In case you missed it:
Richard Marx hates my guts
I made a snarky comment about the 1980s soft-rock balladeer on my blog. And now he won’t leave me alone. Really.
BY EDWARD MCCLELLAND
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/19/richard_marx_hates_my_guts/
Highly entertaining, the Salon comments section every bit as much as the piece per se!
Interesting how calling someone “shameless” for hawking a “special edition” of his latter day Christmas album “exclusively at Target” could be perceived as such a monumental insult. No wonder a few delicate souls were so upset at Timmy and me for “making fun of musicians” during the Taxonomizing Sludge! presentation at EMP’s second Pop Conference back in 2003!
Personally, in my role as “Avatar of Sludge” (an endearing sobriquet Johnny K shared via voicemail shortly thereafter), I think that ANYONE not named John Fahey releasing a Christmas album, post-1975, is UTTERLY shameless! LOL
Unless of course it’s a multi-artist compilation from Rhino, in which case it’s very unlikely that the material included post-dates my deadline (cf. my long-ago Rhino Xmas roundup fer Slant #2).
By the by, a Christmas single will always be permissible, if still seldom much above utter dreck status! [Rule proving exceptions: Silkworm c/w Engine Kid (C/Z, 1993), Jimi Hendrix (Experience Hendrix, 1999)]
And of course an Xmas song “desecration” is always good for a cheap laugh (e.g. The Dickies’ “Silent Night”, Stiff Little Fingers’ “White Christmas”), while a GOOD new song re: Xmas would be most welcome, though I haven’t heard one of those since The Pogues got together with their producer Steve Lillywhite’s wife, Kirsty MacColl, just over 25 years ago!
Pogues Fairytale In New York by stevanhogg
Specifically in re: uber-proud Chicagoan Richard Marx, I’ll never regret having heard “Don’t Mean Nothing” approximately a THOUSAND times during that fleeting Missoula summer when I delivered pizzas fer Pizza Hut (and you reigned o’er “the hot dogger” at Ole’s One Stop), thinking at first that it was a not-bad new single from either Glenn Frey or Don Henley!
Of course that wasn’t exactly the loftiest of standards, circa 1987, and I really DO wish I had specific knowledge of how it/he went over in Havre, Montana Sludge circles.
Yours in Sludge Almighty,
Tom
