message 22: burning up
Hey y’all:
Sometimes we can keep things a little short and sweet. I live in a city where people are confused about firecrackers going off between Christmas and New Year’s. These firecrackers last maybe a second, short and sweet. I’ve been compared to a force of nature, which is funny because I’m only five-ten, maybe 6 foot in good shoes. Sometimes I wish I could spend a full week making collages and poems with you. Five ten fifteen twenty. I’m revising this in briefs while eating New Year’s grapes—something short, something sweet.
Happy new year.
—Keegan
Burning Up
Albums that received a lower rating from Robert Christgau than Kid Rock’s Devil Without a Cause
“[N]ot since great Motörhead has there been a hard rock album with so many laugh lines [...] Belatedly fulfilling the rap-metal promise of Licensed To Ill, he makes the competition sound clownish, limp, and corny, respectively, and the Eminem cameo is a draw--his flow is surer even if his sound isn't. [...] A-”
Fleetwood Mac, Tusk
“[A] sound so spare and subtle it reveals the limits of Christine McVie's simplicity and shows Stevie Nicks up for the mooncalf she's always been. Also, it doesn't make for very good background noise. B+”
Van Halen, Van Halen
“This music belongs on an aircraft carrier. C”
Roxy Music, Roxy Music
“[S]ide two leans a little too heavily on the synthesizer (played by a balding, long-haired eunuch lookalike named Eno) without the saving grace of drums and bassline. B+”
Black Sabbath, Black Sabbath
“The worst of the counterculture on a plastic platter. [...] C-”
Queen, Queen II
“Wimpoid royaloid heavoid android void. C-”
Nico, Desertshore
“The Velvet Underground and Nico plus Chelsea Girl convinced me that Nico had charisma; The Marble Index plus Desertshore convince me that she's a fool. [...] C”
Lou Reed, Berlin
“The story is lousy [...] The music is only competent. [...] C”
Sinéad O'Connor, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got
“If there's anything that's older news than a 20-year-old who's angry at the world, it's a 23-year-old who's discovered life is worth living. B+”
Bat for Lashes, Two Suns
“Compared to Kate Bush, Björk, even Joanna Newsom, she's an etherhead. [...] That said, the beauteous Eurasian hippie does get a little grounded when she dons a blonde wig and assumes the persona of Pearl, who moans that she's "evil, evil," though to me she just seems confused. [...] C”
Joanna Newsom, Ys
“Original is one thing, worth doing another--and if only indie ideologues knew the difference. [...] C+”
Björk, Post
“This well-regarded little item rekindles my primeval suspicion of Europeans who presume to ‘improve’ on rock and roll [...] Which brings us to, right, her lyrics, which might hit home harder if she'd grown up speaking the English she'll die singing, but probably wouldn't. [...] C+”
Tori Amos, Little Earthquakes
“[S]he's not Kate Bush. And though I'm sure she's her own person and all, Kate Bush she'd settle for. C+”
Kate Bush, Hounds of Love
“Though it's tempting to slot her with Laura Nyro, you never get the sense she's a fool--she's more circa-Hejira Joni Mitchell. Her best songs can't match their best. [...] B”
Laura Nyro, Christmas and the Beads of Sweat
“Nyro is one of those hypersensitive types--they're usually women, which says more about women's oppression than their gifts, though it pertains to both--who can't see the condition for the nuance. [...] C+”
Joni Mitchell, Hejira
“Unfortunately, the chief satisfaction of Mitchell's words--the way they map a woman's reality--seems to diminish as her autonomy increases. B+”
Shonen Knife, Shonen Knife
“The problem with the Japanese is that they don't know the difference between a Ramones song and a Wrigley commercial. [...] C+”
Suicide, Suicide
“[L]yrics that reduce serious politics to rhetoric, singing that makes rhetoric sound lurid, and the way the manic eccentricity of this duo's live performance turns to silliness on record. C+”
Bruce Sprinsteen, Darkness on the Edge of Town
“An important minor artist or a rather flawed and inconsistent major one. B+”
David Bowie, Young Americans
“This is a failure. B-”
Motörhead, Ace of Spades
“[Lemmy Kilmister's] writing is more one-note than need be, wit and all. [...] B”
Well my name's Kid Rock I'm a Capricorn
Detroit's city where I was born
When I was young I knew I'd always be
A super live body rockin' MC–Kid Rock, “Welcome 2 the Party (Ode 2 the Old School),” Devil Without a Cause
Predictions
That’s all. Happy New Year. Happy Old Year. Happy Big Teeth. Happy Bed Sheets.
—KJ
