Friday Night Rock-Out

Ah, New Wave music. I remember you well. Post-disco. Post-punk. Post-modern. Post-everything. Synthesizers. Spandex. Dry ice fog in the videos. Bizarro special effects.

What a lot of people fail to remember is how flat-out danceable a lot of New Wave music was, even in its most cerebral and soaring example, Gary Numan’s Cars.

Yes, that’s Numan—as in human, but not quite. The song is about a guy who becomes so alienated from the rest of humanity that he only feels alive when he’s alone in his car (where he “can only receive”). And yet the song feels completely real, sympathetic, and…well, human.

It’s even a bit transcendent, imho.

Anyway, rock on…

Friday Night Rock Out

This Thursday will mark the six-year anniversary of Chris Cornell’s death, and I am still pretty messed up about it.

Apparently, his friend Alice Cooper referred to him as “The Voice,” a moniker that, as some students of pop culture might recall, was also given to Frank Sinatra, back in his day. It makes sense. Cornell was my generation’s Sinatra.

Actually, with his four-octave range, Cornell was my generation’s Freddie Mercury. Whoever you compare him to, he was a genius, not just for his voice but for his ability to make you feel something, to strike deeply at some hidden spot in the soul. Like the other two titans of the grunge era, Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder, Cornell’s singing made you feel unhinged, as if he was doing the hard work of going mad so that you didn’t have to. Only more so.

Anyway, here’s one of my favorites from Soundgarden…