Category: Music

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…