Covers

When I got out of my car yesterday, I was surprisingly angry. I had been listening to the radio, which is always a mistake, and the station[1] played two pretty bad songs within ten minutes of each other.

The songs were covers. The first was Alien Ant Farm’s cover of Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal,” the second was The Smashing Pumpkins’ cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.”

As the above footnote introduces, I have problems with the mission statement of the particular station playing these songs (which, by the way, I hear played on the station a few times a week – which I think is quite a bit of airtime for songs that genuinely suck and aren’t popular, interesting, current or culturally relevant). It’s an alternative station that really doesn’t play alternative music, not that I really know what alternative music is.[2]

But, I’ll tell you what alternative music isn’t. It isn’t a garage band playing a decades-old song performed by the greatest pop artist of all time and playing it note for note and chord for chord. It also isn’t what’s left after giving the same treatment to one of the most heartfelt songs ever written. This is the kind of shit Glee pulls, and they barely get away with it.

Covering a song, especially a song that was already wildly popular, is risky business, and the decision seems to be made more out of commercial than artistic interests. Hell, you already know people like the song. Pull off a good cover and suddenly your band gets attached to the image of the original performer. If you absolutely kill it, your version of the song might outshine the work of your predecessor, as Jeff Buckley and Manfred Mann did.

What causes me the most dismay is when artists simply replicate songs. Compare AAF’s “Smooth Criminal” to Jackson’s. They sound exactly the same. The instrumentation is the same. The melody is the same. The tone of the singer’s voice is a pitch for pitch match to Michael’s. The same can be said about the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Landslide.” Acoustic guitar: check. Wispy, lonesome voice: check. It’s a cheap replica.

What’s the point? Why make the song, practice it, pay to record and release it if all you are going to do is duplicate a song that already existed? And why should anyone be interested in listening to it when the original still exists?

The Smashing Pumpkins’ failure really demonstrates my point. Maybe the band or the singer connected with the song. Who doesn’t? So they started playing it themselves. And they liked it. And sure, the song is technically good. Nobody’s singing off key or playing out of tune. And it sounds almost exactly the same as Fleetwood Mac. And that’s why if fails. Music is more than notes on a page. Stevie Nicks wrote the song. She created it out of a place in her heart, an experience in her mind and imbued a special energy into it. That energy, unlike the tone of a singer’s voice or the wispiness of a guitar, cannot be replicated. That’s why the Smashing Pumpkins cover rings hollow.

To channel my inner American Idol judge, you’ve got to make the song your own. Put your own energy into the song. I think that’s what separates Jeff Buckley’s version from Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and what gives Buckley’s song a special place in the vast library of musical covers. While playing similar notes and singing the same lyrics to Leonard, Buckley ended up with a completely different song with a completely different feeling and a completely different energy.

It’s what makes his cover magical and other completely unremarkable.

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[1] The station purports to play “alt-music”, but really only plays pop hits that are older than five to ten years. I really have no idea what to define as “alt-music” or how it relates to other genres of music, but a song that make the Billboard-100 isn’t “alt” or “indie”, no matter how old it is. I still enjoy most of the music played on this particular station, I just object to calling its musical choices “alternative.”

[2] My main objection is that I’ve never heard this station play The National, the most awesome and interesting of alt bands. In fact I’ve never heard this station play a song that I haven’t heard on another station.

ESPN Layoffs: Corporate Greed Rears Its Sparkling Head

It appears that Disney has forced sports media giant ESPN to layoff at least 400 employees.

Disney isn’t about to go bankrupt. They rake in millions and millions of dollars, thanks to owning some of the most profitable entities in the world. Disney is everywhere you look, and financial success is always close by. The Marvel superhero movies, the Pixar films, ESPN and ABC television are all huge profit machines, leading Disney to post its highest stock price ever only a few weeks ago.

ESPN itself is a massive money-maker. Half the sports channels on TV are related to ESPN, and new networks covering the SEC and Texas University sports are soon to come. Other numbers related to the company are even more impressive. Recently they announced the construction of a new SportsCenter set which would cost roughly 125 million dollars. They certainly aren’t strapped for cash (unless the people in charge are completely stupid and created the new television programming and ordered the construction of the new set while ESPN lacked the capital to properly fund it all).

So why the layoffs? It appears that ESPN or Disney (or both) understand that these new projects will come at a large cost to the company. Although many of the projects appear to be worth the investment and should give some substantial returns, the short term profits will fall, due to the temporary rise in costs. Unsatisfied with spending even a second without growing profit margins, someone high in the company ordered the layoffs to cut spending and offset the cost of the investments. At least that’s what appears to be happening.

Isn’t this disgusting? The employees at ESPN are hard-working people. They’re honest and decent and kind and all the rest of the bullshit that politicians spout about American people during election season. But, really, they don’t deserve to get fired (unless they do actually deserve to get fired, in which case, they should be fired – but they aren’t being fired, they’re being laid off). And why are they losing their jobs? ESPN isn’t struggling. Neither is Disney. There is no way that argument can be made. They future of those companies looks bright. ESPN has a new SportsCenter set and a bevy new and exciting programming. Disney is in the same position. The Avengers family of films could come out and meet high numbers and the box office until the end of time, and just wait until 2015, when millions of Star Wars films and related paraphernalia smack into America’s collective cultural consciousness.

These entities aren’t in the red. They aren’t losing money or nearing bankruptcy. They’re about to, it seems, experience a tiny blip during which the black number will be smaller than the previous black number on the bottom line. They could wait out that short period and watch profits skyrocket soon after, which they will and everyone knows they will. Instead they’ve chosen to be ruthless, to throw a massive monkey wrench into the lives of around 400 of its hardworking, loyal employees.

That’s capitalism. That’s America. And it’s gross.

The Oklahoma Tornado

The images look like they’ve come from the CGI-created scenes of a movie. I’m not sure anyone could have looked at them and not had their hearts in their mouths, not commiserated with the loss and devastation being experienced by the citizens of Oklahoma.

Unfortunately, the tornado’s devastating path has become the set of something else. Once again the media has invaded, looking to exploit the story of the suffering and turn it into good ratings on the nightly news. It’s something that, unfortunately, seems to happen with every tragedy faced by any people in America.

It’s almost surreal to see Brian Williams and Anderson Cooper standing amidst the wreckage of such a disaster. Maybe that’s why their producers send them to be there. But it also seems completely unnecessary. The use of splintered homes and torn up cul-de-sacs as a setting, as a backdrop to the news man’s somber face seems to belittle the trauma endured by the people of Moore, Oklahoma. The focus of the show, be it NBC Nightly News or the hour-long “special” dedicated to covering the tornado, is that the newspeople are there, that they are standing in the rubble and interviewing the survivors. They aren’t covering the news of the day; they’re making themselves a part of it.

One example is Wolf Blitzer’s interview with one Oklahoma mother. Like most interviews with survivors of tragedy, this one seems completely fake. Wolf absent-mindedly strokes the infant’s leg with his thumb. It may appear that he is being caring and compassionate, but he seems to be playing a part. I imagine him thinking that this could be one of those Iconic News Moments. The baby could start crying, then the mother would too. Imagine how many likes the photo of Wolf Blitzer singlehandedly consoling a traumatized infant and an exhausted mother would get on Facebook? Instead he asks her the awkward and unnecessary question of whether she “thanks the lord” for her survival. Maybe he thinks this is a softball question meant to tie up the interview. Ask a Midwesterner about God, and they’ll surely give some passionate, heartfelt and newsworthy response. Except when that Midwesterner is an atheist.

He and the rest of the media aren’t there to be compassionate and helpful and kind. They’re in Oklahoma, standing on broken homes and demolished schools and torn up playgrounds, to make news, to be a part of the news.

Walter Cronkite never did this. He sat behind a desk, and when he was somber and serious in his reporting, he was truly somber and serious. Nobody rushed him out to be a part of some story. He kept his distance because he was a newsman, a reporter. He wasn’t an actor. He got his information and then he presented it to his audience. He wanted to, and he did, keep his distance from the stories, and it’s what made him one of the greatest that the news media has ever seen.

There is a need for field reporters to gather information and facts, but there isn’t any necessity to bring whole shows, camera crews and television hosts to tragedies and have them stomp through the streets of crushed dreams and broken hearts.

Being Different

In front of the mirror, the Cog appreciates himself. In the glass his imperfections become trophies, his oddities and eccentricities become treasures. He has no hope, no aspirations, of being that perfectly proportioned part of the machine and that makes him all the more ecstatic. Though he might not have a place, he has his self, and what else could one ask for besides ownership, acceptance and happiness of the self.

In front of the mirror, the Cog has confidence. The Cog knows that, despite all history, despite the rejection and the depression and the unhappiness of the past, right now he is happy. He preens for his reflection and the reflection returns the gesture. He has bumps and pits and he has edges that are too rough and edges that are too round, but he doesn’t care. Or he does care, but only in that these make him special, different, commendable and therefore important.

Unfortunately, he knows that it won’t last. The cog knows that he’ll have to return, back to the machine, back to the other cogs.

When he is where he belongs, the Cog becomes a cog.

While he’s there, all the imperfections that he once celebrated will become reviled. He will be ground down to fit in, made painfully aware of how different he is, how he would never fit in.

There, mashed into place, stuffed where he belongs, a cog feels most alone.

Making Too Much of Mad Men (S6/E8)

We want control.

That’s obvious. But we still want it. And maybe we want it more intensely because of that.

We want her, the doctor’s wife. We want her to help us recover when we are sick, to ask us if we like it, to give oatmeal (or soup) when we are sick. We want a favorite toy, something that will drive too fast, that will take us hunting. We want something we can break, even if we break it only to demonstrate our own power.

Or we want the opposite of control.

We want to tap dance on a bum leg. We want to strut around the office, shouting inspirational madness and misspelling Chevy and we want to do it all without any sense of shame. We want to stand beneath a picture of an apple, bleeding from a puncture wound in our arm, and we want to laugh and joke about how we don’t even feel a thing.

Too much control leaves us passed out cold on the ground, exhausted from a manic exertion. Too little leaves the back door open for some imitation grandmother to swoop in and steal all of our watches.

We all seem so grown up, but we’re really just kids.

Last night Don Draper did what has become a habit for him over the last few seasons. He is no longer the invincible alpha male, this time turning away the chance to conquer a lonely female, instead of seeking one out. There was a time when all that strutting and shouting about patience and determination and winning would have been met with rousing cheers rather than blank stares and a sarcastic “Well, that was inspirational.” There was a time when Draper could have dominated the Chevy workload by himself, with nothing more than a nap, a trip to the movies and a few sips of a dry whiskey. But he’s slipped. Now, he can’t even manage to come up with a coherent idea, despite being jacked up on a “vitamin” shot.

I’m reminded of Beowulf, the Saxon hero who, in his prime, had the strength to tear horrible monsters limb from limb. Then, as an aged king, pride brought him to his death, face to face with a dragon, and his arrogance left his kingdom without a future. What dragon will bring Don Draper to his demise? What hero will prove to be his successor?

Congratulations to Betty, for proving to be the most skin-crawlingly annoying character on the screen, despite appearing for only about half of a minute in the episode.

The Cycle

Does anyone else notice that everyone lives life pretty much in the same way?

How many people in the United States get a steady job, work 9 to 5, five days a week? How many buy a sensible car with good gas mileage, room for groceries and maybe kids?

I think it’s a lot.

These people get married between the ages of 25 and 30, mostly between the months of April and July. They start families and move to a reasonably big house in the suburbs. Then, after arriving in the burbs, they spend their days commuting into some city to work in some office or factory, pressing buttons or pushing papers. On the weekends, they mow the lawn and pull weeds out of the front garden.

Sometimes they take vacations, mostly to Disney World. They might head to Busch Gardens, just to be different.

That’s life. That’s life?

Everyone seems programmed. Graduate high school, go to college, get a job, marry someone, move to the suburbs, have children and hang out in Nowheresville until death or retirement. Nobody is thinking. At least it seems to me like nobody is thinking.

Because what never occurs to me is the possibility that for the large percentage of the world who aren’t writers or actors or Wall Street stock brokers, that kind of life is pleasant and comfortable, instead of boring and asphyxiating. Who wouldn’t want to work a steady job or drive a comfortable car or live in a well-kept, upscale neighborhood? What’s wrong with watching Two and A Half Men and Two Broke Girls?

Nothing, besides the fact that, you know, there’s nothing all that spectacular or great about it either.

Gatsby Stumbling

Baz Luhrmann took on a pretty extraordinary task in adapting one of the more classic American novels to film. I think he did a pretty bad job of it.

It was flashy, as one would expect from Luhrmann, and the flashy elements were done well, as one would expect from Luhrmann.

Unfortunately, The Great Gatsby is not a flashy story. It isn’t about the doomed love between Jay and Daisy. It isn’t about, as Tobey Maguire’s Nick Carraway spells out at the end of the movie, Gatsby’s persistent and striving optimism.

It’s a brilliant story about pathetic people.

That’s what Luhrmann’s Gatsby is missing. There’s too much color, too much flash and too much fun for the movie to be considered at all faithful to the book. Baz has taken Fitzgerald’s brilliant social criticism, his brilliant study of characters, and morphed Gatsby into a run of the mill blockbuster love story, which should have been expected.

Things were missing. The funeral was completely (and incorrectly) rewritten. Gatz’ father, who brings some sort of closure to the arc of his son, never appears. My favorite line[1], which I think encapsulates the themes of the story, the problems with Gatsby, was somehow cut, although the scene in which it was said and the character who said it remained.

Most concerning was how, despite Leonardo DiCaprio’s best efforts, Gatsby was portrayed as some kind of hero. Carraway’s narration is only ever glowing when it regards the man, again missing the complexity of Fitzgerald’s writing. If there’s any point that should come across in any retelling of The Great Gatsby it’s that the story’s namesake is a fraud chasing shallow wealth and glory, that his love for Daisy isn’t true, it’s just another bauble for his mantle, another fine shirt to hang in his closet.

While walking out of the theater, I considered that someone had failed to read the book before watching the movie. And that someone probably walked away satisfied, instead of shocked and furious as I was. And that someone would forever misunderstand the true brilliance of Fitzgerald’s Gatsby.

Lurhmann recreates the basic plot of Gatsby, he even spices it up a bit with 3D effects and bright colors, but he fails to tell the true story.

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[1] Owl-Eyes standing in Gatsby’s library exclaims that the books are “absolutely real – have pages and everything. I thought they’d be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they’re absolutely real.”