The Benign Comedy is going on an extended sabbatical. In the meantime, please visit my new blog, Museum Of Pop Archaeology. That blog will be my primary focus for awhile.
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(Scroll down to the end of this entry to see latest smart-ass quips.)
7:57pm - Good evening. By the way, if you want to know who the winners are, just hit one of the news sites. They've already updated all the winners. I get the West Coast delay. But I'm still going to pretend like I'm breaking all this news to you right now. I need the false empowerment 'cause I haven't started working out yet.
8:03pm - Alicia Keys is doing one of those from-the-grave duets with Frank Sinatra. Frank is disquietingly still, and his lip-synch track is off. It's hard to get good help these days.
8:04pm - They have glitter sprinkled all over Alicia's upper torso, perfectly proportioned. I wonder how they do that. Is it planted on speck-by-speck, or do they just sit Alicia 50 feet below somebody standing on a scaffold holding a bag of sparkle, so that it looks natural?
8:05pm - Carrie Underwood sings "Before He Cheats" accompanied by a bunch of urban types beating broken car parts with giant pipes. Ten years from now this blog is going to read like a great lost William S. Burroughs piece, and all I'm doing is reporting what I see.
8:09pm - Prince: "Frank Sinatra looked good for 150." Zing! Nice one-liner for a recluse!
8:12pm - Alicia Keys tells me it's okay to have dreams, which makes me feel a little less guilty about washing my sheets so often.
8:14pm - The Chevron station I was in this afternoon smelled like beer. It was that oddly comfortable scent of beer that you encounter in a well-worn rock and roll tavern. Like McCoy's in Olympia. Shout-out to McCoy's in Olympia. There's a gas station in Seattle that smells like you.
8:17pm - Oh, shit, it's the Time! For the first time in 15 years! It's the Time! Morris Day and the Time! It's gonna be a great show after all!
8:19pm - Oh, shit, it's the Time with Rihanna! For the first time ever! It's the Time! Rihanna and the Time! It's gonna be a great show after all!
8:21pm - Rihanna is wearing high-heeled combat boots. This is like Versace Mad Libs.
8:23pm - Tom Hanks is here, giving a career achievement award to The Band. Talk about a tough segue.
8:25pm - Beatles tribute, incorporating Cirque du Soleil and Julie Taymor's Across The Universe. I have a feeling this is going to look a lot like pasta primavera.
8:28pm - Actually the Cirque part was pretty impressive. Cap doffed, gymrats.
8:32pm - The Across The Universe presentation is chopped up across several different screens, and it makes the film look better than it actually was.
8:34pm - Cyndi Lauper and Miley Cyrus. I'm talking to Billy Ray Cyrus tomorrow, by the way.
8:35pm - Amy Winehouse deservedly wins Best New Artist. Uh, she's not here tonight.
8:36pm - Cut to Jason Bateman, outside the Staples Center, getting people to sign a petition. I'm just kidding. This is something to do with Foo Fighters. They are about to be accompanied by an orchestra conducted by John Paul Jones. It looks like Bateman is doing some sort of mini-talent-contest within the Grammy telecast.
8:37pm - Okay, I figured out what this competition is: They're auditioning hot young string players to accompany Foo Fighters later in the show, voted in by audience call-in. It's sort of like "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," except there's three of 'em, all playing their stringed instruments through distorted amplifiers. "A cello with a thyroid problem!" Bateman quips.
8:44pm - My newborn son Hank's favorite song so far appears to be "Jack-Ass" by Beck.
8:45pm - Here comes Kanye, with eight gleaming circuit boards taped to his chest, and glowing sunglasses. "Stronger." Gleaming black pyramids. The whole set looks like a cross between Tron and the Krypton scenes in the first Superman movie.
8:48pm - Daft Punk emerge in gleaming red outlines from within one of the pyramids, making it even more like Tron. Okay, that was pretty goddamn good.
8:50pm - Kanye sings for his mom. Maybe the saddest hip-hop performance you're likely to see. ("Saddest" in the emotional sense of the word.)
8:53pm - Fergie: Eaten by her own eyelashes.
8:54pm - Okay, she can actually sing a little bit.
8:56pm - Love beats out Across the Universe for Best Soundtrack Album. The Beatles beat themselves. Makes total sense. You think Hairspray's gonna beat out two Beatles?
9:01pm - Can I say the first hour of the show didn't suck? For one thing, consider the bar of your typical Grammy telecast. Also consider that I'm watching this in HD for the first time, so all the sharp lines on the letters look real impressive to me. But even given the expected tricks, like "Let's Reanimate a Dead Guy" and "Prove Fergie Can Sing If Given John Legend," I have to say it was fairly rousing. I wonder what the big payoff will be. Axl Rose parting the Red Sea, that's where my money is.
9:03pm - Beyonce, doing a name-check to end all name-checks, all in service to Tina Turner.
9:05pm - Fashionistas take note: There's a waste management theme to some of the ladies' dresses tonight. First we had Rihanna wearing something that looked like frayed paper bags. Then Cher, just a few minutes ago, wearing repurposed Hefty bags. And now Tina, wearing a tight silver get-up, the top of which is tapered to look like one of those old-fashioned steel garbage cans. And I'm not saying any of this looks bad at all. I'm just sayin' it might undercut the whole "green" thing. Coming up next: Gwen Stefani duets with a trash compactor.
9:12pm - Andy Williams?
9:13pm - You know, Andy Williams wasn't that bad. Tonjia from Huh-Uh once played this song for me, Andy Williams singing a duet with this other woman -- can't remember the name of the song, or the woman -- that sounded like a sexual tryst in a phone booth. It was pretty unsettlingly cool.
9:15pm - Song of the Year: "Rehab," by Amy Winehouse. That was the correct choice. Remarkably ballsy choice.
9:16pm - I really don't want Dennis Hopper talking to me about retirement. You know who I want? Gary Busey. I figure he's probably going to level with me about retirement. He's not gonna throw me some bullshit about it. He's not going to dress it all up in po-mo doilies like Hopper. Busey's gonna come up to me in his best floral print, grab my by the collar, and say, "Look, fucker! Retirement is the only option for people like me! Forget going out gracefully! Just get out with enough plasma to get you to an Indian casino for a few hours! Just get to the shuffleboard court without needing an inhaler! For the love of God, Peggy Sue!"
9:23pm - Foo Fighters do "The Pretender" with the "My Grammy Moment Orchestra," featuring the winner of the stringed instrument soloist competition, a violinist named Anne Marie Calhoun. So far it's been all Foo and no frou-frou. Oh, wait... here we go. Orchestral break.... and that's it. Back to the rock. Except now there's an orcheastra rocking. This is how that whole Trans-Siberan thing started, kids. Be careful with your scholarships.
9:27pm - Dave Grohl's still one of the coolest guys in mainstream alternative rock. Just felt the need to stick that in here.
9:29pm - Art Brut stars in a commercial for the Sidekick.
9:30pm - I have a terrible headache.
9:31pm - Gary Busey force-feeds me some B Complex and I'm back on the street.
9:32pm - WILL FERRELL PLEASE STOP STARRING IN SPORTS MOVIES OK THX.
9:33pm - Brad Paisley doing his great song "Ticks," as the screen behind him shows computer- animated ticks.
9:35pm - Brad Paisley's pedal steel player wears a T-shirt with what appears to be the screen from a Pac-Man game on the front of it.
9:36pm - Brad Paisley's guitar is designed in a classy, sparkling brown-and-tan paisley pattern.
9:37pm - I like Brad Paisley a lot.
9:38pm - I think I have a tumor somewhere.
9:39pm - Kanye wins Best Rap Album, which seeing as how it's up for Best Overall Album, is pretty much a given.
9:41pm - Kanye talks about his recently-deceased mother, as the stage cut-off music continues to grow. Kanye: "It would be in good taste for to stop the music now." Kanye is right. Music fades out. Audience applauds.
9:44pm - Backtracking a bit: Kanye, from the stage, tells producer Mark Ronson that his album with Amy Winehouse deserves the Album Of The Year win just as much as Kanye does. Very charitable.
9:45pm - Nope, I'm still sticking with my Hancock prediction. This whole evening is set up for something as inappropriately incongruous as that to happen.
9:48pm - We just had a big gospel orgy onstage that took all of four minutes and included Aretha Franklin. I was busy trying to figure out more clever things for Gary Busey to say to me.
9:51pm - Coming up soon, apparently: A duet between Josh Groban and Andrea Bocelli. The entire Eastern seaboard is going to experience a giant orgasm and separate itself from the rest of the continent.
9:55pm - Coming soon on CBS: A Celine Dion special featuring guests -- this is a direct transcript -- "Josh Groban, Joe Walsh, and will.i.am." I'm not complaining, but since when did Joe Walsh get so high up on the A-list that the copywriters feel he's worth mentioning in the promo?
9:57pm - Feist, finally. It's all come to this. All that time cohabitating with Peaches, messing around with Chilly Gonzales in France, and Leslie's doing "1234" at the Grammys. Brass band backing her, trombones prominent. Then it cuts to a clip of Louis Prima and Keely Smith from 1958.
10:00pm - Oh, wow, it's actually Keely Smith.
10:00pm - Keely Smith with Kid Rock.
10:01pm - Keely Smith with Kid Rock singing "That Old Black Magic." Badly. Kid seriously messed up the timing. I don't think that matters much.
10:02pm - Who the hell dreamed up Keely Smith duetting with Kid Rock? It was fantastic. Not artistically speaking, necessarily. But a great moment.
10:03pm - Foo Fighters won the Best Rock Album award, but during the acceptance speech, Keely doesn't move too far from her spot in front of the microphone. This gives the impression that Keely Smith is now in Foo Fighters.
10:11pm - Stevie Wonder says a few words about Berry Gordy, who mysteriously has not received an Industry Icon award until now.
10:12pm - Alicia Keys is back. She's changed her look from the beginning of this show. In just over two hours she's changed her outfit and had her hair completely redone. I can't tell if her glitter has been dusted off.
10:16pm - Amazing how Alicia's "No One" sounds almost exactly like U2's "With Or Without You."
10:17pm - Dave Stewart and Ringo Starr announce the Best Country Album. Gratuitous use of the word "fab."
10:18pm - Vince Gill wins Best Country Album, which is understandable, since it's also up for Album of the Year, and is a giant 4-disc set separated into some thematic thing or another.
10:19pm - Gill has best line of the night: "I just got an award given to me by a Beatle. Have you had that happen yet, Kanye?"
10:25pm - Joe Mantegna's doing an intro. Joe Mantegna also did an intro at the Emmys. Need a go-to guy for your retirement banquet? Joe's your man. Not sure if he's busy.
10:33pm - The choices of presenters this evening have been odd. Now we got Juanes and Taylor Swift. This comes after Dave Stewart and Ringo Starr, and Keely Smith and Kid Rock. Did some people think the writer's strike was still going to be going on and refuse to commit?
10:38pm - Wrap this up. My headache's getting worse.
10:39pm - I haven't once spoken about the potential trainwreck that's going to be Amy Winehouse, soon to be performing live on satellite from London. Surely you're seen some of her more inauspicious performances over the last year on YouTube, at functions with supposedly as much posterity as the Grammys. They have not been -- what's the word -- intelligible? Anyway, I'm hoping this one's different, that she feels the love of an entire industry from across the Atlantic, and that her incarcerated husband learns how to tie a Windsor knot.
10:41pm - Aw, shit, here she comes....
10:42pm - She's doing "You Know I'm No Good." It's brilliant. First of all, good choice, considering the circumstances. Whoops, she just name-checked her husband, Blake... well, in any event, she's playing this exactly as dramatically as she should. She's killin' the camera. She's lethal... Now she's doing "Rehab." Damn. You'd never guess she was climbin' the streets at 7am looking for a Breakfast Jack. I swear she's got a stunt double.
10:47pm - Then, post-performance, she gets that glazed look. I don't know.
10:48pm - Doris Day gets a career achievement award. I'd say, "Fuck yeah!", but then Doris would charge me a quarter.
10:49pm - Record of the Year -- Amy Winehouse! She looks stunned. Terrified. The Dap Kings are crumbling around her. Oh, crap, she's gonna say something about Blake. Get your DVRs ready.
10:50pm - "This is for London, 'cause Camden Town is burning down!!!" Oh, God, she's unhinged. The punkest moment we're gonna get at the Grammys, I'm afraid.
10:52pm - That leaves Album of the Year. I'm thinking about changing my prediction.
10:53pm - No. If I fall, I fall with integrity. I had good reason. I still say Herbie Hancock wins it. Live by the blog, die by the blog.
10:54pm - I gotta do a playlist of all this stuff for work in the morning. I need Geritol.
10:55pm - And Billy Ray Cyrus. I gotta research for the Billy Ray Cyrus interview in the afternoon. Damn. This is ridiculous.
10:56pm - Then I go on paternity leave.
10:56pm - And I also volunteer for the elderly. I give them freebase equipment.
10:57pm - Neil Portnow, Recording Academy President! Leagues hipper than Michael C. Greene! More powerful than a tech industry lobbyist! Faster than a speeding file-sharer! Able to leap tall table settings in a single bound! Look -- down in the diamond lane! It's a lawyer! It's a concierge! It's.... Neil Portnow!!!
11:00pm - They're officially overtime.
11:03pm - Just remembered the name of that Andy Williams song: "You've Got What It Takes." Seriously, it's an erotic time-bomb of a song. Check it out. And buy his sweaters.
11:04pm - Aforementioned/threatened Groban/Bocelli duet. This one's for you, Carmella Soprano. Suburban New Jersey, you are so gonna need a cigarette when this is over.
11:05pm - I need to either drink more coffee or more water.
11:12pm - Seriously, this headache is classic. Okay, here we go.
11:13pm - John Fogerty, with Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. Hey, the last John Fogerty album Revival was plenty good. Jerry Lee is not playing piano. He's sitting at it, but he's not doing anything.
11:14pm - Now Jerry Lee's singing "Great Balls Of Fire." He's doing as little on piano as he has to. I'm going to go ahead and give it to him. Don't think we're gonna see him kicking over the piano bench.
11:16pm - Mr. Penniman, on the other hand, can still obviously play. He's doing "Good Golly Miss Molly." The lineage from Little Richard to Prince should no longer be in any doubt at all.
11:21pm - That Art Brut Sidekick commercial again. "(We have) a biodiesel tour bus -- runs on blubber." Very good.
11:22pm - I want to drop out of society and join a neo-pagan nature cult in the Scottish isles like in the original version of The Wicker Man.
11:24pm - "Professor" will.i.am does one-half of one verse of "Mack The Knife." Then raps. Then does "Strangers in the Night." Then raps some more. Then does "Don't Worry Be Happy." Then does U2's "Beautiful Day." Then raps. Then stops.
11:26pm - I feel not one sense of warmth for will.i.am and likely never will.
11:27pm - Usher and Quincy Jones. Here goes Album of the Year. And it's...
11:28pm - HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!! HERBIE HANCOCK!!!! I CALLED IT!!! I CALLED IT!!!!! DID YOU HEAR ME CALL IT??? I FUCKIN' CALLED IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAH!!!!! YOU DOUBTED! YOU CAJOLED! YOU TEASED! BUT YOU DIDN'T CALL IT! WHO CALLED IT?? MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! AAAAAAAA-HAAAAHAAAHAAAHAAAA!!!!!!!!!!
11:29pm - WHO'S YOUR PROGNOSTICATOR???? WHO'S YOUR MOTHER-FUCKIN' PROGNOSTICATOR?????? ME!!!!!!! I'M YOUR GODDAMN PROGNOSTICATOR!!!!!!!!!
11:30pm - WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE ARE THE CHAMPIOOOOOOOONS, MY FRE-EEEEEEINDS!!!!!!!! WOOOO-HOO! I CALLED IT!!!!!!!!!!!! I CALLED IT!
11:31pm - Eh, but Amy shoulda won.
Good night.
3:43pm - Patti Austin has twice called the White Stripes' album "Icky Thumb."
3:40pm - Against all odds, Tom from Slayer is there to pick up their award for Best Metal Recording. He's very nice.
3:35pm - First truly wrong award of the night: Chemical Brothers wins Best Dance Album, over LCD Soundsystem and Justice.
3:32pm - The Beastie Boys win Best Pop Instrumental Album, over people like Dave Koz and Spyro Gyra.
3:24pm - This is the first time I've seen Brad Paisley not wearing a hat.
3:08pm - Lupe Fiasco's sister and mother accept an award for him, and ask people to pray for his "recovery." What happened?
2:53pm - Herbie Hancock wins best contemporary jazz album. Harbinger! Harbinger!
2:51pm - Best New Age album goes to "The Paul Winter Consort." I remember, back when I was playin' the bar bands, gettin' in fights every night, I did it all because I had a dream -- "One of these days, I'm gonna front the biggest consort in the world."
2:50pm - Patti Austin: "I'm so glad Kanye won, because you know how cranky he gets when he doesn't." He's won three so far.
2:48pm - Kanye wins an award, and he's not there to pick it up. Ah, irony. Hey, he just won another.
2:44pm - Ah, dang, my horse Billy Joe Shaver lost in the Best Southern Gospel album category. That's all right.
2:36pm - Polka album. Here it comes. Jimmy Sturr. I'll bet you a million it's Jimmy Sturr... Yup. Jimmy Sturr. This is like his 18th Grammy or something. Good lord.
2:17pm - Not many people show up to the big pre-televised awards, let alone winners, so the award presentations usually take around 45 seconds each if the winners aren't there. But the winners for Best Hawaiian Recording were there. It was a various artists album, so about ten winners showed up. And each of them spoke. It took about 5 minutes to get through the award. Nobody on the actual telecast will get that long. That's wonderful.
2:02pm - The Classical Awards are finished. Come back, polka fans.
1:56pm - There are a contingent of shrieking groupies in the audience who cheer wildly every time the Phoenix Bach Choir's recording of Grechaninov's Passion Week gets called out (it's happened twice).
1:49pm - Here come the classical awards. Where's my bong!!!
1:40pm - Barack Obama beats Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter for Best Spoken Word Recording. Audience also finds the list of nominees hilarious.
1:37pm - "Best Surround Sound" album: Category Most Likely To Be Eliminated Next. Does anyone actually listen to Surround Sound albums in their intended environment, besides other audio engineers? Oh... never mind. Audio engineers. It'll be around forever. The Beatles win the award.
1:32pm - Best Historical Recording. The audience cracks up over the mention of two albums, one about indecent recordings from the 1890's, the other about murder ballads from the early 20th century. Woody Guthrie wins.
1:24pm - Johnny Cash wins Best Short Video, over Feist and Justice. Sentimental vote. I'm tellin' you. You wanna put your money back on Hancock right now.
1:21pm - They even have teleprompters at the pre-televised ceremonies. And they, too, are feeling the after-effects of the Writer's Strike. Oh, wait, I'm mistaken - all Grammy banter has sucked for the last 50 years. This is de rigeur. They just have something to blame now.
1:15pm - BTW, I'm sticking with my Herbie-Hancock-Wins-Best-Album prediction.
1:12pm - Hi. I'm watching the pre-televised Grammys on the web right now. This is where they give all the awards that they don't think anybody watching television gives a shit about. They are opening with a jazzy big-band/pop fusion number that underscores exactly why everybody thinks the Grammys are out of touch.
1. The Oshkosh B'Gosh bustier.
2. The Rev. Ted Haggard Home Abstinence Kit.
3. Shouldn't have suggested that eye liner makes you read better.
4. When she used pink nail polish on her Fisher-Price play figures to simulate them not wearing panties I probably should have said something.
5. Cheez Whiz + frozen Pillsbury biscuit dough do not a torte make.
6. I swear I thought that "House of the Rising Sun" was a Montessori school.
7. Should have reconsidered my explanation about how raising children is like working the swing shift at a salmon hatchery: it smells and it's boring but you can always quit.
8. Should have explained that "retaining a lawyer" doesn't mean shoving an orthodontic device into an attorney's mouth.
9. The Xaviera Hollander Sit-N-Spin.
10. I swear I thought that the "Mustang Ranch" was a day camp for gymnasts.
11. Furthermore should have been more coy about why the Mustang Ranch didn't have any horses.
12. Should never have stopped her from joining the military.
(What's the Story) Morning Glory
Oasis
(Epic, 1995)
Parklife
Blur
(Virgin, 1994)
It was 1995. Oasis, they had this guy named Liam. He was a machine. He trained every day for 16 hours. Jump-roped, bag-punched, everything. He had a big chip on his shoulder. But everyone loved him, because he was so handsome and wan. And he used to make up poems before his fights. One of 'em went:
Ding! Why, look! Here come ole Liam!That's how British people say "ass."
All the fine lookin' ladies just linin' up to see 'im!
The Manchester manhandler, so full-a class!
He's comin' to get Beatlesesque on your arse!
In the very first round, I'll make you a clownI didn't say he was Dickinson, I just said the dude wrote poems.
You'll be staggerin' back to your dinky small town!
I come with a left! I come with a right!
When you run into me, you'll be out for the night!
I'll aim for your gut! I'll go for the throat!
I'll sing pretty songs that my brother Noel wrote!
You'll soon hit the floor, and it'll be over
And you'll leave on the tail of my Pain Supernova!
Now, this other guy, from Blur, his name was Damon. They called him SuperKink. He wasn't as lean as Liam was – sometimes people said he was too slow in the ring, that his moves weren't that good. But man, I'll tell you, the kid could sure throw a punch. Once he got into a fight with Thurston "New Yorkie" Moore, from the Sonic Youth gym. Yeah, that was somethin'. Ole Damon just ran around the ring for a bit, and right when you thought he was gonna lose on points, wham! He hits Thurston Moore with a huge, devastating left hook! Of course, Moore couldn't retaliate because Sonic Youth didn't have any hooks.
So the fight started when one day, Liam and Damon found themselves inside an Indian curry restaurant, squabbling over the last piece of naan. Now Liam, he loved him some naan, and you can bet he wanted to get that last piece. But Damon ordered it right out from under him! And that made Liam a little disconcerted, to say the least.
"Hey!" Liam said. "I wanted that naan!"
"Well," Damon said, "I'm afraid they're all out."
"Listen! Why don't you just get some of that bhatoora over there and let me have the naan!"
"Piss off. Why don't you get the bhatoora?"
"I don't want the bhatoora, I want the naan!"
"Look, Liam, maybe this isn't the place for you this afternoon. Why don't you try that new exotic African restaurant across the street? I hear they've got some intriguing edible beetles that are driving the locals mad, simply mad."
"Edible insects? Sod off!"
"Whatsamatter? Afraid to eat a beetle?"
"Afraid? Nothin' scares me! The beetles don't scare me! I'm bigger than the beetles!"
"Ehhh, big talk."
"You pasty Essex non-entity!"
"That's the best insult you can throw at me? 'Pasty non-entity'?"
"Stop it, you… you highly arrogant biped?"
"There it is again. That's just awful."
"You undulating person of interest!"
"What does that even mean?"
"You… you being of a rascally nature! You are a… you're an air conditioner… you're… you're a piece of flimsy linen… you're a person that knows somebody named Beatrice! You're… you're exceptionally kind to your mother! You… you purchaser of baked goods, you… hold on, hold on, wait a minute. Where's Noel? Noel!"
Right at that moment Liam's brother Noel walked up and whispered something into Liam's ear. Liam thought for a minute, nodded his head, smiled, then finally turned his head to Damon as Noel took a seat by the condiments.
"Hey, Albarn," Liam said confidently, "fuck you."
"That's it, motherfucker!" Damon screamed. "That really hurt!"
"Let's settle this tiff in the ring, you abstraction of monk… err, I mean, arsehole!"
"Fine! Let's go to the Congo!"
So they went to the Congo, which was formerly known as Zaire, but changed its name because it didn't rhyme with anything. "Congo" rhymes with "bongo." Look it up. When Liam and Damon landed the press was all over them, so they decided to herd all the reporters into a conference room in the Congo Hilton (formerly the Zaire Sheraton) and field questions.
"Liam, what would you say your strongest trait is?" Liam thought for a minute, then leaned over to his brother Noel, who whispered conspiratorially into Liam's ear.
After thinking for another moment, Liam responded, "Independence of thought."
"Damon, same question?"
"Well…. I like to think I'm the custodian of a giant manor somewhere in the Moors, and my neighbors all have closely-cropped hedges, and my teenage daughter is pregnant. But it was planned."
"Liam, who will be your support staff during the fight?"
"That's easy. My support staff will be the pantheon of rock and roll, those who have blazed the trails for me to… continue to blaze trails. Plus I have some groupies. This one here's named Alice. Say hello, Alice."
"Hello."
"Shut up, Alice. Like I said, I ride the fourteen-headed hydra of the Rock God. I wouldn't be caught dead in an ascot, and neither will my entourage. We have – stop poking me, Noel – we have the blessings of Elvis, Madonna, Gene Pitney, Brian Jones, and exactly one-quarter of the Bay City Rollers. I believe there were – dammit, Noel, stop hitting me with that stick! Each member of my team will be outfitted in aviator sunglasses and an oxygen tank filled with – goddamn it, Noel! I've had enough! Sod off, you son of a bit – um, I mean, you cantankerous twat!" With that Liam shoved his crumpled fist into Noel's ear and the two scuffled on the floor behind the podium, beginning a row that eventually lasted four hours.
"And Damon, who will your support staff be during the fight?"
Damon glanced at the fracas. "Apparently, Noel Gallagher."
Finally the time came. They sold out one whole seating area of the Congo Coliseum (formerly the Zaire Chuck E. Cheese) in sixteen hours. The ringmaster began the fight.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the Congo… I have one question for you… Are… you… ready… to… channel the spirit of a typical suburban British teenager??!!!!"
"No," the crowd replied, "we jolly well aren't."
"Fine, let's fight. Gentlemen, come to the center. All right… I wanna clean fight. No hitting below the belt. No using the phrase 'Second British Invasion.' No appearances on the Jools Holland show. And let's leave Mick Jagger and Ray Davies outta this. You're on your own now. Are you ready?"
Liam grabbed the mic. "I just wanna say to the fine people of Covington, Oasis stands in unison with you! Ride upon our plush, shag-carpeted conveyances! We soar with the spirits of hummingbirds! We swoop down upon your gullies and hilltops, taking all within our view underneath our glossy wings! There's some blow in the back if you get too tired! Gooooo, Oasis! Gimme an 'O'! Gimme an 'A'! And gimme your sis, she looks like she hasn't had a good time in years!"
Then Damon grabbed the mic. "Excuse me -- attention please -- there's a Fiat in the parking lot with its lights on… which means it's nothing at all like the inside of Liam Gallagher's head!"
The crowd ooooh'ed. That was a good one.
"All right, all right, back to your corners," said the ref. The scorekeepers got their cards ready. The trainers stood by with towels, buckets and back copies of the NME.
The bell sounded, and both Liam and Damon raced to the center of the ring, when all of a sudden the roof of the coliseum opened and a shaft of light spilled into the ring. A chorus of angels sang out, and a giant cherub-like figure with good skin descended upon the ring. With one kick of each foot, the angel knocked Liam and Damon to the floor. He landed upon the center of the ring and reduced himself to the size of a normal human. He didn't appear to have exerted any effort at all, as he shot a look at Liam, then at Damon, both men crumpled, fetally whining on the floor.
The angel grabbed the mic and spoke to the crowd:
My name's Nick Carter! I'm from Orlando!The angel departed through the top of the roof, attended to by numerous seraphim and a couple of choreographers. Liam and Damon lay on the floor of the ring, dazed and chastened. They eyed each other warily at first, but the fact of their being vanquished by an outside force soon broke the chill.
The greatest resort town in all the land-o!
I have come to blow your Congolese minds
With supple rich harmonies and sculpted behinds!
We love girls! They love us! We freak on the floor!
Then they break up with us and we get rather sore!
We'll be taking the charts over here for awhile
So when we're on TV, please give us a smile!
Thanks for all of the great memories,
And by all means, come by and visit us please!
If you ever drop by down Florida way,
Here's a half-off coupon good at any Chick Fil-A!
"Damon, we must set aside our aesthetic differences and work together in the light of our defeat by a common rival. I now extend my hand of solidarity to you and the rest of Blur."
"Liam, I'm going to vacation in the islands, but while I am, I will consider and ponder our newly-formed alliance. I extend my hand to you, my brother. And to you too, Noel, brother of my brother. We're all brothers. White, pasty, sometimes experimental but always accessible brothers."
"Let's go rent Wings Of Desire and be pleasant to each other."
And with that, the great Oasis-Vs.-Blur fight was over almost as soon as it began. Liam went to the video shop and found that Wings Of Desire was out, so he rented Fitzcarraldo and kept it for six years. Damon formed a band called Gorillaz who, in honor of his new friend Liam, he made two-dimensional.
And we all lived happily ever after, except Zaire, who were all Pulp fans anyway.
THE END.
(1) Someday, some guy is gonna walk up to you all cocky and say this: "Yeah, London Calling was okay, but I think Cut The Crap is the Clash's unspoken, underrated masterpiece. You just gotta listen to it, man!" The guy who tells you this is a moron. Taze him.
(2) If anyone tells you Johnny Cash was too depressing or that Bob Dylan sucked because they couldn't stand his voice, say nothing in return. Just wish them luck on their unicorn figurine auction on Home Shopping Network and walk away.
(3) Unless we're talking about your sandwich lunch, trust 'em: you're not ready for this jelly.
(4) You may be recruited for a boy band. I'm not going to stand in the way of your career. I'm just sayin' the bigger your impresario's gold medallion is, the more you'll need to get your own representation. Don't tell the other guys.
(5) When passing through Bakersfield in the year 2036, why not stay at the Rodeo Kill Motor Inn on Truxtun Avenue? Free shell casings for the kids!
(6) It's spelled "Guns N' Roses." Single apostrophe, after the "N," not before, as logic would have it. And for God's sakes don't even think about hyphenating.
(7) Speaking of, let me know what you think of Chinese Democracy. Oh, wait, I'll be dead when it finally comes out.
(8) When the great 8-Track Cartridge Revival of 2028 happens, feel free to watch it from the sidelines.
(9) Never mind the pooh-poohers: It is more than possible to fashion a recording band from a cartoon. Why, just look at Gorillaz, the Archies, Josie & the Pussycats, or Nickelback.
(10) Just feed the bass player once every three days and he should be okay.
Distortion
The Magnetic Fields
(Nonesuch, 2008)
The Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs is my third favorite album of all time. Judging from how often it comes up in conversation without any provocation, it's apparently about that high on the lists of about two-fifths of everybody I have ever met in my life. It seems to be the only album of which the cliché "That album changed my life!" may be exactly appropriate in a collective sense. I mean, really, it's kind of remarkable and scary how quickly this album made people do long-form, sustained artistic things in homage. (I'm the bald one.)
It also solidified Stephin Merritt as the most conceptual songwriter in indie rock history. Excepting his work as Future Bible Heroes, everything Merritt's done since and including The Charm of the Highway Strip has maintained some sort of constant, artistic backdrop, almost like it was on a dare. Sometimes that can feel like a cop-out, I suppose, in a time when such pretensions are easier to ferret out, when we expect our artists to maintain spontaneity, and a mistrust of larger themes or devices is implied. But I think the approach is just a tool, a groundwork where Merritt really can do anything he wants.
The last proper Mag Fields album (there's been plenty more from Merritt, who wears his side projects like some generals wear medals) was called i, lowercase, and its shortcomings sprung from its strictly intellectual concept. Every song title started with the letter "i," and I believe each song appeared in alphabetic running order. While you couldn't fault the effort of his composing, the introduction of a logical argument for a backdrop took a little away from the songs. Whether it's the case or not, it felt like Merritt was on deadline for some of i. The purely academic approach made it feel arranged, whereas everything else he's done never obscured his service of song.
Distortion goes back to a musical conceit, unless you want to argue that it's a mechanical one, in which case you'd be partly right. It's the most conceptualized use of feedback and squall since Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, and at first – at first – it threatens to capsize Merritt's strengths in a thicket of screams and ragged filters, and the echo of one hundred glazed-tile bathrooms. The drums on Distortion are so dependent on reverb, it sounds like the snare drum was struck sometime last week and is just now making it to the speaker.
Yes, it sounds just like Psychocandy, as many others have already noted. But the contrast reminds me, a little bit, of Marshall Crenshaw's Field Day album. After making a very tight, song-oriented debut album that was dry in comparison, Crenshaw overfed the guitars and echo on Field Day with the help of Steve Lillywhite. The logic was that huge echo would sell the songs better at the time (1983), when groups like Big Country and U2 were practically giving the echo chamber its own dressing room. The knock on Field Day was that it obscured Crenshaw's songwriting. And at first it did. But I kept coming back to it periodically, and the songs sank in; Crenshaw's talents eventually overtook the acoustics and all was forgiven.
Same thing almost happens with Distortion, but it doesn't because such care is taken with the presence of distortion as a supporting actor. Every song blends the distortion differently. Sometimes it just blankets the listener so much they're bound to walk funny later. Other times, it weaves itself in to the middle of the mix, vibrating and flexing. It sometimes gets to the listener before the song does, but more often the distortion on Distortion is a post-modern Greek chorus.
And Merritt is having fun again. Sometimes the distortion is just flat-out funny, like in the ballad "Mr. Mistletoe," where the gentleness of the beautiful piano ballad Merritt is singing is shot over with a lumbering, steel-grinding mass of shrieking guitars. (I think they're guitars.) It's disorienting and calls attention to itself… but I just came back for thirds to find out what's behind it. I'm guessing there's a theme in that somewhere.
Distortion is also the Magnetic Fields' heaviest guitar album. Granted, it sounds like the guitar is being played by someone wearing an oven mitt. It's as clunky and ham-fisted as you can get. But it does exactly what is intended of it. It forces both comfort and agonizing into the listener, fighting to get through to hear about songs by people who are fighting to get through something themselves.
Then it becomes obvious: The distortion provides the external, amorphous cloud under which the characters on the songs muse about their reduced souls. Merritt's characters are either exhausted or resigned. Even in the instrumental opener, "Three-Way," which sounds like a contemplative surf instrumental, and where Mag Fields chant the track title the same way the Champs exclaimed "Tequila!" It's hilarious: A rather complicated sexual activity being honored in rock music's simplest form with unrestrained juvenile enthusiasm. They could be chanting "Tilt-A-Whirl!" or "New Coke Zero!"
The distortion either amplifies the complaints ("California Girls," as in "I hate..."), or worms its way into reflective moments ("Old Fools," "I'll Dream Alone"). And that's where you understand the point of it. Merritt, as dependent on lyrical cleverness as much as anybody, is trying to imbue rock's most chaotic sound with a lyrical sensibility. The feedback overwhelms the songs, but once you buy into their dwelling, it stops sounding indulgent and starts sounding collaborative. It loses its externality, which any device in a Merritt vehicle must do if it's going to work.
"A Nun's Litany" is about all the things a nun can't do, like being a Playboy bunny and a porn starlet (she'd "get to spend every day in bed"). It's very nice to hear Shirley Simms on a Mag Fields joint again (she was almost absent on i), and especially on "Drive On Driver," she's opened up her upper range to get through clearly over the distortion. She's trying to escape ("Take me to the airport/I need to be extremely far away"). Her escape route, like everything else on Distortion, is complicated by the existence of giant machines with uneven teeth. But they're only on the side of the road.
A lot of Mag Fields fans are going to describe Distortion in the simplest of terms: It harkens back to the band's earliest work, with the echoes providing distance and a partition of sound. (It's too thin and shrill to call it a "wall".) True that, but it also reflects the depth Merritt's taken on with his compositions. With 69 Love Songs being so immediate, and i being transparent almost to the point of immaterialism, I guess it's not a surprise that Merritt would make things a little tougher to discern on Distortion, just to keep the listener's game on.
Unlike their past work, Distortion isn't immediate and doesn't sink in on first listen. But I was enchanted enough to come back for a third time. Which must count for something. Especially since at this writing it's been out less than 24 hours.
