The Vaselines’ ”Sex With an X”Scottish indie-popsters The Vaselines got their biggest break a couple years after they broke up, when Nirvana featured a cover of the group’s song “Jesus Doesn’t Want Me for a Sunbeam” in their classic MTV Unplugged set. Formed around singing-songwriting duo Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee, the Vaselines’ entire recorded output, summarized neatly in a 1992 compilation called The Way of the Vaselines, amounted to little more than a couple of EPs and a single full-length album called Dum Dum. Their songs – which boasted titles like “Oliver Twisted” and “Monsterpussy” – were as adorable as the Japanese ceramic figurines you might find in any given antique shop, and just as cracked as their glazes. (Sample lyric: “I’m gonna skin it and wear it as a hat, every day.”)
Like the earliest episodes of South Park or Pee Wee Herman’s original stage act, The Vaselines’ music is delivered with rudimentary technical skill, a formal vocabulary geared towards kids (South Park’s goofy animation, Pee Wee Herman’s goofy costume and voice, The Vaselines repetitive, elementary singalong melodies), but with content deeply inappropriate for that audience. That’s absolutely the case with the group’s 2010 reunion single, even if the title track from their 20-years-after-the-fact sophomore album Sex With an X isn’t half as lyrically as naughty as its title would suggest. The first time I heard this – Feels so good, it must be bad for me – I thought, “Wow, these guys could be writing for Barney or The Wiggles.” Thankfully, Kelly & McKee use their powers for good and not evil, and they also deliver a great little video playing an indie rock duo who left indie rock to become sunbeams for Jesus (err – a nun and a priest), but ultimately return to their musical and spiritual roots. Amen to that.
Is it sacrilegious to compare Kurt Cobain and Tupac Shakur?
Before you start screaming, believe me. I know you can’t compare their output from an artistic standpoint. Cobain was clearly an A-list songwriter and an effective vocalist who made two (three, if you count “Unplugged in New York” classic albums, while Pac’s output was decidedly mediocre. His legend is based more on charisma and image than music.
But take a closer look. The two died at relatively the same age (Kurt was 27, Pac was 25), both died by gunshot, and while their musical paths were widely divergent, they both were the spokespeople for a segment of their generation. I’m lucky enough (or culturally and musically eclectic enough) to be able to claim both as representations of the era in which I came up.
There’s no denying what Kurt did to popular music, even if (shock! horror!) his influence is ever-so-slightly overstated. A lot was made of his symbolic toppling of Michael Jackson’s “Dangerous” from the top of the Billboard charts, but a closer look into 1992 reveals #1 albums like “The Bodyguard” Soundtrack and Michael Bolton’s “Timeless…the Classics”, chart-toppers post-“Nevermind”. With that said, though, Kurt’s kicking down a door that R.E.M. had pried ajar is extremely significant. Whereas in the fall of ’91, I asked my friend Dee to make me a “rock” mixtape and returned with a Warrant and Poison-heavy piece of work, I was checking out much harder, less glammed-up sounds barely a year later. A whole generation of kids did the same.
After all these years, the music still holds up. A lot of folks forget (or don’t realize) how poppy Nirvana’s music was. While the musical structure was off-center, the melodies were straight from The Beatles. Think about that next time you find yourself singing along with a Nirvana song. “Teen Spirit”, “Lithium”, “Pennyroyal Tea” and “Rape Me” still sound fresh on the radio after nearly two decades, and Cobain’s shadow still looms large over the rock scene today. Next time you hear Chester Bennington shrieking on the radio, think about whether that sound would have existed in contemporary pop music without Cobain and Nirvana. Whether you want to praise or curse him for the existence of bands like Linkin Park is another story entirely.
It’s interesting to imagine what Kurt would be doing with his music if he were still alive. After all, his contemporaries Pearl Jam still make commercially relevant music, as do partners-in-rage-if-not-sound Nine Inch Nails. Hell, anyone who’s heard “Pablo Honey” knows that Radiohead pretty much started out as a Nirvana tribute band, and Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell was still pretty relevant until his recent ill-fated collaboration with Timbaland. Would Nirvana still be on the cutting edge? Would Kurt have said “fuck it” and retired? Would he be a kook like Axl Rose is these days? Shit, would the Foo Fighters (an absolutely underrated singles band) even exist? That’s to say nothing of Courtney Love. If Kurt really did write much of “Live Through This”, I’d say there was a helluva career in store for her, had they stayed together.
At any rate, Kurt deserves credit for bringing an anti-establishment attitude straight into the mainstream and not doing a goddamn thing to temper or change it. And when you break it down, isn’t that what rock ‘n roll is all about?
Hey Mikey. Sorry I deleted your comment. Oops!! (he mentioned “I Can’t Drive 55” by Sammy Hagar as one of the other courtroom videos from the mid-Eighties. See, man? I’m giving you your props.)
It’s been…hmmm…about two weeks since I last bought a CD, which is fairly major stuff for me. I went record shopping in Cambridge yesterday, though, although I was tempted to break my streak and buy Eddie Murphy’s “So Happy” on CD (which would actually give me the entire Eddie Murphy non-comedy collection on compact disc…yes, I’m lame), I ended up picking up a few records, including Talking Heads’ “Fear of Music” (which only cost $1 and I already own on CD, but the dualdisc won’t burn onto my computer), LaBelle’s “Chameleon”, Spandau Ballet’s “Greatest Hits” (because I misplaced the CD), and this little gem.
I’ve seen pictures of Mike Sembello performing “Maniac” on TV, and he looks like this burly, heavy-set dude. So why the hell did he decide to come out with what might be the gayest album cover in history? Beats me.
Anyway, the current tally on the iPod is currently over 17K. Let’s get right down to bidness.
Track One: “Say You Want it All” by Amel Larrieux
Those of you not familiar with the name may remember Amel Larrieux as the voice behind the R&B duo Groove Theory, who had a Top 10 hit in 1995 with “Tell Me”. I’m surprised it wasn’t a bigger national hit because they played the shit out of it in New York City. Anyhow, she only made that one album with GT partner Bryce Wilson before going solo. To date, she’s released three pretty good albums of new material in addition to one collection of standards that I really haven’t devoted a lot of time to. This song is pretty standard midtempo neo-soul, with the addition of a peppy horn section, and it comes from her second solo album “Bravebird”. If you cross Sade with Erykah Badu, you’d have a pretty good idea of what Amel sounds like. Good stuff.
Track 2: “Talkin’ Loud and Sayin’ Nothing” by James Brown
Can’t go wrong with The Godfather, who was also the master of catchprases. “Say it Loud-I’m Black & I’m Proud”, “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag”, that line “I don’t know karate, but I know ka-razy!!” from “The Payback”. We miss you JB. Hmmm…I wonder if we can find that Eddie Murphy “singers” skit on YouTube. Well, I’ll be…
Track Three: “Better Days” by JOE
R&B singer Joe Thomas, who until recently used only his first name professionally, has actually been in the news recently. Apparently, he’s been accusing his former labelmate R. Kelly of sabotaging his career by calling radio stations and telling him not to play Joe’s songs for fear that Joe would take some shine away from him. While I wouldn’t put that past Kells, didn’t he give Joe two of his “Loveland” leftovers for one of his albums? Wouldn’t that almost be self-sabotage, then? Regardless, Joe, despite being somewhat inconsistent, overall is a much better listen than Kelly, capable of writing songs that are nuanced and melodic. This is the title track from his somber 2001 album, which took some inspiration from the 9/11 tragedies. It’s a pleasant midtempo song with an uplifting message, and it also starts with a quote from The Five Stairsteps’ “Ooh Child”, adding to the song’s optimistic feel.
Track 4: “Territorial Pissings” by Nirvana
And now for a COMPLETE change of pace, let’s go with one of the most frenetic offerings from “Nevermind”. Two things come to mind when playing this song. One is, did Nirvana really kick-start the whole alterna-rock changing of the guard, or did R.E.M. do it six months earlier with “Out of Time”? Second, this song opens with a sarcastically sung snatch (ooh! alliteration) of The Youngbloods’ “Get Together”, making it the second straight song (ooh! alliteration) played that references another song in it.
Track 5: “Selena” by Wyclef Jean feat. Melissa Jimenez
True story: Wyclef Jean’s “Carnival 2: Memoirs of an Immigrant” is actually good (much better than you’d expect from ‘Clef after a trio of solo records that went from OK to terrible to OMIGOD this sucks!). Unfortunately, this belated tribute to the Tejano superstar is…oh, about 13 years too late and is one of the weaker songs on the album. I think I’ll be unchecking this. Actually, there’s a pretty neat breakdown in the middle of the song that elevates it to average status. I won’t be unchecking it, but it’s still one of the weaker tracks. Still, check the album out. You might be surprised. Who else can get Paul Simon on a rap record?
Track 6: “Tell Me What You See” by The Beatles
This is definitely one of the more incidental songs on the “Help!” soundtrack, although even incidental Beatles songs are pretty good. Some interesting organ playing on this (shades of “Louie Louie”!) and some pretty harmonies too.
Track 7: “Sulky Guy” by Elvis Costello
The man who was originally Declan MacManus ranks as my favorite Elvis (hell, if I had that name, I’d change it too), and while I can’t place what album this song may have originally come from (I burned it from a compilation), it sounds late Eighties/early Nineties, right in line with songs like “Handle With Care” by Traveling Wilburys (only slightly messier and garage-y) or “My Brave Face” by Paul McCartney (a song that Costello co-wrote). My two questions of the evening to close this edition of the Sunday Seven out.
1) How in the name of Jeebus did Elvis Costello snag Diana Krall? That’s almost as bad as Janet Jackson and Jermaine Dupri!
2) If Lenny Kravitz and Elvis Costello did a duet, would you be able to tell who was singing what??
It’s interesting to imagine what Kurt would be doing with his music if he were still alive. After all, his contemporaries Pearl Jam still make commercially relevant music, as do partners-in-rage-if-not-sound Nine Inch Nails. Hell, anyone who’s heard “Pablo Honey” knows that Radiohead pretty much started out as a Nirvana tribute band, and Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell was still pretty relevant until his recent ill-fated collaboration with Timbaland. Would Nirvana still be on the cutting edge? Would Kurt have said “fuck it” and retired? Would he be a kook like Axl Rose is these days? Shit, would the Foo Fighters (an absolutely underrated singles band) even exist? That’s to say nothing of Courtney Love. If Kurt really did write much of “Live Through This”, I’d say there was a helluva career in store for her, had they stayed together.