k-postpunk

Wednesday, April 24, 2019

The Number Fortys: Rebbie Jackson - "Centipede"

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.

Monday, April 22, 2019

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.

Friday, April 19, 2019

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"

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"

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.

Thursday, April 18, 2019

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.

Wednesday, April 17, 2019

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

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.