As rickrolling achieves "macarena"-like stature...

A full commitment's what I'm thinking of. You wouldn't get this from any other guy. Unless Astley believes he's the only man on earth capable of fidelity, he's totally negging you.


We know The Game and we're gonna play it.

holy shit, this was 16 years ago.

miley cyrus was not even born when this happened.



Where is the big-ass MTV Obamarama party? Where is Barack's Fleetwood Mac? A hologram of Will.I.Am on CNN doesn't count.

(Edit: Morning Anthony remembered that all the jazz I'm referring to happened at the inauguration, not election night. The infant Miley was indeed alive for this. So the tone of this post should be giddy-who knows what insanity the music industry will cook up January 20th?).

This Was #12 On The Pazz & Jop Singles Poll

And yet I can't believe anyone enjoyed listening to it.



Eminem, if that 3% possibility happens, I'm going to blame the lack of a "Mosh '08."

You Kids Don't Know PM Dawn?

Boston Arts Academy students (more here) paying homage to videos at least a decade old. I'm assuming their teacher must have shown them a bunch taped in the '90s---how else would kids today know about Kris Kross?

It was the "Jump" homage (starts at 2:20) made me realize that, to a 17-year-old today, videos from my youth must be as hilarious as, oh, Flock Of Seagulls was to me at that age. "LOL! THESE KIDS ARE FIERCE!!! WHY ARE THEIR CLOTHES ON BACKWARDS?!?!?! OMGWTF!!!!" As a kid, I always wondered how people could earnestly be into '70s and early '80s fashions. Now a new generation gets to laugh in bewilderment. I wonder if I'll tell my hypothetical child about the day I tried to play basketball after school with my clothes totally krossed out.

Scared, Not Out Of Here

I'm half-surprised that Matthew Perpetua's Q&A with Michael Stipe on his PopSongs blog hasn't gotten more attention (I hope fan boards are burning up over it at least). Stipe is remarkably candid (this couldn't have happened in 1994) and Matthew doesn't waste the unexpected access. That his comprehensive song review blog could achieve such a grand finale is proof that music blogging of the non-commercial variety is still a worthwhile thing.

But I'm only half-surprised, because REM hasn't made more than a handful of worthwhile songs in the last decade. As much as I enjoy a track like "Imitation Of Life" or "Hope," I'd happily give them up if it meant history could be altered - if the band had stuck to their oft-repeated promise that if anybody left the group, they were done. What could have been remembered as the college rock Led Zeppelin is now an amalgam of the worst aspects of late XTC and late Rolling Stones. Imagine if their reunion for the Rock'n'Roll Hall Of Fame had been their first performance since 1996! We might not have minded Michael Stipe over-enunciating "Gardening At Night!"

In that alternate reality, Matt and Michael's dialogue could be a highly publicized book. It could probably still get published in this one, too. If you are now or have ever been a die-hard REM fan, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Separated At Birth?

Built To Spill, "Twin Falls" (1994)



Biz Markie, "Let Me Turn You On" (1993)



Did Doug steal Biz's failed high note, or did they both stumble onto this great off-key hook?

Despite worshipping Big Star's Third since high school, my admittedly diminshed antipathy for their first two albums (described in a review that actually inspired someone to post my address and phone number on Hipinion, promising to kick my ass) kept me from bothering to check out the Box Tops, the genuinely successful band Alex Chilton led in his youth. Despite reading plenty about his change in vocal style, I still wasn't prepared for just how gritty his baritone was at 18. Even you know "Cry Like A Baby" by heart, you need to check out his dancing.

A 60's singer, an '80s song, a '90s video. Guaranteed ironic fascination for 2008.

A few weeks ago, before moving, I used a decade old copy of Billboard's Top 40 Hits as a guide and downloaded dozens of songs by pop stars underrepresented in my music collection. Now I have more CD-Rs with names like "'80s Cars/Wang Chung/Paula Abdul mix" and "Animals 1964-1969" and life is better for it. While debating whether to keep Cyndi Lauper's "I Drove All Night" (bite me, I'm unemployed), I remembered Roy Orbison's version and checked youtube to see if the video really did feature Jason Priestly and Jennifer Connelly (back when their respective hair and chest inspired awe and disbelief) canoodling in the desert on various modes of transportation. My memory was correct, but what surprised me was the bumpada-bumpada bass sequencer underneath Roy's past-prime warble and "uh-huh, yeaaaah"'s. Thanks to American Recordings, MTV Unplugged and the niche market they spawned, its unlikely we'll ever see a pop fogey brought back in such a garishly "modern" context again; Santana's the only such success of late that wasn't merely crassy class, and that was almost a decade ago.

An example of why this sucks? Aerosmith's Big Ones, which I also recently downloaded. Rocks is the godhead, but I've got a lot of love for the second commercial heyday of these decrepit transvestites. Along with the power ballads and dramatic descriptions of molestations consensual and otherwise, they had a tremendous, nasty, FIERCELY rocking track about fucking in an elevator...and it went top 20! The song even ends with a trumpet and a capella harmonies! Now, if they want to get some attention without calling Diane Warren, they have to make an album of "classic blues" tracks. Zzzzz. I already have classic blues tracks, I want Aerosmith to take me to the other side! Take me to the other side, where Desmond Child, John Kalodner and a synth-horn section wait patiently. Even a band named Velvet Revolver, a band with SLASH in it, can't reach these heights today, thanks to their choice of Weiland as a singer. He got the clothes right (love that Night Porter vibe) but he's so 90s-glummy a vocalist that I keep hoping Ian Astbury will bash him over the head and the lead them into "Fire Woman." But that schmuck's too busy with the 21st Century Doors. Christ.

Ignoring extremely awesome yet too-self-aware-for-prime-time bands like Eagles Of Death Metal and Electric Six, two acts on this planet give me hope for the future of gaudy 80s feel-good rock. One is AC/DC, who've claimed that their next album will be a DOUBLE CD. They can't fill all that with just Brian Johnston's incomprehensible gargling, so why not some RAP CAMEOS?! I'm down! Did somebody play the band that remix of Nelly's "Work It"? Don't get Rick Rubin on this, though, he had his chance.

My other hope against hope is Taylor Hicks. While this detested American Idol winner can't really rawk, his success should have made Clive Davis realize that AMERICA WANTS BAR-ROCK BACK! Down with soul patch, up with soul patrol! Give this man's man some "Simply Irresistible" jam and watch it skyrocket to the toppermost of the poppermost, where hopefully it will inspire other aging men of song to loosen up and give us the kind of Spuds McKenzie trash that can dignify a decade like this. Seth Rogen knows what time it is! Why doesn't anyone else?

Fred Durst needs to start directing videos again.

Just cuz you didn't know Puddle Of Mudd had several rock #1s doesn't make them anonymous, Al. Their sound is shrill Nirvana/Local H rather than groany Pearl Jam/Creed, and, Vines aside, that's been an anomaly in rawk since the days of Durst. Thanks in part to that Kurt-like wail, their romantic paranoia has slightly less of a cock-rock undertow than most of their peers. Still, the hits on Come Clean were early examples of the misognyist psychosis that is "active rock," with "Blurry" more disturbingly vulnerable and "She Hates Me" more disturbingly giddy than most of the truly anonymous bile that's followed. Wes Scantlin was (is?) freqently seen in photos and videos wearing a black cap over his blond mane, and for that alone they were more identifiable than Fuel then or Three Days Grace now. Those videos were pretty damn memorable, too (respect the Durst).

Recent singles have been merely more of the same, but the success of "Psycho" and "Famous" imply that Scantlin may be a radio lifer, an emotionally unstable Tom Petty, rather than the eventual prison lifer he comes off as. I'm not saying everyone should like them, but they wouldn't be as "repulsive" as Al finds them if they were as "anonymous" as he claims.

I believe this is the first rebuttal to a negative Puddle Of Mudd review that wasn't at least 50% profanity.

The song is underrated enough (guitars the glossy cousin of "Pretty Persuasion," released the same year, and the singer's anger makes the off-rhyme of "love" and "up" in the second pre-chorus sound not so much forced as evidence that he's too pre-occupied to deal with niceties), but NOBODY ever told me how crazy the video is. The band isn't seen performing the chorus until the last minute. Instead, we get footage of wild horses. And why pause the woman-scorned drama for thirty seconds of slo-mo ponies anyway? Metaphor? Why do we hear the gunshot? Why is the tramp pawing the wedding singer? Is he the cheater? Is that why the bride steps on the burning guitar? All this as well as the cars, fireballs and ugly beardos you expect from early '80s AOR videos (I love when you catch the singer looking down at his guitar, like it matters if his hand is at the right fret). Now that video budgets have been dramatically slashed, it's time for this kind of unrefined pretension to make a comeback.

Dear God, Time-Life thinks I have this much money to spend on revisiting my adolescence.

I'm comfortable with Mark McGrath hosting Extra (what better gig for the leader of the most admirable sell-out rock act of the 90s than celebrity journalism?), but it's embarassing to see him smiling through 30 minute infomercials for The Buzz Box. That really seems like something Art Alexakis or the dude from Fuel should be doing. After all, McGrath still has his Extra gig. Sugar Ray just headlined Singapore's first international musical festival this August! Infomericals fondly recalling songs by Vertical Horizon, Eve 6 and Candlebox? This is beneath you, dude.

Things seemed so much more promising in 2004, when Shania Twain invited him to duet on her single "Party For Two." There's so much enthusiastic mugging here, you'd think an NBC logo was about fly out of his ass.



It's funny how differently the video for the "country" version plays out, despite its identical treatment. Where Billy Currington sways gentlemanly beside the beaming Twain, McGrath's frenetic moves leave her visibly weary. Both versions feel like they were released much, much, much, much earlier than 2004. Nobody in music is that happy now.

This was hip once.

I took the thirty or so cassettes I still own back to State College over Christmas - the only cassette player I still have access to is the one in my mom's car (My VHS collection will head home before I move to NY as well; it's all about friends, family and outdated media whenever I visit). The first tape I put on was Urge Overkill's The Supersonic Storybook, beating out such worthy contenders as Teenage Fanclub's Bandwagonesque, Girls Against Boys' House Of GVSB, Sugar's Besides and mixtapes with names like Listenable Out Of Unlistenable No. 3, Gimme Indie Schlock! and Shake Some Jangle.

A new CD of The Supersonic Storybook costs less than $10 on Amazon, and I'll buy it eventually. Christgau gives the album a C in the consumer guide, accusing the flashy dandies of "mix-and-match hipster one-upsmanship." That quality isn't as easy to hear as the "sludgy hooks, whiner groans, and arrogant exoticism" today, and that arrogance that has been rendered merely ridiculous by the ravages of time and a lack of success outside of a Neil Diamond cover (which means no songwriting royalties of note for King Roeser, Nash Kato and Blackie Onassis).

Examples of said one-upsmanship and exoticism: reading off the big cities in which "The Kids Are Insane," promoting a "Bionic Revolution," covering Hot Chocolate's melodramatic suicide ode "Emma," and writing their own six minute tale of Native American love and warfare, "Henhough: The Greatest Story Ever Told," immediately followed by the instrumental "Theme From Navajo." My favorite track is "Vacation In Tokyo," which mourns a love who's left Nash and/or King "feelin' the breeze," begging God to "give me back my fantasy." Finally, he asks that girl remember him in his robe on their vacation in Tokyo, as the song climaxes with a repeated run through the opening notes of the Vapors' "Turning Japanese." I shit you not.

In the 90s update of Stairway To Hell, Chuck Eddy, praising them for "making fun of '70s AOR riff-fully and tunefully enough to pass for both satire and the item itself," also observes that these guys could be "Replacements-flimsy," with wimpy vocals that don't quite fit the hey-baby fashion sense. It's that odd presence of a heart on their leisure suit sleeve that endears me to the band. Their last album (though a reunion is afoot), 1995's Exit The Dragon, is a beautiful drag full of heartbreak and angst, peaking with their then-junkie drummer's overdose ballad "The Mistake," which conveys plenty of tragic pathos despite opening with "Travellin' 'cross the USA, it's hard sometimes to keep it together. Nothing but the songs that you play, and a couple kids believin' your sound." It's as if critics misjudged these guys, assuming they were too-cool-for-school jack-offs when rawk cliches and artifice were their only means of expression. Their legacy may be the sole property of clearance CD bins, like so many of their Geffen Records peers, but the final product is more dynamic and affecting than most of the fuzz the era provided.

Here's where I admit that I didn't recognize that the riff on Timbaland and the Hives' "Throw It On Me," one of my favorite singles this year, is the same one from the Elastik Band's "Spazz," one of my favorite songs from the Nuggets box. According to allmusic and wikipedia, the song is credited solely to Timbaland, Randy Fitzsimmons (the Hives' songwriting alias) and Timothy Clayton a.k.a. rapper Attitude. Has anyone seen the liners for Shock Value? Is it credited? Despite this lift, it's probably my favorite rap-rock collabo track since Mike Shinoda and the X-ecutioners "brought the seperation of styles to a stop" with "It's Goin' Down" back in '02.



Hell YEAH, Mike! Putting rap and rock together was a "logical progression on the time line"...in 1985! And yet I'm forever grateful for his enthusiasm.