Merry Christmas

I know I usually have a hard on for anything and everything Phil Spector related, but as much as I enjoy Darlene Love's version of "Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)", there's another version that I'll always prefer.

That's right, I'm talking about U2. Maybe Darlene Love can help you celebrate the birth of Christ AND the wall of sound (both equally influential to the world), but the U2 is the band I instantly think of when I hear this song. It's the version I grew up with and it rocks oh so well.

"Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home" by U2

Then of course, there's the pairing that's odder than any mash-up the internet could ever dream of.

"The Little Drummer Boy" by David Bowie & Bing Crosby

To step in another direction, I'd like to bring up the only christmas song I can think of that contains the word "faggot". I mean, what is Christmas without some alcoholism? Cue Shane MacGowan and his mushmouthed mess of a first verse. Kirsty MacColl balances out his sloppy mess and the result is LOVERLY.

"The Fairy Tale of New York" feat. Kirsty MacColl by the Pogues

Oh and on the subject of alcoholism,

"Baby, it's Cold Outside" by Dean Martin (my favorite rat packer)

And just so we don't lose any scene points here,

"Rock and Roll Santa" by Yo La Tengo

The skinny pale duke?

Both Clap Your Hands, Say Yeah!!! and Built to Spill have songs where they make reference to someone who looks just like David Bowie. Perhaps they're referring to Steven Spratt of the Splitting Images Lookalike Agency.

Or maybe they're referring to Leon Michaels of Celebrity Impersonators by Elyse.

The world may never know.

"Over and Over Again (Lost and Found)" by Clap Your Hands, Say Yeah!!!

"Distopian Dream Girl" by Built to Spill

the next bob dylan? if by bob dylan, you mean creepy looking folk singer, then yes.

So today I was at work cleaning up some clutter and I found this half page that had been torn out of a newspaper with a large picture of Conor Oberst. Now, this might not sound that weird, except I work construction. I would say that maybe 70% of the guys that work on the site speak only polish and listen to the Prodigy. The rest of them all seem to listen to top 40 radio or spanish music. So it's kind of odd that someone would tear out a big picture of Oberst and just leave it in this side room for a couple months. Naturally, I took this as a sign from God that I should be posting on Cigar Box Guitars about Bright Eyes.

"Green Hornet, I need you to force your opinions
about Conor Oberst onto the unwilling masses.
They have much to learn."

Well, I can't ignore God, So here we are. I wanna start off by saying that I put Conor Oberst in the same category as Dave Matthews, that of artists who are wildly overrated and wildly underrated simultaneously. Both of these guys have their fans who will pop boners for literally everything they do and who will hail them as musical geniuses and legends in our own time. Both men also have extremely dedicated "haters" as it were, folks who will refuse to budge in their opinion that everything the man has touched is crap. Both groups are a bit off, in my not so humble opinion.

Oberst's lyrics tend to be hit or miss. At times, he's a very clever storyteller. A great example here is the song "Lua" off of I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, his folk album centered around a trip to New York City. Lua paints the listener a pretty little picture about cocaine addiction (a favorite subject of the skinny little bastard's), loneliness, and the ladies. The song is somewhat reminiscent of Elliott Smith, with its quiet guitar playing and half whispered singing, but since when is being like Elliott Smith a bad thing? Since never, that's when.

"Lua" by Bright Eyes

At other times, Oberst's storytelling takes dives into the obnoxiously mellodramatic. Case in point, a little ditty called, "It's Cool, We Can Still Be Friends" off of the compilation Transmission One: Tea at the Palaz of Hoon. The song starts off fine enough, with a chap lamenting the weird frustrating relationship he has with his ex-girlfriend. Towards the end of the song, however, Oberst just falls so deep into sloppy mellodrama that it becomes unbearable. Screamed lines like "yeah I'm pouring myself some whiskey, I'm going to get really fucking drunk... so drunk that I pass out, forget your face by the time I wake up" just blow any artistic integrity he may or may not have achieved in the song up to that point. Showing emotion in a song is good. Being a weepy little bitch on a song does you no good and will only make it hard on the people who enjoy your good songs.

"It's Cool We Can Still Be Friends" by Bright Eyes

That's not to say that everything falls to shit everytime Oberst starts screaming. Certain songs have well placed yelping that help create good sonic dynamics. A good example here would be "The City has Sex" off of Letting Off The Happiness. Oberst's screams slam the listener right into the chorus unexpectedly, then drop off before you even realize what happened. The entire song sounds frantic and his screaming also helps reinforce that mood.

"The City has Sex" by Bright Eyes

Sometimes Oberst screams for the whole song and it's awesome. I never got into his side project Desaparecidos as much as Bright Eyes, but "Manana" is a rocking good time. Here he employs more of an "ahhhhhhh we're rocking" scream than an "ahhhhhhhh I'm so hurt on the inside" scream.

"Manana" by Desaparecidos

My one final note on Mr. Oberst is that I want to see him do more than folky indie rock. I read in an interview that he really enjoys MF Doom and Pete Rock as both producers and rappers. If you listen to the song "Arc of Time" off of Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, there's an obvious hip hop influence. This is the best produced song on the album, hands down. The beat is just so incredibly tight, there's no other way to describe it. After hearing that song, I really would love to hear him produce some beats for someone to rap over. I really can't even imagine who'd be a good match for him, since I have little idea what his beats would sound like, but I'm sure there must be at least one rapper out there who'd be down.

"Arc of Time" by Bright Eyes

it could happen.

David, Karin, and Olof

I know I just posted about the Knife, but I was inspired to post about them again, this time talking about them along with Mr. Stardust.




Now, I am pretty surprised that David Bowie hasn't been mentioned on this site before. I love the guy, especially the Berlin stuff. One of the great parts about the Berlin era of Bowie were the fantastic instrumentals that he and sometimes (but not always) Brian Eno would make.

Warszawa - David Bowie
Appearing on the album Low, this is one of my favorite instrumentals ever. I guess it's not entirely instrumental since Bowie chants some gibberish (to GREAT effect) towards the end of the song. This song was the only song on the album that is credited to both Bowie and Eno, and it has Eno's touch all over it. The song reveals itself slowly, building to as good a climax as music can offer. Also, for a song made almost primarily from synthesizers that came out in the '70s, it hasn't aged a bit.

Sense of Doubt - David Bowie
The album "Heroes" was released after Low and contains this song. I have always taken "Heroes" to be the better album. The reason for this is that both albums second side's are all instrumentals, and I think "Heroes" instrumentals form a better whole than do Low's. "Sense of Doubt" is scarce, barely there if you think about it. But no instrumental song has ever given me a better picture in my head based on nothing but the atmosphere of the song. The song is based around bright, almost uplifting synth chords that get higher as the song goes on, that are answered right away by the ominous, descending piano line. The song is a struggle between the two instruments. I really could write another 3 pages about this song, but I'll let you draw your own conclusions from it, since that is probably the intention anyways.

Behind the Bushes - The Knife
The reason I was thinking about Bowie instrumentals was this song by the Knife. The song clearly has influences in the Berlin era Bowie and Eno stuff (as I easily could have compared it to half of the stuff of Eno's album Another Green World). The beat is minimal and industrial sounding, and I wonder if this song wouldn't be even better without it. But the synths sound ALOT like the synths in "Warszawa". This song on it's own is fantastic. As the last full track on the album Deep Cuts, it truly leaves the album with the correct feel to it (actual last track on the album, minute-long throwaway "Hangin' Out", really could have been left off).

womp womp

"Modern Love" by David Bowie
This is a really great song for driving by yourself, or if you're pretty comfortable with someone. The weird, vague spoken part at the beginning is fun to imitate, the lyrics are easy to remember, and the timing is just right that you can sing the main vocals and the backup all by yourself. Someone told me that there's a version of it with Tina Turner and Bowie that they did for a Pepsi commercial. I'm not terribly keen on the whole corporate whoring thing, but damn, Tina Turner's voice must sound great on this song.

"This Modern Love" by Bloc Party
This is just one of those songs that the first time I heard it, it became one of my favorite songs of the moment. The way Mr. Kele Okereke-Okay, I didn't have to use his whole name there, or his name at all, but God Damn, that is a cool ass name, is it not?-alternates between the right and left side at first is pretty cool, nothing earth shattering, but it works well here. The instrumentation is all simple, but really well layered, and the effect is just... pretty. That's really the best way to describe this song, catchy and pretty.

"Modern Romance" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs
This has always been one of my favorite Yeah Yeah Yeahs songs, the other one being Art Star. The drums and guitar are so simple that they have this hypnotic quality of sorts. The only time either changes is when both drop out momentarily, on a very odd place in the beat, and then come back in a second later. Combine all that with the the soothing nature Karen O's voice takes on in this one -quite the opposite of Art Star- and the guitar effects layered on top, and the song as a whole is so peaceful. It's the perfect instrumental vehicle for the lyrics, a very somber and accepting look at heartbreak. There's even a cool bonus track at the end of it.

***

I'm not sure why all these songs ended up with almost the same title, but they all do it very well, so I wrote about it.

peace.