Gnarls Barkley, “Crazy” video
A remarkable song and an even more amazing video, this Rorschach blot of a clip perfectly captures the fluid, elusive soul of the music, melting and changing shape before your eyes, with Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse’s visages forming in and out of the drops on the screen. Irresistibly psychedelic, watching this piece of eye candy is almost like getting high and gazing at that picture which can appear as a skull or two ladies facing each other at a table, depending on your perspective. Does that make me crazy? Possibleee… Check it out here.
Ghostface Killah, Fishscale (Def Jam/IDJ)
If you need any more proof as to how hip-hop has trumped rock & roll as a cultural phenomenon, look no further than this full-length epic by one Dennis Coles, better known as Wu Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah. As Christopher’s movie pal tells Ben Kingsley in The Sopranos, it’s all about the “specificities,” and this densely packed narrative is full of them.
Childhood bed-wetting (“Whip You With a Strap”), watching Larry King Live (“Crack Spot”), male-pattern baldness and the quality of the Knicks’ jump shots (“Barbershop”), Fat Albert (“Big Girl”) and Spongebob Squarepants (“Underwater”) might not seem to fit into the gangsta rap mold, but for Ghostface, it’s all part of a seamless whole with drug dealing and Glocks. Highlights include a Wu Tang reunion on “9 Milli Bros.” and several classic soul samples, including Freda Payne on the Sopranos-meets-Shaft noir “Crack Spot,” Marvin Gaye (“Jellyfish”) and Sly & the Family Stone’s “Family Affair” (“Dogs of War”).
And the Killah is not nearly as misogynist as many of his peers. Though he comes down on his mother for being an alcoholic and beating him on “Whip You With a Strap,” he forgives her on “Momma,” while also singing the praises of women on “Beauty Jackson” and “Big Girl,” pausing long enough to appreciate a beauty mark, the way she smokes a cigarette and her penchant for Louis Vuitton and Versace. And you wonder why rock is dead.
Peggy Lee Sings Leiber & Stoller (Hip-O Select/A&M)
A reworking of the classic songwriting team’s 1975 album Mirrors by sons Jed Leiber and Peter Stoller, this is the belated follow-up to their unlikely 1969 hit with the chanteuse, “Is That All There Is?,” certainly one of the strangest songs ever to crack the Top 40.
And if you thought that tale of ennui shot through with Brecht-Weil irony was weird, wait until you hear this collection, which has the great Miss Lee crooning her way through such unlikely choices as “Kansas City,” along with hard-to-categorize nuggets as “Some Cats Know,” “I’m a Woman” and “Professor Hauptmann’s Performing Dogs,” which has more than a passing resemblance to the under the big top theatricality of Sgt. Pepper’s “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite.”
Article comments
1 - Mary K. Williams
Then there's the rise of bottom-up, everyone-has-an-opinion blogs like Blogcritics.org and Amazon.com, in which quantity trumps quality.
Mr. Trakin:
Not sure if you put this in just to see who noticed - well you've been noticed. Even in context of your complaint of not enough good music writing - it's not only not true, it's a bit rude.
2 - Eric Olsen
I have to disagree with this characterization of us as well.
3 - Michael J. West
I'm insulted, frankly. If that's the way you feel about the site why bother writing here yourself, Roy? If you want to attack hack music writers, there's much better targets...like Dave Eggers...
4 - Roy Trakin
Didn't mean to offend anyone on this here site. I am happy to be a part of it, thanks to my good friend Eric Olsen for hooking me up. I only mean to say that the proliferation of blogs has made everyone a critic, which is all well and good, except not everybody has something to say of value. I certainly didn't mean to single out my distinguised blogcritics.org colleagues... If the shoe fits, though...
5 - zingzing
yes, he only meant to attack those that weren't looking...
6 - Michael J. West
What I fear you're missing, Roy, is that the site actively looks for writers of quality who have something to say.
7 - Mary K. Williams
If the shoe fits, though...
Oh, come on now.
OK, there is room for improvement here, same as in many other very popular media outlets. But when you are given the privilege of posting here, it's just not kosher to make those kinds of comments.
8 - Mary K. Williams
Oh, and one more thing - Amazon.com has had some very good writing on their site as well.
9 - zingzing
oh hell, leave him alone. he can say what he wants to.
10 - nugget
metal music is "resilient" in the same way horror flicks are "resilient." (if ya catch my drift)
11 - rolfwind
Stephen Colbert was funny. The last quarter of his act (the video) was mediocre, but his stand-up routine was hilarious.
12 - Peter Stoller
Dear Mr. Trakin,
Thank you very much for your thoughtful, well-written review of Peggy Lee Sings Leiber & Stoller.
If I may offer one brief correction: crediting Jed Leiber and me with "reworking" Mirrors is an overstatement of our role. Engineer Brian Blackburn and I remixed the tracks at Jed's studio. We did not impose our own ideas in a "creative" remix; we sought only to improve the sonics of the original. The choices of which additional tracks to include, and how to sequence them, were made by Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller. This is still very much their record...and, of course, Peggy Lee's.