Niki N. Phaser

Even before the release of The Dark Knight and, if I remember correctly, even before the death of Heath Ledger, there was a lot of buzz about his performance as Batman’s nemesis, The Joker. The shock of his untimely death, mixed with that buzz, created a suited environment for the birth of something… well, mythical, Hollywood style. When the movie came out, there was no disappointment, Ledger’s performance was as cool as everyone expected, even more. He received the entire package of acting awards and a new movie legend was born.

But since then, The Joker’s Glasgow grin has become a bit of a pop culture icon, finding itself on plenty of pop art items. I am not talking about Heath Ledger, who might or might not become the James Dean of our generation, but solely about his Joker, who makes Jack’s Joker a Joke… (some pun intended). Not only do we see his face on T-shirts and other clothing, but it actually became a hip thing to wear Joker-type make-up, on special occasions, like weddings and funerals… just kidding, but you do see plenty of Joker faces at concerts or clubs or whatnot. Youtube is filled with “Joker make-up tutorials”.

This face of evil might just become the next big thing in iconic pop images. Take down your Don Corleone and Scarface posters, replace them with the “Why so serious ?” series. Tatoo artists, start practicing Heath Ledger’s face lines. Pretty soon, it will become one of those images that few will remember where it came from, but they’ll know it’s cool to sport it. And the truth is, it is cool. I’m hesitant in claiming that it will equal the Che mania, but there will be a few bands in the future that will reference some of Joker’s lines, some parodies very soon, Halloween masks, the make-up craze will hit the mainstream and you’ll see a buch of pop stars all looking like pretty sexy versions of The Joker doing machine-gun moves and wetting their lips after every word. Just keep an eye on the process to see it unfolding step by step in front of us… And if I’m wrong I’ll probably delete this post, so no one will know…

SEE THE SIGN OF THE COMING

This isn’t really something against The Dandy Warhols, it’s just that they have recently joined yet another new trend in the process of releasing records. We no longer get just remastered re-releases, but also remixed ones, and by that I don’t mean the seven-minutes-intro club mix of a three-minutes song. It’s about the mix of the whole album. The Dandy Warhols released Welcome to the Monkey House in 2003, the version mixed by Jeremy Weathley, apparently preferred by the band’s label at the time, Capitol. Still, the original mix was done by Russell Elavedo and this was apparently preferred by the band. Now, six years later, they are releasing this version with the title The Dandy Warhols Are Sound.

Truth be told there are plenty of differences between the two records, it’s not just that one is louder, like with remastered material. First of all, some of the songs are longer, for example The Last High or We Used To Be Friends. The track order is different, the album covers (as you can see in the images) and then, of course, there is the mixing. The songs have a new sound, but if you have listened to Welcome to the Monkey House for all these years and got acquainted with that music in that form, its 2009 “doppelgänger” seems like a collection of rough demos, missing some crucial production. Still, The Dandy Warhols have a strong enough indie following for this release to not have been in vain and they have plenty of irony to not pretend that pecuniary thoughts haven’t crossed their mind. Their official website’s greeting at the moment is: “Remember when we released The Dandy Warhols Are Sound today? And then you bought it? Good times.”

You can compare samples from the two versions here:

Welcome to the Monkey House and The Dandy Warhols Are Sound

Pearl Jam did the same with their first album, Ten, which was rereleased in 2009, both remastered and in a new mix by Brendan O’Brien, as the band thought the original mix by Tim Palmer had too much reverb on it, something that many rock bands seem to complain about when it comes to mixing. But the truth remains that it simply sucks when your favourite band says about your favourite album that is not quite what they were striving for, but, oh, the new mix, which comes in Limited edition, Deluxe edition, SuperDeluxe edition, Vinyl, iTunes edition, Wal-Mart/K-Mart edition, the gas station around the corner edition, oh, yes, that’s the real deal. And, yeah, I know no one is forcing you to buy it, but it has those two damn bonus tracks…

Ok, I need to make this as clear as possible: what you are about to read is a joke, it’s having fun with lyrics interpretation. I’ve listened for many times to When in Rome’s The Promise and at one point, the lyrics started to sound like some remorseful wifebeater’s plea/threat thing. I mean, the song starts with the following verse: “If you need a friend, don’t look to a stranger, You know in the end, I’ll always be there. And when you’re in doubt, and when you’re in danger, Take a look all around, and I’ll be there”. Now… this could be easily read as a violent husband’s calm and ironic threat to his wife. “Don’t look to a stranger” meaning don’t ask for help, it will be futile because “in the end, I’ll always be there”. Then, when she is in doubt and in danger, he says “take a look all around, and I’ll be there”, so maybe that’s exactly the reason why she is in danger. The second verse is filled with other ambiguous stuff like “Sometimes, if I shout, It’s not what’s intended”. This kinda resembles “I’m sorry, but you make me do this. You know I love you” sort of line we hear in movies about violent spouses. The chorus sounds like another shape of the same line: “I’m sorry, but I’m just thinking of the right words to say. I know they don’t sound the way I planned them to be”, which means he expresses himself in all the wrong ways. And there is no escape for the poor woman, since he promises: “if I had to walk the world, I’d make you fall for me, I promise, I promise you I will …”, which means she could run and hide, but it’ll do her no good, because he’ll walk the world to find her. This is what his promise is all about. Crazy stuff. Remember that movie, Sleeping with the Enemy ? Just imagine a montage of Julia Roberts-Patrick Bergin scenes with this song as soundtrack…

I’ll finish up by reminding all of you Napoleon Dynamite fans out there that this is joke, I like this song just as much as you do – after all, it’s by listening to it thousands of times that I came up with these hidden meanings (and I admit, afterwards, it was pretty difficult to listen to it as the love song it was meant to be). So, if you can’t take a joke, go watch an Eddie Murphy movie…

LISTEN TO THE SONG AND READ THE LYRICS HERE