perfidy

Hey, kids! Unky Johno has two bits of fun for you kids today!

First up, thanks to Phil Dennison, is a blog which currently-- and for not much longer-- has a recording of The Chipmunks' Christmas Song slowed down to the speed at which they recorded the vocals. Did you know that Theodore is actually a baritone, Alvin a tenor (and possibly a child molester, by the sound of his voice), and that Tom Waits wrote the music? Must be heard to be believed.

(BRDGT (blogrolled to your left) is moving away from Boston soon to become a doctor (of history), and you better believe this'll be on the Super Special Driving Mix I slip them before they go. On there about six times, i might add. A joke is funnier if it's not funny anymore.)

Next is this gem of a beaut of a wonderful thing, thanks to Will Collier of vodkapundit who apparently has not sufficiently disciplined his inner ten-year-old.

My name is Johno and I approved this message.

Being that I am from Northeastern Ohio I retain a certain pride in the region, especially when it comes to the music scene. Consequently, when co-blogcritic person Craig Lyndall offered me an album by Lovedrug, a new Canton band who, according to him, put on a beautiful live show, I jumped at the chance. What's new in Canton?

Lovedrug are a four-piece group in the young tradition of Radiohead and Coldplay who have a few big things going for them-- a tight sound, a good producer, and a phenomenal singer among them. Unfortunately, their debut, "Pretend You're Alive" lacks memorable songwriting and strong lyrics, leaving the impression of a band who has a lot left to prove.

A few tracks impress. The shiny surfaces of the opening "In Red," the disturbing and violent lyrics of "Blackout," and the Coldplayesque arrangment on "Candy" all hint at good things to come, but over the course of the album's 13 tracks ear fatigue sets in and the high points get smeared into a samey haze.

As with most albums I review, I put "Pretend You're Alive" on autorepeat and waited to get sick of it. After five or so straight times through, I wasn't ready to chuck it in the bin (good news) but also hadn't noticed a single transition between tracks apart from the album starting over (bad news). A few more listens and I still wasn't able to tell the songs apart. Although not boring, there's just nothing here that works too hard at being interesting. Although Lovedrug sound great (especially if you really, really like Coldplay) they play like a Saturday Night Live movie of the rock world -- a really good four-minute sketch stretched very thin.

I’ve been on a freaky 70's and 80’s trip recently. Maybe it started around the time Reagan checked out, I don’t know, but for the last few weeks I’ve been pulling out my old early Replacements records, Def Leppard, Stooges, Ramones, Televison, Run-DMC, Cheap Trick… about the only thing I haven’t done is regrow my mullet and buy a Scorpions T-Shirt. I’m pretty sure I already have the acid-washed jeans and skinny tie somewhere in the bottom of my closet.

Part of it is that music is seasonal for me: I spend springtime in Funkadelphia, winter is for crooners and Europop, fall is all Tom Waits all the time unless it’s Neil Young, but summer, summer is for funtime only. A couple weeks ago I was blessed with the Sahara Hotnights new album, "Kiss & Tell," and finally after a slow rainy June I am pleased to find that funtime is here again.

I first heard Sahara Hotnights about a year ago. I was in my car on a rainy Saturday, ready to spend a hungover afternoon at the mall shopping for work clothes and casting wistful looks at Chelsea boots by Aldo and Kenneth Cole. The local community station was in the middle of a punk hour I kind of like, so I was enduring some vague thrashy surf-metal by a band from Saugus or Winnepesaukee or someplace when the surf bleat was preempted by this awesome girly funtime sound! which was back-announced as being from Sahara Hotnights’ second album, 2002’s “Jennie Bomb.” They were so good I almost drove off the road.

I never really heard from them again. A series of lean months spent prioritizing rent and lentils over music purchases relegated the band to marginally-remembered status. I remember bringing their name up once or twice to people as examples of Whats New and Hott, but mostly I felt wistful like I’d hooked up with the band at a bar, hit it off great, and lost their number in the laundry. Now just in time for high summer, Sahara Hotnights have returned to my life with “Kiss & Tell.”

Here’s what I know about Sahara Hotnights. They’re Swedish, like Abba. They’re four girls, like the Donnas. Two of them are sisters, like the Ramones, and that gets the inevitable comparisons out of the way. Yes they’re Swedish, yes they are rock chicks, and yes they have a way with buzzsaw guitar and a hook. But really, they’re so much more!

It’s a lasting tribute to the quality of the underlying material of rock and roll that it can withstand endless repetition and still remain worthwhile. Genres rise, prosper, wither and die, and their remains are reincorporated into the DNA of rock to be used again by future bands: Chuck Berry begat The Rolling Stones begat Aerosmith begat Van Halen begat Guns N Roses begat Alice In Chains ‘n’ so on world without end. Sahara Hotnights, like so many great bands before them, don’t so much carve out new territory as live in abandoned houses. And that’s fine; most days I’d rather listen to Def Leppard do “Hysteria” than PIL do “Metal Box” anyway. In particular, the Hotnights seem to have boned up on their Bangles, Runaways and Joan Jett, Cheap Trick, Go-Gos, and Cars, with hinted suggestions at a Clash and B-52s record or two somewhere and a lasting affection for Rick Derringer’s “Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo.” That the Hotnights pull this off without sounding stale is a tribute to both their astute choice of influences and to their considerable ability to write a hook, bang a drum, and bash a guitar. Like I said, I dig freaky retro trips.

From what I’ve already written, you’ve probably decided whether you feel like giving the album a chance or not, so I could be phenomenally lazy and wrap up without even talking about the music, about the fat two-guitar attack that opens “Who Do You Dance For?” giving way to a heavily chorused single-note guitar line and a fantastic Go-Gos-stylee vocal that builds within 45 seconds to a chorus made for driving with the windows down and the radio cranked. Or the way that vocalist Maria Andersson’s faint Swedish accent makes her muscular vocals super cute. Or the exuberant drive of the first single “Hotnight Crash,” that somehow manages to simultaneously evoke Television, Cheap Trick, and Sleater-Kinney without the caterwauling. Or they way that “Nerves” wouldn’t sound out of place on a B-52s or Pretenders record. Or the way that “Empty Heart” kind of sounds like the great lost track from Cheap Trick’s “In Color/In Black and White.” Or the way that echoes of the Clash’s “Safe European Home” sit comfortably alongside nods to Susanna Hoffs. Or the way that the Spirit of St. Joan of Jett infuses the whole proceedings. But I won’t do that because it would mean I wouldn't be able to impress upon you the sheer breathless impact with which Sahara Hotnights pull all these influences together into a loud, poppy, shiny, swaggering whole.

Bottom line: if you like albums that sound good with the windows down and the sun shining, and miss that feeling from when you were a kid where every song on a new album felt like an awesome new discovery, “Kiss & Tell” will get you off. I’ve had it on auto-repeat almost nonstop for a week, and after sixty or so listens, I’m starting to think I’ve found the Funtime Champion of 2004.

Nellie McKay, "Get Away From Me" (Columbia)
Katie Melua, "Call Off The Search" (Universal)

I'm a sucker for precocious youngsters. Having passed forever out of precocious youngsterhood a few years ago, I remain deeply impressed by people who can, at an improbably young age, turn out an album of assured, complete, and ambitious songs that deserve a wide audience. However, I'm frequently disappointed with the followup. In 1999, I was very much taken by Ben Kweller's self-released EP, "Freak Out It's Ben Kweller!" His super-ballad "Butterflies" was possibly my favorite song of that year, and his Vanilla Ice redux "BK Baby" was improbably fun. However, his follow-on major label debut, 2002's "Sha Sha" (ATO) lacked the same flair, possibly because recording in an actual studio with Dave Matthews' money made him choke a little when the time came to deliver. Ditto Erin McKeown, a Massachusetts singer whose second album, "Distillation" (Signature Sounds) is still one of my favorites. A pixieish woman who plays hot jazz guitar, McKeown mined Tin Pan Alley and some weird angry side of her subconsious to create a strong and diverse set of songs. "Queen of Quiet," "Blackbirds" and "La Petite Mort" crackled with creativity, brilliance, and masterful performances, and a small bidding war ensued for her among indie labels. Unfortunately her next album, last year's "Grand" (Nettwerk) was notable mainly because McKeown abandoned her strengths to experiment with new genres and forms with the result that for the moment her reach exceeds her grasp.

So now when faced with the prospect of some ambitous new hotness, I tend to hesistate lest I sign on to follow the career of an artist who will within two years disappear into his or her own navel. I am especially hesitant to embrace releases by young female jazz singers these days, since every label in the universe seems determined to build their future on cloning Norah Jones. Nellie McKay and Katie Melua are both nineteen years old, both have preciousness just coming out their ears, both grew up in itinerant circumstances (Melua moving from Moscow to Georgia (the Black Sea Georgia) to Belfast, McKay shuttling between the East and West Coasts in a VW van), and both have chosen to be jazz chanteuses on their debut albums. But for all the similarities, their albums could hardly have turned out any different. Where Nellie McKay kicks against the stereotype, dead set on being different from Norah Jones in every way, Katie Melua seems dead set on jumping Jones's claim.

Nellie McKay has already cut her teeth singing in New York clubs, and her official bio claims that she sometimes writes a song a week (precocious, indeed!). Her album cover tells you almost everything you need to know about what's inside. On it, McKays' apple-cheeked face is ringed with cherubic red-blonde curls as she throws her arms skyward in a Mary Tyler Moore moment. She wears a bright Red Riding Hood coat and is in general completely adorable. Behind her is a grafitti-covered wall and construction scaffolding. Her name and the album title ("Get Away From Me") are in yellow, with her name written in a jaunty serif font that brings to mind swingin' releases from the golden age of crooners on LP. The back cover proudly proclaims McKay to be "A Proud Member of PETA."

The title tells you the rest. Part a response to being lumped in with the fuzzy jazz noodlings the Norah Jones Clone Army (Amazon has bundled "Get Away" with Jones' new album-- get both for $25!), and part a psycho-girlfriend outburst, Nellie McKay's audacious debut album is far more entertaining than all the jokiness and contrivance I've mentioned would initially suggest. Mostly dealing with issues dear to the heart of any 19 year old (boys, hypocrisy, sunshine, death threats, alienation, and issuing death threats to hypocritical boys), McKay and producer Geoff Emerick (of Beatles fame) envelop her self-written cabaret-style songs and droll, dark-toned voice in a shiny mix of piano, strings, and a skintight rhythm combo. But where Norah Jones and fellow travellers like Diana Krall make timid albums that threaten to be little more than pleasant background music, McKay enlivens "Get Away From Me" with adventurous writing, sharp and witty lyrics, and a scary yet bubbly personality. One might be tempted to draw comparisons to Fiona Apple and Tori Amos, but where Apple comes off as a poetry-obsessed neurotic and Tori Amos seems dangerously unhinged, Nellie McKay steps right past them with great talent, a smart sensibility, and-- unlike Fiona and Tori-- a sense of humor. Also, where Fiona and Tori seem always on the brink of carving their initials into their arms with a pencil, I get the feeling Nellie McKay is more likely to carve her initials into yours.

In 18 tracks over two discs (a nice contrivance meant to evoke the lost art of the album side) McKay explores everything from reggae to torchlit balladry, with stops at jump blues, perky rock, and rap. Yes, rap. On "Sari" McKay raps convincingly about every petty thing that irritates her (including herself) in a laconic flow that, though obviously coached, still hits harder than P. Diddy's best attempt at a rhyme. Elsewhere, her more conventional songwriting efforts display similar ambition. The jaunty depression song "Ding Dong" manages to simultaneously evoke Frank Zappa and commercial jingles, "Baby Watch Your Back" detours into canned jazz-funk that works far better than it should, and the album opener "David" is colored heavily by reggae. Her voice and piano playing are up to the genre hopping, and even the songs that don't quite work redeem themselves through sheer bravado and the saving grace of a well-turned lyric. Vocally, she reminds me a little of Anita O'Day and Chicago chanteuse Holly Cole's first albums. Her pitch is good, her voice is strong, and like Cole she tends to over-enunciate her vowels and "r's" in a way that makes her sound positively aggressive.

Her lyrics are Nellie McKays' strong suit, and "Get Away From Me" demonstrates a refreshing talent for acid tirades that would put the great masters of invective to shame. "Clonie" is a narcissistic ode to the "apple of my eye, and "the only person I have ever loved"-- her own clone-- and "Won't you Please Be Nice" warns her man "if we part, I'll eat your heart, so won't you please be nice." "It's A Pose" is a rant against men, men, men! in general, whose thesis is that all men are pigs, so using the filthy swine for pleasure isn't really a problem. The second verse goes:

You’re preenin’ in your armchair
and I’m steamin’ at your knee
go on pontificatin’ like I care
Peter Lorre, then a story about AC/DC
Harvard-educated, frustrated dictator
tyrant with a PhD
. . . . . . . . .
but hey hey hey
that ain’t nothin’ to do with you
you’re a sensitive Joe, I’m forgettin’
but every woman knows
it’s a pose, just a pose, just a pose.

It's hard to say whether Nellie McKay will be able to live up to the promises she has made on "Get Away From Me." For all the accomplishment and bravado, it is still very much the product of someone young. A couple songs, notably "Work Song," which unconvincingly evokes the terror of a dead-end job, and "Inner Peace," in which McKay realizes she's not unique, make it clear that she has room to grow as a writer. As long as she can avoid the usual traps; spiralling off into craziness (like Anita O'Day, Tori Amos or Laura Nyro), drugs, (Anita O'Day again), or her own navel (Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, coffeehouse casualties everywhere), I expect the Nellie McKay of the future to be dangerously happy showstopping boatload of fun who sometimes scares us terribly.

Katie Melua's debut album "Call Off The Search" features a cover shot of her with dark curls and a black leather jacket, holding a nylon-string guitar and sitting on a stool under a single overhead light. The rest of the cover is black-- "none more" black. Just as precocious in her way as Nellie McKay (she already has had a #1 hit in Britain with "Closest Thing to Crazy"), Melua has chosen to explore the quieter side of jazz vocals with a fleet of songs mainly by songwriter Mike Batt, with covers of John Mayall and Randy Newman. Melua's album has already gone platinum in the UK, and it's clear that Universal is hoping to make Melua a crossover success, this year's sonic wallpaper for the Audi set's summer soirees.

It will be impossible for Melua to dodge comparison with Norah Jones since they are essentially mining adjacent claims. But where Norah has channelled her pop sensibilities toward country and tentative stabs at soul, Melua takes a different tack, pursuing the folkier sounds of Joni Mitchell, Nick Drake, and Van Morrison. And where Nellie McKay spends her time being explicit about everything she says-- to a fault-- Katie Melua is content to suggest, insinuate, and understate. The trouble is, there is a fine line between understatement and snoozing. "Call Off The Search" recalls at times Nick Drake's "Bryter Layter" and Van Morrison's "Veedon Fleece," two other albums which luxuriate in soft textures and barely upbeat tempos. However, "Bryter Layter" was redeemed by Drake's preternatually acute folk sensibility, and "Veedon Fleece" by Morrison's obessive journey to the center of his lyrics. Despite a few highlights-- the title track, the self-penned "Belfast," and "Closest Thing to Crazy," in general "Call off the Search" too often rolls over and goes to sleep.

The overall impression I get from this album is of some very pleasant and indeed beautiful arrangements marred by some fairly bad lyrics and boring writing. For example, "Tiger in the Night" includes the mediocre Blake re-write, "You are the tiger burning bright, deep in the forest of my mind, all my life I never knew, you were the dream I see come true, you are the tiger burning bright," over an arrangement that sounds a great deal like Van Morrison's "Linden Arden Stole the Highlights." "Mockingbird Song" attempts to revive the nursery rhyme with vodka shots that fail to rescue the song from triteness. "My Aphrodisiac Is You" aims to evoke the wonder of being in lust. Unfortunately, a mellow arrangement (especially an ill-considered soprano sax), Melua's languid delivery and an unfocused lyric sap "Aphrodisiac" of the visceral punch it ought to pack, considering the subject.

As mentioned, Melua's first single, "The Closest Thing to Crazy," is already a monster hit in Britain; in fact the Queen is even on record as liking it, and it is here we can see Melua's future if she's lucky. "Crazy" yokes the album's torpid sound to a nice lyric in the style of late period Elvis Costello, and Melua bites off the ends of lines ruefully, like she means it. It's easy to see why the song was a hit with a chorus that goes

This is the closest thing to crazy I have ever been
Feeling twenty-two, acting seventeen,
This is the nearest thing to crazy I have ever known,
I was never crazy on my own...
And now I know that there's a link between the two,
Being close to craziness and being close to you.

However, even here Melua's bravado vocal performance can't break through of the sleepy haze that envelops the arrangement, and the song ends up hamstrung by these limitations.

All this is not to say that Katie Melua isn't talented. Although her voice is not yet up to the heavy lifting that jazz singing requires (she has yet to develop a wide palette of vocal expression, her breath support is sometimes lacking, and her pitch can be hit or miss) if she can harness the earthy smokiness that comes so naturally to her and links it up with a better set of songs and more ambitious arrangements, I'd give her another listen. She is still developing as a songwriter, and unlike McKay, she hasn't yet had a chance to vet her songs in front of paying audiences night after night after night.

If I had to choose one of these two artists and place $500 on whose third album is more likely to be an all-time classic, I have to admit that I'd almost be stumped. On one hand, Nellie McKay has chutzpah and charisma coming out her ears, and those attributes get her through some flat patches of songwriting. But it's hard to tell whether she's emptied her clip on the first try; what comes next is either going to stun or suck. On the other hand, Katie Melua's first album is a workmanlike piece of folky jazz-blues that will go over huge at suburban PTA meetings and will probably be the listen of choice at cocktail parties in Vail, East Hampton, and Provincetown for the rest of the year. That practical assurance of success might get her through the difficult next phase of her development in which she finds her own voice, and if it does she may well end up an affable hybrid of Cassandra Wilson and Carole King. However, it may also be true that Melua is a one hit wonder of the British variety, blessed with one good song and a lifetime of resolute mediocrity.

As far as I'm concerned, the deck is stacked against artists who don't take chances. At nineteen you should be either too drunk or too stupid to know there are things you aren't allowed to do. A listen to some artists' early albums-- "Never Mind the Bollocks," the Clash, the Ramones, Elvis' first Sun sessions, even the Flaming Lips' long out of print first EP-- burn with a thrilling audaciousness born of wild ignorance. The artists I mentioned at the opening of this piece-- Ben Kweller and Erin McKeown-- first caught my ears because they were doing something it seemed they shouldn't be doing. The danger as I see it is that, for a young singer or songwriter, it's much easier to teach someone restraint than it is to teach them originality. Nellie McKay passes that test with flying colors, and although her next album could be a disaster, I am much less confident that Katie Melua's next album is going to even take that chance.

(also posted to blogcritics)

The AFI has released their list of the 100 top songs from movies of all time.

They did remember some of my favorites: "Puttin' on the Ritz" from Young Frankenstein, "Lose Yourself" from 8 Mile, "Springtime for Hitler" from The Producers, and the theme from "Goldfinger" all figure, as does "Rainbow Connection" and the theme from "Shaft." Nice work there.

However, I am hard to please, and I'm flabbergasted that some very worthy selections were passed over in favor of songs from "When Harry Met Sally...", "Beaches," and "Moulin Rouge". Beaches? Did you ever know that you're my hero? Bite my implants, Bette.

Among the reasons for my irritation (not that it takes much to irritate me these days) is that not making the cut is the single greatest film theme song of all time, no discussion allowed:

• Across 110th Street, Bobby Womack (Across 110th Street)

And let's not even mention these worthy candidates:

• Can You Picture That, Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem (The Muppet Movie)
• Stuck in the Middle With You, Stealers Wheel (Reservoir Dogs)
• Shout!, "Otis Day and the Knights" (Animal House)
• My Way, Sid Vicious (Sid & Nancy)
• Rock and Roll High School, The Ramones (Rock and Roll High School)
• Purple Rain, Prince (Purple Rain)

Johnny Ramone is dying. He has been fighting prostate cancer, which has now gone nuclear and metastasized throughout his system.

"Johnny's been a champ in confronting this, but at this point I think the chances are slim," Marky Ramone said in the report. "John never smoked cigarettes, he wasn't a heavy drinker and he was always into his health. It just proves when cancer seeks a body to penetrate, it doesn't matter how healthy you are or how unhealthy you are. It just seeps in and there's nothing you can do."

The greats are dropping like flies these days. It's inevitable; death will get us all, but one of the facts of life is that some things never get easier. The Flaming Lips, one of my favorite bands, have a line in their song "Fight Test" that for me sums up everything you need to know about growing up: "I'm a man, not a boy/ But there's things you can't avoid/ You have to face them/ When you're not prepared to face them." Even if it's a rock star you never met, some things never get easier.

Here would be the time when I typically launch into an extended rapturous encomium for Johnny (before the fight has even gone out of the guy, I'm such a ghoul), but since I've been doing that too much recently so's that people might think I have a thing for rock star deaths or something, I'm going to shut the hell up for a change. We all know who Johnny Ramone is, what he did, and why he's great. Right?

BIG!, the Discovery Channel's new entry into the increasingly crowded TV genre of people working hard while we all watch them, is airing the big guitar episode tonight. Go to the sight, work the tabs, read all about it: 31 feet long. 14 foot fretboard. Giant pickups designed by pickup stud Seymour Duncan. And a bigass amp to play it through to boot.

This project is a curious intersection of cool- guitars, big amps, heavy gear; and dorky- because only a total dork would ever crave a 31 foot guitar. I will add that Peter Frampton somehow plays the thing in the finale. I leave it to you, gentle reader, to decide which side of the intersection that fact lies.

Begging to Differ has been following the development of a new reality-type music show, called "Rock Star." Produced by Survivor Svengali Mark Burnett, the show will follow the efforts of contestants to earn the job of lead singer for Australian nostalgia act INXS. There'll be an album, maybe a tour, an onerous and unprofitable contract and everything!

Not to be crass, but, to be a little crass, INXS are notable in the annals of Rock Deaths for being the only band known to include a member who died of autoerotic asphyxiation. Out of a panopoly of choices: the boring old OD; choked on vomit; choked on someone else's vomit; electrocution; stabbed by father; wrapped car around abutment on the M1; riding in car with Motley Crue; died under mysterious circumstances, body stolen and burned in desert; shot in own home; heart attack on stage; plane crash; helicopter crash; plane crash in fright wig (Chase); murder-suicide, INXS are unique. (With apologies to Greil Marcus.)

That's quite an achievement and some serious shoes to fill. I wonder if the competition will include a psychological profiling of the contestants? Given the media's need to sell papers and latch eyeballs, I wouldn't be surprised if in the next few weeks we are all reminded repeatedly of the tawdry and tragic circumstances surrounding the death of Michael Hutchence. Of course, I'm getting the ball rolling here and now, but that's only because I am a follower of Rock Deaths and found this one to be particularly remarkable.

I only have one question. Rock star? INXS? There's plenty of bands out there in need of a lead singer. Both Van Halen and a reformed, Axl-less Guns & Roses would make for better TV than would INXS. But that wouldn't be a wholesome yet manky Mark Burnett production, now would it? May the, um... best... singer "win."

[wik] BTD Greg helpfully corrects my terminology: it's "autoerotic asphyxiation" not "erotic autoasphyxiation."

Radio has come full circle, and we're back to the good old days.

During a single week in May, Canadian pop rocker Avril Lavigne's new song Don't Tell Me aired no fewer than 109 times on Nashville radio station WQZQ-FM.

The heaviest rotation came between midnight and 6 a.m., an on-air no man's land visited largely by insomniacs, truckers and graveyard shift workers. On one Sunday morning, the three-minute, 24-second song aired 18 times, sometimes as little as 11 minutes apart.

Those plays, or "spins," helped Don't Tell Me vault into the elite top 10 on Billboard magazine's national pop radio chart, which radio program directors across the country use to spot hot new tunes.

But what many chart watchers may not know is that the predawn saturation in Nashville — and elsewhere — occurred largely because Arista Records paid the station to play the song as an advertisement. In all, sources said, WQZQ aired Don't Tell Me as an ad at least 40 times the week ending May 23, accounting for more than one-third of the song's airplay on the station.

The Don't Tell Me campaign is part of the latest craze in record promotion, a high-pressure part of the music business in which the labels try to influence which songs reach the air. . . .

In the latest twist, it's the radio stations themselves that have been reaching out to the labels, offering to play songs in the form of ads, often in the early morning hours when there tends to be an excess inventory of airtime. The practice is legal as long as the station makes an on-air disclosure of the label's sponsorship — typically with an introduction such as "And now, Avril Lavigne's Don't Tell Me, presented by Arista Records."

To be sure, Don't Tell Me is a bona fide hit, even without spins being bought and paid for. Radio stations must play a song many thousands of times for it to crack the Billboard top 10. Nonetheless, a few hundred spins here and there can move a song up a place or two in the rankings — and ensure that it is climbing rather than falling on the charts.

Now, don't blame the labels, at least not totally. The second a record loses spins, BAM! it's history. At least now they're being up-front about everything.

Man. What's next-- poodle skirts?

Ray Charles is dead at 73.

Ray Charles was a genius. His combination of blues, soul, gospel, jazz, swing, and barrelhouse piano was his alone, and although he is remembered best as a hacky spokesman for Diet Pepsi, he was a giant among giants. Nobody put the various threads of American music together like he did, especially not as early, and though he shied away from the spotlight in his last years, his live performances remained heartstoppers.

Man, I hate it when this happens.

Writing on the death of punk icon(oclast) Robert Quine, Phil Dennison asks "[w]hat the hell is it with these guys – Quine, Dee Dee Ramone, John Entwhistle – who lived through the worst the 70s and 80s had to throw at them, only to OD as old men? Cripes!"

Cripes, indeed.

Not being a big ol' druggie myself, apart from a few desultory stabs at self-medication here and there (nothing hard, nothing to write home about, nothing even that fun), I have a hard time understanding, much less identifying with, folks who fail to die before they get old, then manage to go and succeed at the end of a needle. This is particularly so when it's someone unexpected. Dee Dee Ramone isn't that surprising, actually, if you've ever listened to the lyrics to "Warthog Boy" or "Fifty-Third and Third." But John Entwhistle was a rock, the trillion-ton black hole that kept the Who from flying apart. Was he a tortured soul, or did he just like to get high a lot? And Robert Quine? What the hell?

And why Quine and not Keef, Iggy, Ozzy, or Phil Lesh? The more I muse on the vicissitudes of mortality and the decisions people make, the less I understand.

Maybe I'll write a little more on this tomorrow when I've had time to think it over. But for tonight... cripes.

Robert Quine, one of the finest guitarists of the New York City punk movement, has died of a heroin overdose at age 61.

Owing more to Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground than to the Rawk chaos of the Ramones, Stooges, or Dolls, Quine joined with peers Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd of Television, David Byrne of the Talking Heads, and Richard Hell (his counterpart in the the Voidoids) in bringing nervous, angular, thoughtful musicianship to the punk scene. With his balding pate, beard, sport jacket, and ever-present dark shades, he was certainly nobody's idea of a rock star. Indeed, the cerebral, almost anti-rock style Quine and his corevolutionaries pursued shows itself to be the true legacy of the New York punk scene, once you step away from the deafening buzzsaw of the Ramones. All the major bands of the era-- Blondie and the Talking Heads as well as lesser lights like Mink Deville, all owe huge credit to Quine's sound.

Although Richard Hell and the Voidoids are unfairly forgotten, remembered mainly by punk enthusiasts and then mainly for their great single "Love Comes in Spurts," Quine's career after the Voidoids ably demonstrates the breadth of his talent and influence. He made a guest appearance on Tom Waits' 1985 masterpiece "Rain Dogs," played with spiritual father Lou Reed, is largely responsible for Matthew Sweet's career, notably "Girlfriend" and "Altered Beast," and had long associations with iconoclasts Lloyd Cole and John Zorn. His spidery leads and angular attack were unmistakeable, and his tasteful contributions improved every record he appeared on.

Yet again, heroin does its rock and roll thing and kills one of the good ones.

See you in hell, Quine.

[wik] I should note that Quine is an Ohio native, of Akron specifically. Northeast Ohio is criminally under-appreciated as the birthplace of some great music. Chrissie Hynde, Lux Interior of the Cramps (KNIF!), DEVO, Joe Walsh, me, Rocket from the Crypt, Pere Ubu, and the Dead Boys all hail from that corner of the country. Good stuff!

[wik] Let's not forget Phil Dennison or Miz. B, wife of Buckethead either. I tell ya, Northeast Ohio has a serious talent pool.

Wish me luck. I'm off with two friends to play a 20-minute live set which will represent my first appearance on a rock stage in almost exactly ten years. I'm on bass, we don't know what exactly we're going to play, and tonight and tonight only we are under the moniker "Tonight We Hunt And Kill Crispin Glover." Our one finished song is an instrumental called "I Am Your Density."

Accolades to the first reader who can tell me what these two titles have to do with one another.

We're gonna rip their lungs out. It's gonna be that good. Bad. Good. Definitely good.

[wik] ...and accolades go to the pseudonymous "Edward Van Halen" for accurately identifying "Back to the Future" as the unifying theme.

It went okay. It was definitely a fun fifteen minutes, and it was good to play in front of people. I only have two things to bitch about, which is about twelve less than usual. First: I hate, hate Hartke amplifiers. They're the leading bass amp maker, and they suck. I play an early-'70s Fender Jazz Bass, which like its cousin the Stratocaster guitar, is a versatile, clean-sounding instrument. The trouble is, much like the Strat, getting a good sound has partly to do with what amp you pair it with. Hartkes, especially the high-end heads/cabinets like I played through last night, have a very clean, clear, even brittle sound to them that's great for the studio but doesn't do it for me. Even though the head had dual-channel many-frequency eq's and high- and low- bandpass, the best I could do was a sound that was round and low, but still sort of shiny and tanky. That's what you get from putting a clean-sounding bass with a clean-sounding amp.

Non-bass players won't get this, but when you bear down on an electric bass, especially one of the classic models, you get a different attack to what you play that's a bit metallic. Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers makes great use of this sound. However, through a Hartke, this sound can never be more than mannered and polished. I prefer a fuzzier, less trebly sound like you can get from Fender Bassman or a Gallien-Krueger. So the sound was a bit of a drag.

Also, I'd forgotten how hard it is to hear in a live setting. Even with just three instruments and no vocals, if you don't have a monitor system to go by, trying to get a tight groove in a room that's new to you is like trying to drive a car blindfolded. Deeply frustrating.

But what the hell. I'll do it again. I'm married, so I no longer have to worry about getting chicks, and I have a job so I don't have to worry about doing it for money. I answer to a higher power now: ROCK.

It would have made sense thirty years ago: take a phenomenal country singer with an outstanding batch of songs, lock her in a room with a top-notch rock band, roll tape, and see what happens. When Gram Parsons hooked up with Emmylou Harris, we saw a glimpse of how great that could have been, but GP had two strikes against him: he was the first person to fuse country and rock and therefore wasn't taken seriously at the time; and he was kind of a wuss. That great experiment could have turned out so much better.

So why did it take thirty years for someone to try again? For her new album, Van Lear Rose, Loretta Lynn tapped Jack White of the White Stripes (a huge fan) to produce, arrange, and play guitar, and assembled a crack team of musicians to help out. The results are amazing. Lynn wrote thirteen great songs for the sessions, and the band raises a sound that evokes the Rolling Stones circa Sticky Fingers.

Now seventy years old, Loretta Lynn has been languishing for years in that sort of dim career twilight where country icons go once the Nashville Establishment can't quite accept them anymore without a twinge of embarassment. She's joined there by luminaries like Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, and George Jones. But where Willie and Dolly have recently staged comebacks (and where George just doesn't give a shit), Lynn hadn't done much. Her first "comeback" record, 2000's Still Country was nothing special, and to all appearances her next stop was some obituary page a decade hence.

Or so you would think. As it turns out, Loretta Lynn has a lot of gas left in her tank. Like Johnny Cash before her, who made some of the best music of his career after hooking up with the legendary rock and rap producer Rick Rubin, Lynn has teamed with Jack White to revitalize her career and creativity. In the process, she has released one of the all-time greatest country albums I can remember. Van Lear Rose has got it all: a cheatin' song; a killin' song; a couple God songs; two (!) country-classic punning song titles; a drinkin' song; and an answer song (! When's the last time someone wrote an answer song?). But rather than simply go through the motions and touch all the bases, Lynn and White rip into the album' s thirteen songs with a vengeance-- the amps are turned up, the drums are loud, and Lynn sings like it was still 1970.

I do not kid about "Van Lear Rose" being among country's all-time best ever. Country records have always tended to be a few singles surrounded by lazy tossed-off filler, and no matter how good those few singles are, even the best full albums drag in the middle. When's the last time you sat through George Jones' classic I Am What I Am waiting to hear "Bone Dry"?

(In fact, it occurs to me that the final argument that Elvis was really a country star lies in the fact that he didn't craft albums so much as compile singles into LPs long after rock artists had moved on to making whole records. But I digress.)

Part of a great country record is whether it can get to you emotionally. Well, I am happy to report that Van Lear Rose made me cry, hard. I remember the last time a country album made me cry. It was 2001, and I was living in a basement apartment in Queens and working a thankless gofer job in the entertainment industry. After a hard week, I came home on Friday night, poured myself a stiff whiskey and put on some Johnny Cash. Two hours later I was eyes-deep in self pity, weeping along in a whiskey haze to Johnny Cash singing "Unchained." The difference between then and now is this: Cash made me cry because his songs made me feel bad for myself, made me see myself in the song. That's easy. Lynn has done the harder thing and made me cry for her; for her song on its own terms.

The one that did it it was "Family Tree." Written from the perspective of a wife confronting the woman who her husband left her for, the song manages to simultaneously to be righteous and pathetic. From the wife's perspective, lines like

I didn't come to fight
If he was a better man I might
But I won't dirty my hands on trash like you.
Bring out the babies' daddy
That's who they've come to see
Not the woman who's burning down our family tree.

sound like thundering denunciations, as in fact they are. But later in the song, Lynn complicates matters:

Their daddy once was a good man
Until he ran into trash like you.
Take a look at the baby's face and tell me who loves who.
I brought along his old dog Charlie
And the bills that's overdue
'Cause y'all been working and we need money too.

Suddenly the scene is much more tawdry: a barefoot woman standing in a yard with children and a dog waving "past due" notices and looking for a handout. This is expert songwriting, backed on the album by an outstanding performance, and it made me cry like a kid without candy.

Back to front Van Lear Rose is consistently great, and made all the richer for the interplay of Lynn's and White's iconoclastic musical personalities. Standouts include "Family Tree," the title track, the priceless White/Lynn duet "Portland Oregon," ("Portland Oregon and sloe gin fizz/ If that ain't love then tell me what is") the plaintive solo "Miss Being Mrs." and the spirited answer song "Mad Mrs. Leroy Brown." White leaves his musical stamp all over the place, from the straining-at-the-leash guitar chunk of "Have Mercy" to the rollicking lo-fi piano groove to "Mad Mrs. Leroy Brown," and Lynn answers with vocal performances as strong and as nuanced as anything she has ever done. In fact, in a few places she sounds more like frenetic howler Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (almost half a century her junior) than the sweet Kentucky Girl who sang "Coal Miner's Daughter." The talent, technique and abandon on display are absolutely staggering. Few performers of her age have even tried an experiment this daring, and fewer still have created music that can stand with the very best of an already stellar five-decade career.

Hard-rocking Zionist Gene Simmons went on a tear on Austalian radio, managing to vilify the entire religion of Islam. Seemingly his rant started by trashing terroroists; before long his massive reptilian tongue had knocked his brain into submission and before anyone knew it, he was explaining that Islam itself was to blame.

Now, you can read all the primary and secondary sources on Islam you wish, and there is no way that any sane person would come away from such study convinced that an entire religion spanning so many cultures, languages, and legal structures is out to get you. Just no. Don't argue about it. That doesn't mean that certain goofy fuckers within those structures aren't out to get you, but you can't blame something as broad, abstract, ancient, and interpretive as religion solely for them.

Yasser Soliman, chairman of the Islamic Council of Victoria, said the remarks were "very unfortunate. He's very famous obviously and popular and, as a result, influential."

Famous? Yes. Popular? OK, by most any measure yes. Influential? With every guy in America who owns a guitar knowing at least most of one KISS song, influential is a good choice of words. Influential on American foreign policy? Fear not.

Let me add that the toughest part of this entry was deciding on a title. I opted for the "Thunder Down Under" angle because everything that happens in Australia is marketed here as thunder down under, so the cheese factor appealed to me. Other candidates:

"Muslims Not Pulling Trigger to Gene's Love Gun"
"Caling Doctor Hate"
"Rocket Ride to Mecca"
"Gene's Tongue Latest Weapon in WoT"

I tried some others with puking blood, 7" leather heels and demonic face paint but nothing was really clicking.

A woman I work with, her husband, and I were thinking about cool names for punk bands the other day. Here's what we came up with; feel free to add your own or modify, fold, spindle or mutilate those listed. Favorites among those who have seen the list are "Changing Table" and "Practice Head" (from a King of the Hill episode)

The list:
1. Helper Monkey
2. Killing Timmy
3. Bronx Science
4. Practice Head
5. Mister Furley
6. Regime Change
7. Chandra Levy
8. Neutral Drop
9. Attention Shoppers
10. Changing Station
11. Fen-Phen
12. Monkey's Double
13. Buhrka Assasins
14. Full Release
15. Chechen Rebels
16. Jonestown Mazzacerz
17. Dangling Babies
18. Stem Sleeper Cell
19. DC SniperZ
20. Boxcutter
21. Guarini Gorilla
22. Nylo Bone
23. Aunt Nancy
24. Peacewrecker
25. Pray for Mojo
26. Cracker Factory
27. Musing Meme (for your cerebral punks)
28. Sickle Cell
29. Fisted Nurse
30. Pony Rode Hard
31. Every Swingin' Richard

And for some local flavor:
1. Tom Bevacqua's Hairpiece
2. Turnpike-Fuckpipe

Now the robots will control our music!

Two readers have now emailed me this article, about the impending launch of an all-digital electric guitar by the venerable Gibson company, father of the electric guitar (thanks, mapgirl and NDR!).

As Gibson Guitar Corp. launches a new digital model, company CEO Henry Juszkiewicz can close his eyes and almost hear the music.

"The defining moment will be when a certain lick in a popular song is out there, and it can't be done with anything else but a digital guitar," Juszkiewicz says. "It only takes one example to really inspire people."

That, Juszkiewicz hopes, will usher in the age of the digital guitar -- much the same way as the Beatles and Rolling Stones inspired a generation of young people to pick up a standard electric guitar in the 1960s.

"It opens a whole new palette of possibilities," Juszkiewicz says. "It's a little bit like hearing stereo as opposed to mono."

....

The advantages of the digital guitar come down to sound and control. For 70 years, the electric guitar pickup has translated string vibrations into an electrical signal fed to an amplifier. The player can control the tone and volume, but output is limited to a mono or stereo signal. The signal itself is noisy by today's standards, and stray frequencies often cause an annoying hum.

"Some of the guitar pickups popular today go back to the 1920s," Juszkiewicz said. "We have not changed a lot in terms of the instrument."

NDR argues that now is "time for revolt" before the electronic guitar does for the bell-bottom-flapping-stack-of-Marshall-tens power chord what the CD did for high fidelity. I'm kinda with him on that, but I find to my surprise that I can't get too worked up.

Here's why. As with compact discs versus vinyl, there is an ineffable warmth to the sound of analog that digital simply cannot match. Listening to Neil Young's "Rust Never Sleeps" on LP is a fundamentally different experience from listening to it on CD, and don't even get me started about the gritty trebles and woolly bass tones of some early jazz CD transfers. The same debate has already played out among the musicians of the world as the flatter-sounding yet more durable transistor amplifiers have become more common than the rich and gorgeous yet tempermental vacuum-tube varieties. And yet tube amps retain a dedicated (even fanatical) following, and most guitarists play one of a few models, most of which are decades old.

Myself, I don't care. There's a sound for all seasons, and digital guitar will merely open new frontiers. Much of what Gibson's CEO touts as shocking new innovation already exists in the from of guitar synthesizers, which have become increasingly refined and useful over the last decade or so. Moreover, the guitar synth has already found its niche without taking the place of the proverbial Sound Of Les Paul into Marshall Head. Vernon Reid, Elliott Sharp, and a fleet of others have made whole careers out of wrangling their guitars like plectrum-struck keyboards.

At this point I should offer some full disclosure. While on the bass guitar front I am a dedicated purist for four strings (5- and 6- stringers sound thin and grindy), for twelve years I have been the proud owner of a Fender Ultimate Stratocaster featuring new-generation Fender Lace pickups that are as unlike the traditional wire-wound magnet versions as a Mac running OSX is from a Dell running Win98. They sound awesome, bringing that classic bell-clear Strat sound but more so, and with greater sustain since the magnets are much weaker than normal and create less drag on a vibrating string. I'm a dedicated user of effects (mostly cheap) and signal transformers, but only when they are called for. If I had money to burn, I'd buy myself a nice big tube-driven Mesa/Boogie amp with a Line6 Pod preamp and a whole flotilla of rack effects. I would rip out the rhythm part to "Janie's Cryin'" and people five hundred miles away would cower at the sheer sonic power of my awesome riffage.

But if I had money to burn, I'd also buy one of the new Gibsons in a heartbeat. Back when I played every day, I got pretty good at playing two parts at once, palm-muting the lower strings to alter the tone in the lower register at the same time. The new Gibson digital allows you to customize the tone of each string independently, which would let me take that technique to the next level. Freaking sweet!

Think of it this way. The Hammond-B3, the Fender Rhodes, and countless generations of increasingly sophisticated synthesizers have failed to put Steinway and Bosendorfer out of business. To the contrary, Yamaha now offers some models of piano that integrate a digital preamp, processor, and hard drive with the finest in traditional piano construction and tonal shaping. The very best of these are magnificent. Yet most people when buying Yamaha still go for the baby grand, spinet, or upright devoid of the bells and whistles. I think the same will go for guitars. As long as Mexico keeps turning out the pinewood Fender Stratocasters for $300 a pop, and as long as tube amps can be gotten used for $150, Gibson hasn't immanentized the eschaton for heroic rockin' guitars. They've merely ushered in a new era.

Let me be the first to welcome our new six-stringed overlords.

[wik] A side note to NDR: just imagine a world where Joy Division had to record "Love Will Tear Us Apart" or "She's Lost Control" without the benefit of synths. I think in twenty or so years we'll be saying the same thing about the Gibson digital guitar.

GeekLethal put me on the trail of a Yahoo(!) news piece on a new fad: fantasy record labels. Universal's distribution arm, UMVD, has launched the program among retailers whom they deal with with the aim of raising awareness of new Universal product. Sure it's a cynical ploy to earn retail footprint, but what a concept!

Here's the deal. Much like with fantasy sports, you do research into bands, tour schedules, bios, etc., pick a roster, and compete against your peers for fabulous prizes. The team who charts the highest and sells the most units at the end of the 36-week season wins. But unlike my fantasy baseball league, in which I stand to win a few bucks if I win the season, winners in UMVD's SMASH (Scoring Music and Selecting Hits) program get consumer electronics.

This sounds like an idea that has found its time. A friend of mine had this idea a few years back but, lacking programming acumen and overweening ambition, we never got it off the ground. I suck mightily at A&R, but I always thought it would be fun to see if I could pick the winners out of a crop of upcoming releases.

The most interesting stuff will happen when UMVD takes this to the public. I'm willing to bet that SMASH will become something like an Iowa Electronic Market for music, except with less war and more exposed thongs. I can't wait to sign up.

Beginning with one of the best ledes I've seen in a long time,

Christian teens are stealing Jesus music

this Seattle Times article tells the sordid tale of Christians pirating inspirational music.

The findings were a jolt to many in the evangelical music industry, who expected churchgoing teens to be mindful of the commandment that states, "Thou shalt not steal."

"I'm surprised and disappointed that the behavior isn't that ardently different between Christians and non-Christians," said John Styll, president of the Gospel Music Association, the leading trade group for evangelical music.

While downloading a Metallica song and putting a metaphorical finger in the eye of Lars Ulrich might give one a certain frisson of excitement; stealing the Word of the Lord should provoke a slightly bigger "hey, wait a damn minute" from the conscience. Or at least make you reassess your commitment to the moral system that motivated the musicians whose music you're stealing.

[hat tip: Sophont.]

Norbizness (who I have not linked in some time, to my shame) has a hilarious post up - rap lyrics translated into middle-management speak. Example:

"Law enforcement officials seem intent on confiscating my current narcotic harvest."

"Please pass me the amplification device, so that I may extend my present line of discourse. The alliance of particular Californian neighborhoods is a portent of imperilment."

Fun, fun, fun