So our president continues to piss me off.

While we’re all arguing over whether the administration’s intelligence arm is deceptive or just plain bad, King Bush II goes on record opposing gay marriages. Wait, it’s worse – he’s likely going to back a proposal the GOP has put together to amend the fucking Constitution to make gay marriages illegal. “I believe marriage is sacred, and is between a man and a woman,” Dubya said, before finding a way to work in the word “sinners.”

This is one of those times when I really wish God would just show himself, just come down from wherever He is and start smiting. Amidst their fervor for moral values, the religious conservatives almost always seem to forget that their pal Jesus preached tolerance and love. I swear, I will never understand how two people finding each other and making each other happy, without hurting anyone else, can possibly be wrong. November 2004 can’t come quickly enough.

On the bright side, Bill Maher should have a lot of fun with this on his HBO show this week.

* * * * *

Anyway. I wanted to bring up a long-running topic again, that of artists finding new ways to communicate with and expand their audience. Plus, this gives me a neat excuse to rectify a glaring omission – I’ve recently discovered that one of my very favorite bands has so far gone practically unmentioned in this column, and I can’t imagine that your lives are complete without an additional exhortation from yours truly to go out and buy more music you’ve never heard.

So. The band is Marillion, a British quintet that often gets wrongly lumped in with the progressive rock types. Truth is, there’s never been a band quite like Marillion – the range and scope of their catalog is impressive, as is their nonchalant attitude about it, as if every band on the planet could be this good if only they’d apply themselves. If you’re not a fan, you’re probably only aware of Marillion thanks to a pair of huge singles in the ’80s – “Kayleigh” and “Lavender.” That was when they were fronted by an imposing, dramatic Scotsman named Fish, and when he left in ’88, to be replaced by Steve Hogarth, pretty much all of the art-rock posing went with him.

The music, startlingly, has become more experimental and diverse since Fish’s departure. Imagine the 1968 Beatles, complete with style-hopping sonic unpredictability, but with the unassuming air of the 1963 Beatles. In such an image-conscious era, it’s surprising to hear a band make such grandiose magic musically and still come off like a bunch of fun-loving regular guys while doing it. You might not think that second bit is so important, but if the guys in Marillion have proven anything in the last few years, it’s that they’re masters at inviting their audience in.

That’s crucial when the music is as wide-ranging as Marillion’s is. Radio program directors (or at least, those that still select their own playlists) like formats, and like to be able to squeeze artists into them. It makes for predictable hits – if Jay-Z suddenly decided to do a big band swing album, the whole marketing machine wouldn’t know how to deal. (Also, the seas would boil and the skies would split open, heralding the end of the world, but that’s another problem…) Marillion is un-squeezable. For every three-minute pop masterpiece they create, they also deliver a 15-minute multi-part epic, an ambient soundscape, and a rocking blues tune. That it all sounds identifiably like Marillion is just not good enough for worldwide promotion.

And true to form, the established hit-making engine has passed Marillion by – their albums have sold less and less through the years as they’ve leapt to smaller and smaller labels. That the records themselves have gotten better and better is beside the point. Their last one, 2000’s Anoraknophobia, was one of their best – two killer pop singles and six long, winding experiments in groove, tone and texture. Songs like the swirling “This Is the 21st Century” and the pummeling, epic “If My Heart Were a Ball It Would Roll Uphill” were (and are) unlike anything else being produced right now, and charted new ground for the band as well.

Anoraknophobia was important for the band for another reason as well – it signaled the beginning of the end of their reliance on record labels. See, while a lot of bands were talking about utilizing the internet to create a fan community and subsidize continued musical exploration, Marillion was doing it. They started marillion.com in the late ’90s, and did everything right – they kept in constant contact with their fans, provided consistent information, and delivered on every promise. It helps immeasurably that marillion.com is one of the best-designed and most user-friendly websites you’ll ever see. The whole enterprise conveys the band’s professionalism and reliability. They know what their site says to people – come on in, we want you to hear this stuff, and we’re going to make it easy and painless for you.

After years of this, the band finally turned to their fanbase for help – they offered Anoraknophobia for pre-order before they’d recorded a note of it, hoping that they could pre-sell enough of the album to pay for itself. The advantages for the band are obvious – a recording process free of outside interference, and the freedom to make whatever record they wanted. The advantages for the fans were less obvious – cool packaging for pre-orders, a bonus disc with a few songs, things like that. But guess what – it worked, far beyond the band’s hopes.

The thing is, a pre-order campaign is only successful if the fans implicitly trust the band to deliver on their promises. Here are some other cool things Marillion has done through their website: they’ve organized Marillion Weekends two years running, and sold tickets and promoted the whole shebang through the site. This year, they played their Afraid of Sunlight album straight through on stage on Friday night, filmed it, and had a professional-looking homemade DVD of the show on sale on Sunday – a stunt that landed them in the record books. They run a concert subscription service called the Front Row Club, whose members receive a complete recorded concert once every two months. They’ve been doing that for two years now and haven’t missed a ship date.

Recently they offered the masters of every track on Anoraknophobia for a remix contest. The best remixes will appear on a compilation later this year, and there’s a cash prize for the best version of each song. And of course, there’s Racket Records, the band’s own label, on which they release live albums and special projects. Racket releases are only available through the website, but they don’t look like albums of that sort often do – everything Racket does is lavishly designed and beautifully executed. As you’d expect, their customer service is excellent as well.

I bring all this up because the band has tapped the fanbase again this week. For the past year or so, they’ve been working on a new album, keeping the details somewhat secret, but they revealed all on Monday. It’s called Marbles, it’s well over two hours long, they expect to be done with it at the end of the year, and it comes out next April. Marbles becomes available for pre-order on September 1, and Marillion hopes to sell enough copies beforehand to not only pay for the recording, but the packaging, promotion and distribution as well. This will be the first completely independent Marillion album.

As a new format for record sales, I’ve got to say, I like this. Those who pre-order will get special packaging, receive their discs a month before anyone else, and get their names printed in the liner notes. But it’s not about that, at least not for me. Supporting something like this is about helping deserving musicians continue to be musicians, with creative freedom. It’s about flipping off the record industry, if for nothing else than for thinking that suing people left and right will stem the download revolution. In this particular case, it’s about rewarding one of the best bands in the world for never letting me down.

It’s also a huge gamble for the band, one that could very well find them crawling back to the labels by next Christmas. They’re aware of this – one of the reasons they named the album Marbles is that it’s for all of them – and they’re still willing to give it a shot, which by itself makes this little enterprise worth my money. Every revolution needs a leader, someone who will show the way, and if these five quiet Brits can pull this off, who knows how many other bands they’ll inspire.

I’m not certain where I’d recommend starting a Marillion collection, but happily, the band has included sound clips for every one of their releases on the website, so you can hear for yourself if you like. Whether or not you like what they do musically, it’s hard to argue that they don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to promotion. They’re right now building the model by which all ‘net-based bands will eventually be measured. Despite what the RIAA may think, the future is inevitable, and the best parts of it will look like marillion.com.

* * * * *

One last thing, because I’m so excited about it – everyone go to www.sloanmusic.com right now and check out the cheesy-beautiful cover for their new album Action Pact. Isn’t that cool? It’s the little things like this that make me glad to be alive.

Coming up, I plan to finally get to that 6gig record, and then the new Prince, the new Ween, and a host of other goodies.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

It’s been a weird week.

I got hired full time at my shitty job. Up until now, I’ve been working through a temporary service, but I’d reached the end of the agreed-upon term, and it was come on full time or be cast out into the street. With the loss of temporary status went the attending privileges, including my guaranteed immunity to random-draft overtime. Twice a week now I’ll be pulling 12-hour shifts. In case there’s any doubt in your mind, 12-hour shifts suck. A lot.

Naturally, I’ve re-sent my resume to literally everyone with an office in northern Maryland. As Murphy would have it, though, circumstances have just intervened. I found out today that my last place of employment (in sunny Indiana) closed its doors for good. No notice, no severance pay, just a big “get out” from management. We all kind of saw it coming, which is one of the reasons I got out when I did, but it’s still a bit of a shock, especially for the folks I know who still worked there.

For my part, of course, this renders the top reference number on my resume useless. In fact, most of my reference numbers are useless – Face is still going, but under new management, and it’s unlikely that they’d give me the best of references. Plus, I’ve just discovered that the editor who hired me in Tennessee no longer works for that paper, so anyone trying my references in order will get a) a disconnection notice, b) a new editor who likely has never heard of me, and c) an owner/publisher with whom I parted on bad terms.

Yeah, I’d hire me.

It’s a good thing the economy is in such robust shape these days, or I’d be worried.

* * * * *

As I was picking up the new Jane’s Addiction CD this week, I tried to explain to the clerk my bizarre music-buying habits, especially as they pertain to this particular purchase. While most people I know buy CDs only after they’ve heard a song or two and are certain that it’s good, I know months in advance which ones I’m going to end up buying. In the case of albums as apparently ill-advised as a new Jane’s Addiction record, I then spend the weeks leading up to the release dreading it, hoping that it doesn’t suck.

This is a special case, however, because Jane’s Addiction has always meant more than just a bunch of songs to me. In the late ’80s, Jane’s, under the direction of anorexic-looking madman Perry Farrell, released a string of the most uncompromising, visionary records the major labels have ever seen. If you had to explain to someone in 1988 what “Mountain Song” sounded like, you’d be left with very few reference points – Led Zeppelin, sort of, but bigger, like a seventy-mile-long steamroller.

Looking back, it’s clear that Farrell and company first presaged the entire alt-rock movement with 1988’s Nothing’s Shocking, and then outdid it with 1990’s Ritual de lo Habitual, rendering the whole thing moot before it began. These are records so far ahead of their time that were they released today, they’d still sound forward-looking – Habitual especially, with its epic sprawl and dynamic atmospheres. None of the Nirvana-come-latelies that followed in that album’s path have reached as high as Jane’s did with the 10-minute “Three Days,” or the progressive-tinged “Then She Did…”

But there’s more to it than that. As I’m sure is the case with a lot of music fans my age, my first brush with corporate censorship revolved around Ritual de lo Habitual, and Warner Bros.’ insistence that the band replace the “offensive” cover art with something more “pleasant” to “grandmothers” who shop at “Wal-Mart.” The original art depicted papier-mache statues of three naked people in bed together, and by today’s standards, it’s fairly tasteful. Thirteen years ago, however, it was a big deal.

And I know it’s easy to impress a 16-year-old, but Farrell’s decision to scrap the cover entirely and replace it with a text block rendering of the First Amendment seemed downright heroic. Farrell further gained my respect when he decided, mere months later, that Jane’s Addiction had gone as far as it could with Habitual, and broke up the band before it could get stale. Even at 16, I was familiar with bands that had gone on too long, and inwardly applauded Farrell’s nerve and artistic conviction.

And then the money started coming in. Farrell quit his association with Lollapalooza, the traveling festival he helped create, in 1991 due to its increasing commercialization. It took 12 years to get him back in the saddle, and along the way he produced a bland side project (Porno for Pyros, although their second album, Good God’s Urge, had its moments) and stuck his name on a terrible electronica record (Song Yet To Be Sung). His Jane’s compatriot Dave Navarro, one of the most inventive guitarists of his generation, joined the Red Hot Chili Peppers for one so-so album (One Hot Minute) and also affixed his name to a lousy solo record (Trust No One).

Worse by far, though, was the money-hungry resurrection of Jane’s Addiction, who came together (minus original bassist Eric Avery, who was replaced by, of all people, Flea) for a reunion tour in 1997, complete with cash-in “rare tracks” compilation (the utterly useless Kettle Whistle). The effort seemed half-hearted at best, but now Farrell and company have decided to go whole-hog. Since no other project has lined the band members’ pockets quite like Jane’s Addiction did, they’ve reunited once more to headline Lollapalooza – minus Avery again, his spot this time covered by Chris Chaney. And of course, they’ve brought along some recorded product to shill. They’ve called it Strays.

You can see how one might consider this a triumph of the commercial over the artistic, and if you’re feeling melodramatic, the final death knell for a generation’s youthful, wide-eyed idealism. Even the jacket art of Strays is cynical and boring – the first of their cover images to not depict nipples, amusingly enough, it’s just a group photo, shot in a studio and digitally inserted in front of a landscape backdrop. This is not a cover worth fighting for, not an artistic statement worth preserving. It lies there and does nothing.

But maybe it’s the Waterworld effect – if you expect an absolute disaster, a halfway competent work will seem like genius. Or maybe I’m just mellowing out, and my youthful, wide-eyed idealism died a long time ago. Whatever the reason, I like Strays quite a bit. And whatever else this record may be, I can assure you it’s not a cash-in marketing tool. Jane’s worked on this, they crafted it when they could have just rushed something out, and for that they deserve at least one open-minded listen.

The funny thing is that Jane’s still play like it’s 1991. Yes, they’re older and a little mellower, but the songs and the band’s performance of them sounds very much like the last decade of pissers and moaners (what I like to call the “days of whine and poseurs”) never happened. Strays is a big, joyous record, with all the wailing guitar solos of the Guns ‘n’ Roses days, and liberal splashes of Led Zeppelin’s epic sense. After 12 years of guitarists following Saint Cobain’s lead, hitting the distortion pedal and calling it dynamics, it’s refreshing to hear someone like Navarro who knows what that word means. His tones slither and waft around this album, caressing it to life.

That’s not to say it doesn’t rock. One of the primary criticisms I’ve read of Strays is that it sounds like nu-metal, but that’s not true. It sounds like the nu-metal prototype Jane’s always was, molten riffs crashing into funk and Cure-style soundscapes, with a splash of electronics this time out. Jane’s started the whole mess, remember, and their sound was hijacked by the likes of Korn and ripped to shreds by Disturbed, Staind and other no-talents. We need a band like this to show us just how far this music has strayed from its original purpose – you’ve never heard a Jane’s Addiction song about how crummy life is, and you likely never will.

I don’t want to give the impression that Strays is a masterpiece, or even on the same level as Jane’s early works. It isn’t. These songs don’t have the same sense of unlimited adventure as the ones on Habitual – you never get the feeling with this album that anything can happen, that the floor could drop away at any moment. Strays also contains the worst Jane’s song ever, the acoustic blah “Everybody’s Friend,” which is almost spared by its nifty middle section, but not quite. Closer “To Match the Sun” fizzles before it can do anything, and “Hypersonic” doesn’t deserve its awe-inspiring drum beat.

But for surprising stretches of this record, all is right with the world. “Wrong Girl” is a neck-snapping slice of Zeppelin funk in odd tempos, “The Riches” percolates nicely until it flips on its own ear in typical Jane’s fashion, “Strays” is a good old clean guitar romp, and the album’s highlight, “Price I Pay,” condenses a side-long suite into five and a half minutes. Along the way, you’ll be taken aback by how much this new Jane’s Addiction actually sounds like Jane’s Addiction.

The hallmark of this album is its unrelenting positivity, a trait that all by itself sets it apart from the legions of Jane’s wannabes that sprung up in their wake. Farrell remains one of the most idiosyncratic frontmen on the scene, simply because he always sings and never screams, growls or raps. His delivery is so full of joy that even when his lyrics are accusatory (“Just Because”) or sarcastic (“The Riches”), he sounds on the verge of ecstasy. And it’s that sense of fun, of pure delight, that’s been slowly and painfully excised from so-called alternative music in the 13 years since Jane’s albums.

Strays may not be an instant classic, and it probably won’t irrevocably change the musical landscape like Shocking and Habitual did. Surprisingly, though, I think that’s a shame, because until hearing it, I didn’t realize how much we needed Jane’s Addiction’s brand of delirium and wonder. I was expecting a crapfest from tired old men hoping for a payday, and I got a vital, electric album from a band that probably doesn’t even realize how relevant they are. If Strays begins another alt-rock revolution and brings forth a fountain of wannabes who learn from its deep textures and joyous grooves, it won’t be a minute too soon.

Cash your checks, boys. You’ve earned them this time.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Well, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences missed their last chance to give Joss Whedon an Emmy for his work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer this week. One visual effects nomination, and that’s it. Never mind the fact that with “Selfless,” “Conversations With Dead People,” “Storyteller” and Whedon’s series finale “Chosen,” Buffy served up four of the best hours of television of this or just about any year. Screw it, let’s give the award to The Sopranos again.

Okay, end of rant. And, I’ve decided, end of dreary and depressing topics for this column, at least for this week. Yeah, the music industry is in a lousy place, and the world at large is in a lousier one, and at least one million injustices are committed each second, which means six million awful things have happened in the time it’s taken you to read this atrocious run-on sentence. One of music’s great attributes is its ability to make you think about the state of the world, or forget about it entirely. It’s all in how it’s used, and some of the best records ever made revel in their power to inflict temporary blissful amnesia for 50 minutes or so.

For instance.

I had a conversation this week about the new Fountains of Wayne album, Welcome Interstate Managers, and I remembered that this nifty little gem was still languishing in my “to review” pile. FoW is basically a songwriting duo – Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood – that makes some of the most infectious, hilarious, touching pop music this side of Sloan. They’ve never written a song that can’t be described as a ditty – they’re all simple, perfectly constructed three-minute marvels. The magic of FoW is that while these ditties are playing, you’ll find it hard to imagine enjoying anything as much as you’re enjoying them.

In some ways, FoW are doing a delightfully deadpan mockery of pop music, using its framework to dissect and destroy its usual lyrical concerns. Welcome Interstate Managers is in places just a few vulgarities removed from Ween – “Hey Julie,” for example, is a song the Ween brothers could have penned, and “Hung Up on You” would fit nicely on their 12 Golden Country Greats album. Any album that begins with the line “He was killed by a cellular phone explosion” is going to be labeled quirky, an easy description that has relegated bands like They Might Be Giants to the novelty bin.

And like TMBG, dismissing FoW as merely a quirky pop outfit will likely lead one to miss the subtler, more beautiful moments they pull off with ease. Yes, there is a song here based on the line “Stacy’s mom has got it going on,” but there’s also “Hackensack,” a lovely lament for a lost, now-famous friend. And there’s “All Kinds of Time,” which takes three minutes to describe in loving detail the couple of seconds before a young quarterback throws a perfect pass. And there’s “Valley Winter Song,” which emulates musically the soft New England snowstorm it paints lyrically.

And there’s “Bright Future in Sales,” the most fun you’ll have listening to a single song this year, barring an excellent new album from the aforementioned Sloan. Musically it’s perfect pop, and lyrically it’s a Dilbert strip minus the cynicism – “I had a line on a brand new account, but now I can’t seem to find where I wrote that number down, I try to focus, I’m staring at the screen, pretending like I know what all these little flashing lights mean…” In an alternate universe, this is an anthem that’s blaring out of speakers in convertibles roaring down every street in America.

And there’s “Halley’s Waitress,” a pastiche of ’70s orchestral pop balladry that’s just as clever as you hope it is: “Halley’s waitress never comes around, she’s hiding in the kitchen, she’s nowhere to be found…and when she finally appears it’s like she’s been away for years…” They choose the popular mispronunciation of Halley – “HAY-lee” instead of “HAL-lee” – but one gets the sense that a band this smart wouldn’t make that mistake, and it’s all part of the joke.

Welcome Interstate Managers has a masterfully executed ebb and flow, as well. In fact, had the album ended, elegantly and beautifully, with “Fire Island,” it would have been a worthy successor to 1999’s Utopia Parkway. Unfortunately, Collingwood and Schlesinger have uncannily sequenced the only four inferior songs right at the end. Three of them meander with pleasant grooves and very little melody, kind of like second-rate Oasis, and closer “Yours and Mine” is so brief it feels like an afterthought. “Peace and Love” does a decent job of skewering the recent lazy-hippie acoustics-and-drum-machines bong music thing, but otherwise the final quartet plays like a set of hastily appended bonus tracks.

But hey, you have the power to press stop at track 12 if you want to, and if you choose to do so, you’ll have a nearly flawless pop gem on your hands. Welcome Interstate Managers is just light enough to be winsome and ingratiating, and yet just considered and artful enough to avoid easy dismissal. It’s a pop record for people who think they’re too cool for pop records, and an absolute charmer. Like all the best pop, there is loneliness and disconnection beneath its sunny surface, and the lyrics, read on their own, would seem to belong to a much sadder record. That it leaves you with a hazy sense of pleasant wonder is nothing short of magic.

What’s that? Another example? Well, okay, but just this once…

I’m eventually going to write a book about criminally underrated bands, and when I do, Enuff Znuff will easily rate their own chapter. Most folks, if they remember them at all, lump Enuff Znuff in with the late ’80s-early ’90s hair metal explosion, dismissing them as they would Trixter or Britny Fox. These people are insane. Remember this – there will be a quiz later.

EZN (their preferred abbreviation) have been making records for 15 years, and their latest, Welcome to Blue Island, is their 11th. They scored their only two hits in 1989 with “New Thing” and “Fly High Michelle” from their self-titled debut, and have been ignored ever since. But here’s the thing – since their second album, the wonderful Strength, EZN have been on a roll, penning one terrific pop song after another. It would be far easier for me to list the bad Enuff Znuff songs, there are so few of them. They are the most Beatles-influenced power pop band since Cheap Trick, and proof positive that simply making great records is not enough in today’s market.

Enuff Znuff are easily described thusly: imagine if John Lennon had left the Beatles and started the glam-rock revolution. They’ve always balanced equal parts British melodicism and good old American arena-rock, despite not being able to play arenas since 1991 or so. Sure, there are wailing guitar solos now and then, but they’re easily countered by the soaring, Lennon-esque voice of Donnie Vie. (Sorry, but there’s no other way to describe him – he sounds an awful lot like John Lennon at his best.) And of course, there are the songs, with as many interesting chord changes and inescapable melodies as the boys can cram in. The work speaks for itself – Donnie Vie and Chip Znuff have written more great songs together than a large percentage of the folks who routinely outsell them.

I know that bands are supposed to get better with age, but the last few EZN records have been pretty damn amazing. After a few efforts put together on a shoestring, the production finally caught up with the songcraft on 1999’s Paraphernalia, and only got better on 2000’s superb 10. Because this type of music is much more popular in Japan for some reason, they get EZN records before we do. Add in the search for a stateside record label (they finally landed one with Perris Records) and my aversion to import prices, and all told I’ve had to wait more than a year to hear 2002’s Blue Island, just out in the U.S. Not that I was worried, but I’m happy to report that the streak continues – it’s by and large an excellent pop album.

There is a touch more rock this time, and I always found it odd that a band that regularly throws back to the ’60s would want to evoke the ’80s as much as they do, but happily only one song – “Roller Bladin’ in the Shade” – really recalls the days of stonewashed jeans and teased hair. The rest of the album carries on the Beatles-but-louder tradition they’ve always upheld, and there are gems aplenty. “Saturday” and “Sanibel Island” could duke it out for Best Summer Anthem, “Man Without a Heart” levitates on gorgeous harmonies, and “Fallen in Love Again” is perfectly Lennon/McCartney.

Most impressive of all is the mostly instrumental concluding trilogy, quite unlike anything they’ve attempted thus far. The rocking “Z Overture” is the work of a tight, well-hewn unit, and it slams headlong into the multi-part jazzy epic “Zentimental Journey,” which, among other things, outs Vie as a halfway decent scat singer. That tune ends with a repeated Beatles quote – “Here comes the sun” – which, of course, leads into the wailing-guitar-and-huge-harmonies coda, called “The Sun.” It’s sort of their mini-Abbey Road suite, and it’s a fine capper to a short yet rewarding album.

The American bonus tracks are definitely tacked on – there’s a live reading of “Hide Your Love Away” on the Howard Stern Show, a new track performed with former BulletBoy Marq Torien (not even in the same league as Vie), and a note-for-note cover of Nirvana’s “All Apologies,” the point of which eludes me. Like Welcome Interstate Managers, Blue Island is much improved by stopping at track 12.

There are rumors that Blue Island will be the last Enuff Znuff album, since Vie refused to tour with the band in order to promote his soon-to-be-released solo record Just Enough. Should this prove to be true, it will feel like reality finally intruding. Considering the tumultuous musical landscape into which they were born, it’s pretty remarkable that EZN managed 11 albums, as if the gods have been looking the other way each time. At the moment, they are alone in their field, the only band doing what they do, or at least as well as they do it. In the end, it’s all about the songs, and virtually every Enuff Znuff song can be lifted up as an example of pure pop joy.

I haven’t quite digested the new 6gig yet, but I hold out hope that I can get to it next time. Also on the way are Jane’s Addiction, Spock’s Beard, Queensryche, Mark Eitzel and Harry Connick, Jr. I just read that list again and I can’t help marveling at its incongruity. It’s neat to be me.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

The Normal Rules Do Not Apply

On Glenn McDonald and the Alarm

7/9/03

I’ve been thinking an awful lot about big corporations lately.

I’m not sure why – maybe it’s because I work for one, so I get to see first-hand the doublethink and the layers of useless terminology and processes posing as innovations. I get to participate in soul-numbing multi-step procedures every day, procedures which could be simplified with the application of a tiny bit of common sense, but which are blindly and unquestioningly carried out because that’s the way things are done.

Part of my stultifying job is assembling wire harnesses for air conditioning units. These harnesses come in boxes of 50 or so, and each wire is masking-taped together at the ends. Hence, an essential part of my preparation for my job is removing each tiny piece of masking tape, one by one, box by box. This takes hours. These strips of tape are so small and tightly wound that it’s impossible to imagine a machine adhering them, which means that somewhere there’s a guy whose job it is to tape the ends of the wires together, one by one, box by box. That guy and I are likely being paid similar amounts of money to counteract each other.

And it should be the simplest thing in the world for me to call that guy and ask him to stop taping the wires. Surely he has better things to do with his time. I know I do. Yes, taping the wires prevents them from tangling up during shipment, but once I remove the tape, the wires get tangled on my end anyway, so what would be the difference? Thing is, I can’t call that guy – I have to go through my bosses, who then have to go to that guy’s bosses, because we’re talking about two enormous corporations communicating, and nothing will change because taping the wires is just how it’s done. The tape guy and I will still be paid to accomplish absolutely nothing.

Naturally, this made me think of the record industry.

I realized this morning that last week’s column offered a lot of problems without clear solutions. I feel the need this time to offer up a few more positives, to show that there are people out there trying to swim against the tide and make a difference in a soulless, plastic musical climate. There are people who are actively discovering new ways to reach people and connect with them, bringing undeservedly obscure music to light. In fact, I want to mention two of them by name: Glenn McDonald and Mike Peters.

Glenn and I have a bit in common – we both run a weekly online music column that often diverges into personal terrain. Glenn’s is called The War Against Silence and can be found at www.furia.com/twas. He also lives in my once-and-forever home state of Massachusetts, no more than an hour’s train ride from where I was born. That, however, is where the similarities seem to end, because Glenn and I hardly ever agree.

It’s not just our taste in music, although there’s a pretty impressive gap between us there, too. In the very rare cases in which our tastes intersect, we always seem to like a particular artist for completely different reasons, and never agree on which particular albums are any good. I loved Marillion’s Anoraknophobia, for example, largely because it sounds so un-Marillion and it shows their undying willingness to grow and change. Glenn, conversely, seems to have given up on the band entirely after repeatedly trying to like Anoraknophobia and failing. I hated Tori Amos’ Scarlet’s Walk, going so far as to call it a boring waste of time. Glenn, on the other hand, called it the “best album ever.”

But that’s why I read him – to get a different viewpoint, and to read about artists I’ve never sampled. I also read TWAS every week to marvel at Glenn’s writing style, which couldn’t be more different from mine. I tend to focus on the music itself, going into often ridiculous detail about instrumentation and tone and theory. Glenn talks about how music affects him personally, and he does so with engaging eloquence. You can’t deny his palpable desire to connect his love of music with his readers, and while he sometimes misses the mark, he’s usually successful at drawing you in to his pocket universe, and communicating his one-on-one relationship with music in a universal way.

Glenn’s is the only online music column I read faithfully, and also the one from which I’ve learned the most. The highest compliment I can pay him is that he’s held on to his passion for music, a passion I sometimes find myself lacking when it comes to writing my own weekly missive. Reading his work helps me refresh and revitalize my own, and whether he’d take that as a compliment or not I don’t know, considering how often we disagree, but I owe him. So thanks, Glenn. And everyone who isn’t Glenn, go check out his column.

I really wanted to mention Glenn this time because he’s also the only online reviewer I’ve encountered who has as much love and respect for the Alarm as I have. It’s apparent that we both encountered the Alarm at similar points in our lives – those idealistic years when soaring anthems of hope and struggle connect with some unexplainable spark within. To most of America, the Alarm is a tiny blip of a band, most commonly known for their supporting tour with U2 in the late ‘80s. To some of us, though, the Alarm fulfilled the promise of U2 with more sincerity and less ego.

In one form or another, the spirit of the Alarm has continued through the efforts of singer/songwriter Mike Peters. The band officially broke up in 1992, but Peters has slowly staged a comeback in his native Wales, organizing a website (http://www.thealarm.com/) which treats the Alarm like the most important and influential band ever to walk the earth, and evolving his blossoming solo career into a vehicle for his newly formed version of the original foursome. He’s toured with the new guys for three years, getting old and new fans used to the name Alarm again, and now he’s reached the linchpin of his plan – a new Alarm album called In the Poppy Fields.

Peters is kind of a take it or leave it proposition, especially for newbies – he appears to carry out his life and career as if he’s never heard of irony. Everything Peters has ever done has been done passionately, and he puts himself on the line regularly. His self-serious, save-the-world-through-music persona invites laughter, but only until it becomes clear that it’s not a persona at all. Unlike Bono, for example, Peters truly believes every word that he sings, and he seems to have no patience for frivolity. I couldn’t imagine him taking an entire decade to ironically comment on the artificiality of fame, as U2 did – he’s got more important things to discuss, like hope and peace and rock ‘n’ roll.

Which brings me to the main reason I wanted to mention Glenn and Mike at the same time. Glenn beat me to the punch by reviewing Poppy Fields weeks ago, and he delivered the most accurate and insightful description of Mike Peters I’ve ever read. It’s bloody perfect, and I hope he doesn’t mind if I reproduce it here in its entirety:

“Gradually, over the past few years, Peters has morphed into a sort of hyper-cuddly reinvention of the fundamental archetype of the rock star as a new and inexplicable creature capable of taking himself monumentally and encyclopedically seriously without ever being detectably dour or egotistical about it. Far from any delusion that he’s some kind of King of Pop, Peters more often appears to labor under the delusion that he has somehow inherited the post of Town Singer in a village that has, and has only ever had, just one. He cheerfully sets out to entertain the townspeople with the mixture of senses of responsibility and entitlement that arise from the apparent assumption that people come to him for entertainment in the same way that they visit the town’s only blacksmith for horseshoes.”

Of course, Glenn and I disagree on the specifics of our shared love for Peters and his work. My favorite Alarm album is Change, their startlingly ambitious opus from 1989, and I like it for the same reasons Glenn seems to dislike it – it often sounds nothing like the Alarm. Unsurprisingly, our views on Poppy Fields differ sharply, for the same reasons. This album rarely sounds like the Alarm. Rousing, hopeful anthems only make up a small percentage of the record. But that stands to reason, since despite Peters’ insistence on using the name, the band that recorded Poppy Fields isn’t, in fact, the Alarm.

This is my main quibble with Peters, and it stems from the same place as my objections to the new Jane’s Addiction album. To my mind, the Alarm was four guys – Peters, guitarist Dave Sharp, bassist Eddie MacDonald and drummer Nigel Twist. The new Alarm retains only Peters, and even though guitarist James Stevenson, bassist Craig Adams and drummer Steve Grantley have the blessing of the original members, they’re not the Alarm. I don’t doubt the purity of Peters’ intentions, or the deliberate nature of his process, but it’s a misnomer to refer to this Mike Peters solo album as the work of his one-time band.

One thing I can’t fault Peters for, however, is his willingness to try new avenues of fan interaction and distribution. Poppy Fields is a bold step forward for ’net-based music, as it’s currently available exclusively from the Alarm website, and it incorporates a level of interactivity that seems like a logical progression, but is in truth a great leap. Most albums emerge from the studio at four or five times their intended size, and the artist usually undergoes a weeding-out process, throwing two-thirds to three-fourths of the recordings away. Peters and the band recorded 54 tracks for Poppy Fields, but rather than shelve more than 40 of them, he released the whole thing online as a five-CD set.

But that’s not all. Those who purchased Poppy Fields in its entirety before March were asked to vote on the track listing for a more traditional 10 to 12-song album to be culled from these songs. It’s based on the often correct assumption that the fans know how to turn new people on to the band better than the band does. Think about it – how many times have you bemoaned the selection of a first single that puts a bad face on an otherwise terrific album? Here’s an Alarm fan’s chance to design the album most likely to win new fans. It’s a very cool idea.

There is one flaw, however. You get the sense listening to the unedited Poppy Fields that Peters absolutely considers the 54-song version to be the official one. Unlike Glenn, who managed with ease to select 10 songs, I’m having difficulty imagining any version of In the Poppy Fields that runs less than two hours, so excellent is the vast majority of the material here.

Part of my positive reaction stems from my undying love for U2. Problem is, Bono’s boys have had a spot of trouble lately sounding like U2 – let’s say, for the last 13 years. Peters appears to have noticed this as well, and he’s set out to fill that vacuum retroactively. Here’s enough earnest, honest, wide-open landscape music to replace U2’s entire ‘90s output, and there’s no denying the connection this time. One listen to rousing opener “Close” and it’s clear – Peters couldn’t have made this sound more like U2 if he’d tried.

But listen beyond the “infinite guitar” trappings and atmospherics, and you’ll hear melodies the likes of which U2 haven’t written in ages. “Alone Together” gets the most out of its dramatic chord changes, “The Search for the Real Life” drops off surprisingly into spoken word at just the right times, and “How Long and How Much Longer” achieves orbit. This is a much mellower record than I expected, punctuated by moments of pulsing electrics (“Coming Home,” “Trafficking,” “45rpm”) that gain power through contrast. Best of all, for a 54-song collection, this thing is paced perfectly and sequenced brilliantly. Aside from a slow stretch of songs at the end of the third disc, it’s never boring.

There are definite highlights, which I suppose could aid in whittling this thing down. If I had to pick a favorite disc, it would be the second one, perhaps the mellowest of all. But “New Home New Life” is beautiful, gliding on Peters’ falsetto, and “Rain Down” is even more so, all passion and acoustic guitars. “45rpm” is a surprising punk raveup, leading into “Everafter,” a great rock song. The disc concludes with “The Unexplained,” a moody acoustic mantra unlike anything the Alarm has done.

Elsewhere, Peters sets the bar high with “The Drunk and the Disorderly,” the most Alarm-like song here. (In fact, it bears perhaps too close a resemblance to “Spirit of ’76.”) It’s a singalong fist-pumper, sequenced exactly halfway through, and it leaves little doubt that Peters still has the old fire. The fourth disc is given over entirely to a 30-minute song-suite called “Edward Henry Street,” and it’s the most impressive chapter in Peters’ ongoing autobiography in song. He leads the band through styles and sounds of his youth, and the songs amazingly recapture that sense of innocent power that infused the first few Alarm records. “Edward Henry Street” ends with “It’s Going to Be a Good Year,” reason enough to fall in love with Peters’ work all over again.

And In the Poppy Fields ends well, too. It’s rare to sift through this much material and still find mini-masterpieces like “Free Inside” sequenced at track 51. The record ends with three psychedelic experiments disguised as epics, and here Peters pulls out the late-period Beatles influences and takes them for a ride. It’s gratifying to me that he concludes such a mammoth work with three songs that break new ground for him, that push his personal envelope beyond his admittedly narrow purview. It’s a good sign for the future that he’s still willing to grow and change.

Throughout Poppy Fields, in fact, older fans of the band may think he’s changed a bit too much. Quite a lot of this set is slow, acoustic and moody, and while these songs would probably have been axed (or at least revved up) by the Alarm of old, here they serve to further separate the eras. Peters has grown, both as a person and as a songwriter, and if he’d churned out 54 variations on “Strength” or “Sixty-Eight Guns,” it would have been laughable. Poppy Fields sounds like what it is – the work of a mature songwriter who knows how much the world sucks, and who keeps the fire alive anyhow.

I admit that part of what I like about Poppy Fields is its sheer mass, its inescapable ambition. But I also like that it provides a comprehensive, crystal-clear picture of Mike Peters, one which justifies the place I’ve reserved for him in my personal pantheon. How easy would it be for Peters to live off the past, to fade away into an anecdote on VH1’s I Love the ‘80s? Instead, he pushes himself to excel musically, and pushes the model of internet distribution forward at the same time.

In the Poppy Fields is an imperfect collection, to be sure, but it simply burns with the desire to connect, to reach out and ignite everyone it touches. Far from the impersonal product of a massive corporation, it’s an intensely personal expression, delivered directly from Peters’ heart to yours, with no interference. It’s an attempt at a one-on-one dialogue, a stab at revitalizing music by bringing it back to its original purpose. That alone is worth supporting. That it’s very, very good is just icing.

Remember to check out Glenn McDonald – www.furia.com/twas. Next week, the new 6gig.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

At this point in his career, saying that Bruce Cockburn has made a terrific album is kind of redundant.

In fact, Bruce Cockburn has made more than a dozen terrific albums, and a bunch more very good ones. He’s had a long career – his new album You’ve Never Seen Everything is his 27th – and while he’s something of a national hero in his native Canada, he’s pretty much a nonentity here. Which is a shame, because Cockburn is a talent that deserves wider recognition and blah blah bitty blah.

I’m so tired of singing this same song. Aren’t you tired of hearing it?

Most of you don’t know who Bruce Cockburn is. Just a glance at his sales figures makes such a statement self-evident. Somehow this man has managed to create 27 albums over more than 30 years, and still escape the notice of just about everyone. He’s on tiny Rounder Records now in the United States, and there’s no question that Rounder is a great label – they discovered Alison Krauss, and released the soundtrack to the Buffy musical, just for starters. They’re just small. They don’t have the resources to put Bruce Cockburn’s incredible music in the home of every American, and there’s only so much room on the radio dial anyway and Jennifer Lopez is taking up most of it with her ass. So you don’t get to hear Bruce’s new album.

I try to pretend most of the time that this greed-driven music distribution system we have doesn’t make me angry, but truth be told, it pisses me off. You all know who Puff Daddy-slash-P. Diddy is. You’ve all heard the Backstreet Boys. I talked to a guy at work this week who buys nothing but MTV-promoted “rebellious” rock, like Disturbed, Linkin Park and Staind. He just bought his first Jimi Hendrix album, because Hulk Hogan recommended it on TV. He’ll buy the Staind album the day it comes out, but it takes Hulk Hogan to convince him to try Jimi Hendrix.

Guess what? He was blown away. He’s a Jimi fan now.

Music should be taught in schools, right alongside English and math. Kids should know that they’re being used, that marketers have targeted them since birth to buy products disguised as emotions. They should know that there’s a world of music that won’t be spoon-fed to them, a world that’s brighter and more vivid than anything TRL says they have to buy, buy, buy. They should be encouraged to appreciate music as art, and be taught to discern the honest and talented from the plastic and calculated. Otherwise they’ll grow up to buy Staind albums. Or, you know, albums by whatever group of sullen, middle-class mopers have taken Staind’s place in the grand machine.

Everything is backwards. Everything is in reverse. There’s no way that Carlos Santana should have to duet with Rob Thomas or Michelle Branch to sell albums. (The best part of that last sentence is that people stumbling upon this column online in 10 years will be scratching their heads and asking, “Rob who?”) There’s no way that a talentless bozo like 50 Cent should be selling millions of records and Terry Taylor should have to post a letter to his website practically begging his tiny group of fans to buy his albums, not copy them for each other. He can’t pay his bills, you see. He needs the paltry income his few hundred CD sales a month bring him to live.

Seriously, what the hell is going on?

This is not music that no one would like, either. Most of the great albums that appear and disappear month in and month out are filled with songs people would respond to, if only they got to hear them. Many of them are filled with songs that would open worlds to people, overflowing with sounds they’ve never heard in combinations they’ve never imagined. But we’re trained, you see. We’re trained by the grand parade of lifeless packaging, trained to believe that our opinion means nothing. That our taste means nothing. Most people don’t like music unless they’re certain that everyone else will like it, too, and they can be reaffirmed by the herd.

This mentality makes it incredibly simple for the marketers. If the primary characteristic of something “good” is that everyone likes it, and everyone is afraid of deviating from the norm, then it’s the simplest thing in the world to use the mass media machine to make a certain product the norm. Put 50 Cent on the radio 40 times a day and in heavy rotation on MTV, for no other reason than because the record company said so, and you’ve circumvented the natural order of things – you’ve made something “good” by making it popular first, instead of letting it become popular because it’s good. If you can do that, and get people used to it, then the product can be any old shit you wish.

All of which makes it harder to find the music that actually is good. Take Bruce Cockburn, for example. (This is, after all, supposed to be a column about him and his new album.) As redundant as it may be to say, You’ve Never Seen Everything is a great album. Cockburn plays a tricky yet appealing blend of jazz and folk, with indelible melodies and impeccable guitar work. Just the opening guitar figure of “Tried and Tested” is enough to win you over – it’s deep and soaring, weaving a dense web of light. “Open” is a wonderful pop song, as is “Put It In Your Heart,” and there hasn’t been a more graceful, gently uplifting number this year than “Don’t Forget About Delight.”

The most impressive aspect of this album, as usual, is Cockburn’s gift with lyrics. It’s always worth it to digest his albums whole, since he offers the most finely tuned sense of lyrical balance you’re likely to find. The message of nearly every Cockburn album is that life is absurdly difficult and depressing, but hope is always there. He juxtaposes moods like no one else – furious political rant “Trickle Down” (which contains a stunning piano solo by Andy Milne and the great line “pinstripe prophet of peckerhead greed”) is followed by “Everywhere Dance,” the most gentle and beautiful thing here. And it’s all about unnamed hope – “And we cry out for grace to lay truth bare, the dance is the truth and it’s everywhere.”

Similarly, the nine-minute title track is a mostly spoken litany of responses to the person who says they’ve seen everything: “On the other side of the world the drug squad busts a child’s birthday party, puts bullets in the family dog and the blood goes all over the baby. And the Mounties are strip-searching schoolgirls because they can.” The song laments the fact that we “never feel the light falling all around.” One song later and he’s making sure we “Don’t Forget About Delight” – “Amid the post-ironic postulating and the poet’s pilfered rhymes, meaning feels like it’s evaporating out of sight and out of mind, don’t forget…”

In many ways, though, “Tried and Tested” is the mission statement of the album, and of this phase of Cockburn’s life. It lists off the trials the song’s narrator has faced, and concludes with one repeated phrase – “I’m still here.” Twenty-seven albums into a career which, added all together, probably doesn’t equal the sales figures of Avril Lavigne’s one record (five, Mike!), Cockburn is still here, following his muse and his conscience and simply making great music. Music which, unless you seek it out, you’ll never get to hear.

The stupid music distribution system works just fine for the rich guys who run it, so it’s not going to change. That means we have to. We need to crawl out from under the pile of soulless shiny crap they keep dropping on us, and seek out the good stuff, and support it. None of this means you need to agree with me about Bruce Cockburn – he’s my current example of a guy who’s had a lengthy, acclaimed career in relative obscurity. There are many, many more, most of which I’ve never heard. And isn’t that the best part about music – the discovery? Yes, it’s harder than it needs to be to find those magical musical moments, but finding them is always worth it, isn’t it? This is no time to be complacent. That’s exactly what they want. Dig. Discover. Explore.

To paraphrase the man, you’ve never heard everything.

See you in line Tuesday morning.