Category: Music

(King Cake photo by Caitlin Bensel for Southern Living)

Today is Fat Tuesday! As a protestant who’s to this day never once visited New Orleans, I can’t claim to be an expert, but I have got to respect any holiday that so prominently features religious desserts.

In honor of that, here’s a song by Elvis Presley, who’s The King to most, but never meant shit to me except as a karaoke song. I have to say I can do a pretty good rendition of “(You’re the) Devil In Disguise”. (That’s a painfully on-the-nose animated video that’s “official” or whatever, but of course the best animated video to that song is in Lilo and Stitch).

Tangentially related: I was a big fan of the band Cake back in the late 1990s, which is when it was most appropriate to be a big fan of the band Cake. I let my fandom lapse since then, but back when they hit it big with “The Distance,” I felt squarely in their target audience of hipsters and aspiring hipsters. I’ve never had a bucket hat, and I’ve only sporadically had a goatee, but I still thought each record was like finding a special surprise.

I almost forgot it was Tuesday, what with everything going on this week. At Spectre Collie HQ, I’ve been preoccupied with furniture and with VR headsets and, like everybody else in Los Angeles:

Rain, and lots of it. Revolver is my favorite Beatles album, and it’s only a modern convention that “Rain” is included on it, since we don’t really do singles in the 21st century. It fits, though. I honestly can’t say whether I like the song for its own merits, or just because I know that one of my best friends was named after it.

When you live in a desert, unusual amounts of rain mean one thing:

Twisting. No, wait: Floods. We’ve been relatively fortunate that for us, the storm’s been little more than a nuisance. I’ve been staying off the roads, though, since the last time a big rain storm hit, it was causing flooding all over the San Fernando Valley. It’s kind of surreal to be driving through (beautiful downtown) Burbank like everything’s normal, and suddenly finding yourself driving through foot-deep ponds in the middle of an intersection. That was enough to convince me to stay at home if possible.

It’s also surreal to see the LA River actually filled with water. I’d always assumed that calling it the “LA River,” was Los Angeles being sardonic or something, since it’s just an impossibly huge concrete canal going through the city and occasionally being used for film or music video shoots. Ignorant of LA history, I wasn’t aware that it’s an actual river, paved only because of catastrophic floods in the 1930s.

Anyway: Flood isn’t my favorite They Might Be Giants album (that’s Lincoln), and “Twisting” isn’t my favorite song from Flood (that’s “Minimum Wage”). But it’s been a while since I’ve heard it, and it’s a highlight, even if I don’t know anybody named after it.

I’m kind of phoning it in this week, because I’ve already mentioned tons of times how much I love the Kenzo World ad directed by Spike Jonze and starting Margaret Qualley.

The song is called “Mutant Brain” by Sam i and Ape Drums, if for some reason you want to hear it without that amazing choreography.

Qualley is phenomenal in it, and I instantly became a huge fan. Granted, it’s impossible for Spike Jonze to make a bad music video, but I think part of that is that he chooses the right people to work with. In particular: actors and musicians who are game for whatever wild idea he’s come up with, and will be willing to bring all their talents to it. Especially if, like Christopher Walken, they can dance.

I haven’t seen The Leftovers or Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, but I was pleasantly surprised to see Margaret Qualley show up in a rather small and weird part in Poor Things. It didn’t seem like it required someone at her level of career success, so I’m assuming that she just thought it was a weird, neat idea and wanted to be part of it. (And if that’s not the case, I’d rather not know otherwise).

She also stars in a recent video for the song “Tiny Moves” by Bleachers. I’ve got to admit I’m all but completely indifferent to the song, since Bleachers has always struck me as so inoffensive that there’s nothing I can latch onto. But it’s just nice to see someone so comfortable in front of a camera bringing that charisma, along with dance training and familiarity with a ton of different styles of choreography, to a love song. I like the story behind it, too: Qualley has said that she wanted to make it as a wedding gift for Jack Antonoff after they got married last year.

If you’re as prone to catching earworms as I am, I recommend avoiding the movies Death Proof and But I’m a Cheerleader, because they both contain “Chick Habit” by musician and animator April March. The last time I saw either of those movies was a year ago, and I still occasionally wake up with the song going through my head. Sometimes just thinking of or seeing a picture of Natasha Lyonne is enough to set it off.

It’s a faithful cover of “Laisse Tomber Les Filles”, and she’s recorded versions in both English and French. The original was made famous by France Gall, a French pop star with an only slightly less unbelievable pseudonym than April March.

Not as good as “Laisse Tomber Les Filles,” but no less tenacious, is “Poupée de cire, poupée de son”, another song written by Serge Gainsbourg, and the song with which she won Eurovision in 1965. You can read more about the song in your local library, or on Wikipedia, if you’re wondering about the translation, or just want to be reminded of how asinine Gainsbourg was.

I’ve only seen 8 1/2 once, back around 1989, so I only remember two things about it: 1) My favorite moment had an annoying character suddenly getting hanged¹Or dropped into a bottomless pit? I said I don’t remember much about it, and am too frustrated with Kanopy’s interface to try and find the scene again. with no comment from the other characters, and 2) It’s a surreal interpretation of Frederico Fellini’s struggles to make his ninth movie.

Frankly, I feel that that movie has been surpassed by the decades of movies that were inspired by it. But back in the late 1980s, just the idea that a movie was “allowed” to be so happily self-referential was like pure Chucknip.

And I also still love the idea of songs that are aware that they’re songs. “Simple Song” by the Shins doesn’t wallow in self-reflection, but it still does quite a lot with the premise. With just a couple of acknowledgements, it sets up the idea of looking back at a young love, struggling to find a way to encompass how significant the “small” moments turned out to be throughout his life.

The most extreme example is Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s “Your Song,” which is still such a wonderful way of expressing in song how you can be so full of love for someone that a song feels incapable of expressing it.

My favorite version of the song is still Ewan McGregor’s from Moulin Rouge, because it uses the self-reflection of the song — McGregor just narrates the entire first verse, as if he’s composing it on the spot — and then turns it into self-reflection for the movie.

Everything in Moulin Rouge up to that point had been broad, loud, chaotic, and so, so affected. I distinctly remember the urge to walk out of the theater, it was so relentlessly too much. At the start of the scene, Nicole Kidman is going completely over the top²In case it’s not obvious: deliberately over the top. Her performance hinges on the idea that she can never show anyone the “real” her, but just the affectations. — over-acting as an actress in a movie scene about an actress over-acting — about how stories feel perfect and powerful, because here, they are. Then McGregor practically unhinges his jaw like a python to let the song pour out, and she, along with the rest of Paris, is forced to stop and pay attention. It’s just such a wonderfully sincere and earnest expression of how difficult it is to be sincere and earnest.³And if you’re wondering whether watching that scene again, completely removed from its context, still made me tear up at my desk in the middle of the afternoon: I assure you that it did.

And my apologies to Carly Simon, who probably thought this post was going to be about her.

• 1
  Or dropped into a bottomless pit? I said I don’t remember much about it, and am too frustrated with Kanopy’s interface to try and find the scene again.
• 2
  In case it’s not obvious: deliberately over the top. Her performance hinges on the idea that she can never show anyone the “real” her, but just the affectations.
• 3
  And if you’re wondering whether watching that scene again, completely removed from its context, still made me tear up at my desk in the middle of the afternoon: I assure you that it did.

Listening to “I Am The Walrus” last week, and praising George Martin’s production in particular, reminded me that it’s been a while since I’ve heard a popular musician really commit to the string section beyond a few samples here and there.

Luckily, two of my favorite songs by two of my favorite musicians are full-to-bursting with string arrangements.

I love Neko Case, both for being funny as hell, and for really understanding the appeal of a creepy murder ballad. And of course, for her amazing voice. It’s so powerful that listening to one of her records from start to finish can sometimes leave me like I’ve been physically assaulted. She should do a team-up with Black Bolt. It’s so powerful that it makes you forget how brilliant she can be with the lyrics.

It almost seems like she had to bring in the big guns with “Dirty Knife” because a full orchestra is the only thing that could compete with her voice. You can hear the madness punching its way in, interrupting her wistful and lilting voice with a compulsive repetition that’s actually frightening.

Björk is another artist who could overpower anything other than a full orchestra, and “Isobel,” my favorite song from my favorite of her albums, uses it to full effect. It doesn’t feel like an unnecessary flourish. It’s more like the music that’s been driven by the electronic beat that seems to carry throughout Post is finally allowed to break free and soar. It felt timeless, both familiar and cinematic and still like nothing I’d ever heard before.

I’m not aware of too many things, but I am aware that I missed posting a Tuesday Tune Two-Fer last week. I decided to take a break for Christmas, largely because Christmas songs are ubiquitous anyway, and there’s not much original I can say about any of them.¹If you’re curious, I probably would’ve tried to find some way to pair “Put One Foot in Front of the Other” from Santa Claus is Comin’ To Town with “Santa Baby” by Eartha Kitt.

But that’s all in the past! I’m making up for the missed week by delivering four tunes this week! That’s double the songs for the same low price! And now it’s the New Year, which means it’s time to decide who or what you’re going to be in 2024.

You could go expansive, like in “New Year” by The Breeders. Granted, only somebody as cool as Kim Deal could claim to be the sun and the rain and the New Year, but this is more about being aspirational than achievable.

If you like the idea of being the sun and the air, but you want to manage expectations a bit, you could change it up like The Smiths with “How Soon is Now?” Just make sure you’ve got Johnny Marr backing up your self-aggrandizing, performative gloominess, so it’ll be a few decades before people realize your bullshit isn’t that funny anymore.

Or, if you want to wallow in your neuroses, but not quite as hard and definitely not as gothic, then you could take a cue from Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel and declare “I Am a Rock.” Pros: A rock feels no pain, and an island never cries. Cons: It’s a little on the nose.

Of course, you could just skip the whole business and just spend the year spewing out nonsense, as in “I Am the Walrus” by the Beatles. Again, just be sure that you pair yourself with a brilliant producer, and you’ll be praised as an enigmatic genius.

As for me, I think LA’s fine, the sun shines most of the time, and the feeling is laid back.²Update: The palm trees still grow, but the rents are no longer low. For 2024, I aspire just to be a content, middle-aged man.

• 1
  If you’re curious, I probably would’ve tried to find some way to pair “Put One Foot in Front of the Other” from Santa Claus is Comin’ To Town with “Santa Baby” by Eartha Kitt.
• 2
  Update: The palm trees still grow, but the rents are no longer low.

The other night I was in the grocery store, and I seemingly spontaneously remembered the mighty morphin’ models at the end of Michael Jackson’s “Black or White” video. And it cheered me up a surprising amount. While I like to think of myself as an intellectual, I suspect that I’m actually more like an infant who’s still struggling with object permanence, and who lights up whenever he sees the face of someone smiling and saying “Yeah yeah yeah.” I was giggling in the bagel aisle.

I’m struck by how The Youths probably can’t fully appreciate what a huge cultural touchstone that video was. Even in a world where Beyonce, Lady Gaga, and Taylor Swift all exist, it’s hard to imagine someone being so singularly, globally famous as Michael Jackson. He had the money and fame to do literally whatever he wanted, and he was just batshit enough to do it.

It felt as if everyone in the world was immediately familiar with that morphing sequence, and it’s still the part that I remember immediately. Watching the video again, I’d completely forgotten the whole Amblin-esque beginning, with its unnecessary flight through a suburban neighborhood model, culminating in Macaulay Culkin launching George Wendt across the planet with only the power of his electric guitar. I’d also remembered the rest of the video playing out on a sound stage, instead of having Jackson in the desert dancing with tons of Native Americans, many of whom were on horseback.

For that matter, I remembered a long sequence of Jackson in an alley smashing car windows with the power of a crowbar and his crotch-forward choreography, but had misremembered it as a completely different song. That version of the video was supposedly controversial at the time, but now it seems superfluous and more than a little bit silly, coming across like one of those Musicless Music Videos.¹And I’d forgotten the most genuinely clever part of an otherwise extremely corny video: as director John Landis is talking to the last morphing dancer in front of a stock gray background on a sound stage, he can be overheard asking, “How did you do that?!”

Honestly, I’d been thinking that OK Go were pioneers in making ridiculously, excessively overwrought videos for catchy-but-let’s-be-honest-mostly-inoffensive-at-best pop songs, but this was a reminder that it goes way back to the early 1990s.

And while the morphing effect is still pretty solid even by 2023 standards, in my opinion, the thing that’s most effective about the whole video is simply the joy at the end. The smiles may be forced, but the sentiment’s not. I like that the most enduring image of the video is just a multicultural bunch of human beings being goofy and smiling at the camera. It kind of makes the rest seem unnecessary.

Which reminded me of “Overkill” by Colin Hay. Appropriately, the best versions of that song are the ones that remove the saxophone and the rest of the Men at Work, and just have an acoustic guitar and Hay’s amazing voice.

• 1
  And I’d forgotten the most genuinely clever part of an otherwise extremely corny video: as director John Landis is talking to the last morphing dancer in front of a stock gray background on a sound stage, he can be overheard asking, “How did you do that?!”

One thing to know about me is that I’m very much a Gentile. But even I know that it’s the middle of Hanukkah in 2023. And I know the basic idea of the miracle of the oil and can illustrate it with this week’s two tunes:

Imagine you’re the HAIM sisters (who have recorded an excellent Hanukkahfied version of “Christmas Wrapping” themselves) and, you’ve only got a “Little of Your Love”.

Just take a lesson from both the Maccabees and The Stylistics and “Make it Last” eight days and nights.

See, it’s easy to be respectful of cultures that aren’t your own. In the immortal words of the Black-Eyed Peas: Mazel Tov! L’Chaim!

One of the only things that Bluesky has over Mastodon is that it’s a better home for hashtag games and “what’s your favorite?” style threads. A recent one asked everybody to name a perfect album from when they were 21, presumably for identity theft purposes, but also for fun.

It turns out that a surprising number of pretty great albums came out when I was 21 years old. One of them was Check Your Head by the Beastie Boys. I always think of that one as being one long uninterrupted song, plus “So Whatcha Want,” so it’s kind of hard to pick a stand-out. All of the tracks blend with the interstitials and samples, and I never remember individual titles.

Hard to pick a stand-out, but not impossible: “Stand Together” picks up from Peter Sichel’s comfortable study (“Mmm, it does go well with the fish.” “Delicious again, Peter.”) and builds up energy to carry through the final third of the album. I vividly remember driving through Marin County with this playing as loud as my car’s cheap stereo could handle.

That wasn’t when I was 21, though. I wasn’t cool enough to appreciate the Beastie Boys until Hello Nasty came out. In 1992, I was still heavily invested in my favorite bands from college, including the Indigo Girls. That was the year Rites of Passage came out, and the big hit from that one was “Galileo.”

I always thought they were a little underrated, even though the truth was probably more that they’ve always been exactly as successful as they wanted to be, making folk-pop songs about reincarnation. In any case, it was nice to see them have another song get as much attention as “Closer to Fine” did.

I don’t know about y’all, but I was already pretty disillusioned with Silicon Valley several years ago, when I was working as an app developer in San Francisco. I was shuffling between BART and MUNI trains with a bunch of hoodie-wearing maniacs pacing back and forth like caged tigers who couldn’t wait one more second to get to their open-office-plan desks and start disrupting shit.

And that was before I really appreciated the incredible magnitude of egomania that was running rampant among the guys making way over my pay grade, who acted like bypassing governmental regulations and selling people stuff they don’t really need were revolutionary ideas.

In fact, neither moving fast nor breaking things were all that novel. Look at Fiona Apple! Maybe no other public figure besides Sonic the Hedgehog understood what it meant to move as Fast As You Can.

Corny dad-level analogies aside, every time I hear a Fiona Apple song, I think “this is brilliant; why don’t I listen to Fiona Apple all the damn time?” And then I listen to a bunch and I remember why. She’s brilliant, but I don’t feel like I have brain chemistry balanced enough to mainline too much of it at once without going into a depressive episode.

I need to break it up with a song like “My Lovin’ (Never Gonna Get It)” by En Vogue, which I try to listen to at least once a month to keep my spirits up. If I go too long without hearing it, the never gonna get it never gonna get it starts to pick away at my brain until it’s satiated. I can’t say I’m that familiar with the rest of their music¹Although “Giving Him Something He Can Feel” is also excellent, but this song is a bona fide classic.

(One thing I’ve never understood about this video: they’ve got four of the most beautiful women working in music, with some of the most iconic costumes from the history of music videos, so why the hell do they keep cutting away from them? I understand that at this time, having quick flashes of silhouetted dancers against a solid color background was required by Music Video Law, but they could’ve just done a couple and left more time for the stars. And I tell you what: if I’d gone to the trouble of putting on a tight dress and a wig, and they told me they were going to cut away to some guy dancing in a gimp suit, I would’ve been out the door!)

And now it’s time for a breakdown!

• 1
  Although “Giving Him Something He Can Feel” is also excellent