Miss Piggy Lunchbox

I’ve been skipping those CDs I got from J-mez that are duplicates in my collection, for obvious reason. But if one of them is a duplicate of a cassette I have, well, I’ll give that a truncated treatment.

Honestly, I just don’t feel like doing the full-on review process for a turd like this. This was Mötley Crüe’s fifth album and last before grunge hit. I.e., it was their last album where they were relevant. Their first album was a masterpiece, their second was really good, and the next three were god awful and also their most popular. Dr. Feelgood might be better than Theatre Of Pain, but I think it’s inferior to Girls, Girls, Girls. Gawd, I can’t believe I wrote about Sibelius just two days ago.

So this gets just a quick listen to remind myself that, yes, it sucks, a rating that is an estimate of how many lunchboxes I would give it were I to torture myself with five full listens, and a quick assessment of which songs I’d consider on mixes and want to keep on my DMP.

Estimated Rating:

Mixers: none
Keepers: “Kickstart My Heart”
Filed Between: Dr. Feelgood on cassette and Crüe’s Decade Of Decadence ’81-‘91

I believe I only have two CDs with the word “Argentines” in their lyrics. Both of these CDs have been reviewed here this month. The first is Vampire Weekend (“Mansard Roof,” the first track), and now I encounter the word on Billy Joel’s “That’s Not Her Style,” the first track off of 1989’s Storm Front.

There’s a lot here that you’ll recognize, but for the longest time my iPod was only shuffling through crap like “When In Rome” and “Shameless” and so I couldn’t figure out why this would be the only Billy Joel album in J-mez’ collection. Finally, though, I discovered the presence of “We Didn’t Start The Fire” and everything made sense. (Speaking of finally making sense, check out this awesome Wikipedia page on that song.)

What I still can’t make sense of is Billy Joel. The guy is basically music’s biggest enigma. Chuck Klosterman wrote a great profile of him a while ago that reportedly set off Joel something fierce. A good chunk of the profile is about how Joel craves critical approval, and that’s the crux of the enigma. There’s no questioning Joel’s talent, skill, and work ethic, but for some reason there’s this layer of cheese that creates a bit of an emotional distance between the listener and the songs that keeps Joel just out of reach of a “Great” categorization.

All of which is ironic because you can tell this guy feels intensely in a way that most of us can’t understand. His well-publicized battles with his demons seem to be evidence of that, but we also have a number of songs, primarily ballads, where he cuts right through to the core. The best example of that type of song on Storm Front is “And So It Goes,” whose lyrics encapsulate every sentiment about taking risks for love far more poignantly than nearly any other poet and songwriter has been able to do. “Leningrad” isn’t quite as raw emotionally, but its tale of a “cold war kid” making a connection in adulthood with a Soviet man of the same age reveals how powerful the moment was to Joel and how he owns the power of the history of his lifetime.

Joel probably doesn’t get as much credit as he should from the music world, but I can’t quibble too much with him being confined to his “Very Good” status. He kind of brings it on himself, with that layer of silly, bombastic cheese on top of so many of his songs. “Shameless,” with its opening Bryan-Adams-riff, sounds like it was written for Garth Brooks, who did have a hit covering it, and “Storm Front” pushes a metaphor between weather at sea and romantic relationships well past the point of unintentional parody.

Still, Joel is the master at creating songs that you like, even though you think you shouldn’t, and this album is full of them. I can hear what’s wrong with “We Didn’t Start The Fire” and “I Go To Extremes,” for example, but I still like them. And while I’d never think to categorize this album as “Great,” it’s a damned enjoyable piece of musical craftsmanship, and what else really matters? I hope Joel can arrive at that conclusion for himself and find some peace.

Rating:

Mixer: “And So It Goes”
Non-keepers: “Shameless,” “Storm Front,” “When In Rome”
Filed Between: Joel’s The Bridge and Elton John (Greatest Hits 1970-2002)

If you imagined exactly what a Peter Gabriel collaboration with “world music” heavyweights, including Youssou N’Dour and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, for the soundtrack (it’s more of a score, really) to Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ would sound like, you’d be pretty much dead on.  There are a few surprises here and there, primarily the fascinating rhythmic experiments with flute and flute samples on “Gethsemane,” but for the most part you’ve got a new-age mash-up of 80’s synthesizers, world music instruments, and classic Peter Gabriel elements like the drums to “Land of Confusion” (“Troubled”) and the synth harmonic progressions of “In Your Eyes” (“It Is Accomplished”) sprinkled throughout.  There’s even a person credited with “Lead Tambourine” on a track.  Can you get more pretentious than that?

This combination of modern, technological music with traditional instruments from far-ranging cultures has been done plenty, and it’s usually a misguided attempt to help Western ears get accustomed to “world music”…the equivalent of sticking the dog’s pill inside some table scraps.  Even though this sometimes works out okay, owing to the facts that modern synths are so good and my Western ears wouldn’t know a Doudouk from a Kementché anyway, usually I’d just prefer the world music please.  Oh, and while it does work sometimes, it doesn’t work here: even the best synths of 1989 should never have been paired with these traditional instruments and melodies.

The keepers all come from the more adventurous tracks that begin and end the album.  The middle is one long sleepy-time exploration of timbres, mood, and dozing off.  It’s fitting for a movie score, sure, but it just doesn’t make good listening unless you’re working on a cure for insomnia.

Rating:

Keepers: “Gethsemane,” “Of These, Hope – Reprise,” “A Different Drum,” “Zaar,” “With This Love – Choir,” “The Promise of Shadows”
Filed Between: Full House Spring ’96 Sampler (for Zero Hour Records) and Galactic Cowboys (Galactic Cowboys)

In August of 2003 I proposed to My Baby. I’m still reeling over the fact that she accepted, but she did, so the next day I started formally listening to her CDs, inviting them into the family. By January 2005, already severely slowed by the infamous Pearl Jam purchase made a few weeks after the proposal, I reached Al Green. When I told My Baby I really liked it, she asked why. I decided to write and post a review, and Miss Piggy Lunchbox as you know it was essentially born.

Nearly three years after that first review I have finally reached the end of My Baby’s collection. It’s a milestone and I’m celebrating, but not nearly as much as I did when I reached the end of that damned Pearl Jam tour. There were considerably better highlights in My Baby’s collection than in those concerts. Besides Al Green, other favorites were Linda Ronstadt, Joni Mitchell, and Carole King. A Capella Worship Classics and Nimblefoot are the punchlines of the collection, but the worst was probably Chantal Kreviazuk. Or the relaxation CDs. Ugh.

That’s a bit unfair to an entire country’s popular music, especially considering the Italian CDs My Baby has in her collection were purchased with the assistance of her host mother at what was probably the Italian equivalent of Wal-Mart. Still, though, the thought of My Baby asking for some real Italian CDs before she left and being sold the equivalent of Fine Young Cannibals 15 years later, all the while knowing it wasn’t what she wanted but being unable to express what she really wanted in Italian, is all a little too much for me to take, and hurts along the lines of the original Miss Piggy lunchbox story. So I just prefer to slander an entire nation’s musical output.

Besides, this album came out in 1989, so the fact that it sounds like 80’s music really isn’t that much of an aspersion. Think Phil Collins from that year (But Seriously…) or Genesis’ Invisible Touch from 1986, replace the English lyrics with Italian, and you basically have the sound of this album. There’s even the pretentious “I care” song where the first several minutes of “Madre Dolcissima” feature Tom Brokaw leading in to a segment about the war in Afghanistan.

In fact, there is all kinds of American influence on this record. Guest musicians include Clarence Clemons and David Sancious of the E Street Band and Eric Clapton. Clapton is doing his stupid Clapton thing where he plays a few slow, soaring notes in between verses. I’m not sure where he got his reputation as a good guitar player, but he must have had one or two virtuosic displays early on and just coasts on those songs. Soulful, sure, but there are plenty of soulful guitar players who aren’t as revered as that boring-ass performer. Anyway, I don’t know why there are so many Americans on such a mediocre album, but I wonder if it is similar to celebrities hawking products in Japan. Like maybe they’re sure very few Americans will hear it so they take the payday and the free trip to Italy without worrying about their reputations. God I love making s**t up.

I really don’t like using the word “cheesy” to describe the sound of music, because I think it’s a bit lazy and imprecise. However, when one of your songs is titled “Overdose (D’Amore),” features lyrics like “I need your love/Your love in me,” and even your live drums sound like early, soulless drum machines, you’re kind of inviting the dairy label. There are some interesting moments on here, but I’m happy to have those come up on Shuffle All rather than go out of my way to put this into my CD player in the future.

Rating:

Keepers: “Nice (Nietzsche) Che Dice,” “Il Mare Impetuoso Al Tramonoto Sali’ Sulla Luna e Dietro Una Tendina di Stele…,” “Diavolo In Me,” “Diamante,” “Libera L’amore”