Guns N' Posers II: The Search For Curly's Gold

The best thing GNR ever did, in my mind, is their cover of "Live And Let Die". That's my personal thing, I suppose, but I think it bests the original, with Axl Rose's great great vocals and the weird channeling of Zeppelin in the B section and Queen in the second verse. It's great, and even the shit-ass production can't ruin it.

That said, I have to say that the re-writing of history concerning this group troubles me. I disliked GnR when I was 10 and I don't feel much better about them now. They were only ever better than most shitty hair metal bands of the 80s to me, and that's just not good enough to cast them as some sort of classic hard rock group. You know what a classic hard rock band is? Well, Zeppelin is, for one, and I say that as someone who cannot stand the sound of Robert Plant's voice, much less his lyrics. If it weren't for him, I'd like them almost half as much as Sabbath, but let's face it, Sabbath is one of the best bands ever. I mean I've listened to the first two albums thousands of times and I never tire of them. That's the real shit. People think it's specious to compare Sabbath to Zeppelin, in my experience, but I think it's a good way to go. They were working similar areas in rock a lot of the time, but one was florid, self-indulgent, and kinda silly, and the other has aged a helluva lot better. Both of them kicked out groovy enough stuff to land in the canon, though. It's just that, well, I'm not embarrassed for Ozzie when I hear him sing. Dio's a different matter, of course. But hey, he's the guy who taught the world how to cast the evil eye on people, so he's got that going for him. I cast it on a hated co-worker once and she was out sick for two weeks the following day. Scary.

I'm listening to Bruce Springsteen right now. He's pretty good. Sometimes great, if you can forgive him for the terrible Dylan attempt in the lyrics of "Blinded By The Light", which is easy to do if you just listen to the awesome keyboards in the Manfred Mann version. IV/iii/ii/I never sounded so neat.

Speaking of, how great is their version of "The Mighty Quinn"? Pretty great. Dylan's version is great too, but it doesn't have those nifty tom tom overdubs in it, so The Mann wins out.

On that note, what's with people who don't like Dylan? That's like not liking air. I don't get it. I mean, I get not liking his voice (not really, he's one of my favorite singers), I get not liking the lack of vocal melody and the poetics of his Highway 61 period (actually I don't get that), I get not liking his iconic status (actually I don't see why that matters). Actually, I don't get it.

How about Frank Zappa? Is he not hip enough for you? Maybe you're not trying hard enough. Few musicians marginally in pop music were ever hipper. He was making fun of fashion hippies 40 years before it was fashionable to make fun of fashion hippies. He could do pretty much anything musically and make it catchy and hilarious and insightful. He produced "Trout Mask Replica". He could wipe the floor with most rock guitar players of any era. And he never touched any narcotics save for caffeine and nicotine, AND he was Italian (actually, he was Lebanese, by way of Greece and Sicily). Now THAT's a role model. Do myself a favor and pick up "Absolutely Free" and see if it doesn't blow your blind (thank you Frogs). Listen to "Brown Shoes Don't Make It", which shifts from sleazy blooz rock to chamber pop to light opera to Aaron Copeland to bubblegum psych to Webern to mod rave-up to soft-shoe roaring twenties tuniness to what-the-fuck is this to tone poem to straight rock to T.V. news music via mod raveup to doowoop to barbershop to atonal blooz rock and back, all the while telling us all why America is a nation of depraved idiots with pedophiles running the government. In 1967. Give me a break, are you a philistine?

Neu! is pretty awesome, too. They're like Stereolab, only in 1971, and with more shouting.

Let's talk about Funkadelic. You're not going to win any cache amongst the sort of people I hang out with by mentioning them, but that's a shame, because they managed to be several different varieties of cool at once and no one really bested them at their game. They were like if Sly and The Family Stone were cool, and had someone that sounded like Jimi Hendrix on guitar, only even better. You're thinking "Jimi Hendrix?? C'mon, man, that's LAME", and you're right, Hendrix has aged worse than even the Doors, which is really saying something, but Eddie Hazel ripped out the guitar ninja jams in a fashion very much indebted to Hendrix, but without making us suffer horrid lyrics that Zappa probably had a field day making fun of with his friends in the late 60s. Speaking of the Doors, I still like them if I close my eyes and imagine Iggy Pop fronting them, and different words being sung. Jim Morrison was a great singer, but whoever encouraged his "poetry" and its manifestations in the Doors' recordings should be forced to watch "Designing Women" while being sodomized by Delta Burke wearing a strap-on.

Sorry for the venality, there. Bad form on my part. And hey, I liked that Annie Potts alright, just like everyone. Actually, think about this: what if Leonard Cohen, or maybe Nick Cave had fronted the Doors? Would that have been good? Maybe not. Anyway, you can appreciate Morrison's singing voice, the drumming, and Ray Manzarek's absolutely great keyboards regardless of how completely foolish it makes you feel to hear someone sing "The Blue Bus....is calling us....." Robert Pollard is reportedly a big Morrison fan, which is upsetting on a shallow level, but makes a little bit of sense. Except Robert Pollard is one of the greatest songwriters of all time. So he's got that over Morrison.

Oh yeah, back to Funkadelic. They churned out wonderfully recorded and funky as hell rock/soul tunes for several years before eventually getting too close in sound to their not nearly as interesting sister band, Parliament. Beyond that, their shit was weird. Which always helps. It must have been a shocker to hear some of the tripped-out monologues that begin their first three or so albums back in the early 70s, especially given the context of being a soul-rock band, and not a bunch of British prog dudes. That said, they don't have much to do with indie-rock.

Oh, indie rock. I remember when the phrase actually meant something more specific in terms of sound. Indie-rock was Sebadoh, Pavement, stuff like that. Rilo Kiley, not so much. They're kind of a modern Fleetwood Mac, a band that, while responsible for several songs that I genuinely like, is also responsible for creating an entire dull subgenre of pop music which I simply do not understand the aesthetic purpose of. Years and years ago, before I learned music theory, I used to refer to bands like the Mac and songwriters like Joni Mitchell as pushers of the "dry chord". What I meant by that is pretty specific- it's music that heavily utilizes modal over diatonic melodies (look it up) and unresolved suspended chords. If you mess around with an open D major on the guitar, you'll hit on some of this. That kind of music depresses me because it's emotionally vacant. This isn't at all an ephemeral thing- in this culture, pieces of music with strong harmonic tension and release are more emotionally resonant. The rise of post-modernism and all its cheeky faux-cynicism is a good explanation as to why emotional vagueness is popular in music. To many ears, it sounds more reserved, more distant. One of my major problems with My Bloody Valentine has always been Shield's tendency towards the modal. There's a reason why so few classical composers from the Baroque period up to impressionism didn't create modal music- it's emotionally vacant, good for trance states (this might be part of the reason why so much indigenous folk music from across the globe is non-chordal & modal) but not good for personal expression.

That said, there are people that do modal music, or non-chordal music, whose work resonates with me. Sonic Youth comes immediately to mind- being one of my favorite bands. Their music is very often modal, though usually chordal to some degree, but they make up for this distance with a lot of rhythmic, lyrical, production, arrangement, and vocal timbre aspects that bring an intensity to the music. Stereolab also comes to mind- though unlike Sonic Youth, I'm not always in the mood, as they don't always overcome the harmonic "iciness" with other bells & whistles. Sometimes, they're just too flat and clean for me, though at their best, they update the V.U. and Neu! in a thrilling way.

Oh my god, am I an asshole.