Guster "Bad Bad World"

There was a time when videos MATTERED. To get your song on MTV could pretty quickly change your band's life.

Then there was a time when videos didn't matter too much. You could spend a million bucks, hire Oscar winning actors, and have acres and acres of girls in hot pants, and you might still not sell any records.

It's kind of fun to be back in a time when video matters. And when production values don't.

Great videos are being made for low low budgets. And they don't need MTV. They need you.

You are needed, to make a music video a success. You have to watch it, love it, and share it with your friends, in the FaceTubeSpace World.

So how does a band get you interested in their video? They have you make it.

Check out Guster's video contest for their new song "Bad Bad World." Even if you don't really plan on making a video, you can download the track for free.

But with today's simple technology, anyone can make a World Wide smash video.

Get on it, Cecil B.!

Lady Gaga "Bad Romance"

The Entertainment media is all abuzz Lady Gaga perhaps buying a home on Martha's Vineyard.

And as usual, the media has annoying, reductive things to say about the Island, like calling us the "prepster capitol."

The folks I know, (even the famous ones!), don't dress in tennis whites and Lily Pulitzer to go to the grocery store. Most of the folk here are hard working, unassuming and down to earth (even the famous ones!).

They come here because no one expects them to be famous, act famous or wear meat suits.

So to the annoying, reductive media, I send out this annoying, ridiculous song. And it's meat free!

The Fools "Life Sucks Then You Die"

For anyone under the age of, say, 25, it’s probably impossible to imagine, but there was a time when computers were not in the classroom.

In fact, my first academic interaction with a computer was in my Junior year of high school. The building had one computer lab, and juniors and seniors could take computer classes. I guess Freshman and Sophomores weren’t quite ready yet.

And there wasn’t really software, per se. Or operating systems like Windows.

So computers were pretty new. And really, they couldn’t do too much.

One of our early assignments was to print out something we’d written. That was the extent of the complexity of computer programming: can you type something, and get it to come out on a piece of paper. High Tech, for 1985.

“What to you want us to type?” someone asked.

“Anything you want,” Mrs. Larnard told us. “It doesn’t matter. Just type it and print it. That’s the assignment. And she left us to our task.

So I typed up something that had been rattling around in my brain for the last few days, got it to print on the first try, passed it in and didn’t think about it again.

A few nights later, I was wandering through the kitchen near dinner time, when Dad asked me to come sit at the table. Mom stopped what she was doing and joined us.

Uh-oh.

“Everything okay?”

“Um. Yeah . . .” I was, of course, wracking my brain, trying to think what I might have done.

“You’re sure?”

Yes.

“School’s okay. You’re not feeling down?”

I’m fine.

“It’s just . . . Mrs. Larnard said you passed in some writing, and it was pretty upsetting. It sounded like maybe you were having some problems at school.”

The next day, I had a sit down with Mrs. Larnard.

“You’re okay, then, PJ?”

“Yes, Mrs. Larnard. They’re just song lyrics. I’m not depressed. Don’t worry about me.”

Here are the lyrics that I’d handed in. Just the first verse and chorus. (You can also read the full lyrics)

My house burned down in a flash of thunder
My wife ran off with a one-legged plumber
The crops fell dead when the riverbed went dry
My dog got squashed by a pick-up truck
My son ran away and got hooked on drugs
My daughter's knocked-up by the Class of '85

People say that life is good; it don't seem good to me
I'm lost without a paddle and I'm headed up **** Creek
People say that life is fun but I don't know why
As far as I can tell,...
LIFE SUCKS...then you die!

This was a popular, regional song, played quite a bit on WBCN, back in the 80s. It was the first thing that came to my teenage mind when I was asked to write something. It didn’t seem like a bad idea at the time.

I guess the irony of the song is lost, on paper.

Fortunately, the intervention was canceled.

John Lennon “(Just Like) Starting Over” (Stripped Down)

In this stripped down version of “Starting Over” from the new Lennon boxed set, there is a small-voiced intro:

“This one is for Gene and Eddy and Elvis. And Buddy.”

While the influence of 50s rock was very apparent in the early Beatles, I have to say, that I hadn’t really considered that Lennon’s final works were a product of those same influences.

But with much of the production stripped out, how can you not hear Lennon doing a lite-Elvis impersonation on the line: “It’s been too long since we took the time . . . “

Or to think of Gene Vincent and Eddy Cochran when you hear the guitar lines on the “Why don’t we take off, alone” section.

I suppose that the apparent-ness of influence will wax and wane, but it never really goes away, does it?

Hum "Stars"

Here's another Weekend Post:

Because this story doesn't qualify as a real memory . . . But I recall that when this song came out, Howard Stern was obsessed with it, and he played it over and over again on his show. Which I thought was cool. Cool that he had the power and freedom to do what he wanted.

Urban Dance Squad "Deeper Shade Of Soul"

Here's another Weekend Post:

This is a fun 1989 cut, that is a good example of the era's penchant for sampling large chunks of old hits, to create a new one.

Justin Townes Earle “Harlem River Blues”

Justin Townes Earle has every reason to sound he lives downstream.

He has every reason to sound like his Dad, Steve Earle, one of America’s great songwriters. How could he not be influenced by that?

He has every reason to sound like the man he was named for, Townes Van Zandt. His Dad was certainly a fan, and Justin most certainly grew up listening to Townes’ tunes.

But how refreshing that, at least on “Harlem River Blues” he seems to evoke the most upstream influence of both Townes and Steve.

Doesn’t this track sound like a Woody Guthrie song? Or at least an outtake from the Billy Bragg/Wilco “Mermaid Avenue” project?

Prince “Controversy”

Thank God I grew up in the pre-YouTube age.

Prince was on the Island last week, and so I was trying to think about some of my favorite Prince memories and I flashed back to a rainy day in 1985.

We had discovered Prince, through “Purple Rain” the year before, (like most white suburban kids) and my friends and I had started to work backward through his catalogue, picking up copies of “1999,” “Prince” and “Controversy.”

On any other Spring afternoon, the bunch of us might be playing basketball or tossing the nerf around, or (of course) trying to figure out how we could get our hands on some beer before the High School dance scheduled for that evening.

But on a rainy day like this one, there wasn’t much fun to be hand, other than to hang around the house where parents weren’t home, and blast some records.

I can’t imagine who among us had the idea to make up our own dance. Truthfully, there wasn’t one of us who was particularly groovy. But we did.

We lined up. We worked out synchronized moves. We each had what could loosely be described as a “solo.” And we practiced.

That night, at the high school dance, the DJ spun “Controversy” for us, and we performed.

The whole idea that I was part of a group of people who created a series of dance moves, is so foreign to me, doesn’t seem like this could possibly be my own memory.

The last time I was on a dance from was when I got married five years ago, and that was certainly only because it was mandatory.

I avoid the dance floor like the plague, because good God, I’m not very funky. Nor, if I recall, was anyone else in that group of dancers.

Oh, I’m sure in 1985, we thought we were pretty damn slick. But no doubt, we were horrible.

Thank God we grew up in the pre-YouTube age and there is no chance of anyone, ever, anywhere, at anytime, re-living those “moves.”

The Beatles "Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite"

When my wife was pregnant with our daughter, we went through dozens, hundreds of ideas for a name. There was a period where we really wanted to name her after a Beatles song, somehow.

We ran through the many many choices for a Beatles-themed name:

Prudence
Lucy
Sadie
Pam
Eleanor
Julia
Martha
Michelle
Abbey

But none of them seemed right. We ended up dropping The Beatles theme.

Around that same time, we got a fish. A blue Beta fish. And I guess we just wanted to complete that thought of using a Beatles song for a name.

So we named him Mr. Kite.

And for the last 2 ½ years, he’s quietly made his home on the mantle in the living room.

But tonight, I came home, and the fishbowl was next to the sink. Washed out and emptied of his little fish rocks.

I can’t say I knew him well. It’s not like he was a snuggly puppy with a big personality or anything. But he was a part of our lives. And at some point our daughter---who has known Mr. Kite for her whole life---will probably ask where the fish is. It was one of her special treats, to be lifted up, so she could give him a little food. I looked forward to the day when she could take on pet care as her responsibility. But that task will have to be for another pet.

So this post is for you, Mr. Kite. Thanks for being a benefit to our lives.

-------------------

I actually wrote that post early in the summer.

I'd come home to an empty house, saw the empty fishbowl, and wrote out my feelings.

Later, I was making something to eat, and my wife called. She and the kids were spending the day at my mother-in-law's house. She chatted about her day, and the kids and their plans and what we might be doing on the weekend and . . .

"Is there something you want to tell me?" I asked, a little indignantly

"Uh. About what?" She seemed genuinely confused.

"About Mr. Kite?"

"What about him?"

"That he's gone?!?!"

"Oh Honey, No!"

She felt awful.

Earlier in the day, she had decided that Mr. Kite, after two-plus years on the mantle, needed a change. So she got a nice vase, and make that his new home, and then put the vase in our daughter's room, so she could enjoy seeing him from her bed.

He wasn't dead, just relocated.

So I put that post aside.

Do you know that often, newspapers will write the obituary of someone famous who is old or in ill health, before they have died? It gives them a chance to do research and have the obituary ready to go, when the celebrity actually dies. And occasionally, those premature obituaries get published?

Thankfully, "Mr. Kite" was not described as "The UK's favorite grandmother."

Sadly, Mr. Kite died for real, last night. His bowl is in the kitchen, out of site, obscured by a box of cereal, until we are ready to talk to our daughter about it.

She's innocently sitting across the living room from me, watching "Curious George." And I'm wishing for all the world that I didn't have to have this conversation with her.

But, as much as we'd like to, there are some things that you can't postpone anymore . . .

Neil Young “Walk With Me”

I have, what is practically a yearly ritual with Barbara.

After some thoughtful, but resigned listening, I bring the new Neil Young CD to her and say, “Well, we should play it, right? I mean, it’s Neil Young.”

I guess I’m looking for her to deliver, what the Catholic Church might consider “dispensation.”

Regardless of the quality of a new song by, say, Neil Young or Jack Johnson or Sheryl Crow, if we didn’t play it, people who listen to mvyradio regularly, would find that weird. Sometimes, you play a song in rotation, for a short time, and then drop it, just to let people know the record exists, and this is what it sounds like.

Neil Young has made more great records and written more great songs than near-about any person who has ever lived.

But Neil Young also has a pretty insouciant attitude toward commercial viability. He goes in the studio, he makes the record he makes and he puts it out. Some are better than others.

The singles off “Prairie Wind” where pretty single-y. But for much of the last decade, Young has released some material that could be described, generously, as “loose.”

I mean, there’s a charm to unedited garage rock. It just doesn’t always lend itself of radio play.

So I gave a quick listen to the new track, “Walk With Me,” and wandered to the studio where Barbara was, prepared to have our usual conversation:

PJ: What do you think?
BD: It’s a little rough. But it’s Neil Young. We probably should play it.

But instead, I got an entirely different response.

She had listened far more intently than I had, I guess. Because she started talking about his detailed playing and the repeated musical phrase under the surface of the song and the complexity of it all and about how great it sounded.

I have to admit, I hadn’t heard all that. Did you?

More listening is required.