17 posts tagged “guilty pleasure”

This song is called White Unicorn. That's probably all you need to know.

A billion blog years ago (2006) I started a feature here on Dabysan in Hammersmith Palais called Guilty Pleasure of the Week. It soon became Guilty Pleaure of the COUGHweekCOUGH because I published it so infrequently. Now its mostly dead, but our little conversation about shitty 90s music this past week got me thinking of something indefensible that I remember quite liking.

I know I spent a goodly part of last week inveighing against shitty mall punk, so it seems fitting that I should acknowledge my favorite purveyor of shitty mall punk: The Offspring. In my defense, I only ever owned the first album, but to my discredit, I played the shit oit of it, and loved every second of it.

Maybe it was all the Vandals and Germs shirts the lead singer wore, but I remember thinking they had at least thought about real punk before processing it for the masses. Or maybe I'm making excuses.

Regardless, I just relistened to "self-esteem" and decided that it's a good, clever song. There, I said it.

It may be a bad sign that I missed my self-imposed Saturday pre-deadline deadline on the very first week I instituted it, but I definitely thought about blogging last night, which ought to count for something. At any rate, I am at least committed to not filling Jodi Luthor with false hopes about me being dead in a ditch somewhere, or needlessly worrying my friends and well wishers in the Quest for the Pie.

Stay tuned next week for the first in my 12-part investigative series about a Minnesota-based Word Twist cheating ring and its quest to undermine the very fabric of fair play in our society. For now though, we're dusting off an old favorite feature here at Dabysan in Hammersmith Palais --  "Guitly Pleasure of the (Cough) Week."

I was eating a bowl of cereal and watching a little TV before work this this past week, when I happened across a VH1 video block and saw the following:

I was instantly hooked. So hooked that I had to run right over to my computer and buy her whole album on iTunes, along with "Blinded by the Light" as performed by Manfred Mann's Earth Band.

I am a sucker for a clever, well-produced pop song, and this definitely fits the bill. I'm also an enormous proponent of the Honest Pop Lyric, of which this is an excellent example. The honest pop lyric is a sadly rare phenomenon that occurs when pop and rock artists forget that they're supposed to be suffering for their art. My personal fave in this sub-genre is "Life's Been Good To Me So Far" by Joe Walsh, but a pop princess declaring "I think the world should revolve around me" definitely qualifies. My one reservation is that I think her name should be "Lil" Jackie.  It may be the case that an entire album of this stuff is overkill, but I was moved, and it was only $7.99. 

Also, since I mentioned it, and since the next Guilty Pleasure post may not arrive until the start of the second Obama term, here's a special bonus:

I've got blogger's block. There's plenty of stuff I want to write about, but I can't seem to muster the energy to sit down and compose it. It's possible that I'm blowing through all my "A" material in my weekly fantasy football recap (that's right ladies, and he's still single), or that my ongoing career change is sucking up all my mental bandwidth, or that I've just been watching too much Top Chef and The Ultimate Fighter.

Whatever the cause, the muse is just not taking me to flesh out some of the higher (all terms are relative) concept bloviations that have been knocking around in the old melon. So until I can will myself to birth these fabulous ideas, I'm dusting off an old standby, the Guilty Pleasure of the COUGHweekCOUGH. I think there was once a time, for like three-quarters of a month, when I actually used to post these weekly. Now, not so much.

Anyway, this week's installment is a doozy. I discovered it while I was watching an episode of the powerfully broadening Rob and Big on MTV. At the end of the episode, Rob dumps five grand in ones on an adoring crowd to the tune of this gem from Fat Joe.

Fun Fact: "Making it rain" refers to the practice of throwing paper money at an exotic dancer in such great volume that it appears to be "raining" singles. This expression achieved popular saturation in the case of disgraced NFL star Pacman Jones, who's rain-making activities led to a shooting in a Las Vegas nightclub and got him suspended from the league for a year.

Back in the heady days of the late 1990s, I had a huge crush on Gwen Steffani, and I couldn't really put my finger on why that was. The fact of her being the world's most famous ska-betty certainly played into it, as did her athletic good looks, but neither of those things really fully explained the extent of my unrequited lust for the spunky Anaheimian (Anaheimite?). It took the this week's Guilty Pleasure of the (cough) Week to help me pull it altogether.

It's those damn 1940s hairdos. They make me abandon all reason. Apparently if you want to snare me (anyone? Bueller?) all you have to do is style your hair like Betty Grable and I'm a goner. It's nice to learn these things about oneself. And I'd like to thank Xtina for helping me arrive at this little pearl of self-knowledge.

As for the song, it is both catchy and strangely, subversively filthy, to the point that I think I may actually consider listening to it outside of the video context...maybe.

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.