a divorce, a breakup, or some other horrible relationship-ending explosion of shit,

How often have you heard this phrase: "Why can't you just get over it?"

If you're like me, or everybody else I know that's been through a divorce, or a breakup, or a death, or getting dumped outta a long-term relationship, the answer is "a fuck of a lot, all the time, from just about everybody you know."

It usually comes from someone with the best intentions -- like, you've just got done with time #2034 of bitching about the ex and you're either angry or sad or some wicked combination of the two, and somebody who hates seeing you like that lets fly with that phrase. It's out of concern, usually (usually -- I'd say that Trix's boss who said to her, snarkily, "it's been a month now, why can't you just get over it" was probably slightly less than concerned for her well being) and its certainly almost never meant maliciously but --

-- here's the thing. It's not like you can switch on a switch and "get over it." That's not the way it works.

As I've mentioned before, the breakup leaves everybody with a list of fucking outstanding issues. Since nobody ever follows my advice on "how to properly break up with people," most of the time they think the best thing to do is to be quote-unquote "honest" and tell the other person just exactly why they're breaking up with 'em, and those psychological scars, combined, mind you, with feelings of abandonment and fear and depression and two thousand other emotions that just come along with any breakup, no matter how big or small, run fucking DEEP.

And the way it works is: you have to work through every single one of them, one at a time, painfully, before you can heal. And just so everybody knows: that can take a really long time. How long? They say that you can't fully heal from a relationship until HALF AS MUCH TIME HAS PASSED AS THE RELATIONSHIP LASTS. Did you hear that? Half as much time as the relationship lasts.

Now, that's just a general rule of thumb. That's obviously not hard-and-fast by any means. Some people heal faster than others, obviously, and some people heal slower. There's people out there who've been through a divorce or death or breakup or whatever who never heal. And sometimes they heal outwardly but are still suffering like damn inwardly. Like: I "healed" from my breakup with The Ex Before Last, outwardly, really quickly. Like I was glad I was out of the relationship, really glad. But I spent three years -- THREE YEARS, and that's just about exactly half the length of the relationship -- having pretend arguments with her in my head. Going over ALL the hurt, all the bad feelings, all the stupid crap I went through bit by bit by bit until somehow, magically, I finally worked it out to my satisfaction.

That's how I do it. Pretend arguments in my head. Or "draft" emails that I never send, that's my current M.O. But other people do it differently.

And this where I get really condescending -- to the folks who say "why can't you get over it," you honestly can't know until you've been through it. You say to yourself "but I've been through all kinds of breakups!" Yes, maybe you have. But every breakup effects everybody differently. And the length of a relationship makes a HUGE HUGE HUGE difference. And how the breakup happened makes a huge difference too, like a really huge one. A mutual "parting of the ways" hurts far less than getting dumped for a supermodel or even a totally normal average person, y'know?

And even if the person you're concerned about is currently happy in a NEW relationship? Honestly, that doesn't make a bit of difference. Again, speaking of the Ex-Before-Last, I was VERY happy in a relationship the entire time I was carrying on arguments with my ex in my head. I know there's some of you out there who feel me -- yeah, you KNOW you should be focusing on the positive, you know you should have your head 100% in the relationship you're in 'cause it's awesome and rad and whatever else, but guess wha? You can't because there's still some healing to do, and it takes how long it takes.

(And furthermore: even if the person you're healing from SUCKS BALL-SACK? Doesn't matter one bit. Just doesn't. Because it isn't about the quality or quantity of the person. It's about PAIN and HEALING and SCARS and all that stuff cannot be rationalized away by saying "well, I'm better off now, aren't I?" Although it certainly HELPS to tell yourself that, sometimes, it is not a cure-all by any means).

So people? Be patient with the healing folks, okay? Honestly. It takes how long it takes. Sometimes it takes a scary amount of time. But it does happen.

Ronnie James Dio (or, why I think shrieky voiced lead singers are awesome)

2008-11-20T11:10:00.000-08:00

On the way into work this morning, I was cranking Black Sabbath's "The Dio Years."

Okay, okay, I know what you're thinking -- Dio? Seriously? But yeah -- honestly, there's something about the Dio era of that band that I really like. My buddy Dave Beckner swears by it, and I have to say he has a point. There's more actual pop songs on "Heaven and Hell" than there is on the entire first ten years of Ozzy's administration. And yeah -- there's a part of me, the part that was raised on Halen and Leppard, the fucking Beavis and Butthead that still lives inside my head, that thinks songs about dragons and wizards and kings and scantily-clad barbarian women are just COOL, huh huh huh. Y'know? Its the kind of stupid crap that you draw pictures of on your high-school notebook, and also it rocks, and you can bang your head to it, and at 7 AM stuck in traffic on the way into Venice for another day where my comps that I worked for days on will get killed or at least changed beyond recognition, it seemed a little transcendent. That's not to say that Ozzy isn't, well, Ozzy, and there's no question that, like, "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" is a BETTER record fundamentally than "Heaven and Hell," but let's just not totally write off the Dio tenure, shall we?

Also, SHRIEKY VOICED LEAD SINGER.

There was some point in the late 90s/early 00s where every american metal singer in the world decided that shrieky voices were, like, for PUSSIES, and started singing like that asshole from Pearl Jam. 'Cause, y'know, its easier to find people to sing like that, because Bob down the street has a pretty good voice and he has a bitchin Camaro we can take to gigs so Julie from high school will finally fuck me, and he's not gonna get all fucking EGO about this shit, 'cause this is MY BAND, and let's not forget it. Any idiot can sing like the guy from Pearl Jam. I'd give you a sound clip to prove it -- I'M an idiot, and I can sing like that. It's low. You don't have to have any chops. You dont' have to have a range. All you have to have is a lotta testosterone and the ability to write shitty lyrics about how crappy stuff is.And what does that get you? Well, Nickelback is what. And that is, by no means, a good thing. I'll take Poison ANY FUCKING DAY over Nickelback. ANY FUCKING DAY.

Because okay, that's the thing, right? Shrieky voiced lead singers write about chicks and dragons and wizards and more chicks and going to California and how Love Hurts and shit like that (I know he didn't write that, but let me riff, here), and all the low-voiced assholes can do is write about how much shit sucks. What's up with that? Is there something about the ability to sing high that makes you HAPPIER ABOUT LIFE? At any rate -- I will posit that metal written by shrieky guys always always trumps metal written by the low guys.

And that brings me to Justin Hawkins. You may remember a band called The Darkness from a few years back. They had a hit called "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" which featured the ULTIMATE shrieky-voiced lead singer, a stringy British dude with a wicked sense of humor called Justin Hawkins, who whooped and shrieked like nobody's business. He was almost Freddie Mercury-like in sheer range, and he was AWESOME.

Then at some point he went into rehab, and then quit the Darkness. And so what do they do? They replace him with a LOW-VOICED GUY, who immediately gets all serious and singing about life sucking and stuff and then the band BLOWS. You see? You see?

Well, the good news is that Justin Hawkins is back, with a COMPLETELY AWESOME BAND called Hot Leg (yes, just the one of them!) and he's just as shrieky and amazing and hilariously over-the-top as he was before. So low guy that joined what's left of the Darkness? You may go to hades, my friend, because here comes Hot Leg. Enjoy.

I've Met Jesus

Give me some solace, but just a quantum, they sell big bags of solace, but I don't want 'em!

2008-11-18T09:57:00.001-08:00

I'm just gonna get it out of the way right up front: I never, at any point during Quantum of Solace, had any trouble figuring out what was going on. That's one of the main complaints I've heard over and over about this film: that the editing style -- quick, fuzzy cuts mixed with odd symbolic cutaways -- makes it impossible to follow. Dunno -- maybe I'm just used to that style from my years watching music videos (see especially Mark Romanek and Sam Bayer) or maybe I'm just so BORED with the slickitty slick style of the Brosnan-era Bond movies that I'll take anything that's different. Anyway -- got it, followed it, done and dusted.

Also: I keep hearing over and over again that there's "no plot." Huh? There's just the right amount of plot. Plenty of plot. I mean, it's a BOND PLOT. There's a guy, he's up to no good, he's trying to fuck with the world, Bond figures out his complicated scheme and stops him. Right? Is there typically more plot in a Bond film? A subplot featuring a gay love affair between two of the Bond girls? Some kind of subtlety that I normally miss? It features the usual amount of plot. And just a note: the more you say the word "plot" the funnier it sounds.

That all said: I liked it. I fully went in expecting it to be a flawed film, after reading so many reviews bitching about the previous two complaints, but I found myself completely captivated. Its relentless, to be sure -- the action starts right atop and never lets up for even a second. Okay, for a second -- we get the redemption of the Mathis character from the last film -- but other than that, there isn't any pause to reflect at any moment during the film. Which to me is great because I'm not sure I want a let-up, here. It just keeps going, bashes you in the face over and over, and then it wraps up neatly. It's fun.

And it isn't completely po-faced, either. There's plenty of humor, it isn't relentlessly dark -- see especially the growing relationship between Bond and Judy Dench's M, which this time 'round is played for laughs as Bond racks up the body count to Dench's great and vocal dismay. The audience I was with guffawed in all the right spots, too, so it isn't like the beats miss their mark.

Daniel Craig continues to be excellent -- he smoulders. We're not used to a smouldering Bond -- Moore fucking DRIPPED with irritating, winking charm; Connery was a little harder and more rapist-y; Brosnan was just plain HOT and knew it and acted like he knew YOU knew it. Craig's a funny-looking, jug-eared freak, but he fucking smoulders. He walks into a scene and he's SEXY even when he's not. His sexy catches you off guard, which seems more like the kind of sexy a blunt instrument is supposed to have. He's supposed to be a SECRET agent. If he walks through the world being smarmy, everyone's gonna know who he is. Y'know?

Oh, and the opening titles sequence was magnificent. But then, I'm a White Stripes fan.

I've never felt more like I was watching a different film than the critics. I say: go see it, pronto.

(Oh yeah -- the STAR TREK TRAILER -- I feel like that's almost a post in and of itself, but holy wow Jesus was it cool.)

Bond. JAMES...Bond.

2008-11-14T09:22:00.000-08:00

If you know me, you know I'm a huge Bond fan. Always have been. The first Bond film I ever saw was "For Your Eyes Only" -- I can't remember if I saw it in the theater or on TV, but I've seen every film since then in the theater, usually on the day they're released (it takes an act of God to keep me away, frankly). My favorites, if you must know -- you're all dying for a geek-list, right? -- are, in this order, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (yes, the Lazenby one! Its a tremendous film first and foremost, and he's a lot better than you remember), "Dr. No," "Casino Royale," "From Russia With Love" and the still-awesome, action-packed Moore departure "For Your Eyes Only."

You'll notice the absence of one particular film from my favorites list, there -- "Goldfinger." That's not to say I don't ENJOY "Goldfinger" -- hell, there's something I like about every Bond film, and that includes "Moonraker" -- but, you see, I am, first and foremost, a fan of a slightly different Bond: Ian Fleming's literary version. "Goldfinger" is adapted from a book, yes, but it also serves as the template for every Bond film for almost twenty years. Gadgetry galore, hot chicks galore (or Galore), a Big Cartoon Villain With A Massive Base And A Plan To Destroy The World, and lots and lots of quips. Roger Ebert, in his review of the newly-released "Quantum of Solace," declares his preference for this Bond, and I couldn't disagree more.

The reason I prefer films like "From Russia With Love" and "For Your Eyes Only" is that they exist in the real world. This is not the fantasy world of "Goldfinger," but an actual world filled with border disputes and angry superpowers and druglord clashes and fucked-up brutal fist-fights. Fleming's superspy always existed in the real world, too. He was human. He was a brutal thug with mad skillz. He liked his drinks a particular way, he liked fancy clothes and fast cars and hot women, but only because those were the small pleasures he could take in a life filled with brutality and ugliness. He drank too much and took too many damn pills to dull the pain of his work. He enjoyed himself, he took pleasure in his occupation, but it HURT HIM. He felt. He was real.

We watched "Die Another Day" -- which I kind of see as the nadir of the Brosnan era -- the other night, to drive this point home. The Bond we get at the beginning of the film is almost the literary Bond. He's captured, he's tortured, he just about loses his life and it DRIVES him. It pushes him. He feels. He's angry. He's a real guy. Then, about halfway through the film, the invisible car is introduced by John Cleese as Q, and we drop right out of the real world. We're now in Sci Fi Fantasy Land again, and for the remainder of the film we get cliche after cliche taken straight from "Goldfinger" -- big villain. Hot chicks with funny names. A satellite that can destroy the world. Gadgets that couldn't possibly exist. Quips and stupidity.

Which is why I'm so happy about the reinvention of the film series, starting with "Casino Royale." The "Goldfinger" template is nowhere in sight. Daniel Craig's Bond is as close to the literary Bond as we could possibly get in 2008's blockbuster-driven cinema. He is that brutal thug with mad skillz, and he's living in a world that's pretty much our own. He has gadgets, but they're simple and practical -- he has a car thingy that diagnoses poison, that's about it. Other than that, this Bond relies on his wits and his fightin' skills. He's still charming as hell, but his repartee isn't filled with ludicrous puns and ridiculous single-entendres. For chrissake, he sleeps with trashy married women -- that's all he can get, at first, and that's totally believable.

Most of all, he FEELS. He's MOTIVATED by something. A complaint I heard a while back (from someone who probably caught a few of the Moore films on TV, not a fan by any means) was that "Bond would never fall in love" like he did with Vesper Lynd. Uh uh, Charlie. Go back and read or watch "On Her Majesty's Secret Service." He not only falls in love, he gets married, and when Tracy Bond is brutally shot by Blofeld's thugs, his desire to avenge her death drives him; a single-minded desire to kill the man who murdered his wife in cold blood. THIS is the same Bond we get in "Casino Royale" and, from what I hear, "Quantum of Solace." He's a real guy. He's not just a haircut and some quips and a martini, shaken-not-stirred.

Of course, there will always be folks -- Roger Ebert among them -- who prefer the "Goldfinger" Bond. Or these guys, who wish that Roger Moore would come back:

For them, I recommend a movie called "Austin Powers," 'cause that's pretty much what the Bond films became. Me? I'm gonna be in the front row for "Quantum of Solace" tonight, cheering the best Bond we've had in years and years.

A brief discussion about genetics

2008-11-12T09:35:00.001-08:00

Consider, if you will, the genetic factors behind the curious Munster family.

Grandpa Munster and Lily Munster are, quite clearly, Vampires or, as they're popularly known, "Draculas." This means that they're dead people who have been reanimated by whatever spiritual or supernatural force creates Draculas; however, they have, oddly, retained their ability to reproduce -- Lily is clearly Grandpa's offspring, though it is unclear who the mother is. Herman Munster, however, is clearly a monster, or as they're popularly known, "Frankensteins." He, too, is a reanimated corpse, though presumably through the means of electrical infusion of the tissues via some unnamed evil scientist. He, too, retains the ability to produce sperm.

Where the confusion comes in is with the offspring, Eddie and Marilyn. Now, Eddie is clearly an aberration like his parents -- however, he is a werewolf or, as they're popularly known, a "Woofman." Marilyn is quite clearly a normal human girl -- she retains none of the characteristics of her mother's side. What does this say about the crossbreeding between a vampire and a reanimated corpse?

Clearly the wild card here is Lily's mother. Draculaism must not be a dominant gene -- one presumes that Lily's mother was part Dracula and part Woofman and through breeding with a Frankenstein -- simply a reanimated corpse, but basically a normal human, one assumes, BEFORE the reanimation -- the Dracula gene became recessive and the Woofman gene and human gene became dominant. One shudders to think of a Dracula with the lycanthropic tendency -- the thirst for human blood must have made euthanasia essential. Grandpa presumably killed her for her own good, and it is this sorrow which informs him in his daily life.

I would seriously advise Marilyn -- who can "pass" as human -- to notify any potential breeding partners that she has the capability of producing Dracula or Woofman offspring, in case he's not aware of her forebears prior to breeding.

Our next discussion: the Addams Family -- clearly a case of nuclear mutation gone haywire.

New music! New music! New music!

2008-11-10T12:11:00.000-08:00

Okay, this is just a LITTLE teaser for the album I'm working on, okay? This kind of doesn't really represent the direction I'm working in, or maybe it DOES in the sense that its darker, fuzzier and more fucked up than the old stuff I did, but its such a cheerful little ditty (unlike many of the others) and there's a nifty story attached to it and so I felt like I should share. Just to get everybody excited about whatever new band I eventually put together around these songs.

The story is this: about a week ago, I had this REALLY vivid dream. In it, I was arguing with my former bandmate and dear friend Mr. Jay Hurley. The argument went like this:

Jay: Dude, it takes WEEKS to write a really good song.
Me: No it doesn't. I can write a song in like four minutes flat.
Jay: Yeah?
Me: Seriously. What's that girl's name you wanted to write a song about forever?
Jay: Matilda.
Me: Okay, I'm gonna write "Matilda." Be right back.

And then I went downstairs, and grabbed a guitar, and WROTE A SONG CALLED MATILDA, in a dream. In a dream. And then the cool thing was? I woke up and remembered every bit of the song, from the chords to the words to everything. And I rushed over to my computer at 5AM and sang the song into it. And the next morning? It still didn't suck. So that night I recorded the song as a full demo with instruments and everything.

And here it is, now retitled "When Trixi Smiles." Enjoy!

"When I'm with you, it feels like home." Somehow in my dream, that sentiment came though, and its absolutely true of the subject of the song.

Weekend Cheese and Onions Clearinghouse

2008-11-10T11:50:00.001-08:00

First off, a little old business -- this is Halloween In West Hollywood, a decadent insanity featuring about 400,000 (seriously!) costumed, drunk freaks staggering up and down Santa Monica Avenue and groping each other. Here we see Trixi dressed as Trixie from Speed Racer, touching the extremely rock-hard boobie of Paul Stanley, who looks mayyyybe a little worse-for-wear alcohol-wise -- but man, he's more ripped than Real Paul Stanely ever was, and straighter, too, methinks, if you know what I'm saying.

Yes, I'm saying I think Paul Stanley is gay. No proof, of course, but there it is.

This last weekend, Trix and I went to the desert again. Yeah, we have kind of a thing for the desert. Palm Desert, Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage, Joshua Tree -- we frickin' love it out there. The people are kind of a little batshit crazy and the architecture is insane and the MOUNTAINS IN THE BACKGROUND are staggeringly beautiful. There's something so peaceful about it compared to the "spend seventeen hours in traffic and then slit your wrists" insanity that is Los Angeles.

This time, however, we had a REASON to go -- the B-52s!

Trix loves 'em more than anything, and I dig 'em too -- I was at the Northrop Auditorium show where they, like, literally brought down the house in the sense of "caused the entire infrastructure of the building to collapse." They're in, what, their fifties? Probably? I mean, it was 20-some years since *I* first liked 'em, and they were around for ten years at that point already, so yeah, they have to be, but there's NO way you'd be able to tell. Fred's still talkin' smack, the girls still sing like angels, and everybody's still pretty goddamn hot. We even waited by the tour bus afterwards, and Trix got to talk to Cindy a lil' bit. It was fun as hell.

Then the next day we visited this awesome zoo in Palm Desert called The Living Desert. This is Trix with her "appropriate" shoes, as we headed into the desert for a bit of a hike. Yesterday, oddly, VERY oddly, it was like 60 degrees, windy and rainy. The ONE DAY we planned a nature hike, it frickin' rained in the desert. I kept joking that Kyle McLachlan must be around. "HOW CAN THIS BE? FOR HE IS THE KWISATZ HADERACH!" But then, that's a "Dune" joke and near as I can tell, I'm the only one that ever gets my Dune jokes.

I have more fun to post later, including -- perhaps -- some new music? Should I? Should I?

Is it really possible?

2008-11-05T09:50:00.000-08:00

Sexy pic of Obama pretending to be Ursula Andress from Dr. No

...we actually won? By a freakin' landslide? Well, at least an electoral landslide? I'm so used to being a member of the Party of Perennial Whiffers and Professional Underdogs that it caught me completely off guard. The energy last night was palpable, all over West Hollywood. Trix and I took to our local watering hole to watch the coverage and imbibe with the locals. When Obama finally took to the podium to give his speech, there was -- seriously -- not a dry eye in the bar. I'll admit fully, I was one of 'em -- I welled up at least three different times during his speech, as well as when they showed Jesse Jackson with tears running down his face. Whatever you might think of the Rev. Jackson, it's been a long, hard struggle to get where we are today, and the man's been at the front lines the whole time. He paved the way for last night, even with "Hymietown." And seriously -- it has nothing to do with policy or social issues or really anything at all except the heart of the man, but how amazing was it that Obama referred to his wife as "his best friend for sixteen years?"

And isn't it nice to have a President Elect who can actually move you with his words? Rather than send you scurrying behind the couch in embarrassment and/or fear? I'll take "articulate." ** It's been eight years of "folksy," believe me, I will take "articulate." Not that McCain wasn't articulate -- I thought his speech last night was more than adequate, and a little charmingly self-effacing. They're both smart guys -- isn't it nice to bloody well force the country to choose between two smart guys, rather than one brainiac east-coast robot and one backwoods hick?

Random thoughts:

- Notice the difference: when McCain mentioned Barack Obama during his speech, the crowd either booed or began chanting angrily. When Obama mentioned McCain during his speech, the crowd applauded. I guess that just says the Democrats on hand were more polite than the Republicans on hand, maybe nothing larger, but hey -- at this point, I'm all for a little politesse.

- I felt a little smug, because I had to endure eight fucking years of people saying, of the VERY close race in 2000 and the semi-closeish race in 2004 "Well, if your guy was GOOD ENOUGH, he would have been able to beat the opposition by a landslide." Um -- HA. HA HA HA HA HA HA. HA. HA. HA.

- In Texas -- TEXAS, where apparently polls showed that 30% of people believed Obama was a Muslim -- McCain only won by 55% - 44%. Notice the county breakdowns. Obama won in the south of Texas -- where he undoubtedly scored oddly huge with Mexican immigrant voters -- and in the Big Cities. I mean, you HAVE to call it a landslide when Texas actually plumps that much for the Democrat. Nothing against Texas -- I actually really dig the state, and have a lotta great things to say about time spent there -- but that's just a little bit of wow.

- I had to doink TWO MySpace friends this morning. One guy posted a bulletin about how he thought Obama was the Antichrist -- like the actual, biblical Antichrist -- and how we hadn't learned enough from Hitler and Stalin. His actual page claimed that we were now officially in "the great tribulation." DOINK. The other guy posted a thing about how "now we know who will bring about the end of the world in 2012 as foretold by the Mayans." DOINK.

- I'm FUCKING PISSED, however, that Prop 8 passed. My friend Ashley posted the most articulate thing I've yet read on the matter, so go there and read that. I'm just too angry at the moment, especially after seeing the pictures of the pro-Prop 8 people actually CHEERING that they took the right to marry away from people, and watching the TV ads the "Yes on 8" people ran, with a kid coming home from school saying she'd learned at school that a "prince could marry another prince." Dear frightened parents: I am going to teach my child that equality is the most important thing ever and that its totally okay for princes to marry other princes and princesses to marry other princesses. And then my child is going to totally infect your child with free thinking and there's nothing you can do about it. You can only fight against common sense and equality for so long. I think this election is proof of that.

- I'm kinda psyched about the Democratic president and the Democratic majority in the House AND the Senate right now. I want New Deal Liberalism, dammit, and I want it now. Also, I'm psyched that hemlines will now rise like they did during the Johnson and Clinton administrations. Yay on all that.

Morning in America, folks. I have to say, I feel pretty good about it all.

** I just wanna point out -- I'm using the word "articulate" in the sense of "compared to President Bush, who is exactly the opposite." It didn't even occur to me until this morning that using "articulate" to describe an African-American man can have severe racist overtones, so if anybody took it that way, I apologize. There's gotta be a better choice of words to describe someone who's able to put together cogent, interesting thoughts with words and speak them in public.

Hells yes, I voted.

2008-11-04T10:32:00.000-08:00

...NO on Prop 8, and YES on Barack Obama. Also YES on the less-publicized prop 2, which prevents cruelty to farm animals, and NO on the libertarian screenwriter running for Senate.

Overheard at the polling place: "I'm voting for change, yo!"

Also overheard at the polling place: a poor barking dog who was terrified by the HUNDREDS of people waiting in line. Heartening that there were so many people turning out to vote, but people: don't bring your frickin' DOGS to vote, okay? That right's a few years off yet.

If you haven't voted yet -- VOTE. Okay?

Explorers Club Video!!

2008-11-03T10:08:00.000-08:00

Okay, remember a month or so back when I was ranting and raving about the Explorers Club? Check out their first video, an absolutely exuberant little clip for their tune "Do You Love Me."

Do You Love Me?

Recent Record Release Roundup

2008-10-30T09:47:00.000-07:00

Queen, The Cosmos Rocks -- there isn't enough invective in the English language to describe how I feel about this record. Like -- I love Queen, okay? Freddie Mercury is the greatest singer in the history of rock music. It's that simple. Elvis had the sex, the soul, the appeal, but there has been NOBODY EVER with chops like Freddie that still made you care deeply about what he was singing and wanna shake your ass at the same time. And as a replacement, we get journeyman bloozeman Paul Rogers? The fuck? How is that even a correlate? Has Paul Rogers ever, even when he was actually good back in the Free days, had even one scintilla of the flair and the power of Freddie? Does anybody still enjoy hearing Bad Company on the radio? Were they even ever any more than Zeppelin third-stringers? Wasn't The Firm already a sick embarrassment 'cause of Paul Rogers 25 years ago? I could name you thirty guys who'd be better than Paul Rogers in Queen, and make more sense -- the list starts with George Michael and goes from there, and no, I'm not kidding -- but apparently formerly-thrilling-guitarist Brian May is content to play with safe. And that's just what this record is -- competent, well-played, extraordinarily safe rock and roll music, and it makes me absolutely sick to my gut, because that's what Queen NEVER were, EVER, was fucking safe. Dig? Don't bother, don't even look at this record or play it on iTunes or steal it from the internet because if you like Queen and you like rock music, it's just gonna piss you off and you'll end up wanting to pull your own fingernails out. Like I did. Fuck you, Queen And Paul Rogers.

Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, Cardinology -- Okay, we've already established that it's super not hip to like Ryan Adams. I mean -- Pitchfork gave this thing a 4 out of 10, and Pitchfork are the arbiters of What's Hip Right Now, and I'm sure right now are listening to the new Black Kids record and patting their own backs at their unimaginative slagging of the "classic rock." 'Cept Ryan Adams ain't really about hip, and never was. Ryan Adams' influences are about as unhip -- the Dead, mid-period Stones, U2 or something, whatever else you'd care to name -- as you can get. Ryan Adams doesn't care. Ryan Adams is about writing pretty songs about his own pain, and if you can't get behind that, you ain't never really gonna get him, which don't matter much to Ryan Adams, as he's gonna keep on writing pretty songs about his own pain probably as a form of therapy, and hell with you anyway, and that kinda makes him cooler than a lotta guys who pose and act all indie and whatever else, that not giving a fuck what you think-ness.

Ryan Adams would like you to know, but doesn't care if you don't dig it, that "Cardinology"'s kind of a corker, and that the first four songs are pretty much solid all the way through. I especially like "Fix It," which is probably the best piece of musical rumination on getting left by someone I've ever heard. At its base, this is a good old-fashioned breakup record, with virtually every song lamenting somebody (Parker Posey?) who left the poor sad sack in the dust, but man, does he manage a buncha great tunes about it. It starts to lag right around "Sink Ships" but wow, the first half just slays. And yeah -- it's "classic rock" in just about every way you can name, and terribly uncool and unhip, but damned if I dont' like it anyway, not that Ryan Adams cares one jot. He's just gonna keep putting out records whether you or I like it or not. Luckily I do.

AC/DC, Black Ice -- Meanwhile, we have the new AC/DC record, available quite conveniently at your local WAL-MART store, and nowhere else, because Brian Johnson thinks the internet steals your vital fluids or something. And the good news is that it kicks lots and lots of ass. The guitars drill themselves into your skull, the vocals shriek and squeal and scream in all the right places, the drums you can feel in your gut (BOOM -- KSHHH -- BOOM -- KSHHH, and nothing else, ever) and the songwriting is tight and heavy and stupid, absolutely irredeemably wonderfully stupid. The other good news is that the band have not changed AT ALL. They haven't gotten any better or any worse -- they're frozen in suspended animation in 1981, and that's kinda what you want, right? You don't WANT AC/DC to write a concept album about each of the 50 states, or make an album of country covers or something. You just want them to be loud and dumb and that's it, and do you really need any more? Hell, we need a band like that, right?

The bad news is that its about six or seven songs too long, but hey, that's what they make skip buttons for, right? There's a buncha killer tunes lumped at the beginning -- "Rock 'n' Roll Train" and "Skies on Fire" and "Big Jack" and "Anything Goes" and then you gotta hit skip and then "Smash "n' Grab" is killer and "Spoilin' for a Fight" and then "Decibel" is super damn heavy and "Stormy May Day" and skip skip "Money Made" and then skip skip skip skip and you're back up atop again. It ain't perfect. It's too long. But it's loud and dumb and will crunch the shit out of your skull and leave you bleeding, and I think that's worth the price of admission. Have fun at WalMart, folks.

On Lost Friendship

2008-10-29T12:21:00.000-07:00

Trix and I have been ruminating and chatting about loss of friendship a lot because it's been happening a lot recently.

I don't mean the slow, gradual burnout that happens to some friendships -- because those are, in my experience, totally reparable. You lose contact with someone, you reconnect with them a year, two years, five years down the line and it's like no time at all has passed. My childhood best friend Adam Lee and I do that all the time. We lose contact with each other for, like, a year or two or ten at a time, but when we finally do reconnect, we're still those dorky kids on the playground with our Star Wars toys. Really, our friendship never died, it just gets put into suspended animation occasionally due to circumstance, but it's still totally real and fierce, y'know? I'd still take a bullet for that mothafucka even thirty years later.

No, I'm talking about the abrupt, sudden stabbing death caused by actually having to shove a friend out of your life for whatever reason, or alternately, being shoved out of someone's life. Sometimes, it's really just a case of "who's the first person to call it quits" -- the friendship was probably over already, otherwise no shoving would have to be done, right? Other times, one person still wants the friendship to continue but for whatever reason the other one doesn't. Either way -- it hurts. People tell you "oh, it's for the better" or "oh, really, you're better off without those people in your life," or come up with all kinds of excuses WHY it happened or HOW it happened, but it still hurts. It's no less real than actually losing those people entirely, like if they actually died. That's what it feels like. That's the only thing I can compare it to.

And it isn't just an "ouch, it hurts," either, like a jab from a needle at the doctor's office; it's more a multiphased pain that lasts a long damn time.

You go through the questioning phase, like -- did I ever matter to that person in the first place? What the fuck did I do so wrong that's causing this? Am I a bad person, or am I a callous person, or was I not enough of a friend in the first place? Was our friendship ever even real to begin with? This phase probably hurts the worst, because you feel like you're to blame for the friendship ending. You start going over and over and over in your head what you could have done differently and keep coming up with no answers, or answers that don't fit the bill, or answers that only solve PART of the problem. I mean, nobody's a saint, right? It's always two-sided, but sometimes you don't come up with enough that accounts for something as harsh as the end of a friendship, and that just leads you to question yourself more. You're sure it had to be your fault.

And then you go through the demonizing phase. And that's like -- fuck that person. I mean, how could they not see that I'm good enough for them? How could they be such a horrible person that they could do this to me? I suppose your typical "five stages" model would see this as the "anger" phase, but it's more than that. It's a kind of ritual hardening-of-the-heart, a protection against further pain, an assurance that your feelings for that person become less than they were before because if they were as strong as they were before, you just know they're gonna hurt you again, right?

I suppose the final phase is something like "acceptance," but you never really accept it. Not really. It's like -- it's over. Sure. That person isn't my friend anymore. But it still hurts. There's still that last lingering shred of pain that might fade to a dull throb but never really leaves your heart. There are triggers -- they're everywhere, right? And everytime you run across one, you get that reminder again. Oh yeah. There was this person in my life, and they're not there anymore, and they will never be again. And even if the pain is just a dull throb, it still hurts.

Losing a friend is no less painful than losing a relationship, frankly. I mean, who do you have in your life except your friends and your family? And for lots of us -- especially someone like me who didn't have siblings growing up -- your friends are just as important as your family, and your loyalty is fierce and unswerveable except in the face of what I'd call X-Treme Circumstance. But I think people don't realize how painful it is, because some people haven't gone through it. It's like how some people don't understand how much divorces hurt, right? 'Cause they've never had one? "Get over it," they tell you. "Divorces happen."

That's something I don't ever wanna hear again. I guess all things "just happen," right? That's kinda self-explanatory. But it doesn't make the pain any less real, or palpable.

Anyway, losing friends sucks.

Sanctuary is a LIE!!

2008-10-29T12:19:00.001-07:00

My favorite scene from Logan's Run!

Dig that crazy hologram effect! Did you know they make those with lasers? Like honest, real futuristic lasers?

I Think I Discovered The Reason Watergate Happened

2008-10-27T10:43:00.000-07:00

(This entire post is dedicated to Chris Hill.)

So this weekend Trixi and I were in San Juan Capistrano. See, we've decided we're going to take these cheapy trips every weekend to places that are not Los Angeles, in order to maintain our sanity. San Juan Capistrano is where, like, the monarch butterflies go and hurl themselves off the cliff every summer, or something. I saw that on In Search Of, so it must be true. Also, there is a Mission there, and its really quite astonishingly magnificently ruined and awesome. If you like Ruined Stuff, you have to go there and look at it, 'cause wow.

Also, I bought a Mego Captain Kirk from the 70s.

Here's the Chris Hill part though, and is related to his obsession with the Presidents -- so apparently Richard Nixon really dug San Juan Capistrano, right? There's this plaque at the mission talking about the time he came there and rang the bells. So we went to this awesomely cheesy mexican join in town called, like, "Adobe" or "El Adobe" or "Las Ketchup" or whatever, I forget. But they had an item on the menu called "PRESIDENT'S CHOICE." It was one chile relleno, one enchilada and one taco, and apparently not only did President Nixon eat this particular dish every time he was in town, he had it specially prepared for him at the white house too. And of course, I had to order it -- "for Chris," I said, because I knew he would order it too.

Here's me, making a Nixonesque pose next to my "President's Choice."

And it was yummy, and all -- but it gave me horrible, painful stomach and intestinal issues for two days.

So my theory is: the reason Nixon was such a surly, insane bastard during the latter half of his presidency probably has to do with his stomach being a painful, acid-y mess the entire frickin' time from eating this angry Mexican food.

So, I guess, when you think about Nixon, give the guy a slight break. You probably would have broken into the DNC Headquarters, too, with a gut like that. Seriously.

70s bands: WHY ARE YOU NOT LISTENING TO ME?

2008-10-27T09:34:00.001-07:00

Led Zeppelin To Maybe Tour Without Robert Plant.

Lissen: Page. Jones. Bonham. READ MY BLOG MORE OFTEN.

Of all the bands that are proposing this travesty, you are the one that is least the band you'll claim you are without your lead singer. Last I looked, Robert Plant was a) the guy who wrote half the songs, b) the most memorable and apeable thing about your band and c) the guy who got the most and best squirrel in the group.

I know I can't stop you from doing this nonsense. But if you're gonna replace one of the best singers in the history of rock at least get the guy he was a replacement for in the first place.

Terry Reid is still alive and looks better than any of you do. Just an FYI.

Still not going, and you can't make me.

Oh, for heaven's sake.

2008-10-23T15:08:00.000-07:00

Link to original blog post if anybody cares.

Did anybody -- scratch that, anybody remotely intelligent, who knows me even a weency, tiny little bit -- think I was serious in the post below when I said that given a hypothetical choice between a huge sum of money and the ability to punch Trix's exes in the gut I'd pick the latter? Anybody? Honestly? Serious as in "gee, I'd really like for that to happen and I'm taking steps to get that together?"

Just to clarify, for the sane and the insane: it's called blowing off steam. I was living through a week when they (as a unit -- do you guys call each other and discuss how best to get our goat?) were causing one or the other of us consternation and turmoil on an almost daily basis. For one thing, I've never enacted violence upon another human being, ever. Seriously: the one time I got into a fight in elementary school, I let the guy kick my ass while I laughed at him. Didn't even swing a single punch. It hurt, but man, it sure was funny. I think I developed a reputation for being either fearless or crazy, and nobody ever touched me again. For another, I tend to write hyperbolically. Dunno if you've noticed that, but I tend to exaggerate for comic effect on a fairly regular basis. I could weed through for examples, but meh -- why bother. If you've half a brain in your head, you've noticed them. Example: If I say, for example, that I'd like to kick Bob Seger's ass nine ways to Sunday for writing "Like A Rock" (which is something I've thought about, certainly, he's been asking for it since about 1972), just for future reference:

I'M PRETTY FUCKING OBVIOUSLY NOT SERIOUS.

Plus, the logistics involved in getting all of her exes together in one place AND rendering them somehow immobile while I punched each of them in a line without the others kind of banding together and defending themselves like a kind of crazy Trix-crazed phalanx would be insurmountable.

Obviously.

Big, giant, bolded-for-obviousness DUH on this one.

You know how I know my girl is hot?

2008-10-23T10:20:00.001-07:00

...because we were sitting across from Sugar Ray's Mark McGrath last night...

(...just a refresher in case you don't remember him from his late-90s heyday...)

...and he couldn't stop staring at her all damn night!

I agree, Mark. She's a freakin' gorgeous girl, ain't she?

Sigh. My heart skips a beat.

So...Chinese Democracy.

2008-10-22T16:31:00.001-07:00

I'm famous (check it out if you don't believe it -- LITERALLY FAMOUS) for being the guy to doubt that famously long-gestating albums from legendary bands will EVER come out. I swore up and down that a second Stone Roses album wasn't on its way (and maybe its better that it wasn't, right?) and I swore up and down that there wasn't any way in hell that My Bloody Valentine would ever pull their shit together and release a followup to "Loveless," but...

...oh. I was right about that one.

But of course I also swore that ""Chinese Democracy" would never be released in our lifetime, and I turn out to be, happily or sadly, dead wrong about that. So far I am wildly underwhelmed by what I'm hearing -- it has none of the incendiary punk rock charms that "Appetite" did, nor the thrilling bloat of the "Use Your ILlusions." I'm also pretty sure that it doesn't have a chorus to speak of. Sigh.

Go here and let me know what you think. 'K?

Random Music Thoughts

2008-10-21T09:29:00.000-07:00

- So you all know I was a proponent of the Killers' last album, right? After the first album's anemic by-rote 80s rip, I found the gigantic scope of their Springsteen Try to be ambitious and kinda awesome -- ultimately a failure, if you're stacking it up next to "Born To Run" or even Springsteen's latest, but an intresting, huge, bloated, beautiful failure. So last week, right, Trix kept mentioning this song they were playing on the radio. "It goes (she sings) 'Aa-a-a-a-are we huuuuman, or a-a-a-a-a-are we DAWWWWNCERS.' And it is the worst song I've heard in my entire life." Imagine my extreme disappointment when I finally heard it for myself -- not only is it the latest Killers single, of course, but she's absolutely right, it is appallingly, bone-crushingly awful. The music sounds like fucking third-rate bedroom Casiotone demos; there's NO grandiose sweep, no hook, no good melody; and the lyrics are so fucking horrible they just about made me cry. Killers: the fuck is up, guys? What happened to bloated ambition? Couple years you had to piss off and make something better, and nineteenth generation watered-down Spandau Ballet is the best you can do? Are we DAWWWWNCERS indeed.

- Very interested in the new Byrne/Eno album. Haven't heard it it all the way through yet, but an iTunes sampling tells me it's shockingly pop-oriented and really quite amazing. God knows I like Brian Eno, and God knows I like David Byrne, so what's not to like? Has anybody heard this thing yet?

- "Womanizer" -- pro or con? I vote pro. Joe Escalante on Indie 103's morning show was chuckling at it (c'mon, man, it isn't even COOL to chuckle at Britney anymore) and complaining that it sounded too much like Devo. Why is that a bad thing? I think it's a great song, even if her voice does sound rather pieced together, almost like someone's playing it on a Fairlight Synth.

- I'm also of two minds about Raphael Saadiq's latest, "The Way I See It." I mean -- it's good, and by all means go download it as soon as you can, because a closer and more loving Motown tribute you'll not hear this year. He hits all the marks, and the singing is actually damn near astonishing, the more I hear it. He ain't Smokey, but he's got something, this kid (*yes, I know he's not a kid.) But the question I've been asking over on my fave music board is: does it transcend? Does it pull an Amy Winehouse and actually become as cool or cooler than the thing it's borrowing from? I've listened all the way through about five times and I'm still of two minds. Every time through, I enjoy listening, but I'm still hit with the urge to put on ACTUAL Smokey Robinson after its over, and that might portend that it doesn't transcend. But man, is it fun. I mean, really really fun. And unlike a lotta people who channel the "old school," or think they do, this thing isn't just milksop balladry and slow jams -- it actually rocks in places, and you gotta give the man credit for that, at least. Minus two points for the Jay-Z cameo at the end. I loves me some Hova, but he sounds so outta place.

- Don't like Of Montreal now, never have, never will. Sorry, folks.

- High School Musical 3 -- how's the MUSIC, though? I didn't see 2, either (shame, I know!) but, y'know, I gotta hand it to whoever wrote HSM1, the songs stick in your craw. Someone who's heard the choons tell me whether I need to hit the theaters or not. I don't have a Daughter Excuse, so I need it to be really good to drag me into the theaaaatre.

- Bands: please stop hiring tribute band lead singers. I'm giving Journey a pass, but ONLY JOURNEY, okay?

Damn STRAIGHT I'm voting no on Prop. 8!

2008-10-17T09:19:00.001-07:00

I'm rather thrilled by the amount of attention my awesome friend Prince is getting over on Bamboo Nation for his unswerving and extremely vocal opposition to Proposition 8, which is a bill essentially overturning the recent California Supreme Court decision to legalize gay marriage and banning it for good. I mean, seriously? Fuck that.

Lissen: I'm gonna come right out and say that I'm a Christian. (Surprised? You got a problem with that? No? Then let's move on.) However, my particular brand of Christianity (a nice Scottish Presbyterianism with a healthy dollop of Unitarianism and a smattering of old-school hippy-dippy philosophizing) doesn't find any problem at all with allowing gay people to get married. It has a hell of a lot more problem with hypocritical "family-rights" advocates who seem to think that letting two people who love each other and are committed to each other get married somehow undermines the very institution of marriage itself. For the love of Peter, Paul and Mary -- HOW? How does it do that? Two men or two women get married and somehow your own marriage is now less real? It seems to me the realness or unrealness of your marriage has more to do with the particulars of your relationship with your spouse than it does anybody else in the world -- in fact, I'd have to say it has literally nothing to do with anybody else in the world at all.

If anything, I'd say the wholloping divorce industry in this country (which I've contributed to on a number of occasions -- you're WELCOME, lawyers, I expect cards and letters) does more to undermine the marriage institution than anything else. I'd say the lack of importance people place on their marriage vows, and the general relationship malaise in this country (backed up by mass media signals) that lets relationships -- that are supposed to be permanent -- flounder and die on a regular basis with nothing more than a how-do-you-do does more to undermine the institution of marriage. I'd love to take a poll of, say, your local right-wing superchurch and find out how many affairs happen. I'll wager it's a percentage point just about equivalent with the rest of society (like 50%, shockingly). I'd also wager THAT does more to undermine your marriage than Sulu and his boyfriend getting married (which was the most awesome thing ever btw).

And I'd absolutely love to talk to you about the hottest gay relatonship in the history of ever, which just happens to be in the Bible. Yeah, I'm talking about David and Jonathan, and if you don't think that's a gay relationship then maybe your friendships are a lot more intense than mine. Maybe yours frequently involve things like this: "...and they kissed one another and wept with one another, until David exceeded. (1 Samuel 20:41)" In which case, my friend, I have news for you: you are gay.

Jesus himself (see: below, with TEEN) had not one word to say about being gay. Not one single word, my friends. He had a lot to say about loving your neighbors, and about judging not lest ye be judged, and about letting he who is without sin cast the first stone, but those little items frequently get tossed by the wayside around election time, don't they? And the worst phrase in the history of ever -- EVER -- is "hate the sin, love the sinner." I heard that so many times when I was growing up in the Evangelical Church (bleh!) as a way to justify their basic hatred of gay people -- "well, we don't hate them, we love them. We just hate their SIN. Therefore, we won't let them teach our children. Or have basic rights that everybody else has. Or be treated as equals. But seriously -- we love them." Hypocritical nonsense. It made me angry at AGE NINE. It makes me angry now.

So anyway -- VOTE NO ON PROP 8, my California brethren and sistren. And read Bamboo Nation if you're not already. That is all.

Calm down, now, Jonny...

2008-10-16T16:58:00.001-07:00

What would JESUS WITH TEEN say?

I decided today...

2008-10-16T16:48:00.001-07:00

...that if someone gave me these two options::

a) a million dollars, over the course of the next 3 years, completely tax free --

OR

b) the ability to line up all of Trix's exes* against a wall and slug each of them, one by one, REALLY FUCKING HARD, in the guts --

I would most certainly pick B.

*Of course, Trevor, you are exempt, because I drunkenly told you I loved you last weekend. You're my homey, bra.

Oh, and the BEST thing happened this weekend!!

2008-10-14T12:56:00.000-07:00

On Saturday...

...in the middle of an empty parking lot...

...and I swear this is absolutely true...

Trixi slipped on a banana peel.

(I caught her, though -- it wasn't a full on fall, but man -- outside of cartoons, does that ever REALLY happen? And who knew they were slippery?!)

Back Hooooooooome

2008-10-14T09:32:00.001-07:00

Visited Minneapolis this weekend. It was absolutely lovely. The height of fall, and the leaves were all a-dapple with bright, shining colors. We spent the weekend walking around and BREATHING NON-SMOG-ENCRUSTED AIR, and it was lovely. We visited an apple orchard. We sang karaoke. We visited relatives. And we hung around with my daughter, who is officially the coolest kid in the history of ever. And we RELAXED. There's something about Los Angeles that totally tweaks the "you can't relax EVER!" part of the brain, and something about Minneapolis that's a bit like living, breathing Xanax. Yes, I think I can officially say I'm a bit homesick.

In other news: CONGRATU-FREAKING-LATIONS to my pal, longtime bandmate, and general all-around-awesome-dude Marc Iwanin and his wife Katie for giving birth to an alarmingly cute baby this weekend named Lilah. Isn't that a lovely name? Lilah? Anyhow, the couple are cute as buttons so it's really no wonder their kid is as well.

And so: regular work resumes after a nice looooong weekend. Sigh. I wish life could just be a constant vacation. What is this work bullshit, and why do we do it? Discuss amongst yourselves.

Random Thoughts:

2008-10-09T08:37:00.000-07:00

- Sometimes you just need to take a break to recharge. Sometimes you just gotta step away from the computer and go "hells bells, there's sunshine out there."

- Turning older doesn't mean you turn any wiser. Hello, forty -- I see you in the near-distance, and you terrify me, but I'm gonna kick your ass anyway.

- My favorite Queen album is "Jazz." I know that's not the popular choice, but nevertheless that's the one I turn to most often, because it contains both "Bicycle Race," which is Queen's "Heroes and Villains" in a way, a tour-de-force of batshit crazy composition and production, and "Fat Bottomed Girls," which is their most kick-ass rocker.

- I hate television posters. I like doing theatrical projects a lot because there's tons of freedom, and movies encompass a number of different ideas and themes which opens you up to some pretty creative thinking. Television? Sucks. Try taking a picture of Arsenio Hall and making something cool out of it. Seriously: try it.

- Palm Desert, Oct. 31, 2009. Save that date in your hearts, my friends. We found our wedding hotel.

- Homesickness sucks. Let me just tell you honestly. It was a delayed reaction for me -- almost a year -- but when it hits, it hits hard.

- Been rockin'. Got half a new album recorded. Fans of the last Silvergirl thing are gonna be shocked -- there ain't a LICK of country here. Its gonna be dark, fuzzy, mean and rock and roll.

- It's genuinely hard to forgive. Sometimes you have to go through intense amounts of pain to get there, but let me tell you that sometimes, it is so worth it.

- Meanwhile, sometimes people can hurt you without even realizing it. Or if they do realize it, they don't even care. Or if they do care, they just pull the hell away even further, which causes further hurt. That's kind of a toughie. I don't know what to do with that. Sometimes you just gotta stop caring so much, which hurts even more.

- Another band I realized don't suck at all? Jefferson Starship. No, seriously -- pre-"We Built This City," when Paul Kantner was still involved with the band, they were fantastic. Especially whenever Marty Balin came to call. If you aren't moved by "Miracles," then you ain't got no heart, and it's time to dial one up.

- I haven't seen "Burn After Reading" yet, and I really wanna. Is it good? I've heard phenomenal things from Cheryl of Silver Phial fame, but what do you all think, Hatesexy readers, if there are any of you left?

- There is nothing funnier than King Kong with a balloon.

See? Doesn't that just put a smile on your face? I don't care how fucking depressed or whatever you are on any given day, King Kong with a balloon will make you smile.

- I get to see my daughter this weekend, and any weekend involving Trix, my daughter, karaoke, and both my parents and my birthmom cannot help but be a GREAT weekend.

Folks -- sorry about the delay. I'm back, I swear.

In which I discover I like music I thought I hated, or at least was ambivalent about.

2008-09-04T16:29:00.001-07:00

One of the awesome things about having so many friends who are so into music is that once in a while, I get totally schooled on something i thought I hated or at least thought I didn't care enough about to formulate an opinion on.

Last year, it was Bob Seger. If you'd asked, I woulda told you Bob Seger was my LEAST FAVORITE MUSICIAN OF ALL TIME. He was the guy that made me run screaming for the radio dial, begging and pleading with the gods to MAKE THE SONG END and ease my pain. But then someone at my online haunt The Record Room hipped me to his first couple records, which are, in fact, whip-ass white-guy rippin' psych-soul a la the MC5, and bear no resemblance to the later stuff that made me want to gouge out my eardrums.

Today? The Steve Miller Band. Now -- y'know, I didn't HATE Steve Miller at all. I mean, when "Fly Like An Eagle" comes on, you bet I don't change the channel. But that's all I knew were the hits, and I didn't like them enough to love them. But Ian Wagner o'er at that self-same record room hipped me to his first two records, "Children of the Future" and "Sailor," and HOO BOY WOW, those are some amazing records. They sound more like the Band or Procol Harum than, like, shufflebluesboogierock. Y'know?

Anybody else have stuff they want to tell me about bands I hate? Like, uh -- wow, the number keeps shrinking the more I learn.

R.I.P. Jerry Reed

2008-09-02T17:35:00.000-07:00

Folks who know me well know of my fondness for the music of Mr. Jerry Reed, he of "East Bound And Down" from "Smokey And The Bandit," one of my all-time favorite movies. Sadly, Mr. Reed apparently passed away a couple days ago. His lung collapsed. Yet another reason to quit with the coffin nails.

Here's Jerry and Glen singing two of my favorite songs -- "Country Roads" and "Ko-Ko-Joe," one of Jerry's weird idiosyncratic late-60s hits.

I Want A Cleee-e-e-e-ean Shaven Man!

2008-09-02T09:53:00.000-07:00

So this weekend I shaved my beard off.

Oh -- I kept some gigantic Neil Young-ish mutton chops, but the bulk of my beard? GONE. Within two seconds of the hair hitting the sink I regretted my decision WHOLEHEARTEDLY. Why? Because without a beard, I have a goofy looking face. The beard gave me the illusion of youth. Now? My jowls are out there for all to see. I look like Paul McCartney if you maybe punched the guy hard in the kisser, broke his nose, and took about 50% of the hotness away from him. Or -- Paul McCartney, NOW.

Oh, and according to people on the internet? I gots a double chin. And it's true. I do. I went through a phase where I lost about 30 pounds and I *still* had a double chin.

WITH the beard I look like a bohemian hobo, sort of late-period Beatles meets 70s Bob Dylan. WITHOUT the beard I look like a jowly Mike Nesmith.

Sigh. HOW long does it take to grow a beard back?

New Silver Phial Song! New Silver Phial Gig!

2008-08-27T13:48:00.000-07:00

So yeah -- check out our fantastic new song on our MySpace page, right here, entitled "Ohio." I'd have to say this is probably THEE live fave, and it was a tough one to record, but man, I think we did a damn fine job capturing lightning in a bottle.

Also: the mighty Phial is playing Friday Night at Club Fais Do-Do -- come down at 8:30 and check us out if you've not seen us yet. I promise harmony singing of the highest order.

Why I Don't Really Hate Disney Channel Music At All

2008-08-27T10:03:00.000-07:00

Look, folks. I hear a lotta hipsters who think they're gonna score points with me complaining that pre-tween Disney Channel music -- Miley Cyrus aka Hanna Montana, the Jonas Brothers, Demi Lovato, whoever else -- is "ruining rock and roll."

I usually reply by getting really really pissed and saying that hey, faceless copy-cat indie music without even a SHRED of originality (see: about half the groups on Indie 103 RIGHT NOW, buy yourself a copy of Duran Duran's "Rio" if you don't believe me) is what's probably ruining rock and roll WORSE right now; maybe try making music that doesn't sound like everybody else on the radio / 80s radio hits minus the "faggy" bits to sound more butch for middle America / crap, okay?

I spent a quality weekend this weekend with my pre-tween imbibing quite a healthy amount of Disney Channel Rock (this included watching several episodes of "Wizards of Waverly Place" -- is it wrong that I think that chick on the show is super-duper hot? Yeah. It's wrong. I'm sorry.) And I've decided -- well, not decided, really, but solidified -- that I like Disney Channel Rock, and here's why:

1. Bubblegum music for pre-tweens has always been far cooler than it's given credit for. I shouldn't have to cite examples, but I will. Anything out of the Kasenetz/Katz camp from the late 60s like "Chewy Chewy" and "Yummy Yummy." The Archies. The Sweet. The Partridge Family. The Cowsills. The Monkees. KISS (yeah, they count, sorry). Justin Timberlake. New Kids On The Block (ask someone either older or younger than you, okay?). Duran Duran. Hell -- just about any time someone markets to pre-tweens and starts slapping someone's face on Tiger Beat or whatever the modern-day equivalent is, you can just about bet that they're cooler than you. And yeah: about 1/2 the groups on that list were manufactured, plain and simple, including the Monkees, so that argument doesn't wash one bit.

2. Bubblegum music is, by definition, repugnant to people who are older and more jaded. You catch yourself saying, recently: "I don't get that horrible shit that the kids like?" Guess what? Your parents said that, and so did their parents. Music for young people isn't for you to get. It's for your kids to get. You're not supposed to get it. It's that simple. If you don't get it, or actively hate the stuff, then GOOD -- it's working.

3. Bubblegum music is innocent. Say what you will about Modern Day Kids, the Disney Channel set keep it strictly PG at most. Frankly, I find that a little refreshing. Yeah, the actual STARS THEMSELVES try to bust out of the box sometimes (see: Miley Cyrus' seminude cellphone photos, or don't, depending on your level of creeped-out-ed-ness) but the music itself is refreshingly innocent. Frankly, I get a little tired of hearing music about mid-20s or mid-30s hipsters bitching about life sometimes, and I write the stuff. Sometimes I wanna hear cute little songs about love. Period. And I like that it's still out there.

4. Bubblegum music really isn't bad at all. Face it: a lot of you bitching about the stuff haven't spent any quality time with it. Did you buy the new Jonas Brothers record? Rolling Stone gave it 4 stars, and I think it deserves it -- it really is, as they say, a power-pop masterpiece, and twenty-five-BILLION times better than that International Pop Overthrow bullshit because it's genuine. Ask Prince what he thinks about Drake Bell, star of Nick's "Drake and Josh," because his album is almost as good as -- and sounds just like -- those Jellyfish albums from the early-90s which IMO have influenced a lot more people than the cynics thought they were gonna (I'm looking at YOU, Tangborn!). I got really hooked on Demi Lovato, who, I guess, was on that Camp Rock thing that they sell shit for at Target, and who sounds really asskicking. And honestly: who isn't secretly a fan of "High School Musical?" I mean, at this point, is it even cool to pretend you hate it?

5. A lotta these stars have some genuine latent talent. See also: Justin Timberlake. See also: Just about all of 'em. Give a bubblegummer enough time to find their own voice, and about half the time they end up doing stuff that's actually artistically viable. The Jonas Brothers write their own music, or lots of it -- I'm sure it's song doctored -- and that reminds me a little bit of the Monkees, because the songs are actually pretty damn terrific. Most of 'em sing pretty well, too, I hear a minimum of digital frippery and pitch-correction (unlike the last generation of stars -- I'm sorry, Britney's cool in a certain sense but she is mostly the product of studio trickery).

6. This stuff is an entry-point for cool rock music for kids. 'Cause, wow, you really think your kids are gonna be thrilled listening to Elliott Smith's "XO" in the car? They're kids. I've got my daughter hooked on the Free Design and the Archies and whatever else, but to me, that's a logical stepping-off point for kids, and it surprises me not one jot that she went from that into the Jonas Brothers. And from there, I fully expect she'll explore the full range of rock music. Of course, lots won't -- but how many kids DID go from, say, Duran Duran into cooler music? Or from New Kids into cooler music? It happens, a lot. Bubblegum is the rock and roll gateway drug.

7.It's harmless. Oh -- so ALL rock and roll has to be dangerous, like THE STOOGES? No, it doesn't. Some rock is supposed to be cute. It always has been, it always will be. Otherwise the dangerous stuff doesn't have anything to look dangerous against.

My recommendation: sit down and watch a day's worth of Disney Channel. You'll have to sit through twenty-five episodes of Phineas and Ferb (which isn't really THAT bad, all told, it's pretty funny) but you'll also get a spate of music videos, clips, ads, whatever else, and you'll feel like you're a little bit in touch with Youth Culture Of The Moment, and that's kinda cool, and I bet you find yourself actually not hating Hannah Montana anymore. Hell, she's twenty-five times better than "Achy Breaky Heart." Not that it's a particularly high sight to set against, but I'm just sayin'.

Check this shit out!!

2008-08-26T15:29:00.001-07:00

I'm dating a celebutard!

I've come to kick ass and chew bubblegum. And I'm all out of bubblegum.

2008-08-22T09:32:00.001-07:00

Busy week, Mon Hatesexy Peeps. Sorry for the non-writing, but I've been hyperfocused on lots of other stuff, and haven't had a chance to even peek in and say howdy.

Last weekend we spent a LOVELY pre-paid weekend (pre-paid when we weren't broke, that is!) at the Parker Palm Springs, that fantastic mid-century-modern hotel I mentioned a month or so ago. MAN OH MAN. Vegetarians: I'm sorry to report we ate PAIN that evening for dinner. I had veal, Trix had Fois Gras, and yes, we felt HORRIBLE about it, but man oh man was it delicious. I had to go there at least once in my adult life (the Animal Gods are still SCREAMING for all the veal parmesan TV dinners I consumed from ages four through nine).

Wednesday night was one of the coolest nights evah, at least since I've been in Los Angeles. I attended a party of complete Beach Boys geeks at the home of my friend, erstwhile archivist Alan Boyd. I met lots of people I only previously knew through my former Beach Boys website The Smile Shop -- always severely cool to put a name next to a cyberpresence. I took a whole smackload of pictures, including one extremely geeky pic of me and Brian Wilson bandmember Nelson Bragg. And most interesting of all, I met this guy:

-- Mr. Domenic Priore, author of Look, Listen, Vibrate, Smile, THEE tome on the Smile phenomenon which I basically have memorized. He was an incredibly friendly, approachable, hip-as-fuck dude in person, and he knows his stuff like nobody else. It was fantastic to finally meet him in person. Great guy, 100%.

Last night, we watched John Carpenter red-headed stepchild They Live. You seen it? Okay, you need to. First off, the aliens look like this:

And yeah -- that HAS to be where Shepard Fairey got the idea for his OBEY company, no? Second of all, it stars ROWDY RODDY PIPER, who is actually surprisingly likeable and gets saddled with some of the funniest tough-guy lines in history, including the title of today's blog entry. Third: Yadda yadda yadda political allegory, but man, the view of the world through the magical glasses that remove the aliens' glamour is just FUCKING CREEPY, okay? For THAT ALONE it's worth seeing.

Tonight, late at night, I'm off to Minneapolis again for a weekend with the birthfam, thanks VERY MUCH to my birthmom Gigi, who very kindly bought me a plane ticket. It's my birthgrandad's birthday, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Grandpa Beaner who looks like me in 20 years (yeah -- TWENTY -- he's a young lookin' cuss. Native don't crack!) Plus, I get to hang out with the Peanut, which is just automatically cause for celebration. Poor Trix isn't coming, but I see a fabulous weekend ahead for her, too. At least she doesn't have to deal with another two days of MUSIC HEAD.

I'll keep y'all posted after the weekend.

SEE?

2008-08-15T17:31:00.001-07:00

Proof positive that Music Mode sucks the life out of me -- that last blog entry SUCKS. I used the word "songwriter" twice in the first two sentences. Jesus.

NEED ALCOHOL, people.

Music Mode

2008-08-15T11:58:00.000-07:00

So there's probably some of you out there who are wondering WHY I'm not the most prolific songwriter ever. I mean, I have a proven track-record of being a not-so-bad songwriter, so why am I not constantly sitting around with my guitar in hand bashing out pop gems for the ages?

I'll tell you why. Music Mode.

When I go into Music Mode, it's like I'm in another world. People who've had the misfortune of living with me will attest to this. I'm distracted. I constantly have "websurfing" voice when I talk, like I'm really paying attention to something else and am just cursorily replying -- which is true, I am paying attention to something else. I'm going over and over some melodic fragment or arrangement choice in my head. I don't sleep, because I'm constantly thinking of a better way to end this verse or that verse or the other verse. At work, I listen over and over to certain songs that I think will help me solve some songwriting dilemma. If I had to describe the feeling I get, its a combination of mind-numbing pain and constant distracting adrenaline rush.

But, see, I've discovered something else. I have the power to turn this songwriting mode ON AND OFF.

Once I switch it on, it's hard to turn off. I have to totally IGNORE what I'm doing for, like, a week solid, and then I'm able to relate to normal society for a while until I start it up again. And it ain't easy to start up again, either -- I have to spend a couple weeks thinking about MAYBE sitting down to write some songs. But listen: if I *didn't* shut it off occasionally, I would have no normal human relationships whatsoever which explains why so many songwriters don't.

The only time I can leave it on constantly is when I'm distracted by WORSE PAIN -- which is why most of my best songwriting coincides with periods of crippling depression.

The reason I mention this is that I'm currently not in a period of crippling depression, but I am in songwriting mode. I've been recording some songs for a 2nd Silvergirl album (yeah, I had a first one, it just sat around on my computer until I posted it on the blog!) and my brain feels like jelly. Trix has noticed. She'll ask me something, and I'll kind of respond but she knows FULL WELL that I have no idea what she just said, and if she asked for a play-by-play I wouldn't be able to respond.

So, see, I love Music Mode, but I hate it at the same time, deeply. I have a feeling THIS round of Music Mode might end with me starting a LIVE VERSION of this band, but rehearsing and playing stuff that's already written and arranged doesn't hurt NEARLY as bad. Music: the cause of, and the solution to, all life's ills.

The EXTREMELY welcome return of the Verve

2008-08-13T13:12:00.001-07:00

I'm listening to a pre-release leak of the Verve's new album "Forth." After years of wishing and hoping they'd come back -- mostly for Nick McCabe's astonishing guitar playing, he's the last guy I called "hero" on that instrument -- I can officially and firmly report that they are back in spades, and this isn't just fanboy babbling, either.

Because, believe me, I was worried. When I heard "Love Is Noise," the first single, I was -- er, underwhelmed, to say the least. The song is bolstered by possibly the most annoying sample in history and I didn't hear a single bit of guitar playing on the entire song, which depressed me. Frankly? It sounded like singer Richard Ashcroft's solo stuff, which I don't hate, per se, but certainly doesn't inspire the other strong emotion either. I was worried they'd, y'know, gone soft. Gone commercial. Gotten boring.

But no -- they've gone t'other way with it. "Forth" is far more like "Northern Soul" and "Storm In Heaven" than it's even like "Urban Hymns," the hitmaking slab that propelled them into stadium territory. Nick McCabe is not only present, he's forefront, and his guitar rips, shreds, floats, dances, floats in the stratosphere like I'd hoped it would, and Richard Ashcroft shows little sign of the happy domestic bliss (or artistic blase) that's marred his solo albums.

Also: apart from the single, there's very little commercial pandering, here, either. "Noise Epic," for example, is seven minutes of amazing guitar skronk with what sounds like completely improvised lyrics, Mad Richard in top form, and "Appalachian Springs" is yet another seven minutes of floaty, angry psychedelia, as dark as they come, heading towards krautrock territory. Love it. Furthermore -- the one thing that got me down about "Urban Hymns" was the overabundance of "tender acoustic ballads," as lovely as they were. Here? We get "Valium Skies," which is, well, dark, and about drugs. Tender it ain't, really. I'm in.

I'd pass you all a link, but that's illegal.

Facebook Frenzy

2008-08-12T09:19:00.000-07:00

Remember Friendster? Remember when ALL YOUR FRIENDS were on Friendster and it was all cool and everybody was doing it and you felt left behind so you RELUCTANTLY made yourself a Friendster page, finally, and started friending your friends, and suddenly...

...FRIENDSTER? Man, you are behind the TIMES, buddy! It's all about MySpace! Get with 2005, here, and sign up for MySpace! It's so much cooler than Friendster, because -- well, it is! It just is! Plus, it has bands, and those bands are becoming BIG HUGE STARS so sign up for MySpace NOW, we're all doing it!

So you signed up for MySpace, and juuuuuust when you'd gotten around to updating your site once in a while...

...MYSPACE? Dude, you're still on MySpace? We're all about the Facebook now! All your friends are on Facebook! No, not just all your super cool friends, I'm talking about all your high school friends and your elementary school friends too! We're all here and you're not! Sign up! And while you're here, take this incredibly stupid quiz about what kind of bread you are! I'm Rye!

Can you tell I'm all fed up with networking sites? Can you?

Dude, seriously, slow the fuck down. There is nothing on Facebook that wasn't on MySpace, and in fact, apart from the fact that they very smartly list your friends alphabetically, it offers nothing that MySpace doesn't except a lot lot lot LOT of ways to waste your time in very stupid ways. Plus, I liked MySpace. I have a band profile on MySpace. I met my birthmom through MySpace. MySpace was cool.

I'll make an agreement with you, Everybody I Know. I'm willing to stick with this Facebook thing if you promise me you won't jump ship when the NEXT big networking site jumps out at you with a bunch of shiny things to distract you from the job you hate. Okay? I'll sign up for your quizzes and I'll look at your photographs and whatever else you want me to do, just stick with it this time, okay?