Liner Notes

Any serious follower of music knows that even with all of the genres and sub-genres and hair-breadth, putative distinctions, there are really only two categories necessary for music: songs that have been parodied by “Weird Al” Yankovic and songs that haven’t. “My Bologna” was the first big hit for Yankovic, played on Dr. Demento back in 1979. Maybe that is why when a fan screamed to hear “My Sharona” at an Atlas Sound show recently, frontman Bradford Cox (also of Deerhunter) launched into a series of bizarre antics which included commanding the heckler to strip onstage and playing a one-hour cover of The Knack’s classic song. What I mean to say is that I hope it’s all a joke.

In an interview with Pitchfork, Cox did little to explain or dial back the odd nature of that night in Minneapolis. “[T]he only person I asked to strip was the person who commandeered my stage,” he said of the heckler, whose ego he described as “super potent.” “He asked me to strip when he called out the name of the song. It was a joke; he’s basically throwing a dollar bill at the foot of the stripper.” This cannot be the first time that a drunken idiot has yelled out a request, even one as out of place as “My Sharona.” So why did Cox take particular offense this time? Did he have a childhood trauma related to two-hit wonders?

There must have been something particularly menacing about the heckler. It couldn’t have been his appearance, necessarily. From footage of the hour-long pop cover, the heckler looks strikingly like a pudgy David Wain. Nevertheless, he led Cox to say (again to Pitchfork) nonsensical things like, “I am a terrorist. As a homosexual, my job is simply to sodomize mediocrity.” Cox makes great music and his following is fit, though few. But quotes like this make it hard to believe that he covered “My Sharona” the way Weird Al intended it: for a laugh.

At least no one yelled “Freebird.”

KatY Perry is releasing a concert film in 3-D. It will be attended by the same crowd that showed up for last year’s Justin Bieber concert film, Never Say Never: preteen girls (in big, texting groups) and old white guys (alone). A fun drinking game to play with this bit of news is to take a shot every time a magazine or blog mentions or makes a pun about Perry’s breasts. (Start now.)

Jonathan Davis, lead singer of Korn, is releasing a new solo EP this year, which he describes as “electro and heavy dubstep.” The dubstep aspect is no surprise due to the genre’s current ubiquity. Additionally, Korn’s last album was produced by the tiny dubking Skrillex, winner of the Corey Feldman lookalike award. Davis, known to those in his native Bakersfield as that man who steals children and hunts them in the most dangerous game, will release the EP under his DJ moniker J Devil, a name that couldn’t be more out of touch if it was squeaked by an octogenarian. The new EP is eagerly anticipated by people who stopped listening to new music after they graduated middle school in 1999.

Isaac Slade, lead singer of The Fray, has set out to save the life of his fans; and if he read that last sentence, he would see what I did there (that is to say I don’t think the reference would go . . . over his head). Slade, at the very least, feels that the honor of his fans has been besmirched by that feather-shouldered frontman Brandon Flowers (The Killers). Flowers said to a particularly lackluster crowd at a recent concert that they should “stand up and dance. This isn’t a fucking Fray show.” Slade demands satisfaction, going as far as to say that if he should come across the arena-rock ne’er-do-well he shall “punch him in the mouth.” Flowers is no doubt shaking in his glitzy, over-the-top boots. Remember the days when a feud like this could be settled in a good old fashioned Celebrity Deathmatch?