Music Review: Ghostface Killah, “The Big Doe Rehab” (Island Def Jam) * * * *
Ghostface Killah’s “Fishscale” emerged in 2006 as the antidote to the boring boom-bass boasting of Rick Ross. In sharp contrast to the dumb-as-dirt rhymes of that one-note hustler, the sweeping, widescreen stories of Ghostface proved to be hip-hop’s equivalent to crime writers George Pelicanos and Dennis Lehane. “The Big Doe Rehab” suffers from comparison to “Fishscale” and the absence of MF Doom as producer — Doom is largely replaced here by Diddy’s Hitmen — but still, the erstwhile Wu-Tang Clan rapper is the greatest rhyming crime novelist, armed with a microphone instead of a laptop.
The bar is raised high with “Yolanda’s House,” in which Ghostface weaves a tense account of a drug deal going supremely wrong, forcing the protagonist to flee the scene and seek help from Method Man. “We Celebrate” offers a ringside look at a dealer’s high life set against a Rare Earth sample — it’s the wretched excess before the fall, and Ghostface makes it all cinematic and hard boiled.
When Ghostface tells these tales against lush ‘70s soul grooves, there is never a question of how this will turn out. The devil is in the details, and as chanteuse Chrisette Michele cautions him at the end to “Slow Down,” it’s clear that the Tony Montana wannabe in “The Big Doe Rehab” might need to lie low and put the yacht in storage. Right now, hip-hop simply does not have a better storyteller.
Led Zeppelin Wire Round-Up
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| LONDON (AP) — On the morning after Led Zeppelin’s long-awaited reunion concert, the music reviewers were already calling for more.
Playing a full set for the first time in nearly three decades, the authors of “Stairway to Heaven” and “Whole Lotta Love” rocked the O2 Arena on Monday for more than two hours, leaving fans from around the world gasping in delight. “With a synergy like this going on, it would be an act of cosmic perversity to stop now,” Pete Paphides of The Times of London wrote. The band’s three surviving members — singer Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page and bassist-keyboardist John Paul Jones — were joined at the sold-out benefit show by the late John Bonham’s son Jason on drums. The 16-song set mixed the classics with the thumping “Kashmir” and the hard-rocking “Dazed and Confused,” which Plant introduced by saying, “There are certain songs that have to be there, and this is one of them.” Plant’s high-pitched screeches and moans also filled the arena, while Page used a cello bow during the solo in “Dazed and Confused” and picked on his double-necked guitar to ring out the famous notes to “Stairway.” Although a full tour remains a mystery — Plant is reportedly due to tour with bluegrass star Alison Krauss — the band surely proved that it still had what it takes to keep an audience interested. “Page dispensed power chords like an aged Thor lobbing down thunderbolts for kicks,” Paphides wrote about “Black Dog,” the band’s third song of the night. Other media also hailed the show as a success. “They sound awesomely tight,” Alexis Petridis wrote in Tuesday’s The Guardian. David Cheal of The Daily Telegraph said the band’s “familiar old sinew and swagger were still there.” The Independent was a little less effusive in its praise, but Andy Gill did write that the call-and-response routine between Plant and Page during “Black Dog” was “one of the night’s more engaging moments.” Gill also singled out Bonham, who was sitting in for his father. John Bonham died in 1980 after choking on his own vomit, leading to the band’s breakup a few months later. “Jason Bonham makes a more than merely able replacement for his father on drums: indeed, there’s a stronger funk element to his playing which kicks the songs along with more elan,” Gill wrote. In the Evening Standard, John Aizlewood gave the concert five stars. “Two hours and 10 minutes after they began `Good Times Bad Times,’ … they had assuaged the doubts and delivered a show of breathtaking power and spine-tingling excitement,” Aizlewood wrote. The New York Times reviewer Ben Ratliff said Plant “was authoritative; he was dignified.” “As for Mr. Page, his guitar solos weren’t as frenetic and articulated as they used to be, but that only drove home the point that they were always secondary to the riffs, which on Monday were enormous, nasty, glorious,” Ratliff wrote. Kim Murphy of the Los Angeles Times said the band “played the first sets with easygoing confidence. Their good humor built into triumphant intensity as the night wore on.” Daily Star writer James Cabooter may have written what all Zep fans have been thinking since the concert was announced months ago. “Led Zep were pure class,” he wrote. “Now bring on the full reunion tour.” |
Led Zeppelin Rehearsal, Dec. 9, O2 Arena, London
I have seen the future of rock ‘n’ roll and its name is The Dirty Projectors
The drums and wires group recently released “Rise Above,” a collection of 11 songs from Black Flag’s classic disc, “Damaged,” but played like Fela Kuti. It’s out there, and it’s surprisingly bracing and beautiful — even “Six Pack.”
McCartney is Chuffed
Paul McCartney, right, shortly before being mugged by Pete Doherty.
An official statement from Macca: “I’m very pleased with these Grammy nominations for my latest album, Memory Almost Full. I had a lot of fun making it with David Kahne and my band and am very pleased with how successful it has been, particularly because of the way we got it out to people in a new and interesting way. I’m chuffed that people are enjoying the album and am really pleased that it’s been recognised by all the voters.”
I love “chuffed.” Very nice. I’m certain there are ointments for that.
Apology Not Accepted
OneRepublic, plenty of apologies
It is not your imagination: you really are hearing “Apologize” by OneRepublic featuring Timbaland all the time. And you probably thought it was Maroon 5 the first 1,000 times it dribbled through the speakers.
According to a Dec. 1 story in the New York Times, the string-laden and lightly remixed ballad, which currently sits at No. 2 this week on the Billboard singles chart, just set a record for the number of times a song has been played on radio stations throughout the country in one week: 10,240 spins.
And one Philadelphia station jammed the thing into its listeners’ ears 123 times one week in November. For those keeping score at home, that is once every 90 minutes on average, or just enough to warrant a perusal of the Geneva Conventions.
“Apologize” is not a terrible song by any means, although it seems chiefly geared to people who cannot abide the full-tilt rocking assault of The Fray. But is it good enough to warrant such an enthusiastic pummeling from radio?
The short answer is no, but “Apologize” is getting the platinum treatment because it is a music marketer’s dream, a cross-format mélange of hip-hop beats and smooth love-man crooning from what is ostensibly a rock band, featuring grafted-on taps and beeps courtesy of Timbaland. It plays on every format except rock and country stations, and just wait — a lap steel and fiddle remix cannot be far behind.
But the Times article indicates that this is the way the world has been turning for awhile. “Apologize” broke the record that was just set by Fergie’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry” in July, and eight out of the 10 most-played songs in history are from the past three years. Radio is now as repetitive as Timbaland’s beat box.
The strategy is not being driven by the collective public’s desire to hear OneRepublic as often as possible without breaking into mellow spasms. Radio is hoping that everyone who wants to hear the song at least once a day will get to hear it during their brief window of listening, and will thus be locked into the oncoming torrent of ads for new cars or new bars.
But this is not how many of us are consuming music these days. In the pre-digital era, teenagers and lonely adults sat for hours waiting to hear their favorite song on the radio. Now, especially in Philadelphia, the wait is sharply attenuated, but for 99 cents, that song can be downloaded in seconds and played 123 times a week — or more — on demand.
So who is being courted by radio stations that cannot “Apologize” enough? Is it people who do not have access to computers, or listeners who cannot figure out how to use iTunes? Extremely passive people?
None of those groups seem like demographics that are setting the market on fire.
DVD Review, “Balls of Fury” *
“Balls of Fury” obviously was dreamed up after the success of “Dodgeball,” but as cheap and stupid comedies go, this feels shopworn, like it was shot 20 years ago in the heyday of Leslie Nielsen slapstick. Maybe it’s the Def Leppard shirts worn by the shrill hair farmer Dan Fogler (a dead ringer for Curtis “Booger” Armstrong of “Revenge of the Nerds”), or maybe it’s the antique, Charlie Chan-style depiction of Asians, but “Balls of Fury” feels like a bad day at Blockbuster in 1990.
Fogler plays Randy Daytona, a former Olympic ping pong contender who went down in flames at the 1988 Summer Olympics. Reduced to awful supper-club demonstrations, the FBI recruits the distressingly metal-coiffed Randy to defeat Feng (Christopher Walken in full Ming the Merciless drag), the evil arch-nemesis who killed his father over gambling debts.
Walken’s puzzling appearance in “Balls of Fury” begs the question: what would the man turn down? But he is not the only decent talent scraping bottom here: veteran character actor James Hong, Aisha Tyler, model Maggie Q and comedian Patton Oswalt all cash checks from First Bank of Hell. Fogler never fails to annoy, and the titular joke keeps coming up like bad mu shu pork, making “Balls of Fury” a low-aimed serve with no score.
Music Review: Daft Punk, “Alive 2007″ (Virgin) * * * 1/2
The joke about Daft Punk live shows is the same one told about Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode: “Fifty buck to watch someone push a button? Count me in!” But like recent live collections by both of those synth-rock pioneers, Daft Punk’s “Alive 2007” proves that it takes more than alternating current and a disc drive to make this band’s electronic throb catch fire. This tour quickly became legendary for its pure spectacle and ecstatic dance eruptions, but even when the visuals are stripped out, “Alive 2007” is one of the best hour-long mega-mixes on the market.
“Alive 2007” begins with “Robot Rock” from 2005’s disappointing “Human After All,” but Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo take even this material and transform it into a rock ‘em, sock ‘em rave-up. The beat barely stops and the two robo-mixers prove genius at maintaining mood, throwing in favorites such as “Around the World,” “Harder Better Faster Stronger,” “Da Funk” and “One More Time” just when the crowd needs a charge.
A decade ago, Daft Punk released “Alive 1997,” a landmark, one-track disc that included a 16-minute version of “Da Funk.” These days, armed with more material and greater opportunity for energy jolts, the duo is even better at starting the party, and with “Alive 2007,” Daft Punk is playing at your house.
Random 10 for Dec. 4, 2007
1. Ben Folds Five, “Your Redneck Past.” “Choose from any number of magazines/ Who do you want to be, Billy Idol or Kool Moe Dee?” Folds sings on one of the few and best songs about growing up in a rural area but blessed/cursed with city sensibilities. Folds and I were born just a few days apart, so I specifically relate to what he’s talking about here. Granted, in the mid-’80s in Jenks, Oklahoma, it wasn’t exactly a choice between going pro rodeo or writing an atonal kraut rock-influenced opera based on the life of the Dalai Lama, but it was not easy. My editor at the Trojan Torch used to complain about me writing too many reviews of bands no one knew.
Q: “Why don’t you write about Journey?”
A: “Well, (a) Frontiers is a year old, and (2) Everyone knows what Journey sounds like.” Lather, rinse, repeat.
2. Kanye West, “Touch the Sky.”
3. A Girl Called Eddy, “Did You See the Moon Tonight?”
4. Ween, “Object.”
5. Sondre Lerche, “After All.” This year, Lerche attracted a lot more attention for writing the songs in “Dan in Real Life,” and his return to rock structures, Phantom Punch, was virtually ignored. Punch did not deserve it: this man is a Costello in the making.
6. Funkadelic, “Hit It and Quit It.”
7. Supergrass, “Tonight.”
8. The Eames Era, “Benjamin.”
9. The Picture, “So Many Days.”
10. Bat For Lashes, “What’s a Girl to Do?” This is a first-line contender for best video of the year — equal parts “Donnie Darko” and Flaming Lips, but the song is something else entirely, a throwback to Kate Bush-style drama that will give you the creepy creeps.
Evangelicals, “Last Christmas on Earth”
The superb Norman prog-pop band Evangelicals contributed this magnificently spacey confection to Mistletonia, a holiday collection put out by their Australia label. It is being made available as a download here. Listen well: this is a fine appetizer for the release of the band’s new collection, The Evening Descends, on Jan. 22.
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