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oneweekoneband · 4 years ago

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Some Context

I keep referring to BTMI! songs’ critiques of the “punk scene,” and I realize that I should give some context on what that meant at that particular moment in time. My account is going to be a little muddled because I didn’t actually live through most of what I’m about to recount (well, OK, I lived through it, but I was too young to understand it until I became a teenager at the very end of the era), so I apologize if this comes across as inauthentic or second-hand – the best I can say is that even if I wasn’t “there,” I felt the ripples and aftershocks of the tensions within the punk scene throughout my teenage years and beyond.

I don’t want to sound like I’m idealizing the past too much, so I’ll say that if my study of the genre’s history reflects any kind of reality, we can safely say that punk rock, for all its rebellious posturing, has always had a commercial aspect to it. Hell, everyone knows the story of how Malcolm McLaren assembled the Sex Pistols as a kind of “anti-boy band” specifically to make money. But it wasn’t until the 90s that punk became a business institution. And this turn of events revolves largely around the rise of a “sub-genre” of punk that has now become the first thing most young listeners think of when they hear the word: pop-punk.

The biggest pop-punk bands of the 90s (Green Day and Blink-182 being the most notable examples) enjoyed a steady rise to mainstream popularity from the time of their origins until many reached the kind of “superstar status” previously reserved for what were known in the 70s and 80s as “arena rock” bands. This was largely unprecedented, and it fundamentally changed how punk as a genre was approached from a musical and political standpoint. By the mid-2000s, punk became an opportunity to make big money, upping the stakes for anyone trying to get a piece of the pop-punk pie.

At the same time, pop-punk began a fragmentation into increasingly stratified subgenres that attempted to alter what some saw as a disappointingly formulaic approach to counter-culture. Thus we got emo*, metalcore, and, of course, ska-punk. The irony of this genre stratification was that the subgenres proved to be just as restrictive and formulaic as pop-punk, if not more so: metalcore bands must have tuned-down guitars and screamed vocals, ska-punk bands must have a horn section, downbeats on the 2 and 4, and sections that alternate between ska and hardcore, etc. And with these subgenre divisions came further divisions of punk fans into cliques that frequently fought amongst each other for the spotlight, each claiming to be the true successor to the iconoclasm of the original punk movement. On top of all this, some punks with noisier/avant-garde leanings that could smell the stagnation coming found solace in rejecting any kind of commitment to pretty much anything, adopting a cheap irony to shield themselves from the self-parody they might otherwise be accused of. But instead of opening up new creative avenues, this stance tended to lead only to a callousness that encouraged making fun of almost anyone who claimed to take what they were doing seriously, creating a race to the bottom for who could appear to care the least.

This is the scene I imagine Jeff grew up through; I merely grew up in the midst of it. This was already the state of punk rock by the time I started listening to it in the late-2000s. Naturally, Jeff had a lot to say about it. His music and lyrics in BTMI! frequently challenged the apparent incoherence of playing punk rock in the 21st century. Perhaps the fact that he started from a position in it considered (by the mid-2000s, although Propagandhi had already released “Ska Sucks” in 1993) to already be deserving of mockery, that of the much-derided ska-punk scene, is part of what gave him the vantage point he had. BTMI! started with songs in a genre already considered to be obsolete, and Jeff sounded like he was fully aware of this from the start; he sings and plays with irony, but it’s a different kind of irony than that of the callous hipster types that had started to dominate the scene at that time. BTMI!’s sense of irony feels like it’s laughing both at and with itself, like a person who knows exactly how ridiculous they look in doing something but goes ahead and does it anyway. And there’s a freedom in this, the freedom that comes from both self-awareness and shaking off the chains of shame simultaneously.

Granted, BTMI! didn’t just play ska-punk – over time, their sound grew more and more diverse as they branched off into different experiments and new arrangements. This was another challenge to the punk scene of the time: a refusal to be pigeonholed and restricted to a single genre. Jeff mentions in some of his notes how much he was inspired by music that falls pretty distinctly outside of the realm of punk, like Neutral Milk Hotel and the Beach Boys, and his own music reflects those influences. BTMI! was more than a ska-punk band, and, against the limited measure of what a punk band could be at that time, more than a punk band as well.

In addition to its ironic malaise, BTMI!’s lyrics also tackled the punk scene’s in-fighting problem and general hostility to anyone perceived to be coming from outside of the culture. Jeff decried gatekeeping and violence at shows, pushing instead for a community based on kindness, positivity, and recognition of what members of the scene have in common. Punk rock is still angry and political in his vision – during the Bush years, how could it not be? – but that anger is also therapeutic, helping to lift up those who come to punk seeking some kind of release from mainstream capitalist drudgery. And even those that don’t care about punk deserved respect; Jeff was a big proponent of not being cruel to the “boring nice people” who weren’t a part of the scene.

One final note for context that doesn’t inform BTMI!’s music as much as my own understanding of it: by the late 2000s, another development occurred within punk, once again to its detriment. The worst aspects of the emo and metalcore movements came together into something that would become known as “the scene,” populated by “scene kids.” Though rejected by most “traditional” punks, this quickly became the most popular subculture of its time, and is likely how the majority of kids in the last couple generations ended up learning about punk as a culture and musical form for the first time. BTMI! didn’t necessarily explicitly address this development (though there are hints of some recognition of it in their lyrics), but their music did stand out in stark contrast to most of the “scene” music of that time. This is partly what attracted me to them so much: they were a punk band that had nothing to do with “the scene,” independent thinkers with a musical vision of their own, willing to mock anything (including themselves) but still seriously committed to what they did because they knew that was what they wanted.

*Yes, I know that the roots of emo reach further back, but I’m talking about when it began to solidify into what we recognize to be “emo” today – let’s face it, Rites Of Spring is a far cry from My Chemical Romance, or even, I don’t know, Cap’n Jazz.

#Bomb The Music Industry!#BTMI!#Punk #Punk rock

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deadcactuswalking · 4 years ago

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REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 03/04/2021 (Lil Nas X’s “MONTERO”, Mimi Webb, Russ Millions & Tion Wayne)

So, we have a #1 debut, and that’s pretty much the only story here in the UK Top 75 as we get a filler week before Demi Lovato, Olivia Rodrigo and Lil Tjay run in and cause havoc. As for now, “Wellerman” is replaced at the top by Lil Nas X’s controversial “MONTERO (Call Me by Your Name)”, spending its first week at #1 after making pretty sudden gains assisted by the video and alternate versions – the mid-week projection had this at #15. Elsewhere, we just see the fall-out from Bieber. Welcome back to REVIEWING THE CHARTS.

Rundown

It’s a quiet week – only seven new entries, and none from Rod Wave, 24kGoldn or AJR as I had predicted. That doesn’t mean there isn’t some stuff to talk about within the chart, or particularly off of the chart, as we have a fair few drop-outs switching their places with returning entries. In particular, we have Justin Bieber’s “As I Am” featuring Khalid being swapped out for “Anyone” at #25, as well as drop-outs for “Arcade” by Duncan Laurence – slightly premature, I’d think – and all of Lana Del Rey’s songs from last week. We also “Anxious” by AJ Tracey, “Heat” by Paul Woodford and Amber Mark and “Toxic” by Digga D exit the chart, but the only real notable loss was “34+35” by Ariana Grande ending its 21-week run on the chart. Returning to the Top 75 in its place – which I cover – we have “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers of course at #73, as well as “Midnight Sky” by Miley Cyrus at #72, “You’ve Done Enough” by Gorgon City and DRAMA at #70 (really hope this one becomes a hit) and “Don’t You Worry About Me” by Bad Boy Chiller Crew at #66. In terms of climbers and fallers, we do have some notable gains and losses. For songs travelling down the chart, we have “Patience” by KSI featuring YUNGBLUD and Polo G tanking a sharp drop in its third week to #18, “Streets” by Doja Cat shaking off the video gains at #22, “drivers license” by Olivia Rodrigo continuing to collapse at #27, another sharp drop for HVME’s remix of Travis Scott’s “Goosebumps” down to #34 probably due to ACR, which was probably the fate for “Get Out My Head” by Shane Codd at #46. The same probably can’t be said for Drake’s losses, as “What’s Next” is at #40, “Lemon Pepper Freestyle” featuring Rick Ross is at #41 and “Wants and Needs” featuring Lil Baby stalls at #55. We also see falls for “Money Talks” by Fredo and Dave at #50, “Bringing it Back” by Digga D and AJ Tracey at #51, “Sweet Melody” by Little Mix on its way out at #57, “Headshot” by Lil Tjay featuring Polo G and Fivio Foreign down to #61 off the debut (although it’ll rebound thanks to the album as soon as the next week rolls around), “Ready” by Fredo featuring Summer Walker at #62, “You’re Mines Still” by Yung Bleu featuring Drake at #63 and “Day in the Life” by Central Cee at #69. Where it gets interesting are our gains, such as outside the top 40 with “What Other People Say” by Demi Lovato and Sam Fischer which could very well get even higher next week thanks to the album. We also have “Track Star” by Mooski at #53 off of the debut and a couple of tracks entering the top 40 for the first time, those being “Heartbreak Anniversary” by Giveon at #39 and Majestic’s remix of “Rasputin” by Boney M. at #38. Elsewhere in the top 40, we have “Let’s Go Home Together” by Ella Henderson and Tom Grennan at #13 and two songs marking their first week in the top 10, those being “Little Bit of Love” by Tom Grennan at #10, a song continuing to sour on me, and “Your Love (9PM)” by ATB, Topic and A7S, an EDM song at #8 that I initially mocked for its soulless repackaging but has honestly got me pretty hooked since. I’m excited to see how this one does. For now, however, let’s get on with our new arrivals.

NEW ARRIVALS

#64 – “Cloud 9” – Beach Bunny

Produced by Joe Reinhart

Beach Bunny is a power pop band who last year released their album Honeymoon on Mom+Pop and it’s basically a modern r/indieheads staple in that it’s an accessible, airy pop-rock record fronted by a woman. It’s not anything unique, really, or different if you look further into it but that’s fine because there’s a lot of vaguely “indie” or music snob releases pushed out every year that miss the charts entirely. It’s a different story, however, when a year later, it gets viral on TikTok and streams its way onto the chart. In that case, we have “Cloud 9” by Beach Bunny, a pretty simple but sweet love song about a guy who just makes her feel a lot better about herself in times where she can’t pick herself up from the rut she’s in. Again, it’s a simple track but enhanced by the wonderful and unique vocal performance from front-woman Lili Trifilo and some pretty great production making sure no guitar lick is missed in this mix, especially in that chorus which is such an ethereal blend of the electric guitar dubs. I would argue that this actually should end at that second chorus even if it ends feeling abrupt as the transition to the final chorus feels a lot less cathartic than it does awkward, especially if the bridge is going to be a simplistic, quirky instrumental meander that doesn’t go far enough to be a guitar solo and hence feels kind of like a worthless addition. As is, this is a pretty great song still, just not the most fully realised once it loses that initial tight surf groove, though I’ll let it pass if we’re going to get rock this good on the charts again. I know this won’t really get more traction for Beach Bunny – or power pop for that matter – but more of this, please.

#52 – “You All Over Me” (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault) (Remix) (feat. DaBaby) (Part 2) (Radio Edit) – Taylor Swift featuring Maren Morris

Produced by Taylor Swift and Aaron Dessner

Sadly, this does not feature DaBaby and is not the remix, radio edit or sequel to any previously released song. Jokes aside, I guess brackets are the next big comeback for pop music, which goes hand-in-hands with remixes and re-releases, hence why Taylor Swift is dusting off this leaked Fearless-era cut for a new recording with country singer Maren Morris, who you probably know from her contributions to Zedd’s “The Middle”. Now whilst Swift is a great songwriter, I do often find myself frustrated by how she treads common ground all too frequently without establishing much different with how a song is structured or how it emotionally connects. This is true not just lyrically but especially sonically as of recent, as despite being written in 2008, it has too much in common with the less interesting cuts off of folklore for me to really care that much. That’s especially if Taylor’s going to undercut the clean acoustic guitars with flourishes of harmonica and crow sound effects, showing some genuine intrigue here before refusing to let any of that develop past a couple stray melodies or notes further back in the mix. I’m trying really hard to be compelled by these re-recordings and re-releases of her back catalogue as I do consider myself a fan, but it’s tough to pay attention when any new compositions we get sound like folklore leftovers with Maren Morris only put to use as decoration, much like HAIM on “no body, no crime” – and we already got an album full of folklore leftovers. I’m not a fan of this, sorry – I can see the appeal, and I do think this has enough of a country tinge to it to make it at least somewhat interesting – but this goes in one ear and immediately out of the other.

#48 – “Tonight” – Ghost Killer Track featuring OBOY and D-Block Europe

Produced by Ghost Killer Track and Kenzy

Screw the formalities and screw the analysis because D-Block Europe are back to add another D-Block to their EU collection – and since they’re Londoners, their only – and that’s Paris, and contrary to the British nature, we’ve let French rap chart in the top 50 out of the fact that they collaborated with two of the most comical rappers in British history. They’ve also linked up with producer Ghost Killer Track, also from France, as this is ostensibly his song even if he intends not to prove himself with this dull piano-based beat and oddly-mastered bass and percussion, which are really just DBE staples. Unfortunately, past the initial comedy of that first line in the chorus, neither Young Adz or Dirtbike LB deliver any stupid lyrics or funny inflections, instead just resorting to being as boring as they can in their constant flexing as possible. I guess the French guy here, OBOY, commands a higher energy in his verse if only through his comical “no, no, no” ad-libs, but he’s the only French speaker in an otherwise basic British trap song that I just cannot see the appeal in when we’ve had song after song from these guys for three years now. This won’t be the last we see of cookie-cutter UK rap this week though so brace yourselves for that.

#47 – “Last Time” – Becky Hill

Produced by LOSTBOY

It’s almost as if the charts are trying to send me off to sleep as here we have Becky Hill, a singer hedging the line between a non-presence and mildly annoying, which is arguably more frustrating than downright infuriating as her slightly smokier voice does not sound bad, just lacking in texture in every way, especially if the multi-tracking is going to be this minimal on a royalty-free deep-house beat produced by Getty Images with a pretty worthless drop, a generic and simple melody of piano stabs for major chords, and a whole bunch of reverb on the vocal take... but it still ends up feeling dry as there’s nothing here to quench that thirst for a tighter, bass-heavy house banger or even a more ethereal, dreamy trance track, deciding to stick to a healthy medium of boring and utter garbage. Yes, that was a singular sentence. I’m not awake enough to form a cohesive sentence less than 40 words long, and this new Becky Hill track is just worsening that if anything. Speaking of...

#21 – “Body” – Russ Millions and Tion Wayne

Produced by Gotcha Bxtch

Who’s Russ Millions? He’s Russ. No, not that Russ. British Russ – or Russ Splash, stylised as Russ splash on Spotify and nowhere else. This confusingly-named fellow appeared on the charts a couple times and possibly most famously with “Keisha & Becky”, a song also featuring Tion Wayne that is referenced on this very track. Sigh, I usually like Tion Wayne but even he can’t be bothered to delivery his usual brand of suave charm or sinister menace, instead opting for a more growling but ultimately completely monotone cadence that doesn’t flatter him or Russ, who one of my friends described as sounding like one of the aliens from Toy Story. This is a pretty by-the-numbers drill beat too, and it’s pretty safe to say that neither Russ or Tion Wayne here are going to bother with wordplay, even when they start pretty smoothly trading bars and Tion Wayne goes for a more unique chopper flow in the second verse. This is just not of any note. Once again, speaking of...

#17 – “Good Without” – Mimi Webb

Produced by Freedo

I assumed Mimi Webb debuted this high because of a talent show she won or something because I’d never heard her name but instead, she just happened to have a major label deal before her unreleased song just happened to go viral on TikTok and just happened to be supported by one of the women who just happened to be the biggest creator on the platform. Yeah, and this song just happened to be garbage, suffering from every possible millennial pop trope and then some, from the mix dressed rather too overtly in reverb, the ugly guitar pluck, a generic indie-girl voice that you swear you’ve heard before in one of those dreadful piano covers of popular songs they use in adverts, as well as this ballad being undercut by badly-programmed trap percussion. I can tell this label is trying to create somewhat of an Olivia Rodrigo phenomenon from this and I for one am terrified of the Poundland knock-offs to come. Screw this.

#1 – “MONTERO (Call Me by Your Name)” – Lil Nas X

Produced by Roy Lenzo, Omar Fedi and Take a Daytrip

At least Lil Nas X will bring some passion into this chart week? Well, not really, as when I hear this I recall that Pitchfork review of his EP, a much-maligned critique that featured the ever-so pretentious questioning if Lil Nas X really enjoyed making and listening to music. It reminds me because I think I now fully get it – at least when Lil Nas X was making slap-dash pop rock with Travis Barker or meme-worthy country rap with Billy Ray Cyrus for less than two minutes apiece, there was something invigorating in the execution or at least in concept. That 7 EP is still not a bad debut at all, but this new single “MONTERO”, a long-anticipated record that went from constantly-teased demo to Super Bowl commercial to Satanic-panicked videos of Lil Nas giving Satan a lap-dance to own the conservatives, has the same remote dreariness to it as “HOLIDAY” did late last year. The acoustic, Latin-flavoured guitar loop reminds me of his much better track “Rodeo” from that aforementioned EP that used its energy for similarly lighthearted subject matter but with some genuine energy, a Cardi B feature and a lot less subtle moombahton creeping in. With that said, I can’t say Lil Nas X didn’t try, as his vocal performance, whilst largely insufferable and strained, gives some energy to an otherwise aggravatingly stunted beat, and makes it a lot more infectious than it has any right to be. Content-wise, the song is essentially about a full circle where Lil Nas X becomes increasingly desperate for a man who starts off lonely and in a bad place, and the irony is that Lil Nas gets more explicitly sexual and crazed due to a combination of the LA life-style surrounding him and the fact that he’s simply, for lack of a better term, “down bad”, despite the fact that this guy doesn’t seem particularly desirable. Lil Nas knows this, though, and acknowledges it in the pre-chorus where he outright says that this guy is living the cocaine-addled celebrity life, but not living it right without Mr. Bullriding and Boobies in his life. I’m happy about the video and the outrage it seems to cause not just within conservative spaces but also amongst the hip-hop community, particularly Joyner Lucas, and I’m pretty happy with how out and proud Lil Nas X is about his sexuality, even if it leads to lines like “Shoot a child in your mouth while I’m ridin’”. I’m just really not a fan of this song past its content, which could really be interesting but falls flat with this plucking production that wastes time in barely two minutes with humming interludes. It’s not bad at all, just not for me.

Conclusion

And that concludes our week, and wow, what a bad week this was for new arrivals. Admittedly, it’s a filler week so only “MONTERO (Call Me by Your Name)” will probably last – or at least we can hope as even if I don’t like the song, I still have to give out an Honourable Mention to someone, and it may as well be Lil Nas X trying to put the effort in. Best of the Week easily goes to Beach Bunny for “Cloud 9”, far and away the only good song here, with Worst of the Week also going out pretty easily to Mimi Webb’s “Good Without”, which is the type of soulless, unmemorable garbage that makes pop music look uninspired, and as a person who writes about the charts constantly, it’s a misconception I don’t want proven or revisited. Dishonourable Mention is a toss-up but I guess I’ll give it to Russ Millions and Tion Wayne for that sprinkle of drill disappointment that is “Body”, and that’ll be it for this week. I predict some impact from Demi Lovato, Lil Tjay and especially Olivia Rodrigo next week, but for now, here’s our top 10:

Thank you for reading – sorry for the grouchiness on this one – and I’ll see you next week!

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daggerzine · 4 years ago

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Stephen Smith of The Morning Line opens up.

I believe that Bay Area musician Stephen Smith began sending me stuff to listen to/review with his band The Morning Line a few years ago. I really like the band’s brand of melodic rock/pop and was curious to know more. I then realized it was the same Stephen Smith who had been in Boston faves Salem 66 many years before. I then wondered what other bands he had been in that I had maybe checked out (or own records by) so I tossed him some questions that he was more than happy to answer. Read on and give the band a listen, they really deserve your time.

RAWK

Where did you grow up? Was it the Boston area?

North Shore of Chicago until about 14, then high school in the Boston suburbs. I stayed in and around Boston, with stints in New York, L.A., and North Carolina, until I was 25. I was into music as a kid in Chicago, but too young to really be going to shows or anything. Boston was where I really had my musical coming of age. There was a surprising amount of stuff happening in the Suburbs. I saw Husker Du in Concord. The Dead Kennedys in Waltham. And Boston was only about 45 minutes away by train. I remember going into the city and buying records at Newbury Comics, with Aimee Mann behind the register.

What was the first instrument you picked up?

Why I started playing french horn at 11 or 12, I don’t know. It didn’t last. I started playing guitar pretty quickly after that. My first electric was a Stratocaster. I was probably 12 years old. 1979? It was used, so I’m guessing it was an early 70’s one. Got stolen at CBGB while I was loading in in the mid-80’s. Thieves work fast! Let me know if you’ve seen it.

What was the first record you remember buying? As a kid nay band knock your socks off?

My memory is embarrassing, but I recall three early purchases. Singles of ELO’s “Turn to Stone,” and Gary Numan’s “Cars,” and a Beatles comp called “Rock ‘n’ Roll Music.”

The most recent album from 2019.

What bands were you introduction to punk/new wave/alternative music?

I remember very distinctly tuning into WLYN (later WFNX) and hearing Gun Club’s “Sex Beat”, and Bush Tetras’ “Cowboys in Africa,” and being amazed. I’ll tell you what, though, high school girlfriends were absolutely key to my musical education. Gang of Four? X? Learned about them through my first girlfriend. The Replacements? Through my second. I’m the great beneficiary of other people being better informed than me. Through these same people, I became aware of what was going on locally, and was turned on pretty early to stuff like Christmas, Volcano Suns, the Proletariat.

Was Expando Brain your first band? If not what?

As a fifteen-year-old, I had a couple bands with friends playing covers (I remember Gang of Four’s “Essence Rare,” X’s “Riding with Mary,” “Brand New Cadillac”). But Expando Brain was the first “real” band. I think I was 16 when we started that. Being that age and getting to play shows (like that CBGB one where I lost the guitar), make a record, and be ever-so-slightly enjoyed by some people, was a thrill. I suppose obviously.

Tell me about your time in Salem 66? Howe did you initially meet those ladies?

I don’t remember how we got together! I’m going to guess it was David Savoy’s doing. David managed Expando Brain for a while. He later managed Husker Du, before passing in early 1987. I think he got me together with them. I was 18-19 at the time. They were all 5-10 years older, so we wouldn��t have been traveling in the same circles.

It was absolutely thrilling for me. They were a great, interesting, band. They had “made it,” in my youthful eyes. Signed to Homestead Records? Come on. Gerard had rejected Expando Brain. So I was gonna be on my favorite label (well, maybe SST aside)! I was only in the band for nine months (I think I was a pretty relentless pain in the ass), but so much happened in that time. I think it was all in 1986. We did a tour through the south, so I saw places I’d never seen. We did another tour as a part of our travel to make “Frequency & Urgency,” so I got to see California, an unknown place that loomed so large in my imagination. We stopped in Needles, on the CA/AZ border, and I skated the pool of the motel we stayed at (very poorly). We made the record with Ethan James, who had recorded one of my favorite records of all time (“Double Nickels on the Dime”). I got my first tattoo while we were in L.A. making the record. It was just a dream for a 19-year-old who wanted to be a musician. In some minor way, I *was*.

Waiting for the pizza delivery.

Was God’s Eye next? If so how did that band begin (and end)?

Yes and no. After getting booted from Salem 66, I went to school. Spent a year at Vassar College. There, I started the first version of God’s Eye with my brother, Tim, who would drive out to Poughkeepsie from Boston now and then to rehearse, and with Ivor Hanson, another Vassar student, who had earlier been in Faith and Embrace (and has gone on to lots of other things, musical and otherwise). I was just writing riffs then, nothing very substantial, and that came to an end at the end of the school year. At the same time, I answered an ad in the Village Voice. A band in North Carolina, apparently signed to a major, was looking for a guitar player. I noodled some notes onto a tape, took a picture, and sent it. I got an audition, then the gig. The band was called the Right Profile and, at the time, they were signed to Arista. ….but no record ever came out. Sort of a roots/American thing before that was a thing. Maybe Petty-ish? I hate to pigeonhole. So I moved to North Carolina. The band was led by a guy named Jeffrey Dean Foster, who is still making great music today. The drummer was Jon Wurster, a name I’m sure you know. For about nine months – again - I played with them. I was the wrong guy for the job though. I didn’t really have the kind of sideman chops they needed. Can’t remember if I jumped or was pushed. Maybe some combination. As an old man, it’s been nice reconnecting with them through the miracle of social media. A year or two after that, I restarted God’s Eye with my brother. In candor, it wasn’t very good. I had decided I needed to sing in a lower register, and it was really just bellowing. Despite that, we had remarkable success. We were managed by Boston dynamo Joyce Linehan, who would later go on to work at Sub Pop, work with Joe Pernice, and work as chief of staff to the Mayor of Boston. She got us much further than we (I) deserved. We made an album, an ep, and a single for Domino in England. The album also came out on Rough Trade in Germany. We got to play some dates in London. Nothing ever came out in the U.S. We had some interest, but it never materialized.

Anything in between that band and your move to the west coast?

Near the end of God’s Eye, I also played a bit with Green Magnet School. They needed a bassist, and I pitched in. Chris Pearson, one of the guitar players in the band, returned the favor, adding a second guitar for God’s Eye. I was lucky to be able to record a single with GMS, the Sub Pop double-single with Six Finger Satellite.

When did you make your movie to the Bay Area and what prompted that?

Frustration with music prompted it. I remember having breakfast with an exec from Stone Roses’ label. Silvertone, if I recall correctly. He sounded so into it! He was gonna put out the God’s Eye record in the U.S.! But it didn’t happen. I decided I needed to have more control over my life, so I bore down, finished college, and moved across the country to San Francisco, sight unseen, to go to law school.

The latest single from earlier this year.

Were you in any bands before the Morning Line in San Francisco?

In law school I met a fellow student, Jason Hammon, who was in the midst of a pretty successful rock career. He was in Dance Hall Crashers. We stayed friends and, in 2000 or so, we started a band called My Fellow Astronauts, with his brother Gavin (another DHCrasher) and my friend Scout (Scout Shannon & the Willing Deceivers). We played some shows, recorded some demos, but nothing ever came of it.

Tell us about the beginnings of The Morning Line?

It’s 2004 or so. My friend Marco Baroz (Lucy & the Long Haul) played bass, David Knupp played guitar, and somehow we found David Shollenbarger. Maybe craigslist or something? David had played for awhile with Agent Orange. We were in our late 30’s, and knew not to take it too seriously. But we made some demos, and an album in 2007 (“Stay My Satellite”). We were and are very fortunate to have a friend named Peter Craft, who has a great studio called Boxer Lodge, and great skills. We got to spend a year working on the album, and get it just the way we wanted. We self-released, but got a few reviews and a few fan letters, and that’s all I could hope for. Eventually, the lack of success that comes with being in a band of forty-somethings took its toll, and the band was pretty much dissolved in 2008. But Peter (also a terrific drummer) and I kept making demos. I wrote some stuff I liked in about 2015, so we started recording again using The Morning Line name. “Stephen Smith” is too generic to get the job done.

“Smoke,” from 2017, is a collection of things we did over a few years. “North,” from 2019, was a focused, intentional album project, all recorded with Peter, David Knupp, and Brian Mello (the Bellyachers). That’s the band today. I write the songs and sing, but it really wouldn’t sound like it does without them, especially Brian (I don’t think Peter or David will be offended by that).

I know you just released a Morning Line single. What’s next for the band?

Not sure! I’m still riding the high of getting a couple songs done with all of us in quarantine! We’re talking about putting out a collection of odds and ends: demos, the songs from this new single, some remixes. But I’m not sure. We’ll be putting out a couple of those old outtakes as a Big Stir digital single in June. An album of all new material is probably in the future, but I’d guess at least 18 months out. We’re . . . deliberate.

Prior to COVD was the band actively playing locals shows and or doing any touring?

Not really. We play from time to time, but it’s mostly a recording project at this point. You’d be surprised how little interest there is in watching an obscure group of fifty-somethings peddle their wares.

A man, his dog and a weird-ass mountain (ok, hill).

Who are some of your favorite current bands, local or otherwise?

I’ve been oddly incurious about new music the past few years. I just looked at the Outside Lands schedule and was like, “scarypoolparty? What?” I know that’s inconceivable to you. I tend to get excited by friends’ new products. People I’ve mentioned here, like Brian Mello and Scout Shannon, have had things out over the past year or two. My friend Russell Tillitt has something coming out. Jeff Shelton’s Well Wishers. Just off the top of my head. Bigger name stuff? I like the new Besnard Lakes record. The most recent Sleaford Mods. I’d be happy to hear the new Wrens record, which I suspect may never come.

What are your top 10 desert island discs?

You know how hard this is. Every day a different answer, right? Here goes:

Neil Young – Live Rust The Clash – London Calling Wrens – Meadowlands X – Los Angeles Gang of Four – Entertainment Replacements – Let it Be Jesus Lizard – Goat Jam – Sound Affects Teenage Fanclub – Catholic Education Wipers – Over The Edge

Those and a hundred others.

Final words? Closing comments? Words of wisdom?

Thanks for giving me the chance to think about this stuff. It’s fun to do a little reminiscing. As you know, there’s a deep bench of older indie-rock folks out there, still at it, and doing it pretty well. Thanks for giving us some attention.

BONUS QUESTION: Red Sox or Giants?

60/40 Giants. It's nice to have a team in each league.

https://themorningline.bandcamp.com/

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nerianasims · 4 years ago

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Billboard #1s 1975

Under the cut.

Elton John – “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” -- January 4, 1975

He slowed it down. Of course he did. And he's singing it like every word must be perfectly enunciated so that you can understand how incredibly deep it is. Awful, terrible, ugh. William Shatner's version is actually preferable.

Barry Manilow – “Mandy” -- January 18, 1975

Barry Manilow got a lot of hate when I was a kid in the 80s, and I didn't understand from any first-hand experience because the only song I knew of his was "Copacabana." Now, listening -- he's not bad. Yeah, he's 70s light rock. But he sings with emotion that doesn't sound fake and this song has a beat. I'm not saying I like this song, in which the singer regrets sending away the woman he loves, but it's fine. I find it far more tolerable than any Elton John song on this list.

The Carpenters – “Please Mr. Postman” -- January 25, 1975

The Carpenters' asset was Karen Carpenter's amazing singing. This song does not showcase it. They'd have done better to cover "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" or "One Fine Day." Also the way they redid the music makes it sound more like a light 50s pop song than early Motown. Blech.

Neil Sedaka – “Laughter In The Rain” -- February 1, 1975

This song is about taking walks in the rain with his wife/girlfriend. There's something fake about his singing, and also he doesn't hit the high notes (which aren't that high) right. I'd actually like to hear what Barry Manilow would do with this. It's not terrible, but meh.

Ohio Players – “Fire” -- February 8, 1975

Putting sirens in a pop song is kinda dickish, because you're gonna get people driving in their cars to try to suddenly swerve off the road. Anyway, besides that, this is an Ohio Players song, so it's funk. I don't really know what else to say about it. Maybe it could have been a little faster? I'm a bit bored, and that should never happen with funk.

Linda Ronstadt – “You’re No Good” -- February 15, 1975

There are sure a lot of covers this year. Boomer nostalgia. But Linda Ronstadt put a hell of a lot of effort into this one, unlike the people who did the previous two covers. The song's also a really good one, with an interesting lyrical twist; not only is the singer telling the man who broke her heart that he's no good, but "I broke a heart that’s gentle and true/ Well, I broke a heart over someone like you.” That's some vinegar in the wound. And musically, it's really good rock -- not an ounce of schmaltz anywhere. Excellent song, and I went back to listen to it on repeat when I was done writing for the night.

Average White Band – “Pick Up The Pieces” -- February 22, 1975

It's a funk instrumental. I think this has been on a lot of soundtracks. I find it repetitive and kinda boring.

Eagles – “Best Of My Love” -- March 1, 1975

They're still in love but their marriage is falling apart. The divorce rate in the 70s was very high. People often claim those 70s statistics are the same today, but they very much are not. Anyway, it's not too whiny and he doesn't blame her, but the song is too slow and too light. You could replace the words with a straightforward love song without changing the music, so long as the love song was boring. Yawn.

Olivia Newton-John – “Have You Never Been Mellow” -- March 8, 1975

Wow, shut up Olivia. I can identify with being sick of someone who is wound up like an E string and wanting to tell them to just chill. Hell, I'm that tightly-wound person pretty often, and I do much better when I remember to be mellow when I can. But this song is condescending and superior. "Have you never tried to find a comfort from inside you?" Toxic positivity.

The Doobie Brothers – “Black Water” -- March 15, 1975

I saw the song title and the chorus immediately started up in my brain. This is a song about the Mississippi by people who may never have been east of Las Vegas. "I ain't got no worries/ Cuz I ain't in a hurry at all." Pfft right. But the music of this song is so catchy and fun, that even though I'm not fond of the lyrics, I like the song.

Frankie Valli – “My Eyes Adored You” -- March 22, 1975

This guy used to lead The Four Seasons, but thankfully he doesn't do that horrible falsetto in this one. Ostensibly this song is about how he's thinking about his first crush. I think that's a metaphor, though. I think it's a song worshiping nostalgia and missing childhood. Yuck.

LaBelle – “Lady Marmalade” -- March 29, 1975

Patti LaBelle claimed she didn't know what this song was about. Yeah right. It's about a guy who spent some time with a sex worker on his trip to New Orleans. There's no judgment. It's just a sort of funky, sort of disco-ey, definitely belted song and it’s great.

Minnie Riperton – “Lovin’ You” -- April 5, 1975

Turn it off turn it off turn it off. I hate this song. It's one of the first songs I knew I hated musically, rather than only lyrically. The lyrics are whatever, a 70s love song, but the music -- I can't handle it. It's like sandpaper on my brain.

Elton John – “Philadelphia Freedom” -- April 12, 1975

Elton John's ode to Philly soul. It doesn't work. It's too slow, it's repetitive, and Elton John's no soul singer. He's so boring.

B. J. Thomas – “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song” -- April 26, 1975

Hey won't you not play that please. It's too slow, and it's without guts or grit. The Muppets sped it up and made it a multi-Muppet honky tonk singalong, which improved it a lot. Also I think Bo Burnham took the idea for "Y'all dumb motherfuckers want a key change?" from Rowlf's "Up a key!" line in the Muppet version.

Tony Orlando & Dawn – “He Don’t Love You (Like I Love You)” -- May 3, 1975

Another cover of a 60s song. Linda Rondstadt is still the only one to do it right. The song itself, when sung by others, is a good one. Not when sung by Tony Orlando. It's like he bleached it. Also I expect him to tell me the slot machines are available all night when he's done.

Earth, Wind & Fire – “Shining Star” -- May 24, 1975

This song is absolutely awesome. It's disco-funk, and yet it's sort of a sermon about self-actualization too. "You’re a shining star, no matter who you are / Shining bright to see what you could truly be.” Compare and contrast with the condescending "Have You Never Been Mellow." This is how you inspire people.

Freddy Fender – “Before The Next Teardrop Falls” -- May 31, 1975

This song is in both English and Spanish. Musically, it sounds like it comes from way before 1975, but that's not a bad thing. The singer is losing his woman to another man, but he tells her if the new man ever hurts her, he'll be there before the next teardrop falls. It's a solid country song.

John Denver – “Thank God I’m A Country Boy” -- June 7, 1975

How much money did John Denver have by this point? He sounds like the typical rich conservative talking about how he's a good ol' down home boy while he's got a condo in New York, a mansion in California, and keeps an official residence in Oklahoma for tax purposes that he never visits. "A-raisin’ me a family and working on the farm / My days are all filled with an easy country charm." Total and absolute bullshit -- farm work is phenomenally hard, not "easy country charm." This song is offensively bad.

America – “Sister Golden Hair” -- June 14, 1975

The singer isn't ready for commitment but can't stop thinking about the woman he's singing to. So he's trying to keep her hangin' on. There's one line that I hate: "Will you love me just a little, just enough to show you care?" How about you show her you care first, you entitled brat? The music's pretty good, but the lyrics bug me.

The Captain & Tennille – “Love Will Keep Us Together” -- June 21, 1975

It has a beat and some bounce at least. She sings about how some girl may come along to try to take him away -- seriously? This silly hat-wearing doof? Okay, that's a problem. Another problem is that she sounds perfectly chipper throughout. She's not worried, but who would be? I think this song struck a chord because of the divorce rate in the 70s. That, along with it having an actual beat of some kind unlike so many other hits of the era, is my theory as to how it got big.

Wings – “Listen To What The Man Said” -- July 19, 1975

There is, of course, nothing wrong with silly love songs. But some of them are not good songs. I usually love to hear a saxophone on a pop song, but this one sounds like it belongs in background music on a TV show. The main melody line is boring. I think it's another song about divorce anxiety: "No matter what the man said/ And love is fine for all we know/ For all we know, our love will grow." Very true. But did you have to be so boring when imparting this message, Paul?

Van McCoy & The Soul City Symphony – “The Hustle” -- July 26, 1975

Doo doo doo da doo doo doo da doo. My dad actually knew how to do the two-person hustle. I think. Anyway, how he showed me to dance is the way the couples are dancing in the Hustle video here. Minus that leg kick. There are almost no words to this song. Just "Do the Hustle" and "The Hustle. Do it." And -- okay! It is an irresistible dance song. I like it, though the piccolo (I think it's a piccolo) gets hard to listen to after a while.

Eagles – “One Of These Nights” -- August 2, 1975

Tom Breihan, whose Stereogum articles I've been using to track these songs, doesn't like the Eagles when they turned to a bit more of a rock direction with this song. This is one of many examples of how he's wrong. Okay, okay, an example of how my taste differs from his, which is one thing that pushed me to do this list. But yes, I really like this song a lot. The guitars are great. The narrator of this song is looking for a girlfriend. Or maybe a friend with benefits. The lyrics are all pretty good, if hardly Stevie Nicks level, but one line stands out: "Oh, loneliness will blind you in between the wrong and the right." It will.

The Bee Gees – “Jive Talkin'” -- August 9, 1975

I made a weird noise that scared my cat when I saw this was the next one. But thankfully, I have a little more time before Barry Gibb's horrible falsetto pierces my brain. This is nonetheless a Bee Gees disco song, which means my butt is firmly planted in my seat and I have no desire to dance whatsoever. It isn't ear-bleeding like their later songs, as the falsetto is absent, but it is terribly boring.

Hamilton, Joe Frank And Reynolds – “Fallin’ In Love” -- August 23, 1975

He's fallin' in love with you again. Or maybe fallin' more in love with you. I dunno. I'm falling asleep.

KC & The Sunshine Band – “Get Down Tonight” -- August 30, 1975

Some dance songs are good listening songs. This one is not. The narrator wants to do a little dance, make a little love, get down tonight. And if you are not there to get down, the song is not for you. Especially how repetitive it gets in the second half. It serves its purpose as a dance song well, though.

Glen Campbell – “Rhinestone Cowboy” -- September 6, 1975

I really like rhinestones. I like sparkly stuff. The narrator of this song does too. He's been trying to get somewhere for a long time and has had it. He's eager to sell out thoroughly at this point. I get it. Oh boy do I get it. And being a rhinestone cowboy doesn't hurt anyone. If I could churn out huge amounts of disposable fiction with a "load of compromising" to make a lot of money, I'd do it in a heartbeat. My 20-year old self would be shocked. But life's hard, and "cringe" isn't harm. Rhinestone Cowboy's good in my book.

David Bowie – “Fame” -- September 20, 1975

And here's a song about how chasing celebrity is maybe not such a great idea. A really bad idea, actually. "It drives you to crime," for one thing. Yet this is musically not a dour song at all. It's angry but upbeat at the same time. Also brilliant musically, which from David Bowie is "of course." Most excellent.

John Denver – “I’m Sorry” -- September 27, 1975

The narrator is sorry about a breakup. He says he's also "sorry for the way things are in China." That one line makes me side-eye the entire song. Saying that they're sorry for huge things that have nothing to do with them is something abusive people sometimes do. The rest of the song sounds sincere enough though. And boring. Oh, so very boring.

Neil Sedaka – “Bad Blood” -- October 11, 1975

The narrator is telling a guy that the woman he's with is bad and is going to mess him up. And he's angry about it -- not at the woman, but at the guy. I think the narrator wanted the woman and is now calling her an evil bitch to try to turn his supposed friend against her. There's this happy flute in the background that sounds really odd with this deeply nasty song. Also, nastiness should be more interesting than this. It's both mean and boring.

Elton John – “Island Girl” -- November 1, 1975

Did Elton John start all his songs with the same chords? I feel like he did. This doesn't sound like an island song. It sounds like an ad jingle. A racist, sexist ad jingle. Ha-ha isn't it funny that a woman is tall and dark-skinned. The song calls her a "well-worn tire." So, so bad.

KC & The Sunshine Band – “That’s The Way (I Like It)” -- November 22, 1975

I have never understood any lyrics to this song but the chorus, or been curious enough to look them up. I just did. There are very few lyrics in this song besides the chorus, but yep, it's about sex. It's another KC & The Sunshine Band dance song that's great for dancing, and not really meant for anything else.

Silver Convention – “Fly, Robin, Fly” -- November 29, 1975

"Fly, robin, fly/ Up up to the sky" are the lyrics to this song. Over and over again. It's plastic Euro-disco and it is bad. Not danceable, no reason to listen to it, no reason for it to exist. I can only think that large amounts of cocaine were involved in this becoming a hit.

The Staple Singers – “Let’s Do It Again” -- December 27, 1975

It's another sleepy sex song, but this one is by a band with three sisters and their father. Their father sings on this track too. Apparently he didn't want to, and I wish he'd stuck by that, because ew.

BEST OF 1975 -- "Lady Marmalade" by LaBelle and "Shining Star" by Earth, Wind and Fire WORST OF 1975 -- "Island Girl" by Elton John

#billboard number ones

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kalluun-patangaroa · 5 years ago

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Suede

SKY magazine, December 1993

written by Simon Witter

"HELLO! WHAT HAVE WE GOT HERE?!" asks Brett Anderson rhetorically, staring at the fluff he has just removed from his ear. "I haven't taken these earrings off for about nine years."

It may seem an incongruous moment to ask the 27-year-old indie pin-up about his personal style, but hey, that's the kind of guy I am. "Tatty," replies Brett with a wry smile. "I haven't been able to get out and go shopping."

Brett Anderson, frontman of Suede – the British pop sensation of 93 – is hotly rumoured to have a great dress sense. Today however, perched uncomfortably behind an executive desk at the central London HQ of his record company, his head inadvertently framed by a halo of Right Said Fred promotional balloons, he is sporting a navy blue jeans'n'top ensemble he accurately describes as "just anything". Brett has been telling me how he spends most of his time with people who work in shops or are unemployed – "real people, not in the business" – so I presume this boutique bonding provides a clue to his supposed, though temporarily non-evident, style savvy.

"Oh no," he gasps. "Not clothes shops! Most of my friends are in food shops. So I know a good bit of brie when I see it."

The thought of Brett Anderson having, at any point in his life, ever eaten food, conjures images of pigs flapping their trotters as they sail past this second floor window. But we press on with the personal style enquiry.

"I want to change it at the moment," he says. "I'm sick of wearing second-hand things. I used to have a grudge against new clothes because I don't like wearing things that another thousand people are wearing. It's nothing to do with being into clothes from years ago, or tatty clothes at all. I'm quite keen to toy around with my style until I eventually find something, to have clothes made for me. There's never anything, when I go out and look for clothes, that I really love. I've got quite a strong vision of what I want, which would be very, very well fitted things. I don't like baggy things. I like lots of ethnic looks. I really like the Spanish look, that sort of matador thing." By way of explanation, Brett strikes a pose, clicking imaginary castanets above his head. "I like that shape. Prince wears a really brilliant little thing sometimes. When I kept getting my bellybutton out, it was really a desire to achieve that shape more than anything, nothing to do with flaunting my navel."

It's well worth flashing your bellybutton while you still can, I assure him, a rueful hand on my own expanding waistline.

"Yep," he smiles. "Well I can't anymore. Not after that chinese last night."

In May of 1992 Suede released their first single, 'The Drowners'. They had already been on the cover of Melody Maker – before they had a record out – and would grace 18 other British magazine covers over the next year, including the cover of Q on just their second single. Their eponymous debut album, released last March, went straight to No. One in the charts and went on to win the Mercury Prize, and last autumn they released a full-length concert video Love & Poison. At this rate, it will be time for their memoirs by easter.

Within the bizarre, incestuous fishbowl of the British music media, Suede have become almost self-damagingly important. After a couple of wilderness years spent faffing about, finding their feet and being universally loathed, their overnight transformation into the most hyped band in the world was nothing short of miraculous. Yet it created impossibly high expectations of their music. A German friend told me how surprised he was, after long distance exposure to their media glare, to discover how average Suede sounded – a judgment that casual discovery of the first album would hardly have elicited. And while touring America, their support act the Cranberries famously outshone them by an enormous factor when it came to album sales. Yet phase one of Suede's career has been – or appeared to be – so extraordinary, that they are going to be hard-pressed to follow it up with anything similarly momentous.

For now, we have 'Stay Together', a new, epically long single. As a measure of Suede's magnitude in the reality-starved world of British indie pop, I am treated to an absurd preview of the track the day before meeting Brett. Before entering the listening room I am subjected to a bag search to check – I kid you not! – that I'm not carrying a concealed tape recorder.

In LA, the world capital of muso control freakism, I was played U2's Desire, the immediate-follow up to their 15-million selling Joshua Tree album, eons before its release without anyone thinking twice. Yet now, without a hint of humour or irony, I am being treated as if I not only know anyone who cares what the next Suede single sounds like, but would be willing to pay for a tape of it recorded through a leather bag.

After regaining consciousness, I join in the fiasco, insist on a full body search (well, at less reputable establishments you'd have to pay good money for this touchy-feely experience) and am seated. The label boss places two speakers on each side of my head, facing my ears from about 20" away, turns it up LOUD, and begins to do that embarrassing, pseudo appreciative in-chair grooving that only people who work in record companies and recording studios have the gall to indulge in. "It's not pompous," he assures me, "even though it's eight minutes long."

Of course any pop song – as opposed to dance record – that lasts eight minutes is by definition pompous. 'Bohemian Rhapsody' was gloriously, defiantly pompous with a side order of pomposity to go. But, despite the circumstances, 'Stay Together' sounds like a fine, many-hued song, liberally doused with Bernard Butler's life-saving guitar, that is destined neither to win many new fans nor shock the devotees.

"It's about a sense of unrest I feel about the world," Brett tells me the following day, in an ill-advised shot at an explanation. "An attempt to make some sense when everything seems to be going slightly insane. I do get a real sense of impending doom, but not in a depressing way, not like we're all gonna die, let's go and rape people. I feel quite content with it. We're living under some shadow, and I'm not quite sure what it is. It's a bit like the fears I felt when I was growing up, when things were unstable and there was the threat of nuclear war, or the fear that your parents could die of aerosol poisoning."

Brett grew up, together with Suede drummer Mat Osman, in the soulless satellite town of Haywards Heath, between London and Brighton. According to Osman, if they'd been the tea party fops people make them out to be, they would've formed a grunge band. They only wanted to be really glamorous because of their stultifyingly dull working class backgrounds. Some might say that that would lead to the three-Es-a-night, dance-and-forget syndrome, rather than the formation of a glam rock band.

"Hopefully we're not a glam rock band," Brett shudders defensively. "You can escape those surroundings by taking a load of Es and ignoring it. Another way is to create your own myth, to try and become romantic in your own eyes, to create something beautiful out of the rubbish and the shit. It all sounds very Oscar Wilde, but that's the way we did it. None of us were brought up in workhouses, but we haven't had easy lives at all."

Suede claim to be obsessed with fame because they were excluded from it. Yet surely fame is the one classless thing people aren't born into?

"Lots of people are constantly privileged," says Brett, who has clearly spent an unhealthy amount of time pondering the abstract qualities of fame. "If you're born in Soho to rich professional parents, and you've got Jonathan Wotsisname coming round to your house every night to see your father, then you've got this world that you slip easily into. When you're excluded from it there's a desperation, you're desperate to have it. It doesn't come as second nature to you, like professionally famous people who hang out in Beverly Hills. It's not something you're comfortable with, but that mutates it into something far more interesting, a bit prickly and far more creative, because you're not just sitting there lapping it up."

Suede's appearance coincided not unfortunately with the post-Madchester 70s revival. But was their styling something more than just the result of being unable to afford new clothes? Personally, I had thought the emergence of Gary Numan had killed off the idea of anyone ever again wanting to be David Bowie (not to mention Bowie's recent records). Then along came Suede, with their rough guitars, their androgyny and their theatrical singer.

"I never thought of ourselves as '70s," Brett insists. "David Bowie is a genius, but the rest of all that rubbish I always found laughable. As for the clothes, I always thought we looked more 60s than 70s. It's all tied up with this whole kitsch thing, this Magpie and Porridge and rediscovering the culture of British music journalists' youths. Kids of 14 didn't know what anyone was talking about, it was just that the people in power had reached a certain age where they were getting sentimental about their youth and started remembering Magpie. That's all it was, all a complete load of rubbish. As soon as we were aware that this scene was going on, we wanted nothing to do with it."

Brett's voice is a highly variable instrument, perfect and beautiful on slow numbers like 'The Next Life', but occasionally, when he affects that archly operatic Bowie yodel, a whiney, sneering sound like Rik Mayall on speed boring into your brain – absolutely maddening. It goes without saying that his delivery owes much to the most overrated British pop star of the last decade, Morrissey.

"I forced my voice in that way because of how we were born, musically, playing shitholes. It was the only way I could make myself heard. I didn't want to sing in the murmuring way that was the style of the time. I wanted to project my voice, because I was writing songs that I wanted people to hear the words of. I wasn't just writing about fluffy little clouds, which is what everyone was doing at the time. People read into my intonations a theatrical seventiesness, but it was a complete accident."

Overworked as the subject is, it's hard to avoid asking why Brett thinks his androgyny caused such a fuss. It's not the first time it has been done; it's not even the tenth time. Genderless, mincing fops are to classic British pop what hairspray is to American rock, a staple ingredient. Brett, by comparison to most, is pretty tame.

"I don't know," he sighs. "We certainly weren't thinking 'oh let's be androgynous', it's just the way we are. I'm naturally quite an effeminate person – not all the time, I do play on things. I think it was because, at the time, people were so incredibly boring. We had been through five years of the cult of non-personality, and we never wanted to go with the flow. When everyone had their heads down, chugging away, we wanted to twist things a little bit. It's like at school, when you find that something annoys someone, you keep on doing it more and more. And that's what happened really."

A female psychologist wrote recently about the overt sexual expression of pre-pubertal girls at pop concerts, the way in which, amidst the non-contact hysteria of the pop experience, they could sometimes experience their first orgasm. She was, admittedly, talking about a Take That show, but I can't help wondering if it looks like that from the stage to Brett Anderson?

"No, nothing like that," he purrs, "nothing sexual. I always feel like people are putting it on."

Having their first fake orgasm?

"It's a bizarre thing in my head. I know they really like me, but I can't really take it seriously. When I'm onstage, and it's working, I feel like I can do absolutely anything. I feel as though there's no limit, even in the sense that I could fall asleep if I felt like it, because I'm that relaxed. I feel much more comfortable on stage than walking down the street. I could go off into a corner and do a crossword or shave my head. I feel ridiculously relaxed. I really enjoy the power of being onstage. It's to do with the circuit of the flow between the audience and you, when it's an audience willing you to be good. Your own power is an expression of how the audience is feeling, but I can't say I ever feel sexual, even if it looks that way. I think that to call the power purely sexual is to belittle it. When I've been to incredible gigs, it hasn't been a sexual thing, it has been something far more magical than that. "

Brett and Osman came to London in the mid 80s to study, respectively, architecture and politics at UCL and LSE. Suede began after they placed an ad in the NME in 1989, but initial concerts had audiences shouting "Fuck off!", critics calling them effete wankers and record companies running for the hills - a three-pronged invitation to eat shit and die that would have spelt the end for most bands.

"That X factor that made people despise us," muses Brett, "was something we managed to turn around in our favour. It's like being in love with someone, and exactly the same things you adore about them, completely horrify you when you've fallen out of love. We went away and learnt how to write songs, and came back transformed. And those qualities that originally pissed people off, we transformed into something provocative. I think the fact that we went through all that rubbish was a fucking good thing for us. People forget that the Beatles spent five years in Hamburg. No one would touch them in England, cos everyone thought they were an utter load of shit. They spent five years getting it together, suffering a bit and fighting for it."

A typical lyric from those hard years was Brett's line about "shitting paracetomol on the escalator". When they were recently described as chemically saturated, I had assumed more interesting chemicals were involved.

"That's about pure mundanity, being off your face every night and your staple diet coming from your bathroom cabinet. It's a metaphor for a humdrum life, going up and down the London underground, which I spent five years of my life doing."

In many ways this – Suede's poignant soundtracking of new depression Britain – is their strength. But if they are Her Majesty's equivalent of slackers, it hasn't made America any more amenable to their cause. Indeed, despite Brett's avowed loathing of the British character – "negativity, small-mindedness, lack of faith" – there may well be a Britishness about Suede which prevents America from getting the point.

Brett makes the mistake of quoting a Smiths song to me – something about innocence, fragility and trust – forcing me to point out that American audiences don't want to be trusted with something precious, they want to rock out with their cocks out. Evan Dando may wear a dress and pigtails, but the wider American market is notoriously unkeen on sexual ambiguity. Queen were big in America until the early 80s, when Freddie Mercury started appearing in full clone gear. They never toured America again, and didn't have a single hit until after his death (and then only thanks to Wayne's World). In fact, America's association of guitars and manliness make Suede fundamentally unsuited.

"No!" storms Brett. "I don't think we're fundamentally unmanly. All you have to do is come and watch us live. We're about sexuality, power and emotion, things that everybody feels."

Whether or not America is destined to fall for his Morrissey-meets-Larry Grayson stage persona, Brett's much-aired desire to move to America (and less well-known plan to live in Paris) has, for now, been replaced by a much smaller act of bedouinism.

"I've moved from Notting Hill to Highgate," he announces proudly, "from a fashionable place to a place where you're living in the last century pretty much. I was living in a very small flat in Notting Hill and it was driving me insane, I couldn't write and was being bombarded with nonsense all day long. I needed the peace and quiet, and now I have a bigger flat with a studio room in it and I'm writing quite prolifically. It's more serene, there's more space to think. It's quite a beautiful place, but you do feel like you're living in the last century, like you're some sort of oddity, or in a play. You keep going into these odd characters. But it's a great place."

In person, and despite the affectation of much of his thought processes, Brett Anderson is quite charming. An endearing smile – which seems to hibernate when cameras are around – plays constantly around his face, suggesting shared confidences which, to some extent, he delivers. Like so many people cocooned by over-protective minions, he is refreshingly open and approachable. I like him. But he is deeply shocked and incredulous when I paint a picture of the special treatment afforded him by those he works with.

"They treat me with the respect I deserve," he jokes defensively. "I don't have tea with Lenny Kravitz. My best friend works in a chip shop, and that's why I like it, it's a complete escape. One of the beautiful things about being successful is that it can rub off onto your friends as well. Not fame and all that bullshit – the really brilliant thing about being successful is the self-confidence, the sense of life having a purpose, that life is a wonderful thing. You open the shutters in the morning and the sunshine pours through. That sense of vitality about life can completely rub off on your friends. Sometimes it doesn't, it can go the other way, with friends ignoring you cos they think you don't have time for them, but that never happens with your proper friends."

And yet, engulfed in the sweltering perversity of his peer group, Brett has come to hold some pretty crap views, views that seem utterly irrelevant beyond the borders of saddo indie land. He worries about being thought a sell-out, thinks Suede are radically honest because they admit to having ambition – as if people didn't get over all that bollocks a decade ago – and, worst of all, that people don't talk enough about music in interviews. Oh dear!

But, despite all this, Brett's public image remains unshatterably cool. He exudes waves of sultry, sulky hipness. I feel an urge to know what naff items lurk in the corners of Chateau Anderson, his ownership of which will shock Suede devotees to the core. Brett tells me he's been to see Aladdin, listens to jazz music, likes The Orb and Verve and has just bought the new Shamen single. To prove it, he even does his Mr C impression - "Comin' on like a vibe, y'know!". This won't do at all.

"I like Terence Trent D'Arby," he admits, trying harder. "I think he's really good."

It's good, but it's not right.

"I bought Billy Joel's River Of Dreams album. I like that one."

Aha – as Inspector Clouseau used to say – now we are getting somewhere! What about films?

"No, I've got impeccable taste when it comes to films."

No feature length On The Buses video stashed chez Brett?

"No. I have got Crocodile Dundee."

Bingo and Bullseye! So much for impeccable taste.

"Well, my perennial favourite is Performance," he flusters wildly. "I can virtually quote the whole film from start to finish. And there's a brilliant film which I've just discovered called The Shout, with John Hurt, Alan Bates and Susanna York. It's about a man who has spent years in the Australian bush learning the secrets of the bush doctors coming to this ridiculously reserved Cornish village and turning two people's lives upside down. It's like an animal alive within this village, and when he shouts, everyone within a mile radius dies. If Alan Bates' part had been played by Vincent Price, it would've been laughable, but it's incredibly powerful, one of those great lost films."

It's a nice try, but nothing can erase the impression created by Billy Joel and Crocodile Dundee.

#suede #brett anderson #press #interview #sky #1993

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elysiumwaits · 5 years ago

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Ely’s Ever-Changing Playlist - Sat. Aug 31st

You can find the playlist on Spotify right here. The Ever-Changing Playlist is best listened to on Shuffle Mode. I plan on updating this playlist every Saturday, and rotating songs out and in with new releases and whatever’s caught my fancy this week.

Feel free to send me music you like, I’m always open to new songs to listen to and I like literally every genre except death metal and polka. (I’m also not a big fan of musical theater, tbh). But like seriously, fuck polka.

This first playlist is a pretty eclectic mix of new releases and not-so-new releases, in a variety of genres. Probably a little heavy on the rock, to be honest, but that’s the mood I’m in this week. You’ll get whiplash, though, ‘cause there’s some good country and pop on here too.

Song list and comments are under the cut!

Scrawny by Wallows - I love self-deprecating but somehow still kind of cocky rock (like Polaroid by Imagine Dragons). They also have that bedroom rock kind of vibe that I love. Plus I love the line “I’m a scrawny motherfucker with a cool hairstyle” and hardcore relate to the line “I say the wrong shit at the right time.”

Wild Roses by Of Monsters and Men - I honestly didn’t know how to feel about the new album for a couple of weeks. They’ve definitely gone for a more pop vibe to their songs - Alligator was catchy but it seems like a lot of the songs on their Fever Dream album just don’t have the same lyrical depth as songs like King and Lionheart or Wolves Without Teeth or Little Talks. It’s a good song - catchy, like I said - but honestly I was hoping for better when I heard a new album was coming out.

Blame It On my Youth by Blink-182 - This may actually be my most highly-anticipated release this year. For one thing, Blame It On My Youth actually sounds like Blink-182, like you could follow it with All the Small Things and there’d be no real musical shift. Which is honestly amazing, considering how much they’ve been through as a band, and of course, the lineup changes. Hoppus still sounds like Hoppus, though, and the music is still that glorious “fuck you, watch this” guitar that kickstarted the whole early 2000s guitar rock (you wouldn’t have FOB without Blink-182, and you can tell in the early FOB albums). I love to see Nine come out on September 20th - Blink-182 is a legendary band in the punk genre and hearing this song felt like coming home. “I was bored to death, so I started a band/ Cut my teeth on the Safety Dance, my attention span never stood a chance.”

Love All Night (Work All Day) by Yola - You know those gentle 70s rock/soul songs? Vaguely influenced by country, definitely influenced by R&B, leave you with a feeling of home and comfort while also kind of inspiring you to go out and work on some social change? It’s definitely got a Memphis rock vibe, but it also really made me want to listen to The Temptations and Creedence Clearwater Revival. The best part about it is that this album came out this year.

Circles by Post Malone - I’m actually a huge Post Malone fan, because I’m a huge Fleetwood Mac fan. You might be wondering how those two things add up. Post Malone cites one of his major influences to be Stevie Nicks, and in fact his vocal (when he sings, instead of rapping) draws a lot from Stevie’s unique vibrato and slurring of the words. Circles captures this beautifully, but if you really want the best that Post Malone has to offer (in the singing department, I’ll fight people over how good Wow. is), you really need to check out his remix and mashup of Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams from his August 26th mixtape. Check it out here. The unfortunate thing is that it can only be found on Youtube or the mixtape app DatPiff.

Drive by The Cars - So this is on the list because Tim McGraw put out a cover, and I usually like Tim McGraw, but Drive is not a song you can make a country cover out of. You can’t do it. Listen to this one instead of the Tim McGraw version, and if you’re really wanting a Tim McGraw fix, Neon Church is good.

Refugee by Melissa Etheridge - Speaking of covers, this is my girl Melissa’s cover of Tom Petty and the Heartbreaker’s Refugee, and frankly, I like it more. She goes hard, is the thing, sings every word like she fuckin’ well means it. That’s the thing about Melissa Etheridge, she is passionate about her music. This cover was released on her greatest hits album in 2005 - fun fact, this album included four new songs total, including I Run for Life, written for others, like Melissa, who have gone through breast cancer. It’s a damn good album, I had to recently buy a new hard copy because I wore the first CD out.

Mornin’s Gonna Come by Brent Cobb - I actually don’t know why this hit the Apple playlists this week, considering it was released on the album Providence Canyon back in 2018. It’s a pretty southern-rock style song, despite the country label, and sounds like a party song right up until you’re listening to the lyrics. Turns out it’s about the fact that everything done in the dark will eventually come to light, whether that’s a hangover or something deeper.

Soon You’ll Get Better by Taylor Swift feat. Dixie Chicks - Okay, listen. I love this song. Hearing Natalie come in on the vocals in the background for the first time since 2006 made me bawl. The Dixie Chicks were the main music of my childhood, I grew up with Wide Open Spaces and Fly. Add in the poignant lyrics about watching someone struggle through illness - Taylor opens up in an article that it’s about her parents’ battles with cancer, but we all take something away from music we listen to and it made me cry because I relate to it from a mental and chronic illness standpoint.

60 & Punk by Death Cab for Cutie - So, Death Cab actually has a new EP coming out and the new single on it Kids in 99 is pretty good, but I’m still stuck on their album Thank You for Today. I don’t know if it was my stint in the Pacific Northwest that kickstarted my Death Cab love, or if I’m just naturally drawn to their music, but I would argue that Thank You for Today may be their best album. 60 & Punk is sad, honestly, about watching your heroes grow old and give into the world around them. But it’s good.

Reaper Man by Mother Mother - Mother Mother is one of my favorite bands, and Reaper Man is right up there in my self-deprecating-but-cocky genre. Released in 2014, and a staple on my playlists since.

Head Above Water by Avril Lavigne feat. Travis Clark (of We The Kings) - Okay, raise your hand if you can still sing Complicated or Sk8er Boi from memory, because I sure as hell can. I can also do Check Yes Juliet from memory, because I grabbed it off the free iTunes download back in the day before it ever blew up - I’m a hipster. Anyway, Avril’s surfaced with a frankly marvelous album about growing up, getting divorced, and dealing with the devastating effects of Lyme disease. This is a bonus single - you can find her solo version on the album also titled Head Above Water.

Hollow by Barns Courtney - There’s really no deep meaning to this one for me, I just really love Barns Courtney and haven’t found something they’ve put out that I didn’t like yet. Catchy and rock and pop, this song makes me want to dance.

Summer Girl by Haim - Everyone I knew back in 2013, in my little pocket of rural America, turned their noses up at Haim. I was like, “Oh my god, they’re amazing!” and my coworkers are like “Why does she sing like that?” It was weird to me because The Wire was named one of the best songs of the year, hit charts all over the place - weird. Anyway, Summer Girl has a super lowkey acoustic vibe, and I love it.

Far From Born Again by Alex Cameron - So Alex Cameron is pretty hit or miss for me - I either hate what he puts out, or I obsess over it. Far From Born Again is an obsess-song, because it’s honest-to-god the best sex worker song I’ve ever heard. Every time a “positive” sex worker song comes out, it’s always something like Porn Star Dancing or Shakin’ Hands or Pay Me. The worker is always over-sexualized and vilified in some way or another, and frankly, it’s exhausting. I like Far From Born Again because it’s super realistic to my experiences - lines like “It ain’t your goddamn business if she does it for pay” and “pays bills while you all still text jerks” and “she’s a woman earning more than a man” - puts the focus where it should be. She’s not some over-sexed nympho doing it for the thrill of it, it’s a job that she’s good at.

Don’t Call It Love by Quiet Riot - So, literally everyone has heard Cum On Feel the Noize or Metal Health. It’s interesting to see Quiet Riot pop on charts again, especially considering that they haven’t had a founding member of the band in the lineup since 2010. That said, the members currently do include Banali and Wright, who were in the band at the height of Quiet Riot’s success in the mid 80s. Current vocals are done by James Durbin, as the vocalist Kevin DuBrow passed in 2007. Quiet Riot as we know it was revived mostly to celebrate the memory of DuBrow, actually, and on the insistence of DuBrow’s mother.

Last Day Under the Sun by Volbeat - I just really fuckin’ love Volbeat. That unique mix of hard rock and rockabilly, mixed with my frankly inappropriate feelings for Michael Poulson’s voice, gets me every time. I was drawn in by Lola Montez and here we are today.

All Apologies - Live & Loud by Nirvana - So this live album was actually released in 2013, and just popped up on my feed because it was just put onto Apple Music, which is where I get all my music from. You can also watch the whole concert for free, which I can’t bring myself to do yet. Nirvana is my favorite band of all time - literally of all time - and All Apologies has the ability to bring me to tears. I actually have “All in All is All We Are” tattooed on my back. Vinyl is coming out, concert is up, go live your grunge baby dreams with me.

Black Hole Sun (Live from The Artists’ Den) by Soundgarden - So this is a recent release of their 2013 Artist’s Den concert. It’s a bittersweet release for the band, who decided earlier this year to disband after the death of Chris Cornell, following their only concert without him. They chose to release the live album because they remember how much fun Chris had that night, according to a Spin article. Of the major original Seattle grunge bands, that means that only a few remain - Alice in Chains lost Layne Staley, Nirvana lost Kurt Cobain, and Soundgarden lost Chris Cornell. Pearl Jam is still going strong, though. (Technically Alice in Chains is still active, but DuVall has nothing on Staley).

Can You Feel It? by White Eskimo - Okay, so following all that rock trivia, I was absolutely floored when I found out that White Eskimo had recent music... because I only know them as the band that Harry Styles was in before One Direction. Anyway, it’s a pretty catchy pop-punk song, I dig it. I love that the first actual info I found about them, with current news, was on the Harry Styles wiki.

Lullaby by Kalie Shorr - Here’s that whiplash again, how about some country? Brand new country, even. I have a bone to pick with country lately about how it all sounds like pop with exaggerated accents and how that pisses me off, but I like the acoustic vibe Kalie Shorr has going on. It’s that good old country song about loving someone you shouldn’t and then letting them go. She honestly reminds me a lot of Sunny Sweeney.

Tennessee Whiskey (Live from City Winery Nashville) by Sara Evans and Olivia Barker - This is a classic country song, written for a half-drunk slow dance with your sweetie at the dive bar (which is honestly the best way to hear it, not gonna lie). The best version is the without a doubt Chris Stapleton’s cover, and this cover is a cover of that cover, but if you want to go back, it was originally recorded by country great David Allan Coe - of “You Never Even Called Me By My Name” fame if you do the bar circuit like I do. It was also recorded by George Jones in the 80s, and then a bunch of other people. There’s a reason Sara Evans is a modern country great.

The Chain (from The Kitchen) by the Highwomen - I got a lot of bones to pick with the Highwomen - I don’t like them and I’m not afraid to say it. I think it comes from the fact that The Highwaymen was created by the pioneers of outlaw country, who were pretty much on the outskirts of country music due to their lifestyles and other factors. The Highwomen have good sound and good writing, but they’re all pretty mainstream, and they should have chosen a different name. Anyway. This is a good country cover.

The Daughters by Little Big Town - I like this song because it tackles a lot of issues still prevalent in societies in country and rural areas, primarily feminism. A lot of people don’t realize that out here in the sticks, the gender norms are alive and well - if you don’t have a kid by 21 and you’re a girl, you’re out of the norm and you’re gonna die alone. You get a lot of women who get married young, then spend their lives cooking and cleaning and never thinking about anything more because this is all they know, this is what their mothers did. The song goes over the delicate balance a woman plays down here - you have to be strong but not too strong, and you have to “know your place.”

The Louvre by Lorde - I wasn’t a fan of Lorde’s second album at first, because I was very much stuck in the sound of the first. It’s growing on me.

Remember the Name by Ed Sheeran, Eminem, and 50 Cent - So I’m a big fan of Ed Sheeran, and my mom loves Eminem and 50 Cent. I like some Eminem, and some 50 Cent, but overall I’m not a fan of rap. What I like about this song is that it sounds like an early Eminem a la “The Real Slim Shady” so it’s catchy and easy for my audio processing issues to follow. I also just dig cocky songs.

20 Something by SZA - I started listening to SZA when my brother sent me the DJ Khaled song Just Us that featured her vocal. I love her voice and lyrics, and also the fact that my little bro relates so much to a lot of her music that it sometimes makes him cry (apparently Just Us made him cry). 20 Something is my favorite off her debut album - I mean, everyone I know is a 20-something right now, and the lyrics hit home.

#ely's ever-changing playlist #spotify #playlist #music

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janiedean · 6 years ago

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(1) Can I just say I hate all this Freddie Mercury biopic wank with a passion? Like, this hellsite went from "Queen is one of those boring 'classic' bands all whites are obsessed with bc they won't even consider new music by diverse artists u.u" to "WWRY is clearly a song about rebellious queer youth, cishets don't touch Queen u.u" after someone pointed out Freddie's ethnicity and sexuality, to "why aren't they making Freddie gay in the biopic!!!11" and... whatever they're whining about now.

(2) And I HATE looking at all this bs and thinking "fake fans", bc I'm pretty damn sure that by most standards, *I* count as a "fake fan", too. I mean, most stuff I know about the band's history is actually stuff about Freddie, thanks to a few documentaries centered around him and my mom, the long-time fan with a big crush on Freddie who introduced me to Queen when I was a kid. Hell, I couldn't even name all their albums or anything needed to be considered a "true fan". But ppl on here... ugh. (3) It's like they're really embarrassed bc they were called out on mistaking "woke" stuff for "unwoke" stuff, and now they have this desperate need to prove their ability to discern wokeness by getting offended about something they don't even care all that much about, as loudly and dramatically as they can.

HAHAHAHAHA.

okay so, tldr: I hate this discourse and I honestly hope that it dies within two weeks out of the biopic for a whole lot of reasons amongst which the ones you said, but like, this discourse actually highlights a shitload of issues with the usual tumblr discourse which I will gladly go into now because I’m fucking tired and this movie isn’t out yet.

now, premise: while I don’t think that true fans are a thing - at most there’s casual fans or in-depth fans but I mean, a fan is a fan so I don’t believe in the *fake* fans thing..... the problem here isn’t that they’re fakes. it’s that they aren’t fans. period.

other premise: from what you’ve said you’re a casual fan which is normal and you DON’T count as fake I mean if you like them and listen to them and know something it’s basically being a casual fan same as I am with idk the rolling stones, I like the famous stuff, I have the fundamental records and I like them when they’re on but that’s it.

but, yours truly is a Not Casual Queen Fan in the sense that a) I got into them when I was seventeen and I’m thirty now so thanks it’s been a while, b) I own all the records, c) I own a decent portion of roger taylor’s/brian may’s solo records (and I have listened to all of them that I couldn’t buy), d) I went to see them live once (k it was with paul rodgers but nvm guys not my fault if I wasn’t born in time for freddie) and I love queen’s music and I’m also fucking cishet and you know what? these people Are Not Fans and they should stop pretending they are and just stop making themselves look like assholes.

SPECIFICALLY:

the movie’s not out yet and I’ve had to see FIFTEEN ‘FRIENDLY REMINDER TO ALL CISHETS THAT FREDDIE MERCURY WAS GAY (at least a couple said he was bi and they were less asshole-ish) AND POC AND IF YOU DON’T KNOW YOU’D BETTER LEARN NOW HAHAHAHA YOU THOUGHT HE WASN’T. spoilers: every fucking casual queen fan who has bothered to buy three records knows that. yes, also the cishets. like, as someone who went from VERY CASUAL (ie: I know three songs) to NOT CASUAL in the span of two months I can 100% assure you that before getting into queen the usual preconceptions are that freddie was gay and that queen = freddie + three other people. the first three things you learn when getting into queen are (more or less in order but it can change) that a) the band was actually brian may + roger taylor first, b) that roger brought freddie in because they knew each other already, c) that mary austin was a fundamental person in freddie’s life and that she was also brian may’s ex and knew him first before they got together, d) the members’s backstories including where freddie was born, so like...... this idea that CASUAL CISHET FANS wouldn’t know that freddie was a) not heterosexual, b) poc is just something a NON-FAN would say because guess what, most queen fans even at a casual level are 100% aware that freddie was a) not heterosexual, b) not ethnical british. and saying that OMG CISHETS DON’T KNOW it’s ridiculous because guess what, everyone knows and if they have no idea they do, though luck, we did;

(spoilers: I also am 99% sure that those ppl have no idea that roger and brian actually sing on the records and composed a shitload of the music and queen =/= ONLY FREDDIE but okay)

they have no idea that rock music in the 70s/80s was not so heteronormative and was not the cishetmalething they think it is. like, please look at led zeppelin (ie THE PEOPLE WITHOUT WHOM YOU WOULDN’T HAVE HEAVY METAL) and tell me they were heteronormative. like, you saw robert plant? yeah, me too. and the thing was that queen were revolutionary in the sense that they brought an operatic/theatrical approach to the music that no one tried before but guess what, the point is that they made it sell. the thing that I would like tumblr Woke People to grasp is that what made queen groundbreaking as far as Wokeness goes is that they managed to sell and become the monster-moneymaking group they were (while keeping things quality) with a frontman who was Not Heterosexual, Did Not Try To Pass For Heterosexual One Day In His Life and Never Shied Away From It. like, idk if people are aware that while the scene was way less heteronormative than they think it still wasn’t the most openly talked about topic around (I mean guys elton john did marry a woman at some point X°DDD), but going around in the seventies flaunting your non-heterosexualness around and selling millions of copies making your stage persona a selling point of your music wasn’t exactly common. like ffs one of the most famous queen songs has a video where for 3/4 of the time they’re in drag and the other part has freddie performing with the royal ballet (and guess what the song was actually written by john deacon and the idea of doing the video in drag was roger taylor’s and none of them as far as we know is Not Heterosexual, but never mind giving the rest of the band some credit when it came to Not Caring About Heteronormativity) and fine, that video was banned/controversial, but it still was a huge british hit and it’s in the top five queen songs Everyone Knows. and tbh I’m terrified of that video being shown in the biopic (which it should since the works was from ‘84 and they stop at ‘85) because I’m 100% sure that those people have no idea it exists and when they find out how long is it gonna take them to decide that IT’S PROBLEMATIC? I mean, Woke Kids on here think the rhps is problematic, I’m shuddering at the thought of what they’d think of the i want to break free video;

actually a lot of us cishet queen fans might have had a wake up call including, er, finding out certain preferences, thanks to either their music or their shows or their videos (*cough* I 100% assure you that watching roger taylor in drag was what made me realize crossdressing was my thing for good like I knew before but I didn’t actually put two and two together until I saw that video and went like ‘............. AH WELL SHIT THEN THAT’S IT FAIR ENOUGH’), and a lot of us cishet queen fans who weren’t, like, strictly playing to heteronormative rules back in the day found a lot to relate to in their music even without being queer ourselves and guess what I’ve never met a single queen *fan* who could give less of a damn about freddie’s ethnicity or orientation (as in: everyone was a-okay with it) regardless of their background. that was what made them groundbreaking and extremely important as well, because they managed to be that kind of record-selling records-breaking band while not shying away from having a Not Heterosexual frontman AND Not Heteronormative Heterosexual Band Members Who Also Didn’t Give Two Fucks About Their Lead Singer’s Sexuality so going like OMG NOW WE’RE GONNA TEACH YOU THAT FREDDIE WASN’T HETEROSEXUAL BECAUSE WE’RE WOKE is ridiculous because dearest susan, we already knew and we already were woke about that and to us he was the frontman of a band we liked for a bunch of reasons;

also I don’t think people realize that freddie was a role model/example for the entire next generation of rock bands frontmen even in genres that had zilch to do with him - I mean guys AXL ROSE had a hero-worship for freddie and sang bohemian rhapsody at the freddie memorial concert WITH ELTON JOHN and grn really aren’t the same exact sphere as queen jsyk, but if you look at axl on stage esp. when he was younger? guys. it’s obvious. like you can see the influence. but lmao, now ALL the very cishet(-ish) singers who OPENLY SAID FREDDIE INFLUENCED THEM DIDN’T KNOW ACCORDING TO TUMBLR DOT COM?

LIKE, fuck’s sake, one of freddie’s major accomplishments in that sense was to ending up being a role model for younger singers in a genre where heteronormativity is way less common than everyone thinks BUT where not many people esp. back in the day would be open about their sexuality because it still was a taboo-ish thing -- like, gender roles were a lot more blurred but you wouldn’t hear many of those people admitting openly they were bi or gay or Not Heterosexual and the entirety of the rock scene especially mainstream but also not was entirely fucking aware of it, do these people think THE FANS wouldn’t?

also, we will rock you was WRITTEN BY BRIAN MAY AND IT WAS ABOUT A FUCKING ENCORE WHERE THE FANS SURPRISED THEM AT ONE SHOW IN LIKE MID-SEVENTIES which already shows that They Know Nothing because if they think freddie wrote all the queen songs then it’s already obvious they have no fucking clue about how queen worked as a band because all the members contributed something (guys john deacon wrote at least two of their major hits, roger taylor sang on all the records along with brian may and if you hear the back harmonies on ‘39 he goes way higher than freddie and a part in seaside rendezvous has both him and freddie mimicking other instruments with their voice and you wouldn’t know if no one told you first, brian may wrote a SHITLOAD of music for queen and it was an all-four effort, not just freddie + three other generic british dudes for fuck’s sake) so like, anyone saying that is already giving ample proof that they have no idea;

now of course you can interpret it as whatever the hell you want, but assuming that all of queen’s music that might relate to queer issues was written by freddie ABOUT QUEER ISSUES (this when freddie’s main topic of interest was... not really discussing his sexuality especially in the seventies like again, I want to break free is one of the queen to-go songs everyone brings up when it comes to that topic and IT WAS WRITTEN BY SOMEONE ELSE and the video concept was THANKS TO SOMEONE ELSE) just shows that a) you don’t know shit about the band’s history, b) you’re not a fan because you didn’t even bother to look it up on wiki, c) you’re trying to look woke at all costs;

they have NO FUCKING CLUE that most people in the 70s/80s/90s in the business were NOT politically correct according to their standards LIKE LITERALLY NO ONE WAS;

goes unsaid they probably haven’t listened to one full queen album from beginning to end not even the greatest hits.

tldr: I hate that they don’t seem to realize that things existed before 2005 and that music in the 70s/80s COULD and WAS diverse and *woke* already before they were even born, I hate that they decided that ALL CISHETS DIDN’T KNOW when thank you I think even my damned parents know and they don’t listen to rock music, I hate that they decided that queen APPARENTLY DIDN’T HAVE A FANBASE BEFORE THEM (lol) or that that fanbase didn’t understand them (triple-lol), I hate that they’re reducing freddie to his sexuality when he didn’t want that in the first place, I hate that they’re falling into THE MAIN MISCONCEPTION AROUND ABOUT THIS BAND as in THAT IT WAS FREDDIE + THREE OTHER PEOPLE and not an all-around group effort of people who were friends and deeply loved/respected each other and put the same share of work into it, I hate that they moment they see the movie and are introduced to the actual music/the actual story they’ll MOST LIKELY find problematic things to wank about because like hell they wouldn’t and I hate that they’re basically pretending to give a fuck about a band that I love and have loved dearly in a very non-casual way when they actually fucking don’t.

fucking hell please never let anyone make a biopic about either springsteen or led zeppelin or other people I actually like because this is bad enough, I don’t even want to think of what tumblr ppl would say if they knew anything about any rock artist of medium-large fame back in the day. peace.

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #queen for ts #let's see how fast wank arrives #I HOPE IT DOESN'T #god i hate this discourse BURN IT #lgbt for ts #haljathefangirlcat #ask post

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nightcoremoon · 6 years ago

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I think part of the reason why I hate horror movies is because of the overreliance on jumpscares and shock value and BWAH SUDDEN LOUD NOISES rather than on atmosphere, believability, tension, fear.

here's a list of horror movies from google and the reasons why I hate them, or why I love them, or that they're not actually horror movies.

A quiet place: haven't seen it yet but it's a thriller more so than a horror. thrillers can be scary though but then again so can comedies. and romances. 50 shades is definitely scary: it is psychological abuse after all.

Halloween: slasher film, automatically boring and shit. I'm including the entirety of the franchise here, by the way, and I'm also gonna be including Friday the 13th, nightmare on elm street, etc. They're all the same brand of sensationalist garbage. maybe the very first in each series could be redeemable but the mass volume of shitty and terrible CGI gorefests have ruined them forever. "oh no the scary unkillable monster is coming after us and he's gonna kill us in overly violent ways" 💩

Hereditary: I don't even give a shit it looks trite EDIT maybe it's okay but I don't give enough of a shit to bother to ~give it a chance~ because hey. that's what fucking horror games are for.

Insidious: boring, not scary, 0/10

Get Out: haven't watched yet but will because it's a cinematic masterpiece that defies genre conventions

Bird Box: IM SO FUCKING SICK OF HEARING ABOUT FUCKING BIRD BOX SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT BIRD BOX HOLY SHIT. It's just the goddamn happening by shyamagofuckyourself and it's an excuse to profit off of sensationalist suicide. oohh so spooky. eat my ass, boggart

It: too much bad cgi makes it a comedy. plus a bunch of kids say fuck a lot. good movie that's technically horror I guess but is it scary? nah.

Suspiria: I've never heard of this movie

Annihilation: same

Split: M NIGHT SHYAMALAN IS A SHITTY FILMMAKER and also it's ableist as fuck so

Mandy: google you suck none of these movies have any mainstream appeal

The Conjuring: 💩💩💩

Hush: ??? you know what fuck it I'm skipping the ones that don't matter

The Vvitch: 🙄 my mom's a witch, my best friend's a witch, I'm a witch. hey yeah maybe let's not buy into christian colonialism please? scary witches are boring as shit. gimme something actually scary. like Catholics.

The Nun: wait shit not like that! and by that I mean BORING AS HELL aside from the jumpscares. which are shit

The Babadook: clearly an LGBT movie, not horror

Cabin in the Woods: a parody and an excellent one at that. at least the gore is in homage, or hilariously over the top

Sinister: the fucking epitome of shitty jumpscares and shock value and lack of atmosphere and bad acting and bad plot and jesus fucking christ this is one of the worst and most boring movies I've ever had the misfortune to see DONT WASTE YOUR GODDAMN TIME

Saw: it's actually a thriller with Cary Elwes, Danny Glover, Michael Emerson, and Tobin Bell. it's a campy cheesy low budget true to form horror film with adequate writing, good acting, AMAZING MUSIC BY CHARLIE CLOSER, and isn't over the top with gore considering it's all practical effects. top fucking notch but spawned a dozen terrible sequels.

Shaun of the Dead: it's a touching and heartfelt romantic comedy... with zombies, EXCELLENT CINEMATOGRAPHY, excellent acting, and sad parts that will rip your fucking heart out, stomp on it, and grind it to dust. literally one of the best movies ever made of all time, eat shit tarantino.

The Ring: eh, the original Japanese was better (Japanese horror is its own genre and not a part of this criticism, I actually really like original Japanese horror unfucked up by american audiences as long as it doesn't just gratuitously glorify suicide as Japan does), but this was still a really good mystery thriller with some really cool effects, and is the only movie that has ever actually scared me for real. even now I hate that there's a tv with a vcr right at the foot of my bed.

The Sixth Sense: shyamalan made a couple of good movies. this was one of them. but it wasn't a horror movie and if you didn't know the twist IT WAS A FUCKING AMAZING ONE. like, goddamn empire strikes back levels of supreme and god tier plot twists. it went a little overboard on shock value but compared to the rest of the COMPLETE BULLSHIT on this list (AND IN HIS OWN MOVIES) it really could've gone way further.

The Descent: goddamn claustrophobia. too much horribly cgi'd gore and terrible decisions to be truly enjoyable though. would've been a much better movie without the mutants and the middle finger to physics throat stabbing and the JUST FUCKING KICK IT YOU GODDAMN IDIOT and oh yeah the subtle misogyny. the first half was good tho

28 days later: shitty remake of a merely ok movie EDIT I was thinking of 28 weeks later, 28 days was actually okay I guess

Scream: did not age well but it's okay for being meta, despite the fucking torture porn of drew barrymore at the beginning. allowed for scary movie 1 though, so I'm glad it exists.

Paranormal Activity: PARANORMAL FUCKING ACTIVITY CAN EAT MY ASS, ITS SUCH A SUBLIME FAILURE OF EXECUTION. I WANTED IT TO BE GOOD BUT IT WASNT. oh well at least it inspired five nights at Freddy's. I'll go ahead and throw all shitty found footage movies under this one, including unfriended.

Blair Witch Project: a fucking pioneer of its time. a genre definer. truly scary. good movie. I'll go ahead and throw all good found footage movies under this one, including cloverfield.

The Shining: a thriller, not horror. but goddamn is it the scariest not horror movie ever made. Stephen king you magnificent bastard

Alien: goddamn fucking alien. science fiction masterpiece. director's a little creepy but eh, sigourney weaver kicks ass, and alien isolation is such a good game (despite its many flaws), and it's just so iconic in terms of sheer scope of concept. it's the same horror movie as anywhere else but in space, and I still can't fucking believe this was made in the 70s. this and Star Wars were FUCKING AMAZING, and the xenomorph? THATS ALL PRACTICAL EFFECTS BABEY. NO OVERRELIANCE ON CGI GUTS AND SHOCK VALUE HERE, ITS JUST PURE HORROR AT ITS FINEST. good movie. aliens was better. everything else... eeehhh...

The Thing: same as the descent but with men instead of women, and EVEN WORSE DECISION MAKING. IT IS UNBELIEVABLE JUST HOW GODDAMN STUPID EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM COULD POSSIBLY BE. and in the remake yeah the practical effects were mind blowingly fantastic and inspired dead space which I believe is one of the best horror games if not just best games or horror pieces of media if not just best pieces of media constructed. but the prequel? 🙄 no thanks

The exorcist: masterpiece of practical effects without an overreliance on jumpscares and gore

Jaws: it's Stephen fucking Spielberg in the 70s and one of the most influential horror films and just films in general

Hellraiser: okay I'll give all works by clive barker a pass here because goddamn is he a demented fucking genius if ever I saw one. if only Jericho was actually a good game, it could've been the next doom 3

Poltergeist: an actually good horror movie that depends on atmosphere and effects more so than jumpscares and gore? SIGN ME THE FUCK UP

Evil Dead: campy but misogynist. the sequel was a comedy so it's okay. the next sequel is also a comedy AND ARMY OF DARKNESS IS ONE OF THE BEST MOVIES EVER FUCKING MADE. FIGHT ME. and fuck the remake. sam raimi should've retired after spiderman 3. maybe even before that.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: honestly not bad. it was actually freaky and believable. rednecks really are fucking scary with all their inbreeding and terrible music and hatred of black people. I refuse to acknowledge the original and the sequels.

Psycho: eh, hitchcock's worst is still better than most of the shit on this list.

The Wicker Man: OH GOD NOT THE BEES! AHHGUBLAHH MY EYES! AAAAAHHHHH!!! fucking excellent comedy. but it doesn't have any naked ladies in it like the original did. oh well, can't please everyone.

Night of the Living Dead: THOSE ZOMBIES ARE BULLSHIT. ZOMBIES CANT USE WEAPONS AND THEY SURE AS FUCK CANT TURN YOU INTO A ZOMBIE BY STABBING YOU WITH A TROWEL. THEY HAVE TO BITE YOU. FUCK YOU GEORGE ROMERO. Also, dawn of the dead was just sensationalist garbage. "They tore apart a real pig carcass tho so it looked like real intestines" what? the fuck??? who gives a shit????? I watch movies to escape from reality, dumbass. I don't beat off to chopped up human carcasses. If I want a zombie movie I want the walking dead sans the soap opera bullshit and the racism and then "no one is safe and everyone will die" boring mentality propagated by twd and got and other things I used to like but no longer care about (because why should I give a shit about it if everyone could die? I can already be sad enough about all the real people I know who die. enjoying the pain of the deaths of those important to us is a privilege the cishets have). the walking dead seasons 1&2 was pure horror and the very best kind. don't give me boring contrivances. "but sheena, night of the living dead was a trope definer! everything in it was original!" yeah, you know what else is original? *farting noise* George Romero is just rob zombie without a rock band. his best work was fucking call of duty. that's pathetic. "maybe you just don't like gore" HEY YEAH SURE I DONT WANNA SEE UBER REALISTIC INTESTINES AND ORGANS IF THEY ARENT PART OF A MEDICAL DEAL SO IM JUST A BIG DUMB HATER. I'm the one in the wrong. fuck me, right?

Don't Breathe: A FUCKING TURKEY BASTER FILLED WITH SEMEN. THATS SO STUPID I FORGOT IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SCARY. BEST CRINGE COMEDY OF THE YEAR :D

Tremors: legitimately great movie with a hundred shitty sequels. like saw but your faves win so you walk away filled with determination rather than sad and disappointed. enjoyment of tragedies are a privilege awarded to those who are neurotypical.

Zombieland: gore done right. the only casualty is mindless zomzoms and bill murray. good. granted it counts as a romance and a comedy but honestly last time I watched it I cried at the part where you find out buck isn't tallahassee's dog. god I love that movie. AND FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS IS THE MOST BADASS MOVIE OPENER EVER.

The Fly: Jeff fucking goldblum. amazing effects for good reasons. need I say more? the original doesn't exist because 1950s horror movies are all bad because all 1950s movies are bad. the 1950s should just be purged from america's records except for pleasantville.

All other Stephen king movies: hit or miss but mostly still good. although very few are actual horror.

10 cloverfield lane: more of a thriller like above's misery but still an amazing movie.

Peeping Tom: literally a movie about how creepy it is to fetishize the deaths of women WHILE LITERALLY FETISHIZING THE DEATHS OF WOMEN. like, come on man. how do you miss your own point so completely?

Invasion of the body snatchers: it's not horror and if it's made to be horror using gore it's shit. the whole thing is just an allegory to the joe mccarthy communism witch hunts anyway.

Cube trilogy: the ultimate b movies. so bad they're good. and it's such an interesting concept too!

Killer Klowns from Outer Space: fucking alien clowns come to earth to turn us into cotton candy by killing us using carnival fare. THIS IS THE GREATEST BAD MOVIE EVER MADE.

All horror movies based on horror video games: either irredeemably bad, or action movies

All creepy Netflix horror movies: wow any idiot with a camera and basic cgi skills can throw shit together to make a movie these days, huh

The Slender Man: I am literally too pissed off about this movie to insult it.

Marble Hornets, Tribe Twelve, the Slender Man movie on YouTube: triumphs of meta, editing, found footage, proof of concept, and story. Slenderman is such a malleable entity for a perfect horror experience, HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY FUCK THAT UP? YOUD HAVE TO BE INTENTIONALLY SABOTAGING YOUR WHOLE MOVIE TO FUCK IT UP AS BAD AS SOMEone who exclusively directs remakes... oh... oh no.

Wrong Turn: one mediocre movie and a dozen loathesome snoozefests coasting by on shock value

Troll 2:

oh god

they're eating her

and then

they're gonna eat me

...

oh my gooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-

(Troll 2 is literally the worst movie ever made and I have to respect it for that at least)

but yeah, horror is just bad for movies. but for video games, though...

#long post

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morbidy · 6 years ago

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Teddy Opal bio ramble

Friend asked for Teddy Opal details so I wrote 900+ words because I don’t know when to stop. There is so much I am so sorry

You don’t have to read if you don’t want to. But if you don’t, you should still be subjected to Teddy’s favorite pair of shoes:

Teddy was born in England in 1964. Low-middle class, I’m thinking. He probably has one or two older siblings that took a lot of attention, so was left to his own entertainment a lot. He was kind of rowdy, energetic, was the type to climb around derelict buildings and get kicked out of corner stores for being loud and untrustworthy.

Some of his loud energy got channeled into piano lessons - he actually enjoyed them a lot. He was no prodigy, but he was pretty quickly coming up with his own, simple little sequences. He grew up listening to 70s rock, and into his teen years was learning guitar, bass guitar, and finding he was a decent vocalist.

He was in and out of a couple bands as a teenager, gaining enough of a reputation in the area to head his own band, Opal Stallions. Though he was the youngest of his bandmates by a handful of years, his charisma and dedication to finding gigs and rehearsal time made him the unquestionable leader. By the time Teddy was 21 (1985), they were signed and rapidly gaining popularity as a rock band with some punk influence.

They enjoyed something very near stardom for a while, releasing a couple well-received albums and doing shows. Not a top band, but beyond being a local band. They had music videos and did big events and and could easily be described as famous. As most famous 80s bands, drugs and partying were a large part of their lives. Especially for Teddy, who was still really just a rambunctious kid who now had the world at his feet.

A few years into their rising stardom, a scandal knocks the feet out from under the band. I’m not sure what yet - I want it to be something they brought on themselves, probably, because that's more poetic. A lesson in hubris like some dramatic Greek tragedy. But anyway, whether its some legal money scandal, or the death of a groupie at a party, or whatever - it ruins the band. Quickly they find this scandal following them and tarnishing their reputation, and popularity plummets. The band cracks from all the internal fighting, and they split.

Teddy still had his charming charisma, and was able to keep some of his contacts in the music industry. He moves to the US at this point, I think. He did some session/studio musician work for a while - providing guitar on the albums of other musicians. Generally he moped around and mourned the music career he killed just as it was getting started. He stopped partying, mostly drinking alone now and living a very boring life.

Sometime in his 40s, I think, he is able to buy or become partners in owning a music venue in a city. I’m going to say Seattle ( I feel like all my real-world stories take place near Seattle, but oh well). He runs the music venue now, bringing in lots of popular bands, and letting up-and-coming local bands perform on weekday nights for cheap. At this point he starts becoming less broody over his past - he meets all these kids who say how much they liked Opal Stallions growing up, how they influenced their music, and stuff like that. And he becomes this weird uncle figure to the local music scene.

He’s really casual - he doesn’t like being called Sir or Mr Opal. Even Ted and Theodore sound too stiff for him, so he still goes by Teddy. He has a sense of humor, but it’s hidden under a calm demeanor. His face is rather severe looking - gaunt cheeks, a boney chin, and sharp little ears. He dresses in mostly simple, dark clothing - except his shoes. He seems to have a collection of interesting shoes - things like teal zebra-print pointed toe things (i used to have a picture saved of these shoes for him, but have since lost it.) They are often colorful and tacky, and no one can tell if he’s being ironic by wearing them, or if he actually likes them.

I kind of designed his tattoos! He has quarter sleeves on both his arms. His left arm is mostly snakes winding through flowers, with some mice running around in between. Teddy has had a few pet snakes over the course of his life. He probably always has one or two, and is the type to bring one from home to the office every day to let it hang out in his shirt. His left forearm has some nautical stars around the bottom of the sleeve, and some stray matches and a zippo lighter. There’s also a hissing black cat done in a like.. 50’s halloween decoration style.

His left sleeve extends up onto his neck where he has something written in scrolly font, but I don’t know what yet. I need to figure out when in his life he got it to determine what the quote says.

His right pectoral is a rearing horse with a sunburst behind it, which fades into clouds on his right shoulder. Under the clouds is a cemetery scene, and the headstones have some dates on them - I think the dates of some close friends and family who died. From there to his elbow is random edgy stuff - a coffin, an iron wrought cemetery fence. Not sure about his right forearm yet.

The front of his right hip has a skeletal hand giving a middle finger.

I have all these sketched out for an idea but need to finalize things and find more filler to make the sleeves look better. Also, I feel like in his late 30s he started going to the gym and kept at it, and so now is surprisingly agile and fit for his age. Still smokes a lot of cigarettes though.

#teddy opal #oc

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blogsmith57 · 3 years ago

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Movies Ansd Tv With Pina Colada Song

Movies And Tv With Pina Colada Song Rupert Holmes

Pina Colada Song Wikipedia

Escape The Pina Colada Song Video

Two Pina Coladas Song

Pina Colada Song Video

Janet learns the lyrics to the Pina Colada song. Janet learns the lyrics to the Pina Colada song. On the movie the sweetest thing who sings the pina colada song its a womens group?

In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.

***

At least in retrospect, the ’70s must have been the wildest, most motley, most all-over-the-place decade in the history of popular music. Some genuine musical revolutions either started in the ’70s or matured during the decade: Hip-hop, punk, disco, funk, prog. But if you look at the ’70s through the lens of the pop charts, as this column does, you see excitement and tedium locked in a constant struggle for dominance throughout the decade, with novelty sneaking around the outside and getting some jabs in.

So really, the ’70s ended the only way they possibly could’ve done: With a badly-sung, infernally catchy soft-rock ditty, an infidelity-themed story-song that ends in an O. Henry twist. Rupert Holmes’ “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” has popped up on movie and TV-show soundtracks countless times in the past four decades; it has earned its place within our shared consciousness. And yet I can’t imagine ever being in a situation where I would actively seek the song out, where I would want to hear it. But then, I was three months old when the thing hit #1. Maybe I’m not supposed to know what motherfuckers were thinking.

Rupert Holmes, the man who wrote and produced “Escape” and who thus owns the chart transition from ’70s to ’80s, had been part of the pop-music dream factory for a decade when he got to #1. Holmes was born in the UK, the son of an American Army officer and an English woman. He spent the early years of his childhood in the English village of Northwich and the later years in the New York suburb of Nanuet. Holmes’ parents were both musicians, and Holmes went to the Manhattan School Of Music on a clarinet scholarship. Pretty soon after he finished school, he went to work as a pop-music professional.

Holmes was working as an arranger in the late ’60s when he joined the Cuff Links, an anonymous bubblegum group that also featured Ron Dante, the lead singer of the Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar.” When the Cuff Links broke up, Holmes recorded a song called “Jennifer Tomkins.” The single, released under the name Street People, peaked at #36. In 1971, Holmes wrote a cannibalism-themed joint called “Timothy” for the Pennsylvania band the Buoys, and that one peaked at #17. Holmes also wrote ad jingles and scored a little-seen 1970 Western called Five Savage Men. He was in the game.

Holmes released Widescreen, his solo debut, in 1974. Before 1979’s Partners In Crime, the breakout album that gave us “Escape,” Holmes knocked out four solo LPs. None of them sold, but those records helped Holmes build a name for himself as a writer of funny, irony-infused story-songs. Barbra Streisand was a fan, and Holmes wrote songs for her and for the absurdly popular soundtrack for the 1976 film A Star Is Born. Holmes didn’t score a charting single of his own until 1978’s “Let’s Get Crazy Tonight,” which peaked at #72. Private Stock, the label that released “Let’s Get Crazy Tonight,” went out of business when the song was still on the charts.

Holmes got the idea for “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” one night when he was flipping through The Village Voice, the newspaper that once employed me. (“Escape” is the second #1 hit built around classified ads; it arrived eight years after the Honey Cone’s “Want Ads.”) Inspired, Holmes hatched the narrative of a bored couple who, while attempting to cheat on each other, accidentally go out on a blind date with each other. As originally written, the chorus started with the line “if you like Humphrey Bogart.” While he was getting ready to record it, though, Holmes decided that his own songs had too many references to older movies, and to Bogart in particular. He changed “Humphrey Bogart” to “piña coladas” at the last possible minute simply because he didn’t want to let down any of the real Rupert Holmes heads out there.

If you stop to think about “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” for even a second, it’s a pretty nasty little song. The very first line is this: “I was tired of my lady/ We’d been together too long.” The song’s narrator is unhappy with relationship, but he doesn’t do anything to end it. Instead, he sneaks around behind his girlfriend’s back, falling for a sentence in a classified ad. The person described in that ad seems hopelessly basic. Likes: Fruity mixed drinks, rain, champagne, beach fucking. Dislikes: Yoga, health food. But apparently the guy is basic, too, since a few lines of small-print newsprint text are all he needs to ditch his relationship. He takes out his own ad, responding to the first, and he includes grandiose verbiage about planning an “escape.”

He does not successfully execute that escape. It turns out that the girl who took out that classified ad is his own girlfriend, who is just as bored with the relationship as he is. They meet up at an Irish pub and instantly figure out exactly what just happened. The song presents this ending as a happy surprise. In interviews years later, Holmes says that the guy was supposed to be an asshole, and a passive one. The girl, who is also attempting to cheat, was at least the one with the wherewithal to instigate the whole episode. Holmes was hoping that they’d both realize how much they had in common, that they’d recommit themselves to each other. This seems unlikely.

Movies And Tv With Pina Colada Song Rupert Holmes

I have questions. For instance: Where does this couple go from here? They both know that they can’t trust each other. They also know that they don’t really know each other. They’ve got all these completely elementary preferences that they haven’t communicated. After that initial rush of recognition, how does the rest of this relationship look? How long do they stay together? How are they not incredibly pissed off at one another from the moment they spy each other across the bar? How are they not, at the same time, both consumed with guilt upon getting caught? I don’t like this couple’s chances.

I don’t know if this is a good story, but it’s good storytelling. I don’t much like the characters or where they end up, but Holmes sketches out the whole narrative in a few quick words, never losing sight of his own melody. This doesn’t change the reality that the actual music behind this story is exactly the kind of wack-ass soft-rock pablum that I cannot stand. It’s got an awkward, clumpy beat that Holmes recorded with two drummers. (Holmes co-produced it, and he says that the studio band played sloppily that day, so he used the 16 bars he liked the best and looped them.) There’s watery piano. There’s a processed-to-death guitar lead. There’s a groove that can’t stop tripping over itself. And then there are those vocals.

Holmes isn’t a bad vocalist, exactly. He a classic ’70s singer-songwriter guy, a conversational speak-singer. But man, I do not like what happens when he cranks that voice up and hits the hook on “Escape.” The hook is, to be fair, instantly memorable. But this is not always a good thing. Holmes hits that upper register, and I just wish I was someplace else. I don’t even know how people functioned when this thing was all over the radio.

Holmes managed one more big hit after “Escape (The Piña Colada Song).” “Him,” the single’s follow-up, was another story-song. This time, Holmes sang from the perspective of a guy who figures out that his girlfriend is cheating. “Him” peaked at #6. (It’s a 4.) Holmes kept putting out albums into the ’90s, but none of them hit. He also went back to writing songs for other people. “You Got It All,” a ballad that Holmes wrote for the teenage Tongan-American Minneapolis-based Mormon family band the Jets, peaked at #3 in 1986. (It’s a 6.) Britney Spears, an artist who will eventually appear in this column, covered it on her debut album. Get ready to be incredibly depressed: Holmes wrote the song for his 10-year-old daughter. Before the song took off, she died of an undetected brain tumor.

I don’t know how you bounce back from something like that, but Holmes did. After “Escape (The Piña Colada Song),” Holmes has had more success as a storyteller than as a musician. In 1985, Holmes wrote The Mystery Of Edwin Drood, a Broadway musical based on an unfinished Charles Dickens novel. It won five Tonys, including two for Holmes. Since then, Holmes has written more than a dozen plays, many of them hits. He also created Remember WENN, a drama that ran for three season on AMC in the late ’90s, and he wrote all 56 of its episodes. He’s published a few books, too. The man can write, and the best thing about “Escape” is that you can tell that right away.

But Holmes is a whole lot more famous for “Escape” than for anything else he’s ever done in his life. He’s pretty funny when he talks about it, too. In a 2003 Songfacts interview, Holmes said this:

I have a feeling that if I saved an entire orphanage from a fire and carried the last child out on my shoulders, as I stood there charred and smoking, they’d say, “Aren’t you the guy who wrote ‘The Piña Colada Song?'”

Perhaps Rupert Holmes would like to escape “The Piña Colada Song.” So would I.

Pina Colada Song Wikipedia

BONUS BEATS: Here’s the scene from a 1999 episode of The Simpsons — the same storied episode that predicted the Trump presidency — where the not-aging-well future version of Bart sings a parody of “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” during his sister’s presidential addresss:

BONUS BONUS BEATS: Here’s the weirdly extremely memorable “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” needle-drop from the 2001 film Shrek:

BONUS BONUS BONUS BEATS: Here’s Kanye West, noted fan of the aforementioned Shrek scene, quoting “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” on “White Dress,” a song that he contributed to the soundtrack of the 2012 RZA-directed kung fu movie The Man With The Iron Fists:

(Kanye West will eventually appear in this column.)

BONUS BONUS BONUS BONUS BEATS: Here’s the scene from 2014’s Guardians Of The Galaxy — which, like The Man With The Iron Fists, stars Dave Bautista — where Chris Pratt steals his Walkman back from the space-prison guard who is enjoying “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)”:

BONUS BONUS BONUS BONUS BONUS BEATS: Here’s the great scene from a 2016 Better Call Saul episode where Bob Odenkirk sings a few bars of “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” and spouts some fake biographical facts about Rupert Holmes:

more from The Number Ones

Raised in Hawaii Jack Johnson was the son of a famed surfer and even tried to have a go of his own on the waves. Unfortunately an accident that involved teeth being knocked out and stitches being required kind of halted that dream as he was sidelined from surfing for a while. It wasn’t too long after that however that his musical talents started to become his thing and picked up a guitar and started strumming out a few songs that he’d thought up. He did this throughout college, joining a band and jamming as they performed here and there during their time together. Johnson’s big break came in 2000 however when he not only produced the soundtracks for a couple of films but he tried his hand at making them as well. You could easily say this man is quite talented but it might still be an understatement.

Here are a few of his songs as used in TV and movies.

5. Glee – Bubbletoes

Glee is one of those shows you either liked or didn’t think about. It wasn’t even a matter of not liking if it you didn’t watch it, as the energy and verve of the show was enough to make it interesting. But if you weren’t into the whole song and dance routine then chances are you wouldn’t dislike it but just wouldn’t watch it since the whole idea of not liking the show seemed kind of petty since it was so upbeat a lot of the time, or at least seemed like it. In many way Glee kind of took a lot of people back to their experiences in high school since there are quite a few people that can remember being in similar clubs.

Escape The Pina Colada Song Video

4. Sense8 – The Sharing Song

This show is something else and it was one of Netflix’s top prospects when it first came out. The ability to connect with people miles away due to a special quality that links them all, and the knowledge and skills that can be shared via that link is pretty cool, but it could cause some serious problems as well. You can’t help but think that some of the people that are connected would embrace this after a period of confusion, but others would seek to block it out since this is the kind of thing that humans would rarely ever be able to get used to since it’s not considered natural or normal.

3. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty – Escape (The Pina Colada Song)

Two Pina Coladas Song

Walter Mitty is a man that no one seems to take seriously since he’s kind of a nobody when the film starts, though he’s far more important than many people would care to realize. Working at Time magazine where he’s been for so long he’s been taken for granted and treated like a shadow on the wall since he’s a very quiet and unassuming person. But when an important negative for the last issue of Time goes missing he has to go and track it down by tracking down the photographer. In the end however he finds that it was with him the whole time, he just didn’t know where to look. The adventure he takes though is what was truly important as it finally got him to open up to the world.

2. Curious George – Upside Down

Several generations have grown up with Curious George since in truth he’s been around for a very long time. As a children’s story he’s one of the most classic tales out there and is the kind of story that you’d want your kid to watch since it’s a very touching and educational show that offers a lot of fun and engaging activity that kids will want to emulate. Sure George gets himself into trouble now and again, but that’s the beauty of the design. Kids can learn how they can get themselves out of trouble as well since George is all about having fun but he’s also about problem-solving. This is just a great show for kids and a bit of nostalgia for adults.

1. Jack Johnson – Middle Man

For all his talent and all his skill at music Jack Johnson is still a very diverse man since he’s not only a musician, but a father, a husband, and an environmentalist that spends a lot of his time balancing his life out between the different roles he’s given himself to play. So far in life it seems like he’s done just fine and has kept everything as it should be. He’s a very open person about his life in music, but keeps a lid on the private lives of his kids and family, which seems like one of the best ideas since quite honestly it’s no one else’s business. He’s definitely a family man and someone that cares a lot about what he does.

Pina Colada Song Video

Usually that’s the kind of person that knows just what they want and how to make it happen.

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thisaintascenereviews · 3 months ago

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Blues Pills - Birthday

One of my favorite styles of music is blues-rock, especially bands that have a sound similar to 60s and 70s blues and hard rock. I wrote a couple of pieces years ago when that retro style of rock became popular, especially thanks to Greta Van Fleet, but in that time since, this style of rock has become rather style. It was really fun when it was first popular, because it provided an alternative to the post-grunge and butt-rock of the 00s and early 2010s, but like with that style, this retro rock style also became style and needed some kind of alternative to keep rock fresh. The problem was that a lot of these bands began sounding the same, and I just got bored of it, but a few bands have come out of the woodwork with a somewhat unique sound.

Enter Swedish band Blues Pills, who have been around since the early 2010s, but they became a victim of the generic sound, too, as their last couple of albums just haven’t done much for me. It’s not even that they were bad, it’s that they didn’t do anything new or exciting to their sound, but they’re back with a new album, entitled Birthday. I was curious to check it out, just to see if it was any good, and thankfully, it’s a solid little blues-rock album. At only 39 minutes, it’s a short little record that doesn’t quite do too much that’s unique or off the wall, but it does have somewhat of a refreshing sound.

Their vocalist, Elin Larsson, is a powerhouse vocalist, and she is a big part of why I got into that band in the first place, but their first couple of albums dabbled in acid-rock and psych-rock, along with blues-rock, but they’ve smoothed out their sound over the years. She still remains intact, and in fact, her voice has adapted well to their sound change, especially with this album. They have a bit of a soulful sound on this thing, and it reflects quite heavily into the vocals, but there is a Motown flavor to it that I haven’t quite heard from a lot of bands in this vein, so I appreciate that.

The only real issue with this record, and it’s an issue I’ve had with a handful of things this year, is that they have a cool sound, but only a few songs really stick out, due to having a pretty similar formula throughout the album. It’s a good formula, but the songs bleed into each other, so while I have a good time listening to it, I don’t come back to it much after the fact. I’d check this out if you want a solid blues-rock album with some soulful melodies behind it, and a powerhouse of a vocalist. The songwriting isn’t anything to write home about, but it’s still good, and it’s worth hearing, regardless. I’ve heard a few albums in this vein a bit better, but that doesn’t discredit this one at all.

#blues pills #birthday #rock #blues #blues rock #hard rock #soul #Motown

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bleederziine · 7 years ago

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“I’m Compelled To Do It”; an Interview w/Lisa Jane Persky, Photographer, Writer, and Artist

In high school I was going to move to New York and grab the city by its throat. I was going to have at least 500 friends, own a punky couture boutique, and hold gothic open mics there every night and maybe date a Stroke for a few months. My imagination was like an entire universe of different identities, with tiny planets for NYC, Paris, 90s Seattle, 20s Greenwich Village. My favorite magazine was Pitchfork Review, and when I read Lisa Jane Persky’s piece, “X Offenders: A Typical Day in the Life of an NYC Proto Punk”, I got really jealous of her and then I got over that and wanted to know more. So I sent her a pouring my heart out email about how boring my neighborhood was, and how her story gave me hope for my own “New York story.” Sappy, right? Also, it was likely the truest thing I had ever written, before or since. As an over emotional messy artist, I’ve learned that the only way for me to get anything done is to rip open my heart and be as (healthily!) vulnerable as I can. In my experience, this has led me to knit a sweater for my favorite lead singer (Luke of the Walters) throw pads at Mario of the Orwells, and interview one of the coolest people I know.

Hi Lisa! How are you?

Lisa Jane Persky: I’m fine, just doing so many things at once! How are you?

I’m good! What are you working on right now?

LJP: I’m going to do a ten-day residency in London in June with my friends at Underground, a subculture inspired brand that makes some cool favorite stuff of mine. We found each other in 2015 and have been plotting something to do together ever since. June is Music Month in the UK and the residency will first of all be a show of my early photography, mostly of the Blondie days, and CBGB's time, really early, like 74-75. Along with that I’m programming various events, so different artists will come, DJs, musicians, underground comic book illustrators, all along the lines of subculture and music.

What made you want to photograph Blondie, since you were already familiar with them as friends?

LJP: Mostly it was access to a camera! I had a camera my dad used to use, and the band was just so cool looking, and I was going out with Gary Valentine at the time. Chris and Debbie were living in my friends loft, which is now known as the Blondie loft on the Bowery, where the band also rehearsed, and up there on the fourth floor was a big, torn white backdrop for portraits. It all started with an *official* session where I took 5 rolls of film in the loft, and those were pretty cool so I just kept going.

What is a good picture to you?

LJP: I like looking at people, studying them and observing what they do. When I shoot portraits we create an atmosphere together. I try to make a comfortable space for the subject to play, to be who they are with me, in spite of my lens I really enjoy seeing that, and the collaboration of it. It has to mean

something to me and I try to frame in the camera, and not edit it later. My eyes really were the frame then. Everyone looks so beautiful, was so young. When you’re young, you think, “we’re all so that!” And they were. Debbie’s a beautiful woman. She makes a picture look good, without much effort. I’m all

about making Instagram a place for my work right now. I like the shooting for that square shape. I love seeing other people’s photography evolve there.

Who were some of your other musical subjects?

LJP: I photographed Martin Rev of Suicide, I did a series on keyboard players, Cherry Vanilla’s, Zecca, and Richard Sohl, Patti Smith’s keyboard player, Kristian Hoffman of the Mumps, Lance Loud and the other Mumps, The Fast, mostly my friends and mostly portraits. I prefer to see live music rather than photograph it.

Yeah! I photograph shows sometimes and I prefer to ask to take pictures of the band after because I feel like the subject will give me more than when they’re thinking I’m just an anonymous photographer. What motivates you as an artist?

LJP: I’m compelled to do it, I want to do it. That said, writing is harder for me than all the other things I do. I’m not really sure why. I think it’s because there’s a loneliness to it that the others don’t have. Even when I’m out photographing my landscapes, which I call Lonescapes because there are no people in them, I never feel lonely. But there’s some kind of foreboding loneliness in writing that keeps me away from it. But I love having written, which is how most people probably feel.

”The picture of me is a photo booth pic. I’m wearing an Eagle’s Nest T-Shirt. The Eagle’s Nest was a gay hardcore leather bar in the Meatpacking District (no girls allowed) and their symbol was that Eagle on the shirt, which is the eagle that in part inspired Arturo Vega to design the Ramones Eagle. There are all kinds of other stories out there about Arturo's art but he loved America and being in it, had a great sense of humor about its hypocrisies. The Bicentennial was coming up and that was a very big deal in New York City with sailors from the fancy wooden Tall Ships arriving and all. Anyway, I thought you might like to see that and know about it. The Eagle's Nest is now called The Eagle and it has moved uptown from its old location.”

What do you get out of making art?

LJP: The most important thing is what connects me to different people. I like being able to be in the world with others to share stories with people who aren’t necessarily like myself. Each of these things I do connects me to others in different ways. I value that, making and having friends and exploring the world through art and music together more than anything. But I also have no idea what else I’d do. I really don’t.

So the way we met online was through me reading your piece in Pitchfork; what made you want to write that?

LJP: Every year my husband and I go to a conference that highlights music writing of all types, a very eclectic mix of people and papers, and I one year presented a paper on my interview with the Ramones, which I did the day after their first record came out. And then I wanted to write another paper, since everyone had been asking me, “what was it like back then?” And I had read something Tommy Dean (Mills), who owned Max’s at that time in the 70s had said in an interview. He said that all the girls who came to the club with or to see the bands back then were either hookers or groupies. And I read that and it made me really mad, because all of us had been working our tails off, we were not hookers or groupies! Not that there is anything wrong with being a hooker or groupie, it’s just that way he characterized all the women. It said more about him than us but that quote coupled with people asking what it was like, made me decide to write what it was like for me. So I wrote that and presented it at the conference, and used photos I had or had taken or found that went with the text, so people could get a three dimensional look at what a day in the life in downtown New York back then was like.

What was writing for the New York Rocker like?

LJP: Well, that is why I was interested in what you’re doing, because it’s very similar. It was just a bunch of us going to these shows. Early on there was hardly anyone going, just us, the people in the bands and the neighborhood, other artists, our friends and then Alan Betrock. He was older and always a superfan of rock music, especially pop and girl groups. He had a zine before there were zines. I don't know what you'd call them but it was amateur publishing by smart people and he and others like Greg Shaw would

write to each other about records newsletter style sometimes on mimeograph paper because they didn’t even have Xerox machines then and they’d snail-mail it around because it was the only way. So he showed up and we knew he was a kind of force and then it was like “Lets have a newspaper!” and he gave birth to New York Rocker with us as his staff and we wrote about each other and it was much more representative of the downtown music scene in the early '70s than PUNK magazine was. PUNK magazine was great but was its own more specific world.

What do you think was the most interesting thing one of these musicians said to you?

LJP: One of my favorite answers, when I asked the Ramones in July of 1976 what they liked to do when they weren’t making music, they all agreed, and I think it was Johnny who said it, “we like to hang out in stairwells.” And he wasn’t kidding; they liked to hang out in stairwells in Queens. One of the things that was good about being there and these early interviews was you got an idea of who everyone was in an unguarded way except for Patti Smith who always seemed strategic and cautious. It was before anyone else there was famous or known, and no one knew whether they were going to be anyone or not. We were all hanging out with our pants down, there was no hiding going on.

What do you think were punk’s biggest inspirations back then?

LJP: In the beginning, they were all pop bands, really. Everyone really liked pop, and everyone was a fan of real rock n roll, and what we heard on the radio was more like Bread and yacht rock before it was called that, and it didn’t feel like what we grew up with and times were tough and a lot of us were just furious, had a ton of energy that needed an outlet. And then, too, we all liked glam. These things, the pop sensibility, the love of glam and the performative aspects of that and the furious energy was the most visible, in many of the Max's and CBGB'S bands 74-76. In 76 the Sex Pistols who had been influenced by The Ramones but had their own kind of fury and other UK bands started to have an effect. There was a lot of discussion, which I wrote about in the New York Rocker and the LA Weekly, about whether our New York music was punk. And we didn’t think so. We were, most of us, a bunch of punk kids but Punk wasn’t a good moniker for most NY bands.

A lot of your Pitchfork article was also about your acting career. How did you get into acting?

LJP: Yeah, that article was about the time when you could still get an apartment for $65 a month in Greenwich Village. There was a lot of experimental theater in the neighborhood, and this guy who lived in my building was a wonderful, known playwright and all around character in The Village named Harry (H.M. Koutoukas), and he came up to me on the street one day and said, “Darling I've written a play for you. Rehearsals start on Sunday. The pay is $25 a week. I’m sending someone to pick you up.” And I didn’t really have anything better to do, I wasn’t sure what I was doing. It was right after I graduated from high school. The guy he sent to pick me up, came to my apartment, walked me from there to the East Village to La Mama Experimental Theater Club and we started rehearsals, and that got my career started. I was enthusiastic and had a passion for it and even more important, I got laughs. The guy who picked me up and walked me to the first rehearsal of the play was the same person who let Chris and Debbie move into the loft on the Bowery with him. The theaters I worked in were right around the corner from CBGB’s so it was convenient to go to shows after I’d perform. The acting part of my career went on until about 2005. I haven’t done much of it since then but I'd welcome the opportunity to play some juicy part with fun people.

What was your favorite acting role? LJP: Well, that’s a hard question to answer because I’d almost always think, “this is the best job, this is the most fun I’ve ever had!” I loved the film The Big Easy, because I had worked with the director Jim McBride before, and we knew each other pretty well. And there was a preponderance of male characters in that script and I said to him, “you should make one of these detectives a woman. It would be so much more interesting.” We had to convince the producer, and we did, and I basically got to write my own role. And you were in the Golden Girls! What was that like? LJP: Well, those ladies are pretty amazing and admirable, as you might imagine. Bea didn’t like to talk very much. She would come in every morning and say “good morning everyone” and not really talk to anyone all day, unless she had a note for you about your performance. It was quite odd. It was fun, but there were more fun jobs. It was more fun to watch them work. What music/art/other stuff do you like today? LJP: Theres a band called Shame that’s from the UK, and they just put out a record called Songs of Praise. I’ve seen them live and they’re fantastic. They have the spirit that I saw back then, in the mid 70s from all the punk bands that we didn’t call punk. I love Mary Epworth who is putting her own unique ethereal spin on psychedelia. She has a beautiful voice. I love so many artists and musicians that I don’t know where to start listing but I’ll tell you this, at any given time you might find me listening to Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Trio Is My Life! I’ve been listening to Simple Minds again lately. I like Orwells, who I learned about from you. When I was growing up I was the only girl that I knew who had a record player and records. My father worked at a newspaper, so I got a lot of free records. My stepfather was a violinist and he would buy me more experimental music. I always liked noise and I was the only girl I knew who liked prog, and I still like prog. I love Steven Wilson, from Porcupine Tree--but not Porcupine Tree. I like his prog band which goes by his name. I like his work in part because he writes interesting songs about women. No one’s really paid enough attention to that. Prog is leaving behind it’s reputation as a masculine ghetto. Someone needs to write about it. Maybe me, but I haven’t gotten around to that.

Interview by Chloe Graham

All Images Courtesy of Lisa Jane Persky

#blondie #lisa jane persky #punk #70s new york #70s punk #film photography #70s #interview

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deadcactuswalking · 4 years ago

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REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 13/03/2021 (Drake, Silk Sonic, Justin Bieber, AJ Tracey)

Look, there are tons of new arrivals for this week, mostly in the top 50 and a third of them being Drake. Olivia Rodrigo’s “drivers license” is still #1 for a ninth week despite the aforementioned Drake. Let’s just run through this as quickly as is possible. Welcome back to REVIEWING THE CHARTS.

Rundown

We have quite a few notable dropouts from the chart here, particularly the UK Top 75 which I cover, including “Siberia” by Headie One featuring Burna Boy, “Apricots” by Bicep, “Afterglow” by Wilkinson off of the return, same with “ROCKSTAR” by DaBaby featuring Roddy Ricch and then some pretty massive dropouts, some of which might return, most will not. These include “willow” by Taylor Swift, “What You Know Bout Love” by the late Pop Smoke, “Take You Dancing” by Jason Derulo, “Looking for Me” by Diplo, Paul Woolford and Kareen Lomax and finally, “Watermelon Sugar” by Harry Styles. I’m surprised there weren’t any Drake songs dropping out because he debuted three tracks, the most he could possibly debut, but apparently there weren’t any Drake songs on the chart in the first place. Naturally, as it’s a busy week, we had quite a few notable fallers for songs already on the chart, like “Get Out My Head” by Shane Codd at #16, “Streets” by Doja Cat at #19, “Up” by Cardi B at #21, “Anyone” by Justin Bieber at #23, “Afterglow” by Ed Sheeran at #27, “Bringing it Back” by Digga D and AJ Tracey at #31, “Blinding Lights” by the Weeknd at #33, “Head & Heart” by Joel Corry and MNEK at #36, “Arcade” by Duncan Laurence at #37, “Money Talks” by Fredo and Dave at #38, “We’re Good” by Dua Lipa at #39... okay, maybe “quite a few” was an understatement. Regardless, we still have more fallers outside of the top 40, like our biggest fall for “Bluuwuu” by Digga D at #42, “Levitating” by Dua Lipa and remixed by DaBaby at #43, “Love Not War (The Tampa Beat)” by Jason Derulo and Nuka at #45, “Sweet Melody” by Little Mix at #46, “Toxic” by Digga D at #47 and “34+35” by Ariana Grande at #48... as well as “Ready” by Fredo featuring Summer Walker at #50, “Mood” by 24kGoldn and iann dior at #51, “Good Days” by SZA at #52, “Someone You Loved” by Lewis Capaldi at #53, “You’re Mines Still” by Yung Bleu and remixed by Drake – apparently that doesn’t count as Drake – at #54, “Dance Monkey” by Tones and I at #55, “you broke me first” by Tate McRae at #56, “Regardless” by RAYE and Rudimental at #57, “Whoopty” by CJ at #58, “Pierre” by Ryn Weaver off of the debut to #63, “Be the One” by Rudimental, MORGAN, TIKE and Digga D at #65, “Midnight Sky” by Miley Cyrus at #66, “Mixed Emotions” by Abra Cadabra at #67, “Lemonade” by Internet Money and Gunna featuring Don Toliver and NAV at #68, “Roses” by SAINt JHN and remixed by Imanbek at #69, “positions” by Ariana Grande at #71 and finally, “Didn’t Know” by Tom Zanetti at #73. You’d think it was Christmas with all of this, except in this case there aren’t returning entries or even many gains other than “SugarCrash!” by ElyOtto up to #59. That’s literally it for any notable gains, so apparently only hyperpop can withstand Drake. God help us.

NEW ARRIVALS

#75 – “Don’t You Worry About Me” – Bad Boy Chiller Crew

Produced by Tatics

The “Bad Boy Chiller Crew” sounds exactly like a 2000s UK garage collective from London, and thankfully, I’m pretty much right, except these guys were actually formed in 2018 and see themselves more of a “bassline” group, even if they were formed a decade after the fact. Bassline was big in Yorkshire in the mid-2000s, and I guess the BBCC – subtle – are here to bring it back? I mean, I’d rather it go this way than having rappers lazily sample bassline classics like a couple weeks back so, what have the Bad Boy Chiller Crew got to say? Well, not much clearly, but they’ve never had to. UK garage groups weren’t ever hardcore rap collectives in reality, at least in the mainstream, and their primary purpose was to make bouncy music for the clubs and, yes, it worked. Does this work? Well, no, because it’s not really UK garage or bassline, going for a sampled piano-house chorus and percussion that never really goes full on with the “bassline” or has that much of a breakbeat. These rappers are definitely a presence and whilst I may not know what they’re saying because Genius.com gave up two lines through, at least they’re not more boring, just settling for mildly obnoxious in how everything sounds like double-tracked gang vocals. I can definitely see the mid-2000s influence in some of these synth patterns and absolutely the vocal tone on the chorus, which, by the way, is an incredible chorus that deserves a more subtle rap presence. Hell, I think KSI did a similar track like this with Nathan Dawe... he could have worked here. When I’m saying I’d prefer KSI over your own song and your own beat, you’ve got a problem. As it is, this is a really promising bassline-adjacent song with some really nice string flourishes and an infectious chorus, that falls flat in its attempts to keep me interested when the chorus isn’t playing because it serves more to repulse during instead of keeping its momentum. I’m praying for a remix that takes these guys off, honestly. AJ Tracey? Please?

#74 – “The Bandit” – Kings of Leon

Produced by Markus Drays

Ah, Kings of Leon, that indie rock band who hasn’t made anything good ever. Okay, maybe that’s a blunt, over-the-top statement but as little as I care about modern mainstream indie rock in the first place, I care even less about Kings of Leon, who I’ve yet to hear anything worthwhile from in singles. Regardless, they have a new album, which meant their lead single could finally chart, and I don’t know what a non-fungible token is and I’m not doing research for an album that my friend’s dad – read: Kings of Leon’s main demographic – thought was boring, so how’s this new single? Well, there’s an acoustic guitar strum I swear I’ve heard before, followed by a riff that admittedly sounds okay, a steady drum beat you can see replicated in rock songs of this tempo... the vocalist here is covered by everything in the mix, it feels, and even when I can hear him clearly, the lyrics feel overly cryptic to the point where nothing really sticks, and the guy’s delivery at least used to be commanding. Here, he’s fully checked out and I’m convinced everyone in the band stopped bothering. Whoever does the left-channel electric guitar wankery feels like he’d be more fit on a slower, lo-fi indie rock project and he’d really work in that context. Here, I couldn’t care less about this nothing of a song that just does not move. It chugs along through odd mixing and a “get this over with” guitar solo, and just chugs and chugs for four minutes. I honestly do not see a reason to seek this out, let alone an entire album... but it still went #1. That’s sales for you.

#70 – “What Other People Say” – Sam Fischer and Demi Lovato

Produced by Rykeyz

This song was released last month and hasn’t reached any chart in the US outside of the Bubbling Under yet, even with a video, which is just concerning for Demi, but I know she’s been struggling to reach any kind of further success recently, which is unfortunate as she always came off as one of the most interesting singers to come out of that late-2000s Disney star cast. To be fair, she did collaborate with professional nobody Sam Fischer, so I guess it’s partially her fault. That said, I like this song quite a lot, actually. Lyrically, it focuses on how both singers feel like they’ve left behind your individuality as a result of becoming famous and ending up distancing themselves from people they actually love and care for, with it being heavily implied in Demi’s verse that this is a result of not wanting people like her mother to see where she is now: taking the same drugs she was taught to say no to, with that pre-chorus of her realising she felt she was “better than” all of the people that she mirrors to. You can tell this comes from a real place from Demi, and it’s kind of heartwrenching, even if this instrumental is mostly piano-ballad fluff that does work for such a lyrically heavy song by casting off all attention away from the weak acoustic guitars and the finger-snaps that add more of a soul or gospel element to this production, which is pretty apt for some of the references to separating yourself from the religious practices you grew up on in the chorus. Demi’s vocals are pretty powerful here, and there are some really interesting backing vocals and ad-libs in that last chorus from both of them... oh, yeah, Sam Fischer is on this song too, but he’s such a lack of presence in comparison, even lyrically, that it probably doesn’t matter. Regardless, this is a good song and I hope it becomes a hit past the chaos of this week.

#60 – “Heartbreak Anniversary” – Giveon

Produced by Maneesh and Sevn Thomas

I figured this guy would finally chart here in the UK eventually, “Chicago Freestyle” notwithstanding, which was a top 10 hit for him and – guess who? – Drake. Anyway, this guy’s from California yet he totally sounds British sometimes, but that’s all I’ve really paid attention up until this point, and, yeah, I like this quite a bit too. Giveon has a really unique voice and the intro with those distorted vocal samples is a real Kanye touch to the whole song. The song is about Giveon finding it really hard to cope with a break-up of a relationship he thought had a lot of potential, through the odd and janky metaphor of “heartbreak anniversary”. The really cavernous mixing does accentuate how the percussion feels very stunted and the song as a whole feels kind of rough around the edges, but the desperate tone in Giveon’s voice and those pretty excellent backing vocals in the post-chorus sound pretty excellent, especially over these subtle pianos, and there are certain moments in the song that, like all good R&B, you remember for the vocal run or the harmonies, really rather than the chorus, so, yeah, this is good and I hope it sticks around. Huh, maybe sleeping a lot does make you more of a positive person... or maybe the music’s just good for once.

#49 – “Ferrari Horses” – D-Block Europe featuring RAYE

Produced by Da Beatfreakz

Ah, “Ferrari Horses”, from the same album as such gems as “Mr. Mysterious”, “Only Fans”, “Gulag” and my personal favourite, “Perkosex”. Maybe I’m just happy whenever I know a D-Block Europe song’s debuting because these guys are very rarely all that great but just consistently hilarious... and this one’s no different. It starts with reverb-drenched Auto-Tuned moaning from both RAYE and Young Adz that reminds me of Charli XCX if anything, because... sure, before it’s drowned out by acoustic guitar loops and a drill-adjacent trap beat... and, yeah, it’s really badly-mixed, especially the bass mastering, but, it’s a really satisfying drop, I’m not going to lie. The chorus’ melody is way too infectious for its own good, and you’d be surprised with the chemistry that Adz and RAYE seem to have, as she shares a verse with Adz where they bounce off of each other’s flow quite smoothly, both going into pretty funny falsettos – one that genuinely made me laugh out loud when I heard Adz’ attempt – but she really sells the melodic trap angle, I’m really surprised. Why is she still doing EDM? The double-tracking on her last few lines is beautiful, and I love how she comes in when it’s unexpected to awkwardly interrupt either Adz’s chorus or where Dirtbike LB’s verse would be... until he does actually come in and he kind of kills it, not as much as RAYE of course, but I think his delivery here is pretty great, especially when he slides in his Auto-Tuned flow from the more fast-paced cadence to the melodic drawl afterwards where I’m convinced he interpolates Weezer. Sure, the mixing is still bad, with the reverb percussion in the last chorus being really unnecessary, and the sequencing generally being off, and the content is really nothing interesting at all, except with a couple fun lines from RAYE, like when she says how she feels like she’s in Prince’s house because there’s purple all around her (we can infer what that “purple” is) or how she’s “so lit” that she can see two Young Adz, before realising it’s actually Dirtbike LB. I don’t think either member of D-Block Europe realises the layers to that line, but it’s probably best to keep them in the shadows, especially if it’s as unintentional as it sounds. Yeah, this is genuinely really great, and whilst I doubt it’ll last, I’m honestly shocked to the quality of this. Maybe D-Block Europe are just... good? Okay, I won’t go that far, but check this out.

#41 – “Medicine” – James Arthur

Produced by Red Triangle and Matt Rad

British daytime television and news rarely cover the Top 40, but at some point Lorraine Kelly did bring up new music releases expected to smash the charts, those being this song, Justin Bieber’s new track and that Joel Corry song we discussed last week. They did not mention the three new Drake songs or even the new track with Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak, both of which out-charted this guy intensely. Regardless, this has the foundation of a good song somewhere. It starts with a really nice-sounding pop-punk guitar riff that James Arthur could really sound good on. The song’s about being overly dependent on a woman who really helps with maintaining his mental health... but then instead of being a rock song, it goes straight into a generic, boring trap ballad with too much in its cluttered mix for its own good. The lyrics feel increasingly lacking in self-awareness, asking the woman to not let him “spiral” when he becomes suicidal, which seems like an obligation the woman does not need to take up unless she really cares enough. In the second verse, he starts rapping, full-on triplet flow, and I realise that this is James Arthur trying to do emo-rap and lose all hope. Then he says, “Everything gonna be Gucci today”, and the hope goes into negative numbers. If we’re going to bring back some essence of rock on the charts, please don’t let it be whatever the hell this is.

#34 – “Anxious” – AJ Tracey

Produced by Remedee

I guess he heard my pleading a couple songs ago. Anyway, it’s pretty bad that I could vision how this song goes by looking at the lyrics... and I was pretty accurate, but that’s partially because of how he uses Drake flows all over this song, directly referencing his songs “Life is Good” and “POPSTAR”. Regardless, this song is pretty alright, actually, especially with that bassy ambiance that serves the drill-adjacent trap beat with a lot of tension, perfect for his checked-out delivery about gunplay and flexing. It’s a British trap-rap song that does what it does in very little interesting fashion, but has good production and a vaguely charismatic vocalist. It also sounds a lot less fun than the lyrics will make you think, but it does have some energy in this fast-paced beat and by the second verse, AJ Tracey is saying some funny stuff, like how he’s “recession proof” and seems to know his exact UK Singles Chart statistics. Please, just do my job, I think people would be genuinely interested in reading what AJ Tracey thinks of Kings of Leon. I never really like AJ Tracey when he’s on a dark vibe, anyway, I think he really shines on more sugary production, but I think that’s just my preference when it comes to trap anyway. The song’s fine, but I can’t say it’s anything more.

#25 – “Hold On” – Justin Bieber

Produced by Louis Bell and watt

I’m pretty sure Bieber is still pushing “Anyone” and in the US, “Holy” is still doing pretty well to my knowledge, so I guess it makes sense to drop an album but not really another single before it, especially since now it seems to start underperforming. Regardless, I’m a bit more willing to enjoy this one because of that washed-out acoustic guitar pick-up and a definite groove in the bass and percussion during that chorus. I mean, Justin Bieber still isn’t interesting at all, but I like the guitars in the chorus and I guess that’s something. The content? Condescendingly holding his hand out to a woman he only vaguely describes, whilst pushing out the “we all make mistakes” narrative he wants to continue from “Lonely”. By the time the guy has any genuine rock energy he’d need for this song, it ends, so I’m just going to say that this is mid-tier Maroon 5 and move on.

#20 – “Leave the Door Open” – Silk Sonic, Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak

Produced by D’Mile and Bruno Mars

When Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak revealed a collaborative album was to release soon under the band name “Silk Sonic” – an incredible name by the way, how did no-one in the 70s copyright that? – I was immediately overjoyed and excited. Not only would this probably be a great album but it would be that one last boost that pushes .Paak into a mainstream context and for the record, he’s one of my favourite artists working today. His last three albums are all great and he’s made some of my favourite music ever, and has never been able to get that final reach into the charts until now, where riding on the coattails of Bruno Mars – who, by the way, is a fantastic artist in his own right nowadays – they’ve made a massive retro-soul cut that debuts at... #20. Okay, well, I know this style is bigger in the US but I did expect a top 10 debut here. Huh, well, that doesn’t take away from the fact that this song is absolutely incredible from the moments it starts with that drum fill and that distorted bass flowered by the jingling keyboards, with .Paak delivering some angelic intro vocals, and that’s before the first verse, where .Paak trades off with Bruno Mars really smoothly about simply picking up a girl yet making it sound like the most wonderful thing in the world. Bruno Mars almost sounds like he’s imitating .Paak at times, especially when he says that he just shaved and is “smooth like a newborn” in a really funny harmony. You could call Mars’ chorus cheesy but it’s just as cheesy as 70s funk was back in its day, and the way the instrumental builds up the tension with the rising pianos and smashing percussion just to cool down for the perfect pay-off in the chorus proves that even a song trying its best to imitate a live, jam-band recording and doing it very well can sound this intricate and perfectly crafted. .Paak’s second verse – he handles all of the verses here, probably because he’s ostensibly a rapper – has even more of a smooth, comedic charm as he offers the girl weed before also offering her filets, whilst also referencing some classic, iconic songs by three artists, namely Jimi Hendrix, Michael Jackson and... Anderson .Paak himself, and somehow it does not seem either forced or too unsubtle of a flex. The harmonisation in the background vocals in the chorus convince me that angels have been dropped down from Heaven and are currently living in Bruno Mars’ recording studio. Even at points where Bruno Mars is serenading you with “la-la-la’s”, its ridiculousness is undercut with .Paak’s ad-libs, and each chorus is so different that it never feels like Bruno is meandering or repeating himself... until the outro, which just of fades out because it goes nowhere. Honestly, I would rather prefer to see how the song really ends, and I think we will when the album comes out, but as a single, it definitely still works, and hell, a lot of those 70s soul and funk cuts faded out on the single edit anyway. I don’t think I’ve been this excited for a project in ages so, yeah, I have high hopes for Silk Sonic and this song alone keeps me fed well enough. Also, .Paak isn’t just a vocalist here, he’s on the drums too. Just saying.

#10 – “Wants and Needs” – Drake featuring Lil Baby

Produced by Cardo, Dez Wright and 40

At this point, after I’ve mentioned Drake a couple times and said he had three debuts this week, you’re probably wondering where they all are. The answer to that is that every single song from his triple-barrelled single release, Scary Hours 2, debuted in the top 10, with this being – to my surprise – the lowest, only hitting #10, which is still nothing to scoff at. Even for Drake, this is doing really well, which I imagine is because of how he had to delay his album so people are really craving for some new Drake that isn’t “Laugh Now Cry Later”. Now, I for one am not, and honestly I’m probably craving for less Drake if anything. That’s just my personal bias, though – I didn’t really like this project and haven’t liked much of Drake since 2015 or even earlier, but I still think the guy’s talented. I’m just pretty sick of the formula at this point. This particular single-EP thing doesn’t stray that far away from it either, with one song for the clubs, for the radios and for the fan. This one I think is for the clubs, even though they’re not even open so it’s really just for anyone to stream, and hence, we have Lil Baby on his third song with Mr. Graham. I wasn’t a fan of Baby until recently, and I’m not sure being a “fan” is really all that sincere as it’s really just hope and good will, but he absolutely kills his verse here and is the only reason could possibly be worth for me to revisit. The beat has vague squelchy synths and a boring trap pattern, heavy bass and some admittedly cool strings in the background that are cut out and drowned out by Drake being pretty blatantly off-beat. The chorus is monotonous and just stalling time until we get a brief escape from Drake for around 50 seconds of Lil Baby ranting rapidly in his typical frog-throat delivery and it left me kind of astonished on first listen because of how unexpected it was, and it’s still a great verse, even if the content is just flexing. “I’m not a GOAT, but I fit the description” is a bar, and I like the reference to betting his Ferrari off in a Las Vegas casino, which I hope he did not actually do. Hey, it’s more interesting than Drake wasting time with Kanye subliminals that aren’t even subliminals anymore, and a reference to how people grow on his albums, which I don’t think is even true, at least for his recent work. Ah, well, it could be worse. For example:

#6 – “Lemon Pepper Freestyle” – Drake featuring Rick Ross

Produced by Austin Powers, FnZ, Keanu Beats and Boi-1da

I refuse to believe this many people listened to Drake ramble for six and a half minutes. I refuse to believe there was a need for four people to make this lazy, unchanging beat that can’t even mix its sample correctly. I refuse to believe Rick Ross washed Drake on his own song for... you know, being vaguely clever and not a waste of time? Maybe I just love that “M-M-Maybach Music” tag, who knows? I definitely like it more than Drake, who handles the last five or so minutes with his monotone delivery and taking breaks to let the beat play because apparently, he can’t think of a flow that means he wastes less of the listener’s time. I’m sick of Drake’s more lyrical tracks nowadays where he goes on and on about how everything goes wrong for him despite him being so rich and famous and that’s the plot of this verse. It does not make you likeable or “real”, Drake, it makes you much more distanced and honestly just coming off as boring and kind of a dick. He starts his verse on a melancholy boom-bap beat by flexing that he’s a war hero – even though the last “war” he was in, he thoroughly lost – whilst also saying he’s doing all this expensive stuff in foreign countries when really, he should be staying in Canada or wherever he is during a pandemic. He then says, “These days, fame is disconnected from excellence”, which first of all, has always been the case and second of all sounds rich as hell coming from Aubrey Drake Graham, the most famous rapper, singer and musician currently alive, and far from the most “excellent”. That’s before he does his typical click-bait female-name-dropping and brags about his child whilst also side-eyeing the child’s mother for no reason, saying he had brunch with the judge he’s appearing before in court for child custody – you know, bribery – and that he doesn’t like how when he pays child support, she sends her the heart emoji in response. What else do you want, Drake? She’s the one raising this child, you have no right in telling her what emojis to use when you brag about sending child support to her, and then in your song which gets millions of plays. I’m not going to make assumptions about the mother here but it sounds like a really bad move, especially when you continue to talk about how the mothers at parent-teacher meetings flirt with you and ask if you know celebrities, whilst also bringing Secret Service-level security to the humble French school in Toronto your kid goes to. Something feels really icky about putting so much pressure on your son and their mother through rap lyrics, not even giving them much of a limelight other than through condescending references in a snoozefest of a single. Oh, yeah, and then he boasts about being friends with the corrupt, human-rights-violating royal family of Dubai, before mixing lines about how his house looks bigger through his son’s eyes with how his penis looks bigger when the woman is drunk. Yeah, no, you can’t really redeem this especially when the beat is unchanging and dull. I’m not a fan, and honestly, Drake’s pushing into his late 30s and yet I still think it’s applicable to tell him to grow up. I can’t say as much for this next track, however.

#3 – “What’s Next” – Drake

Produced by Maneesh and Supah Mario

Okay, for our final Drake track, we have the only solo cut and surprisingly easily my favourite of the three, and the reasons why are pretty subtle. The trap beat relies on a really bassy trap knock over a chiptune-sounding beat that goes really hard, and even if Drake’s vocals are mixed... just straight-up incorrectly, being so far in the left channel for no reason and that being kind of inexcusable for a big artist, he still has a lot more energy here than he does on any given Drake track. His flow is faster-paced, and he references a lot of his older work through pretty slick lines, mostly based on delivery, and there are really subtle counter-melodies in the beat that creep into the mix and sound really great. Drake himself actually brings one of his best verses in the second verse, which is probably his best flow in years and some pretty nice bars, none I can quote here because of how long that stream of bars goes for. The sequencing is somewhat off and Drake’s vocals seem to cut off really abruptly a lot of the time but for Drake, this is as good as it gets in 2021, and I’m pretty happy to have a genuinely good Drake song on the chart. Hopefully, it won’t be eclipsed by those two other tracks as time goes on, but we’ll see.

Conclusion

It may sound odd after dunking on Drake for a while at the tail-end of this episode but this is a damn good week all things considered. I think I only dislike the Worst of the Week here, going to “Lemon Pepper Freestyle” by Drake featuring Rick Ross, with a Dishonourable Mention for Kings of Leon’s “The Bandit”, though it’s not really that bad of a song, just pales in comparison to some of the absolute gems we have this week, particularly Best of the Week, which obviously goes to “Leave the Door Open” by Silk Sonic, whilst Honourable Mention is a bit more of a toss-up. I’d give a tied Honourable Mention to both “Ferrari Horses” by D-Block Europe featuring RAYE and “What Other People Say” by Demi Lovato and Sam Fischer. Sorry, Giveon, it was really close. Here’s our top 10 for the week:

Thank you for reading. You can follow my Twitter @cactusinthebank but I’ve actually been permanently locked out of that, so I probably wouldn’t bother. Regardless, next week, in the words of Drake, we’ll see what’s ‘bout to happen next. See you then!

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josiebelladonna · 3 years ago

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all time: the beatles, alice in chains, and green day - i still like soundgarden, but i show up more for chris now, though | right now: anthrax, testament, green day (been going back to them a lot lately)

nothing yet, but i’m always on the lookout for new music, though

norwegian wood // the beatles | misery // green day | rainier fog // alice in chains (probably my favorite will era song; i always go back to that one) | time is coming // testament (officially one of my favorite songs ever - they have so many good songs to pick from, though) | ugly truth // soundgarden

my sister’s machine - third-tier band out of the grunge scene, for those unfamiliar: they have a very alice in chains-ish song called “i hate you” (i guess the frontman was actually roommates with layne? idk, that’s what wiki says) and despite the name, i have a lot of good feelings associated with it. the rest of their discography is pretty meh at best. another one is wolf alice: they did that song “moaning lisa smile” back in 2015, a song that sounded like it came right out of buffy the vampire slayer and it was short, too, like 2 and a half minutes, so a lot of people who were alive in the 90s were going nuts over it. the rest of their catalogue is forgettable and kind of annoying.

oh yes, love musicals! oliver twist, west side story, singin’ in the rain, my fair lady, hamilton.. let’s sing, baby

at this point, chris. like i said, i show up to soundgarden more for him now - case in point: i can listen to euphoria mourning and scream from start to finish, whereas i skip over head down, black hole sun, and spoonman when i listen to superunknown now - although i love, love, LOVE audioslave. i have to listen to the rest of the temple of the dog album past say hello 2 heaven now.

alice in chains unplugged, just because every time i listen to the album, i can’t help but visualize their set

my best friend in high school introduced me to linkin park, rise against, bullet for my valentine, my chemical romance, panic! at the disco, and paramore. after high school, i mostly followed my nose and figured it all out myself because i was living alone and i was a recluse for the most part; but a couple that come to mind almost immediately are death grips, mr. bungle, and in this moment

either the 60s or the 70s - i guess i’m just a fangirl for classic hard rock and psychedelia. the 80s are lousy with good stuff, but there’s also plenty of garbage. same can be said for the 2000s: lots of good stuff and lots of nostalgia, given that was the decade i grew up in, but a lot of nonsense that makes me go “god, what we were thinking?” and i am so burnt out on the 90s, i have no opinion anymore. (now, 90s metal and 90s r&b? yes please.)

chris, without a doubt.

dramatically. i look at my taste from 2017 and... you know, looking back on it, that was a shift year for me. that was when i was starting to look more in other different types of rock and pop (i really got into new wave that year, believe it or not) just because in the previous year, i was starting to feel bored with grunge and alt rock - just the same shit over and over again, at least go into the third tier with grunge or fusion genres ffs.

max frost: he does a song called “good morning” - i hear it on tv all the time and i’m always like “yeah, this is a good song!” before that was trans-siberian orchestra~

alex. that stripe is gorgeous - and he wouldn’t be alex without it. he might not think so, but i still think back to the first time i saw it and it was almost hypnotic.

none, as of yet. i do want to read alex’s memoir and also sing backwards and weep (mark lanegan’s book).

florida man blues - said it before and i’ll say it again, alex needs to sing more. he needs to be reeled in and tuned up a bit, but the man’s got a good, full, sexy sensual as hell voice.

most of soundgarden’s songs - for example, the studio version of black hole sun? skip skip skip otherwise i’m staring off into space. the live on i-5 version? a thing of beauty (the acoustic version: ethereal). on nirvana’s live at reading festival album, there’s in bloom, spank thru (which is probably my favorite nirvana song, too), and negative creep.

disco is awesome. new wave is awesome. olivia rodrigo rocks. billie eilish is overrated (to the point of overkill, if you ask me). country music is good, and when i say that, i don’t mean the shit that’s come out the past ten years: i mean, country from the 90s and old country western and bluegrass THAT is where your money should be. concerts kinda suck now, you guys: i saw eddie a couple of weeks ago and i barely enjoyed myself; i’m seeing pearl jam in may and i’m not holding my breath. the industry itself is soulless and leechlike and i completely understand how so many people get burnt out by it. oh, and vinyl is overrated.

chris: i have my higher truth shirt, my temple of the dog shirt, a poster of him on my wall, my soundgarden book (new metal crown), my soundgarden albums, and a couple of tour posters in the stairwell.

my poster of chris, my poster of layne, there’s also the higher truth posters and some ten club posters (and stickers!) in the stairwell

i used to have a lot of cds, like my parents and i were big on collecting music when i was in high school. but moving around and having things packed away, sometimes things fall by the wayside. that said, i still have my soundgarden albums, and also alice in chains, pearl jam, nirvana, stone temple pilots, and some other people (i still have my copy of dark side of the moon, too! since 2006!). my stepdad had a steve miller album, and i cannot, for the life of me, find it because there were a lot of good songs on it.

chris, temple, pearl jam (from their 2013 tour; i have another one packed away somewhere, i haven’t seen it, though), foo fighters, nirvana, gorillaz, alice in chains, david bowie, and i have a lot of patches and buttons, all of which on my rock n’ roll jacket~ i used to have a couple of green day shirts and i have no clue what happened to them. i used to have a stone temple pilots shirt, too, and i think i wore it out 😳

definitely. although... i can kind of see the counterargument to that. some bands just have cool gimmicks.

one time, i went up to reno to go see my dad for thanksgiving and i stopped over in bishop, which is like the halfway point. and i was standing at the street corner waiting to cross the street and this was right after that movie isle of dogs came out: i was my temple shirt and the lady next to me goes, “oh, is that for that movie?” and i laughed and said, “nah, but that’d be pretty cool if it was, though!”

i... don’t think i have?

ben shepherd. brilliant songwriter and every so often, i’ll go back to hater, i’ll go back to those two albums but... man. what a piece of work.

chad channing. one of the nicest guys ever and i kind of wish he did more with nirvana because i can’t get into before cars, dude.

HA! i can think of a number of people right off the top of my head 😉

i haven’t used spotify in a year and a half so i have no idea what that is

(see above)

i’m real partial on classical music (and like i said above, disco and new wave are awesome) but for some reason i can’t find the gumption to post about either one? now that i write about it, i might go forth with it. i also love the deftones, but same story there. i’m also partial on reggae rock and ska, like sublime, pepper, 311, no doubt, the interrupters, mighty mighty bosstones (it’s what i get for hailing from southern california). thing is i don’t see a lot of content revolving around them. i also really like blur and oasis - yes, both.

aerosmith. some songs i really like, but for the most part, i don’t get the hype. halestorm, too: same story there, some songs are great, some aren’t, and i’m on the fence with lzzy, too.

motley crue, believe it or not - no, i don’t think girls, girls, girls is exploitative, sorry ed. and whitesnake (dave used to be with deep purple, for god’s sake). and van halen blame alex, i say. and boston: brad had quite the voice and tom is an underrated guitarist.

soundgarden, although i wouldn’t say “dislike”. i’m not nearly as passionate as i used to be, though.

journey. could not for the life of me get into them when i was in high school, but it’s funny: once i left high school, it was like clockwork, i had a lot more affection for them - probably because i quickly realized they were far more than “don’t stop believin’” (and i lowkey wish someone had told me that sooner, too, would’ve saved me a lot of awkward moments).

badmotorfinger (i skip over superunknown too much now), bleach, jar of flies, live through this, apple (mother love bone), pretty hate machine, the black album, belladonna (joey’s album), conundrum (alex’s trio - quintessential rainy-day album, imo), rust in peace, state of euphoria, abbey road (yes, i know it’s 12 but... you know)

outshined, just because i’ve heard it a lot.

holy water - fun fact: that’s the only song on badmotorfinger that soundgarden never played live.

ultramega ok, bleach, facelift, led zeppelin, kerplunk!, the legacy, kill ‘em all

souls of black. ‘nuff said.

i don’t think that’s happened before.

right now: bohemian rhapsody.

i think a biopic surrounding metallica would be interesting. same with zeppelin, too.

oof, i’m gonna write these as nicely as possible because “overrated” is a very loaded word. as much as i love these three bands, i do, i love them to death, but... nirvana, guns ‘n roses, and type o negative. i’m nirvhannah, but nirvana is far more than teen spirit (like spank thru is one of my favorite songs ever, but so many people just don’t know it, though). gnr’s lesser-known songs like the stuff on use your illusion > appetite for destruction, yes, i take criticism. and i went through a good, long period back in... 2015, i think? where type o was literally all i listened to, but the goth scene is so... i want to say, corrupt, now, and i see a lot more grungy people moving towards them lately and i just can’t help but bring out my inner hipster. i also think the pretty reckless are overrated, especially now: going to hell was their finest hour and it’s... well, gone to hell since then.

testament! i recommend starting with the “classic lineup” from the legacy to the ritual, in particular souls of black and practice what you preach. i also want to recommend alex’s trio, even if you’re not into jazz: start with last day in paradise (aka, alex getting jiggy with it) and then conundrum ("won’t somebody hug that man?”). there’s also dragonlord, eric’s black metal project: start with the album rapture. i also recommend the so-called “third tier” of the grunge scene: away from the “big four”, away from mudhoney, green river, and mother love bone, and go into screaming trees, tad, skin yard, gruntruck, the melvins, and my sister’s machine. the trees are pretty diverse so start with the song they contributed to singles, “nearly lost you.” tad, start with “leafy incline” and also “giant killer”. skin yard, “the birds” and instrumental “scratch”. gruntruck, “crucifunkin’” (which i love saying aloud) and “paint”. the melvins, “honey bucket” and “a history of bad men”. my sister’s machine, “i hate you” and maybe “inside of me” - gotta be in the right mood for that, though. i also recommend truly, hiro yamamoto’s band after he left soundgarden: start with “blue flame ford” and also “hurricane dance”, “come hither”, and “public access girls.”

the beatles, i got into through my parents. i feel like anyone who wants to get another person into music, no matter what the context, start with the beatles.

avenged sevenfold. i went through a period in my senior year of high school where i listened to them a lot, but besides that song “warmness of the soul”, i have a hard time getting into their earlier stuff. and given the time period, i also have a lot of bad memories associated with them.

soundgarden. OH MY GOD do i have a bone to pick with their idiot fans.

anthrax, believe it or not. i was really drawn to joey’s voice but it took me a little bit to get into their dissonance.

slayer. the first albums = fantastic. their later stuff... ehhhhhhhhhh.

nine inch nails. even the albums i’m not too crazy about like with teeth and hesitation marks: trent’s never made a bad album. i’d say testament, too: even after alex left, their death/groove metal phase is really interesting and chuck sounds like a totally different person, in a good way.

the grunge fandom. the grunge fandom. the grunge fandom. the grunge fandom. the grunge fandom. especially now. y’all need to get a grip. it’s not the be-all, end-all to music, the world does not revolve around you, it’s been done to death, and what’s done is done. that ship has sailed and it’s not coming back. move the fuck on.

aside from what happened to me in summer 2020 and last summer, the thrash fandom, especially the guys away from metallica and megadeth. not a lot of people over here and the ones that inhabit here are some of the most chill people ever.

wizards of winter // trans-siberian orchestra (their instrumentals are works of art) | la villa strangiato // rush | interstellar overdrive // pink floyd | jerry garcia’s finger // soundgarden

as much as i like this song, superunknown. one of their tastier grooves.

there’s a couple of trio songs where i’d love to hear alex sing to, but... i won’t say which 😉

you know... i think at this point, the question should be “which musicians have a crush on ME?” 😆

my dad’s always loved linda ronstadt (and for a while, he really liked shania twain) and my mom likes eddie and also elvis costello

way too many to choose from

walk by the foo fighters (then again, the foos’ videos often make me laugh). and i like the video for take on me from a-ha, just because i like the fact it’s animated. take notes, future makers of music videos: animation will bring you many blessings~

superunknown, madhouse, or danger! high voltage

(i love you, alex, but) comfortably numb

souls of black or slow ride - prominent, fat bass is... is... *chef’s kiss*

chris, joey, and layne

alex

eric

either dan and scott, alex and eric, or courtney and eric (erlandson, from hole)

cliff, frankie, jeff (ament), and melissa auf der maur

matt cameron and charlie - joey’s a damn good drummer, too

so many to choose from, but i’m gonna say somebody to love from jefferson airplane

gonna listen to it for the rest of my life, too: when the levee breaks from zeppelin

(what i get for my new wave phase, too): magic by the cars

one that will always make me think of the 90s, too: rub ‘til it bleeds by pj harvey

(cue the “this song was my childhood”): tick tick boom by the hives

moaning lisa smile. one of the best things to come out of a decade that i would rather forget.

raphael from carla bruni. i first heard it in french class and it was like instant love.

isobel by bjork; christine by siouxsie and the banshees; alison by elvis costello (i was almost named after that); doreen by frank zappa; east jesus nowhere by green day

seven deadly sins by flogging molly; one by metallica; zero by the smashing pumpkins

blue by a perfect circle; black saturday by soundgarden; pretty in pink by the psychedelic furs; creepy green light by type o negative; blue lights by truly; purple rain by prince

no such thing, champ. enjoy what you like.

probably school of rock, just from the nature of it. there’s also this weird little trend in the late 2000s into the 2010s where the movie would be just terrible but the music was pretty good, though, (examples: twilight, transformers, the 50 shades movies, ready player one - oh, god, ready player one)

chris’ cover of one (metallica lyrics with u2 music). i also love his cover of nothing compares 2 u. and let me just say that it was quite the treat to witness both of those songs live.

Ask Me About Music

1. Top 3 favorite bands of all time and top 3 favorite bands currently?

2. What are some bands you discovered/started listening to this year?

3. What are your top 5 favorite songs by your top 5 favorite bands?

4. Is there an artist that you only like one song by them?

5. Are you into musicals? If yes, name some of your favorites.

6. Musician who’s solo career you like more than their work with their bands?

7. If you could go back in time to attend any concert, which one would it be?

8. What bands did a friend get you into?

9. What decade do you think has the best music?

10. What singer do you think has the best voice?

11. How has your music taste changed in the last 5 years?

12. Your most recent music discovery?

13. What musician do you think has the best hair?

14. What musician biographies have you read?

15. Meme songs you love unironically?

16. Are there any songs you like better live than the studio recording?

17. Tell me some unpopular music opinions you have. It could be about a song, an album, a musician, the music industry as a whole, anything.

18. What band do you own the most merch of?

19. Do you have any music posters/tapestries/etc?

20. How many cds and vinyls do you own?

21. Do you own any band shirts? If so, what bands are they for?

22. What’s your stance on “you shouldn’t wear band shirts if you don’t know the band”?

23. If you wear band shirts, share a positive experience you’ve had when wearing one.

24. If you wear band shirts, share a negative experience you’ve had when wearing one.

25. Who’s someone you like as a musician but not as a person?

26. Who’s someone you like as a person but not as a musician?

27. Who’s someone you like as both a musician and a person?

28. If you use Spotify, name all the songs on your On Repeat playlist in order.

29. If you use Spotify, name all the songs on your Repeat Rewind playlist in order.

30. What are some bands you like but hardly ever post or talk about?

31. What are some bands people would expect you to like but you actually don’t?

32. What are some bands people would expect you to dislike but you actually don’t?

33. A band you used to love but now dislike?

34. A band you used to dislike but now love?

35. Top 10 favorite albums of all time?

36. Your least favorite song on your favorite album?

37. An underrated song on your favorite album?

38. Top 5 favorite debut albums?

39. Top 10 favorite songs of all time?

40. Record you don’t have but really want?

41. Has anyone ever talked to you about a record you were buying? If so, which one was it?

42. Your favorite band biopic?

43. What bands do you want biopics made about?

44. Bands you think are overrated?

45. What are some bands you think are hella underrated? If you’re up to it, recommend a few songs!

46. How did you get into your favorite band?

47. What’s a band you tried to get into but just couldn’t?

48. What’s a band that fans ruined for you?

49. Is there a band you didn’t like on your first listen, but you did after a few more?