September Shit

Scarlett Johansson - What’s with the Hollywood crowd? Always trying to do shit they shouldn’t. I turn on the TV and there’s Cloris Leachman, a decent actress in her day, all made up to look like a 112 year old hooker trying to dance with some 25 year old homo. Then I get this package in the mail from Greg and it’s Scarlett Johansson, a decent actress in her own right – well, she’s hot anyway – trying her hand at singing. Enough already. Which one is worse is a topic for another day, but old Cloris has some serious stumbling around to do if she’s going to top this. I don’t know much of Tom Waits’ music, so we’ll leave lyrics out of this discussion and concentrate solely on the music. Dirge-like was the term that came to mind after about the 4th mind-numbing song passed through the speakers in my car. Someone should have told her this wasn’t working and put a hold on this project before it got this far. No stars.

Velvet Crush - Imagine the guitar based pop (or power pop if you will) category as a tree. There’s a branch that includes a bunch of bands and artists that see a connection between country and rock. Big Star is at the base of that branch ( many branches grow out of Big Star) and some of the more prominent bands and artists that reside on this one branch are the Gin Blossoms, Matthew Sweet and Velvet Crush. This is probably Velvet Crush’s signature release and it contains at least two bona-fide guitar pop classics - Hold Me Up and My Blank Pages. Very reminiscent of Matthew Sweet and they have a connection of course. Matthew Sweet has produced these guys, although this one was produced by Mitch Easter, and Lead Crusher Ric Menck plays drums on Sweet’s new record. Although much more country than most of their previous and later CDs, this one is my second favorite, losing a close battle with a live album that draws from about 75% of this record. Yeah, it’s simplistic and lyrically, it’s pretty down, but its raucous moments have a great homemade feel and the slower stuff feels real to me. 4

Del Amitri – My former brother in-law introduced me to this band in the early to mid ‘90’s and I thought the stuff he put on tape for me was really good. Although I have no idea which albums I had then, they seemed fresh and interesting. Surprisingly, this does not live up to what I remember them being. They write good songs and it is very tight, but it is too polished and that takes away from my overall enjoyment. 2.5

Alejandro Escoveda – I wanted to buy this because he seems to be taking star turns with everybody and every time I heard something come up on Sirius, it sounded good. And it is good. Stylistically, it’s a bit too all over the place to really get my arms around, though, both musically and vocally. I kept thinking of the people he sounds like whether it was Southside Johnny or Jim Carroll or Van Morrison or Randy Newman or the lead singer of the Hold Steady. It was always in the back of my mind when listening to the songs – who does he sound like here? I’m not so sure what he sounds like. Still very professionally done, maybe a bit too professionally done – again – but the strength of the songs gets it to a 3.5

Tom Morello - I’ve always considered just about everything our radio station plays to be passé, almost by definition. And a band as popular with our audience as Rage Against the Machine must again, by definition, be completely overrated. So I’ve never really listened to them in this context. Morello can certainly play and that (more than the songs themselves) was the point of this collection. And actually, listening to these songs in that context made this music far more interesting than I had initially thought it was. He really drives the sound and while some of his techniques (some would call them tricks) become redundant, he knows how to create great guitar moments. Strangely, I found the Audioslave stuff far less compelling than the Rage stuff.

Topic

I’m hard pressed to come up with anything that fits that description recorded after 1980. Really. I’ll let you guys come up with the titles and I can either agree or not.

In terms of “classic” recordings, the phrase classic rock and the term "classic" describe two completely different things. Classic Rock is a radio format and most of what is heard is not classic, as I define a classic in much the same way I define a standard, except that a standard is the next echelon up from a classic song. Classic songs recorded after 1990? Songs that will truly endure 10 years from now? Enter Sandman comes to mind. Can’t think of any others off the top or bottom of my head