Some Stray Thoughts
I posted my Aerosmith memories without mentioning the Steven-Tyler-to-American Idol news that we all knew several weeks ago and was just confirmed this week. J.Lo's along for the ride too. Even though AI's been a toxic asset for some time now, this is especially mystifying. After losing the TV's best villain since Newman, you don't replace him with two celebrities desperate to remain in the limelight after some high-profile setbacks. On the bright side, we may never have to hear another karaoke version of Armageddon'twannamissathing on national TV. Silver lining, folks.
Aesop Rock - None Shall Pass
The video for "None Shall Pass" popped up on MTV2 during the only time I would remember that channel existed - whilst exercising in the USC gym (yes, I went to the gym...for 5 months). You know, the MTV that still plays videos!? Yuk yuk yuk.
Except they don't, really, between all the reruns of Jackass and Pimp My Ride and that show with the pro skateboarder with the hat. I just happened to be there in the right 60-minute window - a happy coincidence.
Aesop is an idiosyncratic MC with the kind of charisma seen in soapbox preachers. The aforementioned title track and "Keep Off the Lawn" are suitably nutty delights. The nauticisms of "The Harbor is Yours" also reveal a gift for wordplay.
Buuuuut...well, let me put it this way. Though None Shall Pass was allegedly released in 2007, Aesop still thinks building tracks around samples from old high school science filmstrips ("Fumes") is cool and includes a "secret" track in the post-boombox era. There are lots of ideas on this record and Aesop is unfortunately in love with every one of them and reluctant to do any editing.
At least the zombieriffic "Coffee" ends everything on a high note.
Afrika Bambaata
For a while all you needed was a cool nickname and a clever way of describing whatever party you were currently at to be a rap star (and you could argue that things haven't changed much). And, really, that's all Afrika Bambaata and the Soul Sonic Force/the Zulu Nation was. It was the way he did it, with the mystical trappings and the science fiction influences, that set him apart.
The tracks are long, almost like mini radio dramas. "Don't Stop...Planet Rock" is a robot rocking head trip featuring perhaps the only orchestra hits in music history that aren't cheesy. "Looking for the Perfect Beat" is the intersection between Herbie Hancock and Harold Faltermeyer; it could very well be mislabeled "Rockit vs. Axel F" on file-sharing sites if Bambaata's influence wasn't so palpable and respected in the birth of electro.
The lesson here is not to reinvent the wheel. These tracks feel like the invention of carousal cliché, the forefathers of leaning back and getting low and other vague physical imperatives, where "rocking" the party sounds like a novel idea and not like a punishment from the Old Testament.
After the Fire - "Der Kommisar"
I wasn't lying in the Adam and the Ants post - off-key rhyming was a trend that swept the globe (or at least the UK and downtown New York City) for a few years and, if anything, culminated in this top 5(!) English remake of a song originally by German electro-pop star Falco.
Though I can imagine the song being a wee bit more serious when coming out of Berlin, it's nonetheless a very tongue-in-cheek romp at the expense of Cold Warriors and bureaucrats. But even that assumes too much depth in "Der Kommisar" - its enduring value is now a giant audio banner that screams "Hey look, it's the '80s!"
Against Me! - "Here Comes a Regular"
Warner Bros. celebrated the 50th anniversary of their record label by releasing a surprisingly adventurous and obscure covers album. This cover of the Replacements is pleasant, straightforward, and pretty unnecessary and mainly reminds me that there's better stuff ahead (I organize alphabetically by artist, never by album).
Also, who really wants to hear Against Me! instead of the Replacements? I thought so.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
Ace of Base to Aerosmith
Ace of Base
There's a simple formula for going nine times platinum with your American debut: Scandinavian melancholy, phone sex vocals, and the R&B demo track on the Casio repeated ad infinitum. But Ace of Base were less the second coming of ABBA than the genesis of big-time Europop built entirely around the sturdy upbeat music/downbeat lyrics dichotomy.
Exhibit A: The aforementioned debut was originally titled Happy Nation before it changed to The Sign for the U.S. release to capture on the massive success of the title track. Only Eiffel 65's Europop adheres more slavishly to the statute of truth in advertising (just imagine a Nirvana album called Disaffected Sounds of Young People from the Pacific Northwest).
Exhibit B: The singles "All That She Wants" and "Don't Turn Around," two morose tales of heartbreak with nearly identical song structures but told from two different perspectives. Just change a few lyrics and you've gone from jilter to jiltee.
Exhibit C: "Beautiful Life" is a corny stab at uplift tailor-made for a terribly green-screened video. Drew Carey weeps.
Whee! We're flying!
But just as I was ready to indict Ace of Base for everything from Aqua to Zombie Nation, I dropped the needle on "The Sign" and remembered why they have lifetime amnesty. Here, the optimism works since it's actually a giant kiss-off, and they start the listener out about as low as you can possibly go (first lines don't get much more depressing than "Why?/Why do I bother?") then work hard to bring you back up in that brilliant chorus. It's a shiny comet of pop perfection that takes me right back to the roller rink.
Adam and the Ants
"White hip-hop" was a curious idiom that didn't survive rap's first halting steps into the mainstream in the early 1980s, which makes "Ant Rap" more fascinating as an historical document than an actual song, as it is pure nonsense. Nobody has the balls to refer to his "four men" doing "that rapping thing" anymore. It is a moment to be preserved, if only to show just how elastic hip-hop can be.
Experiments aside, Adam and the Ants are a great example of the '80s band that was always interesting to look at and occasionally interesting to listen to. "Stand and Deliver" is their de facto calling card, a little glam Western about a bunch of cheeky fops-slash-highwaymen stealing our attention away from the talented and slovenly, huzzah.
"Kings of the Wild Frontier" is all about drums and comparing your fanbase to an oppressed ethnic group. "Antpeople," I reckon, were no less oppressed than Parrotheads. But did I mention how sweet those drums are?
Aerosmith
I wonder what happened to the old Aerosmith, the straight-up boogie woogie New England bar band of the type that Boston wrote about but could never actually be with all their synths and spaceships and falsettos. This is the Aerosmith that wrote the epically dirty "Back in the Saddle" and the epically epic "Sweet Emotion" and "Dream On" (sorry, Eminem, not even you can ruin that one). This is the Aerosmith that came up with "Walk This Way," a song so ludicrously hickabilly that Run-DMC considered re-working as it joke until they saw a way to make piles of money from it. I should note that I have only the original version and not the collabo - there's nothing revolutionary about yelling each rhyming word at the top of their lungs, then acting like it's the musical equivalent of de Klerk freeing Mandela.
"Train Kept A Rollin'" also fits into the above style but not the rant.
After that Aerosmith imploded due to the usual litany of rock 'n roll vices, Aerosmith 2.0 rose from its ashes, a jovial collection of kooky uncles with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of songwriting gimmicks. This is not entirely a criticism. I have soft spots for the barely-clever wordplay of "Love In An Elevator" and the inexplicable oddness of "Pink"; the softest spot, however, is reserved for "Dude (Looks Like A Lady)" which for many years I believed was written specifically for the movie Mrs. Doubtfire. I am smarter now and am well aware that it's about transgender love. There's also the rumor that it was inspired by Steven Tyler meeting the members of Motley Crue which, if it's true, is totally heroic. WHA KA KA KA KOW!
I'm surprised that while I don't have some of the better singles like "Living on the Edge" or "Crazy," I do have "Janie's Got A Gun" - it's kind of taboo to slam due to its subject matter but I have a major beef with those pan pipes and the heinous overproduction all around.
And we can't forget the song from Armageddon, laying aside the cock rock long enough to do some avant-garde screeching over a full symphony orchestra. Without it, nobody would take the plot of the film seriously.
There's a simple formula for going nine times platinum with your American debut: Scandinavian melancholy, phone sex vocals, and the R&B demo track on the Casio repeated ad infinitum. But Ace of Base were less the second coming of ABBA than the genesis of big-time Europop built entirely around the sturdy upbeat music/downbeat lyrics dichotomy.
Exhibit A: The aforementioned debut was originally titled Happy Nation before it changed to The Sign for the U.S. release to capture on the massive success of the title track. Only Eiffel 65's Europop adheres more slavishly to the statute of truth in advertising (just imagine a Nirvana album called Disaffected Sounds of Young People from the Pacific Northwest).
Exhibit B: The singles "All That She Wants" and "Don't Turn Around," two morose tales of heartbreak with nearly identical song structures but told from two different perspectives. Just change a few lyrics and you've gone from jilter to jiltee.
Exhibit C: "Beautiful Life" is a corny stab at uplift tailor-made for a terribly green-screened video. Drew Carey weeps.
Whee! We're flying!
But just as I was ready to indict Ace of Base for everything from Aqua to Zombie Nation, I dropped the needle on "The Sign" and remembered why they have lifetime amnesty. Here, the optimism works since it's actually a giant kiss-off, and they start the listener out about as low as you can possibly go (first lines don't get much more depressing than "Why?/Why do I bother?") then work hard to bring you back up in that brilliant chorus. It's a shiny comet of pop perfection that takes me right back to the roller rink.
Adam and the Ants
"White hip-hop" was a curious idiom that didn't survive rap's first halting steps into the mainstream in the early 1980s, which makes "Ant Rap" more fascinating as an historical document than an actual song, as it is pure nonsense. Nobody has the balls to refer to his "four men" doing "that rapping thing" anymore. It is a moment to be preserved, if only to show just how elastic hip-hop can be.
Experiments aside, Adam and the Ants are a great example of the '80s band that was always interesting to look at and occasionally interesting to listen to. "Stand and Deliver" is their de facto calling card, a little glam Western about a bunch of cheeky fops-slash-highwaymen stealing our attention away from the talented and slovenly, huzzah.
"Kings of the Wild Frontier" is all about drums and comparing your fanbase to an oppressed ethnic group. "Antpeople," I reckon, were no less oppressed than Parrotheads. But did I mention how sweet those drums are?
Aerosmith
I wonder what happened to the old Aerosmith, the straight-up boogie woogie New England bar band of the type that Boston wrote about but could never actually be with all their synths and spaceships and falsettos. This is the Aerosmith that wrote the epically dirty "Back in the Saddle" and the epically epic "Sweet Emotion" and "Dream On" (sorry, Eminem, not even you can ruin that one). This is the Aerosmith that came up with "Walk This Way," a song so ludicrously hickabilly that Run-DMC considered re-working as it joke until they saw a way to make piles of money from it. I should note that I have only the original version and not the collabo - there's nothing revolutionary about yelling each rhyming word at the top of their lungs, then acting like it's the musical equivalent of de Klerk freeing Mandela.
"Train Kept A Rollin'" also fits into the above style but not the rant.
After that Aerosmith imploded due to the usual litany of rock 'n roll vices, Aerosmith 2.0 rose from its ashes, a jovial collection of kooky uncles with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of songwriting gimmicks. This is not entirely a criticism. I have soft spots for the barely-clever wordplay of "Love In An Elevator" and the inexplicable oddness of "Pink"; the softest spot, however, is reserved for "Dude (Looks Like A Lady)" which for many years I believed was written specifically for the movie Mrs. Doubtfire. I am smarter now and am well aware that it's about transgender love. There's also the rumor that it was inspired by Steven Tyler meeting the members of Motley Crue which, if it's true, is totally heroic. WHA KA KA KA KOW!
I'm surprised that while I don't have some of the better singles like "Living on the Edge" or "Crazy," I do have "Janie's Got A Gun" - it's kind of taboo to slam due to its subject matter but I have a major beef with those pan pipes and the heinous overproduction all around.
And we can't forget the song from Armageddon, laying aside the cock rock long enough to do some avant-garde screeching over a full symphony orchestra. Without it, nobody would take the plot of the film seriously.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Abe Vigoda to AC/DC
Abe Vigoda - Skeleton
I can't really explain (nor do I entirely 'get') the no wave scene except to say that city folk and Los Angelinos in particular are incredibly tolerant of noise. Not sound - noise. But at least Abe Vigoda has that tropical dash of "whitey sees the world" that comes through best on songs like "Dead City/Waste Wilderness" and "Gates." And a terrible ironic band name hasn't prevented them from being a low profile local institution for the past 6 years - I was surprised to discover that Skeleton is their third LP. Their song titles are better. "Whatever Forever" is, fittingly, 40 seconds of...noise. With a similar "just not giving a shit anymore" schtick for the past 15 years, the real Abe probably approves.
On a personal note, I saw Abe Vigoda open for Vampire Weekend at the Wiltern at the tail end of VW's debut album hysteria. Or at least I would have, if my buddy Jeff hadn't turned and walked out of the room after hearing 3 seconds of their opening song. That really sums it up.
AC/DC
Did you know that Back in Black, the gritty bridge from 70s glam rock to 80s glam metal, is the best-selling album by any band? Only MJ bests them worldwide with Thriller. It's easy to see why with its meat-and-potatoes appeal, the first two tracks beloved by baseball closers ("Hells Bells") and Iron Man directors ("Shoot to Thrill") alike. But still, how do we get there from here? The themes of Back in Black are insanely dark (natch), touching on death, crime, murder sprees, prostitution, alcoholism, and, lest we forget, noise pollution. It's a perfect example of the clear distinction between happy-go-lucky hedonism and balls-out nihilism. These are some of the nastiest party songs ever written. Of course, the song "Back in Black" is as fine a eulogy as has ever been written, flipping the proverbial bird to moderation in all its forms. "Shook Me All Night Long" is almost sweet in its relative subtlety (how do you envision "American thighs"?) compared to, say, "Giving the Dog a Bone."
"Relative" is truly the watchword when it comes to AC/DC. It all lies in the Bon Scott-Brian Johnson schism: the former's death seemed to inspire the group to go even more obvious in the lyrics. I don't expect much more from AC/DC, but my scattered collected of singles reveals a handful of songs that are game attempts at something more complex than Back in Black would lead one to believe. "High Voltage" and "Live Wire" (what I call "the electricity songs") are charmingly clever in comparison to the 7th grade humor of "Dirty Deeds Done Dirty Cheap" (admittedly, you shouldn't go looking for wit in a song about a murder-for-hire business with the phone number 36-24-36).
"It's A Long Way to the Top (If You Want to Rock and Roll)" says fuck you, here's some bagpipes, which win a slim 3-2 judge's decision against the lead guitar in the call and response instrumental section. You gotta have serious cojones to put that much bagpipes in your lead single (Scott was, of course, ethnically a Scot). "Girls Got Rhythm" is the best thing about the Dead or Alive trailer. "For Those About to Rock" is hard rock's 1812 Overture; "Thunderstruck" isn't bad but is one of Johnson's worst sandpaper vocals. "TNT" again weaponizes the body...or the guitar...or the music itself. There's a lot of masculine id in these songs that no number of footnotes can keep straight.
I thought "Let There Be Rock" originally had a racist lyric in its dense origin story where "the white man had the smarts/the black man had the blues." But the Internet claims that what the white man had was "schmaltz." This kind of makes sense but also kind of reverses the stereotype. And I don't know if I buy a Yiddish word in an AC/DC song. Jury's still out.
And duh, "Highway to Hell" is unstoppable, the quintessence of the simple relentless energy of the classic AC/DC compositions - just as impressive as the virtuosic bursts that characterized popular metal post-Back in Black. Just as important, it was the band's first single to chart in the U.S. and the last featuring Scott as lead vocalist (unless you count the posthumous "Big Balls," and I don't, though I've always wanted to work a phrase like "posthumous big balls" into a post).
I can't really explain (nor do I entirely 'get') the no wave scene except to say that city folk and Los Angelinos in particular are incredibly tolerant of noise. Not sound - noise. But at least Abe Vigoda has that tropical dash of "whitey sees the world" that comes through best on songs like "Dead City/Waste Wilderness" and "Gates." And a terrible ironic band name hasn't prevented them from being a low profile local institution for the past 6 years - I was surprised to discover that Skeleton is their third LP. Their song titles are better. "Whatever Forever" is, fittingly, 40 seconds of...noise. With a similar "just not giving a shit anymore" schtick for the past 15 years, the real Abe probably approves.
On a personal note, I saw Abe Vigoda open for Vampire Weekend at the Wiltern at the tail end of VW's debut album hysteria. Or at least I would have, if my buddy Jeff hadn't turned and walked out of the room after hearing 3 seconds of their opening song. That really sums it up.
AC/DC
Did you know that Back in Black, the gritty bridge from 70s glam rock to 80s glam metal, is the best-selling album by any band? Only MJ bests them worldwide with Thriller. It's easy to see why with its meat-and-potatoes appeal, the first two tracks beloved by baseball closers ("Hells Bells") and Iron Man directors ("Shoot to Thrill") alike. But still, how do we get there from here? The themes of Back in Black are insanely dark (natch), touching on death, crime, murder sprees, prostitution, alcoholism, and, lest we forget, noise pollution. It's a perfect example of the clear distinction between happy-go-lucky hedonism and balls-out nihilism. These are some of the nastiest party songs ever written. Of course, the song "Back in Black" is as fine a eulogy as has ever been written, flipping the proverbial bird to moderation in all its forms. "Shook Me All Night Long" is almost sweet in its relative subtlety (how do you envision "American thighs"?) compared to, say, "Giving the Dog a Bone."
"Relative" is truly the watchword when it comes to AC/DC. It all lies in the Bon Scott-Brian Johnson schism: the former's death seemed to inspire the group to go even more obvious in the lyrics. I don't expect much more from AC/DC, but my scattered collected of singles reveals a handful of songs that are game attempts at something more complex than Back in Black would lead one to believe. "High Voltage" and "Live Wire" (what I call "the electricity songs") are charmingly clever in comparison to the 7th grade humor of "Dirty Deeds Done Dirty Cheap" (admittedly, you shouldn't go looking for wit in a song about a murder-for-hire business with the phone number 36-24-36).
"It's A Long Way to the Top (If You Want to Rock and Roll)" says fuck you, here's some bagpipes, which win a slim 3-2 judge's decision against the lead guitar in the call and response instrumental section. You gotta have serious cojones to put that much bagpipes in your lead single (Scott was, of course, ethnically a Scot). "Girls Got Rhythm" is the best thing about the Dead or Alive trailer. "For Those About to Rock" is hard rock's 1812 Overture; "Thunderstruck" isn't bad but is one of Johnson's worst sandpaper vocals. "TNT" again weaponizes the body...or the guitar...or the music itself. There's a lot of masculine id in these songs that no number of footnotes can keep straight.
I thought "Let There Be Rock" originally had a racist lyric in its dense origin story where "the white man had the smarts/the black man had the blues." But the Internet claims that what the white man had was "schmaltz." This kind of makes sense but also kind of reverses the stereotype. And I don't know if I buy a Yiddish word in an AC/DC song. Jury's still out.
And duh, "Highway to Hell" is unstoppable, the quintessence of the simple relentless energy of the classic AC/DC compositions - just as impressive as the virtuosic bursts that characterized popular metal post-Back in Black. Just as important, it was the band's first single to chart in the U.S. and the last featuring Scott as lead vocalist (unless you count the posthumous "Big Balls," and I don't, though I've always wanted to work a phrase like "posthumous big balls" into a post).
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