Lesser (Known) Lights #7

Trans-Canada Highwaymen – Explosive Hits Vol. 1

I’m always a bit surprised when fans of a band don’t follow former band members when they set out on new musical adventures. If someone has given you joy as part of one outfit, it only seems logical to me that they might be able to do it again with another. Barenaked Ladies have 2.7 million monthly listeners on Spotify, and I think we can all agree that a big chunk of those people (myself included) are mostly listening to music made when Steven Page was the band’s co-frontman. (I wonder if there is still some bad blood there, since you would never know from the band’s Spotify bio that he was ever one of them.) Page on his own, however, has just over 5,500 listeners, and Trans-Canada Highwaymen – his supergroup with Moe Berg of The Pursuit of Happiness, Craig Northey of Odds and Chris Murphy of Sloan – has a mere 3,115 at this writing. And in the case of the latter at least, that means a whole lot of people are missing out on a giant heap of fun.

Now, even the idea of a Canadian supergroup seems pretty un-Canadian to me. Considering the gang’s middling commercial success, they’ll have to do until Drake, The Weeknd and Bieber join forces with whoever they pick to play George. (Sorry, Biebs fans – he’s Ringo in this scenario.) Mendes? Avril? Shania? Buble? My pick is Celine, medical concerns permitting – I’m pretty sure the album would be an unlistenable mess, but what a glorious mess it would be.

This album is wall-to-wall joy, starting with the throwback cover art in homage to those messily bright K-tel collections of the band members’ (and every other Canadian of the era) childhoods. After an entertaining opening track setting out a possibly fake story about how the band even exists, we get nothing but cover versions (my kryponite!) of classic Canadian pop songs of the 1960s and (mostly) 1970s. Part of the fun – assuming you share my definition of that word – was learning about the songs that were unfamiliar to me. But there was plenty I already knew here – many of them from those same K-tel collections – and hearing them in these faithful renditions was both nostalgic and revelatory. I never cared for Lighthouse’s “Pretty Lady”, but something about Berg’s clogged sinus delivery opened me up to its charms. Joni Mitchell’s “Raised on Robbery” is a honky tonk roof raiser, the cheese of Paul Anka’s “(I Believe) There’s Nothing Stronger Than Our Love” becomes less of a threat to your cholesterol level, and I apologise to Larry Evoy and the rest of Edward Bear for not recognizing that “You, Me and Mexico” is, indeed, a classic. And if they hadn’t already won me over completely, they sealed the deal with a high energy and not even slightly ironic take on “Heartbeat, It’s a Lovebeat” by, in the words of Mr. Pink in “Reservoir Dogs”, “Little Tony DeFranco and the DeFranco family”.

I haven’t had the chance to see them live yet, but I really hope their calendar and mine will align while they still feel like doing this. In concert, the band liberally mixes in tracks from their past bands, and any show where the setlist might include “Brian Wilson”, “She’s So Young”, “The Rest of My Life” and, especially, “Heterosexual Man” is a night that I’ll happily take a chance on. You should, too.

SoundTracking #4

”And the Oscar goes to . . .”

Rob Lowe is a very good looking man who is aging so gracefully that you can’t even dislike him for it. He’s also an excellent comic actor who for some reason keeps appearing in dramas. What he is not is a singer or dancer. Yet, in a decision that can never be truly understood, he was called upon to do both as the blind date of Snow White in the opening number at the Academy Awards on March 29, 1989. The results were glorious.

I am a regular Oscar ceremony watcher (though these days I rarely make it to the end unless I’m invested in a particular film’s prospects, like last year), but I missed the 1989 show, so I had not watched this video until just this week. I certainly knew the legend of the botched opening. But I assumed that Disney, who were so upset by the unapproved use of their intellectual property that they (1) sued the Academy and (2) had Snow White portrayer Eileen Bowman agree not to speak about the show for 13 years, made sure that this clip was buried. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it taken down at some point, so, please, take the 11 minutes right now and watch the video. It is so undeniably awful that you can’t help but feel embarrassed for (almost) everyone involved, yet you are also compelled to keep watching, to see what fresh horror is coming up. It’s supposed to be a tribute to old Hollywood, and I guess the amount and variety of cheese on display is consistent with that. But what is the cheesiest part? The dancing stars? The dancing tables? Snow White’s voice? The rewritten lyrics to familiar songs? Rob Lowe shimmying? The gigantic hat – I guess it’s a hat – that Snow wears towards the end? The mere presence of Merv Griffin? The only one for my money who comes out of this a winner is Cyd Charisse: just past her 67th birthday and more than 20 years since her last major film role, she turns up at 3:37 and shows that she still has moves, and looked awfully good in the process.

Now, it’s Oscar time again, and it is certain that nothing so gloriously camp will turn up in tonight’s ceremony. Unless, of course, it’s on purpose. Which brings us to “I’m Just Ken”.

There are five tunes up for best original song this year, but three of those have no chance of winning, despite contributing honourably to a strong nominee slate. “It Never Went Away” (from “American Symphony”) has beautiful piano, and is a lovely and moving elegy to enduring love. “The Fire Inside” (from “Flamin’ Hot”) is yet another Diane Warren anthem, but with a faux Latin beat, and I can’t deny that it had me moving my head and shoulders along with the music in a way that my wife would instantly recognize and, hopefully, be embarrassed by. And, last but not least of the also-rans, we come to “Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)” (from “Killers of the Flower Moon”), which I can’t even begin to pretend to understand but which also dug under my skin and made my heart race.

But this is “Barbie”’s year, and it is probably 99% certain that Billie Eilish and her brother will be walking off the stage tonight with their second little gold man. And it’s hard to deny that it would be a deserving victor. “What Was I Made For?” is a delicate lament, light and airy sounding but with lyrics that display an existential questioning of purpose that is also grounded in the film’s through line. An Oscar winning song should ideally be connected to the movie itself, and not just a pretty trifle played over the closing credits. Eilish’s song touches on the emotional centre of the film, and of Barbie’s journey.

And yet, nothing is certain until someone says “And the Oscar goes to”, and in that tiny 1% of space that remains, I will be rooting for Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt – two of the folks behind “Shallow” – to win their second Oscars with “I’m Just Ken”.

My love for this song is a little irrational, but I’m okay with that. It, too, is connected to the story, as Ken grapples with his insecurities and confusion over why Barbie doesn’t appreciate his awesomeness. That it is accompanied by a massive production number, in which dozens and dozens of Kens (but no Allans) battle each other with beach toys and, I don’t know, charisma, I guess, organically ties in to the problems with the patriarchy and toxic masculinity that the film addresses. I prefer to watch the movie clip so I can appreciate its full glory, with Ryan Gosling in beach god mode and fellow Canuck Simu Liu as his preening nemesis, but the song on its own is great, switching from power ballad to ‘80s dance track to grungy techno then back to power ballad. And the lyrics: “a life of blonde fragility”, “the man behind the tan”, “Am I not hot when I’m in my feelings?” and, my personal favourite, “I’m great at doing stuff”. Plus, this song gave the world Kenergy. Give these geniuses another Oscar, damn it!

Okay, that’s absolutely not going to happen. For one thing, Hollywood, despite being a place that has churned out great comedic entertainments for over a century, has never had a sense of humour about itself, and rarely has awarded those comedies its highest honour. So the emotional turmoil of “What Was I Made For?” is more on brand for the Oscars than the absurdist humour of “I’m Just Ken”. Also, everything Eilish touches turns to award-season gold – she has already won the Grammy for Song of the Year for her track, an award for which “I’m Just Ken” was egregiously not even nominated. But what would it say about Hollywood if Barbie’s moment of triumph was stolen away by Ken? It would fuel thinkpieces for days on every feminist (and anti-feminist) Substack, every website and magazine, every culturally oriented TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, X, blog, vlog and whatever the heck else is out there. If nothing else, it would take our minds off Trump and the American apocalypse in the making for just a few more days.

Do it, Academy. We demand that you step up in this moment of need. Give “I’m Just Ken” the Oscar. The world is counting on you.

That’s A Wrap . . . On 2023 (Sort Of)

It’s been a bit surprising to learn how important Spotify’s personalized year end wrap ups are to some listeners. Reddit – my current favourite social media hang spot – is filled with folks sharing their top 5 artists, total listening time, and other badges of their dedication to music generally and certain artists specifically. I feel like a slacker compared to some of them: my measly 89,300 minutes of listening can’t compete with people who are over 400,000, which can only be accomplished if (1) it is streaming while you sleep (which is a cheat, frankly) or (2) you have a serious need to see a doctor about your life-threatening insomnia. And the 909 minutes I spent on my #1 act shows that I am a puny being unworthy of being called a fan when one listener showed proof that she spent over 290,000 minutes – that is, the equivalent of 201+ days – on Taylor Swift’s music alone. To my daughter Nicole: the gauntlet has been thrown down.

The real news to me personally was that, for all the effort I put into finding and listening to new music, not a lot of it makes its way into heavy rotation. Spotify has noticed that I do this, as lately it has been serving up more and more obscure acts for me to check out, like Wry (1,165 monthly listeners) and Scorpion Wolf Shark (6!). Still, the absence of these musical adventures makes sense: much of my listening is casual or in the company of my spouse, meaning I tend to favour things we both know and like. Exploration requires an element of focus that I just don’t have while puttering around the kitchen sous chef-ing or when doing the laundry. There are three tunes from Sobs released in 2022, a bunch of that year’s Oscar nominated tracks, my favourite cut from Lil Nas X’s last album, and that’s it for more recent releases.

Not news was that my favourite songs are dominated by music that I wrote about: my most listened to track was The Cars’ “Just What I Needed” (34 times, which seems like a total that could happen by accident), The Romantics’ “What I Like About You” came in at #3, and they were joined by other Classic Songs of My Youth Revisited alumni like Phil Collins, Rick Springfield and The Outfield. I have all of these songs on a single playlist, and wrote about them because I love them, so of course they get played a lot. (No, “Billy, Don’t Be A Hero” did not make the cut.)

There were a few surprises. I love “Close To Me” by The Cure but had no idea it was my fifth most played song of the year. I did not play Hall & Oates’ “You Make My Dreams (Come True)” even once with intent, yet there it is, snuggled in between Gazebo’s “I Like Chopin” and “Hey Ya!” from Outkast. I didn’t even know that The Flashing Lights existed until mid-August, but I have played them so much since that “Been Waiting” made the cut. Right ahead of them is my favourite surprise: “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man” a 1968 track from The Bob Seger System that I didn’t know before but Spotify correctly thought I might enjoy.

As for that 909-minute top act, it was Fountains of Wayne, and I totally believe that: their music is a form of really healthy comfort food for me. Elvis Costello is at #2 with the Attractions and at #4 on his own, and both of those track: he is one of the artists who my wife and I share an enjoyment of. The Rolling Stones are 3rd, and while it was a bit surprising, I did write about them a few times. But #5 is Bruce Springsteen, and other than “The River”, which somehow isn’t among my most played, I have a hard time recalling any time when I played one of his songs on purpose. But the numbers say I played him a lot, so I can’t really argue it.

From the comments on Reddit, I can’t tell if my experience is that unique. People are posting their top fives, and I have not seen a single one of my top 100 songs on any of these lists. Nobody on Reddit seems to have been listening to music from the 1950s, and my dominant era of the 1970s and 1980s is also not getting much love. I don’t really see anything whacky, like Sylvester’s “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” in the middle of four Megadeth tracks. My favourite is probably the user who has three Tina Turner songs, the end credits theme to “Charlotte’s Web” (it doesn’t indicate which version) and a track from the video game Persona 4 Golden, followed by the guy who had one hard rock song (I can’t recall what it was) and four stand up comedy bits from Christopher Titus, who I will absolutely be checking out. Those are some distinctive choices.

I’m definitely getting my money’s worth out of Spotify: I’m in the top 2% of worldwide users. And while I feel a little guilty about artists getting shafted by the payment model, it’s not like they weren’t also getting screwed by every other iteration of the music industry since time immemorial. I listened to 5,149 artists this year, and that number would be much, much smaller if I had been required to pay for a record from each of them. Thanks to Spotify, I discovered artists that I love, like The LeeVees (nothing but songs about Hanukkah) and Nerf Herder, and was able to become reacquainted with acts like folk rocker James McMurtry (whose fantastic 1989 debut album “Too Long in the Wasteland” finally made it onto the service this past year) and The Bears. Wrapped doesn’t really show that: it’s the top slice of my listening, but doesn’t reflect who I truly am as a music fan, so it’s of limited utility to anyone who might want to try to figure out who I am based on my musical tastes. Except for the very top: Fountains of Wayne truly is my favourite artist, and “Just What I Needed” has been getting me fired up for 45 years now. The algorithm got those right at least.

The Rolling Stones – Hackney Diamonds

Growing up, I believed that the music you listened to was a product of your chronological age. In younger years, you gravitated towards rock ‘n’ roll (the idea of “pop” didn’t even occur to me, and anything Black – soul, R ‘n’ B, blues – simply did not exist as a category in my corner of the world), followed by a dalliance with country before you settled into old age – which I suppose I imagined began around 50 – with the kind of stuff that Marg Ellsworth played on CHER on Sunday mornings, which was what Johnny Fever was rebelling against on that classic first episode of “WKRP in Cincinnati”. Classical and jazz were not considered – I knew they existed, but no one I knew was listening to them openly to any significant degree.

So, now that I know that all of that is a lie, and that I was not in fact destined to become musically boring, I am still left with the question of what it means to “act your age” musically. My father would sometimes say to me that I had to grow up and stop listening to that noise. Keep in mind, I was, like, 15 at the time, and years away from growing up. But that message fed into my mindset about what kind of music was proper at a given age.

Thankfully, The Rolling Stones never met my dad.

What are we to make of an ass-kicking band of actual and borderline octogenarians? Well, first there is a sort of amazement that they are even doing this, no doubt with their hearing aids cranked up to 11. The Stones will, like all successful acts, be faced with the reality of being compared to the better records they made when they were younger, and, god, I am so over that garbage. Yes, this is no “Sticky Fingers” or “Exile on Main St.” or whichever album tops your ranking of their canon. But, dear god, I had fun listening to this album. It’s a saggy balls out, smash/bang howl of a record, and if the Stones are now little better than a honky tonk bar band playing the nostalgia tour (and I don’t necessarily share that assessment), they are still the very best at that. The songs have solid melodies, Mick still sounds great, and Keith, Ron and the rest of the band deliver on every track. My favourite tune is probably the British grannies bitch slap “Bite My Head Off” with Paul McCartney, but you could talk me into favouring the opener “Angry” or “Whole Wide World” or “Live By The Sword”, the last of which includes contributions from former band mates Bill Wyman and the late Charlie Watts. Even the slower tunes, like the Lady Gaga and Stevie Wonder team up on “Sweet Sounds Of Heaven”, should feel no shame when sitting next to “Angie” or “Wild Horses”.

This might be their last gift to us – ending with an honest cover of the Muddy Waters classic that gave the band its name seems a signal – and, if so, it’s a very honourable ending. It’s a good record, even a great one at times, and if you disagree – I’m looking at you, Pitchfork – please, for your own sake, pull your head out of your ass and give it another spin.

Olivia Rodrigo – GUTS

The biggest challenge for any musical artist is the sophomore record after a brilliant freshman outing. The first record is made in relative anonymity with a lifetime of creative efforts to draw on: its follow up is made in less contemplative conditions, with the world watching and a whole lot less time. More than a few acts have faltered.

Those acts weren’t Olivia Rodrigo.

I, to my surprise and a little bit of dismay, enjoyed her first album. But I love “GUTS”: it just feels like a massive leap forward in figuring out who she is, which right now feels like a way smarter less scruffy updating of Avril Lavigne for the influencer generation. I don’t really care if a lot of this is derivative, as others have suggested. That just makes her part of a line of great repurposers, and since I don’t know most of the artists she’s borrowing from, Olivia can be my gateway drug.

The ballads are fine (except the closer “teenage dream”, which kicks), and probably a necessary bloodletting for Olivia and her similar-aged fan base, but where she truly excels here is when she rocks. She’s still angry at unappreciative exes, but instead of just lamenting the loss, she’s in revenge mode. “get him back!” starts out like you think a song with that title would, but the chorus soon makes it clear why she wants that: I laughed out loud when she sang “I wanna meet his mom / Just to tell her her son sucks”. Her narrators are young women taking control of their messy lives, and, yes, being in charge means you screw up sometimes (“bad idea right?” is a howl), and you live with the consequences and move on. Other favourites are “all-american bitch”, “ballad of a homeschooled girl” and “love is embarrassing”. When the record ended, I paid it the ultimate compliment: I moved the needle back to the beginning.