Make It Hurt So Good

Posted 14 April, 2008 in Music | 3 comments

Jay over at Kill the Goat (who was apparently separated at birth from yr. humble correspondent) on why she detests karaoke:

Despite the world being filled with good music, karaoke mostly features: cheese by Celine Dion, stinky cheese by Mariah Carey, and inevitably, some baby boomers reliving their misspent youth with Grease tributes out the wahzoo. Yeah, I said wahzoo. And just for the record: Gloria Gaynor should only be sung by drag queens with big curly hair, sinfully short skirts, and gold go-go boots. Seriously.

You go girl.

Hey Hey, My My, Rock ‘n’ Roll Will Never Die … Until Someone Tries to Write a Novel about It

Posted 13 March, 2008 in Literary Criticism, Music | 3 comments

Reviewing Ibi Kaslik’s new book The Angel Riots on the CBC website, Kevin Chong ponders whether it’s possible to write a great rock ‘n’ roll novel:

Writing about rock ’n’ roll is, more often than not, a fool’s errand. Frank Zappa’s withering description of rock journalism as “people who can’t write interviewing people who can’t talk for people who can’t read” is not only pithy, but reflects the widely held opinion on the matter.

I’d argue that it’s really not possible to write a “great” rock ‘n’ roll novel, if by “great” one means authentic or capturing the essence of the source material. Great rock ‘n’ roll is built on a kind of anarchic energy that can’t truly be replicated in prose: as Craig O’Hara said of Warren Kinsella’s book Fury’s Hour, “a book about Punk is not Punk Rock”; in the same way, a description of a horde of sweaty, writhing, drunk and stoned headbangers can’t adequately capture the sheer body rush and sonic assault of a Motörhead concert.

Chong points out that Kaslik adroitly avoids this problem by mostly leaving the descriptions of the band’s performances out of her novel and concentrating instead on their personal interactions offstage, but there is nevertheless something oddly static about the result, and stasis is the very antithesis of the rock ‘n’ roll ethos.

In Chong’s conception, Don DeLillo’s Great Jones Street and Jonathan Lethem’s You Don’t Love Me Yet constitute enjoyable rock ‘n’ roll novels; I’d be more inclined to tilt towards Michael Turner’s Hard Core Logo or Ray Robertson’s Moody Food, which, although it too suffers from an unavoidable literary sedateness, is adept in capturing the mood of Yorkville in the ’60s, and his Gram Parsons stand-in is well-rounded and believable.

However, to come closest to nailing the manic energy and electricity of a great rock show, you have to look at novels that don’t deal with rock per se, but nevertheless brandish a youthful vigour, and work flat out to provide an adrenaline-fuelled body blow. In that sense, the greatest “rock ‘n’ roll” novels I’ve read — neither of which have anything to do with rock ‘n’ roll — are Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting and Craig Davidson’s The Fighter.

Ramble on.

(My own review of The Angel Riots appeared in the January/February 2008 issue of Quill & Quire.)

Naked Album Art

Posted 1 December, 2007 in Music | No comments

And in case that didn’t get your attention, here’s a link to an exhaustive list (complete with images, you pervs) of phonographic recordings that feature nudity in their cover/interior art.

A quick scan of the first 150 listings (there are over 1,400 in total) displays a surprising range of titles, from the mainstream (Led Zep’s Houses of the Holy, the Wings single “Jet/Let Me Roll It”), to the essential (the first album by The Slits — pictured at left — the post-punk band that along with Buzzcocks and Subway Sect accompanied The Clash on their White Riot tour), to the obscure (a disc by someone named Kenny Dino called Love Songs for Seka, addressed to the vintage porn star).

Unsurprisingly, Madonna features prominently, with seven entries, outstripped (sorry) only by eighties vixen Samantha Fox with eight (Marilyn Monroe has four). Also unsurprisingly, female nudity dominates almost exclusively; the only male image I could find (and a pretty tame one at that) is from an album by Pablo Cruise called Lifeline (1976).

My hat — but only my hat — is off to whomever spent the time compiling this list. (via Ed)

What Are They Thinking?

Posted 19 September, 2007 in Music | 2 comments

Item, from today’s Globe and Mail, page R3:

Punk legends the Sex Pistols announced yesterday that they will stage a one-off gig in November to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their controversial album Never Mind the Bollocks.

I saw the Sex Pistols in the ’90s, which is something I’m almost ashamed to admit. The Filthy Lucre Tour: at least they were honest about their motives. But the show was shite, and seeing the Sex Pistols without Sid Vicious is like seeing the Doors without Jim Morrison. It’s not even the same band.

Next thing you know the Doors are going to stage a reunion tour with Ian Astbury of the Cult on lead vocals. Oh, hang on a tick …

Look Out, Chip Kidd

Posted 13 August, 2007 in Book News, Music, Publishing | 1 comment

Fancy yourself a book designer? Ever wanted to see your very own cover art on the front of a classic book? Well, now you can. The folks at Penguin UK have a promotion whereby you can purchase a copy of a Penguin Classic, and they’ll slap your preferred choice of cover art onto the “naked” covers of the chosen title.

As a promo, they’ve commissioned a number of well-known musicians to create personalized covers for the series. These include Beck’s cover of Le Grand Meaulnes (left image) and Ryan Adam’s startling oil painting on the cover of Dracula (right image). You can view screen shots of the other musicians’ creations here.

I can see it now: innumerable proud mommies throwing their children’s kindergarten finger-paintings on the covers of Henry James novels, or paint-by-number watercolours affixed to Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles. This notion makes me shudder the way I shudder every time I hear “The Ode to Joy” as a cell phone ringtone.

If I were to do this, I’d choose Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and slap a nude photo of Kobe Tae on the front, or maybe one of those Britney Spears commando shots. That’s just the kind of sick bastard I am. (Hey, they are “naked” Penguins, after all.)

(Thanks to Queen B for the tip.)

An Afterthought

Posted 15 June, 2007 in Music | 2 comments

I’ve now got ZZ Top’s Eliminator on the disc player, and it occurs to me that the video for “Legs” is what What Not to Wear would be like, if the folks at What Not to Wear had even a scintilla of a sense of humour.

Overrated Albums

Posted 15 June, 2007 in Music | No comments

As I’m writing this, I’ve got Who’s Next on the stereo. For me, that’s one of those timeless albums, one of those few (oh, so very few) albums that doesn’t have a single dud track on it, that sounds just as vibrant and essential today as it did when it was first released in 1971. (Or, so I assume, since that was also the year I was born, and I wasn’t yet a Who fan, to the best of my memory.) Everything about that album seems right: the extended synth intro to “Baba O’Reilly” that opens it; Roger Daltrey’s anguished howl of anger on “Won’t Get Fooled Again” (which, with it’s cynical imprecation to “Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss” could well be the perfect anthem for our times); and — especially — Keith Moon’s ferocious drumming.

I’ve written about essential albums before (on the old site, here and here); Who’s Next more than qualifies, as do Bone Machine by Tom Waits, Sticky Fingers by the Stones, and London Calling by The Clash.

Then there are those albums that don’t see the inside of the CD player that often, but on those occasions that I do drag them out, I’m almost startled by the revelation, “Fuck, this is a really good record.” This category would include Elvis Costello’s severely underrated Mighty Like a Rose, Mae Moore’s lambent Bohemia, and Lloyd Cole’s playfully anti-romantic opus Don’t Get Weird on Me, Babe.

Then there are those albums that everyone considers timeless classics, essentials of the canon, that I just plain don’t get. You know the ones I’m talking about: perennials on those “Best Rock ‘n’ Roll Records of All Time” lists; overproduced monstrosities like Bat Out of Hell, cartoonish pseudo-aggressiveness like Never Mind the Bollocks by the Sex Pistols — the Monkees of punk rock — and practically anything by Led Zeppelin. (I always get in trouble for this one, but as far as I’m concerned they are the most overrated band in rock history: “Whole Lotta Love” is a pretty decent rock song, but “Kashmir” is boring and repetitive, and the only reason for “Stairway to Heaven” even to exist is because it’s a six-minute slow(ish) song that gives horny teenagers at high school dances an excuse to cop a feel.)

Fortunately, the folks at the Guardian feel the same way, and have commissioned some expert musicians to cut the knees out from some giants of the rock pantheon. Albums that come under fire include heavy hitters like Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band, which Billy Childish calls “middle-of-the-road rock music for plumbers”; Dark Side of the Moon, which Tjinder Singh of Cornershop says is “a bloated concept album that made punk necessary”; and Meat Is Murder, which Jackie McKeown of 1990s likens to “being stuck in a lift with a Manchester University Socialist Workers’ Party convention.”

Also falling victim (finally!) to the Guardian’s tender mercies is The Neon Bible by Arcade Fire, the inexplicably popular Canadian collective, which Greer Gartside of Scritti Politti rightly points out is “solidly unattractive, texturally nasty, a bit harmonically and melodically dull, bombastic and melodramatic, and the rhythms are pedestrian.”

But the Guardian piece is worth reading, if for no other reason, thanks to Ian Rankin’s extended takedown of The Velvet Underground and Nico, which is strident, hilarious, and long overdue. Rankin says that Nico “sings English the way I sing German,” and that’s one of the more complimentary remarks he makes. Great stuff for anyone who, as Rankin suggests, enjoys seeing sacred cows turned into hamburger.

(Thanks to AA for pointing me toward this article.)