This year November 1 started the Christmas season here in Kansas City, at least on the radio. Both of our light (or is it lite?) rock stations switched to Christmas music until…well I don’t even know when. December 26? December 31?
It’s easy enough to ignore at home or in my car (and I do) but the problem is that those two white bread, limp dick stations are being played everywhere so it’s tough to avoid when you’re out and about. Even my wife’s office pipes in Star 102, including that horrible John Tesh show, which is a whole ‘nother post.
Last year I went on about my problems with these two stations and from what little I’ve heard they still stand. They manage to play the safest, most boring stuff you can find. Oh and what the hell, let’s add a little King Diamond Christmas action:
Entertainment Weekly recently published a list of the 25 best and five worst Beatles songs. I’m not really interested in the “best” list – things like that are completely subjective and can vary. However, for some reason the list of the five worst songs intrigued me:
05 “Flying”
04 “Don’t Pass Me By”
03 “Dig It”
02 “Wild Honey Pie”
01 “All You Need Is Love”
I don’t really have a list of Beatles songs I don’t like as much as I have a list of Beatles songs that I’m really tired of hearing, and it would look something like this:
05 “Twist and Shout”
04 “Birthday”
03 “Let it Be”
02 “Hey Jude”
01 “Hey Jude”
“Hey Jude” goes on there twice because I’m really tired of hearing it and it just goes on and on, especially in concert. Back to the Entertainment Weekly list – the first thing is that having “All You Need is Love” and the worst seems like a bit of a troll in order to get people worked up. Yes, I’m tired of it, but a lot of people – including my wife – really love it. If you want to call it overrated that’s fine, but saying it’s that worst….I don’t buy it. Another thing is the inclusion of “Don’t Pass Me By”. Not only is this my favorite Ringo song, I would probably put it in my top 20 and possibly top 10 Beatles songs. Songs like that are why the White Album is so great – just a collection of great songs and you never knew what was coming up. I also like “Flying” quite a bit but I get that since it may be a little too weird for people. The other two I get as well but to me they weren’t really official songs, just little throwaway bits they had on their albums.
I don’t know where I’m going with this other than it really makes me sad when people slag “Don’t Pass Me By”.
Today I noticed that CNN has devoted 11 AM – 3 PM (Central) today to the Michael Jackson memorial service.
Four hours. On a network supposedly devoted to news. This is why the cable news networks drive me up a wall.
It got me thinking though – I can’t imagine any other current musician/pop star getting this kind of coverage if they died.
Paul McCartney? I don’t see it.
Dylan? Nope.
Bono? Maybe more than any other, but not even in the same ballpark.
To me, this just confirms that people’s interest in Michael Jackson isn’t really in his music. It has to do with his celebrity and his weirdness. The circumstances behind his death contribute to this too. I think the interest in his music is just something to try to legitimize the obsession over him.
Anyway, speaking of weird, I saw this Flickr set on Boingboing a few months ago. I’m not sure what I got out of it, it’s more of a trainwreck thing.
When Dimebag Darrell died in 2004, people started calling him one of the greatest guitarists that ever was, ranking him with Hendrix and EVH, then someone had to take it further and compare him to John Lennon. Let’s face it, the guy was a great metal guitarist, but comparing him to the all time greats is just a little much.
The same thing is going on with Michael Jackson. Even though it typically wasn’t my sort of thing I owned a cassette of Thriller back in 1983 and with the exception of the horrible song “The Girl is Mine” it’s a pretty solid album. That being said, he’s now being compared to Elvis and the Beatles and that’s just not right. I lost the link to the guy, but someone on Twitter made the claim that his work would one day be analyzed the same way Michelangelo’s is today.
Really?
At the end of the day, Michael Jackson was just a pop singer. Thriller (which is what I’m guessing is his best album) is good, but it’s not exactly Revolver or Pet Sounds. I sometimes feel that people are desperate to cling to something from their generation as significant and if they keep saying it long enough it will come true – these are the people you see on the news who make the statement that they’ll always remember where they were when they heard Michael Jackson was dead. Saying this on the day that it happened sounds phony to me – it’s something you come to realize as time goes on.
Anyway, with all my complaining about this, there’s a pretty good chance that I’ll buy myself a new copy of Thriller. The cassette I had back in 1983 is long gone and I’m wondering how it will sound to me today.