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  • Not Necessarily The News – DMB, Prince and (of course) Kanye

    What Would You Say?: If DMB Went Back To Work:
    After a four-year absence from the studio and the loss of saxophonist Leroi Moore, the Dave Matthews Band are soldiering on with a new album and tour. The album is scheduled for release on 4/14, with the tour kicking off in New York on the same day. This new album is produced by Rob Cavallo, who manned the boards for Green Day’s massive “American Idiot” album (speaking of which, where the hell are those guys??). As a veteran of DMB shows numbering into the double digits, I am looking forward to both a new album and tour from these guys. See? I can write something without being smarmy!!

    Photograph by Penner.

    What Will Wendy & Lisa Say?
    In the “I Love His Music, But The Guy’s a Douchebag” department, Prince allegedly revealed himself as a homophobe by saying “God came to Earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever, and he just cleared it all out”. Of course, Prince (who, in case you haven’t heard, has been a Jehovah’s Witness for the past several years)’s people denied that he made the statement, but the New Yorker, the magazine in which the statement was published, is standing by the quote. Talk about sticking your foot in your mouth, especially when you’re an artist who has traded in on gay imagery and tons of gay fans for years. I wonder how a cuban heel tastes in your mouth, Mr. Nelson?

    Mr West: Lip Synching?
    So, according to this news clip, the message boards are abuzz, wondering if Kanye lip-synched his “Saturday Night Live”. Folks, find a place somewhere that has the clips of his performance and you tell me if he’s lip-synching, because if I was miming, I’d have made sure the vocals I was miming to sounded a hell of a lot better than Kanye’s did on Saturday night. Kanye fairly obviously used a background singer to hit the high notes he would have otherwise muffed, and the Auto-Tune was in full effect, but anyone with half an ear can tell the dude wasn’t lip synching.

  • FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #16: Viva Lost Vegans

    STEVE MARTIN  “Grandmother’s Song”  b/w  “Let’s Get Small” (Warner Bros. Records WBS 8503, 1977)

    Novelty songs and comedy records were of no short supply in my house as a kid growing up.  In my Dad’s collection alone, amongst the guitar virtuosos and big western-swing bands, there were scads of 78 RPM platters by the likes of Spike Jones and Kay Kyser’s Kampus Kowboys.  My older brother had the motherlode, of course:  pristine full-length stereophonic LPs of Lenny Bruce, The Smothers Brothers, Woody Allen and Bob Newhart (whose Button-Down Mind we practically memorized;  I can still do the whole “hair-piece” bit), as well as the adult (read: drug-fueled) comedy of Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Cheech & Chong and the incomparable Redd Foxx, who’s still cussing a “blue” streak somewhere, I’m sure.

    My personal favorite was the yellow gatefold double-album from Kermit Schaefer’s Pardon My

    Blooper! series.  What’s more funny to a pre-teen boy than professional broadcasters royally blowing it on-air?  Nothing, that’s what.  (And obviously little has changed, as trillions of YouTubers will testify.)  Hell, I can still crack myself up at any time simply by saying, “Wonder For The Best Bread And Rolls” real fast.  Now that’s entertainment!

    Millions of late-night television viewers fell madly in love with Andy Kaufman and Steve Martin in the mid-’70’s, and I was no exception.  In the years pre-VCR, I would place a cassette recorder in front of the single monaural speaker on my little black & white portable and capture the audio portion of their genius performances on The Tonight Show, NBC’s Saturday Night, Fridays and The Midnight Special for review the next day.  And the next.  And for permanent memorization thereafter.  Kaufman’s bits, being less jokey and more visual, ultimately didn’t translate well to audio.  Martin, however, had by this point crafted the surreal audio joke into an art form.  So if Steve Martin was on Saturday Night Live, I was out in the garage after church Sunday morning, with my brother’s banjo slung around my neck and a prop arrow stuck through my head, doing all the bits.  Most notably this one, where a lovely little “life lesson” ditty quickly descends into a clusterfuck of bestial proportions.

    STEVE MARTIN \”Grandmother\’s Song\” on YouTube

    Learn to play this song, and play it for your kids, nephews, cousins or whatever children you have in your family, and they will adore you forever.  Kids absolutely LOVE this song, especially when they get to sing, “Put a live chicken in your underwear.”  Kids will call it “The Chicken Underwear Song.”  “Play ‘Chicken Underwear’!  Play ‘Chicken Underwear’!” they will scream, and you must oblige, as they have now been exposed to the great surreal masterpiece that is Steve Martin’s “Grandmother’s Song,” and their lives will never be the same.  They will never be sad again, as they can always sing these words and laugh hysterically anytime life gets them down.  I know that’s what I do.

    Side B of this short-but-sweet single provides the title cut from Martin’s 1977 debut LP, Let’s Get Small, from which both these tracks are taken.  Clocking in at a scant 1:24, “…Small” stands as Martin’s classic piss-take on America’s ever-popular drug humor;  simply by changing the word “high” to “small,” Martin becomes a comedian playing a comedian doing a bit about drugs.  Not until Mitch Hedberg slipped in then slipped away did we get a wider bird’s-eye view of the comic brain on drugs.  Since I don’t have a clip of this bit handy, I’ll leave you with this somewhat related, yet significantly more chaotic sketch from the same year, pairing Martin with a different kind of wild-and-crazy guy, The Who’s Keith Moon.

    STEVE MARTIN & KEITH MOON on YouTube

    Steve Martin’s career, which extended beyond standup and into acting, writing and music, is chronicled thoroughly in his best-selling 2007 autobiography, Born Standing Up.

    NEXT WEEK: Four attractive young men from Athens, GA release a single.  And the rest is history.

  • The New Music Files 12/16/08: Ending the Year With a Bang

    Well, folks, we’ve come to the end of the road for 2008. The last big release date of the year. The labels are emptying their chambers until 2009 (and from the looks of the ’09 release schedule…those chambers won’t be emptied until we’re way into 2009). Here’s what you can expect to see on the new release shelves in stores today.

    Fall Out Boy Folie a Deux: This is supposed to be Pete Wentz and the boys’ “political” album, originally scheduled to release on Valentine’s Day. While I kinda like FOB (their last album impressed me, actually), I’m not so sure that I want to hear them talking about politics. Anyway, Folie a Deux continues their move from emo to power-pop as evidenced by their hit single “I Don’t Care”. Debbie Harry and Lil’ Wayne-of course-are among the guests on this album.

    Anthony Hamilton The Point of it All: This man, ladies and gentlemen, is a soul singer the way they used to make ’em. His first two albums have been excellent, and even the pre-fame vault releases that have been put out are pretty good. The Point of it All is touted as a more uptempo effort from Anthony, but I’ve heard the whole album, and it’s not much different from his first two. This is a good thing, because I was scared when I found out the first single had a cameo from rapper David Banner.

    Keyshia Cole A Different Me: It took Mary J. Blige 13 years and seven studio albums before she went from “troubled” to “diva”. Keyshia Cole is trying to turn the same trick in five years and three albums. Of course, Mary had to deal with drug and alcohol addiction and an abusive relationship. Keyshia’s pretty much only had to deal with being a hoodrat. This new album is already off to a shaky start, as the first single heads back to the grave of Tupac Shakur one more time. Leave the man alone! He’s been dead 12 years now!!!

    Soulja Boy Tell ’em ISouljaboytellem.com: What’s that sound? It’s the sound of Soulja Boy Tellem’s career dying a quick and undignified death! The maker of last year’s biggest novelty hit returns for round 2, only this time, no one cares.

    Jamie Foxx Intuition: Back when Jamie was playing Ugly Wanda on “In Living Color”, did anyone think the words “Oscar winner” would precede his name? Probably not, but here we are a decade and a half later, and Foxx has a successful dual career as actor and singer. This, his third solo album, features more slightly lecherous R&B (dude, you’re 40!) with cameos from T.I., Ne-Yo, and (you guessed it) Lil’ Wayne.

    But wait, there’s more!

    The All-American Rejects follow up their breakthrough album, Move Along, with When the World Comes Down, which features the hit single “Gives You Hell”. They’re joined on this week’s release schedule by rapper Plies (didn’t he just release an album?), Josey Scott & Saliva, and in this week’s oddest release, Vibes,a reggae album by Heavy D. Yes, that Heavy D.

    On the reissue tip, The Bee Gees re-release their Love Songs compilation a full month and a half in advance of Valentine’s Day.How thoughtful. There’s also the annual Dave Matthews Band live album (I think this might be one of the last shows sax man Leroi Moore played), a best of from Ghostface Killah, and budget compilations from the likes of Bob Dylan, Brooks & Dunn and REO Speedwagon, so if you’ve been interested in checking these bands out, you can do so at a low price.

    Get your full list of this week’s new releases here.

    And with that, “The New Music Files” is taking the remainder of 2008 (and the first week or two of 2009) off. Enjoy the holiday season and see you next year!!