Oh, Janis! Was it really so bad? Of course it was. We all remember the angst and pain that went with being a teenage girl, always feeling left out, ugly, alone, and totally misunderstood. Perhaps no song captures these feelings with such earnestness and compassion as this.

'Those of us with ravaged faces/
Lacking in the social graces/
Desperately remained at home/
Inventing lovers on the phone'

I can imagine curling up and listening to this on my record player in 1975, crying quietly so my siblings won't hear and make fun of me. Hearing someone who felt just like you must have been such a comfort, kind of like Sassy magazine was for me and my peers.

A songwriter like Ian, who speaks for the girl that doesn't fit it, is needed more than ever in today's world, where Teen Vogue is telling girls they should be spending $500 on the latest trendy skirt, doll-prostitutes like the Bratz never want for friends and boyfriends and live only to shop, and the vacant nimrods of the Hills are meant to be idols.

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Posted on August 13, 2007

See what this town can do to people when it's hot and sticky? Poor Mark Sebastian, brother of the awesome John Sebastian, was so fed up with getting dirty and gritty from his summer spent in New York he was compelled to complain about it in song.

Summer in the City, despite it's upbeat chorus, is somewhat ominous and claustrophobic with its recordings of street noises which let you feel Mark's pain at being stuck in 90 degree weather with a jackhammer outside your window. At least his nights were fun.

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Posted on July 30, 2007

There are many moments in Eddie Murphy's career and life choices that people can point to as, well, low points.
Everyone can agree that getting caught with a tranny hooker is not the best foot forward and Norbit and Pluto Nash didn't help a bit. Those can be pretty universally claimed as bad things, but then you have Axl Foley (minus part three) and Delirious and Raw, not to mention the outfits he wears in those shows–all of which can all be sited as major positives.

The gray area comes with a few other career choices. One is the money-making voice over work as a jack ass jack ass (so clever) in the Shrek movies and Party All The Time, an eighties pop ode to very bad girlfriends, which was produced by Rick James.

Most people might applaud the Shrek stuff, I do not. Maybe I'm an ogre (ha ha), but I find the movies obnoxious and while I love that Murphy got enough dough to fund personal projects like his daring portrayal of a fat ass horrid woman and some stereotypical asians, I just can't stomach the Mike Myers trilogy.

On the other hand, I love this cheesy song and probably disagree with a lot of people in saying that I don't think this attempt at pop non stardom was an embarrassment at all. But you might not respect my judgment entirely, because when to comes to that other gray area film, Boomerang – I LOVED IT!

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Posted on July 16, 2007

I guess this is one of the first “indie” songs I really got into. The term indie, however, was unknown to me for years. In Colorado we just called it alternative.

The unforgettable Spike Jonze, Jason Lee, redefining-of-cool video had a whole lot to do with my obsession with this catchy feedback rock classic. It was released on the album Dirty, which I'd probably read about in Sassy magazine, had originally featured genuinely dirty pictures of plushies doing their thing. (The people photographed were actually performance artists Bob Flanagan and Sherry Rose). Imagine my disappointment when the CD I bought from Wal Mart featured no such dirtiness. You just can't pull one over on those huge corporation guys.

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Posted on July 2, 2007

Jim has been justifiably obsessed with this first incarnation of Wham! as a hip hop act that raps about street cred and living on unemployment. George Michael's rapping inability is what you might expect, maybe even a little bit worse.

Let me put it this way, Jim can rap about as well and when he did so (to the lyric “HEY, JERK YOU WORK/This guy's got better things to do”) last week, a whole table of girls turned and stared in disgust. It was awesome to see their minds being blown. Yours will be too when you watch the video!. It's hard to pick a favorite part, maybe the white room dances, or Michael being into leather, or possibly the line “a jet black guy with a hip hi-fi”. Yikes!

BUT… the song itself is strangely enjoyable and actually sounds much like a new Scissor Sisters song minus the rapping.

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Posted on June 18, 2007