Silver

When you see a man somewhere around Cooper Square wearing a metallic silver fringe jacket and tight pants with leopard print patches, hair all bleach blonde and 1908s, it is totally legitimate to follow him into Walgreens. Right?

I <3 Rock-n-Roll.

Suicide Sells Cars

No matter how many “Kill Your Television” bumper stickers I see plastered on the back of a beat up and bent up Volvo, I still watch TV. I guess I am just not hip enough to stop zoning out in front of the ol’ boob tube. One of my favorite things is commercials that have used questionable background music, such as:

2006 ad for Gap denim products. Music: Do Ya by Peaches
(It makes me happy to know that Gap values the support of artists like Peaches who like to wear dildos on stage and write songs entitled Shake Your Dix. I wonder what Peaches got out of the deal. A free Gap denim mini?)

2007 ad for AARP. Music: Everybody’s Happy Nowadays by the Buzzcocks
(I suppose the Buzzcocks, one of Manchester’s seminal punk bands, are getting so old that they need AARP’s help themselves. Still, I always thought that this song was more about modern malaise than celebrating the joys of life.)

2004-present ad for K-9 Advantix. Music: Parody of Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah by Allan Sherman
(And all of the Jews weep. Our culture is going to the dogs! To the dogs, I tell you!)

And, the best one of them all:

2000 ad for the Volkswagen Cambrio. Music: Pink Moon by Nick Drake
(There is nothing like a night out in your new Volkswagen Cambrio with your charming, 20-something friends, laughing and listening to…Nick Drake singing about…well, rumor has it, he is singing about suicide.)

Anyway, I am still obsessed with the Kills, so here is a link to the latest interview with Alison Mosshart. Thank you to The Stranger, Seattle’s only newspaper!

Yes Wow

My faith has been restored.

Recently, I had been going through a very bleak musical phase in which I was listening to a lot of Rufus Wainwright and Belle & Sebastian. Of course, there is nothing wrong with Rufus and his hopelessly romantic/tragically depressed baroque pop epics. And Belle & Sebastian are Scottish which makes them infinitely entertaining. However, when you get down to it, both are kind of dull. Nothing about their music inspired me to twist and shout and spend hours Google researching their respective careers. I want music that scares me, that makes me think, that inspires obsessive hero worship.

And then, deus ex machina, The Kills came into my life. I am not going to reveal how I first heard their music for it would only show just how far I have fallen into the addictive wasteland that is American pop culture. I know that I am a little bit late to jump on The Kills bandwagon. They released their first full-length album (Keep On Your Mean Side) in 2003. Since then, they have toured successfully, been featured in many a trendy magazine, and have even put out a record that defied expectations (for better or for worse, depending on whose reviews you read). But, screw being “up-to-date.” I have now spent $17.08 on iTunes and am a bona fide fan.

The Kills are comprised of the tantalizingly cool Alison “VV” Mosshart and Jamie “Hotel” Hince. Mosshart was once a cherub-faced, spike-haired post-punk and Hince, well, he was once poor. Together they make artful, Velvet Underground-esque rock which surprisingly does not sound retro (unlike, for example, Interpol’s pale imitation of Joy Division). Instead, The Kills make me want to go crazy (see songs: Cat Claw, No Wow, Cheap and Cheerful) or cry (see songs: Rodeo Town, Black Balloon, Last Day of Magic) in the best way possible.

I wanted to write Mosshart and Hince off as pretentious hipsters who make bland statements about “art” and wear skinny jeans. While the band does have a very put together look, music for them is more than a stylized mask. The way that Mosshart jerks her body when performing live indicates, to me at least, that their sound is inspired by something visceral and real.

One thing that I really love about The Kills is that they cite PJ Harvey as a major musical influence. PJ has been putting out amazing records since the early ’90s. Her songs are raw and character-driven. She lulls you into a calm and then screams with the fury of a thousand angry women. I can’t believe that PJ has been around for long enough that she is being cited as an influence (didn’t Stories from the City…Stories from the Sea come out practically yesterday? Oh wait, that was EIGHT YEARS AGO!).

The only thing that disturbs me about The Kills is the weird relationship between Mosshart and Hince. I do not mean their ambiguous sexual past (they did some weird fake guitar sex a la David Bowie and Mick Ronson) but rather the male/female power dynamic. Hince does pretty much all of the talking while Mosshart hides behind her black bangs and black shades, smoking. In one interview, Hince says, “Alison is really shy.” I wonder how this carries over into their musical partnership. Who writes the songs? Whose ideas get put on the records?

Skepticism aside, the band is currently finishing up a Europe/US tour. Hopefully they will put out a new record soon and hit the road again. Until then, there is always YouTube.

On a closing note (or perhaps a introductory one), welcome to my blog! The title is a quotation from the New Testament (Second Corinthians, perhaps?) which was co-opted by Thomas Hardy in Jude the Obscure, a fabulous novel.

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