THE OVER/UNDER

Even as teenagers spazzing around in their suburban Philadelphia homes, Dean Ween (Mickey Melchiondo) and Gene Ween (Aaron Freeman) offered a giddily irresponsible, snot-fueled antidote to the tiresome PC earnestness that characterized popular music throughout the 1990s. Ween began in the mid-’80s as a lo-fi bedroom act, producing a handful of unhinged four-track cassette releases and rapidly moved up the indie-label chain—first Twin/Tone, then Shimmy-Disc—to land an inexplicable major-label contract with Elektra for the group’s third “official” album, 1992’s remarkable Pure Guava. Since then, on both label-attached records and a dizzying stream of self-released recordings, Ween has delighted in nothing more than vivisecting pop music forms and twisting them into new shapes—or pushing them far beyond their logical endpoints. In addition to their astonishing talent for mimicry and parody, however, Freeman and Melchiondo are also (and this is a point that’s rarely been made with sufficient emphasis) musicians—and students of pop music—of the very first order. Anyone who’s heard the group tackle note-perfect readings of ’70s sap rock with a straight face (such as Billy Joel’s “Honesty” or Wings’ “Band On The Run”) has to recognize that for all its smartass, for two decades Ween has been one of the smartest, most exceptionally gifted bands in rock. That may seem an odd claim to make about a group so energetically dedicated to absurdist goofing, but to sink into Ween’s catalog is to nuzzle the brown underbelly of pop-music history and hear what the top-40 hit parade might have sounded like after a steady diet of whippets, Ballantine’s scotch and carry-out chimichangas. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of debut GodWeenSatan: The Oneness, here’s our take on the most overrated and underrated songs in Ween’s catalog. Hail the Boognish, mang.

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Let’s just assume that the very notion of a Tom Waits Over/Under is going to split us into two camps: those who’ll be affronted that we’d even consider calling any Waits cut overrated, and those who think the whole of Waits’ career describes an overly hyped trajectory of avant-garde noodling. And, oh yeah, his fans are tiresome sycophants. Let’s accept that and skip the usual self-justifying intro. Just so you know where this particular writer falls, though, be advised that musically speaking, Waits’ 1983 giant step, Swordfishtrombones, changed my life, and that’s no exaggeration. As with most unregenerate Waits fans, my first exposure to his music felt like a smack on the side of the head. I’d been seeking out strange sounds for most of my young life to that point, but I hadn’t heard anything like Waits’ game-changing mission statement for where his muse was about to take him—away from the barrelhouse-piano-player/dive-bar-poet persona (which had become shtick by the early ’80s) and deep into much stranger, sterner territory, the clangorous midnight cabaret where he’s set up shop for almost 30 years now. And it changed my listening habits, too—led me down exploratory paths I might not have been curious about if I hadn’t heard Swordfishtrombones at age 15. (An older cousin slipped the album to me. My mom, a stone Connie Francis fan, never forgave him.) The guy’s a warhorse, a legend, an icon by now. That’s inarguable. And yet, lest we fashion Waits into post-rock’s sacred cow or divine mule or whatever, let’s slip under the fence and into the old fella’s junkyard and examine the trash and treasure there to be found.

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Talking Heads positioned themselves in NYC’s mid-’70s downtown arts scene at the most fortunate moment possible. With one ear trained on the punk and new-wave movements and the other cocked toward the art-rock and performance-art explosions that would come in the early ’80s, the Heads—David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Jerry Harrison and Chris Franz—undertook projects far beyond the scope and ambition of most of their counterparts, everything from choreographed minimalist live shows to full-length feature films, even as the band amassed a catalog of forward-looking albums, each with a unique mood and aesthetic. As time passes, though, Talking Heads’ legacy in the popular mind is largely limited to a ubiquitous handful of songs, most notably radio staple “Once In A Lifetime,” referenced everywhere from the opening credits for second-rate movies (Nick Nolte, we’re looking in your direction) to a series of Rolling Rock commercials. That’s a shame, since Byrne and Co.’s music bridges the gap between punk’s anything-goes aesthetic and formalist art rock’s high-concept composition. So for this week’s Over/Under, we survey the “Big Country” Byrne once sang about, thereby to take the lay of the land.

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This came from reader Stephen Sigl, who thought it was about time MAGNET had an Over/Under on the Rolling Stones.

I don’t interpret the Over/Under features in as harsh a light as most people seem to, just as long as there’s a distinction between the writer saying a song is “good but overrated” (as evidenced in the Built To Spill Over/Under)—this is good. Downright hostility toward someone’s guilty pleasure (Beck’s “Satan Gave Me A Taco”)—this is not so good. Being a Stones fan, I don’t dislike any of the overrated songs, but I do find them inessential. Here goes …

:: The Five Most Overrated Rolling Stones Songs
1. “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”
Easily the most identifiable Stones songs ever. The riff has the legacy of being recorded by Keith Richards just before he passed out, the song was cut by the band on the fly sans horn overdubs, and it became a mega-hit despite lyrics that pushed radio standards of decency at the time. I don’t dispute this song’s greatness; it is on the top of the overrated list only because it is the one song that die-hard Stones fans generally forget exists until the encore.

2. The Brian Jones Era
Hipsters who are generally down on blues-based rock do not like the Stones after ‘68. The infatuation with the Brian Jones era is clearly a fallen-idol/fashion issue. Unless you are still awed by ’60s idealism, there is no reason to place the Jones era above the other two.

3. “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”
This is probably the definitive example of a “classic song” that blows you away when you’re 14, but ends up as anathema by graduation. The length doesn’t help any, either. File under “Stairway To Heaven” for been there, done that.

4. “Wild Horses”
The best (and weirdest) analogy I can come up with for including this and “Satisfaction” on the overrated list is by admitting that I went to a Fugazi show about 10 years ago with some hard-core Fugazi fans and told them (at least more than once), “I hope they play ‘Waiting Room.’” That had to have been annoying, and that’s the criteria I’m using for this list.

5. “Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)”
The overt urban-funk, pre-disco wah-wah pedal workout from Goats Head Soup is the album’s weakest moment, exacerbated by the aggressively topical nature of the lyrics (a theme that reached its apex on “Little Indian Girl” off Emotional Rescue). This song still gets moderate airplay, though “Fingerprint File” from It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll is more deserving and feels more natural to its era.

:: The Five Most Underrated Rolling Stones Songs
1. “Luxury”
Could it be that a great riff, an unabashedly faux-Jamaican accent and a sense of novelty make this the unheralded gem off It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll? Or maybe it’s because some of the slower songs on that album tend to drag (“Time Waits For No-One,” “If You Really Want To Be My Friend”) that this song brings the pace up and, for some reason, always strikes me as being the most unrecognized, underplayed song in the Stones’ catalog.

2. “Winter”
The successor to “Moonlight Mile,” though the lyrics are not as abstract. It’s still amazing: Christmas imagery, references to past Kenneth Anger-induced occult practices (bell, book and candle … ) and Mick Jagger’s between-verses yelps (a la “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking”) add a sense of life to the overall dynamic, which is something the band has retained (on record) since Andrew Loog Oldham left.

3. The Ron Wood Era
Ron Wood’s tenure with the Stones marks their most critically maligned period. Only recently have people started to come around. Whether it’s Uncut magazine begrudgingly admitting a song from Undercover onto its 50-greatest-Stones-songs list or Rob Sheffield (of all people) praising Emotional Rescue. The Stones entered their “third” phase still willing to experiment musically but with no intention of playing it safe by conventional rock-star standards, which has got to be worth something.

4. “All The Way Down”
At a time when almost all their contemporaries were tailoring their music to the pre-30-something baby-boomer generation’s attempts to come to grips with its collective mortgage payments, the Stones released an ’80s album that, outside of a few concessions, stayed true to the consistent formula of succinct songwriting, great guitar playing and blatantly sexual lyrics. There’s an earthiness to Jagger’s singing that is a vibrant remnant of the Stones’ early-’70s heyday.

5. “Tops”
It’s always a revelation to hear someone mention that this song was recorded during the sessions for Exile, considering it has a sophistication no one listening to the Stones at the time would have expected. The soul element of the rhythm ‘n’ blues equation has always kept the Stones grounded in good songwriting and steered them clear of overbearing blues-rock banality.

Doug Martsch cannot hear you. He thinks the world has plenty of Built To Spill albums. This summer he told Pitchfork, “We’re not in any hurry to put anything out. There are plenty of Built To Spill records—no one is in a hurry to hear something new.” He’s wrong, though. Martsch should make more albums. He should make more BTS albums, but I think that he should also start a Robert Pollard-esque program of pseudonym bands where he releases several albums a year in different styles. Remember that fantastic closing track on There’s Nothing Wrong With Love that was a preview of the next Built To Spill record and it was a bunch of snippets of joke songs? That joke-song montage had a handful of tunes that were far better than a lot of bands’ earnest efforts. He could do albums just like that—as a joke—and still make year-end top-10 lists. If he doesn’t start recording under his own new band names, he should at least be a bit more mercenary and hire out his guitar work. More side projects and guest appearances, please. In 17 years, Built To Spill has released only seven studio albums; naturally, over that stretch of time, the band has gone through several musical phases: the early lo-fi charm of Ultimate Alternative Wavers; the poignant, small-town pop genius of There’s Nothing Wrong With Love; the epic, jammy, post-rock groove of Perfect From Now On and Keep It Like A Secret. (Martsch may have saved the guitar solo and possibly even the guitar altogether on those two records.) The next two BTS albums, Ancient Melodies Of The Future and You In Reverse, though lacking the definition of the earlier LPs, found the band nestling in to its sound and couldn’t have been made by any other group. Martsch has said in interviews that Built To Spill isn’t innovative, that the band isn’t creating anything new. And maybe he’s right. But what band is? Aren’t they all just a synthesis of their influences? Martsch might sound at times like J Mascis or Neil Young, but Built To Spill sounds only like Built To Spill. Though the band never found mainstream success and has yet to have a hit single, its most recent LP, There Is No Enemy, cracked the top 50 on the Billboard album chart, the highest spot for any BTS record to date. How else can we say it, Doug? More albums, please. Some of the best songs of the past 20 years are Built To Spill songs, certainly, but I can’t praise them all. Look, I know what you’re thinking. “Car” didn’t make either list. Hit the jump to find out what did.

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‘Scuse me, sir? You with the Devendra Banhart haircut? And you, ma’am, in the vintage prom dress and cat’s-eye spectacles? Don’t look now, but Bunnybrains are playing an unannounced in-store with Yamakata Eye on vocals at the Atomic Soundz record shop, about a block and a half up. Me? No, no, I developed tinnitus from playing Mission Of Burma in the car on long drives. Can’t be around the loud stuff anymore. But go, go, have fun … Whew. OK. Now that those guys are out of the room, let’s talk, you and me, about Sonic Youth. And let’s be sensible. When it comes to Sonic Youth, I’m that guy; should the house ever go up in flames, my local fire brigade has standing orders to rescue: 1) the cats, and 2) my life’s-work collection of SY albums, singles, bootlegs, vinyl pressings, VHS tapes, cassette tapes of individual band members’ side projects, photocopied zine articles, books and sundry merch. Everything else can go to ashes. I’m that kind of fanatic. Like you, though, I try not to be a pain in the ass about it. I just love the stuff. Not only does SY’s career link late-’70s cerebral art noise to ’80s no-wave and hardcore punk, the ’90s alt-rock boom and bust and early 21st-century experimental composition (an arc no other band can even approach), the group also happens to rock, when it wants to. Maybe due to the band’s embedding in those very disparate muso-freak camps, each hyper-conscious of its own peculiar notions of “integrity” and “credibility,” Sonic Youth seems to trigger a visceral reaction in enthusiasts and dissenters alike, which means we fans have an unfortunate tendency to get snotty about what we do and don’t like. But really, I can’t think of a conversation more tiresome than the one about whether every release since 1988’s Daydream Nation describes a downward spiral. And I don’t quite get how a band so openly suspicious of corporate-controlled music acts could fetishize Madonna, ironically or not, but so what? Each to their little inconsistencies, is what I say. And frankly, I couldn’t care less what anyone—including the members of Sonic Youth themselves, always rather obsessive on this point—think about whether they’ve sold out to corporate interests. Over nearly 30 years, Sonic Youth has been able to move from tiny to mid-size to major labels and back again, release a string of consistently interesting if sometimes uneven records and pull a bunch of other great bands into the spotlight in the process. That’s doing God’s work, no matter how you fine you cut it. So let’s come to the gargantuan Sonic Youth catalog not as fawners or snobs—but as people who dig good music—and see if we can talk about which tracks we find overrated or underrated. It’ll be more fun than trying to one-up each other by posing out over our own coolness, and … Oh, hi, you’re back! What? No Bunnybrains? Huh. Sorry about that. Maybe I got the date wrong. Who, us? Nah. We weren’t talking about anything.

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Beck came to most people by way of MTV wearing a stormtrooper mask and rapping about “getting crazy with the Cheez Whiz.” The video was “Loser,” and the song was recorded as a joke—on a friend of a friend’s eight-track in a span of six hours. The white-boy slacker-rap song went to number 10 on the Billboard charts. He seemed like a one-hit wonder, but now he’s in the running to be considered one of the most influential pop musicians of the past 20 years. No other artist in recent memory has so thoroughly blown apart any attempts at categorization. In the span of single songs, Beck has been known to fuse hip hop, Latin, funk, punk, classical, R&B, soul and delta blues. (I could have kept going.) The diversity he’s shown in his ability to take on different musical styles makes it obvious he could make any album he wants. He’s even started remaking his favorite records; his online-only Record Club project has him gathering with a group of friends once a month to re-record classic albums in a weekend. The first two installments were The Velvet Underground & Nico and Songs Of Leonard Cohen. For the next round, Beck got together with Wilco to cover Skip Spence’s Oar: not exactly easy lifting. He may be the hardest working slacker in show business. After 11 full-lengths, he’s written a ton of great songs, but there are a few that get undeserved praise and a mountain that get neglected. Here are the five most overrated and the five most underrated Beck songs.

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Seattle’s Sunny Day Real Estate somehow managed to create a footprint far exceeding what would reasonably be expected of a group that produced a mere handful of albums during its relatively short tenure (1992-95 as an original quartet, then a reunion from 1997-2001 reduced to a trio). The band’s then-unique admixture of churning, guitar-driven rock, plaintive and nakedly emotional vocals (sometimes sung, sometimes screamed) and lyrics that made clear the spiritual questing of frontman Jeremy Enigk (read our 2006 Q&A with him) would ultimately earn SDRE the label “godfathers of emo,” which for better or worse would forever link it to lesser lights such as Jimmy Eat World and Fall Out Boy, but more appropriately, to similarly minded forebears such as Fugazi. After releasing two beloved but quirky full-lengths on Sub Pop back in the early ‘90s, the quartet dissolved into a puddle of timeworn rock-music clichés: Enigk declared himself born again (and in an early, prescient move, told the world about it through a post on the Internet), the rhythm section departed and hooked up with Dave Grohl (who, by then, had discovered his post-Nirvana special purpose via the Foo Fighters), and eventually, they wandered separate paths for a decade or so before finding their way back to one another and to stages across North America for a recent sold-out reunion tour, the first shows the band had played in its original form since 1995. It may be stretching things to suggest that an act better known for its influences than for any chart hits actually possesses anything in its catalog remotely overrated or underrated, and yet SDRE has inspired such a passionately devoted fanbase that it’s clear there are, in fact, peaks and valleys throughout its sonic history, which leads us down the usual path of charting the group’s five most overrated and five most underrated tracks.

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They were one of the funniest, most consistently interesting bands to emerge from California’s first-generation hardcore scene. And yet the Dead Kennedys’ post-breakup renown languishes unfairly in this era of remastered discographies and outtake-choked bonus discs. As hardcore bands go, the DKs had a decent run, much longer than many of their contemporaries. The band formed in 1978 and released its first single, the classic “California Über Alles,” the following year. Jello Biafra, the singer and to many fans the DKs’ public face, ran for mayor of San Francisco in 1979, finishing fourth in the election. The band’s self-founded/self-operated label, Alternative Tentacles, released a series of brainy, often bizarre records by acts that flowed wide even of punk’s often conformist mainstream, a frequent target of the DKs’ snide humor. A punishing obscenity trial related to a poster included with 1985’s Frankenchrist, followed by subsequent internal tensions among the band members (which resulted in an ugly lawsuit), blew the DKs apart in 1987. The Dead Kennedys left behind four albums, an odds-and-sods collection and a handful of EPs and singles as their full legacy. But that slender output includes some of the most creative and disturbing—and often hysterical—punk music ever recorded. Of course, it also contains some misfires, so let us now praise (and bury) the Dead Kennedys. Here’s hoping for the double-disc re-release of 1980’s Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables soon.

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With nine studio albums and more officially released bootlegs than any band in history, Pearl Jam has managed to not only escape the grunge pigeonhole and the shadow of Nirvana but also cement itself in rock history as one of the most uncompromising and captivating live bands of all time. Sure, Pearl Jam has inspired whole, terrible sections of the radio dial, and I cringe to imagine who will give its Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction speech (Eddie Vedder has done it for R.E.M., the Ramones, Neil Young and the Doors), but these guys were almost the only thing I listened to for several formative, angst-filled years growing up, and there’s something to be said for being such a major influence on mainstream modern-rock radio, just like there’s something to be said for having sold more than 50 million albums. Pearl Jam’s debut album was 1991’s Ten, and it was the first CD I ever owned. At one point, this was the biggest band in the world, but then the group decided to make a conscious effort to cut back on the videos and press and take the ride at a pace it could digest. Now the guys seem to spend most of their time surfing, skateboarding or with their families and working with various charities, but they’re still at it: Pearl Jam’s latest, Backspacer, hit Target and iTunes this week. Here are the five most overrated and the five most underrated works from the last band standing from the ’90s Seattle grunge explosion. Read our 2006 Q&A with Vedder.

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The members of the Who were the revolutionaries of the ’60s and the hard-rock heavyweights of the ’70s. At their best, they were four separate-yet-equal forces of chaos, harnessed in the pursuit of the ultimate pop song. That might sound like hyperbole, but in guitarist/songwriter Pete Townshend, the Who had a brilliant lyricist with a gift for a hook. And in Roger Daltrey, they had a vocalist often unmatched for sheer power. With a rhythm section of Keith Moon and John Entwistle, the Who should have destroyed themselves in their first practice session. And if the band’s endless, meaningless existence since Moon’s death has sullied its legacy, the albums (thankfully) speak for themselves. Here are the five most overrated and five most underrated works of the Who’s career.

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High on my list of rock-scribe near misses is the time I came within a Marlboro butt’s distance of interviewing Lou Reed. (You’ll never guess what happened: He suddenly decided he didn’t want to talk to one more goddamned journalist during his promo stint.) Maybe it was just as well; Reed has been known to hang up on interviewers when he’s feeling especially cranky. That sort of contentiousness is an integral part of Reed’s career persona, which is what we mean when we talk about his “charm,” in quotes. Still, down amidst the coals of that touchy tough guy, there smolders a tiny, warm, hopelessly romantic ember. Every Reed fan has a stylistic preference; my own has always been for the noisy, squonky stuff: Metal Machine Music and The Blue Mask, etc. But when you review it, his songbook is surprisingly full of softer material, evidence that like most songwriters who’ve survived more than three decades of stardom, Reed has long been involved in the process of nailing his whole life—the good, bad and ugly parts—down on paper. He’s recently made himself over as a kind of artistic Renaissance man, showing photographs at the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, releasing albums of ambient music for tai chi and meditation, heading up a three-man drone/noise outfit called Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Trio. But for this edition of the Over/Under, we revisit the pop songbook of one of rock’s most contentious sweethearts: the nicest Jewish boy from Long Island ever to date a transvestite named Rachel. Note: As usual, there are a few very popular songs on the overrated list. This seems to be an ongoing point of contention, God knows why. Five dollars of this writer’s personal cash money to anyone who can explain, calmly and rationally, how a song can be both overrated and unpopular. (Read our Velvet Underground Over/Under.)

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When the Decemberists signed to Capitol for 2006’s The Crane Wife, it was a sign that they, and their particular brand of quirk-friendly indie, were gunning for the mainstream. But Colin Meloy and his band of Portland, Ore., artists were the most unlikely standard-bearers of the indie cause. Influenced by folk and prog, prone to telling tales of ghosts, wayward women and man-eating whales, the Decemberists never topped anyone’s list for the next small-time band to make it big. But thanks to Meloy’s nerdy charm, clever lyrics and a band that could tackle the most epic of themes, the Decemberists are now one of the best-known groups in modern rock. With the band in the middle of part two of its “A Short Fazed Hovel Tour,” it’s time to look back and examine the most overrated and underrated Decemberists songs. Read our recent Q&A with Meloy and one from 2008.

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Weezer has always gotten more than its fair share of contempt. We come not to bury Rivers Cuomo, but to praise him. Tucked beneath its Cheap Trick riffs and nerd-friendly lyrics, Weezer managed to record some of the best power-pop anthems of the past 15 years. And even if the band’s recent efforts haven’t lived up to its classic debut and history of hits, this is still a band with the power to surprise us. While some of Weezer’s songs have passed into our collective memory (“Buddy Holly,” “Beverly Hills”) and have no intention of leaving anytime soon, others should never have been released in the first place (we’re looking at you, “Heart Songs”). With Cuomo and crew about to launch their own online radio station courtesy of Clear Channel, what better time to examine the most overrated and underrated Weezer songs?

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With Big Star best-of/rarities box Keep An Eye On The Sky slated for a September release, Alex Chilton, Jody Stephens, Andy Hummel and the late Chris Bell are about to enter the mainstream rock pantheon at last. Of course, Big Star has been a key reference point for three generations of indie and underground rockers. The band’s brief, highly romanticized narrative arc—Anglophile Memphis rockers set the bar for genius power pop, begin deconstructing the genre, then self-destruct before they can finish their third record—guaranteed Big Star’s canonization by alt-rock misfits, as well as that odd strain of culture vulture obsessed with watching talent implode. MAGNET wants to reexamine Chilton and Co.’s work in part because, though this is one of those cases where the music frequently does live up to the hype, for 30 years Big Star has unavoidably colored the way we hear the music. And despite a few post-mortem live releases and a handful of bootlegs both sublime and godawful, it’s in the limited studio recordings that Big Star’s glory lives or dies. So for this installment of the Over/Under, it’s to the studio albums we go, to give the mix one final stir before it hardens. (For more on Big Star, as well as Cheap Trick, Matthew Sweet, the Posies and many more, check out our special 2002 American power-pop issue.)

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The Over/Under isn’t about the best and worst of Genesis. It’s the most overrated and underrated Genesis tracks, and the main theme here is that not everything from the Peter Gabriel era is genius and not everything from the Phil Collins era is crap. In fact, three of our five overrated songs date back to the Gabriel era, while four of the five underrated tracks are from the Collins era. And the one underrated track from the Gabriel era features Collins on vocals. So here we go with the most overrated and underrated songs in the vast Genesis catalog, as chosen by MAGNET’s Roob. Cue synth solo in 7/4.

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