Who Moved My Cheese Metal?

Kind of.

One of those early eighties bands that had a fair amount of success but never quite made the big time in America was The Cure. Sure they had several hits but were never fully accepted by American audiences.

It’s a shame as they were innovative, interesting and most of all wrote some really great songs.

The Cure were always on the dark side of rock music, classified as alternative or “post punk” for whatever that is worth. From the 1983 single “The Lovecats,” we found out there is a sense of humor in there, hiding, not wanting to be released by lead singer and songwriter Robert Smith if he could ever just let it out. He never really did although “The Lovecats” was a close call.

 

When describing The Cure, nihilism comes to mind. Usually that’s not a good thing. In rock music there is a certain tendancy for that path to be chosen but rarely has it made for really good music. The Cure were one exception to that trend.

“Love Song” is one interesting bit of music. A terribly sad love song about how much he’s in love. I don’t quite know how songs like these happen but I am quite happy they do. Watching one of the old VH-1 Pop Up Video shows a while back the bubble came up that the director wanted the band to smile more. They didn’t. It would seem wrong to me if they had I guess.

My Cure Cheese Gem is a really easy one for me to pick out. It has a very different approach from “The Lovecats” and certainly “Love Song.” First off there is a joy that had been rarely explored in The Cure’s music before. It really is a happy song though typically unconventional in story and lyrics in that for most of the week he doesn’t really seem to give a s—. It is The Cure after all. Well, can’t change that much.

“It’s Friday, I’m In Love.”

The guitars are sparkling and fill the song with such a strong sense of happiness you have to wonder if it really is The Cure. In the lyrics it’s impossible to tell why the rest of the week he’s so down on things but boy does he really like Fridays.

A nice understated bass line and neatly done drums fill the bottom out while Smith’s always very emotive vocals slide over the top. The passion in his vocals have always been a major part of why I listened to them. In “Friday” he’s so delightfully over the top it is just one of those songs I can listen to over and over and get something new from it every time.

At the end of the song all the yells and “do, do, dos” add to the joy of whatever the heck he is so happy about.

Friday he’s overjoyed. (And in love.) That seems to be enough.

Since Bridey brought up the subject I have had more time to think about a song that is just so bad that I just couldn’t forgive the perpetrators. Even after years of trying.

In San Francisco of the mid sixties more then a few truly great bands came to prominence. The Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, Quicksilver Messenger Service and many others. One of the few bands that survived the sixties largely intact was Jefferson Airplane.

Founder Marty Balin with Paul Kantner, Grace Slick, Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady and Spenser Dryden created in 1965 one of the most loved and influential bands of their era.

Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” is perhaps the definition of psychedelic rock.

From the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour:

Although they broke up in 1974, it didn’t take very long for a new group to reform as the newly christened Jefferson Starship. Paul Kantner and Grace Slick remained and Marty Balin soon rejoined the band. A very creative and successful period of years followed with the classic “Red Octopus” album track “Miracles” still a radio staple today.

(Sorry, no official video was made.)

In 1978 Balin made his exit for a solo career and then in 1984 when Kantner left the band it evolved into simply,  Starship.

This is where it all goes horribly, unforgivably wrong.

“We Built This City”

 

This song is so masterfully awful it’s difficult to describe with any civility. I actually had to listen to this lump of audio torture to make sure I still hate it as much as I thought I did. Yeah, I hate it. Oh, I hate it. I am tempted to write a book on what is so wrong with this song I hate it that much.

Overblown drums, really tacky keyboards with a traffic report stuck in the middle of the song?

Embarrassing falsetto backing vocal rounds at the end of the song screeching, “we built, we built this city.” I am still wondering exactly how this piece of musical farce came together and who said it was a good idea?

The song neither rocks nor rolls. It just kind of sits there smug in the knowledge that now it has been created it will never go away.

“Marconi plays the mamba, listen to the radio.” Please stop this song!!!

As an aside tying in with Bridey’s Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame story. This song actually was a number one hit.

Go figure…

A Cheese Gem is that moment you wait for in a song every time it comes on… especially a great moment in a song you don’t otherwise like.

And here’s one, in Bee Gees’ “Tragedy.” By way of demonstrating, earlier comments aside, that disco didn’t always suck. Of course, there is a place in the world for dance music — what inspired so much loathing  in the ’70s was the way pop radio jumped on disco, and it just consumed the airwaves — for what was actually not a very long time but seemed like years.

Any way, this gem comes early:  right at the end of the first verse, as Barry Gibb goes up and up and up on “Holding you, holding you/Loving you/Loving yoooooooou….” and into that great refrain.

The Bee Gees had a long pop history, of course, before they became a disco phenomenon, and “Tragedy,” looked at purely as a pop record, really kind of rocks.

(Turn it up — dance music should be played loud.)

The tiresome Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announces the 2010 nominees:

ABBA: Grand, but not a rock act.
Darlene Love: Overdue.
Donna Summer: Are you KIDDING ME???
Genesis: Long overdue.
Jimmy Cliff: Also grand, and also not a rock artist.
KISS: Three-plus decades of prefab garbage rock.
Laura Nyro: Fine choice.
LL Cool J: WTF?
Red Hot Chili Peppers: For their improbable longevity, I suppose. I can see no other reason.
The Chantels: I do like a girl group.
The Hollies: Dreary but adequate.
The Stooges: Can’t argue with that.

If we must have a Rock Hall, and apparently we must, it’s not that I object to the induction of disco and R&B and reggae and hip-hop artists per se — there’s a great deal of overlap and influence, after all. But if they’re gonna do that, it should be the Pop Music Hall of Fame.

But if it is a Rock Hall, then there are many, many artists — Jethro Tull, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Yes, Roxy Music, many more– who should be in it before piling in other genres. Particularly one so anathema to all true rock fans as disco.

Donna Summer. Un freakin’ believable.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is an amazing hash of styles for an album by someone who was already well on the road to pop deification.  Indeed, the fact that such an eccentric mix of straight-up top 40, power pop, unpersuasive yet cheering attempts to rock out, prog lite, folk rock, and a certain amount of unclassifiable weirdness (I am thinking particularly of “All the Girls Love Alice” in this regard) was released in the state it was is about as good a short lesson as one could want in how much the record business has changed since 1973.

Elton John had had a steady string of hits before Yellow Brick Road, and Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player had pushed him into the first rank, largely on the strength of “Crocodile Rock.” But of course it was Road‘s title track that made Elton into the dominating pop force of the first half of the ’70s. Keeping in mind that that gorgeous title track is one long blast of hatred and contempt — I’ve often thought many pop hits become pop hits because nobody listens to the words.

Elton John and Bernie Taupin became such a harmless pop institution so quickly that they didn’t, and still generally don’t, get enough credit for being as adventurous as they were. And one illustration of that is an album track from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, the nearly six-minute “I’ve Seen That Movie Too.”

The noirish piano and brushes-on-the-high hat that open the song are attention-getting, but maybe just a little too neat a match for the tough-guy, “Nobody messes with me” ex-lover of the lyrics (a role in which Elton is maybe not 100% plausible). But it’s a fine vocal, sung largely in his often-neglected lower range, where Elton is a stronger and more persuasive singer than when he stretches for the poppier high end. And behind the verses, contrasting with that hokey-jokey jazz riff in the intro and between the verses, is a funeral-march piano that stairsteps gloomily between Nigel Olsson’s gunshot drumbeats.

Subtle strings build in intensity through the first and second verses, until, by the end of the second chorus, they have filled any open space, and there’s no breathing room left. Then we get that opening piano riff again — it seems more serious now — on the way into a truly remarkable instrumental bridge.

The slowly pounding drums keep the sound anchored while a distorted guitar dips in and out of building, swirling strings, as the piano falls back in the mix until it’s momentarily nearly inaudible. Then the piano moves back to the forefront with a grand falling figure before the guitar rides up and up and up to an almost distressing intensity — then vanishes. And we’re into the last chorus.

Follow how this song moves from that jazz-pastiche opening piano riff to that wailing, distorted guitar. The bridge on this minor album track — a little over a minute long, beginning at around three minutes 50 — is as inventive and “progressive” as just about anything that was being produced by the proggy bands and art rockers of the early ’70s.

The  ’70s were an odd and awkward time, but that a pop star could release an album like Goodbye Yellow Brick Road — well, maybe some things were better in the old days.

Sound quality’s not ideal on this version, but the song is available on Amazon and the other legal services.

Oh the images left in my brain by “I Want To Know What Love Is.”

A bigger piece of cheese it would be difficult to find in “rock” music than that. So, of course, I had to find one.

It really wasn’t that hard. A lot of mind numbingly talented musicians have a tendency to go a bit too far.

This one took me years to forgive and after having to listen to the song again I may have to go to rehab.

Be thankful that I didn’t put McCartney and Michael Jackson’s “The Girl Is Mine” up here. Some things just should be ignored or forgotten.

I’m going to listen to some Beatles now…

What happens when a band known for really fun power pop songs with a large chunk of Beatles influenced melodies and sounds goes in a more straight pop direction?

Well, usually it sucks.

Cheap Trick pulled it off.

With great style. In fact it has been one of my favorite Cheap Trick songs since it came out back in 1988 on the Lap Of Luxury album.

“Ghost Town.”

The big single from the Lap Of Luxury album was “The Flame.” A bit of a power ballad and Cheap Trick’s only number one single. It’s also one of the few songs of theirs that I really, really don’t like much.

“Ghost Town” however is a fabulous song. It has the usual slightly warped but always brilliant guitars of Rick Nielson, Bun E.Carlo’s understated yet somehow powerful drums, the intricate bass of the recently rejoined Tom Petersson, (He had left the band for a few years to pursue the always mysterious “other projects,”) and a slightly creepy keyboard floating by filling up the spaces behind the vocal and guitars.

Topping it off is a truly great vocal by Robin Zander. Zander is usually at his best when going full throttle. Loud is good and riding on the edge of exploding his vocal chords is pretty much to be expected from a typical Zander performance.

In contrast to ”Surrender” or “Dream Police,”  Zander is subtle and smooth and shows a transition to his highest register with an unexpected ease. I think it’s his best vocal of all time. It’s very powerful and emotional while still being very masculine.

No wimps allowed in Cheap Trick.

The backing vocals are true to the song’s name and kind of sneak in here and there while Zander is doing a nice “ahh, ahh, ahh,” behind his own lead vocal.

The lyrics are full of images of heartbreak and loneliness:

“The world it keeps turning, but it don’t turn for me. Without you in my life, my life ain’t no place to be. “

“Till you come back to me.”

A great song for when you are depressed and want to feel worse.

On the very entertaining Unwords site (for words that don’t exist, but should),  there is this grand term:

dark matter song (därk măt’ər sŏng): A song of such awfulness that it alone outweighs the rest of an artist or band’s body of work.

I won’t repeat Unwords’ examples (mostly because I sort of like those songs), but there is definitely something to this. Let’s say, Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is,” wherein a band that once rocked pretty hard mutate into (post-Kath) Chicago-style cheeseballs. And naturally, this gutless, hyperproduced, rapidly descending anvil of a record became the Foreigner anthem and their biggest hit.

Or there’s Queen, a band that drifted aimlessly for some years, landed long enough to make two amazing, innovative, genre-bending albums, then drifted slowly away once again. They produced quite a few less-than-stellar singles, but “Another One Bites the Dust” was the one that finished me on Queen. It is so tasteless, so badly sung, so determinedly crude that it seems to have no connection at all with anything they ever did that was actually enjoyable. They were well past their prime by then, but even now, I’m disappointed that Queen ever released such a thing.

Pete, you have any songs that finished you on a band you’d liked?

Having gone to every Genesis concert in L.A. from 1980 to the last big show with Phil at Dodger Stadium in 1992, I guess you can count me as a fan. I too am a drummer. I started in the garage driving my family and the neighborhood nuts for years with too much volume and not enough skills. Oh the heady days when L.A.P.D. would show up and tell us to turn off, (not down), or they would take our stuff.

Very seventies.

I first heard Genesis on the long gone K-100 fm. They were playing “Follow Me, Follow You.” It took a few years and a friend of mine to introduce me to the Gabriel era stuff as well as the early Phil material. I can say one thing. I was in love with their music from about the first note I heard.

Seeing them at the Forum in 1980, they were still on the tail end of the Three Sides Live show. The big run-up to the closer was the “Cage/Slipperman/Afterglow” medley. I saw the beginning of something quite special in music and for drummers in particular.

Phil is the lead singer of course so it’s just not very showy to have him behind the set all night so they brought in Chester Thompson to play most of the night. Chester had been with Frank Zappa and with the superb jazz band, Weather Report. A total pro.

At the end of the “Cage,” Phil would join Chester behind his own set of drums. Quite a specticle in itself as Chester is right handed and Phil is a lefty. You get the really cool effect of two drummers playing mirror opposite of each other on the stage. And how they played…

What started with the “Cage” medley grew into one of my favorite parts of the shows. “I hate drum solos!!!!” (I hear Bridey scream…)

Normally she would be right.

Not with these two guys. When you watch the video Bridey provided in her story you can see how much silent communication is going on between the two of them. They complete each others runs, fill the others fills and answer back in kind. Before you could even attempt something like this you must already be a truly great player and musician.

They create music with just drums. No easy feat.

As for Phil’s injury I really do have a good answer. I am a small guy like Phil. We’re roughly the same size. If you look at his drum set, the smaller toms are all set at a much higher angle facing him than Chester’s. I also know why, I do the same thing. It’s a simple matter of reach.

Because someone my size simply can’t get cleanly over the tops of the rims of the drums consistantly when flat, we tend to increase the angle the drum faces us. It can become a problem, that I have had myself from time to time, because you wind up relaxing your back while extending your arms and shoulders fully with a great deal of muscle power. When I’m not paying attention to my posture, my body reminds me too. It feels like a knife being stuck into the base of my neck.

A very unkind reminder to keep my back straight and position my drums accordingly. Yet, I still do it from time to time. (This I will keep in mind.)

I do hope Phil recovers fully. I would love so much to see him and Chester do their thing again.