ARTIST: BUSTA RHYMS FT. JANET JACKSON
ALBUM: N/A
SONG: WHAT'S IT GONNA BE?!
DATE: MARCH 1999
STATUS: ACQUIRED
I just love how hyped Busta gets at the end of the song. He takes it to 11, and he sustains 11 for a good minute. That's a long time to hold at 11. You should try it. Its like he's Janet Jackson's hype man, and Janet's just saying nasty things. Good nasty things, but nasty no doubt. "Explicit" would be the word.
ARTIST: PAVEMENT
ALBUM: WOWEE ZOWEE
SONG: RATTLED BY THE RUSH
DATE: NOVEMBER 1994
STATUS: NOT ACQUIRED
Pavement was too cool to be good. Like this video they can run from unpleasant dizzying disorientation to nerve dulling distance, but some how they churn along just enough. If you forget about all the things the aren't, and some of the things they are a song like Rattled by the Rush can suddenly bloom.
Urban legend has it that film maker and general creative type Baz Lahrmann composed the music to fit the words of a commencement speech given by Kurt Vonnegut. In actuality the lyrics come from Chicgo Tribune columnist Mary Schmich, who wrote a hypothetical commencement speech that was published in 1997.
At first blush, some passages sound naive and silly: the kind of advice you get from beauty magazine, but then some lines ring through with piercing clarity. I do look back at photographs of myself from twenty years ago, and the effect is shocking, much as Schmich foretold. The overall effect is I Ching like. Simplicity hides complexity. The trivial is profound, and I have to stretch a lot, or it gets hard to put on my socks in the morning.
Its Wednesday. Be careful out their people. Keep your head down, and be nice to your siblings. It'll be okay.
ARTIST: THE LEMONHEADS
ALBUM: IT'S A SHAME ABOUT RAY
SONG: IT'S A SHAME ABOUT RAY
DATE: JUNE 1992
STATUS: ACQUIRED
This is one of those early 90's songs that reproved that guitars and drums sound great. I always find myself humming along to it and wondering what happened to Ray. Something bad? Something tragic? It was complicated. I'm pretty sure about that, and it was probably one of those things, and that's life. Sometimes stuff happens, even simple small stuff, and we're dumbstruck by our inability to do anything about it.
ARTIST: TOM PETTY
ALBUM: WILDFLOWERS
SONG: YOU DON'T KNOW HOW IT FEELS
DATE: OCTOBER 1994
STATUS: ACQUIRED
Tom Petty believes that there really aren't that many rock bands out there. Sure there are a lot that call themselves rock, but few of them really are. Petty and the Heartbreakers, and weather or not the Heartbreaker's name shows up on the album cover is beside the point, are rock, and their among the best.
Most manifestos are wind howling desert storms of indignation, but Petty's "You Don't Know How It Feels" is the manifesto of a man whose seen too much to care about meaning. This is Petty at his stoney best. I'm not sure if the title is braggadocio or plea. Probly a little bit of both. The point is, Petty's gonna be what Petty's gotta be. Know
I'm still not sure if that's a dude or chick in this video. I know, I know, but you'd be amazed by what they can do with tape.
Urge Overkill made it okay to be dirty and all body odered up. That's how you get a really cool leather jacket. Its that body funk that gets into the leather and breaks it in. Clean rockers always look like they got their coat from Wilson's Leather at the mall. That's the thing about Urge. They were always cool, but too dirty to go mainstream, even if they knew what they were talking about.
ARTIST: LIVIN COLOR
ALBUM: STAIN
SONG: LEAVE IT ALONE
DATE: 1993
STATUS: ACQUIRED
Living Color brought a thunder and virtuosity that was deeply rooted in 70's and 80's heavy metal rock but a sophisticated ambiguity to their politics that never fit into the culture wars of that time. Instead a proto-slackerdom comes through in songs like this.
Also, there's a medium size dog out in the world causing trouble.
ARTIST: THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS
ALBUM: FACTORY SHOWROOM
SONG: S-E-X-X-Y
DATE: NOVEMBER 26, 1996
STATUS: NOT ACQUIRED
They Might Be Giants, the thinking man's pornographers.
Look, its Wednesday, you're probably sitting in a cubical somewhere. You have a little over fourtyeight hours of work ahead of you. no one's told you its against company policy, plus she speaks Portuguese. Do you know what the odds are of that? Just unplug the head phones, turn up the volume and let nerd love happen as God intended, ironically and full of shame.
Every artist goes country eventually. Elvis Costello, Darius Rucker, everyone. But with Beck its oh so anti-folk, or whatever Beck is. Sissyneck distances itself from the noise injections of other tracks on Odelay and its lyrics begin to approach some kind of cohesive narrative. Not to much though, its Beck after all. What's really important, as with all Beck songs, the music should be wrong, but it's oh so right.
ARTIST: SOCIAL DISTORTION
ALBUM: SOMEWHERE BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL
SONG: BAD LUCK
DATE: 1992
STATUS: NOT ACQUIRED
Social Distortion proves that punk band's can stretch their artistic wings, get the girls and still not sell out. This sounds like Mike Ness stumbled across John Mellencamp in some hotel bar on the outskirts of Kansas City; (because shit gets real on the outskirts of Kansas City!, especially when Johnny Cougar's riding shot gun!) had a lovely dinner, probably steak with a nice bourbon glaze and a side of asparagus with a middling sharez, and went their separate ways.
Anyway, this should help get Joe-Chardonnay up and ready for a week of pushing paper. Even the tourments of the twentyfirst century are banal and evil.
