Monday, March 15th, 2010 by Mike Heyliger
It certainly hasn’t seemed that way recently, but there was a time when hip-hop was an agent for much-needed social change. The children of the civil rights movement were empowered, they wanted what was theirs, and they were going to get it by any means necessary. This attitude spawned groups like the legendary rap crew Public Enemy, who delivered music that was as enlightening and powerful from a lyrical standpoint as it was from a musical standpoint.
A lot of people call 1988’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back P.E’s magnum opus, but to me, 1990’s Fear of a Black Planet was the moment when their sound and message was at its’ most powerful. While Nation of Millions found the group expanding their sound and attempting to find their audience, Fear marked the moment P.E. realized how big that audience was, and unlike most musicians experiencing the first flush of success, they decided to push the envelope even further. By making their sound even more forceful — lyrically and musically — Public Enemy wound up creating a landmark record, not only within the genre of hip-hop, but in music period.
While a big part of Fear’s success came from the principals wanting to push the creative envelope, an equal amount of the piss and vinegar that went into making Fear what it was came from the media firestorm that P.E. (and specifically Chuck D., the group’s focal point and mouthpiece) found itself under in the year or so leading up to the album’s release. (more…)
Tags: 1990, Big Daddy Kane, Chuck D, Fear of a Black Planet, Flavor Flav, Ice Cube, Mike Heyliger, Popdose Flashback, Popdose Flashback '90, Professor Griff, Public Enemy, The Bomb Squad
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Saturday, March 13th, 2010 by Ken Shane
This coming Tuesday, Bloodshot Records will release the latest Graham Parker album, Imaginary Television. My colleague Dw. Dunphy thinks it’s a pretty good effort. Read his review here. For many people however, Parker has yet to top his 1979 classic Squeezing Out Sparks.
Parker put the Rumour together in 1975 by enlisting veterans of three different British pub bands. The members were guitarists Brinsley Schwarz and Martin Belmont, keyboard player Rich Andrews, drummer Steve Goulding, and bassist Andrew Bodnar. Their debut album, Howlin’ Wind was released in 1976, followed quickly by their second release, Heat Treatment. The band quickly gained a strong reputation for their intense live performances. Unfortunately, record sales did not live up to expectations, and by the time of their third album, 1977’s Stick To Me, Parker had clearly adopted a somewhat more commercial songwriting style.
Parker made it clear that in his opinion the blame for paltry sales in the U.S. lay squarely at the doorstep of his label, Mercury Records, and delivered the ultimate goodbye in the form of the lethal b-side of a 1979 single, “Mercury Poisoning.” He was quickly signed to Arista records, and enlisted legendary producer Jack Nitzsche to work on his debut for the label, Squeezing Out Sparks. The album would become one of the most acclaimed efforts in the history of rock and roll. (more…)
Tags: Andrew Bodnar, Bob Andrews, Brinsley Schwarz, Cratedigger, Dw. Dunphy, Graham Parker, Jack Nitzsche, Ken Shane, Mark Howlett, Martin Belmont, Steve Goulding
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Friday, March 12th, 2010 by Robert Cass“What will be my legacy?” It’s a question every politician has to answer.
Will we be remembered for fighting the good fight, or, like former New York congressman Eric Massa, fighting the tickle fight to end all tickle fights? Will we be remembered for standing behind our constituents even if we didn’t agree with their views, or, like California state senator Roy Ashburn, hiding behind our constituents by saying they wanted us to vote down gay-rights measures, particularly those intimidating constituents who tend to corner us in gay bars that just happen to be on the campaign trail.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my legacy the past few days, especially after the health scare I experienced on Monday when I sat on a rusty tack placed in the chair behind my desk. I scrambled to look up “do-it-yourself tetnis shot for dummies” on Google, but the next thing I knew, a doctor was standing over me and pointing to the spelling of “tetanus” in the dictionary.*
No, I don’t want to be remembered as a mayor who passed out after sitting on a tack. But if I’d died from septic shock and it turned out I’d been poisoned by a political enemy, that’d be kinda cool, I guess.
I also don’t want to be remembered for my own sex scandals, which didn’t involve sexual harassment of my aides, or closeted homosexuality and open self-loathing, but they were embarrassing nonetheless. I think it’s time we all moved on. Or maybe you already have moved on, in which case I’m reminding you of something I don’t want you thinking about, in which case I may need to look up “how to cure verbal diarea” before I pass out again.
(more…)
Tags: Eric Massa, Jack Wagner, Robert Pattinson, Roy Ashburn, Tetris, Vampires are the new black.
Posted in Bootleg City, Music | View Comments
Friday, March 12th, 2010 by Jeff Giles
There are things each generation must explain to those that follow. Things they must atone for. The Founding Fathers had slavery, for instance. The freewheeling credit spenders of the 1910s and ’20s had the Great Depression. The “Greatest Generation” had the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
My generation has Kenny Loggins.
To be fair, it was actually our parents who brought him his first measure of success, as the “Loggins” in “Loggins & Messina.” But they knew what they were doing–L&M’s recorded output, while slight, managed to stay on the sunny side of the line between breezy and banal more often than not. “Danny’s Song”? “House At Pooh Corner”? “Watching the River Run”? Classics.
But then Loggins & Messina broke up, and Loggins proved all too eager to expose himself as the dippy New Age doofus he’d always been at heart. His first few albums were a terrible blend of ponderous mysticism, mush-brained folk, and soft jazz, from the interminably mawkish music to the artwork that seemed to always feature a soft-focus shot of Kenny–all done up in a velour tunic or something similarly lame–striking a ridiculous pose against a backdrop of, say, the universe.
That was bad enough. But then the ’80s dawned, and he discovered two things: (more…)
Tags: CAPTAIN VIDEO!, Jeff Giles, Kenny Loggins
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Friday, March 12th, 2010 by Rob Smith
Had director Garry Marshall consulted me during the postproduction editing stage of Pretty Woman, the film would have ended with Julia Roberts’ lovable hooker Vivian being driven away from the Beverly Wilshire to the strains of Roxette’s “It Must Have Been Love”. We would also have seen the wonderfully empty Richard Gere’s emotionally distant corporate raider Edward standing on a Wilshire balcony, mourning the loss of the only woman he ever truly loved, or at least the only one he ever paid three grand to fuck for a week.
Fade to black. Cut. Print. Roll credits.
Oh, no, you say, not so fast, Cecil B. DeSmitty. You want the fairy tale, just like Vivian tells Edward before that particular montage. Lots of people wanted the fairy tale. Garry Marshall certainly wanted the fairy tale, and instead of a relatively reasonable ending to a film with a decidedly unreasonable premise, we got Sir Edward riding in to “save” Princess Vivian from turning her life around on her own terms, whisking her away to be his well-cared-for trophy wife forever and ever, amen. (more…)
Tags: David Bowie, Garry Marshall, Go West, Jane Wiedlin, Julia Roberts, Lauren Wood, Michael McDonald, Peter Cetera, Popdose Flashback '90, Pretty Woman, Richard Gere, Rob Smith, Roxette, soundtracks
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Thursday, March 11th, 2010 by Dw. Dunphy
All rise.
The rules of this courtroom are simple. You will be presented with two songs, one by the plaintiff and one by the defendant. It is your task to decide if the defendant’s track is only coincidentally similar to the plaintiffs or, as members of the Bar Association put it, how… could… you?! You have been duly instructed.
Today’s docket: Blues Traveler, plaintiffs vs. Sister Hazel, defendants
Blues Traveler – “Runaround,” from Four (1994)
We recorded three albums that got us nothing but stoner groupies. Finally, we get a hit song and hot stoner groupies! Then these jerks come along, rip off our melody and our hot stoner groupies! What’s this crap?
Sister Hazel – “All For You,” from …Somewhere More Familiar (1997)
It’s so unfair. We never, ever ripped off Blues Traveler. We had no intention of ripping off Blues Traveler. Hootie, maybe!
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Tags: Blues Traveler, Dave Lifton, Dw. Dunphy, John Popper, Sister Hazel
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Thursday, March 11th, 2010 by Matt Wardlaw
Walking through the mobile home that functioned as the broadcast headquarters for the West Texas radio station KWES-FM, we made a stop in the middle room, which was the “promotions department” for the station. Meeting the promotions director, opened my eyes wide to the concept of radio stations and “free stuff.” She rummaged around in the office and gave me a station bumper sticker, plus the ultimate prize, my very own circular Sammy Hagar “I Can’t Drive 55″ button. Hagar was still a little bit off of my musical radar at that point – I knew “I Can’t Drive 55,” but not much else about the catalog of the so-called “Red Rocker.” During visits to the record store, I had looked many times at the album cover for Hagar’s latest album VOA, and snickered at the inclusion of a song called “Dick in the Dirt” in the track listing.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, Hagar was about to make a really big impression in my world. Shock waves moved through the rock world in 1985 with the slightly unexpected departure of David Lee Roth from Van Halen. When the dust began to settle from Roth’s departure, Sammy Hagar was the new guy holding the microphone in Van Halen. I knew enough about Hagar at this point to know what an interesting and unorthodox choice Van Halen had just made. Vocally, Hagar was anything but a clone of David Lee Roth – a clear roll of the dice and statement from Van Halen that they were going to do something different. And so it began, one of the most controversial ( heavily debated to this day, and ultimately one of the most successful) lineup changes in the history of rock and roll music. (more…)
Tags: Matt Wardlaw, Sammy Hagar, Ticket Stub
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Thursday, March 11th, 2010 by Ann Logue
One day last September, the mail included a hand-addressed envelope with a New York City postmark and a return address that turned out to be a Mail Boxes Etc. store near Times Square. Inside was a sheet of paper with an odd story on it and instructions to go to TippersMusic.com and request a CD from a band called The Twenty % Tippers.
How exciting! Finally, mysteries were coming my way! And as someone who read a lot of Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden back in the day, I am always looking for mysteries. (more…)
Tags: Annie Logue, Ken Sorkin, marketing, McSweeney's, Nancy Drew, New York City, Tippers, Trixie Belden, Twenty%Tippers
Posted in Music, Why You Should Like... | View Comments
Thursday, March 11th, 2010 by Michael Parr
The first time I listened to Broken Bells’ self-titled debut, I was completely unaware of the band’s pedigree. In the end, I feel like this actually gave me a chance to enjoy the record without any preconceived notion of what to expect. Had I known I was listening to the new project from the minds of Danger Mouse — credited here under his given name, Brian Burton — and James Mercer, of indie rock act The Shins, there is a good chance that I would be more critical of the album. Instead, I found myself wrapped up in the songs, enveloped by the sound, and enjoying the down tempo vibe of the record.
The project started as a mutual admiration, shared between Burton and Mercer, and discovered when the two performed with their respective bands at the 2004 Roskilde festival. Flash forward four years to 2008 when the duo locked themselves down in Burton’s studio and challenged themselves to expand beyond the box they respectively fit in. For Burton, this meant abandoning the trappings of being Danger Mouse, and focusing on live instrumentation. For Mercer, the challenge was to stretch his vocal repertoire to its limits. The result is, arguably, one of the better records to come out in the first quarter of 2010. (more…)
Tags: Broken Bells, CD Review, Danger Mouse, gnarls barkley, James Mercer, Michael Parr, The Shins
Posted in CD Reviews, Music | View Comments
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