Midweek Music News Roundup 10.21.09: But I No Longer Hear The Music

Posted by Lucas Wesley on 10.21.2009

Thurston Moore and Iggy Pop team up for Jemina Pearl, Carly Simon is mad at Starbucks, The Flaming Lips cover Pink Floyd, Madonna is loud, Jon Bon Jovi is all over NBC, Pixies hit the road, Kanye hits the smallest screen (then bounces off it), Guns n Roses love children, we take a look at why some artists refuse to acknowledge their most beloved music, along with perhaps the most important music news the world has ever seen...a-Ha...broke up! Read all about it in the Midweek Music News Roundup!

I got nothing for the beginning this week. I thought I did, but apparently I spoke to soon. So let's get right to it, friend.



- Talk about instant indie love. Jemina Pearl of Be Your Own Pet recently released her first solo album, and one of the videos has quite the pedigree. Both Thurston Moore and Iggy Pop appear, though Pop appears only in way of cardboard cut outs. Not that he'd mind, I'm sure: he provides pack up vocals on the song. Friends in high places, y'all.

- Carly Simon is bitter that her last album didn't sell, so she's suing Starbucks. No, wait, it almost makes sense: the record was released on Starbucks Hear Music label, and she's arguing they didn't promote it. Starbucks is counter arguing that her album has received the same amount of promotion as their most successful release, Paul McCartney's Memory Almost Full. Granted, I haven't seen Simon strumming on a ukulele selling iPods yet, but I have to side with Starbucks. She apparently expected billboards and commercials, but that only happens on very rare cases. Whoa, did I just side with Starbucks?

- a-Ha are breaking up. I considered quitting my column and giving up on life, but then I remembered this news effects no one. Not even a-Ha knew they were still together; that's why they're breaking up. One day they both woke up, realized they were still in a-Ha in 2009, and did what any rational person would do. Get the hell out of a-Ha.

- Lego Rock Band is, aesthetically, a very bad idea. That is all. This bullet was not completely necessary.



- They said that with their last two albums The Smithereens were becoming the world's most famous cover band. Well, no more! The Flaming Lips next project is slated to give them that title. For you see, boys and girls, the next Flaming Lips project will be a full album cover of Dark Side of the Moon. They intend to feature guests such as Coyne's nephew's band, Stardeath and White Dwarfs, Peaches and Henry Rollins. As a Pink Floyd denier, I was vehemently against the idea until the idea of Henry Rollins screaming some of the songs came to mind. I probably won't get my wish, but it might be fun. Take that, Beck, and your...your..."Record Club."

- Jermaine Jackson's ex-wife is arguing that Jermaine isn't paying child support for Jermajesty. If she didn't realize he wasn't the best father around when he said "hey, let's name him Jermajesty!" then she has no one to blame but herself.

- Madonna is facing threats of eviction from her apartment based on a high level of noise complaints by her neighbors. Apparently, like many musicians, Madge doubles her home as a makeshift recording studio. First Bob Dylan's neighbors complain about his outhouse smelling bad, now Madonna's neighbors are complaining about the shit coming out of her home. When will it end! But the real question is: why does Madonna live in an apartment? She's a zillionaire!

- Jon Bon Jovi is taking over NBC for the next month. I'm not watching NBC for the next month. Well, that's not true. I'll still watch The Office. And let's face it, that's the only NBC show I watch in the first place. But come on, Universal. Bon Jovi? Of all people, why him? That's not fair to those of us who like good music. Let me acknowledge something: everything Bon Jovi does infuriates me. If he walks down a street, that's unfair to the residents of that street. He should not be allowed to commit his crimes against humanity on such a national level.


Pictured: Bon Jovi, pissing me off.

- A new line of stamps has been released featuring a several cool album covers. And also a Coldplay album cover. Featured albums include Primal Scream's Screamadelica, David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, The Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed, New Order's Power, Corruption & Lies and The Clash's London Calling. The rest were less cool, so I didn't want to spend any time tagging them. Nonetheless, it's a cool string of rock stamps. Not that stamps are particularly interesting or anything. Now there's one hobby I never understood.

- Pixies are about to tour Doolittle in America, and boy are the open acts a doozy. Doozie. Not a real word. Okay. Anyway, around the country the openers are culled from this list: No Age, Bad Lieutenant, Rain Machine, Jay Reatard, Mew and Black Gold. Talk about indie superstars. But then again, Pixies were amongst the first indie superstars, so it's no wonder they can bring out the big small names.

- Spike Jonze is back in the music video making business! Kind of! He and Kanye West created a short film called "We Were Once A Fairytale." As the "See You In My Nightmares" title may suggest, the film is based on the songs of 808s & Heartbreak. In Michael Jackson video tradition (see: Moonwalker, Ghosts), the song started out as a video for a single song (the aforementioned "Nightmares") but developed into a bigger project. Unfortunately, many people, myself included, missed out on the fun: Kanye "had to" take the video down. Maybe it'll be back again some day. We'll see.

- Guns n' Roses are set to be the next artist to get their own Rockabye Baby. Despite being the exact opposite of a fan, I'm kind of excited. Rockabye Baby is pretty consistently adorable, and I'm sure the added idea of guitar solos will make it pretty hilarious, too.


They might need to work on the cover, though...

Star Power

Johnny Marr of The Smiths (and Modest Mouse and Electronic and The The and The Cribs) was recently interviewed by Pitchfork Media. The interview was mostly about his work with The Cribs, but it ended with a question about the Smiths. Marr quickly dismissed the question as something in his past that he is now over with. This brings me to today's Star Power: what's the deal with musicians hating on their best, most acclaimed work?

At one level, I understand the self-conscious thing about it. When all you hear about is your "best" work, you know what's coming next: that your current work doesn't live up, or is somehow inferior. No one likes to accept that their best days are behind them, and one method of covering that up is by refusing to acknowledge it. So when everyone points to one thing you did and says "masterpiece," and points to the last thing you did and says "ok, but compared to that last one it's terrible," you forget the last one.



Take Rivers Cuomo for example. My understanding is that he's over it now, but back in the day, he hated Pinkerton. Hearsay tells me that once, during a concert, he kindly invited any fans in the front of the crowd who knew how to play guitar on stage. One young guitarist came up and decided to play a little "El Scorcho." Rivers flipped out and kicked the young man out of the venue. When you look at what Weezer is doing now and you think about just how horrible it is, this kind of makes sense. They receive no unbiased criticism. Every review you read of Red, every review you read of Make Believe, of Maladroit, of Green, they all come back to the same thing: Blue and Pinkerton are way better.

There's another mentality, which is more confrontational to the fans. The mentality is that this is what we do now, so this is what the fans need to like. On some levels, Bob Dylan may have gone through these kinds of motions. Though he was never the most vocal about his own work, those that "got it" would argue that if you didn't like it, you were in the wrong. It was Dylan, after all. How can you not like whatever it is that he's doing? The man's a legend!

Dylan is an interesting case, actually. He never really refused to talk about any period of his work, even after changing dramatically from it. At the same time, however, he never talked about any of his work. There was no discrimination in what he refused to talk about: he would just mess with reporters regardless. Now and again a friend reporter might get something interesting, but your typical reporter wasn't going to get anything out of him, be it a question about his best album or his worst.

To digress from Bobby, there's another, similar school of thought out there as well: the artist thinks, "this is what I like now. The fans can like it or not, but this is what I'm all about right now." Tastes change. It's possible that an artist truly doesn't like listening to their old material any more. By the time John Lennon was complaining about Paul's inabilities to keep up with his experimental nature, he probably didn't like going back and listening to The Beatles pop songs. Even if people love those songs, he didn't anymore. What more can he say about that? Radiohead had the same issue with Pablo Honey and Creep in particular. Even when they were still playing it and talking about it, it was with the greatest disdain.


Thom Yorke reacting to someone telling him Creep is their favorite song.

Of course, some artists hold this mentality while still enjoying their older material: Liz Phair recently toured Exile on Guyville with enthusiasm, despite the fact none of her recent material has even a remote similarity to her past work. But then again, that isn't the point because she's never been shy to talk about her past work. Back to the Weezer example, though Raditute is what Rivers is in to now, he seems to no longer have trouble talking about what he did in the past.

On a completely unrelated note, we have the issue of personal problems connected to an album leading to an artist refusing to talk about it. For years Brian Wilson wouldn't talk about Smile because he still couldn't face those demons. To this day, Neil Young refuses to re-release the 1973 album Time Fades Away, feeling that the circumstances were too depressing and difficult to revisit. Until recently, he held the same feelings about On The Beach and Tonight's The Night. Despite the great critical acclaim each of these albums receive, the personal connection to his friends' deaths and drug use was too much for him to deal with.

On a more abstract level, when a band first breaks up, solo artists may not want to play the songs written with the band anymore. I wouldn't be surprised if Noel Gallagher refused any of Liam's bigger roles on upcoming appearances, and certainly vice versa. In the past Noel might wear a smile and laugh if someone requested Songbird, but now that might be the end of it. We can't say certainly yet, but that would be my guess.



Ultimately, there are several reasons an artist refuses to talk about their biggest and/or best works. The reality we have to accept, though, is that to a fan, none of these reasons work. We all want Johnny Marr and Morrissey to forget about whatever the problems are and get together for a chat about The Smiths. Neil Young needs to get it together and release Time Fades Away. And Rivers Cuomo...you know, I don't even care if he loves Pinkerton or hates it or whatever, I just want him to stop. I can't take the jaded Weezer fans anymore. You know, forget the whole article and just take that last sentence to heart.

I realize this week's Star Power is a little short. For this I apologize. I tend to get a little ahead of myself when I get work, and recently I wrote a review for this here site. The crafty might be able to locate it, but for the general public, you won't see it for a few weeks. However, this cut into my time a bit this week. Anyway, point is, with the review and school work piling up, I didn't have time to do a really long Star Power. I feel that it was more than made up for by the larger than usual amount of news this week, and I hope you agree. If not, come back for a better story next week.

Farewell Song

One of the stupidest questions music fans face from other music fans is "what is your favorite year in music?" As with most things I find stupid, I only find it a stupid question because I don't know the answer. It's weird not knowing the answer to an opinion question, but I don't know. I just can't answer it. But the point is, when I was first pressed to answer this question, 1975 was an occasional answer. Two Elton John albums, debuts from Patti Smith, Leon Redbone, Richard & Linda Thompson and more classics from Brian Eno, Bob Dylan, The Band, David Bowie, Neil Young, Tom Waits and Willie Nelson...what more could you ask for? While I can't really stand by that logic too heavily anymore (because I can name as many artists I love from almost any year), it does remain evidence that there is no lack of possibilities when it comes to the best song of the year. But in actuality, it's no contest. One of the greatest songs of all times was released this year, so it's the winner. Jesus may not have died for this song, but that doesn't in any way damage it. The song is, of course, In Excelsis Deo/Gloria by Patti Smith.



The album of the year is as different as Patti Smith as you can get. While Patti Smith, at least in that song, is as confrontational and as in your face as you can get, this album was the start of a transition into a genre the artist created. The music comes with the demand that it must be as ignorable as it is interesting. While this particular album was still, shall we say, half-pop, the seeds were there for ambient goodness. Of course (I need to stop saying of course) I speak of Another Green World by Brian Eno.

I believe that wraps things up for this week. Hope to catch you again next week for the Midweek Music News Roundup!