Better Than Ezra

Wow ... something must be wrong here ... I just realized it's been a whole month since my last CD review. Well, nothing's wrong, really ... was just a bit preoccupied with my sister visiting from out-of-state ... but maybe things will get back to normal now. I'm not quite sure, though ... might be best if y'all just go with the flow and don't hold out any expectations. I'll try and keep you posted on exactly what I mean by that.

BETTER THAN EZRA
"PAPER EMPIRE"
(BTE, 2009)


The record labels have lost my business more than once lately because they've been packaging more and more of their CDs in what I call "sleeve" packaging (like a digipak, but worse -- instead of a tray the CD rests in, just a pocket that the disc slides in and out of, making it more vulnerable to scratching), The Fray's and Ben Kweller's latest releases being the two prime examples. But when Louisiana rockers Better Than Ezra released their latest album, I was so set on picking it up that I flinched for only a moment when I saw that it, too, is packaged that way. But then I knew that it was going to be worth getting regardless of its packaging, and I was right.

This album has a healthy blend of sonic moods, but the more subdued tracks tend to be the stronger ones of this set. The ruminative "Just One Day", the exquisite love waltz "Fit", and the anti-war anthem "Wounded" are amongst the best that BTE have ever come up with. As far as the uptempo tracks, lead single "Absolutely Still" and stadium rocker "Hell No!" (which, if I'm not mistaken, hints at comparing football to war) are winners, but the feather-light "All In" is little more than filler, and though the guys do an admirable Duran Duran impression on "Nightclubbing", it just sounds silly coming from these guys.

I've been a fan of BTE since their very first major-label album, back in 1995, thanks in part to the unmistakable voice of frontman Kevin Griffin, which is still as rich and resonant as it was when I first heard it fourteen years ago. The band has occasionally taken a more artistic detour (such as the curious and commercially unsuccessful "How Does Your Garden Grow?"), but more often than not has dedicated itself to crafting melodically accessible but lyrically substantial songs. "Paper Empire", their fifth studio effort, carries on that tradition nicely, and I expect to be a listener of theirs for their next five albums too.

Just One Day - Better Than Ezra

United Breaks Guitars

I caught wind of this on the news the other day. It seems that back in the spring if 2008 a small, up-and-coming band called Sons of Maxwell was flying from Halifax to Omaha on United Airlines (a carrier in whom I had plenty of trust -- until now), and their guitar cases were treated with just as much gross negligence by the baggage handlers as any other piece of luggage. Not surprisingly, when they got to their destination, at least one of their guitars was badly damaged. Unfortunately, the airline refused to take any responsibility, so these guys did what any disgruntled passenger with an Internet connection would do these days -- they wrote a song, made a video, and posted it on YouTube for all the world to see.

According to the news story, the band was hoping to see this video get one million hits by the end of this year. Well, not surprisingly, its exposure has helped it more than double that goal in mere days (2.1 million hits and counting)! And, well, it doesn't take a fortune teller to know that these guys are really going to go places thanks to this story, and I rather suspect we'll all be able to see their debut album on CD shelves everywhere before too long. If you want to read all the gory details of their ordeal with United Airlines, click here. Meanwhile, here's the story in a very entertaining and tuneful nutshell:



Oh, and just yesterday, the band's frontman posted an update to the story. Hmmm ... nine months go by with absolutely no help or cooperation whatsoever from United, but now that the story has spread like wildfire, the guys finally get a response. Who'da thunk it...?!



I don't own a guitar myself, and have never had any complaints about United's service, but from now on I'm really going to need a good and compelling reason to fly their airline anymore. After all, I love music, so seeing musicians treated this way (come on, how much brains do you need to know that a guitar case should be handled with at least some amount of care?!?) is almost like a personal inslut to me. As for Sons of Maxwell ... just the creative "lemonade from lemons" way they worked out their frustrations about the situation is making me want to buy their music...!

Life In Stereo

My life is about to plunge headlong into the gaping maw of chaos. Well, actually, it's just my stereo, but to me it's pretty-much the same thing. Hard as it is for me to believe, that trusty old music machine of mine is in fact 13 years old. Only it's not quite so "trusty" any more ... some of the buttons on the front panel have begun doing strange things (the "next track" button switches the stereo from CD mode to radio mode, the graphic equalizer button changes CDs, the "play" button resets the graphic equalizer), it sometimes doesn't see that there's a CD loaded into a specific slot (or just skips over a slot or group of slots for no good reason), and the cassette playback deck went "boink" almost two years ago.

All is not lost, because I can work around those faults, at least for the time being: the remote control still works perfectly so I use it whenever I can, a strong blast of air makes the CD slots behave normally for awhile, and there's still the cassette recording deck that I can use when I have occasion to play (or record on) a tape. But if and when this thing finally bites the dust, it's gonna be a really sad day. This beaut has a 51-disc carousel CD changer, and a dual-cassette deck -- two features that are all but extinct on so-called "shelf" stereo systems anymore (the best I can find now is a 5-disc changer). If I went to a specialty retailer and assembled my own component system, I'd probably be able to find features like those, but I'm neither financially inclined to spend the money on a customized system with all the bells and whistles, nor am I such a finicky audiophile that I need a top-of-the-line sound system.

I'm still old-school in that I sometimes like to make mix CD's "the old-fashioned way", by recording them in real-time, track by track, from my stereo onto my stand-alone audio CD recorder. That's one reason I like my system so much -- I can load all the CDs I'm burning tracks from into the stereo at once, and just nudge the jog dial from one disc to the next as I go. Sure, it would be faster and easier to assemble the playlist in iTunes and hit the "burn disc" button, but it's so fast and easy that I almost think of it as cheating ... besides, such a mix CD would be made of 128Kbps MP3's instead of coming straight from original CD tracks. As for the remaining working cassette deck, I still make use of it, though admittedly not a lot. I do still have a couple dozen tapes that I listen to occasionally enough that I haven't felt the need to burn to CD; and I have yet to get a request to record a mix tape instead of a mix CD, but it's nice to know that, for now, I still have the ability to do so. And to top it all off (quite literally, in this case), not long after I'd gotten this stereo, I happened upon a matching turntable add-on for it, the same brand and dimensions and color and everything, making it a complete and total all-format (for its time) system!

The more I think about it, the more I realize that it's not just these conveniences that I'll miss if and when its proverbial number is up, but it's what this stereo represents in a broader sense. This is mostly what I've listened to music on for the last thirteen years ... in other words, for almost three-quarters of my music-loving life. Though I've embraced the iPod and now basically can't imagine life without it, I grew up with CDs, cassettes, and vinyl records, and now it seems that the big-name electronics manufacturers have all but forgotten those formats and now almost totally cater to the MP3 and iPod crowd. If you're not sure just how old(-school) your generation is becoming, all you have to do is check out the shelves of any electronics retailer, and it'll become pretty clear. Hey, I've still got a cassette Walkman, for cripe's sake! (It almost never gets used, and its belt clip is broken off, but I just can't bear to part with it.) Did I mention that my stereo doesn't even play CD-RWs or MP3-CDs? It reads CD-Rs just fine, though.

So, the question remains: what am I going to replace my existing system with when it finally kicks the bucket? I do have to admit, a 250- or 300-disc CD changer would be way bitchin' to have, but the way my listening habits have been changing slowly but surely (when playing a CD at home nowadays, I've gotten into the habit of just popping it into the computer and listening to it from iTunes), I just can't imagine getting my money's worth out of such a thing anymore. I went browsing around at Best Buy's online store the other day to get a feel for what's out there, and I guess I hadn't realized just how much the iPod has truly taken over -- the vast majority of the shelf systems out there are iPod-ready, complete with a dock that will not only pump your Pod's tunes through its own speakers, but even recharge its battery.

But I like to think of my iPod as being for strictly on-the-go music listening (Really, if you need to have songs in MP3 on your computer to put them onto your iPod, why not just play music from your computer when you're at home?), so I probably won't be looking for that particular feature. Sp far I've found a sweet-looking Sony 5-disc changer with a CD-recorder, which would potentially allow me to get rid of two machines at once, but then away go the cassette deck and turntable. Then again, there's a very cool-looking "retro" Victrola-style turntable housed in a desktop-sized woodgrain speaker cabinet, complete with a cassette deck on the side panel and a built-in CD player (or, for a bit more money, a CD recorder, for making those LP-to-CD or tape-to-CD conversions) as well. Maybe that's the ticket ... hey, if my stereo is my life, and I'm as old-school as I say I am, I might as well walk the talk, right?

Remember The Time

I didn't plan on letting ten days go by before saying something about Michael Jackson on this blog, but there are a couple of reasons it ended up that way. Mostly it was the deluge of news reports and fan tributes that absolutely flooded cyberspace, so what I could have said would have already been said by many others, plus it would have been delivered with more heartfelt sincerity and profundity, by people who felt a deeper connection with the artist and his music. You see, as much as I love music in general, and pop music in particular, I was never a huge MJ fan, probably mostly because the biggest peak in his career happened years before I really began to appreciate music. (Back in the early '80s I was much more a fan of "Star Wars" and Legos than I was of vinyl records and cassettes.)

But one doesn't have to be a fan of Michael Jackson to recognize what a powerful influence he had on the world of music, especially in two key ways. First of all, he broke the color barrier on radio and the then-fledgling MTV. Black artists may have ruled disco, but were seldom taken seriously by the mainstream until he came along -- and just like that, the color of the artist didn't seem to matter anymore. Secondly, Michael Jackson was the first artist whose look was as much a part of his gestalt as his sound, and pop music has, for better or worse, focused on the artist's image as much as his or her music ever since. It may have been the fact that his rise to fame coincided with the music video revolution, and it may have had something to do with the magnitude of a star that MJ was -- and being the keen self-marketer that he was, it's a safe bet that MJ was aware of it all and used it to his advantage.

And let's not forget his music, of course. There's a very short list of artists who have had such a phenomenal impact on music that it has made the artist and their sound instantly identifiable, and essentially influenced all who have followed. All you have to do is look at how many subsequent artists cite him as an influence. As much as the '50s were ruled by Elvis Presley, and the '60s belonged to The Beatles, Michael Jackson personified the '80s. Think about it: when you hear the name Michael Jackson, a distinct style of music flashes before your ears, and when you hear one of his songs, you just know that it's Michael Jackson. And, just like The Beatles and Elvis, you simply can't turn the radio dial very far until you hear a song that has something in it, big or small, that Michael Jackson did first.

It might sound like hyperbole, but it's the truth ... none of us can even vaguely imagine what pop music would be like today if MJ had never come along. And, sadly, times have changed such that there will never be an artist again of such all-encompassing superstardom. The music business, and pop culture in general, are vastly different beasts now than they were then; thanks to the Internet and globalization (and perhaps to our resulting shorter attention spans), there are ten times as many artists of twice as many genres coming at us from ten different directions.

I've never been a big fan of The Beatles, but my music library simply would not be complete, nor would I be able to call myself a fan of popular music, without some of their recordings (their two double-disc greatest hits albums, in this case). The same goes for Michael Jackson ... I think I had his "Thriller" album on cassette many years ago, and though I don't own it or any of his other studio albums now, I consider "The Essential Michael Jackson" a ... well, essential ... part of my collection. Maybe I didn't love you, MJ, but I'll miss you all the same.