Chart Championship Week 11 RESULTS now with REVEALS

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

epicharmus's marks are in - has he delivered a nail-biting finish?

01. Rufus Wainwright - "The Origin Of Love". The singer is Rufus Wainwright, the band I'm betting is the Wallflowers, the song I don't know, but it's a ponderous riff on Aristophanes' speech in Plato's Symposium. The song confronts my guff about music resolving the problems of man-man alienation head-on: once we were all physically joined to our soulmates, but when mankind got too powerful, Zeus split everyone right down the middle. Love happens when we rediscover our other half, and sex -- contra Public Enemy, pro Elton John -- is when the pieces finally fit. Problem is that the Gods are ready to alienate all from all *again* if we get too powerful: "they'll cut us down on one foot, looking through one eye." This is totally not my personal theology at all -- I believe in my heart of hearts that God *wants* us returned to the fold, God *wants* us as wholes and not parts. Anyway the reeeaaal problem is that I really can't cotton to Wainright as a singer; his singing aspires to a perpetual state of common cold, and adopts rockstar mannerisms better left undead, audibly puffing his cigarette at the very beginning, desperately wishing it meant something. 9th Place - LOSE - poptasticuk succumbs to defeat.

02. The Scorpions - "Robot Man": Here the contradictions of heavy metal and new wave are resolved via the mediating power of Queen/Sparks weirdness. It's a taut (which is a joke, see, because it's about a rubber man ha ha) and even admirable synthesis, but maybe if the lyrics weren't social realist cliches garbled by someone's limited command of English, or if they were even *more* garbled, then there'd be more to hook me. WAIT A MINUTE. This isn't the Scorpions, is it? The Scorpions? 8th Place - LOSE - workhorse foreign imports can't cut the mustard for byebyepride

03. Barbara Morgenstern - "Nichts Muss": Oh person who selected this track, while I'm not totally crazy about this one, you know me better than I know myself. You know what I should've said I loved? PIANOS. OMG. The more reverberant the better. A few simple chord changes and I start swooning. Oh faded grandiloquence! Oh slow decay of tones! In pianos, we hear the very evanescence of all experience! Solo piano (and small ensemble) pieces are generally the only classical music I don't have to study to respond to emotionally; much of the resentment I feel about the overuse of pianos in sensitive-person pop-blues (Five for Fighting's "Superman" is one particularly egregious example) comes from my gut feeling that someone's trivializing holy musical territory you just do not fuck with by adding asshole mewling. So this track doesn't need much to fix my attention, and I even stay with when it goes to darker, more urgent places, but it goes on too long. There's a few too many moments in the second half where I think "OK, you can change now. OK, go on. C'mon, you can do it, I'm ready. Hmph." 7th Place - LOSE - agonising defeat ends lockedintheatti's hopes this season.

04. Fox - "Only You Can": I WAS GONNA SAY SOMETHING ABOUT J-POP! J-pop is one of the mysterious exceptions to my "no squeaky girls" policy. I think, I dunno, I must chalk j-pop vocal girlishness up to mere genre convention, something so so so background it really ceases to have any real bearing to womankind's subordinate status in society or whatever and is just done because, well, that's what you do if you want to make a j-pop song. (Martin is likely to disagree, and be right, too.) The sproingy country-glam hearkens back to the bubblegum from the handful of years in the mid-seventies when I first became a conscious TV-watching individual, so it tickles the deepest recesses of my memory whether I like it or not. This is not necessarily a positive association: I remember being really grossed out by the weirdo rockarolla of Captain Kool and the Kongs, who probably churned out things exactly like this, far as I know or care. (I also remember being choked with awe and emotion when I was maybe 4 or 5 hearing the Brady Bunch's "Time to Change" -- which also sorta sounds like this -- on my mom's car radio as we were driving onto the Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway.) Plus I get an inarticulate sense of disgust when encountering musicians (and other cultural producers) who *try* to trigger (negative or positive) associations of the childhood ephemera we share: it just seems...too easy, too lazy, too crass, maybe too irreverent. But why do I like *this*? I think it's the seething sounds the singer makes, a bit of sudden rhythmic emphasis in singing that just might otherwise roll by. 2nd Place - WIN - thumping win not enough for brave skillextric side.

05. Kenickie - "Come Out 2Nite (Peel Session Version)": The voice is errr. Huh, well, the music is. Erm. OK! So the lyrics, then! Yes, the lyrics! They ooze carpe diem but are undermined by the polite tentativeness of everything else. Or is what I'm hearing esp. in the woman's voice not hesitation but every moment, every word in her narrative? Whatever, it outstays its welcome very quickly. 10th Place - LOSE - blue_russian ends season on a bum note.

06. Aavikko – “P-Piste”: Judging by the sounds, I'd say this was recorded as the seventies were turning into the eighties, a moment when a heartfelt easy-listening homage still had the electrical charge of the unlikely. And while it is a tad noir compared to the likes of Martin Denny or Percy Faith, it is heartfelt, as a mockery of the genre would not be so delicate in its approach, nor have the smarts to reference the Moonlight Sonata, which I think shows an intuitive understanding of EL's demiclassical aspirations and inspirations. (Of course, it could be a cover of some sort.) Outside of "Firecracker," I have no first-hand experience with Yellow Magic Orchestra but based on what I know of their aesthetic, it seems like something they'd do. (And, I'd argue, it could've only been made by people who maybe grew up with rock but could maintain a certain sense of irony about it -- people for whom rock wasn't an indigenous music, or people who made a conscious effort to treat rock *as if* it was a non-indigenous music, post-punkers like Stewart Moxham for example.) I am beguiled by this track but I'd be more beguiled by it in long-form or part of an album. 4th Place - WIN - smooth performance keeps jeff_worrell in title hunt.

07. Staple Singers - "Born In Bethlehem": Martin Skidmore's, I'm betting. OK, it's 11:30 at night in New York City and I have to write about this and Track 9 and I want to go to bed. So I'll say this: a haunted murk illuminated only by the singers' faith. Sounds quite a *lot* like the Stones' "I Just Want to See His Face" (or the other way around, obviously). 5th Place - WIN - last minute strike keeps koganbot in pole position.

08. Adult vs Solvent – “Flexidisc (Remix)”: "You know what you need: the flexi-disc review." I so should remix this so it says something to me about my life: "You know what you need: four gin and tonics." And then add some weedy strings and piano. Something, anything to liven up the abject sterility here. 11th Place - LOSE - fans in despair as piratemoggy stays rooted to foot of table.

09. Cheb Khaled - "Hada Raykoum": Is this rai? I am shamefully ignorant about rai. The synth+accordian drones on and on in a thrilling way that instantly reminds me of Harold Budd's fucking unbelievable *Oak of the Golden Dreams*, the closest music has ever come to putting me in a trance state, but...I find myself resisting this. Maybe the vocals and the skinny beats break any spell the drone might weave. 6th Place - DRAW - solid end-of-term draw for martinskidmore's cosmopolitan team.

10. My Chemical Romance - "Teenagers": A readymade teenpop snarl anthem as catchy as "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" with a singer as cute as Aaron Carter (and cuter than Rob Thomas) and an us vs. them scenario that a good half-century of culture have prepared us to thoroughly understand after exposure to only a handful of cues. And thoroughly misunderstand, maybe. The chorus goes "They say 'All teenagers scare the living shit of me.'" Who's "they"? Well, the non-teenage, right? Meaning adults, specifically adults in positions of authority (parents, teachers, cops, doctors, etc.) as established in the first verse: "they" are gonna watch your every move, force you into the role of "citizen" and "cog in the murder machine," ply you with pyschopharmaceuticals, etc. BUT. In the second verse, the "they" are "the boys and the girls in the clique" who'll ensure "you're never gonna fit in much, kid" -- that is to say, the "they" sound like other teenagers. The next round of the chorus is the same as before, though, which implies that the clique-teens also hate and fear all teenagers, too, including themselves. So the whole first verse could be read as being about the clique-monsters, who enforce cultural mores with fear, who are so afraid of other teens they sleep with guns, who ply recreational drugs on other kids to screw them up. OK, another weird ambiguity: the second half of the chorus can equally mean (where x=a darkening of your clothes and y=a violent pose): "Do x or y, and maybe they'll leave *you* alone, but they won't leave *me* alone" or "Do x or y, and maybe they'll leave you alone, but I *won't* do x or y" or "Do x or y, and maybe *they* will leave you alone, but *I* won't." The first reading says the singer is a victim, too; the second, a rebel; the third, a bully, just like the adults and the clique-monsters. Another hole: what's the thing under your shirt that'll make them pay? A gun? Or your heart? And there other things I could point to. Are these ambiguities deliberate or sloppy? Hard to say. But every way you cut into this song, there are many thin and flaky layers of extraordinary paranoia and cynicism about what it means to be a teen, both in the eyes of adults and the eyes of teens, and it's quite possible the song lets no one of the hook, not even the singer. Gross, compelling. 3rd Place - WIN - infov0re guarantees survival in fine style.

11. Bobbie Gentry - "Fancy": Is this the track Jeff Worrell worried I might've heard before? If so, lucky him. I can easily identify this song -- Bobbie Gentry's "Fancy" -- but I've never actually heard it before. I think. I passively absorbed a *lot* of hit country music from about the wimp/outlaw era to some point past the urban cowboy era (OK, let's say '75 to '82), and while I don't remember WHN ever playing many older songs (this would've been six years out of my listening window) they could've played this, so maybe I heard it then, I don't know, though I certainly do remember hearing Gentry's great "Ode to Billie Joe" any number of times. "Fancy" takes the "Billie Joe" form but adds just a wee little bit of decoration to make those bare bones into Dusty soul. Except it's actually a *lot* of different kinds of decoration (background singers, horns, organ, one fucking awesome drummer, plus Gentry lets loose a little more vocally here) applied economically. It has beauty in it, but I can't completely divorce myself from the fucked-up-ed-ness of the story: the narrator's *mom* whores her *daughter* (yeah, an of-age one, as Gentry casually mentions, but still) not just to feed the family (which Fancy loses soon enough anyway) but to help the kid "move uptown" and yet Gentry presents the latter as something of an anti-hero rather than...well, "starved to death with dignity" isn't necessarily fucking great, either, I know. 1st Place - WIN - lovely play by lisa_go_blind keeps title race open as final week looms.

Thanks to Mike for some epic reviews! Reveals at a more civilized hour today, and standings too!

For week 12, I am still waiting for a bunch of tracks - four in the Pop Prem and six in the Chart Champ, I think. Get them in! (Even if you've nothing to play for.)

Comments

[infov0re.livejournal.com]

All I'll say is: 10 is me, the ambiguities are (I think) totally intentionally, and I'm really looking forward to the reveal.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

This is the only track by this band that I unreservedly love. Good pick!

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I am very impressed by your tactics! Audacious play pays off here. A deserved 3 points. I think when I played this album to my g/f she commented 'this sounds like Chas and Dave'. I can sort of see what she means.

WTF with the Rubber man!!

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

ROBOT!!!!

Re: WTF with the Rubber man!!

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

also: :-(

Re: WTF with the Rubber man!!

[epicharmus.livejournal.com]

Oh. OH!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

i'll be sending you my track tomorrow...you won't be putting them together til sunday, right?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Right - it's not super urgent but I do need them for Sunday and I don't want to have to send out lots of reminders.

"This could be the last time"

[koganbot]

The group on TRACK SEVEN also did a song that is definitely a precursor to the Stones' "The Last Time."

Fancy

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Is this the track Jeff Worrell worried I might've heard before?
No, #11 isn't mine. But funnily enough, like you I guessed Bobbie Gentry singing "Fancy" whilst never having heard the song before. BUT BUT BUT... although the singer really sounds like Gentry, I googled the lyrics to her version and they don't match with this track - and I found a better match with someone else's version of the song. So it might not be her!

Aside from my track, I knew three of these (#4, #5 and #10) and guessed who #3 is and what album it comes from.

#4 is a classic, although I suspect I haven't heard it since the 70s! Very pleased it did so well.

Mine is #6 btw. Will say more about it after the reveal.

Re: Fancy

[koganbot]

#11 is definitely Gentry (All Music Guide has sound clips).

I shivered as I watched a roach crawl across the toe of my high heel shoe

[koganbot]

This is how I'd rank my winners, not counting mine (TRACK SEVEN). I'd heard Reba's famous (and excellent) remake of "Fancy," but never Bobbie Gentry's original; and I'd heard TRACK FOUR in the distant past but never knew who did it - research shows it was a hit in the UK, and apparently that's where the group originated, though if the singer was raised in the UK she must have been hidden in a basement and denied human contact through age 13, since I'm damned if her pronunciation originated in social interplay on the British Isles. Japan isn't an unreasonable guess as to her origins. Perhaps that one is Jeff's and the Gentry is either Martin's or Sally's.

In any event, I'm truly glad that I didn't put "Science Fiction" in my own writeup when I was the home player, as there's too much weirdo-weirdo stuff at the expense of emotion, though once again I can't say I dislike anything. I was sure which were my first three (though not the order); after that everything is in a pack, so my fourth place seems weak for fourth place but my ninth place seems strong for ninth.

--TRACK THREE: I suppose the piano could count as spacey. It's gorgeous, and the gorgeousness permeates the clicky accompaniment. But what starts as a mood piece ends up as an intense rave-up!
--TRACK ELEVEN: In the Reba version the story was about moving up in class but the music wasn't. Not knowing until I searched it online that this was the original, I was thinking that this was a modern version being too upmarket with its quaint blues and soul touches; but of course those touches are right in line with 1970, when this was released. Man, I've got to hear more Gentry.
--TRACK FOUR: Now, I was wondering if these were latter-day art bohemians going for '70s naff, whereas it turns out this is actually '70s naff shooting for '70s naff and hitting the bullseye.
--TRACK TEN: We're told that teenagers scare the living shit out of us, but this is pretty damn rollicking and joyous in its terror.
--TRACK SIX: And now the space dramas shift into high gear. Theramin or something. I was ready to dismiss this as corny strangey-strange shit, but it builds emotion.

Re: track ten

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I linked to a YouTube upload of this track on the Teenpop thread a few months back, albeit without adding any comment. Next time I shall say: "Frank: please click" :)

Re: I shivered as I watched a roach crawl across the toe of my high heel shoe

[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

Ah, well my play-off hopes may be over but at least I'm still doing well with Mr. Kogan. Do your counter-rankings count as a kind of Pop FA Cup?

Hmm...

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

I didn't live through it at the time, but my impression was my song this week was kind of iconic. I won't say I'm shocked at the result, but I loved it immediately upon first hearing it, and still do. And I submitted a different version, which just seems a even more compelling to me. Maybe not. Or maybe you need to hear the original first to get the full bittersweet effect.

Re: Hmm...

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I loved this band, but don't much care for this version of the song TBH. The original is a lot better (although it's by no means my favourite song of theirs either).

[koganbot]

And the losers are:

--TRACK TWO: Good glammetal tune, wish the singer had a more flexible voice.
--TRACK EIGHT: For the first minute this is one of my favorites, the "haunting" background tones are haunting and the buzzing electro-pulses are energetic. After that, robotic vocals weigh it down, and it can't figure out where to go.
--TRACK FIVE: Guitar strums and self-involved singer. This seems to be exactly what Michael would hate. In fact, it seems exactly what I often hate, tentative voice trying to find emotions in the hesitations and half quavers. But I don't hate this, esp. when beauty sneaks in via some nonwavering harmonies.
--TRACK NINE: I love this fellow's rough-but-soothing timbre. A wonderful voice, which I feel I've heard before. But it's embedded in a neither-this-nor-that world fusion track that's not horrible by any means, but just goes on for too long.
--TRACK ONE: I may be underrating this (though don't know what above it should be replaced), as it's quite a good tune, but I have the same problem as Michael with the vocals, which actually aren't so bad and are up to the emotional parts, but maybe I just have something in principle against this singing. I can't say I don't enjoy it. (Jessica's track?)

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Peel Sessions as the hated origin of all indie!

[lisa-go-blind.livejournal.com]

First place! And I was absolutely terrified that I would lose this week, or at least draw. I absolutely love Bobbie Gentry, and I considered submitting several different tracks by her for this week. I had to go with "Fancy," which is the song that got me in to her (I've only recently heard Reba's version, which is also very good) and is one of my favorites by anyone ever. Glad to see that Mike liked it as well.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

The top three all won again this week, Will. So I *think* that's the play-off places all decided.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

Mine was track 9, sadly - another near miss draw, dammit. It's a track I love deeply, and thought Mike might really like too. Yes, it is rai - I won't say more right now.

[koganbot]

If he's who I think he is, he's a tremendous singer but I've often wished he'd use different arrangements.

Chart Championship Rules

[koganbot]

At the beginning of the competition I was consistently preferring the Pop Premiership, but over the last half of the season I've been loving the Chart Championship more.

What It All Means

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The top three all won, which means they've locked up the playoff places.

If koganbot (22 points) equals or betters lisa_go_blind (21) and jeff_worrell (20)'s results next week, he wins the title.

If lisa_go_blind wins and koganbot loses or draws, she wins. If she draws, and koganbot loses and jeff_worrell FAILS to win, she also wins, as koganbot has got where he is on a string of 5th place finishes and his goal difference is poor.

If Jeff worrell wins and the others lose or draw, he'll win (again, his gd is better than koganbot's).

Down at the bottom it's a straight fight between byebyepride and piratemoggy. Moggy has dreadful goal difference, so byebyepride will survive if he equals her result - she needs to better his.

Everyone else is floating around mid-table with nothing to play for but pride.

Re: What It All Means

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

and we've already established I have none of that. This may be why I have forgotten to send you anything this week yet - I will do so tomorrow, as I aim to be out tonight, mental health permitting, which it may not.

Then again, I'm unsure what the rest are playing for, if it is not merely pride. Is there cash?

Has a country song ever lost?

[koganbot]

Has a country song ever lost in League play? I know that Taylor Swift was my highest finish.

Re: Has a country song ever lost?

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Leonard Cohen's folk, isn't he? Otherwise I am guilty of rubbishing country.

Some after the fact comments.

[epicharmus.livejournal.com]

04 - Funny how I assumed this track's ersatzness (and the singer's odd accent) meant it was Japanese homagery rather than the real fake thing. I think I've just heard too many entertainingly fake fake things from Japan to assume otherwise. Oh, and I know "Sssingle Bed," too!

05 - But I adore Mint Royale's "Don't Falter"!

06 - To "probably circa 1980," I was going to add the qualifier "or a revivalist," but my assumption that it was definitely "people for whom rock wasn't an indigenous music" turned out to be right on the money. Though perhaps it's shortsighted and chauvinistic to assume that in Finland (or Japan) rock *isn't* an indigenous music now.

07 - I was gonna say I thought maybe it was the Staples but thought, well, there are probably other gospel groups from the fifties-sixties with wicked guitar, best not to show your ignorance by assuming the obvious.

10 - Oh, great, now I like a MCR song.

Re: Some after the fact comments.

[koganbot]

Think the Staples might have been crucial to the Stones, not just because of "This Could Be The Last Time," but because they were one of the few gospel or gospel-style (i.e., soul) groups that I know of to use blues guitar in a soul-gospel context* - and contrary to what most writers seem to say out of habit ("Stones derived from blues"), the Stones' big musical innovation was to take r&b/soul/gospel type material and infuse hard blues and hard Stones into it (and to change the meaning from transcendence to alienation, of course).

*5 Royales would have been another, though they were derived more from the gospel quartets than the church-shout that the Staple Singers drew on.

OH.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

That's one of my favourite songs. Although I always thought the words were 'You know what you need, let us give it to you' so if it actually is 'the Flexidisc review' I am less enthused.

Re: OH.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

it's "flexidisc [something]", but not "review". I think it's "You know what you need the flexidisc to do" (no comma).

This track is a bit like Kat's Green Velvet one in this week's PP, and I quite like it for the same reasons as I said I liked that one.

(Hmm, a semi-enthusiastic "quite like" is my recurring comment on your picks, isn't it? Sorry.)

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

I think I'd lost this one before I'd even started, Epicharmus was impossible to choose for. At least I gave him something to philosophise about.

[epicharmus.livejournal.com]

If I enter the Pop Open, I promise I'll be less difficult. I have to admit that my likes 'n' dislikes write-up was way too nebulous and inside-y to be very helpful.