by Rodney Eric Griffith | Armour of Rod | |
One of the nicest compliments I’ve ever received was when a friend told me that whenever he read Calvin & Hobbes he pictured Calvin as what I must have been like as a child.
Loved the movie.
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Universal Music recently launched Hip-O Select, which is its own version of Warner Brothers’ boutique label Rhino Handmade. I’d been wracking my brain for weeks to come up with something I would want them to release (my first and only impulse for weeks was the second half of the Squeeze catalogue to correspond with the Six of One box). I finally came up with Harry Nilsson’s recordings for Mercury: Flash Harry, Harry’s vocal demos for the Popeye soundtrack, his Yoko Ono cover album Harry Does Yoko, most of which has never been released, and his last LP Papa’s Got a Brown New Robe, said to have been completed just before his death, but never issued. (The latter was most likely not owed to Mercury, but they could probably lease it from his family in order to get all of his post-RCA recordings in one package.) I’m sure they could get Nilsson expert Curtis Armstrong to help bring it together.
All American Idol contestants and winners derive from Liza “with an ‘F’” Minnelli. That’s the underlying reason why they’re awful. The formula is minimal talent + averageness + histrionic delivery.
Someone oozing with talent like Sam Cooke, who made it all seem effortless, would never make it on Idol. Neither would Roy Orbison. Because Bovine America resents the gifted.
Don’t get me started on Clay Aiken.
bp: 134/80
Tonight’s politically-oriented content: Eric Idle’s indescribable wonderful “FCC Song”, and noted “Expose and Depose” coalition Axis of Eve.
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This would be the 37th anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band because I’m 37. I’d love to see Apple release the mono version of it on CD. My brother owned a mono copy but when I was first interested as a teenager I didn’t appreciate the distinction.
bp: 126/79
Now Hasselhoff wants to be a Bond villain. Let’s take it further: he wants to do a Bond theme song, too.
I’m all for indulging Mr Hasselhoff’s Shatneresque delusions of grandeur from time to time, but somebody has to draw the line: No.
Just ordered our Harry Potter tickets!
Rodney | 7:28:00 PM [permalink]“Musicology” left me cold.
Every David Bowie LP since 1983 has been hailed by someone or other as a comeback, and every time it’s untrue. The same fate belongs to Prince.
In 1985-1987, Prince was at the top of his game, but too much time has elapsed since then, even though he’s apparently become much more convincing at acting like himself. He let the landscape get pulled out from under him when Warner Bros. stopped automatically saying yes to his successive whims (although it would have been for the best if they’d acquiesced to his triple-LP Crystal Ball). John Fogerty had a much better motive for being bitter—he gave up all CCR royalties just to be freed from his Fantasy contract, but he didn’t let his bitterness overshadow his own standards of quality. Centerfield and Blue Moon Swamp are as good as anything credence. But no NPG Prince album is listenable or exciting.
Parade and Sign O The Times were great LPs then but they point to a future that didn’t come true. John Lennon said that Elvis died when he went into the army. Prince died, at his own hands, when he killed Dream Factory, and when Warner Bros. subsequently blocked its successor Crystal Ball. I know he wants this present period to be his 1968 Comeback but I didn’t hear it in the song, which is all that counts.
At the time it didn’t seem this way, but when he broke the Revolution the shrapnel eviscerated the careers of his collaborators. Wendy and Lisa made a fatal mistake in being dishonest with themselves, the way Paul McCartney refused to write like a Beatle from 1970. They abandoned the craft they were good at in the Revolution and alienated, I think, most of the fan base that identified with the music they created with Prince. All the potential of Dream Factory was wasted all around; the key songwriters all refused to have anything to do with their unreleased creations. Prince, perhaps, was justified in walking away, but Wendy & Lisa had no reason to abandon the style of the work that they were primarily responsible for instigating. Instead, they just sort of rode on the wave Lenny Kravitz later made his own for their first three LPs. I had wanted to believe that they had continued the same stream of consciousness, but they didn’t, so apparently it never meant as much to them as they said it did in 1986. Now they do themes like “Theme from Single Female Coroner”.
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One of the wisest things I have ever heard, and something that comforts me whenever I start worrying about people with beliefs:
“If you think there’s a solution, you’re part of the problem.” —George Carlin
