Category: Music

Friday Night Rock-Out

One summer in the early 1990s, I drove across the country with a beautiful, brilliant girl named Susan. We drove from Manhattan, New York all the way to Tucson, Arizona, and by the time we reached the desert southwest, we had driven each other a bit crazy, to the point that it pretty much marked the end of the relationship. (The fault, by the way, was entirely mine.) 

I only had one working cassette (yes, cassette) to play in my tape deck. It was Depeche Mode’s Violator, which marked the peak of that great band’s success and cultural influence. Speaking of cultural influence, you know you’ve become a musical icon when one of your songs gets quoted in the most culturally significant film of the decade. That film was The Matrix, and the song was Personal Jesus. If you’re ever driving through the desert in a demented state of mind, I highly recommend it. Actually, I highly recommend it for any time in your life when you need to get your blood going.

Enjoy…!

Friday Night Rock-Out

In some ways, Missing Persons was the ultimate west coast 80s band. With their heavy synth sound and propulsive drum beats, they were a band that could make you think and make you dance. Plus, I simply loved Dale Bozzio. Not just your average bottle-blonde space-age sex-kitten with a plexiglass bustier, Bozzio could really sing. And her baby-doll, hiccuping style was tempered with just enough knowing irony to make you realize how cool she was. In fact, she presaged another super-smart front-girl from a decade later, Shirley Manson of Garbage.

My favorite Missing Persons song is “Destination Unknown”. Ah, how true.

Enjoy!

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Stupid Girl”

When I first heard the band Garbage, I was struck by lead singer Shirley Manson and her fabulously expressive voice—at times monotonal, at other times growling. This pale goth girl from Scotland had somehow tailored her vocals to exactly fit the manic-depressive zeitgeist of the 90s.

Indeed, I would argue that the band’s premier song, “Stupid Girl,” is the definitive song of the period (yes, even more so than Nirvana’s brilliant “Smells Like Teen Spirit”). In the song’s now-famous lyric, the narrator accuses an unnamed girl of being…well…stupid. In fact, the aspects of her stupidity are those evidenced by practically every person under 40 in modern urban America: vanity, self-absorption, consumerism, nihilism.

And fakery. Especially fakery. “[I] can’t believe you fake it…” as Manson sings portentously to the stupid girl in question. What is she faking? Being human.

Friday Night Rock-Out

If you were alive in the early days of MTV, you probably remember this gem from Kiwi pop group Split Enz. It’s got everything an 80’s New Wave hit should have: trippy synthesizer riffs, an infectious hook, and a truly bizarre video (complete with the players dressed in New Wave zoot suits). And—oh, yeah—it’s also a great dance song.

Enjoy!

Friday Night Rock-Out

One night when I was walking the streets of New York City, a young panhandler confronted me and demanded five dollars.

“For what?” I asked.

“I’ll sing Stevie Wonder.”

I gave him two bucks, and he immediately delivered a surprisingly good rendition of “Superstiton.” When he was finished, he looked at me and said, “What’dya think?”

“Not bad,” I said. “But where’s the clavinet?”

He shook his head in disgust and stormed off. 

I have always been fascinated by the fact that so many great works of art depend on a single, bizarre innovation—one that might have seemed ridiculous if described in writing. Like Jackson Pollock’s slinging paint onto the canvas, or The Kinks’ shoving knitting needles into their amplifier to create feedback. Who would have guessed that using an electrified version of a 19th Century instrument would be the perfect touch to make a classic funk song? Stevie Wonder, that’s who!

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…