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.
George Michael had everything going for him in the late ‘80s. A teen idol just a couple short years before, Michael’s blazing solo success had him positioned as the heir apparent to Michael Jackson, Prince, and Madonna. Sadly, Michael was never able to escape his bubblegum past with Wham! – at least not in his own mind, where he constantly felt the need to prove he was something MORE than whatever he was at the moment. As such, Michael wound up rivaling Axl Rose as the late-‘80s superstar whose inferiority complex most effectively sabotaged the brilliance that made him a star in the first place.
And make no mistake, George Michael was brilliant. Until Amy Winehouse came along two decades later, Michael ranked as the last great blue-eyed soul singer, and the last to truly cross over between white and black audiences. Why was he able to do that? Well, he could write a great pop song, but more importantly, that motherfucker could flat-out SING. He knew it, but despite “Careless Whisper,” the world didn’t realize it, since Wham! wasn’t exactly perceived as musically substantive. So what’s a closeted British white boy with a killer set of pipes to do?
Enter Aretha Franklin, coming off a mid-‘80s comeback with hits like “Freeway of Love” and “Who’s Zoomin’ Who.” Routinely ranked among the greatest soul singers of all time for her combination of vocal power and technique, Aretha had also become a feminist icon thanks to her opposite-sex recasting of Otis Redding’s “Respect.” Franklin is so widely revered, white-girl lesbian sex guru Susie Bright even named her daughter Aretha in tribute. NOBODY questions Aretha Franklin’s credentials.
And this is what made George and Aretha’s chart-topping ’87 duet “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)” so revelatory. That’s Aretha Franklin…and that’s George Michael??? Going toe to toe? George Michael? That guy in the “Choose Life” shirt who was just making junior high girls wet their pants with that goddamn jitterbug song? Holding his own right next to Aretha Fucking Franklin?! No way. No way, brah. Uh-uh.
Now, it isn’t as though Michael comes out on top here, or even registers as an equal. The point here is like the point of the first Rocky movie – the underdog doesn’t win, but against an unbeatable opponent, he holds his own. You can almost hear Michael’s confidence building as the song goes along. In the first verse, he’s quiet and breathy, as if he wants to play Franklin’s opposite so he can’t be compared on the same terms and found wanting. Then he starts to let loose a little at the end of the second verse. By the end of the song, he and Franklin are trading off vocal lines over the chorus like it ain’t no thang. Even if he lacks Franklin’s raw gospel power, the supple elasticity and natural sob in Michael’s voice has become more and more apparent. This coming-out (ha!) party was the stepping stone to Faith, which deserves to be mentioned with Thriller, Purple Rain, and Born in the U.S.A. as one of the great blockbuster pop albums of the ‘80s.
Sadly, the mature, emotionally complex love songs that made Faith such a rewarding – and substantive! – work weren’t enough for Michael. On his next album, Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1, Michael fell victim to that great bugaboo of Reagan-era popular music, the incessant rock-critic demands for socially conscious material criticizing the status quo. Michael took apart the superficiality of his own appeal on “Freedom ’90,” and for the next two decades disappeared up his own ass, crafting intermittent albums of dour, self-consciously serious songs that were intentionally not as catchy or immediate, whittling down his audience in the manner of Pearl Jam so that his self-image as a Serious Artist would never again come into conflict with the reality that he was superbly talented at making mainstream music. By now, Michael could have taken his rightful place as a gay pop icon to rival Sir Elton John. Yet, sadly, the fun of blowing dudes in public restrooms never again found its way into the music he made, constituting an enormous waste of talent to rival…well, the aforementioned Guns N’ Roses and Amy Winehouse.
Disney soundtrack veterans George Burns and Floyd Huddlestone (what a name!!) penned this charmingly schmaltzy ditty as the romantic ballad for the bizarre all-animal edition that is 1973's Robin Hood. I watched all the Disney classics as a child, and I remember this fox-on-fox pairing struck a 7-year-old me as quite romantic. I found the couple more genuine than say, Sleeping Beauty and Prince Phillip or Snow White and Prince Charming. I think that's because even as a young child, I was able to comprehend the idea that true love comes from a shared history together. Maiden Marion and Robin Hood were childhood sweethearts separated and reunited after years of longing for one another. Plus, they both seemed to have personalities, unlike most Disney Princes and Princesses, who were all blandly noble and or annoyingly cheerful.
"Love" is the height of 70s cheese. There is so much dubbing, you feel like you are in a forest of guitars and violins! No character sings the song in the film. It is just there in the background, playing while the foxes flit around in a trance of love. I want you, reader, to really stop and think about your life! Have you caught fireflies among the lotus flowers recently? Has someone even ever made you a homemade flower-ring? Even though that swamp land looks like a bunch of mosquito bites waiting to happen, it doesn't matter when you're in a love-trance! Have you gone through to the other side of the waterfall? (Vegas hotel pools don't count!) Because you know what, "life is brief, but when it's gone, love goes on and on"! They never re-released the full soundtrack of Robin Hood after the original record pressing in the 70s, but singles like "Love" pop up here and there on compilations. However, this song will play in my heart (and youtube) for the rest of time!
Ray Davies has complicated feelings as regards large women. On one "Sunny Afternoon", he called for help when a "big fat mama" was trying to "break" him. Ok, granted, no one wants to suffer the vague but dreadful fate of breakage, especially when a big fat mama would be the agent of said injury. Granted.
Keeping that earlier episode in mind as you start listening to "Skin & Bone", hearing Ray sing about "fat flabby Annie" and her 16 stone heft (that's 224 pounds for the millions billion of you who don't keep up with the latest trends in English imperial weight), you might think that Ray's fat-phobia is surfacing again. But then a "thick dietitian" puts Annie on what sounds a lot like the Atkins diet before Atkins had a chance to put his name on it. She cuts out alcohol, pizza, pies, potatoes, scones ("stay away from carbohydrates") and now she "looks like she's ready to die", tut-tuts Ray. "You can't see her walk by."
From one perspective, this is an ad for the low carb lifestyle. Sure, it's a crash diet, but it worked, right? Annie cut out the carbs, and in a couple of days she acquired a tiny headache and just enough nausea that eating turned into a mechanical chore that she avoided if she could. It was weird the way she kept waking up to urinate every night at 5 am with her heart pounding like crazy and her head feeling explosive, but that's how she knew it was doing something, and look at the pounds melt away! That's what "living at the edge of starvation" is all about. Ray doesn't say, but Annie probably goes a little crazy after a few months of this and starts thinking it's ok to eat raw spaghetti out of the box because the carbs don't count if it's not cooked, but this is supposition.
On the other hand, poor Annie loses all her friends because she's not "cuddly" anymore, although here I think Ray uses "friends" to mean someone who was a lot more friendly with Annie than the word implies. Like someone who was really friending it to her good, from like seven different directions, wink wink. I guess you could debate the merits of being the town pump up on Muswell Hill, and you might even conclude that having fewer friends is a good thing, when you put it that way. But when even the girl's parents shake their heads...well, no one stays on Atkins forever.
Happy Saint Patrick's Day! You know what's super charming? An Irish accent. I am impervious to English, French and even Italian linguistic leanings, but that soft-as-butter Irish brogue will melt my heart every time. I once spent an entire 30 minutes talking to the most boring guy in a bar just so I could hear him talk (sample line of his: "I am enjoying California. It's very nice here. Much different than Dublin" me: "oh, DO go on"). In song, that lilt combined with heavy Irish-brand sorrow translates into pop gold. U2, The Cranberries, The Corrs, and The Thrills are all moping about and crying injustice. Even U2's uplifting songs have a decidedly tragic leaning. I mean it's a "Beautiful Day", but man don't fucking let it get away. But we're not here to talk about U2, because god knows even this obscure blog isn't going to feed Bono's monstrous ego. We're here to talk about the tomboy (ha!) pop outfit B*witched. Although Irish-born, they were having none of the traditional Irish sad-face. One of the girls in the group has a shamrock tattoo on her hand. If that's not carefree, I don't know what is!
B*Witched's biggest hit by far was "C'est La Vie" in which the girls are trying to coax a boy down from his tree house to play with them. " I got a house with windows and door / I'll show you mine if you show me yours." These kind of playful lyrics are reminiscent of a children's nursery rhyme or a Led Zeppelin song. They continue on: "I'm the wolf today hey, hey, hey/ I'll huff I'll puff /I'll huff I'll puff and blow you away." Abandoning the idea of the Irish woman as a passive victim, these ladies are taking the reigns on their romantic endeavors into tree houses. I guess that's what Girl Power™ is all about!
Oddly, although B*Witched styled themselves after the teen girl groups of the time, most of them weren't teens. Of the foursome, only one could legally claim teen status when their album broke in 1998. Sinead O'Carroll (I guess there's not that many name variations in Ireland) was a full blown 25-years-old when this single dropped. However, they lied and said she was 20. Oh the dangerous trappings of the pop star world. B*Witched never hit it big in America aside from "C'est La Vie", but the group went Platinum on a couple albums in Europe. Like Abba, their brand of faux-pixie was a bit too psychedelic for American audiences...perhaps too gender bending what with their denim tomboy act. Ah well, c'est la vie!
Reviled by rock critics and metalheads alike, Poison have never gotten their due as the definitive hair metal band. Don’t get me wrong, now, I’m not saying they’re the best. Def Leppard invented the pop-metal style. Bon Jovi took that sound into the biggest arenas. Guns N’ Roses smoked everyone in terms of energy, songwriting, and artistic credibility (at first, anyway). And no one embodied the sleazy excess of the era better than Motley Crue. But let’s look again at what hair metal was, according to its many critics. Hair metal was shallow. Formulaic. Slickly produced. More reliant on looks than musical talent. Calculated for multi-gender appeal. Simple and easy to play. Decidedly not heavy. Silly fluff made by slavish trend-hoppers for hormonal MTV fans with no attention spans.
And let’s remember the meaning of the word “definitive.” Did any band of the era epitomize all those characteristics better than Poison? Was there a more ambitious – and successful – group of trend-hoppers to be found on the Sunset Strip? I’m looking through my extensive hair metal library, and I can report to you that the answer to both of those questions is “no.” Time and time and time again, Poison became whatever they thought you wanted them to be. Far from being inconsistent, that is the very essence of what Poison was. Criticizing them for it is like complaining that bankers are too greedy, or lobsters are too pinchy. It’s WHO THEY ARE. Consider the following QUARTER-CENTURY of successful trend-hopping:
1985: We’re workin’-class dudes with big dreams. Let’s move from middle America to Los Angeles to make it big.
1986: What? Pop-metal is starting to take off commercially? All the girls want to touch Jon Bon Jovi’s big teased-up hair? Well, let’s utilize our drummer’s skill as a professional hairdresser, and present ourselves on our first album as hot trannies ripping off the New York Dolls.
1988: What? If you want to break into the big time, you need a really good power ballad the ladies can enjoy too? OK, let’s write one with barely more than two chords and make a shit-ton of cash. (Too simple? Well, YOU didn’t think of it, smart guy.) Let’s also write a bunch of party anthems, and then take a bunch of groupies and fuck a bunch of drugs. Yeah, you read right. These are crazy times!
1990: What? Critics hate us? They’re pissed about the Reagan era because they see their youthful ‘60s-era idealism being crushed in an orgy of military spending and capitalistic greed? The only music they want to hear is relevant sociopolitical criticism, because they think the power of protest rock can change the world again? OK, let’s call our new album Flesh and Blood to signify that we’re getting more substantive, and let’s do a piano ballad about stuff that is deep and real, like the homeless, Vietnam, televangelists, and also the death of our security guard, which is what started us thinking about all this depth.
1991: What? All the guitar magazines say our records have some of the worst guitar playing ever? Even the writer of this review was able to play C.C.’s guitar solos, despite being the second-least-coordinated kid in gym class? OK cool, you’re gone, C.C. Let’s hire third-tier shredder Richie Kotzen!
1993: What? The musical landscape changed and now we’re perceived as anachronistic symbols of America’s greatest pop-culture embarrassment? Shit, we better get even more substantive, as substantive as these alternative bands! Let’s revamp our sound to be real bluesy, because blues = authentic substance.
1994: What? Richie Kotzen fucked our drummer’s fiancée? Let’s get a different guitar shredder. One with such selective appeal that the only “record company” that would release his solo work was actually a magazine called “Guitar for the Practicing Musician.” Welcome aboard, Blues Saraceno! Blues = authentic substance!
1995: What? Hair metal is dead? Welp, time for our record company to shelve the new album and drop us.
1998: What? Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson made a sex tape that everyone is talking about? Hey Bret, YOU should make a sex tape with Pamela Anderson!
1999: What? Motley Crue got back together a couple years ago? Welcome back, C.C.! (Fuck, we missed one! We should have tried to go hard pseudo-alternative, like the Crue with John Corabi. Blues Saraceno? What the fuck were we thinking???)
2000: What? The only people who listen to us anymore like the party stuff? OK, let’s write some of that and call the new album Power to the People! Let’s make half the record live performances of old songs they already know, to remind them of why they liked us! Let’s also form our own “indie” label and call it Cyanide (a clever allusion to our band!). No one else is gonna release this thing. Fuck that prick Bon Jovi and “It’s My Life.” WE never had to hire outside songwriters.
2002: What? Def Leppard is still releasing records in their old style, and doesn’t seem ashamed to sound like it’s still the ‘80s, and is putting effort into songwriting even though they have no chance of getting on the radio anymore? OK, let’s write about the old days in L.A. and call the new album Hollyweird!
2006: What? Washed-up ex-celebrities are getting a second life on reality TV? Hey C.C., you’re a motormouth, you’d be perfect! Get your ass out of rehab and get it on The Surreal Life the very next day!
2007: What? Def Leppard released a covers album and actually got good reviews for it? Let’s Poison up some classic rock tunes, POISON style, and call the album Poison’d! Fuck the letter E!
ALSO 2007: What? Flavor Flav got a Bachelor-style dating show after being on The Surreal Life? Hey, C.C. was on – wait, there was a trumped-up domestic violence complaint, and he just got out of rehab. Errrrrrrrr…let’s give this one to Bret instead.
2009: What? We played the Tony Awards? And Bret got his nose fractured by a descending stage piece? Uh…OK, that’s a new one.
Whew. If you made it through that entire litany of reactions to what other people were already doing, you are now properly set up to enjoy the EXQUISITE irony of the band Poison writing a song called “Stand,” whose chorus goes like this:
“You know you’ve got to stand Staaaaaand STAND FOR WHAT YOU BELIEVE.”
This song was from the uber-substantive 1993 album Native Tongue, and was designed to be the successor to “Something to Believe In.” A pop-hit ballad couldn’t be as substantively bluesy as the rest of the record, so how do you achieve musical substance here? Easy. You get the First A.M.E. Church Choir of South Central Los Angeles, because nothing announces epic musical importance quite like a gospel choir. (Especially, as Bret Michaels points out in the liner notes of Greatest Hits 1986-1996, a gospel choir from the area where the L.A. riots had just taken place a year before. No one can know the truth of the line “Lies and money become the white man’s god” better than these folks!) You also put a mandolin in the all-acoustic first verse, because this signifies totally authentic “roots” music. You also bury Richie Kotzen’s inconsequential noodling under some choir soloists toward the end of the song. Because it isn’t time for flash and fun – this is SERIOUS business. Serious business that can only be expressed through clichéd stock phrases, such as “carry the cross,” “burned our bridges,” and “draw the line.”
Behind all the fake tits, bleached blondes, and general destruction of American culture that was Rock of Love, it was possible to pick up on the qualities that animated Bret Michaels: a puppy-dog eagerness to be liked and accepted, an intense drive to do whatever it took to get to that point, and a tendency to be deeply impressed by his own accomplishments. Those threads are woven throughout Poison’s music, but nowhere is it easier to hear the third point than on “Stand.” And, as such, it is crucial to truly understanding the band.
(N.B.: This is also why Poison’s best song is “Ride the Wind.” It’s not only superbly catchy, it’s their least calculated choice of topic – it’s just about how much Bret really liked motorcycles.)
As with virtually all music once accused of inciting inappropriate sexual arousal in days gone by, 1959's "Teach Me Tiger" sounds tame today. Of course, the erosion of mores in our society is generational. April Stevens' breathy cooing was followed a decade later by Robert Plant's fake orgasms, and fourteen years after that astronauts aboard the Challenger, upstanding golden paragons of American virtue to a one, requested "Teach Me Tiger" as their day 3 wake-up call while in orbit around God's Green Earth. The "millennials" probably already think we're a bunch of lame-o's for ever getting worked up over pantomime fellatio and Trent Reznor saying exactly how he wants to fuck people. Unless "lame-o" now means "super cool" and "cool" means "hot" and whatever the hell.
"Teach Me Tiger" is still capable of provoking outrage, of course. In me. When someone insists that it's a Marilyn Monroe song, which happens a LOT. Look, even though everyone is aware that nobody had sex in the '50's except movie stars who later OD'd on pills, that doesn't mean that one lady was responsible for every media artifact from the time period that sounds remotely naughty. Quit stealing from April Stevens to feed your idiotic Bernie Taupin-esque tired icon fetishism. Marilyn Friggin' Monroe, blah blah BLAH, happy birthday mister stupid president already.
What's most infuriating is that it's such a lazy comparison. Stevens's voice is much more playful than Monroe's, coyer, more girlish. And when you hear her claim that she doesn't know how to kiss, how to tease, how to touch, all while her delivery is reaching right down the front of your pants, it's clear that she's also a much better actor than Monroe. And probably a better lay.
There was once a time, not so long ago, when grown-ups could consciously decide to form a pop group, for the purpose of scoring pop hits on the pop charts. People could do this without having to be celebrities already, or otherwise constructing a defined public image for the media to eat up (though, of course, that never hurt in the MTV era). With a professionally developed sense of melody, you could find yourself all over radio, landing in the Billboard Top Ten, and thoroughly permeating the popular consciousness, despite your relative personal anonymity. Critics often lambasted music they couldn’t identify as the product of a personal artistic vision, but critics weaned on rock in the ‘60s or punk in the ‘70s often seemed to expect every goddamn record to change the fucking world or it wasn’t worth anyone’s while.
Boy Meets Girl were a husband-and-wife songwriting duo who got their start penning Whitney Houston’s two best songs, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)” and “How Will I Know.” For their own material, George Merrill and Shannon Rubicam adopted a suitably generic name that alluded in vague terms to their own real-life coupling. So much the stuff of romantic songs and long-distance dedications, they even MET at a wedding! Unlike many such hookups, however, they continued to date long after the wedding atmosphere (“Love and romance are in the air!” mixed with “Oh God, I’m so alone!” mixed with “Shit hell, I’m drunk!”) had faded.
Boy Meets Girl’s lone hit was the Top Fiver “Waiting for a Star to Fall,” an effortlessly catchy amalgam of light dance-pop and late-‘80s adult contemporary. The song kicks off with that typical, awkward ‘80s juxtaposition of a real live saxophone with an almost completely synthesized backing track. The lyrics are standard-issue romantic longing, and if you don’t remember this song by its title, you may well have thought it was called “In My Arms Baby Yeah” if you ever listened to a pop radio station or attended a junior high school dance in the late ‘80s. For my money, the highlight is that hallmark of the lost art of professional songwriting, an absolutely killer bridge (around 2:45 in) that’s every bit as memorable as the chorus (and also proves that George and Shannon don’t sound all that different from one another).
The downside of lacking a marketable image or soap-opera private life is that you sink or swim on your ability to keep coming up with great melodies. And if you run out of those, well, thanks for playing. Boy Meets Girl just seemed like nice people making nice music, and they joined hair metal in getting fucking obliterated by Nirvana. Alas, when their career ended, their romantic partnership went the way of the creative one, proving yet again that popular love songs are a cruel prank on the American psyche.
Oftentimes, pop songs walk the delicate line between "romance" and "stalking" or "desire" and "rape-y sounding". "Hungry Eyes," off the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, gets real close to crossing the line. It starts out innocently enough, but isn't every road to hell paved with the best of intentions? Eric Carmen quietly delivers "I've been meaning to tell you, I've got this feeling that won't subside." Awwww, he's admitting his feelings to his crush. Sweet! But then gets darker, FAST. "I look at you and I fantasize. You're mine tonight. Now I've got you in my sights...with...these...hungry eyes." Maybe this girl is down, but his tone is a pleading one. He continues, "I want to hold you so hear me out." Sounds like the objection of his affection was interested in leaving. If a boy I liked professed his love for me, he wouldn't need to ask me to stay; I'd be sitting there smiling! Eric Carmen sings "Did I take you by surprise?" but doesn't wait for a response, only answers his own question, "I need you to see this love was meant to be." I'm of the opinion that if a love is meant to be, both parties involved are willing participants that don't need to be convinced once feelings are laid on the table. Although the saxophone solo makes a strong argument.
Needless to say, I loved this song when I was 8 years old and someday imagined a boy singing it to me. I remember my sister guffawing at me, "You want a boy to sing you a song?! That's ridiculous Camille. Do you know how ridiculous that would be?" Time has passed and I am now a woman, but I still wouldn't mind having a guy sing me a song. Just not this song. If a guy is singing me this song, well, I'd probably be trying to dial 9-1-1 on my cell phone. I mean, just look at Eric Carmen's mug shot below. This guy is NOT messing around!
As the Internet has very little information on this video, I can only imagine how this cartoon / live action extravaganza of a song came to pass. However, I think we all know how it went. By the late 70s, the Schoolhouse Rock animators were riding high on the hog. The goverment / Public Television was giving out mucho dinero for educational cartoons. Those guys became International Jetsetters! There were Pina Coladas in Fiji followed by aperitives in gay ol 'Paris. One night in Rome, a drunk schoolhouse rocker came into contact with cute-as-a-button Rita Pavone. "Hey baby!" he shouted at her. "Do you know who I am?" She smiled coyly and took a gold tipped cigarette out of her Halston purse. "No, English not so good." As flecks of red wine spittle spew from his mouth, he screamed "Schoolhouse Rock!" She replied, "well you look ... how you say? Like Potato, American Potato!" The wheels in this rocker's mind spun quickly. Business cards were exchanged and they were in studio the VERY NEXT DAY laying down the track. Yeah, said animator may have taken on an Italian name "Guido Manuli" for artistic credit, but we all know that's not a real name.
When the tape was released, Guido's friends back at home chastised him. "What are you trying to teach man? That potatoes grow in the earth? Let's not get started on the tobacco sequence. That shit better not see the light of day in our U.S. of A." But Guido had got to spend a whole two days with Rita, and that was all that mattered.
Everybody has days when they want to bury their "head in the shit at the bottom" of a lake. The urge is universal, a vestige of the reptile brain, meaning that basically anything with a spine has experienced the sensation: you say something hurtful to your turtle friend, or you get embarrassed in front of the stegosaurus you've been crushing on, or your garter snake buddy sits you down and lays some hard truth on you; then the pit forms in your stomach and you want to go find a damned lake already.
What lake? Any lake! A lake you can dive into, so you can start burying your head in the shit at the bottom. Sure, there's a name for that shit, but you're not Percy Bysshe fucking Shelley over here. Your brain-stem is in charge now, and it doesn't give a crap about whether the metaphor speaks to the sublime, or what shit happen to be called, only whether can be used as a burrowing place for your stupid skull.
This raw expression of life's occasional, simple lousiness forms the basic thrust of Wild Light's catchy first single, and smartly the band leans so heavily on their sing-along "shit at the bottom" chorus that you've already heard it twice before you stumble upon the first verse. By the time they start to get specific about which pile of regrets is responsible for the moment's anguish, we're already on board, caught up in the feeling of collective remorse, while jangly guitars strum enjoyably and a mournful, Petty-esque harmonica answers the lead vocal.
What makes the chorus really special, though, is that there's a second universal urge embedded in the back half of it, namely the ancient, evolutionarily-tested need to tell the State of California to go fuck itself. "Fuck today, fuck San Francisco/Fuck California," sings Jordan Alexander, whose warbled yearning recalls Phantom Planet's Alex Greenwald. "California on My Mind", in fact, could just be the other side of the coin for "California", brutal reality setting in for those same Phantom Planet-eers who'd so hopefully driven down the 101 on their way to The OC's Teen Choice Awards party a few years back. Now the show's canceled, those idiots from The Hills are famous, the state's bankrupt...you know what? Give me a lake.
When you think of cool kids in the 1960s, The Turtles aren't the first band to come to mind, or the 6th or even the 18th. In fact, if VH1 did a count down for "cool" 1960s artists, I doubt The Turtles would crack the top 50. BUT they hung out with the cool kids and at the end of the day isn't that what counts? During the golden age of Laurel Canyon, The Turtles partied right along side all the important players. I have no doubt Howard Kaylan was licking the same LSD sugar cube as David Crosby. I'm sure that when Jim Morrison was wobbling over the toilet puking pure whiskey, Mark Volman was the one to hold back his precious locks.
So who really cares if The Turtles turned their backs on psychedelia and folk rock to create deliciously catchy pop? OK, full disclosure: this author has a strong dislike for most of Bob Dylan's recordings. I know, I know, he's a great American poet yada yada.... but those vocal tones aren't dulcet. I like my Bob Dylan like my vodka: mixed with something... anything... to dilute the bite. The Turtles' break out hit cover of "It ain't me babe" gets that job done. In an Alternate universe where Oceanic Flight 815 does land in Los Angeles, I like to imagine what it would be like if Bob Dylan was born without a tongue so only others were able to record his music. In that Alterna-verse, The Turtles original version of the song "it ain't me babe" would hit the spot that much more because you wouldn't realize what a passive aggressive number they were about to lay down. The song starts all sickly sweet. Mark is crooning in his teenie bopper voice to that be-bopping girl in the front row, and then he smacks the chorus on her like the big ol' truth bomb that it is: "IT AIN'T ME BABE." While Dylan sounds like he is about to jump off a bridge as soon as he completes performing the song, The Turtles sound like they are about to leave for spring break in Cancun! And that, my friends, is actually quite cool.
Nice guys finish last. AMIRITE LADIES? Nice isn't sexy. Pulp's Jarvis Cocker on the band's magnum opus "Different Class" is not some nice guy. He's a bad boy. In 1995, way back when cholos still ruled Echo Park with an iron fist, and before single gear bicycle freaks inundated the orthodox Jewish population of Williamsburg, Jarvis Cocker invented the look of the modern day hipster. Except unlike the modern day hipster, Jarvis Cocker exuded* sex appeal. Although his appearance is scrawny and deathly British-white, his voice is another matter entirely. His voice is pure sex. Girls love Pulp. Hetero guys that I've talked to don't really have an opinion on the matter. Asking a guy about Pulp is like asking him what kind of white wine he prefers.
The album Different Class is all pretty ridiculous and over-the-top, but "Pencil Skirt" takes the cake. Jarvis purrs each line and even the guitar riff seems naughty. He's already seduced you even though you've got a fiancé and the song is just there to make you feel guilty because it turns him on that you feel bad but are...you guessed it, still turned on. He's tapped it before, and he's making sure YOU know he's got you in the bag. In fact, he's got your WHOLE FAMILY under his seductive spell since he's "kissed your mother twice, and now I'm working on your dad. oh baby!" Oh baby indeed. Astonishingly, Pulp never hit it big time on the American charts like contemporaries Blur and Oasis. I'm pretty sure that's due to the fact that U-S-A! U-S-A! in 1995 was and still is an uptight crowd. Yeah, we got gangta rappers that shout to the high heavens of their sexual prowess, but they are so impersonal about it- pluralizing their exploits ("so many bitches") and not really pointing to specific encounters ("when I hit the town..."). "Pencil Skirt" gets into the devilish details. So dudes, when you are putting together that mix CD to make a girl think you are a mysterious dashing gent, throw on "Pencil Skirt". You know that I know that she knows its turning her ooooon.
*I use the past tense because modern day Jarvis is, in fact, quite asexual. Later Pulp songs are about old people and trees (literally: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bZjKC0EaY0 AND http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEAtpuZJtu4). In this writing I am referring solely to mid-90s Pulp.
Arena rock is one of the more critically maligned genres of rock music, mostly for reasons that were intrinsic to its very being. It was great big music meant to be played in great big spaces. Your style can’t be subtle when you need to reach all the way back to the cheap seats. And if you’re going to fill up a sports stadium for some reason other than sports, your lyrics have got to be as universally relatable as possible. If you’re gonna go big, you’ve gotta go commercial. Grandeur – at least the human-made variety – doesn’t happen without cash.
Has there ever been a more thoroughly average grandeur than that of REO Speedwagon? On the surface they fulfill all the major arena-rock checklist items. Big fist-pumping choruses! Dramatically ringing power chords! Cigarette-lighter-ready ballads! But listen carefully, to what they’re actually doing. None of this stuff is all that hard to play. The melodies are usually fairly simple. The guitar solos rarely leave much of an impression. It certainly doesn’t require the jazz-trained chops of Journey. Any competent band could do this. (Of course, it was the misfortune of many competent bands to not have done this.) Kevin Cronin’s vocals lack the range, power, and supple elasticity of the incomparable Steve Perry – and if you can’t hear the contrast, just try singing one or the other at karaoke. Now, there’s no law that says great music requires great technical ability. It’s only that REO Speedwagon’s chosen, grandeur-obsessed idiom would seem to demand something above…average. Here is an average band of average Midwestern guys, constantly reaching for the stars, yet the spacecraft they’re using to get there is more akin to a model rocket.
“Average” doesn’t mean “bad.” The Speedwagon (as they no doubt affectionately dubbed themselves) aren’t that great at anything – they’re just good enough. Perhaps there is no better illustration of their mundane everyman stabs at transcendence than the big ol’ ballad “Take It On the Run,” which went Top Five in 1981. It’s instantly catchy, right from the opening lines – “Heard it from a friend who/Heard it from a friend who/Heard it from another you’d been messin’ around.” But this is as much a function of the repetition as it is the tune. When I was a young man, I saw a commercial for a car stereo with a detachable face to deter thieves, and I still remember it to this day. Why? Here’s how it went:
GUY 1 (showing the product): “It’s a detachable face for the car stereo.” GUY 2 (confused by the novelty of this concept): “A detachable face for the car stereo?” GUY 1 (pleased with his avant-garde consumption choice): “Yeah. A detachable face for the car stereo.” GUY 2 (nodding as the light of understanding dawns): “Ohhhhh. A detachable face for the car stereo!”
For the remainder of the song, the Speedwagon (whose nickname contains the same number of letters as their full name) reveal their thoroughly average pedigree in much the same fashion as modern-day reality TV stars. That is, they prove incapable of expressing all but the most basic thoughts without the aid of clichéd stock phrases. Why does Kevin’s baby have to “take it on the run”? Why, because she’s “under the gun,” of course. This is also why she tells “white lies” and then puts on “bedroom eyes.” O, the maddening hypocrisy!
But we all know that lyrics don’t really matter in arena rock – hooks do. And if the Speedwagon’s hooks are simpler than competitors like Journey, Boston, or Styx, it doesn’t mean they aren’t memorable. If nothing here is challenging, it is comfortingly familiar. And if the song’s tale of betrayal might have held more menace or anguish in the hands of a more versatile vocalist, it would also lose Kevin Cronin’s perennial nice-guy presence. No matter how angry or disappointed the lyrics get, Kevin sounds like exactly the same aw-shucks fellow who’s gonna “Keep On Loving You.” Yes, everything here is good enough.
So an average band of average musicians, with aspirations of grandeur, gets to the point where, through dedication and hard work, they can come reasonably close to grandeur. What does this mean? Is it a sad commentary on American mediocrity, that people are only admiring the great big aspirations of common folks they recognize, and can’t judge the substance of the results anyway? Or should we be inspired, that through good old American stick-to-it-ive-ness (i.e. touring and recording for an ENTIRE FUCKING DECADE before everything suddenly clicks and we make a really catchy album that sells NINE FUCKING MILLION COPIES), we can rise far beyond what our natural limitations may have seemed to be when we started out? Well, your answer probably depends on how successful you’ve been at what you wanted to do, and how easy it was to attain that level of success.
Me? Well, a few years back, thieves broke into my car to steal my Sony Discman (which lacked a detachable face). They also took my flashlight and my Andrew W.K. CD. They did not, however, take my REO Speedwagon tape. Whether that was because of the format or the music contained therein, I say, it’s their loss. Keep on rollin’, Speedwagon.
What stretches limits of human endurance? The marathon? The 52 mile super marathon? Magic man David Blaine's attempts to submerge himself in cream soda for a record 7 minutes? Anyone interested in testing these limits should consider subjecting themselves to all 15 minutes of "The Adventures of Super Rhyme" by hip hop pioneer Jimmy Spicer, a song dealing with the then-controversial subject of "Every single thing Jimmy Spicer could think of in the space of 15 minutes."
When this song first came on, I had no idea what an arduous journey I was in for. It starts out with the same Chic-esque disco groove as "Rapper's Delight." Rapper Jimmy Spicer actually has a better command of the microphone than the Sugar Hill Gang, and the beat is spiced up with some fresh conga breaks. I was into it, figuring I would hear a few lines about waving my hands in the air like I just didn't care and the like and be on my merry way. What I didn't know is that i was about to hear a man rap in a dracula voice about Superman's "fine as wine" girlfriend "Lois Line," a rambling anecdote about Aladin using his wish to travel to the year 1983 to pick up a freak at the disco, and a brag that Spicer has more rhymes than a lemon limes. Does a lemon have limes? Is that what Spicer is going for? Or has he, perhaps, actually run out of rhymes... something that may have happened many minutes earlier, in the first verse, during the whole "Lois Line" thing?
We may never know. Jimmy Spicer hasn't released a commercially available song since 1985. It's my guess that he perhaps used up all his rhymes in his initial 15 minute rap hit. America wasn't ready for hip-hop songs to reach the lengths of side-long prog rock tunes, especially when they don't make any sense at all and name drop Howard Cossell instead of designer labels and code words for cocaine. Jimmy Spicer, at around the 12 minute mark, tells us that he "freak[ed] it to the east, freaked[ed] it to the west, freak[ed] it to the girl with the biggest chest." He is now freaking it to the post office, where I'm guessing he works, testing the limits of how much OT he can do during the week so he doesn't have to pick up a Saturday shift.
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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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?
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