Hello. I’m Gavin Edwards, the public speaker and the New York Times-bestselling author of The Tao of Bill Murray, the ’Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy series, and Kindness and Wonder: Why Mister Rogers Matters Now More Than Ever. If you’re interested in hiring me, click here for more information.
Chris’s comments about Madonna’s chart history, and how her incredible run of top-five singles was interrupted by “Oh Father,” got me thinking about how she never actually released “Into the Groove” as an American single, even though it was everybody’s favorite Madonna song circa 1985 and (I feel confident) would have hit #1. Which then got me wondering: what’s the biggest potential hit other acts never released as a single? With Nirvana, I would nominate “On a Plain,” which always sounded like the third-catchiest song on Nevermind to me (after “Teen Spirit” and “Lithium”). Who else left a smash hit on the table?
The commercial break kicks off with a time-lapse video. A shadow of the MTV logo glides across a wall. As it moves, black-clad graffiti artists paint the shadow on the wall, resulting in a mural of overlapping MTV logos. It’s a well-conceived, attention-grabbing ten-second spot.
Next up: another Gillette ad repurposed from the European market. I think it’s this one, but I can’t be sure, because back in 1988, just as we got to the stirring “Gillette, the best a man can get” chorus, I swapped videotapes. (That’s right–everything I’ve been blogging about so far in this countdown was on one jam-packed VHS tape.)
So we skip over a bunch of commercials (maybe even a January Man spot!), and start our next tape with Adam Curry talking about the MTV New Year’s Eve festivities, touting Sandra Bernhard, Kevin Seal (“he’s already on his way over to Times Square”), Sam Kinison, Julie Brown, Hall and Oates, Cameo, Vixen, Winger, Bobby Brown, Escape Club, and Poison. “That, of course, is our Big Bang ’89 New Year’s Eve party. Make sure you join us–just by watching MTV.”
A Monday-morning five-star review from the Rolling Stone “Hall of Fame.”
Madonna, Like a Prayer (1989)
When people talk about Madonna exposing herself, they normally mean her tendency to drop her knickers. But her fourth proper album, 1989’s Like a Prayer, is filled with nakedly emotional songs such as “Promise to Try,” (about her mother, who died when Madonna was just six) and the mournful “Oh Father” (just guess). “The album is drawn from what I was going through when I was growing up,” Madonna told Rolling Stone. As always, she had a kicker: “I’m still growing up.”
So Like a Prayer was the sound of Madonna figuring out her life, most explicitly on “Till Death Do Us Part,” a thinly fictionalized portrait of her volatile marriage with Sean Penn. But it was also the sound of a pop diva who had been taking vocal lessons and wanted to show off. Later, this would lead to an unfortunate tendency to tackle show tunes by Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber. But here it meant that she not only belted blockbuster singles such as “Express Yourself,” she indulged in gentle psychedelia (“Dear Jessie”) and a slow, grinding collaboration with Prince, “Love Song.” Who would have guessed then that pop music’s two leading imps of the perverse would end up as two of its most publicly devout figures (Prince with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Madonna with Kabbalah)?
That Sacred vs. Profane tag-team wrestling match was showcased in the glorious title track, where Madonna declared “Everyone must stand alone,” and then “I’m down on my knees / I wanna take you there,” seeking succor in both God and fellatio, or maybe fellatio with God. In a career full of transgressive moments, “Like a Prayer” is the trangressiviest. The music that comes with it is irresistible: dramatic guitar skronk, a gospel choir, an amazing bassline. That’s not coincidence–it’s Madonna showing you what divine inspiration means for her.
(By Gavin Edwards. Originally published (in a marginally shorter version) in Rolling Stone 955 (August 19, 2004).)
(It will perhaps not surprise you to learn that an editor changed “transgressiviest” to “most transgressive” for the print edition.)
A burbling drum-machine rhythm accompanies quick cuts of four young white synth-poppers, including a boy with Chris Lowe glasses covering his mouth, a girl with black lace gloves covering her ears, and a lead singer covering one ear and one eye.
Then a gravelly voice solemnly intones, “Pure energy,” and the set is revealed in its full glory. There’s a white background, with brightly colored scrawls behind the band: an orange airplane, a yellow fish, a green alarm clock. The bassist has an oversized cardboard bass in pastel blue, and is valiantly pretending to play it. It looks sloppy and amateurish, like a high-school drama club took an afternoon to bang out a set for a children’s theater production. It’s not really the image that a hipster synth band wants; this video has the aura of “our A&R rep at the record company told us this would be a good idea.” To add insult to injury, I suspect the band was charged an enormous sum to make this clip.
We see bright flashing colors, and the words “PURE ENERGY” scrawled across the screen, followed by some black skulls. Lead singer Kurt Harland stalks around the cartoonish set. He’s wearing a black suit and a mod shirt that gestures at the idea of a collar. His hair is a patchwork of black, red, and blonde dye and appears to have a small colony of Spanish moss growing out of one side. He’s trying to look menacing and mysterious, and completely failing.
Harland backs away from the camera, holding up fingers counting down–four, three, two, one–and then charges forward and sings “Here I am in silence,” which is an odd first line for a song. Shouldn’t it be “Now I break my silence”? In the background, the girl saws away on a bright blue cardboard violin. The whole band looks like they’re working the acne/concealer combo.
I suppose this is a good place to mention that I vaguely knew Kurt in the early ’90s–he and I were both on the Well, the pioneering online community that over the past two decades has evolved into the Colonial Williamsburg of the Internet. He wasn’t a pal, but we chatted sometimes, and he was a decent enough guy. At the time, he seemed like a rock star who had wandered into a crowd of computer nerds; watching this video now, he looks like a computer nerd who somehow ended up in the same countdown as actual rock stars.
Kurt keeps advancing and retreating, like he’s Grover explaining the difference between “near” and “far.” The other members of the band circle around him. Kurt waves his arms ever more energetically, trying to make up for the charisma deficit. An animated eye blinks. We switch to fast-cut stuttering editing of the band, doing the hands over eyes/ears/mouth bit again. The girl with the oversized cardboard violin is wearing something in her hair that appears to have given her Minnie Mouse ears.
The band members jump in the air, in brightly colored silhouettes. Beyond a certain altitude, jumping in videos usually looks dorky (e.g., R.E.M.’s “Stand”). Demonstrating this maxim, the drummer jumps up, splayed out like a starfish, with a bicycle cap, high-top sneakers, and a sleeveless t-shirt riding over his belly.
More silhouettes, this time of a hammer, to the clanking beat of the song. The drummer appears with a giant orange hammer and bops Harland on the head; Harland lurches backwards, miming a colossal blow. The footage speeds up, as if the editor got bored and fell asleep on the fast-forward button.
Once again, that gravelly voice says “pure energy.” To be more precise, it’s Leonard Nimoy, performing as Spock. Information Society’s schtick (other than being a white band on hip-hop label Tommy Boy) was that their songs included lots of Star Trek samples. These would have been pretty much impossible to clear, if not for the fact that Nimoy’s son was a fan of the band.
Double-time buzzing riff, as the band cavorts in forced gaiety. The bassist is wearing striped shorts and running around; the girl with the cardboard violin is skipping. Information Society managed another top-ten hit in 1989 (“Walking Away”) and a top-thirty hit in 1990 (“Think”) before disappearing. Apparently, they later tried to reinvent themselves in an industrial mode, which was the synth-pop equivalent of hair-metal bands going grunge. Video aside, this is a decent song. I mean, it’s no “Unbelievable” by EMF, but what is?
“What’s On Your Mind (Pure Energy)” hit number three on the singles chart. You can watch it here.
Byline alert: I wrote short portraits of a half-dozen players on the Chivas USA professional soccer team (possibly known to you as “the MLS team that plays in Los Angeles but is not the LA Galaxy”). My words accompany a fashion spread in the May issue of Men’s Journal–the article isn’t online, and the magazine has not yet arrived in my mailbox, but reliable sources inform me that it’s on newsstands now.
On the day of Prince’s second show at the L.A. Forum, some stray thoughts and observations from the amazing first show that I didn’t have room for in my review last week:
1. Los Angelenos show up late and leave early. Although the ticket said 7:30 and there was no opening act, at around 8:45, the arena was still half-full and people were milling around aimlessly. They started flashing the lights in an effort to get people in their seats: every five minutes or so, they’d bring down the house lights, the crowd would roar, and then there’d be some boos when they came back on. After 9 p.m., the place still wasn’t full, but the show started anyway. George Lopez did the introduction.
2. “Purple Rain” was performed in epic set-closer mode: fifteen minutes, extended guitar solo, confetti cannon, and all. Looking at some other recent set lists, it often does end the main set: Prince didn’t bother to scale it back, even though he popped it into the concert less than an hour into the show. Which was cool, but did leave the crowd with a “what next?” feeling.
3. Prince did six of the nine songs on Purple Rain: admittedly, two of them (“When Doves Cry” and “Darling Nikki”) were in truncated versions.
4. I have no problem with a singalong or two at a concert, but Prince did it often enough that it started to feel lazy. No, I want to hear you sing your most famous songs, not the crowd.
5. The performance was in the round, on top of a stage in the shape of the Prince symbol. Lots of teleprompters everywhere scrolling lyrics.
6. Many costume changes–that hydraulic lift in the middle of the stage got used every third song or so. There was one set of footwear that I originally thought were sparkling gold high-heel shoes, but turned out to be wedges with a clear Lucite heel. The weird thing: when he took a step, they also had a little red light flash in the heel, like with the sneakers that elementary-school kids wear sometimes. Maybe Prince does his shoe shopping in the kids’ section of the stripper-wear store?
7. It was hugely gratifying to hear some of my favorite non-hits played that I never expected: “The Beautiful Ones,” “Adore,” “She’s Always in My Hair.” Apparently, Prince indicated that last one to his drummer by pointing at his hair.
8. Sheila E. was onstage for most of the encores, singing backing vocals, jamming out on her stand-up drum kit, having a good time. She was the only other performer allowed to ride the hydraulic lift with Prince.
9. Prince spent a lot of time exhorting the audience to tell their friends about the show, even instructing them to pull out their cell phones and call somebody. It looked like he was working overtime to make sure that all 21 L.A. shows sell out–no better way to start buzz than play for an extra hour on opening night. “You going to get the Saturday night show now!” he announced.
10. He made minor tweaks to lyrics throughout, emphasizing godliness over sex. But it didn’t feel preachy, and he seemed to have a good sense of humor about it: e.g., playing the opening of “Darling Nikki” and then saying, “I’m in rehab.”
11. The “Single Ladies” on the set list was more of a Beyonce sample than an actual performance. Although a lot of the songs were truncated, some were played at glorious full length: “1999” made it all the way to “Mommy, why does everybody have a bomb?”
12. By the end, my notebook had notations like “ANOTHER ENCORE” and “STILL MORE.” I told my wife, “If I run out of pages, we’re going home.”
My apologies for the infrequent posting lately–I’ve had a full plate of magazine work, or really several full plates and a salad bowl. One of the recent results is my short profile of songwriter Bonnie McKee in the latest issue of Rolling Stone (where she’s slugged as “Best Secret Weapon”). It’s behind a paywall at the RS site, or on pages 64 to 66 of the paper edition.
A reminder: if you’re fond of Twitter, you can find me there with the @mrgavinedwards handle.
And he is funky. And I saw him last night at the fabulous Forum, on the opening night of his 21-show residency in Los Angeles, and I reviewed it for Rolling Stone‘s website.
Chris’s comments about Madonna’s chart history, and how her incredible run of top-five singles was interrupted by “Oh Father,” got me thinking about how she never actually released “Into the Groove” as an American single, even though it was everybody’s favorite Madonna song circa 1985 and (I feel confident) would have hit #1. Which then got me wondering: what’s the biggest potential hit other acts never released as a single? With Nirvana, I would nominate “On a Plain,” which always sounded like the third-catchiest song on Nevermind to me (after “Teen Spirit” and “Lithium”). Who else left a smash hit on the table?
