Song of the Month: If I Ever Lose This Love

Thanks to my impending vacation, here's a treat for you: the Song of the Month, a week early!! Enjoy, and I'll tell you all about my vacation -- and, more importantly, my music finds -- when I get back!


"If I Ever Lose This Love"
Christian Wunderlich
from the album "Reflections" (BMG/Germany, 2000)

Christian Wunderlich broke into show business as an actor on a television soap opera in his native Germany. Capitalizing on his teen-idol status, he recorded two pop albums between 1998 and 2000, garnering a few hit singles and a smattering of music fans, myself included.

This is probably my favorite song of his, taken from his second CD, "Reflections", and showing the shift toward a more intricate and mature pop sound that he took after his more basic debut album. The echoes and reverb that are lightly layered throughout give this mid-tempo love song an atmosphere that I find quite engaging ... and the string interlude is pretty cool too, without slowing down the song one bit.

Christian Wunderlich may not be the most talented singer in the world, but in my opinion his occasionally off-key voice (not nearly so much on "Reflections" as on his first CD) is part of his charm, and to this day I still enjoy listening to both of his albums. Anyone who likes pop boys will probably like him.

Compilation Celebration!

After recently touching on the subject with a friend and fellow blogger, I was inspired to do today's post on the subject of import compilations. (I'm trying to give you folks more posts than usual this week, since I'll be on vacation next week and probably won't be posting anything.) Import compilations are often overlooked as a fun way of not only getting a taste of what's hot on the radio in other countries, but also of discovering new artists that might otherwise remain forever under your radar. What follows is a short description of some of the better import compilations I've found over the years, and why I love them.

"International Music: Sony Music Around The World" (Sony, 1999) -- Technically this is not an import, because it was released in the U.S. as part of Sony's "100 Years: Soundtrack For a Century" series. But it might as well be, since its track listing consists almost entirely of songs you otherwise won't find anywhere but on import releases. Don't be misled by the title -- this isn't the kind of acoustic/ethnic "world music" you would find on those high-brow compilations from labels like Putumayo; this is pop music, like you might hear on any given country's radio dial alongside the more internationally-known hits from the U.S. or U.K. Many of the songs are sung in foreign languages, and a fair share of them are laced with touches of the traditional musical roots of their respective countries. It's an expansive, two-disc journey across the world (literally) of popular music -- you name the country, it's probably represented here. Simply put, if you like the sort of music that Poster Girl or myself likes, get this collection now!

"Big" (Warner/Thailand, 2004) -- "The cheeseburger album", as I like to call it (since that's what graces its cover photo), is notable for a rare Justin Timberlake track, "I'm Lovin' It" (yes, the song that was adopted for the ongoing McDonald's ad campaign), a single by Swiss pop singer Patrick Nuo, and also for my own personal discovery of the song "Hey Ya!" by Outkast ... no, not a "rarity" by any means, but a song that I ignored, thinking that no song could live up to the hype that was bestowed upon that one. But obviously, I was wrong...!

"Only Fools And Horses: The Album" (BBC/UK, 2002) -- This is actually a soundtrack, but I'm unfamiliar with the BBC television series, so as far as this "Yank" is concerned, it fits better into my compilations section. And what a compilation it is! Two discs full of an enchanting blend of popular music -- most familiar with U.S. audiences, but a few U.K.-bound gems are included -- from the last two decades of the 20th Century. If you're new to '80s music, or already have a fondness for it, take this compilation for a spin!

"Now 6" (EMI/Asia & Universal/Asia, 2000) -- Not to be confused with its counterpart in the U.S. "Now! That's What I Call Music" series, this is the sixth installment of the Southeast Asian version of the series. While most of the tunes on here are available domestically, the selection is just packed with top-notch favorites ("It's My Life" by Bon Jovi, "Bang Bang Boom" by The Moffatts, "New Beginning" by Stephen Gately, "If Only" by Hanson, and the list goes on), and it's a CD I could listen to over and over again. Plus, the inclusion of a cool bonus VCD, with a short but sweet video message from The Moffatts and a clip from their "Bang Bang Boom" video, makes for a neat "souvenir" that I couldn't pass up!

"Dreamin': Pop Classics Recollection" (Victor Entertainment/Japan, 2003) -- I happened upon this fantastic collection of '50s and '60s pop on eBay, while I was buying a couple other CDs from the same seller, and decided on a whim to pick it up at the same time. I'm glad I did, 'cause I ran into a couple of gems I'd never heard before ... most notably, "I'm Gonna Knock On Your Door" by Eddie Hodges, probably the cutest song about unrequited teenage love that you may ever hear. And who can resist a CD with a (licensed) photo of James Dean gracing its cover?

CD of the Week: Ari Hest

ARI HEST
"THE BREAK-IN"
(Columbia, 2007)

Something weird sometimes happens when an artist, whose debut album I had tried but eventually tired of and traded in, comes out with their sophomore CD: I feel compelled to give said artist a second chance, not just by picking up their new album if it sounds intriguing, but also by re-buying their first. (Yes, you just learned one of my dirty little secrets. But don't worry; I never pay full retail price twice for the same CD -- not that that makes me seem to have any less of a CD-buying sickness.) It took me awhile to appreciate Ari Hest -- three years and a new album, to be exact.

Ari Hest garnered a moderate amount of success with "They're On To Me", the lead single from his mostly radio-friendly first disc, "Someone To Tell". On his new album, he seems to have refined his sound to more of a subdued, coffeehouse-troubadour approach. Consequently, the songs on "The Break-In" aren't especially catchy or instantly memorable. Instead, he lets the cozy, no-frills instrumentation and lyrics speak for themselves, by way of his rich, hearty voice, that seems to wrap itself around you like a wool blanket. This CD would be the ideal soundtrack for a mellow, unhurried drive down the highway on a late afternoon, with the most upbeat track ("Right Of Way") perfectly positioned halfway through the album, as if to give the driver a refreshing second wind.

The only thing I can chalk up this "second album/second chance" phenomenon to (it also recently happened with Teddy Thompson -- more on him later, since his third album is on the horizon), aside from the fair number of artists whose sophomore albums I find superior to their debuts, is my slowly evolving musical taste. I seem to be getting a little more into the singer-songwriter genre, as my thankful re-discovery of Ari Hest proves.

Audio Train Wreck of the Month: Hold On Tight

I knew I couldn't hold myself to posting just one song per month! But, before you get too excited, this is something a bit different ... as you may have noticed by the title of this post. I almost called this series "Audio Root Canal", but then I remembered that a root canal is something that is genuinely painful and unpleasant, and that people wholeheartedly want to avoid at all costs. A train wreck, on the other hand, is one of those things that, while also unpleasant, one can't help but want to see -- out of morbid curiosity of how bad it can get, perhaps? That's the idea with these songs I've dubbed "Audio Train Wrecks" : they're bad, but in such a way that you just have to listen to them -- sometimes more than once, just to truly appreciate the way these artists have (usually unintentionally, I grant you) elevated awful to an artform. Let's face it ... how can we appreciate the really good music out there without occasionally subjecting ourselves to the really bad? Besides, if you ask me, music is kind-of like sex: even when it's bad, it's still pretty good! So, come on ... you know you want to download it ... I dare ya.


"Hold On Tight"
Edward Furlong
from the compilation "Cut Tunes From New Release" (Pony Canyon/Japan, 1992)

Yes, that lovable future-doomsday-warrior of "Terminator 2" fame, Edward Furlong, recorded a handful of songs at the height of his popularity in the early '90s. And, no, the results weren't pretty.

Edward sounds noticeably uninterested in singing the lyrics to this otherwise cute pop song, which brings an almost surreal air of intrigue to it for me ... was he somehow roped into doing a pop record, or did he actually want to do it and end up having not a musical bone in his body? Presuming that one of the above is true, then the sorry results are no fault of his own and thus we can't be too hard on the guy.

I found this little ditty on a Japanese promotional CD, and it's so curiously terrible that I've actually been thinking about hunting down the full album so I can see what other beautifully crappy sonic oddities are waiting to find me. Does that make me a glutton for punishment? Probably.

By the way, I've only got a limited number of Audio Train Wrecks to share with you, so this feature will eventually be replaced with a second "Song of the Month".

CD of the Week: Music With a Twist

VARIOUS ARTISTS
"MUSIC WITH A TWIST: REVOLUTIONS"
(Columbia, 2007)

I remember hearing, a year or so ago, that one of the major music juggernauts was going to launch a new record label which would showcase gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender artists, but I had forgotten about it until this past weekend, when I happened upon this CD in a store's compilation section. I hesitated at first, though; most compilations marketed toward the gay community are abnormally fond of the electronica/house/club/dance/trance family of genres, which I've never cared for in the slightest. Bracing myself for the worst, I scanned this CD's barcode into the store's listening post, and put on the headphones. I turned out to be pleasantly surprised by what I heard.

This compilation showcases eleven artists -- most of whom I would presume will soon be releasing their own albums on Sony BMG's Music With a Twist label -- covering a broad variety of styles, from '80s-inspired dance-rock, to contemporary singer-songwriter pop of both the male and female persuasions, to soulful funk-rock, to lesbian hip-hop(!). You won't find any of the bigger-name, established queer artists here, such as Rufus Wainwright, K.D. Lang, or Elton John, but if you're anything like me, you'll find more than one artist on this disc whose music you'll want to check out more extensively.

The beauty of this collection is that it's accessible: you don't have to be part of the queer community to appreciate the genuine talent and musical appeal that's packed into this collection. If you're straight, then hopefully you won't be turned off by the "gay" label (the word appears, but not especially prominently, on the promotional label affixed to the outer wrapper); chances are your auditory adventuresomeness will be rewarded. If you're not-quite-heterosexual, then this album will give you even more to love about gay artists' contributions to popular music -- and, like me, it'll restore your faith that queers know how to crank out more than mundane dance-club droning.

Where We Started From

The time: 1989. The place: Chino, California. (Yes, as in "where Ryan on The O.C. was from".) I had gotten my high school diploma about a year earlier and had recently started my first actual paying job. As soon as I had saved up enough money, I bought my first CD player, in the form of a "boom box" equipped with two cassette decks. Then, after I got my next paycheck and cashed it, I ambled down to the nearby Music Plus store and browsed the CD racks -- CDs shared equal space with records and cassettes back then -- in careful deliberation of which CDs I would choose as the very beginning of what (little did I know) would eventually become a collection of hundreds.

Back then, CDs came in what were called "longboxes": paperboard boxes similar to what CDs are still packaged in at Costco, the same size as the twelve-inch-long theft-deterrent plastic "frames" that eventually replaced them, except there was no window showing the jewelcase inside; instead, the fully-enclosed box was adorned with an enlarged, panoramic version of the CD insert's cover art. And the best part: the jewelcase inside was free of not only a redundant layer of plastic wrap, but also that annoying-as-hell top edge sticker! The longbox is a lost art ... you might find the occasional vintage one gathering dust in an independent store, perhaps with its never-exposed-to-the-open-air CD jewelcase still cocooned inside. For awhile, I had roughly a dozen longboxes adorning my walls --- I would carefully open both ends, attach them to the walls with thumbtacks through only the back panel, leaving the front intact, and then seal the ends back up with tape.

Presented in this post is what, to the best of my recollection, I purchased in that first CD shopping spree. I've listed them in approximate order of certainty, from the ones I'm positive I bought that day to the ones I'm giving my best educated guess on. I'm also drawing on the hazy memory of those longboxes that were mounted on my walls for those precious few years afterward, and (is this cheating?) the copyright dates on the CDs themselves. I know I bought at least four CDs that day, and I know they're ones that have never left my collection. For a while, I had saved the receipts from every CD I bought (Music Plus had these neat computer-printed receipts that showed the artist and title of each purchase), but I eventually threw them all away after I had stopped collecting them. I now wish I had saved at least those first couple of receipts, so that any margin for error in compiling this list could be eliminated. If only I could travel back in time to that day and be sure ... but then, that would probably take away the romantic sense of uncertainty that makes the memory such a fond one....

John Williams & The Boston Pops Orhcestra: "By Request: The Best Of..." -- Like most of the titles in this list, I'd had this one on cassette for awhile and liked it so much that I couldn't wait to upgrade it to the comparatively indestructible and age-defying medium of the compact disc. It's an album full of the greatest themes from Williams' stunning career of music for film ("Star Wars", "Superman", "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "Close Encounters"), television (the themes from the Olympic games and from NBC News), and elsewhere (a special composition commemorating the Statue of Liberty), showing his unparalleled achievements in orchestral music.

Scott Grimes: "Scott Grimes" -- When he was a teenager and already well into his acting career (after the "Critters" movies but before "Party of Five" and, of course, long before "E.R."), Scott Grimes tried his hand at making a pop record, like quite a few actors do. Although the results aren't the most spectacular -- cheesy late-'80s pop to such a degree that you can almost smell the scent of cheddar wafting from your CD player -- Scott's decent voice (better than most wanna-be rock-star actors) and capable production from Richard Carpenter and Herb Alpert made this CD a keeper, at least to me.

Yanni: "Chameleon Days" -- Okay, stop laughing. Back in the early years of his career, Yanni's music actually had life to it. At this time, there was a new radio station in the L.A. area called "The Wave", which played so-called "New Age" music, and it was there that Yanni's tune "Everglade Run" grabbed my ear and didn't let go. I had to write down the name of the song and the artist, and I picked up the album it was on (this one, of course). Surprisingly, there were a number of cool songs on this album and some of his previous releases, and I eventually became a fan of his ... that is, until he became the king of snooze in the early '90s, which he basically has been ever since.

Leonard Rosenman: "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" Soundtrack -- This was the film that made me a "Star Trek" fan (the film that is the most widely credited with doing so, I've heard), and of course I also loved the music. Rosenman would later lose a lot of respect from me as a musician (dismissing Basil Poledouris' "RoboCop" score as "crap" in a magazine interview, when his own score for the sequel was in fact quite inferior), but I've never stopped liking this album.

The Connells: "Boylan Heights" -- Earlier on in that same year, I had purchased a cassette from a professional mix-tape service called "Personics", which sold songs, from a pre-determined list of a few hundred, for a nominal per-song fee -- just fill out your order form at the kiosk (inside Music Plus, of course), take it to the counter, and in about ten minutes or so, your tape was ready. It was a great thing, considering it was about a decade before CD burners existed! This is how I was introduced to The Connells, a great melodic rock band from North Carolina that would end up becoming one of my favorite groups of all time ... and to think it was only because I couldn't think of anything else I really wanted to fill up the extra space on the cassette! This CD, containing that first song of theirs I chose through Personics, became the first of theirs I bought, eventually accumulating their whole discography.

CD(s) of the Week: Game Show Themes

"THE BEST OF TV QUIZ & GAME SHOW THEMES"
(Varese Sarabande, 2000)

and

"CLASSIC TV GAME SHOW THEMES"
(Varese Sarabande, 1998)

As the classic Monty Python catch-phrase goes: "...And now for something completely different." I was browsing through my CDs recently and came across these two titles, nestled in at the end of the soundtracks section. Not being able to decide what to watch on TV/DVD or what to listen to that evening, I popped these two discs in and was soon time-warped back to my youth. Back in the days when I was outgrowing cartoons but wasn't quite ready for the meaningful programs of prime-time, I became hooked on game shows. This was a good few presidential elections ago, long before The Game Show Network (in conjunction with whom these two collections were produced) existed, and long before the grey had invaded Bob Barker's and Alex Trebek's hair.

I suppose it was unavoidable that, with my budding interest in music, I would become enamored with the theme music recorded for these shows ... music as unnaturally peppy as the programs' hosts. But, when you listen a little more closely to these tunes, removed from the applause of the studio audience and the chatter of the shows' announcers (who could almost always take on the hosts in an enthusiasm contest), you'll find a surprisingly varied and innovative genre of music. The goal of the game show theme has always been to capture and focus the excitement and fun of the game, and each composer had their own approach to doing so. The two most prolific composers spanning these collections, Robert Israel and Bob Cobert, took what became the "textbook" approach: bouncy, jazzy tunes with traditional instrumentation, sometimes arranged to sound in step with whatever trends were prevalent in popular music at the time.

There are a number of curiosities hidden in these collections, from the bad (the two vocal numbers: "The Wizard of Odds", sung with unintentionally silly results by future sitcom star Alan Thicke; and "Monopoly", in which the O's sung by the female vocalist in the spell-it-out duet sound bizarrely sexual) to the good (the earlier, all-synthesizer rendition of "The Joker's Wild" which was extremely innovative for its time, and sounds like the Disneyland "Main Street Electrical Parade" probably because it was done by the same composers; and the long-forgotten original "Wheel of Fortune" theme, which was composed by the forementioned Mr. Thicke and is a thousand times better than the simplistic, repetitive one that took its place), as well as the legendary staples that we're still hearing today ("Jeopardy!", "The Price Is Right", and "Family Feud"). And by the way, don't be concerned about the duplicate titles you may see in the track listings ... they're all different themes, mostly from various incarnations of the show over the decades.

The only quibble I have about these albums is that their titles probably should have been reversed: there are many more original, vintage themes on the disc called "The Best Of TV Quiz & Game Show Themes", whereas all the more popular themes that more people recognize can be found on the disc named "Classic TV Game Show Themes". But, the fact that these discs collect (as far as I can determine) all the ORIGINAL themes and no re-recordings -- a highly commendable achievement that couldn't have been easy to accomplish -- makes such an imperfection easily forgivable. The childhood bliss that the "Tic Tac Dough" and "High Rollers" themes (my two sentimental favorites) whisk me into every time I hear them made these discs worth every penny of the purchase price.

Song of the Month: Remedy

Okay, here goes ... wish me luck ... I've never tried uploading a file to any kind of a sharing site before, so let me know if something goes ca-ca and you can't download it. Here it is, boys and girls: my new feature, the "Song of the Month"! At the beginning of every month, I'll pick a tune that I really like, one that you've probably never heard before, to share with all of you. As is the case with any other feature on here, it's subject to change, most possibly in frequency ... after all, I have a long list of songs I'd love to share with y'all, so it could turn into a twice-a-month (but probably not weekly) thing. In the meantime ... enjoy!


"Remedy"
Maria Arredondo featuring Espen Lind
from the album "Not Going Under" (Universal/Norway, 2004)

I bought Norwegian singer Maria Arredondo's second album just for this song, which a fellow Espen Lind fan had sent to me in an MP3 file and I promptly fell in love with. It's one of those pop songs that's so perfect, you just can't imagine anything that could make it any better.

First of all, it's an honest-to-goodness "duet" from beginning to end, with Maria's and Espen's vocals dancing together in perfect, blissful harmony. Plus it's got an energetic, almost country-ish sounding rhythm that hits the ground running, and a catchy-as-all-get-out melody ... so, what's not to love?

This song is definitely pop, but I could easily see it making a big splash in America on contemporary country radio if it were covered by a male/female pairing of current artists. Maybe that'll happen if someday someone in Nashville discovers it ... but for now, it's our little secret.