From Keith: OST for Donovan McNabb’s Career

Not even in Greek Mythology is there a hero’s tale that could do justice to the complexity that has been the story of Donovan McNabb’s career. The only mythological comparison would be if while Zeus was carrying the dying Heracles to be deified on the Olympic Pantheon that he was raucously booed by 30 drunken Athenians that wanted the gods to pick Achilles instead.

You suck Heracles!

Donovan McNabb’s career is one that has fluctuated between the highest plateau and a sea of what ifs. It is a career that has all the makings of a Disney sports flick that you won’t admit you like. After all, this plot is full of evil characters (Rush Limbaugh), complex love relationships (the Terrell Owens saga), and taking every ounce inside of you and leaving it on the field (Donovan throwing up during the 2 min. drive in the Super Bowl).

However, if modern Hollywood has taught me anything, talent and hard work alone will not translate a beat all odds story onto the big screen. What’s needed is a kick ass soundtrack. After all, without Huey Lewis Marty McFly never gets back to 1985 and without “Gonna Fly Now” Rocky gets levied with a series of health code violations for training in the freezer of a meat packing plant.

Since one of my core musical beliefs is that there is a soundtrack for everyone and every living moment, then there certainly is a soundtrack for the life of #5. In my mind, it might go something like this…

1. Transcendental Jogging Moment when Donovan becomes Number 5
Flying Lesson (Hot Chicken #1)- Yo La Tengo

Sports movies have two parts, a self doubting before and an ultra confident after. In-between there is a three minute training montage where a song slowly pushes the athlete out of bed and then sends him on a reflective jog while the city sleeps. By the time character returns home, he is ready to be a champion.

2. Born to Run (but not because I am a black QB)
Born to Run- The Boss

3. I'm So Bad I Make Medicine Sick
You Can't Catch Me- Chuck Berry

In a Forest Gump/ Benny Hill chase scene, Donovan is juking and jumping over defenders because in the words of Chuck Berry, “If you get too close, I’m gone in a cooool breeze”

4. The Big Hurt
Pressure Drop- Toots and the Maytals

Drop the Pressure- Spank Rock Remix of Mylo

If someone asked me today to put money on the 2002 NFC Championship, I would still hand over a year’s salary to bet on the Eagles. Even though I witnessed that event in a stadium whose ghosts now haunt the parking lot that stands in its place, I still don’t believe the Eagles lost that game. Anyone want to bet?

Continue reading "Word Association: The Life of Five" »

Posted by Yonah Korngold at 01:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I hate the Run DMC-Aerosmith version of "Walk this Way." Loathe it. How's that for an intro? I'm not much of a fan of the Public Enemy-Anthrax version of "Bring Tha Noize." You might infer that I hate rock or rap or both (not true) or that I favor the separation of musical flavors (nay, I say) or revel in being contrarian (false, I say, but others (damn contrarians) may disagree vehemently). My reason: They always struck me as crass commercialization ploys. I suppose hip-hop aficionados should appreciate that is help propel the incipient genre (to the population at large), but I'm pretty confident it would have reached its current massive level, regardless.

I bring these examples up because when Sebastian passed to me "Frankenstein," hip hop-rock hybrids immediately came to mind. All in all, they are two tastes that taste poorly together, but that may be a result of the components.

(Note - for the sake of sanity and fair play, I will note that many of hip hops greatest DJs built graffiti walls of sound by dissecting, rearranging, and splicing rock tracks. So... rock is, somewhat, one of the major building blocks of rap. We're not talking about that.)

Some bad examples: "Come with Me" (diddy, jimmy page); Limp Bizkit and their descendants (is Limp Bizkit still popular enough to be comment bait, a la My Chemical Romance/Lady SOV?); Insane Clown Posse; etc.

To Keith: Frankenstein

But there is one somewhat shiny pebble in the sands of mediocrity - the Judgment Night Soundtrack. Pure, beast, Frankenstein.

Continue reading "Word Association: they only knew 10 hip hop acts" »

Posted by Keith O'Brien at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm not sure if I should begin this edition of the Word Association feature with an apology for the extended delay, or with a long rant in the direction of my esteemed colleague Randall Monty, formerly famous in Massachusetts and upstate New York for his unwavering defense of the little man, and now for challenging my imagination in ways that were more frustrating then I ever thought possible. Someone might need to instruct Mr. Monty, who once scaled the Fenway Park's fabled Green Monster with his bare hands, on the basic merits of the word association exercise, namely it's best in succinct form for the immediate reflexive response that it is supposed to incite. Or not, whatever.

In case you've forgotten the purpose behind our Word Association feature, here it is again. The goal is to create a continuing conversation between MerrySwankster.com's writers for an intended effect of inspiring a more diverse result in the music responses that may not necessarily be picked from the same batch of fare one expects from the site, which is another way to say "not exclusive to indie-tastic music and blasts from an overlooked past." It goes without saying our version of the game can be more simply described as creating mellifluous responses to a word or phrase, resulting in a packaged lunch of hot potato and monkey wrench shiv.

To Merry Swankster: You Personified as WWE Gimmick

I froze like a deer in headlights when the assignment lobbed in my direction requested my own personal self embodied (how redundant) as a professional wrestler with, natch, musical accompaniment. Never had I envisioned what a 'roided out version of the Merry Swankster would look like, nor did I entertain such thoughts with my- outside-the-blog-world self either. The fashion backward, homoerotic sense of sporting tight speedos and rolling around in battle with my fellow man never crossed my mind, neither did creating a stereotypical character to flamboyantly prance within the constraints of some crafted gimmick. Embodying my own "personification" to such a character in the realm of a kitsch-overloaded wrestler was a troublesome task to put my head around.

My own distance with the WWE world didn't help. The last time I was current with wrestling was before massive pay-per view events existed, during the early era of Macho Man Randy Savage, Andre the Giant, Rowdy Roddy Piper, and Sgt. Slaughter. Hot chicks associated with WWE began and ended with the lovely Elizabeth and not the parade of stripper types the current version of WWE promotes under the Diva banner. My loss for an immediate connection, the wariness of actually trying to personify myself and a true block of my ability to write something meaningful, or at least interesting created the perfect storm for my ambivalence in responding to the request from the revered Sir Monty, known throughout Southern Texas for his great reading speed and dexterity in clearing brush. All this AND I needed musical link to go along with it all. Sigh. The Merry Swankster is not as nimble with these types of challenges as he thought. Again, I apologize for the derailed feature, especially to the honorable Mr. Randall Monty, infamous for the 2001 incident in Montreal where he led a spontaneous procession of drunken runners in song along Sainte-Catherine Street. I want to say it was the Toadies "Possum Kingdom," but my memory continues to work against me. Regardless, that song is an excellent choice for drunken sing-a-longs.

I settled on progressing with this endeavor by starting with the most important piece of the puzzle as it relates to the main focus of MS.com - the music. Surely I had to begin in the Hard Rock genre of my music collection, and certainly it would be a brash and over the top indictment of something, somewhere somehow. General angst,... cheese-ified through anthemic posturing ("We're Not Going to Take It")? ...filtered through a polemic dismissal of authority ("Killing in the Name")? What about curbing the tortured angle and epitomizing a force of fear that no man, no matter how strong, could overcome. Typical of the horror Freddie Krueger exemplified in his movies - a wherewithal to enter the subconcious and destroy the mind via nightmares. I would be the Sandman, and Metallica's ominous momentum builder will be my entrance music! This was nixed fairly quickly for several reasons, none related to either of the famed closers from the AL and NL versions of New York baseball teams, but due to the difficulty of creating a special move that caused nightmarish fright in opponents (the "sleeper hold" would prove embarrassingly unoriginal). Add that and to a deference to Marvel's Spiderman villain and James Hetfield's monster hit doesn't make the cut.

Like any good product launch I consulted with many focus groups for feedback on the quintessential archetype of a snobby, East Coaster by birth, self-hating hipster in denial, music blogger. Early drafts (think Tracey Ullman era Bart Simpson) involved a Colin Meloy looking character complete with menacing horn rimmed glasses and sharp cream-colored designer blazers. Signature move - the overly literary brainwash. Motivation - a nerd with something to prove. Ready and willing for any challenge, the ultimate brain vs. the ubiquitous brawn. It was all deadly, but so clearly doomed from the start. Data gathered from focus group #1 nixed the building momentum. The instant this version of my WWE persona began rattling off cerebral attacks it felled not only opponents but everyone in the room. I will mention that Focus Group #1 consisted entirely of nine year olds. Plus I looked too much like Rivers Cuomo and that dude fell off the cool train a long time ago. Though to his credit he probably was never on it in the first place and just tricked us into thinking he paid full fare. Enough mixed metaphors yet?

Going back to the drawing board was best in the end, but unfortunate only because I had a perfect song for this flawed character. Too good for his current digs but unapologetically convinced it will lead to other things. Like a fiercely liberal, idealistic film school graduate working as a P.A. on the Factor with Bill O'Reilly while dreaming of creating weird art films in Paris.

Decemberists - "Legionnaire's Lament"

-- -- --

Axl Swankster

Weight: 165 pounds
From: Valley Stream, NY
Signature Move: Shoegaze Facial - Kick to the face from a heavily polished boot

Guns n' Roses - "It's So Easy"

High energy baiting kicks things off running, which is how me as WWE gimmick would come racing through the curtains. Ready to pounce opponents in order to get to the after party. Wrestling matches are increasingly getting in the way and becoming annoying sidebars to the true calling of rocking hard all the time. There is no doubt my character is a Heel, and probably a big dick. I don't think I'm a dick in real life so I don't know if I am being true to the request for "personification," but I'm sure some people would disagree with that assessment. Just saying that it's true what they say about having more fun being the bad guy, so given the chance I want to be the villain. Just like Axl, who I never met, but is probably a dick.

"I see you standin' there
You think you're so cool
Why don't you just
Fuck off"

To Keith O'Brien: Frankenstein

Posted by Merry Swankster at 01:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Explanation

To Monty: Favorite Song Inspired By a Work of Literature

Cards on the table: I was more than anxiously awaiting my turn in this little free association game, but when Koren or John or whoever is actually the brains of the operation soft-tossed “Favorite Song Inspired by a Work of Literature” into my wheelhouse I immediately froze up. The primary thing I could come up with was the embarrassed feeling that I should have an answer for that question permanently in the queue. Fortunately for me, the aforementioned pitching duo added that generous word “favorite” to the offer, meaning that in my “take everything literally approach”, I really can’t get this one wrong.

Although I haven’t done the proper legwork in this regards, but I’d be willing to wager that nearly every major literary work “inspired’ some song or another. Some more literally than others: “The Battle of Evermore” by Led Zeppelin comes immediately to mind. And there’s a whole ‘nother can of worms if you want to include Christian rock, which I suppose technically does apply. (But the only ones I considered from that genre would be Pedro the Lion’s excellent pair of “Of Minor Prophets and their Prostitute Wives” and “Secret of the Easy Yoke”.) My initial inclination was to take Ray Charles’s version of “Amazing Grace”, which is certainly an excellent rendition, but I think that’s sort of a cop-out. (Especially since that song sounds so much better when sung to the tune of “the Theme from Gilligan’s Island”.)

No, no, let’s keep this in the rock ‘n roll stratosphere. Canadian progsters Rush went so far as to name a song after one of America’s greatest literary sidekicks, but “Tom Sawyer” isn’t really about the book at all, ‘cept for a few mentions of the titular character. Alas it were called “Huckleberry Finn”, which is by far the superior novel, maybe it would stand a chance. I can similarly eliminate “Animal Farm” by the Kinks and “One” by Metallica. Neither of which are actually about the books, it's the video for the latter keeps its aim on Dalton Trumbo’s phenomenal Johnny Got His Gun. And besides, if I wanted to go for a stretch, I could take the Zombie’s the Odyssey and the Oracle in its entirety.

I am also disinclined to choose the Cure’s first single, “Killing an Arab”, as it comes in a distant third behind The Stranger and the controversy surrounding “Killing an Arab” on my scale of favoritism. Elefant’s “Lolita” isn’t worth mentioning, other than to point out that the Police did a lot better job of name-dropping Nabokov on “Don't Stand So Close to Me” (sorta). I could probably construct an entire playlist of the Decemberists’ songs, but none of the directly literary-inspired (“Billy Liar”, “Song for Myla Goldberg”) come from books that truly stick out in my mind. And it’s just disappointing that Green Day have written the best The Catcher in the Rye song, although Belle & Sebastian do mention it, and Lisa Loeb was cool enough to name her entire backing band after a lesser known Salinger book.

Fulfilling my MS contractual obligation to mention The Velvet Underground, “Venus in Furs” is a splendid if not eerie cut, but I haven’t actually read the novel by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, I therefore cannot in good conscience give it favorite status. A similar fate befalls “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones, never Guns ‘n Roses, as I, to my memory, have never even seen an actual, physical copy of The Master and Margarita. Recently, there has been an under the table push involving the exchanging of much money and diamonds for me to choose David Bowie’s “1984”, but there’s too much disco-ish theatricality to it, so out it goes

All of the above-mentioned songs fall into the “almost” category. Either I really like the song but not the book, or I love the novel yet it is attached to a song that is, in my opinion, sub-par. In giving my answer, I wanted the kind of track that meets its inspiration in both impact and application. And with that, I came up with a tie.

Continue reading "Word Association: Two for the price of one" »

Posted by Randall Monty at 05:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)

Those of you who have been temporarily blind for the past two weeks have missed the introduction of a new feature here at M.S. The premise is simpler than a game of schoolyard tag: Every week one member of the crew lays down a musical query to another contributor, calling him or her out by name (i.e. "tag Jeff, you're 'IT'"). This poor, put-upon Swankster then has roughly a week to raise his or her fists and respond to the challenge. And, after fighting back with the very best answer to the question at hand, he or she can essentially "tag," "tackle," or "pants" someone else with a word association of his or her own. Ah yes, see how the abused becomes the abuser?

Last week, Dave Klein posed the following challenge to me, which I in turn outsourced to Spinto Band guitarist Jon Eaton.

To Koren Jon Eaton: Would Have Made a Great Instrumental

"If you could leave the chorus of orphans in, Jay-Z's "Hard Knock Life" could make for the kind of instrumental you'd hum during eight hours of any workday. It's nice to have a big old bassoon of a rapper hovering over a bunch of orphans, but the young ones steal the song. Hook, line and sinker, I've been laying sod all day and humming along.

It reminds me of the rap song that all the kids in your high school used to play way too often, and like a lot of Red Hot Chili Pepper songs, everyone would be real sick of it. But then, if you haven't listened for a couple of years and then tune in, you end up nodding your head too..." (J.E.)

Although it takes a pretty secure "gangsta gangsta" to hoist a sample from a Broadway musical--and a very secure man to compare himself to an 11-year-old girl with a cherry-red perm and a heart-shaped locket--I have to agree with my sod-laying friend. Here are some of the more unfortunate rhymes and word choices in this School of Hard Knocks:

1. "Sip the Cris and get pissy-pissy."
2. "If you with me ma I rub on your tits."
3. "I flow for chicks wishin' they ain't have to strip to pay tuition."
(On second thought, I take that back. Even John Keats would be pissed he never thought of number three.)

** Should you disagree with Jon's choice, Spinto Band plays NYC's Mercury Lounge on Saturday, June 9th, where you can dispute him in person. Here's a link for tickets.

Jay-Z - Instrumental Hard Knock Life

To Monty: Favorite Song Inspired By a Work of Literature

Previously:
Word Association: Truth Hits Everybody, the Police Were Overrated.
Word Association: Explanation and Inauguration.

Posted by Koren Zailckas at 09:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

For those fickle members of the MS audience that missed this feature's launch last week, the full rundown is here. Reader's Digest version: Every week, an MS contributor is given the task to find the best musical answer to the words assigned them. Some times these words will form an understandable query, sometimes not. Once answered, the previously on the spot will in turn challenge another. I started last week and ended with the challenge below, which was answered by Prof. David Klein as such... (JK)

To David: Overrated Band, Underrated Song

I was temporarily thrown for a loop by Jeff's two-edged challenge. I've heard a lot of people call bands overrated but it’s never been a big descriptor for me. I'm more the type to say, “I never really got them” or “I respect their work more than I listen to it.” The “O” word often gets tossed at rock’s sacred cows. If you really want to get a certain type of person’s goat, just say something like, “The Sex Pistols were overrated.” Or the Ramones. Or Joy Division. It’s easy to lob “overrated” at a band that achieves massive success (U2, Coldplay) because nobody could really deserve that level of universal acclaim (except maybe the Beatles). In other words, too fat a target. I guess the target I ultimately chose is fairly fat, in its way, but I think pronouncing this outfit overrated will give me the most joy, because the Police were overrated in many if not all of the most telling ways.

First, they were overrated by the rock press, who fawned all over these guys as if they really were the Beatles of the ‘80s. The critics were understandably enamored of the bands’ impeccable chops, but also with its international influences, and of course, its lead singer. Beyond that, and this is an absolutely critical point, the Police's records were overrated by a long shot. They were all extremely spotty affairs, with some good singles and a few stray tracks, and a lot, a lot, of filler. And what does a band really leave behind when all is said and done but their recorded output? The obligatory Andy Summers song always sent one scurrying for the fast-forward button, and the Stewart Copeland songs were never anything special. That left Sting, who was more than capable of writing good songs, but several of the LPs were rush jobs recorded while on tour and offered to a world clamoring for new product from the three blonde dudes. The bottom line is the Police never made a great album. Their swansong, Synchronicity, contained several excellent singles but was marred by middling tracks and that awful Andy Summers song, “Mother.” As the band got bigger and bigger, so did its pretensions, and inevitably Sting's throwaways got heavy on sloganeering (“One world is enough/for all of us”), mysticism and politics, all surefire ways to make well-played but average songs into something much worse. Let’s also not forget that as Sting grew into the trio’s unabashed leader, his ego was amping up for a solo career in which he would delve deeper into faux reggae, dream of blue turtles, wonder if the Russians loved their children too, and declare love to be “the seventh wave.” (I can’t believe I missed that one in my quest for the perfect “7” song!) But by 1982, the former Mr. Sumner was saying things like, “It would be false for me to be modest. I believe I’m a great singer and a great songwriter.” (That same year, John Cale had this to say, “Being a living legend is such a precarious livelihood. It’s like being a bar of soap in a shower which doesn’t have any water in it.”)

Still, before they were living legends, there was a time when the Police were one extremely talented band and an exciting live act. I remember hearing (and of course, taping) a radio concert of the band in the Regatta de Blanc era, and loving their speedy but extremely tight versions of songs that had already been smoothed out and slowed down on the record. (I also remember an overly familiar radio DJ referring to the band as “The Cops” which I thought was the height of idiocy. I mean, would you refer to the Monkees as the Chimps?) A case in point is “Truth Hits Everybody,” a song from the debut outing from the Police, 1978’s Outlandos D’Amour. The band played it a lot in concert, but since it is certainly no one’s idea of a major song in the Police canon, it would seem to qualify as underrated. It’s just a couple of sturdy riffs and a keening vocal line, but on the live version of the song, they just tear it up. Check out Copeland’s fills and the tight interplay in the breaks. This version, from the Message in a Box collection, sounds a lot like the one I thrilled to back in the day. Other versions I checked out from even a few years later lacked the fire and over-the-top energy captured here in a sizzling two-and-a-half minute burst.

the Police - "Truth Hits Everybody"(live)

To Koren: Would Have Made a Great Instrumental

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

So there's a new feature we've been tossing around the ol' idea park for a while now, which I think is finally ready to see the light of day (the idea park is only open at night, also it doesn't exist).

Since this site's inception the roster of contributing writers has ballooned from a meager 3 to a whopping 7. As our continuing domination over the increasingly lively comments section shows (readers please keep it coming, by the way), we're all pals and we like to continually tease, encourage, mock, and just generally pick fights with each other over music quite a bit. Which is why we're all here. But I have to think that beyond the occasional after the jump grousing, there has to be a better way for all of our contributors to interact more significantly. A way for us to develop the kind of continuing bar stool banter that occasionally develops in our non-virtual lives.

The premise is simple, each week one member of the MS crew will lay down a challenge to another contributor, calling them out by name. The challenge can be a totally straightforward musical query ("best drum solo"), a less straightforward musical query ("robot make out music"), or a complete and utter non-sequitur ("turkey club"). The challenged will then have roughly a week to respond with the best musical answer that they can muster, and a couple paragraphs in defense of their choice. When successfully completed, they will throw down the guantlet to someone else. This guantlet will be continually thrown down in perpetuity until it doesn't know why it bothers to get up anymore. Hopefully the result will get us to post things we'd have no call to otherwise, and result in profound entertainment for all.

To give you an example of how this will go, I will indulgently throw myself an alley-oop. Pretend someone else had said...

To Jeff: Worst Song Ever

Declaring something the worst of all time is just as tricky as deeming something the best. They're both extremely strong words, and you better be prepared to back them up. For mental cases like us who've heard who knows how many songs, you have to power past simply dumb, inept, or boring to find the truly musically offensive. Cheesy pop songs are too easy, avant garde noise torture too ambitious, and personally disliked genres too subjective to be the absolute nadir of musical achievement. No, we need to dig deeper, looking under rocks much fouler than "My Humps" or "Nookie". We're gonna need a novelty song.

The playlist of Dr. Demento and his ilk is bad enough, but the worst Ray Stevens can throw at us pales in comparison to the horror that is the British novelty song (for example see the Crazy Frog debacle). Well, I've gone one step beyond even that. Not only is my choice a British novelty song from the 70's, it's the sequel to a British novelty song from the 70's! Pop hack Johnathan King is to blame here, as the middling success of his 1971 parody "Johnny Reggae", recorded under the name Piglets, inspired this 1976 bullshit, "Baby Reggae". This time it was billed to the infinitely ickier sounding Big Pig with Little Porker. This is the worst sort of parody for many reasons. For one, because it seeks to simultaneously capitalize on and belittle a thriving cultural force, while completely watering down the sound it seeks to emulate with horrible cheesecake production. Other sins include being a blatantly soulless cash in on a non-hit (like the song equivalent of Anaconda 2), and forgetting to even attempt being funny. More than anything it's downright creepy. Mr. King lowers his voice a few octaves to limit his recognizability, presumably out of shame, and the result is a man named "Big Pig" in an off kilter deep baritone singing "Baby Reggae, giggle for me," to which a disembodied baby sound ("Little Porker"?) obliges. Any time a novelty song reminds you of pedophilia, it's a bad sign. Its worst sin, however, is probably being so completely bereft of ideas that it can only fill one minute and forty seconds of its excrutiating two minute and twenty-two second run time before resorting to a fart joke, and deciding to run out the clock.

Let's review. Novelty cash in, culturally condescending, wildly annoying, toilet humor, vaguely remiscent of pederasty, and most of all, bloody awful. I think we have a loser.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the worst song of which I am aware...

Big Pig w/ Little Porker - "Baby Reggae"

So there's an example. Going forward, the abstractness of the answer will probably be directly proportional to the abstractness of the trigger phrase/question. As eager as I am for this feature to blossom into complete randomness, I'm gonna keep it strictly musically related at the onset. If I dropped the Dada bomb right away, there'd be no sense of delight when someone finally has to scramble to find the perfect musical expression of "napalm trousers", or whatever. So slow start it is, but in order to allow for a wider spectrum of strange answers, I throw it to Mr. Obscurer Than Thou himself, David Klein.

To David: Overrated Band, Underrated Song

P.S. No backsies...

Posted by Jeff Klingman at 01:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)