The promised (see below) response. Also, Rob points us to a thread in which some non-believers recant. Sort of.

--------------------------------

Hey Matt-

Thanks for replying. I gotta say, though, I'm looking for a little bit of critical consistency here.

For instance, you say I shouldn't consider the lines I quote from "Rock Me" good because they're only good in relation to Phair's biography, but the whole context of the original review was how Exile in Guyville used to be great and how Liz did this and Liz did that. Now you say you don't care about an artist's motives. (Although you do use the opportunity to tell me about her motives some more.) Fine, but maybe that should've been reflected in the original piece. Me, I think that context is the rock-crit game, and that's great, but let's get on with it, shall we? If the only reason it's being covered by PF is because she's Liz Phair, then that just plain ol' matters, and I stand firm in my contention that were it almost anyone else and were you folks to deign to review them, they would have deserved, oh, at least a tenth of a point there rather than the 0.0 it got hammered with, and that, like with the Sonic Youth review, the rating (and the review in general) was done to make a certain reactive point. At any rate, the only pieces of Liz's biography you'd need to make my interpretation is that she's in her 30s. And even if you don't use that it's still, IMHO, a great song. Speaking of which:

You said in the original piece that you wanted to see some self-doubt or reflection. I showed that there was some. You reply by saying that you don't care if she's angsty, but I think you miss my point: since there is self-doubt there, I think you want a bit of that angst; you want her to feel really bad about making this piece of crap, and if that was in there, if there was some of the indie impulse to self-sabotage your best efforts at acceptance, then it would be better. Because there is self-doubt there, if you want it to be: you just don't want it to be, since you think that the only uses the lines I quote from the bridge because they rhyme. To which I gotta say: huh? Did she only say "It's harder to be friends than lovers and you shoudn't try to mix the two / but if you do it and you're still unhappy then you know that the problem is you" in "Divorce Song" because "you" and "two" rhyme? I'm open to a different interpretation of the line, Matt, but using the fact that it rhymes as evidence that it doesn't mean ANYTHING is unlikely to win me over.

And speaking of critical consistency: where the hell did that "yuppie" thing come from? First off, I don't know what's wrong with track lighting or $300 dinners in and of themselves, unless you're going to use the "that money should go to poor people" argument, in which case I'll happily inquire why you're writing record reviews and not working in a soup kitchen full-time; indeed, the only thing wrong with them is that I don't have them, and I would like to have them. Some people, when faced with this situation, think that the people with track lighting and $300 dinners should at least have the decency not to enjoy them, at which point I gotta say: well, then what's the point? I'm glad Liz likes her album. It would be weird if she made it and DIDN'T like it, don't you think? As for the SUV's, I'm definitely confused as to how a radio-friendly album is analogous to a machine that spews pollution and smashes smaller cars, but maybe that's because I like $300 dinners. (Mmmm.)

And incidentally, although this may not have come through clearly in the original message, I was making the point that Liz WASN'T being retro, but was instead applying a kind of retro-chic treatment to the current sound, recycling it in real time and thus participating in popular culture. But.

You did get two things right, though: I do really like Xtina and Britney (although not Creed, as they are too dour and rockist for me) because, like I say about the Liz album, there are some really, really fucking good songs there, just like how I like early Beatles stuff even though they sing stuff with dumb lyrics like "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" (by the by, if you're looking for a good parallel for the "ironic line surrounded by meaningless sincerity" thing you don't see in "Rock Me," try the first verse of "I Saw Her Standing There"). If the song is good, fuck it: I don't give a shit about the rest, and I especially love the way that the producers of those songs have, as I say, fucking gone for it and just thrown everything at it. Love it love it love it. Unabashedly.

The other thing would be about Pitchfork's not covering an album like this if it wasn't Liz Phair. Yeah, that's true. And maybe that's a problem. Yes, yes, I know you're not the editor, but we did both CC Catherine on this one, so maybe it'll get in the mailbag and spark some kind of useful dialogue. (And what the hell, I'll cc Ryan too.) And who knows--maybe you'll get assigned something mainstream in the future, and it'll change your thinking a bit. At any rate, Pitchfork seems to have assumed its editorial mission, from what I've gathered from newswire and mailbag stuff, is to both cover "underground" music, and to expose people to good music they wouldn't have heard otherwise. Both admirable goals. But you guys have also covered a decent number of mainstream products of late, and when you do so, it only seems to be to trash them. So if the first part of the mission has been compromised a bit, it would seem to make sense to sublimate it to the second, very positive, goal, and expose indie-rock kids who normally scorn the mainstream to mass-market stuff that's good but that they might otherwise overlook. This was the point, for instance, I think a lot of the letter-writers were trying to make about your Metallica review--that if you're going to address something indie kids left for dead long ago, then why not do so to say something good about it and expose them to good music? (And before you say, "Well you should bring that up with the other writers"--oh believe me, I have.)

Ultimately, I guess, we'll have to agree to disagree, because obviously you can't bring yourself to like radio-friendly pop / rock, and I can't help but like it. I would suggest, though, that if you can't bring yourself to like this kind of music (the hated Britney, Xtina, etc.) and you love music as much as someone who writes for PF obviously does, then maybe you should give it more of a chance--as should Pitchfork.


posted by Mike B. at 3:40 PM 0 comments

So it's confession time: I actually sent my response to Pitchfork's Liz Phair review into Pitchfork, and I got a reply from the author, which I'm printing below. My response will follow in a bit, but I figured I'd throw it on here now for it to be chewed over. The bit at the end where he hopes to shame me with the spectre of Britney is especially good.

Incidentally, on their letters page today they print three letters in response to the Phair review, none of which are mine, and the two negative ones are, IMHO, way less coherant than mine. But, I guess, that's why I'm trying not to write in much anymore.

At any rate, here's the letter.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Hey Mike, thanks for writing.

For the record, the stuff on the front page isn't written by me, it's added
by the editor.

As for the lyric in "Rock Me" -- would you read that self-doubt into that
line if you weren't familiar with Phair's biography? The music itself never
sounds anything less than mercilessly upbeat, and the lyrics surrounding
that one particular line are anything but reflective. I don't care if she's
angsty or not -- I think the "tortured" schtick gets old very, very fast,
and I also think Liz is saying "You think I'm a genius / think I'm cool"
because "cool" rhymes with "rule." Just like she rhymes "if it's alright /
rock me all night," even though the gentleman in question is obviously quite
alright with rocking her.

I don't think "Rock Me" is an amazing song -- in fact, I think that if it
were made by somebody other than Liz Phair, it probably wouldn't have been
covered by Pitchfork at all, let alone given a 5+ rating. "Rock Me" doesn't
play with convention -- it is convention manifest.

What retro sound is Phair touching on? I don't think the album sounds retro
at all. In fact, I think that its endless drive to be comercially viable in
the present is going to result in it sounding ridiculously dated a few years
down the road.

You know, I have nothing against an artist who wants to make money from his
or her music. In fact, I don't really have anything against an artist like
Liz Phair, who junks a whole album when she's told by her label that it's
only going to go gold. But I don't think it's anything to be admired, any
more than it's admirable when some yuppie jackass rattles on about how he
LIKES his goddamned SUV's, track-lit apartment, and $300 meals. How could
she have "pussied out?" By making a half-assed pop album like
Whitechocolatespacegg? I don't care what an artist's motives are, my job is
to comment on the music. I never claimed to be a "true" fan, nor do I think
that such a concept is even remotely viable. If you enjoy the new album,
I'm happy for you -- I'm just curious as to whether or not you're a fan of
the hundreds upon hundreds of pop acts who've had the conviction to go "full
fuckin' force" as something other than a calculated style change, and
without the safety net of an established fanbase. By your reasoning,
Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Creed should've won your ass over
ages ago.

Best,
Matt

posted by Mike B. at 1:06 PM 0 comments

rocking me
So today's gonna be Liz Phair day here at claps blog, with a bunch of stuff brewing.

First off is the letter Liz wrote to the Times in response to their scathing review. The general consensus has been that the letter is "crazy" (c.f. Gawker and the Velvet Rope) and I'll grant that halfway--certainly the letter starts out kind of crazy, and her refusal to telegraph the meaning behind the "Chicken Little" metaphor I'm sure confused some people. I mean, hell, I was pretty confused at first. But then I hit the end, and it, quite honestly, is one of the most moving and quietly beautiful love-letters to pop music I've ever read:

"The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" Chicken Little screeched, terrified they would not heed her and would be found the next morning, buried among the intellectual debris. She pecked and pecked at them with her sharp little beak until they finally agreed to be awakened. The three readers rose up and shuffled outside to be greeted by a warm, summer rain falling steady as a heartbeat, wondrous and quiet as unexpected relief from pain. "Why, Chicken Little," said one reader, "it's only a summer shower come to feed the land. It feels great!" Chicken Little cowered in the corner as a fork of lightning licked the trees. "It's dangerous!" she cried, "you could slip on the wetness! You could catch a nasty cold! You could get electrocuted!" The three readers laughed, and went back out to experience the mystery of the storm, without thinking, without deconstructing, without checking what the other would do first. "Listen to me! Listen to me!" cried Chicken Little, as she watched their backs turn. The three readers stopped at the door and called out before leaving: "C'mon, Chicken Little. Hurry up, you're gonna miss it!"
LIZ PHAIR
Manhattan Beach, Calif.

Now honestly, how nice is that? And true, too, I think. "Warm summer rain falling steady as a heartbeat." That's great writing, and a perfect summation of what I've been trying to show folks about this particular move on Liz's part. So let me try to, as the lit teachers say, "unpack" it a bit.

First off is the attempt to separate the critic from the listeners (and the annoying jab of "three listeners") and thereby imply that the critic doesn't get it but the "people" do. This is a technique too often used by artists who have (usually deservedly) had their work panned, and not really that valid or revelatory, so a D on that one, Liz.

Then there's the stuff about critics traveling in packs and waiting to see what the general reaction will be before jumping on the bandwagon. This is an undeniably true fact about critics, I think, but it's not really a valid argument unless you can demonstrate that they actually do like the music and are just ripping it in public to maintain their cred, whereas in this case I think both the level of hatred in the reviews and the fact that Liz admits she was making a record she knew the critics wouldn't like belie the sincerity of their reaction. So points for asessing a truism, but demerits for picking the wrong case to apply it to, and a C+ here.

But she gets the full A+ for the positive stuff, the description of the simple pleasures of pop music and of the difficulties faced by people like us--what I'll call, for lack of a better reference, Liz Phair's audience (or LPA for short)--in suddenly finding that we really like, say, the new Justin Timberlake song, or the American Idol single, because so much of our identity is tied up in music and so much of our taste tells us that the mainstream is evil and wrong and we must avoid it at all costs because it is shallow and it crushes the true innovators in the underground, etc. etc. This is about, as far as I can see, the process by which LPAs (including in this case, I think, LP herself) get over that hump and start to learn to love the bomb.

Here's the argument I think she's making. First off, I think you have to realize that the view of "listeners" here, while a bit idealized, is essentially a parody of what they seem to look like from the critic's perspective: "They played outdoors, mostly, and had very open minds." Listeners don't, of course--most people's tastes are pretty fixed--but critics need to believe this in order for their criticism to be meaningful (since very few critics are happy simply writing Papa Roach reviews for Rolling Stone and like to think of themselves as connoisseurs and dilettantes and exposers of new good things), and as a consequence, most have a strangely paternalistic attitude towards "listeners" wherein they think they're very easily influenced, mainly in a negative way, and need to be shielded from the bad shallow crushing mainstream what I mentioned earlier. And so--as, for instance, a few Pitchfork writers have admitted to me at different points--they overcompensate, making a work seem much worse than it is ("The sky is falling!") in order to scare their "stupid listeners" into not buying and thus stopping the evil, etc.

But what the metaphor is trying to point out is that listeners are a bit more adventurous in their tastes than critics give them credit for. This doesn't mean that they're open-minded, but it does mean that we seem to be able to find pleasure in music where critics cannot, or, worse, assume we shouldn't. We appreciate humor more ("it's only two squirrels chasing each other in amorous conquest, skittering over the eave of our house." "It's quite funny, actually...") and we don't expect every album to be Revolver; we are often happy with, as Phair so nicely puts it, something "wondrous and quiet as unexpected relief from pain." If that makes us shallow, so be it, but it does seem to make us more happy. The process of a LPAer becoming a pop fan is the process of maturation, I think, the process of getting tired of being so much "smarter" than everyone else that we sit alone in our room and becoming, instead, the kind of person who can look goofy and dance in the rain and listen to "Crazy in Love" and sing along, now, not when the LPAers appreciate it twenty years down the line. It's the process, in other words, of appreciating how rare and beautiful a thing happiness is, no matter how much of it you have, and seeking it out wherever you can.

It's nice that the letter doesn't close with the critic alone and rejected, but, instead, with an offer to come outside and play, because this is the eternal promise of pop music: that of inclusion. But there's a warning there too, one that I wish more critics would heed. If you keep yelling that the sky is falling when it is, in fact, only sort of rumbling, you lose your authority with the readers, and you become another instrument of what you're trying to avoid. We don't want that, because (as the last bit demonstrates) the listeners like you and value you. But we also need to know when to trust you, and to be able to go to you without you attempting to take away our simple pleasures.

So there's your crazy letter, kids. Kind of funny that it may actually have been too intelligent for most people...

posted by Mike B. at 1:00 PM 0 comments

Friday, June 27, 2003

The South Carolina Democratic primary might not take place because the party doesn't have enough money.

Guys...guys, guys, guys...

posted by Mike B. at 1:24 PM 0 comments

Reason why Eminem is cooler than you #2,401: he dangles a fake baby over a hotel balcony in Scotland. Then he tosses it in the air. Especially funny because, like Jacko, there was a crowd of slavishly devoted fans waiting below.

Not as cool as Kurt coming out in a wheelchair, I think, but still pretty cool. (And nowhere near as cool as Jarvis interrupting Jacko's performance at the Brit awards by dancing with the wee children, but that's an impossibly high standard.)

posted by Mike B. at 12:33 PM 0 comments

Very informative and very encouraging article about Apple getting indie labels (and music) into iTunes. Among the salient points:

- Placement/promo is based on their preference; they claim to have refused all payola (and to continue to do so). So they'll do special artist "spotlights" or push certain tracks, but mainly for the benefit of Apple (i.e. they like it or think it'll drive traffic), not the labels.

- Indies get the same deal as the majors.

- Indies get listed right by everyone else.

- Sales are reported to Soundscan! As single songs, though, never as albums.

- 45% of songs purchased on iTunes have been in the context of full-album downloads, which is encouraging, and they're trying to drive the per-album price down, which I'd imagine would be helped by letting the indies in the door.

- Self-released artist won't be listed (which is understandable, honestly, since the payment scheme would be way more hassle than it would be worth) but the author of the article, who runs CDBaby, says since he's an "iTunes partner" he'll try and get self-released stuff up there through the CDBaby connection.

Of course, there's still the DRM issue, but we all knew that when widespread online sales came for music, DRM was just plain ol' gonna be a requirement. Apple's, by all accounts, is not too stringent. But hey guys, when you givin' us a Windows version, eh?

posted by Mike B. at 11:37 AM 0 comments

Thursday, June 26, 2003

The really incredible thing about this story of a man getting beaten and stabbed because his assailants thought he was Muslim (he's Hindu, not that it really matters) is the whole idea of robbing a pizza delivery guy and then getting morally outraged because you think he has some vague connection to Iraq. And then tying him up and beating him.

It is a good metaphor for the FOX News approach, though.

posted by Mike B. at 5:17 PM 0 comments

in memorium
Today is an auspicious day: the phrase "homosexual agenda" has been uttered in all seriousness in the Supreme Court. By a judge, no less! In re: the court's decision to strike down the Texas anti-gay sodomy law:

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented.

"The court has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda," Scalia wrote for the three. He took the unusual step of reading his dissent from the bench.

"The court has taken sides in the culture war," Scalia said, adding that he has "nothing against homosexuals."

It's so weird that he would say this, and make a point to say this, since there are legitimate (albeit wrong, in my opinion) legal arguments in favor of the Texas law--state's rights and so forth. Why did Scalia feel it necessary to utter that laughable bit of right-wing paranoia?

I'm guessing it's something to do with his cold, black heart, although maybe that's unfair.

Naaaaaaah.

posted by Mike B. at 1:21 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, June 25, 2003

In an interview, Tom DeLay bitches about the growing Westar scandal:

It never ceases to amaze me that in this town people are so cynical that they want to attach money to issues, money to a bill, money to amendments. They hardly ever write that money is given to support people who think the same way. Westar supported people who were doing the things they believed in and wanted to see done.

Wow.

First off, Tom, the charge of vote-buying comes from a report the company itself prepared, so saying the criticism comes from "this town" is making a straw man argument, and is not only invalid, but grossly dishonest. Just because y'all got people to hate politicians doesn't mean you can just whip out that prejudice whenever the mood suits you.

Secondly, I fail to see how carving out an exemption for one specific company can fit into anyone's ideology beyond pure greed. Was Westar making a cure for cancer or supporting the arts or feeding the poor, or were they participating in the free market?

Finally, weren't you guys supposed to be the moral clarity party? Let's be clear about this: I don't give a shit if a Democratic representative who's taking money from big biz himself is criticizing this. I'm criticizing the action, and I am a voter, and that's what I get to goddamn do. I'd hope other people would as well.

Just incredible.

posted by Mike B. at 1:21 PM 0 comments

Thomas Friedman makes the astute point that the left's focus on "gotcha"-ing Bush on the WMD void is distracting it from making legitimate critiques about the sorry state of postwar Iraq. C'mon now, folks...

posted by Mike B. at 1:10 PM 0 comments

I guess my favorite thing about SCOTUS' affirmative action decision is Thomas' dissent, which gets around eventually to arguing that the majority is wrong to uphold diversity because it made him, personally, feel bad when he was in college.

At the heart of Justice Thomas's dissenting opinion was a highly personal critique of affirmative action, which he called the "cruel farce of racial discrimination."

"The law school tantalizes unprepared students with the promise of a University of Michigan degree and all of the opportunities that it offers," he said, adding, "These overmatched students take the bait, only to find that they cannot succeed in the cauldron of competition."

Justice Thomas, himself a beneficiary of affirmative action at Yale Law School, compiled a respectable record at what is arguably the country's most elite law school. So his opinion reflected not objective failure so much as a lifelong struggle with the ambiguous position in which beneficiaries of affirmative action — "test subjects," as he put it — often found themselves as elite institutions felt their way, sometimes clumsily, toward a more inclusive identity in the cauldron of the early 1970's.

Asking, "Who can differentiate between those who belong and those who do not?" he continued: "The majority of blacks are admitted to the law school because of discrimination, and because of this policy all are tarred as undeserving. This problem of stigma does not depend on determinacy as to whether those stigmatized are actually the `beneficiaries' of racial discrimination. When blacks take positions in the highest places of government, industry or academia, it is an open question today whether their skin color played a part in their advancement."

So, basically, he felt bad because he thought that affirmative action implied that blacks weren't, actually, just as worthy of jobs as whites. Then again, it doesn't necessarily have to imply that, as I'll explain in a second, and if there are options as to the interpretation, one has to ask: from where does this implication of lessened worth come from? Well, gee, looks like conservatives to me. So the same group of people who keep insisting that the reason racism still exists is because we keep talking about race, and that if we stopped talking about it it would go away, also keep talking about how affirmative action lessens the worth of blacks. Now, following their logic, the way to make that stigma go away would seem to be to stop talking about it; and if that argument's not valid, well, maybe the argument about racism magically going away isn't so valid either.

That said, let's consider this question of perceived worth. Now, the folks on the right seem to keep insisting that this case exists separate from any historical or societal context, and that giving extra points to black people is no different from giving extra points to white people, so let me play on their terms a bit and do a thought experiment about groups X and Y, and see how Thomas' supposition plays out.

It is demonstrated that, on average, group Y receives a worse education than group X--their schools have less money, their teachers are less qualified, etc. Although there is no difference in average intelligence between group X and Y, secondary educational achievement for group X is markedly above group Y (group Y even gets placed in special ed classes at a higher rate), and so members of group X tend to get into certain colleges (let's call them the Z group) at a higher rate than group Y; there is a clear separation going on, although of course the relative worth of colleges is up for debate, and they may very well be equal.

Still, some people see this as a problem. The clear solution is to improve (i.e. equalize and normalize) the secondary educational system, but since this is easier said than done, it is suggested that a different way be found in the meantime, and members of group Z (those "special" colleges) voluntarily decide to start looking beyond secondary achievement measures and admitting that members of group Y might be equally as smart as members of group X, but might have simply had the bad luck to be placed in a bad school, as seems to disproportionately happen to members of group Y.

But no, says Judge Q: this is unfair, and will cause members of group Y to continually doubt their achievement, even if they are, in fact, just as qualified as members of group X. So the solution is struck down.

What happens? Well, members of group X continue to go to group Z in disproportionate numbers, and find members of group Y absent from same, and there is a clear separation between the two groups.

In other words, you've set up what Thomas disavows: a separate-but-equal system.

Now, of course, there are a few objections you can make to this. One is that while you can replace "group X" with "whites" and "group Y" with "minorities," you can also replace them with "affluent people" and "poor people." And I'm all for preferential admission for low-income students, but the problem there is that once you let admissions officers look at a student's income, that also effects the college's decision to admit based on the amount of financial aid they would have to give; income-biased admissions could easily result in a drop in the number of low-income students. However, using an organic approach (as the court favors) where admissions officers can de facto tell what kind of background a kid came from based on their name or school allows these kind of preferences to helpfully sneak in, and I think that's all right.

Another objection would be based in our historical situation, i.e. that, well, there are a lot of affluent blacks now, and they seem to be doing just fine, so there will be lots of minorities at elite colleges even if we drop affirmative action. The problem with this is twofold. First is the way it mirrors the President's argument that since our water is the cleanest it's been since 1960, it proves that we don't need environmental protection. Well, of course that's ridiculous, since the reason it's so clean is because of the environmental protection we've had, and the same applies here: if we force our colleges to become "race-blind" now, this won't assure a continued rise in black enrollment at elite institutions, but will instead cause that statistic to essentially freeze. If you think we've got just enough racial equality right now, then I guess that's not a problem, but personally, I disagree. And while we're talking about historical context, let me mention that the widespread belief that we don't have to worry about race anymore because it'll just take care of itself, man, is way more PC than anything I've said in the last 5 years.

Of course, all of this overlooks a few important facts, such as the one that, Thomas' feelings aside, affirmative action beneficiaries rarely (i.e. 1%) feel that it has had a negative effect on them, that "few studies show that student learning outcomes, such as success in postgraduate employment, correlate positively with initial quantitative test scores or grade point averages," and that affirmative action "babies" go on to greater success than those who have not benefited from the program (no link, sorry, but it's around somewhere) because, unsurprisingly, they appreciate the opportunity more. Not to mention that if affirmative action students are failing out of college because of their poor training, the problem seems to be less with the admissions process and more with the college's first-year curriculum and/or the climate they cultivate on campus (that whole "diversity" thing Thomas disdains), but I am a bleeding-heart, after all.

Were I an armchair psychiatrist, I might say something about how Thomas' feelings of worthlessness might stem from his allegiance with a party his race has traditionally not been allied with, but that would be unfair and, of course, highly unacademic.

posted by Mike B. at 12:18 PM 0 comments

Rob of Quo Vadimus points us (via comment) to Pitchfork's Liz Phair review, about which I'd like to make a few points:

- "The saddest possible conclusion to what began as one of the most promising careers of the 1990s..."
Why does everyone think this is the end of her career? Do they think she's going to stop making music? Does it really stand to reason that no indie label would have her if, worst-case scenario, sales for this one were horrible and she got dropped? (And, since she is tied to a major-label contract, maybe this is a way of getting out of it? Hmmm...) I think there will be more Liz Phair after this, whether or not it sells well, and I suspect someone's going to keep listening.

- "The result: one of the worst records ever made!" / "0.0"
Well, of course, she's in good company with this 0.0: the only other album I can remember with this rating is Sonic Youth's NYC Ghosts and Flowers, for which the rating was similarly ridiculous: surely the beautiful title track deserves a few points, right? As for "worst records ever made," is "Liz Phair" really down there with, say, Michael Bolton albums and collections of dogs barking Xmas carols? (Or Bonnie Tyler?) Of course not; context is king here, as it always is for Pitchfork, and had this been made by someone else it wouldn't have gone below the 5.0 mark, especially with a song as amazing as "Rock Me" on it. Speaking of which:

- "Phair sings exuberantly about the benefits of an affair with a younger guy including-- I shit you not-- "[playing] X-Box on [his] floor." In between choruses of "Baby baby baby if it's alright/ Want you to rock me all night," Phair declares, "I'm starting to think that young guys rule!" without a trace of self-doubt or reflection."
As for the latter: as I've noted before, it seems like the indie crits didn't actually listen to this song, as the "young guys rule" line is immediately preceded by "You think I'm a genius, think I'm cool." So there's your self-doubt, if you want it: Liz is feeling like a lame single mom, and she thinks it's sweet that this guy naively thinks she's cool, since of course she isn't, nor is she a genius. The main complaint here seems to be that she's not bitter and angsty, which seems, how to put it, a bit unfair. ("Why aren't you torrrrrtured like Cat Power???") And the chorus--man, the chorus! As I say in the comments below, the great thing about this chorus is how it totally nails the pop-song thing I look for, i.e. a kind of anonymous thing that draws you into the song, and then you notice the verse lyrics, and then you're glad you got drawn in. It's a hook, and it's very well done. Speaking of pop:

- "In recent interviews, Phair has been upfront about her hopes of mainstream success, and claims full awareness that Liz Phair is likely to alienate many of her original fans."
Well, good for her! This makes me want to shake the woman's hand (although I would be disappointed, albeit impressed, if this just turned out to be a ploy to get out of her major-label deal). I admire an artist who's totally upfront about this, especially one who came from the conservative, moralistic indie community. And good for her for not pussying out; once she chooses this path, she goes at it full fuckin' force, playing the conventions of the still-ongoing teen-pop genre like she was a garage-rocker (or neo-no-waver, or electroclasher) referencing the touchpoints of some retro sound, while still working in those great Lizzy lyrics we all swear by.

So good for her. If this alienates her "true" fans, well, fuck it, she won my ass over.

UPDATE: Rob via comments points us to the Matador thread about the new Liz album.

posted by Mike B. at 10:47 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, June 24, 2003

I was in the supermarket yesterday and I noticed that the headline for the Weekly World News was:

OSAMA AND SADDAM: IN LOVE!
(or something to that effect)

This was accompanied by a picture of Saddam lying peacefully in Osama's arms. It was very sweet.

It's not listed on their website, but they do have a poll asking: "Is there enough sex and violence on tv?"

posted by Mike B. at 3:24 PM 0 comments

I particularly like part 2 of Lore Sjorberg's rating of D&D monsters. Particularly particularly good is this entry:

Gelatinous Cube

Gygax clearly had some sort of ooze fixation. He populated his little world with a goobery panapoly of spores, molds, and fungi, at least one variety of which has psychic powers. Huh. At any rate, closely edging out green slime for "Best Performance by a Nickelodeon Game Show Prop" is the gelatinous cube, a transparent, hallway-shaped, flesh-dissolving, uh. Cube. The sheer ridiculousness of it is impressive. Here we have yet another monster with no reason to exist in a dungeon-free ecosystem. It's genetically adapted to graph paper, for God's sake! Plus it conveniently fails to either digest or excrete metal, giving an adventurers a reason to kill it and scoop coins from its corpse. It's like some sort of living, deadly, mall fountain. A

posted by Mike B. at 3:17 PM 0 comments

Daily Kos posts more info on the Westar thing (to the effect that the VP of the company ran Ashcroft's campaigns for quite a few years, thus perhaps hinting why the AG is not investigating the company all that aggressively) and no one seems to care because--what--either it's too complicated or because it's not strictly speaking illegal; I assume it's not the latter since Bush's pre-war hype wasn't strictly speaking lying either, but we're going after that with big blunt sticks labeled "Amerikka." But fuck, man, read the signs (and read the report (PDF) - relevant info on 349-357, or what Adobe thinks is pages 341-349), this is unabashed vote-buying. Whether it strictly speaking violates campaign finance laws is ultimately irrelevant for the political gains to be had; if you're a Democratic representative and you can't get effectively worked up about a failed Enron-model corporation openly buying legislative exemptions because you can't hide your own indiscretions, I don't want you as my representative. Real politicians know how to fuckin' hide their graft, and when someone doesn't, you bite 'em on the ass as hard as you can. Ashcroft is an easy target anyway--go to it, folks.

posted by Mike B. at 3:11 PM 0 comments

Syrians Wounded in Attack by U.S. on Convoy in Iraq

During an American attack Wednesday on a convoy suspected of carrying fugitive Iraqi officials near the Syrian border, United States Special Operations forces engaged in a firefight with several Syrian guards, wounding five of them, Defense Department officials said today.

At least one of the Iraqi vehicles destroyed in the attack was hit by American attack helicopters on the Syrian side of the border, the officials said. They said three of the five Syrian border guards, who exchanged gunfire with American ground forces, remained in American custody for medical treatment.

OK--fair enough--fugitive Iraqis and hostile activity and all like that. But this is starting to sound a bit like the beginning of the Mexican-American War, isn't it? So it goes, I guess, in a country where we're not supposed to go to war unless we're attacked.

(It also sounds a bit like Cambodia, but I won't bring that up because Vietnam comparisons are hackneyed, and I'd like to see more Mexican-American War alarmism on the left.)

posted by Mike B. at 10:14 AM 0 comments

Monday, June 23, 2003

Good but complicated post at Kos about the way a company named Westar wanted an exemption from regulation, and got a specific price tag and beneficiary list from Republicans.

Good for them for exercising their free speech rights! I'd hate to see campaign finance laws restrict that.

posted by Mike B. at 5:55 PM 0 comments

On June 20 came the story that Saddam Hussein is probably still alive. I can understand why officials would be reluctant to say this, since it would give opposition groups in Iraq even more ammunition on that front.

But now, 3 days later, the story is "wait, no, he's really dead this time." Probably. And the raid in which he was supposedly killed happened five days ago.

The timing of this just feels weird, and kind of off. Did they just discover that he was alive, and just kill him? Is this just the NYT's fault for getting the "Hussein-is-alive" story late? Maybe this war has made me a bit paranoid, but I can't help but wonder. Unfortunately, I can't put my finger on why it doesn't feel right. Hmm.

posted by Mike B. at 4:22 PM 0 comments

Great article in the Guardian about why there might be such anti-NGO rhetoric flying around these days. It's by Naomi Klein, if that helps you avoid reading it, but me, I think it makes some pretty smart points.

(via Eschaton, which toots its own horn in the process)

posted by Mike B. at 2:59 PM 0 comments

A very good post at Reason giving us a good, concrete example why that whole "classify anyone we want as enemy combatants" thing might be problematic:

The administration's defenders say we shouldn't worry, because this power has been used only a couple of times (that we know of). But the case of Iyman Faris, the would-be Brooklyn Bridge saboteur, suggests how this end run around the justice system can have an effect far beyond the people who are officially labeled enemy combatants.

According to The New York Times, "Prosecutors discussed the idea of declaring Mr. Faris an enemy combatant...and that may have influenced his decision to admit guilt to avoid the prospect of indefinite detention." I have no reason to doubt that Faris, who pleaded guilty and faces a 20-year prison sentence, really did discuss the Brooklyn Bridge's vulnerability to blowtorches with members of Al Qaeda. But it's not hard to see how someone who was mistakenly accused of terrorism might choose a finite prison sentence over "enemy combatant" limbo.

Reason also points out that there is a bill under consideration to have the FBI investivate and prosecute illegal P2P transactions.

Which begs the question: what else is the FBI going to have jurisdiction over? Library fines? Take-a-penny trays? The "lentil fund" we have in our apartment?

posted by Mike B. at 2:57 PM 0 comments

Very good post on Eschaton connecting the new DHS / BATF regulation of fireworks displays (because, uh, they could be terrorism) with this:

[Rumsfeld's] staffers have been phoning city officials, including some in Orange County, and strongly urging them to structure Fourth of July celebrations around the war in Iraq.

"I got the impression that they had a list of every city in the nation that had applied for a pyrotechnics permit, and were calling them to persuade them to be part of the program," said one OC city official.

Hmm. Could that be...nah.

posted by Mike B. at 2:52 PM 0 comments

I have a question:

Alexandria's mother, Carol DeMuria, remembers an episode in which Samantha (always Samantha) has sex in a firehouse. "This is not how I want my daughter to live," says Ms. DeMuria, a 45-year-old mother of four. "This is not how I want her to think people in Manhattan live." Although Ms. DeMuria likes the show, and its positive portrayals of gay men, she says the thin, well-heeled heroines don't match her own memories of being single in what can be a tough and bruising city. But more important, she finds the women's gonzo sexcapades and the show's hallmark sexual frankness — discussions of topics like S&M, anal sex and erotic urination — unsuitable for her daughter. "When I was a kid, married people slept in double beds in all the TV shows," says Ms. DeMuria. "Let's be honest, people are having sex and having kids out of wedlock. But what do you tell a 14-year-old, that it's O.K.?"

What's the income of this family, do you think?

Opposition to sex out of wedlock as a concept just seems so outdated. (Opposition to sex out of wedlock as a reality, i.e. hearing your daughter having sex upstairs, is far more understandable.)

posted by Mike B. at 1:47 PM 0 comments

So in case you haven't noticed, reviews of the new Liz Phair album have been awful. I've even had a few friends, who listened to the album, tell me as much, and certainly it's confusing as to why a pretty respected indie artist would chase teen-pop at this particular moment in time. I'll admit I consequently wrote it off, not that I was ever that much of a Liz Phair fan.

But Fluxblog today posts a song from the album, Rock Me, and fuck, it's just great--a very Phair-ish bit about fucking younger men whose "record collection don't exist," but it sounds like, well, an Avril Lavigne song production-wise, which is no surprise, since it's one of the songs on Liz's album written / produced by The Matrix. It's a lot rougher than Avril's stuff, but all the weird little digital starts-and-stops, the big chorus dropins, the telephone voices, etc., are there.

And I love it! It's weird to read interviews that say that the Matrix's style "is not exactly in the business of making a singer sound more like herself," since this song totally sound like what I would expect if someone told me to look for Exile in Guyville with teen-pop production. I don't know why the lyrics are being slagged off--maybe something about the sequencing of the full album makes critics numb to the charms by this point--but I think they're excellent and fully in character. Of course, when the worst insult you can find for an album is "banality wins the day," you know I'm gonna love it (banality being, of course, at the heart of rock 'n' roll), especially when there's a song whose initials stand for "Hot White Cum" and posits ejaculate as a fountain of youth. Wahoo! OK, it's no "Divorce Song," but let's be honest in saying that this is an unfairly high standard to live up to. Liz seems to be successfully fucking with everyone, and I like it. Good for her. And beyond that, the song just sounds great to these ears.

This raises an interesting question for me, though: maybe more of our indie icons with pop leanings should grab some major-label dollars and make a fucking radio-friendly pop album with the Neptunes or the Matrix or someone like that. I mean, isn't that what we love about Beck's party albums? They're impeccably produced and very well-written, teaming as they do a great songwriter with great pop producers. The only thing separating Midnite Vultures and Liz Phair in my mind is that the songwriting is better on the former (by all accounts) and the latter is trying to actively participate in popular culture. I know not everyone agrees with me about stuff like Avril or Britney being great production-wise, but I think it would be awesome if you took that kind of style and gave it the kind of great lyrics and hooks that some of our underground luminaries can crank out. Think of, say, one of these folks doing that: Isaac Brock, Dan Bejar, Cat Power...the list goes on.

Anyway, the point is that I like the song, and that an album with 3 great songs on it and a bunch of crap is a firm convention of the teen-pop genre that Phair is trying to participate in.

posted by Mike B. at 1:12 PM 0 comments

Our San Francisco correspondant, Aaron Brown (no, not that Aaron Brown), on attending a Lou Reed show:

So Lou was fantastic. He played a really chill set. I was also reassured
that Lou is still cool, which makes me happy. But to top it all off,
fucking Tai Chi Master Ren took it all to a new level. I guess he tours
with Lou now. See, Lou can sing "Perfect Day" by himself, and it's good,
but when you throw in Tai Chi Master Ren in a red silk outfit doing
interpretive Tai Chi, it changes everything. Tai Chi Master Ren is the man.

posted by Mike B. at 12:11 PM 0 comments

Friday, June 20, 2003

Thread on nyhappenings reacting to a mailing for a party at Luxx called WELFARE:

1) "Welfare is not so badass and punk rock a name when you have to feed 3 kids on it. reminds me of that place tenement... BAD IDEA KIDS"

2) "yeah fuks change th name to: SALT MINES"

3) "Pianos is a really shitty name if you're scared by "The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T"."

Ah, nyhappenings. I do find "Tenement" a pretty hilariously offensive name, and I don't think hilariously offensive is necessarily the vibe they're going for.

In fairness, I do know a decent number of hipster kids on welfare, but the fact that they would use it to go to Luxx is perhaps evidence of what the original poster was saying...we all gotta party though!

posted by Mike B. at 4:50 PM 0 comments

OK, a brief Pitchfork mention, but only in praise: they rightly give a 10.0 to the reissue of Glenn Branca's The Ascension. Apparently the remastering is very good, which means I may have to buy a copy to replace my perfectly servicable 1994 News / New Tone CD I got at Other Music a few years ago. Damnit.

At any rate, it's a fucking phenomenal album--the prototype for symphonic noise-rock, and made only with 4 guitars, drum, and bass. Lee Ranaldo plays one of the axes and there's a very cute picture of him bein' all young in the liner notes. It blows your ass away. Go go go.

This, by the way, is being issued by fellow Oberlin grad Dan Selzer's new Acute Records label, distributed by Carpark, who have put out some very good discs by Miss Dinky and Kid 606.

UPDATE: As to the differences between my Italian jobbie and the new version, they seem to be significant. Dan replies to my questioning as follows:

Glad you asked. It differs in many ways. In 1994, the Italian label
New Tone licensed the Ascension. It was mastered from vinyl, the
original tapes being long lost. It never really received proper
distribution in the states, causing it to appear for various
prices(sometimes up to 25 dollars) and for some people to think its a
bootleg. How is our copy different? Well it's the first domestic CD
release of the Ascension, not that that would matter to you, as you
already ownd the Italian CD. What is signifigant is:

A) Our version is remastered by Weasel Walter and sounds considerably
better, louder, more exciting etc.

B) Our version contains a 4 page essay/liner notes from Sonic Youth
guitarist/Ascension bandmember Lee Ranalod.

C) Our version contains a 2 minute quicktime video clip of Glenn
playing solo improv guitar at a 1978 gathering at Jeffrey Lohn's loft
that is just blistering.

D) Our version contains, on the tray card, never before seen color
Robert Longo artwork.

E) Our version will, when selling millions, put more money in the
Acute coffers, giving us the ability to re-release tons more fantastic
music. We are very close to closing the deal on 5(FIVE!) more CDs.

posted by Mike B. at 1:30 PM 0 comments

Updated links; they are now roughly organized by politics stuff on top, music stuff on the bottom. Let me know if I've made any errors or if I left anyone out.

Also, the page seems to be loading quicker now, but the comments are still semi-fucked-up. You can always keep reloading the popup if the form doesn't come up, and it seems like you just need to wait a while after clicking "post comments" for it to register. I'll fix that sometime or other.

Also, I think I'm going to stop talking about Pitchfork for a while--it's getting a bit shrill and boring.

Politics-wise, I'd like to stop criticizing so much and start proposing more possible policies, but I'm not sure that's going to happen. It seems like an admirable goal, though.

Hi to Quo Vadimus readers--there's a bunch of politics stuff on top, and some good music stuff a bit below that. And, er, sorry to Rob for misspelling your site name. Ahem.

posted by Mike B. at 1:08 PM 0 comments

I was sitting there yesterday, wondering how widespread the idea was that Joe Lieberman is unelectable primarily because he is a ("modern?") orthodox Jew; I was guessing "not very" (even though it seems self-evident to me) because folks would not want to be labeled an anti-Semite. "What are you talking about? Jews can do whatever they want!" etc. So I did a Google search and it did indeed only come up with two pages of results (although each of the results stated this fact easily, as if it was self-evident). There was a lefty mention and a conservative leaving comments on a lefty site; a libertarian (?) mention and a comment on a conservative site where Democrats are called "Dimocrats" (haha--get it? It's a play on words! "Dim" means they're stupid! Oh wait, he's talking about me! I'm stupid! Oh no!) and a few other things.

And then there was this. Some sample comments:

- True, American government is already over run with Zionists, but going with the traditional lesser of two evils approach I would much rather have a puppet in office than a straight up Zionist henchman. Lieberman is so pro-Israel that even the American jews don't trust him. His wife is an Israeli citizen who was already traveling around speaking out against the holocaust when he was just running for vice president. Imagine what they could do if they were in charge. I could talk all day about it, but what I want to get to is what can we do to lobby against him. I know virtually nothing on the subject of political lobbying, but I think we need to start opposing him now. Any ideas anyone. One thing I can suggest is for people to start speaking against him to everybody who will listen. This even means to drop your racial platform when talking to the lemmings about this( so as to not scare them away from your stance on this). Many of us in the movement have stopped voting for obvious reasons, but I think this is serious enough for us to renew our voter registration. Anyways, feedback from any comrades in charge would be greatly appreciated.

- Oppose him? I say help vote him in there. His presence in the White House will make it hard for people to deny that America is run by Jews.

- The most cunning threat to White Nationalists right now is the NEO-CONS. If you think back to the neo-con reaction to Lieberman's selection by Al Gore as his running mate you will recall that the neo-cons were VERY UNHAPPY that Lieberman was on the Democratic ticket opposing Bush. Bush is the neo-con sock-puppet. Takeover of the Republican Party is the neo-con target. A Jew on the Democrat presidential ticket severely hurts both of these neo-con programs. A measure of how determined the neo-cons are to solidify their penetration and co-option of the commanding heights of the Republican Party is the lavish national campaign of "let's be Republicans" seminars and community gatherings that the neo-cons are putting on at 4-star hotels. A typical such gathering of the Landsmen will feature Michael Medved, Richard Pipes, David Horowitz, and Dennis Prager. All of the speakers are pitching the urgent need for Jews to re-register as Republicans, to get active in the Republican party, and to seek out precint, county, and State Republican positions. The money is flowing as these guys are flown all over the U.S. to pitch the new Inner Party tactic. In my opinion the neo-cons see Joe Lieberman as a guy running more on his own ego rather than getting with the Inner Party "program". His presence on any Democratic presidential ticket greatly diminishes the numbers of Jews that can be migrated into the Republican party by neo-cons like Medved, Pipes, Horowitz, and Prager.

- The time when we could have voted ourselves out of this mess is dead and gone. The only way the masses are going to get with the program, if ever, is if evertyhing they hold dear falls apart. Perhaps the best thing to do at this point is to speed up the process. Even though Sharpton and Lieberman are both unelectable, someone of their caliber in the White House would be just thing for that to happen.

- Absolutely correct. Politics is nothing but a spectator sport. As for Jews, Blacks, or whatever other non-white hominid that runs for office, I say more power to them. Worse is better. Lets turn up the heat on this pot as high as it will go. The sleepy white frog needs a wake up call.

So this is a) pretty sickening, but also b) kind of interesting in the parallels--and, oh Lord, you know I'm hesitant to make this one--between these guys and the activist left. Both, for instance, see "their" party as having been "taken over" by a sinister outside group seeking to advance their own narrow interests (the conservative-at-heart moneyed interests of the DLC v. the Jewish neo-cons); both express a disdain of politics as a means of effective action (although thank God in this case for that); and both think that, faced with their impotent position (even if they would never articulate it as such), the best thing might be to give the system a good push in the direction it's already heading so it will crash and can be rebuilt in their own image. It's also very interesting to see this view of the neo-conservatives, because, let's be honest, all of us liberals find it a bit confounding the way Jewish issues seem to be being co-opted by the right, although the anti-Israel rhetoric spewed by some of the activists probably doesn't help. Also both think they have some secret, hidden knowledge about the workings of the government and who is behind it (rich people, Jews and blacks) and thus action is necessary to correct it.

Brr, white supremacists. I think I'm going to go read about puppies for a while or something. Although it is a little weird how nobody talks about militias or these folks anymore, isn't it? Especially with all this Eric Rudolph business going on?

posted by Mike B. at 12:48 PM 0 comments

Harm posts a WaPo story about "white studies" courses at UMASS-Amherst.

Naomi Cairns was among the leaders in the privilege walk, and she wasn't happy about it.

The exercise, which recently involved Cairns and her classmates in a course at the University of Massachusetts, had two simple rules: When the moderator read a statement that applied to you, you stepped forward; if it didn't, you stepped back. After the moderator asked if you were certain you could get a bank loan whenever you wanted, Cairns thought, "Oh my God, here we go again," and took yet another step forward.

"You looked behind you and became really uncomfortable," said Cairns, a 24-year-old junior who stood at the front of the classroom with other white students. Asian and black students she admired were near the back. "We all started together," she said, "and now were so separated."

Fucking white people. See, I would be cheering. "Woohoo! Doin' great out here! Think I'll get me a good job and some great health care and then run the government!"

White studies is an annoying academic discipline--or, more accurately maybe, an embarrassing one. So is American Studies, for that matter, which I was thinking of doing as an independent (second) major in college until I did some research and discovered that they didn't seem to like America...well, at all. Which, honestly, strikes me as weird. If you read the blog, you know I'm not exactly your typical wave-the-flag-and-read-the-Bible patriot, but I am a patriot, and I do quite honestly love America--I wouldn't be this interested in politics and government if I didn't. So no American Studies for me. Apparently it used to be a pretty productive fusion of literary and cultural studies (putting books in their political context in a fairly moderate way, etc.) but now...well, I hesitate to use the phrase "taken over by the whackos," but it does spring to mind. (There was a great article online about this, but I have regrettably misplaced it, and Google ain't helping.)

As for white studies itself, it's problematic. I do actually believe that it would be nice if white people were more aware of the privilege they have as a group and the way this colors social and political interactions, but I want that to happen so maybe we can use what power we have to work towards greater equality and other various bleeding-heart goals. This shit just seems designed to get white people to give up their power, which is a nice idea, I suppose, except that it's a self-selecting program, and since, quite frankly, most people with power will be hesitant to give it up, it ain't gonna work too well.

This is to say nothing about the problems caused by making people feel guilty for being born a certain way--paternalism, misplaced pity, oversensitivity...well, let's just go the videotape:

Chen said Avakian's course made her more aware of how the sense of belonging corresponds to skin color. "I would never not choose to be someone's friend because they are white, but I think it's important to have friends of color," she said...

Clason-Hook said that the class was the only one he knew of that explicitly spoke of whiteness, and that it helped him realize that "other classes, like economics, politics and history, are about whiteness. They are written by and are about white people." ["White. White white white! White." -ed]

He said later that confronting whiteness, day to day, is challenging. "I am racist. It's not on the surface, but it's in me. Day to day I hear racist comments, and people don't even know what they're saying."...

Cairns, who had sailed through the privilege walk, said whiteness studies helped her understand race a little better. "My social group has always been white," she said. "I've noticed that, and I've started to look beyond my group."

Yoinks. Not to, uh, speak for someone else, but if I was black and a white kid wanted to be my friend right after taking a white studies class, I'd either punch him in the face or play a great prank on him, like making him eat a bunch of watermelons and fried chicken to prove he understood blackness.

Sorry, that was very racist of me.

Good lord, am I agreeing with David Horowitz?

posted by Mike B. at 12:25 PM 0 comments

Thursday, June 19, 2003

Wahoo!

Senate Committee Votes to Overturn FCC Ruling: The Senate Commerce Committee voted today to overturn a recent Federal Communications Commission raising the national broadcast ownership limit to 45 percent. Under the legislation approved by the Commerce Committee, the cap would be rolled back to 35 percent of the nation's TV households.

The committee also approved a measure that overturned the part of the FCC decision that relaxed rules prohibiting broadcasters from acquiring newspapers in their markets. Under the legislation approved by the committee, the newspaper combos would generally be barred. But under waivers they could be granted in the 60 smallest markets if those mergers are considered to be warranted in the public interest.

Now we just gotta get it through Congress...

posted by Mike B. at 3:09 PM 0 comments

The blog seems to be loading very slowly. This seems to be blogger's fault rather than the comments, as I have tried taking those out, so there's nothing I can do. Just keep hitting reload if you're having problems, and accept my apologies.

posted by Mike B. at 2:22 PM 0 comments

wiping a bit more horseflesh off my toe...
The PF mailbag is good today--one says a lot of what I said, but shorter. (Shorter than me? Never!) There's also a letter about Isaiah Violante's Bill Hicks review, which is nice, because I've wanted to bitch about it for a while. This is the same Isiah Violante who started off a review with a straight-faced Marshall McLuhan quote ("Oh was HE the one that said 'the medium is the message'? I had no idea!") and gives off the general air of being a little bit too proud of being in college and reading books about "politics." The Hicks review is a classic of repeating questionable, knee-jerk lefty rhetoric and sneering at anyone thinking otherwise, coming off like a less articulate Bill O'Reilly (a horrible thing to say about someone, I knew, but check the review and try and tell me otherwise), and generally taking Hicks way too seriously--he lionizes him in a way that I suspect Hicks would find embarrassing, and he takes his proclamations (or, as they're sometimes called, "jokes") as statements of unvarnished truth, which they're not. Hicks didn't even intend them that way, I think. Anyway, how does Violante respond to the letter? Did you say "snottily?" Here's hoping.

Anyway, I mainly wanted to talk here about the Fountains of Wayne review, mentioned a bit in comments below. The Pitchfork review likes it, mostly, although you can pretty clearly sense their repulsion at the popiness of it all. There's lots of backhand slams in there ("disposable," "its obviously short shelf-life," etc.) but the one outright complaint made is more or less here:

Still, Fountains of Wayne are guilty of taking themselves a bit too seriously here, or at least trying to prove their legitimacy, when they should be goofing around.

It seems strange to complain about Fountains of Wayne goofing around, and not a little insulting--"you guys look dumb when you try to be serious, so stick to the yuks, please." It's a problem a lot of "funny" bands face, it seems, when they try and write...well, not even "serious," but just "normal" songs, since jokes are supposed to be excluded from your typical music-product. But it's not like FoW are, I dunno, Atom And His Package or the Dead Milkmen or something (both of which, by the way, I dearly love)--there's so much care put into the music that it's tough to dismiss them as a novelty act (although, again, I love novelty acts, and I think the boys are a novelty act in many ways, but the "serious = good" crowd would have a hard time making that stick with their criteria).

For me, at least, the thing about Fountains of Wayne's humor is that it's not the point of the point of the song so much as one more hook among many--in "Hackensack," for instance, the line "I saw you talking to Christopher Walken" pulls you into the song and serves as the setup for the sadness in the second verse, or the poignancy of the chorus--or a pointer to the gorgeous melody and vocal harmonies. Does this fall into the serious = good formation? Maybe. But while this joke-as-hook scenario is the case in some songs, like all other hooks they eventually fade into the background and lose the "wow!" of their initial impact, but they rarely cease being pleasurable. And in some songs the humor is definitely the point, and it makes the songs far more interesting and complex than a "serious" approach would have--"Stacy's Mom," say, or "Bright Future in Sales" (the latter of which sounds to me like the closest a U.S. band has gotten to Blur's slice-of-life songs like "Stereotypes" or "Parklife" or "Yuko and Hiro"). And in some songs the humor is more in the approach, and again, this makes them far more interesting and rich, like in "Hey Julie" (the opening line of "Working all day for a mean little man / with a clip-on tie and a rub-on tan" isn't strictly laugh-out-loud funny, but it draws the perspective of the narrator very sharply).

The point is that to complain about the seriousness is meaningless, because the comedy exists side-by-side with the very serious approach they take to their music--this album defines "pop songcraft" to my ears--and, after a while, the "serious" and "funny" lyrics all fade together into one big pop-music melting pot. And, more importantly, I wish more songwriters and critics could realize this (the aversion of the overwhelmingly male rock-crit establishment to anything "cute" is a continual sore spot with me) because it would really open up music to a lot more kinds of expression, and would make it less mopey in general, and I hope we can all see the value in that after a decade of modern rock radio. Ideally it would even make music more constructively political--but that's a subject for another time.

posted by Mike B. at 2:09 PM 0 comments

"Geez, I don't know why people keep comparing us to fratboys:"

The vice president’s chief of staff and national-security adviser, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, wants to be anonymous, but his personality sometimes gets the better of him.

A SLIGHT FIGURE, taciturn like his boss, Libby rarely speaks to reporters. But in April at a White House Correspondents Dinner after-party, he challenged various well-known journalists to drink tequila shots. Most of the reporters got drunk; Libby did not. “Typical Libby,” says Rep. Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio. “He was probably doing every other one.”

Doing tequila shots competatively: cool when you're, say, under 35 and working some random job. Not cool when you're an aide to the Vice-President. (Especially when you look like Scooter.) I like a man who can hold his liquor, but I get a little suspicious of a man who likes to show off how he can hold his liquor. Also, it don't got shit on ottering.

The article is generally a bit misguided otherwise; it tries to blame Scooter for pressuing the intelligence folks to come up with the now-partially discredited WMD evidence, but it doesn't have any particular evidence, and I don't think the question of whether the administration as a whole was desperate to find some info and that the intelligence folks catered to that--at least a wee bit--is really up for debate. Pegging it on an aide is a good way of shifting blame, but it's not really looking like any heads are going to roll for this anyway. This bit, however, is just dumb:

One senior administration official says: “You’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t. Before 9-11, the criticism was that we failed to connect the dots. Now the criticism is that we did connect the dots.”

You're not damned if you do and damned if you don't--we just want you to get it right, asshole. That's why we employ you. We don't care whether you get it wrong by overestimating or underestimating, because each can be highly problematic in different contexts. We just want you to get it right. Sheesh. This is not unimportant stuff.

posted by Mike B. at 12:56 PM 0 comments

The impact of their flesh against my boot is starting to feel not unlike a rotting horse corpse, but check out the Pitchfork newswire today. A Radiohead item starts off thusly:

To celebrate the release of Radiohead's Hail to the Thief, Capitol Records is pulling out all the stops-- first by announcing the band's U.S. release dates a few at a time, so as to force publications like ours to run two stories on the band in one week; and also by giving away a one-of-a-kind Vespa scooter and tricking-out one lucky Kennebunkport man's Segway personal transporter:

This is followed by, guess what, the pictures of Bush falling off his Segway, which would have been funny, eh, a week ago. It wasn't even that funny then. Now, though, it's...well, here's what I wrote in response:

Dude, that Segway joke was soooooooo funny! You guys could totally write for Leno! I'm serious--you're THAT good!

I hope you stay, though, because I look forward to hearing the Sigur Ros / Joey Buttafuoco jokes you've got planned for next week.

Yeah. It's on the level of late night monologue humor. I'm assuming they'll figure out that I'm being sarcastic, but this has not been the safest assumption in the past.

And yeah, I know I said I was going to stop writing them, but this one's just too good to resist.

UPDATE: They reply: "What, did you fall off of your Segway too?" The wit, the wit! Stay outa the comedy clubs, kids, you'll get eaten alive if that's your best comeback.

posted by Mike B. at 12:04 PM 0 comments

Dude, what the fuck is wrong with Australians?

The unlikely, and dangerous, sport of ottering is largely unknown outside the ranks of its participants. In fact, it is possible that there has only been three occasions on which it has been mentioned in the press.

The secretive nature of the sport may be due to the fact that it is performed by journalists...following the release of the Australian Commonwealth Government budget...The 'standard' otter is performed by sliding down a staircase on one's stomach. The 'double' Otter is the same as the standard, but with a passenger or rider aboard. This method carries a higher risk of injury for both parties. The 'power' otter is assumed to be the same as the 'standard' otter but with a running start.

I really wish they did this in the US. "Get off, Will, it's O'Reilly's turn!"

(via Popbitch)

posted by Mike B. at 12:00 PM 0 comments

Is it weird that when I hear REM's "Stand" I get embarassed for them, because all I hear is Weird Al's parody version, "Spam"? "Geez, guys, why'd you write a cheesy song about luncheon meat..."

I guess that is kind of weird. I listened to way too much Weird Al as a child.

posted by Mike B. at 11:53 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, June 18, 2003

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this sound like a newspaper summary of a Simpsons episode?

A Brooklyn elementary school graduation became a scene of pandemonium yesterday when members of an overflow crowd, angered by being left outside, confronted at least one security officer and were hit with pepper spray, witnesses said.

Before it was over, three people were treated at a hospital for burns, parents were circulating a protest petition and 174 pupils from Public School 92 were left with the memory of a graduation at which the strains of "Pomp and Circumstance" blended with the blare of ambulance sirens.

I can almost hear Kent Brockman reading that, just after it cuts to him from Moe pushing someone at the graduation ceremony. "The hell we ain't!"

It's best to read through to the end, where you get to the part about the pregnant lady getting maced.

posted by Mike B. at 7:29 PM 0 comments

In regards to the riots in Benton Harbor, MI: the article here (though not so much the one on CNN.com right now) makes it sound like the crazy black people just went nuts when the officers happened to chase this guy who happened to crash and die.

What they don't mention is that Benton Harbor, in addition to being 91% black, is one of the poorest communities in the nation (see unemployment stats here--yep, 27%!), and lies across the river from the predominantly white, pretty affluent lakeshore town of St. Joseph (2% unemployment in the link above, and a median family income of $51k in 2000 versus Benton Harbor's $17k in 2000). There's a good summary of a book written about this particular division at the Christian Science Monitor site, and it's worth pointing out that one of the things sparking the riots is the issue of police extending chases from St. Joe into Benton Harbor and the problems that causes.

If you have a fairly affluent town populated by people of one race situated right next to a really poor town populated by people of another race, you better be real careful in your race relations, or--well, or you're going to have riots. I think it's clear the police department, despite the "Gee, what did we do?" attitude expressed in the AP article, has a least a small bit of the blame for this, and while I'm not exactly the kind of person who's going to be pro-rioting (I'm barely pro-marching), it's hard to resist the "Well, duh" reaction in this case. While you can certainly blame the residents for the violence, you're gonna have to put that 27% unemployment rate on someone else, and I can't help but think, being the bleeding-heart liberal that I am, this statistic reveals perhaps another cause of the rioting.

In other words: don't pay too much attention to any report of the riots that doesn't mention St. Joe. It's a good third of the story here.

More on this later, perhaps--gotta do work right now.

posted by Mike B. at 6:16 PM 0 comments

There's an essential article on the Atlantic's site describing the process by which then-Governor Bush decided to deny clemency to all but one of the record number of people put to death in Texas during his term. He bases this on an examination of the recently-obtained memos authored by current White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales:

Gonzales's summaries were Bush's primary source of information in deciding whether someone would live or die. Each is only three to seven pages long and generally consists of little more than a brief description of the crime, a paragraph or two on the defendant's personal background, and a condensed legal history. Although the summaries rarely make a recommendation for or against execution, many have a clear prosecutorial bias, and all seem to assume that if an appeals court rejected one or another of a defendant's claims, there is no conceivable rationale for the governor to revisit that claim. This assumption ignores one of the most basic reasons for clemency: the fact that the justice system makes mistakes.

A close examination of the Gonzales memoranda suggests that Governor Bush frequently approved executions based on only the most cursory briefings on the issues in dispute. In fact, in these documents Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence.

(from a post by Leah at Eschaton, who appears to be the only sane one posting during Atrios' vacation)

posted by Mike B. at 5:06 PM 0 comments

It's not as funny as the Jerry Garcia condolences line story, but it's still pretty funny to read Steve Albini talking about whiffleball. (Bob Weston's self-referential / deprecating post is pretty hilarious, too.)

I bet on whichever studio has more equipment "from Abby Road, man."

(via Quo Vadius, which is really quite good, i.e. it links no less than 5 interviews with David Lee Roth)

posted by Mike B. at 3:28 PM 0 comments

While we're talking about music:

I've been digging Giant Sand a lot lately, particularly the songs "Shiver" and "Temptation of Egg." They're poppy and vaguely country while still being really weird, with a great sense of melody and hooks, but, as I say, weird. I know I'll be into Calexico if something clicked in that direction (they seem like a kind of American Dirty 3, and violins and southwestern sounds are my secret pleasures), but regrettably it has not happened yet. Also, Giant Sound has way too many albums. I do own and quite enjoy (on an occasional basis) the collaboration the Calexico folks did with some French loungey people called abbc. Good stuff.

Re: Coloma, I am informed that their website is now in English. You should go listen if you have not already.

I'd swear there was a third thing, but it has flown from my mind like so many mosquitoes.

posted by Mike B. at 1:20 PM 0 comments

Saw Mogwai last night at Irving Plaza and they were quite good and quite loud. Some of the new album stuff in particular sounds really powerful and varied. They were much better than when I saw them last year at Warsaw when people talked through all the quiet parts, although Doug Mosurock assures me this is due to Warsaw's shitty sound system, which is doubtless true. Still, whoever thought I would be praising Irving's system? I guess it's OK if you stand back a bit. Some very loud moment which rocked me back on my heels. Mmm.

Some nitwit in the front kept waving this monkey puppet / doll on a stick, and at one point Stuart grabbed it and said, "Monkeys have tails, which is what differentiates them from apes. See, you learn new facts at a Mogwai concert. I'd like to see that at a Sigur Ros show." Everyone laughed. (Many people also laughed when, after the cheers for the beginning of "Xmas Steps" died down, I yelled "boo!") (No one really laughed when I yelled "You smell like pussy!" earlier though. I blame that outburst on my brain. No idea WHAT it was thinking.)

Japanther opened, and while they clearly hadn't played a hall that big before (they admitted as much) they amused me quite a bit and were nicely poppy in a kind of early Deerhoof way, and I'd like to see them in a small place. Very silly and noisy. They should get a full time drummer, though.

Afterwards, me and Kristie got McFlurries. Mmm. I think you're going to hear a lot more pretty, noisy, delay-ridden jamming from us at some point in the future. I forget about that sometimes when I get really focused on the pop songs, but we have produced some really excellent songs together in that vein. Of course, ideally I'd figure a way to mash those all together, but give us a while.

Incidentally, did you know there's a band called Moogwai? Weird.

posted by Mike B. at 12:36 PM 0 comments

The Justice Department has issued guidelines on racial profiling which say, basically, "Don't do it except for when it comes to terrorism and national security, which are apparently the same thing now, when you can do it sometimes. But not too much." The guidelines are non-binding.

It's a tricky subject to comment on for we lefties, since our (semi-understandable) kneejerk reaction is to say "Bush did it! It can't be good!" Still, I definitely don't agree with the ACLU spokesperson who said: "This policy acknowledges racial profiling as a national concern, but it does nothing to stop it...It's largely a rhetorical statement. The administration is trying to soften its image, but it's smoke and mirrors." Well, I dunno. For a JD with this bad of a record on civil liberties, this might almost be more effective than it would be (well, was) under Clinton or someone. Sure, it's non-binding, but eh. You want to try and push an anti-racial-profiling thing through Congress?

I can understand why your reaction to this might be something like "Prohibiting racial profiling except for terrorism investigations is like prohibiting drunk driving except for alcoholics." But forsooth, hold your ass on a second. Let's look closer. Let's look, instead, at where it does prohibit racial profiling: drug investigations and traffic stops. So maybe a better way to summarize the policy would be: no racial profiling for blacks, hispanics, and Asians, but for Arabs and Muslims, it's OK.

Of course this is a wee bit problematic, but then again, it's also non-binding, so it's hard to get that worked up about it. And I think almost everyone does support racial profiling in terrorism investigations, whether they know it or not: every time you say something like "They patted down my gran at the airport, does she look like a terrorist?" this implies, of course, that there is a certain type that looks like a terrorist, so let's at least be honest about that. There are lots and lots and lots of problems with the way we're currently pursuing anti-terrorist efforts, prime among them the fact that we seem to want to take our model from, gulp, Israel, but until someone comes up with a better model of enforcement than being extra-careful with young male Arabs traveling alone on a one-way ticket, we're going to have to go with that admittedly unjust strategem.

So sure, kind of an empty gesture, but also not exactly something worth criticizing--it's at least a reasonably positive empty gesture, and it gives us something to hold them to. Maybe it would even be worth opening a dialogue on what exactly the exceptions should be for terrorism. I think I believe Bush when he says this has been in the works for 2 years anyway--while there are Republicans that are racists, he's clearly not one of them--but it may be worth pointing out that the terrorism exception is probably a recent addition.

posted by Mike B. at 10:53 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, June 17, 2003

So remember how I was worried about the impeachment thing?

As Chief Wiggum would say: Ah, crap.

posted by Mike B. at 5:01 PM 0 comments

Looks like Brent hasn't been reading the blog (and why would he?) because, once again, he's responded to some legitimate reader mail in a pretty wack-ass way. The letter writer, one Eric Jensen, makes a fairly reasonable objection to Brent's Metallica review, i.e. that maybe a publication like Pitchfork shouldn't be wasting space on telling its readers the unsurprising fact that Metallica sucks now.

Hey Brent, leading off a Monday morning issue with a blast on Metallica was brilliant. Who's next on the mainstream chopping block, Puddle of Mud? PepsiCo? Wal Mart? Adam Sandler?...So Metallica sucks, huh? Thanks for yelling fire in a building that burnt down 15 years ago.

A bit harsh, maybe, but respectful, too, and making some reasonable points. Brent's response? Well, it's just weird. You should go read it in its entirety, but let me take it point-by-point.

1) Brent initially defends himself by saying that Metallica is worth covering because they're an important band. This is true. However, the letter was not criticizing the publishing of a review of Metallica; it was criticizing the writing and publishing of a Captain Obvious pan of Metallica. So the point is sort of moot.

2) Brent gives the following reason for writing the 0.8 dis:

It was entirely possible, in theory, that Metallica did make a return to their thrash years. After all, that's what literally EVERYONE has been saying. If Metallica is such an obvious low target, I hope you're writing Spin, NME, Entertainment Weekly, Blender, AMG, Rolling Stone, Dotmusic, Amazon, et al to complain of their raving over the album. I believe AC/DC reviewed the album for E! Online, as it claims St. Anger to be "all balls." The reviews have been so obnoxiously positive, that, as a writer with an outlet, I felt there was a need to offer another opinion.

So, in other words, he wrote a reactive review, and like he told me about his White Stripes review, he skewed it lower because it was too high elsewhere, he felt. But in giving this justification he seems to be willfully ignoring the main complaint in the original letter, i.e. that it was a pan published in Pitchfork. The people who read PF probably don't get their opinions from any of the sources he lists above (except maybe the NME, and you can never trust them about mainstream white American stuff anyway), so if he wanted to counteract those reviews, he would have been far better off publishing it, well, almost anywhere else. Publishing it in Pitchfork simply reifies the standards of the community, i.e. that Metallica sucks, and it becomes just more indie-rock circle jerking. While it's true that, say, Rolling Stone probably wouldn't publish a negative Metallica review due to its, um, "relaxed" upmarket critical standards (i.e. "selling good = sounding good") but hopefully Brent grasps that trashing Metallica in Pitchfork isn't a whole lot more noble than praising it in Entertainment Weekly.

3) In the same paragraph that he says "I felt there was a need to offer another opinion" he says "I wasn't commissioned to hate the album." This is mostly not true; he admits as much. Pitchfork didn't have to run the review, and he says he set out to write a negative one. So there you go. If he wanted to do a debunking or response to some of the other reviews, he was free to do that; indeed, if Pitchfork published response reviews regularly, this might be way more honest as a critical technique. But nope.

4) Brent says the writer "can't call us elitist," but the writer did no such thing. If anything, he's praising Pitchfork's normally high standards, and criticizing this review for not living up to them. Certainly the word "elitist" appears nowhere in the letter, unless my eyes are broken again.

5) Brent finishes with the accusation, "I don't remember you writing in response to my Destiny's Child review." This is misplaced for a whole host of reasons, but here are a few:
- It's the equivalent of one of the dumbass reader mail folks who write in saying "Well Pitchfork liked X but not Y so why are your standards inconsistent?" Dismissing a reader's opinion because you did not know his opinion in the past is just as logically silly as complaining about a review written by X by comparing it to one written by Y and accusing someone of inconsistency. There's no inconsistency there, just a facile comparison.
- It asks for the kind of constant indie-snob sellout policing that presumably Brent despises (although I'm beginning to have my doubts), since according to this scheme the only way a critic could take you seriously is if you constantly criticize him. Clearly not true.
- Metallica and Destiny's Child are apples and oranges. Metallica has been around for 20 years or so; Destiny's Child for 4ish. (I am too lazy to check dates.) Metallica's old stuff is loved by indie kids but their new stuff is ignored; Destiny's Child still maintains a reputation skewing good among Pitchfork's likely readers. So the complaint the letter voiced would not, in fact, apply to Beyonce.

Sounds like Brent read the letter like he wanted it to read ("you guys sold out!") rather than like it actually read ("your standards seem to be declining as you seem overeager to publish some rather easy and obvious pans purely for entertainment value").

The point of all this (besides complaining about Brent and Pitchfork's editorial decisions some more) is to point out why I no longer actually write letters in to the site: they treat their letters page like the "hate mail" section of Bonzai Kitten. Clearly they get a lot of dumb illiterate wackos writing in, but I bet most publications do, quite frankly, and they don't publish 'em, by and large. If Pitchfork wants to take that tack, as they clearly do, they can't then publish the intelligent, well-written criticisms side-by-side as if they were the same thing. Harper's gets some pretty intelligent criticisms of their articles, for instance, and they don't publish them all with insulting banners and snotty responses, because, quite frankly, sometimes their articles are wrong. It would be nice to see Pitchfork admit this.

But I'm not holding my breath.

posted by Mike B. at 4:03 PM 0 comments

The New York Times publishes an update on Gitmo based on the accounts of some released detainees.

Now, I'd just like to do some interpretive damage control before my fellow wacky leftists get out of hand with this. (Not that it'll do much good, I know, but...) First off, let's just keep in mind here that these are not the reliable sources, on either side, so maybe we should take all of this with a few grains of salt.

More importantly, though, I think we have to differentiate between the detainees' physical treatment and their procedural treatment / legal status. They are different issues and we need to maintain separate and, I think, opposing judgments on them.

Their physical treatment, it now seems clear, is not something I think we should be too concerned about. Everyone seems to agree that there were no beatings, and while they weren't exactly living in the lap of luxury (or Florida white-collar prisons), we have to remember that these were not nice men. At the very least, they actively supported a regime that was not, shall we say, soft on the women-killing issue, the Taliban. Most were trying to kill American soldiers, and in the worst case some are actually Al-Qaeda agents. (And don't give me the "they were defending their homeland" line--if there's any army I'd expect you to go AWOL from, for moral and/or self-preservation reasons, it'd be the Taliban's.) These guys aren't the domestic detainees picked up for decidedly non-violent immigration violations--they're killers who have no problem stoning women to death, and we really have to remember that before we go complaining too loudly about them only having half an hour of exercise a week. I'd love to live in a world where neither of those things happen, but given the choice, I'll go with the harsh sunlight any day.

But, you ask, what if they're not killers or Taliban supporters or Al-Qaeda members? Well, that's where the procedural stuff comes in.

On a certain level, the outcry about Gitmo has been prompted by a certain naivety about the way we get a lot of our intel and about the treatment of war prisoners worldwide--this is not, I don't think, particularly harsh treatment compared to that of most other countries. But now we see it not only happening here, but also happening with, as the article points out, "Canadians, Britons, Algerians and Australians, and one Swede." This scares people, understandably so, especially in conjunction with the other various scary rumblings coming out about civil liberties in the last two years. It's a weird combination of alarmist and naive--well, hell, from the conspiracy theory point of view they could always do this to ordinary Americans, but an Al-Qaeda member with Canadian citizenship is still a long, long way from an American student protester--but if we're getting that reaction here, imagine the reaction elsewhere. If the U.S. is to be a beacon of justice and democracy to the world, maybe it's not the best thing for our support of freedom in the Islamic world to be seen to be ducking international law. While our disdain for the International Criminal Court is, unfortunately, starting to look smarter and smarter, this doesn't excuse us from long-standing standards of justice like the Geneva convention.

It also doesn't help our vulnerability to charges of injustice when the guilt or innocence of the prisoners is never formally considered--if they have done monstrous things, which I've no doubt most of them have, why not detail it? And, moreover, why deny them counsel for so long? While I recognize that an uncertainty about their fate can be useful for interrogation purposes, I hope any citizen with a civic conscience would agree that any information gleaned from leaving a person in legal limbo for a year is probably priced too high. We can all agree that a year without a lawyer is too long, right?

posted by Mike B. at 1:55 PM 0 comments