Rating My CD's: This Isn't Supposed to Be Here.

18. The Black Keys -- Brothers

It's September. I'm in the damn E's.

Back in January, when I conceived this,  I hoped that I would have knocked out the first part of this plan by the end of the year. I should be elbow deep in the Rolling Stones by now, not struggling to come up with things to say about Echo and the Bunnymen. I shouldn't be promising reviews to my three readers. I should be delivering them.

Remember my one-word review of Back in Black? Good times.

So the last thing I need at this point, with my momentum flagging, is to double back into the B's just because I happen to have bought another Black Keys disc. Hell, I shouldn't be buying another Black Keys disc until I've finished cataloguing all the stuff I already have, sitting patiently, alphabetically by genre, waiting for me to tell all of you whether I like it or Like It like it.

A Lament for "Forced Consumption"

Album-a-Week laments the fall of music magazines, as represented by the end of Paste:

Let's say you bought an entire album just because you liked one song. After listening to that one song on repeat for days, you ventured into the rest of the album. After listening to the entire album, you ran across the best song of your life. Well, that would never have happened if you hadn't bought the album, now would it? If you just bought the single, you would not have learned about any other tracks on the album. Forced consumption in the magazine format is the same. It leads you through a maze of possible favorites; whereas, online only leads you through what you already know.

He's not wrong.  But the mags need a better tag line than "Forced Consumption: Because We Know Better, Sheeple!" Maybe ConsumptionPlus?

INCOMING!

My plan is to have not one, but two, new reviews up by tonight.

Until then, savor the awesomeness of this:

Jazz is the new black, y'all.

I Just Can't Quit You: The Goodnight Loving Redeems Itself

Boy, Brokeback Mountain really slipped down the memory hole like a greased pig, eh?

I was prepared to hate this. The Goodnight Loving is the kind of band name that makes me contemplate violence. It's nonsensical, fey, and dull at the same time. And their description hardly improves the impression:

the Milwaukee quartet takes on a musical time warp to beachy ‘60s garage pop, with twangy guitar riffs, psychedelic organs and vocal harmonies.

In other words, they sound like the Beach Boys. Which is good, as its been several minutes since I reflected on how the Beach Boys are easily the least interesting Important Band from the 60's.

And true to form, most of their mix-tape selections are irretrievably middlebrow. Linda Ronstadt belongs nowhere outside of my mom's dusting record collection. Thin Lizzy is Rush for meatheads. Thomas Function has a name that causes the phrase "bowel movement" to appear in my head, and surprise, surprise, the song is called "Filthy Flowers." As the kids say, FAIL.

And yet. When he sais that people who don't like Born In The U.S.A. are terrorists, I'm with him. When he shouts out Link Wray's "Hidden Charms," I salute. And their songs?

Their songs are pretty damn good, actually.

Talking Back to Punk Rock #7

"Look pal, you can want a suburban home all you want. Unless I see a 20% down payment and a credit history, you won't get lent the price of a Reese's Big Cup.

Though if you run to the store and get me a few of those, I might be willing to negotiate that percentage a few points."

-The Descendents, "Suburban Home"

Guess Who's Still Alive, Part IV: The Revenge

The following artists have Top 25 discs on Amazon as I write:

• Eminem (Stealing the Blues is Business, and Business is Good)
• Iron Maiden (Dude! Most Triumphant!)
• Brian Wilson (Apparently, we aren't quite full up on crazy yet)
• John Mellencamp (I once thought that Cougars don't like him, either. I was apparently wrong)
• Sheryl Crow (Is it just me, or does she look more like Butt-Head every album?)
• Los Lobos (Back from the 80's and hungry, hungry like the wolf!)
• Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (The Rolling Stones of New Wave ride again)
• Gov't Mule (The Rolling Stones of Jam bands ride again)
• The Black Crowes (The Rolling Stones of their tepid imaginations ride again)
• The Kidz Bop Kids (Because all that keeps a Katy Perry song like "California Gurls" from being age-appropriate is an infinitesimal shift in vocal pitch)

Rating My CD's: Come on Down to My Rescue

17. Echo & the Bunnymen -- Songs to Learn and Sing

In my library/office, where I compose these deconstructions, I have a small paperback edition of Verse by John Updike, published in 1965, which I paid a pittance for in my favorite secondhand books & music store a few years ago. Every now and again, I flip through it idly, seeking knowledge and understanding, and finding only cleverness. For John Updike was a clever poet who poetry says clever things. A brief example, from A Cheerful Alphabet of Pleasant Objects:

Apple

Since Time began, such alphabets begin
With Apple, source of Knowledge and of Sin
My child, take heart: the fruit that undid Man
Brought out as well the best in Paul Cezanne

You see what I mean. The poem doesn't so much enhance my understanding as flatter it, with the wink that of course I know who Paul Cezanne is, and if I can't quite place his art, I remember him as an Important Artist that Educated People know about, so I assume that he painted apples. Damned witty, Wilde!

Out of Office AutoReply

The Echo review is coming, I swearsies. but for the nonce, I am on vacation. I am soaking up rays and replenishing my system. Next week I'll be back.

Mad Men Season 4 Premiere

Will someone please tell me what version of "Tobacco Road" that was at the end of the episode? All those TV critics keep mentioning the song's name but not who's singing it. There's about 15 versions on iTunes right now. Help a brother out!

Kleptones Video Mashup

This is just awesome.


Kleptones - Come Again (Beatles vs Rare Earth vs Beaties vs Daft Punk vs Cypress Hill vs Boston) Video by Crumbs Chief from The Videotones on Vimeo.

Perpetua Sticks it to M.I.A.

At Pitchfork:

The record is a shambling mess, devoid of the bangers that characterized Arular and Kala, two of the stronger pop albums of the past decade. It aims to capture a technological and cultural zeitgeist in its over-stimulated, digitally degraded sound, but the songs are too flimsy to carry her bold conceit. Without compelling tunes, the obnoxious public antics, dubious political messages, and thin voice that had grated on her naysayers have become impossible for even dedicated fans to ignore. It's as if everything that was great about M.I.A. has been stripped from this music, leaving behind only the most alienating aspects of her art and public persona.

I should probably stop wailing on the girl. That "Born Free" video really got under my skin somehow.

Is it Just Me...

... or is "Band of Horses" sound like a name that was only adopted because someone's girlfriend didn't like "Band of Doom"?

UPDATE: Should I listen to a Band of Horses song before I make cracks like that?

I actually didn't mean to vanish...

But something about Echo and the Bunnymen has defied giving me a hook to write about, and I've had other projects looming. You know how it is.

Here's Album-a-Week Talking about the XX album that everyone's all gaga over:

Negative space, purposeful hesitation, simplicity and raw awkward understated talent are what make this album brilliant. Romy Madley Croft, Oliver Sim and Jamie Smith have birthed a masterful and original debut.

I suppose that's true. To me it sounds like a band sitting in it's bathtub and farting. But I haven't been in the most creative mood of late.

Genre Breakdown: Punk Rock

[A new design on a struggling blog merits a new feature. So from time to time, Genre Confusion will feature Genre Breakdowns, an explanation of why various "genres" of popular music exist, and why they shouldn't exist. Herewith is the first entry, one near and dear to my heart.]


All right, trendsobbers, it's time to spike your hair, rip your shirts, and unlearn everything you have learned about what makes rock n'roll good. We're going to jump into the most unfunky, amateurish, and loudmouthed subspecies of rock ever to lay claim to popular imagination. Behold, Punk Rock.

1. Where the Name Comes From

The word "punk" is of indeterminate origin, and had a dual meaning in early American culture. In the first place, it referred to any prepared substance that will smolder when ignited, so that it may be used as tinder, to light firewood, etc. This had a connotation of something rotten that could be used. In the second place, and as early as 1596, it denoted a harlot or prostitute, and in prison culture referred to those on the ahem, bottom. By the early 20th century referred to a young hoodlum or troublemaker, often an associate of an older criminal.

The musical movement focused on the troublemaker aspect and largely ignored the homosexual undercurrents (although it was the first movement in rock to be even remotely gay-friendly). As Legs McNeil of the influential Punk Magazine put it:

The word "punk seemed to sum up the thread that connected everything we liked -- drunk, obnoxious, smart but not pretentious, absurd, funny, ironic, and things that appealed to the darker side.

Rating My CD's: She's an Artist, She Don't Look Back

16. Bob Dylan -- Bringing It All Back Home

Somewhere along the way, this tiny, curly-haired white boy from Goditscold, Minnesota became the Voice of a Generation, when such a title meant something beyond achieving a certain level of music-industry investment. Well before the Beatles promised them endless youth or the Rolling Stones gave them a window on their darkness, Bod Dylan enshrined in the Baby Boomers their founding myth; that they were righteous, that the world was going to shift into their hands without effort, by the aligning of some cosmic alarm clock. Hunter Thompson called it "that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting -- on our side or on theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave . . . ."

And there more or less, lies the reason I cared not a whit about Bob Dylan for the longest time; that sense of inevitable irrelevance to anyone born after 1960. I missed that high and beautiful wave; and have since seen little in it high or beautful. Just because I can dig on Cream's thundering romanticism doesn't mean I'm buying into the notion that sex and drugs and raucous music were something my parent's generation invented. Rather, like Howdy Doody and Social Security checks, it was something provided for them, and they claimed it as theirs.

MIA = Missing In Action, in the Jungles of Hip.

 A few months ago I shot a quick dart of snark at Sri Lankan-born rapper MIA over her intentionally-infamous "Born Free" video. I did so without a whole lot of knowledge of anything about her other than her popularity amongst the hipsters, and Andrew Earles' tart dismissal of her:

It’s amazing the lengths to which music consumers, makers and critics will go to avoid appearing—gasp—racist. If the Sri Lankan-born M.I.A. had instead hailed from Tulsa, Okla., with the exact same music in tow, well, she would still be there right now. I call it TV On The Radio Syndrome: If they were white, one-eighth of the press and attention would’ve come their way. Music critics are terrified of facing this fact. M.I.A. provides lazy listeners with an easy multicultural accessory, the equivalent of traveling through India by way of seeing The Darjeeling Limited.

And so I would have let the matter rest, had not Ace of Spades linked the NY Times' skewering of her radical pretensions. Which he goes on to lambaste:

Basically, M.I.A.'s rule seems to be that if you're talking about her being a terrorist as if it's a chic, fashionable, daring, awesome thing -- i.e., as a good thing -- then she is a terrorist, precisely as she herself often claims.
But if you're saying it's a bad thing to be a wannabe terrorist jocksniffer, then she's not, and you are just being an unfashionable dolt who doesn't understand her sly humor.

After which, he links to the following (Content Warning: Real corpses and violence):

Rating My CD's: Indie-Pedant

15. Death Cab for Cutie -- The Photo Album

I tried with this one. I really really tried.

There's a whole swath of music that came out in the decade past that I cannot relate to in any way. I fundamentally don't "get it." Most of it falls under the rubric of "indie" rock or pop. Now, I am aware, as is anyone who's ever used the word "indie" in any piece of writing about music for the last fifteen years, that "indie" doesn't mean anything specific. It's an umbrella term that describes music bubbling up from the so-called "underground" (the pop culture's minor leagues). In this way, it's basically short for "independent" and can cover a wide variety of sounds (for purposes of clarity, I'm not going to get into the fact that the original "independent" labels, like Atlantic Records, were those that lacked their own distribution channel). And that's all perfectly fine.

Rating My CD's: Let's Go Trippin'

14. Dick Dale -- The King of Surf Guitar: The Best of Dick Dale and His Del-Tones

Somewhere out there, beneath the clear moonlight, some kid is looking at this disc for the first time in his uncle's CD collection and asking himself, "What's a Del-Tone?" He is afraid that there is no answer, and begins to wonder if he can ever relate to something when he has no frame of reference to it. Someone, somewhere, must have known what a Del-Tone was at some point. Someone must have thought that it was a good idea to name a band that at some point. But, as regular viewers of Mad Men know, then the Sixties happened, and we were left, like the Simpletons of a post nuclear-apocalypse, hunting for meaning amid the ruins of a culture that made sense.

I first heard Dick Dale the way the rest of you did, five minutes into Pulp Fiction, my mind blown by the juxtaposition of blistering surf guitar, Tarantino's screwball-comedy-esque dialogue, and the threat of impending violence. The first ten seconds of "Misirlou" (which means...?) shows up the the Beach Boys, and the Byrds, and the Doors, and any other California rock group for the posers they are.

Talking Back to Punk Rock #6

"Um, do you want me to touch you to verify that you're sick? Because you seem pretty sure of it. I'm willing to take your word, if you know what I mean."

-Mudhoney, "Touch Me, I'm Sick"

Rating My CD's: Sunshine of Your Love

13.  Cream -- Disraeli Gears

When we were kids, my brother and I would make fun of Eric Claption, and our dad for presumably liking him (Dad had a Clapton Greatest Hits, but preferred early Elton John and Grand Funk and such). We did this without having really heard Clapton, in the fashion of juveniles everywhere: we made fun of him because he was old, and a honky, and had the kind of name that a bank executive or CPA might have.


Later on, when my brother actually sat down and learned to play guitar, he came to a 180 on this position, and briefly went through a period where Clapton was the man, coinciding with a period of digging the Beatles. I never went through this period, preferring always Jimmy Page to Clapton, and I’ll have loads to say about this when I get to my Zeppelin collection.