Brandon's Buzz

If you’ve not yet purchased the new Switchfoot retrospective The Best Yet, which arrived in stores two days ago, make sure you pick it up at your local Wal-Mart, whose version comes packaged with an exclusive DVD containing fourteen music videos and rare live performances. (Don’t you really hate it when stores get these red hot exclusives and then refuse to advertise them?!) Now, if you’ll ‘scuse me, I’ve gotta head off to Borders to return my copy of the original version, which, praise Jesus, I haven’t opened yet.

(P.S.: Be aware that the version of “This is Home” which appears on Best is a vastly inferior re-recording, not the staggering original from last summer’s Prince Caspian soundtrack. Grrr.)

I’m sure what follows is funny to no one but me, but the beauty of having my own blog is that I have the power to indulge myself in that which amuses me greatly.

Earlier this year, Ellen Wheeler, the executive producer of the 71-year-old American institution “Guiding Light,” spearheaded a radical revamp of the classic soap, switching to handheld digital cameras and adopting a more “natural” shooting style.  In addition, the show’s home base was moved from its traditional Manhattan studio out to Peapack, New Jersey, several of whose locales — churches, municipal buildings, gas stations, and residences — now double for those in fictional Springfield, the town in which the show is based.

In late February, when the show’s new production model was unveiled, Wheeler gave a multitude of interviews to the mainstream press trumpeting the enormous changes, and expressing profuse joy over being able to now show the soap’s characters driving real cars, waving from real porches, and primping in real salons.  (As she herself intoned excitedly, “Now when a character is getting down on one knee to propose, he doesn’t have a patch of fake grass sliding out from under him in the studio. It’s there in the beautiful park and believable!”)

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Election Day is playing hell with this week’s new music slate: Hilary Duff and Dido have already blinked — their new projects, originally scheduled to be released this Tuesday, have been shuffled to Novembers 11 and 18, respectively — and the few stars who are taking the leap this week will have to do battle with strong holdovers AC/DC (whose new album has already soared past the million-sold mark) and those pesky High School Musical churren. In other words: chin up out there. It’s a slow one this week.

In the immediate wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, the arrogant pricks who run radio behemoth Clear Channel Communications (which owns and operates well over one thousand stations nationwide) sent to all its outlets a memorandum which strongly suggested they strike from their playlists 166 songs that the company had deemed “lyrically questionable.” Even in such an irrational, knee-jerk climate, the inclusion of more than a few of these songs — the Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian,” for instance, which is as harmless as a soda jingle — seemed entirely nonsensical, but none more so than that of John Lennon’s touchstone “Imagine,” one of the most powerful prayers for everlasting peace and unity that has ever been written.

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I’ve been lapping up, and with great nostalgic affection, the staggeringly fine new eight-disc DVD collection containing all forty-five marvelous episodes of Aaron Sorkin’s prematurely canceled (and woefully underappreciated) initial foray into television, ABC’s “Sports Night.” (A more extensive Buzz post regarding same is forthcoming.)

However things shake out tomorrow, we sit as a nation on the cusp of a milestone. In roughly twenty-four hours, either way, history will have been made. Given that, the following exchange from “Sports Night’s” thirty-fifth episode (broadcast in January 2000) grabbed my ear. (What you need to know, just in case you never saw the show: the series takes place behind the scenes at an ESPN-style news program called “Sports Night”; in this episode, “SN” has been approached by Michael Jordan’s representatives for an interview promoting Jordan’s new fragrance line; Dana (portrayed by the blisteringly brilliant Felicity Huffman) is the show-within-the-show’s executive producer, and Isaac (Robert Guillaume, a gravitas-infused blue million miles away from “Benson”) is its managing editor.)

ISAAC: Dana, listen to this. This is fantastic.  [reading from a magazine] “Bioengineering might one day create living creatures adapted to survival in space.”

DANA: Okay.

ISAAC: Space birds!

DANA: Okay

ISAAC: Don’t you want to know how they’re gonna fly without air?

DANA: Oh… kay.

ISAAC: It says here they’re gonna fly on sunlight.

DANA: So, we got this Michael Jordan offer—

ISAAC: —and farther out where the sunlight grows weaker, they’re gonna bioengineer a squid.

DANA: A squid?

ISAAC: Yes! Swimming not in water, but in space! [reading]  “Drawing volatile fuels from jovian moons to power their gentle but efficient propulsion systems.”

DANA: Uh, Michael Jordan—

ISAAC: —“Their utility could be comparable to that of horses and mules in the winning of the West.”

DANA: Okay—

ISAAC: I can see myself out there, sitting alone by the fire, a space squid my only companion!

DANA: Isaac—

ISAAC: Michael Jordan.

DANA: Yes.

ISAAC: They want to talk about cologne.

DANA: In the press kit, they accidentally included coaching notes for Michael on how to bring the interview back to the cologne.

ISAAC: Heh!

DANA: Yeah. Do we book the interview?

ISAAC: Absolutely.

DANA: Isaac—

ISAAC: Absolutely!

DANA: And talk about perfume?

ISAAC: Cologne!

DANA: There’s no difference!

ISAAC: Michael’s Michael. Let him talk about what he wants.

DANA: You really want to use “Sports Night” for a five-minute infomercial?

ISAAC: With Michael? Sure!

DANA: Isaac—

ISAAC: You know, just ten years ago, it would have been hard to imagine a black man selling cologne.

DANA: Eight year olds are buying aftershave, Isaac. I’m not sure it’s a huge step forward.

ISAAC: I’ll take any step forward.

DANA: [sighs and rises to leave] Okay.

ISAAC: Dana?

DANA: Yeah?

ISAAC: They’re talking about bioengineering animals and terraforming Mars. When I started reporting Gemini missions, just watching a Titan rocket lift off was a sight to see. Now they’re gonna colonize… the solar system.

DANA: Are you obsessing about this?

ISAAC: Yes.

DANA: Why?

ISAAC: Because I won’t be alive to see it.

See y’all at the polls, ladies and germs.

[poll id=”3″]

“We found that America had turned every older band into ‘the reunion band.’ It was ‘I just want to hear those eight songs and drink my beer.’ You think, ‘I’m 41 years old, and I’ve earned some level of trust.’ And you find out you’re just like everybody else. You’re no better than Bon Jovi.”

— that ever-quotable doofus Billy Corgan, discussing with Rolling Stone last year’s ill-fated Smashing Pumpkins reformation, which, with the absence of core members D’arcy Wretzky and James Iha, was anything but.

Generally speaking, at least where music is concerned, the holiday shopping season really gets going the first week of November.  But with next Tuesday being Election Day and all, and with more emphasis than ever being placed on first-day sales, the record companies are largely shying away from that as a viable release date.  Consequently, this week is beyond crowded.  I advised you all last week not to get complacent; read on to see why that was a fair warning.

The acronym’s a nifty play on those controversial print ads which made their target a pop culture buzz magnet last spring; alas, the thirty-two point letters on the album’s cover akshully stand for Original Music Featured on ‘Gossip Girl’. An entire array of under-the-radar acts fills this collection, although appearances are made by The Kooks, Junkie XL, and current flavors of the week The Ting Tings. Could be fun, could be a sprawling, self-indulgent mess.

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And tonight, one for the “you just never know” file:

If you’ve watched even a tiny measure of television in the past week, you’ve no doubt seen a commercial for the Subaru Grand Vitara automobile which is scored by the classic Switchfoot smash “Dare You to Move.” (Just watching a couple of hours of ESPN football highlights and VH-1 music videos last Monday morning, I caught the ad, like, ten times.) Apparently, I’m not the only one who has seen this promo spot, but it seems as though I am the only one who recognizes the song: behind the scenes here at the Buzz, I have access to a wonderfully educational page of statistics, through which I can learn not only which pages are being viewed most often, but also how folks are getting here to begin with, and it seems that people are rushing to their computers to Google the lyrics of the song — it begins with the lines “Welcome to the planet / welcome to existence” — in an attempt to ascertain the title and artist. And because I used those opening lyrics as a category for a post back in June, the Buzz is popping up near the top of many of those searches.

Because you’ve not found what you’ve come here looking for, I’ll happily ease your frustration. Once again, the band is Switchfoot, and the song’s title is “Dare You to Move” (here’s a handy link, s’il vous plait), and it can be found on their bold, coolly magnificent 2003 major-label debut
The Beautiful Letdown. (If you’re interested in learning more about this marvelous band’s discography, may I humbly suggest you begin with
the playlist I painstakingly crafted at summer’s start?) And, finally, whatever freak stroke of Google-determined luck brought you here to the Buzz, I sincerely thank you for your patronage, and hope you like what you see and have decided to stick around. We’re having lots of fun here discussing life and the meaning of it.

(PS: This week’s record store report is forthcoming. I swear.)

As has been the case for the past month, posting will be rather erratic for a spell. My uncle is back in the hospital for the second time in as many weeks, and things are maddeningly hectic right now. Predictably, therefore, this week’s record store report is an unwieldy monster (I just counted twenty noteworthy releases, and I’m sure I missed a couple.) It may get posted piecemeal, with much of it guest-written by my beloved A, but it’s coming.

“The Internet is opening things up….  It’s broken the stranglehold that radio had. Downloading has made people more eclectic in their tastes, and I’d guess eventually that will redirect radio to loosen up, because it will have to compete.  When that happens, you can say whatever you want, and there will be a place for it.”

— Paul Simon, speaking to USA Today in 2006 about the evolution of the music business.

Recent additions to the flair board:  a pair of buttons memorializing one of the all-time great singer/songwriters, David Gray; a pair of buttons to commemorate the sterling return to form for “Friday Night Lights,” which has opened season three with a brilliant bang; and a pair of buttons eulogizing Aaron Sorkin’s two noble television failures, “Sports Night” and “Studio 60.”

After a series of wallet-busting weeks, we get a brief reprieve this Tuesday, with only a couple of major releases vying for your attention. But don’t be fooled: with new stuff coming next week from Snow Patrol, John Legend, Queen, and Pink (whose red-hot smash “So What” is currently the most-played track at top 40 radio, despite being not half as fun as her instant classic “U + Ur Hand”), among many others, this week is hardly a harbinger of what’s to come. In other words, enjoy this breather while you can.

She’s had a tough climb in the near-decade since her iconic smash “I Hope You Dance” carried her to the (ultimately fleeting) Shania-level of stardom: despite its vastly underrated title track, her uneven 2002 effort Something Worth Leaving Behind was an across the board failure, having been deemed too pop for country stations to play, and vice versa; in 2005, she made a sharp U-turn back to the twangy side with the hilariously retrograde There’s More Where That Came From, and while the critical hosannas were free-flowing (deservedly so, too, especially where the devastating lead single “I May Hate Myself in the Morning” was concerned), that record likewise failed to fly off the store shelves. Now back with her sixth album Call Me Crazy, Lee Ann Womack finds herself at a peculiar career crossroads: having been supplanted in her native realm by young upstarts like Taylor Swift, Miranda Lambert, and Carrie Underwood, it remains to be seen if Womack can downshift into the already-crowded arena of country’s elder stateswomen. (With Reba, Martina, and Trisha comfortably holding court there, and with the format still largely viewed as a man’s game, that seems far from a sure bet.) Nevertheless, Womack continues to prove herself as a vital, eternally intriguing artist, and Crazy should extend her streak of worthy efforts.

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I’m pleased to let you all know that my terrific sister Amanda celebrates the 23rd anniversary of her birth this fine day.  I have no idear if she reads the Buzz or not, but regardless:  happy birthday, sis.  Have a piece of cake on me, and tell my Shaye-bug she has my permission to eat a corner piece.  Have a goo day.  😉

Much wuv,

your brother.