The Hackers Soundtrack

Yeah, it's been a while.  Midnight Poutine has sucked up most of my blogging-allotted time despite my naive promise that I would continue this blog in full force.  I also had a couple months of intense dissertation work followed by a completely unproductive (but well worth it) two-week visit from Mike.  Now I'm working in Maine, moving at a summertime pace, and enjoying a life with fewer distractions.  Getting on with it... 

Hackers.  A terrible movie by any objective standard if things like "acting" and "plot" and "cinematography" are taken into consideration, but one that I love more and more over time.  This is because it captures perfectly the sense of wonder we all felt when we encountered the internet for the first time but knew nothing about it.  If computers were connected, and lots of things ran on computers, then wasn't there the possibility of making crazy cool shit happen all over the world by pushing buttons in our living rooms?  Was there already an overclass of hackers controlling everything that contained a microchip, living in the shadows, laughing at the rest of us?  What did these people do at night?

The answers to these three questions, according to Hackers, were yes, yes, and rollerblading.  Hackers portrayed a world where hip young people with names like "CrshOvrd," "ZeroCool" and "AcidBurn" did extremely important things on their computers that were beyond any normal person's comprehension and best portrayed using 3-D graphics and floating math equations.  Most characters (i.e., the main ones) used hacking for fun and harmless hijinks, while others used it for evil things like robbing banks and flipping over oil ships in the Atlantic. Watch, for example, the segments at 1:00 and 6:30 (or watch the whole thing because it's all awesome):

Another important part of the hacker lifestyle, as this clip makes clear, is that all hacking-related activities must take place over super cool techno music.  As much as I laughed at the film's absurdities (I was an overly snobby twelve year old), I absolutely loved every bit of its soundtrack to a point where it plunged me into a three-year-long techno phase.  

I should specify first that my twelve-year-old self would have resented my use of the word "techno," since the music I liked was broadly classified as "electronica" and fell into sub-genres like drun n' bass, deep house, trance, etc.  I used to get so indignant when people called it techno, as if my imported European underground rave music was the same thing as "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)" by C+C Music Factory.  Yeah, I was a giant douchebag.  

The Hackers soundtrack started me on this trajectory.  It offered a surprisingly good sampling of electronic music that was huge in Europe and relatively unheard of in the United States outside of rave culture.  It was only a couple years later (especially with the American release of Prodigy's Fat of the Land) that you could hear electronica on mainstream radio,  and even then it fell into a niche market.  My local "alternative rock" radio station, WHFS, broadcasted a show called Trancemissions (sic) every week that played DJ sets from raves; it ran from 12-2am every Saturday, specially designed for kids like me who wished they could be there (or go out at all).  All of this is to say, electronica was big enough to make it onto a major motion picture soundtrack, big enough to make it onto the radio, but underground enough to make me feel really, really cool for listening to it.  

The album's track list reads like a who's who of mid-90s electronic music:

1. "Original Bedroom Rockers" by Kruder & Dorfmeister
   
2. "Cowgirl" by Underworld
   
3. "Voodoo People" by Prodigy
4. "Open Up" by Leftfield
5. "Phoebus Apollo" by Carl Cox
6. "The Joker" by Josh Abrahams
7. "Halcyon + On + On" by Orbital
8. "Communicate" by Plastico
9. "One Love" by Prodigy
10. "Connected" by Stereo MCs
11. "Eyes, Lips, Body" by Ramshackle
12. "Good Grief" by Urban Dance Squad
13. "Richest Junkie Still Alive" by Machines of Loving Grace
14. "Heaven Knows" by Squeeze

Some of these artists became bigger than others.  The most recognizable here is Prodigy, although "Voodoo People" and "One Love" are songs from their albums before Fat of the Land, which were unavailable in the U.S. before 1997 except via import and this soundtrack (and yes, I owned the imports, because I was a pretentious fuck).  "Halcyon" by Orbital was one of the most ubiquitous electronica songs of the 90s and I suspect the most recognizable on this album.  It's also still pretty good.  

My favorite song on the soundtrack was "Cowgirl" by Underworld because it struck me as the darkest and most representative of the cyber punk lifestyle I wanted to live.  (Side note: they were better known for "Born Slippy," which appeared on the Trainspotting soundtrack and was perhaps the second most ubiquitous electronica song after "Halcyon.")  

Within about a year my love for electronica expanded way beyond the Hackers soundtrack and I very snobbishly looked down upon "novice" listeners who only knew a couple of big artists from a couple of compilations.  I loaded up on imports by Orbital and Underworld, mined the internet for new music, and downloaded live sets by underground DJs.  Occasionally I got in over my head, like when I dropped something like $20 on a five-song EP by Future Sound of London called Lifeforms, only to discover that it was was an experimental ambient project where the music was sampled from forest sounds - the first song, for example, features a drum beat scrapped together from recordings of flapping owl wings.  I still have this album in my iTunes and occasionally put it on at parties as a joke.  

My love for electronica began fading when I finally attended a real rave at around age 16 (I know, I really should not have been at a rave when I was 16).  I was expecting an overwhelming, all-consuming, awe-inspiring experience where I would hear music with an intensity that I had never felt before, and just naturally dance my ass off without thinking about it.  Imagine my deep disappointment when I realized everyone there was on... DRUGS!  Yes, as an early-teen electronica lover, I largely overlooked the fact that most people's appreciation of my favorite music was largely supplemented by drug consumption.  I remember a particular conversation with my friend Jessica who accompanied me that night: "This place sucks when you're not on drugs," she shouted to me over the noise.  I shouted back, "I really like the music, that's why I'm here.  I'm okay."  Later that night she told me about a favorite drug cocktail of hers called the "Magic Five."  As I recall, the Magic Five consisted of ecstasy, coke, ketamine, pot and PCP taken in some particular order.  Some of her friends, she told me, had burned out for life after too many Magic Five-infused raves.  Until then I thought my love of the music was enough to make me a true member of the rave/cyber punk/electronica revolution, but that night I realized I was an amateur and an outsider.  It was all about the experience, not the music, and the experience involved retarded amounts of drugs.  I also had a huge crush on Jessica and had thought my extensive collection of UK imports was enough to impress her (note: as much as she was a druggie, this still made me a pretentious douche).  After that I felt a disjunction with electronic music, as if I would never know how artists intended listeners to hear it unless I altered my perception.  

This isn't such a big deal anymore.  I mean, drugs are fine, although maybe not at Magic Five levels.  But I still think of electronica as being more about experience than about music - i.e, about dancing all night rather than listening closely -  and this has prevented me from becoming a connoisseur again.  I have, however, become increasingly enamored with the film Hackers and will happily watch it over and over again.  I suggest a movie night in the future.

Now writing for a real blog, too

Not that this blog is "fake."  I just mean that I've started writing for a blog that I didn't make up, and one where I'll talk about stuff I actually do like rather than used to like.  My first post is a review of the Bell Orchestre show at La Tulipe this past weekend.  Check it out and come back often.  I'm doubly stoked about joining their team because Midnight Poutine was my favorite Montreal blog even before I started writing for them.

Of course, this blog will continue in full force, since there's still so, so, so much left to cover.

The Smashing Pumpkins, pt. 2: BILLY CORGAN WTF

What the fuck is this?

I'll tell you what the fuck it is.  It's Billy Corgan reciting the lyrics to "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" for a pro wrestling commercial - some steel cage match, or whatever.  He accordingly changes "rat in a cage" to "rat in a six-sided steel cage."  I can see how the song itself might fit well with wrestling-type things because it's all loud and angry and stuff, but reciting the lyrics?  A tall, pale, bald guy with a wimpy, high-pitched voice is speaking over a pro wrestling commercial?  WHAT THE FUCK, BILLY CORGAN?  Also WTF to pro wrestling, while I'm dishing out the WTFs.  

As it happens, this isn't the first time Billy Corgan has done something wrestling-related.  He appeared in a WWE match a few years ago as part of an elaborate introductory skit.  (I think it was WWE - I get the names confused because I absolutely don't give a fuck about wrestling).  In a deeply bizarre and depressing scene, Billy smashed a guitar over some wrestler's head and the two exchanged insults related to the recently-broken-up Smashing Pumpkins.  The wrestler said stuff like, "Your band broke up because of your big ego," and "Your solo project sucked."  Both of which are completely true.  (Note: Warner Entertainment took this video off of youtube.  If someone finds it somewhere, please let me know).

If only Billy Corgan would listen to the things wrestlers told him in fake, choreographed skits, he might get his career back on track again.  Instead he has sworn off album-making altogether, started fighting with his fans during concerts, publicly insulted his former band mates, and kicked out the last remaining Pumpkin (and an essential part of his sound), Jimmy Chamberlin.  Oh, and apparently he's dating Tila Tequila. 

In my last post on the Pumpkins, I directed everyone to an excellent bootleg website that offers free concert downloads from the band's full run.  The first thing that became clear to me, as I listened to the pre-reunion shows, was just how much Billy Corgan benefitted from the input of his other band mates.  The guitar interplay between him and James Iha is absolutely killer, and his chemistry with Jimmy Chamberlin borders on sublime.  Corgan's worst output has been his more solo-oriented material, like Machina I and II, The Future Embrace, and Zeitgeist.  The short-lived Zwan, on the other hand, was a return to form - great guitar work and song craft, all within the context of three-guitarist supergroup.  (Check out this song and skip to 6:00 for the guitar goods).  

I wouldn't say Corgan's transition into a giant shitfuck has made me sad, because I stopped expecting good music from him a long time ago.  At this point it makes me angry.  Angry at him for assuming all the credit for an excellent corpus of work with the Pumpkins.  The Pumpkins were a band, not Corgan's solo project.  As much as he may have been their driving force, he's also the one who fucked them up and is ruining their legacy.  

Rivers Cuomo has still got it

I submit the following video as evidence.

Proper Weezer post coming soon.  Happy Easter everyone.  

The Mid-90s Swing Revival

Contributed by Michael Schwartz

Last week I went to see Spike & Mike's Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation, my first time in years. Midway through was a clip featuring the music of the Squirrel Nut Zippers, a band I'd long forgotten about. The clip was amusing, but I was distracted, reminiscing on my days as a swinger. (sorry ma, I just couldn't get enough.)

Inspired by the films Swing Kids and Swingers!, I joined in on the Swing revival of the early-mid 90s. How could you resist the charm of young Robert Sean Leonard, Christian Bale and crew dodging the gestapo (incl. Noah Wyle) in order to dance and furtively listen to American import LPs in the listening booths at the local record shop. Just try to deny the cool after seeing this clip:

Jeez, the fedoras, the suspenders, the hardwood floors - it still gets me all tingly. This guy is a total music nerd of another generation, rifling off the names of the trumpeteers at the 5 minute mark:

"Müller! This is not one of your dance clubs!" Ooo, busted! Of course one of their buddies has to be a wheelchair-bound guitar player, making the whole purification of the Aryan Race deal more personal. It really sucks when your talented pal gets disappeared and all.

We were 16 when Hayley suggested we should take swing-dance lessons down at the community centre. Great fun. I didn't get my driver's license until years later and at that time Hayley had her learner's, meaning an adult has to be in the car whenever she drove. Luckily for us, her grandpa had moved in with the family and had a lot of spare time. He came with us and sat through the lesson each week. At the end, he would shmooze with the teacher and show him how they really used to do it back in the day.

So at the time we were plagued with the likes of The Squirrel Nut Zippers, The Cherry-Poppin Daddies, The Brian Setzer Orchestra, and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. I can't remember a notable track from the Zippers, but the Cherry-Poppers (I never noticed the sexual innuendo in that name until right now) had a hit with "Zoot Suit Riot":

Reminds you of this guy, right?

Not such a coincidence, as The Mask came out in 1994 and tapped into this hot Swing trend. It even features the Brian Setzer Orchestra on the soundtrack. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy also had some sountrack success with a couple of tracks on the Swingers! soundtrack.

But as fun as these bands were, the real highlights of all these films are the older tracks they feature from the original swing era. We all know Louis Prima's big hit, "Sing Sing Sing," but check out how funky this one is:

No need of oversized, brightly colored suits to prove how much fun they're having.

As a teen, I took a genealogical interest in this music, digging through my Grampa's old Artie Shaw and Glen Miller records to acquaint myself with the original swing music and finding again and again that these guys from the 1930s rocked much harder than their 1990s descendants. I went out and bought a CD of Louis Prima hits that can still get a party bouncing. It's full of songs that continue to pop into my head now & then as I'm wandering around the city.

As a coda, one swing-related film that actually is quite good (aside from the not-half bad Swing Kids) is Stanley Tucci's writing/directing debut, Big Night. In the 1950s, two brothers attempt to open a restaurant serving authentic Italian food, directly in competition with the red-checkered-tablecloth joint across the street. Rent it tonight. Then cook a feast for your sweetie-pie.

Green Day: An Ode to Dookie

Last Monday, I read an article on pitchfork about Green Day transforming American Idiot into a rock-musical. This seemed like a natural (if depressing) move for a band that has so thoroughly overstepped their bounds, going from potty-mouthed punks to Bono-esque interpreters of the state of the world. The lyric, "Don't wanna be an American idiot," always struck me as a cheap attempt at political commentary by a band whose minds belonged in the gutter. Even an upsetting one, insofar as it circumvented complex issues with one shallow anti-American slogan. I remember watching in disappointment as hundreds of thousands of gleeful fans sang along to the song at Live8 in Germany. For political music, it was just too easy - like a band receiving roaring applause for shouting, "No one rocks harder than you, Cleveland!" when playing a show in Cleveland. Protest music was big after the Iraq invasion, and I felt like Green Day was cashing in, or suffering from delusions of grandeur, or both.

This is why it was especially weird realizing that American Idiot has become Green Day's seminal album - outselling all the others, winning more awards, and defining their new identity as a socially conscious punk band.  Many younger Green Day fans aren't even aware of the band's earlier output.  Though a little annoyed, I accepted this - we had our fun, stupid Green Day album, and a new generation has theirs.  I use the word "generation" because American Idiot came out a full decade after Dookie, meaning those of us who don't "get" American Idiot are just different.  We wore more flannel and our pants were looser.

I was going to write this post about a band that had sunk from unremarkable, to annoying, to borderline evil - insofar as they embody everything I hate about mainstream music today. I absolutely loved every bit of Dookie when I was twelve, but as was the nature of music consumption at the time, what I liked at twelve I hated by fourteen. Dookie quickly felt old, out of style, childish; it was fake punk for mainstream radio. I only gave it a second serious listen on Monday. 

That's when I realized it's still one of the greatest pop-rock albums ever made.

First of all, abandon any notion that Green Day is or ever was a band with rough edges. Rolling Stone nailed it in their original review of Dookie: "it's useful to remember that before mythic Brits such as the Sex Pistols and the Clash spewed distorted guitar and anarchic politics, punk essentially was the Ramones – that is, basically just the Beach Boys ultraloud and pissed off." That's what you get on Dookie - one killer hook after another, played through distorted guitars, with curse words.  

Here's one of the album's best songs, "Having a Blast," which I suspect would have been a hit single if the lyrics hadn't been about mass murder and suicide.  Turn up the volume; I dare you not to enjoy.

Here's another hidden gem - "Pulling Teeth."  Easily could have been a Weezer song if the lyrics were about Dungeons and Dragons or Japanese girls or whatever.  

The album's closer, "F.O.D.," live at Woodstock '94 (the one with mud, not fires).  Also a vivid illustration of what it was like when moshing was really popular.

And, of course, their gargantuan hit, "Basket Case."  If Billie Joe Armstrong's toolishness gets in the way of appreciating this song, I suggest closing your eyes and thinking about rollerblading.  That's how I first heard this song - I was in sixth grade, and the DJ at the rollerblading rink played it repeatedly because kids like me went absolutely apeshit over it.  (Yes, rollerblading rink).

I'm skipping over the other hits ("When I Come Around," "Longview," "Welcome to Paradise," "She") because we've heard them a million times.  But they're all equally deserving of a second chance.

If I can achieve something with this blog entry, it's to have at least a few people dig up Dookie and play it a couple times through.  At worst it will be a fun nostalgia trip.

What if God Was One of Us? A philosophy essay by Joan Osborne

What if God Was One of Us?

Final Essay, PHIL590

Submitted by Joan Osborne

March 21, 1995

Dear Ms. Osborne,

I have finished grading your essay and unfortunately it does not fulfill the assignment guidelines, nor does it meet the broader standards of graduate-level philosophy.  My in-text comments are denoted by a dash (-) and written in italics.  You will find a more sustained critique of your work at the end.  

My first comment, regarding your title page, is that the assignment did not require a visual aide.  While you display a great deal of singing and filmmaking talent, your time would have been much better spent formulating a sound philosophical argument.

If God had a name, what would it be?

-"God" is already a proper name.  If you would would like to undertake a philological study of the various words for God appearing throughout scripture, I suggest doing that in a Biblical Studies course

And would you call it to his face,

If you were faced with him in all his glory?

-Now I am unclear which question you are addressing.  What is your central thesis?

What would you ask if you had just one question?

-I do hope you would be more concise than you have been in the writing of this essay.

And yeah, yeah,

-Here you come off as bored with the question.  Are you slipping into satire?  If so, I missed the joke.

God is great.

Yeah, yeah,

God is good.

-So far you've told me God is "great," "good," and "glorious," when the word "God" already entails omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence.  Your added description is unnecessary.

And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

-PLEASE PROOFREAD

What if God was one of us?

-Finally, you have arrived at the question proposed in your essay's title, and it is buried too far in your text.

Just a slob like one of us?

-Be careful when using the universal "us."  You may be a slob, but that does not mean all of us are (or that I am).

Just a stranger on the bus,

Trying to make his way home?

-What is the purpose of this image?  It does not address the question at all.

If God had a face, what would it look like?

-Isn't your essay trying to prove God would have a human face?  

And would you want to see it,

If seeing meant that you would have to believe,

-You need to prove that seeing necessarily entails believing.  Warning - this will be EXTREMELY difficult.

In things like heaven and and in Jesus and the saints and all the prophets?

-The Christian religion is MUCH more complex than this.

And yeah, yeah,

God is great.

Yeah, yeah,

God is good.

And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

-Here you are repeating your second paragraph.  Did you just copy and paste it?

What if God was one of us?

Just a slob like one of us?

Just a stranger on the bus,

Trying to make his way home?

-I take it this essay comes in fugues?  

Back up to heaven all alone,

Just trying to make his way home.

Nobody would call him on the phone,

Except for the Pope maybe in Rome.

-This is waffle.  You should not introduce new information in your concluding paragraph, especially when it does not support your thesis in any way.

While you are clearly a talented verse writer, there are numerous problems with your essay.   Most importantly, you do not provide an argument or even address a central question.  Instead you ask a total of eight (8) questions and do not provide any answers for any of them.  More generally, I am unsure how you could even answer the question, "What if God was one of us?" since it is predicated on a problematic definition of the word "us."  You are essentially asking, "What if God were a human?" and comparing God with a human fundamentally undermines the definition of "God."  Either you need to propose a new definition of "God," or a new definition of "human."  The question could just as easily be, "What if a human were god?" This question could be more fun - I would refer you to the first Ghostbusters film for research.  Next time please pay closer attention to the assignment guidelines.

Final Mark: D-

Inner Circle

Contributed by James Phelan

As an older child, I watched The Hit List with Tarzan Dan most Saturday afternoons. Tarzan Dan was given a show on YTV when there was still real and sincere confusion about what sorts of TV personalities children should be encouraged -- or could, at least, be expected -- to identify with. He was an FM radio DJ in the grand old style: loud guy, loud clothes, lots of shtick. Everything in his manner showed overeagerness to please. He always sounded like he was giving away free t-shirts. His show was a Top 30 video countdown, and the chart had that diversity TV charts had in the early to mid- 90s, before the media used to promote popular music caught up with the fragmentation of the market for it. And though the chart clearly privileged kid acts like Joey Lawrence and TBTBT, there was (rightly, if incorrectly) no assumption that music with a mostly older audience wouldn't appeal to children.The videos were mostly terrible but the show was pretty great. My favorite Hit List hits were, in no special order: "I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" by Meat Loaf, "Great Big Love" by Bruce Cockburn, "Enid" by the Barenaked Ladies, and "Sweat (A La La La La Long)" by Inner Circle.

Greg has already written well about "I Would Do Anything for Love." "Great Big Love" is, on reconsideration, kind of a dud, though my memory of listening to it gives Cockburn's better records ("Tokyo," "The Trouble with Normal," "Lovers in a Dangerous Time," "Peggy's Kitchen Wall," "How I Spent My Fall Vacation," etc.) a nice nostalgic aura. "Enid" is probably the Barenaked Ladies' finest moment -- their best shot at credible-pop-band success before turning into Canadian joke rock Jimmy Buffett times five. (Even the video for the song shows that, alas, that's where they're headed.)

This is about Inner Circle -- about "Sweat."

Inner Circle is an institutional band, like The Drifters or Menudo. They have recorded some twenty-five albums since 1974, with four different front men and regularly changing personnel, in a variety of reggae genres. Their biggest international hit to date has been "Bad Boys," the theme song to the official organ of bad PR for the American poor, COPS. "Sweat," like "Bad Boys," was recorded by the line-up fronted by Calton Coffie, which turned the band away from radical rasta politics and a hard-edged sound, towards pop universalism.

Calton Coffie is a big fat goofball who wants the world to be happy. I can tell this from the video for "Sweat." The video's promise of happiness is extravagant -- it's all joyous bad dancing and people about to get laid in paradise -- and the song lives up to it, by being perfect. The song is perfect in that every part of it is irresistible. I just listened to it trying to count the number of hooks, and I couldn't do it. The song never lags, never abates in being excellent in the way it's excellent (which, I'll grant, isn't for everyone). By that last qualification, I don't mean that it's a specialist taste. It so easily overcomes the inherent cornballism of its genre, pop party reggae, and the ambient cornballism of its moment, the early 90s, that it's not really worth talking about. Calton Coffie knows how good a song it is, though he doesn't want to make a big deal about it. He's just going to sing it and dance, fatly, goofily, making the best of his moment of grace on earth by sharing it.

This is fitting, as it's a song about generosity, the song of a generous lover. Pop songwriting is, as much as it's anything else, the art of writing about sexual love in a way that can be sung wholeheartedly and sound true and still get played on the radio. In commercial genres, coded language is the norm, and pop literacy means knowing how to decode lyrics. But machoness and misogyny are mainstays of Caribbean music, so a casual listener can be excused for thinking all the business about making you sweat till you can't sweat no more, and going on making you sweat even after you cry out, is a wolfishly aggressive come-on, or worse. It's not. Clearly, clearly it's a song about wanting to make someone come as much as is physically possible. Proof: he tells her he wants to make her sweat "till she can't sweat no more." If he literally did that -- if he exhausted her body's store of water, leaving it incapable of regulating its temperature -- she would die in dry agony. Serge Gainsbourg might, at his very grimmest, have written an upbeat reggae number about sex-murder by dehydration. I'm quite sure Calton Coffie did not. But substitute "come" for "sweat" and the line not only makes sense, it's idiomatic.

Speaking of Serge Gainsbourg, an indie rock band of a certain type looking for a surefire hit could do worse than to cover "Sweat" in the style of "Je Suis Venu Te Dire Que Je M'en Vais." (When you thank me in the liner notes, remember it's P-h-e-l-a-n: e before a and no F.)

More proof the song is about wanting to give its addressee orgasms: the second time the line comes around -- I only just noticed this -- Coffie changes the phrasing of "My tongue gets tied" so that it sounds like "My tongue gets tired." Of course, there shouldn't be any need to offer that sort of evidence to anyone who enjoys the song. With rare exceptions, the correct interpretation of a beautiful song's meaning is whichever one does it the most credit. To insist on a less generous one, without having a very good reason for favoring it, is to want to diminish the world in a small but definite way. It's barbaric.

That being said, to appreciate the record's greatness, it isn't necessary to think the song is about generosity in bed, or even to know what that might mean. I loved "Sweat" before I knew what sex was and have listened to it with undiminished pleasure ever since. (Though I have, regrettably, gone through long periods of forgetting it or figuring it's not the sort of thing I'd like anymore.) While writing the above I played it at least a dozen times. I have never tired of hearing it.

Sloan and Afternoon Delight

Contributed by Dave Lemay

Full disclosure: I think I still like these guys, which should normally disqualify my entry. But I get slightly ashamed and nauseous as the associated memories spew forth, which seems warrant enough to pursue this confession.

And with no small amount of self-gratification I retraced my love affair with Sloan, those bastions of classic rock hailing from Toronto, Canada: those shameless cataloguers of the original British invasion; those inveterate peddlers of rock and roll nostalgia.

It may come as no surprise that such hard-working respectable Atlantic boys would still be plucking away some twenty years later - and indeed they have been recording and touring consistently right into middle-age. While they seem to be holding up rather well (Chris Murphy still looks and acts like a kid with his mopish hair and his too-big wire-frame glasses) it is not always the case about their music. To their merit they have released 10 albums throughout this period, from Smeared (1992), up to Parallel Play (2008) last June. Though my steadfast devotion ended about 1998 with the release of Navy Blues and Sloan's progression into classic rock, it is fair to say that their prodigious output has always been tempered by an uneven quality. While their musicality is undeniable, many songs fail to stand-out and sometimes sound like an uninspired study in rock-abilia while others seem too contrived to bare any real scrutiny.

Take for example the following lines from "I can feel it" off the album Twice Removed (1994) —  what was for a time my favorite Sloan song but now seems unbearably saccharine and indulgent.

You could tell a million lies


And I'd think they all were true

Trust


That's my trust in you

...or plainly pubescent:

No strings attached


No copy to match


No drift to catch

No plans to hatch

No itch to scratch

Just infatuation

Is all you need

...and just downright questionable value for our ardent youth:

But you've got a thing for me


I can feel it, I can feel it


And I've got a thing for you, too

You can have it, you can have it

Certainly infatuation is not all you need. Venereal disease stalks the brash and heedless and that's something that 'you can have' that can't easily be gotten rid of.

As with every itched scratched, there is the requisite self-loathing and plainly I am not exempt.

As I write this, I am painfully aware that I am not only ridiculing something that I once identified with, but I am also intruding on some very fond moments that I shared with friends: the first mix tape that I ever received, that included "I can feel it"; an aimless weeknight in the back of a Toyota Tercel listening to One Chord to Another (1996) and debating its relative merits to Twice Removed — still my personal favorite, sorry Rob. 

Have I become an asshole? Maybe. Probably — I don't think I was born that way. 

I am in fact one of those people that never really listen to lyrics — to the amusement and consternation of my wife and friends. I only hear the musicality of the song, which makes it really hard to sing along and really easy to mess up words. 

It also leads to the sometimes embarrassing re-interpretation of a song's meaning, not unlike the moment in Arrested Development when Maeby and Michael sing a duet to "Afternoon Delight" by the Starland Vocal Band only to discover its suggestive meaning half-way through the song — or in my case, 15 years later.

I am sufficiently sentimental, I think, that melody is all I need to hear. And besides, I still think Twice Removed is an awesome album. 

The Gin Blossoms

Somewhere there is a magical land where everyone wears plaid and kaki, where everyone lost their virginity to their high school prom date, where hugs always happen in slow motion, where all high-fives are jumping high-fives, where the local sports team always wins after a trying season, where parents never divorce, and where all fountains are made for spontaneous frolicking.  This is the land where Gin Blossoms songs come from.  

The Gin Blossoms had a firm enough foundation of talent to escape the Amy Arena treatment.  Their songs have aged relatively well.  As I write, some douche with curly hair is probably playing "Hey Jealousy" at a bar around the corner, and I'm sure no one there minds.  I only dislike The Gin Blossoms because their songs always make me really sad.  When I hear one, first I feel nostalgic for the "good old days," then I remember how badly my early teens sucked.  If you don't know what I mean, watch this and think about how your life was never as perfect as Party of Five:

Want to play again?  Okay, this time, think about the first time you were in love, and then replay the moment when it all ended in severe heartbreak.  (Those of you who are currently married to your first true love, go fuck yourselves and stop reading my blog.)  

I especially like the lyrics during the pre-chorus: 

Well I don't want to take advice from fools

I'll just figure everything is cool

Until I hear it from you...

...like when you're dating an axe murderer, and all of your friends keep telling you she's an axe murderer, but you won't believe them until she sits you down one day and says, "Hey, I'm an axe murderer."   I've never had that exact talk, but I've come close enough.  Not fun.  Listen to your friends.

So here's something you probably didn't know about The Gin Blossoms: the dude who wrote "Hey Jealousy," original guitarist Doug Hopkins, was kicked out of the band for severe alcoholism and killed himself in 1993.  I mean, fuck!  And that's the one interesting thing that has ever happened in their career, aside from getting famous.

The band reunited in 2002 and embarked on a tour with Spin Doctors and The Seven Mary Three.  Four years later they released a new album entitled Major Lodge Victory to little fanfare.  Here's a video of a creepy, balding Robin Wilson singing the album's "single"  in what looks like a nursing home recreation room.  

This is our new single off our new record.  God it's cool to be able to say that. 

(cue non-clapping)

Amy Arena

I wouldn't say I "liked" Amy Arena so much as I passively enjoyed her one hit song, "Excuse Me," when my local radio station played it incessantly during the Summer of 1995.  My critical faculties hadn't kicked it yet.  It was just part of the air I breathed, like how we all breathe in car exhaust without liking it but without minding it terribly, either.  

The mid-90s girl power, Lilith Fair thing produced a lot of music that is too easily mocked.  At this point I'd sound like a dick if I called Tori Amos a whiny, hairy hippie, because her movement came and went without having any long term impact.  And actually, she was a pretty good artist despite all her self-righteousness.  

However, there should be no limit to the number and severity of shots taken at Amy Arena.  Here's why:

Yes, this song actually saw airplay on mainstream radio.  There isn't even any rhythm to the talking.  At least rap-metal had that.  

Thankfully Amy Arena has sunken into extreme obscurity, without even a Wikipedia page to her name.  Her official website is delightfully amateurish in its attempt at making her look multitalented and successful.  She's a voiceover artist ("Sexy Announcer" for Jerry's Pizza), an actor ("C3" in the play, "Performing Objects Stationed in the Subworld") a film star ("Opal" in "Hunk of the Month") and model (apparently being an emcee for the Furniture Factory is modeling).  She also recorded a series of motivational, "in-your-face affirmations," entitled "You Are Not a Big Fat Loser!" 

Even though she hasn't released any music since 1995, she describes an upcoming album at great length, comparing it to Guns n' Roses, The Beatles, and a dirty little whore.  Seriously - a dirty little whore:

I thought of calling this body of work a thousand different things to describe the variety of it that is, indeed, me.  My favorite so far is "Dirty Little Whore" because the album just sorta gets around, you know?  And eventually, you'll have your hands all over her.  And you'll be passing her around, talking about her behind her back, but you'll love her in spite of her wild inconsistency.  We'll see.  I don't want anyone confusing the concept with my dignified reputation as a person.

She really should add a "maker of excellent metaphors" section to her website.  Maybe the Furniture Factory is hiring.

The Smashing Pumpkins, pt. 1

I was pretty ridiculously obsessed with The Smashing Pumpkins during my mid-teens.  There's no way I can encapsulate this obsession in a single entry, so I've resigned myself to writing snippets as the inspiration comes.  

This isn't even so much a Smashing Pumpkins post as a news item.  I found this website that offers full recordings of a ton of Pumpkins concerts from 1988 onward.  

I'm especially enjoying the ones from around 1992, when they were still in Gish mode but had starting writing some material for Siamese Dream.  I like the jammy fuzz rock, the My Bloody Valentine-esque shoegaze distortion madness.  

I'm sitting in my friend's apartment listening to their 1992 concert in Den Haag and playing Mortal Kombat.  Only slap bracelets would make this a more 90s evening.  

Meat Loaf

It's an unsettling feeling, realizing your first exposure to an artist came well after the album that made them famous. This was the case with R.E.M. and Pearl Jam (my first albums of theirs were Monster and Vitalogy, respectively), and even more absurdly, with the legendary Meat Loaf.

The 90s did not own Meat Loaf. He just baked the world a loaf of music while passing through, a loaf entitled Bat out of Hell II: Back into Hell. The lead single, "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do that)," was one of the catchiest pop songs of the decade, supported by what might have been the single most epic music video of all time. What it contained: helicopters, motorcycles, castles, floating furniture, lightning, masks, a police chase, heartbreak, longing, wailing, and profound lyricism (example: "Will you hose me down with holy water if I get too hot?") Grab some popcorn and watch it in its nearly-eight-minute-long glory.

I'm especially weirded out by the law enforcement aspect, since it implies that Meat Loaf's character has done something very wrong, and at best his crime was spying on the woman in the bed. At worst... well, I'll just say the video gets more and more disturbing as I imagine Mr. Loaf having committed more depraved and perverse crimes. Also, how about Inspector Glasses McGhee at 5:03? Somehow that guy made sense as an authority figure in the early 90s.

I was so into this song when I was nine years old that I actually acted out the music video with my Legos. First I had a Lego guy in medieval garb ride around on a motorcycle while being pursued by a space ship (I didn't have a helicopter). Then the guy narrowly escaped into a giant Lego castle and sang to a Lego wench in the next room. If you can fuse together the four images below, you will have a clear idea of what it was like:

Of course the number "II" in the album's title entailed a first Bat out of Hell, but despite my overwhelming love for the sequel I never bothered seeking out the original until about two years ago. My parents knew about Bat out of Hell and thought it was a silly, overwrought product of the late-70s. Eventually I would learn that this was 1. totally true; 2. totally a good thing. I also didn't realize that Bat II marked Mr. Loaf's return to form with Bat I collaborator Jim Steinman, who wrote all of the songs on both albums. Steinman had always intended to continue the Bat saga, but some personal feuds during the 80s stalled the process. In his own words:

I didn't call it Bat out of Hell II just to identify with the first record. It really does feel like an extension of that... It was a chance to go back to that world and explore it deeper. It always seemed incomplete because I conceived it like a film, and what would you do without Die Hard 2?

What, indeed? Bat II retained Steinman's musical magic as well as his deep lyrical skills. The song "Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer than they Are" was an emotional and cathartic exploration of his difficult past:

It's a really passionate song. It's really, I think maybe, the most passionate one on the record. I mean, I'm really proud of it because that's really one that goes over-the-top in the sense that it's got images - it has religious imagery of resurrection, it's got images of fertility and rebirth, it has really very good sexual images, images of cars - which I always like.

I see no better way to close this celebration of Meat Loaf than by listening to the man at the height of his glory. Here's the original song, "Bat out of Hell," with its motorcycles, Roy Bittan piano line, and soaring choruses. Also, it's got images.

Stone Temple Pilots

Contributed by Nathan Howard

My father, grateful though I am to him for my first concert (the Stones), tempered his Jagger with Weber. I was painfully aware both of the fact that we could afford, but still didn't buy, cable and of the fact that cable was the only way to watch music videos. Cable was doubly wasteful in my father’s eyes because not only was it a needless thirty-dollar luxury but it also threatened to prevent me from being otherwise productive (playing outside, doing homework, cleaning room, you remember the litany…).

Winter 1996 brought with it three months of free Videotron cable, Musiqueplus, and the music video. Elated, the first music video I can remember seeing is “Big Bang Baby”. I’m sure I saw others earlier, at friends houses say, but I can’t quite remember them. I remember STP because Scott Weiland scared me. Eyeliner on men was not part of my universe, and, though I didn’t quite know what heroin addiction looked like, I knew enough to conclude that it must have some connection to cable television.

Scott Weiland’s battle with that kryptonite of late 20th century grunge proved to be the band’s greatest stumbling block and the band perennially canceled or cut short touring during their career. The band also suffered at the hands of critics. To wit, Rolling Stone’s review of STP’s first album, “Core”:

With Eric Kretz bashing the skins like a Bonham manqué and axman Robert DeLeo ladling murk, Core is a testosteronefest. So thickly the sweat drips that when Weiland, resident shaman, gruffly mourns, "I'm half the man I used to be" ("Creep"), one shudders. "Plush" devoured radio with its mix of guitar grandiosity and woolly philosophizing; "Wicked Garden," another big single, waxes equally pompous. The inner child of Stone Temple Pilots is Iron Maiden, and that kid just won't quit howling

Now I can’t see for the life of me how the Maiden comparison is a) derogatory or b) valid, but other critics rightly lambasted STP for aping Vedder’s trademark ‘manly man-drawl’ – a drawl still lamentably echoed by Nickleback. The Weiland cum Vedder of early STP is most evident on “Interstate Love Song”, a song that until writing this article I thought actually WAS a Pearl Jam Song.

The band’s total output includes the relevant (Core, 1992; Purple 1994; and Tiny Music… 1996), the irrelevant (No. 4, 1999; Shangri-La Dee Da, 2001), and the trying-to-run-out-our-record-contract, a.k.a cash grab (Thank You, 2003; Buy This, 2008). Scott Weiland sang for the pleasantly mediocre Velvet Revolver but left for reasons so obvious as to obviate the need or desire for speculation. The DeLeo brothers were in the largely unremarkable but surprisingly functional “supergroup” Army of Anyone with Richard Patrick of Filter.

A reunited STP, according to Spin, plans on releasing an album in 2010.

The Prodigy

Pictured above is an English chap named Keith Flint.  He is the most recognizable face of The Prodigy, a band that frightened your mother between the years 1997 and 1999.  It was Flint's "punk look" that made The Prodigy safe for grunge-listening teenagers in America and helped them become the best selling dance band of all time.  But Flint was not the band's lead singer, nor did he write any of their music.  His official role was "dancer" and he augmented this with occasional shouting.  The official M.C. was Maxim Reality, who occasionally augmented his shouting and singing with dancing.  The band's third member, Liam Howlett, was the guy who wrote and performed all of their music.  If any of this is confusing, the video below offers an illustration of Howlett playing music, Maxim Reality shouting, and Flint dancing:

Part of The Prodigy's cache was their origin in London's underground rave scene of the early-1990s.  This made me, a fourteen-year-old living in the suburbs, feel like I was traveling somewhere exotic and hip whenever I listened to their music, and the "underground" part in particular made me think I was experiencing something really rare.  This rare experience was shared by the two million other people in the U.S. who bought The Fat of the Land, and several million more worldwide.  

Their success makes complete sense in hindsight, because when your music video features rodents, bugs, worms and an alligator, it will obviously go multi-platinum: 

Controversy beset Prodigy with their infamous song, "Smack My Bitch Up," for its repeated phrase, "Change my pitch up/smack my bitch up."  Despite their erudition and eloquence, these lyrics sparked accusations of misogyny from the National Organization of Women, various media outlets, and scores of other people with ears, minds.  The Beastie Boys, for example, asked them not to play the song at the 1998 Reading festival, because it could, maybe, possibly have been offensive to victims of domestic abuse, perhaps.  The song's music video was banned from television for depicting drug abuse, drunk driving, fighting, nudity, violence against women, and sex.  Oh, and repeated use of the word "bitch."  Despite censorship, the magic of the internet makes it readily available:

The end really makes you think, doesn't it?  Uh, yeah.  Especially ridiculous were the band's attempts at quelling the controversy, like when Howlett claimed in an interview that the song was about "doing anything intensely, like being on stage - going for extreme manic energy," thereby suggesting that he did not, in fact, know what the word misogyny meant.  

The Prodigy waited five years to release new material, and when they did, it came in the form of one song called "Baby's Got a Temper," which sampled part of "Firestarter," reused its vocal rhythm, and exploited Flint's "punk look" for all it was worth:   

The song flopped and infighting ensued.  Howlett moved to dissociate Flint from the band, claiming the punk thing was all Flint and not indicative of Prodigy's work.  A full album (Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned) came in 2002 and another (Invaders Must Die) in 2008, both receiving negative reviews and selling poorly outside of Europe.  But they're still touring!  Those seeking a surreal mid-90s experience can see them in New York or Toronto in late-March.  

Tripping Daisy

It's perfectly possible that Tripping Daisy wrote some beautiful, thoughtfully crafted, profound songs during their career.  This may have happened.  But everyone except a small group of diehard fans (mathematically speaking, these must exist) will only know them for "I Got a Girl," one of the most unfortunate songs of the 90s.  

I say unfortunate because everything about it tapped into a specific milieu that was extremely unsavory.  In 1995 we liked darkness, irony, and all things grotesque.  "I Got a Girl" was full of meaningless if vaguely positive lyrics like these: I got a girl she loves her dog/I got a girl I love her dog too; I got a girl that makes me laugh/I got a girl I'll make her laugh too.  Not excessively weird, just stupid.  But the singer, Tim DeLaughter, delivered them in a childish way that made him sound deeply disturbed.  This was cool at the time.  Healthy teenagers would act disturbed just for the hell of it.  So Tripping Daisy wrote the right crappy song at the right crappy moment.  Just watch the music video:

See?  I feel like I need a shower now.  I'm sure they thought it was artsy and deep, but when deep = disturbed, it just ends up being disgusting.  

Tripping Daisy disbanded in 1999 when the guitarist, Wes Berggren, died of a drug overdose.  The band seemed destined to become one hit wonders, with its remaining members living lives of frustration and quiet desperation - but no!  Tim DeLaughter is still among us in the form of The Polyphonic Spree.  Seriously.  The former lead singer of Tripping Daisy is now the lead singer of The Polyphonic Spree.  

They don't play "I Got a Girl" anymore but they do occasionally cover "Lithium" by Nirvana, which is close enough: