Like the shameless trendhopper I am, I read Pitchfork's review of Evolution Control Committee and was intrigued enough to visit their website and download two tracks PF touted: Chart Sweep, part one and Chart Sweep, part two (very large MP3s). PF describes it thusly:

This unreal sequence of brief (legally inconsequential) clips from every #1 song up to Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" is a must-download, available from ECC's site. Didn't Nirvana knock Whitney's tyrannic single off the charts? What's the implication in ending just before that happened?

Eh. What really interested me was what seems more directly relevant to the track: the sound of all these specifically #1 songs, and what that says about pop music. Now, these MP3s are 192k, so there's no reason for them to sound crappy, but there's a certain washed-out quality to all of them, like they are coming out of or recorded off of the radio, and while one of the interesting things about the tracks is hearing the sonic signature change as time passes, it's also interesting to notice how much of the sound stays the same. From early derivations from R&B and hillbilly music to early 60's girl groups to psychedelia to 70's stadium rockers to 80's synthpop to hairbands to more crappy soul than you can shake a stick at, it's like there's a filter at the #2 spot that prevents anything from getting through that doesn't sound kind of samey, with a very similar wash of sound and dynamics throughout. It's a big noise, like a blatt or a stream, like the "machine" that Andrew WK talks about, a big batch of ballads or mid-tempo semi-rockers. And, again, maybe this is just the result of the aesthetic choice ECC made for the song, but it's still pretty amazing that he could pull out enough clips to give me (at least) that impression.

Sure, there are some exceptions, some standouts that break through the "#1 hit song" setting on the EQ. "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," for one, maybe because it sounds like such a break with the ballads that dominate for the five minutes before or so (such as "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore--who knew that was a fucking #1 single?!); and, oddly, George Michael's "Faith," with its proto-Timbaland start-stop sound, cuts right through. (Some of Prince's do, too, but most of them fade back into the sound which he almost invented.) You notice songs, but not because the sound is different, just because you know them already. "Nothing Compares 2 U" jumped out at me, for instance, but, let's be honest, it sure sounds like the rest of the stuff there.

Which is not to say that there aren't some great, great songs there, but I guess the reason they sound great in other contexts to music fans like me is the way that sound contrasts with, say, the sound of Lightning Bolt or Donna Summer or Fountains of Wayne. So it's sometimes hard to appreciate, say, "Every Rose Has its Thorn" in the context of a shitty classic rock station (although very easy in the context of a good classic rock station, i.e. one that just played "Civil War" and "Bad Medicine") or, God forbid, the rest of Poison's catalog, but it's a lot easier to get into when you sandwich it between Royal Trux's "Inside Game" and Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees." And maybe this, more than bootlegs or mashups which have a questionable level of sincerity toward the artists they're working with by and large, is a model for appreciating pop music.

But back to "the sound." What does that say about my beloved pop music? (And what does it say about The Timelords' golden rules? Well, that's another post entirely.) They say that every critical system has to have limits, so is mine a simple box drawn around the #1 spot on the charts? Is pop music really, ultimately, about shitty ballads?

Or--more positively now--does it mean that there is an angle here for the indie kids I always seem to be trying so hard to convert? Is there, in other words, crap and not-crap among pop itself? Well, of course there is--every time I choose to highlight one song from Beyonce's album instead of just sending you out to buy Evanesce, that's what I'm trying to imply. But it's not always as explicit as maybe everyone wants it. So there you go: shitty ballads that hit #1 are the kind of soul-deadening, mind-numbing mass-appeal pap that we should morally condemn and throw in the deepest pit of hell, like the hipsters are always telling us. A good Britney single, though--let's sing that shit from on high.
posted by Mike B. at 6:12 PM 0 comments

I love rainbows, Mickey Mouse, the beach, the mountains, and waterfalls. My favorite color is navy blue and my favorite flower is the daisy. I am a Christian and I enjoy attending church. I consider myself to be sensitive, caring, and kind-hearted. I´m currently serving a life sentence on the charge of murder. I have grown and matured a lot since my incarceration, but I will always hurt for the pain I´ve caused so many, especially my children. I hope to receive letters from those who are not judgmental and who are sincere.

Susan Smith's personal ad.

Wow.

Uh, wow.

(Via Gawker)

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

Required listening for today: Nina Gordon ex-Veruca Salt, doing an acoustic cover of Skid Row's "18 and Life." It's really quite touching.

(Via Quo Vadimus. Memo to Rob: I read the last (?) issue of Arthur and Thurston's column was this very long, rambling, but intersting thing about moder hardcore-ish bands like Wolf Eyes and Lightning Bolt, and then he went off on all this other stuff and I got bored and stopped reading. It was very good as a whole.)

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

Thursday, July 10, 2003

This is kind of exciting: on July 25 @ 10pm, Blevin Blechdom and Donna Summer (and Wobbly, who I've not heard of) are playing Pianos. Wahoo, lots of sample-theft! Should be fun.

Incidentally, the Donna Summer homepage is really neat, albeit horrendously designed. (Black items on a black background, yeah!)

posted by Mike B. at 11:24 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, July 09, 2003

So I saw Patti Smith last night at the World Financial Center. It was OK. I mean, she was real good, but I had gouged the hell out of my shoulder the previous night and there were these super-annoying hippie chicks "dancing" (in the loosest possible sense, seeing as how they sort of picked their own beat which was totally different from Patti's) to the music and making me want to beat them with my shoe, so it was hard to entirely enjoy it. Still, it's hard not to like a woman who looks like someone's cool, biker-bitch aunt, even if she does seem to use the same vocal tics over and over again. (Perils of a small range, I suppose.) And she did have a disproportionate number of lesbian roadies, so, uh...cool! Also--best part--the encore was a cover of Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" in the middle of which Patti picks up, swear to God, a clarinet and does a solo. And then she starts reciting the Declaration of Independence. For some reason.

posted by Mike B. at 1:52 PM 0 comments

Not to be too snide or anything, but Pitchfork sure does act like it's "just heard of this great new thing called grunge the kids are into" sometimes. Viz, in regards Dizzee Rascal:

As is the case when describing and categorizing music, a genre label is often attributed, yet the artists beg to differ. Where Dizzee and The Roll Deep Crew are concerned, that label has been "garage". Although that's essentially the case, some, including Dizzee, contend there's a whole new subgenre emerging from the garage legacy. This new genre uses the garage signature tempo of two-step with "an influx of bass driven, minimal, often off-key tracks, and emcees chatting on a flex about life, decidedly similar to their hip-hop cousins," according to UK Music Worldwide. In other words, it's not your everyday hip-hop.

...that Simon Reynolds has been talking about for, oh, six months or so (or more, I just got lazy). And the term "Gutter/Gutta Garage" seems to be sticking pretty well. So c'mon folks, this isn't something just busting out.

Really, the whole Dizzee Rascal review was weird. Aside from blatantly ripping off Reynolds' "gutta-garage-as-the-new-punk" thing and making the way too easy Streets comparison, it's just so wide-eyed. It sounds like indie rock's version of, say, Newsweek's coverage of "moshing." Know what I mean? There's nothing wrong with not knowing stuff; in fact, that's great, as long as you go into things admitting that and looking to learn and like that. But that's not really Pitchfork's style, nor the review's, which is condescending, first, to Dizzee ("Dizzee already longs for the innocence of childhood" - *cough*), and then second to the readers. "We've heard about this thing called UK Rap, let us educate you about it..." Which is fine if you do, in fact, know about it, but that's just plain ol' not the sense I get here.

In fact, I think it kind of proves my point about Pitchfork and their anti-mainstream bias; I actually was going to bring it up to Matt LeMay if I'd ever responded to his letter, i.e. "Well, I bet you're not gonna treat Dizzee Rascal like you treated Liz, and they're both pretty pop..." And oh lookie! Which is not to say that the Liz album is necessarily as good as the Dizzee album, but it is to say that the big difference expressed in their reviews is that they know a lot about Liz (0.0 only because she made Exile) and they don't know jack shit about Dizzee, so he gets a 9.4. Which is to say, as I have before, that rock critics like their artists mysterious, because that way they don't feel limited in their interpretations. Pitchfork clearly has no idea how this album was made or how it rose to prominence (besides a vague notion of pirate radio) and so it's this unsullied cultural object. Is it an accident that there are only three extremely vague mentions of what the record sounds like, and an endless stream of condescending lyrical quotes? Because the sound, to me, matters way more than the lyrics here. But that's just me.

I guess if the review gets more people to buy the Dizzee album, great, but they seem to be telling people to buy it mainly because it's the next big thing and not because of how it actually sounds. And how fucking mainstream is that?

posted by Mike B. at 12:07 PM 0 comments

Good things the administration has done: given the Palestinian Authority money. It's only $20 million, and it was done by executive order, but it's still a great step, and an actual carrot (hey, remember when foreign policy involved those?) for shoving Arafat to the side. So wahoo.

posted by Mike B. at 10:40 AM 0 comments

Quo Vadiumus points us to an article about the new Medicine album. I have dim memories of liking Medicine's song on the Crow soundtrack, but the description put forth here makes it sound pretty cool.

posted by Mike B. at 10:38 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, July 08, 2003

the socialist strategy
I haven't bashed My People much here lately, and maybe it's time. Of course, I'll probably take a few shots at the right along the way...

Around the time of the mid-80's "culture wars," conservatives hit on the singularly evil (not to say ineffective) trick of using the left's terms and tools of dissent for their own causes. So we've seen an answer to the left's technique of jumping on anyone making racist / homophobic / sexist statements with the right jumping on anyone making Maoist / Stalinist / communist statements. The major modern progenitor of this trend is McCarthy groupie Anne Coulter, but it's pretty widespread among the right in general as a "gotcha." (Although maybe it is a good sign that the simpler "liberal" tag isn't an effective smackdown anymore.)

On a certain level, this seems silly; aside from the imbeciles who will consciously identify themselves as Maoists (analogous in my mind to the nitwits who consciously identify themselves as white supremacists) there just aren't any Stalinists in the mainstream left, whereas Strom Thurmond, a former segregationist, was well within the conservative fold, and there are way more ex-Trotskyistes in the mainstream right than in the mainstream left. While you can find a member of the Senate's Republican leadership denouncing homosexuality as evil, you can't really find any elected Democrats saying Stalin was a pretty good guy, so they have to settle for denouncing statements about how the USSR wasn't all that bad, and fair enough, maybe they should. Maybe Stalin doesn't have an evil enough public reputation, and we should be teaching kids that he's as bad as Hitler, but I don't think that's revelatory of a particular liberal bias (a European bias, or maybe a bias towards focusing on evil men the US did, in fact, take down) or an ambivalence in liberals towards the man / ideology. Totalitarianism is bad. Genocide is bad. We're unequivocal in denouncing those, and if we slip up, it's because of a bias towards socialism, which is as debased in this country as racism.

But that got me thinking about the GOP's "Southern strategy," wherein they exploited white anger in the formerly Democratic South towards the Dems' embrace of civil rights by using certain code words in their public statements to endorse the morally, um, difficult stance of being against African-American rights. So if they could do this, do Democratic candidates have a way of similarly evoking a shamed ideology, socialism, in their comments? Certainly these policies remain resonant with a certain part of the base (labor especially). So while it's clearly not institutionalized like the GOP's technique, is there an unspoken "Socialist Strategy?"

It seems like there is. Progressive taxation, say, or universal health care, or welfare: all of these seem, at root, socialist policies, moreso than liberal / humanist policies. And I think that's OK. I'm not in favor of socialism, either as a political or intellectual doctrine, but its worldview was a certain advancement on classical liberalism.

So maybe there should be a Socialist Strategy. Not spoken--never spoken, that's sort of the point--but if conservatives can openly talk about their hatred of homosexuals and make allusions to racism, then why not a few more unashamed gestures on the left toward that most idealistic of leftist doctrines? No point in making policy based on it, but maybe it might be a good idea for campaigns. I dunno. Just a thought.

posted by Mike B. at 2:15 PM 0 comments

Josh Marshall has a very good interview with Ken Pollack about WMD and like that. Well worth reading.

posted by Mike B. at 1:36 PM 0 comments

"Hillbilly heroin."

The man has a way with words.

posted by Mike B. at 1:34 PM 0 comments

The question here is: how much political benefit of the doubt do you give a seemingly beneficial policy proposed by the opposition before you can start legitimately objecting?

In his State of the Union address, Bush proposed a big increase (like double) in AIDS funding to Africa.

Immediately it was clear that this was pandering in no small part--"Hi black people, we're against affirmative action and, oops, Trent Lott, but we like Africans!"--but whatever, much of the good in politics comes from pandering, so OK.

It was soon clear that there were problems with this funding because it is cotemporaneous with the conservative objection against providing funding for contraception in foreign aid; given that condoms are one of the best ways to stop AIDS (although this is problematic in Africa for various cultural reasons), treatment without prevention seemed a likely result.

But now guess who Bush picked to be the AIDS "czar"? Go on, guess. Think outside the box. (But no, not as far outside the box as Michael Savage.)

Bush's choice of former Eli Lilly & Co boss Randall Tobias was announced on Tuesday at the White House, just four days before Bush's first trip as president to Africa.

Yes, a former pharmaceutical CEO. It's like the punchline to a Bush-bashing joke, isn't it?

Like so many things about this administration, while it may seem astoundingly dunderheaded to most people, it is doubtless firmly in line with Bush's oddly idealistic conviction that corporations are a better model for government than, well, government. So it's not really evil, it's just...well, I hesitate to say dumb, so let's just say it's out of line with my particular set of beliefs.

Oh, never mind. It's pretty dumb. Any African AIDS policy should have a strong relationship with the market so it'll have some chance of success, but I think Bush could've found an appointee who had ties without having, you know, kind of a vested interest. I mean, whether they have a right to or not (I'm undecided), it's pretty much a fact that the pharmacutical companies are what's preventing AIDS drugs from getting to Africa right now, and that's sort of the major problem at present, although issues of distribution and education are desperately pressing as well. So fine, let the guy be on the council or something, but good lord, don't make him head of the goddamn commission. This is the problem and the fallout from bashing State and NGOs in general.

This would be the point at which you can legitimately start criticizing the policy, I think.

posted by Mike B. at 1:32 PM 0 comments

Monday, July 07, 2003

Eek.

posted by Mike B. at 6:35 PM 0 comments

By the way, I also had a big disappointment this weekend in that the store where I bought the below-mentioned CDs has this whole "vinyl vault" in the back, and whenever I went I'd go through their racks of 12" singles and inevitably find a bunch of gems. Well, this time I noticed they were gone, and when I asked what was up, they told me they'd just given them away! I was heartbroken. That shit was a treasure trove of samples, I tells ya.

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

Purchased over the weekend:

Jay-Z: Life and Times of Shawn Carter Vol. 2...Hard Knock Life - Very very good. The Timbaland beat on "Nigga What" is particularly mind-blowing. The Swizz Beats loop on "Money, Cash, Hoes," though, is possibly the worst thing I've ever heard. It sounds like a stoned, tone-deaf sixteen-year-old running his hands over an organ at random. And it loops through the entire song. Yoinks.

French Kicks: One Time Bells - Found in a used bin still in its shrink-wrap! Haven't listened to it yet, though I like the song "White" quite a bit.

Electric Light Orchestra: Greatest Hits 2-disc set - Now this, my friends, this is the shit right here. I'd heard an MP3 or two before, but it just didn't match the true stereophonic majesty of the real thing. And then I listened to the Flaming Lips "Soft Bulletin" later in the day and, well, you're going to have a real hard time convincing me hereinafter that the Lips aren't doing a serious ELO homage. Which is great--perfect Beatles-esque pop instincts + lush arrangements = me likee--but also kind of unspoken, or so it seems to me. Sure, the Lips put the drums higher in the mix, do a bit less vocal theatrics, and deemphasize the synth (at least on Soft Bulletin) but the melodies and the arrangements and the pacing just seems very, very similar.

The different critical reactions to these two bands, though, is interesting. No doubt the major salient fact in this regard is that ELO sold a lot more records and had a lot more hit singles, but the one more likely to be pointed out is that Wayne's songs are weirder and they've stuck to their vision, etc. This seems a bit backwards: ELO sure stuck to their weird vision for a long time, they just happened to have more success with it. What seems more salient, then, is the mainstream acceptance, and on that note it seems more like times have simply changed. I mean, what reason is there for "Waiting For a Superman" not being a huge hit? Or "Do You Realize??"

So it's interesting that decreased success (along with a healthy dose of experimentalism, which may admittedly be the cause of said decreased success) makes it easier to like a band. It's silly that losing respect for a band would cause you to like their songs less, but it's also pretty true. On the flip side, this might mean that it's actually a better time to be a pop fan than in the past, since the music isn't entirely mainstream; having weird great pop bands like the Lips and the Danielsen Famile and, hell, Neutral Milk Hotel be around and be respected instead of "bubblegum" (I mean, no critical judgment implied, the Danielsen Famile does pretty much sound like weird children's music) strengthens pop and welcomes more talented, weird people into its sound. Will it ever really come back? Can we seriously hope to hear joy-core, or even just a predominantly major-key song (c'mon, name me a major-key chart hit in recent memory that wasn't power-pop) in the mainstream again? Well, here's hoping.

Incidentally: the Lips? Total joycore.

posted by Mike B. at 5:12 PM 0 comments

Concerts I would like to have a tape of:

Last month's reports of Kid Rock and Pamela Anderson's breakup were greatly exaggerated. On July 1st, the Kid threw a surprise thirty-sixth birthday party for his still-fiancee at the Malibu Inn, a trendy left-coastal dive.

The last-minute arrangements included a call to Keith Nelson (formerly of Buckcherry), who brought along his new band, the Lazy Stars, to back Rock up on "Cowboy" and "Picture," plus covers by the Rolling Stones, Allman Brothers, Hank Williams Jr. and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Joining Rock and the band were actors John Stamos (who accompanied Rock on a USO tour of Iraq last month) on drums and old pal David Spade, who shared the mike on "Sweet Home Alabama."

Singing "Sweet Home Alabama" with Kid Rock at Pamela Anderson's birthday party--who knew there was a plus side to being David Spade?

Can't beat Stamos' loping skin-work, though.

posted by Mike B. at 4:17 PM 0 comments

Dear Pitchfork,

Regarding this:

9. Francis Scott Key's later musical endeavors were mostly religious music, including the forgettable "Before the Lord We Bow" and "Lord With Glowing Heart I'd Praise Thee." In fact, the fourth stanza of "The Star-Spangled Banner" refers to America as "the heaven-rescued land," namechecks "the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation," and even alters our national motto to fit his rhyming scheme: "In God is our trust." Key, dude, check the front of a nickel!

(Incidentally, that stanza also includes the war-mongering line "Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just." I'm surprised Orrin Hatch didn't bust that one out last fall, when the Senate was 'debating' whether to cede the power of declaration of war to the executive branch just for the fuck of it.)

You know how Dave Matthews Band fans sound when they try and talk about the White Stripes, or when some younger kid starts blathering about this band he's "discovered" called Fugazi? Yeah. That's how you sound when you try and talk about politics. Just so you know. I'm glad you're exercising your freedom of speech and whatnot, but...

Well, actually, let me amend the above. I'd have a lot more respect for it if you did sound like a kid who just discovered Fugazi. That would be good and positive and nice. But instead, you sound like a DMB fan talking about how the White Stripes suck because they're not all complex like DMB. Or, maybe more accurately, like a DMB fan talking about how Black Dice suck because it's just, like, noise, man. Because I agree with that, but at the same time I don't agree at all. You know what I mean?

posted by Mike B. at 10:40 AM 0 comments