SCARBOROUGH! – IOTW Report

SCARBOROUGH!

Sunday, 16 July 2017, 16:30 BFH Uncategorized 33

I’m going to give Joe Scarborough, and his music, the “on the nose review”-

Scarborough: Fair.

For a political pundit it’s real good, but I think Joe wants us to take him seriously as an artist, and through that lens, his music is painfully derivative. Each track is a different replicant, a cheap replicant, from different eras and genres. If it was a greatest hits album spanning 3 decades, okay. But this is supposed to be a coherent musical statement in the here and now, and it’s like karaoke night on The Hill.

Derivative isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you’re deriving from one or two sources and then you put your unique stamp on it and follow through with it until you own it.

Muse did that with Radiohead. At first I laughed at Muse for being such copycats, but they’ve managed to wrestle away a bit of Radiohead’s soul and have squatted on it to great effect.

Scarborough derivativeness is amateur hour, where you take a little from just about everywhere, never really quite forming your own sound. I swear some of it sounds like the incidental music used for a Starsky and Hutch car chase laid over a Pete Yorn riff.

You’ll get bits of Squeeze (that’s where you do a two-track vocal where the extreme bass sings the root and the higher pitch sings a harmony, which, in effect, becomes the root, if that makes sense) duct-taped awkwardly to Fountains of Wayne meets Lou Reed with SCARBOROUGH’S Mentos Breath Mint horn section, which manages to make an appearance on every song whether it’s warranted or not. And on 99.99% of his songs, they aren’t warranted. They feel like gate-crashers rather than song enhancers.

And the key changes, my God, the key changes. Barry Manilow said, “enough!”

I’m not going to claim that it’s all rancid. It’s not. The song linked below is pretty good. It’s catchy. It’s Cars meets Bowie meets Flock of Seagulls meets video game theme song. And that’s his undoing. To many “meets.”

“Scarbys. He’s got the meets!”

If you’re keeping score-

For a Political Pundit Musician- Very, very Good. His vocals benefit greatly from studio enhancements. (Live he is abysmal.)

For An Artist – Less than fair.

At least we can be thankful that Mika doesn’t make any cameo appearances, playing a cowbell or screaming like a banshee.

Oh wait. Behold! Mika Ono-

Do we have to review his music VIDEOS now?

Okay, this I can say is RANCID.

It’s very, very, very, very much like a college student project. Seems deep, and it is. It’s a deep pile of bullshit.

Am I being harsh?

Well, Joe says Trump isn’t very presidential.

I say Joe is musidential. And that’s not a compliment.

 

Are you going to Scarborough Hair?

 

 

33 Comments on SCARBOROUGH!

  1. Give me Big Mama Thornton, in a powder blue Elvis type jump suit with a huge featheredTexas style stetson, and then I raise you with some Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee….You don’t want to see the flop….

  5. THE GOP MAKES A GOOD TRADE: Joe Scarborough for Kid Rock.

    The contrast between the two is striking.

    Scarborough is at home in Washington. Kid Rock lives in Detroit.

    Joe curries favor with coastal elites. Kid Rock is at home in the middle of the country. And it’s no wonder: He’s travelled the country by bus and minivan on more than 25 tours with legends like Lynyrd Skynyrd and David Allen Coe. . . .

    Perhaps most striking is the music. Kid Rock plays straightforward American rock and roll. Scarborough sings Britpop retreads steeped in the sort of hipster self-regard that is unbecoming in a 20-year-old student at a small liberal arts college let alone in a middle-aged man.

    Like I said, a good trade.

    90 Posted at 10:17 am by Glenn Reynolds

  6. Joe Scarborough. Hmmm. Name sounds vaguely familiar. Used to be a republican congressman.

    Which reminds me. Jason chaffetz resigned from congress abruptly before his term was complete so he could return to Utah to be with his young family. Except I see him in NYC doing the 5pm Fox News show. Something odd going on there.

  8. Mika Lewinsky can turn any man. Devil with the blue dress on.

    Honestly, I care more about the life of the guy who services my HVAC biannually than any of these people.
    At least he knows how to do something useful.

  11. From Fur: “bits of Squeeze (that’s where you do a two-track vocal where the extreme bass sings the root and the higher pitch sings a harmony, which, in effect, becomes the root, if that makes sense) duct-taped awkwardly to Fountains of Wayne meets Lou Reed with SCARBOROUGH’S Mentos Breath Mint horn section,…”

    At this point, you have shed me like a grasshopper on the windshield as you accelerate through sixty MPH.

    Your analysis may be spot on. I don’t know.

    Clearly, you are speaking to a segment of audiophiles I am not a part of. Were I less self assured (and I assure you I ain’t) I’d be smarting at you talking over my head in an attempt to put my non-listening, non-critical, non- clued into coolness ass into the back pasture of musical critique ineptness.

    But, I think you just said this shit borrows or steals from others and don’t take the wrinkles out of your dick when you listen.

    Then again, if not for Kate Bush, I can point to several singers would never have had a job.

  12. So I made it to 20 seconds in the video. Dodge truck with an American Flag, some body shooting an AR15, and then weird mayhem. I assume since he lumped the Truck Flag and Gun in with the rest of the crap he doesn’t approve of them. Communist bastard.

  13. I just want to see Mika do hardcore, triple-triple x, real dirty, real skanky, drugged up, glassy eyed, thousand mile stare, Porno movies.

  17. Actually the song and video and not terrible thanks to the over-effects and autotune on Joe’s voice. The trouble with Joe is that he takes his music WAY too serious. I don’t think anyone else (except Mika) does.

  20. Lazlo used to be in the Music Biz.
    I shall give my review:
    Crap,
    Just like Hilary’s campaign.
    Well oiled mechanisms, coupled to proven hooks, but lacking in a central theme, leaving you drifting in a sea talented production, like a rudderless boat because there is no real purpose for existing.
    All the right depth, all contrived, all stunningly soulless.
    Joe, I Knew Buckaroo Banzai, and You Sir, are no Buckaroo Banzai

  21. OK. This qualifies as threadjacking and I apologize in advance. Watched a documentary about Stevie Ray Vaughn today. Struggled hard to find his niche, but did you know that David Bowie kind of discovered him?
    And did you know that Bowie’s song Let’s Dance featured him on lead guitar. I was shocked.

    Every day I learn something new.

  23. Mika Does a Cameo in there ! Listen Close, She’s Playing the Russian Clitoris in a Minor Key ! Who can Blame her, with Joe and His Jimmy Nuetron Plastic Hair !

  31. What a dweeb. He is what, 60, 65 years old? A little too late to decide to play at being a musician. It’s embarrassing to watch. My dog licking its nut sack has more self awareness than this fart cupping moron. On the plus side, I’m pretty sure that no interns had their skulls crushed in the making of this video. Which is more than one can say about his foray into playing at being a congressman.

  32. Everybody is missing the jealous psychology here.
    There’s only one thing close, equivalent or better than the elusive job of the President of the United States and that’s being a Rock Star.
    Trump happens to be BOTH!

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