Truth be told, I’m a bit shocked that the music press is rather indifferent to New York glam rockers Morningwood. I know they’re not the best band New York’s given the world, but their blend of punchy guitars, perky beats and that force of nature named Chantal Claret at the microphone strike some primal chord in me. Maybe it’s a reminder what what rock bands used to sound like, before they worried about whether they were cool enough, or if they were attracting the “right” fans. What a joke, really. Do you think Cheap Trick ever gave a fuck who was listening to their records, as long as people were buying them? Hell, no.
That’s why people refer to the music business these days as junior high school with money. Sadly, the same peer pressure rules apply to the people who write about bands. They want to be seen as cool, too (probably more so than the musicians they write about), so once a band has the perception of not being hip, the writers tend to fall in line. Case in point: a very well-known blogger told me at Lollapalooza in 2007 that they were surprised at how much they liked Silverchair’s performance, yet they the band down in their column. Oh, the price some pay for hipster credibility.
But not me. I gave that ghost up years ago, and I can’t tell you how much easier things are since I did. Of course, this might make bands reluctant to receive my stamp of approval, since it comes with a giant asterisk – Shit! He’s uncool! Wait, unless it’s cool to not care about being cool. Damn, this is hard – but I’m not high enough on the food chain yet for that to matter. Anyway…
Personally, I’ll take a band like Morningwood and a song like “Best of Me” over the more popular Paramore any day of the week. It’s brief (just a hair over three minutes), it’s catchy, it’s confident without bragging, and best of all, it’s all major keys, so there’s no unnecessary melodrama. It reminds me of Pat Benatar in her ass-kicking days (i.e. before she started her family). And you can have it for free. Dig in. And as an appetizer, here’s the video, which contains a nice callback to the band’s hilarious clip for “Sugarbaby,” which is one of my singles of the year.
Anyone who was lucky enough to snap up a copy of 2008’s here-today-gone-yesterday Yo Gabba Gabba! CD will likely be disappointed with Music Is…Awesome!, the newest release of songs from the TV show that’s a hit with both kids and stoners. Eight of the 13 tracks from the previous release are here, along with songs from the Shins, Chromeo, Of Montreal, I’m from Barcelona, and Money Mark. That’s a whole lotta hipster, right there, and the decision to include the hipster bands over acts that actually had our kids singing along – there is no excuse, for example, for the exclusion of the Aggrolites’ “Banana” or GOGO13’s fantastic ska tribute “Pick It Up” – is a curious one, to say the least. Then again, the soundtrack supervisors had positively tons of bands to choose from (The Bird and the Bee, the Ting Tings, Mates of State, Jason Falkner, MGMT, Jimmy Eat World, Datarock, the Clientele, etc.), not to mention original songs (“Hold Still,” “Please, Thank You”), so it stands to reason that they were going to leave some essential YGG moments out. Be that as it may, Music Is…Awesome! is good, but not quite as awesome as it could have been. (Filter/Fontana 2009)
