In a recent full-page advertisement, veteran music executive Steve Stoute lashed out at the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), the organization that oversees the Grammy awards and ceremony, saying that the organization has “clearly lost touch with contemporary popular culture”.
Has there ever been a rock album quite like Born to Run? As a young person it’s easy to grow up listening to “Born in the U.S.A.” and “Glory Days” and thinking that Bruce Springsteen is essentially a glorified heartland rocker, in the vein of Bob Seger or John Mellencamp. And early in his career, Springsteen had already been hailed as the next Dylan after his first two albums, 1973′s Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, thanks in part to a proclivity toward lyric-heavy songs like “Blinded by the Light” and “Growin’ Up.” But with the release of Born to Run in 1975, Springsteen established himself as a bona fide rock ‘n’ roll revivalist: a devout acolyte of Elvis, Roy Orbison, and, maybe more than anyone, producer Phil Spector, whose lush arrangements were responsible for the iconic “girl group” sound of the ’60s (and the oft-maligned orchestra backgrounds on the Beatles’ Let It Be album). Born to Run is an album of dualities – entrapment and rebellion, joy and sorrow, hope and despair. But more than anything, it’s an album that aimed to synthesize Springsteen’s ratty, working-class, quintessentially urban personality with the saccharine sheen of 1950s and ’60s pop. The result is something entirely unique: a rock ‘n’ roll opus that moves effortlessly from the backstreets to the front porch to the boardwalk, encapsulating exactly what it means to be young and restless and out of control.
Remember those days when Amy Winehouse was getting the same buzz that Adele is getting these days? Sure, it could be argued that Adele owes her success to Winehouse first blazing the trail and making the world safe for torchy songstresses to again roam free.
As much as I’m loathe to admit it, the greatest musical artist working today is Kanye West…the operative word being ‘WORKING’. In between bouts of exasperating pretentiousness, this man never fails in his attempt to bring something compelling and fresh to the table. This is a guy who is actively TRYING and for that he gets my undying respect.
“Firewall,” the opener to Bright Eyes’ latest album The People’s Key, begins with a spoken introduction that had me pretty instantly hooked the first time I heard it. I’ve always been a sucker for all texts mystical – the Gnostic Gospels, Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, Stephen King’s Dark Tower series – so hearing an apparent crackpot named Denny Brewer riffing on theories about malicious, reptilian, interdimensional beings who’ve been around since the Garden of Eden (“Space is expanding. There are spirits coming from the center, right? The universe is moving counter-clockwise…”) was, admittedly, thrilling. I began imagining an album full of stark, chilling meditations on the darkness that permeates the fabric of the universe – something I could really sink my teeth into.
You’d think that nearly half a decade would provide sufficient enough time to come up with something that could satiate the public’s rabid desire for a new direction from their favourite group… it didn’t have to be the next OK Computer (it would’ve been nice, but it didn’t have to be), but just not more of the same nebulous noodling of the last decade.
Back in 1987, the UK press began lauding the talents of a U.S. singer by the name of Terence Trent D’Arby, whose debut album, Introducing the Hardline According To…, had just been released there. I, being an American who found myself quite enamored by Britain’s ability to appreciate great artists that the American mainstream willfully ignored, grabbed a copy the minute I saw it in the local record store and was immediately floored by D’Arby’s talents.
If it were possible to toss Prince, Al Green, Percy Sledge, and Little Richard into a blender, what you’d come up with would have been very much what you heard on D’Arby’s debut. On songs like “Wishing Well”, “If You Let Me Stay”, and “Sign Your Name” (to name but a few), D’Arby’s vocals were so evocative of the greats mentioned above, yet his vocal style was entirely his own. This was a cat in full control of his talents and able to sing the cover off a phone book at fifty feet.
Sure, it’s no longer cool to dig KISS, but, let’s face it, if you are a dude or dudette “of a certain age”, you did at one time think KISS were pretty damn cool. You owned all the records, went to their shows, and, on at least one occasion, went as your favorite KISS member for Halloween.
You know, it wasn’t so long ago that the world was virtually littered with chick bands. Every time we turned around, there seemed to be some new all-girl band trotting out their musical wares and. more times than not, they weren’t half bad (to look at). It was an amazingly great time for music, now that we think about it.
Like most everyone else on the planet, we have an opinion about the new song by The Strokes, called “Under Cover Of Darkness”. Of course, a lot of people are of the opinion that it’s a very cool return-to-form for the pride of Hipsterville, or, as we like to call them, the Jules ‘Blanca & Silver Spoon Gang.
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