Wednesday Meme: Roy G. Biv

Red: "Feel Good Hit of the Summer," Queens of the Stone Age

Orange: "I Do," Lisa Loeb

Yellow: "Girl from Ipanema," Astrud Gilberto

Green: "Jamming," Bob Marley and the Wailers

Blue: "Genius of Love," Tom Tom Club

Indigo: "Mojo Pin," Jeff Buckley

Violet: "Rhymes of an Hour," Mazzy Star

Guilty Pleasure Video Favorites: Alanis Morissette

Hard to believe, but it's been 10 years since Alanis Morissette released her super, mega, multi-multi-platinum album, Jagged Little Pill, and it's taken me almost as long to start liking it. Though her recent appearance on the "Tavis Smiley" show threatened to undo all my goodwill: She was singing an acoustic version of "Head over Feet," and her pronunciation was driving me to distraction! She sang the line, "I couldn't help it/ It's all your fault," and it came out like, "Aye caaawldn't heeeaawlp aaaaait/ Sssss aaawwwwl yaaw faaawwwlllttt." Seriously, the caterwauling, I wanted to jump into the TV and haul her off to a speech therapist. Now, I GET the idea of, okay, I'm a singer and here's how I sing and it's unusual. But when you don't talk like that, it just sounds like you're going way far out of your way to make that sound. And back in the day, that bizarro yawlping wasn't nearly as bad. Why now? Like, it's a hell of a lot of work to add 20 more vowels to every word you sing, you feel me? Okay, so, anyway, yeah, JLP, great album.

But there are other, later songs of hers I like even better. "Uninvited" is really fantastic. It's this dirty, Led Zeppelin-y rawk song, you know? The MTV Unplugged version is spectacular, and "No Pressure over Cappuccino," from that same album, is cute and fun. And I guess I never paid too much attention, but did you know that some of her videos are pretty good? Some. "Thank U," "You Learn," and "Ironic" make me insane. "Ironic" grates especially because, as has already been discussed to death, nothing in the song is at all ironic. It would be more accurate to call it, "Unfortunate" or "That's a Drag." And the video—a whole car full of annoying Alanises misusing irony into the ground—turbo-HATE (TM, Max).

But the following two videos are both funny and clever and the songs are just as good. I never thought I'd cop to liking her, but here I am, all growed up. As usual, they can all be found at Yahoo! Music (FKA, Launch).

"Unsent"
Premise: Alanis wrote letters to some of the memorable men in her life, but, per the title, never sent them. So, over vignettes of her with these men, she sings them. And there are subtitles at the bottom that give more detail on what was going on between them at the time. Like, the first guy, she can't have because he has a girlfriend. Number two was an asshole, but she stuck around anyway. Three treated her well, but she pushed him away. Four was a playa pimp who, I think, wanted her to get down with the ladies. And five was the straight-forward doomed relationship that she probably wanted to work, but for lots of reasons, it would never.

It's the details that make this video so much fun to watch—the clothes, the settings, the facial expressions. It's all very realistic. And she is pretty good at making you understand how she felt with each of these people. For example, around 1:00, my heart starts to break because I WAS that woman, too. I've had that conversation—similar, but different—where you want to spend time with your boyfriend and he's all, "Yeah, well, I've got this thing, but maybe, MAYBE you can come with." And you're all, "REALLY? Great!" Ay yi yi. And the hair! Wow. She totally nails it.

I don't remember whether this song was big. I think I heard it on the radio a few times and I recall the complaint about it was that it didn't rhyme. Or maybe that was my complaint. But over time, it's held up nicely and the video is a great compliment. In short, a lot happens in four-plus minutes and is relatable to just about everyone who's ever been in a relationship.

"Hands Clean"
Premise: I've often wondered if this song was about her relationship with Dave Coulier. Oh wait. A quick Google search reveals that it might be about him. I mean, I knew that the majority of JLP's vitriol was directed his way, especially "You Oughta Know," but I figured that seven years later, she might be over it. Guess not. Anyway, in this video, Alanis is with this smarmy older dude and the lyrics tell us that "Dave Coulier" doesn't want Alanis to tell anyone that they're together. Probably because she was like, 15, and he was like, 30. Ew. He's got a big career and is totally full (HA!) of himself, not really giving a shit about her or her career. So fast forward a few years: He falls off, and she gets mega famous. He gets jealous of her success. And she writes a song about it, promising him that she won't let anyone know what happened between them. The song becomes huge and eventually, he finds out that the song is about him and he feels like a tool. She continues to be famous, and he continues to be a loser, who may or may not have hosted "The World's Funniest Home Videos." At least, I THINK that's what happens; a lot of this analysis was based on context clues and whatnot.

Some trivia: The Smarmy Older Dude is played by Chris Sarandon, perhaps best known as having played Prince Humperdink in "The Princess Bride." The Record Producer is played by Ian Gomez, who played Javier Qunitata on "Felicity."

Best moment: Around 3:50, the Karaoke scene where the totally spazzed out fan starts doing the Smurf or the Prep or some dance move that I can't remember the name of. She cracks me up.

The video has a lot going on, and it's engaging. The tune is hummable. The lyrics are clever and pretty staight up, no squishy psychological talk, like she's fond of. It's basically, "I dated this guy and he was too old for me and told me all these shitty things and hated on me. But I got mines! Peace."

Singles Going Steady: Stevie Wonder, "I Was Made to Love Her"

Dave Chandler was on time like clockwork: He came in to Archie's Alley everyday at five-o'clock when we opened. Usually, he was waiting at the door to the marina because he liked to feed the ducks along the Olentangy River, but sometimes he was already inside the bar, head on the table, taking a nap, waiting for one of us to unlock the TV cabinet and give him the remote. I don't remember when Dave started coming to the bar, he was just always there. And everyone seemed to know the routine, as it concerned him: Dave comes in, you give him the remote, a beer, and a cup of water. If he wants to change the channel, great. If he wants another beer, fine.

Dave was retired. I asked him once from what, and he said he'd been a schoolteacher. He said he'd roamed around the south in the sixties with other teachers, looking for jobs, but it had been slow going because he was black. "Chasing education. We were chasing education," he said with a laugh. "I'm still chasing, it man." I loved his laugh, but it freaked me out when he opened his mouth that wide because one of Dave's front teeth was a tooth no more. In its place was a tiny metal rod. Maybe there had been a tooth around it at one time, but if so, it was very long ago.

There was no smoking in the bar because it was a campus building, but it never stopped Dave. Time and time again, Chaz, one of the student building managers, would come down and say, "Dave, you know you can't smoke in here." And Dave would say, "Right, right," and stub it out, only to relight it as soon as Chaz left. After a while, we started smoking in there, too, but when other people tried it—customers, people who weren't our friends—Dave was our no-smoking ambassador, yelling at them, "Hey! You can't smoke in here! S'matter with you, knuckleheads?" They would look around, like, "The fuck?" because as he said this, Dave kept smoking, as did we. But they always put out their cigarettes.

We played music in the bar all the time, which, given how possessive of the TV Dave was, you'd think he'd want to hear it, as well as see it, but no. He just wanted to stare at the picture from time to time, no matter that there was no closed-captioning. He simply liked having it on. And when he wasn't watching it, he was reading one of many newspapers he always brought with him. And if he got bored with both, he'd comment on whatever CD was blaring away in the background. "What's this noise?" He'd ask? "It's The Pixies, Dave," or "It's Gang Starr." He'd smash up his face and say, "In my day"—and yes, he really did start sentences like that—"music was music and funk was funk. And this is garbage! Don't you have something with soul? Some real music?" And so, we started bringing things we thought he would like. I played Stevie Wonder's "I Was Made to Love Her," one evening and Dave lit up—or, as much as someone like Dave could light up—and said, "Ha! Yeah! That's some real music, ain't it?"

On football Saturdays, when the bar opened early, Dave would come down and bring us breakfast. He volunteered at a soup kitchen in the mornings and was always bringing leftover things like, a food-service-size box of Pop Tarts. "What kind of Pop Tarts you like?" he'd ask, "We got everything." Or a huge bowl of scrambled eggs. Or some candy bars.

And this is how it went, every week, for two-and-a-half-years.

After I graduated, I worked at Archie's Alley for one more quarter while I got my shit together. There were rumors that the Student Union folks were looking to close down the bar because nobody ever came in and "profits are excessively low compared with the volume of alcoholic beverages consumed each quarter," i.e., we gave away all the beer to our friends and kept all the money as tips. A new manager started working there and he was not having any of Dave's shenanigans. "Dude," we said, "he's an old man! He's been coming here forever. Can't you cut him a break?" "No," we were told, "We're trying to turn a profit and we can't have any freeloaders. And don't you guys know there's a no smoking policy for all campus buildings?"

Eventually, probably after being denied entrance to the building one too many times, Dave stopped showing up. And not too long after, I quit the bar and got a real job. And shortly after that, Archie's Alley closed, and based on what I can—or in this case, can't—find on Ohio State's Web site, it never reopened.

The whole reason I wrote this entry is because I was sorting through my CDs and came across that Stevie Wonder one I so often took to the bar, which made me think of Dave. I wonder whatever happened to him, if he's even still alive. I'd like to tell him how much I enjoyed his company all those years. In lieu of that, this is my little love note to Dave Chandler: Hope you're still chasing education, wherever you are.

Stevie Wonder, "I Was Made to Love Her"
From the album, Motown Legends
Released Spring of 1995
Purchased at Used Kids Records, Columbus, Ohio

Mariah, Sting, and Fiona

Stream-of-consciousness post, forthcoming. Strap in.

Mariah Carey, "We Belong Together"
This song has been in my head for days now. Mariah is so fierce all of a sudden, and I'm all up in her business like an accountant. The video is kind of dull, so you have to look past that, and also look past the fact that she's wearing that white TRB tunic like it's a dress and not a beach cover-up, but that's how Mariah does, and you take it or leave it. The song is so good, though! So catchy and the beat bounces along and you want to bounce along with it. And I like that she's even doing some interesting things with her cadence -- it reminds me (don't laugh) a little of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. It does! Listen to this and her single "Shake It Off," and then listen to "The Crossroads" and "1st of tha Month" off of E 1999 Eternal and you'll TOTALLY understand what I'm saying. No, really. Just listen to the clips on Amazon and you can hear it. Also, she spares us of the vocal gymnastics she's so fond of, and thank Baby Jesus, too, because that shit is tired. What it means when singers do that is that they're either A) unable to sing complicated vocal arrangements and use this as a crutch, while relying on the backing vocals to do the real work, or B) cracked out and too tired to bother with actually singing (see also, Whitney). So big ups to Mariah and congrats on that comeback, girl. I never thought you were crazy.

Sting, *"Like a Beautiful Smile"
Scene: Tower Records; 2:30 in the afternoon; a pleasant, but generic, Sting song plays throughout the store
Players: Drunk seeming young man in baseball cap, everyone in the rock section

Drunk Man (loudly, angrily): Yeah, that's right Sting! You drunk, you! You goddamn chimneysweep. Didn't you used to be in The Police? Huh? DIDN'T YOU!?
Everyone: The fuck?

Le Fin

* Song may have been something other than this, but does it matter, really? They're all pleasant and boring, no?

Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine
Like everyone else, by now I'm sure you've heard the hoopla surrounding Ms. Apple and her near-mythical 2003 album that was shelved because, according to many fansites, "Sony has their head up their asses." I like Fiona Apple and have enjoyed her albums, especially 1999's sublime When the Pawn..., so when it looked like this new record would never see the light of day, I downloaded the mp3s of the aborted sessions to see what all the fuss was about. (And no, I'm not going to reveal where because I don't want to get those folks in trouble, but I will give you a hint: Search for parent directories. You should get lucky that way.) And they are very, very good, as one would suspect of something in which Jon Brion was involved. So now it's been reported that the album will finally be released in time for the holidays, but without Jon Brion at the helm. She's using Mike Elizondo, who's better known for producing club bangers like "In Da Club" and "Let Me Blow Ya Mind," which is pretty ballsy and interesting and I'm super curious as to how it's all going to play out. So I'm glad I have these original mp3s to compare. You should do the same before you decide it's going to be crap. And by "you," I mean, "rabid Fiona fans who are upset about the change in producer." And by "crap," I mean, "produced by someone who's been working mainly in hip-hop." Nobody's saying that shit about Kanye West and his decision to use Jon Brion on his forthcoming Late Registration, right? Trust that Fiona Apple knows what she's doing just as much as Kanye does. That's some next level shit, right there. I don't want to miss it--do you?

Singles Going Steady: Blur, "Song 2"

You know how when you were a kid you thought how cool it would be if your best friend's mom or dad married your mom or dad? And you'd all move into the same house? And you and your best friend would be best friends AND sisters? (I suppose this line of thinking most often applied to girls.) Cool, right?

D-Money and I become friends our senior year of high school, but become really close once we both get to college, D-Money to Akron, me to Ohio State, and thanks to that wonderful new invention called e-mail, we keep in touch on a near-constant basis online and also over the telephone. D-Money and I talk one night and one of us says, "Wouldn't it be funny if our parents started dating?" As it happens, D-Money's mom is newly single again after ending a relationship with a guy who liked to flirt with girls our age, and my dad is newly single again after ending a relationship with a woman who liked her dogs better than she liked him. We both get a kick out of the idea; I call my dad and run it past him. The next I hear, dad and D-Money's mom have a date to get coffee. "Awwww! How cute," D-Money mails me. "They're gonna get married!!!!!"

Fast forward a few months and our parents are inseparable. Suddenly, we're spending holidays and weekends at each other's houses. Dad tells me, "This is serious, Pumpkin." Meanwhile, D-Money decides to transfer to Ohio State the coming fall and we're going to live together. We're going to be together all the time! She's going to be the sister that I never had and we'll be sharing clothes, CDs, shoes, weed. Lots of phone calls and e-mails follow, lots of "eeeee"s and "awesome"s and plans and a general sense that life is going to be a nonstop pajama-jammy-jam from here on out.

One year later, D-Money and I are barely speaking to each other, and when we are, it's usually, "Phone's for you," or "We're out of cereal," or "Here's my half of the rent." Where it all went off the rails, it's hard to say. There are too many reasons to count. All that I do know is that our parents are engaged and D-Money and I can't wait to get away from each other. This has become something of a challenge now that our parents live together, and we are sharing this apartment. Fortunately, our lease is almost up and we've both got summer plans. Summers past, we'd drive back to Warren together almost every weekend, the three-hour drive going by in a haze of pot smoke and good driving tunes. Now, neither of us can imagine spending three minutes together. When dad asks, "Are you coming home any time soon?" I hedge, knowing that I don't want to be there if D-Money is, saying, "Uh, I don't know. I have to see what D-Money is doing, first." Dad's too busy with the new house to notice the crack in my voice.

We are getting ready to move out of our apartment, everything is in boxes, save for my stereo. It's always the last thing I pack because I like to clean to music. I half-heartedly mop puddles of dirty water from one side of the room to the other. I stop mopping and look for a CD that will get me in the right frame of mind for cleaning. I put on Blur's "Song 2." It's difficult to not bounce around to that song, to not play air guitar and sing along with the "woo-hoo!" parts. When we first moved in together, that's exactly what D-Money and I would do. For the longest time, neither of us had a clue what the words were; something about, "And I feel metta metta. And I'm pans amma neels. And I lie amma easay…" It hardly mattered; it was plenty fun to yell out anyway. D-Money came home one afternoon all excited because she'd found the lyrics online. We were sort of close:

When I feel heavy metal /
And I'm pins and I'm needles /
Well, I lie and I'm easy /
All of the time but I'm never sure why I need you/
Pleased to meet you…

****

I lean on the mop, staring at the speakers, tapping my feet. When the door opens, I'm pretty sure D-Money is going to tell me to turn it down, that she's studying. She doesn't; instead, she hands me a beer and sits down, saying, "Start it over?" I do. Neither of us get up to dance or air guitar. We stand away from the puddles, bobbing our heads. When it's over, I turn the stereo off. We look at each other, but it's clear we don't have anything to say. "I have an idea," D-Money walks to the door, "Get another beer and meet me out back."

A few minutes later, we're standing in the parking lot next to our apartment. The lot belongs to an Italian restaurant, but because it's late, there are no cars parked there. There's a high brick wall that separates the lot from the apartment building on the other side. For some reason, there's barbed wire at the top of the brick wall, even though you can easily walk around the wall to get into the lot because there's no gate. There's an advertisement for the restaurant painted on the wall, a few rusty metal signs letting you know that it's a tow zone, reserved only for patrons of the restaurant. A banged-up Dumpster crouches near the back door. It's really quiet, save for a few sirens in the distance and some alley cats.

D-Money has a full beer and there's a box at her feet. "What's in there?" I ask. "Ah," she says, "it's those nasty plates. The ones we were going to give to Goodwill. They're too chipped up to give away, don't you think?" And they are. The box contains a motley assortment of plates, no less than four different patterns, and we were the third or fourth owners. She takes a swig of her beer and takes one of the plates out of the box. She hurls it like a Frisbee at the brick wall and it smashes with the most satisfying sound I've ever heard. It hangs in the air, like a kind of deranged bell. She stoops down and hands me a plate, "Your turn."

I don't hesitate. I fling the plate as hard as I can and do a little jump when I hear the crash. "Woo-hoo!" D-Money yells as she throws another one. "Aim for the sign," she says, as I get ready to launch my next plate. Back and forth, we take turns throwing the plates until the box is empty.

Blur, "Song 2"
From the Album Blur
Purchased at World Record, Columbus, Ohio, Spring of 1997