Greatest Song Evah 4/19/24
Welcome To The Jungle
What a breath of fresh air Appetite For Destruction was. I’m not a huge fan of hard rock, so take my comments for what they are worth, but the late 80’s were a pretty dreadful era for that genre. It was the age of hair metal, and being that this coincided with my college years I was in peak “too cool for the room” mode when I dismissed that entire movement. I eventually got over myself and can now hesitantly give props to some of the better songs from that time, but I still prefer to think of it as an era best left in the corner. Guns N’ Roses, on the other hand, were something entirely different.
They had an authenticity that largely escaped many of their peers. There was nothing antiseptic about them, you could practically smell the strip club coming out of the speakers. I mean that as a compliment. I remember when Appetite came out. I was music director at my college radio station at the time. When I listened I had 2 immediate thoughts: 1) This kicks ass. 2) There’s no way we can play this. It would have stood out from the rest of what we were playing like a sore thumb. A sore, infected thumb.
Welcome To the Jungle was the leadoff track, and it served as a perfect introduction to the band. The extended guitar intro built & built & built until Axl Rose’s wordless scream kicked it into an even higher gear. The twin guitar attack of Slash & Izzy Stradlin made GNR stand out from the pack, and there have been few frontmen quite like Axl Rose. He could go from a whisper to a scream at the turn of a dime; because of the drama that has surrounded the band for so long it’s easy to forget just how charismatic Rose was before… stuff happened.
And sadly, that stuff has largely tarnished the reputation of the band. They really filled out their Dysfunctional Rock Band Bingo Card - frequent personnel changes, an epidemic of late-starting shows, a comically long gap between album releases, sniping in the press between members. It’s no wonder that there was sparse attendance for their Hall of Fame induction; finding members at any point in time willing to talk to each other presents a challenge. Set aside the Chinese Democracy debacle; for a period that turned out to be all too brief, they were about as big of a deal as there was.
To Be Forever Preserved
This weekend’s upcoming announcement of the latest Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame class is not the only new celebration of music history. Earlier this week the new list of recordings that the Library Of Congress is adding to the National Recording Registry was revealed. Similar to the annual list of films set aside for preservation, this list covers a vast array of recordings going back more than 100 years.
It runs the gamut from some of the most popular hits of all time to lesser known, but hugely influential, pieces of music. It also demonstrates just how much great music there is out there for all of us to experience if we’re just willing to step outside of our comfort zones on occasion. I’m not trying to shame anyone here, I too am always more likely to stick with what I already know & love when actively searching for something to listen to. It’s never too late to feel a little adventurous. If nothing else, when the aliens visit our planet eons after the human race has disappeared, they’ll find a lot of great music preserved in the national archives.
The Streaming Orphans - Cop Rock
Don’t worry, I’m not going to give you any sort of revisionist history here. I won’t pretend that Cop Rock was some kind of secret gem that will eventually be vindicated in the future. There’s a very good reason why it’s one of the first shows thought of when any list of television’s greatest debacles is compiled. I personally only watched the pilot and found myself in disbelief. And yet…. if you squint you can almost imagine the show it could have been. There were some salvageable elements; it’s just that it was such a train wreck overall that none of the pieces meshed.
The show was developed by Steven Bochco at a time in his career where he felt he could do no wrong, so why wouldn’t a musical police show work? The inherent problem is that the show was terminally bipolar; trying to combine the gritty reality of a police drama with the enhanced fantasy of a musical simply did not work. That irreparable duality can be seen in the 2 most memorable musical numbers from the pilot. The show began with a raid on a drug den; the suspects sang a song to the arresting officers which pointed out that there were more of them than there were of you. It gave a very ominous feel to the proceedings. There was a later song, which I will get to, that could not be more different in tone.
This dichotomy extends to the characters as well. One of the leads was a dirty detective, portrayed by Peter Onorati as a sort of precursor to Vic Mackey. He executed a suspect in the premier, and he had an untouchable vibe around him. It was pretty ballsy at the time to have such an unrepentant criminal so high up on the call sheet. (Onorati specializes in these type of characters that you do not want to mess with; he recently portrayed Jack’s father on This Is Us.) Contrast that with two other characters who were so over the top that their scenes felt like it was an entirely different show - Barbara Bosson as the corrupt mayor and Ronny Cox as the police chief with an urban cowboy wannabe fixation. Each had their own absurdly comic showcase song in the pilot that contributed to the all over the place mess that was the show’s trademark. The sharp contrast in tone was evident in another highlight from the premiere. One of the characters was a middle-aged detective in a relationship with a much younger uniformed officer. In one scene after she left his apartment he sat down at a piano and sang a touching ballad expressing gratitude for the fact that she chose him. Ideally, songs in a musical are used to effectively convey the emotions of the characters. If there was more of this as opposed to the nonsense, maybe, just maybe, the show could have had a chance at success.
There is one scene from the pilot that everyone points to when the show is talked about, and that is the courtroom scene. If you’ve never seen it, I don’t know if any preparation I give you can do it justice. I can only imagine the network executives walking out of a screening and thinking to themselves, “what have we done?”
Like many shows that are not currently on any streaming services, Cop Rock episodes are easily found on YouTube. You can experience them if you dare, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Billy Joel, Take Two
If CBS had to cut off the end of a Billy Joel concert mid-song, why couldn’t it have been We Didn’t Start The Fire? No one needs to hear that s***. As I’m sure everyone is aware of by now, the network’s airing of the 100th concert from his Madison Square Garden residency abruptly ended in the Eastern & Central time zones in the middle of his performance of Piano Man. After network execs wiped the collective egg off of their faces, they are re-airing the special in its entirety this evening and pinkie swear that no song will get cut off this time.
That’s the special in its entirety, NOT the concert in its entirety. I know that a lot of fans were upset over the fact the certain songs were cut out of the broadcast, but it was unrealistic to expect otherwise. The show had a 2 hour window, and once you add the commercial breaks, that means a total runtime of less than 90 minutes. Of course, producers would have to make use of the edit button. There is a related issue worth examining, however.
Part of the reason for the whole kerfuffle in the first place is that CBS’s coverage of The Masters ran long, which meant that the prime time schedule, and by ripple effect the local news was already going to start a half-hour late. This could have been avoided had CBS been more realistic about when The Masters would actually end. Each of the networks have to deal with the possibility of daytime sporting events bleeding into prime time, but they usually build in contingencies ahead of time. During the NFL season Fox reserves the first hour of Sunday prime time for The OT, so unless the 4:00 game runs really late they are able to start The Simpsons on time at 8:00. 60 Minutes is too valuable a property for CBS; if their NFL game, NCAA tournament game, or in this case golf tournament, runs past 7, 60 Minutes starts late and the entire schedule gets pushed forward accordingly. They can’t realistically do anything about the immovable object that is the NFL, but The Masters is a once a year event. For that one week only I see no reason why they can’t pre-schedule a 7:30 completion for the tournament, then start 60 Minutes at 7:30, plug a sitcom in at 8:30, and then 9:00 is clear for whatever else the network is running with a guarantee that it can sign off at 11:00 for local news. As always, my expertise programming advice is offered free of charge.
Bye Bye, Jontay
The NBA dropped the hammer on Jontay Porter, banning him from the league for his gambling involvement. In the press release announcing the punishment, commissioner Adam Silver presented the receipts.
In one sense, it’s oddly fortunate that this story involves a player as inessential as Porter is. He is an easy guy to make an example out of; the NBA loses nothing from his absence. What could be more uncomfortable is what would happen if/when a more significant player finds himself in a similar situation. I think of the old line Jerry Tarkanian used to point out the NCAA’s selective enforcement. “The NCAA is so mad at Kentucky they’re going to give Cleveland State another year of probation.” The league essentially sent a warning shot in the air; now every player knows how dire the potential consequences are. Leaders of every sports league have gotta be in constant worry that they might be forced to punish someone important. They would much prefer to sanction Cleveland State.
The details in this case are comically stupid; it’s almost as if he wanted to get caught. Because I don’t gamble I pay little attention to prop bets, but it stuns me that these types of bets even extend down to a player as low on the totem pole as Jontay Porter. Betting 80K on him of all people must have raised every red flag in existence. And as many have pointed out ever since sports gambling became legalized nationwide; it’s a minor concern that a wealthy player could get so deep into a gambling addiction that he can affect game results. The much bigger worry is that a back of the roster player who makes relatively little money could have a quieter affect on the sport. Insert whichever Pandora’s Box reference you most prefer.
What’s The Bizarro World Version Of The Streisand Effect?
I can’t honestly say that I knew much about Uri Berliner as recently as a week ago, and I can safely guess that people much less attuned to the media than I am can say the same. His relative anonymity quickly changed. He is a now-former NPR editor who wrote an essay for an outside publication in which he made the dog bites man accusation of a liberal bias at NPR.
The response was swift. He was initially suspended for speaking outside of the organization without authorization, and he formally resigned soon afterwards. He’s not going away quietly, and it’s obvious that he intends to become the latest member of the I’m Being Censored! Band O’Grifters. Bill Maher is likely to pull a muscle in the rush to book him so that they can complain about cancel culture together.
To summarize: a week ago few people knew who he was. Now, he is a card carrying member of Bari Weiss Martyrdom Land. If I were a cynical man I would say that this bit of self-immolation was pre-planned.
Dickey Betts 1943-2024
A few items above I brought up the great twin guitar attack of Guns N’ Roses. There were few, if any, guitar duos that were better than Duane Allman and Dickey Betts in the glory days of the Allman Brothers Band. What made their sound so special beyond the fact that both were brilliant musicians was that their styles were so different yet they fit together so perfectly.
Even though they were usually classified as a southern rock band, the Allmans were at heart a blues band, best exemplified by Duane Allman’s work. Betts, on the other hand, was more or less a country musician who turned his amp all the way up. That contrast was made more clear depending on who was signing each particular song. Gregg Allman had a down & dirty vocal style; Betts had a much more pronounced southern twang.
Betts was much more than a country picker, however. He wrote my personal favorite Allmans track, In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed, and it sounded nothing like either blues or country. His role in the band became much more prominent following Duane’s death, and many of the Allmans tracks from their commercial peak had his fingerprints all over them.
Dickie Betts had a contentious falling out with the band around the turn of the century and sad to say they never reconciled. With Betts’ passing Jaimoe stands along as the lone surviving member of the classic Allman Brothers Band lineup. Betts was 80 years old. He departs this mortal coil as one of the greatest guitar wizards in rock history.
Closing Laughs
I’d better wrap this up quickly lest the network feed cuts me off mid-sentence to go to the local news. Have a great weekend you hepcats, and I’ll see you all again on Monday.
