Category: Music

Songs and bands I love!

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REVIEW: “Hard Candy”

Madonna - Hard CandyHard Candy is Madonna’s 11th studio album. Will it be an instant classic (like Ray of Light or Confessions on a Dancefloor) or will it be an instant bomb (like American Life)?

Honestly, in this “true blue” fan’s opinion, it falls somewhere in between. I like much of the music, but Madonna’s lyrics (never that great to begin with) could really use some work. What made Ray of Light so great was that we got a peek behind Madonna’s veil; the lyrics were heartfelt and real. This honesty continued on Music, but had largely disappeared by American Life, where Madonna tried (and failed) to skewer George Bush, Hollywood, and other aspects of “American life”. by Confessions, she’d mostly gone back to doing straight pop music, which was a relief. Which sounds hypocritical, I know. On the one hand, I want her to stay away from political messages and other “deep” topics, yet on the other hand I criticize her for writing “silly” pop tunes. But it’s deeper than just that. Sure, Madonna isn’t known for being a deep thinker, and her songs work better when she shies away from such things. But that doesn’t mean that she has to rehash the same lyrics again and again. Check out these lines from the new album’s opening track, “Candy Shop”:

All the suckers are not all we sell in the store
Chocolate kisses so good
You’ll be beggin’ for more
Don’t pretend you’re not hungry
I’ve got plenty to eat
Come on in to my store
‘Cos my sugar is sweet!

Hmmmm. Fine, I suppose, but not much different than anything else she’s written over the years.

You’ve probably heard the next track on the album – “4 Minutes” – so I won’t waste a lot of time on it. Suffice it to say that although I don’t dislike the song, I’d probably like it better if it was someone else singing it, not Madonna. Is that weird? Does that many any sense? I will say one thing: I hate it when the artist of a song is mentioned in the lyrics (which is one of the many reasons I hate rap music). I don’t know why… it just gets on my nerves.

“Give It 2 Me”, the third track on the album, is one I actually like a lot. It loses much of the Timberlake \ Timbaland \ Pharrell Williams \ Kanye West influence and sounds more like something Stuart Price would have done.

“Heartbeat”, the fourth song on the disc, sounds suspiciously like something Nelly Furtado would do… and, let’s be honest here, Furtado would have done it better.

The fifth track – “Miles Away” – is a bit more downtempo than the others on the album so far. Although it has a nice beat, the somewhat spartan music – mostly an acoustic guitar, with some synths thrown in for good measure – the song just seems slower than the other tunes on the disc. It’s also an interesting tune in that it seems written directly to Madge’s husband, Guy Ritchie. Many of the songs so far contain a few hints of trouble in the Ritchie marriage… but this one seems aimed directly at Guy:

I just woke up from a fuzzy dream
You’d never would believe those things that I had seen
I looked in the mirror and I saw your face
You looked right through me, you were miles away…

As if that weren’t enough, the next track – “She’s Not Me” – is directly written to a man that’s having an affair on Madonna:

She started dyeing her hair and
Wearing the same perfume as me
She started reading my books
And stealing my looks and lingerie

I just want to be there when you discover
You wake up in the morning next to your new lover
She might cook you breakfast and love you in the shower
The thrill is momentary, cause she don’t have what’s ours

She’s not me
She doesn’t have my name
She’ll never have what I have
It won’t be the same
It won’t be the same

Wow. Bitter much? The song’s pretty good (I’m not a fan of the “love you in the shower” line).

The next song, “Incredible”, also sounds like something Nelly Furtado would put out, but it works much better than “Heartbeat”. It’s an infectious tune, one of those songs you crank up on the car stereo but carefully turn all the way down when you cell phone rings. You just can’t help but get the song in your head for hours at a time… and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

“Beat Goes On” is the 8th song on the album. It’s got a nice, “bouncy” bass line… but is sounds too familiar. For reasons I cannot fully explain, it almost sounds like an updated outtake from Erotica or Bedtime Stories. It’s pretty decent, but is ruined for me by the background vocals.

“Dance 2night” is a nice (if forgettable) throwaway pop tune. It really reminds me of a 70s disco\R&B tune – especially the bass line, which actually kicks ass. It’s like Chic came back to life for one song!

The 10th song on the disc – “Spanish Lesson” – couldn’t be a bigger Furtado rip-off if it tried, with hip-hop influenced percussion over “Spanish style” acoustic guitars. It’s not… bad, but I’ll probably skip this tune when I listen to this album in the future.

The 11th song – “Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You” is the album’s “hidden gem”. It’s slow and introspective, with a nice melody, accentuated by piano\synths. It’s a really nice track, so it’s sad to see it burned so far near the end of the disc. If I were in charge of the track list for this album, I’d move it to just after “Miles Away”. Seriously, listen to this song.

The final track on the album “Voices” might as well be a B-side. It’s decent enough, but not good enough to write more about here.

All in all, it’s a better album than I had feared it would be. Any time I see the words “Madonna” and “urban” in the same sentence, it’s usually a sign of awfulness. It’s also a bad sign when Madonna “hooks up” with the “latest and greatest” producer (like Timbaland, in this case). Notice that the best Madonna albums happen when Madge picks a DJ or producer out of relative obscurity (like Stuart Price for Confessions or William Orbit for Ray of Light). She should always stick to her won instincts, rather than do “what’s cool at the moment”…. which I guess is my main complaint with this album.

It seems to me that Hard Candy is Madonna’s blatant attempt to “black up” herself in order to win back a US audience. Confessions was a huge hit in almost every country but the U.S., so I guess Madonna thinks that getting Kanye West to sing backup will help her gain fans here. And I suppose she’s smart to think that. The album is actually pretty decent (even if I’m not especially excited about it as I was for her past few albums). Just like a loyal puppy, I’ll stick with her through this “phase”, and I’m guessing most of her hard core American fans will, too. So she can essentially release this album “risk free”. But that doesn’t mean that I have to like that she’s hanging out with Justin Timberlake and Kanye West.

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Ludacris’s Area Codes Map

You might remember Ludacris’s 2001 song “Area Codes”, in which he talked about having “hos” in many different area codes. Well, someone was finally bored enough to actually put the “hos” on an area code map:

Ludacris Area Code Map

Click to embiggen

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SONGS I LOVE: “My Someday”

BlondefireIf you’re new to this blog, you might not know that one of my favorite bands is the English group Saint Etienne. If you’ve been around here for a while, you probably know that I love them in large part due to Sarah Cracknell’s voice. Her voice is soft and sultry. Comforting. And although she generally sings in an “accent neutral” voice, you can just tell that she’s English. It’s all very sexy, and combined with the band’s “electro lounge\dance pop” sound, I actually feel as though the band has become my friend. When I listen to Saint Etienne, I feel like I’m wearing an old comfy sweater. I feel like I’m at a secret “cool people’s party” in London. It’s just fun! But then… what would it sound like if Sarah Cracknell were the lead singer for early Pet Shop Boys or Power, Corruption & Lies-era New Order?

Wonder no more, my friends, for I have found a band that answers the question. They’re called Blondfire, and they are the brother-sister team of Bruce and Erica Driscoll. The Driscoll children were born in Grand Rapids, Michigan to an American father and a Brazilian mother, and spent many summers in Brazil. They’re bilingual and are citizens of both the US and Brazil. Interestingly, although the band claim to be inspired by musicians like Antonio Carlos Jobim, Caetano Veloso, and Astrud Gilberto, they actually sound like a British New Wave band.

I recently stumbled upon their MySpace page and instantly fell in love with “My Someday”. Listening to the song is like eating a chocolate cupcake with pink frosting and sprinkles. It’s that sweet, comfy and just a little bit guilty. Give them a listen and tell me what you think!

[audio:blondfire.mp3]
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SONGS I LOVE: “Afraid of You”

Our Sleepless ForestIt’s been a long time since I’ve done a “Songs I Love” post (the last one was February 26th, 2008, and before that it was December 17th, 2007!). My apologies for that.

I have traditionally posted music from 1980s artists in these posts, and I’ve done that for two reasons: one, because I grew up in the 80s, and that’s the music I like; and two, because some tiny part of me thinks that the Music Police only bust people who post new music.

They won’t care about some middle-aged guy posting an ancient Tubeway Army track on an obscure blog somewhere… but post the latest Justin Timberlake track, and here come the guys with handcuffs! It’s silly, I know… but I just can’t help it. Fortunately, I’ve found a brand new band good enough to make me overcome this fear.

They’re called “Our Sleepless Forest”. They’re a bunch of young guys from South London (many Internet posts about them talk about how they’re barely of legal drinking age in the UK, which is 18). And the music they make is simply amazing. It grabs your attention in an instant, and holds it there until they’re done with you. As I’ve said many times before on this blog, I’m not someone that can experience “love at first listen” with most bands. I usually have to listen to things over and over before I really start liking them. Even with a song I really like (say, Tiesto’s remix of Paul Oakenfold’s “Southern Sun”), I start with “that’s pretty interesting”, then move on to “huh – not bad”, then go to “hey, I like this!” to finally, “I love this!” (In the case of “Southern Sun”, it took hours to finally reach the “love it” stage, since the song is over 9 minutes long). With Our Sleepless Forest, I has able to skip all those levels and fall instantly in love!

The music is not for everyone, however. It sounds like… well, imagine what an instrumental This Mortal Coil song would sound like on acid. There’s plenty of gentle acoustic guitar, delicate synths, and sound effects that could sound out of place, but (surprisingly) don’t. Above all, there’s an unbelievable amount of sheer beauty in their music. Imagine the soundtrack to your most beautiful dream, and that’s what Our Sleepless Forest sounds like. It’s my favorite new album of the year (by far), and I can see myself as a “Sleepless Fan” for some time to come. Have a listen and tell me what you think:

[audio:forest.mp3]

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Ashes to Ashes soundtrack out there..

The soundtrack to the TV show Ashes to Ashes was released in the UK on March 17th, 2008. Here’s a track listing:

1. Introduction – Dialogue: Alex Drake
2. David Bowie – Ashes To Ashes
3. Visage – Fade To Grey
4. The Human League- Love Action
5. Duran Duran – Girls On Film
6. Dexys Midnight Runners – Geno
7. OMD – Souvenir
8. The Stranglers – No More Heroes
9. The Clash – I Fought The Law
10. Heaven 17 – (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thing
11. Interlude – Dialogue: You’re Nicked
12. Edmund Butt – Gene Genie (Gene’s theme from `Ashes To Ashes’)
13. The Passions – In Love With A German Film Star
14. Altered Images – Happy Birthday
15. Joe Jackson – It’s Different For Girls
16. Flying Lizards – Money
17. The Beat – Doors Of Your Heart
18. The Ruts – Staring At The Rude Boys
19. The Teardrop Explodes – Reward
20. Tenpole Tudor – Swords Of A Thousand Men
21. Bryan Ferry – Let’s Stick Together
22. Ultravox – Vienna
23. Edmund Butt – Title Music from `Ashes To Ashes’
24. Epilogue: Dialogue: Fandabydozy

You can buy it from Amazon UK for £8.98 here. I mention it today because it’s now “out there” (wink-wink!)

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RIGHTING THE WRONGS: Van Halen and M&Ms

The 1980s were decadent times for rock stars. Stories of bad behavior by some of rock’s finest – from trashing hotel rooms to over-the-top demands – were splashed all over the headlines. And few of those stories were as famous as the “Van Halen M&Ms” story.

If you weren’t around in the 80s, the rock supergroup Van Halen had a clause in their concert contracts which stipulated that the band would be provided with one large bowl of M&M candies with all brown candies removed.

Once the “M&Ms” story leaked to the press, social commentators jumped all over it. Some called it an egregious example of the spoiled behavior of rock artists. Some saw it as yet another sign of the decline of Western Civilization. And to this very day, any time a story about a celebrity acting like a diva surfaces, my mom rolls her eyes, clucks her tongue, and asks if “she wants the brown M&Ms taken out of the bowl, too??”

Here’s the thing, though: the band put the “no brown M&Ms” clause in their contracts for a very good reason.

*     *     *

Van Halen was one of the first rock bands to bring truly massive concerts to smaller cities like Macon, Georgia or Tempe, Arizona. Arena staff in smaller cities were used to bands coming to town with, at most, three tractor-trailers full of equipment. But Van Halen would roll into town with nine tractor-trailers. It was a lot of stuff, and staff at these venues were frequently overwhelmed. And when people are overwhelmed, they make mistakes. At a concert, “making a mistake” during setup can make the band sound bad or it can kill someone… which is exactly what the band was afraid of.

*     *     *

At the heart of any major concert is the contract. Most of these contracts are standard legal text that varies little from performer to performer. In fact, if one were to take the core contract from a Katy Perry concert in Nevada and a Foo Fighters concert in Florida and switch the artist and state names, there’s little chance anyone would even notice.

Each band “customizes” their contracts by attaching specific demands via something called a “rider”. Each contract can have hundreds of such riders.

You’ve probably more familiar with the “outrageous” personal riders artists have included over the years. For example, Willie Nelson requires that all his shows be smoke-free (don’t ask about Willie’s own type of “smoke”). The Beach Boys demand several Bic lighters in the backstage area, but absolutely no green ones. Country group Alabama demands that NO ANIMALS OF ANY KIND be allowed backstage. Meanwhile, animal lover Paul McCartney not only bans leather furniture backstage, he’s also banned all types of synthetic leather as well. Madonna once requested some $200 French candles for her dressing room. And to the very end, Prince required that EVERYTHING in his dressing room be covered in plastic wrap (yes, really).

The thing is, although the nutty personal riders make headlines, the vast majority of riders are actually technical in nature. They’ll include the size and weight requirements for the stage, electrical and lighting needs, pyrotechnical needs, data and fiber optic cabling specifications, sound and video board requirements, office space requirements for tour personnel, minimum number of security personnel, etc. It’s like an instruction manual for a concert, only in legalese.  For instance, a rider might say something like

“Article 148: There will be fifteen amperage voltage sockets at twenty-foot spaces, spaced evenly, providing nineteen amperes total, on beams suspended from the ceiling of the venue, which shall be able to support a total gross weight of 5,600 pounds each, and be suspended no less than 30 feet, but no more than 37.5 feet, above the stage surface.”

Van Halen’s concert contracts would have several hundred such demands, causing lead singer David Lee Roth to joke that the band’s contracts were so thick they looked “like a Chinese Yellow Pages”.

The staff at large venues like New York’s Madison Square Garden and Atlanta’s The Omni were used to complex shows like Van Halen’s, so the band usually played there without incident. But the band kept noticing errors, sometimes significant errors, in the stage setup in smaller cities. The band needed a way to know that their contract had been read fully. And this is where the “no brown M&Ms” came in.

The band included a request for “a large bowl of M&M candies” with their backstage demands for typical things like Coca-Cola, whiskey, cigarettes and sandwiches. But, hidden deeply in the middle of the technical riders, the band added this clause:

“Article 126: There will be no brown M&M’s in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation”.

That way, the band could simply enter the backstage area and look for a bowl of M&Ms. No brown M&Ms? Someone read the contract fully, so there were probably no major mistakes. A bowl of M&Ms with the brown candies? No bowl of M&Ms at all? Stop everyone and check every single thing, because someone didn’t bother to read the contract. Roth himself said:

“So, when I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl… well, line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error. They didn’t read the contract. Guaranteed you’d run into a problem. Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show. Something like, literally, life-threatening.”

The “no brown M&Ms” clause became a national news story after an “incident” at University of Southern Colorado (now Colorado State University-Pueblo). The national press told a story of unacceptable behavior from the band, and how they caused $85,000 worth of damage to the arena.

David Lee Roth remembers it a bit differently:

The folks in Pueblo, Colorado, at the university, took the contract rather kinda casual. They had one of these new rubberized bouncy basketball floorings in their arena. They hadn’t read the contract, and weren’t sure, really, about the weight of this production; this thing weighed like the business end of a 747.

I came backstage. I found some brown M&M’s, I went into full Shakespearean “What is this before me?” . . . you know, with the skull in one hand . . . and promptly trashed the dressing room. Dumped the buffet, kicked a hole in the door, twelve thousand dollars’ worth of fun.

The staging sank through their floor. They didn’t bother to look at the weight requirements or anything, and this sank through their new flooring and did eighty thousand dollars’ worth of damage to the arena floor. The whole thing had to be replaced. It came out in the press that I discovered brown M&M’s and did eighty-five thousand dollars’ worth of damage to the backstage area.

Well, who am I to get in the way of a good rumor?

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SONGS I LOVE: “Melody of a Fallen Tree”

Marie Antoinette SoundtrackI don’t remember exactly how I came across the soundtrack to Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film Marie Antoinette. I do remember looking at the track list and thinking “OK, mostly 80s music, with some baroque pieces thrown in, as well as a few tunes by new bands… It’s worth a look!”

As it turned out, the soundtrack was mostly a bust. I, of course, already owned all the 80s songs on the 2-disc album, and thanks to a “baroque phase” from a few years ago, I’m pretty much “done” with the whole pre-1750 genre. Most of the songs by “new” bands were OK, but didn’t leave much of an impression on me… most of them that is, except “Melody of a Fallen Tree” by Austin, Texas based post-rock band Windsor for the Derby. It’s one of those rare tracks that I instantly fell in love with. I threw it on my iPod Shuffle and listened to it over and over while walking, doing the dishes, etc. But my favorite story involving the song had to do with my last trip to Isle of Palms, South Carolina:

It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, and it was hot – not so hot that it’s not comfortable, but hot enough to remind you that you’re at the beach. Relief from the heat was provided by a constant, gentle breeze from the ocean. I was lying down on a beach towel with my back to the sand. I had my Shuffle on, but not so loud that I couldn’t hear the occasional roar of the surf or seagull overhead when the music hit a quiet point. I had been lying there for some time, and my iPod had worked its magic, randomly playing a whole bunch of tunes – mostly mellow tunes – that I wanted to hear.

You’re probably heard marijuana smokers talking about “zoning out” to a song; well, that’s exactly what I did when “Melody of a Fallen Tree” came on… only I was completely sober. I relaxed, then relaxed some more, then relaxed even more. I was completely awake and fully aware of my surroundings, yet I was so relaxed and calm that I almost feeling as if I were in a different state of existence. As the song played on, I felt my earthy cares fade away. I became fully aware of gravity pulling my back onto the sand. I could feel the existence of everything. There was everything yet nothing from the very tip of my nose, up through the sky, all the way to the very end of the Universe. I wasn’t simply a person on vacation on a beach, I was part of the everything that made up God’s creation. I felt the earth rotate through the aether, and it seemed to me that I should feel like I was on a roller coaster… but I was too calm to worry about it. I was too busy visualizing all of the uncounted trillions of atoms of everything that had made up not just me, not just the beach, not just the hotel… but all the atoms that made up Jupiter, Europa, Neptune and all the other planets outside our tiny galaxy. I saw how beautiful it was that that which made up which made the Sun and all the stars was the very same thing that made me me. Every part of me – every tiny little atom – was once nothing but dust floating through space. Though I was only 36 years old, the teeny, tiny bits of carbon that made me could have been spewed from a dying star billions of years ago and traveled across all the light years of the universe… just to make me me. And those tiny bits of carbon have been recycled over and over and over again. Perhaps one day, those bits of carbon would play a part in forming a mighty mountain. Perhaps they’d sit at the bottom of the sea for millions of years, until our Sun finally spent the last of its fuel and exploded, sending the parts of me back out into space, to float around for aeons… until those parts became someone else, somewhere else.

Right about that point – just when heaven and earth were merging into a perfectly beautiful synthesis of all things and nothing… Lisa tapped me on the shoulder.

“I’m hungry! We should get lunch.”

The beautiful moment I was enjoying – a moment that felt as if it could stretch out into infinity – suddenly came crashing down around me. I snapped at Lisa – not because I was mad at her, exactly, but because I had been ripped away from such a beautiful place. But then I thought.. “you know, a fried grouper sandwich would be good right now.”

And so I left that moment on the beach, where it will stay… forever and ever.

[audio:windsor.mp3]

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This is… disturbing

OK, I know I’m late to the scene with this one… but man, there’s just something so disturbing about this video:

I don’t know if it’s just the subject matter, or the cheesy “special effects”, or how the video is one “music video cliché” after another… or whether it’s just Samwell himself. I don’t know, but I do know that this video just gives me the heebie jeebies for some reason!