Deep Album Cuts Vol. 236: Oingo Boingo

Wednesday, June 30, 2021





Danny Elfman released a new solo album earlier this month, Big Mess, so I thought I'd comb through his band Oingo Boingo's back catalog. Oingo Boingo is one of those bands I'd always meant to explore more -- "Dead Man's Party" is one of my favorite modern rock songs of the '80s and it bummed me out that it was one of the songs that I used to hear regularly on WHFS that's kind of disappeared from airwaves since the '90s. My college roommate Mike was listening to a lot of Only A Lad when I lived with him and that's a pretty warped, entertaining little record, but I'm glad I finally checked out the others. 

Oingo Boingo deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. On The Outside
2. Controller
3. Capitalism
4. Wild Sex (In The Working Class)
5. Insects
6. Running On A Treadmill
7. Who Do You Want To Be
8. Dead Or Alive
9. Cry Of The Vatos
10. It Only Makes Me Laugh
11. The Last Time
12. Heard Somebody Cry
13. No One Lives Forever
14. Help Me
15. My Life
16. We Close Our Eyes
17. Goodbye, Goodbye (live)
18. Violent Love (live)
19. Try To Believe
20. Lost Like This
21. Ain't This The Life (live)

Tracks 1, 2 and 3 from Only A Lad (1981)
Tracks 4, 5 and 6 from Nothing To Fear (1982)
Tracks 7, 8 and 9 from Good For Your Soul (1983)
Tracks 10 and 11 from So-Lo (1984)
Tracks 12, 13 and 14 from Dead Man's Party (1985)
Tracks 15 and 16 from Boi-ngo (1987)
Tracks 17 and 18 from Boingo Alive (1988)
Track 19 from Dark At The End Of The Tunnel (1990)
Track 20 from Boingo (1994)
Track 21 from Farewell: Live From The Universal Ampitheatre, Halloween 1995 (1996)

For a long time Devo and Oingo Boingo have been kind of informally twinned in my mind. Growing up it seemed like every film score or TV theme I liked enough to take note of the composer was either by Danny Elfman or Mark Mothersbaugh. And besides both band's frontmen becoming big movie score guys, both bands obviously have a certain twitchy, darkly satirical new wave aesthetic, Oingo Boingo sort of leaning more towards horror to Devo's sci-fi bent. And both acts sort of stumbled into becoming major label rock bandsd after starting out as the musical outpost of a sort of more avant garde art/media project -- the short film The Truth About De-Evolution in Devo's case, and the theatre troupe The Mystic Knights of The Oingo Boingo founded by Richard Elfman, which slowly evolved into a rock group led by his little brother.

I don't want to compare Oingo Boingo too much to another somewhat more famous act, though, because they were a wonderfully unique band in their own right. Their combination of a horn section playing ska and a band playing rock songs on electric guitars wound up being sort of a unique precursor to the ska punk that would become hugely popular a decade later (a 2005 Oingo Boingo tribute album featured Reel Big Fish and The Aquabats). 

Ironically, by the time that ska punk wave was on the horizon, Oingo Boingo had dropped both the horn section and the first half of their name for their final studio album, and their only album as simply Boingo, in 1994. It's not a bad record, or a grunge bandwagon thing at all, and it's interesting to hear a more guitar-driven sound from them with longer, more epic songs. But it's certainly a classic example of a band that had a place in the '80s alternative landscape getting a little lost in the '90s shuffle. Elfman made it right on the heels of The Nightmare Before Christmas, which is at this point by far his most famous work as a singer, so it seems kind of a shame that the band were never able to capitalize on that, and that it took him 25 years to return to vocal music with this new album. 

The 1984 album So-Lo was credited to Danny Elfman, but he's backed by members of Oingo Boingo throughout the album and he soon persuaded MCA, who'd signed him as a solo artist, to include the band in his contract, and they performed a couple songs from So-Lo on Boingo Alive. So it's kinda been folded into the band's discography, much in the same way the sole Difford & Tilbrook album is now considered a Squeeze album. Elfman revisited two songs from Nothing To Fear recently as a solo artist -- he re-recorded "Insects" for Big Mess and uploaded a performance of "Running On A Treadmill" to Instagram last year. 

Boingo Alive is a 'live in the studio' record with no audience, so it really just feels like a chance for a band of skilled perfectionists trying to improve on the previous studio recordings of songs. Farewell, however, was recorded at their final shows in 1995, including a 4-hour set on Halloween, and is a more traditional live album, and an excellent one. And both live records feature a few non-album tracks, outtakes and b-sides and soundtrack work. In addition to Danny Elfman's many film scores, Oingo Boingo's music made it into quite a lot of movies. Obviously their biggest hit is the title song for Weird Science, and they performed "Dead Man's Party" in Back To School. But there was also "Goodbye, Goodbye" in Fast Times At Ridgemont High, "Wild Sex (In The Working Class)" in Sixteen Candles, "Who Do You Want To Be" in Bachelor Party, and "Violent Love" in The Adventures of Ford Fairlane. 

9:00 AM

Wednesday, June 23, 2021





I wrote a piece for Spin about the best rock songs by pop stars. 

10:35 AM

Movie Diary

Tuesday, June 22, 2021


 






















a) Parallel
I was looking for something to watch one night and happened upon this obscure Canadian sci-fi movie that turned out to be pretty good. Some people find a portal to parallel dimensions, all very slightly different from our reality, and start using it for get-rich-quick schemes (finding dimensions where different things have been invented and bringing them back) or other what-if things (finding the one dimension where a dead parent is still alive). It all escalates in the way these things usually do but I thought the way it unfurled was pretty clever and the dialogue was good, too, this could've done really well with a big budget and some recognizable stars, hopefully the director Isaac Ezban gets more money for his next one. 

b) Moxie
I really enjoyed this movie Amy Poehler directed about a teenager who anonymously starts a feminist zine and starts an activist movement at her high school. Parts of it were a little broad and unrealistic but it was a really sweet and inspiring story, the characters were fleshed out well and felt more like real teenagers than in a lot of high school movies. 

It's fun to see Tracee Ellis Ross's acting career sort of culminate in this movie where she sings and plays a role that's a little like her mother Diana Ross. As a music industry fable there's plenty of stuff in here that rings false but there was some clever show business satire stuff and as a rom com it's solid. There's a plot twist towards the end that I didn't see coming at all and it felt a little unnecessary but it kind of worked anyway. 

d) Luca
Watched this with the kids, they really enjoyed it, kind of felt like enjoyably low stakes Pixar like Onward but I'm glad they can still do movies like this and not always the weird metaphysical concepts like Soul and Inside Out. 

e) Wish Dragon
A really cute Chinese animated movie that's on Netflix, my 6-year-old loved it, kind of a clever twist on the wish-granting genie type story. 

10:34 AM

Thursday, June 17, 2021






I did a Q&A with Nile Rodgers and Robert Randolph for GQ about the Juneteenth Unityfest they're putting on this weekend. 

2:29 PM

Wednesday, June 16, 2021




I wrote a piece for Spin about Tim Foljahn and his new album I Dreamed A Dream. Back when I was in high school I loved Tim's band Two Dollar Guitar so much that I made a little AOL fan page about them, and when Two Dollar Guitar opened for Mike Watt in my hometown I did a Q&A with them for my site. So Tim was really the first musician I ever interviewed back in the '90s, and it was good to talk to him again. 

9:26 AM

Monthly Report: June 2021 Singles

Tuesday, June 15, 2021




1. Moneybagg Yo - "Time Today"
At first I thought this song felt like a retread of Moneybagg's big hit from last year "Said Sum," but now I think it's far better, really sounds fantastic on the radio, one of those rare 2-minute rap songs where it feels like not a second is wasted. Here's the 2021 singles Spotify playlist that I add 10 singles to every month. 

2. Brothers Osborne - "I'm Not For Everyone" 
"I'm Not For Everyone" was one of my favorite songs on last year's Skeletons. And it's kind of an apt choice for the first Brothers Osborne single released after T.J. Osborne came out and became the first openly gay artist on a major country label, even if that's not what the song is about. It just feels like the band is really being themselves on this song, singing about Townes Van Zandt over a zydeco accordion riff and letting John Osborne sing a verse on a single for the first time. 

3. The Maine - "Sticky"
The Maine are a pop punk band from Arizona -- what a wacky name! -- that apparently has been putting albums in the top halif of the Billboard 200 for 13 years but I'd never heard of them before my local alt-rock station started playing "Sticky." It's one of those songs that sticks in your head that's about songs sticking in your head. 

4. Willow f/ Travis Barker - "Transparent Soul" 
It's kind of become a meme lately that Travis Barker is turning all sorts of people like Machine Gun Kelly and Willow Smith into pop punk artists. But I really think it's awesome that one of the most talented drummers of his generation has become this torchbearer for a style of music that had been on a downward commercial slide since his band's peak years. And "Transparent Soul" is one of the best songs he's been involved in lately. 

5. Billie Eilish - "Lost Cause" 
I think the most interesting thing about Billie Eilish is the way she and her brother Finneas have really arranged all her records to complement her half-whispered vocal style with stark instrumentation and really dry drums, and still manage to make hits even when every other record she gets played between is bright and noisy. "Lost Cause" kind of works like "Bad Guy" in that the bassline is front and center, and kind of stands in for all the other instrumentation that anybody else would pile onto the song, it's really the kind of song with a lot of attitude about giving up on a disappointing guy that TLC used to make, but delivered in an exact opposite Billie Eilish style, and it works. 

6. John Mayer - "Last Train Home"
Lots of musicians have a dark or absurd sense of humor that never comes through in their earnest and emotional lyrics, but rarely has the contrast been more stark than with John Mayer. But in a weird way it feels like he's finally found a way to reconcile those two things with his upcoming album Sob Rock -- the cover art and videos for the singles, including "New Light" from way back in 2018, all have some manner of campy '80s aesthetic, but he's still doing super sincere John Mayer songs within that glossy retro sound. "Last Train Home" in particular sounds kind of like a Toto song, while the video looks like a late '80s Eric Clapton thing and Maren Morris pops up vamping over the chorus like Ronnie Spector in "Take Me Home Tonight." 

7. BTS - "Butter" 
I wasn't really into BTS's first big English language single "Dynamite" last year, and "Butter" has some of the same problems -- can't they just do a pop song with no Black Eyed Peas-type rapping? -- but I think it's overall a lot better. The way the synths surge forward on the "side step, right, left to my beat" section, that shit goes. 

8. Cannons - "Bad Dream"
Cannons is very much working in an '80s synth pop mode, this song even has a synth patch that sounds like "Running Up That Hill," it's a good follow-up to their recent radio breakthrough "Fire For You." 

9. Young Dolph & Key Glock - "Aspen" 
Young Dolph and Bandplay are really one of my favorite MC/producer duos these days, everything they do together sounds so good. 

10. Queen Naija f/ Ari Lennox - "Set Him Up" 
The less said about R. Kelly these days the better, but "Same Girl" was always an entertaining song, and "Set Him Up" does a clever job of gender flipping the premise with a similar back-and-forth lyrical dialogue. 

The Worst Single of the Month: Glass Animals - "Heat Waves" 
This British synth pop track that directly references heat in June was a big summer jam on American alternative radio last year, and a year later it's now crossed over to pop radio. Last year I was too ambivalent about it to put it on the 'best' or 'worst' category of my alt-rock radio roundup, but after some prolonged exposure I have come to the conclusion that it's an insipid piece of crap. I hate the way the guy sings but I also really hate his bizarre choices of words ("that look that's perfectly unsad" and the mix of past and present tense in "last night all I think about is you"). 

9:25 AM

TV Diary

Monday, June 14, 2021





Of all the films and series made from Stephen King's work, he's been directly involved in the screenplays for a good number of them, but they're not necessarily the most well regarded or remembered King adaptations, aside from say Pet Sematary or the miniseries of "The Stand." "Lisey's Story" looks really impressive, thanks to Jackie director Pablo Larrain and a big name cast, but after 3 episodes I'm still a little iffy with it. It's funny how someone with Stephen King's wild imagination writes so many novels about novelists, and Clive Owen's character Scott Landon is a King surrogate who gets shot by an obsessive fan. Julianne Moore is his wife Lisey who's being stalked about another fan after Scott's death, and the stalker is played by Dane DeHaan, giving one of the most absurd over-the-top performances in a career that's always been bereft of subtlety. After Scott's death, he seems to be sending Lisey messages from beyond the grave through her mentally ill sister played by Joan Allen, who cuts the message "help me Lisey" into her arm, which I think is a pretty stupid and borderline offensive plot point regardless of where this strange story ends up. 

One thing I like about "Sweet Tooth" is that what's driving the whole story is the very prevalent public failure to tell the difference between correlation and causation -- a deadly virus arrives around the same time that human mothers start giving birth to kids with fur, hooves, and other animal features, and so people blame the hybrid children for the virus and start hunting them. That said, it's kind of a weird mix of tones, this very dark dystopian show that stars an adorable little boy with antlers. 

c) "Loki"
I definitely enjoy the MCU more when things playful and weird, and hiring Michael Waldron, a writer from "Rick And Morty" and "Community" as head writer and exec producer of "Loki" is a really good way to set the tone for a series about a character that's always been comical and unpredictable. And Owen Wilson with a mustache? Man, we've been way overdue for Owen Wilson with a mustache in series television. 

d) "Solos" 
"Solos" is an anthology show on Amazon Prime where more or less each of the 7 episode stars one actor in some kind of sci-fi scenario, sometimes just talking to themselves, or some kind of clone of themselves, or their future self just after they've just invented time travel. It's kind of a mixed bag, I thought the Anne Hathaway, Anthony Mackie, and Constance Wu episodes were the best ones, but in general it's all pretty cleverly constructed and keeps you guessing. It kind of worked out the same way as the recent Apple TV+ series "Calls" where each episode initially feels like a distinct, unlinked story, until you get to the last episode and see how it all ties together. 

e) "We Are Lady Parts" 
This very charming show on Peacock is about a Muslim punk band in London who meet a guitar teacher with stage fright and try to convince her to be their lead guitarist. It's very sitcommy but in an enjoyable way, the characters and the performances are just so perfectly realized and in a weird way it does kind of conjure some of the spirit of playing in a punk band. 

f) "Little Birds" 
"Little Birds" is based on a collection of erotic short stories, and is about an American debutante living in Tangiers in 1955. So it's a kinky period piece, but very stylized and imaginatively rendered, lots of surreal colors and camera angles, feels very artsy and impressionistic. 

g) "Panic" 
This Amazon show's tagline "every small town has a secret" really has me pining for just one TV series about a small town that's not full of secrets. The whole premise in this with teenagers playing a weird game to win the ability to leave their town just doesn't make a lot of sense, too, not interesting. 

h) "Run The World"
This show kind of feels like Starz attempting to have their own "Insecure," it's not bad but feels a little too soapy for a half hour show, like they haven't really found a comedic voice. 

i) "Flatbush Misdemeanors"
This Showtime comedy set in Brooklyn has a very relaxed, amiable vibe that I haven't seen in many recent shows about New York -- it's not about ambitious careerists or aimless hipsters or cops and criminals, people are just hanging out and going to their jobs, it's kind of refreshing. 

j) "Home Before Dark"
"Home Before Dark" is probably my least favorite Apple TV+ series that I've watched so far. It's not bad, I just feel like it's a little flat, I want the story of this kid doing investigative journalism to be really cool and exciting but I don't feel any connection with the characters. 

k) "Dom"
Amazon's first series that takes place in Brazil, no pun intended, a very broad and pulpy show about the son of a police officer getting mixed up in drugs and gangs. The first episode was very loud and full of cliches, no real desire to keep watching. 

This is one of the worst FOX 'animation domination' shows I've ever seen that wasn't created by Seth MacFarlane, it just feels like those Secret Life of Pets movies with way worse animation and slightly more 'adult' humor, big waste of the voice cast talent. 

This is very much in the middle of the pack of FOX animated sitcoms, but I'm glad it hasn't been canceled but "Bless The Harts" has, there's usually a few sharply written lines in every episode that make me laugh hard. 

I enjoyed the first season of "Feel Good" last year and now it's back for a second final season, and the addition of John Ross Bowie to the cast is a welcome one. 

The first two seasons of "Mr Inbetween" were mostly about Ray the hitman's banal daily life in Melbourne and how his double life as a career criminal occasional interferes with it. But the third season feels like things are coming to head as it all catches up with him -- he spends a couple episodes in jail after a road rage incident, and then his daughter finds  his gun and shoots a hole in the wall. I'm not really sure where things are gonna end up but it seems like it's gonna get dark, but the show is still occasionally really funny. 

I'm kind of glad this show has stuck around long enough to make it to 3 seasons, the combination of David Caspe's "Happy Endings"-style banter still feels really incongruous with the period piece '80s storyline, but the cast is clearly having so much fun with the dialogue. And I like the way this season started off with all the characters getting away from Wall Street and embarking on odd new careers. 
 
q) "The Chi" 
I've never found "The Chi" terribly interesting but I think I'm officially too bored with it to keep watching in season 4, I was at least serious to see how they'd course correct in season 3 without Jason Mitchell in the cast but now I just have no interest at all. 

Natasia Demetriou is so funny on "What We Do In The Shadows" that I decided to check out this British series she did a couple years earlier that recently came to HBO Max and I think is getting a new season soon. Her brother Jamie Demetriou is the main character, a rental agent, and in a way it feels like a very familiar British mockumentary about an obnoxious guy who thinks he's a lot funnier and more charming than he is like the original "The Office," but they put their own spin on the formula well. 

"In Treatment," an adaptation of an Israeli series, ran on HBO from 2008 to 2010, and it was good when I watched it, but I just couldn't keep up with it -- they had the unusual format of running episodes of the half hour drama 5 days a week (therapist Gabriel Byrne's weekly appointments with 5 patients) and it was just so much. After going dormant for a decade, HBO has revived "In Treatment" with a new therapist, played by Uzo Aduba, and what I've watched of it is so far is really good, but again, I have no idea if I'll be able to catch up with it all -- at 24 episodes, this is their shortest season to date, but that's still more than pretty much any scripted cable series. Amazingly, one of the producers of "In Treatment" is Mark Wahlberg -- this show may not have ever wound up on HBO if not for "Entourage." 

My 11-year-old son has gotten big into anime in the last few months, he watched every episode of "Naruto" on Netflix and now he's moved onto "Naruto: Shippuden." I guess it's a good sort of intermediate cartoon for a kid of his age but it all feels a little cheesy and childish to me. He's always asking to stay up for one more episode because the last one was a cliffhanger, but practically all of them are cliffhangers, it's such a scam. 

Another anime my son has been really into, maybe a little dark for him but it's good, I'm more impressed by it. 

Between the shows our son's been watching and the latest season of "Castlevania," my wife's been on an anime kick lately too, it's about some kind of cool demon slayer lady, I like it. 

Netflix just premiered this anime from the Philippines, I like the animation style but I dunno if I'm too interested in the story yet.

This Netflix show stars youtuber Daym Drops as their Guy Fieri going from city to city trying to local greasy delicacies. I've only watched the Baltimore episode but it gave me a few ideas of places I want to check out (that pork belly burger with the fried egg at Mount Vernon Marketplace looks amazing), and the host being this big animated guy whose enthusiasm for eating guy seems really genuine makes the show fun to watch. 

It feels like Joel McHale is being served some kind of karmic revenge by hosting goofy high concept reality shows after making fun of them for a decade on "The Soup," but he deserves better than a show like "Crime Scene Kitchen," where teams of cooks look at a messy kitchen and the crumbs of ingredients 

A very campy VH1 show that tells tales about murder cases involving NBA players and stuff. Kind of cheesy and lowbrow, but it's nice that my R&B fav Monica is getting some TV checks. 

9:03 AM

Saturday, June 12, 2021







This week I appeared on Aleksander Lee's Head Rush podcast, which is on Apple and Spotify. Back in 2019 I was on his old podcast From The English Basement. 

9:32 AM

Friday, June 11, 2021

 




George Bonanza's new album Queen Victoria's Jubilee is up on Bandcamp and I played drums on 2 songs, it's his third release that I've played on in the last few months.

9:31 AM

Thursday, June 10, 2021





I wrote about Made For Love, Snowfall, Cruel Summer, and Servant for Complex's list of the best TV of 2021 so far. 

9:30 AM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 235: Split Enz

Wednesday, June 09, 2021





Last week I made a Crowded House playlist in anticipation of their new album, but I've loved the Split Enz songs "History Never Repeats" and "Six Months In A Leaky Boat" for a long time and have always meant to dig into their catalog. 

Split Enz deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. So Long For Now
2. Walking Down The Road
3. Sweet Dreams
4. Lovey Dovey
5. Woman Who Loves You
6. Sugar And Spice
7. Nice To Know
8. Parrot Fashion Love
9. Missing Person
10. Shark Attack
11. I Wouldn't Dream Of It
12. Ships
13. Clumsy
14. Wail
15. Small World
16. Take A Walk
17. Giant Heartbeat
18. Bon Voyage
19. Heartbeat
20. Working Up An Appetite

Tracks 1 and 2 from Mental Notes (1975)
Tracks 3, 4 and 5 from Second Thoughts (1976) 
Tracks 6, 7 and 8 from Dizrhythmia (1977)
Tracks 9, 10 and 11 from True Colours (1980)
Tracks 12, 13 and 14 from Waiata (1981)
Tracks 15, 16 and 17 from Time And Tide (1982)
Tracks 18, 19 and 20 from Conflicting Emotions (1983)

Only 6 of the 9 Split Enz studio albums are available on Spotify in full, but I was able to pull tracks from Second Thoughts from a compilation. So there's nothing from the 1979's Frenzy or the final Split Enz album, 1984's See Ya 'Round, although my Crowded House playlist kicked off with a re-recording of that album's single, "I Walk Away." 

Split Enz's lineup and their sound changed a lot over the course of a decade. Tim Finn and Phil Judd split singing and songwriting duties on the first two albums, which have some really fascinatingly intricate songs, very proggy and experimental, with saxophonist Robert Gillie really shaping the sound of the songs a lot. Phil Judd was out of the band by Dizrhythmia, but they still included some songs he wrote on the album, including the great "Sugar And Spice." 

Neil Finn was 19 when he joined his big brother's band for their third album, and gradually came into his own, singing and playing guitar at first, co-writing a couple songs on their 4th album, and then emerging as a major creative force on their fifth album True Colours, writing and singing the band's biggest hit, "I Got You." I think there's a real 'steel sharpens steel' dynamic in the best Split Enz albums, when Neil was growing as a songwriter and Tim took his writing in a more pop, melodic direction as well. Keyboardist Eddie Rayner does some incredibly cool textural stuff on these records, too, and wrote a few wild tracks like "Wail." In 1983, Tim Finn launched a successful solo career, so Neil Finn wrote the majority of Conflicting Emotions, and when Tim left the band, Neil led the band for one final album, See Ya 'Round, before launching Crowded House. 

I've always been fascinated by New Zealand, my wife and I went to Australia for our honeymoon and nearly made NZ part of the trip but decided not too rush through too many different places in one trip, so it's really on my bucket list to go back and see New Zealand. And it feels like a band like Split Enz has an interesting perspective, being from this tiny country that's often in a remote corner far away from most of the English-speaking world. In some ways Split Enz sounds like a lot of their British and American contemporaries and charted a similar arc from the proggy mid-'70s to the new wave early '80s, but in some ways it feels like they were very much in their own world. And I think it's cool that they tipped a hat to indigenous people with the title of Waiata, a Maori word for song and singing (in Australia, the title of the album was Corroboree, an Aboriginal term with the same meaning). 

One thing that fascinates me about Split Enz is how they were a very visually oriented band from the beginning. Noel Crombie has been the 2nd percussionist for Split Enz throughout their history (and the primary drummer on Time And Tide) but he was also the creative force behind the band's album artwork, promotional material, costumes, and music videos. And they really made a lot of videos for a relatively small band who released most of their records before MTV existed (although "History Never Repeats" was the 12th video played on MTV's premiere broadcast). This video for the early non-single "Sweet Dreams" is a really incredible example of the early Split Enz visual style, bizarre customized suits and face paint and strange choreography. In later years they weren't quite so outwardly strange, although Crombie's videos continued to have really interesting sets and staging and camera angles. 

Previous playlists in the Deep Album Cuts series:
Vol. 1: Brandy
Vol. 2: Whitney Houston
Vol. 3: Madonna
Vol. 4: My Chemical Romance
Vol. 5: Brad Paisley
Vol. 6: George Jones
Vol. 7: The Doors
Vol. 8: Jay-Z
Vol. 9: Robin Thicke
Vol. 10: R. Kelly
Vol. 11: Fall Out Boy
Vol. 12: TLC
Vol. 13: Pink
Vol. 14: Queen
Vol. 15: Steely Dan
Vol. 16: Trick Daddy
Vol. 17: Paramore
Vol. 18: Elton John
Vol. 19: Missy Elliott
Vol. 20: Mariah Carey
Vol. 21: The Pretenders
Vol. 22: "Weird Al" Yankovic
Vol. 23: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Vol. 24: Foo Fighters
Vol. 25: Counting Crows
Vol. 26: T.I.
Vol. 27: Jackson Browne
Vol. 28: Usher
Vol. 29: Mary J. Blige
Vol. 30: The Black Crowes
Vol. 31: Ne-Yo
Vol. 32: Blink-182
Vol. 33: One Direction
Vol. 34: Kelly Clarkson
Vol. 35: The B-52's
Vol. 36: Ludacris
Vol. 37: They Might Be Giants
Vol. 38: T-Pain
Vol. 39: Snoop Dogg
Vol. 40: Ciara
Vol. 41: Creedence Clearwater Revival
Vol. 42: Dwight Yoakam
Vol. 43: Demi Lovato
Vol. 44: Prince
Vol. 45: Duran Duran
Vol. 46: Rihanna
Vol. 47: Janet Jackson
Vol. 48: Sara Bareilles
Vol. 49: Motley Crue
Vol. 50: The Who
Vol. 51: Coldplay
Vol. 52: Alicia Keys
Vol. 53: Stone Temple Pilots
Vol. 54: David Bowie
Vol. 55: The Eagles
Vol. 56: The Beatles
Vol. 57: Beyonce
Vol. 58: Beanie Sigel
Vol. 59: A Tribe Called Quest
Vol. 60: Cheap Trick
Vol. 61: Guns N' Roses
Vol. 62: The Posies
Vol. 63: The Time
Vol. 64: Gucci Mane
Vol. 65: Violent Femmes
Vol. 66: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Vol. 67: Maxwell
Vol. 68: Parliament-Funkadelic
Vol. 69: Chevelle
Vol. 70: Ray Parker Jr. and Raydio
Vol. 71: Fantasia
Vol. 72: Heart
Vol. 73: Pitbull
Vol. 74: Nas
Vol. 75: Monica
Vol. 76: The Cars
Vol. 77: 112
Vol. 78: 2Pac
Vol. 79: Nelly
Vol. 80: Meat Loaf
Vol. 81: AC/DC
Vol. 82: Bruce Springsteen
Vol. 83: Pearl Jam
Vol. 84: Green Day
Vol. 85: George Michael and Wham!
Vol. 86: New Edition
Vol. 87: Chuck Berry
Vol. 88: Electric Light Orchestra
Vol. 89: Chic
Vol. 90: Journey
Vol. 91: Yes
Vol. 92: Soundgarden
Vol. 93: The Allman Brothers Band
Vol. 94: Mobb Deep
Vol. 95: Linkin Park
Vol. 96: Shania Twain
Vol. 97: Squeeze
Vol. 98: Taylor Swift
Vol. 99: INXS
Vol. 100: Stevie Wonder
Vol. 101: The Cranberries
Vol. 102: Def Leppard
Vol. 103: Bon Jovi
Vol. 104: Dire Straits
Vol. 105: The Police
Vol. 106: Sloan
Vol. 107: Peter Gabriel
Vol. 108: Led Zeppelin
Vol. 109: Dave Matthews Band
Vol. 110: Nine Inch Nails
Vol. 111: Talking Heads
Vol. 112: Smashing Pumpkins
Vol. 113: System Of A Down
Vol. 114: Aretha Franklin
Vol. 115: Michael Jackson
Vol. 116: Alice In Chains
Vol. 117: Paul Simon
Vol. 118: Lil Wayne
Vol. 119: Nirvana
Vol. 120: Kix
Vol. 121: Phil Collins
Vol. 122: Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Vol. 123: Sonic Youth
Vol. 124: Bob Seger
Vol. 125: Radiohead
Vol. 126: Eric Church
Vol. 127: Neil Young
Vol. 128: Future
Vol. 129: Say Anything
Vol. 130: Maroon 5
Vol. 131: Kiss
Vol. 132: Dinosaur Jr.
Vol. 133: Stevie Nicks
Vol. 134: Talk Talk
Vol. 135: Ariana Grande
Vol. 136: Roxy Music
Vol. 137: The Cure
Vol. 138: 2 Chainz
Vol. 139: Kelis
Vol. 140: Ben Folds Five
Vol. 141: DJ Khaled
Vol. 142: Little Feat
Vol. 143: Brendan Benson
Vol. 144: Chance The Rapper
Vol. 145: Miguel
Vol. 146: The Geto Boys
Vol. 147: Meek Mill
Vol. 148: Tool
Vol. 149: Jeezy
Vol. 150: Lady Gaga
Vol. 151: Eddie Money
Vol. 152: LL Cool J
Vol. 153: Cream
Vol. 154: Pavement
Vol. 155: Miranda Lambert
Vol. 156: Gang Starr
Vol. 157: Little Big Town
Vol. 158: Thin Lizzy
Vol. 159: Pat Benatar
Vol. 160: Depeche Mode
Vol. 161: Rush
Vol. 162: Three 6 Mafia
Vol. 163: Jennifer Lopez
Vol. 164: Rage Against The Machine
Vol. 165: Huey Lewis and the News
Vol. 166: Dru Hill
Vol. 167: The Strokes
Vol. 168: The Notorious B.I.G.
Vol. 169: Sparklehorse
Vol. 170: Kendrick Lamar
Vol. 171: Mazzy Star
Vol. 172: Erykah Badu
Vol. 173: The Smiths
Vol. 174: Kenny Rogers & The First Edition
Vol. 175: Fountains Of Wayne
Vol. 176: Joe Diffie
Vol. 177: Morphine
Vol. 178: Dr. Dre
Vol. 179: The Rolling Stones
Vol. 180: Superchunk
Vol. 181: The Replacements
Vol. 227: Tina Turner
Vol. 228: Ike & Tina Turner
Vol. 229: Iron Maiden
Vol. 230: Devo
Vol. 231: Carole King
Vol. 232: Kate Bush
Vol. 233: Dionne Warwick
Vol. 234: Crowded House

9:25 AM

The 2021 Remix Report Card, Vol. 2

Tuesday, June 08, 2021




















Time for another round of remixes. Here's Vol. 1 from earlier in the year, and the 2021 remixes Spotify playlist with every track I've covered so far. 

"Astronaut In The Ocean (Remix)" by Masked Wolf featuring G-Eazy and DDG
I don't know what's worth, Masked Wolf's new verse or G-Eazy riffind on Masked Wolf's verses from the original. Surprisingly the "Moonwalking in Calabasas" guy does a decent verse, though. 
Best Verse: DDG
Overall Grade: D

"Batman (Remix)" by LPB Poody featuring Lil Wayne and Moneybagg Yo
Of all the "three letters and one word" rap names out there these days, LPB Poody is by far the funniest. I thought I didn't know who he was, but he's the guy with the little kid voice who had the song that Jason DeRulo and everyone else was dancing to on TikTok last year. "Batman" is pretty good, though, kind of a hard track despite the drums sounding like "Teach Me How To Dougie," and both the guests on here have solid verses.
Best Verse: Moneybagg Yo
Overall Grade: B+

"Body" by Tion Wayne and Russ Millions featuring Jack Harlow
"Body" is a big UK rap song that already had one posse cut remix where the only American was Fivio Foreign, which made some sense since he's one of those Brooklyn drill guys who raps on the same kind of beats all the time. Hearing Jack Harlow on this track is just weird, though, dude is not versatile at all and sounds like he's been beamed in from another song even if he gets on a nice run in the second half of his verse. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C+

"By Yourself" by Ty Dolla Sign featuring Bryson Tiller, Jhene Aiko and Mustard
Not a big fan of Tiller or this song, but he was a good choice for the remix, really fits the vibe of it. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B- 

"Killer" by Eminem featuring Jack Harlow and Cordae
Now here's a beat that Jack Harlow sounds natural on. The original "Killer" is awful because Eminem makes one of those awkward occasional overtures to making a contemporary-sounding club rap song but his attempt at a restrained flow just makes the stupid punchlines sound worse, but on the remix the guests set the tone, and then Em comes in at the end with a long indulgent verse that somehow feels less forced than what he did on the song before. But he tries to clear the air on that weird feud he had with Snoop Dogg, and he was lame for ever taking offense to what Snoop said. 
Best Verse: Jack Harlow
Overall Grade: B

"No Plans For Love (Remix)" by D-Nice featuring Snoop Dogg, Ne-Yo and Kent Jones
The original "No Plans For Love" is a pleasant cruise ship R&B jam that sounds like it was made for Snoop Dogg to rap over, so the addition of Snoop to the remix feels like a no-brainer that makes the song sound more complete. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B+

"On Me (Remix)" by Lil Baby featuring Megan Thee Stallion
In December, Lil Baby released his first two new solo singles since My Turn made him into a superstar, and I'm annoyed that "On Me" became by far the bigger hit of the two and got a remix with Megan Thee Stallion, because "Errbody" is much better and actually has a reference to Meg already. Her verse is solid but I still hate that beat and the hook. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B 

"Options (Remix)" by Earthgang featuring Coi Leray and Wale
I didn't think Coi Leray would be a good fit for this song but it kind of works. 
Best Verse: Coi Leray
Overall Grade: C+

"Peaches (Remix)" by Justin Bieber featuring Ludacris, Usher and Snoop Dogg
I've always been irritated by Justin Bieber's aspirations of being taken seriously as an R&B singer, so the success of "Peaches" and it being an undeniably pleasant song makes me grit my teeth. But he pulled off a nice little remix here, thematically appropriate with two legends from Georgia and one from California, and everyone in is in good form, especially Luda, who has that classic "should have been on the original version" remix aura. Bieber's "that's that shit...bad ass bitch" ad libs are still like nails on a chalkboard to me, though. 
Best Verse: Ludacris
Overall Grade: B+

"Save Your Tears (Remix)" by The Weeknd featuring Ariana Grande
I was starting to think that The Weeknd would never get another hit from After Hours after "Blinding Lights" because "In Your Eyes" disappeared quickly even with the Doja Cat remix and "Blinding Lights" just kinda kept going and going. But "Save Your Tears" was doing pretty well even before the remix took it to #1. "Love Me Harder" was a classic so I'm annoyed that Ariana and The Weeknd reunited for this song because it always sounded like sour milk to me, what a lousy song. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B- 

"Slow Clap (Remix)" by Gwen Stefani featuring Saweetie
I ridiculed "Slow Clap" when it first came out but most people didn't ridicule it until the version with Saweetie came out a month later. Either way, just a laughably bad song. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: D 

"Top (Remix)" by Fredo Bang featuring Lil Durk
Billboard lists the original Fredo Bang solo track on its airplay charts but every time I've heard it on the radio it's been the remix, and it's really Lil Durk's best verse from his recent hot streak of features, he brings a lot of emotion and personal experience to the song. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: A- 

"Track Star (Remix)" by Mooski featuring Chris Brown, A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie and Yung Bleu
"Track Star" is a pretty dumb song to begin with, and it feels like Chris Brown should know better than to get on a song about a woman running away from a man, but of course Chris Brown never knows better. 
Best Verse: Yung Bleu
Overall Grade: C

"Toot That (Remix)" by Erica Banks featuring Dreamdoll and Beatking
It's been less than a year since Huey was shot and killed, so it's kind of depressing to hear a "Pop, Lock & Drop It" sample. DreamDoll killed her verse, though, I hope she's the next female rapper that blows up because she's definitely the best of the 'doll' rappers. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B+

"Without You (Remix)" by The Kid Laroi featuring Miley Cyrus
This song sucks and Miley on it just makes it suck even more, I'm sure she thought it was really cool and edgy to sing the "can't make a wife out of a ho" part. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: F 

9:24 AM

Movie Diary

Monday, June 07, 2021





a) Army of the Dead
I still have pretty fond memories of seeing 300 in the theater and what a fun over-the-top popcorn movie it was, and I wish Zack Snyder had stuck to his strengths of orchestrating big silly brawls instead of wading into superhero epics like Watchmen and Justice League where there's a lot of delicate mythology and characterization to get right that's a bit out of his depth. So Army of the Dead was satisfying in that Snyder finally dialed his ambition back to simply doing something as entertaining as Dawn of the Dead and 300, but I also just enjoyed the execution, great ensemble cast with some of the best performances coming from people I'd never seen before (Matthias Schweighofer, Nora Arnezeder). It's a shame that Snyder went to the trouble of replacing Chris D'Elia but then put fucking Sean Spicer in the movie, though. 

b) Emma
I took a Jane Austen class in college so I've read all her books, but Clueless was my first exposure to anything Austen, and it's kind of hard for me to read Emma or watch any adaptation without constantly thinking of Clueless. Of course, I skipped the previous movie because I can't stand Gwyneth Paltrow, but this new one with Anya Taylor-Joy was pretty good, excellent casting all around. 

c) The King of Staten Island
Most the movies that Judd Apatow has directed have existed primarily to give a rising comic actor a star vehicle that packages their persona perfectly and allows them to headline more movies. And The King of Staten Island feels pretty successful at putting Pete Davidson's whole deal into an enjoyable 2-hour movie, even if it didn't get a theatrical release because of the Covid lockdown and I have a hard time imagine it selling a ton of tickets even if it got the chance to. But I liked it, it had the right combination of dirtball silliness and heart. Apatow scored the movie like an iPod shuffle, though, there was a romantic montage of middle-aged parents on a date set to Fabolous's "You Be Killin' Em" and later for no apparent reason a string quartet cover of Red Hot Chili Peppers. 

d) The Killing of a Sacred Deer
I really liked The Favourite but thought The Lobster didn't really work, but both made me curious about Yorgos Lanthimos and made me wonder what my opinion of his work overall really is, so I felt like I should check out another one of his movies. And I had pretty mixed feelings about this one, and felt like if it was executed just a little differently I might have loved it, but it just pissed me off instead. The Killing of a Sacred Deer takes places in America, but only 1 of the 5 leads is American, and only Colin Farrell speaks with an Irish accent, but Barry Keoghan speaks with a bad American accent while still having these very distinct Irish rhythms and intonations, while also having this sort of distant monotone delivery. And the movie might have worked if Keoghan, sort of the mysterious villain of the movie, was the only character who spoke like that, but nearly all of the dialogue is delivered in this flat way, devoid of emotion, even when the words seem like they should have exclamation points ("He's really funny. I laughed so hard my ribs hurt." "Yes, he is very funny."). Even when Farrell and Nicole Kidman eventually express some emotion, it's pretty muted relative to the gravity of the situation, and this is one story where I think maybe just letting the actors go over-the-top and melodramatic would have served it better -- you don't really get the sense that this ordeal is ruining this family's lives because they seem kind of blank and sullen from the very beginning.

e) Chinatown
I was looking around for a movie to watch one day and was pleasantly surprised to see that Chinatown was one of the few 20th century classics that Netflix actually has, and I'd never seen it in full before and really should fill in that knowledge gap. I'm a big Nicholson fan and this is definitely one of his best performances, love the way he gets to deploy his smug one-liners throughout the movie but you gradually see the confidence kicked out of his character as the story goes on. The sound effects haven't aged well, though, the punches sound like a video game. 

9:02 AM

Saturday, June 05, 2021





I contributed a few blurbs to Spin's lists of the best albums and songs of 2021 so far. 

11:45 AM

Friday, June 04, 2021






I wrote a piece for Billboard digging into the history of a topic I have long been fascinated by: the less successful songs that artists released between #1 hits. 

11:44 AM

Monthly Report: May 2021 Albums

Thursday, June 03, 2021





1. Olivia Rodrigo - Sour
It's been really boring and exasperating the last few weeks to watch adults try to shame other adults about enjoying a record that was made by a teenager, especially since I watched all this crap play out with a smaller set of nerds and critics 15-20 years ago. It's boring, you don't have to agree that Sour is a great album with cross-generational appeal but it is, so get over it. Obviously the three singles loom large over the album, but I don't think there's a miss in the bunch and my early favorites are "Jealousy, Jealousy" and "Brutal." A lot of it reminds me of the 'shallow boy' episode of "Boy Meets World," and it kind of feels like "Drivers License" was a really sincere moment of emotional outpouring and now she's just leaning into being the new breakup song girl, sometimes in a campy way, but it works for her. Here's the 2021 albums Spotify playlist that I put all of the new records I listen to into. 

2. Tim Foljahn - I Dreamed A Dream
I've always been a huge fan of the band Tim Foljahn fronted, Two Dollar Guitar, as well as his many sideman gigs in the '90s (Cat Power, Thurston Moore, Mosquito, etc.). But I hadn't heard much music from him after Two Dollar Guitar's last album 2006, and felt foolish to realize a few months ago that he'd released very good albums under his own name in 2012 and 2015 that I'd managed to not know about. So I've been enjoying all 3 of his solo albums lately, and I Dreamed A Dream has these really lush surprising string arrangements, which sound especially good on the album's big chugging rocker "Remember Me." I first interviewed Tim over 20 years ago, and it was good to talk to him again recently for a piece that will be out soon. 

3. Mannequin Pussy - Perfect EP
"To Lose You" is really great, I hope this is a teaser for a full album soon because the 13 minutes go by really quickly. 

4. Toyomansi - No More Sorry
I will make the argument that Baltimore has always been a fertile breeding ground for experimental hip hop and people making really personal and individual music, but there's definitely something special about the wave that's happening right now. And No More Sorry is one of the best records to come out of that wave lately, with features by Butch Dawson, JPEGMAFIA and Kotic Couture but largely guided by Toyomansi's own unique aesthetic and perspective. 

5. Morray - Street Sermons
I feel like it's still unfortunately really hard for a rapper's debut album to get commercial traction without big name features, but I like hearing an artist prove they can stand on their own before anything else. And Morray's debut proves that "Quicksand" wasn't a fluke and he can crank out songs of the same quality with a whole bunch of different producers, most them not big established names. "Nothing Now" and "Reflections" are my early favorites, he kind of bends his voice in an interesting way on the latter. And "Bigger Things" is a great closer, he just sounds so sincerely joyful to experience some success and have people feeling his music. 

6. J. Cole - The Off-Season
I don't like The Black Album-style farewell albums because rap retirements are fake, so I really don't like that J. Cole has upped the ante with a pre-farewell album before The Fall Off. And one of the things that really soured me on J. Cole early on was the way Born Sinner tried to borrow the classic album gravitas from other albums via samples, so I rolled my eyes pretty hard at the first track, which features Cam'ron and Lil Jon cameos and a beat that sounds like Jay-Z's "U Don't Know." Despite all that, though, The Off-Season is really strong, could be J. Cole's best project and definitely top 3, "Amari" and "Let Go My Hand" and "Interlude" have great production and some of the most effortless verses in a catalog that has often felt too effortful. It's cool that J. Cole finally lightened up and put some features on his album, too, especially since Morray, the newest star out of North Carolina, got a spot, but I wish it wasn't just a hook. 

7. Cordite Tracker - Dopamine_DDOS EP
Matthew Austin's latest release on Bandcamp is described as "shattered digital melody" and I think that's a good way to explain the music on this EP. One of my favorite things is when people who make out-there instrumental music do their version of short, digestible pop songs, and that's kind of what this feels like, some of the tunes are very catchy but the textures are still often alien and unpredictable. 

8. DMX - Exodus
When DMX died in April, he'd been working for years with Swizz Beatz and Def Jam on his first major label album in over a decade, and it's fortunate that an album's worth of that material was ready to release mere weeks after his death, while the world is still mourning him. And it feels good to hear the red carpet rolled out for X one last time, his old label and the super-producer whose career he launched reuniting him with Jay-Z, Nas, and The Lox, as well as kind of entertainingly weird mishmash of other guests that ranges from Moneybagg Yo to Bono. The elephant in the room is that DMX doesn't sound quite like he did when he was taking over the world, in fact his voice and his delivery have sounded a little hoarse and worn down for a long time, and sometimes it feels like they're hiding him from the spotlight, putting him on the last verse on the guest-filled early tracks on the album. But as the album goes on, X finds his groove and it feels like his final effort was done justice, even if it couldn't turn the clock back to his classics. And I really have to question the opinions of people who listened to a DMX album and complained about the Swizz Beatz tracks and said the Griselda track was the only good hting on it. 

9. Mach-Hommy - Pray For Haiti
Speaking of Griselda, I'm amused at how records that sound exactly like this come out 10 times a year and all of them get hailed as incredibly brave and unique masterpieces going against the grain. Like most of these records, Pray For Haiti is pretty good, but it makes me miss street rap with loud drums, I feel like the point's been made now that stuff can sound hard without any percussion added to samples and can kind of help you focus on the lyrics, but it's getting boring to me from a production standpoint. 

10. Aly & AJ - A Touch Of The Beat Gets You Up On Your Feet Gets You Out And Then Into The Sun
It feels like May brought the return of a whole wave of teen pop starlets from the mid-2000s, with new albums by Aly & AJ, The Veronicas, and Sky Sweetnam's weird metal band Sumo Cyco. Aly & AJ tried to do an indie pop rebrand as 78violet a few years ago, but more recently seemed to embrace their earlier commercial work, making a big deal of re-recording their biggest hit with the word "fucking" in place of the word "stupid." The new album is good, though, I think it fits the "Fiona Apple album title but happy" vibe of the title, "Break Yourself" in particular is a cool tune. 

The Worst Album of the Month: Van Morrison - The Latest Record Project Volume 1
Van Morrison has always been notorious as one of those legends who's made some really lousy records in addition to his unassailable classics, including an infamous 1967 session where he improvised 31 nonsense songs on the spot to fulfill a contractual obligation. His new album wasn't dashed off to spitefully honor a contract, but it still feels like he's defiantly churning out songs off the cuff to troll people. The Latest Record Project has 28 songs, even without including the 4 singles he released over the past year in protest of the coronavirus lockdown, and the Volume 1 in the title ominously promises that this is just the beginning. The lyrics are mostly benign boomer versions of Sun Kil Moon-style stream of consciousness 4th wall-breaking bullshit, he at least doesn't continue the COVID truther stuff, but it's still pretty terrible. Some songs like "Psychoanalysts' Ball" have a pleasant groove that evokes old good Van Morrison songs, if you sort of ignore the goofy lyrics, but it still feels like he's just kind of twisting a beloved signature sound into something petulant and lazy. 

11:43 AM