- No Alarms And No Surprises, Please
Yeah yeah... garage punk and stuff. Fuzzboxes and Fenders. My friends often think they have me all stitched up as far as "What Mike likes". So I wanna throw a wrench in that machine, and somehow fess up to myself, as well. In the interest of full disclosure, ladies and gentlemen, here's a list of unexpected favorites, guilty pleasures, and shameful secrets that I'm sick of hiding.
1. The guitar tone on Lenny Kravitz' "Are You Gonna Go My Way" is almost perfect, and I would love to figure out how I could replicate it. If I could, it would probably be the only tone I'd ever use again.
2. I own every Wu-Tang Clan album, and every solo album by the nine primary members. And a bunch of compilations of related tracks. And some mixtapes.
3. I like to relax to Mazzy Star more often than anyone this side of 1995.
4. Post-'95 Prince. 'Nuff said.
5. For all my talk of being born-again in the waters of punk rock in high school, my college years taught me that I'm probably never going to shake my affinity for Black Sabbath & Led Zeppelin (Sab more than Zeb, though).
6. Even though this is about loves, I still hate the Doors. Everything about them.
7. Kevin got me into Thin Lizzy and now I can't get out. And I don't wanna.
8. I used to go for power walks to the tune of Kylie Minogue's "Can't Get You Outta My Head", which I'm still convinced is a perfect pop song, whatever it's other merits may or may not be.
9. While it was a gift, I do in fact own that Eiffel 65 album. Remember them? That "Blue" song?
10. I know the Spin Doctors' Pocket Full Of Kryptonite album so well that I do that "wooow, deedle diddle wooooowwwww" sing-along thing to the guitar solos, cause I know how all of them go. And I still think that's a pretty good pop album.
11. Oasis.
12. It's been long enough since I've listened to them that my feelings may have changed, but I used to own multiple albums by the Verve Pipe. What are the cosmic repercussions of that?
13. There is nothing wrong with my loving the first five Cheap Trick albums, which are stone-cold power pop classics. There is, however, something wrong with my loving the next five as well.
14. Is Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl" far enough removed from the charts for it to be considered a guilty pleasure? I mean, that Goldfrapp song that it ripped off is, so I'm gonna list it.
15. When packing up my CD collection when we were last moving, there were two different CD copies of Bell Biv DeVoe's Poison. That's a GOOD album!
16. My love for mid-90's alterna-rock is well established, so let's just get the ones that I couldn't really argue in favor of out of the way: Veruca Salt, the first Bush album, Mother Love Bone, Silverchair, Filter, Soup Dragons, Imperial Drag. These among many others have been played, willingly, in my home within the bast 6 months. [The Gin Blossoms, Presidents of the USA, Urge Overkill, and The Figgs are all safe, as I can objectively say that they're really good albums.]
17. When I moved to Boston, I had to leave about 90% of my very large CD collection at my folks' place, taking only "the essentials", i.e., the CDs that I felt I really needed the physical copy of, for which high-quality MP3s would not suffice. I had 4 albums and a six-disc box set by The Cult among those 300 CDs.
18. I like David Bowie. No, no, you misunderstand. Of course I like Ziggy & Berlin-era Bowie, but I'm talking about post-Scary Monsters, pre-Outside David Bowie.
19. Sometimes, when I'm doing dishes, I like to dance and sing along to Kraftwerk's The Man Machine.
20. Madonna's first two albums. I'm not ashamed, but I do feel guilty about it.
21. I will always love The Prodigy Experience, and to a lesser degree, their next three albums. - 21st Century Putdown
-- Green Day's latest bloated concept piece, 21st Century Breakdown, now has a release date. It's due May 15 via Reprise. Get, uh, excited.
So let me get this straight, Pitchfork...
Green Day puts out a Who-influenced double-album mix of fuck-you politics (thanks, punk rock) and teenage angst (will the real Husker Du please stand up?), which is a huge success. Depsite some of the singles being the maudlin ballads, it puts big loud rock songs back on the charts for like two years. They follow it up with a sixties-styled garage-punk record under an assumed name which rocks and is also a success. Why in the HELL would you possibly be all snarky about their upcoming album? Sure, the cover art is bad, to say the least, but c'mon jerks... why you gotta be hatin'? Is this really going to be any worse than the tripe that's clogging up the charts right now? U2's latest abortion is the only rock album in the top 5, and unless you count Nickelback and Chris Cornell* (I don't), the charts are almost devoid of any rock music. Kelly Clarkson is at number one, and that's fine. She's not evil. Not my style, but not dangerously manipulative like U2 and thier ilk. And this has nothing to do with my teenage love of thier first four records. I did love them, but it took me a while to come around to American Idiot... once I finally picked it up though, I wasn't disappointed.
So chill out, Pitchfork. Just because there's a pretty good chance that this new album will be a reachout to Green Day's "bread and butter" demographic (under-17 Hot Topic Shoppers), it still gonna be better than most of the rest of what's on the radio.
[*I was on allmusic.com yesterday, and saw a banner ad for Chris Cornell's new album, with a big "Produced by Timbaland" graphic over the lower half of the album art. Does that just seem totally messed up to anyone else?] - Was It Really That Bad?
I was a grunge fan.
From '89-'92 I lived in Vienna, Austria. I was 7-10 years old during that period. Due to a lack of English language media, I often found myself flipping through the movies section of my parents' copies of Newsweek and Time, because those had pictures of the big upcoming blockbusters (Batman, Dick Tracy, etc.). However, once you read those movie sections enough, and I was a pretty smart kid, you start reading other parts. So I'd read the music section. Around that time, I was taken to a concert at a local rec center by a friend's high school age brother when I was in the third grade, and when I saw one of the bands I had seen at the rec center talked about in Newsweek, I thought it sounded cool and I saved my Christmas money and went out and bought the big album everyone was talking about as a "new youth movement". It was Nevermind, and it was awesome. So I was rocking some Nirvana at age nine, and I didn't get the fact that this was a complete sea change in youth culture, or that it was revolutionizing both contemporary rock music or fashion. I just knew it was loud and fuzzy and catchy and I sorta liked how ANGRY it was and I didn't know why.
Over the years, I kept my faith to the loud and fuzzy. I mean, I've broadened my pallette, but I've never gotten rid of my grunge CDs, and Mudhoney might still be one of my Top 5 bands of all time. Which brings me to my point. There was far more variety in the grunge movement than a lot of people realize. There was a metal faction (Alice In Chains, early Soundgarden), there was a garagey punk faction (Mudhoney, parts of The Melvins), there was a psychedelic group (Love Battery, Screaming Trees), and there was, most abundantly, the "Classic Rock" faction that was epitomized by Pearl Jam.
In the interest of Full Disclosure (TM), I'm not a big PJ fan. They were funkier than I preferred my "real serious rock" to be, and they were often just too serious for their own good. I applauded their fight against Ticketmaster when that seemed like it meant something, and their hearts were in the right place, but they had that U2 vibe about them of wanting to fight "The Man", not really being sure who he was, and swinging blindly in all directions. As the years rolled on, the fact that there were essentially two mentalities at work in the band became known, and that was very telling. Frontman Eddie Vedder was revealed to be the Punk Academy graduate with the sellout/deity dillema, while bassist Jeff Ament was unabashed in his desire to be the biggest band on the planet at nearly any cost. And that's OK I guess. Their recent albums have been perfectly acceptable, but I just have no real interest in picking them up, and we could have worse things than another ethical rock band making workmanlike records... sort of like Tom Petty for My Generation (TM).
But what about then? Some critics and fans on my side of the fence (grunge-that-comes-from-punk) labelled Pearl Jam mere classic rock revivalists and derided their presence on the radio at the expense of real important artists like Sonic Youth, Mudhoney, and The Melvins. Now? I would KILL to hear a band like early Pearl Jam ruling the airwaves. Who cares if the rage and Big Important Issues (TM) were misguided stabs by guys in their early 20s? I just went back and listened to their greatest hits collection and these guys were fantasic for their first two albums at least. Messy? Yeah. Inconsistient? You betcha. But I would love a band that would take that kind of risk in public, something that we're sorely missing. While the Information Age may have changed the way that things work, it sure seems like we didn't know how good we had it. Remember how irritating the Presidents Of The United States Of America seemed? I DARE you to go listen to their album again. The two-string bass concept was developed with Mark Sandman of Morphine, and as the Trouser Press guide puts it, "[They] could not be more intrinsically indie if they had the PopLlama logo tattooed on their foreheads." And yet America embraced them with open arms. I heard fucking HARVEY DANGER on the radio the other day, and suddenly "Flagpole Sitta" didn't sound too bad. And yet we complained.
I've been attempting to make a case for years about the New Pop Age of the post-grunge mid-90s, where the marketplace was open to almost anything as long as it was catchy and grunge (i.e. punk) influenced. Unfortunately, at the tail end of this age, Dave Matthews swooped in to ruin things, but even in this age, his first album was almost just another one in the crowd. Sure, one-hit wonders abounded, but there were some excellent albums that never got their due to to the wonderfully disposable nature of the times. Remember when you could buy any Flaming Lips CD for three bucks because they were a past-their-prime flash-in-the-pan after playing "She Don't Use Jelly" on 90210? But alas, that's a rant for another day. Remind me, though and I'll tell you young 'uns all about it.
Classic rock is still kinda lame, and no matter what happens, Rolling Stone will remain a bastion of late-60s heirarchy and close-minded Boomer-ness, but I'll be damned if those early Pearl Jam singles don't sound great. Sure, you can't understand what Vedder's singing, and the bass playing is too funky, and Mike McCready's lead lines are all too busy, but for a brief moment in time, meaning NOW, those songs are sounding pretty good. And I don't know whether that's a reflection on the state of radio and culture today, or if it's just that Pearl Jam has aged like fine wine.
I think it's the former.
Oh, and I really like that song "Dissident" on Vs.. - Walkin' On Down The Road (or, What Happened To The Red Hot Chili Peppers)
"Rob, top five musical crimes perpetuated by Stevie Wonder in the '80s and '90s. Go. Sub-question: is it in fact unfair to criticize a formerly great artist for his latter day sins, is it better to burn out or fade away?" - Barry, "High Fidelity"
Not Stevie Wonder, but some of his illegitimate progeny. Let's talk about the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Once every year and a half or so, I tend to start listening to the Chili Peppers, as one influence or another tends to lead me to them naturally. I think last time it was that I was reading the Jane's Addiction book and there was a lot of intermingling and the L.A. scene and blah blah blah. Last night, I was talking to my friend Brent and when I offhandedly mentioned that I really liked their early stuff and thought it was really underrated, he mentioned that it might be becuase their later stuff is so overrated. Which is a pretty good point. Unfortunately, on paper, they're certinaly one of the better rock bands around these days, and it's only old coots like me who long for the days when they were less-than-first-rate. But more on that later.
Coming of age in the early '90s, it's easy to forget how weird these guys must have seemed in the mid-to-late '80s. Colorful, grit-teeth manic, hyperactive funk that was so fast it sounds like thrash. Seriously, I've tried this... play some of their early hardest stuff at a slower speed and it starts to sound like a tight funk jam. It's just that the energy level was SO intense it comes across as spring-loaded. The first three albums... man. Nobody but me likes the first one, and I don't even love it, but after the remastering job it got a few years ago, it's biggest crime is underwritten material and weak production by Andy Gill. Yeah, Gang Of Four Andy Gill. Freaky Styley is way better beacuse of the return of O.P. (original Pepper) guitarist Hillel Slovak (truly gifted weirdo) and the production talents of Mr. George "Funk Yo Ass Up" Clinton. The Uplift Mofo Party Plan is a bit of a step back, but not bad, and then Slovak succumbed to a nasty heroin addiction. The rest of the band recruits whiz-kid 18-year-old John Frusciante, gets a little more serious (in ambition, if not musically) and puts out their real bid for mainstream acceptance, Mother's Milk.
Surprisingly, it worked. They got huge, riding the wave of their cover of "Higher Ground" (see how this all ties in to Stevie?), and were finally big business. They geared up to make the biggest record of their career (arguably) and in 1991, they were everywhere... selling millions of records and scaring the CRAP out of my parents, who were sure that they were trying to corrupt the youth. Blood Sugar Sex Magik is a great album. Like, a really and truly great album. Even it's stupider parts add to the whole of it, toning down the day-glo excesses and punky thrash of the early years and amping up a much more realistic party vibe that feels like a trip through Hollywood.
So why do I think that they haven't done anything great since?
Before they followed it up, they lost Frusciante to a smack habit, and struggled to find a replacement for their next record. When it came out, as a big Jane's Addiction fan, I LOVED the presence of Dave Navarro, but One Hot Minute is a case of "the less said the better". When he left, I thought that they were done. And when Californication came out, it was a really nice return to form, despite the fact that it didn't sound like anything they'd done before. Frusciante was back, maybe better than ever in his tasteful playing, but there were plenty of ballads to keep the "Under The Bridge" fans happy. But even the harder songs were tempered with a lot more melody than in the past. Now, while this makes them a much better band (emphasis in that sentence is on "band", not "better"), it does make them feel a little more homogenous. I can't expect these people to be the same band they were 25 years ago, and I don't. However, the mingling of the two styles makes for some middle-of-the-road moments. I didn't buy By The Way, and I only gave a couple of listens to Stadium Arcadium.
So why don't I like them? Frusciante is a masterful guitarist in the true artistic sense (even if he is still a little crazy). He plays in a way that I can only use "jazz words" to describe - tasteful, exploratory, adventurous. But he still rocks. Flea is, despite my aversion to modern-day slap-bass (and the cult that this style has attracted), one of the great bassists of the past 40 years, and the under-mentioned Chad Smith hits his HARD exactly when he's supposed to. Maybe it's Kiedis' undercooked poetic prose I don't like, maybe the yelping rap and warbly croon he uses, but I can deal with those. The lyrics can be a bit sophomoric, but they're not bad.
I have a theory...
During their height, the Peppers were part of the alternative rock vanguard that changed pop culture, but unlike their grunge contemporaries and the alt-rock singer-songwriter contingent, they were unabashedly MEN. Shirtless men, who liked to perform wearing one sock each and sing nasty, filty songs about women who they did nasty, filthy things with. They were like a four-piece walking libido. Grunge was sexless and self-loathing, with maybe the exception of Soundgarden's Chris Cornell, and the R.E.M. crowd was too into sex as an idea. But the Chili Peppers were young, shirtless, played funk and rock (the two most debauched musical styles), and were there to sex you up. As a boy, that kind of thing left an impact, and while at the time I thought they were dirty verging on ridiculous, as an amateur pop-culture sociologist, it was kind of important for someone to represent the sexual side of a youth movement. All of this has happened before and will happen again. Early rock'n'roll had Elvis to offset Buddy Holly. Psychedelia had Jimi Hendrix to offset Donovan. Alt rock had the Chili Peppers to offset Nirvana.
After falling apart after '92 and being on life support until '98, they came back knowing that their biggest hit was the ballad "Under The Bridge". They made sure that the follow-up had a clone in "My Friends", and sure enough, their big comeback hit was a ballad - "Scar Tissue". They realized that they had to castrate themselves to stay successful. Or maybe they didn't realize, maybe it's just that a sexless Chili Peppers is what the public wanted. Do they know it? Maybe not. They're older, they've slowed down, and they're one of the biggest bands in the world since Californication, so they don't have that youthful sex drive anymore, and that's OK. But maybe they should have hung it up after that, or maybe they'll surprise me again.
None of it matters, of course, cause they'll sell millions of records and be huge stars forever. And good for them. They deserved it back when they made Freaky Styley. - Cracks In The Cement (Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Just Go Ahead And Not Like Pavement)
What started as a quick trip ended up as something else altogether...
In my excitement to dash off to a favorite writing location, hoping eagerly to squirrel myself away in a corner and bang out the current thing that's swirling around in my head, I hopped on the southbound train instead of the northbound. Not a big problem, as I just had to go south 3 stops to avoid paying another entrance fee, switch to the other side of the platform, and head north four stops, and I'm where I was going in the first place. Of course, once I hit the turnaround, I hear that there are a track delays on the northbound. Ugh... more time lost, and I was hoping to make this somewhat fast. It takes forever to get to my ultimate destination, even though it's maybe a half-mile from my apartment. My own fault, but c'est la vie.
But, you see, with the past year giving me a newly optimistic outlook, I take the opportunity, stuck on the rush-hour subway, to dial up some Pavement on my iPod, as they're my intended subject for this piece. Until now, I've never been a big fan of Pavement. But they've just re-released Brighten The Corners, which, as much as any, could be my favorite Pavement album. As "Shady Lane" turns into "Transport Is Arranged", the subway lurches foreward as the sun goes down west over the Charles River, and I feel, well...
[Pause Part I]
[Begin Part II]
When you're learning how to write in the more advanced stages of schooling, they teach you to open up long-form journalistic articles in a number of ways. One of the more"creative" is to use your storytelling powers in miniature, and since all good stories have a setup, a conflict, a climax, and a resolution, you can use this miniature framework to then put the larger piece in perspective. "He's stuck on a subway", "he doesn't like Pavement". "He puts on Pavement, has a moment with the sunset, the train clacking..."
"He still doesn't really like Pavement."
Now, boys and girls, I've lost some serious cred with friends, co-workers, and bandmates over the years, who just claim that I don't get it, or I haven't listened to it enough, or that I've heard too much of what's come after to understand how good it is ("Big Star Syndrome"). For years, in certain circles, I've been ashamed to admit my sort of ambivalent dislike of them, for fear of sudden hipper-than-thou cold-shouldering and cracks about how I should go back to the basics. I've finally realized that I can stand up and say with definition that I just don't care for them. No real ill will, I can think of dozens of other so-called canonical bands that I like less, but I'm sick of pretending that I really dig 'em.
Do I get it? Yeah, I do. I don't think my understanding of indie rock is really a question here. Although I hate the "slacker" tag, it's music by highly-educated graduates who sharpened their teeth on the pre-grunge college rock scene, taking equally from the American underground of rock like Dinosaur Jr, arty British post-punk like Gang Of Four and (sorry, guys) The Fall, and scratched-vinyl avant-garde underground stuff like Royal Trux. Smart enough to understand the lineage, they put these elements in a blender and made sure to come at it with a smirk, as though it was a thrown-together term paper to get a good enough grade, but have enough stuff in it that was over the professor's head that the joke's on him. Like referring to the masterful bass playing of Dale Nixon in the U.S. underground rock scene of the '80s (look it up, see what I mean?). And no matter how these guys deny it, this is "slacker-rock" to the core. A melange of it's influences, delivered with an ironic detachment, back in a time when irony meant something.
Have I given it a chance? Sure I have. In fact, I own the deluxe reissues of their first three records. Why? Because I periodically think that I do like Pavement. They have a decently-sized discography that's weird enough to be interesting, smart enough to be layered, and the reissues are without a doubt some of the best I've ever come across. Two discs, tons of liner notes, packed with extras, and usually for less than a single-disc album costs at Best Buy. Now that's a deal. But maybe I'm buying them more as a record collector than a Pavement fan. After reading about them, I'm always HOPING that I'll like the records more and more, and just in case, I picked up the deluxe versions, cause since they're so cheap, and since I used to work in a record store they were even cheaper, and why not have them so that "when I finally hear Pavement click for me", I can just wallow in their awesomeness. But no matter how many times I listen, that click hasn't happened yet. Maybe it never will, but just in case, I'm not selling those reissues anytime soon.
That article I once mentioned about Radiohead and Springsteen was going to be along the same lines... I wish I liked each of them as much as people who really like them like them. I realize that part of the appeal is supposed to be Steve Malkmus' tossed-off vocals, but those really do grate sometimes, and I like angular and lo-fi, but something about a lot of this stuff just seems disingenious. But maybe since I wasn' t really rocking the 7" vinyl in 1989, the idea of disingeniousness among a sea of lameass hair-metal was refreshing.
I have a lot of friends who love this band, or at least like them a whole lot, and I have no problem with that, but there are some who hold their love of this band like a badge, not just because they have a connection with the records, but because they think it guarantees them a certain safety credibility in a world of very snooty people. For example, just about any critic who likes them applies a comparison to them in even the least likely places. A friend of mine just sent me a couple albums by Butterglory, a band I'd never heard of until he sent them my way. To his ears, and mine, they sound like a band on Merge in the early '90s, which is to say that they sound a lot like Superchunk. While that could sound damning, as though they don't have an identity, I mean it more as a compliment to the band and label at a time when label identity made sense. If you said to me, "here's a band on Dischord", I'd have some idea where they might be coming from. There are always exceptions to the rule, but Dischord, Merge, Sub Pop, Matador, etc... they all had a sort of sound that made their groups familial. Yet somehow, several reviews I've read compare Butterglory to Pavement. That's just lazy criticism. Laconic vocals over slightly jarred guitars, singing clear pop melodies? Sure could describe Pavement, but as my friend Brent put it, people like to apply the "sounds like Pavement" tag to underground bands that play pop, which as I can tell, was a rather slight side of Pavement. My favorite moments of theirs, to be sure, but "Summer Babe" is not the song I would use to sum up their sound. Yet somehow, indie rockers play a pop song with out-of-tune Lou Reed speak-sing, and suddenly it's Pavement-esque. Is that fair to anyone? Nope. I understand that you really like this band, but don't tell me that every band that comes within a hundred miles of them sound like them. It'll just make me not want to listen to a score of bands that I might otherwise love. How would you like it if every time you asked me about a band I told you it sounded like the Butthole Surfers? Might scare you off of some things. Although I stand by my assertion that Sloan's Navy Blues is the spiritual follow-up to Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac. And don't even get me started on how the last Okkervil River single just totally lifted the melody and arrangement from "I Saw An X-Ray Of A Girl Passing Gas." It's not fair to Pavement, though, to bitch about the fans. Although it does seem that punk rock finally had it's victory with them - there truly seems to be little definition between the band and the fans. The kind of people who listen to Pavement are the kind of people Pavement are. The divide between performer and audience is truly crumbled.
So rock on Pavement. You made good albums that I just don't really like. A far lesser offense than many, and you're never going to hear me say that they sucked. Just don't expect me to be first in line for the reunion shows.
[End Part II]
[Resume Part I]
...bored. I turn off the Pavement album, realizing that I've got about a hundred other albums on this iPod. I briefly think about some Prince bootleg, but end up going with The Telescopes instead. - Lunch Break At The Dream Factory
As mentioned in the previous post, the plan this week was to write a piece on the relative authenticity and merits of Bruce Springsteen, as well as the interesting fanaticism of Radiohead fans. However, that would probably turn to my usual Andy Rooney-esque griping about one thing or another, and anyway, I found something much more interesting...
Thanks to the wonders of technology, I am now the proud owner of a copy of some unreleased Prince albums. Now, while this would be cause for happiness in any situation, it's the particular albums that have me so worked up, so first, a little backstory...
Prince made Parade. Like all of his other albums, it sold more than I ever hope to, but it was by no means a success on the level of Purple Rain. So he goes back into the studio to come up with a new album with the Revolution, which he calls Dream Factory. Things get a bit tense with the Revolution (please see the Purple Rain movie for a fictionalized version of what this might have been like), and they end up getting fired. Prince keeps plugging away at Dream Factory. He eventually records a song called "Housequake", which features pitched-up vocals, which the Purple One likes so much that he decides to record a whole album this way, planning on releasing it under the name Camille. More recording ensues, and since the Revolution folded, he decides to combine the two albums (with a few new songs) into a 3-LP set called Crystal Ball (which has no real relation to the late-'90s set of the same name). He presents Crystal Ball to Warner Bros., who balk at the idea of releasing an extravagant 3-LP set after the relative failure of Parade. They convince him to whittle it down to 2 LPs worth of material, which is then released as Sign 'O' The Times.
SOTT is my favorite Prince album for a number of reasons, the least of which is that it's a critical fave. It's after he discovered new drum machine technology, making it funkier and harder-hitting than the synth-y drum sounds on the previous stuff. It's darker, weirder and more insular. And it's 2 discs, and more prime Prince is good Prince, right?
Well, after discovering it in high school, and finally finding some online info about Prince, I discovered the whole Dream Factory / Camille / Crystal Ball backstory and from then on, every time I read anything about Sign, it was more about what it wasn't, rather than what it was. And what it was was a near-perfect album.
So what's the deal with these unreleased records? Well, I don't quite know what to call it, but the collected recordings from this era, I feel, put the definitive stamp on the fact that this is surely Prince's finest era, a point when he was famous enough to have reign to do what he wanted, hungry enough not to repeat himself, and weird enough to ensure that this was truly a distinctive presence. This is it, arguably the last gasp of greatness before descending into a perfectly interesting and enjoyable, but relatively unexciting, pop music standard-bearer.
So where does that leave a music fanatic who must categorize and compartmentalize his listening into easily-defineable categories to make offhand references to among his fellow music snobs? It doesn't really leave me anywhere. But we have this body of work by a pretty radical artist, a pretty good portion of which is unreleased. Sure, plenty of songs from the Dream Factory recordings made it through every iteration, relatively unchanged, to emerge on Sign, but there are at least 2 LPs worth (maybe not full 45 minute ones, but still 2 LPs) of songs that never came out, except for a few strays appearing on b-sides and promo ephemera.
The question is, has this happened since? When was the last time a major recording artist was given carte blanche to suirrel away and create a sweaty paranoid psychedelic funk psychosis suite, funded by big label money, and having it ultimately remain unreleased? Sure, there have been examples of endless recording sessions ultimately resulting in little to nothing (Chinese Democracy, anyone?), but when was the last time that a record label forked over money for fantastic music only to bury it later? Juliana Hatfield's God's Foot might fit the bill, but as good as it may or may not be, it's hardly on the same level as Prince circa '86. Has the record industry consolidated to the point that it's only spending on things that it knows how to define and sell? Of course it does, that's no news. But it seems that over the past 20 years, their rare willingness to gamble is being lost.
For the life of me, I will never understand how Prince became such a pop culture sensation. Of course, he wrote amazing pop hooks and was a genius musician. But there are plenty of those out there, and a tiny sex-crazed one that appeared on his breakthrough record wearing a trench coat and bikini briefs in the puritan Reagan '80s, writing songs about threesomes and incest and being young and sexy is not the kind of thing that I imagine could blow up, even with the idea of it capturing the public's repressed naughty side. How in the world did some of his lyrics make the airwaves? I mean, there's obviously the racy-if-not-filthy ones, but I'm talking about the freaky, weird psychedelic ones. Not only was he sexually assaultive, but he was subversive, and people just let it go, culminating in the whole collection we're talking about. Most of the "dangerous" mainstream music since then has been at the very least label-sanctioned... run past the bigwigs to make sure it was "acceptably" dangerous, where my man Prince represented a real danger, even if he was too weird to be a widespread threat. People were happy to get a glimpse of the weirdo, but probably didn't want to get too close.
Would you want to sit next to Prince on the bus?
So I realize that this has been rambling, but ultimately, my point is this: there is often dispute about what the best Prince album is. Kevin Smith told me his was Purple Rain, and I told him mine was Sign 'O' The Times (I have a couple hundred witnesses, but didn't make the DVD - ask me some other time). There is nary a bum note on Purple Rain, it was designed to make the Purple One a superstar and it worked. But Sign is the sound of an mad genius reaching his fervent peak. And with the relatively recent electronic availability of the surrounding context (the three albums of unreleased material), it becomes both astounding that he was able to create this, amazing that the label was willing to bankroll something so bizarre, and unfortunate that he was never able to scale these heights again. - R.I.P. Lux Interior, 1946-2009
I just found out upon getting to work that Lux Interior (a.k.a. Erick Purkhiser), lead singer for the Cramps and allegedly all-around good guy, passed away at age 60. Unlike most of his rock'n'roll-to-the-core bretheren, it was a pre-existing heart condition that did him in.
I was planning on writing something about Radiohead and Bruce Springsteen today, but somehow, none of that seems to really matter, 'cause I'm so bummed that Lux has moved on to the Great Go-Go Club In The Sky. Honestly, if it weren't for the Cramps, Shake would probably never have existed, and I wouldn't have had the opportunity to play some of the best shows of my brief career.
So go get 'em, Lux. Something tells me you're freaking them out already.
- Whatever Happened To My Rock 'N' Roll
Dear Judd Apatow... I'm very glad you've moved on and had a bucket full of success in Hollywood. You're a funny guy, and you deserve it. Please keep the funny coming.
Thanks,
Mike
--------------
Now for the rest of you: can you please shut up about what a travesty it is that Freaks And Geeks was cancelled? It was a terribly funny show that was ahead of the curve, but never found an audience and got axed. Your bellyaching will not bring it back. Especially since most of the cast is now edging on their 30s, and is way past believable as high-schoolers.
You see, I was a little late on the show. But I did start watching it not long before it went off the air. And I enjoyed it. When it was cancelled, I was sad. It may seem like sacriliege, but I think I may have even enjoyed Undeclared, Apatow's follow-up show even more. And when that, too, got cancelled, I was, again, saddened.
I was reading the allmovie.com review of one of his more recent production successes, The Pineapple Express, this morning, and F&G is mentioned twice. Once, I could understand - to let the reader know that Seth Rogen and James Franco starred together in the show, which was directed by the producer of the current film. But there's the usual lip service to how the TV show was "one of the most honest and hilariously endearing shows about teenagers ever to air on network television" (gag). Really? Is that necessary? We can all bemoan the loss of good things that weren't given the chance to develop (Arrested Development, The Ben Stiller Show, The Dana Carvey Show, Dead Like Me, Men Behaving Badly...), but after nine years, somebody needs to put an end to the whining in places that aren't appropriate for it.
The time has come to let that rotting, bloated corpse that we all love LIE. It's been almost a decade since it was cancelled, and I think we can all get on with our lives. All the featured players have moved on to something else, and Apatow's writing/directing/producing has probably given us more laughs SINCE that show went off the air than the entire run had in it. And it was a funny, funny show. That said, I have never laughed as hard in a movie theater as I laughed at The 40 Year Old Virgin. Let's not forget the fact that Anchorman, Knocked Up, Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Step Brothers, and, once again, The Pineapple Express have all been solid-to-great (despite the fact that Jonah Hill usually rubs me the wrong way), and while Apatow hasn't directed them all, he's certainly created enough moments to not be defined as "The Guy That Did Freaks And Geeks", right?
My only complaint at the time about Freaks And Geeks was the early '80s setting. And nowadays, I completely understand the choice to do that, given Apatow's age and the way that era lent itself to the overarching tone of the show. Back then, however, it didn't connect with me, maybe because I didn't get the fact that the whole "Morning In America" era was a perfect foil for the confusion and insecurity of high school awakening. I think that may have been lost on a lot of people my age as well, many of whom only "found" it after the DVD release, becuase while the stories and themes were universal (if you were a loser in high school), the setting was not. It felt, at the time, like a little bit of hip posturing for a time that, at the time, wasn't particularly hip. A lot has changed in 9 years, and now that era is super-bad once again, what with new wave haircuts and synth-pop hitting the boutiques again. But I'm finding myself wondering if the fawning devotion to something that didn't have enough viewers in the first place isn't just a case of catching up on a good thing, or maybe even idealizing an object/time of your formative years, just like the setting of the show must have been for the creators. Call me crazy. Maybe I'm reading too far into it, but don't us mid-20-somethings love to make ourselves feel better about ourselves by rewriting our own adolescent history? The dudes that call Pinkerton Weezer's finest moment were the same kids that told me it sucked and I should be listening to Rage Against The Machine instead back in '97.
Judd, you're a-OK in my book, and I dig your stuff. Can you just please tell your fans to get over it, a la William Shatner in that SNL clip where he tells a Star Trek Convention to get a life?
You know how I know YOU'RE like Coldplay? You're fine and dandy, but your fans can be the worst. I think Sloan said that. - I Don't Give A Damn About My Reputation
Dear Judd Apatow... I'm very glad you've moved on and had a bucket full of success in Hollywood. You're a funny guy, and you deserve it. Please keep the funny coming.
Thanks,
Mike
--------------
Now for the rest of you: can you please shut up about what a travesty it is that Freaks And Geeks was cancelled? It was a terribly funny show that was ahead of the curve, but never found an audience and got axed. Your bellyaching will not bring it back. Especially since most of the cast is now edging on their 30s, and is way past believable as high-schoolers.
You see, I was a little late on the show. But I did start watching it not long before it went off the air. And I enjoyed it. When it was cancelled, I was sad. It may seem like sacriliege, but I think I may have even enjoyed Undeclared, Apatow's follow-up show even more. And when that, too, got cancelled, I was, again, saddened.
I was reading the allmovie.com review of one of his more recent production successes, The Pineapple Express, this morning, and F&G is mentioned twice. Once, I could understand - to let the reader know that Seth Rogen and James Franco starred together in the show, which was directed by the producer of the current film. But there's the usual lip service to how the TV show was "one of the most honest and hilariously endearing shows about teenagers ever to air on network television" (gag). Really? Is that necessary? We can all bemoan the loss of good things that weren't given the chance to develop (Arrested Development, The Ben Stiller Show, The Dana Carvey Show, Dead Like Me, Men Behaving Badly...), but after nine years, somebody needs to put an end to the whining in places that aren't appropriate for it.
The time has come to let that rotting, bloated corpse that we all love LIE. It's been almost a decade since it was cancelled, and I think we can all get on with our lives. All the featured players have moved on to something else, and Apatow's writing/directing/producing has probably given us more laughs SINCE that show went off the air than the entire run had in it. And it was a funny, funny show. That said, I have never laughed as hard in a movie theater as I laughed at The 40 Year Old Virgin. Let's not forget the fact that Anchorman, Knocked Up, Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Step Brothers, and, once again, The Pineapple Express have all been solid-to-great (despite the fact that Jonah Hill usually rubs me the wrong way), and while Apatow hasn't directed them all, he's certainly created enough moments to not be defined as "The Guy That Did Freaks And Geeks", right?
My only complaint at the time about Freaks And Geeks was the early '80s setting. And nowadays, I completely understand the choice to do that, given Apatow's age and the way that era lent itself to the overarching tone of the show. Back then, however, it didn't connect with me, maybe because I didn't get the fact that the whole "Morning In America" era was a perfect foil for the confusion and insecurity of high school awakening. I think that may have been lost on a lot of people my age as well, many of whom only "found" it after the DVD release, becuase while the stories and themes were universal (if you were a loser in high school), the setting was not. It felt, at the time, like a little bit of hip posturing for a time that, at the time, wasn't particularly hip. A lot has changed in 9 years, and now that era is super-bad once again, what with new wave haircuts and synth-pop hitting the boutiques again. But I'm finding myself wondering if the fawning devotion to something that didn't have enough viewers in the first place isn't just a case of catching up on a good thing, or maybe even idealizing an object/time of your formative years, just like the setting of the show must have been for the creators. Call me crazy. Maybe I'm reading too far into it, but don't us mid-20-somethings love to make ourselves feel better about ourselves by rewriting our own adolescent history? The dudes that call Pinkerton Weezer's finest moment were the same kids that told me it sucked and I should be listening to Rage Against The Machine instead back in '97.
Judd, you're a-OK in my book, and I dig your stuff. Can you just please tell your fans to get over it, a la William Shatner in that SNL clip where he tells a Star Trek Convention to get a life?
You know how I know YOU'RE like Coldplay? You're fine and dandy, but your fans can be the worst. I think Sloan said that. - From A Double Threat To A Triple Drag
Who says actresses shouldn't sing?
I do.
Scarlett Johansson, doe-eyed dream girl of nearly every nerd in the country, has released an album of Tom Waits covers. Jena Malone has invented an instrument (yes, you read that right) called the Shoe, (yes, you read that right as well) and started to record her own music. Zooey Deschanel has teamed up with M. Ward and recorded an album under the monker "She & Him".
Ladies, this is a case of knowing your fanbase all too well. These three could well be the indie-rock fanboy's choice for the newest version of a sad-ass Charlie's Angels, but what makes one think that just becuase indie kids like their movies that they'll like their records, too? If I wasn't so sure that these three (there are many more, I'm sure, these three are merely figureheads for the trend) were honestly trying to do this becuase they wanted to and believed in it, I would mark this up as a cash-grab not seen since the likes of Elvis' movies and Kiss' lunchboxes.
Let's go one by one, shall we?
First up is Deschanel. Now, although I don't care for her sardonic "real-life kinda post-modern girl" schtick, I will say that I think she's the most believable actress of the group. While I may not LIKE her style of acting (or is the the type she gets cast as?), her films aren't without merit, but she is better as a supporting player, in my opinion. So, while it may seem as though I'm letting her off easy, her project is the best. The most tuneful, the least self-indulgent, and the one that could certainly lead to second and third albums. So what's the problem? It's almost completely uninteresting to me. Indie-pop by numbers is still by numbers, no matter who might be writing or singing it. Would I give a pass to a band who put this out? Nope. Why should I accept less from someone who has never done this before. OK, she has played music before, but I have the suspicion that Ward is due a lot of the musical credit for this one, and until Deschanel puts out an album that's pretty good and just called "She", I'm sticking to my guns. Zooey, I don't really like your acting, and I don't really like your music, but you seem to be doing this honestly, so if you're going to bother doing this, can you please do it just a bit better?
Jena. Jena, Jena, Jena. Where do you get off? First off, duct-taping a bunch of instruments, amps, and audio equipment together does not in any way constitute "inventing an instrument". If it did, I would have made a fortune on my "harmoni-saxo-dolin". But naming it "The Shoe"? Screw you. Pitchfork defended you by saying that you couldn't be categorized as an "actress-turned-musician" because you weren't really a very successful actress. Please add "musician" to that list of things you weren't very successful at. I used to work at the company that distributed your label, and when we got a box of your first 7", we put it on only to have it met with tears of laughter. And that's from a bunch of people that distribute stuff like K Records. Seriously. Yes, you were in Donnie Darko, voted by this 14-year-old as "the greatest movie of all time, ever". But the scenes with you in them just distracted me from the rest of the movie with your sullen "weirdo pouting" passing for acting. And I even liked that movie. But this isn't about your acting, this is about your terrible, terrible music. There will come a time when someone must draw the line between "experimental" and "bullshit". And I know which side of the line you'll fall on. What makes me sad is that you really, really believe in this thing you're doing. Cat-scream vocals and "arty" electronics matched with "outside the system" touring locations like outside a mini-mall. I'm not even mad, I'm just disappointed. Please quit this while you can, so you can go back to underwhelming everyone with your film career.
And what about Scarlett? She sorta started this whole thing, right? I mean, like, this wave of it. "Indie girls with vanity projects" is actually probably now going to be the new name of MY recoring project. But let's run down the timeline, OK? You announced that you were going to record an album. Pitchfork and their ilk then rejoiced. You announced it was going to be comprised of Tom Waits covers. Bloggers had to run for their collective notebooks to cover up their excitement. Then we saw a clip of you singing backup for the Jesus and Mary Chain at Coachella that was so off-key I don't even have a witty remark for it. The record comes out, and we get a collection of flatly-sung, emotionlessly-performed Waits covers that make me long for Rod Stewart and the Eagles to come back and cover your ass. And I HATE the Eagles. Don't get me wrong, it was a nice try, but if I heard this without knowing what it was, I'd tilt my head to the side like my dog does when she's confused, say "Huh, that's a Tom Waits song!", and then walk right out of that bookstore at the mall. And what about producer David Sitek or TV On The Radio? "Taking an otherwise pedestrian sound and making it interesting" sounds a whole hell of a lot like what he did for TV On The Radio, Scarlett, you have parlayed an incredible film career from a mere two good movies that happened to enthrall the film-criticising internet world. Take away Ghost World, and especially Lost In Translation, and your path is littered with gems like Home Alone 3, The Perfect Score, The Island, Eight Legged Freaks, The Nanny Diaries, In Good Company and Match Point. You were certainly fine in The Prestige and The Black Dahlia, but nobody actually saw you in that Woody Allen movie you did. So 3-4 arty dramas don't really give you justification for what you've bothered to do. If you did nothing but high profile emo films, I might be a little more lenient, but I watched The Perfect Score on cable one afternoon, so I feel like I'm justified to say all this. Look, I like Tom Waits, and with all that auto-tune, you do sorta sound like Kanye (another post for another day...), but just do me a favor, OK?
Don't do it again.
[Edit:I was going to include Milla Jovovich in this list, but she's getting on in years, and is a Euorpean bohemian ex-model werido, so she didn't really fit the bill of "Starlets Making Music". I just wanted to mention her in this article so that I could bring up the point that if anyone should stop, she's included. I still haven't forgiven this chick I knew in college MAKING me listen to her completely awful albums.]
