Grounds for Divorce
There are two types of people in this world.
Those who like Neil Diamond and those who don't.
My ex-wife loves him.
-Bill Murray in What About Bob? Explaining why he got a divorce.
Alright, let's get into the conundrum that is Neil Diamond. I know I am going to get a lot of push back on this, as I did with
Blondie last week and rightly so because Neil Diamond is one of those guys who, on one hand, is a talented song-writer in the genre of mediocre music on which Sucky CD was built. On the other hand, he is insufferable when taken in large doses.
For every good Neil Diamond contribution, there is one that cancels it out. For example:
Forever in Blue Jeans (good) v. Hello Again(awful)
Cracklin' Rose (good) v. Kentucky Woman (sucks)
Song Sung Blue (ok) v. I am ... I said (agonizing)
Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show (ok) v. Heart life (he was kidding, right?)
And then there are situations like this ...
Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon(sucks but I like it) v. Sweet Caroline (really, it isn't that good but it has become a great drunken kareoke song)
You get the idea. Neil was very prolific and he wrote tons. Some of them like "Red Red Wine" and "I'm a Believer" I feel were saved by the fact that Neil Diamond did not record them so his career as a writer is better than his career as a performer. I also get the feeling that Neil tried to fill a gap left by the death of Elvis in the 70's.
It's a bit disturbing because it reminds me of the guy who is too old to be at a club but is still trying to work it with the ladies. Ewww.
So, does Bill's maxim of two types of people hold true - those who like Neil Diamond and those who don't? I don't think it is as black and white as that. But there are
people who have really jumped on the band wagon of all that is Neil. Hey, if you search on
images of Neil Diamond, you get a nice little photo essay on male pattern baldness.
Neil Diamond is from Brooklyn, as is my dad (and myself, born there). My dad loves him. My mom is from the Bronx. She hates Neil Diamond.
Maybe it is a cross-borough thing, maybe it is Neil Diamond thing, but my mom and dad didn't work out. Maybe Bob was right. Maybe there are just two types of people.
Sunday Girl
This was the first album I ever bought with my own money. My grandmother and I walked to The Music Box in the little Hamden Plaza in Hamden CT and I gave over my birthday/Christmas/stuff I found in the couch money for this album.
I didn't know it at the time but this punk band, a feature at CBGB's, who hung out with the Ramones and were featured in punk rags for the years coming up to the release of this album, had broken out of the utterly cool, utterly punk yet utterly broke existance to put out this record, which included, among other pop-friendly songs, "Heart of Glass". "Heart of Glass" promptly became a darling of the Studio 54 dance floor and Blondie no longer could move in their punk rock circles. Apparently, Blondie was never really well respected because a) they really couldn't carry a tune b) Debbie Harry was too good looking and classically sexy to be edgy enough for punk rock so I don't know why they were vilafied by a community that rejected them in the first place.
A little more on b) ... whilst Blondie was doing gigs at CBGB, Debbie Harry was told by punk high priestess Patti Smith that she sucked and should never come back to the club again. You know, I've listened to Patti Smith and she may have meant something in the punk era but I think she sucked too and what a thing to say to someone! I thought the spirit and purpose of Punk Rock was too allow for the raw emotion, non-polished music.
What the hell Patti? I personally think that Smith was reacting to the fact that she looked like this------------------------------------------------>
<----------- and Harry looked like this.
So much for Patti Smith being cool. She is just a catty bitch like the rest of us. And don't tell me that Harry sold out the "music" with her looks - of course she did! With the shite band that was Blondie, they wouldn't have gotten anywhere if she didn't. Women suck, they really do, especially to other women that they feel threatened by for whatever reason, real or fabricated.
So, in the true spirit of Sucky CD Sunday, we have discussed a whole lot of topics and not a hell of a lot about the music so my parting words are these...
I still love Parallel Lines. I only have my original vinal copy and I have Heart of Glass on my iPod but I am thinking this is going on my amazon list as soon as I finish this post. So there. Oh, and to those women who feel threatened by me being friends with your husbands (and you know who you are - and I doubt they read this blog but you never know) ... eat your heart out! I pick Harry over Smith every time.
Infinitely Sad
Just when we thought it was safe to gain a little self-confidence, crack a smile and let go of your teenage
angst, they are back! Yes, on June 21,
Smashing Pumpkins announced that they will be reforming. It is fitting that this announcement was made on the longest day of the year - a day that just keeps going on and on and on and on and on - kinda like the Smashing Pumpkins. Even the announcement as it appeared in Billy Corgan's full page add in the Chicago Tribune (that he took out himself) was annoying.
"For a year now," Corgan wrote, "I have walked around with a secret, a secret I chose to keep. But now I want you to be among the first to know that I have made plans to renew and revive the Smashing Pumpkins. I want my band back, and my songs, and my dreams."
Didn't this guy kill himself yet? Obviously not but I will be coming very close to it if I have to endure "the pumpkins" as part of my auditory experience again in the near future. For me, the Smashing Pumpkins spoke to a generation of idiots who walked around being disenfranchised about the fact they had nothing to piss them off. They thought this stuff was clever.
I'm never coming back/I'm never giving in/I'll never be the shine in your spit/I disconnect the act/I disconnect the dots/I disconnect the me in me
Shine in your spit? Disconnect the me in me? We are free falling now ...
the disenchanted, the romantics,/the body and face and soul of you is gone /down that deep black hole/destroy the mind-destroy the body-but you cannot destroy the heart/and you, you make me so I need to disconnect/and you make it so real/I don't need your love to disconnect
... and now we have hit rock bottom. Are they kidding? This is stuff that isn't even fit to print in a high school literary mag where all the submissions should be called "an ode to my staged suicide attempt". Speaking of suicide, did I mention that even reading these lyrics again is making me lose the will to live?
You may say that the Smashing Pumpkins have earned their right to march to a funeral dirge. Here in Dublin, a girl was killed at an over-crowded show and Jonathan Melvoin, who was
Wendy as in Prince and the Revolution Wendy's brother (that is a one of those killer trivia moments), died of a drug overdose. Another guy in the band was arrested for the incident - basically, they are all a train wreck. But it may be a case of 'what came first, the chicken or the egg?' I mean, drama kings and queens tend to bring a lot of drama into their lives. Corgan himself looks like a big, endomorphic baby. But I have limited sympathy, just like I had little sympathy for those pathetic "crys for help" by the self-indulgent, ridiculous 15 year old girls who timed their confessions of suicidal tendencies perfectly so they can miss midterms while they talked to the school councilor who would remarkably deem them fit to attend the homecoming celebrations.
Here is a description of the 1995 offering from the Smashing Pumpkins:
The result was Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, a double album release featuring 28 songs and lasting over 2 hours (the vinyl version of the album contained three records, two extra songs and an alternate tracklisting). The songs were intended to hang together conceptually as a symbol of the cycle of life and death. Pleaaasssee, God! Take me out of my misery! Do the words "overbearing, immature and adolescent" spring to mind for you too? No? Then you must be 15 years old.
Usually on Sucky CD Sunday, I own and like the music that I know to be bad for me but not in this case. The reason for this is because this music isn't bad for me like the standard fare on this blog - bad in the junk food way which is just an over indulgence of processed pleasure. The Smashing Pumpkins are bad in a much more lethal way. It won't turn my brain into sugary, bubblegum goop like Disco does - oh no- the Pumpkins make me go straight for the razor blades. Not only does this music make me want to die, it provides me with the soundtrack for my own demise. Ugh.
Oedipus Rod
I think one of our culture's modern tragedies, a 20th century
Oedipus if you will, is the way an artist of some integrity can fall from grace. There are many examples, some of which are just stumbles, mere hiccups nearing the precipice of the yawning hole of mediocrity and sell out. Some are full fledged swan dives into the middle of it. This week's Sucky CD Sunday is dedicated to one such diver.
What the hell happened to Rod Stewart? He used to be cool. He used to make music with the likes of Ron Wood and Jeff Beck to name just a few. He used to be Rock and Roll. If March did a Best of the 70's FDF,
Every Picture Tells a Story would have to be on it. It is a shockingly good album, the music is good, the lyrics are great, it is still one of my favorites.
Ooh la la, penned by Ron Wood and Ronnie Lane, out of the Faces time period is such a classic - I don't know anyone who doesn't like this song who has heard it (we'll see in the comments to this blog). But this is only a few.
So with a mark of authenticity and a history that demanded respect, what made him release things like the 80's "Young Turks", "Baby Jane" or "Passion". You've got to be kidding Rod! I am not even going to go into the "Da ya think I'm sexy" on
Blondes have more fun because that has become iconoclastic in and of itself so it redeems itself, just by being so '70s cheesy and campy ... you will find I feel that way about most of the disco era.
Fast forward a little to the 90's and his biggest hit is with Brian Adams and Sting (two others who may appear on this blog in the future). And it is for a soundtrack. I mean, that's sad. He does a cover of "Have I told you lately" which is a Van Morrison song and if you hear Van the Man's version of it, you will hear why it is actually a good ballad and not the sappy piece of rot gut that Stewart put out.
So what to do with a steady erosion of a career? I know, put out an album of Gershwin, Porter and Berlin songs that have been popular since the 40's and no one can really mess up no matter what they do with them. Its a cheap, manipulative ploy. I mean, how bad can you mess up "What a Wonderful World" although, a duet with Cher "Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered"??? - I'll pass.
My theory is that Rod Stewart's career in music is taking the exact opposite path as Tom Jones.
Jones started out as a cheesy lounge singer who was more at home in Vegas than with the Rock and Roll elite and now, he is releasing albums with the latest and greatest. He never sounded better. Weird, huh? And Rod? I'll look for him doing 2 shows in the Mirage with a matinee on Sunday.
Rod Stewart was diagnosed with thyroid cancer so I will cut him a break for this crap he has been putting out for the last 10-20 years. And, as the tradition of SCDS continues, my confession is that not only do I have all his bad music, I still listen to it AND I have seen Stewart in concert during college. He was good.
I hope there is still something left in Rod. I hate to think that we offer our best up only in youth and are left to the downhill slide. I think I would rather be Tom then Rod at leave something left for my older years. The thought of it is tragic.
It's a bit disturbing because it reminds me of the guy who is too old to be at a club but is still trying to work it with the ladies. Ewww.
