Today was the birthday of the nation, which 235 years after its founding still feels rather new, and the final day for legendary Cleveland rock critic  Jane Scott, who died this morning at age 92.

Her importance as a major cultural voice cannot be overstated. She created careers, promoting Bruce Springsteen and other luminaries long before more mainstream news organs discovered them. And if you love the Ohio music scene the way some of us do, you owe a debt of gratitude to Jane Scott for spreading the word. Without her, would the rest of us have learned of The Dead Boys, Devo, and Pere Ubu? Perhaps not. If you watch any of the several good documentaries about Cleveland rock, she’s mentioned or featured in all of them. She was an inveterate champion of the new and the different, and that’s what all of the good music of the mid-70’s and 80’s was.

Most of all, as this very good obit in the LA Times notes, she was an ardent fan. In the piece, she’s quoted as saying, “What I like about rock music is that you can’t sit around, feeling sorry for yourself… the blues perpetuates your feeling of despondency. Rock gets you up on your feet, dancing, and you forget about it. The beat gets you going.”

And, if you let it, it’ll keep you going for a long time.

Last night a friend and I saw Echo & The Bunnymen at House of Blues in Anaheim. It was not a good experience. I don’t think I’ll be seeing Echo & The Bunnymen again, and whether or not I do, I doubt I’ll be seeing them or anyone else at that particular House of Blues.

Ordinarily, I like the House of Blues. Or, at least, other Houses of Blues. I’ve never had a problem with the one in West Hollywood, and last year, I saw the Psychedelic Furs at the one in Atlantic City with my friends Paul and Joe. But seriously, someone needed to call the fire marshal on this one in Anaheim last night. I’ve frequented many small, packed, sweaty clubs in my life — including the Roxy just last month for Big Audio Dynamite — but this was ludicrous. Two floors of absolutely airless rooms stuffed with throngs of people desperate to move somewhere, anywhere, even an inch. Over the course of the evening, I had accidental intimate relations with five people (four of them men, and none of them appealing). Add to this pressurized tin-can atmosphere the utter lack of air conditioning or oxygen. C’mon, House of Blues, you’re banking boatloads of cash — turn on the AC! A heavyset middle-aged guy sutured onto my right flank started texting his wife:  “Awful time. Really. Too old for this. Sweaty. Packed like sardines. No air.” I started to worry about him and wondered why he didn’t leave — but then realized again that there was no way to get out. During one of the set breaks he and his friend took advantage of a clearing in the crowd and inched their way toward the exit.

That third “set break,” by the way, was not actually a set break — it was an extended interregnum courtesy of the band’s singer, Ian McCulloch. While I have always liked the band’s music, and was eager to see them, especially with a friend in tow who is a major fan, I have to say that the vocal work of this Ian McCulloch presents not even passing similarity to his younger self. It’s not just that he can’t sing any more; he can barely talk. (The five cigarettes that he smoked during his vocals didn’t help, I’m sure.) I’m not sure if the soundman was trying to prove a point, or just curious, but a couple of times he dropped the echo from McCulloch’s voice and the results were alarming:  recall Johnny Cash’s sandblasted deathbed final vocals before his deathbed; compared to Ian McCulloch, Cash sounded like Julie Andrews. McCulloch also can’t be bothered to learn his own lyrics. And, mostly, he can’t be bothered to deliver what he and his band promised:  their first two albums, Crocodiles and Heaven Up Here, performed in their entirety. The band sounded great, especially lead guitarist Will Sergeant, but McCulloch put in a dreary first set, and an even worse second set, accidentally repeating one verse, skipping or mumbling lyrics, and, finally, stopping mid-way through the second album. After a long long long pause, the band came back with McCulloch making some apology that no one could understand, and then he phoned in the two hits they would have played as encores (The Killing Moon and Lips Like Sugar) and left. Bad evening for a good band? I don’t think so. Here’s someone else’s review of the show two nights prior at Club Nokia.  Note the criticism of McCulloch’s “singing.”

When it was over, I was just glad to be out of there. There was a surge of people to get to the door, and you could hear gasps of “Oh my God, AIR!” as people hit the cool evening breeze. One person likened the atmosphere inside to “dollar night at a whorehouse.” My friend wavered between anger and regret. I understand; he loves this band, and I don’t. On the way home, we listened to their first two albums. I think from here on out, that should be the preferred method of experiencing Echo & The Bunnymen.

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal contains an interesting piece about how music videos are undergoing a reinvention. Here’s the story. You’ll note several videos featured that I’ve embedded into this blog in recent years, including Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice,” a superb video that famously features Christopher Walken performing a gravity-defying dance throughout a hotel, and the new interactive Devo video, which allows viewers to determine the shots and click to buy featured products, which I wrote about here. (Rebecca Black gets no mention.)

The form is evolving and so is the distribution method. Yes, almost 30 years ago, my generation was glued to MTV daily in search of the latest great new music video. They were for the most part brief and memorable. I still don’t like Van Halen, but “Hot for Teacher” remains stapled to my consciousness thanks to the video, and I just wish I could cease mentally seeing Steven Tyler opining about love in an elevator. (Shudder.) When MTV transitioned into faux-reality programming for teenagers underburdened by things to do, my generation drifted away. Smart move on MTV’s part in its search to remain relevant to a younger demographic. Forty-somethings still have music videos, but now we find them on YouTube, and we find them there via Facebook. I’m glad these sometimes brilliant little musical vignettes still get produced, and I look forward to new examples that will help pave over “Love in an Elevator.”

Poly Styrene, the great and influential lead singer of X-Ray Spex, died yesterday at the age of 53.

This brief excerpt from the documentary “The Punk Years” reminds us why she was important, as a feminist pioneer for punks, and as someone predicting the forthcoming clash between consumerism and conservation.

And this shows her fronting her flat-out great band on a great song. I’m sad knowing she’s gone, but I’m glad we have this.

At age 13, Rebecca Black is a talented young girl trapped between enormous sudden fame and instant lasting ridicule. You wouldn’t think that someone who has received 120 million views of her video on YouTube, and who recently performed her song “Friday” on “The Tonight Show,” and who has done all this without the benefit of a major label or close industry connections, needs anyone to come to her defense, but I’m going to do it anyway.

First, here’s her video. If, somehow, you haven’t already seen this, you’re going to want to watch it as a point of reference. And if you ever can’t find it again, simply go to YouTube, consistently one of the five most visited websites on the planet, and start to enter Rebecca Black’s name into the search field. Here’s how far you’ll get before YouTube suggests the correct response:  one letter. That’s right, you’ll get as far as “R” before it suggests “Rebecca Black Friday.” Before “Rihanna,” “rad,” or anything else you might think would come up first. Try the same thing with Google and you get the same result:  one letter, and it’s “Rebecca Black.” Lady Gaga is just damn glad that her name doesn’t start with “r.”

Now please take a couple of minutes and pay witness to the source of her fame. Here goes.

Now that you have watched that, it’s done to you what it did to me last week: It has nested in your head, where it will stay for days on end, no matter how you try to get it out or subsume it with other, more widely respected music. Are the lyrics “good”? No. But they don’t compare badly with those of some other songs. To wit:

I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name,
It felt good to be out of the rain.
In the desert you can remember your name,
‘Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.
La, la, la la la la, la la la, la, la
La, la, la la la la, la la la, la, la

I think that that compares rather unfavorably with Rebecca Black’s lyrics:

It’s Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend, weekend
Friday, Friday
Gettin’ down on Friday
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend

The 13-year-old Miss Black’s lyrics express an emotion that many of us can relate to (which I will characterize as “Hooray, it’s Friday!”), and she does so in a way we can understand. Meanwhile, the grown man who wrote America’s “A Horse With No Name” tells us that he “met a fly with a buzz” and that “the heat was hot.” I have to think that while he was in this desert, he was ingesting mescaline.

Here is another set of lyrics which you may also recognize, also written by a grown man, one who has had a rather noteworthy career:

When I’m ridin’ round the world
And I’m doin’ this and I’m signing that
And I’m tryin’ to make some girl
Who tells me baby better come back later next week
‘Cause you see I’m on a losing streak
I can’t get no, oh no, no, no
Hey hey hey, that’s what I say

Under scrutiny, I don’t think that the lyrics of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” are any better than those of Rebecca Black. It’s a short slope, after all, from “I can’t get no, oh no, no, no
Hey hey hey, that’s what I say” to “we so awesome.” Lyrics aren’t the point, as proved so unerringly by David Byrne, whose lyrics both with and without Talking Heads serve to connote a feeling (usually anxiety and alienation) rather than denote an argument. The point of a song is the song, and lyrics are just a part of that. Not convinced? Try reading pseudo-poet Jim Morrison’s scribblings in service of The Doors; divorced from the instrumentation, they are unbearable.

While my daughter, who is only a couple months separated in age from Rebecca Black, and is thus a generational peer, will have none of this, and throws her hands over her ears whenever I play this Rebecca Black song, I know the song is every bit as infectious as “The Macarena,” which I have not heard once in 15 years and which I’ve nevertheless been unable to plunge from my consciousness. “Friday” also does not seem to me far removed from Katrina and the Waves’ “Walking on Sunshine,” which was regarded then and now fondly, and which is no less puerile. So I have to think that what we’re looking at here is age discrimination. Part of me is just glad that, for once, it’s directed at the too-young rather than the too-old.

Will Rebecca Black last? I rather doubt it, but who knows? One measurement of success is parody. “Weird Al” may not have gone after her yet (although he’s already set his sites on the Gaga; watch for the video, coming soon), but this fellow has, and thereby further proves her credibility.

This is the new video from Devo. You would think that if there were one 80’s music act that was going to sound dated 20+ years later, it would be Devo. (And, okay, Howard Jones.) But this song, released last June, sounds remarkably fresh, and this video proves their continuing embrace of new things. This video is interactive: It’s shot in 360, meaning that you can scroll left or right or up or down with your mouse to direct how the video moves, and links at the bottom allow you to click and buy related items immediately. That’s all great — and so is the song. I had the great good fortune to see Devo last year on this tour, and they were terrific. For more information on the making the video, click here, but after you watch the video.

On Thursday night, a friend and I caught Big Audio Dynamite at the Roxy, prior to their performance at Coachella. The Roxy is an ideal music venue: a small dark club stuffed with people drinking beer. Someone very helpfully recorded and uploaded this video of the band playing their #1 hit from back in the day, “Rush.” I will never get to see the Clash (Joe Strummer died 10 years ago), but I did get to see Mick Jones’ other band. And they were great.

Forget U2  and whatever they’re on about. Here’s an anthem that I personally know some of you would like to learn and sing, courtesy of my friends The Ultramods.

My favorite musical artist, David Thomas of Pere Ubu, is now taking bookings for solo concerts — in people’s living rooms. I’m preferring to think this is cool, a la Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory doing one-time plays staged for audiences totaling all of 40.

Here’s the info… and a friend and I are already figuring out how we can round up 30 people to join us.

Yesterday on KPCC, one of the local national public radio stations, I caught a nifty little profile of Van Dyke Parks, another of my preferred musicians. Parks hangs out in the best of company — Brian Wilson in his prime (and since), and David Thomas of Pere Ubu, to name just two — and I enormously appreciate his influence wherever he spreads it.

Here’s the transcript of the profile, which ends with the writer putting out the little paper sailboat that perhaps Van Dyke Parks might tour with his (only now) acclaimed album, “Song Cycle.” Yes, here’s hoping.

This quote from the Parks suggests why I’ve always been interested in him:

“We’re still learning not to laugh at funerals,” said Parks. “Especially those of people who are leaving us something. We are supposed to cry. But the arts demands something else, often. Sometimes they suggest uncertainty.” It’s that uncertainty in music — discord, contrapuntalism,”mistakes,” and other elements that allow the music to break free of rigid formal demands — that’s interesting. Witness the  lyrics Parks supplies for the Beach Boys’ “Surf’s Up”:

A diamond necklace played the pawn
Hand in hand some drummed along, oh
To a handsome man and baton
A blind class aristocracy
Back through the op’ra glass you see
The pit and the pendulum drawn
Columnated ruins domino

Canvass the town and brush the backdrop
Are you sleeping?

Hung velvet overtaken me
Dim chandelier awaken me
To a song dissolved in the dawn
The music hall a costly bow
The music all is lost for now
To a muted trumperter swan
Columnated ruins domino

I don’t care that they don’t make “sense” or that Mike Love remains outraged. The sonic shape of the words demands the elegaic reading given them in the Beach Boys’ recording.  The surf’s up, and something (youthful innocence?) is washing away:

Surf’s Up
Aboard a tidal wave
Come about hard and join
The young and often spring you gave
I heard the word
Wonderful thing
A children’s song

I hope I get the chance to see Van Dyke Parks play live.