There's a HUGE difference between Richard Cheese and Michael Buble - namely, Richard Cheese only does covers of horrible pop songs and is campy ON PURPOSE. He wouldn't touch the great American Songbook with a ten foot pole. Covering NIN's song Closer, however, set to a variation on the Sesame Street theme is right up Cheese's ally. Sorry Belle - Richard Cheese is AWESOME!
I duly amend my thinking! I am not above novelty songs. I did love Dr. Demento and actually owned, back in high school, two Weird Al albums.
#3 The lyrics of No Regrets can almost tear me up. I think it's an amazing piece of work, frankly.
#5 - Bittersweet Symphony was an awful exercise in repetition. I think this song isn't really comparable.
#7 - Sorry, but I do not hear the connection between Mugison and the White Stripes at all. You kind of have White Stripes on the brain. Did it not sound folky? (Like a "smooth folk singer", perhaps? Maybe not... moving on.)
#8 - I was so out of the proverbial pop culture loop when JAMC was big that I had no idea this was a cover. And it's the second cover on this album, which is a bit of a pep peeve of mine. Oh well.
#9 Ha! I knew you wouldn't like that song. Oh, well...
#10 - This begins the set that I knew you'd like.
#11 - This reminds me of a point I need to make about the White Stripes, but later.
#12 - This song is my favorite song at the moment. I think it really a work of genius. It's not really about clowns, by the way, it's a political song: "We're going to burn your flag and piss on your parade." Yeah, baby.
#13 - What Belle doesn't like about this song is exactly what I do like about this song...
#14 - I found this song during a local wildfire. JRO wouldn't let me play it on the show until a month after the fire ended.
#15 - Hey, we finally agree! It was kind of filler from an artist I hadn't played in a while.
#16 - Mambo Kurt is awesome. (See also: Richard Cheese.) Sigh.
#17 - Tom Lehrer is the greatest satirist of the 20th Century, and probably the most influential musical satirist of all time. That's no hyperbole, BTW. What can I say... he's just awesome.
Well, mission accomplished. I really needed to feel out our aesthetic differences, and I think this show kind of lays it out on the line a bit. The stuff you liked I like for entirely different reasons (save, maybe, Compulsive Gamblers and Les Sexareenos), and the stuff you didn't like I like for the exact reasons you didn't like it. So there we go...
Here's my issue with the White Stripes. In pop culture, they were largely credited with "inventing" a sound that was around for a long while - but only really became marketable when MTV ran out of genre's to exploit. The way the White Stripes were trumpeted REALLY pissed me off. Yeah, they were good, but they weren't nearly as great and "revolutionary" as everyone made them out to be.
Once the White Stripes made it big, you saw this huge spike in "garage bands" like The Hives, The Strokes, etc - getting airplay on KROQ and MTV and suddenly, it was this "whole new garage band genre" that's been prevalent on college radio for damn near decades. The Hives get a bit of a reprieve from me because they legitimately disliked their status in all of that, not to mention they were also the best of that "movement" IMO.
It's yet another GLARING example of commercial labels and commercial radio rewriting musical history for their own exploitative purposes (see also: hip hop), so I can't reference music to the White Stripes because the White Stripes themselves are merely yet another band in a whole genre that has its own history. But the Michel Gondry video was cool, so there's that...
This was fun BTW. I hope you agree.
Definitely fun! I do like being challenged and I think disagreeing can be really productive. Keep it up!
And I do find myself thinking differently about the songs when I hear your point of view.
You have to watch that JAMC video for Sometimes Always. Hope Sandoval is so beautiful and sexy! That bar is so '90s! I really want to grow out my hair and buy a bunch of bangles, except that my wrists are so thin they fall off.
I love the commentary between you too. I think this could only be improved if I could get the play-by-play commentary as I listen to the podcast.
1. I have already bored Belle with my JAMC jones, so I'll skip to...
2. Tom Lehrer is just fab. I have dug him since 6th or 7th grade. It's a good way for a young lad to learn about masochism;
3. Tom Jones is also fab. He is unashamedly in my mixes.
4. I'm too old to get distraught about the way the White Stripes were marketed (w/ no small amt of help from Jack), though Bryan is right in principle.
In practice: the WS are better than most of whatever else the majors would have marketed at the time; it got bands like The Hives noticed (try The Flaming Sideburns Save Rock 'N' Roll for some fab foreign MC5 imitations); it got two of the Greenehornes and Brendan Benson a steady income (no pun intended); and probably got some kids interested in the garage genre -- including WS forerunners. So wile I take Bryan's point that the WS may get an undue share of attention or prominence from a critical perspective, the effects were probably positive on balance.
Someone tell me who the girl is singing with Meatloaf, because I have a crush.
Because I suck at googling, I googled "girl singing i would do anything for love" and got this in the results. WTF. Who writes these things? Not that I wouldn't love TD playing any one of his musical instruments for me (which he refuses to) or singing, but the way the answer is written is bizarre, what with the disconnected bullet points saying different things. WikiAnswers: yet another bad example of open source.
Surprisingly, Wikipedia is not bad for this sort of thing.
Now this is one great entry. I knew that smushed boobs girl in the music video wasn't a real singer. But then I thought "I am engaging in reverse snobbery." But her lip-synching was so bad.
My favorite part:
"Perceived ambiguity of "that"
Each verse comprises two things that he would do for love, followed by one thing that he would not do. It is that latter part of each verse that is the "that" of the title. However, some people misunderstand the lyrics, claiming that the singer never identifies what the "that" is which he is unwilling to do.[9] Steinman predicted this confusion during production.[10] An early episode of the VH1 program Pop-up Video made this claim at the end of the song's video: "Exactly what Meat Loaf won't do for love remains a mystery to this day."[11] A reviewer writing for Allmusic also misunderstood the lyric, commenting that "The lyrics build suspense by portraying a romance-consumed lover who pledges to do anything in the name of love except "that," a mysterious thing that he will not specify."[7] While the reviewer concludes that the mystery is revealed during the closing stages of the song, it is not observed that "that" is revealed in every chorus throughout.
Although some people assume that "that" is an exophoric reference to a sex act,[12] it is actually an anaphoric reference to the varying activities and feelings that are specified as antecedents in the lyric that the singer says that he won't do.
Jimmy always said, "You know what? Nobody's gonna get it." And he was right.
Meat Loaf[10]
* "I'll never lie to you ..."
* "I'll never forget the way you feel right now ..."
* "I'll never forgive myself if we don't go all the way tonight ..."
* "I'll never do it better than I do it with you ..."
* "I'll never stop dreaming of you every night of my life ..."
In addition, the female vocalist identifies two other things that the lead singer denies that he will do: "You'll see that it's time to move on" and "You'll be screwing around." To both of these, the lead singer emphatically responds, "I won't do that! No, I won't do that!"
Meat Loaf says that the question "what is 'that'?" is one of the most popular questions he is asked.[12] In his 1998 VH1 Storytellers special, he even explained it on stage using a blackboard and a pointing stick. In a 1993 promotional interview, Steinman states that the definition of "that" is fully revealed in the song in each of the several verses in which it is mentioned.
It's sort of is a little puzzle and I guess it goes by - but they're all great things. 'I won't stop doing beautiful things and I won't do bad things.' It's very noble. I'm very proud of that song because it's very much like out of the world of Excalibur. To me, it's like Sir Lancelot or something - very noble and chivalrous. That's my favorite song on the record - it's very ambitious"
This is a somewhat specious claim, though:
"Cultural impact
The song's huge commercial success has meant that it has had an impact on popular culture."
That's why I just linked, w/o giving the name. It's a pretty fab entry overall.
While I have put "Hot Summer Nights" on one Summer CD set, I have yet to include "I Would Do Anything For Love." But I do have the CD-single with three different versions of it, which makes it a likely candidate for a future appearance.
Jim Steinman carried the Spectorian torch between Spector and the JAMC. The fact that Phil is a psycho murderer really bums me out.
I think it bums out everyone. Psycho murderers have a way of doing that.
You should do Fall, Winter, and Spring CD mixes! But I am greedy like that.
By the way, I also want to plug Karl's weekly mix for those who can't wait till next summer.
Karl: The main reason why the White Stripes marketing bothered me is that it entirely stripped away the politics of the music's origins. Your MC5 reference wasn't lost on me.
For the sake of argument...
The year that separated my undergrad and grad school was spent working in a locally-owned bookstore, and this was the year that Jewel's awful book of poetry was published. The staff had a debate about the book. The argument was about whether or not Jewel's book, which we unanimously agreed was full of bad poetry - was still a positive thing because it might "kids" into reading poetry. My argument was that kids into Jewel's book had no interest in poetry, but interest in being pretentious schmucks.
It's a tad unfair as a comparison, but...
Just getting into a genre without any context of the very nature of that genre is unlikely to yield positive results. Again, musically speaking, see also hip hop.
Bryan,
Point taken. A possible counter-example might be Harry Potter, which is not great literature, but does seem to have gotten kids into reading for pleasure at the margin.
And yes, comparing Jewel to Jack White probably is a tad unfair.
Again, I agree with you in principle. But I'm operating from the premise that the majors will generally behave as they generally always do (even in the face of the Internet, because they are dinosaurs). Thus, my estimation is generally that promoting the Stripes is marginally better than promoting most of what passes for the Top 40 today. Conversely, promoting Jewel's book is probably not marginally better than what the publisher would have marketed in its absence.
---
Belle,
I do a Holiday/year-in-review mix CD (Part Xmas (mostly secular), a bit Hannukah, and People Who Died (Died)). I used to do Fall and Spring mixes, but dropped them a few years ago due to time constraints.
Also, I thank Belle for the plug natch. The weekly mixes differ from the CDs, though, insofar as the weekly mixes are comprised of "found objects" in the music blogosphere.
Sorta like making dinner with whatever ingredients fall to hand in the kitchen w/o shopping.
New mix is up. I threw in some Shatner and Tom Jones for Belle.
I know the Shatner is there to torture me and drive another wedge between me and Amber viz our disagreement over Original v. TNG, but re Tom Jones: aaaahhh!! I'm going to listen now! Yay!
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