You’d think the warning signs would be hard to miss. It seems obvious that a singer in an emo band would make for a vindictive, immature ex, yet they continue to sing about their inability to maintain an adult relationship and people keep dating them.
We occasionally run promotions at work where we give away autographed CD booklets to people who pre-order certain albums. I have to imagine the touring and the radio and the TV that comes with the lead-up to an album launch leaves few free hours, and blowing two of them sitting in a room signing your name a thousand times has to get a little tedious. It’s not surprising when bands have a little fun and get creative with the signatures.
Taking Back Sunday, whose album Louder Now just came out this week, definitely got creative.
When the booklets arrive at the office, one of the people on my team usually takes a break to stuff them into jewel cases so our warehouse can pack them and ship them off. It sounds boring, but, on rare occasions, it’s actually kind of nice to zone out for a while and do something that doesn’t require even the tiniest notion of creative thought.
Anyway, I had less on my plate that day than any of my other co-workers, so I volunteered to stuff the Taking Back Sunday liner notes. As I made my way through them, I noticed the band made some drawings on a few of the booklets. There was an anthropomorphized cloud on one, a beer can on another. On some of the others, they wrote little notes to their fans. Here are a few nuggets of Taking Back Sunday wisdom, as found on their autographed CD booklets:
* Adam is YAY!
* Korn is terrible
* R. Kelly Pee’s [sic]
* Figure 4 Leg lock= Ric Flair’s finishing move
* What happened to hip hop…
In addition to their musings on music and professional wrestling, there were also some fake signatures, like Sir Mix-a-lot and Herbie Hancock. Others featured one-word statements with questionable punctuation. “PANTS.” got a period, “BOOBIES!” got an exclamation point, but “Pancakes” was left mysteriously naked, no punctuation at all.
This sort of stuff is pretty standard. What isn’t standard, though, is that a few of these booklets had a phone number on them.
I was bored and, curiosity being the cure for boredom and all, I decided to get my Scooby Doo on and do some investigation. At first, I thought it was one of the dudes in the band screwing with one of his bandmates because the ink-thickness of the phone number didn’t match the name next to it.
Eventually, I decided to text message the number. Here’s a transcript of my conversation.
Me: Hey, dude.
Mystery Number: Whos this
Me: Is this Matt?
Mystery Number: Nope sorry
Me: If you’re in Taking Back Sunday, one of your bandmates is effing with you. If you’re not in TBS, someone in the band is effing with you.
Mystery Number: Adam is my ex boyfriend, I gues hes messin w/u
Me: Ha. Just a heads up, he put your phone number on a bunch of autographed CDs going out to their fans. I think I pulled them all, but you might get calls from some randoms. Sorry.
About three seconds later, my phone rings. A girl, out to dinner with someone, worried, shouts “IS WHAT YOU TEXTED ME TRUE!?”
I tried to stifle the laughter while I explained to her that I wasn’t lying and that I think I rescued all of the booklets with her number on it, but I couldn’t be sure. She should’ve thanked me, but she kept going on and on. Eventually, I had to say, “I don’t really want to talk about this anymore” and hang up. And laugh. And laugh and laugh and laugh.
You should know you’re playing with fire when you date an emo dude. When you break up—and you will break up—he might write a song about you, he might say unflattering things about you in an interview or he might give your phone number out to other girls who will call you and dream about how they would have made it work with that same emo dude, who would surely break up with her, write a song about her, say unflattering things about her in an interview and distribute her number to other girls and so on and so on.
Download: The Siren Six : “If You’re Not Now (You Never Were)”
In potential Skabba The Hut news, a band called Big City Rock released a self-titled full-length on Atlantic a few weeks ago. It’s a synth-pop record guided by the hand of Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger that ends up sounding something like The Killers for people who thought The Killers were too edgy.
Now, normally, I wouldn’t care about this, but two things put this on my radar: 1) I had to watch the band’s EPK (which strangely makes them look like an Xtian band) in meetings with their label/distributor on several occasions, which leads me to believe that Big City Rock may get the attention (meaning: funds) they need to get major exposure, and 2) they used to be in a ska band called The Siren Six.
That none of their promotional materials (from what I can tell, anyway) mentions this band makes me think they might be embarrassed about it, hence the Skabba The Hut comment. The thing is, though, their recorded output as The Siren Six—especially the Young and Professional EP—is almost uniformly superior to what little they’ve released as Big City Rock. “If You’re Not Now (You Never Were),” which I’ve linked above, is a great example of this.
I’ve disavowed any knowledge of most of what I listened to during the dark period of my life when I was, like, way into ska and pop-punk, but I’ve held onto my love for The Siren Six and this song in particular. I love everything from the fist-pumping drum intro to the organs to the wanky guitar solo to the lyrics, which, though they aren’t particularly deep or important, manage to simultaneously convey a feeling of arrogance and self-deprecation, which is no easy feat. Maybe it’s just the personal memories I have associated with it, but “If You’re Not Now” is all fun-times sunshiney goodness. Since Spring is here and it’s allegedly sunny in some parts of the country, I thought I’d pass the song along.
Also, when you hear Big City Rock’s “All of the Above” on the radio and try to guess why someone thought it would be a good idea to rip off “Somebody Told Me,” but give it even dumber lyrics, you can listen to this and wonder what went wrong.
* Communiqué - Poison Arrows: With A&R cats seemingly groping about for the next The Killers, labels could do worse than to take a look at Communiqué. I’m not sure what their situation is with Lookout at the moment, but I’ve always said these dudes could be massively popular if they had the marketing heft of a major behind them. Whether they want that is another story. Still, I’d like to think there are a lot of people who would enjoy Communiqué’s propulsive synth-rock jams, but never got a chance to hear them. This is one of my favorite driving around records. You can listen to two tracks from this album by clicking this link.
* Thicke - A Beautiful World: Yes, he’s Alan Thicke’s son and, yes, he did look like Bike Messenger Jesus in the video for a song where he soul-cooed over the entirety of “A Fifth of Beethoven,” but I have a tremendous amount of irrational love for this record by Thicke. I know he’s a terrible lyricist (sample lyric: “Sometimes you read like William Shakes/Your scent is sweet like Betty Crocker bakes”), but the melodies are enough to override all that. His upcoming full-length, a collaboration with the Neptunes out soon on Star Trak, is one of the five or so records I’m eagerly anticipating this year. The lead single has disappointed some– and it is by-the-numbers nu-Pharrell R&B– but the only thing that’s been a disappointment in advance of the album is that it isn’t titled Touch Me, I’m Thicke.
* Usher - Confessions: It’s been a while since Ursher had a stranglehold on pop radio, so Confessions actually seemed like an appealing listen for the first time in months. I used to keep a list of People I Want To Punch In The Neck. Until I heard this album, Usher was on that list. Sure, there’s some grown ‘n’ sexy VH1 Soul filler crammed in at the end of the album, but even the filler is pretty decent. Tracks like the Just Blaze-produced “Throwback” make this a surprisingly solid record even outside of the mega-hits. I never expected to like this. That I still find it interesting almost two years after its release should qualify the guy for some sort of medal.
* Tom Vek - We Have Sound: I thought the similarity between Tom Vek’s song “Cover” and Irresistable Bliss-era Soul Coughing was just coincidental at first, but listening to it again this week, I have to wonder if he is actively trying to ape that sound. Everything from the bass sound to the vibes sample to the little Doughty-esque “uh” he slips at the end of phrases makes “Cover” sound like a sequel to “Soft Serve.” Maybe I’m imagining it. You can listen to it on this episode of my podcast and hear for yourself.
* Dios Malos - Dios (Malos): Dios (Malos) strike me as a more drug-obsessed American version of The Magic Numbers here. To be clear, that’s because of their music, not the fact that they have more than a passing familiarity with Husky jeans. Honest! On that very same podcast episode that I mentioned in the last paragraph, you can hear a Dios Malos track. God Bless Star Time International for releasing the good rock, by the way.
* Stevie Wonder - For Once In My Life: Have you ever had someone ruin a band or an artist for you? I mean, you associate some music with a person, then something happens to sour your relationship with the person and the music becomes a casualty as well? A woman I dated briefly a few years ago ruined Stevie Wonder for me. How brutal is that? Anyway, I haven’t been able to listen to Stevie much since then, but I came across this disc on my shelf and said, “eff it, bro. I am getting over this nowsville.” I loaded it in the changer. When the disc popped up, I made it about 25 seconds in before I had to skip to the next disc. Dammit.
* Jay-Z - The Blueprint: This happened, like, eight blog years ago, but I just wanted to listen to “The Takeover” after Cam dropped his Jay diss track. I am not even remotely qualified to comment on this beef, so I will spare you and move on.
* Death Cab for Cutie - Plans: I used to be a total moron for Death Cab (evidence: this URL is a Death Cab reference), but I never really got into Transatlanticism and my fanaticism had almost completely worn off by the time Plans dropped. I’m not sure why. You might think it has something to do with Death Cab’s status as the New American Standard For Boring among cranky hipsters and critics, but I think it has more to do with my initial fandom coinciding with a stretch where I went way too long without touching a breast. I’m not as sad now and I don’t need music to heighten my melancholy moods nearly as often, so I don’t need to turn to Death Cab much anymore. It’s not a bad album, though. I’d rank this directly in the middle of their recorded output, if you care. You probably don’t, though. I don’t blame you.
* Apollo Sunshine - Apollo Sunshine: Honestly, the only reason I listened to this was because it had the SpinART logo on the back. A ton of promos come through our office and though I might try, I simply can’t listen to every one of them. There are certain labels I trust and SpinART is one of them. I’m glad I did give this a chance, though, because I’ve had an immeasurable amount of fun flailing around my apartment while I’ve got “Today is the Day” cranked up. Tracks like “Eyes” and “Phone Sex” helped make this one of my favorite albums of last year. I could have just as easily ignored it. I’m very glad I didn’t. Here is a link to yet another podcast I recorded that includes an Apollo Sunshine song.
* Shirley Horn - Travelin’ Light: I have an odd fascination with celebrity playlists on Rhapsody, even though I rarely get anything out of them. Sometime last Spring, I came across a playlist by Nouvelle Vague, which initially intrigued me because it seemed like Rhapsody were making very liberal use of the word “celebrity.” The playlist, while short, was exceedingly listenable, though, and the Shirley Horn song that anchored it had a lot to do with that. It’s a cover of The Beatles’ “And I Love Her,” only she changes the pronoun. These are usually warning signs, but I’ll be damned if this isn’t one of the sexiest things I’ve ever heard. The rest of Travelin’ Light is more than decent. I think the amount of time I spent listening to Shirley Horn and Blossom Dearie over 2005’s warm weather months would have made a lot of grandparents very happy. I can see myself repeating that process again this year.
