My mom recently reminded me that when I was little I approached an African-American gentleman after a session of YMCA Gym & Swim and innocently asked him, “Do You Know Michael Jackson?”
Growing up in the Chicago suburbs, he probably looked a lot more like Michael Jackson than any other person I’d seen. Growing up at that time I also remember moonwalking across the wooden dining room floor in socks with my older sister. Unfortunately, neither of these are my most vivid memory of MJ – as that is reserved for a more unsettling recollection: that “Thriller” scared the shit out of me.
It was a great video, but all I knew at that age was that “Thriller” scared the shit out of me. Like when a fanged Jackson screams “get away!” and you watch him turn into a werewolf!? That shit was scary. Or when Michael goes green and his zombie dance crew surrounds his hapless date. That shit was scary.
But the most frightening bit by far, and what came to me immediately when I thought about my first impressions of Michael Jackson, was the inimitable voice of Vincent Price. I remember hearing “Thriller” tons of times in my youth because everybody owned that album. I remember anticipating when Price’s part comes in; when MJ stops singing, the bass and funk guitar keep grooving, a funeral organ comes in, and then the creepiest voice in history begins, “Darkness falls across the land…” I remember excusing myself from wherever I was – a playroom, a backyard, a birthday party – so I could get out of earshot from that terrifying laugh of his.
Despite all this, my enthusiasm for Jackson didn’t dissipate much over the years. Apparently my Thillerphobia didn’t even prevent me from accosting strangers about their affiliation to The King of Pop.
The article is reposted below, and extend it with some more rambling commentary…
In a giddy fit of keyboards, falsettos, and saccharine dance beats, Boston newcomers Passion Pit are charming their way west during their first national tour. P.P. bounced their way through a congenial but criminally short set last night at Schubas, as Michael Angelakos engaged the audience with the same disarming manner and sky-high vocals that seep through every track of his debut EP, Chunk of Change.
The set started out playful and keyboard-heavy with Angelakos’ ear for pop melody pushing to the forefront. Flanked a guitar, drums, two Rolands, a Moog, and sitting behind a Yamaha synth himself, Angelakos’ dare-you-to-sing-higher-than-me octaves pierced through riffs, piano lines, and programmed back-beats. Espousing sentiments that in lower vocal ranges might be cringe inducing diary entries, the proper set ended with the dance-happy electropop of “Sleepyhead” and “Better Things” to which the sellout crowd lost their collective brains to, bloggers and ALTBros alike.
Angelakos apologized repeatedly for the abridged set, but, the audience couldn’t blame them for succinctness – Passion Pit just haven’t been around long enough to have a full set.
In a backstory that’s impossible not to repeat; Passion Pit’s origins couldn’t be more endearing: Originally a late Valentine’s Day present for Angelakos’ g/f, the “Chunk of Change” CDR made the rounds at Emerson University, made waves in Boston, and made headlines after some stellar sets at this year’s CMJ music fest in New York. A few months later, after some east coast practice gigs, they’re on tour backed by new label Frenchkiss, playing the six songs that everyone knows and road-testing a few new ones.
Passion Pit’s sincerity and DIY style fits with just a few other bands who somehow dodge be criticized for being goddamned “sincere” all the time — people have seemed to get really sick of that recently. (The fact that, as 20-something culture consumers, we already have issues with earnestness is fodder for a different blog).
I see Angelakos along side other singer/songwriters like Khaela Maricich (The Blow), Ben Gibbard (a-la The Postal Service), and Robert Wratten (Field Mice) as artists that manage to be shmultsy but nevertheless loveable.
Let it be a lesson to those aspiring coffeehouse guitar wankers… if you’re inspired to put your love / breakup letters to music and share it with the world, do two things:
Chicago’s fortunate to have a super-supportive (nay, incestuous?) music scene, many of whom have roots back to a lil’ place called The Hideout. So who better than Hideout to host “Sending the Four Star City to the Lone Star State” party? The mini-fest is a fundraiser for all the bands travelling’ down to the Sundance Film Festival, oop, I mean South By Southwest in Austin.
Performing is a laundry list of the city’s faves, some of whom will soon be called “indie buzz bands” by Entertainment Weekly or something. A mere $10 gets you into this shizzle:
12:00 - Sybris
12:45 - Apteka
1:30 - Cameron McGill
2:15 - Mittens on Strings
3:00 - JT and the Clouds
3:45 - The Hood Internet (DJ STV SLV)
4:30 - Hollywood Holt
5:15 - Bound Stems
6:00 - Make Believe
6:45 - Reds and Blue
7:30 - Pit Er Pat
8:15 - Waco Brothers
9:00 - Tight Phantomz
9:45 - Killer Whales
10:30 - Icy Demons
11:15 - Tom Schraeder & His Ego
12:00 - Ezra Furman & the Harpoons
12:45 - Scotland Yard Gospel Choir
Rounding down, that’s like, $0.72 a band. Your door cover will let you go in & out for the whole day (like there’s anything else to do on Wabansia & Elston), but it will be packed by the end of the night. -Brian Howe Battle
Can you believe it’s been nearly a decade since Office Space? That’s roughly 36 financial quarters of bad Lumberg impressions and Swingline stapler jokes. The unforeseen longevity of a movie like Office Space -– a cynical look at corporate drones — stuck with the American audience long after its theatre run. Though the defining modern corporate farce is getting old, it seems like “life at the office” has become an increasingly prevalent touchstone. A new breed of unflinching, cynical, critical, tragi-comic and sometimes downright depressing office themed productions have hit a cultural nerve.
There have always been the silly corporate comedies and hyper-real farces a-la Office Space, Dilbert, and (can I throw in) Fred Savage’s short-lived Working, but it seems the new crop of pop-culture corporate landscapes have a biting, sad, desperate underpinning. What’s the deal?
The obvious jumping-off point is NBC’s excellent adaptation of The Office — a satire that turns a documentary-style camera on the lives of paper salespeople in first-world Nowheresville. It’s a show that’s both funny and melancholy — simultaneously hilarious and hitting a little too close to home. You’ve also got the inanity of Carpoolers, a silly single-cam show that’s the brainchild of Kids In the Hall graduate Bruce McCulloch. If you flash back 50 years and add some slick suits, the politics, binge drinking and philandering could easily be that of the sloganeering Madison Ave execs of AMC’s period drama Mad Men.
Elsewhere in the business world, author Matthew Beaumont documents the hilarity of London’s fictional Miller-Shanks office in a story told strictly through exchanged e-mail in e. If the U.K. doesn’t hit close enough to home, local cube dweller Joshua Ferris is getting stellar reviews for Then We Came to the End, a wry comedic novel chronicling the dismantling of a Chicago ad agency.
Of course, I can’t get too far into an office-themed blog without mentioning OFFICE, the group of former Chicago worker bees who produced a killer EP, quit their day jobs, and now professionally churn out bouncy pop tracks with some seriously sardonic underpinnings. Elsewhere in the music world there’s been a huge response to the National’s CD, Boxer. The album, with equal parts charm and anxiety, chronicles the Willy Loman-esque slide of a modern corporate worker into a nostalgic shut-in.
So if popular music, books and television are meant as means of escapism, what’s to say for an audience that’s developed an interest in fictionalized versions of working stiffs? Is the emergence of corporate-themed amusements just a mere coincidence, a blip on the radar, or a hint of more to come? Whatever the explanation, the subject matter has resonance and the writing is good, so I will continue to ignore the inherent irony of hanging around the office every week to talk about The Office. -Brian Howe Battle
