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The music video is dead! Long live the music video?
"Total Request Live" gets the ax from eMpTyV because, the suits there have said, that the show's target audience—tweens, teens, and collegians not working during the afternoon hours the show originally ran and/or the next morning when it was rerun—were now in the habit of consuming the show's staple feature—music videos with what became an increasingly erratic relevance to the rest of the American popscape—on the interweb. The cable station in question continues to annually fete the audio-visual vignettes that provided its original raison d'etre seemingly out of historical self-importance, a welcome respite from a spate of spoiled prats and daredevil idgits' "reality" shows, and who the heck else is going to honor those short-short-subjects with tacky astronaut statues, right?
Apart from my idiot box's lack of cable or satellite dish connection, due to a change of residence earlier this year—after which futile hours in person and on the phone with represenatives from the televisionistically monopolistic company that had provided me with cable service led me no closer to my pre-move price and channel selection combination (and the resumption of the free year of HBO I was supposed to have gotten for complaining about the cancellation of Logo from my menu if only because I liked watching gay guys dressed more stylishly than their hetero counterparts delivering the news and—whaddaya know?!—its music videos), the eMpTyV suits are probably right.
Hey, I set my browser to YouTube to check out the latest Britney Spears and Pussy Cat Dolls vids after hearing the songs on the radio (and seeing Spears in a black wig from that vid in an issue of my free subscription Star) and wondered how they translated filmically, like the million-plus before me. But for all the production values spent on making the former Mrs. Federline and Nicole Scherzinger and her burlesque'y cohort look sexyglossytastygood, the effect is diminished considerably when the picture's shrunk down and crapped up. To give platinum-selling guys whose music I like lately their due, too, the last couple of high concept Jonas Brothers clips must lose some in translation from seeing them on a TV screen set to The Disney Channel (where I'm guessing they've been in some kind of rotation) to your viral video site of choice.
It would be easy to go to any of those sites, plug in names of bands you already know and love and who have footage you've never laid eyes on (The Monks!) or stumble upon new curiosities via the proper keyword (Fecal Corpse!). (I wouldn't have boldfaced the aforementioned acts in parentheses if I hadn't done it already; trust me, OK?)
There's another kind of thrill, however, in happening upon a trove of viral music videos that represent someone else's memories that half the time (maybe) coincide with your own. Such has been the thrill (mostly) for me upon encountering 80sMusicVids.com.
Yeah, yeah, I know you got a largely Reagan Decade buzz of reminiscence from me, last time out, wth the recollections of the songs I'd have liked to have heard at my high school class reunion. That was different because (1) it was just the music; the couple times I went to video dance clubs in the '80s, it was tough paying attention to the aural wallpaper because my mind was on my terpsichorean revelry and keeping a connection with my partner/s on the floor and not whatever was on the jumbotrons astride me, even if they were clips for songs I'd requested and (2) this site has actually hipped me to music from around the world!
Whatever anonymous party put together this repository of over 1000 vids (the "feedback" link connects to a page that says "Sorry, this module isn't active!"; there goes congratulating the compiler) must have been quite a traveler. Or, from what I'm guessing was a home in continental Europe or somewhere in the United Kingdom, had access to TV signals from all over the place. In fact, a good lot of what's compiled here isn't strictly music vid'age, but excerpts from music-based TV shows such as England's "Top of the Pops" and Germany's "Disco". I'd swear at least a couple of the clips I've perused must come from the Eurovision song contest, as well. Softly rockin' Japanese '90s band Every Little Thing makes the cut, too, sounding enough to be from the previous decade to justify their inclusion for whomever created the site.
The chronological swath cut by the vids contained therein cuts in the other direction, too. Country queen Dolly Parton and randy ska/reggae toaster Judge Dread turn up wth tunes froim the first half of the '70s (though in performances, perhaps, from the URL's eponymous ten-year stretch). And those who lived through it ought to know that it was at least as much the giddy electro-analytical apocalypse of Robin "M" Sott's "Pop Muzik" that brought new wave into mass consciouness as those leery Los Angelino Beatles-wannabe's in The Knack (not on the site, thank Jah) .
But all those above-mentioned acts are ones I know and own stuff by (even, alas, The Knack). The greater joy in this anonymous assemblage is discovering people whose music I'd honest-to-goodness buy. Or wait until I see a new reissue collection to request a promo of it to review.
I have this site to thank for letting me hear the kind of Italo disco I'd only read about back when it was charting in most any country other than mine (Fun Fun), co-ed kooks from the Fatherland with a penchant for fusing internationalist adventure with dancefloor bombast (Dschinghis Khan), artsy French gals whose videos are rife with ambiguous symbology just like so much of their country's longer cimematic works (Desireless, Guesh Patti), and one Dutch Jamie Lee Curtis-looking looker coming on like what Sheena Easton's dancey side might have come to sound like had Prince not gotten his hands on her studio's control knobs (C.C. Catch). Apart from country, Americans represent a wide spectrum of metal (Alice Cooper to Exodus), punk (Black Flag, Dead Kennedys), R&B (Midnight Star, Evelyn "Champange" King), artheads that fell into the new wave camp by default (Laurie Anderson, The Residents), a touch of house (Lil Louis, Steve "Silk" Hurley), and hip-hop from its soulfully sampling side (Eric B & Rakim, Kool G Rap & DJ Polo) to its more synthetic sibling (Mantronix, Mann Parrish).
The best/worst of the true music videos collected here (and really, so many of these are a toss between the adjectives on either side of that slash) gave me a brainstorm. Enough time has certainly elapsed since the rise and fall of the age of the music video as a collective, communal, cultural experience watched around home and college cafeteria TVs—the latter being the only place where I've, to date, seen certain vids by Suicidal Tendencies and Killing Joke—not to mention those video discos (an oxymoron, that) of yore. There has already been a series of DVD collections of music vids categorized by their directors, some of whom have gone on to tread feature-length footsteps in Hollyweird. Why shouldn't there be a music video film festival (or several) where aesthetes can view them gathered by filmic or musical genre to be judged as the works of art/schlok they always really were? Whether new submissions should be included in the first of such a fest is something I'll leave up for debate, for the moment.
How about it? Viewing the past—even one comprised of componenent you don't recognize—doesn't have to be nostalgia if you're seeing something new in it, right?
P.S. I recently read that eMpyTV is getting back to re-emphasizing music vids...online! (Why, just now, did I feel like Triumph the Comic Insult Dog pausing to say "...poop on you!" at the end of a sentence?) Anyway, I can't stop you from supporting the middling MTVMusic.com if you really see fit to do so. Just don't expect the complete assortment of clips the station has ever played. And do expect selections by country acts that were never played on the Web site's actual cathode ray complement. |
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For a variety of reasons, '08 wasn't a year of copious concert attendance for me. Have I kvetched here before about missing Kraftwerk less than 90 minutes away from me this past spring? Ach! Don't get me started about that...or a few others shows I would have loved to have seen.
Most of those regrets dissolve into nothingness, however, upon recalling one truly memorable recent performance. And it wasn't even intended to be a proper gig.
In early November, I went with some older men from my town to Ethan Allen School, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections facility for delinquent young males. It was my first time to participate in EAS' weekly Saturday morning chapel service, with which my companions have been involved on a thrice-yearly-basis for some time.
I had no expectations, not knowing the first thing about how events like that are conducted at a place like that (where, incidentally, my mom threatened to send me, every now and again, when I was being an incorrigible kid).
The fiery preaching by the Euro-American Baptist pastor in our throng was as sincere as it was exegetically logical, and the school's chaplain, a beatific African-American gent who was nothing but welcoming to us white guys there to share with kids mostly closer to his higher melanin level. My own understanding of the Bible causes me to bristle a tad at decisionist beckonings to receive salvation (that is, altar calls), but if God can use them and the kids are sincere, no problem, I reckon. Some of the guys staying at EAS have a choir. Those youthful voices full of heart—and, maybe, desperation—might well have sufficed on their own. And their drummer? WOW! I didn't get the youngster's name, but the funky way he was playing off and around his own beats had me thinking maybe Clyde Stubblefield has a grandson who took a criminal turn and got rerouted by the Holy Spirit while incarcerated. (Stubblefield, for you who don't know, was James Brown's drummer from 1965-70, so the man knows from funkiness; that he's landed leading a band in Madison, Wisconsin numbers among the numerous "go figure" scenarios in modern pop music.)
The only song I recognized among their repertoire was John P. Kee's "Jesus Is Real", but I'm sure the rest of their few songs were from established soul-gospel acts. To my ears, the closest similaritry their sound evoked is the co-ed choir-and-drum kit of '70s Detroit group The Voices of Conquest, compiled on Good God!: A Gospel Funk Hymnal (Numero Group).
Maybe there are similar choirs in juvenile deterntion homes throughout the country. Maybe I happened on the hottest of the lot. No matter; I'm wanting to bring recording equipment the next time I join my friends to minister at Ethan Allen. (learn more; learn even more; learn more still)
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Give me grief for upholding the pop bona fides of Disney darlings such as Selena Gomez and Miley Cyrus should you do deem it necessary to your self-worth, but it's not my fault teenage girls with too much time on red carpets are responsible for some of the most scintillating hooks on the radio nowadays.
Exhibit 1: The utter sassiness of how Gomez annunciates "Oh!" in the really subversively empowering (and hooky as a tackle box) "Tell Me Something I Don't Know." Ow!
Exhibit 2: the buildup to the final fussilade of "Fly On The Wall" by the Cyrus who sings better than her father (Billy Ray) and her brother (Trace of the risible Metro Station), where she is roughly as much a threat as she is an ambiguous delight before erupting in that "Hey!", and that chorus that has me thinking of "Memory Lane" by underrated protean '80s new wavers Daniel Amos
If she can hold onto the virtue she espouses but of which she sometimes appears to be a confused example, it's nigh scary to think of what a dynamo she can be by the time she's old enough to vote. And am I itching to hear the soundtrack to the next season of the show that propelled her to the heights of scalpers' concert ticket prices, "Hanna Montana", and that of the animated feature in which she has the co-voice lead, Bolt? 'Bet I am!
Her co-star in the latter, John Travolta, however, should never again be let into a recording studio. And I'm hopeful Cyrus' and Gomez's fractious rivalry can simmer down to one of a professional variety where they aim to fortify the bubblegummy sugar buzz of their aural confections for musical freaks such as yours truly.
If you need them, and maybe you do...
(learn more; learn even more; learn more still)
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Its very title should have bristled against so many of my musical appreciation sensibilities that I should be congratulating myself for not having given the press release for it a second thought. But something drew me to veteran music critic/author DAVE THOMPSON's I Hate New Music: The Classic Rock Manifesto (Backbeat/Hal Leonard). Maybe it was a quest to reconcile my life before writing about what a good friend insists to me is "critics' music" wth the alienation I've felt every so often when people in my immediate circles of geographic acquaintance talk about non-critics' rock music. Maybe it was the audacity of the book's title signaling a valid perspective I've been too far up my own critic's music-drenched backside to have considered any earlier.
The latter did happen. Thompson's British roots and life in America gives him a balanced view of the unsung merits of that time when "rock" jettisoned its "'n roll" and birthed music that endures so vibrantly that it's the bedrock for an entire radio format that the mid-'70s punk influx couldn't demolish.
Thompson's tongue remains embedded in his cheek far enough to elicit out-loud laughs several times over. The yuks don't, however, smother his largely salient observations. Those boil down to a a handful of easily summarized points—among them that, these days, it's nearly impossible to make breathtakingly original music that doesn't lean too heavily on the past; the death knell of rocking commercially with any semblance of germinal sonic passion came with a handful of releases in '78; the use of the synthesizer in non-prog rock is highly suspect at best; and though The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and a handful of other acts own and rule, enough respect is due for Queen (that assertion got me to thinking, and I concede to it) and the mighty demi-sham that is Spinal Tap. And his analysis of the good and ill fortune of pop music's increased respectability in the post Band Aid age reads pretty trenchently, too.
A reading of Thompson's 1968-76 Classic Rock Top 100 is surprisingly generous, if a touch frustrating (Gary Glitter, but no Ted Nugent?!), but he outright acknowledges the ultimate un-definitiveness of such lists.
If ever, as I have, you've given too short a shrift to the prime eras of Aerosmith and Foghat and The Rolling Stones' jetsetting peak, and if so much of hipster indie/collegiate musical allegiance gives you an inchohate sense of déjà vu, you'd do well to harken to Thompson's wry, almost Solomonic musings. Everything old maybe can't help but be new again; but, at least with Thompson, you can laugh at how the mess turned out. (learn more; learn even more)
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Having just concurred with that indictment of most everything going on in music of the past 30-plus years that purports to rock, do I dare proceed to some reviews of albums not that old? Yes. So, go there with me, 'K?
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ABOVE THE GOLDEN STATE Above The Golden State (Sparrow)
I like their name (they're from Oregon, which is above California...get it?). I'm mystified by the presence of the bear in their logo and album graphics. And as a contempo Christian pop-rock band, there are worse, Lord knows. But isn't it a mite funny (peculiar, not ha-ha) that ATGS only gets consistently engaging once the trio starts using Jesus' name in the lyrics and the occasional minor key? They're the likeable guys who are surely fun company, but who you wish would stop trying to be so...uh...mainstream. Whether that's the curse of their producers shooting for the median so endemic to cCm or the burden of a band recording a tad too soon, 'can't say, but will trust brighter things for them lie ahead. And I'd be game to take them out for pizza. (learn more; learn even more)
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BLACK DIAMOND HEAVIES A Touch Of Someone Else's Class (Alive Natural Sound)
Ooh! Ohio trio with neo-'60s punk aspirations, fuzzed out production sounding making The Mummies sound like Emerson, Lake & Palmer, a thang for gritty '60s soul and blues from earlier'n that, a singer sounding like a nephew shared by Dr. John and Tom Waits and a quote from Job in the liner notes. Perhaps exactly the kind of derivativeness the aforementioned Thompson decries, but so fun he might find the heart to forgive them. (learn more; learn even more)
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CALI (a/k/a CALLAN LANE) Christmas This Year (Levity)
The teen blonde's best trick on her holiday EP is recontextualizing a Madonna dusty into a Yuletide anthem, suonding much like a mid-'80s John "Jellybean" Benitez production to further the Madgey effect. Elsewhere, she's overloaded with vocal effects on the Xmas classics she remakes, includes a theologically complete (if strangely worded) slow closing number and a titular tune that sounds like she wants to bring home a baby or a pet. OK, enough, but methinks gal can do better. (learn more; learn even more—'Wear Levi's? You're funding this label! Weird?)
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SALME DAHLSTROM The Acid Cowgirl Audio Trade (Kontainer)
Salme Dahlstrom can consider herself artistically successful since she cites bigbeat and techno architects such as Fatboy Slim and The Crystal Method as influences. That's because the lady sounds like she ought to be the pop muse for whom those blokes should be writing instead of using all those crazy samples so often. Though a medium layer of effects coat her sturdy voice sometimes, she mashes up simple party sentiments, sexual politics (of course, guys like screwing, Salme!), and a side helping of non-sectarian peacenikism and hope. All amid some fiercely stuttering and sampled metallic riffage. A lot of what you might've wished Deee-Lite to become and Lady GaGa to be are manifested in Dahlstrom. Yay! (learn more)
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FAREWELL FLIGHT Sound.Color.Motion (The Easy Company)
The publicist friend who sent me this Pennsylvanian band's début full-length first heard them on "World Café". That explains much of what I like about them. Such as how they're piano-heavy, slighty edgy pop with a singer I like better than The Fray's Isaac Slade. That, in turn, may explain why these guys make a reasonable case for Ben Folds being an unwitting forebear of emo. Yep, Farewell Flight's got confessionally heart-on-sleeve and philosophical lyrics, insinuating melodies, and those 88 keys (plus strings). And a cover that looks like it came from a swanky '50s jazz LP. They'll probably grow on me s'more.
(learn more)
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VEDA HILLE This Riot Life (Ape House)
It's my introduction to this Canadian art-pop singer-songwriter, but it's her 12th solo longplayer. Herein, she reconstructs some Christian hymnody ('can't tell where she is spiritually, herself ) to mourn personal tragedies. Somewhere between Tori Amos without all the guy'n' God issues and a more domesticated Björk lies Hille's inventively arranged, dryly memorable ruminations (though she may owe a similar debt to Philip Glass that Sufjan Stevens does). 'Easy enough to hear why XTC''s Andy Partridge signed her to his label. (learn more; learn even more)
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JOEY + RORY The Life of a Song (Sugar Hill)
For opening their first project with a song excoriating Music Row's calculation for hit prediction, and following with a tribute to one of their musical heroines (Emmylou Harris), I wanted to dismiss this married duo's reflexivity. No could do. Joey Martin has the sweetest, most classic new female voice in commercial country since gospel-bluegrass transplant Sonya Isaacs, and she and hubby Rory Feek make some of the rootsiest county to get serious radio play in an eon or so. When they're not talking down white trash adulteresses, talking up their boots, or newgrassily reinventing Lynard Skynard, it gets almost too intimate, and they've at least 1.5 downright tearjerkers. So, here's forgiving them their presumptuous chutzpah for turning on my waterworks big-time, etc.. (learn more; learn even more)
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MARY MARY The Sound (Columbia)
This is the R&B gospel sister duo's most ambitious album since they started cranking out praises and such in '99. Don't know what inspired them to give rapper David Banner the mic (huh?; let's see if his next album cuts out the cussin' like Chamillionaire has), but kudos to the sibs for their strongest club banger in awhile, probably inventing surfabilly gospel and, what the heck, revisiting their Jackson 5 fixation, along the way. Calling the Lord their Superfriend, though? Hmmm...
(learn more; learn even more)
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NEWWORLDSON Salvation Station (Inpop)
A band un-pigeonhole-able but wonderful as NewWorldSon shouldn't be all that tough a sell. Four Canadians with an electro-acoustic bluesy/soul incorporating spy movie licks, rocksteady, more rural folk genres, and jazzy snazziness? Think of NewWorldSon as a more northerly, sanctified recasting of The Blasters, and you're at least warm on their path. I've read of how Al Green's gospel singing is a sublimation of sexual impulse into spiritual ecstasy. NWS seems like a white dudes' parallel to my ears. And if the American Evangelighetto hasn't taken too bright a shine to their bucolic eclecticism, they're getting more love among their fellow Canucks and Europeans. And, for pity's sake, someone get these fellas on the folk circuit, or "A Prairie Home Companion", eh? (learn more; learn even more)
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PEZZETINO Because I Have No Control (self-released)
Her real name is Margaret. She plays accordian (and piano). And she specializes in a kind of post-punk revisionism that renders her keyboards as the bouys to float her forelorn visions of romantic doom and personal alienation. That's a smidge strange, since I got a rather chipper feeling from corresponding with her to obtain this premiere of hers. And, oh yeah, she's from Wisconsin and beneficiary of my infrequent perogative to help acts from my state get over. May this help toward that end. (learn more)
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SLANK Anthem for the Broken Hearted (MRI)
One of Indonesia's biggest rock acts, Slank, makes its U.S. launch with an album title seemingly torn from Bon Jovi's playbook but has more classicist sensibilities than XX-chromosome-friendly hairspray metal. Instead, they exude '70s glammy vibes, with the slightly fractured English that one might assume comes with living half a planet away from the country of their music's origin. Some of their homeland hits apparently reflect on native political situations, but you wouldn't know it from the girl craziness mostly professed in their songs. Interesting? Yes, but that's one of those non-committal words. Expecting better next time. (learn more)
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VARIOUS ARTISTS P Is For Panda Mix Tape Vol. 1 (P Is For Panda/Hopeless)
There's plenty to appreciate about P Is For Panda Records (and its clothing division—shades of that Levity/Levi's connection?) apart from the label's dandily wordy name. Splitting money made on any given release between the record company, the act who recorded said release, and whatever charity that act deems worthy of the other third of the returns makes for a model of social responsibilty more enterprises foisting recorded music on an outwardly insatiable public might do well to emulate.
Now, maybe it's because this is the last in my nearly-one-per-every-week-since-my-last-installment review. Or maybe it's the after-effects of the Dave Thompson book I devoured over the past week, but the arists contributing to this sampler just ain't doing much for me. Some power-pop (for which I'm usually a drop dead sucker, regardless its apparent formalism), alt-country, jangly recollections of '80s collegiate rock, earnest folkies, dashes of Springsteenian epicry and other indie-isms likely well-represented over the past ten years of CMJ 's main chart. That caveat covered, the second half of these 16 songs do more for me, more or less, than the first. Names to know among the PIFP roster, and that of contributing sister labels: Mike Dunn, Pasadena, J.R. Rund, Gasoline Heart and Damion Suomi. Try me in a few months, and I may be crazy for one or more of the previously mentioned. But not right now. Best to the label and its good intentions, all the same. (learn more)
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Have my musings and meandering ever aided you in spending some of your disposable income on any musical plesasures? I'm here to help, y'know. And if my advice on steering you to solid sounds isn't quite so impeccable as mine has been in directing friends to worthwhile restaurants, let me know how I might've inadvertently disappointed you, too. I'm not giving money-back guarantees, but I'd like to think I'm up to taking whatever criticism you can dish out.
eMail your comments to me or find me at...
P.O. Box 29
Waupun, Wisconsin 53963-0029
USA
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