Category Archives: youtube song

Night Music: Smashing Pumpkins, “Bullet with Butterfly Wings”

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Ok. I’m just going to say it. This video is super awful and super powerful, but the song is mostly just powerful.

In other words, the video lowers the median score, unfairly I think. It’s a song!

Dynamics, explosive language, heavy guitars and propulsive rhythm, lots of bottom as it were, and some swing, too. The Pumpkins were feeling it, they weren’t machines, not by half.

So much of our appreciation and hatred for tunes comes from context. Smashing Pumpkins’ legacy has been colored by the declines of the band’s personalities, especially head genius Billy Corgan (who loves cats). But sorry, this isn’t fair! He loves cats! And dogs, too. We need to be fresh about these canards that are too easy.

As an antidote, here is this. I make no claim about the character of the artists, but the fact that they made this song (not the video) is worthy of massive respect.

After that, let God sort them out.

Breakfast Blend: Looking Good

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The whole issue of physical shape and attraction is fraught. Folks have issues with weight, some that matters (health!) and some that doesn’t (if that silicon barbie doll is what you’re in to, go ahead and move along). In any case, this tune is a hit these days, though I didn’t know who Meghan Trainor was until tonight. She’s got a visual presentation like Taylor Swift, and an accent like Iggy Azalea, and a shtick that is likely to have legs. Plus booty.

My first connection was that Johnny Soul calypso hit from 1963, If you wanna be happy.

But Natty Dread with Sly and Robbie and the Mad Scientist solved this in 1981. No?

Afternoon Snack: Smokey Robinson, “Ooh Baby Baby,” & Captain Beefheart, “I’m Glad”

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Today I brought my Rickenbacker along to my guitar lesson (as opposed to my bass) just because I felt like playing some guitar, and Steve pulled up this wonderful Captain Beefheart cut, I’m Glad from the album  Safe as Milk.

I have that disc, as well as the seminal Trout Mask Replica, though I have not listened to either of them in years, so I sort of forgot about them. We were working on the arpeggios within the cool progression (played here by Ry Cooder) and at one moment, I stopped dead, looked at Steve, and said, “this is Ooh Baby Baby,” and Steve quickly nodded and said, “yeah, I couldn’t put my finger on it.”

Both are great, and different in their own way, but the crossover is unmistakable; however, you be the judge.

And now the inimitable Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.

Half Time: Katy Perry!

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I like some pop music, and Katy Perry is the most fun of today’s pop stars. She is politely offcolor, rebelling from religious parents, and has steered herself an amazingly straight line to popular stardom, from the novelty hit I Kissed a Girl to the singing at half time at the Super Bowl. I’m sure that’s going to be murky and awful, especially because the long in the tooth Lenny Kravitz is the guest artist (taking the lead vocal on I Kissed a Girl, by the way), but that shouldn’t obscure the awful corporate fun of at least three Katy songs (and videos).

Novelty dance decadence cheese.

Passionate overstatement, her best song.

Crazy alien sex metaphors. Or is it literal?

All of this music is terrible, terribly popular and I just watched the halftime show and it was as murky and dismal as expected. All I can say is, like the NFL, please forgive me.

Breakfast Blend: Hot for Teacher

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I came across this survey of different songs with the same name recorded by different bands, and the description of a Boston band who released one album in 1974 seemed intriguing. Their album was called Teenage Suicide and their one sort-of hit was called Hot for Teacher. Descriptions of them on the internet rank them as the legendary Boston missing link between glam and punk. You be the judge.

Van Halen, of course, had the better Hot for Teacher song, some years later, and the better video, too.

Lunch Break: Midnight Oil, “Stars of Warburton”

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I could have sworn I posted something on Midnight Oil before, but a search of the archives suggested otherwise.

If you know Midnight Oil at all, it is from their hit Beds are Burning from the Diesel and Dust disc.

That song was ok, in my opinion, but did not do a lot to make me a fan of the band. Although, I heard through circles that Midnight Oil had honed their skills by playing a shitload of bar dates for years, and as a result were a really hot live act.

So, when they toured on top of Blue Sky Mine, I think in 1990, I bought the disc and got tickets to see them at the Greek Theater in Berkeley, a nice outdoor venue (with, if memory serves, Hunter and Collector).

They were indeed one hell of a tight band, and put on a terrific show, holding their notch of the notion that they were a much better live band than studio one.

On the heels of Blue Sky Mine, came their live disc, Scream in Blue which is a killer set and displays just what a crisp live act the band was (they disbanded in 2003).

Part of what made the band interesting, too, was their lead singer Peter Garrett, an environmentalist and artist who had quite a life as a politician in Australia, as well as that of a rocker.

This song, Stars of Warburton, is subtle in that it is not really a cranked-out song in tempo, but it drives and builds and is just so well executed that it is sick.  Although, also note that this particular version is not from Scream in Blue. I chose it because it at least flashes on pics of the band and the outback and environment that the band wrote about (Garrett once said it would be silly for them to do love songs, as that just wasn’t what they did).

Check it out. The song–and album–really smoke.