I Have To Buy This Album! (List 1)

You remember that time long ago when we used to go out and actually BUY albums in a store? No one from this fucked-up generation remembers the feeling of buying an album in a store. I remember we on the very edge of the GenerationX-Generation Y divide still can recall what it is like to spend hours in your local record store browsing, buying, laughing at the bizarre titles of the records the major labels were offering us on the shelf. To give you guys an idea of what that felt like, we're going to create a store shelf for what records might be on a shelf today, December 2009, in an alternate universe where the record industry a we know it had NOT collapsed. Imagine with me...

(Rap) Da Westside Boyz- Christmas With Me And My Niggerz
(Reggae) Dem Gwaan- Rastafarian Massacre Vol. 2
(Hip-Hop) The Mo'Murder Posse- We'll Murder You
(Comedy) Redneck Pete- Wood'ja Like Sum Fries Wit Dat'??
(Top 40) Slim Pickens- Life Or Death (Cant Decide?)
(Punk) Tawm Gaadner- Feckin' Sawx! (Ft. The Dropkick Murphys)
(Classic Rock) James Mortar- A Dove In My Spiritual Mortar-Tree
(World Music) John Amiable- Happy-Go-Lucky Polka Egregiousness!!!
(Modern Rock) James Callus Emo Band- I've Never Felt This Way Before (But To Answer Your Question, Yes I Have Cut Myself And Bled For My Art)
(Folk) The Folsom Foundry Folk Singers- Gobble, Gobble, Toil, & Trouble
(Rap) Big Balla Jeffrey- Niggas Don't Understand My Pain (Previously Unreleased Box Set)
(Hip-Hop) Carolina Cal- We Tailgatin', Where Da Hoes At?
(Rock) Bill Carpinello- Muffler Installer Blues
(Best Sellers) Jihad Joe & The Taliban- We're Blowing Up
(Country) Nascar Nate- Dem Crackers Is Fast
(Modern Rock) Social System Theory- Disaffected Youth (I Hate My Daddy)
(Best Sellers) Ganja Ganj- Lightin' Up Another Spliff

Personal MJ Nostalgia

Now that Michael Jackson is dead, basically all I've been hearing over the past five days are stories about how Michael Jackson's music personally changed people's lives. Some make us sad. Some make us happy the King of Pop existed. Some even make us vomit. One way or another, the death of MJ was a moment time seemed to stop. One of those momets when, love him or hate him, everybody had something to say.

For me personally, it didn't effect me much, and I tried not to go to any massive celebration. But ultimately, the magnitude of the moment would catch up with me. An old friend from high school sent me a random facebook Email saying that I was the reason he remembered Michael Jackson, because of an attempt at a moonwalk I did at a dance in 11th grade. At first I was shocked. No, really? I have a reason to care, a reason Michael Jackson's death affected me personally? But whatever, what the hell, it was what it was. He was the King of Pop and he will never be forgotten.

The Kings Of Leon: What The Hell Happened?

I remember a time when the Kings of Leon were just another band, competing for market share with the most popular bands of the day. They had to compete for college radio airplay and placement on "hip" shows such as Entourage, just like everyone else. That era was 2003, and the other bands of the day were the Strokes, the White Stripes, the Hives, and you could probably imagine the others. But nowadays, the Kings of Leon no longer have to play those games. Because now, the Kings are NOT just another band. They are THE band, the rock n roll saviors, situated on Itunes playlists in between Lady Gaga and Kid Rock. They are performing at ridiculously expensive awards shows. Selling out arenas. And people love them, really, really badly. How bad? Z-100 bad. "13 year old girls will give ANYTHING to go to their show" bad. And how do I feel about all of this? I feel like I've just been punched in the fucking gut. Really, really hard.

I used to like Kings of Leon way, way back in the day, when they were the only Skynyrd and Southern blues-influenced band on my college radio station. I even bought a Kings of Leon T-shirt, went to a Kings of Leon concert, because in college it was the "cool thing" to do. Back then it was cool, because no one knew who the fuck they were. Arrogant siblings who squabbled backstage, sang and played like they didn't give a fuck what anyone thought, and rocked out consistently and thoroughly without a radio hit that anyone knew. This WAS a cool band. Or so I thought. (By the way, "Pistol of Fire" is a kickass song. I will give them that. Not in their live repoirtoire anymore. Fuck that)

These were the days when people HATED them. The press hated them, Americans hated them, and other bands thought they were douchebags. And that's exactly why I liked them. But that was just for a few months. Then, their music did start getting featured on shows such as the the aforementioned "Entourage" and movies like "Cloverfield" And they started to gain a reputation as "that party band": swilling booze on the Lower East Side, fucking supermodel chicks, appearing in tabloids, having celebrities hanging out backstage at their shows. That's where their slow decent into shit started.

Then last year, they released their second album in two years, "Only If By Night". Same thing they pulled back in 05' with "Aha Shake Heartbreak": release the same record two years in a row and market it as being "a huge step forward" or "sonically expanding" or whatever bullshit excuse bands give their fans to buy the same product.

But the problem was, the American people didn't treat this Kings of Leon record like they did the one before. Because apparently, on this one you could actually understand what the fuck their singer was saying. And it had singles. Huge singles. So last summer, they released their first single, "Sex On Fire", and it became a hit. The chorus: "Yeeeahahhhhhh! This sex is on fire!" Definitely a chorus the beer-swilling idiots of America can rally around. And definitely added to their "party-band" image.
Stupid chorus, stupid song. And THAT's how they became popular. Dumb their shit down for Nascar Joe to sing along to.

This single became way too big too fast. And the follow up "Use Somebody" is now being hailed as the "power ballad" of the new millenium. Every teenager in the country knows the words. That's great. Just fucking great. I have always hated power ballads. And now, to have girls claiming that they were "fans from the beginning" when really they're bandwagon groupie fuckers, the band is really in a bad place.

Then they played Madison Square Garden. Usually when a band plays MSG, it's just another stop on their tour and that's it. But the Kings of Leon would not shut the FUCK up for months about how they played MSG. They even released a live album called "Kings Of Leon: Live At MSG". WHO FUCKING CARES? Now, stupid girls will not shut the fuck up about them. They and the Killers have somehow enraptured even the stupidest and blandest members of "Idiot America". There's girls who don't know what a Stock is, what a Bailout is, yet know every word of "Only If By Night".

I HATE Kings of Leon now. Fame destroyed this band. People now are claiming them as the "saviors of rock n roll", when really each record, each single they make gets worse and worse. How can one family produce a bunch of degenerate, douchebag, sellout fuckers. I truly with they had been a bunch of girls who never picked up a guitar. Or had just never been born. As of right now, I'd take either one.

The State Of Music

Music, whether you like it or not, is ALL about corporate commercialization, and slimy guys in suits and ties who want to sell a streamlined product to make a quick buck

Music is about dinosaurs who roam the earth, and ask you to to shell out 200 bucks every three years or so to go and hear them put a "new" spin on songs that sucked when they first came out 30 years ago.

Music is about the anticipation of the house lights going down, and you and your 20,000 best friends just going absolutely apeshit, for a band you don't even like that much.

Music is about clapping and screaming your freakin' head off for 20 minutes for the slight chance that same band that you don't even like too much might come back out and do a half-assed encore.

Music is about getting waaasted with your buds, and using any excuse to clap and scream.

Music is about celebrating made-up milestones that you technically should not give a shit about (Ex. this is our first tour with all original members in 20 years).

Music is about branding and streamlining a band, a sound, a look, for rampant commercial consumption.

Music is about re-releasing and re-re-releasing (in a remixed/legacy/deluxe edition) the same old tired product, for lack of drive to create anything new to release and to capitalize on the fact that some bands'fans will buy absolutely ANYTHING.

Music is about dudes who partied way too hard back in the day, and should have died, but are still alive and rockin' man. Yeeeaaaahh.

Music is about being there, maaan. Being there at Bonnaroo. There for freakin' Coachella. There for SXSW when you discovered the next Killers. There at Lolla, when Girl Talk covered Gnarls Barkley, who covered the Raconteurs, who covered Pink. Just... there. I don't care if it's a fucking barnyard animal convention where Dwight Yoakum played, I was THERE.

Music is about making a pilgrimmage with your buds, driving 8 hours into the woods to see the same freakin' band you have seen a billion times, and could have seen on Youtube for free. Except this time they have trees behind them. WOW.

Music is about never paying to see a band too many times. Like Dave Matthews, every concert they do something SO much different than the one before. Yeah seriously, they need another 80 bucks from me.

Music is about larger-than-life douchebags who think that because they've sold an assload of records, they're too big to sit down on a toilet and take a crap like everyone else (Hey Bono, um, I think I might be talking about you. And you did not just win another award. You won a big FUCK YOU)

Music is about selling out to pay the bills, no matter what your fans might think (Hey Billy Corgan, this one's for you, little corporate whore who markets himself as "I'm so angry, the world doesn't understand me")

Music is about a huge chorus that even drunken idiots can rally around. Because Drunken idiots will sing along to ANYTHING.

Music is about taking 8 hours out of your day so you can know EVERY word of let's say, Nine Inch Nails for the next time you see them. Why- so Trent Reznor can give you a medal or something? Or so that YOUR voice can be heard over the 3 million other idiots singing along to the same shit? Why bother.

Music is about re-living the 80s, man, because they were such an amazing time and everyone was sooo awesome. I sure wish it were the 80s and everything was coooool.

Music is about artsy, pretentious, all-knowing, nerdy fags who have listened to Joy Division one too many times and think they can make the next "Closer"

Music is about kissing someone's ass for no reason. Usually some dude who has done nothing but sit on their ass for 20 years, while doing nothing but resting on their formerly multi-platinum laurels.

Music is about cooking up half-assed tributes to bands who don't even deserve them.

Music is about shitty little indie labels who won't shut the fuck up about how badly they want you to come to their shitty showcases to see their shitty bands play.

Music is about shitty solo albums, "side projects" and bad "electronic experiments" that force insecure douchebags to come running back to their original bands for a "big reunion tour" claiming once and for all that "we've put the past behind us", "buried the hatchet" or some such bullshit, and forcing all you stupid fucks to buy into it.

Music is about "recreating the magic" of dudes that are dead by hiring boring douchebags to fill in for them.

A Vote Against The Management

My vote for most overhyped band of the past year has got to go to Brooklyn's MGMT, pronounced "Emm-Gee-Emm-Tee" Why everyone makes a big deal about these guys is beyond me. Their songs create a sense of jubilation when they come on anywhere in New York. People start jumping up and down and screaming when the opening for "Kids", "Electric Feel", or "Time To Pretend" blares on a speaker system. Yet when I ask people why they like MGMT so much, they can't give me one legitimate reason. They tell me things like "Because their music... it takes me to another place, man" or "Because everything else sucks". Yeah, like I haven't heard that one before. Every single band tries to market their music by convincing their fans that everything else out there sucks and they are the only band worth listening to. I've bought into that mentality with a band so many times before. But not this time! I've heard guys in Brooklyn comparing the music of MGMT to Bowie and Zeppelin, and comparing their live shows to "an experiece" But I have several distinct personal reasons why I am not in that crowd:

1. What's up with that name?
Why couldn't they have just stuck with their original name "The Management"? It would have made things so much less confusing. If I ask people if they know The Management, they will look at me like I am speaking Chinese. However, if I spell out the letters of their name, then people will get all excited.

2. Their live shows SUCK.
The first time I saw "The Management" was during the CMJ Music Marathon in 2007, and I'm pretty sure I yelled at them to "get off the stage, pretty boys". They just played their songs, nothing more nothing less, and showed nothing even close to resembling a stage presence worthy of me shelling out 60 bucks. A couple of people outside their overhyped Halloween show at Webster Hall confirmed pretty much the same thing, that for your money's worth you cannot find a more disappointing live act. They stand like mannequins onstage while expecting everyone to worship them like Pink Floyd.

3. They are pretentious pretty boys
This point brings me back to last Fall of 2008, when I embarked on a spontaneous road trip that one of my friends wanted to go on- 3 and a half hours into upstate New York with the sole purpose of seeing the almighty Emm-Gee-Emm-Tee. When we finally got there, we learned that the band had canceled their set for what sounded like a made--up excuse, their drummer had "broken his leg". OK first of all, the band does not officially have a drummer, just two shaggy-haired dipshits. Second of all, I checked their website two days later to find out that everyone was fine and the band was touring as planned- a tour which people had to PAY FOR. The show we went to was free. Hmmm...
I mean even Justice, another group whose music I abhor (they sound like five French fucks farting in a bag), at least did us the courtesy of performing a half-assed set for all our troubles. And even if MGMT did acquire a drummer- oh please, the Who performed entire rock operas while their drummer was nearly unconscious. I don't buy it. That's just irreparable.

4. They don't offer anything that special
Sure, MGMT are the only "psychadelic" band out of the whole "hipster scene" in Brooklyn. But their music, beyond maybe one curious listen, just isn't that good. For example, the lead synths in "Time To Pretend", their breakout single, are pretty much like hearing nails scratch across a chalkboard. Trust me, when you've heard a song that many times, your mind goes to weird places. Their lyrics are abhorrent. Sample: "I'll move to Paris, shoot some heroin, and fuck with the stars. You man the island and the cocaine and the elegant cars." Jesus Fucking Christ, are people THAT desperate to find a band in the musical jungle that they have to buy into that cheap crap. Their singer, Andrew Van... something, sings in a Prince-aping fake falsetto shrill enough to make Justin Hawkins of the Darkness cringe. Their album cuts have bizarre, spacey names like "4th Dimensional Transition" and "Of Moons, Birds, and Monsters", and they just sound like hastily put together messes going all over the place. Talk about consistency.


5. They are representatives of a jumbled and confused scene.
Why they have become the most successful band in the New York City scene and attracted a larger audience than a bunch of sweaty dudes in a Brooklyn basement is really beyond me. Someone just had to break out of that scene with millions of fucking bands, and I guess they were just in the right place with the right stuffy A&R guy listening. I have been following the New York music scene for the last three years, and let me tell you there are some weird fucking bands out there. The band to come out of that scene could have been a garage-funk black dude who screams. Could have been some chick and some dude who picked up instruments last week and had Charlie Kane from Warner Records there when they played their sister's bar mitzvah. The New York scene is so ambiguous and out there, that really any act could have come out of it, and these two psychadelic doofballs from Wesleyan just won the lottery.

MGMT are a victim of the oversaturation of music in the marketplace, and a perfect illustration of how pathetic "Hipsters" are as a barometer of what is cool in music.

Merrill Bainbridge- Mouth

When I was recently looking at a list of bad 90s' one-hit wonders, I thought I had pinpointed the worst and most annoying one. Well looking further back in time, I may have been wrong. This one comes from the year 1996. You'll have to stick with me while I introduce it

Relatively speaking, 1996 was an awesome year for music, one of the best in my memory. Pop and rock radio were dominated by huge, awesome alterna-rock classics from legitimately cool bands such as Spacehog, Local H, No Doubt, and the Butthole Surfers.

Literally speaking, I was a happy camper back then, a senior in elementary school. That year was filled with fond memories of rocking out with my alternative buddies in the elementary school cafeteria to Bush, Silverchair, and even White Zombie (Yes, I was one badass 12 year old). Clarissa was explaining it all to me on TV, Kazaam and Robin Williams were making my dreams come true at the movies, and the NY Yankees were making my dreams come true on the sports field. Life was good.

Then came middle school in the fall. From the get-go, I missed elementary school like a hailstorm. Back in the old school, I hung out with kids who were down with the new alternative rock, and I was cool. In middle school, most of the kids there were ghetto and intimidating, and preferred to listen to Tupac and Quad City DJs over bands that were my bread and butter, like Weezer and the Smashing Pumpkins.

Then came my first middle school dance, and I heard it. The song that would become my #1 annoyance for the remainder of 1996. As funny and cheesy as it sounds to listen to this song now, it still makes my blood boil for the ghost of my 12-year old self when I hear this awful atrocity. This song, or course, is "Mouth" by Merrill Bainbridge.

Within two weeks of that dance, it was the song all the girls would sing along to every day during recess, or during any break in my teacher's speech. It was the song that had "naughty" lyrics supposedly, so all the 12-14 year old girls felt "adult" and cool for singing it. And of course, all the dudes followed along, because it made them imagine what adult sex would be like. And of course, its soft reggae-tinged R&B rhythm made it gentle and unaggressive sounding, absolutely perfect for the urban middle school set.

Here's the chorus:
"Would it be my fault if I could turn you on?
Would I be so bad if I could turn you on?
When I kiss your mouth I wanna taste it
Turn you upside down, don't wanna waste it"

Just to think, that this is something we were listening to at 12 years old. My GOD were the 1990s kinky! On the other hand, this makes me feel dirty in almost a bad way. This is the sappiest of the sappy. Just writing those lyrics down on this journal makes me want to put on the Dead Kennedys or Rage Against The Machine and just fucking thrash for about 10 minutes to make up for listening to this atrocity of sap.

After all this talk, we're forgetting the question- who the FUCK is Merrill Bainbridge. She was, I guess, just some chick. During the mid-90s the music business was booming, and girls were getting signed left and right, making for a zillion Merideth Brooks and Beth Harts, most who have thankfully been forgotten. She was just one of the girls in that girl singer-songwriter boom that nobody remembers.

"Mouth" actually was a moderate-sized smash, peaking at #4 on the pop chart in November of 1996. By that point, I could not walk down the hallway of my school without hearing this song in some shape or form. OK, the Macarena was bad too, but that song at least had a novelty factor which I found amusing. Meanwhile, "Mouth" was the annoying song with the annoying lyrics that I absolutely could not stand.

I have considered in this day and age, using the chorus of the song as a prominent pick-up line at bars. I have gone ahead to use it a couple times, to decidedly negative results. You could probably imagine why. Picture this, you're a girl standing by yourself, looking all pretty. Then, this dude comes up to you, without even introducing himself, and asks you if he can kiss your mouth and "turn you upside down"
What would you think? Sketchy? Rape? Exactly.

With the exception of my cool math teacher chick who showed up for class hungover after going to Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar tour, and forgoing her entire lesson plan to talk with us about how awesome the show was, Middle School Sucked. A song which has had a similar effect on me the following spring of 97'was "Lovefool" by the Cardigans. This was also a one-hit wonder song, but everyone remembers "Lovefool" for how annoying it was.

Meanwhile, "Mouth" by Merrill Bainbridge, is a song that I believe is unique to me in the annoyance it caused me at a particular place in time. And that's why I'm writing about it now. I loved '96, but absolutely hated the kiss your mouth song. And don't let anything in this entry tell you any different. I still fucking hate it now. More than ever.

Peach Union- On My Own

The late 1990s were a relative sanctuary for overproduced and awful dance music sung by girls. Gina G, La Bouche, Sophie B. Hawkins, Aqua, the list goes on and on of shitty dance producers and singers who cashed in with huge, cheesy late 90s dance anthems. And pop radio stations such as my then-favorite, NYC's Z100, ate them up like sugar, the pop confectinary and billion dollar productions that they were.

But the worst of the worst, the overblownest of the overblown, the cheesiest of the cheezy, was "On My Own", by Euro-crap tools Peach Union. It was a song that sounded as if every kick, snare and instrumental flourish cost about a million dollars to produce. After all, back in the late Clinton-era, that kind of money was flying around, unlike today (Obama will change that soon, but that's another story).

When this song was a hit in the US for about three days in October of 97' I was a young teenager. When you're that age, you're pretty much too young to realize that you're listening to absolute shit. You tend at 13 to take what the major-label spoonman gives you and not complain about it. Which is exactly the reason why gigantic ball of crap "High School Musical 3" is getting your money as we speak. When you're that age, you have a hard time discerning the greater forces of reality.

When I was 13, this song "On My Own" was stuck right in the center of Z100's playlist, right in between Third Eye Blind and Sister Hazel. Of course, I thought it sounded great then. But looking back on it now, I was just a stupid tween stuck in his own world. This song sucks balls in hell, right in between mediocre one-second wonders as Fort Minor's "Where'd You Go" and Jimmy Ray's "Are You Jimmy Ray".

OK, let me talking about the song's one saving grace first. After a weird operatic opening and the typical 90s' dance-pop "1-2-3-4" countoff, this weird, hypnotic bass line kicks in. This bass groove has synths, keyboards, and lots of cheese surrounding it. Enough so to make Right Said Fred roll around and cringe in his pop cultural grave. But the riff itself is dark enough to be almost cool. Like I'm pretty sure the Smashing Pumpkins could do a number with it. But not in this universe.

OK, the good part is over. The lead singer of this "Peach Union" sounds like a tenth-rate Madonna rip-off. Even her breathing and posturing in the video were likely to inspire a royal ass-whupping if Madonna ever laid ears on it. Unfortunately, during the 90's Madge existed in a completely different stratosphere than to ever be in the same room as this knock-off.

The song's chorus is manufactured cheese. No wonder this song was left "on its own" in the annals of pop. No one fucking remembers it. That's because the chorus is woefully forgettable, and contradicts itself. The name of the song is "On MY Own" and all the verses suggest that it was intended to be made as a break-up anthem for the ladies. But the chorus includes the line "Through the course of history, I hope you'll still remember me". I wonder what brilliant hired songwriter thought of this gem. Fucking history? You would think that if you're breaking up with a dude, you would want him to forget you and move on, not remember you for all of eternity. JESUS.

The song is best known for two things:
1. having the shortest and quickest time of any song as a figment of America's pop cultural zeitgeist.
2. being on the soundtrack of Gwyneth Paltrow's long-forgotten chick flick "Sliding Doors".

So it's a forgettable song that was featured in a forgettable movie, from what was turning out to be a horrible era in American music. First there was this Euro-dance crap which the song was part of.. Then there were the boy bands and TRL and all those indescribable horrors.. Then Bush got elected President.. Then everything went to hell. At least until now...