I don’t wait by the phone like I used to
I don’t hope for kind words you might say
You don’t prey on my mind like you used to
But you can still ruin my day

I’ve always been amazed, amused and, ultimately, saddened by the importance of perception in our romantic interludes. In the span of days, or minutes (as the case may be), one can go from floating on air, dropping their guard completely, and falling head over heels for someone to being sickened by the sight of them.

It isn’t that the person who once caused our heart to skip a beat each time we saw them has changed, mind you, but that our perception of them has. We’ve all probably been on the receiving end of such changes in perception and, truth be told, it would be disheartening to know what minor detail brought about such a dramatic change in perception.

In one such instance, a friend of mine who’d been unreachable for the past couple weeks, caught up in the throes of passion with someone they described as “the one,” called me out of the blue and asked if I had any dinner plans. When I asked why they weren’t spending every available minute with ‘the one,” they rolled their eyes and informed me that they’d broken it off. “Too needy,” they replied with a shrug. You or them, I asked? “Not funny,” they shot back, punching me in the arm.

See, it was only when “the one” seemed aloof and unattainable that my friend had dropped everything to pursue them. Only after “the one” reciprocated the affection and then went one further by displaying a sense of vulnerability did my friend decide they weren’t really “the one” after all. The idea that my friend might go the rest of their life repeating this chain of events struck me as incredibly sad. What was sadder is that I knew I’d been guilty of much the same thing at various points in my life. (more…)

The cutout bins are filled with what I’ve always called “blatant pop attempts” — albums created for maximum commercial appeal that, despite such intentions, failed miserably on all fronts. In most cases, one listen to the album in question reveals precisely why it was such a dud. I mean, we consumers have bought a lot of crap over the years, but we know when we’re being pandered to, right?

But what about those BPAs that really weren’t all that bad?

One such album is Kix’s 1983 release Cool Kids. I remember seeing the cover and thinking the band had a bit of a Ramones vibe going on. They looked metal, of course, but these were the days before “hair metal,” so the shaggy manes weren’t an automatic turn-off. I was in the mood to rock and these guys looked like they might just deliver, so I bought the album.

What I heard both confused and delighted me. Imagine, if you will, a band that looked like a Baltimore street gang (not that I’ve actually seen a Baltimore street gang, mind you) coming at you with a synth-heavy mix of bubblegum and vintage AC/DC. It’s a weird mix on paper and even weirder coming through the headphones, but once I wrapped my teenage mind around it, I was hooked.

“Cool Kids” is the kind of song that should’ve been blasting out of radios during the summer of ’83, a pitch-perfect slice of teen angst set against staccato guitars and a tight-as-a-prom-date (did I really just type that?) bass line. Seriously, download this bad boy and give it a spin. If you aren’t rockin’ the air guitar in your cubicle by the first chorus, we may wanna start feelin’ for a pulse, brah.

(more…)

The news of Danny Federici’s passing has me contemplating a number of emotions. It seems that with every passing week, there is news of cancer claiming yet another beautiful spirit and you can’t help but wonder if such a thing is really necessary, or fair, for that matter.

While I readily admit to being a recent convert to the magic and splendor that is Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, the reason Danny’s death hits me especially hard is because I too suffer from cancer. I’ve been through chemotherapy a number of times and am scheduled for surgery in mid-May to remove some tissue my doctors describe only as “suspicious.”

Even before I was diagnosed, I was well aware that cancer was the kind of disease that toys with its victims like a cat pawing at a wounded mouse. Sometimes, it takes you swiftly and other times, it lets you alive in such unbearable pain that you wish for death as a release from the prison that life has become.

What was even more disheartening were the countless stories of those who’d supposedly beaten the disease – gone into remission – only to have the cancer return stronger than ever, stealing them suddenly.

Springsteen and his band are gods. There’s really no other way to put it. I can only imagine what it must be like to have lived in New Jersey during the band’s rise from obscurity to super-stardom. Unlike most bands, Bruce and the E Street Band were a gang of brothers, bound by blood and an unwavering devotion to the cause that was rock & roll. (more…)

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away lived a kid who hadn’t a care in the world. In the small Indiana town he called home, he had a ton of friends and spent his summers riding bikes around the neighborhood, building makeshift ramps out of scrap pieces of wood, and giving the stay-at-home moms (of which there were many in those days) around the neighborhood minor heart attacks with stunts that would give Evel Knievel pause.

Then one day his own mother told him the grandfather he loved more than anything was dying of leukemia. The family would move to Michigan as his dad had agreed to step in and run the auto parts stores his grandfather had turned into a thriving business.

His first day of school in Michigan would set the tone for the remainder of his childhood. One of the kids took him aside and told him that if anyone tried to beat him up, he’d protect him. Why anyone would beat him up was such a foreign concept. Back in Indiana, there’d been no cliques, no bullies, and no reason to need one of the bigger kids to protect him.

Unable to reconcile such idiocy in his mind, he retreated into his own world and found solace in the music that blasted from his stereo. It became his most trusted friend when others failed him. It understood him when others couldn’t be bothered to try. When his grandfather passed away - having beaten the cancer, but being too weak to stave off the pneumonia that followed – he lost the one human who never judged him harshly, who’d always believed in his every dream as if it were his own. This was a man who’d been told by a teacher that he’d never amount to anything. Years later, after having become a successful business owner, he was visited by this same teacher, who’d come into the store for the express purpose of saying he was wrong. The kid always remembered this when someone told him that he too would never amount to anything. (more…)

In 2006, the Raconteurs (the pairing of Brendan Benson’s cheery pop sensibilities with Jack White’s rock and roll decadence), released their first album, Broken Boy Soldiers. It was a fun debut, more or less what one would have anticipated: infectious pop with a strong edge and driving rock with pop accessibility. The critical response was okay — but the Raconteurs had been given the unfortunate “supergroup” misnomer, which no doubt led to lofty expectations.

Perhaps in an effort against a critical repeat, this year the Raconteurs released their followup, Consolers of the Lonely, at the drop of a press release. No one had any idea it was coming. No advances were sent out to the media, no interviews given, no news items published. A mere week separated the announcement of the record’s existence and its arrival. The band did this, they said, because they wanted people to listen to it without any pre-conceived notions.

Had they done anything wildly different, this publicity stunt disguised as a publicity shun might have made more sense. In this case, it probably didn’t change much. Aesthetically, there’s little difference between Consolers of the Lonely and its predecessor. The biggest change is in time. Where Broken Boy Soldiers was just over half an hour long, Consolers of the Lonely is about 20 minutes longer. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work to the band’s advantage. They crammed those minutes with extraneous rock revival anthems, the type that Jack White’s other band — the White Stripes, dare it need to be said — is already so good at. This includes some of the strongest tracks: the brash but brilliant opening title track and “Top Yourself” which, with its showoff guitar and slyly sexual lyrics, sounds reminiscent of “Ball and a Biscuit” from the White Stripes’ Elephant. But some of the weaker tracks (”Attention,” “Hold Up”) fall in this category as well, and they drag the album down. (more…)

When I was a kid, my heroes were, at the very least, deserving of adoration. The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Cheap Trick, Dan Pastorini (the one non-musician of the bunch) — the one thing they had in common was that they were immensely talented at what they did. Some would say that they were among the very best, and thus, they seemed bigger than life to me and the millions who adored them. I was inspired by them and what I perceived to be their dedication to the craft. I also admired their shrewd understanding that a fair bit of marketing went a long way, too.

Of course, the music world is not just full of legendary artists such as those named above. For as long as there have been artistes, there have been those whose marketing overshadowed their artistic endeavors. I’m thinking along the lines of C.W. McCall, Taco, and — oh, what the heck — Sigue Sigue Sputnik.

Such one-hit wonders would invariably come out of nowhere, dominate the airwaves for every last second of their fifteen minutes of fame and then, thankfully, disappear into pop oblivion. The respectable artists who were temporarily swept aside to make way for this brief dalliance with the latest “here today, gone tomorrow” pop confection would then return to their rightful place on radio playlists and the ship would right itself.

I mean, acts like Tiffany, Sly Fox, After the Fire, and others had their success, but it was always understood that they’d go away. That’s what one- or two-hit wonders did. It was understood.

But then something weird happened.

(more…)

Many summers ago, I was a counselor at a remote summer camp in the heart of lake-bound Michigan and, suffering from a bad case of cabin fever (literally), I had been counting the days until my scheduled day off. Borrowing a fellow counselor’s car, I hauled ass to the nearest record shop in search of some new music to replace the cassettes I’d plum worn out since taking my position as rocketry instructor at Lake Of The Woods Camp. That day, I bought two albums sound unheard: the BoDeans’ Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams and E.I.E.I.O.’s Land of Opportunity.

I literally knew nothing of either band, but figured the album covers hinted at greatness within. Upon checking the liner notes of each, I was struck by the similarities.

For starters, both bands were from Wisconsin. Secondly, they had each occupied the same studio in L.A. during the recording of their albums, and, lastly, T-Bone Burnett showed up in the credits for each album; producing the BoDeans while adding acoustic guitar to E.I.E.I.O.’s “Blue Mountaintop” (download).

While I admit that I preferred the more rambunctious Land of Opportunity, there was a lot to like about the BoDeans’ debut. Most intriguing was the fact that they were fronted by two singer/songwriters, each with a voice and songwriting style that couldn’t have been more different. Kurt Neumann boasted a voice so honey-sweet that even when he pushed the edges, it still sounded smoother than smooth. Sammy Llanas, on the other hand, came across much more world-weary — with a voice that, to my ears, sounded like Festus from Gunsmoke. That their voices melded together to create wonderful harmonies seemed a minor miracle. (more…)

Although released in late 1977, the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack would be impossible to ignore for much of 1978, with the Bee Gees’ “Night Fever” and “Stayin’ Alive,” as well as Yvonne Elliman’s “If I Can’t Have You,” all reaching #1. At several points during the first half of ‘78, the soundtrack album was selling over 1 million units a week.

Bee Gees - Stayin’ Alive
Bee Gees - Night Fever (w/ More Than a Woman) (more…)

The weird thing about being into music as much as I am (much to the chagrin of every girlfriend I’ve ever had) is that I still end up missing out on a few — okay, a few hundred — really cool artists along the way. It’s just not possible to be up on all the cool music out there. It isn’t. Believe me, I’ve tried.

Of course, if you were anything like me when you were younger, you were quickly jaded to the greatness of certain artists who were, for lack of a better term, fucking huge. And it’s not just my generation — my parents were kinda “meh” about the Beatles because, near as I can tell, those guys were everywhere, and just about everybody and their freakin’ brother liked them. If I’d been alive, or at least old enough to give a crap when the Beatles were still together, I probably would’ve written them off too.

Thus there are quite a number of bands that were still together when I was old enough to give a crap and their crazy level of success and/or popularity made them like Kryptonite to me. My thinking was: if all the nimrods at school like them, how good can they be?

Case in point: Huey Lewis & the News. How does a cat go from palling around with Nick Lowe and Declan McManus to, ahem, wanting a new drug?

Then there’s Def Leppard. Forget that I was the first kid in my school to own 1981’s High ‘n’ Dry — the fact that everybody else soon owned a copy of 1983’s Pyromania quickly reduced Def Leppard to Loverboy status in my book.

And Prince? Don’t get me started. (more…)

Welcome to a series I began at He’s A Whore and am proud-as-punch to continue here at Popdose. While not able to mention everything that happened, I’ve touched upon some of the key events that made 1996 what it was, warts ‘n’ all.


Kiss announce plans to reunite with original members Ace Frehley and Peter Criss as part of a “farewell” world tour.

In March, Phil Collins announces his decision to leave Genesis.

That same month, the Sex Pistols announce plans for a reunion tour marking the 20th anniversary of the band’s formation. (more…)