Archive 2016

THE BEST AND WORST IN ENTERTAINMENT FOR 2016

THE BEST

FAVORITE ALBUMS

Jimmy Eat World- Integrity Blues (see review)

Green Day- Revolution Radio (see review)

The I Don’t Cares- Wild Stab: Former Replacements front man, Paul Westerberg, has been hit or miss over the years with his solo projects.  Later releases sounded sloppy and unpolished in many respects.  His collaboration this year with Juliana Hatfield as the I Don’t Cares is the best Westerberg has sounded in many years.  This album is reminiscent of Westerberg’s early solo albums like 14 Songs and Eventually and later Replacements albums, like All Shook Down.

Jane Siberry- Angels Bend Closer:  Some of the songs on this album are a little weird lyrically.  However, Siberry sings like an angel.  The ballads such as “Anytime”, “Positively Beautiful”, and “Mama Hereby” make the album a stand out.

Vandaveer- The Wild Mercury: An impressive, regional favorite.

TOO MANY GOODBYES

2016 was a year we lost too many great artists in particular, David Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, and George Michael.  However, I rediscovered many of the great works by these artists.  After Bowie and Prince’s deaths, Amazon was sold out of most of their back catalog, which shows that many others had a period of rediscovery.  Bowie left us with the wonderful album, Black Star.  “Lazarus” and its video, were hauntingly beautiful and fitting farewell to Bowie.  I went back and listened to Prince’s Parade album and “Sometimes It Snows in April” was a fitting tribute to the purple one.  “Hallelujah” will always be Leonard Cohen’s home run and the many covers of this song are his tribute.

BEST CONCERT

This definitely goes to Greg Dulli for his show in Cincinnati on 3/17/16.  Dulli pulled a great selection from his back catalog plus added some great covers.  When there was a mini Afghan Whigs reunion during the encore and new material was played the show was over the top.  Plus, meeting Dulli after the shows for the first time in over 20 years was personal highlight for me.

I also give an honorable mention to the Gin Blossoms for their appearance on 9/9/16 at the Christ the King Oktoberfest.  It never ceases to amaze me the talent that a Catholic church is able to book for their Oktoberfest.  It had been many years since the last time I saw the Gin Blossoms but I enjoyed hearing their songs live again.  I was impressed at how well their newer independent work stands up with the songs from their “hits” period.  I wish as many people were listening to these songs as “Hey Jealousy”.  I have had fun rediscovering and discovering the Gin Blossoms since this show.  I also would like to give a shout out to Rebel Without a Cause who opened the show.  When you cover the Replacements’ “Can’t Hardly Wait”, complete with the horns section, you have proven that you are a step above the average cover band.

BEST REISSUE

R.E.M.- Out of Time: Out of Time was the album that made me an R.E.M. fan.  R.E.M. has released reissues before but none as complete as this.  The set is beautifully packaged with artwork and photographs from the time.  The complete set has three CDs: the album remastered, the demos, and one of the few concerts from this period, plus a Blu Ray DVD of the music and promotional videos for the album.  It a complete set and treasure for fans (read my blog here about Out of Time).

BEST MUSIC MOVIES

Sing Street- The plot was simple, a teenager with family problems starts a band to impress a girl.  What sets the movie apart was its sweetness.  Set in the 1980’s, it played well on the nostalgia of new wave and a time when MTV ruled.  I also liked Popstar Never Stop Never Stopping.  The movie was comedian Andy Samburg’s parody of the rise and unraveling of a boy band.  It was over the top but hilarious.

BEST COVER SONGS

Michael Stipe came out of retirement to pay tribute to David Bowie when he sang “The Man Who Sold the World” on Jimmy Fallon’s show.  Backed only by a piano, it was sparely beautiful.  I am not a huge fan on Disturbed but I love their cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence”.  When they performed on Conan O’Brien’s show backed by a strings section, they showed they had more depth than the typical heavy metal band.  

BEST TV BREAKOUT

I had a crush on Andrew McCarthy when I was teenager.  I have come to realize recently that I think McCarthy is in many ways a better writer than he is an actor.  That changed when I saw him on the cancelled too soon, The Family.  McCarthy played a pedophile wrongly accused of murdering a teenage boy.  McCarthy took a risk and didn’t go the safe route with this role.  His portrayal of Hank was creepy and sympathetic at the same time.  This was a career defining role for McCarthy. 

THE WORST

WORST CONCERT

Phillip Phillips in Cincinnati 7/7/16.  I had the misfortune of seeing Phillips when he played with Matt Nathanson.  I had to sit through his set because Matt Nathanson's meet and greet was after his set.  Phillips had no stage presence and played drawn out extended jams of his mediocre songs.  He then did the sacrilege of covering Jimi Hendrix.  He was a living example of everything that was wrong with American Idol. 

WORST MUSIC TV SHOW

Vinyl-  This show had the pedigree to be a great show.  It had Mick Jagger and Martin Scorsese as creators.  It was suppose to be about the 1970’s New York music scene.  What we got instead were a bunch of foul mouthed, strung out on drugs, unlikeable characters with little emphasis on the music.  What a disappointment.  I also give a dishonorable mention to Roadies.  I had high hopes for   Cameron Crowe’s drama about the roadies. I really wanted to like the show. It had some good moments but was rather dull. Cameron Crowe was not able to recreate another Almost Famous with Roadies,

REVIEW: JIMMY EAT WORLD- INTEGRITY BLUES (November)

With their new album, Integrity Blues, Jimmy Eat World returns to form.  Though their 2001 album, Bleed American, is their most popular and a great album, thanks to the hit single, “The Middle”, it was their 1999 album, Clarity, which is their masterpiece.   Clarity was the perfect balance of achingly beautiful ballads (“Table for Glasses”, “A Sunday”, “Ten”, “Just Watch the Fireworks”, and “For Me This is Heaven”), straight up rockers (“Your New Aesthetic”), and experimental with one song clocking in at over 16 minutes (“Goodbye Sky Harbor”).  Jimmy Eat World has had several great albums but seemed to have peaked out with 2007’s Chase This Light, with later albums being hit or miss. Integrity Blues is the best Jimmy Eat World has sounded since Bleed American and is structured very much like Clarity.

The first single, “Sure and Certain”, is a classic, listener friendly rocker with a darker chorus “Sure and certain.  Wander til we’re old.  Lost and lurking.  Wonder til we’re cold”.  “Get It Right” is a driving rocker that reminds me a lot of “Your New Aesthetic” from Clarity.  What sets Integrity Blues apart comes in the second half of the album (or for vinyl listeners, the second side).  “You Are Free” is an uplifting song for self acceptance where the front man, Jim Adkins, sings “You are free to be who you want, what you need,… baby you are free”.  “The End is Beautiful” is one of the most achingly beautiful ballads I have heard.  A mature break up song  about realizing that the end of a relationship can be more freeing than staying in a bad relationship, Adkins observes “You see the problem was us, tried to bend love to the picture we had in our heads” but has freeing closure as he sings “it doesn’t have to hurt anymore” in the chorus.  The haunting title track is probably the most experimental the band has been, another song for self acceptance even in times of doubt where Adkins sings “I wish I could hold.  I wish I could touch.  But a fool just wants and wants and wants and wants.  It’s all what you do when no one is there.  It’s all what you do when no one cares” over a lonely horn arrangement.  The album closes with the epic, 6+ minutes, “Pol Roger”.  In the song, the narrator spends his birthday on a beach alone and his room is named “Pol Roger”.  He is content with his solitude as he sings he is “alone but not lonely”.  The song has great narrative and is reminiscent of the great Jimmy Eat World epic songs from Clarity, like “Just Watch the Fireworks” and “Goodbye Sky Harbor”.

Integrity Blues takes what Jimmy Eat World has done best in the past while experimenting with new sounds.  The lyrics affect the listener emotionally by being uplifting and sad at the same time.  The album showcases what the band did well in the past while being new and fresh.  

REVIEW: GREEN DAY- REVOLUTION RADIO (November)

Revolution Radio is the first release from Green Day since their release of a trio of albums, Uno, Dos, and Tre in 2012.  Since 2004, Green Day went for the big, ambitious efforts in their album releases, whether it be the concept rock operas of 2004’s American Idiot and 2009’s 21st Century Breakdown or releasing three albums in one year.  Revolution Radio is a straight rock album that doesn’t rely on a high concept.  However, while early Green Day albums seemed to be an anthem for the slacker, Revolution Radio still has more mature songwriting and a keen eye for contemporary society and politics that Green Day first explored on American Idiot.

The album opens with “Somewhere Now”, which starts as a quiet, acoustic personal reflection where front man, Billie Joe Armstrong, laments “I’m running late to somewhere now that I don’t want to be” and rages to a big rocker call to activism, “Here goes nothing when there’s nothing to lose”.  On the first single, “Bang Bang”, Armstrong takes on the voice of a mass shooter and the song examines the media’s almost glamorization of mass violence.  The next two songs are commentaries against violence in our society and call for activism.  On the title track, Armstrong rages “Scream!  With your hands up in the sky, like you want to testify for the life that’s been deleted”.  On “Say Goodbye” , Armstrong laments “violence on the rise, like a bullet in the sky”.  “Still Breathing” is a great rocker where Armstrong praises the survivors in society, such as the “solider coming home for the first time”,  “the junkie tying off for the last time”, “a son that was raised without a father” , and “a mother barely keeping it together”.  With the division in the US, especially surrounding the recent election, “Trouble Times” is timely and relevant where Armstrong observes “what part of history have we learned, when it’s repeated.  Some things we’ll never overcome if we don’t seek it”.   The band doesn’t completely abandon the rock opera format , as evident by “Forever Now”, an epic song in three movements that  is reminiscent of “Jesus of Suburbia” from American Idiot .  The album closes with “Ordinary World”, a simple acoustic ballad where Armstrong observes “Baby, I don’t have much but what we have is more than enough”.

Green Day’s strength is Billie Joe Armstrong’s talent as a lyricist.  He continues to grow and mature in this regard.  Revolution Radio is a powerful listen because it is mature, angry, and introspective all at the same time.  The album is not a highly conceptual album but is a powerful commentary on the divisive times we are currently living in.

R.E.M.’s OUT OF TIME AT 25 (September)

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the release of R.E.M.’s album, Out of Time.  Out of Time brought R.E.M. to the mainstream and gave them their first number one hit with “Losing My Religion”.  Many awards and accolades followed.  What means the most to me about Out of Time is it is the album that solidified me as fan.  It is still one of my favorite albums of all times.  Starting with Out of Time, R.E.M.’s music has been the soundtrack to my life for the last twenty five years.

Why Out of Time works so well as an album is because R.E.M. broke out the traditional molds they had used in the past.  Instead of being political like its predecessors Green and Document, R.E.M. made an album based more on personal narrative.   When “Losing My Religion” became a hit, who else would have their first number one hit have a mandolin as the main instrument but R.E.M.?  Many misinterpret the song as Michael Stipe’s deep commentary on religion and faith.  In actuality, it is Stipe’s commentary on an unrequited crush using the southern expression of “losing my religion” to mean “I’m at the end of my rope”.  Stipe always hated the triteness of the love song in pop music.  With “Losing My Religion”, Stipe turned the traditional love song on its head and was successful doing so.  

For the first time, R.E.M. collaborated with other musicians.  The album opens with “Radio Song” where R.E.M. collaborated with rapper KRS-1.  As a B-52’s fan as well, I love their collaboration with Kate Pierson on “Shiny Happy People”.  “Shiny Happy People” is probably one of R.E.M.’s most reviled songs but I always thought it got an unfair bad rap.   Stipe has always been known as being a serious, enigma in music and with “Shiny Happy People” he wrote a song that’s only purpose was to be fun.  Musically, “Shiny Happy People” is quite smart with the gorgeous alternating of vocals between Stipe, Pierson, and bassist, Mike Mills in the chorus.  What other song would switch the meter part way through the song successfully? Kate Pierson also contributed backing vocals later in the album to “Country Feedback” and “Me in Honey”.  

Bassist Mike Mills stepped out front more on Out of Time than ever before.  He sang lead vocals on the smart, infectious pop song, “Near Wild Heaven” and the mysterious, “Texarkana”.  Texarkana is a real town on the Texas-Arkansas border that my family always stopped in on our road trips to Texas when I was a child so I always liked the clever use of this as a song title.   

Mills and guitarist Peter Buck switch things up musically bringing non-traditional instruments to songs like Buck on mandolin on “Losing My Religion” and Mills on organ on the haunting, “Low”.  Buck brought the mandolin and Mills the organ, on the achingly beautiful, “Half a World Away”, which features one my favorite R.E.M. lyrics, “this could be the saddest dusk I have ever seen, turn into a miracle”.

Stipe brought a wider range to his vocals and lyrics on Out of Time.  “Belong” was a soft spoken word from Stipe in the verses.  “Country Feedback” is probably one of R.E.M.’s darkest songs on loss and regret.  Stipe’s vocals are gut wrenching when he sings “I need this” with the urgency of an addict.  “Me in Honey” is a brilliant commentary on a pregnancy from the father’s point of view.  Stipe had said this was his male answer to 10,000 Maniacs’ “Eat for Two”.

Many long time R.E.M. fans at the time said that Out of Time was the album R.E.M. “sold out” on. Out of Time never conformed to the standards of mainstream, pop music.  Instead of R.E.M. “selling out”, the mainstream finally came to R.E.M.  R.E.M. maintained their musical integrity, sometimes to their own detriment, until they disbanded.  Out of Time still hold up today.  I am happy to have had R.E.M.’s music in my life for 25 years and I am happy it started with Out of Time.

NOTHING COMPARES 2 U- IN MEMORY OF PRINCE (1958-2016) (April)

On the afternoon of Thursday, April 21, I shocked and saddened to hear of the passing of Prince.  I am not a super Prince fan, I have some of his albums.  But I still felt sadness that we have lost another one of the greats in music.  I grew up in the MTV generation.  MTV and the music video changed how the world listened to music. They made the great music icons of my generation.  Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Prince defined music for the 1980’s, thanks to MTV.  Prince was flamboyant and mysterious.  Purple Rain defined the 80’s and became one of the greatest albums of all time.  Everyone in my generation was ready to “party like it was 1999” which seemed so far off in the future at the time.

Early in Prince’s career, he sang “I get a dirty mind whenever you are around”.  Prince brought the sexy song to a new level.  From “Do Me Baby” to “Gett Off”, Prince wrote some of the sexiest songs music had ever heard.  You know that Prince wrote some of the hottest songs when “Darling Nikki” led to the Parents Music Resource Center (PRMC), which waged one of the biggest censorship campaigns in the US.  Prince showed that you didn’t have to be the hottest one in the room, sexiness was an attitude.  His writing demonstrated what he sang in “Kiss”, “you don’t have to be beautiful to turn me on”.  It wasn’t just that he could write a great make out song.  He addressed the sexual politics of the 1980’s whether it was the hook up culture in “Little Red Corvette” or more serious topics like AIDS in “Sign O’ the Times” where he sang about the “big disease with a little name”.

Prince’s greatest legacy was that he was the ultimate, genuine artist.  So many hitmakers are not songwriters or musicians and these traits are many times undervalued in the music industry.  Prince’s music crossed so many genres.  He could be funk, he could be R&B, he could write a perfect pop song like “Raspberry Beret”, he could write a rock epic like “Purple Rain”.  Musical genres were fluid in Prince’s world.  He was the ultimate songwriter.  Not only did he write his many hits but we would not have had Shelia E’s “The Glamorous Life”, the Bangles’ “Manic Monday”, Cyndi Lauper’s “When You Were Mine”, Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” and so many others without Prince’s writing talent.  He was a multi-instrumentalist who could tear up a guitar. He was the ultimate showman.  He was small in stature but a huge presence on stage.  Like any celebrity, his career was not without some weird moments like when he changed his name from Prince to an unpronounceable symbol in the 1990’s.  However, when I learned that he did it to protest the record labels ownership of his music, it seemed to make sense.   He is best known for his hits from the 1980’s and 1990’s but he was prolific until his death.    Prince was a one of kind and that he why he earned the right to have words like “legend” and “icon” used to describe him.  To Prince, nothing compares 2 U.