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The Twelve Albums Days of Christmas, Day 10-12: A Special Christmas Box
December 20, 2006
Well, kids, my home computer died and today is my last day in the office before Christmas finally hits us, so I have to cheat a little (okay, a lot) and end my "Twelve Albums of Christmas" countdown a bit prematurely. However, I hope you'll find this little holiday R&B love ditty from Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake an entertaining substitute for albums 10, 11 and 12 in my Christmas countdown.
The Twelve Albums of Christmas, Day Nine: Rubber Band Christmas
December 20, 2006
A Rubber Band Christmas is exactly what it sounds like -- an album's worth of Christmas songs, all played on plucked rubber bands. Genius, no? So why, you may ask, is this brilliant holiday classic out of print? Well, just listen to "Ring Rubber Bells" -- the album's high watermark, believe me -- and ask yourself if you want to listen to 13 more tracks of that shit. You do? Really? Are you sure? Okay, weirdo -- you're in luck. There are MP3s of the whole album posted here. Twang on, dude.
The Twelve Albums of Christmas, Day Eight: Aimee Mann
December 19, 2006
If Christmas for you means less holiday cheer and more thoughts of suicide, then Aimee Mann'sOne More Drifter in the Snow is the Christmas album for you. Actually, the world's mopiest singer-songwriter, best-known for her work on the Magnolia soundtrack, doesn't sound quite so down at the mouth here -- but she's still the perfect voice for such stealth bombs of holiday melancholy as "I'll Be Home For Christmas" and "Whatever Happened to Christmas?" (Answer: "It's gone and left no traces.") Yep, it's the perfect alternative to that lump of coal you usually give the Gloomy Gus on your Christmas list.
The Twelve Albums of Christmas, Day Seven: Blackmore's Night
December 18, 2006
Back in the day, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore was a rock 'n' roll badass, shredding for Deep Purple and alongside Ronnie James Dio in Rainbow. But somewhere along the way, he fell in love with a witchy Renaissance Faire wench named Candice Night, who convinced him to put down the axe, pick up a mandolin, and join her in the creation of a new medieval-style band called Blackmore's Night. To fully appreciate the glory of all that is Blackmore's Night, you really have to watch the video for their song "Christmas Eve," which boasts lots of soft-focus shots of Candice in her poofy-bodiced finery intercut with computer-generated forest creatures and angels and whatnot, all frolicking to the lutes 'n' flutes. It really takes you back to the 15th century, doesn't it?
The Twelve Albums of Christmas, Day Six: James Brown
December 17, 2006
Has anyone ever written a more heartwarming Yuletide lyric than, "Santa Claus, go straight to the ghetto -- and tell 'em James Brown sent you!" This is more a collection of ballads than you might expect, but even when he's singing sweetly about holiday cheer, the Godfather of Soul puts more funk into each syllable than most dudes can muster in a lifetime. Yow!
The Twelve Albums of Christmas, Day Five: Billy Idol
December 16, 2006
It's hard to knock an album like Cyberpunk off the top of your list of All-Time Career Lows, but Billy Idol might have pulled it off with this one. Yep, everyone's favorite faux punk has reinvented himself for the holidays an ivory-tickling faux crooner, doing his best Dean Martin and Elvis impersonations on tortured covers of "Let It Snow," "Jingle Bell Rock" and other songs you may never be able to listen to again. It's almost enough to make you long for his horrendous cover of The Doors' "L.A. Woman." Well, okay, maybe it's not that bad.
The Twelve Albums of Christmas, Day Four: A Klezmer Christmas
December 15, 2006
The wonderfulness of today's selection needs little explanation: Oy to the World: A Klezmer Christmas is the creation of a group of musicians called the Klezmonauts, led by a Jewish ad jingle writer from Chicago named Paul Libman, who have the chutzpah to play old Yuletide favorites like "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" in the style of "Hava Nagila" -- with a little surf music and spaghetti western thrown in for good measure. It's an instant Chrismukkah classic!
The Twelve Albums of Christmas, Day Three: John Waters
December 14, 2006
When a man who's best-known for making movies in which fat tranvestites eat dog poop decides to make a Christmas album, you know it's gonna be good. And A John Waters Christmas does not disappoint -- it's full of tasteless treats like Tiny Tim's warbling rendition of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and Rudolph and Gang's "Here Comes Fatty Claus (With His Big Bag of Shit)," angrily dedicated to "anyone who's been pushed and shoved around doing their last-minute shopping at the mall." The best moments are the ones that, unlike Waters himself, don't realize they're being tacky, like Little Cindy's "Happy Birthday Jesus," in which a little girl saying her bedtime prayers apologizes to Jesus for all those men being so mean and nailing him to a tree. Truly, A John Waters Christmas captures the holiday spirit.
The Twelve Albums of Christmas, Day Two: Twisted Sister
December 13, 2006
You know, the way Christmas is rammed down our throats every year -- the mindless consumerism, the forced merriment, the exorbitant electric bills, the incessant holiday music, the awkward office parties -- it often makes me wanna raise my fists to the heavens and quote Twisted Sister's immortal rock 'n' roll war cry: "We're Not Gonna Take It!" So I must admit, I felt a little betrayed when I heard that Dee Snider and the boys had reunited and were putting out a Christmas album. Then I watched the video for their version of "O Come All Ye Faithful" and found it oddly cathartic. This is heavy metal humbuggery of the most deliciously stupid sort.
The 12 Albums of Christmas, Day One: Bootsy Collins
December 12, 2006
Let's face it: Most Christmas albums are a complete waste of time. Does the world really need to hear James Taylor's version of "Winter Wonderland," or Kenny G turning "Silver Bells" into credit card company hold music? I think not. However, once in awhile, a holiday album does come along that is so mind-blowingly awesome, it demands to be heard -- or at least written about in this humble blog. So for the next 12 days, I'll be counting down 12 of my personal favorites.
First up (the partridge in the pear tree, if you will): Bootsy Collins'Christmas is 4 Ever, an album that answers the age-old question, "Can Christmas be funky?" (answer: sort of, but only in the most ridiculous way imaginable) even as it raises another: Where can I get me a Bootsy snow globe??
The Triumph of Taylor (or: Every Generation Gets the Michael McDonald Clone It Deserves)
It's really, really tempting to say that Taylor Hicks' solo debut is going to flop -- but the truth is, every American Idol winner can sell at least 100,000 albums in their first week as stocking stuffers alone, and the "Silver Fox" has got that whole stupid "Soul Patrol" thing going for him, so he'll do better than that. Will he outsell runner-up Chris Daughtry, who moved 300,000 copies of his DAUGHTRY rock album in a single week? Personally, I doubt it -- but he'll easily sell about 220,000 copies, enough to take the top of the charts, even competing against a Mary J. Blige greatest hits collection. [Actual sales: 298,000, better than I expected but still not enough to beat Young Jeezy.]
Fantasia vs. the Snowman
Young Jeezy, The Inspiration. It's a tried-and-true hip-hop formula: Boast about your criminal past, explain how you triumphed over adversity, and have it both ways by making the whole thing a feel-good story even as you continue to shamelessly boast about your criminal past. Young Jeezy, an ex-coke dealer who still refers to himself as "The Snowman" and drops rhymes about cutting his product with baking soda, knows this shtick better than anyone. And it seems to be helping him weather what is otherwise a bit of a growing backlash against the Atlanta crunk/party rap sound. Prediction: 190,000 copies. [Actual sales: 352,000. So much for any backlash -- or for hip-hop being "dead," for that matter.]
Fantasia, Fantasia. This week's other American Idol winner seems to be in the midst of making herself over into a Mary J. Blige clone, which is unfortunate since she's competing with the real deal for album sales this week. I may hope that Taylor Hicks flops, but I know Fantasia will. Prediction: 65,000 copies. [Actual sales: 133,000. Okay, so I don't know anything.]
Ghostface Killah, More Fish. This odds 'n sods collection of new tracks, remixes and stuff that didn't make it onto Ghostface's Fishscale album from earlier this year is actually better than its predecessor. But there's more competition for hip-hop dollars out there right now, and a lot of fans might choose to skip this, thinking it's simply a batch of leftovers. Prediction: 60,000 copies. [Actual sales: 36,000. Ah, so here's the flop of the week. I guess the prospect of leftover fish DOES sound pretty unappealing.]
Tyrese, Alter Ego. This R&B singer-cum-rapper (he has a rapping "alter ego," hence the album title... clever, no?) hasn't had an album out in four years, which makes him a bit of a wild card. His last disc, 2002's I Wanna Go There, went platinum, and his last mixtape was downloaded over 200,000 times. So he might do better than anyone (including me) is expecting. But, J Records has released three singles from this new disc, including one featuring Lil Jon, and so far none has gotten much attention -- so Tyrese may need to come up with a few more alter egos before he can start selling records again. Prediction: 55,000 copies. [Actual sales: 115,000. Yeah, I was way off this week. I need a break. Good thing Christmas is just around the corner.]
And that's pretty much it for new releases this week. My whole "Pick o' the Week" routine is probably on ice until January at this point.
The Los Angeles Times published an article today joining a growing chorus of doomsayers, ready to declare that rap is dead. The impetus for this article? The fact that no rap acts were nominated in any of this year's major Grammy categories. Hmm... so, wait, by that criteria, does that mean that emo and dance-rock are dead, too? Thank God! Cuz those genres sucked big time.
Seriously, though, the LA Times does raise a valid point, even though they wrongheadedly cite the Grammys -- which remain totally irrelevant to any significant trends in popular music -- as evidence. The same article goes on to note that only one "rap" album (as opposed to "hip-hop" albums, which might arguably include crossover records like Gnarls Barkley'sSt. Elsewhere that feature hip-hop beats but very little actual rapping) was among the year's 20 best-selling titles, and that was from T.I., who is hardly one of rap's giants, no matter how much he campaigns to become one (dropping subtle hints like calling his album King, for example). They even got an editor for hip-hop mag XXL to say, "Our problem now is finding enough albums that are worthy of being reviewed." Truly, dark times have befallen us, indeed.
Now, with perfect timing, we even have one of rap's elder statesmen, New York "Illmatic" legend Nas, releasing an album called Hip-Hop is Dead. Never mind that it's a hip-hop album -- Nas' point is that he's old-school and can do whatever the hell he wants, while today's younger generation of rappers have brought nothing new to the table. "It used to be fresh and original," he opined to the Times. "But that day is gone."
So is it true? Is hip-hop dead? Are you kidding me? Why are we even having this conversation?
It's true, none of this year's major hip-hop releases have performed up to expectations -- but guess what? None of the industry's blockbuster releases performed up to expectations in 2006. It was a crappy year across the board, the latest in a continuing downward slide as people buy fewer and fewer albums and turn their attention to downloading ringtones and -- let's face it -- swapping files illegally with their buddies. Relatively speaking, hip-hop did okay in 2006 -- it spawned #1 albums from T.I., Busta Rhymes, Juvenile, Jay-Z, The Game, Diddy, Ludacris. Even Rick freakin' Ross had a #1 album -- not on the strength of a hit single (he didn't have one) or a big rep (it was his debut album), but because he had a hit ringtone, "Hustlin'." I'm sorry, but any genre of music that can sell over a million ringtones, at two bucks a pop, of a song that stiffs at radio is a far cry from dead.
But commercial success aside, there were plenty of signs in 2006 that hip-hop is alive and well and just in need of a slight attitude adjustment if it hopes to follow in the footsteps of rock and survive into a healthy middle period. Veteran acts like The Roots and Clipse released solid, critically acclaimed albums; newcomers like Lupe Fiasco (a skateboarding black Muslim from Chicago) and Lady Sovereign (a wisecracking white chick from London) brought fresh ideas and sounds to the genre. Even OutKast's much-maligned Idlewild soundtrack was hardly the train wreck it was made out to be; it was scattershot, yes, but it was filled with interesting ideas, including several that actually worked (compressing 60 years of black American music into a single song on the Cab Calloway-inspired "Mighty O," for one thing).
So why all this talk of hip-hop being dead, or at the very least, stagnant? Because this year, most of rap's big guns were either silent (50 Cent, Eminem, Kanye) or putting out records that were varying degrees of crappy and/or commercially disappointing (Jay-Z, Diddy, Snoop Dogg, Ludacris, the aforementioned OutKast). There also weren't any new big guns added to the genre this year -- arguably, there hasn't been a major new force in rap since Kanye West, and he's universally considered to be a fair-to-middling rapper at best, more widely acclaimed for his skills as a producer and egomaniacal grandstander (and yes, in hip-hop, that's a valuable talent) than as a true poet of the street, which is what all great rappers are, or aspire to be.
Pundits love to write off entire segments of our popular culture when they go for more than a year or two without producing a new savior -- just ask rock, which gets declared dead at least once every two or three years -- but I think in the case of hip-hop, there's a larger issue at work. For all its talk of seeking innovation or "taking it to another level," the truth is that hip-hop remains deeply mired in its own self-mythology and its own narrowly defined set of rules. Hip-hop has to be "hard," it has to be "from the streets"; it's about beats, not melody, about sampling and reconstituting music, not composing it from scratch. Above all, it has to be built around its vocal component, rapping, and the basic motifs to which all rappers return -- boasts, disses, clever analogies. Anything that strays too far from these conventions is immediately maligned as inauthentic. And if anything really kills hip-hop, it will be this obsession with "authenticity," however it's defined.
Think about it: Rock fans may argue over the validity of a given sub-genre, but rarely will they try to discredit any artist as even qualifying as "rock" in the first place (okay, James Blunt may be an exception). You may hate emo, but you would never say, "Fall Out Boy isn't a rock band." You may not like music that's not sung in English, but you wouldn't begrudge the Swedes their death metal, or the Mexicans their "roc en espanol." Rock 'n' roll has become a universal form of popular music with a hundred different sub-genres -- but those sub-genres all more or less happily co-exist with one another, and even keep one another's gene pools healthy by regularly cross-breeding (pop-punk, prog metal, blues-rock, etc., etc.).
In hip-hop, it's exactly the opposite. Fans gotta "represent" -- the "tru schoolers" hate that ghetto crunk shit, the "gangstas" think Kanye and his pastel sweaters aren't "street" enough. And everybody thinks anything produced outside the United States is phony to the core.
But if you deny all innovation -- if you dismiss every fresh perspective and every attempt to do something new as somehow "inauthentic" -- then of course, you'll eventually find yourself saying, as Nas does, "It used to be fresh and original.... But that day is gone." Because you'll spend your life walking around saying, as I hear from hardcore hip-hop fans all the time, "[fill in the blank] isn't real hip-hop."
But as far as I'm concerned... if k-os isn't real hip-hop; if Sage Francis isn't real hip-hop; if The Coup and Colossus and Lyrics Born and MF Doom and even Mos fuckin' Def and The muthafuckin' Roots aren't real hip-hop (and yes, I've heard it argued... because they play live instruments, see, and that ain't "authentic")... then yes, hip-hop is probably dead. Even if it starts winning Grammys and selling records again, it will eventually be a museum-piece, stuffed-and-mounted, lame imitation of its former self, like Chicago blues and big band jazz. Then it can start smug little preservation societies to keep its dying traditions alive, while the rest of the world moves on to reggaetronica or alt-klezmer or whatever the new trend is in 50 years. And if that's what the Nases of the world want, then I guess they can go right on proclaiming the death of hip-hop. But if you ask me, the reports of its death are greatly exaggerated.
With his recording-studio pallor and less-than-athletic physique, LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy makes an unlikely shill for Nike. But that didn't stop him from jumping at the chance to write a "runner's soundtrack" to help the "Just Do It" sportswear company promote its new Nike+iPod Sport Kit, a wireless system that allows runners to track things like time, distance and calories burned on their iPod Nano. All you have to do is get yourself a pair of "Nike+"-enabled sneakers, which transmit the data to your iPod, which you can then download to the nikeplus.com website for easy tracking. You can even compare your stats against other runners and add a little friendly competition into the equation. For anyone who likes tracking their workout progress but doesn't like being confined to the gym, it's a pretty nifty setup.
Murphy's workout-length composition, helpfully entitled "45:33" (yes, it's 45 minutes and 33 seconds long), is available as an exclusive iTunes download, buried in a section called "Nike Sport Music." It plays more like a continuously mixed LCD album than a single, 45-minute track, with plenty of plenty of peaks and valleys amidst Murphy's trademark, densely orchestrated washes of old-school synths, percussion and cowbell -- always more cowbell.
And yes, it's meant to be listened to while running, though how many runners actually listen to this sort of nouveau disco stuff is anybody's guess. However, I can attest from personal experience that "45:33" can also be enjoyed while driving, dancing, typing, and copping a mild buzz on substances I can't mention here. It's 100% couch-potato friendly -- although it lacks anything as witty and immediately ear-catching as "Daft Punk is Playing at My House."
Regardless of the quality of the music, Murphy doing a project for Nike obviously raises the spectre of "sellout" -- especially since LCD Soundsystem is a hipster standard-bearer thanks to knowingly jaded songs like "Losing My Edge," while Nike is, well, Nike. But in explaining why he chose to do the project, Murphy makes a valid point: "This appealed to me because it was so anathematic to what you're typically asked to do as an artist: make easily digestible lumps of music for albums, or the radio, or whatever. I'd been thinking of the records I love in which people made one 'song' that took up the entire LP and realizing that releasing something like this would otherwise be a virtually impossibility for me."
So whatever you might think of Nike, give them points for paying an artist like LCD Soundsystem -- whose music hardly screams "commercial sellout" -- to do something that most record labels wouldn't touch: create a 45-minute song.
This is the second "Nike+ Original Run" piece that Nike has commissioned; the first was a 45-minute continuous mix of original tracks and remixes from The Crystal Method. It will be interesting to watch the Nike experiment and see if it inspires other companies to commission similar original or exclusive pieces from other artists -- and maybe in other genres besides electronica. An exclusive hip-hop mix to go with those Pioneer subwoofers you just installed in your trunk? A John Tesh "namaste mix" to go with your new Hugger Mugger yoga mat? A set of driving tunes pre-installed in the in-dash iPod of your new Cadillac? With CD sales continuing their downward slide, record companies and recording artists are going to be increasingly eager to try new things to get their music out there.
This week was supposed to be all about a couple of pop divas, Gwen Stefani and Ciara, duking it out for chart dominance. Leave it to that greatest of pop pranksters, Eminem, to come along and spoil their fun, and to do it with a goddamn mixtape -- not even a real album. But The Re-Up is a mixtape in name only -- this is no tossed-off set of freestyles for street distribution, but a big, well-produced, star-studded testament to the strength of Em's Shady Records imprint, and parent label Interscope has decided to give it the major marketing push it deserves. Despite the presence of lots of D12 filler, and the absence of any soul-baring rants about Em's wham-bam remarriage and redivorce from Kim Mathers, The Re-Up is the undisputed 800-pound gorilla among this week's new releases. Prediction: 480,000 copies. [Actual sales: A solid 309,000...hardly a disappointment for a mixtape, but not quite the blockbuster we've come to expect from Mr. Mathers.]
And Now, About Those Divas...
Gwen Stefani, The Sweet Escape. Gwen's first solo album sold over 300,000 in its first week -- and that was before "Hollaback Girl" took over the world. Early reviews of this set have been mixed, but that won't hurt Gwen's first-week sales. Prediction: 400,000 copies. [Actual sales: Okay, now this is a disappointment: 243,000. Maybe those mixed reviews did hurt -- or maybe that yodeling first single, "Wind It Up," scared 'em off.]
Ciara, Evolution. When this hip-hop-lite diva first came out of nowhere two years ago, I wrote her off as her generation's Paula Abdul. I might have underestimated her; she may turn out to be her generation's Janet Jackson. Prediction: 290,000 copies. [Actual sales: 338,000 -- about what I expected, but just enough more to earn her a #1 spot. Yup, she's now officially bigger than Paula.]
Lil Scrappy, Bred 2 Die Born 2 Live. Is crunk dead? If this Lil Jon protege has anything to say about it, no. His first single "Money in the Bank" is a hit on "urban" radio, which bodes well not just for Scrappy's prospects but also for Crunk Rock, Lil Jon's long-delayed followup to the massively popular Crunk Juice. Can I get a "YEA-uh!" Prediction: 140,000 copies. [Actual sales: 82,000. Hm...crunk may not be dead, but it's definitely a little less feisty these days.]
Brian McKnight, 10. While I'm making sweepingly generalized comparisons, how about this one: Brian McKnight is the new Teddy Pendergrass. As with Teddy, all of his albums sound exactly the same, and they tend to sell exactly the same, too. So given that Brian's last album, Gemini, sold 103,000 in its first week... Prediction: 100,000 copies. [Actual sales: 63,000... okay, so I was a little off this week. Give me a break, it's the holidays!]
Pick o' the Week
You know things are slow when I pick soundtrack albums twice in a row. Two weeks ago my "Pick o' the Week" was the Babel soundtrack; last week it was nothing; this week it's the soundtrack to Breaking and Entering, the new film from Anthony "English Patient" Minghella. The music for Breaking and Entering is a collaboration between Minghella's longtime composer, Gabriel Yared, and Underworld, who are probably best-known for that creepy techno track "Born Slippy" that was used to such great effect in Trainspotting. I've always thought that Underworld, more than any other "techno" act, transcend their genre, and the Breaking and Entering soundtrack proves it. It's a haunting, ethereal collection of music, anchored by that sense of rhythm and pulse that Underworld bring to all of their work, even when they turn the drum machines off. And with his film composer's gift for repeated motifs and curlicued melodies, Yared is the perfect foil to Rick Smith and Karl Hyde's more experimental leanings.
I have to admit, I mostly went to see Tally Hall last Friday night because my girlfriend thinks they're great. C'mon, guys, we've all done it. At least I wasn't being dragged along to see The Notebook or a Jesse McCartney concert. My girl has better taste than that, thank God.
Still, I wasn't really sure what to expect from the Michigan power-pop quintet with the color-coordinated ties and the penchant for Barenaked Ladies-style kitsch (Exhibit A: "Banana Man," the whitest Harry Belafonte ripoff ever recorded). Their album, Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum, was pretty much what you'd expect from an album called Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum: charmingly geeky but a bit cloying in places, as the five young men who recorded it occasionally fell a little too in love with their own cleverness. Seeing them live might be like seeing a really good college a cappella group with guitars, or it might strike me dead from a cuteness overload. There was really no telling.
Anyway, I'm pleased to report that although they were, in fact, completely and utterly adorable, Tally Hall also know how to rock the friggin' house. At The Echo, a divey little hipster venue in Los Angeles' Echo Park, a divey little hipster neighborhood, Tally Hall delivered a tight, polished set that proved they have both vocal and musical chops to burn, not to mention a gift for peppy, hook-filled songwriting. This is a band that's going to be around for a long time.
What impressed me the most, apart from a two-song micless, acoustic interlude in which the band actually got a Los Angeles club crowd to sit down, was that Tally Hall's live show is less Barenaked Ladies and more Weezer. Singer/guitarists Rob Cantor and Joe Hawley both know how to lay down a big, meaty guitar riff, and the interplay of their guitars and vocals, plus some nifty harmonies from bassist Zubin Sedghi, save the band from coming off as too gimmicky.
And when you're this good, even the silliest gimmicks become part of the fun, like the fish in its bowl that was placed on stage, with its own stool and mic stand, and given a "solo" (i.e 15 seconds of silence) towards the end of the band's set. Or the "West Coast World Tour" t-shirts the band had printed up that had only their Echo show and no other gigs listed (my girlfriend bought one, of course, and I have to admit it's a pretty cute concert t-shirt... and I'm not just saying that cuz she's probably reading this).
Even a recurring technical glitch -- a microphone that kept crapping out -- was transformed into a highlight when the roadie who finally fixed it was allowed to stay onstage and sing a few verses with the band. He was pretty good, too.
It's tragic, I know; I was so close to earning my hipster credentials, and then I had to go and blow it with another playlist full of incredibly unhip music. But in the immortal words of Huey Lewis, "it's hip to be square." And there's nothing squarer than Sarah McLachlan, Charlie Brown and emo.
1. Fall Out Boy, "This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arm Race." I know, I can't believe I like the new Fall Out Boy song, either. But damn if it isn't catchier and more well-crafted than anything they've ever done -- and damn if Patrick Stump hasn't grown up to be the best vocalist still standing on the emo/pop/punk slag heap.
2. Goldfrapp, "Fly Me Away." Six months ago, I wouldn't have had to call this a guilty pleasure. Now it's all over those holiday Target commercials, further cementing Goldfrapp's reputation as the most advert-ready artist since Moby. I don't care, I still think this is a great song.
3. 2Pac, "Pac's Life." It's hard to imagine Tupac Shakur approving of the '80s dance-pop backdrop his hard-edged rhymes are given on this track, but I find the combination oddly impossible to resist.
4. Vince Guaraldi, "Linus and Lucy." Another song that's not really a guilty pleasure, except that it's been played to death. But who can resist that jazzy Charlie Brown music?
5. Sarah McLachlan, "River." Yup, it doesn't get much more unhip than Sarah McLachlan covering a Joni Mitchell song -- on a Christmas album, no less. But she sure can sing purty, can't she?
Recently, Slate.com published a fascinating article by Columbia law professor Tim Wu about a copyright infringement case involving Jay-Z's 2003 song "Justify My Thug" and a company called Bridgeport Music, Inc.. Bridgeport is the most high-profile of several companies that Wu has dubbed "sample trolls." In olden days, Bridgeport (which was founded in 1969) was simply a music publishing company, owning the rights to a large song catalog and collecting small sums of money every time one of those songs was licensed for a movie soundtrack, piped into a shopping mall, placed on a "golden oldies" compilation or covered by another artist. But this is the age of sampling, so instead Bridgeport is mainly in the business of hunting down unlicensed samples from its catalog in other people's music and then suing the living crap out of them.
For a long time, a lot of people -- myself included -- were under the impression that the days of rampant sampling were pretty much over. Ever since a landmark 1992 case that forced Warner Brothers Records to actually recall an album (Biz Markie's otherwise forgettable I Need a Haircut), record labels have bent over backwards to properly clear all samples and give credit where it's due -- which is why the credits on most hip-hop albums are now spread over pages and pages in miniscule type. But in truth, that 1992 ruling did little to stop hip-hop and electronic music producers from sampling. Instead, it just inspired them to come up with new and creative ways of covering their tracks -- slicing and dicing their samples, playing them backwards, speeding them up, slowing them down, and otherwise manipulating their source material to the point where it was (virtually) unrecognizable. For most of the late '90s, it's entirely likely that many label executives were unaware of how many samples the average hip-hop record still contained.
Enter Bridgeport, a company with a deep catalog of classic funk and R&B songs and a very wide ruthless streak. George Clinton, for example, insists that the company owns the rights to most of his Parliament/Funkadelic catalog only because its owner, Armen Boladian, forged Clinton's signature; "he just stole 'em."
It didn't take Boladian long to realize what a cash cow all that stealth sampling offered to his company; by 2001, he was filing over 500 copyright infringement suits in a single year, and winning a number of large settlements. Even in cases where the label wouldn't settle, Bridgeport often won; earlier this year, a judge ordered a halt to sales of the Notorious B.I.G. 1994 album Ready to Die because it contained an unlicensed sample of an Ohio Players song owned by Bridgeport. (Diddy and the folks at Bad Boy Records, no fools they, took the opportunity to reissue Ready to Die in a deluxe CD/DVD package with the offending sample removed -- and they even timed the reissue to coincide with the release of archrival Jay-Z's long-awaited Kingdom Come album.)
Obviously, there are two ways to look at this whole debate -- either "sample trolls" like Bridgeport are attacking the very foundations of hip-hop, which has a long tradition of looping and sampling beats from old records, or hip-hop itself needs to grow up and learn how to play real instruments and stop coasting on other people's music. Personally, I do think mainstream hip-hop limits itself creatively from a lack of live instrumentation (The Roots are an obvious exception, but they're so friggin' good they prove my point by example). On the other hand, I also think that the best hip-hop and electronica producers (Dr. Dre, DJ Shadow, et al.) are truly sound collage artists, and asking them to clear every last sample is a bit like asking every modern artist to pay Conde Nast a royalty every time they paste a magazine clipping on a canvas.
Even detractors of sampling would probably have a hard time getting behind the 2005 court ruling that marks Bridgeport's greatest legal victory to date. In that decision -- which even the RIAA denounced -- a Nashville federal appellate court ruled, as Wu summarizes it, "that any sampling, no matter how minimal or undetectable, is a copyright infringement." Or, to quote Judge Ralph B. Guy of Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals: "Get a license or do not sample. We do not see this as stifling creativity in any significant way."
It's disturbing enough that the sample in question in that case was a three-note guitar riff from George Clinton's P-Funk classic "Get Off Your Ass and Jam," which was pitched down and used as a barely recognizable background loop in a 1990 N.W.A. song, "100 Miles and Runnin'." What's even more disturbing is that Bridgeport didn't even bother to sue N.W.A; they sued Dimension Films, for featuring "100 Miles and Runnin'" in a 1998 movie soundtrack, I Got the Hookup. So a corollary to the court's ruling is that you are now liable for copyright infringement even if you simply license or otherwise make use of a song that contains an uncleared sample from another artist. By this logic, Spike Lee can be sued for using Public Enemy in the soundtrack to Do the Right Thing. In fact, given Bridgeport's scorched-earth approach to collecting on its P-Funk catalog, he probably has been sued by the time you read this.
You can read the full text of Tim Wu's "sample troll" article on Slate.com. And by the way, for the record -- Jay-Z isn't getting sued for "Justify My Thug" because Bridgeport somehow bought the rights to Madonna's catalog. Nope, "Justify My Thug" allegedly contains a sample from a 1980 Funkadelic song called "The Witch." Good luck trying to find it.
It's the first full week of the holiday shopping season, so naturally the record industry must be kicking into high gear, releasing a ton of blockbuster albums to compete for your Christmas dollars, right? Right? Hello? Is this thing on?
Actually, there are hardly any new albums coming out this week -- most of the big holiday releases are already in the stores, and the handful of exceptions (Ciara, Bow Wow, Gwen Stefani) aren't hitting shelves until next week or later, to allow the marketing people time to gear up again after that four-day, L-tryptophan-induced coma that is Thanksgiving weekend. So that leaves us with really just three albums worth mentioning, none of which is likely to top the charts; that honor will probably go to a Nov. 21st holdover (most likely Jay-Z, despite an avalanche of bad reviews) or a chart-climbing holiday title (Sarah McLachlan'sWintersongs is looking like a strong contender). [Update: I was almost right about Sarah McLachlan -- Wintersongs sold another 116,000 copies, enough to push it to #7 -- but Jay-Z's sales fell off a cliff, dropping 80% to 140,000 and #6 on the charts. Apparently the fans are tending to agree with the critics on Hova's comeback album.]
Of the three big new releases this week, the smart money would be on Ying Yang Twins, whose last album sold 200,000 copies in its first week. But that album had a monster hit, "Wait (The Whisper Song)," while nothing on their new disc, Chemically Imbalanced, has really caught fire (proving once again that if I genuinely love a hip-hop song -- in this case the lead single "Dangerous" -- that means it will be a commercial dud). So I don't think the Twins will manage to move more than about 120,000 copies, especially since the stores are awash in major hip-hop releases right now. [Actual sales: Ouch! 36,000, which is shockingly low for an act that was hugely popular only a year ago.]
Incubus, on the other hand, is that rarest of animals: a hard rock band that has actually matured with its fans and continued to sell records despite an increasingly idiosyncratic, anti-commercial sound. And yes, there are a lot of fans for defiantly idiosyncratic rock bands -- just ask Pearl Jam, Tool, etc.. Still, I think people tend to underestimate Incubus' continued popularity, and forget that they can easily sell 140,000 copies in a week. Which is probably about what they'll do. [Actual sales: 165,000 -- about what I expected, but to the chagrin of everyone except Epic Records, enough to earn them a #1 debut. Album sales were way off in what was supposed to be a big holiday shopping week.]
That leaves this week's wildcard, a cult status rap duo from Virginia called Clipse. Their new album, Hell Hath No Fury, has been so long-delayed that it's hard to tell whether it will be the victim of the hip-hop world's short memory, or the beneficiary of much pent-up hype. Unfortunately, the track record for famously long-delayed hip-hop records is not a good one; just ask Clipse's fellow Virginian, mega-producer Pharrell, whose long-delayed solo album flopped earlier this year. Pharrell managed to move 140,000 units in his first week before fading from the charts, thanks to a combination of star power and some clever MySpace marketing; figure on Clipse to do about one-third that, or 45,000. [Actual sales: A surprisingly healthy 78,000.]
And that, for the most part, is it, kids. Told ya it was a slow week. Don't worry, it picks up again next week and I'll have plenty more chances to humiliate myself with more bad predictions.
Yep, November is Rap Month at your local record store, as labels rush to release all their big-name hip-hop artists right before Christmas, no doubt hoping that parents will go out and buy these albums for their kids, who would've just illegally downloaded all the tracks otherwise. So remember, parents -- this holiday season, help keep the record industry afloat, and give your kids the gift of Snoop Dogg. Don't worry about pissing them off by getting the "clean" version -- they can still go to Limewire and download the versions with all the "N" words and "F" bombs.
Anyway, last week it was The Game vs. Akon vs. Fat Joe. This week, the competition for your hip-hop dollars is ever more fierce, with Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg and 2Pac (who has now officially eclipsed Hendrix as the Most Prolific Dead Guy Ever) all dropping product. Despite an initial barrage of negative reviews, it's a pretty safe bet that Hova's album, Kingdom Come, will take the brass ring and debut at the top of the charts. Jay-Z plays the hype machine better than anyone in the business, even Diddy and 50 Cent; he somehow managed to stay in the spotlight even as he convinced people that he had really "retired" and that this really somehow represents a "comeback" album (even though it's only been three years since his last solo effort and he's tided fans over with a flurry of side projects). Prediction: 500,000 copies. [Actual sales: 680,000, the biggest single sales week since Justin Timberlake sold almost exactly the same amount back in September. Yup, Hova's bringing the pimpin' back.]
More Hip-Hop... And Some Other Stuff, Too
Snoop Dogg, Tha Blue Carpet Treatment. This is a better album overall than Snoop's last effort, 2004's Rhythm & Gangsta, which sold 225,000 copies in its first week. But without a "Drop It Like It's Hot," I'm not sure if it will catch on as quickly. Prediction: 170,000 copies. [Actual sales: 264,000. You will note that I lowballed all the top sellers this week, because the week of Thanksgiving is traditionally the week that old titles have a big resurgance and new releases don't necessarily fare as well. So much for tradition.]
The Beatles, LOVE. Personally, I think this glorified Beatles remix project falls under the heading of Worst Ideas Ever. But it has the imprimatur of Paul, Ringo, Yoko and George Harrison's widow, and George Martin produced it, so between that air of legitimacy and the curiosity factor, it will probably do quite well. Prediction: 150,000 copies. [Actual sales: 272,000. I wonder how much of that money will end up in Heather Mills' pocket?]
2Pac, Pac's Life. Is there no end to how much Tupac Shakur's family and the hip-hop community at large can continue to profit off his old studio outtakes? Apparently, the answer is no. His last posthumous album, 2004's Loyal to the Game, sold a jaw-dropping 330,000 copies in its first week, but that disc was produced by Eminem. Without him, this one won't do those numbers, but it'll still move units, if for no other reason than because Pac's leftovers are still more exciting than 90% of the new stuff out there. Prediction: 150,000 copies. [Actual sales: 159,000. Okay, I haven't completely lost my mojo.]
Il Divo, Siempre. Simon Cowell's prefab pop-classical boy band just put out an album back in January, so what's with the quick followup? A cynical bid to cash in on the Christmas shoppers before this Three Tenors Lite fluff wears out its welcome? You betcha. Will it work? Probably. Prediction: 120,000 copies. [Will it work? Definitely. Actual sales: 108,000.]
Chris Daughtry, Daughtry. Listen, if Kellie Pickler can sell 79,000 records in a week, the sky's the limit for this guy. Never underestimate the retail clout of American Idol, even for the also-rans. Prediction: 95,000 copies. [Actual sales: 304,000. What was that I said about "never underestimate American Idol"? Seriously, though, I'm baffled by this one. Daughtry was a runner-up, for god's sake! Does this mean Taylor Hicks is actually going to sell more than 300,000 records when his debut drops next month? Is there no end to the Idol madness?]
Brand New, The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me. The first major-label release from these emo-punks may surprise a few people. They built up quite a following during their indie days on Razor & Tie. Prediction: 60,000 copies. [Actual sales: 60,000. Bada-bing...]
Killswitch Engage, As Daylight Dies. This band might end up surprising a few people, too -- their last album wound up selling around 300,000 copies, they've got some clever product tie-ins hyping this new one (including a pre-order dogtag that unlocks some bonus features on the band's website); and their sound is right up that same melodic hardcore alley that Avenged Sevenfold recently used as a shortcut to mainstream success. Prediction: 60,000 copies. [Actual sales: 60,000. Bada-boom!]
Loreena McKennitt, An Ancient Muse. I know -- Loreena who? It's been nearly 10 years since this New Age chanteuse put out a record, but my guess is that her fans -- and there's a lot of them -- have not forgotten about her. Prediction: 40,000 copies. [Actual sales: 19,000. Eh.]
Flop o' the Week
Remember that other TV show that's supposed to generate a new flock of musical superstars every year? Though it did pretty well in the ratings, CBS's Rock Star has not been the star-making machine that is American Idol; even INXS fell right back off the radar after they used the show's first season to find a new lead singer. Now comes the first offering from this season's ersatz supergroup, clumsily dubbed Rock Star Supernova after a pre-existing band called Supernova won a court case against them, and the silence surrounding their debut release has been deafening. It's almost like Epic Records just wants to fulfill their contractual obligation by putting this thing out so they can forget about it and move on. [Actual sales: 16,700. Not quite the K-Fed-level dud I was anticipating, but still, to put that in perspective -- Chris friggin' Daughtry sold 18 times that number.]
Pick o' the Week
Let's face it: November and December are the doldrums as far as good, under-the-radar music goes. The major labels are trying to hit their fourth-quarter targets; the record-buying public is stocking up on reissues and greatest-hits packages to put under the Christmas tree; and the indie labels, for the most part, hunker down and wait for January, when it's easier for them to get their product better placement on sites like ours (note the Snoop Dogg and U2 on our homepage this week). Still, there's a few smaller releases worth mentioning, starting with the amazing soundtrack to the film Babel, which features original music by Gustavo Santaolalla, the guy who won an Oscar last year for Brokeback Mountain. Babel's action spans three continents, and Santaolalla's music somehow manages to do the same without ever deviating from that haunting acoustic guitar work that is his trademark. There's some other cool stuff on the soundtrack, too, including tunes from Nortec Collective and Japanese avant-garde composer Ryuchi Sakamoto. I just have one piece of advice: If you go see the movie, be prepared to feel confused and depressed for several hours afterward, and don't expect to see Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett do much except be miserable and terrified.
The other album I have to mention this week, even though my hipster friends will give me crap for it, is by Spock's Beard, a prog-rock band that avoids the fatal mistake of most of their peers and actually crafts interesting, hooky, riff-heavy rock songs, instead of 15-minute mini-operas with long keyboard solos. Their latest self-titled album reminds me a little, on a much smaller scale, of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, on which all the prog was in the esoteric lyrics and eccentric arrangements, and the songs themselves were actually quite accessible and even catchy. If Spock's Beard is smart, they'll try to ditch the "prog" tag and position themselves more as a Coheed & Cambria type of band; the music on this album is certainly good enough to win them a C&C-sized audience.
Yeah, I know, I suck. I couldn't think of a theme last week and I can't think of one this week, either. Maybe we'll just do away with the whole "theme" thing and just focus of picking five really good tunes. You're all okay with that, right? Good. On with the picks:
1. Miho Hatori, "Barracuda." As the sweet, fetchingly accented voice of the New York Japanamerican duo Cibo Matto, Miho Hatori always seemed like the group's pop influence. Now that she's finally released a solo album, it turns out she was the weird one all along.
2. The Good, the Bad & the Queen, "Herculean." Forget the band name and just think of this as Gorillaz (Damon Albarn, Danger Mouse and guitarist Simon Tong) plus Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen and former Clash bassist Paul Simonon. Sound pretty awesome? Based on this lead single, it is.
3. Peter Bjorn and John, "Young Folks." I don't know much about this band except that they're from Sweden (always a good sign) and that its main members are three guys named (wait for it) Peter, Bjorn and John. Apparently this song is from an album called Writer's Block that won't get an official U.S. release until next year. Yup, 2007 is shaping up to be a pretty good year already.
4. Gosling, "The Burnout." True story: Last summer we got Gosling's album in the office, tried to listen to it, and didn't like it. The first track was full of screamed vocals and noisy guitars and it pretty much scared us off. Then, a few weeks ago, I'm getting my hair cut by a new stylist and we get to talking and it turns out he's the bass player in Gosling. He's a really nice guy and he gives me a good haircut and a copy of his album, so I dutifully throw it into the car stereo and listen to it while I'm running errands. And this song comes on and I go, "Holy crap, I completely and totally underestimated this band." So now I'm officially a Gosling fan. I even sorta like that song with all the screaming in it.
5. Gogol Bordello, "Start Wearing Purple." I first heard this song over the closing credits of a film called Everything is Illuminated, and now the only things I remember about that movie are "Start Wearing Purple" and how they put Coke-bottle glasses on Elijah Wood, which is sort of like stuffing Pamela Anderson's bra. A rousing testament to how drunken barroom music crosses all national boundaries, and how if you slow a polka tempo down enough it starts to sound almost like reggae.
As a music blogger, I feel compelled to offer up my commentary on the launch of Microsoft's much-hyped Zune player this week -- but truth be told, I really can't add anything to the whole "Is it an iPod killer" debate?" that isn't clearly expressed in this side-by-side comparison photo, which I lifted from the review on IGN.com. To summarize:
iPod: stylish metallic and black
Zune: '70s rec room brown (with a moldy greenish tint)*
iPod: slim and sleek
Zune: thick and brick-like
And that's really all you need to know, isn't it? Somebody at Microsoft apparently did not get the memo that when it comes to portable music players, size matters, and smaller is better. People take these things jogging and wedge them in next to their lattes in their car's center console. Microsoft also didn't get the memo that these things are not just multimedia players -- they're also fashion accessories, a point succinctly demonstrated by a CNN anchor in a segment on "Minding Your Business", who watches the New York Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin give a lukewarm but mildly favorite review to the Zune, then proudly clips her new, matchbook-sized iPod Nano to her lapel. Comparing the two, her co-anchor dismisses the Zune as "clunky." Ouch.
To be fair, not all Zune reviews have been negative. The aforementioned IGN.com review was highly favorable, and at least one blogger on ZDnet seems to be convinced that all the bad buzz surrounding the Zune is the result of a vast conspiracy by those cult-like iPod lovers. He may have a point, too; after all, sites like this one don't magically start appearing every time Apple puts out a new generation of iPods.
But no matter how many tech bloggers and critics point out the Zune's positives -- a brighter video screen, more intuitive navigation, WiFi sharing between Zunes (though not, it must be noted, between your Zune and your computer), a scratch-resistant, hard-rubberized body -- they just don't outweigh the "clunky" factor. And in nuts-and-bolts terms, there's really no difference between the Zune and the iPod -- you get the same amount of memory for the same price, playback quality is about the same, and you'll spend just as much time ripping CDs onto your computer and then transferring them to your portable device.
So can anyone stop the iPod? Speaking as someone who doesn't own an iPod, I'll tell you what it would take for me to buy any kind of portable music player: A fully WiFi-enabled device with decent controls (sorry, iPod, that click-wheel sucks -- but then again, no one's improved on it, either), built-in EQs, and playback quality good enough to plug that sucker into a high-end sound system and not notice any compression (and again, sorry Apple, but the file formats you sell on iTunes are pretty weak). Oh, and a laser that can read and rip the data right off my CDs so I don't have to load my whole music collection onto my computer. Cuz I'm lazy like that.
*The Zune also comes in white and black versions, but let's face it, that brown is pretty telling of the design attitude that shaped the thing.
Videos That Don't Suck #2: "God's Gonna Cut You Down"
November 16, 2006
Wow, it's been over three months since I posted my first "Video That Doesn't Suck" -- are most music videos really that bad? Nah, I'm just that easily bored by most music videos. If you watch enough of them, they start to feel less like entertainment and more like what most of them are, which is essentially song-length commercials for the artists and their music.
The video for Johnny Cash's "God's Gonna Cut You Down" has a vaguely commercial-like feel, too, but it works in the same way an Annie Leibovitz coffee table book works: We all love to look at famous people, especially when they're artistically photographed doing stuff that provides a glimpse, real or imagined, into their personality. And the 36 famous faces who appear throughout "God's Gonna Cut You Down" are beautifully shot in moody black-and-white by Tony Kaye, a brilliant, eccentric director best-known for the film American History X. It's a great tribute to the Man in Black, and a fun way to waste time trying to identify who all 36 famous faces are (I'm not telling).
P.S. If this tune sounds familiar to some of you hipsters out there, that's because it's the same one Moby lifted for the song "Run On" off his Play album.
You gotta love Australians. Yes, they're responsible for Jet, but they also gave us AC/DC, Mad Max and Elle Macpherson. And now, a team of government scientists has designed a shirt that plays guitar riffs based on your flailing air guitar motions. Yes, you read that right -- Aussie scientists spent government money to design an air guitar shirt. And no doubt dranks lots of Foster's and barbecued lots of shrimp while they were doing it.
They're calling it the Wearable Instrument Shirt, or WIS (these are scientists, remember, not marketers). You can watch a video demonstration of it here. Warning: It doesn't seem anywhere near as cool once you actually see the shirt in action, at least as worn and played by Dr. Richard Helmer, who proves that yes, Australians can be nerds, too.
The Game came seemingly out of nowhere in January 2005, a genuine underground hip-hop phenomenon whose major label debut sold nearly 600,000 copies in its first week. Despite that monstrous debut, he's somehow managed to retain his underdog status with his sophomore album, Doctor's Advocate. Album title aside, his mentor Dr. Dre is gone (thanks to a rift between Game and another Dre protege, 50 Cent) and other November hip-hop releases from Akon, Snoop Dogg and Jay-Z have garnered more radio play and more buzz.
So is Game's moment over already? Don't bet on it. This record is a monster statement from a guy who, "Hate It or Love It," clearly has a gift for getting maximum mileage out of beats and hooks from all-star producers (it's not as easy as it sounds -- just ask Fergie). Over slick, party-ready tracks from the likes of Kanye, Timbaland, Cool & Dre and Swizz Beats (hey, who needs Dr. Dre?), Game rants and raves about how all his role models abandoned him, how he's pissed off and underappreciated, how he's still a 40 oz.-swilling hood from Compton -- and oh yeah, how the last album made him richer than an oil sheikh. He's not the most gifted rapper on the planet, but for sheer entertainment value, this may be the rap album of the year. It'll sell faster than a Britney/K-Fed sex tape. Prediction: 350,000 copies. [Actual sales: 358,000. Am I good or what?]
More Hip-Hop... And Some Other Stuff, Too
Akon, Konvicted. How, you ask, is the reformed gang-banger from Compton the hip-hop underdog, and the Senegalese singer-rapper Akon the favorite? I don't get it either, but the fact of the matter is that this guy already has two massive hit singles, the Eminem-fueled "Smack That" and the Snoop-fueled "I Wanna Love You." But hit singles don't always translate to big album sales, especially when the guest stars are doing most of the heavy lifting. Prediction: 150,000 copies. [Actual sales: 284,000. Okay, so maybe I underestimated Akon just a little. A bit. But hey, a lot of people thought he would outsell The Game, and they were wrong, too.]
+44, When Your Heart Stops Beating. I want to believe that this new band from ex-blink-182 guys Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker will outsell the unbearably pretentious new band from that other ex-blink guy, Tom DeLonge. But even I have to admit -- at least Angels & Airwaves was trying to be something new and different, and +44 is just more of the same. Prediction: 100,000 copies. [Actual sales: 66,000, barely half what A&A sold. Somewhere, Tom DeLonge is congratulating himself.]
Fat Joe, Me, Myself & I. Poor Fat Joe. Two years ago, that "Lean Back" song was everywhere and he was king of the world. Last year, his solo disc All or Nothing faded from the charts after just 12 weeks and he parted ways (he wasn't dumped, he swears) with his longtime label, Atlantic. This year, he releases an "independent" album (through Virgin/EMI) and it comes out the same week as The Game and Akon. Ouch. Prediction: 55,000 copies. [Actual sales: 60,000, which actually isn't all that bad considering the competition this week.]
Tenacious D, Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny. I'm tempted to predict that this will be the hottest-selling album of all time, because after all, they are the greatest rock 'n' roll band of all time. But alas, genius is always wasted on the masses. Prediction: 45,000 copies. [Actual sales: Wow... 81,000 of you recognized and honored the genius that is the D. Well done.]
Kenny G, I'm in the Mood for Love: The Most Romantic Melodies of All Time. Kenny G covering James Blunt's "You're Beautiful"? For the first time in history, your time in the dentist's waiting room will be more painful than the root canal you're waiting for. Prediction: 40,000 copies. [Actual sales: 32,000. Should I be proud of guessing the size of Kenny G's audience fairly accurately? For some reason, I'm not.]
Pick o' the Week
I know I'm supposed to put the new Yusuf Islam album here. Or just "Yusuf," as it's being billed. Did he decide to drop the "Islam" for fear that it would alienate us towelhead-hating Americans? Dude, we know you're a Muslim, and we're okay with it. Just don't make a boring album, that's really all we ask.
Or maybe I'm supposed to put that darling of the KCRW set, Damien Rice. But frankly, I can't stand the guy. He's the Kiefer Sutherland of singer-songwriters, all quiet-loud dynamics with no actual emotional range or nuance at all. Next.
Then there's Joanna Newsom, and here I must admit to plain and simple ignorance, because we're losers here at ARTISTdirect and haven't gotten a copy of the album yet. I wasn't crazy about her last one, either, but everyone else is saying this one blows it away. So okay, fine -- my pick o' the week, by default, is Joanna Newsom's Ys. Go buy it and tell me if it's any good, will ya?
It's true, I can't think of a theme this week. These are just five really cool new songs that have been getting stuck in my head for the last few weeks, in a good way. So I just thought I'd share.
1. Cold War Kids, "We Used to Vacation." It's weird how every young hipster in the blogosphere has enthusiastically embraced a band whose best song is a first-person narrative about a recovering alcoholic on the verge of a relapse, a midlife crisis, or both. But yup, that's what this song is about, and its lurching, start-stop rhythm perfectly complements the ambivalence of that tortured narrator, who loves his family too much to fall off the wagon, but admits that all he really wants is another drink.
2. Luke Doucet, "Broken One." This Canadian singer-songwriter calls his sound -- wait for it -- "country verite." Whatever. If he can keep writing songs this good, he can call his sound "pretentious drivel" and it still wouldn't stop people from listening to it. Ryan Adams will probably write and release another 10 songs in an attempt to come up with one this catchy.
3. The Bird and the Bee, "Again and Again." I'm a sucker for sunny pop tunes with dark, sarcastic lyrics, so needless to say I flipped when I heard Inara George coo, "Say my name, say my name, say my stupid name." Inara, Inara, Inara! Yeah, I guess that is kind of a stupid name. But man, is this a great song.
4. The Shins, "The Phantom Limb." New Shins! That breeze you just felt was a million Garden State fans collectively exhaling after holding their breath for the past two years. It's still 2006, but my money's already on these guys to have the best album title of 2007: It's called Wincing the Night Away. It's due out in January. I know -- try to contain yourself.
5. The Feeling, "Sewn." I stand corrected -- "Inara" is not a stupid name. "The Feeling" is a stupid name. But I forgive them, because I am stupidly in love with this song. If Keane's Tom Chaplin could write soulful Brit-pop this tuneful, pretty and effortless, he wouldn't be in rehab.
Well, despite their name, Sellaband won't actually sell you one... but they will let you, in essence, invest in one. The whole idea behind this new, Netherlands-based website is this: If a band you like joins the service, you can pay $10 to become one of that band's fans, or "believers." If you really like the band, you can buy as many $10 shares, or "parts," as you want. Once the band's believers buy enough "parts" to hit the $50,000 mark, Sellaband will take that money and use it to buy studio time for the band and help them make a limited edition CD. Each believer gets a copy of the CD and the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing they helped finance the whole thing.
It sounds like a goofy idea, and vaguely pyramid-schemey; after all, none of the bands on Sellaband see a nickel of the money their believers send in until they hit the $50,000 mark. And so far, only one band has done so, a Dutch band called Nemesea that sounds kind of like Evanescence, if Evanescence was Dutch and listened to a lot of Tiesto. The site's creators insist that they will share revenue on every album they put out with both the bands and their believers, though how exactly this revenue is to be generated remains a bit sketchy -- supposedly, it will come from a combination of advertising revenue generated from a free download service, and sales of the bands' albums at their shows (but wait, wasn't the album a "limited edition" release for the believers? not exactly, I guess).
Despite all my misgivings, I hope Sellaband is legit. There's something refreshingly simple and optimistic about their business model, which is predicated on the notion that people will pay for music they really like, even if it doesn't exist yet in a form they can actually purchase. That's the opposite of what everyone else in the music industry increasingly fears, which is that no one's willing to pay for anything anymore.
I'll check back with Sellaband in about six months. If they're still around, and still helping bands like Nemesea make records, then hell -- I'll start telling all my friends in bands to sign up.
Do you enjoy wallowing in the misery of others? Then have we got a website for you. Actually, most of the stories collected on RuinedMusic.com are more funny than tragic, but they all revolve around a universal theme that I can't believe no one's explored before: The experience of having a perfectly good song ruined when it becomes forever associated with a bad relationship, an annoying ex-bandmate, a psycho roommate or some other hateful person or situation. We've all been there. For me, browsing the site reminded of a particularly irksome college roommate who played certain passages of Guns N' Roses'Use Your Illusion so many times that I pretty much can't listen to anything by GNR ever again without wanting to hit something.
For what it's worth, my favorite story is this one. But I'm sure you'll find yours. You can also contribute your own story. I might do that myself, if I can unsuppress enough traumatic memories about my Axl-loving college roommate to write a story about him.
MTV's been talking about "Rocking the Vote" for years, but yesterday, young people finally really did put down their iPods and Playstations and queued up at the polls. The early reports are that voters aged 18 to 29 turned out in record numbers for this election, and that about 60% of them voted for Democrats -- a number that surely contributed to the "tidal wave" that swept Dems into control of the House and possibly the Senate.
So what got Generation Y off their apolitical butts? (By the way, I'm not just being mean-spirited here; for the 2002 midterms, only 22% of registered 18-to-29-year-olds bothered to cast a ballot.) Republican scandals and the Bush administration's ineptitude surely helped, but a lot of the credit probably goes to groups like Music For America, a grassroots organization that tries to get young people active in politics by hitting them where they hang out -- at concerts, on MySpace and YouTube, and other Gen Y hotspots.
"Our generation is smart and savvy. Most of us don't watch network TV and we ignore ads," says Molly Moon Neitzel, Executive Director of Music For America. "We knew we had to get our friends and peers out to vote in an innovative way. So we looked at how we communicate with our friends about everything else in our lives -- through new technology and at places like concerts."
The list of bands Music For America has gotten involved is pretty impressive, too -- everyone from Death Cab for Cutie to TV on the Radio to Lyrics Born to the Barenaked Ladies (hey, those Canadians know a thing or two about democracy, too). At lot of these bands invite MFA to set up voter registration tables at their shows.
I try not to get too political on this blog, but I have to take a moment to thank Music For America for getting out the youth vote and helping restore a little balance of power in this country. Truly, you guys rock.
Not many top artists have new albums coming out this week, which probably isn't a coincidence. After all, if you're a major label and you're sitting on the next album from Snoop Dogg or Jay-Z, do you really want to risk getting spanked on the charts by the industry's modern-day version of a K-Tel hits collection? Yes, Now That's What I Call Music, Vol. 23 (or NOW 23, to those "in the know") hits stores today, and if it does anywhere near as well as the previous 22 volumes, it should clean house. The latest NOW contains #1 hits like "London Bridge," "Promiscuous" and "SexyBack," plus a bunch of other inescapable tunes from the likes of Pussycat Dolls, Beyonce and Nickelback. These compilations are cheesy, yes, but their success is at least a hopeful sign that slumping album sales may have less to do with illegal downloading and more to do with the fact that most contemporary pop albums are long on filler and short on decent songs. Prediction: 320,000 copies. [Actual sales: 337,000. But this one was sort of a no-brainer. I'll pat myself on the back for my other predictions below.]
Other Movers and Shakers
Josh Groban, Awake. This classically trained baritone came out of nowhere in 2004 and wound up selling about 10 bazillion copies of his sophomore album, Closer. That should translate to a monster first week, though some buyers may hold off on buying his romantic ballads as a stocking stuff for Aunt Trudy until after Thanksgiving. Prediction: 290,000 copies. [Actual sales: 270,000. Close enough for me to mime a jump shot and yell "Swish!"]
Keith Urban, Love, Pain & the Whole Crazy Thing. A country music award last night; a high-profile marriage (to fellow Aussie Nicole Kidman); and a stint in rehab (for alcohol treatment). If that isn't a great publicity hat trick, I don't know what is. Prediction: 170,000 copies. [Actual sales: 267,000, Urban's best sales week by a wide margin. All that free publicity helped his career even more than I expected.]
Sugarland, Enjoy the Ride. Their debut album went triple platinum, but I still wouldn't bet on them to outsell Urban. Conservative country fans love a reformed drunk almost as much as they hate the Dixie Chicks. Prediction: 150,000 copies. [Actual sales: 211,000. Apparently all those country music fans are awash in excess spending money now that it no longer costs $120 to fill the tank on their super-duty pickup trucks.]
Jim Jones, Hustla's P.O.M.E.. The usually inept Koch Records might actually have a hit with this one, thanks to a hit single ("We Fly High") and exclusive versions of the album getting a big push at both Circuit City and Best Buy. Prediction: 80,000 copies. [Actual sales: 94,000. Holla at a hustla!]
Eric Clapton & J.J. Cale, The Road to Escondido. Personally, I think this is the best thing Clapton's done in years -- a loose, warm-spirited affair, with none of the Great Preserver of the Blues pomposity he's brought to most of his recent work -- but I'm not convinced the record-buying public will sit up and take notice. Most people, unfortunately, still have no idea who J.J. Cale is (he's the guy who wrote "Cocaine" and "After Midnight," in case you're among them), and there are already signs that the disc is being received as though it were a side project. Prediction: 40,000 copies. [Actual sales: 43,000. Nailed it! Though I still wish I'd been wrong and it sold twice that many.]
Flop o' the Week
Bowling For Soup, The Great Burrito Extortion Case. One of the song titles on here says it all: "High School Never Ends." Actually, guys, it does. Grown men doing snarky, adolescent pop-punk just becomes sort of embarrassing after a certain point. Even the guys in blink-182 and Good Charlotte were smart enough to figure that one out. [Actual sales: 13,000. Not quite a flop, but hardly good news for a band that's been around as long as they have.]
Pick o' the Week
Thunderball, Cinescope. One of the many underrated acts signed to Thievery Corporation's Eighteenth Street Lounge label, Thunderball makes music that evokes '60s British spy thrillers and '70s blaxploitation flicks in equal measure. Their latest ups the funk ante with guest appearances by Afrika Bambaataa and guy named Mustafa Akbar who sounds so much like Curtis Mayfield it's scary. This is some seriously cool party music.
The Other Pick o' the Week
Benjy Ferree, Leaving the Nest. On his debut album, this DC-based singer-songwriter comes across like an Appalachian answer to Jack White, with a similarly timeless rock 'n' roll yowlp of a voice and a habit of concealing his song's pop hooks under ghostly, traditionalist arrangements. One of the year's weirdest and most inscrutable debuts -- and yes, that's a compliment.
There's no denying it: Rock is a young man's game. But as the first generation of rockers, outlaws and rhythm-and-blues belters enter their twilight years, there's a handful of them making music that's still vital and interesting and not just an excuse to go out on tour again (hello, Rolling Stones). Here's a few recent examples of geezers showing the young whipper-snappers how it's done.
1. The Who, "Tea and Theatre." The closing track to Endless Wire, the first new Who album in 24 years, is a classic Pete Townshend meditation on how triumph and loss are often intertwined. An oddly affecting drum loop stands in for the late lamented Keith Moon, and an unusually nuanced Roger Daltrey outshines his younger "See Me, Feel Me"-era self.
2. Lindsey Buckingham, "Show You How." Fleetwood Mac's best songwriter also took awhile between albums -- his last solo disc came out 14 years ago -- and apparently he spent that time figuring out how to make an entire album out of layered vocals, acoustic guitars, tons of reverb and not much else. The effect is pretty cool, and gives catchy pop ditties like this one an eerie quality.
3. Tom Waits, "You Can Never Hold Back Spring." I'm not usually a big fan of Waits' drunken, gravel-voiced delivery, but here he comes off like a broken-hearted Louis Armstrong. (This is from a new rarities collection called Orphans, so it may actually be an old song -- but even as a young man, Waits was sort of an old fogey.)
4. Solomon Burke, "Does My Ring Burn Your Finger." As a young singer in the '60s, Burke never really got his due -- other soul singers adored him, but his blend of soul, gospel and country music never made much impact on the charts. Now, as one of the last surviving voices from the era of Sam Cooke and Otis Redding, he's becoming something of a cult hero. His latest album is billed as traditional country album, but as you can tell from this track, it's something deeper and more timeless than that.
5. Willie Nelson, "Songbird." A young whipper-snapper named Ryan Adams deserves credit for pairing Willie's weathered voice with this Fleetwood Mac classic, written by Christine McVie. It sounds like it couldn't possibly work, but it does.
You probably didn't hear about it, but something happened last week that at least one record executive is calling "the future of our business." Auditions began to find five young men to form a new incarnation of Menudo, the Puerto Rican pop group that sold over 40 million albums in the '70s and '80s and launched the career of Ricky Martin. The reconstituted Menudo will be selected by fans from a pool of 30 finalists, and is scheduled to have an album out on Epic Records in late 2007. That was Epic president Charlie Walk hailing Menudo as the way of the future.
So what makes an old retread like Menudo so futuristic, as opposed to some other pre-fab pop group like, say, Danity Kane? Ultimately, it comes down to this: All the interested parties are treating Menudo as a brand first and a band second. A company called Menudo Entertainment bought the rights to the name in 2003; they have nothing to do with Ricky Martin or anyone else who was in the band's various earlier lineups. And they're selling an "equity stake" in the Menudo brand to Epic, so the label can look forward to reaping profits not just from the band's album sales, but from all of its merchandising, touring, ringtones, an animated television series and, last but not least, a 10-episode MTV reality show. No wonder Epic's president is so excited. Who cares if CD sales continue to slide -- now they can make a tidy profit off the action figures alone!
If the Menudo project is a success -- and my guess is that, with the growing market for Latin music, it will be -- you can bet you'll be seeing more bands in which the members are basically just hired guns, with the label or another third party owning the rights to the name, calling the creative shots, and reaping most of the profits. This isn't entirely a new game -- the original master was boy band impresario Lou Pearlman, who was inspired by his success managing *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys, and decided to start the process from scratch by hand-picking the members of O-Town. But the degree to which the new Menudo will be entirely a corporate creation is pretty unprecedented.
So remember, kids -- next time you're illegally downloading those songs instead of buying them like you're supposed to, you're pushing one more major label towards dumping your favorite band in favor of one they cobble together themselves. Sort of gives a whole new meaning to the words "corporate rock," doesn't it?
I've been saying all along that there's something a bit funereal about James Blunt's music. Now my feelings have been confirmed: Blunt is Top of the Pops when it comes to funeral music in Britain. The Bereavement Register surveyed 5,000 U.K. funerals and compiled a chart of the top 20 songs people selected to accompany their loved ones' journey into the Great Beyond. Blunt's "Goodbye My Lover" came in at #1, and why not? Considering that Blunt's falsetto causes feelings of pain and loss no matter where it's heard, it's a "can't miss" for funerals.
The full list from Bereavement Register is below. While there's plenty of dubious taste on display here (Bon Jovi? really?), the one that really creeps me out is "Every Breath You Take." Personally I don't want Grandma watching over every game I play and every night I stay, but maybe that's just me.
1. "Goodbye My Lover," James Blunt
2. "Angels," Robbie Williams
3. "I've Had The Time Of My Life," Jennifer Warnes & Bill Medley
4. "Wind Beneath My Wings," Bette Midler
5. "Pie Jesu," Requiem
6. "Candle In The Wind," Elton John
7. "With Or Without You," U2
8. "Tears In Heaven," Eric Clapton
9. "Every Breath You Take," The Police
10. "Unchained Melody," Righteous Brothers
11. "Danny Boy," Daniel O'Donnell
12. "Time To Say Goodbye", Sarah Brightman
13. "What A Wonderful World," Louis Armstrong
14. "Knocking On Heaven's Door," Bob Dylan
15. "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing," Aerosmith
16. "Bright Eyes," Simon & Garfunkel
17. "Eternal Flame," The Bangles
18. "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead," Bon Jovi
19. "Want To Live Forever," Fame
20. "Reach For The Stars," S Club 7
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MTV's been talking about "Rocking the Vote" for years, but yesterday, young people finally really did put down their iPods and Playstations and queued up at the polls. The early reports are that voters aged 18 to 29 turned out in record numbers for this election, and that about 60% of them voted for Democrats -- a number that surely contributed to the "tidal wave" that swept Dems into control of the House and possibly the Senate. 
You probably didn't hear about it, but something happened last week that at least one record executive is calling "the future of our business." Auditions began to find five young men to form a new incarnation of 
I've been saying all along that there's something a bit funereal about