MUSICIANS ON MUSIC
Musicians On Music is a weekly column in which we feature exactly that: musicians, both local and national, writing about music, the industry, other people’s music, or whatever they feel like writing. This week we feature Mike, Nick, and Frank from In, one of the most exciting – though least internet-searchable – new bands cropping up in Brooklyn. Our writer Drew Citron sat down with In last week, where they talked about trying to understand the ’80s. This week In continues their quest by examining one particular ’80s phenomenon: the Pizza Jam.

For a brief period between the early ’80s and the early ’90s – our childhoods – pizza was the flagship token of the tyke zeitgeist. This was when the mechanics of massive-scale corporate food production and commercial television were in full swing, mostly unchecked and uncriticized. The possibility of a certain kind of instantaneous common experience, minted in movies and proliferated in broadcast TV, had become mundane, elementary. We were getting reamed by the capitalist machine, but we were kids: there’s an honest intimacy to any crucial developmental experience, and a huge portion of ours was spent under the influence of the advertising aesthetics of the day. And so often, we were served pizza, with bright colors, a way-cool demeanor, and a subtly slamming soundtrack. These last – the pizza jams – became a part of our first language, as instrumental as “Uh-oh,” and “Mommy.”

We don’t want to revere pizza in particular – the Ninja Turtles turned it into a godhead, and we’ll leave that kowtowing in the sewer – it’s a useful locus; it’s got its greasy imprint all over late-20th century issues of post-Spockian child-rearing, technology and literacy, gender, violence in the media, the apex of the fast food nation, the rancid dream of free-market economics, and, in retrospect, authorship and the epistemology of art-making. For lots of attentive people of a certain age and demographic, the term “Pizza Jam” barely needs explication. We know it’s that pizza sound that gets kids moving as fast as their legs’ll get them to the nearest Hut. It’s that carefree vibe cut through with visions of gooey cheese and extra pepperoni. No anchovies, no worries. You eat this stuff with your fingers. You put your elbows on the table. You do some armpit farts. Whatever.
More on Pizza Jams: Soundtracking the Fantasy of the Everyday

HATE TO ADMIT IT, BUT…
Cutting Crew
“(I Just) Died In Your Arms”
1986 | Virgin Records

When I think about what’s wrong with the 80s, the first thing that pops into my mind is Cutting Crew and their biggest American hit, 1986’s “(I Just) Died In Your Arms.” I was seven years old when Cutting Crew’s first album, Broadcast, dropped and ascended immediately to the top of the American pop charts. I can, very vividly, remember hearing the tune, its staccato synth strings, and Nick Van Eede’s declaration that, “I just died in your arms tonight.” I can also remember, very vividly, thinking that Van Eede’s grammar was awful.

Think about it: One man is so shaken by a lover that he suffers a fatal collapse, is reborn, only to write and record a mawkish ballad about the night? Lovemaking included? I can think of multiple scenarios as to how this could all have happened in one night. One, Van Eede (or his narrator) is a piss-poor lover. It was over so quick that he had time to take a shower and write a song about it. Kind of pathetic (though it happens to everyone, to be sure). Two, lovemaking was not even a factor, and he wrote this song about a hug, or maybe someone administering CPR, in which case, who cares? Sex is always implied in good pop music. Always. If we’re discounting sex between these two, we can safely declare this not a good pop song. Third, this is one of those Dark Tower-esque nights, where the Gunslinger has a story to tell, and time bends sympathetically, lasting until the story’s conclusion. As it happens, Cutting Crew’s Broadcast predates Stephen King’s Wizard and Glass (the Dark Tower volume in which time bends sympathetically to allow Roland to tell his backstory) by twelve years. Fourth, Nick Van Eede is a liar. His titular night never happened, and he’s making up a story to preserve face. It’s fine (it’s occasionally required) to lie within the confines of pop music, but what’s the point of making up a bad story?

Of those four scenarios, none of them change the fact that “(I Just) Died In Your Arms” makes me want to puke in my hat. Nick Van Eede sings like a howling, boring dog. Guitarist Kevin Scott MacMichael sounds like he’s playing in another room, with no monitor to hear what everyone else is playing. The lyrics are inane to the point that I can’t remember anything beyond that dumb, dumb hook. I have just listened to “(I Just) Died In Your Arms” five times in a row, and I cannot find a single redeeming factor about it. Inane dreck is just as harmful as carcinogens and free radicals, and “(I Just) Died in Your Arms” is, indeed, purely inane dreck.

by Brook Pridemore

HATE TO ADMIT IT, BUT…
Hall and Oates
“Maneater”
H2O
1982 | RCA

Hall and Oates’ biggest hit, 1982’s “Maneater,” sits amid a pile of singles that, in my mind, exist as true multimedia pieces, the music video inseparable from the song. Think about it: can one really listen to that “Lust For Life”-on-downers beat without visualizing that menacing glare on Daryl Hall’s face? Can the casual listener hear that saxophone without seeing Oates’ semi-obscured by shadows, attempting to be cool, but coming off geeky?

Neither the song nor video have aged particularly well, and the single has been mercilessly plowed through the irony machine by numerous bands since – which is easy to understand, when one considers that “Maneater” embodies many of the 1980s clichés that became passé after punk “broke” in 1991 (i.e. that whole grunge thing). But let’s take a look at a few facts about Hall and Oates’ greatest contribution to music — you might be surprised by how cool “Maneater” is.

First, consider the afforementioned Iggy Pop-lite rhythm, bassist “T-Bone” Wolk’s steady, un-fuckwithable groove, and the dual reggae guitar attack by Oates and G.E. Smith. This supposedly lame pop song manages, in a mere four minutes and twenty-eight seconds, to tip it’s hat to punk, new wave and reggae, all while remaining comfortably beneath the un-hip umbrella of Adult Oriented Rock.

A full year before The Police’s punk-reggae synthesis put Synchronicity into eight million homes, Oates and Smith’s tasteful, steadfast jamming on the one and three brought the Two-Tone beat a little closer to mass public consciousness. While Oates is content to palm mute away on a Fender Stratocaster, Smith’s playing a Danelectro, his taste for the crappy-but-dependable guitars falls smack in the dead zone between Dan-Os 60s heyday and late-90s resurgence. And the sax: ubiquitous in 80s pop (thanks in no small part to the fierce playing of Eddie Money and the E Street Band’s Clarence Clemons) keeps the band firmly rooted in the popular cultural idioms of 1982, despite their delving into cooler, uncharted sonic waters.
More on Hall and Oates | “Maneater”

HATE TO ADMIT IT, BUT…
Eddie Money
“Take Me Home Tonight”
Can’t Hold Back
1986 | Columbia

The trick to elevating a hit song to the status of true classic is twofold. First, embrace the idiocy of pop music. Eddie Money’s biggest hit, “Take Me Home Tonight,” is silly, stupid good fun. Containing many of the most ridiculous conventions of mid-80s pop (pointless saxophone solo, vaguely Asian-sounding keys a la “Turning Japanese”), “Take Me Home Tonight” works first and foremost because, when listening to the song, you can hear the smile on Eddie’s face, you can feel his tongue firmly in cheek. It’s refreshing to hear a song that knows it’s a goof, after years upon years of foolish irony masquerading as high art. Eddie, and everyone involved with the track, is clearly having a good time making the song. And the good time had in the studio translates immediately into a good time had by the listener. There’s no trick to the accessibility of “Take Me Home Tonight,” and that’s why it was such a big hit.
More on Eddie Money | “Take Me Home Tonight”

TOP DOG
According to a recent interview given to the Philippines-based Inquirer, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has announced that “NIN as a touring live band or live band that’s on the road all the time is stopping.” Reznor explains his intention is to pursue other musical collaborations and keep NIN active sans touring. Reznor says, “the only way to get a paycheck is to play live,” so one can estimate he’s financially comfortable for now.

Over the last couple years, Reznor has relied heavily on information technology to promote and sell NIN. On NIN’s Myspace page you can find avenues to purchase hi-res photos of this lady-killer or follow him on Facebook. And of course, there was the NIN iPhone app fiasco. Apple rejected NIN’s app because of objectionable content on NIN’s “The Downward Spiral” album, although Reznor harshly criticized Apple’s reasoning on a NIN forum.

Regardless, a break in NIN’s touring only means that Reznor will reunite with Exotic Birds, a Cleveland electro band that he was in during the 80s. In this video of a 1985 interview on Cleveland TV, Reznor, looking like a cross between Screech and Jason Schwartzman, explains concepts of electronic music to us. Young Reznor’s voice cracks and his hair looks something like a jerri curl. If all goes well, Exotic Birds will playing “Rhythm of Machinery,” at Bar Matchless before we see the end of 2009.

by Thomas Wilk

ART OF SONG
The Gories
“Thunderbird ESQ”
I Know You Fine, But How You Doin’
1990 | New Rose

There is wine that you savor. Uncork the bottle, let it breathe, and when you finally have a sip, you taste all the complicated notes and comment on the finish. And then there is Thunderbird. A “low-end fortified wine” (read: bum wine), Thunderbird is a sickly yellow color unlike any wine I have ever seen or experienced. I was warned that if I drank too much of it, it would turn my mouth black. And, perhaps most importantly, it has 17.5% alcohol by volume.

This is the shit that gets you drunk.

It makes sense then that The Gories, when thinking about a wine to write a song about, chose not Reisling or Chardonnay, but this toxic concoction. Why? Because, and I’ll say it again: this is the shit that gets you drunk. And what, pray tell, is more rock and roll than being blackout drunk on cheap ghetto wine?
More on The Gories | “Thunderbird ESQ”

HOLY MUSICIAN, BATMAN…

The first time I heard Joan Armatrading, it was last year while watching an old episode of Saturday Night Live on DVD. She performed a song called “Love and Affection” that I quite liked, so I decided to find out more. I got a two-CD anthology from the library called, appropriately, Love and Affection, that covers 1975-1983, which seems to be widely considered Armatrading’s prime period.  From there, I’ve gone on to listen to about half of her recorded output.

Armatrading is hard to pin down exactly. The constant that ties her work together is the subject of love – about ninety percent of her songs are about the good and bad of male-female relationships – and the emotions she is able to wring from that topic.  But rather than seeming like a one-note performer, Armatrading creates music that is undeniably eclectic. On her earliest recordings and also in her recent work, the music sounds very folky and jazzy, sometimes bluesy. Other times it’s unashamedly pop-rock. Usually it bears a Caribbean influence, and sometimes it’s straight-up reggae.
More on Joan Armatrading

HOLY MUSICIAN, BATMAN…

If you know anything about Elvis Costello and his relationship with his former backing band from the 70s and 80s, The Attractions, then you know that he hate hate hates Bruce Thomas, The Attractions’s bass player. In fact, the only difference between The Attractions and Costello’s “new” backing band (current tour excepted), The Imposters, is that Davey Faragher from Cracker now plays bass.

Some music writers have gone so far as to call Bruce Thomas Costello’s “nemesis.” It surely doesn’t help that Thomas wrote a wafer-thinly-veiled roman à clef about life on the road, in which he reportedly painted Costello with quite unflattering colors (though I haven’t read the book yet, so I can’t say for sure). This bad blood has led Costello to boldly state that The Imposters have a superior rhythm section to The Attractions, and he’s even gone so far as to say that the old records had interesting bass playing but never had a groove.

This rivalry begs the question: what’s so bad about Bruce Thomas? Well, in truth, absolutely nothing. In fact, I’ve often used him in arguments as an example of a bass player who does a hell of a lot more than fart out the root notes of every chord. His playing is excited and funky, like he forgot he’s supposed to be playing new-wave rock and instead thought maybe he was subbing in for James Jamerson on a Motown revival tour. He crafts catchy melodies, accentuated by rubbery slides down the neck of the bass, creating undeniably infectious grooves.
More on Bruce Thomas, Elvis Costello and The Attractions