Monday, February 2, 2009
Someone Please Stop the DOOM!!
Rolling Stone reports that "Scarlett Johansson Ponders Album of Original Tunes or Leonard Cohen Covers." I take it she's taking this as an exclusive disjunction. In either case, we're totally fucked. But if she elects to take the second horn, we must take action. Wasn't the Tom Waits album enough of a disgrace? I'm horrified. She must be stopped. Shouldn't someone beat her into unending silence with Billy Joel's stiff corpse?
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14 comments:
Now once again where is that goddamned asteroid when you need it?
But seriously, is poor Scarlett's self-absorbed grandiloquence about her supposed talent any less gorge-inducing than say, the typical blogdiloquence about the putridity of Billy Joel or Leonard Cohen? That is, pronouncements without anything behind them but self-assured authority? Holy Euthyphro Batman!!
Maybe justice will be served and she will do an album of Billy Joel covers. Or, maybe she'll meet Zooey Deschanel and go away.
Questions I have about this:
(1) The R.S. story says the Tom Waits cover album got "mixed reviews." Is this just a standard way of saying "bad reviews"?
(2) That guy from TV On The Radio was involved in said album. Is it OK to think he's still cool?
(3) Same question as (2), but this time about David Bowie.
David Bowie is still cool, but that's just because he's David Bowie not because of anything he's recorded since Scary Monsters.
Even if you like Billy Joel (and the Ramone's drummer remonstrates with Anthony Bourdain on that very point) it is still the case that Leonard Cohen's trilogy "The Songs of. . ." "Songs from a Room," and "Songs of Love and Hate" are so awe-inspiringly great that he is firmly enrolled (along with Bowie and recently diseased Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton) as one of the major gods of the rock and roll pantheon. So blogdiloquence about Cohen's (supposed) putridity is a priori gorge-inducing while blogdiloquence about Joel's putridity at best a posteriori gorge-inducing (I realize it would be conceited to cite my Analysis piece on this very subject (well actually specifically on the modal and epistemic distinctions involved in the irritating cover art of Joel's Glass Houses L.P., but it's close enough).
I thought Johanson could have done justice to the Waits thing if the selection of songs had been a little better and the production choices less horrifyingly pro-toolsy. I mean, the problem wasn't her voice or singing interpretation. Rick Rubin or Jack White or maybe Albini (all producers who appreciate wacky syncopation and acoustic viability enough to do justice to Waits) could have got everything into shape. The point is, the "On the Radio" guy certainly shares some of the blame. And she can hardly do a worse job on Cohen's classics than Rufus Wainwright did in that movie.
Anon 2:31:
1) The reviews were mixed in the degree to which they said it fucking sucked.
2) The TV On The Radio guy fucking sucks.
3) Bowie's output has been disappointing since Scary Monsters (Cogburn's right!), though I thought "Heathen" has some high points. But Bowie is still cool simply because he worte the best rock song ever: "Heroes."
Cogburn:
Agreed that Rufus's version of "Chelsea Hotel No. 2" in that film was pretty bad. But there were *lots* of low-points of that film. To wit: Nick Cave needing to read the lyrics to "Suzanne"! And let's pretend that the U2 never happened.
But I think that Scarlett could do even worse.
Jon Cogburn: Just to clarify, any blogdiloquence on this blog about Leonard Cohen's putridity was "supposed" incorrectly by anon 11:12. A while back Sprios had been complaining about the putridity of Bryan Adams, then complained about Canadian song writing generally. He was corrected about the latter complaint when reminded about Cohen--a correction Spiros fully accepted. I'd agree that blogdiloquence about Cohen's putridity is a priori gorge-inducing, but it didn't happen here.
Spiros: It isn't clear from the articles reporting Johansson's next album that the disjunct of Doom will actually happen. She claims she is interested in "collaborating with Cohen," Nothing is said about Cohen's interest in collaborating with her. We can hope, I suppose, that Cohen might stop the Doom. I'll admit, there is a part of me that would find listening to a Scarlett Johansson rendition of "Hallelujah" (once) irresistible for all the wrong reasons.
Re: Bowie and "Heroes". It's interesting how often one finds Eno's fingerprints on great music, especially from the late 70s/early 80s, e.g., his work with Bowie and Talking Heads. Is there a better three-album run than "More Songs about Buildings and Food," "Fear of Music" and "Remain in Light"?
Glaucon:
Right about Eno. "Fear of Music" is definitely in my top 5 fav albums of all time.
Spiros:
As they say on The Wire, "true dat." The "Mind" "Paper" "Cities" cluster -- in fact, the whole first side (I'm dating myself; I still think of certain albums as having sides) -- is really something. It's hard to believe that stuff is 30 years old. I had the great good fortune to hear them live a couple of times; they were so tight live, even with the big band. I still vividly remember what the place felt like when they tore through "I Zimbra" for ten minutes. It was, uh, transcendent.
Glaucon:
And don't forget "Memories Can't Wait"!
when I think about all the bands I've seen that I think (and at the time thought) suck, the fact that I never made it to a TH show is fucking criminal. I suck
I think if she goes through with such a plan, she should be violated in every possible orifice with Elton John's freshly severed head or Eric "My hand's so slow I can catch my kid diving out a window" Crapton's severed hand.
That Tom Waits cover album was a crime against humanity.
can = can't
"[...] beat" into "unending silence" and "violated in every possible orifice with Elton John's freshly severed head?"
Really?!?
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