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Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

CD Review: AC/DC, “Backtracks”

by Rob Smith

It’s rather pointless to review an AC/DC box set—you either love the band and have the thing already ordered or on your Christmas list, or you’re not going to bother. Since I am nothing if not a sucker for lost causes, I therefore direct this review to the uninitiated—those who might not “get” how a hard rock band can parlay a single, simple equation (4/4 rhythm + cool riff + screaming vocals x songs about sex) into a 35-year career. Please let me explain. Also, since the band is the collective king of the double-entendre, and such wordplay may be a bit confusing, I shall translate the song titles contained herein, so the uninitiated may better grasp of the meat of the music.

AC/DC songs live and die by the riff—that distinctive, distorted, wicked cool Angus Young guitar figure, roughly the aural equivalent of a he-wolf stalking his mate while thinking about all the other mates he’s going to do later on that night, after he and the other he-wolves have a few beers. Young got better at coming up with these riffs over the years, which leaves lacking some of the previously unreleased Bon Scott-era material collected here on Disc 1.

“Poster I Use for Masturbation” (i.e., “Stick Around”), for example, is built around a snoozer; only Scott’s leering vocal keeps the thing interesting. “Leave Me Alone So I Can Masturbate” (”R.I.P. [Rock in Peace]“) bears no riff whatsoever, unless you count the basic I-IV-V blues chords that chug behind the singer. (more…)

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Monday, November 9th, 2009

Death by Power Ballad: ZZ Top, “Rough Boy”

by Rob Smith

This long-distance dedication goes out to Jon Grayson, host of Overnight America, friend of Tha ‘Dose, and all-around cool guy and decent human being. Last time I represented this fine publication on Jon’s show, we engaged in a bit of banter about the power ballad arts, and he singled out one particular song as being the nadir of both the band that created the song, and of the genre in general.

His exact words, more or less, were, “I still point to a lot of those power ballads as ‘Songs that Any Given Band Should Never Have Recorded,’ and my favorite example of that is ZZ Top’s ‘Rough Boy.’” To bolster his point, Jon revealed that he comes from the “Jesus Just Left Chicago” school of ZZ Top fandom, hinting that something as ballady as “Rough Boy” is anathema to such a fan.

I concede that listeners who fly the flag for the band’s early blues/boogie/livestock-on-the-stage work may have a problem with the synthy slow burn of “Rough Boy.” Their vision of ZZ Top was a vision of blues-bustin’ rodeo escapees, chugging around the dusty back roads of Texas’ roadhouse circuit, soaked in mezcal, tuned in to border radio, and exhaling barbeque smoke. Their band is the one that started their recording career with a song called “Somebody Else Been Shakin’ Your Tree” (still my favorite Top track) and loaded albums like Deguello, El Loco, and Tres Hombres with odes to cheap sunglasses, tube snakes, tushes, and ejaculating on prostitutes. (more…)

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Monday, November 2nd, 2009

Unsolicited Career Advice for … Rush

by Rob Smith

This is a memo written in 1977 to the Canadian management of Rush. If pictures from this period are any indication, Uncle Donnie had taken to sporting a green Mohawk for at least several months that year. -RS

TO: Managers of Rush
FROM: Don Skwatzenschitz
RE: Career Advice

You, my friends, have a great property in this band Rush. I just saw them the other night at the Fitchburg Theater, and I was really surprised. Well, the first thing that surprised me was the fact that the Vibrators weren’t playing at the Fitchburg—I’d gotten my nights mixed up and missed their concert with Stinky Toys and Métal Urbain. This really sucks, because, as it turned out, most of Stinky Toys got deported back to France after the show. That, and, well, I found out the Vibrators, Stinky Toys and Métal Urbain weren’t even booked at the Fitchburg, but at Needles and Pins, a bar down the street from the Fitchburg. What can I tell you? It was a long week.

Anyway, so I stayed to see Rush and some band called Max Webster put on a hell of a loud show. And even though I realize I’m not exactly the biggest authority on this so-called “progressive” scene (I was the only one in attendance with any kind of nose piercings, but I don’t think anyone else noticed), I think there’s something really special about a band that can perform 15-minute-long songs about space travel and intergalactic politics. And by special, I mean—well, special. Not my usual cup of vinegar, but I didn’t leave early, and that’s saying something.

Now, since I am a member in good standing of this “industry,” such as it is, I feel I am uniquely qualified to offer you some advice on how to best position your property, this band Rush, for maximum effect, both in the U.S. and abroad. Certainly, you’re aware of a new form of revolutionary sound sweeping through England and certain pockets of the U.S.—call it punk rock, call it just punk, call it whatever you want to call it; it’s here to stay, my friends. If you handle Rush properly, you should be able to grab a piece of this uprising and prosper. Here are my ideas: (more…)

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Monday, October 26th, 2009

Death by Power Ballad: Bonnie Tyler, “Lovers Again”

by Rob Smith

Back in her late-70s, “It’s a Heartache” period, gravelly voiced Bonnie Tyler was viewed chiefly as Rod Stewart with a vagina (a designation many have claimed simply describes Stewart himself). When that dubious crown was rather quickly lifted from her head and placed just above the Bette Davis eyes of Kim Carnes, Tyler was left bereft of both an identifying hook for her career, as well as the hit songs that usually comprise such a career. This unfortunate situation lasted until she encountered three words that completely turned her life and livelihood around:

Jim. Fucking. Steinman.

Once Meat Loaf’s popularity had disappeared into a fog of dry ice, Steinman was left with a thousand overblown ideas and no one to turn them into crappy records. Oh, sure, he had made a ridiculous solo album (Bad for Good) with ideas he had been saving for Bat Out of Hell’s sequel, but he needed a unique, powerful voice worthy of his theatrical, pomporific muse, and his mangy tenor wasn’t gonna cut it.

See, Steinman has long harbored the wish to be another Andrew Lloyd Webber, when wasn’t trying to recreate Springsteen’s Born to Run, and in Bonnie Tyler, he found just the set of pipes he needed to kinda-sorta do both. He (over)produced her 1983 smash Faster than the Speed of Night, with its internationally loved/reviled hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” and the two began what could only have been a beautiful/loud/bombastic partnership. They continued their winning streak with “Holding Out for a Hero,” another Steinman song most of us associate with hick teenagers playing chicken with tractors. (more…)

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Monday, October 19th, 2009

Unsolicited Career Advice for … Rick James

by Rob Smith

In 1967, Rick James was just getting out of military prison, having served a year for going AWOL from the Navy, and was pondering a return to music with the Mynah Birds, a band that had been signed to Motown and had briefly included Neil Young on guitar. Few people know that James at this time was a tea-totaling, God-fearing, neatly groomed young man who was shy around women and had never heard of funk. Uncle Donnie intended to set him straight and help him spice up his life and career in this 32-year-old memo. – RS

TO: Rick James
FROM: Don Skwatzenschitz
RE: Career Advice

Hi, Rick. Don Skwatzenschitz here; we met at the Motown building about a year and a half ago, while you and the Mynah Birds were recording “It’s My Time.” That should have been a hit, but we all know you had to meet your military obligation, and it’s good you ‘fessed up and faced the music, so to speak. Feels good to not having that hanging over your head, doesn’t it? By the way, how’s the food in the Brooklyn Brig?

Rick, you are a singular talent, but it has to be nurtured. I know you’re thinking about going back to Motown, but I ask you to reconsider. There are new musical worlds being discovered in places like San Francisco, Berkeley, and right around the corner from where I’m writing—Haverhill, Massachusetts (we have a swingin’ acid rock collective nearby called Captain Dusty Verkota and His Electric Hookah All-Stars. You should come by and check them out, next time you’re around). Soul music is great—you know me; I’m all about the soul of things. But there are other avenues of expression to consider. And, for God’s sake, don’t act so scared around the ladies! You’re a good-looking guy! (more…)

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Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

You Again?: Michael Bolton, “One World, One Love”

by Rob Smith

Some albums defy the usual judgments of good or bad—they’re just wrong. I’m thinking of Liz Phair’s major label records (with the exception of the chorus of “Extraordinary”); or Sonny Bono’s post-divorce nervous breakdown Inner Views; M.C. Hammer’s gangsta record; Kiss’ The Elder; Aretha Franklin’s La Diva; or the most recent Chris Cornell solo misstep. They’re each so conceptually incongruent with the strengths of the artist, there’s no way in hell the actual performance could be anything but an oxygen-sucking, dust-kicking disaster.

The cloud o’ doom has descended upon one Michael Bolton, who really should be doing the Vegas thing right about now, but who apparently has the need to prove his relevance in whatever passes for the pop marketplace these days. Thus, the lady-slayin’, soul-crapping loverman has brought in the arguable talents of Ne-Yo, Lady Gaga, and others to introduce his creamy Boltony goodness to the kiddies in their Black Eyed Peas t-shirts, TiVo-ing Glee so they can line up to see the new Fame movie. Predictably, he stumbles, like a Jonas uncle who tippled a little too much Jesus juice at the family prayer picnic.

Again, I say, Bolton shouldn’t be doing this. He hasn’t had so much as a single gold record in 11 years, and had seemed to be quite content releasing cover albums that only about 100,000 or so people around the world really cared to hear. Fine—he’s a niche artist now, an indie, if you want to stretch the term a bit. He’s 56 and has enough hits behind him to put on a killer Celine Dion-like thing four or five nights a week at Harrah’s or Caesars Palace, and no one would begrudge him. He could put in ten or 12 years, make a nice living, develop a little blackjack habit, then retire. Right? Right?

Wrong. Aw hell … (more…)

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Monday, October 12th, 2009

Death by Power Ballad: Bon Jovi, “Silent Night”

by Rob Smith

Had Bon Jovi been killed in a horrific, fiery airplane crash in 1985, we would remember them much differently than we do today. Had they experienced a painful, flesh-melting demise prior to recording 1986’s monster Slippery When Wet album, we would recognize the band’s name strictly as a hair metal afterthought, a tragic rock and roll footnote. They would have been seen as the perennial opening band, having done the warm-up honors for the Scorpions, KISS, Ratt, and others before their plane exploded in midair and crashed, leaving a trail of flaming debris scattered somewhere in the hinterlands, far from civilization.

Granted, the power ballad arts would have been denied a number of genre classics, had the band’s still-smoking corpses been strewn across a wide swath of land, in and around the crash site. We, of course, would know not of “Always,” “Bed of Roses,” “Never Say Goodbye,” “This Ain’t a Love Song,” or “I’ll Be There for You,” just as surely as the deceased Richie Sambora would never know the touch of Heather Locklear, or taste the sweet nectar of her kisses, sweat, and other exquisite excretions one cannot experience from one’s future beloved when one’s tongue is reduced to ash by gallons of exploding jet fuel before one even meets said beloved. (more…)

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Monday, October 5th, 2009

Unsolicited Career Advice for … Courtney Love

by Rob Smith

Uncle Donnie has a soft spot for lost causes, and there are none more lost than Ms. Love. This recent missive outlines his concerns, and his plans to help her rise again. -RS

TO: Courtney Love
FROM: Don Skwatzenschitz
RE: Career Advice

You know, dear Courtney, we all feel a little lost sometimes. I remember the two and a half years between Jackson Browne’s Running on Empty and Hold Out records—you were just a kid, but trust me, they were long, lean years with no new JB poetry to get us all through. Jimmy Carter was in the White House, and you could just see the effect Browne’s absence had on him. Everything seemed to go straight to hell, without passing “Go,” without collecting $200 in worthless cash.

But we all snap out of it. In the summer of 1980, I turned on the radio and heard those wonderful words—”Down on the boulevard, they take it hard / They look at life with such disregard.” I wept. Openly. Mitzi and I were in the old Impala, cruising down Highway 1 at night, looking for a place to pull off and have a little shtup, you know? And then I heard the song and all thoughts of shtupping vanished, disappointing Mitzi horribly. But the voice was back, and his new words had … well, they had very little meaning, but I clung to them anyway. Didn’t help Jimmy Carter, though.

But you, Courtney, have taken feeling lost to a whole new level. We all had such hopes for you, too—the brave widow, newly single mom, protecting her husband’s legacy while establishing one of her own. That was before the anus wax meltdown in 2003, and the feud with Dave and Krist, and the Pam Anderson roast, or any of the other numerous breakdowns. The latest breakdown, though—the whole Kurt/Guitar Hero/Bon Jovi thing—is the last straw. We were merely worried about your safety before, dear—now we’re concerned about your sanity. You simply must turn it around—and I have just the plan: (more…)

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Monday, October 5th, 2009

CD Review: Built to Spill, “There Is No Enemy”

by Rob Smith

Built to Spill, There is No Enemy (2009, Warner Bros.)
Purchase this album (Amazon)

If Doug Martsch sang like Dave Grohl, Rivers Cuomo, or even Thom Yorke, Built to Spill would be huge, arena-packin’ gunslingers and rich bastards, to boot. In a parallel universe, Martsch might have killed Chris Martin in some combination one-on-one basketball game-cum-minor celebrity death match, ridding us of Coldplay and winning the hand of Gwyneth Paltrow, only to discard her upon hearing her Oprah-fied tips on beauty and spiritual wellness. Built to Spill might’ve then invaded some minor republic like Kalmykia, slaying its meager armed forces with nothing but the brute volume of their amplification and building a towering monument to the band’s undisputed leader, made entirely of reconstituted Fender and Gibson products and melted-down copies of Coldplay’s X&Y. The new nation’s national anthem would have been Neil Young’s “Love and Only Love”—a ten-minute distorted guitar manifesto, the kind King Doug loves and would insist upon being added to state radio playlists.

The Idaho-born Martsch, in other words, is a fucking god, but his reedy, nasally singing voice—a hallmark of every Built to Spill album—is the very thing that keeps his band from being the kind of international proggy juggernaut those cutie-pies in Muse currently are. Things are not bound to change with There Is No Enemy, good as it is, as Martsch’s elastic whine once again blends into the overall sound of the band, becoming, in effect, another instrumental layer you either grasp or you don’t. Even without many immediately discernible lyrics, though, the album’s songs still satisfy, displaying the full and mighty power of Built to Spill in all its parallel universe-shakin’ glory. (more…)

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Monday, September 28th, 2009

Death by Power Ballad: Foreigner, “Out of the Blue”

by Rob Smith

“It’s always that one song that gets to you. You can hide, but the song comes to find you.”
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape)

I dislike Rob Sheffield for many reasons—his writing comes off as pompous, hipper-than-thou snark (and that’s just for the stuff he likes); his greasy, perpetual grad student look smacks so obviously of affectation; his voice on those VH1 shows sounds like he’s gargling bathwater with a tampon shoved up each nostril; and he made music writing safe for a whole army of people just like him (read Spin lately?). I also dislike him out of insane jealousy; in spite of all the above, he wrote one of the most moving books about music and music fans I’ve ever read. The bastard done really good. Go to Amazon now and purchase a copy, or borrow one from your local library, that most wonderful of socialist institutions.

A song I’d relegated to the leaky, cobwebby space in the back of my mind recently came to find me. I’d been in the mood to listen to some vinyl, and one of the hundred or so LPs I had standing at attention on a shelf in my living was Foreigner’s 1987 album Inside Information. Immediately, I knew which song I would drop the needle on first; I flipped the thing over to Side Two, and let my trusty old turntable do its thing. (more…)

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