Les Paul Would Still Be Proud…
In honor of Les Paul’s 96th Birthday, some of my favorite players of his signature axe:
Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols:
Robert Fripp:
Two for one here… Ace Frehley and Slash!
Neil Young:
Jimmy Page:
Zakk Wylde, here playing with the man who should be Idol:
The Stooges’s Straight James Williamson, here doing a warmup gig with the band Careless Hearts before rejoining Iggy and company:
Randy Rhoads:
And while I’m not one to be posting my own guitar wanking on here, today I can make an exception and share something I did this morning on my own Les Paul, nicknamed after my favorite MoMusu:
Les Paul Birthday Riffin’ by thegroovemusiclife
And to finish off, a now-classic beer ad (not a beer I would ever drink, though) featuring Les himself.
REVIEW: BORIS “Attention Please” and “Heavy Rocks (2011)”
Attention Please and Heavy Rocks (2011)
(Sargent House)
Available on CD, LP, iTunes, AmazonMP3 and eMusic
Rating:
With some bands, you know what to expect before you even bust the shrinkwrap on your newly purchased LP or CD or click that download link. Boris is not one of those bands. When it was announced earlier this year that the veteran Japanese experimental rock trio was dropping both a rock album and a pop album simultaneously, I’m sure a lot of eyebrows were going up. Since we’re dealing with Boris, however, these descriptions of their new material are vague at best. The music, however, isn’t.
Attention Please, the so-called “pop” album, actually sees the trio bringing their experimental tendencies into the pop-rock format with often surprising results. Lead guitarist Wata is the sole lead vocalist on the entire album; while she doesn’t possess the range of many of her more visible countrywomen like Kumi Koda and Morning Musume’s Reina Tanaka and Ai Takahashi, her whispery, almost fairy-like singing does carry its own distinctive recognizable signature. Terming the album as “pop”, however, doesn’t mean that the album is loaded with radio-friendly tracks like the first single “Hope”. “See You Next Week”, for example, marries an industrial found-sound loop to Wata’s reverberated vocals and slowly arpeggiated guitar figures. I’ve noted several times in the past that most Western J-pop fans are usually fans of alternative, punk, and indie music. Attention Please may very well be the album those fans reach for when they can’t decide between listening to Sonic Youth or Morning Musume.
Heavy Rocks – borrowing a name from another album of theirs from ten years ago, and thus a methodology not dissimilar to Weezer’s self-titled, differently colored trilogy of albums – actually seems like the more accessible of the two albums. Here, the band concentrates on various forms of guitar-based riff rock – Anthrax-like riffing on “Czechoslovakia”, raucous hardcore punk on “Galaxians”, first single “Riot Sugar” sounding so much like the Cult that they invite their pal Ian Astbury over to chip in a few trademark vocal interjections. They let their experimental side rest, save for the ambient cut “Key” and the Merzbow-like noise explosion that interrupts “Missing Pieces”. Most of the vocals are handled by Takeshi, but a guest vocalist, Yoshito Kawakita, takes the mic over to kick some Puffy AmiYumi-like “do-do-do”’s over the grunge-influenced barre chords of “Window Shopping”.
Also curiously, both albums contain a track called “Aileron”, but both songs, like the albums they are on, are rather different. The Attention Please “Aileron” is a William Ackerman-esque acoustic guitar instrumental, while the Heavy Rocks track takes one of the other version’s guitar figures, transfers it to an electric, slows it down, and makes it a lengthy full band piece with lead vocal.
They’re two separate albums, with their own packaging and musical concepts, but together they make one complete whole – and you can’t go wrong with that.
Four and a half stars for each one, or five stars for both.
ETA: When this was first written, the album was reviewed from legally downloaded editions of the albums that contained no credits. We thus originally identified Wata as the vocalist on “Window Shopping”. Having received physical copies of the albums from Sargent House today, we have since corrected that error and apologize for any confusion.
How To Prevent “Idol” From Becoming “Idle” Again
It’s been two weeks, and pretty much everyone I’ve talked to is still bewildered as to why James Durbin, one of the few American Idol contestants this season that had never been in the bottom, got voted out. As I am writing this, while people are watching two servings of country crock vie for the “top spot” (which is really who is going to be promoted a little more than the other artist and get a slightly bigger budget) on the program, I am ignoring the entire spectacle and listening to a playlist of all of James’s AI digital singles via earbuds.
Would someone like to tell me, without any bullshit, why this dude isn’t in the Top 2?
How telling is it when, after the Top 4 became the Top 3, Randy Jackson was on The View (and, I’m sure, elsewhere) openly criticizing the vote that had led to James’s uncalled for ouster?
I suggested when I wrote about the situation the night of the disaster that part of the blame should have been directed at an audience that wasn’t really into music (buying it only as an afterthought during a trip to Wal-Mart rather than as a thought-out purchase or chance discovery at a record store, chain or independent, as I put it in said article) but was tuning into the last couple weeks of episodes of the show and voting like they were invested in the season since day one.
That may be one factor. Abbey Phillips from the James Durbin fan Twitter/Facebook page The Durbin Source hipped me to another factor that I hadn’t taken seriously until now, although my own wife had mentioned it in passing as the season progressed: VoteForTheWorst.com
Yep, an anti-American Idol site is apparently to blame a great deal for the disaster this year – and maybe in years past from Season Two onward.
During the Top 4 round that James Durbin found himself voted out of, VoteForTheWorst had put up this graphic on their website (they may have tried to hide it, but Google Images is a wonderful thing):
This isn’t the first time VoteForTheWorst’s followers have skewed the results of a show that most of the visitors don’t even watch or care about. An article from Examiner.com written after the Top 4 had become a Top 3 noted:
“Although it is currently unknown the magnitude of influence the website has, there is little doubt that they have a sizeable following and that many of those followers vote for the chosen “Worst” of the week. The site claims several successes, such as getting Sanjaya Malakar to the Top 7 in Season 6 and Tim Urban to a like finish in Season 9.”
Ugh. I wonder if this site is the reason why Taylor Hicks, who didn’t even last a year with his major label contract, ended up the Season 5 winner? (As I pointed out two weeks ago, I’m sure Chris Daughtry is still laughing like hell about that.)
Can something be done to make sure future seasons of the program don’t go the way of this year’s? Yes. There’s plenty of things that can be done all around to make sure AI viewers aren’t being forced to settle for two flavors of blandness like they are this year.
First off, quite obviously, those that watch AI’s seasons from beginning to end should vest themselves even more in supporting the more deserving contestants, and not skimp on voting. That much is obvious. Just because someone like James Durbin didn’t make the bottom three doesn’t mean they’re immune to getting eliminated.
Second and most important, there should be a serious revamping of the judges’ roles in the eliminations versus those of the people calling in, especially if VoteForTheWorst’s followers are going to be waiting in the wings to fuck things up. Giving the judges a save to use this season was a step in the right direction and they weren’t wrong to give it to Casey Abrams. For next season, the judges and AI’s producers should closely monitor what VoteForTheWorst and any similar “anti-fan” sites that are out there to see what kind of chicanery is afoot. Why should a group of people who don’t watch the show (at least, not with the vested interest actual fans do) be a major factor in who stays and who goes? When chicanery is being dictated, the final say in who gets eliminated from season to season should be left in the hands of the judges.
Is there anything else that can be done to neuter the likes of VoteForTheWorst? Perhaps, and as a big fan of democracy I hate to put it like this, but perhaps AI’s producers should look into making it a little harder for people who don’t give two shits and a fuck about the show to vote. This is admittedly a bit of a stretch, but look at it this way: would the people who vote for who VoteForTheWorst tells them to vote for “participate” if they had to actually pay for their phone calls and text votes? This is a stretch, and no, the phone charges don’t have to be the equivalent of 900 and 976 numbers, but any vaguely substantial charge would easily deter prank “voters”.
A little tightening of standards could also help prevent a boring Top 2 like this year’s as well. American Idol is primarily designed to be a pop/rock/R&B show, and it baffles me how someone like Scotty McCreary(*), who only has an octave and a half at best in his vocal range and very little personal experience with any music outside of the watered-down pop-country that websites like SavingCountryMusic.com rail against, even got into the Top 24. It should have been obvious that someone with that poor of a vocal range and that limited of a musical education could never have pulled off the variety of different material expected of an American Idol contestant.
I can’t say that I’m a fan of the idea of having anyone under 18 audition for the show either – which might be an odd thing for longtime readers of this blog familiar with how often I champion the pop and rock talent coming out of Japan, given the fact that the present lineup of this author’s favorite band features four new members younger than AI Season 10’s Top 2. But the next year or so in the professional and personal lives of Scotty McCreary and Lauren Alaina (face it, it doesn’t matter who becomes finalist and runner-up – they’ll both be handed record contracts by Interscope/UMG the second they step off stage) are just as likely to be the worst of their young lives. I honestly don’t see them handling the pressure that someone in their positions will most definitely be experiencing. Will they be unafraid to stand up for their own artistic ideals, if they have any – or will they let whoever gets assigned to them as a producer call all the shots (Lauren might do so, but that’s a long shot; the bad experiences that both the Dixie Chicks and Hank Williams III have gone through in the past decade easily attest to how difficult it is to be daring when you’re a country artist on a major label). And if they both get dropped from UMG within two years, will they even have the desire to continue performing and recording, even if they have to result to putting out their own records?
Time will tell, but with the track record AI’s past post-Kelly Clarkson finalists have left behind – which isn’t a good one, with only Carrie Underwood and non-winner Chris Daughtry still holding on to their original contracts at the time of this writing, no one should hold their breath. (As this article notes, James Durbin and Haley Reinhardt are already having the last laugh – both of them have sold the most digital singles on iTunes to date. That says a lot.)
As an aside, I also have to wonder what Jimmy Iovine is thinking this past week – he probably expected to get two very good rock/pop artists to add to Interscope’s roster at season’s end; Interscope isn’t exactly a country-friendly label; Scotty and Lauren will probably be parceled out to whatever label UMG’s country division puts records out under, which last I heard was MCA Nashville or Mercury; I certainly don’t see either artist ending up on UMG’s “boutique” alt-country label Lost Highway.
(* Yeah, I said last time I would never mention the names of either of the Top 2, but given the odds they’re against all around for their post-AI careers plus my own Buddhist-influenced beliefs, they deserve at least a little sympathy. I just won’t buy or listen to any of their recordings.)
NEW MUSIC: MARSHALL CRENSHAW “Maryanne (Live at First Avenue, 1987)”
Veteran singer/songwriter Marshall Crenshaw (best known for his hit “Someday Someway” and his portrayal of Buddy Holly in the Ritchie Valens biopic La Bamba) is commemorating his 30th year in the music business (his first single “Something’s Gonna Happen” [live performance from a very recent NYC show with his current band here] was released by the venerable Bomp! label back in 1981) with a 30th anniversary tour (where he’ll be playing both classic cuts as well as songs from his current album Jaggedland) – and a free download of a newly discovered live recording of another classic M.C. tune, done at the landmark First Avenue nightclub in Minneapolis in 1987. Marshall isn’t identifying exactly when this track was recorded or who comprised his backing band, but he’s offering a bonus download of another unreleased recording to the first ten fans who can answer both questions! (Details at his website.)
“Idol” Becomes “Idle” Again
One thing I knew was going to happen within the first year of the marriage was an inability to escape American Idol. My newlywed wife Tara has been a fan of the show since its first season, while I haven’t been overly impressed with it. How could a serious music fan be really impressed with much of the “talent” that the show has produced (save for inaugural winner Kelly Clarkson), given that two-thirds of the original judges panel had tineared record exec Simon Cowell and alcoholic-in-denial has-been pop star Paula Abdul on its panel versus the more musically acute expert opinion of veteran session bassist Randy Jackson?
Nethertheless, watch it this past season, I did, and with high hopes. The tineared Limey prick and the alcoholic-in-denial has-been are gone (although they’re going to turn up on another show on the same station as AI later this year, which will remain unnamed for the foreseeable future), replaced with Steven Tyler, whose musical pedigree shouldn’t even have to be discussed here, and Jennifer Lopez, whose musical pedigree made for some very underrated earcandy, at least during her first three or four albums back when she was contracted with Epic/Sony (I’m undecided on her current material but that first single off her new album didn’t grab me.)
I had three favorites early on once the top 12 was underway: James Durbin, Casey Abrams, and Naima Adedapo. Naima got bounced first after about a month, which kinda sucked because I liked her tropical take on some of the material she did. Casey was wonderfully unpredictable and brought in lots of left field song choices (“Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Nature Boy” both come to mind) but, stupidly, got bounced last week for reasons unknown despite a great take on Blood Sweat and Tears’ “Hi De Ho”.
I was convinced that James Durbin was going to go all the way. Not once did he falter, the judges’ panel was more than supportive, and as weeks passed it seemed likely that he was going to make the Top Two and bring some long-overdue respectability to the series. I thought it was a sign that, after Celine Dion soundalike Pia Toscano was bounced, that American Idol viewers were up for something completely different and exciting this time around.
Then the American Idol viewers royally fucked up and picked the one-octave-voiced Alfred E. Newman lookalike that can’t sing anything other than fake pop-country music (and will also remain nameless in this blog) over James Durbin. James Durbin, who proved week after week that he can sing ANYTHING and fucking OWN IT. The guy actually made me like “Don’t Stop Believin’” – and anyone who knows me knows how much I hate Journey. (James’s take on that song, along with what I heard of Journey with their “new” singer and some experiences I’ve had playing their songs in bands with female singers, further confirmed for me that what I hated the most about Journey was Steve Perry’s voice.)
Speaking of bands I’ve been in fronted by female singers, one of my former colleagues posted this on her Facebook with her own reaction to the results of the 5/12/11 episode of AI: “James Durbin rocks. America got it wrong again. They really don’t recognize real talent. This is [the same week] where Daughtry was voted off. Must be a sign that James is moving on to bigger and better things. I’m done watching, BOO HOO!!”
You said a mouthful, Maryellen.
I’m no fan of Chris Daughtry (MotokoAoyama.com v1.0 gave his band’s self-titled first album the distinction of the lowest-rated review ever given by me in my blogging history), but I’m sure he’s laughing like hell that he’s still on a major label while the guy who took the top spot that year is already a has-been reduced to doing vanity pressings for the follow-ups to his lone Sony-BMG-distributed album in-between doing Frankie Avalon’s old role in touring companies of Grease. (Weird Al Yankovic had it nailed right on the head when he reconfigured said fifth-season buffoon’s lone “hit” into “Do I Creep You Out?”)
The fact that this year’s competition is down to two lame-ass fake pop-country singers and a potential diva-in-waiting further validates one thing – that most American Idol viewers are either just as fucking tineared as Simon Cowell, or have brain cells just as pickled from grain alcohol as Paula Abdul’s, or both. These are the idiots that buy all of their music as an afterthought at Wal-Mart, rather than as a thought-out purchase or chance discovery at a legitimate record store (chain or independent). These are the idiots that flooded Twitter and Facebook with “Who the fuck is Arcade Fire?” posts after the respected indie rock band did the unthinkable and won Album of the Year at the Grammys this past Spring. These are the idiots who think Katy Perry is “edgy” and “original” even though she’s stolen ideas from everyone from Bjork to Ayumi Hamasaki. These are the idiots that are responsible for putting much of what currently occupies Top 40 radio onto Top 40 radio.
And they can have their fake pop-country singers that would get eaten alive at a Hank III or Willie Nelson show and the diva-in-waiting that will probably be snorting enough cocaine to make Whitney Houston look like Ian MacKaye in five to ten years’s time, and go straight to hell with them.
If anyone wasn’t sure why The Groove Music Life covers the music it does – and why I used to refer to the show before, and will resume doing so now with the deliberately misspelled title American Idle, now you have a good idea why.
Rock on, James, we’ll definitely be hearing more of you in the months and years to come – unlike the three who will be finishing out the last couple of weeks of the 2011 AI season.
