Corporate Rock *still* sucks

Devo is suing McDonalds over a new Happy Meal Toy, which strongly resembles the outfits Devo wore in their 'Whip It' video.

I have no problem with bands selling their music for use in commercials, especially since advertising executives developed decent musical taste. (The most recent example are ads I've seen during the UEFA Euro Cup featuring music by great Brazilian psych-rock band Os Mutantes.) And maybe I'm foolish but it still amazes me that McDonalds would steal from Devo, of ALL bands, to keep selling their multi-million dollar flavor of diabetes. And attaching American Idol to it is a pretty big slap in the face.

I wonder how much this sort of thing goes on. The only famous example I can remember from my lifetime is when Michael Jackson licensed 'Revolution' to Nike back in the late 1980s. Paul McCartney, a notorious suit in the rock 'n' roll world (let's not forget that he sued the Beatles) was livid, and I'd always assumed that it was McCartney defending Lennon's ideals, but it turns out that it was because he didn't get paid. Read about it in the Straight Dope (God, I miss the Straight Dope.)

But a much better example is that of Tom Waits, who has, among his other accolades, developed a stance against this very practice. From his Wikipedia page:

"Waits has steadfastly refused to allow the use of his songs in commercials and has joked about other artists who do. ("If Michael Jackson wants to work for Pepsi, why doesn't he just get himself a suit and an office in their headquarters and be done with it?") He has filed several lawsuits against advertisers who used his material without permission. He has been quoted as saying, "Apparently, the highest compliment our culture grants artists nowadays is to be in an ad—ideally, naked and purring on the hood of a new car," he said in a statement, referring to the Mercury Cougar. "I have adamantly and repeatedly refused this dubious honor."

Waits' first lawsuit was filed in 1988 against Frito Lay. The United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit affirmed an award of US$2.375-million in his favor (Waits v. Frito Lay, 978 F. 2d 1093 (9th Cir. 1992)).[46] Frito Lay had approached Waits to use one of his songs in an advertisement. Waits declined the offer, and Frito Lay hired a Waits soundalike to sing a jingle similar to Small Change's "Step Right Up," which is, ironically, a song Waits has called "an indictment of advertising." Waits won the lawsuit, becoming one of the first artists to successfully sue a company for using an impersonator without permission."

Good for Tom Waits, and good for Devo. I hope the courts find in Devo's favor.

New Pornographers

The New Pornographers are probably the best band of this decade, and easily the best Canadian band of all time. (Fuck you Rush, and the unicorn you rode in on. And fuck you, The Band -- when I watched 'The Last Waltz' I fast-forwarded through all the music. Why do you need two drummers to play slow, lame folksy jam-rock beats? You suck.)

Their debut release, 'Mass Romantic', is the happiest record I own. It takes that Carpenters-"I want to kiss children and play Candyland" happy vibe and waits till they turn 18 so they can *really* kiss them. Preferably with their pants off. You know, sex.

It kinda sucks that the New Pornographers are so good at writing songs, because they could easily be the best cover band in the entire world. Witness their note-perfect cover of 'Don't Bring Me Down' by the Electric. Light. ORCHESTRA.

Also (plug)

Stinkrock is a crazy sports fan. For the same reason I loved seeing Bruce Springsteen take the stage at Tramps with Soul Asylum and forget all the words to 'The Tracks of my Tears', I love the unpredictability of sporting events. So I've started a sports blog with a good friend of mine. If you're a sports fan or a man, come visit I'm Keith Hernandez!

Walt Mink

I was talking to Jackson recently about my increasing boredom with writing about music. Two reasons -- I'm not really seeking out new music, and since I gave up caffeine I lack the resolve to argue that 'Right Down the Line' by Gerry Rafferty is a better-sounding pop song than anything that came out in the last 10 years. Second, I am sick of the New York City music scene. It's turned into a microcosm of the machine I fled from in my teens when I gravitated to punk and alternative music.

When you do a new drug for the first time, it knocks you on your ass. We're all jealous of people who get to experience amazing things for the first time. But there are diminishing returns. I never have to hear another catchy rock song as long as I live. I have Big Star, Guided by Voices, the Posies, Sugar's 'Copper Blue', the Raspberries, everything Grant Hart ever wrote, Pulp, Lou Barlow, "Hybrid Moments" -- the list goes on and on.

The way for me talk about music is to sit down in a room with each of you (all 6 of you), listen to a song or an album side or a band and just talk. In a vacuum, it feels pointless. And here in NYC, since Brownies closed, there's no successful business model for building a live music venue with great sound unless overpriced drinks and overpriced haircut-wearing heroin-thin trendpackers are in attendance.

So if anyone wants to hear me talk about the bands that matter to me, that's all that's going down on this site from now on.

----------------

Walt Mink came out of musical mecca Minneapolis at the exact same time that the Smashing Pumpkins were convincing sad goths that overproduced records exalting misery were the great new and true art. Lead singer and guitarist John Kimbrough was cursed because he sounds like a chipmunk on helium when he sings. But he blasted through Orange amps, and is one of the lost great unheralded guitarists of my lifetime.

When I turned 21 I was stuck in St. Louis for my birthday, a city I transplanted to and never really got sold on. I drove down to a tiny club called Cicero's and saw Walt Mink play a fantastic show. Walt Mink was a 3-piece, with the guitar hero Kimbrough, his gorgeous wife on bass, and Joey Waronker on drums, who went on to play on Elliott Smith's 'XO' and tour with REM after Bill Berry faked an aneurysm because he was sick of the Douche Peter Buck.

I don't normally wax about guitarists but Kimbrough was incendiary. Where Billy Corgan decided to be a figurehead and write anthems like 'Cherub Rock' with insipid lyrics, JK focused on the guitar. These two guys were probably the only '90s alterna-rock guys with the chops to salute Hendrix, but you can hear Kimbrough springboard and dive tight. That fuckin Orange amp sounds awesome.

Here are a few Walt Mink songs--one from each of their first three records.

Miss Happiness: boomp3.com

Turn: boomp3.com

Overgrown: boomp3.com

Performance

Happened over to Tony Alva's blog today and saw he enjoyed the hell out a performance by Kansas recently.

People, this is sad. I was given a ticket to see Kansas/Night Ranger in high school, and I went because they were 4th row seats. Night Ranger was a lot of fun, and apparently I was the only one who knew 'Don't Tell Me You Love Me' was their only serviceable song. At that point, it was probably my favorite song, I'm a starfucker, whatever. Bassist/singer Jack Blades attempted to throw me 3 or 4 picks but they all landed in the lap of some country club lackey in the 2nd row, who thought he was the hottest shit for getting all these picks. I realized that Night Ranger sucked because they couldn't flick picks worth a damn. Wait, I have a story.

I went to see Van Hagar in 1987 on the OU812 tour and scored 2nd row tickets...wait, I have a story.

There was this guy in high school named David Brown. He was the kind of guy that made you feel like he had already come up with an alias-y name like David Brown. Anyway, he had no friends and was super smart, and lived behind the restaurant I used to work for. And he was a ticket scalper. Or not quite--he was a middleman, between the scalper and the kids I went to school with. Occasionally, we'd cut class and for the rich sum of $20 (gold in those days) we'd cut class and head to ticket sales with him. At that point St. Louis venues would give out circus supply tickets as line numbers, then you were supposed to show up at the venue at 10 or 11am on a weekday with your line numbers. They'd flash the last two digits of line numbers up on the board, and the unemployed trailer set would send their better half scurrying towards the ticket windows. Our David Brown opened up a cd booklet full of duplicate tickets, ob/com'ly sorted in numerical fashion and clipped together. He pulled the ticket with the corresponding numbers, handed it off to one of us with a clip of cash and yelled, 'Go! Go! Go! Go!' like we were heading into war.

Along with the $20, David would get us great seats for various shows. I saw the Who reunion tour in '89 at Busch Stadium - I had seventeenth row. It was amazing. I also had 2nd row seats for Van Halen in '88. And during Eddie's I can do this when I'm drunk Eruption/Mean Streets/Cathedral/Eruption solo, he started throwing out picks. He whizzed one right in my direction from about 25 feet away. I was stone cold sober, but I couldn't get my hands up in time. But I swear to God, that pick whizzed *right* by my ear, so close that I could feel the displaced air on my earlobe. That's how you know Eddie Van Halen is a great guitarist--he flicks picks better than any of them.

At that show, I did get a pick from Sammy Hagar, who couldn't flick picks worth shit. It broke two weeks later and I threw it out.

Getting back to Night Ranger, I found Jack Blades' pitch-flicking abilities to be on par with Sammy Hagar's. And he was never in Montrose. *And* he was in Damn Yankees. This was probably the pivotal moment in my life where I realized that there were certain types of rock bands that mattered, and certain types who didn't.

And then Kansas came out. The set was terrible. Yes, the musicians were well-skilled, just like they are at Sam Ash. And even though I still have a nostalgiac liking for their epic 'Carry On My Wayward Son', Kansas prefaced it that night with a battle cry of 'ARE YOU READY?????'. Come on, Kansas. It's a good song, but we all expected to hear it. If you hadn't played it, a good percentage of us would have asked for our money back.

So, back to my point: here's a kickass performance from Otis Redding. I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now). No coolers or soft lawn needed. Just pure energy.

What ITunes means to me, or how I spent my winter vacation

As I wrote a few months ago, I began losing interest in new music last year. It was a combination of a few factors: a frustration in the New York scene as a musician, a loss of interest in seeking out live music as venues closed, moved and featured worse sound, plus a merging of the lounge culture with the live music culture. Even at the Bowery Ballroom, where music sounds good, kids sit on the floors with their hair lice and gigantous backpacks and hit on themselves.

On the positive note, I pulled away from the excitement and hype of new music. Tougher than you think. Up until recently, I discovered most of my favorite bands from two sources: publications, and word of mouth. In the late 1980s, I was listening to classic rock and scrubbed metal, but Metallica's Garage Days led me to the Misfits, to hardcore, to punk and finally to indie rock. I subscribed to Rolling Stone when I was 16, and within a year or two they published their list of the best 100 albums, featuring bands I had never heard of or had considered. I bought Murmur, Zen Arcade, Let it Be and London Calling from that list.

In the year-end issue RS asked artists and other people (who I skipped) what they liked that year. This is common practice now, lists of new music, but then it was essential -- everything flew through word of mouth. Michael Stipe named 'Doolittle' by The Pixies was one of his favorite listens, and I snatched it up immediately.

(The guy who gave me a copy of Garage Days gave me some other Misfits songs, and turned me on to Fugazi. Already, I'd heard 6-7 of my favorite ten bands that exist today.)

Back to the present. This year I realized that what I'd heard from those years, and the music I sought out till recently produced enough great finds to last me for a lifetime. When is enough enough? Sure, there is good music out there being made, and I want to find the energy to keep searching for it. But it was time to take stock of what I'd acquired. So I went through my catalog and listen to everything I owned. Well, not entirely true--I listened to everything I felt like listening to. For instance, I've had no interest in hearing a Beatles track from 1962-1964; they're firmly forged into my brain at this point.

And then I hit on why I love ITunes. I could mold into a living, breathing diary and encyclopedia of the music that I love. Imagine if you had a radio show, where you could play anything you wanted all day. The IPod became my perfect radio.

My motivation ran along these lines: there have always been discussions about desert island music picks: If you could only take so much music, what would you bring? So I wanted to build my perfect radio. If I put the IPod on shuffle, I wanted every song to mean something. Gone for me is the album format that proliferated in the 1970s. Unless the album is perfect from start to finish, why do I need to hear the filler tracks?

There's been so much discussion about how digital music, particularly the mp3, and the IPod are no match for vinyl or even compact disc in terms of audio quality. So maybe I'm of the perfect generation, but growing up, I did 80% of my listening on cassette. Bought 'em through Columbia House. Taped albums and songs off the radio. So an mp3 is a fine replacement for a cassette for these ears.

And from January 1st until last weekend, I did just that. I listened to every song I had at least twice, and usually a third time, to make sure every song represented something, a memory, a story, an experience. I listened to 5,500 songs like this, knocked 1,000 off. It was an obsessive, compulsive exercise.

But going through it is like being able to fit every photo from my life into one photo album. Of course I have all my favorite songs from my favorite bands. I have 'Carousel' from the Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris soundtrack, which I used to dance along with like an acid monkey when I was 5. I have a few choice tracks from the first Meat Puppets record, which is one of the most unlistenable records I've ever heard, which is why I used it to send everyone home at parties I threw in college.

And there are definitely songs that I would never even dream of having access too if it weren't for a change in the way music can be compartmentalized in the digital age. I have mp3s from the last Guided by Voices show in New York City ever, where John van Atta gets up on the stage of Irving Plaza, and in a man-hug with lead singer Bob Pollard belts out the drinker's anthem 'Johnny Appleseed' which is going to sound legendary, and at a key point in the song he chokes on his phlegm, gets escorted off stage, and the guy escorting him offstage gets a shout-out from Bob and an ovation from the crowd. I also have an mp3 of my 5-year old niece singing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

I've built my own personal jukebox/radio. You should all be doing the same.