Back in my school days, Valentine’s Day was a time for exchanging cheap perforated Valentines cards and inedible Necco hearts, and punishing the unpopular kids by “forgetting” to give them anything. (I was perhaps one of those unpopular kids.) If you were really lucky you got a mixtape from a girl, and I did get a few in my day, even if they were from girl-space-friends and not girlfriends. What was disturbing was the presence of “Every Breath You Take” on said mixtapes, given it’s the kind of love song that John Wayne Gacy might write. Even Sting himself says it’s a paean to controlling someone:
Spokespeople for Rod Stewart and Flea have both denied to Billboard that the hyperactive Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist would be filling in for the deceased Ronnie Lane during a forthcoming Faces reunion, with Stewart’s flack going the extra mile and saying that despite Ron Wood’s claims that he and Rod went on a debaucherous, songwriting-filled vacation over the Christmas holiday, there were no plans for the band to reunite and tour at all in the near future. Someone’s got a lot of explaining to do, or at least a couple of expense vouchers to reclassify!
My post on James Brown’s “Living In America” reminded me of a sorta-sketched-out theory I have about the evolution, and devolution, of recent years’ musical landscape: There are few musical icons from the glory days of rock and pop who didn’t make at least one indescribably awful career choice during the 1980s. (Some of the artists haven’t even recovered yet.) Evidence for this theory after the jump, along with one striking exception who leads me to believe that the product of an idle mind forced to hear one too many Rod Stewart covers while waiting on line in Walgreens might actually be fact.
Rod Stewart will undoubtedly start writing “slave” on his cheek and checking into “this whole Internet thing” now that J Records won’t let him record an album of country standards. What did you expect, Rod? Did you think you’d be able to luck into some “one for you, one for me” trade-off in this economy? Or even a “four for you, one for me” deal? It’s been 15 years since Unplugged…and Seated upended your pop career, and over five since you sold what was left of your career for a Great American Songbook. While I’d love to see you do something more daring (I’m not a big Black Keys fan, but I’d be curious to hear the musical outcome of your bromance), you’ll probably have to shut up and make that Christmas album.
