Archive for the ‘music’ Category

Let me count the ways: Brought to you by the numbers 12-42

Posted: August 30, 2013 in music, Record reviews
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One disqualification this evening:

Napoleon XIV
“They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!” was funny when I was 11. The only sounds beyond the vocal, if you can call it a vocal, are from a tambourine, a drum, ambulance sirens, and someone slapping a thigh (presumably his own thigh, but who knows). All of the non-vocal sounds are on a loop. The vocal is speeded up in places to emphasize the narrator’s dementia. The words are not at all clever and in fact reveal the narrator to be a passive-aggressive SOB and a master at inducing guilt. The B side of this surprise hit, which outstrips “Transfusion,” “The Purple People Eater,” and anything involving chipmunks for sheer weirdness and/or plain dumbness, is, of course, “!Aaah-ah, Yawa Em Ekat ot Gnimoc Er’yeht”

There was a record company called Gennett. During the Great Depression, when money was short, they fixed leaks in the roof of their building by nailing their surplus records over the holes. I can’t think of a better use for copies of “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!”

All right then. Let’s go 12!

12 Rounds
Basically two people, Atticus Ross and Claudia Sarne. Has the name Atticus become fashionable again? I like Apollonia better. Their 1996 debut, Jitter Juice, won them an advocate in Trent Reznor, who signed them to his own label. I want my own label and as soon as this blog starts making money I’m going to go out and get me one. Ross has worked with Reznor on various Nine Inch Nails albums and film scores. I can see why they get along so well as they’re both big navel gazers, though Reznor rocks so very hard and Ross so not so much.

16 Horsepower
As soon as I read “alt-country” I threw down my guns and walked away, but the little bastards shot me in the ass. 16 Horsepower is one of the happiest surprises in this project. The first song I heard in their YouTube mix was “Black Soul Choir,” and I was sold in under a minute. By the second song, “Haw,” which evokes the Old West and Pink Floyd, I was chair dancing, using my co-workers’ chairs. Then came “Heel on the Shovel,” and how great a title is that? Pretty good song, too.

David Eugene Edwards is the man behind this music. He looks like a young George Thorogood with worse hair. His voice is nothing special and yet it wails with all the emotion we thought we left behind in the Depression. The man is from Denver, but from Denver in what era?

I haven’t heard all of their music yet, and I’m not crazy about their ballads, but what I can say so far is that if you don’t like Springsteen’s Nebraska, you might if it had a beat. That’s how I’m hearing 16 Horsepower.

East 17
The boy bands keep on rolling, this one suggested by Loyal Reader Bill Seabrook, who had to put up with them back when he was just a kid and all he wanted was to find 17 other guys in the British Isles to play baseball with. East 17’s name comes from a London postal code. That trick never works – just ask 3OH!3.

The boys (the youngest turns 40 next year) danced, sang, and rapped their way through the 1990s, or at least until people got tired of them. “It’s Alright” is typical of their ouevre; it’s strongly reminiscent of Madonna. Oops! Britney could have done it again.

They had a hit in 1992 with “House of Love,” which sticks in your head whether you want it to or not. It would sound strong in a club where you could dance to it. Sitting here with my headphones on, I keep thinking they’re playing Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” at twice the speed. It just ended, and with an explosion, too, just like Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” Cool. You have to like pretty white boys pretending to be gangstas and singing/rapping about people needing more love. I wonder if they ever considered touring with House of Pain (another gaggle of white rappers) or covering Van Halen’s “House of Pain”? Probably not.

Heaven 17
Their name is from A Clockwork Orange, which makes me want to reread it. Heaven 17 was a branch of the British Electric Foundation, which was started by computer wizards who turned to the synthesizer to make dance music. This was a radical idea in the 1970s when Roxy Music and David Bowie were playing around with keyboards. It became the industry standard in the ’80s. Gary Numan, an artist I like very much, at least in the beginning of his career, took the synthesizer and went to the dark side of the moon. Depeche Mode found a somewhat sunnier space between Numan’s vision and sea foam like Heaven 17.

Heaven 17 (and their sibling The Human League, another branch of the BEF) are among my guilty pleasures. I’m not claiming that “Let Me Go,” “Penthouse and Pavement,” and my favorite, “(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang” are songs that will live forever, because they aren’t and they won’t. But they do make me pump up the volume. The Andre Norton Effect is undoubtedly at work here, since these tunes are all from the larval stage of my adult development.

If I had to place Heaven 17 in the hierarchy of ’80s synthesizer dance pop outfits, I’d rank them below Simple Minds, The The, Talk Talk, and Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, on a par with Howard Jones, but above flash-in-the-pans like The Spoons (“Nova Heart”) and Information Society (“Pure Energy,” which you may remember as the song that sampled Spock saying “pure energy”). They are way above A Flock of Haircuts. The undisputed kings of this kind of music were Duran Duran (and, for about 15 minutes, Thomas Dolby). All of these acts appeared in the immediate wake of MTV. They were all made for each other.

Matchbox Twenty
Their debut, Yourself or Someone Like You (1996), is probably the biggest-selling rock album of the decade…probably because it sounds like everything else. This is the guitar sound that all post-grunge bands tried to achieve. It makes me think of mainstream acts like Dave Matthews and Blues Traveler as well as ’70s arena-rock heroes Lynyrd Skynyrd and even Black Oak Arkansas. Matchbox Twenty’s sound may not be original but it’s entertaining and the perfect party soundtrack. Nobody wants to hear from a critic at a party. Nobody wants to hear from a critic most of the rest of the day, either, which is why Special D channeled my energies into this blog.

Matchbox Twenty’s first hit was “Push,” which is so mellow that I can’t understand why it ever got anywhere. But almost everything from their first album turned to gold, especially “Long Day,” “Real World,” and “3am.” Their singer and songwriter, Rob Thomas, could be the voice of the ’90s. You couldn’t escape him on alt-rock radio or even on the headbanger stations.

Thomas is the kind of guy who can do just about anything he wants to do, even though I have never understood how he does it. In 1999 he co-wrote and co-sang “Smooth” for Carlos Santana’s comeback album, Supernatural. Like everything having to do with Thomas, I thought this was adequate, but it soon became the most popular tune on the planet, proving once again that any idiot can write about music….Early on in this blog, I praised the man for his voice, which I still do.

In 2005, Thomas released a solo album called Something to Be. I thought “Lonely No More” was an OK song. Of course, it was a smash.

Rob Thomas supports animal rights, gay rights, and the rights of the homeless. He once wrote, “Each of us has a short ride on this earth and as long as we stay in our lane, and don’t affect someone else’s ride, we should be allowed to drive as we see fit.” That’s a hit with me.

UB40
The guys in UB40 met in a line at an unemployment office and decided to form a reggae band. Must’ve been a slow line. The money to buy their first instruments came from a compensation payment following a bar fight. Not all of them knew how to play these instruments. One of them called himself Astro and gave himself the title of Toaster. One of their first songs was a condemnation of Margaret Thatcher over Britain’s high unemployment rate. How can you not love them?

Their first successful album was Labour of Love (1983). It was made up of covers and included Neil Diamond’s “Red Red Wine,” which I still think is beautiful. Same goes for their cover of Al Green’s “Here I Am (Come and Take Me)” from Labour of Love II (1989).

Although UB40 have filled most of their 18 studio albums with other people’s hits, their best stuff in my opinion is on Rat in the Kitchen (1986), which was all theirs.

Level 42
The only album I know by Level 42 is World Machine (1985). I know the dance hits “Something About You” (which I like) and “Lessons in Love” (which I like a little less). I’ve read that they started out fusing jazz and funk and then tried fusing soul and R&B and eventually resorted to making one of their members sing, but I haven’t worked up the motivation to check this out. I have heard “The Sun Goes Down (Living It Up)” from 1984. It’s funky for sure but it’s never going to make anyone forget Earth, Wind & Fire.

We’re down to the last 18 bands. Over the next couple of days we’ll travel from 47 to…infinity (but not beyond)!

Let me count the ways: Brought to you by the numbers 6-10

Posted: August 29, 2013 in music, Record reviews
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We have a thing in our house called the Andre Norton Effect. The Andre Norton Effect states that you can read and enjoy an Andre Norton novel as an adult only if you read and enjoyed the same novel as a kid. Nostalgia always forgives. The Andre Norton Effect explains a range of mysterious activities; for example, why I still like Billy Idol’s “White Wedding,” a song that by any objective standard is a speed bump in the forward path of musical progress.

So if in this series I have trampled upon someone’s favorite band from their youth, I’d like to apologize. If, for example – and I’m speaking at random here and not from intimate knowledge of anyone I know but rather I am proposing a fictional composite – you loved folk music as an idealistic college student a certain number of years ago and you worked hard after school serving espresso coffee to beatniks at the Sugar Shack and you spent your meager paycheck on, say, an album by We Five, then you perhaps took offense at certain observations I made about the lads. And if I had had your experience, I might never have said what I said. But I lack your experience, which is why I basically said that they suck. Sor-ree.

Out already
Two disqualifications this evening:

V6
This Japanese boy band debuted in 1995 singing covers of popular “eurobeat” songs. (Eurobeat means disco updated for the new millenium.) Each V6 member is assigned a color for life, and apparently they are in V6 for life – the oldest boy is now 43. I’m disqualifying them because the whole concept is terrifyingly stupid.

Temperance 7
The Temperance Seven
The New Temperance Seven
The Temperance Eight
This is all the same group, formed in Britain in 1957. They split in the ’60s; when they reformed in the ’80s they called themselves The New Temperance Seven and then expanded to The Temperance Eight. They played jazz and engaged in low comedy.

The Temperance Industrial Complex interest me only because I read that they had a hit in 1961 with “You, You’re Driving Me Crazy.” The producer was George Martin and that was his first trip to the number-one spot. It’s kind of New Orleans-y. Their singer, Whispering Paul McDowell, has listened to too much Rudy Vallee. “Whispering” is a great nickname…but not for a singer.

OK. Let’s go 6!

Apollonia 6
Prince had a trio of female singers named Vanity 6 who became Apollonia 6 when Vanity was replaced by Apollonia. I never dated anyone named Apollonia or Vanity. I never even went to a party where they had Apollonias and Vanitys. Apollonia 6 released one album, Sex Shooter (1984), featuring the title cut, “Sex Shooter” (“I’m a sex shooter/shootin’ love in your direction/I’m a sex shooter/come and play with my affections”). Their songs are Prince’s leftovers. Watch their videos with the sound off.

The 6ths
This is a side project of indie-god Stephin Merritt, who writes emo kinds of songs and then gets other indie-gods to sing them. Merritt released albums in 1995 (Wasp’s Nest) and 2000 (Hyacinths & Thistles). I’m not sure whom to compare The 6ths to, except maybe the Paisley Underground bands I mentioned the other day when I listened to The Three O’Clock. Wasp’s Nest has grown on me over the years.

Six By Seven
Allmusic.com describes them as “drone pop.” I don’t usually understand Allmusic’s descriptions, but this one I totally get. The five Brits in Six By Seven are the musical equivalent of an airliner waiting for its turn to take off. You never leave the runway but the engines stay revved. They occasionally do better on songs such as “Candlelight” (The Things We Make, 1998), but even there it never completely takes flight.

Sixpence None the Richer
Normally, I avoid Christian rock like the 10 plagues. So it’s only because of this project that I found myself voluntarily listening to Sixpence None the Richer. Sixpence broke into the mainstream with “Kiss Me” (1999), which was featured on Dawson’s Creek, which I guess was some kind of Young Adult cultural launching pad. It’s OK. The chiming guitars sound like LA in 1983 or like someone has thrown a blanket over R.E.M.

Sixpence gained more attention with covers of two British bands: “There She Goes” by The La’s and “Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Crowded House. These pleasant interpretations don’t stray far from the originals. Sixpence None the Richer is sort of like Coldplay; just turn down the intensity and turn up the God. If I ever do a project on bands with money in their names (Cash Money Millionaires, 50 Cent, Pennywise, The Dimes, Nickelback, Ke$ha, Buck Owens) I’ll give them a second listen.

7 Seconds
They started playing their brand of unlistenable punk in the first wave of California punk bands in the late 1970s and here they are in 2013 still playing their brand of unlistenable punk. Founder Kevin Seconds is still with the band. Major points to Kevin for doing what he loves to do for 34 years, even if what he loves to do is unlistenable.

7 Seconds of Love
Another comedy act, like Four Bitchin’ Babes, but with rock rather than folk. Quizno’s uses their music in their commercials. I know I’m falling down on the job here, but their music is not on Rhapsody and I didn’t feel like trolling YouTube. I’ll wait until a Quizno ad turns up in a show I’m watching.

L7
More LA punk, this time from a gang of women who have no problem with throwing a used tampon from the stage. Their album that found the greatest acceptance was Bricks Are Heavy (1992), which spawned the alt-rock Top 10 hit “Pretend We’re Dead.” Bricks Are Heavy came along right after Nirvana and was produced by Nirvana producer Butch Vig. Yes, L7 benefited from the grunge groundswell, but they’re just as good as Alice in Chains or Temple of the Dog. “Everglade” and “Shitlist” were ’90s anthems. “Pretend We’re Dead” is not only infectious, it even has fun with words (“What’s up with what’s going down?”).

Unfortunately, the singers, Suzi Gardner and Donita Sparks, sound like they’re shagged out following a prolonged sqauwk. Actually, they sound like a very tired Joan Jett. If only Jett or Pat Benatar had sung this set….As it is, the album is locked in its era and not aging well, but “Pretend We’re Dead” will always sound good and “Everglade” is still a great driving song.

Crazy 8’s
I came close to disqualifying them, as they were never with a major label and are almost unknown outside of the Pacific Northwest. But their music is available on Rhapsody, and Special D and I saw them in Seattle in 1988 when they sang “Let’s get naked!” and we could see how hopeful they were that people actually would get naked. (They were disappointed for probably the one millionth time.) So I’m leaving them in.

If you like The English Beat, General Public, and The Specials, try Crazy 8’s, especially “Scratch & Claw.” Their best songs are collected on Still Crazy After All These Beers (2000). Whether you get naked or dress in business casual is your business.

8Ball
The only thing I can say about this Southern rapper is that his birth name is Premro Smith, and why did he think he needed a new name when he was already Premro? Try being born as Steve and see what that’s like! I can only dream of a name like Premro.

Nine Inch Nails

10cc
They started out in life as Hotlegs, a group of guys from Manchester with an impressive history involving The Yardbirds, The Hollies, Herman’s Hermits, Jeff Beck, and Wayne Fontana & The Mindbenders. They scored a hit in 1970 with “Neanderthal Man,” which is one fun song, and became 10cc after signing with Jonathan King and being renamed by him.

(Apparently, when Jonathan King went into action, his partner could expect approximately 10ccs at the finish. Loyal Reader Bill Seabrook claims this name came to King in a dream. What an odd coincidence – I have the same kind of dream!)

10cc wrote literate lyrics for pop music that makes me ill. “Donna” is a 1972 doo-wop satire that I can’t stand. “Rubber Bullets” was another hit in 1973 and another swipe at the ’50s. It sounds way too much like ELO.

They were a smash in the UK, but they didn’t break into the US charts until 1975’s “I’m Not in Love,” which I heard every night at the restaurant where I worked as a dishwasher and back-up cook. I can’t hear it today without smelling something I’ve left too long on the grill. I’m going to stop here, even though they still have two more super explosive smash hit explosions that I would prefer to forget: “The Things We Do for Love” (1977) and “Dreadlock Holiday” (1978).

10 Years
10 Years is a ’90s alternative band that made the mistake of not forming until 2002. “Wasteland” (Autumn Effect) would’ve sounded spectacular in 1995 instead of derivative in 2005. “Beautiful” (Division) was another hit for them, this one in 2008. I would’ve enjoyed it more in 1998 before I heard a hundred other similar songs. If you’re into slow-moving, immensely heavy guitars, you might dig these guys, or you might want to stick with Tool.

Ten Years After
My feeling about Ten Years After is that they never had the material to match Alvin Lee’s guitar skills. Eric Clapton has had this problem for about 40 years. “I’d Love to Change the World” (1971) is a trippy souvenir of its time with a dynamite guitar line. “Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl” (1969) would be difficult to play today, now that we’ve learned that grown men should not be initiating sexual relationships with females who are still using Hello Kitty notebooks. “Love Like a Man” (1969) is a blues-rock hybrid that would’ve fit right in on a Led Zep or even a Steppenwolf album. In fact,  “Oo You” on McCartney (1970) sounds a lot like it, only it’s better.

Ten Years After is best known for “I’m Going Home.” It was one of the highlights of Woodstock, though at 11 minutes there’s a lot of filler to wade through. The fireworks don’t start until the 8-minute mark. The album version, which is half that length, still rocks today. At times it sounds as if Lee is trying to update Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock”!

Stonedhenge is the perfect name for an album released in 1969.

Tomorrow night: 12 through 80!

Let me count the ways: Brought to you by the number 5

Posted: August 28, 2013 in music, Record reviews
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4

No disqualifications tonight. I briefly flirted with The Five Blind Boys of Alabama. They began their careers 20 years before The Four Seasons but have had barely a third as many members. I enjoyed their one appearance on a Jimi Hendrix tribute CD, but they’re gospel and that’s too far afield. Though they’re certainly better than many of the bands on our list.

Let’s go 5!

Ben Folds Five
Ben Folds plays piano, and his two colleagues don’t play guitars. This gets really monotonous after a while, and it doesn’t help that Folds’ vocal qualities are similar to Weird Al’s. On Ben Folds Five (1995), Folds mostly bangs on his piano à la Schroeder, though he opens up some on “Uncle Walter.” I do like one of these songs a lot – “Where’s Summer B.?” – but mostly I want them to hire a guitar player.

The Dave Clark Five
Awhile back I wrote that “time has not been kind to them.” I’ll stick with that.

Deadmou5
This one probably doesn’t count, as the 5 is a stand-in for an s. But what the heck.

Deadmou5’s real name is Joel Zimmerman. He hides inside a mouse’s head because he made a fool of himself at his bar mitzvah and he’s still embarrassed. I love trance and other forms of electronica, but Deadmou5 is not one of my favorites. He can turn out a classic hypnotic number like “I Remember” (Random Album Title, 2008) and he can also be repetitious and annoying, frequently in the same song. People say the same things about me, or maybe just the “repetitious and annoying” part.

Five Finger Death Punch
Don’t throw up your rawkfist just yet. 5FDP is a hard-core thrash outfit with a knack for making all of their pummeling songs sound exactly the same. Vocalist Ivan “Ghost” Moody thinks he’s narrating a horror movie. One of the two super-shredding guitarists is from Hungary – they have a lot of barely checked aggression there after decades of Soviet rule. Their first album was The Way of the Fist (2007); the follow-up was War Is the Answer (2009). Of course they were.

Five for Fighting
Another pianist, though this one likes guitars. John Ondrasik writes self-reflective songs that make me the Chairman of the Bored. At least Ben Folds gets up in my face. Ondrasik is too mellow for a confrontation. Has had two hits this century: “Superman (It’s Not Easy),” which is delicate and boring, and “100 Years,” which is syrupy and boring. Jim Croce without the sense of humor.

Five Man Electrical Band
A Canadian band that hit the big time with the anti-establishment “Signs” (1969). Today the singer railing against all the signs he sees forbidding this or restricting that sounds like a self-righteous little prick. Nice guitar work, though. They also did a song called “It Never Rains on Maple Lane,” which isn’t exactly good but it does make me imagine Harry Nilsson collaborating with George Harrison in 1970.

Maroon 5
It’s difficult to escape singer and TV personality Adam Levine these days. He has a very long neck. I wonder if he’s ever thought of hiding inside a mouse’s head? Probably not.

I’m not crazy about Levine’s near-falsetto singing, but Maroon 5’s music is an entertaining merger of alternative rock with the mainstream and a dash of hip hop. They’re not innovators, but they know how to get you moving. The Monkees could’ve recorded It Won’t Be Soon Before Long (2007) if they’d had the benefit of 30 years of video culture to build on.

MC5
“Kick out the jams, motherfuckers!” Wayne Kramer yells at the beginning of Kick Out the Jams (1969), and there follows an earthquake that could easily be called the birth of punk. This is an angry album that I still find hard to listen to, and yet there are moments of quiet harmonizing – these boys grew up in Motown, after all. Must’ve been something in the air: another punk forerunner, The Stooges, came out of Detroit at the same time.

Q5
Seattleite Floyd Rose was a guitar-tech god of the early ’80s who invented a locking tremelo system. This keeps guitars in tune no matter how trembling the tremelo. We can thank Rose for his invention and ignore his music – 1984’s Steel the Light is routine metal and uninspired singing.

The 5th Dimension
Nixon invited these folks to the White House, which shows you how inoffensive they were. But if you want to experience the hippie milieu, “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” will do it for you at light speed. They usually let too much sunshine in for me; exhibits A, B, and C are “Up, Up and Away,” “Stoned Soul Picnic,” and “Wedding Bell Blues.”

“One Less Bell to Answer” is a fun song to act out, though I find that people start hitting me before I get much beyond the first line.

The Five Satins
Bobo Holloman was a pitcher who threw a no-hitter in his first major-league appearance in 1953. He won two more games, lost seven, and disappeared. The Five Satins were something like that. Their very first single was “In the Still of the Night,” which right out of the box made them the most famous doo wop act ever. And then nothing much happened. They were immortalized by Paul Simon in “Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War”:

Easily losing their evening clothes
They danced by the light of the moon
To the Penguins, the Moonglows
The Orioles, The Five Satins

The deep forbidden music
They’d been longing for
Rene and Georgette Magritte
With their dog after the war

The Jackson 5
Say this name and we think of “Puppy Love” and “ABC,” or else we think of the family’s sad history. But The Jackson 5 were so much more, as they proved early on with “I’ll Be There” and “Never Can Say Goodbye” and as you can tell from two of their last major albums, Destiny (1978) and Triumph (1980). “Lovely One” from Triumph could easily have won a place on Thriller. The Jackson 5’s contemporaries The Osmonds were a pebble on their shoe.

The Jackson family had problems similar to The Monkees, in that their label refused to let them write or play their own music. The Jackson 5 was Motown’s last great group, but their relationship ended in a bitter legal struggle, a new label, and a change of name to The Jacksons. This at last freed the brothers – and allowed them to grow up.

Victory (1984), I just learned, is the only album that features all six Jackson brothers. (But not Janet.) I didn’t know there were six. It’s not as good as Triumph, unfortunately. Victory also has the bizarre “State of Shock,” which pairs Michael with Mick Jagger. Weird Al’s parody was better.

We Five
Here in the 5s, the two bands that are the farthest apart are Five Finger Death Punch and We Five. Five Finger Death Punch could sprinkle We Five on their pancakes and never notice the difference. I can best describe We Five as The Byrds after they were fixed at the vet’s. In 1966 they turned “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” into a cure for insomnia and then had a hit with Ian & Sylvia’s “You Were on My Mind.” (The British egomaniac Crispian St. Peters, who claimed he could write better than Lennon and McCartney, also had a hit with “You Were on My Mind.”)

These groupings will now start getting smaller. Tomorrow we’ll probably tackle numbers 6 through 10. Thanks as always for following along!

 

Let me count the ways: Brought to you by the numbers 3 and 4

Posted: August 27, 2013 in music, Record reviews
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7

I almost included The Three Tenors. They’re not rock, obviously, but Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, and José Carreras are the premiere tenors of our time. When they’re together, everything they touch turns to gold. People would pay money to hear them sing “Who Let the Dogs Out?” But they never recorded “Who Let the Dogs Out?” and I finally decided against them. Also, I hate opera.

Let’s go 3!

3 Doors Down

3 Mustaphas 3
Paul Simon’s Graceland is as far as I go with “world music,” a term that covers every instrument and musical scale ever played that isn’t usually played in North America. If world music is your thing you’ll enjoy 3 Mustaphas 3, as the members seem to be having a lot of fun playing their various Dr. Seuss string-like things. I find that their singing sounds like the Minions from Despicable Me, but that’s probably my American provincialism speaking. Allmusic.com suggests you start with Soup of the Century (1990). I suggest Graceland or The Rhythm of the Saints.

311
Pioneering rap-metal outfit that helped open the door for Korn and Limp Bizkit. Curse you, 311! Their 1994 hit “Down” is a marriage of rap and Nirvana. Their other hit from that year, “All Mixed Up,” is rap, metal, reggae, and jubilant all at once. That’s the one song I can recommend by 311.

3OH!3

Fun Boy Three

Loudon Wainwright III
I admit that this is cheating. The guy was born with that number, he didn’t pick it! But this gave me a chance to listen again to “Dead Skunk” (“Take a whiff on me that ain’t no rose/roll up yer window and hold yer nose”) and “Lullaby” (“Shut your mouth and button your lip/You’re a late-night faucet that’s got a drip”), two of folk-rock’s greatest achievements.

The Three O’Clock
Bands have been returning to their music’s roots since rock was old enough to grow roots. One such roots movement was “The Paisley Underground,” a loose grouping of early-’80s LA bands that loved the ‘60s. The Dream Syndicate loved The Velvet Underground. The Bangles loved The Mamas and the Papas. Rain Parade loved The Doors.

Then there was The Three O’Clock. (Their biggest fan: Prince.) They worshipped The Monkees and The Association, though to me they sound like their contemporaries The Go-Gos. Their best-known song and the one I like is “Jetfighter,” from Sixteen Tambourines (1983).

Third Eye Blind
They came along in the aftermath of grunge and produced hard rock for a hip college crowd that was thrilled to see them in concert and forgot all about them before they hit 30.

Best known for the catchy “Jumper” and the even catchier “Semi-Charmed Life” from their self-titled 1997 debut; the former is about talking a friend off a ledge, the latter is about trying to escape crystal meth. The suicide song sounds surprisingly upbeat, but the other is downright happy. The singer and his girlfriend are in love with meth and they feel fine, despite the bleak words they’re singing. I don’t know if this emotional disconnect is intentional. It’s definitely weird.

Third World War
No listing on Allmusic.com, no music on Rhapsody, but a tantalyzing reference on Wikipedia, where I learned that these Brits formed a sort of proto-punk band in 1970 that produced two albums, toured Finland, and made no money. I found their song “Ascension” on YouTube – it sounds like Jethro Tull had an affair with Joe Cocker. I listened to a couple others, but while my interest declined I can understand why punk pioneers Joe Strummer and Henry Rollins cite Third World War as an influence.

Three Dog Night

Timbuk 3
Forever known for “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades,” which would’ve been perfect for Huey Lewis & The News. “Things are all right, and they’re only getting better,” Timbuk 3 sang on this 1987 release, and though things didn’t get better for them professionally they did turn out a pretty interesting record, Greetings From Timbuk 3 (check out “Facts About Cats,” “Just Another Movie,” and “Shame on You,” another good song for Huey if he had ever learned how to rap). Too bad that the glare from Timbuk 3’s one novelty number obscures the rest of their work.

4 Non Blondes
Joan Armatrading meets Guns N’ Roses with a hint of Heart. Their one album, Bigger, Better, Faster, More (1993), yielded the hit “What’s Up,” which is pleasant enough. 4 Non Blondes eventually featured six non-blondes, one of whom was a guy.

Bobby Fuller Four

Classics IV
Classics IV started out in life imitating The Four Seasons. That’s enough by itself to get them kicked out of this conversation. But they eventually produced three classics (there, I said it) of the ’60s, “Stormy,” “Spooky,” and “Traces.” (“I close my eyes and say a prayer/that in her heart she’ll find/a trace of love there…”)

If you were 12 or 13 as I was when these songs appeared, then like me you occasionally tune in to the Oldies station in the car and you don’t turn these off when they pop up in the rotation. The first slow dance I ever had was to “Traces.” Unless it was “Crimson & Clover.” Whatever the soundtrack was, once I was mashed up against a girl-type person I suddenly understood what everyone in rock was singing about.

Objectively speaking, these songs pretty much suck. “Spooky” is particularly nuts – the singer never knows what his girlfriend is going to do next. Check this out: He asks her if she wants to go to the movies and she says no. Then she rethinks her decision and says yes. Alfred Hitchcock could’ve made an entire movie out of these psychodynamics.

Perhaps because they recorded “Stormy” and “Spooky,” at one point they covered “Sunny.” That one’s not bad!

Four Bitchin’ Babes
Folk-comedy from a rotating cast of bitchin’ babes brought together by Christine Lavin. Their first album, which I have yet to hear, is Buy Me Bring Me Take Me: Don’t Mess My Hair!!! (1993). I’ve heard Fax It! Charge It! Don’t Ask Me What’s for Dinner! (1995), and it’s not all laughs on this disc, as in the first track, “My Mother’s Hands.”

Frankly I’m getting tired of all the folk music and world music on this list, and that includes our next contestants:

Four Men & a Dog
Irish boys playing Celtic music with an international flair. There have been more than four men in this lineup although only four at a time. The dog stays home. If the long-running radio program Thistle & Shamrock is your idea of a good time, you probably already have posters of Four Men & a Dog on your bedroom wall. (For years I wondered why that show only had one announcer, and if she was Ms. Thistle then where was Mr. Shamrock?)

Gang of Four

The Four Aces
Famous a cappella group of the early 1950s that were shot to pieces like a rural stop sign by rock ’n’ roll. I know I don’t get paid for writing this blog but somebody owes me something for listening to their two biggest hits, “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing” and “Three Coins in the Fountain.”

The Four Freshmen
We’re not exactly on a roll here with the number 4. The Four Freshmen are The Four Aces set to music. Eighteen freshmen have sung in their lineup, on such albums as Four Freshmen and Five Trombones, Four Freshmen and Five Trumpets, Four Freshmen and Five Saxes, Four Freshmen and Five Guitars, and Four Freshmen and Five Dr. Seuss String-like Things. Surprisingly, the band existed as a recording unit for six years before they thought of naming an album Freshmen Year.

The Four Fellows
See The Four Toppers.

The Four Havens
I thought this had something to do with Richie Havens and his family, but I was wrong. I’ve heard one track, “One Note Too High,” from somewhere in the 1950s. It’s an uneasy clash of R&B and doo wop. I think they were on to something interesting here but it’s impossible to judge from one song and no context.

The Four Horsemen
Obscure metal act of the early 1990s in which everyone went to jail or died. If they’re known for anything, that thing is “Rockin’ Is Ma’ Business,” which would’ve been done far better by AC/DC. In fact AC/DC can do everything they can do backwards and in high heels. However, for a while the Horsemen had a punk/metal drummer named Chuck Biscuits, which is the second-best drummer name of all time (the #1 spot is still held by punk pioneer Spit Stix).

The Four Seasons
Awhile back I read Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, in which the hero spends 50 pages at the bottom of a dry well. In the dark. I’d rather reread those pages than listen to The Four Seasons.

But, because I am always fair and balanced, I must note that this bland, boring steamroller has been playing and touring and selling records for 50 years. The British Invasion, funk, reggae, disco, punk, grunge, rap, and Lady Gaga have all tried to kill The Four Seasons and all of them have failed. The Four Seasons will still be playing, touring, and selling their bland, boring records 50 years from now (and you can bet your download device of choice that I’ll still be complaining about them).

The Four Seasons’ lineup of past and present members stands at about 40. They will catch 101 Strings sometime before the bicentennial of the Civil War in 2061.

The Four Tops
They’ve lasted just as long as The Four Seasons and they’ve done it with only five guys. Long list of hits, particularly when Holland-Dozier-Holland was feeding them material in the mid-’60s, but my favorite has always been “River Deep, Mountain High” from 1971 (recorded with The Supremes’ survivors after Diana Ross left).

The Four Toppers
Early ’50s singing group that basically broke up when half of them were drafted during the Korean War. They transformed into The Four Fellows on their return. They’re worth remembering because Fellow David Jones wrote “Soldier Boy” while serving in Korea.

Tomorrow night: Rikki. Don’t lose that number, OK?

Let me count the ways: Brought to you by the numbers 1 and 2

Posted: August 26, 2013 in music, Record reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
2

Before we get started, I have two more disqualifications:

  • The 4 Hits & a Miss: They were born during the Great Depression as 3 Hits & a Miss. They later expanded to 6 Hits, but like many start-ups they soon learned that steady growth is preferable to reckless expansion and by the end of the war they had cut back to 4 Hits. There was only ever one Miss. Survived into the late ’40s when they drafted Andy Williams, who was just starting out as a force against music. Anyway, they are so not rock ’n’ roll.
  • World War Four: AllMusic.com mentions an album, Rising From the Rubble, but gives no further info. I can’t find any tracks. Someone on MySpace has a World War Four page, and there are bands in Canada and New Zealand that claim this name. This is beginning to smell suspicious so out they go.

Beginning right now: I spend the week summarizing people’s life work in 100 words or less!

.38 Special
One of only three non-integers on this list. .38 Special was sort of an ’80s power pop band, not as hard as The Romantics (“What I Like About You”) but not as soft as A-Ha (“Take on Me”). They broke into the Top 40 in 1981 with “Hold on Loosely,” which is about not smothering your girlfriend with attention, which is unusual for a rock song. The only other thing I find interesting about this band is that “38 Specials” would be a great name for a porn actress.

Kenny Rogers & The First Edition
Kenny Rogers, with his immaculately made-up hair and his meticulously landscaped beard, looks exactly like the kind of guy who always tries to corner me at a party so he can deliver a monolog about his main area of expertise, himself. You gotta know when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em and the time to fold this joker’s music was way back in 1967.

One Direction

KRS-One
It’s kind of late for me to be catching up with KRS-One (“Knowledge Reigns Supreme Over Nearly Everyone,” or Kris Parker, to use his birth name), as his heyday was the late ’80s-early ’90s. I’ve detected a curious thing about rap: What sounded raucous, threatening, and unfocused 25 years ago can sound almost melodic today. I listened to his second album, KRS-One (1995), and found myself tapping my foot as I listened. If KRS-One is reading this he’s probably wondering where he went wrong. Way wrong.

2 Live Crew

2 Nice Girls
Folk music with a country flavor and a feminist/lesbian perspective. Sometimes they add Spanish or Hawaiian overtones. 2 Nice Girls is actually three girls; I suppose the third one is not very nice, but I am prohibited by certain legal requirements from researching this.

The three women harmonize beautifully, not with the strange-visitors-from-another-planet grace of The Roches but more like The Indigo Girls. You can’t resist them when they sing, “I spent my last ten dollars on birth control and beer/My life was so much simpler when I was sober and queer.”

2 Unlimited
Dutch 1990s techno that was absurdly popular in Europe but almost unknown here, except for “Get Ready for This,” which has starred in the soundtracks of two movies (How to Eat Fried Worms and Scooby-Doo 2) and was played for many years in the old Kingdome whenever the Seattle Mariners did anything noteworthy or were just trying to wake the crowd up.

2Pac
Kid Rock owes a lot to this guy; KR simply removed the politics and the real-life gun battles. But I suppose every rapper who came along in the 1990s owes something to Tupac Amaru Shakur. No telling where this artist would be today if he hadn’t been murdered in 1996. I listened to his debut, 2Pacalypse Now (1991). I wish I could say something insightful about rap but I usually flee from it. From everything I’ve read, Me Against the World (1996) is supposed to be 2Pac’s best, but I don’t intend to test that claim.

Amon Düül II
This was a tough call. Amon Düül II may be the only band in history with two consecutive umlauts in its name. (Their distant competition is Hüsker Dü.) This alone deserves some attention.

The “II” in their name refers to the second incarnation of this German juggernaut of musical avant-gardists. The second act didn’t just recycle the old material, à la Devo 2.0; they produced new, noise-filled records that I’ll bet their own mothers wouldn’t listen to.

A much-traveled co-worker once told me that the only thing wrong with Germany is that it’s filled with 90 million depressed Germans. The thought of listening to German experimental music filled me with angst, and I’m not talking about a German beer.

Aztec Two-Step
Aztec Two-Step (1972) is a relaxed country-folk hybrid that makes me want to nap under a tree. The surprising exception is “The Persecution and Restoration of Dean Moriarty (On the Road),” which is surely one of the lost classics of the 1970s.

Boyz II Men
Doo-wop transplanted from the ’50s to the ’90s. Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes and Teddy Pendergrass pulled off the same trick in the ’70s. “Motownphilly,” their first hit, is a song I remember from dance floors of the very early ’90s.

RJD2
Another white hip-hop artist/MC/turntablist. This one mixes in lounge and various strange things and takes us to a very boring place.

U2
No one takes themselves more seriously than U2. U2 makes Yes, The Moody Blues, and Kraftwerk look like a corral full of circus clowns. U2 makes Coldplay look like a bunch of guys who blow up balloons on your birthday. Only a band with the collective ego and awesome skills of U2 could decide to call a song “Magnificent” and then write a song that actually is magnificent. Only Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen could stand around like Anasazi gods in the desert and then deliver a record that very possibly came from Anasazi gods in the desert. Only Bono and The Edge would call themselves Bono and The Edge and five minutes later everyone else in the world is calling them Bono and The Edge.

U2 is the best band by far on our list of bands with numbers in their names, but they’d be the best band on almost any list. I wouldn’t give you much for them here in the new century, but in the 1980s and ’90s they led the pack. My favorite U2 album is still their live set from 1983, Under a Blood Red Sky, even though it showcases U2’s most enduring and least endearing trait: the way they can pair genius (“Gloria,” “The Electric Co.”) with way less than genius (“Party Girl,” “40”) on the same record.

Tomorrow night: They’re givin’ you a number, and takin’ ‘way your name!

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