Sure, I’m an indie-rock snob. I’ll readily admit that. But have you listened to any commercial radio rock or so-called alternative/modern rock stations lately? They’re horrible. It doesn’t matter where you live since the Clear Channel near monopoly has spread their insipid, homogenized playlists across the airwaves nationwide. Maybe I’m just getting to be an old fogey but I swear the songs are interchangeable. Most sound like Nirvana or Metallica. Or they actually are songs by Nirvana and Metallica! They all seem to have the same super compressed production values too, compounded by the FM broadcast. I tell ya, when I was a kid, radio was… probably just as sucky. I simply didn’t know any better. Now I do and can rant about it.
Anyway, I usually listen to NPR, the excellent Georgia State college station WRAS, or my mp3 player in the car. One day this past week I didn’t have my mp3 player and nothing was grabbing me on my two choice stations. So I flipped around on the right of the dial and caught a familiar sounding song. It took me a verse to confirm that it was a lame cover of an even lamer song but I couldn’t place the original artist. It was driving me crazy! I did know it was a song I’d never owned. The opposite has happened to me a lot. It’s a pretty funny feeling to hear something and think, “I have this! Wonder who it is?” Music overload.
Turns out it was a band called Disturbed who covered “Land of Confusion” by Genesis on their ‘05 album, Ten Thousand Fists. As in Phil Collins. Of all the zillions of songs to choose from these guys actually picked a song by ol’ Phil. On purpose. Without irony. I don’t care how nasty their downtuned guitar crunch sounds or if the singer growls through the verses, it still sucks!
Are these guys big? I’ve never heard of them but that doesn’t mean a whole lot. I lead a purposely sheltered life. And I’m sure if a typical Disturbed fan went through my music collection there wouldn’t be a whole that registered. Still, I consider myself lucky to have gone this long without hearing it.
But I suppose the lyrics are just as relevant today, if not more so, than when Phil originally wrote them. I mean, think of global warming, the War on Terror, and Britteny dumping K-Fed as you mull this truism: “There’s too many men / Too many people / Making too many problems / And not much love to go round.” And how can you not be moved by his rallying cry? “This is the world we live in / And these are the hands we’re given / Use them and let’s start trying / To make it a place worth living in.” Ow! My eyes are starting to hurt from rolling them so hard.
It’s truly a crappy song and whoever these Disturbed fellows are deserve to be laughed at for their poor choice in covers. They even kept the “Whoa-oh-oh” part in! Somehow I doubt that anyone who has “Land of Confusion” on their ipod or whatever has it tagged as Comedy, but let me go ahead and make that suggestion. Imagine the headbanging moshers at a Disturbed show during this song and I don’t think you’ll argue.
Ah, yes. This Tom Heinl cover is a nice gift from Holly Golightly just in time for the holidays. And what a song! Not like a wimpy little spark from a bad string of lights that slowly consumes tree and house. “Christmas Tree on Fire” is spontaneous combustion, with drums crackling like flames and Holly’s strong voice radiating playful but intense heat. It’s a country-fried scorcher and shows Holly in top form.
Well that didn’t take long. In my 
So your trying to make a Halloween mix for this weekend’s bash, or you went to one this weekend and the music bombed (I mean how many times can possibly listen to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”) and you have it in you to fix that for next year. So let’s fill that puppy or should I say three-headed dog with some strange, unique music your friends never heard that you can seize for free or very cheap.
Poirier is back and this time is slinging beats for himself under his own label,