Weekly Soundtrack

My daughter’s vacationing in Puerto Rico for 10 days, my divorce papers came in the mail last week, and I’m so fucking bored and lonely I just can’t stand myself. All in all, it sound like the perfect time for the

Lou Reed Edition

There may not be another rock figure as fucked-up as Reed. He’s been (in no particular order): a genius, a speed freak, a has-been, a joke, a junkie-poet, an elder statesman, a Honda scooter pitchman, and a drug casualty. He’s truly a monumental figure in rock history, yet his work is wildly uneven. The good stuff is really good; the bad stuff is off-the-charts dismal. Boiling him down to three songs has taken most of the afternoon.

“Rock And Roll” from Loaded

The best song ever about the power of music, although I laugh every time I think of a five-year old lamenting that there was “nothin’ goin’ down at all.” This song is so good that I don’t even mind that he ends every line with “at all,” and you know how that usually bugs the shit out of me. Some lovely rhythm-guitar playing on this, as well.

“Sweet Jane” from Rock N Roll Animal

I’ve gotta go for the obvious FM staple here. For some reason, Reed put together a bombastic band for his ‘73 tour, and while the resultant proto-metal thunder didn’t musically relate to anything he’d done before, it did earn him some airplay and some decent sales figures. Unfortunately, his vocals here are dull and affectless, nothing like the Loaded version, with it’s irrepressible ad-libs and throw-away lines.

“Waves of Fear” from The Blue Mask

Deeply ominous and creepy, this is not even the most sinister song from this record. This album really got Reed rolling after a period of artistic lethargy, due in no small part to bandmate Robert Quine (RIP), who encouraged Reed to play guitar again.

(ed. note: this may have been my most half-assed Soundtrack ever. Obviously, I neglected to mention that “Rock and Roll” is from Reed’s days as the leader of The Velvet Underground, only the most influential rock band in history. But, of course, you already knew that.)

Fucking Dumb Commercials

Have you seen the Jeep commercial where the squirrel drops through some douche’s sun-roof and they sing a fucking Neil Diamond song?  If you haven’t then good for you. If you have then I’ll probably see you on the 11 o’clock news after the cops arrest you for murdering someone shortly after viewing it.

TV commercials are my all-time pet peeve.  Commercials with lousy music drive me nuts, but this fucking piece of shit takes the cake.  It’s clear that no one listened to the words of “Rock Me Gently” before they used it in this commercial.  Someone just said, “Hey, we bought the rights to a cool Neil Diamond song for our new commercial! Like, isn’t that great?” Then someone else said, “Great! And because it’s a Jeep ad we’ll have lots of wildlife in the car! And they can sing the song too! Great!”

All of which would be wonderful, except that it’s a song about getting laid.  It’s not about cars, or jeeps or wildlife.  And so some poor schmuck of an actor had to sing a duet with a CGI squirrel on a song about getting laid.  I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t exactly make me wanna drop by my nearest Jeep dealership.  It does make me say, “Wow! That’s a fucked-up way to try to sell cars.”

Weekly Soundtrack

I don’t like to post the same artists over and over, but since I find myself listening to the same shit again and again there’s bound to be some repeats…

“Hand In Hand” by Elvis Costello and the Attractions

I overlooked this song for years until I really paid attention to the lyrics. I just might get the line “You can’t show me any kind of hell that I don’t know all ready” tattooed on my back.

“Toys And Flavors” by the Hellacopters

Geez, I’ve been playing the shit out of this lately. Hell, I’m playing it right now. Great, no-nonsense guitar sounds and good use of honky-tonk piano.

“Can You Help Me?” by American Music Club

This was another great band that got swept aside by the grunge tidal wave. They had a great songwriter in Mark Eitzel, and they were undeniably musically talented, but what radio station was gonna play a band with a pedal-steel player back in 1994?

This was probably their poppiest tune, and it has all kinds of good lines (“My old friend Rigor Mortis starts to breathe in my face” always makes me laugh), but they’re not exactly Up With People. The song seems like a simple plea for love, but the last verse takes the song in a different direction. Why do they need to “turn (their) backs on what the world has in store?” Love, it seems, can only do so much. Not exactly Top 40 sentiments, but still a great song.

Gay Retard Teased

Because I’m an effete white guy I dig This American Life on NPR. It’s shows are usually a few real-life stories based around a common theme. Sometimes the stories are totally, dismally depressing, and if it’s about autistic kids or something I’ll turn it off mid-story, but usually the stories are so interesting that if I’m listening in my car I’ll drive around aimlessly just so I can hear the whole thing. I once sat in a parking lot for close to 30 minutes listening to a story about a guy who invited the neighborhood hookers into his house. That story did not end well, but it was so fascinating that I couldn’t even think of going shopping until it was over.

My favorite story is from a show called “Tough Room” and it’s about the weekly writers meeting at The Onion. The eight writers all bring in 15 headlines and read them to each other. Any headline that gets two votes moves on to the next round of editing, where it is subjected to another round of scrutiny. I might be the only one who thinks that it’s interesting to listen to professional comedy writers dissect jokes. One writer proposes “Man Evidently Thinks Those Sideburns Make Him Look Cool” and then immediately says, “That’s not funny.” He then asks, “Is it funny with something other than sideburns? No? All right.” If I wrote something as funny as that headline I wouldn’t even think twice before I wet my pants laughing, but here are these writers parsing every joke word-by-word, and you wonder how any joke could stand up to such scrutiny.

At one point the story’s narrator describes the meeting as “not just tedious, but it’s the opposite of comedy.” And that’s what I kind of find captivating about the whole thing.  I’m interested in these sorts of glimpses behind the finished product.  It’s easy to lose track of the fact any work of human creativity takes a lot of hard work.  Sometimes the people doing the work aren’t very talented, and the finished product can still suck, but even a shitty pop song requires an untold amount of conscious choices before it can pollute the airwaves.

The headline for this post was proposed as an Onion headline, and while everyone in the room laughed at it (in a good way), ultimately it was rejected because it didn’t seem to have much potential as a story.  I don’t care, though.  I laugh every time I see, hear, or even think of it.  I’m desperately trying to think of a way to use it as a catch-phrase.