This Used to Be My Stableground
Material Hurl
Like a Surgeon*
Another Broken Bone in Another Hall
Who’s That Roan?
Beautiful Ranger
Don’t Cry for Me Amygdala
Goodbye to Medicine
I’d Be Surprisingly Ill for You
Justify My Cast (Arm Within)
Open Your Body Part
X-Ray Process
What It Feels Like for a Patient
* — No relation to the Weird Al Yankovich song. This is a new version.
So the Dave Matthew Band is encouraging people to bypass digital rights management on the latest album. That’s all noble and revolutionary of you, Dave, but your music still sucks.
It’s doubtful that any well-adjusted (one might argue: regular) person would expect either a meaty anecdote, much less a bon mot from one-time Spice Girl Victoria Beckham. But I happen to be one of those strange aging men who has retained a soft spot for the Spice Girls and kept the faith over the years . In fact, I’m not ashamed (nor should you be!) to confess that I not only forked out eight bucks for Spice World, but actually enjoyed it!
Throughout the past decade, when in the doldrums, I have turned on “Wannabe,” danced like an ungraceful Caucasian within the privacy of my own bedroom, and connected with the deceptively primitive cadences of “So tell me what you want, what you really really want, I wanna I wanna I wanna I wanna I wanna really, really, really wanna zigazig ha.”
All along, I’ve had faith that there was something more to these many “wannas.” Perhaps somewhere between the “I” and the “wanna,” the brief pause (as the Spice Girls recaptured their breath) suggested a secret existential void that imparted a certain fortune cookie wisdom from performer to listener. It was, one might argue, a fortune cookie of one’s own making, formed within that milisecond of pause and inhale.
So it disheartens me in the extreme to learn that, all along, the Spice Girls have lied to me and that I’ve been led astray. They are indeed authentically vapid.
Or at least one of them is.
The latest news from England is this: Victoria Beckham, the Spice Girl once known as Posh Spice, has, despite having authored a 528-page autobiography, never read a book in her life. “I prefer listening to music,” says Posh, “althogh I do love fashion magazines.”
Fashion magazines! No possibility of her whispering sweet Shakespearean sonnets into anyone’s ear (well, specifically, that caveman soccer star Beckham’s) anytime soon. Heaven help her children.
How did she get through school? Who sent the checks to the headmasters? Isn’t this attitude a bit like performing fellatio but not receiving cunnilingus in return? More importantly, what hope for Ms. Beckham’s autobiography if she ain’t read none of dem books?
Because of this, I’m afraid that I’m going to have to turn my back on the Spice Girls and sell all of my Spice Girls album to Ameoba, if they’ll take them. This was a tough decision. But I’m a man of honor. And frankly there is nothing that turns me off more than a lady who don’t read.
Shortly before being confirmed as United Nations Ambassador, John Bolton once again embraced his musical side with his sixth album, Time, War & Tendinitis, which continues the flatline yet soothing sound that Bolton established on his previous album, Soul Destroyer. Without even bothering to shave his ridiculous moustache, Bolton has somehow created an album that has gone on to sell six million copies, mostly to aging, BMW-driving accountants who have finally come to terms with the fact that they have no real taste in music.
His chief collaborator this time around is former Republican Justice Earl Warren, whose death in 1974 did not preclude Bolton from sifting through Justice Warren’s treasure trove of bad poetry and hastily written lyrics. Warren penned half of the songs on this album and his passion for that old-time war hawk feeling can be heard on the album’s highlight track, “When a Man Loves a Weapon,” a loving paean to both the cold war and unilateralism.
But while Bolton’s album cannot be played when you’re making out in the back seat with your girlfriend, Track No. 5, “Now That I Found God” is a melodious little romp to play if you’re ever feeling alone or isolated after you’ve told everybody in the world that you and only you are right. Bolton’s bark is indeed as bad as his bite, as he croons during the second verse, “I could’ve screamed forever/And never realized/The terrorists of our lifetime/Were anyone else inside your eyes.” Never mind the fact that “realized” and “eyes” don’t actually rhyme. This song is more concerned with the advantages of corruption and abrasive authority. As another odious solo from Kenny G plays in the background, Bolton then barks at several unidentified underlings in the studio, expertly berating them while tying this into a fundamenalist jangle that reaches a crushing crescendo of hate and inflexibility. (One leaves this particular track wondering if Bolton is truly suffering from tendenitis or if the pain in question is psychosomatic.)
Alas, such a hate-filled mainstream sound cannot last for an entire album. Near the album’s end, Bolton sounds as if he’s had the wind knocked out of him. On “Save Me,” Bolton sings this chorous: “Warrior you’ve gotta save me, oh warrior don’t you drive me crazy.” Shortly after each round, we hear the distinct sound of something being unzipped and other things that cannot be mentioned in a family newspaper.
Still, this is a solid record for priapic neocons, with nary an olive branch offered for anyone outside Bolton’s obdurate and controversial political ideology.