Category: Music

But the Go-Go’s used punk as a starting point, not a destination. They weren’t afraid to not only rock but to pop too. Ms. Wiedlin and the guitarist Charlotte Caffey in particular began writing songs that were Brill Building-worthy with their clever lyrics and unabashed hooks.

When a critic uses the phrase “not afraid to” in reference to an action that is usually regarded as a sell-out or compromise or phony or narcissistic, look out!  It’s a clever rhetorical device to try to convince you that up is down, what is in is out, and that selling out is really a way of not selling out, because we’re all being ironic and sophisticated here.  We heard it when Abba, a shallow pop band, was compared to the Beatles.  Really.

So, here, we are told that the Go-Go’s were actually courageously and audaciously taking the safest possible course.  They were artistically pandering to the pop crowd.

Which is why Margot Olavarria left the band, claiming that they had sold out in a “cutthroat” drive towards commercial success.

They were “Brill Building-worthy”.  The Brill Building is famous for putting out product– not art.  Pre-packaged musical pap.  Muzak.  Crap.  Music by assembly line.  Neil Diamond and Carole King and Gerry Goffin.  Everybody’s doing the locomotion.

Where else do we hear this phrase?  Not afraid to enjoy fast food.  Not afraid to admit she likes Justin Bieber.  Not afraid to slap on some makeup and a miniskirt and high-heels and dazzle the despised paparazzi!  Oh, so sassy!  So saucy!

I know a young woman who basically reeked Christian virtue, principles, truth, authenticity.  She veritably sneered at women of questionable morals and at pop culture in general.   She was bullied in school by class-mates who thought of her as Miss Goody Two-Shoes.  Then I heard that she was planning a trip to Greece and had purchased the sexiest bikini ever, because, like, she was not afraid to be sexy.  More like quite happy to sell out if she could make it sound like something admirable.  She was cheered on by her friends: you go girl!  She felt liberated!  Empowered!  In control of her own sexuality!

Just like those girls she used to sneer at.

What we are really hearing is the critic attempting to justify her admiration of music she tacitly admits is mediocre.

Three words: They. Kicked. Ass.

Oh please. Evelyn Mcdonnell, sounding desperate, makes it loud and clear that her fondest aspiration for the Go-Go’s was for them to be loud and abrasive, just like a male band.  You think the Ramones kick ass?  Well, the Go-Go’s are just as loud!

With Margot Oliveriea in the band, the Go-Go’s aspired to punk.  The minute they were led to believe they could have a lot more success as a mainstream pop band, they switched gears and Olavarria was fired for resisting.

And yes, we will pose in our underwear for Rolling Stone Magazine– and then complain that RS exploited them (I don’t know how the photographer managed to get their clothes off without them noticing).  (Actually, I will note they later made their complaint more specific– aware, perhaps, of the inconsistency– by citing the headline: “Go-Go’s Put Out”.)

Wikipedia, by the way, rather shamelessly offers this gem:

During this period, the Go-Go’s became America’s sweethearts and started building a fanbase.[9]

Punks don’t do “sweethearts”.  Authentic bands don’t do “sweethearts”.  Kick-ass bands do not do “sweethearts”.  Artists don’t do “sweethearts”.

Olivia Newton-John does sweethearts.   Justin Bieber does sweethearts.

Gottehrer [Producer of the Go-Go’s first album]: They didn’t talk to me for a minimum of three months. Might have been six. Miles [Copeland, IRS Records Executive], I think, threatened to kill me: “You’ve ruined them. I gave you a punk band and got back this pop crap?”

[whohit]The GoGos Sell Out Again[/whohit]

Back in the 1970’s, Todd Rungren was dating a young woman– a model and Playboy Magazine Playmate– named Bebe Buell.  Bebe, in the vernacular of the day, “got around”.  She gave birth to a baby girl whom Rungren adored, only to discover, years later, apparently, that the child was fathered by Steve Tyler.  Yes, that baby was Liv Tyler.  Who famously played a psychiatrist in one of the most appallingly dumb movies I’ve ever seen, “Reign Over Me”.  Only in the movies, is a young, sexually attractive psychiatrist compelled to beg her patients to come in, and only in the movies, do they come in when they don’t want to.  That conflict, you see, allows you to feel fabulous about role-playing this scenario out in your head: Liv Tyler wants me.  I know she does.  She will even cancel all her other appointments — which have no existence outside of her appointment book in this movie anyway– and go racing around Manhattan to look for me, because I am just so special.  Cue the glycerin tears!

Anyway, Todd Rungren was dating Liv Tyler’s mother, but it wasn’t going well, obviously.  He wrote a song around that time:  “Can We Still Be Friends”, which sounds a lot like a painful ode to a relationship that had promise but is now disintegrating.

I’ve always thought it was a great song.  Unusual.  The idea of remaining friends is often given a passing slap of the hand in popular songs about failed relationships, but in “Can We Still Be Friends”, it gets the full 3 minutes of attention it deserves.  It’s the opposite of “Don’t Think Twice” and “It Aint me Babe” even though they are both breakup songs.  “You just kind of wasted my precious time” is too much truth for anybody.  “Someone who would die for you and more”.   Indeed.

After I started writing this, I planned to include a quote from the song to demonstrate how acute it was, how poetic the lyrics, how marvelous the insights.  But I ransacked the verses and have nothing that isn’t really kind of a cliche: “memories linger on/It’s like a sweet, sad, old song”.  Yeah, that’s original.

“We awoke from our dreams/Things are not always what they seem”.  Yeah, nailed it.

All right– so it’s not a masterpiece.  I will concede that musically, it is fresh.   The “la-la” chorus fades into echoes of itself, before joining into a large group affirming there is a future for this relationship, if only…

It’s just associated in my mind with a relationship that went bad long ago, and music always tickles us somewhere.

 

[whohit]Can We Still Be Friends[/whohit]

At the latest consumer electronics shows, there was not a single headphone with the traditional 3.5mm jack being offered. Not one. But no wireless connection has the sound range of a traditional wired connector. Of course, lower quality didn’t stop the CD, or MP3, or bookshelf speakers, or Radio Shack– so why should it stop Bluetooth?

It should be a bit surprising, given the pace of technological innovation.  We’re all watching HD television now, and a lot of us even have 4K.  And then we buy ourselves a Bluetooth headset.  Because it’s convenient.  Because it’s cool.

Quality is overrated.

[whohit]The Death of Great Audio[/whohit]

Being the youngest of 8 children, many stray albums found their way into my grubby little hands as I grew up.  One of them was Melanie’s “Born to Be”.  I have no idea who brought it into the house, but I think it was abandoned.  I listened to it and grew attached to the raw power and bluesy darkness of the music on it.  One of the songs was “I Really Loved  Harold”.  I found it haunting.

The narrator recounts how she was told when she was little that she would go to heaven if she was good.  Now, she says, she is a long way from heaven, because she tried to find it herself. She thought she loved Harold, then she thought she loved John, and then Alfie, and “almost” Tom.  She loved them “so easy” and loved them “so free”, that she realizes that heaven will not want “to love me”.

It is a dark song, far darker than I even remember, and I remember it as dark and, like I said, haunting.  This young woman had sex with several men.  She was what some of the boys in my class at school would have called a “slut”.  The relationships failed and she moved on in a desperate search for the “heaven” of romantic and sexual love.  But she realizes her mistake too late: heaven will not want to shine on her.

I wonder if she performs the song today, in her concerts (which she still gives, as kind of a nostalgia act).  It would highlight the strange, archaic quality of the song– from a time when a girl who willingly had sex with more than one man could be called a “slut”.  It is amazing that she put it into a song, a confessional song.

Her most exquisite verse:

Hallo, song of the willow,
The dreams under my pillow,
Turned to tears that I cried.
Beauty and love are our riddle,
Never to answer, but always to try.
And, boy, did I try.

There is a raft of novels in that verse: the quest of a young woman to reconcile her ideals of beauty and truth and love with the reality of being, perhaps, ill-used, or with the realization that whatever it is men want from these relationships it was not hers to give or to take, in an enduring sense.  Ill-used?  Today, feminists would have a different term for it, but they would be just as inadequate in defining it as Melanie was when she “tried”.  The difference is, Melanie knows it’s a riddle, and reaches for poetry to express it.  The feminists  think they know it but if they do, they can’t express it.  The feminists think men don’t know it because if they did know it they would admit that the feminists are right.

So if you think Melanie was old-school compliant and dependent you might be surprised to read about her history with record labels and promoters.  She was her own woman, as independent-minded and formidable as any one, willing to dump a major recording contract when they didn’t respect her artistic integrity.

Another thing I remember about Melanie was a bizarre appearance on Ed Sullivan.  Sullivan usually looked a bit askance at pop acts.  He presented them because he wanted to be relevant and kind of hip but you could tell he didn’t know what to make of them and longed to get back to the talking Mexican mouse.  When he introduced Melanie, however, he clearly was impressed by something about her.  She was sitting on the floor of the stage surrounded by friends– one thinks of the word “acolytes”– looking groovy and priestessly and magical, and Sullivan chatted with her for a moment and she seemed totally befuddled by this strange man in a suit trying to ingratiate himself with her.  She smiled as if Sullivan were talking in a language she didn’t understand and she didn’t want to be rude.

She performed “Peace Will Come According to Plan”, if I remember correctly.

She also appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.  Again, she is clearly respected and admired by the host: unusually, Carson tries for sincerity.  And you can see why: she seems utterly authentic and real.  You can almost see Sandy Duncan and Ed McMahon on the couch shrinking from her in fear.  For God’s sake, don’t ask me if I believe in peace or spirits or mother earth!

An exquisite performance of “Lay Down”.  Note that really strange audience she is performing for, in Germany.  They look like they have no idea.  They clap like they had been instructed to just before the performance.  Precisely on the beat, yah?

The evil twin of “I Really Love Harold”, by the way, is Alanis Morrisette’s “Unsent“.  In one  generation, the experience of casual sex has been transformed from shame and despair to how good it felt to cry in front of him for the first time or fall asleep on his couch.

 

[whohit]A Long Way From Little: Melanie Safka[/whohit]

I should like the Tragically Hip.  They are Canadian– though that’s really not relevant to me in that regard.  They are fairly authentic: no factory beat, no synthesis.  They are honest and hardworking and true and they ignored the temptations of American pop stardom and stayed here.  They actually refer to Canadian things in their songs: hockey and Newfoundland and the CBC.  The band itself is musically decent– far better than, for example, than Crazy Horse, Neil Young’s awful backup band for several albums.  They can crack a beat. I respect them.  But I’m not a fan.  I tried.  I loaded up four of their albums on my music player and listened to them on my walk.  It only reminded me of why I never cared enough about them to have a collection of their albums.  It’s their lyrics, mainly.  Here’s a sample, picked at random:

I’ll be short and brief And to the point
The fighting has resumed
In that tone of voice
The plague is exhumed
He said “What I’m going through
Is essentially all true
Made no less amazing
By the fact that it’s see through”

And here’s another:

You triumphed over will
You had immunity to kill
You had your dreams fulfilled
And I love you still
But there's a power beyond control
There's a fire in the hole
Ah the nights are getting cold
All your secrets will be told
Turn your lanterns low

As long as you can dig up proof
As cold as water through the roof
Brutal as depicted truth
That kid's a fuckin' goof
Turn your lanterns low
But there's a power beyond control
There's a fire in the hole
Yeah the nights are getting cold
All his secrets will be told
Turn your lanterns low
Alright

What’s it about?  The Hip’s lyrics, mostly by Gord Downie, are allegedly “poetic”.   But the artist they remind me the most of is not Dylan, or Lightfoot, or Cohen– not by the wildest stretch of the imagination– but more like those pretenders, Mumford and Sons.  Downie’s lyrics are not really about any particular idea or emotion or situation or insight or perception.  They are not.  They have no particularity to them at all: they are snatched out of the air, fragments of isolated half-baked disconnected images without any weight or adherence.  “There’s a fire in the hole/Yeah the nights are getting cold”?  Wait a minute– are you suggesting something about heat and light here, or something about a cold winter night.  Maybe the next line will tell us: “All his secrets will be told”.  Whose secrets?  In the cold or in the hole with the fire in it?  “Turn your lanterns low”.  Why?  Who doesn’t want the secrets to get out?

Read the rest of the lyrics in vain for enlightenment: they are random images with no overall cohesion or purpose.  The Tragically Hip’s lyrics suck. Tell me what this means:

yeah that's awful close
but that's not why
I'm so hard done by

It was true cinema a clef
you should see it before there's nothing left
in an epic too small to be tragic
you'll have to wait a minute
cause it's an instamatic

Not only are Downie’s lyrics disappointing to me.  I think they are just about the worst lyrics of any major band I can think of.  Even Mumford and Son’s sound more coherent, with their ridiculous…

‘Cause I have other things to fill my time
You take what is yours and I'll take mine
Now let me at the truth
Which will refresh my broken mind

So tie me to a post and block my ears
I can see widows and orphans through my tears
I know my call despite my faults
And despite my growing fears

Now, I don’t object to the idea of discordant or absurd images or sequences of images, but I do object to random images that have just one connection to any over-all artistic entity: that they happen to be sung in sequence.

I suspect that some of these writers have heard Dylan songs that struck them as random sequences of jarring images and ideas.  They are seriously mistaken.  Dylan is always either telling a story or commenting on the world in parody and creating a set of images that tell you something about the players in the story, or the narrator, or the object of desire, or whatever he’s thinking about:

They are selling postcards of the hanging
They’re painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They’ve got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tightrope walker
The other is in his pants.

Above all,  Dylan’s images are almost always striking, funny, and memorable.  Downie’s are not: “Hairbird plucks a hair from a sleeping dog/To build her nest, she said I’ve looked around and I like your hair best”.  These lines really are incredibly lame and incomprehensible– not because they are difficult to understand, but because they really don’t hold anything to be understood.   They really don’t belong to an idea or an impression or a narrative or even an emotion.

Does Downie believe there really is a deeper meaning to his lyrics?  Quite probably.  I would guess that Downie would not see a whole lot of difference between the quality of his lyrics and some of Dylan’s.

The mistake here is not unusual.  Some great poetry is allusive and obscure, but not everything that is allusive and obscure is poetry.

[whohit]Tragically Unhip[/whohit]

And stop appreciating real talent.

Here’s the argument: Beyonce can sing really, really good.  So when she performs at Obama’s second inauguration, she decides to not take a chance on not sounding good and goes with the lip-synched version of the national anthem.

Wow, she thinks.  I nailed it.  Woohoo, look at me!  Look at the lavish praise pour in for my inspirational performance!

Here’s the key part, the crux of the matter: she didn’t tell you that she was not really singing.  She didn’t keep her mouth closed.  She didn’t hold up a little sign saying “I’m actually just moving my lips to a recording”.  No, she put all of her energy into this monumental effort to give all of her “authentic”, fantastic self into this performance of a digital recording.

And you are an immature little wuss if you don’t like it.  Do you hear me?  Stop not liking it.  Stop thinking there is something phony about it because… well, not because it’s not phony, because it incontestably is phony, but because we are all grown-ups now and don’t care if it was fake or not because, after all, Beyonce can really sing, so you can just think about that as you are stirred, nay, inspired, nay revolted by this bullshit.

So if Dave Shumka, the writer of the CBC post, wants to go out and hear some “live” music and doesn’t mind if it’s pre-recorded, bully for him.  Go to it!  Pay your $150 and sit down and watch the stage and enjoy get your thrill from watching some super-model stand there and move her lips in synchronization to a recorded performance.

Just don’t post some bullshit sign at the venue advertising live music: it is not.   Post a very large, clear sign saying “Lip-syncing Tonight” and watch the audiences role in.  If you are worried that not very many people will show up to watch fake live music, then you are the one who should grow up, suck it up, and stop lying to people.

Incidentally, I can’t think of a single song by Beyonce I care about anyway: she’s just another diva, like Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, and a host of others who sing, pretty well, songs that have no significance whatsoever.  The songs are all merely carriers for the noise of her voice.

[whohit]Lip-sinked[/whohit]