Tag: Music Box

Music Box – Happy Birthday, Chaka Khan. We Love You Still.

Love Me Still is a hauntingly beautiful song sung by legendary soul singer Chaka Khan, who co-wrote the song with Bruce Hornsby (who plays piano on the track and appears in the video) and was initially featured on the soundtrack to Spike Lee’s 1995 film, “Clockers.” I fell in love with the song and it remains one of those ballads that leaves me breathless, and even for a long while in the mid-1990s, I used it as the music on my answering machine (remember those?).

Of her myriad of sonic gifts – the funk, the grit, the spunk etc… – Love Me Still touches me for its pure simplicity; there are no vocal pyrotechnics, no improvisational scattering, no jazzy quirk – just a straightforward reading via Khan’s richly clarion vocals, accompanied by the gorgeous tickling of the ivories by Mr. Hornsby.

There are two versions of the video that were released, both directed by Spike Lee. The soundtrack version has clips of the film interspersed throughout and the standard version omitted that footage.

In an excerpt of the January/February 1997 issue of Performing Songwriter, writer Lydia Hutchinson asks Khan about the songs origin, and co-writing it with Hornsby:

Tell me about writing “Love Me Still” with Bruce Hornsby.

“I went to Virginia and visited with Bruce and his family and had such a great time. We were working on some songs, and he finally said, “OK, I know you like this melody so let me work on it some more and send it to you.” So he finished it and sent it to me and when I heard it, it just blew me away. It was this beautiful hymn-like piece and it just sort of told me what it was about—the sentiment was there. So I sat down and the lyrics just came out. And I recorded it immediately and was so happy with it that I called Bruce up and played it for him over the phone. And we were both knocked out by it.”

How long did those lyrics take you?


“Oh, they took a while … at least a couple of hours.”

(Laughing) A couple of hours?

“That’s a long time to be messing around with words!” (Laughs)

Have you noticed a maturing process that you’ve gone through vocally, such as “less is more”?

“Absolutely. My thing was always to kind of scream and go over the top. When I listen to my old stuff I also sound like I’m going at about three speeds faster than I am now. I sound a little bit frantic and young and wet. Now my vibrato has slowed down. My voice has deepened. So yeah, it definitely feels much more effective to pull back and then be choosier about the over-the-top parts.”

I really noticed a more reserved delivery in the song you and Hornsby wrote.

“That was one of the hardest songs I’ve ever had to sing, because I knew I had to really hold back on it and still get the message and emotion across.”

Ain’t nobody…like Chaka Khan. Happy Birthday!

Love Me Still (with “Clockers” footage):

Love Me Still (standard version):

Music Box: Madame Zzz

Madonna – Medellin & I Rise

Staunch defender of her previous two releases (MDNA and Rebel Heart), I am supremely underwhelmed with the two songs released from Madame X, Madonna’s upcoming new album. The saturation of autotune aside, both tracks lay flat, delivering none of the Madonna mastery I’m used to: songcraft.

“Medellin” is breezy enough, but really a piffle – cute as cafe background noise, forgettable once it’s over (and dueting with the grotesque, misogynistic hack Meluma doesn’t help).

“I Rise” should have been bold and anthemic, but instead is musically chintzy, with neither memorable hook nor melody. And that she wrote it as a rallying cry for marginalized people and as a way to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Stonewall, the genesis of the Pride movement, makes it all the more frustrating that it’s not the clarion call the Queen of the Gays (as I like to call her) could have delivered. It doesn’t soar – it just floats, lazily along, until it doesn’t.

But, I won’t let any of this deter me. Madam X was influenced by Madonna living in Lisbon, Portugal, according to the press release, and celebrates her love affair with Latin music and culture and global influences. That alone intrigues me. I won’t let my distaste for these two tracks dictate my anticipation for the full album, which drops June 14th.

Music Box: Mike Acerbo’s THE SEARCH

I can’t remember the last time a song made me cry, but toward the end of Mike Acerbo’s evocative, engrossing CD, THE SEARCH, it happens. “Robbie” chronicles Acerbo’s soul-kept memories of his childhood best friend, who drowned in the Delaware river when he was in his early teens. But the images this poet evokes bear neither a scintilla of schmaltz nor a hint of histrionic melodrama.  No, he allows his memories speak for themselves in the simplest of fragments, both heartbreaking and tragic. His pain is palpable, as you ache alongside his longing. Yet, even when describing the indescribable, his pen whispers in heart-wrenching profundity:

“Oh, the water flooded you…there were angels on air…
Had I known your fire would simmer in that river, shimmering…sparkling stars up to the sky…
I would have fought with every angel…”

The rest of this gorgeous self-released album isn’t so saddled with tears. THE SEARCH is about just that, as he sojourns his soul and the ghosts that linger, and the fantastical world he inhabits, for answers sometimes – and sometimes not – found. I’m reluctant to use “fairytale” to describe these pieces because they strike such a cathartic and emotional innate chord in Acerbo, and the listener, that these are more “truth tales”.

From the fanciful carnival feast of “Blueberry Moon” (“I take a stroll there’s a blueberry moon peering above the treetops…”), to the quiet devastation at the intangibility of his “Mother”, who passed away from breast cancer when he was only 14 (“…keep the candle burning through the window pain so that I may find my way again to your embrace…it held me near, hold me near again…where is your embrace…?”); from the questionable nature of love itself – is it a “Fairytale Love” (“…you rode in on your horse of gold, swept me away, we were bold…”) or is the very idea of love a fairy tale (“…this is not real…this is not real…”)? – to the dark forces sometimes winning the war between light and despair in the breathtaking “Trilby” (“…her lips scarred and torn from a  thousand misplaces kisses…she’s been dancing with so many men, none of them would love her and that little girl is a stone woman now…”); from the irony of the country-tinged sound waves of the exhilarating “Where The River Meets The Sea” juxtaposed with its escapist, almost ironic, lyricism (“…I’m sitting here upstream next to a fading fire, thinking about my life and knowing there’s got to be a better place…”) to the often psychologically manipulating terrain of unrequited love in “Like The Tide” (“…I am the nothing that you see, when you look into my eyes…I am the empty well you’ve drunk dry, you are like the tide…”) – track after track Acerbo bares his soul with mystical stories layered in intricate imagery and truth – some dark, some tinged in hope, some reticent – each all-too human.

While each song is a monument in itself, this collection is really fully realized as a whole, from the start of the voyage until the finish. The album ends with “The Night Light” and the cautionary hope that perhaps love isn’t really a pipe dream, that despite those battles with the aforementioned darkest forces, it can bloom into fruition (“…I can feel the heart of the masses, I can see the tired eyes and hear the hatred…if you grasp it, we ain’t gonna make it…don’t you know that the night light in your hands baby, is a fire that will lead you to my darkened heart…”) – maybe all one needs to accomplish this is to detoxify  the soul of such influences.

If Acerbo’s voice sometimes struggles to keep up with the glorious melodies he writes, or sounds strained, or if a few tracks get mired in the layered production, it’s those imperfections that make such songs like the brilliant “Beast”  (the other side of the mirror, so to speak, to Stevie Nicks’ classic “Beauty And The Beast”, with the viewpoint of the beast himself) ring true; he’s not overtly concerned with sounding pretty (though he mostly does), he merely needs to tell his stories. And we sit there, enraptured by his pen, swirling in sonic paintings that are so ineffaceable – and even archetypal – they become tattoos to your soul. (It would be remiss of me not to mention Acerbo’s extraordinary band – their vast taut musicality never loses focus and at times, on varying cuts, actually reign Acerbo’s vocal flippancy back on track.)

From the images of castles, forests, dreams, witches and beasts, to the swooping melodic cadences, to the vulnerability-masqueraded-as-fortitude, the muses of Acerbo’s past might appear to be obvious. But appearances can be deceiving, for his is a singular pen, and when such muses are perceptible, he never stoops to mimicry, rather he heralds their aesthete, learning from the masters while forging his own unique identity as a dazzling modern troubadour for the still-new millennium.

And that he does so with some of the most haunting, ravishing and indelible melodies is merely icing.

My grade: A

Order (and sample) THE SEARCH via CD BABY, BandCamp, and iTunes.

Here’s the full music video to the album’s first single, “Trilby”:

Legacy: Amy Winehouse…Another Dead Rock And Roll Cliché

Amy Winehouse died this past week and the real grief is in the knowledge that no one was surprised at all. As of this writing the cause of death was still undetermined, but lest we fool ourselves, is there really any wonder?

Winehouse – whose breakthrough (2006’s BACK TO BLACK) cemented the route for other Brit-soul contemporaries like Duffy and Adele to conquer intercontinental shores – didn’t merely “struggle” with addiction – she flaunted and reveled in it. She was a talented singer/songwriter who lived a stupid, foolish life and now she’s another stupid, foolish dead Rock star. She squandered her intrinsic gifts for years for pure hedonism, permeating her whole existence in drug-induced stupors, coked-up public performances, heroin-induced soporifics and a lifestyle that prodigiously overshadowed her musicality. Her brief skimps at rehab only solidified her lack of seriousness of getting any help. And because of that profligacy, she was the inadvertent queen of the tabloids, those subhuman succubi who lick their scabbed lips in deviant, debased glee at every fucked-up antic that befall any caliber celebrity. (Though we can scorn the tabloids for their evil, we can only blame ourselves for their successes.)

I’ll not belittle addiction. I understand the colossal power of control it has over the core of the mind and body and soul. And I also know that there are enablers and sycophants who are willing participants in someone’s destructive behavior (Winehouse associated with plenty, and even married one). But at what point does one’s self – the captain of that soul – take responsibility for the sinking ship? Millions battle addiction. Millions have beaten addiction. Millions will continue to do both.

Addiction is often touted as a disease, and perhaps it is – I can’t claim to be erudite in the science of medicine. And if it is indeed a disease, it’s the only one that is curable by the afflicted. Those who cannot – or who do not – overcome this malady are not wholly to blame, of course, but do bear the crux of responsibility. Those who cannot are merely prisoners of the encumbrance of the albatross. Those who continue on their suicidal sojourn (which is what addiction is) understand the ultimate price payable. And they accept it. Those who do not wish to accept the obvious sober up, as complex and excruciating as the process is. If it’s too late, then it’s merely another sad cautionary tale. And a cliché.

Or, in Winehouse’s case (or Jim Morrison’s case, or Janis Joplin’s case or Jimi Hendrix’s or Judy Garland’s, or John Bohnam’s, or Billie Holiday’s or any other icon who played one final game of Russian Roulette that cost them their lives) a dead Rock N Roll cliché. By joining a list of dead musicians, she has solidified her place in the annals of music history (that the tragedy of Winehouse is greater than her genius is foretelling – with a mediocre-at-best debut and a strong follow-up, many – postmortem, of course – have histrionically already declared BACK TO BLACK a classic).

On a friend’s website earlier this week, I drew ire when discussing my innate beliefs about Winehouse and addiction. One response I received after voicing these sentiments read:

“It’s disrespectful, whether you know Amy Winehouse or not, to simply pass her off at the end of her life as a “stupid, foolish dead RnR cliche”. I hope that you don’t have the misfortune of someone saying these horrible things about one of your loved ones one day.

My reply was simple and true: if someone in my family or one of my friends dies as a result of addiction, I would say exactly what I said about Winehouse. If accusations of cold-heartedness are hurled my way, so be it. If that mendacity makes you feel better, I’m glad for you. Only, it’s not. It’s the polar opposite. It’s a truism, and anger often deflects truth.

My empathy is minuscule for life-wasters. My sympathies are limited to the devastation of the loved ones and family members and friends that addicts inconsiderately leave behind.

This week, they buried the woman who possessed such promise but cared so little in nurturing it. Family and friends gathered in somber reflection, serene sadness and devout mourning.

Another daughter. Another sister. Another friend. Another artist. Suicide by selfishness. Another addict.

Music Box: 2Cellos – Cello, I Love You

Luka Sulic & Stjepan Hauser (Courtesty their official Facebook page)

Some of the most profoundly poignant, hauntingly beautiful pieces of music I’ve had the trembling pleasure of hearing have come from the cello. It’s the closest a musical instrument has ever come to the innate cries of the human heart, and I can say (even as an atheist) that if there is a god, surely his/her voice speaks through one. It moves me beyond words.

But don’t let my description deter or confuse you. I don’t mean to imply that the sounds of a Cello are purely mellow or forlornly. A Cello also stimulates me into pure, unmitigated eargasm. Case in point…

Spelunking YouTube recently, I stopped on this magnificent duo who call themselves 2Cellos. Their names are Luka Šulić and Stjepan Hauser and they are from Slovenia and Croatia and what they have done to Michael Jackson’s classic “Smooth Criminal” is, to overuse an often overused cliché, nothing short of breathtaking.

 

Classical purists might scoff (probably because these boys are beautiful), but that’s what purists do. Me? I’m in musical ecstasy (oh, and not because these boys are beautiful).

Update July 24 – Initially, the duo originally uploaded their video to YouTube independently, but that has since been taken down. They signed with Sony Masterworks and have released their debut CD, a thrilling rock/classical hybrid running the gamut from Nirvana to Jackson to Nine Inch Nails to Coldplay. They have their own official Vevo/YouTube page which you can click to see above, and have reuploaded “Smooth Criminal”.  

2Cellos (Luka Sulic & Stjepan Hauser Courtesty their official Facebook page)

Music Box: Presidential Debate (Nashville Edition)

I know it appears that, seemingly, My New Boyfriend is morphing from a momentary place for hilarity and levity to a political ranting pit stop.  My apologies, but I can’t deter my passions sometimes.  So, to even things out, here’s a juxtaposition of both.

Here, in 3 minutes, is last night’s Nashville Presidential debate/song and dance.  Usually, when asked “So, who won the debate?” my answer is “Whoever you’re voting for”.  Last nights victor was this brilliant young man from New York named Michael.  You need to spelunk his YouTube page for other strokes of genius.  Check it out here ~  SCHMOYOHO

Enjoy.  And one last thing ~ I dare you to just try to STOP humming “Who’s gonna work it out, baby, who’s gonna work it out…” It won’t work.   Oh, and if you wanna to sing along (and you will), he has the lyrics on his YouTube page~

Music Box Report Card: The Worst Albums of 2005

Last week I posted my favorite CDs of 2005. And while it’s a hard task (I mean, who wants to intentionally revisit painful memories?), here are the worst musical experiences of my 2005.

1 IL DIVO Il Divo So, Simon Cowell searches the globe for the best opera singers he could find and all we get is this lousy hairshirt?  Four quasi-talented vocalists with faces right out of gay porn?  Their proclivity is toward the house-frau demographic, like an adult Backstreet Boys reunion tour, only the sounds are straight out of Muzak heaven (hell), each pretentious over-melodramatic dirge more consistently inharmonious than the next.   Clay Aiken is Pavarotti by comparison, Lindsay Lohan is Aretha Franklin.  Howlingly misguided, terminally ill-fated.  It will make a fortune.

2 STAIND Chapter IV How could the powers-that-be possibly believe that lunkhead metal from five years ago would have an iota of relevance in 2005?  Aaron Lewis over-emotes more than Chris Carrabba, while the crunching of the chords and the smashing of the drums give their teenage fan base all the reason in the world to believe the lies.  But the dullards who buy into this are the same dimwits first on line in the I Hate Emo bandwagon, the ‘Boy Bands Suck’ collective.  Well, kids, this emo Boy Band sucks too.

3 CELTIC WOMEN Celtic Woman The most revolting piece of Irish drivel since the onslaught of the Enya, this dreary, detestable piece of Irish goop inches slowly up to gold status thanks in no small part to the profusion of PBS. Their animism naive, and the soft-core eroticism snares the male demographic for all its perky refrain. Eire de Toilette indeed.

4 ENYA  Amarantine Almost a year after it’s initial release, and because of the horror of September 11, this hack “singer” [yeah, right] / “songwriter” [oh, please] had the biggest selling piece of tripe of her career with the abhorrent A DAY WITHOUT RAIN, a dismal discord of synths and ooze that the world seemed to grasp onto as a sign of distorted comfort.  Well, she’s baaaack…and as imprudent as ever.  More quasi-Celtic schmaltz coalesced with her archaic wheeze of a voice, it took 5 years to come up with this monstrosity.  She might need a new 9/11.

5 BACKSTREET BOYS Never Gone  Driving the line between has-been stardom and ersatz nostalgia, this painful redux into the lost art of ‘boy bands’ couldn’t be more blatantly manipulative, right down to the almost indistinguishable videos, to the uneven mix of hideous ballads and up-tempo dirges.  What made these boys [men] so irresistible before were their inherent urges to bestow beauty on the landscape.  MILLENNIUM was a teen near-classic based on 4 of the first 5 cuts alone, with their ethereal vocal flourishes wafting you toward reverie signifying nothing but pulchritude.  Here, the gasping of the voices, the pretentiousness of each trying to out-sing the other, and the song selection prove this to be a fatal error in judgment.  What could have been a growing up process morphed into the 3rd coming of New Kids On the Block. Max Martin, where are you?

6 MARIAH CAREY The Emancipation Of Mimi  “The Return of the Voice” it was heralded. More like, the “Attack of the Screaming Mimi”. In the beginning, Carey’s performance art consisted in the technically proficient rather than the emotional tonality. The post-Tommy years saw her dwindle that siren-like screech by leaning toward more hip-hop cred – sort of ‘The Pornification of Mimi’. While those results were more laughable, at least the thought was more laudable, and thank the powers that be, more listenable, albeit never – ever – lovable. Well, to secure both audiences, `Mimi’ juxtaposes both dichotomies to the nth degree. She had a knack for a hook, but her real gift was her rolodex filled with the Who’s Who of producers and arrangers; but you know you’re hard up when even the Neptune’s come up empty handed and Jermaine Dupree feels lost. But mediocrity was always a comfortable bed for Carey to lie in – this commercial comeback garnered Mariah her biggest opening ever, and her 16th [or 17th] #1 single. But, count out artistry here – it’s a genius marketing of a record company getting what they paid for.

7 BON JOVI Have A Nice Day Yes, Jon, 100,000,000 fans could be wrong, especially when your mathematics is a devious lie. But that’s another debate. Proving once and for all that their longevity has little to do with raw talent and plenty to do with pure chutzpah [and an ever-dwindling fan base], the latest in a long line of drek by these cliché-mongering, former pin-up boys proves neither a growth or regression – it’s a quintessential Bon Jovi confection – pallid ballads and unintentionally hilarious faux-rock, over-produced, and in grand, never-let-me-down Jon Bon Jovi fashion, sung with the most bombastic over-the-top whine this side of Celine Dion on steroids. They are so awful they are not even bad enough to enjoy anymore.

8 ASHLEE SIMPSON I Am Me While not off or on the bandwagon of the ‘Ashlee Sucks’ compendium of the past year or so, bringing it upon her uneducated self I might add, I took her SNL snafu for what it was – hell, Britney and Damita Jo herself have never sung live that I’ve ever witnessed [especially on SNL], so why the flack for this wannabe diva-ette?  Because, when the tenacity turns to mendacity, it’s a one-way ticket Where Are They Now?  You’ve heard it all ad nauseam, from Alanis to Avril to Kelly Clarkson to, well, Simpson herself.  Engaging, if not specious on her debut, her vocal was never the matter…it was the strong tunesmith.  Here she aims and fires for the hook, but decimates on contact, channeling various styles unsuccessfully with no sense of songcraft.  There’s no sense of coherence in the songs – her brooding becomes at best, annoying, at worst, pathetic.  It would have been nice for a real triumphant comeback to alleviate the past year or so, but instead she lands flat on her high notes.   And. Lord, there is THAT voice.   Overall, though, it could have been darker, more satanic for poor Ashlee – her first name could be Jessica.

9 NICKELBACK All The Right Reasons  Putrid neo-grungsters who commit the worst sin – not admitting they are putrid neo-grungesters. This replicates their last two albums, and if that’s your cup of vomit, cheers.

10 BURT BACHARACH All This Time  Good lord, where the hell is Dionne Warwick? Not that it’s remotely possible that she could save the banalities here, a socio-political lyric sheet by Bacharach, the composer, which clearly foreshadows senility. Frightened by the weight of the world, he takes to pen and paper for the first time in his career, penning elongated suites, long-winded instrumentals and – gasp! Actually sings a few himself. Grabbing onto hipsters and hip-hop is any sage’s call for help, but who knew that not even Elvis Costeloos, Dr. Dre (“the most extraordinary producer of our time” – Burt’s words, not mine), or Rufus Wainsright could save this. Forget Warwick, where the hell is Hal David?

 

Runners-Up:

BLOODHOUND GANG Hefty Fine How could misogyny, scat and Ralph Wiggums not be any fun?

MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge Power chords, a singer as sonic as an electrocuted simian, they got the quasi-Goth wardrobe down. Though, they’re really Emo in charade (oh, joy.). Perfect for the PopGoth for the the MTV generation. For the rest of civilization, they’re a travesty as cold and calculated as Limp Bizkit.

JASON MRAZ Mr. A-Z Dexterous wordplay doesn’t come close to his smug self-absorption. The most un-sexy artist to muse about sex since Adam Levine, his sophomoric cramming of too-many-puns-per sentences showcases his contrivance over deft, gauche over piquancy. If his preoccupation with sex seems congruous with his goofy frat boy geekiness, it makes it more depressing that he ain’t got the skills.

PAUL MCCARTNEY Chaos and Creation in the Backyard Far be it from mortal me to attempt to knock a legend off his pedestal, but, sick of hearing, every few years when Sir Paul releases a new album that it’s ‘his comeback!’  ‘He hasn’t been this good in years!!’  ‘The best since the 70s!!!’  Please, Rock-N-Roll Hall of Fame solo be damned, he’s never released a masterpiece [closest was his almost-covers CD post-Linda, a fine tribute to 50s nostalgia].  While not as lethargic as ‘Driver Rain’, or cringe-inducing as his last live opus, this is still a major annoyance.  Balanced by John, George and Ringo in the 60s, unbalanced by Linda and – who else? – ever since.

ANDY BELL Electric Blues   Gay disco at it’s most commercially repugnant; there isn’t a hummable track on this hour-long spiral into the depths of top 40 club-land.  Not that Erasure was ever inventive or ground-breaking (they were not), but there were hints of campy nostalgia within each superficial album, which propelled Bell to utilize his atrociously schmaltzy vocals to grand, if not hammy, effect.  On ELECTRIC BLUES he takes his ‘art’ serious, folks, and by serious I mean dueting with his offspring, Jake Shears and losing the preciousness that endeared him to his aging queer fan base.

JENNIFER LOPEZ Rebirth I thought abortion was legal. Then how did this album survive?

SHERYL CROW Wildflower Formulaic enough, she also releases a deluxe edition, with acoustic versions of the track list. Whatever happened to the Sheryl Crow of SHERYL CROW?