26 June 2001
STOOGES – “REAL COOL TIME”
adapted for the stage, a play in one act.
dramatis personae:
me – me.
her – her.
setting:
suburban bedroom(s), 1969.
[a telephone rings. a telephone is answered.]
her: “hello?”
me: “can I come over tonight?”
her: “why?”
me: “can I come over tonight?”
her: “no, no, i got that much. what i want to know is why?”
me: “what do you think I wanna do?”
her: [sighs]
me: “that’s right. can I come over tonight?”
her: …
me: “i say we will have a real cool time tonight.”
her: [grudgingly] “oh, alright.”
[cue air-guitar solo to heavily wah-wah'd track]
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24 June 2001
MANDY MOORE – “IN YOUR POCKET”
mandy moore, light of my life, fire of my loins. my sin, my soul. man-dy-moore: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. man. dy. moore.
in the teenpop world, there are four female singers: britney, christina, jessica, and mandy. of these four, only young mandy moore (17!) is a nymphet. there was a time when britney was one, it lasted for about four minutes, the duration of the “…baby one more time” video: she was girl on the brink of womanhood and she shall forever remain so as long as that video lives on in the mtv archives and in the hearts and minds of men and women this world over. christina never was one; christina is offensively sexual, and she just continues to flaunt it with the “lady marmalade” video. jessica, oh jessica, white as snow, and just as pure; jessica is lost to us forever, as anyone who’s seen the video for “irresistible” and the accompanying ad campaigns will sadly attest. besides, anyone who has to talk about their virginity so frequently and at length radiates far too much sexuality in the first place.
ah, mandy! mandy who makes me feel equal parts humbert humbert and kip winger. mandy is the epitome of the nymphet: precocious, eminently lovable, and chaste. sex is never mentioned when mandy is around for fear that it’d offend her delicate sensibilities. for the length of her admittedly short career, mandy has been woman-child and at 17 she shows no sign of becoming hardened, of plunging into the abyss of adulthood. though we know it impossible it seems that she may stay the way she is forever; that we know it is impossible is just why we must cherish her while she is how we see her today, a flower nearing full-bloom.
“in your pocket”! is a great single, it’s the best thing jennifer lopez has ever done. and, though i’ve not seen it, i’m nearly certain mandy won’t be resorting to showing her stuff in the video either, a cheap ploy to increase heart rates while increasing sales. in my mind’s eye, i envision it as enrique iglesias’s “rhythm divine” video, except non-sexual. an apt comparison because “in your pocket” has the same kind of balearic sway, the kind that was so hot just a year or so ago but has now disappeared almost entirely to mandy’s benefit since it helps to distinguish the single from the eden’s crushes and jessica simpsons of the world. even the lyrics are good and the metaphor clever — “among the many muted faces” it begins — and, unlike many of the maturing teen acts out there, one doesn’t have to worry about “creative control” when it comes to mandy: she’s far too busy trying to please everyone, slowly turning the male population of this country into mandy’s boys. (oh, how it is working!)
a year or so ago, she was merely a cute face amongst many, a teen whose debut was released twice and barely managed to go platinum; now she’s as cute as ever, making commercials, making good music and has her own mtv talk show called mandy (!). she’s the type of girl who would’ve unknowingly broken my heart eight years ago. but, yet, i am not so old: mandy, i’ve slipped my heart in your back pocket: please don’t sit down: if the years have taught me anything, it’s that my heart breaks far too easily.
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21 June 2001
We live in the future, baby, you and me. How does this make you feel? The centuries have been erected with this very goal in mind, thousands of years of popular culture have been building up to this. Time had been enjoying a prolonged childhood for too long now; turning 21, with all of its accompanying freedoms and responsibilities, so intoxicated mankind that seers, artists, authors, musicians, and poets have been foretelling its coming since the last time the clock zeroed out, some hundred years ago.
Initially, the dreams were fairly modest. Skyscrapers? Motorized transportation? Flight? As each dream became reality, writers of fiction and fancy upped the ante, envisioning buildings that kissed the heavens, cars that flew, and men on the moon. Within each of these inventions, ambitious yet flawed, fantastical minds could see each form idealized; trapped inside the rough creation, they saw the future straining to escape. As the years were hammered away from these innovations like excess marble from a statue, perfection escaped only to see itself de mode at birth, its patrons having moved on to new whims.
The sound of gunshots and bombs awakened the dreamers to the nightmare that was real life. Alarmed by our ever-increasing capabilities for self-destruction, their visions becoming bleaker as war and fear took hold of the globe in its thankfully tenuous grasp. The future, if there was one (if), was plagued with conflagrations that threatened all of humanity and invaders from the sky, “aliens” (gee, who could that be…). To the young mind, with no concept of real fear or pain, blissfully unaware of that adult-word “consequences,” this all undoubtedly seemed great. The new millennium seemed like it was going to be a pretty fucking cool place to be. Having lived through it all, as a youth, no less, and therefore naturally given to romanticization and idealization, I can tell you this much: The future ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Name me ten important ways in which life in ’01 is different from life in ’91. Sure, MP3s are great, but cell phones alone are argument enough against progress. We should be living on Mars or the moon, at the very least, not trapped in our bedrooms on T1 lines. I mean, for fuck’s sake, Dippin’ Dots are still the ice cream of the future and the Visi-Phone has yet to become readily available. To quote William H. Gass, “I was born…For this? I dress. I wash. For this?” To quote the t-shirt that, to the best of my knowledge, exists but in my mind: “My parents saw the new millennium and all I got was this crappy t-shirt.”
Where’s my robot butler? The kid in Rocky had one and that was, what, 20 years ago?
What? Air? Yes! I haven’t forgotten them. Let me attempt to tie all of this up as neatly as possible. With their last album, Air soundtracked the film, The Virgin Sucides, a tale of suburban angst and ennui in the 70s; with this new album, 10,000Hz Legend, they’ve created the soundtrack for the 21st century. Not the one we live in, no: it’s the soundtrack for the future as imagined by bored kids, stoned out of their minds, in the suburbs of the 1970s: It’s the soundtrack for modern folks who hoped things would’ve turned out a bit differently
Study the sleeve-art: It tells you much of what you need to know about the album. It looks like Arizona, sure, but let’s call it Mars instead. If one were granted access into the compound in which the two blurred gentlemen appear, they’d hear 10,000Hz Legend wafting through the speakers — it’s space age bachelor music (as opposed to the — capitals and italics important — Space Age Bachelor Pad Music of their debut LP Moon Safari). Perhaps, while you’re enjoying your wine and cheese — some customs never die — one of the cute boys of Air will play you a piece or two.
The future, as Air have chosen to interpret it, is like Blade Runner in the hands of Hanna-Barbara or David Lynch helming a live-action Jetsons. In this future, Air have written themselves out of the picture; the music is instead performed by robots that they program themselves. For 10,000Hz Legend, they’ve set the dial for Prog-Rock and it’s prog as only a robot could render it. Like the robots, my knowledge of prog is limited to the input I’ve received (human speak: what I’ve read or been told about it): I’ve never knowingly heard a prog record, though Greg Lake’s “I Believe in Father Christmas,” which served to turn me against said jolly fat man, may count, I don’t know for sure. What I do know is that the All Music Guide defines it thusly:
Progressive Rock…incorporates elements of European and classical music to rock & roll music, resulting in long, complex instrumental passages and dramatic, grandiose flourishes
Sounds good, eh? In this definition, there’s no mention of capes or smoke machines or H.G. Wells or wizards or ice skating or King Arthur. The robots, then, have taken all that was good about prog and distilled it into 10,000 Hz Legend. And since they’re robots and therefore INFALLIBLE, they’ve rendered it perfectly: the Kraftwerk (the original robots!) pulse of “Electronic Performers”; the lethargic beauty and electronic poignancy of “How Does it Make You Feel?”; first single “Radio #1″‘s electro-glam thud; from a different 2001, “Radian” is the cry of the Monolith — vengeful and mournful; and OMD covering “Live and Let Die,” better known as “Don’t Be Light.” It’s not all good: Beck is best left in the past and “Wonder Milky Bitch” isn’t sexy or funny, it’s just cringeworthy and ill-conceived. Since they’re on for so much of the record, I’ll give the robots the benefit of the doubt, and ascribe it to: HUMAN ERROR.
While the future constructed by Air does indeed sound like a great place what with its complex instrumental passages and grandiose flourishes, its technology and advances can be a bit frightening to simple-minded folk like you or I, merely a hair’s breadth away from the 20th century. That’s why it’s so refreshing, so reassuring to discover that the future, despite all of its advantages, still deals with many of the problems we ourselves wrangle with on a daily basis. Like a lack of communication; an inability to explain one’s self properly to the one they love; the difficulty of finding something good on the radio; the hassle and stress created by a regimented life; and despairing over where to find a good blow job nowadays. Their problems are our problems, and vice versa!
In many ways, then, they are still the Air we’ve known (and loved!) for some time now. Many reviewers and “critics,” lazy types mostly, have exclaimed that the new album represents a “new direction” for the band (and a number of them hint that it’s the “wrong” one. “Prog-Rock?” More like Frog-Rock. And I say that with love). If Moon Safari was lyrics/music: Bacharach/Wilson/Gainsbourg, 10,000Hz Legend can be attributed to: Gainsbourg/Eno/R. Waters. The major difference is that all of the homages to Bacharach, the rage at the time, have been replaced by a more atmospheric, expansive production style. What they’ve always been — and still are — are modern kids bringing old music into the future. The future they bring the sounds of the past into is alluring, one that while very little like our own, illuminates just what makes modern life brilliant and depressing. It reminds us that we’ve not yet seen the future: despite what we think, it’ll always be one step ahead of us (and ahead of this record!); we may never see it, but from their privileged position, Air assure us that it’s still something worth dreaming about, something that should, with a gleam in our eyes, always be looked forward to. Or at least that’s how it makes me feel.
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17 June 2001
THE STROKES! – “MODERN AGE!”
warning: if you tolerate this, then your children will be next. it’s been ten years now since kurt and co., with their carefully crafted look, changed the face of youth fashion, having kids nationwide dress like their dads (or, my dad, at the very least). mom and dad, you’ll be pining for the days of grunge because, now, the strokes want bobby and janey to dress like lower east side hipsters — and it’s going to cost you!
the strokes have it all going for them: they’re from new york; the press is ecstatic (they’re rolling stone’s cool new band); the modern age ep was released on rough trade; and they look good and dress well. they have fantastic names: fabrizio moretti! nikolai fraiture! julian casablancas!! albert hammond, jr! his father co-wrote both leo sayer’s “when i need you” and julio/willie’s “to all the girls i’ve loved before”! so they have great breeding too! and there’s a nick! because every great band needs one! according to the bio, albert “moved” to new york (after film study!) and the group was complete — after long, arduous cross-country auditions, no doubt. essentially, the strokes are a boyband for people who like boybands “ironically” — if alan mcgree put together a group to appeal to teens, it’d be the strokes. (louis pearlman: eat your heart out.) the strokes are, in many ways, the first american british group in, well, i don’t know in how long. tom calls them a new york oasis, and while they have the moxie — sez julian: “i don’t want to sound like a cocky bastard but we are young and good looking and the music is good” — i’ll call them a new york suede, if only because suede had a more cultivated image and a better press agent.
the tenet of full disclosure dictates that i should tell you that the above “analysis” precedes my actual hearing a strokes song, and that’s intentional. i’ve downloaded “the modern age” [sic] since, after a search on morpheus that yielded 93 results (!), it was their most popular song. i now press ‘play’ and hope to be a different, better person three minutes and thirteen seconds from now.
…
i, i had the strangest dream. it was 1977. i was at cbgb’s in new york. television was on stage…and then tom verlaine announced, “ladies and gentlemen, we have some special guests with us tonight. on my way back from the bathroom, i saw these two guys hanging out with patti smith and jonathan richman and john cale in the back. i’d like to call them up on stage right now, if they don’t mind. guys? come on up, don’t be shy…here they are…folks, lou reed and iggy pop!” and lou picked up a six string, and iggy, who looked coked up, yelled that we could all “suck [his] CAAAACCCCKKKKK,” and then they started to play. it was like they’d been together for years…you were there, and you! and you! and it was alllllriiiiiiight. but only just.
the strokes: the biggest band your little sister has never heard of. but not for long. gentlemen, start your marketing machines.
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10 June 2001
BELLE & SEBASTIAN – “JONATHAN DAVID”
i have a love/hate relationship with belle & sebastian, that is to say that i hate myself for loving them and i don’t know how much longer this particular arrangement can last. for the longest time, i hated belle & sebastian; for their image, mostly, and for the handful of songs i had heard. then, upon some advice, i downloaded “lazy line painter jane,” and the spark of love formed in my heart, a spark that would grow into a flame before being sussed out, and then it would begin again. i came to the conclusion (because i always have to justify things to myself) that if the smiths were scottish and not a rock band and if they spent more time staring at their navels than at their reflection in the mirror, they’d be belle & sebastian. the other night, i counted that there were exactly eleven belle & sebastian songs that i unequivocably love; the problem is that i think the remainder is mostly bilge. for every “the boy with the arab strap,” there’s a “family tree,” “belle & sebastian,” and “chickfactor.” any fan or non-fan will tell you that fold your hands was a piece of poo. i’m sorry it’s just the truth, even though “the model” is fantastic, they have something to prove with this new single.
there are two kinds of b&s songs: naively optimistic songs with acoustic guitars and naively optimistic songs with pianos. “jonathan david” falls into the latter category, sounding a bit like “seeing other people” in a minor key. when the vocals began, the true state of my condition was revealed: i learned that i have a very big problem: i discovered that i missed hearing stuart murdoch’s voice. i’ve churlishly commented that murdoch sings like his tongue is too big for his mouth and now, listening to stevie jackson (?), i find myself pining away for ol’ mushmouth who, to my great relief, provides harmony vocals. “i know you like her, well, i like her too, i know she likes you”: listening to the lyrics, it becomes clearly obvious why stuart isn’t on vocals: he’s not playing second fiddle to stevie fucking jackson (?). to fictional alistairs and ashleys, perhaps, but not to his own keyboardist. (of course, there’s always the possibility that jackson wrote it, but i like my reading better.)
it’s hard to say much more about it. it’s good belle & sebastian, you know what you’re in for and you know if it’s for you or not: 60s pop references, key changes, winding passages. what makes a b&s song special is that one part of the song you point to, the part that makes you say “ahhh” and comforts you like a warm spring evening. in “jonathan david,” it’s part of the chorus and the first time it appears is at fifty-nine seconds in, the chorus builds, the drums swell behind it and its set free with a key change. the word emphasized: “love.” as in “i love belle & sebastian.” “jonathan david” lifted the floodgates from my heart and once again my love runs wild like the river and, like the river, it shall never be tamed.
until their next shitty record.
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27 May 2001
BACKSTREET BOYS – “MORE THAN THAT”
several weeks ago, driving home after a long day at work, i was switching through the stations on the radio, stopping at 106.7 lite-fm when i heard one of those songs that makes you wonder if a) you’ve heard it before or b) you’re just crazy for thinking a). well, it turns out that the answer was c) both a and b. the song was the backstreet boys’ “more than that,” their current single. i had heard the song before but i hadn’t really heard it.
the string-kissed “more than that” was one of the very small handful of songs i found salvageable on their black & blue album, a disc that has turned out to be a disappointment in every way imaginable. the most tragic thing about it was the sense that the backstreets weren’t content with just holding hands with your little sister any more; they wanted to neck with your big sis and do something tastefully adult with your mom as well. all the signs were there: the vintage rock n’ roll t’s; the stories of them frequenting strip clubs; appearances on howard stern; publicity shots of the band — greasy hair, goatees, bare chests — looking like punk rock hobos; and the kiss of death itself: self-penned songs. sure, ‘nsync had eclipsed their sales record, but it wasn’t about being popular anymore, it had become a quest for respect.
and so while “shape of my heart” was like a mechanical abba and the uptempo tracks made great use of max martin’s hair-metal-freestyle production, the rest of the album was drearily midtempo with songs about commitment and love (but not love), all to reflect the changes in the groups’ lives, that our backstreet boys were now men, some married, some pushing 30. lost in this haze of good intentions was the string-kissed “more than that,” a song whose overall goodness i recognized at first, but whose actual greatness eluded to me until i heard it stripped of one context and replaced with another, i.e. the playlist of adult contemporary radio. for those unfamiliar with adult contemporary radio, it’s a format from which you can expect a triple play of billy joel-little river band-celine dion; in the midst of such tracks, “more than that” is, as they say, a breath of fresh air, in contrast to their a.c. brethren, it sounds alive and vibrant. with its tight harmonies, a melody that’ll catch you off guard and a balmy arrangement, “more than that” is their best radio song in ages and so it’s a shame that, unlike “shape of my heart” (which at one time was played on top 40) and “the call” (which i’ve never heard on radio, period), it’s limited to one station.
with ‘nsync’s return imminent (whose “pop,” contrary to herr ewing’s opinion, is excellent), never have the bsb seemed so irrelevant, and yet in the end their abandonment of the t.r.l. nation may be the best thing they ever did: our parents are always going to want to listen to music that doesn’t make them feel quite so old. so if the backstreet boys have to hit on my mom, then they can at least do it with material as fine as “more than that,” a single that, however fleetingly, makes maturity sound like a good idea.
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1 May 2001
do you remember rock n’ roll radio?: report from salon on clear channel communications which quietly acquired over 1,200 radio stations in america, including 247 in the top 250 markets. your favorite local station may now be programmed from hundreds of miles away and the djs may even be in an entirely different city.
do they play hardball? oh yeah. do you not want to cross them? according to the representatives for “two platinum rock acts” whose songs were pulled from their stations, no, you don’t. are you going to pay steeply to get your artist on? yes. combining this with a decrease in commercially available singles, is there any way to tell what songs are really popular in this country? sadly, i don’t know.
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REM – “IMITATION OF LIFE”
i have a problem, and all of yer recovery type programs say that the first step is to admit to it. so i will do just that.
i like the new rem single.
it’s good, i don’t know what else to say. except that i do, otherwise what kind of review would this be, eh?
to date, i’ve liked exactly three, count them, three rem songs, which are: “radio free europe”: great chorus; “perfect circle”: sucky band, great song; “at my most beautiful”: tip o’ the hat to beach boys ca. ’65. i’d sum up the reasons i, by and large, hate rem thusly: michael stipe. on one occasion, i essentially stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the man, a long time dream, an opportunity to accost the man, violently if necessary. and, yet, when the moment of truth was upon me i found myself wanting, my hand was mysteriously stayed. perhaps i knew even then what was to come…
when a band enters its third decade of recording, there are usually two routes for them to follow: they stay the path, comfortable with where time has led them, e.g. nick cave and the bad seeds, or they go “back to basics,” “return to their roots” a la u2. by all accounts, r.e.m., at least on this single, have opted for the latter, “imitation of life” sounding like an imit– well, the pun’s so obvious i refuse to insult our collective intelligence. nevertheless, if this is what r.e.m. once sounded like, i fear i may have to trawl through their back catalog. the strings, ducking and dodging around the guitar line, were the first indication that this may actually be worth hearing. then there’s a bit of verse and the chorus begins with something about “sugar cane” but then, and here’s the best part, stipe leaves his pretension at the door and bays a hopeful, optimistic “come on, COME ONNNNN” which, like the best of gregg alexander, makes me want to throw my fist in the air in agreement. from there, it is sent spiraling into the heavens by what i can only call, due to my lack o’ education, a ringing synth solo that sounds for all the world like it’s what that wichita lineman heard on the desolate midwestern plain when he was hanging on the line. cue chorus a few more times and i am utterly hooked.
so, yeah, this new single is alright by me. but so too is the new radiohead album…and more on that when the time calls for it. it’s just been exactly that kind of year: dear reader, it should not surprise you to see me, by year’s end, bopping down the street in a godspeed you black emperor! t-shirt. if there’s one thing, though, that i’ve learned from my time amongst the (REAL!) freaky trigger folks is that everything is worth at least one listen, and that you should never be surprised by your boundless capacity to be surprised.
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26 April 2001
well, tom, as dan indicates over on his blog, i’d bet that it has something to do with the de rigeur condescending attitude towards pop expressed in the slighting of black box, but it also rankles further: it praises st. etienne, the pop group indie folks are supposed to like and, when combined with the opening dis of the ‘box, who incidentally made better dance records than st. et., it epitomizes the pitchfork approach, putting it in the worst possible light when laid bare so egregiously as in this case. beyond that, it’s one of those examples where you’re made to feel guilty or just plain wrong for liking a band, i.e. st. et., because of their fans. not many reviews accomplish both these tasks; is a congrats in order?
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22 April 2001
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