Like many Saturday afternoons, we found ourselves straightening up the house, the children and I. It was June 2007, it was hot, and they were beginning to bicker. What can you expect? The last thing kids want to do on a weekend is clean up after themselves. While I did my best to make sense of the one thousand toys scattered around the playroom, Sophie and Jacob had the simple task of picking up their toys, shoes and movies in the living room. I’m sure at the time I thought we would surprise Julie, who was at work. However, my two darlings began to argue and my nerves were beginning to fray. Instead of erupting and unleashing anger, I decided to alleviate the growing tension with music.

Our house is always filled with music, whether it’s coming from the stereo, the television, Sophie’s room, the kitchen, or through the voices of my loved ones. Julie can sing like an angel and Sophie appears to have inherited this wonderful trait. It’s still too early to tell what kind of singing voice Jake will have, but like his sister, he has a natural talent for keeping the beat (something from the old man, I suppose). I sprang into action and threw in Paul McCartney’s Memory Almost Full, which had recently been released, skipping the first track and going right to my favorite song, “Ever Present Past.”

The driving rhythm of the song’s opening immediately captured the kids’ attention, especially when their father decided to revisit the high stepping of his high school and college marching band days.  Jacob cracked up, his cheeks full and eyes squinting, while Sophie broke into a gorgeous wide open grin that lit up her deep blue eyes.  “Follow me!” I commanded and we created our own parade, weaving down the hallway, through the kitchen, around the playroom and back into the living room.  At the song’s bridge, I shouted, “Crazy dance!”  The three of us twisted and turned, jumped and wiggled like loons.  When the instruments suddenly stopped just before the final verse, we froze until the music restarted.  Our parade picked up once again moving through the house.

And then it was over.  Two minutes and fifty-six seconds of pure bliss created a memory that will stay with me a lifetime. (more…)

Some people are just flat-out smart-asses.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing to be at times, mind you, but a good smart-ass pulls it off with a modicum of grace and might give you a chuckle for it. In the music world, there are relatively few of the latter. Instead of a wink and a nod, they just about knock you unconscious and then ask if “you saw that.” You can tell one from the other by their choices in the realm of cover songs.

A word of note to anyone who is not a music nerd accidentally finding themselves at this site: a cover song is when an artist records another artist’s song, hence covering it. The term ‘remake’ fits as well. The term ’smart-ass’, at least relative to this article, refers to those who decide to go all hipster and record something that bears no relevance, charm or wit toward their own sensibility. I’m thinking of Madonna’s cover of “American Pie” or that godawful A Perfect Circle CD where the songs weren’t just reworked, they were worked over, until all that was left was roadkill disguised as tribute. Then there’s the Bluegrass Tribute to Pink Floyd’s The Wall. More notoriously, I’m thinking of the late-’50s pop songs from black artists covered by teen idol white artists because, you know, if it comes from a white guy in a sweater, the subtext can’t be about sex. Right? Pat Boone? Tutti Frutti?

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On March 8, 2008, the Rutland Times reported the breathtaking news that the world and elsewhere would soon be privy to something quite remarkable: “Rutlemania! The Tribute Concert.” Even more impressive to fans of the Prefab Four, however, was the announcement that the famed Mods & Rockers Film Festival would be handling the official 30th-anniversary celebration of the Rutles on March 17, with Dirk (Eric Idle), Nasty (Neil Innes), Ricky Fataar (Stig), and John Halsey (Barry) all in attendance for a screening of the original 1978 version of The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash, the 1975 British TV skit that inspired the film, Rutles-related footage from Saturday Night Live, and highlights from the 2003 film The Rutles 2: Can’t Buy Me Lunch.

Damn. I really wish I could’ve been there for that.

Fortunately, David Haber from WhatGoesOn.com was there, and provided two separate reports over at his website, one a general summary and the other focusing specifically on the Rutles’ first full reunion performance ever. Better you should go there yourself rather than allow me to cannibalize all the good stuff here, but let’s just say that any event that can draw an audience that includes Andy Summers, Jeff Lynne, Aimee Mann, Michael Penn, Stephen Bishop, Howard Kaylan of the Turtles, producer extraordinaire Peter Asher (who was also half of Peter & Gordon), Emo Phillips, Marcia Strassman, and Dan Castellaneta was clearly the place to be that night.

If you’re a Beatles fan who’s never heard the genius parody that is the Rutles, you’re really missing out. It’s a fair assessment to suggest that 90 percent of all power pop is unabashedly derivative of the works of John, Paul, George, and Ringo, and plenty of comedians have taken the world’s most famous Liverpudlians and had a laugh at their expense, but few have done such an exquisite job of it and gotten the blessing of the members themselves to boot — well, three-quarters of them, anyway. George actually made a cameo in the original film; as for the others (if we can trust Wikipedia’s word on the matter), Ringo liked the happier scenes but felt the ones that mimicked the sadder times in the band’s career hit too close to home, while John loved the film so much that he refused to return the videotape and soundtrack he was given for his approval, warning Neil Innes that “Get Up and Go” was too close to “Get Back” and to be careful so as not to be sued by Paul. This might explain why Macca always said “no comment” when asked of the film at the time of its release, as well as Innes’s remark that Sir Paul “had a dinner at some awards thing at the same table as Eric one night, and Eric said it was a little frosty.”

Well, fair enough, you can kind of understand that. It’s fine and well for us to have a laugh at it all, but then, we didn’t live it. George was around for much of the planning of the original film, but according to producer Gary Weis, even the Quiet One got a bit testy at one point, snapping, “We were the Beatles, you know!” Moments later, however, he shook his head and said, “Aw, never mind.”

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Yeah, yeah, we know what you’re thinking: “The Hooters? Are they even still together?” Well, actually, if you’d asked that question between 1995 and 2001, the answer would’ve been a resounding “No.” After the tremendous success of the band’s 1985 breakthrough, Nervous Night, their commercial success in the States began a gradual descent; simultaneously, however, their stock was rising overseas. When the band took a break in 1995, singer-guitarist Eric Bazilian proceeded to keep very busy as a songwriter, working with everyone from Midge Ure to Jon Bon Jovi, but when the gang got back together in 2001 he was right there with them. The Hooters did a fair amount of touring in Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden, but it wasn’t ’til 2006 that the band finally started doing some shows in the U.S. The next thing you know, the band was back in the studio to record Time Stand Still, their first album in 14 years. Popdose had the good fortune to speak with Eric about the history of the band as well as his solo career, touching on subjects like the Hooters’ omission from the Live Aid DVD, what it’s like to meet three out of four Beatles, and what a glorious gift it was to have Joan Osborne record “One of Us.”

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