Who Moved My Cheese Metal?

Cruising the wide open spaces of Napster and E-music, I ran across of all things, The Partridge Family. In and of itself, not a surprise. What was a surprise was one song in particular. In defiance of the laws of physics and all we know of the universe, there is a Partridge Family song that is actually rather good. And no, it’s not “I Think I Love You.”

Although, being honest, I have to admit I downloaded a copy to my iPod, and it didn’t melt or malfunction in any way. I don’t know if that qualifies as a guilty pleasure or some mental illness, but there it is.

The song that I had forgotten so long ago was:

Since I rediscovered this bit of TV cheese, it’s grown on me. For the Partridge Family, it’s almost racy. A solid and mature vocal by David Cassidy, lyrics that are solid if not profound and the overall arrangement it very cool, with the early seventies chucka/chucka guitars and neatly layered harmonies. All in all, a pretty good pop song.

A big plus while watching the video is how they meticulously avoid showing anything that remotely resembles actually playing any of those instruments. Satisfyingly funny!

Well, not so much power pop as just plain pop this time, but a great track to cheer up a post-long-weekend Monday.

ELO were more capable of plain joyous music than any other band I can think of. Gloom is easy — joy is hard.

Having been away for a while saving a small corner of the universe from the horrors of Michael Bolton, I will throw my boring songs to the wind for your approval. Or not.

“Stairway To Heaven.” I once loved this song as I was young and foolish. Now, I just want it to be over so I can move on to something that really does mean something. Not that I am the stickler for lyrics the way Bridey is, but, please, it’s been nearly forty years and the thing is still going on. I mean the real song. Someone, somewhere is still playing this song as we go on about our daily lives. Stop it!

I’m all in with Bridey about “Kashmir.” It was funny in Fast Times at Ridgemont High but not since. (Or before…)

“Slow Ride” from Foghat. “Slow ride, take it easy.” Got it. And do you really need to take over nine minutes to get this life-shattering observation to the world?

Here’s a live version if you dare.

“Mississippi Queen” by Mountain. At least it may have given Christopher Walken one of his best bits.

More Cowbell!!!

“The End” by The Doors. While no doubt shocking in 1967 and used to great effect in Apocalypse Now,  it’s still a load of self-indulgent garbage. I can only guess that you really do need to be on something to enjoy this song.

Honestly, tell me you enjoy this sober… NSFW!!!

I still like “Aqualung” though not as much as I once did. Perhaps  more overplay fatigue for me there. Steve Miller was always a hit and miss thing with me so I can’t really say one way or another about “Fly Like an Eagle” except I would rather hear “Jet Airliner” for what that’s worth.

As for “Rocky Mountain Way” I agree. There are many other 15-minute Joe Walsh songs I would rather listen to.

“I Shot the Sheriff.” I don’t know how that one was missed, or recorded for that matter. A song that, try as I might to block it from my mind, it keeps coming back. What do you do with a song that was recorded by two different legends and still sucks?

A thought: Did you ever realize that, if it were only possible to build one, a double-necked Flying V would be the Cheesiest Guitar in the World?

Happy Thanksgiving from Who Moved My Cheese Metal!

OK, everyone has some songs that, though they may be beloved of millions, make you say to yourself (or even out loud), “I hate this song!”

These songs in particular also share the distinction of having been played to death. A radio research term for songs listeners have heard so often they never want to hear them again is “burned.” People who are not born yet are burned on these songs.

Led Zeppelin, “Kashmir”: Duh-duh-DUH, duh-duh-DUH, duh-duh-DUH, duh-duh-DUH.  Repeat. And repeat. And repeat.

Joe Walsh, “Rocky Mountain Way”: An inexplicable classic rock radio staple. Just poke around the preset buttons when it comes on. Then click back when you think it’s over. It won’t be.

Jethro Tull, “Aqualung”: It starts out slamming — with lyrics that would very likely keep it off the air if it were a new tune — but soon slips into a mopey, folky ballad tune. Though it eventually perks up again, our minds have wandered.

Steve Miller, “Fly Like an Eagle”: The most disposable major star of the ’70s, in Full Earnest Mode.

Doors: “Light My Fire.” With a fantastic keyboard intro, this sounds like it’s going to go somewhere great. But the lyrics are more than usually sophomoric, the instrumental breaks are interminable — there is no reason in the world this little pop tune needed to be seven minutes long — and the vocal sounds like it was recorded at the bottom of a refrigerator carton.

Update re: commenter Maggie McT: How could I have forgotten “I Shot the Sheriff”? Whatever the next step is after boring….

(The low-rent video? Well, it was 1980.)

I’ve addressed this topic once before (mediocre acts who produce one great record) with Bon Jovi, and here’s another one:  Al Stewart, a Scottish singer-songwriter who in the ’70s produced a lot of earnest pop, with a fondness for story songs that were often folk-tinged, sometimes deeply strange, and yet somehow consistently uninteresting.

He’s still recording and performing, but 1976 was the Year of Al, because that was when he teamed with Alan Parsons on Year of the Cat — and the title track was, and is, a terrific pop record.

I’m not a production nut, but Parsons’ production on this, from that long, rolling piano intro on, is just brilliant. Stewart is a middling singer with a limited range, but there’s so much going on in this song — strings and piano and little phrases on the bass dipping and gliding, adding emphasis and emotional heft where the inexpressive Stewart is unable to.

But perhaps the most striking thing about “Year of the Cat” is the remarkable sense of place. Without using any tricks or “world music” gimmicks, it evokes an exotic landscape, where, like the “you” of the lyric, the listener is enchanted but, finally, just passing through. It’s an expansive — nearly seven minutes — record that earns its length, and just a great pop song.

Welcome to Who Moved My Cheese Metal!

So — what exactly do we mean by “cheese metal”?

First, by our terms, it’s not at all a bad thing. Basically, we’re talking about big, loud, often kind of silly songs, most of which  fall into one of two categories: the cheerfully dimwitted or the goofily grandiose. If it is quiet or contemplative, it is not cheese metal (though it can still be be cheesy). Largely, these are guitar-driven, and a good jet-engine vocal also helps make a good c-metal tune.

For example, in the cheerfully dimwitted school, there is Foghat’s “Slow Ride,” which is an exemplary — even a definitive — cheese metal record as we use the term. It’s happy and sexy and dumb, and it seems to have been created expressly to delight the hearts of bar bands and garage guitarists. “Slow Ride” was one of the great AOR records and will be a classic rock radio staple evermore.  Here’s a pretty nice live version. No date given — guessing mid-’90s.

Then there’s Golden Earring’s “Radar Love,”  which is, first, a pretty decent Deep Purple impression.  The relationship described in the lyrics is perhaps a bit eccentric, but it’s all thoroughly good-natured and sung (very well) with exactly the combination of conviction and good cheer that it demands.  And it rocks.

Then, in the goofy-and-grand school, there is Rainbow’s “Man on the Silver Mountain.” Yes, it has the kind of prog-rock lyrics that can easily sound really stupid (he’s a wheel, he’s a wheel, he can roll, he can feel!), but Ronnie Dio just blows the roof off. And listen to the guitars, driving it and defining the song without overwhelming that masterful rock vocal. And the solo… man, I LOVE this song.

And finally, on those rare occasions when the noisy-dumb approach and the goofy-grand approach can be combined, good cheese metal can defy gravity. At precisely 1:30 on Def Leppard’s “Rock of Ages” (1:33 on the video below): liftoff.

Well, less an album track than an obscurity.  This Roger Daltrey solo track wasn’t released as a single in the UK — indeed, it didn’t appear on the UK release of One of the Boys – and the single didn’t go anywhere in the U.S., despite the buzz that was still around Daltrey after Tommy and (the very unfortunate) Lisztomania.

It really shouldn’t have tanked — it’s an enormously appealing record in its way. But 1977 was the height of the disco era, and this song, though it’s not at all hard rock, may have been rather too heavy in a year when Kenny Nolan’s “I Like Dreamin’” was the best-selling non-disco single.

Despite the title, Murray Head’s lyrics have nothing to do with Shoeless Joe Jackson and instead are about a political figure who, through some disastrous failure — perhaps corruption — has left his followers bereft. Whether it is meant to refer to anything or anyone specific, I have no idea, but Daltrey gives a lot of emotional punch to this shocked and disappointed believer.

The arrangement starts out rather Who-esque, with the acoustic guitar opening rolling into a swinging electric guitar break between the first and second verse, when the drums cut in and really begin to pull the song forward.

The most powerful part of the song is the bridge, which starts out right at the upper end of the singer’s reach, or indeed a little beyond. Then overamped, even disco-ish backing vocals start to chant behind Roger the rocker. It shouldn’t work, but it kind of does, especially right at the end  — 2:40 on the video — when the song builds to one of those emotional, almost-a-word shouts that nobody but Daltrey can do. And if you had any doubt about the drummer, the drums coming out of the bridge will clear it up — that is indeed Keith Moon.

And a live version with John Entwistle looming large on bass, Keith Moon looking about 50 years old behind the drums, and a baby-faced Jimmy McCulloch playing lead.

I’m not a movie reviewer, so this isn’t a movie review, but I was generally delighted with Pirate Radio.

This movie, particularly the last third, has to be looked at in light of a fable or fantasy rather than any kind of history. (Among other things, I doubt there were quite so many grizzled old rock jocks in 1966.) But it’s charming and funny and bawdy and in love with rock ‘n’ roll, and everyone involved seems to be having a blast.

The music is great, of course — mostly American, as one would expect, sticking faithfully (well, reasonably faithfully) to music available by ’66 or ’67, and well matched to the action. And some clever soul made the best possible choice for the opening credits: