take a look at this from top to bottom

A friend pointed this site out to me the other day, with the comment that I "shoulda done this." I get respectable number of emails every day hyping and promoting some band or another. Some are slick PR pieces, complete with attached digital presskits, whipped up by professional promoters. Others are sent directly from the bands themselves. Even though most of the material really isn't to my tastes or not easily contextualized as an annotation to an old Captain Marvel story, it's flattering to be noticed...though given recent events, maybe willful obscurity is a wiser course of action.

In any case, I've never been able to bring myself to publicly pillory any of these desperate contenders for my listening attention, no matter how lousy the music or how overblown the hype. (Well, except for that one time where I redacted the names of the parties involved.) As I said then, and many times before, I am not an arbiter of public taste. Do you really need me to tell you that jam bands are antithesis of all that is good and decent?

This is all ground I've covered before, except for one enigma which I finally believe I have resolved. An astonishing number of the acts represented in the promotional emails hew very close to the AOR template established by the Dave Matthews Band/Maroon 5/circa 1996 Goo Goo Dolls. I find that style of music to be aggressively bland and unlistenable in the extreme, but that's beside the point. What baffled me was that someone would be actively and unironically pimping the spiritual heirs of Phil Collins and Michael McDonald to the hipster-heavy music blogging scene. Or that anyone would earnestly hitch their wagons to that particular tired genre star in the year 2008 in the first place.

It eventually dawned on me that what I was seeing were working bands, ambitious lads and lasses with residencies at the local college bar or crab shack, seeking to crack into the big time. It's an understandable dream, but while their inoffensive sound might go well with a plate of softshells, a bottle of microbrew, and some inane conversation, it doesn't carry well to the world outside the realm of soft rock radio.

It's like choosing practical over theoretical study -- the former will likely net you steady work, but the latter offers the better chance of making a massive breakthough and universal acclaim. There is no shame in choosing either path, but transitioning between the two can be difficult. Easier, I think, to just accept the situation and carve a profitable niche in Mix 98.5's AOR ghetto*. Today's hipster darlings are tomorrow's forgotten heroes, but Michael Bolton's stream of royalties is eternal.

If folks do intend to keep sending me info about new artists, however, here's a prime example of what I am interested in listening to...

Statues - Living in Lines (from New People Make Us Nervous, 2008; also available on eMusic) - Top-notch Canadian punk/power pop pointed out to me by a reader (to which I will forever be grateful). The rest of the album is in the same fist-pumping, boot-tapping vein and fills my bitter heart with hope for the future of hooky, well-crafted power pop.

If you go the eMusic route in picking this one up, swing by and nab the Tranzmitors' eponymous 2007 album for more killer punk pop from the Great White North...or if you're low on downloads for this month, just pick up "Alma Blackwell." You won't be sorry.

*I will always remember Mix 98.5, one of the Boston market's many lite rock stations, for the TV ad they ran featuring Janine Turner a few years back. In the spot, the GOP shill-slash-actress let potential listeners know that the station playlist did not contain "lyrics that will embarrass you in front of your kids." Y'know, the same kids who are grooving to "Do Me in Da Butt," by Ephebe Jailbait. Come to think of it, the ad might have been for Magic 106, after all...

you're just wasting my time

When I was in my middle teens, I had difficulties sleeping at night (for reasons I still don't quite comprehend). I eventually discovered that leaving the radio on when I went to bed made it easier to nod off, the background noise serving as an effective lullaby.

My initial choice of listening was the local classic rock station, as the comfortable familiarity of the playlist was tailor-made to doze off to. That changed after a fever-dream plagued night when I woke up to the rock-disco crossover nightmare known as David Bowie's "Fame," the one song capable of forcing me to reassess my otherwise high levels of respect for both The Thin White Duke and John Lennon. I eventually settled on WBZ's evening-through-morning lineup of call in talk radio programs, tuning in at night to Larry Glick and waking up to Dave Maynard.

The overall tone of these shows was light and more than a little corny -- a open community chat format peppered with novelty songs, interviews with local celebrities, trivia contests, and the "blind calls to random payphones" gimmick. The focus was heavily local, with quintessentially parochial discussions involving Bill Buckner's bow-leggedness and nostalgia for landmarks and stomping grounds past, but because WBZ's 50,000-watt signal carried far during the dark hours, there was also a good chance of hearing a caller from Appalachia engage an impromptu spoon-playing performance or demonstration of proper hog-calling techniques.

Jovial and bizarre, though still rather sedate -- the warm conversational tone of these shows made a better sleep aid than a glass of warm milk (which I've found makes for a better ipecac than narcotic). Then 1988 came and irrevocably screwed it all up. Larry Glick, the host who best personified the anarchic coziness of the format, left WBZ (to land at WHDH the following year) and was eventually replaced by the more politically-focused petit conservative snobbery of David Brudnoy. Bob Raleigh, who covered the graveyard shift between Glick's and Maynard's, shifted in style from being Glick-lite towards a more dittohead-friendly approach. It was a transition in keeping with the times, when the Lee Atwater-directed coarsening of public discourse truly came into its ugly own, but my personal reasons for tuning in each evening was not to hear an endless stream of lumpen-ignoramus rants directed at Michael Dukakis and the "libural eleet."

The problem with sensationalistic confrontation as a means of grabbing market share is that the process feeds on itself and pushes the practitioners to escalate the rhetoric to sate the symbiotic hunger of the audience. This hunger, in turn, only grows greater with each successive escalation, causing a perpetual feedback loop of faux populist rage, in nearly every case directed at a conveniently demonized other -- gays, minorities, feminists, liberals, Democrats, and so forth -- to a point where the crassness of the dialogue exceeds anything that would be countenanced otherwise. It reaches, or rather has long since reached, a point where the ringmasters of this pathetic circus feel emboldened enough to indulge in sub-sophomoric jests about hate crimes and "nappy headed ho's", or engage in this sort of inexcusably disgusting behavior without any prior notion of consequence or contrition...until the outrage affects their employer's revenue stream, that is.

Even then, odds are more likely than not that the offending party will blame "political correctness" for the backlash, and not, say, their own persistent disregard for basic concepts of respect and common courtesy in favor of antics that would make a junior high school student blush in shame.

I prefer to sleep in complete silence these days.

Talk Talk - Talk Talk (from The Party's Over, 1982) - I know the critical consensus is that the band's later work represents some revolutionary leap forward in the development of the so-called "post-rock" genre, but I still prefer Talk Talk's earlier, overtly Duranist output.

baby, if you've ever wondered

Out of the dozens of DVD box sets that fill the shelves in our living room, exactly three are solely and completely mine: Pink Lady and Jeff, Bottom, and Bubblegum Crisis. The rest were purchased by (or given to) my wife, and while some of them are of shows that we both enjoy, I still think of them as "hers" since she's the person who actually watches them.

Strangely enough (and despite my strong retrological tendencies) I've chosen to keep to the sidelines during the DVD boxset revolution. While it's wonderful to see so much nostalgia fodder made available to the public, I find myself liking the idea that the entire run of B.J. and The Bear can be obtained at a reasonable price more than the notion of sitting down and actually trying to choke down an episode of the series. It's similar how I feel about the fire department -- I'm glad to know they're out there, but I hope to hell that I'll never have to require their services. Plus, I'm not that much of a TV watcher, and on those occasions when I do plunk myself down in front of the small screen, I'd rather pop in a taped copy of Bad Ronald than watch a Facts of Life marathon on TV Land.

Life is too short, and fuzzy flashbacks to childhood aside, I've come to realize that most programs are best viewed once, if at all, then relegated to memory's distorting mercies.

There are some series whose appeal to me is durable enough to justify the purchase of a box set. Apart from the three I've already mentioned owning, the first (pre-outer space) season of Josie and The Pussycats and the three seasons of The Addams Family occupy low-priority slots on my Amazon wish list...and there's the problem of WKRP in Cincinnati.

Despite a strong and acknowledged demand, the DVD release of the classic sitcom about a struggling Midwestern rock radio station was held up for years over licensing issues. It's a problem which has kept several other favorites of mine -- It Came From Hollywood, Urgh! A Music War, the Region 1 release of Spaced, and the 60's Batman TV series -- from reaching store shelves. The problem stemmed from a change in how music was licensed for television, which given the heavy use of licensed music in the series, put a prohibitive price tag on a home release. Later syndication edits of the show worked around the issue by swapping in generic library music cuts in place of the original songs, and overdubbing dialogue where context required, but the fix was extremely unpopular with the fans.

As a result, the DVD release of WKRP remained in limbo for years, with half-baked rumors of a pending announcement making the rounds of internet fandom. When the official announcement was made last year regarding the first season's upcoming release on DVD there was speculation on the subject of the licensing issues, and whether or not the original or the later syndicated versions of the episodes would be used. The news that the show's creators were going to select replacement tracks as needed was taken as a tentatively positive sign that there would be an effort made to keep as much of the content intact as possible, and perhaps preserve the most contextually important songs through some corporate legal magic.

Instead, the end results turned out to be indistinguishable from the syndication edits, with scenes and dialogue heavily edited (or cut outright) to dodge any licensing issues.

The range of responses to the final products make for some fascinating, if maddening, reading. There are hardcore fans who see it as treason most foul and snotty reviewers who claim that "it's good as we're going to get" while dismissing the fan rants by downplaying the importance of the original music. It is comforting (and by "comforting," I mean "soul-wrenchingly depressing") to know that the eternal circular battle between disproportionate fan-ger and snotty condescension passing as "reasonableness" isn't just limited to comics fandom.

I love WKRP. It was the first "adult" television program I ever followed on a regular basis (though early syndicated repeats -- with the original music -- run weekday evenings on a local UHF station). It's one of the best ensemble cast sitcoms ever made, and unlike a lot of the cynical meanness that passes for TV comedy these days, it had, for lack of a better term, "heart." The reactionary, agriculture-obsessed newsman Les Nessman and the sartorially challenged lounge lizard ad man Herb Tarlek were given a sense of humanity and depth rather than played as simple Midwestern caricatures. Similarly, the "cool" characters in the cast were frequently shown to be all too human.

So, as a strong fan of the show, do I think that having the original music is that important?

I do, but I'm not going to foam at the mouth or declare a flamewar over it. I agree that the writing and acting is able to carry the show even with the cuts and substitutions, but the absence of the licensed tracks does diminish the experience. Given that the show was about a radio station, music played an important part, woven into the overall tapestry in things as subtle as an in-joke (CCR's "It Came out of the Sky" queued up after the disastrous turkey drop) or as accompaniment to a big dramatic or comedic moment (Foreigner's "Hot Blooded" playing in the background as Les sexes himself up with a toupee). Moreover, WKRP's creators thought the use of licensed music was important enough to justify shooting the series on video, instead of on film like the other MTM productions, because it meant lower fees for the music rights.

There's also the matter of historicity in regards to the music used in the show. The period in which WKRP originally ran, 1978-1982, was an incredibly important and interesting time in the history of pop music, encompassing the "death" of disco, the rise of the "new wave," and that mythical era when non-hyphenated "rock" was a powerful ongoing concern. One of the things I love most about WKRP is how it incidentally and unselfconsciously documented these trends, and others, as they happened -- things such as the ever-changing promotional posters (featuring, at certain times, The Selecter, The Clash, and Joe Jackson) in the broadcast booth or, most importantly, the station's playlist which included everything from the Flying Lizards to the Rolling Stones to the cool jazz of Donald Byrd to Frankie Lymon. It's a fascinating, if fictionalized, glimpse into the pre-media consolidation/standardized national format era (and those emerging trends were addressed in a couple episodes of the show) of music broadcasting, and it's a shame that aspect of WKRP has been completely (apart from the posters) redacted from the home video release.

It would have been nice to replace my grainy early syndication taped copies of the show with cleaner DVD versions, but the price for doing so is just too high, in too many ways.


A while back I made a project out of assembling a complete soundtrack for WKRP based on a marathon viewing of the show and various scraps of info found on the internet. It's still a bit shy of being finished, but it does make for some great listening. Here are a few selections pulled from it:

The Sports - Who Listens to the Radio? (from Don't Throw Stones, 1979; collected on The Definitive Collection, 2004) - Australian new wave of the Costello/Parker/Edmunds/Lowe school. With all the various genres and subgenres that have been "revived" in recent years, why hasn't pub rock-inflected power pop been given a new coat of paint and set loose upon the world?

Oh, that's right, it takes actual effort to come up with clever lyrics and killer hooks.

Ted Nugent - Queen of the Forest (from Ted Nugent, 1975) - Normally I wouldn't be caught dead posting something by the Dark Prince of Reactionary Rustbelt Rock, but this track happens to be the song that Dr. Johnny Fever played to kick off WKRP's format change from easy listening to rock in the series pilot, so I'm making a one time exception to my "No Nuge" policy. I'm also dedicating it to Dave Campbell, the Rainy City Madman. He knows why.

Oops, I almost forgot: BOOOOOGER!

Detective - Betcha Won't Dance (from It Takes One to Know One, 1978) - Does this sound punk to you? No? That's because it's "Hoodlum Rock," an absurd made-for-TV offshoot of punk performed by "Scum of the Earth" in a first-season episode of WKRP. One of the members of Scum of the Earth (not to be confused with The Dregs of Humanity) was played by the prolific and multi-talented Michael Des Barres. Detective, Des Barres then-current band, provided SOTE's music. (Des Barres also went on to play a DJ on the short-lived The New WKRP direct-to-syndication sitcom, which was slightly better than The New Monkees but not as good as The New Munsters.)