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Actually Swings

Download: "Smells Like Teen Spirit (Cover)"

Shocker, I couldn't find any of these Paul Anka mp3s in the usual, illicit spots [thanks WSB], but somebody did, and he played the above album front to back at a wine tasting festival I ended up at yesterday in New Jersey. Pardon all straight parallels. These festivals are both way less and way more pretentious than you think. On one hand everybody's pretty honest about the fact that wine is business. It comes from a vine that grows in dirt, and all kinds of crazy bugs are hanging out on the grapes, there are spiders everywhere, and it's all pretty disgusting if you think about it.

But then there's the other hand. It belongs to an extremely handsome man in a business suit. He asks you to pour some of your wine into a glass he brought from his expensive summer house. You don't know this guy but you pour the wine anyway--the wine your family's been trying to perfect for several centuries. He sticks his nose into the glass, says something about it smelling like passion fruit, then he sips it and says it tastes like burnt tire, mixed with blackberries. Then he violently spits it out on the grass, right in front of you, and he's shaking his head a lot--it's like he actually doesn't give a fuck. "This is absolutely delicious," he tells you. "I'd like three bottles."

I googled Rock Swings and found the obvious swipes--it's been around for a year now, the album--but more than trying to make some bread I think Anka and Verve Records are just being honest with themselves about the whole jazz thing. Marsalis put it in Lincoln Center and now it costs like $10,000 a ticket to see, like, Sonny Rollins play "St. Thomas," a song that used to be about how jazz is a really affordable entertainment option. Used to be fun for me too. Before I asked the DJ who or what stroke of genius had turned "Eye of the Tiger" into this glorious mess that was "Eye of the Tiger (Swing Remix)," my boss guessed that it was Anka, though he couldn't remember Anka's name. "It's the guy who's pretty much exactly like Sinatra," he said,"Except Sinatra's dead and had too much self-respect." When Anka gets to "Smells Like Teen Spirit," he really loves that "here we are now, entertainers!" line--he's telling you where he is, now, then what he is. It's like you can hear him wink at you.

Best part is that Anka transcends irony here. He's totally immune. Obviously Rock Swings is what I'd put on for this sort of silly event, Tarantino-style, at once demystifying and remystifying and altogether forced and spitballed. But I also think it's the album people in the thick might think is the perfect wine tasting soundtrack--something to bring in younger blood, allay their fears with the familiarity that is getting drunk, rocking out, listening to the Cure, etc., but also to jazz all that up, let the kids know this wine shit is so sinsurr. Hence the swing. Past that everybody I've told about this New Jersey wine thing asked if they played Paul Anka Rock Swings on the soundsystem, since (you know) it's that faux-sophisticated bullshit New Jersey always gets slammed for per the stereotype but really it's just as bad in New York if not worse. Most of all, I bet if Anka was there yesterday, he'd want to hear Rock Swings. He'd be wearing all black, drinking the new Moet rose champagne straight out the bottle, talking up all the blonde-haired women representing the bigger wine companies, and everybody there would be 99% sure he was that famous jazz guy, Tom Jones.