In honor of Mardi Gras, may I make a slightly ungracious request?
Feb 122013
Mr. Moderator
Feb 112013
“We Are Young,” the big hit song from fun., isn’t that bad. I can handle the kidz digging it. It’s upbeat. It’s hopeful. It’s over the top in a way that Queen already got me used to hearing and at least appreciating in my youth. I heard an interview with the band last year, and I could stomach that as well. They seemed like nice guys.
Beside some other song my younger son likes by them that sounds like Paul Simon’s “Cecilia” I’d never heard another lick of their music nor seen them perform. While flipping channels last night I stumbled across their performance on the GRAMMYS. This is all I watched of last night’s GRAMMYS.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xxfh5yThe band’s collective Flock of Seagulls Look was not appealing to me, but I could laugh about it. I’m not one to spot poor pitch, but I felt the singer was way sharp on a number of notes. Earlier yesterday I heard U2’s “New Year’s Day” on the radio and thought to myself, “For as frequently as I’m subjected to hearing this song and for all the emotion Bono is exuding I should like this song just a little by now.” I find “New Year’s Day” completely boring, but at least Bono seems to hit his notes. Whatever, it wasn’t like the fun. singer hitting his notes would have made this Styx-like song any better.
The one thing I could not get beyond was the singer’s clam-digger jeggings. Come on, man, that’s a bad Look! I hate the ’80s. I’d like to punch that entire decade in the face.
Feb 112013
Since rock instrumentals don’t provide a whole lot of vocals, I will spare you any summaries of the contestants in this battle. If the song titles and tunes don’t immediately match up in your mind’s ear, click the following videos and help us determine—once and for all—the Best Rock Instrumental of the 1960s.
Feb 112013
It’s become commonplace now at giant events like Super Bowl halftime shows and awards shows to see an artist perform to an audience of a couple hundred beautiful, enthusiastic, coordinated fans-for-hire doing what I call cheer-syncing (or crowd-syncing), a term I propose adding to our RTH Glossary. Sometimes the camera pulls back to show the crowd rushing the stage as they are set free from their holding pen. In the case of The Rolling Stones’ 2006 halftime show the cheer-syncing professionals were actually enclosed in a pen within the band’s stage. Talk about a captive audience.
Everyone is beautiful. Everyone’s got their hand raised to the heavens, like they’re in a Pentecostal church. There can’t be that many Pentecostal churchgoers at televised rock performances, can there?
How far back does this practice of hiring an audience to crowd the foot of the stage and essentially pee their pants in unison does this practice go? Was this idea spawned after choreographed rock performances in Jesus Christ Superstar and Tommy? No one really cheers like that do they? How often does an audience actually rally around a performer the way they do on these televised spectacles?
Feb 102013
Where’s this episode of The Brady Bunch been all my life?
The above photo reopens my childhood adoration of Marcia Brady. There was nothing special between us, like the bond I felt with my first TV crush, Room 222‘s Karen Valentine. I didn’t choose Marcia; she demanded my adoration, as she did the adoration of any red-blooded American boy of my generation. Even though Jan would make a late run for my pre-teen affections, Marcia was perfect in that unattainable way drives boys to master the fingering of a C chord or some other skill in vain effort to rise above.
This image came to me courtesy of Robbie Rist‘s Facebook page. Only Greg got to play guitar on the show. Not Robbie’s Oliver. Not Marcia. Guess our little heads would have been blown had they let her strap on an SG.
Have you come across a shocking photo of a non-musical celebrity playing an instrument that you previously had no idea he or she played? Share it here. Thank you.
Feb 092013
You know you’ve been waiting for this one! The People have asked for a decision on this, and we will work together to supply the answer—once and for all!
What’s the greatest white Afro in rock? It can be natural or the result of a perm, but no wigs! It can be an artist’s running Look or a 1-time affair. The nominees and the RTH People’s Poll follow…after the jump!
Feb 082013
This 1970 performance of “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours” by Stevie Wonder shocked me on a few levels. First, it never occurred to me that the song was released in 1970. I grew up with that song and all of Stevie’s big hits, but as a greatest hits/anthology-type Stevie Wonder fan I’ve never gotten to know the ins and outs of individual studio albums. I would have pegged that single for a couple of years earlier, like 1967 or 1968, the era when Smokey Robinson & the Miracles were cranking out similarly sleek, driving productions like “Tears of a Clown.”
