Believe it or not, today is twenty years to the day that the Simpsons Christmas Special first aired way back in 1989. Though the show remains popular, by Fox standards, it has never again reached the insane level of merchandise saturation it hit in that very first year. Nothing captures the way the Simpsons exploded into popular culture in 1990 more than The Simpsons Sing the Blues, a full length album of different Simpsons family members performing old blues and jazz standards. The Simpsons characters (with the possible exception of Lisa) have no connection whatsoever to blues music—odds are these songs were cheap to license, or else some blues fan on the staff was just dying to record an album. I have no inside knowledge on how this thing came about. It doesn’t matter. Knowing why it was created would only take away the magic. All that matters is that the album sold, going platinum in the US and making it to #3 on the Billboard charts. I got it on tape along with a glut of other Simpsons merchandise back in 1990, and I listened to it at least as much as I would one day listen to The White Album. Maybe even more. The main selling point was “Do the Bartman,” a rap/rock/new jack swing song ghost written by Michael Jackson, a huge hit on the playground in 3rd grade. Bart Simpson was the coolest kid on the planet back then—the show centered around him, and he was marketed to death. If you were a fan of the Simpsons during that first huge rush of popularity the song is sure to hit you in face with a powerful slap of nostalgia. If not, it must seem a very sad relic indeed.
My favorite song, however, was and still is one of the few other Simpsons-original tracks on the album, “Look at All Those Idiots,” sung by Mr. Burns and Smithers. Unlike the rest of the album, which mostly consisted of the Simpsons voice actors singing real-world songs that I had never heard of, “Look at All Those Idiots” had a real story based around real Simpsons characters, and was, wonder of wonders, funny. Okay, so maybe it’s not side splittingly hilarious now, but if you’re in 3rd grade it’s top notch stuff. Mr. Burns and Smithers were probably the first Simpsons ancillary characters to break out of the pack—they were definitely the first ones I was aware of, and it was great fun listening to Mr. Burns complain about the incompetence of his inferiors to a groovy late 80s dance beat. It’s the one song on the album that shows the clever, intelligent direction the show was headed.
As for the rest of the songs, they were happy to cash in on the show’s status as a fad. Do we really need to hear Homer and Marge singing a duet of “I Love to See You Smile” or Lisa Simpson doing a cover of “God Bless the Child”? Apparently I did, because I listened to the album nonstop from Christmas Day until at least March. And it had some stiff competition: I also got Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em that Christmas. Come to think of it, I listened to that tape all the time, too. Damn, that was a good Christmas. It’s amazing how many things you can be passionately interested in when you’re eight years old, and somehow there’s time for them all.
So like many of childhood’s delights, The Simpsons Sing the Blues is a pretty sorry experience without nostalgia backing it up. It’s hard to explain in words why I had so much fun with it, and listening to it sure isn’t going to get the message across. It’s just one of those weird things that perfectly captures a specific set of memories—there’s something of the Spirit of 1990 alive in The Simpsons Sing the Blues. Or maybe it just captures that in 1990 there were millions of kids just like me who would buy absolutely anything with Bart Simpson’s face pasted on it, even a mediocre blues album. As happy as I was in 1990, I bet Matt Groening and The Simpsons producers were even happier.
Discovering The Beatles is a kind of right of passage for many American teenagers, even forty years on. It certainly was for me. I had known about The Beatles my whole life, but for those first few years they were just the relics of a bygone age; Mom and Dad’s music. Kids my age had Counting Crows and Nirvana and Pearl Jam and R.E.M. and even those delightful troubadours of slacker-pop, the Spin Doctors. But by 1995, all those bands had started to wear a little thin for me and many kids my age. That was the year The Offspring and Nine Inch Nails were replaced on t-shirts by Led Zeppelin and the Grateful Dead. Even inside of that momentary fad that embraced all things 60s and classic rock related, I managed to stake out a unique reputation for myself as “that Beatles kid.”
It happened almost by accident. Early that fall I was excited for the new Greenday album, Insomniac. I had missed the explosion of their last album, Dookie, which was already widely known by half the school before I even knew who they were. Determined not to let such a thing happen again, I made sure to grab the new Green Day album the instant it came out.
What a mistake that was. Though Green Day has gone on to redeem themselves by releasing what will probably be recalled years from now as one of the most seminal CDs of the decade, Insomniac was crap. It was crap of such unfathomable caliber that I only listened to it twice before abandoning it forever. I needed something better, so I raided my parents’ CD collection. That’s where I found The Beatles’ “Blue Album,” a greatest hits collection spanning the later half of the band’s career; oddly enough I had gotten it for my mom for Christmas several years before. I was hooked right away. As so many before me have discovered, it only takes one listen of “I Am the Walrus” to change your life.
It didn’t hurt that 1995 put The Beatles back on the pop-culture map in a huge way with the Anthology project. It’s possible, almost likely, that unremembered marketing for that thing may have influenced my sudden Beatle fandom, but I remember it as a happy coincidence. The documentary gave me my first look at the entire Beatles story, and my first listen to many of the Beatles' most famous songs. My parents had plenty of actual Beatle LPs and 45s for me to go through, along with boxes of Beatle books and Beatle merchandise. I became an expert quickly.
At that point, I was so behind the technological curve that I didn’t even own a CD player. All of the albums I had were on cassette. That finally changed on Christmas, when I was given not only a CD player but my first Beatles album of my very own, The White Album. Later on that same day I got Magical Mystery Tour from relatives. Those two albums, actually back to back releases from the band, became my baseline for all the Beatle discoveries that would come after. I’m not sure either CD still works—I long ago converted them to MP3s, which I hope to soon replace with the new remastered albums anyway, and lots of other Beatles albums have long since eclipsed both of them in my esteem. But more than any other, those two albums remind me of what it felt like to listen to The Beatles for the very first time. It’s something you only get to experience once.
Magical Mystery Tour is probably my least listened to album today. It contains a lot of songs even seasoned Beatles fans might be hard pressed to remember. How many people out there can hum “Flying” or “Blue Jay Way” off the top of their heads? The attraction of the album for me was of course “I Am the Walrus,” but it’s the lesser known songs that remind me most of that Christmas, perhaps because I’ve listened to them only a handful of times since.
Magical Mystery Tour, fun as it was, was a blip on the radar compared to The White Album. I plugged in my new CD player right underneath our Christmas tree, laid by the fireplace, and listened to both White Album CDs nonstop for days. I remember actually jumping out of bed days after Christmas and rushing downstairs just so I could listen to “Helter Skelter” one more time. It’s hard to believe The White Album came only a year after Magical Mystery Tour, so different are the albums. Gone are the mystical psychedelic Beatles of 1967, replaced by the even cooler raw and fragmented Beatles of 1968. Admittedly, there’s a lot of nonsense on The White Album, and I can no longer listen to corkers like “Honey Pie” or “Long, Long, Long” with the same wild-eyed awe I did at age thirteen. The best tracks, (“Dear Prudence”, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, “Back in the USSR”, etc.) on the other hand, hold up as among the best The Beatles ever made. I even had fun with “Revolution 9”—I would put it on whenever friends dropped by just for the sick thrill of watching them squirm with discomfort and confusion. Once it even caused the lights to blink on and off (or that might have been a coincidence, but never underestimate the power of “Revolution 9”).
I don’t think there’s been a Christmas since where I haven’t gotten some kind of Beatles product, ranging from the giant and at the time expensive Anthology VHS box set to magnets and posters and everything in between. I’m not quite the Beatles fan I once was—there are plenty of other bands and musicians I listen to, and as far as I know no one knows me today as “that Beatles kid.” 2009 has been another Beatles renaissance year with the release of the new remastered albums and The Beatles Rock Band game, so I’ve been thinking about that Christmas lately. New thirteen year old kids are bound to discover The Beatles for the first time this Christmas and become the Beatles kid at their own schools.
Today marks the 29th anniversary of John Lennon’s murder in NYC. Rather than take it as a time to remember that we live in a world where innocent and well meaning people can be taken away so violently, it’s much better to remember the music The Beatles gave us. That a thirteen year old kid in 1995 can have the same warm memories of sitting under their tree listening to The White Album as a thirteen year old in 1968 or 2009 is an achievement no murderer can ever take away. The Beatles’ music ranges from the silly to the sublime, but it will be with us forever.
This weekend I decided to buy a ridiculously overpriced Arclight movie ticket and see Michael Jackson’s This Is It. I was a little surprised at all the positive buzz the movie was generating. Nobody loved to kick Michael Jackson more than the press. It turns out that the movie is no great revelatory experience, nor even an emotional farewell to the man. It is, on the other hand, a fantastic and energetic concert film and a good answer to anyone who will ever ask the question of why Michael Jackson meant so much to so many people.
If you like Michael Jackson’s music, you owe it to yourself to hear it pumped out of a great theatrical sound system. Michael’s voice might be a little rough around the edges, but he can still belt it out when he wants to. All of Michael’s biggest hits are here, and I doubt anyone will be complaining that their favorite wasn't included. Unfortunately the audience I saw the film with was incredibly quiet and reserved, but I can imagine that seeing this with the right group of people would be almost as fun as going to the real concert.
Even at age fifty, Michael could still move. He’s so skinny that some of the steps have a weird, puppet like quality to them, but after watching this movie there can be no question that he was one of the best dancers of the 20th century and one of the greatest entertainers of all time. Seeing him nailing the "Thriller" or "Beat It" moves 25 years later is a spectacle indeed.
Some of the set pieces and movies made for the different songs are so over the top that you can’t help but giggle, but like Bram Stoker’s Dracula they’re over the top in the best possible way. If your idea of a good action movie is seeing Michael Jackson in a film noir shootout with Humphrey Bogart (and whose isn’t?) then this concert would have been your cup of tea. Even my dull audience cheered and laughed when the film revealed how Michael would have emerged in the “Thriller” performance. It’s deliciously campy and entirely Michael Jackson.
While the performances were entertaining, what I enjoyed most was the limited glimpses the film gave of Michael at work, tweaking the show and talking to the dancers and musicians. The movie shows Michael Jackson entirely in his element, and one gets the sense (fostered by the estate, let us not forget) that he was a master craftsman and consummate perfectionist. He has opinions on the dancing, the special effects, the lighting; even the tempo of “The Way You Make Me Feel” comes under intense scrutiny. After years of knowing Michael Jackson the freak show, it’s enlightening to see him here as the talented musician and artist he always was.
It’s likely that such a perfectionist would never have wanted these rough, unfinished performances to see the light of day. However, in showing the genesis of the concert that would have been, the film helps us see past the media circus that surrounded Michael’s life and death and get a glimpse of the musical genius underneath. We don’t get any tawdry glimpses of Michael’s private life for our tabloid obsessed culture, but in showing him at work we probably get closer to knowing him than we ever could with a straight up biography. Michael Jackson was about music, dancing, and putting on a hell of a show. The man on stage was the real thing, the freaky man-child just another illusion.
If not for This Is It, Michael Jackson’s last major public appearance would have been the child molestation trial. I’d say the movie is a much better way to go out.
For nearly thirty-five years now, it's been impossible to mention the guitar without thinking of this very special lady. Shredding gender boundaries as gracefully as she shreds guitar licks on Electric Mayhem hits like "Can You Picture That?" and "Night Life," Janice has earned herself a place in the pantheon of rock royalty. Labels like "pioneer" and "trailblazer" do too little justice to the achievements of this remarkable woman, who took a cheap guitar and a dream all the way to the top of the charts.
She joined Electric Mayhem in the late 60s after performing for a few years as a solo artist in local clubs. "I was just, like, listening to Joan Baez and copying her as best I could," she says. In time, Janice's own unique, harder sound began to develop. Her creative use of distortion and feedback brought her to the attention of acid-rock pioneer Dr. Teeth, who invited her join his new band. With Janice's arrival, Electric Mayhem went to another level of artistic experimentation, and soon they graduated from small bars to larger venues.
This led to their discovery by Kermit the Frog and his aid in getting them a Standard Rich and Famous Contract. By the mid 70s, they were bringing their unique blues/rock sound to The Muppet Show every week, and their 1978 US Tour outsold KISS 2-1. Still, Electric Mayhem has certainly had their ups and downs over the years. They were reduced to squalid living conditions after the failure of their London tour--a subsequent tour a few years later was warmly received--and even gave up on the dream for a few months when a foray into Broadway theater met with disastrous results. Still, with Janice at the wheel the band has persevered, and today they have earned their status as legends of rock.
Tragically, Janice's talent has always been overshadowed by the tabloid scandals that have dogged her since she first arrived on the music scene. Her highly publicized relationship with Electric Mayhem saxophonist Zoot ended in calamity when he learned from a tabloid story that she was carrying on an affair with bassist Floyd Pepper. Despite the noisy gossip and hateful rumors that dogged them in their early years, Janice and Floyd have proven themselves true rock and role survivors--their relationship has now lasted over thirty years.
Then there was Janice's very public and very passionate endorsement of hallucinogenic drugs in the late 70s. While other celebrities, hypocritically or not, were making anti-drug PSAs and carrying on the appearance of upstanding citizens, Janice, speaking on behalf of the entire band, angrily told a reporter that without marijuana or LSD "Electric Mayhem would still be playing in bars between Florida and Hollywood" and "Maybe if more kids tried drugs, there would be, like, more hit records in the world." Though Janice has since backed away from these comments as "like, the arrogant ramblings of a young Muppet who was just, like, getting her first taste of stardom" they have haunted her ever since, causing continued strains with more "family friendly" retailers like Wal-Mart.
But no matter what the papers liked to harp on, Electric Mayhem was never about drugs or the member's personal lives. They were about the music. Even Dr. Teeth himself has long acknowledged Janice as the driving force behind the band's music. Though she sings lead on only two songs (covers of "Rockin Robin" and "With a Little Help From my Friends") her presence is felt on every record. Never given to flashy, self-indulgent solos, Janice always saw the role of guitarist as "bringing out, like, the feeling of music"--a statement as ambiguous and multi-layered as Janice herself.
The future looks bright for this rock legend. She is heading back into the studio with Electric Mayhem in early 2010 for a new album, and it is rumored that she will be the next rock star to get the Hollywood biopic treatment in an elaborate "music video motion picture" said to star Laura Prepon of That 70s Show fame.
Whatever the future holds, Janice and her music will continue to inspire young musicians just starting out on the path to stardom. The star, for her part, seems to accept and even embrace her role as an inspiration to women everywhere: "Every time a young girl picks up a guitar instead of a Barbie, I feel like I've, like, made the world a better place."
So I'm sure everyone's heard the news already about Michael Jackson's death. It's been on the news nonstop since it happened, and at first I was a little amazed at the coverage it was getting. After all, for about the last fifteen years the man has been a living joke, a sad cautionary tale of the price of fame and easy fodder for Family Guy and Robot Chicken jokes. As soon as I heard the music though, played more and more as the day went on, I remembered that there was a time when all of us, myself included, thought Michael Jackson was pretty cool.
I wasn't even a year old when Thriller came out, but it speaks to its enormous popularity that I can still remember the aftermath. One of my earliest memories, in fact, is of running in terror from the Thriller video when Michael morphed into the werewolf. (If you must make a "Children are instinctively scared of Michael Jackson" joke, here would be the place, I guess, but c'mon. The man's dead.) I don't think I got up the courage to watch the video again for almost ten years.
But the other stuff, I'll admit, I liked quite a bit. My friends and I went through a phase when we were in 4th grade (when the Dangerous album came out) where Michael Jackson was just about all we listened to. (If you must make a "Ten year old boys and Michael Jackson" joke, here is probably the place, but again, why not let him rest in peace?) I bought all his albums (on the exciting medium of cassette tape!), watched the videos, rented the Moonwalker movie, tried to do the dances. Better still, I was (an am) a proud owner of Michael Jackson's Moonwalker for Sega Genesis, a kingly game if ever there was one. Michael turned into a spaceship. Seriously.
It's a really odd life to try to get a handle on. On the one hand there's that guy I remember from the 80s and early 90s, the guy that was weird, sure, but still a brilliant, best selling musician. On the other, there's the sad, pasty faced skeletal man-child he's become ever since. And it's sad for me, someone who remembers (however vaguely) the years when Michael Jackson was actually cool, actually a source of inspiration and entertainment. It's sad that he never got to do his comeback tour, which might have revived his image somewhat. But what's sad, really, tragically sad, is knowing that, even at 50, the guy probably lived too long. He'd made himself into such a freakshow that people forgot what a great entertainer he had been.
There will be Wacko Jacko stories flooding the tabloids for years to come, and I'm sure before too long we'll get to hear from his children and others who will reveal new oddities and scandals. As for me, I'm doing my best to remember him as he was. If they put him on a stamp, I sure hope they use the young version. My favorite Michael Jackson song back in 4th grade was almost certainly "Smooth Criminal" and today it's as good a reminder as any of what a great talent the man was, and why so many people are so shocked at his loss.
It's still an amazing song, isn't it? That's the Michael Jackson I want to remember. It's a tragedy that's become so difficult. At least he's finally at peace. Unless he comes back as a zombie.
E3 is this week, so the nerd in me will be getting hyped up about various new bits of video game news.
I've been a huge Beatles fan much of my life, so I'm really getting hyped up for the new Beatles Rock Band game. I know it's not any different than a lot of other rhythm games, but c'mon, it's the Beatles!
Here's a new trailer--I love the visual style and song choice. Has a cool rotoscoped, Yellow Submarine feel to it. Even though all Rock Band games are basically the same (this one spices it up by adding three part harmonies) this is one I'll definitely be picking up on September 9th, hopefully with all the many peripherals to get the full Beatles fantasy experience.
If that doesn't get a Beatles fan excited, what will? They sure know how to market themselves, even forty five years on. There's some gameplay footage and more at the game's official website. No doubt it will sell like crazy when it comes out.
Like the Oscars, I’m not sure how relevant the Grammys ever were, but I have to congratulate Robert Plant on winning a bunch last night, especially after the general disrespect the music industry showed Led Zeppelin during their heyday. Though his album with Alison Krauss came out well over a year ago, it’s quite good as far as mellow country-tinged albums go. Great to listen to while writing or just sitting around the house.
I’ve been a little bummed out about the direction of the music industry lately. It may just be that I’m getting older. Let’s face it—most music these days is geared towards the 14-18 crowd. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but over the years it’s led to music becoming more disposable. Today Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake are old pros, and though they’re both talented I can’t see them standing the test of time. My generation never had a Beatles, a Led Zeppelin, a Guns N’ Roses—even Pearl Jam and Nirvana were a little before our time. While we can still enjoy the old music, there hasn’t been a seminal event in music for decades, and the old styles are becoming more and more tired.
This could all just be due to the fact that I’m out of touch. Apparently Chris Brown got into some kind of trouble that prevented him from attending the awards last night, and to be honest with you I’m not 100% sure who that is. People come and go now without my noticing. As Grandpa Simpson once said, “I used to be with it, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t it, and what’s it seems weird and scary to me.” There’s a good chance I’m already far down that road. Have I become the kind of joyless old man who screams out “Bring on Sha-na-na!” at Woodstock? I hope not.
But I don’t think I’m mistaking in the lack of passion in the industry today. Musicians tend to hop in and go with the flow, and individual expression falls by the wayside. During the entire 8 years of the Bush administration, there was a deafening silence in anti-war songs or any serious statements from mainstream musicians (with few notable exceptions), and it’s strange that something as liberating as music has become, in an odd way, so conservative.
Yet there’s no way to give up on music. Arthur Machen once called it “the perfect art,” and I couldn’t agree more. As writers, “We are forced to devise incidents and circumstances and plots, to ‘make up a story;’ we translate a hill into a tale, conceive lovers to explain a brook, turn the perfect into the imperfect.” Musicians, on the other hand, have the power to speak directly to an emotion, without covering it up in the mechanisms of plot. For a writer to express a broken heart, for example, she has to create characters and a story and work her way to the emotion indirectly; a musician can strum the right notes and we instantly feel what they feel. Bruce Springsteen’s song, “The Wrestler,” conveys everything in three minutes that the movie spends two hours and millions of dollars showing us.
But we might just be experiencing a lull right now. There are great musicians out there, great songs are still being written. The whole world moves at a faster and faster pace, and it’s easy for great music to get buried as the industry moves on to someone else. This kid gives me a lot of hope, and he might just be on to something.
As Eric Cartman once so eloquently put it, “Real guitars are for old people.”
There’s been a lot of talk on and off lately about a Zeppelin reunion tour, reuniting some of the members of the band. In a lot of ways this might seem like a good idea. After all, Zeppelin rules, right? Maybe not. For many years, Presence was the only Led Zeppelin album I had never heard. I always knew it was out there, but I had plenty of quality Zeppelin to listen to without the need to branch out. I guess it’s my fault—I let the thing take on a kind of mythical quality. So when I finally bought the album I was expecting a lot. And what I got was Presence.
Now there’s a lot of history behind the album’s creation: It was recorded in 18 days, Plant had just been in a car crash, Page was struggling with heroin addiction, blah, blah, blah. True as that may be, the album just isn’t very good, and listening to it was a disappointment of epic proportions. At its best, Zeppelin is a barely coherent mix of late 60’s hard rock, stolen blues riffs, bizarre pagan mythology, British folk music, and forty minute solos. Presence is more like generic rock music, with all of the over-indulgence and none of the craftsmanship. It's like the worst of Foreigner.
“Achilles Last Stand,” remains one of Zeppelin’s greatest tracks, and if you think of Presence as that song plus seven bonus tracks, maybe it's worthwhile. There is no finer example of the raw power and awesomeness of Led Zeppelin than the relentless drums of John Bonham on “Achilles.” Plant’s voice is haunting, and the song has a driving, gentle sadness to it despite the hard edge. It’s an underrated, somewhat unknown Zeppelin track, mostly popular among hardcore Zeppelin fans, and its worth about a million listens. (Which is still a somewhat low number for a Zeppelin song; indeed, most Zeppelin albums are worth at least five trillion listens, according to top Zeppelin scientists.)
Presence eliminates itself from the debate of “greatest Zeppelin album” almost as quickly as the even more regrettable Coda. Perhaps someday I will try to make a list of the best Zeppelin albums, but it’s hard to make decent comparisons out of what’s left. Without hyperbole, I can confidently state that Led Zeppelin is one of the greatest achievements in the history of mankind, and slight mistakes such as Presence will be forgotten in the grand scheme of things.
And now the point: What won’t be forgotten is if Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones attempt to run around the country touring as Led Zeppelin without Robert Plant. I understand the need to cash in on success as much as the next guy, but Zeppelin, like The Beatles, is one of the few great bands who quit while the iron was (relatively) hot, never subjecting their legacy to the spectacle of increasingly elderly men trying to run around the stage like they did when they were 23.
If Plant were on board, then yes, I’d be rushing to buy tickets, whether it tarnished their image or not. But with any other singer, it’s just a bunch of old men. Zeppelin fans can forgive Presence, they can forgive Coda, and most of us have come to terms with “The Crunge.” But let’s leave them in the 70s where they belong. Otherwise Presence won’t be the biggest thing to worry about.
When I was a kid, Guns n’ Roses was the coolest band on the planet, period. If you asked a kid in the late 80s to think of the quintessential rock band, odds are they would have pictured G n’ R (after asking you what “quintessential” meant.) I was just a child at the time, and I could hardly run out and buy Appetite for Destruction or even the Use Your Illusion double (priced) album. But I was never far from teenagers who could. A group of teenagers used to hang out under the basketball hoop on a driveway four or five houses up from mine. They would stand there night after night in the summer smoking cigarettes and talking in voices that carried all the way down the street. I was always too nervous to get close, but I would lay out in my back yard listening to the insects chirp in the trees and the voices, unintelligible, but distinctly older and dripping with what I thought was sophistication. Teenagers have a strange aura when you’re a kid. You’re well aware that they’re not quite adults, but they seem so impossibly old and different. They’re adults that still get to have fun—that drive around in cars and go to the movies and the mall whenever they want.
And they got to sit around at night and play their music. All the 80s hair bands were represented, of course, but I’ll never forget the night I first heard the opening notes of “Welcome to the Jungle” ripping out across suburbia, Axl’s unforgettable wail drowning out even the crickets. What I heard coming from the boom box that night was fierce and violent and free, and it belonged to those kids down the street. It’s an unwritten law of the universe that, while we all might love music, you can never quite have a relationship with a song like you can when you’re sixteen. That night I sat on my porch and dreamed of the day when I could be like those teenagers down the street, and this music would belong to me.
I never really grew into one of those teenagers. By the time I was in high school grunge and alternative were already on their way out and N*Sync and Britney Spears were on their way in. So maybe people from my age group can never quite call Guns n’ Roses their own. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t represent everything that made that last generation of adrenaline fueled guitar rock so exciting: The girls, the crazy life style, the long hair, the “I don’t care” attitude. I think a lot of our idea of what’s “cool” comes from the teenagers we know as children, and so for the children I grew up with there was nothing cooler than Guns n Roses.
When people pop in a new CD (or nowadays, download a song) by a favorite band from the past, they’re not looking to find a new favorite song. Nothing, and I mean nothing, connects us to our emotions and memories the way music does. Consciously or not, when people buy a new CD with the Guns n’ Roses name on it, they’re looking to feel the way they felt on those summer nights two decades ago, when the music was brand new and they were a whole lot longer. But the days of boom-boxes blasting out music over dark suburban streets are long gone. Today, Axl Rose is the only original member of G n’ R left, and he’s pushing fifty. For a lot of people, it will be difficult to get past the fact that Appetite for Destruction will never come back. I’m sure there are still people who run out to buy every Paul McCartney album hoping to hear “She Loves You” again for the first time. But if you can get past all that and judge it for what it is, Chinese Democracy is a solid rock album and definitely worth a listen.
Oh, and Axl? If you can’t resurrect the past, can you at least get me my Dr. Pepper? Thanks.
Believe it or not, today is twenty years to the day that the Simpsons Christmas Special first aired way back in 1989. Though the show remains popular, by Fox standards, it has never again reached the insane level of merchandise saturation it hit in that very first year. Nothing captures the way the Simpsons exploded into popular culture in 1990 more than The Simpsons Sing the Blues, a full length album of different Simpsons family members performing old blues and jazz standards. The Simpsons characters (with the possible exception of Lisa) have no connection whatsoever to blues music—odds are these songs were cheap to license, or else some blues fan on the staff was just dying to record an album. I have no inside knowledge on how this thing came about. It doesn’t matter. Knowing why it was created would only take away the magic. All that matters is that the album sold, going platinum in the US and making it to #3 on the Billboard charts. I got it on tape along with a glut of other Simpsons merchandise back in 1990, and I listened to it at least as much as I would one day listen to The White Album. Maybe even more. 
The main selling point was “Do the Bartman,” a rap/rock/new jack swing song ghost written by Michael Jackson, a huge hit on the playground in 3rd grade. Bart Simpson was the coolest kid on the planet back then—the show centered around him, and he was marketed to death. If you were a fan of the Simpsons during that first huge rush of popularity the song is sure to hit you in face with a powerful slap of nostalgia. If not, it must seem a very sad relic indeed. 
