Heterarmony

Rusted Wheel - The Belle Brigade (mp3)
At Least I Have You - Mates of State (mp3)
Chances Are - Bob Seger & Martina McBride (mp3)

My single most favorite trend of the past 20 years in music is the surge in male-female musical groups.

Boy-girl duets is nothing new, mind you. Helloooo, Sonny & Cher? Donny & Marie? The history of pop music is replete with duets, from Kiki joining Elton to Rihanna guesting with Eminem or Coldplay.

But the fact is this: You put a male and a female in a song, singing into one another, singing around one another, singing on top of one another, and I’ll give your song five times the chance of success.

The song doesn’t have to be overtly sexual, because the allure of male-female singing goes far deeper than mere genitalia. It follows a rule similar to Jules' explanation of foot massages in "Pulp Fiction." A male-female duet hits me in the same core as bagpipes or African drums; something primal in me is instantly drawn to it.

Trying to name all the current bands on my radar which exploit this weakness is virtually impossible. The Weepies, The Civil Wars, The Rescues, Mates of State, The Belle Brigade, The New Pornographers, Buddy & Julie Miller. Those are all bands who earn chronic rotation in my musical life.

Others include The Ting Tings, Lady Antebellum, Sugarland, Swell Season, Acid House Kings, Sleeper Agent, Black-Eyed Peas, COYOL. These are all without even looking at my iTunes collection. There’s no telling how many I’m missing.

Glee, the entire show, the cultural phenomenon, rocketed into instant success the minute they turned "Don't Stop Believin'" into a male-female duet.

As much as I adore ‘80s music and its place in my heart and history, its male-female combos kinda sucked unless they were one-shot deals. Roxette? Animotion? The Human League? Ace of Base? Just about the only one that comes to mind that earned much respect was Timbuk 3, and that’s a stretch.

The ‘70s and ‘80s seemed better about single-gender combinations, groups where multiple dudes shared singing duties or sang on top of one another. Hall & Oates, Tears for Fears, Wham, Alabama, The Eagles, Flock of Seagulls... the Beatles, even. Almost the only obvious exception that stands out is Fleetwood Mac.

But you sit me down and ask me to start rattling off all the songs from my life I’ve loved that harnessed the power of a male-female duet, and I might never find time to eat a meal again. Here’s what I came up with just on the way home from dinner tonight:

• “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart” - Elton John & Kiki Dee
• “After All” - Peter Cetera & Cher
• “The Next Time I Fall” - Peter Cetera & Amy Grant
• “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” - Tom Petty & Stevie Nicks
• “Endless Love” - Lionel Richie & Diana Ross
• “Islands in the Stream” - Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton
• “Kid Fears” - Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe
• “I Knew You Were Waiting” - Aretha Franklin & George Michael
• “It’s Only Love” - Bryan Adams & Tina Turner
• “Up Where We Belong” - Joe Cocker & Jennifer Warnes
• “Chances Are” - Bob Seger & Martina McBride
• “U Got the Look” - Prince & Sheena Easton
• “Summer Nights” (and most of GREASE) - Olivia Newton John & John Travolta
• “I’ve Had the Time of My Life” - Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes
• “Don’t Know Much” - Linda Ronstadt & Aaron Neville
• “Almost Paradise” - Mike Reno & Ann Wilson

These all popped up in 15 minutes or less of driving. I’ve thought of at least several dozen more since then, and I haven’t even Googled “greatest duets ever” or anything yet.

I only made this connection, about my deep instinctive love for male-female songs, because I wrote about both Tina Turner and Bryan Adams. The truth is that I love their duet, “It’s Only Love” as much as if not better than anything the two of them created individually. Which is absurd, by the way. It’s not that great. Which means this is more about my own Kryptonite, my own Achilles’ Heel. But I wouldn’t trade it.

Rap and Hip hop men have always sensed the value of a well-placed woman. We would never know Rob Base or DJ EZ Rock if they didn’t enlist the assistance of a woman to tell us exactly What Took Two. C&C Music Factory never sells 10,000 CDs without a woman belting out that chorus. This continues today with B.O.B.’s “Airplanes” and Eminem’s “Love the Way You Lie,” just as examples.

I love all these songs far more than they probably deserve.

I wonder how much longer this trend will last? Or if maybe it’s a longer-term shift in music? Would Oasis even form in 2011 if Noel & Liam didn’t have a cute siren of a sister? Could Hall & Oates have even been born in the 21st Century? Surely they would have had to at least give themselves a different name that dodged emphasizing them as a couple.

Is it coincidence that, as our country and culture gets increasingly comfortable with homosexuality, we increasingly insist that our music resemble Adam & Eve more than Adam & Steve?

What about you, dear readers? Do you have a favorite duet, or a favorite band where the singing duties are shared across gender lines? Give me some names to feed this hunger of mine.

The Cougar and the Horse

What's Love Got to Do With It - Tina Turner (mp3)
River Deep, Mountain High - Tina Turner (mp3)

Tina Turner used to scare the shit out of me.

Tina was my universe’s First Cougar*, the woman who stood there looking all older and shoving all that intense sexual experience in your face and daring you to not be impressed with her.

In 1984 I was 12. Ike started beating Tina before I was even an itch in my daddy’s pants, and she’d dumped him before I hit Kindergarten, so I knew nothing about her previous musical existence. When she released “What’s Love Got to Do With It” and walked down those city streets with enough teased hair to snare birds and small twin-engine airplanes, I knew nothing of her past. That video was my introduction to Tina. And she scared me.

Whereas older guys saw Tina struttin’ around The Big Apple as her way of reclaiming territory, of repossessing her rightful throne as the Queen of Rock, I just saw this scary big-haired black woman to whom I damn well better say “yes ma’am” when replying to her.

Most people focus on Tina’s legs -- because they are a damn fine pair of legs, especially at a time when most women were covering theirs up with leg warmers and spandex. But I never could see her legs for her hair, teased up and blonde and electrified.

To this day I can’t see what made “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” or its video popular. Nothing in the lyrics was terribly memorable. And the instrumentation, even by ‘80s standards, is hardly worth raising an eyebrow. It’s just this one long stretch of mellow rock that only once or twice gives you a chance to even appreciate her voice. And seriously, the video is pretty awful.

This won’t get me backstage passes with Tina, but I didn’t find her the least bit attractive. To be fair, the guys from The Fixx or Men At Work were nothing to look at either, but I don’t recall members of the opposite sex drooling all over them. Tina’s video did. Everywhere she walked, men worshipped her, and I simply didn’t get it.

This is the woman who sang “Proud Mary”? This is the woman who sang “River Deep, Mountain High”?? Hell, Tina and Bryan Adams covered the same general subject matter with their 1985 song “It’s Only Love,” a much more infectious song.

In hindsight, and with the benefit of a broader musical education, I get it. That song was her return, and it almost didn't matter what song she returned with, because everyone in music was cheering for her.

Fortunately, if I was initially turned off of Tina because of crap, she won me over with crap as well. Her role in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome as Aunty Entity was just perfectly awesome. That's the kind of character that fit my idea of her: vicious and nasty on the inside, but able to cover it with some smiles and sensuality, a kind of new age Cruella De Vil. The movie dragged on too long in parts, but her scenes, and the scenes in the Thunderdome, were awesome. And she almost looked good in that metallic dress with the low cleavage.

But nothing about Tina, and I mean nothing, could have rendered me as aghast as 1989 video for “Simply the Best.” The song, I like. But the video almost kills it. If Tina is indeed the Queen of Rock, then this video is her homage to Catherine the Great. It’s her visual love song to a horse.




I still can’t figure out exactly what the director is trying to do. Are the horse and Tina kindred spirits? Is he saying the horse’s legs are as sexy as hers? Is it an homage to Seabiscuit? Enquiring minds need to know!!

* -- With the possible exception of Rue McClanahan’s character Rose from “The Golden Girls.”

A Woman Named Pat

You Better Run - Pat Benatar (mp3)
Take It Any Way You Want It - Pat Benatar (mp3)

Pat Benatar might not have owned the ‘80s, but she had a very nice lease with an option to buy.

Were I God, I would have created a serendipitous series of events that allowed Pat Benatar to marry Rick Springfield. By now, their son, Patrick Springatar, would be in his late 20s and burning up the charts with the kind of power pop we’re sorely missing. But I digress.

Because I was just a kid, I was relatively tardy to the Pat Benatar party. I’d seen a few of her videos and heard her on the local radio station. Trivia moment: Benatar’s video for “You Better Run” was the second video ever played by MTV. Proof nobody remembers second place.

I was given the 45 for “Shadows of the Night” as a Christmas gift in 1982. I was 10. It grew on me very slowly.

For some reason, the song “Anxiety (Get Nervous)” got more of my attention. Maybe the Billy Joel song “Pressure,” released the previous spring and in a similar pop pseudo-psychology vein, laid the groundwork for me being intrigued. Somehow I tie these songs and that time in my life as the first signs I would eventually seek out a bachelor’s degree in psychology.

First I got her Get Nervous album. Then I expanded my obsession when two other albums, Crimes of Passion and Precious Time, were offered at the “Nice Price” of $3.99 each. For a couple of months, these three albums comprised most of what occupied my orbital lobes.

Ironically, in a time when videos were the vehicle and measuring stick of success, one could easily argue that Pat Benatar succeeded in spite of the general suckiness of her videos. Her most popular and ambitious video, “Love is a Battlefield,” was born cheesy and only gets worse over the years.

The video for “Shadows of the Night” arguably gave Quentin Tarantino inspiration for Inglorious Basterds. It was still a bad video though.

Her first five studio albums (and one concert album) all went platinum. She released these albums over six years. Think about that. One platinum-selling LP every year for six straight years. While not unprecedented, and while certainly not Beatles-esque, I dare you to find anyone in the last 20 years capable of competing with that kind of release pace and unbroken popularity.

Eminem had four platinum albums in six years. Mariah Carey had 10 platinum albums in 15 years and nine in 12, which is about as close as I suspect you’ll get (and, arguably, more impressive).

It’s also worth noting that, in an era where female stars rose the ranks on sex appeal, Benatar didn’t -- perhaps couldn’t or wouldn’t -- win at that particular game. Nothing about her looks or her behavior worked the Madonna or Lita Ford angle, and even Heart, a legitimately respectable musical force, kicked up another level of fame on the exposed cleavage and leg kicks of Nancy Wilson.

Pat, bless her heart, has a small chest, big teeth, and as a longtime friend says, “breeder hips.” I always found her appealing, but she wasn’t someone you’d consider universally attractive, nor did her videos work too hard to sell her as such.

In fact, many of her videos seemed almost dead set on not calling too much attention to her in such a way. Her song "Sex as a Weapon" was not posing. She'd earned some of the right to take that stand... (even if she didn't write that song or anything else she sang).

The nature of our relationship to popular musicians over the course of time is to remember the 24 different greatest hits albums released rather than for their original LPs. With the possible exception of Led Zeppelin or the Beatles (or, I guess, Radiohead), we measure people by their hits. While Pat comes away looking plenty fine when measured by her hits, it seems a shame that a lot of quality pop rock gets neglected.

You can go buy Crimes of Passion as an mp3 download for only $5. It’s probably her best overall album.

If Only She Knew... (no, that's the name of her song)

All You Wanted - Michelle Branch (mp3)
Tuesday Morning - Michelle Branch (mp3)
Deeper - Hanson (mp3)

I love Michelle Branch.

No, I don't love her love her, not like I love Sandra Bullock or Patty Griffin or... OK, or my wife. I'm not guilty of Love in the 3rd Degree, as those Alabama bastards might croon. It's more like a 2nd degree burn.

I've loved her quite a lot ever since BOTG buddy John burned me a copy of her first CD, The Spirit Room back in 2001. She was 18 when that bad boy was hitting the shelves.

My radio boycott began in full right at the turn of the 21st Century, so I hadn't heard anything of her when John gave me her CD. I had no idea that "Everywhere" had wowed the MTV crowd. I couldn't stop playing "All You Wanted," though. I played the album start to finish a ton, and for more than a year it hardly left my car's CD player.

Even now listening to that song reminds me of driving through the mountains of western North Carolina late at night, windows rolled down to stay awake, pounding my air drummer hands into the top of the steering wheel and doing my very best to stay with Michelle's voice. That album is so very full of intense sincerity, the kind that a mega-talented teen can work up so much better than most adult artists. (Of course I believe this. If I wasn't magnetically drawn to the intense sincerity of teenagers, why the hell would I work and live at a damn high school?)

As previous music confessionals would prove, I have a very soft place in my heart for young creatives who can grasp a strong pop hook and put a little rock in the mix, and that Michelle was wise enough to lend her talents to Hanson's first independent release, Underneath, in 2004, just pushed her right up into a higher stratosphere of my admiration. She'd already cut two platinum albums by that point, so she wasn't clinging to Hanson's coattails. In fact, it was almost like she was lending her cache to them, showing mutual respect for another group trying to prove they were bigger than their teeny-bop britches.

It's the kind of decision a young woman whose every move was controlled by her record company could never make. Work with Santana? No brainer. Work with Hanson? Hell no, not in 2004.

And lest you think that wasn't enough of a risk for her career, she one-upped herself on the next move. Three years after her second platinum album, Hotel Paper, Michelle decided it wasn't enough to just add her name to an album track for another young band. No, this time, she wrangled her no-name pal Jessica and formed a COUNTRY band and recorded an album! Totally took her name out of the mix and called the band The Wreckers. Not "Michelle Branch + The Wreckers," mind you. (OK, The Wreckers are country about like Skynyrd was country, but hey, it was still a slight change in direction for someone who could have easily gone platinum doing more of the same.)

All three of her albums are exquisite pop gems. We're talking about albums that, start to finish, have maybe two or three weak moments. Anyone who buys more than a couple of albums a year knows this is rare air we're talking. Most albums, even halfway decent ones, you're lucky to find more than half of it contagiously delicious.

Now that Jessica Harp has her own record deal -- yes, Michelle gave her that break... Jessica deserved it, but even deserving folks need someone to give them that magic break -- Michelle's ready to return to her solo roots. But she's staying country, surprisingly. Maybe she feels like she has more to prove since The Wreckers only went gold.

Doesn't matter. I'm practically biting a hole through my cheek waiting for this album, and it's not due out 'til November.

She's a magical lady. She's now even a magical musical mama. Who's married to some dude, like, 35 years older than her or something. I mean, I think her hubby is old enough to be my great-grandfather. (Don't worry, Michelle. I'm just jealous is all. Teddy's only, like, TWICE YOUR *#^@! AGE.)

(Meh. Like age matters. I've been in love with Cloris Leachman for years.)

Point is, I'd call Michelle one of my "Listen w/o Prejudice" performers, except I can hardly consider her a guilty pleasure. Maybe y'all can explain to me why I should feel guilty about lovin' this gal so much...

Can We Clone Dolly?

Cologne - Dolly Parton (mp3)
Knockers - The Darkness (mp3)

I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb... and I also know that I'm not blonde.

America should clone Dolly. Not the sheep, mind you. Dolly Parton.

I'm being totally serious. Dolly is, as best I can figure, the greatest Renaissance Man of the modern world. It just so happens that the greatest Renaissance Man of the modern world has a set of 40DD breasts attached to her front side.

Dolly Parton has managed to prove her prowess as a songwriter, a singer, an actress, a business manager, a philanthropist, and perhaps more than all of these, as a marketing genius. And in all of these various endeavors, she has not merely succeeded, but succeeded wildly:

• 37 awards from BMI for her songwriting;
• 26 #1 hits;
• 40 Top 10 Country albums;
• 42 Grammy nominations;
• (at least) 2 Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress.

And then there's Dollywood. Dollywood turned what was once Silver Dollar City (a.k.a. struggling) into one of the most successful theme parks in the country, and can be credited as the single most important factor in turning Pigeon Forge from a Gatlinburg afterthought into its own destination for millions of white people every year (and a few dozen minority families). I can mock Pigeon Forge and Dollywood, but I can't deny its success.

She's been in the public eye since 1967 when she jumped on The Porter Wagoner Show, and she's hardly left it a day since.

Some of my dreams are so big they would scare you.

If, as Keyser Sose once said, "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist," then Dolly's greatest trick has been to ride the train of fame and fortune and celebrity for four decades without ever getting irreversably slimed by her own publicity.

Perhaps she's done this the good ol' fashioned way, through squeaky-clean livin'. She's been married to the same dude since 1966, and they don't have children, and she constantly leads us to believe they're happy and content with her on the mountaintop and him hidden in a very private life. Hey, whatever. Whatever the woman has or hasn't done in or out of bedrooms with or without other people doesn't make a lick of difference to me (NOTE: My fellow blog partner might disagree with that... see link above). My point is, one way or the other, she's managed to avoid one of the deadliest career-killers in the business while simultaneously throwing her (always-covered) hooters out there for the world to gawk and oogle.

If I had career ambitions in politics, I would encourage Dolly to hold seminars on how to please all the people all the time.

She's one of the wealthiest women in this country, and the undisputed financial Queen of Nashville, but you wouldn't know it with all her stories of humble childhoods and tin cans and rundown cars. She's sung the theme song for a movie about a pre-op transsexual but has made most of her money off the very God-fearin' Bible-thumpin' folks who hear the word "transsexual" and run screaming the other direction. While Dolly has plenty of people who couldn't care less about her, she seems to have a paucity of enemies. And the enemies she does have seem wise enough to know not to make their spats public.

If I see something saggin`, baggin` or dragin`, I`m gonna have it nipped, tucked or sucked.

Seriously, do you realize how rare all of this is?

I grant you, singin' and actin' and Dollywoodin' isn't exactly going to cure cancer or AIDS. Dolly won't go down in history as a true changer of fates like Marie Curie or anything. But the woman has managed to remain on the radar of pop culture consiousness for FORTY YEARS, and she's hit it in almost every way imaginable save for a Pulitzer Prize.

She's got career legs like Elvis and Marilyn and didn't need to die young to do it.

The worst things I've ever heard about Dolly Parton come out of her own mouth. She lovingly romanticizes her extremely impoverished beginnings, but she doesn't lampoon them. She jokes that her entire body is fake at this point. And although no one has accused her of being a World-Class Diva, she's admitted to having her own bad moments. She said as much when making an appearance on Larry King to defend Jessica Simpson (who got all fat and whale-like, we're led to believe).

Let me go back and repeat that. Dolly was out there defending Jessica Simpson. That's pro-bono work if ever I've seen it.

I'm not like a real person. I love being artificial. I think there`s a little magic in the fact that I`m so totally real, but look so artificial at the same time.

One of our culture's stoopidest and most enduring myths is somehow believing we can know people better just because they show up on our TV and movie screens. I betcha fewer than 200 people in the world could describe Dolly Parton's actual hair color, and I suspect fewer than that have seen her without makeup.

But Dolly offers enough of herself, this sense of amazing openness, that we buy what she's selling, metaphorically. We want to believe she's genuine in spite of the costume. She emits this aura that she's beyond being ashamed or scared, that you're a dang fool if you judge that book by its cover (even while she herself seems to think having a very intricately-mined cover is important).

The woman has made a career, a long and amazing career, out of riding every fence in the book yet coming across like she's out there running wild and fancy free. In the end, perhaps Dolly Parton's greatest gift is as a magician.

Mock her. Dislike her. Care nothing for her. But please don't dismiss what she's accomplished as anything less than stupefying.

We should clone her before she's gone forever.

"Cologne" is from Dolly's most recent album, Backwoods Barbie, produced by her own record company. "Knockers" is  from One Way Ticket to Hell... And Back. Both are available on iTunes and Amazon.com. Dolly's album is also available on eMusic.

Girls Who Play Guitars

Maximo Park--"Girls Who Play Guitars" (mp3)

The Pretenders--"Message Of Love" (mp3)

So, somehow, a few night ago, I got sucked into watching Dancing With The Stars, a show I had managed to avoid altogether for the first seven seasons and that I didn't even understand, in terms of its logistics or its appeal. But when the first dance I saw finished with the male partner sliding his index finger in the sweat between the breasts of his female contestant, I don't know, I decided I'd watch for awhile.

Now that I have your attention, what I really want to talk is Belinda Carlisle. She is one of the contestants on the show this year, and when they showed her, my daughter said, "Who is that?" in a what's-she-doing-here kind of voice. My response, "That's Belinda Carlisle; she used to sing for the Go-Go's," was as illuminating to her as if I'd said nothing at all.

That's fair, I guess. The Go-Go's haven't held up very well either. But thinking about them raised for me once again the questions: Why don't women rock? Enough. Why don't women rock enough? Why aren't there more women rockers? What aren't more women into rock?

I do not intend to be stereotypical nor do I intend to invite a litany of responses from people reminding me of some random woman here or there who rocks. I know they are out there. They're just in such an impressive minority that I can't draw any conclusions except that there aren't nearly enough of them, a point that was really driven home to me when I tried to create my list of......


The baker's dozen greatest female rock songs of all time:
(in no particular order--I don't rank them; I'm just glad they exist)

1. Janice Joplin--"Piece of My Heart"

2. Heart--"Barracuda"

3. Liz Phair--"Fuck and Run"

4. Jefferson Airplane--"Somebody To Love"

5. B52's--"Roam"

6. The Pretenders--"Mystery Achievement"

7. Stevie Nicks--"Edge of Seventeen"

8. Linda Rondstadt--"How Do I Make You?"

9. Miranda Lambert--"Crazy Ex-Girlfriend"

10. The Bangles--"Hazy Shade of Winter"

11. Patti Smith--"Gloria"

12. Fetchin' Bones--"Flesh Blanket"

13. Lone Justice--"Ways To Be Wicked"

I can just imagine you poking holes in my sad little list. Believe me, I had to work to get it; it didn't just come off the top of my head. Among my many problems with the list are these: a) I don't even like Patti Smith's version of "Gloria;" I just acknowledge it for its influence, b) Miranda Lambert is a country singer (but that song does rock); the same could be said of Linda Rondstadt who made a career move toward the "New Wave" during the 80's, but isn't really a rocker, c) two of these songs are covers, not original material, d) only four of these songs come from the last 30 years of music, e) I don't know enough of X's songs to have added one of them to the list.

If you yourself decide to engage in a similar exercise, I think you will discover several things. First, that many of the songs that you really like by women don't really rock. That may even be why you like them. Second, that the 80's, which would appear to have a plethora of female rockers really only have flimsy imitations--Pat Benatar, the Go-Go's, Blondie, etc. Sure, they have hits, but they don't have the thump, the punch, the crunch of great rock songs. Only Chrissie Hynde delivers the goods, at least to these ears. Finally, and, here's where you can help me, you may have several contemporary offerings to add to such a list that I know nothing about. I would appreciate that.

Maximo Park and The Pretenders are both available at Itunes.