I heard Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" on the radio yesterday morning and it hit me. This is a blatant drug song, I thought. It blatantly tells, no, ENCOURAGES the kids to take drugs. What's more, this song (and many others of the time period with similar sentiments) is played at every oldies station on the continent. The same suits who fondly remember the 60's as a time of peace and love and experimentation balk wildly at the music of Marilyn Manson, Eminem, DMX because they claim that it promotes suicide, violence, misogyny and just about every other bad thing that a person could do. They claim that today's music is warping their kids' minds but are completely accepting of the glamourization of the late 1960's by oldies radio, passing it off as "fond remembrances" or some other confusing rhetoric.

At least the suspects I mentioned above bring an element of satire into their music. Marilyn Manson is eloquent and well aware of the absurdities of pop culture, most recently expressed in the single "Disposable Teens". Yes, the song is utter trite, but kudos to him for taking well-needed shots at such an easy target. Eminem's music is full of witticisms and caricatured celebrity satire. On the other hand, don't try and pretend that the Jefferson Airplane had ANYTHING deeper to say than "feed your head". And it doesn't stop there, because the 60's were full of songs containing this message and nothing more. Let's not get all fuzzy inside and pass these songs off as the good old days of pure and meaningful music when they are nothing more than drug glamourization relics written by hippies who were wasted most of the time which is why they couldn't think of anything more intelligent to write about.

New Musical Express has conducted a year-long poll to determine the 20 most influential acts on today's music scene. Who was polled, or how they defined "influence" will have to wait until the mini-site is posted tomorrow (Eminem was #8, seems a bit early to be labeling him as a major influence on anyone beside 15-old boys who have gotten bored of their Marilyn Manson records). Bowie is #1, which is a good choice, but there is no explanation on God's green earth that can convince me that Radiohead deserve to be #2. WHAT IN THE WORLD WERE THEY SMOKING? I'm actually at a loss of words and I'm angry as hell. The Velvet Underground and Kraftwerk invented everything, oh, yes, but Radiohead recycled 1974 Pink Floyd. And then they went electronic, which is groundbreaking if you went into a coma in 1973 and woke up last week. "The Bends" was a good album, and it would have been a lot better if Thom Yorke hadn't sung on any of it. "Pablo Honey" featured a passable rip-off of vintage Adorable, but the rest was filler. And as personalities, Radiohead make Belle and Sebastian look like Mogwai taking drugs with Happy Mondays in Leonardo di Caprio's flat. AAARRGGHHHH. Screw Radiohead ... no, it's not their fault ... screw everyone who picked Radiohead in this poll and screw their families too.

After the first few listens to PJ Harvey's "Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea", I was totally loving it (my initial reaction to each new PJ Harvey album is to declare that it is her best ever, with the exception of "To Bring You My Love", which took three years for me to fully appreciate. After a few months I always come to my senses and scold myself for ever doubting that "Rid of Me" wasn't her finest recording). My mate Paul, a far bigger fan of Polly Jean Harvey than I am, also thought it was a fine album, but remarked that the final two tracks, sweet ballads they may be, but "a bit too Sarah Mclachlan". And the more I've thought about it, the more I'm convinced that Paul may have summed up the entire album with that comment. One thing which has always separated PJ Harvey from the multitude of female wimp-rockers is the menace that she brings to her records. In the case of "Dry" and "Rid of Me" this needs no explanation, "To Bring You My Love" featured the fierce "Long Snake Moan", and femme fatales a plenty -- "To Bring You My Love" and "The Dancer" in particular. What's more, she dressed like a sexually repressed farmgirl dressing as a tomboy dressing in drag, and if that's not a person that you absolutely do NOT want to be alone with in the back seat of a parked car, then I don't know what is. Anyway, she started dressing normally for "Is This Desire?" which ranged from the near industrial "A Perfect Day Elise" to the plurality of "character" songs with their bleak tales of lonely, abused young women. Lighter on the menace but heavy on the eeriness. Fear abounded. Now comes "Stories" -- where is the fear? The music itself is very radio-friendly. It is far from the desolate electronic-tinged moods of "Is This Desire?". "Big Exit" and "The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore" turn up the guitars but the Sarah factor looms large over the less aggressive tunes like "One Line" and "A Place Called Home". The menace presumably because this is a "New York album". Many people have written this but not a single person has defined exactly what "New York album" means, as if it were supposed to be obvious. I think it means "Velvet Underground", since they (and subsequent Lou Reed albums) are the finest examples of music about urban decay, drugs, the freaks who inhabit a city's underbelly, and introspection about all of the above. Polly was already an expert at writing about most of these, so I'm not sure how moving to NYC and mentioning Manhattan by name in her lyrics makes her new record so distinctly different from her others. As for the music, it's sounds more "Loaded"-era than EPI-era VU. At that point in the Velvets career, the songs were far less intense and the subject matter greatly toned down. The same could be said for the progression of PJ Harvey's career.

Then again, maybe I'm just a crybaby who's been waiting seven years for Polly to write another "Rub Til It Bleeds".

(That's all I have to say about PJ Harvey, but I would feel remiss if I didn't mention that she gets prettier as she gets older. I don't care how shallow and sexist that sounds.)

Dr. Andrew Weil made a double CD in 1997. Music "made" by a guru of alternative medicine -- I expected Indian drone instruments and nine hours of humming a single note. Actually, "Sound Mind, Sound Body" (or was it "Sound Music, Sound Mind" or ... oh, who cares what the exact title was) is 99% propaganda. One CD was mostly spoken word by Dr. Weil's friends, outlining their medicinal theories while speaking so slowly it makes "Eyes Wide Shut" seem like an afternoon at a cattle auction. The other CD was intended as healing through sound. From the extensively detailed liner notes, I surmised that the listener was meant to feel the vibrations, and the body would synchronize itself to the resonances, and heal itself, or something to that effect. But the music was an ordinary excursion through "themes" of Bach, Mozart and other mega-famous classical composers. Jeez, since that music is more than 200 years old, people must have been healing themselves with it for at least that long, in which case why on earth would anybody need to buy a CD from Andrew Weil? Millions of people have found themselves transported by Mozart's music, and they certainly didn't need Andrew Weil's approval. If they didn't want to make a recording of hundreds of people saying "AHMMM", if they wanted to put out a CD of classical music, wouldn't the music of a composer such as Debussy (La Mer) or Satie (endlessly repetitive piano pieces) have been more appropriate? If they REALLY wanted to convince anybody that music has the power to disrupt body chemistry, record some SCHOENBERG for God's sake!! I guess they figured that hardcore Andrew Weil fans would buy any CD with his name on it no matter how low the musical quality, hell, Limp Bizkit rode that pony to the tune of a million sales last week.

This weeks' purchase of Jeff Mills' "Live at the Liquid Room, Tokyo" was both elating and deflating for me. Elating because it is FREAKING AWESOME as our hero slams through the techno equivalent of the world's biggest gangbang with an incredible 38 tracks packed into 70 breathless minutes. Deflating because I clearly remember when this album was released *five* years ago. I remember thinking about buying it. Sometimes I had other musical priorities and would forget look for it and when I did remember it was always too expensive or some other excuse. I always kept my eyes open for his DJ appearances, and was finally all set to see him in January 1999 before a brutal snowstorm prevented me from doing it. I have yet to see Jeff Mills live. And now, even though I have his Axis compilations, even though I own a sick amount of minimalism, I willingly deprived myself of this album for five years.

George Michael commented the other day about the sorry state of British music, about how companies were signing "pretty young things" and not real songwriters, and he criticized the music listening public all over the world by saying that what they were listening to is crap. These comments are getting some publicity, mainly because it is George Michael, not because George Michael is a person with anything remotely interesting to say on the state of the music industry. Sure, it's true that minimal talent and a tight ass are big sellers these days, but let's face it, when has this NOT been true? Does anyone think for a single second that if Elvis or the Beatles or the Supremes or Michael Jackson had been 400 pound slobs with harelips that they would have become stars? Does George Michael really believe that Wham was signed because they were bright young songwriting talents, or because they were good looking teenagers that were marketable to a British public that adores it's squeaky-clean, made-for-tabloid popstars? George Michael is a wanker (pun very much intended) who is using his recent publicity as the buyer of John Lennon's "Imagine" piano to get on his soap box and pretend that anybody still cares about his opinion, all in the name of boosting his profile and (hopefully) his CD sales. Come on, Georgios, the current trend of Mickey Mouse pop will run it's course of mainstream mega-success, just like grunge, new wave and disco, just like all musical trends do, just like just like your career already has.

In the fall of 1994, I had a brilliant idea. While enjoying a passionate affair with Pulp's "His 'N Hers" album for most of that season, I couldn't help but hear something more than the obvious kitschy brilliance. I heard a musical. Not just any musical, but a musical based on the songs of "His 'N Hers". I used to pop the tape into my walkman and dream about it. Vaguely speaking (and truthfully, my adaption never went beyond the "vague" stage) it was an English version of "West Side Story", featuring the riff raff of Sheffield's underbelly. The hero (I never did come up with names for any of the characters) was a boorish thug who, along with his gang of similarly minded friends, did his damnedest to cause trouble, and treat women like Kleenex ("Joyriders" is the gang's mission statement -- serving the same function as "When You're a Jet"). Then, he falls in love and sees how the other half lives. It tears him apart that he loves her and yet she's hung up on other men who treat her like garbage (in the same way that he has been doing all of his life -- cue "Have You Seen Her Lately?"). He becomes a sentimental, whimpering shell of his former arrogant self (bring on "Pink Glove"). Of course, this musical can't have a happy ending. For one thing, "Happy Endings" foretells a conclusion which is never due to pass (smell the irony), and besides, "West Side Story" didn't have a happy ending, did it? Whatever their names are, the people featured throughout "His 'N Hers" are endlessly fascinating. This album is an untapped source of high musical drama, while the lyric sheet is practically it's own libretto.

My ideas may be six years old, but "Mamma Mia" made it to the stage first. It bears mentioning that I LOVE Abba's music, and I finally saw "Mamma Mia" last night. On one hand, Abba songs are pop music of the first order: exquisite specimens of melody and harmony and insatiably catchy to boot. On the other hand, the lyrics are not-so-exquisitely crafted by people with a limited grasp of the English language. Combined with a sparsity of topics beyond love and lost love, this makes a collection of these songs in-adept at telling a story, which means that Abba songs have no place in a musical. Watching the pathetically thin plot unfold while Abba songs were grafted on like tin foil to shag carpet ranged from awkward to embarrassing. And it is certainly NOT all in good fun, if it were SUPPOSED to be all about the songs, then we should be seeing an ABBA covers band, not a musical in which some semblance of drama and suspense and plot resolution and character development are to be expected. It all amounts to little more than karaoke with an extravagant budget. What's more, this production knows it because it does it's damnedest to distract you from what's being sung on stage -- from the over-the-top dancing in the background to the brightly coloured 70's jumpsuits to the men dancing in wetsuits and flippers -- all of it serves to provide fleeting entertainment value at the expense of having to pay any more attention than one would while watching showgirls in Vegas casino.

I won't quibble anymore (OK, maybe just a bit -- you'd figure they could find decent male singers, but maybe I'm wrong) but the take home message is that "Mamma Mia" offers Broadway-themed renditions of classic Abba songs and absolutely nothing else. Of course, in writing this I've let another cat out of the bag. Any enterprising theatre production company that wants to design another musical based on classic pop songs might want to call Pulp c/o Island Records.

I don't own too many rare records, but New Order's "Run 2" is one of them. Is it just me, or did the vinyl era produce far more rare, hard-to-find products than the CD era? Ten years from now, the CD era as we know it may well be over -- all new music will be downloaded from the internet and freely shared through programs like Napster. When those days come (sooner rather than later) will there be any such thing as a "rare" recording? With frightening ease, I have found songs through Napster that I failed to find with months, or even years of searching music stores. Thus, the concept of "rareness" comes down to analog vs digital. A rare, digital recording will become a non-entity, if it isn't already. Until every home has both a computer and a vinyl-pressing machine, vinyl will be the Taj Mahal of music collectibles.

Raves will continue to be held on City of Toronto property. But isn't it strange that Toronto made such a big stink about banning raves (because of the "rampant" drug use) while making an even bigger stink (of a different odour) about ALLOWING a different group of "rampant" drug users onto city property. While spending millions of dollars to campaign for it. While pledging to spend billions further to bring said drug users to our city. I'm speaking, of course, about the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Unfortunately, The Offspring were convinced by their record company that releasing their new album to the internet is not a good idea. They will be pre-releasing only one song. Of course, Columbia Records is currently knee-deep in the legal motions to shut down Napster ... what a neato little coincidink.

In the meantime, Pearl Jam released 25 albums yesterday. That is, they released a double CD live recording for every single show on their summer European tour. Why the wank-rock extravagance? PJ claim it's for the fans, who have now been rescued from the arduous task of having to track down low quality bootlegs.

Bull$h!+. They're not doing it for the fans, they're doing it for themselves. The band is aware that their fan base is as devoted as they come, and this is the perfect way to sucker people into dropping a whole whackload of money just in time for Christmas. PJ know that the bootleggers have made a killing off of taping their concerts, so why not give something back to the fans by taking all that bootlegging money?

The end result is that PJ will be seen as a joke. A sickenly grandiose statement that is the release of 25 live albums is especially ironic given the bands all-too-often-self-professed hatred of the music industry, namely, the labels that exploit them, the ticket sellers that rip off their fans, and the celebrity-hungry public that demands their heroes' precious time in the forms of videos and interviews. Yet that same band has made the biggest fart-rawk statement of the decade, a 50 hour (25 albums x 2hrs/album) bloated gesture that must have Jerry Garcia laughing in his grave, and worse, they've tried to pass it off as doing a favour to their fans, rather than a (misguided) attempt to boost their sales which have been declining since Clinton took office.