I’m 95% certain I owned every single on this 1984 Top 10 list, even for the one song I hated.
Today’s celebrity passing news: at age 82, legendary radio DJ, animated voice actor, TV host, and professional list caretaker Casey Kasem passed away early this morning after extended illness and an unsightly captivity in unsavory media headlines that I didn’t want to read. Lord willing, it’d be awfully swell to see all that in-fighting between his relatives disappear from our front pages forever.
As previously cited on Midlife Crisis Crossover in an entry about the joys of writing lists: “Casey Kasem’s American Top 40…had a profound impact on my childhood.” Syndicated reruns of that long-running radio show are still airing each week on both commercial and satellite radio if you know where to tune. Here in Indianapolis, they’re on B105.7 Sunday mornings from 8 a.m. to noon, pleasant accompaniment for my early drives.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: pics from our visit to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame Museum in scenic, underrated Cleveland. Last time I shared the items and exhibits that struck the deepest chords for me. This time: the general-audience objects that also caught our attention.
For example: FLYING DEATH CARS FROM ABOVE! Stage props from U2’s ’92-’93 Zoo TV tour.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: on Day Eight we woke up in Cleveland on purpose. Not many vacationers will lead a story off with that confession. This wasn’t like our last time in Cleveland, an ill-fated day in 2004 when we ended up trapped there for several hours, having been clobbered by a sneaky one-two punch of alternator failure and overturned semi. No, this time I wanted to be in Cleveland all day long. We had a to-do list of geek stops and I meant to assay every last one of them.
Our second stop of the day has a high-ranking item on my modest bucket list for years: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum, ruling majestically from the coast of Lake Erie. I’ll be honest: its six-hour distance from home wasn’t the only reason I’d procrastinated a visit. I was afraid the whole place will be one massive, nostalgic, retrograde tribute to old acts from thirty or forty years ago, just like the average Grammys ceremony. I was honestly surprised at the breadth of musical acts honored inside these randomly shaped walls.
This man deserves to be selling zillions more albums. Someone see to it.
It’s that time of year again! The last time I summarized my year in music purchases, it was slightly longer than this year’s list, only because I bought a 2012 reissue that merited inclusion. I don’t limit myself to a maximum of seven CDs per year; the identical count is coincidental. Blame the music industry for largely boring or alienating me nowadays. As you can imagine, local commercial radio is no help.
The following, then, comprises every CD I acquired in 2013 that was also released in 2013. Back-catalog materials are forbidden from inclusion, though allow me to express in this singular clause that I wish I’d gotten Elvis Costello and the Attractions’ Live at Hollywood High much, much sooner.
On with the countdown, then — from least best to surprising favorite:
7. Childish Gambino, Because the Internet. The only other rap album I bought in the last five years was Donald Glover’s 2011 pseudonymous debut Camp — a killer mix of scathing satire and autobiography, laced with pop-culture references as cutting descriptors rather than random gags. Harsh language isn’t my thing anymore, but the Community-clever snark and wounded candor rose above. His sophomore effort, on the other hand, is a hodgepodge of half-finished tracks, electronic hooks in search of lyrics to stick to, verses that lead nowhere, Bone Thugs speed-rap for listeners who love rhyming words but hate complete sentences, and a general impenetrability that strings a velvet rope in front of us intruders who don’t Get It.
Sample track: The obligatory NSFW single “3005“, in which he sounds defensive about his insecurities and comforts himself with in-jokes. Or something. But it’s more or less a complete song in music-class terms. Points for English class completeness, I suppose.
If I learned anything after the fact from Buffy‘s depressing sixth season, it’s that our early 20s is when we humans are prone to committing our worst mistakes, making our stupidest decisions, missing our best opportunities, undergoing our darkest times, and discovering all the best reasons to fear and loathe ourselves. For many people those were also hallmarks of their teenage years, but I was a late starter on the journey to self-flagellation.
A childhood in which I was raised to “find my own path” (read: wander blindly through life’s shadowy forests without a tour guide or even a working flashlight) left me with very few tools for suffering the worst trials and shouldering the heaviest burdens, too many of which I brought on myself. By age thirty a series of improbable coincidences and extensive rethinking sessions had led me at long last to an illuminated trail that’s taken me toward much more reliable means and sources of support and encouragement than I ever had during my extended, two-time college-dropout phase.
Before I walked that way, all I had was music.
Of all the hundreds of songs that have caught my attention throughout my life, five in particular stand out as rare instances in which I was moved by music, moments of lyrical lucidity and emotional truth that resonated deep down in that mushy core whose existence the common guy denies, moments I returned to again and again for comfort, advice, consolation, deep thoughts, and/or a boost of spirit. These were five solid shots struck at the foundation of the oddly designed structure that passes for my life.
Dateline: October 17, 2013 — Just got back from attending my first concert in years. Tonight at the Vogue, one of Indianapolis’ most well-known nightclubs in the heart of the Broad Ripple neighborhood, three catchy bands appeared on a single bill for an appallingly low price. Honestly, for $22.00 a head, I felt as if we were ripping them off.
I have multiple reasons for rarely indulging in live music, but in those extremely rare situations when bands I actually, truly like (or liked at one time) come to town, this old man has been known to grant exceptions.
Why browse through someone’s full-sized collection of vinyl cover art when you can peruse a strictly formatted collection of charmless Windows icons instead?
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover, I waxed verbose about my long-standing like/loathe relationship with commercial radio, the medium that lured me into Top-40 fandom in my pre-teen years and spurned me from high school to the present.
One digression was left unexplored due to issues of relevance and length:
My reluctance to embrace MP3s would require an entry in itself. Short answer: not at this time, but thank you for the option.
Far be it from me to let a promise of digression remain unrequited.
I recognize that digital music has numerous advantages over CDs and its precursors, but I have yet to embrace iTunes or to fill multiple external hard drives with jams for a variety of reasons. Some of them may sound tired and overused; most are conclusions I reached over the years after repeated bouts of personal deliberation. Continue reading →
You know something’s afoot when you turn on the shower radio at 6:45 a.m. and hear Anne Murray crooning “O Come, All Ye Faithful”. Or maybe it was Julie Andrews.
I spend a minute or so trying to name the singer, ignoring for a moment that the radio was celebrating Christmas in May. The guessing game ends when the mystery diva is succeeded by Wham!’s “Last Christmas”, for which I have no use even in December. Somewhere in Indianapolis, either a DJ is greatly amusing himself, listener requests have taken a bizarre turn in the hands of joyous off-season mob rule, or Skynet is taking over the airwaves as part of a truly twisted master plan and doing a terrible job of acting naturally.
I’m not a morning person and my brain isn’t a morning organ. The confusion sown by my early-morning background noise inspires my brain to awaken more quickly than usual. Now it has a mystery to solve.
I’d wager the average American considers December the busiest, most stressful month of the year. Holiday shopping, family gatherings, crunch time at work before end-of-year final tallies are taken, mid-season finales, what have you — if we don’t pack the days from dawn to dusk, they’ll pack themselves. For our family May is far harsher when it comes to divvying up the minutes spent outside work or sleep.
Whether on or off the Internet, I very rarely discuss music. I was a typical top-40 fan as a child, but segued to “alternative music” circa 1989 thanks to the late-night lineups of Post-Modern MTV and 120 Minutes that kept me company over homework into the wee hours every evening. I’ve followed musical acts of varying degrees of talent and volume ever since. I don’t consider myself finicky, but I’m not interested in 99% of the bands that receive mainstream coverage nowadays. I rarely discover new bands because local radio is a joke and I haven’t felt compelled to subscribe to satellite radio yet. You can bet the aging process hasn’t exactly broadened my vistas. As for the disparate gulf between my lifelong musical tastes and my present-day spiritual mindset, that’s a subject for another essay altogether.
I have the hardest time keeping track of when the musicians I still follow finally release new albums, but in 2012 I stumbled across six such occasions, and on another occasion tried one (1) relatively new act with pleasing results. I also bought one reissue, relegated to a separate category of its own. The following list scratches the surface of my purchasing preferences and may or may not provide any insight into me at all.
And just so we’re clear, I really did buy all seven albums on CD. My disdain for collecting digital music is also a subject for another essay altogether.
On with the countdown:
7. Joey Ramone, “…Ya Know?”. If I’m understanding the candid liner notes correctly, the Ramones frontman’s first album since his death in 2004 was constructed from vocal recordings acrimoniously wrested through litigious means from the hands of frequent Ramones collaborator Daniel Rey. The bulk of the posthumous backup-band work is by Joey’s brother Mickey Leigh, late-’80s Ramones producer Ed Stasium, and assorted studio musicians, though a few familiar names also contributed — mid-’80s bandmate Richie Ramone; Bun E. Carlos from Cheap Trick; Steven Van Zandt; Dennis Diken from the Smithereens; and Joan Jett, though her part is reduced to backing vocals on “21st Century Girl” rather than a true duet. It’s nice to hear one last Joey collection, though the assemblage of various artists creates a sterile, corporate-bar-band sound too diluted to approximate the vintage Ramones buzzsaw sound. (Sample track: “Rock ‘n Roll is the Answer“.)
Consider this list an overdue companion piece to my previous entry, “The Songs That Sour My Christmas Spirit“, in which I griped at length about lumps of audio coal guaranteed never to appear on my personal Christmas playlist. Let it not be said that my only thoughts on the subject are entirely negative, though. There, I tooketh away; here, I giveth.
The songs of the season that catch my ear, lift my spirit, and chase away the holiday errand-running blues, include but are hardly limited to the following, in no particular order:
* * * * *
* Dido, “Christmas Day“ — I’m not usually a fan of love songs, but I like the ethereal vocals, dreamlike gait, touches of electronica, and the lyrical tale of an anticipated traveler that may or may not be romantic.
* Anyone who cares to sing it, “The First Noel“ — I’ve been partial to this tune ever since I sang it solo in my school’s Christmas program in sixth grade. As I’ve aged and my spiritual outlook has metamorphosed since then, it’s taken on deeper level of meanings for me. Of all the Christmas songs we learned in school, it arguably receives the least radio airplay and is seldom covered by today’s artists. I’m sad when a song I like is never played, but I appreciate it when it’s not overplayed. For some songs that’s a tough middle ground to find. (I’m looking in your direction, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”.)
Detail from the worst Christmas CD cover in my collection. What’s wrong with poor Kevin’s face?
For those stricken annually by some measure of Christmas cheer, we all have our favorite songs for the occasion. I’ve always been partial to “The First Noel”, which is followed by a long list of other classics and obscurities, both hymnal and secular. For my wife, I’m 95% certain “O Holy Night” wins the prize. (If I’m wrong, I’m sure I’ll learn the error of my ways shortly. Updates as they occur.)
When (at least) one of our local radio stations switches to a 24/7 Christmas format in late November, their limited playlist includes a handful of tracks I don’t mind hearing more than once throughout the month-long seasonal commercialization. However, since I’m not their primary listener, they’re also prone to spinning several holiday staples that I wouldn’t miss if they disappeared from heavy rotation forever:
* Eartha Kitt, “Santa Baby” — The first few hundred times I heard this ostensible satire of trophy-wife Christmas greed, I thought it was recorded during an earlier era when pining for material wealth was acceptable in pop music, decades before today’s top-40 artists dedicated entire careers to the subject. Perhaps the line about the platinum mine should have tipped me off sooner to the true nature of Kitt’s unreliable narrator, but how was I supposed to know that our ancestors didn’t really consider platinum mines a must-have? I’ve resented the song ever since for making me think too hard about something so shallow. I’m marginally more tolerant of Madonna’s cover because her Betty Boop impression better suits the satirical bent. I’m not sure what to think of the Everclear cover that transforms the narrator into a spoiled-rotten upper-class gay man.
I never intended to dedicate a weekly spot to any given TV show, but the sheer density of dialogue, references, and character momentum packed into every episode of Bunheads keep driving me to take notes while watching for later musing and reliving. Tonight’s episode, “What’s Your Damage, Heather?”, was darker-edged than last week’s movie-truck escapade, with Michelle confirming the hard way what she’d already assumed deep-down, long before Fannie’s surprise vacation forced her into the substitute role: that teaching is hard, and role-modeling is even harder.
(Courtesy Spoiler Alert goes here. Bail out now if you’re planning to view the episode later this week on the ABC Family official site. This was no fluffy, inconsequential episode like “Movie Truck” was.)
As a consequence of Michelle’s carefree recollections of her life as a free-wheeling teen who received next to no moral guidance from her “Deb”, Ginny and Josh ended their aww-cute/uhh-weird eight-year relationship because Ginny (taking center stage for once) now feels inspired to play the field. The resulting domino effect emboldened Melanie’s icky brother Charlie to use poor lovelorn Boo as a potential inroad to now-unattached Ginny, to Boo’s humiliation and budding ire toward Michelle.
On the adult front, Truly remains on a roll from last week’s wild night and finds herself inexplicably drawn to one-eyed David the bad plumber. When Michelle isn’t upsetting the delicate fabric of the Paradise romantic scene, she’s busy bristling and fuming when Sasha acts up and all but demands a dressing-down from a capable adult. Meanwhile, Boo’s mom Nanette brings the gift of snacks, but seemed a little jealous of Michelle’s influence on Boo. Worst of all, now Ginny’s mom Claire will have to take out her own trash whenever she’s not busy shoving a real-estate pitch down someone’s throat. Oh, the horror and effort of it all. Tonight was just not Michelle’s finest hour.
Other random thoughts from tonight:
* The Heathers reference in the title was apt, though the callback to Winona Ryder’s one-time shoplifting incident seemed more than a little dated, even by the standards of a show that’s previously name-checked Girl, Interrupted. Also, though the “Heather” line is easy to remember if you’ve seen the film, Sasha reminds me more of Shannen Doherty’s Heather than Ryder’s Veronica. Differently apropos: when Charlie once again treated Boo like a doormat, I couldn’t help being reminded of poor, downtrodden Martha Dumptruck (in terms of status, not figure).
* Back in the days when I had enough hair to keep it shaggy and necessitate the use of a hair dryer, I recall many a time having them overheat and conk out after three or four minutes. How did Our Heroines manage to keep their dryers functional for three straight hours? Has the technology improved that much over the past decade? Do teams of Conair scientists work ’round the clock infusing their products with state-of-the-art upgrades?
* Are there reasons to hate Guys and Dolls? I’ve never seen it. Also to my shameful ignorance, I’ve never seen a single version of Les Miserables. Is this (a) a minor oversight; (b) a major oversight; or (c) a crime against art on my part? (If it helps, I promise to see the upcoming Hugh Jackman version as soon as it’s ready for me.)
* They mentioned a food truck fair! Finally, they cited an event we actually have in Indianapolis. I feel so hip and modern now.
* Fries on salad: worth trying or not worth trying?
* Sasha may be the first character under age 30 in recorded history to recite a snappy comeback using the word “shtetl”. Can someone verify that? Have pop-culture punchlines been sufficiently documented up to this point in time?
* Using “hip-hop line dancing” as an ostensibly made-up punchline isn’t half as funny if you’ve attended a company holiday party that endured a four-minute interruption by “The Cha-Cha Slide”. It’s not hip-hop, but I don’t appreciate that Michelle’s off-the-cuff wisecrack somehow brought it to mind anyway and now it won’t leave my head. (“Everybody clap your hands! CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP” AAAAAAAUGH.)
* Perhaps I’m too finicky, but ending a downer of an episode with pumpkin chocolate-chip cookies and a grape juice box isn’t nearly as tempting as the cheesecake breaks that used to punctuate every other episode of The Golden Girls.
* Alas, no use of They Might Be Giants this week. I was rather hoping for a brisk interlude set to “The Mesopotamians” or even “Boat of Car” (good luck choreographing that one). For the curious, the song of the night was briefly brought to you by Mates of State, before being interrupted by the wall-punching incompetence of David the pirate plumber.
Apparently because the showrunners can peer inside my mind and divine all the right ways to earn an instant thumbs-up, tonight’s episode of Bunheads concluded with Sasha (played by Julia Goldani Telles — in Archie Comics terms, she’s the Reggie of our four teen heroines) and two backup dancers performing a routine set to They Might Be Giants’ classic “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)”. It pains me to realize their version of the song is now over twenty years old and therefore qualified for “classic” status on age alone, despite complete lack of Top-40 love or common-man opinion, but there it is. I owned a copy of Flood long before the song was famously featured in an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures.
Their Malcolm in the Middle theme notwithstanding, any other chance to hear TMBG tunes outside the Internet or my CD collection is a rare major event in my life. I have zero (0) local friends who get them, not even my own family. In all their years of existence I’ve heard Indianapolis radio play exactly one TMBG song exactly one time, and why that honor went to a single rotation of “AKA Driver” I cannot even begin to speculate. I’ve seen them twice in concert — once at the now-defunct Music Mill and once at the Vogue — and in both cases I had to attend alone. Hence their headline status tonight. For me this is huge, even if it’s just for me and only me.
To the show’s credit, tonight’s episode was full of fun concepts even before the epilogue. Concept #1 provided the episode title, “Movie Truck”. Our main characters spend an evening grouped separately by age inside a full-on movie truck, which I gathered from the background glimpses is like Indianapolis’ own food trucks, except instead of food they serve a cinema inside a truck, walled with gypsy quilts and furnished with interior seating for a fair crowd. Someone must invent this if they haven’t already.
Trendsetting concept #2 in dire need of widespread acceptance and franchising: the cupcake ATM. When Michelle’s birthday night-on-the-town threatens to end before dawn because of Paradise’s small-town closing hours (I’ve known this pain, albeit without Michelle’s love of alcohol), a blessedly sober Truly is still enthralled by night-on-the-town fever (in an increasingly bubblier performance by Stacey Oristano as a meek-girl-gone-slightly-less-mild) and offers to drive them out to a rumored 24-hour cupcake ATM over in L.A. One scene later it’s dawn, they’re still awake but a little less toasted, and they have cupcakes thanks to the invention of a Redbox stocked with snacks instead of flicks. I can only hope the contents of this magical bakery-vending machine aren’t facilitated by an evil preservative formula that maintains freshness from within the product, like a reverse Hostess wrapper.
I hastily researched but couldn’t confirm the existence of a movie truck in real life (yet). To prove Bunheads isn’t secretly a science fiction show, I did find the following evidence of an alleged cupcake ATM sighting that doesn’t appear to be an SNL Digital Short or College Humor offering:
Concept #3 wouldn’t be my thing if it were real, but I won’t be surprised to see it exist within a year: Mountain of Arms, the R-rated movie-within-the-episode that I assume is like The Crawling Hand crossed with The Human Centipede. Our Four Teen Heroines obtain movie-truck passes and sneak out to see this future Criterion Collection classic without permission, all the better to escape an unfortunately epic rumble between Sasha’s troubled parents. I never had the wherewithal to pull such a stunt when I was a teen, but there was the time when I was eleven and snuck over to my friends’ house to watch Friday the 13th parts 1 and 3 on a surprise snow day when parents had to work. I recognize this ritual even if I naturally don’t condone it as an adult. (The moral: kids, do as I say now and not as I did then. And that’s…one to grow on.)
Between the majority of the above and an amusing sequence of movie-truck musical chairs, I found this a great character-building episode tonight (and I think I finally have all four girls’ names memorized now), even if it ended on a downer of a note, as relations between Sasha’s parents hit a new low, and a fateful letter in the wake of last week’s Joffrey Ballet auditions brings rewarding news that threatens to separate one of our lucky heroines from her best friends. I’m not sure which part of that is meant to be symbolized by Sasha’s non sequitur “Istanbul” set. Some deep thinking might be in order.
ABC Family will post the episode for online viewing on Tuesday, so another run-through of Flood will have to do until then.
* * * * *
Updated 7/24/2012, 7:30 EDT: Someone’s posted the “Istanbul” segment online! Enjoy before Disney or ABC Family shoot it down:
Updated 8/2/2012, 8:05 EDT: As expected, the YouTube user took it down days ago. I’ve left it up for posterity because I hate being too much of a George Lucas with my old posts.
Updated 12/9/2012, 7:00 EST: Oh, what the heck — here it is anyway:
Today the Internet reposts its favorite Beastie Boys videos as tribute to Adam Yauch, a.k.a. MCA, passed away too young at 47. The group notified fans on their official email list about his cancer a few years back, when it arose during the original Hot Sauce Committee recording sessions. I thought it had gone into remission months later. I was unaware of the unfortunate status change.
My vote for tribute is the first song that convinced me they had any intent of becoming Serious Artists instead of languishing as party-chasing musical pranksters. Licensed to Ill seemed at the time like novelty rock. I never “got” Paul’s Boutique, though I can understand why it has its fans. To me, Check Your Head seemed like a stronger leap forward, particularly the first single, “Pass the Mic”, though our local corporate alt-rock station prefers endless revisits to “Sabotage” and “So Whatcha Want”. It’s a rarity of sorts in that MCA leads off for once instead of batting cleanup.
One last pass of the mic, then. Note the dominoes at the end for unintended, retroactive gravitas.
To be honest, the first apropos tribute that sprang to mind was “Bodhisattva Vow”, the closest he ever came to a solo performance (as far as I’ve experienced, anyway). My beliefs aren’t Buddhist by any stretch, but I was intrigued by the passion that drove him to compose such a complex expression of what drove him. Sadly, the only linkable upload I could locate was a live version with muddled sound. My own copy of Ill Communication is a dub cassette that does it little justice.
You know something’s afoot when you turn on the shower radio at 6:45 a.m. and hear Anne Murray crooning “O Come, All Ye Faithful”. Or maybe it was Julie Andrews. 
Consider this list an overdue companion piece to my previous entry, “
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 