Shut Up, Dude: This Week’s Best Comments

Tago Mago and Ege Mamyasi absolutely blew my mind when I first discovered Can as a perpetually stoned teenager. The spirit of exploration and abandon, the feeling of ecstatic expressions of creativity, conveying emotions through abstraction and pure sound divorced from any recognizable language. Damo’s unique voice was what drew me in and what held it all together for me and lead me to discovering so much more amazing music. A psychedelic in human form, he expanded my mind and brought new colors to the world. RIP.

"Locked Out Of Heaven" is where Bruno Mars proves that he is spiritual brothers with "Weird Al" Yankovic. Hear me out.

One of the things that makes Yankovic so great, and the thing that puts him head and shoulders above everybody else who's ever put funny words to preexisting music, is his attention to detail. If he's going to do a parody of a Robin Thicke song that today's column alluded to in two different ways, he's not just going to slap together something that sounds enough like the original to sell the joke. He's going to analyze and pick apart what went into that original and what makes it work – from the arrangement to the playing to the delivery to the production – so that he can sound like it as much as possible, which turns it into a whole other joke. If he's going to do a non-specific pastiche of an artist in general, he's going to deconstruct all of the things that make that artist that artist so that he can do the same things and come up with something altogether new, aping none of their songs and all of their songs simultaneously.

That's Bruno Mars right here. If he had come around 15 years earlier, he might've given Yankovic his only real competition. If he'd come around half a decade later, he'd've been writing songs for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. He happened to arrive at the precise moment when that lane was empty and he could claim it fully unironically by yelping about how horned-up he was. In what will not be the last time it happens in this column, Mars's attempts to write about sex cause him to trip over his own schwanz. At least here it's contained within a single line, but boy, that single line is a doozy. I'm sorry, but the instant I heard him sing "Your sex takes me to paradise," I flagged it as one of the worst lyrics of the decade, and ten-plus years have not cooled my ardor on this front (nor Mars's ardor on all fronts, apparently). The rest of the song? Unobjectionable! But that one line treads very closely into "bags of sand" territory. In four years, Mars will build a whole song around that energy. It's gonna be awkward.

As for "Locked Out Of Heaven," my eight-year-old liked it enough from the radio that he asked me to put it on his playlist. And I did, because I'm a great dad. "Locked Out Of Heaven" gets a tight 7.

My mate JonathanSuperdonkeypiss has had similar experiences.

Seems plausible that this guy, who has almost a half a century in the game and thus is probably in his late sixties/early seventies at the youngest, wouldn't be aware that Beyonce was going country? And he immediately said he was "all for it" when he got push back. Willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt here.

If u only think of Chads when you see Usher that speaks more to your white surroundings than anything Usher has done lol...Usher has given black people a lot of great black music.

If you have the time, I invite you to pop over to tnocs.com, where I have 4 more questions waiting to be answered by the music-obsessed.  

https://www.tnocs.com/its-part-deux-four-more-musical-questions-my-answers-and-your-answers/

I have conflicted feelings about "Locked Out of Heaven".  I see the merits.  It's boldly different from what was out there at the time, taking its influence from a retro source not often mined.  It's a solid, tighter than tight jam and deftly produced. And it heavily employs the cuica, (or probably a sample of one), a Brazilian friction drum that sounds a bit like a hooting owl, which is always welcome in my world.  The issue here is that the "rabid Police fan in high school" part of me does not want to hear someone trying to sound like Sting and/or the band.  The sound of the Police, bringing together 3 very diverse talents and energies, was like lightning in a bottle.  It will never be duplicated. I didn't even want to hear Sting's solo music post break-up.  It was just a shell of what once was and a bitter reminder of what we had lost. I have come to enjoy some of those songs, but the idea of Sting apart from the Police is not something I've ever fully embraced. So it stands to reason that I'm even less thrilled hearing someone aping him, as good as Bruno Mars is at it.  So a 7, I guess?

I asked my 14-year-old daughter what she thought of it, and she said "I love that song".  She gave it an 8.5 initially and then bumped it up to a 9.

Ok, here's my very random Waterboys memory:

I was living in Nepal from 1998 to 2000, outside Kathmandu or any tourist friendly places. When I would come to K'du, my friends and I usually ate out in the touristy neighborhood (Thamel) to have some non-Nepali food for a change. There were decent Thai, Middle Eastern, and vaguely continental offerings available.

Anyway, a few months before I left, a new restaurant opened called "Over the Rainbow" which advertised itself as American cuisine. Out and out "American" restaurants (as opposed to US based chains) are really rare. I had to try it out out of morbid curiosity. The theme was very Wizard of Oz with lots of other Old Hollywood types of references in the art and photos. The room was really stark white and overly lit. The menu was fried chicken, Mac and cheese, a few sandwiches. I had a meatball sub that was pretty good.

I'm sitting there, the only customer while the proprietor was making my food. He was indeed a guy from the US. And in the midst of waiting for my food, "Fisherman's Blues" by the Waterboys came on the PA. I immediately lit up with joy! This song at this moment was a balm for my soul. I asked the guy if he was responsible for the Waterboys being played, and he responded with the most serious countenance, "You gotta have the Waterboys."

I didn't return to the place, but randomly encountering "Fisherman's Blues" in the wild in Nepal was a definite highlight of my time there.

This album has never once left my rotation in 20 years, ever. The production is timeless, the songwriting clever but not too clever, and - speaking as a bass-baritone - it is an absolute joy to sing along with Kapranos. Well done, gentlemen. (Not "lads.")

Imagine in 2005 the guy who just dropped the series finale of The Osbournes being mortifiedto be even tangentially associated in people's minds with the guy who just dropped Late Registration

Dolly Pardon

i just think it’s redundant to waste time and beat around the bush if i have a certain feeling or emotion on my chest im gonna spit it out. Sometimes me being spontaneous and blunt doesn’t work in my favor and people take it as a bad thing but for the most part I mean it in the most respectful way. like why even waste someone else’s and or my time when I can just say what’s on my mind.