{"id":2191,"date":"2009-06-05T08:34:03","date_gmt":"2009-06-05T12:34:03","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-06-08T22:45:13","modified_gmt":"2009-06-08T22:45:13","slug":"alanis-morissette-are-you-kidding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/alanis-morissette-are-you-kidding\/","title":{"rendered":"Alanis Morissette, Are You Kidding Me?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/NL1Nu3qZLdg?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nI&#8217;m fascinated by <strong>Alanis Morissette<\/strong> &#8211; and my fascination grows as the years pass and I continue to stumble across her latest televised performances. The people in the audience are either paid extras or people who are beginning to think of the &#8217;90s as the best years of their lives, but who, beside me &#8211; ironically &#8211; is tuning into a live performance by Alanis Morissette these days? Just the other night I saw her on <strong>Palladia<\/strong>, a high-def, all-concert performance channel that&#8217;s part of the MTV\/VH1 family.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know the vintage of this performance that I caught, but it must have been from the last couple of years. She had a different hairdo than I&#8217;ve been used to seeing, something almost like the shag worn by <strong>Carol Brady<\/strong>. It was kind of cute. She&#8217;s kind of cute in the way some woman in everyday life, maybe working down the hallway, is kind of cute. Some of you are bound to find fault with her prominent jawline or the lengths she goes to in strategically covering what seems to be a decent but probably flawed body, but have you ever taken a good look at yourself in the mirror?<br \/>\n<!--nextpage--><br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/eF9dc3rQSek?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Morrissette&#8217;s Look is only a small part of why I find her so fascinating. Her stage presence is painfully awkward. When she&#8217;s not anchored at the mic she often struts across the stage arrhythmically, mic in hand (see above video). Sometimes she just lunges forward a step and then walks back, but not in a cool way. And check out her eyes: she makes no discernable eye contact! She seems to be looking off into that world where only B-level actors playing murderous, betrayed wives in telemovies look when they&#8217;re coming clean about their horrible secret. <em>What&#8217;s Morissette&#8217;s horrible secret<\/em>, I find myself thinking?<\/p>\n<p>Have you ever noticed how animated her band members are? I find myself speculating the rigorous training that they go through to look so interested in music that&#8217;s so mediocre. They give off a 6:1 ratio of enthusiasm to actually invigorating musical content. At some point in the &#8217;90s there must have arisen some Bob Fosse of the MTV age to choreograph bands&#8217; stage moves. A series of previous unnatural formations suddenly hit. This MTV-era Fosse must have been integral to the development of Morrissette&#8217;s band members.<\/p>\n<p>Morrissette&#8217;s yuppie audiences are fascinating to study as they nod along in appreciation. Man, I&#8217;m glad I already had my life together, was happily married, and fairly content with who I was in the mid-&#8217;90s. I would hate to have looked back on my life at this time and think that I was eyeballing one of these people as a potential mate. I had displayed enough bad instincts as it was in the &#8217;80s, but at least the women I was checking out weren&#8217;t nodding along to the platitudes of these Morissette songs.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sorry, that&#8217;s harsh and doesn&#8217;t reflect well on me or Ms. Morissette, but I can&#8217;t lie. I spent about 20 minutes, the other night, watching the Carol Brady-tressed Morissette strut arrhythmically across a stage full of unreasonably animated musicians in front of an audience of 30-something people calcifying before my eyes and I still can&#8217;t get it out of my head.<br \/>\n<!--nextpage--><br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dR6mEu5-egA?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nI&#8217;ve barely touched on her music, and maybe it&#8217;s better that way. I have found her music at least potentially engaging since her breakthrough hit, &#8220;You Outta Know.&#8221; (By the way, what early &#8217;70s Motown-related song does that song always remind me of? It&#8217;s been bugging me since the first time I heard it. Are there snatches of &#8220;Band of Gold&#8221; or some late-period Supremes song that were lifted for reconstruction?) Her songs are always annoying in a fairly ambitious way. She makes those ridiculous vocal leaps, tries to add in some slightly exotic instrumentation, and so forth, but I keep thinking that had <em><strong>SCTV<\/strong><\/em> been on the air in the &#8217;90s that <strong>Catherine O&#8217;Hara<\/strong> and <strong>Andrea Martin<\/strong> would have put together some kind of wicked parody of Morissette, or maybe Morissette merged with some other &#8217;90s iconette: <strong>Fiona Morissette<\/strong> or <strong>Alanis Merchant<\/strong>. &#8220;Michael Stipe, I want to ride your tour bus!&#8221; <\/p>\n<p><strong><em>MADtv<\/em><\/strong>, which I believe was created by some people with roots in <em>SCTV<\/em>, tried their hand at a Morrissette parody. It&#8217;s all right, but nowhere near as funny as the real Alanis.<br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/K-sm5-6gaXE?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>For comparison, here&#8217;s a sensitive Alanis, accompanied by two guitarists and <strong>Dave Grohl<\/strong>&#8216;s hairdo on <em>Regis and Kelly<\/em>.  <\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GGbvOHeVs40?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>F-U-N-N-Y!<br \/>\n<!--nextpage--><br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CQ9veFlM2Bg?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nI&#8217;ve always liked the fact that she&#8217;s Canadian and occasionally wondered if her whole act is actually an elaborate gag. To support this suspicion, the suprising development in the unexpected, unintentional humor of this Canadian import was her <em>intentional<\/em> stab at humor, which is almost as successful as her various &#8220;unintentional&#8221; efforts at ticking a rib.<\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/W91sqAs-_-g?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>Then, when I&#8217;m all confused about how I really feel about this Everywoman of the &#8217;90s, she pays homage to <strong>John Lennon<\/strong> with heartfelt attempt at covering &#8220;Dear Prudence.&#8221; Tell me you wouldn&#8217;t take a second look at her if she worked in a cubicle around the corner. <em>She sucks,<\/em> I find myself thinking, <em>but she is sincerely joyous in her attempts at being decent!<\/em><br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CNIdeGV9g34?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<nav class=\"page-links\"><strong>Pages:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/alanis-morissette-are-you-kidding\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">1<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/alanis-morissette-are-you-kidding\/2\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">2<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/alanis-morissette-are-you-kidding\/3\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">3<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/alanis-morissette-are-you-kidding\/4\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">4<\/span><\/a><\/nav>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m fascinated by Alanis Morissette &#8211; and my fascination grows as the years pass and I continue to stumble across her latest televised performances. The people in the audience are either paid extras or people who are beginning to think of the &#8217;90s as the best years of their lives, but who, beside me &#8211; <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/alanis-morissette-are-you-kidding\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[77],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2191"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}