Earmageddon: The Ex-Corey-Ation

A friend was recently surprised to discover that I'd never seen Home Alone. The reason, I explained, was simple: I was 21 when it came out and, therefore, had no use for a family comedy starring a pre-pubescent boy. And, since I have no children, that has never changed.

Of course, I was fully aware of its phenomenal success, and how it made a star out of Macaulay Culkin (and fortunately, the success of Schitt's Creek means that it, and not Home Alone, will likely be the main thing that leads Catherine O'Hara's obituary, although I hope she never dies). And I also remember how he was credited above the title and on the poster a year later in My Girl, despite eating it about midway through. I never saw that, either.

But I'd be hard-pressed to name another movie he did after Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, which I also never saw. Still, every once in a while, he'd make news for falling into the same traps that have befallen too many people who gain fame at a too-young age: Fought his parents for control of his trust fund? Check. Drug arrest? Check. Befriended by Michael Jackson? Oy. All while not making movies that I would never see.

From the scant research I've done to write this, it seems that Culkin was able to wrest some control of his life and resume acting, even if his highest-profile gig was reprising his most famous role in a Super Bowl commercial. But he’s also had to watch his younger brother Kieran turn into one of his generation’s best actors.  

If Culkin was a few years after my time, Corey Feldman was right in my wheelhouse. I was the exact demographic (white, middle-class suburban teenager) to have enjoyed The Goonies, Stand by Me and The Lost Boys. Then I went off to college, and Feldman, with his fellow Corey, Haim, stayed in the teen-comedy world with License to Drive and Dream a Little Dream.

Around that time, Feldman quickly became a punchline. I distinctly remember an article in Spy about celebrity activism where he was quoted as saying he wore black every day as a protest against racism.

Goddamn, I miss Spy.

And his friendship with Haim led to a recurring joke on The Simpsons.

Funny as that was, life behind the scenes for the Coreys was not the subject for Lisa's Non-Threatening Boys Magazine. I doubt I need to give anybody reading this a detailed rundown of all their problems, but everything that could have happened to a child star happened to them, and then some.

A game I like to play inside my head is "That's a Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Song." For example, when someone posts a link to an article in The Atlantic, I always think, "And then we peed on The Atlantic." Or after Jason Hare and I have doubled up on Jeff's mom, I sing, "We tapped that ass all over this house."

Feldman’s career can be summed up in “I Want to Be a Child Star,” in which, at an audition, Luca Padovan sings about how his main desire for fame is that period when everything comes apart.

I want to have a teenage Hollywood meltdown
Be a pop-culture casualty
I want a bunch of addictions to illegal prescriptions
And completely lose touch with reality

I want to squander everything I've worked for
And spiral out of control
I want to wake up in Van Nuys with a bunch of sketchy guys
I've never even met before

That’s bleak as fuck, but that line about Meryl Streep always cracks me up.

Goddamn, I miss Adam Schlesinger.

As easy as it was to laugh at them, Feldman and Haim (the latter of whom died in 2010) are but two in a long line of talented, charismatic kids who got chewed up and spit out by the system. In the Coreys’ case, it’s particularly heartbreaking because Feldman has asserted that both of them were sexually abused early in their careers, all while a network of parents, producers, leeches disguised as friends, agents and the press — none of whom gave half of a collective shit about the damage they inflicted on the innocent — made money off their self-destruction. And the fact that it happens time and again proves that they. Never. Fucking. Learn. Everyone who has ever been involved in the exploitation of a child needs to burn in Hell as soon as possible.

(obvious awkward pivot coming)

You know who else needs to burn in Hell? Jeff Giles. Back in September, I woke up to an email from him with the subject, “Your turn, fuckface” and a link. It was my latest Earmageddon challenge, payback for when I sent him a bluegrass album by New York sports’ biggest failson (there are three).

Until that moment, I was unaware that Feldman fancies himself a musician. This is another trait he shares with Culkin, whose attempt to front a band that rewrote pizza-themed lyrics to Velvet Underground songs went about as well as could be expected. And the files Jeff sent me were Feldman’s 2016 double album Angelic 2 the Core.

That nearly ruined my vacation.

As is always the case with Earmageddon, I delayed and delayed until I got sick of Jeff harping about it in our texts. I eventually promised to have it to him by the end of January, so I uploaded it onto my phone and hit play as I left my apartment last Wednesday morning.

A couple of days later, I had dinner with another friend and told her about this. She got a puzzled look on her face and asked, “Can he sing?” I said I had no idea because I only got 52 seconds in, before the vocals started, before I shut it off.

I tell this story for two reasons:

1.    To show just how difficult a listen this is from the start. The elevator hadn’t even arrived yet.

2.    Coupled with the one that starts this piece, this proves that “I have friends/I definitely have friends” who aren’t torture-loving creeps.

I finally took the plunge the next morning. Angelic 2 the Core is Feldman's first album since the deaths of Michael Jackson and Corey Haim, and the first disc (Angelic Funkadelic (2 Dance)) is dedicated to Jackson and the second (Angelic Rockadelic (2 Rock)) to Haim. It begins with Feldman's voice electronically deepened to Satanic levels as he declares that all angels will descend to the earth on the 22nd day (he does not specify the month, nor does he seem to understand that demons don't get to decide what goes on in heaven).

"Oh shit," I thought. "It’s a concept album."

Fortunately, four of the songs on what Jeff sent are radio edits, which apparently omits a few skits that might have given some coherence to the concept. But that’s doubtful, given what's on display.

Then the track "Ascension Millennium" kicks in, with lyrics that wouldn't have made sense in 1999, no less in 2016. Kaya Jones of the Pussycat Dolls pops in to trade lines on "4Bidin Attraction," which I guess aims for "Sexyback" vibes and hits nothing but the last vestiges of my resolve.

To answer my friend’s question, Feldman cannot sing. The vocals for much of Funkadelic (If George Clinton is reading this, please sue) are double-tracked, with both given some form of electronic treatment that fails to coalesce into an interesting voice. That they’re panned hard right and left — with other parts often taking center stage — suggests that Feldman is putting himself at the margins of his own vanity project.

However, it gets comparatively listenable toward the middle. "Bad People” evokes Gold Experience-era Prince, right down to the vocal phrasing, and would work in more talented hands. "Everybody" is an attempt at Katy Perry-eque bubblegum pop with some jazzy guitar lines and a rap from Dr. Ice of UTFO.

But he sandwiches the best moments with "Duh!" where, not for the first or last time, he displays a lack of self-awareness by asking "Should I just go mute?"

As he would put it, duh.

That also shows the entire problem here. Every song sounds like something somebody else did better. Feldman's use of decidedly retro beats and beeping synths can't help but come off as secondhand bangers that have less success at banging than me at the bar at closing time.

The rest of Funkadelic includes cameos from Snoop Dogg, who didn't need the money, and Kurupt, who probably did.

Things possibly get worse in Rockadelic. Let's put it this way: If the first track of a record needs help from Fred Durst, it's not a good sign. Nü-metal guitars take over midway through “Wanna Break Free” and don’t let go for the next song and a half.

Again, this is 2016.

Much as the "concept" is about angels, he's not particularly angelic in his lyrics. There’s an awful lot of anger directed toward the bloodsuckers who have wronged him. Maybe that’s justifiable given what he’s been through, but it comes close to full-on misogyny at times. After an hour of that, it’s hard to take the final third, where he sings about his child (“Baby Blue Eyes”), his partner (“4 My Love”), a wish for better world (“Take a Stand”), and Haim (“Remember 222,” which features clips from their films) as anything more than perfunctory. It certainly doesn’t help that, in the midst of that stretch, is “We Wanted Change,” a goofy attempt at an old-timey shuffle that features his only true attempt at melody. It’s the worst thing on here, and also the most memorable.

There’s a survivor’s story in Angelic 2 the Core, but it’s for those of us who made it through the whole fucking thing. Nothing suggests he should be taken seriously as an artist, nor does it sound like he’s merely having a laugh.

All of this is a shame, because he’s lived a fascinatingly tragic life. An album where Feldman takes his experiences with the proper perspective and tells us what he’s learned and how he’s grown could be interesting. Granted, it still wouldn’t have been good, but it could have allowed anybody listening to show a little empathy.

Throughout the two (TWO!) times I listened to Angelic 2 the Core, I kept thinking, “Who is the audience for this?” Just about every installment of Earmageddon was meant for somebody: Horny teenage boys, chaste teenage girls, hipsters, regional sports fans, metalheads who secretly love musicals, etc. Maybe there's a nostalgic pull for some of the now-fiftysomething women who made him famous, but there isn't anything likable enough to lure them. All I can think of that it’s meant for a “writer” at a pop-culture chumbox looking for the right album to go with the headline “You’ll Never Guess Which Actor Made the Worst Album Ever.”

One of my favorite lines from The Good Place is when Jason Mendoza defends the Jacksonville Jaguars by saying, "All we need is a defense and an offense and some rule changes." Corey Feldman is the Jacksonville Jaguars of people.

And, for inflicting this upon me, Jeff is the human equivalent of the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, only without the cool Creamsicle uniforms. He will get what he deserves.