Beatles? More like Beat(en-to-death)les!

Well thank goodness the powers that be are using Artificial Intelligence to solve climate change and make healthcare more equitable… oh wait, no, they’re using it to create a “new” Beatles song.

Because that’s what the world really needs… yet another song to go along with every other song in the Beatles catalog that has been overplayed over the past 60 friggin’ years.

I could go the rest of my life without hearing another of their songs and would be fine with that.

Me, about a year ago…

America, please stop with the Beatles obsession. For me. For you. For all of us. Two of them are deceased. It’s time to move on, not time to run some lyrics and melodies through AI and generate something that sounds vaguely like a Beatles song being performed by the Starland Vocal Band or the Ray Conniff Singers. It’s not just a bit cheesy, it’s full-on two-tons-of-Velveeta cheesy. It’s the aural equivalent of this:

The alleged song already has 17,635,546 spins on Spotify. And if you think I’m going to link to the recording of this Drab Four song, you’re more delusional than the folks who think the new song is good.

Here’s a song from an artist named Chris Catalyst. It has 6,516 listens on Spotify. But it’s a million times better.

Maybe Chris Catalyst isn’t your cup of tea. That’s fine. But please, for the love of music, go find another new artist… any new artist… and stop living in the past!

Songs and Substance (and Silliness)

If you’re old enough to remember the 1990s, and if you’re even slightly into music, and you appreciate great writing, you really owe it to yourself to check out the 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s podcast.

Rob Harvilla, a senior staff writer for The Ringer, spends each episode breaking down a song from the ’90s. Actually, he spends about half of each episode on a series of digressions, often about his time growing up in northern Ohio in the 90s, before finally getting to the featured song. And the digressions are great – brilliantly written, completely engaging, and typically hilarious… and the humor is usually self-deprecating.

Writing about this podcast doesn’t do it justice… especially when it’s my writing. Just listen to the first three minutes of one of the episodes — pick any one, they’re all great — and you’ll be hooked.

Here’s the opening of the episode that covers Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like A Woman!”:

The series (which is well over 100 episodes/songs now… Rob himself calls it “the world’s most inaccurately named music podcast”) covers all sorts of tunes from the ’90s – from pop to country to R&B to hip-hop to indie rock. Some songs were monster hits… some have been mostly lost to the mists of our memory. It doesn’t really matter, as they all offer Rob a chance to wax eloquently about music and life (not necessarily in that order).

(Apparently this podcast is the #1 music podcast on Spotify, so I’m probably about three years late in touting it… sorry, I was busy.)

Rob Harvilla just released a book to accompany the podcast.

This book description does the podcast justice:

Ringer music critic Rob Harvilla reimagines all the earwormy, iconic hits Gen Xers pine for with vivid historical storytelling, sharp critical analysis, rampant loopiness, and wryly personal ruminations on the most bizarre, joyous, and inescapable songs from a decade we both regret entirely and miss desperately.

From the Hatchette Books description of Rob’s book

Listen to the podcast now and thank me later!

A KISS Goodbye

Last week, I saw KISS in concert.

A pickleball pal had free tickets, and I’d never seen KISS live, so I figured “why not?” Besides, this is billed as their final tour (although we’ve heard that from them before).

The show was at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Coliseum, a venue that’s seen better days. The same could be said for KISS. I think the last time I was in that arena, it about a decade ago, when I took my sons to see pro wrasslin’.

KISS has a lot in common with the WWE – both are heavy on showmanship. The concert featured (in no particular order): Flames. Fireworks. 40-foot inflatables of the band members. Smoke machines. Confetti cannons. Fake blood. Floating platforms. Paul Stanley gliding on a wire across the arena — Peter-Pan-like — to get to a smaller stage. Gene Simmons in a crane bucket that swung out over the crowd.

I went with my buddy Joe, and as he said after the show, it was completely over-the-top… and that’s exactly what we expected from Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley and friends (Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer served as decent subs for Ace Frehley and Peter Criss from the original lineup).

Here’s the thing though: Gene Simmons is 74. Paul Stanley is 71. They’ve been in this band for fifty years! And they’re still out there playing a two-hour set… wearing those giant super-soled boots… and getting in platforms that take them 40 feet above the stage, and, in Paul’s case, zooming through the air while hanging onto a trapeze contraption. While most folks their age are wearing sensible shoes and ordering the early-bird special at Denny’s, they’re rocking and rolling all night (but probably taking a nap every day). More power (and pyro) to ’em!

The Beths. The Best.

A week ago, I saw the best concert of the year. And Taylor Swift was nowhere to be found.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Taylor hater. Far from it. I have a ton of respect for anyone who writes their own songs.

But I saw a terrific band from New Zealand called The Beths at a small club in Cincinnati, and they hit all the right notes, literally and figuratively.

During the show, I just savored the sights and sounds. But after the fact, I tried to analyze why I liked the gig so much. And I came up with a few items on my concert checklist:

  1. Great songs – it’s about the music, first and foremost. Lead singer/songwriter Elizabeth Stokes writes songs with hooks that are catchy and lyrics that are profound.
  2. Live, not Memorex – The Beths are a four-piece band, and they play their own instruments, live, without backing tracks. I know a lot of bands are using pre-recorded tracks these days… but I don’t go to a show to hear studio recordings. Elizabeth Stokes has a great voice, and plays guitar as well. Guitarist Jonathan Pearce, bassist Benjamin Sinclair, and drummer Tristan Deck also sang backing vocals, which added greatly to the overall sound of the songs.
  3. Setlist – The songs matter, but so does the sequencing, and the mix of “classics” to new songs. The Beths have released three great albums, without a bad song in the bunch, so they were working from strength, but their set featured really strong songs from each of the albums, with a nice mix of singalong anthems and quiet ballads. (You can listen to the songs from the set at setlist.fm.)
  4. Sound system – All three of the above can be ruined by a bad sound mix. The Beths played The Woodward Theater and the sound was stellar, and the sound engineer kept the volume at a reasonable level. (If I had a nickel for every band I’ve seen where the sound engineer had the mix WAAAY TOO LOUD, I’d be able to afford better earplugs.)
  5. Energetic band – The Beths were having fun on stage, and that can be contagious. A running gag was them shouting “O-H” and waiting for the crowd to reply “I-O!” (It’s an Ohio State thing – The Beths made no bones about the fact that they had no idea what the cheer was about, but someone had told them to do it at Ohio concerts.)
  6. Enthusiastic audience – the folks at the show weren’t casual fans. That’s the beauty of being an up-and-coming band – the people who like you are dedicated, and are there because they like your music, not because your lead singer is on a Disney show or TikTok.
  7. Intimate venue – all other things being equal, being able to get close to the stage at a club is so much better than an arena show with giant barriers between you and the performers.

There you have it, my Sonic Seven ingredients for a tasty gig. Not that you asked.

This KEXP live in-studio performance gives you a taste of what The Beths are like in a live setting.

This stripped-down set highlights the brilliant songwriting.

And here’s the title track from their brilliant new album:

Mic Drop

Yesterday, my friend Dave and I recorded a podcast episode. Just like we’ve done nearly 100 times over the past five years.

Never heard of our podcast? You’re not alone. 99.99% of the world has never heard of it, much less heard it. But for the few, the proud, the folks who remember a tiny “modern rock” station in Oxford, Ohio, the podcast was pretty darn cool. It helped them reconnect with the station, the music, and the people that meant a lot to them.

“I am not sure you guys realize just what impact having this modern rock format has had on my life… your podcast has brought about all of these thoughts, feelings, and memories of the soundtrack of 21 years on my life. I thank you for playing your part in it back then and I thank you for creating this podcast to help me process just what those 21 years have meant to me.”

“Thanks for the pod. It is like finally being able to talk with someone about the treasure that was WOXY.” 

We found a niche — actually, it’s more like the niche found us, because we were horrible at promoting the podcast. But somehow, some way, the people who wanted to listen found us. And we had a ton of fun in the process.

But now we’ve exhausted the list of potential guests and topics. It’s been great, but it’s time to pull the plug on “Rumblings.”

I’m really proud of the work we did. Step 1 was figuring out how in the heck to do a podcast. Then came setting up the website, finding a hosting platform (Podbean has been great), scheduling the interviews, figuring out how to record them when we’re in different locations, doing the editing, and finally posting them. We put out a new episode nearly every two weeks for close to five years. It was a labor of love, but the accent was on “labor.”

I’ll miss it. It wasn’t just a chance for listeners to reconnect with a station they loved, it was also a chance for me to reconnect with my radio days. Guess I’ll have to find another outlet for my podcasting prowess (using that term extremely loosely). I have no idea what that’ll be. So you and I both will have to stay tuned…

But for now, it’s mic drop time.

Nothing Compares 2 Sinéad

This is the story of a Prince, a Pope and a young woman.

Sinéad O’Connor was 23 when her second album I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got rocketed up the charts, mostly based on the strength of her cover of Prince’s song “Nothing Compares 2 U.”

She didn’t just cover Prince’s song… she made it her own.

Sinéad was just 25 when she appeared on Saturday Night Live and performed Bob Marley’s “War.” She didn’t just cover Marley’s tune, she made it her own… by changing the lyrics to reference child abuse. Oh, and as we all know, she did so while tearing up a photo of the Pope.

For doing so, she was “cancelled” before cancel culture was even a thing.

In a post-Spotlight world, when we know much more about the child abuse being committed by members of the clergy, and about the coverups by the higher-ups, I hope people can better understand the motives of Ms. O’Connor. She wasn’t just protesting clergy abuse either, but child abuse in general. It was something she had firsthand experience with.

The photo itself had hung on the bedroom wall of O’Connor’s mother, who O’Connor later said had physically and sexually abused her as a child.

Source: this New York Times article

At 14, Sinéad was sent to live at one of the infamous Magdelene Laundries in Ireland.

“We were girls in there, not women, just children really. And the girls in there cried every day. It was a prison. We didn’t see our families, we were locked in, cut off from life, deprived of a normal childhood. We were told we were there because we were bad people. Some of the girls had been raped at home and not believed.”

Sinead O’Conner in this Irish Times article

Nine years after she tore up his photo, Pope John Paul II sent an email apology to the victims of sexual abuse perpetrated by priests and other clergy in Australia and the surrounding region, acknowledging the scandal for the first time in his papacy.

In 2010, Pope Benedict XVI said in an 18-page letter that he was “truly sorry” for the abuse suffered by victims at the hands of Catholic priests in Ireland, O’Connor’s home country.

Source: CNN article

Perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, we can see Sinéad’s protest as a clarion call… and we can see Sinéad as more prophet than pariah.

In a tribute to O’Connor following her death, Irish comedian and actress Aisling Bea wrote on Instagram that “everything she stood up for and against then, including racism in the music industry, has been proved to have been needed and right…She was the original truth sayer who wouldn’t go easy into the night.”

Source: CNN article

“Everyone wants a pop star, see? But I am a protest singer. I just had stuff to get off my chest. I had no desire for fame.”

Sinéad O’ Connor