The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #299

#299: "Shake Your Blood" (2003) - Probot

When I was a teenager, I loved watching MTV's 120 Minutes and TBS' Night Tracks late at night, as they'd broadcast videos of songs that mainstream radio rarely played (in the early '80s): new wave and hard rock (and on Night Tracks, occasionally a rap or R&B song). Eventually (in 1987), MTV started airing heavy-metal videos in the late-night weekly show, The show was hosted by (at first) Adam Curry and (a year-or-so later, on until the show's demise) Riki Rachtman. The air was live and loose, and the atmosphere was most decidedly un-glossy. The show aired videos by the glam bands--Poison, Motley Crue, Cinderella, Def Leppard, etc...--usually during the first hour, and during the second hour, Headbangers Ball would (often) showcase heavier metal such as Motorhead, Dio, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Krokus, Slayer, Helloween, Scorpions, Ozzy, Slayer, Megadeth, Metallica, Celtic Frost, Venom, Saxon, Anthrax, etc....Back then, some of the imagery in those heavier videos disturbed me a bit, more so than the music. I thought the music was cool, but I had a hard time (at first) watching the videos because I was scared my parents would come in the living room (I didn't have a television in my room), think I was turning into a Satanist, and ban me from ever watching MTV (and I already knew better than to buy a heavy metal album/tape).

My dad tossed my Prince 1999 LP because he'd heard the uproar over sexist and Satanic* lyrics on that double album. Alas, my dad sometimes confuses minute details. He must have heard the criticism of Purple Rain (derided for its "masturbating with a magazine" line in the song "Darling Nikki"), went to my album rack, and pulled out the Prince record with the freaky cover, thinking this surely must be the one Christian radio and the newly-formed, Tipper Gore-led PMRC (not to be confused with 1999's "DMSR") were ready to burn. Unfortunately for me, no it wasn't (though if the PMRC were going to denounce a Prince record, they should have picked a more sexually explicit one, as Purple Rain was the tamest of all the Prince records up to that point in time; 1999 itself contains far more lewd and vulgar lyrics). See, I made a weekly allowance (though I don't remember now what it was), and I only had so much money to spend on records. It took me a month to save up enough cash to buy 1999 because 1999 was a double album, and the price reflected that. Once Dad trashed it, I could either wait another month without buying any records, hoping that Wal-Mart would still carry it after the controversy, or I could buy two entirely different albums I hadn't heard before. It wasn't until a few months after I took my first job before I was able to replace 1999, and even then, I had to buy it on tape ('cause it was easier to hide a tape than an album)...and you know how long it takes to rewind a double album on cassette? Fifteen years, that's how long it takes.

Anyway, short story long, I was very cautious when I watched Headbangers Ball because I didn't want my parents going through and destroying** my case of heavy metal cassettes I'd recorded from my friend Eddie Smith's albums; so, I sat up close to the television with the volume down and my hand near the knob (to change the channel when I heard footsteps), head turning at every little hallway sound, changing the station if even the house creaked. Living the metalhead life in the utmost of paranoid fashion, I'm not sure if I ever heard any of those songs in their entirety until much later, and therefore I still find most of them fascinting if not a little bit creepy, no matter how silly the costumes or subject matter or lyrics were. Metal was (in my mind) forbidden, so metal was exciting.

New heavy metal doesn't elicit the same response in me. I'm having a hard time learning to appreciate it. I think I can't hanker to it because most of the singing is of the low-pitched, gutteral, shred-your-vocal chords variety, but it could be just because I've grown old and lazy (though my wife'll tell you I've been lazy for a good-long while now). I can still dig the old-school stuff, though, even when it's new, and apparently so can Dave Grohl. Five years ago, he wrote, produced, and played (nearly) every instrument on an album he called Probot.

In the liner notes, Grohl stated how much he loved heavy metal growing up, that after he heard Edgar Winter's instrumental "Frankenstein" on a K-Tel album, he searched for years, looking for the perfect riff (actually, he said he went looking for whatever rock riff he could find, but you--or at least Afrika Bambaata--get my drift), and developed a life-long love of heavy metal. He decided to give some of the love back, so he wrote twelve tracks with specific singers in mind. He recruited these singers for this one-shot, and he--along with the singers from Venom, Sepultra, Motorhead, Corrosion of Conformity, D.R.I., Napalm Death, The Obsessed, Celtic Frost, Voivod, Trouble, and Mercyful Fate--produced a nostalgiac heavy-metal masterpiece.

My favorite track here (I hesitate to call it best, because for an album of this type, best is truly in the ear of the beholder, as it depends on your mileage as a fan)--and the only one that might be considered a single, that might have had a chance on Modern Rock radio (though it didn't), the only one with a video--is "Shake Your Blood." Motorhead's bassist and lead singer Lemmy wrote the lyrics, plays bass, and belts out the song in tried-and-true Motorhead fashion. He makes it his own, and it's the best Motorhead song released this decade (and Motorhead have released great records this decade). The song chugs and drives relentlessly; it rocks and it rolls, and Grohl's drumming is superb, showcasing madder skills than he ever put down on any Nirvana record. It grabs the heart, and it shakes the blood. And--perhaps most importantly--I can now sit down at home and play it as loud as I want.

PARENTAL ADVISORY: the following video features implicit content. The erotic images might be deemed pornographic by either Tipper Gore or my father. Beware both.

NOTES

* Neither 1999 nor Purple Rain contain any Satanic lyrics, nor do I believe they were ever accused as having such. Again, my Dad sometimes confuses minute matters, such as the the Satanic accusations thrown at Ozzy Osbourne and W.A.S.P. and KISS (though, strangely, never at Ronnie James Dio)

Another example of my father confusing matters was when--during the same time period--the furor was raging over the corrupting forces of role-playing Dungeons & Dragons. I didn't play D&D (and still to this day have never played it), but I owned the first edition Monster Manual and the Fiend Folio because I loved the artistic depictions of the monsters. I also happened to own the Dungeons and Dragons electronic labyrinth board game

that my parents had given to me for Christmas. The game involved no role-playing whatsoever; you just maneuvered your token around the board, running into invisible walls (which you'd then mark with the little red tiles shown above), trying to find the invisible treasure before the invisible dragon found you. I loved this game. Because it was electronic, the dragon's position changed each time the game was reset, and so would the position of the walls and the treasure; so, each new game was a truly new game. My dad threw this game away because the box said Dungeons and Dragons in bold letters; he never read the words underneath the heading, the words that stated computer labyrinth game. He also never read the subheadings--role-playing game--on the two D&D books I had on the closet shelf right next to the D&D board game, because those books remained unscathed. He left them right on the shelf. Unlike the Prince double album, I never saw the D&D electronic game in a store again.

**I wasn't exagerrating about my parents trashing my tapes. In 1986, my friend Eddie bought us tickets to see Motley Crue in Jackson. I'd devised an elaborate scheme to trick my parents into letting me go to the concert: lie to them. I was too wracked with guilt over the thought of deceit (I should have been born a Catholic), so I told my mom about us going to see them. She said I could. Wow! I couldn't believe it! Did she know who the Crue were? Did she know they recorded an album entitled with a song (though it's not really a true song) called, "God Bless the Children of the Beast"? I didn't know, but I sure wasn't going to tell her. I was as giddy as a fifteen-year-old closet metalhead. I drove around in my 1970, two-door, blue Ford LTD for the next couple of weeks listening to the (unmarked) Crue tapes I recorded from Eddie's albums. Day of the concert: Eddie drives over to my house to pick me up to go to the concert, and my mom tells us that I can't go. I asked her why, and the only thing I remember her saying was something about Satan. She tore up my ticket, and Eddie said, "Sorry, bud," and he left.

The next day at school--the concert was on a Thursday night--Eddie and all of my other friends that went raved on and on about how totally awesome the band was. I initially hung my head and slumped my shoulders, feeling sorry for myself, but then someone told me it wasn't Motley Crue that was so great; in fact, they didn't play well at all. What band were they talking about then? Oh, some new band that's going to have a record out in three or four months. They didn't have one out already? No. Okay, then--that's alright. Who cares if I missed out on a band nobody's ever heard of, even if they had the coolest tee shirts and the coolest name: Guns N' Roses.

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #300

#300: "Chronic Schizophrenia" (2000) - Wesley Willis

He whupped Batman, but later the Birdman whupped him. Even though he knew Jesus was the answer, they threw him out of church. He broke out your winshield, but STP conked out his engine, 'cause Kris Kringle was a car thief. The termites ate his house up, and he's sorry he got fat. He was a rock; he was a roll; he was Wesley Willis.

Willis was a street musician of sorts, recording thousands of songs (on over fifty albums) at home on his Technics keyboard. He'd then hit the subways and streets of Chicago, perform, and hawk his CDs. In the '90s, word started getting around about Willis's singular style, and he started to grow a cult following--so much so that American Records signed him, and noted artists played for him and asked him to open shows for them. In 2004, one of his songs was prominently featured in a movie. None of this information would seem surprising if it came from, say, some normal indie band or folk-singing chanteause. Wesley Willis was neither of those, though; in fact, Wesley Willis wasn't quite normal at all.

Willis was a schizophrenic. He had daily visions of demons, and he fought hard not to hit these monsters with bricks while traveling on the subway (which was good for the demons, because they usually manifested themselves in the bodies of ordinary people). These demons and other monsters (referenced in song titles such as "Vampire Bat," "Electric Eel," and "The Chicken Cow") troubled Willis terribly, so he'd sing about his "warhellrides" with them--sometimes he'd be victorious, sometimes not--in order to exorcise them. He'd also sing about his "harmony joy rides"--his favorite musical acts, in songs such as, "Urge Overkill," "Stabbing Westward," and "Mojo Nixon." Willis also had to give some shout outs to his friends, so he'd write songs about them, like "Dale Meiners," "Caryn Shaffer," and "Tammy Smith." Crime fascinated Willis, and he'd sing about the terrible exploits of the criminals in tunes such as,"Al Capone," "Richard Speck," and "Larry Nevers/Walter Budzyn."

In all of these songs (and almost every other), Willis used the same basic structure:

• brief keyboard intro
• first verse (usually about four lines)
• chorus (the song's title repeated four times)
• second verse (usually about two lines)
• chorus
• keyboard solo
• third verse (usually about two lines)
• chorus
• outro (always "Rock over London/Rock on Chicago" followed by a product and its slogan)

The music rarely varies, too: Willis used his Technics keyboard's preprogrammed melody to create the tune (the same one) for all his songs, though he would always adjust the key and vary the tempo for different songs (Willis never actually, truly, "played" the keyboard). Willis's singing style varied between spoken-word (for the verses) and off-key (not purposefully) singing (for the chorus). He seldom changed these patterns.

If his music was so formulaic (and it was), then why the cult following? Part of it surely comes from derision, as Willis's songs make for prime picking. The longer you listen to his oeuvre, though, the more you start to see Willis's music as a portrait of the artist as a conflicted man, at times full of joy, at times full of pain. Sometimes it's funny, and sometimes it's frightening (and, quite often, it's vulgar, but I believe that Willis's frequent outbursts of profanity were symptoms of his disorder). And sometimes, in songs like "Chronic Schizophrenia," the effect is tragic, as here Willis lucidly details how his mind starts to slip away, and the soft, electronic, factory-set music--set here in a minor key--provides the moody bed in which Willis's tale lies.

Willis's music isn't going to be for everyone; it's outsider music, and it's definitely an acquired taste. At first listen, you may laugh, or you may think it's the worst thing you've ever heard. Listen again, though--and again, and again--and you might start to hear the art inside the artifice.

Sadly, the vultures ate Wesley Willis's dead ass up in 2003, as he succumbed to leukemia...but hopefully not before he took that harmony joy bus ride to the sky. Rock over London. Rock on Chicago. Wesley Willis: music of champions.

The Countdown Capsule, Part I: 333-301

For those of you new to the blog/list, here's what I've listed so far as the top 333 pop songs of the 2000s:

333. "Let's Get Retarded" - Black-Eyed Peas

332. "Welcome to the Black Parade" - My Chemical Romance

331. "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived" - Weezer

330. "Drunk All Around This Town" - Scott Miller & the Commonwealth

329. "You Don't Miss You Water" - The Black Crowes

328. "Cougar" - Silas Bankhead

327. "A Garage Dayz Nite" - Beatallica

326. "Like a Feather" - Nikka Costa

325. "Hey!" - Home Blitz

324. "Perfume de Gardenias" - Ibrahim Ferrer

323. "House of Jealous Lovers" - Rapture

322. "Gold Digger" - Kanye West

321. "Hemorrhage" - Fuel

320. "Goodnight Irene" - Tom Waits

319. "Change of Heart" - Teddy Thompson

318. "45" - The Saturday Knights

317. "Honestly" - Zwan

316. "Move by Yourself" - Donovon Frankenreiter

315. "The Whole World" - OutKast

314. "Boll Weevil" - Taylor Grocery Band

313. "Laser Life" - The Blood Brothers

312. "Mother Mary" - Foxboro Hottubs

311. "Safety Joe" - John Prine

310. "Bag Lady" - Erykah Badu

309. "Down in Mississippi" - Mavis Staples

308. "I Can't Go Back to Austin" - Doug Sahm

307. "Go" - Common

306. "Disaster" - The Besnard Lakes

305. "Je Ne Te Connais Pas" - Prototypes

304. "I Wonder" - Kellie Pickler

303. "Desire" - Pharoahe Monch

302. "Someday Baby" - Bob Dylan

301. "U + Ur Hand" - P!nk

For those of you not new to the list, well, nothing's chaged. Except that the list'll start to see some of these artists appear again, as well as some artists not yet seen appear mulitple times. I thought about limiting the list to one song per artist, but--in being honest with myself--I just couldn't do that, as the past eight-and-a-half years have seen a number of artists who each make a number of records so awesome that I just couldn't in good mind leave those other quality records off the list. If I have to sacrifice diversity for quality, then so be it; consider this the politically-incorrect "best of" list.

Any thoughts so far? Please comment and let me know, as I'd love to hear your ideas. That's it for now, though. Tomorrow, we'll continue with #300, as we move forward with the countdown (and the beginning of the 2008 NFL season). Who dat! Who dat! Who dat talkin' 'bout write them blogs? Who dat! Who dat!

Who'll Buy My Memories?

Pittsburgh's Paul Mawhinney owns the world's largest record collection, valued at over $50 million. His health is failing, so he's trying to sell the entire shbang for the bargain bin price of only $3 million--and no one's buying; he's not received one legitimate offer in over five years. What gives?

Well, Mawhinney owned a record store, but had to close up shop earlier this year because no one was buying records anymore. Duh! I feel for the guy, but come on--vinyl is a niche market and has been for twenty-five years now. Vinyl will never sell to the masses anymore. Why doesn't Mawhinney just auction off his most valuable records, and then drastically lower the price on the rest of the collection? I mean, just getting read of the building/warehouse where they're stored would save hundreds of dollars a month on taxes, utilities, and whatnot. Mawhinney refuses to split his collection because, well...I'm not sure.

Maybe he's hoping to eventually bring in the type of haul that Nicholas Cage did when he auctioned off his entire comic book (and memorabilia) collection in 1992 for $5.2 million dollars. I don't think that will happen, though. I've read some accounts of people who have been to his store/archive, and they've stated that most of his records are shi...uh...junk (reminds me of what George Carlin had to say about "my stuff and your [shi...uh...junk]"). He houses very few (relative to the size of his collection) rare or valuable items. Very few people--even if they had that type of money to throw around at will--would pay that much money just to get a few items worth of stuff that are probably only worth less than a third of his asking price. I think Mawhinney just can't bear to break up his collection because it has become almost as much a part of his life as his own family. It's part and parcel of his identity. It's not only what he does; it's who he is.

Is this necessarily a bad thing? Is Mawhinney's archive merely a collection, or is it more than just a hobby? Is it an addiction? When does collecting cross the line? My wife would say my hobby (or hobbies, depending on whom you ask) has not only crossed the line into addiction, but it jumped over it, clearing it by a good five feet. She's got a point, of course; when your collection/hobby prevents you from building a new, larger house with a big backyard (and secret passageways) out in the country, then it's time...to build a bigger garage at your current residence, so you can have more place to put your stuff!

My wife's been very patient. I think she understands the nature of the collecting game (if not the complete and utter fervor of us OCDs): she collects hardback Nancy Drew novels. Her sister Ninny collects glass angel figurines. My brother Ben collects naval lint. British record producer, songwriter, & DJ Ian Levine owns a copy of every DC comic ever sold at retail, from 1935 to today. It took him forty years to complete his collection (found the last missing back issue in 2005). Paul McCleod houses the world's second largest collection of Elvis memorabilia at Graceland Too in Holly Springs (give you one guess who's got the largest). Forrest J. Ackerman was once the proud owner and exhibitor of the world's largest collection of horror & sci-fi memorbilia, though he's since had to sell most of his items as he topped ninety, his health failing, too. I guess George S. Kaufman was right.

And that's a bit sad, too. You spend a good portion of your life--and your money--collecting something of value to you--and you can't take it with you. Whenever Mawhinney dies, will his tombstone read, "Beloved Father, Husband, and Once Proud Owner of the World's Largest Record Collection"? Doubt it. Does that mean that Mawhinney's wasted his time, money, and his life in amassing his archive? Heaven forbid, no. When it comes down to it, he doesn't want the world (or whoever sees his tombstone at the cemetery) to remember him that way for all eternity because that would mean giving away part of his identity, just as much as selling part of his collection is like splitting his soul. When we meet someone for the first time, we don't immediately share with them our innermost dreams and desires; we rarely do that even with the people that are closest to us. We don't do that because we can't do that. We each have to retain a bit of ourselves for ourselves; we have to have a bit to call our own, and it doesn't matter if that bit is as small as a locket from your grandmother or as large as a warehouse full of vinyl. We collect to complete as much of ourselves as we can, prudence be damned. Some people just need more to complete than others.

Of all the gall!

Two days ago, I went to the hospital. I've had terrible abdominal pain attacks for about the past ten years (ever since I got married...hmm...), and I always attributed them to a bleeding stomach ulcer, as the pain started around my stomach area. The attacks occured mostly in the middle of the night (either at midnight or at about three), but sometimes they'd hit me just as I was ready to drive to work. These attacks were completely debilitating, causing me to lose color, double over and writhe on the floor, vomit, and produce, uh, intestinal difficulties. Most of the time, the pain would subside in intensity after about an hour-and-a-half, but the attack would take its toll on my body, leaving my dehydrated and exhausted, my stomach still cramping for at least another hour or two.

These episodes happened about once every six weeks, but I never could discern what'd I'd done to bring them about. I used to think it was stress, but I've had them during the summer (when I was off work) and on other relaxing days. I had my last incident two weeks ago, right around midnight, and it was the worst one yet. I thought I was going to pass out from the pain. I could hardly stand. I felt utterly weak and powerless, and I stayed awake that night/morning until about five. I had to call in sick to work--again. After that night of the worst pain I've ever had (tied with the night twenty-five years ago when I got my braces) and the next morning of having to tell my principal that I'd have to miss work for the same reason I've missed it in the past, I was determined to go to as many doctors as I could until I found out what was causing this pain and have it excised.

Lucky for me, I found out on my first try--last week. My doctor told me he thought it could be my gall bladder, that I might have gall stones, and that he wanted the hospital to run a couple of tests on me. The one I had two days ago was a HIDA scan, a procedure in which a radioactive tracer serum is injected into a vein to travel and fill the gall bladder so that an image of the gall bladder can be visualized via a computer. About an hour after the initial injection--and the duct that dumps the bile from the gall bladder into the duodenum--the doctor at the hospital injected me with another serum, this one designed to contract my gall bladder so that the previous serum would eject. This contraction and ejection would show him how effeciently my gall bladder was working. About fifteen seconds after injection, I felt nauseated, and my upper abdomen started hurting, a feeling similar to the pain I felt during my attacks. This time, though, the nausea and pain subsided after a couple of minutes.

About ten minutes later, the serum finally began exiting my gall bladder (and I could feel part of it seeping down through my body--and it was a odd feeling, too), and the doctor told me that my gall bladder should have emptied the serum completely about five minutes sooner--and that my gall bladder was still mostly full; i.e., my gall bladder was not operating at peak capacity. I rose from the table, and he motioned me to the computer to show me the results. My gall bladder was working at 13.8% efficiency--healthy gall bladders operate at 34%.

Before I left, the doctor told me not to hold my two-year-old daughter (or any baby that age or younger) for about twelve hours because I was actually (still) radioactive. Not much, he said, but just enough that he'd rather I be cautious. Wow! Radioactive--that is SO COOL! You know who's radioactive? This guy:

Of course, I wasn't attacked by an atomic arachnid, but--but--maybe I might now have the proportionate strength of a gall bladder! What wonders could I work with that great power! Ooh, better yet, I might have the power to emit radiation at will, making sick my students who refuse to yield to my awesome teacher might. When Penny came home with the kids that afternoon, I tried to emit on Nicholas, but it didn't work. Plus, I wouldn't want to get fired just because some parent didn't understand my methods. Were all my homes now dashed? No! Of course not! I could use my irradiated body to become a true hero to all yellow-skinned, four-fingered folks everywhere!

Wouldn't work, though, as I don't think we have any of those types of people in Philadelphia yet. Maybe, though, I wasn't thinking clearly. Maybe the radioactivity had affected my brain.

I needed to think clearly. Now...let me see. The radioactivity hadn't affected me yet, and it didn't affect my son; maybe, though, it might affect animals. I could irradiate my pet cats with just a touch, and they might mutate into something grand themselves.

Then again, though, there's an equal chance that they could mutate into something terrible, something destructive, something that might terrorize this entire country,

and I wouldn't want that. What to do? One resource left--the internet. I spent the next several hours researching radioactivity. I discovered that Gene Simmons was once radioactive (that might explain the tongue), and so were all the members of the Paul Rodgers/Jimmy Page band The Firm. I delved further and further into my study, and I unearthed a shocking revelation: Marie Curie did not discover radiation, as I was taught in high school in college. Instead, the discovery of radioactivity fell to Henri Becqueral, the man who invented comic books! Alas, he received no recognition for his discovery. Becqueral first published his findings in one of his comic books (where he lettered the words with uranium) instead of in a medical journal, and thus his claims were considered fraudulent; he was booted from the university where he taught (Madame Curie, head of the university's board of directors, saw to that--two years before she published her "discovery"), and he soon died from the deadly combination of radiation and newsprint.

After reading this sad tale, I decided to hang it up. I was never going to gain any powers from my radioactive body, and it was probably doubtful that I--or anybody with whom I came in immediate contact--would grow ill from it either. I went to the kitchen to make coffee for the next morning, and the phone rang. It was my brother. He told me about his upcoming trip to Chicago so he could watch the Cubs lose at Wrigley Field, and while he was talking, I paced around inside the house a few times. I passed behind Penny several times, who then was on the computer, and after my third go-around, she yelled at me to quit coming near the computer. I asked her why, and she told me that everytime I came near the computer, that it stopped working entirely. Huh? Surely she must be kidding. She told me to come near it and see for myself. So, I did.

I've since been banned from the house. I don't know why.

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #301

#301: "U + Ur Hand" (2006) -P!nk

...and just to show that I'm not a complete* misogynist pig, here's one by a lady (who should sing more rock songs like this**) for the ladies, a kiss-off (with the best sounding drum-beat of any song thus far) to all the guys who think they have a right to touch and grab scantily-clad women just because they're scantily-clad. What the guys don't know is that--like Van Morrison said--the girls dress up for each other. The guys should beware, 'cause P!nk uses some, uh, choice words in her electrifying diatribe.

NOTES

*only about 35%

**then again, there's me pigeonholing her, which P!nk has fought hard to overcome--uh, the pigeonholing part, not the her part.

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #302

#302: "Someday Baby" (2006) - Bob Dylan

Last week, I was sitting with my wife, another female teacher, and five students (only one of whom was male) at the cafeteria, and the discussion somehow turned to Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats." One of the students--let's call her Lil' Tia--asked me if I liked the song, and I told her that I hated it. She was aghast; she wondered why. I told her that the song justified pre-mediated violence and vehicular slaughter. My wife interjected by telling me that nowhere in the song does she mention trying to run him over. I didn't say she did; I said she slaughtered his vehicle. I asked Lil' Tia if she knew how much it would cost to replace four tires and the upholstery? She said he deserved it. I disgreed. He hasn't done anything yet. The song's narrator's planning on committing these terrible crimes just because she thinks he might be cheating, and that's just not fair. Lil' Tia turned red in the face, and raised her voice, "He's already cheated! She's doing this to make sure he doesn't do it again. What's your answer to that now, huh?"

"He's already cheated on her?" I asked.

"Yup," Lil' Tia said.

"And she's causing thousands of dollars worth of damage to his car so that he won't cheat on her again, right?"

"Yup. That's right," Lil' Tia said, giving another girl at the table a high five.

"Well, then," I said, "if he cheated on her, and she took him back, then if he cheats on her again, she has no one else to blame but herself. She's stupid. And I don't want to hear a song praising the violent actions of a stupid woman."

Uh-oh. Big mistake. All the women at the table--my wife included--started shouting at me, saying things I cannot repeat here on this family-friendly blog. I heard cries of "solidarity," "misogynist pig," and "women's lib," and someone shouted, "Forget McCain! He left his wife! Lorenna Bobbit for President: She'll cut the pork out of Congress!" At that time something whizzed past my face, grazing me on the ear. I felt something wet and sticky. I rubbed my ear, and pulled my finger in front of my eyes. My finger was coated with a thick red substance. The young man at the table, looked at me looking at my finger, and he ducked down underneath the table, pulling the chair up behind him. I licked my finger to discover what I'd already surmised: yup, it was ketchup. Someone chunked a chicken tender at me; it was time to leave the premises.

Just as I was about to make a run for it, the female assistant principal approached. She calmed everyone down and asked what the problem was. All the women at the table gladly explained to her their interpretation of the situation. Once they were done, the principal shot me the evil eye. She remained silent for a few seconds, then she looked at the other women at the table--and she started chanting: "I am woman/Here me roar." They did. And they joined in: "In numbers too big to ignore...." Pretty soon, all the women were standing and singing. Brazierre's were tossed atop the salad bar, the lunchladies removed their aprons and cooking caps and threw them at the men behind the lunchline, and as I snuck out the door, I believe I saw Gloria Steinem herself step from the Senior Room joining hands with all the twelfth-grade girls. You'd think one of these days I'll learn to keep my contrarian opinions to myself.

Now, after having learned my lesson, I'm going to focus solely on the music on Underwood's song: it's overproduced and oversung; it tries too hard to be anthemic; it's too blustrous, so much so that the overwrought recording undercuts the song's meaning. It's almost as if Underwood (or the narrator) is trying to pump herself up, trying to talk herself into committing these violent acts. It sounds as if she's trying to convince herself, which means she's irresolute, and it's not convincing because she's not already convinced. And it's the music that produces that effect, not the lyrics (which contian some fantastically-detailed imagery). It's a parody of itself.

In "Someday Baby," Dylan takes pretty-much the same premise, tells pretty-much the same story (though told from a male point-of-view), and he makes it work. He's convincing. Why? He and his band (and the band's fantastic, the best one Dylan's recorded with in almost forty years) play it laid back, and Dylan sings the lyric* as matter of fact. He doesn't have to make up his mind about when he'll exact revenge--he doesn't have to pump himself up--because his mind's already made up. He delivers the lyric almost lazily, letting his razzled voice float around the beat, occasionally (and purposefully) overshooting the rhythmic mark. He doesn't feel the need to punch the notes at just the right spot, no need to shout, no need to brag. He's just sitting in his house or on his porch, sipping whiskey-spiked tea, casually and conversationally telling his story, just waiting for her to come home, letting his red-hot band (though their sound is muted for overall effect) underscore his murderous intentions and revenge-filled emotions. He sings with a wisdom born of pain. He is strong. He is invincible. He is Dylan.

*NOTES: This song is a cover of "Trouble No More," written by Muddy Waters, recorded by Sleepy John Estes, Lightnin' Hopkins, the Allman Brothers, and Waters himself. Dylan caught all kinds of slack for not including writer credits for this song--and the rest of the songs--on his Modern Times album, mainly because most of the songs contain pieces cribbed from other--much older--songs. Most of the critics who, uh, criticized him for this have defended sampling in hip-hop songs. Go figure.

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #303

#303: "Desire" (2007) - Pharoahe Monch

In 2007, the self-proclaimed poetical pastor Pharoahe Monch released his second album...eight years after his first! No, he didn't fire members of his band 'cause they couldn't handle his artistic fits of temperament and then hire new members and record an entire album only to fire those members and re-record all their parts with new members only to repeat the process yet again and come within a year of releasing the new album only to fire his long-time manager because he didn't like the negative p.r. he was receiving which apparently had nothing to do with his promising each year that his album would be released later that year only to pull it from release to tweak it and add more songs and remove others and then finally allow himself to be pressured to finally release the album by a faux press release by a major soft-drink company that would give everyone in the world a can of their soft drink if the artist in question actually released that album before the year's end. No, Pharoahe Monch (nickname given to him back in school because his classmates said he looked like a Moncheechee) is not W. Ax...uh, the alleged--probably hypothetical--artist whose seventeen-year-one-album-recording process is detailed above. Monch's record's delay is of a much-less monomaniacal nature: record-company-takeover & contract-buyout problems. More details here.

Monch's second album Desire is a great one, solid from song-to-song, and it seems like an old-school rock LP, with album unity and cohesiveness in mind as much as hit singles. The second single from the album--the title track--is my favorite. The producer Alchemist shows select sampling tastes, mixing a Holland-Dozier-Holland melody and string arrangment with the "Uh! Oh!"s from an old M.O.P. rap record. On top of this, Alchemist adds some utterly fantastic soul vocals (Is that Monch singing? I think it is)--think a slightly higher-pitched Teddy Pendergrass along with some great female soul backup vocals. All those elements together would make for a great neo-soul record, but Monch--the illmatic asthmatic--raps, and his verses elevate the record to, "Woh! That record is phat and def and dope and chill--and I must hear it again!" status.

Monch's rhymes: greatness abounds, but so does some sophomoric failings, as does the touch of the off-handedly bizarre. First, the failings: Monch brags--but, hey, that's part-and-parcel of the genre--but his bragging is sometimes too clever for its own good, seeping into stupid sexual similes (the "ovaries" and "sperm" lines), and at times verging into the realm of the truly obtuse (if anyone can explain the metaphors behind "yo' anus" and "chick perms," I'd be grateful). Fortunately, Monch's writing shows humor, depth, detail, and a little bit of self-contradiction (hey, maybe he's rap's Walt Whitman--maybe). He drops a line about the specific type of fur he wears (the only time I've ever heard someone boast of wearing a chinchilla) and then bemoans rap listeners (in prison!) for only caring about the bling. Monch also offers more sage advice by serving up slices of a cautionary tale about the recording industry. He mentions the struggle of having to work his own A&R and the importance of WYA. He confesses that he's still a slave to his label, though--through his hard work, his desire to record, to be heard (I rap, therefore I am)--he now owns his own master tapes. That confession--that humility--is rarely heard in rap (or rock), where (often) the exact opposite--boasting because one is recording for such-and-such company--is de rigeur. He's not preaching, though; he's just witnessing. He's been through it all, and he has to let us know his struggles. He's singing his own brand of blues.