In the 1970s, performance artist Marina Abramović created a piece called Rhythm 0 in which she arranged a collection of 72 objects – instruments of both potential pleasure and potential violence (including a gun and a single bullet) – on a table, and sat passively for six hours essentially inviting viewers to do what they would to her with those objects without fear of either reciprocation or retaliation. You can hear the artist talk about the results – yes, someone did load the gun – here.
Well, this isn’t quite so extreme. But there are parallels. “Drunk Girls”, the new video by LCD Soundsystem for the first single of their just-released album features the band, led by songwriter-producer James Murphy, surrendering themselves to the initially merely annoying but increasingly violent whims and wiles of a gang of people dressed up as evil pandas. For instance, James Murphy’s trying just to get through the song’s first verse, not pulling any crazy rock star moves, no windmilling arms, or skyward fistpumps – just a guy standing there singing while being prodded and fondled by panda suit people.
The video’s camerawork seems to be working in conspiracy with the pandas. Before we can get too wrapped in the minor abuses being rained upon Murphy, who only momentarily seems to defend his personal space (and seems to catch himself, as if he knows he’s transgressed somehow), the camera jerks to bandmate Nancy Whang. The pandas jiggle her microphone while she tries to sing. Annoying, yes, but harmless. Soon enough, though, the evil pandas are blowing air horns in people’s ears, gassing people with colored stage fog (I think?), stripping them of their clothes, tackling them, dragging them around the floor, smearing make-up on faces, duct taping them together and setting off firecrackers around their bodies. There’s property damage. There’s vandalism. It’s like a contained riot.
Sure, this was almost certainly a more controlled “happening” than Abramović’s Rhythm 0 – at the very least, there were no fatal weapons being brandished about – but you start to get a sense by the end of the video things have gone a little beyond the group’s “artisto-masochistic” capacities. Moreover, there’s something strangely adorable about the panda people – specifically their costumes, the cheap-looking coveralls, the Sharpee facial features are as cute a third-grader’s homemade Halloween costume, but as one of the video’s Youtube commenters noted, it’s also as sinister as a Slipknot get-up. It certainly looked a lot more fun to be one of the pandas than to be “with the band”, so to speak.
All this sorta got me thinking: Lindsay Lohan. (Deep thoughts by Paul Lorentz.)
But then again, maybe this was just another exercise in personal limit-stretching and self-defeating unrockstardom for James Murphy, whose video for the 2002 debut LCD Soundsystem single “Losing My Edge” (a hilariously specific indictment of hipsters) featured Murphy getting slapped in the face by an anonymous hand (or several)… like a hundred times. The band’s third, and what Murphy has suggested will be final, album This Is Happening, hit stores last week.
Sunday morning, I came downstairs and sort of half-heartedly flipped on the TV. The show I wanted to watch was still a good 18 minutes away, but sometimes it helps in our house to stake the claim in advance. As it happened, my partner must have been watching one of those Bill Engvall-hosted, hey-y’all-check-out-them-rednecks reality shows the night before, and the TV was still tuned to CMT, which – amazing these days, given the “M” in its initials – was actually playing a music video. Blame it on Sunday morning inertia: I didn’t rush to change the channel. But then, after a minute or so of doing nothing in particular – oh, look at the fog out there, it’s gonna be a muggy day, I thought absently to myself while surveying the progress of my garden – I found myself nodding and humming along to the tune they were playing on the TV.
The song, “Lover, Lover”, by one Jerrod Niemann, has one of those ultra-laid-back choruses, the kind conducive to lazy Sunday morning head-nodding, but which also fairly begs to be the soundtrack for all your summer tailgate parties, bonfires, and grill-outs; its simple complaint – you don’t treat me no good no more – delivered without self-pity but with a matter-of-fact cool underscored by richly chorded Opryland harmonies, all accompanied by little more than clapping hands, an acoustic guitar, and a bass drum keeping the downbeat as dutifully, as reliably, as unpretentiously as a 50s sitcom father providing for his family. Boring, bordering on enticing. (Or maybe it’s the other way around?)
In the song’s video, Niemann comes off as a paragon of unspectacular manhood and charmingly impish macho – he’s not going to stick around for further neglect, but he’s not going to get all tear-in-his-beer about it either. Instead – so the video goes – he’ll just sit out on the front steps, looking not-so-bad in blue jeans and a t-shirt, strumming his guitar, singing his song, and, y’know, inviting (or rather, enlisting some of the neighbor kids to put up handwritten posters inviting) passers-by to gut the apartment of all of his corporate career-woman girlfriend’s prized possessions. (Don’t try this on Craigslist!) I’m sure there’s a retrograde comment on the evolution of traditional gender roles in there somewhere, but… shoot, do you hear that bass voice in the harmonies?
Kansas-native Niemann has been making a decent living as a songwriter for the last half-decade or so (although he didn’t write “Lover, Lover” – it’s a Sonia Dada cover), scoring his biggest hit when Garth Brooks recorded “Good Ride Cowboy”, and recording a couple of self-released records along the way. Last year, he became the first artist signed to Brad Paisley‘s new label Sea Gayle Records, and started work on his major label debut Judge Jerrod and the Hung Jury. While citing such old-school country stars as Eddy Arnold, Lefty Frizzell, and George Strait as influences, Niemann doesn’t seem to belabor the typical country image too much. He eschews the traditional cowboy hat for something a little more train conductor. He may be a-pickin’-and-a-grinnin’, but not on a hay bail against a Hee-Haw blue sky backdrop; rather on the front stoop of his building in the shadow of a big city skyline. “Lover, Lover” is a great little song that’s already a Top 20 country hit, but with its effortless, just-this-side-of-gimmicky, Uncle Kracker-ish chorus – the song’s strongest but also most artistically suspect asset – it’s making its way up the Billboard Hot 100 as well.
Judge Jerrod and the Hung Jury is set for a July 13 release and is currently available for pre-order.
The Donald Trump could hardly have wished for a better Celebrity Apprentice contestant than former Poison frontman Bret Michaels. Not only has the guy proven an able contestant, landing himself in the final two by a combination of unharnessed creativity, fierce motivation, and an endlessly endearing lack of pretension, he’s also demonstrated an admirable sense of personal accountability and a willingness to accept feedback and learn from it. Fellow contestant Rod Blagojevich could’ve learned a thing or two from Mr. Michaels. Michaels knows who he is – and he’s no brain surgeon – but if he’s not saving lives, so to speak, in his chosen profession, he’s clearly made a choice to contribute to the saving of lives by staying in Trump’s game, and staying focused even when his personal life threatened his ability to stay on. And all this in a season which saw some supposed winners (for shame, Darryl Strawberry) check out early.
This week, Bret Michaels gave The Donald the kind of unexpected bonus only the most cynical Goldman Sachs exec could envy when he was hospitalized – again – after experiencing what doctors call a transient ischemic attack, but what the rest of us call a “warning stroke”. Further tests revealed that he has a “hole in his heart”. (Cue the Extreme song!) All of which has added a new layer of suspense to tonight’s Celebrity Apprentice live season finale in which Michaels could very well win the show’s top prize for his charity, the American Diabetes Association. As a diabetic myself, and a former non-fan of Poison, Bret Michaels – I salute you!
Celebrity Apprentice was less kind to 80s songstress Cyndi Lauper, who, like comedienne (and first firee) Carol Leifer, seemed especially vulnerable to the “mean girl” politics of Team Tenacity. In one episode, pro-wrestler Maria Kanellis expressed frank disappointment when she discovered that her childhood hero was actually a person with three dimensions, human feelings, and, as a project manager, could be firm, driven, and demanding. Cyndi was also fighting a good fight close to this writer’s home. Her True Colors Fund works to advance equal rights for the LGBT community. When she was fired a couple of weeks ago, she was clearly frustrated and disappointed by the decision. And so was I. I was really hoping for a endgame rematch of the season’s first challenge in which Lauper and Michaels faced off as their respective teams’ project managers. (Bret won that one, although Cyndi won as project manager in the same episode in which Kanellis griped about her bossiness as a boss.) Here’s a song from Cyndi’s 1993 album Hat Full of Stars which, like Cyndi herself on this show, has gone woefully underappreciated. Written with the Hooters’ Eric Bazilian and Rob Hyman (who plays their band’s namesake keyboard on this song), “That’s What I Think” is, to my mind, one of Lauper’s best singles, and sounds like a fitting post-mortem to her adventures in Trump’s parallel universe.
When the original line-up of 80s prog-rock-meets-pop-rock supergroup Asia reunited three years ago to commemorate the 25th Anniversary of their classic self-titled debut album, nobody expected it to last, given the band’s tumultuous first run. In fact, the reunion did run into some adversity early on, but not from dueling egos. Both singer John Wetton and drummer Carl Palmer were hospitalized for heart problems. Both came out okay, and the reunion lasted long enough to yield a miserable dud of an album called (with unintentional irony) Phoenix in 2008. Lucky for the band, and for their fans (myself included), the reunion has also lasted long enough to put out a “sophomore” record Omega. And Omega is spectacular. The record, which hit stores a couple weeks ago, re-embraces and further advances the critically-derided formula upon which they first built their brand – four minute pop songs, performed monumentally – with a fiery intensity. The album’s first single is “Finger on the Trigger”, maybe the most straightforward classic-rock sounding song they’ve ever put out. Freaking Asia. As Wetton sings on the first chorus: We got a good thing going on. Damn straight, they do.
One band that won’t be reuniting any time soon is the Norwegian pop trio a-ha who, earlier this month, played their first North American concerts in more than 20 years as part of their “Ending On a High Note” farewell tour. Though a-ha will always be best known to American audiences as the one hit wonder behind “Take On Me”, the group has put out nine studio albums including last year’s Keane-ish Foot of the Mountain and remains popular throughout the world. Meanwhile, Rhino Records has just announced the upcoming release of a new a-ha singles compilation and deluxe edition remasters of a-ha‘s first two albums, 1985’s Hunting High and Low and the following year’s Scoundrel Days, which will only be available to U.S. customers via the label’s website website. Here’s a 2008 live performance of their 1987 hit “Manhattan Skyline” from the Scoundrel Days record. This song’s Jeckyll & Hyde combo of sweetly yearning synth pop verse and raging hard rock chorus blew me away back when I was in the 7th grade. Wave good-bye…
Another crucial album getting the deluxe treatment from Rhino this spring is The Cure‘s massive 1989 album Disintegration. The rest of the band’s early catalog, up to the 1986 collection Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, had already been reissued a couple years ago, but fans have had to wait this one out. And while most Cure die-hards will agree it’s not their best record, it remains one of their most important – not just within their own body of work, but in terms of bringing “alternative” music to a mainstream audience. Unlike the band’s previous album which yielded a trio of short, sunny pop singles (“Hot! Hot! Hot!”, “Just Like Heaven”, and “Why Can’t I Be You?”), Disintegration is one of their densest, darkest, dirgiest records – one which explored failing relationships and lead singer Robert Smith’s insecurities about aging with an often nightmarish candor. Still, it became their most commercially successful and iconic record. At a time when hair metal still ruled the airwaves, the pop success of songs like the grimly atmospheric “Fascination Street”, and the lovely, understated “Love Song” helped to prime radio for the darker still confessions of Cobain and Staley.
The Swedish pop duo Roxette have been playing shows across Europe and working on a new album all spring, hoping to complete the record this fall for an early 2011 release. It’s been almost 10 years since singer-songwriters Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson have released a full length album. In the interim they’ve put out a handful of singles and greatest hits comps, and both have worked on solo projects. Gessle put out a 2008 solo album called Party Crashers, and while Fredriksson also issued a solo album – 2004’s The Change – her most important solo project has been staying alive, following the discovery and diagnosis of a malignant brain tumor in 2002. Of their recent live shows, Per Gessle said in a recent interview: “Both Marie and myself want a total live situation these days, no click tracks, no sequencers or computers on stage… Lots of ad lib, great harmonies and silly jokes in the dressing rooms.” Sounds like classic Roxette to me. Roxette: #Almost Unreal#
And finally, this week marked the passing of legendary jazz pianist Hank Jones at the age of 91. Here he is in a solo performance, a young man of 75. Until next week…
