The song in question, of course, is “The Wonder Of It All”. Folks in the Northeaster corner of the US (and perhaps points beyond) have heard this quaint / annoying little jingle, or seen the commercial associated with it. It’s not his song – it’s the work of jinglesmith Joey Levine (“the man who invented a genre“, according to a WFMU zine interview), and Pizzarelli, known more for his traditional jazz-guitar stylings and the occasional Late Night with Conan O’Brien appearance, got the chance to sing the jingle, and, lo and behold, he and the song are inseperable. And this is 3 years after the fact, too – while big ol’ multinational conglomerates shuffle through songs like spastic card dealers (hello Volkswagen!), Foxwoods dances with what brung ‘em. I guess it’s a testament to the intoxicating allure of Pizarelli’s music, as this press release describes it. The release features a quote from New York Times movie critic Stephen Holden – I’m not sure if Holden on music is equivalent to the travesties of critical thinking Matos discretely commented on at his blog recently, but it’s not too surprising to learn that Holden’s a fan of Mr. P.:

[Pizzarelli's] music portrays the kind of joy that sneaks up on you at odd moments when you’re just walking around feeling good…

I took some liberties with the quotation, though – I’m not sure it’d be truthful to praise Pizarelli’s music, post-Foxwoods, as a music that’s “[f]ar from evoking the hedonistic highs of sex, drugs, sports and gourmet food.”

(I tried like heck to find a sex-related Foxwoods link, but Las Vegas Ledyard is not.)

I’m reading this and looking at this while listening to this (and perhaps, if you’re interested, you’ll want to check this out, if you haven’t already), and I realize A) I don’t click over to here often enough (which the steadfast impermanence of the internet lets me get away with) (FOR NOW) and B) I don’t listen to the Mountain Goats well. I own a few of their records, I play them every so often, and I enjoy the hell out of them when they’re on, but they’re there much in the same way white noise or a radio at a party or crowd noise is there – totally willing to be engaged and admired, if so desired, but otherwise plenty happy to stay in the background and stay discretely busy.

I enjoy the music from a safe, admirable distance, unwilling to get too dirty in the details for (possible) fear of getting it wrong. Bullshit, yeah, but it’s not a conscious choice for me to be standoffish; it just works out that way. Admiration as respectful cowardice / fear / passive-agressive ego stroking (because I KNOW that this is beyond me, and I should be proud to recognize that)? Oh, whatever – chalk it up to my ears being distracted by what the rest of me is doing.

But this new record – it seems to WANT me to pay attention. It’s not going to let me get distracted, not going to let me politely ignore it. And “Cotton”, with the muted strumming and the piano crossing paths like cool pillow cradling tired head – it is beautiful. “Let it all go,” he sings – yeah, sure, I’d love to do that, but what? What am I letting go? What’s going on? I feel some tears wanting to poke their way out. And I’m smiling? What’s going on?

I want to let this song go, that moment of untainted inexplicable beautiful sadness, just let it go and let it diffuse into the air and float on currents passing through drywall and budding leaves and car exhaust and smokestacks, maybe to risk the chance that someone else catches it and feels that, maybe to be selfish and keep this feeling to myself knowning only I’ll feel that way, maybe to be selfless and let the song be. Just some quiet. Just some regular noise now. Something to keep me grounded, keep me from floating away.

E. Crunk (Mr. Crunk?) (mr. crunk?) took the words right out of the place I wish my words came from in regards to this track, and also added a fine l’il Flip gif to complete the ensemble; I just thought you folks should know.

Note to Flip & Co. – next time, less Pac-Man, more Contra.

‘So this is the new year / And I don’t feel any different’

‘ I want nothing more than to take him out back and plant a few Skecher insignias betwixt his pert little fanny cheeks. (See for yourself.) Yeah, New Year’s Eve can suck, but not because of the lack of life-altering epiphanies available at the bottom of a glass of champail. (Like, duh.) (Really.) Possible solutions:

1) Instead of sitting outside tossing fireworks in your shoddy dress-up duds, start dipping into the hard liquor. FYI – boxes of wine do not count as ‘hard’.
2) Try chatting up some strangers — remember, someone you don’t know is possibly (hopefully) someone that doesn’t know you, either; strike that iron, Sparky!
3) If you are actually with someone, and if that someone’s special, find an empty bedroom or bathroom (preferably one with a lock) (and windows with convenient sightlines) and do what comes naturally.

Do NOT, under any circumstances, go wandering around in the snow shoeless and jacketless, wearing a pair of your dad’s old athletic socks and some pleated pocket-happy Bugle Boy slacks, cursing to yourself in regards to your sorry self and sorry state as midnight rolls around just so you can be some rock-hard tough guy that doesn’t need stupid shit like friends and love and an old fashioned good time. Sitting in the snow in such a state is a bad idea, too. Please also note — having a beer-fueled mope on someone’s fiberglass truck cover is quite gauche. Not that I have any first-hand knowledge about this sort of thing. Cough.

Had I heard ‘The New Year’ around this time of my life (age 19) (he hopes), I imagine the song’s crashing guitars and ebbing drums would be an appropriate soundtrack to such a scene. I might have also empathized with the lyrics, most likely because I was young, stupid, and drunk on Bud Light. Now, some fifty years later, the intellectual rebellion my younger self would have ascribed to this song comes off as mealy-mouthed bombastic posturing. Mr. Gibbard must know his shit if, later on the Transatlanticism disc, he sings about ‘the sound of settling’ — if anything epitomizes the middling half-hearted shrug of that sound, it’s this album’s opening number.

Perhaps I’m guilty of transferencism, channeling my frustration with a certain strand of popular music that involves the guitars and the whinging and the bombast into this innocent bystander. Or maybe it was Death Cab’s manifest destiny to glom onto their hoariest traits, and accentuate them to the point of parody. Or maybe I should stop all this doublethinking and just say what I now realize I should’ve said at the start:

Boo fucking hoo.

At first, I was like “cool new Jay-Z!”. Soon after, I was like “COOL new Neptunes!” Then I bought the album and I was like “ehh..” Then I was like “woo boy it’s Jay-Z again”. For an ever so brief while I was “oh just SHUT UP and retire” (even though my problem isn’t with Jay & his self-proclaimed unimpeachable stature, but with Pharell & Co.). (There’s no parenthetical aside long enough for me to discuss Jay-Z’s role in all this without coming off as a dismissive & curt asshat.) Now, when I hear this beat kick in, I can’t muster an emotion that ranks above or below Submissive Apathy, given I’ve been beaten over, about, and across the head with it since before the album dropped. Actually, “beaten” is too strong a verb – try “tapped”, or perhaps “brushed”. It began to feel like a slightly damp washcloth gently slapping against my right forearm. HOWEVER.

I caught the video a couple of weeks ago (not for the first time), and maybe it was Naomi Campbell’s hairclip, or Beanie Segal walking the runway like the debonair bastard he is, or that Alicia Keys lookalike sporting the fur, but I realized an epiphany (albeit a lightweight type). You know, like when you’re listening to a Tony Conrad piece from the Early Minimalism box set, and you lie on your bed, and after 30+ minutes of the same violin chord played at the same tempo, you start to hear something different? Yeah, of course you do!

Anyway, I started to notice how the beat did a little sashay or flourish at the end of each measure, a little quick-like BaBaDaBa to mix with the mostly measured pace it holds. There’s also this bit of percussion that obviously sounds like glass garbage can lids getting whacked by orchestra triangles, or maybe it sounds like a bent triangle being struck by hollow glass. Those two little details hit me, and continued to hit me, in full-on THX Dolby Theatre Quadrophenic glory each time the rest of the song was beating – sorry, GENTLY PUSHING – me about.

Unfortunately, this moment passed sometime this evening, as I attempted to coax my PC into playing this track from my copy of the CD. (Here’s a sample of what happened: clickclickclickclick – “I’M HITTING PLAY!!!” – clickclickclickTHUNKclick – “YOU HEAR THAT?!?!” – clickclickWHACKclickclicliclilckciclkclkcick – “COME ON YOU FUCKHALWJREORIU@**!(S(*A(!)(00908A*!”) When I finally got my computer to acquiese, the magic was gone. Without Naomi, and perhaps outside of the pitchshifted auspices of Infinity Broadcasting, those little percussive flourishes I crushed on sunk back into the mix, and I was left with what I had before – a perfectly likable song that exemplifies the Neptunes’ unerring (and tireless) (and perhaps tiresome) consistency.

This isn’t to say the formula is getting stale, but … would it be so bad if the Neptunes just straight up bombed? Or at least tried to? And I mean REALLY tried – like, if they had a lapse in poor taste, or collaborated with some completely atrocious (and, no, Fred Durst doesn’t qualify, you ninnies). There’s a point where being experimental and edge in the same exact way every time over and over turns into lifeless safety dancing. Granted, I’m not sure what that “way” is for the ‘Tunes – some motorik Stereolabbing bunsen burner bubbling way, maybe – but it’s recognizable, it’s omnipresent, and it’s more than a little stifling.

The same could possibly be said of Jay-Z, but he’s playing out the string like Pete Rose or Cal Ripken, lingering a little bit longer than recommended to collect a few more hits, giving the fans one final farewell. The Neptunes haven’t given themselves the luxury of an easy way out, and I imagine they’re not looking for the EXIT signs just yet. All I’m asking for is a little fresh air, and by “fresh”, I mean “new”; I don’t care if it’s rank and foul, as long as it’s different. I don’t need another L.A. Law or Hill Street Blues or NYPD Blue or NYPD 2069 or even Hooperman, for the love of crap – I need Cop Rock!

1) Jim DeRogatis utilizing the “I knew Jack Kennedy” routine to roast Ryan Adams – vaguely amusing, but not impressive. Don’t blame the kids, Jim – blame the parents (or the corporate overlords parenting their media decisions). And, hell, even if Adams isn’t worthy of even lancing Jeff Tweedy’s sabacious cysts, he’s a sight better than that awful tart pop & immoral gun-toting hip-hop, yeah? Shyeah – like I need to convince NYLPM of that!

2) Ryan Adams calling DeRogatis on the phone to pitch a bitch about the bad review – vaguely amusing, but not prudent, and unfortunately not unexpected nowadays. Also feeds into the DeRo theorem regarding the Love / Adams similarities. (Damn you critics and your hipster thoughts!) (And damn you hecklers, too!)

3) DeRogatis countering the Adams misstep by playing said message on his radio show so folks like me can be amused by the foibles of misunderstood artistes – vaguely amusing, but just about as classless as the actual message. (I will give Adams credit for hiding the vituperative and vindictive nature of his call with the friendly & casual “just calling to say hi” greeting. Well played, kid.) (MP3 over here for a limited time.)

4) “Ryan Adams” posting on one of “his” fan sites to address the DeRogatis maneuver – oh, Calgon, take me away already. Downplaying the CHICAGO SUN-TIMES as just a “local paper”, pulling the 4th Grade Punning for Dummies book off the stacks (cf. Jim Derogatory) (yeah, and may your hair grow inward), the “I write my own songs” argument (as if “what we are up against now” is the Popstar), invoking the names of Dave Matthews and John Mayer as a DEFENSE, and all this because the word of one critic obviously carries more weight than the multitude of fans willing to PAY to see the show, fans willing to write DeRogatis and tell that dull old square who’s what, fans that are actually willing to buy 5 of your CDs in one calendar year, never mind quality control, market saturation, creative dry heaves, cholera, grass stains, little bunny foo-foo … FIVE DOLLARS? getouttahere…

I’m sorry, I had a point in there somewhere.

5) WFMU’s Tom Scharpling spending 15 minutes dissecting this bulletin board post – take a guess. (MP3 over here for a limited time. Belated thanks to Fluxblog for their assistance in these trying times.) Oh, wow, jokes about bad grammar and spelling in Internet bulletin board posts – hey, did you hear the one about the chicken and the road? And where the HELL did the Steely Dan hate come from? Reel in those ears, Doctor Wu! I should give this chucklehound a call. Fucking stupid bullshit, man. Fucking stupid bullshit.

So, over here, there’s this sport that resembles cricket, in a way, except the ball-hitting implements aren’t as flat, and the hurlers throw differently, and, sometimes, the people playing this sport tend to treat it like a mix between the football gaming essayed in both North America and Australia. For example: Game 3 of the American League Championship Series.

And after having talked down to you in the first paragraph, I’ll switch gears and talk like you know what the hell’s going on. (And you might’ve read this on ILE already – it reads better the 2nd time, though.)

Granted, Pedro Martinez acted like one of those social pariahs former Boston GM Dan Duquette was fond of collecting (cf. Jose Canseco, Carl Everett, Mike Lansing, Dante Bichette, etc etc etc), but Pedro’s a little better than those folks (combined) (times 100), so head-hunting / rope-a-doping incidents like this have been tolerated. I’m still not sure why he was egging on Karim Garcia, and I’m also not sure why, aside from the throwing-at-head thing (which, duh, is a big deal) (and undoubtedly the impetus behind Yankee bench coach Don Zimmer cowboying up and taking a run at Pedro), 4th-outfielder posterboy Garcia A) took SUCH umbrage @ Pedro deigning to throw a baseball near his personage and B) felt it necessary to exact revenge by sliding into Todd Walker @ 2nd base long after Walker had gotten rid of the ball (which is how I understood what happened on that double play) – it’d be a neat trick to see a runner break up a double play when the ball’s already 3/4ths of the way to 1st. Of course, given the purported cleat massage that Garcia (& super-terrific good fella Jeff Nelson) gave to the groundscrew member, perhaps it’s not too surprising to see Garcia act like such a chump.

As for Pedro’s run-in with Zimmer, I’ve heard some rumblings regarding Zim’s less-than-cherubic personage, though I would like some stories to back this up. Regardless, it might’ve behooved Pedro to not toss Zimmer aside (but, heat of the moment, damned if I wouldn’t have done the same), though it might’ve behooved Zimmer to not charge a guy half his age. Never mind the whole “I’m gonna hit you / I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” shift of the entire encounter. And never mind the Yankees playing up the travesty of the entire fracas by having poor old defenseless plate-headed Don Zimmer shipped off to the hospital, while anyone with alleigances to the Yankees and New York City called for retribution. Of course, none of this would have happened had Manny Ramirez realized how far Clemens’ pitch was from hitting him and reacted accordingly.

Given what went down, the umps should’ve either A) tossed Pedro after the head-pointing thing & warned both sides or B) let Clemens stoke the fires with a little chin music & warn both sides. Issuing a warning immediately after the Garcia confrontation totally screws the Yankees, in that Manny’s overreactive fucknuttiness regarding a middle-of-the-plate ball can actually be vaguely justified, and morons like Garcia feel the need to channel Ty Cobb in exacting vengeance.

Ideally, I would hope / had hoped that Garcia would simply take his base, swallow his pride, and let his teammates get back at Pedro’s insolence by smacking him around. Of course, that’s what they were doing prior to The Pitch – the Yankees had scored 4 runs through 4+ innings – and I guess Pedro was successful with The Pitch (if his intentions re: The Pitch were to establish dominance again and get his slop-throwing self back on track). That said, the Yankees (& Clemens, in particular) showed a LOT more restraint than I thought possible, & I might throw up in my mouth after typing this, but it’s that sort of professionalism that typifies the Yankees and their pseudo-mythical ability to win the big games.

Honestly, I’d feel better about sympathizing with the Yankees’ plight were it not for the YES Network’s post-game coverage and their inability to even attempt to fashion a feasable facade of journalistic impartiality. Like, y’know, if you’re going to comment on how harping on all the Pedro / Garcia / Zimmer nonsense detracts from the greatness of the actual game (and, yeah, the game was pretty good, as most of the games involving the Red Sox have been this post-season), then how about backing that shit up by practicing what you preach?

Of course, what I just did here goes entirely against what I wanted YES to do, and this insta-punditry isn’t much different than what professional sports writers cobbled together this weekend, so, in conclusion, I’ll shut my yap and defer to what Baseball Prospectus writer Joe Sheenan offered in his eloquent summation of Saturday’s events:

1. Karim Garcia acted like a moron
2. Then Pedro Martinez acted like a moron
3. Then Manny Ramirez acted like a moron
4. Then Don Zimmer acted like a moron

Oh, and, hey, how about them there Cubs?

After reading through that, you might want to reacquaint yourself with Ditko’s akimbo career via Steve Ditko’s World (including this rejected cover to Amazing Fantasy #15), and the more recently updated Ditko Looked Up. For those of you looking for something a bit more esoteric, there’s Ms. Yronwode’s companion to the Dr. Strange comics, The Lesser Book of the Vishanti.

(Link to the Ditko letter pilfered from The Comic Journal’s Journalista blog.)

Even the video — featuring enough makeupless JLo in-your-pores close-ups to make Jonathan Demme break his camera — favors this somewhat mawkish yearning. It’s less cloying if you turn away during the verses and just focus on the vibe. And the DeBarge windchimes. People! You know what I’m talking about, when a song gets in your soul, and won’t let go… After the nadir that will forever be linked with Ishtar and other cinematic stinkbombs, this serves as a nice pre-Jersey Girl sorbet. (Only 5 / 8 / 11 more months!) (Wait a second — Gertrude Steiney?!?!?)

It’s not the ideas that have me up in arms – reducing Grant Morrison’s initial New X-Men storyline to “Cassandra Nova, mastermind behind the destruction of Genosha, and Professor Xavier’s twin sister (who he tried killing while in the womb) has her plan to destroy mutantkind thwarted by being tricked into placing her consciousness into a powerless mitochondrian-looking construct” – sounds pretty ludicrous, but turned out to be a fantastic read. No, in Austen’s case, it’s the mind executing the ideas that has me rolling my eyes. Over in Uncanny X-Men, it’s Clorox Plus as Austen has weddings broken up mid-vow because the groom (Havok) just realized that he’s in love with the nurse that cared for him during his coma – this, of course, causes the bride (Polaris) to go apeshit & start wreaking magnetic bedlam all over the mansion grounds. Austen also has teenage characters respectfully coping with the loss of a dear friend by having one of them stand at the gravesite wishing ALOUD she could’ve had sex with the deceased. Meanwhile, the group is licking their wounds after foiling the Church of Humanity’s plot to install Nightcrawler as the Pope and … oh, hell, The X-Axis does a much better job of explaining all this. Needless to say, it seems as if Austen’s ideas are at the same subterranean level as his characterizations and his plot executions and just about every other aspect of his writing.

For the record, the Avengers interview is even-keeled and surprisingly restrained, while the Action Comics interview features Austen in full-on irrational spew mode – assuming you’re one of those 12 internet trolls Austen continually rants about, you’ll definitely enjoy the spew.

Now, for those of you feeling a bit more adventurous, I’d also like to recommend you give a second or third listen to this track, too — it’s the best of the 4 Matrix productions available here, and that’s saying something, since the work they performed on Liz Phair might be the best post-Avril music the Matrix has birthed. (Yeah, so what if it’s some of the ONLY post-Avril Matrix stuff? Stop bothering me & see for yourself.) The Matrix treat Liz in much the same way that Liz seems to treat the boy toy in this song — bend, shape, tease, please. The guitars shift from 11 to 0 without hesitation, the song switches from pensive and halting to gaudy noo-wave yea-yea, and Liz herself is transformed into a multi-tracked fem-bot. Everything’s gloriously over the top, including Ms. Fuck-and-Run’s pursuit of Joe X-Box, and no more so than when one realizes all the orgiastic revelry centers around an apologetic request to be rocked – ‘you know, Joe, if you’re done playing DOA Volleyball, maybe we can…?’ Yes, this song is totally ridiculous. So is sex. The honesty in this track is no different than the confession Liz made in ‘Flower’ 10 years ago — ‘I want to fuck you like a dog / I’ll take you home and make you like it.’ Plus ca change, plus ca la meme chose, n’est pas?

No, this is a more reasonable type of wonderland, the sort of place that’s always a joy to explore and admire. For me, that’d be the hilly outskirts of my home state, Connecticut. For the 99% of you unfamiliar with the area — ‘outskirts’ in this plot of land equals any area 25 miles to the left or right of the state capital, Hartford (excepting Fairfield County, of course, which I still think is just a part of upstate New York looking for tax breaks from us yokels). If there’s one road, one general store, actual trees, and lots of rusty dilapidated gas stations, then you are definitely skirting the out. Thompsonville, Moodus, Hebron, Canton, New Fairfield, Lebanon, and so on for another 50 towns. Once in a while, my job would lead me to navigate those winding, inhospitable lanes of asphalt slicing through the thatch surrounding these quaint little hamlets. More often than not, I’d grouse and gripe while beat-up trucks nearly knocked me off the slim little bit of road I called mine, or whine that the street-signs / picket-fence-type posts don’t catch the eye of a working tourist gunning past them at approximately 25 MPH. And when it rained or snowed, I did my best to stay the hilly course and avoid flirting with any of the sleepy hollows abutting the road, while stinking up the plush felt interior with my potty mouth. But, of course, once I shut my pseudo-city-slick pie hole, and business was done, and I took a moment to actually look around at the trees and the buildings and the sky and the snow dappling the scenery and that strange, alluring mixture of openness and isolation — well, it’s a cliché because it’s true.

So when John Mayer is half-whispering about this wonderland, he’s not some randy lothario willing to squeeze out a line of bullshit for some lemon-squeeezing action. He’s not even that overly poetic awestruck artiste treasuring each inch of milady’s skin like the water that passes between the lips of a island castaway. He’s the guy waking up at 1 PM on a Sunday afternoon while his girlfriend of 2 or 3 or 5 years sits up in bed, in her glasses, reading Fox Trot, sipping on some coffee, and the light from the bedside lamp mixes with the way the pillow tousled her hair, and he falls in love with her all over again. The song’s not complacent — it’s confident and it’s comfortable. Maybe a little cocky, too — save that ‘if you want love / let’s make it’ line for the gals you pick up after your wonderland kicks you out of Space Mountain, John — but after all this time together, she can see what he really means to say. Of course she puts down the paper and coffee — wouldn’t you?

Of course, after beating the song into my head these past couple of months, it’s pretty clear that ‘Cry’ isn’t much more than the root canal flipside to all the sugar and spice she fed the Billboard charts these past couple of years. It’s not a personal glimpse into that bitterness & anger you get with love gone wrong, though. ‘Cry’ is a Rorshach blot that doesn’t leave much room for interpretation — unless you’re the type to take round-trip plane rides with your Frequent Flights of Fancy Miles, you’re going to see the same thing in that amorphous blob as millions of other listeners. And shame on you if you’re reading that assertion as a criticism of the song – most songwriters would fold, spindle, and mutilate for just one opportunity to tap that universal vein. (Brief aside – show me a songwriter / musician that doesn’t want to communicate with as many listeners as possible, an artist that wants to entertain and inspire on their terms and their terms alone, and I’ll show you about 1000 CDs from my collection, days’ worth of music made by talented, creative folks struggling / that struggled to rub two coupons together.) (OK, I was wrong – 1250 CDs, give or take two hundred.)

If you notice Faith’s pushing through the words instead of singing them (like she’s never done that before), there’s no need to grouse — it’s belabored a wee bit, but the conviction is there. Professional actors know when to mug for the camera and be totally, shamelessly obvious. Sometimes, there even has to be a little effort put in by Happy Me in order to wake up my inner Goth and realize some quality existential angst. Even if it’s only for 4 minutes, it’s worth the effort.

No, I’m going to get on these huggable, snuggable reprobates for bitching about the rich & famous bitching about being rich & famous. It’s kind of cute that they don’t get the joke – like, duh, you didn’t sign to a major label for the cred factor, did you? Regardless of how dopey one is, you can’t blithely ignore nearly 80 years of popular music by claiming (in a contrapositive fashion) that money can be exchanged for happiness and contentment and other non-tenderable services. Alas, in the world of Good Charlotte (which just happens to be the world at large), because a small sect of people have oodles of moolah and 10,000,000 fans and gold lame suits up the yin-yang, they should smile and wave and be happy twenty-four seven. Starving kids in China yadda yadda yadda, so just shaddap and eat your spinach. Well, you know, spinach isn’t all that tasty – if those aforementioned grumps just flipped on the set an hour or two earlier, they would probably catch one of a handful of shows depicting just how hard it is to be rich and famous. By the way, sticking it to Marion Barry really hits those bourgeois bastards right where it hurts — look out Billy Joel, looks like some folks are looking to have themselves a wee little protest. Don’t forget the toilet paper this time, boys.

Given the little wink-wink flourishes that accentuate the song (which, with verse vocals turned down / totally ignored, is pretty OK, in a Blink-182-meets-rhythm way), you’d think the group would know of, say, a couple HUNDRED songs that succinctly nip those misplaced Robin Hood ideals in the proverbial tuck — OK, maybe they just know a couple hundred Cake songs. (As if they didn’t steal that ba-bum-ba-bum-ba-bum-ba-bum pre-chorus drum flourish from ‘The Distance’.) Even if you’re going to shiny-happy your way through a wrong-headed anti-establishment anthem, you have to know a little bit about your forefathers and their struggles. Call me crotchety, but I’d like to think that the inspiration for the beat came from a well-worn vinyl copy of Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life and not a Carnival Cruises commercial.

Word of advice — when the post-Pump Aerosmith gives the eat-the-rich wheel a spin 10 years before you get around to placing your bet, just cash out.

Yes, I know duck-all about jungle & drum & bass & other forms of the dance music, and I’m undoubtedly subceptible to some review touting a house remix of “The Hokey Pokey” as the best thing since stop signs. It seems like a fair enough read if you’re curious about this sort of wide-ranging, ever-changing musical thing (and fond of rave pics showing girls invading each other’s personal dancing spaces, hubba hubba). However, is it de rigeur for the picture captions in this mag to be so unforgivably awful? Christ, they talk about ironing on some poor guy’s chin, and actually use “URRRRRRRRRGH” (or some synonym – “ARRRRRRRRGH” or “UUUUUUUNGH”) in one instance. And a POT joke about MORCHEEBA – wooo boy. I own 6th grade yearbooks with more decorum & good sense.

This response, one of two drafted in response to, and vehemently opposing, a petition established by a 15-year-old boy, Rommel Zamora, in opposition to the selection of Ashanti, “rising R&B star”, as the Lady of Soul Entertainer of the Year, is, um, interesting. Where Zamora’s petition, created on a lark, drew unprecedented, and possibly warranted, attention, for Soul Train’s selection, a questionable one if you’re of the mind that 18,000 signatures on this petition offer credibility to this claim, Soul Train’s reaction to this furor has been, to be succinct, unbelievably ridiculous.

In one diatribe, quoted above, the events of September 11th are referenced to both marvel at, and belittle, the 18,000 with “nothing better to do”. In another website post, these meager 18,000 people become a mindless throng of minions with little knowledge, or possible interest, in what it takes to create a show as popular as Soul Train, while also taking a dig at Rommel Zamora for possibly not being black.

Despite my Caucasian heritage, I think it would be clear that any type of publicity for one’s show, especially one so willfully marginalized as Soul Train seems to be, is good publicity, and certainly not worth the efforts exerted by their braintrust in concocting these mindless, misbegotten, comma-ridden missives. If expressing dissenting opinions regarding a recording artist of your own ethnicity can be construed as an interracial hate crime, let alone one of such heinous proportions as Don Cornelius Productions would have website readers believe, then, if there are any officers reading this post, and I’m sure there are, feel free to drive by my office and arrest me, because I’ve been a baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad wittle honky.

(Special thanks to Jon Solomon for the 411.)

In order to avoid the uncomfortable sit of fiction in a music review I have to tell you that this happened. In Baltimore. Some of the facts are loose – this is to protect my right of not doing proper research. However the substantive gist of the account is true. It should be apparent now that I’m sketching the backstop for a metaphor.

Aim, release, flow through points one and two then connect. Not yet – hold, bide, don’t go to sleep on the possibilities here.

Alternative rock covets the scabrous; Andy Gill, guitar as shards of split electricity sound. Witness the ascendancy of the Albini sound: the dirt and scree of scraped string and clipped chords. His name is almost ubiquitous in alt.rock circles [blame In Utero]. Indeed, it is arguable that the rutting guitar-rape of Steve Albini’s Shellac of North America, avatars for the crunchy stopanstart fretlove of modern alt.rock, is the apotheothis of this bent. Listen to the records, though, and it’s hard to think of anything less structurally messy. Sure the sounds are itchy and corrupted but they’re all placed just so. Left a bit, right a bit, there.

Tell them about the scrawny kid in the faded Battle of the Bands: 1981 tee-shirt and Don’t Mess With Texas badge shouting up the place with his crazy slogans?

Now, the Oxes: studied insouciance. In a genre characterised by its own dour po-faced guitar-seriousness they are conspicuous. They’re Will Smith at Carlton’s private school in the Fresh Prince. All coquettish cheek and blank irreverence towards formally accepted structures and institutions. The opening riff of “Boss Kitty” churns like a palm-muted buzzsaw – I can see them in black spandex suits, tongues thrust spastically deep under their bottom lip, heads high. [On their boxes.] The structures of the songs are phenomenal – the engineered cascade of momentum perfectly judged. The only equivalent reference point structurally may be the Delgados’ The Great Eastern – though the Delgados’ deconstruction of Conventional Song is not nearly as extreme.

The lengths to which the Oxes push this disembodiment are obscene. If you completely disembowel the song then you re-cast structure – you can obliterate verse chorus verse. The first Oxes album achieved this annihilation but ironically it had no focus. It sprawled and songs chewed into others, grafts of guitar here, there etc. Say, for analogy, album X is full of conventional songs (song A, B, C, etc) and A is made up of 1a, 2a, 3a; B of 1b, 2b, 3b etc. Where this Oxes album achieves over its prequel is in its ability to successfully cheatsteal 1a, 2b, 4d, and 5n+1 for its song A. Little fragments of rock, glimpses and gasps of heavy metal grafted onto percussion – to make one heaving tapestry of all out spizzazz.

At this point I lost my thread and was unable to write a further paragraph. So I passed the computer to my girlfriend. This is what she wrote:

Oxxxes is generally a great album; see above. However, although it is mostly killer, there is that tiny element of filler in the middle section of the album. And does it have an “And Giraffe Natural Enemies”? You decide.

Which is fair. The almost stringent adherence to non-repetition means that the songs can be disparate and disjointed, each section a different rhythm, riff, and momentum. The result being that, as they’re unable to hit a 100% great phrase rate, they inevitably stumble upon a rubbish theme.

Now’s the time to shade the light you’ve cast. Show them their relationship to other rock bands. Follow through. Now.

They’re starkly contrasted with Shellac – they play the same music, differently, from a different philosophy and, unlike Albini, they are punk as fuck. They’re unique, their sound taking its structures and riffs from math.rock and heavy metal. It’s an injustice that I must explicate them by way of comparison and contrast to other bands within their field. But they are utterly indefinable by way of positive definition hence my requirement of negative demarcation. Not just another rock band having fun. A rock band that in their hyper self-conscious genre aren’t afraid to breach their dignity, to stand on boxes, to stalk through the crowd (wireless instruments are the fourth member of the band) rocking, ‘Excuse me, I’m in a band,’ to wear illuminous camouflage cargo pants and strip mid-stage. Why do I love the Oxes? They make me want to talk to strangers in the street, make friends with them; to look the idiot, ask the idiot question. They make me aware that I am risking my life.

David Howie

If you think about it, the music industry should be rejoicing at this new technological advance! Here’s a fool-proof way to deliver music to millions who might otherwise never purchase a CD in a store. The cross-marketing opportunities are unbelievable. It’s instantaneous, costs are minimal, shipping non-existant — a staggering vehicle for higher earnings and lower costs. Instead, they’re running around like chickens with their heads cut off, bleeding on everyone and making no sense.

Eminem is currently one of the most popular recording artists in the U.S. Clearly a lot of kids can relate to what he has to say (Eminem spends quite a bit of the opening track, “White America,” making sure we know that). We can look at that reality. We can analyze it. We can come up with theories about it. But as critics, it’s our job to separate what is popular from what is good, and what is art. That Eminem’s recordings are popular does not mean that they are good … in fact, they aren’t.

According to Mr. Goldberg, supporters and fans of Eminem’s work are out-of-touch fogeys that wouldn’t know their ass from a colostomy bag. I wish I were a teenager trying to cheese off my ‘rents with some well placed fuck-yous and BIIIITCH-es. Alas. Clearly folks are out of step with decency if they’re praising the groupie-bashing Eminem revels in (helpfully illustrated in the lyrics to “Superman” Goldberg quotes). Obviously, all of the intelligent and smart things Em offers up over the course of the rest of the album should just be pushed aside and ignored, since mutli-platinum rap artists never make disparaging comments about homosexuals or Jews or women or anyone else. They don’t include ladies in their stage shows as caged dancers swimming in uncanned Schlitz. They don’t talk about the Holocaust being a fraud, and Jews as the root of all evil. They don’t make videos filled with stripper’s poles and butt floss. And, of course, any work of popular culture (or “art”, if you’re willing to take that fateful step) that risks offense is only worth the time it takes to transfer the work into a sanctioned waste disposal unit.

Instead of taking the high road and dismissing Marshall’s recorded output in such high and mighty tones, I wish Michael Goldberg simply took the time to LISTEN to the album he’s dismissing and weighed the good with the bad. Dunderheaded comments like his only inspire dunderheaded comments like mine, which simply perpetuates the hype that’s given Eminem the exposure and power to become a vociferous critic and proponent of pop stardom. Sure, gasoline’s wet, but you don’t see firefighters rushing to use it.