Rock and Roll Love Letter

I’ve been in a serious Undertones mood for a few weeks now (well possibly for the past 10 years, but I meant more so lately). Reaching what I would call an unhealthy obsession with playing a copy of their debut album at least twice a day. How lucky I am that CD’s don’t wear out (anyone else remember being told how the grooves in vinyl will heat up if you play a song twice in a row)?

For my money, The Undertones are a perfect pop band. 5 pimply teenagers from Derry, Northern Ireland fronted by the uniquely warbly voice of Feargal Sharkey playing brisk, jumpy, 3-chord wonders that stick pretty much to the topics of chocolate, girls, and teenage hijinx. I recently bought a documentary made about the band - “The Undertones: Teenage Kicks” where band members spend considerable time wandering the Irish countryside reminiscing with their guardian angel, the late BBC DJ John Peel. The documentary itself though is as much an upper as a downer. Hearing about the band’s early days and seeing Peel with the band who even now in their 40’s still reek of a sweet earnestness is lovely. But Sharkey, filmed sitting in a room somewhere quite far away from the rest of the band spends most of his on-air time being far from proud of singing in a truly seminal punk/pop band. Rather he gives the impression that he views his time with The Undertones as a lead up to his horrible solo career, capped with his odious soft rock single “A Good Heart.” Seems Sharkey was always a hired hand even in The Undertones, singing someone else’s lyrics to someone else’s music, a fact which he’s oddly self-righteous about. Lord only knows why.

I actually just corrected the band’s Wikipedia listing to include their 1999 reformation with new singer Paul McLoone, which led to 2003 the release of the surprisingly good CD “Get What You Need”. Who would have imagined the band could put out a release which would hardly suffer for lack of Sharkey’s unique vocals? And what is Sharkey up to nowadays? Hanging with all those other singers who refuse to tour with their old bands like Dennis DeYoung and Steve Perry?

Random linkology:
My favorite Undertones song. My recent obsession. And thank you for playing football in a video for no reason.

Tom Waits for no man (or 14 year old girl)

I’ve had two encounters of the Tom Waits kind this week. The first was finally seeing the gent in the Jim Jarmusch film “Coffee and Cigarettes” where he discusses with Iggy Pop that the previous generation was the “coffee and pie generation, but" he brilliantly declares "we are the coffee and cigarettes generation”. A few days later I caught him being interviewed on The Late Show with Jon Stewart, being gruff voiced, irreverent and delightful as ever. After the interview he returned to sing “Day After Tomorrow”a lovely song about soldiers, war, and futility, which was depressingly cut off so the network could go to commercial. Even on cable there is hardly a respite from capitalism!

20 years in, Waits is able to convey so much that is both intimate and true, yet profound and global with his music. There are a few imitators (more artists who have drawn on his work for inspiration, like Reverend Glasseye and His Wooden Legs) but no one I'd quite call a 'contemporary.' He remains one of the few musical artists I can think of who is onto himself a genre. And what exactly is that genre? Well, I remember seeing Waits interviewed (I think) by David Letterman probably more than a decade ago. The question was "What are you listening to lately?” and Waits replied “I’m listening to the sound of the radio in the other room, when it’s tuned between two stations and there’s a lot of static...” Yes, that seems about right.

I’m beginning to believe that the people most worth listening to musically are the unfashionably old and the very young. The former because they know exactly what they’re doing, and know how to use their talents to convey a message eloquently; the latter because they haven’t yet arrived at having their honesty and passion beaten out of them in favor of what (they believe) will sell. Witness my blossoming interest in Smoosh, a band comprised of two pre-pubescent sisters whose music, although not always perfect, is pleasingly experimental, and oddly adept, yet not nearly as painful as The Shaggs.

Do you have to be a 14-year-old girl or a 57-year-old man to be able to breathe the heady air of uncontaminated creative selfhood? You shouldn’t have to be, but lord knows it certainly doesn’t seem to hurt.

Prescription Drug or Metal Band?

This item brought to me courtesy of my sister.
And no, I didn't know which was which either.

The Rock is All Around Us

When going to see my doctor today due to seek a solution to the ringing in my ears that has not abated since I went to see The New York Dolls last week (fortunately gigantic antihistamines were the answer), I mentioned by way of explanation that I go to see a lot of rock concerts. My doctor, a momsy lady with graying hair who I’d guess to be in her mid-50’s said “Oh, if music is a big part of your life, do you know who Conor Oberst, "Bright Eyes" is?” Surprised at seeing my sweet middle aged Doctor suddenly getting all edgy I told her “yes” and she informed me that he is her nephew.

??!!

Tryptophan induced coma leads to overindulgence in a different kind of turkey

Thanksgiving means many things to many people, but to me it often means hanging around my Mother’s living room, watching too much TV, and asking questions like “Is there more stuffing?” and “Can I get you a cookie while I’m up?”

With this in mind, it was late Saturday night after Thanksgiving when my Mother and I ended up for at least a half hour watching an infomercial for the "Time-Life Soft Rock of the 70's collection." Why was I drawn in? I must admit that most of these Time-Life infomercials are pretty great, if not only due to the copious clips of rockers of the past delivering versions of their hits on Don Kirschner’s Rock Concert, The Old Grey Whistle Test, or best of all sloppy early ‘rock video’. I mean, really, when was the last time I got to see what Nilsson really looked like? Add to this the allure of seeing of the “hosts” - aging members of Air Supply Russell Hitchcock (the short brunette one) and Graham Russell (the tall guitar playing blonde one) - stiltedly deliver lines about “What fantastic memories these songs bring back…”

The clips recounted many a soggy love song of the past from the likes of Todd Rundgren, Leo Sayer, and America, as well as a wide array of un-memorables like Bertie Higgins, Benny Mardones, Exile, and Player, leading my Mother to demand “Did *any* of these people have a career after these songs?” No Momma. No.

Still, I had to tip my hat to my favorite one-and-a-half hit wonder appearing on the collection - Rupert Holmes. It would be easy to say that my love for Holmes sprung from his profoundly irritating 1979 hit "Escape (The Pina Colada Song) - which tracks a philandering couple, both of who seek to escape each other through placing a personal ad to attract someone new, but accidentally attract each other. Fortunately, the song shows us that their relationship is salvageable once they realize they actually have several important similarities they had gone unnoticed until now; like loving piña coladas, being caught in the rain, and of course a desire to run out on their relationship. But my love of Holmes actually stems from his far less successful follow up single “Him” where Holmes muses about his philandering girlfriend “Him, Him, Him! What’s she gonna do about him? She’s gonna have to do without him. Or do without me, me, me!” Getting to see video footage however, of the scrawny 30-something Holmes whose face is nearly entirely obscured by gigantic computer programmer glasses lip-synching the ultimatum “It’s me or it’s him!” is such a great moment in 70’s hubris it made me laugh out loud. So this Thanksgiving I’m giving thanks for Rupert Holmes and his optometrist. Another cookie anyone?

Aging Madonna still too damn scary for TV

I was so pleased that NBC saw fit to run the full 2-hour video of Madonna’s Confessions Tour on Wednesday night. Even I was surprised that I attended this music spectacle a few months ago when it rolled through Boston and certainly felt I got my money’s worth when among other things Madonna:

1) Arrived on stage inside of a giant
disco ball that dropped from the
ceiling,

2) Did an erotic bump and grind on a saddle suspended in mid-air to "Like a Virgin"
and

3) Made a bunch of political statements with her music that probably aren’t really
quite as deep as she thinks they are. But hey, she’s Madonna, what do you want?

The downside of seeing the show on network TV however, was realizing how American culture has become so lame that even a 48 year-old married mother of two (three?) can be easily judged as far too scandalous for the common viewer. The network apparently were the ones who made the decision to not show Madonna rising from the stage nailed to a giant disco ball cross while singing “Live to Tell” and later in the midst of “I Love New York” also cut out her comment which replaces the lyric “Just go to Texas, isn’t that where they golf?” with “Just go to Texas, and you can suck George Bush's dick”

It’s lame enough that NBC is so afraid of some kind of Christian backlash that they knocked out Madonna’s big fat crucifixion scene (as if any of these people had tuned in to begin with?), but why is a network deciding to chop out Madonna’s comments on Bush? Would Fox be so quick to cut out the political views of any of their ultra-conservative commentators (no matter how profane)? Or is that kind of language only OK in Girls Gone Wild ads? Obviously the lady herself doesn’t much care if anyone knows her politics – she changes this lyric at every show she does. Regardless of NBC's censoring, some markets were still just too plain scared to show the show. In Chattanooga, Knoxville, Reno, Ft. Wayne, Bloomington, and Atlanta TV bigwigs too offended by a number of “questionable scenes and content” opted instead to go for footage of the local aquarium among other sure-fire ratings getters.

At the end of the day I guess we can all thank NBC’s censors to be there to save us from Madonna being... Madonna. Even approaching half a century, there’s still something about her that scares the hell out of people. Well that sounds like something to be admired.

EMF finds a new way to be associated with cheese

I know that the art of jingle writing is officially dead, and thus on any given night of TV one can hear real songs by bands like Franz Ferdinand, Kings of Leon, Trio, The Caesars, and even the lovely and mysterious Yma Sumac repackaged to shill all kinds of mundane products, but have things really gotten so bad that Kraft needed to contract EMF to sell their latest cheese product?

EMF, the one hit wonder who a decade and a half ago brought us the Manchestertastic "You're Unbelievable" have rewritten their one stab at glory to be about cheese. No, real cheese. Kraft Cheddar Crumbles to be exact. Except now instead of declaring that the object of the singer's affection is unbelievable due to the things she says, the tune now declares in an incredibly awkwardly worded refrain that Kraft Cheddar Crumbles are "Crumbleievable" - a word which besides being imaginary, is decidedly perplexing as to its exact meaning. One can only wonder what the ad agency meeting was like where someone suggested locating a band whose relevance expired more than a decade ago and then thought "Ah yes, and let us get them to rewrite their song to be even more completely nonsensical than before".

When Devo rewrote Whip It to be used in Swiffer ads, now demanding we "Swiff it good!" the effect seemed oddly appropriate. I mean, this is the band that back in the day were shilling Honda scooters, so rewriting Whip It to Swiff It seemed less a sell out and more like an inside joke we were all in on. But for EMF, the joke seems firmly on them. I just want to know, was there a moment when singer James Atkin was rerecording the song and recognized what kind of lows had been hit. There's selling out, and then there's rewriting your only hit song to shill cheese. That's scraping the bottom of the cracker barrel.

Sometimes young people with their new wave delusions hit the mark

Maybe I'm just being a little too new wave for my own good here, but I find this young gentleman's video terribly (embarrassingly?) enjoyable.

The star is one "Mr. Kane" aka: Kane Chukro, a sweet-faced 20 year-old from Saskatchewan/Vegas/LA who is currently in some kind of video-contest on Yahoo. The video for his home studio recorded pop nugget - which he insists cost all of $30 to make in his garage (that's the spirit!) - is acres more pleasant than anything else in the contest it seems - not to say the competition was anywhere near stiff.

A quick tour of the Mr. Kane website reveals plenty more clever little power pop songs, the kind that would make Jason Falkner, Ben Folds, or members of The Knack surely want to sit down and split a beer, er... Mountain Dew with the gent. Some tracks go too long, but that's the folly of youth; others become too damn slick for their own good - reminding one of a yet unwritten theme song to a show about ironic young people on the WB, but all of this is just splitting hairs. At the heart of it all there's Kane's disarmingly well-honed knack for finding a hook and beating it into your skull until you can't help but sing along. And that means this young mister probably won't be label-free for long.

Quote of the Day

"Good music, no matter what it is - jazz and spirituals and blues as well as classical - if people hear it , they get it. But if day after day, you hear schlock, it becomes your language"

- Studs Terkel
93 year old DJ & Author quoted from an interview in The Sun.

Homophobia: Cures Middle East conflict, produces crap disco song.

It seems that Israeli singer Benny Elbaz has decided the best way to try and stop an impending gay pride parade in Jerusalem is to release a song about it. The song, “Jerusalem Will Burn” is a duet with a Muslim singer, an action Elbaz sees as a step toward peace in the Middle East, because – hey, if they can’t agree on anything else, they certainly can agree that gays are icky! Of course what Elbaz and his ‘friend’ seem to have not noticed is his brand of hi-energy Euro-pop is the kind of Eurovision-friendly pap that sans homophobic lyrics could really get some gay booty shaking on the dance floor. Sounds like it’s about time to send Donna Summer to the Middle East to have a little talk with the man about how it’s not nice to make the gays angry, especially when your music is, like, kinda gay?

Read more and listen to the hate music you can dance to here.

A word from the wise about going to see bands...

So the more you read this blog, the more you will see that I have this thing about going to see aging rockers. My belief is, if someone is coming to your town, and you have any interest in seeing them you should drop everything and go. This is because one day, doubtlessly unexpectedly, that same person is going to up and die on you.

I came to this epiphany around the time my friend Alex and I had planned to go see Roy Orbison. The time was the late 80's and Orbison was riding high on a tide of post-Blue Velvet resurgent interest in his music. Appropriately, we were ready to see the man with the 3rd largest pair of sunglasses in rock and roll croon "In Dreams" and subsequently get all Frank with ourselves about it. So after much planning and scheming, the day came when Orbison was in our town and what did we do? We lost enthusiasm. "Oh, we'll go see him next time" we naively said. We were young and stupid then. There was no next time. A month later Orbison was dead.

Oops.

A year or so later, a similar thing happened with Screamin' Jay Hawkins. Oops x 2. That sealed the deal for me. So now I have seen Tom Jones twice (he doesn't seem to be going anywhere but I'd still go see him again), and Morphine at their last gig in the US before singer Mark Sandman died (a gig during which I thought "Gee, these guys are great, I have to go see them more"). So believe me, when someone of interest comes to play in your town, don't count on them coming back. Go see them now. Planes crash, people die, bands split, drummers explode,... Take the next morning off from work. As a good friend of mine once said to me - you will never look back and think, "Wow, I am so glad I went to work that day". Too true.