godthedog

i was 11, watching the vh1 top 20 countdown with rapt attention. who would be number one this week? the stunning new ingenue celine dion's gently reassuring "if you asked me to"? the always-provocative george michael's "too funky," with its sampling from 'the graduate' that would take me another five years to recognize, and would make me always associate 'the graduate' with this song? the deeply-soulful-yet-white michael bolton's elliptical and suspenseful new hit, "said i loved you...but i lied"? (a level of suspense that would go unchallenged in popular music until meat loaf's "i'd do anything for love (but i won't do that).") i don't remember who won that week, but i do remember in the mid-teens a certain road-as-metaphor-for-existence hit that was light on the pretense and heavy on the denim & harmonica. and i remember it being sung by a certain blonde-haired musical descendant of bob seger and bruce springsteen, a man who, when i close my eyes to try to remember his face, looks exactly like greg "the hammer" valentine. i will never forget that first time. except that time from 1994 to 2006 when i didn't think about it at all until i heard it in pixar's 'cars'.

if i were singing in 90s week i would sing "i'd do anything for love (but i won't do that)." i kindly ask chris sligh to sing it in my place.

well...a lot of it IS her fault. A, she chose the song. B, she fucked up the melody on almost every line. i understand what she was trying to do, the song has a really simple melody that doesn't show off your voice very well & she wanted to clear some space to show it off. but when you go UP instead of DOWN at the end of every line, you destroy the whole tone of the song. the 'american idol'-ingrained desire to turn the melody into a swirling crescendo veers you way off from the descending melody line that makes the song bluesy & dark & interesting. it's a terrible mistake that tells you she doesn't know what the song is about.

obviously, they couldn't get the rights. as i understand it, the only beatles song that ever got performed on AI was when taylor hicks did "something," and that isn't in the northern songs (lennon/mccartney) catalog. and they probably got into some legal scuffling with that even, or just said something like "if we only let contestants sing george harrison songs it's just gonna look weird, so we'll just take the beatles off the table." or, no one this week wanted to do a harrison song. so how fucking embarrassing is it when you're doing a show focused all around the british invasion and you can't sing any lennon/mccartney songs? and you have a tremendous amount of talent being represented in that period, & the best you can do for a special guest is peter noone and lulu? this just makes the whole show seem bush league. it made for a horrible and boring choice of songs from almost everybody, & made that whole period sound like a shitfest. who, when hearing the words "think of a british invasion song to sing," thinks "oh! i'll do 'tobacco road'!" or "oh! i'll do a song from 'oliver!'!" even gina, the one most suited for this period, chose the wrong stones song. "paint it black" only sounds like a great song when it's done a very specific way...they at least got the booming drums right, but it was just way too polished and not dark or edgy enough. "paint it black" is exactly the kind of song whose greatness you cannot duplicate in any way on AI. do "time is on my side," or "you can't always get what you want," or "heart of stone"...ANYTHING but "paint it black." this SHOULD'VE been a great week with great songs, and it turned into a mess.

Melinda - House of the Rising Sun (The Animals) why would melinda sing a song from the point of view of a man who spends all his time at a whorehouse?

lakisha needs to do "oh! darling" by the beatles. that would be some good shit. sanjaya should do "i'm into something good" by herman's hermits. chris sligh should do something by the animals. preferably "boom boom." blake should get over his fear of real instruments & do something safe, but he'll probably fuck it up completely by trying to turn "time is on my side" into an aphex twin song or something. chris richardson should...i'm sorry, i was nodding off in boredom as i typed his name. melinda should do "got to get you into my life" (beatles again--note how the best songs go to the best singers). good rock song with a really horn-heavy, r & b-inflected sound. if gina could pull off "satisfaction" and successfully alternate between sultry/low and angry/high, she could steal the show. jordin...probably something cutesy like "i want to hold your hand." maybe she'll find a loophole and do "please mister postman." phil would do good with "gimme some lovin" by the spencer davis group. i'm sure there's more contestants, but i can't remember them. they should all do "paint it black."

i just found out that a triple bill of styx, foreigner, and def leppard is coming to pittsburgh. i did not know it was possible for so much rocking to be in one place.

styx - "lady"

awesome. that will fit in so perfectly with the new "parody-of-itself" persona that 'law and order' has created for itself in the last year.

how much did neil young's complete discography cost? ted hawkins - 'the next hundred years'. i'm digging his voice, and the little bit of country flavor is kind of nice.

franz ferdinand's aptly titled 'you could have it so much better'. portishead - 'portishead'. basically more of the same, with songs that are far less memorable (except the first two tracks). and i think both these bands used a theremin on their debut album.

No fucking way! Any way you can upload that song? i have no idea, but it's not really worth listening to. there's an inordinately long instrumental intro & an additional instrumental intermission, both of which sound exactly the same as the instrumental thing that's already in the radio version. semi-related, i found out that my favorite barry manilow song, "could it be magic," has an original version that's almost 7 minutes long. turns out barry was not the maverick experimenter with song structure i thought him to be, as the radio edit just chops out some of the bits that make the original version make sense. it's still sort of weird, and the ending is still the same chorus fade-out into the piano solo, but not "holy fuck this thing is creepy did thom yorke put it together"-level weird.

if it'll make them stop, let them regulate the shit out of it. the league has a right to ensure that the game is being played as fairly as possible, and if the players won't regulate themselves & choose to use every possible shade of grey to their advantage, then they force the league's hand to make it a black-and-white issue. this isn't like players being called for a tech every time they get too excited about something, you don't flop because your emotions get the best of you. it's an exacting & calculated move, a deliberate perverting of what the rules are. if flopping is rampant (which it is), then the players have made it clear that they can't be trusted to keep things fair & the only thing that will dictate what they do is whether or not they get called on it. so it's up to the league to call them on it. no player would be dumb enough to publicly bitch about it, cause what's dumber than bitching about a game that actually makes you play by the rules? and even if they do bitch about it, they would have no ground to stand on.

i was just noticing that last night. at the end of her number, i half expected her to start squinting and say, "he who approaches the bridge of death must answer me these questions three." also, her enunciation on that song was incredible. there's a lot of words you have to mash together in a very short span of time on those lines, and i didn't lose a single word she said. and she did it effortlessly without losing any of the emoting required. it's like if the micro machines guy could sing.

that song, like all but maybe 3 songs on the new timberlake album, goes on about 2 and a half minutes too long. i really don't understand how people can think 'futuresex/lovesounds' is a solid pop album. i think the best way to describe it would be "hooky but thin material drawn out to epic length."

received as birthday presents last week: sam cooke - ain't that good news bruce springsteen - darkness on the edge of town billy joel - the stranger billy occean - suddenly. containing the original 7:52 version of "caribbean queen"! james carr - the complete goldwax singles otis redding - live at the whisky a go-go righteous brothers - greatest hits george michael - faith

"Change Clothes" is way worse than "Encore" i was actually thinking of "change clothes" when i wrote that. i don't know how "encore" came out. 80s: 1. cowboy junkies - the trinity session 2. pixies - surfer rosa 3. michael jackson - bad 4. prince - 1999 5. this mortal coil - it'll end in tears 90s albums that women sing lead vocals on: 1. sarah mclachlan - fumbling towards ecstasy 2. massive attack - mezzanine 3. portishead - dummy 4. elastica - elastica 5. mazzy star - so tonight that i might see

I could make the final 10 in canadian idol. there are exactly 14 people in canada who have any non-wrestling-related talent.

top 5 lone bad songs on great albums: 1. michael jackson - "jackson," off the wall 2. jay-z - "encore," the black album 3. frank sinatra - "what's new," only the lonely 4. beatles - "when i get home," a hard day's night 5. wu-tang clan - "7th chamber part ii," enter the wu-tang: 36 chambers not in any particular order, except for number 1.

top 5 exotic instrument names: 1. didgeridoo 2. zither 3. glockenspiel 4. mellotron 5. triangle

i thought that was "psalm." fiona apple edition: 1. "on the bound" 2. "oh sailor" 3. "not about love" 4. "carrion" 5. "sleep to dream"

we get byron the bulb, but we don't get me? what the fuck, people.

fuck yeah. i loved that album when i was a kid. billy ocean was equally awesome with syrupy ballads and dancy numbers.

i saw 'sunrise' again for the first time in a few years the other day. that there's a pretty good movie.

relieve one's hostess twinkie of its cream filling.