Essay Question: What Will Michael Jackson's Legacy Be?

Like many of you, I've done a lot of thinking and talking about Michael Jackson these last few days, and the question I keep returning to is, what will his legacy be? Of course, it's too early to know for sure, but it's never too early to start speculating, if speculating on the legacy of dead pop stars is the kind of thing you're into. It's certainly the kind of thing I think and talk about anyway.

So I'm tossing it out to you guys, and I hope some of you will answer: How will Michael Jackson be remembered, as a great artist or as a freak? Will future generations enjoy or even remember the man's amazing artwork -- the groundbreaking "Thriller" video, the wedding-reception staple "Billie Jean" (my vote for the best bass line of the '80s, if not all time) and, of course, the Moonwalk -- or focus instead on the man's bizarre personal life -- the changes in appearance, the financial problems, and, of course, the Peter Pan syndrome/sleepovers with kids/child-molestation allegations?

Now, in his time of dying, most of the fan and media attention seems to be on his artwork, as perhaps it should be, out of respect for his passing. But in the 18 years (!!!) between, let's be honest, his last relevant single, "Black or White," and his surprising death, the overwhelming majority of that attention was on everything BUT his music and performances, perhaps as it should have been, considering his incredible shrinking nose and his, ahem, suspicious behavior around other people's children, even if nothing criminal was ever proven.

Face it: The man spent the last THIRD of his life not as a thrilling entertainer, but as a tabloid journalist's wet dream. And what a dream he was! As big as he was as a pop star, I would argue he was even bigger as a supermarket headline. The biggest in the world, I would argue. Would anyone dare disagree?

Rhetorical questions (which I'm going to answer): If he were still alive, would we be buying or even listening to his music so voraciously? (Of course not.) If he were still alive, would we still be calling him "Wacko Jacko"? (Well...)

So, what will Michael Jackson's legacy be? In writing this, I guess I've found my answer. My prediction is this: Sadly (or not, depending on how strongly you believe in his innocence), what people will remember is the freakshow. After all, it's what we've done for that other deposed king, Elvis Presley. I never sat down and listened to Elvis' (surprisingly timeless) music till my late '20s, beyond a handful of hits, yet I thought I knew everything about it, or at least him: Skinny Elvis, Fat Elvis, bad beach movies, the comeback special, peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches, shooting TVs, and dying on a toilet. The artwork didn't remain -- unless you're talking the black velvet variety -- but the trivia sure did. And Michael's is even weirder.

At the moment, we're playing "The Man in the Mirror." But will we still, in 18 years? Will our children play it? Hmm...

Surely, only time will tell. But until that time, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Seriously. Comment away!

Thanks for reading!

Dear Axl

The latest in my series of never-ending essays (which always leave me feeling like I haven't said enough), this is sort of a review of "Chinese Democracy," but more of a review of my relationship to music.

In summary, Guns N' Roses rocks, even when the band is an Axl Rose solo project. And I only get wordier the older I get.

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Dear Axl

Essay by Matthew Webber

Dear Axl,

Your music is so awesome I can taste it in the air. I love your tapes. I play them loud. When I’m angry, they help me. It’s like you understand. And even when I’m sad and lonely and pensive(?), I listen to your music, especially your ballads, and it’s like you’re inside of me, screaming out and listening. I need your music now, and I’ll need it forever. I like it, I love it, I want it, I need it. I can’t imagine life without you and your gift. When girls I like don’t like me back, the times when I’m ugly and stupid and young, when everything ahead of me will surely be a failure, since everything behind me has already failed, and everything else is unspeakable, ineffable(?) – your music speaks out and explains, on repeat. Consoled, understood, even exorcized, really – I play your songs over and over again. I’m just about to graduate and grow into the world, and I can’t wait to hear what you’ll think about that. What will you write, will you sing, will you scream? What will it sound like? Who will we be? Hurry up, Axl, and make some new music. Not just for me, but also for the world, since a world without you is a world without me. I’ll probably never send this, so you’ll probably never read this, but time, all at once, seems fleeting, yet infinite. I think I can hear your new album already. It sounds like an element, not yet discovered. It sounds like a mythical creature, but real. And then it’s gone. If it was ever there. So get in the studio! Crank out some tunes! Don’t make me wait till I’m 30 to know them.

Matthew Webber (1996)

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Dear Axl,

Thank you so much for finally releasing the new Guns N’ Roses album, "Chinese Democracy," last year, seventeen years after your band’s last proper studio albums, "Use Your Illusion I" and "II," fifteen years after your band’s stopgap covers album, "The Spaghetti Incident," and nine years after your band’s stopgap live album, "Live Era ‘87-‘93." Thank you for letting me listen to it. Finally! It feels like I’ve waited my whole life to hear it! Anyway, I have some questions for you: How did those albums sell so many copies? Weren’t there, like, MySpace and iTunes back then? Is it true that your videos got played on MTV? Was Slash from Guitar Hero actually in your band? Have you seen my new movie, "The Secret Life of Bees" yet? My co-star Queen Latifah used to rap; I bet you knew that. Anyway, I hope you’re well. Thanks again for "Chinese Democracy"!

Dakota Fanning

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Dear Axl,

I flew past Best Buy on November 23, shocked not to see an unruly mob of metalheads (I almost typed meatheads, and really, what’s the difference?), but rather just a smattering of early-morning shoppers, braving the cold for some holiday bargains: plasma TVs (whatever that means), DVDs (is that a band?), and this space-age-looking iPod thing (I think it plays cassettes). Other than a cluster(fuck) of pasty, paunchy soccer dads, most of these people were not in line for you, which rendered the scene, and the world, unrecognizable. Remember when the lines used to wrap around the stores? The parties at midnight to celebrate the albums? The women you (not I) abused because of such rabidity, with everyone frothing, crazed for our bands? Well, I can’t forget; it was everything I hated. Everything spiteful, if not xenophobic. Everything shitty, like life and death itself. But now, a new album, and nobody cares? Corporate rock sucks, and everyone knows this? What the hell happened to you and the world? I wish I was alive to enjoy my vindication.

Kurt Cobain

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Dear Axl,

It’s cool that the record finally dropped. But yo, I’m dead, and I’m still making records. Plus, we elected a black man first?!?!?! What the fuck too you so long? Goddamn.

Tupac

*

Dear Axl,

It’s me. I’m just checking in. What’s it been, years, since you sent me a message? Hey, it’s cool. I just wanna chat. I miss you, you know? Or at least I miss your music, the things it said, it did, it meant. The things it represented. The way it felt. I still play your tapes. They’re perfect to jog to! They’re perfect for my anger at world all around me. Fear and confusion and, I don’t know, badness. In fact, I should tell you, I’m still the same person, despite my older age and the fact that I’m skinnier, a scared little boy in the body of a man, or at least in the body of junior in college. The world is too big and too scary; you know this. So why you’d have to go and forsake me, you jerk? Why’d you forsake us all, you big asshole? It’s not just me, man. We all wanna hear you. Sorry for the anger, but fuck, man, we need you. Yeah, the world sucks, but it’s like you understood this. You somehow expressed this and made it okay. How’s the new album? You’re working on it, right? I’d like to review it for my underground paper. Don’t make me make yet another bad joke, the one that compares it to democracy in China, wondering which one will happen in my lifetime, if either one happens at all, that is. Diss! Don’t make me hate you for letting me down. Don’t leave us hanging for longer than you have to. Don’t let us down. No, don’t let me down. And hey, write back, when you get a spare moment! After all, I’m still your biggest fan. I’ll never forget how you saved me in high school. I haven’t moved on. I can’t move on. It’s easier to mock you than to deal with myself.

Matthew Webber (2000)

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Dear Axl,

It looked like a mirage to me, a dream, something fictional. Sitting on a shelf, in a store, to be purchased. My brain was like, what? And my mouth was like, holy! And now my dumb fingers are scribbling to the bone: “'Chinese Democracy?!' Really? No way!” Followed by a string of (expletives deleted). Even in my hands, when I took it to the counter, it didn’t feel real, but fake. Made-up. Heretical. It wasn’t until I got it home, and opened it up, and put it in... and played it once and twice and thrice... and came to know the lyrics and the melodies as memories... as songs my heart was awaiting, forever... exceeded hopes and realized dreams... better than mirages and fictions and fantasies... almost angelic, but no, that’s heretical. Hymns, I guess, you’d call them, right? My ears were like, wow! And my mouth was like (asterisks)! Two months later, I’m still... bemused? But mostly, I’ve accepted its reality as fact. The album exists. In truth. In actuality. There’s nothing to be nonplused about. Right? Nothing requiring magic, or prayer? Nothing requiring divine intervention? I wish I could say I always believed. I wish I could say it and mean it, I mean. And even though I doubted you, I’ve always doubted miracles. Anyway, Axl, your scream is... holy? Your range remains... canonical? The way you make music is... sacred and profane? I totally feel you; I hear your wounds. Please don’t doubt my flattery. Amen.

St. Thomas

*

Dear Axl,

So I copped the album. I had to, right? To hear for myself how badly you’d blown it, how much you overthought and overworked and overmurdered it: a great band’s chemistry, a fan base’s hunger, the whole world’s patience (pardon the pun) to tolerate your douche-itude and wait and wait and wait. (Douchebagosity? Douchebagination? Simple douchebaginess? You tell me.) You think you’re so special, so talented, so tortured. So damn unique in your overreaching brilliance. A self-proclaimed genius, a world-proclaimed recluse, challenging the notion of rock ‘n’ roll itself. What is a song: the performance, or the record? What is a band: the members, or the memory? And what the hell is this, this album you released? What the fuck is this "Chinese Democracy"? Where’s the blues-rock stuff that helped Duff feed his family? Where’s the dumb and easy stuff for crappy bands to imitate? Where are the buzz saws that cut you to the bone, the jet trails that linger as evidence of flight? Where’s that wildcat scream of yours, that feral growl, that snake dance? The panic, the danger, the terror, the guns? Actually, fuck, man, where are the roses? After one listen, I can’t say I hear it: you, Guns N’ Roses, rock ‘n’ roll, music. Noise, I hear. Production. Sterility. But melody? Beauty? Majesty? Greatness? Anything transcendent of short, sorry lives? What a waste of time and money. Not just yours, but mine, all mine. Who’s gonna play this album twice? Who’s gonna buy it, to play it once? Who’s gonna... shit. My iPod’s on repeat. What the fuck is happening? I’m starting to hum? Still no Snakepit, but wow, not bad. Way the fuck better than Velvet Revolver. But still, you shoulda had me play. I totally woulda rocked it. Wanna hit the Chinese buffet with me sometime?

Slash

*

Dear Axl,

The album’s what it is; it’s what it had to be. Your vision. Your truth. Your legacy. Fuck ‘em. It took too long? It’s overproduced? It doesn’t have Slash? What are you, an asshole? No, you’re a genius. They can’t understand. You’re Axl Rose, bitch. And don’t you forget it.

Axl Rose

*

Dear Axl,

I’ve started this letter a dozen different ways, as if you’ll ever read this when you’re Googling yourself, as if you’ll ever know me, or understand, or care. The thing is, Axl, I don’t know myself, and I don’t understand me, much less what I’m writing. But I do care, Axl, beyond all reason, about your music, about all music, about this thing so close to God it’s blasphemous to listen to, to try to sate my appetite for – no, for damnation. I can’t explain it, at least not in words, or else I would’ve done so either here or somewhere else. Lord knows, I’ve tried to. Lord knows, I’ve tried. Forgive me for failing. Father, forgive me. But here I am, trying my hardest. Believe me. I’m 30 years old, and I’m meeker than Jesus, and here I am writing a goddamn epistle, but not about faith or family or love, but no, about music, about Guns N’ Fuckin’ Roses. For seventeen years, I waited and wondered – What will it sound like? What will I think? – and now that it’s here – The Album is here! – what can I say to encapsulate this lifetime? Nothing, that’s what. Or at least that’s what I’ve said. To say any more would, like, obfuscate the truth. (I still like my thesaurus, so that hasn’t changed.) A mere five months of listening is nothing but a blip. A dot on a timeline. A page in a biography. I’ve actually listened to Chinese Democracy. I actually own it. It’s sitting on my shelf. I woke up that morning and sped to Best Buy, infusing every moment with meaning and memory, bracing myself for the letdown – but hoping. Don’t be a disaster. Don’t be a disaster. Oh, Axl Rose, reward me, release me. Well? And? So, what do I think? Review it already! Describe it! Prescribe it! I like it, I think, and I might even love it – but what will I think in seventeen years? Will I still need your music, or music at all? I think I will, but of course, I don’t know. All I can do is take it on faith. But Jesus, I hope so, or my life has been a waste. Anyway, thanks? It’s far from a fiasco. And I haven’t even mentioned that voice of yours. Yowzas! Plus, there’s that ballad... those solos... that sheen... Your music is so awesome I can taste it in the air, even today, as ever before. I still play it loudly. It’s what we both want. It’s what we’ve been waiting for, now and forever. Your music is so awesome I can never finish writing...

Matthew Webber (2009)

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"I Love You": The Worst Song Ever

or, Vanilla Ice Sells Out

Essay by Matthew Webber

The lounge is filled with VIPs: producers, managers, label execs... DJs, dancers, eyebrow stylists... and finally, the dream, the great white hope, the rapper/dancer/entertainer/star to whom a nation of eyes will turn, at least those eyes in junior high, and maybe the eyes of concerned mothers everywhere. The star, the white boy, plays his funky music: fourteen deadly, ice-cold tracks, an album of songs that bum rush the speakers. The DJs say, “Damn!” The girlies go crazy. One of the homeboys eats spaghetti with a spoon. Over the pasta, the lounge smells like happiness – fame, money, world domination – as each dope melody flows into the next. Mics get rocked. Chumps get waxed. Juice gets kicked. It’s colder than ever.

The album ends. It sounds like a hit. The V.I.P. posse congratulates itself.

“If rhyme was a drug, we’d sell it by the gram!”

“We’re cooking MCs like a pound of bacon!”

“It flows like a harpoon daily and nightly!”

Vanilla Ice responds with a simple, “Yup, yup.” Then he rises, starts to leave. “Yo, man, let’s get outta here. Word to your–”

“Stop.” A voice, a stranger, emerges from the ether. “Collaborate and listen.” His suit commands the posse’s attention; otherwise, the jackers would’ve jacked him, and how. “The album’s not done. You need one more song.”

The DJ, Deshay, puts his gauge away, but Vanilla keeps his hand on his nine, just in case. The stranger could be full of eight balls, or worse. He might be a chump; he might act ill. “If the situation in which I’ve just found myself does indeed become a problem,” Vanilla thinks, “then, yo, I’ll solve it.” He’s worked too hard at fabricating his past to let some stranger ruin his future. He’ll keep his composure; it’s time to get loose. For now, though, he’ll listen, and that’s all he’ll do. Collaboration seems out of the question.

“All right,” says the Ice Man. “But this better be a hell of a concept. Conducted and formed. Feasible. At least as much as a chemical spill. Basically, will I wanna step with this?”

“What you need is a song called ‘I Love You,’” says the stranger. “For the ladies.”

“I’m poppin’ it the most,” says Vanilla. “You know what I’m sayin’?”

“Um,” says the stranger. The posse laughs.

“I’m hittin’ hard and the girlies goin’ crazy. Vanilla’s on the mic, man, I’m not lazy.”

“Oh, I wasn’t saying that, Mr. Ice. I know you’re not hooked on that ‘S-S-S-Y’! I’m just saying – I’m just suggesting – that instead of rapping about these girlies – I mean, ladies – you sing a song directly to them. A love song. A ballad. You know, like LL Cool J does. And the ladies love that guy! After all, grown women buy albums, too. It’s not just prepubescent boys, even though there are literally millions of them in the Midwest who are gonna buy your album this year and throw it away next year while subsequently denying they’ve ever heard of you, St. Peter-style.”

“Go on, white boy,” says the Ice Man, suddenly all ears, instead of all cheekbones. He stores away the reference to the Gospels for possible inclusion in the liner notes of his sophomore album. “Go.”

“As you surely must know – you can’t be that dumb – you’re gonna get sold as a product, not an artist. You’re gonna fill a niche for millions of kids who want to like songs with rhythmic speaking, but aren’t quite ready for actual, honest-to-goodness rapping. Something about polysyllables scares them. Or maybe it’s the blackness of every other rapper. Not to play the race card, but come on? Vanilla Ice? Wearing the American flag as a jacket? Middle America will devour you like ice cream! The kids are gonna eat you up!

“They’re gonna shit you out, but still. White boys and white girls will enjoy you going down. The kids who don’t know that you jacked ‘Under Pressure’? They’ll just think the beat is dope, because, lets face it, the beat is dope. Queen and David Bowie? Damn. That’s a beat that can’t be ruined, not even by a flow as simple as yours. If anything, your simplicity helps to sell the song, since the kids can more easily memorize the lyrics – and even bust ‘em out at their weddings! You’ll see.”

“What?” says Vanilla, honored, yet skeptical. His fabricated past should’ve rendered him more dangerous.

“No, really. Trust me on this. It’s you and Sir Mix-A-Lot and the Rednex. You’ll see. And Tiffany’s gonna do Playboy. You’ll love it!”

The Ice Man leans back and imagines the future. He’s blinded by the sweat that rolls into his eyes, one of the perils of shaving his eyebrows. All he can see is Debbie Gibson, naked. And Paula Abdul, strung out on drugs. Tiffany? Drowned, and choking on coins, with a mall cop diving in after her body.

The shadowy ghosts of... reality TV? The specter of something called... YouTube? The fear! Marky Mark at the Oscars? A nightmare! Ice-cold night sweats! Holy fuck! At least his friend Hammer will never go away. One more dance-off, for old time’s sake...

Is this what havin’ a roni is like?

The man in the suit continues his pitch, ignoring the terror, the dying star. “So ‘Ice Ice Baby’ – we know that’s a hit. ‘Conducted and formed?’ It’s quite the high concept. It’s the best ‘brand new invention’ in pop culture since the Ninja Turtles. We really oughta hook you up.

“But that’s just the kids. So, what about their parents? More specifically, what about their mothers? What about their grandmothers?

“Vanilla – if I can call you that – a smart businessman diversifies. You need to expand your portfolio of fans. If you want to last – or at least last longer than Another Bad Creation – you need to appeal to everyone, everywhere. Or at least you need to try. So, try it! Hell, you’ve already got your beatboxing track, as if any hip-hop head could ever take you seriously. You’ve already got your reggae jam, as if you’ve ever a) listened to, enjoyed, or been inspired by reggae; b) seen, talked to, or even, before looking it up in the encyclopedia, had foreknowledge of a ‘Rosta Man’; or c) made friends with black people who aren’t on your payroll.

“You’ve got your dance tracks, your sex jams, your skits. You’ve got a bit of everything, or everything that sucks. Clearly, you’re cool with looking like a sellout. So why not sell out one more time? Why not go the sellout distance – like Costner in the sellout corn! – and add this one more, one last, track?

“Add ‘I Love You.’ For the ladies. And also for the kids who’ll laugh at you later, mocking not you, but themselves for ever listening. Give their lives meaning, in contrast to yours. Your songs are bad, Ice, but this song is bad. Don’t just jump the shark...”

“What?”

“...but catch the shark, mount it on a goalpost, and set the new world record in pole vaulting over that shark.”

“What?”

Poof! He’s gone, in a sulfurous flash.

Vanilla Ice grins. He smells collaboration.

Before the posse knows what hurt ‘em (hint: it wasn’t the aforementioned Hammer), Vanilla Ice enlists other sellouts in project: The songwriter looking for her first big break. The saxophone soloist with hungry mouths to feed. The recording engineer whose lifelong dream is to splice a G-rated phone-sex conversation into the breakdown of a pop song. And every other enabler who hears this track, surely knows how rancid it is, but places it on the To the Extreme album anyway in perhaps the most futile bid for crossover appeal – or appealingness in any form – in the history of recorded sound.

And finally – finally! – the Iceman cometh: cooing, whispering, coughing up a hairball... less like a rapper than a non-native-English speaker, less like a loverman than a heavy breather, less like LL Cool J in the bedroom than Heavy D at the top of a flight of stairs.

Record it. Mix it. Slap it on the album. Sell it to millions of kids... like me.

Burn out, die, and fall to earth.

Vanilla Ice’s “I Love You” is a song bereft: of melody, sincerity, virtuosity, or anything else that makes music musical. Crass, unlistenable, unintentionally hilarious, “I Love You” is, simply, a song bereft. Calling it cheesy insults America’s dairy industry. Calling it schmaltzy demeans yourself, for lacking a stronger, more memorable word. Really, it isn’t a song at all, except when you’re proclaiming it the worst song ever.

I hate you, “I Love You,” and your saxophonist, too.

Goodwill Hunting: MC Hammer

Uh-oh! Here Comes the Hammer Apologia

Essay by Matthew Webber

Best. Album. Ever. (The 1990 Version)

Although I had crushes on several cute classmates, in 1990, I loved three people: MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, and Paula Abdul. (Sure, I loved my family, too, but what kid in middle school listens to his family?) I only regret this last obsession. The Hammer and the Iceman, they’re still at least listenable, as they never dueted with a scatting cartoon cat. They also had nothing to do with Clay Aiken. Admittedly, however, to the Idol judge’s credit, she never shaved designs in her sideburns or eyebrows. (What boy in middle school didn’t want that hairstyle?) But I definitely don’t want to marry her anymore. I’m also over Elizabeth Berkley.

Of the three, the Hammer was probably my favorite. Not only was Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em one of the first albums I ever bought with my own money, but a poster of MC Hammer was one of the first non-baseball posters I ever hung in my room. Keep in mind, at the time, I was only eleven, and I had to ask permission first. (Also keep in mind, I still have that poster.)

But MC Hammer was worth the risk. Of what? I’m not sure, but I feared my mom’s response, since any rap at all back then was rumored to be dangerous. Even a clean rap like “U Can’t Touch This” – which could’ve been a reference to his penis, I suppose – was thought to incite bad behavior in the youth, behavior like dancing and thinking of London.

I was still naive enough to hope for such corruption, for anything badder than skipping my homework, for something as illicit as playing music loudly. Thus, I admired my tape and my poster, taking tiptoed baby steps towards juvenile delinquency, or at least towards a life filled with music that was mine, music my parents simply didn’t get.

MC Hammer spoke to me, and what he said was, “We got to pray.” Clearly, this was a dangerous message. You better believe I followed it nightly. After all, what would he want me to do?

Today, I know the gospel truth: The guy’s about as scary as Neil Patrick Harris, especially in contrast to the rappers who eclipsed him, rappers who rapped about killing each other, rappers who (allegedly) lived out their lyrics. I learned this fact about two years later. Snoop and Dre – now those guys were scary!

All throughout high school, I mocked my former favorite – now known as “Hammer,” without the “MC” – for rapping like a dude in parachute pants, instead of like a dude in pajama pants and shackles. Basically, I thought his music was wack, mostly because of his lyrical content. Plus, he danced, which made him not worth listening to. Why was he dancing – to distract us from his lameness? You didn’t see Tupac doing the Running Man! (Not that I liked Tupac either yet, but still.)

To Hammer’s credit, you didn’t see him dying. I guess that makes them even.

The Hammer Apologia

The time for a Hammer reappraisal is due. Actually, I feel it’s long overdue. Thus, here comes the Hammer apologia. Sure, nostalgia plays a part, as well as the cachet I’ll earn for being a contrarian – for going against the critical grain, for swimming against the critical tide, for spitting into the critical wind, etc., etc, etc. – but no, I’m serious: He’s worth another listen.

Has anyone taken him seriously recently? If they did it in print, I can’t recall. Again, he danced. His raps were clean. His beats seem quaint, if not outdated. Basically, the man’s a joke. The same things I said back in 1993, when I was a freshman who thought he knew everything, are still being said by people who should know better.

This critical consensus belittles MC Hammer, which frankly, I think he doesn’t deserve, and I think this more strongly than simple nostalgia (which, I admit, afflicts me quite acutely).

Now, I’m not saying the man’s a genius. I’m just saying he’s not that bad.

Compare him to his peers from the era, for starters. The great Sir Mix-A-Lot? Wreckx-N-Effect? It’s not that I’ve forgotten the words to their hits, or that I won’t dance when I hear them at a wedding, it’s just that, come on, they’re all about ass!

Mix-A-Lot claims that his song is empowering, and true, there’s some merit in his praise of black women, especially in contrast to the bimbos on Cosmo. It’s worth an exploration in a cultural studies thesis. And true, good ol’ “Rump Shaker” can teach the kids geography, at least it terms of body parts that roughly equal Delaware.

But no one would dare to proclaim these songs as timeless, on par with other wedding songs like “At Last” and “Unchained Melody,” and every other wedding song that you don't mind hearing elsewhere.

Hammer’s positivity remains slightly corny, but twenty years later, it isn’t so embarrassing. (His deep album cut “She’s Soft and Wet,” however, is.) When I hear him at a wedding, he doesn’t make me cringe, beneath my ironic, guilty-pleasure mask.

His two biggest hits, “U Can’t Touch This” and “Pray,” remain more respectable, if not more danceable, than anything out of the Kris Kross katalog.

He doesn’t bear the stigma of misappropriation, of putting on a culture like a star-spangled suit, of faking a background of inner-city poverty. In other words, he’s more credible than my boy Vanilla Ice.

He makes me dance, without the baggage. Without the uncomfortable glances towards grandma.

This was the start of the nineties, people. This was what he was competing against, at least in the realm of top-forty radio. You’ve got to keep these things in context.

Further, if rappers are supposed to keep it real, then Hammer seems as real to me as hip-hop ever gets. The man, after all, was not a gangster; to rap like a gangster would’ve been disingenuous. (Not that this stops other rappers from trying. Not that this stopped him from doing it later.)

The man was a churchgoing, suit-wearing gentleman; thus, he rapped about legal pursuits: praying, dancing, the kids, etc. When he did mention crime, it was always to condemn it, as well as to encourage us to do our best to stop it.

Except for the one time I stole a pack of gum, I tried to follow the Hammer’s advice. “Help the Children.” Sure. Why not? I thought I was helping by rapping along.

So did millions of other kids. And that’s the real problem, the reason he’s a joke: Most of his fans weren’t old enough to drive. He shared a target audience with Paula Abdul.

And even though he gave us all that first sweet taste of rap, long before Biggie and other rap giants, he never got credit for blowing our minds. Sure, we’d hear hip-hop eventually, inevitably, but the simple fact remains that we discovered it through him, we dumb, suburban, mall-shopping kids, me and my friends and gazillions of others.

He might not have inspired the rappers who came after him – I’ve never heard him cited as an influence anyway – but I know he inspired at least one little kid. He inspired me to open my ears, to give his genre, hip-hop, a chance – and maybe even just to give music a chance. I bought his album, I bought his poster, and I’ve identified myself as a music fan ever since.

He did what his rapping peers didn’t do (at least not until I discovered them much later): He let me relate to him. He made me care. He became an artist I could idolize – and love.

My musical obsession started with him.

But even if yours began with someone else, the Hammer, I believe, remains too legit to quit.

My first favorite album deserves another chance. It’s soulful, introspective, and danceable at weddings. It has that rare mix of intelligence and fun. (The fact that it reminds me of my youth doesn’t hurt.) Listening to it again bears this out. If you’ve got a copy lying around, you really ought to try it.

MC Hammer is a true pioneer, and that is a beat, uh, you can’t touch.

Bonus Track: The Song Title Sentence Game

In a bit of serendipity that’s amazed me for two decades, the following three consecutive song titles on Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em form a complete sentence:

Yo!! Sweetness
Help the Children
On Your Face

It doesn’t get any better than that. It just doesn’t.

Goodwill Hunting: Empire Records

The Unified Theory of Empire Records

Review by Matthew Webber

One can suspect that a movie’s gonna suck if the soundtrack gets mentioned more often than the story – especially when that soundtrack is a showcase for the Ape Hangers.

Empire Records kinda sucks.

I saw it once and promptly forgot it, other than a vague recollection of boredom, and a lingering confusion over Joey Lauren Adams, who sounded less squeaky than she did in Chasing Amy, probably because she was now Renee Zellweger. Clearly, I didn’t see it again, or else I would’ve made this realization sooner. But back when I saw it, in 1995, the future Oscar winner was another token blonde, the poor grunge-rock fan’s Joey Lauren Adams. Otherwise, the film was utterly unmemorable. Kinda like the Ape Hangers’ music. And existence.

I couldn’t even recall the soundtrack.

But that’s what they’re selling you, unabashedly, on the box, whose unintended comedy was well worth my two dollars. (Eh, why not? I love the nineties.) “They’re selling music but not selling out,” says the Empire Records tagline on the front. “A killer soundtrack,” says the illustrious Skip Sheffield of the heralded Boca Raton News on the back. “Woof! I’m wearing headphones! Woof!” says the dog on the front.

Even the characters join in the fun, as their dialogue gets turned into advertising copy. To wit:

The director of Pump Up the Volume cranks it up another notch with this comedy about an eventful day in the lives of the young slackers, doers and dreams who work at a bustling store called Empire Records.

“This music is the glue of the world,” one of Empire’s clerks says. “It holds it all together.” Gin Blossoms, the Cranberries, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Cracker, Evan Dando, Better Than Ezra and more hot alternative rock underscores virtually every scene.

It’s not just a movie, it’s the Lollapalooza side stage!

When I took it home and watched it, I didn’t find it horrible. I simply found it hackneyed and shoddily constructed. It’s more like the dried-up glue stick of the world.

Basically, the characters – these slacking, dreaming clerks – reenact their favorite songs. Everyone comes to work as they are, to kind of do work but mostly just to talk. They’re losers, baby, so why don’t you support them? Also, Liv Tyler pouts a lot. Hot!

But then – oh no! – the boss hatches a bogus scheme to sell the store – thus, selling out – to the MegaCorporateDoucheBag record-store chain, I think. A wrist-cutting punk girl shaves her pretty head. A washed-up pop star has sex on a copy machine. A dude in a black turtleneck has to rob the store in order to save it. Or something. It’s not really that important, yo. Not when you’ve got Edwyn Collins on the soundtrack!

So they slack and they dream and they finally, like, do, to keep their store independent (and pricy). They fight the power of an evil corporation! They rage against the consolidation machine! It’s one small step for readers of Spin, one giant leap for future readers of Pitchfork!

Good thing they didn’t have file sharing yet. That would’ve been just a little too ironic.

God, this film is totally nineties. So am I – and I’m totally underwhelmed, now that I’ve seen it too recently to forget it. Everything about it belabors the point. Music: good. Money: bad. Moneyed music: the evil empire. Talk amongst yourselves.

It’s just like Clerks, but with crappier cinematography. Reality Bites, but made for the kids! A Sonic Youth B-side, as covered by Bush!

Plus, it’s little more than an ad for its soundtrack – available now on A&M Records! – thereby undermining its heavy-handed premise.

Again, it's not horrible, just a faded flannel flashback.

* * *

“But, Matt,” you say, when you’re feeling nostalgic, all of you guys who remember Sponge. “What nineties classics would you recommend instead?” Well, that depends on what you miss.

So-so films with dynamite soundtracks? Singles. (Both of which annihilate Empire Records.)

Liv Tyler’s navel? Aerosmith videos. (As mentioned on the back of the Empire Records box.)

Ethan Embry’s cutesy mugging? Can’t Hardly Wait.

Bald chicks? Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” video.

Ape Hangers? Man, I can’t even tell you.

Goodwill Hunting: Boston

Boston Wins Pennants, Records, and Hearts

Essay by Matthew Webber

Pennants

Long before Manny, Big Papi, and Varitek, Boston won it all with a lineup of these guys: Delp. Scholz. Hashian. Sheehan. And finally, The Axe Man, Barry Goudreau, whose velvety blazers were as red as his stirrups. (Further, when Barry “was wearing the collar,” he really was wearing the collar, ya heard? Next to the guys from, say, Kansas or Chicago, Barry stood out with his sharp sense of style. Next to the guys from Boston, he’s shiny.) They formed, like Voltron, to vanquish their foes, actually inspiring that 1980s icon. (Citation needed.) Red Sox Nation embraced them as brothers, and so did a nation starving for heroes, especially those with otherworldly powers – or at least those heroes with spaceship iconography. (Fact: Single-word rock bands were really into aliens.)

And heroes they were, these native sons of Boston! In the year of our lord 1976, the two-hundredth year of America’s independence, these players, these warriors, were re-writing history, reeling off hit after hit after hit, as seen by men in sold-out stadiums and heard by boys on portable radios and cheered by women – and little girls, too – in awe of their mustaches and Hashian’s Afro. (Look at his picture! The thing was magnificent!!) For the first time in decades, since the great Babe Ruth was traded, the standings in the paper showed Boston in first – the city humming like rookies of the year, the nation spinning along with their records – ahead of all other cities, states, and city-states.

Success was like Foreplay; it had been a Long Time. But Boston’s domination gave their fans some Peace of Mind. And Boston was all like, there’s Something About You, so let me Hitch a Ride and enjoy it for awhile. The shared adoration was More Than a Feeling. The players said, “Let Me Take You Home Tonight.” The fans said, “A'ight. It's key party time!” Just another band out of Boston? Ha! The Rock & Roll Band called Boston was Smokin’!

If you don’t believe me, listen to the record!

Or better yet, look: Those spaceships are guitars!

Records

Boston’s Boston is one of those albums: scorned by critics, hipsters, and babies; beloved by disc jockeys, older brothers, and triceratops; and memorized by you without your even knowing it, thanks to its ubiquity at summertime activities, car rides to nowhere with all the windows down, and countdowns with names like the Labor Day 500.

If you’re younger than thirty, it’s always been everywhere, like Red Sox fans in your local (non-Boston) sports bar, or YouTube videos of Red Sox players dancing. If you frequent establishments with jukeboxes, you’ve heard it. If you live in the Midwest, you awkwardly got conceived to it. It’s massive, it’s a juggernaut, it’s a giant leap for rock blocks.

But don’t take my word for it, listen to the record!

I know I’ve heard six of its songs on the radio; I truly believe I’ve heard all eight. To date, it’s been purchased more than seventeen million times, as fans exchange their eight-tracks for microchips and holograms. It remains, where it might remain for all time, as the number-one best-selling debut album ever, millions ahead of your favorite band’s debut. (Fact: Its closest competitor, Rowling & West’s Harry Potter and the Hogwarts Dropout, is millions of fictional album sales behind it.)

Seventeen million?! Listen to the record!

It’s a classic by weight of its sheer popularity, as well as for the grandiose statements it makes. On the back of the record, beneath the obligatory publicity shot of the five grizzled band dudes (well, four plus the nattily attired B. Goudreau) looking all stoic and bad-ass and stuff, is an origin story worthy of a comic book, or the spoken-word intro to a concept album by Rush. What begins as a biography of the band – but really of songwriter, guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, founder, leader, and obvious control freak Tom Scholz – quickly degenerates into a don’t-believe-the-hype diatribe, straight from the Rock & Roll 101 textbook, equating virtuosity with virtues like Truth. Like, how the band started doesn’t really matter, where the members come from doesn’t really matter, and who they are as people? Well, that matters even less, ‘cause the only thing that matters is the music, man. The music! These guys – er, this one guy – can really, truly play. With recording equipment he built himself! So disregard everything you’ve previously heard, and “listen to the record!” Now. Posthaste!

This phrase, this command, gets repeated like a chorus, one, two, three, four overwrought times. It’s fun to imagine a kids’ choir singing it: “Listen to the record! Listen to the record!” Or maybe a robot who sounds like Brad Delp. (R.I.P.) Or maybe these things are only fun to me. But what about a chorus of little kid robots?

But anyway, whatever. Listen to the record!

Here’s one sentence from the back of the record, describing Boston’s music to those who haven’t heard it:

“What distinguishes Boston’s music is although it’s by definition heavy rock & roll, it evidences a greater concern for melodic and harmonic flow than practically any band you can think of working the same general territory.”

Is this how bands gained fans before MySpace? Is this how critics padded their reviews? The italics are mine, because really, WTF? Were Scholz and his P.R. staff the Kanyes of their day? And what do they mean by “territory”? New England? “Melodic and harmonic flow?” Um-kay. And where’s the empirical evidence for this?

Ah, right. Their record sales. Q.E.D.

Boston’s Boston is the greatest! My bad.

Hearts

Boston’s Boston is also one of these: an album of songs I seldom need to listen to, because of how often I’ve heard them in the past, over and over on classic-rock radio, which plays the same songs by the very same bands, before I was born, till after I’m dead, or often enough to strip them of feeling, turning old anthems to standards, to backgrounds, making me forget how they used to mean the world, not just to millions – but also to me.

Knowing, as I do, their every well-placed beat and pitch-perfect scream and overdubbed strum, these songs can’t possibly surprise me anymore, much less excite me or stop my constant searching. Especially these songs, as processed as they are, without human error, or maybe human touch. Math rock, science rock, computer rock, space rock. Full of sound, lacking in fury, they signify nothing much.

And yet, and yet, when I take the band’s advice, when I actually put this record on and listen, as if I’m listening for the very first time, long before DJs ran this ship aground, I’m reminded, as I often am, of how much, yes, I love this: not just this album, and not just this band – which, believe me, is far from my favorite – but all the most played-out classic rock in general, all the most un-hip, un-ironic songs, all the stuff that got me through high school and beyond, in between grunge – whose players chose suicide – and golden-age hip-hop – whose players chose murder – and other fads and genres I fancied for a spell.

But this stuff, the old stuff, the corny stuff, whatever, sounds like my high school weekends and summers, driving from work to the house of my girlfriend, the first girl to like me for more than a month, the girl who, despite our post-Boston ages, listed this album, the decades-old Boston, the one with the spaceships and “More Than a Feeling,” as her all-time, number-one, most-favored favorite, ahead of Van Halen or Journey’s Greatest Hits, some of whose songs she could play on piano, ‘cause Boston was it, boy, The One, the platinum standard.

She was the cutest Boston fan ever.

I liked her so much, I maybe even loved her, even more so for this heartfelt confession, which never seemed silly until I got older, until I read magazines and tried to be a critic – a synonym for “skeptic,” “cynic,” and “jerk store” – ‘cause back in the day, such feelings were simpler, and choices like these weren’t choices at all, and I could just love things because I, like, loved them, just as she loved Boston’s Boston, and I loved things like Aerosmith’s Big Ones. I just loved; I didn’t think. I just loved; I didn’t doubt. I just loved; I was just a kid. I just loved. And that was enough. That was all I had to do.

I loved it all to pieces.

It’s hard for me, now, with actual people, but easy for me with albums and songs, even though music can never love you back, or otherwise get messy, entangled, or real. Music is life, man. It never breaks your heart.

It also never warms you up.

As always, it’s hard to know what I mean.

But even old records I didn’t use to love, even old records I’d previously dismissed, remind me of a time when I wasn’t scared to love, when even old music seemed new to me, and magical, before these old songs seemed tired and ancient, before I seemed ancient to even myself, alone in my apartment playing records and reviewing them, alone in my apartment, alone in my apartment...

And sometimes a song you haven’t played in years, a song you skip when it comes on the radio, a song whose lifeblood you thought you’d sucked dry – a song like this can take you back in time – and maybe, in a spaceship, to a different, radder world – especially one like “More Than a Feeling” – its beautiful intro, its fist-pumping chorus, its lyrics of sunshine and music itself – and seven other songs that, yes, sound the same – which isn’t a knock, ‘cause they all sound so good, technically proficient and climate-controlled – and all you can do is tip-tap this gibberish – em-dash run-on tangent delete (?) – or sit there in silence imagining the girl, until the song ends and you type the word “essay,” something undefinable to everyone but you, someone whose memory surely isn’t right, and then you start typing as fast as you can, to get it all down and discover the truth:

It isn’t really Boston. It’s more. It’s a feeling. It’s comfort rock, like comfort food. It’s youth. It’s love. It’s life. You know?

The shortest thing I’ve written yet. The simplest thing I’ve meant to say.

It’s hard to be objective, when artwork never is.

But Boston’s Boston is fucking amazing.

That’s what I feel when I listen to the record. That’s what I know, or just what I remember, or possibly just what I think might be happening.

And that, I know, is worth recording here, in the year of our lord 2007, eight years into my independent twenties, when Boston players are dancing jigs, when St. Louis boys are listening and writing, thinking of girls they used to know, closing their eyes and slipping away.

This is my history I’m trying to write. This is my soundtrack I’m trying to share. A thousand words are never sufficient. Eighty minutes are never enough.

This could be me or the aliens talking.

Goodwill Hunting: Joni Mitchell

The Big Yellow Circle Game
(Ostensibly, a Joni Mitchell Review)
Essay by Matthew Webber
1. The Prologue, The Apology, or
Getting What You Give

Joni Mitchell hates modern music – except for that one New Radicals hit.

I wish I could cite the source of this outrageousness in order to let you look it up yourself, or at least to prove I’m not insane. The problem is, I read it once – at least, I’m pretty sure I did – so now it’s a fact I drop in conversation, along with other awesome facts like who co-wrote “Rump Shaker” (The Neptunes’ Pharrell Williams!), which Smiths song does T.A.T.U. cover (“How Soon Is Now?”!!), and what’s “The Lemon Song” actually about (not lemons!!!)? For these three facts, I own the proofs: a tape, a CD, and a forehead-slapping duh. Few things in life are known with such certainty. Sadly, friends’ birthdays are not among these things.

But Joni’s screed? I’m sure, but I’m not. Doesn’t it seem like something she’d say, something that should be true, if it isn’t? If nothing else, she likes the New Radicals, putting their song on some “Favorites” kind of mixtape, something I’ve seen at Target, I believe, or some other place with crap you don’t need. Whatever it was, wherever it was, I obviously didn’t purchase the thing, choosing instead some more recent works, possibly something by Avril Lavigne, an artist Joni wishes dead. (Hint: I sometimes dabble in fiction, but also a bit of autobiography.)

From the little I’ve read about Joni through the years, I’ve gathered she’s proud of her work, which she should be, even if she gets kinda prickly about it, and disses other artists who aren’t named Bob Dylan. Her work is “dense” and “rich” and “obtuse,” and other short adjectives that show you I don’t get it. She’s one of those artists whose brilliance I recognize, whose towering influence is something I acknowledge, whose timeless contributions to the arts are unassailable. She’s all that and a bag of fat-free chips.

And yet, I don’t really like her music. Although I certainly appreciate it on an intellectual level, I seldom actually want to play it. I seldom choose to listen to Joni. Even now, as I’m typing this essay, respecting the hell out of everything she’s done, I’m choosing to listen to newer, lesser artists, just like I pretty much do every day. I mean, sure, A Fine Frenzy, whom I’ve seen in concert twice, can write a pretty song – but will they last for forty years? Will Feist outlast her iPod commercial? Who, besides me, even likes Tanya Donelly? Is Jewel even writing songs anymore? Has anyone heard of Charlotte Martin? None of these artists has a trace of Joni’s genius, but yet, they’re all artists whose work I prefer.

So, yes, just to clarify, yes, you’re right, yes, I am absolutely telling you that I’d rather listen to Belly (both albums), Jewel (her first two albums), and an artist (or two) whom you probably haven’t heard of than the great Joni Mitchell. And yes, this makes me a horrible person, and probably an even worse critic to boot.

This is something I can’t defend, but something that, yes, is a part of who I am. Tangents? Cheap shots? Crappy, unworkable metaphors? All of them, too, are who I am, in part – a hack, no doubt, whom Joni would hate. I even write songs that Joni would excoriate. Wouldn’t it be funny if the two of us had beef?

Really, what I am is sorry. I mean that. Sorry for being so, I don’t know, glib. For actually liking a cover tune better – namely, The Counting Crows and Vanessa Carlton version of “Big Yellow Taxi,” which is funkier, poppier, and all-around catchier to my ears – than the Joni original. (Note: According to everyone else I’ve ever met, the cover tune is way more craptacular.) As always, Vanessa’s cooing is sexy, and Duritz and Co. don’t fuck it up too badly. (Note: According to everyone else, they actually do.) I think, again, it’s less obtuse. Sorry, again, for being so terrrible.

To Joni and her fans, I’m sorry. I am. Don’t blame her for inspiring this, even though she truly did. Like, that’s how awesome Joni really is, if she can even inspire me, when I really don't even like her that much! Please continue to listen to Joni – if I’m not doing it, someone has to!

But surely, there’s an artist you also don’t get, someone whose praise you’re tired of hearing, someone whose fans you’re tired of debating, someone you know you’re supposed to adore, even though you’ve tried, and nope, you still don’t, someone like The Beatles, The Clash, or Wesley Willis, someone whose cult you’ve tried to understand, someone whose blah blah greatest band blah. I wouldn’t get too angry if you mocked Tori Amos, probably ‘cause your mockery would finally break my heart. “Tori? Not Joni?” you’d ask as I lay dying. “You know she’s like the originator, right?”

And isn’t that the thing about our All-Time Favorite Artists? We can’t understand why the whole world’s smoking crack. “What do you mean you don’t like My Band? Haven’t you heard Their Life-Changing Album? Doesn’t That Song, The One That Really Speaks To Me, likewise tell you The Truth About The World?”

Me, you, Joni, everyone – perhaps we can all agree on this: The New Radicals’ “You Get What You Give” is one of those timeless songs, despite or because of its happy generalities. (Also, the dude wore this huge floppy hat.) Joni and I completely agree. That is something I know to be true. Except for the whole hating-modern-music thing.

And finally, do you remember the ending, when the Floppy-Hatted Guy dissed all those other artists, some of whom he probably liked? (You do remember this song, though, right? "You Get What You Give"? The New Radicals? No?) Well, maybe you’ll remember me for dissing Joni Mitchell, even though I respect her very, very much, ‘cause that’s just me attracting publicity. That's just me being clever and stuff. If nothing else, I’m just being honest. Because hey, if I thought it could make me superfamous, I’d even be willing to diss my favorite artists. That’s why Ben Folds is dead to me now. And also Jeff Buckley. What? Too soon?

It worked for ol’ Floppy Hat, so why not for me?

Responses to music are never objective. This, I know for a fact.

Hence, I circle, around and around, dancing, while seated, to a dusty old record.

2. The Unread Epic, The Rhyming Interlude, or
If a Tree Gets Killed to Print This Page, Does That Mean Someone’s Actually Reading It?
Sadness is an epigraph, read and forgotten,
Fading to yellow, discarded, unwanted,
Signature ghostly, book cover haunted.
Sadness is an epigraph, read and forgotten.

– “The Unread Epic”

No, that’s not a Joni Mitchell lyric, although Ladies of the Canyon is full of such wisdom, words worth savoring, saving, then sharing – and memorable melodies for the Counting Crows to cover. (“Big Yellow Taxi” appears on the album.) That’s actually a poem I wrote this very day, to share with the people who visit this page, to maybe remember and secret away, ‘cause I write reviews like Pinter writes plays. Joni’s work deserves much better; sorry for writing this, what? This letter? Whatever you think I’m saying, I mean, ‘cause nothing lasts forever, even unrecycled reams. Hey, f’reals, you should read this album, ‘cause Joni’s poems are better than this pathetic pablum. And if there are problems? Yo, I’ll solve ‘em. Check out a book while this record revolves ‘em.

Hate the reviewer, love the reviewed? The point is, her insights are really, really shrewd. And yes, my skills are kind of crude. Thus, you’re going, “Really, dude? Joni Mitchell to ‘Ice Ice Baby’? What’s next? A riff on Britney’s ‘Crazy’? That songs sucks. And so do you. She’s a pro; you’re just a tool.”

You’ve probably forgotten my epigraph already. Even though I wrote it, I’ve forgotten it myself. And even though caffeine makes my hands unsteady, I’ve no one to blame for this game but myself. Before I slide her on the shelf, I better write what I wanted already, especially since I’m repeating myself:

Sadness is an epilogue no one will read.
Rhyme time’s finished. I’ll proceed.

3. The Essay Proper, The Unloved Inscription, or
This Is the Sound of One Hand Scribbling

They break my heart as few things do, those loving inscriptions from parents or lovers, those names and dates on the insides of books, closed for years and given away, to sit on sagging thrift-store shelves, to wait for some cheapskate to find them and read them and take them home for a dollar or less and place them with love on his own sagging shelves. (The aforementioned cheapskate is me, of course.) He can’t understand his fortune and luck, paperback gifts to himself, for a buck? (I have to get my heartbreak from somewhere, right? [Also, I have to bust a rhyme.])

I fear that the books I’ve given as gifts have met with similar, dust-covered fates, maybe read once, if even at all, and put in a box in some dust-covered place – closets, attics, garages, trunks – and finally in the place where they often end up, the place where maybe they’ve always belonged, the place marked “Donations” or “This Is Not Trash,” smelling like memories, mothballs, and mold, next to limp boxes of souvenir cups and screen-printed T-shirts for now-defunct clubs.

You know the place; it's behind your local supermarket. Sometimes it's a big red mailbox-looking thing. Other times, it's just a Dumpster.

In other words, I worry that you've tossed away my gifts, instead of cherishing them forever and ever.

Thus, I don’t write inscriptions anymore. I’d hate for some stranger to read what I’ve written and know the end of my story already. Worse, I’d hate to read it myself, my very own words in my very own scrawl, and know that it’s not just the book that’s been pitched. That is one bargain I never want to find, not in a thrift store or any other place, especially not on the new boyfriend’s shelf, a thing that’s actually happened to me, but only if “actually” really means “never,” which naturally means that it’s possible, right? That is a fiction I never want to live.

I’d much rather find some stranger’s inscription – it’s like a free gift for buying the book! – and squint to decipher the hard-to-read letters and answer the questions the words seem to pose. It’s easy to do if the reason is mentioned: a birthday, graduation, First Communion, just because... It’s harder to do, and more fun, if it isn’t, if I’m left to my guesses for why the book was given – or why this particular copy of Ladies of the Canyon that I now have in my possession features handwritten annotations like “strange but alright,” “bought it for this,” and “don’t care for much” next to every song.

This is a riddle I’ll have to write myself.

Who would write such things, and why?

4. The Complete Annotated Tracklist, or
Joni Mitchell’s Two-Star Review

Here's the back of Ladies of the Canyon, saved from a Goodwill store in Waukesha, Wisconsin, with the previous owner’s comments in italics. (They’re actually written in blue ink.)

“Morning Morgantown”: nice“For Free”: good“Conversation”: OK
“Ladies of the Canyon”: tune OK“Willy”: don’t care for much
“The Arrangement”: strange but alright
“Rainy Night House,” “The Priest,” and “Blue Boy”: strangish
“Big Yellow Taxi”: good“Woodstock”: quite good“The Circle Game”: * bought it for this *

These words in blue ink are what inspired mine. That's what inspired whatever this is.

5. The Essay Continued, Completed, and Capped, or
This Is a Girl, and This Is Me

I picture a girl who’s about to turn thirteen, asking her parents to buy her this record, even though they’ve banned all records from their house, fearing, old-fashionedly, they’ll inspire sex and drugs. It’s 1970, the record is new, and people are amazingly walking on the moon. The future is full of rockets and boyfriends, and all this girl wants is a record of her own, made by an artist who speaks both to and for her, as well as to her friends, whom she’s worried have outgrown her. Her two best friends can loan her this album, but owning it is almost as vital as hearing it. It’s something to touch whenever she wants, something to look at, something to play. It’s something to keep as a secret in her room. Joni understands what her parents never will, trapped as they are in their paved-over paradise, looking out windows only when they're closing them – it’s curtains for them; for them, it’s always twilight. Joni understands there’s more to life than this: clear-cut forests, freshly planted saplings, and brand-new subdivisions ironically named for trees.

Anyway, the girl, whose name is something seasonal, wishes on every shooting star, as well as the ones that merely, feebly twinkle, for Big Ideas like Truth and Love, Understanding and Independence, Becoming a Woman and Seeing the World. She maybe wishes her parents were dead. She closes her eyes to wish and dream; at all other times, she keeps them open wide.

She’s turning thirteen, and this is what she wants. Far from all canyons, she wants to be a lady. What she wants most is to find her perfect self, whoever that is, whatever her soundtrack.

Anyway, of course, her parents disappoint her. Her birthday arrives; her gift does not. Instead, they get her something for them. A book, perhaps; it doesn’t matter. It’s something she won’t remember in a year.

Defiantly, she takes her money (at least they had the foresight and the kindness for that), and buys this record, her first, for herself.

To commemorate this first small transgression of hers, this act of doing something forbidden, she scribbles her thoughts on the back of the record, the first time she'll substitute music for a diary.

The record doesn’t disagree. Joni sings, but she also listens. The girl, our heroine, listens back. Her favorite songs are conversations, revealing her heart and most of its mysteries. (Some will remain for the rest of her life.)

So, she answers. So, she writes. Describing these songs, she’s describing herself – just as I’m doing, right here, right now. Long before blogs or Amazon reviews, I'm giving this girl an outlet for self-expression. I'm substituting Joni for Tori or Belly, as well as fiction for autobiography, while totally projecting myself onto the girl. That’s what all the great writers do. That’s a technique I’m trying to copy.

The problem is, the girl is real. Or rather, someone scribbled those notes. The scribbler is not a fictional character. And here I am, projecting away, and probably getting it totally wrong. I'm probably nowhere near the truth. (The cryptic words could just be graffiti.) Still, it seems we shared the same impulse, to define ourselves through the music we love, or at least to write words for no one but ourselves.

For just one dollar, I got to sneak a peek. For free, I'm giving the world the same chance.

But back to the scribbler, the real-life girl. She wrote those wonderful words for herself: "bought it for this" and "good" and "quite good." What did she mean? She’s the only one who knows.

I read her handwriting, whoever she is, and I hear her talking, now, to me. I hear her voice, and I answer back. More than the album on which they’re written, this lonely girl’s pen strokes inspired me to type. They saddened me, too, like Joni does for others. I think I'm starting to get the appeal. Some of her best songs wrap you up like blankets. Once discovered, now discarded; once a treasure, now a bargain – it’s up to me to save them, reclaim them: the songs, the girl, and maybe myself.

This is not about Joni at all.

Spending our time in music stores and libraries, is anyone reading this grasping for our dreams? We haven’t thrown them away yet, have we? I mean, we’re still writing our lives, are we not? On record sleeves, in unread blogs, we’re still conversing – we’re still alive?

Or else, have all of us – to quote the great New Radicals – "cured the dreamer’s disease" already? Forget Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson – has life come around and kicked our ass in?

I know I spend way too much time in the bargain bins. I know I should make some music of my own. That would be nice, and even OK. That could be quite good.

A final thought, which I'm not making up: They recently paved my apartment building’s parking lot. Across the street, they cut down some trees, in order to put up a similar building. How soon will it be before it blocks the creek? Now, it already does, I think. Not that I actually look out my window. Instead, I sit and type in the dark. Instead, my blinds are tightly closed. The record stopped, but I kept on typing, and all I hear now is the rush of traffic. It kind of sounds like the rush of water – and yet I know it’s not. It’s gone. But don’t it always seem to go?

Yes, it’s strangish. Don’t care for much.

Paradise, for me, is more than one reader.

Goodwill Hunting: Harry Nilsson

Webber Schmebber

Rant by Matthew Webber

I never thought I'd grow to tolerate, much less appreciate, the singer and songwriter of the "you put de lime in de coconut" song, which annoyed me to my nerve endings the few times I chanced to hear it. (What is this? A fruit industry public service announcement?)

So, my latest musical discovery, and my latest musical truth, came as a surprise: Basically, Harry Nilsson was a genius. Despite or because of "Coconut," which sounds more like a Jimmy Buffett song or something by, shudder, Sammy Hagar and the Waboritas than any of Nilsson's other songs, I've bypassed tolerance and shot past acceptance, and I'm well on my way to pure, unabashed fandom. Again, the guy was a musical genius.

Once again, my excellent local library (the same library that recently allowed me to check out indie-rock masterpieces by Arcade Fire and the Ditty Bops) rescued me from my own ignorance with its killer collection of free CDs. When I saw two studio albums and a greatest-hits compilation by Harry Nilsson on the shelves, I remembered how little I knew of the guy and his music and how much I felt I needed to fill these gaps. So I checked them out immediately.

So, three burned CDs and multiple listens later, I'm a convert. I'm a fan. I see why the Beatles loved this guy so much: Beautiful voice (to rival Jeff Buckley's, not that the Beatles would've made that reference), uncorruptable songwriting talent (to rival Lennon/McCartney's), and a truly unique and idiosyncratic artistic vision (to rival his own, I guess). Although his songs sound similar, and similarly great, no two songs sound the same.

The biography on his Wikipedia page, too, is fascinating, from his battles over creative control with his record label to his carousing in Hollywood with a drunken John Lennon.

If you don't know him at all, or if you only know "Coconut," I heartily recommend him, especially if you're a fan of Beatles-esque pop music.

My only complaint is that he includes the word "Schmilsson" in too many of his album titles.

Goodwill Hunting: We Are The World

Record Reviews of Actual Records!

Review by Matthew Webber

The Thesis

My studio apartment doubles as a library, with hundreds of DVDs, CDs, and books – and now, even records, actual records, warped and dusty, but surprisingly playable. For just one dollar, sometimes less, I can add whole albums to my music collection, a bargain too good to be anything but true.

With prices so low – they must be crazy! – I’ll gamble on a record, or two, or a dozen, where maybe I wouldn’t on a higher-priced CD (even though thrift stores sell them, too, often for less than $2.99). I’ll double up on albums I already own, just so I’ll own them in their older, cooler forms. I’ll even buy albums I’ve only slightly heard of, or albums I suspect will suck, just because there’s nothing to lose, except space.

And some people wonder why I don’t have an iPod. Ninety-nine cents for just one track?! Apple’s treasure is this man’s trash; Goodwill’s trash is this man’s treasure. St. Vincent de Paul is my rock (or my source); armories of misfit Toys in the Attics are my salvation.

But anyway, here’s a fossil I found:

USA For Africa, We Are The World

Like The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, an album often named by music magazines and the Sgt. Pepper liner notes as the greatest of all time, the cover of USA For Africa’s We Are The World features a group photo of musicians and melty-faced wax statues (no less than six Jacksons took part in this “historical recording”!) for future pop-cultural historians (um, me, I guess) to struggle to identify. Thankfully for me, there’s a list of names on the front. Sadly for the members of Huey Lewis’ backing band, “& The News” is listed collectively.

Some of the faces are obvious today. Others are James Ingram and Jeffrey “Definitely Not Ozzy” Osborne. But peep this collection of mid-‘80s talent! Dylan, Springsteen, (Lionel) Richie... that Geldof dude who organizes benefits (he also played Pink in Pink Floyd’s The Wall!)... two token blind guys (and four other posers in sunglasses, indoors)... and, leading off the alphabetical lineup, Dan Aykroyd, representing all the white people who ripped off black people’s music, I guess. (In 1985, when this record was released, the Sgt. Pepper-suited Michael Jackson was still identifiable as a member of the latter race. The banana-suited LaToya, however, is as white as Kenny Rogers’ USA For Africa sweatshirt and matching beard.)

But more than merely a “We Are The World” single, We Are The World is an album, you see. Sure, there’s the song that everyone knows, but then you discover the deep album cuts: “Nine Previously Unreleased Songs,” according to the back cover, or “Nine New Superstar Songs!” according to the front (exclamation point mine).

Here’s the tracklist in decreasing superstardom: Prince & The Revolution, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band (so far, so good), Tina Turner, Chicago, The Pointer Sisters (good at one time, or so I’ve been told), Huey Lewis & The News (great in Back To The Future), Steve Perry (solo), and Kenny Rogers (ugh).

The ninth superstar is Northern Lights, a supergroup you’ve never heard of, even though you’ve heard of some of its members. Unfortunately for actual superstars Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, the list of Canadian recording artists (Northern Lights, get it?) is alphabetical, so higher billing goes to the artists you’ve heard of either slightly less or possibly not at all: Bryan Adams, John Candy, Corey Hart, Gordon Lightfoot, Anne Murray, Aldo Nova (who?), Oscar Peterson (um?), and Mike Reno (who’s probably not even real). “And Others” also appear.

But wait! There’s more! Holy pop-cultural artifact, Hatman (my new nickname for the goofily hatted Steve Perry)! The record sleeve is an ad for even more outdated USA For Africa products: books, buttons, pins, posters, sweatshirts, T-shirts, and muscle T-shirts! USA! USA!! USA!!!

Tragically, this offer ended Feb. 1, 1986.

Before I even played this record, I knew the following statements would be true:

1. The title track is gonna be treacly.

2. The superstar B-sides are gonna be bad.

3. This is where Quincy Jones jumped the shark.

After one play, I knew I was right. This processed cheese is why I hate the ‘80s. (The Prince and Bruce cuts aren’t too bad, though.) Also, although we might be the world, we actually harmed the world with this music. (And Steve Perry, please, just reunite with Journey.) I’ll file this record as a conversation starter, not as something I’m going to play.

Goodwill Hunting: Vanilla Ice

Light up a Blunt and Wax a Chump Like a Candle!

(Re-released from the vaults)

Review by Matthew Webber

Regarding Mind Blowin, Vanilla Ice’s second album (yes, he actually released a post-To the Extreme album; actually, he’s released two and when he’s not slicing pickles he’s recording his third Where Are They Now? disc*), a friend asked me if it was as “good” as his debut.

So I blabbered something like the beats are rather primitive and he’s, like, trying to be a gangsta rapper but he’s white and he has no flow and his lyrics are kind of high school poetry-ish and there aren’t any songs that are catchy enough to be singles, but yeah it’s “good.”

Sadly, with the exception of two songs, the album’s as forgettable as MC Hammer albums after he shortened his name to Hammer and Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ albums that don’t include “Come on Eileen.”

But really, it’s not Vanilla Ice’s fault.

Any hardcore Iceman fans/believers or astute watchers of Behind The Music know our hero could actually rap and beatbox. (Remember “Havin’ a Roni”? He can even do that shit live!) But because he was white, his management turned him into a one-hit marionette with the quickest 15 nanoseconds of fame since that “Hey, Mickey, you’re so fine” chick. They draped him in American flags, notched his eyebrows, pompadoured his hair, labeled him the “Elvis of Rap,” cleaned up his lyrics and basically sold him out.

The slap-bracelet wearing set adored him. Anybody else who’d ever listened to real rap acts such as KRS-One and Eric B and Rakim thought he was slightly more real than Milli Vanilli’s live vocals.

Our hero, angry at being discarded like a poopy diaper, rebelled like any repressed child whose parents burned his Twisted Sister albums and would only allow him to listen to Stryper would do: he started smoking weed, ignored the Adam Duritz Postulate (white guys never look good with dreadlocks) and started rapping about dropping bombs on other MCs.

The result is Mind Blowin, an album as excessive as a rebellious teen’s orange hair.

Vanilla Ice really can have an original flow when he wants to. I swear. It’s just that he tries too hard to sound like Snoop Doggy Dogg on songs like “The Wrath”: “It’s like that ‘cause I’m the mizzak, I carry my strizzap/To bust a kizzap, don’t try to jizzak me.”

But give the man some credit. He co-produced every song on the album and responded the only way he knew how to do – through his music – to some of the harshest criticism the music press has ever dished. For this reason, Mind Blowin is worth a listen. It’s a document of a musician at an artistic and critical crossroads, reinventing his image and trying to prove his detractors – who by then made up the entire world – wrong.

Vanilla Ice may never be able recapture the glory of “Ice, Ice Baby.” It’s partly because nobody will let him.

* As of 2001. Not even I followed his career after that.

Goodwill Hunting: Pat Boone

Pat Boone Sells Out, or
Granny Kills Self While Listening to "Heavy Metal" Album

(Re-released from the vaults)

Review by Matthew Webber

I can’t decide what’s more nightmarish: A) a shirtless, gold-chain- and earring-wearing Pat Boone with a freakishly luminescent eye on the front cover of an album, B) a denim-clad, sunglasses-wearing Pat Boone on a Meatloaf-sized motorcycle on the back cover or C) the fact that Pat Boone, his management, his family and his friends thought an album of Pat Boone’s singing heavy metal songs was a marketable - or good - idea.

The resulting album, In a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy, might just make you wet yourself. Not because of how scary the Deep Purple, Ozzy Osbourne and other heavy metal bands’ cover songs are, but because of how giggle-licious they are. Pat Boone’s late-life crisis album is the accidentally funniest CD since any Wesley Willis album.

I’d call Pat Boone’s crossover attempt laudable -- but then I’d change that D to a GH. I mean, nobody should cover a classic like “Stairway to Heaven,” especially a fart who wouldn’t know Led Zeppelin from Alice Cooper if his daughter committed suicide because of one of their backwards Satanic messages, but Pat Boone went ahead and oiled his chest (!) anyway.

The only people who would kill themselves while listening to this album are fans of the original heavy metal bands, grannies and gramps at various nursing homes whose idol just sold out (at least Lawrence Welk keeps it real) or anyone who enjoys good music in general.

In the liner notes, ol’ Patty claims he’s “ a product of the whole rock revolution” and that his fans “would buy anything [he] did.”

Hee hee hee.

Imagine an album full of you and your buddies getting drunk on a Tuesday night, cranking up “Enter Sandman” and “Paradise City” on your karaoke machine and pretending to sound like a sober Frank Sinatra, and you’ve successfully imagined In a Metal Mood and probably wet yourself.

In other words, you absolutely must find yourself a copy of this album!!!

Goodwill Hunting: Millennium Hip-Hop Party

Wanna Review Your Middle School Years?

(Re-released from the vaults)

Review by Matthew Webber

Young MC’s "Bust a Move" music video flashes across the television screen. A geeky music critic (um, not me) grins his whitewashed picket fence grin. He stares into your eyes/soul and does his best Ron Popeil homage:

"Do you remember standing against the wall at your seventh grade dance, admiring the acne-less 90210 reject flop his bowl haircut as he danced the Roger Rabbit and the Running Man as your favorite rapper at the time, MC Hammer, cautioned U not to touch him and your foot tapped uncontrollably but you wouldn’t actually dance at a school dance for another two years?

"Do you remember when the actor Mark Wahlberg was a rapper named Marky Mark? And do you ever lose sleep wondering when the Funky Bunch will get their own Behind The Music episode?

"Do you wax nostalgic for the [here, the geek elaborately quotes with his fingers] ‘hippin’est, hoppin’est cuts in hip-hop history,’ or at least for the poppy machinations that passed for real rap from ’87 to ’92?

"If the answer is yes – and I assure you it should be – then the Millennium Hip-Hop Party is the album for you. Containing eighteen of your puberty’s greatest hits, the Millennium Hip-Hop Party will turn your next party into the Millennium This Friggin' Rules, Dude, Party. Your all-time favorite songs (until you discovered grunge) are together for the first and only time on one CD."

As various members of the studio audience attempt to do me baby, a-do the Humpty Hump, keep doin’ the Hump, the geek advises you to act now and reach for your Visa or Mastercard and purchase the only compilation album you’ll ever need to own, which is only available for an unlimited time and is actually available in stores!

The track listing flows over the babies who got back, around the way girls, parents who just don’t understand and G thangs: Run-DMC’s "Walk This Way," Tone Loc’s "Funky Cold Medina," PM Dawn’s "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss," Arrested Development’s "Tennessee," House of Pain’s "Jump Around," Naughty By Nature’s "Hip Hop Hooray," Snoop Doggy Dogg’s "What’s My Name?" and every aforementioned song to which you still know all the words. (I know you do. You probably still know "Shoop," too.)

As if one compendium of memories from the most awkward years of your life weren’t enough, you can now own the New Millennium Hip-Hop Party, which features "blazin’-hot B-boy favorites to help you get your bounce on" such as Tone Loc’s "Wild Thing," MC Hammer’s "Pray," Naughty By Nature’s "O.P.P.." A Tribe Called Quest’s "Scenario," Coolio’s "Gangsta’s Paradise," Arrested Development’s "People Everyday," DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince’s "Summertime," Snow’s "Informer" (the single greatest song by a white Canadian who sounds Jamaican) and awesome songs you loved but forgot, like N2Deep’s "Back to the Hotel."

To tell you how phat these CDs are, I’ll revert to my pre-nocturnal emission hyperbole and tell you these are the greatest CDs of all time, not only for the songs but also for the hilarious liner notes.

You’ll laugh out loud as Snow "earns his props" as a gangsta rapper worthy of being on the same album as the Notorious B.I.G. You’ll cry when you realize how condescending it is to be a genuine fan of rap music and have to "consider yourself schooled" by the fan site-style language.

The geek says: "If I were to create a mix tape of every song I don’t just love but need, it would sound something like these CDs. Thank you, Rhino records, for doing it for me!"