Rolling Teenpop 2006 Thread

(They've also got another MySpace page from when they were marketing themselves as the Nelson Twins, and a Website where you can download among other things a clip of their strangely bright cover of the Everly Bros. "All I Gotta Do Is Dream.")

"umgawa": i like this more, mainly for the chorus chant, which is superb; the verses are somewhat more negligible, though i like when the guy's voice turns into james chance toward the end. anyway: the ubangi stomp in the ubangi style. and right, it beats jon spencer.

(by the way, is this the thread where we'd talk about the new teena marie album? she's even less teenpop than stacey q, but what the heck. well...even though there's a photo of teena holding a guitar inside for the first time since forever probably AND a 100-line-or-so poem eulogy to rick james inside the CD booklet, and even though as always i was totally obsessed with it for a day so, i'm pretty convinced by now that, as usual, a la' the last who knows how many albums, this one's way too buried in mushola. best track seems to be "love is a gangsta," though i could be wrong. also one song has her reversing two lines from james taylor's "you've got a friend.")

RE: Ashlee's nose: There's the possibilty of some--I'm being an awful voyeur of human dstruction here--some serious DEAD RINGERS drama in this sad act.

It made me think of that movie where she plays the shelpy best pal to someone--eternally upbeat, very inside herself and yet giving to her (forgotten, for me) star. TRhe last image of that I recall is her looking at her retreating friend with an expression that seems to say, 'I'm second best--and that's how it should be.'

Actually, I'd probably have argued that no hip-hop is minimalist since even the sparest hip-hop is feeding off a large ENVIRONMENT. Whereas Minimalism as an art movement is trying to pull you into the minimal rather than into the environment.

In fact, I know virtually nothing about Minimalism the art movement, so if all goes well I'm all wrong.

There's not much whispering in "Vans," only some whispered punctuation gasps. There's a lot of vocodoring, however, all up and over and around the scenery.

http://www.myspace.com/futureinplastics

Speaking of Vans, I'm not all that surprised that the Warped Tour 06 sampler leaves me cold. Most of these guys all sound the same even when they don't sound the same.

the history of emo
Current mood: tired
Category: Life

Hip hop is the basis of my dance class, and my school career (anybody remember "no Scrub" by TLC ? ya that was my first hip hop experiance-5th grade). It is also all you hear at my school "MT. McGhetto" so of coarse I'm into it.Ya I went through my 'pop phase'. It consisted of phrases like "I don't like BSB, but I'll stand Nsync" & "I don't like Britney Spears, but I like SOME of her songs. Besides I'm only going to the concert because my mom wants me too". LOL-Sixth grade was so naive and simple. Ever since I had ears to hear tho, I was listening to whatever my sister (aka role model) played. She was born in 1981 (6 years before me) so I heard the first of the Beastie Boys, Hoobastank, No Doubt and Smashing Pumpkins...when they were still 100% good...and the 80s and 90s were burned into my subconscious and heart along with u2, the cure...and all that jazz that I won't even list. So that led me to my Seventh grade phase (with my punk/goth-antiprep-don't label us friends- yes Marilyn manson actually screamed into my ears through headphones) and created the "emo" musik freak I am today. I prolly donT define emo the way the rest of you do cuz itZ not a label or a look or w/e to me. You don't define Emo, & it doesn't define you, & you don't define yourself as it...your loves, likes, and life do all that for you. I guess you can say it is a "symbionic reltionship" between EMOness and your personality that EFFECT (not define) each other. NEway, For me itZ a lifestyle, how i think, love and act. i do use it to describe a look or a band...etc, but only for lack of a better term. in the case of music, it's more of an indescribable sound that only the depth of my heart understands. It is basically something about a song, any song that hits me hard enough to make me want to leap & cry at the same out of love and beauty for that "something" and makes me say,"THAT is why music is my life!" ya I know, I'm wierd (that's how my BF puts it). But hey, emo IS short for emotional. I know Mary (who'll prolly never see this) will agree with me on this one. Music is life and expression for many..."to each his own" cuz 'he' will be the only person to ever understand his way and his personality...and that is what musik is for anyway.

k.. sooooo
i was walking down the street
all innocently and stuffff
and i pass by an EMO
yes, thats terrible, i know!
&& thats not even the end of it!
he's with his friend
((yes, ANOTHER emo))
&& he said
"yuu think the exorcism of Emily Rose is hawt right?"
and his emo friend says
"well... let's just say

id excersize emily rose"

&& then he started
humping the air
im scarred for life
=]]
but ill admit
it was PRETTY DAMN HILARIOUS
or as i [told] sam taylor pais && danielley
it was both swadacious and lidacious
;]]]]]]]]
goooood times

Better, at least for now, are Blog 27, Polish kiddie r&b/rap. (Faux twinpop: they were born on the same day, November 27, 1992, but to different parents.)

LDN sounds very flip, snarky... like Allen is just tossing off lines. This is slightly reflected in the lines "Pimp and his crack whore... Sunny in the sky, oh why oh why would I want to be anywhere else." But it also feels tired and old, already. And while I think one of the best things about Allen is her exhaustion, I don't think it sounds best cynical.

Smile on the other hand has that smokey jazz sound. It's a kiss-off song, which is hardly innovative, but the tone makes all the difference. I think of scotch and Lucky Strikes - maybe Dorothy Parker in a speakeasy kissing off Robert Benchley. Or a continuation of some of the themes on Joni's "Court and Spark."

Everything is personal (and you'd probably have to share my obsession with Parker/Mitchell to feel the same way) but I feel like Smile has a depth that LDN lacks. Smile sounds like a natural expression of world-weary exhaustion, while LDN sounds like Allen is justifying the attitude with examples. And I always think jaded sounds better without justification. Otherwise it has the taint of an affectation.

That even the ways that they don't sound the same are similar. They choose the same places to distinguish themselves from everyone else.

Don't know a whole lot about her (except she friended me a few months ago), but she's currently streaming a cover of Dashboard Confessional's "Screaming Infidelities," interpreted as an acoustic ballad. Can you say "infidelities" on Radio Disney?

But first my own private confessional. I liked Screaming Infidelities. Admittedly, I liked it more when it was placed into its cultural context (thanks to the Greenwald Emo book). It improved a notch after I went through a break-up (and reconciliation) and listened to The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most. I figured that the best way to listen to Dashboard was to listen to him like the "kids" do. In heartbreak. It improved, slightly. (But still hasn't replaced Blue as most painful album of all-time). Finally, the Legion of Doom mashup "The Quiet Screaming" was the final nail in the coffin.

This said, what seemed to be the link between all these things was the stripped down naked feeling of the music. The cracks in the voice weren't a bug, they were a feature. And the only reason the song worked in the mashup was because it played the soft half to Brand New's "Quiet Things No One Ever Heard" harder sound.

So with Hands Down, then moreso on Vindicated, and finally all over this new album, the sound is too clean. Too refined, too melodic, too -- everything. Now when he can't hit a note, it sounds like an honest to god fuckup.

That said: Joanna cover of Screaming Infidelities completely replicates the breaking voice, heavy breathing to articulate, finally soaring chorus - except with better production values. To that extent, it reminds me more of Legion of Doom's "Quiet Screaming" than the actually original. Except at about 1:20, she just starts whining, and my ears start hurting. Bombastic and soaring aren’t the same thing... what I’m trying to say is: There is something very sincere about the breaking voice. And something very insincere about faking it. And it sounds like the second-half of Joanna’s cover is faking it, and the first half is sincere. And the beginning of Dashboard Confessional’s career was authentic, and now it’s insincere. Which is to say (exhale): The sound of trying to sound sincere is essentially an insincere sound. [Which, Frank, is why I don’t like LDN half as much as I like Smile]

Her latest work is stupefyingly mediocre, including "Whatever It Takes" and "Healing Side" on the stupefyingly mediocre SHeDAISY album. Seems to me I was pretty clear upthread about my interest in the SHeDAISY alb having a lot to do with my liking various previous tracks by the people involved.

I lean towards the Everlys on this but need to listen to a lot more Ricky - and I do not understand the claim that Ricky does not rock as hard as the Everlys. His band was the best in the business, pure fire when it wanted to be. Please please please listen to his version of "Milk Cow Blues." Listen to the snap that James Burton puts into the riff. Dave Davies lifted it whole on the Kinks' version. Burton and Sumlin (w/ Howlin' Wolf) were the models for many hard and frantic guitar riffs since, from "The Last Time" through "Boyfriend."
Ricky's singing is very canny, walking with aplomb atop the music's hysteria. I hear some Ricky in Gary Allen (cf. the title track on See If I Care).

[Ricky was the best of the '50s-early '60s teenybopper boys.][Unless of course you count Elvis as a teenybopper boy, which he was but his social reach also went elsewhere.]

At one point, Disney realized they were able to promote all these non-Disney musicians very effectively. So they decided to use that promotion power to push forward their own actors.

Also; two favorite quotes in the article:

"I'm not into the club scene. You won't see mo go over the edgy edge. I will always be wholesome." -Ashley Tisdale (Sharpay)

"I don't want to be seen buying cigarettes and liquor. It wouldn't be a smart move to be out doing promiscuous things." -Zac Efron (Troy)

Actually, Ashley's upcoming debut is on Warner Bros, not a Disney label, so maybe she's closer to the old school Disney model. Zac Efron can't sing (and didn't sing in High School Musical) but Drew Seeley, who did, has been appearing on Disney comps and is trying to launch a solo career. Zac has the potential to be a Disney-groomed star anyway...maybe he could rap or something.

Britney Spears' sister already works with (GASP) Nickelodeon! They need to start building their own roster. Amanda Bynes (can she even sing?), Jamie Spears, Spongebob...what label was the Emma Roberts album on? (checks...on Columbia, includes rootkit)

IN YR FACE FURTADOO

In other news, 'Samantha' by Margaret Berger is making waves in the Norwegian chart at the moment, and is a bit good in what I am tempted to describe as the Eurodisco manner, except it isn't quite like that. Not quite, anyway.

I cannot find a video online for it, though. Which is a bit of a pisser.

On some of the other songs there is a dominately featured piano, but the playing has a very modern feel to it - the piano's purpose being to introduce the condition of empty modernity that Ell is singing about, as opposed to jaunty tunes. (Glass instead of Mozart - to be slightly facetious).

What do people think?

Looking right back at the top of the thread, at Mr Kogan's KDIS playlist, it strikes me that all the artists there have at the very least been nodded at on this thread, with one exception:

8. CHEETAH GIRLS - Shake Your Tailfeather

Given that I presume the song was a cover, I can kind of see why they never popped up again, but what were they to start with?