Hole

Certain Songs #613: Hole – “Boys on The Radio”

August 5, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Celebrity Skin
Year: 1998

I mentioned this in my post on “Violet,” but in December 1994, Hole played Live 105’s “Green Christmas” being broadcast live from Berkeley, which I stayed home on a Friday just to tape off of the radio.

I was rewarded with a pretty ferocious and barely-together performance that twice featured a new song that seemed to be written in the wake of Kurt Cobain’s suicide & Hole bassist Kristen Pflaff’s OD, especially since it had the following lyric:

Certain Songs #612: Hole – “Celebrity Skin”

August 4, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Celebrity Skin
Year: 1998

If Live Through This was already scandalous because of its (relative) polish, then the big, brassy and glossy Celebrity Skin was tantamount to high treason against indie ideals.

Not that Courtney Love gave a fuck: the circumstances surrounding Live Through This and Kurt Cobain’s suicide had made her infamous, something she milked on AOL as well as the subsequent tour, and her performance on The People Vs. Larry Flynt threatened to make that infamy tip over into actual fame.

Certain Songs #611: Hole – “Doll Parts”

August 3, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Live Through This
Year: 1994

Perfectly capturing that disassociation when you like someone and you’re not sure they like you back, “Doll Parts” features drums that continually start and stop, like when you’re at a party or a show and you keep starting to walk over to talk that person, but then you catch yourself, and turn back around.

It’s also got some of Courtney Love’s most iconic lyrics.

Certain Songs #610: Hole – “Asking For It”

August 2, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Live Through This
Year: 1994

Because he sang backing vocals, “Asking For It” is often cited as “evidence” that Kurt Cobain contributed to a significant amount of Live Through This. Which is such bollocks, even if Live Through This is far more melodic than Pretty on the Inside was.

Look, if you had access to Kurt Cobain while you were writing songs, wouldn’t you get his opinion? Or at the very least, steal some of the tricks you learned from him? I know I sure would.

Certain Songs #609: Hole – “Violet”

August 1, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Live Through This
Year: 1994

Now that it’s all ancient history, how does Live Through This sound?

Now that entire generations of punks and popstars and chick-rockers and controversies and drugs and conspiracies and reissues have come and gone, how does this record sound two decades divorced from the raging inferno that surrounded it?

23 Musical Moments to Die For

October 3, 2008 by Jim Connelly

You can talk about genres, artists, albums, or even songs, but sometimes what keeps us coming back to music is the discovery of the transcendent musical moment. For me, “the moment” is the part of the song that fully and utterly engages me; the reason that I keep coming back to it.

I’m not necessarily talking about hooks here, because the purpose of a hook is the draw you into a song. I’m really talking more about traps: the part of a song that that keeps you there.

The is the third in a series. The first one had 25, the second one has 24, this one has 23.

Every single moment I’ve listed below kills me single every time I hear it.

Oh, and this isn’t in any kind of order, despite the numbering.

Hole – Celebrity Skin

December 31, 1998 by Jim Connelly

(DGC)

I know why people hate Courtney Love. Crazy, contradictory and caustic, she’s so fake she’s beyond real. And, of course, coming from a subculture where realness equals sincerity equals artistic integrity, her fakeness and ambition give all of the people who worshiped her poor dead husband (or even her earliest music) an easy target. Yet, her goal to make a record that would cut across this most fragmented pop scene ever is strangely noble. And naïve. And no less informed by artistic integrity than, say, Modest Mouse or Silver Jews. Of course she failed — even the impact of Nevermind was probably overstated by those of us who were impacted the most, and things have just unraveled further since — leaving us with a record that has far more flaws than her brand-new body. More highlights, too.

Hole – Live Through This

June 18, 1994 by Jim Connelly

(DGC)

Like Let It Bleed, Street Survivors, Double Fantasy or (for some of you), Three-Way Tie (For Last), this is one rock and roll record which will be forever linked to the tragedy which surrounds it. Ironies abound because they always do, but the fact that this record wouldn’t existed without Kurt Cobain’s music or commercial clout doesn’t in any way diminish from its overall power. Did she learn songwriting tricks from her husband? Of course. Wouldn’t you? Did she make them completely her own? You bet. This is Courtney’s record top to bottom.