Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Don't Start a Ri-ot
Back in 1996, it may surprise some who know me now to learn, I was a Grade A, card-carrying prude. I certainly would have cried had my dog run away, I had no bills to pay, and the idea of my mom smoking pot was too laughably ludicrous to even consider (still is). In 2010, I quite often rise up to the street early in the morning, cigarette lit and shoes strapped on, pondering possible reasons my money's all gone; I'd love a dalmation, and on certain rough days probably could use a little getting high (I cannot, however, play the guitar like a motherfucking anything). But one thing that has not changed for me in the intermediate fourteen years is my enjoyment of a certain big mid-nineties hit by the great band of yore, Sublime.
Trivia: The story behind the breezy, cheerful, realistically optimistic mood-brightener that is "What I Got" is actually quite a downbeat one. One month before the Long Beach ska-punk band's third album and major label debut was released, Sublime's lead singer Bradley Nowell died of a heroin overdose at age 28 after a gig in Petaluma, CA. Originally intended to be titled Killin' It (wisely changed following Nowell's untimely death), Sublime nearly did not see release, but on July 30, 1996 the retitled album debuted and eventually went 5x platinum, and singles "What I Got," "Santeria" and "Wrong Way" became legitimate mainstream successes. Like Nirvana had done two years earlier after the death of lead singer Kurt Cobain, Sublime disbanded following Nowell's death. To leave you on a lighter note, however, the canine mentioned in "What I Got" did actually exist, in the form of Lou Dog, Nowell's dalmation that served as the band's mascot.
"What I Got"
Sublime
Sublime
(Gasoline Alley, 1996)
Trivia: The story behind the breezy, cheerful, realistically optimistic mood-brightener that is "What I Got" is actually quite a downbeat one. One month before the Long Beach ska-punk band's third album and major label debut was released, Sublime's lead singer Bradley Nowell died of a heroin overdose at age 28 after a gig in Petaluma, CA. Originally intended to be titled Killin' It (wisely changed following Nowell's untimely death), Sublime nearly did not see release, but on July 30, 1996 the retitled album debuted and eventually went 5x platinum, and singles "What I Got," "Santeria" and "Wrong Way" became legitimate mainstream successes. Like Nirvana had done two years earlier after the death of lead singer Kurt Cobain, Sublime disbanded following Nowell's death. To leave you on a lighter note, however, the canine mentioned in "What I Got" did actually exist, in the form of Lou Dog, Nowell's dalmation that served as the band's mascot.Get Sublime's thoroughly enjoyable self-titled third and final album.
Monday, January 25, 2010
I Hate To Bug You In The Middle of Dinner
If you're anywhere near my age, chances are you at the very least remember hearing the sounds of an angry caterwauling nineteen year old Canadian emanating out of some form of music player during the middle years of the 1990s, that is if you weren't yourself obsessed with the now legendary emblem of a generation of teen and preteen angst, Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill. But after her musically adventurous sophomore album smashed sales records but bamboozled many of her former fans, Morissette's career slowed to a steady idle, where it continues today, three albums later. Morissette toured a few years ago with Barenaked Ladies in support of her 2004 album So-Called Chaos, and it was the first pop/rock concert I'd ever attended (much less spent money on a ticket for), and to this day it remains my favorite. At said concert Morissette, sans backup singers and headbanging jovially, introduced a confused but delighted crowd to some unusual renditions of some of her old songs that later showed up in the tenth anniversary re-release of Jagged Little Pill, a fully re-recorded acoustic reimagining of the iconic 1995 album that, in my mind, rivals if not surpasses the original and is a must-have for any Morissette fan. But how can raging angry-rock anthems like "You Oughta Know" possibly translate to acoustic versions? Well, here's your answer.
Trivia: Alanis Morissette's eighth (!) album, an acoustic re-imagining and re-recording of her third album, Jagged Little Pill, appeared on June 13, 2005 (two days before my birthday...just saying) as a special promotion through Starbucks coffee shops, only being available in North American Starbucks outlets for the first five weeks before it was made available to all retail. Starbucks promotions have certain common aspects, such as the fact that they are not 1. uncommon, nor 2. chart-busters. Besides, by 2005 So-Called Chaos
had barely moved a million copies worldwide, and Morissette can't have been seen as a colossal moneymaker overall. So why HMV Canada got its nose so bent out of joint by this Starbucks deal that it pulled all Morissette albums from its stores for the duration of the promotion is as much your guess as it is mine, but happen it did.
Definitely get Alanis Morissette's phenomenal acoustic re-release, Jagged Little Pill Acoustic, one of my favorite albums of all time.
"You Oughta Know"
Alanis Morissette
Jagged Little Pill Acoustic
(Maverick, 2005)
Trivia: Alanis Morissette's eighth (!) album, an acoustic re-imagining and re-recording of her third album, Jagged Little Pill, appeared on June 13, 2005 (two days before my birthday...just saying) as a special promotion through Starbucks coffee shops, only being available in North American Starbucks outlets for the first five weeks before it was made available to all retail. Starbucks promotions have certain common aspects, such as the fact that they are not 1. uncommon, nor 2. chart-busters. Besides, by 2005 So-Called Chaos had barely moved a million copies worldwide, and Morissette can't have been seen as a colossal moneymaker overall. So why HMV Canada got its nose so bent out of joint by this Starbucks deal that it pulled all Morissette albums from its stores for the duration of the promotion is as much your guess as it is mine, but happen it did.Definitely get Alanis Morissette's phenomenal acoustic re-release, Jagged Little Pill Acoustic, one of my favorite albums of all time.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Like Learning to Fly
With the new season of American Idol is kicking off, I find myself more conflicted about the show than I've ever been over the previous eight seasons of the ratings (and pop music) juggernaut. I'll likely elucidate on this inner conflict on another occasion (or, more likely, multiple other occasions), but suffice it to say my relationship with Simon Fuller's Simon Cowell-starring reality singing competition is, and always has been, strained at best. But I thought that something of a white flag on my part might be in order as the three brave souls named Simon (bless him), Kara (songwriter extraordinaire...just not for American Idol) and Randy (who? Oh yeah, him, dawg) and their weekly celebrity guesting fourth (so far we've had Posh Spice, Shania Twain, and Kristin Chenoweth, warming the seat Ellen Degeneres will take over from recently departed original judge Paula Abdul beginning Hollywood week) slog through what I imagine is a hideous amount of aural punishment to try and weed out the two dozen or so finalists who will spend the next several months screeching their tits/balls off to try and earn the 2,000 text messages their 12 year old fan clubs can manage to send in within the time allotment after the "live" shows in hopes of ultimately "winning" a million dollar record contract, a guaranteed #1 single (for a week), and then obscurity while the runners-up win all the Grammys and sell all the albums. *Whew*
That said, there have been a marginal number of actually talented vocalists (and even a couple - dare I say - performers!) to emerge from the depth of this cesspool of pre-teen screaming and general pop ickiness. Kelly Clarkson, winner of the inaugural season, has grown into a legitimate pop star in her own right; Jennifer Hudson (who came in seventh in the third season) won over viewers, critics and Academy voters with her showstopping role in the film version of Dreamgirls, winning an Oscar (among many other awards) in the process; Fantasia Barrino, who won that third season, has gone on to Broadway with a critically supported debut in The Color Purple; Carrie Underwood, season four champ, is easily the Kelly Clarkson of country music, with as much popularity and legitimacy in her own genre; Adam Lambert, season eight runner-up, covered every magazine and has kept people talking to this day about his raunchy (if tonally challenged) performance at the 2009 American Music Awards.
Then there's season six winner Jordin Sparks. The youngest Idol winner so far (17 when crowned), the Arizona native has two top ten albums (one has gone 2x Platinum), three top ten singles, an AMA and a Grammy nod to her name, so she's done all right for herself. There are a number of things I don't love about her: her schmaltzy duet with pre-Rihanna incident Chris Brown ("No Air," the Grammy-nommed track); uncanny yet unacknowledged similarities between the lead single to her sophomore album Battlefield to a certain Pat Benatar song; the fact she was on American Idol; her little anti-slut comment at the 2009 VMAs; and so forth. But there has been one time the young Ms. Sparks has had my full attention, and that is with this track, a single from her self-titled debut album that made minor waves but failed to crack the top 10 (topping out at 17). The use of close harmony, a solid-sounding lead vocal by a then-still young Sparks, and the innocent positivity make up for the utter saccharine quality of the lyrics, in my eyes, at least.
That said, there have been a marginal number of actually talented vocalists (and even a couple - dare I say - performers!) to emerge from the depth of this cesspool of pre-teen screaming and general pop ickiness. Kelly Clarkson, winner of the inaugural season, has grown into a legitimate pop star in her own right; Jennifer Hudson (who came in seventh in the third season) won over viewers, critics and Academy voters with her showstopping role in the film version of Dreamgirls, winning an Oscar (among many other awards) in the process; Fantasia Barrino, who won that third season, has gone on to Broadway with a critically supported debut in The Color Purple; Carrie Underwood, season four champ, is easily the Kelly Clarkson of country music, with as much popularity and legitimacy in her own genre; Adam Lambert, season eight runner-up, covered every magazine and has kept people talking to this day about his raunchy (if tonally challenged) performance at the 2009 American Music Awards.
Then there's season six winner Jordin Sparks. The youngest Idol winner so far (17 when crowned), the Arizona native has two top ten albums (one has gone 2x Platinum), three top ten singles, an AMA and a Grammy nod to her name, so she's done all right for herself. There are a number of things I don't love about her: her schmaltzy duet with pre-Rihanna incident Chris Brown ("No Air," the Grammy-nommed track); uncanny yet unacknowledged similarities between the lead single to her sophomore album Battlefield to a certain Pat Benatar song; the fact she was on American Idol; her little anti-slut comment at the 2009 VMAs; and so forth. But there has been one time the young Ms. Sparks has had my full attention, and that is with this track, a single from her self-titled debut album that made minor waves but failed to crack the top 10 (topping out at 17). The use of close harmony, a solid-sounding lead vocal by a then-still young Sparks, and the innocent positivity make up for the utter saccharine quality of the lyrics, in my eyes, at least.
"One Step at a Time"
Jordin Sparks
(Jive Records, 2008)
Trivia: Despite, as I mentioned, the song not making the top ten on the Billboard Hot 100, when it peaked at number 17 in August of 2008 Sparks became the first Idol contestant to have her first four singles crack the top twenty on said chart (Idol single "This Is My Now" topped out at number 15, followed by "Tattoo" at number 8, then "No Air" at number 3). "One Step At a Time" did reach a peak of number 16 on the UK charts despite never being physically released there. The video, which did reach the top spot on VH1's weekly Top 20 Video Countdown (now the de facto replacement for the late MTV video countdown "Total Request Live"), features a cameo by High School Musical co-star Corbin Bleu.
Trivia: Despite, as I mentioned, the song not making the top ten on the Billboard Hot 100, when it peaked at number 17 in August of 2008 Sparks became the first Idol contestant to have her first four singles crack the top twenty on said chart (Idol single "This Is My Now" topped out at number 15, followed by "Tattoo" at number 8, then "No Air" at number 3). "One Step At a Time" did reach a peak of number 16 on the UK charts despite never being physically released there. The video, which did reach the top spot on VH1's weekly Top 20 Video Countdown (now the de facto replacement for the late MTV video countdown "Total Request Live"), features a cameo by High School Musical co-star Corbin Bleu.Check out Jordin Sparks' well-reviewed sophomore album Battlefield.
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