The Number Fortys: Rebbie Jackson - "Centipede"

In The Number Fortys, we review whatever song was sitting at #40 on the Billboard charts. We began in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music, and will continue until we get bored. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either). Also, if you want to read the Number in the title as meaning "more numb," I think that's totally understandable at this point.

The oldest of the 10 Jackson children, yes those Jacksons, Rebbie was 34 when she released her debut album. This was the first single, and the only Top 40 song she would ever have (it would reach #24). It is incredible, both exciting and strange all at the same time.

Her brother Michael, at this time the most famous musician on the planet, wrote and produced it. And yes, it sounds like he contributed some background vocals too. On the back of the single, Michael dedicated the song to his "mannequin friends." Here's his crazy-ass lyrics in full.

Your love is like a raging fire
You’re a snake that’s on the loose
The strike is your desire
But when the centipede is hot
You’re bound to feel the fire
But when the centipede is hot
You’re bound to feel the fire

I feel, oh yeah, a longing for your touch
Like you crawled into the bathroom window
To give him all your love
Like a centipede that’s hot
The fire is in your touch
Just like a centipede you’ve got
A lot of loving to touch

Don’t you know
In the quiet of the night
Is when the snake is in the crawlin’
And the moon starts to glow then disappear
When the time is really right
Is when the centipede is crawlin’
You’ll be crying in the night
So many tears
And crawlin’ like a centipede
(Centipede)

You came to strike him with your love
Like you crawled into the bathroom window
To bite him with your love
Like a centipede that’s hot
The fire is in your touch
Just like a centipede you’ve got
A lot of lovin’ to touch

(Chorus X 3)

Beats the shit out of me. The video's just as weird (what does a tiger have to do with...anything?). But regardless of all that, the song is pretty fucking great. I love the syncopated guitar, and that synth run at the end of the chorus is divine. Is it the greatest song ever written? Nah. But it's exactly what I was hoping I'd find when I started this column, a song from out of nowhere that grabs me.

Interesting note about Rebbie, she was groomed for music stardom just like the rest of her siblings, but she bailed on all that to get married when she was 18 and move to Kentucky. Like most people who grow up in abusive domestic shitshows, she could not wait to get out of there. Rebbie's dad, Joe, whose punches led Michael to develop the moonwalk in order to avoid being hit so much, not only objected, he refused to walk her down the aisle. Rebbie and her husband had three children, and stayed married until her husband's death of cancer in 2013. All of this suggests that Rebbie was a very smart woman with a good head on her shoulders.

Anyway, Centipede is a jam, a surreal disturbing jam.

Score: 7

THE NUMBER ONE

You like candy? Of course you like candy. Everyone loves candy. Even if it's empty. Even if it makes your teeth falls out and causes type 2 diabetes and mood crashes. This song isn't a pastry. It isn't a donut or a cake. It's Fun Dip. It's flavored powdered sugar you shovel down your throat with a stick made out of solid sugar that you eat after you run out of the powder. Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go (I tried not to type the words; I feel stupid typing the words) is gloriously, deliriously empty. It is a never-ending pleasure that quickly sickens. It's impossible not to enjoy. It's impossible to be moved. It's too catchy, too perfect, not to have been a hit. It's too devoid of anything else to do anything at the top of the charts besides sit there. How do you evaluate something that is simultaneously inescapable and effervescent? You put it right in the middle, the statistical average of a 10 for form and 0 for content.

Score: 5.

Bandcamp: All Cats Are Grey

I've found more interesting, un-hyped, flat-out enjoyable music through Bandcamp these past several years than through any other music-related outlet. As a place to discover new music, it knocks all the algorithmic-curators and critical places out of the park. The fact that it also generates money for musicians, and (as far as I can tell) is able and willing to cover stuff irrespective of what other noise and PR is out there, makes it the most vital music thing on the internet, if not the planet.

That's why it's worth talking about everything I hate about it.

There's only one thing, really. The music writing on the site is boring as hell. There's no humor, no irreverence, no critical perspective (all music is good and all music contains the exact same amount of goodness. The music exists in a hell of arbitrary equality. It feels like the editors could substitute everything on their front page for something different, and they would write about the music the same way.

At its worst, Bandcamp combines the worst aspects of PR and criticism in a self-contained ouroboros. The only difference from the other ouroboros is that their ouroboros is different from the others. AT its worst, the writing on Bandcamp feels more like someone trying to sell you something than someone exploring the music. The writing isn't art; it's a real-estate broker showing you a house.

Here's one of this week's "essential releases" (note the advertising jargon--the promise of necessity that can't possibly be met). I chose this one because it's the one I liked the best.



There's a couple of paragraphs about the album. Weirdly, the names Bjork and Angelo Badalamenti don't get mentioned once (the first song is a dead ringer for both). Mostly, what we get is a writing that is indistinguishable from hype: 

• Constantly in Love feels like a step forward for Matthildur into a more fully realized sense of herself as a solo artist—a voice, in other words, that cannot be ignored. 
• And Gothic drama is something Sólveig Matthildur’s latest, Constantly in Love, is rich with.
• Her pop songwriting skills are on full display—this would have been a huge hit for 4AD or Projekt in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s.
• The tension necessary for that high drama, these tales of the plangent and often ugly need at the core of desire, is well-established, through curling vocal layers (“Tómas”), pulsing beats (“My Father Taught Me How To Cry”), and chord changes that feel like the bottom of one’s heart dropping out when attempting to vocalize a crush (“My Desperation”).

The reason I call it hype is because the music doesn't measure up to any of this. First off, I think the biggest hit for 4AD around that time was either the Pixies, or Breeders, or I don't know, Belly? I get the comparison (it's goth, or Goth), but "huge hit" seems like a weird claim to make. Secondly, I don't really hear anything pop, or "chord changes that feel like the bottom of one's heart dropping out". I hear a fine, but kind of boring, goth album. It combines elements of Cocteau/Bjork vocals with Coldwave tropes (snares that go snap, an excess of reverb on the vocals, icy synths) that is ultimately less than the sum of its parts. Every influence I hear here is taken from an artist who went further, emotionally and musically, than Matthildur goes here. And because it's written about here as the second (third? eleventh?) coming of goth, I, the listener, come away from a perfectly fine album--nothing special, but nothing horrible--with a feeling of disappointment. The writing makes claims that the music can't live up to. There's no place for the writer to say, most of this album sucks but track three is great. Or shows a lot of potential, we'll have to see what happens. Everything is flawless. Everything is worhty.

Unable to judge music because it is all equally good--or more accurately, each artist exists in its own bubble of itself, unrelated to any other--Bandcamp focuses on biography and genre, i.e. who made this music and what does it sound like. The result is band descriptions that feel like they were generated by a random generator bot that somebody fed music genres into.

New Zealand Female Singer-Songwriter Music On A Grand Organ.

Avant-garde Protest Music with Hindu Philosophy.

A hip-hop collective that "cross wires" Memphis rap and Cyberpunk.

This is all virtually meaningless. As I once said to a local guy who told me he sounded like John Prine, it's easy to sound like John Prine. Anyone can sound like anything. The question is can you write like John Prine (spoiler alert: he couldn't come close). I remember another local guy saying his band sounded like The Housemartins. They did, but without any of political content or soulful singing. I think the first song was about wanting to walk a girl home after school. I asked whether the singer was a pedophile, a virgin, or both.

The biggest problem is that it assumes the genre is an end in itself. Looking for Cosmic Americana Music Made in Africa? You're sure to love this new band? It's a cliche to say you like "all kinds of music." But I'd rather hear someone tell me they like all kinds of music than tell me how they're into Filipino Techno Folk, or whatever.

The point is who cares what a band fucking "sounds like," or what their influences are. I want to know if they sing from their fucking soul, if the music can stop me in my tracks, if it can make me feel less alone in the world, if it can redefine my ideas about what constitutes sound/music/existence. I want to hear something that doesn't sound like anything I've heard before. I want to hear something that sounds like the best, most ultimately realized version, of something I've heard a million times. I want lyrics that hit me so hard I swoon, that give me a way to describe my life that feels more accurate and true. I want lyrics that are silly and make me giggle. I want a guitar solo that sounds awful and wrong the first time I hear it, and the seventh time I hear it, it sounds like a comet blazing a trail though the atmosphere of Jupiter.

But moments like that are rare. They certainly don't come along every day, or five times a week, as Bandcamp would like me to believe. Hey, I'm glad to know that, as today's Bandcamp headline announces, here are Ten Bands Keeping The DIY Scene In Portugal Loud, Edgy, And Alive. I'd be surprised if more than one of them was worth a shit. Here's the first one. You tell me.

I get that Bandcamp has a business to run, mouths to feed, etc. But it is on its way to possessing a great deal of power. As a result, it has the chance to do something that is rare in the history of music criticism. Bandcamp has an opportunity to offer high-visibility music writing--that is to say music ideas/opinions/arguments--that aren't compromised by the fear of jeopardizing its revenue sources. Because it isn't dependent on advertising from labels and artists, Bandcamp could offer sustained criticism & analysis of contemporary music in an arena of total freedom. Instead, it has, so far, chosen to offer mere spectacle. It commits the worst sin of contemporary music criticism. By focusing so exclusively on what is happening "right this second," it communicates that all music is ephemeral and ultimately worthless. You can hear about an incredible album one day, and then never hear anything about it ever again. In its rush to sell you another product, to tell you about the hot new thing (but don't worry, it still sounds recognizably like other things you already like), contempo-music-crit devalues the very things it's supposed to be valuing. In its desperation to sell vast quantities (or any quantities! please! just buy something!) of music, it does away with notions of vast qualities of music.

In the Bandcamp POV, nothing is everything, and everything is nothing. It's impossible to imagine an album of the day that is disruptive, that calls the other music around it into question, that exposes it as compromised, that provokes a furious response in the writer--that forces the writer to pick a side, about anything. Disruption is bad for business. And in its critical tone, its (absence of a) stance, Bandcamp resembles nothing so much as a dislocated version of all these beige buildings surrounding us. If you want burgers, you go to Beef O'Brady's. If you want coffee you go to Starbucks. Hey, I heard we might be getting an In-N-Out Burger soon. Everything here is exactly the same. It's just a question of what shape it comes in. Viewed this way, Bandcamp is (to this point) not much  more than the artisan design--your-own pizza slice across the parking lot from the big corporate chains, attempting to sell its different approach as a substitute for freedom.

Doom Mix Vol. III - Doom Trip Records

hey it's friday and all the week's new music is here that everybody's talking about but not enough everybody's are talking about this and what do you mean you don't know about doom trip and the doom mixes? there's more ideas in this cassette/bandcamp-digitalis thing than a year's worth of college radio (except for KFJC b/c they're rad) and a year's worth of hip-hop radio (except for 103.3 in atlanta the motherfucking PEOPLE'S station). this is the third doom mix. it's the best doom mix (i think, so far, at least, it's early, why are we forced to contextualize the fleeting present against the obesity of history). i've embedded the whole thing, but if you've never heard of skyjelly i say go to that track first. no wait. listen to the whole thing. for the rest of the day. no wait again. listen to it for a week and let's have a goddamn revolution.

The Number Fortys: John Waite - "Tears"

In The Number Fortys, we review whatever song was sitting at #40 on the Billboard charts. We began in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music, and will continue until we get bored. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either). Also, if you want to read the Number in the title as meaning "more numb," I think that's totally understandable at this point.

Tears as in the salty water that pours out of your eyes, not tears as in rips something in half. It's John Waite's follow-up to his #1 hit Missing You. We talked about it when this series encountered Sheena Easton; it's a 7.

This is not a 7. It's an incoherent, vaguely misogynistic piece of crap. Of all the girls I've had at my knees / You're the only one who could bring me to these tears is the opposite of romance. Hell, it's the opposite of human decency. It's quite possibly the worst compliment you could pay someone.

John Waite didn't write the song. It was co-written by a guy who replaced Ace Frehley in Kiss (Kiss is terrible; their music is a 0--Kiss is in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Inc., an act which is like inducting Bill O'Reilly into the Objective Journalist Hall of Fame). The lyrics are the blabbering of a not-very-bright-person confused why the object of their...affection?...desire?...That's giving it too much credit. The guy wants the girl to have fucky-wucky time with and they'd rather do the fucky-wucky with someone else, someone who's not a babbling asshole. It's a tough conceit for a song, when you're glad the girl left the singer, but that's what we have here.

You turned another's thumb / And he makes your wrongs seem right / Out on some different wavelength / Somehow he brings you more

I don't know what it means to "turn another's thumb." But here's some free relationship advice. If you think the girl you're pining for is wrong, and incapable of making good choices, maybe they're not the person for you. Also, the fact that you are crying tears is not a good reason for the object (a really appropriate word here) of your desire to get back together with you. Tears are a reason for a parent to give you a hug, not for a girl to get down on her knees for you. Just because someone loved you, or did the humpy-bumpy with you, does not mean they are required to continue loving, or humpy-bumping you. You haven't been betrayed, or misled. The person just isn't into that anymore. And it's extremely possible that it's your fault, not theirs.

Later he call her "a killer on the streets," which  means either she murders homeless people, or is really good at being a prostitute. Again, not the best compliment to give someone.

But what about the music, you ask. Tell me what you think about the music. Yeah. Sure, man. Stop yelling.

The music is generic, unmemorable mid-80s arena rock. It's like a soulless version of Boston or something. It aspires to classic rock without ever being classic or actually rocking. It's bad.

It's a 1.


THE NUMBER ONE

Two weeks for Billy. I can't hear this song without thinking of this old Mr. Show sketch, probably because there was a time in my life when I didn't have cable or internet and one of the five DVDs I owned was the first season of Mr. Show. Anyway, this one is funny enough to make me okay with Bob Odenkirk's,..uh. Central-Asia-face? This might be the 100th time I've seen this sketch, and I still, in a room by myself, busted-up laughing when he shouted "Soon! Soon! You're a balloon!"

Hell on earth, indeed.

The Number Fortys: Dan Hartman - "We Are The Young"

In The Number Fortys, we review whatever song was sitting at #40 on the Billboard charts. We began in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music, and will continue until we get bored. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either). Also, if you want to read the Number in the title as meaning "more numb," I think that's totally understandable at this point.

What's this "we" shit, old man?

Dan Hartman was 34 when this came out. It was the follow-up to I Can Dream About You, his previous single that had reached #6. That song is a glorious piece of 80s soul (it's a 10), and there's a hell of a backstory about it. Hartman was commissioned to write a song for a movie called Streets of Fire (the movie is a 4; Diane Lane is a 9). Those guys in the video sing the song in the film, but Hartman had a stipulation in his contract, which he exercised the fuck out of, that it be his voice on the soundtrack, and if they issued the song as a single, that it be his voice on the single.

It was a savvy decision on Hartman's part. He got a major hit out of it at a time when he desperately needed one. The only problem was the video for the song didn't feature Hartman, it featured the band from the movie.  Here's the video that MTV played the shit out of. That is not, I repeat, not, Dan Hartman in blackface. Those are the guys from the movie.

So most anyone who knew who Dan Hartman was in 1984 would have (quite reasonably) assumed that Dan Hartman was a good-looking young black man who could dance his ass off. I have no memory of MTV ever playing We Are The Young (a year later, we would be told we are the world, we are the children), but if they had I would have been pretty confused.

None of this would have mattered if We Are The Young was a great song, but it most emphatically is not. It's actually an uninspired rip of the beat from Shannon's Let The Music Play (that song is a 10 btw). It shamelessly panders to what advertisers call "the youth demographic." However, it does, in the line Every street is an arcade of dreams has one of the few Top 40 lyrics that could have reasonably come from a Walter Benjamin notebook.

Dan Hartman had been kicking around music since the early 70s. He wrote/sang/did nearly everything on The Edgar Winter Group's 1973 Top 10 hit Free Ride. The song itself is an 8, but this performance is a 10.

Dan Hartman was a gay man who spent his entire life in the closet. He died of AID-related causes in 1994.

THE NUMBER ONE

In other parts of the world the song was European Queen or African Queen (no idea if there was a Korean Queen), but in North America, they went with Caribbean Queen. It's fine. Billy was born in Trinidad, and he co-wrote the song, so it's not as problematic. You know this song. I know this song. The bassline is straight-up Billie Jean. The song is catchy. It's fine. Billy is about to have a long stretch of hits. It's a 4.

But ______ Queen was something of a comeback for Billy. He had a couple of hits in 1976-77, and I would not be doing my job as a music connoisseur (I spelled that so badly the first time that spell-check suggested concessionaire) if I didn't share this great piece of 70's soul from Billy Ocean. This one's a 9. Enjoy.

The Number Fortys: Steve Perry - "Strung Out"

In The Number Fortys, we review whatever song was sitting at #40 on the Billboard charts. We began in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music, and will continue until we get bored. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either). Also, if you want to read the Number in the title as meaning "more numb," I think that's totally understandable at this point.

As this series heads towards the end of 1984, it's worth noting here that a 1983 Gallup Poll of people between the ages of 13 and 25 named Journey as their favorite rock band. I wasn't in that demographic yet, but my favorite cassette was Purple Rain at this time, followed closely by Def Leppard's Pyromania. I was living at my aunt's house in Brockton, Massachusetts; she had MTV and two daughters a few years older than me. The oldest one was a talented artist, and the Little Red Corvette she had absent-mindedly drawn on one of my book covers got me serious cool points in my new elementary school.

We don't usually do auto-bio stuff in this blog, but I've got some space to fill because the song I'm supposed to write about here is bland trash. I'm not being a snob. Mr. Perry's previous solo single, "Oh Sherrie" is great (it's a 7), my favorite thing he ever did, including his work with Journey, a band who's induction in the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame Inc., as far as I'm concerned, pretty much invalidates the existence of a Rock N Roll Hall of Fame Inc.

Strung Out isn't a song about heroin addiction, or is it? (it isn't). It's unmemorable light-rock, so unmemorable I feel weird giving it a score. How do you score something that barely exists? How do you score a piece of music that feels like it wasn't made to do anything? It's like giving a reading assessment test to a pig. Like, what's the fucking point?

But this column aspires to revel in, and subvert, the idea of quantifiable data, so the premise requires us to give a score. Strung Out is a 1.

THE NUMBER ONE

Stevie holds on for a third straight week (one week longer than Let's Go Crazy so fuck everyone in America in 1984). This brings us back to an idea this column has provoked: Which is worse, a shitty song that you can't remember (like S. Perry's), or a shitty song that you can't get out of your head (like S. Wonder's).

We've already approached the awfulness of this song from a couple of different angles. This week let's do they lyrics. The verses list reasons why Stevie did not call the person, which implies that these are reasons why you would normally call someone. The song's premise is, in a hacky songwriter way, playing a romantic game that goes back as far as Shakespeare. It's the old, people normally woo in overly romantic ways, but I am going to pitch my woo without any romantic adornment at all, thus signifying the steadfastness and authenticity of my love, a love that, by not being tied to any occasion, will show indirectly that it can weather the passing of time better than those other extravagant woo-pitchers, which actually makes ME the romantic one.

It's bullshit of course. Because, as pro music critics have been falling over themselves for the past decade-plus to triumphantly point out, people can, being aware of what authenticity looks like, actually perform it. Of course, most pro music critics, being the kind of straightforward simple people they are, then conclude there must not be any such thing as authenticity, or at the very least, it isn't relevant in evaluating a piece of music. Which is a stupid idea of course. There is a difference between Leadbelly's blues music and the blues music of, say, New York Knicks owner James Dolan. Or, to continue the Leadbelly connection, there's a difference between Nirvana's version of In The Pines and this one.

Because this blog sometimes aspires to be, on occasion, a kind of corrective to contemporary pro-music-crit, I'll go ahead and explain the difference. It isn't authenticity on a simple, objective level. Neither Kurt or John Sprocket explicitly lived the experiences they sing about (neither's daddy was a railroad man killed a mile-and-a-half from here being the most obvious example). A work of art can't be authentic, it can only feel authentic or not feel authentic. And because that is totally, completely subjective, it means that we can argue about it. The problem comes when we argue about the first part (Bob Dylan was actually a middle-class jewish kid from Minnesota, and not a rail-hopping hobo--therefore his entire musical output is a LIE) when it's only the second part that's important (Blind Willie McTell is one of the most powerful, moving songs about slavery and its perpetual stain upon the American landscape and consciousness). The first conversation is boring. The second conversation is...well it's a little less boring.

So Stevie Wonder. Yeah. Here are things that, in the context of the song, are considered totally normal reasons why you would call someone:

- It's the first day of spring.
- To sing someone a song.
- To announce their "wedding saturday within the month of june" (this is known in the poetry world as trainwreck of forced meter).
- I am high and it's summertime (to be fair, I would love to receive this phone call).
- Because there is a "harvest moon to light one tender August night."
- Autumn breeze.
- Falling leaves.
- Libra sun (whatever that means).
- It's time for birds to fly to southern skies.

Compared to those things, I think calling to say "I love you" makes way more sense. That seems like a totally normal, sane, not-at-all-disturbing reason to call someone. The others, not so much. I suggest you call someone (or I guess text them, or DM them, b/c it's not okay to call people on the phone anymore) today and tell them "I just called to tell you about the Libra sun," and see where that takes you.

Score: 2. I decided to add a point this week on account of the bizarre lyrics. It gives me something pleasurable to focus on next time I hear it.

The Number Fortys: Romeo Void - "A Girl in Trouble (Is a Temporary Thing)"

In The Number Fortys, we review whatever song was sitting at #40 on the Billboard charts. We began in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music, and will continue until we get bored. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either). Also, if you want to read the Number in the title as meaning "more numb," I think that's totally understandable at this point.

Oh cool. We get to talk about Romeo Void. And yeah, we're dealing with Romeo Void's most commercial song from their brief stint on a major label, but Romeo Void were one of the finest bands to come out of the SF punk explosion/aftermath, steering a propulsive Gang of Four-ish art rock that was cool as hell.

Let's enjoy the smooth beauty of this week's song for a few minutes before we get to the story of Romeo Void. As major label polished songs from post-punk bands go, A Girl In Trouble is pretty damn fine. 

We don't do a whole lot of narrative storytelling here. If you made it here, you obviously know how to use the internet, and can find all that stuff yourself. But in doing a little research about the band's history--because I'm a fan and I wanted to know more--I decided their story needed to be told, and it will be told through stories from lead singer Debora Iyall.

I'd come down to the Bay Area a few times to see Patti Smith. Then I got a fortune cookie that said 'Art is your fate -- don't debate.' So I applied to the SF Art Institute. After seeing Patti Smith, I still had it in my mind that you had to be skinny to be up there [on stage], but after going to the Mabuhay ... you just do whatever you want, be whoever you want, just make it happen. My approach was always that I had something to say, I had a point of view. I remember seeing Penelope from the Avengers at the Mabuhay Gardens and thinking, I can do that. I have something to say.

Even though I was going to the Mab so much, I also had criticisms: Everyone was leaning against the wall wearing black. I guess we were considered New Wave, but for me Romeo Void was a reaction against the regimentation of everyone having to be bleached blond and everything being about despair and no future, when I thought the do-it-yourself thing should encompass all the different kinds of emotions, and all the different colors. ... I was proud of being American Indian, so I purposely never bleached my hair blond.

I was told by our culture that I would never be a full human being because of my size. Aggression was in high value at the time, and there was an aggression just in me being a singer, because I didn't fit the mold.I wasn't ever really a rock 'n' roll gal; I might've been listening to Erik Satie or Billie Holiday! we played a college in Santa Barbara, and there were all these blond people crowding the stage, and I thought 'These are the people who hated me in high school!' When you grow up being 'outside' -- because I wasn't white, and I was fat, and always a bit of a free thinker -- it was strange. It was like, 'uh-oh, I must be doing something wrong -- they like me!

Their independently released EP blew up, propelled by Never Say Never. If you've never heard it before, it's one of the smartest, funniest, coolest songs of its era, or any era. Here it is:

The major labels came coming, and the story took a decidedly fucked up turn. There's a story out there that the label told her to lose weight and she refused.

Howie sold us from 415 to Columbia Records, and they were like 'Who's this fat chick?' They decided that was as far as it was going to get, and pulled their support. 

The very next town we got to after they made that decision, there wasn't an A&R person there," said Iyall. "[There] was no local person there, there were no interviews and in-stores arranged as they had been. All that just ground to a halt.

That would have been right around the time this song reached #35. Without support from your label, you're pretty much dead in the water. Romeo Void broke up shortly thereafter. Debora Iyall made a solo album a couple of years later and then went back to poetry and teaching. The band reunited to play shows in 1993 and 2004, and she began making music again in 2009.

A Girl In Trouble is a glimpse of what could have been. A fiercely intelligent, empathetic, feminist vision in the heart of the Top 40. Listen to the lyrics. Listen to the music. The song even features one of the few 80s saxophone parts that doesn't make you cringe. To quote one of Debora Iyall's best lyrics. "You don't get it? Rain on you and the world disappears."

Score: 9/10.


THE NUMBER ONE

Iyall's story is one version of punk. She sees someone on stage throwing their intelligence and anger at the world and realizes there's an outlet for their own intelligence and anger. You can do it too was one of the most powerful messages of punk. And one of the most insidious, as it quickly gave permission for testosterone-fueled white boys an outlet for their anger (most of them missed the intelligence part), esp. their anger at people they considered to be not-like-them. But for a while there, people saw punk as a challenge to do something different. Before it became the most conformist, dogmatic genre in music, it was the least conformist, the least dogmatic.

You're wondering what punk has to do with this Stevie Wonder song? I was having lunch last week with a friend, and the place had a Stevie Wonder playlist on the--not radio, I guess whatever music dissemination format the restaurant was using. Anyway, I knew this song was coming up in the blog's future, and eventually (the service was, uh, lackadaisical--it's fine), this song came on and I got the chance to make it a working lunch.

While it played for what seemed like an eternity, I thought about the Sex Pistols. There a scene in The Filth and The Fury documentary where Johnny Rotten talks about covering the Small Faces and changing the words from I want you to know that I love you baby / I want you to know that I care to Rotten's version I want you to know that I hate you baby / I want you to know I don't care. He talks in the doc about how ridiculous the original was, and how just by changing a couple of words you make it interesting. It made me think about how much more interesting this Stevie Wonder song would be if you changed it to I Just Called To Say I Hate You.

But Stevie wouldn't do that, would he? And that's as good a definition of the "punk impulse" as I could ever come up with. There's all these emotions and feelings that dominate our lives, but we can't talk about them in public. That was the case in the late 70s, and that's kind of become the case now. There's no room for anger/despair/humor in mass culture. While the Stevie Wonder song played in the restaurant, the very sweet, gay, person of color working there was dancing and smiling as he listened. I thought about my version of the song, what his reaction would be if I changed it to hate, how it would ruin his moment. It might even confuse him. A lot of time when I make jokes like that, people's initial reaction is shock and discomfort. We hold so many things sacred these days.

Anyway, Wonder's song is garbage. I don't care who enjoys it. There are other things to enjoy. Sometimes our desire to enjoy something means co-existing with bullshit. All you have to do is walk the streets on Valentine's Day to see that.

Score: 1.

The Number Fortys: Joyce Kennedy & Jeffrey Osborne - "The Last Time I Made Love" (Again)

In The Number Fortys, we review whatever song was sitting at #40 on the Billboard charts. We began in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music, and will continue until we get bored. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either). Also, if you want to read the Number in the title as meaning "more numb," I think that's totally understandable at this point.

It's always amazing to me when the #40 song stays at #40 the following week. When I first thought about doing this series, it hadn't occurred to me that it was even possible. But this is the second times it's happened in nine months of chart action. I wonder what that felt like for the artist. Your song enters the charts at #40, you've got to be thinking it's going to go up, right? But nope. Right where it was. It's like watching a rocket, or a firework, go into the air. It reaches its peak and just...kind of sits there for a while. Nothing happens. You know it's going back down, but it hasn't gone down yet.

Anyway, I present to you, once again, JK & JO.

Here's a link to what I posted yesterday, in case you're too lazy/obstinate/confused to find it over there on the right in the BLOG ARCHIVE. I chose to do this on blogspot because I wanted to pick the lamest possible hosting site as a protest/counter-narrative against slickness & metrics. Turns out it's extremely difficult to get your blogspot blog to show up on search engines, or to incorporate tagging features. If you're thinking that's insane that a blogging platform provided by google doesn't show up when you google, well...welcome to the 21st fucking century.

Anyway, last time we talked about this song, which was last time we talked about any song, I suggested some other, more interesting, scenarios that could have taken place the last time someone made love. Here's one more.

The last time I made love...I got a cramp in my leg, in the back of my calf muscle, you know where I'm talking about? and I had to stop for a few minutes. When the pain finally subsided, it turned out they weren't in the mood anymore. I mean, Jesus, I can't help it if I get a cramp in my leg.... Bananas? What do you mean bananas would help? Is that some kind of weird BDSM shit? Bananas?.... Oh. Potassium. Yeah, I get that. Maybe I'll try it.

I think I gave the song a 2 last week (I'm too lazy/obstinate/confused to go back and check). I'll give it a 2 again. Why the hell not.

THE NUMBER ONE

Remember when I took the fact that a song as exciting and unique as Let's Go Crazy could reach #1 as some sort of sign that humanity wasn't a total cesspool of misdirected fear and ignorance? Those were good times, man. Not only did this here insipid bland-out reach #1, it stayed there longer than Let's Go Crazy. Humanity can go to a local sex shop, purchase a bag of fake dicks, boil them, chop them up into bite-sized pieces, grill them in soy sauce, sprinkle some nutritional yeast on them once they're tender, and them proceed to eat that whole bag of dicks. This song is a 1. If you're thinking to yourself, how can I rate that nothing of a #40 song higher than a sweet earworm from a total legend, I'll just say that at least I can forget the #40 song. It's forgettable. But walking around with this bopping around my head? Jesus.

And it stayed at the top of the charts so long that I need to leave more to talk about in the next installment.

Sucks About Your Thousand Year Old Megachurch

Here's a take hot enough to burn whatever's left of that building to the ground. The Catholic Church is a child-rapist-enabling blight on society, and I don't give a fuck about one of their buildings burning down.

Unless it was arson, because it's not cool to burn stuff down just because it's a symbol of centuries of tyranny and darkness. I don't support arson. But ask yourself, what if you were a boy from Senegal who was sexually abused by a Parisian Catholic priest in the 90's? Would you want to burn down a symbol of the Catholic church? I bet you fucking would.

Did a twitter search yesterday for Michael Mouree, who back in 1950 gave my all-time favorite sermon in Notre-Dame Cathedral on Easter Sunday. Like most great speeches, he had help from his friends, in this case Serge Berna (who actually wrote the thing), Ghislain Desnoyers de Marbaix, and Jean Rullier. Here's the text in full, though I think by the end he was drowned out by the screaming (not unlike The Beatles).

    Today, Easter day of the Holy Year,
    Here, under the emblem of Notre-Dame of Paris,
    I accuse the universal Catholic Church of the lethal diversion of our living strength toward an empty heaven,
    I accuse the Catholic Church of swindling,
    I accuse the Catholic Church of infecting the world with its funereal morality,
    Of being the running sore on the decomposed body of the West.
    Verily I say unto you: God is dead,
    We vomit the agonizing insipidity of your prayers,
    For your prayers have been the greasy smoke over the battlefields of our Europe.
    Go forth then into the tragic and exalting desert of a world where God is dead,
    And till this earth anew with your bare hands,
    With your PROUD hands,
    With your unpraying hands.
    Today Easter day of the Holy Year,
    Here under the emblem of Notre-Dame of Paris,
    We proclaim the death of the Christ-god, so that Man may live at last.

Now there's a hot take. See, Mouree and his friends weren't actual priests. They were members of a group of bohemian artists who called themselves Lettrists, which later evolved into the Situationist International, which...just go read Greil Marcus' Lipstick Traces. They dressed up as priests and hijacked the service.

They were arrested of course. And, as you can imagine, it was a big deal, with people having all kinds of opinions. Mourre was held for a while, eventually released, and many years later repented and became (I shit you not, life is nothing if not hilarious) an actual priest.

But, you know, if 1000 years from now the Wal-Mart-sized Jesus World, or whatever the fuck the church is called out by the highway, I hope nobody sheds any tears. Like Notre-Dame, it's a symbol of arrogance, wealth, and is an abomination that flies in the face of everything Jesus taught. The Notre-Dame cathedral is a symbol of power, and as such, I shed no tears for its destruction. And I feel nothing but pity for the ones who do.

Passing Is Not The End

Maybe it's because of where I live (the US south), but it seems like nobody can say a person died anymore. People say they "passed." They speak of someone's "passing." Maybe it feels less jarring, more sympathetic, to say someone passed. You imagine the person's loved one hearing it. Maybe their child. And because this is a cruel world, you want to try to be as gentle as possible. What is the gentlest way I can say this, you think. And so you say, I'm so sorry to hear of Dave's passing.

None of which changes the fact that Dave's fucking dead, of course. It's just that it feels so...rude to talk about it that way. Watch people flinch when you talk about death. For a society that has no problem when it comes to killing--especially when it's done by a soldier, or a cop, or a judge--we get real fucking squeamish when somebody talks about death. You better stand on your chair and weep tears of patriotic joy when someone mentions the military, but when you're talking about my 93 year old grandma? She passed away.

If this trend continues (and given the general squeamishness of the middle-class-and-up bougie social values that are infecting our society--a demographic that simultaneously loves TV shows of violence and rape like Game of Thrones but will stiffen if you say the word shit in front of them--I see no reason why it won't), it won't be long before everyone just the newer, more sanitized euphemism get used just as crudely as the word it replaced.

You hear about, Dave?
Yeah, yeah. Too bad. Heard the dude passed in the bathtub. How sad is that?
Yeah, man. Wish Trump would hurry up and pass. Save us the trouble of sending his racist ass to jail.

You get the idea. Hey, I can totally get with the idea that language shapes thought, that violent/sexist/racist language is likely to, even if employed ironically, lead to more violent/sexual/racist acts. So sure, language is powerful. But it's worth remembering that cleaning up the language isn't going to clean up the world. Death doesn't get any less ugly just because the words get prettier. Indeed, for most of human history, we've tended to pick euphemisms that emphasize the ugly/cruel/real facts of death. Pushing up the daisies. Becoming worm food. We made bleak jokes about death because, well, because death is kind of a bleak joke. And I can't help but feel as coping mechanism go, you're better off picking one that acknowledges the realness of the thing you're coping with, rather than engaging in that suburban style of avoidance. But what do I know, I'm not the one gobbling anti-anxiety meds so I can walk out my front door.

But what are we going to do about the radio? Think of all these poor people driving around in their cars, listening to the radio, and suddenly some song comes on about death. People are likely to be so shocked and traumatized that they drive into a guardrail or something. For that reason, we think someone needs to do some radio edits to some famous songs. For the sake of politeness. Here's a quick sample of lyrics and/or titles that have been gentle-fied (it's like gentrified, only the real estate is between your ears).

The Day The Music Passed
Hope I pass before I get old
Live And Let Pass
The Passing Of A Disco Dancer
The Black Angel's Passing Song
I Just Passed In Your Arms Tonight
Earth Passed Screaming
All These People Have Passed
Ready To Pass
Born To Pass
Only The Good Pass Young
I Would Pass 4 U
Get Me Away From Here, I'm Passing

The Number Fortys: Joyce Kennedy & Jeffrey Osborne - "The Last Time I Made Love"

In The Number Fortys, we review whatever song was sitting at #40 on the Billboard charts. We began in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music, and will continue until we get bored. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either). Also, if you want to read the Number in the title as meaning "more numb," I think that's totally understandable at this point.

Remember when they used to have to call it "making love." I think I speak for everyone when I say, ick. As for this song, well, I guess people had to listen to something back in 1984 when they were fucking (excuse me, making love).

I guess maybe the difference between fucking and making love is that making love is supposed to go really slow? Because this song is slow as hell. This sounds more like going to sleep than fucking, or making love, or doin' the old pokey-pokey (a term I just made up). Let's imagine a song called "The Last Time I Did the Old Pokey-Pokey. Is that a better song? Why yes, I believe it is.

So this song is about the last time they made love... to each other, and how beautiful it was. Seems like a waste of a title that could have gone in a number of different directions.

The last time I made love...I was attacked by a flurry of locusts.
The last time I made love...was awesome. It was right before my dick fell off.
The last time I made love...I was in a brothel in Wichita.
The last time I made love...it was with my sister.

You get the idea. This though, this is just an embarrassing Hallmark card set to insipid music. This is the second time this blog has encountered Jeffrey Osborne. That song got a 6. This one gets a 2.

At least it has a nice message re: women's sexual satisfaction etc., though even that aspect of the song makes me a little uncomfortable for the way it portrays female sexuality as passive and rooted in kindness (so much like mommy!). But since most songs about sex back then (and back now, for that matter) didn't give the women any agency at all, I guess I'll cut the song some slack and say, fuck it.

Or, as the song would say, make love it.

THE NUMBER ONE

Even if people one day decide to cancel Prince, and there are plenty of reasons why people would want to, I can't believe anyone could ever cancel this. It is one of the most life-affirming pieces of music ever made. A song about joy that looks death right in the eye and laughs at it. The singer is excited by the fact that we are all gonna die. Because if we are all gonna die then we have absolute freedom. That's some radical shit to send to the top of the charts with a multi-gender, multi-hued, multi-genred band of weirdos. A song about wanting everything "to go wrong" because it means the party, and our existence on the planet, will be so much greater and more exciting, is the sound of true enlightenment, a freedom that would be dangerous if people actually understood it and took it to heart.

Let's remove the song from the singer, the person who wrote and imagined it. Because that guy didn't come close to living this out. He was a control freak who lashed out in anger and brooding silence if things didn't go exactly the way they were supposed to go. But this song. This song is glorious.

Score: 10.

Ideology: Are you opting out or buying in?

Let's go ahead and reduce it to a false binary, in order to understand exactly what we're talking about here. Which is worse? To play the game and lose. Or to not play the game and lose. There is no good option. We knows the rules of the game. You choices you make about how you live/love/work need to be rooted in fear. Fear of not making enough money, of not having health care, of one day (never today, delayed gratification is rooted in this game) being able to buy a house. There's a reason this blog has SC.R.E.A.M. (Scarcity Rules Everything Around Me) as it's motto.

But what's the alternative, people ask. What else are you supposed to do? The fear of being poor is so great, a fear indoctrinated into us from birth by parents, authority figures, the entire fucking culture from top to bottom. Who is worthy v. who is not--worthy of love, respect, admiration. Which one do you want to be? Well if you want to be worthy, if you want those rewards, hell if all you want to do is survive, you need to shut your mouth and play the game. That means you measure every relationship on whether or not it can get you closer to your goal (which is the same goal as everyone else's money and/or fame and/or power). This is true of people in the culture industry, academia, country clubs, whatever. The people who can get you where you want to go have value. The people who can't are worthless, or a waste of your (limited, exhausted) emotional resources.

That's one path. The other path would mean trying not to care about any of that, and just doing what brought you joy, or freedom. It would mean learning, or creating, or working in spaces & situations that--even if they couldn't bring you 100% enjoyment all the time--could at least minimize the anxiety and dread and SC.R.E.A.M.ing in your head. You could at least find peace of mind in knowing that you weren't perpetuating a cruel and exploitative way of living. You could, to be trite, treat others the way you yourself want others to treat you.

For all its kindergarten simplicity, it's still a radical concept.

You can opt out, or you can buy in. But be careful. They both lead, more often than not, to disappointment. But they are two different types of torture. Opting out means getting your heart broken over and over again. Buying in means sentencing yourself to a life of perpetual hell.

Because the way you live your life ends up creating the lens through which you see others. In the same way that if you are liar, you'll assume that nobody can be trusted, if you are a person who sees other people as a rung upon a ladder, then you'll assume other people are as shallow and machiavellian as you are. I have to do this, you will think, because everyone else is doing this. And to not do live like this would be putting yourself at a disadvantage. And in a competitive world, you need every advantage you can get.

There is no victory. Not a final victory. Any success, by these standards, can only be temporary and fleeting. There are no triumphs, only respites.

The thing is, there's no guarantee that playing the game, that leading a ruthlessly aspirational life, inevitably leads to success. This is not a meritocracy. Not even fucking close. And the amount of money you're born into has way, way, way more to do with whether or not you will "succeed" or "fail" in this life (we're going to start putting those words in quotes, because they have been debased beyond all meaning).Do you really think hard work gets you anywhere in this country? Intelligence? Ability?

And networking is just another form of work. It's right there in the word. The idea that, in order to get ahead you need to make contacts and cultivate relationships (puke) is just  bougie, middle-class version of the "if you work hard, you'll get ahead" American dream horseshit that even the people selling it don't believe in. The US equivalent of snake oil. Work hard because I get to keep 90% of the wealth you generate would be a more honest and more accurate philosophy.

What does it mean to opt out of all that? What is the alternative? It means recognizing that dignity and self-respect also matter.  It means trying to live first and foremost as a human being sharing the planet with other humans, as opposed to seeing one's self as a commodity, or a fucking brand. It means resisting. It means being conscious of all the ways in which dominant ideologies--of neoliberalism, of capitalism, of nationalism, etc.--poison our existence. It means seeing how we suffer in our striving. It doesn't mean no one should strive, or aspire, or dream. It doesn't mean one resigns one's self to suffering. It means being aware of exactly what choices we're making, being aware of them as choices, and then choosing what we are willing, and are not willing, to do--to ourselves and to others--in the pursuit of our goals.

Opting out isn't easy. But then neither is buying in. Opting out means being aware. No rationalizations, no straw man arguments, no easy justifications. It means understanding exactly what you're doing, and accepting that your actions have consequences. It means valuing love over money, kindness over success, and revolution over perpetuating a system that is murderous & cruel.

The Number Fortys: Barry Gibb - "Shine Shine"

In The Number Fortys, we review whatever song was sitting at #40 on the Billboard charts. We began in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music, and will continue until we get bored. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either). Also, if you want to read the Number in the title as meaning "more numb," I think that's totally understandable at this point.

This installment, we present to you a song so bad you may never want to listen to music again.

I would rather listen to Shine a Light, or Shine Like it Does, or Shine On You Crazy Diamond, or Shiny Shiny by Haysi Fantayzee, The Sun Is Surely Gonna Shine, or whatever that Blossom theme song was called. I'd even listen to Collective Soul's Shine, which is only half the title that Barry's song is.

Anything but Shine Shine, from Barry Gibb's 1984 album, Now Voyager, which I'm assuming was named after a 50's movie called Now, Voyager. Barry got rid of the comma, the first of many, many lapses of judgement. Hell, even Barry thinks the album sucked.

It's something I always wanted to do, but I never quite felt confident enough to do it. The man who really made me think seriously about it was Irving Azoff, who convinced me that there was possibly a market out there for me. As unhappy about it as we were at the time, we now appreciate why it didn't do well. We worked nine months on that album. That's crazy. I think you lose energy by doing that. The message has to be that we really can't take so long making albums. 

That's one message, a kind message, a kinder message than this song deserves. Barry Gibb had done, by this point in his life, plenty of music-related things that could be considered, by some, to be good. This is not one of them.

Fun fact: I think there's some celebrity cameos going on in that video, but the only person I can definitively identify is Jameson Parker, one of the Simon brothers on hit 80's TV show Simon & Simon. It's theme song, taken as a TV theme song rather than an actual piece of music deserves a 7.

Anyway, see if you can find some more celebrities. Mr. Gibb's song is a 0.

 THE NUMBER ONE

This is probably the biggest between a #40 and a #1 that we've had so far, quality-wise. We wrote a couple weeks back about what an absolute bucket of scum Prince was as a  human, but this song is quite simply one of the most exciting pieces of music ever recorded. You have to admire the way it does everything. Spoken introduction, jet-engine guitar riff, a beat that kicks, sex, melody, a heart-stopping guitar solo, even a little bump & grind at the end. Short of the studio exploding, it's impossible to imagine Prince, or anyone, getting more excitement into a pop song. Some songs reach #1 because they're sweet, or because of their hype, or because everything else around it is so incredibly shitty. Prince reached #1 here, as he did with When Doves Cry, because he had created something so artistically and commercially perfect that I can't imagine how it could have not gone to #1.

Score: 10.

Ratka Against The Machine

When I here something like this, something that makes me sit up and go fuck yeah, I figure everyone must be talking about it. After all, most of the stuff everyone is talking about makes me sit back and go huh. The good folks (they could be bad folks, actually, I don't know them) over at Treble wrote about this new record by a Brazilian band called Ratka (link). You're a smart person. You can listen for yourself.

The review's great (the phrase "psychedelic witches" was all it took to send me scrambling to their Bandcamp). I'm not sure I get the Factory/4AD comparisons though. To me, it sounds like early Animal Collective in hell (a show I would definitely see; I'd even pay an extra $20 to do some of the torturing), everything distorted and processed through delay pedals being abused within an inch of their existence. Or maybe Laurel Halo on a Pharmakon trip? Anyway, it's white-knuckle, blasted, and beautiful.

But a quick Google search brings back next to nothing on this Brazilian band. The album is available on Iron Lung records, who obviously haven't thrown the proper amount of $$$ at the proper PR firm (this is, in our opinion, a plus). Here's a link to their site. Buy this album. Hell, go buy the label's entire fucking catalog, you RMD-collecting trust-fund son-of-a-hedge-fund-manager.

This record feels like an appropriate response to being alive in 2019. And you want to talk to me about fucking Weyes Blood, a Sarah McLachlan without the sense of melody? Get the fuck out of here. Go sell that shit somewhere else.

The Number Fortys: Sheena Easton - "Strut"

In The Number Fortys, we review whatever song was sitting at #40 on the Billboard charts. We began in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music, and will continue until we get bored. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either). Also, if you want to read the Number in the title as meaning "more numb," I think that's totally understandable at this point.

If I had been involved in making this song, the first thing I would have done is fire every one of those fucking horn players.

Strut is a song about a woman who doesn't like being sexually objectified by her partner. Sheena Easton, apparently not the deepest thinker about these kinds of things, decided to make a video for the song where she does exactly that. I guess if the words "strut" or "pout" appear in the lyrics, then Sheena, being a true literal-minded showbiz pro, is going to strut and pout when she sings those words, even in a song mocking a man who wants his partner to strut and pout. One shudders to imagine what might have happened if Sheena had ever sung a song about leaping off a bridge, or sticking her hand into a mason jar filled with ants.

For all her pro-ness though, Sheena makes a common singing mistake on the chorus. She starts out singing high when the song will require her to go higher than her voice is comfortable with. So by the time she gets to the watch me baby while I walk out the door her voice has become a barely intelligible screech. Though, to be fair, Sheena had a tendency to go into this range a lot (go check out the ascending key changes at the end of 9 to 5 (Morning Train), or Telefone (Long Distance Love Affair)--Sheena also had a thing for parentheses [so do I]. Actually, don't go check those out. They're pretty terrible. As for Strut, it has some good things going on in it (memorable hooks, feminist lyrics), but it has oh so many very bad things going on as well (rooty toot horns and slap bass, memorable hooks that maybe you don't want to remember).

Score: 3.

THE NUMBER ONE

This song is, on an objective level, smooth garbage, but I love it anyway. I'm a romantic sucker at heart, and a song where the singer insists that he's not missing the person who is obviously, desperately, missing, is a concept that totally works for me. A song about trying to convince yourself that you aren't missing the person you're missing is, for the Top 40, a poignant conceit. The conflicting internal monologue makes it a builder, as the narrator gradually realizes--hell, by the final chorus ad-libs (I. Ain't. Missing. You.) Waite and me are both virtually in tears.

Score: 7.

This Is How We Live Now #2 - Neoliberalism As a Form of Social Control

When George Monbiot makes contact, he doesn't miss. His Op-Ed in The Guardian yesterday is worth a read. Here's the link. And here's the money paragraphs, but the whole ting is worth a read.

New extremes in the surveillance and control of workers are not, of course, confined to the public sector. Amazon has patented a wristband that can track workers’ movements and detect the slightest deviation from protocol. Technologies are used to monitor peoples’ keystrokes, language, moods and tone of voice. Some companies have begun to experiment with the micro-chipping of their staff. As the philosopher Byung-Chul Han points out, neoliberal work practices, epitomised by the gig economy, that reclassifies workers as independent contractors, internalise exploitation. “Everyone is a self-exploiting worker in their own enterprise.”

The freedom we were promised turns out to be freedom for capital, gained at the expense of human liberty. The system neoliberalism has created is a bureaucracy that tends towards absolutism, produced in the public services by managers mimicking corporate executives, imposing inappropriate and self-defeating efficiency measures, and in the private sector by subjection to faceless technologies that can brook no argument or complaint.

Saves me the time of saying it myself. Thanks, George. As someone who does part-time work transcribing meeting notes of financial advisors--I could be fired simply for telling you that btw--the "my stats" page on my online employee profile has enough stats to make a pro sports analyst blush. I do have the freedom to make my own hours. Walk in, log on, and start earning $$. Based on my proficiency, I can earn anywhere between $8.25 and $11.00. Usually I'm around $9.50. I only work 16-20 hrs a week, and the extra physical/mental effort it would take for me to crack $10 is more than I'm willing to do. I like that freedom. It allows me to juggle my pro writing life (there's a signed contract, w/an advance, that says I will deliver a manuscript on Nov. 1st) with my family life. The other half of my legally binding romantic partnership had a PhD. dissertation due in six weeks, and together we are raising a five year old son. I'm saying the job fits with my lifestyle right now in a way that most other jobs would not. But I have no illusions. About anything.

The Number Fortys: Elton John - "Who Wear These Shoes"

In The Number Fortys, we review whatever song was sitting at #40 on the Billboard charts. We began in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music, and will continue until we get bored. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either). Also, if you want to read the Number in the title as meaning "more numb," I think that's totally understandable at this point.

No question mark in the title, but man do I have a lot of questions. Why is there thunder at the beginning of the song? Was anyone fooled by that toupee? Given that Elton can't dance, why not get a ringer to wear the hat and shades? Did anyone notice that the last two minutes of the song are basically an extended meandering chorus? Who thought it was an idea to take the common colloquialism of walking in someone else's shoes and apply it to a break-up and try to make a whole song out of it?

I actually know the answer to the last question--long time Elton lyricist Bernie Taupin, a man with so little poetry in his soul, and so many aspirations to poetry in his writing, that Taupin is the kind of ridiculous that I can't help finding a little endearing. Who Wears These Shoes, however, contains no poetry, no aspirations. It's an extended metaphor stretched so thin, that by the end of the song I'm strongly considering whether the song is actually just about shoes. That Elton, the narrator, whoever, left their shoes behind when they moved out, and they're genuinely curious how the shoes are doing now that this same shoe-sized person is living there. They don't want the shoes back, necessarily, they just hope they're comfortable.

After a late 70s/early 80s commercial/creative lull, the by-product of exhaustion and cocaine addiction, Elton John was having a bit of a comeback around this time. The past year-plus had seen hits like I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues (it's an 8), I'm Still Standing (it was true, Elton doesn't lay down once during the video; the song's a 6); and Sad Songs (Say So Much). The last one is a 4. And if you've detected a pattern of diminishing returns, you are absolutely right. Elton would have hits through the rest of the 80s--we may or may not encounter them as we travel through the decade--but they are all uniformly horrible.

Who Wears These Shoes thinks it sounds Motown-influenced, and I suppose for the first 30 seconds or so it does an extremely 80s-fied impersonation of You Can't Hurry Love. Then the song starts, and the rhythm guitar gets subsumed by the doobie-doo lead. Goodbye Motown, hello 80's schlock. A melody, catchy or otherwise, refuses to make itself known. The song keeps going anyway. A bridge appears, no more memorable than anything. The song feels like it will go on forever. Eventually it stops, having played out all its (tired, uninspired) ideas long before it ended.

Apparently, this song went all the way to #16. I have no memory of it ever existing. This song has no reason for existing, and yeah, I get that in a cosmological sense none of us have any reason for existing, but I think of the effort that went into writing and recording this, all the people who worked on the video, and it just makes me sad. Everyone involved in this song would have been better off spending that time mediating, or jerking off into a sock.

Score: 1.

THE NUMBER ONE



Tina's third week at number one, which means we've already written about it twice. It's cool that, not only did this song reach #1, it stayed there for a while. It wasn't a fluke hit. It didn't struggle. For nearly a month, this beautiful song of wisdom and pain was the most popular song in the country.

Score: 10.

This Is How We Live Now: #1 - Dumpster Diving In Silicon Valley

Here's a link to the NY Times article. It's worth using one of your five free articles a month, or whatever it is on it, though the first three paragraphs give you the basic gist.

SAN FRANCISCO — Three blocks from Mark Zuckerberg’s $10 million Tudor home in San Francisco, Jake Orta lives in a small, single-window studio apartment filled with trash.
There’s a child’s pink bicycle helmet that Mr. Orta dug out from the garbage bin across the street from Mr. Zuckerberg’s house. And a vacuum cleaner, a hair dryer, a coffee machine — all in working condition — and a pile of clothes that he carried home in a Whole Foods paper bag retrieved from Mr. Zuckerberg’s bin.
A military veteran who fell into homelessness and now lives in government subsidized housing, Mr. Orta is a full-time trash picker, part of an underground economy in San Francisco of people who work the sidewalks in front of multimillion-dollar homes, rummaging for things they can sell.

And then later....

Mr. Orta says his goal is to earn around $30 to $40 a day from his discoveries, a survival income of around $300 a week.

This is definitely the best of all possible worlds, life under capitalism. You'd be a naive fool to suggest otherwise.