where's that song?

I've had one of those summers. One that's been fun (hello, Dollywood! and Cleveland! and New York City! and cups of tea and Netflix documentaries in the afternoon!), but that's largely been spent feeling guilty about what I've not been doing: writing, revising, lesson planning, reading the 13 books I ordered in a frenzy of wishful thinking during finals week, or updating this blog. But, sadder still, it's also--so far--for me been a summer without a song.

There are the summer hits (remember The Summer of "Hey Ya" and how the dance floors filled and we all mash-potatoed and shook our hips?) and the summery songs, but I'm talking about when the timing's right and I meet a song I like around the time I'm pulling shorts out of boxes, and I get to know it better as the fireflies appear, and I like it enough to play on all the car trips and out the open windows, not tiring of it when the locusts start hissing, or when the school supplies invade store shelves, or maybe ever.

And so in lieu of posting this summer's song that I haven't met yet, I'm turning to a song about falling in love with a song. It just so happens to be one of THE top handclap tunes (revel in that breakdown at 2:38, please), but it's here because it's about that very good thing--I'm in love / what's that song?--that doesn't happen all that often and that we can't predict, but when it does, it's worth sharing.

I had never seen this video until I YouTube searched the song today, but I appreciate what seems a poignant sort of disconnect between the ho-hum black and white visuals of knees and nostrils and messy hair, and the dizzy, hyper affection in the music, the love Paul Westerberg's singing about--how the song gives life to the visual ennui. It makes me want to keep my ears open and to play music while I  finally get down to work at this old, boring desk of mine.

Eurovision Round 2

This round was an even split between melodramatic ballads (7) and slick club jams (7), with only a few anomalies.  The most distinctive of the bunch:

Belarus: This hyperslick Europop featured several questionable haircuts and when they sang the chorus that goes “we are the winners!” they pronounced the last word like “wieners” (so they could make it rhyme with “believers”). Bless them.

Turkey: A weird, nautical-themed Turkish shanty made interesting because at one point the dancers extended their arms and turned their costumes into a boat. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that a Eurovision audience loves a costume trick.

Sweden: This round was all about Loreen. Hers began a moody sort of club number but before long the beat dropped, her vocals lifting like a hip Celine Dion, as she chopped the air and bent to the floor, Capoeira meets rave meets pop transcendence. Easily got my vote for this round.

Eurovision Round 1

Those of you who know me will know that this is one of my favorite weeks of the year.

(last place 1980 Belgian entry)

You don’t even need to ask: yes, I will be watching from the first shout of “GOOOOD eveninnnnnnng, Europe!” until goodbye kisses are being blown at the camera.

In case you missed the first Eurovision semi-final on Tuesday, or you’re of the American contingent who haven’t yet had the pleasure, here’s a run down of what you missed in Round 1:

The Best of the Worst

Montenegro: A stocky middle-aged man who calls himself Rambo Amadeus lurched his way through a Balkan funk-rap fusion, dropping lines like “I don’t like snow peas” and “always stay cool, like a swimming pool.”

San Marino: This one’s called “The Social Network Song” because they found out late in the game that they were breaking the EV rule that bans brand names and had to remove all references to “facebook” from the song. The most delightful absurdity came thanks to the staging: a doctor, a cheerleader, and a pilot danced in the background while the blue pleather-bedecked vocalist sang things like “if you wanna come to my house, click it with your mouse.”

Austria: The group is called Trackshittaz.  The song is called “Woki Mit Deim Popo,” which loosely translates to “Shake Your Bum,” though they made it sound dirtier. It was no “I Like Big Butts,” but it did feature pole dancers, name-checked Nuddel Suppen (noodle soup), and a nifty online translator also helped me understand the lines that meant: “Your bum has feelings, your bum is part of you / Don’t put it on chairs, your bum has an opinion, yeah.”

The Best of the Best

Iceland: As a rule, entries from Nordic countries are usually classy and usually involve orchestral string instruments. This one featured a fellow named Jónsi (not to be confused with the one from Sigur Ros, his Eurovision profile boasts that he starred as Danny Zuko in Grease a few years ago) and violin. About as classy as Eurovision power ballads get.

Romania: Drums! Bagpipes! Accordion! A scantily clad pop princess! Excessive pyrotechnics! It was like Romanian folk goes club and had a tongue-twister of a chorus that goes “zah li la li la lee.”

Cyprus: Not terribly different from Romania’s tune in terms of its catchiness, but this favors a sort of Ace of Base beat and has a chorus that goes “How I’ve been waiting for this la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la love.” 

Ireland: Say what you want about Jedward the rest of the year, but they are made for Eurovision. Their “Waterline” is no “Waterloo” or “Borderline” but watching them bound around the stage dressed as cyberknights to the tune, I was reminded of “We Built This City” and “Footloose.” If either of those were sung by hyperactive albino Irish twins, that is.

Russia: I believe in these Babuski, and I would love to see them beat all the young, naked divas. They began by pretending to put something in a stage prop oven, all baking and looking adorable. Then the beat dropped and it became a “party for everybody.” The littlest grannie is such a star she gets her own solo dance with the camera. (Their previous entry “Very long birch bark and how to turn it into a turban" may have been a better tune, but “Party for Everybody” seems more appropriate for the Eurovision agenda.) They get my vote:

when "POP!" surprises

A few weeks ago, my friend Matt asked if I had heard of Gentleman Jesse. Then he used the magic words--"Power Pop"--to describe him as he let the needle drop. Truthfully, that (that someone who knows what I like would use that phrase to describe what he was about to play me) was all I needed to be convinced, and when this came out of the speakers, I wasn't surprised he got it so right:

I was surprised when a few weeks later, The Husband came home from playing ping-pong at our neighborhood bar with news that that Gentleman Jesse would be playing there in a few days.

And I was surprised to discover at that show that his music was so precisely what I wanted at just that moment: to walk out of the ladies room across the scuffed parquet floor and feel like I was in a bygone decade. To hear the warm organ and the kitschy background vocals and that particular drum beat that begs for handclaps (the one that always reminds me of the Ronettes's "Be My Baby"). To witness someone so efficiently utilizing the songwriting formulae of Elvis Costello or Springsteen or early Beatles or Eddie and the Hotrods and coming up with this bundle of desperate verve and melody:

It was Jesse's birthday to boot and it wasn't long before birthday cake was flying, people were dancing with a for-real sort of arms and legs a-go-go abandon, a woman walked on her hands across the dancefloor with her feet kicking the air, all to the sound of Johnny B Goode riffs a'ripping.

According to his record label's blog, the narrative of how Gentleman Jesse's latest output came to be goes something like this: he's been frustrated with some of the problems befalling his hometown of Atlanta as of late and been dealing with some tragedies that recently affected the Atlanta music scene. Rather than giving up, he wrote these songs. To quoth Douchemaster Records directly, "The record kicks off with 'Eat Me Alive,' an anthem of perseverance that Jesse undoubtedly used as a demon-exercising tool. The album is bookended by another mover titled 'We Got To Get Out of Here,' a song that turns out to be less about getting out of an actual location and more about getting out of a state of mind that makes you afraid of it. Stylistically, Jesse never strays from his bread and butter, which is short, hook driven, and delicately patterned rock n roll songs." 

Power pop, rock n roll, damn catchy--whatever you want to call it, sometimes an old formula can be just the right way for dealing with now. I don't know why it still surprises me when pop songs prove they can really do something, have power.

(Update: the clips originally posted expired so I had to change them.)

sadly, not in my toilet

Sometimes I wake-up on a Tuesday morning so jealous of people who got to live in a time when music I love was first made, I start bargaining with history. "History, I'd give up all the trappings of 2012, if you'd just let me, you know..." See Johnny Marr pick out the melody to "This Charming Man". Or watch Guided by Voices in a dive bar in Milwaukee. Or be close enough in the crowd to feel Adam & the Ants's two drummers pounding out the beats on "Kings of the Wild Frontier". Sure, I've been to a few reunion tours and I've enjoyed myself, but it's never quite the same as witnessing something the first time around, when the songs haven't lost a bit of their necessity and aren't yet burdened by nostalgia.

Oddly enough, the band I most regret not being around to see in their heyday is Dexys Midnight Runners. I put on Too-Rye-Ay and I dance and--I'll be honest--I ache a little.

This clip, from their appearance on The Young Ones, takes place in the communal bathroom (spot the drummer sitting on the toilet and a fiddler in the tub) and begins with handclaps and is jiberrishy, light-flashing, nonsensical joy. A couple English friends went to see Dexys in a tiny theatre in Wales a few nights ago. They're touring their new album and they still played plenty of old hits, though they didn't appease the very drunk Welshmen who were yelling out "duh duh duh duh-DUH, duh duh duh duh-duh"even before the curtain went up.

Dexys had plenty of incarnations, and so the window for this line-up and particular strings and brass-heavy sound wasn't even very big, but logic doesn't work on this brand of musical regret. This little Youtube clip from a performance that happened a year before I was born helps more than a little, though. Even in the moment when it might be as good as it gets, they're striving, striving, striving, striving up a hill toward the next thing. Thank goodness there were cameras rolling.

(The handclap breakdown is at 4:10, and I'm sure glad the crowd gets off their rears in exultation by the end of the song)

what to do with an atrophied thang

Hi. My name is Kristen, and I have a thing for handclaps. I plan to use this blog to explore that "thing," to share pop songs with anyone out there who cares to be shared with, and to attempt to write about the things I love about music.

But I don't want this first post to turn into a blog manifesto; I just want to start. I've had this blog template ready but blank since May 2009. That means that for nearly three years I've been sitting on writing this first post, so before another minute passes, I'd like to take a second (or 194 of them) to listen--and, at last, obey--James Brown:

Though handclaps don't feature as prominently in this live clip as they do on record, they're there. In the horns' punctuation. In the LET'S FRICKING GO-ness of the good godfather's diaphragmatic heaves. My thang may have gotten flabby, fallen asleep, been mistaken for dead, but I'm up now.  

Here goes.