The Immortals #90 - Carlos Santana

Santana is lot like Jimi Hendrix, if Hendrix was as nonthreatening as a plate of refried beans.

Was that racist?

In 1999, Santana released the mega-selling collaborations album Supernatural, featuring such enduring creative powerhouses as Rob Thomas (he was in Matchbox 20!), Eagle-Eye Cherry (his name is all nouns!), and Everlast (he wrote "Jump Around!") This made him the most popular middle-aged Mexican in the world, a title he held until the rise of George Lopez. Maybe Supernatural was the record I should have studied for this series. It was probably the most representative document from his entire career of everything Santana's music really is: comfortably re-tread classic rock, uninspired-but-pleasant virtuoso leads, and tasteful cameo-whoring, all dressed up with a "muy caliente" Latin flair that'll have you running for the border.

I might have read that last from a packet of Taco Bell hot sauce.

Supernatural is exactly the kind of record you want to make when you're old and boring and waiting for some lifetime achievement recognition, and a fitting tribute to a man who personified the phrase "popular recording artist." But I didn't pick Supernatural for this entry, opting instead for Santana's sacred and time-tested "best" record, Abraxis. And you know what? It's lame.

It's telling that Santana's enduring classic only contains two original compositions. He doesn't really have much of an original voice or point of view beyond wanting to play electric guitar over traditional Latin inspired standards. I suppose it's nice that in his way, Santana's popularization of more diverse instrumentation in rock informed some of the better diversions into world music in later decades. And hey, a pre-Bonnaroo culture of blacklight poster enthusiasts needed something to listen to until Phish came around, right?

I can see why this sold a ton of records. Despite its illusion of exoticism, it's blandly palatable to seemingly any audience. And while it's non-challenging, it's also not an entirely unpleasant score for any number of background music needs. But I can't just sit down and actually listen to the whole record today without it really just making me want to listen Jimi, or Fleetwood Mac, or Tito Puente or Can instead. Or maybe eat some chips and salsa.

Mmmmm... chips and salsa.

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The Immortals #91 - Ricky Nelson

You might hear the name "Ricky Nelson" and think of the spoiled, talentless offspring whose terrible music was only popularized for his ability to be a televised proxy of famous parents. But you're actually thinking of his kids.

Ricky Nelson's career was notably discredited his lineage through much of his adult life, but the posthumous recognition he's seen for his place as not only the original teen idol but one of the first great rock stars is deserved. His wasn't a music career born of contrivance, like, say, David Cassidy's, but the result of an actual talent that just happened to grow up on TV.

That doesn't change the fact that in the beginning (for white people anyway) there was Elvis, and there was Ricky Nelson. Where Elvis' aping of rockabilly leaned more heavily on rhythm and blues of the delta, Nelson mixed similar influences with an overt and unabashed pop sensibility. And he wrote a couple of plain amazing songs for it.

Go listen to "Travelin' Man" right now. Go ahead.

But all the modern praise for Nelson is probably a bit overstated. In truth, he wouldn't have made my top 100, and his legacy benefited from an age-old biopic plot device: he died suddenly and tragically, and in a plane crash to boot. There aren't many better bonafides for to admittance to rock and roll Heaven than that.

And hey, he died. So let's just let him have it, yeah?

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The Immortals #92 - Guns N' Roses

Way back in January, the erstwhile co-authors of this site and myself made a road trip from southern California to Las Vegas, Nevada. Each of us being inveterate gamblers (untrue) and borderline problem drinkers (closer to true), the neon capital of the world called to us Hustlers for an off-season weekend of wandering the strip, seeing the sights, and intermittent gaming heightened by the thrill of undeserved "free" drinks carried by Eastern European-born waitresses.

A particularly memorable moment came on our second proper evening in town as we approached the gleaming casinos from our borrowed timeshared condo on the outskirts of tourist-land. Popping a disc into the car stereo, the intro started with an echoed, clanging guitar lick, followed by snaking high-hat... I made sure to carefully time the music with our left hand turn onto Las Vegas Blvd, cruising in time for the climactic "Cha!"

Welcome to the Jungle, baby.

It might have been the highlight of the whole weekend.

Except that it wasn't.

If memory serves, we turned the stereo back down before the first bridge. Why? Because it's 2009 and we're neither strippers nor professional wrestlers- who the fuck wants to listen to Guns N' Roses?

In 1987, it's not too hard to imagine why this was considered "revolutionary." Compared to all the other hair-obsessed pop metal bands popularized by Guns' own hometown Sunset scene, Axl, Slash, Duff, Izzy and Steven were about as badass as could be. Never mind that they were themselves just as hair-obsessed and poppy as any of their counterparts- Guns felt different, back then anyway.

To be fair, Slash plays electric guitar quite well, and Izzy/Duff both helped craft several tracks into catchy hits. Axl was surely compelling (if not particularly charismatic.) There's a reason that Appetite for Destruction has been so much longer-lived than albums by Guns' contemporaries. It is, on the whole, a solid 40% better than most of the excrement it can be compared to from its era. It was 1987 and mainstream music sucked. In fact, I could have been a whole lot more fair to Guns and picked the noble failure of Use Your Illusion, with its high points offering glimpses of actual nuance in Rose's persona and- dare I say it?- talent, even. But Appetite is the record they/he will forever be known and celebrated for, plus it sold a a million bajillion copies, so good on them.

And so it was that Guns N' Roses was perhaps the biggest band in the world for a glorious 4 years of excess and undeserved acclaim from people with shitty taste. And then along came Nevermind. Although technically true that Nirvana knocked Michael Jackson's last good record off the top of the charts (Dangerous- RESPECT), it wasn't the end of the King of Pop, who enjoyed another good 5 or so years of absolute peak popularity worldwide. Rather, it was Guns N' Roses who were relegated to a distant 2nd place in the world of rock music, soon to be outpaced by dozens of less-than-Nirvana grunge and grunge-imitators (and then eventually by Nirvana again with Kurt Cobain's 1994 suicide.)

During the long wait for (and following the inevitable failure of) Chinese Democracy GN'R became more sideshow than legend. The creatively valid members of the band left and/or got fired, Axl challenged Jacko to a race for who could descend into freaky cult-figure status and social irrelevance the fastest (sadly, Axl lost again- nobody beats the King), and their fanbase waited, dwindled, and eventually realized that Fred Durst was a reasonable enough facsimile for their lost messiah. By the time of Democracy's release late last year, it was little more than an afterthought on a career that all but the douchiest of males had forgotten. The transparency of Rose' cashgrab was almost insulting- you could only buy the record at Best Buy in the US, and there was even a Dr. Pepper tie-in!

Guns feel today like a band that were never more than the sum of their parts: Crazy redheaded controversy magnet, stoner icon with a cheap fashion gimmick, bass player from a "real" music city and not fake-old Los Angeles, a drummer who repped "punk" to people who don't know shit about T.S.O.L., and at least one guitarist with an awesome nickname (I refer, of course, to "Izzy." What kind of name is "Slash?" I mean REALLY...)

That sense of hollowness was only heightened by the decade-plus that Axl Spent bloating its lineup with as many potentially notable names as possible, including actual notables like guitar-noodling demigod Buckethead, session super-man Josh Freese, and Tommy "I Was in the Fucking Replacements!" Stinson. Now you can see Guns N' Roses on their periodic tours for a couple hundred bucks. The venues they play are surely better than whatever state fair Ratt is gigging next summer... but by how much?

Well, they're #92 on the "Immortals" list, so I guess the upside is that I get to take potshots at them for eternity. In fact, the picture for this entry was very nearly one of Kurt Cobain himself, from the famous "Where's Axl" scuffle backstage at the 1992 Video Music Awards (the same telecast that yielded a memorable Guns duet with Elton John on "November Rain.")

Why?

Because fuck you, Axl.

You lose again.

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The Immortals #93 - Booker T. And The MG's

Too much is made of their being an integrated band. Recognition for their monumental importance as the house band at Stax, a fine bit of historical revisionism. Their sound? Overestimated. And that's a shame, because they really should be loved for exactly what they were.

First, addressing the obvious- they had no vocalist. One of only 2 entrants in the Immortals list not to have featured a singer. But, at the risk of sounding an apologist, I'd posit that the organ and guitar on those records were a duo worthy of mention alongside any fronting duo in rock history. And I don't mean Booker T. Jones and Steve Cropper, not the men or how they played those instruments/parts- that's an important distinction. I mean that the organ and the guitar on those records were Mick and Keith, John and Paul... or maybe more appropriately Sam and Dave. Even backing Wilson Pickett or Eddie Floyd, the instrumental track itself always seemed to present another frontman and sidekick, commanding the listener up front in the mix.

It's good that they had their effect on other people's records, because they released precious few compositions of their own (the landmark Green Onions contains a mere 3 original tunes.) Most if Onions is composed of reproductions of songs they'd already fleshed-out on other people's records, and yeah, it's sort of impossible not to prefer the originals we know and love. That's not to say that it isn't a sheer pleasure to listen to Booker T. and the boys- that title track is utterly un-improvable. But it would frankly be a lot easier to overlook the fact of their own songs' scarcity if it didn't highlight a suspicion you get listening to the MG's: that in a few records-worth of material, they could have ended up so much more than extras for the Akroyd/Landis canon.

In another universe they might have been the Animals (if never the Stones): remembered for their lasting influence but also beneficiaries of an era of mania that let them cash in while they were young enough to enjoy it. Instead, they get the distinction of being imitated in modern music just as often as they're sampled outright, a more obscured legacy (though certainly one of honor itself.) Maybe that's all fitting, just as well for the world's best backing band.

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The Immortals #94 - Nine Inch Nails

Nine Inch Nails are the most popular "industrial rock" band of all time. So yeah, Trent Reznor got famous, but just technically.

No era of popular music was ever as accepting of naked emotional release as the 1990s, but as the grunge boom snowballed out of control, we lost our sense for deciding quality from insistence, meaning any two-bit lump could and would be signed to a multi-record deal worth many major label millions for our eagerness to confuse earnestness with talent. This would be taken to even further extremes (bordering on the grotesque and/or humorous) in the early 2000s with nu-metal and emo ascendant, but in 1994, that shit was juuust about to ripen. And so, after a modestly successful (but only cautiously embraced) also-ran debut called Pretty Hate Machine, Nine Inch Nails was ready set the new curve.

The resulting album, The Downward Spiral, feels pretty transparently like exactly the record Steve Albini and Brian Eno's hyperneurotic trust fund kid would make. And not really in a cool way, but I fully get how it would have been taken that way 15 years ago.

In hindsight, think the most compelling thing about the album today- like so much about the alternative/industrial genres- isn't the fact of it's peripheral associations. No matter how schlocky Mark Romanek's video for "Closer" seems in a post-Saw-franchise-society, the truth is it's actually every bit as vital as the song for most of us, and probably more. Johnny Cash had a knack for stealing the songs he covered by virtue of the indelible, unmistakable mark he left on the source material, but I think we can all tell that he had an easier time of it elevating album-closer "Hurt" by virtue of the patina of superficiality it carries when eventually filed away in the Reznor oeuvre. I mean, Bowie himself wrote the damned piece in the original "Immortals" issue of RS, and for a while there in my thought proccess that alone seemed as interesting thing to write about as anything else related to The Downward Spiral.

And it was. And that's why I just said that. Yet Michael Trent Reznor remains a semi-famous, sort-of rock star... and a damned millionaire to boot! Does that dredge up any of the anger we were supposedly feeling and embracing in the 90s? Not really.

What were we talking about again?

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The Immortals #95 - Lynyrd Skynyrd

Today I talk about my personal feelings regarding Lynyrd Skynyrd.

*Ahem*

Fuck classic rock
Fuck 3 guitars
Fuck solos
Fuck that hat
Fuck saying fuck Neil Young
Fuck multiple bridges
Fuck back-up singing wives
Fuck pride
Fuck confederate flags
Fuck stupid spellings for stupid band names
Fuck reunion tours
Fuck plane crashes

I'll try to get it some day, I really will. In another life, I'll say that my 3 years in Arkansas were an elaborate field study of southern culture. I'll actually chart the estimated thousand times a month that Clearchannel stations play "Sweet Home Alabama" in a given month and publish colorful spreadsheets. I'll listen to more than the first 3 minutes of "Freebird" before getting sick of it and turning it off. I promise I'll try. But now, at the age of 26, I know that I've spent enough of my life peripherally engaged by Lynyrd Skynyrd to know that I've never been ready to give them a fair shake. And I'm still not now.

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Neon Hustle's Totally Subjective and Woefully Incomplete Guide to the Best Music of 2008, Part 1

This is part 1 of an ongoing, year-end series from your buddies at NH.

Entries are presented in no particular order. Each author's parts were crafted independently of one another, and should pretty much never be taken as representative of an opinion/endorsement by the collective. Except when they are. But that'll probably be for totally different reasons anyway.

Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight

Let's call a spade a spade here, shall we? Emo generally sucks. Beyond the monotonic soundscape and whiny upper-middle class perspective lies a wasteland of lyrics so vastly insipid that Lou Pearlman has to be ROFLing in his prison cell.

With the bar set so low, then, it shouldn't be hard to make a "good" emo record, and The Midnight Organ Fight is certainly that. It's also one of the best albums of the year. It's caustic and funny and genuine -- you have to be legitimately scarred to write lines like "You won't find love in a hole / It takes more than fucking someone / You don't know to keep warm". And the music itself is strikingly affecting alt-folk, not the same upbeat pop-punk tune we've heard scores of times from the likes of Panic! At the Disco or their unfortunate clone, My Chemical Romance.

-Steven

Ezra Furman and the Harpoons - Inside the Human Body

There's something of a rarity that exists today, in a world about to see the release of the first 10 disc CD/Blu-Ray volley of the "Neil Young Archives" box sets and which welcomed the 8th (eighth!) installment of Dylan's long-running Bootleg series in 2008. That rare thing to which I refer is the opposite of those retrospective-obsessed dinosaurs: the young, unestablished artist whose output isn't yet outpaced by their creative productivity. That might sound like a backhanded compliment, but sometimes it can mean you've just been lucky enough to stumble in on a musician documenting the process of writing good songs and throwing them together to make an honest to goodness long-player. And if you're lucky and it turns out that his records don't suck, that's pretty sepcial, right?

Ezra Furman is still basically a kid, his Harpoons having been formed in 2006 after playing parties at Tufts, this year saw their 3rd album, Inside the Human Body released on Minty Fresh. Furman spends 45 minutes careening between imitations of influences and contemporaries alike, and at times you'll swear Furman's vocals are channeling Alec Ounsworth, Gordon Gano, Spencer Krug, and/or Robert Smith, even as his band plays indie rock, folk-punk, or Modern Lovers-styled decosntructo-pop. You can call it amatuerish and derrivitive, or you can step back and wonder at how anybody writes a track as monolithic as "Take Off Your Sunglasses."

-Brendan

Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago

Bon Iver's debut dropped in February, which means it's been talked about as a potential record of the year for so long that the "it's overrated" backlash has begun.

It's all flimshaw.

There's something timeless about a lot of the songs on For Emma, or maybe anachronistic. It's easy enough to imagine "Skinny Love" being sung around a campfire on the American frontier, or "The Wolves" being the keystone to a movie soundtrack 100 years from now. And in the here and now, there's an austere intimacy to each track that provides a nice antidote to the in-your-face spectacles that defined 2008.

-Steven

David Byne and Brian Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

Old people would have you believe that Everything that Happens could never be as good as the first Byrne/Eno record, 1981's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. I know they are old people, because they probably care about the influence of samples and world music on types of borderline popular music that nobody actually listens to today.

Despite the reported influences of gospel and soul having been filtered through Byrne's hermit-like prickishness or Brian Eno's eventual and complete tanshumanist merge of consciousness into a downloadable iPhone application, Everything that Happens is good because it's made up of songs. Real, catchy, pretty songs, songs better than anything either has released in quite a while. And if it sometimes sounds like a lost hit from 1988, well, that's probably all for the better then, isn't it?

-Brendan

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The Immortals #96 - Martha and the Vandellas

Everything I wrote about Berry Gordy applies to Martha and the Vandellas too. Plus a few controversial claims which I will make after the jump.

They're ranked ahead of the Supremes on this list because, on average, any three members of the Vandellas were better singers than any three members in the Supremes' history.

The Vandellas had nearly half as many "hits", but they were all roughly 2.6 times better than most of those Supremes songs.

Martha and the Vandellas were more popular with black people at the time. Back then (as with today, but especially back then) that was important because rock and roll had only been stolen a couple of decades earlier. White peoples' taste wasn't that good in the early going (that's why we'll probably never catch up.)

Martha didn't leave Detroit.

Unlike most "pop" girl groups, when you listen to Martha and the Vandellas, you can feel your organs start burning inside your chest a little. Which is rad.

20th Century Masters: The Millenium Collection by Martha and the Vandellas

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The Immortals #97 - Diana Ross and the Supremes

The significance of Diana Ross and the Supremes is not about Diana Ross. Everybody, from Rolling Stone to the Kennedy Center would have you believe that she is a special talent, and honestly, yeah, she could sing a little. But that's not why she matters (if she matters.) Neither is her relevance to anybody about Florence Ballard, or Cindy Birdsong, or Mary Wilson, or Holland, Dozier and Holland or the Funk Brothers or fucking anybody else save for one man. The significance of Diana Ross and the Supremes is that they were the crowing achievement of one man: Berry Gordy Jr.

Pop music in the 1960s wasn't really driven by The Beatles and Dylan and Brian Wilson all pushing one another, though that's a nice way to romanticize everything. In fact, those artists influenced one another and many more artists to make music that was on the fringe of the furthest acceptable boundaries at the time for rock music. Smile is nice and all, but even had it been released when originally planned, it wasn't going to rival the sales of "She Loves You" 45s, nor would it be accepted as idealized gospel of the psychedelic brilliance of what is, in hindsight, a great and important time in our cultural history. Fuck that shit. The popular consciousness is represented first and foremost by what sold enough to qualify as truly "pop" music, and the man who made the most profitable, popular music on the planet for the better part of a decade was Berry Gordy with his Motown sound. Keep your pitiful sales of Revolver, to this day more people know twice as many Gordy Motown hits by heart as can even name a track other than "Yellow Submarine." Truth. Hendrix is the soundtrack to our revisionism. Gordy, Motown, and Diana Ross and the Supremes were the soundtrack to the entire country's trip to the grocery store.

Included in Gordy's genius was his coordination of talented people with interesting people. That's what differentiated him from the other most important producer of that era, Phil Spector. Spector made hits without personalities- name me the drummer who pounded the first kick, kick-kick, snare on "Be My Baby." Nobody can. Practically everybody who wrote/co-produced/played/sang on a Spector hit in that era was sublimated to one man's singular vision... and that vision was more or less of himself.

Gordy, on the other hand, made personalities into hits, taking a just-alright singer who was kind of an insufferable bitch and made her the name in front for an already successful group. He recognized what sold their records and gave her top-billing, growing both the person and the brand in the process. Maybe the greatest music marketer of all time, and he had an ear too. He made more hits than he could count. Any of them could represent the man. But on this list, he's represented by Diana Ross and the Supremes.

The Best of Diana Ross and the Supremes by Diana Ross and the Supremes

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Invisible Men

To anybody who's reading this, yes, we still exist.

But Just Barely.

See, we have jobs. We have other projects. We have stressful and time-consuming pursuits of postgraduate degrees. And at the end of the day, Top Chef ain't gonna watch itself, you dig?

An idea for a new beginning for Neon Hustle has been floated around. Perhaps it will take, perhaps it won't. Either way, we're just as pop/culture-obsessive as ever. I'd recommend against removing NH from your feeds, as I have a feeling we'll come up with something eventually to intrude upon your minds once more.

Thanks for reading.

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