Time to Play B-Sides

Speaking of cowbell...

Blue Öyster Cult has a lot to answer for (starting with that damn umlaut above the "O" and including enough heavy-metal black-magic imagery to embarrass even Spinal Tap). Still, it's hard to argue with an understated ode to doom and death that's as catchy as "Don't Fear the Reaper." It was impossible to escape this song in the 1970s (when every third FM DJ -- and every single overnight DJ) played it half to death (another 40,000 plays every day). (Link for Gmail subscribers.)

But try to find a radio station that played the B-Side of "Don't Fear the Reaper" -- or a casual fan who even knows it was (for the record, it's "Tattoo Vampire").

Five years after not fearing the reaper for the first time, Blue Öyster Cult was back on the radio with "Burning for You," a song so slick and anonymous that it could have come from anyone. Naturally it was a huge hit and poured forth from every AM radio in America like a Vampire (tattooed or not) in search of a pre-dawn snack.

I didn't like the song much, but I loved exactly one of its lines:

Time to play B-Sides

See, I loved B-Sides. They're the vinyl equivalent of opening bands: You're there for something else (which you know you like), so you have zero expectations and anything good that comes out of it is just a lucky bonus.


Save the B-Side, save the world?

Blotto (aka the 34th Most Important Band in the World) clearly knew this. Their great 1981 single "When the Second Feature Starts" had a flip side called "The B-Side," which laments the lack of respect given to B-Sides:

The A side gets the attention
The B side? Barely a mention...

The A side has the hit
The B side ain't got...anything

My friend Eric and I once stood front and center at a Blotto concert yelling out "B-Side" until they relented and sang it. The look of confused irony on Broadway Blotto's face as he sang the chorus (including the line "And you're probably not even listening to this right now") is etched permanently on my brain.

And, of course, Buck Dharma, who wrote and sang "Don't Fear the Reaper" played the heavy-metal guitar solo on Blotto's anthemic "Metal Head." In a just world, Blotto would have been on the radio as much as Blue Öyster Cult.. and years later it would have been Blotto instead of BOC doing a cameo in the movie The Stoned Age.

Still, sometimes the B-Side was so great that it transcended B-Sidedness, like XTC's "Dear God," which started life as a non-album B-Side (on the single "Grass") until radio stations started playing it and Virgin Records made it a proper A-side (and reissued the album Skylarking, adding the song). This proves a lot of things (including that Virgin couldn't pick XTC singles to save its life), especially that it's worth taking the time to play B-Sides (link for Gmail subscribers):

By Order of The TSA

True story.

My wife, Mrs. Clicks and Pops, is in The Bobs, a Grammy-nominated band.

Last month, they were on tour and (like any band on tour), they were lugging around merch (CDs, etc.) to sell at gigs. Towards the end of the tour, they flew halfway across the country and checked the merch bag for the flight.

Now, sometimes the TSA opens checked bags to inspect them... and when that happens, the TSA agent is supposed to leave a card in the bag explaining that the TSA inspected the bag.

When the Bobs opened the merch bag that night, they found the TSA card. Apparently, the TSA agent who opened the bag had a sense of humor: recognizing that the bag was merch for a band, the TSA agent scrawled a two-word note on the card he left in the bag.

It read: More cowbell!

(Link for Gmail subscribers).

Bill Gates vs. Music

My Mac-based friends have told me for years that Bill Gates is an evil genius.

Until now, I've never believed them. But how else can you explain Songsmith, a Microsoft software product that fabricates (bad) music when you sing to it.

When I first heard about this product, I was convinced that it had to be a joke. The introductory video (which starts out by declaring it's rated "S" for "Songtastic"!) seems to have come from The Onion, not Microsoft.

But Songsmith is sadly real, an ill-conceived product built to address a market that probably doesn't really exist.

The one hope for Songsmith's success is that it's given birth to a new sub-genre of videos on YouTube: great songs reimagined (i.e., ruined) by Microsoft Songsmith.

For example, here's Songsmith butchering the Beatles "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band" (link for Gmail subscribers):


And Billy Idol's "White Wedding" (link for Gmail subscribers):


And "Hotel California" by the Eagles (link for Gmail subscribers):


Now tell me: Have we underestimated Bill Gates all these years? Has he really been hiding his true identity as a James Bond villain amassing billions as part of a long-fomenting evil plan to destroy rock 'n' roll once and for all?

Excavating Below Layers of '80s Cheese

Long before becoming a reality show on VH-1, the '80s were a decade.

Today (January 25, 2009), MTV's schedule is literally 24 hours of reality shows. But in the '80s, the "M" meant something; it was a decade filled with great (and not-so-great) music, beamed nonstop into American households over MTV.

Back in 1985, a friend of mine working at a radio station played me the song "Take on Me" by Norwegian band a-Ha. It bored me right away and seemed hopelessly mired in '80s cheese: blippy keyboard bleats, bouncy synth drums, vaguely nonsensical lyrics, absurdly high vocals that tried to reach escape velocity and go up into space. I thought it was instantly forgettable and told him so. No, my friend said, you don't understand; you need to see the video.

He was right: an attractive girl (with bad '80s hair) hangs out in a restaurant that advertises "cold milk" in the window until she's literally pulled into a magical wonderland where cute animated (actually pencil-rotoscoped) rock stars are chased by bad guys with wrenches (driving motorcycles with sidecars). And then the cute lead singer guy bangs on the walls of the cartoon until his love for the girl transcends space and time and he's transported from cartoon-world to the real world. I guess.

It doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's cool -- cool enough be nominated for 8 video music awards and win 6. Cool enough that it's impossible to hear the song now and not think about the video. And cool enough to be parodied years later on Family Guy (link for Gmail subscribers):


But if you take out all the electronics? What's the real essence of this song when you strip out the video?What would an archeological team find if they could excavate deep down past all the '80s cheese? It turns out you need Runar Eff, a musician from Iceland (who spent 10 years playing hockey on Iceland's national team) to answer those questions. No "cold milk" sign, no bad '80s hair, and no animated alternate reality -- just a surprisingly emotional song (link for Gmail subscribers):

Ron Nasty's Hard Day's Rut

Is it wrong to love a fictional band?

If the band is the Archies or Milli Vanilli, it's very wrong. But if the band is the Rutles, it couldn't be more right.

In 1975, Monty Python's Eric Idle was doing a BBC sketch comedy show called Rutland Weekend Television and wrote a sketch about a Beatlesesque band called the Rutles. Idle hauled in Neil Innes (the former Bonzo Dog Band member who wrote and performed most of the songs for Monty Python) to write and sing a song parodying the Beatles' style (circa 1964). A year later, Idle played those BBC Rutles clips when he hosted Saturday Night Live.

SNL producer Lorne Michaels was already a huge Beatles fan; in April 1976 he offered the Beatles $3000 to reunite and perform on SNL (an offer raised to $3,200 -- an extra 50 bucks each! -- a few weeks later). (Ironically, Paul McCartney and John Lennon were watching that episode of SNL together in the Dakota and discussed getting a cab and going down to Rockefeller Center to collect the check. They ultimately decided against it.)

Idle then talked Michaels into producing All You Need is Cash, a full-length mock rocumentary on the Rutles, written by Idle and directed by Gary Weis (who made a series of short comedy films in the early years of SNL). Idle again turned to Neil Innes, who wrote 20 songs (parodying various musical styles associated with the Beatles) for the project.

All You Need is Cash is arguably the best rock 'n' roll comedy in history (its only serious rival is This is Spinal Tap). The movie, a history of the rise and fall of the Rutles that lovingly mocks the Beatles through different eras and moods, features Innes (as John Lennon-ish Rutle Ron Nasty), two Pythons (Idle and Michael Palin, both in multiple roles), two Rolling Stones (Mick Jagger and Ron Wood), one actual Beatle (George Harrison), as well as Paul Simon, David Frost, and six SNL'ers (John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Lorne Michaels and new Minnesota Senator Al Franken). (Link for Gmail subscribers.)


If you've never seen it (or you haven't seen it lately), buy or rent it immediately. (I'll wait.)

But the best part of the Rutles is the music. Innes channels Beatles songs, then twists them through an alternate-universe prism that warps them into off-kilter creations that are simultaneously familiar and completely new and unique.

Ironically, the Beatles themselves loved the Rutles music, but their publishing company sued Innes, so he never made any money off the first Rutles album. In addition, Idle reportedly demanded payment for having "created" the idea (and name) of the Rutles. (Link for Gmail subscribers.)


I bought the vinyl soundtrack (which had 14 songs). I bought the soundtrack again when it came out on CD (I needed the 6 songs from the movie that were left off of the original vinyl). A few years ago, I saw Neil Innes perform at McCabe's. The packed house loved his Python songs, but there was something magical about 250 people singing along to all the Rutles songs (and even knowing all the backing vocal parts to "I Must Be in Love"). After the show, I got him to sign my vinyl copy of The Rutles (which was great) and got to thank him for all the amazing music he's made in his love (which was even better).

Bonus Trivia: Both Neil Innes and Ron Nasty are credited on the Aimee Mann album I'm With Stupid.

The Audacity of Vote

Back to music tomorrow.

When I voted two years ago, the poll workers were maddeningly inefficient, uninformed, and nasty. It was a horrible experience that made me never want to vote again. Instead, I signed up to be a poll worker for last November's election.

I spent 16 hours on Election Day at the polling place, determined to give others a better voting experience than I had had. (After all, in a Democracy, voting should be easy instead of torturous.) The day was long and amazing, sometimes wonderful, and sometimes annoying. And did I mention long?

My favorite thing that happened was when a middle-aged woman who spoke with a heavy accent came in to vote. She took a long time and was clearly carefully considering each and every race and item on the ballot. When she turned in her ballot, she made a point of shaking hands with each and every poll worker. I was the last one before she shook hands with and she asked me if she had to tell me who she voted for. I told her she didn't have to tell anyone who she voted for. Ever. At that, she smiled and she said to me "I was sworn in as a citizen in March, but today, right now, I feel like I'm really an American."

Link for Gmail subscribers.

Listening to the Jam on the Freeway

Misheard lyrics are the best kind.

I remember that it was pouring. It had been raining for days and would rain for many more days. 17 straight days of rain. I was driving somewhere with my friend Steve (who was a complete pothead, but for some reason hated "drug music"). Steve's musical taste tended more towards southern Hard Rock and boogie music (he loved groups like Molly Hatchet and Lynyrd Skynyrd and thought that self-indulgent solos that stretched songs to 9 or 10 minutes were the purest expression of God's grace on earth). Steve had a confederate flag decal on his school notebook and would refuse to listen to anyone who argued that New England was not part of the South.

Steve and I always argued about what radio station to listen to, but since it was his car, he got to pick that day. He took mercy on me and didn't pick the station that boasted it was "ultra, mega kick-ass rock" and instead settled for the "Rockin' You Hard All Day All Night" station. And that afternoon the DJ played this song, sandwiched between "Highway to Hell" and "Crazy on You" (link for Gmail subscribers):


I instantly loved the opening count-off (which sounds like it comes from another dimension), slightly robotic new wave beat, harmonies, and how the vocals simultaneously sound removed, disaffected, and completely insistent. The mood of the song perfectly captured how I felt looking out the window at a New England town I felt part of and simultaneously completely separate from. And, since another friend had recently introduced me to the Jam, I loved the line in the song "listening to the Jam on the freeway." To me, that pun perfectly combined the desire to escape with the deadening grounding of daily life (and seasoned it with a shout-out to an incredibly cool but then-obscure British band).

And, despite the casually pro-drug lyrics, even Steve seemed to like the song. He was tapping his fingers on the steering wheel (although that might have been an advanced driving technique to keep his Mom's Volare wagon from fishtailing).

Throughout that string of rainy days, I hunted for 20/20's album, finally finding it misfiled under "Various Artists" at a local used record store. I plunked down my 3 bucks and walked out with it. Unlike some albums you buy for a single song, listen to once, then only listen to that single song in the future, the first 20/20 album is filled with great and amazing tracks you want to hear over and over. And, the day after I found the record, the sun finally came out.

When the second 20/20 album came out, I was again driving with Steve in the rain and the song "Nuclear Boy" came on the radio. He got as far as the line "If I take enough pills, I'll be tough as the world today," before changing the channel to a station playing some endless song from a live-in-concert Outlaws album. I got the second 20/20 album around that time and it was just as good as the first, filled with driving power-pop anthems and lots of great hooks (link for Gmail subscribers).


The first two 20/20 albums failed to sell and their record company dropped them. The band broke up shortly thereafter. But their music won over a fervent cult of fans and their song "Yellow Pills" inspired a power-pop magazine of the same name (and a series of compilation albums in the 1990s), which eventually led to a band reunion in the mid-1990s.

As for my friend Steve -- he eventually wrecked the Volare coming home drunk from a party; he was relatively hurt but scared enough to stop drinking and taking drugs. He also stopped listening to hard rock and accumulated a huge collection of classic jazz records. He doesn't remember 20/20 at all and insists he was visiting a friend in North Carolina the time we got the 17 straight days of rain.

Maybe he's right -- memory's a funny thing. The lyric that won me over to 20/20, that I've heard every time I've played the record, that great shout-out ("listening to the Jam on the freeway")... it isn't in the song at all. The real lyrics are "But they're stuck in a jam on the freeway," which is just not as cool.

And maybe it didn't rain for 17 straight days and wasn't even raining when I got the 20/20 records. But it's raining in my mind every time I hear a 20/20 song... and maybe that's what really matters.