Music Dump - MTV's Faith No More in Rolling Stone's 'Loutallica' Feist
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I Want My MTV (Excerpt) by Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum (Pitchfork): Marks and Tannenbaum have put together an oral history of MTV, and here they excerpt some quotes to do with MTV’s mid-80s heyday, many of which are gold; from Daryl Hall saying he has no idea what the video to ‘Adult Education’ was about, to discussions of how bands would employ people to go through their videos with stopwatches to make sure the drummer got as much screentime as the singer. But perhaps the best story is Lionel Richie getting increasingly agitated that the bust of him in the video for ‘Hello’ does not look like him.
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The U2 Paradox by Eric Hynes (Slate): Bono and his colleagues have never been cool; they’ve always walked a fine tightrope between art and commerce. This alienates pop fans (U2 were never as fun as, say, Wham!), as well as art music fans (U2 were never as uncompromising as a Radiohead or Pixies). But this middle ground is fertile and interesting in its own right argues Hynes, and when U2 got the balance right – such as on their 1991 album Achtung Baby - the reward was enormous. (Also see Nitsuh Abebe make a similar “not too heavy, not too light” argument about Coldplay.)
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Injustice For All: The Metallica/Lou Reed Album by Chuck Klosterman (Grantland): Lulu is basically manna from heaven for a writer like Klosterman, who has always been fascinated with the interaction between lowbrow culture (e.g., Metallica) and highbrow culture (e.g., Lou Reed). The second sentence here — “It’s not really designed for people who like music” — is but just one of many the killer lines. But Klosterman not only makes glib jokes; he also has some interesting insights into the social context of ‘Loutallica’. And the bit where Klosterman says ”I'm certain some contrarian rock critic will become Internet Famous for insisting it's more subversive than Transformer and a musical reaction to both Occupy Wall Street and the subpar drum production on St. Anger”? It already happened.
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When Bands Fall Off Cliffs by Rob Fitzpatrick (The Guardian): Some bands do have a tendency to ‘fall of cliffs’ – but Fitzpatrick isn’t talking about The Cure in their video for ‘Close To Me’ here, instead he’s talking about bands that have very popular first albums and diminishing returns after that. Take the Kaiser Chiefs, who sold 2 million copies in the UK of their first album, Employment -- their third album Off With Their Heads sold only 200,000. It’s mind-boggling to read A&R guys at UK record companies speak of their bafflement at why it keeps happening however: as Village Voice critic Maura Johnston pointed out, it’s because the British music press is so ridiculously focused on novelty. She suggests an alternate title: “British Hype Cycle Playing Out Pretty Much The Way You Can Expect (Especially If You’ve Read Any Of The Laments Over Blog Hype That Have Been Written In The Past Four Or So Years).”
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It’s Been A Long Time Since A Man Made Love To Me Passionately While Listening To Simply Red by Janet Manley (McSweeneys): “He reached up and undid my alligator clip; my Bottecellian hair tumbled down around my shoulders, full of bounce from Pert 2-in-1 shampoo/conditioner. When Genesis hit the high, clear notes of “I will be theeeeeeeere” in 'Hold on my heart' I realised I was in trouble. He picked me up, as if I weighed no more than a single rose, told me I took his breath away, and threw me on his waterbed.” (Yes, I too was waiting for a twist at the end to reveal he was Patrick Bateman).
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Indie Grown-Ups by Nitsuh Abebe (New York Magazine): Musicians like Wilco or Feist essentially make adult contemporary music. That is, though their backgrounds are in punk music, they make basically the same kind of music that punk came to replace. That is: respectable rock and roll with fine musicianship, thoughtful singer-songwriter stuff, music without much bite in it. But you know what? I’m an adult. Who likes indie music which is contemporary. And I’m perfectly okay with this – music doesn’t need to have bite to be good (though sometimes bite is obviously awesome). You know, let the black-clad set have their Soundwave, we indie contemporary types have a Harvest festival now! In the US, the NPR network of radio stations is probably the biggest proponent of indie adult contemporary, and so it’s also worth reading NPR’s Frannie Kelly’s interview with Abebe, where she passive-aggressively asks why he’s insulting ‘NPR Muzak’.
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The Rolling Stones’ Tattoo You by Steven Hyden (The AV Club): Hyden continues his project of looking at random #1 albums from the past. Here he picks 1981’s Tattoo You by the Stones, trying to figure out why an album of rejects and ragtag leftovers got to #1. I mean, the obvious answer is ‘It has ‘Start Me Up’ on it!’. But ‘Start Me Up’ was a reject too; the Rolling Stones were convinced it was a reggae song and had been trying to record it like a reggae song since 1975. Going through the archives, they discovered two straight-ahead-rock versions of the song they’d tossed off. They picked one, and Mick re-recorded the vocals. Done. I wonder how many other half-finished outtakes would be #1 singles given the chance…
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A Small Victory by Craig Schuftan (craigschuftan.com): Faith No More got really big in 1990 with a song called ‘Epic’, which, along with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, defined funk-metal. But Faith No More were terribly uneasy with the kind of success they’d created, and they resisted all record-company attempts to get Faith No More to record another album full of songs like ‘Epic’ or ‘Falling To Pieces’, largely because they’d come to hate the style. When fans would come up to Mike Patton and say, “You’re so awesome”, he’d say, “Don’t say that”. Thus the covers of smooth easy listening tunes like ‘Easy’ and ‘I Started A Joke’. Though, seeing a band as big as Faith No More completely opt out of ‘the game’ is a blast from the past, isn’t it? In the current recording industry climate, it’s hard to think of equivalents – everyone is so concerned with their careers.
Tim Byron
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