web analytics

Pop Rock Nation

Tag: Paul McCartney

  • Eminem the Bogeyman

    In my email this morning was an ad targeting parents of children much younger than my college and high school kids.  Take a look:

    This is an out-of-touch marketer. If the goal to strive for alteration and invoke another E name overrides common sense marketing and being topical, then I guess they hit their goal.  But Eminem as the bogeyman?  Go ahead, click the image and make it big so you can see it.

    I don’t want that kid listening to Em except maybe a clean version of Mockingbird.  But I’m not so sure I want her listening to Elmo either.   There’s a middle ground, and my hackles raise up when I see music being used to scare parents.   Look, this happened with blues, with jazz, with doo-wop, with pop and Lord knows, it happened with rock.

    But isn’t it time to say, “I don’t need that little cutie to be a real emo kid and start cutting herself, but you’re not going to scare my family.   She’s listening to Louis Armstrong, early Bach and a mix of the more melodic McCartney tunes.  She’s quite fine, thank you.”  For her seventh birthday, we’re buying her the new Common release.

    Maybe I’m  overreacting, but this ad ticks me off.

  • Album Review: The Fireman is Paul McCartney – Electric Arguments

    Our boss, Mike, always finds things to live blog.  I’m going to suck up to him and try to live blog a CD review.  I have had the CD for almost two weeks but I have only listened to it while sharpening pencils or ignoring my ringing phone so it’s almost fresh.  It’s 10:45pm.  Mrs. Rock just went to bed. I’ll write a little background and then review the CD as I listen to it.  There will be no second impressions, but that’s OK because I know a lot of Beatles fans will buy this and only listen to it once anyway.  I’m not saying they shouldn’t.  I just know how they are.

    Let’s remind ourselves what The Fireman is.  The Fireman is Paul McCartney and a British producer who calls himself Youth.  In addition to his production experience, Youth brings knowledge of electronica and dub to the collaboration.  Bass is really important in dub music, so it’s going to be pretty interesting to hear what he does with a bass player of Paul’s caliber.  Paul is known to be a fan of reggae music (not just ganja), so if you think of dub as an offshoot of reggae, maybe Paul knows something about dub himself.  The Fireman released two albums in the 1990s.  They made a half-hearted attempt to hide their identities first time around.  Now, I wouldn’t be surprised to find Electric Arguments filed under M in my local record store.

    (more…)

  • New Music Files 11/24/08: Special Monday Edition

    I hope the music industry doesn’t use this week as a model going forward.

    Not only are there albums coming out this Tuesday, like normal, but there’s also a handful of albums coming out today (Monday), and one album that came out yesterday (Sunday)! All of this left me at a loss for when I was going to publish my column this week. Y’all can’t be doin’ that, record industry.

    Anyway, lots of big names this week. Here’s the line-up.

    Guns ‘n Roses Chinese Democracy: You’ve waited fourteen years. You thought it would never see the light of day in your lifetime. Hell, most of us never thought it would see the light of day in ANYONE’s lifetime. However, Axl Rose and his merry band of scabs have finally released Chinese Democracy. One of you guys will have to tell me whether it’s worth the wait. Unless I hear absolutely mind-blowing things, I’ll stick to my copy of Appetite for Destruction…although I must admit that I am intrigued. BTW, this album is only being released at Best Buy stores, bestbuy.com and iTunes.

    (more…)