Notes From Sunny Los Angeles

The Mong
Music Group Commentary
March 2008

JOE ELY – “LIVE AT LIBERTY LUNCH” = 4 STARS
Now that’s great country! Sweet guitar work. And live no less. Wow!

KATE NASH – “MADE OF BRICKS” = 4.5 STARS
Walking that dangerously fine line between sincere/heartfelt and clever/amusing to near perfection. Holy shit this is a great record!

JEDEDIAH PARISH – “TWENTY FIRST CENTURY AMERICAN” = 4.5 STARS
And repeat: “Walking that dangerously fine line between sincere/heartfelt and clever/amusing to near perfection. Holy shit this is a great record!” Jed is a later day Tom Waits who deserves to be heard by the whole wide world.

PUSCIFER – “‘V’ IS FOR VIGINA” = 2 STARS
We seem to have a theme of, “What is good clever?” this month. For all that’s good here, and there’s much (the solid production/engineering among them), this is mostly “bad clever” that’s trying too hard.

G’HITS – BEST OF THIN LIZZY
What’s not to love? Seriously though.

Topic 1:
- D’Arcy Question: Nirvana is given much credit for being revolutionary and changing music but were they. Did they in fact change anything and was it for the better? Please include thoughts that include radio, live performances, and music business as a whole.
- Answer: PART 1: Yes, Nirvana was revolutionary and changed music, which is not the same thing as being completely original, which doesn’t mean they weren’t brilliant, perhaps genius.
- PART 2: At the time, they changed music for the better because they blew open the doors for great new acts to muscle into the mainstream, which changed the face of radio and labels, and also helped to expose bands to those who wanted to delve deeper into the so-called underground and all this is indeed ‘for the better;’ however, the changes they helped to bring about have more or less been co-opted and formularized by big business and hence the lineage (from here to there) of the bands and trends that have resulted mostly suck ass, which is decidedly not ‘for the better.’
- PART 3: Among the greatest live performances I’ve seen was Nirvana, living up to their punk/hardcore roots. The best part of the show wasn’t necessarily the performance (which was noisy and sloppy but awesome nonetheless) but what ended the show. It was in Springfield, MA, 90s, and the show was largely populated by muscle-heads, frat boys, and jocks (not all of whom are tough-guy assholes but it seemed that every one in attendance that night was a tough-guy asshole) from Umass and the other nearby colleges. These assholes were so rowdy, slamming violently (not for fun), picking fights, basically ruining the show for everyone else, that after about the tenth time Kurt nicely asked them to (collectively), “Calm the fuck down,” and they didn’t/wouldn’t, he abruptly ended the show by leaning his Strat against his amp, turning both up all the way, resulting in deafening feedback, and then he told the sound guy to leave it up as all three of them promptly left the stage. That fucker buzzed and whaled and was still going strong when I was two blocks away from the stadium, twenty minutes later. “In Bloom” come to life, indeed. Remember the lyrics? “He's the one / Who likes all our pretty songs / And he likes to sing along / And he likes to shoot his gun / But he knows not what it means...” God fucking bless Kurt Cobain and the boys.

Topic 2:
D’Arcy Question: And on a lighter note. What was the first song that you remember really liking? To us older folks I am guessing its an AM classic, because Ken I don't think Blood on the Tracks was the first song you latched on to.
- Answer: Probably “Saturday Nights Alright for Fighting” by Elton John. And it was definitely on AM radio.