| �Til the Cows Come Home: More Music by: Lucas Heffer �What the?! Two articles by one person in my beloved Observer?� Indeed, I felt compelled to indulge you all with my articulate criticism of today�s musical offerings, or as up to date as I feel like getting. Twice. And this time it�s free without a hitch (some of you forgot to pay me for the last issue- I have names). This analysis of somewhat contemporary compositions by (mostly) contrived �artists� focuses on a trio of groups from three distinct areas of pop culture that don�t even attempt to make good music. First are the pop-crap offerings of LFO. WTF? POS! IDK! LOL! ABC, 123, and all that. OMG. And you thought DMB was bad! At least they have the (slight) ability to play (play horribly, but still play) bona fide instruments intended for the production of music. This LFO, which probably stands for some horrendous inside joke for the guys, and the story of which no one cares to hear, see, or acknowledge. If you do care, however, you really ought to expand your musical horizons. I vaguely remember their abomination of sound called �Summer Girls�. Wow. That must have taken all of five minutes to write, and I�m sure they must have had help, because I�d like to think that no one�s that much of a mental defective by himself. My dad always says: �Son, if there�s one thing to avoid, it�s stupid people in large groups, they might write music, or start calling themselves Congress. Where�s the paper?� I�ll tell you what folks; I don�t mind girls that wear Abercrombie and Fitch, but the ones that like these guys make me sick. And if I had one wish, well, LFO would be in Siberia right now. Alas, these boys have managed to stick around some since that summer, since that summer, and as I painfully recall, butchered another song called �The Girl On TV�. On the plus side, this one was written in semi-coherent English, and the video starred Jennifer Love-Hewitt. Why? I lost what little respect I had for her as an actress that day. If LFO stood for L (50-Roman numerals- forget those already?) Fans Only, I�d be much happier. From pop-crap we go to garbage-rock. No, I didn�t misspell �garage�, this next band is pure garbage, and not the good, Shirley Manson-style Garbage, we�re talking the why-did-you-buy-this, get-it-out-of-my-house, did-you-throw-it-away-yet garbage. It approaches infinity on the DMB scale (how many times I would allow my eardrum to be defiled by DMB in place of the given). I would break down and submit eventually, how much Dave can a guy take? This �Hangin� by a Moment� song, I want to throw the stereo out the car window every time I hear it. Luckily, GM has good factory installation that makes it hard without the right tools. That�s a tip kids, tell your parents the school newspaper�s music critic said buy GM. Chevy, Pontiac, Caddy, on and on. Anyway, if I was a certain Mr. William Gates, I would first make a sizeable donation to paying off the national debt, then I would use some of the other 99% of my money to purchase every album, single, video, mp3, anything containing Lifehouse material and burn it with $100 bills. Because I could. Then I�d take Canada out to lunch. The whole country. The final band in this piece is Weezer, the quintessential nerd-rock band (maybe that�s why Dana likes them so much). Like I said, these guys don�t even try to be decent. As with Gino Stolfa, greatness comes with laziness. My dad, ever the philosopher also says: �There�s a fine line between ignorance and laziness.� It�s not that Weezer is an atrocious band, it�s that they put no effort toward eminence, it just happens. Like with Hendrix, after he taught himself guitar, anything he did with it was amazing. Phil LaMartina, another example, why is he funny? By all logic, he should have been labeled an idiot and discarded by society years ago, but he lets his inner goof out regularly to entertain us all, with slight encouragement now and then. The moral of this article, in case you were searching for one, is this: in some cases, one must not work painstakingly to the bone to succeed, achievement comes natural to a few of us. |