Bear with me here.<\/p>\n
I had an iPod crisis.\u00c2\u00a0 I went to do my podcast yesterday, and the songs I’d transferred earlier in the day weren’t there.<\/p>\n
Now I’m a computer whiz.\u00c2\u00a0 Yet running through all the logic in my brain, I couldn’t figure out what happened.\u00c2\u00a0 And after failing to rectify the problem earlier today, after losing eighty percent of what was on my iPod, I decided to reset it, using the just released iPod updater, the one with the volume control (talk about pre-empting a lawsuit) and start over.<\/p>\n
And while I was loading the thousands of tracks back on the little white machine, I started playing some of my all time favorite tracks in my iTunes library.\u00c2\u00a0 I played Argent’s "Liar", one of the very first tracks I downloaded from Napster, and Hoku’s "Another Dumb Blonde".<\/p>\n
Wait!!\u00c2\u00a0 Wait just a minute!\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t stop reading!<\/p>\n
Half a dozen years ago, I said Hoku’s one and only album was my favorite of the year.\u00c2\u00a0 And people couldn’t believe it, they were stunned.\u00c2\u00a0 I heard about it for YEARS thereafter.\u00c2\u00a0 To the point where even I wondered if I’d lost it.\u00c2\u00a0 But spinning "Another Dumb Blonde" today convinced me, I LOVE this record!<\/p>\n
Let’s start with another track on the album, "Just Enough".<\/p>\n
Just enough to keep me hanging on Around this same time back in the early days of this century, I got hooked by a woman.\u00c2\u00a0 It was WHIPLASH!\u00c2\u00a0 It was the conspiratorial joking.\u00c2\u00a0 The mind meld.\u00c2\u00a0 I tried to play it cool, but I was a goner.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, she had such horrible follow-through.\u00c2\u00a0 She’d e-mail me wanting to get together, I’d immediately respond, and then she’d disappear.\u00c2\u00a0 And just when I was starting to give up hope, to put my desire to bed, she’d look me up again.<\/p>\n Will you come tell me you love me or let me go You don’t find the real thing that often.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a revving of your insides.\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t feel like yourself.\u00c2\u00a0 Or maybe you feel like your BEST self.\u00c2\u00a0 And the feeling is so exciting, so different from pedestrian life, that you scramble for another morsel, another hit.\u00c2\u00a0 You lock on, you’re elated, and then when the interaction is over you walk on air.<\/p>\n Oh, I went through the bends.\u00c2\u00a0 I couldn’t figure out…did she like me, was she toying with me or was it not even RECIPROCAL?\u00c2\u00a0 It got to the point where I avoided going places for fear she’d be there.<\/p>\n Oh, I’m over it now.\u00c2\u00a0 But it lasted years.\u00c2\u00a0 Two to be precise.\u00c2\u00a0 Till I found out it wasn’t me at all.\u00c2\u00a0 That that’s how she operates in the world.\u00c2\u00a0 Making contact intermittently.\u00c2\u00a0 But I’d be lying if I didn’t say my heart still didn’t palpitate when I see her name in my inbox.<\/p>\n I’m looking for truth in my music.<\/p>\n These Hoku tracks are true in music.\u00c2\u00a0 Because they follow the classic form.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s verse chorus verse, occasionally a bridge.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the standard formula.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s honest.\u00c2\u00a0 There are no extraneous changes thrown in for the sake of hipness.\u00c2\u00a0 AND, the lyrics are exactly how I felt, and sometimes still feel.\u00c2\u00a0 Written for pre-teens, they have a universality that anybody who’s played the game of love can relate to.\u00c2\u00a0 And maybe that’s why these songs were unsuccessful, the target audience had never been in love, their libido had never raged.\u00c2\u00a0 Or maybe it was that only Jive knew how to promote this stuff, and Hoku was lost on Geffen Records.<\/p>\n But as good as "Just Enough" is, and "How Do I Feel", about falling in love with a boy eating a burrito at El Torasco’s, the personalization planting the image in the listener’s brain, the piece de resistance is "Another Dumb Blonde".<\/p>\n It starts off with a synth that replicates an ocean swell, you get that feeling you have when you finally catch a wave, when it picks up your board and you start to FLY!<\/p>\n I think that it’s time that I should just let you go You know how you get up your gumption?\u00c2\u00a0 After crying into your pillow for days?\u00c2\u00a0 How you brush yourself off and confront your demons?\u00c2\u00a0 OH, how I relate to this.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re all just human under the skin.\u00c2\u00a0 Despite your beauty, despite your wealth, goddamn it, I’m an EQUAL!\u00c2\u00a0 And I’m FINALLY gonna stand up for myself!<\/p>\n You see I thought that you were special, baby Oh, the double meaning.\u00c2\u00a0 Is the guy himself special, or was he just different from the average dude, and special to HER?\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, how do we get infatuated when nobody else does?\u00c2\u00a0 I confided to friends I was hung up on this woman and they just didn’t get it.\u00c2\u00a0 They’d worked with her.\u00c2\u00a0 They’d seen her in action.\u00c2\u00a0 Their dicks didn’t get hard.<\/p>\n That’s alright, that’s okay You’ve got to HEAR this to get it.\u00c2\u00a0 The EXUBERANCE!\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, she’s finally free!!\u00c2\u00a0 She no longer cares.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s the turning point.\u00c2\u00a0 When you’re no longer beholden.\u00c2\u00a0 Freaks your beloved out.\u00c2\u00a0 They thought they had you hooked, but you’ve slipped off the hook, you’ve DANCED AWAY!\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, Hoku’s double-tracked.\u00c2\u00a0 A vocal in each channel.\u00c2\u00a0 Like a modern day girl group.\u00c2\u00a0 And the bass is pinning it all down, representing her newly-reconstituted, throbbing libido.<\/p>\n Last night I went to a party hoping that you were there Oh, that’s how I met my first long term girlfriend.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d SEEN her at the library.\u00c2\u00a0 I just couldn’t stay in my one room apartment any longer.\u00c2\u00a0 I jumped up, on a mission, and got into my 2002 and went STRAIGHT to the library where I found her, and sat down RIGHT ACROSS FROM HER!\u00c2\u00a0 Something I’d normally never have the guts to do.\u00c2\u00a0 And I didn’t feign interest in my book, I went right for it, I engaged her in conversation, I got her to go down to the basement and take a break.\u00c2\u00a0 Four years later…<\/p>\n And the way Hoku delivers "the very same thing", with the INDIGNANCY we all feel.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, she’s got a thin little voice, but she’s PISSED!\u00c2\u00a0 How could you DO THIS TO ME!\u00c2\u00a0 Not only abandoning me, but picking up somebody else employing the exact same technique!<\/p>\n You want just a little trophy hanging on your arm This is GUYS!\u00c2\u00a0 There was none of this truth in the Backstreet Boys or ‘N Sync’s music.\u00c2\u00a0 We guys are always trying to impress each other.\u00c2\u00a0 God, look at the big swinging dicks on Wall Street, trading in the wives who stood by them on the way up, often providing the SEED money, for BABES!\u00c2\u00a0 Evidence they’ve MADE IT!<\/p>\n But do you really want someone who’s into you because you’re rich and\/or famous?\u00c2\u00a0 What if you lose your status?\u00c2\u00a0 What is the relationship BASED ON?<\/p>\n That’s alright that’s ok I never loved you anyway Oh, Hoku sings this at a high pitch, almost as if she’s fighting back tears, but she’s not gonna cry, she’s not gonna lose her dignity.<\/p>\n And THEN, like a Phil Spector wall of sound record, like everybody in the high school is suddenly on Hoku’s side, like it’s the end of a movie musical and everybody has joined in, as the instruments pump, the multiple voices SING:<\/p>\n It’s alright, YEAH!<\/em><\/p>\n Over and over again.\u00c2\u00a0 GO AHEAD AND FIND WHAT YOU NEED!<\/em><\/p>\n Oh, she’s DONE!\u00c2\u00a0 She’s been released from prison.<\/p>\n You know how some of the best records never made it, how they were never iconized, embedded in the public mind?\u00c2\u00a0 "Another Dumb Blonde" is one of those tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 A tour de force.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, it got some airplay.\u00c2\u00a0 But if it were rereleased on the newly-powerful Hollywood Records TODAY, cross-promoted on the Disney TV and radio stations, it would EXPLODE!<\/p>\n Then again, maybe it’s just not dumb enough for the audience.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, "Another Dumb Blonde" is teen pop, but made for ADULTS!\u00c2\u00a0 Still children at the game of love.<\/p>\n So download this.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s better than anything on Madonna’s new album.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s pure pop for now people.\u00c2\u00a0 Shut the door, close all the windows, then CRANK IT UP!\u00c2\u00a0 All your past emotional hurt, all those dumpings, all those relationships that didn’t work out, they’ll be EXORCISED!\u00c2\u00a0 At least for the four minutes of this song.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’ll feel so good, you’ll want to play the record over and over and OVER again.<\/p>\n This is what we call a hit.<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bear with me here. I had an iPod crisis.\u00c2\u00a0 I went to do my podcast yesterday, and the songs I’d transferred earlier in the day weren’t there. 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Till I’m ready to move on
And then you find a way to make your play
And then I stay
Just enough to give me hope
That you will fall in love with me<\/em><\/p>\n
I guess we’ll have to see
You’re unpredictable
And that keeps me interested
But I’d rather have you right here instead<\/em><\/p>\n
So I’ll tell it to your face instead of tell it to you on the phone<\/em><\/p>\n
Something unique but lately I’ve come to find
That you’re not really interested in my heart or mind<\/em><\/p>\n
You never loved me anyway
And I think it’s time for you to just move on
That’s alright
That’s okay
I bet you never thought you’d hear me say
That I think it’s time for you to find another dumb blonde
‘Cause it’s not me no, no
‘Cause it’s not me no, no, oh no<\/em><\/p>\n
And sure enough you were hanging on some other girl playing with her hair
And I overheard you telling her the very same thing you said to me the night before
Hook, line, and sinker you were walking with her out the door<\/em><\/p>\n
So all your friends’ll see you got it goin’ on
But I see what you are so clearly
But baby, baby that’s not alright with me<\/em><\/p>\n
That’s alright that’s ok you never loved me anyway<\/em><\/p>\n