I’m paraphrasing here, but Billy Joel once gave an interview where he said something like “Soft rock sounds too much like soft cock. I want a hard cock!”. Funny statement coming from one of the originators of the modern-day “lite music” sound, but his sentiments echo those of most who consider the dramatic pop ballad the bane of modern-day music.
Not so, say I. A well-sung, melodic ballad can be just as good as any edgy […]
If you haven’t been watching Bravo’s Flipping Out this summer, you should really start. It’s the kind of show that makes you really reassess just how crazy your boss might be, or just how degrading your job might be, or just how anal-retentive your partner or spouse might be. This reality show follows obsessive-compulsive (to the hundredth power) house-flipper Jeff Lewis and his crew of long-suffering assistants. In one of last season’s best episodes, Jeff had one of his assistants drive his cat to an appointment with an acupuncturist, and insisted that the assistant have a discussion with the cat on the way over to explain where they were going and what would happen there.   Jeff Lewis’s mindboggling demands and his perfectly timed, deadpan one-liners are the true star of this show; but the absurdist antics of his assistant Chris Elwood (a sometimes actor) sometimes threaten to steal the occasional scene.
This week, Chris Elwood drew his boss’s ire by wearing his iPod headphones all the time, which had everyone he ran into asking what he was listening to. It was one of those scary moments when I actually understood and (gulp) agreed with Lewis’s righteous indignation – it’s so… unprofessional! – but then, I wanted to know what Elwood was listening to too, and felt cheated when I didn’t find out. Then again, one could hardly fault Elwood for turning up the Tunes and tuning out his boss’s self-absorbed rants. If I were Elwood, I’d probably do the same.  And here, apparently, is what I’d be listening to:
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