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Pop Rock Nation

Category: News

music-news-from-breakups-to-the-lastest-buzz

  • Pazz & Jop: Before We OFFICIALLY Turn The Calendar Over To 2008

    Real quick, though: Interesting potential Grammy performance alert: The Time (of “Jungle Love” and “Purple Rain” film fame for those of you with no soul whatsoever) are reuniting on the Grammy ceremony and performing with Rihanna…which should be pretty goshdang interesting. Are Time members Jam & Lewis delivering a subtle shot to star pupil Janet Jackson for leaving them behind on her upcoming album (which I’ve heard is *very* good)?
    Anyway, what I originally started writing: many of you know the Village Voice as the bastion of the New York City liberal. I *used* to enjoy reading their music reviews (headed by the venerable if occasionally wrongheaded Robert Christgau). Every year, they have a who’s who of music critical intelligentsia vote on their favorite albums and singles of the year, and every year the results are…well, they’re kinda predictable.
    Not to say they’re wrong. Their picks are uniformly solid, although I gotta admit that I don’t *get* the whole big deal about LCD Soundsystem (who came away with the year’s best album in their poll). I also don’t get why everyone salivates over Jay-Z’s “American Gangster” (his album is better than Ghostface’s? And Lupe’s?-which also somehow wound up below Britney Spears-REALLY??) when it’s (to my ears) just as mediocre (in a dependable kinda way) as “Kingdom Come”. The list did, however, remind me that I need to get that Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings record that I’ve walked past for the past four or five months every time I’ve gone into Virgin Megastore.
    Singles list? More of the same. Lots of indie-pop, lots of Winehouse (a little ironic in the Morissette sense that “Rehab” checks in at #1 on their singles poll just as Wino finally heads off to actual rehab!), lots of T-Pain (let’s face it, the guy was *inescapable*).
    I’d write more about the list, but frankly, I’m tired and the words are starting to run together.
    Check out the list and tell me what YOU think:

  • "Here, My Dear": Revisited (An Appreciation)

    There have been many great breakup albums over the years. Most are not specifically related to the end of a relationship, but sound good when the lights are off and you’re sitting alone in your apartment with a bottle of Jack (see: White Ladder by David Gray). However, occasionally you’ll hear an album by an artist reeling from a breakup who has decided to put all his or her energies into documenting the end of a relationship and it’s aftermath. Examples of that would be Bruce Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love and Beck’s Sea Change.
    …And then there’s Marvin Gaye’s 1979 masterpiece Here, My Dear, an album that will leave you slack-jawed at it’s beauty as much as it will leave you scratching your head at it’s weirdness.
    A little backstory for you. Marvin’s first wife was Anna Gordy, the sister of Motown Records’ founder Berry. Their marriage ended acrimoniously in 1976, at which point Marvin was already dating the woman who would go on to be Mrs. Gaye #2, Janis Hunter. As part of the divorce settlement, Marvin was asked to record an album and donate a significant portion of the royalties to his soon-to-be ex-wife.
    I’m pretty sure Anna Gordy expected nothing like Here, which is essentially a musical document of their courtship, marriage and breakup. As such, it is one of the most lyrically forthright (and disturbing), honest albums ever recorded. Musically, it’s the equal of any album released by Marvin that decade (and if you’re reading this, I’m sure that you’re aware of how highly What’s Going On and Let’s Get It On figure in the lineup of classic albums).
    It’s disturbing to hear Marvin’s heavy inhaling and exhaling during the funky yet tortured “Anger”, even more so to hear him hear him ask “what I don’t understand/is if you loved me/how come you turned me in to the police?” in the jazzy suite “When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You?”. In between, Marvin grumbles about having to pay his ex’s attorney fees and not being allowed to see his child. He shouts out the year of the couple’s marriage and divorce in the middle of one song like a deranged carnival barker. He then dedicates a love song to Anna, practically howling her name with a mixture of desire and disappointment. By the album’s end, he’s “Falling In Love Again”, but after hearing him audibly go insane over the course of the album, you wonder if he’s just fooling himself, and if you know anything about Marvin’s tragic end less than six years after this album was recorded, you’ve gotta imagine that he probably was.
    Here, My Dear gets the deluxe two-disc tribute treatment from the folks at Hip-O Records tomorrow (1/15), with alternate takes and a second disc which assigns contemporary producers like Prince Paul and ?uestlove to the songs on this album. This album was excellent enough that I will be purchasing it for the THIRD time. Whether you’re a Marvin fan, an aficionado of soul music or someone who just loves artists that are unafraid to be honest in their work, I advise you to do the same.
    Here’s a Youtube clip of “Anger”. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything with Marvin singing anything live from the album, so this will have to do:

  • Rock ‘N Roll Hall of Fame 2008: Who?!??!?

    Next year’s class of inductees for the Rock ‘N Roll Hall of Fame was announced a couple of days ago, and my overwhelming response to the motley crew of artists inducted this year is: huh?
    Well, not totally. Madonna’s a gimme. While those that argue that “rock ‘n roll” music (as in: white guys playing guitars) has nothing to do with Madonna, most people with sense are fully aware that the term “rock ‘n roll” encompasses just about every form of American popular music post-1955. Hell, would folks consider Bill Haley and Little Richard rock ‘n roll nowadays because they don’t sound like The White Stripes?
    Anyway, Madonna’s a legend. She was a gimme. Next.
    I love John Mellencamp, but he’s always been a poor man’s Bruce Springsteen to me and a whole bunch of other folks.
    Leonard Cohen? From the little bit I know of him, fantastic songwriter. We’ll file Mellencamp and Cougar into the “this could have gone either way” pile.
    Maybe I’m salty about the Dave Clark Five and The Ventures being inducted because they’re not of my era of music. But, seriously, I can list a cross-genre list of at least 50 artists currently not in the HoF that made better music, made interesting music for a longer period of time, and had greater influence on music and popular culture at large than these two bands. We could start with bands that were on the ballot this year and not voted in (The Beastie Boys, Donna Summer and Chic chief among them), and then head off to Yes, Metallica, Genesis, Hall & Oates, Electric Light Orchestra…and that’s just to start…Depeche Mode, New Order/Joy Division, The Go-Gos, Devo, and that list just came from a sideways glance at my CD collection. A lot of folks are teed off at the fact that neither Rush nor Kiss is in the Hall of Fame, and I might even make the case for Luther Vandross and Janet Jackson (both of whom are eligible) before including those two inducted bands.
    Much like the Grammy nominations, you’ve just gotta roll your eyes when it comes to things like these. Congrats to the inductees.