Yesterday I heard the following song on the radio for the first time since it came out and was part of a popular album owned by college freshman girls I might have been trying to date. In fact, I’m certain that I tolerated the playing of this album in my presence a half dozen times for the greater good of enjoying the company of the young woman in whose dorm room I was sitting. The singer’s voice was good for this kind of stuff, but still…
This audio-only clip should give you a fair idea of what I heard in the car yesterday. You won’t be distracted by any annoying ’80s video slo-mo techniques and asymmetric hairdos.
For the good of Rock Town Hall, I made myself listen to this Yaz song, “Situation”, yesterday, with no college freshman riding shotgun. (You’re welcome.) As the stereo synth tricks settled down and the song got underway, I thought to myself, Where was INXS when I needed them? Had I entered college a few years later, that college freshman may have been playing me her INXS album instead of Yaz.
Do you see how the structure of this Yaz song is so like the structure of any INXS song? As a songwriting template this is a recipe for ’80s MIDI-mediocrity, but INXS always had the good sense of satisfying the streak of Rockism that was already settling deep within me. By putting some Roxy Music-based rock arrangements into the ’80s equivalent of dimestore garage rock song structure, I could hear this type of boring song without feeling so antsy in that college freshman’s room, without wanting to drive off the side of the road while listening to the Yaz song just yesterday. Can RTH Labs develop a program that runs just about all ’80s synth-pop through the INXS Rockist Cow-Tow Filter?
i will touch the untouched YAZ thread, even though I have nothing to offer.
Thanks, Shawnkilroy. The thread itself thanks you as well! I’m aware that in-depth discussions of thoroughly mediocre bands at the level of Yaz and INXS are difficult for folks to tackle, but I trust at least having this discussion on the record will help future generations of rock nerds in their efforts at proving some…point.
Shouldn’t it be InXS? That always bothere me for some reason, my usual disdain of acronyms notwithstanding.
Just wondering,
Why Hazy
no. wait. i have it.
INXS, like:
Fleetwood Mac (Peter Green “Albatross” era)
IRON MAIDEN
Bruce springsteen and the E-street Band
The Warlocks
Brian Jonestown Massacre
Isis
Broken Social Scene
Bob Dylan’s touring band for the past decade +
godspeed you black emperor
CSNY
Grateful Dead
Red Sparowes
Boyd of London
NIN
Scorpions
Gomez
SKYNYRD
Molly Hatchet
April Wine (formerly)
.38 Special
Moby Grape
steely dan
Radiohead
The Allman Brothers
have 3 guitarists. it would be impossible for them to ROCK less than YAZ.
In your situation, I’d look at it differently:
I’d wish, instead of Yaz, a song from New Order, Depeche Mode, or Echo and the Bunnymen was playing.
Dr. John wrote:
Do you feel those bands follow a similar songwriting – and I use that term loosely – structure? Perhaps. I can list thousands of bands I’d rather hear, but did anyone but INXS make this sort of song more tolerable? If Echo and the Bunnymen share similar songwriting roots, sure. I’d much rather hear them. I don’t care for Depeche Mode one way or another – for me they’re just as much part of the problem. New Order’s much easier to swallow, but they still could use some Rockist elements to make them more palatable for these ears.
My favorite line from the LCD Soundsystem song “Losing My Edge”,
“I hear you’re buying a synthesizer and an arpeggiator and are throwing your computer out the window because you want to make something real. You want to make a Yaz record.”
I was listening to that LCD Soundsystem CD, just now, and checked in to the Hall and read your comment just as that very song started.
Koinkidink?
Let me put this another way: it’s apples and oranges.
INXS are a knockoff of mainstream rock/beer commercial music. When I hear INXS, I wish I were hearing the Police.
Yaz, as the LCD Soundsystem lyrics suggest, is more dance music. New Order, Depeche Mode, Echo and the Bunnymen were all making dance tracks.
the bunnymen really? ya think?
Wait, what? Bunnymen = dance music?
The only people I ever saw dance to Echo and the Bunnymen were chunky high school girls with pageboy haircuts who’d do this kind of Stevie Nicks twirl thing whenever “Bring On The Dancing Horses” came on.
The Bunnymen were not known as a dance band. They were a guitar rock band. That said, they were somewhat successful at tapping into the new wave side of the dance market with the single “Never Stop.” I also recall the dance floor at an all-ages show at the Channel in Boston filling up in 1985 in between bands when “The Cutter” came on. Then again, that maybe was a time when the Berlin Wall between dance and rock cultures was not quite as strongly fortified as it is now.
I completely disagree with this statement, though I agree with your take on the Bunnymen crossing over to the dance side of things with the “Never Stop” 12″, though generally they were and are a guitar band (and a great one, esp. on the 1st 4 albums; “Bring on the Dancing Horses”, while great, was the beginning of the end as far as I’m concerned).
What I mean to say is that dance and rock cultures are more closely aligned than ever before and have been for the past 5-6 years. Why? A steady stream of post-punk revivalists taking the spirit of the merging between punk and disco and appealing to rockists as well as those who prefer the dance floor. You want examples? Other than overt electro like Ladytron or more recently Hot Chip (a huge favorite amongst indie kids now), what about indie-loved artists like M.I.A., Diplo, Spank Rock, Santogold, Yo Majesty, etc. that bridge the gap between hip-hop and dance-rock? Or on the more “rock” side of things, Franz Ferdinand, Radio 4, the aforementioned LCD Soundystem, et al.
I’m fascinated how the average crap bands my country produces end up being the ones that become huge successes overseas. The Kylie Minogues, Natalie Imbruglias and INXS.
INXS were a cheesy synth-pop band, then suddenly Michael Hutchence started play-acting the whole ‘Rock God’ part. It was thoroughly unconvincing, and completely embarrassing but this awkward imitation of the real thing found huge success around the same time with the ‘Kick’ album.
INX aren’t ‘Rockist’, they’re Fake Rockist: people believing they’re more important and more talented than their abilities otherwise indicates. They set out to make themselves ‘Important’ because they’ know they’re Definitely Not.
Didn’t Depeche Mode do much the same thing around the same time? Maybe it’s the only reaction to having a Synth Pop Credibility Guilt Trip.
I don’t expect you guys to hear this band on the radio anytime soon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO5DFQoxnks
hfr, good points about INXS. Your definition of Fake Rockist should surely enter into the lingua franca of RTH.
Where do you stand on Midnight Oil? I am troubled by the fact that though they meant well, their songs don’t really hold up under close scrutiny. Great live band though.
Hey, Homefront — wish I could say I liked that Augie March number, but it pushed all the wrong Rock Intellectual buttons for me. I realize this is an “issue” in my life, and I’m trying to come to grips with it. Thanks for sharing, nonetheless.
I’m only familiar with their more popular albums (1987’s Diesel and Dust, the one with “Beds are Burning” on it) and the follow-up, 1990’s Blue Sky Mining. After not listening to either for many years, I revisited both of them recently and I was pleasantly surprised at how well both of them held up. Between the two of them, Diesel and Dust is definitely preferable as it’s less slickly-produced than its follow-up and I think the songwriting is a notch better, too.
I have no problem with their overt political leanings and their advocacy of causes on each record since, for the most part, I agree with just about everything they’re saying. Peter Garrett may not be the world’s most gifted singer, but his passion made up for it. Also, I like the twin-guitar thing they had with Jim Moginie and Martin Rotsey. The real key to understanding them, though, at least to me, is that above the superficial similarities to U2 and even their countrymates INXS, they were really more similar to a political punk band or even folkies in terms of their political convictions (Garrett ran for a seat in the Australian Parliament under the Nuclear Disarmament Party banner and lost; after Midnight Oil broke up, he’s reinvented himself as a Labour leader and compromised his environmentalist roots, unfortunately), though they also seem to share musical DNA with Australian pub-rock type bands (I’m thinking of Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons, the band who did the original version of “So Young” for you fellow Costello-heads), in addition to big arena rockers like U2 (who they could obviously be compared to).
Oh and thanks for posting the link to that Augie March performance. I really like it. What album is it off of? The song reminded me of The Blue Nile and Prefab Sprout a bit and the singer’s voice sometimes ventured into Jeff Buckley territory, but not in the annoying way that so many of his imitators seem to do.
Homefront,
I second Dr. John’s request for a Fake Rockist entry in our RTH Glossary. This is kind of what I was trying to get at with the INXS Rockist Cow-Tow Filter bit. Do you have any interest in writing it up? Let me know, and I can set you up with access to The Back Office. I’d also be game for you to moderate an entire Aussie Rock chat some day. You could be – or at least assume the role of – The Expert. Let’s talk about it offlist. It could be a lot of fun.
Berlyant sez:
I have no problem with (Midnight Oil’s) overt political leanings and their advocacy of causes on each record since, for the most part, I agree with just about everything they’re saying.
I ask:
Yeah, but is it good music? And, more to the point, do you have to agree with something before you can like it?
I always found the hits by Midnight Oil thoroughly decent – in a sincerely good way – despite the fact that I didn’t have an idea of what they were going on about politically. Nor did I really care. I get the same amount of enjoyment out of Midnight Oil as I do, say, Echo and the Bunnymen.
Yes and no, respectively, though the latter helps. Regardless, I don’t agree with the sentiments of a song like The Louvin Brothers’ “The Chirstian Life” or Merle Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee”, but I love them both nonetheless since they get their point across well and are moving for different reasons.
Nevertheless, I thought I was clear in my previous post that I liked Midnight Oil’s music as well, but in case it was unclear for whatever reason, I’ll try to summarize why I like them. Big choruses, nice twin-guitar riffing/fills, passionate vocals, hard-driving sound, political lyrics delivered with conviction, they rock like most Aussie outfits, etc.
Oh and Mr. Mod, their political causes are fairly overt and obvious, at least to me. Diesel and Dust is a concept album about the rights of Aborigines and their historic mistreatment (their biggest hit “Beds are Burning” is a plea to give back land to them, perhaps the most overtly political song to ever be such a big hit here). Plus, they have many songs about nuclear disarmament, anti-gun sentiments (“Put Down that Weapon”), pro-worker anthems (“Blue Sky Mine”) and even one song that questions the Aussie involvement in WWII (“Forgotten Years”). Another thing I like them is that they weren’t afraid to court controversy via these views.
Yes, Berlyant, I know what they’re going on about in their music, but I pay little attention to it. The lyrics themselves simply don’t jump out at me, and I find the need to hear Peter Garrett’s voice as just another part in the overall mix. I’m mainly listening to the twin-guitar arrangements and things like that.
Sorry, but: live by the rock video, die by the rock video. Midnight Oil suck because of that spastic robo-man they have out front. I don’t care what they’re singing about, and I find it very easy to ignore their dull anthem-rock. So for me it’s about that bald-headed cyborg.
Survey says: BUZZZZZ!
If this thread has de-volved into a Midnight Oil discussion then I’ll say that I bought their “10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1” release on cassette in like 82! I remember loving its proggy goodness and thought that it was amazingly produced back then (I think it was recorded in England and not “down under”…maybe even at Mr. Gabriel’s Real World?). I haven’t heard it since so not sure what I’d think of it now. I didn’t follow them after their success but remember Dave Blood from our band was really into them throughout. (I think he dug the bald-headed Cyborg!)
Lookist! 🙂
I could see Dave Blood liking them, Mrclean. His audiophile side was always a bit of a surprise to me. He used to play me and Chickenfrank John Mellencamp albums and marvel at their production. Maybe so, but with his sense of humor I couldn’t shake the thought that he was putting us on.
I thought 10…1 and Red Sails in the Sunset had a lot of potential: a fierce sense of urgency and intelligent lyrics.
But Diesel and Dust was a major disappointment: the songs failed to deliver the goods. I don’t think I even got all the way through Blue Sky Mining.