Archive for the ‘Record reviews’ Category

Rage against the Bikini Machine

Posted: February 10, 2013 in music, Record reviews
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Bikini Machine joue Dutronc
Bikini Machine
2011

I was looking at Allmusic.com’s lists of recommended songs and albums for 1969 when I hit “Le Responsable” by Jacques Dutronc (from the album Un disque MAXI). Messr. Dutronc is a legend in France but unknown in the USA. He was definitely unknown to any of us here at the Bureau. Unfortunately, Rhapsody didn’t have any of his music, but they did have a cover of “Le Responsable” by fellow Frenchmen Bikini Machine on their masterwork, Bikini Machine joue Dutronc. How did we make these connections before the invention of the World Wide Web? What did I do with my time? Read books? Interact with other humans?

Bikini Machine’s “Le Responsable” is an earth-mover (so’s the original, which I found on YouTube), so I happily gave the rest of this disk a spin. The results: Positive! Here’s a guide to what I heard:

“Sur une nappe de restaurant” (“Sir, that’s my napkin”) begins as if it wanted to live on The B-52s’ Wild Planet but soon surfs into a California-dreamin’/electro wonderland. The horn section gets a moderate workout here.

“Les Cactus” (“All that cactus”) can best be thought of as The Dave Clark Five playing “Boys” on the International Space Station.

“L’idole” (“This song is not about Billy Idol”) could almost be the theme to a spaghetti Western.

“J’ai font lu, tout vu, tout bu” (“I like this typeface, you like it, but the client hates it”) is French rap, which sounds pretty good in French.

“La fille du pere noel” (“My Dad spent Christmas with his girlfriend”) is the French version of Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll (Part Two),” complete with musical flourishes à la Alison Goldfrapp, with whom the Bikini Machine boys probably want to pursue activities l’intimate in the name of rock ’n’ roll.

There are enough worthwhile tracks on this CD to rate it a Buy. (I also tried an earlier album, Let’s Party with Bikini Machine, but that wasn’t much of a party.) Bikini Machine c’est formidable! At least they are on Bikini Machine joue Dutronc (“Bikini Machine thinks Dutronc is Jewish”).

Return with me now to the Swinging Sixties, French division.

It takes a nation of millions to pay for our health care

Posted: February 3, 2013 in music, Record reviews
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Baby Boomers Social Club Dance
Red Lion Convention Center
7 December 2012
Portland, Oregon

The mosh pit formed early on that rainy Friday night thanks to one of the best cover bands I’ve heard in years, Crash Sunday. This all-male quintet (average age around 40) knew what we wanted to hear. Their three guitarists (one also played keyboards) were stellar, more than compensating for the singer, who was charming but adequate, and the drummer, who was muscular but monotonous. Special D and I entered the hall just as they broke into Billy Idol’s “White Wedding,” which was a gas. While dancing to this one I realized that I no longer remembered the original lyrics – I could only recall the words to the literal “White Wedding,” where the Billy Idol impersonator sings what’s happening in the video. “Time to bleach my/hair agaaiiiiin!!”

Unlike our last outing with the Baby Boomer Social Club, I didn’t take notes. I just stood back and let it all be. That is, I kept dancing. I will say that Crash Sunday chose their lineup well and that they had not just practiced their material, they had found ways to fool with it. For example, the keyboard player treated us to some Gary Numan-style atmospherics in the middle of a song by The Cars. Yes, The Cars and Gary Numan were contemporaries, but The Cars played pop music for people who like just about anything while Gary Numan played music for people made out of circuit boards.

Crash Sunday never let the room’s energy flag by venturing into the doldrums of Norah Jones or The Carpenters or the swamplands of “House of the Rising Sun.” They never installed safety bars on their songs or commended us for still being able to walk unaided at our age. They assumed from the opening note of the opening song that we were there to rock. And we were.

As we say here in the Rose City, the Baby Boomers Social Club is Portland as Fuck.

Random Pick of the Week
Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears
Tell ’em What Your Name Is! (2009)
Scandalous (2011)
Imagine if The Rolling Stones had matured into the Sticky Fingers / Goat’s Head Soup era with more blues and without a psychedelic pit stop. Add some social commentary and you’re somewhere close to Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears. Standout songs for me are “Master Sold My Baby” from the first album and “Messin’ ” from the second.

Random Pan of the Week
Life Is People (2012)
Time of the Last Persecution (1971)
Bill Fay
Bill Fay is an English singer and songwriter who takes a dim view of humanity, nature, and pretty much everything in the universe no matter how far it expands. He makes the Existentialists look like an insane clown posse. After decades of seclusion he has returned with another album about life and why it’s not worth living. But I’ll give him this: He has impressive hair for a man his age.

Random Run-DMSteve of the Week
You may recall from my sign-off last summer that I’m trying to write a novel. Although in the past six months I’ve had to cope with a number of setbacks (what those of you in the psychotherapy game call “life challenges”), I’m definitely making progress. If I can continue to do so, I’m going to try to post every Sunday. I miss this blog.

Earth girls ain’t easy

Posted: June 20, 2012 in music, Record reviews
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Sparkle and Fade
Everclear
(1995)

Sparkle and Fade was the album that made Everclear a success and Art Alexakis the voice of his generation, just as Born to Run did for Bruce Springsteen exactly 20 years earlier. The two albums are similar, with working-class characters and an outside-the-mainstream point of view. Their characters are trying to run away from the straight world and themselves. Springsteen, however, writes fiction. He’s an observer; he stands back and lets it all be. With Alexakis, it’s memoir. He’s a participant. Also, in Alexakis’ world they’ve gone way beyond drinking a few warm beers in the soft summer rain.

Sparkle and Fade (and its sequel, So Much for the Afterglow) underline just one of the many difficulties I would face as a contemporary rock star. Memoir? What would I write about, teaching chess? My life looks like Mr. Run-DMSteve’s Neighborhood compared with this joker. For example, it would be instructive to compare the women Alexakis has been involved with with the women I’ve been involved with. Instructive, but dangerous. Instead, I’ll compare and contrast all of his women with Special D.

Composite Everclear Woman: Enjoys heroin.
Special D: Enjoys a nice Chardonnay with dinner.

Composite: Walks around in monster boots.
Special D: Never underestimate the importance of comfortable shoes to a woman.

Composite: Sleeps with the lights on due to fear of what the dark might bring.
Special D: Don’t try that at this house!

Composite: Makes questionable life choices.
Special D: Married me.

Composite: Mysterious, unknowable past.
Special D: At this point, I am her past.

Composite: Leaves without warning.
Special D: Reserves the right to divorce my ass.

Although the comparison is close in a couple of areas, it’s obvious that I won’t be writing songs like “You Make Me Feel Like a Whore,” “Chemical Smile,” or “Electra Made Me Blind” anytime soon. I’ll leave this sort of thing to the experts. Though my life has followed a different plot, Sparkle and Fade is one of my favorite albums of the ’90s – it’s Screaming Trees with intelligible lyrics. I think of it as Born to Run +20.

I want to hear what the next generation has to say, which, if they keep to this schedule, will be right around the corner in 2015. It probably won’t be about chess.

Rock journalism of the ’90s

The Promise Keepers came into being two years ago, after mutating from an equally tumultuous local combo, Slappy White. “[Slappy White] were bad back then,” Perini confesses. “It was noisy and funny, but it was really chaotic. We’re trying to control our chaos more, make it a little heavier.”

“Yeah, it’s not so much like get up there and play drunk as you possibly can, make a bunch of noise and insult people,” explains Pineschi. “It’s more like, ‘Well, maybe we should try to like still insult people and drink a lot, but kind of make it more focused.’ ”

(The Rocket, Seattle, 1998)

Tomorrow on ’90s Week: Thank God I’m a country boy!

I’m too sexy for this blog

Posted: June 19, 2012 in music, Record reviews
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“I’m Too Sexy”
Right Said Fred
1992

“I’m Too Sexy” was the last 45 rpm I ever bought. I don’t mean bought on eBay or at a yard sale, I mean the last 45 I ever bought that had just been released. This was at the Queen Anne Tower Records in Seattle. I returned a couple of weeks later and just like that, the 45s section had disappeared. Eventually even Tower Records disappeared.

(I know they have 7” vinyl records today, but they play at 33-1/3 and they’re called “sevens.” Disqualified.)

“I’m Too Sexy” was a global hit for the shaved-head body-building brothers Richard and Fred Fairbrass, who also performed in the video. The video is a showcase of ’90s hairstyles and timeless male insecurities. A song about male models featuring two shaved-head body-building guys with their shirts off? What if the record-buying public thought the Fairbrasses were gay? No one would buy the record because then they would be gay! The record company had to figure out how to keep people from panicking. Their simple solution was to surround the two shaved-head body-building guys with women photographers dressed in bikinis (just like real photographers), because everyone knows that authentic male homosexuals would never appear in a video with women in bikinis. This is a bedrock principle of Western democracy.

While this logic may appear faulty, or even Republican, it obviously worked, because this thing sold like crazy. And while I can do without the video (the choreography is so inept, it’s adorable) (almost), I can’t do without this song. “I’m Too Sexy” is danceable, fun, too simple to forget, and there’s even a brief guitar homage to Jimi Hendrix just past the 1-minute mark. (Either it’s a homage or they couldn’t think up something on their own.)

“I’m Too Sexy” is a coed favorite at any dance, unlike ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” or Bananarama’s “Venus,” both of which have been coopted by women, or Men Without Ideas’ “Safety Dance,” which speaks only to nerds. “I’m too sexy for [fill in the blank]” is a useful catchphrase, particularly at the office. The readers of Rolling Stone voted “I’m Too Sexy” onto the list of the 10 Worst Songs of the ’90s (it finished 9th); this just adds to the song’s luster.

In the U.S. we think of Right Said Fred as a one-hit wonder. I was surprised to learn that they’d had other hits in their native England and on the Continent. It’s unfair to judge an artist in any discipline on one work – except in pop, where your judgment is most often right. Thanks to the miracle of downloadable music, I listened to all of Up, RSF’s debut album. “Don’t Talk Just Kiss” has a good title, but I have shirts that are sexier. I’m too sexy for the rest of these tracks, and I’ve already said so in My Little Turn on the Catwalk: The Journal of Right Said Fred Studies.

I don’t care what gender the Fairbrass brothers want to mate with. Thank you for writing that song before Tower pulled all of its singles. Whatever you boys are doing today, I’m confident that you’re still too sexy, whether you’re in Milan, New York, or Japan.

Random ’90s Pick of the Day: Foo Fighters, Foo Fighters (1995)
Dave Grohl was Nirvana’s drummer. Not only is he a great drummer, he also wrote all the songs and played all the instruments on the Foo Fighters’ debut. The Foo Fighters make big arena rock and don’t take themselves too seriously.

Random ’90s Pan of the Day: Foo Fighters, Foo Fighters (1995)
Sounds like all the other arena rock of the ’90s.

Tomorrow on ’90s Week: What I know about women won’t even fill a blog post!

To infinity and beyond: ’90s Week starts tomorrow

Posted: June 18, 2012 in music, Record reviews
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All right ramblers, let’s get ramblin’. I thought ’70s Week and ’80s Week went pretty well, so it’s time to dive into ’90s Week. Yes, the 1990s, when my house was worth a billion dollars and I grew obscenely rich at my dot-com. I don’t even own that house anymore and the only traces of the dot-com are the baseball caps we made with our logo on them, one of which I gave to Accused of Lurking, who is still walking around underneath it in Seattle.

Many scientists have concluded that the ’70s gave us the worst music of all time. This is because the ’70s gave us the worst music of all time. It’s hard to beat “Muskrat Love” or “You’re Having My Baby,” but the ’90s tried: “Achy Breaky Heart,” the “Macarena,” “Ice Ice Baby,” “Barbie Girl,” “My Heart Will Go On,” “I Will Always Love You,” and forced participation in the “Electric Slide” at corporate team-building retreats. This was a very complicated decade. You know, a lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what-have-yous.

Random ’90s Pick of the Day
Various artists, For the Masses (1998)
This Depeche Mode tribute CD taught me how good Depeche Mode’s songs were if you could just get somebody else to play them. The highlights come from Failure (“Enjoy the Silence,” an ironic choice for a moody but extremely noisy band) and Rammstein (who pump some Armageddon-level hysteria into “Stripped”).

Random ’90s Pan of the Day
Britney Spears, …Baby One More Time (1999)
I’m convinced that this broad is responsible for two horrors of the new century, Justin Bieber and Katy Perry. I’m also pretty sure that Justin Bieber and Katy Perry are the same person.

Punchline from a ’90s radio commercial at Christmastime
[Harp music, animals, muted violins.] “Angels. Animals. The baby in the manger…[shredding guitar and devil voice]…and MEGADETH!”

First rule of ’90s Week: There are no rules in ’90s Week. See you tomorrow.

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