Vital Signs

Among all the bad, bad news, there are glimmers of the human spirit (and if that sounds like a rejected Neil Peart lyric to you, read on)

VH1 creates a Jewish Prog holiday, by starting a "Rush Hashanah" observation tonight.

Now, if we could get Wall Street to STOP singing "The Big Money" like a drunken frat boy on karaoke night....

Hard Times (are comin round again)

Nothing to Fear (but Fear Itself)

The Rude Pundit has a good one today.

My favorite el-o-el moment:

...Palin can't help it. It's hilarious, like when you see a particularly spastic spider monkey leaping between trees and then it hits a branch that breaks and plunges into a crocodile-filled lake.

You bought it, you name it.

Songs that Made Me Rotten, 16 through 20

Here's a few more of these.  Boy, this is taking a while, isn't it?

16 •  Girlfriend, Matthew Sweet
Matthew Sweet has a new album out. Yes, if you don’t have it, you should.

But many years ago, Sweet was an unknown. He teamed up with Richard Lloyd and Robert Quine, veterans of punk and art-rock, who lended a muscular urgency to this album that took quintessential power-pop and gave it a knife edge. They wrapped intertwining guitar lines around Sweet’s accomplished songwriting.

I saw them on this tour, playing a basement at Marquette with unfortunately placed columns. Quine and Lloyd were not on tour. A couple of years later, he played at Summerfest with the Jayhawks and The Indigo Girls.

Since then, he has continued to work the same vein, continually releasing chiming, shimmery power pop that in a sane world would be omnipresent on the airwaves. But he’s never been able to (quite) recapture the mix of pop sheen and raw energy that suffused Girlfriend.

Not that I’ve cared. He’s so good at what he does. For a while, though, in the 90’s, it seemed like commercial music was poised to embrace simple, beautiful, and modern pop songs.

Maybe it’s for the best that they didn’t.

17 •  Viva La Vida, Coldplay
Not much new stuff on this list. Maybe it’s because I’m less plugged in to new music than I used to be; maybe it’s because it’s natural for formative listening to occur to younger folks. I don’t know; but certainly folks like Chuckles and Pinko Punko amply demonstrate that there is no shortage of good new bands out there.

I had resisted listening to Coldplay, even as they were receiving some critical success; there was such a critical backlash that I just never paid attention. But this one, serving as a soundtrack to an iPod commercial before the album was available, commanded my attention.

The song contains so many referents, it’s hard to pick them all out. There is some Radiohead in there, and a healthy debt to some of U2’s work. I also heard some nods to progressive rock, at least the less self-indulgent side of it. And after hearing much criticism of the vocals, I found I liked them. Quite abit.

Maybe it’s also because the song itself works within the bounds of pop songs, while expanding them maybe a bit.

It’s refreshing to still be able to find new music that becomes important to me. As my son’s Spamalot shirt says, “I’m Not Dead Yet”

18•  Smells like Teen Spirit, Nirvana
How many people has Kurt Cobain inspired? When this album was released, it was a sleeper, and I picked it up right away because of the local buzz due to Butch Vig’s involvement.

The release of Nevermind was luckily timed; about 6 months later, Billboard revamped the way they calculated album sales, using actual register sales rather than distributor sales, so huge middleman sales of albums that don’t sell to consumers no longer registered as big hits and counts the albums people actually buy. Almost immediatley, Michael Jackson’s album dropped off the top sellers and a little known semi-punk band from Seattle showed up....

The soft/loud dynamic has become trite, cliched by now; but in 1992 it was an a bracing addition to the punk aesthetic. The album opens with Smells Like Teen Spirit, and a better opening track is hard to find. London Calling, maybe, but I’ve already covered that.

My favorite memory of this song, however, is riding in a friend’s brand new Porsche at about 85 miles per hour through an early evening office park while it blared from the stereo.

19 •  I Wanna Be Sedated, The Ramones
All things being equal, sometimes three chords is one chord too many.

20•  Drunk By Noon, Sally Timms
Sally Timms of the Mekons covering a song by the Handsome Family, formerly of Chicago. This song is so sublime, Sally’s sweet voice murmuring the near-nonsense words that culminate in one of my favorite lyrical couplets ever.

There once was a poodle who thought he was a cowboy,
But he lived in a cage the size of his thumb.
And, though his white horse was a box of toothpicks,
He galloped around until hit by a car.
Sometimes I flap my arms like a hummingbird
Just to remind myself I'll never fly.
Sometimes I burn my arms with cigarettes
Just to pretend I won't scream when I die.
If my life was as long as the moon's,
I'd still be jealous of the sun.
If my life lasted only one day,
I'd still be drunk by noon.
Sometimes I can't wait to come down with cancer.
At least then I'll get to watch TV all day.
And on my deathbed I'll get all the answers
Even if all my questions are taken away.
If my life was as long as the moon's,
I'd still be jealous of the sun.
If my life lasted only one day,
I'd still be drunk by noon

This was released on a hard-to-find EP called Cowboy Sally that is well worth searching out. The rest of the songs are also covers, but she owns tehm totally and completely. But this song is one that always connects with me.

And often when I’m drunk by noon.

Low Fi At Society High

OK, is anybody else as friggin depressed by the last couple of weeks as I am?  

The economy, already a big back of suck, crashed like a speed freak in a bar.  Johnny Mac is close to Obama in the polls, even after two friggin weeks of senior moments, and a face that looks like cottage cheese with orange makeup.  people STILL dying in the sand.  George Bush still has power.

So, a bit of positive:  The first show of the post- Bush era is on the SCHEDULE!!

Have I posted this one before?

Here's the thing: tight hooks, no-nonsense punky power pop, with fallen angel harmonies second only to Murphy/Pirner for sounding completely at home in a bar.  A band that plays harder and with more abandon the drunker they get, and the fewer people in the crowd.  In a just world, they would be playing stadiums and I would be designing their houses.

The Figgs are booked for Febby 6, 2009 at Linnemann's in Milwaukee's wonderful Riverwest neighborhood.  it's even a Friday.

Just as a reminder, here's an old post I did after an especially memorable FiggShow.  everybody needs to see this band.

But it will probably just be me and Silent Mike again.

Copycat killers

My office equipment support staff has been negatively impacted by cutbacks....

If I Had A Million Dollars

visitors here, I'd guess, will not find it news that Sarah Palin installed a police chief in Wasilla who would comply with her demand to charge victims of rape for their forensic rape kits, up to $1200.

It's a totally reprehensible policy, that gives the hard right wing a two fer; they get to claim fiscal responsibility while demeaning women, and hey as a bonus, toss a frickin bone to the crazy anti-sex brigade.

So, TBogg passed along a fine little idea.

In the spirit of TLAP Day, go ahead and make a donation to Planned Parenthood... In Sarah Palin's name.  She'll get a nice little thank you card, hopefully a whole shitload of them.

TBOGG

More

Planned Parenthood Honorary Donation

You can use one of these addresses:

John McCain 2008
PO Box 16118
Arlington, VA 22215


McCain 2008
1235 S. Clark Street
1st Floor
Arlington, VA 22202

Arrrr

House Of The Rising Sun

First of all, thanks to AG for keeping the top post alive.  I've been half too busy and half too depressed to pay half as much attention as this half assed blog is half worth.

But; and in any case, I was tickled by this post over at Firedoglake:

As long as the American Public now owns most of the mortgage market, and considering that Palin-McCain seem to be cratering along with the entire economy, I would like to make several Modest Proposals to the incoming Wildly Socialist Democratic Government:

1. Federal Payments directly to designers of housing.  Believe me, this is VASTLY IMPORTANT.  Come On!!!
2. Dog Houses now qualify as second homes.
3. So do cardboard boxes
4. All new suburban houses must be painted lavender.  
5. If you qualify for a credit card, you qualify for a home loan.
6. AND the same health care plan that Congressman receive.
7. Did I mention that Architects are now Federally subsidized?  
8. You CANNOT build a house beyond your primary residence until you have spent at least two years working at minimum wage.  Yes, I'm looking at you Bill Gates.
9. That counts your spouse's houses.  Yes, we are looking at YOU, John McCain.
10. I am the final arbiter or Architectural Suitability.  JUST SAY NO TO CRAPPY-ASS GREENFIELD SUBDIVISIONS, STUPID DEVELOPERS!!
11. 3 Car garages are not only stupid, they will now be subject to criminal penalties.
12. Every dollar expended in suburban development will be matched by federal funding of urban development and/or mass transit.
13. Vinyl siding and vinyl windows are hereby outlawed.

Honestly

Do these people not know that AG is going to read this stuff and then blog it?

McCain is Palin's Bitch!

Did anyone else make some popcorn and sit back and enjoy the Palin show last night?!

I only caught a brief bit between graduate school, marathon training, friends stopping over, and calling hotties. However, what I did see was the best comedy I've seen in a while. I had to stop at one point and respect that there really are Americans that clueless.

Good times! more...

Deceptive Bends

More songs that Made Me Rotten.  Part Three, I guess.

- [ ] 11 Babe, Styx

This is an odd one out.  This is a song that I LOATHE; but that intense hatred is no less formative than the love I have for the other songs in this list.

FWIW, Styx is the first real rock concert I ever went to.  A couple of years later, they released the follow up album, Cornerstone, which contains this hairball.

The treacly electronic piano, the smarmy lyrics and unctuous delivery; it's the epitome of Dennis DeYoung's vision of a rock band crossover MOR 'hit'.  His leather-lunged proto-Kenny G delivery is awful.   I don't blame the rest of the band for kicking him out.

Of course it was a hit, and was omnipresent.  You couldn't listen to the radio without hearing this tripe.  It still forms a blueprint for soft-rock hits, and that keyboard sound still makes me cringe.  It formed the basis of a hatred that endures to this day, and is probably a significant reason I have little tolerance for mellow music.

At least Styx has stopped playing the song.

- [ ] 12 Save it For Later, English Beat

There was a time MTV played music videos.  It's True!  

And this video was one of the first ones I ever saw.  You see, MTV took the music industry unawares, which is little surprising.  Clueless twits.  But like the 24 hour news channel, programming 24 hours of music presented a need for videos.  Lots of them.  And American music weasels were preoccupied with pushing playlists onto radio.  However, the British music labels had been making cheap promotional videos for all the new wave bands to play on the variety shows and in the nightclubs, so MTV used them, providing a huge boost to the newer sounds.

Among all the sideways haircuts and cheesy synths, The English Beat was part of the Two-Tone ska revival, melding reggae with pop songcraft and enjoying popularity in England.  Much less so here, but among a certain group of people, the ska bands were massively popular, and I was one of those people.  A few months back, I wrote this post about the English Beat playing in town, and talked a bit about those days.

The Beat, and ska music, helped to articulate some of those youthful feelings of optimism and equality, and still provides part of the soundtrack of my days.

- [ ] 13 Good Morning Judge, 10cc

This may seem an anomaly among the other songs; I was turned on to this British band by a friend I worked with in high school.  I was attracted by the sardonic humor, the sophisticated popcraft, and the kitchen-sink approach to musicianship.

This, along with their singles, is one of their songs that tends toward straightforwardness. 

In this song, and others by this band, it started to become apparent how music could be less serious affair, setting the stage for other punk bands and, of course, Free Hot Lunch.

- [ ] 14 Cartoon, Soul Asylum

In the eighties, Minneapolis became a hotbed of music.  Prince, of course, but there was also a thriving punk scene centered in the industrial district.  Playing mostly for themselves and a small circle of friends, alternative rock developed out of these hardcore bands, groups like the Replacements, Husker Du, and Soul Asylum.

This song is from their first major label release, Hang Time. While the label support allowed them a major producer, it seemed the label otherwise kept their hands off. Maybe they were hoping the band would flop; you might think that, if you knew that the major label was A&M, Herb Alpert's label, and that the band's previous EP cover was a parody of a cover of a Herb Alpert album.

Did it almost make you feel
that something's got to happen soon,
when you wake up feeling lost in your own room.
If you're crying in your beer you're gonna drown,
if you think we'll rise above,
you'd better look around,
you'll see.
It's a mountain made of sand crumbling under me.

Soul Asylum is the only one of these bands still together. Heroin and success broke the other bands up, and their bright flares of youthful energy gave way to experience and competence.

In fact, SA didn't cope so well with success, either.  Dave Pirner had a tabloid relationship with Winona Ryder, their subsequent albums did not fare well with the critics or the fans.  They went on an indefinite hiatus, Pirner living in New York while Dan Murphy stayed in Minneapolis.

Maybe I'm chasing shadows on the wall,

they loom so large,
but make me feel so small so hard,
when you're chasing your own tail spinning your own wheels.
And a time to leave,
and a time to stay,
I guess the things I look away.
Did it almost make you feel that somethings gotta happen soon.
You're in the movies now and I'm in your cartoon.

Murphy and Pirner sing together like drunken angels recovering from a weekend bender.  This song is a propulsive blast, featuring them singing together almost all the way through.  I can almost never resist the urge to turn this one up and sing along.  It also features one of my favorite lyrics ever:

There's a ringing in my ears that's heaven sent.
There's a beast out on the ruins,
some broken down lover's lament.
It goes on and on but it won't go away.

I've seen the band several times, both before and after the big hit, and they never fail to deliver.  They almost never fail to play this song also.

- [ ] 15 London Calling, The Clash

Funny and coincidental that AG posted this one last week.

I bought this album.... well, I don't even remember exactly how I ended up buying it.  They certainly weren't being played on the radio.  I'd guess that I read about the Clash in Rolling Stone or something.... and the Clash insisted on selling this double album at a regular album price.  It seemed like a worthwhile gamble.

Boy, was it.  From the moment the fire alarm urgency  of London Calling came out of my speakers through four sides of short, urgent songs and ending with Train in Vain, a nearly pop gem that should have been a massive hit;  I was entranced.  I had never heard anything that sounded like this.

Damn, I miss Joe.