Brandon's Buzz

Cutting Crew — “(I Just) Died in Your Arms”
(from The Best of Cutting Crew) —

A and I had a total blast last night jamming out with a host of other mindless-pop-loving Austinites at the Alamo Drafthouse’s Totally ’80s New Wave sing-along, and it actually turned out to be quite the educational experience for both of us, because until last night, I had utterly no idea how serious (and, in actual fact, quite profound) a song Tears for Fears’ “Head Over Heels” is — my mind is blown time and again at these events when I’m forced, sometimes for the first time ever, to actually pay complete attention to the lyrics of songs I’ve loved my whole life! — and A gained a bit more sociological (and physiological) insight than he had held previously after I was forced to explain to him, verse by verse, what actually is going on between the lines of The Vapors’ “Turning Japanese.” (It was also quite a pleasant surprise to realize just how well a-ha’s then-revolutionary video for “Take On Me” continues to hold up all these years later.) There were some objectionable omissions from the playlist last night — no “99 Luftballons,” sadly, and no Kajagoogoo, no Culture Club, shockingly little Duran Duran, and they could have swapped out Billy Idol for a wee taste of Wham! and not offended me at all — but there was more than enough of Madness, Morrissey, Devo, Violent Femmes, and Sherry Ann’s beloved Cure to satisfy. Oh, and then there was Cutting Crew: this song — an all-time classic from that magical, mystical summer of 1987 — wasn’t technically part of the New Wave movement, any more than was “Walking On Sunshine,” but that didn’t stop my ass from getting happy and singing along nonetheless. Twenty-four summers have passed between the moment I sit here and type this and the moment my clueless eleven-year-old ears first heard this magnificently unsettling masterpiece — a compelling chronicle of how a young man’s erotic fantasy comes alive as an all-consuming minefield of desperation and emotional destruction — and it remains, bar none, the single sexiest song I’ve ever heard.

Cee-Lo Green — “Bright Lights, Bigger City” (from The Lady Killer) —

One of the great surprises of the spring television season has been NBC’s smash competition series The Voice, which has been chock full of really interesting, curious, fascinatingly diverse talent (what a concept, this picking great singers to compete in a singing contest!), and one of the great joys of following The Voice has been the opportunity to watch that delightfully deranged dingbat Cee-Lo Green — easily the most flamboyant of this series’ quartet of judges — let his gloriously fabulous freak flag fly. Dementedly donning the visage of a modern-day Lawrence Welk — complete with thousands of bubbles, no less! — and confusing the living hell out of his hilarious fellow mentor Blake Shelton (who, on this program, often eyes Cee-Lo as though he’s halfway ready to run screaming into the night), Green performed this saucy little ditty, the third single from his latest album, on last night’s penultimate results show (Voice‘s two-part finale begins next Tuesday night), and though it doesn’t at all have that same sort of sticky, instantly (and insanely) catchy hook as his Grammy-nominated monster “Forget You,” it nonetheless feels like a perfectly poppy summertime jam.

The Sundays — “Summertime” (from Static and Silence) —

Happy (official) first day of summer, y’all. (We here at the Buzz hope that, wherever you are, you’re beating the heat in style and with the one you love.)

Train — “She’s On Fire” (from Drops of Jupiter) —

As has, badly and so sadly, become de rigueur over the past few years, last night’s presentation of the Daytime Emmy Awards was a painful, ponderous exercise in stretching one’s patience to its bitterest, most tenuous extremes, and it must be said that this latest telecast was the worst yet: a two-hour infomercial for Las Vegas’ entertainment lineup, Universal Studios’ various theme parks, the Childrens’ Miracle Network, and, apparently, the International House of Pancakes, this program — whose sole reason for existence, it must be noted, is to reward the bountiful excellence which airs on television during the daytime hours — managed once again to make the awards themselves an inconvenient afterthought, a way to fill (kill?) time between wobbly performances from the likes of poor Gladys Knight (struggling mightily to stay both on key and in time with the lifeless Muzak-level beat during her tremble-filled tribute to Lady Oprah) and Marie Osmond (no offense to her at all, but the fact that the producers of this telecast found time to include her random and irrelevant performance of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” but couldn’t be bothered to include one clip of any of the nominated performers’ work is simply unconscionable). Still, every rough patch hides a diamond, and here is this insulting travesty’s gem: the electrifying, gloriously brilliant Laura Wright, who has toiled in the trenches of daytime dramatic television for some two decades now — she has spent the past six years breathing beautiful life into that brazen bitch-on-wheels Caroline “Carly” Spencer Corinthos Alcazar Jacks on General Hospital, and spent eight extraordinary years on Guiding Light, and six on Loving and its ill-fated spinoff The City, prior to that — and who deserves to have no fewer than four or five of these shiny, golden tchotchkes on her mantlepiece by now, can finally, at LONG last, be referred to as an Emmy winner, having just been named this year’s Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for her stupendously superlative work. This honor has been one hell of a long time coming, and it was worth sitting through the entirety of last night’s epic misfire of an Emmy show just to be able to catch the look of pure, unfettered, stunned joy on Wright’s face as she made her way to the stage to accept her trophy. Brava, gal: the whole damn world now has no choice but to concur with my long-held belief that you are the inarguable best, my dear.

Billy Joel — “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)”
(from The Essential Billy Joel) —

A final word about this weird, woolly Weiner saga before we (hopefully) banish it from our collective consciousness and shift our attention back toward the truly important stuff (such as figuring out exactly how we’re going to fill our Sunday afternoons and Monday nights this fall if indeed it comes to pass that the imminent NFL season is delayed and/or altogether canceled on account of the continuing stalemate between the league’s owners and players): the craziness surrounding this brazen blip in the news cycle has certainly reinforced Aaron Sorkin’s Academy-Award winning assertion from last fall that the World Wide Web is written not in pencil, but in ink, and that we can never know who is out there reading the words we write here, there, everywhere, and who is out there just salivating for the chance to take our online activities and twist them to fit any perception. I absolutely speak my mind here on the Buzz (like when I call that irritating nitwit Natalie Maines an insufferable twit), and I happily take sole and exclusive responsibility for every syllable you read on this site (even when I piss off Clay Aiken’s ever-impassioned cabal of fans by handing him a backhanded compliment), but I always try to stay mindful that I don’t compose these words in an isolated vacuum, and that untold others actually come here to read these muddled, marvelous musings. And it is nice every now and again to be served a simple reminder that we clearly all need to heed: let’s be careful out there.

Duncan Sheik — “Bite Your Tongue” (from Humming) —

“. . . Christ, it’s gonna sound /

like I’m agreeing /

with the most ultra-boring ideas /

of pop-psychological Western gurus /

who haven’t gotten lucky in years. . . .”

Lady GaGa — “Marry the Night” (from Born This Way) —

Try as I might, I haven’t had a heck of a lot of luck getting through one full spin of Born This Way, which mostly comes off as a warmed-over mishmash of styles and studio trickery, as though our gal GaGa, ever desperate to stay right on the cutting edge of fashion and favor, instead went careening right over it. Title track aside, the singles have been so-so: the Lady is clearly running out of ways to blow our minds with music as we’ve never heard music before, and her initially fresh, bracing blend of disco-inflected pop punk is starting to feel decidedly stale. So when you do run across a bit of fun on this overheated record, as we have with this exuberant blast of fiery, fluffy frivolity, best to enjoy them to their fullest.

Michael Grimm — “Red” (from Michael Grimm) —

For roughly the first forty-five seconds or so, I was violently offended by this, for a plethora of reasons: Grimm — the last man standing in last summer’s edition of America’s Got Talent, NBC’s poor man’s Idol takeoff — is a fine singer to be sure, but he mostly sounds as though he’s trying too damn hard to ape my magnificent Marc Broussard (who, incidentally, is back this week with a sterling new record), and his major-label debut is top-heavy with largely inferior covers (apart from this song, Grimm also attempts to put his stamp on classics from Lynyrd Skynyrd, Rod Stewart, and, of all people, Alicia Keys). Besides, the new has yet to wear off of Daniel Merriweather’s brilliant original take on this tune, which appeared only last year, on Merriweather’s divine debut album. Still, guided by the strong hand of iconic producer Don Was, something entirely fascinating begins to emerge here: whereas Merriweather attacks these verses with a smothering, soulful verve that his bee-you-tee-full baby face seems wholly incapable of being able to conjure, Grimm underplays the words from start to (almost) stop, bringing to bear a clipped edge of hard, raspy drama that — given what you know and love about the original — has absolutely no right to work, and yet kinda sorta does anyway. (Was’ astonishing arrangement of the instrumentation, which swaps out Merriweather’s full-on wall-of-sound approach for a loosely lush string-driven aura of organic bliss, helps immeasurably in that regard.) As much as I hate to admit it: a muted, tender triumph.

Cary Brothers — “Ride” (from Who You Are) —

My very best friend celebrates her birthday this fine day, and in her honor, the Hive is blasting at full volume one of her all-time faves. (Brothers appeared on Brandon’s Buzz Radio last year and actually sang a bit of this tune to her at my humble request, and if you happened to miss that moment, you can catch up with it right cheer.) Much love as ever, Sherry Ann!

Clarence Clemons (with Jackson Browne) — “You’re a Friend of Mine”
(from Hero) —

Praying hard for the extraordinary Clemons, who, atop all of his other health problems the past few years, has apparently suffered a stroke and is in critical condition. As a founding member of Bruce Springsteen’s legendary E Street Band, Clemons very much helped pioneer the introduction and use of the saxophone in good ol’ rock and roll, and his utter virtuosity with the instrument has given us some of the most enjoyable sax solos — think Aretha Franklin’s “Freeway of Love,” think Springsteen’s own “Dancing in the Dark,” not to mention his just-released work on Lady GaGa’s latest single, “Edge of Glory” — of our time. (Get well soon, Big Man.)

Matraca Berg — “A Cold, Rainy Morning in London in June”
(from The Dreaming Fields) —

The glorious Berg didn’t stumble into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame by accident, and indeed, the only thing more mind-blowing than the breadth of her brilliant oeuvre — Patty Loveless’ “You Can Feel Bad,” Deana Carter’s “Strawberry Wine,” Martina McBride’s “Wild Angels,” and a goodly chunk of Trisha Yearwood’s entire discography (to name just a few!) all originated from her hot little pen — is the fact that the industry unto which she has delivered classic smash after classic smash writing for others has so stubbornly and steadfastly refused to allow Berg the success she has so richly earned as her own woman. It figures, of course: Miss Loretta notwithstanding, Nashville has largely and historically not been commercially kind to songbirds who have the gumption and gall to write their own words unless they are forced to by the vagaries of DNA (see: Rosanne Cash) or otherwise happen to find themselves caught up in a full-fledged fluke (see: Mary Chapin Carpenter, Gretchen Wilson, both of whom got shunted beyond the palace walls as soon as possible). Berg is back with her fourth album, the deeply engrossing Dreaming Fields, and while its heavy complement of downbeat tunes — Matraca specializes in these kinds of unassuming, divinely depressing slice-of-life narratives — very nearly ensures that superstardom will again have to wait, it stands as a new personal best in a body of work that far too many have let pass unnoticed.

George Michael & Queen — “Somebody to Love”
(from Ladies & Gentlemen: The Best of George Michael) —

A final word on the Sugarland show about which I’ve been railing (and raving) for days now (and, no doubt, about which you must be sick of reading): Little Big Town and Matt Nathanson returned to the stage to join Jen and Kris and close the concert with a triumphant cover of this Queen classic, which of course gave me a surrious hankering for my gorgeous George Michael, who himself — helped along by the surviving members of Queen — turned in an intensely intoxicating cover of this tune some two decades ago, at a tribute concert honoring Queen’s fabulous lead singer Freddie Mercury just a few months following Mercury’s tragic death from AIDS, and who landed himself a sizable radio hit with the recording the following year. (Matter of fact, sacrilegious though it may seem, there are those among us who quite justifiably feel that Michael stole and assumed sole possession of the song with this one brazenly brilliant performance.) And I generally find that whenever I get an overpowering urge for some George, the best and most satisfying course of action is to indulge it.

Sugarland — “Incredible Machine [interlude]”
(from The Incredible Machine) —

As for the main event in the concert whose praises I sung in yesterday’s Honey from the Hive: this was our second brush with Sugarland in a live setting (the first was here in Austin in 2009, and if you missed my dispatch regarding that experience, you can catch up with it here). I don’t have a hell of a lot to add to what I wrote back then, because it all still pretty much applies, even a pair of years later, but I will once again reassert that Jennifer Nettles’ lively, galvanic potency as a live performer is such that many of her songs which may leave you cold when you listen to a Sugarland record — “All We Are,” for instance, or Machine‘s middling third single “Tonight” — make your spirit soar when she sings them straight to you (and, natch, to five thousand fellow fans). (That’s not necessarily true across the board: I thought “Stand Up” was a cliched hunk of ponderous poppycock when I first listened to Machine last October, and my stance was not moved a millimeter in any direction after seeing it on its arena-sized feet. And — as much as it pains me to agree with him — my cyber buddy Blake nailed it to the wall when he intimated on this very website last fall that one of the governing inspirations behind this record was to give Jennifer and Kristian Bush, her underappreciated musical partner in crime, a series of big, booming, stadium-ready set pieces designed to carry their audiences floating back to their cars on a post-show heartstring-tugged high, although it feels imperative that the following must also be noted: indeed, my heartstrings were, on balance, tugged, tweaked, plucked, and prodded, but it still takes a peculiarly cultivated talent and skill to be able to see that through and make it seem effortless, and, for whatever flaws she may otherwise possess as an artist, that is unquestionably Nettles’ compelling, magnetic magic as a performer.) Bush and Nettles opened their encore with this very song, a riveting ninety-second reprise of their latest album’s shimmering title track that offers Bush — his voice a captivating study in haunted, reverent awe — a rare opportunity to shine in the sun all by his lonesome, and aside from the magnificently jocular left turn when Nettles unexpectedly leapt from the bridge of “Everyday America” right into the chorus of Cee-Lo Green’s zeitgeisty smash “Forget You” (which you’d best believe brought the whole damned Alamodome to its collective feet), it was my favorite (and, hands down, the most profoundly powerful) moment of the night.