Songs about Ping Pong

A great friend of mine sent me a note about a band called Operator Please, and I got pretty excited. That's a boring story for all you lovely blog readers, but it's one of the catalysts that synthesized my current musical mind-frame, and so I think it's an important thing to note. After all, you can't claim all great musical discoveries as your own. It's important to share.

Operator Please has a cute name, that, for some inexplicable reason, conjures visions of the 1950s. However, their music sounds like nothing you would ever hear in a sock-hop, and that's a good thing. The songs are overwhelmingly high-energy, and even the slower songs remind me of the Sneaker Pimps' "6 Underground", which has that menace-simmering-on-low-but-ready-to-boil quality. Maybe I'm going crazy (it's an obvious possibility), but whenever I listen to "6 Underground", I feel like it could just blow up in my head, and that's exactly the way I feel when I listen to Operator Please.

Operator Please is female-fronted and female-dominated (with drummer Timmy injecting testosterone), but they achieve something in their music that I've been waiting to hear for a long time: balance. Instead of writing songs about "girls and girly things", or about feminism, they just write songs. This is important to me as a woman. It may sound silly, but it's difficult to find songs that achieve true femininity without sacrificing universal connection. What I mean is that when I listen to Rancid or the Beatles or Led Zeppelin, I can emotionally connect to their music while still being aware of the fact that they are boy bands. It doesn't matter that "Old Friend" was (probably) written about a girl, because the sentiment applies to my feelings about guys. When it comes to recent girl band music, I don't feel that same ability to universally connect.

I love Le Tigre and the Donnas, but "What's Yr Take On Cassavetes" and "40 Boys In 40 Nights" don't immediately apply themselves to my life. Le Tigre is a great band, but I often feel that their music is so obsessed with feminism that it misses the important and awesome differences (yes, there are differences) between men and women. The Donnas achieve something similar, but go about it by a different route. They make cock-rock as a girl band. The male misogynism and the female objectification is reversed by the Donnas, and the men in their songs become objects. This is fun music for a girl's night out, and the point that they're making is valid, but I don't think it's the healthiest way to deal with sexism in music.

Operator Please achieves something completely different, they make good alternative music that applies to all sexes and doesn't bash any of them (outside of the ex-bashing that takes place all over the music scene). They also make music that's fun and exciting, and reminiscent of the Fratellis. "Just A Song About Ping Pong" is humorous, with it's double-entendre lyrics and hyper delivery. The video -which you can view below - reminds me of an M.C. Escher optical illusion, and has become a phenomenon in the US. "Get What You Want" is slinky with driving bass, and sounds an awful lot like songs from Hot Hot Heat's first album. "Crash Tragic" is full of the chanting found in the Go Team!'s music, a mix between childhood chanting games and cheerleading. The songs "Two For My Seconds" and "Waiting By The Car" use violin to create drama and intensity, but are also very playful. I like this music, and I like Operator Please. For anyone else who enjoys this music, look out for their album - Yes, Yes! Vindictive! - that drops on November 10th.