“We Are Young,” the big hit song from fun., isn’t that bad. I can handle the kidz digging it. It’s upbeat. It’s hopeful. It’s over the top in a way that Queen already got me used to hearing and at least appreciating in my youth. I heard an interview with the band last year, and I could stomach that as well. They seemed like nice guys.
Beside some other song my younger son likes by them that sounds like Paul Simon’s “Cecilia” I’d never heard another lick of their music nor seen them perform. While flipping channels last night I stumbled across their performance on the GRAMMYS. This is all I watched of last night’s GRAMMYS.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xxfh5yThe band’s collective Flock of Seagulls Look was not appealing to me, but I could laugh about it. I’m not one to spot poor pitch, but I felt the singer was way sharp on a number of notes. Earlier yesterday I heard U2’s “New Year’s Day” on the radio and thought to myself, “For as frequently as I’m subjected to hearing this song and for all the emotion Bono is exuding I should like this song just a little by now.” I find “New Year’s Day” completely boring, but at least Bono seems to hit his notes. Whatever, it wasn’t like the fun. singer hitting his notes would have made this Styx-like song any better.
The one thing I could not get beyond was the singer’s clam-digger jeggings. Come on, man, that’s a bad Look! I hate the ’80s. I’d like to punch that entire decade in the face.
I also caught an Austin City Limits featuring Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, one of those hanger-on bands that are all the rage, composed of nearly 2 dozen musicians, half of whom are doing little more than shaking some junkyard percussion. Their leader sported a hipster hobo Look, with rolled-up slacks, bad shoes and no socks, a baggy shirt, and some weird cult leader pile of hair. This guy also had a terrible Look, but at least he put forth a ballsy freak show. I’ll let him slide.
Look Sharpe!
What do young people need to do these days to earn a wedgie?
I noticed a somewhat related Look a few years ago when I saw Conor Oberst — he had large cuffs on his jeans.
http://www.heyreverb.com/wp-content/photos/conor9.jpg
BTW — Weird Grammy Tweet from Gary Wright this AM:
“No Church in the Wild” won the Grammy for best sung
collaboration. Adapted from “Sunshine Help Me” Spooky Tooth. Thank you Jay Z, Kanye West, Frank Ocean and the Dream.
http://youtu.be/FJt7gNi3Nr4
Original Spooky Tooth
http://youtu.be/2UaNlbjPR0g
Never heard the “adaptation” but Gary is getting paid!
Instead of complaining of these new lengths in stage pants maybe I should see this as a possible sign that Undertones-style floods are coming back.
A hard rain’s-a-gonna-fall.
I think clam-diggers and rolled up jeans look great . . . on women.
So, uh… Tell us how you really feel about the ’80’s. Was college really all that bad?
P.S. If’n that was all you saw of the Grammies, you actually missed a few inspired performances.
I lasted about five minutes with the appropriately named Zeros. Smae with the second half’s Tuneyards. A completely worthless ACL this week.
Yeah, I had a guy at a party last year get totally pissed off at me because I would not concede to Edward Sharpe’s brilliance. Too many beards!
Tuneyards on the other hand, actually have some decent cuts.
After 30 years and God knows how many times heard, I ought to be sick to death of “New Year’s Day” but I’m not, and it sounds just as great to my ears as it did the first time I heard it. It’s a killer, even if it was released in the 80s, which have a great deal to answer for, indeed.
Likewise, I had to bail on both. The long set up for each tUNe yArDZ (or however they wrote their name – man, THAT stuff [see “fun.”] gets annoying real fast) song was like watching someone perform occupational therapy.
Please provide an example of an inspired GRAMMYS performance I could get up to speed on. I don’t doubt someone delivered.
Mmm, I wish I could like that song even a little. I like plenty of other U2 songs, some a great deal. That one, to me, just gets too tied to its little units: moaning Bono opening, impassioned verse, stirring chorus, guitar workouts, the part where The Edge makes his guitar do another trick (ie, the sawing harmonics), more moaning, another impassioned verse, another stirring chorus… It’s like they found a way to drive home all those aimless, impressionistic songs on October, an album I haven’t listened to in 25 years but remember liking more than War.
I used to listen to the Sound Opinions podcast regularly but when tUNeYarDs was on, I found her/them to be so annoy that not only did I stop listening to that episode, but I haven’t really listened to Sound Opinions since. That’s all it takes to throw me off…
I can imagine tUNeYarDs doing something stupid like giving an album a title that works upside down.
The Black Keys with Dr. John and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band did themselves proper despite sound quality issues.
Jack White looks positively possessed last night.
I must admit that LL Cool J. and Chuck D did aw’ight.
My wife’s oldest brother is one of those guys that thinks he’s funny, and we were at a picnic a few years back and he was playing cornhole with the younger guys. He had on those man capri pants and was playing on one end, and this guy on the other end had like plaid Bermuda shorts on. So Big Bro is tying to get into this guy’s head, and he says (kind o yells, because they’re 35 feet apart), “Hey! I haven’t seen those kind of shorts in years. How’s it feel to be wearing your Dad’s shorts?”
The whole party can hear this big putdown, and everyone kind of turns and listens and Young Guy yells back, “It feels good! How do you like wearing your wife’s pants?”
40 people died laughing and told Big Bro to just shut up and take his medicine. That’s still one of the funniest things I ever saw, and I hope it doesn’t translate to one of those , “you had to be there” moments.
I felt like I was there!
I completely agree. New Years Day sounds great to my ears too. However while I do like the dramatic sound, the typical U2 jangly guitar sounds at times grates on me. It seems to me those jangly guitars gets tiring after awhile….even under a blood red sky. It seems those well you know guitars never let up in this and most if not every U2 song.