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.)
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.)
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.
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?)
Belinda Carlisle — “Heaven is a Place On Earth” (from Her Greatest Hits) —
A few days back, with the help of our local Redbox, A and I took in a screening of last fall’s box-office underachiever Love and Other Drugs, and while the film’s plot — basically, Sherry Ann’s second-favorite Gyllenhaal is a cocky prescription drug salesman who falls head over heels for a girl afflicted with Parkinson’s disease — is little more than a flimsy excuse to stare uncomfortably at Anne Hathaway’s boobies (and lots of other girls’ too!) for two solid hours, the film’s music cues were a marvel to behold, what with the Spin Doctors’ long forgotten ’90s classic “Two Princes” opening the show, and what is very possibly the only Regina Spektor song (“Fidelity”) you can sit through thirty seconds of without feeling the need to go heave closing it, as well as visits in between from a lovely former Honey from the Hive contestant, and from the single greatest contribution Miss Belinda Carlisle ever made to the art of popular music. You’ll never make me believe that “Heaven” isn’t one of the ten greatest records ever made, and so, in honor of Record Store Day, I can scarcely think of a better tune than this one to blast from your speakers this fine afternoon.
Last night, A and I finally dragged our asses out of our house (and away from our beloved baby girl, Kelly, whose blessed entree into our family in January — as much fun as it has been to have a new puppy running around here — has literally turned our domicile upside down) and, for the first time since last December, made it to the movies, where we took in a screening of The Lincoln Lawyer, quite a nifty legal thriller with an exceedingly fine cast led by Matthew McConaughey (as ever, smooth as Chinese silk) and Ryan Phillippe (spectacularly sinister here playing a lethal lothario), with a brief but pivotal turn turned in from ace character actress Frances Fisher (best and forever known to Sherry Ann and myself as The Other Mother). The film opens with a slick City of Angels-centric montage set to this tune, a forgotten ’70s classic from soul pro Bland which has been covered and/or sampled by acts as disparate as Whitesnake and Jay-Z, and I was humming it to myself for the whole rest of my long-awaited night out with my beloved.
“Maybe look inward, Gary. Maybe just look inward — take a big swim in Lake You and see what you find.”
— Sugar Ray frontman Mark McGrath, conferring combatively (yet, seemingly, resigned to his imminent fate) with fellow teammate Gary Busey (easily one of the most wonderfully batshit wackydoos in the history of reality TV) just prior to being (unfairly) fired on last night’s installment of Celebrity Apprentice, which airs on Sunday nights on NBC and which, thanks to its marvelous cast of misfits — numbering among them this season: Meat Loaf, Star Jones, the surprisingly brilliant John Rich (the “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy” dude!), and the completely crazy LaToya Jackson — has become the two hours of television I most look forward to catching each week.
Bareilles follows up her Grammy-nominated radio smash “King of Anything” with this pleasant, harmlessly charming little piffle whose surprisingly sweet video — which features the likes of Josh Groban, Sugarland’s Jennifer Nettles (an absolute hoot rockin’ out in her jammies), Ben Folds, Cary Brothers, and Maroon 5’s Adam Levine lip-syncing this tune’s lyrics — is an utter, unexpected delight. A few more smartly-played moves like this, and I’m really gonna have to start liking this girl a lot more. (Said video can be seen in its entirety below, and if you’re up for a little extra credit reading, my buddy Blake recently chatted with Sara and has filed this dispatch.)
GaGa’s Monster Ball tour — as garish and gaudy a spectacle as you could ever hope to witness — rolled through Austin the night before last, and A — the biggest GaGa fan I know — and I took in the show from the nosebleed section of the Frank Erwin Center. The night started off in the hole with a plainly heinous opening act (New York City’s astoundingly atrocious Semi-Precious Weapons, whose clueless lead singer clearly thought we wanted to spend forty minutes watching him writhe around in assless pants and being serenaded by his deafeningly shrill screams), but once GaGa took the stage, the night hurtled pretty violently between boldly brilliant (say what you will — I’ve said plenty, and will continue to do so! — but when this gal takes to the piano all by herself, you can’t deny that her raw talent is the real deal) and brutally bizarro (not that the whole rest of the presentation made a hell of lot more sense, but near the end of the show, during an otherwise energetic turn on “Paparazzi,” a giant man-eating squid entered from stage left with no easily identifiable purpose, leaving me so mystified I literally had to plop down in my seat for a second, lest my brain actually shut down from the incapacitating strangeness of it all).
From one of music’s most underrated (and adventurous) troubadours, an on-and-poppin’ big-band-inspired blast of brilliant blues. (As monumentally marvelous as his more introspective tunes undeniably are, isn’t it nice to remember that Morrison is actually capable of having fun behind the mic as well?)
Jason Aldean & Kelly Clarkson — “Don’t You Wanna Stay” (from My Kinda Party) —
I resisted this one for the longest time, because it just screams premeditated event record, and I tend to resent being force-fed the Kool-Aid and told that I have no choice but to love something. But this stunner hums with a riveting undercurrent of raw sexually-charged desperation that can’t be denied: even though he sings one of the precious few songs to name-check my hometown, I never much cared for Aldean until I caught his collaboration with Bryan Adams on an episode of CMT Crossroads last year, and the unique mix of comfortable warmth and icy determination in his voice — think Alan Jackson crossed with Bob Dylan — has become oddly compelling. And the ever-dependable Clarkson — taking her second chart-topping detour into the crunchy lane — matches her partner note for sizzling note, proving that, when pop radio inevitably grows tired of her (and, let’s face it, with GaGa and that abominable Ke$ha currently carrying the torch over there, the clock could well be ticking), she has a second home waiting for her with arms outstretched.
Mel McDaniel — “Baby’s Got Her Blue Jeans On” (from Greatest Hits) —
The news hasn’t received a great deal of ink this weekend, so had I not caught something about it on Twitter Saturday afternoon, I likely would have missed entirely the tragic passing of McDaniel, who died on Thursday after a long battle with lung cancer. I have long contended that 1984 is the finest year for music in the history of recorded sound, and I generally mean pop music when I make that proclamation, but don’t think for a second that country didn’t put together a smashing set of twelve months back then as well: with The Judds busting through to megastardom, and iconic tunes like “That’s the Way Love Goes” (ah, Merle) and “I Got Mexico” (God bless you, Eddy Raven!) and “You Look So Good in Love” (arguably, the one that really sent George’s career Strait into orbit) and “Islands in the Stream” all making their indelible marks in radio land, ’twas a hell of a year in Nashville, and for no one more than this quintessential good ol’ boy, who exploded back up the charts with this simple (and sinfully catchy) little ditty about nothing more than his favorite gal’s dashing figure. (Hey, it’s three chords and the truth, but nobody ever said the truth had to be depressing! Fare thee well, Mel.)
I must admit I really miss the era when reruns of classic primetime soaps like Knots Landing and Falcon Crest filled its daytime schedule, but flipping over to SoapNet these days can still be a font for a hell of a lot of shameless entertainment, with its afternoon visits to The O.C. and Sherry Ann’s forever fave One Tree Hill. (Take it from me: you can get sucked into these programs, lose half the damn day and not even know what hit you if you don’t exercise extreme caution when surfing past this channel!) And over the next few weeks, you’ll be able to get an extra dose of frothy fun, courtesy of SoapNet’s two-hour late-morning block of Beverly Hills, 90210 episodes, which have just reached the pivotal point in the series’ remarkable decade-long run. Rolling into its sixth season (which began unspooling in the fall of 1995), 90210 had weathered Shannen Doherty’s stormy departure (and, even better, the initially bizarro choice to swap her for Saved By the Bell‘s seemingly sticky-sweet Tiffani Amber-Thiessen — an unexpected knockout as a brazen, vampy vixen — had paid off in spades), but the show was gearing up to face life without its male MVP Luke Perry, the loss of whom on paper appeared to be incalculable. To compensate, Aaron Spelling and his savvy team made a handful of wickedly wise moves, including subtly moving their star romantic heroine Jennie Garth — and her eternally hilarious onscreen rivalry with Thiessen, the bitchy ballistics from which never got old — completely to center stage, and bringing in as Tori Spelling’s co-star the ravishing Canadian actor Cameron Bancroft, whose character — a holy-rolling college quarterback with the hots for the only female virgin with cosmetically altered breasts to be found in the whole of Beverly Hills — gave the show a peculiar gravitas it had often lacked theretofore. The result was a spectacularly soapy mix of sex and social responsibility that, even though it was becoming unmistakably long in the tooth, made 90210 a deliriously delicious weekly delight once again. (If you’re wondering why in blue hell I’m regaling you with this review, it’s because my favorite episode from this season — the one in which Perry’s new wife is accidentally shot to death in a hail of drive-by bullets from a mob hit that is actually intended for Perry himself — just re-aired Wednesday morning, and the episode closes with this tune, a tender ballad which might just be the finest hour of Lovett’s Grammy-winning career as a vocalist. And even though I’ve probably seen this episode a minimum of 200 times — and, indeed, own this entire season on DVD — and have the lion’s share of it committed to memory, I still couldn’t tear myself from the TV and was on the edge of my seat (and, uh, awash in tears — I’m a softie, sue me!) the entire hour.)
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). The film opens with a slick City of Angels-centric montage set to this tune, a forgotten ’70s classic from soul pro Bland which has been covered and/or sampled by acts as disparate as Whitesnake and Jay-Z, and I was humming it to myself for the whole rest of my long-awaited night out with my beloved.
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