You know what my favorite things are? Bananas, hookers, lips, and electric sperm. Guess how overjoyed I was when I first saw this album, then! All of my favorite things right there on the cover! I like the band's logo on his one, too. It's almost like they were to be the Coke brand of rock. I've noticed that girls who wear glasses and read boring shit like Tom Robbins books often like to be felt up while listening to "Midnite Cruiser" from this album. So I guess they can't be all that bad, right?
Jandek waits for the ice cream man. What will Jandek get today? Perhaps a Sno-Cone. Maybe a plan vanilla on a cake cone. He might get risky and try a fudge bar. He's thinking about it. You can see the thoughts roll by in the tension on his face. Undoubtedly, though, he will get what he always gets. A cup of water and a napkin.
Some friends of mine came over one night. One brought along this red-haired girl who had some LSD in her compact. She took a hit while we were all sitting around listening to Sesame Street Fever and playing canasta. About a half an hour later she starts moaning and shit and says she's going to the bathroom. Next thing you know she's screaming at us to all come and help her.
So we get into the bathroom thinking she has hurt herself or something. Nope, she's just staring in the mirror pulling her hair back from her brow and pointing, yelling "Oh my god I'm Bowie on the Pin Ups cover! Look at that! Oh my god, I'm Bowie! What am I doing here? I need to get back to London!"
So she proceeds to step back out into the living room and sings all of "Changes" in a slow croon, then runs outside to "make her flight." She promptly collapses on the ground. Before we can get to her to pick her up, the neighbor's dog walks by and pisses on her head. Classic.
Scatological. Insane. Clearly stupid. Just what you want in a music review. "Reviews from the Spark Plug" is a new feature here that will be highlighting absolutely craptastic album reviews with zero merit that I wrote over at the rateyourmusic website. I've been over at that site since shortly after its debut. When I started, I wrote legit reviews that informed. After a while, though, the rot set in and I left along with my reviews.
When I returned, I decided to write the anti-review. The reviews were sometimes satirical or parodies of other reviews on the site, but mainly they were just over the top, childish and aimed at the lowest common denominator. But whatever, I love them and now I'm passing on the ridiculousness to you. If anything, these reviews may just prove that music critics really may not be that necessary if at all. We all know the story of The Beatles and Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, et al, but you don't know my version of it. Until now.
"Gimme an issue, I'll give you a tissue. You can wipe my ass with it."
"We were pretty bad, and we had to change our name a lot. We played fraternities. People would vomit on your amp."
"Dylan was never around for me. But he did have a nice flair for words that didn't mean anything. They were just marijuana throwaways."
"I enjoyed those shows I did in London at the Rainbow, but I kept thinking that Frank Zappa fell seventeen feet down into that pit. I hate Frank Zappa, and it made me so happy to think about that."
"Musicians usually cannot speak. That's why they communicate through their instruments. But Frank was one who could. And because music is pure, the musician is pure as well and when Frank spoke he demonstrated the power of purity. Who will do that now? I admired Frank greatly and I know he admired me."
"Everyone should have a divorce once, I can recommend it."
"This is fantastic - the worse I am, the more it sells. If I wasn't on the record at all next time around, it would probably go number one."
"Show me a journalist who isn't a whore and I'll show you a man."
"I created Lou Reed. I have nothing even faintly in common with that guy, but I can play him well. Really well."
"This waiter came up to me in a restaurant and said, 'Listen, I write songs, what do you suggest I do?' I said, '"Let me hear them so I can steal them off you if there's anything good.'"
"My current designation as godfather of punk is shit, ridiculous. I'm too literate to be into punk rock."
"A punk is a misplaced hippie."
"Nixon was beautiful. If he had bombed Montana and gotten away with it, I would have loved him."
"I don't smoke grass and I don't like things that everyone sniffs off a table. That's tawdry, it's so common. I like to play with my system, alone. I'm into drug masturbation."
"The nice thing about New York is that you're anonymous. I mean, who wants to be known?"
"I like my trash to sound better than anybody else's trash, because I make records to sell records."
"I wanna be black, I wanna be like Malcolm X and cast a hex over President Kennedy's tomb. And have a big prick, too."
"Not everybody gets the chance to live out their nightmares for the vicarious pleasures of the public."
"I believe in all things in moderation...including moderation."
"I really love the farm, it smells great."
"I don't write for a rock 'n' roll audience. I write for adults...who listen to rock 'n' roll."
"It's very hard to keep it simple."
"Who else could make a scooter hip?"
"I've had reviews that say, 'Why don't you just die?' and it hasn't seemed to make any difference."
"I can't do anything outside of New York. It's death."
So Britney Spears has a new album out called Femme Fatale. If I was younger, this probably would have irked me and I would have written out a not at all well thought out rant against it. But this is counter-productive. You can see enough of such "reviews" for the album over on Amazon.
Which leads me to ask, how does one properly rate or review a new Spears album? If you look at the entire swath of reviews on Amazon, you'll see that there is no middle ground for the most part. The fans love, love, love it, proclaiming it to be the album of 2011 and Britney's best yet (undoubtedly something they say every time she puts out a new one), and the people who don't like her write one-star reviews and bitch about how she's phony, the music is all auto-tuned and overly processed and takes no talent, blah, blah, blah. There is truth to some of those accusations, but at the same time the venom is guiding the way and not an objective set of ears.
As I get older, I get tired of seeing the same rants of "Music ain't what it used to be!" Music is cyclical. There will always be wheat and chaff, and radio-friendly pop tunes that you can dance to will always be frowned upon because there is no "artistry" or "talent" that goes behind such work. But if that were truly the case, then the shit wouldn't sell at all, and Britney's fans would have all grown up and forgotten her. But the thing is, Spears gets new fans with every new album. New, young fans. And that's the key. The people working behind her know this, as does Spears herself. Hell, she wants to maintain a career. Not even Federline and going nuts in public could derail her, so why would she suddenly start doing confessional singer-songwriter stuff? Lindasy Lohan tried that on her second album and we all know how well that turned out.
I used to not like Spears as well. I mean, I still don't like her music, period, but I don't dislike her for it. She's made a fortune out of what she's done and she continues to do so, so something's working in her favor and it isn't just luck. No, she can't really sing, but that's beside the point these days. The decade will continue and new old trends will rise and fall again and someday this will all repeat once more.
