The Daily Awesome: City High “What Would You Do?” (2001)
September 2, 2010
Lauryn Hill is ready to record again! But hey, what about her Sister Act 2 co-star and fellow former Wyclef Jean associate Ryan Toby, who, along with (future Intervention-subject) Robby Pardlo and (Pardlo’s girlfriend and future ex-Mrs. Toby) Claudette Ortiz, recording as City High, scored a terrific surprise hit in 2001 with the song “What Would You Do?”.
The song, a conversation between a guy at a party and a woman he knew from when they were kids who’s now working as a stripper and turning tricks on the side, treads a tricky line between passing judgment and urging empathy. It was an unusually earnest, message-y song more fitting the social consciousness of the late 80s than the blingy-clubby early Aughts (Toby actually scored his biggest hit as a songwriter with Will Smith’s “Miami”), but somehow it overcame, and damned if it doesn’t still sound great and feel resonant.
Still, City High had trouble following it up – a second single “Caramel” did just all right. Meanwhile, tense group dynamics (putting it lightly) led to their break-up, and their self-titled album was their last. Toby did release a solo album called The Soul of the Songwriter in 2006 which came and went without much notice, but hasn’t put anything out since. Where is he now? YouTube, of course.
City High “What Would You Do?”
Keith Murray Threw Hands With Tupac?
August 24, 2010
Well, who really knows, though according to Keith Murray, he’s promising on his dead mother’s grave.
In this three minute video (for whatever reason, the fade to black goes on forever) of RugahTV, Keith Murray goes off talking about a fight with Tupac and hitting Dame Dash in the head with a bottle.
The man’s had a violent history, so if it did happen, no one would be surprised. I guess the only revelation in this entire thing was that The Most Beautifullest Thing In This World came out a very long time ago and that I am old.
Big in the UK: Cooking the Charts with They Might Be Giants
August 23, 2010
This is the sort of thing that probably wouldn’t happen here. I just don’t think Americans take their pop charts quite as personally or as democratically as they do in the U.K. Earlier this summer, a brand of kid’s shoes put out an ad featuring “Birdhouse in Your Soul”, the 1990 major label debut single by They Might Be Giants. The duo of John Linnell and John Flansburgh have, since they started recording original songs onto a standard answering machine in the early 80s, become the godfathers of nerd-rock, and now that their original fans (like me) are pushing middle age with mortgages and children, the band have found renewed success recording four albums of “children’s music”, and performing alternate shows for grown-ups and kids on tour. The idea of sticking TMBG’s loving ode to the nightlight into an ad for kids’ shoes might’ve been genius if it weren’t so self-evidently perfect.
I don’t know how it’s working out for Clark Shoes, but it seems to be doing well for They Might Be Giants. The song re-entered the British Top 100 pop songs late last month. Of course, songs featured in popular ads often get enjoy a run on the pop charts here as well – just as Sara Bareilles, Yael Naim, or Phoenix – but those successes seem more like happy accidents. In the case of “Birdhouse In Your Soul”, a strange populist cause – okay, a facebook group – has formed around keeping the song on the charts and trying to advance it to the top spot. That said, after four weeks, the song has only gone so far as #70 (on the chart dated 8/21; the song falls back to #72 on the 8/28 chart).
But that’s not to say it couldn’t eventually succeed. This isn’t the first instance of the Brits attempting to cook their pop charts. See also: Buckley v. Burke. In 2008, after Alexandra Burke won the TV talent show The X-Factor, a campaign by apostles of the tragic 90s singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley attempted to thwart Burke’s cover of the Leonard Cohen song “Hallelujah” from making its predicted number one debut over that year’s Christmas sales week by urging fans to download Buckley’s own version of the song.
It's a Brand New Record for 1990!
The campaign failed, but just barely. Buckley’s song charted at #2 behind Burke’s. Still, the TMBG song, while it may linger on the chart for as long as the ad airs, probably won’t reach those sorts of heights. For one thing, “Birdhouse In Your Soul” isn’t being pitted against another version of itself, or even another song. Moreover the Alexandra Burke debut was a one-off event sales week; it was also a holiday week, and it’s a holiday week that The X-Factor has annually co-opted for just this eventful purpose. So Buckley v. Burke was framed as the classic battle over artistic legitimacy between a tragic rock icon and a freshly minted “mass-produced” pop idol for the very soul of the pop chart.
As a fan of both Burke and Buckley (although, when it comes to “Hallelujah”, count me in with Team John Cale), I, frankly, prefer not having to choose sides. They Might Be Giants‘ Elektra debut record Flood was essentially the first record of 1990, and “Birdhouse In Your Soul” was instant classic that still makes me giddy and giggly every time I hear it – even more so now that I’ve got two kids singing along with me.
Here’s the original video from 1990:
The Daily Awesome 8/20/10: Giorgio Moroder “Baby Blue” (1979)
August 23, 2010
We may associate dance music with the clubs, the strobelights, the bathroom drug deals and sticky bathroom floors, but in this video for his 1979 hit “Baby Blue” (not to be confused at all with songs by Badfinger or Bob Dylan), Italian disco, bubblegum, and electronic music pioneer (not to mention mastermind behind some of the most memorable soundtrack music of the 80s) Giorgio Moroder – who, in April, celebrated his 70th birthday! – demonstrates what dance music is really all about: precision and professionalism, science and technology. Aww yeah. Shake that groove thing. Layers of interconnected, burbling synths, vocoders and cheesy falsetto harmonies, all backed by a solid disco beat? Just another day at the office for Giorgio Moroder.
Lionel Richie Is Outrageous
August 21, 2010
There are some people who just know you. They know just the thing that will brighten up your day. Well, thanks to Money Mike from Popblerd (and who also is one of the forefathers of this very site), nothing in my day can go wrong today.
Let me go backwards slightly.
Back in the mid 80s when Lionel Richie was winning music awards, he started using a special word over and over and over again. That word was “outrageous”. And he wouldn’t just say it. He’d shout it. He’d pump his fist when he said it. He’d shimmer in all of his glittery greatness when he said it.
VH-1 even had one of those goofy specials about the 80s where they remembered Lionel’s outrageous usage of the word “outrageous”.
But other than the B-grade comedians on VH-1 and Money Mike, no one would delight in the memory of Lionel’s outrageousness. Why? Well, I couldn’t find the thing on YouTube.
That is, until now. Just today, Money Mike sent me an e-mail with a just YouTube video link in the body and a subject that said, “Your boy.” So you can now celebrate with me, the outrageousness that is an 8-second video of “my boy” saying that oh so special word.
Awesome Free Download: The Baseball Project “Broadside Ballads”
August 17, 2010
Broadside Ballads
D’ya like baseball? D’ya like story songs? How about story songs about baseball? How about story songs about baseball written by a supergroup of alterna-cool elder statesmen including the Dream Syndicate’s Steve Wynn, drummer Linda Pitmon, R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey of the Young Fresh Fellows, The Minus 5 and, well, a zillion other side projects. These four got together last year and formed a band that specializes in baseball songs. They call their band – duh – The Baseball Project and they released their debut full-length album Vol. One: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails in 2009. While they’re working on Volume Two (due out next year), they’ve partnered with ESPN’s The Life this summer to provide running baseball commentary in song. And those songs – six of ‘em so far – are being made available for free dowload at the Baseball Project’s label home, the always awesome Yep Roc Records. No small feat: these songs have actually given me a reason to care about baseball this year.
I mean, seriously, with the exception of my sons’ little league games and the occasional excursion to Warner Park to watch the Madison Mallards play (and eat a few brats), I like stories and movies about baseball a lot more than I like baseball itself. I never miss a chance to watch Major League II when it comes on the TV. But when the guys in the Baseball Project start singing about “Lima Time”, the references are pretty much lost on me in the same way that that punchline in Modern Family about Diana Ross’s RCA period was mostly lost on the majority of the network prime time viewing audience. But it doesn’t matter that much: the band plays a handsome variety of laid back folk rock – think The Traveling Wilburys at a Miller Park tailgate party – that sounds great even when I don’t know the relevant background of the song’s lyrics.
Moreover, songs like “Phenom”, in which a 21-year-old ponders his ability to live up to his own hype – “Man of the hour, and that’s 400 percent of your 15 minutes of fame, and they say that I’m the most in the Washington Post… I just want to stick around for a while” – resonate outside of the sport they pay tribute to on an allegorial/metaphorical level. I love the relentless (and hopeless) optimism of “Cubs 2010″, the jangly, swinging, Woodie Guthie-ish singalong of “30 Doc”. And I’ve never been to or even cared about a baseball season opening day, but I can, nevertheless relate to the sense of excitement and expectation of “All Future and No Past” – Before a game is played! Before an out is made! – especially when the song sounds like They Might Be Giants fronting the Byrds on a Bob Dylan cover.
The Tuesday Morning Awesome: Spectrum “How You Satisfy Me” (1991)
August 17, 2010
In one of the more spectacular acts of musical nuclear fission, the two personalities at the core of the seminal shoegazing outfit known as Spacemen 3 split from the group in the early 90s, with singer-guitarist Jason Pierce forming the band Spiritualized, the better to document his adventures in amateur pharmacology through ambient garage rock, gospel choirs and all manner of decadent-pretending-at-profound bombast – hitting pay dirt when the title track of his monumental 1998 album Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space was licensed for a Gap commercial.
Meanwhile, keyboardist-guitarist-singer Sonic Boom, forming a band called Spectrum (named for Boom’s 1990 solo album) delved deeper into hallucinogenic meditations on, like, existence and stuff, drifting further and further away from song structure into studio-assisted mantra and chant. Listening to Spectrum’s records can be like walking into a hall of mirrors, the vocals drowning in echoes of their own echoes, the backing music more perceived or hinted at than actually heard. That said, the band debuted in 1991 with one supremely catchy, radiation-dappled pop song that manages to balance the band’s trance-y aesthetic – tidal washes of echo and distortion, single-chord structure, melodic repetition and harmonic drone – with the sweet simplicity of a teenage love note. From the album Soul Kiss (Glide Divine), here’s Spectrum’s “How You Satisfy Me”.
The Wednesday Night Awesome: John Farnham “Age of Reason” (1988)
August 11, 2010
Johnny Farnham was an Australian teen idol and television actor throughout the 60s and 70s. In the early 80s, he recorded an album with producer and Little River Band principal Graeham Goble. When lead singer Glenn Shorrock left that group, Goble recruited John Farnham to be his replacement. The arrangement was unhappy and short-lived. After years of artistic marginalization, Farnham’s star was finally back on the rise and he felt himself anchored to a band that had always been plagued with complicated internal politics, and was then, in addition, simply becoming less popular worldwide. In 1985, Farnham acheived international stardom with his album Whispering Jack and its signature single “You’re the Voice.” Bye-bye, Little River Band. That hit only dented the U.S. charts, and then, only when it was included on a Greenpeace charity compilation three years after its original release. It would be 20 years before Farnham would have his next brush with fame in America – and that would be only vicariously via David Archuleta’s performance of the song during Season 7 of American Idol. (Simon was the only one at the judge’s table who knew the song – and he called Archuleta’s take on it – rightly – a “theme park” performance.) Despite the fact Farnham remains virtually unknown here (I mean, if Randy and Paula haven’t heard of him, right?), he’s still a big star in Australia, and in 1988, he followed up Whispering Jack with the album Age of Reason, whose gorgeous title track is not only awesome, but gave him a No. 1 hit in his home country.
Colbie Caillat and the Virtues of Unspectacular Niceness
August 11, 2010
Today, I was listening to my iPod at my desk and my next-cube-neighbor overheard the song that was playing – you know: that one that goes, “it starts at my toes and it twinkles my nose”, or whatever it is she says, doesn’t really matter – and asked me what the name of that singer was. I was like, oh that’s Colbie Caillat. And she was like, oh yeah, that’s right. As if I had just reminded her of some bit of common but unimportant and therefore easily forgettable knowledge. Like, oh yeah, that’s right: Montpelier is the capital of Vermont. It’s easy to understand how her debut single “Bubbly” became a top 10 hit. It’s a sweet, easygoing song with the kind of melody the cozies up to a listener right around mid-afternoon and makes the dreary day seem not just bearable, but, y’know, kinda nice. It makes no particular demands of the listener, except to lay back and sing along if you want (that is, if your next-cube-neighbors don’t mind). It’s the audio equivalent of a back rub. Seriously, what’s not to like? And, consequently everyone seems to like it. Harder to explain is the fact that, three years later, Colbie Caillat isn’t a one-hit wonder.
Colbie Caillat “Bubbly” (2007)
Have a great summer! Luv n' Hugs, Colbie Caillat, Your Musical BFF
In Wayne’s World, Mike Myers joked that artists who just made songs that everybody liked were the BeeGees. He could make the same joke today about Colbie Caillat. She’s really pretty (okay, she’s hot - even a gay like me can see), but in a really normal, everyday sorta way. Her album covers are as innocuously generic as senior yearbook pictures. She’s got a warm, lovely voice that also happens to be unspecial enough that only the most devoted fan could pick it out of a radio line-up. And even then, it might have as much to do with her surroundings as with her voice itself. She plays a strummy guitar in an Autotune world. Born to a record producer who worked with Fleetwood Mac in their glory years (and who also produces Caillat’s records), Colbie writes and sings unassuming 70s-style singer-songwriter country-ish pop songs in an era where producers armed with flashy Eurosynths and premium manufactured beats rule over all they survey with the help of their faithful army of sexy robot minions like Flo Rida and Ke$ha. Colbie Caillat remains fully clothed and defiantly unprovocative in the valley of the shadow of the Haus of Gaga’s ascendance. And yet, for the last three years, she’s been semi-reliably holding her own on the charts – not just the adult contemporary chart for which she’s a virtual archetype for success, but also on the general Pop charts and Billboard’s Hot 100, where her songs may not reach the heights attained by Gaga, but have a tendency to stick around two or three times as long.
Colbie Caillat “Fallin’ For You” (2009)
You’d never know it from her songs or her voice, both of which project a maturity and confidence on par with Sheryl Crow (who could’ve been her mother) the 25-year-old Colbie is younger than Britney and Xtina, and could have attended high school with Stefani Germanotta and Kesha Rose Sebert. Admittedly, she’s not the only artist in her age group currently mining this particular vein of pop. But 26-year-old Mandy Moore, who began her career as a third-tier Britney soundalike, has been transforming herself into the second coming of Carly Simon ever since the release of her shockingly tasteful covers album Coverage in 2003; and her increasing artistic legitimacy has paid off in decreasing commercial viability. And former Idol finalist Brooke White, has found the world outside the Nokia Theater to be harsh and unaccommodating of that 21st Century Carole King thing she’s got going on.
Meanwhile, Caillat’s songs are getting licensed to Brazilian soap operas, and getting picked up by Taylor Swift, a country-pop star even younger than herself. Her songs have an emotional intimacy to them, but they’re never really quirky or confessional the way, say, Sara Bareilles or Ingrid Michaelson are. They sound as good to a middle-aged commuter as they do to a teenager doing homework. You can hear them at the beach, and you can hear them at Walgreen’s. I don’t think I’ve ever really fallen in love with one of her songs. But I really, really like a lot of them. In a sense, we need a Colbie Caillat right now. She gives Lady Gaga something to be freaky in contrast to at a time when other starlets (who really should know better, Ms. Aguilera) are doing their best to challenge the Lady on her own turf. She’s a welcome respite from “edgy”. An oasis of unspectacular niceness in a landscape of computerized, militarized, vampirically sexualized pop menace. And I say: it’s all right.
Colbie Caillat “I Never Told You”
Travellers in Space and Time: New Videos by Broken Bells, The Apples in stereo, and Robbie Williams
August 6, 2010
Comic Con may be over for this year, but that doesn’t mean the geek joy needs to end. Witness these three new videos, all dealing with space and time travel. One’s a bit of science fiction in the classic “allegory for the world we live in” sense featuring a performance by the kind of uber-hottie actress that could inspire a veritable library of fan fiction. There’s a nerdy goof on parallel realities (err- “alternate space-time continua”) starring a former child star (who also happens to be the band’s label boss). And finally, a mournful ballad that reads like an elegy for the decline of the U.S. space program (or maybe the decline of the singer’s solo career).
First up is the latest by Broken Bells, “The Ghost Inside”. It’s the second single from the self-titled debut of this partnership between producer Danger Mouse (fresh off his success with Cee-Lo in Gnarls Barkley) and The Shins’ James Mercer. The video features Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks in a genuinely wonderful performance as a woman who, quite literally, sells her body in her desperate pursuit of interplanetary luxury.
“The Ghost Inside” by Broken Bells
Elijah Wood was 12 years old and on the verge of indie-film stardom when the Colorado band The Apples In stereo, an eccentric indie-pop sextet centered around singer-songwriter (and fervent Brian Wilson acolyte) Robert Schneider, released their debut seven-inch “Tidal Wave”. Now the 29-year-old actor has his own record label (Simian Records), and the first act he signed was The Apples In stereo. Both actor and band have come a long way in the last two decades. This latest video finds the band, which started out making wildly colorful, but overly precious psychedelic pop (think Harpers Bizarre), embracing an impossibly cheesy retro synth-pop sound on their latest album Travellers in Space and Time. To promote the record, the band teamed up with Greg Kilpatrick to produce the album’s first video “Dance Floor” along with an adorable 5 minute companion short film starring Wood (as a middle school science-and-gym teacher and host of “Exploring the Universe”) and Schneider (as a scientist who can turn a cucumber into a drum machine). You can watch it at stepthroughtheportal.com. It’s true that Schneider’s baby-voiced delivery is utterly at odds with his bald-bearded-bellied appearance. The incongruities are off-putting at first, but the song is an absolute winner that should endear itself to anyone who ever loved DEVO. Even better: The band is offering the song for free download. Click below to get your own copy!
“Dance Floor” by The Apples In Stereo
Finally, we have “Morning Sun”, the latest from 36-year-old British boy band veteran Robbie Williams, whose impressive latest album Reality Killed the Video Star finds the singer contemplating celebrity culture and his own role in it with thoughtfulness, uncharacteristic humility, and a mordant sense of humor. The video is a simple and elegantly photographed depiction of Williams’s astronautical journey from the earth’s outer atmosphere to the outer reaches of the solar system and the Milky Way galaxy, flirting with his own spectacular destruction, before parachuting back down to earth. All as if to say that like space travel, like celebrity itself, is journey as fascinating as it is isolating. And what does one even do with oneself after space?
Though in the ten years since his song “Millennium” became his first U.S. hit, Williams has been ignored by American audiences and radio programmers, he’s enjoyed continued success overseas. But lately, even British and European audiences are feeling underwhelmed by Williams, which is sad since his latest record may actually be his best yet. And it may be his last solo record for a while. Following the release of a greatest hits set, he’s just recently re-united with Take That, the boy band he left in 1994. The other four members of Take That reunited after a 10 year hiatus in 2005 and have enjoyed even greater success in their second incarnation than they acheived during their early 90s heyday (which culminated in their 1995 U.S. Top 10 hit “Back for Good”).
“Morning Sun” by Robbie Williams
Robbie Williams – Morning Sun
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