Saturday May 5, 2012
After yet another week shrouded by tragic and early celebrity deaths, the pop music world was forced to join in the mourning with Friday's announcement that founding Beastie Boys member Adam Yauch had passed away at 47 following a three-year cancer battle. So now, just three weeks after the pioneering rap-rock trio was enshrined into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, death strikes again in what could be construed by the extremely conspiracy-minded as a cruel attempt to silence the music. Now, I'm not literally saying some cosmic force in charge of death has something against rock and roll, but let's face it: 2012 has not been thus far kind to several creators of legendary music.
Yauch leaves behind his two Beasties cohorts, Mike Diamond and Adam Horovitz, as well as a towering legacy for the innovative blending of seemingly disparate pop music genres. "She's On It" stands as a prime example of this, even if it's as juvenile and posturing as you might expect from three sneering white punks from New York City barely in their twenties. In fact, this unflinching dose of attitude was one of the draws for the early Beastie Boys recordings, saddling the group with a reputation it ultimately worked hard to transcend on later efforts that typically became critical darlings. But this tune deserves respect if nothing else for the rather seamless way it serves as a marker between the Beasties' early NYC hardcore punk roots and its eventual position as critically favored hip-hop dignitaries. Yauch will be missed on several wide cultural levels, many of the same ones the Beastie Boys will continue to inform going forward. That won't block the current requisite sadness, but such a breadth of impact is bound to outlast it at least.
Single Cover Image Courtesy of Warner Bros.
Wednesday April 25, 2012
The passing last week of Men at Work's multi-instrumentalist and key creative force Greg Ham likely caught more than a few pop music fans off-guard, but those who knew the 58-year-old best probably (and sadly) weren't all that shocked. Ever since the puzzling 2010 court decision that determined the band's signature 1982 hit "Down Under" duplicated "substantial portions" of popular Australian children's song "Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree," friends say that Ham had been despondent, even relapsing into drug and alcohol abuse in part due to his discomfort over the situation. The cause of death for the musician - found dead April 19 in his home near Melbourne - has yet to be determined, but it's difficult for any original fan of Men at Work's early-'80s heyday not to feel resentful about a court decision as suspect and potentially damaging as the "Down Under" judgment.
Nevertheless, former bandmate Colin Hay has been quick to praise the positive elements of Ham's life and the enriching perspective his personality brought to so many of the lives he touched. This, of course, is fitting and essential in the face of the loss of someone young and talented, but the sentiment is especially resonant in light of this week's feature, one of Men at Work's few tracks that featured Ham on lead vocals and drew from his solo songwriting efforts. Despite its seemingly downbeat title, "Giving Up" - a deep album track from the band's seldom-heard 1985 swan song LP, Two Hearts - actually embraces an uplifting if contemplative view on treasuring the joys of life while it's still possible. In essence, the song is about NOT giving up, and it serves as a particularly poignant requiem for an individual Hay remembered as "a beautiful man" graced with boundless humor and energy. Musically, this tune showcases one of Ham's least recognized gifts - his singing voice - and demonstrates the important role he served in a band clearly fronted by Hay but also most certainly graced with far more than mere backing from Ham. Fans celebrating the famous respective saxophone and flute parts from Men at Work hits "Who Can It Be Now?" and "Down Under" should probably also check out the group's unjustly out-of-print final record, which really allowed Ham to stretch out quite memorably as both songwriter and lead vocalist.
Album Cover Image Courtesy of Columbia - Greg Ham Pictured Above, Far Left
Wednesday April 18, 2012
During the past eight years or so, something happened within American pop culture that many music fans assumed would never actually come to be: in the form of a 2004 stroke, the ravages of time had finally begun to catch up with seemingly ageless, legendary musical TV personality Dick Clark. Unfortunately today - despite an impressive recovery from that stroke over the past several years - Clark passed away at age 82 from a massive heart attack suffered during a hospital visit for an outpatient procedure. It's a genuinely sad day for music lovers of the rock and roll era, who one way or another grew up with Clark as a broadcast icon. And yet there's also so much to celebrate about a man who witnessed massive changes in the music industry and its styles across the decades as host of the long-running American Bandstand. Always earnest and business-like in his attempts to interview '80s acts disparate and seemingly unlike himself - from heavy metal band Autograph to sultry R&B vixen Vanity - Clark believed in his platform for pop music appreciation across the ages, which is perhaps his greatest legacy.
That brings us to this week's feature. I poked around the hundreds of '80s artists that appeared on the program during its final decade, and ultimately I settled on Patty Smyth's band Scandal as a reasonably representative example of the type of moderately successful music acts that performed week to week on Bandstand. Clark treated them all with respect and genuine interest, and in the case of Scandal, the rather brief period of fame wasn't really enough. Smyth and the band are generally best known for their bigger hits (the worthy "Goodbye to You" and "The Warrior"), but "Love's Got a Line on You" continues to stand tall as an energetic and highly listenable new wave-tinged mainstream rock song. Despite barely cracking the Top 30 on the Billboard mainstream rock charts in 1983, this track shines as more than just an above-average arena rock tune. Buoyed by the muscular, passionate lead vocals of Smyth but also by the solid, underrated songwriting of bandmate Zack Smith (something Clark probably detected during his brief encounter with the band), this song is as good a way as any to mark the passing of a true pop music populist. Rest in peace, Ageless One.
Album Cover Image Courtesy of Sony
Wednesday April 11, 2012
I'm the first to admit anytime the subject comes up that I was probably about as far as one could be from being hip to the early alternative/indie sound continuing to emerge out of the U.K. circa 1988. Trapped far too exclusively in a music world (though it seemed kind of wide open at the time) composed mostly of classic rock, hair metal and arena rock, I would have had no idea what to do if exposed to a band like The House of Love at that early point of my rock music education. So perhaps it's just as well that this London outfit remained as alien to me back then as a good, modestly stylish haircut. After all, only years after their peaks did I discover and appreciate the work of such bands as The Jesus and Mary Chain, Psychedelic Furs and Echo & the Bunnymen - all seminal influences on the dreamy, proto-indie rock strains of The House of Love.
I just wasn't ready for it back then, I suppose. And to be honest, my penchant for aggressive rock may never allow me to fully "get" The House of Love's thickly atmospheric pop punctuated by seemingly sedated yet passionate crooning. Nevertheless, I'm stretching here only to make sure I don't forget how to do so in the name of appreciating worthy, complex music. "Love in a Car" did not appear as a single from the band's 1988 debut (the better-known "Christine" made quite a mark as a Top 10 hit on the newly formed U.S. modern rock charts). However, the distinctive vocals of frontman Guy Chadwick and the precise instrumentation of guitarist Terry Bickers set a palpably otherworldly mood on this track that is highly emblematic of what the early lineup of The House of Love was all about. But don't take my word for it; by admission, I'm still at times a bit of an infant - aurally speaking - when it comes to late-'80s early British indie rock. So just sit back and take your own listen to a band making truly unique if not immediately fashionable music during a time not terribly favorable to such musical daring.
Album Cover Image Courtesy of Creation
