Just Can't Get Enough

Much like Chris, my fascination with YouTube has led into the hunt for old videos. There's all sorts of oddities to be had. For example, take the new wave band Animotion and their song Obsession - a gem of the 80's. Well, courtesy of YouTube you can view:

Animotion then: the original video.

Animotion now: a live performance in 2004.

Animotion forever? A homemade video, based on footage from an old Ewan MacGregor movie. Not a bad mixing job.

Anyhow, your homework is as follows:

1. View the original Obsession video, followed by the original video for The Metro by Berlin and the video for Don't You Wan't Me by the Human League.

2. Write a 500 word essay on the style and conventions of new wave music videos of the early 1980s. Your essay should (a) examine the role of bad costumes, absurd sets, heavy makeup and androgynous men, and (b) contain the word 'inexplicable.'

There will be a prize for the best essay.

Video du Jour

Just surfing youtube and feeling nostalgic. I really like this video - it seems oddly innocent now.

Rainy Day Afternoon

Stuck inside? Here's a fine way to pass the time on a rainy afternoon:

Pitchfork Feature: 100 Awesome Music Videos

I would direct your attention to David Hasselhoff's entry, in all its magnificent awfulness. Plus, there's plenty of old friends for fellow children of the 80's.

The 100 Best Living Songwriters?

I haven't seen the issue yet, but apparently the latest edition of Paste magazine features a list, compiled by 50 or so journalists and musicians. I love lists. Not only do they satisfy the obsessive that lurks within me, they also provide fodder for endless discussion and argument.

Anyway... here's the list. Just for s. and g. I have bolded artists who records I own and crossed the ones I've never heard of (because I am contrary like that). Maybe I'll throw in some brief comments at the end.

1. Bob Dylan
2. Neil Young
3. Bruce Springsteen
4. Waits/Brennan
5. Paul McCartney
6. Leonard Cohen
7. Brian Wilson
8. Elvis Costello
9. Joni Mitchell
10. Prince
11. Randy Newman
12. Jagger/Richards
13. Paul Simon
14. Stevie Wonder
15. Willie Nelson
16. David Bowie
17. Holland/Dozier/Holland
18. U2
19. Patty Griffin
20. Van Morrison
21. Lou Reed
22. Lucinda Williams
23. John/Taupin
24. Jeff Tweedy
25. Chuck Berry
26. R.E.M.
27. Radiohead
28. Robbie Robertson
29. Tom Petty
30. John Prine
31. Carole King
32. Leiber/Stoller
33. Pete Townshend
34. John Fogerty
35. Steve Earle
36. Beck
37. Smokey Robinson
38. Kris Kristofferson
39. Led Zeppelin
40. Bacharach/David
41. Ray Davies
42. Loretta Lynn
43. Ryan Adams
44. Al Green
45. Jackson Browne
46. David Byrne
47. Sufjan Stevens
48. Welch/Rawlings
49. Cat Stevens
50. Public Enemy
51. Penn/Oldham
52. Paul Westerberg
53. James Taylor
54. Aimee Mann
55. Dolly Parton
56. James Brown
57. Morrissey
58. Sly Stone
59. Jack White
60. Jimmy Webb
61. John Hiatt
62. Sting
63. Richard Thompson
64. Andy Partridge
65. Bill Mallonee
66. Charles Thompson
67. Conor Oberst
68. Allen Toussaint
69. Merle Haggard
70. Alex Chilton
71. Vic Chesnutt
72. Michael Jackson
73. Julie Miller
74. Over the Rhine
75. Ron Sexsmith
76. Will Oldham
77. Bruce Cockburn
78. Robert Pollard
79. Stephen Malkmus
80. Pink Floyd
81. The Flaming Lips
82. John Darnielle
83. Fleetwood Mac
84. They Might Be Giants
85. David Bazan
86. Sam Beam
87. Lyle Lovett
88. Parliament
89. Victoria Williams
90. Nick Cave
91. Drive-By Truckers
92. Alejandro Escovedo
93. Joseph Arthur
94. Sam Phillips
95. Patti Smith
96. Jimmy Cliff
97. Josh Ritter
98. Jay Farrar
99. Outkast
100. T. Bone Burnett

Well, there's a lot of names struck out at the bottom of that list, presumably newer artists unknown to me. Which shows how unhip I am.

I see Shane MacGowan did not make the list, which I find inexplicable as he is (technically) still alive.

I would've put Lucinda Williams, Paul Westerberg and Richard Thompson higher up the list. Certainly ahead of Tom Petty.

No Neil Diamond? I am serious here - Bacharach and King make it, but Diamond doesn't? WTF?

Anyone else think it strange to see 'Morrissey' listed instead of 'Morrissey/Marr?' Why not just list the Smiths?

Old School Friday

Currently on the iPod: Brook Benton and Dinah Washington singing Baby(You've Got What It Takes), Number One on the Billboard magazine R & B singles chart for ten weeks in 1960.

And better than just about anything you're liable to hear on the charts today - a real smooth song.

10 Days Late

The above image comes to you courtesy of The Comics Curmudgeon: your source for everything weird in the funny papers. I post it here mainly because it cracks me up. I would consider the gentleman's word a fine code to live by if there were any hog pens in Q-town.

Just so you know: one iPod + this podcast = musical bliss. How else are you going to find out that Brad Roberts (lead singer of the Crash Test Dummies) has a strange knack for covering Britney Spears?

More stuff later. Maybe.

Liner Notes

Since CDs nudged LPs aside I've heard a number of folks - critics, pundits and casual music fans alike - lament the end of what was, I guess, an age of great album cover art.

Well, um... ok. I pretty much cut my musical teeth on cassettes, which as I recall had little more space than a postage stamp for this kind of thing.

I do miss liner notes though. My parents did not have a large record collection, which is probably another reason the whole idea of cover art leaves me cold. Anyway, they had two records which were pretty much in constant rotation - Meet The Beatles and The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem: In Person At Carnegie Hall. I spent hours listening to these records, more often than not with the cardboard cover balanced on my knees, flipped over so I could read the liner notes on the back. These notes, which related various anecdotes about the bands and the songs on the record in a casual but knowing manner, seemed to me like a glimpse into another world, adult world.

Nowadays, the little booklets nestled in the front of the CD jewel case rarely contain anything more interesting than lyrics and various and sundry thank yous by the artist(s). An exception to this general rule was the CDs by Johnny Cash. Whether it was an album of new content, or a compilation of older material, a Cash CD alsways had something worht reading inside. This makes sense, see as 'the Man in Black' won two Grammies for his liner notes. Some examples...

June Carter Cash wrote these notes, recounting how Elves sort-of-kind-of introduced her to Johnny Cash, for the compilation Love.

Here are the liner notes to Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison - these won one of the two grammies I mentioned above. (He won the other Grammy, oddly enough, for the notes to Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline.

Steve Earle contributed these notes to the re-issue of the At Folsom Prison.

And these are the liner notes to American Recordings, Cash's first record with Rick Rubin.

Thanksgiving Five

I thought it only appropriate to note the coming holiday with a special and particular post. A post about being thankful, not only for the presence of certain things in your life, but for the absence of certain things in your life. So, for your illumination and consideration dear readers....

Five Songs So Overplayed You Should Be Thankful If You Never Hear Any Of Them Again. Ever.
5. Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin
An overwrought song with absurd lyrics, Stairway to Heaven is a blot on the canon of Zep. There's really no need for this song to exist within your musical purview once you leave the confines of high school. Kindly cue up Good Times Bad Times as an antidote.
4. You Shook Me - AC/DC
I likes me some AC/DC. But I cannot - not even a little - abide this song. AC/DC makes hard-rockin' ass-kickin' music. Music for drivin' fast, binge drinking, breaking furniture and simply lighting yourself on fire. The music of AC/DC was not intended - not even in the band's worst imaginings - to be an anthem and rallying call for flipperheads.
3. The Joker - The Steve Miller Band
Wow, was this a tough entry to figure. You could pretty much put down the entire contents of Greatest Hits 1974-1978 and call it a day, but that seemed a little too easy, a little too much like cheating. As it was, The Joker edged out Rock N' Me by a hair, largely due to the fact that after The Joker turned up on an episode of The Simpsons it took on a zombie-like quality of simply refusing to die a decent death. The song has become the kind of nightmarish standard that bar bands feel obliged to cover, while Rock N' Me remains safely confined to the dusty tomb of classic rock radio stations where it can do little or no harm.
2. Old Time Rock & Roll - Bob Seger
This entry involved another decision that was very difficult for me to make. Simply put, there any number of Bob Seger songs I need never hear again. Turn The Page? All set with that. Night Moves? Ditto. But in the end it simply had to be Old Time Rock & Roll. How many times has this song been inflicted on me at a wedding? How many times did the video for this song - with those terrible images of the early model Tom Cruise Android prancing about - coming jumping out at me during the long ago days of MTV? Why, I ask you all, why? What was it all for?

And the number one entry....

1. Hotel California - The Eagles
This song is the Chief Devil of Overplayed songs. This song is my Beelzebub. I hate and fear Hotel California. Just the opening notes of this song start me to twitching violently and I will immediately seek to turn the station, unplug the stereo or otherwise terminate the source of 'the bad sound.' If forced to suffer all the way through to the first chorus, I'm generally ready to club Don Henley like a baby seal.

It has been over ten years since I listened to Hotel California from start to finish. Never again.

So there you go. Now go be thankful and have a lovely holiday.