10 posts tagged “gpow”

So there's a little twist to this edition of Guilty Pleasure of the (cough) Week. Rather than featuring a single song (though the astute among you will notice one down there) the team here at Dabysan in Hammersmith Palais is proud to bring you an entire band whose catalog we wholeheartedly endorse, despite the critical beating it has taken over the years.

I have no idea when I was first exposed to Steely Dan, but I think its safe to say it has been a musical constant throughout my sentient existence. My parents (who did not see eye-to-eye on very much) both loved the band and played their records constantly. I'm pretty certain that my father to this day would tell you that Aja was the pinnacle of pop music achievement and that human beings may as well have stopped making records after it was released in 1977. Even more than Aja, the Steely Dan album that was the soundtrack to my childhood was Gaucho, particularly the standout track "Time Out of Mind," which, as it turns out, contains some pretty obvious heroin references ("tonight when I chase the dragon, the water will turn to cherry wine"). You had to love growing up in the 1970s.

All this is to say that I'm completely incapable of objectivity when it comes to Steely Dan. Those songs are hardwired into my pleasure centers. I hear the first notes of Deacon Blues and the endorphin response kicks in before I even know what's happening. I'm powerless against their smooth, jazzy stylings.

As for the guilt part, well, Steely Dan are not a favorite of postmodern rock nerds, which is to say, my friends. It's true that their music is produced within an inch of its life and fits a little too neatly into elevator and supermarket soundtracks. There's more than a hint of lowest-common-denominator commercialism in there. But you know what, fuck it, it's still better than Pavement, so Hotrod can bite me.

All music for me falls into four categories: 1) music I both like and respect (e.g. the Clash)  2) music I neither like nor respect  (U2) 3) music I respect but don't like (most jazz) and finally the big number 4) music I like but don't respect.

That fourth category is the subject of this COUGHweeklyCOUGH feature on Dabysan in Hammersmith Palais. It comprises a shockingly large catalog of music. As it turns out there's a heck of a lot of music I love in spite -- or perhaps even because -- of how little esteem I have for it.

The reason I mention this is that I'm not entirely sure that this song belongs in that fourth category. I'm still holding out hope that it might be genuinely good and make its way into the hallowed halls of category #1, but I'm doubtful. I think when all is said and done it will belong right here with its shabby brethren in category #4. The thing that I find the most immediately vexing about this song was that I "discovered" it by watching a fucking iPod commercial. For someone who prides himself on having an ear to the UK musical underground, that's a tough pill to swallow.

The band is "The Fratellis." The song is "Flathead," and I can't stop listening to it (on my iPod, naturally).

Pitchfork has already decided to savage this band, as has Drowned in Sound, and I may end up realizing that there's not much to them, but for now, this is the hottest track I've heard in awhile and I'm eagerly awaiting the U.S. release date of the album.

After this post I'm not apologizing anymore for the increasingly absurd tardiness of guilty pleasure of the "week." I am writing this during a week -- that much is clear, and that's just going to have to be good enough. On a related note, happy 2007 fellow voxers! (voxaholics? voxettes?). I vow to have more posts in 2007 than I did in 2006 (It'll help that I started blogging in July).

Anyway, this week's guilty pleasure comes courtesy of the band most directly responsible for the caricatures in This is Spinal Tap. My first-ever "favorite" band was Iron Maiden. The skeletons, the quasi-black magical imagery, the screaming operatic vocalist -- the 12-year-old Dabysan just ate that shit up. The thing is, I may have drifted away from that stuff as I got older (something about wanting to have sex with girls) but while you can take the boy away from the heavy metal, you can never really take the heavy metal out of the boy...or something.

I saw this little gem on the hypnotic/depressing VH1 "classic" the other day (newsflash to my fellow 30-somethings: Nirvana is now "classic") and was instantly transported to a simpler time. The 12-year-old me was right. Iron Maiden do rule.

Fun fact #1 the giant skeleton-zombie you see on all Iron Maiden album covers is named Eddie. He says "hi."
Fun fact #2 my mom actually got me a signed copy of the excellent Powerslave on a business trip to LA. Moms are the best.

I'm getting more and more embarrassed by the name of this semi-regular feature of Dabysan in Hammersmith Palais. My last post went up the day after Thanksgiving. Today I looked up and all of a sudden we were halfway through December. I really need to stop letting work and social functions that involve live humans get between me and my blog. Sometimes I wonder about my priorities.

Anywho, notwithstanding the inaccuracy of the headline, this week's selection comes to us courtesy of Miami rapper Trick Daddy who waxes poetical on this track about the joys of being a minor criminal. I've got to admit that I've got a big soft spot for gangsters. I've seen Goodfellas and the Godfather more times than I can count. I quote liberally from the excellent 80s L.A. gang pic Colors, to the great bemusement of my younger coworkers. Whenever A&E runs documentaries of famous mobsters, you can count on me being there with my popcorn, rooting against the FBI. I should probably talk to someone about this, but in the meantime, let's enjoy Mr. Daddy's ode to petty crime.

As a postscript I want to encourage my mother and grandmother not to watch the above video, especially if it is likely to have a negative impact on me getting a healthy portion of Eggplant Parmesan at Christmas (I love you Grandma). To everybody else: I'm hard. For serious.

I must admit that I find it somewhat hard to account for my shameful appreciation of soft-rock standards from the 1970s. My best explanation for why these nonthreatening, radio-friendly singer-songwriter numbers have inscribed themselves so deeply into the deep folds of my cerebellum, is that my parents must have had this stuff playing pretty much nonstop before my fragile mind could erect defenses to its gentle charms.

Anyway, this week's selection comes courtesy of Jim Seals and Dash Crofts of the cleverly named 1970s soft-rock hit machine Seals and Crofts. I'm thinking this must have been their biggest hit. My favorite use of it in a film comes in the denouement of the criminally under-appreciated and misunderstood Dazed & Confused (I feel another blog post coming on).

I love this tidbit from their allmusic.com bio: "Warner dropped them shortly after their 1980 LP The Longest Road, but by this time, both Seals and Crofts were more interested in devoting themselves fully to the Baha'i religion they had converted to back in 1969. The two have reunited occasionally at Baha'i gatherings, and for a short 1991-1992 tour; Crofts has lived in several different countries, while Seals moved to a Costa Rican coffee farm in 1980."

Good stuff.

I briefly considered renaming "Guilty Pleasure of the Week" to "Guilty Pleasure of Whenever I Get Around to It," but it doesn't have the same ring, and I don't think it would fit in the headline. To make up for my tardiness of late here is another twofer of indefensible songs that I quite like.

I really don't know what got me thinking about this first one. When this band broke with their one and only American hit in 1985, I still had a subscription to Hit Parader and was listening more-or-less exclusively to bands like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, all while moping over a genetic deficiency that prevented me from growing long rocker hair.
Listening to songs like this was a first-degree heresy that could get your rat-tail snipped off and your jean jacket tossed on a pyre. Still, for whatever reason this tune stuck with me, and it still manages to creep into the reptilian core of my brain every now and again. Watch for the excellent mullets in this video.

While I still find it deeply strange that a band from England would have to reach all the way across the Atlantic to find inspiration for such a tepid name, I can't deny the glory of this song.

Guilty pleasure number deux comes from even further back in my personal history. Long before I was buying my own records, I would pillage my mother's ample collection for musical inspiration. One artist who grabbed me right out of the gate was Jimmy Buffet, who always seemed to be singing loving odes to petty crime and alcohol abuse. To this day I can sing every word of Peanut Butter Conspiracy (below) and Great Filling Station Hold-Up. I actually think his first couple albums are quite good. What makes him a guilty pleasure is his fan base, which I think travels en masse to his concerts from gun rallies and boat shows. Sigh.

My girlfriend can tell you how much I love this one. I can think of no higher aspiration than to stay fly-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ay 'till I die-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ie. Watch at your own risk. If you have any rythm at all (so Soo-do is safe) you'll wake up in a cold sweat singing this song.

Now that I've done a few of these things, I find that my guilty pleasures fall into three basic categories: socially irresponsible hip hop; slickly produced soft rock hits of the 70s and 80s, slickly produced arena rock hits of the 70s and 80s, and bad pop songs sung by very attractive women. I'm not expecting to run out of material anytime soon.

One thing that has been galling me lately about YouTube, which I maintain is cooler than the coolest thing ever, is the fact that several of the videos I've embedded here have disappeared in recent weeks. Dunno if its a copyright issue, but I do know that I personally have purchased several songs and albums after reaquainting myself with them on YouTube. Music publishers, take note. And stop taking down my Libertines videos.

This week's guilty pleasure is another twofer to make up for yet another vacation-induced blogging lapse on my part. I'd like to extend my deepest apologies to my reader(s) and promise that I won't be abandoning my post again any time soon (especially since my office manager informs me that I've used all but two of my vacation days for the year).

In the interest of full disclosure, I don't actually own either of these songs, mainly because I don't like them nearly so much without the accompanying videos, which are true works of art. The first, by Columbian pop sensation Shakira is actually still on the charts methinks, making it the most-current-ever inductee into Guilty-Pleasure-of-the-Week fame. She must be very proud.

In the song, Columbia's second favorite export testifies to the infallible wisdom of her hips, and after seeing the video, I can't really argue with her.There's not much that's redeeming about the song, but I stare riveted whenever it comes on the MTV, and I think its actually kinda catchy.

Song two has probably even less to recommend it, but I like it just as much if not more. It comes to us from the lovely ladies of Destiny's Child, who dropped their church girl routine to write an ode to hoodlums. So basically a good message for the kids.

When I was in college, I had a job working as a peon for a small company in San Francisco's business district that sold retirement plans to school teachers. Although the work was painless, it was soul-crushingly boring, and the only thing I had to distract myself with was the radio, which was always tuned to a work-safe soft-rock station playing tepid hits from the 70s, 80s and today!

As a devotee of hardcore punk and hip-hop and a recovering middle-school metalhead, I avowed  -- to anyone who would listen -- a biting distaste for the auditory sedatives pumped out by the faceless corporate whores who ran the station. But deep down, I harbored a dark secret. I secretly loved a disturbingly large swath of the station's playlist.

So, since we missed GPOW last week, here are two soft-rock classics that I know, love and own: "True", by Spandau Ballet and "Africa" by Toto.

 

Am I crazy, or are these songs actually pretty good? ... oh, I see, the first thing. Right. Ok, these songs are pretty bad, but twinkies are pretty bad too, and I'd like to see you resist one if I slipped it into your lunchbox.

As a side note, as appears often to be the case with these guilty pleasures, I performed a rendition of "True" at our annual bad singing contest a few years back and was narrowly defeated. "Africa" is on my short list this year. You need to love a song to really mangle it properly.

Welcome to Guilty Pleasure of the Week (TM) a once-weekly journey into the darkest, least-defensible corners of my music library...

Her are a couple of things to know about this week's selection:

1) My favorite musical genre is punk rock. The period of creative rebellion that began in New York and London in the late 1970s and continues (arguably) to this day produced my favorite band (the Clash) and some of the the most raw, socially relevant rock songs ever written.

2) It is a common misconception that punk rock emerged in part as a musical rebellion against disco music. This couldn't be further from the truth. Punks didn't concern themselves with the latest breed of sugary pop. No, what really pierced their nipples were the hyper-produced, market-researched arena acts that had taken over rock radio by the mid-1970s. Joey Ramone said it best in "We Want the Airwaves" -- "Where's your guts and your will to survive/ don't you wanna keep rock and roll music alive?/ Mr. Programmer, I got my hammer/ Gonna smash my, smash my radio!."

3) The following band in general, and the following song in particular epitomized everything the punks rightly hated about corporate rock.

4) I like this band, and I love this song.

 

I don't know what else to tell you. This is the biggest hit single off one of the best selling records of all time; and if there's one thing that's been demonstrated repeatedly in the world of music , its that 20 million people can, in fact, be wrong. Slick and facile, produced within an inch of its life, this song may as well have been designed in a lab by scientists researching the the best combination of tonal qualities with which to opiate the masses.

I can't help loving it though. Fair warning: if you're in my vicinity and this song comes on the radio, turn and run, fast, because I'm going to sing, and it won't be pretty. I did a karaoke version of this at our annual bad singing contest (more on that later) and people were jamming forks in their ears to improve the aural sensation.

Ah, sweet catharsis.

Excelsior!