Jon will be in the KMYI studios on Monday, June 19th. He will be a guest of the Jeff and Jer morning show. Listen in at 8:00 am (PDT) and you will hear Jon perform a song or two live.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Favorite quote from 2007: Some people are like a Slinky ... not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you shove them down the stairs.
He sang some different lyrics to the Three's Company part. lol...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass.. It's about learning to dance in the rain."
Oh okay, I'll go read that now. I don't remember seeing it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass.. It's about learning to dance in the rain."
Originally posted by jpl_lover: ^^^ Paula...did you read my recap of Cleveland? I mention the real lyrics in it, but they are highlighted for a reason...lol.
I've been busy lately so I guess I missed an entire page on that thread, including your recap. So I just read that! Thanks so much for writing all that. It sounds like a great time. So did he sing the song twice? Once on air and once for that video we saw? I guess I'm confused.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass.. It's about learning to dance in the rain."
Paula, I believe Jon sang the song once for the radio station in Cleveland and then he went to a television station where he sang it again. The television station clip is the video we have now.
As you all may have guessed, Rodeo is my least favorite of Jon's songs. I don't really care to hear Jon singing about such things. This one crosses the line for me since the words can't even be taken in a more tame way very easily. Those words have pretty clear meanings. I know that I am not especially hip or anything, but even from the stand point of marketing himself, I fear this song will be a step backwards for other people besides me. And musically, it is not a good representation of what he can do since the music is the least complex and unique of any he has come out with so far.
I think 14 year old boys may really like it.
**************************** A voice, a chime, a chant sublime, of peace on earth, good will to men.
Thanks for posting the link to the steam of the interview, Mish.
Good interview. I'm still not qutite sure what to think about the song Rodeo now. I liked it better with the lyrics we heard during the TV interview. It's much more....ummm....what's the word I'm looking for...passive?, mellow?, tame?.... whatever, and it makes the song more fun. With the lyrics this way (per the radio interviw) it takes away a lot from the song. I love Jon's voice and his musical talent, but I have to sorta agree with Arts, I don't really care to hear Jon sing in such a blunt manner. But, I do still like 3/4 of the song, so I'm not completely unhappy with it, just not as thrilled with it as I was. LOL
Still, Jon is doing great, and I can't wait to hear the whole EP.
It is an undeniably fun song in general. And it is great that Jon has a such a fun side as well as a serious musician side. With revisions, I could see myself really enjoying the song at a concert, but less so on the EP, even with revisions. Sometimes, without a true focus group to give feedback about a song, an artist may get so caught up in a song that it is difficult for him see its effect clearly. Of course, I am fully aware that sometimes singers deliberately try to shock the audience. I have never seen the point of that since being shocking is fairly easy to do and doesn't necessarily require skill or art or intelligence or anything. I mean, I could let loose with a string of profanities and vulgarities and you all would be even more shocked. But I ain't gonna do it, so y'all can stop holding your breath on that one! What people joke about with close friends or say in front of family or a spouse is often different than what they ought to say in public. I know that Jon is portraying a character here, and is likely trying to jab at what pop culture can turn people into. Nevertheless, I think this goes too far since that whole idea will go right past anyone who is not an English major who has studied how the artist can be commenting ironically on a narrator.
**************************** A voice, a chime, a chant sublime, of peace on earth, good will to men.
So one more thing. It is the CHARACTER in the song who sings the words and is pretty much a loser wasting his life on old tv shows and mindless frivolity. Jon is detached from that character and is commenting with disapproval on how tv can eat away your brain and character (in the other sense of the word), but you know, it took me days to fully figure that out and I have a masters in English!
**************************** A voice, a chime, a chant sublime, of peace on earth, good will to men.
Now it's my turn to shock everyone here by being in complete disagreement.
While I wouldn't necessarily rank "Rodeo" as among my favs, it is a fun and interesting song that does seem to get people talking...lol. And it sort of sticks with you in a not unpleasant way. I had only had time to listen to that clip once but found myself humming it at odd times for the rest of the day, so it's catchy.
As to the Tripper thing...though I see where you all are coming from, it WAS pretty much the premise of the entire show...lol. Tons of people watched it, and the Love Boat, and Friends. I don't think an acknowledgement that there is are sexual situations shown on TV is a great shock to anyone. And Tripper never even did get lucky, anyway, did he? lol.
A song with TV show references seems sort of a natural for jon, I think, and the TV shows themselves were silly and outrageous, so what better way to describe them musically than with a song like "Rodeo"? Even the round at the end is just right...a pointless and endlessly singable, hummable tune that most of us have known since we were kids.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: Betts01,
Mish, as I was writing tonight and thinking, I also realized your point about the pointless round at the end. Right after I posted about how the song is undeniably fun, I started to have ideas and connnections flow, so I went back then and changed that post to add the part about how Jon is portraying a character, and I added the other post about how he is detached from the character in the song. That is called dramatic irony. I had an ephiphany over the last hour or so really, and although I could be totally wrong, I spent the last hour writing to Jon about it and telling him he has a clever song. I think y'all can see that my attitude toward the song has been evolving right before your eyes. I am still taken aback and think most people will not see anything much in the song besides silliness and a couple of off -color words, but if you think even about what a rodeo is, it fits with the song's theme. A rodeo takes place in a circular arena. You ride and ride in a circle in order to throw a rope some dumb animal. Unlike a straight line,a circle never arrives anywhere. It is like a life that is just spinning its wheels. It is like Jack Tripper who repeats ad naseum the same scenarios and never gets closer to the goal and never will.
I think the other point of the song is that if we watch too much mindless drivel, we begin to see ourselves as the smart, powerful hero/heroine, when we are actually more like the reject who never finds love and never amounts to anything.
**************************** A voice, a chime, a chant sublime, of peace on earth, good will to men.
I like your last point, as well...lol, and would agree.
Another point about Three's Company is that it is famous for it's physical comedy, rather like The Three Stooges, Laverne and Shirley and the like. Traditional guy-type humor. Also cowboys, Superman, etc. The song sounds like it would appeal to a 14 year old guy because all the stuff in it is stuff relevant to a young man.
Oh man. I should soooo not be still here commenting on this. But I can't get my mind off it and get going on what I am really need to be doing right now. In my letter to Jon, I commented on what a sly dog he is with this song. Think about it. He is pillorying pop culture, where? On a radio station would play plenty of pointless, dumb, inartistic songs. And on a TV station that would run plenty of shallow shows. Not only that, he is getting all these media people to SING ALONG with him. The layers of irony are thick here. He is mocking the song's character who has lost touch with reality and lives in an adolescent's fantasy world, and then he uses the media and gets them to jab at themselves. LOL
What this all shows to me the power of writing. I used to teach people in composition classes how ideas will flow if you just start writing about the topic. It wasn't until I began to write that I began to make sense of the song. I found the lynchpin when I realized he had the dramatic irony going on. Even my initial comment about the song being the least musically complex fits in once that lynchpin is in place. The song is musically more simple throughout the whole thing, not just in the part when he launches into a round. And that is because the song's character is simple minded. He is sort of a George Kostanza type--crude and shallow and going nowhere. And we know where all that show's characters ended up in the last episode--in jail for being heartless and selfish and fundamentally losers with no lives.
I don't think art consists in being shocking for its own sake, and also not for every supposedly "higher" point. Europe is full of art that shocks for no real point, though it thinks it is being so very profound. Jon is actually, I believe, making a point that has real validity. He is showing what pathetic creatures singing along thoughtlessly to pop culture's tune can turn us into.
Here is a definition of a pillory. I don't know if I made it into a verb correctly, but you get the idea:
Main Entry: 1pil·lo·ry Pronunciation: 'pi-l&-rE, 'pil-rE Function: noun Inflected Form(s): plural -ries Etymology: Middle English, from Old French pilori 1 : a device formerly used for publicly punishing offenders consisting of a wooden frame with holes in which the head and hands can be locked 2 : a means for exposing one to public scorn or ridicule [pillory illustration]
**************************** A voice, a chime, a chant sublime, of peace on earth, good will to men.
So what you're saying is that JPL is a laughing dictator who plays with the lives of his evil generals by stringing them up in their own front yards and making them laugh along, in a Kauffmanesque display of insanity with the goal of being intentionally purposeless to expose meaninglessness.
He sang some different lyrics to the Three's Company part. lol...
