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Pop Rock Nation

Category: Music

  • The Infatueighties Countdown: #105: “All Out of Love”

    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 rocker. Case in point, the song that starts off this countdown: “All Out of Love”, by the Australian duo known to one and all as Air Supply.

    Graham Russell (the tall blond one) and Russell Hitchcock (the short, dark one) were the kings of adult contemporary ballads in the first half of the Eighties, scoring hit after hit with orchestration-heavy, borderline sappy ballads like “Even the Nights Are Better” and “The One That You Love”. However, “All Out of Love” stands head and shoulders above the rest. Perhaps because it’s one of the few Air Supply hits that has both members sharing vocals. Perhaps because the way Hitchcock’s voice crests at the end of the dramatic brige. Maybe it’s that impressively long note at the end of the song. Any way you slice it, this is one hell of a soft rock gem. You can’t deny it.

    Since the song’s original video is nowhere to be found on Yahoo and Youtube has disabled embedding on it, I am forced to show you an abbreviated version of the song from Arista Records’ 10th Anniversary concert, which was at some point in the late Eighties. Bask in the glory of Graham’s Bolton-esque mullet. Wither in the face of the diminutive Hitchcock’s powerful tenor (thank God he got rid of that curly fro). Revel in the cheesetasticness that is “All Out of Love”.

    And how’s this for hard cock? One day in the mid-Nineties, I found a familar face on the cover of a tattoo magazine. Who knew that the bite-sized lead singer of one of the most notoriously cheesy pop groups of all time had a body full of ink underneath those suits?

  • Steven Page: Just About The Last Person You’d Expect To Be Busted For Drugs

    Never thought you’d hear the words “Barenaked Ladies” and “drug bust” in the same sentence? Well…

    Barenaked Ladies singer/guitarist Steven Page. Photo courtesy of TheHypo
    BNL lead singer Steven Page

    Steven Page, lead singer of Canadian rock band Barenaked Ladies was busted last Friday for possession of a controlled substance in Syracuse, NY (Syracuse? Really?). Cops, suspicions aroused by a car with one door open (?), found married dad Page (whose band just released a children’s album, for crying out loud!) along with two women (??) in a nearby apartment with cocaine and pot. I wonder if the ladies were barenaked??? BWAHAHHAHHAHHA…

    (For those who aren’t really up on their BNL, they are the guys who sing “One Week”, and “If I Had $1,000,000”. Of the group’s two main singers, Steven Page is the fairer, sort of chunky one with the big voice, while Ed Robertson is the darker, more nerdy-sounding one)

    But anyway, I won’t say anything bad about Steven Page. I’m actually extremely fond of BNL..well at least I was until that “Barenaked Ladies are Men” crap. They’re one of the best live bands I’ve ever seen (and the only rock band I know who could get away with a cover of Destiny’s Child’s “Bootylicious”, as they performed the night I saw them). But seriously…who’d have thought that the singer of songs like “Be My Yoko Ono” and “Brian Wilson” was capable of Winehousity??

  • Paul’s MyTunes Baker’s Dozen: A Random Nickel Tour of What’s Playing on My iPod

    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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