{"id":279,"date":"2010-03-15T13:01:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-15T13:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nowthissound.com\/ntsib\/?p=279"},"modified":"2010-03-15T13:01:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-15T13:01:00","slug":"guilty-pleasures-verbena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.nowthissound.com\/ntsib\/2010\/03\/15\/guilty-pleasures-verbena\/","title":{"rendered":"Guilty Pleasures: Verbena"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The scene: You’re home alone doing some menial chore. It’s boring and takes a long time, but it has to be done. To make the experience a little less of a trial, you put on some music, something up-tempo. Something light. Maybe even something a little mindless. Before you know it, as your cleaning out the cat box or washing the dishes, you’re doing a little boogie and singing along at the top of your lungs.<\/p>\n

The sound of snickering behind you stops you dead, and you know your partner\/roommate\/child will now never let you live down the fact that you were just jamming along to Counting Crows\/Lady Gaga\/the original cast recording of Cats<\/i>. You’ve been caught indulging in a guilty pleasure. It seems everyone has at least one, even those who say they don’t (yes, okay, I do actively blush when I listen to Billy Squier). But why feel guilty? We can’t help the fact that certain sounds just move us. So let’s cleanse our guilt through confession. <\/p>\n

My first confession is a complex one. Regular readers know by now that I feel no guilt at all about loving the music of A.A. Bondy (and if anyone does feel guilty about loving his music, I’d like to have a word with that person after class), but what I am a little less forth-coming about is my affection for the music of his former band, Verbena. And not just the first album, Souls for Sale<\/i>, which is widely agreed by many – including Bondy himself, who is more than willing to forget his whole Verbena experience – to be a decent album, full of promise. I like all three albums. Yep, even the being-groomed-to-be-Nirvana major label debut, Into the Pink<\/i>. (I… I, actually, prefer the latter two albums to the first one…) Like, really like them. Like, can be found listening to them at least once a week. <\/p>\n

The complex part comes in that I only feel guilt about listening to Verbena because the man partially responsible for the music itself would seem to prefer that the music didn’t exist at all. I do not actively blush while listening to “Bang Bang” or “I, Pistol”. Indeed, I like those songs a whole fucking lot. “Dirty Goodbyes” is a beautiful song, reminiscent of the Greg Dulli school of dark piano ballads. “Devil in Miss Jones” is just, plain sexy. And “Way Out West” is an instant shot of energy.<\/p>\n

Okay, sure, some of the lyrics are… well, let’s just say they don’t measure up to the words Bondy sings these days. And, admittedly, a lot of what I love about Verbena is the LOUD GUITARS AND SCREAMING factor, but what’s wrong with that? Sometimes after listening to a lot of lovely, pared-down acoustic work, you need a shot of noise, right? <\/p>\n

Right?<\/p>\n

Oh, whatever. I still like them.<\/p>\n

[youtube=http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AErgD4mYvz0]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The scene: You’re home alone doing some menial chore. It’s boring and takes a long time, but it has to be done. To make the experience a little less of a trial, you put on some music, something up-tempo. Something light. Maybe even something a little mindless. Before you know … Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[262,397,1837],"class_list":["post-279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-a-a-bondy","tag-verbena","tag-video"],"yoast_head":"\nGuilty Pleasures: Verbena -<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nowthissound.com\/ntsib\/2010\/03\/15\/guilty-pleasures-verbena\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Guilty Pleasures: Verbena -\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The scene: You’re home alone doing some menial chore. 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