Speaking of fine rock and roll music, Pop Culture Gadabout Bill Sherman has a couple of noteworthy posts up. First is a review of the excellent self-titled debut elpee from edgy-effete rockers Franz Ferdinand. Angular guitars, sleazy lyrics, and you can dance to it! Well worth checking out, and it’s on sale almost everyplace you’d care to shop. Second is a response to my would-be debunking of the cult of London Calling. Bill can sympathize with my lack of enthusiasm about the album’s genre pastiches, but argues that these tracks prepare the listener for the bigger and better things on the album. (He cites another pastiche, the kick-ass “The Card Shark,” but having done some more thinking about this I think one could argue that straightforward rockers like “London Calling” and “Clampdown” might seem merely workmanlike, rather than nuggets of pure punk satisfaction, if there were nothing different to offset them.) Folks, I’ve read a lot of record reviews, and Bill does this sort of thing as well as anybody.
