Brandon's Buzz

Javier Colon — “Time After Time”
(from Time After Time [“The Voice” Performance]) —

It will be interesting to see if it holds up as it unfolds — particularly as it is curiously scheduled smack dab up against the climax of one of American Idol‘s more compelling seasons in quite a spell — but I have to tell you: I wasn’t expecting much, but I quite liked the premiere episode of NBC’s knockoff talent competition The Voice, which is built around an fascinating concept — the judges are building “teams” of singers and are essentially competing against each other just as fiercely as the singers are — and featured a surprising number of moving moments — among them, a married couple quite capably tackling “Falling Slowly” from the Once soundtrack, and a young girl giving Adele a run for her money with a riveting take on “Rolling in the Deep” — and none more so than this, a brilliantly bittersweet cover of Cyndi Lauper’s all-time classic smash which literally made me weep. Everything about this — from the loose, off-the-cuff guitar arrangement, to Colon’s slightly off-kilter phrasing (particularly on that iconic chorus, which is every bit as powerful right this moment as it was nearly thirty years ago) — works and works fabulously, and though it feels kinda weird to anoint the captivating Colon as the instant front-runner in this competition — especially when there are many, many other contestants to be seen yet — it’s exactly what I’m doing. (A quick check of Colon’s discography reveals that he is indeed fearless in tackling the classics, as he has also put his lovely imprimatur upon what gets my vote for the best song in the whole damn history of great songs, Joni Mitchell’s landmark “A Case of You.”) I, for one, can’t wait to see what trick Javi pulls out of his hat next. (If you missed this performance, or any of the gazillion commercials for The Voice on which bits of this performance were played ad nauseam, the full video can be seen below.)

John Waite — “If You Ever Get Lonely” (from Rough and Tumble) —

Because he was one of the musical heroes of my favorite year — 1984, duh — it was a peculiar thrill to welcome Waite as my guest on last night’s installment of Brandon’s Buzz Radio to discuss his latest album, and when I posed the question, he revealed that this midtempo ballad — co-written with Matchbox Twenty’s Kyle Cook — was his favorite Tumble track. Believe it or not, it’s mine too.
(Close to thirty years beyond “Missing You,” doesn’t Waite’s voice still sound just incredible?! Incidentally, if you missed this episode, you can download it as a free podcast from iTunes, or you can catch up with it right cheer.)

He (and the oddball pop band which bore his name) scored a surprise radio smash in the spring of 1998 with what is possibly the most depressing pop song ever find a mass audience, the devastating “Brick.” But if you think that success is there all is to know about the Ben Folds story, think again: he has just released his latest album, a frisky and fascinating collaboration with novelist Nick Hornby entitled Lonely Avenue, and he presides over the judging panel on NBC’s hit music competition series The Sing-Off, which the network recently renewed for a third season set to premiere later this year. (A companion album — featuring the best of season two’s contestants performing freshly recorded a cappella takes on such hits as OneRepublic’s “Apologize” and Mika’s “Grace Kelly” — has also just arrived in stores.) I recently spoke with Folds about his participation in The Sing-Off, as well as how he has managed to keep himself and his brand consistently relevant in an industry that seems to be changing by the second.

BRANDON’S BUZZ: This thing, The Sing-Off — for those who haven’t seen it, it’s essentially a strictly a cappella take on American Idol, or something of a cross between Idol and Glee, and you’re basically a judge-slash-mentor on this show. How did you get involved with this?

BEN FOLDS: Well, there were a lot of a cappella groups over the last ten years covering my music, my music being a big part of the repertoire of university a cappella groups. So I was hearing a lot of versions, and some of them I liked better than what we had done originally! I thought they were compelling versions and moving and engaging; they were getting it and they were musically intelligent. So I wanted to feature them on a record, and we made a record called University A Cappella, which, essentially, I was recording these groups in their natural habitats, and we put it on record and gave the proceeds to music education charities. And then NBC rang, because they heard the record and knew of my interest [in a cappella music], and they asked me if I wanted to do the gig. And initially, I didn’t want to.

So what changed your mind?

Well, I thought about it for a little bit before I came back and just knee-jerked and said no. I think when someone says, “Hey, you wanna be a judge on a music show,” you say no! [Laughs.] But [Sing-Off] was different because — I began to think about it, going, “Well, these groups are gonna be singing live, a cappella on television.” That’s pretty — that’s pretty brave! They’re gonna have to be dead-on, and if they’re not, they’re gonna need good feedback. You know, they don’t need someone cutting them down and making a circus out of it; what they need is someone to say, “Look, I’m pretty sure it would have been very moving had you not rushed and had the bassist been more articulate.” So I just thought, “Wow, I can help — that’s not so bad, let’s do it.”

(more…)

Ben Folds Five — “Don’t Change Your Plans”
(from The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner) —

I recently got an opportunity to speak with Mr. Folds, and one of the questions I asked him — as I try to ask most musicians with whom I chat — was about what he is listening to these days, and he surprised me by throwing out the names of Nat King Cole and Rachmaninoff. (Not sure what I was expecting him to say, but it sure wasn’t that!) Nonetheless, I was immediately reminded of this lovely, bittersweet beauty — the piano-driven tune with which the Five bade us farewell in ’99 — which documents a couple who can’t seem to bridge their own geographic divide. (Incidentally, the transcript of my interview with Ben will be posted here later this afternoon, so come on back.)

Amanda Marshall — “Love Lift Me” (from Tuesday’s Child) —

The hilarious comedian Sinbad recently took to Twitter to inquire as to the whereabouts of this bracingly terrific Canadian singer/songwriter, a brilliant blend of equal parts Carole King and Pat Benatar who made three tremendously fine albums for Columbia around the turn of the century but still managed to get herself mired in the tricky political minefield of post-Lilith female-fronted pop music. I myself thought it to be a valid question as well — indeed, I’ve been trying to track her down and drag her over to Brandon’s Buzz Radio for eons now, and she literally seems to have dropped off the planet — so ‘Manda, if you’re reading this, please phone home my darling, because fans of sophisticated, smart music are being blown off the map by that ridiculously rancid tart Ke$ha and a mortifying multiplicity of her ilk, and we miss and need you ferociously, lady.

Duran Duran — “The Reflex” (from Greatest) —

I had seen it coming on the calendar earlier in the week but then lost track of it (probably for the best, that), and it didn’t dawn on me until around mid-afternoon that yesterday was actually the sixth anniversary of my father’s passing. I was rather an oddball child, so, at least outwardly, I never really had so much in common with my dad. That he seemed to be perfectly fine with that fact — and by that, I mean that he gave both of his children the space to fully be themselves — might be the single greatest gift he ever gave me, and I promise that I recognize and appreciate it more with each passing year. The second greatest gift he gave me, without question, was simple yet achingly profound: he taught his son how to really feel the music that surrounds us, how to let it scrape against your soul and leave its mark. Like a broken record, I always and often say that 1984 — my eighth full year hanging onto this mortal coil for dear life — was the greatest year for music in the history of recorded sound, and I keep coming to realize that I feel that way as much for the fact that its songs were inescapably, incontrovertibly fabulous as for the fact that it was the first year I was paying attention — ergo, the year that I play all other years off against — and that I was paying attention because he taught me how to. This, believe it or not, was our favorite song that year — we used to love trying our best (and loudest) to imitate Simon LeBon’s irresistibly batshit vocal performance whenever this came on the radio of my dad’s puke-green, tore-up-from-the-floor-up Ford pickup truck, which back then I thought was every last iota as cool as Rocky’s gold and black Trans Am — and even though it’s still hard to listen to much of the time, because of the memories it conjures with every passing note, it’s the tune that I couldn’t help but hum to myself all evening yesterday. And I have the funniest feeling — or, maybe, just the funniest hope — that, wherever he may now be, he was doing the exact same thing. (So much love to you, Dad, still and always.)

“I believe that daytime is failing because the people who create it, run it, own it have forgotten what soap opera is. Soaps were originally developed to bring in family, love, infidelity, pain, joy, but family, across the board. Not just young people, not just old people, everybody! I think the mistake has been — I mean, who sees aliens in their lifetime? When you do a story about that, who relates to that? I don’t! It’s just silly! Erika Slezak with twins that, one is from one guy [and the other is…] — wha?! I remember when they did it, I went, ‘Wha…?!’ There’s enough in life, real life — real joys and traumas and difficulties and infidelities and love — there’s enough of that to write stories about…. And when I think that it’s gonna be all over, ‘cause it doesn’t have to be! It’s not some old-fashioned thing; no one just ever brought it into 2012. They didn’t respect
[the form of soap opera]…. they didn’t honor it. And they ruined it.”

— the peerless Linda Dano — an Emmy-winning veteran of the soap grind for nearly three decades — offering her thoughts on the continuing decline of the art of the soap opera, which took another paralyzing hit last week with the tragic cancellations of All My Children and One Life to Live, on
Brandon’s Buzz Radio. (My full fifty-minute conversation with Dano, during which she was quite candid with her opinions on the current state of daytime, in addition to previewing her imminent return to QVC and waxing wistfully on the upcoming royal wedding, will be available for download later this weekend, and trust me: it’s a doozy.)

Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova —
“Broken Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy”
(from Once [Music from the Motion Picture]) —

I’m still in the process of processing my thoughts on ABC’s cavalier cancellation last week of their classic soaps All My Children and my old fave One Life to Live (which I’ve watched, practically uninterrupted, for twenty-three years now, so watch this space), but, in the meantime, an interesting sliver of a silver lining from this awful, awful news: multi-billion-dollar conglomerates are not exactly known for siding against their own, but in a rare show of solidarity with literally millions of heart-wrenched soap fans — a sizable number of whom, it should be noted, purchase (and utilize) his company’s products — a brilliant gentleman name of Brian Kirkendall, the vice president of marketing for The Hoover Company — whose vacuum cleaners have been hot sellers for over a century — announced on the company’s Facebook page that, exclusively because his wife and mother are fans of the ABC soaps, his company is pulling all advertising from the network, effective immediately. (Imagine that: a top-level executive putting his own personal integrity and conviction above the almighty dollar. Contrast that with the doofy dolts at ABC, who are, come fall, flushing a combined eighty years of television history down the drain in favor of a Mario Batali-starring reality show about food entitled The Chew, whose existence ABC Daytime president Brian Frons helpfully justified by explaining that the show will be easy to promote with The View, his network’s smash morning gabfest.) I’m not sure that anything will ultimately come of Hoover’s ballsy move (although mobilized fans are now bombarding other soap advertisers with requests for similar action, and I understand that Hershey is paying keen attention to the brouhaha), but it does my heart good to see anyone — even someone without a real dog in this particular hunt — standing up for the soaps. (A recently bought a vacuum cleaner for our household, and I’m sad to report that he chose a Bissell upright, but let it suffice to say that our next machine will be a Hoover. As for this seemingly odd song choice: it was the only vacuum-related song I could conjure up, but given how crushed I remain about this news a week after the fact, I find its content and subject matter to be not at all inapropos.)

Paul Simon — “Old” (from You’re the One) —

In a text message the day before yesterday, Sherry Ann reminded me that it was the twentieth anniversary of the release of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and, because we were high school sophomores the year of that tune’s inception, she decided to connect all the dots and drop the following bomb upon my head: “We are soooo damn old!” (Funny enough, I wasn’t nearly the Nirvana freak that she was back in the day, so this milestone doesn’t make me feel as ancient as next year’s 25th anniversary of Faith or the impending 30th anniversary of Colour By Numbers — which I still can vividly recall begging my father to drive me up to TG&Y to buy on a snowy February day in 1984 — almost certainly will.) Old is a sliding scale, too: on this very day three years ago, Brandon’s Buzz was born, and there are moments when it feels as though these 676 blog posts, 569 post comments, 2100 post tags, and 98 site pages have flown past in a fleeting fingersnap, and yet others when it feels like my typing fingers have been toiling away here forever. (As always, most profound thanks to all who have come along for this crazy, silly ride, and here’s hoping that the next three years are every inch as much fun as the first three.)

Sinead O’Connor — “No Man’s Woman”
(from Faith and Courage) —

I always find it interesting when artists make decisions and/or arrange their choices in such a fashion that a toxic mythology forms around them, and the tale begins to supersede the talent. (Think Prince changing his name to an unpronounceable symbol, think Britney’s apeshit antics, think Michael’s difficult-to-justify fascination with minor male children, think Kanye’s hilariously blowsy hubris.) Nobody in the know has ever doubted Sinead’s abilities as a profound performer, but over time, regardless of whether or not she purposely set out to accomplish just this, the mention of her name has slowly become its own punchline: the starkly shaved head, the infamous ripping-up-the-Pope’s-photograph-on-live-television incident, deciding that she’s a lesbian, and then re-deciding she isn’t. The music has stayed fiercely compelling, but the impact of its message (not to mention, her credibility as an artist) has become so mangled and muddled by her herky-jerky insanity. And no fewer than one fan (me me me me me) feels that her catalog of material deserves a legacy properly befitting its rich, riveting brilliance.

Meredith Brooks — “Bitch” (from Blurring the Edges) —

Considering that two of last week’s three biggest hits at top 40 radio flagrantly feature the word “fuck” in their titles (Lord love you both, Pink and Cee-Lo Green!), isn’t it amusing to recall that it wasn’t so many moons ago that a large number of radio stations refused to even identify this innocuously tame little trifle by name? (Isn’t it also amusing to discover, as I did when this popped up in a shuffle yesterday while I was at work, that the pleasure in listening to this tune is laced with every bit as much guilt now as it was back in 1997 when this thing was originally a hit?)