NYT: Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. wistful like "Hall and Oates." Wait, what?

The dwindling travel budgets here at MT insured without question that we not send a writer to cover the CMJ Fest in NYC this past week. So we figured we'd just eye yesterday's New York Times wrap up in lieu 'cause we usually trust the word of critic Jon Pareles. His umbrella take of the five-day event offered the usual music fest space-filler about how "conversations revolved around T-shirt sales, licensing deals, corporate sponsors," as well as eagle-eyed observations about inherent fest huckerstisms and how many "exhibitors were Internet middlemen, promising evaluation, exposure and marketing — for a percentage of course."

That's nice.

But we did get a couple chortles after reading his comment that Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. sing "wistful love songs reminiscent of Hall and Oates."

Wait, what?

Peter Asher said Beach Boys, someone wrote Paul Simon with up-to-the-moment beats and another Prince.  We say pop of the gifted variety. But Hall and Oates? H&O were terribly white "blue-eyed" soul with good locks (not the curly ones, tho!) whose unremarkable sound was a bland, faux-Philly excuse to get from bad Michael Jackson to even worse John Mellancamp on '80s FM radio. Hall and Oates were, however, a duo.

But in these times when everything's post post-modernist mashup cutup beat-maker spin, everything's good. Everything is real when nothing is. (Maybe what Pareles was on about?) Except, of course, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.  They don't count. Just you wait.