Dear Mr. Echo

In all my years of living in New York City, I had never been to Radio City Music Hall, not for a Christmas show, not for a rock show, not even for a tour when I was an intern at Rolling Stone, a mere two blocks away.  In all my years of adoring Echo & the Bunnymen, I had never seen them live.  The former finds its excuse in the old adage that New Yorkers never take advantage of their town. The latter–well, I became slightly obsessed with Echo & the Bunnymen two years after they broke up (the first time), in 1990.

During that summer, a remaindered copy of Ocean Rain (1984) made its way into my burgeoning remaindered-vinyl collection (Yes, I have a ton of worthess vinyl records, purchased in 1990, during the Great Vinyl Discontinuation).  I spent about a month listening to Ocean Rain–and very little other than Ocean Rain, except for maybe some Depeche Mode.  Like many of the albums I have obsessively listened to over the years, I still know every word to every song.  Unlike most of the albums I’ve had similar obsessions with, I don’t know a damned bit what they mean.

Ocean Rain is not about song lyrics.  If it were, then it would be a fairly nonsensical and incoherent album. From the opening lyric of “Silver” (“Swung from a chandelier / my planet sweet on a silver salver”) to the much-more-sensible, but still obscure closer, “Ocean Rain” (“Screaming from beneath the waves”), it doesn’t make much sense.  (I did find myself very proud at the time for having known what a silver salver was, having learned its definition via Barry Paris’s biography of Louise Brooks.  Second obsession of early teen years: silent film star biographies.)  No, Ocean Rain is not about song lyrics.

Ocean Rain is about exactly two things: dense, orchestral textures and Ian McCulloch’s wide-ranging voice.  His voice was warm and delightful, emerging from the speakers and surrounding you like drinking a hot toddy while wrapped in a fuzzy blanket.  And that is exactly why I had to go see Echo & the Bunnymen at Radio City Music Hall.  The show advertised Echo & the Bunnymen performing Ocean Rain with an orchestra! Of course, then I wondered: would Ian McCulloch still sound good after all these years?  He’s done lots of drinking, smoking, and other things that are not exactly conducive to vocal longevity.  And would he still have that hair?

Yes, that hair.

When we got to Radio City Music Hall, I realized with dismay that I could not answer the last of these questions.  Our seats were in the very last row of the very last mezzanine.  Ah, well.

The opening band, Glasvegas, might have been good.  I think they were; their songs seemed pretty catchy.  But there was a horrible, horrible microphone issue with the band’s bass drum, which the standing drummer played on its side.  I could hear little else, but the boom-boom-boom-boom of the steady beat.

After hearing nothin’ but bass for a good 40 minutes, I worried that the Bunnymen would similarly suffer sound problems.  Thankfully, I had nothing to worry about: their sound guy was aces.  Their first set included energetic, sometimes extended versions of their non-Ocean Rain hits, including “Bring on the Dancing Horses,” “The Cutter,” and “Rescue,” but also their much richer cover of The Doors’ “People Are Strange.”  Between songs,

I honestly don’t know if the years of boozing and whatnot have affected Ian McCulloch’s voice–there was a fair amount of reverb on his mic, which probably corrected a lot of mistakes.  But he could still sing, and his voice is still timbrally cozy.  He used his lower range a bit more, but who knows what that means?  I do highly suspect that he was drunk off his ass–his stage banter was completely incomprehensible, and it was not due to his Liverpudlian accent–by the end of the first set.

The second set, with a small orchestra (really, I’d call it a “string ensemble, plus French horn and percussion”), toured through the songs from Ocean Rain.  It was incredible for me, as a fan of the group, to see it performed with an orchestra (however small).  The strings added density and acoustic richness, harmonic fullness, and varied textures.  On the other hand, as a classical music snob, I was not exactly happy with violins’ intonation at times, and the French horns were not quite up to task (but when are they?).

In completely nonmusical aspects of the show: there was a woman, similarly in the last row, who flashed her boobs during EATB’s first set.  Seriously, what was she thinking?  That Ian McCulloch has eagle-eyed boob-o-vision?

And FYI: Radio City Music Hall has the best bathrooms in New York City.

This blog entry is for Andrea Lam, who could not be at the show last night, since she has real responsibilities, but who is the biggest Echo & the Bunnymen fan I know.

Solange: Retro-Soul from the House of Knowles

Following on yesterday’s post on disco, I’m entering the world of R&B-disco-pop, in the form of Solange Knowles.  In typical pop fashion, Solange’s new album blends a number of styles, but most notable about it is that she is taking the retro-soul-female-singer niche to the mainstream black audience.

Earlier this year, I attended the Experience Music Project’s annual Pop Conference.  At the panels on race, one topic seemed to reign supreme: the retro-soul revival.  Most of the panelists–heavy-hitting rock journalists, critics, and academics–debated this revival in terms of race, noting that it has been both produced and consumed by white people.  Mark Ronson, fancy-pants rich kid producer, Svengali to Amy Winehouse, curator of albums that sound just like those back in the day, bore the particular brunt of much of the criticism.  And I can see that–there’s always something irritating about some rich, white kid ripping off someone else’s culture, whether that’s Billburg hipsters appropriating the trucker hats and full beards of the redneck or Ronson’s faithful, yet fixed-in-time, recreations of soul music.

Nonetheless, one significant thing that was brought out in those panels was the question of audience.  The people who have bought Amy Winehouse’s music (and especially those who dig further into the retro-soul category) are generally white, middle-class kids, judging by the audiences at her shows (back before her visa was revoked).*

All of which brings me to Solange Knowles, and how she is a very different representation of the retro-soul world than either Ronson (who did work on her album) or notorious trainwreck Winehouse.  As we all know, the Knowles parents have firmly represented their clan as responsible, hard-working, Christian, and united together.  This is also an iteration of blackness that has resonated with mainstream pop audiences–black and white–since Motown, whose owner Berry Gordy, Jr. forced his young singers to take dance, manners, and elocution classes.  The Knowles family may have controlled Destiny’s Child with an iron fist in a velvet glove, but they ensured that the group was popular with a wide audience.

In the case of older sister Beyonce, the connection with that history of black pop was implicit, at least until Beyonce starred in Dream Girls.  Now, on Solange’s new album, Solangel and the Hadley Street Dreams (2008) it’s much more fully on display.  In promo photos for the album, Solange looks like a young, more exotic Diana Ross:

Solange Knowles

And the press surrounding it often notes this relationship to classic black pop, such as a review in the Boston Globe:

This is such a smartly executed, classy set of songs that’s miles away from the hoochie pop being turned out by young female R&B vocalists these days.

(Of course, that above review is equally problematic, in that it once again irritatingly associates black women with “hoochies.”)

Or this one, noting that Solange is using the album to recover a negative public image:

Steeping an album in classic Motown and other R&B sounds of the late ’60s and early ’70s may not be the wildest maneuver in 2008, but throughout Sol-Angel, there is a kind of frolicsome adventurousness that is singular and undeniable, even when Solange lets loose with the sourness and addresses her false public image.

Her video for “Sandcastle Disco” especially draws on the Motown connection, but also on the current soul revival.  It presents her in front of a white band of dudes (who look a lot like The Jam, especially the blond guy with the Weller haircut; come to think of it, this video looks a lot like several of The Jam’s videos), with two black, female backup singers.  Despite the fact that most soul groups were integrated–both Motown and F.A.M.E. studios in Muscle Shoals had black and white players–the current revival features mostly white, male instrumentalists.

While I do think that it’s a little weird that her backing band in the video is all white and Justin Timberlake’s touring band is all black, I think that Solange has something different going on than a Svengali such as Mark Ronson pulling the strings. She already did that with her schizophrenic first album.

Instead, she seems to be capitalizing on and blending the history of black pop music, from Motown to disco to latter-day R&B in ways that smartly reposition it for a bigger audience–one that includes not just hip, white college kids playing the obscurity game but also audiences who listen only to the Top 40 and who listen primarily to “urban” stations.  It may not be as faithful a recreation of soul as the Dap Kings, but it instead fuses past (Lamont Dozier!) and present (Boards of Canada! Cee-Lo Green!) forms of pop music into something sparkly, fun, and of the moment.

Of course, there are bigger questions here about class, race, and musical audience.  But for right now, I’m just going to take off the academic hat and listen to a good pop song.  Which “Sandcastle Disco” is.

*Strangely absent from these discussions:  Gnarls Barkley.

Rock History, What I Leave Out: Disco

Disco deserves a second chance.

The music is much maligned, for reasons that have as much to do with its audiences–gay men, folks of color, women, working class, John Travolta–as much as it has to do with the music itself.   Yes, some of it reeks like a camembert on a hot summer’s day.  “A Fifth of Beethoven,” which I always play in my music history classes as an example of a fascination with high culture gone horrifyingly awry (What did you just do to the Fate motive????), comes to mind in that category.

But, despite the misgivings that I have about disco, the genre offers some pretty compelling reasons musically, culturally, and historically for its inclusion in my class.  In a reverse of what I usually do with this column–since I know someone will read it and say, “Of course you don’t teach disco!  It sucks!” I’m going to go with those first, and then address why I don’t teach it.

Disco undoubtedly descends from the rock & roll tree, just as surely as punk or heavy metal, each of which I do teach (and more of the former of those in just a second).  One could easily plot out one line from soul to funk to disco.  And, hell, just listening to the growing prominence and function of the bass line–first based on an R&B bass line, then doing a repetitive thing, then adding syncopation to the repetitive thing, then doing a repetitive thing with octave ornamentation and syncopation–should be convincing enough to say that dismissing disco as simple or bad or soulless is at the very least a little off.

Most of the musical criticism of disco revolves around the production: it is not “real” music; it is manufactured.  But if you look at and actually listen to a band such as Chic, you can hear that the band is a real band in every sense of the word.  Nile Rodgers incorporates a distinct, easily identified rhythmic pattern into his guitar part; Bernard Edwards plays a melodic, syncopated, completely inspired bass line.

After listening to Chic’s “Good Times,” you probably recognize it from several contexts, up to and including samples in Grandmaster Flash’s “Grandmaster Flash and the Wheels of Steel”; Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight;” imitation in Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” and Blondie’s “Rapture”; and distillations of Edwards’ bass line in most early Duran Duran songs (of course, they were produced by Nile Rodgers).

And then there are the drums of disco, all high-hatty and crunchy, that are oh-so-tasty.  Here’s Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”:

And, finally, there are some FANTASTIC vocal performances in disco.  Donna Summer?  What would the world be without “Love to Love You?” or “I Feel Love”?   A whole lot darker and less sensual, that’s what.  And what about Labelle?  Here’s some “Lady Marmalade” for you (also–listen to that hi-hat!  And check out those costumes!):

But these are not the things that most people talk about when they complain that disco sucks.  No, people think of the really awful disco songs, such as the ouvre of the falsetto-favoring Bee Gees, or the highly produced Village People.  So my question is, why is disco remembered for its shittiest, and not for its best?

Back in the heyday of disco, aka the late 1970s, the music was favored by certain audiences mentioned above, who do not and did not fit the mold of “what rock critics like.”  Reebee Garofalo, a pop music scholar, has argued that disco’s audiences brought out the worst in some people.  Homophobia, for example, almost certainly played a part in the dismissal of disco as “real music;” racism played another; and then there’s sexism, since almost all the vocal performers of disco were black women.

When I think about the big “disco sucks rally” in Chicago, I think of Nazi book burnings.  So does Nile Rodgers. At that rally, on July 12, 1979, people destroyed more than 10,000 disco records.  There’s something completely disturbing about hating something so much that you can’t just turn off the radio, but have to actively, literally blow it up in center field.  It’s not just about the music at that point.

I have no shortage of what I could say about disco, particularly as a gender and sexualities scholar.  And I think that disco influenced hip-hop, new wave, and even the recent resurgence of post-post-punk/dance-punk bands that flourished in the early 2000s.  So why do I leave it out?

I mostly leave disco out because I have other battles to fight, and I try to include a balance of “things the kids will like” with “things the kids really ought to know before leaving this class.”  In the beginning, it’s all about getting them to understand things like the Great Migration’s effects on everything from Chicago blues to Motown.  At the point in the semester where disco arrives, I usually have a big wave of resistance from the majority when I expose them to punk.  While you’d think that they would be open to it, I’ve yet to have a class that embraced punk rock.  Or even shook hands with it, on the whole.  So, putting disco into the mix at that time would be a fine dance indeed.  Perhaps even the “Last Dance.”  And I’m pretty sure I would not feel love.

Rock History, What I Leave Out: Queen

Queen is just too diverse musically to talk about in a rock class.

OK, I know that sounds wrong, and that it sounds like I’m saying that rock music in general is not musically diverse.  That is not what I mean at all.  And still, you’d think this wouldn’t be too hard to get around.  After all, I teach other musically diverse bands, such as the Beatles, in addition to those who continually mine the same territory *cough*Rolling Stones*cough*.

I also know that one could counter with a standard, “But you teach a classical music class, too!  How do you deal with being too diverse musically there?”  The answer is: I often don’t face that problem, since the class–again, a survey–frequently focuses on one person or one example to represent entire style periods and ends up, by necessity, being even more reductive about musical style and eras than my rock class.   But that’s beside the point.  We’re talking about Queen here.

Freddie Mercury was a terrific frontman, with the courage to wear sparkly unitards and total moustache-leatherman getups in front of audiences who would probably have been less comfortable meeting a gay man in real life.  He could work an audience, they say.  Also, did you know he was Indian?  And Brian May is close to my heart, if just for the fact that he finally got his PhD in astrophysics some 30 years after having begun his dissertation.

Queen has also sold an ungodly amount of records, influenced countless bands in countless genres, and provided the soundtrack for the single best scene involving Wayne and Garth and their friends.  And talking about Queen could provide a template for understanding the meaning of “camp,” which the band illustrates better in its music and Mercury’s visual style and onstage/audience interaction and so on and so forth.  And lord knows college students often need a healthy introduction to camp.  For that alone, they are entirely worthy of including in the history of rock and roll.

But finding that core topic around which one focuses a class is difficult with Queen.  With the Beatles, our above musically diverse example, we can trace the development of rock and roll, not as something necessarily linear, but at least logical and timely: from their beginnings as a “guitar band” with tight vocal harmonies to a band influenced by psychedelia to a band drifting apart, their story fits a standard and understandable narrative of the 1960s.  It may not be in the totally “true” story of the Beatles, but it enables students to get a larger picture of how popular music developed along with major historical events.

Queen’s musical diversity, on the other hand, is more about bricolage, or the piling up of many different musical styles, often within the same song.  Think about “Bohemian Rhapsody,” that signature song.  It’s got operatic choruses, rock riffs, extended piano sections… and I want to analyze it all at a level that will leave students glaring at me for having ruined a perfectly decent song, since it will take the entire hour and a half to get through it.

Most of Queen’s music is that way.  It’s interesting because it doesn’t fit a standard narrative, but that also makes it harder to explain to a group of students whose only knowledge of the band is, at best, some exposure to Queen being performed at sporting events.  And it’s also more difficult for them, since most of them have very little understanding of musical concepts, to understand high-level musical discussions.  This is a freshman level class, after all.

I would like to teach them, though, in order to find the right tone to introduce the interesting musical aspects of Queen and to reconcile them with the other issue above, camp.  While there’s a lot of Velveeta involved in Queen’s music, I don’t want to make it seem like I’m being a jerk and saying that’s all there is, and teaching them would allow me to explore that knife’s edge of teaching.

At any rate, I will leave you with something completely cheesy and in the spirit of camp: Anton Corbijn as Freddie Mercury:

P.S.  It’s Anton Corbijn week at Bad Cover Version!  Tomorrow’s exciting post will feature a thorough examination of why I think he’s bad luck for the bands he’s photographed.

Bad Cover Version’s Bad Cover Versions

Today was a busy day.  And it looks like all Fridays are going to be that way from now on.  Thus, the introduction of a new series on the blog: Bad Cover Version’s Bad Cover Versions!  It will feature, rather obviously, some of the worst rip-offs, remakes, and regurgitations of fine pop tunes.

Bad Cover Version’s Bad Cover Versions #1: Pat Boone’s “Ain’t That a Shame” (1955)

Boone is one of the worst offenders in pop history; he may have, ironically, helped integrate music.  Back in 1955, Pat Boone scored a big hit covering Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That a Shame,” which had gone to #1 on the R&B charts.  Of course, songs that had gone to #1 on the R&B charts probably hadn’t done so on the pop charts, which largly played white music to white audiences.

According to rock music history apocrypha, Boone’s producers had to push the uptight, stuffy Columbia University alum into singing the song, with its grammatically incorrect title.  The result was a forced, uptight, restrained, overly reverbed, swingless version that had neither rhythm nor blues.  In short, it was perfect for a white, middle-class audience.

The song went to #1 in the pop charts, thus justifiably pissing off Fats Domino’s co-writer Dave Bartholemew for all eternity.  Boone would continue, throughout the 1950s, to shamelessly record songs that black artists had made popular with black audiences, including Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” and “Long Tall Sally,” and the Orioles’ “It’s Too Soon To Know.”  And he wasn’t doing it out of homage, but out of opportunity:  Boone would typically record the song a few weeks after the black artists reached the chart.  Sometimes, as in the case of “Tutti Frutti,” the songs would be on the charts at the same time.

Boone’s bowlderized versions had immediate and great success, but they are, thankfully, not the versions that we as a culture remember.  When Alan Freed (yes, of the payola scandal) began playing original artists instead of Pat Boone versions, teenagers began to demand the originals, if just to piss off their parents, who were much more likely to look kindly upon that nice Boone boy and less kindly upon that cross-dressing weirdo, Little Richard.  While Boone’s opportunism did earn him a good deal of cash, he was, as they say, on the wrong side of history.

Future suggestions for Bad Cover Version’s Bad Cover Versions?  Email ekkeenan at gmail dot com!  Or send me a tweet on Twitter.

Anger Is an Energy, but Sometimes I Have Hope

I have not been so angry at any time in recent memory as I am right now after Sarah Palin’s speech last night.  But I’m in no mood to be articulate about that anger, and I don’t even think that if I were in the mood I could, at this point, be articulate.  And I am tired–so tired–of being this angry about politics, of listening to angry political music to abate my angry political disappointments.

So, I am reminding myself not only of the deep connection between popular music and politics, but also of the great songs that are not jingoistic or knee-jerk political and that are about what makes this country great.  Here are five classics of hope.  And I do not mean “hope” in an instant gratification kind of way, but in a long-term, someday-this-will-be-fixed kind of way.

1. “A Change is Gonna Come.”  Sam Cooke (but I also like the Otis Redding cover… certainly not a bad cover version!).  One of the most beautiful songs of the Civil Rights era, supposedly inspired by #4 in this list.  Prior to this song, Cooke wrote ballads and pop songs; after, he turned towards Civil Rights activism.

2.  “People Get Ready.”  The Impressions.  Uses religious imagery in a way that does not make me automatically shout, “Separation of church & state!”  Mostly because it’s not saying, “God is going to smite you!” but rather, “We will be delivered from this suffering.”

3. “We Shall Overcome.” Traditional, but popularized by Pete Seeger, who credits Guy Carawan (my SF roommate Heather’s dad!) with the nice little rhythmic twist in the song.  Seeger also added a verse to the song.

4. “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Bob Dylan (but performed by Peter, Paul, and Mary).  Sure, it might rip off the African-American spiritual “No More Auction Block for Me,” but it’s one of those songs that presents Bob Dylan at his best, writing in poetic, yet understandable language.  It’s at once depressing–because the answer seems to be “forever,” but also suggestive that it’s obvious to fix the problems at hand.

5. “Free Your Mind (And Your Ass Will Follow).” Funkadelic.  Yes, it’s basically a very long, very high song with no clear political message.  But, you know, freeing your mind is pretty damned important.

Notably, all these songs are from no later than the 1960s.  I tried very hard to include more recent music, but most of the political stuff from my lifetime seems too damned angry, not as hopeful.  And I was really hoping (ha!) that this election could be about hope, and not a bunch of dishonest mud-slinging.  And so I try to think of last week, rather than this one, and think, “A Change is Gonna Come.”  Someday.

P.S.  My favorite jingoistic American song?  “Round & Round Hitler’s Grave,” the Almanac Singers.

Rock History, What I Leave Out: Alanis Morissette

Alanis Morissette actually makes it into the syllabus every semester, but somehow she’s the first cut when I get behind, after showing too much of Gimme Shelter or Woodstock.  I then have to figure out what to cut, and Alanis inevitably is the first to go.

I have often wondered why I do so, since I think that she’s incredibly important in the revival of the female singer-songwriter in the mid 1990s.  Sure, you might argue that Tori Amos is a more interesting choice musically, or that she’d been doing it a lot longer than Morissette.  Or maybe you could say that Sarah McLachlan is more representative of a “singer-songwriter” sound.  Or maybe you want to see an  “indie” artist, such as Ani DiFranco, included in the syllabus, for her spirit and her contributions to a certain kind of punk-folk guitar playing.  Or maybe you’re into Liz Phair.  Or maybe you don’t like female singer-songwriters at all, in which case you’re like most of the boys in my rock & roll class.

But Alanis Morissette’s position is a little different than all of these, since she seemingly appeared out of nowhere (OK, Canada), and had the biggest selling debut album of any woman, ever, internationally.  And for that, I think she wins out, but she’s also worth talking about for other reasons.

For example, “You Oughta Know,” Morissette’s first single from Jagged Little Pill (1995), is blazingly autobiographical in its lyrics (or at least it’s meant for us to think so).  The lyrics are explicit in both meanings of the word–sexual and clear.  From the notoriously skanky line about going down on the dude in the theater, to the fact that the woman replacing her was “an older version of me” (rather than something more predictable, but still works, like “another version of me”), they set forth a portrait of an extremely bitter breakup.

But the lyrics, female subjectivity and all, are not what made Morissette’s debut song on her first international album the ginormous hit that it was.  No, it was Morissette’s voice, which was not at all what one would have expected from a former Nickolodeon star and Canadian teen pop princess: yelpy, growly, howly, at times filled with air, at times strategically double tracked for extra power and wickedness, it was a complex and confusing instrument of anger, the voice of a woman scorned.  Just as important and not to be lost in this discussion of lyrical content, it was the musical setting: like many rock songs of the time, it begins with relatively sparse instrumentation and a quiet dynamic and builds gradually with an extended crescendo to the chorus.  Nirvana (or the Pixies), anyone?

I would love to teach a class just on that idea alone: that, for all the hype about the “angry young women” in rock music, it was about damned time that they were there, not forced into the girly confines of acoustic guitar-playing or piano banging.  That, more than just equating the female singer-songwriter with feelings and emotion associated with cliches of womanhood, women like Morissette were taking on anger, that last bastion of maleness that always already characterized masculinity in rock music.

But then, the rest of the album–also megahits–moved away from that picture.  “Ironic” and “Hand in My Pocket” and “Head Over Feet” and “You Learn” gave an entirely different view of Alanis Morissette’s music.  It was darned optimistic, and at times charming, but at others seemed to be an apology for the brute force of “You Oughta Know.”  As in, you oughta know that I’m not really like that, see, I’m nice, and winning and a good girl.  And, while I don’t want to imply that one cannot both be angry and a good girl, or have many facets to one’s identity, I also don’t feel comfortable with teaching the wacky-free-spirit vibe, either.

In the end, I just don’t know how to reconcile Alanis Morissette’s whimsical side with her angry one in a way that can be encapsulated in an hour and a half class.  In fact, I think that I would find that to be the same problem with all of the women I mentioned above from the 1990s.  It’s a lot easier, for example, to talk about Green Day as the template for suburban punk and teen anomie in the mid-1990s than it is to talk about women singer-songwriters, whose lyrics, recording styles, instrument choices, etc., force a listener to consider autobiography and subjectivity a little too much.

Don’t get me wrong, female subjectivity is important–not to mention rare–in rock music.  It is frequently brought up as the salient characteristic of the female singer-songwriter, a gender-based genre that often straddles the line between rock music and pop, both stylistically and in terms of radio play (often losing out on both ends for that one).  But why does the question of subjectivity really only come up with women?   Is it because a male subjectivity is just assumed most of the time?  (Silly question.)

So, since I don’t like to make it seem like the only value for these women is a female subjectivity–a very specific white, middle-class, youthful subjectivity, at that–I continue to search for another paradigm under which to describe their contributions to pop music.  While I do think they are important, I’m not sure it’s an hour-and-a-half, easily encapsulated kind of important.  It might just be one of those Rock 202 discussions, rather than Rock 101.

Tune in next week, for the next installment of “Rock History, What I Leave Out”: Queen!

Review: Black Kids’ “I’m Not Gonna Teach Him How to Dance With You”

Ah, yes, this song’s been floating around for a while now, and former Columbia ethnomusicology student Christian Hoard pegged the band as “one to watch” last November.  But this week “I’m Not Gonna Teach Him How to Dance With You” is the FREE single on Apple’s iTunes (Secret reason I reviewed Jaguar Love’s EP and not the whole album? It was $1.99 in the used bin), and I’m sick and can’t bother with much more than a review of a single.

The obvious touchstone for the Black Kids is the Cure–from the fondness for the vocable “do” to the airy, heavily layered, symphonic synthesizers to the slightly morose lyrics about unhappiness with a girl to the Robert-Smith-esque timbral qualities of Reggie Youngblood’s voice.  We all know this (though apparently the kids reviewing it on iTunes don’t–out of the 500 or so reviews, only about ten seemed to recognize the Cure.  Others listed Arcade Fire, The Hives, The Killers, Gwen Stefani, and Bloc Party as reference points.  Learn your rock history, kids!).

However, I’m irritated with the constant assertion that the Black Kids are another “retro ’80s” band.  The musical style that the band apes dates from the Cure’s height of popularity, which was not in the 1980s but in the early 1990s.  In particular, the Black Kids draw on the sounds of the Cure’s 1992 album, Wish, which contains some of the bands poppiest, as well as most depressing, songs (Anyone else notice that the protagonist of “Friday, I’m in Love” is miserable six days a week?).

The Cure’s musical style is undoubtedly ripe to be imitated: the retro ’80s post-punk movement is past its prime, Bruce Springsteen is currently en vogue, and it’s not surprising to me that the Black Kids are looking to early ’90s Cure these days.  None of this nostalgia is bad in itself, as long as it serves to push music forward while simultaneously looking back.

As for the Black Kids’ “I’m Not Gonna Teach Him How to Dance With You” itself: The song’s lyrics are slightly silly, about dancing with a girl (with Reggie Youngblood referring to himself also as having been “a little girl”) he likes and not wanting to give her boyfriend tips.  It’s cute, but hardly substantial.

But the band executes the song with such exuberance, especially through the cheerleader-esque backing vocals from Ali Youngblood and Dawn Watley, that the teen angst of the lyric seems an entirely believable situation.  A guy likes the unattainable girl and tries, like Ducky’s lip sync to Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness” in Pretty in Pink, to continue dancing with sweet, sweet moves though his heart is breaking and she’s probably going out with a guy named Blaine.

Though synths dominate the sound of the Black Kids, its spunky danceable quality bursts forth in the tight, machine-like pattern in the drums: crisp, clean, not much bleed in the kit, it could easily be isolated in some parts for an old-school breakbeat.  Extended remix, anyone?

Rock History, What I Leave Out: David Bowie

Among the folks I leave out, David Bowie ranks highest in student requests.  Once I get a few semesters under my belt, get tired of teaching the same folks, and decide to switch things up, I’m sure I’ll swap him in, like a relief pitcher.

For now, though, I have several reasons to keep David Bowie on the alternate list.  First, his musical contributions are not as significant as one might think.  I can already hear complaints to this assertion, but hear me out:  Bowie’s best works contain a pastiche of musical styles, simultaneously referencing different eras and genres.  Aside from his Berlin work with Brian Eno, which helped to establish Eno as one of the best producers ever, much of this work is distinctly retro musically, while forward-looking in lyrics and performance.

Second, His adoption of different musical styles and personae throughout the years–Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke, Berlin-Brian Eno-produced Bowie, elder statesman of alternative rock–doesn’t lend itself to easy characterization at a Rock 101 level.  But, at the same time, I already cover some bands that are doing similar things at the same time, though we don’t always think of them as being in the same realm as Bowie: gender bending, genre shifting, and issues of the border between art and pop also appeared in the music and performance of Led Zeppelin; George Clinton and P-Funk adopted fully-formed crazy spacemen characters at the same time, and their characters–Funk Messiahs from outer space–come with the benefit of acting as metaphors to address race in a post-Civil Rights Movement landscape.

Third–and this is the least valid reason, but I can’t change it–the class I teach falls into the category of “Intercultural North America.”  Its description focuses on rock & roll as an American form.  Thus, though I can of course cover some non-North American acts, my geographical focus tends to be the United States.  (Oh, poor Canada and Mexico!  I neglect you, too!  For there will be no Brian Adams or Corey Hart or even Alanis Morissette* in my course.  Or Los Tigres del Norte.)

Conversely, I can make a lot of arguments for including him when I do.  Although he’s never been as famous in the United States as he has in the UK, one could argue that no one else has been a greater influence on the visual and performative in rock music–on either side of the Atlantic–since 1970. Bowie’s gender-bending, super-weirdo-to-this-day Ziggy Stardust persona reinfused the overly “authentic” rock and roll of the late 1960s and early 1970s with a sense of showmanship.

Bowie’s contribution in terms of sexuality can’t be underestimated, either.  In a time when people actually thought that Freddie Mercury was straight,** Bowie declared his bisexuality.  Whether or not he really was/is whatever, this move, like Mercury’s often-overlooked declaration, blurred the edges of sexuality in rock performance.  This not only called into question the assumed heterosexuality of rock music as a genre, but also placed focus on how the masculinity that so many bands presented as “authentic” and “natural” was just as artificial and just as much of a performance.  On that topic, alone, we could probably spend a semester.

*Alanis Morisette will be the topic of my next “Rock History, What I Leave Out,” next Tuesday!

**Though Freddie Mercury told the NME he was gay in 1974, his audience often disregarded and remained unaware of his homosexuality.  One of his more-famous, oft-repeated quotes was, “I’m as gay as a daffodil, my dear!”

Rock History, What I Leave Out: An Introduction

In my non-blogging life, I teach a semester-long course on the history of rock & roll. Somewhere in the middle of the first semester teaching it, I realized I should have a disclaimer presented on the first day of class, written in bold letters:  While many, many bands are worth studying, they do not all fit into a semester long course.

The realization that they will not learn about their favorite band (even though they already know a lot about them) often comes as a shock to students, since what they like tends to be the center of their musical universe, not a moon circling a planet in a distant solar system in a galaxy far, far away.  What, you don’t teach about Christian metal?  No class on Jane’s Addiction?  Why can’t we learn about ‘80s hair bands, like Ratt and Poison?  That would be so cool!

But, even discounting the peripheral bands that students make the center of their lives, I inevitably have to leave important people, bands, and even entire genres out. One semester means roughly 24 classes, an hour and a half each.  If I want to make the class a rock & roll history course and connect the music to the social events of the day, i.e., why it is important to study rock & roll in the first place, then I have to talk about things other than just the music itself.  Otherwise, students make the same mistake that the Republican campaign did in 1984, overlooking the sense of bitter, bitter irony in Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.”  Or they go through life not knowing who Medgar Evers or James Meredith were, and that makes me sad, because it’s pretty easy to listen to 1960s folk music in order to learn who those people were (even if some of the folk is a little overly didactic).

And, because a lot of my students don’t come to class armed with a knowledge of cultural history, I spend a lot of time on things that seem pretty simple to me, like learning that the shit economy in the early 1990s was part of seeing grunge (and Riot Grrrl, though that’s one of the things I don’t talk about) as related to Generation X.  Or that soul music is integrally connected to the Civil Rights movement.  Or that heavy metal owes a lot to the blues, but also a lot to the 1960s counterculture.  Or that punk is just one iteration of the frustration with the death of the counterculture.

Also, because many of them don’t come to class armed with a knowledge of pop music history—and that’s OK, because that’s what the class is, and I don’t expect a great background in it—I have to start with the basics.  I want everyone in my class to leave it being excited about music, but, just as importantly, able to talk intelligently about it with others, and this requires depth (and sometimes repetition).  And thus I have to leave more out.

So, as part of an ongoing series, I’m going to write about the subjects, artists, and genres I typically have to leave out.  These are all things that I consistently want to have time to teach about, but don’t get to because I want my students to have an understanding of the broad strokes of pop music writ large in history.  While the things I leave out are dessert, a tasty, valuable dessert, the things I teach are higher in nutrients—and still quite tasty.

The first artist of “Rock History, What I Leave Out” will be David Bowie.  So, come back on Tuesday to see my reasons for excluding a man I think is brilliant!