Wings For Wheels

If you listened to Episode 59 and are still looking for more summer tunes, go over to my friends at Addicted To Vinyl, where they’ve put together an excellent summer mix of 40 songs for you to download.

And if you’re hitting the road over the next few months, you can also check out Popdose’s Ultimate Road Trip Mixtape.

EDIT: Also, for your reading pleasure, something I got sent by several people yesterday, an excellent analysis of the different approaches that Bruce Springsteen and Michael Jackson took to their careers helps explain why one rocked English stages last weekend as the other had obitituaries written about him.

Once again, I was all set to begin work on the next episode of the podcast when, last night, I was contacted to work on another book. I don’t know how many details I can give out, but it will require pretty much all my time and energy over the next week, so I won’t be able to do any work on Episode 60 until I’m all done with this project.

Bruce Springsteen joins The Gaslight Anthem at Glastonbury this past weekend.

When I heard that he sat in with them, my first thought was, “WOW!” Then I thought, “Wait, how could I not see that coming?” Then I saw the clip and wondered when the last time Bruce appeared on stage with something other than a Telecaster?

But the main thing I’m taking from this is that, looking at Brian Fallon on the choruses, I now have an idea of what my face would look like if I were to ever be sharing a mic with Springsteen.

Let’s go back to the beginning.

We critics always talk about artists as the sum of their parts, how well they created their own style out of their influences. When you see this clip of I Want You Back, you hear why Michael Jackson couldn’t become anything other than a megastar.

I listened to this about five times yesterday, and finally hit upon the reason. As a singer, Jackson took bits and pieces of pretty much every major Motown star in this one song. I couldn’t find Martha and The Vandellas or Mary Wells, but follow along…

0:21 The first note we ever hear out of him is a whine worthy of Smokey Robinson.
0:30 Singing right up against the beat in the first verse (listen to the phrasing on “had you to myself” and “picked you from the bunch.” Think Marvin Gaye in songs like I’ll Be Doggone or Ain’t That Peculiar.
0:51 Was the attempt to channel Levi Stubbs on the emphasized “Oh” on the first chorus just a fluke? Hell, no. Wait for it.
1:54  Gaye’s phrasing with another attempt at Stubbs’s grit on “Now that I’ve seen you in his arms,” followed by another Smokey whine, which segues effortlessly into…
2:00 …Wordless vocals straight out of Sly & The Family Stone (not a  Motown act, of course, but it shows The Corporation was listening).
2:09 The first “All I want/All I need.” Sweet and innocent like Diana Ross. But it all builds up to…
2:17 ALL I NEEEEEED!!!!! The kid nails Stubbs’ greatest moment, the a cappella shout in Bernadette.
2:34 After more Stubbs on the “Baby”’s he uses his melisma to climb up on “let you go-oh-oh” instead of down. Where the fuck did that come from? Forty years on, that moment is still remarkable.
2:49 Those “Hahs” and “Ows” that close out the song let James Brown know that there’s a new sherriff in town.

Let’s not forget the backing vocals and choreography straight out of The Temptations, and you have the previous ten years of Motown encapsulated in less than three minutes.

Now remember this:

HE!

WAS!

TEN!

Ed gives us the last word.

“The little fella in front is incredible”

I don’t remember much from my early childhood, but I know that the Jackson Five were my first musical love.  This would have been in the early-to-mid 70s, and I can remember seeing them on TV. Nowadays I can talk about why their music was great in technical and sociological terms, but back then all I knew was that the boy, who didn’t look much older than me (although he was actually 10 years older) doing the singing was incredible.

There’s no point in me rehashing his status as a cultural icon in the 80s, as so many other have done over the past 24 hours. It would be redundant. Like everyone else, I loved Off The Wall and Thriller and made laughable attempts at moonwalking, but that was where it ended for me. Granted, I would have loved one of those red leather jackets with a thousand zippers that Chess King in the Sunrise Mall was selling, but I knew my parents wouldn’t go for it.

The real tragedy isn’t in yesterday’s news, but the 20 years that preceded it. For much of his adult life, we forgave his eccentricities, first because he was so talented and then because we felt sorry for him. Then the allegations started, and the behavior became more delusional than quirky. Since his death, people have been making comparisons to Elvis Presley, another cultural revolutionary trapped within his own fame and enabled by those along for the ride.

But the difference is that Elvis turned his pain inward, substituting his need for his mother’s love by abusing his body. Even if the unproven allegations against Jackson never happened, he admitted to behavior which could cause serious psychological damage in children. That he saw nothing wrong in this shows that he was pathologically incapable of understanding the consequences of his actions.

For me, the point of no return was the mid-90s, beginning with the anti-Semitic lyrics in They Don’t Care About Us. Then came the statue on the Thames, followed by the 1996 BRITS and Jarvis Cocker’s protest. Like Paulie at the end of Goodfellas, I had to turn my back on someone I had known my whole life.

There are those who say that, in his death, we should now solely remember the music and joy he brought us as the Michael we grew up with – the adorable child singing I’ll Be There with a wisdom beyond his years, the teenage Dancing Machine, and the young man who singlehandedly turned video into an art form.

Ultimately, that’s how he will be remembered, as his music will outlast us all. But I disagree. People are flawed and complex, so we don’t want to see the whole picture because acknowledging it implicates us in his downfall. As with Elvis, we came for the music and stayed for the sideshow, ignoring the cries for help as he became sicker. We need to learn from these mistakes. Unfortunately, the rise and fall of Britney Spears in the past decade shows that we haven’t, nor are we willing to.

It’s been nearly three years since I first came across The Hold Steady, and hardly a week has gone by when I haven’t either listened to or thought of them. Surprisingly, I had only seen them once before, just as they were starting to break. But on Sunday, they closed out the Taste Of Randolph Street Festival with a typically blistering performance.

The opener, Positive Jam into Stuck Between Stations (note the song they walk on to)

A few songs later, Constructive Summer segued beautifully into Multitude Of Casualties

Later on I decided to get one more clip, only this time with a close up on Finn. Luckily, it was Hornets! Hornets!

That little dance he does with Tad at 3:52 nearly made me weep with delight. They simply exemplify everything I love about music. I can’t put it any other way, and I’m not exaggerating in the least.

Triumph The Insult Comic Dog at Bonnaroo. For a change, someone else gets the biggest laugh at the end.

I’ll have the videos I took of The Hold Steady, The Posies, and Tinted Windows at last weekend’s Taste Of Randolph Street Festival up here in the next few days.

Friend of the show John Hodgman at the Radio & TV Correspondents Dinner on Friday night.

Hodgman shows precisely why he’s a genius: he learned. Rather than doing the same tired jokes about the same politicians that manages to piss off someone somehow and force the White House into an awkward situation, he completely changes the game. If you were offended, it’s because it was intellectually over your head. What’s Fox News going to do, slap the “elitist” tag on him? He already did! He wears it proudly! THAT’S HIS SCHTICK!!

This morning, Hodgman clarified his argument a little more.

ON THE SUBJECT OF JOCK v. NERD, look: I don’t want to make too much of this.

OF COURSE I was being somewhat reductive for the sake of comedy.

I love This American Life. It’s compelling to the point where I don’t even start the podcast unless I have a full hour to concentrate exclusively on it. It’s everything you want a radio show to be: funny, informative, touching, sad.

However, Ira Glass, the show’s auteur, is a loathsome prick.

Yesterday, I went to listen to the latest show, and I hear Glass going into his now-weekly podcast-only pitch to solicit contributions. He starts by saying that, because of the economy, parent station WBEZ’s corporate underwriting is down $700,000 this year.

OK, there’s nothing wrong with that. We all know times are tough (sidenote – I stopped listening to Morning Edition because I was getting beaten up with recession stories) and, if they have to ask for funds more frequently than their regular pledge drives, so be it. And we’re always told that public broadcasting is underfunded, so to take a minute before launching into the show to plead his case is fine with me.

However, Glass stepped over the line with his second point when talking about the extra cost of releasing the show as a free podcast, he said:

You. YOU, simply by virtue of hearing my voice right now, you are costing them money.

Fuck you, Ira Glass.

So I’m a freeloader if I don’t help out with your Internet expenses? Did you not even hear your own point, that things are tough all over? Did you ever think maybe your business plan is wrong? Hell, I use Bluehost and get unlimited storage and bandwidth. And they have great customer service, as I learned when my site was hacked a few months ago, all for only $6.95/month.

Granted, I had to pay for two years up front to get that rate, so it wasn’t without some sacrifice. But at least I don’t have to make my readers and listeners feel bad if they don’t give me money (But, readers and listeners, you will have multiple orgasms if you do give me money. Trust me on this). If I can afford that, certainly WBEZ can.

Maybe, Ira, if you were nicer about it, I would contribute. After all, giving a few bucks to you is a small price for 52 hours a year of the exceptional quality of TAL. But it’s not until the 1:02 mark that you lower your tone and deign to use the Magic Word “please.”

Once again, fuck you, Ira Glass.

This isn’t the first time Glass has pissed me off asking for money. During their pledge drive in February, I was considering becoming a member of WBEZ. After all, they produce three of my favorite shows (TAL, Sound Opinions, and Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me), and I had plenty of cash on hand after writing the first book. WBEZ does a lot of cool events in town, like the Wait Wait taping in Millennium Park last week. I also enjoy their blog.

Then, midway through the drive, Glass comes on the local Morning Edition segment to help raise money. From some members, he received the phone numbers of people who listened to public radio but don’t contribute. He called them up asking them why they feel they should get this stuff for free, berated them for it, and played those calls on the air . The message was clear: Give us money or Ira Glass will publicly make you feel like the worthless piece of trash you are.

What a smug, pretentious dickhead.

That WBEZ felt this was a good idea was evidence that they didn’t deserve my money. Instead, I gave it to WFMU, the excellent listener-support free-form station in New Jersey. I listen to five of their shows and would listen to more  if I had the time. They also run the Free Music Archive, which has provided music for my podcast.

Again, This American Life is an incredible show, but it’s getting harder and harder to listen to, as its host clearly thinks I am not worthy of it.

Had to repost because the link to the episode was broken.

At just over 25 minutes, this is one of the shortest episodes I’ve ever done. I didn’t feel the need to come up with three paragraphs worth of material about every song, but instead decided to let it flow a little more naturally. I think it works pretty good.

What are you favorite summer songs? Leave them in the Comments.

LINKS

Episode 26: Summer Songs, Part 1

Bill’s blog

Michele’s blog

Brian’s blog

MUSIC

Closing Music: The Detroit Cobras courtesy of the Free Music Archive

You can download the episode (25:24, 23.2 MB) by right-clicking here and selecting “Save Target As…” or by subscribing using the buttons on the right.