Like the most wonderful dream I could imagine

There I was, flipping around the stations just before going to bed and what did I come across but an episode of House starring Dave Matthews. According to the blurb on my cable info box Matthews was portraying a pianist who comes down with some malady House has to find the cure for. During the 3 or so minutes I watched, the handsome blonde English doctor on the show attempted to give Matthews a gigantic hypodermic needle in the tongue. Matthews screamed and yelled and was eventually subdued and injected. Seeing this purveyor of musical horribleness shriek, wail, and be injured just tickled me pink. Knowing that the show couldn't get much better than this (House usually does save the lives of those he's charged with, no point in staying tuned for that), I turned off the TV and whisked myself away to bed and a night of peaceful slumbers.

One Hit Wonder

First off, I won’t pretend that “One Hit Wonder” by Lisa Jewell is not chick-lit, because it is. That said, it’s damn fine chick-lit. Predicting your next question, which would be “What could possibly be defined as good chick lit?” Well, if the premise doesn’t involve the main character desperately and pathetically casting about as she attempts to procure a wedding ring, a baby, or exceptionally expensive shoes, that’s a fine place to start.

The main character of One Hit Wonder, Ana, is thankfully not pursuing any of the items above. What she’s after is finding out what prompted her sister Bee – a fictionalized one-hit-wonder from the eighties – to a lonely suicide in a grotty London apartment. By the end, she finds out, in a tale that is actually some nicely crafted storytelling with colorful characters and a few surprises along the way. Admittedly the details of Bee’s life are hardly the focal point of the story, but this book gets big points for not only describing our failed pop star as looking exactly like another one hit wonder of the time, Corinne Drewery of Swing Out Sister (whose hit “Breakout” can consistently be heard in grocery stores all over America), but also chalking up her professional demise to a problem that has legendarily plagued next big things; mistakenly believing that you are as competent as your producers to pen a hit song. Although certainly not identical, the premise pleasingly recalls that of Nick Hornby's "About A Boy" in which the main character lives off the proceeds of an appalling Christmas novelty single. It makes one wonder if all the UK is stuffed full of people who are one hit wonders. After all, it’s not a big country (no pun intended) and they do seem to export an inordinate number of pop stars. Regardless, Jewell certainly gets a thumbs up for this book. When reading, it doesn’t hurt to be a girl, but should that not be the case already it’s certainly not necessary.

In other advertising news...

Wendy's bacon double cheeseburger is now advertised to the tune of "Blister in the Sun" by the Violent Femmes. Advertising your foodstuff to the tune of a song about masturbation. Ewwwww!

"Body and beats I stain my sheets I don't even know why
my girlfriend she's at the end she is starting to cry
let me go on like a blister in the sun
let me go on big hands I know you're the one..."

It's A Sign

So here I was, posting away and found myself grooving out to "Feed It" by The Candyskins. There I was singing along at the top of my lungs to the refrain "You don't know what it is until it's gone gone gone..." when I realized I wasn't listening to the radio or the CD player. What I was listening to was an ad for Lay's potato chips trailing in from the TV in the next room. First EMF, now this. Why are all these britgazers being tapped for American snack food ads? And more importantly, can we all wonder for a moment if the Candyskins made more money from this chip ad or from the release of their sparkly "Death of a Minor TV Celebrity" CD 9 years ago?

The intersection of oral hygiene and rock and roll x2

About 1 second after espying the “Tooth Tunes Toothbrush” by Tiger at my local CVS I had 3 in my hand and was headed for the cash register. Who could deny the snappy packaging, promising the item inside will “Rock your teeth clean” to the songs of Kiss, Queen, Kelly Clarkson, and The Black Eyed Peas among others? At last someone was able to marry two things close to my heart – rock and fresh breath. Well this had to be investigated.

A few hours later, toothbrush in mouth, I began to find out that the Tooth Tunes toothbrush is even odder than I expected. First off, the toothbrush has no speaker system to speak of, so oddly the music (which thankfully is original recordings) is transmitted via vibrations from the bristles into your teeth. Brush harder, the music is louder, brush softer, the music gets softer. You could effectively remix a song in this manner. But perhaps the most important question for me to answer here is “What is it like to receive music in your head via a toothbrush?” The answer is “Entirely uncomfortable, thank you very much.”

I often dream of getting to work at a company that makes strange niche-market items with incredibly limited appeal like this one (I mean, haven’t the folks at Tiger noticed that brushing after meals and rocking out are hardly compatible?). I'm already having visions of the collectability of this item. After the first lot sell out, I can’t imagine them making a lot more, so get yourself to the drugstore and get one now. If you do, I hope the folks at Tiger will be lead to believe there is a market for a Cheap Trick toothbrush, and I personally can hardly wait to hear “Dream Police” vibrating through the bones in my head.

In a nearly related story, Mark Matthews, former bass player of British jangle-pop pioneers The Dentists is bringing his new band The Echo Heights on a mini-tour of the Northeast US next week and everyone should go.The Echo Heights are a deeply pleasing psychedelic pop delight toned with hints of ennui in all the right places.I suppose this kind of thoughtful strum is less popular with the kids now than it once was, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth adoring.Dates in Boston, Worchester, NYC, DC, and Nashville are on tap. Pop on down, won’t you?

Book Report

My new year’s resolution this year was to actually read all of these lovely books I amass here in the house yet never read. The first of these books was a cheapie I picked up just because of the great title and back jacket description. “Dreaming of Gwen Stefani” by Evan Mandrey has a great premise, Mortimer is an obsessive-compulsive hot dog maker at one of those places in New York City with the word “Papaya” in the name where the hot dogs are perfect and sold for 75 cents. When flipping around TV stations late one night, he stumbles across a video of Gwen Stefani and falls in love with her. This fervor increases when, after pathetically researching the minutiae of Gwen’s life, he finds out her favorite food is (wait for it) hot dogs at the very place he works. The rest of the story follows Mortimer as he crazily readies himself for the day which he knows will come soon, when Gwen will come to the Papaya place, get a hot dog and (of course) fall in love with him. With a premise this good it’s surprising how horribly wrong this book can go. Endless uninteresting chapters about the building blocks of biology are thrown in, along with a heavy handed and clumsily executed moral that is so entirely self-congratulatory and immature were I the author, I would be embarrassed that anyone might think this was ‘the deep statement I wanted to make with my book’. By the end I was left with was a strong desire for a Papaya Plus hotdog, though sadly I found myself about 200 miles away from one.

Much better was a book I bought a year ago, in hardcover, lent to my boyfriend at the time, and then never read myself “Killing Yourself to Live” by Spin writer Chuck Klosterman. I first encountered Klosterman a few years back when a friend bought me his crazily brilliant love letter to a youth loving heavy metal “Fargo Rock City”, a book that I have now bought for at least 5 other people. “Killing Yourself” follows Klosterman on a Spin-funded expedition across the US, visiting the sights of various rock celebrities deaths, obsessing all the while on every girl he has ever had (or hoped to have) sex with. The resulting treatise is painfully honest, embarrassingly geeky and pathetically rock-dorky, but damn good reading. As proof I hold up the fact that at one point the author actually goes to the trouble of letting us know which member of Kiss each of his past loves would be. This includes members who were in temporary lineups, managers, the kind of thing an in-depth and perhaps dismayingly over the top knowledge of Kiss is required to fully grasp. It is brilliant. It is pathetic. Go read it now.

Emily Post for Rock and Roll

Last night I went out to see “This American Life - Live!” at the beautiful Boston Opera House.This venue is so entirely opulent, I’m glad it was resurrected, if not only so that I can visit where I went to see The Smiths and Billy Bragg the day before I graduated high school oh so many years ago.

So many delightful authors were there reading including Sarah Vowell (who I never like in her books, but always like on the radio) and Dan Savage (who thankfully kept his potty mouth to a minimum - after all, I was there with my Mom) as well as seeing the now finally just vaguely aging TAL host Ira Glass in all his wonderfully nerdy glory. If this tour is coming to your town, it is most certainly a must see.

The musical guests for the tour are the Mates of State, who revealed under questioning from Ira that they haven’t practiced in over two years, since the birth of their daughter but they did maintain that being married is not necessarily the opposite of rocking out. The Mates’ music was entirely charming, and reminded me of how - like with old favorite of mine The Spinanes - that sometimes less (a girl, a boy, a piano, and a drum kit) can definitely be more.What was the only problem with their wee sets? The fact that audience members seemed to think nothing of getting up during the band’s songs to go to the bathroom or otherwise wander away. Hey people, it’s a show! I certainly didn’t see anyone getting up and leaving while Ira spoke. Poor Mates. Maybe these people felt that listening to married people rock out was the opposite of having any manners.

Linda! Linda!

It’s a good possibility that tonight I’ll see “Linda Linda Linda” - a Japanese film about a group of high school girls who form a band in order to play the Blue Hearts’ single “Linda Linda” at a school competition. Japanese teenage girls singing the punk rock. Now what could be cuter than that?

Around 1990, I recall getting the sole Blue Hearts’ US release on Juggler Records. It’s not hard to sell me on a band that was being marketed a “The Japanese Beatles” (not to be confused with the band The Japanese Beetles, which featured members of Big Dipper and Shonen Knife). The 6 song ep was a hodgepodge of the band’s hits including “No, No, No”,"Kiss Shite Hoshii (I Wanna Kiss)" and "Be Nice" - chipper little numbers designed to get you pogoing on your tatami mat in no time. Every one of these tunes was a winner even if they weren’t sung in Japanese, but of course being not in English meant the band would never make it big in the US. It’s a sin how language keeps up apart isn’t it?

Inauthenticity is what's hot in 2007!

When I was out seeing a friends band last night, I was pleased to discover the band who was on just after them: Paper Thin Stages.

Sort of a Minutemen/Mission of Burma kind of thing, but with a bit more art school thrown in – all three members all wore glasses, sang minor chord harmonies and the bassist played bass as if he were playing a guitar (with chords). Songs were angled, striving, uncomfortable, and yearning - nothing not to like there. Dying to go home after a long day at work, I ended up pushing myself to stay for their whole set, which gave me the pleasant feeling that there is hope for music.

This same feeling was one I had nearly lost last week upon hearing the gutless sound of a new Fall Out Boy single played on NPR as they discussed “What is hot for 2007”. Isn’t it evident to anyone with the smallest bit of real hipness in their soul, that the moment one is able to articulate “What will be hot”, it immediately ceases to be hot? But of course hot or not Fall Out Boy (a band the NPR commentator pleasingly repeatedly called “The Fall Out Boys”) are just the kind of thing I loathe – a band who are entirely inauthentic, feigning to be deeply authentic. Does this mean that feigning authenticity will be what is hot in 2007? And if so, is there a reason that would make it different than any other year? I don't know how to break it to Paper Thin Stages they won't be hot this year. With any small amount of luck they'll never read this blog.

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.