"Lights, please"

1. Run-D.M.C., "Christmas in Hollis"
2. The Waitresses, "Christmas Wrapping"
3. Vince Guaraldi Trio, "Christmas Time is Here"
4. Big Star, "Jesus Christ"
5. Donny Hathaway, "This Christmas"
6. Eels, "Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas"
7. The Pogues, "Fairytale of New York"
8. Otis Redding, "Merry Christmas Baby"
9. Joni Mitchell, "River"
10. Harry Nilsson, "Remember (Christmas)"
11. Elvis Presley, "Blue Christmas"
12. John Prine, "Christmas in Prison"
13. The Pretenders, "2000 Miles"
14. The Tall Pines, "Christmas Morning Coming Down"
15. Local H, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"
16. The Kinks, "Father Christmas"
17. Jackson 5, "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town"
18. Wham!, "Last Christmas"
19. Bob Dylan, "Here Comes Santa Claus"
20. Tom Waits, "Christmas Card from a Hooker In Minneapolis"
21. Sinéad O'Connor, "Silent Night"
22. Ramones, "Merry Christmas (I Don't Wanna Fight Tonight)"
23. Morphine, "Sexy Christmas Baby Mine"
24. Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Deck the Halls"

For RAB.

Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Higher Ground"

For Hari.

Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Deck the Halls"

Five Great Songs from the Say Anything... Soundtrack (that aren't "In Your Eyes" or "Joe Lies")

My sister once declared that Say Anything..., which turns 25 today, was a definitive chick flick that guys will watch (she phrased it more eruditely than that, but you get the idea). She's right--maybe it's Cameron Crowe's screenplay, or the way it captures the aches of the male crush, or its creation of a world where a guy who spends his Saturday nights at a Gas 'n' Sip could date a girl that looked like Ione Skye. There's something about Say Anything... that gets through to the lunkheaded heterosexual male, more than perhaps any other film in Netflix's Rom Com section.

As with every Crowe film, us music nerds get the bonus of a killer soundtrack, doused with everything from Aerosmith's "Back in the Saddle" to Mother Love Bone and Soundgarden two years before the grunge boom (which Crowe went on to capture in his next movie, Singles). Of course Say Anything... is best known for the Peter Gabriel song in its most famous scene, and Lili Taylor's odes to her callous ex are probably a distant second, but its soundtrack has a trove of less-famous gems worth celebrating today.

1. Living Colour, "Cult of Personality"

It's a classic today, though there was no way of knowing that in 1989, when Living Colour were a relatively new band under producer Mick Jagger's wing. They're still a ferocious live band, and Vernon Reid is universally acknowledged as one of the world's greatest guitar players, but this is deservedly their most enduring song.



2. Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Taste the Pain"

Another band on the cusp of megastardom when Crowe picked them for Lloyd Dobler's tape deck, the Chili Peppers were streamlining the disjointed funk rock of their earliest albums on "Taste the Pain," showing hints of the songmanship that was about to peak on Blood Sugar Sex Magik.



3. Depeche Mode, "Stripped"

Like Crowe himself, Depeche Mode were experts at taking the artsy underdog to the mainstream, being lonely enough for Cusack types and sexy enough for the rest of the world. Arguably the male musical equivalent of "a brain trapped in the body of a game-show hostess."



4. Fishbone, "Skankin' to the Beat"

Now that ska has been raided and exhausted beyond repair, "Skankin' to the Beat" should be as dated as Fishbone's cameo in Back to the Beach. Thankfully, its got enough of a new wave touch to earn its spot in the graduation party scene, and justify the Fishbone logo on Lloyd Dobler's shirt.



5. The Replacements, "Within in Your Reach"

Crowe dug this one out from the second half of the Replacements' messiest album, where it hid next to a drunken cover of "The Twist." Performed entirely by Paul Westerberg, "Within Your Reach" is the only song in Say Anything... that sounds like something Lloyd Dobler would actually write, though I'm glad Crowe made him a kickboxing instructor instead.

Müsic for Airpörts

Müsic for Airpörts

1. Pearl Jam, "Given to Fly"
2. Iron Maiden, "Aces High"
3. Ozzy Osbourne, "Flying High Again"
4. Blackalicious, "First in Flight"
5. Liz Phair, "Stratford-On-Guy"
6. Howlin' Wolf, "Mr. Airplane Man"
7. Eels, "Blinking Lights (For Me)"
8. Neutral Milk Hotel, "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea"
9. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, "Learning to Fly"
10. The Rolling Stones, "Connection"
11. Motörhead, "Bomber"
12. The Cramps, "Mystery Plane"
13. Beastie Boys & Biz Markie, "Bennie and the Jets"
14. Marvin Gaye, "Flying High (In the Friendly Sky)"
15. Heatmiser, "Low-Flying Jets"
16. Björk, "Aeroplane"
17. Joni Mitchell, "This Flight Tonight"
18. Neil Young, "Expecting to Fly"
19. Led Zeppelin, "Night Flight"
20. Queensrÿche, "Jet City Woman"
21. Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Aeroplane"
22. Hüsker Dü, "Private Plane"

For Olena, somewhere between New York and Iceland.

Funky Monks

It's unlikely that the Red Hot Chili Peppers' just-announced Super Bowl halftime performance will go down as a highlight in their career. Some might even see it as their downfall, the moment when a group of counterculture icons became safe enough to be disgracefully billed as Bruno Mars' special guests on the world's least spontaneous rock show, performing between scores of $5 million commercials. I'm sure we'll get some depressing internet quotes on the inevitable "Who are the Red Hot Chili Peppers?" Tumblr page that will pop up during the week of the show.



To remind yourself why the Chili Peppers matter, check out Funky Monks, now up on YouTube. This beautifully-filmed documentary captures the band at their creative peak, writing and recording Blood Sugar Sex Magik at Errol Flynn's old home in Laurel Canyon. Each of the Peppers (and producer Rick Rubin, working with them for the first time) take turns being the smartest and the stupidest guys in the room, all probably stoned and somehow sculpting a few melodies into songs like "Under the Bridge" and "Give it Away." Director/cinematographer Gavin Bowden unfortunately never made another movie, but rarely has any filmmaker ever captured such an intimate look at an all-time great rock album.

Back to School

Back to School

1. The Smiths, "The Headmaster Ritual"
2. Van Halen, "Hot for Teacher"
3. Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, "School Days" 
4. The Mountain Goats, "Fall of the Star High School Running Back"
5. John Lee Hooker, "Teachin' the Blues"
6. Chuck Berry, "School Days"
7. The Replacements, "Fuck School"
8. Kanye West, "School Spirit"
9. The Dubliners, "Schoolday's Over"
10. Nirvana, "School"
11. Venom, "Teacher's Pet" 
12. Otis Redding, "Stay in School (Radio Spot)"
13. James Brown, "Don't Be a Dropout"
14. Paul Simon, "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard"
15. Elvis Costello & the Attractions, "Chemistry Class" 
16. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Catholic School Girls Rule"
17. Jerry Lee Lewis, "High School Confidential"
18. Muddy Waters, "Good Morning Little School Girl"
19. Jethro Tull, "Teacher"
20. Leonard Cohen, "Teachers"
21. The Ramones, "Rock 'n' Roll High School"
22. Pearl Jam, "Jeremy"
23. Deftones, "Pink Maggit"
24. Pink Floyd, "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2"
25. Gwar, "School's Out"

Five Great Videos of Fans Meeting Musicians

1. Crazy Russian Guy flips out over Dave Mustaine

Be sure to watch this one with subtitles. My favorite part is when he re-enacts one of Mustaine's legendary alleged fistfights. How often is Dave Mustaine the second-craziest guy in the room? Maybe not even here.



2. Black Sabbath Super Fan

This video of a Chris Farley-type meeting Dio-era Sabbath went viral a few years ago, to the point where if you yell out "THE GODS ARE HERE!" at a metal show, at least half the attendees will know what you're talking about.



3. Acrassicauda meets James Hetfield

All of you need to watch Heavy Metal in Baghdad, the tense and touching doc about four Iraqi headbangers fighting the Hussein dictatorship's ban on heavy metal in one of the most dangerous parts of the world. Thankfully, the boys were granted refugee status in the United States, where they met James Hetfield and made some of the greatest faces that I've ever seen.



4. Crashing with Andrew W.K.

This could be an entire list of Andrew W.K. encounters, who even hosted his own MTV2 show specifically about meeting and helping fans, Your Friend, Andrew W.K. That concept, however, may have stemmed from Crashing with Andrew W.K., a special where our host spent a few days in a girls' dorm at North Carolina Central University. This idea deserves a full-length movie.





5. The Red Hot Chili Peppers on FANatic

Nobody talks about FANatic anymore, but in the late '90s it was one of the last watchable programs on MTV. Every episode gave a few megafans a chance to meet their heroes, and of course the craziest fanatic was there for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Keep an eye on that clipboard, and be sure to stick around for the ending. If any of you can track this guy down, please tell me what he's up to.

Song of the Day: Suicidal Tendencies, "I Wasn't Meant to Feel This/Asleep at the Wheel"

Suicidal Tendencies are best known for a song about being institutionalized, but this is the song that makes the case that they actually needed it.



ST started as a punk rock band, but by 1992's The Art of Rebellion they were writing two-part, seven-minute psychedelic-metal songs for a major label. By description, "Asleep at the Wheel" should be an embarrassment, but instead it's a genuinely chilling track, with studio effects that recall "I Am the Walrus," and an "ay-ay-ay" rejoinder that will stay in your head for hours. Mike Muir turns out to be a surprisingly good singer, and Robert Trujillo's bass at the forefront suggests the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the start of a bad trip. The Vandals' Josh Freese provides crash cymbal magic here on his way to being one of the America's most in-demand session drummers. Be careful where you sleep tonight.

Idiot Rock Stars

Reactions to Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong shipping himself to rehab last month were even more predictable than the the chord changes on ¡Uno!. There was schadenfreude, most embarrassingly from fellow musicians (Trevor Dunn and the Faceless' Michael Keene among them) who publicized their jealousy with potshots at Armstrong's bank and playing ability. But just as bad was the applause that Armstrong got, for, to paraphrase the most of the cyberverse, "the most punk rock thing he's done in ages."

American Idiots vs. "American Idiot"

Debates over what is and is not punk are fruitless. What I am more concerned about is why we want our rock stars to be idiots.

How many times have you heard it about Green Day, the Beastie Boys, Metallica, Van Halen, the Red Hot Chili Peppers or Guns N' Roses? "I liked them better when they acted like idiots." Better when they were drunk or stoned. Better when they were inciting riots. Before they collaborated with the San Francisco Symphony.

People who applauded Green Day for turning Woodstock '94 into a mudfight and naming an album Dookie chickened out on the band once they got a Broadway musical. Nostalgia for "Fight for Your Right to Party" still runs higher than that for Tibetan Freedom-era Beasties. Metallica were ridiculed last year for collaborating on an album about expressionist, fin de siècle German theatre, but all was forgiven when they opened their concerts this year with "Hit the Lights" ("No life 'til leather, gonna kick some ass tonight.")

Part of it is the still absurdly overused "the old stuff is better" screed, which shouldn't matter to anyone with enough perspective to realize that "Give it Away" wasn't in any way effected by "The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie." It's understandable to pine for our favorite artists to keep making great music, but why do people relate that creativity to idiocy?

Is it an inferiority complex to people who found success by following their dreams? Ignorance to the fact that guys who played slackers in the "Longview" video but somehow had gotten two records out on a prominent indie-punk label weren't actually slackers? Just something we associate with being young? Discuss.

Toadies at Webster Hall

It has never been this cool or important to be a Toady or a Helmeteer, not even in 1994. In grunge's wake, Todd Lewis and Page Hamilton's bands were a pair of Johnny-come-latelys, alternative also-rans in an arena with Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. But with the current '90s nostalgia wave earning even Marcy Playground more press and bigger tours than ever before (see Gabrielle Moss' terrific piece on this subject for GQ), the Toadies and Helmet were able to pack Webster Hall on their co-headlining tour last Thursday. 10 years ago, both of them would have been lucky to book the Mercury Lounge.



Much of Helmet's appeal is in how little they care. Not that they weren't professional--Hamilton's D-tuned riffs lost none of their precision, and his band of hired guns recreated the sounds of Meantime and Betty as well as they could be asked. But Hamilton, a 52-year-old jazz guitarist who found his niche in keep-it-simple alterna-metal, gave likeably self-assured banter between songs, joking on the audience's song requests and assuring us that he was more interested in a nap than in getting action. No one at the show would blame him, specially after the workout finale of "Meantime."



The Toadies' Pixietallica stylings have aged well, especially now that they're no longer sharing FM radio time with third rate Black Album and Doolittle fallout. Songs like "Heel" and "Mister Love" brought the crowd into minor moshing, and non-hits like "I Come From the Water" and "Tyler" are more singable than you remember. A song from their new album was respectfully received and forgotten, but most of the set was dedicated to Rubberneck, the Toadies' hit debut which included singles like "Away," "Backslider" and most memorably, "Possum Kingdom" a predatory love anthem elevated by Lewis' psychosexual howl, a distinctly aggressive and tuneful voice that has always been the band's best asset.

After teasing us with a few measures of Bell Biv DeVoe's "Poison" (to remind us who they were really up against) and Helmet's "Unsung" (earning them an affable offstage finger from Hamilton), the Toadies closed with "I Burn," finalizing their pitch for Rubberneck's greatness. Who knows--give it a few decades and it could be Odessey and Oracle.

Appetite for Destruction: "Rocket Queen"

Let's get it out of the way. This is the song where Axl Rose had sex with Steve Adler's girlfriend.



The first time that I heard "Rocket Queen," I was listening to Appetite for Destruction on headphones, the whole way through. My first thought during the instrumental section was was "What is this?" My second was "I'd better not let my parents hear this."

Years after that first listen, Rolling Stone tracked down Adriana Smith, the 19-year-old girl whose climaxes ended up selling 28 million copies worldwide. "I would do anything Axl asked me to do," said Smith, now a mom in her 40s. "He's fuckin' magical."

That's exactly why we like Axl Rose. Steve Adler is certainly not infallible (he was on his way to being kicked out of GNR for, amazingly, drug abuse. If you watch him talk today, you can tell.) But he was the one being wronged here. Yet Axl can sleep with Steve's girlfriend, record it for the world to hear and still be the one that we like more. It's a little bit like explaining why Bill Clinton's approval ratings, book sales and speaking engagements always outperform Hillary's.

The Clinton comparison isn't an original one. Lars Ulrich, one of the most famous musicians in the world who still has to answer questions about Axl Rose, once made this claim:

"When he was in a good mood, he was the sweetest guy, and when he forgot to take his medicine or decided to go off, he was kind of a freak. He was the last person I've ever seen, though, besides maybe Bill Clinton, that when he walked into a room every single person was drawn to him. That's a rare thing." 

Is it fair that Axl sleeps with his bandmates' girlfriends, cancels shows on seconds' notice, wears t-shirts with Charles Manson's face, calls Slash "a cancer" and still has money, adoration and respect thrown at him? Of course not, but we all understand why he can. Ian MacKaye never has to defend himself against assault charges or bigotry accusations, and by all accounts he treats his fans, friends and bandmates well. But his music is also never as rewarding as Axl's.

I want to shower "Rocket Queen" in all the flowery language that my Liberal Arts degree can come up with. The funk rock progression that the Chili Peppers lifted for "Naked in the Rain," the entrancing vocal melody and most of all the lovely final movement, as surprisingly uplifting as the ending to (classic movie spoiler alert), deserve all the awe that music can get. But I can't express why as well as Adriana Smith did in Rolling Stone.

The Other F Word

Even if Warped Tour bands leave you cold, or if you can't tell the difference between Black Flag and Blink 182, you'll find something to like about The Other F Word.



Directed by Andrea Blaugrund Nevins and distributed by Oscilloscope (Adam Yauch's company), The Other F Word follows Fat Mike, Lars Frederiksen, Jim Lindberg and several other punk rock dads while they balance their anti-authority principles with their authoritative new roles as parents. Watching conspicuously pierced and tattooed dudes taking their kids to the park and singing "Wheels on the Bus" should be a novelty, but thankfully the film never gets sappy. Instead, we get a thoughtful look at punk rock growing up, told with respect for both the genre and the families.

I love this clip with Flea and his daughter, Clara. I've been following the Red Hot Chili Peppers for long enough to know what a smart guy he is, but hearing him talk about "the classic parent attitude" vs. his own gave me a new level of respect for him. What a champ.



Mall-punks will watch the trailer and assume that this is an anti-punk, pro-families doctrine. They can stick to Hot Topic while the rest of us enjoy The Other F Word. Stream the full movie below:

Song of the Day: Fishbone, "Sunless Saturday"

No one still needs to learn that happy music isn't written by happy people. Yet there's something shocking about all the misery in Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone, the Laurence Fishburne-narrated documentary about the world's most transcendent ska band. 



Onstage, Fishbone are a jubilant blast of acrobatics, stage dives and and singalongs, sons of James Brown and fathers of Andrew W.K. Watching peers (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Primus) and followers (Sublime, No Doubt) find the success that eludes Fishbone is sad, but seeing middle-aged Angelo Moore move back in with his mom, bassist Norwood Fisher charged with kidnapping the band's Rapture-pushing guitarist and nearly-empty record store signings for a band that once performed on SNL is downright disheartening. It's funny to watch no one show up to an Anvil show, but only because Anvil got a second chance.

Before Kendall Jones started believing that his bandmates were demons, he wrote one of Fishbone's best songs, "Sunless Saturday."



Fishbone were on a major label (but not for much longer) and had the budget to get Spike Lee to direct their music video. To Lee's credit, it catches some of the frenzied excitement of a Fishbone show without ever looking like a concert movie.

"Sunless Saturday" is heavy, in the way that something with horns and major key progressions can still sound like helter skelter. The melody's controlled chaos makes me wonder how the band lasted ten years before someone went insane.

It's isn't punk, funk, metal or ska--Wikipedia calls it "alternative," which confirms that no one really knew what to do with Fishbone. Everyday Sunshine interviewees argue that they "were too black," "weren't black enough," "were too ahead of their time" or "should have been less of a democracy," the latter point being the only one that Fishbone's records back up. But everyone seems to agree on "Sunless Saturday."