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Kurt
Hernon:
January,
2004
Scroll down for Hernon's Best of 2003
Our Very Own Man
(Sort of…Maybe? Well, Whatever) of the Year!
"No Vietcong ever called me 'nigger.'"
- Muhammad Ali
No truer statement hath ever been uttered
in our American history - in either a literal or abstractly
metaphorical sense. Such is the complexity of our national
experience. And believe me, no Vietcong would likely have
ever slurred Michael Jackson - in his present and gruesome
incarnation - that way either. In fact, had the North Vietnamese
encountered our man Jacko crawling out of the heavy brush
looking then as he looks now and armed to the gills (and he
may have those by now) with grenades and an M-16 they'd have
probably shrieked like scalded little kittens and bawled like
new born babies as they clung together, comrades huddled in
infinite fear of such an inexplicably disturbing sight. And
while they had heard much about the so-called "capitalist
American devil" in their party indoctrinations, nothing,
neither hallucinogens nor the most wild of imaginations, could
have prepared them for something as unsettling as coming face
to face with such an absolute disfigured atrocity of what
could only marginally be recognized as a human being - right
there in Ho Chi Minh's own backyard.
But make no bones about it, Jacko is ours.
He is us. He is America. He is the American experience boiled
down to its most vile and disturbing core. The Michael Jackson
we have is the Michael Jackson that America gave birth to.
Jacko, much to Fitzgerald's chagrin (or would he have smiled
about all of this?), is the most authentic Jay Gatsby this
country has had since Muhammad Ali - a clownish and horrifying
Gatsby, but Gatsby nonetheless - one up-ing Gatsby's self-reinvention
by avoiding the floating "re" prefix and simply
heading right to a straight up "inventing" of himself;
his frightening appearances are not simply part of our cultural
landscape, they define it to its unfortunate, yet logical,
extremes. Buy the ticket; take the ride; never look back.
Reality is no longer real. All lines have been blurred. You
are me and we are he and so on and so on and so on…
Mike Jackson is the fucking Walrus.
So with criminal allegations against Jackson
grabbing headlines and a mug shot that is so gruesome and
sordid it would make David Cronenberg break out in a cold
sweat making the rounds, and a new "#1's" type disc
on the shelves I figured it is high time to honor good 'ol
Jacko with the accolade he absolutely deserves - Man of the
Year, 2003. A good and wholly representative choice, as I
see it, for a culture that's gone absolutely beyond the pale
of absurdity. You want reality? You want garish voyeurism?
You want bachelors marrying bachelorettes marrying Dads eating
Brazilian cockroaches in tribes of talentless oafs undergoing
eternal plastic surgery and being called American Idols? You
want it all, you got it all…and Jacko is your King. Man
of the Year for a year that no longer seems to know what the
hell a man is. A mixed up mess of childhood dementia, cartoon
reality, and distorted albeit very real talent.
Jacko is King; Long Live Jacko (I
Can't Wait to See What He Looks Like Next Year!).
King indeed! And King of our twisted culture
he is. But a funny thing happened on the way to my handing
the man his throne: I went back and listened - closely - to
the Jackson solo output (do not feel sorry for me, as I did
it all for you!) and something struck me, a revelation of
sorts, while sifting through the avalanche that Jackson's
career has become. The cat ain't made a full-on record worth
a fuck since the brilliant coked-up disco of 1979's Off
the Wall. The whole thing - his entire career - was a
giant commercial venture. Nothing holds up anymore, nothing
but Off the Wall and a handful of songs here and there.
Sure Thriller was wildly successful on financial grounds,
but it was an absolute freak show cartoon that, in retrospect,
first hinted at Jackson's twisted grasp at eternal adolescence
and his slipping away from the reality that the rest of us
grapple with each and every day. I'll give "Billie Jean"
a nod for its slickness, but that song couldn't hold up ANYwhere
on Off the Wall. And everything Jackson has done since
has been an exercise in rapidly declining returns.
"King of Pop" My Ass!
So for a moment forget the sensational celebrity crime dramas;
forget the carnival sideshow appearance; forget the dangling
baby; the Spiderman masks; the zippers; the blur-sexual crotch
grabbing; and forget the strange and stomach churning facial
hair; forget everything about this so-called King of Pop -
a King whose reign started with "ABC" and ended
with "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" and then devolved
into PT Barnum's ultimate wet dream - forget all of that for
a moment because THIS IS THE END OF ANOTHER YEAR…the
year of OUR LORD 2003…gone and, hopefully, soon to be
forgotten, but never forgiven. Like a wounded filly having
gone down in the backstretch mud, lying on her side, doomed
for the fat man's silver bullet!
LONG LIVE THE KING OF
POP…THE KING OF POP IS (if not dead) A COMPLETE AND UTTER
MUSICAL FRAUD!
But he's our man…oh yes…Our Man of the Year 2003!
Congratulations Jacko…now either make a record worth
a god damn or get the hell out of our lives!
But enough of this senseless rambling -
good riddance is good riddance! And while Jacko's Off the
Wall has come blowing in (just in time for its 25th Anniversary
in 2004. And be sure it is a record worthy of honors) from
my forgotten past and dominated my ears of the present for
the past two months, and despite his shadow casting itself
across much of the better music of this past year (Junior
Senior's "Move Your Feet"; Justin Timberlake's entire
oeuvre) it's time for me to step up to the plate and take
a few swings at the rockroll knuckleballs that, it turned
out, were the music of 2003. It was an ugly year to say the
least, but the funny thing about it was that it never felt
ugly as it was happening. Only now, in my hindsight and much
to my surprise, does it seem to have been an extraordinarily
thin season.
2003: The Songs (Oh! The
Songs! Hey, it's About Time You Got Off That Creepy Mike Jackson
Thing and Got Around to the Music!)
It was the year of "the song" 2003 was, which probably
makes sense now that we've returned to the reasonable single
song world that is the digital download age. Much noise has
been made this past year about new technology and cafeteria
style downloading killing off the long-playing album, and
many records that shouldn't be made won't be made in the future
- to which I raise my glass in a toast. But you'd be a fool
to believe that the artistry of the full-length recording
will soon be forgotten. In fact, the return of the cheap and
easy single in digital form will merely return us to the glory
days of the 45 RPM'er: the days I've been bitching about and
pining away for for nearly twenty fucking years now - that
glorious era of rock and roll's birth, puberty, and teens
when singles bands made singles and that, like the bubblegum
we'd dubbed them as, lost their flavorful pleasures and just
disappeared. It's been a long time coming and I welcome the
new era of SONGS with open arms. The downloadable single has
made my year far more tolerable by allowing me to listen to
great little tunes by artists whose full length records I
would never spend time or money on. First and foremost on
that list is (segue here) my fellow Off the Wall-ophile
and rival for the hearts and crotches of women everywhere
Justin Timberlake, whose "Rock Your Body" and "Cry
Me A River" stood out as they showed us where Jacko may
have gone had he been less a boy and half a man. Timberlake
avoids the trappings of having been a teeny-bopper star by
discovering his cock and figuring out that it's an asset and
not just a hideous and unwelcome appendage.
But Timberlake, although the two tracks in question were very,
very good, wasn't the best of the best. That accolade has
to go to OutKast's "Hey Ya!" - Andre3000's absolute
and eternal R&B funk classic. And while the record, Speakerboxx/The
Love Below, has been as wildly overrated as any record
in recent memory (it's a sloppy, erratic and wildly disjointed
effort that I doubt many folks will still be listing to -
save for "Hey Ya!" - in the very near future), Andre
nailed down a place in pop music history with a track that
will forever rival the very best rock/pop has ever put out
there. Download the track. Don't buy the record.
Other slabs of brilliant R&B also made downloading worth
the while in 2003. R. Kelly's stupefying and sexy "Ignition
(Remix)" as well as "Snake" were modern production
marvels (one listen to the Kelly produced "One More Chance"
on the aforementioned Man of the Year's #1's record offers
up evidence that Kelly is undoubtedly one of the absolute
premier production ears alive these days. Now, if only the
man (allegedly) could figure out what a right and proper urinal
looks like.
In fact it was a banner year to dabble in the new R &
B. Tracks by Junior Senior (whose "Move Your Feet"
was hands down - sorry Justin T - the finest musical tribute
to our man of the year Jacko), Kelis (milkshake? Make it chocolate,
please), and the new Chuck Berry (as so dubbed by none other
than the venerable John Hiatt himself) Nelly have all gone
their distance on my disc burner - each and everyone of them
terrific cuts from albums that you wouldn't catch me dropping
one cent of my hard earned cash for. But 99 cents (or, gulp,
I admit it…free)? Why the hell not?
So it was that, through downloading, that
I, cynical bitcher-about-all-things-contemporary-and-popular,
wound up wading through many more bits and pieces of the mainstream
pop culture than I would have in years before. Great songs
are great songs, but at $15-18 bucks a pop, the industry can
sell their slop-heavy fifteen songs CD to some other sucker.
But gimme a crack at that one song that caught my ear somewhere
in an unguarded moment, and give it to me for a reasonable
price, well then count me in!
But downloading will not be the death of
the album. There's just no way that'll ever happen because
not all great songs are great singles. In fact, from where
I stand, the very best tunes are the ones that acquire and
absorb their greatness from the art around them. Mark McKay,
a singer-songwriter from Virginia (also has a band he calls
June Star), tossed off one of the finest displays of this
effect this year when he released Live From the Memory
Hotel, a gem of a live recording that features one unquestionably
brilliant and beautiful song called "Nashville"
(it's a million miles to Nashville / driving back to you the
way I came McKay sings, the song having nothing really to
do with driving at all) which is followed by a smarter but
not as pretty sibling titled "Constantine Gardens"
and a pair of exquisitely conceived cover tracks (given the
full band June Star treatment) - Uncle Tupleo's chilling "Moonshiner"
and Springsteen's "Atlantic City" (effectively draped
in resigned anger as opposed to Springsteen's mournful caution)
- that made Memory Hotel a constant presence in my
life when I needed it to be.
Great tracks were abundant in 2003 and despite my dabbling
in the mainstream pop waters I still found my best kicks off
the beaten path. Most of my faves made up records that became
faves, but in some cases it was a song or two that really
stood out, so those come first (in no particular order of
preference):
- "Too Fat" - Girly Freak Show's
smart, smarmy, and sarcastic stab at Britney, Christina, Pink,
and the bordering on pedophiliac ideals that run the pole
up in corporate culture trousers. It's called "Too Fat",
it uses the word "repressed" and it rocks like a
motherfuck.
- "Magnetic" - Chicago's spacey power popsters sounding
like 70's neo-hippies ELO had they been Raspberries and Plimsouls
fetishists instead of Beatles and Byrds geeks.
- "I Will Keep the Bad Things From You"
- Hands down the most moving ballad of the year, the Damnwells
deflate nearly all alt.country with this pointed and poignant
acoustic ballad. This is the centerpiece of one of the years
more sublime listens - Bastards of the Beat.
- "I Refuse" - the fifth track of a five track run
that made Sense Field's Living Outside a major summer
highlight. Here lead singer (and best rockroll interview I've
ever had) Jon Bunch makes like an edgy George Michael while
laying it all straight for any like-minded Emocore kid who
thinks sounding as good as Sense Field does hear is tantamount
to selling out ("I refuse / to fit into this lame ideal
you've always had for me")
- "Outfit" - the Drive-By Truckers astoundingly
brilliant ode to a sense of self. Inspirational lines of the
year: "Don't call what you're wearing an outfit / don't
ever say your car is broke / don't worry 'bout losing your
accent / a southern man tells better jokes / have fun and
stay clear of the needle / call home on your sister's birthday
/ don't tell them your bigger than Jesus / don't give it away"
- "Just Because" - the cornerstone of Jane's Addiction's
brilliant EP stretched, unfortunately, into an 11 song record
that tails off horribly at its end. "Just Because"
is hyper-everything, but most of all it became the soundtrack
of my sex life. And the good part is that I heard it a lot
this year. A whole lot.
- "Danger (High Voltage)", "Gay Bar" -
The Electric Six hits a pair of home runs with this years
biggest Stones homage ("Danger" is the best Emotional
Rescue track I've ever heard, and it's still hard to believe
the Stones didn't do it first) and it's only true Queer Eye
for the Straight Guy homage (does anyone else but these old-timers
remember when killer guitar licks mattered in punk rock?)
- "The Best Is Yet To Come", "60 Million Jennifer's"
- Mint are an oddity of sorts, a heavy on the melody power
pop outfit with the insecurities of 80's indie college rockers
and a penchant for wanting (desperately) the girl they're
sure they cannot get. But that's why they're in a rock and
roll band… These two tracks are like a pitch perfect
dream of how good, smart, and catchy pop music would sound
in a flawless world.
2003: The Records!
Then there were those records - complete albums that kept
creeping back into my life with startling regularity this
year. Whether that means these records were simply that good
or that there just weren't that many other good records remains
to be seen (or heard), but the pleasures I derived from this
batch of records will forever sit lodged firmly in my craw…such
a year 2003 was (in a somewhat loose order of preference,
the first on the list was my clear favorite and the rest tend
to fall in close approximation)
Escapology - Robbie Williams: On which
Mr. Williams comes to Hollywood and finds it as appalling
and absurd (yet enjoyable) as Nathanael West once did. He's
a star, we're all star fuckers, and there's really no difference
between the two when you get right down to it. Williams will
take it all with a grain of salt, but he'll take it nonetheless.
The entire thing is a hoot to listen to, but the first five
tracks are as good pop/rock as has been laid down the past
ten years. The way it should always have been moment: Williams
video for "Come Undone", banned stateside, is video
the way we'd all always imagined it would be. Get on the 'net
and find it - now. You'll thank me later. Easily my favorite
record this year.
Rock N' Roll - Ryan Adams: Apparently
Adams got sick and tired of trendmeister's like the Strokes
(going so far as to answer the Strokes debut record's title,
Is This It?, with a resounding opening track called…"This
Is It") taking 1979-1989's alt/punk movement and twisting
it into something disjointedly derivative. Here Adams goes
proudly and unabashedly derivative and eschews any opportunities
to hide it - unabashed is the key here. Sounding like everyone
he ever listened to (U2, New Order, The Smiths) and so much
like Ryan Adams, Adams makes a mockery of any notion of a
"new" rock and roll as he makes the "old"
rock and roll sound fresher than anyone else has so far.
Get Born - Jet: The most difficulty
I have on this one is in the deciding whether I prefer these
Aussie cats as an emboldened modern day T. Rex; or as the
new Bachman Turner Overdrive; or as an Oasis cover band. But
no matter which way my taste buds are leaning Get Born
always comes across as the freshest classic rock since Therapy?
Sand about suicide solutions. But if it's new it ain't yet
classic, is it? Ahh yes! And therein lies the great and forever
unsolvable rock and roll mystery. The Everything Old is New
Again Principle…still leaving us to wonder what exactly
constitutes new these days. Ah, fuck it…that's too much
thinking. This record is for shaking your own ass while grabbing
your girls! Go with it will ya?
Easy Listening - Cobra Verde: Does
John Petkovic love early era Alice Cooper? You bet he does!
And he'll even tell you that Alice Cooper was the name of
a band at one point, not some skinny comic book rock star.
And that band could rock pomp and circumstance-like with abandon.
So what happens when some kid from Cleveland who is way too
smart for the trash culture he loves dearly forms a band and
decides that low-culture can exist within an ambitious high-art
aesthetic? God grant that man the grace he deserves. Yet,
despite the intriguing mix of smarm and smarts Cobra Verde
has released their second consecutive rockroll masterpiece.
Easy Listening, as a title, aims for sarcasm but winds up
being the gospel truth when you take your listening options
into consideration these days. It starts with a "riot
in the streets" (okay, yeah, the song is titled "Riot
Industry" but you and I both know out of which side of
the mouth Petkovic sings!) and then gets truly savage as the
listening becomes easier and easier. Try it once and call
me in the morning.
Hello Starling - Josh Ritter: The
comparisons come from everywhere and cite nearly everybody
(Dylan et. al.) who has ever tried their hand at the folk/troubadour
thing. But Ritter is not one of them, he's far too literate
to even consider these little gems as mere "songs"
- they're heartbeats; some faint and distant, lost and forgotten
in history's cruel attic; some pounding like a marching band
bass drum ("Kathleen" may be the best girl-I-can't-have
song ever written). That Ritter is the best at doing what
he does is unquestionable - the beauty of it all lies in the
idea that he's the only one doing what he does. Which makes
him utterly incomparable. Not to mention that his full band
live show at Cleveland's venerable Beachland Ballroom this
year was the finest live show of the season.
stellastar* - stellastar*: I was shocked
when the band's bassist Amanda Tannen Up the Bracket: The
Libertines; confessed to me that she'd never even heard of
Galaxie 500. It just seemed a strange fact for a band that
does exactly what Dean Wareham and Co. did nearly 15 years
ago only with the energy of the Pixies and the jaundiced pop
culture eye of Psych Furs guy Richard Butler. Nevertheless,
"Somewhere Across Forever" is the best rockroll
tune of 2003 bar none. It is pop/rock in its most perfect
form. And while no band could repeat the pleasures of having
created such excellence, this full-on record made me sweat
(from dancing around like the stooped 37 year old fool I tend
to be these days) more than anything else I played this year.
Elephant - The White Stripes: While
I have become concerned with my old friend Jack's disturbing
"star" turn in the second half of this past year
(fights, the weird white make-up, car crashes, Zellwegger,
he's just a shy kid from Detroit and the spotlight has been
too bright for too long - I hope for the best in 2004, but
am a bit alarmed), I cannot deny the distinct pleasures I
derived from hearing him and Meg allowing themselves to break
down some of the walls they'd placed around their sound. The
thumping disco bass of "Seven Nation Army" announced
the arrival of a band willing to stretch farther than even
I thought they'd stretch. It's not my favorite Stripes record,
but it is by far their best.
Youth and Young Manhood - Kings of
Leon: I'd held off on this one for a long, long time this
past year - too many Allman Brothers/Skynyrd/Strokes references
for me to find agreeable. But when I finally did break down
and buy this it struck me as odd that so many smart (haha,
yeah right, smart!) rockwrites missed the patently obvious
Meat Puppets comparison. Hell, I thought they were a freaking
Puppets tribute band when I first heard them! Add a dash of
CCR boogaloochoogaloo and you have one weird swampy stew of
rockroll. Ya better have the whiskey and/or opiates ready
when you listen to this stuff.
Up the Bracket - The Libertines: This
record said more about rock and roll than anything else this
past year in that it proved that the beautiful losers in life
still have a haven in this music. While its been said often
that rockroll (I've been guilty of shitting this cliché
out myself) is best when its on the brink of disaster, it's
rare that we hear disaster itself. Up the Bracket isn't
the sound of a band walking disasters tightrope, it's the
sound of a band falling off and hitting the ground with a
beautiful THUD! The guitars are jittery (maybe because their
hands upon them are too!), the singing a blur and slur of
indictments and epitaphs, and the rhythm's go off on their
own as if there's no one else around. Somehow it all collides
and forms compelling rockroll racket. Something tells me that
this is the one record I'll keep going back to for years to
come. Does that make it this year's fave? No. Does it mean
that time may prove it to have been this year's best? Absolutely.
Love & Death - The Sun: an early
season entry that kept me coming back for more. Are they punk?
Are they straight rock? Are they weird as shit? Yes to all
of the above. Inspired Rock Dance track of the year: "Rockbox."
It's only an EP, but sometimes that's the entire rockroll
dose you'll need - especially if it's potent shit.
The Strangest Things - Longwave: Their
auspicious debut may never be usurped on my list of great
rock debut records (at or very near the top), but this one
does the band further justice as it goes deeper and darker.
Steve Schiltz remains America's most dramatic and economical
rock-poet and the band remains the country's pre-eminent artrock-guitar
band.
Enjoy Your Life Poolside - Stereo360:
I like it better when they called themselves the Iroquois
Stealth Pilots, but that is merely a matter of my own rock
snobbery. My great regret of this past year is that this record
came to me at the same time as my father's passing. I was
never able to muster up the words to spread the gospel about
how goddamn good a rock record these silly SoCal cats had
put out, but I'll be forever thankful to them for pulling
me through a rather bleak emotional time in the summer of
2003. Shad Hills remembers when rockroll and pop sweets used
to coexist as terrific tunes. Now, since no one else seems
capable of doing the dirty deed these days, he writes'em and
plays'em as good as anyone ever has. Big fat-assed melodies
strut along in their bikini bottoms to the endless rush-rush-rushing
of guitars. Hills sounds like The Pursuit of Happiness' Moe
Berg if Moe had ever had even an inkling about the girl he
really wanted. Hills got that girl, only to discover that
he loved rockroll more. The background vocals on the refrain
of "Sick of You" are an absolute inspiration (angels?)
and at least four songs are unquestionable classics ("Vasoline
Mouth", "Plastecine", "Don't Belong",
and "California" - which frames the line "I
got jumped for no reason / it wasn't safe for me anymore"
that I prefer to say "I got drunk for no reason…
it just makes me feel so much better to sing "drunk"
over "jumped"). THE summer record of this past year.
Static Transmission - Steve Wynn:
2003…It was a god-awful tough year for me personally,
and while my writing may have suffered a bit, I came to find
that it was music that constantly pulled me through. I've
always loved the sounds in my life, but have to admit to having
always wondered whether music would be there to do what I
needed it to do when I needed it to. It was an extreme comfort
for me to discover that, in the face of the worst life has
to hand out (death) not only was music there for me, but that
it was even more cathartic, more comforting, more of an emotional
base (or release, or escape for that matter) than I could
have ever imagined. If you've ever read the nonsense I write
you know that this gig is not merely an exercise in ego or
judgment for me. It is so much more than that. It is life.
It is death. It is the very fabric of which all I am is cut.
I know that about myself better than ever now. Which brings
me around to Steve Wynn and Static Transmission.
There is no way I could conceivably convey to any of you the
supreme poignancy that this disc, and in particular the gorgeous
bookend songs that open, "What Comes After", and
close, "A Fond Farewell", the record and have become
a part of my living psyche, having pulled me through the toughest
of times by answering both my questions and prayers (have
no doubt about it - that is the ultimate power that exists
in music…the reason I, or any of us, listen). I could
not possibly describe for you what this record, this music,
has done for and to me this past year…so I won't. I'll
keep the experience a personal one. I only hope that someday
the music in your life will be there for you like Steve Wynn's
was for me when you damn well need it the most.
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