liner essay by jay ponteri

Deadlines and Range Rovers should dissipate into nothing, like our friend the cloud. As Rich says, Keep it real. Keep it clean. Range Rovers pollute the air and deadlines merely shrivel us into dead sound. Turn your attention to this brand new CD, entitled the Burnside Project. Pop it in, push play, and you will find pathos aplenty, surprises at every crosswalk, a plethora of moods, sounds, sound bites, stances, orchestrations, electronica, erotica, mister robotica.

In the song "Anywhere," Rich says, "Let's take a ride," and that's exactly what this is, a ride, and this vehicle is more affordable than a Range Rover (not to mention friendlier to the environment!). You will have no problem finding rock star parking. What happens when you take a ride down an unfamiliar road? Simple, you see new places and meet new people; you move out of the ordinary, dreary tedium of your life. How many bullets are left in the top drawer? Thank baby Jesus because this collection of songs offers us a ride out of radio-ready/guitar-drums-and-base-ville. But that's where money and fame rub shoulders.

Foo Fighters, I'd like to introduce you to Third Eagle-Eyed Blind Melon. How tired I am of that same old ice cream truck with that same old ice cream truck driver(the woman with a mullet haircut) with the same old American Bomb Pops. Make room for the avant-garde. I wish that truck-driver woman with the mullet haircut would dole out marijuana cigarettes to kids, for FREE! Just once! Where are you when we need you the most, Uncle Al?

Rich is changing, part 1: His music. Those electric drums, all those sound bites, unconventional structures, the radical shifts in tone from track to track, within the tracks themselves. Inherent in songs like "Drainage", "Blowfish," "Telling" are stripped down and layered instrumentations. A quick, intense techno beat combined with simple, lackadaisical, screeching guitar riffs; it's the contradictions within each track that create emotional resonance. It's like walking down the street: you're full of happy, blissful anticipation because you're about to go cheat on your wife, you're about to go stab your cube mate with the letter opener.

Rich says, I'm feeling bitter. Aren't you? Rich is changing, part 2: His lyrics. He has caught the train to post-modernity. Forget that romantic, I'm-a-drunk-fuck-up-kind-of song. He collages beautiful, concrete images with broken bits of narrative with emotional stances with musings intelligente. Just look at these lines from "Apathy":

The only window open is the one he just jumped out of
The drapes are blowing inward dangerously close to the potted plants
And my hands are stained with association
While this nation mourns the passing of a noble prince
Conspiracy theory will rear its head, the good, the bad, the smug

The cable channel and the website solely devoted
Try to remember, try to decipher
Why we're here...and could you clue me in?

Some of these lyrics convey a hint of self-consciousness. In "Sing With Me" Rich mocks all the singers who take themselves too seriously, i.e., Billy Corgan, RadioHead guy, Oasis brothers (those guys are dickheads), Kid Rock, (fill in the blank). However, you can't forget that Rich is a singer who takes himself quite seriously, and this makes the song even more clever. We enjoy it when people make fun of themselves. The other notable semblance of self-consciousness occurs on "Anywhere." The song is about music and how it can go anywhere.

Often, Rich changes his mood, and then changes his mind, like any other normal human-being-artist, but the difference is that he pushes his mood changes, his capriciousness, into the music where it belongs. Listening to these songs, one experiences, as is true with any good piece of art, a myriad of emotions: sadness, bliss, anger, Vladimir, melancholy (i.e., pensivity), sweetness, erections, multiple orgasms, parental inadequacy, micro beer, Pabst Blue Ribbon. Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3,Testing. It's not all brain work. What pleases me the most is Rich doesn't fear the emotional hub-bub. Somewhere, sometime since I last saw Rich, he adopted an inner child. He doesn't fear silliness; he gives us plenty of La-La-La-La-La-La-La.

Have you met Rich? I met him in a large building between Wells and Wisconsin Avenues, and neither of us could have told you what exactly a clitoris was. Both of us took the proper prerequisites and now excel handedly. now excel handedly. now excel handedly. That was a long time ago in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, exactly 1,237 miles from where I'm seated right this moment.