| |||
|
Arts & Entertainment Books Comics Health & Body  MediaMothers Who Think News People Politics2000 Technology - Free Software Project Travel & Food  Columnists
- - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - Also Today For a full list of today's Salon Media stories, go to the
Media home page. - - - - - - - - - - - - Search Salon - - - - - - - - - - - - Salon Columnists - - - - - - - - - - - - Recently in Salon Media Brand X Column Alt Alt Column - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
Real Life Rock Top 10
- - - - - - - - - - - -
1) Mekons "Journey to the End of the Night" (Quarterstick) An end-of-the -- or anyway their -- world album, maybe the best the intransigent Leeds-to-Chicago punk combo has made, with Morris dancing hiding inside reggae rhythms and inside of that "Neglect," which could be the Crests, climbing "Step by Step" in 1960, Rod Stewart in 1972 telling a woman he hasn't seen in years, "You Wear it Well," but has a twist nice songs like those were made to deny. 2) The Need "The Need Is Dead" (Chainsaw) Olympians (as in Washington) Rachel Carns and Radio Sloan on a thrilling ride, down switchbacks in reverse. Freedom of speech is fine, but this is something else -- in moments, as when they recapture the long-gone late-'70s London warble of Lora Logic's "Wake Up," freedom of throat. 3) Christina Aguilera (Jan 30., ABC/MTV) The blonde sensation's lip-sync job for the Super Bowl halftime show was creepy in a conventional, who-says-they-aren't-real? manner. It was no preparation at all for the low point of the two-hour biopic "Christina Aguilera: What a Girl Wants," which followed: In grainy footage of a little girl on a public stage, mike in her hand, singing an adult love song and making adult tease gestures, the 6- or 7-year-old Aguilera was the image of JonBenét Ramsey; and her mother, popping in to say, Oh, it wasn't ME, it was what SHE wanted, was the image of Patsy Ramsey. Running simultaneously on the USA network was "The Mary Kay Letourneau Story: All-American Girl," but in this night's depravity sweepstakes it didn't have a chance. 4) Vue "Vue" (Sub Pop) This young San Francisco band has rather bizarrely rediscovered the unrepentantly cheesy sound of the post-Beatles, pre-psychedelic San Francisco Bay Area -- a sound perhaps summed up better by the name of one of its exemplars, Peter Wheat and the Breadmen, than any actual records, though "Little Girl," by San Jose's Syndicate of Sound, is close. Thanks to Jessica Graves' implacably poker-faced, two-fingered organ riff, Vue's "Girl" (principal lyric, ecstatically groaned by Rex Shelverton: "Oh, girl") is closer. 5) Robert Mugge, director "Hellhounds on My Trail: The Afterlife of Robert Johnson" (Winstar video) Talkers and players gathered at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for a celebration of the '30s Mississippi bluesman, and this documentary includes too many fat white guys with nothing to say. But there are lucid, stirring passages from keynote speaker Peter Guralnick; there is Johnson's childhood friend Willie Coffee, crying over his memory of "Sweet Home Chicago" ("I don't like to talk about him too much"). Alongside any number of sclerotic or florid readings of hallowed Johnson tunes by singers black and white, there's skinny white guy Chris Whitley's queer, atonal revision of the previously uncoverable "Hellhound on My Trail," ludicrous in its first notes and a dead man walking, a thing in itself, by its end. And in the power trio Gov't Mule there are fat white guys slamming their way through a don't-let-it-end-yet assault on "If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day" -- with the Rolling Stones' "Stop Breaking Down" and Cream's "Crossroads" the most exciting claim on a Johnson song I've ever heard. Don't go looking to Gov't Mule's own records, or Chris Whitley's, for anything similar; their performances here take place outside their careers. | ||
 |
 |
 |
 |
Next page |