TOMORROW ON THE CATHOLIC CHANNEL: THE SONGS OF AIMEE MANN

For those of you who are new to No Expiration, once a month I go on SIRIUS XM's The Catholic Channel's Busted Halo Show on SIRIUS channel 159 and XM channel 117.  Tune in at 7:20 pm ET (for a free online trial subscription, go to www.sirius.com/freetrial). Thursday nights are "Faith and Culture Thursdays," and we usually discuss the music of a specific artist, and tomorrow night we'll be talking about one of my favorite artists of all time, Aimee Mann.

Ms. Mann might find it odd that her music is being discussed in that forum, but I feel that her songs have a really strong moral code. She comes off as a very strong and together person, but she seems to be surrounded by very flawed characters with a variety of problems.  Paul Thomas Anderson's film Magnolia, which I watched over the weekend preparing for the Busted Halo show, was inspired by a line in Aimee Mann's song "Deathly." In so many songs, she sings about these characters.  You don't get the impression that these people can take advantage of her, she doesn't seem like an "enabler." But she doesn't reject anyone either, and she doesn't judge them. Rather, she seems to give hard advice, the advice that only someone with compassion would bother to give.  That's why I guess I felt she fit in on the show. It's difficult to forgive.  It's easier to just hold a grudge.  But to try and understand other people's problems and why they are the way they are, that's something we should all be able to do, and something religion should help us to do.

There are a lot of parts of Magnolia that stick out to me.  But one big one is towards the end where John C. Reilly's character, pretending he is being interviewed for a "COPS" type show, says, "Sometimes people need a little help. Sometimes people need to be forgiven. And sometimes they need to go to jail." There's a lot of humanity and realism in that statement. Sometimes you can help people if you try.  And sometimes you can't help them. That is sort of at the core of Magnolia, and in a lot of ways, it is at the core of many of Aimee Mann's songs.

Agree?  Disagree?  Tune in tomorrow and call in with your opinions.

TOMORROW ON OUTQ: THE BRITISH INVASION AND R&B

UPDATE: I'm not going to be on OutQ today, due to a number of other guests. So I'll do an extended version of my weekly thing next week. Sorry everyone, I just found out! Tomorrow night, however, I will be on The Catholic Channel, and I'll post more about that later on.

For those of you who are new to No Expiration, every Wednesday morning at 9 am ET, I go on the SIRIUS XM channel OutQ to talk about music on The Morning Jolt with Larry Flick. Tomorrow I will talk about the "British Invasion" of the early 1960's, and the American R&B of that era, and the effects they still have today. It's something I love to talk about: how music can bring together different cultures, and that was definitely happening in the early '60s. 

First, I'll talk about The Kinks' late founding bass player Pete Quaife. He passed away last week. The Kinks were kind of seen as the quintessential British band, and they were. But on their first album, they were covering Chuck Berry and blues and R&B artists. It's still amazing to me: there was no internet in the early '60s: the fact that white British kids were going crazy over American artists like Chuck and Muddy Waters - who many American kids didn't know about, or didn't appreciate, it's pretty amazing.

After that, I'm going to talk about The TAMI Show DVD. The TAMI Show was a concert film recorded October 28 and 29 of 1964 and was released in December of that year. The concert featured performances by James Brown, The Rolling Stones, Marvin Gaye, Lesley Gore, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, Diana Ross & The Supremes, Chuck Berry and The Beach Boys among others. It was when desegregation was still a relatively new concept. The show was mainly attended by white kids, but there were black kids too, and I bet this made lots of people nervous. You can hear the white girls going crazy throughout the entire performance, especially when James Brown is on. Brown's TAMI performance is legendary, he blew everyone away. The Rolling Stones were pretty badass, and the Motown artists were excellent, but James was by far the best. Anyway, this DVD costs like $15 and it's one of the best things I've ever seen. I can't say enough about how awesome it is, just trust me.

It's been a year since Michael Jackson died. Before he was The King Of Pop, he was the star of a great Motown band, The Jackson 5. A newly released live album, Live At The Forum, recorded at the L.A. Forum in 1970 and 1972. I brought in their cover of Traffic's "Feelin' Alright."

One British rocker who was profoundly influenced by the music of 1964 is Paul Weller. In the late '70s and early '80s, he fronted a legendary band called The Jam, who were influenced by The Who and The Kinks, but only through their mod periods. Not only The Who and The Kinks, but their American R&B influences, and when they moved away from that, I think he moved on. In the '80s, he formed a new band, Style Council, who were very influenced by the very synth-heavy American R&B of that era. He's been solo since the '90s, and done some of the best music of his career in that time. Some say that his latest album, Wake Up The Nation, is his finest. Larry Flick has already said that it is his favorite album of 2010.

Finally, Bettye Lavette. Last year, I said that her 2005 album I've Got My Own Hell To Raise was one of the most underrated albums of the '00s. I'll stand by that: the album saw her covering classic songs from great female songwriters. Her new album, Interpretations, sees her covering Britsh rock artists, most of whom started in the '60s, including The Beatles (individually and collectively), The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. It's good, I don't love it as much as I've Got My Own Hell To Raise, but it's a cool album.

One album that I wanted to discuss, but I just won't have time, is the newly released Otis Redding collection Live On The Sunset Strip. If I don't talk about it on OutQ at some point, I will at least write about it here.

MOTOWN ON THE TAMI SHOW

Motown's slogan was "The Sound Of Young America." I think that classic Motown records still make people feel young, but here are some videos from when their music really did appeal to young folks (and it's a glimpse of when the artists themselves were still young!). Check out these performances by Marvin Gaye and Diana Ross and The Supremes (I couldn't find any videos online of Smokey Robinson and The Miracles from The TAMI show, but they played also).

THE ROLLING STONES ON THE TAMI SHOW

A couple of days ago, I was digging listening to The Rolling Stones' early 1970s-era stuff via the Exile On Main Street reissue and the Stones In Exile documentary DVD. They were a very different band from a few years earlier, when they were still up-and-coming and featured Brian Jones as the guitarist (replaced in the Exile-era by Mick Taylor). You get a glimpse of the band on the recently released TAMI Show DVD, where they performed at a concert that also featured James Brown, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, Diana Ross & The Supremes, Chuck Berry and The Beach Boys, among others. The Stones' performance is pretty incredible (although they got blown away by James Brown, who performed before them - Keith Richards said going on after him was the biggest mistake the band ever made). But check it out, here's The Stones from the TAMI show doing "It's All Over Now."

SHOCK ROCK 101: SCREAMING LORD SUTCH AND THE SAVAGES

I've heard of Screaming Lord Sutch and The Savages, but didn't know much about them. I just read a pretty big feature on them in a recent issue of the great British music mag Mojo. Lord Sutch was a big influence on Arthur Brown, of the band The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, and also Alice Cooper... and via Alice Cooper, pretty much every other shocking rocker who followed.

Some musicians who did time in The Savages include: Jeff Beck, Ritchie Blackmore of Deep Purple, John Bonham, Jimmy Page, Viv Prince of The Pretty Things, Mick Waller of The Jeff Beck Group, Mitch Mitchell of The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Nicky Hopkins, among others. So, I'm going to search out some of his music, but for now, check out this video of "Jack The Ripper."

He has a pretty interesting and sad story: he was also involved in politics, and suffered from depression, taking his own life in 1999. Read a tribute to Sutch from his former drummer Carlo Little (who was in an early version of The Stones, and was replaced by Charlie Watts) here.

AIMEE MANN AND MAGNOLIA

It's hard to believe that Paul Thomas Anderson's film Magnolia came out ten years ago. I remember being curious about it because I loved his prior film, Boogie Nights, and this one featured some of the same great actors, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, William H. Macy and the lovely Julianne Moore. And Tom Cruise was in it as a member of an ensemble cast. But the video for Aimee Mann's "Save Me" which included most of the cast really got my interest - at the time I was working at MTV2, and we played that video often.

Anderson knew Aimee because her husband, Michael Penn, scored Boogie Nights and also made a cameo in it (as the guy who owned the studio that Marky Mark and John C. Reilly cut their album in). At the time, she was going through well-documented issues with her label, Interscope, who was enjoying great success with music by the likes of Eminem and Fred Durst. They weren't sure how to market her,  and didn't hear a single on her new set of songs.  One of those songs, "Deathly," included the line "Now that I've met you, would you object to never seeing each other again?" Paul Thomas Anderson heard that line, which inspired one character named Claudia, and he started writing the rest of the film from there. He wrote about this in the liner notes to the Magnolia soundtrack.

The film also provided Aimee's music a better vehicle than Interscope ever could, not only did it find her audience, but it gave her a bigger audience than ever, and helped her launch the next phase of her career as a truly independent artist (she owns her own label, SuperEgo Records). In some ways, her story is a bit Magnolia-like.  Going through crap with at least three major labels for years led to greater popularity as an independent artist.

I was one of the people who became a fan due to Magnolia. I liked some of her old songs, but I wasn't a huge fan, and this film and soundtrack changed that. Her music figured pretty heavily into the film, not just "Deathly" and "Save Me" but also "Momentum" and "Wise Up," which was used in a scene where different characters sang along with it (I remember lots of the Cruise fans in the theater weren't going along with the premise).  I loved that the songs described people who you might say were "damaged," but did so without really judging them  - which is kind of what Anderson did in the film.  Over the last decade, I've listened to her music as much as anyone else's and I'm always struck by that.  She doesn't seem like someone you could take advantage or, she's not an "enabler," in psychological terms. She doesn't suffer fools lightly (particularly if they work at major record labels!).  But she also doesn't judge, and sort of has hope for characters/people no matter what their flaws are. I find that noble, and often try to be more like that. I'm going to be talking about Aimee Thursday night on The Catholic Channel.  I haven't selected which songs yet, but I'm sure at least one will be from Magnolia.

Here's the video for "Save Me":

STONES IN EXILE DVD

I've got to say, I've really been digging listening to The Rolling Stones' classic Exile On Main Street over and over since the reissue came out. Tonight I watched Stones In Exile, the documentary about the album.

The doc was pretty cool, it was interesting to see footage of the era.  But you know Mick Jagger really isn't too into talking about it (in a recent interview he said he didn't know the point of it, other than getting paid, or something like that), and Charlie Watts really really isn't into talking about it. Keith Richards is cool with talking about whatever, but he didn't have any incredible insight, nor did former members Mick Taylor and Bill Wyman, although it was cool to see and hear them in the doc. My favorite parts were the interview segments with Bobby Keys, who played sax on the album (and still plays on their records and tours today). But I enjoyed the doc.

What I loved about the DVD though, was a bonus feature with extended interviews with "Exile fans": Jack White, Sheryl Crow, Liz Phair, will.i.am and Caleb Followill from Kings Of Leon, as well as Martin Scorsese and Don Was.   I used to do interviews with rock stars, and I often was more interested in talking about things other than themselves - especially music that really, really meant a lot to them. Whoever did these interviews, I was definitely envious of, because these were the types of conversations I loved, back in the day. It was fascinating to see what Exile meant to these folks: to Jack White, it was an album that could confound rock critics, they could no longer box the Stones in. To Sheryl Crow, it was how they looked at the place where she was from, the south. will.i.am is one of the most proudly modern and commercial artists - but he likes the fact that it is an entire body of work, and part of a greater continuum of work, and one that isn't reliant on having hit singles.  It's the "cool" album to like, because it isn't as well known. Followill, the son of a preacher man, thought it sounded like the devil's music, and loved it. Don Was, an artist and producer (who has produced The Stones' records of the past 15 years) can't figure out what is on the essence of the album (which I'm sure some critics will have field day with).  And Liz Phair, as her fans know, has a pretty complex relationship with this particular record. Maybe the doc will get some Stones fans to pick up her debut, the classic Exile In Guyville. I know Mick, Keith and Charlie exec-produced the doc, but I would think that they might be weirded out by all of the things that everybody said about the album - not just Liz (but especially Liz!).

A cynic could say that they selected the artists they interviewed for marketing purposes, but I take a different point of view.  Through these interviews, you really see why the album, and the band is so relevant today. I give the main doc a B but this feature an A.