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Appreciating Angie Aparo by Bob Lefsetz I'm not as hip as you. I didn't get laid in high school. I'm still wearing my college uniform of Nikes, jeans, and polo shirt. Get me at one of those cocktail parties featured in Rolling Stone and I get all uptight and have to leave. I feel out of place. I don't know what happened. Whether my mother didn't eat the right food while I was developing in her body. Whether God took a bathroom break. But that gene. That allows you to be able to look down your nose at others, feeling superior, knowing all the right places to be seen, the people to be seen with, how to act, the clothes to wear. I seem to be missing it. I read these album reviews. The writer seems to know about some movement in England or Africa I was never exposed to. How this record is the next logical progression. These records on independent labels. They say they're great and explain why. Me? I've never even heard of them. And when I come across them at some listening post, or somebody's house, when I put them in the player, I'm completely nonplussed. Doesn't sound good to me. But there's always some confident gent or gal around, with their hair just so, telling me how I'm plain wrong. How I just don't get it. But that doesn't mean I don't get anything. But the stuff that reaches me. It's just a bit less revolutionary. More basic. Usually vilified by the trendmongers, but me? I live for it. Now I'm not talking about the Carpenters. (But hell, did you notice how they went from being vilified to exalted? How the hipsters hated them when they were happening, but now think they're the coolest, most talented thing out there? I mean WHO DECIDED THIS??) I don't do mainstream. Don't do kitsch. I'm not talking about the evanescent stuff. Sold to millions today, forgotten tomorrow. Rather, I'm talking about stuff just a little more basic. Like Train. Now Train are a funny example. Because somehow they're still seen as cool. No, let's go to Collective Soul. Nobody's a Collective Soul fan. But some of those tracks. They're utterly fantastic. Stuff like "Shine." "The World I Know." "December." And those tracks were produced by one Matt Serletic. As a result of his success with Collective Soul and a number of other acts, Mr. Serletic was rewarded with his own record label. Melisma. Distributed by Arista. However, when his first big production was about to come out, the label was in turmoil. The man he made his deal with, Clive Davis, was out. The record was released, and as an orphan, it died. Now, I can't tell you I was eagerly awaiting the release of Angie Aparo's The American. After all, I'm not the biggest fan of Mr. Serletic's monster act, Matchbox Twenty. But I got a call from my friend Joe, an Arista promotion man. Yes, the status of the label was up in the air, but they were going to work this record. Would I come to the Viper Room and see him? They pulled out all the stops. The cream of L.A. radio attended. And no one cared. They knew it was all for show. That the label was really incapable of working anything at that point. And hadn't broken a rock act in eons anyway. Furthermore, there were no tapes, no dancers, no beautiful babes. All there was was music. Straight-ahead rock. Who gives a sh*t about that? I do. |
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