Honestly, I try to be nice. . .

Music review: The Strokes try to find their way back

By The Burg Staff on Mar. 30, 2011
BY MATT ASHARE
To alter a quip from Ben Franklin, in this world nothing can be certain but death, taxes, and the inevitability that rock music will from time to time circle back to find renewal in the past.
In the fall of 1991, it was Nirvana who exploded convention by restating the suburban teen angst of punk in terms that captured something essential about the alienation of the times, ushering in the rebirth of a certain brand of aggressive “guitar rock.“
Ten years later, in the fall of 2001, the out-of-nowhere emergence of an odd little band from New York City — the Strokes — heralded the re-emergence of another particular brand of retro guitar rock that, ah, captured something essential about the alienation of the times ... or something like that.
     If Nirvana got their point across with bolded, arena-sized hooks and confessional, if often oblique lyrics, then the Strokes delivered their message in italics, with slanted melodies and the enchanting vocals of Julian Casablancas, a master of debauched elegance with a gift for singing in subtext.
     Spurred on by early British hype that proclaimed the NYC fivesome rightful heirs to the downtown cool of the Velvet Underground and “Walk on the Wild Side” Lou Reed, the Strokes employed a scaled-down, underproduced aesthetic that created the impression they’d arisen fully formed from the garage — or, in this case, a cramped Lower East Side rehearsal — on their RCA debut, “Is This It” (no question mark needed).

     Unlike Cobain, who came out of nowheresville with the flannel shirts to prove it and a giant chip on his shoulder, the Strokes were privileged prep-school kids slumming it in second-hand-store black with affected yet intense nonchalance that was intoxicating. I mean, there’s just something so blithely charming about the way Casablancas slurs his way through “Last Nite,“ one of several stand-outs on “Is This It,“ and a song that, amid insistent, even upbeat guitars, essentially can’t be bothered to care about a girlfriend who feels “so let down” and “so left out.“
     A lot has happened to the Strokes in the past decade, most of it not so great. Following up “Is This It” was indeed a tall order, but bleeding the seedy out of the cleaned-up 2003 disc “Room On Fire” and 2006’s even cleaner “First Impressions of Earth” was just a bad move.
In the wake of declining record sales, the band opted for a “much needed break,“ which left rhythm guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. free to pursue his own pop pursuits on two adequate solo albums and led Casablancas to explore the dance floor in his own wry manner on 2009’s “Phrazes For the Young.“ Still, I was hopeful when I heard that the Strokes had regrouped to record their fourth album. One can always hope. . .
    It’s not that there’s nothing to admire about the new “Angles.“ For one, Nick Valensi has developed into a formidable lead guitarist. And the band locks into the same propulsive groove on “Under Cover of Darkness” that drove “Last Nite” home, even if it’s a kinder Casablancas who earnestly croons “I’m tired of all your friends listening at your door/And I want, what’s better for you.“ (On “Last Nite” he at least sounded tired.) When synths mix with guitars on “Two Kinds of Happiness,“ Casablancas affects an arch deadpan that brings to mind the Cars. And then Valensi steps all over the song with far too much noodling, as he does way too often on “Angles.“
     In the end, I found myself humming “Last Nite,“ which is just another way of saying thanks to the Strokes for reminding me to go back and spend some quality time with “Is This It.“
Ashare is a freelance writer based in Lynchburg and former music editor for The Boston Phoenix. http://www.the-burg.com/blogit/entry/music_review_the_strokes_try_to_find_their_way_back http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/music/other_stories/documents/04726984.asp

R.E.M. COLLAPSE INTO NOW

Music review: R.E.M. Return To Form With “Collapse Into Now”

By The Burg Staff on Mar. 23, 2011
By Matt Ashare
The first time I gave up on R.E.M. was back in ’88, when they released “Green,” an all-too-conventional “pop” album that seemed to undermine everything the band stood for.
I mean, here were the guys who essentially created the template for indie rock — punk inverted into a kind of thoughtful, sensitive, yet still subversive folk-inflected rock, an enticing whisper rather than a threatening scream — blatantly mugging for the masses on the MTV-ready single “Stand.” Argh!
    But I got over it: although it may best be remembered for the upbeat “Shiny Happy People,” 1991’s “Out Of Time,” which won one of the first Grammys for “Best Alternative Music Album,” was redolent with moody mystery, insinuating melodies, and lyrics that were cryptically poetic enough to get me back on board. Besides, by then the notion of “selling out” had lost any real meaning and the idea of Pete Buck as guitar hero and Michael Stipe as international pop star was at least amusing, if not inspiring.
     My second fallout with R.E.M. was more severe. I’ve never begrudged a band of R.E.M.‘s stature for experimental detours — U2 worked through their misguided mid-’90s electronica flirtations and wound up with “Beautiful Day.” But when Bill Berry, the band’s original drummer retired in 1997, Stipe, Buck, and bassist Mike Mills just seemed lost. The subsequent album, “Up,” was an amorphous, impenetrable downer that set the band adrift. I wasn’t even particularly aroused by the rousing, politicized, hard guitar-driven “Accelerate,” the perhaps too finely focused 2008 disc that, to these ears, oversold the concept that R.E.M. were back on solid green ground.
     Now, maybe it’s a misreading (that’s half the fun of parsing Stipe’s best lyrics), but “I was wrong/I have been laughable wrong” sure sounds like an apology to me. That’s a line from “Discoverer,” the pounding opening track of R.E.M.‘s new “Collapse Into Now.”
Buck’s guitar rings mightily, Mills thumps along melodically, and Stipe’s practically testifying as big chords coalesce around a bigger backbeat. “That just the slightest bit of finesse/Might have made a little less mess/But it was what it was/Let’s all get on with it, now,” he sings with warmth, humor, and defiance.

     Buck keeps things churning as “All the Best” announces itself with Stipe shouting “So over me/So pie in my face” before making this declaration of intention: “I’ll sing in rhyme/I’ll give it one more time/I’ll show the kids how to do it/Fine, fine, fine.” Go Michael! (I’m reminded that Buck actually did show the kids how to do it earlier this year when he guested on the Decemberists’ “The King Is Dead.”)
     The guys go for gorgeous on the largely acoustic “Überlin,” the mandolin-laced “Oh My Heart,” and the yearning “It Happened Today” (featuring an Eddie Vedder cameo). And they nail it. Not sure how Canadian electro-punk provocateur Peaches found her way into the party, but she and Stipe have some infectious fun poetry slamming on “Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter.” And the original punk-poet priestess, Patti Smith, turns up singing a counterpoint to Stipe’s “Song of Myself” spoken wordings (“I am Walt Whitman proud. . . This is my time and I am thrilled to be alive, living blessed, I understand”) on the album’s closer, the feedback haunted “Blue.”
     Let’s just say that, 30 years after the nascent murmurings of R.E.M.’s arresting 1981 single “Radio Free Europe,” I’m happy to be back on board. Again.   
Ashare, a freelance writer based in Lynchburg, is a former music editor for The Boston Phoenix. http://www.the-burg.com/blogit/entry/music_review_r.e.m._return_to_form_with_collapse_into_now

A St. Paddy's Day Present from Dropkick Murphys

Springsteen lends his voice to Dropkick Murphys’ Irish-punk

By The Burg Staff on Mar. 16, 2011
By Matt Ashare
Back in ’99, the Boston-born ‘n’ bred Irish-punk juggernaut Dropkick Murphys hit the national alt-rock airwaves with “10 Years of Service,” a prescient pro-union anthem that asked “Who’s gonna save us -from this lonely picket line?/Ten years of service but I’m still not worth your time.” In 2004, their amped-up reworking of “Tessie,” a 1902 Broadway musical number, became a rallying cry for an improbable Red Sox World Series run. The following year, on “The Warrior’s Code,” it was a Woody Guthrie poem that provided raw material for the hard-hitting Celtic-rock gem “I’m Shipping Off to Boston,” a track featured prominently in Martin Scorsese’s 2006 film “The Departed.” And just a few weeks ago, the Dropkicks lent their support to protesting public union workers in Wisconsin by issuing a limited edition t-shirt adorned with the title of their latest pro-union call to arms, the blunt and folky “Take ’Em Down.”
     So maybe I should have seen Springsteen coming down the pike. That’s right, 12 songs into the 13-track “Going Out In Style,” Guthrie-loving blue-collar Bruce does his proud best to out-gruff Dropkicks’ singer Al Barr’s bulldog bark on a slamming mandolin-laced cover of the “Zeigfield Follies” ballad “Peg ‘O My Heart.” It’s just one of the high points on this fittingly raucous St. Paddy’s Day present from a band who have never been shy about mining the past for material.
     It’s been over three years since the Dropkicks’ last studio album. But bassist Ken Casey, the only remaining member from the original 1996 lineup and the guiding force behind the Dropkick Murphy ethos, has been far from idle. Instead of bashing out a dozen or so mosh-and-stomp rockers, Casey set out to create an ode to Cornelius Larkin, a fictional immigrant who leaves Ireland at 16, is drafted into the Korean War, has a bunch of kids, and is memorialized in the disc’s liner notes, an obit written by noted Boston memoirist Michael Patrick McDonald (“All Souls,” “Easter Rising”).
     It’s not clear how “Sunday Hardcore Matinee,” a loud, fast romp through the glory days of old-school, all-ages punk that has multi-instrumentalist Jeff DeRosa racing to keep up on banjo, relates to the life Larkin might have led. Or where Larkin fits into the yearning Civil War epic “Broken Hymn,” with its clarion tin whistle melody.

    But you gotta take inspiration where you find it. And “Going Out In Style” is never less than inspired. From the martial drumbeat that crashes into the wall of guitars and bagpipes on “Hang ‘Em High,” a bruising sea-chantey that wouldn’t be out of place in the hands of Davy Jones and his “Pirates of the Caribbean” crew, to the disc’s celebratory title track, a homage to Boston that references Fenway Park and Mt. Calvary cemetery, and drops the names of Mayor Menino and NOFX frontman Fat Mike amid what sounds like an impromptu funeral after-party, “Going Out In Style” is a tribute to certain simple pleasures. Raising a glass of whisky. Singing along to shout-along choruses. And, of course, hearing Springsteen channel his inner punk.http://www.the-burg.com/blogit/entry/springsteen_lends_his_voice_to_dropkick_murphys_irish-punk

Liam Gallagher Beats Brother Noel to the Punch with Beady Eye

Music review: Beady Eye Look Back Toward the Beatles

By The Burg Staff on Mar. 09, 2011
By Matt Ashare

Every couple or three years, it seems, another English band steams across the Atlantic, their bags stuffed with the kind of hyperbolic press that's a Brit-crit staple, promising a nostalgic new twist on the sounds of swinging ’60s London or class of ’77 punk. In 1994, it was Oasis, a brother fronted group who were said to have one foot defiantly planted in both eras. Singer Liam Gallagher's fuck-all sneer was definitely — no, maybe — a third cousin twice removed from Johnny Rotten's spiteful delivery; guitarist Noel Gallagher wrote hard, indelible riffs that carried more than faint echoes of the Lennon/McCartney songbook; and Oasis were saddled by over-eager scribes with the unfortunate moniker "The Sex Beatles."

       All's well that ends well, I suppose: After years of brotherly squabbling, bad behavior, and big hits, Liam and Noel went out with a bang that erupted into a fist fight on stage in France two years ago. Since then, it's been Liam, not Noel, who's been working his way back to the USA babe, with three Oasis regulars, guitarists Andy Bell and Gem Archer, and drummer Chris Sharrock, in tow. This new band of non-brothers, strapped with the rather unsavory sobriquet Beady Eye (false modesty, or was "The Liam Gallagher Project" already taken?), aren't looking to make a break with the past so much as perpetuate the brand: "Different Gear, Still Speeding," as the title of their debut suggests, makes a few minor modifications to the machinery, but Liam's not shy about steering this trusty old chasis up and down the same long and winding road Noel's always favored.

       Ok. I'll stop with the Beatles allusions. There are simply far too many Lennonesque moments on "Different Gear" to enumerate here, not to mention direct cops from "Revolver," "Imagine," etc. . . There’s even “Beatles and Stones,” a retro Faces rocker that loudly proclaims “I’m going to stand the test of time/Like Beatles and Stones.” But first, Liam lets Noel have it, with a big, banging, wall-of-guitars monolith cheekily titled "Four Letter Word," as in "I don't really know what I'm feeling/A four letter word really gets my meaning." It's 1994's Definitely, Maybe all over again, only now we know exactly who rhymes like "It's about time your mind took a holiday/You're all grown up and you don't want to play" are aimed at.

If there's a revelation here, it's that Liam and co. manage to find plenty of fine, familiar melodies without Noel's guru-like guidance. Their several stabs at “Wonderwall” grandeur culminate with Liam earnestly crooning “it’s not the end of the world, oh no/It’s not even the end of the day.” But it’s not even end of the album: “Different Gear” fades to blue with “The Morning Son,” tempting tedium with a six-minute neo-psychedelic opus that ends in a mess of drums Noel might have nixed. 
http://www.the-burg.com/blogit/entry/music_review_beady_eye_look_toward_the_beatles 

To Be or Not to Be a Radiohead Fan

http://www.the-burg.com/blogit/entry/music_review_radiohead_get_back_to_business_on_king_of_limbs

Music review: Radiohead Get Back to Business on “King of Limbs”

The Burg Staff on Mar. 02, 2011
By Matt Ashare
When we last heard from them, Radiohead — that enigmatic big little band from England — seemed bent on shaking up a business model that had stood since the dawn of vinyl. With no label support, the group invited fans to pay what they wished in 2007 for a download of “In Rainbows.” The strategy also served as an effective marketing campaign, as cultural pundits scrambled to grasp the meaning of it all. Inevitably, perhaps, the music was overshadowed by media static.
  Sitting here now, with an actual CD of “In Rainbows” nestled on a shelf next to the band’s 1993 debut, “Pablo Honey” (“Creep” anyone?) and “OK Computer,” the bold, guitar-driven 1997 album that established Radiohead as a major musical force — a subtler but no less cerebral Pink Floyd, or maybe a less overtly political heir to U2’s grand guitarscapes, with singer Thom Yorke cast as the digital age’s reigning king of pain — two thoughts come to mind. For all its airy synth textures, electro-beats, and disembodied vocals, “In Rainbows” is far more accessible, and enjoyable, than I remember. More importantly, while its original mode of distribution seemed to challenge conventional notions of what music is worth, in the end Radiohead profited from an old-school paradigm: the download, like the bygone vinyl single, was simply a loss leader — a tease — for an $80 “In Rainbows” deluxe edition, and that handsome CD on my shelf. Radiohead simply put a new twist on the tried and true.
  They’re at it again. After abruptly announcing on Valentine’s Day that a new Radiohead album, “King of Limbs,” would be available as a download the following Saturday, the band created a bigger stir by delivering the “disc” a day early. “Limbs” didn’t benefit from the big build-up to “Rainbows,” but it created a stir nonetheless. Forthcoming, in late April or early May: Vinyl and CD, as well as a deluxe “newspaper” version featuring two 10-inch vinyl disc, a CD, and over 600 pieces of “artwork.”
  With eight tracks that fly by in under 40 minutes, “Limbs” feels even more like a loss leader than “Rainbows.” Longer than most EPs, but shorter than an LP, perhaps it’s meant to suggest that, in the age of downloads and digital media services like Pandora, those analog-era designations are no longer useful. And, yet, “Limbs” does have something akin to the ebb and flow of an “album.” The first half — yes, I’m finally going to mention the music — is flush with du-jour dubstep rhythms.
  The fluttering piano the introduces the first track, “Bloom,” quickly gives way to a rushed beat that feels like it’s tripping over itself and Colin Greenwood’s nearly subsonic bass (no guitars in sight). Yorke’s apparitional voice is front and center, but the only lyric I can make out is “Open your mouth wide/Universal sigh.”
  Typical Yorke: at once inscrutable and evocative.
  Guitarists Johnny Greenwood and Ed O’Brien arrive with an insistent scratch of a riff on “Morning Mr. Magpie,” and insinuate “Little By Little” with a bit of melodic interplay.
But it’s back to scattershot drums ‘n’ bass for the wordless exercise “Feral.” And then, viola!, the white lab coats come off and we’re back on quasi-familiar ground: the piano chords of “Codex” carry faint echoes of “Karma Police”; “Lotus Flower” has the verse/chorus structure of a potential single; acoustic guitars ground “Give Up the Ghost”; and for all his mumbling, Yorke doesn’t stumble over the key line of the final track, “Separator.” With guitars swarming like pixies around his spectral falsetto, he warns, or promises, “If you think this is over, then you’re wrong.”
  The album as unending project: a business model for the 21st century. 

Boston's Dropkck Murphys Stand Up for Wisconsin Unions

Not sure I miss Boston so much as I do a certain Boston state of mind. And I can't think (right now, at least) of a better of way of summing up that sentiment than urging anyone who might happen upon this little post to follow the link below. Not going to wax poetic on the many virtues of Dropkick Murphys brand of blue collar Irish-punk. And I don't think I have the words to express how utterly wrongheaded the Republican governor of Wisconsin is. Others have held forth on his attack on unions far more eloquently than I am capable of right now. . . Oh, buy a "Take 'em Down" t-shirt from the DKMs if you can. . .  http://www.dropkickmurphys.com/2011/02/22/take-em-down-the-dropkick-murphys-stand-with-wisconsin/

Blast from the Past: Michael Jackson and Ozzy Osbourne

Here's a little blast from Pop Rocks past. Obviously it wasn't written in 2009. . . Don't remember the original pub date, but the Phoenix republished it in July of 2009. Guess someone there liked it. . .

Send in the clowns

The wacky worlds of Michael Jackson and Ozzy Osbourne

By MATT ASHARE  |  July 2, 2009

Read more: http://thephoenix.com/boston/news/85906-send-in-the-clowns/#ixzz1FNgbDNbi

TWO OF A KIND

The New York Post got to resurrect its priceless "Wacko Jacko" headline. Barbara Walters scored Super Bowl-level ratings without having to lift a pretty little finger. And Michael Jackson, well, no matter how you slice it, he got screwed royally. That's how they do it in Britain. His first mistake was to give journalist Martin Bashir access to his inner sancta – to his playground-style home, to the floor of a Las Vegas hotel that he'd rented out, to a day out with the kids (three of them) at the zoo. After all these years as a celebrity, Michael Jackson still hasn't picked up the most basic aspects of dealing with the public. He's clueless when it comes to gauging how his smallest actions will be interpreted once they've been writ large across the headlines of the world. And he seems unaware that behind the masses of adoring kids who scream for hugs and autographs wherever he turns up, there's a much larger mass of people who are repelled by him and everything he's come to represent.
  If Jackson hoped to find allies by submitting to a lengthy televised interview, he failed utterly. There will be a few people – myself among them – who feel sorrier for him than they did a few weeks ago. But as soon as someone mentions the millions of dollars he's got in the bank, that pity melts away, and you're left no longer caring what happens to Señor Wacko – especially when he's put in the context of Iraq and North Korea.
  His attorneys are, of course, claiming that it was all – the entire two hours of it – taken out of context. And maybe some of it was. But no amount of backtracking is going to undo the harm the Walters special did to his image. The shot of Michael nervously feeding his youngest kid, fumbling around in front of the camera as if not quite sure where the nipple goes. The hyperactive swing through his "favorite store" – that swanky and heroically tacky Vegas boutique full of million-dollar art objects that Michael apparently owns half of already. That moment at the zoo when he complained to his handlers that his daughter was holding his hand too tightly. The open admission that he spends a large amount of time playing and even napping with school-age children. And the straight-faced denials that he's had any kind of cosmetic surgery except, when he was pressed, two rhinoplasties that were "necessary" to improve his vocal range. Yeah, and I bought that penis enlarger so my underwear would fit better.
  The controversies have only just begun. There will be court battles and countersuits, and tonight (February 20) at 8 p.m., Fox will air Jackson's two-hour rebuttal to Bashir, Michael Jackson Take 2: The Interview They Wouldn't Show You. But the damage has already been done. We all now know what many of us had already suspected: there's something very, very wrong with Michael Jackson. And I'm not sure he'll ever be able to sing and dance his way out of this one.

  Yet there is one issue that's been overlooked in the wake of his public humiliation, and that's the allegation that he's slowly been changing his appearance over the years in order to look more "white." Given the evidence – lighter skin tone, a cleft chin, and that once broad Afro-American nose cut down to the kind of dainty, diminutive, upturned little nugget all those pretty little Lacoste-wearing WASPy girls seemed to have in junior high – it made a certain sense. But white-envy isn't Jacko's pathology – as he enters his fifth decade, it's clear that he's no race traitor. After all, he grew up in an era when white-music moguls had lost their hold on African-American stars who'd been their bread and butter since the jazz age. Black stars were coming into their own in the 70s, and there were just as many white as black performers getting screwed by the man.
  No, Jackson's surgical procedures seem to have been aimed at allowing him to maintain the face of a child. Because what he had to deal with was not overt racism but allegations of questionable dealings among his own family and his parents when it came to managing his money. Add to that the wall of yes-men and yes-women that was erected around the Jackson Five and then the solo Michael Jackson and you have the makings of an adult who's always been treated like a child, and who'd rather spend his free time with the only people he can trust – children.
  Most psychologists will hold that as wacko as Jacko may be, he doesn't fit the profile of a pedophile. No, his is a Peter Pan complex, and it's getting harder and harder to watch as he gets older and older and that facial stubble looks more and more fungal. Those children he invited over to romp around the playground he's built in his backyard are his friends, and that's sad. It's also potentially damaging, because children do need positive adult role models to foster healthy development, and Jackson doesn't qualify. If I had kids, I wouldn't want them spending their afternoons at the Jackson compound – not for fear of molestation but because he's a severe casualty of childhood pop stardom, with all the attending pathologies.
  The pop universe is full of such victims, some of whom didn't even hit the big time until they were at least young adults. Two weekends ago, MTV gave us an amusing, in-depth look at one of the more notorious and successful rock-and-roll casualties currently working the system: Ozzy Osbourne. After spending a couple decades playing Antichrist, first as the leader of Black Sabbath and then as a successful solo artist in the '80s, Osbourne has ingested enough drugs and alcohol to make even simple acts like forming two- and three-syllable words difficult. It also appears he appears he can't construct a sentence without dropping half a dozen f-bombs. But that's all part of what makes The Osbournes, a reality based-based sitcom that takes you inside the home of Ozzy and his family, such a guilty pleasure. It amounts to a sort of a live-action Simpsons, with Ozzy as Homer in the role of the dumb but ultimately well-meaning dad; Sharon as Marge, in the role of the stern, well-bred, clear-spoken authority figure; the pair's older, goofy prodigal son with the questionable A&R job as Bart; and Kelly, the ambitious, amusing daughter with a budding musical career, as Lisa.

  The best thing about The Osbournes – unlike The Jacksons – is that nobody gets hurt. Shron's the brains of the operation, and she seems aware that most of the world – not counting the people who line up to buy front-row seats for the yearly OzzFest – see her husband as a walking joke. Yeah, and she's laughing all the way to the bank. If Ozzy's even half aware of what all those cameras are doing in his house, he doesn't show it. This is a guy who appeared befuddled last season as he sat and watched himself perform on television. And after being mystified by an episode of the Food Network's Two Fat Ladies, all he could muster by way of explanation was, "They're bakin' fooking bread on the television."
  Yet Ozzy too has been embroiled in controversy. In his case, however, it was Pepsi, the multinational soft-drink corporation, that stepped in it. It all started when Pepsi decided not to use a commercial featuring the aggressive and potentially controversial rapper Ludacris. Since it's likely Pepsi had an escape clause in its contract with the rapper, that decision didn't cause any flak. But when Pepsi subsequently opted to make Ozzy the star of a high-profile ad, the Johnnie Cochrans of the world cried foul. After all, if a former antichrist who once bit the head off a bat can be a legit Pepsi spokesperson, then what the hell is wrong with Ludacris? Ozzy may have cleaned up his act in recent years, but every sentence he says on TV still sounds like a bus backing up – and he knows the cameras are rolling. So when a group called the Hip-Hop Action Summit threatened to organize a boycott, the corporation made nice and agreed to pay reparations to the Ludacris Foundation.
  Which is all well and good except for one uncomfortable question that I can't shake: was there really any racism involved in Pepsi's decision to go with Ozzy instead of Ludacris? Was race any more of an issue here than it is in the case of Michael Jackson's surgery? Or was it just an example of the racial card-sharps playing their hand before they had all the facts? Let's face it: Ozzy Osbourne got the Pepsi gig because nobody takes him seriously anymore. He's as harmless as a dotty old uncle. He's Benny Hill with a sketchy past. And he doesn't have anything controversial to say. Ludacris, on the other hand, is a serious rapper with a message that might make some folks – okay, mostly white folks – uncomfortable. And the Pepsi people have evry right to pick spokespeople they feel will offend the fewest cola drinkers. It doesn't take a marketing genius to figure that Ozzy is the more suitable salesman.
The beauty of it all is that there probably wasn't a single Pepsi executive who could have picked Ludacris or Osbourne out of a line-up before this controversy went down. In fact, they'd probably have assumed a guy named Ludacris was a Satanic rocker. This is one case where skin color turned out to be incidental. White or black, Ludacris was never going to make the Pepsi cut, because he's a man with a message. After all, Pepsi didn't have any trouble hiring Michael Jackson back when he looked black. The sad truth is that in today's content-free television, a message is more dangerous than the color of person's skin. Now if the NFL could only hire a few more African-American head coaches. I wonder whether Ludacris is looking for a new gig?

PJ Harvey Let England Shake

PJ Harvey marches into the fog of war
By Matt Ashare
Here, on this side of the Atlantic, we tend to see the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan through the shattered lens of the Viet Nam experience or as a new and singularly American effort to rid the world of terrorism. Those are our stories and we’re sticking to them. But there are other narratives, and in her latest incarnation, as a spectral avant-folk seer on Let England Shake, the polymorphic Polly Jean Harvey picks up on a peculiarly British strain of sorrow and loss that takes her all the way back to the First World War, specifically the notoriously disastrous amphibious invasion of Gallipoli.
    “Death was everywhere,” Harvey intones darkly against a diffuse backdrop of oddly-tuned autoharp and strummed guitar on “All and Everyone,” a song that references Bolton’s Ridge (a Gallipoli landmark) and draws much of its power from its first person, on-the-beach perspective — “As we advanced into the sun/Death was all and everyone.” The plaintive and poetic “Battleship Hill” is named for another relic of Gallipoli. Only here Harvey’s in the present, her plaintive yet proud voice floating gently above “caved in trenches” as her longtime partners in crime, Mick Harvey (a former member of Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds, and no relation to PJ) and John Parrish, arrive with a quietly skiffling beat, gently propulsive guitar, and a disquieting descending piano figure.
    Let England Shake is more than just a history lesson set to music. The disc’s ominous title track and opener finds a puckish and strangely playful high-voiced Harvey writing what might be a letter to a friend at war overseas: “England’s dancing days are done/Another day, Bobby, for you to come home/And tell me indifference won.” And on “The Last Live Rose,” one of the more immediately accessible, guitar-driven songs on an album that parcels out its pleasures, Harvey descends into a more familiar vocal range for a “walk through the stinking alleys” of London that could have taken place yesterday or years ago.
    This isn’t an easy album. It’s shot through with discomfiting images of fallen bodies, severed limbs, and, well, death, death, death. There are times when Harvey gets a little too creative — the bugle call that interrupts the flow of “The Glorious Land” isn’t pleasantly jarring, just jarring. But Harvey is smart to mine the past. It’s a device that allows her to march through the fog of our current wars without succumbing to self-righteous polemic. By placing herself in the center of the action in a song like “The Words That Maketh Murder,” she lands on the right side of a soldier who’s on the wrong side of history. “I’ve seen and done things I want to forget,” she sings plainly, “I seen soldiers fall like lumps of meat/Blown and shot out beyond belief/Arms and legs were in the trees.” As William Tecumseh Sherman unapologetically put it, “War is hell.”

Corin Tucker Band

http://krs5rc.com/krs/bands/corintuckerband/audio/Doubt.mp3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwU7idFy2Ro

Corin Tucker Graduates From Riot Grrrl To Riot Woman
By Matt Ashare

It’s so very tempting to read between the lines of 1,000 years, the emotionally turbulent and often devastatingly poignant Kill Rock Stars debut by the newly minted Corin Tucker Band. Tucker, an early convert to the riot grrrl cause, got her start in the Olympia punk band Heavens To Betsy twenty years ago. But she really came into her own co-fronting the grrrl-powered trio Sleater-Kinney with fellow singer/guitarist Carrie Brownstein, a perfect rock-and-roll pairing that sadly dissolved when the band went on hiatus in 2006 after seven albums in eleven years. So when, for example, she opens the disc’s haunted yet insistent title track with the hyperbolic “About 1,000 years ago, you left/I felt nothing for centuries” and follows up with a chorus that begins “And when it hit that you were gone/I stood frozen for so long,” it’s hard not to assume she’s got Brownstein in mind — especially since she ends the last verse with the defiant “With each song I get closer/With each note I return.” Then again, back in October she told the Village Voice she’d written “1,000 Years” for possible inclusion in the film Twilight: New Moon.
    1,000 Years is peppered with could-be snippets of autobiography. In “Half A World Away,” against a slinky guitar riff that rises to a pleasing roar, Tucker sings with forlorn dignity about an absent partner who’s making a “film” while “the phone in the hotel room never rings.” In fact, she’s been married to filmmaker Lance Bangs since 2000. And is “Break up with the boogie/Break up with the beat/Did you let us down, or was it me” a reference to lingering doubts about her decision to move on from Sleater-Kinney? It is a line from the disc’s most overtly Sleater-Kinneyish track, the pounding rocker “Doubt,” with Tucker’s gorgeous ambulance siren of a voice reaching an anguished peak on every noisy, discordant chorus.
    It’s the gift of great songwriters — and storytellers — to exploit real-life experiences. But that’s only part of what gives 1,000 Years its emotional power and weight. Tucker has emerged from the shadow of her former band with 11 tightly knit, poetic vignettes that conflate the vividly real with the equally vivid imagined. The timely “Thrift Store Coats,” one of the disc’s most affecting tunes, captures the desperation of a family on the brink of financial ruin without falling prey to the all too common desire to find something ennobling in poverty and hardship. “If this is a test/Can we make it through?,” she asks without answering, as the gentle caress of piano makes way for the pleasant bite of growling guitars. I’d be lying if I said Brownstein’s sinewy guitar and vocal counterpoints are missed. But with 1,000 Years, Tucker has expanded her musical vistas, with strings and keyboards laced throughout, and sharpened her lyrical vision in ways that will surely come in handy when Sleater-Kinney (hopefully) reunite.
   

The Decemberists

Less Is Mercifully More on the Decemberists new Americana Excursion

By Matt Ashare

It’s no secret that Colin Meloy’s really, really smart. As the man with the plan behind the Decemberists, he doesn’t just write songs, he undertakes projects; he composes suites; he embarks on grand schemes like 2009’s The Hazards of Love, an hour-plus 17-track operatic opus inspired by obscure British folk traditionals. Not only did that album employ three guest vocalists — My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, Lavender Diamond’s Becky Stark, and My Brightest  Diamond’s Shara Worden — but, out of necessity, its lyric sheet designated which parts were sung by particular characters, including a faery queen and a shape-shifting forest creature. Footnotes wouldn’t have been out of the question.
    Whether the Decemberists new The King Is Dead (Capitol) is an apology of sorts for the overcomplicated overreach of Hazards, or just another genre exercise for the brainy Meloy will, I’m sure, make for great blogger fodder (but not here). For the rest of us, it’s just kinda nice that Meloy’s put his ambitions, if not his pretentions, on hold for ten solid, folksy, and relatively straightforward Americana that mercifully clocks in at just over 40 minutes.
    Painted in broad, rootsy strokes by the full-voiced Meloy and a cast that includes his pals in the progressive bluegrass outfit Black Prairie, as well as Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, The King Is Dead is simply more hookish than bookish — especially when R.E.M.’s Pete Buck steps to the fore with a 12-string guitar riff borrowed from his Reckoning days on “Calamity Song.” Buck’s also behind the propulsive churn of “Down By the Water,” which has Welch playing Emmylou Harris to Meloy’s Graham Parsons (and is almost certainly the first proper single in ages to rhyme “wrong” with “anon”).
    The largely “unplugged” feel of the disc leaves plenty of space for the square-dancing fiddle and accordion flourishes that are Black Prairie’s bread and butter. Sure, Meloy drops a few arcane references (Hetty Green in “Calamity Song”; Leda of Greek mythology in “Down By the Water”), but he’s singing more from the heart than the head here, and blowing some pretty mean harp to boot.

Ryan Adams

Ryan Adams Revisits his Cardinal Past on III/IV
by Matt Ashare

Ryan Adams has never been a particular good source for accurate information regarding Ryan Adams — at least, not unless you're really good at reading between the proverbial lines. So when the former Whiskeytown frontman began touting III/IV as a "double-album concept rock opera about the ’80s," prior to its mid-December release on his own Pax Am label (also the home of the vinyl-only sci-fi metal disc Orion, which became available by mail-order in early November), there was good reason to be skeptical. The product of six months spent sequestered at New York's Electric Ladyland studio with the Cardinals (drummer Brad Pemberton, bassist Catherine Popper, guitarist Neal Casal, and multi-instrumentalist Jamie Candiloro) in 2007, the disc collects 21 tracks that apparently didn't fit the alt-country bent of Easy Tiger, his second to last for Lost Highway, a label he famously feuded with over the number of albums he wanted to release. (In 2005, there were three, one solo and two with the Cardinals: oddly enough, although the Cardinals were present for the Easy Tiger sessions, it doesn't bear their name. All clear?)
    Actually, assuming Easy Tiger was essentially I, it's not at all clear why Adams skipped over II to get to III and IV. But, then, he's always enjoyed being a "difficult" artist and, since Adams has referred to the new pair of discs as "Cardinology III and IV," perhaps they're meant as a follow-up to 2008's Cardinology, which, come to think of it, doesn't actually clear anything up. Even "Cardinals III/IV," which is how Wikipedia has it listed, confuses matters because Easy Tiger was released as a Ryan Adams solo album. Oh well.
    Fortunately, there doesn't appear to be much of a rock-opera concept behind III/IV — it's, as you might have already guessed, simply the best of what was left when the Cardinals closed up shop after half a year at Electric Ladyland. And that's not a bad thing at all. The disc opens in the same rockist vein of 2003's aptly titled Rock N Roll, with Adams alluding his struggles with addiction ("I get my dreams confused with wishes and bad ideas") and rehab ("So you probably heard I went away/Where do we start?) against solidly churning guitars coalesce into respectably anthemic hook on "Breakdown Into the Resolve." Elsewhere, Adams puts his crooner cap on for a swing through the organ-laced "Dear Candy," veers into Killers territory with the bold synth-rock of "Users," returns to the familiar folky alt-rock ground of the plaintive and sweet "Death and Rats," has a little arena rock fun on the just-short-of-metallic first few minutes of the 7-plus "Kill the Lights" before he and the Cardinals close things out with their best Allman Brothers imitation. It's a tribute to Adams' penchant for bad choices that he neglected to include the winning romantic ballad "Typecast," a duet with Nora Jones, on Easy Tiger. As Adams himself admits it in "Users," as hard as he may "try to be good," he's forever haunted by "bad ideas."

http://paxamrecords.com/downloads/

   
   
   

New Year's Daze

Keefing it Real
A New Year's Eve playlist

"Happy," The Rolling Stones (from Exile On Main Street Deluxe Edition) — Thanks to Life, a memoir as bold, brash, and rakishly charming as his best riffs, it's been the season, if not the year, of Keith. When he took over the mic to proclaim, "I need a love to keep me happy" back in ’72, nobody thought he'd live to see the end of the decade. A full 38 years later, he's still going strong, and this signature song rings as true as ever.

"Help Me Mary," Liz Phair (from Exile In Guyville) — If Phair's Exile really were a song-by-song answer to the Stones' Exile then the match for "Happy" would be "Fuck and Run" — probably not the best strategy for a successful new year.  Better to celebrate tempering "hatred with peace" and weaving "disgust into fame," especially since Phair impressively channels Keith's loose yet propulsive chordings on this ultimately uplifting track.

"P.S.," Ryan Adams and the Cardinals (from III/IVI) — It's almost always worth looking to the past before moving forward into new year/decade. This rousing glam kiss-off came out of ’07’s Easy Tiger sessions. Why it's taken so long for alt-country's allegedly reformed king of dramedy to unburden himself of it is anybody's guess. Just glad to finally have it. 

"Ready to Start," The Arcade Fire (from The Suburbs) — The Grammy-bound Arcade Fire made a bit of history in 2010 by hitting #1 with an indie release. Win Butler never quite sounds like he's ready to bust a move — he's far to cerebral for that. But this instructive, upbeat ode to new beginnings rocks most of the moodiness out of him until he indeed resolves that he's "ready to start." 

"Not Afraid," Eminem (from Recovery) — Anyone who can go from Relapse to Recovery in the span of a year deserves props. Poised to overshadow The Arcade Fire and just about everyone else at the Grammys, the new Eminem made some major New Year's resolutions when last the the ball dropped. He may sound angry and defiant at the start of "Not Afraid," but before long he's apologizing (!!) and urging us all to take his hand and move into the future. Redemption, not to mention recovery, is, as Martha Stewart would say, a good thing.

"Just Dance," Lady Gaga feat. Colby O'Donis (from The Fame Monster) — Just because — because she brought spectacle to a new level and had a fashionably great time doing it. So just shut up and dance. It's New Year's eve. . .

"Wake Up Everybody," John Legend feat. the Roots (from Wake Up!) — Sure, the video plays a bit too much like a big-budget PSA and Legend's channeling of What's Going On-era Marvin Gaye comes off slightly stilted. But the Roots come to the rescue, grabbing the groove and then the mic to take this socio-political wake-up call places Gaye never had the chance to dream of.

"Daft Punk Is Playing At My House Tonight," LCD Soundsystem (from LCD Soundsystem) — With Daft Punk busy deflecting lukewarm reviews of their Tron Legacy soundtrack, it's not likely they'll be playing any house parties over the holidays. LCD Soundsystem's electrofunk homage/send-up "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House Tonight" isn't just the next best thing, it's better. For best results, press play and repeat.

The Invisible Hand, "The Future of Music" (from The Invisible Hand) — It just wouldn't be right not to celebrate something Charlottesville as we ring in the new year, and The Invisible Hand have all the makings of the future of the local scene, if not quite the future of music. Angular melodies, hyperkinetic drums, gloriously noisy guitars, and a frontman who sings with the kind of passionate intensity Yeats would approve of. Give it a shot.

"Fake Empire," The National (from Boxer) — Until something better comes along, every New Year's Eve should end with "Fake Empire," an epic ode to staying out "super late" that begins as a slow dance and gradually gains a glorious kind of momentum. By the time the lights go out, Matt Berninger is crooning "No thinking for a little while" as the horns kick in and the drummer drives off into the rising sun.

The Return of POP ROCKS

For those of you who don't know, Pop Rocks is a column I first wrote for Stuff Magazine, a Boston monthly that later morphed into the bi-weekly Stuff@Nite. When I took over as music editor at the Boston Phoenix (it's an alternative weekly in, yes, Boston), I felt we needed to be more aggressive about engaging our readers and touting the high quality of the content we published. So I set out to recruit the best writers/thinkers I could find, and gave them each a forum — a bi-weekly column in which each could address any anything he or she felt was relevant, as long as it had some connection to music culture. Josh Kun had his "Frequencies" column; Douglas Wolk, "Smallmouth"; Jon Caramanica, "Slanguistics." As for myself, I adapted "Pop Rocks" to the Phoenix format and we were off and running. Eventually, even our initially wary jazz writer, Jon Garelick, got into the game with a column I dubbed "Giant Steps" after the Coltrane tune. Those columns helped create a unique identity for the Phoenix music section and, within a couple of years, the section was broken out of the "Arts" section as a stand-alone magazine within a magazine. Sadly, that came ended shortly before my tenure at the Phoenix came to an end. But the idea lives on, at least in my own mind.

Now I'm in Virginia, a State that most artists assiduously avoid when touring. But I'm writing a weekly column for the paper here and doing features for a Charlottesville weekly (C-ville). In an effort to revive the spirit, if not the form of "Pop Rocks," I'm going to begin this blogging experiment by posting my scribblings, beginning with a New Year's Eve playlist I contributed to C-ville. Too many hours were spent whittling that list down to ten songs that do not include the words "New Year's Day" or "New Year's Eve." And then we'll just see where that leads. . . In the words of Yeats, "The best lack all conviction while the worst are filled with a passion and intensity." Or, as Paul Westerberg once lovingly put it, "I hate music: it's got too many notes."