PANIC IN DETRIOT

Where is David Bowie?

He had a heart attack in 2004 and with the exception of playing a song last year with Arcade Fire has released no music nor played a gig in FIVE YEARS. FIVE YEARS MY HEAD HURTS A LOT.

Cmon Mr. Jones we want you back!

MANIC IN NEW YORK

Then (top) and now (bottom) Manic Street Preachers are one of the great English rock bands and they haven't played the area in a decade. I saw em blow Oasis away at Jones Beach around fifteen years ago and have been a believer ever since. They will be at Webster Hall October 7th and you have to go or else live in shame forever.

Madonna On the Record: Nobody's Perfect

Madonna has remained a constant presense at the highest echelon's of the pop firmament for decades: a wild ride from catholic School Princess gone bad to riding crop Mistress of the dancefloor. I have always simultaneously admiredher and been a little turned off by her. She is like a Swiss Watchmaker: obsessed with the intricacies of time but uninvolved with the nature of time: by the time Madonna was settled in to her career proper, say around 92, she was distant to the point of distillation.
　
At the center of Madonna there has always been a metronome where a heart should be and, while at the time I thought she was antithical to the claims of feminism, I now believe she was a post-feminist sign post for a future we have now reached. Everything gave into the beat with Madonna -every image change, every outrage, every song edged her back to the dancefloor.
　
Madonna (1983)
From Danceteria to your dance floor, Madonna's first album still sounds fresh even if the synths sound a little cheesy. This was what she was doing: she was laying down natural pop singles like "Lucky Star" and "Holiday" with a heavy beat right ON TOP. Madonna owes her boyfriend "Jellybean" Benitez a debt of gratitude here because though he only gets credit for one song here is influence is so overwhelming it's as though he reinvented dance for her. And the reinvention, really by Madonna, because it was her decision to make (she used three producers ON HER FIRST ALBUM) was to make a mainstream pop move. She didn't just want you to dance but she wanted you to sing as well, she came across like three types of pop stars. Grade: "A+"
　
Like A Virgin (1984)
Two things here. First and foremost, for those of us who took disco seriously what we took seriously was Chic: the greatest dance band of all time (yowzer, yowzer, yowzer) and while it is better produced it sounds a lot more dated. The other thing was the moment Madonna appeared on MTV singing the title song her life as she knew it was over. In a bridal gown Madonna is laying on a wedding cake before staring into the camera with a sizzling come hither which was, rather than being provocative, aggressive and self centered at the same time. A minute or so later she gets down off the cake and lifts up her veil and though cheorography is weak by the end she is rolling on the floor flashing her white panties and white garter belts. It was a calculated, electrifying, sexually dynamized career making performance. Grade: "A"
　
True Blue (1985)
A touch more pop than dance here the title track in particular is a sweetly coy come on (and a hit) but it was "Papa Don't Preach" which lit the first this time -a pro-life discourse tied to a story. The song -which is nothing much though a big hit, is the bravest thing this (true) blue state girl has ever done -in NYC you can hitch hike naked till your hearts content but keeping your baby; now you got worry. It is an act of pure integrity and purer media savvy. The rest of the album coulda used a crisper sound and I am less than enthralled by the orchestration but it is also more purely emotional than her other two albums (and oddly enough, probably less honest). When you're a teenage seductress and calling yourself madonna you are dealing in manipulation and by her coldness in the first two albums MC was remaining true to an icey dicey pop image. Here the image closes down (she dedicated it to Sean Penn so who knows who is manipulating who but still -and even if the pop star giving you a glimpse of her inner tick tock is an inert joke) and the real MC woman in love appears to emerge. Grade: "A-"
　
You Can Dance (1987)
Here come the remixes Grade: B+"
　
Like A Prayer (1989)
Not Madonna's best album and she seems to have lost the consistency all good pop girls need but she finally marries her dance sensibility to her AOR and therby grows up and goes down at the same time. The title track is the most perfect Catholic Schoolgirl in distress song she has written and the songs about pain from her mother's death early. Grade: "A-"
　
The Immaculate Collection (1990)
More than being a disco diva or a rock superstar or an MTV Icon or anything, Madonna is a pop star and here is why: every single one of these pop songs is devastatingly brilliant and huge hit after huge hit. "Holiday," "Borderline," "Into the Groove" -one after another. Just stick it on your turntable and you can DJ the night away. Grade: "A+"
　
Erotica (1992)
"Bad girl drunk by six kissing some young strangers lips…" The best thing about writing this blog is it sends me back to stuff I haven't heard in years and years. Oooooh, "Deeper And Deeper" is on it. Man, she CAN NOT do this stuff any more. Grade: "A"
　
Bedtime Stories (1994)
After the bad girl dance of "Erotica," this one seemed to be a pop move though with Dallas Austin producing it sure wasn't a pure pop move. It worked out real well, Not just "I'd Rather be Your Lover" and the witty express yourself don't undress yourself "Human Nature" but the smasherino co-written with Babyface "Take A Bow" which sounds like heavy cream being poured on your heart. Grade: "A"
　
Ray Of Light (1998)
This is Madonna's "Slow Train Coming" and if "STC" worked best because of Mark Knopfler's guitar, "Ray" works best because of William Orbit's atmospheric -like it's being recorded in the deep sea, orchestration and productions. A straight up act of faith. Grade: "A+"
　
Music (2000)
A disappointment in the same way "Beatles For Sale" was a disappointment after "A Hard Day's. Not bad and in some ways as easy going and charming as a Madonna album ever will be -but a little on the shallow side. Altogether now: "I like to singy singy singy like a bird on the wingy wingy wingy". Grade: "A-"
　
GVH2 (2002)
So it's not as consistent as "Immaculate" (her first greatest hits). It's still really good and now gives me four versions of "Beautiful Stranger. Grade: "A"
　
American Life (2004)
Yes, it's that bad though I thought she was better on the "American Life Tour" than on the "Music Tour" Grade: "C"
　
Confessions On The Dancefloor (2007)
Madonna fans consider this a return to "Music" heights -me, I'm less sure. It's not bad but it's not there, it is actually a rarity, it is an avearge madonna album. Grade: "B"
　
Hard Candy (2008)
There is a million miles between using Orbit just before he peaks and Timbaland just after. Grade: "B"
　
And that's the story so far and here in my opinion in minature: Pick up the two greatest hits and the first two albums and "Ray Of Light" and pick and choose from her other albums. Too much filla not enough killa!!

FABOLOUS "LOSO'S WAY" HIP HOP AT ITS BEST

I loved the "Everything, Everyday, Everywhere" single off Fabolous' new album "Loso's Way" but thought it might have had a lot to do with Keri Hilson but the word is getting out and it is deafening. "Loso's Way" is the album we never though Fabolous had in him. I just got a text from my nephew and hip hop fanatic Jeff McColl telling me I had to buy it. Appraently, so do you.

Itunes Too Rich And Lazy To Accurately Label Songs

A coupla months ago Marie Lynn was fuming at itunes inability to accurately categorize the songs she downloaded. I thought nothing of it at the time but as time has gone by I've found myself agreeing with her more and more.

Here is a list of pop-rock musical genre's from the indie review web site delinyc.com - :
Electronic
Hip Hop
Indie Pop
Brit Pop
Lo-Fi
Orchestral Pop
Lounge Pop
Mellow Pop
Avant Indie
Post Rock
Indie Rock
Post Punk
Noise Punk
Metal
Psych Rock
Shoe Gaze
Alt Rock
Power Pop
Emo
Garage
Punk
Glam
Alt Rock
Alt Soul
Rootsy Pop
　
Now here are the genres Itunes include:
Electronic
Hip Hop
Heavy Metal
Punk
Everything else is considered Alternative or Indie.

Itunes are the single biggest distributor of mp3s -they have reached their billion songs downloaded, but a website certainly no bigger than, say, Spin Magazine, know how to categorize popular music and they are clueless.

What do Paul Simon, Oum Kalthoum, Kristy MacColl and Kaiser Chiefs have in common? According to Itunes they are all World Music. Bob Dylan's country album "Nashville Skyline" is a folk album and worse, his rock breakthough "Highway 61 Revisited" is also a folk album. That is so pathetic. "61" got him booted from the folk fraternity, how can they label it folk music? Nine Inch Nails is electronica along with Kid Creole and the Coconuts. Dashboard Confessional are soft rock … well, maybe that's an itunes employee making a point.

Does it matter? At the very least it is entirely unprofessional. They have chosen to be pros in the music industry but they are clueless as to what music they are selling. They are attempting to suggest music to us in their recommendation section but they can't classify the music correctly. At Itunes Wilco and Merle Haggard play the same genre of music. Why would they not care?

There are two reasons for a big company to be run so arrogantly 1) they are Government run like the DMV and are not answerable to anyone and 2) they have a monopoly like Itunes.
Look at the care a record label like "Verve" put into their catalogue. Itunes can't even get the right cover. (Ps: I see the $1.29 cost for a song all over the place, I haven't seen the 69 cents anywhere). The truth is itunes isn't run by music people, it isn't about music any more than it's about movies, it is a gigantic warehouse of recorded songs and the warehouse is God like in its indifference to the product it's shifting. In effect you are doing business with machines -just digital bytes.

I was the first to complain about the major labels butthe major labels were people distributing music they had -at the least, a financial investment in. The more I think of Itunes the more I see the omnificent Steve Jobs pushing it out and raking it in with complete indifference to the quality of his product.

COMING TOMORROW

New Music Week Of July 27th, 2009 Part II: From Fabulous To Fabolous

Relator - Scarlett Johansson and Pete Yorn - I think this is the first Pete Yorn song I have consciously heard and I wish it was the first Scarlett Johansson because after the travesty that was her Tom Wait's covers album "Anywhere I Lay My Head" it was my most sincere wish to never hear her sing again unless it was with me in the shower. HOWEVER "Relator" is real good indie rock and after the enervated growl she affected last year she has an off beat India Arieish voice that, if not pleasant, will probably finds its own market.

Analogue Bubblebath - Aphex Twins
Whenever a song comes on and it is both bleepy and beat box-y I guess it is the Aphex Twins and if I can feel my body moving on its synth effects I am probably right. This is from the the Optimo (the Glasgow club) Mix and it sounds like it comes from another era of dance.
　
Everything, Everyday, Everywhere - Fabolous and Keri Hilson
I was just asking Matt his opinion and he agrees: Fabolous kinda sucks but not here. Matt's friend says the album "Loso's Way" is great and he loves every tack. The best he has ever heard from Fabolous. Well, this song is great but is it Fab or the fab Keri?
　
Run Myself Out Of Town - George Thorogood
I used to date a girl who got trashed to "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" by this bluesy rocker Thorogood and Thorogood hasn't aged a day or added a lick on this neat rocker.
　
Something Wrong In Paradise - Kid Creole and the Coconuts
From the "Ze Records" compilation back when August Darnell shoulda been King not Kid Creole this is a timeless rhumba with perfect maracass and bad ass drums. Unspeakably great.
　
Don't Know Why - Smokey Robinson
Smokey will always be Smokey but certainly since 2004's Gospel outing "Food For the Soul" his song writing has been in serious decline. So his cover of Jesse Harris' "Don't Know Why" solves that problem with a great song both soulful and soft.
　
Number One - R. Kelly
Featuring the ubiquitous Keri Hilson but this sounds like R. Kelly all the way, hip hop track, echoey, autotuney vocal, from ballad to dance and back.
　
Remember Me - T.I.
With Mary J. opening the song, T.I. gives one of his most powerful raps as he worries about being in jail and the track is very very hot.
　
Psychic City - YACHT
Hyped art rock band using digital manipulation to play with sounds entirely around and yet the songs still work pretty well as songs and on "Psychic City" it is kinda weird blip acoustic biting bizarreness as though everything can be solved with two turntables and a laptop. The chick singer is something new.

Kaiser Chief's Lead Singer

This is Ricky Wilson's patented microphone jump as described in my MSG review!!

Falsetto Soul Crooners: The Chris Clarke Mix List

When I thought of posting review's of other people's music mix's I had hoped what would occur is precisely what has occurred with my friend Chris Clarke. Chris has an excellent idea of what he likes in music and I am in agreement with him though not to the degree he enjoys it. John Legend, James Ingram, Maxwell, early R. Kelly: these are technically proficient soul crooners but only R. Kelly is a pop crossover act and not on the strength of the album this song came off.

Ingram in particular is a gifted vocalist with easily the best voice (a rich, wide ranging instrument) on Chris's list and a great songwriter (he co-wrote MJ's "PYT") but despite a coupla crossover hits (with Patti Austin and Linda Ronstadt) he is not a crossover artist.

There are few crossover artist's here. I saw Maxwell in 96 at Radio City Music Hall and he had the most easily defined demo in the world: black women. He doesn't even crossover to guysville and this despite all three of his albums being very, very good. In comparison, I saw D'Angelo at the same venue in 00 and his audience was multi-ethnic and multi-generational.

Maybe this speaks to the concerted old fashioned nature of Chris's choices: there is no hip hop background here, not even on R. Kelly who is certainly no stranger to hip hop. Also, with the exception of Legend's "Another Again", lyrically this is boring stuff. I am going to quote a lyric from the greatest falsetto soul crooner of them all, Smokey Robinson:
　
"THERE YOU WERE BEAUTIFUL
THE PROMISE OF LOVE WAS WRITTEN ON YOUR FACE
YOU LED ME ON WITH UNTRUE KISSES
YOU HELD ME CAPTURED IN YOUR FALSE EMBRACE
QUICKER THAN I CAN BAT AN EYE
SEEMS YOU WERE TELLING ME GOODBYE

OH, JUST A MINUTE AGO YOUR LOVE WAS HERE
ALL OF A SUDDEN IT SEEM TO DISAPPEAR
SWEETNESS WAS ONLY HEARTACHES CAMOUFLAGE
THE LOVE I SAW IN YOU WAS JUST A MIRAGE

(YOU PROMISED THAT LOVE WE FOREVER SHARE)
(BUT ALL I HAVE ARE MEMORIES OF LOVE THAT WAS NEVER THERE)
WE USE TO MEET IN ROMANTIC PLACES
YOU GAVE THE ILLUSION THAT YOUR LOVE WAS REAL
NOW ALL THAT'S LEFT ARE LIPSTICK TRACES
FROM THE KISSES YOU ONLY PRETENDED TO FEELAND NOW OUR MEETINGS YOU AVOIDAND SO MY WORLD YOU HAVE DESTROYED

OH, JUST A MINUTE AGO YOUR LOVE
WAS HEREALL OF A SUDDEN IT SEEM TO DISAPPEAR
THE WAY YOU WRECKED MY LIFE WAS LIKE SABOTAGE
THE LOVE I SAW IN YOU WAS JUST A MIRAGE"

It is not just the extended metaphor in is the camouflage/sabotage/Mirage perfect rhyme.
　
Now here is Avant's lyric to "My First Love":

"Silhouette of a perfect frame
Shadows of your smile, will always remain(always remain)
Beginners love, soon fades away ah baby
We go on, I will always
[Chorus](Avant & Girl)(long as I live)long as I live
you will be my(my first love)ah baby,
you and only(long as i live)long as I live
(My first love)you will be my first loveand i choose you again."
　
Avant's lyrics aren't sophomoric only because no college Professor would allow him to get away with it.
　
So I asked Chris why his fave songs soul (sic) reason for being was background music for acts of seduction. Without disagreeing with my premise he noted that I had given him zero time to think up his list. A valid comment so off the top of my head here at seven songs:
Hypnotise - Biggie; Hit em Up - Tu Pac; Positively 4th Street - Bob Dylan; Road To Joy - Bright Eyes; Whenever God Shines His Light On Me - Van Morrison; Hit the Road, Jack - Ray Charles; She Loves You - The Beatles.
　
So what does this tell me? 1) male centric, 2) nothing very recent; 3) not particularly of a single sound but all of these songs are great AS SONGS. No Latin, no classical, no jazz. As a type of Rorchach taste in music, it's essentially a mix of R&B and folk-rock. And I would say if it isn't a pinpoint control exposition of my taste in music, it isn't a million miles away either.
　
If You're Not The One - Daniel Bedingfield - Ugh. BD's sole reason for being is to make Robin Thicke look good on this bathetic blue eyed soul travesty. "I know it isn't good," Clarke admits, "But I love it". I hope they'll be very happy together.
　
I Can't Sleep Baby (If I) - R. Kelly - Questions of personal merit notwithstand I have loved R. Kelly since his public announcement but his first solo album "12 Songs" was better than anything on his eponymous sophomore effort. It's the second album that brought us this soporific effort -a lullaby to loneliness. There is an R. Kelly type song I just can't listen to "If I Can fly" is a much more egregrious noise then this but this is pretty bad.
　
This Woman's Work - Maxwell - Maxwell can't write a lyric if his life depended on it but he is a brilliant arranger whose songs always leave me flat footed so I am never sure why he has constructed them so belligerently. It's like they are art rock or something -the strings here are in the wrong place and you have to listen harder then you are doing to find where it's going. It's as though he is channelling his subconscious and the back up vocals are coming from a dream that isn't quite sweet. This song and the James Ingram are the real keepers on this list.
　
My First Love - Avant & Keke Wyatt - The start of this song sounds like "Knockout TKO" and Avant is an interesting minor talent and this is an interesting, minor song.
　
Kushumpeng - Frankie Paul - This is pretty good dancehall reggae -not Buju but not bad. The intro is from the Beatle's "Norwegian Wood" no idea why, and the beat moves on a high hat flip. Hot stuff.
　
Another Again - John Legend
Take Me Away - John Legend
I thought Legend was on his way to becoming the R&B Kanye West -just a completely gifted songwriter, a fucking genius who knew he was a fucking genius. And "Another Again" from his sophomore effort stands up well to all hype as well as having a great lyric filled with iterations to reflect the circular keyboards. "Evolver" was the first truly disappointing extended work in Legend's career and "Take Me Away" is a snooze.
　
Baby, Come To Me - James Ingram, Patti Austin, Quincy Jones - Reached # 2 in the pop charts and deserved it based upon Ingram's lush life vocals and the very wonderful Patti Austin (she is so good even Jimmy James and terry Lewis worked with her) from "From Q, With Love".
　
Tiny dancer - Elton John - Off Elton's second album, a songwriterly song that thinks it knows more than it does (the lyric is very uncomfortable: "Blue jean baby, LA lady") and a piano that is all trills and fake blues fills.
　
And that my friends is that. Chris seems to live for keyboard ballads by high pitched blokes so why Chris hasn't offered up any songs from the late lamented Luther Vandross is beyond me. As for me, the most important thing Chris shared with me is the gifted James Ingram and his own take on modern music. Thank you, Chris.

Dan Aquilante of the New York Post gets it wrong

Many years ago I was sitting one row above New York Post Pop muic beat writer Dan Aquilante at the Lauryn Hill "Misadventures' concert. The seats weren't great but they weren't terrible either, center stage in the 200s at The Theatre At MSG, and this pussy made such a fuss I wanted to punch him. Now obviously you can't tell much about a bloke after seeing (not even meeting him) once in an adverse situation.

But I have never much cared for his taste in music and yesterday his review of Green Day was insipid.

Here is an excerpt: "GREEN Day should be ashamed. AT Madison Square Garden Monday night, the Grammy-winning punk band -- famous for leftist politics hitched to mainstream pop -- presented what was essentially the same production they did four years ago at a September 2005 Giants Stadium show.
It came rushing back at you like a hot kiss at the end of a wet fist. Just like last time, a guy in a pink bunny suit roused the crowd with mock drunk antics and led the soldout house through a few lame verses of the Village People classic "YMCA." And yeah, it was as queer (and not in the gay way) on Monday as it was four years ago.
Lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong engaged the crowd with call- andresponse, fireworks and flames were "1812 Overture"- style percussion notes and Armstrong even plucked kids out of the crowd to sing and play instruments with the band -- all just like last time.
While fun the first time out of the box, it insults the audience when a band, touted as brilliant sociopolitical commentators, doesn't think we'd notice the recycling."


Well, I saw Green Day with Velvet Revolver in 2005 and they played it straight up so I don't understand it. However, let's give Aquilante the benefit of the doubt: so what? Smokey Robinson, who has more integrity in his little finger then most people have in their family tree, has been doing the girls vs boys singalong for at least 20 years. James Brown had done the fake leaving the stage since the mid-60s till the end of his career. Punk credibility? Over half the concert was new material, what recycling.

New york post should make Mary Huhn their head writer.

Beck's Golden Age

In 96 I saw Beck at the start of the Odelay Tour in the tiny "Supper Club". He was a bolt of lightening like a surfer dude James Brown chasing down his masterly hip hop-folk hybrid. I was a believer but since then, and despite some good stuff all along the way, he has failed to live up to his potential.
　
　
In 02 Beck broke up with his long term girlfriend and chronicled it on the broken down album "Sea Change" and on the lead song "The Golden Age" the loss leads him to social abandonment and an inability to deal with life.
　
　
Around this time I was involved in one of the most serious romances of my life when Julie told me she was in love with somebody else and left my life and left me reeling. In retrospect it was like a death only worse because when somebody dies you might imagine them in heaven or imagine them being eaten by worms but when they have left you for another guy all you can imagine is him doing things you thought were yours only.
　
　
I did what any real man would do: I went on a four day bender that ended with me two liters deep into bacardi and on all fours and somewhere in the background is Beck's "The Golden Age" playing. At least I think it was "The Golden Age" playing -maybe nothing was playing as I shook from alcohol poisoning and rolled on the ground, but I've written about the day any number of times and in the fiction I have portrayed the broken hearted guy dying to "The Golden Age".
　
　
Beck starts the song with what sounds like a cheerful come on (and it's the first line of the entire album) "Put you hand on the wheel, let the golden age begin" but his voice is so depressed he seems to be singing in a whisper and the song is a constant sink. There is a strummed acoustic guitar and a slide guitar and a dissolute back beat and it all adds up to a depression the words get to: "These days I barely get by, I don't even try". Since he is suggesting the way to recover is to drive through the night (how Californian of him) the mood he is setting both musically and lyrically is of a guy who knows the road to take to make it through but can't take the road it takes to make it through.
　
　
The thing about being devastated by love is the bruises are both invisible and unreliable markers to who you are or how you live: you can't be judged on your lowest moments but ARTISTICALLY, if you are willing to cannibalise your own horrors, the results are very useful. Look at it this way: it is easier to deal with larger emotions (and heartbreak is a huge one) than smaller emotions because the outlines are clearer. For instance, it is easier to write about watching your girl laugh in your face and go off with another guy then it is to write about eating a Popsicle too fast and having an ice headache.
　
　
"Sea Change" comes out of the bottom of the emotional barrel; it is paralysed in sorrow and in "The Golden Age" the age discussed is out of reach because Beck can't take his own advise. Beck has worked this side of the folk road before (it isn't a million miles from "Ramshackle" yet without the conviction of his lack of connectedness. It is a great song to cry to, the space between the guitars is perfect for a little gasp for air and you can sing it low and blue barely murmuring the attempt.
　
　
And it is, like so much stuff, based on a contradiction: Beck is so depressed by losing the girl he can't even try to fix the situation yet he has the energy to craft a song which perfectly mirrors his refusal or maybe his inability to get over her and which I, 3000 miles away, am using to sink myself down further into an alcoholic based break down where the downward spiral of the song and my downward spiral mirror each other. This is a testament to two things 1) Beck's ability to accurately mirror his loss with a sound and 2) the universal nature of that loss.
　
The gift of the artist is the transmogrification of the ethereal into the formal: these things Beck and I were feeling can't be held or touched or shared: they are deep inside us and they are stopping us in the midst of our lives the same way the women leaving us stopped our deepest feelings and turned them against us. You offer love and you are loved in the return and the more you have done what you are meant to be doing in a romantic adult relationship, ergo giving love, the more sorrow you will get when betrayed by love. This is simple feelings shared by countless people BUT that doesn't make them easy to share any more than it isn't easy to share a headache. You can say it but you can't pick it up and you can't touch it but in Beck's "The Golden Age" this betrayal is given a form and therefore we can be really shared.
　
Later that year Beck joined Scientology. Me? I've dated around but I still bear the scars. Maybe I should join Scientology as well... Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf_zt_dIm0A&feature=PlayList&p=B3BB669839A8A19D&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=39

Someone Else's music: The Alix Wartell Mix List

If I am in an elevator, if I am in a train or a plane, anyway stationary position, and I see somebody listening to their Ipod I will ask them what they are listening to. This is not an act of social intercourse, I really wanna know, I wanna know what I've missed and also, for me, with the answer of one small question I will gain insight on both the man or woman who are listing to music and the artist they are listening to.

If I am dating a girl and she has bad taste in music (or worse no taste in music: "I like everything" is the equivalent of saying "I am a boring bastard who doesn't have a thought in my head") the relationship is doomed from the start. If I have to explain why Cinderella were not as good as Crazy Horse we are never gonna work out.

I still find it endlesly fascinating what people listen to: often it is age related but sometimes it simply makes no sense at all to me and only reveals the reason when you dwelve a little deeper. An Irish girl I know told me she loved Jerry Rivera but it took a couple of more questions for me to discover she had been dating a Puerto Rican guy for the past three years.

Here is a list of some of my friends and the music they like:
Robert Nevin: Classical, especially Mozart
Todd Leibowitz: Hair metal
Larry S.: 60s classic rock
Mike Dee: Reggae
Matt Drummond: East Coast hip hop
Lisa Fay: Modern Country
Rachel Tuckerman: Latin American
Louba Lababedi: Judy Garland
Steve Diamond: the closest to my taste, wide and deep but no Latin
Liam Murphy: Hip Hop
Chris Maglioni: George Harrison
Marie Lynn: Modern Alternative
Bob Klein: Classical
Christine Babiak: 90s grunge
Samer Diab: 70s metal
Jeff McColl: Hip Hop
Aletia Small: Gospel
Bobby Sciortino: Dance
Nicki Angelica: 90s dance mixes

Than there is my former assistant Alix. In an effort to share the music in our office I made her a mix and added to it by her request. Here is the highlights of the Alix Wartell mix.

Romeo And Juliet - Taylor Swift - Undisputably Swift's best song ("Thug Story" is her hip hop T. Pain rethinking) and the introduction to her smash hit album "Fearless" it is a pop stroke of mammoth proportion and would've broken her pop if "Tears On My Guitar" hadn't already done so. A girly girl triumph which (and this is why Swift crosses over) has a larger appeal because it is catchy pop with only a trace of country on the acoustic guitar flavor and a smart electric backing. In this sense she is like the Beatles who also appealed to young girls and paedophiles before gaining a larger audience. Best line: "This love is hard but it is re-e-al" -a terrific line cheat.

When The Stars Go Blue - Tyler Hilton and Bethany Joy Lenz - A Ryan Adam's cover from "One Tree Hill" and it should really suck and it doesn't. Despite a full rock band back up that is a bit obtrusive and Hilton's (smart) decision not to try for the high blue note, it is a clever pop rework of a gone Adam's song.

If I Were A Boy - Beyonce - This pop hit is better than it has any right to be and the direction of the lyric is orginal. The album was pretty lousy.

Somebody's Baby - Jackson Browne - Get the feeling Alix is a bit of a wimp yet? Browne used to refuse to play his biggest hits, an 80s pop move but I guess all the royalty checks has softened the blow. A lovely straight up acoustic version.

Basket Case - Green Day - Alix was nine years old when "Dookie" was released, and it's position on her mix is either a testament to "Dookies" exothermic qualities or it's inclusion in many a Summer camp campfire singalong.

You Don't Know How It Feels - Tom Petty - Alix's ex was a big Petty fan but she didn't recognize the song when she heard it on one of my mix's. She still loved it and I still think this is the equivalent of my Irish friend liking Latin music.

La La - Ashley Simpson - This is the sort of song the pros write when the pro's wanna write a hit. The "Lala" is a modern equivalent of a "yaya".

Won't go Home Without You - Maroon 5 - When people say, "Al," they call me Al, "You pretend to be a populist but you are really a music snob" I point to these blue eyed soul boys to prove I'm not. PS I saw em at MSG a coupla years ago, the last night of their "It Won't be Soon before Long" tour with their parents in the audience and Lenny Cohen should be made aware even THEY dug how big a deal it was.

Defying Gravity - Idina Menzel & Kristin Chenowith - Alix saw the Broadway musical "Wicked" on the West End begging the question: what was she thinking of? Anyway, the broadway musical was a chick flick put to really bad music and this song sucks.

Piece Of Me - Britney Bitch - Is this Britney's finest moment? A snap shot of life as lived after the breakdown based around a synth beat hook from the ultra well named album "Blackout". "Blackout" was the first of two sequential albums that wiped the floor with Madonna.

Wedding Bell Blues - Laura Nyro - I think there is some sorta secret society where chicks get together and share inside dope on chick songs through the ages. This is one of late great singer-songwriter's catchiest creations and possibly the best song on the mix.

Curbside Prophet - Jason Mraz - You haven't lived till you've heard Alix rap along to this.

S.O.S. - Jonas Brothers - Before these guys took themselves seriously they could write catchy teen pop.

Love The One You're With - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - When people say guys were using the hippie ethos to treat women like shit they mean the sentiments in Stills borderline misogynist song. Lead directly to the Eagles.

The Boys Of Summer - Don Henley - A little voice inside my head said don't look back, you can never look back.

All Summer Long - Kid Rock - Alix had never heard Warren Zevon's "Wevewolves Of London".

We Belong Together - Mariah Carey - Like Britney after her, Mariah got her act together on this technically miraculous song off the simply miraculous "The Emancipation Of Mimi".



Misery Business - Paramore - Sure "Riot" was great but the song off "Twilight" kinda sucked.
"Piano Man" - Billy Joel - Alix can thing this entire song… the question is why would she want to.


So there is the Alix Wartell Mix List. Does she have taste -absolutely, not as good as her kid sister's taste (Bari is given to jams, dubs, and techno) but certainly more extroverted and accessible than the average fan. There is a fairly consistent sense of empowerment in the chick stuff and a consistent sense of pure pop music in the other with a fillip of older stuff prolly inherited from her parents.

Thanks Alix for lending me your Ipod!!

New releases Week Of July 27th, 2009 Part I: The best and the worst of the week

New Perspective - Panic At The Disco
Now Ryan Ross and Jon Walker have left the band I was expecting the worse. I Like Panic a whole lot and "Pretty Odd" more than their break through "Fever" album and it sure seems to me now I am gonna have two lousy bands instead of one great one. However, "New Perspective" suggest the the experimental psychedelic Beatle pop of "Nine In The Aftertoon" has been replaced with a more power pop bent with cool harmonies on the back up track and Brendon Urie sounding very much like Brendon Urie with a highly polished finish and an ultra ultra song melody that bleeds from the chorus to the verse before breaking for a harmonised segue and a cheeky line "Can you fast forward to go down on me…". It's like Macca without Lennon or Holsapple without Stamey. Good, hooklined power pop. Single Of the Week

Dear God (Sincerely M.O.F.) - Monsters Of Folks
So it is Yim Yames turn (as he asininely dubs himself with MOF). I like Yim's vocals so much, that Mayfieldy falsetto, I forgive him much and though the song is a bland disappointment I would not rag on it if it was not for the embarrassing lyric. I think they have given Conor, M. Ward and Jim a verse each to address the Big G directly and forgot Professor Higgins cardinal rule: "You'll get much further with the Almighty if you don't offend his ears." Here is my God comparison. First Los Compesinos addressing him: "You don't have to worry about us, we can look after ourselves, we have learnt not to rely on you or anyone else." Now MOF: "Dear God I've been trying to reach you (…) I've been thinking about, I've been worrying about, why do we suffer?" Interesting sentiment… if you're twelve years old. Here is the Iman God axiom: If You have absolutely nothing to say about the subject shut the fuck up. Worst Single Of the Week.

Coming Soon: Corruption

From Alan Freed to The Wall and beyond either you're selling or you're buying in the corrupt world of rock promotion and pay to play...

Slacking Off...

After getting home late from Green day last night I woke up late and rushed to work forgetting my Ipod. What's a guy to do? I turn to http://www.slacker.com/ . Slacker is an online radio similar to Pandora playing music by genre and by either the artist or artists similar to the artist you type in. For instance, Bright Eyes got me Conor, Cat Power and Rilo Kiley among others. Jay-Z had me listening to Beanie Siegel's "The Truth" for the first time in years. Perhaps most importantly, if there is a genre of music I am not well versed in, say Reggaeton, I can figure my way past my usual Daddy Yankee diet. It's the best reason for going to work after a long long night!

Billie Joe Pic From MSG Yesterday

Billie Joe losing his boyish good looks at a rockin' MSG last night

Bob Dylan In The 90s: 20 Miles from town and cold irons bound

The 90s began with an odd step, went through a blocked middle and ended with a major revival -in between there were cover albums and many many outtakes.

Under the Red Sun (1990)
Seen as a down after "Oh Mercy" it was quite "Oh Mercy"'s equal and includes "Born In Time" -a 2nd tier Dylan lost love song plus lots of nursery rhymes. Wiggle your way out of that one Grade: "B+"

The Bootleg Series Volumes 1- 3 (1991)
Wanna know how good Dylan was? In 1961 he recorded the first song on this album of outakes "Hard Times In New York Town,"and I quote: "New York town is a friendly old town, they trip you when you're up and they kick you when you're down…" the last song on this triple CD was "Series Of Dreams" recorded but not placed on "Oh Mercy" and as good as anything on it. In between it is really remarkable just how long and deep he goes. "Who Killed Davey Moore" -a protest against boxing, "Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie" a poem read aloud at Woody's eulogy that is rap in all but the name and praises as it passes the great man, "Like A Rolling Stone" done in 3/4 time, "If You Gotta Go, Go Now (Or Else You Gotta Stay)" a comedic seduction song… If "Go" I slight there is nothing slight about "I'll Keep It With Me" -just Dylan and a piano. And the masterwork that never was "She's Your Lover Now", These are the songs NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO MAKE THE FINAL CUT!!! And I have "The Real Bootleg Series" -a bootleg triple featuring "Hurricane" before the censors got to it. Grade: "A+"

Good As I Been To You (1992)
A covers album but what covers. It's as though it was the day before he recorded his first album and he had decided to step back even further. These are tradional folk songs like "Froggy Went A- Courting" but done with conviction and a voice like sand and cobwebs and ice. Grade: "A-"

The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration (1991)
I bet it was better if you had been there but it isn't bad on record. Cash and Carter you know but George Harrison's "Absolutely Sweet Marie" was a country lick away from "Beatles For Sale" and Lou Reed's "Foot Of Pride" is one of the great Dylan covers. Grade: "B+"

World Gone Wrong (1993)
The companion piece to "Good As I Been To You" it surpasses it on classics like "Stack-A-Lee" and "Delia" and what both albums have in common and are different than, say, something like "Shanandoah" is these are reinterpretations and reworkings of songs he seems to bleed whereas his other covers from the 70s on have for the most part, and sometimes to great effect, been Dylanisations of other songs. Grade: "A"

MTV Unplugged (1995)
I think we know what Dylan sounds like unplugged though worth buying for the new song "Dignity"

Time Out Of Mind (1997)
I actually hadn't listened to the album in years and was a little disappointed in spinning it before this post. Dylan as rustic old man and it aint dark yet but it's getting there is the basic concept and it is very moving on songs like "Cold Irons Bound". Also, Lanois gets the production right this time. But some of these songs haven't passed the test of time, particularly the sixteen minute plus "Highlanders" which just can't compare with "Desolation Road" or "Brownsville Girl" and stuff like "Standing In Doorway" feels a bit slight today. Grade: "A"
A little on the skimpy side right? I was actually buying a lot of live boots in those days: the live at Roseland stuff and japanese tours and they are among his finiest recorded musical achievements (he is nowhere near as good today). But as far as recordings are considered, things will get better in the following decade: I know he's sorry, I'm sorry too...

Green Day and Kaiser Chiefs at Madison Square Garden: "Do you want this fucking time?"

Before the encore Green Day leader Billie Joe Armstrong sings the last song off their new album "21st century Breakdown" and reaches a conclusion: "The moral isn't to do the right thing but to do the right thing together". The smartest thing he has said in two albums worth of material and it got me to thinking of Bruce Springsteen in the 80's. Like Springsteen, Billie Joe has a bit of the demagoge in him and like Springsteen he believes that rock will set him free and like Springsteen he shows tremendous respect for his fans. This is a giant leap forward for Billie Joe -I saw him on the "American Idiot" tour in 05 and he did not have this ability to move an audience. Good, absolutely, top showman, no he wasn't. "Turn off your cells, turn off your TVs." Billie Joe screams, "Do you want this fucking time?"

But on the other hand, earlier in the night Billie told a very funny story about having a loud argument over his cell with his wife when a car stops and a guy in the back seat shouts out the window "Hey Billie, Green Day sucks and so do you." Billie puts his wife on hold and chases after the car which stops at the light. Billie jumps in the window and whales on him, punch, punch, punch… hardly, Springsteen, right?

But certainly frontman stuff. It was a night for frontmen. English rock band Kaiser Chief were the best opening act I've seen since February and Ricky Wilson was the main ingredient. A extroverted maniac he was holding onto the microphone one moment while jumping up and down, diving into the audience (there would be a lot of that this night), seating in the mezzanine and watching the band, leading the audience in a Green Day cheer and playing one crowd pleasing, arena tearing anthem after enough that cut their recorded works to pieces. It's real easy: their three albums don't begin to capture this bands live intensity. I had thought they were essentially a one song band, "Oh God" was great but that's all there was but nothing could be further from the truth. "I Predict A Riot" is even better "Angry Mob," off their second album which I thought was kinda a drag, is as intenseand emotional and fun as anything you can imagine. Apparently Kaiser Chief's is taking a break at the end of the summer and that's a shame because based upon my and the rest of MSG's response to this superb set they are ready to break US and break it big.

Of course, Green day have already passed the audition but even so it is hard to overstate the case for Monday's concert. This felt like GD throwing down the gauntlet in the only band that matters sweepstakes. Billie Joe was unreal: one moment waddling like Charlie Chaplin on steroids, the next lying on his back and kicking up his legs. Billie wanders the stadium, all the way to the cheap seats, and he glad hands and hugs his audience with a genuine humility belied by his complete arrogance and certainty. For instance, Jerry Rivera brought a girl out from the audience and sang to her on Saturday, Billie Joe brings a girl out of the audience, hands her a guitar and has her play (very well) "Jesus Of Suburbia". That's truly respecting your audience. In 1979 I saw Public Image, Ltd. Invite six members of the audience on stage to sing "Poptones" for him (John Lydon) and it is magical, Billie does the same thing with three members and it is equally magical.

Hell, the entire night is magical. The GD method this tour has been to play the entire "21st Century Breakdown" in sequence and encore with a healthy dose of hits. Halfway through the set somebody shouts out for "Basket case". "What the fuck," Billie says, "We'll play anything" and so they play it and then veer right off the set list performing stuff like "When I Come Around" and "Brain Stew"and a cover of "Shout" with Armstrong adding "Earth Angel" and "I'll be There" and a little later in throwing some Guns 'N' Roses our way. He goes so far off "Breakdown" Green Day doesn't play one of my faves off the new album "Peacemaker".

I liked "Breakdown" a lot, I liked the way it sounds and that I think his politics are relentlessly naïve is completely unimportant (I mean: the US Godless? Anybody who has read the book of Samuel II can tell you just how Godly a country this is). But I only love a handful of songs and it is to GDs credit there isn't a sag of even a second: the band is overwhelming for two and a half hours straight and the pleasure is just unbearable. Dirnt and Tres Cool are Armstrong's brothers and enablers -they are the glue that keeps Armstrong from coming unglued; they are so good, they are so loud, they are so free. And Billie Joe is a star and a nutcase, the Rolling Stone interview found a man running through the horrors of stardom I've been describing for the past couplamonths but there are rewards for those who are willing to pay the price: "I'll do this till I'm dead" he says but when will that be? Whatever, tonight he is an indefatigable star presense and he is communicating completely with the audience. It's a love thing, a man who knows our mood completely and shares it and with a band (an extra coupla musicians along for the tour) who can vamp as easily as they rush forward and who play, and this is the punkiest thing about them, tight and fast. I counted precisely one guitar solo all night.

The set is fabulous with a changing backdrop(they start with a Manhattan skyline) and powerful red and white colors though they should have kept a camera and screened it for the denizens of the upper levels.

Billie Joe ends the night with two acoustic songs and then "Good Riddance". It's a fine song and a lovely parting from a thriller of a set.


Song of the Century
21st Century Breakdown
Know Your Enemy
East Jesus Nowhere
Holiday
The Static Age
Before the Lobotomy
Are We the Waiting
St. Jimmy
Boulevard Of Broken Dreams
2000 Light Years Away
Welcome To Paradise
Castaway
When I Come Around
Disappearing Boy
Brain Stew
Jaded
Longview
Basket Case
She
King For A Day
Shout (The Isley Brothers cover)
21 Guns
American Eulogy
Encore:
American Idiot
Jesus Of Suburbia
Minority
Encore 2:
Drama Queen
Last Night on Earth
Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)

Jerry Rivera and Audience Member on Saturday

Cmon -you know youd have left!!!

Ian Mackaye and Integrity In Rock

Every caveat I have ever used about good and evil apply and are doubled when it becomes a question of integrity. The question of integerity is remorselessly subjective and so subjective it could disappear if you look at it too closely.

Here is a personal example. Saturday I went to see Jerry Rivera at Summerstage and twenty minutes into the set he is singing to some girl from the audience and I'm "Ok, that should do it" and I'm edging towards the exit but I couldn't bring myself to leave because I knew I wanted to post a review. I also knew it would be a MIRACLE if anybody at all read the post but even so, just in case somebody did, I felt obliged to stay to the end so I could accurately write my opinion. That is my definition of integrity as it pertains to this blog: my writing may or may not be awful but whatever it may not be it is an informed opinion. I've been to the concerts, I've listened to the music, and this is what I think.

So integrity is not about good or evil, it is about doing what you think you should in a given situation.

Look at Ian Mackaye formerly from DC hardcore band Minor Threat. He formed Fugazi, a hardcore reggae band (you know Sublimey only less melodic). Fugazi recorded in a home studio, released their own music and distributed themselves at very inexpensive prices. In 2009 with the Internet making music distribution relatively easy Fugazi's actions don't have the ramifications it did then. It was, simply, unheard of.

More, Fugazi made all their concerts for all ages. In the world of night clubs hardcore bands tour this act of unity with their teenage audience is amazing. It lead directly to a hardcore movement obsessed with skateboarding and seriously anti-drugs and alcohol.

I have no idea what responsibility adults have to youth but it seems to me an absolute responsibility of a parent, whatever the species, it to keep the child away from harm and drugs are poisonous and poison is harmful. So whether Mackaye meant to take a responsible attitude towards his fans or didn't want to take a responsible act towards his fan, his actions were in keeping with a parent's responsibility to a child.

Punk came out in 1976 and was essentially done by 1978 with the Sex Pistols disbanding. Within those two years they were in the forefront of Rock Against Sexism and Rock Against Racism, not merely spokepeople for a generation they marched for gay rights and Union rights. Was this integrity? As a music punk UK was deeply influenced by reggae and, for the first time really, women were on an equal footing with men, but these were subjective political opinions. Who can not be anti-racism though? Actually, the Oi movement which was punk veering into hardcore and an ear bleedingly hard sound was affiliated with Oswald Moseley's White shirts and other racist organizations. If punk had integrity, Oi had just as much integrity because integrity is neither good nor evil: it is in having the power of your own convictions; it is in doing what you believe in.

Strummer and the Clash were hoisted on the pole of integrity and hung out to dry. They wanted to keep true to their beliefs but, unlike Fugazi, wouldn't give up on a larger audience by going it alone, or at least signing to a smaller label, rather than the majors. The cost was internal combustion -good guys, yeah. Integrity -not so much.

The flip side of the subject is a band like "Jam Today" -a reference to the menstrual cycle. "Jam Today" were lesbians who refused to play in front of a male audience. Tons of integrity but like Oi bands essentially assholes.

Bands show their integrity or lack of it in odd ways. I went to see Jay-Z at MSG once and the concert was running long so while on stage his management reached an agreement with MSG for Jay-Z to pay MSG's employees overtime. Compare this to Guns 'N' Roses who started a riot in Miami by keeping the audience waiting three hours and then playing three songs before kicking in an amplifier and hurting themselves. The audience destroyed the place.

As an inveterate concert goer I find it insulting when a band doesn't go on stage in a timely manner.

In the 90s Pearl Jam, somewhat presciently, refused to use Ticketmaster for their major tour behind "Vitology". The result? They couldn't play any major stadiums and the ticket scalpers raised their prices significantly.

The question of doing the right thing by a group is somewhat complicated in that the method of their integrity is tied into the manner of their business and nothing helps tremendously unless you are willing to step right out of the box. When David Bowie claimed to be bisexual it was a smart business move and an act of integrity. When Elton John did it wasn't.

When Public Enemy hung a white man in effigy during their concerts, what was that? Preaching to the converted?

It goes back to a mix of individual definition and common sense. Unlike the moral coda attached to good and evil, integrity is amoral, just because you are doing something with no concern for its effect upon you does not mean you should be doing it. But still much more than good and evil, rock tends towards integrity. It tends to take the hits for what it believes in.

Bacharach and Costello: Memories Were Made Of this

From 1998 to 2001 Elvis Costello went on a tear, a lost and possibly final, rush of masterpieces that feel a long, long time ago now. In 1998 he released "Painted From Memory" with Burt Bacharah and the contemporary recorded "The Sweetest Punch" with Bill Frissel and in 2001 "For The Stars" with Anne Sofie Van Otter. The very next year his decline would begin in earnest "When I Was Cruel".

"Painted From Memory" remains one of Costello's finest moments, written with master pop song writer Burt Bacharah these are a series of perfectly realized, heavily orchestrated tonal pop melodies. The collaboration began with "God Give Me Strength" in 1996 -written for a semi-fictional retelling of the King-Goffin romance "Grace Of My Heart" the movie ended up being a chick flick but the song a pop stroke. Written via fax per Costello the effects of learning how to read a music for once anything but a curse for EC's increasingly convoluted style.
"PFA" feels like something of a master class at the knee of the great Bacharah whose list of hits from "The Look Of Love" thru "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head" to "Rose Garden" are part of the canon. Bacharah imparted on Costello's lyrics self-control, bacharah wouldn't allow him to cheat on syllabels the way a rock singer does (if you haven't written enough beats you just stretch a syllabel over a sufficient amount of bars) and what started as an exercise in finese pop became a gold standard. Every orchestration is spot on, every emotion economically instilled with a self-control remarkable from a man given to histrionics.

With exceptions (big exceptions) are formed around the keyboards more than even Costello's vocals and the orchestra -mostly strings- are like the flood gates of emotion when they swell behind his soaring voice. Indeed, it soars in way we haven't heard it soar before. On "What's Her Name Today" the piano leads him, om "God Give Me Strength" the horns and the production is unobtrusive giving the songs a live feel. A full orchestration lead by Nacharah are both front and center and irrelevant, one of a pucture puzzle of sound merging for a supreme sense of pop perfection.

Costello himself is different then he ever was before or after. "Painted" was not the first time Costello's eclecticism had come to the forefront of his career but it was the first time he nailed it. "Painted" was not the faux-opera of "The Juliet Letters" with the Brodsky Quarter, "Juliet" was such a different type of music from Costello's but Bacharah was a forefather to Costello's rock music; it stretched him without bending him.

The result was one great song after another. Now more than ever the Costello persona was buried -no one would mistake Costello the popular musician with Costello the rock and roll misanthrope: the squinty eyed nerd was over and done ith and whatever the songs reflected they absolutely did not reflect a diary of past relationships. On "Toledo" the infidility was purely a lyric albeit a very very fine one. Here is the chorus:
　
"But do people living in ToledoKnow that their name hasn't travelled very well?And does anybody in OhioDream of that Spanish citadel?But it's no use saying that I love youAnd how that girl really didn't mean a thing to meFor if anyone should look into your eyesIt's not forgiveness that they're gonna see"

"The Sweetest Punch" sounds so much like Bacharah and so much like EC: its as if they had this most beautiful of a child; it's a major mix of both especially leading to chorus line "I can hear it ringing, but I didn't see it coming" with its keyboard trills and accented strings: a sort of anticipatory sadness. The album is full of moments like this (it won a Grammy for best pop Album with vocals) and the effect is one of a highly glossed and yet very caring pop confection: it's as though its point of view, reason for being, was the intense care put into every aspect of the album.
　
When you listen to somebody like Marvin Gaye there is a calculated consideration of the needs of a song that amounts to a condemnation of the indifference placed upon song and upon people. In 98 Costello and Bacharah were placing the responsibility for the songwriter with the songwriter until Bill Frissel would take it back and give it to the musician. As jazz guitarists go there is nobody more informed by atmospherics than Frissel: he is all about the tone of the music and in these if not lite jazz than certainly smooth instrumentals the songs are slimmed down from the orchestration and are indeed more accessible. Good stuff.
　
Three years later with the Mezzo-Soprano Annie Sofie von Otter, Costello released "For The Stars" and it is his finest collaboration. Chosing pop songs like Tom Waits "Broken Bicycles" sung by Von Otter segueing beautifully into McCartney's "Junk" and blending together. It is the best moment on a transcendally beautiful album.
　
The very next year Costello returned to his angry young man and attractions rock stance, the way he returned on "Brutal Youth" with one big difference. "When I was Cruel" was a bad album as convoluted and self-conscious as the title of just one song: "Tear Off Your Own Head (It's A Doll Revolution)".
　
EC seldom play any of these songs in concert nowadays but he should think about keeping "Toledo" in his canon.

Coming Soon: Integrity Rock

In a world with no intrinsic meaning what is integrity?

Who has it?

Does it matter?

I'm gonna tell you very soon...

RARE SIGHTING OF BOB DYLAN PLAYING GUITAR

The pic is from thursdays gig but two songs a set aint gonna get the job done. Zimmy, quit your low down ways and get yee behind your guitar for good.

Green Day, Walmart and Artistic Integrity

Art for art's sake, money for Gods sake"
10cc

Walmart insisted Green Day bleep any profane words on their album "21st Century Breakdown". Green Day refused. Walmart refused to stock the album losing a huge amount of sales for the band.

At first glance this is a story of artistic integrity but let's look closer.

Why are Walmart asking for this request -surely a parental warning label would suffice? Perhaps, but they sure weren't picking on Green Day. This is store policy. Walmart is middle American, red state, Christian Bible belt in redux. It is what they sell: heavily discounted consumer goods to the conservative heart of the country. We might find the censoring Green Day ridiculous but Walmarts shoppers would not like it at all. Walmart were not being irrational in their actions. They weren't asking Green Day to cut songs from this often vicious attack on organized religion.

Only four of the nineteen songs on "Breakdown" uses profane language. Do Green Day believe for a moment bleeping some of the language would have destroyed the essense of the album? Changed it in in any fundamental way? Surely their product has less integirty as a unified piece of work when they change the albums song listing dependent upon how much money you're spending and where you're spending it? If "Breakdown" can withstand the addition and subtraction of songs and remain of a piece, why can't it withstand some minor bleeping.?

If the album was "Dookie" or even "American Idiot" I would assume Green Day would've bleeped away. Integrity and sales are going hand in hand -their artistic control is based solely on prior album sales. Won't they let radio play those songs if they bleep em?

Finally, and worst, who is hurt? Walmart not at all. Green Day will lose sales for no reason. East Coast, West Coast, middle class fans not at all -is their a Walmart in NYC? I don't think so. It'll effect the very people, and the very minds, they most want to reach. It'll effect the kids who have no other way of buying the album and, if you agree with GD's message, have the most reason to hear it.

Yeah, that's very brave of Green Day. They must be proud of themselves.

The Mix July 24th, 009: Love flows and jones

Let Your Love Flow - The Bellamy Brothers - Sure it's bland but it is comforting and it's a song sung blue -everybody can singalong. Complaining about the brothers Bellamy is like complaining about a peanut butter and jelly on white -it's kinda bad mannered to whinge that it is mass produced and non-descriptive when you like it so much.

Going Home - Mark Knopfler
I Love Salsa - N'Klabe
She Wolf - Shakira - The falsetto chorus is perplexing and the heavy breathing bizarre, the drum machine incessant and the song as nondescript as Shakira has made in a long, long time.

Heart's Beats and Shades In Physical embrace - Charlie Mingus - From Lester Bang's fave album.

One More Day - Brinsley Schwartz - Robert Nevin says: "My first time ever hearing a song by Brinsley Schwarz. Written by Ian Gomm; I supposed that's his vocal. I believe I hear Nick in the background"

Mi Mulata - Frankie Negron - He is as good as Jerry Rivera but not better.

Lonely Is (As Lone Does) - the dB's
Evil - D.C. Snipers
Bad Complexion - Spider Bags
Coahula - Old 97s - "I'm suffering from a kinda indecision about what I'm gonna watch on television".

Fidelity - Regina Spektor - Her best song till "Ink Stains" arrived. The most subtle of background pianos and strings throb somewhere as she sings to a lost love and (and I love this, it is something I just admired so much) the song is about writing songs that break her heart and break her fall simultaneously.

Bob Dylan's Dream - Bob Dylan
Man Out Of Time - Elvis Costello
Here, My Dear - Marvin Gaye - Written for Berry Gordy's daughter, the title song of perhaps his greatest album, his voice is so full of feeling and there is no clearer song (actually songs) about betrayal. I will get around to reviewing the entire album one of these days.

The Static Age - Green Day
Alcoholics Unanimous - Art Brut
Say Please - Monsters Of Folk
Oh My God - Kaiser Chiefs - Opening for Green Day tomorrow so get there early. They have yet to improve on their first album "Employment" but their new wavy rock will kill live.

Local Hero does Good

The new movie, political procedural "In The Loop", features a bravado performance by Scottish actor Peter Capaldi as a dirty motor mouthed Director Of Communication for the British Prime Minister.

You remember Capaldi as the young assistant in Bill Forsyth's magical "Local Hero", the follow up to Forsyth's equally magical "Gregory's Gir" which starred Altered Images vocalist Clare Grogan.

Mark Knopfler scored the music to "Local Hero" including "Going Home" -the instrumental theme song and one of the loveliest pieces of music you'll ever here. It's the saving grace on a major league career whose albums and songs I've found relentlessly disappointing. Knopfler came on the scene with his band in 1977. Considered new wave by dint of if he didn't wear skinny ties he'd have had no career, Dire Straits were a hugely successful group whom Mark wrote all the songs for. My problem was these hugely successful songs put me to sleep. Even his most successful songs, "Money For Nothing" , "Sultans Of Swing" and "Romeo and Juliet" were tasty but somnambulistic and his solo albums are unspeakably dreary and live he couldn't sell the sizzle if it sat on his knees and went "szzzzzzzzz".

This is not complain about Mark's very fluent guitar guitar. The man is a born session musician and he is integral to one of Dylan's most important works, "Slow Train Coming". He also did a fine, almost invisible job, on "Infidels" -a better job than Lanois would do a little later.

So Knopfler's problem is he has zero personality and his songs suck except his work on "Local Hero" is so good. The movie, Forsyth's best, is the off-center story of a small village in Scotland being sold to an oil company for huge amounts of money but that doesn't begin to describe what a wonderful adventure it is ("Gregory's Girl" tells of teenagers on a first date but that doesn't describe it either). Burt Lancaster portrays an oil tycoon and they just don't make em Lancaster. This was one of his final performances in a great third actor to the virile star of "From Here To Eternity".

Everything in "Local Hero" is touched by divinity and that goes for the gorgeous and moving "Going Home" -with a syntn leading the way that slight toneyness on top of a rock band moves from the Houstony big city to the small Scottish village and, in keeping with the lead actor Peter Riegert's awakened longings for another life the instrumental ebbs and flow between exultation and nostalgia.

Jerry Rivera and friends at Central Park Summerstage Saturday February 25th, 2009: Serious Salsero

Summerstage promised the sound of young Salsa -well, Jerry Rivera is thirty-six so not that young but the other three performers look twenty-something so maybe young though only Salsa Rapper Magic Juan sounds new.

That's not necessarily a complaint. N'Klabe have been promising a pure salsa sound and this afternoon with two conga players, a drummer, maracas, and bass they provide a pure rhythm based dance music as useful as Industrial electronica. And the audience know what to do -they dance and dance and truly some of these people were incredible. There was a man, must have been seventy, I couldn't follow his feet the steps were perfectly in synch and perfectly intricate. N'Klabe were a study in audience enchantment. I wish I coulda taken "Woods" there and shown them how you connect with the people who most want to give pleasure -however you might want to define the word. The three singers are lively but not much vocally, still by the time they get to their 2005 hit "I Love Salsa" we are all believers.

Next up is Magic Juan. The Magic one has two chick dancers showing off in front of him and back up tapes and a DJ backing him up. He gives a pretty good performance missing the old with a still salsa flavored rap here and there. It sounds different than anything else this afternoon. The third band I've never heard of and neither has my Spanish friend and she isn't excited by the relatively tame merengue and neither am I.

Unfortunately, "serioius Salsero" Jerry Rivera is taking forever to get it together as well. Two OK songs to start are followed by a very misjudged segment where he brings up a girl from the audience and sings to her. I know you and I have seen this a million times. I've seen both Julio and his son Enrique Iglesias as well as a countless litany of R&B and hip hop singers so here's the rule: from now on the O'Jays and only the O'Jays are allowed to do it.

Rivera puts the set in jeopardy but he will pull it out because a) he is a ripe luscious looking guy -though he might wanna cut back on the pork chops and 2) he has a great vvoice -easily the strongest vocalist on show today. Still it isn't till 45 minutes into this hour and a bit show that it actually takes off during a terrific cover of a Frank Ruiz song. Rivera did an album of Ruiz covers a coupla years ago and it was a big hit so he knows his stuff and he is on fire -the vague otherness, the strange sucking up to the adoring chicks, the misjudged set list is finally put to bed and the great thing about dance concerts is it's easy to see when the audience like it. If they're dancing they like it and they're dancing now. The last song before the one song encore is his smash "Amores Como El Neustro" -you might thing you don't know it but you'd recognize the horns from Shakira's sample on "Hips Don't Lie" - and he gets all of it. He even takes his leather jacket off!!

Further to comments a coupla days ago about the difficulty of getting into Summerstage. I got there at 230p and had no trouble for a 3p start but fiveish during a break in sets I wandered down to the gate. The line was endless and they had stopped letting people in. I wonder if anybody knew that?

My Most listened to songs of 2009 on Itunes

Young Adult Friction - The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - I remain unconvinced the album is the alt indie pop revelation its fans claim -but there is no gainsaying this song
California On My Mind - Wild Light - "Fuck LA, fuck San Francisco, fuck California".
Strange Enough - NASA - This is the second time ODB has made a girl vocalist sound even better thru proximity. First Britney bitch, now Karen O. "Is that what you want?" Karen asks.
Sixteen, Fifteen, Fourteen -PJ Harvey - This is the PJ Harvy I've been waiting for since "Is This Desire?"
Waking Up Drunk - Titus Andronicus - Yeah, I know it's 2008, I cheated.
I Need to Know Where I Stand - Rhett Miller - Great song, iffy album.
Blood Bank - Bon Iver - This guy has started a movement, you can hear his sound on every other Deer band.
Peacemaker - Green Day - If all of "Breakdown" was this great...
Best Of Times - Glenn Tilbrook and the Fluffers - Terrific in concer and this is Tilbrooks best song in many a long year.
Crack A Bottle - Eminem - Before the album tanked this promised a major hit.
Day 'N' Nite - Kid Cudi
So Human - Lady Sovereign
The Ballad Of The RAA - The Rural Alberta Advantage
Wantin' Here Again - Ben Kweller
Diddy Bop - P. Diddy
The Seven Nation Army - The Oak Ridge Boys
Imma Be _ Black Eyed Peas

Woods and Yellow Fever at The Whitney Friday July 24th, 2009: Two Turntables And a Microphone

Yellow Fever and Woods have this is common: the bass players of both bands are multi instrumentalist. They also have this in common: at the Whitney last night as part of the pop conceptual artist Dan Graham's retrospective "Beyond" both bands, while good in their own right, and with plenty of inner band magic, seemed to have a problem letting the audience join in. I don't think it's nerves that had the lead singer barely acknowledge us after we cheered a Hendrixy solo on a long, thrilling jam which was both very old fashioned and completely up to date. I think it was... I dunno, integrity? If so it is misplaced and both Woods and Yellow Fever were just too distant from us though we were right on top of them.


Woods and Yellow Fever don't have this in common as well: Fever don't but Woods, a psychedelic, lo-fi jam band, have a DJ with a tiny soundboard connected to two music cassette players he (I can't find his name) knelt on the floor and flipped cassettes -most of which seemed to have background noise on, pausing the cassettes, pressing down on em as they play the way he might scratch vinyl and with a mike attached to his head like a horses bit, harmonizing distortedly in the background. It is a virtuoso performances, the guy with a shaggy hair and a pony tail looks just just like his collegiate audience but he has an intensity that is mesmerizing and used to enormously good effect by Woods.

Earlier Yellow Fever are a lo fi, quasi experimental band with the lead singer keening her strange, nursery-rhyme like lyrics in a song-songy, engagingly weird manner. At one point she plays an open chord guitar striking the bridges of her guitar with a drum stick. I ask the bass player for the name of the song but it doesn't have one -it was improvised. At the end they announce they are selling seven inchers, CDs and Michael Jackson tee-shirts after the show. These guys have been compared to "Young Marble Giants" but that's a little knee jerk, they are true originals and their songs of cool cats and getting funky should find its audience -include me in.

Woods start their set with "Rain On" and "Too Clean" with the lead singer on acoustic guitar and his gorgeous falsetto leading me to believe they are a folk band but they are just starting and half way through their forty five minute set the guy is high high up on the neck of his guitar and shredding notes. Later still he is playing a blues shuffle first in the spaces left by and then along with the DJ.

A good night of new sound but playing in a group is always an experiment in empathy and both bands should work on their on stage charisma.

Young Louis Armstrong In Pictures

You can see it in these pictures of a young Louis Armstrong, the brash confidence of a gifted trumpeter raising a ruckus from New Orleans down the Mississippi to Chicago and New York. Here at the begining of the 1900s America's unique art form is busy being born.

Scam Artists Live In August

In deciding when to see Steely Dan during their 8 night stand at the Beacon Theatre it all came down to money. They will be playing one of three albums each night and an additional night with songs chosen on the internet by people who had bought that nights ticket, repeat and rinse. Since I love all three albums they've elected to play and since my experience of nights when the audience chooses the set is that it is a mix of obscurities and hits with zero pacing any night would do. So I went with when I could find their cheapest ticket -still a whopping $74. I ended up with Monday August 10th and "The Royal Scam" and I couldn't be happier. It dates from 76 but is somewhat timeless -all the songs are brilliant jewels but a special tip of the hat to the single "Haitian Divorce".

I've seen Steely Dan many times since they reformed in the 90s and have loved them sometimes more than other times. Anyway, a quick ranking and grading per album and a huge question mark as to why they went with "Scam," "Aja" and "Gaucho" and didn't include their two best albums. They claimed no clunkers but except for "Everything Must Go" they haven't written an awful lotta clunkers.

1) Katy Lied - Grade: A+
2) Pretzel Logic - Grade: A+
3) The Royal Scam - Grade: A
3) Aja - Grade: A
3) Gaucho - Grade: A
3) Two Against Nature - Grade: A
4) Can't Buy A Thrill - Grade: A-
5) Countdown To Ecstasy Grade: A-
6) Everything Must Go Grade: B

The live album is really good as well and "Citizen Dan" includes a live "Bodhisattva" with an hysterical guy introducing the band, claiming "if he's good to you he's gotta be good for you" and hitting on the "little itty bitty ones..." God save Santa Monica.

Off the Wall off the hook

1979 of course... I mean when else would Michael Jackson's greatest album have ben released? And so much seems lost in time here but first and foremost this is part of the disco revolution -it is mostly music and its best being listened to in a club at 2am drunk, coked, happy, dancing and if you were a DJ and you wanted people dancing any track -well, accept for "Off The Wall" penultimate moment, would do it.


Because, honest, this is mostly first tier disco. Listen to the break on the title track: it could well be the Bee Gees, listen to the horns on "Working Day And Night," listen to the drum machine on "Rock With You" -everything is throwing down to the producer Quincy Jones and giving up to a distinct, highly mercurial, and groove which despite the heavy orchestrations is very light on its feet: the beat never bears down hard.

The fear would be that MJ might disappear into the mix here; his personality not strong enough to stand up to a form where EVERYTHING is a black hole being sucked into the dance. One reason disco didn't have any staying power was because it was a producer and not a vocalist or group's medium and this album made MJ a superstar (it sold a mind boggling 7 million copies) because he maintains control on "Off The Wall" -he is your date from "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough" thru "I Can't Help It". He is sexy and exciting and a symbol of a perfect date for many girls. And he was also unthreatening.

White American Males suffer from sexual panic when it comes black males. That's why we are always jailing em -fear of a black planet indeed, but fear of it because we think they are stronger then us, have bigger dicks. They're gonna mug us, rob us, and rape our wives and worst of all our wives are gonna moan with pleasure the way they never do with us.

But not with MJ -not even this early in his career. He was sexy the way Fred Astaire was sexy; with a suave sensuality. Quincy once mentioned that MJ was really crying while singing "She's Out Of My Life" -imagine Chuck D. doing that. So we're not talking Mandango here folks. This was pure money in the bank because white males embraced him completely: he cut a swath right thru all demographics.

The album is a short (though not for the times) 34 minutes and it is all brilliant though nothing is as straight out wonderful as "Rock With You" -a greatest song of all time contender if ever there was one. Everything that came after this for MJ -even "Thriller," owes a debt to this superior template.

"Off The Wall" is the stuff of legends.

Bad Timing?

I will be in England the last week of August. Here are the concerts I'll be missing:

Taylor Swift

Brittney Spears

Paul Oakenfeld

Pet Shop Boys

Nine Inch Nails

What a city!!

Todd Leibowitz: Itunes don't know their Jovis from their Joels

Writer Todd Lebowitz finds a big flaw in Itunes album covers....

It seems like iTunes is failing to upload the correct album artwork of songs that weredownloadedto your iPod via a CD.

I noticed the last few times when I went to sync my iPod, it would show a bunch of song being re downloaded – and I wasn’t too sure why. Until two days ago when I was listening to my iPod on the long train ride home and noticed the album cover to a Bon Jovi song that I knew for sure that I hadn't purchased through Itunes. As the ride conitnued, I noticed a few more songs where the album art work was now showing up.

This is great because you spend good money to purchase a color iPod and all you are usually looking at is a white background with a music note on it. How boring is that!

While I appreciate the new software that iTunes is using to read our library, there are some mistakes in the album artwork. For instance, a Steve Miller Band song came on and the artwork was for Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits. Also, a Motley Crue song from the Dr Feelgood album came on and the art work was for the Motley Crue Shout of the Devil cd. Anyway, not sure how something like this gets fixed but it should.

However, for the most part this is really a cool new feature. Especially for us from the generation who are used to going to the store and actually purchase a CD, or tape or record. For us, the front cover was always part of an album. This way while now listening to the classic songs from CD, you can see the wonderful artwork as well!!