Baby, I'm a Star

If you have ever perused the sidebar over there to your right, you may or may not have noticed a blog of mine called Baby, I'm a Star. You may have visited once or twice. If you're especially astute, you probably noticed that I haven't posted anything there in 3 years.

The goal of Baby, I'm a Star is simple: I watch some of pop music's most famous and infamous films and then I write about them. Since there are literally hundreds of films to choose from, I initially picked 30 in 6 different categories (The Pop Music Movie, the Starring Vehicle, the Biopic, the Documentary, the Musical, and the Fake Band) to focus on. When I left off in 2006, I had written about 20 films.

In returning to the project, my ambition has expanded. So in addition to the 10 from my original list, I'll be watching and writing about 6 more films. My new mission is to post one per week, until the project is finally finished. I've also slightly redesingned the blog, and added an index for easy browsing through the archives.

The marriage of pop music and cinema is a volatile one. For every glimpse of true love, there's an awful spat brewing. I hope you'll join me in watching it all unfold. The first of the final 16 films is Spiceworld, a 1997 gem featuring everyone's favorite British singing group phenomenon. Enjoy!

227. Paul McCartney: Flowers in the Dirt (1989)

It was 20 years ago today. Seinfeld and The Simpsons debuted, and the Detroit Pistons, Calgary Flames, Oakland A's, and San Francisco 49ers were all champions.

This is the fifth in a series of 5 reviews of seminal (well, depending on your definition of the word seminal) albums from 1989. You can read the other four here, here, here, and here.

At one point, I was so consumed with Beatlemania that I made a goal to track down any Beatle-related album, including tributes, albums by offspring (which is how I came to own The Secret Value of Daydreaming by Julian Lennon), and especially the solo albums of the four lads.

What eventually led me to abandon this goal was Paul McCartney. Let's face it, the solo work of the Beatles is largely mediocre, with occasional flashes of brilliance. Paul has contributed his fair share of both the former and the latter, but what makes him more problematic than the others is the sheer volume of his work. While the other three have all released approximately 15 solo albums, Paul's number well over 20. Frankly put, that's a lot of crappy albums to have to seek out. So even though I abandoned my goal halfway thorough, I still ended up with an interesting collection, and some undiscovered gems. Flowers in the Dirt is one of those.

Though exceptions to the generalization abound, McCartney has gotten a rap as a sappy pop songwriter. It's true that his lightweight melodies often need an anchor (something Lennon provided that so well during that their time in the Beatles). Rarely has McCartney acknowledged this, but for Flowers in the Dirt he brought in the acerbic Declan MacManus, a.k.a. Elvis Costello, to be the Yin to his Yang.

The two co-wrote four songs on the album (four additional collaborative efforts appeared on Elvis' albums Spike and Mighty Like a Rose, including the hit Veronica), and as you'd expect, they're among the most memorable on the album. Though That Day is Done and Don't Be Careless Love both sound like Costello album filler, My Brave Face and You Want Her Too have a little more to offer. The former is a polished break-up tune with an ultra-melodic bassline, and the latter is a duet, with Costello playing the cynical foil to McCartney's optimist. For example, Paul sings, "My intentions are quite sincere" and Elvis follows it up with, "That's not what you said the other night." Sound familiar? It's the same dynamic Lennon and McCartney used, especially on songs like Getting Better and A Day In the Life.

Without Costello egging McCartney on, one might expect the other nine songs to suffer in comparison. They don't, mostly because this is the most eclectic McCartney album you'll find. Sure there're the expected would-be showtunes (the loungey, Wingsish Distractions) and cheesy-but-enjoyable pop (the brief, acoustic Put It There), but there're other pleasures too.

Some credit for that can go to Trevor Horn (a former member of the Buggles, Yes, and Art of Noise and producer for ABC, Frakie Goes To Hollywood, Seal, Pet Shop Boys, and many others), who worked on four songs. How Many People, about the death of a Braziallian rainforest conservationist) features a reggae beat. Rough Ride sound smore than a little Bowie-esque. Figure of Eight could be another lost Wings tune, with handclaps and a strong melody, but McCartney's loose vocal (even somewhat pitchy, if I'm being honest) keeps it from sounding too canned.

But the final Horn-produced tune is the most intriguing. Nowadays, McCartney is no stranger to experimentation (his electronic alterego The Fireman has put out three albums since 1993), but in '89 it was something new from him. Ou Est Le Soleil, the album closer, is chugging and funky, and wouldn't sound out of place in a club. The haiku-like lyrics are in French. Here they are, translated (who said 4 years of high school French were useless): "Where is the sun? / In the head / Work!"

Not every song works so well. We Got Married marries happy lyrics with heavy, dark music. Maybe it was Macca's attempt to show he could be could get down-and-dirty on his own, but it doesn't work. Motor of Love is a little bit like a prayer, but sounds like it should be playing over the end credits of a bad '80s movie. It's the only truly dated moment on an record released in a year crowded with dated albums (maybe that's because of the sighing synths of The Cars' Greg Hawkes).

Believe me, I learned through trial and error that most of the Beatles' solo albums are really not worth owning. Put this one on the short list of those that are.

Grade: B
Fave Song: Figure of Eight / Ou Est Le Soleil

226. The Monkees: The Monkees Present (1969)

The Monkees Present was was the band's final '60s attempt to wring any commercial viability out of itself. Unlike Instant Replay, all but two of the songs were brand new, and the album was accompanied by a strong advertising push (including a cross promotion with Kool-Aid!) and a tour with a seven piece R & B backing group.

As interesting as that all sounds, The Monkees Present failed to make much of an impression. Monkeemania had obviously had its day, and Michael Nesmith chose to leave the band soon after.

The Classics:
Mike's Listen to the Band, though not a huge hit at the time, has become a sort of theme for the group. Though Nesmith claims the lyrics weren't a plea to be judged on musical merit, people nonetheless chose to view them that way. Rhino even chose the song's title as the name of their 1991 Monkees box set.

The Pleasant Surprises:
Good Clean Fun is, in my opinion, the most crackerjack country rock song the Monkees ever did. Though the title has nothing to do with the song, the lyrics, about a man returning home to his patient sweetheart, are actually quite straightforward (something you can never take for granted with Nesmith). Oklahoma Backroom Dancer, another Mike tune, boasts a honky tonk piano and a groovy rhythm.

Mommy and Daddy finds Mickey attempting to redeem himself for his awful showing on Instant Replay, and succeeding. Like Randy Scouse Git, the lyrics are socially-conscious. They take on the treatment of American Indians, drug use, war, and the misguided tendency of white middle class parents to shelter their kids from harsh truths.

Comme Ci Comme Ca:
Mickey also offers Little Girl, a fast-paced, jazzy tune with some nice harmonies, and the harmonica-centric Bye Bye Baby Bye Bye. Neither is bad, but both feel slight and underformed.
Pillow Time, a minimal jazzy fairytale lullaby cowritten by Mickey's mom, is intriguing in concept, but slightly boring in execution.

After an atypically strong showing on Instant Replay, Davy returns to blah territory with the soppy If I Knew. French Song is not much better; the loungey instrumentation is its most appealing aspect. Looking For the Good Times, a half-baked leftover Boyce and Hart tune from 1966 is highlighted only by Mickey and Davy sharing vocals, something that didn't happen nearly enough.

Mike's only semi-clunker on the record is Never Tell a Woman Yes, a piano-driven tale of a man who passes on a woman's invitation to travel with her, regrets it when he finds out she's rich, and then ultimately gets rewarded when she comes to find him after having been robbed by another man. Thus we get the title of the song, which serves as an odd, misguided moral to the story.

WTF?:
Ladies Aid Soceity, another Boyce and Hart composition from '66, is easily the worst song on the album. As far as I can tell it's an attempt to capture the same spirit of pastoral Britain that The Kinks did so well. It just doesn't work, especially the annoying falsetto chorus.

The Bonus Tracks:
The selection here is fairly (and thankfully limited). There are two original tracks, two alternate versions, and an advertisement. Calico Girlfriend Samba is a fun, spirited track that Mike reused on his solo debut, Magnetic South. The Good Earth is a hippy dippy, anonymous poem that Davy recites rather dramatically and earnestly. It's actually not too bad until the final line: "Why can't we be good, on the good Earth?"

Listen to the Band is presented in an earlier version, but marking the differences is for audiophiles only. A harsher, more controversial version of Mommy and Daddy is also included, with the added lines "ask your mommy and daddy who really killed JFK" (remember it was only 6 years later) and "if it was my blood, mommy, would you care a little more?". Of course, I like this non-bowdlerized version even better than the final.

Finally, there's a radio ad for the album. It features a "typical teen" talking "straight" about how The Monkees Present speaks for just them, and how those square adults just won't get it. Though it's an actor delivering the lines, the air of desperation is palpable.

The Monkees Present is the last time for a long time that the band represented even a shred of its former self. It's a middle-0f-the-road swan song, especially considering that the worst was yet to come.

Grade: B-
Fave Song: Good Clean Fun