I’ve been a huge fan of Trey Parker and Matt Stone since I was like 9 or 10 years old and started watching South Park. It’s an awesome show. The last couple seasons have been amazing. Their movies – especially South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut and Team America: World Police – are genius. And their latest endeavour, the Broadway musical The Book Of Mormon, which I saw in New York a couple months ago, is amazing. Clearly the Tony Awards even agreed, which is pretty amazing considering how ridiculous the play is, not to mention offensive. Finally I was able to download the soundtrack. Here’s one of my favourite cuts.
Oy. My wi-fi access here in Israel is a little tough, so I’m having trouble updating as frequently as I’d like to. This week’s artist is an artist I’ve heard about a lot but never really listened to until now. He’s kind of good, kind of shitty, but worth talking about. The artist of the week is…
BOB SEGER!!!
After listening to the album Night Moves, I understand why Bob Seger became something of a rock star back in the day. He’s got his own shtick, it works, it’s in that Springsteen/Petty vein, it’s that ‘voice of the average American’ kind of thing. And there is something homey about music like that, something that always just feels very comforting, even to a Canadian like me.
You can hear the influence of that kind of music today in the music of indie artists like Kurt Vile, and even to a lesser extent bands like Titus Andronicus. Sure, these guys deliver a very twisted take on the aforementioned variety of music, but the influence of it remains apparent regardless.
Interestingly, the reinterpreting and re-evaluation of what is commonly considered by critics, music snobs and hipsters to be ‘uncool music’ – such as 80s synth and drum-machine abundant pop, 70’s and 80’s soft rock, classic 70’s am pop, Americana highway rock and other similar kinds of music – is becoming more and more prominent, talked about, and ultimately accepted. (For respective examples, see Class Actress (and debatably the last decade of music); Destroyer‘s Kaputt and of course Bon Iver‘s “Beth/Rest”; Ariel Pink; Kurt Vile (as mentioned before). Within a musical environment like this, classic ‘uncool’ mainstream artists such as Bob Seger can suddenly become celebrated by the musical elite, while still being loved by their longtime mainstreamer fans.
Though Bob Seger hasn’t gotten this kind of re-evalutation yet, and it might very well pass him by. Sure, the shout-out the other night from Colbert and Jack White was significant, but Seger’s place in the history of cheese might not be, or at least not on the level of Springsteen and Petty. On the other hand, though Seger’s cheese isn’t quite as classic as the aforementioned, it is seriously cheesy. Sometimes it’s bad cheesy, like in “Sunspot Baby”, which is a blatant rip-off and cliche-fest lyrically, stylistically and musically, but sometimes it’s awesome pure American cheese like in “Rock And Roll Never Forgets”, where Seger’s raspy voice and blue-collar charm supercharges the simplistic joie de vivre of the song.
Unfortunately Colbert was wrong, there exists that which is “what not to love”, but on the other hand, there is also stuff worth seriously loving in Seger’s catalogue.
Alt Altman (better known as Toronto electronic-pop maker Digits) and Lesley (of noisy Toronto electropoppers Powers) have teamed up in what some might call a case of…Bad Passion. There’s a good chance they’d call it that, actually, because that’s the name of the band. (ho ho ho). Despite the jokey-sounding title, their first track together “Rockin’ Your Beats” is a cool, smooth electronic groover.
Knoxville, TN chill-gazer/ambient-pop maker Brandon Biando (also of a band called COOLRUNNINGS that I will check out after posting this) makes some very nice music on the track below. Anyone else getting a serious Grandaddy vibe? (Via No Fear Of Pop)
