Dan Baird "I Love You Period"

This week we're talking about an artist who has the rare distinction of having been a one-hit wonder twice...Dan Baird.

Who is Dan Baird you might ask? If the name might not ring a bell, perhaps his first band will--The Georgia Satellites. A Southern Rock group out of Atlanta who owed as much to the The Faces Ronnie Lane and Ron Wood as Skynyrd's Ronnie Van Zant, the Satellites formed in the early '80s and made several great--if decidedly uneven albums--before breaking up before the end of the decade.

But not before they left their mark on the decade with the novelty hit "Keep Your Hands to Yourself"--a tongue-in-cheek Chuck Berry-esque number that stood out from the monster ballads and synth-driven pop of Top 40 radio in 1986.

The song concerns a man lamenting the words of his "cruel" virginal girlfriend who tells him "the story 'bout free milk and a cow" and puts her foot down when it comes to hanky panky: "and she said no huggin' no kissin' until I get a wedding vow/my honey my baby don't put my love upon no shelf/she said don't hand me no lines and keep your hands to yourself."

Now you remember? You should, cause the song hit #2 on the Billboards.

That gap-toothed front man being forced into a literal shotgun wedding is Mr. Dan Baird. As I mentioned, the song was labeled a novelty hit, and to an extent it was, but not from the Satellites' point of view. That's just what they did. They were a rock n' roll band in the classic style--their songs are about girls, drinking, and girls. There's no pretense here. And when you think about it, a song about a girl who won't give up the goods--no matter how tongue-in-cheek--isn't really that much more jokey than Rod Stewart's "Lost Paraguayos" in which the singer attempts (unsuccessfully) to fend off the advances of an underage girl. Maybe the novelty aspect was that it was a kick-ass rock n' roll song in an era where that kind of thing barely existed without a big dollop of irony.

After three albums, and a couple of non-starter singles (check out the fantastic "Battleship Chains") the Satellites' original lineup called it quits in 1989. Soon after, Baird announced plans to continue as a solo artist. As the lead singer and songwriter for the group it wasn't surprising that Baird went solo, but the question was--if Baird essentially was the Satellites, what would there be to differentiate his solo work from his work with that band?

The answer: not much. But who cares?

The problem with the Satellites' wasn't the songwriting, or even the playing--it was the energy. The energy from their live shows simply couldn't be caught on tape, and in turn their recordings came off as flat. Working to correct that, Baird teamed up with producers Brendan O'Brien and Rick Rubin and hired a crackerjack group of sessions players (including Benmont Tench of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers). What came out was 1991's Love Songs for the Hearing Impaired--an album that was far more consistent than most of the Satellites' output, even if it didn't quite reach the same heights as their debut.

Released on Rubin's Def American (later just American), the album featured more of Baird's patented wink-wink, nudge-nudge, say no more lyrics and big helping of barroom ready blues rock. What Baird lacks in originality, he makes up for by crafting songs that are just plain fun. They're made for the jukebox--specifically for a drunken barroom singalong (or maybe a drunken ride down a country road in your pickup--your choice). That's not to say they're generic--they're far from it. Sure, Baird is playing riffs and chord changes that have been played a million times before, and maybe more skillfully, but he's a true original--turning blues-rock on its head and pushing it to the limits while still tipping his hat to the greats.

The first single featured possibly the most tongue-in-cheek lyrics of Baird's career. No doubt sensing another chance at a novelty hit, Baird pumped out "I Love You Period," a song that's at first cringe inducing--until you get it stuck in your head and find yourself singing along before the chorus even comes around the second time. It's a funny concept--a kid writes a love letter to his teacher (who he always wanted to impress, but would mentally undress), who then critiques the letter for punctuation. The chorus is the teacher explaining what corrections should be made to the letter:

I love you period
Do you love me question mark?
Please, please exclamation point
I wanna hold you in parentheses

The kid in the song then goes on to high school, where he has trouble meeting girls. But when he remembers what the teacher told him, he becomes something of a Casanova (or Cyrano De Bergerac, at least) writing letters to girls with correct punctuation and telling them the chorus once more--which the narrator discovers is better than Spanish Fly.

The song was a hit--if only a minor one--reaching #14 on Top 40, #26 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #5 on the Mainstream Rock Charts. Luckily, it also featured one of those "guy walks down the highway playing his guitar" videos that seemed so popular in the early '90s. Here it seems the director was instructed to make Baird's David Letterman-esque gap-tooth something of a trademark for the man, perhaps in hopes that Baird would start a gap-tooth craze wherein kids would buy prosthetic toy gap-teeth and maybe even spur people to undergo controversial dental work. I can see it now: "Gimme 'The Baird,' Doc."

But back to the music. If I may go off on a small tangent--here's the problem with novelty songs: they're nearly impossible to follow up.

Take Beck's "Loser." A complete novelty song--a good one, no doubt, but still a novelty song. What was the next single? "Pay No Mind"? "Snoozer"? Either of those ring a bell? Probably not, and they shouldn't, because "Where It's At" was the first true follow up--a whole two years later. He had to wait until his next album, Odelay, on which he didn't have one song that sounded even close to his hit. Genius! The guy knew he had talent, and knew that he had been and always would be more than one novelty song, so he didn't even attempt to go back to that well--he moved forward, and he was successful. Of course, it didn't hurt that he had an insane amount of talent, but had he not signed to a major label, he might still be part one-hit wonder and part underground phenomenon (which was how he'd started).

The problem with novelty songs is that the people appreciate the actual novelty. Not the songwriting. Not the musicianship. Not necessarily the sound (unless it's sung in a strange voice, a la "Disco Duck")--though in Baird's case, that may have been part of the novelty. Usually, all of the above are involved, but it's really the lyrics that send it over the top. "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" is another example--if it weren't for the lyrics, that song would be just another soft-rock ditty. But it made people laugh, and they remembered it and it's still played endlessly.

Novelty songs aren't as popular as they used to be--and that's probably because they've been usurped by YouTube and viral music videos. Hell, Andy Samberg has practically built a career off viral videos (and a damn good one)--his digital shorts are really just music videos for novelty songs. But even most viral videos are one-hit wonders. For example, I do not expect Tay Zonday to be the next Bob Dylan (please prove me wrong, Tay!). Samberg is lucky enough to have a venue like SNL that shows more of his work to a massive audience. Had "Lazy Sunday" come out a decade ago on the radio, that might have been it for Samberg. We might not have ever heard "Dick in a Box" or "Jizz in My Pants."

Think, for a minute, about a world without "Dick in a Box"--on second thought, don't. It's too painful.

With that in mind, we check out Baird's follow-up, "The One I Am," the lead-track off the album.

Musically, it's every bit as rockin' and exciting with its crunchy riffs and call and response vocals. In fact, it's probably a better song. It doesn't try so hard to be cute and clever, it just plain rocks. And the lyrics aren't lacking either with gems like: ""I can't afford to buy you no four star dinner/but by god, my love's a winner." That's gold, Jerry, gold. But it still isn't "I Love You Period"--and while that was mostly good news for listeners who wanted the real Baird and not just another jokey song, it was bad news for Baird. While the song did a strong #13 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks, it didn't crack the Billboards or Top 40.

Baird followed up his debut with a five-year long break. When he finally did release an album, 1996's Buffalo Nickel, the album tanked. The Georgia Satellites reformed the same year without Baird. Perhaps in response, Baird started a new band with two other more then capable songwriters to form The Yayhoos. The band toured behind Baird's album and in 2001, released Fear Not the Obvious, followed by Put the Hammer Down in 2006. Around this time, Baird also began producing and guesting on other musicians' recordings.

In 2007, Baird introduced a new band in his newly adopted home town of Nashville. Made up of players from various bands, including Georgia Satellites and Yayhoos, the band may be Baird's best yet. In 2008, Dan Baird & Homemade Sin released their eponymous debut to critical acclaim, along with an outtakes compilation, Out of Mothballs.

Here's the group playing "I Love You Period" last year at the Exit/In in Nashville. Clearly, Baird is continuing on his one-man mission to preserve kick-ass rock n' roll.

THE FIRST SINGLE: B
THE SECOND SINGLE: B+

Download: Dan Baird - I Love You Period
Download: Dan Baird - The One I Am

Visit Dan's MySpace
Visit Dan Baird & Homemade Sin

BoDeans

Most bands--no matter how long they've been around--get one shot at the big time. Seniority doesn't mean squat in the music business--you're only as good as your last charting single.

Take the BoDeans. The band was named "Best New American Band" by Rolling Stone in 1987, following the release of their second album. Yet they didn't have a hit until 1995--and even then, it was a complete fluke, and turned out to be their first and last brush with the big time.

The beginnings of the BoDeans reach back to 1979, when singers/songwriters/guitarists Sam Llanas and Kurt Neumann started playing together in their hometown of Waukesha, Wisconsin while still in high school. The band later added a drummer and bassist and in 1985, signed to Slash Records, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. and entered the studio with famed producer T-Bone Burnett (Counting Crows, The Wallflowers). The debut, Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams was released in 1986.

Their sophomore effort, 1987's Outside Looking In managed to reach a broader audience. With the Talking Heads' Jerry Harrison (Live, Crash Test Dummies) at the helm, the band broke into the big time, opening for U2 and breaking into the Top 100 best sellers album charts.

Home and Black and White followed in 1989 and 1991 respectively and were met with mixed reviews, but it would be 1993's Go Slow Down that would eventually help break the band to mainstream pop radio--eventually being a key word here. Hooking up once again with producer T-Bone Burnett, the group decided to return to a more acoustic folk-rock sound. The album was released in October of 1993, and, while being critically acclaimed on its initial release, didn't fare much better than their previous works commercially.

The single may have had something to do with it. On an album filled with great pop-rock songs, the band released "Feed the Fire," a standard rock song that has "'90s alternative" written all over it. Pained howls, tremolo-ed backing vocals, a coda repeated to the point of annoyance. It's what I call "Collective Soul rock"--music that sounds like a Seattle band and hits all the right notes a Seattle band might, but ultimately is lacking. It's made by guys who don't get it--which isn't good, since, in my opinion, that type of Seattle rock--with a few exceptions--is pretty damn boring to begin with. "Fire" isn't a bad song, but it sounds more like a filler track than a hit single, and it's far from being the best representation of the album.

But a funny thing happened--two and a half years after the release of Go Slow Down, the producers of the uber-'90s Fox primetime soap Party of Five selected the lead track, "Closer to Free," for the show's theme song.

NOTE : Matthew Fox's awesomely floppy hair.
Why he doesn't sport that on Lost, I will never know.

"Closer to Free" was a driving, jangly pop song in a similar vein to '80s R.E.M. and was indicative of other folk-based college rock that became popular in the post-grunge rock scene (Hootie and the Blowfish, Blues Traveler, etc.). Slash Records released the song as a single--there had never been a follow up to "Feed the Fire"--and thanks in no small part to its weekly presence on the show, the song became a hit on the Billboard Hot 100 (#16), Top 40 Mainstream (#6) and Adult Contemporary Top 40 (#3)--nearly three years after the album's release. Oddly enough, it didn't chart on either the Modern Rock charts or the Mainstream Rock charts, where the band had charted five times before.

To capitalize on the success of "Closer to Free," the BoDeans headed back into the studio and released Blend in 1996, led by the single "Hurt By Love." "Hurt" is a fine ballad, and sounds a bit like a slowed down version of "Closer." With its jangly guitars and emotional vocals, it could easily pass for a Gin Blossoms song. The problem was, the popularity of that brand of catchy college rock was starting to fade (except from colleges, where the BoDeans continue to do a business). Had the record company given the BoDeans the same kind of push even a year earlier, their success might have had a chance to continue. The song was a minor hit on Top 40 (#39) and the AC Top 40 (#33). It is their last charting single to date.

In the late 90s, Neumann and Llanas decided to take a break and make time for solo projects. Their next release wasn't until 2001--a greatest hits compilation called Slash and Burn followed two years later by The Leftovers, a rarities comp. During this time they also found themselves in a three year long court battle over their contract with Warner Bros. Their next album, Resolution, wasn't until 2004--a full eight years after Blend. It was released on the independent label Rounder.

2005 saw the release of a 2-disc live album and DVD, Homebrewed: Live from the Pabst--fittingly, the set on the live disc ends with "Closer to Free."

The band continues on--touring occasionally, usually using an acoustic set up after losing their upteenth drummer (shades of Spinal Tap--lets hope it wasn't spontaneous combustion). They released their latest album, Still, in 2008.

I think it's fitting to end this post with the opening of Party of Five's mercifully short-lived spin-off 1999's Time of Your Life which featured the BoDeans covering The Beatles' "I've Just Seen a Face."


Now if someone could just tell me what the hell a BoDean is, we'd be all set.

FIRST SINGLE ("Closer to Free"): A-
SECOND SINGLE ("Hurt By Love"): C+
Random Single: ("Feed the Fire"): C

Download: BoDeans - "Closer to Free"
Download: BoDeans - "Hurt By Love"
Download: BoDeans - "Feed the Fire"

Visit Bodeans.com and buy BoDeans stuff

The Cardigans

One-hit wonders come in so many forms. For some, it's the only decent song they ever wrote. For others, it's just the only one that hit big.

But for a band like the Cardigans, it's a different story. The Cardigans are a Swedish band who have been making music since 1992, and have had continual success before and after their big U.S. hit "Lovefool" in the UK and other non-English speaking European countries like Sweden, France, Norway and Germany. We in the U.S. usually measure the success of a band by how big they are in our country, which is hard not to do when you see that, for instance, '80s rockers Night Ranger sell out stadiums in Japan. But that line of thinking causes us to miss out on a lot of great music.

The Cardigans came together when two heavy metal musicians, Peter Svensson and Magnus Sveningsson decided to record a pop demo with singer Nina Persson--who, with her petite frame and steely blue eyes, is/was one of the most beautiful women to emerge in rock n' roll since Deborah Harry. In 1994, the group released their debut, Emmerdale, and their first single "Rise & Shine," which would go on to become a hit on Swedish radio. The group followed it up with Life, which sold over a million copies worldwide and went platinum...in Japan.

Around this time, U.S. labels began to take notice of the international sensation that The Cardigans had become. The group signed to Mercury Records and released 1996's The First Band on the Moon. Persson's lyrics delved into darker places than their previous recordings, dealing with heartbreak and infidelity. Thanks in part to the first single "Lovefool," the album went platinum in Japan in record breaking time and achieved gold status in the U.S.

"Lovefool" is a feather-light pop ditty with a melody and beat so catchy, it has since been used to comedic effect as the prototypical song that can get stuck in your head after uttering only a few lines of its bubblegum chorus (see The Office (US) Season 3, "The Initiation"). Love me, love me, say that you love me...See? it's stuck in your head already.

The song's success was buoyed by its appearence on the highly successful William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet soundtrack. And like so many other one-hit wonders of the '90s, the band appeared on Beverly Hills 90210, all but cementing their status as one-hit wonders.

The song also birthed two different videos--a disturbingly funny and sexual one for European audiences and a more cartoony, MTV friendly one for U.S. audiences. The European version features a group of men (who I assume are the male members of the band) entering a warehouse that turns out to be a brothel offering sometimes garishly made up middle aged prostitutes. The men all look extremely bored as the hookers grind in their face. Off to the side, the video cuts between one of the men is listening to a tape made by Nina Persson, and Persson herself recording the tape (which is made up of the lyrics). At the end of the tape, the man appears to be crying while one of the hookers grinds on him, that is until Persson enters the brothel and the two are reunited at last. It's as weird as it sounds, and probably weirder. This one is superior for many reasons, not the least of which is that Nina Persson looks like some beautiful Nordic pixie goddess that will have you scrambling on Priceline for a ticket to Sweden (not that she looks bad in the U.S. version, but there's just something about her in this one...).


The second one is the one you always saw on TV if you live in America, the band stuck in a bottle that was passed out to sea by a castaway. This one was often shown with clips from Romeo + Juliet interspersed throughout.


"Lovefool" charted in practically every country on God's green goodness:
Sweden - #15
Australia - #11
Austria - #7
France - #31
Germany - #6
Latvia - #2
Switzerland - #22
UK - #21 (rerelease hit #2 in 1997)

And of course, in the U.S. it was #1 on the Billboards with a bullet. And when a band has known that high a level of international fame, it's nearly impossible to follow up--but as usual, they tried.

"Been It" was the follow up single. And what can you say? It's far more in line with the rest of the album and the band's other material than the lite-pop of "Lovefool." It's a beautifully catchy pop-rock song, though admittedly, it isn't as immediately toothache inducing as the hit. It's a little more rockin' (okay a lot more rockin', with a pretty sweet little riff to boot), a little less poppy and the lyrics couldn't have helped:

I've been your mother, I've been your father
who can ask for more
I've been your sister, I've been your mistress
maybe I was your whore
who can ask for more

Not the stuff pop hits are usually made of, Nina.

"Been It" only reached #72 on the Billboards U.S. and #56 in the UK . This is one of those things where there's seemingly no rhyme or reason to it, except that the song was so overplayed at the time that people came to associate The Cardigans with "Lovefool" and only "Lovefool." It was the last Cardigans single to chart on the Hot 100 in the U.S.


No matter though, the band went on to make great music and experienced continued success in Britain, Japan and other countries outside the U.S. (they've charted nearly a dozen times in the UK since "Lovefool"). Their follow up album, 1998's Gran Turismo, outsold First Band on the Moon by a half a million copies, though it only made it to #151 in the US. The album did birth one hit on the Modern Rock charts, "My Favourite game" hit #16 after being included on the video game also titled Gran Turismo. The controversial video didn't hurt either.


That album also features one of the band's best songs, a deep cut introduced to me by a friend on a mixtape--"Junk of the Hearts," an absolutely gorgeous country-ish love song with some lovely pedal steel work and some great rock flourishes.

The Cardigans have released two albums in recent years, 2003's Long Gone Before Daylight and 2005's Super Extra Gravity. While the album sales aren't what they used to be (note: the drop in sales correlates directly to the bands decision to stop including Black Sabbath covers on each album; coincidence, I think not), the band hasn't called it quits just yet. They're currently on hiatus, though there are plans to reunite. And in the meantime, Nina Persson has released two albums with her husband, ex-Shudder to Think member Nathan Larson under the name A Camp. Their new album, Colonia, is to be released February 2, 2009. Persson is currently touring in support of the album.

In 2008, a 2-disc Best Of compilation released in Europe cemented their status as international superstars. Appropriately enough, there are no plans to release the album in the U.S., though it can be purchased as an import. U.S. listeners owe it to themselves to give The Cardigans a chance; they really are better than your average pop band.

Oh, and Nina Persson is still gorgeous.


THE FIRST SINGLE: B+
THE SECOND SINGLE: A-

Download: The Cardigans - Lovefool
Download: The Cardigans - Been It

BONUS Download: The Cardigans - Junk of the Hearts

Buy Cardigans stuff!

Second Single Update! Jamie Walters

Erstwhile teen soap star and singer Jamie Walters is appearing alongside other obscure former teen idols like Jeremy Jackson, Eric Nies and, er, some other dudes who will test your pop-culture trivia knowledge (their use of the word idol is about as loose as your average Rock of Love contestant...hi-yoooo!) for a new VH1 show entitled Confessions of a Teen Idol. The show sports the tagline "Fame is a bitch. And they all want her back." So you know it's gonna be good.

Check out this interview with Walters on Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch blog for more info on the show, what the man has been up to since his fall from grace, why he has so many damn tattoos now, and why the 90210 writers didn't redeem Ray Pruitt after he threw Donna down the stairs.

Also, if you haven't, read the Second Single entry on the guy and download his hits "How Do You Talk to an Angel?" (with The Heights) and "Hold On."