September... Was it a classic, or a standard meeting?

First meeting for me, and it was a good experience. I especially liked the fact that nobody takes other people's music rating opinions personally. Pitchers of beer aid the process. Now to the music...

Velvet Crush - Special thanks to Jay for turning me on to this a couple of years ago...it is one of my favorite power pop CD's. I'm a big Matthew Sweet fan, and this is very reminiscent of his 100% Fun sound. In fact, this CD IS 100% fun to listen to again and again. 4 1/2 stars.

Alejandro Escovedo - Thanks for the introduction to him. I listened first, liked what I heard initially, went back to read a bit about him and listened again with an ear toward the autobiographical tone of the CD. It became even more enjoyable from that perspective. The slow songs are the most memorable...Sensitive Boys...Slow Down (to me, the most well-crafted song), but my favorite was People (Not As Long As You Think) even if the moelody was copped from David Byrne. And a nod to Tony Visconti's production as the "Ashes to Ashes" sound from Bowie made its way into one of the tracks. All in all, the best CD of the month - 4 stars.

Del Amitri - Another CD I had not heard, though one of my favorite pop tracks is a later Del Amitri track, "I'm Not Where It's At", so I figured I'd enjoy this one. I was wrong. The lyrics were forgettable, the music sounded anachronistic - and I'm not a fan of that mid-late '80's sound - and the vocals, manic with a Scottish twang, just didn't do it for me. Any CD worthy of more than 2 stars should make me at least want to play one track over again the first time I hear it. Didn't happen - 2 stars.

Scarlet Johansson - Yikes! Where to begin...The first track on the CD, an instrmental, sounds like something that Phil Spector threw up. The vocals, when they finally appeared, were awful. There was NOTHING pleasant about her sound. It was the polar opposite of how she looks. I was on a road trip to Philadelphia with my wife when I first listened to this. After three songs, she said, "It sounds like Sinead O' Connor had a lobotomy and they took out all the talent but left this behind". I could not argue otherwise. 1 star.

Tom Morello is the master of cool guitar sounds. I enjoyed the GH collection very much. The Rage stuff seemed better musically than the Audioslave stuff, but it was all good new rock.

...And then there was Standards vs. Classics. In my view, it's all about how to define them. If a standard is something that a wedding band would play, as was suggested in a couple of previous posts, then the Chicken Dance and the Macarena would qualify as standards. I don't think that's the case. In my view, a standard is a song that transends generational bias - that is, people who won't tolerate rock will tolerate it, and people who love rock will tolerate a pop/jazz version of it.
It also has to be a good enough song to warrant covers in different genres. A good example (though not from the years we are using) is "Something". Sinatra recorded it, The Beatles recorded it, and many others did, too. That's a standard, in my book.

Songs that could fit that mold from 1980 forward are...

New York, New York (Kander and Ebb)
Every Breath You Take (Police)
Always and Forever (Heatwave)
Love and Mercy (Brian Wilson)

Classics are a different story. Classics could live in a genre without ever crossing over. Songs like Joey (Concrete Blonde), Enter Sandman (Metallica) Theme from Friends (The Rembrandts) Hey Jealousy and 'Till I Hear It From You (Gin Blossoms) and Banditos (The Refreshments) fit that description for me if we're limited to the 1990's.