Mini-update, bigass music rant

Unexpectedly had a four-day-weekend thanks to Mother Nature blessing me with an overabundance of springtime germs. I felt near death on Wednesday night, but I felt mostly human again by Saturday so I spent the weekend-weekend shopping & nerding out with a friend. I gave Japan my money, and it not only gave me fantabulous finds at its hippie shops, but my new favorite designer name in the whole wide world (this includes tokidoki, because yeah my new favorite's prices are still ridiculous, but not quite that ridiculous): drug store's. "It is a symbol of happiness beloved by girls," according to a lot of their overpriced t-shirts. Their mascots are little pigs, and they appear in every iteration imaginable, including but not limited to: samurai pig, noodle-shop pig, viking pig, Rastafarian-inexplicably-riding-a-Hindu-elephant pig, Harlem Globetrotters pigs, The Beatles' Abbey Road album cover pigs, and these little doods on the left here. HELLS YES that is Indiana Jones pig and Sean Connery pig. I got a surprisingly-not-overpriced backpack that is most definitely a direct play on LeSportsac's tokidoki handbag aesthetic but with viking pigs and "Helmetons" written on the button-logo instead of "LeSportsac." It is made of awesome and win ♥

In the next 3 days I wanna get some of the dust out of my apartment and take a crack at revamping my first-year students' classes so that they can actually get something out of them this year besides "I'mu fine sank you." Then I'm going to Korea.

What follows are some thoughts on "Nightmare Revisited," which I bought at Tower Records in Suzuka this weekend. All those in favor of NOT sitting through my musings about The Nightmare Before Christmas, contemporary bands, and two successive generations of movie-goers, stop reading nnnnnnnnnnnnnnn...
...ow.

Okay, I wrote the bulk of this while it was still very fresh in my mind, so forgive me if the transitions aren't obvious because my brain does that lateral-thinking thing an awful lot and I don't notice it because, well, it's my brain. To get right to the point (that's a lie), I don't at all care for any of the songs that have anything to do with Jack (that's the truth). Yes, that very much includes The Polyphonic Spree's version of "Town Meeting Song." They, like the rest of the bands that were inexplicably chosen for Jack-related songs, just end up sounding like parodies of themselves, and not in the good kinda way. About the only performer of which I am unqualified to make that assertion is Sparklehorse (haven't heard any of his [their?] other songs), but judging by the rest of the indie-pop outfits on this album I feel I can make an educated reach and include him (them?) too.

Something I should make clear: I am not simply singling out bands like All-American Rejects and Plain White T's because they happen to fall within more or less the same flavor of music. DeVotchKa did an amazing job on the overture, and sonically he is worlds away from Marilyn Manson, who did wonderful things with "This Is Halloween." The reason bands like Manson and DeVotchKa and Stars work for this collection is because they can stay true to their own sound - and, of course, knowingly spoof themselves; I mean, Marilyn Manson, THEE Marilyn Manson, singing in wee-tiny-witchy voices and going "whee!"??? I laughed pretty hard. The man is completely self-aware, acting as his own caricature here, and has a ton of fun with it - while also remaining true to the stories and emotions embedded in these songs.

By contrast, Plain White T's doing "Poor Jack" just sounds like Plain White T's doing their best Danny Elfman impression. And admittedly it's pretty spot-on. But if you're merely going to copy the original song exactly, how is it "revisiting" that song? What elements of your band, besides the name, are you adding in?

Flyleaf goes to the opposite extreme and does Flyleaf-sings-a-song-called-What's-This. Not Flyleaf reinterprets "What's This" from The Nightmare Before Christmas. I simply cannot integrate those two songs, because they are separate animals. When I listen to those vocals, to that instrumentation, I don't hear wonder and delight at making new discoveries in life, at breaking out of your own little world and taking joy in the diversity of experience.

I hear all the teenagers and twenty-somethings who did not see this movie as eight-year-olds. They saw it in their teens and twenties, because it has Halloweeny stuff in it, and because they mistakenly felt it validated their self-absorbed morbidity. They saw this film when they were too old to naively accept the fantastical aspects of death and monsters as commonplace within this particular fictional world - they had already been taught that those things are in fact taboo no matter what the context. So they did not understand that Jack's return to Halloween Town as the Pumpkin King was not, in fact, a triumph of their subculture - for Jack, being spooky is the norm, a regular 9-5 job, and thus for him it is a return to traditional values, albeit with an enriched worldview and renewed inspiration thanks to his having briefly experienced a different way of life. Let's not forget with near-disastrous results. If anything The Nightmare Before Christmas is a pretty straight-up cautionary tale about throwing yourself into alternative lifestyles or attempting to emulate different cultural practices without first gaining some actual knowledge and understanding of them, god forbid.

Granted, I acknowledge that the songs, in a way, simply embody a different generation's experience of the story, one that is not wrong in any meaningful sense. It is what it is. Jack can be a lonely guy with a stagnated career having a quarter-life crisis, and he can also be a whiny emo kid. I guess I just can't help but bemoan the connections that later and broodier audiences were missing out on due to their inability to see past their mascara and pink hair extensions. And also Flyleaf-chick's voice gets REALLY irritating after just a minute and a half. (Apologies to Jenni, and nothing against mascara or pink hair extensions - they are really quite awesome when given into the right hands, i.e. not-most-15-year-olds).

I'm on the fence with Amy Lee. I have mad respect for her vocal talents, and she captures Sally's voice perfectly, but...yeah, but. Fiona Apple. Her voice, and her music, gives Sally the little spark of moxie that we always knew was there, but gets drowned in the fatalism of "Sally's Song." I can listen to Fiona Apple's rendition and not feel at all guilty over it. In fact I'm going to go dig that up right now.

P.S. -- Dear Notre Dame Class of 2009: I hope your more conservative elements are at least mature enough to quitchyer bitchin' about having PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA as your commencement speaker. To those wet blankets who keep fueling what I imagine is by now a raging Viewpoint wank-fest: freaking loosen up and enjoy the most awesomest commencement in the history of ever. Oh, and have fun with your subsequent Bush-begotten lack of employment. Neener neener. Love, Nikki.