Midweek Music News Roundup 12.30.09: She's A Rebel

Posted by Lucas Wesley on 12.30.2009

It's still the holidays so there's almost no news to report, but we managed to find a few stories that may intrigue you. Joe Jackson vs Joe Jackson, Kanye West's gotta big ego, Tom Waits may have a new album in the works, the tragedy of Vic Chesnutt and an essay on women's rights in relation to girl group. Check it out in this week's Midweek Music News Roundup!

So, there was *no* news this week. None. Well, okay, there were a few stories, some awesome, some very sad. But I mean, it's the week after Christmas. Everyone with a real reporting job is on vacation. Probably a paid vacation at that, and here I am, not even getting a paid workday. Ah, well. The point is, I'm improvising a general lack of news. But I hope you enjoy it all despite that.

- Tom Waits has announced he is working on a new album. He's offered no real information on the process nor do I think he's actually planned anything beyond "Aw, hell, what else am I gonna do?," but it's still the best news I've ever heard this week.



- In the most depressing story of the week, indie singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt appears to have committed suicide. Late into the night of Christmas Eve, he was reported dead. Then people thought they spoke too soon. Then, finally, mid-Christmas, his label reported he had indeed passed away. He will be sorely missed by all in the Athens music scene and by all of his fans around the world.

- I'm getting a little tired of Michael Jackson's father Joe being in the news all the time. Not because he is and was a terrible, greedy, child-beating man, though none of that is good either. But because headlines keep reading Joe Jackson and I assume it's the Look Sharp! singer songwriter. By now I realize I should accept that it never is, but it still makes me sad. Ok, this isn't news, whatever. I guess I'll have to point out that the story that inspired this was that Joe Jackson's lawyer might lose his license. Which is also not really news.

- Kanye West was voted the celebrity with the biggest ego this year, which I'm sure will inspire him to write a song named "Ego" with Beyonce. Well, I suppose he already did that. But it is proof of an unoriginal polling society. Who else could even come close? This was just another attempt at vilifying Kanye for causing the first entertaining MTV moment in at least fifteen years. Not to mention I'm sure he loves it. Lest we forget that Michael Jackson created half the rumors about himself in the late 80s to stay in the news between hit singles. Kanye's just doing the same thing. In other Kanye news, over Christmas he served lunches to homeless people. So that's good.

Star Power

Since, as noted above, there was no news this week, it's hard to report on any hot button issue (or barely relevant issue, whichever the situation calls for) in depth. So instead I'm going to talk a little bit about what I got for Christmas. It's music related and possibly interesting, I promise.



First, I'm going to give a token mention to The Langley Schools Music Project. As the name may imply, it's a bunch of students from a small elementary school in the Langley School district in Canada. Their music teacher, Hans Fenger, was a hippie looking for an easy job, and he happened upon being a school music teacher. Instead of the traditional "sit around trying to play simple songs on a recorder" method most music teachers used, he instead decided to have the kids sing the big pop songs of the time. Recorded in a school gym with incredibly minimal instrumentation (Fenger played guitar, but the kids weren't all so musically adept - an occasional xylophone or discordant drum beat may be found, but there were no prodigies in his classrooms), many would probably assume this to be horrible. In fact, it is one of the most haunting, beautiful collections of music I've ever heard. And when it's not haunting, it's positively ecstatic: the cover of "You're So Good To Me" is possibly the happiest thing I've ever heard. To quote the Washington Post, "Langley Schools Music Project is the sound of falling in love with music." So, yeah. Check out Innocence & Despair, it's amazing.

Whoa, that was just a token mention? This next part's gonna be long, man. Anyway, in addition to that CD, I got several other CDs. Though I listen to many genres of music, the big one when I compiled my Christmas wish list this year was girl group. I can't get enough of it. Right away, let me say I don't mean The Spice Girls or Girls Aloud! or modern girl group, but rather the original groups from the 60's. As such, I received a fair number of girl group compilations: The Toys' Sing "A Lover's Concerto" and "Attack!", The Shangri-La's Leader of the Pack, The Dixie Cups' Chapel of Love, and the big one, One Kiss Can Lead To Another. All of these albums are fantastic and highly recommended to fans of the genre, though through listening to these albums (and listening to the sometimes extensive liner notes), I've begun to think about girl group on a much grander scale. Before I get too women's rightsy on you, keep in mind that it was this or I talk about The Indestructible Beat of Soweto in terms of ethnocentrism and Paul Simon. So, it would've been preachy either way.



First I'm going to give a few thoughts to the term "girl group" in general. Personally, I have no problem with it. As should always be the case with disenfranchised groups, we should let them decide on what they wish to be called. Though it's true the term girl group was likely created by someone in the press or Phil Spector, I've never known any of the musicians within the group to be offended by it. Some would argue that the term girl, when applied to a female over a certain age, is an attempt to infantilize her and make her seem like less of a person than the adult male. I'm not disagreeing with this in general, but I would argue it applies to a case-by-case basis. In this case in particular, it especially doesn't matter. While the term "girl group" does apply to the group itself, I'm using it to describe the genre of music. The Beatles made girl group songs. The Beach Boys made girl group songs. Ramones made girl group songs. The adaptation of the term may have been regrettable, but it refers to no one in particular.

Anyway, the issue created when girl group is cross-referenced with women's rights is that these women were completely controlled by the men standing behind the scenes. Occasionally you may see credit given to Ronnie Spector or Mary Weiss for helping to start create the punk image (quoth Patti Smith: "I just wanted to be Ronnie Spector"), but more often than not you'll see that credit handed to Phil Spector or Shadow Morton. Even when we credit women like Carole King or Ellie Greenwich, both composers of some of the finest girl group songs, they're the last on the bill. The teams are Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich and Gerry Goffin and Carole King, not the other way around. Is this an over analyzing a simple thing like alphabetical order? Perhaps, but it could be the idea of men belonging above women in all genres and facets of life.

The true tragedy of it, and what inspired me to create this article, is that for the most part, these men decided what these women were singing. More often than not, the subject was how much they love boys. While some truly self righteous people may complain about that, I feel that's obvious and what they should be singing about. All the male musicians stars their age are singing about girls, after all, so we can't complain about that. But in at least two instances, a horrible message emitted from these young women's mouths. The first was in fact a biting commentary, but it was taken as subservience and more or less banned from the radio. The second is just horrifying.



First, we have The Crystals' song, "He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)." The title kind of gives it away. Written by Goffin and King, the song was inspired by Little Eva telling them, with complete sincerity, that her boyfriend hit her and she was okay with it for the reasons explained in the song. Before I go any further, let me say something as an aside: "He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)" is quite possibly my favorite song. The atmosphere is absolutely perfect, and no other song sets a mood better. However, part of that is because I know the story: Goffin and King wrote this because they were absolutely shocked by what Little Eva said. Controversy erupted, in part because Phil Spector, producer of the song, got married around the time it was realized. Aside from that, people saw it as an endorsement of spousal abuse. This is perhaps more telling of the state of the world, where women can't broadcast concern over the fact that other women really feel this way and need help. I'm not saying the rest of the world condones the abuse, but my reaction wouldn't be to ban this from the radio, but rather to find the source and try to help these women. Regardless, the way the public reacted at least showed their hearts were in the right place. This next song...not so much.

To my knowledge, there was no grand public backlash when The Fabulettes released "Try The Worryin' Way." Written by Dave Morrison, the song advises women that if they want to lose weight, they should date men who make them worry. That way, you'll sweat and be scared and lose a pound a day. Not a hint of irony in this one, just a way to manipulate women into doing horrible things in order to create a body image that is likely unsustainable (or at least unhealthy) and unrealistic. One of the primary complaints of the women's rights movement throughout the years, this song unintentionally explains everything wrong with thinspiration and the movement towards over-dieting. But they got some pretty girls to sing it, so it's probably okay with them, right?

I suppose I may be stretching to create complaints. In all honesty, I don't have any problems with the whole structure of girl group in general, just the one song and the way some of the public sees it. But man, there was *no* news this week, so I had to come up with something.

Farewell Song

As we hit 1985, I realize I've kind of fell into a rut with this whole best song/best album thing. The problem is that there's been far too many in a row where the best song of the year was on the best album of the year. That's not any real problem, but it leads to redundancy and it's kind of dull. Unfortunately, 1985 is no different. While some were listening to U2 and Madonna or waiting for Nirvana, I was listening to Tom Waits. Well, no, not really, I was busy not having been born yet. But I would've been listening to Tom Waits, I promise you that. Usually I go song that album, but there's no need to fake that suspense after that build: the best album of 1985 is Rain Dogs. The Fall and The Replacements offer strong competition with This Nation's Saving Grace and Tim respectively, and I've always felt that King of Rock was Run-D.M.C.'s best album, but you just can't beat Rain Dogs.

Anyway, as for the song. That's a lot tougher than it should be. You'd think that with the level of praise I'm bestowing upon Rain Dogs, it'd be a veritable hit parade, at least to his fans. "Every song is the best song! I just can't pick!" But actually, it works so well as an album that I've almost become unable to separate it into individual tracks. However, the best of the year has to be one of these tracks, because nothing else makes sense to me. Thus, I take the cheater's way out and go with the obvious: "Downtown Train." Rod Stewart murdered it, but every time you listen to Waits, it comes back to life. This is the version from Big Time, also featuring a bit of "Clap Hands" and the implication that Tom Waits is a werewolf.



That does it for this week. I never realized how close Giftmas and New Year's were before. I mean, sure I knew it was a week, but man...it's a short week, you know? Have a safe and happy New Year's and I hope to see you next year for another Midweek Music News Roundup!