Living Colour, "Solace of You"

I saw Living Colour earlier this week, and have been on a kick ever since. I thought it would be a good nostalgia show, and it was--their energy and musicianship is always first rate. But the songs also held up much better than I remembered. "Cult of Personality" is deservedly a classic, but the range of tracks they performed from Vivid and Time's Up made me wonder why both of those records are underrated in 2014.

My co-attendee commented on how surprisingly diverse their influences are, and that may have something to do with it. A band that covers Robert Johnson, Talking Heads, "Amazing Grace," MC5 and James Brown all in the same night is bound to alienate someone. The hipsters who know "Cult of Personality" probably lump it in with Megadeth and the other thrash metal bands they ignore, and headbangers who bought Vivid likely wanted more meat and potatoes rocking. But for those of us who enjoy more than one type of music, Living Colour offers a plethora of riches.

"Solace of You," from Time's Up, sounds like it could have been written and recorded for Paul Simon's Graceland. Living Colour are often wrongly described as "funk metal" (or worse, rap-metal) by people who don't know how to handle the individuality of an all-black rock band. But more so, Living Colour gave metal a stronger sense of African-American tropes and history than any other band, exhibited by the American Afrobeat of "Solace of You." Not only did they bring something to the game that distinguished them from Metallica and Guns N' Roses, but they beat (and bested) Vampire Weekend and tUnE-yArDs to these polyrythms by about 18 years.

Alice Cooper, "We're All (Clones)"

Few things piss off metalheads like the idea that their favorite musicians are hopping trends. KISS fans pretend that their disco song doesn't exist, even though it's one of their biggest hits. Machine Head's nu-metal years, the Page-Coverdale album and "Turbo Lover" are derided by everyone who remembers them. Even when a band jumps between sub-mainstream genres, such as the metalcore incarnation of Cryptopsy or Morbid Angel's industrial album, one would think that they'd have teamed up with Justin Bieber for the amount of bile that gets thrown their way. In the eyes of some headbangers, they may never redeem themselves.

But what if the trend-hopping songs are really great?



By 1980, Alice Cooper had already spent a few years releasing rehab-inspired ballads and rehashes of his early '70s ragers. But he roared back to life with "We're All (Clones)," a shameless jump onto the new wave bandwagon. Alice gets right into character with a piping sythesizer and reserved delivery to match Gary Numan's. Overzealous rock critics might point out that Alice was mocking the too-cool new wavers by aligning himself with clones. Maybe it was his chance to get back at Talking Heads, whose "Psycho Killer" was inspired by Billion Dollar Babies. More likely, he's just having fun being a robot.