Brandon's Buzz

Wouldn’t it be my luck that I would start writing a marvelous post, only to have the story contained therein change dramatically before I would have a chance to shepherd the composition to Buzz-worthy perfection? Such is the case with
Ms. Joanna Pacitti, who was already well on her way to becoming “American Idol” season eight’s bona-fide front-runner until the producers decided — amid a new swirl of controversy a la last season’s inclusion of the ridonk Carly Smithson (who, under the moniker of Carly Hennessy, released a high-profile Ishtar-level megaflop album at the beginning of this decade, and who was derided heavily last year for competing in what is ostensibly designed to be an “amateur” competition) — to deep-six her for eligibility reasons, as it had come to light that, even though she at this point no longer has a recording contract, Pacitti did have past working relationships with more than one executive at 19 Entertainment, the company which owns and produces “Idol.” It’s a devastating break for her: unlike Smithson last year, who, with her faux-tough-chick sensibility and demeanor, was never gonna go all the way (and whose needless desecration of Bonnie Tyler’s all-time classic “Total Eclipse of the Heart” still rankles my ass, all these months later), adorably fresh-faced Pacitti actually had a decent shot to win this thing.

If Pacitti’s name rings a bell with you, it ought to: three years ago, she released a dynamite debut record called This Crazy Life, which sounded very much like something Avril Lavigne would come up with if only Avril could hit more than one note. (I swear to Jesus I mean that as a compliment!) Life initially received a burst of attention for its fun (and infinitely more tuneful) cover of Dashboard Confessional’s breakthrough smash “Screaming Infidelities,” but there was so much more interesting material to be found on this record: for the life of me, I don’t know why the brilliant “Ultraviolet” wasn’t chosen as the radio single; “Your Obsession” matches pound for pound the haunting creepiness of Sarah McLachlan’s 1994 touchstone “Possession”; and if “Just When You’re Leaving” isn’t one of the saddest faded-love songs you ever heard, kindly ask someone to slap some sense into you until you’ve reversed your foolishness.

Meantime, we get our first real look at “Idol’s” top 36 tonight, and I’ve already been warned by my new pal Michael Brainard (an actor I recently interviewed on Brandon’s Buzz Radio) to keep an eye out for his good friend Jackie Tohn, whose Joplin-esque voice is already causing quite a stir in the “Idol” blogosphere. I already had money down on Pacitti, so my best guess is that the remaining contestants are breathing a heavy sigh o’ relief that she’s been shown the door. Game on, folks.

A major computer malfunction has kept the Buzz inactive for the past few days, but we’re back and better than ever, just in time for this week’s record store report. It’s another slow one out there, kids, but there are some gems hidden in the rough.

Continuing in their ongoing quest to sucker us into purchasing the exact same material — these guys have as many live albums as they do studio ones! — as often as they possibly can, those crafty fools of Maroon 5 unleash their latest project Call and Response this week. A collection of remixes, Response features radically reworked versions of the band’s massive radio hits and well-loved album tracks, and while Sherry Ann will testify that I’m all for a tasteful remix, I’m just not quite sure the world needs to be able to dance to “She Will Be Loved” (as masterfully heart-wrenching a ballad as has been recorded this decade) or “Better That We Break” or “Goodnight Goodnight.” (Does that make me crazy?) We’ll see.

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Quite the amusing cottage industry has sprung up over at Ultra Records, which, in a brilliant bit of counterprogramming against the ridiculous hip hop plague that ate top 40 radio, has emerged over the past two years as one of the premier labels for American dance music. Their terrific series of continuous mixes, all released under various shades of the Ultra um-ba-relly — pay special attention to the riveting Ultra Chilled compilations, which regularly feature brilliant, mellow mixes from Dido, Sarah McLachlan, Coldplay, and others — have proven to be reliably entertaining collections of music, and none more so than their latest project, Ultra.Mix.

Arranged by New York DJ Vic Latino (one of Ultra’s primary go-to guys; he’s that good), Mix contains stomping club versions of recent radio smashes from Rihanna (Jody Broeder’s remix of “Don’t Stop the Music,” whose dazzling centerpiece sample of Jacko’s “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” soars here), Jordin Sparks (“No Air,” her runaway hit duet with Chris Brown), September (the enchanting “Cry for You,” whose virtues I’ve already extolled ad nauseam on this site), and Madonna (“4 Minutes,” her nakedly desperate collaboration with Justin Timberlake and his posse). For good measure, Latino also tosses in two of 2008’s most fascinating dance tracks: “Pjanoo,” another breakneck masterwork from British electronica maestro Eric Prydz (best known over here for the club hits “Call On Me” and “Proper Education,” his amazing reinventions of Steve Winwood’s “Valerie” and Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” respectively); and “The One,” Sharam’s bold (and stunningly adroit) attempt to refashion Daniel Bedingfield’s classic ballad “If You’re Not the One” as a dizzy four-on-the-floor epic.

Flawlessly assembled and rendered, Mix adds up to a brilliantly thrilling hour of nonstop fun, the likes of which are way too difficult to track down on the standard radio dial these days. If you’re not tappin’ your toes by the end of track number one, it must be because you’ve already fainted from the sheer giddy exhilaration of it all.

A pair of fascinating newcomers releasing long-awaited sophomore projects, up against a host of old pros returning to the spotlight, punctuate this week’s (regretfully belated — sorry, Sherry Ann!) record store report.  But don’t just take my word for it:

Her already legendary spot-on spoofs of Gov. Sarah Palin will almost certainly stand beside Dana Carvey’s oafish takeoffs on the elder George Bush in the upper echelon of “Saturday Night Live’s” political pantheon, and if there’s any justice, the enormous buzz generated thereby will draw some much-needed attention to the product of the peerless Tina Fey’s day job, as writer and star of NBC’s enormously funny riotous farce 30 Rock.  Critically adored — the series just swept the comedy Emmys, nabbing acting trophies for Fey and Alec Baldwin (as masterful a buffoon as can be found anywhere on the dial these days), as well as honors for the series itself and for its writing — but a Nielsen also-ran — even as a niche show, this thing’s ratings are paltry — Rock miraculously returns for its third season at the end of the month, and to whet appetites for the series’ imminent return, this week brings the arrival on DVD of the outrageously hilarious Season Two, which features another Emmy-nominated turn from Elaine Stritch (as Baldwin’s ribald mother) and guest turns from, among others, Jerry Seinfeld and Edie Falco.  The textbook definition of eccentric television, this often-demented series is certainly not for everyone.  But it is funny, and given how shockingly short is the supply on that these days in TV land, that’s worth celebrating.

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After what seems like years, the dreadful month of August is finally crawling to an end, and taking with it the abominably dull music lineup which has bogged us down since late July.  And now that we can turn our attention toward fall and its transformative glory, we can begin to anticipate with breathless, open-mouthed vigor the terrific tuneage laying in wait for us.

The item I was most looking forward to this season was The Annie Lennox Collection, a first-ever solo best-of set from one of the most fiercely divine artists we have.  But after word broke last week that Lennox required emergency spinal surgery, Collection was pushed back to spring 2009 so that its creator could have ample recovery time.

Fear not, however:  Ms. Lennox, as monumentally necessary as she may be in our lives, wasn’t slated to be the only game in town this fall.  New works from Pink, James Taylor, Rachael Yamagata, Whitney Houston, Sarah McLachlan, and many others are in the pipeline, as are the following five records, which — now that Lennox has been taken off the table — I’ll confess I am most excited about.

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For a minute there, didn’t it feel like Austin was gonna become the next Seattle?

In much the same way that Seattle gave birth to the grunge scene in the early ’90s, with homegrown bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam leading the zeitgeist-capturing charge, a new singer-songwriter boom — one, no doubt, which got kicked off by Jagged Little Pill, got stoked by the staggering success of Jewel’s debut and Sheryl Crow’s sophomore efforts, and got sent into orbit by the phenomenal, out-of-the-box success of Sarah McLachlan’s Lilith Fair — exploded across the landscape in the latter part of the decade, and, thanks to the emergence on the national stage of supremely gifted local talents like Patty Griffin, Kelly Willis, Shawn Colvin, Sister 7, Fastball, and the peerless Abra Moore, its epicenter was Austin. Having long labeled itself the “live music capital of the world,” the city had all of a sudden become ground zero in the most significant cultivation of introspective music since the early days of Dylan, Mitchell, Collins, and Taylor. (Clive Davis was so certain it was gonna stick that he launched the Arista/Austin imprint to discover and develop new artists.)

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Three weeks ago, A, Sherry Ann, and myself embarked on a hilarious, joy-filled excursion to Houston, where — twenty-five years after first making his acquaintance — we had primo tickets to the George Michael concert. George hadn’t toured America in almost two decades, and when the news broke early last spring that there was going to be a Texas stop on his ‘08 jaunt, my ass instantly leapt into action; faster than you can say, “Charge it,” I had reserved us three spectacular seats inside Houston’s Toyota Center.

Excited by the mere idea of what we were about to experience, Sherry Ann proclaimed to anyone who would listen that we were going on, in her words, “a big gay adventure!” All we had to do was get there in one piece, and we’d be set.

The hijinks and hilarity that resulted from this trip were not only the most fun I’ve had in light years, they were also quite informative and educational. I don’t kid when I tell you I acquired so many various and sundry nuggets of knowledge on this weeklong vay-cay, and, in a multi-part series, I’d like to share them each with you, my loyal readers.

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Another relatively light week is on tap, although if you’re feeling nostalgic, you’ll find a pair of touchstones — one from the ’80s, one from the ’90s — in the pipeline as you do your shopping this Tuesday. Behold:

After an endless wait, one of television’s smartest and most beloved situation comedies finally began making its way to DVD last year, and the latest release arrives this week. The Fourth Season of Family Ties was a watershed one for the series; having been paired with “The Cosby Show” on Thursday nights, the show was finally a ratings bonanza after several years of flying below the radar, and thanks to box office smash Back to the Future, its young star Michael J. Fox had just become a bona fide superstar. Season four also introduced to the series two of its funniest and most memorable ancillary characters, as the oldest Keaton kids both found true love: Alex, with fellow co-ed Ellen Reed (the terrific Tracy Pollan), and Mallory, with dropout sculptor Nick Moore (the hilarious Scott Valentine). The resulting complications — Alex deciding to take up ballet, or the riotous family dinner in which Mallory introduced Nick to the mortified Keaton clan, to name but two — rank among the show’s most remarkable moments.

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A Canadian bubblegum pop star in her teens, and a misunderstood (and, to a large extent, mischaracterized) angry young female (and, at that, one who singlehandedly touched off a deafening revolution for women in rock) in her twenties, the tenaciously divine Alanis Morissette has mellowed markedly as she navigates her thirties, though that fact may not be immediately evident upon first listen to Flavors of Entanglement, Morissette’s texturally dense eighth studio album. Inspired by her brutal breakup with actor Ryan Reynolds, Entanglement finds its author being lured into intriguing new sonic territory by producer Guy Sigsworth (co-writer of Seal’s 1991 classic debut “Crazy,” and best known for his striking work with the lovably psychotic Imogen Heap), who grafts rougher-hewn guitars and touches of electronica onto Morissette’s typically untidy prose.

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In 1996, as a nifty way to help bridge the excruciating three-year gap between her critical breakthrough (the sultry slow burn Fumbling Towards Ecstasy) and her commercial arrival (the Lilith-fueled smash Surfacing), Sarah McLachlan released Rarities, B-Sides, and Other Stuff, a collection of little-heard remixes, covers, and original tracks anchored by her knockout take on Joni Mitchell’s legendary touchstone “Blue.” And now, twelve years later, McLachlan returns to that well with Rarities…,Vol. 2, the title of which is a probable misnomer: seeing as she’s a hell of a lot more famous now than she was back then, a great many of this album’s songs aren’t quite so rare.

Which is not to say you won’t enjoy them all the same. Included here are a trio of motion picture soundtrack contributions — “Ordinary Miracle,” from 2006’s Charlotte’s Web; “Blackbird,” from 2002’s I Am Sam; and what stands as perhaps the finest vocal performance of her entire career (I’d only put Fumbling’s magnificent “Good Enough” ahead of it, and even then, with great hesitation), the Academy Award-nominated “When She Loved Me,” from 1999’s Toy Story 2 — and a litany of superstar collaborations — among others, a duet with Cyndi Lauper on a remake of Lauper’s 1984 classic “Time After Time” (which appeared on Lauper’s 2005 record The Body Acoustic); a live rendition of “Angel” with special guest Emmylou Harris; and a team-up with my crazy best friend’s favorite new band The Perishers, on a harrowing track called “Pills” (a handy link for which can be found here, Sherry Ann). To be sure, this latest installment of Rarities doesn’t fully sate the need for a new Sarah studio album (and not counting Wintersong, McLachlan’s 2006 Christmas album, it’s been five loooong years and counting), but if you missed one or more of these tunes the first time around (or if you would simply like to have them all in one compact collection), there are certainly far worse expenditures of your time.

Admittedly, Brooke, I’m biased.

Sixteen years ago this August, an astonishing flame-haired raven name of Tori Amos cajoled her incomparably seductive self into my life and instantaneously hurled my very being straight and plumb off its axis. For reasons that aren’t remotely relevant to this particular conversation — though they merit (and will almost certainly eventually win) their own future blog post — 1992 remains, in its own way, the single most important and noteworthy of my 32 years on this planet. Thanks wholly to unrequited, emotionally draining crushes on Craig Doughten and Annie Lennox — and, all these eons later, it remains a fair toss-up which of those two people was more unattainable, despite my daily access to no fewer than one of them — it was the first year I got really serious both about writing and about music appreciation. Quite true, I had always loved music — hey, I still remember, and with the fondest grace in my heart’s most sacred quadrant, Dad driving his downright giddy eight year old son up to the TG&Y to buy anything that contained “Karma Chameleon,” and trust me here if nowhere else: yes, Brooke, an eight year old’s palms can sweat, honey — but ‘92 tore across my mind like a gale, like an huracán.

Nothing was left standing.

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