From writer David Breland, in the Mississippi State student daily paper:
Jayson Triplett is a Starkville original. An artist that makes his way living, preaching, teaching and playing his art. Better known to some by his alternate persona, Ming Donkey, Triplett has been a fixture in town for the past few years. He is a prolific artist, creating in various mediums. Arguably, Ming Donkey’s one-man band is as much performance art as it is raucous, driving roots music.
His latest release as Ming Donkey on Ultra Low Fidelity vinyl epitomizes the one man approach. Touted as “written, performed, recorded and designed one July weekend in 2009,” the album is down-home gold. The A side to this back-woods release is “Lil’ Cross-Stitch Bitch” followed up with “Waiting On The Georgia Line” on the B side. What you hear is what you get on this recording.
And I’m here to remind you of an iconic radio hit that invaded our fifteen-year-old imaginations once upon a summer, 15 years ago. It may seem a pedestrian sort of anniversary, but if you were among the nearly two million 15-year-old girls facing immanent banishment to suburban-American high schools, there was nothing pedestrian about Alanis Morissette’s post break-up rock enema, except that by late July 1995, it was everywhere. It’s statistically likely that you shouted the lyrics of “You Oughta Know” from your best friend’s car window on the way to your babysitting job, or casually chimed in from your bedroom while painting your toenails Manic Panic purple. Maybe you participated in a spirit-sister sing-along in a musty Blue Ridge mountain cabin, while the proverbial tampon bloated in a water-bottle. Still speaking statistically, over the next year, you purchased your own copy of Morissette’s third album, Jagged Little Pill, prompted by the first song you heard, the song that still validates your anger when you recall how, at the final co-ed camp mixer, your “sister” made out with the boy you’d been kissing all summer. But doesn’t the fact that Jagged Little Pill was the third best-selling album of a decade (missing second place to The Body Guard soundtrack by a mere 100,000 records), that over 30-million copies have sold, translate into more than petty cash and teeny-bopper angst? Maybe Morissette was actually on to something we oughta know, at least in regards to the zeitgeist and lingering aftermath of the ‘90’s.
“You Oughta Know” was originally released as a B-side to the slightly less tormented “You Learn.” It became the first radio darling of Jagged Little Pill, catapulting the albumto highest-selling, three-Grammy status by the song’s first birthday. “You Oughta Know”had all the ingredients: gossip and intrigue (who was “Mr. Duplicity,” beyond the recipient of Morissette’s sexual favors in a theater?), emotional convenience (an attainable vocal range, lyrics that were never obscure), a 20-year-old singer (attractive, but not pretty enough to intimidate) and a seasoned producer (Glenn Ballard, whose prior clients included Aretha Franklin, Celine Dion and Michael Jackson).
Brilliantly marketable, the song played on shock value, while playing it safe. The lyrics spurred radio bleeps and Bible-belt teens to slip liner notes beneath mattresses, but there was nothing new or threatening about the girl-pining-for-boy trope employed in its narrative. Morissette’s hit was just risqué enough to titillate, not radical enough to terrorize, and she was adored by target audience and media alike. Everyone could pretend that “You Oughta Know” was confrontational, but what everyone already did know, was that really, it wasn’t. Various trends were under way that summer of ’95, paving the path for a radio-friendly scorned goddesss to burst upon our collective consciousness. The likes of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains had already inoculated the commercial industry to shocking lyrics, and anyway, Morissette was an easier sell—younger, more poppy and most importantly, female. She tapped an under represented cohort that craved their own Kurt Cobain but considered pre-Celebrity Skin Courtney Love a bit esoteric. Enter Morissette. Even as she sang “an older version of me,” that’s who teen-suburbia imagined her to be, and the media established her as the standard reference for every young songstress in her wake. Tracey Bonham, Meredith Brooks and Fiona Apple—all with distinct styles of their own—garnered regular comparison. Upon the release of Fiona Apple’s debut album, Tidal, which coincided with that of Jagged Little Pill, Time magazine labeled Apple a “muted Morissette.” Continue reading →
This is one of my favorite Replacements songs, and I feel like more people should know about it so they can love it, too. It’s an ode to Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls, who did die of a drug overdose in 1991, ten years after this song was released. Four years later, Bob Stinson, Replacements guitarist, followed in his tracks (um…pun intended?)
So Saturday I rode down to Jackson with Ghosthand, some garage-rockabilly guys out of Columbus, Mississippi…although really, they should be called Black Black Evil Eye (maybe Ming Donkey is working on this?) We were riding in Bryan’s van–no seatbelts, no AC, just good conversation, gorgeous skies and a gnarly storm (did I mention, no windshield wipers?)…
Although Ming Donkey wouldn’t know, since he slept through the storm.
Then at Hal & Mal’s, Ghosthand and the Dots had to deal with the problem of standing puddles on the same patio where they needed to run wires. Ming Donkey disappeared to make a set list, and I rocked out to the latest incarnation of the Party Dots–the wife and husband duo (Daphne and Marsh Nabors…unless they’re brother and sister, hmn…) of the Goner Records punk trio the Overnight Lows. “We tried not to let Marsh drink too much before leaving the house,” Chrissy, Daphne’s bandmate in the girl-garage outfit Wild Emotions, whispered to me as we bounced in tandem. The Dots got through most of a set before Marsh started dropping notes and Daphne started sighing into the mic–”Are we gonna actually play this one, Marsh?” All I could think, was Our Band Could Be Your Life. And it is. YOUR life, Bryan Leslie. Continue reading →
Thanks for the tapes, and for the tapes of all the bands you influenced. You did well, Alex Chilton…
From Citypages.com:
“Without Chilton no Jayhawks/REM/Mats/Huskers/db’s/Rain Parade/Game Theory/Posies/Teenage Fanclub,” wrote Twin Cities musician and producer Ed Ackerson. “The mind reels… Not to mention no Cramps, Panther Burns, Let’s Active. Chilton showed us how to write pop songs with teeth and anguish. Blurred beauty. Mangled melodicism. Proved guitar pop wasn’t for pussies.”
From Chicago Tribune obit:
“Among the many bands that have proudly cited Big Star as an influence and put their own interpretations on its sounds are Chicago’s Wilco and Material Issue, the dB’s, Teenage Fanclub, the Posies (whose Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow fleshed out the reunited version of the band that has performed over the last decade), Game Theory, Matthew Sweet, Velvet Crush, the Bangles (who scored a hit with a cover of “September Gurls”), Ryan Adams, Cheap Trick (which covered “In the Street” as the theme song for the sitcom “That ’70s Show”) and of course the Replacements, who went so far as to write a song called “Alex Chilton.”
