2008 – Worst Year for CDs. Ever.

The Guardian had several music industry related stories posted over the past couple of days. Apparently CD sales for the fourth quarter are expected to be down by a whopping 27%. Last year, sales for the same quarter were down 21%. One of the many reasons for the decline could be the record companies’ insistence on maintaining their position as gatekeeper to music, dictating when we get to hear records everybody knows are finished and just sitting on a shelf somewhere. Why can’t they just release the damn thing, or, as one of the Guardian’s bloggers notes, at least put it up on itunes and other digital sights. Bands like the Raconteurs, Radiohead and Girl Talk have figured it out, so why can’t the labels (My guess? Hubris). If you know it’s out there already (probably posted online via review copies), you’re going to skip the record company and just download it via bittorrent.

But while it looks like the whole industry is circling ’round the edge of the shitter, there is somewhat of a silver lining to the situation. Atlantic Records hit a huge milestone (whether it’s a good or bad one is up for debate), becoming the first record company where revenues from digital sales were greater than those from physical releases. Of course, that’s pretty easy to do when CD sales are down 27%.

And yes, that is a photo of unemployed rock stars lining up for their unemployment insurance. Try and spot Jack Johnson and Dave Matthews Band at the front.

A Tribe Called Quest – “Show Business”

New Hives and Cyndi Lauper – A Christmas Duel

Christmas songs suck. Seriously suck. Probably because the majority of contemporary Christmas music is put out by aging crooners and young up and coming pop stars looking to woo-oo-oo their way through the holidays. Don’t believe me? Check this Christina Aguilera track. Nowwwww you get me. 

That’s why it’s so great when an actual good X-mas song comes along. This generally happens once every couple of years (“Oi To the World” and Jimmy Eat World’s version of “Last Christmas” come to mind). And, thankfully, this is one such year. “A Christmas Duel” is a Christmas track in the tradition of the Pogues stone cold classic “Fairytale of New York” in which lead gurgler Shane MacGowan spars with fictional and real life partner Kristy MacColl. While it trades Fairytale’s nuanced atmosphere for sheer bombast (this is the Hives we’re talking about here) and the through line, that the two characters truly love each other despite how life hasn’t turned out the way they’d hoped, is replaced with a straight up dysfunctional relationship, I still think it’s a great entry into our recent pop-music (anti-)Christmas canon. 

“A Christmas Duel”

“Fairytale of New York”

Mick Wall Interview

Wired’s Listening Post blog has a great interview with English rock journalist Mick Wall. Wall spent the latter part of the 80s hanging with Guns ‘n’ Roses and for his troubles got a rather rude shout out in their Use Your Illusion II track “Get in the RIng.” While the song seemed pretty silly at the time, it seems to have served as the template for all those “Fuck the haters” tracks we hear these days. Here are the Wall referencing lines.

And that goes for all you punks in the press
That want to start shit by printin’ lies
Instead of the things we said
That means you
Andy Secher at Hit Parader
Circus Magazine
Mick Wall at Kerrang

Wall talks about what’s it’s like to have a shout out in one of the most infamous beef tracks here.

“The DJ never has it/JAMC’s ‘Automatic’”

But youtube does. Or at least, some really early footage of the Jesus and Mary Chain in England, back when people used to riot at their shows. My friend Christian saw this years ago and sussed it out on the tube. It’s pretty interesting if you’ve never really understood the fervor that surrounded the band’s early gigs. Try and spot the young Bobby Gillespie – he used to play drums for them…

Cobra Starship @ The Opera House, Nov 25

Since 1977, punks have decried the new generation’s bands as slick, radio-friendly sellouts. At its core though, punk is music for outcasts and as time shifts the factors leading to social ostracization, so too will a band’s lyrical and musical tropes. Yes that excitable emo whine is annoying as hell, but it’s a reaction to a decade of tortured-growl Eddie Vedder rips, that were in turn a reaction to the pretty-boy wails of ’80s hair-metal.

But sometime around 2006, punk-identified bands, or more specifically the punk-identified bands blaring out of your neighbourhood West 49, started experimenting with sounds and themes of hip-hop. Disco breaks, and songs about girls and dance floors (and, in a clever twist, girls on dance floors) is the new MO. Gone is a desire to tear down the system, now they just want to get down.

Cobra Starship have certainly hitched their apple wagon to this sound and it has helped to set the band apart from their pop-punk peers. But live, the studio sheen is stripped away, leaving the five-piece sounding like every other mall-punk band on the sold-out all-ages quadruple bill at the Opera House last night.

Hit the Lights played the night’s most aggressive set, harkening back to the days when bands looked to New Found Glory for inspiration instead of Fall Out Boy. In the final moments of their short set they even ripped into the chorus of Pantera’s “Walk,” a fitting end for a band named after a Metallica track, but probably lost on the mostly teenage-girl audience.

Dallas sextet Forever the Sickest Kids make the case that punk has entered its own hair-metal phase. These guys, with their angular haircuts and in unison head banging look like six skater-fucks who couldn’t give a shit as long as they’re getting laid after the show. Their plea to donate money at their merch table so they can “help feed an entire African tribe” seemed particularly disingenuous since it came from a guy wearing a crooked ball cap and pink Hollister t-shirt. They did inspire me to go home and listen to Will Smith after playing a faux-Limp Bizkit style cover of “Men in Black.” Thanks guys.

By the time Cobra Starship hit the stage, the audience was in rapturous anticipation. Their arrival was greeted with a round of shrieks and camera flashes. Like the rest of the evening’s bands, they jumped around a lot and played catchy tunes. Differentiating one from another though was getting pretty hard. I think they played the one with the ripped-off J-Lo lyrics (“Hey Mr. DJ/ You’ve gotta put a record on yeah”) and they definitely played the song they wrote for the movie Snakes on a Plane. Various ass-hats from the other bands joined Cobra Starship on stage near the end of their set, but like the music, you’d be hard pressed to tell one from another.

To be fair, none of the groups had trouble revving up the audience. When For the Sickest Kids sing “whoa-oh-ah-oh” the kids sing right back. And the same kids knew every song in the Cobra Starship oeuvre, and it’s easy to see why. After two days of listening to their records even I knew a good chunk of their sing-along songs and if I were 15, I’d eat that shit up. But I’m not 15. I’m 27. Does anybody else miss the days when punk bands just boiled complex social issues down to naïve sing-along choruses? Yeah, me too.

This story originally appeared on the EYE WEEKLY website.

Pinhead Gunpowder Live @ 924 Gilman

Green Day seem at a bit of a loss for what to do next. The Bay area three piece stunned pretty much everyone when their 2004 record American Idiot sold a bajillion copies and propelled the band back to their Dookie-era heights. After releasing the single “The Saints are Coming” with U2 the band disappeared and have been slow to re-emerge. But really what does a punk rock band do after playing the Super Bowl with one of rocks most narcisstic bands.

When a band at Green Day’s level go on hiatus after a big album and long tour, the members usually go off and form other bands or do solo albums. Billy Joe, Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool formed a second band together and started playing 60s inspired garage rock. Unfortunately, there’s about 6 dozen other bands doing the same thing and a lot of them do it better than Foxboro Hot Tubs. Billie though, did have another band. Pinhead Gundpowder started before Green Day hit it big, back wen he was also writing songs with Rancid, and have had various levels of activity over the years. And since Green Day is going through an identity crisis, we get to see Billie back with Pinhead Gunpowder earlier this year at the legendary all-ages punk club 924 Gilman in Berkeley, CA.

Is Girl Talk really killing music, or is he just a douche?

There’s been some talk in the press lately about Girl Talk and the legality of the music he creates. EYE WEEKLY (where I work as an editorial intern) and Now magazines here in Toronto both ran cover stories about Greg Gillis prior to his recent gig at the Kool Haus two weeks ago. Idolator picked up on both stories and threw their own assessment of the situation into the mix. While I’m a fan of Gillis’ music (I was at the show) I tend to agree with the sentiment that since Gillis is making money through selling records and playing gigs, his music doesn’t really constitute Fair Use. But whatever.

What I really want to talk about it the rant Gillis shared with the crowd at his Kool Haus gig. Gillis took exception to the story Marc Weisblott wrote for EYE, kind of cursing him out to the crowd and saying that he wants to sit Weisblott down and tell him why his music constitutes Fair Use. Too bad Gillis failed to mention he gave Now an exclusive interview, shutting out Weisblott and the rest of Toronto’s print media. Now I’ve got no problem with Gillis giving the exclusive to Now, cause that’s just the way things work these days.  But is this really the kind of douchebag copyfighters want as their spokesperson?

Is the RIAA using an unconstitutional law to sue music fans?

There was an interesting story on wired.com last week about a Harvard Law professor who believes the US law which the RIAA has used as its basis in all of its legal suits against music downloaders in unconstitutional. The professor in question is Charles Nesson, best known for  defending the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers. Check it out here.

It’s a dance off…

I want to learn how to dance like this. New Jack Swing was the convalessence of R&B and Hip-Hop that occurred in the late 80s and early 90s. Bobby Brown, early Boyz II Men and Blackstreet’s “No Diggity” are great examples of the sound. VH1 recently paid tribute to the genre at one of their Hip Hop Honours shows. But it’s Kid ‘N’ Play’s great 1990 flick House Party that stands as New JackSwing’s greatest inflitration of the mainstream. Oh, Martin and Gina are in their somewhere too…

Weezer, masters of the music video

With MTV and MuchMusic playing fewer and fewer videos, more and more bands and their fans are looking to sites like Vimeo and Youtube for their music clips. Like with the introduction of the music video and MTV at the dawn of the 80s, the change in technology has brought with it new bands like OK Go who are better able to adapt to the changing times. Then there’s Weezer. With the exception of Radiohead, no other the bands from the golden age of the music video (the early 90s) have really been able to capitalize on new distribution models the way Weezer has. In 1994 They were often dismissed as a one-hit wonder after their Spike Jonze directed clip for “Buddy Holly” became a staple on music video channels with it’s clever use of footage from Happy Days. It’s since become a shining example of a music clip done right.

Weezer was an inactive entity at the turn of the century when the shift away from physical products started. But their profile during their post Pinkerton 5-year dormancy their profile, and the reassesment of their sophmore effort blossomed in online forums and message boards. When they returned in 2001 with the Green Album they were arguably more popular than at their Blue Album heights. They’ve ridden that wave into Web 2.0 notoriety culminating this summer with their video for their excellent single “Pork and Beans,” which lampooned/paid homage to a litany of viral video stars and then followed it up with what amounts to their own viral video for second single “Troublemaker.” Once again Weezer have rocketed to the top of the heap with catchy hooks and clever visuals. Is it a cheap grab for attention? Maybe, but when it’s this fun to watch, who cares.

Pork and Beans

Troublemaker