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  • Just My Thoughts On Adam Lambert

    These are just my thoughts ladies and gentlemen, just my thoughts.

    I think that Adam Lambert is insufferable.
    Adam Lambert is what I call forced flamboyance. From the over the top album cover to his awful display of trying way too hard to shock people at the American Music Awards so that he’d be in the news the next day, none of what he’s doing seems natural. Some of your greatest performers in music are themselves, just turned up a couple of notches. When it comes to flamboyance, Cyndi Lauper seemed to have it right. It seemed like her energy and creativity was simply her, but just dialed up to a 10. I don’t feel the same way about Lambert. It all just feels so fake.

    For Your Entertainment
    For Your Entertainment
    I really enjoyed him on American Idol (and if you want proof, just read my Vital Idol blogs from last season) and was looking forward to buying his album. I heard he was really pushing the envelope and the gimmick early on in the production of his album, but I was still willing to give it a shot. Even if he didn’t do Mad World and Tracks Of My Tears type of songs, he was still interesting enough that I wanted to hear where he was going.

    And then I saw his American Music Awards performance (I had to find the edited portion online). His over the top performance told me that he didn’t trust his record to stand on its own merits. And I absolutely hated his comments after he was asked his thoughts on whether or not he thought ABC would censor the West Coast version of his performance.

    This is what he told Rolling Stone before knowing whether or not his performance would get edited on the West Coast feed of the American Music Awards:

    “It’s a shame because I think that there’s a double standard going on in the entertainment community right now.

    Female performers have been doing this for years . . . pushing the envelope about sexuality . . . and the minute a man does it, everybody freaks out.

    We’re in 2009 . . . it’s time to take risks, be a little more brave, time to open people’s eyes and if it offends them, then maybe I’m not for them. My goal was not to piss people off, it was to promote freedom of expression and artistic freedom.”

    “In a roundabout way it’s a form of discrimination because it is a double standard. They didn’t censor BRITNEY [SPEARS] and MADONNA macking onstage did they? But yet two men kissing they’ll censor.”

    Discrimination? Ha!

    Well, they didn’t censor the kiss but ABC sure did censor the facial pelvic thrust. I understand the guy is young and he has to fight the stereotype that he’s simply a byproduct of a television show, but to already have a built in excuse for getting censored shows me that whatever he did was completely planned, not a spur of the moment like he said it was, and just irresponsible. If you really are a rebel, don’t throw anyone else under the bus with you.

    Oh, and Adam, lest you forget that what Madonna and Britney Spears did was on MTV which isn’t broadcast television.

    But here’s the bigger thing for me. The dude had probably 60-100 million pairs of eye balls on him at one time or another during Idol. There was no need to turn some of those folks off on a low rated music awards show performance. It was quite silly actually and bad marketing. How about you sell some records first before resorting to those kinds of tactics?

    Folks like me who were going to buy Lambert’s For Your Entertainment because of his body of “work” on Idol decided to skip out when we saw the shock value marketing ploy. The idea is to create a fanbase, not to turn off potential fans. It’s just not good business sense.

    He’s talented enough to come back from this, but whatever he did didn’t work. It looks like he’s getting trounced this week by Susan Boyle who is also a byproduct of a television show. And she didn’t have to pelvic thrust anyone in the face (thankfully) to do it.

  • CD Review: John Mayer’s “Battle Studies”

    John Mayer’s first album, “Room for Squares”, set up damn near permanent shop in my music rotation shortly after its’ 2001 release, and the two studio albums that followed were even better. Unlike most people, I wasn’t hung up on Mayer’s matinee-idol looks (although I would imagine that most matinee idols don’t have that ugly O-face Mayer has when he performs) or even his admittedly superior guitar skills. For me, it was his lyricism. Somehow, Mayer seemed to tap into lots of feelings I had regarding life, love and relationships. There was an instant and intense relatability.

    Well, I guess it’s true what they say: what goes up must come down. Mayer’s fourth solo studio album, “Battle Studies” isn’t anywhere near as good as the album that preceded it, 2006’s “Continuum”. However, let’s be fair here. “Continuum” was a watershed album-the album that managed to convince even my friends that hated John Mayer (and there were plenty of them) that this guy was a lot more than “Your Body is a Wonderland”. Even though “Battle Studies” doesn’t reach those lofty heights, it’s still a pretty solid work. It’s just a matter of tempering your disappointment after realizing that this isn’t another “Continuum” and then appreciating the album for what it is.

    “Battle Studies” is, is a concept album about relationships. Folks have been comparing being in love to a war for years-think Pat Benatar’s “Love is a Battlefield” or Lenny Kravitz’s “Battlefield of Love” or Jordin Sparks’ “Battlef…” OK, you get the picture. Mayer stretches this metaphor out for an entire album, with mixed results.

    Musically, the album’s fairly restrained. The most energetic song on “Battle Studies” is a very faithful version of Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads”, required playing for every aspiring blues guitarist. In terms of remakes, Mayer has done better (“Bold As Love”, “Free Fallin’”), but this is pretty solid, if a little bit on the karaoke side. He fares far better with original works like “Heartbreak Warfare” and “Assassins”. The latter song has the album’s best lyrics, while the former song comes a close second lyrically but adds an ambient U2-esque musical vibe. It has an expansive sound that’s atypical of Mayer’s vibe but notably still manages to maintain the intimacy that’s a hallmark of his work.

    “Half of My Heart” is taylor made (pun alert) to climb the charts, and as if Mayer needed any help making the song a hit, it features support vocals by music’s current it-girl Taylor Swift. On the other side of things, there’s the simple “Who Says”, which sounds agreeably tossed-off. It’s a simple acoustic ditty (that recalls “The Heart of Life”, one of the best songs on “Continuum”), with unusually acerbic lyrics from Mayer (“I don’t remember you looking any better/but then again, I don’t remember you”).

    Then there’s the rest of the album. Songs like the bluesy “Perfectly Lonely” and the slow jam “All We Ever Do is Say Goodbye” are decent enough, but I don’t get the same spark of recognition and appreciation on these songs that I get from Mayer’s earlier work, and I think that’s the rub here. There’s not a bad song to be heard here, but some of the songs (especially on the last third of the album) sound like John Mayer spinning his wheels. Thankfully, John Mayer on autopilot is still relatively engaging.

  • In the Holiday Spirit with Rahsaan Patterson

    One of the biggest crimes in the music industry is that Rahsaan Patterson is not a bigger star. A gifted songwriter (having written for artists like Brandy and Tevin Campbell) and an exquisite vocalist (think about the love child of Chaka Khan and Stevie Wonder), it galls me that his former “Kids Incorporated” castmate Stacy (Butterface) “Fergie” Ferguson has #1 singles and million selling records and Rahsaan doesn’t even have a major label contract.

    That said, Rahsaan has built up quite the cult following over the past decade and change. He’s released four excellent studio albums and I just discovered his 2008 Christmas album “The Ultimate Gift”. I haven’t listened to much holiday music over the past couple of years (for no good reason), but the combination of the strong writing (6 of the 10 songs are originals written or co-written by Rahsaan), the genuine emotion (this doesn’t seem like a contract filler at all) and that soulful voice put me in the mood for good cheer almost as soon as the Thanksgiving turkey got cold!!

    The track I’ve posted here is his version of Paul McCartney’s 1978 chestnut “Wonderful Christmastime”. While Macca’s version will remain a classic, Rahsaan updates the track with some serious use of the Linn drum machine, a staple of all those classic Prince tracks from back in the day. Makes you wonder what the Purple One would have done with a happy, uptempo holiday song (because, quite frankly, I LOVE “Another Lonely Christmas”, but that song makes me want to slit my wrists. Enjoy!!

    P.S., it doesn’t look like Rahsaan’s main site has been updated recently, but be sure to check out his MySpace page.