Real Life Rock (162 page)

4
E-Trade Super Bowl Halftime Show (CBS, Jan. 28)
As Aerosmith and 'N Sync ran onto the field for their all-star revue, soon to be completed by neo-soul queen Mary J. Blige, rapper Nelly and Britney Spears as Miss American Fuck, the sound system pumped out the first chord each of “Start Me Up” and “Hard Day's Night.” Never mind the parade of the Lines 'Round My Eyes Are Protected by a Copyright Law gestures of Aerosmith or the animatronic Michael Jackson moves and constipated singing of 'N Sync: according to the script viewers were supposed to follow, Aerosmith are the Rolling Stones and 'N Sync are the Beatles. Don't like it? Hey, as they say in D.C., get over it. Justin Timberlake says the Beatles were once dismissed as a “boy band,” too. Paul McCartney doesn't remember that, but he's 58 years old, and probably doesn't remember what he's doing in his own living room.

5
Tim Easton,
The Truth About Us
(New West)
The insert to this singer-songwriter's much-praised step away from alt-country shows a guy lolling on a couch, his eyes cast and an arm raised toward what must be light streaming in through a window. He never gets up, though.

6
Aislers Set, “Attraction Action Reaction”/“Clouds Will Clear” (Suicide Squeeze)
It's the B-side of this 7-inch single from the cool, calm and collected Bay Area quintet that's the charmer: a woman warbling about getting someone's attention, and so simply you all but tune out. And then an even simpler but much deeper guitar part lets you feel how her heart beats when she gets what she wants. Plus the best label name of the season.

7
Jon Langford, “PainTings,” at Other Music (New York, Dec. 6, 2000)
The paintings hung on the walls of this avant-garde record store were part of Langford's long-running “Death of Country Music” series, many of them renderings of Hank Williams, but the one that stood out bore no musician's name. With talismans of doom scattered inside the frame—a skull, a Masonic eye—for
Forgotten Cowboy Singer
Langford recast an old publicity still, adding to the would-be star's 10-gallon hat, western shirt, huge guitar and bigger smile a blindfold over his eyes. The plumminess of the pose made the picture as Langford finished it very creepy: this cowboy didn't know that he couldn't see, let alone that now, likely half a century after his photo was taken, he was dead.

8
Richard Pryor,
. . . And It's Deep, Too! The Complete Warner Bros. Recordings, 1968–1992
(Warner Archive/Rhino)
What's most shocking about listening to the nine CDs in this set straight through, which is easy to do, is that by the time Pryor gets to the incident where he set himself on fire free-basing, on the 1982
Live on the Sunset Strip
, he's turned into the same character he pinned so mercilessly on
That Nigger's Crazy
12 years before: the one who, in “Wino & Junkie,” can barely talk.

9
Object in cluttered NPR studio (New York, Dec. 15, 2000)
In an apartment rigged up for remotes but with so much stuff piled so randomly you half-expected someone to come in, announce a pledge drive and start selling every cracked book and discarded piece of clothing, stood an Elvis figure I'd never seen before: lithe, gold lamé, holding a mike stand, frozen in mid-jump-step, sly grin on its face, mounted on a silver base. I pushed a button marked “Demo”; the Elvis began to dance, fast, and a loud, powerful “Hound Dog” came roaring out of a hidden speaker. “It's a telephone,” said an engineer passing by—“Elvis Presley Telephone,” to be precise, courtesy Telemania, division of Tilbor-Hetman Enterprises. “That's what it does instead of ringing.”

10
George W. Bush's inaugural cowboy boots (Jan. 20, all networks)
Black, with “GWB” engraved on the sides and the presidential seal imprinted on the front—which is to say that in his personal appropriation of the symbols of the presidency, Bush made it clear he is not president merely in the constitutional sense but also in a corporate sense. The presidency is a logo, and he owns it.

FEBRUARY
20, 2001

1
Ja Rule, “Put It on Me” (Murder Inc./ Def Jam)
Something like Barry White without the subtlety, this inescapable radio hit reaches depths of degradation most gangsta music never hints at. More tuneless than Fred Schneider of the B-52's but in his way just as fey, Ja Rule slobbers as females swirl around him like a harem, melismatizing their brains out, their sound so far removed from actual human sexual response it becomes the vocal equivalent of breast implants.

2
Bryan Ferry, “Where or When” and “Falling in Love Again,” from
As Time Goes By
(Virgin, 1999), also included on Ferry's
Slave to Love—The Best of the Ballads
(Virgin, 2000)
Of the standards that make up
As Time Goes By
, it's “I'm in the Mood for Love” that's in the air today, thanks to the film of almost the same name. But these are the heartbreakers. Despite the between-the-wars tuxedos 'n' long dresses art on the CD insert, the material doesn't signify the old glam rocker's progression to a more mature, reflective—that is, decadent—state of mind. If anything, the demands Ferry is making on his music are more extreme than ever.
Here the songs are tragic: it's impossible to imagine they've ever been sung with such delicacy, with such an awareness that the slightest false move would break them. The sensibility might have first surfaced on Ferry's cover of John Lennon's “Jealous Guy” (included on
Slave to Love
), cut just after Lennon's murder, but that recording now sounds merely personal compared with songs that, as Ferry sings them, seem to bleed all across the changing map of 20th century Europe. “Where or When” (1937) opens with a theme that suggests nothing so much as a Berlin cabaret where the bohemians who've been there every night for 15 years accept that the Nazis aren't going away, and make their peace. The singer, though, won't give up, so he imagines himself into the future, turning into Cary Grant in
Notorious
—meeting the same enemy around the next turn, but with the odds changed. “Falling in Love Again” (1930) is if anything more blasted; Ferry could have retitled the tune “Slitting My Wrists Again” and you wouldn't even notice. He might be picturing Gabriel Byrne in
Miller's Crossing
, as Byrne realizes that no matter what good he does for others, no matter whom he loves or who loves him, the story will shut him out.