Boom! There She Was

One of the nicer surprises I received this Christmas was a copy of A Quiet Revolution: 30 Years Of Windham Hill. I'd been on a bit of a rediscovery kick with the old Windham Hill catalog lately, and this box has certainly helped fire up some old memories of listening to WNWV ("The Wave") off and on from 1987-1990. Outside of George Winston's ubiquitous December, I'd never owned much in the way of new age music, then again I was also twenty years younger than I am now and far more likely to seek temporary escape from life by cranking OU812, ...And Justice For All, or Delicate Sound Of Thunder rather than, say, In A Silent Way, Rubycon, or Thursday Afternoon. A lot of new age is pretty lame crystals-and-incense wallpaper, but the better examples of the form provide a nice, reflective break from the relentless fast-forward clatter of life (perhaps even moreso now than in the comparatively carefree 1980s).

Ironically, just as I received this box set in the mail (thanks again, nightscapemedia!), the news came down that The Wave would soon be no more. At noon today, WNWV flipped formats (though apparently not call letters) to the so-called "Adult Album Alternative" category and is now known as "Boom!" I'm not really enamoured with this new nick, but at least it's not some guy's name.

Charting the first six hours of their existence (you can listen online here), Boom! so far sounds exactly like a "greatest hits of AAA radio" with a generous helping of songs seemingly grabbed from my "Juke" mp3 folder. A playlist of these first few hours follows:

THIEVERY CORPORATION - Radio Retaliation
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - Radio Nowhere
COLDPLAY - Clocks
SARAH McLACHLAN - Possession
TRAIN - Hey Soul Sister
U2 - Magnificent
MELISSA ETHERIDGE - Bring Me Some Water
OWL CITY - Fireflies
ROBERT PLANT & ALISON KRAUSS - Gone Gone Gone
STEELY DAN - Dirty Work
DAVID GRAY - Fugitive
EDDIE VEDDER - Hard Sun
LOREENA McKENNITT - The Mummer's Dance
BONNIE RAITT - Blender Blues
CHRIS ISAAK - Wicked Game
CHUCK PROPHET - Let Freedom Ring
TEARS FOR FEARS - Everybody Wants To Rule The World
DEPECHE MODE - People Are People
THE GRATEFUL DEAD - Touch Of Grey
COCO MONTOYA - Seven Desires
STING - If You Love Somebody, Set Them Free
NATALIE MERCHANT - Wonderland
EAGLE-EYE CHERRY - Save Tonight
JOHN MAYER - Heartbreak Warfare
DIRE STRAITS - So Far Away
BARENAKED LADIES - The Old Apartment
THE PRETENDERS - My City Was Gone
DAVID GRAY - Sail Away
JOSS STONE - Free Me
KINGS OF LEON - Use Somebody
MICHAEL STANLEY - Lover
PAULO NUTINI - Jenny Don't Be Nasty
PETER GABRIEL - Big Time
NORAH JONES - Come Away With Me
TOAD THE WET SPROCKET - Walk On The Ocean
BELL X1 - The Great Defector
THE FRAY - How To Save A Life
THE POLICE - Can't Stand Losing You
COLDPLAY - The Speed Of Sound
THE CRANBERRIES - Dreams
10,000 MANIACS - Because The Night (Live)
COLLECTIVE SOUL - Shine
DAVE MATTHEWS BAND - Tripping Billies
JAMES BROWN - It's A Man's Man's World (Live)
DURAN DURAN - Ordinary World
KAISER CHIEFS - Ruby
TALKING HEADS - Life During Wartime
GRACE POTTER & THE NOCTURNAL - Ah Mary
AMY WINEHOUSE - You Know I'm No Good
JOE COCKER - You Can Leave Your Hat On
SHERYL CROW - Out Of Our Heads
COUNTING CROWS - Mr. Jones
R.E.M. - Orange Crush
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - 4th Of July, Asbury Park (Live)
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - Tunnel Of Love
JOHNNY CASH - Hurt
JOHN MAYER - Gravity
OWL CITY - Fireflies
FIONA APPLE - Criminal
TRAIN - Hey Soul Sister
INGRID MICHAELSON - Be OK
ADELE - Who Wants To Be Right As Rain?
SPOON - The Underdog
DAVID BOWIE - Panic In Detroit
THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS - Love My Way
DAVID GRAY -Fugitive
PETER GABRIEL - Sledgehammer
MUDCRUTCH - Scare Easy
VAN MORRISON - Wild Night
WILCO - You Never Know
GREEN DAY - Wake Me Up When September Ends
LOVE AND ROCKETS - So Alive
MODERN ENGLISH - I Melt With You
NORAH JONES - Chasing Pirates
SHERYL CROW - Motivation
TIL TUESDAY - Voices Carry

So far, this list offers up a promising start and is reminiscent of the brief period in 1990 when The Wave flirted with a more rock-leaning sound before returning to the safe harbor of lite jazz. The only real criticism I have so far is that I'd like to hear a lot more currents and indie-leaning offerings; right now, too much of this list sounds like a gray-haried version of "The End." The real trick that WNWV will have to pull off to become interesting is to find and maintain a good mix while losing that unmistakeable tang of safe, major label dominated, Starbucks-friendly pop/rock that can all too easily make stations like these a predictable bore.

Since this is only the introduction and/or basically a statement of intent, we'll have to see how WNWV plays out as 2010 gets going and new format-friendly releases begin to arrive in stores. Even if this new format switch ultimately fails (or becomes as soul-killingly boring as the rest of terrestrial radio), Boom! has me actually listening to FM radio for the first time since the middle of 2001, so that has to be good for something, right?

Thoughts On Synth Britannia

It isn't often that I come across a documentary that hits so close to home for me by zeroing in on a subject I was once truly passionate about, whether we're talking space exploration, oceanography, paleontology, cartography, or, in this particular case, the electronic pop music of the early 1980s.

BBCFour's fascinating documentary Synth Britannia was, for me, a lot like watching a documentary about my own "musical awakening" in 1981 and 1982. Like pretty much every other kid in seventh and eighth grade, I listened to the local Top 40 station and let them relentlessly pound the hits of the era into my skull, but it was that exotic, impossibly perfect, alien-sounding electronic pop music that I could only find on MTV that held me completely rapt back then.


A year later, for a few incredible months, that same wonderful, mesmerizing music actually threatened to become the Top 40 in this country; a time that I will always remember as one of those mini "golden ages" when it seemed like mainstream radio could do no wrong (sadly, I don't think another one of these eras came along until 1990 or so). Synth Britannia covers that magical time period and the years that led up to it, tracking the rise of electronic music as a form of pop music from roughly 1977 to the middle of 1983.

Ever since watching that program, I've been stuck in a bit of a time warp as far as my home play list is concerned. The last two weeks in this office have been soundtracked by the best of the golden age of wireless; revisiting the early glories of Ultravox!, discovering the rich solo career of their forgotten original leader John Foxx, marveling anew at the recently remastered Kraftwerk catalog, taking another stab at Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire (two challenging proto-electronic acts that I last sampled during my early 90s industrial phase) and playing through the entire Depeche Mode catalog while poring over the incredible Beatles Anthology-styled mini-movies packaged with their "collector's edition" releases that cumulatively chronicle their entire existence from 1991-2002 in incredibly revealing detail.

There were many joys and highlights to Synth Britannia, but perhaps the most striking part of the program was seeing these once unremittingly dour pop culture figures opening up a bit and showing that they didn't take themselves as completely seriously as, say, Sting does. OMD bassist and lead singer Andy McCluskey in particular was hilarious, while Human League singer Phil Oakey spins a good tale as well. Both figures offered plenty of pointed (and funny) insights into the electonic scene and their respective roles in it (with McCluskey getting a delicious parting shot at 90s Britpop at the very end). It was also interesting to hear deposed League synthesist Martyn Ware admit his jealousy at Gary Numan's "Cars" and discuss his motivations to challenge the his former band's chart supremacy with Heaven 17.

Now for the inevitable whining blogger complaints ...

The biggest problem with Synth Britannia is that, even at 90 minutes in length, you come away from the program a bit let down in the end since it seems to run full-tilt into a brick wall about 88 minutes in. I can understand and maybe even agree with Mr. Critic's point that the genre turned overtly commercial somewhere during 1983 (and the quick cut from that statement to poor Howard Jones dancing about with Jed The Dancing Mime was admittedly a hoot), yet it felt like a cop-out to end the program by saying "... and then things got really lame. The end." Regardless of what the producers may think of the Thompson Twins, I wanted more, and being told in effect that every synth-based act to come down the pike after the middle of 1983 was another load of bandwagoning crap struck me as irritatingly purist, especially when following the lionizing of Soft Cell, for crissakes.

I was also a wee bit irked that the Walter/Wendy Carlos' soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange seemed to be the lone early progenitor to synthpop, with no mention whatsoever given to David Bowie's Low (an album that, to me, is a far more obviously influential work). This omission becomes a bit more glaring when significant face time is slotted to Numan, whose twin genre classics Replicas and The Pleasure Principle owed an undeniable stylistic debt to Bowie's 1977 masterpiece.

Lastly, there is that inevitable list of bands that failed to make the cut. I'm sure this had much to do with time and budget constraints, but you also wonder if there was some unspoken lumping in of these missing artists with the post-1983 acts disparaged above. Was Thomas Dolby too commercial to count as true synthpop? Talk Talk? Visage? Pete Shelley? Blancmange?

My own geeky grumbings aside, Synth Britannia is definitely worth your time if you're into this kind of music. Here's hoping there will be some more in-depth examinations of this era in the future.

The videos linked throughout this post (and a lot more in the same spirit, including some very cool live BBC performances) can be found here.

E's List Of "People Who Have Been Kicked Out Of Marilyn Manson"

This list is not from E! the cable network, but E the singer/songwriter and leader of Eels. The following was cribbed out of the liner notes for his Useless Trinkets rarities compilation:

1. Fiona Hinckley
2. Ladybird Bundy
3. Baby Jessica Speck
4. Alanis Mussolini
5. Hilary Rodham Berkowitz
6. JonBenet Hitler
7. Lady Diana Dahmer
8. UnaBarbara Bush
9. Mother Theresa McVeigh
10. Son Of Sally Jessy Raphael
11. Anita Hillside Strangler

(Youtube): Synth Brittania Preview

Oh. Oh my ...

The following Youtube clips are all excerpts (or previews) of the forthcoming BBCFour production of Synth Brittania, airing October 16.







Phil Oakey (reminding me weirdly of Christian Bale) illustrates how ex-Human League synthesist Ian Craig Marsh came up with the drum sound of "Being Boiled."



Vince Clarke (Depeche Mode, Yaz, Erasure) shows off a very primitive sampling drum machine.



Andy McCluskey self-effacingly breaks down the sound of the Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark classic "Enola Gay."



Ex-Ultravox leader John Foxx (eventually replaced by Midge Ure) plays around with an ARP synthesizer.

I. Must. See. This.

RIVERBOTTOM NIGHTMARE BAND!

While this has never been a family blog per se, I still almost feel the need to apologize for the truly vulgar and tastelessly named band in the Youtube link below. If you can somehow get around their name, dig on this hilariously faithful (if you squint your ears) grindcore cover of an old chestnut from that gentle 1977 Christmas special Emmett Otter's Jugband Christmas.

For the sake of comparison, I first offer you the original version:



And now the same filmed performance, with the, uh, revised version dubbed in:



For those who wish to be even more offended/titillated, some additional info and a complete discography (including song samples!) on the band who covered this song can be found here.

Proof positive of some remaining immaturity still rattling around inside this grumpy old man's heart: I giggled myself completely sore while watching this.

Michael Jackson: 1958-2009

Video killed the radio star, hip-hop killed rock, mp3 killed the album, runaway consolidation and niche marketing killed pop music, and now the self-appointed King Of Pop is dead. I guess it all adds up in the end somehow, doesn't it?

For me, this news isn't quite like Kurt Cobain shooting himself with Nirvana still reigning (albeit in wobbly fashion) as the biggest rock act on the planet: the shock and loss just isn't there. The Michael Jackson that I choose to remember fondly tonight vanished over twenty years ago: a troubled ex-child star who'd started to come apart at the seams in the turbulent wake of one of the biggest pop culture achievements of the century. If you want to read a more thorough and in-depth life story or perhaps a litany of his greatest weirdest moments, you're going to have to look elsewhere as I'm here to celebrate Jackson's halcyon days before the looming specter of middle age and the yawning chasm of 24/7 celebrity culture programming turned his life into the world's weirdest reality show.

There will be a lot of talk about financial foolishness, lost childhood and Peter Pan obsessions, but if you really want to get some clearer idea of the real tragedy of Michael Jackson, simply watch "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough," "Rock With You" and "Billie Jean" for a clear look at the vibrant, raw talent he once was. Primitive by today's standards (oooh, lasers!) these clips still offer an instant primer to understanding Jackson's popularity at the time as his voice, stage presence and stunning physical grace were simply unmatched in pop music.

Then along came The Big One: despite essentially being a PG-rated re-shoot of An American Werewolf In London (by way of a George Romero zombie film), the John Landis-directed "Thriller" video continues to hold up under scrutiny 26 years after its debut. Universally hailed at the time as the greatest video ever created, there are definitely arguments that can be made that "Thriller" still holds claim to the title. Even if you disagree on that point, there is no argument that "Thriller" remains a conceptual, cultural and budgetary milestone, and perhaps the most fully-formed realization of the possibilities of the music video format. That said, this short film (and, more to the point, its parent album) also created an impossible standard that Jackson sought continuously to beat for the rest of his life.

The follow-up to a blockbuster solo debut, Thriller was not only the kind of a mega hit you only saw once per decade, it pretty much dominated the entire year of 1983 (with only The Police's Synchronicity putting up any kind of spirited fight for the throne). As a fourteen year old with an insatiable fascination for the music business, Thriller made for a hell of a story to follow as single after single made the Top 10 and the album sold in the kinds of quantities that record companies never dared to dream of. Beyond that angle, I don't think Thriller had a major effect on my tastes as I was pretty well over the moon on New Wave and electropop, with my taste in R&B more along the lines of "Rockit" and "Little Red Corvette" than, say, "P.Y.T." Listening to the album now remains a largely entertaining 45 minutes, with the lyrical subtexts a lot more noticeable thanks to the passage of time: Thriller is the state of Jackson's psyche at the end of 1982: a bit naive ("Human Nature"), intermittently dark and intense ("Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," "Beat It"), yet possessed of a certain charming innocence that, in its resolute failure to change, started to became increasingly creepy and disconcerting over the albums that followed.

A barely-memorable reunion album and tour with The Jacksons in 1984 was the only peep the world heard from Michael Jackson for nearly three years while the hub-bub from Thriller-mania gradually died down. It was during this crucial down time that throwaway sight gags in comedies like Beverly Hills Cop began to send-up Jackson's style and image, while the first real whispers of "that boy ain't right" began to circulate in the gossip columns. Over time, the aura of invincibility around The Gloved One began to ever-so-slowly dim.

Then came 1987's ravenously-awaited Bad, which managed to become a decent-sized follow up for Jackson as far as sales and popularity were concerned (and I don't think anyone aside from Jackson really expected anything approaching halfway to Thriller's ridiculous level of success), but was also a record that I personally found to be a troubling letdown. Despite some of returning producer Quincy Jones' best work and top-flight musicianship deployed throughout, Bad was the beginning of Jackson ratcheting up his own self-importance to nearly unbearable levels while perfecting the art of writing songs and creating videos that screamed "HEY EVERYBODY! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! DAMN IT, GO AWAY AND STOP LOOKING AT ME!"

Four years after Thriller, high-budget music videos with dialogue and Hollywood actors were commonplace, and Jackson had his work cut out for him attempting to reset the playing field. In trying to continually up the ante on himself, Jackson's newer clips became self-parodic mini-epics where he tried to have it both ways: you know, the kiddie-friendly entertainer who happens to be a hard-assed, hair-trigger street-fighting man not to be trifled with by anyone (eventually up to and including Marlon Brando for crissakes). It is here that I signed off and moved on, letting what eventually became Wacko Jacko The Morphing Human Freakshow become the preferred pet of the tabloid crowd. Besides, by 1988, I was neck deep in the far more interesting weirdness being released by Prince, Jackson's only true competition that whole decade, if not exactly his successor.

In the end, I'll simply forget that the last 20 years ever happened as far as Jackson's career goes and remember him for that first electric decade of solo work and the timeless 70s soul he cut as a child with The Jackson 5. After that, let's just say that he wasn't my King Of Pop. Dangerous? Hardly. Invincible? No. HIStory? Sadly, yes.

Truly "Bigger Than Jesus"

No discussion of popular music in the 1960s (or the 20th Century, for that matter) could be complete without mention of The Beatles, and this week marks the 45th anniversary of what could arguably be considered the very height of Beatlemania.

On Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart for the week ending April 4, 1964, the Fab Four achieved a level of dominance never seen before or since as they staked claim to the Top 5 positions on said chart, while placing an incredible seven other songs ("I Saw Her Standing There," "You Can't Do That," "All My Loving," "Roll Over Beethoven," "From Me To You," "Do You Want To Know A Secret," and "Thank You Girl") at various slots down the list.

Below is a look at that week's Top 10 as it was published:

As you might have noticed, the Beatles singles listed above originated from multiple distributors, not just Capitol Records (the label they had signed to just before the hysteria had started, and their U.S. home ever since). Facing a stone wall of skepticism or outright hostility from the U.S. record industry, band manager Brian Epstein had scattered several Beatles singles among a handful of smaller independent labels over the second half of 1963 in persistent efforts to get a foothold in the U.S. market with no success at all. Then, as now, if you had an insufficient promotional budget to spend fostering radio airplay, your releases simply would not get on the air, and the labels that chose to work with Epstein had little or no national promotion budget to speak of.

Epstein's efforts at the time may have been viewed as a failure, yet they paid off wildly when the band became a known entity in America seemingly overnight. Thus, when "I Want To Hold Your Hand" went supernova in January of 1964 (with five million sold, it ultimately became the best-selling song of the decade), there was plenty of older Beatles product available to record stores who found themselves swamped by overwhelming demand for anything Beatles-related. Such was this demand that even cash-in novelty records recorded in the days and weeks following the band's Ed Sullivan Show appearance began to show up in the record charts as well in the form of "We Love You Beatles" by The Carefrees, "A Letter To The Beatles" by The Four Preps, "My Boyfriend Got A Beatle Haircut" by Donna Lynn and "The Boy With The Beatle Hair" by The Swans.

While managing to nail down the Top 5 slots on the Hot 100 is an impressive enough feat, one has to look beyond this amazing one-week snapshot to see just how stupendous the Beatles were in the first half of 1964. While they released their most epochal works down the line a ways, they would never again completely dominate culture like they did that spring. For starters, that mind-boggling roll call of twelve singles listed simultaneously on the Hot 100 would actually increase to an unbelievable fourteen entries on the April 11 chart as "There's A Place" and "Love Me Do" entered the fray alongside their dozen predecessors.

The April 4 chart may have been the only time the Beatles would control the entire Top 5, but their domination of the Billboard singles chart extends for months either way: on April 4, the band had now owned the entire top 4 for two straight weeks and the entire top 3 for four straight weeks (since March 14). If that wasn't enough of a stranglehold for you, consider next that the Fabs had also reserved the top 2 positions on the Hot 100 from February 22 to April 25 (1o weeks) and held down the number 1 spot with one song or another from February 1 though May 2 (14 weeks).

Oh, it gets better: The Beatles kept at least one song in Billboard's Top 10 from to January 25 to June 20 of that year (22 weeks solid), and managed to keep at least one hit in the national Top 40 for 39 consecutive weeks -- from January 25 (the week "I Want To Hold Your Hand" rocketed from #45 clear up to #3) all the way through to October 17 (the week "Matchbox" tumbled from #17 to #52, opening a nearly two-month period when no Beatles songs impacted the U.S. Top 40 ).

Lastly, and perhaps most incredibly of all, by the end of 1964, the Fab Four would amass 15 million-selling records in the U.S. (over 9 singles and 6 albums), and the total sales of these releases combined amounted to over 25 million records sold ... by one band in one year.

Record Den Top 100 Sellers Of 2008

1. METALLICA Death Magnetic
2. THE BLACK KEYS Attack And Release
3. ARTFUL DODGER Honor Among Thieves
4. COLDPLAY Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends
5. RADIOHEAD In Rainbows
6. DAVID GILMOUR Live In Gdansk
7. THE RACONTEURS Consolers Of The Lonely
8. THE BLACK CROWES Warpaint
9. LED ZEPPELIN Mothership
10. JACK BRUCE & ROBIN TROWER Seven Moons
11. BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS Legend
12. LIL' WAYNE Tha Carter III
13. TODD RUNDGREN Arena
14. SLIPKNOT All Hope Is Gone
15. FISH The 13th Star
16. JEFF BECK Performing This Week: Ronnie Scott's
17. GENESIS 1970-1975
18. WEEZER Weezer
19. JUDAS PRIEST Nostradamus
20. ALICE COOPER Along Came A Spider
21. STEVE WINWOOD Nine Lives
22. R.E.M. Accelerate
23. AC/DC Black Ice
24. MUDCRUTCH Mudcrutch
25. WHITESNAKE Good To Be Bad
26. NEIL YOUNG Greatest Hits
27. OFFSPRING Rise And Fall, Rage And Grace
28. KID ROCK Rock N Roll Jesus
29. DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE Narrow Stairs
30. PINK FLOYD The Dark Side Of The Moon
31. MOTLEY CRUE Saints Of Los Angeles
32. PITCH BLACK FORECAST Absentee
33. LED ZEPPELIN Led Zeppelin II
34. THE KILLERS Day & Age
35. MICHAEL STANLEY Just Another Night
36. CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL Chronicle, Vol. 1
37. DISTURBED Indestructible
38. FOXBORO HOT TUBS Stop Drop And Roll
39. MADONNA Hard Candy
40. TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS Greatest Hits
41. T.I. Paper Trail
42. RADIOHEAD The Best Of Radiohead
43. LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM Live At The Bass Performance Hall
44. RUSH Rush
45. THE FIREMAN Electric Arguments
46. RUSH Snakes & Arrows Live
47. RAY DAVIES Working Man's Cafe
48. JOE WALSH The Definitive Collection
49. BUCKCHERRY 15
50. THE WHO Who's Next
51. LED ZEPPELIN Houses Of The Holy
52. LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM Gift Of Screws
53. BECK Modern Guilt
54. PORTISHEAD Third
55. CREAM Disraeli Gears
56. JOE SATRIANI Professor Satchafunkilus
57. BLACK MOUNTAIN In The Future
58. LED ZEPPELIN Physical Graffiti
59. THE BEATLES Abbey Road
60. DENNIS WILSON Pacific Ocean Blue
61. FLEET FOXES Fleet Foxes
62. DOKKEN Lightning Strikes Again
63. TESTAMENT The Formation Of Damnation
64. VAMPIRE WEEKEND Vampire Weekend
65. KANYE WEST 808s & Heartbreak
66. THE CURE 4:13 Dream
67. MY MORNING JACKET Evil Urges
68. BLUE FLOYD Begins
69. DETHKLOK The Dethalbum
70. GUNS 'N ROSES Greatest Hits
71. U2 War
72. OASIS Dig Out Your Soul
73. VARIOUS ARTISTS Big Blue Ball
74. DARK LOTUS Opaque Brotherhood
75. THE ROLLING STONES Shine A Light
76. FLOGGING MOLLY Float
77. PORCUPINE TREE We Lost The Skyline
78. NICK LOWE Jesus Of Cool
79. MICHAEL JACKSON Thriller
80. BLIND FAITH Blind Faith
81. LED ZEPPELIN Led Zeppelin
82. NEIL YOUNG Sugar Mountain: Live At Canterbury House 1968
83. QUEEN & PAUL RODGERS The Cosmos Rocks
84. KINGS OF LEON Only By The Night
85. JENNY LEWIS Acid Tongue
86. OPETH Watershed
87. RINGO STARR Liverpool 8
88. RUSH The Spirit Of Radio
89. JIMI HENDRIX Experience Hendrix: The Best Of Jimi Hendrix
90. LED ZEPPELIN Led Zeppelin III
91. U2 Boy
92. GRAHAM NASH Songs For Beginners
93. THE BEATLES The Beatles
94. THE DOORS The Best Of The Doors
95. R.E.M. Murmur
96. NICKELBACK Dark Horse
97. RYAN ADAMS & THE CARDINALS Cardinology
98. LUCIFER'S FRIEND Lucifer's Friend
99. BOB DYLAN Tell-Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series Vol. 8
100. MOTORHEAD Motorizer

Catching Up With Rex

Last night, 60 Minutes did a follow-up report on a blind, disabled kid named Rex Lewis-Clack, who has an absolutely incredible gift for music. I watched this report with the sound off while we were at Outback Steakhouse with my brother and my niece and, my curiosity piqued, decided to hunt it down online this afternoon.

If you haven't seen this segment (and have fifteen minutes to kill), you might it very worth your while. On one level, it's a fascinating (and moving) human story, while on another it raises all kinds of interesting questions regarding the apparent connection between blindness, mental disability, and prodigious musical talent.

I think what I find most fascinating about cases like Rex and Rachel Flowers is that we all have the same minds, more or less, and yet it seems that when "higher" functions are lost (or never gained) in a small group of people, an amazing, brilliant part of the brain that the rest of us never access is magically unlocked. Watching Rex and Rachel play, it's impossible not to feel the awesome, still untapped potential of the human mind.

The Comedy Of Errors Continues

It's bad enough for the music industry's long-term health (assuming such a concept still exists) that an ever-decreasing number of people are buying CDs in ever-decreasing amounts, but when record companies seemingly go out of their way to piss off the remaining people who are still actually paying for physical product, you have to wonder sometimes at the point of it all.

The breaking New Order reissue debacle is only the latest in a series of self-inflicted PR black-eyes suffered by what's left of the Big Four distributors over the last few years. What is particularly disturbing in this instance is that the company at fault here is the once-mighty Rhino Records, who were at one time considered the best reissue label on the planet, with a reputation for sonic and packaging excellence recognized by consumers and retailers alike. Granted, the brain trust that made the label great has long since bolted the coop, but for this same label to not only release such a shoddily-created product with no input whatsoever from the band itself is one thing, but to then go ahead and release it in the United States (despite numerous complaints had already surfaced overseas) and then not even acknowledge that there is any problem until most die-hard fans have already impatiently snapped up their copies is simply inexcusable. In effect, what we have here is yet another example of labels seeking to squeeze maximum profits wherever possible while whittling down manpower and tossing previously trumpeted standards of quality and worksmanship right out the window.

It's bad enough that we're being conditioned as a society to accept slapdash plastic doo-dads rushed to market to meet quarterly expectations for their parent multinationals (how often do we pick up buggy cell phones and video game systems that don't always work correctly and accept this crap in order to be among the first to own them), but now this cynical attitude is spreading to "deluxe" reissues of 25 year old records, as well. With catalog departments being systematically pared down to skeleton crews, the job of researching and remastering old recordings has become far more of a major undertaking than it was in headier times, and time-saving shortcuts such as using sub-par quality LP-pressing masters or even vinyl records themselves as source material have become a more common practice as of late, particularly in Europe.


Another victim of this new corporate reality is the hatchet job done by EMI on the Pink Floyd box set Oh, By The Way last Christmas. What was already shaky idea to begin with ("Hey, let's put every Pink Floyd CD ever made -- not including any live albums, bonus tracks, singles or non-album cuts -- into a super-expensive, but cheaply made cardboard box and then market it to people who already own all the albums!"), was made far worse when thousands of irritated customers began reporting mis-printed CDs ("Hey! Why does Wish You Were Here suddenly sound exactly like Obscured By Clouds?"), doubled-up CDs ("Hey! I have two copies of Ummagumma, Disc 1!") , or even completely-wrong pressings ("Hey! This isn't Pink Floyd at all!"). For a list price of $299.99, you might think that some level of quality control was observed somewhere along the production line, but apparently even that is too much to expect these days. Silly us.

Perhaps the worst industry practice that is making even hardened music dorks such as I think twice about plunking down money for new CDs is the ongoing race to create the loudest, most unlistenable CDs possible. There was an infamous quote in Rolling Stone magazine a couple of years ago from no less than Bob Dylan that summed up the state of the art in music in no uncertain terms: "(modern albums) have sound all over them. There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like ... static."

While it's certainly debatable at what point the loudness wars started in the 1990s, it was The Beatles who initially set the bar for increased volume in 1986 when their early catalog appeared on CD for the first time, with all of their discs mastered nearly twice as loud as any other rock titles on the market.

It took a few years for modern rock to catch on, but it started to happen around 1992-1994, when albums by Metallica, , Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Stone Temple Pilots, and Alice In Chains seemed to leap forth from speakers with real, tangible ferocity, especially when compared to the rest of the market at the time. Of course, many of their competitors (or the heads of their labels) heard these records and then asked their producers and engineers why they couldn't make records that sounded just as loud (if not more so) as Metallica, In Utero, The Downward Spiral, Core, or Dirt did, and the race was on.

It was also right around this time that the first "remastered" CDs started to appear in record stores. The argument for the existence of these refurbished albums was that either a.) many CDs of older albums were initially rushed to market in the mid 1980s with little regard to making sure that the original master tapes had been sourced for optimum sound quality (hmm, sound familiar?) or b.) advances in sound reproduction technology since 1983 had made it possible for CDs to sound even "better" than before as a "warmer," more analog-feeling ambience of sound was now becoming possible.

I would be remiss not to mention that the real point to this wave of upgraded classics was, of course, to force die-hard fans to buy their favorite CDs all over again (which some maintain was the true reason for all of this in the first place). Now, it would have been fine and dandy to remaster these older albums once and then let the upgraded, "corrected" copies stand at that, but some records have been now been reissued and remastered multiple times, with differences in sonic quality and mastering on each different iteration. This practice certainly gives credence to those who feel that all of this is just a way to part fools from their money one more time, especially as these same records get progressively shittier sounding with every new appearance on the market.

I had been aware of this loudness war for years, especially since I used to make mix tapes for myself and my friends constantly, and learned early on what recording levels certain CDs from which time periods or musical genres needed to be set at for the best sound quality (and smoothest listening experience) on a finished TDK SA-90 cassette. My frustration with wildly varying levels of output (try making a full-career hits mix tape sourced from old and new Bruce Springsteen CDs to get an idea of where I'm coming from) had me solidly in the "remaster everything!" corner for years, and the first instance where I can recall a new record being "brick-walled" to the point of distraction was Oasis' 1997 release Be Here Now: though I wrote off a lot of my displeasure with that record at the time as being subpar writing and mixing more than anything else. After all, this was the same summer that Radiohead's similarly-mastered classic O.K. Computer had taken over the world, and that record was just great, thank you very much.

My first real animosity against this practice of level compression and peak-limiting came along five years later, when Rush released their absolutely unlistenable reunion album Vapor Trails. After years of earth-shaking build up from sundry rock and pop acts across the spectrum, here at last was a record that was so invasively and unbelievably shrill that it wasn't so much a "listening experience" as a buzz saw to the forehead.

These days, CDs with no dynamic range whatsoever are commonplace, especially at the major label level (indies either can't afford the software, or somehow just know better). Some of the blame is certainly attainable to the race to be as loud as the competition, yet other factors like a sea change in listening habits amongst music buyers away from expensive rack stereo systems and towards iPods, cell phones, and tiny PC speakers also have done their part to alter the way music is presented. While many consumers don't really seem to care that they no longer need volume knobs on their car stereos, enough have banded together in online communities that a whole secondary market of people actively searching out, say, older editions of Led Zeppelin and Genesis CDs has emerged in the underground, claiming that these CDs were actually done right the first time around and have only been marred by any remastering done since the mid-late 1980s. Even younger music fans have noticed recently how much better the video game version of Metallica's Death Magnetic sounds than the actual CD (a graphical comparison can be seen here).

Perhaps the most darkly amusing (nevermind ironic) side effect of these shenanigans is that a new generation of music buyers have embraced the once-comatose format of vinyl LP records as a superior alternative to compact discs. Once they realized what was happening, labels cynically began cashing in: even going so far as to issue record bags emblazoned with their laughable new catch phrase "because sound matters."

The best part? Out of this vinyl resurgence comes a new ridiculous extreme embodied by the bonus CD packaged with vinyl copies of Lindsey Buckingham's new album Gift Of Screws. Now, the idea of throwing in a "bonus" CD copy of a release with the vinyl LP is a nice idea, sure, but the sticker on this album proudly proclaims:

180 GRAM VINYL + AUDIOPHILE CD

RECORDED MIXED & MASTERED ON ANALOG TAPE. INCLUDES CD OF THE UNCOMPRESSED VINYL MASTER PLATING & PRESSING AT R.T.I.

What the hell? I've heard many times before the old argument that vinyl sounds better than CD, but this is something new. If I am reading this correctly, Warner Bros, Records is now implictly admitting that modern mass-marketed CDs sound like dog shit. Even if you think this reaction is over the line, doesn't the very existence of a specialized "audiophile" pressing (available only when you buy the vinyl copy, no less! ha ha!) make you wonder what the hell the regular version is supposed to be?

One funny thing about modern "brick-walled" CDs: they make average bit rate-quality mp3s sound even worse than they already do (as if that were possible). We used to joke at work that the sudden leap in CD volume across the board in the last decade was actually a deliberate and subtle sabotaging of the mp3 format by the major labels, but in light of recent events, it appears that is giving the suits far too much credit.

Life Is Just A Fantasy/Can You Live This Fantasy Life?

I suppose it would surprise absolutely no one that I have a "Google Alert" set to "Pink Floyd," which sends me a nice little daily rundown of all the most popular new stories on said subject to appear on the web (whether through so-called "mainstream" news sites or blogs). 98% of the time, these alerts e-mails are either full of false-positives or plain old chaff, but one link came up last week that caught my eye: drummer Nick Mason will apparently be one of the instructors at a "Rock N Roll Fantasy Camp" in England in early November.

I researched this "fantasy camp" further and the details offered in the package are quite interesting indeed: you (the participant) will practice at the famed Abbey Road Studios and then perform with your band at the (rebuilt) Cavern Club (across from the old location shuttered years ago) in historic Liverpool!

Live the dream! No experience necessary! trumpets the official website. You'll be treated like a rock star. You'll live the rock n' roll lifestyle day in and day out, learning or perfecting your knowledge of an instrument, practicing and jamming with your band mates and learning the ins and outs of the music business - all in the company of some of music's brightest stars.

Funny, I was under the impression that the life of a rock star was more along the lines of frequent anonymous sex, binge drinking, recreational drug use, malnutrition and cultivating a healthy love/hate relationship with your audience. Sure, practice and jamming is certainly involved and all, but the rest of that sounds suspiciously like a community college course.

And while I love Nick and all, I can't say I consider him or Bill Wyman to be among "music's brightest stars," but I suppose they can't have Slash available for these kind of things 24/7.

By the way, that "no experience necessary" part looks absolutely horrifying, doesn't it?

Depending on your skill level and interest, you may try picking up a Peavey guitar during your time at camp, or you may spend your time singing backup vocals or playing tambourine with the band.

Terrific. How many acolyte tambourine players can a live amateur performance of The Wall support before the universe starts to collapse in upon itself?

So, what can a paying customer expect from his experience? The site goes into a point-by-point list:

• Small group instruction from celebrity musicians (campers are placed in a band with a rock star counselor for the entire camp duration)

Good lord, this just sounds like someone's awful idea of a reality series.

• Play and write your own original song

Hey, Brian and Rob! This is your chance to get "Butterflies In The Wind" professionally recorded at last! Can y'all write me a bass part?

• Perform live on stage to a sold out audience at a major rock venue

What, the (second iteration of the) Cavern Club? What's the capacity there? 300 people? Boy, I'll bet they are chomping at the bit to hear a bunch of inexperienced musicians tackle a Pink Floyd double album.

• Counselor-led master class sessions in drums, bass, guitar, songwriting, etc.

Sooo, will Nick Mason be teaching power chords and organ riffs, then?

• A souvenir DVD of you jamming at the final night's Battle of the Bands

Sweet Jesus Mercy, there will be more than one band performing? This is cruel.

• 10+ hours of daily jam sessions with your bandmates and rock star counselors

Good. You're gonna need it if you have any hopes of not embarrassing yourself.

• Daily meals with celebrity musicians and campers

If they are offering the true rock star experience, these meals will come straight out of the ass end of the nearest drive-through burger joint.

• Rehearsal time at professional rehearsal studios (you'll play where the stars play!)

Makes you wonder which engineers at Abbey Road drew the shortest straws to land this gig.

• Plenty of opportunities for photos and autographs as guest stars walk through the camp all week (so be sure to bring your camera!)

"Wow! Chris Slade! Wassup, homey!?"

"Hey, Kip Winger! Can I get a picture with you?"

"Hey, look! It's that guy who was once in The Beach Boys in the 1970s! Awesome!"

At first, reading the article and then perusing the website made me feel sad and embarrassed: my god, is this what our ex-rock stars have sunk to? Teaching a bunch of rich kids whose parents paid $15,000 so that their little Dominics, Dantes and Dillons can learn how to perform The Wall from a guy who, quite honestly, didn't have an awful lot to do with the creation of the piece in the first place (and, considering Pink Floyd's increasing use of session musicians around that time, who knows how much he had to do with the actual recording anyway)?

The more I chewed this program over, the more disturbed I became by what I was reading. A school of rock? We're now giving trust fund brats and aging baby boomers professional seminars on how to be a rock star? What kind of post-Reagan cultural dicketry is this?

Has rock music become so safe and homogenized now that it has completely lost any semblance of artistry or danger that it once held? OK, I'll look the other way on adults working their way through midlife crises (since Goat knows I'm due for mine anytime now), but when exactly did kids growing up in the hopes of becoming a rock star become an agreeable career goal for their parents? Hell, when did joining a rock band become something you went to camp for (and with your parents chaperoning, to boot)?

Maybe I missed something over the years, but I was under the impression that a rebellious teenager joining a rock band was the antithesis of a respectable career choice. If anything, trying to become a professional rock musician was more like running off to join the circus: something that horrify your parents and either turn you into a drug-addled guitar god or at least a spotty, chain-smoking roadie. Not anymore, though! These days, living the rock star lifestyle is as cute and tame an idea as a day at Disneyworld.

The more you think about it, the more Rock 'N Roll Fantasy Camp becomes a vaguely creepy homage to an era that really does feel a century old. Be Amish for a week and raise a barn! Join the Union and be a Civil War soldier for a week and then fight in a real mock battle! Join a rock band and learn to play Pink Floyd's The Wall!

"Lookit me, Darian! I'm a rock star! I can play 'The Thin Ice' on drums!"

Sickening. And we wonder why rock music has seemingly lost much of its meaning and impact on people over the last fifteen years.

Look, it's either this or politics ...

RD Top 20 Sellers For Week Ending 3/12/06

1. DAVID GILMOUR On An Island
2. MATISYAHU Youth
3. MOGWAI Mr. Beast
4. RAY DAVIES Other People's Lives
5. SHAGGY 2 DOPE Fuck The Fuck Off
6. REVOLTING COCKS Cocked And Loaded
7. SHE WANTS REVENGE She Wants Revenge
8. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Hammersmith, Odeon, London '75
9. ROBIN TROWER Living Out Of Time: Live
10. THE CARS Greatest Hits
11. CHEAP TRICK Dream Police
12. COVENANT Sky Shaper
13. DAVE DAVIES Kinked
14. JUVENILE Reality Check
15. VAN MORRISON Pay The Devil
16. OF MONTREAL The Bird Who Continues To Eat The Rabbit's Flower
17. SCARFACE My Homies, Part 2
18. GLENN TIPTON Baptizm Of Fire
19. STAIND Chapter V
20. PINK FLOYD A Momentary Lapse Of Reason

How big is On An Island? Combine the sales figures for all of the albums from #2 to #20 on this week's chart and you'll still be short of the Herculean total posted by the new David Gilmour solo album in its debut week. Not only did Gilmour post the biggest selling debut of 2006 by a factor of 3 to 1 over previous champ Shaggy 2 Dope, he also lobbed up the fastest-selling album since U2 posted an identical total (70 copies) at the end of November 2004. With figures only available since the middle of 2003, these two mark the biggest openings in our store's recent history, maybe even since the days of our old Great Lakes Mall location ... In Gilmour's wake, all other debuts look relatively puny, though in any other week, Hasidic reggae singer Matisyahu's dozen-piece start would compete or take the pole position ... Also opening strongly is the new Mogwai project, reflecting combined sales of two different editions, while the first new album from Ministry side-project Revolting Cocks managed to reach #6 just in front of the resurging She Wants Revenge album ... Not as spectacular were the sales on the new Van Morrison album, which lagged behind the rest of the pack at a disappointing #15, right around similarly underwhelming entries from rap luminaries Jaheim and Scarface ... While none of the releases due for March 14 have anywhere close to the firepower of Gilmour, it is certainly likely that the new Donald Fagen solo album will reach well into the teens for its opening week, maybe even enough to lock up the top of the next week's chart, though we certainly expect On An Island to show some legs and not be a one-week super flash in the pan. Aside from Fagen, also watch for a high debut from guitar ace Joe Satriani, a smashing entry from the Pretenders box set, and renewed action from rock upstars Fall Out Boy with a reissued version of their breakthrough album ...