Brandon's Buzz

This very day — June 5, 2008 — A is out in Calla-forny celebrating his 29th birthday. He insisted he wasn’t planning on doing anything special, no matter how much I pleaded with him to at least go buy himself a birthday pretzel, or a birthday Jamba Juice, or a birthday slice of Stefano’s Pizza. So I’m asking you all to help me guilt him into treating himself indulgently today. (Oh, and to send along birthday wishes, too!)

Happy 29th, A! We love you in the heart!

While doing a bit of long overdue spring cleaning this evening, I popped into the player a Roxette DVD I stumbled upon at Half Price Books a few weeks back. Instantly, I was blown completely away by the utter magnificence unfurling before me. I didn’t even bother to read the back of the box when I first picked it up; this being from one of my five favorite-ever bands, I simply added it to the stack of items I had already earmarked for purchase and continued shopping, none the wiser to the breathtaking brilliance I was now holding.

These kinds of surprises are the most pleasant ones: The Ballad & The Pop Hits: A Complete Video Collection is a superlative visual accompaniment to the two hits collections (divided as indicated in this DVD’s title) Roxette released in 2004. (The Ballad Hits was the only one of the pair released in this country, and if that fact alone doesn’t make you want to instantly emigrate to Sweden, I s’pose nothing will.) The DVD contains thirty-seven of the band’s music videos, a few dating all the way back to their humble (and hilariously lo-tech) inception in 1986, and pretty much all of them — even 1993’s dopey “Almost Unreal” from the disastrous Super Mario Bros. film — supremely entertaining.

But the real hidden jewels here are a couple of hour-long documentaries which close out the disc. One of them is a riveting recollection of the making of Joyride, Roxette’s 1991 smash second record; the other chronicles the band’s brutal 1995 international tour in support of Crash! Boom! Bang!, a stunning album which the f–king idiots who run American radio refused to play because, somewhere between 1992’s “Spending My Time” (their final domestic top 40 hit) and 1994’s “Sleeping in My Car” (Crash‘s leadoff single), it was inexplicably decided that Roxette had gone hopelessly out of fashion.

You’ll understand how wholly ridiculous is that notion when you spend some time with this DVD, which contains no fewer than ten undeniable pop music masterpieces, each from the minds and mouths of a couple of luminous Swedes — Per and Marie, kind of a European remix of Conway and Loretta — who will forever got the look.

“The only talent I have is this: I’ll flap a piece of bologna in front of thousands of women and say, ‘This is a pig’s ass.'”

— Susan Powter, speaking to Elle magazine in 2006

He’s not a marquee idol, he’ll probably never play for hundreds of thousands at Central Park, and he doesn’t win (or, outrageously, even get nominated for) any of the music awards. All he does is write and perform straight-ahead common folk country jams which you cannot eject from your head once they’ve been granted entry.

One of the most criminally underrated artists of his generation (and a dude who could totally take that discreetly fey doofus Kenny Chesney in a bar fight), the terrific Phil Vassar kicked around Nashville as a journeyman songwriter for most of the ’90s. His big break came in 1998 when, with his twin smashes “Bye Bye” and “I’m Alright” (tunes that garnered him ASCAP’s Songwriter of the Year honors the following year), he wrote the blueprint for Jo Dee Messina’s bracing comeback.

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So, there’s this sketch.

I drew it a couple of weekends ago, using three half-sharp crayolas, on a paper tablecloth at a restaurant where such artistic expressions have long since passed into the lore between my lover and myself.

The sketch consists of a rectangular mass of cerulean brushstrokes — colored sideways to subconsciously limn a softer effect — strategically placed between a moonbound spacecraft clearly marked “U.S.A.” and two stick figures pointing skyward, projecting all the wondrous awe of which stick figures are capable, toward a crescent aglow from the inviolable glint of starlight.

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“There’s nothing wrong with being a soap. It’s a perfectly legitimate form. I acted in soap operas in the day, to make my living. I did a lot of those! I remember, I played a cad in one of them. I was trying to seduce a girl… it took us about thirteen weeks in one rumble seat to get anywhere. But it was the same plot as we see on TV now.”

— the estimable Orson Welles, discussing life and art with Merv Griffin mere hours before dying of a heart attack in 1985

Snugly tucked amongst a handful of Harry Gregson-Williams’ soaring instrumentals (which comprise the film’s masterfully executed score) and a new tune from that infinitely annoying Russian pop tart Regina Spektor (one heifer I cannot bear, despite repeated attempts), you’ll find “This is Home” — a slightly melancholy yet uncommonly gorgeous piano-based track from one of the great contemporary bands, Switchfoot (or, as they’re better known in my orbit, “Creed with legs”) — anchoring the original motion picture soundtrack for Disney’s new The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.

Despite the anomaly that was “Meant to Live,” their unavoidable, slow-burning 2004 crossover smash, these guys — led by the enigmatic Jon Foreman, whose world-weary voice conveys honey and vinegar in equal measure — have flown largely (and inexplicably) below the radar in the years following their major label debut, 2003’s The Beautiful Letdown, despite a pair of sturdy, worthy follow-ups.

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“Any song with the line ‘magic rainbow’ in it is disqualified from being a good anything.”

— my cranky British pal Mike Walker (whose genius is solely responsible for how GREAT this blog looks), in response to my assertion that the 2008 American Idol Coronation Song, David Cook’s “Time of My Life,” is, in actual fact, not that bad a tune.

Perhaps aiming once more to one-up her old rival Madonna, the spectacularly gifted Cyndi Lauper is back this week with Bring Ya to the Brink, her first album of original material (not counting 2001’s Shine, which was released only in Japan) since 1997’s stunning Sisters of Avalon. (Her last two records — 2003’s At Last and 2005’s The Body Acoustic were both covers projects.) Brink is heavily influenced by electronica, marking Lauper’s — ever the maverick, this girl — first full-length foray into the field after years of pressing her face to the glass (1997’s crazy-ass club smash “Ballad of Cleo and Joe” and 1998’s Grammy-nominated “Disco Inferno” cover spring immediately to mind) and flirting with it. Especially if you’re accustomed to (and love) Lauper’s ballads and more downtempo fare, Brink is a bracing change of pace that requires a touch of patience; nevertheless, exposure of any stripe to Lauper — one of a fortunate few artists whose work only got more interesting beyond the ’80s (who besides George Michael and, possibly, Prince can seriously stake that claim?) — is a good thing.

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The thread to here:

Prologue — As Gershwin once wrote, “And when he comes my way, I’ll do my best to make him stay”

Part the Second — In random, scattershot strokes… me

Interlude — Everything I’ve needed to know about life, I’ve learned from Sting

So, then came Cascada.

Yes, that nightmarish, migraine-inducing German dance trio — who have just morphed Rascal Flatts’ soaring, searing triumph “What Hurts the Most” into a ridiculous, ear-splitting slab of hopped-up Eurotrash that makes DHT’s intolerably wretched recent remake of Roxette’s pop classic “Listen to Your Heart” sound positively stately by comparison — incited the most vicious argument A and I have ever had.

But first things first.

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“So now I have a house and I’m married and you know what’s next… I don’t know if it’s gonna happen. I get such family pressure about children! Like, my grandmother keeps asking me, ‘When am I gonna be a great grandmother?’ I keep saying, ‘I don’t know, I guess as soon as you do something extraordinary.'”

— the hilarious Rita Rudner, from her appearance on HBO’s One Night Stand

“Mean ol’ bitch, ain’t I?”

— my crazy aunt Sheila, politely declining a pushy customer’s request for a larger turkey leg. (Editor’s note: she prefaced this statement with the following: “Nobody’s better than anybody else.”)

“I think she just had to put on this politician face, and not be this soft… hurt… woman. But she ended up stayin’ and that’s where she’s at, so she might as well sang the song leavin’ the White House.”

— the divine Lorrie Morgan, responding to Hillary Clinton’s 1992 assertion that she’s not “some little old woman standing by her man like Tammy Wynette.”