Jacko Lives! (Or So We Believe)

PHUTATORIUS
Word came out today that Michael Jackson's estate just cut a $250 million deal with Sony Music. The quarter billion goes to Jacko, Inc. in exchange for "unreleased songs and older tracks recorded by Jackson" — in other words, all the dribs and drabs of music that the King of Pop committed to tape but failed to release before dying.

Not exactly the "reissue, repackage, REPACKAGE" phenomenon that the Smiths described in "Paint a Vulgar Picture," but we see today the value that premature death can bring to a pop star's career. A pile of master tapes deemed at least to this point unfit for mass distribution wholesales to Sony for $250 extra-large. Hm.

Anybody else believe that Michael Jackson isn't really dead?
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Just stop for a minute and consider the logic of it. At the time he "died," Michael was, by all accounts, some $300 million in debt. The plan he'd announced to bring himself back into the black? A ten-gig comeback stand in London, followed by three more years of world touring, if he delivered on the gigs in England. The very concept betrays how desperate he was: the guy was broken. Reclusive, narcissistic, zonked on painkillers. He was our generation's Howard Hughes, except in one important respect: he was broke. And to get out of debt he was going to take to the stage? Nope. Uh-uh. That was never going to work. It was no surprise that this last-ditch effort was falling apart. Dates were postponed, rumors were swirling about Jackson's health, and the tour promoters had to be poring over the fine print of the insurance policy they surely bought at the time they cut this deal.

At this point, Michael Jackson was a complete loss. He couldn't do public performances. He wasn't releasing new material. There's only so many times you can promote a back catalog. It wouldn't take a genius to run the numbers and conclude, with all the cynicism of Bialystock and Bloom, that on a going-forward basis Michael Jackson was worth more dead than alive. And of course subsequent events bore this out: Thriller and Off the Wall surging to the top of the charts in the weeks after Jacko's "death"; a slapped-together film release and accompanying soundtrack album; and now this nine-figure deal to release demos and B-sides that might never have sold on the merits, but now can be promoted as Michael Jackson's "final word" in the studio.

If you were a onetime pop superstar, world-renowned, critically acclaimed, but now broke, introverted, and slipping into cultural irrelevance — if you were desperate to square your accounts and just cash out — you might consider faking your own death. And if you had all the aforementioned characterizations and motivations, and you were at the level of Michael Jackson, well, faking your own death probably wouldn't be impossible to accomplish. The guy had resources — he had minders, bodyguards, publicists, personal physicians. We know, too, that Jacko wasn't exactly running scared of plastic surgery, which would surely be in order if he wanted to ensure that he could dissolve anonymously, into the general population.

It's not hard to imagine. You're in a rundown town, far away and off the beaten track — maybe somewhere in Southeast Asia, where sex trafficking isn't so much a crime as a local specialty — and you see a middle-aged man limping painfully along down a dirt road with a bag slung over his shoulder. The man's face is gashed and scarred beyond recognition. His frame is slight, and his skin bone-white. The sleeves of his jacket are pulled up over his forearms. Maybe the man's rocking gait seems a bit affected; if you look closely, you might sees flashes of a dancer's grace in this man's slumping stride. Now and again he reaches down with one hand, grabs hold of his groin, and gasps, as if he's in pain.

Just another drifter, this guy. Hard knocks, hard life. The man mutters, grunts, hoots, winces, as he passes you. It's nearly dusk, and as the sky darkens, it appears that the road seems to light up just a little as this man passes by. Surely that was a trick of the light, you think. Angles and reflections, from the setting sun.

Three Albums

PHUTATORIUS
So we're promoting the site now through Facebook. We're finding now that we have 20+ "fans" — some of whom aren't even Facebook friends (!) — and on that basis we're talking ourselves round to thinking we have readers. In the hope of dispelling that delusion, I'm writing today to solicit "reader input" on a cultural exercise of great importance:

Brothers and Sisters, name the recording artist with the three best consecutive albums (Three Albums, for short). And, of course, name the albums.
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I've been thinking about this question for a while, and because I'm a dork, I've raised it over drinks with friends (who are also dorks — dorky friends, I'm relying on you here). I have some ideas, but before I get to them, first some Rules and Guidelines.

☞ Rule: A greatest hits release doesn't count as an Album, for these purposes. That Steve Miller abomination with the Jordache logo is not an Album (and for that matter, it sucks anyway).

☞ Rule: A live release is not an Album, either, unless it's substantially comprised of new songs written specifically for the release. Thus and so, Under a Blood Red Sky is not an Album. Rattle & Hum? Yeah, probably.

☞ Rule: No EPs or singles compilations, please. We're talking strictly about studio albums. Hatful of Hollow, Louder Than Bombs, and the World Won't Listen are not studio albums. I know this pretty much dooms the Smiths, because it leaves no room to maneuver around Meat Is Murder. This breaks my heart, but it's increasingly clear to me that the Smiths were a singles band, anyway.

As for Guidelines, I figure I'll throw out some general principles you can choose to accept or reject. Obviously Quality comes first, but we might favor as well Three Albums that reveal significant Growth or Refinement on the part of the artist. I'd be inclined to credit Three Albums delivered in a short span of time — say, yearly releases — over a series of three that span a decade or more. It shows me more. Variety would seem important to me. It's the spice of life, after all, and a sign of an artist's versatility. If the Three Albums don't reveal the aforementioned Growth or Refinement, Sustained Level of Brilliance might carry the day. Don't come to me with Two Sandwich Albums on Either Side of a Fair-to-Middling Third. That's not Three Albums. And don't tell me an album is so good it ought to count as Three. I've been in that place. I've considered The Violent Femmes and The Stone Roses. They belong in another contest.

Everybody got it? Good. I submit the following Three Albumses for your consideration:

Start with the Beatles. Get 'em out of the way. You could conceivably do Five, Six, or Seven Albums here, given that we're talking about the Beatles. But Three is the order of the day. I say Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's, and the White Album. But wait, Phutsie: The Magical Mystery Tour came after Sgt. Pepper's and the White Album. Yes, it did, but as I understand matters, it's a soundtrack built around re-released singles ("Strawberry Fields Forever," "Penny Lane"). I won't say I can't be convinced otherwise, but for now I'm excluding TMMT on the ground that it is a compilation.

Some other obvious candidates occur to me. The White Stripes: [self-titled], De Stijl, White Blood Cells. R.E.M.: Life's Rich Pageant, Document, Green. The Clash: [self-titled], Give 'Em Enough Rope, London Calling. And of course an old and enduring favorite, James, for whom I propose two Three Album possibilities: Strip-Mine, Gold Mother, Seven and Gold Mother, Seven, Laid (I see Strip-Mine and Laid as substantially equivalent).

I'd like to nominate My Aim Is True, This Year's Model, and Armed Forces as contenders, but the first album was recorded by "Elvis Costello" (who recorded with an uncredited backing band), whereas the next two were by "Elvis Costello and the Attractions." Can I get a ruling here?

I am what I am, and I'm a Man of Enthusiasms Others Do Not Share. On that score, I submit to you probably my favorite Three Album set, Stereolab's Mars Audiac Quintet, Emperor Tomato Ketchup, Dots and Loops. What Stereolab accomplished between 1993 and 1996 — in terms of the distinctiveness and layered complexity of their sound, their complete overhaul of that sound, and just overall excellence from the standpoint of writing damn good songs — rivals any comparable three-year period from the Beatles' career. Roll your eyes. Laugh. I'll pull a gun on you, I swear. You'll sit down at gunpoint and listen to these albums, and you'll come around. Camper Van Beethoven, of course, falls into My Unshared Enthusiasm category. [self-titled], Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart, Key Lime Pie. Eat it, skeptics! And just to push the envelope in this quarter, I'll throw out the Boo Radleys' Giant Steps, Wake Up Boo!, and C'mon Kids!, although the last of these grates on me a little (which was, I've read, the Boos' intention).

Some final ideas before I open up the floor for comment — Liz Phair: Exile in Guyville, Whip-Smart, Whitechocolatespaceegg. They Might Be Giants: Lincoln, Flood, Apollo 18. The Stooges: [self-titled], Fun House, Raw Power. The Flaming Lips: The Soft Bulletin, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, At War with the Mystics. You can accuse me of grasping at straws here by this point, but it ain't easy. Understand that I've considered and had to reject Joy Division, the Pogues, Green Day, Black Sabbath, Oasis — even Led Zeppelin and Blondie, any of whom have Two Albums better than anything I've listed in this paragraph. But for one reason or other (front man hanged himself, III wasn't all that, what the Jaysus happened with Be Here Now?) they don't have Three. And of course I've left it to Mithridates to argue for the Police.

Anyway, we all have our Enthusiasms and Prejudices, and we all have distinct record collections. E.g., I've only got one Bob Dylan album, so someone else will have to post an entry on his behalf. Write a comment, make a case, so we can threaten or laugh at you.

Deep Questions, Steel Drum Band Edition

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK

Having just returned from a week in the Virgin Islands, I'm left with this question: how do teenagers in the Virgin Islands ever make out at high school dances? I think the slowest tempo a steel drum band can play is somewhere between andante and allegro, and when you're dancing that fast it's impossible to cop a quick feel, let alone get into some serious "The Lady in Red" face-sucking. Hmmmm.

Summertime Rolls: Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction at the Comcast Center in Mansfield, MA (Part 1)

PHUTATORIUS

Short answer: Jane's wins in a rout — and in what was probably an unfair fight. Here's the background. I saw Nine Inch Nails back in 1994 on the Downward Spiral tour. It was at the Nautica Theater in Cleveland; the seats were removed to create a giant general admission pit; and the Nautica's location in "the Flats" — flush up against the Cuyahoga River — sets up a terrific vibe of post-industrial decay, with rusty bridges and rotting barges supplying a suitable background for Trent Reznor's aesthetic. More to the point, I was young, in college, and angry, and to this point Nine Inch Nails had turned out only two albums and one EP's worth of "woe is me, woe to you, my soul is black, so go screw" rock-electronica.

Jump ahead to 2009. The Comcast Center, once the Tweeter Center, is — as it sounds — a heavily cross-promoted venue in the "summer concert" style. This place, along with its 30 or more cookie-cutter counterparts across the country, is nested in a woodsy, off-the-beaten-path locale. It has the usual Pavilion and Lawn seating, which in 2009 means they've gone and replaced most of the Lawn with seats just like those in the Pavilion, except that the Lawn seats aren't sheltered and are taken on a first-come, first-serve basis. There is no pit in the Pavilion, no intimacy anywhere, and not really any sound in the Lawn seats, which is where the three of us are sitting.

My frame of mind is this: I never saw Jane's Addiction, but I love and have canonized the two studio albums from 20 years ago. I think Jane's absolutely rawks and have been fired up for weeks to see them. As for Nine Inch Nails, I tuned out after The Downward Spiral. Nothing I've heard since that album has particularly interested me. I consulted SR, a great old friend and longtime devotee of the band in advance of the concert: what should I buy? SR's answer, as longtime devotee of Nine Inch Nails, was (and I paraphrase) pretty much everything (except for what I could get for free on the NIN website, and isn't Trent Reznor great for doing that, and so on). In anticipation of the show, I put Jane's in heavy rotation and blew off any plans I had to cram the last dozen years of Nine Inch Nails.

Part of this is that "my soul is black" can surely be meaningful to a person in a particular state of mind, but that state of mind is necessarily ephemeral. If it's not, then you're truly in a "downward spiral," and good luck to you. My state of mind these days is that things are generally good, and if and when they're not, I don't need an over-earnest faux-artiste (yeah: you, too, Win Butler) to articulate the sentiment for me. And so I was bracing myself to be curmudgeonly and irritable when Nine Inch Nails took the stage.

Four thick paragraphs of set-up — or maybe disclaimers or explanations I think I owe to folks I know like SR who think the world of Nine Inch Nails — and only now I'm getting to the show. So be it. You don't read these posts because you crave punchy prose. Curtains up! >

Trent Reznor has filled out. He doesn't look like a starved, patchy rat anymore. He has more of a Henry Rollins-crossed-with-thickness-of-middle-age body, and his (naturally) black clothes are well-tailored and well-cut. He has a nice, neatly-coiffed head of hair. His appearance gives the impression that any presentation of onstage chaos has been blocked out and planned weeks in advance. In short, Reznor is seething with competence, rather than passion. The band is a straight four-piece, with vocals, guitar, bass and drums, but there are pianos and keyboards scattered on the stage, too. And what we get is basically a straight-ahead rock performance, with the occasional interstitial segment of electronica.

The crowd's reaction to Nine Inch Nails' performance is, I think, telling. Most everyone in the Lawn seats is carrying on a conversation during songs. This speaks to Trent's inability to hold our attention, and also to the fact that the sound isn't traveling particularly well. The sound issue is important: what distinguishes Nine Inch Nails is sound and production values, and if you want to be specific, the dual gimmicks of stop-start and quiet-loud. When, from where you're sitting, "start" and "loud" aren't all that powerful, these gimmicks falter.

A live performance by a group like Nine Inch Nails is necessarily a dicey proposition, because what "art" we can fairly attribute to Nine Inch Nails lies in the carefully manicured production, the layering of dozens of tracks, the love and attention that Trent gives to every buzz and lilt that lands on a master tape. Contrast the often gag-worthy lyrics ("I built it up now I take it apart climbed up real high now fall down real far") and the guitar hooks, which are nothing special and are generally distinctive only for their weightiness and timbre. The problem here is that the live performance with the four-piece band relies on the vocals and the hooks. Urk.

So the crowd chatters and yawns, and on those brief occasions when vox and guitar give way to a brief spasm of Nine Inch Nails-style electronica, the crowd stirs and cheers the band. Worth noting, too, that I'm apparently not the only attendee who tuned out after Spiral. Whenever Trent dips deep into his back catalogue — for, say, "Gave Up," "Piggy, "March of the Pigs, or "Wish" — the crowd's enthusiasm level surges, only to fall back again when the band returns to this century's material. And what is more, I feel this, and maybe it's a matter of perception and bias more than anything, but I really do feel it: the band itself seems to kick it up about three notches when it plays these old songs. They attack the classics full-throttle, and generally to great effect, whereas the songs in between seem (again, at least to me) to be delivered with a kind of listlessness. Strange, I think, because usually it's the reverse: usually the band is all-too-enthusiastic about its new material, and it's apparent from the soulless rendition of the "old stuff" that they find it tiresome.

I find myself increasingly aggrieved over the selection of songs from the earlier (i.e., familiar) releases. What — no "Terrible Lie?" On what basis, Trent, do you decide to exclude "Terrible Lie?" And you ransack the Broken EP, and all you can find is "Wish" and "Gave Up?" Pfft. You'd have done more justice to Broken with "Suck," or even the "(You're So) Physical" cover. These choices are troubling to me.

And now it's time to discuss the blackness and anger. Some of it is well-cast, fine-tuned, and delivered from some interesting perspective: I've always admired the cyber-alienation theme of "The Becoming," and it's no coincidence that in the entirety of the set it is this song, which documents a soul-destroying mechanization of self, that best incorporates the band's signature electronic elements into the straight-ahead rock. "It won't give up/It wants me dead/God damn this noise inside my head" is especially catchy — the closest Reznor has approached (and will approach, based on what I've seen) to "Bow down before the one you serve/You're going to get what you deserve," lyrical heights he reached, tragically, in his first single, twenty years ago.

Twenty years is a long time to be serving up this blather about Blackness, and it's an aesthetic that, for the reasons I described above, doesn't lend itself to holding the same cohort of fans over the long haul — simply because the sentiment grows wearisome over time. Your best bet, then, if you're Trent, is to pick off successive generations of rock fans as they hit the Blackness Stage of Life, then set them free thereafter. If they don't come back, as the old bromide goes, they were never yours to begin with, and you can use the ensuing feelings of betrayal and loneliness to nourish the next album's Blackness.

At some point I wish out loud that Nine Inch Nails would play its cover of "Dead Souls," and this leads into a conversation with my friend KL about Joy Division. Well, not so much a conversation, because there is live music playing, I'm monologuing, and KL, as is his practice when he goes to concerts (even though it was not really necessary here), has installed earplugs to keep his ears from ringing afterward, so he probably hears only half of what I'm saying. Joy Division is, of course, the unattainable ideal for Nine Inch Nails. If they were contemporaries, I'd use the Mozart/Salieri analogy. Joy Division had the advantages of masterful instrumentation from creatively coequal bandmates, a brilliant producer in the studio in Martin Hannett, and genuinely nihilistic and soul-destroying lyrics. Joy Division's recordings were groundbreaking in their production values, and yet when all Hannett's bells and whistles were necessarily shunted aside for the band's live performances, the band was still able to deliver the goods with an intensity, an immediacy, a desperation and menace that Nine Inch Nails can only dream of having. KL nods in agreement. I can't say for sure he's not patronizing me (he is, himself, an insufferable rock critic), but I gather from his body language that he won't be taking up Nine Inch Nails' cause against Joy Division or anyone else after this show.

There comes a point where Trent Reznor means to introduce a song that is particularly important to him. He says he locked himself away by the ocean for a period of time, ostensibly to write songs, but, he says, "what I really wanted to do was kill myself." He has clearly crafted his presentation of the story to give it maximum rhetorical kick, but given the way he said these words, I don't doubt his sincerity. Trent winds his way through the rest of the story — he only managed to write one song during this lowest period, and it was "The Fragile." Then the band plays "The Fragile," which, to me, is hardly noteworthy or compelling. Not when, ever since my rant to KL ten minutes before, I have had "Dead Souls," "Atmosphere," Side B of Closer, and "Love Will Tear Us Apart" on my mind. This isn't fair, of course: Ian Curtis did commit suicide, and those songs are the very documentation of his downward spiral, which found depths Reznor, to his credit and great benefit, didn't reach. Reason #125, then, why I'm not being fair to Nine Inch Nails in this review.

And indeed, KL told me on the phone yesterday that Nine Inch Nails shouldn't be judged against Joy Division — it should be judged against its real musical progenitors, Psychic TV and Skinny Puppy (in his view). But I'm inclined to judge Nine Inch Nails against Joy Division for two reasons: (1) the high production values of their recordings (see above), and (2) their emphasis on interior terror (see below). Most of the "scary" acts in rock serve up a theatrical kind of "scary": Sabbath sings about the Devil; Gene Simmons spits blood; Alice Cooper is, well, Alice Cooper. Bauhaus, too, pointed to objects, images, legends in its efforts to frighten. The theatricality of metal and Goth is enjoyable. It's a horror show: if you're at all scared, you're scared smiling.

By contrast, Joy Division is the only band I can think of that is well and truly terrifying. I'm actually afraid of what could happen to me if I listen to them too much. If a child of mine got into Joy Division as a teenager, I would confiscate the recordings. And if you know me, that says something. What makes Joy Division so terrifying is that the terror is achieved by introspection. Joy Division doesn't point to something awful: it creates it. Ian Curtis found it in himself and committed it to tape, and the musical fit — the mood, the atmosphere — that his friends and bandmates provided for Curtis's lyrical compositions was uncanny. Nine Inch Nails has chosen to swear off Goth-style theatricality in favor of Joy Division-style interior terror. That's a very ambitious choice, and good for Trent for making it. After all, anybody can put on eye liner and bite a fake-blood capsule. The problem is that this higher prize is very, very hard to attain, and I don't think Trent Reznor has enough going for him to get there.

This is my very, very long way of saying that Nine Inch Nails did not move me. Not like they did when I was twenty years old in a general-admission pit in Cleveland, when the band was fronted by a mangy, probably strung-out industrial rocker clawing desperately at a living. Not like they did before he set forth his mission statement, which is to be 21st century America's Joy Division — as if that is even possible in this time and place, and for a one-man auteur who apparently has it together enough to book a tour of the nation's built-for-Buffett Comcast Center venues alongside Jane's Addiction. Nine Inch Nails has recorded some terrific songs. They should not try to be the band they're trying to be, because it's not working.

Jane's Addiction in the next post.

Faux My God!

MITHRIDATES
Why play Guitar Hero when you could spend all that time getting good at guitar? Stan's dad was right to ponder. But Nintendo's Conductor for Wii takes the question to another level.
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I mean, it's one thing to video yourself in your living room and post it on myspace:


It's quite another to actually get people to pay money to see you conduct Beethoven in a concert hall. Whether this has any legs or not, who knows, but damn impressive first step. Don't get me wrong — no one wants to live in a world where real symphonies are replaced with this synthetic version. From a musical point of view, the more analog the better — but hat's off anyway . . .

Badasses of Songdom: Triangle Man v. Yoshimi

PHUTATORIUS
Badasses of Songdom resumes today after a hiatus of nearly three weeks. Reigning champ Triangle Man has felt a little disrespected since his controversial victory over The Wizard back in April. There's been argument in the blogosphere about whether to credit him for the win. Should a challenger's forfeit go in the books as a successful title defense? Should it not count at all?

All this is eating at T-Man's reputation — and his nerves. He wants a straightforward fight. He wants back in the ring with a solid challenger, so he can take the guy down and bring the focus back on what matters: his raw, crushing aggression. I know Triangle Man wants these things because I've got his agent calling me all day long to tell me. Really: it's the sort of thing I'd be content to hear once, maybe twice. But he won't leave me alone:

Get on the stick, Phutatorius, and get me someone who can FIGHT.

Like I haven't been trying. Like it's just the easiest thing in the world to work the phones and line up anyone, much less a true contender, to fight Triangle Man, when he's well-rested and really pissed off.

Which brings me, at Mithridates's recommendation, to Yoshimi.
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WHO? This is T-Man's agent again, howling at me over his cell phone.

Her name is Yoshimi.

Never heard of her. You couldn't line up Mack, Ziggy, somebody with a name?

We've been over this. Mackie's still Upstate. He's not even parole-eligible until June. And Ziggy's all sucked up into his mind right now. But Mithridates says this one's a fighter.

MITHRIDATES SAYS she's a fighter? Phutsie, look: T and I are getting tired of all these tomato-can challengers. My guy wants a taste of blood on his lip. Just a taste, and none of your people can even touch him. You keep this up, this chick comes off like Rigby did, and it's over. We'll go do the tournament circuit in Europe.

Suffice to say, then, that I've personally got a lot riding on this fight. I need Yoshimi to make this interesting. And it wouldn't break my heart, either, if by some miraculous turn of events she actually wins. Might get a couple of miserable prima donnas out of my life.

So let's get this party started. We're going steel cage here tonight at the Stambaugh Auditorium. No holds barred: anything goes until somebody says "uncle."

Redneck rings the bell, and we're started. Gotta say here, Yoshimi doesn't look like much. Japanese schoolgirl-type. Skirted, demure. Serious eyes, but not very physically imposing, that's for sure. T-Man isn't impressed, either:

"Are you lost, little girl? The Hello Kitty convention is three towns over."

Up here in the booth next to me, Mithridates groans. "Can't he do better than a Hello Kitty joke?"

Yoshimi glares at Triangle Man.

"Hey, look over there!" T-Man points. "Isn't that Pikachu, with Princess Toadstool?" Yoshimi purses her lips, keeps her eyes fixed on her opponent.

Mithridates: "This is just frickin' offensive. Did I say she's a black belt in karate?"

Triangle Man makes his move. A sudden swoop, plunging one vertex at Yoshimi's throat. But she's gone. Behind him, in fact. She taps him on the shoulder. He turns around and spits.

"She can move," I say to M'dates.

"Damn right, she can. She has to discipline her body to fight those evil machines."

"Evil machines? Where?"

"Never mind," Mithridates says. "Just watch."

Triangle Man makes another move. Yoshimi glides out of the way. T-Man runs smack into the side of the cage. He's starting to get his back up just a little bit right now.

"That's all well and good," I say, "but at some point she needs to fight him. And I don't think she's strong enough."

"She's been taking lots of vitamins," Mithridates assures me.

"I suppose every little bit helps."

Triangle Man smacks a fist into an open palm. "You can run, but you can't hide, little girl." Yoshimi doesn't answer. "Do you ever have singalongs at school? 'Cause I've got a song you might know. Jump in anytime you like. It goes a little bit like this: 'TRIANGLE MAN, TRIANGLE MAN, TRIANGLE MAN HATES YOSHIMI! THEY HAVE A FIGHT —"

THWACK!
   THWACK!
      THWACK!

I didn't even see it happen, but Yoshimi just landed three blows — one on each of T-Man's three corners, and she snapped all three clean off. Three, tiny, bloody triangles are lying hacked off on the bottom of the cage, and The Champ is just standing there: dazed, confused, six-sided now.

"Yeah! YEAH YEAH! You see that, Phutsie?" Mithridates is beside himself.

Triangle — er, Hexagon Man is trying to recover himself. He rubs a couple of his blunted corners. Still sharp enough, he thinks, to buzzsaw over this little Japanese beeyatch —

THWACK!
   THWACK!
      THWACK!
         THWACK!
            THWACK!
               THWACK!

Yoshimi again! As best I can figure it — and I'll have to check the slo-mo replay to verify this — she just dealt him three hand chops, two foot-sweeps, and a roundhouse kick. Again, all on the corners, and again, all clean hits. Snapped all six right off. Triangle Man drops to the ground. She's completely disarmed him. Turned him into a frickin' irregular dodecagon.

"OH, POW! HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT, BITCH?" Mithridates crows.

Yoshimi stands over her near-vanquished foe, arms poised for further action. She cocks her head, as if waiting to hear the Magic Concession Word from Triangle Man. It doesn't come.

THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!

If I knew the Greek word for 24, I'd know what to call Triangle Man right now. But I don't, so I'm gonna have to go with 24-o-gon. I dunno. Maybe just gon-er's the right word.

For the first time tonight, Yoshimi speaks. Softly. She's barely audible, but we've got Vercingetorix down at cage-side with a parabolic mike:

"Any last words, Champ, before I turn you into a circle?"

"Un —" Triangle Man starts, then stops himself.

"Yes?" She dangles an open fist over him.

"Uncle."

THEY HAD A FIGHT. YOSHIMI WINS. YOSHIMI.

Now somebody get a broom and dustpan to scrape up the several shards of our beaten champ.

Great Moments in Music Video: Billy Idol

PHUTATORIUS
"White Wedding," "Rebel Yell," "Dancing with Myself." Which one carries Billy Idol's signature music video Moment? If you've got half a brain, you'll pick "Dancing with Myself," because I put it last — a strategy that enables me to consider and dismiss the other two quality vids, then bring this post to an electric climax. And, of course, I've gone and embedded "Myself," too. Talk about your telltale signs.



Your half a brain wins. But let's go through the motions.
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"White Wedding" has got it going on. There's the three goth chicks shimmying gratuitously in the shiny black outfits, the candle-and-altar set, a motorcycle crashing through a stained glass window, and "Hey, little sister, SHOTGUN." Billy slips a spiked ring on his betrothed, causing her finger to bleed (would you believe they've gone and censored that bit out of all the YouTube clips?). The bride does ballet in her new kitchen while her toaster shorts out. Thump, thump, thump-thump. That's the floor tom, but the video will have you believe someone's hammering a coffin closed. Sorry, Greg Kihn, but this is the ultimate marriage-phobic video.

Contrast "Rebel Yell" with its concept-free living. A straight-ahead, classic stage performance video with Idol and his band. There's the stick-twirling drummer, a Cyndi Lauper lookalike on the keyboards, a theatrical lead guitarist there to play Mick Ronson to Billy's Bowie. (Right now some lonely glam kid in Jersey is loading a gun. Bring it on, bitch.) Just you try watching this without pumping your fist and yelling "MORE MORE MORE!" I'm this close [indicating, with two fingers poised a smidgen of an inch apart] to cutting the fingers off my loofah bath gloves. I'll pass on the coordinated jumping-jack at the end, though. Couldn't let a good thing go, could you, Billy?

But let's talk "Dancing with Myself." This was a carry-over track from Idol's Generation X days. It's a post-apocalyptic setting, naturally, this being early MTV. The concept is pretty simple: amid several of the usual MTV non sequiturs — a husband brandishing a hammer behind his unsuspecting wife, the silhouette of a buxom girl in chains (pretty sure that's the Pistols' Steve Jones in the room with her, sharpening a razor: Jones did the guitars for this recording), a skeleton and his papier-maché animatronic friend whooping it up in a living room — a bunch of sooty extras try to climb a skyscraper, in the hope of hanging with Billy on the roofdeck. After considerable exertion these ragamuffins clamber up over the ledge, but just in time for the guitar solo, which frees up Billy to grab hold of a pair of electrical transformers and telekinetically zap them all back down a hundred stories to the ground.

This bit right here — the zapping — is unquestionably a Great Moment in Music Video. Oh, sure, Billy has just finished singing about how "if [he] had the chance, [he]'d ask the world to dance," and it seems counterintuitive that he'd turn and reject his company so emphatically. But no matter, our ragtag Sisypheans will just climb the building a second time, and Billy gives a nod to their tenacity and allows them to bust some moves right alongside him, while the song winds out. Beautiful.

Badasses of Songdom: Triangle Man v. The Wizard

PHUTATORIUS
Hiatus is over: we're back on track, baby! What can I say? Sometimes karma smiles on you. A wealthy patron swoops down and posts Triangle Man's bail — says it's the least he can do, after T-Man made him a killing on the Bungalow Bill bout.

Turns out BoS has sprung a big secondary gambling market, notwithstanding our relatively low Internet profile. Who knew? The upshot for now is that Triangle Man is back in the swing of things. We've lined up The Wizard to take him on this week. Black Sabbath's Wizard, not L. Frank Baum's. I feel like there's potential here. The challenger's got karma. A while ago he endorsed a consumer electronics chain in New York — and from what I hear, nobody's beat them since.
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Big shout-out to Geezer Butler, by the way, who I hear is with us today in the crowd. Where are you, Geez? Stand up, give us a wave. That's right: love your gig, my man.

We're outdoors today — set up at the old battlefield, because at this point we're homeless. The Shriners canceled our contract. Worried about liability. Go figure. Shitty auditorium, anyway. Screw 'em. But wouldn't you know it? The weather sucks today. It's a misty morning — clouds in the sky. Of course it'll fucking rain on all of us today.

Mithridates reminds me there are families in the crowd. I should tone down the language, he says. Oh, right, Mr. Upstanding McPerfect. I don't see you doing the frickin' writeups.

All right, all right. OK. I'm sorry. I'm just in a mood today. I feel like a bad vibe has set in over the BoS series. It's poisoning the atmosphere. I've got an attitude; the crowd doesn't seem particularly interested. The Wizard isn't here yet. He's twenty minutes late, and the boo-birds are taking over. A rotten tomato just flew over my shoulder. It hit the elm tree behind me and splattered. Smells horrible. You wonder how crowds always get hold of rotten tomatoes. It's not like you can buy them rotten the day of an event. Seems to me like that's something you have to plan for, and you'd have to be loser to go to the trouble.

That's right, asshole: that was me calling you a loser. You got a problem with that? Well, bring it on, pal!

So yeah, I'm thinking that with all the bad feeling here, that tomato could have rotted right on the vine, just this morning. Pfft. Cell phone text from Geezer: WTF? WHERE IS HE? Text to Geezer: Wizard's UR guy. U tell me.

Triangle Man's here, of course. Been here since 8 a.m., and he's feeding off all the bad energy. It only makes him stronger. He's looking ripped. Word is he did nothing in his cell but sit-ups and push-ups during his week Upstate. They say Solitary can break you, but it can also focus your mind. I wouldn't want to be The Wizard right now.

And that, in a nutshell, might explain why The Wizard hasn't showed up.

I give this guy five more minutes before I shut this down. The skies could open up any minute, and this Wizard is jerking my chain. Folks bring their kids out into the cold, they're disappointed and crying. Four more minutes and I call a washout. What an unreliable stoner SOB, this guy.

Three minutes. Two . . .

I hear a tinkling bell. I don't see a tinkling bell, but I hear it. The sound is in my head. Clear as day, and loud. And suddenly, The Wizard is here. I mean, that's gotta be him, right? With the funny clothes? Long, black robes with big open, droopy sleeves. Hooded, with a beard tapering down to his knees. Can't really see his eyes. I swear this guy appeared without warning, and then — pow! — there he is, in front of me. Just walking by. The crowd just frickin' erupts.

The Wizard has arrived. Finally, I should add. But I don't, because I'm just so ecstatic he's here. I've completely forgotten the last two weeks of grief I've had over Triangle Man, the scheduling, the beef with the Shriners. All these grudges, worries, and petty preoccupations I've been carrying around: they're just gone. It's like a wash of good feeling has flooded over me and purged me of negativity. I'm filled to the brim with love, heaped over with joy. I can't even tell you how I feel right now.

I chase after him, like some silly fan-girl running down John Lennon in A Hard Day's Night. "Hey, Wizard — you rock, man. Whoo-hoo!"

He doesn't answer. He doesn't even see me. He just keeps walking, making arcane gestures with his hands. Weaving his spells. He passes through the heart of the crowd, which parts ways to accommodate him. All the people give a sigh. They're all — well, they seem happy, like I do, when The Wizard walks by. Out of the corner of my eye I see Vercingetorix turning cartwheels, and it doesn't even occur to me to laugh at him. All cynicism is gone.

Standing in The Wizard's path is Triangle Man. The clouds have gone, and the sun beams down on these two solitary figures: Triangle Man, the demon, standing stock-still, and The Wizard, who just keeps walking — right up, it seems, into T-Man's grill. Triangle Man seems worried. Just when The Wizard might have collided with him, Triangle Man steps aside. The Wizard just keeps walking, past Triangle Man, across the field and into the woods, spreading his magic.

What? That's it?

"CALL IT!" Mithridates cries out. "Triangle Man stepped aside. The Wizard wins!" The crowd roars its approval.

I'm not sure. I'm not as susceptible to spells as M'dates, V'torix, and the drooling masses. All that magic baloney wears off over time — and for the likes of me, it seems, it happens pretty quickly. The Wizard has left the field of play, and I'm not feeling quite as rapt and enthusiastic as some of the other weaker minds out here. Triangle Man's not so thrilled, either.

"Triangle Man, Triangle Man," he chants. "Triangle Man hates The Wizard. They should have a fight. Where is he?"

"You blew it, T-Man," Mithridates shouts. He has tears in his eyes. "Hooray for The Wizard! Hooray!" (Could M'dates be any more dorked out than he is right now? I've never known him to say the word "hooray.")

"Look, it's just a Jedi mind trick," I tell Mithridates. "From where I'm sitting, it's a forfeit. The Wizard left the field. He walked in — and late, I might add — then walked out. We paid him a truckload of money, and he was here for what — three minutes? He didn't even talk to anyone."

"Hey, man, whatever. Your call. I'm just SO FRICKIN' HAPPY right now. I don't care."

"Look: you make a good point. The Wizard did pacify Triangle Man. Or at least intimidate him. But the forfeit case is at least as strong. And I think that in a case like this, a tie goes to the champion. That's Triangle Man."

"Dude, have I told you? I AM SO HAPPY."

That should do it, then. Triangle Man in an uncontested barnburner, if ever there was such a thing.

The crowd roars once more and carries the indicted and victorious Triangle Man off on its shoulders.

Badasses of Songdom: SUSPENDED This Week, Until Triangle Man Posts Bail

PHUTATORIUS
I'm sorry to say that the rumors in the blogosphere are true: there will be no Badasses of Songdom fight this week. We thought long and hard about going ahead without Triangle Man: we have a pretty thick reserve of worthy combatants, after all. Mithridates proposed that I pluck two names out of my Badasses Rolodex, call up the lucky lottery winners and put 'em in a ring together. But I just didn't feel right moving forward on that. Our undefeated champion is in the lock-up, the hoosegow — he's "indisposed" — and it seems a bit cheap, a bit fraudulent, to schedule a title bout without him. I mean, we don't even have the frickin' title belt: the cops locked it away with T-Man's personal effects at the booking.

No, I've decided. We're not gonna budge on the Badasses series until (1) Triangle Man posts bail, or (2) somebody springs him.

All I can do today is tell you how we got here.
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Now I know some of you saw the big mess of cop cars and ambulances in the parking lot after the Rigby fight. We've had emails about it, and folks have been anxious to find out what transpired there. Well, it shouldn't surprise anyone to learn that this darned holding pattern we're in right now has everything to do with the events that took place outside the Shriners Auditorium last Thursday night.

I'll say right off the bat that one of the ambulances was, of course, taking Eleanor Rigby "to hospital" (as they say in her neck of the woods). We're legally required to keep a crew of paramedics on hand to cart off one or more fallen combatants, as necessary. That's standard operating procedure, and nothing fishy about it.

The rest of the sirens, lights, and hullabaloo had to do with some "extracurricular" business involving Triangle Man (who else?) as he went out to his car after the fight. Now I was not a firsthand eyewitness to any of this, and I'm still piecing the story together from the police reports and court transcripts from the arraignment. But as best I can figure it, some guy who calls himself the Taxman approached Triangle Man just outside the doors of the Auditorium. He flashed some kind of documentation and demanded to know what T-Man's fight purse was.

"What's it to ya?" Triangle Man said. (I'm paraphrasing.)

The Taxman said he was entitled to a 95% cut of Triangle Man's BoS earnings to date. As you can imagine, that didn't go over well. Onlookers reported that in his sudden fury Triangle Man actually hit himself in the face, Woody Hayes-style, before proceeding to deal a flurry of blows to Taxman, taking him down to the asphalt.

"THAT'S ONE FOR ME, AND NINETEEN FOR YOU," Triangle Man shouted. Some libertarians in the crowd egged him on, and it took a dozen other people to pull him off the Taxman.

Folks had cell phones: they called the police. Someone shouted for medical assistance, but the paramedics had already blown the joint with Rigby.

"IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE?" At which point a guy named Robert answered the call — who knew, with this audience demographic, that there would actually be a doctor handy? He went over to the Taxman, who was still down, and picked him up. "HE'S DYING THERE!" somebody shouted.

"I'll do everything I can," he said, calmly. He pulled out a flask from one jacket pocket, and a cup from another. The Taxman took a drink from the cup, swallowed, cleared his throat, and spat.

"YOU MOTHER FUC —" Taxman sprang to his feet and charged Triangle Man, who was still restrained (but barely).

"Well, well, well — YOU'RE feeling fine," Doctor Robert said. Something special was in that cup. The police would later have it swabbed for testing in their forensic lab. They're thinking PCP.

Depending on the witness, Taxman actually landed between one and five blows on Triangle Man, before the latter broke free from the crowd and beat the tar out of him. In the ensuing melee Doctor Robert broke his collarbone, and about a dozen other onlookers were injured. I recognized one of them from the police file: a guy from the town where I was born. He'd spent some time at sea and was always telling stories about submarines. Hadn't seen him in years, but I'm glad he's following the blog.

Four squad cars reported to the scene, and it took six cops and four Taser discharges to subdue Triangle Man. He had totally lost it and was screaming "SURRENDER TO THE VOID! IT IS SHINING!" over and over as they dragged him to the car.

At his arraignment the next morning, the court ruled that Triangle Man was a flight risk. Apparently he had escaped from his cell several times by turning himself sideways and slipping between the bars, only to find his bid for freedom thwarted by the solid locked door to the cell block. Bail is set at $5 million. They have him in solitary, in a bricked-up cell. It didn't help that the judge owned up to be a Beatles fan. The guy nearly killed everybody on the Revolver album.

Redneck, M'dates and I are pooling our resources, calling the few influential people we know. We should know by early next week whether we can get Triangle Man out of prison and back into action (pending trial on these aggravated assault charges, of course). We'll keep you posted.

Badasses of Songdom: Triangle Man v. Eleanor Rigby

PHUTATORIUS
All right. Let's just get this one over with. Nobody on our side wanted it, but McCartney insisted on a package deal: no Bungalow Bill unless we took Eleanor Rigby, too. You drive a hard bargain, Macca. Fine. Whatever. Kill this series before it gets any kind of momentum behind it. You're the pop star.

Pfft.
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We didn't expect much in the way of attendance tonight — this Rigby woman isn't easy to promote — but we've had a lot of walkups, folks all on their lonesome, buying single tickets. All these lonely people plunking down hard-earned dollars to see Triangle Man kick around an old maid: where did they come from?

Mithridates and Redneck pooled their savings and shelled out for the "Let's Get Ready To Rumble" Guy: anything to give this bout a little bit of the luster it's so obviously lacking. LGRTR Guy does his bit in style — the guy's a professional — but whatever the hell intern chimpanzee they have running the lights here at the Shriners Auditorium is having the damnedest time landing his spotlight on The Challenger. To the left . . . no. Try over there. Other corner. That her? Think so.

Pale woman, middle-aged — I don't know why I'm trying: she's the definition of non-descript — bent over eating spilled rice off the floor. Carbo-loading? M'dates tells me there was a wedding in the venue earlier in the day.

Triangle Man's in the Red Corner, jacked up on Yoo-Hoo and speed, making confrontational and obscene gestures to the crowd. They just stare back at him, blank-faced and alienated; they can't be bothered even to communicate their baser emotions. Seriously, where did these people come from? T-Man has gone razor-sharp isoceles today. He's thinking bum-rush impalement. Gonna kebab this old bat, stick her clean through to the sandbags in her corner. You can read it in his eyes.

Rigby showed some foresight: she brought her own cut man. Man of the cloth, apparently. He's got a Bible with him, a pair of darning needles (darning needles? really? not forceps?) and a roll of sutures. A 2-fer-1 proposition: he can stitch her up or administer last rites, as necessary.

Over/under here is 35 seconds before KO, TKO. I'm taking the under.

National anthem, invocation from this Father Mackenzie (not that anybody was listening), the band plays "Silly Love Songs" — another contractual concession to McCartney — and they ring the bell. Triangle Man stalks across the ring with the ugliest of intentions.

"Triangle Man. Triangle Man. Triangle Man hates Eleanor Rigby."

That doesn't read all that intimidating, I know, but until you've seen him say it, you have no idea. Ten, fifteen seconds tick off. No contact. Triangle Man circles the ring. He looks confused. It's like — it's like he can't find her. Weirdest thing: she's standing there in plain sight, but T-Man keeps streaking past her. She's managed to place herself beneath his notice. A neat trick: I don't even see her half the time — my eyes are fixed on Triangle Man, and she only flashes across my field of vision as he blows by her.

Fifteen, twenty seconds. Triangle Man is beside himself. "DAMMIT, RIGBY, WHERE ARE YOU?!?" he bellows. He stabs his acute angle into the ring's canvas floor and angrily tears it to shreds.

"There goes our deposit," Mithridates sighs from behind me.

Twenty-five seconds. Rigby steps lightly aside to avoid colliding with her ranting, pacing opponent. Unfortunately, she steps into one of the tears in the floor. She sprains an ankle and cries out. Triangle Man turns toward the sound and sights his prey.

Thirty seconds. Get her! GET HER QUICK! I've got a hundred bucks riding on the over/under!

Triangle Man pauses. He actually stops, lets his raised razor-sharp point droop to the canvas. He seems . . . touched. Rigby's wearing the most pitiful face you've ever seen. It's frickin' ridiculous. What a caricature of a sad-sack personality. Who does she think she's gonna win over with that? Well, Triangle Man, apparently. He's struggling with himself. Pangs of conscience I've never seen before: he can't bring himself to move on her.

Thirty-two seconds.

Triangle Man is fighting back tears. You've got to be kidding me.

Thirty-four seconds.

"I'm sorry," Triangle Man. This leanest, meanest, most merciless and unforgiving son-of-a-polygon is apologizing to Eleanor Rigby. His stomach heaves, and he sighs. It's a dramatic over/under-straddling sigh of empathy and resignation.

Thirty-six seconds. Triangle Man shrugs, checks his watch, and finally drops his kebab move on her. Game over. They had a fight (sort of). Triangle wins. Triangle Man.

And I'm down a C-note to Vercingetorix. Pfft.

Better matchup next week, Brothers and Sisters. We promise.

Badasses of Songdom: Triangle Man v. Bungalow Bill

PHUTATORIUS
Some time ago here at FO, Triangle Man picked a fight with Universe Man. If you recall (and judging from the analytics, you won't), Triangle Man won that bout on points, in a nailbiter. That made Triangle Man undisputed champion of his own song, and he's been riding high and itching for another fight ever since. Message bricks through my window, toilet paper in the shrubbery, the whole nine yards.

So in this post I have the pleasure of announcing — only slightly under duress — Feigned Outrage's Badasses of Songdom Series. Triangle Man's opponent today? That All-American, bullet-headed Saxon mother's son of Beatles lore: Bungalow Bill.
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As you know, Bill's a Nimrod-the-Hunter type. Probably more nimrod than hunter, but don't underestimate him. Bill brings an elephant and blunderbuss with him to this fight . . . and a bit of chip on his shoulder after that incident with Captain Marvel. And Triangle Man has agreed to stage today's combat deep in the jungle: that is, right in Bill's comfort zone.

On the other hand, Triangle Man is a cold-blooded, hateful, feisty son of a bitch with three equally sharp corners (he's gone equilateral today), and he's been working out.

So let's get things started, shall we?

Taking a cue from Captain Marvel, Triangle Man has receded into the shadows. He has the advantage of stealth, whereas Bill is plodding around in the trees with a frickin' elephant. A surprise attack is surely in order . . . "AHA!" Triangle Man cries, swinging through the air on a vine (he hasn't perfected the Tarzan yell). But wait! There's the elephant, but where's Bill?

"Right behind you, Tiger."

A trap! Well played, Bungalow Bill! Triangle Man has to think fast. He has done his research. He knows Bill has proved susceptible to moral confusion in the past. Pinned down between the roots of a giant kapok tree, staring down the barrel of Bill's gun, Triangle Man plays his ace: "Is it not a sin, Bill, to shoot down a geometric figure in cold blood?"

Fierce-faced Bill lowers his gun. He is angry: Triangle Man challenged him to this fight, then skipped away like a rabbit. Now that he's been caught, he's trying the emotional appeal. Unfair, he decides. And hardly sporting! "MUMMY!" he shouts.

"I'm here," Bill's mother says, stepping blithely out from where she had been crouched, behind a termite's nest. "And for cryin' out loud, Billy: you call me 'mama.' I didn't raise no mummy's boy Inglishman. Now I seen the way this-here Triangle Fella been treatin' you and it ain't right." Bungalow Bill's mother glares at Triangle Man. I mean, she really glares at him. Let me put it this way: if looks could kill, it would have been Triangle Man lying at the base of the fateful kapok tree, vanquished.

But looks don't kill, do they? And so instead it's Bill, his mother, and his elephant down on the ground nursing puncture wounds, and it's Triangle Man standing over them all, wiping off his three corners with a Purell-soaked handkerchief and taunting his fallen foe in song:

Triangle Man, Triangle Man. Triangle Man hates Bungalow Bill. They have a fight. Hey, Bungalow Bill: what did you kill? Nobody. Triangle wins. TRIANGLE MAN.

See you next week.

The iPod Archaeologist — Pulp: His 'n' Hers

PHUTATORIUS

With the arrival of my new iPod ten days ago, I'm once again able to carry around my full iTunes Library.  I'm closing in on 41 GB now — and I've recommitted to digging around on the drive to find old favorite LPs.

Today's feature is Pulp's 1994 issue, His 'n' Hers.

Two Alsatian brothers (not Seven Chinese Brothers, or one Alsatian Cousin, mind you) turned me on to Pulp in the summer of '95.  I met les freres Schaffhauser in a youth hostel in London a month or two after graduation.  These two were quite excited to be in England; like me, they were big fans of British music.  We compared notes, and in due course we went out in search of rock clubs to visit.  This didn't go well: we weren't tuned in well to the London scene, and we lost the better part of an evening watching an appallingly misdirected band, the aesthetic of which, as best I can reconstruct years later, somehow managed to incorporate the least appealing elements of Def Leppard, Stryper, and Cornershop into a single, stunningly bad stage act. Try as we might, we couldn't look away.  

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The upside of meeting up with the Schaffhausers, other than great company, was that they gave me a tour of Paris before I caught my flight back Stateside — and a month later I received from them a stack of cassettes loaded with music they thought I might like.  His 'n' Hers was on one of them.  The brothers had talked up Pulp all the way through the Channel Tunnel.  I dropped the Pulp cassette into the tape deck of the Sony component sound system and  gave it a shot. At the time I was living in the tiny partioned-off third bedroom of a "flex 3" apartment with V'torix and M'dates in Uptown Manhattan — I was fresh out of school with no clue about a career (some things are constant), I was working miserable hours for shit pay, and my girlfriend and I were on the outs.

Needless to say, Pulp hit the spot. Thirteen+ years later, with a lot of my immediate post-grad issues finally resolved — housing situation upgraded, Girlfriend come around: she's now my Wife — this album still holds up. The band's sound is distinctive, notwithstanding the efforts of the Killers, the Bravery et al.; the song stylings are varied and interesting, ranging from techno to straight-ahead rock to show tunes and ballads; and, of course, there's Jarvis Cocker, with his crack-up lyrics and camp histrionics in lead vocals. Jarvis Cocker, in his day, was an extraordinary personality, and nowhere is this quite so apparent as on His 'n' Hers, an album that comes off like a the original cast recording of a one-man Broadway show. On this album Cocker howls, growls, prowls, grunts, humps, pouts, snarks, seduces, languishes, and dies a thousand deaths. It's over the top, and it's brilliant. Let's review:

"Joyriders" is the opening track, the mission statement. "We don't look for trouble," Cocker explains, "but if it comes we don't run." This from the same man who, during the 1996 Brit Awards, turned up on stage while Michael Jackson was performing and engaged in repeated lewd gestures until Jacko's bodyguards, dressed as shepherds for no discernible reason, could run him down and rough him up. Let's be clear: Jarvis Cocker does look for trouble. "Joyriders" ends with Cocker repeating the lines "Mister, we just want your car/'Cause we're taking a girl to the reservoir/Oh, oh, the people say it's a tragedy." There's a Clockwork Orange reference lurking in here.

The heart of this album is comprised of five songs: "Babies," "She's a Lady," "Happy Endings," "Do You Remember the First Time?" and "Pink Glove." "Babies" is Pulp's Ur-nostalgia/ sexual awakening track. They'd exploit this theme, to greater commercial success, with "Disco 2000" on 1995's Different Class. But "Babies" is the far better track: after confessing to a girlfriend that years ago he slept with her older sister, Cocker shows, rather unapologetically, that he can "yeah yeah yeah" with the best of them (thank you, Lennon and McCartney, for this tradition). Next is the near-disco "She's a Lady," which although it comes in at just under six minutes still manages to sound epic. If you've ever lamented, as I have, that there's no male-equivalent song for Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive," this is the song for you:

When you left I didn't know how I was going to forget you.
I was hanging by a thread and then I met her.
Selling pictures of herself to German business men.
Well, that's all she wants to do.
Come on, come on . . .
* * *
Whilst you were gone I got along.
I didn't die — I carried on.
I went drinking every night, just so I could feel alright.
Stayed in bed all day to feel OK. (I felt OK.)
* * *
I tried hard to make it work,
kissed her where she said it hurt, but I was always underneath.
'Cause she's a woman, oh yeah, baby, she's a lady.

As I said, I'd recently been dumped — OK, to be fair, destroyed — by a girl when I first heard this song. So it really worked for me. Likewise the next three tracks: the quasi-show tune, "Happy Endings," wherein Cocker wishes his girl the best; "Do You Remember the First Time?", wherein he makes one last pitch as the insurgent ("I know you're gonna let him bore your pants off again . . . Still you bought a toy to reach the places he never goes") before exploring pathetic attempts at compromise ("I don't care if you screw him — just as long as you save a piece for me); and finally "Pink Glove" (here, live at Glastonbury), wherein he lays it all on the line:

I know you're never going to be with me
But if you try sometimes then maybe
You could get it right first time.
I realise that you'll never leave him
But every now and then in the evening.
You could get it right first time.
* * *
Yeah, it's hard to believe that you'd go for that stuff
All those baby-doll nighties, synthetic fluff.
Yeah, it looks pretty good; yeah, it fits you OK —
You wear your pink glove, babe: he put it on THE WRONG WAY.

All that might look great on paper, but Blogger's rendering of the text doesn't even approach what Cocker does with this material. Somehow, some way he delivers the goods both powerfully and playfully. It's tragedy and comedy at the same time: his tongue is planted firmly in cheek, but it's not clear that at any minute he won't swallow it. His 'n' Hers is fun, and silly, and anthemic — classic singalong-in-the-car material. And very emotionally satisfying to a young, broken man who, by the fall of 1995, had not quite left his John Hughes years completely behind him and truly felt that with his girlfriend up in Cambridge dating another man he had lost, well, Everything.

Great stuff, Pulp. I wonder what ever became of the Schaffhausers. I owe them some music.

Great Moments in Music Video: Van Halen Edition

PHUTATORIUS
Van Halen today — lest we should appear overly biased in favor of post-punk new-wave acts. An argument can be made that pretty much any video made for the 1984 album should earn its props in this department, but in this case selectivity is the mother of selection.


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Let's consider the candidates:

(1) "Jump." A workmanlike video performance, and nothing more. Great costuming, and there are inklings here — as in "Pretty Woman" — that the band would have fun in this medium down the road. It's notable that David Lee Roth manages to rhyme "machine" and "saying," but this achievement is an artifact of the recording, not the video. Hold for now, as there might be something better.

(2) "Panama." There, right there, at 0:44-0:53: policemen are hauling a wild-eyed Roth (or is it Lee Roth?) out of a hotel room in a bath towel and handcuffs. This narrative thread (such as it is) surfaces without warning, then drops out of the video entirely. It's a complete non sequitur, but for me, this is the Quintessence of Roth. Bath towel and handcuffs. No Spandex, no war paint, no fringed chaps: this is about possibility. It's what you didn't see — whatever happened to precipitate the arrest — that fires the imagination. This would be the Moment of Moments, but here it's just a runner-up, because of

(3) "Hot for Teacher." (see above) It all comes to a head here. Where to start? The orgasmic (!) inflections in Waldo's mother's voice, as she leaves her son for the bus? The band's woefully choreographed soft-shoe in 70s wedding tuxedos? The scaled-down school-age lookalikes? The 'Where are They Now?' segments at the end of the video (is that Rick Moranis playing Waldo the Pimp?) are fun. A lot of potential Moments here, but these are all a bit too gimmicky to take the prize. Van Halen's Great Moment in Music Video, chapter and verse — "Hot for Teacher" 1:33-1:45:

"Wait a second man — what do you think the teacher's gonna look like this year? WHOA!"

Band breaks out into full-on audio assault, black and white explodes into full color, Miss Chemistry blitzes the classroom stage in blue string bikini. Bam. That's it.

Roth is absolutely a ham (kosher, of course), and he'd overindulge himself in the solo vids that followed on the heels of 1984. "California Girls" and "Just a Gigolo" were good for a few laughs, but in the end, "Hot for Teacher" wasn't so far off when it projected Roth as "American's Favorite T.V. Game Show Host." I'll leave it to more knowledgeable fans to assess Van Halen's overall career. But in my capacity as self-appointed authority and enthusiast of music video, I declare that the band's crowning achievement in that medium was "Hot for Teacher."

CLASS DISMISSED!

You! Me! Dancing!: Los Campesinos! at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston

PHUTATORIUS
We showed up at the Paradise around 10 p.m. — at that age now where we can't be bothered to watch opening acts, although I hear Titus Andronicus does a good set.

You know you're going to see something interesting and original when you arrive at the venue and see not one but two glockenspiels on stage. You know you saw something interesting when band members have to run around between songs to pick up the glockenspiel keys and remount them, because they've been beating the hell out of them. That's Los Campesinos! for you, in a nutshell.
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After ten, fifteen minutes spent tuning their own instruments and conducting their own soundcheck — what? would you have them hire roadies? it's a seven-piece band in a lousy economy — Los Campesinos! hit the stage hard, leading off with "Ways To Make It Through the Wall," the opening track off the band's second album, We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed.

This was Los Campesinos!'s second go-round at the Paradise — this time there were three times the number of people in the crowd, and the show was sold out. The band made note of this in the between-song banter. They behaved as though they were uncomfortable about the reception they were getting and at times they suggested they might be putting one over on us. All this is fraudulent. This band is brilliant on record, and stunningly good live, and they have to know it.

Why do I like Los Campesinos! so much? What made a great old friend of mine insist to me that they'd be right up my alley? How did he know that I'd buy right in after just hearing the one track he played for me, "Don't Tell Me To Do the Maths?" Well, here are some clues:

*Fast, furious, melodic music in the tradition of the Ramones.
*A violinist (see also James, Camper Van Beethoven, and other Best Bands Ever).
*A cute, blonde bassist (see also Stellastarr*, Smashing Pumpkins).
*And finally: clever, literary, postmodern lyrical stylings that range from the pithy —

I'm not Bonnie Tyler, and I'm not Toni Braxton,
And this song isn't gonna save your relationship:
Oh? NO SHIT!

to the downright incomprehensible —

We have to take the car 'cause the bike's on fire
We cannot trust your friends 'cause they were born liars
And if you you don't exist with hearts the size of a house brick,
Cease and desist!

All that and the lead vocalist's personal jerry-rigged drum kit (along with glockenspiel) at the front of the stage adds up to a can't-miss act for Phutatorius — though I recognize that Los Campesinos! might not be for everyone.

On that point, let's discuss this anarcho-syndicalist collective's front man (if that's not a contradiction in terms). Gareth Campesino's stage presence is as indie-cultivated as the horn-rimmed, hipster-shirted Paradise Crowd in Residence. He cocks his head when he sings, brings his arms behind his back, strikes sensitive, poetic postures. A fellow named Steven Patrick Morrissey started us down this path, and 25 years later, for better or for worse, this is what we get. It's no surprise, then, that a guy in the crowd repeatedly and indefatigably calls out "PLAY THE SMITHS!" between songs. For my part, I can never fault anyone who shouts these words — and the band members, too, take it in stride, serving up knowing smiles. And that's ultimately the saving grace on this point: Los Campesinos! are just fun. Gareth is, too, despite his grievous "I'm not comfortable being a rock star" put-on. You can't help but like the guy, because in between all the woe-is-me poses he's beating hell out of a glockenspiel, literally shrieking at us in an exaggerated Welsh accent (gone now the days where Brits endeavored to "sing American"), and attacking his drummer's kit.

In addition to "Ways," Los Campesinos! served up five other tracks from November's WAB, WAD. I bought this album last week, and I wasn't sold on it before the show. I'm not sure I'm sold now — it came out in a hurry, within 8 months of the debut LP I like a lot better — but some of the performances won me over to certain tracks. "Miserabilia" and the title track were two of these. I was pleased when Gareth introduced "You'll Need Those Fingers for Crossing," a song he said is about "a bulimic suicide pact." Oh, now I get it. Urk. The problem is that once you've been clued in to that fact, you don't hear this song the same way again. I didn't think they performed "Fingers" particularly well. Gareth noted beforehand that "nobody likes it," and afterward he thanked us "for our patience." "Documented Minor Emotional Breakdown #1" and "All Your Kayfabe Friends" were the two other new-album bits.

Notwithstanding their promises to inflict a disproportionate amount of the new material on us, the band served up a tweener single, "International Tweexcore Underground," and eight tracks off the Hold It Now, Youngster . . . album. "My Year in Lists" and "This is How You Spell, 'HAHAHA We Destroyed the Hopes and Dreams of a Generation of Faux Romantics'" were two standouts. "You! Me! Dancing!" was the show's climactic number, with its sustained Two Men/One Drum Kit beatdown firing up the crowd before the rhythm guitars triggered and the song suddenly snapped into its groove. This is standard fare at a Los Campesinos! show — at least, based on the two I've seen — and it's great theater. Same, too, for the band's coordinated amplifier-climbing at the end of "Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks," the last song before the encore, "Broken Heart Beats Sound like Breakbeats." "Knee Deep at ATP," "Drop It Doe Eyes," and "Death to Los Campesinos!" also made the set list, which according to Gareth, was written out on pita bread that Neil and Tom Campesino subsequently tore up and fed to the crowd (I did not personally witness this administration of Communion and can't say for sure that it happened).

All in all, a terrific show, notwithstanding certain tired indie aesthetic tics and the all-too-periodic bouts of unintended feedback. They're the Ramones with glockenspiels and English lit degrees. They're Belle & Sebastian on speed. They're Los Campesinos! Buy their albums; go see 'em.

The Dangers of Being Too Familiar With Hip-Hop Lyrics

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK
The wife: Hey, look! The Grammys are on tonight.

Me: You think I give a damn about a Grammy?

The wife: (silence)

Me: Um, I was quoting Eminem.

The wife: (silence)

Me: It's just a line from one of his songs, it just popped into my head and I quoted it.

The wife: But why would you quote it if it wasn't how you really felt?

Me: (silence)

Bruce Springsteen

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK

A while back, Bruce Springsteen signed a deal with Wal-Mart giving them exclusive rights to sell his new greatest hits collection. And last week, Bruce apologized to his fans for signing that deal, saying it was a "mistake" for him to partner with a faceless American corporate behemoth.

I'm glad he got that apology off his chest before his Super Bowl performance last weekend — in case you missed it, the Super Bowl signed him to play during halftime. Fortunately, Bruce doesn't need to apologize for signing that contract, because as we all know, the Super Bowl is a home-based business run by a small family of solar-powered vegetarian dolphins.

One Song I Can't Believe They're Playing Unedited on the Radio

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK
Britney Spears, If You Seek Amy.

The whole point of a double-entendre is that it has two meanings, one of them totally innocent, and the other one naughty. That means you can say something naughty but plausibly argue that your real meaning was the innocent one. But when you sing "All of the boys and all of the girls are begging to if you seek Amy," it's really, really hard to argue that there's an innocent interpretation, because only the naughty interpretation makes any damn sense.

I don't understand why it was wrong for Howard Stern to say "fuck" on the air, but there's no problem with Brit singing "F-U-C-K me".

Ten Songs I'm Digging This Thursday Night

PHUTATORIUS
Just for the hell of it, and in order of importance:
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(1) Joy Division: Atmosphere
(2) Patsy Cline: Walking After Midnight
(3) Stereolab: Jenny Ondioline
(4) Bob Dylan: Visions of Johanna
(5) The Boomtown Rats: I Don't Like Mondays
(6) Cracker: Take Me Down to the Infirmary
(7) M.I.A.: Paper Planes
(8) Stan Getz & João Gilberto: Corcovado (Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars) (w/ Astrud Gilberto)
(9) Lloyd Chalmers: Bang Bang Lulu
(10) The Futureheads: Carnival Kids

Mighty Fine Only Got You Somewhere Half the Time

PHUTATORIUS
One reason it's so fun to write about Caroline Kennedy has to be the wealth of "Caroline" songs out there for quoting.  I went Beach Boys in my post; Redneck served up Neil Diamond.  Not so long ago M'dates wrote to tout some soundtracks he'd bought on vinyl: "Pretty in Pink" could have been in play.

Hard to believe none of us hit on OutKast. What do you want to bet "Roses" has had its fair share of airplay around the New York Governor's mansion?
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Some Thoughts on Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

PHUTATORIUS
WARNING: If you're not into lengthy dissertations on early '80s British electropop bands, STOP reading this post RIGHT NOW.


We take requests here at Feigned Outrage. We do it because it makes it all the more likely someone outside of the three of us is going to read a post. And — pow! — if a reader is actually going to request a post from the Some Thoughts On . . . Department, I have to deliver. And so, some thoughts on Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark.
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First off: The Hardest Band Name To Type. Just brutal. Had to get that off my chest. Thank God for the acronym. On to substance:

OMD is the first band I ever really obsessed over. And putting aside the sundry Neil Diamond and Air Supply concerts I went to with my family, OMD is the first band I ever saw perform live. Depeche Mode was a close second, taking the stage just ninety minutes after OMD did, at the onetime Blossom Music Theater in Akron, Ohio, back in 1988. My Rock Snob destiny was foretold at this early age: this was my first concert, and my motivation in going was to see the opening act.

For my purposes here, I’m going to cover just a subset of the Manoeuvres’ oeuvre — the recordings from 1980’s self-titled debut through The Pacific Age, cuts from which era were selected for their 1988 Best of OMD compilation, which along with DM’s Speak & Spell were the first two albums I bought on compact disc. (Lots of firsts here for Phutatorius.)

This puts seven terrific albums in play, and when I think of them, my working thesis has to be that OMD’s gig (and probably its weakness, from a commercial standpoint) was its ability to swing wildly between extremes of avant-garde experimentalism and McCartney-esque pop artistry — and, at times, to strike a perfect balance between the two. It’s a bit of a short cut (though a useful one) to say the avant-garde came early and the pop songs came late, because early cuts were catchy (“Enola Gay,” “Telegraph”) and late-issue tracks downright weird (“Crush,” “The Dead Girls”). I tend to favor the albums in the middle — Architecture & Morality, Dazzle Ships, and Junk Culture, because their sound was more robust than on the pingy and minimalist earlier albums, and the later albums were inconsistent and at times just plain cheeseball.

(I’ll pause over Crush for a moment for nostalgia’s sake, and over The Pacific Age for the transcendent album cover (above) — rendered more than a few times in blue ink over pencil on my cut-from-grocery-bag textbook covers in 8th and 9th grade.)

Consider Dazzle Ships Track 2: “Genetic Engineering.” What was going on there? A typewriter sets the beat, leading in to a send-up of an ad jingle, two men and a woman, alternating touts: “Efficient — logical — effective — and practical! Using — our resources — to the best of — our ability!” This was Radiohead’s “Fitter Happier” fourteen years earlier. Then came guitars — a rarity for Messrs. McCluskey and Humphrey (though not the first time we’d heard them: they’d sprung guitars on us in “The New Stone Age” — A&M’s stunning opening track, which carried every bit as much menace and unease as something Nine Inch Nails might have recorded at their peak. But I'm digressing.). Then a Speak & Spell steps in to counter the upbeat promo voices. Baby! Mother! Hospital! Scissors! Creature! Judgment! Butcher! Engineer!

By now the whole Speak & Spell business might seem stale: sort of like The Road Warrior’s aesthetic. You have to take six pills and forget the hundred awful knock-offs that followed, so you can remember how groundbreaking the original was. So it is here: an evocative, impressionistic sequence of these eight select words, and now we can hear marching footsteps. Boots. Hints of creeping fascism, clearly, and only now the first verse. There’s a brilliant, catchy pop song to follow over the next three minutes. Genius. The sentiment was a bit overwrought, but the song was genius.



OMD did so much of this, and I'm sorely tempted to go on at length. There’s the song suite about Joan of Arc on A&M. Why? Don’t ask; don’t question McCluskey’s earnest vocals. What the hell is “ABC Auto-Industry,” and why is it so beautiful? Ditto “Romance of the Telescope” — what are these people talking about? And just when you think you might be overmatched by the arcane subject matter, the music's layered complexity, the synthesized choral tracks, the audio samples (done before it was cool) — just then they serve up something simple and sublime like “She’s Leaving” or “Never Turn Away,” the latter of which screamed for inclusion in the final boy-gets-girl scene of some John Hughes movie. Never mind “If You Leave,” the song that made these guys briefly famous. The quintessential ’80s teen movie song is “Never Turn Away,” whether or not it ever landed on a soundtrack.

I could go on about this band’s early cramped, Continental, Cold War aesthetic, and how, while their punk/post-punk contemporaries continued to serve up the same humdrum images of fallen empire and urban decay, OMD’s recordings were evocative in such a distinct and interesting way. You played the albums and you thought of trench warfare, legacy telecommunications, radar blips, battleships, abstract art (contrast punk’s Dadaism), cathedrals, Catholic martyrdom, and BBC news. I could go on about spending an entire summer vacation playing and re-playing “Love and Violence” in my car, and only letting up occasionally on the rewind button, when I realized the next track, “Hard Day,” was just as good. Talking up these two songs could lead me into a hundred or more words about McCluskey’s extraordinary voice (never mind Humphreys’s clunker of a larynx). But I’m self-editing now, so this is all you get.

That all this should have culminated in the godawful video for “(Forever) Live and Die” — there will be no embed here — and the hamhanded digressions about the U.S. civil rights movement (I’m thinking Crush’s “88 Seconds in Greenboro,” “Southern” on The Pacific Age), is I think, cause for some regret. And remember: I’ve ruled the last three albums out of this analysis completely. All this notwithstanding, let’s give OMD their props. I don’t think there was a better band going between 1981 and 1983; if there was, it was Bow Wow Wow, and it’s not fair to compare humans to superhumans.