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Friday, August 1st, 2008

Chartburn: 8/01/08

by The Chartburn Panel

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Mainstream Rock: Mike + the Mechanics, “Silent Running” (1985)

David Medsker: I love Paul Carrack as much as the next guy, but is what I refer to as a non-song. Not a whole lot of meat on these bones.

Jeff Giles: An odd little hit from an odd little record. People remember Paul Carrack and Paul Young (no, the other Paul Young) as Mike +/& the Mechanics’ singers, but this album featured lead vocals from two other guys. I can’t remember either of their names, but I do remember that I like “Taken In” more than “Silent Running” or “All I Need Is a Miracle.”

Jon Cummings: If I remember correctly, M+M albums were packaged with drool cups. Or did I just dream that during the 48-hour nap that was induced by my one and only full hearing of this song? Even 23 years on, it’s extraordinary that a nuclear war/Terminator/whatever prog-rock “epic” could be so abysmally boring. (Compared to this oblique blather, Sting’s contemporaneous “Russians” was a Tolstoy novel.) It’s also extraordinary that Carrack’s voice could be so thoroughly wasted. His M+M work is so pulse-deadening that it calls into question everything he did before. (Was “How Long” really that good? Doesn’t Glenn Tilbrook sing “Tempted” just as well in concert as Carrack did on record?) God, I hated this band.

Dw. Dunphy: Mike + the Mechanics got off to a good start, didn’t they? Big hit, nice synth-y melody, Paul Carrack — but it’s all for naught. I don’t understand a whit of this song. It sounds like the theme to some really bad syndicated sci-fi show. If you don’t pay too much attention to it, perfectly pleasant.

Scott Malchus: I often wonder what songs from the ’80s, with all of the lame electronic drums and synths, would sound like with real instruments. This song holds up okay. I guess I always expected more from Mike Rutherford since he was the lead guitarist from Genesis (and, before that, the bassist). All of the Mike + the Mechanics songs sound very “lite rock” compared to what he did in the ’70s. Then again, look at Phil Collins’s solo output. Worse, look what Genesis had become by the end of the ’80s. How is it that only Peter Gabriel was able to maintain his artistic integrity after he quit the band?

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Friday, July 18th, 2008

Chartburn: 7/18/08

by The Chartburn Panel

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Mainstream Rock: The Tubes, “She’s a Beauty” (1983)

Michael: I like this song a lot. I like “White Punks on Dope” even better. I still remain confused that the same band is responsible for both songs.

Zack: I can’t help but find the opening hook to be pretty interesting, but it doesn’t quite sustain itself beyond that. It’s certainly not bad, and Fee Waybill’s channeling of Roger Daltrey makes it interesting, but by the end I find myself just slightly on the positive side of indifference.

Jon: I always used to parse the lyrics of this song the way you parse a Clinton speech. I could never figure out the exact situation Fee was describing here, and the video didn’t help. If the pretty girl is “behind the glass,” how do you get to “talk to” her? If we’re objectifying the poor girl who’s being kept behind the glass, what’s the point in talking to her anyway? And why would you bother to “fall in love”? Of course, at age 17 I had no first-hand understanding of strip clubs, but Fee sure seemed to be setting up a complicated scenario for a place where I was pretty sure you just went to watch women take their clothes off. Call me naive. Really, go ahead.

David: Being of an impressionable age when MTV first hit, I was unsurprisingly a big fan of the Tubes, thanks to MTV’s near-nonstop playing of “Talk to Ya Later,” “Prime Time,” and “Don’t Want to Wait Anymore.” By the time “She’s a Beauty” dropped, it could have been any old piece of nonsense — and as it turns out, it was — and I would have rubber-stamped it. But shhhhhh … I was a much bigger fan of “Out of the Business.”

Will: Given that I didn’t know the first thing about music in 1983, let alone the Tubes, this was another case where MTV was directly responsible for my introduction to both a song and the band who sang it in one fell swoop. I still think this video’s pretty creepy, but damn, what a chorus.

Mike: Fantastic hook. Sad to say, before I saw the video, that was all I remembered of “She’s a Beauty.” Very strange (but entertaining) video. And who the hell thought Fee Waybill would be a good stage name?

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Friday, July 4th, 2008

Chartburn: 7/4/08

by The Chartburn Panel

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Mainstream Rock: Asia, “Heat of the Moment” (1982)

Vrabel: I have a buddy who’s a big Asia fan. And every single time my buddy who’s an Asia fan tells me he’s an Asia fan, I bring up “Heat of the Moment,” and he calls me a dirty name, and we stare at each other in strained silence for 15 minutes. “Heat of the Moment” is like Kryptonite to prog fans. I call it the “57 Channels and Nothin’ On” Theory.

Ken: I don’t like prog. I don’t like ’80s music (what on earth am I doing at Popdose?). From a brief look at the video, no one in the band has a mullet. I’m willing to give them points for that, and only that.

Beau: Funny, I just covered this one. Basically, it’s terrific prog-rock playing distilled into a palatable pop-rock song. But oy, those lyrics. John, when her looks have gone and she’s alone, she’s still going to be blocking your calls.

Zack: It seems like something of a guilty pleasure, but I actually can’t resist the epic quality of this song’s opening. The video, on the other hand, sucks. Aside from using the same damn effect for the entire video, couldn’t they at least have changed the direction of the screen transitions? Once we get away from the intro, I find the song fair to middling. Nothing special, and it looks like we’re in for some much worse “music” this week. (more…)

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Friday, June 20th, 2008

Chartburn: 6/20/08

by The Chartburn Panel

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Mainstream Rock: Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, “The Waiting” (1981) *

Dunphy: It is, on its face, your standard Petty and Heartbreakers tune. Could’ve been “Refugee.” Could’ve been “You Got Lucky.” But you know what? From 1980 to 1985 that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Was this off Southern Accents or Hard Promises? Does it matter? I miss those good ol’ Petty days.

Zack: Is Tom Petty from Denver? Because I’m convinced he must go to the same dentist as John Elway. Does anyone else share my suspicion that Petty’s video director used the leftover set from the Cube Squared video in Tapeheads? Like everything else of Petty’s, this is good stuff, though aside from the chorus, the lyrics are pretty much incomprehensible.

Jason: I wish I could think of something other than the episode of The Simpsons where Homer has to wait five days to purchase a gun (“Five days? But I’m mad now!“) and “The Waiting” plays in a montage over the five-day period. Petty is a big Simpsons fan.

Ken: I’ve always liked this one. Petty’s one of those writers who knows how to put the things a lot of us feel into words.

Matthew: I remember a really lovely (and abbreviated) acoustic version of this song played by Petty on an episode of It’s Garry Shandling’s Show. It was the episode where Garry has planned the whole show around his neighbor giving birth, and when she can’t do it on cue Shandling ends up looking for ways to stall. Luckily, his neighbor Tom Petty decides to stop by and drop off Garry’s hedge clippers, which he’d borrowed, and he gets recruited to entertain the audience. Tom ended up appearing a number of times on the show playing a version of himself (this was the first time), but he never sang on the show again.

Darren: Back when a simple video, done with class, could hold your attention. No need to spend 500K and have MTV turn their nose up at it. Of course, this was made before there was an MTV, and the only place you saw it was when Showtime or Cinemax had ten minutes to kill until the next showing of Motel Hell or whatever. I remember not digging “The Waiting” much when it came out. It’s still not one of my absolute favorites.

David: This song seems so quaint now. Love the slide guitar, but … I don’t know. I don’t hate it, not at all. I just … don’t care.

Jeff: One of my favorite Petty tracks. I’m surprised by the number of lukewarm reactions to it — I just assumed this was a universally accepted stone-cold classic of the Petty canon. Every time I listen, disappointed, to a new Petty record, this is what I wish I was hearing instead.

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Friday, June 6th, 2008

Chartburn: 6/6/08

by The Chartburn Panel

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Mainstream Rock: Kiss, “Psycho Circus” (1998)

Robert: In my best Paul Stanley impression, minus the made-in-Brooklyn falsetto: “Ya know something, people, we have been given a gift. More specifically, you have been given a gift — the gift of this attached MP3!”

Classic Kiss is back! Ace and Peter are back! The makeup and costumes are back! … Unfortunately, the melodies aren’t, at least not on this song. I like a lot of Kiss’s tracks from the ’70s, and 1982’s “I Love It Loud” is great, but “Psycho Circus” is forgettable. Didn’t the Psycho Circus album bomb? And is it still Kiss’s most recent studio album? Gee, I hope Paul and Gene have found a way to make money aside from album sales. Good luck, fellas. You can do it. I just know you can.

Jeff: I want to rock and roll all night — and party every day. I do not, however, want to hear this song ever again.

Beau: The line between Kiss and Spinal Tap, never designed to be a full-scale wall in the first place, has never seemed so blurry.

Darren: Crikey, somebody got a sweet deal on a green-screen room. Also, just taking a swing in the dark, did Desmond Child cowrite this? If not, he was certainly there in spirit. Paul Stanley and Child in the same room, each taking their stab at the lyrics, could actually create a cheese-flavored cliche vortex the likes of which Chester Cheetah has never seen.

Ken: I’m not a Kiss fan. They made a total of one song that I really like (“Tears Are Falling”). That said, I have to say … no, I don’t like this, either. The video has flashes of humor, though.

Will: “Psycho Circus” was the title track to the band’s reunion album — trumpeted as the first featuring all four original members in two decades — and it was everything you possibly could’ve hoped for. It sounded like old-school KISS, offering a catchy chorus and plenty of rock goodness, and it was the perfect concert opener, with Paul bidding you “welcome to the show.” And, hey, I saw the band on their reunion tour, and it fucking rocked. (Paul’s best patter for the evening: “Hey, everybody, it’s Wednesday night … but let’s pretend it’s Friday night! All right!”)

(more…)

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Friday, May 23rd, 2008

Chartburn: 5/23/08

by The Chartburn Panel

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Mainstream Rock: Aerosmith, “Pink” (1997)

David: Sweet Jesus. It’s that Aphex Twin album cover brought to life. Who asked for that?

The funny thing is, if a new band had sent that song and video to MTV, the answer would have been a resounding “hell to the no.” But because it’s Aerosmith, it gets power rotation. The song itself actually isn’t that bad, even if Tyler ran out of colorful sexual metaphors sometime during 1977.

Jon: I don’t know if this has been the point of Chartburn all along, but this is the first video I’ve seen lately that has sent me into full-on Beavis & Butt-head mode:

BUTT-HEAD: Uhhh … huh-huh … These guys are old …
BEAVIS: Yeah! Yeah! I think my gramps listened to these guys, heh-heh …
(And then, at the 2:02 mark …)
BEAVIS: Boobs! Boobs! Boobs!
BUTT-HEAD: Uh, huh-huh — they’re all green and blue, but they’re still pretty cool …
BEAVIS: Yeah! Yeah! … I’ve seen better.
BUTT-HEAD: Beavis, the only boobs you’ve ever seen were on your mother.
BEAVIS: Shut up! Heh-heh … well, hers were better than those.

Will: I’m pretty sure that this is the single most disturbing video I’ve ever seen, and given that it left me thinking “I will go out of my way to avoid ever seeing it again,” I can’t for the life of me imagine why Aerosmith thought it was a good idea. Brrrrrrr. I’m legitimately disturbed. I’ll be having nightmares tonight.

Ken: Could have been all right at about a minute shorter. This is a band well past its vital era. I do kind of like the choruses, which would have been musically at home on the White Album, especially the Harrison-esque chorused lead guitar.

Zack: It is definitely possible to stay too long at the fair, and that sentiment has never been illustrated more vividly than it is here, in both the audio and the video. The brilliant burlesque images that were Aerosmith’s trademark have seen far too much sun, gin, and barbiturates, and instead of being tantalizing have become just plain disturbing, like some leathery cougar that hangs out at casino bars and leans in as she asks you to light her cigarette. Anytime a songwriter resorts to using the word “very” as an adjective, it’s safe to say that he has failed miserably.

Robert: Hmm … are they talking about what I think they’re talking about? To paraphrase Tenacious D, “You’re too old to sing about poontang. No more poontang songs for you!”

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Friday, May 9th, 2008

Chartburn: 5/9/08

by The Chartburn Panel

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Mainstream Rock: Spacehog, “In the Meantime” (1996)

Pete: Haven’t thought about old Spacehog since, well, 1996. But this song did age well.

Jeff: I can’t believe these guys opened for Pearl Jam. Their moment in the sun was sadly brief — that hourglass in the beginning of the video is pretty appropriate — but I guess you don’t need to be too worried about record sales when you’re Liv Tyler’s husband.

Robert: Why, because of her two dads’ cash? ‘Cause she’s not really that big of a movie star. By the by, my pitch for a new version of the ’80s sitcom My Two Dads, starring Steven Tyler and Todd Rundgren as themselves, never made it to the small screen. I was just as surprised as all of you must be right now.

Spacehog’s Royston Langdon played on the Lemonheads’ 1996 album Car Button Cloth and Evan Dando’s 2003 solo album Baby I’m Bored. In 1994 Dando and Tyler played boyfriend and girlfriend in the movie Heavy when she was only 16 or 17. They had at least one make-out scene. Do you think Royston and Evan ever talk about that? If I’m ever in the same room with them and Liv, I’ll be sure to bring it up.

Dunphy: Not an auspicious beginning here — I had no idea what this song was or who did it. Matter of fact, upon reading, the only thing I recalled was Monster Magnet doing “Space … lord … mutha-mutha!!” But “In the Meantime” isn’t that bad. Pretty enjoyable, actually, even if the lead singer looks like Hyde from That ’70s Show.

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Friday, April 25th, 2008

Chartburn: 4/25/08

by The Chartburn Panel

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Mainstream Rock: Silverchair, “Tomorrow” (1995)

John: It’s Jim Henson’s Kurt Cobain Babies!

Zack: Everybody made such a big deal out of this band because the members were so young. Just because they’re young doesn’t mean their music doesn’t suck. It kind of feels like the record company played the role of the doting parents whose six-year-old brought home a laughably bad drawing of the beach cottage the family rented last summer and hung it up on the fridge, all the while snickering behind their hands. And the public, not getting the joke, all agreed that it was pretty terrific.

Will: How far they’ve come. I didn’t give a flying flip about these guys when they first came around selling their wares, and this song reminds me why. (Granted, the video’s a little creepy.) Since they dumped the Nirvana wannabe sound and embraced the glory of the pop hook, their stock has risen considerably. The turning point for me was “Across the Night” — and they’ve remained on my “can’t wait to hear the next record” list ever since.

David: What Will said. I love their last record, Young Modern, and also liked the Dissociatives, that electronic project that Daniel Johns did. But this song still bugs me. So derivative, so void of any personality.

Jeff: It should surprise none of you that I got bored with grunge sometime in the fall of 1991 — right around the time “Even Flow” or “Alive” was reaching its 10,000th spin on our local rock stations — and by the time Silverchair came around, anything that sounded the least bit like flannel was switched off immediately. I know this was just one aspect of Silverchair’s sound, but I’ve never bothered to check up on their later recordings, despite Will’s evangelism.

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Friday, April 11th, 2008

Chartburn: 4/11/08

by The Chartburn Panel

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Mainstream Rock: Pink Floyd, “Keep Talking” (1994)

Scott: Could Gilmour sound more bored? No wonder he called Floyd quits. Although Momentary Lapse of Reason had its moments, neither of the post-Waters Floyd albums hold a candle to Gilmour’s second solo record, About Face. In fact, you can hear echoes of that ‘84 album in the Gilmour-led Floyd records. And the live performances were so bloated. How many people did they have onstage?

Jon: Zzzzzzzzz … oh, sorry, I fell asleep as soon as I saw that number “7:32″ on the volume bar. Could somebody give me a rag? I need to wipe this drool off my chin.

Isn’t this song the reason punk was invented … 20 years earlier? Couldn’t Gilmour have caught a clue by 1994? I actually was never a big Floyd fan, but after Waters left I tuned them out completely — except for “Learning to Fly,” which at least has a discernible melody and something of a hook. Please don’t make me listen to this again.

David: I own The Division Bell, but I do not remember a single lick of the album, except for “I never thought you’d lose that light in your eyes.” That’s one of the Nick Laird-Clowes songs, yes?

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Friday, March 28th, 2008

Chartburn: 3/28/08

by The Chartburn Panel

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Mainstream Rock: Lenny Kravitz, “Are You Gonna Go My Way” (1993)

Zack: I remember when Lenny Kravitz was first thrust upon the music world by a few cynical record company executives. It seemed like he had been designed by a committee to take advantage of all the latest pop-culture trends. Dreadlocks were in, so they gave him dreads. Tattoos and nose rings were still edgy and cool, so those were included. It was like watching a rock-star version of Poochie. One of the talking points that was pushed was that he was a talented songwriter, and every time I heard that spewing from the mouth of some idiot VJ I felt like I’d been taking crazy pills. Some sample lyrics from Lenny’s quill:

We’ve got to hug and rub-a-dub
We got to dance and be in love

Based on his biography, Lenny doesn’t sound like such a bad guy, and this is actually a well-produced video, but I hate hate hate the song.

Robert: I shouldn’t hate Lenny because he’s beautiful, but I do, and it’s because he knows he’s beautiful. He has a few good songs, but I can’t think of any I’ve liked past the Are You Gonna Go My Way album. The title track is one of his best singles, but I’m sure classic-rock fans could tell me note for note who Lenny’s ripping off in this song.

Dunphy: Y’know, I don’t mind “Are You Gonna Go My Way” much. This and “Believe” made the insurgent grunge brigade a little easier to tolerate. Maybe not by much, but still. “We’ve got to hug and rub-a-dub,” while being a fireable offense, certainly had dynamism against “Kill the pain, oh the pain, heroin? Yes, please …”

Jeff: How do I hate thee, Lenny? Let me count the ways. If I had a dollar for every hour Lenny Kravitz has sucked, I’d be … I’d be even richer than Lenny Kravitz, actually, but not by much. How depressing.

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