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Tuesday, September 30, 2003
Jessica Simpson - In This Skin
There is a war for the soul of Jessica Simpson, and I don't think she knows. It rages on many fronts, sometimes placing her on the margins and sometimes in the center, but any list of the players would include: - The idea of "pop as pornography" (posited by Taylor Parkes and seconded by a host of theoryhead British crits--and about which I really do need to post) which might as well be renamed the "Jessica Simpson liner notes theory," given that the mere silhouettes therein would make a lesser man tumescent; - Adam Green (ex-Moldy Peaches) whose song "Jessica" imagines the new Mrs. Nick Lachey (98 Degrees) as a washed-up ex-celeb and caretaker of her sick mother, possibly in Las Vegas; - Heather Havrilesky and other assorted critics and viewers of Jessica's MTV reality show, "Newlyweds," in which she seems honestly confused as to whether "Chicken of the Sea" is chicken or fish; - Sasha Frere-Jones, whose article on Justin Timberlake sought to reclaim the critical reception of pop, and the assorted "popists" on I Love Music; - Jessica herself, whose coffee table book on her own nuptials (modestly entitled I Do: Achieving Your Dream Wedding), attempts to ensconce her as either an exemplar of American womanhood or a lifestyle coordinator. - And, of course, there's me, who happens to share a birthday with li'l Jess. (Thanks, Weekly World News!) Oh yeah, and the music. So what does her birthday buddy think of that? Well, it's pretty bad. I wanted to like it, finding myself generally on the SFJ side of the battlements, of course, but the production is bland, the songwriting is execrable, and one song steals its melody from a Portishead song. ("I Have Loved You" and "Sour Times"--it's just kind of embarrassing.) There're bits to like, but the interesting thing about Jessica Simpson is how, far moreso than other (inevitably female) artists accused of favoring style over substance and not being "real musicians"--Britney, Madonna, Mandy, etc.--Jessica really is about the context above the music. No doubt the music once mattered; her first disc is reportedly kinda good, but this one falls prey to a number of the stereotypes associated with Christian music--mainstream-huffing, unadventurous musically, unspecific lyrically, faux-innocent, etc. But once I knew to start looking for her, she started popping up everywhere, which was weird, because...well, because I just hadn't thought about her at all before, and I am not exactly uninvolved with music. But there she was, like a secret sign I just hadn't been hip to previously. And the more that it accumulated, and the more I listened to the album, the more important the periphery became, and the less important the album was; indeed, I really have no desire to listen to the album ever again, but I'm really interested in talking about Jessica Simpson. I don't think this is a bad thing, necessarily. I've no doubt she puts a lot of effort into a lot of the stuff in her life--the MTV show, the book (which, while definitely fawning, is still kind of bold in a weird, creepy way), her stage show, her appearance, and even her marriage. But the music, despite what she says in the liners ("I have searched to find the words that reveal to you my fears from special places within my soul" etc. etc.), just feels effortless, in that bad way that you'd talk about, say, the food your dad produces on his night to cook, rather than the Ramones. But Jessica herself just slots so nicely into so many of these discussions and ideas, without apparently producing any interest in the part of the participants to discuss her, that you have to wonder if she's maybe prepackaged as that, too. The utter consumability of her as an image--and keep in mind here that I like consumability--is just awe-inspiring. She's blonde and she's (apparently) attractive and she married a member of a minor boyband and presumably Orlando was involved somehow and she's Christian and, and...and you can just eat all of her up. It's really interesting. I feel like it's a secret sign for me to break. Of course, the other interesting thing is that there are people out there who genuinely like this album, and like her, and will buy it all, in droves. In other words, it's interesting that people like this crap. And I don't mean that in a bad, they-shouldn't-like-it way: people like crap, and that's OK; lord knows I like some crapola. But it's interesting because of the role crap plays in our lives. For instance, the two major lyrical themes of this album are: 1) Her husband and how much she loves him, and 2) How it's hard to be Jessica Simpson and the struggles she goes through. The second one is super-disingenuous, seeing as how she looks like this, and if we're being honest, she's more likely to cause eating disorders than cure them, whether she has one or not. I guess this sort of free-floating empowerment crap might appeal to some people, but it strikes me as more of a bare-minimum kind of thing, and anyone who knows anything about Jessica will have a hard time buying her as particularly oppressed. The love stuff, on the other hand...well, I guess that's part of the appeal, a big part, because her relationship and her love is very public; she even did the virgin thing, mostly convincingly. (And now it's gone, lads; more's the pity.) The lyrics describing said love are less horrible--if they were, they'd at least be interesting--and more just very banal and very straightforward. But I believe Jessica when she says that these lyrics are heartfelt and hard-won and very important to her, and I think a lot of other people will think so, too, but at the same time I also believe that they're not very good lyrics. Because that's the way it works with music, isn't it? The songs that are brilliant and interesting and special have a place in our top-tens, but the dumb ones--whether dumbly masculine or dumbly feminine, irregardless of the listener's gender--are the ones that really have emotional resonance for us. They're the ones we play at our weddings; they're the ones we get a little weepy about. So yeah, I like the Boredoms and Kid 606 and all that, but I love Pulp and Fountains of Wayne and Jonathan Richman. And I think this applies to all brands of music lovers: you'll like Emperor but love Slayer, like Reich but love Zorn (Masada's pop-cult covers are classic dumb-emotional stuff), like Autechre but love Aphex (lots of emo stuff on the RDJ album), like Lydia Lunch but love Sonic Youth, etc. I don't think having a place in your emotional makeup is better than a DID placement necessarily, but I do think it's something not often examined or acknowledged; we simply write them off as guilty pleasures and don't worry about it anymore, all the while trashing other people's favs. Adam Green's "Jessica," for instance, goes: "Jessica Simpson / where has your love gone / it's not in your music / no." (Then again, I guess that's basically what I just said.) But maybe we do examine it without thinking sometimes. The Moldy Peaches, after all, did that really well: they made music that was simple and dumb on one level that you could love, but really weird and innovative on another that you could like. Of course, I know a weird number of people who dislike the Peaches, but I think it is actually the inability to get past that first level of emotional dumbness, an inability to admit that the two levels can co-exist, that causes resistance to the kind of joyful music that I like. But I think they can, and often do, go together. Not so much with Jessica, though, and maybe this is part of her appeal to some people. Maybe they care about those sorts of lyrics more and care less about interesting music, or that's the musical sound they dig, or whatever. I read the lyrics and while they didn't have any effect on me, I could recognize that the potential was there, and in a way, that's something I admire--even if I'm still never going to listen to the album ever again. posted by Mike B. at 10:45 AM 0 comments
Monday, September 29, 2003
Incidentally, just wanted to give mad respect to Andre for repping this blog, in the song "Behold a Lady," whose chorus ends with the line "Clap clap, you deserve everything." Yes I do, Andre. Yes, I do.
Good song, by the way, especially when he starts giving random, kind of blasphemous, shout-outs to the Lord. posted by Mike B. at 5:37 PM 0 comments
I think we've all kind of wondered what exactly the fuck they're thinking over there at Vice, and now I guess we have a better idea.
Whenever VICE co-founder Suroosh would say the word paki, white people would be up in arms criticizing him (huh?). It became irresistible to goad people and corner them into conversations about controversial politics because they were so hysterical and easy to anger. Plus, incendiary political statements garnered endless publicity for us and playing with mainstream media became a fun game. OK, it's hard not to like them for pranking American Conservative. posted by Mike B. at 4:42 PM 0 comments
Really nice to see Mark giving some love to the suburbs. I'm a big fan of the 'burbs myself--I find them very beautiful and, as he says, kind of futuristic in a way that cities, with their hidden histories barely conceled by new construction projects, just are not. (Except maybe for Brasillia, which I really want to visit.) People generally seem kind of creeped out when I tell them this--and maybe even Mark would disagree with me, since he's talking about the UK 'burbs, tho I love them too--but I really do have an affection for them. Granted, I didn't grow up there, but in more rural towns, but still...
I can't find the review right now, but I remember a Pitchfork piece in which Ott rips on some band for being "too suburban" and tells them to just get to the country for some authenticity, and blech. Since when does it work like that? (And sheesh, could we stop mystifying the country? They watch Friends just like the rest of us.) Wherever you go, there you are, Chris. posted by Mike B. at 2:08 PM 0 comments
All right, well it clearly wasn't "upon my return," but so goes my life these days. Still: Outkast.
It might be worth it for all y'all burn-hounds to actually pick this one up (or at least check out someone's physical copy) because the packaging is pretty cool. Well, less the packaging, I guess, and more the liner notes, which, aside from featuring all the lyrics to the non-skit songs (thanks guys!), has some really interesting photos. I mean, you knew it would--it's Outkast, after all, and even if you've only glanced at it in the store, you've seen the borderline-atrocious picture of Big Boi on one cover and the hilarious one of Andre on the other (a Glock and pearls? Oh, Mr. 3000!). But inside...well. How to put it? I guess, basically, it made me understand why Salon assigned someone "writing a book about racial passing in American culture" to review the album. OK, there's Andre under the Eiffel tower in a plaid suit. OK, there's Andre as a centaur in the heavens with three naked ladies. I'll even give him, sorta, the one with him on a bench with a girl and a bulldog. But the one on the inside back cover makes me wonder. It's him on a hill, having a picnic with his wife, who is in a crew-neck orange sweater with white collar peeking out, and his children, who are in penny loafers. Andre himself has his hair slicked back (as he does in the bench and Eiffel shots) and is wearing what can only be described as an outfit straight out of the 50's. The whole thing resembles either a shot from a religious pamphlet or Far From Heaven. In other words, it's kind of a minstrelry of whiteness. Which all makes me wonder--and honestly, I'm asking this, I don't have an answer yet--is Andre just fucking with us, with this and the whole "Hey Ya" thing? Is he pulling a fast one on us white people? Outkast, of course, has a bit of a reputation as a hip-hop group white people like (which is probably true, given that they won two Grammies and all) and various critics (unlike moi) have seen fit to hedge their bets on "Hey Ya" in particular, and The Love Below in general, by saying that well, obviously, it's just going to appeal to rock critics (read: white people) more. And while I don't see any particular problem with that, it does make me wonder, as I say, what exactly the master plan is here. Of course, it also makes me wonder if there's any answer to the question "How much does Andre like Prince?" other than "a lot." Aside from the specific parallels ("Hey Ya" being the "Raspberry Beret" of 2003, for my money, and the minimalism of the drums there in the ecstatic-pop context evoke nothing more than "Kiss"), Andre seems to have, on this album, done a nice job of solving the problem of audience and race that sent Prince spinning into the art-jazz abyss of late--albeit an abyss that's well-deserved, since we'll still be figuring out his 80's output in 20 years, most likely. But from what I understand of the Prince mythos, he began rebelling against his almost universal pop appeal (exemplified, perhaps, by the lack of any bass in some of his best songs) by making what he perceived as "black" music, first with the Black album and now more or less continually with NEWS etc. But Andre has, I think, figured out a way around this, one that's actually rooted in Outkast's appeal: genre-hopping/melding. And one of the genres he's aiming toward is Coltrainey jazz, but if this album is any indication, he wants to fuck with it and mix it with other shit. And that's not white or black but just musical. It's interesting, anyway. And oh yes: Miss Clap is a big fan of "Roses." C'mon, guys, he says "poo-poo-poo" in the chorus! How cool is that? (Although according to the liners he's saying "boo-boo," but bullshit on that.) posted by Mike B. at 1:37 PM 0 comments
Saturday, September 27, 2003
More on Outkast upon my return, but briefly: I noticed on Thursday that the only drums in "Hey Ya!" are kick and snare. That's it. No cymbals for the entire song. Which is really fucking cool. posted by Mike B. at 8:58 PM 0 comments
Thursday, September 25, 2003
Check this out (via Gawker, who bitch about it) and prepare to spend the next hour or so occupied and annoyed. It's the NYPress' "Best of" Media & Politics section, and it's, um, interesting.
I have a few questions about it. #1: Do you guys really think this reflects well on you? Best Media Whore Let me get this straight: you publish a premeditated, unmerited, untrue attack on someone, under a pseudonym, as a favor to a "dimbulb" gossip columnist, and you think this is supposed to show how the NYP is better than all those "cowards" out there? (As for "cowards," see #3.) Are you just trying to tell us something about Mark Ames? Besides which: b-list? What the hell do you think you guys are, the New Yorker? #2: Do you really think it's a good idea to publish kind of lengthy bits about how you jerk off to Teen People? Best Kiddie Porn Magazine Is this supposed to be shocking or something? You sound like Dear Abby, just with jackoff jokes, which were shocking in strip clubs in the 50's. Except not. Clearly you don't mean this as a sincere comment, since there's way better kiddie porn out there (cocks and everything), so is it supposed to be media critique? A larf? What? If critique, what are you saying? That the media exploits young women? That'd probably be more convincing if you didn't sound like, well, like you hate women. I'm just sayin'. #3: What's up with this "we" shit? Why in the world would you do all this bitching about dishonesty in the media in the midst of spewing forth a bunch of gossipy unsigned items? Which one of you jerks off to Teen People? Which one of you applied to the stroke mag? And what the fuck is up with the weird kiss-off to people you fired? Strikes me as yet another symptom of the big dogs getting caught up in pretending they're the continual underdogs, since in their world that's the highest thing you can aspire to, but what do I know? The assumption is that most of this was written by editor Jeff Koyen, Mr. Intense-Irrational-Hatred himself, also the presumed author of the 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers list, which had the laughable gumption to try and pretend like "New York Press readers" overwhelming thought the fucking editor of Maxim was the most loathsome New Yorker. Really? More loathsome than everyone else on the list--Henry Kissinger, Woody Allen, Harvey Weinstein, David Rabin...and, honestly, do you expect us to buy that anything approaching a majority of city citizens thought cocaine is loathsome? To me, it seems a wee bit more likely that it was y'all libertarian grumpy-pusses. Like I said about the Klosterman review, there's no denying that this shit is interesting, but so is Man v. Beast, and despite the Press' apparent desire to be, I dunno, the Vice of Manhattan (I'm not even gonna get into their loathsome slobber over Vice), they're skewing way closer to the former than the latter. No one cares about your bullshit gripes, but we will happily gawk at someone shitting in their hand on the sidewalk, staring at it briefly, and then eating it. But I guess I'm just one o'them bloggers... posted by Mike B. at 7:44 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, September 24, 2003
Here is a review I wrote of Japanther, which I may or may not add to later.
Japanther - Leather Wings Here is the formula for a Japanther song: one found-sound sample; one incessant, up-front fuzz-bass playing sixteenth-note riffs; one muddy 2-bar drum part, possibly canned; and vocals mixed low, sung/shouted through a telephone (not one of those digital telephone filters--actual analogue handsets!). With little low-end and less treble, their wash of midrange recalls Belle & Sebastian's "Electric Renaissance" without the songwriting, and absent songwriting--not a bad thing, necessarily--we've got the sound. While Brooklyn's Japanther seem to have absorbed the lessons of scene progenitors Deerhoof better than their contemporaries, they're at right angles both to Deerhoof's rapturous production gleam (preferring a DI-heavy demo sound, even live, where they play to a backing) and their "I'm-happy-and-angry!" start/stop arrangements (preferring a steady, occasionally annoying, pound). They're actually pretty damn enjoyable on an album level--credit their coherent sound--but on a song-by-song basis they could stand to learn a bit more from the 'Hoof and let their oft-sublime bass riffs complement actual vocal melodies and bigger drums. If this formula, plus the occasional keyboard, sounds like something you might like, "sample" some tracks and see Japanther live, where they're most comfortable. Hopefully one of their subsequent discs will deliver on this one's potential. posted by Mike B. at 2:47 PM 0 comments
In regards the first item about Beck, I can only say:
a) Uh, didn't you guys hear about the "Feel Good Time" thing, you know, a few months ago, when the damn song came out? Because I sure did. b) Didn't Dave Eggers write a whole long thing refuting your Flaming Lips bitchiness about two years ago? You know, before you wrote it? Well, anyway, you can find it here, and let me quote the relevant section, as it takes on odd resonances here, a few years later: I bought R.E.M.'s first EP, Chronic Town, when it came out and thought I had found God. I loved Murmur, Reckoning, but then watched, with greater and greater dismay, as this obscure little band's audience grew, grew beyond obsessed people like myself, grew to encompass casual fans, people who had heard a song on the radio and picked up Green and listened for the hits. Old people liked them, and stupid people, and my moron neighbor who had sex with truck drivers. I wanted these phony R.E.M.-lovers dead. [1] Anyone want to guess who this is? [2] ...although, as wallace-l'ers know, "that one reviewer" may, in fact, be Eggers. [3] Not anymore! Kind of an interesting genealogy to trace there, if you're so inclined. posted by Mike B. at 2:46 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
Christ almighty, Chris, did Peter Buck rape your sister or something? posted by Mike B. at 12:49 PM 0 comments
Monday, September 22, 2003
Klosterman update: via an, um, anonymous source, my attention is directed to an old New York Observer story about Mark Ames, the author of the original review.
Mr. Ames grew up outside San Jose, Calif. He was a weird, smart kid who started smoking pot at age 8 and got into fights. He spent five years at the University of California at Berkeley. After college, he tried writing screenplays. He grew more miserable. "I didn’t even think of women anymore because they could just smell failure on me," he said. Then in 1991, he vacationed in Leningrad right after the failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev. Uh, yeah. That's...hmm. Interesting. It is nice to know a few more things about Ames. Like, for instance, that he grew up in San Jose and went to Berkeley which, at the risk of being glib, goes a long way toward explaining why he can't possibly conceive of people actually liking Billy Joel and Guns 'n' Roses and The Real World. It's also nice to know that he went to Russia because he was a loser, since only someone from that area would respond to an inability to write a successful screenplay by the age of 30 by thinking that a) this constitutes "failure," b) success is all anyone everywhere in America cares about (yes, Mark: there is nowhere in this entire country where you can meet someone who doesn't care that none of your scripts have gotten past pre-production--certainly not, say, North Dakota, or, sweet baby Jesus, fucking Williamsburg) and c) it's way better to live in a decaying foreign country and have sex with girls who wouldn't touch him if they had more money. I've known a few Russo-philes like Mark in my time, and, well, they aren't the best of people. I won't respond to the rest of it because presumably it's supposed to be Jim Goad-ish provocation, but since when are assholes like Ames and not weirdoes like Klosterman "gonzo journalists"? Anyway, for those of you not yet convinced to pick up the Klosterman book (although I know there's the hardback v. paperback consideration), here you can find an excerpt from the Cusak essay. posted by Mike B. at 5:46 PM 0 comments
I was listening to the Jaxx's "Plug Me In" on the train this morning and was reminded of a post I read about it somewhere that said, basically, nice tune, but oh, the delicious irony of a pop star like JC going on about "ever lived without the photographs and money." Now, am I the only one who couldn't give a rat's ass--and who thinks that maybe the song wouldn't be any better with really smart (or, uh, not-so-"ironic") lyrics? The tune and the arrangement is just so damn good that it's hard to see how getting Leonard Cohen in there would have improved things at all. (Though don't get me wrong: I would love to see a Cohen / Jaxx collab.)
One of the main knocks at rock-crit is that it's way too concerned with lyrics, and indeed, I don't think that most critics would deny that they primarily focus on lyrics in their reviews. But for me as a critic (and by "critic" I mean "guy who posts to a blog"), one of the reasons I like pop music is because the lyrics don't matter and I can really focus on the music, which I think often is, as should be clear by now, really quite good. Pop is nice because we've all agreed that the lyrics just don't matter, that they're all dumb, but that it's kind of OK. Do I get excited about Beyonce because, wahoo, it's one more song about relationships? Naw. It's the sounds, and maybe the Jay-Z stuff. There are certainly good lyrics in pop songs, but I think a lot of these are good because of context, not strict content, and this, of course, plays into both the temporality and inclusiveness angles of pop's appeal. Me and my dad have disagreed with this at times--he's very much in agreement with the 60's narrative of lyrics-not-mattering-until-Dylan/Beatles. This was something I agreed with it, once upon a time (said time also being a time when I thought synths were lame), because it seems like a smart thing to say, but then I went back and listened to some of that pop stuff that the Beatles supposedly obliterated, and it was quite good; indeed, it even came back in a highly relevant way with punk. I dunno--if you want good writing, you can always go to Infinite Jest or Harper's or Space Ghost Coast to Coast. With so many outlets out there for good writing, I think it's OK for one or two to emphasize other art forms, even in their meldings. I certainly do think there are some songs, even some pop songs, with just abjectly horrible lyrics, and these bug me. But that's not really the argument being made about "Plug It In" here; we're not even arguing that they're unintelligent lyrics, although you'd have a hard time getting me to say that they were up to Faulkner or anything. They're just, you know, ironic, but not intended to be; they are, I guess, dishonest. This is just more the-singer-is-the-song, pop stars can never conceive of not being pop stars nonsense, and no need for me to bore everyone to tears by ranting again. But the omissions are telling: writing lyrics, after all, is sort of what JC does, and there's no denying that there's a consummate professionalism to them. They're well-formed and well suited to the music, unlike, say, Limp Bizket. And I think that matters. If someone has the talent to sing a melody really well and do that star thing, I don't need them to be Chaucer, too, in order to enjoy them or to think they're pretty great. Maybe this has something to do with me being a lyrics-scribe myself and knowing how often lyrics come from me verbalizing whatever springs to mind at the time, or maybe it has something to do with me knowing where the popsters are coming from with their particular themes and being pretty bored with it already, but yeah, I'm happy to see them scuttled off to one side, at least in this arena. On the other hand, I do kinda wish that indie folks with good lyrics writing skills would venture into the pop arena, but I guess that's more wishing for genre-mixing within a genre than wishing for the wholesale change of another genre. At any rate, I'm more concerned with it in broad terms, and I do think it's slightly silly to be concerned with it in any given song. posted by Mike B. at 2:13 PM 0 comments
Incidentally, after going to said music panel, we went to Lazer Park and played Dance Dance Revolution, which is--and I know I'm a bit late to the game on this one, but still--awesome. You don't know joycore until you've spun around on lighted panels in your socks while a Japanese technopop cover of "We Are The Champions" blares at you. Especially if there is also a kids' birthday party going on and said small children keep dashing at mad speeds around your legs. posted by Mike B. at 1:30 PM 0 comments
So I went to that panel thing and it was pretty boring. I got first-person confirmation that Lyor Cohen (Def Jam / Island / UMG) and Jason Flom (Lava / Atlantic) are slimy tools. Lyor kept saying things like "we're less of a music company and more of a lifestyle company" and "we like to think of ourselves as taste-makers;" both he and Jason forgot they were at a New Yorker panel and not a FMQB conference, but that's probably OK. It was kind of funny to see how both sort of considered themselves mavericks running spunky little labels instead of, you know, members of some of the biggest media conglomerates on Earth. Especially Lyor. I mean, c'mon, you're Lyor Cohen, dude!
Although there was much discussion about MP3s and their effect on the blah blah blah, no one seemed willing to discuss the recent dunderheaded RIAA lawsuits, even though two members of the panel were RIAA folks and two very much weren't, including Danny; there was way less fighting than I was hoping for. Ah well. The questions were also pretty lame, including one about emo (sheesh) and one from "this weasely little guy," as a friend put it, about whether labels were advancing music as an artform or something. They ended right before I was going to ask my question, which was going to try and present the VR view by asking about the C-Lo / Dixie Chicks contract lawsuits and about majors starting to do licensing instead of recording agreements where the artists would put up their own money to make albums and then retain copyright, and then maybe try and move to more broad stuff about labels downgrading into simple promotion companies instead of upgrading to "lifestyle companies" as Lyor talked about. Ah well. Probably would've been too nerdy anyway. But there was one illuminating moment, which came to us courtesy of Mr. Robb Nansel (who "looks like he spent way too much time on his hair this morning," as the same friend put it) of Saddle Creek, home of Bright Eyes, notable not only because of what he said, but because of the fact that he didn't say a whole lot else without being prompted. I don't remember quite what the context was, but here's a rough approximation of what he said: We try to sell records in such a way that fans and musicians can be as comfortable as possible. We don't shove it down everybody's throats. Now, on a certain level I can understand what he's saying. Hell, I'm in two bands, and I've mentioned them here, what, twice? (I'm not even going to link to them half-ironically / half-sincerely in this post.) I understand quite well from personal experience how off-putting intense self-promotion can be, how for people of our particular musical disposition it can either make us totally uninterested in the music or make us far less able to enjoy it, for whatever reason. So I'm sympathetic to that particular viewpoint. But at the same time: c'mon man! Fucking comfortable? Since when was music basically about comfort? Isn't it supposed to be about outsized emotions, about being a teenager or being a rock star or being this mythic country/blues/folk legend, about heightening everything about about making everything louder, about dancing and crowd-surfing and seduction and fucking? Comfort? Fuck comfort! Don't get me wrong: I like comfortable music, and we all know how I feel about unrealistic overstatements about music being "dangerous" or "disturbing" or whatever. But if we're going to admit that music can sometimes be outsized and, if not shocking, at least a little bit disorienting--and I don't see how a fan of Bright Eyes could think otherwise--then what goddamn reason could there possibly be to make the promotion "comfortable"? Maybe a distinction needs to be made. Like I say, it's pretty annoying and off-putting to see self-promotion: to have some guy in a band come up to you or call you or keep e-mailing you about how great he is and how you should check him out, etc. And I even occasionally get grossed by certain publicity stunts. But you have to recognize that there's a big difference between that guy bugging you about his crappy band (although that's even kind of endearing if he's a friend) and advertising, articles, and reviews, which aside from being much easier to ignore, are also not initiated by the artist. And that matters, because it helps us to answer the question: why is it so off-putting? Sure, I'm well familiar with the annoying allergy indie kids seem to have to some pretty damn fun aspects of culture, but that doesn't explain all of it. I think you can nail it to the idea that when an artist is doing promotion, they're not working on their music. And while it's true that most artist, for better or worse, do spend a lot of time not working on their music, we don't want to think this is the case. In other words, the reason we don't like hype is because it should be all about the music, man. Look, I'll admit that there are definitely certain standards you want to keep to when it comes to promotion. Overexposure is a worry, and I'm not so sure I'd be personally happy to go right to Pepsi Smash! even if I don't mind it when other artists do. But is comfort really the standard? I don't think so. Saddle Creek certainly doesn't think so: six months ago, you'd be hard-pressed to think of a more overexposed label than Saddle Creek or a more overhyped artist than Bright Eyes. I mean, Robb himself was at a goddamn New Yorker panel with Lyor Cohen. Maybe they're backing off now in reaction to that (viz. the new Bright Eyes release, a multi-disc vinyl set), but the fact remains that after a certain point, the people who are going to be uncomfortable with you having a review in Newsweek are not the kind of people you want to concern yourself with if you want anyone who really cares about music to hear your stuff. These kind of people are the ones who are still way too concerned with authenticity--whether of the traditional kind or their own particular brand thereof--and who, tragically, are not willing to play the game of pop culture. Which is really too bad, because man, it's fun! But there's definitely a certain amount of disbelief-suspending you have to do in order to fully engage with it. For instance, you have to sort of overlook Britney's lyrics and enjoy, rather than be vaguely weirded out by, the fact that she came to prominence wearing schoolgirl skirts, because, let's be honest here, it is actually pretty damn funny and cool, and concerns of exploitation and tastelessness (and inauthenticity, I guess--"you so did not go to Catholic school!") vanish because, well, because it's not very fun. And who cares? As I've said before, as long as we're yowling pseudo-poetry over electronic noise, no matter what the content or the intent, it's all gonna be inauthentic. And what's this about ramming it down people's throats? Hey, isn't that fun sometimes--to have something just be everywhere, to have it be the soundtrack to your life whether you're doing it or not? To have everyone know about it and talk about it? Maybe you don't think so, but I sure think so, and for a lot of people, let's be honest, nothing makes them more comfortable than to have something be overexposed. And, sweet Christ, man, haven't you ever heard something so good that you want to shove it down everyone's throats, that you just want to say "This is the greatest thing ever and listen to it now or I will punch you in the arm until you do"? And sure, maybe it's not the best thing in the entire world, but doesn't it make you feel that way at the time? (At the time: the temporality of pop music. V. important.) Don't you want to share it with other people? I hope so! I don't want everything shoved down my throat, of course, but sometimes, oh sometimes, it is very nice. posted by Mike B. at 1:19 PM 0 comments
Friday, September 19, 2003
Oh, we've missed you, Pitchfork...
Making thematically (and aurally) challenging music that's not particularly "easy" to summarize or decipher is obviously not something to rally against; nobody wants Silver Mt. Zion to drop their agenda, embrace facility, and dumb that shit down. I'd just like to raise my hand here and prove you very very wrong--and this is coming from someone who very much likes the Godspeed sound. What would impress you more: a founding member of GSY!BE making post-rock, or making a great three-minute pop song? Number two, Chester. Which is more artistically valid? Neither, really, but to me that means that yeah, it'd be kind of interesting to see them dumb it down. Especially when the smartening takes this form: But don't go getting all pogo-primed-- this is cerebral shit, less concerned with getting you to strap on black boots than encouraging you to boycott Wal-Mart and locate alternative news sources. The underlying concept of the record is heady, but not too different from what (the comparably lucid) Conor Oberst was hollering about on Desaparacidos' Read Music/Speak Spanish: lashing out against the impending threat of unregulated urban landscapes, sprawling bigbox superstores, and governmental mismanagement. Unlike Oberst, though, Silver Mt. Zion think globally, and this album also contains jabs at western imperialism, piggish entitlement, and ethically questionable military occupations. Wait--so what are the jabs? Could I get some details here? Because Godspeed does this too. I'm assuming that since there are vocals, there are some, I don't know, cries of "fuck Bush!" or something? I can't even seem to find a tracklist anywhere, but the website does give us this tidbit: Destruction of communities (foreign & local) are lamented & eulogised in the following tracks, culminating in the album closer: an ode to the unzoned terrain surrounding the railyards adjacent to the neighbourhood where the band, along with many other Montreal musicians & artists, have lived since the early 1990s. This land is now being swallowed up by big box & condo development. In other words, it's a NIMBY thing, eh? Affordable housing and cheap standards of living for all, but don't put up a big ugly mass-production/distribution place where I can see it! Minor jibes aside, I guess this is a pretty good example of why people don't like "political music," since it seems to be arguable political opinions grafted as fact onto musical backings that would seem to have little to do with them. Of course, this is pretty much the opposite of "political music" as I would define it, since taking "jabs" is far from political. Indeed, from the description here, it sounds about as political as a kiss-off song: "you did wrong and I'm a-gonna tell you why!" But this is not political, this is not engaging in a dialogue or an argument or acknowledging objections, it's just assuming a position of impotence and preaching to the choir. That's the problem with communities, of course, that they tend to have far more uniform standards and opinions than, well, than the body politic. So that means, first, that they're sort of shying away from democratic engagement (instead of trying to understand the appeal of the big box and finding some sort of compromise, they recognize it as contrary to their community's values and seek to reject it outright), and second, that it's probably not very useful to tell a community to seek out alternative news sources when they probably already do, if they're listening to ASMZ. Indeed, all my experience tells me that if you've decided to limit yourself to a certain group of people it actually makes sense to challenge their assumptions, to open them up to the hidden good in mass media. But this is me, I suppose. In other news, on Amazon, "jesus" says "If you thought The Old Testament was good try ASMZMO&T-L-LBW/C." And for the AFR fans in the audience, here is a Quebecois review. posted by Mike B. at 7:17 PM 0 comments
Charles Taylor helpfully quotes a particularly stupid passage of Lester Bangs:
"I think that if most guys in America," Lester Bangs wrote in 1980, "could somehow get their fave-rave poster girl in bed and have total license to do whatever they wanted with this legendary body for one afternoon, at least 75 percent of the guys in the country would elect to beat her up. She may be up there all high and mighty on TV, but everybody knows that underneath all that fashion plating she's just a piece of meat like all the rest of them." Even allowing for Bangs' consciously overstating the case, there's too much Susan Brownmiller hoo-ha in that passage for my taste. Well, yeah. I don't know if it's more disturbing to regard this as a supposedly Klosterman-esque "everyone does this but me" bit of media criticism or as an honest bit of self-reflection, but regardless, this strikes me as a particularly bitter-nerdy vision of human sexuality. I've no doubt there are some men who would do this, but of the dominators, I suspect most would prefer more of a blowjob-facial-walking-out-the-door kind of scenario. And there are not a few men who regard the high and mighty girl as someone to dominate them. Humiliation or mistreatment is a common fantasy precisely because it's what we can fantasize about, what we don't want to do to the ones we love, and women do this just as much; sure, they probably crush out more, but once they reach a certain age there's an undeniable love-em-and-leave-em impulse, which is what causes some of that bitter nerdism in the first place. And sometimes the fantasy becomes a reality, and let's be honest: when both partners are out to degrade the other, that can be some great sex. Of course, this all ties into the popporn meme, which I really want to comment on. Soon, I hope. UPDATE: Taylor goes on to say the following: "In his book "An Erotic Beyond: Sade," Octavio Paz said that in vilifying the state and glorifying the murderer, Sade aimed to replace public crime with private crime. "Demonlover" is an essay on how public crime (actually crime committed in secret by public companies) makes private crime possible. Consumers here are not the innocent marks of money-mad conglomerates; they're accomplices." I like this a lot; the public/private divide is a big interest of mine, and it's got a lot of echoes in Arendt's "Totalitarianism." (Private crime leads to the public crime of dictatorship.) So maybe more on this later, too. posted by Mike B. at 6:53 PM 0 comments
While we're on the subject of disturbing things, here are pictures of Fred Durst kissing Halle Berry. Gak. posted by Mike B. at 5:03 PM 0 comments
Fifth graders listen to Radiohead and give their interpretations via drawings. It's pretty damn distressing.
The article itself, though, is great, from the opening about "listening to everyone's opinion about Radiohead" to the kids' initial reactions to the requests for Sean Paul. The results? This one features a suicide booth. (Excuse me: a free suicide booth. Wow, the kid found a way to make suicide booths more depressing.) This one is about sad dolphins, which is probably not the traditional interpretation. Oh, and this one's straight out of the Cobain diaries. Then again, I think this kid just likes ice cream, which is fair enough. Of course, it could just all be a hoax, but it's a good one regardless. posted by Mike B. at 5:00 PM 0 comments
So much to write, so little time. Hopefully things will die down in an hour or two here and I can get some stuff posted before the ol' ball and chain hauls me in (just kidding, honey), but for now I thought I should mention that tomorrow at 2 pm I'm going to be attending the New Yorker festival event entitled The Music Machine. The panelists are Lyor Cohen, Danny Goldberg, Robb Nansel, and Jason Flom. If anyone wants to meet up and yell things at Lyor (but not Danny, that would have unfortunate ramifications for yours truly) just drop me a line. I also might have two free tickets if you act now.
I have no idea why Russel Crowe is listed first among Artemis artists (uh, Warren Zevon? Steve Earle?) as it doesn't exactly scream "New Yorker reader," if you know what I mean. I also had no idea that Robb Nansel is from Saddle Creek! Maybe we can make him cry! posted by Mike B. at 4:43 PM 0 comments
I went and saw Donna Summer last night at the WFMU benefit (although I didn't make it through Matmos--People Like Us gave me such a headache) and there are a few things I need to correct from what I said earlier.
1) He does indeed bring the rock. The crowd was being unresponsive (which is kind of not surprising seeing as how, as one merch-table staffer put it, they "look like the crowd at our record shows") and so he charged out there to try and energize us and ended up tackling this one guy and breaking a table. Which probably hurt that guy, but still, it was pretty awesome. After that, I was engaged. 2) He does sustain quite a dancable groove, even if none of the geeks in the audience (besides two or three who were at the Sloth-in-Goonies end of the nerd appearance scale) were actually dancing, especially after he tackled a random bystander. (Which would seem to make you more likely to dance--"We'll shimmy, just don't hurt us, radio DJ!"--but there you go.) Despite the breaks, each song definitely sustains a steady BPM groove throughout, after it gets up to speed. I'd kinda like to be at one of his european shows. 2a) ...oh, except for the prog song, which had no groove whatsoever and kind of killed the mood. 2b) ...also, the gabba song was good, even if too short (i.e. 9 seconds). Incidentally, why the hell were all the FMUers wearing eyepatches? Was it some sort of elaborate Momus joke? (Confusing Matmos with Momus?) ...ah, I see from reading my goddamn mail that the benefit was for a guy with an eye injury, so it was sort of a solidarity thing. Still. The guy before Donna was...well...uh, well, we saw him in the bar before and he's kinda fat and wearing this tucked-in Flintstones t-shirt and was balding and had strips shaved into his head and he had these huge, square glasses, and we were like, wow, that guy's taking indie-retard fashion about as far as it can go. Then he turned out to be the opening act and it involved a lot of spastic shouting, promting Jesse to coin a new genre: 'tardcore. What is 'tardcore? Well, I guess you'll know it when you see it. But it's sort of like joycore that isn't good but is really trying hard and you want to pat it on the head. I'm sure the man himself was nice enough (he seemed to have a lot of friends) and the music was OK, but good lord. Hardcore 'tardcore. posted by Mike B. at 12:43 PM 0 comments
Thursday, September 18, 2003
Another:
Best half-bar breakbeat by an artist with whom you would never really associate the term "breakbeat": the frustrated "would you get to the fucking chorus already Stuart, this is just some wanky school project" roll that comes around 1:36-1:37 in "You're Just a Baby" by Belle and Sebastian. I love that little bit. And then, after the chorus, there's a bongo solo! posted by Mike B. at 6:01 PM 0 comments
Things about which I will brook little disagreement: "Sing to the Singer" by the Danielsen Famile contains the best-recorded set of handclaps ever. posted by Mike B. at 5:24 PM 0 comments
Gawker prints a picture of a dessert that is apparently supposed to be the Chanel logo but which actually looks like two interlocking dismembered cocks with eyes scattered about their decaying surfaces. Sometimes I'm glad my company doesn't have a cafeteria. (Most of the time, actually.) posted by Mike B. at 4:36 PM 0 comments
FYI, the new Carla Bozulich album, a cover of Willie Nelson's Red Headed Stranger, was released on Tuesday and is available now. I have my copy, of course, but I pitched an article on it and will wait a week or so to hear back about that before doing a full post. In brief, though: it is goddamn amazing.
Coming out next Tuesday: New Belle & Sebastian New Outkast New Elvis Costello (which sounds like it'll be the kind of Elvis Costello disc I don't like, but that's OK.) I am excited. Today with the hurricane blowing us a long-distance kiss in NYC it was a good day to sit in the park and listen to Red Headed Stranger. posted by Mike B. at 4:25 PM 0 comments
SFJ gives his favorite Space Ghost quote and says, "The whole thing where I tell people I don't watch TV isn't going to work anymore." And right below that he talks about Liz Phair a bit. It's nice.
Much love to the SGC2C et al. My favorite quote would probably be "I am super-unsatisfied to be replicated in this way! Super-unsatisfied!" At least for right now, that's my favorite. But there are so many. Honestly, I could analyze Space Ghost songs at least as well as I can other ones. Hmm, maybe I should. And that show is one of the most amazing things on television. Also, Quo Vadimus points us to a SFJ review of Killing Joke, which I feel comfortable calling the best Killing Joke review ever written. posted by Mike B. at 4:19 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, September 17, 2003
Came across this in the course of writing the Klosterman entry: a review of Happiness by Jonathan Lethem. It's pretty damn good. posted by Mike B. at 5:51 PM 0 comments
Klosterman (w/cornrows and a pudge)
OK, OK, so I rip on Pitchfork a lot for having horrible, short-sighted reviews. (Speaking of which, there hasn't been much to say lately, although I did want to say a few words about the Rapture review. Have they really changed their ways? Have I made a difference? Those college brochures were right!) And justifiably so: sometimes their pieces are just bitter hack jobs, a series of insults without any particular justification, meant purely for the entertainment of sour indie snobs, doing little to advance the music they profess to love but doing their own little bit to sink it slower and slower into the morass of insularity. They have published some bad, bad reviews. But then there's this: the worst review ever. And it's not even in Pitchfork. It's a book review, of Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by one Mr. Mark Ames. And the fact that it's a book review is probably the problem. Yeah, people are starting to doubt that kickoff manifesto in the Believer, but hopefully the ol' snark watch (currently featuring the above review at top) will pick up soon, presumably as soon as they get me to write for the Believer. (Hear that, Andrew?) But it's true that the harshest reviews are book reviews, because...well, because they're written by writers about writing, so there're whole other issues of bitterness and jealousy tied up there. If there was a good way for musicians to do harsh reviews in song, there would probably be some pretty stinging pissing matches there too. (Do we count "Sweet Home Alabama" or "Takedown"? Well...no.) Writers, lacking abilities in certain areas (socially if not physically, almost always--c.f. David Foster Wallace's essay about how being a writer turns you into an observer rather than a participant, and vice versa) learn to defend themselves with words. And that defense then becomes an offense as other more blatant modes of conflict fall out of fashion outside of adolescence. As Dalton Conley puts it, "thinking of a quick retort...was the perfect training...That's what we do. We sit around snapping on each other." And as a friend of mine likes to point out, going to college and majoring in one of the disciplines that requires less of your logic-and-thoroughness skills and more of your arguing skills (English, politics, etc.) gets you to this point where you can pretty much argue any point with anyone successfully. This is undeniably a useful skill, but we have to be careful how we use it, and too often we become enamored of how entertaining and enjoyable it can be to zing really funny, witty, harsh insults at each other. And sure, it's funny, but you kind of have to be aware of how you're doing it. Ripping on someone who won't hear it is one thing, ripping on your friend in a bar another, ripping on a public figure another, and all of these are OK, but you sort of need to be aware of the context. And you very much need to be aware when you're doing it to a peer. So there's the Bowers way--which ends up being kind of nice despite the exceedingly funny snaps he gets in there--and then there's the Mark Ames way. (Which is not so different from the Chris Ott way, but that's another story.) Let's knock down the obvious ones first. Geez, let's see: there's the focus on the author photograph, which Ames spends four paragraphs talking about, and along with the fact that he mainly talks about the book's cover, the book's title, the book's prologue, and the first few essays, it sure does sound like Ames didn't really prep well for this particular book report. There's the repeated use of a made-up word he never defines, "Beigeist" (it's even capitalized for no reason!), which was so bad even Gawker readers talked about it. There's the idea of accusing Klosterman of "coming off as a sex offender," which is such a low standard that it makes me wonder if he thinks Jarvis Cocker looks like someone who masturbates onto the pope's hat every night. There's the fact that Ames' own personal bitterness, jealousy and resentment are so close to the surface that it's embarrassing even to someone who disagrees with him. And there's the fact that his main argumentative technique is to quote a bunch of things Klosterman said and then let them lay there, like it's so obvious how wrong they are that he doesn't even have to waste his time explaining it to us. So, for instance, here's one of his rebuttals: "Are you scratchin’ your chins over that one, Gen-X- and Gen-Yers? I dunno–my forefinger and thumb are getting pretty raw; I need a special chin-scratching machine to help me through all the thoughts that one inspires. There’ll be nothing but bone and tendon hanging from my lower jaw by the time I figure it out." Now, it's funny when it's on the Simpsons--that bit about the electric clue-finding machine and whatnot. But in an ostensibly substantial and argumentative book review? Uh, not so much. The problem with reviews like this is that since the author is "smart" and he has become very very convinced of his own smartness, he has a really hard time admitting that other people might have legitimate disagreements with him, especially when it comes to things that are subjective rather than objective, and as such just tends to dismiss things out of hand that actually require a bit more elaboration. Like this: "Billy Joel is great." Wrong. And someone should pick up a chair and crack it over Klosterman’s head for writing this. The extra special problem with this is that the quote isn't a random observation on Klosterman's part; it's actually the point of the whole goddamn essay it comes out of. He acknowledges that other people might disagree and he spends a few pages trying to convince them otherwise. In other words, there are other things Ames could have taken issue with about Billy Joel than just the outright statement. Klosterman, in other other words, has already proved him wrong. But by far the biggest sin this review commits is...well, let me put it in a dictionary definition so it's clear. miss·ing the fuck·ing point v. colloq. [superl. really missing the fucking point.] 1. Not quite getting it. "Dude, I think you're missing the fucking point." 2. [motion of palm passing over head accomp. by imitated sound of plane] 3. Mark Ames [Middle English mysnyg thee fyceng pynt, from Old English cl?less. See mis- in Indo-European Roots.] The point he's missing is that Klosterman does not always mean exactly what he says. I can see some of you bristling out there, worried that I'm going to use the word "irony" (I could, since he's being actually ironic instead of "I'm-making-a-joke-about-Webster" ironic, but I won't), but let's think this through. Klosterman doesn't mean everything he says. Sometimes he may, in fact, even mean the exactly opposite of what he says. He may not believe in what he's saying at all. But this is OK for two reasons. First, it's a book about fucking Saved By the Bell and Billy Joel, not a book delineating the administration's foreign policy. It's a standard literary device, and it's OK. But the other reason it's OK is because it's actually pretty damn useful and really really effective. So, for instance, Ames complains about the essay in which Klosterman blames John Cusak for his inability to sustain a relationship because Cusak has projected this particular romantic charm that no normal guy can live up to ("This is Emo"). Ames, predictably, responds to this mainly by saying that Chuck can't get wimmins acause he's ugly, but in the midst of this 12-paragraph, um, critique, he does make two substantive objections, and examining these might be illuminating. #1: 'Underlying this lame point of media criticism is the false notion that other people, not Chuck of course, are incapable of distinguishing media fictions from reality–a stupid premise that was marginally interesting long ago in the hands of Barthes, Baudrillard and Gitlin, but deserving of a milkshake on the head in the case of Klosterman. Only hack media critics believe that "regular" people are somehow more susceptible to the pop culture bacillus than they are, probably because they don’t spend time among these "regular" people.' Absolutely wrong. What's underlying this essay, instead, is Chuck's own implication in the whole scheme. I'd be the first to pounce if he was indeed doing what Ames is accusing him of, since it's one of the things that really bugs me about media criticism. But he doesn't. Midway through he even says, "personally, I would never be satisfied unless my marriage was as good as Cliff and Clair Huxtable's (or at least as enigmatic as Jack and Meg White's)" and he finishes the essay by saying "I want fake love. But that's all I want, and that's why I can't have it." For the love of everything fried, the essay's called "This is Emo." Klosterman is clearly putting himself squarely in the center of this problem. It is, in fact, this quality--of simultaneous self-effacement and honest implication--that makes the essays so effective. They're not mocking his lessers: he's writing about horrible pop culture artifacts he himself absolutely loves, and in some cases, is even kind of obsessed with. And anyway, we really all do do this, if not with TV or movies, then with books (the Madam Bovery thing) or biography (politicians getting a bit too into their idols, etc.). We're all part of this. Even Ames, a man who, after all, moved to fucking Russia to escape the tyranny of prime-time television, which is one of the most fucking melodramatic things I've ever heard. If you want to get away from USA consumerism, Mark, there's always Canada. #2: 'Sick thing is, Klosterman, as a proud North Dakotan hick, spent all too much time with "regular" folks. He knows their presumed susceptibility is a lie, but also knows that this lie is what the coastal Beigeocracy [the what now? -ed] wants to hear. He’s only too willing to sell them all out in order to please his Manhattan masters, who have their own set of clichés that they expect to read. Hence, this gem of a media-crit cliche: "The mass media causes sexual misdirection: It prompts us to need something deeper than what we want."' As we know from the Billy Joel thing above, Ames has a problem with taking things out of context, and this is no exception. This quote doesn't refer to Cusak, but instead to Woody Allen. And here's how that section begins: 'Of course, this media transference is not all bad. It has certainly worked to my advantage, just as it has for all modern men who look and talk and act like me. We all owe our lives to Woody Allen. If Woody Allen had never been born, I'm sure I would be doomed to a life of celibacy.' So he's not, in fact, dumbly railing against the evils of the media's mediation of desire; he's saying it can be kind of cool sometimes. And the Woody Allen point is a fucking fantastic one. Here's what comes right after the quote Ames pulls: "This is why Woody Allen has made nebbish guys cool; he made people assume there is something profound about having a relationship based on witty conversation and intellectual discourse. There isn't. It's just another gimmick, and it's no different then wanting to be with someone because they're thin or rich or the former lead singer of Whiskeytown." So yeah, there's nothing profound about having a Woody Allen relationship, but there's nothing profound about having any relationship. This is the point. The mass media convinces us that there is some meaning there, but that's OK, because that seems to help us out, relationship-wise (gotta narrow down the field somehow besides our random seuxal tastes), same as with music, or literature, or anything. It's all pretty much subjective. Then again, sometimes that actually fucks things up, confuses them. And it's that ambiguity that's so useful, because really, that original "bullshit media critique" had some real value to it. It's just been oversold and we can't really say it without wincing anymore. Klosterman's doing his best to reclaim and refine it for us. What Ames doesn't realize is that he and Klosterman are both using that power of lethal argumentation that I talk about above, but Ames is using it for evil, and Klosterman is using it for good. Klosterman doesn't really believe that John Cusak can be blamed for the failure of his relationship; he even says as much: "And someone needs to take the fall for this. So instead of blaming no one for this (which is kind of cowardly) or blaming everyone (which is kind of meaningless), I'm going to blame John Cusak." But he does believe in the other points he's making, about the possible dangers of fictional images (a theme explored in Don Quixote for the love of criminey) and the problems of romance and Woody Allen. But if he stated them outright, they wouldn't hit as hard. So he's working his way around to them; he's, you know, writing. If comedy is the "sheen" or "overproduction" of literature, then like with Justin, you need to look beyond that here to the remarkable subtlety underneath. Klosterman isn't just trying to bludgeon us over the head with a supposedly self-evident truth like Ames is; he's trying to give us arguments we can use. And he does so over and over again. I really love Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs. It's a goddamn great book. One essay is about Saved By the Bell and is so amazingly geeky about it that I can't help but identify. One essay is about a Guns 'n' Roses cover band that has some of the best lines I've ever heard in my life, and Chuck clearly really likes these guys. One essay is about the Dixie Chicks and how teenage girls are the new teenage boys. And a whole lot of other stuff which I may or may not comment on in the future, including a real bit of scholarship about Kid Rock that was, hands down, the smartest thing I've read in the last 6 months that wasn't written by Hannah Arendt. And one essay is about The Real World and how since that's been on, every single American under 30 now acts like one of the 9 personality types adopted by cast members of that show. Again, this is clearly not true, but it is interesting. And that's what I like about Klosterman: he doesn't go half-assed on these things. He gets an idea and he just runs with it, not because he thinks it's right so much as because he's interested in where it will take him. And that's a technique I really like. One of the problems with criticism is that we're so concerned with taste--understandable, since it's the closest thing we have to theorems or formulas, real, quantifiable things you can base scholarship on--that we can't get beyond it. Klosterman's not even really doing the reverse-snob backflip, since it's clear from even a cursory survey of the Real World essay, among others, that he is way too obsessive about these programs to be liking them "ironically." This is a real and genuine love, and he is neither ashamed of it or proud of it; he just has it, and he uses that to go somewhere. I think too often critics find themselves liking something and then resist it, or find some reason to dislike it, but aside from my usual point about how dumb it is to say no to pleasure, I think these Klosterman essays prove beyond a shadow of a doubt how really liking something you're not supposed to can lead you to a conclusion just as valid as if you started from Blood on the Tracks. My time here is almost done (see, you wait three years for the album and then it's a double-disc), but before I go, let me just address the issue of geographic bias/determinism. Mark Ames lived in America, but he got disgusted with "all the other Gen-Xers who never even had the brains or guts to wade into the margins in the first place." And so he moved to Russia (aided in no way, I'm sure, by money gained from the same shallow Amerikkkan system that produces such soul-killing hogwash, etc.) and writes about Russian whores. No comment necessary, I guess, although I will say that his critique makes one wonder how he can accuse Klosterman of peddling "shallow media criticism" with a straight face. Chuck Klosterman grew up in North Dakota, moved to New York City and is now editor of Spin. He has written a book called Fargo Rock City about loving heavy metal and growing up in the midwest. These facts irk some people; Ames for one, of course (sample: 'I suppose this must go over well with his Manhattan handlers, who just love "authentic" hicks who can write roughly the same Beigeist-intellectual drivel as they while still keeping to their "roots." Here Klosterman is the hick equivalent of an Oreo...'), but it's apparently a widespread idea. See, for instance, here: With his autobiographical yarns about communing with heavy metal culture in rural North Dakota in the mid-to-late-'80s, it's rather evident (to those keeping score) how Klosterman hit the right notes to break into the NYC media--a creature from the land of slackjawyed yokels who figured out how to channel his earnest consumption of mass produced glam rock into a memoir that resonated with the medium funny set because it was just folksy enough. The basic gist of all this Klosto-bashing is that he can't possibly actually be like this, and moreover, no one from those flyover states we've never actually lived in but feel a lot of sympathy for could possibly agree with him. It's only elitist Manhattanites! This reminds me of the argument a while back that Saving Schmidt was insulting to Midwesterners, that it was just reinforcing its big-city audiences' stereotypes. The problem with that, of course, was that the people saying this were elitist Manhattanites themselves, not Midwesterners, and they had only seen the movie at preview screenings in Manhattan; in other words, they were just, you know, assuming that people from the Midwest would be insulted, purely on the evidence that non-Midwesterners thought the movie was funny. I saw it in Indiana, and it was both well-attended and well-enjoyed, and I got similar reports from three or four other Midwestern states. Now, you could make the argument that these people were just too dumb to realize they were being mocked, but is that an argument you really want to make? Is that an argument you want to make about anyone from North Dakota who likes Klosterman? I'd have a lot more faith in these particular critiques if they weren't being made by guys in Moscow and Toronto and were being made by guys in Fargo. (Of course, they're too "out of the loop" to understand the complicated politics of the big-city media game, right?) All the Midwesterns I know who've read Klosterman have absolutely loved it and were not offended at all. When you're wondering why some guy you don't like is successful, you have to consider the horrible possibility that he might just be really good. It's possibly, maybe even likely, that Chuck Klosterman got hired at some publications because the editors were riding a hick-authenticity fantasy. But it's nearly certain that he gets read and liked because he's a great fucking writer. posted by Mike B. at 5:19 PM 0 comments
Real nice post by David over at Big Sunny D about PJ Harvey's "This is Love." Does a nice job of teasing out the joy in it. I'm impressed that he was able to slow the song down enough in his brain to analyze it--to me it's just one big rush of "ooooohhhhWEEEEEE!" I have, um, different associations with this album than some other people, though.
He also posts a pretty damn sexy picture of the artist herself. And, fuck me, is she playing through a Vox? Argh. One more reason to get one. ...and is that really a ZOOM PEDAL?! There on the far left? Hmm, maybe my eyes are deceiving me. I am kind of curious about her gear setup, though. posted by Mike B. at 12:55 PM 0 comments
Awright, I'm out of the Dizzee argument, since Simon says it's over (okee), and it's admittedly getting a bit ridiculous anyway, which we clearly all realize. Some of the latest posts are good, but they're also starting to sound like a) "My country is more diverse than yours!" and b) the retardo arguments I'd overhear (but, thankfully, never participate in) about "this is not punk rock!" "No, this is totally punk rock!"
Briefly, though, I would say to Luke (more on some of his older posts later, perhaps) that neither the beat nor the vox for "Get Ur Freak On" sound very hip-hop either. Sure, there's lotsa Jamaican influences in Diz etc., but there's lotsa Indian influences in that Missy track. Does that make it "not hip-hop"? And, to parallel Simon's question about Justin a while back (which, yar, Luke's not interested in): what's at stake in Dizzee not being hip-hop? I hear it and I hear hip-hop. That's all. Oh, and would he be receiving such mainstream acclaim if it wasn't hip-hop? (Or reducible by many people to hip-hop?) I would never claim to approach Dizzee from the perspective of someone who knows, well, anything about the history of jungle in the UK (I grew up in rural NY, kids), but neither would I ever claim to care, and I think my perspective is both valid and the one that most people will be approaching Diz from from now on, so probably worth considering. And to Mark I would say that sure, Brooklyn ain't Idaho, but you wanna put Boise up against the Lake District and see which one comes out on top, punk? Yep, the US has more of a racial divide, but it also has a higher and more evenly-distributed minority population, so it's really been forced to deal with that issue more than the UK has. Maybe Harm wants to chip in here and challenge us all to quote some goddamn statistics, you blowhards? Yeah, probably should. But I'll say this: the US's racial politics, while hardly ideal, are definitely not what they're portrayed as in foreign correspondence. Oh, and as for geocentrism, maybe I should make that anxiety-of-influence post, eh? Hmm... posted by Mike B. at 12:10 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, September 16, 2003
William Bowers reviews a Jon Mikl Thor album, Triumphant, and oh, it's lovely.
The rating above represents the average score of the 0.0 that Triumphant earns for whatever Pitchfork attempts to assess (originality, artistry, musicianship, credigree?) and the 10.0 that Triumphant earns as a novelty-metal classic putting its genre's satirists to shame. (Why did Spinal Tap and Satanicide bother, when this stuff's already self-consciously a caricature to the point of being spoofproof?) This is to say nothing of the Fat Boys ref he drops in later. It usually only takes me about three sentences to realize I'm reading a Bowers review; it's something about--and forgive the phrase--a generosity of spirit you can grok. Opening a review with a gender theory theory is a classic PF move, but something about the repeated use of "Pardon my blog" tipped me off to the Bowerism. posted by Mike B. at 5:23 PM 0 comments
Hi there folks--I need a bit of advice here. Tomorrow I need to turn in a 100-word review of Donna Summer's "This Needs to be Your Style." Not a big deal, but I can't decide which version to turn in. They're pretty much totally different, so I'll post 'em here and see what you think. Vote in comments--#1 or #2.
#1 What the hell happened to Donna Summer? We knew she had an experimental streak (i.e. the Moroder collaboration I Remember Yesterday), but a cut 'n' paste laptronica album that throws in references (?) to Britney and the Go-Gos? Yoinks! Shocking though it may be at first (no vocals!), the music is so-so: neither very smart nor danceable, it sounds like your average college student with a Powerbook and Reason who slaps on the granulizer to remind you that it's art, to paraphrase Tom Ellard. The high concept falls flat, but it's fascinating to see this side of the disco diva. You go, girl! #2 The diva reconfigured as a pudgy male record geek: this album, made entirely from rock/pop samples, sounds unique if simultaneously default.IDM-circa-2003. Donna Summer a/k/a Jason Forrest wants electronic music to be more rawk (thus "cockrockdisco.com") and this reportedly come through live, but here...well, it's not bad (it's pretty good, actually), but it's not what it's supposed to be, kind of like Cex's "Oops..." Ostensibly Plunderphonics-o-tastic, it's too chopped to sample-spot; theoretically poppy, the grooves are few. No doof-doof should run our lives, but we can do better for a rockist rekindling of disco's glory days. Still, it's fine experimental pop. (there're your options. I considered doing a longer post on Donna, which I can if requested, but I need some free advice more!) UPDATE: Comments seem to be periodically leaving and doing bikini car washes to raise money for the PTA or something, but you can always e-mail me. UPDATE 2: Went with #2. Damn you literalists! posted by Mike B. at 11:02 AM 0 comments
Jesse (my roommate) today has a great article in Salon about the Decembrists and Neutral Milk Hotel. It's real good, even if they did edit out some of the more personal stuff that I really liked. They also link to his excellent STN article on Elephant 6. Go read one of 'em, at least. posted by Mike B. at 10:32 AM 0 comments
Monday, September 15, 2003
Mark at k-punk and Jonathan at quarks and charms reply to my post about the problematics of loving Dizzee Rascal (hopefully by including the word "problematics" in that link I'll get quoted in a critical essay sometime soon. Send me an e-mail if you do!). I don't know if I can muster a substantive response, but I guess I should at least clarify a few things.
First, a few little things: I only know about gutter garage from what I read in the blogs, but contrary to what Mark says, it was certainly my impression (from Simon R., at least) that the new form of garage was strongly influenced by Dirty South bump, and you can certainly hear a lot of the mealy-mouthed verbalizations thereof in GG, just as you can hear the remnants of garage in the vocals of "21 Seconds." Mark says, "In many ways, Dizzee couldn't sound LESS like US hip hop: it's not only the idiolect and the accent, but also the ruffness of the sound, which have no parallel in the US." Well, he could sound less like US hip-hop by sounding like Blur, but snarkiness aside, he sounds a lot like the undie folks we're all pretty used to by now; there's certainly more of a dance-music (gabba?) heritage to it, but the noise elements aren't that different from El-P's stuff. The voice we all agree is unique, but that's equally true of Flava Flav, so...Mark also writes, "And it's not as if US hip hop has much to shout about at the moment." Geez, really? I'm pretty happy with it. If you're inclined to dislike mainstream pop (as Dizzee's fans seem to be--no offense meant, but it is a pretty fair characterization, yes?) then the fact that hip-hop is the mainstream over here will result in some pop-in-rap-form that will put you off, but I'm pretty damn happy with everything from Outkast to Jay-Z's recent stuff to Mr. Lif to Missy Elliot (Missy fucking Elliot!) to instrumental stuff like Prefuse 73 and RJD2. It's the usual suspects, sure, but aside from the fact that I'd never pretend to be able to introduce anyone to great new hip-hop, it says something that I can rattle off a list of great stuff that easily, yeah? And this is to say nothing of all the underground stuff I don't have my lilly-white ear to. And Jonathan says: "I'm not so sure that there is a rise of the US-style MC over here- So Solid, Heartless, Gal Flex etc etc make damn sure we know they are a crew/collective/gang. Dizzee made a point of thanking his crew [Roll Deep] at the Mercury awards." I don't think this is accurate at all, although the rest of the post is excellent: almost all US MCs rise with crews, and only break off with them for marketing purposes. I have an example as close at hand as the Diplomats, Cam'ron's crew, and I could also pull out D-12 (Eminem) and the assorted members of the (shudder) Bad Boy Family. I mean, Diz saying "Roll Deep!" in the beginning of "I Luv U" is, if anything, an ancient rap tradition--think Jay-Z slipping "Roc-A-Fella" into every vacant space of Life and Times, Vol. 2. The crew is a pretty ingrained part of US hip-hop, springing from the founding when taggers traveled as members of a crew and there were breakdancing teams, etc., etc. The crew's a pretty big part of US hip-hop. More broadly, though, I guess the "bristling" is a result of me reopening the old wound of, as Mark puts it, "the US anxiety of influence." And I can understand that; I guess when I made the original post I should have been more careful. But I also think that maybe the fact that I wasn't able to link to Simon's posts, the ostensible subject, made things a bit less clear. Those posts were (unless I'm misremembering) saying how sad it must be to be a USA white teenager and have mainstream culture be dominated by hip-hop--and loving it, but being unable to participate in it. And let's be honest, now, that's a bit of a condescending Brit view itself, which was why I took issue with it. So the whole point of my original post was that this situation that Simon had described and gently mocked for American crackers now seems to be playing itself out in the ranks of white UK critics. Which is OK! The major misunderstanding seems to be that they think I'm saying this is meant as a knock against the UK whereas it's simply an observation. I'm not saying one is better than the other. But I do think there are certain facts we need to cotton to before we can continue the discussion. First off, like I say above, Dizzee is doing hip-hop. It may have come from a different place than US hip-hop, and it might not sound like Nelly, but neither does Aesop Rock, and that's still hip-hop. And hip-hop was, no way around it, invented by Americans. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean it's better, and indeed, one of the reasons US indie kids get slightly anglophilic is because they UK seems to have a knack for taking debased US genres and re-presenting them to us as something new and, often, better. Again, this might sound like a knock if originality is your primary critical value, but it's not mine, and I certainly don't mean it as a bad thing. Like I say, it's proven pretty useful over the years (see: the blues, Detroit techno), and hell, I bet more Americans are listening to the Beatles and Stones than Elvis and Little Richard. Second of all, the UK very simply has a much different racial situation from the US. There's no doubt that Britain's situation is shifting towards America's, but it's far from kind of mix that you'll find in most US communities. (Which--again, disclaimer--does not mean that America's racial politics are better than the UK's, just different, especially in that they have far different factors to consider.) London is better, but even there, even in South London, it feels a hell of a lot different from even my own neighborhood in Brooklyn: there are just simply more white people. Simon even says as much in one of his Merc posts: "it’s easy to forget that most bits of the UK don’t have any black people or Asians…" Yeah, it is, and since we all seem to be in agreement that both US hip-hop and gutter garage are black-dominated forms, this matters. So when I'm accused of imposing "American cultural politics...on Britain," if that's true then I clearly should not be doing so. But I hope that's not the case, because as I say above, what I'm documenting is not a static state but a shift, and a shift that I see taking UK music fans, especially UK critics, closer to the situation American fans have been dealing with for a while. And the reason I bring this up is because I think we've dealt with it badly. Very badly. We've created this bastard undie/backpacker culture where it's OK for white people to rap, but only if they adhere to a ridiculously purist set of standards about what hip-hop should and shouldn't be, especially considering that they didn't start the damn thing in the first place, and where black artists actually seem more exoticized than they are in the mainstream. And that sucks. We went through a period where a music fan could reasonably say "I like everything but country and rap" and not look like a jackass, which still seems to be the case in the UK judging by the BBC comments (and hey, I thought you guys liked Linkin Park or something? You know they rap, right?). That's clearly no longer the case, but I don't think we've ever fully recovered, since we still feel fine saying "I hate that pop shit" (pop=R&B/hip-hop) and seem more comfortable liking rapping whiteys. I don't know quite where to place the blame for this; the idiot, um, "rockists"--at least the ones who still insist you have to Use Real Instruments etc.--deserve some of the blame, but so do the people who refused to see hip-hop as both a part of pop music/culture and to see pop music as Kinda Sorta OK Sometimes. So the situations are different (the geographic distribution of more open-to-the-music minority cultures is worse in Britain, but they do have an established set of reference points which should probably help) but I think many of the possibilities are still there. I'm a bit burnt out now so I won't get into the anxiety of influence UK-bred bloggers have over US ones such as myself, but suffice to say that is a motivating factor sometimes. posted by Mike B. at 6:13 PM 0 comments
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