Rolling Teenpop 2006 Thread

Ha! So Frank, you're saying the Morningwood goyl can't sing at all 'cuz Wendy O. sure couldn't even though I liked her. It gets really obvious and desperate on her recordings after Dieter Dirks did Coup d'etat which was the Plasmatics' most metal and probaby their most likely to appeal to teens. Hey, now maybe I'd like Morningwood, although I still don't know if there's someone like Richie Stotts in the band. No one wore a nurse's uniform on the cover.

I bet you could play "Concrete Shoes" for tweeners and a some of them would like it. That song never aged.

At one point she had points for being beaten by cops -- maybe in Scranton or Detroit -- who took exception to her being onstage with her bosoms covered only by whipped cream.

p.s.s.) I still like the Slunt album fine.

I STRONGLY FUCKING OBJECT TO THE IDEAS IMPLIED BY THIS STATEMENT

Which I really enjoyed. I thought they (Morningwood) were a lot more fun than Gang of Four. I was all rocked out by the time the old fellas came on stage. They were loud, fast, and catchy. I really don't get all the hate at PF and Stylus and so on.

I love the album, but I'm not yet sure how much of that is because its a good album, and how much is me being a contrary bugger.

Shit, I have the Karen Lawrence and 1994 reissue coming in the mail. There amps were bigger and they didn't even stick her on the cover of the first album.

That practice hasn't seemed to have made it to the Pasadena chapter. You can do it in Tower at their listening stations, but Morningwood wasn't on any of them.

>Samantha Jo, self-titled EP, available from cdbaby.com or samanthajomartin.com: Potential teen-pop country, but for the five songs *only* potential: the voice is there, and two songs ("He's Always There," about her Dad though maybe also about Jesus who knows, and "These Days") are actually about getting up for school despite not being a morning person and checking email and stopping by McDonald's in Dad's truck and doing homework, but the production isn't there, and the songs all seem too slow to pop. But then, BAM! track six, "time for summer," she makes her hope partlow "crazy summer nights" move, or maybe her undertones "here comes the summer" move (no kidding, that's what the chorus sounds like, totally kicking and bubblicious), or her hope partlow plus undertones equals skye sweetnam move, and the talking parts have a rap flow staight out of, I dunno, "we didn't start the fire" by billy joel maybe, and the band rocks, and it makes me want to go back and listen to the rest again to see what I may have missed, and I will, just not right this second.

Looks like the summer song (along with the get up in the morning and do homework and check email one "These Days") were produced by Karl Demer in Minneapolis, whereas the other four tracks were produced by Jim Kimball in Nashville. Odd how they save the great one for the end; maybe they're afraid it would scare away Nashville record labels?

Oops, the waltz is "Heart Over Head Over Heels." "That's the Way" is more like a zigzag (at leat that's what Samantha says: "gotta zig gotta zag gotta travel my jagged road." To Mexico with Romeo, maybe. But she also says she changes direction like a pendulum, and this song doesn't, and nor does it swing like England and a pendulum do.)

I did get Robyn, Frank, thanks! I like it, especially "Konichiwa Bitches," though I doubt I like that anywhere near as much as "Jam On It" or "Attack of the Name Game." Enjoy the rest; not sure yet how much. (CD-Rs are always hard for to motivate myself to listen to!)

hey Frank, is any of that Ashlee Simpson stuff in the book?

-- JD from CDepot (kicksjoydarknes...), January 23rd, 2006.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In Real Punks, where I tell my story I'm not doing so just for its own sake but because there are resemblances between my story and some other people's, so by analyzing and probing my own predicament I'm analyzing and probing a lot more, too. I make this clear right on the first page of the preface, where I say that my sentences don't just come from my pen, they're a social product; and I ask, therefore, not just what do I gain by producing such sentences, but what does a society gain by producing people like me who write such sentences. So I'm saying that my story is relevant even for people whose experience doesn't match up with mine, since I'm still playing a role in the society of which they're a part. Of course, one can dispute this claim, but whether I'm being "subjective" or not doesn't touch the claim one way or another. Rather, what's at issue is whether or not my experience resembles other people's; and whether the principles I'm illustrating in telling my story can be applied to other people; and whether my social roles relate to the social roles of poeple whose story doesn't resemble mine.

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), January 23rd, 2006. (Frank Kogan)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No, Ashlee Simpson's not in the book, since I wasn't paying much attention to her until about a year ago (and the book was finished by then, except for the copy editing and printing and stuff). But Ashlee and I have a lot in common, so maybe in a way we speak for each other. The first song on her first album is called "Autobiography," and (if you don't count the prefaces) the first word in the title of the first piece of my book is "Autobiography." So there we are. And no I'm not kidding. I recognize myself in her.

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), January 23rd, 2006. (Frank Kogan)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And if that surprises you, then either you don't know me as well as you think, or you don't know her.

You think you know me?

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), January 23rd, 2006. (Frank Kogan)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Autobiography

You think you know me
Word on the street is that you do
You want my history
What others tell you won't be true

I walked a thousand miles while everyone was asleep
Nobody's really seen my million subtleties

Got stains on my t-shirt and I'm the biggest flirt
Right now I'm solo, but that will be changing eventually, oh
Got bruises on my heart and sometimes I get dark
If you want my auto, want my autobiography
Baby, just ask me

I hear you talking
Well, it's my turn now
I'm talking back
Look in my eyes
So you can see just where I'm at

I walked a thousand miles to find one river of peace
I walked a million more to find out what this shit means

Got stains on my t-shirt and I'm the biggest flirt
Right now I'm solo, but that will be changing eventually, oh
Got bruises on my heart and sometimes I get dark
If you want my auto, want my autobiography
Baby, just ask me

I'm a bad ass girl in this messed up world
I'm the sexy girl in this crazy world
I'm a simple girl in a complex world
A nasty girl, you wanna get with me?
You wanna mess with me?

Got stains on my t-shirt and I'm the biggest flirt
Right now I'm solo, but that will be changing eventually, oh
I laugh more than I cry
You piss me off, good-bye
Got bruises on my heart and sometimes I get dark
If you want my auto, want my autobiography
Baby, just ask me

-- JD from CDepot (kicksjoydarknes...), January 23rd, 2006.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you want my auto, want my autobiography
Baby, just ask me.

Except the lyrics on the page don't convey how sexy it is when she says it. It's a come-on. The song is like the world's most brilliant personal ad.

And I never in my life wrote a line as great as "I walked a thousand miles while everyone was asleep." I don't know if Jay-Z or Eminem ever did either. Or Dylan. It's like she's saying, "Here I am, stealth genius, and you didn't know." Of course, she's making promises in that song that she probably won't be able to keep, just as Dylan and Jagger and Iggy and Lennon and Johnny and Johansen never lived up to their promise.

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), January 23rd, 2006. (Frank Kogan)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Of course, it's possible that Shanks or DioGuardi wrote that line for her, but I can't find anything in their work with other people that has lyrics that come close to the ones on Ashlee's albums, which is why I surmise that Ashlee's the one in charge of the words. Or maybe she brings something out in those two. But there's not a song of hers where she's not listed as a co-writer. And Ashlee, like me, like everything, is a collaborative product.)

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), January 23rd, 2006. (Frank Kogan)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And (speaking of Eminem) I do wish that Ashlee would sing a lyric along the lines of:

When I go out I'm a go out shooting
I don't mean when I die
I mean when I go out to the club, stupid

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), January 23rd, 2006. (Frank Kogan)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I walked a million more to find out what this shit means

It's actually "And I'll walk a million more to find out what this shit means."

See what I mean about her making promises? I admire her for making them.

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), January 23rd, 2006. (Frank Kogan)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 1
The Autobiography of Bob Dylan

When I first listened to Bob Dylan's mid-'60s stuff I thought it was especially honest. It was honest to me because the vocals weren't pretty and didn't sound like singers were supposed to sound, and mistakes were left in. The lyrics to "Visions of Johanna," "Memphis Blues Again," etc. were honest because they were self-destructive. The earlier protest stuff, attacking power, prestige, and everyday commonplaces, fit into a genre of "folk" music; the electric stuff seemed more individual and true. Dylan got to be "honest" not by attacking power, prestige, and everyday commonplaces, but by attacking Dylan.

I thought if you were going to get to see Ashlee's come-on, you should see mine as well, so that's the first paragraph. Ashlee's has a better lilt. I should work on my flirting technique.

I wrote the piece 22 years ago, and it's not about any actual Dylan autobio. "The true autobiography of Bob Dylan isn't an account of his life, or how he got to be that way; but of how it got to be that way, how we got to be that way." In other words, I'm saying we get to complete Dylan's "autobiography" in our own lives and our own stories.

Harold Bloom to thread.

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), January 23rd, 2006. (Frank Kogan)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I walked a thousand miles to find one river of peace
And I'll walk a million more to find out what this shit means

I like these lines, but I don't think I'd like them as much if I didn't know about her family background (ie., ex-pastor father).
-- o. nate (syne_wav...), January 23rd, 2006. (onate)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I should try harder to write something I'm actually going to get paid for, so I need to disappear in midthought.

First, to put some perspective on Ashlee, in one of her songs on I Am Me she says that the fact that her boyfriend is so sensitive ("You finish all my sentences before they begin") means that he must have been hers in a previous life; this is a really boring and unimaginative metaphor, far duller than anything you'll find in the early work of Eminem or Dylan or Johansen et al. Stuff like this is why I won't be altogether shocked if she doesn't follow through on the potential of "Autobiography."

Second, I've revived the Death of Pop thread; not only is it one of the all-time great ILM threads, it's the one that pulled me onto the board in the first place.

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), January 23rd, 2006. (Frank Kogan) (tracklink)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A couple more things about Ashlee and Dylan: Her second album was released a couple weeks after her 21st birthday. Dylan's first album was released a few days before his 21st birthday. Dylan only puts a couple of his own songs on that album, and their lyrics aren't all that interesting (nothing close to "Autobiography," which came out when Ashlee was 19); and nothing in those lyrics foretells what he's going to unleash a year later in "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," going out into that storm he'd called forth on us. But actually, the first Dylan album is my favorite of his four early acoustic records; on that one you can hear him twisting and stretching and distorting the musical forms to make them do what he wants them to. He finds all sorts of different ways to sound intense. In "House of the Rising Sun" and "In My Time of Dying" his voice calls down the storm even though the words don't. Nothing on Ashlee's albums has her imposing her musical will like that, and I'm not sure if there is a way for anyone to drastically twist and distort and reshape her style of music. Which isn't to say that there's nothing special going on in her music or that of people like her. The various reshapings/recombinings are slow and not as ear catching. (And maybe they need to be the subject of another post.) Basically in today's teenpop you're getting admixtures of goth, '80s arena rock, singer-songwriter confessional, various retro dancepop styles, funny novelties, sugar-sweet melodies, hard dark melodies, and blissful r&b, and what's most interesting is the tendency to do them all at once. What's immediately striking about Ashlee is her voice, which sits somewhere between Pink's and Courtney's except that she doesn't sit with it but lets it play around, especially on I Am Me. I Am Me is lighter on its feet than Autobiography; she's found a way to ease up on her bruised intensity without losing it, so she keeps its power while not burying the music under it, which sometimes happens on Autobiography. On the first album she's declaring her identity, on the second she's romping from style to style saying "Look what I can do," so she's the disco slut, then she's the ingenue, then she's the wrathful woman scorned.
But you know what? My heart's with the first album. That's the one where more feels at stake, in words and in sound. Stephen Thomas Erlewine at allmusic.com complains about the second album (he liked the first much more): "The problem is this album is presented with utter seriousness, as if her garden-variety changes in emotions and fashion were great revelations instead of being just what happens in adolescence." That's obviously not how I hear it. Is it possible to listen to "L.O.V.E." and "Burning Up," for example, and not get into the goofing around? I guess it is for Erlewine, who's always worth reading anyway. He's right that her changes in emotions and fashion are garden variety. That doesn't mean they can't be revelations. The situations and emotions in Dylan's "Outlaw Blues" and "Visions of Johanna" and "Sooner Or Later" are just as garden variety. What is amazing is what he makes of them. Any 23 year old can say that even though he sometimes looks and acts like a weasel, he still feels like there's a hero somewhere in him (you hope that a 23 year old hasn't yet lost a sense of his heroic potential). But most won't then come up with anything like "Well, I might look like Robert Ford, but I feel just like Jesse James" to call forth the legends of weasels and heroes past, not to mention calling forth the fear that he'll get shot in the back for it (and the subtext that says, "Look, I can make my little blues song go anywhere, try and stop me"). The risk with Ashlee is that she'll put everything into perspective - that she already has - that she'll decide that a weasel is just a weasel and a breakup is just a breakup and they have no resonance with any larger perfidy or heroism. Maybe "Autobiography" and "Shadow" and "I Am Me" and "La La" are just the pop machine making a couple of lucky shots, and maybe this garden-variety celeb (Dylan: "I know there're some people terrified of the bomb. But there are other people terrified to be seen carrying a Modern Screen magazine") won't make much more that's extraordinary out of her ordinariness. If a Sophie or Alanis or Lucinda had come up with a clumsy line like "Does the weight of consequence drag you down until it pulls you under?" (in the title song of I Am Me), I'd mutter, "Go take a walk in the park, or a nap, or something," but in Ashlee it gives me hope. If she's still got pretensions, maybe she'll push herself to make her mind worthy of those pretensions. You know, like she's got a million miles to go before she sleeps. Or not. In the meantime, at least she gets to speak to my inner 19 year old. Important not to lose that guy.

-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), January 24th, 2006. (Frank Kogan)

What I mean is that the reshapings and recombinations are unfolding over years in the genre as a whole rather than happening - blam! - all on one record.

But of course there are lots of teenpop songs that are fast and/or ear catching.

(their website is creationband.org if you're feeling ambitious.)

Fefe Dobson, "Stupid Little Love Song"
Hilary Duff, "Fly"
Skye Sweetnam, "Billy S."
Skye Sweetnam, "Tangled Up in Me"
Joss Stone, "The Choking Kind"
Joss Stone, "Super Duper Love"
Avril Lavigne, "My Happy Ending"
Avril Lavigne, "Together"
The Beatles, "Yellow Submarine"
Jojo, "Leave (Get Out)"
Alicia Keys, "Karma"
Michelle Branch, "Are You Happy Now?"
Kelly Clarkson, "Miss Independent"
Kelly Clarkson, "The Trouble With Love Is"
Kelly Clarkson w/ Tamyra Gray, "You Thought Wrong"
Avril Lavigne, "Sk8ter Boi"
Avril Lavigne, "Complicated"
Loretta Lynn, "Family Tree"
Kelly Clarkson, "Behind These Hazel Eyes"
Kelly Clarkson, "Breakaway"
Kelly Clarkson, "Since U Been Gone"

(But I'd only claimed she was upthread so that someone could challange me and I could respond with, "Oops, I misunderstood. It turns out she was merely a teenmom." But no one took my bait.)