"Most people work just hard enough not to get fired
and get paid just enough money not to quit."
-George Carlin
It's Friday. More than likely, you're between paychecks right now, having been paid on the 15th.
More than likely, you've got your mind on your money and your money on your mind.
Here's a wonderful Money-themed Friday tune from the absolutely rocking Fitz & The Tantrums
After their first show at Hollywood’s Hotel Café in December 2008, this band has gone from strength to strength at warp speed. All because of a retro organ, sharp suits, killer vocals and no guitars!
Off their brand new album Picking Up The Pieces, here's a wonderful get-up-and-dance Friday song
"Over the last 10 years, the percentage of Americans who took at least one prescription drug in the past month increased from 44 percent to 48 percent, says a federal government study released Thursday.
Use of two or more drugs increased from 25 percent to 31 percent, and the use of five or more drugs increased from 6 percent to 11 percent, according to the analysis of data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).
The study also found that 20 percent of children and 90 percent of adults aged 60 and older reported using at least one prescription drug in the past month, said the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers.
Spending on prescription drugs in the United States totaled more than $234.1 billion in 2008, more than double the amount spent in 1999, they found."
A couple of months into this Cool Song Of The Day blog and things are really rolling. I'm showing commitment, drive and ambition. I haven't flaked a day yet, and my song choices are going from strength to strength, if I do say so myself.
California week was especially tasty.
It's been great for me, too. I'm 42 years old this year, and most people my age couldn't name a contemporary recording artist to save their life. However, in doing the necessary research for this blog, I'm constantly being introduced to new bands. Which is wonderful, because there is some amazing new music coming out these days.
So, I've got this one song lined up in the rotation, from a great band, brand new out of Brooklyn, NY, real scene stealers. I like blogging new bands, and I'm especially excited about this one that was coming up. I thought I would get a jump on people, be the first to introduce this music to my friends and followers. Re-enforce my street cred.
Then I heard it. The song, on the television. In a commercial. For a Honda. A Honda, for God's sake. A Honda CR-Z Sport Hybrid, to be exact, a frickin' hybrid.
The Sleigh Bells "Riot Rhythm" being used to sell Hondas.
Which makes sense. Only....................it doesn't.
Ever since Dinah Shore suggested you could See The USA In Your Chevrolet, popular music has been a common feature in commercials. However, I wonder if commercial music has ever been as hip and trendy as it is these days. Which is the part that does make sense.
It makes sense to use cutting edge bands to sell hybrid cars, because old people don't buy hybrids. In general. In general (remember, this is a generalization now) old people are more than happy to drive around in their Cadillac El Dorado's or Mercury Marquis' drinking up as much of the planets resources as they can for their brief time left on this mortal coil. It's the young'ins what buy up all them new-fangled HIGH-brids.
Hence the necessary hipster soundtrack. But, that's also the part that doesn't make sense.
I mean, the Sleigh Bells have hardly been around more than a week. So for a multi-billion dollar multi-national conglomerate like Honda to carve out some some quality commercial real estate for a couple of newbie hipsters like the Sleigh Bells, they are taking a large risk on an unproven commodity. Or, maybe they got them for pennies precisely because they are week-old newbie hipsters, and the minuscule licensing costs aren't much of a gamble for a company as big as Honda.
Either way, it's a drag that Honda got to them first. Before I did. Jerks.
But, then again, even if you have seen the commercial, you've only got a small taste of the glorious noise that is the Sleigh Bells so, gentle readers, here they are in full force, full length and sans the sales pitch.
Completing the line up for our commercial themed TWOfer Tuesday is a song featured in a recent advert for Alberto Vo5 hair products in the UK and also in a Bud Light Lime commercial.
It's a truly unique track and coming close to becoming a personal anthem for me. Because me I'm a creator, thrill is to make it up, the rules I break got me a place up on the radar.
I'd like to start the week with a song that evokes the sound of those great Phil Spector Girl Groups, but with a post-modern, almost punk take on sexuality.
Maybe something that starts with a direct rip-off of My Boyfriends Back by The Angels but descends into pure erotic fetisization, like singing about a prostitute openly flirting with her arresting officer.
But where, I ask you, where would I find such a song? What group, pray tell, could pull off such a wonderful concoction?
We're leaving the Golden State by revisiting the theme of coming to California.
Because, as I've said before, wherever you are, you'd probably rather be in California.
Today's closer is another TWOfer, as we are looking at two very different variations of the same theme.
Up first, originally released in 1961 by New Orleans-born Joe Jones, and covered by The Rivieras three years later, it's New York punk stalwarts The Ramones who, for me, give us the definitive version of this bright, sun-infused anthem.
Well, I'm goin' out west out on the coast
Where the California girls are really the most
Where they walk and I'll walk
They twist and I'll twist
They shimmy and I'll shimmy
They fly and I'll fly
Well they're out there a'havin' fun
In that warm California sun.
California Sun is the bright, sunny, impossibly happy destination on the Going To California spectrum. Stating no point of origination (is the singer coming from North Dakota? Brussels? Mars?), all the singer knows is that when they get to California, it's all sock-hops, shin-digs, shimmies and twists.
And, of course, being sung by a bunch of dour, leather-clad New Yorkers, The Ramones have obviously taken huge liberties with this ditty and covered it with irony, paradox, satire and ridicule.
But....................................................wait. They haven't. No, I mean, it's there, on the fringes, if you really look, but basically our boys in black play it straight. And loud. And infuse it with more power and energy than the material really deserves, thus making their version one of those rarest of creatures; a cover version that actually surpasses the original. You can even imagine 6' 6" tall Joey Ramone shimmying as they shimmy, and twisting, as they twist. It's fantastic.
Talk To Me Of Mendocino, while exploring the same theme of coming to California, is a whole different experience. If the Ramones "California Sun" is on the light, happy end of the spectrum, then Talk To Me Of Mendocino is definitely on down side. Not dark, mind, but poetic and heavy with longing.
And, yes, it doesn't have California in the title. I know. But, Talk To Me Of Mendocino gave me one of the fastest turnarounds of opinion I've ever had with a song, and for that alone it deserves a praise on CSOTD.
When I first heard this, the opening piano notes were greeted with suspicion, and at 0:15 in I thought, "Right, stuff this too." However, for some unknown reason (Providence? Fate? Luck?) I continued to listen. My cynicism was shaken at 0:51 by some absolutely heavenly harmonies, and by 1:43, when they sing:
"...let the sun set on the ocean
I will watch it from the shore
Let the sun rise over the redwoods
I'll rise with it till I rise no more"
I was reduced to a quivering, sobbing pulp longing to watch the sun rise over the redwoods for the rest of my own life as well.
Talk To Me Of Mendocino is the worst kind of syrupy-sweet folk-traditional pap listened to only by granola-eating, Volvo driving, Lake Wobegon loving Baby Boomers and I hate myself for loving it so much. But, as such, it provides the perfect counter-point to California Sun, and songs like it.
Which, of course, is why these songs are the perfect culmination for California Week here on CSOTD.
Together, these songs go a long way in exploring the myth and mystique, the light and the heavy, the superficial joy and deep meaning of California. The Golden State. The destination for all of our poets and artists and starlets and businessmen in the other 49.
And all around the world.
I was lucky enough to have been born in California. I can tell you I've traveled the world, and I've never really left her.
