Showing posts with label bono. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bono. Show all posts
Monday, November 11, 2013
Lou Reed
The tributes pouring in to Lou Reed over the past few weeks keep reminding me of Lou's incredible 2000 album Ecstasy (the one with the 18-minute song about the possum). On the title track, Lou sings "I see a child through a window with a bib and I think of us and what we almost did." Then there's the almost unbearably sad divorce song "Baton Rouge"--"You wanted children and I did not/You might get a laugh when you hear me shout 'I wish I had.'"
Decades into one of the most remarkable careers in all of recorded music, Lou Reed was still making something beautiful from his dissatisfaction. He probably wouldn't have taken any comfort in the knowledge that his progeny, which includes Bono, Thurston Moore, Morrissey, David Byrne, Patti Smith, Bryan Ferry, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Michael Stipe, Beck, Nick Cave, Frank Black, Henry Rollins and Debbie Harry, would all give him the printed equivalent of a standing ovation this month. He's called the Godfather of Punk, but more than any other musician he's the Father of Underground Rock, all of which, loud and soft, fast and slow, good and bad, should remind you of what an innovator he was.
The amount of boundaries that he demolished and music that he inspired with a few chords ("One chord is fine. Two chords is pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz.") and a flat but self-assured voice is just staggering. The fact that he still sounds fresh and singular after his entire discography was raided by the aforementioned artists is almost unbelievable. When was the last time you heard a hip new band that didn't owe something to the Velvet Underground? Never, and you also never heard one that was nearly as good.
Sometime in high school, I became obsessed with Lou Reed. That's not out of the ordinary, seeing as how obsessions come easily to both high schoolers and Lou Reed fans. But it felt different to this high schooler, whose other obsessions centered around punk anarchy and metal nihilism. Lou Reed could be as aggressive or atonal as anything that I was seeing at Jaxx in Springfield on the weekends. But Lou was also the one who made me want to be an adult. I read along with the lyrics to New York and decided that I had never heard a smarter, tougher artist, or a cooler one. Those poetic, literate stanzas contrasted with the depictions of junkies, transvestites and murderers, which brought me to some of the most affecting love songs that anyone will ever hear. If you weren't the kind of person that he'd want to meet, he wrote about you anyway. I hadn't made any plans to stop being a kid, but Lou Reed changed all of that by portraying the kind of grown up that I wanted to be.
Maybe I never got there, and maybe he never did either. Lou Reed was constantly Growing Up in Public, usually trying something wildly different from his last adventure. In his final years, he was still crazy and brave enough to make Lulu, a Frank Wedekind adaptation with Metallica that sounded like nothing the rest of us had ever heard. It's as admirable and loathsome as anything that he recorded in the previous 50 years, and in a more intelligent world, it would have won all of Spring Awakening's Tonys.
Lou Reed exemplified all the freedom that people love about rock n' roll, taken further than anybody this side of Bob Dylan had ever dreamed. He saw rock n' roll as art, something that should be in a museum or a library. But unlike many of his acolytes (and if you've written any rock music since the 1970s, you're an acolyte, whether or not you know it), Lou Reed always knew how to rock. This wasn't "more of an art project than a rock band," like the bloat that regularly pops up on Pitchfork's Best New Music feature. This was a guy who could tear it up on "The Blue Mask" or "The Last Shot," just as well as he could write tender, 11-minute, violin-laden suites. His characters were heatbreaking, hilarious and all him, part of a guy(?) who defied any sort of categorization.
That hard-boiled, Dirty Blvd. hero of New York? Can't find him in the gender-bending glam of Transformer, or the doo-wop swoons on Coney Island Baby. In the four albums that the Velvet Underground made together, there are more moods and guitar magic than in other bands' 40-year-careers, which is why we believed him when he said "My week beats your year." Those of us who never got to side four of Metal Machine Music have learned to love that it exists. That defiance was part of what endeared him to all of us, and what dared so many writers, musicians, filmmakers and painters to try to figure him out.
Many obituaries have already noted that Lou Reed made rock criticism more important than maybe any other artist, since he gave us so much to write about and so much to contend with (his public fights with Lester Bangs and Robert Christgau did more to confirm the journalists' significance than a Pulitzer ever would have). But the best thing he ever did for rock criticism came last summer, when he wrote the best piece of music journalism of the year. Could he have done it all along? Probably, but what we got instead was already beyond astonishing.
I've tried so hard to keep this blog impersonal, to write about the music that I love without infiltrating my life into these thoughtpieces, lists and reviews. But Lou Reed had a way of pulling things out of the world that people didn't want to address, and I can barely write anything about Lou Reed without thinking of the dozens of ways that he's enhanced my life. In my first baby-sitting job, I was helpless with my toddler until I learned I could calm him down by singing "After Hours" any time at all. I introduced myself to most of my college friends by playing "Walk on the Wild Side" at a talent show. I still lose sleep over the characters in The Bells and Berlin, and wonder about who delivers the speech in the last movement of "Street Hassle." Any of my friends who move to or leave New York City get a copy of New York from me. Anytime I mourn someone, I console myself with Magic and Loss. October 27 was no exception.
Thank you Lou Reed, for teaching me that between thought and expression lies a lifetime. Thank you for writing "You won't be young forever, you should've written fifteen," and for "There's a bit of magic in everything and then some loss to even things out." Thanks for Sha-la-la-la, man. Thank you for being our mirror.
Monday, September 16, 2013
Depeche Mode at Barclays Center
Perhaps the biggest contradiction about Depeche Mode is that they're popular. 33 years into their increasingly storied career, the synthpop heroes are selling out arenas all over the world, playing songs that should have been killed by grunge, g-funk, techno, emo or really anything that has gone platinum since 1992. But here they are, fawned over by everyone from the Deftones to the Arcade Fire to Shakira, releasing solid new music and packing the $60 nosebleeds section (trust me). "Personal Jesus" has been covered by Johnny Cash and sampled by Hilary Duff's producers. So why the Mode, and not The Human League or Erasure?
Judging from last Friday's show, it's Dave Gahan. I'd undervalued his role in the band, and you might too, if you only know Depeche Mode from their albums. He's credited as writing exactly zero of their great songs and plays nary an instrument. In the liner notes and music videos, he's always handsome, stoic-looking and groomed, the spokesman for these gloomy goth cowboys purely on the fact that he has the deepest voice and darkest eyes. But in person, he's a transcendent figure, a seemingly effortless everyman who can express alienation and despair from tight black leather pants and a shirtless vest, the latter of which only made it through a few songs before getting stripped off. Perfectly chiseled at 51, he looked more Robert Downey, Jr. than Robert Smith, even if he emoted like the latter.
Like the top tier rock stars of his time, Gahan finds the magnetism in his loneliness and expresses it, channeling his Songs of Faith and Devotion into Music for the Masses, or vice versa. He can prance or swing his mic stand like a less self-conscious Bono, somehow without undermining the agony of "Barrel of a Gun" or "Black Celebration." A heated take on "A Question of Time" matched the frantic anxiousness of Joy Division, only moments before Gahan giddily let the arena sing most of "Enjoy the Silence." Lest we forget we were in the presence of a showbiz pro, he prowled almost every square foot of the stage, playing to even the worst seats in the house and bringing us to our feet.
Although Gahan is undeniably the band's star performer, it was not a solo show. Even on their most programmed songs the band sounded fierce, whether ripping into the industrial tones of "I Feel You" with the restlessness of a modern metal band, reimagining the first verse of "Personal Jesus" as a blues dirge (Delta Machine, indeed) or bouncing through "Just Can't Get Enough" as if they hadn't been playing it since 1981. Martin Gore, the band's main songwriter and primary instrumentalist, proved himself an affecting frontman when he took the microphone for the chilling "But Not Tonight" and "Home." Had he never met Gahan, Gore would have been a fine lead singer for Depeche Mode, and they would still have found success. But they probably wouldn't have sold out the Barclays Center.
Judging from last Friday's show, it's Dave Gahan. I'd undervalued his role in the band, and you might too, if you only know Depeche Mode from their albums. He's credited as writing exactly zero of their great songs and plays nary an instrument. In the liner notes and music videos, he's always handsome, stoic-looking and groomed, the spokesman for these gloomy goth cowboys purely on the fact that he has the deepest voice and darkest eyes. But in person, he's a transcendent figure, a seemingly effortless everyman who can express alienation and despair from tight black leather pants and a shirtless vest, the latter of which only made it through a few songs before getting stripped off. Perfectly chiseled at 51, he looked more Robert Downey, Jr. than Robert Smith, even if he emoted like the latter.
Like the top tier rock stars of his time, Gahan finds the magnetism in his loneliness and expresses it, channeling his Songs of Faith and Devotion into Music for the Masses, or vice versa. He can prance or swing his mic stand like a less self-conscious Bono, somehow without undermining the agony of "Barrel of a Gun" or "Black Celebration." A heated take on "A Question of Time" matched the frantic anxiousness of Joy Division, only moments before Gahan giddily let the arena sing most of "Enjoy the Silence." Lest we forget we were in the presence of a showbiz pro, he prowled almost every square foot of the stage, playing to even the worst seats in the house and bringing us to our feet.
Although Gahan is undeniably the band's star performer, it was not a solo show. Even on their most programmed songs the band sounded fierce, whether ripping into the industrial tones of "I Feel You" with the restlessness of a modern metal band, reimagining the first verse of "Personal Jesus" as a blues dirge (Delta Machine, indeed) or bouncing through "Just Can't Get Enough" as if they hadn't been playing it since 1981. Martin Gore, the band's main songwriter and primary instrumentalist, proved himself an affecting frontman when he took the microphone for the chilling "But Not Tonight" and "Home." Had he never met Gahan, Gore would have been a fine lead singer for Depeche Mode, and they would still have found success. But they probably wouldn't have sold out the Barclays Center.
Saturday, August 31, 2013
Megadeth, "Sweating Bullets"
What a weird, weird song.
A lot of metal press this month has been dedicated to the fact that Megadeth are now downtuning their songs to accomodate Dave Mustaine's deteriorating vocals. This isn't a new practice in music, or one that's exclusive to metal. But many are taking it as an opportunity to haw about how Mustaine can't sing anymore, which is true, or about how he never could sing anyway, which is not true.
Even Mustaine, in rare moments of humility, has said that singing is not his strong suit. While his chops (1983-present) and songcraft (1983-1997, 2004 and 2009) are without question the qualities that earned him his metal god status*, I'd argue that his vocals were a close third. In Megadeth, Mustaine was the first metal vocalist to talk-sing his way into people's minds, breaking down as many barriers for what a vocalist could do in metal as Bob Dylan did in rock n' roll. He doesn't have Tom Araya's range or James Hetfield's force, but neither of those singers--or almost anyone else, really--could handle a song like "Sweating Bullets" without being laughed off. For decades, talented singers have been embarrassing themselves by trying to talk their way through a song (Bono in the middle of The Joshua Tree comes to mind). But somehow when Mustaine starts talking, he turns "Sweating Bullets" into one of Megadeth's biggest hits.
Maybe it's that he's convincingly insane. We didn't know how far off the deep end he'd go until he became a born again Christian, but when he starts talking to himself ("Hello me, meet the real me...Hello me, it's me again...Well me, it's nice talking to myself!") it doesn't sound like he's faking it. That main riff, which more than one reviewer has compared to the comic rimshot, is underplayed by Megadeth standards, emphasizing that the leader might actually have lost his mind. But this song is all about the unforgettable vocal performance from Mustaine, back when he was vocally gifted and likably crazy. He'd never be asked to join Yngwie Malmsteen's band, but that's not the kind of singer Megadeth needed anyway.
*Non-fans would probably say his hair.
A lot of metal press this month has been dedicated to the fact that Megadeth are now downtuning their songs to accomodate Dave Mustaine's deteriorating vocals. This isn't a new practice in music, or one that's exclusive to metal. But many are taking it as an opportunity to haw about how Mustaine can't sing anymore, which is true, or about how he never could sing anyway, which is not true.
Even Mustaine, in rare moments of humility, has said that singing is not his strong suit. While his chops (1983-present) and songcraft (1983-1997, 2004 and 2009) are without question the qualities that earned him his metal god status*, I'd argue that his vocals were a close third. In Megadeth, Mustaine was the first metal vocalist to talk-sing his way into people's minds, breaking down as many barriers for what a vocalist could do in metal as Bob Dylan did in rock n' roll. He doesn't have Tom Araya's range or James Hetfield's force, but neither of those singers--or almost anyone else, really--could handle a song like "Sweating Bullets" without being laughed off. For decades, talented singers have been embarrassing themselves by trying to talk their way through a song (Bono in the middle of The Joshua Tree comes to mind). But somehow when Mustaine starts talking, he turns "Sweating Bullets" into one of Megadeth's biggest hits.
Maybe it's that he's convincingly insane. We didn't know how far off the deep end he'd go until he became a born again Christian, but when he starts talking to himself ("Hello me, meet the real me...Hello me, it's me again...Well me, it's nice talking to myself!") it doesn't sound like he's faking it. That main riff, which more than one reviewer has compared to the comic rimshot, is underplayed by Megadeth standards, emphasizing that the leader might actually have lost his mind. But this song is all about the unforgettable vocal performance from Mustaine, back when he was vocally gifted and likably crazy. He'd never be asked to join Yngwie Malmsteen's band, but that's not the kind of singer Megadeth needed anyway.
*Non-fans would probably say his hair.
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Dissidents
How does one make a political metal mix for someone who already has "War Pigs," "Peace Sells," "Cult of Personality" and "Bring the Noise?"
Dissidents
I ended up pulling up a little from everything. This is for someone who probably agrees with Cattle Decapitation philosophically if not melodically, so I'm throwing down the biggest metal trump cards. I picked "Blackened" over the other ...And Justice for All contenders by virtue of the fact that it rocks the hardest, and "Symphony of Destruction" for not having a verse about the Punisher, plus being still sadly relevant in an era of Morsis and Putins. Sepultura's "Kaiowas" landed here for proving that a metal band didn't need amps, or even lyrics, to send a message about forced evictions of natives in Brazil. I also dug up "We Care a Lot" from Faith No More's pre-Mike Patton days, a gleefully incisive takedown of the Live Aid and "We Are the World" celebrities which I'd still pit against anything Bono and Bob Geldof are doing today. I'll add that "We Care a Lot" predated The Book of Mormon ("I am Africa") and Get Him to the Greek ("African Child (Trapped in Me)") by at least 20 years.
More recently, the Political Metal flag has been raised by French progressive environmetalists (sic) Gojira and relentlessly confrontational deathgrinders Misery Index, the latter of whom earn the Thomas Paine and John Brown references on "Traitors" by being one of the only metal bands to put as much care into their lyrics as their music. But my favorite is Revocation, whom match their politically-charged lyrics (they recently debuted a song called "Fracked") with the most sophisticated metal that these ears have found over the past few years. "Pestilence Reigns," a chilling depiction of air raids, solves all of my problems with neo-thrash and technical death metal, giving the former a death metal makeover and the later a sense of songwriting direction.
Finally, I couldn't put together a political metal mix without including the most controversial metal single of all time. If you haven't heard it, that's because it's been banned from CD release since 1992.
Dissidents
- Metallica, "Blackened"
- System of a Down, "B.Y.O.B."
- Faith No More, "We Care a Lot"
- Living Colour, "Pride"
- Guns N' Roses, "Civil War"
- Suicidal Tendencies, "Send Me Your Money"
- Marilyn Manson, "The Love Song"
- Saul Williams, "List of Demands (Reparations)"
- Lamb of God, "As the Palaces Burn"
- Revocation, "Pestilence Reigns"
- Megadeth, "Symphony of Destruction"
- Ministry, "Thieves"
- Gojira, "Vacuity"
- Motörhead, "God Save the Queen"
- Sepultura, "Kaiowas"
- Rage Against the Machine, "Wake Up"
- Body Count, "Cop Killer"
- Misery Index, "Traitors"
I ended up pulling up a little from everything. This is for someone who probably agrees with Cattle Decapitation philosophically if not melodically, so I'm throwing down the biggest metal trump cards. I picked "Blackened" over the other ...And Justice for All contenders by virtue of the fact that it rocks the hardest, and "Symphony of Destruction" for not having a verse about the Punisher, plus being still sadly relevant in an era of Morsis and Putins. Sepultura's "Kaiowas" landed here for proving that a metal band didn't need amps, or even lyrics, to send a message about forced evictions of natives in Brazil. I also dug up "We Care a Lot" from Faith No More's pre-Mike Patton days, a gleefully incisive takedown of the Live Aid and "We Are the World" celebrities which I'd still pit against anything Bono and Bob Geldof are doing today. I'll add that "We Care a Lot" predated The Book of Mormon ("I am Africa") and Get Him to the Greek ("African Child (Trapped in Me)") by at least 20 years.
More recently, the Political Metal flag has been raised by French progressive environmetalists (sic) Gojira and relentlessly confrontational deathgrinders Misery Index, the latter of whom earn the Thomas Paine and John Brown references on "Traitors" by being one of the only metal bands to put as much care into their lyrics as their music. But my favorite is Revocation, whom match their politically-charged lyrics (they recently debuted a song called "Fracked") with the most sophisticated metal that these ears have found over the past few years. "Pestilence Reigns," a chilling depiction of air raids, solves all of my problems with neo-thrash and technical death metal, giving the former a death metal makeover and the later a sense of songwriting direction.
Finally, I couldn't put together a political metal mix without including the most controversial metal single of all time. If you haven't heard it, that's because it's been banned from CD release since 1992.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Steven Tyler: J-j-jaded
A few weeks into its shelf life, Aerosmith's new album has fallen off the charts without a hit that Columbia Records didn't pay for. None of the shows on their current tour have been selling out. Steven Tyler is reportedly blaming the label, which is easy to understand. He's made bad albums (Just Push Play, Nine Lives) and released overwrought singles before ("I Don't Want to Miss a Thing"), but those have been hits, too. Why not Music From Another Dimension?
Honestly, it's no worse than the past few Aerosmith albums, maybe even a little better. But for the first time ever, people know that Aerosmith isn't Steven Tyler's top priority. He's been pushing back this album for six years so that he could spent two seasons as an American Idol judge, promote a self-congratulatory autobio, star in a Hilfiger ad campaign and indulge himself with a solo project that was embarrassing enough to include a Pussycat Doll. In the past month, he's flung himself into feuds with Nicki Minaj (presumably for relevance) and KISS (presumably, shockingly, for credibility) to drum up publicity. Maybe these aren't the most egregious acts ever committed by a formerly great musician, but the fact is that they seem like all he's been doing. Now that Aerosmith's first studio album in eight years is finally out, it feels like an afterthought to years of Steven being Steven.
People don't want to listen to Aerosmith if Steven Tyler doesn't act like he wants to be there. Music fans want to know that their artists are putting thought into their work. "Jaded" may be no "Back in the Saddle," but it felt like Tyler giving it his best shot, which is all he really owes us in exchange for our attention. Music From Another Dimension sounds like he mailed in his vocal tracks from Bermuda. As Rolling Stone's critic pointed out, "Sometimes it's easy to hear that Tyler and his bandmates aren't on the same page, or the same planet. When he duets with his fellow American Idol alum Carrie Underwood for 'Can't Stop Loving You' (rhymes with 'because it's all I wanna do'), it sounds like the rest of Aerosmith is off hiding in the next studio."
For all his career missteps, Mick Jagger is foremost a Stone. Even Bono has gone on record as saying that his music is more important to him than his philanthropy, which is exactly as it should be. Who would want to listen to the biggest rock star in the world if he'd rather be someplace else? Steven Tyler should ask himself the same question as Music From Another Dimension sinks into America's bargain bins.
(Music that actually sounds like it came from another dimension)
Honestly, it's no worse than the past few Aerosmith albums, maybe even a little better. But for the first time ever, people know that Aerosmith isn't Steven Tyler's top priority. He's been pushing back this album for six years so that he could spent two seasons as an American Idol judge, promote a self-congratulatory autobio, star in a Hilfiger ad campaign and indulge himself with a solo project that was embarrassing enough to include a Pussycat Doll. In the past month, he's flung himself into feuds with Nicki Minaj (presumably for relevance) and KISS (presumably, shockingly, for credibility) to drum up publicity. Maybe these aren't the most egregious acts ever committed by a formerly great musician, but the fact is that they seem like all he's been doing. Now that Aerosmith's first studio album in eight years is finally out, it feels like an afterthought to years of Steven being Steven.
People don't want to listen to Aerosmith if Steven Tyler doesn't act like he wants to be there. Music fans want to know that their artists are putting thought into their work. "Jaded" may be no "Back in the Saddle," but it felt like Tyler giving it his best shot, which is all he really owes us in exchange for our attention. Music From Another Dimension sounds like he mailed in his vocal tracks from Bermuda. As Rolling Stone's critic pointed out, "Sometimes it's easy to hear that Tyler and his bandmates aren't on the same page, or the same planet. When he duets with his fellow American Idol alum Carrie Underwood for 'Can't Stop Loving You' (rhymes with 'because it's all I wanna do'), it sounds like the rest of Aerosmith is off hiding in the next studio."
For all his career missteps, Mick Jagger is foremost a Stone. Even Bono has gone on record as saying that his music is more important to him than his philanthropy, which is exactly as it should be. Who would want to listen to the biggest rock star in the world if he'd rather be someplace else? Steven Tyler should ask himself the same question as Music From Another Dimension sinks into America's bargain bins.
Saturday, October 27, 2012
For Your Ears Only
What do Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White all have in common?
They've all played on James Bond movie themes.
20-year-old studio musician Jimmy Page got the gig of a lifetime when he was called in to record the guitar part for the theme to 1964's Goldfinger. His contribution gets buried under Shirley Bassey's vocals and some truly abysmal lyrics, but hearing a pre-stardom Page on a John Barry melody is worth the price of admission.
Clearly inspired by Bassey's "Goldinger," Bono and the Edge wrote 1995's Goldeneye theme for Tina Turner to sing. As a composition, it's not as memorable as the movie theme that Bono and the Edge wrote for themselves the same year, but "Goldeneye" works as both a vehicle for Tina Turner and a showcase for the film's opening credits.
Jack White's "Another Way to Die," recorded with Alicia Keys for Quantum of Solace, seems like a great idea. White's minimalistic touch seems the perfect antidote to Keys' gloss, and it sounds great for the first 20 seconds. Then, kind of like the movie itself, the song meanders into an aimless drag, reminding us why White never needed horns or a string section before.
None of these songs are up to par with Led Zeppelin, U2, the White Stripes, John Barry's original theme or even this guy with too much time on his hands. But it's fun to hear Page, the Edge and Jack White all outside of their comfort zones.
They've all played on James Bond movie themes.
20-year-old studio musician Jimmy Page got the gig of a lifetime when he was called in to record the guitar part for the theme to 1964's Goldfinger. His contribution gets buried under Shirley Bassey's vocals and some truly abysmal lyrics, but hearing a pre-stardom Page on a John Barry melody is worth the price of admission.
Clearly inspired by Bassey's "Goldinger," Bono and the Edge wrote 1995's Goldeneye theme for Tina Turner to sing. As a composition, it's not as memorable as the movie theme that Bono and the Edge wrote for themselves the same year, but "Goldeneye" works as both a vehicle for Tina Turner and a showcase for the film's opening credits.
Jack White's "Another Way to Die," recorded with Alicia Keys for Quantum of Solace, seems like a great idea. White's minimalistic touch seems the perfect antidote to Keys' gloss, and it sounds great for the first 20 seconds. Then, kind of like the movie itself, the song meanders into an aimless drag, reminding us why White never needed horns or a string section before.
None of these songs are up to par with Led Zeppelin, U2, the White Stripes, John Barry's original theme or even this guy with too much time on his hands. But it's fun to hear Page, the Edge and Jack White all outside of their comfort zones.
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