Every generation tells the one below them "you kids think you invented sex." But clearly, Adam and st(eve) already did that eons ago. People have always fallen in love, co-habitated, had kids, fallen out of love, die. Not necessarily in that order, but you get the picture. One of those universal feelings is the fear of rejection. And no one, and I mean no one wants to be rejected. So that means you have to safeguard yourself from being made vulnerable. People are so squirmy about getting caught in a crush, they make sure to state their platonic feelings loudly. Except that can backfire. When "the lady doth protest too much," usually means some serious mojo is bubbling underneath the surface.
Hailing from completely different eras, cheese kings 10cc and Enrique Iglesias both attempt to act the part of too cool for school. Clocking in at a leisurely 6.02 minutes, 1975's "I'm not in Love" could not have a mushier production, but the lyrics insists "it doesn't mean that much" and "don't make a fuss." But holy cow, this song feels like someone is spraying you with a thick cologne. They've actually done studies with this song; if you listen to it in a small enclosed room and the volume is above level 7, you may experience involuntary swooning.
Enrique's "Not in Love" may have some Spanish-y guitar strums, a drum machine, and a different melody, but it is essentially the same song. Some dude and featured vocalist Kelis are repeatedly emphasizing how much they couldn't give a shit about the person they (or in this case, their hardworking producers) spent many moons writing a song about with a synthed out voiced wail in the background.
The wailing background sound just really brings it home for both songs. When one feels like having a pity party, it's nice to imagine a choir of people caring about your festival of sad.
Ben Folds Five is so squeaky clean, it's the kind of band you can listen to on the drive BACK from Vegas to make yourself feel clean, sweet and innocent again. Everything about them is wholesome: from the cheery frilly piano, upbeat drums to jokey vocals. With that kind of street rep, people tend to give BF5 the side-eye in terms of "great band" status. There's nary a curse word or hard-edged anything. The 3 piece drums/bass/keys line-up didn't revolutionize music, just pumped out some cheesy piano-rock.
But they aren't exactly polished either....especially early Ben Folds Five, like "Uncle Walter." The messy pop cacophony captures that moment the band finally just managed to learn to put the song together. But what a song! Folds' effortlessly navigates a very large-range tightly packed vocal and jazzy piano solo. Not to mention the sophisticated contrast of the song's theme of batty old man matched with their jingle-jangle sound. Here the band is in the prime of their youth lamenting the everyday awkward of being left alone with a spaced out senior citizen.
Ben Folds Five may have been juvenile, but they certainly weren't stupid.
It's a very sad time in America for rock n' roll. The only rock song to chart on the Billboard 100 in 2010 was Train's "Soul Sister," which just barely qualifies as being a rock song. If anybody should be able to bring rock back into the mainstream, it's HANSON, right?! I mean, can you really feel threatened by them in any way, my fellow Americans? They have soft skin, pretty faces (except for Isaac), and have buttery smooth vocals. In the video for "Give a Little" (the hooky-iest pop rock jam I've heard in a long while) Taylor Hanson literally drapes himself in an American flag for no particular reason other than to remind you that we United States-ians can still make pop records that don't need to be outsourced to Sweden.
More importantly, the song leads with a guitar riff. Remember America? We like guitar! Oh, but if that guitar sound is too wild for you, the heavy horn section should keep you happy. Or not. This song is currently #98 on itunes. You GUYS! come ON. Can we just take a break from buying Black Eyed Peas and Bruno Mars songs for like a day? Give a little heart and soul. Let your body lose control.
More importantly, this song reminds me of something fictional band The Wonders would write.
Dane Cook has never ceased to fascinate me. The frat boy of comedians, he hasn't exactly established himself in hipster circles OR bro-town square dances. He had a movie career that came and went after a few excruciating films. Releasing a song to promote a stand-up tour isn't out of the ordinary... until you listen to the song. "I'll Never Be you" goes for a big dramatic set up and you keep waiting for the joke to hit. and Waiting. It isn't clear where you are supposed to laugh. I *think* Dane's pretending to be an obsessive fan who turns angry ala Stan. Unlike Eminem's classic, this comedy jam takes itself way too seriously. If there are explicit jokes in this song, they are lost on me.
And yet. Ugh. This hurts to type. The pure music side of this track appeals to me. I enjoy the frivolous harmonies and lone bass. The crashing drums are downright fun! And even worse, I actually find Dane Cook's voice charming and (dare I say it?) kind of sexy. I have no idea what he is singing about, but when he says he'd like to "hang out at the coffee bean", I would probably drop everything to meet him there.
He moans at the end of the track "I hate you, but I really really wanna be you." Dane Cook knows you know he's pretty awful. But he's okay with that. He'll just make a faux-rock song about it and get a latte. Including anime fan-vid because it adds to the dorkiness of this song experience.
A kind of a bizarre, yet common, practice was that back in the 40s/50s day when a song hit it big in the United States, it was re-recorded by someone of the United Kingdom. Especially weird since Como's version was a number one hit in England. Although Glee is certainly bringing that useless-covers-of-recent-songs trend back. ANYWAY, Listening to the two versions of Magic Moments side by side, the production is strikingly similar: lots of strings, back-up ladies singing, whistling (though MUCH more whistling for Como), and the sweet lead stylings of Ronnie and Perry. Picking them apart is like playing the pub game Photohunt. (or Highlighes magazine feature). However, one thing did kind of separate them: attitude.
Perry may be singing about some really special times, but in the typical American fashion he's pretty casual about the whole affair. His vocals are almost conversational. On the other hand, Ronnie is singing with the emotion of someone auditioning for X-Factor: enunciating every word, going for full vibrato on every throwaway line. You see, Ronnie made his career on these covers. Ronnie had to try HARDER, push himself FARTHER and go to the limits of what it meant to be a cheeseball crooner. And if you are trying to out-cheese mr. goody two shoes Perry Como, you are gonna end up in velveeta land!
Christmas is not my favorite holiday. Christmas is for children or parents of small children. The yuletides starting with teenage-hood and ending with putting a santa cap on your newborn basically come down to the following:
a) the stress of buying the appropriate gifts b) the stress of faking a smile while receiving gifts c) family dramz d) increased DUI checkpoints e) awful, awful christmas music
Who is the only person in the whole wide world who could make Christmas music great? Phil Spector circa 1963. When he debuted his "A Christmas Gift for You," it was released the same week JFK was shot, soooo... awkward! It got lost in the shuffle, similar to the TV show Undeclared debuting right after 9/11. The release timing may have been off, but certainly not the artistry. His wall of sound + killer vocals take boring old folky melodies and make them explode into red and green fireworks. Brian Wilson listed the record as one of his all time favorites alongside Sgt Peppers and Dark Side of the Moon! I may not enjoy decorating a Christmas tree or wrapping presents, but The Crystals version of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" is some musical genius that will always warm my cold stone of a heart. When singer Darlene Loves wails "you better watch out, you better not cry," you best believe you gotta keep your shit in line. She also plays up the big brother aspect of the lyrics as she hauntingly croons "he sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake," the wall of sound (err and Phil himself?) constantly threatening to engulf her.
So to Phil Spector, sitting in your cold jail cell, I raise my cup of Egg Nog to you.
"Generation Gaga doesn’t identify with powerful vocal styles because their own voices have atrophied: they communicate mutely via a constant stream of atomised, telegraphic text messages. Gaga’s flat affect doesn’t bother them because they’re not attuned to facial expressions." -Camille Paglia-
It's true. My generation's voice is physically stunted by our electronic communication. Even when you do manage to catch someone face-to-face, their iphonic berry is buzzing and whirling away, jerking their attention away from human facial exchanges. Everyone's always texting about future (or past) plans. Meanwhile, the present moment is treated as a second-hand thought. While Gaga embraces (some may say satirizes, but I think that's up for debate) the chilly techno-takeover, Robyn fights the computer power in "The Girl and the Robot."
While Royskopp's instrumentation couldn't be more cold (and well robotic ), Robyn's vocals couldn't be more emotionally raw. After she moans a bit about her unrequited love, the robot's monotone voice responds "so you want to understand me/you just see what you want to see". This sums up my generation's entire problem with written-only communication. You can infer any kind of vocal tone to the written word! I've done it. My friends have done it. Over and over again we are wrong, but we continue to spruce up flat words with emotion...from our own minds. Like right now- you really can't tell if I'm sad or happy. maybe? maybe! ...maybe. We do know how to squeeze some juice out of a question mark or exclamation point though.
I went out on a date with a young rocker dude recently and our high school music tastes where discussed. He brought up liking Tool. "Fair enough!" was my reaction to THAT. However, his response to my two-year-long disco phase was a bit knee jerk. "Disco!" exclaimed the grubby chap. He paused, and then continued "well, I'm glad that's not your bag now. I associate disco with shallow-minded people." First of all, I don't equate musical genres with personality defects (though individual bands- different story!). Secondly, he must have gotten this disco-mean-you're-shallow theory second hand. The boy was around my age, born in the early 80s. He was not cognizant for the Bee Gees record burnings. Nor did he attend key parties where disco music was played while everyone contracted AIDS. One of the greatest things about appreciating the music of a different era from ones own is that you don't have environmental history attached to the music. I'll never be able to hear "I Swear" by All-4-One without having PTSD attacks associated with the anxiety (or excitement? no, ANXIETY) of my first middle school dance. John Mayer's "Your Body is a Wonderland" assaulted me aurally at every turn freshman year of college. It was like it was played on repeat for a solid 6 months in every girl's dorm.
I wasn't around for the advent of disco music. Disco was a genre I chose to become obsessed with for a couple years (and appreciate to this day). It wasn't foisted upon me. Furthermore, quality disco music ain't shallow at all. It's got more soul than it knows what to do with. 1974's single "Rock the Boat" is often credited as the first disco song to top the Billboard charts and is it pumping with real heart. The horn section alone could give someone the will to live! Yes, it's a catchy and infectious pop song, but that doesn't mean it's simple. The thumping drum is actually kind of complex, especially when paired with the horn and piano licks. More importantly, this jam packs an emotionally climactic pre-chorus crescendo that causes my heart to beat faster TO THIS DAY (it's the part where they repeat for final time "so I'd like to know where you got the notion").
Also: how can a pop song cater to the shallow-minded when there is such a commitment to metaphor? "Rock the Boat" adheres to its poetic theme so strictly, there are at least five nautical-based similes.
When I was a young pup, my ideas of adulthood were completely based on my parents, movies and music. Seeing early 90s films like Singles, Swingers, Indecent Proposal, Reality Bites, and Pretty Women with my older teenage sister gave me a good idea of what people did in their twenties: drink/smoke a lot, have business meetings in which business was not discussed, have sex- sometimes for money, also: do nothing (NO wonder our economy is tanking now!!!!) Add to that my mom and I dropping my sister off in the minivan at clubs on Hollywood Blvd ("I'm coming back in two hours for you! You better not go anywhere but this all-age punk club!). Anyhow, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what would go on. Little did I know that punk rock would consist of Blink 182 by the time I hit high school. The punk clubs my sister went to didn't even exist anymore. Not that I liked punk that much anyway. I was more interested in the 70s R&B and Disco. I got "old school" compilations whenever I was allowed a CD purchase. "Hollywood Swingers" was one of those songs that made me yearn for adulthood. This song always accompanied the easy-breezy twenties of my childhood imagination. Maybe it's because of the song's repetition and length or how the thematic contents are about "making it in Hollywood" Maybe it's cause at the time it sounded like what i thought of as a jazz song (a genre I associated with old people), but I inexplicable thought of this song as grown-up.
In my dreams I had a spacious apartment, throw elaborate multi-course dinner parties and looked like Bridget Fonda. Guys like Ethan Hawke came over to discuss philosophy. Vince Vaughn would pick me up for swing dancing. AND THIS SONG WAS ALWAYS PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND. Many things have changed since then. The idea of discussing Kant/Camus makes me want to barf in my mouth even with a hot guy. I don't even know if places to swing dance exist. Vince Vaughn is a fatty frat boy now. BUT, this Kool & the Gang jam still seems... sophisticated.
Plenty of songs suffer from one form or another of mistaken identity, but few get as badly mangled on the internet as rock and country standard "Drift Away". It has a commonly misidentified title (often thought to be "Give Me the Beat, Boys") and a mis-heard lyric that makes the song seem like a brilliant PR move for Mike Love ("Give me the Beach Boys"). You'll see a lot of sources claiming it as a Doobie Brothers song, but good luck finding one labeled as such that isn't actually the hit version by crossover savant Dobie Gray. The Rolling Stones cover is, bizarrely, frequently attributed to "The Beatles featuring the Rolling Stones", when it's difficult even to pretend that you're hearing a Beatle anywhere on the track.
Sifting through all the confusing misinformation about "Drift Away", you'll often come across a bit of trivia maddeningly tossed off and rarely explored, reading something like, "Written by Mentor Williams and first recorded by John Henry Kurtz..." before chugging right along to the part where Dobie Gray takes the song to number 5. As in, "John Henry who the hell is that guy?" He doesn't have a wikipedia entry, and his presence in the allmusic guide is as insignificant as any of the track's fairly anonymous backup singers. None of his music (allegedly comprising several albums on ABC) is in print or available for sale online. He appears to be a virtual nobody, just some guy who happened to get his hands on a future smash hit and promptly vanished into thin air.
But he had to have been somebody. Or at least known somebody. The list of guys who played on his "Reunion" album reads like a who's who of early '70s session wizards, from Skunk Baxter and Kenny Loggins to lesser known but equally heavy hitters like Country Joe sideman David Bennett Cohen, one-time Steely Dan keyboardist Michael Omartian, and Jim Gordon, famous first for his solid drumming with such acts as Delaney & Bonnie and second for suffering a schizophrenic episode that led to the murder of his mother. Helmed by A&R man Steve Barri (who signed such acts as Three Dog Night, The James Gang and Dusty Springfield) and armed with a cover of Loggins' "Danny's Song" and the newly crafted "Drift Away", Kurtz' effort had every chance to succeed. Instead, it barely rates a footnote in Dobie Gray's bio.
This might lead the educated listener to conclude that the song must sound like a gigantic pile of garbage, which, to be fair, it does not. The pace is more sluggish than on the more familiar variant, while Kurtz does his best with a decent country rock voice, even if his phrasing is a bit mannered. It doesn't help that the only apparent way to hear the song online is via some youtube audio that sounds like it was captured by placing a micro-cassette recorder inside a tank of water next to a turntable speaker. Nevertheless, it's clearly a pretty good try, but it doesn't come close to Gray's classic interpretation.
And, it turns out, John Henry Kurtz didn't really need his music career. A jack of many trades, Kurtz did a lot of acting, landing several roles on Broadway (such as a turn as Burbage in Marlowe), and bit parts on TV shows like The Cosby Mysteries. He carved a niche for himself as a voiceover artist, announcing for The NBC Nightly News, Court TV and countless ads. He was even a force in the Civil War reenactment community, donating a lot of artifacts from his personal collection for Ken Burns' documentary, and is fondly remembered as a Falstaffian character who once accidentally drank a cup of dirty socks. In the end, the fact that he was the first to record "Drift Away" didn't rate a mention in his obit.
One of the dirty little secrets of really, really devout Christianity is that many of those folks have the same fascination with the dark, the freaky, and the macabre as the rest of us degenerates. Sure, none of them are consciously aware of it, and they’ll shy away unless it’s wrapped in the proper moral and spiritual message. Having been told how to put a positive spin on the apparent horror in front of them, though, they can gawk away to their hearts’ content, secure in the knowledge that they are not being seduced away from virtue by Satan, and don’t have to feel guilty because they are thinking the correct thoughts in response.
The Book of Job tells the tale of a bet between Satan and the vengeful Israelite version of God, in which God tortures one of his happiest and most faithful followers to prove that Job will never renounce Him. Quite why a supposedly omnipotent being is so emotionally insecure is never explained. But this story is the starting point for most Biblical explanations of why bad things happen to good people – we don’t fucking know, and we just have to accept that we can never know His ways, and shut up and deal with whatever shit He dumps on our heads, without ever renouncing our faith in Him. (There is also the White People Alternative, which holds that bad things never happen to good people, because good people always follow the correct set of rules and never give Mean Sky Daddy a reason to punish them. As a result, everyone exerts total control over every aspect of their lives, and everything bad is probably your fault. But I digress.) So, desperate for heroes to fulfill this preconceived narrative about dealing with disaster, America gave rise to a small cottage industry of gospel musicians who overcame horrible injuries or physical handicaps to sing the praises of their Lord.
Merrill Womach is a dude who had his entire face burned off in a plane crash in 1961. Helpfully, there is an after-crash photo in the gatefold of his 1974 album Happy Again, to illustrate the full extent of God's test of Womach's faith, and also to freak the fuck out of you. A trained singer, Womach had been working as an undertaker, and started a company which provided music for funeral homes. Womach had his face (mostly) rebuilt through numerous surgeries (his doctor is also pictured on the back cover), and returned to singing several years later. He became an inspirational story on the gospel circuit, and released a steady stream of albums on small labels from the late ‘60s through the early ‘80s.
To hear Womach sing the title track of that album, there are no traces of his accident. He performs with the same obvious training and technique you might hear in the vibrato-heavy croons of ‘50s and ‘60s pop singers (the ones who bore NO RELATION to rock OR roll). In fact, you can almost hear him fall a little behind the beat at times, as he strives to make sure each extended note has had the proper technique applied to it.
The real weirdness comes in SEEING Womach. Though it’s remarkable how far he’s come since that gratuitously graphic crash photo, he has still clearly been the victim of a horrible injury. Yes, thanks to his religious faith, Womach has been able to maintain his optimism even after all that’s happened to him, and I doubt that I would be able to do the same, were it to happen to me. But to watch Womach walking around the burn unit of a hospital (in the clip below), patting everyone on the shoulder, performing a sunnily optimistic song called “Happy Again,” everything about his lyrics and his mannerism suggesting no room for doubt at all about how things will turn out for the best…and then to behold the sudden crashing zoom into Womach’s face about 1:05 in…oh dear goodness. Perhaps I am naught but a jaded cynic, but to me, any devout Christian who can convince themselves that their interest in Womach is pure – without a trace of circus-sideshow rubbernecking – is painfully unaware of what it means to inhabit the mind of a human. You cannot NOT react. Your primitive instincts have programmed you to make split-second perceptions to avoid danger, thanks to millions of years of evolution (ah, there’s the disconnect!). I don’t care how inspiring or admirable or sympathetic you find him – when you first see him, you are still gawking in horror, just like the rest of us reprobates, and thanking God it wasn't you.
When your thought system devotes itself to repressing rather than recognizing the subconscious (in all its spiritually dangerous uncontrollability), it is much more difficult to peer beneath the surface of the media product you’ve assembled, read the subtext, and notice when you are forcing or undercutting your message. Even apart from jarring zooms. All of Merrill’s little fist pumps remind me of a crazy guy I once saw on a busy street corner, holding religious signs, trying to witness for Jesus by dancing around with his eyes shut and his face raised to heaven in what he clearly imagined was an expression of joy, but which was so self-conscious that in practice, he came off like someone you’d kill if he so much as looked at your children. Now Merrill doesn’t look crazy, but wow, is he trying hard to sell you on this one. This is not a man who’ll be admitting anything negative, either to you or to himself, even if the real song in his heart is one called “Crippling Post-Traumatic Depression,” because that might kill the miracle. There’s also the fact that every patient in the burn ward looks better than Womach, and wouldn’t appear to need much reassurance – at least, not once they’ve seen Merrill.
Leave it to Lemmy to find the purest expression of this darkest schadenfreude in the delightfully frank “Them Not Me,” a track from Motorhead’s 1997 album Overnight Sensation. “Did you see the accident, the road is red with blood/Funny how it makes you feel really, really good,” he gurgles to open the song, with the kind of fearless honesty that American religion just can’t seem to muster, and a clear-eyed focus on what is instead of what should be. The verses are all about traffic accidents, and when you consider the sheer volume of automobile-related injuries and fatalities, it does make you wonder if America might be a better place if our economy didn’t rely so heavily on that shit. NOT THAT THE CORPORATE MAINSTREAM MEDIA WILL ALLOW YOU TO READ THESE SUBVERSIVE SENTIMENTS!!!! I expect a well-funded smear campaign to be waged against me if this blog’s readership ever climbs above 500. Anyway, the point is, you will learn more about real life from Lemmy than you will from churches, schools, television, and Bazooka Joe wrappers combined.
Notes on the video clip: It’s from a half-hour documentary on Womach, He Restoreth My Soul, which – as noted on his album cover – is indeed a “color motion picture”! Certainly a strong selling point for anything released in 1975. It was directed by the Rev. Mel White, who would later come out of the closet and become a prominent advocate for gay rights in the evangelical Christian community. White’s son, Mike, would go on to a successful career in Hollywood, writing the screenplays for School of Rock, Nacho Libre, The Good Girl, Chuck and Buck, and – somehow appropriately – Dead Man on Campus.
Louis Prima shares a lot in common with the boys in the famous Rat Pack: talented singer, Italian-American, had a long running Vegas show, drank/smoke a ton, and loved the ladies. However, what separated him from the bunch was the fact that he just doesn't come off as COOL. The Rat Pack have endured as the coolest group of swingin' cats some 50+ years later. Louis Prima endures as....the orangutan from "The Jungle Book"? Definitely not hip, but lovable!
In "Banana Split", Louis describes the big ice cream delight that the soda jerk must conjure for his baby, including precious lines like "stack her up with crazy goo...cause that's the stuff she likes to wade right through." In this jam, Prima joyfully sings to his co-star and wife, Keely Smith (who he snapped up when she was a not-legal teen... Jerry-Lee-Lewis-y much?) in 1959's film "Hey Boy! Hey Girl!" Songwriter Stan Irwin asked Prima for a song title and he shouted off the top of his head, "Banana Split for my Baby!" Growing up in New Orleans, one could easily imagine little Louis lapping up a delicious ice cream and loudly proclaiming its goodness. That's the thing that makes me like Louie better than all those cool cats. He wasn't afraid to make a complete fool of himself. Yet at the same time he was a brilliant singer and horn player. His vocal phrasing never ceases to please. And don't tell me Dean Martin was funny. He may have made jokes while sipping his martini and smoking his cigar, but he wasn't a FUNNY guy. Louis mugged for the camera while saying "Give her two spoons, she'll eat it with both hands" in a way that's sounds completely innocent and completely dirty at the same time. That, my friends, is comedic genius.
We are a diverse team of musicologists who have developed an exclusive algorithm we use to determine the one million best songs ever written. We then leverage the extraordinary power of advanced computational technology to bring the top one million to you, listed in precise order, via this web log.
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