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Pop Rock Nation

Author: Paul Lorentz

  • Matt Keating Plays a Show Just For Me…

    …well, me and six other people.  Or seven. 

    Matt Keating at The Frequency in Madison
    Matt Keating at The Frequency in Madison
    A particular blessing and curse of living in a city like Madison which is just big enough to occasionally attract a really great national “indie” act, but small enough that, in all likelihood, very few will have heard or even heard of that really great “indie” act, is that occasionally, you might stumble into a show like the one Matt Keating put on at a new downtown club just off of Madison’s Capitol Square called The Frequency. 

    Blame it on the Brewers, who are right now closer to a World Series appearance than they’ve been since Ronald Reagan was president, who happened to be playing on home turf that night (the game was showing on the TV in the bar, and the bartenders kept flipping back and forth between that game and the just-as-crucial and far-more-suspenseful Cubs/Mets match-up).  Certainly, piss-poor promotion was a factor.  I hadn’t really seen any ads for the show (or any other Frequency show) in the local weeklies until last week when I chanced upon a not-entirely-flattering blurb in The Onion’s AV Club – and I’d been looking!  

    But then again, there’s something about Matt Keating and his music that almost seems to invite and even welcome a small turn-out.  And this, indeed, was the smallest turn-out for a live music event I’d ever witnessed as a participant (topping even ABC featuring Martin Fry’s matinee on the Country Stage at Taste of Waukesha in 2006).  And of the half dozen or so in attendance, I was almost certainly the only one who wasn’t hearing Matt Keating’s unassuming folk rock – an intimate, genuine, unfailingly melodic and endearingly unpretty variety which calls to mind Tom Petty just as easily as latter day singer-songwriter saints like Elliot Smith.  

    But it was okay.  With a crowd that small, Keating and his able backing group seemed to have a fine enough time playing for themselves as much as anyone else; and the evening had a pleasant tinge of what-the-fuck nihilism to it.   Still, the songs ruled, and Keating and crew gave the few of us who showed up the show we paid for.  Actually, given that the price of admission was a paltry five bucks, they gave us way more than the show we paid for.  (And if you got to the joint an hour or so earlier, you could hear their sound check, which included covers of Tom Petty and the Byrds as well as Keating’s own “Runaway Clowns”, from the bar)

    In person, as on record, Matt has an effortlessly self-deprecating sense of humor, and he peppered the show with a few stories, a few jokes (mainly on himself), and a shout-out the soundman.   Before playing a song called “They Came In May” about how grief sometimes takes us by surprise, he offered a touching tribute to singer-songwriter Chris Whitley who died of lung cancer in 2005, Matt recalled how the two of them lived on the same street and just sort of hung out together, until one day Chris didn’t show up.  

    Drawing mainly from his latest album, the double disc Quixotic – easily the strongest record of Matt’s career, and probably my favorite new record of this year so far – along with a couple of new songs that you might find on his MySpace page, the show was alternately raucous and tender and, like the record itself, just a really damn good time.  One of my personal favorites of the new songs “Between Customers”, about a humiliatingly unrequited crush he once had on a girl with whom he worked a Baskins & Robbins counter as a teenager.  In the song, she asks him to give her a ride up to the local cruising spot to see if the guy she has a crush on is there – ouch!  

    A song called “Daddy’s On the Roof” was as goofy and sweet and it’s title might suggest, a remembrance of Keating’s dad who’s favorite hobby, according to Matt, was to get drunk, and sing Irish songs from the roof of their house.  (I want that dad!)  Other highlights included “Louisiana” and “Sorry Son”, both powerful singalong rockers that hint at politics without really being political, and “Lonely Blue”, a song from his first album, Tell It To Yourself, released on the Alias label in 1993. 

    It was one of the songs that made me fall in love with Keating’s music when I was a frustrated 20-year-old college art major, and it sounded fantastic on a night when I’d snuck away from my partner and kids and our big yellow house in the suburbs after dinner to catch a show downtown.  What a weird, strange, embarrassing, wonderful night it was.  And it was nice to thank Matt in person for stopping by. 

    The new record is not to be missed and if you buy it from Matt’s Personal Music Store, “all proceeds go directly to Matt Keating”. He’s also got the album’s terrific opener “St. Cloud” available as a free mp3 download on his website.

    Matt’s set list:

    St. Cloud
    Who Knew
    Sorry Son
    Do in the Dark
    Between Customers
    Daddy’s on the Roof
    Confidential
    They Came In May
    Little By Little
    Lonely Blue
    Louisiana

  • Paul’s Found Vinyl – Episode 2: Eric Martin Band

    Artist: Eric Martin Band
    Title: Sucker for a Pretty Face
    Label/No.: Elektra 60238
    Year: 1983
    Peak Chart Position: #191
    Producers: Kevin Elson and Rodney Mills
    Singles: “Sucker for a Pretty Face” (Mainstream Rock #42); “Don’t Stop” (didn’t chart)

    SIDE A:
    Sucker for a Pretty Face
    Don’t Stop
    Private Life
    Ten Feet Tall
    Letting It Out

    SIDE B:
    Young At Heart
    Just Another Pretty Boy
    One More Time
    Catch Me If You Can
    Love Me

    Judging by the Cover: Looks very power pop to me. The little earring. The heavily shellacked junior mullet look. The rouged cheekbones, and coy androgyny of the sideways glance. The voluptuous pink lips. The black jacket over the red t-shirt, and a lapel pin of the band’s logo. Seriously, what’s not to love. Except, yikes! That creepily exploitive silhouette in the background! Still… his face looks familiar. Where have I seen him before? Oh, shit. What have I done? Do you know what this is? Do you know who this is? Here’s a hint: I’m the one who wants to be with you, deep inside I hope you feel it too.

    What It Sounds Like: Yup, by the end of the decade, Eric Martin would be the lead singer of one of the wankingest hair metal bands ever: Mr. Big. But in 1983, he was leading an eponymous sextet (the other five are pictured with comically feathered hair and blank looks on the back cover) playing the kind of soul-destroying-but-super-catchy hard rock (with keyboards!) that other, arguably more talented bands like Survivor and Journey were taking to the bank. As demonstrated by this LP, the Eric Martin Band really could have been contendahs in the 80s second-tier film soundtrack sweepstakes. Their sound has just the sort of crassly generic bigness that would sound great next to, say, a montage featuring Ralph Macchio preparing himself for, like, the challenge (any challenge) of a lifetime. Needless to say, I love it. The title track has a galloping beat that’s hard not to love, and other songs like “Ten Feet Tall”, the piano-driven, Hammond-organ accented “Private Life”, and “Just Another Pretty Boy” all have an appealing bar band feel to them (that is the kind of bar band that plays in a bar in a 1983 Demi Moore vehicle) that seems thankfully far removed from the Hollywood pop metal scene of the early 90s. On the other hand, the ballads that close both sides of the LP rival Air Supply for pure, shameless, guilty-pleasure treacle. As it turns out, Eric Martin did land himself a spot on the soundtrack of the 1984 film Teachers (starring Nick Nolte and – what? – Ralph Macchio!). But that song isn’t here. (And frankly, though I remember loving it when I was in junior high, it’s been ages since I’ve seen Teachers, so I couldn’t tell you what scene you’ll hear Eric Martin singing in.)

    Recommended If You Like: Survivor (the band, not the TV show), Journey, Second-Tier Sports Movies, Feathered Hair and Jumpsuits

    CD Availability: In the late 90s, “Sucker for a Pretty Face” was reissued in Japan with newer, more generic cover art, and five bonus tracks. Right now, the cheapest you’ll pay for it on Amazon though is $55. Yikes. Keep the vinyl – it’s good.

    The Highlight Reel: Snippets of “Sucker for a Pretty Face”, “Private Life”, “Ten Feet Tall”, “Just Another Pretty Boy”, and “One More Time”

  • Commercial-isms: Lee Jeans vs. The Cars

    Usually, when a company is willing to fork over the licensing fees to use a classic pop song in a commercial, they’ve made some kind of connection between the song’s lyrics and the product they’re selling – even if it’s just a catchphrase removed from its context.  I always thought it was funny how the Disney Cruise ads discreetly cherry-picked Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life”.  But the new ads for Lee Jeans dispense with lyrics altogether in their use of The Cars’ awesome new wave hit “Let’s Go”.  Instead, they pitch an Obama-worthy message about their jeans’ utilitarian qualities and modest price points (as opposed to designer jeans with triple-digit price tags) over the Cars’ distinctive synth-meets-guitar, retro-futuristic hook.

    But just as we expect to hear the dearly departed Benjamin Orr sing “she’s runnin’ away”, or the song’s rallying call “I like the night life, baby!”, or even the handclaps that punctuate the chorus – clap! clap! clap-clap-clap! clap-clap-clap-clap! – or the sci-fi laser show instrumental break that follows them, the poor commercial’s over. This song is the very definition of power pop and I’d be hard-pressed to come up with another song which packs so damn many delicious hooks into three little minutes.  So while it’s nice to hear the little bit of “Let’s Go” we do hear, it’s hard to fight my gut feeling that the song’s been squandered on this ad.
     
    Of course, this got me thinking that “Let’s Go” – one of the Cars’ best (certainly my personal favorite), but maybe not their best known (with “My Best Friend’s Girl” serving as the title of a current multi-plex romantic comedy) – is now 30 years old.  And the ad seems to be appealing to people maybe just out of school who are too old for their parents to be buying them clothes, but too broke to be forking over more than 20 or 30 bucks for a pair of jeans.  That is, twentysomethings.

    And I’m guessing that most twentysomethings, even if they’ve heard of the Cars (maybe from their parents!), probably have no clue what the song is that’s playing behind this ad.  It just, y’know, sounds sorta cool.  I hope I’m wrong about that, but an informal survey of a couple of my officemates born in the 80s (and who are both fairly knowledgeable about 70s and 80s music) suggests otherwise.  Neither of them knew the song, and both only had a passing familiarity with the band who produced it.  I might as well have been asking about the Routers song of the same name, a guitar instrumental from 1962 to which the Cars’ hit makes a couple of obvious musical allusions.  (If the song had been recorded today, they might’ve used samples.)

    Personally, I have very specific memories of “Let’s Go” that go back to the daily after-school trip we’d take each weekday to pick my Dad up from work in Kenosha.  Whenever I hear the song, I think of riding in an AMC station wagon with the sun setting over Hwy 50 at its interchange with I-94, the Brat Stop restaurant (before it burned down and was rebuilt), and the Factory Outlet Mall, which was new back then.  And I remember thinking that it was by E.L.O. on account of the violins on the verses, and Benjamin Orr’s Jeff Lynne-style falsetto flourish on the chorus.  The ad’s target audience might not care, but that’s just the point.  It’s weird and sad to hear such a fantastic song used in a way that presupposes listeners’ indifference to it; to hear it gutted of most of its intrinsic excitement and reduced to little more than semi-stylish background music for an ad about, y’know, cheap blue jeans.