The Love Hate Society

Let's All Reminisce About That Time When David Bowie Was a Nazi-Fascist

2012-03-30T13:00:45Z

Bowie has played a lot of characters: Aladdin Sane, Ziggy Stadust, Goblin King. Arguably the weirdest (although “middle-aged dude with a goatee who hangs around Trent Reznor” is a close second) is the Thin White Duke, his mid-‘70s persona of a emotionally hollow, impeccably dressed gentleman cabaret singer of vaguely Aryan origin who was coked up out of his mind (although that element just might have been the real Bowie seeping through). As he told Roy Carr in Bowie: An Illustrated Record, it was drowning in those two things—a character, and blow—that led to David Bowie’s brief, ill-advised “Crazy Fascist” period, circa 1976. In discussing politics with a Stockholm newspaper, for some reason, he said that “Britain could benefit from a Fascist leader,” a Britain that was still a short 30 years removed from the London Blitz by the Germans in World War II. He was later detained on the border of Poland for possessing Nazi memorabilia, still illegal a short 30 years after the Germans decimated Poland and its Jewish population. Capping off the year, he arrived at a public appearance at Victoria Station in London riding in an open-topped convertible, parade-style, and also Hitler-style, making the good ol’ Nazi salute. Cocaine is a hell of a drug.

While he was just deep in character, and not really a Nazi sympathizer, probably, it’s a a little alarming that all these kids showed up to do the Nazi salute back to Bowie, captured in video here, set to the also alarming German version of Bowie’s “Heroes.”

When Blossom Met C+C Music Factory

2012-03-23T13:00:55Z

Awesome. Blossom.Despite media consolidation and relaxed rules on cross-promotion and product placement, you just don’t see a lot of heavily pushed, barely famous, or on their way down musical acts making cameo appearances on sitcoms, the way they did in the ’80s and ’90s. (Except for Disney acts on Disney Channel sitcoms. They are their own corporate and cultural universe, and I’m not 14.) I’ve written about this before, as I heartily remember Stacey Q on The Facts of Life. Maybe there just aren’t any many cheesy sitcoms anymore, although I don’t rule out some assemblage of Kool and the Gang showing up to do “Too Hot” on Hot in Cleveland, or Toby Keith singing some smug, gross song about being a selfish asshole on Tim Allen’s new ABC show, Women are Stupid Bitches I Wish Were Dead.

Blossom’s dad on Blossom, Chip Blossom (probably) was a session musician and songwriter, so this show really dropped the ball on having cheesy musical guest stars. The only major one they could land was C+C Music Factory. On a 1992 episode, Blossom and her immoral friend Six camp out to see C+C Music Factory, which is weird considering it was about a year past that band’s prime, which was about six weeks in early 1991, and because the C + C in that band stand for the Robert Civilles and David Cole, the producers who made that band as a studio creation (like some kind of music factory), going so far as to hire Martha Wash of the Weather Girls to sing and then using the thinner, younger Zelma Davis to lip sync to her stuff in videos. In other words, C + C Music Factory was less legitimate a live musical act than, say, Joey Lawrence.

As such, they don’t perform on Blossom. Instead, Civilles, Cole, and Davis literally wander into the scene, wearing costumes that look like they were designed for a John Waters movie about evil Color Me Badd robots, to watch Blossom and Six awkwardly do some kind of embarrassing teenage herky-jerky Running Man-like dance to “Things That Make You Go Hmmm,” on a boombox they’re carrying around so as to listen to their own songs whenever they like. The scene is not completely performance-free; Davis sings the chorus along to the recorded version, and their voices notably do not match up.

In the '80s, There Was an Urban Legend That Said the UPC Code on "Thriller" Contained Michael Jackson's Phone Number

2012-03-16T13:00:34Z

How quaint, right? “Universal product codes,” which made scanning for prices and inventory records computerized and thus more accurate, were introduced in the U.S. in 1974, but not widely adopted until the early 1980s. When Thriller came out in 1982, UPC codes were still relatively new and certainly strange and seemingly random, particularly on albums. In fact, the numbers are random, in that they’re randomly assigned. They’re not random in that they pertain to a single product or good. Which is to say it’s absurd and basically impossible that the UPC code for Thriller would correspond to Michael Jackson’s home phone number either by accident or on purpose. Nor would the extremely private and weird Michael Jackson ever do such a thing as invite the 29 million people who bought the album an open invitation to just call him up at home randomly. And also, the UPC code for Thriller was 12 digits long—a little too long to be a U.S. phone number. Such was the level of Michael Jackson hysteria at the time—its power transcended logic.

5 Pop and Rock Stars Who Probably Killed Someone

2012-03-09T14:01:00Z

• C-Murder, brother/lookalike/employee to Master P, beat and shot a 16-year-old at a Louisiana club in 2002 and is currently in prison for life. Keepin’ it real and accurate, C-Murder.

• Blues legend Lead Belly killed a cousin over a woman in 1918 and served seven years in prison.

• Phil Spector is serving 19 years to life for the 2003 murder of actress Lana Clarkson.

• Jim Gordon, the drummer for Delaney & Bonnie and Derek and the Dominoes (he wrote the sweeping piano outro of “Layla”), was an undiagnosed schizophrenic and murdered his mother in 1983 with a hammer and a kitchen knife. He was sentenced to 16 years to life. He’s still in prison.

• Johnny Rodriguez, the 1970s and ‘80s country star, shot a man on his property in Texas he thought was a burglar. He beat the rap, because Texas.

The Eerily Correlated Life Highlights and Singles Discography of Nick Lachey

2012-03-05T14:00:36Z

2002: Marries fake-dumb or possibly really dumb pop singer Jessica Simpson

2003: Releases his first solo single, “Shut Up”

2003: Signs lucrative deal for MTV reality series Newlyweds

2003: “This I Swear”

2005: Simpson files for divorces

2006: “What’s Left of Me”

2006: “I Can’t Hate You Anymore”

2006: “Resolution”

5 Semi-Successful Music Video Delivery Systems Designed to Compete With MTV

2012-03-02T14:00:56Z

• Video Jukebox (1981-85), a 30-minute monthly program on HBO, also used as filler in between movies.

• Night Tracks (1983-92), an overnight video marathon on weekends on Ted Turner’s Superstation TBS

These kids today, with their Bette Midler.

• The lazily titled Cable Music Channel (1984) was another Turner venture, a standalone music video TV network, the first to challenge MTV’s monopoly in around-the-clock videos. After a month on the air, and losing millions, Turner sold the channel (and its spot on cable systems) to MTV, who turned it into VH1. The failure and switchover happened so fast and so efficiently that it’s widely speculated that Turner started the network explicitly so that it would fail and he’d get a big payday from MTV buying it out.

These kids today and their Randy Newman.

• Hit Video USA (1985), was the format of a low-signal Houston TV station that played only music videos. By 1990, it syndicated at least a few hours of videos a week to more than 50 other UHF stations around the U.S.

These kids today and their Double.

• Friday Night Videos on NBC lasted from 1983 inexplicably to 1994, when more than 70 percent of Americans had cable, and no longer needed or wanted to stay up until 1:30 a.m. on Friday to see a Bon Jovi video. Consequently, most of my family’s early video library consisted of my brother’s crudely recorded Betamax episodes of Friday Night Videos.

"The Power of Love" Lost and Other Shameful Mistakes in the History of the Oscar for Best Original Song (Part 2)

2012-02-24T14:00:43Z

Click here for part 1, in which I looked at the most egregious, short-sided snubs in the seven-decade history of the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

1980: Look, I love it when teenagers spontaneously kinda selfishly hold up traffic to have a dance number in the street set to a song about how awesome all of them are/are going to be, but “Fame” from Fame should not have beat out “On the Road Again” and “Nine to Five,” classic country songs (and signature songs for Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton, respectively) and the perfect representations of the inexplicable late ’70s/early ’80s urban cowboy country crossover fad, which was built largely on the backs of movies like Urban Cowboy and Honeysuckle Rose (the source of “On the Road Again”)

1982: Maybe not a snub so much as the result of an unfortunate coin toss by the part of the uncaring universe that determines entertainment industry awards, but “Up Where We Belong” from An Officer and a Gentleman beat “Eye of the Tiger” from Rocky III. The song most associated with a story-ending romantic gesture (Richard Gere goes into a factory and kidnaps Debra Winger, and she retaliates by stealing his hat) must have just edged out the go-to training-montage song.

1985: “Say You, Say Me” by Lionel “Don “No Soul” Simmons” Richie over “The Power of Love”? What the fuuuuuuuck? Marty McFly skateboards to it in Back to the Future, and then plays it as his audition song in front of the board of geeky teachers, one of whom is this song’s creator, Sir Huey Lewis. This is the song that inspired Marty McFly to go back in time, make out with his mother, and introduce Chuck Berry(’s cousin) to his invention, rock and roll music. This song makes an already great movie even better, which is what a great movie song is supposed to do. (Full disclosure: Back to the Future is my favorite movie and I will fight you.)

1997: Alright, so it’s fair and expected that “My Heart Will Go On” from Titanic would beat anything put up against it, but I needed a reason to post this bizarre clip from that year’s Oscars, in which the nominees, performed in rapid succession. It’s just very surreal to hear Celine Dion that close to a wacked out, characteristically depressed Elliott Smith, Elliott Smith, gets up there and hauntingly and subtlely, as if he had another switch, delivers the lovely “Miss Misery” from Good Will Hunting, directed by fellow Portlander Gus Van Sant, also getting some surreal Oscar love in front of a billion home viewers. #portlandrepresent

1999: South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut brought back the classic movie musical in themes, structure, and nuanced, knowing Broadway-style songwriting. Seriously—Trey Parker majored in musical theater in college, and we studied this movie as the perfect musical in my college musical theater class. It’s fantastic that the music branch of the Academy wanted to recognize this movie’s unlikely achievements and nominated “Blame Canada” for Best Original Song, maybe because it’s so catchy, maybe because it expresses the movie’s plot and motivations, or maybe because it’s the only song out of that movie that isn’t about handjobs or uncle-fucking. This is a case in which it’s an honor to be nominated, realistically-speaking, but it has to suck to lose to a tool like Phil Collins in the twilight of his career cranking out a dumb, ending credits, cynically composed love song for a Disney movie (Tarzan). Parker made a whole episode of South Park dedicated to mocking Collins; at least “Blame Canada” was performed on the Oscars telecast in an unlikely showstopper. Also nominated that year: the devestating “When She Loved Me,” from Toy Story 2, something of a preview of the feature-length meditation on letting go of innocence and childhood that would be Toy Story 3, and the damn-near perfect Amy Mann song “Save Me,” one of many she wrote for Magnolia.

"Rainbow Connection" Didn't Win, and Other Shameful Mistakes in the History of the Oscar for Best Original Song (Part 1)

2012-02-20T14:00:47Z

Songs are integral to movies. Maybe not so much anymore, since we don’t really have theme songs that refer to the movie by name, or musicals written directly for the screen, but some of our most beloved and popular songs were written for and first appeared in movies, even if the movie itself has been completely forgotten. (E.g. You know “Lullaby of Broadway,” but probably can’t get in an Anchorman-style quote-for-quote battle with Gold Diggers of 1935.) And then there are some amazing, well-known, iconic in the Western canon pieces of music that did not win the Oscar for Best Song. Here are some notable snubs.

1953: “That’s Amore,” Dean Martin’s second-most signature song, after “Everybody Loves Somebody,” and his signature song until “Everybody Loves Somebody” came out a decade later, was his big number from the generic Martin and Lewis golf trifle The Caddy. It lost the Oscar to “Secret Love” from the musical Calamity Jane. You know, your favorite song, “Secret Love,” from Calamity Jane.

1967: At least Oscar winner “Talk to the Animals” from Doctor Dolittle didn’t fade into oblivion, and its a pretty well-known movie musical song. But it’s not nearly the pop classic or mood-maker the way “The Look of Love” is, which is also, true fact, the most ’60s song of the ’60s, from Casino Royale, the most ’60s movie of the ’60s. This song gets your mom hot.

1972: Michael Jackson’s first solo single of any import was “Ben,” a love song the sad, lonely teenager wrote about a pet rat, which was then used in the horror movie Willard. It was a #1 hit and showed the world that Michael Jackson was pretty much going to be the biggest thing ever, even if he chose to sing songs about vermin. It lost the Oscar to “The Morning After,” the cheesy epic theme song from the cheesy disaster epic The Poseidon Adventure.

1973: In a head-to-head battle of the world’s most famous singers, Barbra Streiand and the schlocky “The Way We Were” from the movie of the same name beats out Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die” from the Bond movie of the same name, notable for being the only time Paul McCartney ever rocked the fuck out.

1976: Movie songs and their semiotic usage became so universally ingrained at some point that filmmakers can only use them ironically, as a parody or as an homage. Like if a movie has somebody training for something, you’ll probablty hear Bill Conti’s awesome, fanfare-laden “Gonna Fly Now” from Rocky, the greatest sports movie ever made. The song that won the Oscar: “Evergreen,” another Barbra Streiand song from A Star is Born, which I’m certain is the same song and movie as “The Way We Were” and The Way We Were, respectively.

1977: For a number of years after Debby Boone (no relation) recorded “You Light Up My Life” from the rags-to-riches, singer-gets-famous movie also named that, it was the most succesful pop song of all time, in that it spent 10 weeks at #1. Yeah, it’s popular and stuff, but it is a love song about Jesus (in the movie it’s just the kind of formulaic pap a cigar-chomping record executive says “now that right there is a hit record”), and it won the Oscar over yet another James Bond movie song. The songs are a carefully chosen, very important part of each Bond movie, and for The Spy Who Loved Me, producers hired composer Marvin Hamlisch to write “Nobody Does it Better” and Carly Simon to sing it, both at the top of their careers. According to Radiohead, who covers it live, it’s “the sexiest song ever written,” and according to me, the only time I’ll ever discuss Marvin Hamlisch on this website.

1979: “It Goes Like It Goes,” a song you don’t remember from Norma Rae, a dull movie about union labor that you never saw, beat out Paul Williams’ “Rainbow Connection” from The Muppet Movie, which is unspeakably beautiful, endlessly inspiring, and a classic, frequently-covered perfect composition in the same class as anything written by Cole Porter, Carole King, or a Gershwin. Fuck you, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. I have a hunch there’s gonna be a performance of this by Jason Segel and the rebooted Muppets this Sunday. I just have a feeling. And it will be fantastic.

’80s and ’90s snubs on Friday. You’ll probably have stopped crying from “Rainbow Connection” by then.

Who Ya Got: Morrissey's Kind of "Sunday," or Trent Reznor's Kind of "Everyday"?

2012-02-17T14:00:47Z

In which I resolve music’s most frequent and highly debated debates. Arguments are laid out, given points, and decisions made. It’s science. Today: based on Morrissey’s “Everyday Is Like Sunday” and Nine Inch Nails’ “Everyday Is Exactly the Same,” which would be a more palatable scenario: every day being like Sunday, or every day being exactly the same?

Morrissey’s Sunday:

Silent + 1

Grey + 1

Filled with wet sand + 1

A viable end would be nuclear warfare – 2

Comparable to a dreary seaside town – 3

Total: – 4 points

Trent Reznor’s everyday:

Purposelessness – 1

Consciousness resembles dreams + 3

People cannot speak – 3

Lack of love – 3

Lack of pain + 3

Comparable to living in a brutal prison – 5

Total: – 6 points

Verdict: An off-season resort past its prime, a la Laughlin, Atlantic City, or Blackpool is still better, although only just slightly, than a prison where they cut out your tongue.

4 Songs That Were Initially B-Sides That Became Bigger Hits Than the A-Sides

2012-02-13T14:00:49Z

Vanilla Ice, “Ice, Ice Baby”
In 1990, Vanilla Ice’s “Ice, Ice Baby” became the first rap song to ever go to #1 in the United States. It was also Vanilla Ice’s first single, but it was the B-side to his lame rap cover of Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music, which still reached #4, largely on the strength of its initial pressings bearing the B-side “Ice Ice Baby.”

To the extreme!

KISS, “Beth”
KISS was never a big singles-moving act—they did their primary business as a live act, selling live albums, and selling studio albums, in that order, and then, eventually, coffins and PEZ dispensers. Inexplicably, “Beth,” a ballad the drummer wrote about his nagging wife that has a last-minute addition to the Destroyer album that was issued as the B-side of the hard rocking “Detroit Rock City” in 1976 became the song that gave them the most pop radio airplay they ever saw or ever would see. Reissued with the sides flipped, “Beth” became the group’s first million-selling single and highest-charting song ever, at #7. “Detroit Rock City” failed to chart at all, even though it’s probably their signature song.

That’s Peter Criss, not KISS’s mom.

Gloria Gaynor, “I Will Survive”
Gloria Gaynor’s 1978 disco single “Substitute,” a forgettable cover of a forgotten Righteous Brothers song did not thrill disc jockeys in radio stations or in dimly-lit, foul-smelling nightclub booths. But the B-side, an empowering song about the will to survive called “I Will Survive” did. So they played that one instead. “Substitute” hit #78 on the R&B chart; “I Will Survive” hit #4 on the R&B chart, and #1 on the dance and pop chart.

Above: not a song for drag queens, the recently dumped, or Cake.

Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Soul to Squeeze”
In the early 1990s, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ go-to B-side was a non-representative, mid-tempo mood killer called “Soul to Squeeze,” which nobody much noticed when used as the B-side on both “Under the Bridge” and “Give It Away.” When producers of the 1993 Coneheads movie approached the band for soundtrack filler, they tossed them the ever cheap and reliable “Soul to Squeeze”…which became a #1 hit at alternative radio and a #22 pop hit.