Category: Music

More kudos to the fools who took a perfectly good Masonicesque Veiled Prophet celebration (seriously) and made it into a family-friendly (called sometimes “public-avoided”) event. The people who bring to you Fair St. Louis, which is an apt description of the city and metropolitan area itself, have rescinded their booking of main attraction Smash Mouth:

Smash Mouth, the pop act that was supposed to deliver a hipper, younger crowd to Fair St. Louis, has been booted from the July 4 lineup. Fair officials dropped the act after lead singer Steve Harwell offended employees of Enterprise Rent-a-Car at a corporate party in Orlando this month. Witnesses said Harwell called audience members obscene names.

Fair St. Louis executive director Rich Meyers said that he received a call from Pete Wyatt, a former entertainment chairman for the fair and an employee of Enterprise, who said that “the performance was the most vile, profane thing he had ever seen.” Meyers said, “We can’t take that sort of risk that there will be that sort of behavior in front of families, especially on the evening of the Fourth.”

I suspect that the target of the profanity, St. Louis Illuminati-level string-pulling Enterprise Rent-A-Car, has as much to do with the abrupt change of plans as the obscenity or profanity itself. But jeez, you happening old dudes, let’s just count up the clues that might have indicated the mindset and style of the group, shall we?

• It’s named Smash Mouth, which describes a style of speaking that’s sort of, um, colorful.
• Its first hit album was entitled Fush Yu Mang, alternately entitled on Amazon.com as Fush Yu Mang [EXPLICIT LYRICS]. Fush yu mang is a slurred pronunciation of a Nuyorican spoken unwritten mandate, if you get my drift. If you don’t, you should read this blog more frequently.
• The first line of their first hit (“Walkin’ on the Sun“) is It ain’t no joke I’d like to buy the world a toke. You know, a marijuana cigaret.

Family-friendly? Geez, man, this is rock and roll. Smash Mouth will only be family friendly in thirty years, when the inured children of this generation curse the next-generation corruptive musicians who have scientific methods of actually altering brain waves through sound to cause orgasm or uncontrolled sobbing, or both when Chris Carrabba, Jr., sings.

Looks like the public/private partnership titans in charge of Fair St. Louis hired the wrong six-figure consultants to tell them what’s cool.

Everybody sing!

Outside my window there’s a whole lot of trouble coming,
The cartoon killers and the rag cover clones.
Stack heels kickin’ rhythm of social circumcision.
Can’t close the closet on shoe box full of bones…..
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Kangaroo lady with her bourbon in a pouch
Can’t afford the rent on a bamboo couch
Collecting back her favors cause her well is running dry
I know her act is terminal, but she ain’t gonna die

Slim intoxicado drinking dime store hooch
Is always in a circle with his part-time pooch
Little creepy’s playing dollies in the New York rain
Thinking Bowie’s just a knife.
Ooh the pain.

I ain’t seen the sun since I don’t know when.
The freaks come out at nine.
It’s twenty to ten.
What’s this funk that you call junk?
To me it’s just monkey business.
Get back!

Blind man in the vox that will probably die,
The village kids laugh as they walk by.
A psycho on the edge of this human garbage dump
And the vultures in the sewers are telling him to jump.

Into the fire from the frying pan, tripping on his tongue,
For a cool place to stand.
Where’s this shade that you’ve got it made?
To me, it’s just monkey business.

Monkey business, slipping on the track.
Monkey business, jungle in black.
Ain’t your business if I got no monkey on my back.

Monkey business, slipping on the track.
Monkey business, jungle in black.
Ain’t your business if I got no monkey on my back.

The vaseline gypsies and silicone souls dressed to the socie-tees.
Your hypocrite heartbeat and cheap alibis can’t get you by that monkey.

M-m-m-m-monkey, monkey!

Monkey business, slipping on the track.
Monkey business, jungle in black.
Ain’t your business if I got no monkey on my back.

Monkey business, slipping on the track.
Monkey business, jungle in black.
Ain’t your business if I got no monkey on my back.

Monkey business, you can’t tell me
(Monkey business) if I’ve got the business.
(Ain’t your business) no monkey on my back, yeah! huh!

Monkey business, ness, business.
Don’t give me your business, baby, woah ay!

Dudes, when I was in college, one night I did sit-ups keeping in time to that song. I am pleased to announce I didn’t vomit nor did I cry for my mother when the next song on the cassette, “Slave to the Grind”, began.

(Michele deserves it for slandering one of the greatest forgetable hair hard rock bands of the late 1980s.)

From his column in the Star-Tribune (registration required):

I never really loved R.E.M., because I felt as if I was supposed to love it. C’mon! The guys are brainy-looking, and sometimes their lyrics make Elvis
Costello’s opaque blocks of text look as clear as an Irving Berlin chorus — heck, man, you’re in COLLEGE! You HAVE to love R.E.M.! It’s this or Ratt! Fine. I liked them, but never loved them. Example: “End of the World As We Know It” — it’s Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” for vegan guys with goatees.

Ouch, that’s got to burn the kids with van Dykes up (which were much more popular, and often were confused with, goatees). It undoubtedly bothers them as they middle age that Billy Joel has a longer, more diverse musical career than Stipes and co and is ultimately more relevant.

Of course, even when I was young (and even considered a van Dyke briefly), I preferred Billy Joel. I mean, he sang about being young when he was young, and he sang about aging as he aged. REM? One trick ponies: disaffected youth, even as they grew old. Billy Joel covered that, too, in “Angry Young Man”.

In the September 2003 issue of Speakeasy, the magazine reports on its survey that sought to examine the differences among the generations in its readership and to determine if one or more generation gaps really exist. A handy table condensed some of the highlights:

Graduated from High School In:	1940s and 1950s	1960s	1970s	1980s	1990s	2000s
When you crooned behind your closed bedroom door in high school, which singer did you most often imitate?	Elvis Presley	Joan Baez The Motown Sound	Joni Mitchell Carole King Paul McCartney	Johnny Cash Prince	Tori Amos Madonna	Ani DiFanco

Ani DiFanco? It’s just a typo, I know, because a later cell of the table (most important album from high school) spells her name right (while getting the name of her album Little Plastic Castles wrong). But jeez, it sort of proves the generational gap, wot, that they couldn’t tell at a glance the misspelling?

Or perhaps I am the only one who straddles the generational gaps like a gymnastically-inclined squid.

To celebrate, I switched from the AM oldies station today and put on some Vag Rock. I’m I am not a pretty girl…. that is not what I do…. I ain’t no damsel in distess….. and I don’t need to be rescued….

Yeah!

So, according to Drudge, Alanis Morissette has been protesting United States censorship, by which she means commercial enterprises that ask her to change words in her monobrow lyrics before broadcast. Let’s examine that more closely, shall we?

• She’s a Canadian
• who protested in Canada
• about “censorship” in the United States
• which is not actually censorship, but a negotiation between the producer (Morissette) and a purchaser (radio stations) that didn’t work out according to Alanis’s “artistic” sensibilities.
• She protested this “censorship” by wearing a body suit (not by exposing her actual, slightly dumpy body).

How seriously does she expect anyone to take this protest? Just seriously enough to buy her new album, probably. That’s what the smart people who run her told her, anyway. If she understood or remembered.

For crying out loud, U.S. Censorship. I tell you what, honey, but I will take your point a little more seriously if I knew CBC was showing a little nudity between hockey games and shows about hockey. So if you want to see some bodies, agitate for liberation in your own damn country first. When CBC changes its ways, I’ll personally write my cable company to get it piped down here.

Other sources for the story:

• Yahoo!: Alanis Morissette Celebrates “Censor-Free” Canada At The JUNOS, Canada’s Music Awards: Songstress “Disrobes” on Canadian TV Video Available by Satellite. Good to know it’s available by satellite. Also, appropriate use of scare quotes.
• Reuters: Alanis Morissette attacks “U.S. censorship”.

Others weigh in:

• James Joyner: Alanis Morisette Not Nude. Thankfully not. Remember that one video she did with her bits pixellated? No? Keep repressing it.
• Michael Williams: Or Maybe It’s Just You

Gahhhh! My eyes! It’s Leonard Nimoy singing “The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins”.

I could have lived my life without seeing that.

Over at Signifying Nothing, Chris Lawrence takes Clay Aikens to task for his song “Invisible”. Lawrence decries the lack of subjunctive voice in the following:

If I was invisible
Then I could just watch you in your room
If I was invincible
I’d make you mine tonight
If hearts were unbreakable
Then I could just tell you where I stand
I would be the smartest man
If I was invisible
(Wait… I already am)

Dudes, that’s the second scariest song in the universe next to “Iris“. Let’s just break this down:

• If I was invisible
  Then I could just watch you in your room
  He’s a voyeur, peeping Tom, or valued x10 customer.
• If I was invincible
  I’d make you mine tonight
  Okay, wait a minute. If he were invincible, then he would make you his tonight. You’ve got no choice, he’s invincible, just lie back and enjoy it. Fellows, that’s called rape, and that’s what the word means. Not patting a reluctant fanny. Getting made his by Mr. Invincible, yes.

• If hearts were unbreakable
  Then I could just tell you where I stand
  Hearts were unbreakable? You mean if handcuffs were not so confining and the hoods of police cars such unyielding headrests, don’t you? If you mentioned where you stand, that would be yet one more restraining order in your collection, wot?

• I would be the smartest man
  If I was invisible
  (Wait… I already am)
  The final assertion is the scariest. If he were invisible, he would be watching you in your room tonight. And he admits that he is! Draw the blinds, turn on some running water and a couple of radios, and stop down at the sporting goods store tomorrow for a nice shotgun for when he gets it in his head that he’s invincible.

And they say that video games make people violent. This song is a veritable roadmap to stalking. All the lyrics need is a reference to Google, and all the pieces would be in place.

Pardon my disgust, but I just heard a DJ for KSHE 95, “Real Rock Radio”, identify Guns N Roses “Welcome to the Jungle” as “the title track” to an album. Johnkin’ J!

For you damn kids, “Welcome to the Jungle” was the first track (on side 1, before we had CDs–and we liked it that way) of Appetite for Destruction. But this DJ didn’t know that. Back in the idealized-and-probably-inexistent old days, disk jockeys (back when the discs were bigger than dinner plates, dammit!) knew their music. But now, the Doctors of Rockology don’t know much.

I don’t so much blame public education as I do for the consolidated inifinitization of radio stations, wherein the disk jockeys are all utility infielders, plugged into whatever genre of music the home office determines needs a “resource.” This explains why drive time guys from the light hits stations suddenly find himself running the morning shows on country and western stations–no knowledge of Kenny Rogers or Hank Williams required!

Sorry, but it irks me. These guys dispense asides and information about what you hear on the radio, and they don’t necessarily know the truth, nor how the particular work or individual talent fits into the tradition of the style of music. And they don’t care to learn, because it’s not important. Not as important as their careers, which will soon take them out of this mid-sized market, and if they’re lucky, will land them in the overnights in a major market, regardless of whether they know or even like the damn music they play. It’s just a job, and where their enthusiasm and knowledge of the music leaves off, their knowledge of established sophomoric radio tricks, such as the novel prank phone call, takes up.

Welcome to the jungle, indeed.

Roger Freeman, gossip reporter, does the previously unthinkable and always the unpalatable:

He suggests a Billy Joel duet with Dido.

Noooooooo! The Piano Man with the….the founder of Carthage? Whatever will this trollop be known as in thirty years other than the Trivial Pursuit answer to the question about Stan?

104.1 WMLL “The Mall” in St. Louis has become the first all-Christmas carol radio station. They’re touting it, of course, as the first, which should imply the best, but really just means the station whose regular format (greatest hits of the 1980s and 1990s) is most expendable (least profitable) in the stable and spectrums of radio stations owned by the megabroadcaster in this market. Regardless of the bigger implications, I have listened to it somewhat this weekend.

I was a little disappointed. They ran more “contemporary” Christmas carols, with electric guitars screeching out “Walking in a Winter Wonderland”. Annie Lennox doing Christmas songs? Christmas carols are not the contemporary, they’re timeless. They’re more croon than synth. Bing Crosby, not Natalie Merchant.

I could tolerate the McKenzie Brothers’ “Twelve Days of Christmas”. It’s a light-hearted diversion, and since it’s almost thirty years old, I guess it’s almost a classic in its own right.

I don’t quite understand why they played Jewel’s “Angel Standing By”. I guess it mentions angels, but it’s not a Christmas song. At all.

But I have banished it from my radio dial not for these lapses, which are really flaws and not transgressions. But banished it I have; I was looking to jumpstart my Christmas spirit through musical transfusion, to enjoy the sounds of the seasons since I am not likely to see snow for Christmas again. But this station’s more involved in having its management wink-wink-nudge-nudge that Christmas doesn’t have to be traditional, that it can be hip and smirky. That’s not why I listen to Christmas music when I bother to listen to Christmas music. So enough already.

The transgression?

I could have happily gone through my entire life without learning Cheech and Chong did a Christmas song.

Courtesy of Foreigner:

Feels like the first time
Like it never did before

Mull that over a while, and try to determine if Foreigner really meant to warp reality, or if they were just looking for a good end rhyme for door.

By now, everyone’s mentioned the story of Bruce Willis performing in Iraq for the troops. But what about the rest of us, Mr. Willis?

I realize one guy banging pots with wooden spoons does not a clamor make, but it’s been sixteen years since The Return of Bruno. I love that album.

Time for the Another Return of Bruno, I say. Loudly, over the clang clang clang.

You think Michael Ironside vs Tommy Lee Jones would be a rumble? Well, you’re right.

However, I’ve been thinking about another match-up: The Battle of the Gritty Authentics:

Ani “Folk You” DiFranco
Vs.
Pi “I Go By One Name I Got No Place for a Nickname” nk

Both of them do in-your-face, unapologetic songs that describe the modern female condition. While Pink‘s undoubtedly got a size advantage over the Pierced Pixie and has had radio-played hit songs, Ani DiFranco built her own record label with her bare hands, enduring the heat and the thousand tiny cuts and callouses that the endeavor inflicted, and no one would ever compare Ani to damn Britney Spears–Ani would garrote the offender with a spare guitar string on the spot.

Advantage: DiFranco!

So I was listening to some Ani DiFranco during a long vehicle voyage this month, when I struck it. No, not a motorcycle, since I was heading out of Milwaukee and every Harley-Davidson in the country was on the other side of the highway. I struck upon why I can listen to Ani when she covers some of the same themes I have maligned Matchbox Twenty for covering over and over.

For example, the failed relationship between a person and a woman. Ani DiFranco covers this ground in her song “Marrow” while Matchbox Twenty did it in their hit “If You’re Gone“. Both songs depict the member of the opposite sex in a less than flattering light, but not with the same skill:

Ani DiFranco	Rob Thomas
cuz i got tossed out the window of love’s el camino and i shattered into a shower of sparks on the curb. you were smoking me weren’t you between your yellow fingers, you just inhaled and exhaled without saying a word.	I think you’re so mean

So Ani’s got a little more lyrical depth. Matchbox Twenty’s collective emotions run from A (self-pitying emotions when dumped, a la “Rest Stop” or “If You’re Gone”) to B (self-pitying emotions when you don’t belong, such as “Bent”,”Crutch” “Disease” or “Unwell”).

Ani DiFranco can capture the ins, from “Shameless” to “Hell Yeah” to “Shy“, and the outs, such as or “Out of Range“. No one’s better at capturing the worst, most poignant song, the love song about a couple who almost made it, such as “School Night” or “Both Hands“, or the songs about love yet to be resolved (“The Diner”). I won’t even begin troubling you with her political or girl power lyrics.

How about the music pacing and variation? Oh, yeah.

Face it, Matchbox Twenty, or matchbox twenty, or m20 or whatever the hell they’re going to be for their next album, has two speeds: Slow Moody Grunge Lite, like “If You’re Gone”, and Regular Moody Grunge Lite, which is everything else that moves a half speed faster.

Ani, on the other hand, varies tempos and even styles. From I-Wish-I-Were-At-A-Slam “Coming Up” spoken word to “Little Plastic Castle” I-Am-A-Folk-Song-Ha!-Tricked-You-I-Am-Ska, Ani varies the rythym and tempo as well as the theme.

Ani DiFranco’s a grown up, and a person who’s, for lack of a better term, thirtysomething can listen to Ani. Her many albums provide enough variation that an aging Gen Xer can wallow in self-evaluation with her, without riding the path enough to rut it. Ani’s music grows with us, and we with it.

If someone reading this feels like it, pass the memo to Robbie and crew. I don’t think he’d listen to me if I told him.

Also, please, no one mention to the Republican National Committee that I even know who Ani DiFranco is. I so treasure those personal mass mailings from Dick Cheney.

Song	Sung By	Backed Up By
“Don’t Forget Me When I’m Gone“	Glass Tiger	Bryan Adams (for Heaven’s sake!)
“My Life“	Billy Joel	Peter Ceterra (from Chicago, you damn kids! No, not that Chicago)
“Stormfront“	Billy Joel	Richard Marx (the only act I have seen twice on the same tour, werd!)
“Put On Your Little Brown Shoes“ “C’est Le Bon“	Supertramp	Ann and Nancy Wilson (partying Heartily, no doubt)

That’s what I could think of off the top of my head.

I have so much good bar bet trivia roaming in my head, I should go to bars and bet more frequently.