Everyone's Talking Music - If
Everyone's Talking Music - If you've read my blog, you know I like music. Lots of it. Everything from Mahler to Public Enemy, and a lot of everything in between.
Even bands I hate, I like. Seriously - a band with nearly no redeeming value can have a song that redeems them (Styx was and is wretched, but "Blue Collar Man" was great), or even a single moment (Journey bored me silly, but the part where the guitar leads the band into "Don't Stop Believing" is just lovely).
Lileks touches on this phenomenon with one of the most maligned groups ever - the Bee Gees:
Are the BeeGees good, then? Sure. Some of their stuff, anyway. I can do without most of the songs t on the greatest hits disk...“Stayin’ Alive,” however, is a great song. It may come from a genre that pumped out more dreck than the CB-radio story-song craze; it may bring back painful memories of John Travolta using his walk in such a way as to inform spectators that he is a woman’s man, and hence has no time to talk. But that hook holds up.
You can hang a side of beef on that hook - and once I got over my seventies' punk aversion to all things disco, I realized there was a
lot of great stuff on the Saturday Night Fever album (Yvonne Elliman's "If I Can't Have You" was even better than "Stayin' Alive" in the hook department).
And as far as the Bee Gees go, "Jive Talking" is an amazing song, too, one that can give me the funk back on a Perrycomo kinda day, especially the part where Maurice sings the line out of the bridge into the last chorus - pure pop joy.
But as close as Lileks gets to the truth, he still slinks just out of sight of genuine enlightenment:
I usually don’t like the hyperventilating castrati sound - Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, for example. Guys, listen - if you’re going to sing a song called “Walk Like A Man,” don’t sound as though you’ve had your testes kicked so hard they bounced off your diaphragm.
Tread on the Four Seasons warily, my friend. As Lonnie Donegan was to the Beatles, so were the Four Seasons to Springsteen.
Filter out Frankie Valli's cartoony-castrati for a moment, and listen to the song: there have been macho screeds equally as good, but none better. And further into the Seasons' oevre, you find the real gems: "Rag Doll" is is a more concise version of Bruce's "Backstreets", and their little-known "Big Man In Town", a precursor to "Badlands", got me through one of the worst stretches of my life.
Castrati. Hmpfh.
Speaking of music, there's a form circulating the blogosphere today that's kinda interesting. I saw it over at Plain Layne, and it's one of those things that's like a bowl full of "Twix" bars; you know you shouldn't try one, up until the point where you're disposing of three dozen Twix wrappers.
Here goes:
1. Name one song you hate to admit you like:
- Shadows Of The Night, Pat Benetar.
2. Name two songs that always make you cry:
- And The Angels Cried,Allison Krause and some other guy,
- Oh, Father, Madonna. Yes, Madonna. Go figure. This'd be one of those "moments" I was talking about earlier.
3. Name three songs that turn you on:
- Voodoo, Godsmack.
- DMSR, Prince
- Easy From Now On, Emmylou Harris.
4. Name four songs that always make you feel good:
- The Card Cheat, The Clash
- Little Mascara, The Replacements
- Sweet Sweet Baby, Lone Justice
- What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love and Understanding, Elvis Costello
5. Name five songs you couldn't ever do without:
- Marche Slave, Tchaikowskii
- The Promised Land, Springsteen
- I Wish It Would Rain The Four Tops
- Flower of Scotland, The Black Watch
- Wall of Death, Richard Thompson
...and to this list, I need to add:
6. Six Songs That Make You Want to Thump Something or Someone:
- Where The Rose Is Sown, Big Country
- Black Steel In The Hour of Chaos, Public Enemy
- Blaze Of Glory, The Alarm
- Shoot Out The Lights, Richard Thompson
- Boulevard of Broken Dreams,, Hanoi Rocks
- Working For The Clampdown, The Clash
All right. Enough fun - back to politics and current events, now.
Posted by Mitch at
May 16, 2003 10:40 AM
