After reading about Lille and Araceli’s favorite love songs, I realized I was in trouble. Despite a healthy amount of loves, most of them fizzle before I have been properly introduced — failing to reach the apex of significant songwriting territory by a longshot. Not to be outdone, there are songs which I most-certainly attribute to romance, or, at least what I would interpret love to be in that particular era.
1992: Love is A Capella
I distinctly remember junior high gym dances being awkward in every way. Kids both obsessed and terrified of the opposite sex… and also sweaty from playing pick-up basketball in between dances. All I know is that slow-dances, complete with bad cologne and flat-bottom woven ties, were always made better by Boys II Men. Aside from that Motown/Philly gold, I was particularly fond of Shai’s “If I Ever Fall In Love “. I remember being outraged when I saw their video on MTV and it was the instrumental reprise! WTF. Acapella 4 Life, yo.
1997: Love is Swing-Techno-Ska
People do stuff for people they like. But, when you’re an impressionable teen, you don’t pretend to like stuff that a girl is interested in, you actually will yourself to like it. For real. This is the only reason I can come up with for me to dive headfirst into bands that included (but are not limited to) The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, Underworld, and Less Than Jake… in the same year. Not that they were all terrible bands (I actually still like Underworld), but the only reason I can explain jumping from my favorite musicians in Junior High (Peter Gabriel’s US, and whatever was played on party radio B96) into Prodigy’s Fat of the Land would have to be girls.
2002: Love is a concept
Everything is difficult. The older people get, the more complicated they like to think life is. It’s like history class. When you’re 6, love is candygrams and the Civil War freed the slaves. When you’re 15, love is pure infatuation — ever-forgiving and evergreen — while the Civil War was the result of tension between the Industrial North and Agricultural South. When you’re older than 22 you have decided that the more you know, the more you’re aware of what you don’t know.
Love is all Conor Oberst talking about a mirror, or a girl (or a dream or something) and we are aware that the Civil War is called “The War of Northern Aggression” in the South, Northerners had no real interest in abolishing slavery, and Abe Lincoln temporarily disbanded congress and may or maynot have been bisexual. Here’s a song about Jeff Tweedy doing the dishes, or touring Japan, or drug addiction, or an aquarium.
To Recap: Drink Up Buttercup was fan-fucking-tastic. If you missed them on Saturday, you’ll have to catch them when they come back our way post-CMJ, though they’ll most certainly be filling a much larger venue than their Ronny’s gig last weekend.
It was stellar. A loose, pop-inflected, bedraggled, harmonious cacophony of a show. If there was ever a band that exemplified the need for universal health care, it’s D.U.B.. They’re erratic, they’re thrashing, they self-affectedly fall all over each other, they dispose of their instruments by dropping them on the floor, and the quartet (who all quit their jobs to tour) will almost certainly injure each other eventually. Obama! We need a public option!
My pal Pegs took some swell photos. One of which is above, a few more below. You get the idea.
Carrie Brownstien (Sleater-Kinney) commented in her NPR music blog, Monitor Mix, that Weezer is a novelty band. Though I’m hard-pressed to really argue with her on this point, there’s a particular line that irked me:
I don’t know if Weezer hates its fans or just the (apparently) stifling concept of sincerity, but you should listen to these two new songs if you weren’t already convinced of Weezer’s contempt for music.
Ouch. I would rephrase that line to read as such:
Weezer hates sincerity, but you should listen to these two new songs to hear Weezer’s contempt for their fans.
There. That looks better. First-off, I am not a diehard Weezer fan but I think they get a bad rap. I would certainly slam a TON of other musicians before criticizing Weezer about being a novelty act — like, perhaps any adult/contemporary “rocker” and nearly all modern country? How about U2 for christsake?! Oh, and aren’t Elton John & Billy Joel touring the country this summer?! Sure, the last few incarnations of Weezer have sounded like a Weezer cover band, but at least they took a STAB at sincerity at one point.
It seems obvious to me that in between Weezer’s second and third albums — Pinkerton and The Green Album, a lot changed. And the change was not just the the loss of Matt Sharp.
Blue Album era Cuomo (L) & Sharp (R)
In 1996 Weezer released Pinkerton — a painfully funny, slightly abrasive, endearing and self-reflective album. It was certainly a “difficult” album by pop standards, especially being their followup to a delightfully sugarcoated Ric Ocasek-produced initial album.
Cuomo poured his heart out, his vocals were raw and the content was much more personal than anything on the Blue debut. The album was slow out of the gate due to some legal problems and never gained footing. It peaked at #19 on the Billboard charts and was initially met with both critical and public indifference. Weezer had dropped a smart, self-effacing, confessional album and the U.S. didn’t care. It was like we pushed Rivers to open up to us and then we were all “Uhhhh, T.M.I., dude.”
It seems from that point on Cuomo pledged never to write anything sincere again.
Even though, in the past 18+ years, Pinkerton has gained considerable adoration the damage had been done. Rivers/Weezer had gone into hiatus, emerging four years later as a shell of itself — vying to ride high on pop hooks and metal riffs and refusing to ever, EVER write anything serious ever again. The guitar licks were spic-and-span, production gleaming, lyrics memorable but completely meaningless. ‘Safer that way.
So is Weezer a novetly band? Maybe. But, my answer would be “So?”. Aren’t most bands? Why criticize a band that tried to be sincere only to be told, quite clearly, by the fans and press, “play like you’re empty inside or risk not having an audience.”
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:
Sing higher and/or softer than you’re comfortable
Put some good fucking beats behind it
You’ll be a blogosphere hero in no time.
Bembang! is a music blog written by a trio of music nerds who live in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City.
