thirdhand report of impending fame

random andy hour
the lockout compilation
little sister mix

flashback

Look carefully. Can you find the deck of Eno cards?

sweet valley pop

At the same party, another friend shared his latest passion: divebombing acquaintances' voicemail boxes with unsolicited dramatic readings from the classic Sweet Valley High teen series. In a mock accent that hovers somewhere in the neighborhood of Scotland. Either a sweet pop gift or an act of pop aggression, depending on how you look at it.

what if?

I was at a birthday party this weekend that coincided with Elvis’ birthday. Our friend daydreamed: If Elvis hadn’t died of his pound-of-bacon lifestyle, maybe he’d have staged another comeback, this time going back to his rockabilly roots, and then stayed around for good. Happy birthday.

contempor(g)ary

This mindbending fact just in:

Gary Numan is 13 days older than Gary Oldman.

do you want to/ return the gift

PC World just published their self-described official and idiosyncratic list of the top 50 gadgets of the past 50 years. The top spot was won by the Sony Walkman (1979); runner up is the Apple iPod (2001).

Which suggests the following useful analogy:

Gang of Four ("Entertainment!" released in 1979) is to the Walkman as Franz Ferdinand ("Franz Ferdinand" released in 2004) is to the iPod.

Of course, Go4 has complicated things by reuniting and getting all self-referential and all. But the portable player angle gets really spooky when you consider the FF breakout was "Take Me Out."

Make of these startling parallels what you will.

overthrown

Post on behalf of M.

"I bought Material Issue’s “International Pop Overthrow” for a friend because she said she liked “Valerie Loves Me.” It cost me $2. Does anyone remember these guys? The better song is “Diane,” although you also have “Li’l Christine” and “Renee Remains the Same” to choose from.

The most interesting thing to me is manner in which the technically excellent recording completely fails the music. The production drips with 1980s reverb on the snare, the vocals, everywhere. Unfortunately, this was released in was 1991, and so the production makes this trio with 1978 pop aspirations (think The Knack) sound like an (even more) underwhelming version of Bon Jovi. Another problem is that nothing ever changes: It’s all EQ’d and compressed so that each song sounds exactly the same---the guitar is just so loud, the vocals are placed right there, etc.

It is painful, because there are some good songs (in the abstract) here, but they are outfitted in so much glossy glop that I can’t quite get into it.

I read somewhere that some engineers will randomly slide faders and turn knobs just a little during recordings in order to inject some life into recordings that would otherwise be perfect and sterile. That would have helped here."

hooked

Early on, our singular friend sat with Daniel Fahrenheit, watching television in a quiet Nebraska house. An infamous advertainment appeared on the screen. You know the one. Hooked on what? Our friend’s commentary was immediate: “Kids are on shady street corners at 3 am trying to score dime bags of phonemes.”

Call this the Dylan version.

Daniel Fahrenheit was so taken with the phrase he later adapted it for use with his undergraduate Spanish 101 students: “Kids are on shady street corners at 3 am trying to score dime bags of upside-down question marks.”

Call this the jingle-jangle Byrds version.

What is talk about pop music? We're standing on shaky premises, trying to score whatever exists between the original and the cover. Take it from here, boyos.