Archive for the ‘Squawk, squawk, squawk’ Category
My Confused Stance on the Cold War Kids
The human brain is weird, sometimes things just don’t add up. Why, for example, can somebody like peanut butter but hate peanuts? Or try to squeeze through the last quarter-second of a yellow light, but get annoyed when the guy behind them does it? It baffles.
As you may have gleamed from the title, this baffledom extends to none other than the Cold War Kids. I’ve had several run-ins with this OC band (like, as in their music) since they began their steady ascent to popularity a few years ago, and despite a damning heap of evidence suggesting I should like them (a lot), it just seems to be one of those things, and I have no idea why.
To demonstrate the depth of this conundrum (which I’m sure is shattering your world as you read this), here is a list of everything the Cold War Kids have going for them, in my modest opinion:
1. Nathan Willett’s voice is unique, loud and completely amazing.
2. Their sense of melody is pretty much genius.
3. Their choices in instrumentation aren’t obvious, and provide just what each song needs.
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Take Two Minutes and Listen to The Satan Song
It’s not Jack Black, but it’s pretty much just as awesome. Ladies and gents, Stephen Lynch:
Revelations Rooted in Listening to Office Music
Some random revelations that came from listening to Internet radio stations at work (a work-in-progress, watch for sudden changes):
- Thom Yorke definitely seems to have gone through a “whiney, screamy acoustic version” period. Meh.
- After a long time, yes, it is possible to be sick of hearing the Beatles.
- Pandora can play long sets without repetition, but not that long. I’d say the euphoria dies around the 4-hour mark.
- John Mayer sounds like a rock and roll version of Dave Matthews.
- David Byrne struggles a bit to hit that high note in “Psycho Killer” when he sings it live, but he’s a badass for not lowering the key.
- In any group of people, young and old, there is always the “metal guy,” and he’s not who you think. Don’t let him control the station.
- Some ’70s group covered the Rolling Stones’ “19th Nervous Breakdown” and slopped it up, and I don’t know who they are. Must look into this further.
- New Order’s “Blue Monday” is catchy, but also long and redundant. I don’t know why so many bands have covered it. Note to self: If I start a band, don’t cover “Blue Monday.”
- God, the Strokes are undeniably awesome, and I’ll wall-slam anyone who disagrees. Try me.
- Also on the Strokes: Ignorant people sometimes bag on Fab’s drumming, but I believe simple and steady outperforms fancy and flamboyant any day.
- The Killers line “I got soul, but I’m not a soldier” is like a grotesque mustard stain on an otherwise halfway decent song. Must write band and complain.
- Someone somewhere started a “sad, high-pitched girl singer/pianist” trend, and then everybody started copying it. Boo, hiss.
Apparently, Commercial Covers Don’t Always Have to Suck
On occasion, I will be in some department store or other where I am exposed to the business side of pop culture. This basically means music that serves as background fill, creating a comfortable, mindless soundtrack that makes people more inclined to shop. And usually, what I hear irritates me beyond words (though I tried to express it once, here).
However, a recent event managed to re-open my judgment on commercial pop covers, and I’ve realized something rather interesting: The commercialization of music doesn’t always have to involve the dumbing down of obscure, artistically challenging songs. It can go both ways.
This occurred to me in the sale section of a slightly upscale clothing store, where my discerning eardrums were introduced to a vaguely funky, jazz-style version of AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell.” Sounds awful, I know. But hold on.
It was performed by a female vocalist, with some combination of keyboards and horns fleshing out the main chord progression, and a broken-down beat that almost entirely avoided the main beat of the song. The whole thing barely resembled the original at all. In fact, it took a few bars for me to positively identify it. And I would even say … I wasn’t pissed off about it. (Side note: I tried to find it on YouTube to no avail, but here’s a goofy, lamer jazz version of it by Tom Gaebel and Jazzkantine, to give you some idea.)
I’d like to contrast this experience with an earlier one, the example I hinted at earlier. This was the Killers’ hipster-pop version of Joy Division’s “Shadowplay.” Hearing that cover brought my blood to a boil instantly, and here’s why: The original version of “Shadowplay” isn’t supposed to be perfect. It’s not meant to be readily absorbed by people who don’t “get” music, or serve as the backdrop to a mindless club atmosphere. It’s meant for the quarter-toting music fiends at The Bar and Jones — and it’s certainly not intended to be the soundtrack to a Forever 21. (I realize this might sound elitist and snobby. It is.)
Every Song is About Heroin
It’s almost second nature for musicians to write about drugs. Especially when you’re dealing with rock, where the idea is to do what everybody tells you not to do, and make it look like it’s cool. This is probably where spandex came from.
The catch is that musicians aren’t supposed to openly write about drugs (except in the case of rap, where it’s encouraged). They find metaphors, and usually those metaphors are about as complex as John Wayne dialogue. Everyone knows about the La’s “There She Goes,” i.e. the heroin-as-girl metaphor; or the Beatles’ “Happiness is a Warm Gun,” whose “shoot, shoot” euphemisms all but sell the stuff. The chemical factor in David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” was even spelled out clearly in “Ashes to Ashes” with the line “We all know Major Tom’s a Junkie,” in case any of the kids missed the classic “floating above the earth” metaphor.
With songs like “Hotel California,” “Under the Bridge,” “Golden Brown” and “Comfortably Numb” all containing their crystal-clear to slightly hazy euphemisms, the list of artists who have poetically flouted their bad habits before the mainstream media is eons long.
But what about the more cleverly disguised songs? You won’t convince me that the only heroin songs out there are the obvious ones. It’s almost guaranteed that somewhere, some good-guy songwriter is kicking back, having pulled off such a well-disguised smack anthem that no one even noticed it. My mission is to uncover some of these sneaky writers. At the very least they deserve to be recognized for their ingenuity, and praised for fooling everyone.
The Osmonds, “Goin’ Home” – This song is a prize winner. Show me a “track star” who’s got a long road ahead of him, who has to fight to make it “home” if it takes him the rest of his life, and I’ll show you a desperately hooked junkie. “I’m a space man from a different world,” the song says, reeling dangerously close to Bowie’s more evocative metaphor. “I’ve been gone so long that I’m feeling like a useless man.” The song’s energetic charge is enough to create a deceptive shroud of positivity, but if you really think about it, this is as strung out as Trainspotting.
When Acoustic Covers Amount to Masturbation
As Einstein once said, the secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
In other words, if no one can figure out where your inspiration came from, then whatever masterpieces you’ve created are attributed directly to you, making you a creative genius.
Musically speaking, a band can take full advantage of this axiom, if they’re clever enough to weave together a collage of influences to create a sonic concoction to which no one can point and say “hey, that sounds just like that Black Rebel Motorcycle Club song.” If you can do that, then sweet, you’ve created an original piece of work.
Or this axiom can be the sword your unimaginative ass falls on after you plunk your way through some mainstream guitar ballad everybody has already heard, turning down-tuned F7 chords into open Es and ad-libbing from Internet-sourced lyrics before pressing it onto 40,000 silver discs and littering the sidewalks of Hollywood with hopeful, paper-wrapped debris.
When it comes to acoustic covers, it’s a tough call which side you’re going to fall on. It seems to come down to whether your aim is to discover a new aspect to someone else’s song that no one might have noticed yet, striving to capture it with only your burning, tortured soul, a minimal of instrumentation and countless nearly perfect takes. Or…whether your aim is to realize your teenage fantasy about banging out your favorite band’s song on a plastic-backed Ovation, hoping the girl you were crushing on in high school has a radio in her cold, lonely trailer park home and suddenly notices you after all these years, and finally contacts you through your Myspace account. On which you’ve had said song posted in hopeful anticipation for the last eight months.
Thus, there are good acoustic covers and bad ones. The line is thin, it doesn’t take much to cross it, and once you have, you’re either a creative genius or Bright Eyes.
Some Music Fans May be Shallow
STP at the Hollywood Bowl
This is partially intended as an addendum to the recent rant on bland retro-popheads, titled “When did the World Get So Unoriginal?” by esteemed [former] CinemaBlend music editor Mack Rawden. I’m wholeheartedly agreeing with his main thesis (albeit without judgment against J.K. Rowling, because I freaking like Harry Potter). But I’m adding one significant point.
And naturally, we will get to it via a quick story.
There I was, with my beautiful girlfriend, watching the Stone Temple Pilots’ June show at the Hollywood Bowl. We’re both into them, even the albums no one really likes (No. 4 and Shangri-La Dee Da). So we had at least a handful of songs we were waiting to hear.
About 10 minutes into the set, the obligatory wave of fashionably late bros and sorority chicks showed up. This element was expected, since due to some cosmic theorem they make up about 85% of the band’s following. But I was completely bewildered, and even disappointed, when during the ¾-set arrival of “Plush,” a group of sorority girls nearby suddenly got all antsy, huddling together in a secret conversation until one of them finally turned to the people next to them and said, “Oh my god, what’s this song called?” At first I thought I was hearing things. But then it happened again, during “Interstate Love Song.” My jaw was floored.
I get it: some people’s memories of these songs are a little dimmed by lite beer and accessory distraction (I might have heard someone singing the lyrics, “Driving on a Sunday afternoon / I swerve my Bug between the lines…”). But someone just spent $50 on tickets, fought traffic and crammed into a packed bleacher row without knowing the names of the band’s 16-year-old major radio hit singles. It seemed like a big monkey wrench just got tossed into the logical fandom gears somewhere. What was wrong here?
Then it occurred to me that the world’s sea of music fans might be a lot shallower than I had previously thought. Do some people pretend to be into bands? Do some even pretend to be into music? I decided this needs to be explored further.
