Stupid music reviews

So today in the Times, Jon Pareles reviews a Prince concert.  The review is fine enough, except for this strange jab: "It was all proudly played in real time by a well-rehearsed band; Prince is a holdout that way."

It took me a minute to even figure out what he was saying - "oh, you mean a rock star played a concert where he was backed by a band?  What audacity."   I think what he was talking about is the fact that a lot of singers (Madonna, Lady Gaga, etc.) perform with dancers to a tape of the music (and sometimes the vocals.)  And that Prince did not.  For which he should be lauded.  As a 'holdout.'

There are a number of ways in which this is stupid, but I'm going on about it for one that drives me nuts - when a reviewer points out something perfectly normal or average as if it is unusual, and people who don't know any better repeat it.  This is what bugs me about Taylor Swift.

In general, I don't have anything against Taylor Swift.  She's country, I'm not, and I'm happy to leave it at that.  She's kind of crossed over to pop, and that's fine too.  I'm perfectly good at ignoring music I don't like and am not interested in.  But people talk about Taylor Swift, and praise her for writing all her own songs.  Her acceptance speech at the (I can't remember which award show - CMA?  Grammy's?  The one where Kanye didn't interrupt her) was exceptionally strange: "I'd like to thank my record company for having the faith in me to let me write all my own songs." (Paraphrased.)

By country standards, Taylor writing all her own songs may be unusual (as is the fact that she's a teenager who writes halfway decent ones) but with her pop/rock crossover, a very strange cultural difference has become apparent.  Praising a rock singer for writing all their own songs is kind of like saying "She sings all her own vocals."  This is also why I keep insisting to my wife that the Beatles are still influential - before them, it was unusual for pop acts to write any, let alone all, of their own material.  In many ways, modern country music is like pop in the fifties.  I wonder how they stayed so insulated over the years.  It's like something else I used to hear, that drove me nuts when I was in a band - X pop group plays all their own instruments.  Yes, like every rock band.

So Prince, keep playing with a live band.  Taylor, keep writing your own songs.  And everyone else, eat lunch in between your other two meals every day.

When did Indie go mainstream?

I turned on VH1 the other day, and the number one song on their morning "Countdown" (of the ten videos they decided to play, I guess) was Mumford and Sons "Little Lion Man".  I really dig the song, and this wasn't the first time I'd heard it, but I never thought I'd hear it on VH1 (I guess I never really expect to hear any music on VH1 or MTV, but that's a different matter.)

There was a time when this kind of music would never have had a chance of being "mainstream" and I don't know what exactly has happened in the last decade, but that has changed apparently.  I remember in 2000 when I discovered audiogalaxy, and suddenly was getting into Neutral Milk Hotel, the Magnetic Fields, and Belle and Sebastian.  I remember getting hit by a ton of bricks by In the Aeroplane over the Sea and Transatlanticism.  But mostly, I remember the completely accidental way I discovered Spoon.

My brother sent me a text message the other day, asking me an interesting question: how many bands can you think of that changed singers but kept going on with the same name.  He offered Van Halen, AC/DC, and Black Sabbath as examples.  I was at work, so I had plenty of time to think about this (my job these days is cashiering for a fast food place on campus during the 2:00 to 6:00 doldrums) and at first it seemed like this would be a fairly rare occurrence.  Very few things are as singular about a band as the singer - most people won't notice when a guitarist leaves a band, or a drummer, even though they may be replaced by someone with a very different style.  But even a very similar singers in style can have very different voices, and for a band to continue simply being recognized after such a change must be difficult.

But as we talked about it, more and more examples kept coming out.  10,000 Maniacs, Pink Floyd, Queen, Alice in Chains, Fleetwood Mac, Black Flag.  Goo Goo Dolls, depending on how you want to look at it.  We didn't even count bands that don't really have a single lead singer (the Beatles, the Band) or where someone else occasionally takes a lead vocal (the Cars, the Stones, the Who). 

Fine Young Cannibals

A game I used to play with my friends: ask them to name any two bands, artists, etc., and I'd try to find a link, a la the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon.  One interesting thing about this game is that it gets easier as time goes on - first, because you learn more connections between bands, and second, because longstanding artists tend to do sideprojects, and collaborate more.  Mark Lanegan for example, can now be used as a linking move for everyone from REM (through Screaming Trees bandmate Barrett Martin who played in a side group with Peter Buck) to Belle and Sebastian (through the terrific Isobel Campbell-Mark Lanegan albums - check them out.)

So today, through my compulsive Youtube video viewing I learned a new connection - Fine Young Cannibals, to the Clash.  But I'm not going to take you there right away.

Seed at Zero

I've been in several bands, and been generally an involved member of a local music scene in my time.  I'm had friendships with bands, and seen a couple of bands who had songs I thought were good enough to justify the tape to put them down.  Still, my all time favorite song by a local band is called "How Your Mouth," written by a friend (well, acquaintance at least) from college named Whitney Mower.  I heard it on her myspace page a year or two ago, and fell in love with it.  It's just one of those songs - I've woken up with the melody in my head.  Anyway, her album is on sale on iTunes now, called Seed at Zero, and it's solid through.  Congratulations Whitney.

Bruce Springsteen

I feel weird about Springsteen's music; I don't hate it, but I'm not wildly enthusiastic.  This is strange, as everyone else I know feels one of the two.  He's not a musician you're supposed to be able to have mixed feelings about, supposedly.

I was in a band with a guy who fell into the maniacal fan camp.  He had every "Official Release" as I discovered when I tried to show him the Japanese single import (I don't even remember which song) with the live version of "Chimes of Freedom: as a B-side.  Oh, yeah, already had it.  Being in a band with a self-confessed Springsteen fanatic was trying occasionally.  We almost became a Springsteen cover band on one or two occasions, and had a strict one song by the Boss per set-list rule that I credit with keeping us together.

Strange Criteria

I was reading about the Clique the other day.  You may not know the Clique - they were an also-ran pop group in the late sixties, a time when even first rate pop bands (the Zombies) could sink with little trace.  Their biggest hit was pretty minor, a cover of the Tommy James and the Shondells song "Sugar on Sunday."  It's not bad, and spent some time on the billboard chart.  No one would care about them today, except that the B-side to "Sugar on Sunday" was an original by the band, a jangly pop song called "Superman" which was turned into a classic by REM twenty years later.

Stay with me now.

Something about the Beatles

My fiancee and I argue sometimes about the Beatles.  Why, she asks, are they still considered the most influential band in the world.  How could they influence hip-hop bands, or Lady Gaga?

At my new job, I can listen to Pandora (occasionally) which has sparked my observation that Pandora treats the Beatles like salt - you can add a pinch to anything.  I've had the Beatles come up on my Iron and Wine station, my Spoon station, and my Ron Sexsmith station.  Pretty soon they'll come up on my Queens of the Stone Age station.

I love the Beatles, but they practically define overplayed.  There's nothing they've done that's new, or that you can even approach as new.  This is a problem with a lot of classic bands, but with some, there's still a sizable catalog you can sift through for gems.  I'd been a Bob Dylan fan for years before I discovered "Isis" which promptly catapulted to the top of my favorite Dylan songs list.

This is why I love the Cirque du Soleil soundtrack album "Love."  If you're unaware, the basic idea was to do mashups of Beatles songs with other Beatles songs.  A lot of the album ends up being full songs that we all know with little flourishes, or pieces of instrumentals stretched out to function as background for some of Cirque's set pieces, but there are a couple of songs that make the whole album worth buying.

First off, what they did with "Lady Madonna" is transformative.  The whole song has been turned inside out, with the little singing-imitating-saxaphones thing leading off rather than being the bridge.  Then, halfway through, they splice it into the riff from "Hey Bulldog" and then splice the guitar solo from "Bulldog" back into "Lady Madonna."  For the first time since I was six or seven years old, a Beatles song surprised me - I didn't know what was going to happen next.  Melodies were bubbling up all over the place - a keyboard line I didn't expect, a bass line in counterpoint with the vocals, etc.  "Love" lets you here the Beatles with fresh ears.

My favorite song is "Drive my Car" which starts off just like the original.  But then, at the second verse, a completely different song cuts in - lyrics, melody, everything.  It's "What You're Doing" - always a second rate early Beatles song - over the instrumentation from "Drive my Car" and through some studio magic, the melody fits.

The Beatles' reputation rests almost entirely on their abilities as craftsmen, but the other day I came home with a song stuck in my head, and decided to listen to it on youtube.  I checked out their versions of both "Money (That's What I Want)" and "Please Mr. Postman."  It's hard to see, in the sedate TV appearances, but you can hear a bit in John Lennon's voice as he sings "The best things in life are free" - this was a hard rocking band.  They must have been amazing to see live back in the day, back when you could actually hear them, instead of the crowd.

I have to imagine that anyone listening to love, or hearing John's scream at the end of "Twist and Shout" would consider them a seminal influence.  Even Lady Gaga.

I have internet again!

After almost a month, I finally have a steady internet connection.  It's good to be back.