Merry Christmas Everyone!

Last year, I compiled a playlist of Christmas songs I remember enjoying when I was young. I remember loving "Christmas Is The Time to Say I Love You" by Billy Squier and "Father Christmas" by The Kinks and "Christmas Wrapping" by The Waitresses.

Seeing Love Actually inspired me to add a few more to it this year "Christmas Is All Around" and "All I Want For Christmas Is You," making it a total of 15 Songs of the Season.

While I usually only play these songs at this time of year, as Santas and reindeer don't hold up too well in July, there is one song I absolutely love whenever I hear it, and I could very well play it year round.

This song is the 1984 version of Do They Know It's Christmas as sung by members of the British pop royalty at that time: Simon LeBon, Boy George, George Michael, Bono. It's amazing what your memories will do to a song. Even when I was 8 years old, I understood that this song was part of something really big. I felt I was watching a part of history being made. Live Aid the next year was completely unbelievable in my young, impressionable mind.

But anyways, the song itself is just so upbeat and beautiful, it's like a modern day Silent Night or Joy to the World for me. And the request for charity, spoken smack dab in the middle of the decade of decadence is a very realistic one. It asks people to not give up everything they own, but to at least reflect about where they are in life that holiday season and realize and be thankful that they are in fact quite lucky compared with others in other parts of the world.

They recently remade the song to celebrate its 20th anniversary and for the Live 8 festivals which were held last year to support the idea behind the world debt-reducing Jubilee 2000 initiative. While the proceeds for that single and video went to charity as well, I stand by my belief that the original in all its cheery, teased out bleached hair glory is the better of the two.

Here's the video for my favorite Christmas song ever. Enjoy it, and I hope you enjoy the time you spend with your loved ones this holiday season!

A Musing About Muse

I think it’s only fitting that I should write about a band I share a name with. Yes, that’s right, I want to talk about the band Muse in this entry. I want to point out before I begin that I did not choose my name in reference to the band; I chose it because I liked the idea of being a goddess-like type connected with music. So there you have it. I’m a bit more humble in real life. I promise.

Anyways, even though where I live is not exactly a hotbed for rock and roll talent, it does show the occasional music video in between shows and one of those videos, shown earlier this year was Supermassive Black Hole, off of Muse’s Black Holes and Revelations CD. For reasons unknown to me now, after hearing this song and liking it quite a bit, I went back a notch and started downloading everything I could off of Absolution, their previous CD. When I realized I pretty much liked EVERYTHING I was hearing and then sheepishly realized I had downloaded the entire album, I then bought the CD. (Look for another post soon on my thoughts about downloading music, when I think it is OK and when it isn’t.)

Muse’s music seems pretty complex and hard-edged. One song features a Rachmaninoff styled piano solo, and another is like a mini-rock opera, featuring different movements within the same song. Then there’s the case for the lyrics being somewhat dark as they explore things like death and conspiracies taking place within our governments. And yet this is also a band that wrote a beautiful song called Starlight, which could be their most mainstream love song style hit, except Matt Bellamy sounds like he is going on about being taken away in some kind of (space)ship, which will take him far from his loved ones.

Matt Bellamy – The Truth Is Out There

Matt Bellamy is the lead singer, guitar player, pianist and lyricist for Muse. One of the more interesting things about him, aside from composing the music for Muse and singing it an impressive range is that he also subscribes to a number of way out there ideas. Some are pretty routine, like life colonies existing on other planets, but another one he has gone on the record believing is the idea that September 11 took place with the American government knowing full well what was going to happen on that day either because they were directly part of the plot to have extremist Muslims hijack planes and slam them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon or at least knew of the plot and did nothing so they would have an excuse to invade the Middle East again.

The title “Knights of Cydonia” refers to a region of Mars which is believed to have at some point housed human life. The video is this futuristic spaghetti western style movie, filled with references to various science fiction films. See it here and be prepared to be blown away. It’s quite elaborate, and a bit over the top, but also quite awesome.



Here’s a video I found of Dom Howard, the band’s drummer, making fun of Slipknot, an over the top American post-metal band. The best bit of the video I think is Matt Bellamy’s cackling throughout it, though the bit with the sombrero comes awfully close.


Just watch it.

CD Review: Under The Iron Sea

Note: I wrote this ages ago for a newspaper out in California who told me then that they would soon publish it. They still haven't so I am putting it here! If for whatever reason I am unable to keep this posted when it gets published (ah the power of positive thinking!) then I'll delete this post. I think it needs to see the light of day somehow! Looking at it now, I know my opinion of Keane has changed since I wrote this, but for purposes of a time-capsule style entry, I'll post the review I wrote as it was when I first wrote it.

With their piano driven rock and their introspective lyrics, Keane certainly aren’t going to ask you to get up and dance any time soon. They’d rather know how you were feeling at that very moment and let you know how they were feeling themselves. It can be a bit melancholy at times, but Tom Chaplin’s voice soars above it all.

What Keane are doing isn’t particularly groundbreaking. Plenty of comparisons have been made between Keane and Coldplay and Radiohead. Unfortunately these days, any band that primarily uses a piano will have people nodding over in the direction of Coldplay, and Chaplin’s singing is like a cross between the show-stopping acrobatics of Dennis DeYoung from Styx and Freddie Mercury and the emotive wailing of Thom Yorke.

The album opens with “Atlantic,” a song that sounds moody and ominous, like you were stuck on a rowboat at sea with a storm cloud rushing at you. But then the mood is quickly uplifted with “Is It Any Wonder?” the band’s first single.

This may be the one song that allows Keane to get greater radio exposure, but it might also be the one song that does not sound like typical Keane. “Everybody’s Changing” off of Keane’s 2004 debut Hopes and Fears seemed to paint Keane as a somber, mopey band who seemed to despair over the lack of permanence occurring in their day-to-day life. The rest of the album sounded quite similar, with a moody piano and bass backing up Chaplin plaintively asking “What does it all mean and where do I fit into it?”

With Under the Iron Sea, Keane are still earnestly asking the same philosophical questions but the band’s sound is much more upbeat. The opening riff of “Is It Any Wonder?” might confuse some people into thinking that someone in Keane has finally decided to pick up a guitar, but in fact, the sounds are made by Tim Rice-Oxley playing a distorted piano. This could be the one song that Keane could play in concert and send its fans pogoing into the aisles.

“Put It Behind You” is one of the stranger songs on the album. It starts off as a pretty straight-forward rock piece, but the song abruptly ends at around the four minute mark. What follows next are two minutes of an odd mix of swirling, atmospheric synthesizer loops. It’s quite a departure from the original tune and really doesn’t add anything special to it.

The next track, “Crystal Ball” is just as shimmery and ethereal an experience as one would hope going to a gypsy to find out your future might be. The only song that is really weak on this album is “Hamburg Song,” which features an annoyingly slow piano. As it is a holdover from their Hopes and Fears days, it’s a good reminder as to just how much their sound has evolved.

Keane might still be concerned about their future and finding their place in the world but seem like they will be enjoying their journey of self-discovery more than they did before. Under the Iron Sea is worth a listen, and you’ll especially like it if you are into Coldplay, Muse or any other band that seems to owe a large debt to Radiohead.

The Lost Art of Rebuying Recordings

Do any of you out there have holes in your CD collection that were created when you made the move from cassette to CD? I can remember having quite a few tapes in high school. It wasn't until maybe my sophomore year in university that I started buying CDs, with the intention of converting all of my tapes to the newer, supposedly better CD format.

When I had them on tape, I owned every single U2 recording that had been made up until Zooropa. Now I have just 8 U2 CDs. I am missing only October, Rattle and Hum, and Pop. I could go either way now with completing my U2 collection.

I also once owned everything R.E.M. made, up until their Up CD. Now I just own six. The point of what I own by R.E.M. is moot to me these days anyhow, as I think they stopped being relevant when they continued on without Bill Berry. I want to get Automatic For The People though as I remember it being a really good tape.

On tape I also collected a couple of recordings by Midnight Oil. I loved Blue Sky Mining and Diesel and Dust. They are nowhere to be found in my CD collection as well.

Pixies were another band I got into while in high school. I think at one point I owned almost everything they put out. Now I just have three CDs: Trompe Le Monde, Doolittle and Bossanova. I would love to own Surfer Rosa again if only to have Gigantic to play over and over again. It's a great song!

I also remember owning Sinead O'Connor's The Lion and the Cobra and I Do Not Want What I Have Not Got and really liking them. I wonder if those songs have stood the test of time with me, or if their memory of them is better than the songs themselves.

It's really hard when you want to embrace both the past and present when you like music as much as I do. I have to admit I have not bought anything in a long time in an attempt to recreate my high school tape collection. I wonder if anyone else is in the same position as me, wondering if it is a good idea to be so nostalgic for a time period when maybe there is other good current music out there that I should be paying more attention to.

Hello World, Here's a Song That We're Singing! C'mon Get Happy!

What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music? -- Rob Gordon, High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

Kurt Cobain once sang "I miss the comfort in being sad," and without going into too much detail (this is after all, a blog about music, not a makeshift confessional/therapist's couch), I have been going through some minor inner conflicts, been feeling some minor pangs of ennui (does ennui even come in minor pang form?) and I've noticed lately that I can't seem to get enough of bands like Keane and Radiohead and Muse. It may have even gotten to the point where others say "Hey that Jeff Buckley guy, he wasn't exactly the most up person out there, was he?" and I don't even notice. Someone on a website I frequent recently recommended Editors to me, and I like them, even though I think someone's observation that they are quite like Joy Division is spot on.

And I'm not even looking at this as part of that lame ass argument for parental warning stickers where parents without a clue think that listening to Korn or Marilyn Manson makes their children into homicidal killers. I just think I am listening to too much music that is cut from the same emotional (but not EMO) cloth, and I'm wondering if I abandoned my beloved music for a few weeks, what would happen? Instead of listening to a man pine for the father he never knew and listening to another complain about getting old when he isn't even 30, why don't I see what happens to my psyche if in their place I listen to Fergie and Pussycat Dolls and Gwen Stefani? Would whatever is affecting me, those problems, would they become different? Would it be the end of the world for me over something more trivial, as in "My local drugstore doesn't sell blue eyeliner!"? Would I end up going completely bat-shit mental?

I know I go through phases of music, where sometimes I like music that sounds completely ethereal and almost fragile, and then I turn around and want to hear someone screaming over crunching guitars and bashing drums. But I have to wonder now if it really is the music that I am listening to that is making me feel meh.

Any lurkers out there know of any intelligent feel good music? Or am I completely missing the point? If everyone felt safe in their own skin and had plenty of money and a lovely person to come home to, etc, etc, would there even be pop music in the first place?

Musicians I Would Like To Take Out To Dinner (Part 3)

I first heard about Sebadoh in high school. After Nirvana came and turned every high schooler on its head, what became known as "indie-rock" was the way to go and Sub Pop and Matador Records were the record labels that had all the cool next big thing bands.

Anyways, in 1994, a close friend of mine was practically singing the praises of Sebadoh to me, and finally when I bit down upon the hook I thought she had been offering me, she balked and pretty much said to me that she didn’t want me to listen to their music because she didn’t want them to go mainstream. I was a little offended at both what seemed to be her selfishness and the allusion that I was what was (horror of horrors!) mainstream. Looking back on myself then, I sure as hell felt like I was out on the fringe but I didn’t subscribe to the uniform of the fringe sitter. Still the idea that I could single-handedly be some band’s critical downfall and point where they officially sold out boggled my mind. Dejected, I didn’t bring up the point with her again.

In the fall of 1996 I was a sophomore at university and again I came across Sebadoh in the circles I traveled and again I was greeted with indie-rock snobbery. (By the way, in a future post I will be addressing this issue of whether to share the music you hold dear, and why I find it positively stupid to be a royal music snob, as in “My God! My Beloved Iraqi Transistor Tomato just sold 5,000 copies of its latest album Kaleidoscopic Junkie Health Insurance! They fucking sold out! Poseurs!”)

But this time, as I was able to get to the used record stores in my neighborhood, I figured enough was enough and I picked up their Harmacy CD. Instantly, I was hooked. The album was a mixture of poppy guitar rock and harder punkish rock. I've amused myself by thinking of a time where Lou and Jason were jamming in separate bands in apartments above each other until one day they can't take the others noise anymore and start screaming "You got pop in my punk!" "Oh yeah? You got punk in my pop!"

I remember I instantly was taken with how one singer was very confessional, sounded sensitive and a bit wounded, lovesick and mooning over some girl whom he knew was The One. In Willing To Wait, he sang of his Beautiful Friend who had taken a chance on him in the past, and how he wanted that chance again, if only she would give it to him. I also quickly realized that if said woman was going to kick him to the curb then I'd be happy to take her place. (Yes, I admit it, I had a pretty sizeable crush on the semi-dorky looking guy in the forefront of the above photo throughout most of my college days.) The other voice was more like “Hell, fuck it, either you like me or you don’t.” I don't think it really is that far off to call Jason Lowenstein and Lou Barlow the indie equivalent (at that time) of Lennon and McCartney.

And later on, I dig deeper into the Sebadoh library and found the albums which featured what can only be called the sound creations of one Eric Gaffney. Not a singer by any stretch, Gaffney's contribution to Sebadoh was the sound loops he liked to throw together which made these really kaleidoscopish collages which were certainly not like anything else I had heard at the time. (Check out Bubble and Scrape for some later Gaffney works.)

I think I really respect Sebadoh for not really selling out, even though yes, they did sign to a major label for what would be their last album. I love what Lou Barlow did with The Folk Implosion, bringing more dancey beats and loops to his music. But I also remember remarking to myself after hearing The Sebadoh that maybe once Lou had won his girl, there was just nothing left for him to say within Sebadoh. (Lou has not only a wife and daughter these days but also his first ever solo album I want to check out sometime soon!) And is it necessarily a bad thing that maybe the reason why a band dried up is because the underdog won the girl of his dreams? I don't think so.

Top 5 Sebadoh Songs (The hardest one yet! I really want to cheat and go 5 with Jason and 5 with Lou...):

1. Too Pure
2. Think (Let Tomorrow Bee)
3. Rebound
4. Together or Alone
5. Got It

Holy Shit, This is Awesome!

Well, wait. Is awesome really the word for this?



Billy Idol. White Christmas.

Let me say it again!

Billy Idol. White Christmas!

Anyone else getting Love Actually flashbacks?

Hope everyone has a happy, festive and SANE holiday!*

*(Only 27 more shopping days to go!)

Skeletons In My Closet (Part 2)

I'm not ashamed to say I like Led Zeppelin. I'm just ashamed that it's taken me so long to finally get interested in them. So my second publicly aired skeleton is this: I consider myself a big fan of music and fairly knowledgeable about it, but have, for the past 15 years or so, largely ignored the catalog of work Led Zeppelin created. Once I was of the mind they were way too metal for my tastes, and way too popular, too middle of the road rock for me. Now I think, "How can you not like them? How can you not like the chances they took musically throughout their career? How can you not appreciate the power of Robert Plant's singing or John Bonham's drumming?"

Changes that I am anticipating for later on in the year made me decide to download some of their songs online, as opposed to buy another CD. This is a really hard thing to do when some of the song titles are never sung during the course of the song! I plan on buying their CDs at some point (I already own Led Zeppelins II and IV), but right now I'm worried about seriously going berserk in HMV at this point, and while it breaks my heart a little to go in and walk out empty-handed, I am a little proud of my self-restraint!

But Led Zeppelin are one of those bands I grew up with, or I should say, one of the bands my dad listened to while I was growing up. When I was much younger, I was plagued with chronic headaches that would last for 2 or 3 days at a time, ones that would prevent me from sleeping until my body couldn't take the strain and I would eventually pass out from exhaustion. Anyways, during that time, as most TV stations were not in a 24 hour format like they are now, my dad would stay up with me into the wee hours of the morning, and we would watch his video collections of concerts and videos, made from taping MTV overnight, back in the day when the channel actually played music.

One of the specials was the Led Zeppelin concert movie The Song Remains the Same. I vaguely remember Robert Plant's video sequence, where I think it was medieval themed. The one that sticks out the most for me, though is the one featuring John Bonham, where we see him play Moby Dick and cut into the performance are clips of him racing a car, some nitroglycerin fueled funny car. I don't know how this memory came about, but I do remember learning that he had died and then asking my dad if he had died in the car crash. My dad probably thinking I'd grow up to try the same thing if I knew he had actually died from a serious bender of 26 vodka shots in one day, told me "yes."

Then when I got older I somehow associated Led Zeppelin with being like the grandfather of all things hair metal. Yes, I (at the time) saw bands like Poison and Warrant in the same light as Led Zeppelin. I now see that all four members of the band, whether separate or together are extremely talented. This is not the case for Warrant. But at the time, I saw Led Zeppelin as too excessive and flashy and was turned off by the whole thing.

I think they are one of the most musically interesting bands out there. It doesn't matter what part you concentrate on. It's all really interesting and amazing. I tend to pay attention most to John Bonham's drumming. It's amazing how much force he put behind his playing. He just beat the shit out of his drums constantly, both destroying his sticks and the drum heads. He drummed with four sticks on the song appropriately titled Four Sticks.

While Stairway To Heaven leaves a bad taste in my mouth, only because it was the one song they played over and over at my school dances to signal the dance's end and thereby signaling to me another wasted evening where I hung out on the sidelines and never was asked to dance, I am now starting to slowly appreciate the song and especially starting to love the guitar solo for it.

I think the best Led Zeppelin song where they all come together so well has to be The Immigrant Song, which is off Led Zeppelin III. I'm really amazed at just how short that song is, just over 2 minutes long. I guess when I first heard it while driving around with my father, I was pretty dumbstruck at the combined forces of Robert Plant's wailing and the solid rhythm section of John Bonham and John Paul Jones.

Also I learned something kind of funny while trying to research Led Zeppelin completely through the wonders of Google, but you have to wait for it. When Robert Plant's 5 year old son died (not the funny part) he was so devastated that he almost decided to quit Led Zeppelin and music for good (also not the funny part) and become a kindergarten teacher. How awesome would that have been? Former rock god Robert Plant once wailing "Squeeze me baby, till the juice runs down my leg!" on The Lemon Song, now singing very soulful versions of the ABC Song and The Eensy Weensy Spider. I wonder how much the bootlegs would have gone for!

I'm very glad he had a change of heart and decided to carry on, even though John Bonham's death only a few years later would shelve Led Zeppelin for good. Robert Plant's song to his deceased son, All My Love is one of the prettiest songs Led Zeppelin songs I have ever heard and it becomes even more beautiful when you realize that this is not a run of the mill love song between a man and a woman, but an elegy to his son who spent such a short time on this earth.

My Top Five Led Zeppelin Songs (subject to change as I am still figuring them out!)

1. The Immigrant Song
2. Good Times Bad Times
3. Four Sticks
4. Misty Mountain Hop
5. All My Love

By the way...

I have not abandoned this blog. Work's just kept me busy and I'm actually starting playing the guitar again and undertaking some self-help work on your creativity project, so I haven't had as much time to blog as usual. I wanted to hit this blog at least once a week but well, maybe in a bit I can get back to that.

I want to write more "People I'd Like to Take Out To Dinner" articles, and am thinking of someday soon lengthily singing the praises of Franz Ferdinand, Sonic Youth, Sebadoh and Pearl Jam, I just need to find the time to sit down, write something and do the article justice!

So stay tuned, you faithful 2 readers!

Songs I Can't Stand Part 2

I feel old doing this one, because I remember laughing at old Tonight Show footage where Steve Allen was reading in a very serious tone the lyrics to "Be Bop-a-Lu-La" or something like that and as the audience was laughing with him, thinking "My God, Steve, you're right this makes no sense!" I was laughing at him, thinking "My God, get a life, it's just lyrics."

And yet Fergie's London Bridge lyrics just make me wanna go "Huh?" And it's sung in one of those ways where it leeches onto your brain and sucks the life out of it.

How come everytime you come around,
My London, London bridge, wanna go down like,
London, London, London, wanna go down like,
London, London, London, we goin’ down like…

Is it in your head now too? Good. Let's suffer together!

Jeff Buckley, God Bless Him!

Jeff Buckley’s voice makes me weep like a baby. It’s just so fucking beautiful. Three full octave ranges in his voice. At least. I’m listening to the only album he completed almost 10 years after he died, and I can’t believe he’s gone. I remember talking with a friend about him when I was in university a few years ago and she told me how she loved Jeff Buckley and I said to her “It’s terrible what happened,” and she actually looked at me and said “What?” Then I got the painful job of telling her how one of her most favorite singers of all time in the entire world had lost his life when he drowned in a Memphis river. I felt like a complete asshole.

His voice seriously is like an infection. It just stays under your skin and you’re not the same after hearing his songs. After pinching a few of his songs off the Internet I finally bought his Grace CD today and am in the middle of listening to it. I’ve been tearing up every now and again, for the beauty of his voice, for his death which just seems to serve as one of many examples as to how life is far from fair sometimes, and for Hallelujah, the song MTV latched onto when covering the September 11th attacks five years ago. The coverage will soon be relived all over the TVs and the Internet tomorrow. As I lived in Washington D.C. then, I’m really not looking forward to seeing any of the coverage, but I know I’m not a special case. I highly doubt anyone else is, too.

Anyways, my most favorite (so far) Jeff Buckley song, “I Want Someone Badly” isn’t even on this CD. In that song, he just completely bares his soul, stretches his voice high up over the lyrics and the backing vocals which are quite reminiscent of something out of the early 1960s soul groups. I love this song so much because his voice is just oozing with pain, dripping with loneliness and I can totally sympathize with it. I just wish I could emote like that too. Everyone has so much to say, has so many feelings they would like to share but he just does it in a way that is unbelievably articulate and vulnerable and just plain amazing.

I’m a woman obsessed now. I can’t stop playing his songs, even though they make me long for an alternate universe where he has grown older and has made a few more albums and I have seen him in concert. Anyone stumbling onto my small pathetic corner of the Internet, please get away from my page and point your browser in the direction of amazon.com or CDnow.com or whatever else and buy his CD Grace. Don’t be stupid like me and download his songs. BUY HIS CD. Really! You certainly will not regret it.

Skeletons In My Closet (Part 1)

I think I like The Feeling.

This belongs in here as a skeleton in my closet because every time I look at the lead singer, Dan Gillespie Sells, I am strangely reminded of Orlando Bloom, who is really too pretty to do anything but be pretty I think. Dan Gillespie Sells, who is right in the center of the picture, may be talented, which would make him really interesting to me, but then he has this Orlando-esque aura to him (is it only me who sees this?) which unsettles me.

Also, on the band's debut CD, Twelve Stops and Home," a promo sticker which labels The Feeling as a "soft rock" can be found quite prominently on the front of the CD.

Soft rock to me is Chicago. It is Air Supply. In short, it can be nothing that I really like, and I just so happen to find two of the songs I have heard from The Feeling pretty darn catchy.

Am I getting old?

And what sort of band of twenty-somethings embraces the label "soft rock"? They don't have to crank it up to 11, but who really straps on a guitar and yet seemingly wants to be featured on Magic 95.7 or whatever it is?

It really is just because of the whole soft rock thing they've been lumped into (and who knows, maybe it's been unwillingly) that I feel a wee bit embarrassed I like their music.

Come on guys, prove me wrong! When you go on your tour, blow out your amps. Smash a few guitars. Be as un-Neil Diamond as possible! I dare ya!

Musicians I Would Like To Take Out For Dinner (Part 2)

I can’t remember when it was that I became enamored with Paul Westerberg and The Replacements. It might have been during my junior or senior year of high school when I saw the movie Singles, and two of his songs, "Dyslexic Heart" and "Waiting For Somebody" were featured on the soundtrack. It might have been a few years later when I heard his version of Cat Stevens’ “Sunshine” which was featured on the Friends soundtrack.

That Paul Westerberg is far removed from the Paul Westerberg of The Replacements, a band who was notorious for showing up to its own shows past drunk -- as in completely obliterated -- and who would play nothing but a set of cover songs, if they damn well felt like it. Those shows, and unfortunately, I am too young to have even seen The ‘Mats toward the end of their career at the end of the 80s, were legendary -- you’d go and not really know what to expect, in terms of set list or the band’s temperament.

Paul Westerberg is just cool. He knows how to write smart, abrasive lyrics, like his dissing of MTV in “Seen Your Video” or when he snidely looks down on flight attendants in “Waitress in the Sky,” and then he can turn around and write something that makes him sound so vulnerable like when he sings “How do you say I miss you to an answering machine? How do you say I’m lonely to an answering machine?” in "Answering Machine" and in “Unsatisfied” where he dares someone to look him in the eye and tell him he's satisfied, before screaming out at the end “I’m so unsatisfied! I’m so dissatisfied!”

I think The Replacements were never a band wanting to be taken ultra-seriously, as seen in their goofy songs “I Don’t Know” from Pleased to Meet Me and “Gary’s Got a Boner” from Let It Be and in a more subtle way, where they show they are just like any other fan of rock music by covering Kiss’ “Black Diamond” in Let It Be and writing an idolizing love-letter song about one of their rock heroes, “Alex Chilton” on Pleased To Meet Me. They understand very well what it’s like to feel an instant connection to a song, even when you don’t know all the details about it just yet: “I’m in love! What’s that song? I’m in love with that song!”

Another can’t miss song is “The Ledge” also off of Pleased to Meet Me. This is a song about a suicidal man, who is threatening to jump, and Westerberg gives us a look inside his head, where he talks cynically about how the cops have called in his ex-girlfriend to convince him not to jump and how the media have made a circus appear down on the street below, and he seems smugly content that for the first time in his life, he is the focus of someone’s undivided attention. It’s quite apparent what becomes of the person deciding whether to jump. Instead of this being a song of redemption and taking it on the chin when adversity smacks you around, the song ends with a fading scream.

I really like this song because it isn’t one of those “Oh yeah, hold on and life will get better” platitude-type deals. (Remember the old “The World I Know” video from Collective Soul?) I’m sure there are people who stare down from a bridge at the water below or count out a number of pills from a bottle and then snap out of it, wondering what the hell possessed them to think about offing themselves, but there are, of course, those people who go through with their suicidal plans and Westerberg again shows his skills as a writer by making the narrator of this song not an adolescent cliché but very real, and very human.

And speaking of all rock stars who don’t die as a result of suicide or a drug overdose or a plane crash, Paul Westerberg just plain got older. As a result, his songs changed too. He no longer screams his throat raw into the mike, though years of doing that and smoking countless cigarettes have made his voice perpetually scratchy.

One of my most favorite Paul Westerberg songs is “Love Untold” where he talks about two people getting ready for a date, and you can almost see him watching it all unfold, this world-weary but sympathetic 40 year old man watching excited 20 year olds get ready for what could be the first night of the rest of their lives. But then something goes wrong and the meeting doesn’t take place. At least it doesn’t take place like it should have, anyways. “It never came to be, I’m told,” he sings and then asks almost sadly “Does anyone recall/The saddest love of all/The one that lets you fall/With nothing to hold?” Maybe they met, and expecting the world, only saw the equivalent of a vacant lot sitting across from them. Who knows?

I’m not sure what I would ask or talk to Paul Westerberg about if I had him over for dinner. It’d probably be something dumb, like “That song? Alex Chilton? I really think it’s cool!” (long pause) and then “You remember the video for ‘Bastards of Young?’ I love that video,” (longer pause), mimicking that Saturday Night Live skit where Chris Farley interviews Paul McCartney.

In short, I think Paul Westerberg is cool because of how well he writes his songs, how funny and heartbreaking he can be at the same time. How he was living a life that seemed to be on the fast-track to self-destruction, but pulled himself out of it, and is now writing songs in a different style that are still quite good.

Top Five Paul Westerberg/The Replacements songs (and this is absolutely tough because I could easily add five more, but that would make that much harder to rank them!):

1. Alex Chilton
2. Answering Machine
3. I Will Dare
4. The Ledge
5. Love Untold

Songs I Can’t Stand (Part 1)

Rihanna is an R and B artist who seems to have a promising career as she looks beautiful and can sing well to boot. For the record, I love “S.O.S,” but maybe that is because while it has nothing to do with ABBA, it features a sample of another so cheesy it’s good band, Soft Cell and their 1981 hit “Tainted Love.”

So here I am wondering what she’ll do next. Something that features Men Without Hats’ “Safety Dance”? A song that samples Howard Jones’ “New Song”? No. What she does is this overly grandiose ballad full of typical R and B wailings (and the video is filled with typical drama-rama posturing) called “Unfaithful.” In it she talks about how she has a boyfriend, but she also is keeping a lover on the side. I apologize for not knowing much about the song, and damning it anyways, but the one thing I have the biggest problem with is the chorus.

I don't wanna do this anymore
I don't wanna be the reason why
Everytime I walk out the door
I see him die a little more inside
I don't wanna hurt him anymore
I don't wanna take away his life
I don't wanna be...
a murderer

A murderer? A murderer???? Now, I am positively sure that Rihanna did not write this song, and so she is only playing the messenger I suppose, but who in their right mind is so presumptuous to assume that if her boyfriend figures out what’s been going on between her and some other guy, that instead of dumping her clothes and all her things on the front lawn, instead of kicking her skanky ass to the curb (yeah, I personally hate the idea of infidelity in a relationship), instead of idly entertaining thoughts of hurting her, he’s going to go and off himself? What?

And yeah yeah yeah, I know what the argument for this is. Rihanna might be as much of a cheater as John Lennon was really a walrus or Johnny Cash really shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. However…a murderer! Ha ha ha…someone needs to get their head out of the clouds.

Musicians I Would Like To Take Out For Dinner (Part 1)

I'm cribbing off a friend of mine who has her own series, but since I think a) she has a great idea but b) she has some hugely glaring omissions on her list, I figured it'd serve me well to compile my own list of musicians I really dig. These are all people I would like to have a chance to sit down with and talk to over a good meal, preferably not from my own kitchen. But that is another post on another blog.



The first one I would like to consider is John (Cougar) Mellencamp. John Mellencamp, not only being a fellow Libra, is also someone who strikes me as being completely unpretentious, a straight-shooter, and someone who doesn't stand for much bullshit.

While I don't know much about Mellencamp's earliest recordings, I have heard that a) he sang covers of rock tunes from the 1950s and '60s and basically sounded like a wanna-be Bruce Springsteen, and b) his stage name ("Johnny Cougar") was given to him and showed up on the front of his first record without his knowledge or consent.

I got to know Johnny Cougar when I was maybe 7 or 8 and watching Solid Gold with my mother. He was performing "Hurts So Good," strutting across the stage and wildly waving one of his hands in a circular motion toward the end of the song. Even then at the young age I was I thought he was a really weird dancer, and while I didn't know at the time that he was most likely lip-syncing, I think there had to have been something about his performance that has made it stand out all these years later.

A few things I admire about John Mellencamp is how he has never forgotten where he has come from, a small town in Indiana. After all, he may have married a former supermodel, but they currently reside in Indiana most of the time. After 1985's Live Aid made hundreds of thousands of people turn their attention to starving children in Africa, Mellencamp and Willie Nelson put together a benefit show that raised awareness of another group of people struggling to get out of poverty -- American farmers. And unlike Live Aid, which had one show in 1985 and another one to commemorate its 20th anniversary in 2005, Farm Aid has gone on every year save for two since its inception. The 19th Farm Aid will happen September 30th in Camden, New Jersey.

I also admire how over the years, he not only gradually renounced what essentially was his slave name (ha), he has constantly looked for new ways to express himself in his music. Earlier I stated that he was a kind of Springsteen clone, someone who sounded like they'd be perfectly happy as some bar's house singer, who covered hits like "Do You Believe in Magic?". 1985's Scarecrow mirrored his work in Farm Aid, celebrating Middle American life with songs like "Small Town" but also cautioning the rest of the country about how a necessary American demographic was slowly fading away in "Rain on the Scarecrow."

1987 saw John Mellencamp reinvent himself again, playing music that was now incorporating elements of bluegrass, country and folk. I'm not generally a fan of these genres of music, but I love what he was doing on Paper and Fire and one of my most favorite John Mellencamp songs, "Check It Out," a song that features an accordion and a fiddle, along with the standard drums, bass and guitars.

And then later, he worked with Junior Vasquez, who is famous for making dance records. Not the kind of dancing Mellencamp claimed he was good at way back in "Crumblin' Down" (and John, I love you, but...no, you really aren't a real good dancer!) but honest to goodness dance music producer and DJ.

In short, I admire him for his integrity as a musician and for his humanitarian side.

My Top 5 John Mellencamp Songs: (thanks to Rob Fleming/Gordon for the inspiration!)

1. Small Town
2. Check It Out
3. Pink Houses
4. Rain on the Scarecrow
5. Lonely Ol' Night

Looks Like Keane Are On Their Way...

Keane singer Tom Chaplin admitted recently that he has decided to check himself into rehab for his own growing concerns over the amount of alcohol he's been drinking.

Usually it's a musician's friend or loved one who puts them in rehab, but maybe Keane are doing this to ensure that VH-1 will make a Behind the Music special on them now that this piece of news has come out.