The hype surrounding his music has died down considerably since he made his Sony debut in 2001 with musicforthemorningafter, but even as the choruses of “next big thing” have subsided, Pete Yorn has set about building a career out of one solidly crafted, well-reviewed album after another — and he’s looking to add two more to the catalog this year: the recently released solo set Back & Fourth, and an upcoming duets set with Scarlett Johansson, Break Up. Having just completed a string of dates opening for Coldplay, Yorn is ready to hit the road in support of Fourth, and was nice enough to set aside some time on a day off for a chat with Bullz-Eye’s Neil Carver. Their talk touched on the new albums (of course), his newfound love for New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle,” what inspired him to work with Scarlett, and how his songwriting process has changed over the years:
“In the old days, I wouldn’t really write much on tour. I’d come home and everything would come to a grinding halt, and then I would start to get really restless and freaked out. That’s when I’d start writing the songs.”
To read more of what Pete Yorn had to say in his Bullz-Eye interview, follow this link!
His blimp-sized ego gets at least as much attention as his music, but underneath all his huffing and puffing, Kanye West ain’t such a bad guy; matter of fact, he’s used some of that superstar cash (and cachet) to spearhead the unsurprisingly named Kanye West Foundation, which works to help reduce the dropout rate. (And if that isn’t enough to raise your opinion of the guy, how about knowing that the West Foundation’s mission was undertaken to help fulfill a dream of the star’s dearly departed mom? Yeah, we thought so.)
To help support the foundation — and entertain your ass in the bargain — Kanye hosted the second annual “Stay in School” benefit concert at the Chicago Theatre a few weeks ago, and the event has been turned into an hourlong special by the Fuse Network that will be airing tomorrow night (that’s August 25) at 8 PM EST/7 CST. Want more details? Here you go:
The show marked the first major event for the Kanye West Foundation since the 2007 passing of its founder Dr. Donda West, and is the first concert Kanye has performed in the city of Chicago in over a year. The Kanye West Foundation (KWF) was established to help combat the severe dropout problem plaguing America’s communities. Approximately 3,000 students from the Chicago area who demonstrated marked academic improvements attended a special pre-show sound check before the evening concert where Kanye performed and talked about the importance of education.
Check your local listings to find Fuse on your TV dial!
It’s more than a little unfair that John Oates has spent so many years serving as the butt of jokes, but, c’mon, you know you chuckled at least a little when “The Simpsons” offered a scene where Lisa, feeling low after not making first chair in the school band, imagined herself as a member of Garfunkel, Messina, Oates, and Lisa. Fortunately, Mr. Oates has a sense of humor, one which he’s getting to show off in the new animated web series, “J Stache,” which reunites him with his long-lost mustache to fight the forces of evil. Yes, seriously. Bullz-Eye talked to Oates about his new online endeavor, his work with Daryl Hall, some of his other musical appearances (he co-wrote Icehouse’s “Electric Blue,” you know), and how bizarre it is to be talking about a bit of facial hair that he hasn’t sported in almost two decades.
* On “J Stache”: “I haven’t had a mustache for 20 years and people actually still talk about it! But I kind of understand it on the level that the mustache is back in vogue, you know. It’s back in style, and there is a lot of talk about it. My mustache took on this iconic kind of symbol of the era, of those decades in a way. Of course, I didn’t carry the ‘stache torch singlehandedly…”
* “Even though Daryl is outstanding as a singer, his trademark personality and his trademark voice have become the stamp of Hall & Oates, and I don’t think people recognize the contribution I made on the writing side, with the amount of songs I have written and contributed to.”
* On going indie: “We realized that we knew how to make records. We knew pretty much everything we needed to know, and we had everything in place. We had a vision that the future of the music business was changing, and that in order for us to continue to be creatively happy and do what we wanted to do, we really couldn’t just listen to the dictates of some businessman in an office in a traditional record company. It just wasn’t working.”
Is your interest piqued? If so, click right here or on the big ol’ graphic below:
Who would’ve thought that I’d be sitting here on June 25, 2009, drinking to the memory of Michael Jackson?
Not me, that’s for goddamned sure. I’d been following the various stories about his upcoming residency at London’s O2 Arena, idly wondering if perhaps the outrageous number of sold-out shows might well inspire Michael to tour the States again. As it happens, my wife was pondering the very same possibility. She and I have our own informal lists of artists we’ve never caught in concert but hope to see someday, and he was a lock for both of us. That’d probably explain why, when I told her the news of Michael’s death earlier today, she burst into tears.
We have seen the Elvis Presley of our generation, and he was Michael Jackson.
You can’t overstate Michael’s importance to people who grew up in the ‘80s. Sure, his time with his brothers in the Jackson 5 during the ‘70s resulted in some damned fine music, and I’ll gladly trumpet the merits of his 1979 album, Off the Wall, as the second best thing he released in his career, but you know it and I know it: Thriller was the shit. It sold 26 million copies, it produced an unprecedented seven Top 10 singles, and it was the soundtrack to my teen years. No matter how “alternative” my tastes in music may have gotten, from the Sex Pistols to the Velvet Underground, Robyn Hitchcock to Social Distortion, I have never hesitated to acknowledge that Thriller is one of my favorite albums of all time. I get how people who didn’t live through the astronomical success of the record can’t conceive how you can know that Michael was accused of pedophilia and yet still declare that he was and, to a certain extent, always will be the King of Pop.
But it’s true. He is.
That’s not to say that his reign hadn’t been without its problems, obviously, and the problem with an album like Thriller is that, after the dust has settled, there’s only one question left to be asked: how the hell do you follow it up? It’s easy to say that Michael never came anywhere near matching that record, but, hey, I just listened to “Dirty Diana” and followed it up with “Smooth Criminal,” so don’t tell me that Bad doesn’t have some kick-ass moments on it, too. I don’t necessarily have the same level of love for Dangerous (although “Remember the Time” has definitely withstood the test of time quite well), but I do think that, had he opted to release the new-material disc of HIStory – known as HIStory Continues – separately rather than couple it with a best-of disc, a lot more people would be praising it today. I still think “Stranger in Moscow” is one of the best songs the guy ever did, and if you’ve ever been sympathetic to the plight of a young boy growing up in the spotlight and never getting a chance to be a kid, then the song and video for “Childhood” just might make you tear up…like it’s doing to me right now.
But I’ve got to be honest: Michael’s last studio album, 2001’s Invincible, didn’t do a whole lot for me (“You Rock My World” and “Butterflies” excepted), and I’ve spent most of the last five years doing nothing but criticizing the guy for not doing everything in his power to mount a comeback.
Back in 2004, Michael released his poorly named Ultimate Collection – a seemingly random selection of singles, album tracks, rarities, demos, and previously unreleased material from the vaults – and I took him to task for it. “With everything he’s gone through in his personal life in recent years,” I said, “what he really needs far more than anything else is to kick-start his musical credibility. The perfect way to do that would’ve been to put together a definitive collection of all of his hits, spread out across as many discs as it takes to do the job properly…and I’m talking somebody-shake-the-cobwebs-off-‘Farewell My Summer Love’ definitive.”
But he didn’t.
In 2005, he announced that he was busy producing an all-star charity single called “I Have A Dream” to help raise relief funds for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
But he never released it.
And when the 25th anniversary of his most iconic album rolled around, he celebrated the event not by taking the opportunity to release a new album but, rather, to drag a bunch of newer artists into the studio to either remix or re-record songs from Thriller.
At the time, I said…
It’s clear that Michael Jackson has brought in these younger and – let’s face it – hipper artists in order to make the statement, “Hey, world, I’m still relevant,” but, as ever, he just doesn’t get it. Nowhere is this more evident than on the DVD that’s included in this package, which provides the album’s three iconic videos (“Billie Jean,” “Beat It,” and “Thriller”), along with the performance of “Billie Jean” from the “Motown 25” television special that serves as the 1980s version of the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” He didn’t need to bring in a bunch of young upstarts; all he had to do was take this DVD and the original nine-song CD version of Thriller, hold them aloft, and say, “This is why you should respect me!”
But he didn’t.
What hurts the most about Michael dying now is that, finally, it looked like he was going to get off his arse and do something about reclaiming his legacy as a superstar of pop. He had these sold-out dates in the UK, and for once, despite all of the false starts he’d offered over the course of the last half-decade, it looked like he was actually going to come back.
And, then, he was gone.
I found out about Michael’s death just as I was walking out the door to take my three-year-old daughter along with me to the grocery store. She was already in the car, in fact, so when I went outside and got behind the wheel, I felt obliged to tell her why I’d taken so long.
I said, “Michael Jackson died, sweetie. That’s why I’m a little upset.”
“You liked him?” she asked.
“I did,” I replied. “He was one of Daddy’s favorite singers.” Then I hesitated for a second and clarified, “Well, maybe he wasn’t one of my favorite singers. But he was very, very important to me and Mama. We listened to him all the time when we were growing up. And that’s why we’re sad.”
And, then, my daughter – God bless her – put the whole thing in perspective by asking a single question: “But you can still listen to his music, right?”
Absolutely right. And that’s why, when we sat down to dinner at the Harris household tonight, we did so listening to Thriller.
Goodbye, Michael. Thanks for the memories…and the music.
A movie about the art form of mash-ups that features mash-ups of the movie within the movie itself? We’re pretty sure we just heard the space/time continuum begin to rip at the prospect. Director Brett Gaylor attempts to make sense of the intellectual property laws that allow some musicians to steal riffs and make millions (Led Zeppelin, the Stones), while other, more cutting-edge musicians are branded as criminals (Girl Talk), and the end result is “Rip! A Remix Manifesto,” a wake-up call to Big Media that, whether they like or not, the rules have changed. Gaylor declares Walt Disney to be the first mash-up artist, and absolutely pummels publishing company Warner-Chappell for refusing to let “Happy Birthday” to enter the public domain (it’s true: if you sing that song, ever, you’re a thief), and for suing Radiohead fans for mash-ups once W-C acquired the rights to In Rainbows. Truth be told, the doc isn’t quite a five-star affair – we were frankly surprised that he didn’t mention when John Fogerty was sued for ripping off one of his own songs – but we’re giving it an extra star because “Rip!” addresses an issue that needs to be sorted out sooner rather than later. Indeed, one could argue that the music industry’s very survival depends on it. (Disinformation 2009)
