Back in the 1980s, The Psychedelic Furs were one of those bands that were so good, everybody had a roommate who loved them. I was that roommate. Rock on…
Category: Friday Night Rock-Out
Friday Night Rock-Out: “Where the River Flows”
I have written about the band Collective Soul before. They were one of my favorite bands of the 1990s, and not just because they hailed from my part of the country (Atlanta isn’t too far from Gainesville, after all).
I remember when their first big singles hit the radio back in the day, and how their sound struck me as both rooted in a deep tradition of Southern Rock but also entirely new and current (grungy, even). Band mastermind Ed Roland’s great voice and edgy lyrics were complimented by Jesse Triplet’s brilliant guitar work. On FM radio (yeah, there was still radio then), they stuck out a mile from all the other hard-rock knockoffs of the age.
This is one of their best songs.
Rock on…!
BONUS: Here is a great inteview of Ed Roland by Rick Beato…
Friday Night Rock-Out: “The Last Stop”
Ah, how the tide turns. Back in the 1990s, The Dave Matthews Band bestrode the music world like a colossus. With their incredibly inventive and fresh jazz-rock stylings and bewitching lyrics by frontman Mathews, they were one of the most popular bands in the world, and deservedly.
Now, for reasons I can’t quite understand, they are considered passé, even ridiculous. The Nickelback of the soft-rock world. Oh, well. I have a feeling that DMB’s popularity will enjoy a resurgence soon. Here’s my attempt to get the ball rolling with “The Last Stop,” one of the darkest and most menacing songs I’ve ever heard.
Friday Night Rock-Out: “How Soon is Now?”
I recently found myself in the so-called “green room” of a TV studio in Biloxi, Mississippi, waiting to be interviewed about a book-reading I was doing that week. The interview was to air live on a local current events show, and another guest waiting for his spot was a musician for a band called The Molly Ringwalds. He was friendly and very smart, and we began to chat (I did so to relieve my nervousness; he was just being nice).
In the course of conversation, he explained that The Molly Ringwalds (as I should have guessed, but didn’t) is an 1980s tribute band that covers all kinds of hits from that by-gone era, which I also love. I asked him if they did any songs by The Smiths, and he said they did.
“Which one?” I asked.
“‘How Soon is Now?’ What else?”
What else, indeed. “How Soon is Now?” is not only The Smiths’ greatest song, it’s one of the greatest rock songs ever. It’s also one of the most complicated. From its famous guitar overture, warbling and full of dark menace, to its anguished lyrics by the brilliant Morrisey, “How Soon is Now?” is both a dance song and a dirge. It’s also a cry of rebellion against conformity, prejudice, and alienation.
Since it first hit the clubs in 1985, the song has been taken up as an anthem by the LGBTQ community, and rightly so. But I think it resonates equally well with any introvert, outcast, or general freak who just, well…needs to be loved.
At least, it did for me. Still does.
Rock on…
Friday Night Rock-Out: “Brimful of Asha”
The 1990s gave us two great, new genres in popular music. The first was Grunge, and the second was Big Beat. I’ve written a lot about the first but hardly anything on the second, even though it represented some of my favorite electronic bands like The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers.
So, as a small acknowledgement of this fact, I’m doing this week’s Friday Night Rock-Out on Fatboy Slim. Specifically, his remix of “Brimful of Asha” by Cornershop. I’ll admit that I’ve never heard the original release, but the remix is pure genius.
Rock on…
Friday Night Rock-Out: “Under Pressure”
People love tag-teams. It’s in our nature. Have you noticed that almost every work of epic literature across the world has not one but two main heroes. The Gilgamesh epic has Gilgamesh and Enkidu. The Iliad has Achilles and Odysseus. The Authurian legends have Arthur and Lancelot. DC has Superman and Batman.
In all of these examples, the two heroes have much in common, but they are also different in some fundamental and defining way. They not only compliment each other, they contrast each other.
More importantly, they make the story a lot more fun.
I think of this dynamic whenever I hear “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie. Together, the band and the singer represented a group of pop titans of the 1980s. But there were huge functional and artistic differences between them. Bowie was probably the greatest musical artist of his generation, known for inventive and experimental works that never failed to surprise or thrill his fans. Queen was a great rock band, constructed around the epic voice of Freddie Mercury and the epic guitar skills of Brian May. The idea of bringing these two forces together might have been disastrous. That is, they might have canceled each other out.
But no. Instead, their talents together to create one of the best rock songs ever recorded. From the amazing bass riff (whose author is disputed) to the colossal bridge near the end, it’s still one of my favorites.
Enjoy…!
BONUS: Here is a great live performance of the song by Bowie and Annie Lennox.
Friday Night Rock-Out: “Connected”
Once again, the title of this series, “Friday Night Rock-Out” is a total misnomer. This week, it’s a Friday Night Rap-Out. Or, more accurately (but more awkwardly), a Friday Night Hip-Hop.
Hip-hop is, of course, the musical genre most closely associated with the African-American, inner-city youth experience. But a lot of great hip-hop comes from big cities outside the U.S. (in this case, Stereo MC’s, from London).
I think what I like about this song is the way it combines the main element of rap—the propulsive, virtuosic spoken poetry—with the beats and grooves of R&B, especially Cath Coffee’s seering background lyrics.
So, enjoy…
Friday Night Rock-Out: “Corduroy”
The grunge era of rock music began around 1991, when bands like Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and (especially) Nirvana began to get massive play on FM radio. I remember how earth-shaking the sound seemed to me, at the time, when I first heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Even playing on the tinny speakers of my old econobox car, the power and passion of the music hit me like a revelation.
Sadly, of those three original, vanguard bands, the frontmen of two are no longer with us. Kurt Cobain and Chris Cornell committed suicide, decades apart, and only Eddie Vedder remains. It might sound strange, but I suspect that if someone had asked me back in 1991 which of those three men (and bands) would still be around in thirty years, I probably would’ve guessed Vedder—and not just because he sang “I’m still alive” so defiantly in the chorus of my original favorite Pearl Jam song, “Alive.” Vedder’s voice and lyrics had just as much power and pathos as Cornell’s or Cobain’s, but it was also tinged with a kind of dogged defiance that resonated with me. Like Vedder, I had a fairly traumatic childhood, and I liked the way he sang about the act of survival as, itself, a kind of redemption. As my old mentor Harry Crews once famously said, “Survival is triumph enough.”
Pearl Jam’s “Corduroy” came out a few years after that first grunge wave crested, but it has since become one of my favorite songs of all time.
Rock on…
Friday Night Rock-Out: “Shaft”
I’ve long harbored the secret hope that someone, someday would refer to me reverentially as a bad-mother-hush-your-mouth, but I don’t think it’s ever going to happen. Oh, well.
This week’s Friday Night Rock-Out (okay, it’s more a Friday-Night Funk/Soul-Out) is dedicated to the late, great Isaac Hayes. Hayes was a musical genius, as well as being a pretty good actor. (He did fine journeyman work in The Rockford Files and Escape from New York. He was also a great voice-actor on South Park.) He will always be remembered, though, for the theme-song of the 1971 Gordon Parks film about the most phallocentric private investigator in the history of American crime fiction.
Yeah, I’m talkin about Shaft. I hope you can dig it.
Friday Night Rock-Out: “Even Better Than the Real Thing”
When U2’s Achtung Baby came out in 1991, critics joked that it was the album that saved the band from itself. After the enormous success of 1987’s The Joshua Tree, U2 too fell into an abyss of self-indulgence and ego with their follow-up album-and-movie extravaganza Rattle and Hum, which alienated some of their fans. Fortunately, Achtung Baby marked not only a return to form for the band but a whole new direction, one influenced by techno, funk, and other genres.
One of my favorite songs on the album is “Even Better Than the Real Thing.” Most young people today do not realize that the title and chorus on the song is a reference to Coca-Cola’s long-standing slogan: “It’s the real thing.” With his brilliant and demented lyrics, Bono twists the slogan into a critique of modern consumerism. The song is basically a sequel to The Rolling Stones’s “Satisfaction,” but with an even more apocalyptic bent.
It also has a great video, notable at the time for its innovative use of a harness in which Bono was strapped while the camera whirled around him. The final effect is both exhilarating and somewhat nauseating, literal sensory overload, in keeping with the theme of the song itself. Not to mention our modern age.
Rock on.
Ash Clifton, Writer 