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.
When you think of Marilyn Monroe, you think sex icon first, then mistress, then tragedy, THEN actress, and then MAYBE, just MAYBE, you'll remember she recorded some songs other than "Happy Birthday Mr. President." She didn't so much sing as formulate words around her heaving breaths (and breasts). However, "I'm Through with Love" is a great demonstrate of her shocking vulnerability that's so lacking from today's pop tarts. Even though our current media is an over-share-machine, there's no emotionality. If you want, you could see what uh, Lindsay Lohan* drank for breakfast, and what color her vomit is later that night. But what's going on beneath that makeup-caked face? We don't know at all.
In this number, man, we really FEEL what Marilyn is going through. It's a pretty emotional listen. There ain't no autotune to cover up that exquisite pain. She's definitely through with love. And why shouldn't she be? By 1959, Marilyn had already been tossed around by sleazy Hollywood dudes (not to mention the industry itself) and baseball bully Joe DiMaggio. She hadn't hit the Kennedys yet but...sheesh. Rough life! I'm not even going to get into her childhood. A lot of saddy sad break-up songs come across as phony, but this one really smacks you in the gut. Lyrics like "goodbye to spring and all it meant to me" sounds hauntingly real. She was a-boozin' and a pill poppin' up the wazoo at this point. She was past the point of no return. And to think this was in the soundtrack for one of the best COMEDIES of all time, "Some Like it Hot"! So next time you really want to feel the awful feeling of love lost, set aside the bullshit emo, and go to this song. Marilyn's quivering voice will carry you through the heartbreak.
*I am soooo not comparing Lohan to Monroe. She's just the what-a-mess celeb whose pictures are popping up everywhere at this moment in spring 2010.
I’m hard pressed to think of a song from the recording-centric rock era that's as well-known, yet as infrequently heard (in its original hit recording), as David Seville's "Witch Doctor." When was the last time you heard it (I guess it was on the soundtrack of the new Alvin and the Chipmunks, but I won't assume you watched that even if you're a parent)? When was the last time you heard it played on oldies radio? Did you EVER hear it played on oldies radio? Does oldies radio as we once knew it even exist anymore, or is everything now just “best of the ‘60s and ‘70s”? More importantly, why are songs that were recorded during my lifetime getting played on those “oldies” stations? And why won’t those filthy children get off my fucking lawn?
Anyhow, that nonsense refrain is far more recognizable in itself, as opposed to “the chorus of a song called ‘Witch Doctor’ by that Armenian guy who went on to create Alvin and the Chipmunks.” Whenever you hear it, it’s being sung by someone at a party or a barbecue or an awkward family reunion or something. Or, you’re a kid, and one of your parents busts it out completely at random. In all my 35 years of life, the first time I ever heard the actual recording of “Witch Doctor,” complete with the proto-Chipmunks voice manipulation, was last night, when I decided to write a review of it and looked it up on Youtube. And you can say that’s my fault for never having bought a Dr. Demento compilation, and I’ll agree with you, but still. How did that happen? How did a novelty song that was so dependent on a recording-studio gimmick get so completely divorced from its technological origins, and become a song that people sing all by itself, just for the hell of it?
Hell, for that matter, “Witch Doctor” is barely even a song – it’s more a hook, repeated over and over and over and over again, with the perfunctory verses (typically only three lines – David Seville couldn’t even be bothered to come up with two rhyming couplets) serving simply as a quick change-up between the myriad repetitions of that goddamn hook. In other words, here is the structural blueprint for nearly every song Kiss ever recorded. I can't believe they didn't use this as the basis for a Crazy Frog follow-up.
NOTE: Late 20th/early 21st century methods of critical analysis will naturally demand a critique of whether the cultural assumptions underlying “Witch Doctor” contain elements of racism. I’m not going to waste anybody’s time on this; you can just look at the fucking artwork. All you have to do is change the caption to "Barack Obama" and blammo, instant tea party rally.
Of all the no-brainer top-tier most important country artists of all time, George Jones gets the smallest amount of love from non-country fans. Everyone knows Hank Williams, both Jr. and Sr. (I’ll let you guess who gets more respect). Rock fans know Johnny Cash for his brooding “Man in Black” image. All potheads know Willie Nelson. Merle Haggard has a far more memorable name. ‘80s TV fans know Waylon Jennings via The Dukes of Hazzard, and perhaps the somewhat less remembered Buck Owens from his time on Hee Haw. But George Jones? Generic name, no great outside claim to fame, no link to any hip modern subcultures, not known for writing his own material. Meh, no matter, he’s just the greatest pure singer in country history.
When he wasn’t recording the saddest country ballads of all time (Exhibit A: “He Stopped Loving Her Today”) or drunk-driving his riding lawnmower into town to pick up more vodka, Jones lightened the mood of his records (not to mention the alcoholic haze of his life) with a lot of wacky novelty songs. Perhaps the least comprehensible of these is the title track of his 1966 Musicor album I’m a People. “I’m a People” was penned by Dallas Frazier, the songwriter also responsible for the Hollywood Argyles’ comic-book caveman ode “Alley Oop,” the Oak Ridge Boys’ deathless “Elvira,” and, oddly, the sweeping ballad “There Goes My Everything,” recorded by the likes of Engelbert Humperdinck and Fat Elvis.
It’s a challenge just to figure out what the subject of “I’m a People” is, not least because Jones really plays up the country twang in his vocal reading. If you can understand everything he’s saying in the verses without the aid of a lyric sheet, you can probably also understand what Boomhower is saying on King of the Hill. But once you’ve got that figured out, the song still doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Basically, Jones spends the verses bitching about how he’s not a monkey, then spends the chorus giving an overlong spelling lesson about how to assemble the word “people,” taking extra time to describe some of the letters in case folks might not recognize them (you need a “big skinny L,” for example).
The chorus being the focal point of every conventionally structured song, it’s hard to imagine “I’m a People” ever becoming anyone’s favorite sing-along. But it gets even weirder when you try to understand just what the verses are on about. Jones starts the song fantasizing about being a monkey, and in the second set of couplets, it isn’t clear whether he’s still imagining his workday as a monkey or whether he’s grinning and humming and taking cash as a human shopkeeper, or whatever profession he’s engaged in. After the first chorus, Jones complains that monkeys don’t have to go downtown and ask for jobs and get turned down. All right, we’ve all been there, but then Jones flies into a sudden and violent fit of self-loathing, turning his rage inward and threatening to smash himself. By the last verse, the narrator has skipped out on what scant responsibilities he’s still entrusted with in real life to go to the zoo, where you’ll find him “diggin’ on you know who.” From this coy hint, we can only assume that Jones is standing outside the monkey cages, likely with a look on his face recalling Private Pyle from Full Metal Jacket.
So to recap the narrator’s mental state: 1) blurred lines between real and fantasy selves; 2) emotionally unstable and prone to violent impulses; 3) unable to contribute to society; 4) obsessively repeats to himself the spelling of one particular word while identifying himself as a “creature”; 5) apparently stalking a monkey at the zoo. And thus we arrive at the true meaning of “I’m a People”: a harrowing portrait of a working-class breakdown into serious mental illness, no doubt precipitated and exacerbated by oppressive economic conditions. Wall Street, take note what you have wrought upon America!
There are certain bands that have a certain stigma attached to them. Say, if you were to be a "big Grateful Dead" fan (known commonly as Deadheads), there's a more than likely chance you are into the "ultimate experience and transcendent nature of the ganja", or some such stoner baloney. Same goes for Phish and Dave Matthews Band. However, those are drug connotations. Other band associations can be attitude-based. I don't know a "They Might Be Giants" album-owner that isn't a total goofball. The Smiths are another band whose superfans fall into a specific emotional category: those who love to whimper. Don't get me wrong, I love The Smiths, but I don't think they're the end-all be-all. The kind of people who take Moz that seriously tend to be a sad lot. I mean, how could you not be a bit dreary hearing that mournful voice all the time? That's why it's so great hearing a Smiths jam taken out of the context of Morrissey.
With his powerhouse vocals, sexy British belter Daniel Merriweather and pop producer extraordinaire Mark Ronson (the man behind Amy Winehouse) take "Stop Me" and add some much needed testosterone. Take the opening lyric: "Stop me, oh oh oh Stop me, Stop me if you think that you've heard this one before...nothings changed, I still love you, oh I still love you, only slightly, only slightly less than I used to my love." Moz sang it like he's COMPLAINING that he's still in love with you and he's just so EMBARRASSED about it. Call the whambulance. Daniel Merriweather comes along and breathes a new meaning into the same lyrics. When Daniel sings the exact same line, he makes it seem like his love for you is something to be proud of. In fact, you bloody well TRY and stop him. He'd probably cut you. Add in that strong motown drum fill plus a booming horn section, and you've got yourself an empowering jam. Yeah, you may have messed up Daniel Merriweather emotionally, but that's not going to turn him into some sniveling cry baby. He may be dying on the inside, but he can MAN UP about his feelings to the world, regardless of his suffering. As the video accurately depicts, if we all went around sobbing, we wouldn't be able to move through the tears on the street because they would be flood-inducing.
I was going to include the video here, but embedding ain't allowed. Here's the youtube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRG55KnZkqc
song posted below.
American culture is currently based on FEAR. We're all so goddamn anxious to earn that dollar! Find a husband! Bang that chick! Avoid that terrorist attack! Be cool! Dress right! Find Jesus! It's really rather exhausting. Popular music right now functions in the same way. It explodes in your face, barely pausing or giving you a moment to breath. It's all BOOM BOOM POW, TIK TOK or JUST DANCE. Pop music, like the dating world, has basically eliminated the courtship process. It's a "bad romance" (har har) kind of situation where the dude is basically a "womanizer" (Okay! I'll stop with this). Even Nashville got mechanized. If you can't look to country music for heartfelt emotion, something has gone seriously awry. Don't you dare tell me Carrie Swift Chesney is heartfelt.
Anyhow, even though he's not popular anymore, you still got to love Chris Isaak for continuing to tour and make his sweet music. In this hurricane age of autotune, Isaak's purebred vocals cuts through the storm. It's a shame THE KIDS THESE DAYS don't understand that emotion can be conveyed through the sound of a real voice. I bet the youngins' now think that a slow jam by Akon signals tenderness.
2009's "Take My Heart", is everything you never hear in music produced today: Hawaiian guitar, multi-part rich harmonies, and complex chord progressions. This song isn't just about some personal relationship. Chris, along with his baby blues, are pleading with you to accept his old world music warmth. This track was off of his first album in 7 years. He's begging you to buy his brand of delicate macho rockabilly. And I don't care if you are a boy or girl, you can't say no to Chris Isaak. Twin Peaks, that hot Wicked Games video where he rolls around in the sand with the model, and a song in a Kubrick film? AND a voice made of melted butter? Look at the girl in the album cover picture. She's alone at the carnival of life, she's helpless...she's YOU! There is Chris Isaak's disembodied head, frowning. He can't get through to her! Stupidly, this album didn't climb the charts. If Chris Isaak isn't good enough for you, America, to hand your heart over to him.... well you're not worth courtin'!
Well enough has already been written about how bad the video is for this song, how five minutes sashaying around a bedroom in a pink tank top (pink! a color never ever worn by rock musicians in the 1980's!) destroyed Squier's high-flying career in an instant. Plenty of pixels already display numerous denunciations of "Rock Me Tonite" all over the internet, mocking Squier's prancing, finger-popping, bed-rolling, waist-bending, marching, pointing, leg-kicking performance in what is a canonical entry in the so-bad-it's-good category of pop entertainment. Other than its ridiculousness, what persists is the disbelief it arouses. How could Billy Squier, a hook-writing rocker—the poor man's Robert Plant with a guitar—have made such a blatantly false move, a worse career choice than John Bonham's death binge? What was he thinking?
What was he thinking? It's a fair question. The man who helmed the video was Kenny Ortega, the choreographer who would later do Madonna's "Material Girl", "Dirty Dancing" and the "High School Musical" movies, and he does not seem an obvious choice for Squier, unless you figure Billy was sitting around watching "Xanadu" and said, "Get me the guy who did that", which film historians agree is basically an impossible thing for anyone to have said. More likely was that Squier wanted someone who knew how to make an interesting music video, since the ones Squier made for his "Don't Say No" album were all shot on what looks like a nondescript club stage without an audience. They were boring. From the vantage of the MTV landscape in 1984, they flat-out sucked.
Furthermore, it's not as though Squier's output was churning along at a consistently high level. His late-breaking career peaked with "Don't Say No", an album he cut at 31, after which his music regressed to the mean. He was still writing hits, but his records were padded with more and more filler. And of course music was changing. A Zeppelin-esque act like Squier's, a relic of 1970's stadium rock, was less and less relevant during a time when Van Halen was hard rock's leading edge, pushing toward a hair metal future.
In a situation where Squier was probably desperate to get noticed amid MTV's increasingly hip fare, on came Ortega. And "Rock Me Tonite" fits right into his oeuvre. Ortega was just doing exactly what you'd expect him to do: coreograph a music video. It wasn't his fault that Squier came packaged with what were quite possibly the gawkiest, most awkward repertoire of stage moves in rock history. In his natural element—that is to say, while playing a guitar—Squier does alright (here's "In the Dark" for reference). But take away the axe, and Squier had no clue what to do with his lanky, angular body. As evidenced by the video for "The Stroke", Squier was prancing, pointing, and engaging in embarrassing leg kicks well before Ortega thought to put him in a bedroom equipped with a stripper pole. And about that pink shirt and the finger popping? Nobody seemed to have as much beef with it when 1982's "Everybody Wants You" debuted.
Ortega's crime (report to bad music video jail, Kenny Ortega) was that his directorial style took what were already Squier's least artful attributes and amplified them. Like a grotesque caricature, the Billy Squier in "Rock Me Tonite" did exactly what Billy Squier always did, only moreso. So go ahead and cite Ortega for Failure to Adapt in the Face of Certain Doom, but don't blame him for wrecking Squier's career. Rather, "Don't Say No" was the perfect explanation for why Squier was on the way out. Squier's musical schtick was stale, his moves were lame, he was damn near 35, he still had Brian May's 1977 haircut, and that shit was not going to fly in the mid-'80s. At least he and Ortega left us with a lasting artifact that's enjoyable for two different reasons. The first reason is obvious. The second reason is, don't look at it and listen: it's a sweet fucking song for Christ's sake. Makes me wish someone would write a review about it.
It's all fun and games talking to that hot musician guy at the party until he asks you to check out his band's myspace. Things can get real weird, real fast after that. There are two ways this can go. The music sucks or it is god awful. He was RATHER cute though, with his shaggy hair, blue sweater and strong arms. Blessedly, he isn't around to see the pained expression on your face when you get around to checking it out online. Even so, at the end of the day, who are YOU to judge some guy's music? You write for Rolling Stone? Probably not.
Annie isn't the kind of girl to silently judge someone behind their back. She's a Norwegian pop star who is actually really cool with street cred and all that jazz. I guess everything is just better in Scandinavia. They have great health care, a high standard of living, an entertainingly scary black metal scene, and Alexander Skarsgard (aka Sheriff Eric from True Blood). Scandinavia's crowning achievement (in my mind) is the alt-pop* music. Annie is a prime example. She's got those ever-so-danceable hooks and pounding rhythms. You can almost smell the sweat flicking off the gyrating bodies in the club. At the same time, the music is intricate and requires many listens to fully unpack. Plus, it's kind of awesome that Annie is calling out the end of the era for old school "bands". Has a drums-bass-guitar act really made its mark in the past 5 years? So, Rock Dude, take note, and buy yourself a motherlovin' sequencer!
*I love the expression alt-pop because it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. It's an abbreviation for "alternative popular." Hmnmmmmm, if something's popular, it's not the alternative. And if something's the alternative, then it wouldn't also be popular. "Alternative" as a way to describe music is pretty wishy-washy as well. Things to think about people.
As nostalgia trips go, Frank Sinatra's version of "It Was a Very Good Year" is utter male shallowness masked by the singer's insouciant delivery and its sophisticated, lustrous string arrangement. "What a grand old life I've led," says this song, "let me tell you about the three years when I managed to get laid a bunch." In "the autumn of my years", the singer looks back wistfully and remembers that he hasn't gotten any since he was 35. Obviously the song is magnificent.
Maybe "get laid" is a strong term, though, depending on the version. If we're talking about the original recording by The Kingston Trio's Bob Shane, whose uptight phrasing suggests little more than chaste closed-mouth kissing and hand-holding, comparing it to sex is like asking for the jelly at the Polaner All Fruit tea party. Perish the thought! We are discussing romance.
With Sinatra, as always, we are discussing romance while winking and firing a hand up her skirt. With Della Reese's cover, however, debuted at Chicago's Playboy Club, we are talking about straight-up, make-no-mistake fucking. It's not just the deep funk arrangement, which is frankly a bit of a mess. The horn chart, aping Gordon Jenkins' strings on Sinatra's version, doesn't quite work, bending notes to an almost clownish degree. It takes Della Reese's powerful vocal, sort of an Eartha Kitt purr tied to a rocket-fueled jump-kick machine, to make the song.
And it's not simply a matter of switching the lyrics around so all the females are males, or Reese calling herself "sexy at 21". Sure, in '67 a woman *gasp!* talking about sex (a woman! enjoying sex!) was still a thumb in the societal eye, but Reese went further. Della positions herself as not just the pursued—she's one of the big city girls who has an apartment upstairs from Sinatra (and maybe even Bob Shane, who'd visit a girl a couple doors down and give her a peck on the cheek goodnight in the hallway)—but as a self-aware object of male lust who's running her own game back on him. By thirty-five, grey-templed men would "ride" her in limousines...oh, she was much wiser at thirty-five.
There's not much more to say about Britney Spears y'all. It's ALL been said before. However, the algorithm burped out this ditty after we musicologists spilled some of the new designer MIT drugs we're always doing in the T1M bunker (jokes!). Latter-day Britney Spears doesn't even pretend to have a voice. The song-makers simply use name. But the music. The music! Ah Hark! Such a blooming sensation of joy doth rise within my soul. "Phonography" (no, NOT pornography- stop being dirty, reader!) has the hooky production touch only Swedish pop-masters Bloodyshy and Avant know how to create. They graced us with their heavenly presence before with the hipster-loved "Toxic." This track didn't quite make the mainstream. In fact, it didn't make the album and was a pre-order itunes bonus track. The record label clearly doesn't know gold when they hear it.
The subject matter regards the quite common (or so i hear from the kids these days) practice of phone sex. The beats drops low and builds into a dangerous-sounding minor chord progression and starts: "We're not so different you and me/ Cause we both share our share of obscenities." Okay, so the lyrics aren't dazzling, but that machine synth drum fill sure is! Oh, readers, this next part might be too x-rated for you, but:
I like my bluetooth buttons comin loose, I need my hands free, Then I let my mind roam, Playing with my ringtone
How exactly does one play with ones ringtone? By changing it? I usually change my ringtone once every three months, but some of my coworkers have taunted me with the same ringtone for over a year. Anyhow, the music for this jam is downright HAUNTING in the most Victorian gothic kind of way, but TRANCE, you know? If they hadn't written such time-specific lyrics, I think this song might have had a chance in making it into the modern pop canon.
Though some have enjoyed it, being a girl ain't always easy. Women have to deal with those philandering men folk! Men are like these wild animals you have to subdue with jangling keys and cooing noises. Sure, there was that whole feminist movement, but at the end of the day, women are singing songs about being stuck in the same old gender roles. The algorithm spit out "Wives and Lovers" followed by "Like a Boy" right after the other, as if to suggest the same sentiment remains. The only thing separating 1963 from 2007 (other than 45 years), is anger. 1963's Dionne Warwick (through Burt Bacharach's lyrics) pleads
"Day after day There are girls at the office And men will always be men Don't send him off with your hair still in curlers You may not see him again"
There it is: "men will always be men"! Girl, I'm sorry, but you've got to push that cleavage up and get your hair in order so he'll stay interested. That's your feminine role! So now we fast-forward to goodies-hoarding Ciara in "Like a Boy". You think she's got something new to say? No, but as opposed to apologizing, she's pissed about the double standards in relationships. Ciara co-wrote this jam, and claimed it to be a "female-empowerment record." I beg to disagree. The song is set in the conditional tense as she cries "wish we could switch up the roles... sometimes I wish I could act like a boy." Um, why can't you? Who is stopping you? It's 2007, NOT 1963! Then she has the audacity to say "girl go head and be just like 'em...sleep like 'em, creep like 'em." WHAT?! So the remedy is to imitate their fuckery? I can't say that's a societal improvement or advancement. So thanks, algorithm, for reminding me of how backwards we're remaining in this world! Oh, except for Ciara's choreography and dancing. That shit is some serious groovin' evolution.
The late Jimi Hendrix has proven to be far more prolific than the living Jimi Hendrix. Every few years, a new album of "amazing unreleased tracks" comes out. And with each release of these amazing unreleased tracks, I start to wonder, was Jimi Hendrix just a dude who took a whole bunch of drugs and dicked around on his guitar? In fact, I'm starting to wonder if these amazing unreleased tracks weren't actually performed by a musical parodist who was trying to make fun of Jimi Hendrix. To my ears, "Valleys of Neptune," the title track from the "new" Jimi Hendrix album, sounds like it might be the work of Jammee Handrax, the "Ruttles" to Jimi's "Beatles," if that makes any sense.
"Valleys of Neptune" contains a bunch of drugged out lyrics about space and colors, and a good amount of psychedelic guitar noodling. Hendrix is sort of singing out of tune, which I guess is harder to notice on some of his classic songs, which I think contain more background vocals and catchy melodies that you sing along with, so maybe you can't tell that what he's doing is suggesting a melody more than singing one. The band sloppily grooves behind him and the last third of the song is just him playing some spacey suspended chords and going "rise on baby riiiiiiise on baby," which is exactly what someone doing a Jimi Hendrix parody would sing, over and over, in exactly the same manner the real one does here.
The weirdest part about this new song is that the chord changes and tempo during the verse sounded strangely familiar to me. I kept hearing something else other than "blue green space fly water baby baby" or whatever it is Jimi is singing. Then it hit me: what I really wanted to hear was "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" by the Spin Doctors. For some reason the outtakes of "the greatest rock and roller of all time" sound like demo tracks for a mildly entertaining early 90's jam band. So congratulations, Estate of Jimi Hendrix. You've dug so deep into your breadwinner's catalog that you managed to do something the Spin Doctors never managed to do over the course of their entire career: release a song that makes the Spin Doctors sound totally awesome.
A group like The Shaggs is not what typically comes to mind when somebody says, "all-girl rock band." Leaving cheap shots about their physical appearance (and tangents discussing what is, in our post-Austin Powers environment, a very unfortunate choice of name) aside, most writing about The Shaggs falls into two basic categories: 1) "this music is horrible" and 2) "or IS it?" Upon first hearing The Shaggs, most would probably agree with the former argument, after they are done laughing. On a second listen, however, they'd laugh a little harder and maybe pee their pants.
That said, once everything that's funny about The Shaggs—remember, this includes name, sound, physical appearance, and lyrics—has been thoroughly exhausted, it might occur that their music is actually pretty challenging. It's challenging in the way that paintings made by schizophrenics are challenging, but nonetheless, if you and two musically-inclined friends sat down and tried to reproduce a Shaggs song you'd have a pretty rough time of it. What initially sounds like crude indifference to such niceties as meter, melody, and other basic musical building blocks is actually a consistent (if arguably unlistenable) approach to song-craft. Which is what led an experimental icon like Frank Zappa to champion The Shaggs as paragons of outsider art rather than merely an ill-conceived vanity project by The Shaggs' dad, Austin Wiggin, Jr.
So "Who Are Parents?" Well, for the Wiggin sisters, parents are the ones who forced them to take music lessons and form a band because of a palm reading performed by their grandma. Parents are the ones who made them write and practice songs, then play gigs at the town hall, as kind of a live-action precursor to the Chipettes. Parents are the ones who ushered them into a recording studio to create an album that will, the adulation of certain artists notwithstanding, guarantee The Shaggs a long half-life of indefinite ridicule. Or as they put it in a lyric that hints at a sinister untertone, "Parents are the ones who are always there".
As much as I am loathe to admit this, there are certain uncomfortable romantic truths. One of these truths is that most people go ape-shit-googly-eyes in love with CRAZY at least once in their life. The Crazy (could be male or female) will present themselves from the get-go as crazy. You are told UP FRONT that Crazy is damaged goods who will most certainly hurt you. Now, would you go into a store and buy a half-broken stereo or computer? No, but more than half my friends (and myself in my youth) have gotten themselves involved in such deadly affairs of the heart, fully aware of the awfulness to come! It doesn't matter what Crazy does because Crazy is a person, so they cannot be returned to Best Buy for cash back or even a credit. Crazy, unlike a computer, can smooth talk its way back into repeating a vicious circle of emotional destruction.
Magnetic Fields' "Absolutely Cuckoo" is the ultimate disclaimer: buyer (or rather lover) beware! Crazy has a really really really really good chance of destroying your life! The song is short and consists of just one run-on sentence. Repeated twice for good measure. However, the music sounds totally upbeat. Singer/songwriter Stephin Merritt seems to be suggesting "Oh hey, I'm letting you know I'm crazy, but I'm also distracting you with the soothing jingle-jangle of ukulele." Crazy is bleating that he's going to threaten you with suicide at some point, but it's hard to not be captivated by that swingin' orchestration and foot tappin' beat. Wait, what is he warning me about again?
Since it was first coined in the late 1980's, the term "road rage" has (apparently) proved inspirational for countless musicians across a whole spectrum of genres, from bluegrass to hip-hop to ska; in fact, you could go to your favorite online listening site right now and load up a playlist of over forty different songs called "Road Rage", which I would aggressively recommend if you're in the mood to listen to a shitload of really bad techno.
Picking a "Road Rage" at random, you have a better than even chance of selecting an instrumental (you're in good shape if you land a bluegrass number). Of those "Road Rage"s with lyrics, about three quarters are metal songs—it's a good rule of thumb to flee any track that starts off with beeping car horns—and damn near all of them are about "gripping the wheel" and getting stuck at red lights and so forth. You'd think the lead singers of unheralded thrash bands would have lots of interesting experiences, but no, they are pretty much always getting trapped behind some bad driver on the freeway and thinking that anyone in the world gives a crap.
It's not much of a surprise that the most listenable "Road Rage" has, thank GOD, nothing to do with people in pickup trucks failing to yield. Welsh alt-rockers Catatonia scored a UK hit in '98 while attempting to re-purpose the term to mean, I guess, something like "the state of being irked by a dude", an idea which didn't really catch on despite a super-hooky chorus. Of course, Catatonia seemed to have a problem knowing what words meant; they initially thought the name of their band was another way to say "a pleasurable sleep", and in "Road Rage", singer Cerys Matthews throws around the term "space age" like a random vocal tic, so, food for thought.
Whatever Catatonia thought their song was about, they do a lot of good things with the music part of it. Upward key changes at the beginning of the second and third verses help show off Matthews' range. Her voice has an impish, Bjork-ish quality to it, slightly husky, alternately bold and quavering, and her native accent gives the 'r' in 'rage' a bit of a trill. The chorus—"It's all over the front page/You give me road rage"—is so catchy it's hard to care that it makes no damn sense. Anyway, how much Welsh do YOU know? That's what I thought.
The band Slade is hard rockin' to the core. They don't know how to NOT rock. It's part of their soul. When their manager said "do a goddamn ballad guys. the chicks dig it," Noddy, Dave, Jim and Don simply heaved a collective sigh, whipped on their glittering go-go boots, applied just a touch of fresh eyeshadow, and set about writing a sweetzie-cola love jam in the only way they knew how: the hard rockin' way. Released in 1971, this song was in the first wave of hard-rock-goes-lovey-dovey. However, there isn't a stitch of the namby-pamby flim-flam bullshit found in the saccharine "hard rock" love ballads of the later 70s and all through the 80s.
The opening line sung over a terse guitar stroke is: "I won't laugh at you, when you boo-hoo-hoo, coz I love you." Under normal circumstances, that would be about as easy-listening-Neil-Sedaka-y as it gets, but when ol' Noddy sings it, it's hardcore man! It doesn't matter that the musical breakdown for this song is a violin solo because it's a rockin' James Lea electric violin solo. When you hear hand claps in this song, they sound like mother-lovin' whips cracking!
And because Slade didn't want you getting any wrong ideas in that pretty little head of yours, they changed the initial title spelling from "Cause I Love You" to the more street smart "Coz I Luv you." Correct spelling is for squares! Often (and by often I mean NEVER), I get asked what song I'd like to be played for my first dance at my imaginary wedding. I've bandied about a few different titles, but I always come back to "Coz I love you." It has the sweet sensibility of a Billy Joel number in its lyrics ("I just like the things you do/ don't you change the things you do") but the vocal/instrumental intensity of Alice Cooper (wild screaming at the end/roaring power chords). I'd like to begin my marriage with a BANG, and this song is the musical equivalent of a Reese's Peanut Butter cup: salty, sweet, and totally satisfying!
Man, that free love movement of the 60s was great for everyone…EXCEPT when those pesky feelings of attachment got involved. The culture of loving the one you're with kind of sucks when they leave you high and dry. It was particularly hard on women what with getting pregnant and stuff. Oh, YOU THINK I'M BEING A DOWNER? I'm sorry. I guess I should be just like the woman in "Angel of the Morning" (written by MAN, Chip Taylor in 1968) and cure my free love hangover with a shot of cold hard truth. "They'll be no strings to bind your hands, not if my love can't bind your heart." Womenz Oh! Our only purpose is trying to tie a man down. That's all we are! Man-catchers! Doncha know?
I mean, honey, "just call me angel of the morning then slowly turn away." I'm so desperate I just want you to "touch my cheek before you leave". We fucked last night, but a cheek touch is all I'm really after, you know? I'm not a prostitute. However," I won't beg you to stay with me though the tears of the day", but I WILL tell you about it to make you feel guilty.
"Angel of the Morning" has been recorded by basically EVERYONE (it's charted like 2,054 times, look it up!). The algorithm, for some reason, really seems to be promoting the PP Arnold version of the song. I think it's because PP Arnold was cool in a major way. She was an Angeleno like myself, but found popularity in England and toured with The Kinks, Jimi Hendrix, The Who and David Bowie. PP's emotionality comes through in this recording based on the sheer number of bewildered girls she must have witnessed. There had to have been tons of groupies leaving whatever tour bus she was on EVERY MORNING. That's incredible amount of intensity for an onlooker to take in. I mean, if you had a wild night with Keith Moon, your life is basically over after that, right?! Anyhow, if you're having a pity party, this is like THE go-to song.
Normally I stay out of things that aren’t my business. Publicly, anyway. But since David Letterman and Howard Stern have already beaten me to the punch rediscovering this number, I don’t feel out of line reviewing this, uh, rather less commonplace vision of American utopia. However, I will be sticking to what I know best, which is why the song “View From Gay Head” holds such strong appeal for comedians.
When you consider everything that’s gone down (har!) in the 30-some-odd years since Alix Dobkin recorded this song, we are undeniably living in a different world. Its verses are filled with ladies casting off the chains of patriarchal oppression and finding their independence in each other’s arms. Yet in today’s America, it’s easy to witness lesbianism – mild or otherwise – as a titillating bar trick employed to attract alpha males, not unlike the female equivalent of crushing a beer can on one’s head. Of course, it’s much more complicated than this for actual lesbians, but thanks to the ubiquity of Internet pornography, lesbianism (or at least a fantasy version of it) is becoming downright mainstream. Not so mainstream that Mississippi won’t cancel proms because of it, but certainly mainstream enough that the Republican National Committee is perfectly comfortable partying down with some of its younger (and, one must assume, “hipper”) donors at a lesbian-bondage-themed nightclub in West Hollywood (“WeHo”). A song positing lesbianism as a radical political statement in and of itself seems…well, quaint.
Of course, “View From Gay Head” was born in a very different time and place – the early days of the feminist movement, a time of consciousness-raising sessions, a mantra that the personal WAS political, and much more limited opportunities for women. It was also a time when certain schools of feminist thought were dedicated to finding new, “better” rules to replace the old ones women had been forced to live by (thereby missing a lot of the point). Some feminists theorized that the only way to rid themselves of male oppression was to rid themselves of heterosexual sex, thus obliterating their impulse to please and, hence, submit. Others theorized that since “lesbianism” was really about loving your fellow women, any act of love would technically make you a lesbian, and you didn’t actually have to have sex with anybody as long as you were loving and supportive. (Those women were not lesbians.) The point is, back in 1975, it wasn’t entirely out of the question that women could choose to have sex with other women purely out of politics. (Although, academic theory does have a way of dissipating once you’re going down on someone you’re not attracted to.)
But all of that isn’t why “View From Gay Head” has a significant “WTF?” factor when heard by audiences it wasn’t intended for. That’s more to do with its musical signifiers. Dobkin’s voice is a typical ‘60s-style collegiate folk warble, which carries all the cultural associations of that era – the starry-eyed idealism of the American left, the typically American dream of building a utopian society, the painfully earnest advocacy of a change-the-world cause, the self-conscious questioning of social norms. And, of course, the era of Bob Dylan as the spokesman of a generation. The American left has been awaiting the arrival of the next Bob Dylan with the same kind of anticipation that the lunatic right reserves for the impending return of Jesus. Imagine, another transformational protest poet who can change hearts and minds with the simple power of folk music! Sorry, guys, it ain’t gonna happen. Unless you’re singing country songs about guys driving their tractors 5 mph on the highway and pissing off big old Mr. Businessman, you’re not going to dent the American consciousness without some basic rhythmic underpinning from African-America. (Jazz, blues, rock & roll, R&B, funk, hip-hop…you know, stuff that people actually enjoy.) Plus, there is no more living traditional music left to synthesize in the manner of Dylan. People just don’t entertain each other that way anymore – they are either learning to DJ, or forming shitty Creed knockoffs to play the local bar circuit, which will undoubtedly be the stepping stone to a major-label record contract, which will undoubtedly make them rock stars on the strength of their shallow, shallow pain. In about 20-30 years, the only people left making hip-hop will be white “purists” dedicated to preserving the “traditional” language of the form. Meanwhile, black people will have invented at least 10 new forms of music, all of which will take a decade or two for white people to understand.
But I digress. The point of all that was, we associate this sort of ‘60s-style folk music with people aiming for an earnest, completely unrealistic left-wing utopia. (Basically, the opposite of our contemporary image of the “common man,” a.k.a. the ostensible creator of folk music.) And so when we hear the lilting, singsong chorus about Dobkin’s version of utopia – a world where “every woman can be a lesbian” – we cannot help but crack a smile. First, because a utopia based on sex doesn’t jive with the nobility and loftiness we expect of utopian goals. Second, because you don’t expect a song about sexual utopia to feature tootling flutes in place of anything remotely resembling a dance beat. Third, because folk music’s delivery is so goddamn earnest, we can’t tell if Dobkin is joking when she uses the words “Gay Head” in the title and sings about not having a penis in between us. And fourth, because this utopia is even less realistic than the stereotypical fantasies of the stereotypical pacifist, do-gooder left.
OR IS IT? Studies of male and female arousal patterns have shown that men’s brains are more likely to respond to physical characteristics (thus reinforcing their pre-existing gender preference), while women are far more likely than men to respond to a general social consensus that something sexy is going on, which leaves more room for fluidity in who they’re getting it on with. Sure, there are ladies on the straight and gay sides of the spectrum who will tell you their gender preference is pretty doggone immutable. And by this point, reasonable people are aware of the studies proving that sexual preference is not a choice. (Which is probably reason #5 this song can give you the giggles.) But the emerging scientific consensus seems to be that overall, women’s gender preferences are less set in stone than men’s. Maybe Alix was prescient in letting this particular cat out of the bag. And nowadays, you know who agrees with Alix that every woman can be a lesbian? Every regular American Joe who’s trying like hell to get his wife or girlfriend to get it on with another chick, and maybe let him join in. You know what…maybe folk music IS still the voice of the common man after all.
From workouts to road trips to killing your whole family and committing suicide, we spend a lot of time sound-tracking the mundane activities of our lives. It might be difficult finding the perfect music for every occasion, but if you're planning to murder your whole family and commit suicide and can't find the right tune to crank in the background, you might consider "Frankie Teardrop", a song about a guy who murders his whole family and then commits suicide, by the band Suicide (original name: Kill Your Whole Family and then Commit Suicide, The Band).
Not only does "Frankie Teardrop" explicitly describe the aforementioned crime of murderous violence, but it sounds like the noise your brain probably makes while undertaking said crime, i.e., the relentless, paranoia-drenched white noise of a hammering drum machine accompanied by rumbling synths and punctuated by ethereal, cold-blooded human shrieks. And at 10 and a half minutes long, it gives you plenty of time to commit the act (assuming a family of three—you, wife, six month-old kid in the crib). Ol' Frankie Teardrop gets it done pretty fast, considering; he works 10 hours a day in a factory, but by 2m 45s he can't buy enough food, and the whole family's blown away less than two minutes later. Let's hear it for Frankie!
Getting the deed out of the way so quickly has its drawbacks, though, and in this case it just means that Frankie has to spend more than half the song traveling to hell while getting pummeled by the pulsating jackhammer of Suicide's musical headache. In fact, if you're not planning to kill your whole family and then yourself, you could skip listening to "Frankie Teardrop" entirely and probably live a long, fulfilling, murder-suicide-free life.
Of course, you can listen to "Frankie Teardrop" without engaging in unspeakable acts, but if you do you should prepare for the possibility that you or your pets or other humans around you could become utterly and unintentionally freaked out, especially in the wee hours when you haven't had a lot of sleep and your college roommate is blasting this song in the middle of a marathon finals week study session. If it does give you a major case of the willies, though, you can always switch to the frothy bubblegum pop of Cannibal Corpse.
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.
Current estimated completion date for this project:
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