Melissa Maerz

Melissa Maerz

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Friday, December 27, 2002

Lost and Found

Spotted in Found Magazine's "notes" section:

a crumpled yellow piece of paper with the following words scrawled in black ballpoint pen

YOU SEE THE SINE SO MOVE KNOW

the commentary from the man who discovered this note reads, "a month ago or so, i came out to my car to find this note. i couldn't figure out which "sine" the note referred to but the line has become kind of a mantra in my head. "you see the sign so move now, you see the sign so move now...."

A good New Year's resolution, don't you think? Notice the sign. Move now.

3:30:09 PM

The Next Pop Sensation? Your Unborn Child!

You can find some really twisted stuff on the record store's discount racks. A writer for Show and Tell's amazing audio library found a Lil Markie record for fifty cents, and has been gracious enough to share it with the public. Kate Clements found it and sent it along to me. Lil Markie is the sickest piece of right-to-life propaganda I've ever heard. Fortunately, it also might be the most hilarious piece of comedy I've ever heard. While a Mr. Rogers-like melody plays in the background, the voice of an "unborn fetus" (which sounds suspiciously like South Park's Cartman) gives a day by day diary account of his thoughts and development from within the womb. The song ends with an abortion, and one of the weirdest choruses of all time.

Thing is, the right-to-lifers have got their tactics all wrong: If all "kids" are like Markie, it's a good enough reason for women everywhere to have abortions on the spot.

The very brave can listen to Lil Markie's swan song here.

Think you've heard a strange song that trumps Lil Markie? Write me at mmaerz@citypages.com and tell me about it. I'll post your response.

12:52:31 PM

Thursday, December 26, 2002

Music Snobs Unite!

Some readers wrote in with great responses to my query about music snobbery. Read their answers here.

3:42:42 PM

Eminem: Father of the Year?

The same man who once held a gun to his baby mama's head is now attending PTO meetings and attempting to understand Tipper Gore's agenda. Without plainly ranting, raving, or defending Daddy Slim, Village Voice music editor Chuck Eddy writes an eloquent piece on the year's best loved outcast, concentrating on what's really at stake between him and Haile (and, for that matter, between him and America): responsibility. We all know it's hard to be a father these days--what else have Jacko, Ozzy, and Em been telling us all year? Now, Eddy explains why.

Oh, and as if you needed another reason to read it, the article also has some great quotes from Marshall Mathers' grandma (!). We look forward to the remix of "I Think My Grandson's Gone Crazy!"

3:15:07 PM

Monday, December 23, 2002

Joe Strummer Dies at Age 50

http://www.strummersite.com/TEST%20FRAMED%20PAGE.HTM

Tomorrow, we mourn. Tonight, we listen to "London Calling" and get obscenely drunk.

2:16:44 PM

Friday, December 20, 2002

Confessions of a Music Snob

I am a music snob. And not even a good music snob. It's embarrassing.

There are the kind of music snobs who, in their skulls alone, have encyclopedias full of album release dates and band breakup years, jukeboxes of song lyrics and specific guitar chords, zines full of bands you've never heard of. These are the people that LCD Soundsystem writes songs about. They pop up as the hero in Nick Hornby novels, and they are the sole reason record collectors went to see High Fidelity, laughed at John Cusack's sad attempts to prove his indie knowledge, and then wrestled over one another to point out that, yes, that was indeed Bill Callahan playing the piano. They're the kind of people all of us hate. Hell, they're the kind of people who hate themselves. Yet we can't deny that after we're done having conversations with them, we take notes.

I am not one of those kind of snobs.

In fact, I can't even qualify as that kind of snob if I wanted to. I realized this when I was looking through the "What Would an Insufferable Music Snob Definitely NOT Have In Their Collection" thread on the I Love Music site the other day. The Singles soundtrack? Green Day's Nimrod? Anything by Blur? I have and love it all. And I don't love any of it ironically. (Is it even possible to really love something ironically?)

Nope, I'm not even good enough to be a true music snob. I can only qualify as sub-snob: the kind of music dork who actually likes some pretty embarrassing albums and yet is afraid to admit it in public.

The other day I was looking through albums at Cheapo with a friend. He found a used copy of Tori Amos's Under the Pink, an album that I was fanatical about when I was a junior in high school. "Weren't you looking for this?" he asked. And all I could do was kind of stare at him uncomfortably. How could I possibly go up to the counter and purchase this album--an album that's beloved only by the kind of girls who believe in fairies and have posters of unicorns on their bedroom walls? An album that I had sold years and years ago because I always had to hide it when friends came over? I couldn't possibly bring such contraband up to the counter unless I brought along enough other albums to cover it up. Okay, here's 25 SUAVES, BLACK KEYS, TRACY AND THE PLASTICS, AND (cough, cough) toriamos.

I felt like I was sixteen years old again, buying condoms.

Is it ever admissible to be embarrassed about something you like? Write me at mmaerz@citypages.com and tell me what songs--if any--should shame any music dork into silence. I'll post as many as I can on this blog.

11:10:29 AM

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Slug (But Were Afraid to Ask)

All of the Atmosphere frontman's dirtiest secrets: He lost his virginity with a menage a trios in his mom's laundry room! He admits that when he was little, he had sexual feelings for E.T.! And he thinks LL Cool J's homoerotic lyrics are the sexiest thing ever! Okay, so one of those things isn't true... but you'll have to read the article by the great Michaelangelo Matos to find out which one. Find it here.

10:43:16 AM

Thursday, December 19, 2002

Van Morrison and Ruben Blades: Separated at Birth?

Thanks to Kate Clements for pointing out this very weird coincidence. One wonders if there was a merchandise sale at the House of Blues during the week these were taken.

5:22:11 PM

Tuesday, December 03, 2002

The Long Drive Home (Or How I Learned to Love J.Lo)

How I Spent My Thanksgiving Vacation:

In Wichita, Kansas (don't ask)

At Denny's, surrounding by screaming toddlers, eating turkey dinner with fat globule gravy and cranberry sauce that arrived in a plastic container (please don't ask)

Taking a quick dinner break before my boyfriend Nick and I crammed our food-stuffed selves back into the car for the rest of a long drive back to Minneapolis from Dallas, during which we listened to as much pop radio as we possibly could.

Okay, the music--that, you can ask about. What is it about taking a long road trip through America's heartland--or through the breadbasket or the dustbowl or the chickenplatter or whereveryouare--that is so condusive to listening to J. Lo? For some reason, when I'm driving through Oklahoma City, I actually believe her when she insists that even though she's got an engagement ring the size of her well-shaped ass, she's "still Jenny from the block." Exactly which block, P. Diddy's still trying to find out. But at least we know it's in the Bronx: When she gives her shout out to her hometown, it's all you can do not to yell along with her. (Even if your own "block" is in the very hip town of, uh, Portland, Oregon.)

Out on the road, we couldn't listen to any of the CDs we brought along: The last time I listened to Oval, it was snowing outside and the crackle of the CD was almost a specific interpretation of what was going on outside. It was perfect. But here in the car, it just sounded like bad inter-station static. Nick pointed out that, during a road trip, the radio seems even more "experimental" and jarring than our CDs: Every time a song ends and the DJ comes back on the air, there's some sort of ear-busting crash of explosive sounds before a booming alto voice comes in with the ridiculous call letters: "KRZY... music so good, you'll go INSANE!"

In fact, everything sounded more experimental on our trip. The Neptunes' production of Clipse's single was suddenly the most outlandish hip hop beat we'd heard since "Get Ur Freak On." It's funny, Nick and I talked about how people like Pita and Fennesz used to be the epitomy of experimental music, and now they're releasing CDs that sound the same as their then-groundbreaking work circa 1994. And now it's these hip hop artists who are bending more traditional sounds into something confusing and amazing.

Clipse, Eminem, J.Lo, even friggin No Doubt sound amazing when you're in the car. Driving past greasy McDonalds and generic billboards and tired hitchhikers and empty hotel rooms and roadkill skunks, you can't really concentrate on anything except sound. Sometimes NPR will just give you nothing but sad stories about bad priests, so you end up listening to music. It's what keeps you awake on road trips, what passes the hours when you've got something like 17 hours until you're back home, what connects you to the other cars on the road who are probably listening to the same thing on their radios. It's our decade's version of the two lovers staring at the same moon from separate faraway places. It's a cliche. And after a long, hard weekend of being stuck by myself out in Dallas, Texas until Nick came to get me, it's the only thing that got be back home.

4:49:56 PM

Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word

I must appologize for my blurb on Ice-Rod (10/29). Peter insists that it was NOT the sex machine MC who he gonged. Rather, it was, Peter recalls, a dude who "rapped about poop and pee."

"The guy I actually gonged might be pissed off," Peter explains. Of course. I sincerely appologize.

3:57:15 PM

Tuesday, November 26, 2002

Joan Jett to Al-Qaeda: "We Will Rock You!"

HEADLINE: "Britney and Shakira Will Never Rock!"

Okay, so maybe you could slap a "Local Teen Insists" in front of that quote and it would be an instant Onion headline. But this quote is actually part of a longer, funnier, and smarter article than you'd think: It's a letter that a Joan Jett fan wrote to Rolling Stone about their ridiculous Women in Rock issue (see my blog from 10/22). Among the letter's highlights? Writer reveals that, during a trip to Afghanistan, Jett pounced into thestage wearing a birkha, promptly ripped it off, and stomped on before "blazing through the purest and nastiest rock show ANYWHERE." (Take THAT, Osama!) A tip that Rolling Stone editors may actually be "retarded." And a suggestion that Avril Lavigne's punk sensibilities may indeed have been bought from Hot Topic. (What was meant to be a dis might now be an excuse for teens everywhere to shop at a place where you can buy lava lamps and red pleather pants at the same time.)

Thanks to Paul Demko for sending this to me... the letter is definitely worth a read. Find it here.

11:26:34 AM