Re: Bizarro TP

So after all that talk about the four representative albums showing in the header of the website, I got to wondering which album covers would be in place at the Anti-Trouser Press site on Bizarro World.

I'll spend the rest of my work day sharpening my knives. I'm running late and have more work to do. I think Rick Astley needs to be one of the four, but the rest are up for grabs.

Rick Astley's neo-soul has too much in common with Bowie and Duran Duran. Milli Vanilli, Ashley Simpson, Boys 2 Men, Rush :p would be the four band I would put albums by.

Chris Gaines

Bay City Rollers

Who is the Bizarro Cheap Trick?

Matchbox 20

no love for the Bay City Rollers? I kinda dig'em.
Chris Gaines is a good one.

This is highly subjective, but:

(1) Any randomly selected John Denver album;
(2) Any randomly selected Styx album;
(3) Any randomly selected Journey album; and
(4) Bat Out of Hell.

Yes. I don't know much about bad art, but I know what I like.

The Bizarro TP would feature only the most bland, middle-of-the-road, eager-to-please crapfest jamboree of truly wretched music imaginable.

Denver. Styx. Now that's what I'm tawkin' about. REO? First ballot, man!

Celine Dion?
Kenny G?

But you're wrong about the Meatloaf title. I'd spare the original (by a whisker) and go with "Bat Out Of Hell II." That is music for sewers. Blarg!

And that Bowie-related defense of Rick Astely has Bowie himself waking bolt upright in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. Screaming.

...

No one mentioned any boy bands. What is up with that?

bay city rollers.
if you 'search' that bands name here you will come across erikalbany meets ira.

so much for coincidence.

i change my mind, replace the ramones, ec, nirvana & moby with the rollers.



Post Edited (02-19-11 01:26)

Black Oak Arkansas? Molly Hatchet? Anything by Ted Nugent?

The last 4 American Idol winners, whoever they may be.

>Who is the Bizarro Cheap Trick?

Cheap Trick, of course.

I'm listening to the "Roller's Show" single right now because of this thread.

Considering Ira's aversion to Springsteen's Heartland overtures, I'd say that Born in the USA (ie, the image of Bruce's ass) would be on the bizzaro TP site.

The Rollers were cutesy pap pop, but some of the songs were undeniably nifty. "Saturday Night" stands up, as does "Rock & Roll Love Letter" and "Wouldn't You Like It."

We did not like the Boss. I for one found him deeply irritating, although I came to like much of the Nebraska LP and a couple of songs from Born in the USA.

One candidate might've been REO Speedwagon, although I recall that their guitarist, Gary Richrath, was a TP reader and was really dismayed to find us disparaging his band. I felt bad about that except that I still thought (think) his group was crap.

Journey is a prime candidate. I always thought Neal Schon was a good guitarist, but the band? Other than maybe one song whose title I can't remember, a prototypical turkey. We referred to them as Gurney.

In a weird way, Spooky Tooth could influence the discussion. With Mike Patto stepping in as co-lead singer, the final lineup of the band ca. '74 did a good album, The Mirror, but while drummer Mike Kellie went on to join the Only Ones (brilliant band, especially live), keyboardist Gary Weaver went on to be a solo success doing dreck like "Dream Weaver" and Mick Jones (the non-Clash, "other" MJ) founded Foreigner, which to us, from note one, embodied the worst of corporate rock.

A major candidate would have to be Jefferson Starship. Back in the day, the Jefferson Airplane was a great band, but the Starship was as awful as they come. Mickey Thomas???? Yikes.

double-post



Post Edited (02-20-11 00:47)

Agreed re: Foreigner and Starship.
Another in that ilk: Loverboy.
Sting !

I somehow managed to see each one of those bands and aside from a few talented guitarists, complete dreck. Wish I had those nights back.

MTV played the shite out of the Starship, propelling millions of units. I looked back at it just last month and good gawd it was bad. They came to our campus right after Kantner walked off and as a council-member I had to deal with the stupidity. It just doesn't get much worse than those bands.*

I've spent way too much time thinking about what it must be like to be that talented and be stuck in a corporate rock bland. Even though very few end up with a back catalog like Page did, it would be hard to be, say, Brian May. Still, you get to pluck your strings and, unlike 99% of your peers, make an income doing it. One factor must be wife and kids. (i.e. bills).

I feel sorry for them but not compared to the guys hitting their 30s and still sleeping in a van with smelly, arguing, substance-addicted bandmates and fighting daily with promoters, hoping to have enough money to eat fast food, since that's all you have time for with the next gig 8 hours away. It's a freaky stressful lifestyle.

*Though I can't see what the attraction to Airplane was, either, except maybe the first 3 LPs, in their day. Sore-thumb Balin needed his own band and label from the start.

---

It's a good point: the anti-TP is adjacent corporate rock. But Bizarro World anti-TP would be something different...?

edit:sleeping in a van; not leaping one



Post Edited (02-28-11 23:39)

Loverboy didn't last long enough. But here's one I forgot:

Styx.

I think I liked a couple of songs, like the one about smoking dope (they actually released it as a single). But overall, atrocious and offensive to a ridiculous degree.

BTW, my second-ever live music concert was the Airplane at the Fillmore East in '68. Ass kicking. Loud. Rockin.' Psychedelic in the best way (although I was on nothing stronger than maybe some Tab). It was one of the shows documented by the live album released in 1998.

Styx were very inconsistent for an arena band. I still remember the young coverall-clad "heads" in my junior high school singing "Light Up Everybody!". It was old by then; they'd likely inherited their brothers collections.

Yes, I'm sure that the live Airplane with Kaukonen and Casady was something else at the time (be it Tab or splitting a tab), like many of those bands, best in person.

(I swear it's the server and not me that keeps double-posting)



Post Edited (02-20-11 06:34)

This thread is almost too easy. (I tried to post a Gino Vanelli LP cover earlier but it didn't work.)

This is reductive, I grant you, but stay with me:

I think a Bizarro TP world would be one that would re-imagine the US music scene from the early 60s onwards as if the British Invasion never happened. (Like one of those horrible Newt Gingritch novels about the Germans winning WWII). No Beatles, no Who, no Kinks, no Bonzo Dog Band, no nothing. Imagine England never exported anything of interest to the US that set off all kinds of unpredictable chain reactions and offshoots - some inspired, some horrible, many of them unusual. No British groups who absorbed R&B/blues music from the US and sent it back for us to rediscover and/or deconstruct. Under those circumstances, TP (if it were to exist at all) would feature the best exponents of strictly race-segregated "oldies rock n' roll," country, and folk (more New Christy Minstrels than Karen Dalton). In the spirit of believing creativity cannot be denied, anything "new" in the "rock" musical landscape under these circumstances might have come from jazz, bossa nova and Bacharach-style arrangements. Which of course, DID happen, only in my Gingritch TP World, it would have been to a greater degree.


This theory doesn't adequately account for LSD, Dylan or Elvis' late 60s comeback.

Your wrong Kay, memories of his Dancing in The Streets video with Jagger has Bowie waking up in the middle of the night. My comment was a joke.

Quote

Your wrong Kay, memories of his Dancing in The Streets video with Jagger has Bowie waking up in the middle of the night. My comment was a joke.

You'll notice that I didn't mention the Duran-ish half of the punchline.

...

But that "Dancin' In The Streets" thing really was rank, wasn't it? I guess we can thank our lucky stars that Jagger and Bowie didn't opt to record (read: rape) an entire LP's worth of Motown classics.

:::shudder:::

What was that again? Live Aid?

"I know how Judas felt, but he got paid. I'm doing this for free ... just like Live Aid."

Two comments:

It's a freaking great idea for a novel but would be hell to write vis-a-vis the descriptions of the music

How...the FUCK..did I not know Newt was a novelist?
Bizarro pulp world

Newt and Bill O'Reilly are both novelists.

On Earth II, in the early 70s, the two of them co-founded what we now refer to as TP in the early 70s. It would not have been called Trouser Press, of course, because neither of them listened to the Bonzo Dog Band (assuming that band even existed). They named it VOLKSPOP! (exclamation included).

Years ago VOLKSPOP! was the focus of a decency campaign loosely built around then-Speaker of the House Robbins' public opposition to the rag. Many felt that by featuring music made by only by white straight male caucasians (or by closeted Jews with anglicized names), VOLKSPOP! willfully ignored large, relevant US demographics and/or music that mattered. Notwithstanding President Nugent's lobbying against the congressional tide, VOLKSPOP! was the first to implement (by force) the now-standard ratings system for all Earth II music made in the US, which is (in ascending order) "BLAND," "BLANDER" and "BOONE."