La Fin de La Semaine Essay Question: Special "Your Post-Christmas Lump of Coal" Edition

Okay, while we're all recovering from yesterday's over-eating and drinking, let's get right to business. To wit:

...and the one, single, stand-alone post-Elvis pop/rock/folk/country/r&b/jazz album you dislike (okay, hate) most intensely compared to all others and have since its original release and it's your story and you're sticking with it is...???

Discuss.

Wow -- peace on earth, good will to men, and all that stuff, right? 😎

Long time readers (by which I mean folks who've been around here since 2009, when I originally published the screed excerpted and slightly rewritten in the following paragraphs) will doubtless be able to guess my candidate.

But don't mince words, Steve -- tell us what you really think (thought).

It's official -- I consider David Bowie's Pin Ups to be not only one of the Three All-Time Worst Albums of Rock Cover Versions Ever Made, but also to be among the worst sets of interpretations of any kind of music -- including classical -- in the history of recorded sound.

Okay, that last may be an overstatement, but I stand by the Three Worst Covers Album thing.

(In case you're wondering, the other two are Bryan Ferry's 1973 These Foolish Things and Duran Duran's 1995 Thank You. The former, I think, is an utterly appalling concept record in which Ferry, nitwit that he was, advances the idea that Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" has something in common artistically with Lesley Gore's "It's My Party" other than the fact that both were originally recorded by sentient mammals. The latter, on the other hand, is merely a sloppy mess in which one of the world's most useless bands pays tribute to its non-roots and tries, unsuccessfully, to convince the world that Simon Le Bon has any business performing a Public Enemy song.)

Anyway, the main reason I so utterly loathe the Bowie album is that the entire attitude it exudes (reeks of, might be a more accurate phrase) is a "Look at Me I'm Wonderful!!!" contempt for the source material. The album, IMHO, is the work of a guy who's convinced that these silly little songs, AND the people who recorded them, are ever so trivial and ridiculous, so thank god that he -- The Greatest Star -- is deigning to give them a little undeserved, reflected, acclaim in his trademark bullshit campy ironic way. Not to mention that the singing is flatout awful; the affectless, emotionless, pretentious pseudo-operatic croon Bowie subjects the songs to is light years removed from the punkish snarl and passion that most of them (with the possible exception of The Mersey's "Sorrow") require.

And just to spread the blame around, let us not forget (actually PLEASE let us forget) Aynsley Dunbar's drumming. Everything he does on the record is overplayed, underlined, and generally reduces the songs to sludge.

Have I mentioned that I hate the goddamn album?

I should add that, believe it or not, I've actually kinda mellowed on Bowie, generally, in my old age. I still can't think of another single album I dislike as much, however. 😎😎

But okay then -- what would YOUR choice be?

And have a great weekend, everybody!!!

Hey -- It's Christmas Day!!!

[I've posted a slightly different version of this on several previous Christmases; consider it one of those internet traditions you've heard so much about. -- S.S.]

Ahem. So. Way back in December of 2007 -- when the world, myself and this here blog were young -- I found myself, quite improbably, falling in love.

And the Christmas song I kept hearing in at least two TV commercials at the time was the ineffably touching "All That I Want" by The Weepies.

Which, as it turned out, was, improbably, about the improbability of somehow finding the right person to fall in love with.

Above the rooftops
The full moon dips its golden spoon
I wait on clip clops
Deer might fly
Why not? I met you

All these years later, I still can't hear the thing without getting a little misty, sentimental old fluff that I am. So I thought I'd share it once again...as sort of a Christmas card to you all.

And to a certain Shady Dame,let me just say, and for the record -- I love you, babe. You're the best thing that ever happened to me. 😎

It's Xmas Eve: How Do You Say "An Oldie But a Goodie" in Yiddish?

This is, of course, the traditional holiday music here at Casa Simels.

But please -- don't even ask about the mistletoe. 😎

[h/t George Cullinan]

Tuesday's Cartoon and Photo Chuckles

The Willie and Keith one is sheer genius. 😎

Well, Apparently It's True, God DIDN'T Make The Little Green Apples. Actually, It Was This Guy!

From Australian power pop auteur Dom Mariani, please enjoy the title song of his just released new album -- the wildly infectious ear candy that is "Apple of Life."

Mariani's apparently been doing stuff like the above since the '80s, but I must confess to having been unaware of him until this past weekend, when friend of PowerPop Mark Rosenblatt played the song (after two by the Floor Models -- thanks Mark!) on his radio program, which airs (and streams) every Saturday morning (betwee 10am and Noon) on WPKN-FM 89.5, from Bridgeport Connecticut. You can find out more over at the station's website HERE, and come to think of it they have a very good archive, so you can listen to the most recent show in its entirety.

In any case, that song just slays me, so I'm going to be doing the research on this Mariani guy. I'll keep you posted on what I unearth.

La Fin de La Semaine Essay Question: Special "Double Entendre Help Me Rhonda!” Edition

From somewhere live in 2016, please enjoy the paralytically sexy Pink covering Jefferson Airplane's classic "White Rabbit."

Seriously -- how come none of you bastid kids ever hipped me to that clip before I accidentally discovered it last week?

I should add, and I've said it before and it still behooves repeating, that yes, I have the raving hots for that woman -- who I've never witnessed in concert, alas. Also alas, I know that if we ever, er, actually got together in a carnal sense I wouldn't be able to survive the foreplay, and that's not just because of my current advanced age; if we'd hooked up when I was as young as she is now, she still would have killed me. 😎

But that being said, and with no further ado, it's onward to the weekend's thematically related business. To wit:

...and the contemporary/post-90s/21st century pop/rock/r&b/folk/country solo artist or group you regret not having seen live, and would in fact sell someone near and dear to you to obtain tickets to a forthcoming show if they're still active (the artist, not the person dear to you😎) is...???

Discuss.

No arbitrary rules you're welcome very much, except I'm gonna be strict about the "nothing before the Aughts" thing; this is strictly post-classic-whatever. And if you've read the above you already know who I regret not encountering in person (yet).

Of course, my second pick would be THIS woman, who I also had the hots for. And alas, of course, it was not to be. 😎😎

But in any case -- who is/are YOUR choice(s)?

And have a great weekend, everybody!!!

Thursday's Cartoon Chuckles

I must admit, the classical one is my favorite. 😎

Well, This is Interesting! Even Without the Vegetables!

The irrepressible (wacky?) Tori Amos dropped this track -- which had apparently been languishing in the vaults since 2001 -- on Youtube this week.

That's the Springsteen song (from his first album) obviously, and originally recorded by Amos for her Strange Little Girls project, which is being reissued on vinyl with four bonus tracks end of next February.

Long time readers are aware that I have a kind of sneaking affection for this woman and her work, largely deriving from the EP she did in 1992 featuring an ace piano/vocal rendition of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and an album cover where she posed wearing a necklace made out of what most people would consider, er, side dishes.

In any event, Strange Little Girls -- which I was previously unfamiliar with -- is a concept album of sorts, in that all the songs were originally written by men, but then recast by Amos from the perspective of a female character she created for each of them. I apparently missed it by design when it was first released, but having now heard the above -- which, admittedly, does get a couple of the chord changes wrong, which irks me -- I think I'm gonna give the album a chance when the vinyl comes out.

Honk Honk!!! Who's There?

A crappy rock band called Geese. That's who.

I bring them up because a) the other day we were having a discussion of the rampant mediocrity of too much contemporary pop music and a little earlier b) we were having some fun at the expense of World's Most Irksome Rock Critic Amanda Petrusich of the New Yorker.

And then I discovered a new Petrusich essay on Geese that a) effortlessly demonstrated the inter-relation between the two themes and b) justified my 2021 characterization of Petrusich as the kind of deeply sensitive soul who underlines passages in slim volumes of poetry and then writes "How true!" in the margins.

To wit: From the December 15, 2025 issue. [All emphases mine -- S.S.]

Even “Taxes,” possibly the most euphoric song on [Geese's new album] "Getting Killed", is both darkly funny (“If you want me to pay my taxes / You better come over with a crucifix / You’re gonna have to nail me down”) and just dark (“Doctor, doctor, heal yourself / And I will break my own heart / I will break my own heart from now on”). These songs lean heavily on the marvel of [lead singer Cameron] Winter’s voice...

Ah yes, as you can hear in the clip above, it's the marvel of Winter's voice fer sure. Wow -- I can't think of a singer in the entire history of pop recordings who has such a uniquely expressive vocal quality.

...and on the drummer, Max Bassin, who plays with enormous restraint but a great deal of emotion. (The percussion on “Husbands,” one of my favorite tracks of the year, is slinky, nervous, weird, perfect.)

Oh yeah -- that drummer's playing is SOOOO emotional and perfect. Keith Moon? Never heard of him. 😎

Let's reiterate -- the marvel of the singer's voice, and the slinky, perfect percussion of the drummer. Right.

Oh, okay, but forgetting those, why is this obviously lousy band so great?

Petrusich again:

There’s a base level of melancholy and loneliness to everything Winter writes, which might have to do with the state of the modern world, or perhaps with the time during which he came of age. Winter, who is twenty-three, had recently turned eighteen when the COVID pandemic hit New York. In an appearance on the video series “A View from a Bridge,” in which guests stand outside and tell a story into a red telephone, Winter spoke about buying a virtual-reality headset during that tenuous, gruesome spring. He started messing around on a V.R. chat, and one day found himself on a Russian server set at a gas station in Siberia. He came upon two lovers in the snow. “Something about that was very tragic,” he said. “It was a very human moment and I think about it all the time.” It is possible that “Getting Killed” and its predecessor, “3D Country,” from 2023, are the first two great works of COVID-era music—not so much in their evocation of the events themselves but in the way the pandemic’s contours of isolation and fear seem to have shaped Winter’s consciousness at such a crucial moment in his life.

Wow. The COVID generation. Let's really hear it for them, ladies and germs.

I mean, the Boomers had the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation, the fight against Jim Crow, the murders of two Kennedys and Martin Luther King, the Vietnam War, the killings at Kent State, the struggle for Gay Liberation and the nightmare of the AIDS epidemic to deal with. And yet somehow they managed to muddle through and become Yuppie assholes. 😎😎

But COVID -- wow again. Those kids just can't seem to recover from the soul-killing anguish of having to wear masks on the subway for a year.

Seriously, how do you say "what a load of bullshit" in Yiddish?

Brent McLachlan 1961-2025

I lost a very good friend this past Thursday.

Brent was a lovely, sweet, funny guy and a brilliant engineer who ran a NYC recording studio that was probably the best I was ever fortunate enough to work at. He more or less co-produced every one of the musical projects I've been involved with since 2012 (that's like six or seven albums and two solo singles, if you're keeping score).

He was also a terrific drummer and something of an indie rock star in his native New Zealand, first with the Sonic Youth-ish The Gordons and -- as recently as some gigs down under in 2024 -- with the more shoe-gazey Bailter Space.

I'll say it again -- this death shit is really starting to piss me off. And this time it's personal.