Thursday, December 31, 2009

The Best Songs of the 2000s: #499

#499: "Throught the Fire and Flames" (2006) - Dragonforce

On Guitar Hero (vol. 1), this was the boss song, a record whose guitar pyrotechnics melted away all but the most nimble-fingered of glorified air guitarists. The drumming and the vocals shred, too, but it's the guitars that are important here, as Guitar Hero (and, subsequently, Rock Band) is one of the two most musically influential innovations of this past decade.

Sure, some musicians bemoan the fact that millions are picking up a video-game controller instead of a "real" guitar, but of those millions, thousands have subsequently picked up a "real" guitar and started learning how to play the "real" thing and even started their own bands. I know personally of at least five such cases. Plus, there's the fact that Toys 'R' Us and Wal-Mart sold (and in some stores sold out) more "real" guitars these past three years than they've ever sold in all the umpteen years combined. Anything that gets an instrument in the hands of someone wanting to learn how to play, no matter what they're learning how to play or what inspired them in the first place, is a good thing. Musical literacy can only lead to a greater nation, a greater world, as it develops the mind.

As far as the track itself (nevermind the influence): it's value doesn't only come from the band's virtuosity, but it also comes from the strong melody that emerges from the uber-tapping and double-kick barrage. It's not quite the equivalent of Van Halen's "Jump," but in this new musical world, it's close enough.

The Best Songs of the 2000s: #500

#500: "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)" (2001) - Alan Jackson

Rush-recorded and rush-released after the 9/11 attacks, Jackson's song was criticized because, basically, it didn't seem too angry. It also didn't implicate the Powers That Were in any wrongdoing, nor did it ask many deep questions. It didn't question the nature of the events, and it sounded maudlin.

Well, most of those criticisms were accurate, but none of those should have denegrated the song. Jackson's song didn't criticize, but it didn't need to. What Jackson offered was a song of empathy. It's sentimental, but that sentiment seems appropriate to the mournful situation. One doesn't go to a funeral and start attacking and villifying any one person or the cause of death: one offers a sympathetic soldier--analysis can come later. Jackson had this song on the radio--not at his behest, either--in two months, and the nation was still in mourning. The deeper questions could--and did--come later.

The song grows complex towards the end, though. Jackson offers what seems to be a glaring contradiction, asking the audience if they turned off the violent television program and then asking them if they went and bought a gun. He doesn't seem to be hewing to the Republican/conservative party line here, though (as that contradiction might seem to denote), for his last question--and ultimate answer--"the greatest is love"--sure seems to be asking his audience to show kindness not only to each other, but to all others. That bit of philosophy is about as liberal and open-minded a thought as I've ever heard from a Nashville record, and that deserves mention.

The mandolin's sad and sweet, too. Just like the entire song.

The Best Songs of the 2000s

Here's a list of 189 artists whose records didn't  make my final cut, but who recorded music of quality this past decade, so their names are definitely worth dropping.

· AC/DC                            
· AM
· Alien Ant Farm
· The Almighty Defenders
· John Anderson
· Andrew W.K.
· The Answer
· The Asteroids Galaxy
· Baby Bash
· Backyard Babies
· Bat for Lashes
· Battles
· Be Your Own Pet
· Beausoleil
· Billy Boy on Poison
· Diane Birch
· Black Label Society
· Amanda Blank
· Mary J. Blige
· Blitzen Trapper
· BLK JKS
· Booker T.
· Brendan Benson
· Broadcast Radio
· The Brides of Destruction
· Bun B
· Buckethead
· The Cardigans
· Manu Chao
· Charm City Devils
· Choir of Non-Believers
· Guy Clark
· Cocktail Slippers
· Ry Cooder
· Elvis Costello
· Samantha Crain
· Rodney Crowell
· Current Swell
· Daddy Yankee
· Dan Auerbach
· Dark Meat
· The Dark Romantics
· The Dead 60s
· The Dead Weather
· The Decemberists
· Deer Tick
· The Deftones
· James Luther Dickinson
· Diddy
· The Dirty Sweet
· Dr. John
· Drums & Tuba
· Electric Owls
· Eliza Jane
· Eve
· The Films
· Liam Finn
· Five Horse Johnson
· The Flatlanders
· Flossy & the Unicorns
· Folk Uke
· The Fratellis
· Fred
· Ace Frehley
· Andy Friedman
· Fruit Bats
· Gentleman Jesse
· Jimmie Dale Gilmore
· Al Green
· Green Day
· Heaven & Hell
· Hakan Hellstrom
· Jolie Holland
· The Horror Pops
· The Horrors
· I’m from Barcelona
· In This Moment
· Iron Maiden
· Bon Iver
· Flaco Jaminez
· Sarah Jarosz
· Jimmy Eat World
· Johnny Boy
· Judas Priest
· Richard Julian
· Kasabian
· Killswitch Engaged
· Sean Kingston
· Kiss
· Solange Knowles
· Alison Krauss
· The Knux
· Aaron Lacrate
· Lady Gaga
· The Last Vegas
· Late of the Pier
· Cyndi Lauper
· The Laureates
· Ryan Levine
· Jeffrey Lewis
· The Liars
· Love as Laughter
· Nick Lowe
· Madlib
· Magnetic Fields
· Jesse Malin
· Richard McGraw
· Tim McGraw
· Megadeth
· John Mellencamp
· Metallica
· MGMT
· Charlie Miller
· Miss Li
· Monster Magnet
· Motorhead
· Movits!
· Mumford & Son
· MV & EE with the Bummer Road
· Nine Inch Nails
· Nobunny
· Noisettes
· Notorious Cherry Bombs
· Paolo Nutini
· Nora O’ Connor
· Shane O’ Dazier
· Colby O’ Donis
· Oh Darling
· James Otto
· Pantera
· The Parlor Mob
· Sean Paul
· Pearl Jam
· The Phenomenal Handclap Band
· Grant Lee Phillips
· Chris Pierce
· Robert Plant
· The Polyphonic Spree
· Portugal the Man
· Quasimoto
· Queensryche
· Radio Moscow
· Rancid
· Jay Reatard
· Robyn
· The Rosewood Thieves
· Rye Rye
· Saliva
· Santogold
· Sasquatch
· Ron Sexsmith
· Naomi Shelton
· The Silversun Pickups
· Slash’s Snakepit
· Slayer
· Todd Snider
· Spank Rock
· George Strait
· Ken Stringfellow
· Jazmine Sullivan
· Taylor Swift
· The Sword
· System of a Down
· Testament
· Thee American Revolution
· The Thermals
· Tool
· Two Door Cinema Club
· The Unicorns
· Unk
· Keith Urban
· The Vanity Plan
· Velvet Revolover
· Vetiver
· Rhonda Vincent
· Brooke Waggoner
· Butch Walker
· The Walkmen
· Webbie
· The Weepies
· Brooke White
· Wilco
· Charlie Wilson
· Winter Gloves
· Xiu Xiu
· Yacht
· Rachael Yamagata
· 16 Horsepower

The Best Songs of the 2000s



Alrighty...

...so my one-week vacation from my blog turned into a one-week and seven-month vacation, but now I'm back/to let you know/I can really shake down the rest of these songs before the day/year/decade is over.

Okay, maybe I can't shake down all the rest of the songs on my list of the best songs of this past decade all in one day, but a man has to start somewhere.

I'll begin by listing almost two-hundred artists whose records didn't quite make my cut, but who recorded admirable music nonetheless.

I'll continue by then offering capsule reviews of 100 songs that either didn't quite make my original list (but I've since come to appreciate much more) or that I overlooked upon the way. These 100 songs were published sometime between January 2000 and June 2008.

I'll complete my list--hopefully, sometime within the next two weeks, possibly sooner--by offering full reviews of the top 100 songs on my list of the best records of the decade as well as analyzing (somewhat simultaneously) 67 songs that were released between July 2008 (my original cut-off date when I started this blog a year-and-a-half ago) and December 2009.

The sum of all these record reviews (333 + 100 +67) will then be 500! Yes, five-hundred fantastic pop songs of this past decade that have made my life more enjoyable. I could easily (though not quickly) lengthen the total to 750, and given a couple/three months to research, even 1000, but I think 500 will do quite nicely.

It's now December 31, less than one day away from a new year/new decade, so let's get rolling!

Sunday, June 7, 2009

The Tournament of Metal: Final Round

This week: the last battles. The last poll. Get your one-way ticket to midnight and vote now!

Last week's results:

2 ACDC’s “Hells Bells” v. Motley Crue’s “Shout at the Devil” 1
1 ACDC’s “Back in Black” v. Metallica’s “One” 2
3 ACDC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” v. Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” 0
0 Aerosmith’s “Angel” v. Motley Crue’s “Home Sweet Home” 3
1 Bon Jovi’s “Runaway” v. Van Halen’s “Jump” 2
1 Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name” v. Motley Crue’s “Dr. Feelgood” 2
1 Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer” v. Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” 2
3 Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive”
v. Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again” 0
2 Cinderella’s “Shake Me” v. Ratt’s “Round and Round” 1
3 Cinderella’s “Heartbreak Station” v. Slaughter’s “Fly to the Angels” 0
1 The Cult’s “Firewoman” v. Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” 2
0 Damn Yankee’s “High Enough” v. Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” 3
1 Def Leppard’s “Rock of Ages” v. Scorpions’ “Rock You Like a Hurricane” 2
0 Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” v. Motley Crue’s “Girls Girls Girls” 3
2 Dio’s “Holy Diver”
v. Van Halen’s “Panama” 1
1 Europe’s “The Final Countdown” v. Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” 2
3 Faster Pussycat’s “House of Pain”
v. Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian” 0
3 Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” v. Motley Crue’s “Kickstart My Heart” 0
3 Guns N’ Roses “Sweet Child O’ Mine” v. Judas Priest’s “You Got Another Thing Coming” 0
2 Guns N’ Roses’ “Paradise City” v. Poison’s “Talk Dirty to Me” 1
2 Guns N’ Roses “Don’t Cry” v. Skid Row’s “I’ll Remember You” 1
3 Guns N’ Roses’ “November Rain” v. Tesla’s “Love Song” 0
0 Sammy Hagar’s “Heavy Metal” v. Quiet Riot’s “Metal Health (Bang Your Head)” 3
3 Billy Idol’s “White Wedding” v. White Lion’s “Wait” 0
3 Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell” v. Motley Crue’s “Too Fast for Love” 0
1 Iron Maiden’s “Run to the Hills” v. Quite Riot’s “Cum On Feel the Noize” 2

Thursday, June 4, 2009

When the Hardys Go Marching In

One last bit to leave you with before I leave for my trip:

After writing Monday's review of "Cryin' in the Street," I felt nostalgiac and pulled out the photographs Foot Foot and I took during our three different stays in New Orleans. So, here are some of my own slides of New Orleans...and St. Francisville, Lousiana (from 2005).

In St. Francisville, Lousiana, stands the Myrtles Plantation. Foot Foot, Nicholas, and I stopped at the Myrtles plantation there for two reasons: it is one of the grandest plantation houses still in existance, and the Smithsonian lists the mansion there as the most haunted house in America. When we arrived, it was the middle of the day, and it was hot, but the land and landscaping were beautiful, and after wandering around for awhile, the three of us sat down to rest and adore the scenery.

After cooling down, Foot Foot and I decided to go explore the mansion, but Nicholas told us that he saw something stwange near the carriage house. We asked him what he saw, but he didn't respond. He was staring afar, and he remained transfixed.


Foot Foot raised her voice to get his attention, and she asked him again what he saw. He told her to come look, that he sees a monster. Penny walked around behind him and peered over his shoulder, and she saw...
...something so hideous, that she screamed. Other tourists there looked at us, and they walked away. She asked me if I saw it, and I came around and peered over Nicholas's shoulder, but when I got there they told me it was gone. She took a picture of it, and she tells me now that the monster is somewhere in the picture above, but I just don't see it.

Foot Foot was ready to leave right then, but I wanted to see the inside of the house. I wanted to see evidence of the ghost of the slave Chloe, who poisoned the children of the house so that they'd be sick (but not deathly sick), and then she could nurse them back to health, thus incurring favor with the owners, which would allow her to become house-slave/nanny again. Alas, Chloe used too much oleander in the mix, and the children died. When the truth came out, so did Chole. Executed.

Since, the house has been rumored to be haunted both by Chloe's ghost and by the ghosts of the children. The most prominent haunted spot in the mansion is at and nearby the foot of the stairwell, opposite of which hangs a stately mirror. Pictured below is the mirror. If you look closely enough (and maybe squint your eyes just so), you can see the outline (it's faint, but I tell you it's there) of a figure wearing a white dress, arms held out straight to the sides, perpendicular to the body. Chloe wore a white dress. Everyday.
You know what's creepier than that? Look again at that picture below. You see those two people in the mirror? I don't even know who they are! I don't even remember them being there!

After touring the rest of the house and all of the grounds, we headed to New Orleans. Much later that night, after driving around the French Quarter, lost, for an hour, we finally found our bed & breakfast (without the breakfast, we'd discover the next morning), but it was locked, the envelope with the keys NOT where the owner said they'd be. I used a lock of my hair and the tag from my underwear to break into the massive wrought-iron gate, and we went inside and crashed.


The next morning was beautiful. We woke early, walked out on the balcony, and admired the busy splendor of New Orleans.
We then hit the streets, hungry, aiming for Cafe du Monde and some Ben Yays.


Unfortunately, Cafe du Monde held a eighteen-hour wait, so we decided to cruise down Decatur to grub at less conspicuous establishment. Luckily, we found one quickly, and this time, the wait was only one hour. Cafe dude Mondey Mondey had no vacant tables inside, but they did have one empty chair and one rickety stool, so I let my family take those whilst I stood outside to sweat and admire Willie and Poor Boys who were playing out in the street. I had no nickels, though I did tap my feet. Soon, someone shouted, "Freebird!" Willie glared, grabbed his guitar and his bag o' tricks, and left.
Soon to take his place in what must have been a coveted spot was a sausage swallower. See the picture below? See what he's doing? He's already taken in half of it. He pushed the entire sausage down his throat, too, and pulled it back up. He asked if anyone then wanted a bite, but no one took him up on his offer.

I almost did, though. My stomach was rumbling, and I was about to walk over and grab that summer sausage, but at that time, Foot Foot told me that there was a spot open in the line. Some old geezer had seemingly fainted from heat exhaustion, and while the other people in line were tending to him, Foot Foot and I jumped at the opening, ordered our Ben Yays, and then we feigned concern. That's the way it's done in the Big Easy.

A half hour later, our Ben Yays arrived about the time the ambulance did outside. We hurried past the EMTs, and we ate as we walked the streets, headed to the famous aquarium (I forget its name). On our way there, we ah-spied a wedding procession with an authentic New Orleans jazz band leading the way, playing a tune somebody told me was called the Second Line (I guess the couple couldn't afford the First Line).
After the procession processed by, we continued on our way, and as we passed by the park, we saw...now get this...MICHAEL JACKSON! Yes, it was really him! He had smeared grease paint on his face in order to disguise himself from the crowd, but it was the King of Pop, alright. We looked at his wardrobe, and seeing the similarity between it and the outfits the cheap wedding band wore, Nicholas told him, "Your band left you up there. Why did they do that? That wasn't very nice!"
Mike told him, "Why do they do me that way? It's just human nature. I gotta get my back up off the wall, now. Bye bye, pretty young thing." He left. I was just a tad nonplussed by his comment, but, hey, it's Michael Jackson...I'm sure he meant nothing untoward.

We arrived at the aquarium, I was instantly attacked by the painful memory of when, three years prior, we lost a student to the waters of the aquarium. Mr. Daryll "D-Bo" Willis (pictured below, in the last photograph taken of him, in his last moments). May he rest in peace.

Foot Foot and Nicholas nearly lost their lives their, too. The world's largest Great White (and no, I'm not talking about Jack Russell's recent weight gain) was on exhibit, and it began to swallow whole my family.
Luckily, I was there with my authentic Peter Quint harpoon (w/spring-loaded floatation barrel), and my family is still with me to this day. The shark, however, swims with the fishes.

After that narrow escape, we happened upon an enchanted swamp there at the aquarium, and Nicholas rode one of the hoodoo hop toads. Later, Nicholas developed a severe case of wart on his lower extremities, but we contacted Marie LaVeau's great-great-grandson Remy LeBeau via v-mail, and she gave us a cure for only $17.99. It worked, too.

The last exhibit (one that has since been closed) we visited in the museum was called the Taste of New Orleans. Rather than sample of the aquatic delicasees, a sample was almost made of Nicholas! One of the three cooks gave Nicholas a bite of newt, and he spat it out. Well, the cook didn't like that poor display of manners, no sir. She reached out and grabbed his toungue, and put him in the pot, saying, "If you don't like eye of newt, then how about eye of Nick?" Foot Foot decided she prefered the newt, so she grabbed Nicholas, and we exited the aquarium.

As soon as we sat foot outside, we saw the late voodoo priestess herself, Marie LaVeau, helming a voodoo carriage down Canal street.

Nicholas deemed the queen too skinny for his personal proclivities, so we scooted over to St. Charles to take a streetcar all down the line and back.

Nicholas soon grew worried that he would be unable himself to cast a spell of redress against the chef that offended his person, so he asked for my assistance. Against an average person, one not so inclined to the ways of hoodoo and voodoo--some call them "muggles", but I've always termed 'em, "doo-doos"--I would have been able to merely scratch my nether regions in order to pester a pernicious person, but against those wise in the ways of vaudois, a needed some assistance myself.

I stopped by the Livre Imaginaire bookstore at 9 3/4 Bienville, and I consulted a consortium of texts legitimate, illegitimate, and not quite sure anymore 'cause my parents are both caucasian but I'm not. After burning the midnight oil and the beds that they burned, I remembered the spell that nearly took the life--and did take the arm--of one of my former students on our last senior trip to New Orleans.

The senior class had taken a bayou tour, and the tour guide--Prince Glenn Dio (and Prince was his given name, too) was somewhat short of height (as well as temper). Garrison Jim--the aformentioned student--normally very genial and gregarious, had some fun at the tour guide's lack of verticality, and the tour guide cursed him...in both senses of the word! Soon, as we came upon an alligator, the tour guide asked Garrison if he'd like to volunteer to feed the sea creature, and Garrison accepted. As soon as Garrison leaned over and held the scum for the gator to get, the reptile lept past the scum and swallowed Garrison's right arm. And bit down. The gator took Garrison's arm down into the depths with him, and we had to rush back to the shore to get Garrison to the hospital on a speed boat that would take him down the bayou to a nearby medical clinic (after seeing it later, I hesitate to call it a hospital).

Since that particular incident was so nasty and unfortunate, I felt it would be appropriate to use that particular curse--locally called the "Gator Getter"--to take revenge upon that nasty and unfortunate woman (I shan't call her a "lady") who tried to make Irish stew out of me boy. When I arrived back at the bed minus breakfast, I told Nicholas not to worry, that I'd taken the liberty of cursing the hag myself (and I did). He smiled and asked for Cheetos, so I knew all was well in his world. I didn't want him to yet match wits with the strange and supernatual forces that lay within the Vieux Carre. I'd already lost enough children to the Quarter, and I didn't plan to lose anymore.

Not only did Garrison suffer the loss of his arm and D-Bo the loss of his life, but the first group of seniors Foot Foot and I took to New Orleans suffered their own loss. The loss of their own persons. Let me explain.

In May of 2003, I took my first group of seniors to New Orleans. One week after we left, I came home...with none of them. The last night of our trip, we came upon a group of what-looked-like tourists gathered in small groups outside of O'Flahety's Irish Pub. In each of these groups stood tour guides, sounding like carnival barkers as they rounded their individual groups together, telling them to stay with each other and make sure they had their stickers on. I looked at these people, and, indeed, each one had a sticker affixed to his or her chest depicting the name of the tour company (I think it was called Bourban Go Boo). My seniors asked if they could join one of these little groups, and I looked around, and one of the guides had just laid a packet of stickers on a cart behind him. I picked up the packet and distributed them to my group. We then joined along, and strolled throughout the streets with our tour guide---Sheleighly Shane--leading the way.
Oh, the stories he could tell...the Axeman, the Boogyeman, the Octoroon Mistress, Madame Minieurcanal, the Phantom of Jackson Square, the Flaming Tomb, the S.S. Watertown, the Seaman's Bethel, the St. Louis Cathedral, the Le Petit Theatre, Antoine's, the Royal Cafe, the Andrew Jackson, the Griffon House, the Beauregard-Keys House, the Gardette-LePrete Mansion, the Devil's Mansion, and, of course, the most famous haunted house in New Orleans: the LaLaurie Mansion (pictured below--my picture, too!):

Long story short ('cause to get the full, chilling effect of this story, one really needs to either be in front of the house to hear it or hear it told by an expert storyteller. Since this is the internet, and I'm obviously not the latter, I'm giving the thirty-second summary), Madame Delphine LaLaurie kept a house full of slaves, tortured them, experimented on them, deforming and defiling their bodies. One day, the house caught fire, and as firemen and other went through the house putting out the flames, they found a door they could not breach for it was locked. They broke it down and found dozens of slaves chained to walls and tables, and a couple of them in cages. They found a few dead. The slaves were led out of the house, and when the public discovered what Madame LaLaurie had done to them, they were outraged and began to storm the house. Madame LaLaurie escaped, though. She never returned. The house was sold, but from the moment the next owner spent his first night in the house, the haunting began.

Nearly one-hundred years later and several owners later, the house was sold (for the umpteenth time), and the new owners this time decided to almost completely remodel the house. When they started working on the second story, they noticed strange smells coming from the room where Madame LaLaurie tortured her slaves. The new owners began ripping up the floor planks, and they discovered nearly one-hundred dead bodies buried there, underneath the second story floorboards.

The complete details of the story are much more heinous and disgusting than what I've revealed here, and our entire crew was taken aback by it, horrified and disturbed. Some, however, were so fascinated with the story that they lingered there on 1140 Royal to wait and see if they could hear or see anything of a spectral nature. They were all well-mannered kids, and--hey--it was New Orleans, so what could possibly happen to them here, right? I allowed them to stay behind as the rest of us followed Sheleighly Steve. That group--five kids, total--we never saw again. They're still missing.

Our tour ended that night outside the oldest building in the Mississippi River Vally (and the only surviving French-colonial building in the United States), the Ursuline Convent. Back when Louisiana was still a colony, prostitution was legal in New Orleans, and the city's criminal element ran rampant, and Governor Bienville sent to France for help, help that arrived in the form of twleve nuns, who came to New Orleans to educate, set up orphanges, and help a few of the locals get religion. The nuns--and Governor Bienville--soon realized they needed respectable women (previously, only lower-class women were shipped, and they were generally full of disease, and thus they either couldn't reproduce or didn't live long enough afterwards to take care of the children) to make honest men of those who weren't, so in 1721 the first of several boatloads of girls arrived from France (a practice that would continue until 1758) in tow with their luggage...shaped in the form of a casket--and hence came known as the Casket Girls. These girls first took room in the third story of the convent.

Many of the Casket Girls didn't fare as well as hoped, and after numerous instances of abuse and rape, these girls were shipped back to France. However, their caskets were not sent back with them. After the last group of Casket Girls returned to France, all of the third-story windows were nailed shut, and for each window was used one-hundred nails--each one blessed by the Pope himself. Rumors abounded, of course, as to why these windows would need nailing shut, especially considering the heat during that time period (pre-air conditioning era), why so many, and why each needed to be blessed by the Pope himself.

In the late '70s, two reporters from The New York Times were in New Orleans, and they had heard the rumors of the Ursuline convent, so they decided to camp out in front of the convent for three nights in a row. According to their journals, the first two nights they noticed nothing, but on the third night, they looked up and noticed a window open on the third floor. This information was the last thing noted in their journals. The next day, they were found dead. Their bodies were completely empty of blood.

After hearing this story, our group made its way back to our hotel. The seniors were--naturally--straggling behind Foot Foot and me, talking amongst themselves, and one Cheyanna Dixon (seen below on the first row in the white tee-shirt), asked me if they could all return to the sidewalk in front of the convent to watch the windows. Foot Foot and I both said sure, for it was hours before curfew anyway. Foot Foot then asked us to pose for a picture before they left, as this was our last night in New Orleans. For that group seen in the picture below, it truly was their last night. We never saw them again after that moment. We still don't know where they are. We returned home alone (and, strangely enough, never went on a senior trip again, either).
Discussing these lost seniors with Foot Foot, we both grew forlorn, and we decided to cut our own family trip short. Nicholas, though, overheard some of our conversation, and he asked if he could help look for them. We told him no, but he was insistent, and he suggested we go to the harbor, that perhaps we could see them there. Well, we walked there, but we saw no sign of them.

Nicholas then told me to ask the riverboat captains if they'd be willing to give us any information. I told him I didn't think they'd know, and if they did, they might not be willing to share their knowledge, but Nicholas stated that the people on the river are happy to give. Since he was correct about the openness of shipyard skippers, I climbed aboard every ferry on that side of the Gulf of Mexico, and none had heard or seen any of our seniors. The captains did, though, agree to share with me a smoke of their pipes. They even let Nicholas steer their ships whilst they each emptied bottles of peppermint schnapps. Ahh...life on the river. I'm glad I listened to Nicholas, as the boat rides lifted my spirits, and I soon forgot about the lost seniors altogether. Thanks, buddy, I needed that. The Little River Band was right: it was time (at that time) for a cool change.

Refreshed, the three of us walked back to our bed minus breakfast, ate our supper of baloney and crackers, and hurried off to sleep, exhausted from all the searching and pondering. The next morning, we woke early as to get home as soon as possible. We enjoyed our stay in New Orleans, but we were homesick. We packed our luggage, and I carried all downstairs and out to the Jeep. I pulled our vehicle around front, and I waited for about fifteen minutes for Foot Foot and Nicholas. They didn't walk out with me because Foot Foot had some last minute intestinal difficulties which she had to tend to. I didn't mind the wait, though. It was nice just watching the people walk by.

They soon came to the Jeep, stepped in, and we drove away, arriving home a mere four hours later. The next day, we took the film to Wal-Mart to get developed (this was back in the day before we were able to use a digital camera). Three days later, we picked it up, and we laughed and smiled at the photographs...all except the last one. That last one is of Foot Foot and Nicholas leaving our bed minus breakfast to go home that last day. What was so disconcerting about that picture?

I didn't take it. I was in the Jeep. The camera...was with me.

The Countdown Capsule, Part V: 150-101

Now, with only one-hundred records left on my chart, I'm taking a mini-vacation as Foot Foot and I descend upon Biloxi to watch the Black Crowes and for me to freckle and get a red (as unfortunately, I can't get a tan). The chart will resume on Monday with #100.

For those of you just now catching up, here are the last fifty:
For those of you not just now catching up, here are the last fifty:

#150: "Can't Get You Out of My Head" - Kylie Minogue
#149: "Portions for Foxes" - Rilo Kiley
#148: "Mercy" - Duffy
#147: "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time" - Jarvis Cocker
#146: "All of This" - Blink-182
#145: "Bullets" - Tunng
#144: "Put Your Records On" - Corinne Bailey Rae
#143: "Imitation of Life" - R.E.M.
#142: "Slow Jamz" - Jamie Foxx featuring Twista
#141: "Run to Me" - Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs
#140: "I Found Out" - Nathanial Mayer
#139: "Ya Ya Ya (Looking for My Baby) - Detroit Cobras
#138: "Dick in Dixie" - Hank Williams III
#137: "Gone and Went" - Bob Childers
#136: "On a Bus to St. Cloud" - Jimmy LaFave
#135: "Valerie" - Mark Ronson featuring Amy Winehouse
#134: "Duplexes of the Dead" - Fiery Furnaces
#133: "Right Out of Your Hand" - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
#132: "Step in the Name of Love" - R. Kelly
#131: "Beloved Stranger" - Cindylee Berryhill
#130: "Hit the Ground" - Lizz Wright
#129: "Yeah" - Usher
#128: "Four Winds" - Bright Eyes
#127: "Saint Martha Blues" - Otis Taylor
#126: "Decoration Day" - Drive-By Truckers
#125: "State of Massachusetts" - Dropkick Murphys
#124: "American Skin (41 Shots)" - Bruce Springsteen
#123: "Paper Planes" - M.I.A.
#122: "A Border Tale" - Robert Earl Keen
#121: "Choctaw Bingo" - James McMurtry
#120: "Your Man" - Josh Turner
#119: "Old School" - Lyfe Jennings featuring Snoop Dogg
#118: "When the Crying Is Over" - Ian McLagan & the Bump Band
#117: "All I Wanna Do" - Jamie Lidell
#116: "Falling Slowly" - Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova
#115: "No One Knows" - Mark Ronson featuring Domino
#114: "No One Knows" - Queens of the Stone Age
#113: "The Sweet Escape" - Gwen Stefani
#112: "1234" - Feist
#111: "A Case of You" - Prince
#110: "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow" - Mitch & Mickie
#109: "Penny & Me (Live)" - Hanson
#108: "Seven Nation Army" - White Stripes
#107: "Your Touch" - Black Keys
#106: "1, 2 Step" - Ciara featuring Missy Elliot
#105: "My Sweet Annette" - Drive-By Truckers
#104: "No Vacancy" - Subdudes
#103: "Cryin' in the Streets" - Buckwheat Zydeco
#102: "Belleville Rendez-Vous" - -M-
#101: "A Stroke of Genie-Us" - Freelance Hellraiser

The capsule list from 151-200 can be found here.
The capsule list from 201-249 can be found here.
The capsule list from 250-300 can be found here.
The capsule list from 301-333 can be found here.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

The Best Songs of the 2000s: #101

#101: "A Stroke of Genie-us" (2001) - Freelance Hellraiser

Now we come to just about every DJ's favorite type of music: the mashup. Also known as bastard pop, plunderphonics, glitches, xenochrony, bootlegging, bootie, and--the term I first heard to describe this type of music--the mix (or the re-mix), mashups are (usually) where DJs (and producers and composers, too) mix one record with another to form a "new" composition. Mashups have been produced for over one-hundred years now, the (argueably) first one coming from classical composer Charles Ives with his Symphony No. 2 in 1906. A few times since, (various forms of) mashups have been national (and international) hits: the Stars on 45 records, the Jive Bunny & the Mastermixers records, and the record "Pump Up the Volume" by M/A/R/R/S (the biggest single mashup hit of all time). Of course, radio-station DJs have been mashing up records since the beginning of radio stations, oftentimes taking political speeches, sampling them, and dropping them into instrumentals or either "interviewing" these politicians using reel-to-reel recorders. Club and party DJs have...well, if you've heard a club or party DJ, you've heard a mashup.

In fact, considering the number of people who've heard mashups all their lives, I'm still amazed at the number of people who still--still--get angry at the basis for most mashups: sampling. Methinks there's a bit of inherent racism that comes along with the criticism of sampling (as it helped give birth--and still is one of the building blocks--to rap and hip-hop). The standard accusation is that samplers have no creative ability, so they just steal from those who do. Malarky. Take it from someone who's tried to mashup songs and has tried to write his own: making a good mashup is much more difficult than writing an "original" song. Heck, in the world of fine arts, isn't collage a legitimate form? I thought so.

The mashup here--a combination of Christina Aguilera's vocals to "Genie in a Bottle" and the instrumental of the Strokes' "Hard to Explain"--is better than either one of those two records. The whole, this time, is greater than the sum of its parts. The production work on "Genie in a Bottle" is too generic, and Julian Casablanca's vocals on "Hard to Explain" too low-key and low in the mix (albeit deliberately). The mixture of the two, though, plays upon each record's strengths: the Strokes hard-driving (but not overpowering) muscular roll and Aguilera's vocals (and "Genie"'s vocal melody, too); it mixes perfectly pop and rock. What we have here is a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich (though the RIAA--which squelched this record from ever being sold or played on ClearChannel radio stations--hasn't stopped production of the peanut-butter & jelly sandwich...yet) for the ears.

Just like you can't buy a peanut-butter & jelly sandwich in the grocery stores, you can't find this one in Wal-Mart or on iTunes. You gotta go home, sit in front of the counter, and find the mix yourself. You don't have to make it, though, as Freelance Hellraiser (British DJ Roy Kerr) has already made it for you. You just have to get up and go get it. As with the sandwich, the result is well-worth the effort. Let's pump up the volume.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

The Best Songs of the 2000s: #102

#102: "Belleville Rendez-Vous" (2003) - -M-

An aural ode to one of the greatest guitarists ever from one of the greatest animation films ever (or at least of the past ten years), Benoit Charest's (music) and Sylvain Chomet's (words, and the film's director/animator) "Belleville Rendez-Vous" takes Django Reinhardt's gypsy jazz stylings (played here with some original fantastic fills by Thomas Dutronc), adds a heavy kickdrum thump, charismatic and stylized vocals & scatting by Mathieu Chedid (known famously around France and part of Europe as -M-), a kazoo, a paper-harmonica, and some sublimely silly scatalogical background lyrics, and makes an endlessy-inventive pop pastry, light on its feet, but ever so tasty. You could sing along even if you don't know the language (and the French original take flows so much smoother than the English version), and you could dance this in the home, in the street, and--with that insistent one-three thump, even in the clubs. Would have driven 'em wild there in the mid '30s, but it works just as well in this new millenium. Even Queen's "Bicycle Race" was never this much fun.


Monday, June 1, 2009

The Best Songs of the 2000s: #103

#103: "Cryin' in the Streets" (2005) - Buckwheat Zydeco
Let's stay on the streets of New Orleans a little longer, for though we still weep at the lives lost over the winds and floodwaters and we still shake our heads at all the homeless denizens, nearly double the number before Katrina, we see a jazz band march 'round the corner at Royal and step down Iberville, and as they approach closer, we hear them playing, and the music is elegiac, stately, yet joyful and hopeful, reflecting that ever-so-specifice Cajun mixture of Catholicism and African culture. It's grieving for the dead with head held high. It's a cheerful promise that tomorrow will be a better day, that those crying are doing so for--unbeknownst to them--our benefit, for we'll see their misery, and we'll sympathize or maybe even empathize, and we'll want to do our best to shine a light, to spotlight their suffering, so that, one day, though the rain may fall and the levees may break, there will be no one crying in the street.

Leading the band 'cross the Quarter is New Orleans's reigning Zydeco king, Stanley Dural, Jr., commonly known 'round these parts as Buckwheat. Buckwheat's been playing music professionally for more than forty years, and he got his start by helping back zydeco progenitor Clifton Chenier. Buckwheat's been performing with his own band--and they're fantastic--The Ils Sont Partis Band--for over thirty years, and they're responsible with the regional hit "My Toot Toot" some twenty-plus years ago.

Today, though, the band he leads is composed of all-star studio musicians: Michael Elizondo on bass, Jim Dickinson on piano, Jim Keltner on drums, and Ry Cooder (who formed the band and produced the sounds of this here parade) on slide guitar. The song of choice is a cover of Buckwheat's fellow George Perkins's 1970 regional hit (w/Perkins's backing band the Silver Stars) about socio-economic and racial injustice. Cooder tells the band to slow it down to funeral dirge tempo and to follow Buckwheat's accordion--and sweet tenor, which hasn't seemed to have aged a day since he began singing and which has never, ever sounded better or more soulfully exhuberant--all the way down the street. Much like the New Orleans jazz band that played at the graveside services to my late aunt Tommie Lynn Kirkland's funeral, they're respectful enough not to denigrate the occasion, but evangelical enough to play with enough emotion and verve to lift the spirits of the quick and the dead on this solemn event, trying to bring back the memories of what was once so wonderful.

New Orleans will come to full strength again, one day. I'm sure. Buckwheat Zydeco is, too. You can hear it in the song. It will rise. Like the waters--still, like dust, it'll rise.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

The Tournament of Metal: Round 4, Bracket 1

We're now down to fifty-two teams. After last week's battles, we were down to forty-seven, but I added five more songs that deserved another shot (according to the 555 messages that people sent me, irritated, sad, and outraged that their songs didn't make it). From fifty-two, we'll go to twenty-six, and then to magic number thirteen, where we'll stop and talk about the importance and/or greatness of each song.

The list of all fifty-two (as decided by you) is below:

ACDC’s “Hells Bells”
ACDC’s “Back in Black”
ACDC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long”
Aerosmith’s “Angel”
Bon Jovi’s “Runaway”
Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name”
Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer”
Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive”
Cinderella’s “Shake Me”
Cinderella’s “Heartbreak Station”
The Cult’s “Firewoman”
Damn Yankee’s “High Enough”
Def Leppard’s “Rock of Ages”
Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me”
Dio’s “Holy Diver”
Europe’s “The Final Countdown”
Faster Pusscat’s “House of Pain”
Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle”
Guns N’ Roses “Sweet Child O’ Mine”
Guns N’ Roses’ “Paradise City”
Guns N’ Roses “Don’t Cry”
Guns N’ Roses’ “November Rain”
Sammy Hagar’s “Heavy Metal”
Billy Idol’s “White Wedding”
Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell”
Iron Maiden’s “Run to the Hills”
Judas Priest’s “You Got Another Thing Coming”
Metallica’s “One”
Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”
Motley Crue’s “Too Fast for Love”
Motley Crue’s “Shout at the Devil”
Motley Crue’s “Home Sweet Home”
Motley Crue’s “Girls Girls Girls”
Motley Crue’s “Dr. Feelgood”
Motley Crue’s “Kickstart My Heart”
Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian”
Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train”
Poison’s “Talk Dirty to Me”
Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”
Quiet Riot’s “Cum On Feel the Noize”
Quiet Riot’s “Metal Health (Bang Your Head)”
Ratt’s “Round and Round”
Rush’s “Tom Sawyer”
Scorpions’ “Rock You Like a Hurricane”
Skid Row’s “I’ll Remember You”
Slaughter’s “Fly to the Angels”
Tesla’s “Love Song”
Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It”
Van Halen’s “Jump”
Van Halen’s “Panama”
White Lion’s “Wait”
Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again”

Here's a list of all the bands whose songs didn't quite make it to the top fifty-two:

Accept
Anthrax
Armored Saint
Autograph
Bad English
Bang Tango
Black N’ Blue
Jon Bon Jovi
Bulletboys
Alice Cooper
Danger Danger
Danzig
Dokken
Enff Z’nuff
Extreme
Firehouse
Lita Ford
Frehley’s Comet
Giuffria
Great White
Hanoi Rocks
Helix
Jackyl
Junkyard
Keel
Kix
Krokus
L.A. Guns
Loudness
Lynch Mob
Manowar
Megadeth
Motorhead
Mr. Big
Nelson
Aldo Nova
Pantera
Queensryche
Rainbow
David Lee Roth
Saigon Kick
Saxon
Slayer
Stryper
Tora Tora
Trixter
Vinnie Vincent Invasion
Vixen
W.A.S.P.
Winger
Warrant
XYZ
Y & T
Zebra

Here are the exact results of this past week's intra-band battles:

2 Metallica’s “One” v. Queensryche’s “Eyes of a Stranger” 1
3 Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” v. Whitesnake’s “Still of the Night” 0
0 Metallica’s “Sad but True” v. Scorpions’ “Rock You Like a Hurricane” 3
3 Motley Crue’s “Too Fast for Love”
v. Warrant’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” 0
0 Motley Crue’s “Home Sweet Home” v. Tesla’s “Love Song” 3
3 Motley Crue’s “Girls Girls Girls”
v. Skid Row’s “18 and Life” 0
3 Motley Crue’s “Dr. Feelgood” v. Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” 0
3 Motley Crue’s “Kickstart My Heart” v. Van Halen’s “Everybody Wants Some” 0
1 Motorhead’s “Ace of Spades” v. Van Halen’s “Panama” 2
2 Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian”
v. Steelheart’s “I’ll Never Let You Go” 1
3 Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” v. Tesla’s “Little Suzi” 0
0 Ozzy Osbourne’s “Flying High Again” v. Slaughter’s “Fly to the Angels” 2
0 Ozzy Osbourne’s “Goodbye to Romance” v. Skid Row’s “I’ll Remember You” 3
1 Ozzy Osbourne’s “No More Tears” v. Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again” 2
3 Poison’s “Talk Dirty to Me” v.
Scopions’ “Wind of Change”0
1 Poison’s “Nothin’ but a Good Time” v. Van Halen’s “Jump”2
3 Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”
v. Warrant’s “Heaven”0
3 Quiet Riot’s “Cum On Feel the Noize” v. Skid Row’s “Youth Gone Wild”0
1 Quiet Riot’s “Metal Health (Bang You Head)” v. Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It”2
2Rush’s “Tom Sawyer”
v. Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher”0
1Stryper’s “To Hell with the Devil” v. White Lion’s “Wait”2

Friday, May 29, 2009

The Best Songs of the 2000s: #104

#104: "No Vacancy" (2006) - The Subdudes


About this time every year, many of my friends and acquantainces and peers are either going or returning from vacation. About this time every year for about five years in a row, the missus and I would be not long returned from a senior class trip. Two of those years we went to New Orleans. The summer after our last senior class trip there, Foot Foot and I took our son Nicholas with us. The three of us had such a good time--and Foot Foot and I enjoyed our senior class trips there so much, too--that the missus and I decided to return to New Orleans every summer. That was in 2005, in June. In August of that year, Katrina hit. It hit our litte town pretty heavily, but the impact here was nothing compared to the devastation in New Orleans. We haven't been back.

We saw all the news reports, read all the articles and editorials, listened to all the griping from those who stayed and to all the griping from those who grew angry at all the griping from those who stayed. Blame passed back and forth, accusations of racism came from white and black/rich and poor, yet still people drowned, still people were left without means, without food, without a lifestyle. For varying reasons--lack of transportation, lack of funds, selfishness, greed, hubris--thousands of people stayed in New Orleans when Katrina hit, and many of these thousands died. The government (local, state, and federal) knew the levees wouldn't hold if a hurricane magnitude of Katrina hit the Gulf Coast near New Orleans, yet these thousands of people--for whatever reason--weren't evacuated. Some stayed willingly, would not have evacuated for any reason whatsoever (remember Camille, when people had hurricane parties--happened this time, too), but some...may they rest in peace.

Not all died, of course. Many who stayed survived, and many of those survivors were left jobless or homeless or both. With this increase in vagrancy came, of course, an increase in crime, in a city already known--yea, hailed--for its laissez faire attitude towards miscreants. Pundits and a few legislators even seriously considered leveling the city, calling it a wash, and starting over from scratch, building atop the rubble and the remains; and some even mentioned forgetting the city altogether, those few thousand remaining forced to leave and find work and home elsewhere.

Some did anyway. Many, though, scraped by best they could. The city's slowly recovering. As noted above, I haven't been back yet, though maybe in a couple of years, when my youngest is old enough to travel more than sixty miles without whining, Foot Foot and I will return. Maybe by then, the city will be as festive and gauche as it was the times I was there before. I hope so. Of all the cities I've visited, New Orleans has been my favorite.

The next two songs on my countdown are dedicated to The Big Easy. This first one was recorded by New Orleans' own Subdudes in May of 2005, three months before Katrina hit; it wasn't released (for obvious reasons) until January 2006. The song's a metaphor for leaving behind heartache and pain, but for me, "No Vacany" will always be inextricably linked to those left behind in the wake of Katrina. I can't hear the song and not think of the pictures and film/video footage of the effects the hurricane had upon the streets of New Orleans. It's supposed to be a hopeful song, but the singer's yearning tone, the somber instrumentation, and the empty spaces bluesman Keb Mo' leaves in the record leave me with images that aren't very hopeful. It makes me sad, a bit depressed, even though I know things will get better. There is (to paraphrase Ecclesiastes and Ben Harper) a reason to mourn.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

The Best Songs of the 2000s: #105

#105: "My Sweet Annette" (2003) - Drive-By Truckers

If Bruce Springsteen would have been raised in the dirt hills of Alabama or the swamps of Florida instead of the swamps of Jersey, then something from his albums Darkness on the Edge of Town or The River might have sounded (in music and lyric) something like this. Since he wasn't, then Jason Isbell's song with his then band the Drive-By Truckers will have to do, and they do so nicely, detailing a relationship soured in the South, where people used to be much more likely to follow their emotions because they didn't have the education to follow their heads 'cause they were spending their youth working the farms and the fields trying to make sure their family didn't go hungry.

The country music here fits perfectly with the redneck setting, as the prospective groom dumps his bride for her maide-of-honor right at the altar on the wedding day. Sounds like a recycled idea from a cliched romantic comedy, doesn't it? Yeah, maybe it does, but that stuff still happens 'round here (and I suspect elswhere, too)--just ask my brother. When you do, make sure and ask if the band's still gonna play the reception even though the wedding's been called off. If you tell him the Truckers are that band, then he might consider it.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

The Best Songs of the 2000s: #106

#106: "1, 2 Step" (2004) - Ciara featuring Missy Elliott

Not only a great "dance" song, it's a great song in-and-of itself, with slinky, funky, very Prince-like Jazzy Pha production (especially in the verses and the chorus), with a contemporary spin that blips and typanies and compresses the frizzy synth lines and interjections just enough to give space for the beat to hit and for the dancers to work their body and one, two step. Enough room for freestyle but structured and full enough for those who just want to follow along, bobbing their heads and shaking their tailfeathers.This one's even got a bridge straight from late-seventies disco/soul, with Ciara trying her best to come across like Disco Donna Summer (though she doesn't have Summer's energy and sounds more like Disco Diana Ross). Plus, you've got co-writer Missy Elliot rapping a solo in the middle, and any Mis-da-meanor addition is always arresting, this time with Ms. Elliot comparing her relative age to the finest cut of steak. Eat it quick, though, so you can get back on the floor.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

The Best Songs of the 2000s: #107

#107: "Your Touch" (2006) - The Black Keys


From one guitar+drums duo of rocking blues to another, I give you (for the second time), Akron's finest,* The Black Keys, with Dan Auerbach on guitar and Patrick Carney on drums and behind the production mixing board. Perhaps moreso than any other band this decade, the Black Keys have benefitted from selling out. This duo has never had a hit record, but they're ubiquitous; more people have probably heard their songs than have heard the White Stripes (even though the White Stripes are headliners and the Keys are always someone's opening act) thanks to savvy Madison Avenue ad agents and TV show soundtrack compilers who know a thing-or-two more about great pop records than do any of those Clear-Channel executives who are ruining radio with their oligarchic rule. The Keys' songs are everywhere, from commercials to mainstream television to pay-cable shows to film soundtracks to video games. Why?
Like the White Stripes, the Black Keys have a primal thrust in the beats and riffs of their songs, and thus their music can appeal to a wide audience. Their song dynamics are catchy, as they often start and stop on a dime, pausing for a vocal effect or a drum roll or a pick slide. They keep it simple and basic, with no extravagence (which is where they differ from the White Stripes) to interfere amid messenger, message, and audience. In that straightforward approach--in musical and lyrical style and form--their music harkens back to the blues of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf (as well as contemporary--and late--blues musician Junior Kimbrough, of whom the Keys owe a tremendous musical debt). Auerbach and Carney like rock and metal too, so Auerbach distorts his guitar so much that it sounds like it could have been played forty years ago by Dave Davies or Pete Townshend, and Carney splashes and crashes on the cymbals like early John Bonham.
Unlike the Kinks or the Who or Led Zeppelin, the Black Keys don't veer from their original path.** Carney adds a little echo to Auerbach's urgent yet controlled vocals, but otherwise it's a contemporary sound the Keys have, yet the energy and emotion are raw and open. Their music may harken back to bands from forty or fifty years past,*** yet the Black Keys aren't a retro band; there's not a false note on any of their records. These primal emotions--and this song, "Your Touch," is a great example--will never go out of style.
"Your Touch" is basically a song about desire, immediate desire, immediate physical--sexual--desire, and the Keys don't, uh, beat around the bush. Over and over, Auerbach moans, "I nee-eed...your touch," the drums and the guitar the only things holding him (ever so slightly) in check all the while replicating his will, his drive, his urge. It's a record almost anyone can connect with on a visceral level, and it's a visceral song, upfront and in our faces, so basic, so simple, the need to connect.

Monday, May 25, 2009

The Best Songs of the 2000s: #108

#108: "Seven Nation Army" (2003) - The White Stripes


As if to throw a big middle finger to their detractors, the White Stripes open the first song on their first album with an instrument that hadn't been on any of the three prior records: the bass guitar. It's a great rock bass riff too, opening the door ceremonially to Meg White's four-on-the-floor kick, all announcing the coming of a ticked-off Jack White, walking towards us, getting closer and closer, vocals climbing from speak-sing to falsetto to full-blown roar. His fuzz-guitar amps mimics the bass riff as it mimics his anger and his envy and his jealousy and his rage at all the gossip and ignorance and betrayal in his life and in his world. It's a little blues, a little Zeppelin, a little Pixies, and a little Nirvana, all wrapped up and striped in a red, white, and black package at our front door. We shake it, we hear it ticking, but we open it still, only to find it blow up in our face, our last images of Jack and Meg walking side by side--but not hand in hand--out to the horizon, their contours framed in shadow by the setting sun, this little Western movie epic of a record, a John Ford film on wax.

The Tournament of Metal: Round 3, Bracket 6

The all-important third round is now upon us, as the top 94 songs battle it out, and this time, there's not a stinker among them. This week, we have 42 songs, with bands M-W competing.

One song--because of the odd number of songs in this bracket--gets a bye based on having a nine-point victory two weeks ago (the highest). That song is Motley Crue's "Shout at the Devil."
We'll see it in competition next week.

This past week, the following metal acts left us:
  • Jon Bon Jovi (solo)
  • Bulletboys
  • Honeymoon Suite
  • Jackyl
  • Junkyard
  • Kiss
  • Lillian Axe
  • L.A. Guns
while the following headbangers soldier on, and we'll see them again in next week:
  • AC/DC
  • Aerosmith
  • Bon Jovi
  • Cinderella
  • The Cult
  • Damn Yankees
  • Def Leppard
  • Dio
  • Europe
  • Faster Pussycat
  • Guns N' Roses
  • Sammy Hagar
  • Billy Idol
  • Iron Maiden
  • Judas Priest
Anyway, exact results of this past week's intra-band battles:

3ACDC’s “Hells Bells” v. Jon Bon Jovi’s “Miracle”2
4ACDC’s “Back in Black” v. Billy Idol’s “Eyes Without a Face”0
0ACDC’s “Thunderstruck” v. Judas Priest’s “You Got Another Thing Coming”3
3ACDC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long”
v. Kiss’ “Crazy Crazy Night”1
0ACDC’s “Who Made Who” v. Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell”3
0ACDC’s “For Those About to Rock” v. Guns N’ Roses’ “Paradise City”4
3Aerosmith’s “Angel”
v. Guns N’ Roses’ “Don’t Cry”2
3Bon Jovi’s “Runaway” v. Billy Idol’s “Rock the Cradle”1
5Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name” v. Junkyard’s “Hands Off”0
4Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer” v. Guns N’ Roses’ “Patience”1
3Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive” v. Jackyl’s “The Lumberjack” 2
1Jon Bon Jovi’s “Blaze of Glory” v. Europe’s “The Final Countdown”3
0Bulletboys’ “Smooth Up in Ya” v. Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine”5
3Cinderella’s “Shake Me”
v. Kiss’ “Lick It Up”2
0Cinderella’s “Night Songs” v. Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle”5
2Cinderella’s “Heartbreak Station” v. Faster Pusscat’s “House of Pain”3
0The Cult’s “Wild Flower” v. Sammy Hagar’s “Heavy Metal”3
3The Cult’s “Firewoman”
v. Judas Priest’s “Breaking the Law”1
3Damn Yankee’s “High Enough” v. L.A. Guns’ “Ballad of Jayne”1
2Danzig’s “Mother” v. Iron Maiden’s “Run to the Hills”3
3Def Leppard’s “Rock of Ages”
v. Kiss’ “Heaven’s on Fire”1
2Def Leppard’s “Photograph” v. Billy Idol’s “White Wedding”3
5Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me”
v. Honeymoon Suite’s “New Girl Now”0
0Def Leppard’s “Hysteria” v. Guns N’ Roses’ “November Rain”5
4Dio’s “Holy Diver” v. Lillian Axe’s “Misery Loves Company”0

Friday, May 22, 2009

The Best Songs of the 2000s: #109

#109: "Penny & Me (Live Acoustic)" (2004) - Hanson

Well, the missus and I never used to put the pedal to the ground, and we never closed our eyes and pretended to fly, but we did use to love to ride around with the windows down (yeah, it's generic, but that doesn't mean it's not great), drinking cappucino, music almost blaring (until I was told to turn it down), and sometimes we'd listen to Hanson and their wonderfully chipper and full California harmonies, their upbeat tone, their just-this-side of bubblegum marriage of pop and rock. You know what? We still do. Or at least I still do. Sometimes. Taylor Hanson can still bring the soul and sing the lights out of anything, and the brothers' sense of melody and harmony and light rhythm is as impeccable as ever, and in this one, they ride that strumming acoustic guitar into the sunset, around it, and back home again. They mention my wife's name in the title, too, and as for Penny songs, this one's much better than Lionel Richie's "Penny Lover" (and slightly better than Moe Bandy's "I Love You Penny"), and guess what...tomorrow marks eleven years of wedded...uh...marriage.
Happy Anniversary, Foot Foot! This one's for you!

Thursday, May 21, 2009

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #110

#110: "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow" (2003) - Mitch & Mickey

When Mitch Cohen and Mickey Devlin performed their seminal hit "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow" on Lee Aikman's Folk Hour on CBS on August 23, 1966, my mother and father were sitting at their respective houses hearing a song that--unbeknownst to them--would soon lead them to their own precious little pot of gold. My mother wasn't a huge fan of folk music, but she liked the more pop outings of Ian & Sylvia almost as much as she did Paul & Paula, so she'd tune in just in case anyone was singing a catchy little ditty. My father abhored folk music,* but he tuned in because his blue-eyed soul band's keyboard player Andy Mobandy had just returned from a trip to San Francisco, where he'd heard a punk rock group he loved, the Golliwogs, and he heard that three members** of the Golliwogs would be playing on the show with a black guy named Jimi who--though he had actually played soul music and was starting to incorporate some weird San Francisco-rock music--looked like a folk singer (or, at least, looked like he had Bob Dylan's hair do), and Andy had encouraged all his bandmates to check out the show.

My dad watched the entire show, and to his consternation, Jimi & the Golliwogs never performed.*** He and his buddies were talking about the show the next day at school, and my mom overheard them. She told them that she had watched Lee Aikman's Folk Hour too, and that she thought the song was sweet. My dad and his friends were aghast. They thought the song was garbage. Knights? Maidens? Fairy Tales? Kiddie music! Where was the groove? Where was the soul? Where was the truth? The honesty? The throb? The pulse?

My mother held out her hand, and she asked my father (who was the most outspoken of the group) that if he took her hand with his, and he felt the underside of her wrist, what he would find. My father, looking around to make sure he was heard, said, "The pathway to your heart, o princess." His friends laughed. He did, too. He started to grab her hand, and she pulled it back.

She told him, "No, what you would find would be what you were looking for in that music last night: a pulse." His friends oohed and chortled. My mother extended her arm again, but this time, she kept it closer to her. She then addressed all of them.

"But you'll never find it, you'll never hear it, you'll never notice it if you're too busy baying like simple-minded sheep. To truly catch the pulse of something live, you must focus, turn on, tune in, and listen for it." She then pressed the first two fingers of her left hand against her right wrist and closed her eyes. "You must be attentive. Only then can you hear it. Only then can you feel it."

She paused, three seconds, and she opened her eyes. "There. I know my pulse. I know it's there. I've felt it. I know it. Now," she then looked at my dad, "let me feel yours." She grabbed his right arm and pressed her fingers to his wrist. She closed her eyes. She, he, his friends were silent. Three seconds. Five seconds. Six seconds.

"There it is," she said, and she dropped his wrist. "I wasn't sure at first because I was listening for my pulse, but I didn't find it. I did, however, find one that beat much more rapidly than mine. It was different, but it was still there. I just had to stop listening for something in particular so that I could hear what was already there to begin with." She took a step or two away down the hall, and then turned her head and said, "Know what I mean?"

Two weeks later, my dad and my mom went on their first date. Three years later, they eloped. Two years after that wedding date, they named their first born after their friend who, for all unintentional purposes, introduced them to one another as man and wife. The day my mother came home from the hospital, she gave my father a cross-stitched picture she'd been working on for weeks, a picture that read, "Pulse Of a Pot of Gold" (those emboldened letters were each capitalized in extra-large stitches at the beginnings of the three lines). The picture, framed, is still at my parents' house, above portraits of me, my brother, and the family dog.

Mitch's and Mickey's pot of gold tarnished, though, only eight short years after their debut album Meet Mitch and Mickey. Mitch struck out--in both senses of that phrase--solo, releasing three critically-panned albums in a row, each more commercially unsuccessful than the previous one. The albums Cry for Help, Songs from a Dark Place, and Calling It Quits were each self-indulgent, insular, stark, gloomy, and paranoid. Both lyrically and musically, each album deliberately contradicted the bright and hopeful tone of the Mitch and Mickey records. Gone were the major-chord melodies and the lush romanticism and the optimistic outlook and the righteous yearning, all to be replaced with doom-laden tracks full of minor-chords, single-string strumming, droning bass notes, and repetitive singing**** about topics such as murder, suicide, hatred, self-loathing, and the yearning for a drink of water. Even after the atypical, non-conventional pop-rock music of the Velvet Underground and the Plastic Ono Band, Mitch Cohen's three mid-seventies' albums struck a nerve with audiences, and the audiences didn't like their nerves struck. After three such strikes, Mitch Cohen struck out.

In 1976, after hearing of the success his pop-music contemporaries Brian Wilson and Roky Erickson had had with institutionalism,***** Mitch Cohen decided to admit himself to an asylum. He stayed there for over twenty-five years. Albums produced: none. Songs written: none. Chart success: none. Critical re-evaluation of his canon of recorded music: none. Egg-salad sandwiches eaten: over 28,000. Cohen did write poetry, though, sometimes thousands of lines per day. Unfortunately, Cohen wasn't allowed to use a typical writing utensil******, so his only writing recourse was a crayon, and his only tablet his hand*******, so Cohen's entire artistic output from this period has since been scrubbed down the sink.

It's all a wash anyway. In 2003, Cohen was released from the asylum******** in order to participate in the "Ode to Irving" tribute show.********* At the live show in the Town Hall, Mitch performed with Mickey for the first time in almost thirty years. They sang "When You're Next to Me," "Killington Hill,********** "One More Time***********," "The Ballad of Bobby and June," and, their closer, "The Kiss at the End of the Rainbow." That last song was the showstopper, bringing forth vocal and emotional nuances in both Mitch and Mickey that were absent in the original recorded version (as well as the version on Lee Atkinson's Folk Hour).

After that highly-regarded performance, Mitch and Mickey were rushed into the studio the next day by once-defunct (but now publicly-traded) record company Folktone Records to record the song again, in hopes of capitalizing on the success of the "Ode to Irving" show. In fact, the duo recorded several tracks--none new--and Folktone hoped to convince the two to record an entire album's worth, and Cohen agreed, but he told the executives that he left his material in his room at the institution. He then hastily returned to the asylum. He has yet to re-emerge.

This re-recording of "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow," however, did emerge, and it sold substantially well online and received limited amounts of airplay.************ Of course, this recording doesn't have the visual--from the Irving show--of Mickey's hope and heartbreak, which truly imparts how important dreams and fantasy are to those of us whose lives have carried more disappointments than they should, but Mickey's vocals are sweet yet forlorn enough for us to imagine the loss she's lived with and the brighter day she hopes may someday yet arrive. Mitch's vocals on the record? Steady. They're the pulse that allows Mickey to invest herself attentively in the song. His rhythmic throb allows her to coo and frill. She can sing upfront because he's coming at her from behind, and they climax together.

With an autoharp.



NOTES

*Still does, too.

**The fourth member, John Fogerty, had just been drafted, and so he immediately signed up with the Air Guard, and he was away on basic training at the time.

***Concert promoter Bill Graham landed Jimi and the Golliwogs the gig, but Bill forgot to book the flight.

****How repetitive? Mitch Cohen's last solo album contains a song called, "Why?" in which the sole lyric is the word why chanted in monotone over an out-of-tune, singularly plucked E-string. No steady rhythm is found in that song, and it drones on for seven minutes.

*****Mitch thought Institutionalism a form of music or art, like Psychedelica or Cubism.

******Quite possibly the inspiration behind this institutional dictum was Cohen's song from Songs from a Dark Place, "A Hard Pencil Lead's Gonna Fall Right in Mary's Eye (so Mary Won't Be Able to Weep No More)."

*******Roky Erickson once visited Mitch in the asylum, and Erickson convinced Mitch that the trees were actually aliens who were able to watch people from the outside (as trees) and from the inside (as paper). It took a decade to convince Mitch that Erickson's belief was fallible.

********He was never actully incarcerated there. He stayed--the entire twenty-six-plus years--voluntarily.

*********Irving Steinbloom was an influential folk-music producer.

**********"Killington Hill" is a song about rape, murder, and naps, and is the only early sign of Cohen's future musical path.

***********Daft Punk would later cover--and strikingly alter--Mitch & Mickey's "One More Time."

************Folktone Records had more success with this new version of "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow" because of the mp3 format. The CD copies of the "Ode to Irving" album sold fewer than one-hundred copies--primarily because word spread that one would have to punch a hole in the middle of the Folktone CD for it to play on many--but not all--CD players. The CD is now a collector's item on eBay, and it has garnered bids of over ten-thousand dollars.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #111

#111: "A Case of You" (2007) - Prince
Kiss. Elton John. Journey. Billy Joel. Bruce Springsteen. Motley Crue. Guns N' Roses. Michael Jackson. Those were my favorite recording artists when I was in late elementary and later high school. I can't say I admire all of their records anymore (except for Springsteen), but for years I did. One topped 'em all, though, and that was Prince. Prince could play rock, funk, soul, and pop with the best of 'em, and his best always topped everyone else's from his heyday. I believed that then, and I still believe it now. Considering how much I loved his music, it's funny--and sad--that of all the records he's released this past decade, he's not only going to have only one make the charts, but that one isn't one he wrote himself.

This one's a cover of a Joni Mitchell song. Theoretically, this mishmash seems odd, but it works oh so well for quite a few reasons. For one, Prince is a self-avowed Joni Mitchell fan (he regurly lists Mitchell's "Help Me" as his all-time favorite song). Second, Prince is highly-capable of writing and performing subtle, piano-driven love/soul songs (and, no, "Purple Rain" doesn't count--that's a metal ballad if there was one). Finally, Joni Mitchell's written many a fine soul song herself, though Mitchell didn't always have the best accompaniment, nor did she usually arrange her songs as typical love/soul songs; nevertheless, that soul-song structure--as well as Mitchell's voice quality and timbre--are present in many of her songs, and maybe only another musical genius could not only see the soul within the songs, but also record one of them as a love/soul song as well, as if to say, "See"?

Prince's version tops Mitchell's for two reasons: 1). he sings in falsetto, so he obscures the bad poetry that lies in some of the verses, and 2). his drummer adds the backbeat/rim-shot combination that---mixed with the exquisite piano work here--makes explicit not only the soul vibe (which was just implied in the original), but also adds the sway, the roll, to the pretty piano, making the record romantic, danceable, and a bit sad and lonely--all of which are ingredients in the best soul ballads, of which this is one.

All hail. The Prince is gone, but he's not forgotten.



no video 'cause prince wouldn't want it that way...

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #112

#112: "1234" (2007) - Feist

I'm a senior class sponsor at my high school, and I teach five classes of senior English, so when all those guys and gals--that I've spent five days a week with for the past ten months, and some I've even taught for three years--graduate this Friday night, I'm going to be watching people I know almost as well as I know my close friends walk across that stage, wearing proudly their maroon caps and gowns, to grab that diploma cover and come back to their seats only to then throw their maroon caps high up in the air and walk to a breakout room and take off their gown and hug their family, and most of them will disappear from my life forever.

I'll try and congratulate the ones I see, and the response I'll get will be a smile and a nod. They won't say thank you. They won't say goodbye. I've listened to their worries and fears, I've seen them cry, I've consoled, I've offered praise and encouragement, I've written letters of recommendation, I've given them second and third and fourth chances at learning and passing, I've ignored countless curses and shows of disrespect and public displays of affection, and I've made sure they've enrolled in college.

You know how I'll feel when they walk out that breakout room with real diploma finally in hand, smiling 'cause they never have to see me again? Elated! I'll be almost as ready to be away from them as they are of me. If I shed a tear, it'll be because I'll have to pack up the caps and gowns that I'll later have to take back to the school--after all the other teachers are through for the year--while everyone else is enjoying the smorgasboard of culinary delights laid out for them in the convention center. They'll be smiling and eating, and I'll be sweating.

I'll be glad, though. I'll be tired, but I'll be relieved. If I had the energy at the time (and I won't), then I'd go out with my pal Foot Foot and cut a rug somewhere.

Why so happy? Is it because I hate these kids? No, I love many of them. I've been close friends with a handful. I've a few who discussed NFL football with me every Monday and college football with me every Friday. I've a couple/three with whom I discussed drumming and rock music. I've a select few who talked religion and politics with me on an honest and deep level. Heck, they've all listened intently to my ghost stories, and they've all laughed at at least half of my jokes. Why would I be so keen to rid myself of people like this, people who think I'm pretty cool and a halfway decent fellow?

They're teenagers, that's why.

The teenage mind is literally configured differently than adult minds. Teenagers make stupid decisions because they're teenagers. It's not just some old adage, some truism; it's a scientific fact.

Oh, some of the mistakes they make, and oh, some of the choices they, uh, choose. Why oh why didn't you sign up before the deadline? Why oh why do you still date that guy? Why oh why didn't you tell your mother where you were going? Why oh why didn't you verify the truth before you hit her? Why oh why didn't you set your alarm clock so that you wouldn't miss the ACT? Why oh why didn't you give your boyfriend's switchblade (that you confiscated from him for fear of what he'd do with it) to your teacher or principal as soon as you got to school that day? Why oh why oh why oh why?

Too much drama is the reason I'm glad I don't have to see these friends** of mine ever again. They break my heart. They remind me of the stupid decisions I used to make. Their geekiness reminds me of my geekiness. Their failed attempts at romance remind me of mine. All in all, they remind me of high school.*

I didn't like high school very much. Now, I had some great friends, and the last three years of high school were much better than the first three, but I look back upon those days with very little fondness. In fact, I believe I've only gone back inside that building twice: once was when I substitued before I began teaching fulltime, and the second was for a job interview to teach fulltime (mercy, what was I thinking, teaching at a place I--more often than not--loathed) before I began teaching fulltime. I don't care to ever go back again.

I do, though--figuratively. Not as often as I used to (as my years away have, thankfully, now grown greater than my years there), but still, every year, just about every week, I'm reminded of me being a teenager, and I don't like to be reminded of that. I didn't know who I was then; I didn't have a clue. I, therefore, wasn't confident.

I know who I am now, and I (for the most part) like who I am. I like being a father and a husband and a goofy yet demanding teacher and a son and a DJ and a drummer. I'm all, and I contain multitudes, and I've a separate place for each one, and I can put them all together seamlessly. I know who I am.

From August to May, though, the further the school year marches, the more and more I'm reminded of a time when I didn't, and the more and more I'm ready for those memories to walk out that door with the graduates. I'm ready to toss them into the air, and I'm ready to celebrate.

What in the world does all this have to do with Feist's "1234"? She feels the same way. She's matured, and she's talking to someone who hasn't yet, to someone who's having a difficult time relinquishing from her teenage hopes. She speaks of not being able to go back, of the fruitlessness of it, of the stupidity of the drama, of celebrating who you are now.

She's feeling some of those nostalgiac fears and worries, too, but she recognizes that fact, and with that recognition comes freedom. With that freedom, comes jubilant celebration, and that feeling of unbridled joy, of personal independence from the past, of relishing the individual, builds and builds throughout the song. "1234" starts with simple banjo plucking and softly-sung vocals, but it climaxes with the most exhuberant commemoration of any folk-pop song in the history of folk-pop songs, with Feist's sandpaper whispery wisps in that follow-the-bouncing-ball melody grown into a full-blown and full-throated yawp of unadulterated happiness that seemingly lasts forever, the Penny Lane trumpets blaring, the barrelhouse piano rolling and tumbling, the drummer marching across the snare, the confetti flying, the caps in the air, the parents applauding, the cameras flashing, and then, right before the end, she dials it all back to next-to-nothing, the graduates out of the room, while she and the rest of the senior sponsors sit and quietly much on the remaining scraps of chicken tenders and pineapple, the party going on without them.

They're much the better for it. All of them.

It's all pomp and circumstance anyway.


NOTES

*Don't say it. I know.

**In all honesty--and, just so you know, I hate being all honest--I will miss a few of them. Overall, I enjoyed teaching this year's class better than any since, oh, 2001. I didn't have to turn in any behavior referrals this year. I wrote a handful, but thankfully the offending students seeing my writing of the referrals was enough of a deterrent to cause them to behave better. I felt myself with these kids this year and often I felt like I was almost communicating with adults. Sometimes--with a few of these students--I was, these few individuals (and they know who they are) had maturity and intelligence levels easily the match for a good number of the people with whom I normally come in contact.

For those few students whom I've come to closely befriend: don't be a stranger. Drop by the house sometime. I promise not to make you write (though Foot Foot will make you watch the slide show of family photos--just a warning).