Friday, August 30, 2013

Song Showcase - Still Sane by Carolyn Mas

Here's a pretty recent discovery I made. Carolyn Mas, a singer who had a minor hit in 1979 with this great little number, Still Sane. It's all I've ever heard from her, but I just picked up an album of hers from a thrift store for a buck in spectacular condition, and I really need to get to listening to that given how much this song impressed me. Then again, anything with a saxophone in it is guaranteed to at least grab my attention. Throw in a great chorus, a damn good vocal performance and a tight performance from the rest of the band and you get a solid song.

The song is insanely catchy as well, which works to it's favor. I first heard this song about a week ago late at night right before bed. When I woke up in the morning, I had it in my head for a while afterwards. I'm sort of surprised that this was such a minor hit when it came out, but then again, being a minor hit isn't any statement about it's quality. It's a killer song, even if it was barely noticed.

Also, I'd like to point out that this video is from the singer's Youtube channel, which is really cool.


Song Review - Torture by The Jacksons




You know what the best part of The Jacksons was? Michael, obviously. You know they continued on without him after he made it on his own, right? No, you didn't know that? Of course not. Because you do better things with your time than listen to shitty music by middling talents such as Tito and Jermaine... I don't know any other Jackson Brothers. The only reason most of us remember Tito is because of that scene in Rush Hour where Chris Tucker tells Jackie Chan "I'm Michael Jackson, you Tito."

The joke is that Tito is irrelevant. Jermaine had a few awful hit songs in the early eighties that people vaguely remember. But the only reason he had those hits is because he came out of the same vagina as the biggest star in the world. Also, he's the greasiest person on the planet. He looks like he's always wet. He's also a punchline for being irrelevant.

But this song was a hit. You know why? Michael sings on it. That's the same reason Rockwell had fifteen minutes of fame. That, and being Berry Gordy's kid. (See LMFAO for more of this nepotism in action with untalented musicians in the Gordy family.)

But here's the kicker. The part that I really don't get. This song is pretty good. It's catchy, it has a great chorus, and Tito has some pretty solid guitar work here. As far as R&B guitarists go, he's not Steve Cropper or Ernie Isley by any stretch of the imagination, but he's a pretty good guitarist in his own right. Jermaine and... the other two... were both mediocre singers, let's not try to paint them as anything more. But Tito was a fine guitarist. I don't know if he's the only guitarist here, and I'm not 100% that it's him playing the guitar here, but I know Tito's a bit of a bigger guy and the guitarist here is... let's be honest here, he's fat. So I'm assuming that it's Tito. If it's another Jackson brother, then I apologize for making that mistake and comparing them to Tito.

The video itself is stupid and cheesy (oh god, is it ever those two things), but it's grown on me. I like this kind of nonsense in my eighties videos. My favorite part is in the end, where you see the Jackson brothers standing with Michael. Except it's not Michael. It's a wax scuplture of Michael. I don't know if that's hilarious, or depressing that he couldn't make time for his own family.

Also, breakdancing skeletons and a really crappy spider suit. That's pretty awesome.

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Song Review - All The Way From Memphis by Contraband


I wish there was a way for me to show exactly how disgusted I was when I first heard this dreck. There was another really crappy cover of an Ian Hunter song from around this period of time - Great White's Once Bitten Twice Shy, which was admittedly a lot worse, because nobody in that awful band had anything more than middling talent.

But Contraband? This should have been a kick-ass supergroup. Their lineup was a pretty solid one. Bobby Blotzer from Ratt on drums, Vixen's Share Pedersen on bass (say what you will about Vixen, they were talented), and the dual guitar attack of Tracii Guns from L.A. Guns and guitar legend, Michael Schenker. Also, Richard Black from Shark Island on vocals. I've never heard of him either. Unfortunately, in reality, we get a band lamer than Damn Yankees, but at least I don't have to see Ted Nugent lowering himself to playing sappy power ballads with Tommy Shaw and the guy from Night Ranger trading off lead vocals.

As a side note, I have no idea why I've never touched High Enough yet on this blog. It seems right up my alley of making fun of bad music. That's now on my to do list.

What I love is that in the opening of the video, we see the logos for the bands these members were a part of and their signiture next to them. It just comes across as desperate. It feels like they're saying "Remember us? We were relevant five years ago."

But this is by the numbers, uninspired, generic hard rock without anything special setting it apart from other crap on the rock charts in 1991, aside from the fact that it's a blasphemous cover. And as I said, there's already a much more noteworthy blasphemous Ian Hunter cover.

This is shit, but even worse than that, it's boring shit. It's shit that isn't even worth the twenty minutes it took me to write about how shitty it is. So, why did I even bother?

Hell if I know. I'm gonna go listen to some Ian Hunter.

UPDATE! - 11/22/2013

During a bit of research for another blog entry I'm sort of working on (not sure if anything will come from it) on a cover of Fleetwood Mac's The Chain by a largely forgotten band called Shark Island, I remembered this entry due to the similar concept of taking a great seventies song and turning it into shitty, generic late eighties/early nineties butt rock. Both bands also have a lead vocalist in common. The guy's butchered great songs in this style before. I figured that I might as well put a link to that cover of The Chain in here just in case I never do anything with it. I'll be fair and say that the outro to the song is actually pretty damn good when it's unrecognizable as a butchered version of The Chain.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY1xs3B8BU4 

Also, the video I linked to for this entry was pulled from Youtube, so I put another copy up. I'd make some snotty remark like "no need to thank me," but a better comment would be "I'm sorry for noticing that and making it easier to find this garbage," and "Seriously, Michael Schenker's better than this."

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Song Showcase - You're Breakin' My Heart by Harry Nilsson

In 1972, Harry Nilsson put out one of his numerous classics. You're Breakin' My Heart wasn't in the same league as his stunning cover of Badfinger's Without You, but it had one thing that certainly set it apart from any other song out there.

The opening line of the song is "You're breaking my heart, you're tearing it apart, so fuck you."

This is a full 38 years before Cee Lo Green put out his song, Fuck You, and two years before Cee Lo was even born. Harry Nilsson was a trail blazer. It's also worth noting that Nilsson drops the F-bomb ten words into the song while Cee Lo waited thirteen to do the same in his.

This song isn't in the same league as Nilsson Sings Newman, Without You or Everybody's Talkin, but it has one thing that none of those songs had. It was an original Nilsson composition. The guy was a great songwriter, but was known mostly for his covers. He had a wonderfully off beat sense of humor to his songs, and this was a great example of that.


Saturday, August 24, 2013

Song Showcase - Citizen Jane by Bernie Taupin

Again with the lack of updates... I apologize for that. I've been focusing more on my Youtube channel lately. If you're interested in the music writing I've done, there's none of that on the channel at the moment. It's all video game related stuff, but if you're interested, check that out.

Of course, at this point, I'm pretty sure a good amount of my readers are bots from Russian spam sites trying to get me to click the link in their referral so they can send me porn and try to get money out of me or something, but there's probably some real people reading this, right?

Anyway, enough of my complaining about that. I'm going to change the format of this a bit so I can get back in the swing of it. Showcasing songs I like - most of which are obscure.

Today's entry is Citizen Jane by Bernie Taupin, Elton John's lyricist. Bernie's only ever put out a few of his own albums, which isn't surprising. The guy's been focused on providing lyrics for one of the biggest musical performers in the world for over forty years. It's made him very wealthy, and fulfilled him as an artist. He isn't required to put his own voice on record, as long as his words make it there.

Besides, Bernie's not much of a singer. He does fine here, but his voice is quite weak and thin. It suits this particular song, though, and Elton John's background vocals help out a lot. But I think Taupin's voice is what makes this song work. It's a very mellow and restrained voice. He doesn't have much of a voice, but he knows how to use it well.