Chris Milam

Friday, February 13, 2009

Sink to the Bottom, Come Up Again (Volume 13)

Volume 13 of the 96X Anthology is noteworthy because it lacks noteworthy artists.  Almost the whole volume features one-off singles by bands never heard from again.  So, what stands out amidst the stack of one-hit wonders?  

How about two-hit wonder, Fountains of Wayne?

When "Sink to the Bottom" came out in the fall of 1996, I knew nothing about Fountains of Wayne.  I thought, "hey, another cool single by another faceless band."  In hindsight, it was a perfect little nugget of 90's alt-rock: 
1) Four chords.
2) The quiet-verse into loud-chorus device that Nirvana popularized and perfected.
3) Infectious melody.
4) Lyrics about being down, low, and a loser, and wanting someone to be a loser with.

Perfect!  I didn't need to know the rest of their catalogue, their bio, or their tour dates.  Fountains of Wayne's sole reason for existence was this anonymous single that fit my station's format.  What made 96X so great was how often it spun the Wonderfully Obscure along with the Great and Famous.  "Sink to the Bottom" was, in many ways, what 96X was all about.  I embraced the song, and nodded cooly as the one-hit wonder was never heard from again...

...Until they were completely heard from again, exactly seven years later, with a new record and a massively successful single, "Stacy's Mom."  When the song hit in 2003, I thought, "Fountains of Wayne?  You've got to be kidding me.  I thought they were dead.  I thought I read that somewhere.  I literally thought they had died, like Zack Morris."  Then, out of nowhere, a #1 hit single, even more popular than "Sink to the Bottom."  If someone told me in 1999 that one of 96X's one-hit wonders would rise from the grave and release a #1 record in 2003, I would have never guessed Fountains of Wayne.  I would've guessed Silverchair.  I would've guessed the Toadies.  I would've guessed Tonic.  I might've even guessed Local H.  I never saw Fountains of Wayne coming, but probably I should have.

In retrospect, they were one of the best melodists of the bunch.  "Sink to the Bottom" was build with such pop sensibility, such GenX savvy (ramped up especially in the lyrics), and such melodic facility that it was no fluke.  This was the band that, if they kept kicking around, would do it again.  Sure enough, by 2000, they saw the pop-handwriting on the wall, saw the new decades' fascination with 80's goofiness, saw how incredibly starved the Oughts were for real, infectious pop-rock, and seized the opportunity.  They knocked off "Stacy's Mom," a song so incredibly catchy and obvious it seemed like a cover.  It's "Jesse's Girl" meets "Keep Fishin."  In fact, it's exactly the song Weezer would write if they weren't inhibited/crippled by irony.  It was so ineffectual that it became unavoidable; it was so dumb that it was clearly smart.  And sure, it didn't enrich anyone's life, but it made some very rich.

And somewhere, the guy from Local H is still bound to the floor.

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Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Restless As We Are (Volume 12)

Some artists--say, any image-conscious local band--seek to be popular, but don't have a talent for pop songwriting.  Some--say, Coldplay--want to be Important, but don't have a talent for serious artistry.  And while it's totally redundant to critically dump on Coldplay, I'd honestly love to love them.  Chris Martin is a gifted pop songwriter who writes great melodies at his worst, and who writes great songs ("Fix You") at his best.  

Neverminding what the Grandma Grammy says, Coldplay's talent is not one of Artistic Importance (a fact made even more clear by their performance on Sunday compared to Radiohead's***).  Their only hope of becoming important is writing the type of songs that come naturally to them.  Take off the army-chic-designer-camo, Patches Martin.  Lower the raised fist.  No mas on the jazzercize stage histrionics.  Stop writing nonsense about "cavalry choirs."  Keep writing "Barbara Ann," because you ain't making Pet Sounds.  Do what you do, do it well, and give a lot of people a lot of harmless pleasure.

See, Viva la Vida Loca succeeded not because it meant something, and not because it tried to.  It succeeded because--as always--it had great pop melodies.  As a record that was meant to be an "artistic breakthrough," it's an unmitigated failure.  But it was still a commercial success, because the songs were still pretty and memorable and, thus, everywhere.  People will overlook a hell of a lot if the melody's good enough.  The problem isn't that Coldplay has no talent; it's that their talent is currently misplaced.

And what I'm trying to say is this: perhaps no 90's band had more misplaced talent than the Smashing Pumpkins.

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As is so often the case with pop trends, a few great artists kick down the door while a dozen more wait in the wings, ready to walk right in.  After Nevermind changed the landscape in 1992, the public was hungry for the uberpop-grunge of Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream.  The record was an A&R rep's dream: thirteen songs of radio-friendly alternative rock.  Smashing Pumpkins were the right band in the right place at the right time, led by the immense songwriting gifts of Billy Corgan.  While he chose to write alt-rock songs, his strengths lay in melody.  He was a hugely gifted pop melodist with a grunge backing band.

Only problem was, he wanted to be Important.  Because grunge meant something to a new generation of music fans, it was essential that grunge songs "meant something" themselves.  They had to be serious, angsty, sad, angry--an alternative to hair metal in every way.  So Billy Corgan wrote great pop songs about depression and anger and sang with a scowl.  

By the time 1995's double-disc opus, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness came out, we should've seen it coming.  I didn't, because I was twelve and I didn't think about stuff like that.  I loved "Cherub Rock" and "Today" and even "Disarm" and now there were new Pumpkins songs to rock.  I remember playing the record and thinking that it felt big, from the symphonic swell of "Tonight, Tonight," to the psychedelic dreamscape of "Farewell and Goodnight."  I thought, "wow, they're really making a statement."  And they were.  After the death and dissolution of many grunge front-runners, Corgan saw an opening.  He pushed himself to make a huge, sweeping, concept-double-album, a post-grunge masterpiece.  In many ways it was successful, because his talents as a pop songwriter were at their height.  He couldn't write a limp, un-catchy song if he wanted to, and the first wave of singles ("Bullet with Butterfly Wings," "Tonight, Tonight," "Zero") were powerful, impressive, and on 96X constantly.

And though I liked it, I wasn't buying it.  Even as an angsty middle schooler, I remember thinking that the "rage" of "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" sounded contrived.  It sounded awesome, too, because it was such a great melody.  But Corgan was trying too hard to be important, to speak for a generation that had been spoken for.  By 1995, I got my "rage" from Rage Against the Machine.  They could sell it.  I didn't need importance from the Pumpkins, just memorable songs.  

Then the haunting, gorgeous, anti-ballad "1979" came out.  It was a snapshot of a single teenage night, the simultaneous excitement and loneliness of adolescence, the joy and pain that accompany nostalgia.  It was also a musical breakthrough, a sonic bridge between their straightforward rock and future forays into electronica.  The production was pitch-perfect, the melody (of course) great, and the song transcendent.  Not surprisingly, it has aged better than any of their singles, including "Today" (the "wall of grunge" production--sounds dated today).  

"1979" was an important alternative to contemporary rock, because it depicted pain as beautiful rather than rage-inducing.  This, I think, is where Corgan naturally comes from as a writer.  Looking back, the Pumpkins' best songs were those that celebrated beauty in sadness, the strange and lasting pleasure of melancholy ("Disarm," "Today," "Muzzle," "1979," "33," and even the "Landslide" cover).  By trying to speak for the supposed anger of his generation, Corgan too often didn't speak for himself.  His naturally immense talent for pop songwriting should've carried the Pumpkins into the Rock Pantheon, but a misguided quest for "importance" prevented it.  

The best bands, of course, are popular and important, and I always hope for both among artists I like. While pop-appeal can be manipulated, contrived, deliberate, ironic, or tongue-in-cheek, Importance can't.  If you're gifted enough, you can become a popular band writing songs you don't necessarily relate to; but you can't become important unless you create from the heart.

I don't care what the Grandma Grammy says, someone should send Coldplay Martin the memo.

Shake these zipper blues,
CM


***On the great list of Things I'll Never Understand, under Japanese Gameshows and above Foot Fetishes, is the Coldplay-Radiohead Comparison.  Comparing Coldplay to Radiohead because both are English and atmospheric is like comparing a gerbil to a lion because both have four legs.  And yes, I understand Coldplay sites Radiohead as an influence and no, that doesn't change what they are.  

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Monday, February 09, 2009

Stone Temple Pilots, The Flip Side (Volume 11.5)

In yesterday's post, I admired Soundgarden for selling out to an indie audience to become a part of the mainstream.  A quick addendum before we move on to Volume 12...

It occurs to me that Stone Temple Pilots were the flip side of the same coin.  While Soundgarden helped transform grunge into pop, Stone Temple Pilots were a pop band ready to ride the grunge wave.  

Both bands wanted to be rockstars, but only STP was open about it (which, in the early 90's world of indie-cred, drew plenty of criticism).  The difference, per usual, came down to scene: Seattle self-identified as non-mainstream, and subsequently cool.  Los Angeles (STP's home base) was an industry hub, and breeding ground of all things glam-metal and wannabe-rock.  In LA, only success was cool, so STP was free to be rockstars on Day 1.  Soundgarden had to be a grunge band to become a pop band; STP was always a pop band first, but with grunge adornment.  

No coincidence, then, that both achieved their greatest success after the first wave of grunge crashed and faded.  As soon as it was artistically viable, Soundgarden began creating arena-rock and Cornell became more Robert Plant, less Mark Arm.  STP's second and third records immediately embraced all their pop influences, as disparate and ungrunge as the Americana-infused "Interstate Lovesong" and the mid-Beatles trippy pop of "Lady Picture Show," "Sour Girl," and even "Days of the Week."  

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Into the Desert (Part 11)

The term "sell-out" is pejorative for "art opportunist," a hipster insult loosely translated as "successful human." It's often used inaccurately and without qualification by sad and untalented people, to such an extent that it's rendered meaningless. To boot, selling out in today's music industry is a pipedream and an impossibility: there's no money. While "Sell-Out" was once a misnomer, it's now an endangered species.

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Of all the seminal grunge bands of the 90's, Soundgarden was the most durable. They pre-dated Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains and made their most popular records after the others had dissolved or languished. While my memory insists that everything existed only in 1995, Nirvana's last single was released in 1993. Pearl Jam had voluntarily slowed their efforts by 1995. But Soundgarden was still releasing hits as late as the summer of 1997.  I, of course, loved them.

So when "Burden in My Hand" came out, I was 1) craving a new grungy hit and 2) completely dependent on Soundgarden to deliver. They did, and the piano-laden follow-up to "Pretty Noose" became my favorite Soundgarden song of all-time. It was an instantly likable, dynamic, inspired and smartly-composed new hit. Only one problem: it wasn't grungy.

Conventional wisdom states that "sell-outs" neglect artistry and follow successful trends.  For example, if a jazz pianist in 1999 decided to sell the keyboard, frost his tips and join a boy band, he's a sell-out. Typically sell-outs justify their decision by saying they'll use their platform as a successful artist to now pursue their true passion. "Now that I've made it," they say, "I get to do what I want. No more boy-banding/hair-metaling/doo-wopping/etc." They sell out to a mainstream aesthetic so they can explore an indie one.

But Soundgarden may have single-handedly inverted the model for selling-out. In the late 80's and very early 90's--before grunge became lucrative--they became Seattle's most quintessentially grunge band. They took what was a new and interesting local movement and did it harder, and heavier, and smarter than everyone else. They became local heroes and earned a record deal because they were the favorite band in an unseen and unproven genre.

Their first records (with heavy staples like "Outshined," "Rusty Cage," and "Nothing to Say") were seminal and prototypical grunge, helping define the genre while laying a foundation for broader success. When Nirvana's Nevermind blew the doors wide open, Soundgarden's success grew exponentially. Grunge was now mainstream, and their artistic experiment had made them rich. They'd earned success making the music they wanted to make, like "true artists" do. Well done. Chalk one up for integrity.

Only, by every indication, grunge wasn't the music they wanted to make.  Immediately following mainstream success, Soundgarden's records became anthemic rockers rather than heavy, sullen bashers.  Almost overnight, they sounded much more like Aerosmith than Mudhoney.  By the time 1996's Down on the Upside came out, they were simply a great pop-rock band that reminded you of grungier days.  

Of course, maybe that was just their evolution.  Maybe they started with a narrow focus and a specific sound and naturally developed over the years, taking on a pop sensibility and a bigger scope.  And even if that was true, I'd fully support it, because I like great pop music, period.  I wouldn't care how Soundgarden arrived at it.  But if Soundgarden started as a grunge band and (by the mid-90's) evolved into an arena rock band, how do you explain 1991's Temple of the Dog?  Why the hell was grunge demigod Chris Cornell writing "Say Hello to Heaven" (a classic rock power-ballad) and "All Night Thing" (an R&B-influenced sex song!) before Soundgarden has even broken nationally?  

In truth, Soundgarden just wanted to be a great, big, bad, rich, obnoxious, super-famous, classic rock band.  But in 1990 Seattle, it was uncool to say that.  "Burden in My Hand," in a perfect would, would've been their starting point, not the finish line.  Instead, they saw in the Seattle scene (long before most people did) a greater opportunity, a powerful new sound, a budding pop revolution, and used grunge to become mainstream.  Instead of "selling out" to pop and then experimenting artistically, they "sold out" to the grunge experiment, so they could be pop artists.  

And that's why, long after Nirvana had gone and Alice in Chains had gone and Pearl Jam had become disillusioned and a thousand grunge imitators took their 15-minutes and walked, 96X was still spinning new Soundgarden singles in 1996.  To the rest of the world, grunge was dying; to Soundgarden, grunge was long-dead.  

So, like many good pop artists, Soundgarden sold out to be poor.  Then they got rich.

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Friday, February 06, 2009

We've Got Something In Common (Volume 10)

In the 1980's, there were basically three types of pop songs:

1) Formulaic glam-metal rockers
2) Synth-heavy, youth-centric pop
3) Ballads of the glam-metal or synth-pop persuasion

Radio programming was all about what songs had in common. Basically, if you turned on pop radio, you knew what you were getting. You might have fun, but you weren't being surprised. Not so in the 90's.

By 1996, alternative, grunge, and indie rock had blended and mutated to such weird extremes that Top 40 radio had no format. You could do, say, play, or explore anything you wanted, as long as the melody was good. So it was no surprise when a completely bizarre and likable song like Deep Blue Something's "Breakfast at Tiffany's" showed up and stayed a while at 96X.

If you think you haven't heard this song, hit play on ITunes and think again. You have heard this song. It's three-chords and an acoustic cloud of dust, all bouncy harmonies and bizarre lyrics. It's really not too far from being a Monkees derivative.  Grunge, it was not.

Yet here it was, on steady rotation, with everyone from Alice in Chains, to the Butthole Surfers, Lisa Loeb, to Green Day, to the Gin Blossoms. And while it didn't ostensibly share anything with the grungy alt-rock of the era, it had the two most important pre-requisites for a 96X hit:
1) Melody
2) Weirdness

That was the great thing about the 90's. While some remember grunge as its defining aesthetic, there really wasn't a sonic trademark of the decade. The only pre-requisites for writing a hit were Great Melody and Affinity for the Weird. "Breakfast at Tiffany's" had both in spades.

To refresh your memory, here's my synopsis of the song:
Guy talks to girl. Their relationship isn't working. They have "nothing in common." Then, in the chorus, he says, "hey, remember that movie Breakfast at Tiffany's?" And she goes, "yeah." And that's the song.

I repeat: the chorus of the song is about remembering a movie exists. They both share a shrug and go, "yep, I remember the movie, it was alright," and that is it. Deep Blue Something doesn't even flirt with the idea of resolving this. There is no reconciliation between the lovers. There is no clarity in a bridge section. There isn't even an explicit joke made. It's incredible. And while much of GenX pop culture broke new ground by being about past pop culture, this song took it to a new (and I can only assume unintentional) level of offhand name-dropping and unresolved references. Aside from the melody being catchy and the words themselves being memorable, it breaks every conventional rule of pop lyricism. What's more, it superficially has nothing in common with the prevailing aesthetic of the time: grunge.

In no other decade could "Breakfast at Tiffany's"have survived radio programming. Or could Weezer's breakthrough single be "Undone (The Sweater Song)." Or could the Butthole Surfers' "Pepper" become a Top 40 hit. When I found out the single "I'm Going to Disneyland" was sung by a band named Dada, I should've guessed. Of course their name was Dada.  The only consistency was inconsistency.  Everything made sense, until you thought about it.

In the 80's, radio programming was about defining what people liked and matching those aesthetics, and it's largely the same today. If you liked Motley Crue, you'd like Guns N Roses; if you like Nickelback, you'll like Buckcherry. But in the 90's, that formula didn't matter. Fans--and label execs, and radio programmers--didn't have to know why they liked something...they just did. Go ahead, 96X, put "Breakfast at Tiffany's" next to "Black Hole Sun" on the playlist.

Turns out they've got something in common.

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Wednesday, February 04, 2009

I Oughta Know (Volume 9)

I get mail from literally handfuls of women saying, "Why don't you write more about female artists? Women make music too, you know!" And you know what? They're absolutely right.

Good thing Volume 9 of my 96X Anthology features Alanis Morissette's breakthrough single, "You Oughta Know." I've been itching for years now to write about Dave-Coulier-inspired chick-rock anthems, and when "You Oughta Know" broke in 1995, I told myself, "fourteen years from now, I'm going to write a blog about this." "What is a blog," myself asked. "Nevermind, go watch Baywatch," I said. And I did.

"You Oughta Know" made Alanis Morissette arguably the biggest artist in the world. Unlike Sheryl Crow, Alanis was grunge-friendly: more angsty, less predictable, heavier guitars, stranger vocals, etc. This single took all the mainstream, moody appeal of alt-rock at the time and gave it an irrepressible woman's sensibility. In 1995, this was a song that was hard not to like...and downright impossible to avoid.

Of course, Jagged Little Pill eventually showcased several more hit singles, and became one of the highest-selling albums of the 90's. Even I (as a rock-greedy, misogynist middle schooler) liked this record, which should speak to its achievements. If you want to make a case that Alanis Morissette was the biggest female artist of that decade, I won't argue much.

What's interesting is how small her influence is among singer/songwriters in 2009. Pop starlets Britney and Christina have a healthy dose of Gwen Stefani in them, but (obviously) no Alanis. Avril Lavigne is a braindead, Disney-friendly echo of Courtney Love (my brother's line) in terms of image and attitude, but not artistic vision. And among actual female singer/songwriters (Sara Bareilles, Ingrid Michaelson, Fiest, etc.), I hear more Jewel, Sheryl Crow, and (yes) even Lisa Freaking Loeb than Alanis Morissette.

So what gives? Why is the most popular female artist of the 90's the least influential in the 00's?

I have a theory that often the highest-selling records of a particular decade age the worst. This is not to say, of course, that the records aren't good, or that the singles aren't worthwhile. But sometimes a record is popular because it is so quintessentially of that time and place, and hearing it outside that time and place obscures its meaning and impact.

For example, in the mid-60's, Dylan saw "topical folk" as a current trend that was popular at the time, but wouldn't be popular later. He abandoned it. In the late 60's, he saw psychedelia for the passing-hippie-craze that it was, and dodged the proverbial bullet, opting instead to make records of classic Americana that still sound relevant today. The Stones have survived and stayed fresh not by following each passing trend but by trusting their own strengths, and making music that's universally appealing regardless of the current climate. U2's least-successful period (critically and financially) was in the mid-90's when they chased the alt-rock bunny ("Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me") instead of being the anthemic pop-rockers they had really become.

Of course, there's nothing wrong following the current trend if (like with Alanis) it really matches who you are as an artist. Alanis Morissette made an uber-pop record with every GenX overtone imaginable. "You Oughta Know" was the perfect hit at the perfect time for pop music fans anxious to hear a girl join the boys and piss vinegar on Grunge Radio. But, for me anyway, many of the angst-ridden, alt-rock gems of the mid-90's just don't quite translate to the new milennium. They're still good songs, they just feel like they don't currently matter.

I could be wrong. Sara Bareilles' next single could be an angry love letter to John Stamos. Fiest could break-out in her next record and write Alanis-inspired rhetoricals like, "Are you thinking of me when you f*ck her?" It could suddenly become fashionable for pop starlets to litanize irony instead of spelling the word "banana."

After 1998's Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, Alanis Morissette waited 7 years until her next major release. Seven years and an entire pop-cultural lifetime later, American music had changed. The Boy Band Era had died, and the Age of Me (emo, moody/cutesy singer/songwriters, etc.) was just beginning. So what did the Pop-Princess of 90's Angst release after seven years' silence, in the fall of 2005?

The Collection: Remastered Recordings of Jagged Little Pill.

Some things, I guess, are better off in the 90's. Thank God.

Mr. Duplicity,
CM

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