Mini Mixtape #7

Posted on November 5, 2010 by bgibs122

Happy Friday! This week, I thought I’d share some surprisingly good covers; those cases where everyone might be a little hesistant to listen, but it all works out. Enjoy!

Jimi Hendrix – Like a Rolling Stone (1967)
I could have easily put Jimi’s amazing and better-than-the-original take on “All Along the Watchtower”, but that’s so popular most people know Hendrix’ version over Dylan’s. Not the case with this euphoric jam over “Like a Rolling Stone”, taken live from theMontery Pop Festival.

Arcade Fire – The Guns of Brixton (2007)
One of the decade’s leading indie bands does their take on an old punk classic. Where The Clash’s original bubble with paranoia about a not-too-far future, Arcade Fire’s haunting cover sounds like the survivors telling their story.

Oasis – My Generation (2002)
For a band so ostensibly rock ‘n roll, Oasis had this habit of rarely truly rocking out. This back-to-the-garage cover of The Who’s “My Generation”, which showcases Liam’s later-day snarl and the band’s ability to make a ruckus, more than makes up for it.

Paramore – Sunday Bloody Sunday
Paramore take U2’s arena sized (I realize how redundant “U2” and “arena sized” are but oh well) political rocker and turn it into an absolutely pretty acoustic reflection. It’s better when the band does this with it’s own songs (see: “The Only Exception”).

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Album Review: Weezer – Pinkerton (Dexlue Edition)

Posted on November 3, 2010 by bgibs122

14 years after its release, Pinkerton has become a weird singularity. In 1996, it was hated. In 2006, it was on “Best of the 90s” lists. In 2001, Rivers Cuomo called it, “A hugely painful mistake”. This winter, he’s playing it live in its entirety.

To be fair, Pinkerton had to be terrifying upon its first 1996 listen. It’s is this 35-minute wave of fuck up filled with guitars distorted beyond recognition, raw drums, awkward lyrics, and rip your heart out confessions. None of these elements on their own were particularly new (see: In Utero, which is a damn good comparison), but coming from the guys that did “Buddy Holly”, it had to be jarring.

But underneath all that, it is awesome. Even among great bands, there’s very rarely an album that’s nothing but everyone at their best, but that’s what Pinkerton is. As a band, Weezer snaps with precision between calm and explosive with a fire that their imitators lack. Matt Sharp was never the greatest bassist, but his backing vocals and contributions are the added flourishes missing from later Weezer records. Brian Bell didn’t believe in a bad riff or turning it up too loud. And Pat Wilson’s beaten-bare, unforgiving drums are a highlight. But it’s Cuomo’s show. It’s his confessional lyrics, cathartic delivery, crazy riffs, and overall manic neurotic stage presence that make Pinkerton such a memorable album.

The lyrics are painfully personal, but not in that Taylor Swift “I’m opening my diary” kind of way. The protagonist here isn’t afraid of letting lose on himself (check the uncomfortable honesty of “Across the Sea”, “I wonder what clothes you wear to school/I wonder how you decorate your room/I wonder how you touch yourself/And curse myself for being the cause”). “El Scorcho” (which could soundtrack any Boy-Likes-Girl movie of the past fifteen years) sees him taking a few jabs at himself, while “No Other One” is about that special kind of hatred that comes from a codependent relationship, and even though it’s amazingly catchy it isn’t hard to imagine Cuomo staring at himself in the mirror and shouting “Get your life together” on “The Good Life. Part of what makes Pinkerton‘s lyrics so uncomfortable is that we don’t even like saying these things to ourselves.

But this is still an amazing album. The fuzzed out, live-from-your-living-room mix is pure 90s alternative rock, and the band is absolutely on fire on these songs. “Tired of Sex” builds from a few parts into an explosive, messy declaration with a killer solo. “Why Bother” is self-defeateing cynicism set to fuzz-buried pop. Penultimate “Falling For You” is a shockingly technical number catchy as it is fun. And even after dozens of listens, “Across the Sea” still has that tearjerker chorus that’ll get to anyone that’s ever missed anyone. “Butterfly” ends the album on a shockingly calm note; the lone acoustic number shifts awkwardly next to nine other grunge pop spaz attacks.

The deluxe edition yields a rewarding if slightly empty return for the extra it costs. There’s 25 additional songs here, but 15 of them are either live, acoustic, or remixed takes on songs that are already on Pinkerton. The rest take the form of the album’s stellar B-sides; longtime favorites “You Gave Your Love to Me Softly”, “Devotion”, and “I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams”, as well as seven more, are all present and accounted for. While they’re nothing particuarly rare (or even really new; diehards acquired these online awhile ago), they make up for it by being really freaking good. This isn’t really after-thought material; it’s the complete Pinkerton package, one last gift to the people who said goodbye after they heard “Hash Pipe”. Or “Beverly Hills”. Or “Everybody Get Dangerous”. You get the idea. Five stars.

tl;dr: It’s a classic with extra live tracks and some kickass B-sides. C’mon.

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Radio Rant: Trey Songz feat. Nicki Minaj – Bottoms Up

Posted on November 2, 2010 by bgibs122

It’s that time of the week again, Radio Rants! Hey, I haven’t used the single art in a while, toss it on down there.

M’kay, what are we looking at here? A rapper that I’ve never heard of (that’s Trey Songz), a rapper I’ve heard too much of (that would be Nicki Minaj), and a song that’s had a pretty good run on the rap and pop charts called “Bottoms Up”.

So, who wants to guess what this is about? Couldn’t be yet another damn club song about partaking in the consumption of hundreds of dollars worth of expensive alcohol while in the company of females, could it? Especially with a few off-hand mentions to the rear end of said ladies because the song is called “Bottoms Up”, eh, eh? Nope, definitely not a song about glorifying inebriation and the objectification of women. Oh, and there’s Nicki Minaj. I’m sure she’ll contribute something substantial to say. Not some babble about whatever the main attraction is rapping about. Well, let’s take a look at the chorus/hook and see how things unfold.

“Bottoms up bottoms up
Ay whats in ya cup–Look, he’s drinking with people!
Got a couple bottles
But a couple aint enough–He’s really drinking with them!
Bottoms up bottoms up
Throw ya hands up–Because this line is in every song now!
Tell security we bout a tear this club up–They’re at the club!
Bottoms up bottoms up
Pocket full of green–Hey look, money! That’s probably being spent on booze!
Girl you know I love the way you shake it in them jeans–Yup
Bottoms up bottoms up
Throw yo hands up
Bottoms up, bottoms up, bottoms up up, up bottoms“

…c’mon man, really? You hit every single cliche in thirteen lines. I’m aware that the only three locations for pop music these days seem to be the past, the bed, or the club, but try harder. And do we really need to throw our hands up? It seems like every song out there’s against keeping blood circulating to the extremities, but maybe that’s just me.

Alright, to the verses…more cliches? “I’m like a walking bank”, “Tell me what you drank”?  Boasts like that are so overdone I’d need both hands and a few toes to count out how many songs use them. What else do we have here?

Actually, the rest of Mr. Songz’ verses deal with, shocker, getting drunk with women, which is apparently some specialty of his. However, there’s a few lines that hint that maybe this a cry for help perhaps? For instance, say “Alcohol insane” real quick to yourself a few times (preferably under your breath so that no one in hearing range thinks you’re nuts). Then do the same with “Alcohol hero”. Put’em together.

Am I the only one that heard “Alcoholism” eventually? That, mixed with the second verse (“My vision’s blurred/My words slurred/Its jam packed”) doesn’t really make “Bottoms Up” the fun “Let’s get smashed” tune that it seems to pretend it is.

Especially with that eerie beat. For some reason, the music to “Bottoms Up” reminds me less of a Top 40 hit and more of the soundtrack to a demented soundtrack. The bass drums, creepy sound effects, crooked synths…it’s very off sounding. Not bad, though.

Aw boy, I almost forgot Nicki “I’m trying to out-feature Lil Wayne” Minaj. Weezy’s actually a pretty solid comparison on account of them both being weird as hell, and taking over most songs they’re featured on. Nicki’s schizophrenic verse is…well, a little hard to call. On a technical level, it’s crazy awesome how seamlessly she jumps from one whack-tastic cluster of lines to another while still keeping this great flow, and her lyrics are ok enough. On the other hand, damn those voices get annoying. She goes from spitting out lines perfectly normally to cartoonish barks to baby talk to sounding medicated out of her pink and blonde head in under a minute.

Really, “Bottoms Up” as a song doesn’t settle one way or another. Is this a bad song? Probably not. In fact, the times that I’ve heard it on the radio, I usually leave it on. But it’s not a really great song, either. I’m sick and tired of songs about the damn club, and Trey’s weak verses are only made interesting by the Halloween Hip-Hop behind him, as well as Minaj’s off-her-lithium verse. Eh, at least it’s interesting.

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We Used to Wait

Posted on November 1, 2010 by bgibs122

A few weeks ago I read the graphic novel series Scott Pilgrim. In volume 5 (of 6), before Scott’s band plays their first show in a while, an extra character says, “A whole generation of bands have come and gone since your last show in 2005.” Scott quips back, “That was in May this year! Four months ago!” The joke is a forth-wall breaking jab at what’s referred to as “comic time”; time passing outside the comic much faster than in-comic due to the fact that comics take a while to draw, get edited, published, etc.

But I think it applies for modern pop music as well. Think about it like this; how long ago does it feel like “Bad Romance” came out? No, don’t sit there and Google it, think about how long it feels like it’s been since  you could look at someone and shout, “RAH RAH RA AH AH” and not look like a sputtering dolt. Feels like it’s been awhile, huh?

It’s been a year last week. It’s been a year last week since Lady Gaga went thermonuclear on us, took over the pop scene, and has now almost completely disappeared (meat dresses be damned). On that note, “Tik Tok” came out last December, and now Ke$ha has a new EP due out in a month. Rihanna’s “Rude Boy”, the big single from her Rated R album, went to #1 in March and she has a new album slated to come out in a few weeks. Katy Perry just put out her third goddamn single in five months. Kanye West has been putting out a song every week for the past month and a half.

Holy shit.

It certainly looks like the production turnaround in pop music’s gone through the roof. The hits come more often, free downloads are the norm, and it seems like a week can barely pass without the headline “Download a new song by ______” on music sites the world over. And, for the most part, the quality never really takes a nosedive.

Music culture’s sense of instant gratification has spiked in the last few years. I’m not saying everyone’s doing it, but a lot of artists have caught wise that once you’re in the spotlight, you damn should damn well hold onto it. Hell, Ke$ha out and out said “I don’t want to go away!” (probably because we’d remember what vocal talent meant once she took some time off) when she announced her EP.

It’s actually interesting to watch. I remember when Cee-Lo’s “Fuck You” was released out of nowhere, and within days it went from a lone mp3 somewhere to one of the most talked about songs of the time. And I’m not saying that the music industry has always been this slow-moving dinosaur (well, at least in terms of music, they only managed to shut down Limewire last week, and I think people stopped using Limewire in 2006). After all, The Beatles released Please Please Me and Abbey Road within the span of seven years. But still, it’s been curious to watch an artist like, say, Lady Gaga go from “Oh, she has a weird outfit or two” to “What the hell is that?”

But what is it turning us into? There’s always an eye on the horizon, always someone looking for the next hit. Artists might have a faster turnaround, but they can blow up and then essentially disappear from mainstream consciousness in shorter amounts of time. Even the songs that are everywhere feel like they have a shorter lifespan than they did a few years ago. And sometimes with everyone always pushing to get that new single, the hot new video, or the latest collaboration, we can lose sight of what makes great music enjoyable.

If an artist puts out a whole album and everyone clamors for the singles, what happens to the other songs there? Last editorial, I talked about streamlining the industry, and one of the negatives of that approach is trimming out experimental work that can lead to artistic growth. Then you can just miss a great song. For example, Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream has a tune called “The One That Got Away”. It’s accessible enough, catchy, not terrible…and because it probably won’t be a single, no one’s listening to it.

Ah well, at least people are churning out more music.

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