Friday, September 05, 2003
Last night I read an article in Harper's entitled "Against School," written by a former NYC schoolteacher named John Gatto. And man, I gotta say, it's simply one of the worst pieces of scholarship I ever read.
In a nutshell, the author wants to prove that not only DOES the American public school system (APSS, let's say, as I am lazy) train kids to be uncreative beaten-down automatons, it was DESIGNED this way. His proof for this? A 19th-century Prussian pamphlet saying as much--which he uses not a single actual quote from--which was referred to as the basis of the APSS by no less than Mencken, who as we know was never anything less than totally serious. (Which, to be fair, the author acknowledges, but then ignores.) He then says that the founders of the APSS used the Prussian school system as their model, and so therefore their goals must have been the same, even if he can't find a single quote from any of these people saying as much. Interestingly, he never mentions Dewey or some of the other major proponents of the APSS. He also says Carnegie and his fellow industrialists understood these lessons well, but does not actually quote anything saying that they understood these lessons well, or that Carnegie's philanthropic support for libraries and educational institutions was based on a desire to encourage American children to grow up to be productive little workers. (He does quote Woodrow Wilson saying some monumentally stupid things, but since Wilson doesn't come up at any other point in the essay, it's hard to see what relevance this has.)
But it goes on! So, having not actually established his basic point, he goes on to further flights of fancy I'm used to seeing only among aging codgers on the internet with a prelidiction for conspiracy theories and too much time on their hands to post to message boards. Because the APSS teaches everyone the same thing and forces kids to sit in rows and do things according to schedule, you see, this is all just--just!--training them to be consumers. It wasn't anything as silly as economic conditions brought on by WWII that produced the modern consumerist state; it was the APSS, deviously turning our citizens into continuous children! Apparently the 40 or so centuries of human existence the APSS wasn't around for contained nothing but free-thinkers, "genius as common as dirt," people not having been conformist or stupid before the advent of this system.
Here, let me just quote a section so you can get a feel for this:
Maturity has by now been banished from nearly every aspect of our lives. Easy divorce laws have removed the need to work at relationships; easy credit has removed the need for fiscal self-control; easy entertainment has removed the need to learn to entertain oneself[1]; easy answers have removed the need to ask questions[2]. We have become a nation of children, happy to surrender our judgments and our wills to political exhortations and commercial blandishments that would insult actual adults. We buy televisions, and then we buy the things we see on the television. We buy computers, and then we buy the things we see on the computer. We buy $150 sneakers whether we need them or not, and when they fall apart too soon we buy another pair. We drive SUVs and believe the lie that they constitute a kind of life insurance, even when we're upside-down in them. And, worst of all, we don't bat an eye when Ari Fleisher tells us to "be careful what you say," even if we remember having been told somewhere back in school that America is the land of the free. We simply buy that one too. Our schooling, as intended, has seen to it."
I suppose there's something almost admirable about this; most scholarly pieces taking roughly this view nowadays--i.e., the view the most people are idiots who are easily controlled by insidious commercial conspiracies--are wise enough to couch their views in a lot of high-flying language about "subversion" and "hierarchies" and so on. This just comes right out and says it, don't it? And it's especially hilarious because it's in Harper's and so I'm sure there's no one who reads this and says, "My God, that's exactly what I do! I buy everything I see advertised on flashing banner ads and I unquestioningly accept what politicians tell me!" Nope, if they agree with it at all, the only thing they can say is, "Yeah, other dupes sure do that, but I'm too smart too!" But honestly, do you know ANYONE who does, let's say, more than two of these things? (I'll give him the SUV thing.) And weren't there a few million people who disbelieved what Ari Fleisher had to say? Were all of these people home-schooled, or what? Even if we grant that the picture he paints of modern American society is accurate, as I sort of smartassedly point out here, he doesn't actually show that any of this is differerent than it was two hundred years ago, and he definitely doesn't show that mandatory education caused it.
So the guy's basic point about the APSS may have some validity, but the scholarship is just so wretched that it's totally discounted. I mean, for the love of Jimmy, he ends the essay with a story about wisdom his old granndad imparted. Sweet baby Jesus.
[1] Ignoring the fact that leisure time became a widespread social phenomenon only in the last century or so, i.e. the same time period he's dealing with, so maybejustmaybe you can attribute this "easy entertainment" to the fact that for the first time people other than overeducated upperclassmen are being entertained.
[2] I don't even know what this means.
posted by Mike B. at 4:37 PM
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Kind of a questionable claim in this pitchfork review:
"Despite this record's spazcore conviction-- the antithesis of traditional, hipster-defined "cool"-- Neu rages and rants in total style."
This is a weird thing to say, that spazcore (sure, I'll go with that one) ain't cool, given that the writer mentions that it's all the rage in Williamsburg right now. (And after he slags off the other Billyburg trend, electroclash.) Oh, but it ain't cool in the way that "cool" is supposed to mean, like, cool man. Like, you know, jazz guys. That's where it comes from, after all, so he's really talking about Norman Mailer's version of cool, i.e. the "white negro." But the spazzy version of cool, the "white cracker," has been pretty prominent, too. It's a mixture of various cultural condescensions, towards groups like the poor and the rural and the insane, who have some sort of special unspoiled knowledge that is so all-consuming that it just has to burst out however it can. Isn't Bill Monroe spazzy? Bob Wills? Hell, William Blake? But, like boho cool, the spazzcore attitude can turn out some pretty awesome and valid cultural artifacts (c.f. Devo), but it can also be used as a pose, the I'm-an-artist-because-I-act-artistic thing.
I've seen what feels like a lot of spazzcore bands, because, well, because I live in Williamsburg, among other things. And at first they really confused me, because they seemed like ironic hardcore bands, which, on paper, sounds like the worst possible thing you can be, and holy christ, there were so many of them--I saw like three at three separate parties over one weekend. But according to this review, and I think it's right in this regard, they're descended more from Braniac, and in this light it kind of makes sense (and is less utterly despicable). But it's still kind of weird to see them open for Deerhoof, as I did a few weeks ago, because Deerhoof has an unbelievably alert ear for hooks and melody and arrangement, whereas a band like the Ex-Models basically makes a noise like WHAMWHANNNNNNNGSCREEEEEEEEEE for a half hour or so. Maybe, given the female voices at the forefront of both the 'Hoof and Braniac, this just represents the masculinization of spazzcore? Wow, did I really just say that?
So anyway, the point is that, jazzbo-laid-back or not, spazzcore--which, were I feeling less kind, I would classify as a kind of wannabe Tourettism[1], of "tic envy" if you will--is very much what's "cool" right now, maybe as an outgrowth of ironic metal appreciation and early-90's punk-yoot nostalgia or as a backlash against dance couture, and given the remarkable ease with which any moron can make this music--"flailing away like monkeys" is how more than one of my fellow concert attendees described the Models' set--it becomes, sigh, a bit of a pose. You want to be in a band and you can't really write a melody but you look kind of cool and it's easy to be loud and fast and you've got a good drummer, so spazzcore it is.
Still, the band in question here, Japan's Polysics, sound actually pretty good, melody-and-keyboard-wise, so I'll give it a listen at some point.
[1] Whereas Jonathan Lethem fans know that Tourettic music actually sounds like the 12" mix of Prince' "Kiss."
posted by Mike B. at 12:55 PM
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Thursday, September 04, 2003
Chuck Klosterman watches 24 hours of VH1 Classic and produces possibly the funniest thing I've ever read. Some choice tidbits:
2:35 pm: Things are really getting excellent: Poison's "Fallen Angel" is illustrating the cautionary tale of a small-town girl who moves to Los Angeles and immediately becomes a whore. The morale of our story? Never go anywhere, and never try anything. Stay home and buy more Poison records.
4:02 p.m.: Driven by hot-blooded lust, Gloria Estefan is crawling into my lap and insisting the rhythm is going to get me (tonight). We'll just see about that, Gloria. You pipe down!
4:48 p.m.: Here is what I am learning from "Our House" by Madness: Never invite ska musicians into your home, because they're all too fucking happy. "Our House" and Eddy Grant's "Electric Avenue" were my favorite songs in fifth grade. Man, I am so glad I got into Mötley Crüe.
Full Klosterman post soon, I promise. Maybe even tonight if I can't make myself do any of the things I actually am supposed to do.
posted by Mike B. at 10:03 PM
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Salon writer Andrew Leonard provides us an excellent example of Lester Bangs' most poisonous literary legacy: making people think they can write like Lester Bangs without sounding like utter jackasses. Andrew thinks this, and Andrew is wrong.
I was sorely tempted, after reading the first 50 pages of "Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste," a new collection of ranting and raving from the late, much-lamented rock critic Lester Bangs, to pull out my old Olivetti Lettera portable typewriter from the closet where it is moldering and start BANGING away. Because you can't really pound on a computer keyboard, no matter how hard you try, and in tribute to Lester (and I feel like I can call him Lester, because I know that if I started knocking back shots of tequila with him in a seedy bar we would be on a first-name basis forever after just 10 minutes of hollering about the relative cultural significance of 'N Sync vs. the Backstreet Boys), I knew that I needed to make some NOISE, I needed to get all worked up in a frothy, gibbering frenzy of excitement and start "slashing away at the typewriter until occasionally a great clot of keys would become hopelessly entangled, would refuse to untwist and fall back into their berths from the action of my whiplash fingertips and my energy would explode in fists pounding on the frame of the machine."
...I'll tell you why you should care. Because Lester cared, goddammit. Lester believed music mattered, and even in this age of facile overproduced musical commoditization, of Britney Spears and Toby Keith and p-diddy-puff-daddy ludicrousness, of manufactured controversy and preprogrammed stardom, of music-as-fashion and fashion-as-cultural-critique, even now we should still be furrowing our brows and raising our voices and slamming our fists on the table and declaiming to anyone and everyone in earshot that music still matters. Sure, it might be harder than ever before to push our way through the shrouds obscuring us from the real shit, to try to pry out some sliver of authenticity from the truckloads and truckloads of odious stinking garbage that surrounds us at every remove, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't make the effort. And it does mean that now, more than ever, we need Lester.
This is about to be a rant, I can tell, so before I get into it, let me make a few things clear. First off, Andrew backs off from this position somewhat over the course of the piece, which presumably makes this here opening a Bangsian bit of intentional provocation. But I'm going to tear that shit down anyway, because it's not the truth that dare not be spoken, it's a corrosive attitude that finds vent all too freely in the rock-crit pages of this great nation, and it deserves to be torn down. Secondly, this is not meant to be an attack on Lester per se, who I do like (though not as much as other members of the old guard), but rather on the attitudes he has apparently--unwittingly?--engendered. So let's get started, shall we?
I, too, am sad that Lester Bangs is gone, but for different reasons than most people. I am sad that Lester Bangs is gone because it allows socially retarded nerdish male rock critics to have repressed half-a-fag fantasies about making friends with him while drinking in a bar, the closeted version of wanting to suck his dick backstage. Lester Bangs would not have been friends with you, dude. He was an asshole and a drug addict, by all accounts, and what percentage of the people who now worship him would he actually even be able to be friends with, regardless of the fact that independent spirits like Lester rarely want to maintain intimate relationships with people who regard their utterances as oracular prophecies? He would have been a jerk to you and you would have resented him so thank God he's dead, because now he can't tarnish this whole Lester-image we've all built up, an image so powerful that Cameron Crowe is able to reliably write him in as a character in one of his movies (a characterization that, regardless of its accuracy, pretty much speaks for my point of view in that particular film), which doubtless made a decent chunk of the audience think "Lester Bangs" is no more real than Stillwater. Or, probably, even less real, since Stillwater actually seemed human, rather than the walking ideology that the Lester-image has come to be.
Take all the drugs and streams-of-consciousness away, take away the anecdotes and the historical connections--take away the personality and the writing and reduce Lester to the critic that he supposedly was--and what do you have? You have a guy we like because he was right about the past in the present. He wrote about music and held opinion that few others had, and those turned out to be the ones that we generally share today. But why is that? Well, it's because, basically, he didn't like much of anything that was coming out, and we today either don't like or don't understand the vast majority of what happened musically before we hit puberty. But of course that's true, because Lester was writing about popular music, and the whole point of popular music--and popular culture in general--is that it's designed to make sense and be enjoyed at a particular moment in time, and at no other particular moment in time. This is its power and its wonder. And so of course we won't like a pop song from 1973, because it doesn't make sense to us. It's not supposed to. Tell me your five favorite bands, and I will write scathingly negative reviews of them, and I bet in 20 years my opinions will be the mainstream ones. That was Lester's trick. Is it really that worth admiring?
Andrew Leonard says that Lester should be around today because he would probably hate Britney Spears. Well gee, we certainly don't have any rock critics around today doing that, do we? Andrew raises the question of whether or not Lester would like anything going on today (after saying that Les would still be engaging with pop culture rather than retreating to indie rock), especially things like hip-hop (which, um, was around just a wee bit before Lester coughed up his spleen, metaphorically speaking), "electronica" (ahem), and pop. The answer being, of course, he probably would not have liked today's rock superstars. Partially this is because, well, Lester hated most things, especially pop, and I doubt this would have been much of an exception. But the other reason is that Lester would be old. Andrew says he'd like to "read Lester on the subject of the Dreadful Hegemony of Boomers and Classic Rock," but come off it, dude. This is dumb idealization and false image-projection on a corpse that hardly has the structural integrity at this point to withstand such a heavy-handed assault. Name me one older rock crit who doesn't champion bands from when he was younger. One! Marcus got his Elvis and Laura Logic, Christgau his Dylan, etc., etc., etc. Hell, I'm sure in twenty years I'll still be harping on about the Geraldine Fibbers and PJ Harvey and Nirvana, and I'll have a hard time getting quite as excited about the bands around at the time. This is simply the way it goes. But to me, this is actually the more valuable service a music critic can provide, because it's not like there won't be new critics coming up to be just as excited about the new stuff while I harp on about britpop and grunge. Critics provide a continuous living memory of the musical past, which is far more valuable than tearing everything bad down willy-nilly at the time; instead of killing everything, save one thing, and harp on about it no matter how popular opinion changes. This is a service we provide.
This is how music works: we all get very very excited about bands at the time, lots and lots of bands, and we listen to them obsessively and we talk about them and we enjoy them and tell others about them and go to their concerts and figure out their music, and we do this even though most of these bands or artists don't "mean anything"--even though they actually mean quite a lot if you're willing to cough your way through that revolted allergic reaction to bands that don't make a conscious effort to convey the fact that they "mean something." And we do this, and it is like love, sort of; music is like love in that they both don't really mean anything, but they seem to mean everything, and so they do, in the end.
But so: then a young music fan comes along and they're wondering who they should listen to, what they can get hep to in order to figure out how music works. And they have this insurmountable pile of data, song upon song upon song, and there's no way of traversing that except through what amounts to random selection. Lester seems concerned primarily with the long term, with what acts will "stand the test of time," but what bands do that seems to come down to which ones your dad has in his record collection, or which ones you find in the library, or which ones have cool cover art, or what the critics at the time are hyping. The long term doesn't matter so much in the present, certainly not so much that you need to be wholly concerned with it in your criticism.
Lester's negativity is presumably excused by the fact that when he did care about a band, he like really cared man. Because MUSIC IS IMPORTANT! But that's the thing: music is important, not individual bands. Fuck individuals bands. They're all working the same twelve goddamn chord changes anyway. What's important is the music, the little variations, the minor digressions, the contexts, the social scene (yes! Fuck it! I will say this!), the shows and the writing and the yelling and all the shit, all the attention that makes music vital. It is important, and so why the fuck would you want to shoot its babies? Why the fuck would you care about authenticity in the context of an artform so wholly artificial? This is a man who happily did that NME bullshit move of praising an artist to the hills and then disproportionately tearing down their next album because it didn't "live up to expectations." Jesus Christ, who cares? That's the kind of shit that would prompt a three-page letter to Pitchfork from me, and you can be sure it's no different if Mr. Bangs wrote it (although maybe, like Christgau and Marcus, he'd have learned to couch his opinions in so much verbiage that you couldn't actually discern a critical viewpoint). The excuse given is that this harsh treatment would drive a band to greater heights, but it sure as shit didn't seem to work with either the MC5 or Miles Davis.
So fuck Lester Bangs. We've got more than enough of his kind today, taking music far too seriously and being far too lazy in looking for meaning; dismissing anything with a commercial connection out of hand, and acting like music is a damsel in distress they must save while coming off as nothing more than an insanely jealous stalker whose affections are mostly unwanted. Guys, you don't get it. You've retreated to the underground while pretending to engage with the mainstream, and you spew out your hateful little screeds while dreaming somewhere deep in your subconscousnesses of nuzzling Lester's putrid scrotum with your downy-soft cheeks. Stop it.
This is all to say: Lester Bangs was a way better writer than critic. And Andrew Leonard is a tool for buying into his grand posthumous prank.
posted by Mike B. at 7:39 PM
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Speaking of political music, Jesse has a blog, on which he replies to my long thing which no one seemed interested in. (Too-hippie centric?) Anyway, it's worth a read (his, I mean), as is the blog as a whole.
posted by Mike B. at 4:47 PM
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Simon Reynolds has a few things to say about that show I went to. Yeah, the drummer in Lightning Bolt is real real good (sounds like fuckin live jungle at times), and I think the bass sound he's asking about can be acheived with a compressor with the tone set high and a pitch-shifter. I think the bassist uses a lot of pitch-shifter, actually.
And yeah, that George Bush song was...good. Especially considering that I wouldn't really like it normally. Maybe because the music was powerful enough that it matched the kind of rage a lot of people were feeling about the situation? Maybe because I was slamming my body into other people's bodies at the time? I dunno, but I guess it makes a good case for non- ambiguous political music. Then again, maybe it's just that when you're that good, you can get away with more things.
posted by Mike B. at 4:42 PM
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A few more thoughts on the UMG situation:
This VR post has a pretty helpful and, I think, accurate breakdown of how this deal effects artists' royalties.
After reviewing the info available to me, here's how I would score the outcomes for the various participants in this whole scheme:
Retail: Gets screwed, because they'll be making less per CD and losing coop advertising (which seems to be confirmed now), a big part of how they operate. The wholesale drops from $12 to $9 but MSRP drops from $18 to $13, with an implicit assumption that they'll be selling at $10 as new releases. This means that instead of making about $4 per cd, they'll be making $1 or $2. Clearly this is not better, and it means they'll have to roughly double sales to make up this margin, to say nothing of the problems with losing coop. Despite what Pitchfork says (who seem to know about as much about the biz end of the biz as my dad--no offense, pop), this will most assuredly not provide much of a boost for the holiday season, since that was the one time of year when some kids would ever get a non-burned CD, usually as a present from their relatives. The effect will mainly be seen later in the year, so give it until March, if UMG actually holds out that long.
Relatively speaking, this is worse for bigger retailers (especially Best Buy) who lose the price-drop advantage they had and are more effected by the loss of coop. But smaller chains and one-stops would be far more effected if UMG decided to implement one-way (i.e., no-return) sales.
Other major labels: Unclear. Personally, I would use this as an opportunity to paint UMG as a "discount" label while keeping my margins high and maintaining good relationships with retail, where I bet Sony and Warners et al can cut some pretty sweet deals now. And I don't buy the argument that they'll have to lower prices too right away: music is not like detergent, where the lowest price wins. People buy specific "brands" (er, artists) because they like them. It would be good to compare a top-line UMG holiday release with a top-line Sony one, say, and see if there's a discernable sales difference. So.
Indie labels: Probably not much effect, I would think. Many of them (think Merge, Touch and Go, Matador's Interpol release) already have lower wholesale and way lower MSRP, so I don't think there'll be too much pressure exerted there. And if the biz as a whole gets more healthy, then it's probably good for them.
Artists: Unclear. Many will legitimately be pissed, even if this makes them look bad, and I'd expect a lawsuit or two. The suggestion on the VR thread that UMG would simply reclassify top-line as mid-price was thoroughly debunked, and I don't buy that either. But since the wholesale dropped less than the MSRP, they're losing less on margin than the retailers, so if sales do indeed increase, it might be OK.
At any rate, "Recoupment? Ha!" Most UMG artists are never going to be recouped, and the ones that are we don't need to have much pity for. As long as they're still making their money on publishing (which is taken according to a federally fixed statutory or contractual controlled composition rate), they'll be OK. So I think I'm giving them a "no change" on this one.
UMG: I'd guess about 75% of their product in the field is going to be returned, so the distributor's going to take a hit on that, and since I'm pretty sure UMG has its own distributor, this'll be an in-house cut. But they can make this look way better on paper, so it'll be a good stock market move, which is where UMG has its attentions primarily focused right now. So maybe this is all it is. That or a move to save face, or to be able to say "we told you so" when it doesn't work...? The actual effect on UMG is the big thing up in the air right now, of course, otherwise it wouldn't be a gamble. So we shall see.
So in sum:
Retailers - bad.
Majors - unclear.
Indies - neutral.
Artists - neutral.
UMG - good?
Oh yeah, and then there's consumers. It's definitely good for them.
posted by Mike B. at 1:53 PM
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ONWARD, BRITNEY?
Why does Britney hate America?
CARLSON: A lot of entertainers have come out against the war in Iraq. Have you?
SPEARS: Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens.
CARLSON: Do you trust this president?
SPEARS: Yes, I do.
CARLSON: Excellent.
Unconditional support for a leader no matter the policy? (How about his controversial "pro-pooping on Britney Spears' face" stance?) Why, that sounds awful... communist. Pro-totalitarian! Go back to Russia and kiss TaTu, pinko!
(disclaimer: there's been no actual, you know, link provided for this story, so it could all be fabrication, but it's pretty funny nevertheless.)
posted by Mike B. at 10:36 AM
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Wednesday, September 03, 2003
UMG drops its MSRP to $13 from $17/$19, which means that new releases can go for under $10. This is pretty interesting. It's also cutting out all co-op advertising, but no one besides me will find that interesting; it does mean, however, that they'll be eliminating most of the sweetheart deals and discounts offered to retail in order to get a lower price to the consumer. (Retail is generally considered the "bitch" of the music industry.)
Says the CEO: "The consumer will get a tremendous value from this new pricing, and maybe I can even fill in some holes in my album collection." Which makes me want to walk over to the UMG offices, find him, and punch him in the arm. "Hey," I'd say, "shut it. Not only do you have more money than I or anyone I know ever will, I know for a fact that--just like I can--you can walk over to the promo department and pick out a free copy of any CD in your catalog." But perhaps this was intended as a joke.
Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what the reaction to this is--certainly one of the big arguments pro-file-sharing folks make is that they'd buy more CDs if they weren't so dad-blamed expensive. So. The VR tackles the question (and adds some additional relevant docs) right about here. Apparently Billboard Bulletin says they're considering going to one-way sales--i.e., eliminating returns. This is a big deal.
The whole thing is a big deal, really. If you care about biz issues, including piracy, this is something you should be familiar with. How it ties into the ongoing negotiations around Vivendi, I don't know, although I don't think UMG is actually for sale. But I may be wrong about that.
UPDATE: From the internal e-mail posted to the VR thread:
Additionally, in the weeks to come, the industry will begin its lawsuits against P2P users who are illegally distributing our music online. These suits will supplement the educational campaign we launched over a year ago. They will send a strong message that it is illegal to distribute our music online without authorization. And they will make it very clear that those who engage in these activities face serious legal and financial repercussions. The lawsuits, together with the educational campaign and the public awareness of the dangers of P2P use, will lead many to explore purchasing music legitimately again - both online and at retail. Reducing our prices at retail now will underscore that music is a great entertainment value.
Aha. So this would be the carrot, eh? I wonder how much this decision is prodded by the RIAA? The reaction of other labels to this announcement--i.e. whether the other big labels protest or not--will tell you how much colluding is going on here.
posted by Mike B. at 5:59 PM
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Gawker prints the following item:
Justin Timberlake becomes McDonald's spokesman, saying of the fast-food empire, "We share the same crowd - people who like to have fun." And that's the most foul and cynical thing you'll hear all day.
To which I can only reply: huh? Seems more, I dunno, logical. Foul and cynical? Really? I guess I just like McDonald's, and Justin, and I have indeed noticed that the people who loudly disdain both seem to be not as, um, fun-loving as others. I think the good folks at Gawker are projecting somewhat, and that their sentiments may be a bit more cynical than Mr. Timberlake's.
posted by Mike B. at 11:45 AM
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In my semi-role as semi-A&R, I received today an e-mail from a lawyer with the following text, which I thought you guys might be interested in reading:
Material: Much like Matchbox Twenty or the Goo Goo Dolls, Big Bad Zero's pop-rock product is saturated with commercial appeal. Each song is meticulously framed around traditional radio formats; blending melodic harmonies with hook-laden choruses and lyrics that are easy to relate to. Given the smooth finish of their material and the marketability of this style, this band could easily find their way onto nationwide radio and beyond.
Now, please, everyone, remember this. This--no moral judgment implied--is "selling out." Compare that to oh, say, REM, and I think you'll have a hard time saying they, or the White Stripes, or whoever, "sold out." It's just not the same, is it?
Of course, this is all to say nothing of the fact that the formula for pop-rock success is apparently now Matchbox Twenty, and how sad is that.
That REM thing at Fluxblog is well worth reading, by the by, as the comments that resulted were pretty interesting, methinks.
posted by Mike B. at 10:52 AM
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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution publishes some confusing letters and a retraction (!) in response to a photo of the Britney/Mazza kiss apparently printed on the front page:
#1 asks: "It makes me wonder whether it is getting this kind of coverage because it is every straight man's fantasy. [Dude, it actually happened, which is sort of the opposite of a fantasy.] Would a kiss between Eminem, Justin Timberlake and 50 Cent be treated in the same manner?" To which I can only say, how cool would that be? Man, Justin really should just lean over and give Slim a big ol' kiss. Oh sure, he'd get shot or something, but it'd still be pretty cool. Eminem looks like he needs a hug.
#2 quite honestly sounds like a joke from either the Simpsons or Bloom County. Here it is:
Newspaper should protect children
I have never been so disappointed in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. To put it bluntly, I'm mad as hell, and it makes my stomach turn to see such trash on the front of the newspaper.
How do we expect to raise a generation of children who are healthy mentally, physically and sexually with inappropriate images in every form of media there is? Will you not accept your role in helping to raise Atlanta's children?
The sad part about this is that you will write about our children and their high teen pregnancy rate, low SAT scores, children out of wedlock and the rising cases of AIDS without taking any responsibility for your role in the problem.
You need to be better than that.
Britney and Madonna kissing causes low SAT scores? Nice! "Won't somebody please think of the children?!"
#3 compares the photo to photos from the war with Iraq. It's actually a reasonably valid comparison, but it's still weird to read. Sure, Mags is getting old, but it's not that bad, is it? It's like all those jokes about to equations between sex and violence: are people really as offended by the sight of two attractive people kissing as they are by the sight of mangled human corpses? Just askin'.
posted by Mike B. at 8:35 AM
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Tuesday, September 02, 2003
Here is an amusing picture from Yo La Tengo. It is mostly only amusing if you are a rock-crit nerd like me.
The newly-posted News is pretty chuckle-worthy. Although it is kind of disappointing-yet-exciting that there's a band named Clap Attack.
posted by Mike B. at 3:09 PM
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Monday, September 01, 2003
I really want to write something about the JC Chavez / Basement Jaxx song "Plug It In," but I'm a bit unsure what I can say beyond what Ned at NYLPM already did. Still, lemme give it a shot.
First thing would be: holy dear sweet Jesus, this is a good song. (And it makes me want to listen to "Red Alert" again, surely the best pirate-themed French house song of all time.) So you should definitely go listen to it if you haven't yet.
What I think I like best about it, conceptually, is the way it perfectly marries the styles of the two parties involved and then adds something that sounds perfectly logical yet unprecedented. What JC's working is undeniably a boy-band thing, although it's unsure if I think that because of its relation to N*Sync songs or its relation to Justin's established solo stuff--there's a definite parallel, melody-wise, to "Like I Love You," especially in the initial verse bit. And there's some simply trademark Basement Jaxx stuff there, especially the high-res synth bit that comes at the end of the bar and the bassline (although honestly, Ned, the drums are pretty Neptunes-y--listen to that snare sample). Even littler bits like the scream and the driving vibe of the track seem like what you'd "expect" from BJ, even if you wouldn't expect anything quite this mind-blowingly good after Rooty.
But then what's interesting is the way this certain logic leads into the totally weird stuff, specifically the chorus. So the rhythms there sound like what you're used to from Remedy, but the guitars, and the vocals--what the hell is going on there? At the risk of offending some of more electronic-music-savvy readers, I'll suggest this is actually an electroclash influence; while there's the hint of the diva-ish vocals of "Red Alert" here, the female vocals are definitely off-tune enough (check the way the notes wander where they will on "in") to sound like Peaches to my ears, and that's definitely a guitar sound, albeit doubled with a ravey synth. So it makes no sense, logically speaking, from a Basement Jaxx standpoint, and it sure as fuck makes no sense in the boyband context; it would have actually been pretty nice to hear a BSB chorus as wonderfully yelly as this one. And yet it does make sense, because it totally follows from the groove established in the verse. And that's the brilliance of it. It takes a hook that's driving the song, making it immensely dancey without actually standing out as something demanding melodic appreciation (so to speak) and fucking emphasizes it, piles everything around it, and makes it into a goddamn fist-pumping dance-your-ass-off little break. For all the talk of dance "anthems," this is an actual anthem in the sense that you can get drunk and sing along to it.
So it's not just that this is a good song, it's that it suggests new possibilities, both for the presumably marginalized genres of electroclash and French house, but for mainstream hyperpop, and that's way exciting. But beyond the fact that I'd love to see the Swedes (random observation: is it just me, or do American audiences seem less knee-jerkingly hostile to artists produced by American teams like the Neptunes or the Matrix than they were to the Swedes of BSB/Britney/etc.?) pick up on this stuff and bring their game up to the Neptunes level, I'd love to see any of the bands that currently (or in the future) digging on The Rapture listen to this stuff and see what you can do with the kind of rock-dance groove they're working. Just as the Rapture can do things like meld noise-rock and dance-pop and make it sound like the kind of detuned, chordally ignorant stuff you hear in real good vocal dance stuff (Green Velvet, say), so can this meld the pretty damn intricate, soul-influenced melodies of boybands and slab it to a sort of heightened electroclash. It's also way joycore in its massive pileup of hooks, but that's another point entirely.
UPDATE: Fluxblog posts the song and says a nice thing about this here post. So now you have no excuse for not listening. Unless you are on a dial-up connection. Or, um, are deaf.
posted by Mike B. at 11:36 PM
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Pretty good article on the Starsailor / Spector collaboration. Unrelated to Phil, I did like this part:
The experience with Spector has convinced Starsailor of the absolute preciousness of their often sniped-at normality. Walsh insists that "striving to make extraordinary music doesn't necessarily mean living extraordinary lives". After spells in London, the singer has moved back to quiet, ordinary Altrincham. The bassist lives with his mum in Warrington. The day we meet, Starsailor are due to play in Amsterdam with the Rolling Stones (Mick Jagger is another icon-turned-Starsailor fan). Stelfox's preparation for that one? "Cleaning my mum's windows."
...but I still don't like Starsailor. Well, maybe I'll dig "Silence is Easy."
posted by Mike B. at 8:28 PM
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Mark at k-punk replies to my post (see said post for the rest of the genealogical linkage). And fair enough, I did take what was clearly idle speculation a bit farther than it should have been taken, so sorry about that.
I'm not entirely sure how to reply to this, which is why it's taken me three days, so maybe take this less as a direct response and more of a fanciful extension. Partially this is because the definition of "pop" we're working with keeps slipping--before I thought it was "Now Pop" or "Bubblegum Pop" or "Top 40 Pop," and now it appears to mean "non-art music"--which maybe means that we actually basically agree with each other. But I will say that I think there was (and is) a pretty inseparable imagistic component to classical, and you can take this from someone who's spent his share of time in the art-muse trenches (violin 2nd class, sir!). If "pop" as Mark's defining it has as a characteristic openness, inclusiveness, a possibility of anyone participating if they want, then classical is by definition exclusionary, and that which is exclusionary is that which seeks to "keep up appearances." You had to go through a lot of training, generally only available to the upper crust, and just to get your damn pieces performed you relied on the patronage of royalty and/or the rich, who of course did not want to see a bunch of unwashed "musician" types gallivanting around the palace. Many musicians made their living giving lessons to children of the rich, and so "image," as in decorum and manners and presentation, were an inseparable part of their creation of music. As a genre, it's deliberately opposed to the "folk" music of troubadours, etc. of the time.
And you see this "image thing" even today. After all, what massive percentage of "classical" performances involve people in formalwear on stage with nicely-polished instruments, an expensive venue, expensive tickets, wine, etc.? Even when classical slips this definition, it seems to inevitably fall into "the jazz image"--think Bukowski's appreciation of Mozart here, or the way Steve Reich and John Zorn seem sort of interchangeable, image-wise, despite the fact that one is ostensibly "classical" and one "jazz." There seems to be something inherent in the music itself, in the choice of instrument and in the training and in the melodies and harmonies and all the rituals that go into simply playing a piece of music that incline classical towards this image, or so it seems to me. Sure, you see old Japanese men with violins playing concertos in the subway, but you see middle-aged black men with acoustic guitars singing Beatles songs in the subway too, and I don't think that makes either of them "busker music" necessarily.
But what you do see--and this is the interesting bit--is classical being transcribed into other forms. So despite the fact that "A Fifth of Beethoven" and Switched on Bach are basically rearrangements of long-existing pieces, they're most definitely pop and electronic music, respectively. And this is precisely what I mean about the immutability and separability of the song. It can be taken out of that imagistic context, I think, and stuff like this proves it. Maybe this is because I'm coming at it from the perspective of a musician rather than a critic, but a lot of times when I hear a song, I can separate it from the arrangement (the "image") and reduce it to melody, words, a beat--something to work with. I've no doubt that it would be hard to do a performance of "Cry Me a River" with samplers or a funk band that didn't turn out referencing the JT image a bit, but do it with a string quartet or a rock band and, well, you've got something else altogether. This is evidenced by those crap "X Goes Classical!" albums wherein orchestras play Beatles or Kiss or Metallica songs, and they are subverted wholly into the classical image, sectionals with face-paint or no. So this is what I'm saying: it's impossible to separate genres from image, because this is largely what genres are. But it is highly possible, and desirable even, to separate songs from genres, and thus from image, sometimes. Because this can make people respect both the original genre and song more, in the end, and to my joycore-addled mind, that's a Good Thing.
Beyond all that--and moving here more into a free-form, unrelated-to-k-punk territory--the reason this kind of focus on image gets my humours up is because it all seems to get back to the persistent idea of pop (and from now on I'll be using that word in the top 40 sense) as something manufactured by committee, something dictated cynically from above in an attempt to manipulate the tastes of gullible young ears; Tom Ewing hisself even uses the term "'manufactured' pop." On one hand, I can kind of sympathize with this view, because after living our musical lives dealing with all the bullshit of "authenticity" and "keepin' it real," it's nice to see something that fully embraces its fakeness, and in a way, the image of being "manufactured" makes the music more pleasurable. Of course, you're talking here to a guy who really loves K-Mart and KFC for those very same imagistic reasons, but you're also talking to a guy who worked at KFC and can eat a piece of chicken and judge how well it was cooked and make a reasonable guess as to how long said cook has been working at said restaurant and whether said cook is having a good or a bad day. I get the feeling that my appreciation of something's fakeness is in no small part related to an understanding of the very real way in which is was created.
So yeah, I like the image of manufacturing, but on the other hand, I think the reality behind pop is very different from the kind of mechanistic conspiracy a lot of people seem to have in mind, and I think most folks' inability to hold these two things simultaneously in their mind is ruining their ability to enjoy pop. So OK, there are people like Amanda Latona who are the absolute apotheosis of these complaints (i.e., "Latona wasn't signed because she was an original artist...poised and pretty, Latona could be poured into various molds and carefully shaped to fit the marketplace."), although of course this portrait leaves out a number of realities: Amanda's sales actually turned out to be shit, and Amanda herself is an actual real human being with aspirations and drives not necessarily all that different from Frank Black's, and the A&R men in question are all actual real human beings with musical taste it's not unreasonable to assume were reflected in the final Latona product. But for every AT there's, well, there's a Creed. The quality of their music aside, morally speaking, they are performing music they truly love and are truly passionate about, they're writing their own songs and they built up a fanbase as big as Nirvana's Sub Pop fanbase before they went multiplatinum. (This does not change the fact that I want to beat Scott Stapp about the head and neck with a broom handle, but we all know that morality doesn't play a particularly big part in my musical tastes anyway.) Hell, even the Backstreet Boys started out as five starry-eyed young hopefuls in Orlando, and at the time signing with Lou Perlman was hardly a guarantee of success. The fact is, those people, despite the mediated image they now project, are all actual real people who had to struggle for their success the same way anyone else did, and Jive / Zomba (an indie label! An English indie label!) had no assurance that people would like BSB, especially since the whole ideal of a boyband was pretty ridiculous at the time. In fact, the Latonas of the world prove the fallacy of the cynical-manipulation argument: they can't be manipulating things very well if they're putting out $2mil for 500 units shifted, can they?
But maybe the best thing at this point would be to focus on an example I have some real experience with, and in this case that would be Khia's My Neck, My Back (Lick It). You know the one: "Right now, lick it good, suck that [censored] just like you should...lick my neck, my back, my [censored] just like that..." On the surface, this would seem like a hilariously typical record-company creation: almost a novelty song, a clear one-hit wonder, selling sex above songwriting/talent/morals, to say nothing of the racial issues. I imagine if you listened to it on the radio without any context, it would seem like a total manufactured nugget.
I can tell you with some certainty, though, that it comes to you as worked-over and conflicted as (say) any Superchunk single. Created, not unlike Beck's "Loser," as a sort of one-off lark that turned into a fruitful collaboration between two people--two people who, it must be said, had no particular connections to the biz or corporate structure--it rose through word-of-mouth and play in clubs in the South, was picked up by a lawyer in LA ("lawyer" in the music biz sense, i.e. kind of an agent) and then released by an indie label more known for its patronage of Steve Earle than anything else. (Oh, and its release of "Who Let the Dogs Out"--but that's another post entirely.) I can tell you that the radio play and MTV play we got for that song was paid for, in part, through the traditional indie promo kind of avenues, but I can also tell you that we do this for all of our artists, and this song simply got way more play than those other songs, because people liked it. The whole partnership then dissolved into acrimony and mistrust and legal wrangling. So this is why it's not manufactured: aside from the label having no particular hand in the creation of the song itself, manufacturing implies a certain reliability, automation, and interchangeability. But pop music is not made up of interchangeable parts, and the best A&R man in the world can't get a successful artist to work with a successful producer if they hate each other, and with a different producer it's very possible that it's not as good and not as successful. The individuals, for all of the admittedly-distracting focus on celebrity, do matter in Top 40, from the artist to the engineer to the label executives, fulfilling all of their various functions in ways, most of the time, it seems like only they themselves could have.
(n.b. More about Khia later, probably, although I'd actually like to write up the whole saga for an article somwhere--it'd be pretty interesting.)
So when you look at pop that's been through the label grinder, that's been presented to you in a certain way through magazines and radio and MTV, you have to try and shut all that out and remember that it all does come, at some point, from people singing in their bedroom, playing guitar in the dark, trying to impress girls, trying to get people to like them, trying to get their unique vision out there. For every careerist in music there's a true idealist, and by and large it's the idealists who succeed. And just as punk apparently showed people that anyone could do it, so has the media obsessiveness over mainstream entertainment and the process of its creation, the relentless spinning of origin myths, created the idea that anyone can do that, too, and if you need further proof of this, watch the American Idol auditions.
So keep that image of real actual human beings making real actual music for themselves in your mind, and try and listen for the song beneath all the sheen.
posted by Mike B. at 1:37 PM
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You know, it's probably not good when you read a story and it sounds like groundless conspiracy-mongering--"the Saudi-Pakistani-bin Laden triangle," etc.--and then you check the link and it was actually from Time magazine. Oops.
posted by Mike B. at 3:52 AM
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Some thoughts on the concert I saw this very eve:
Kouhei Matsanugi - Yeah, I remember when this was called "me fucking around with a drum machine and a delay pedal."
Emil Beaulieau - He will die sooner than I will, probably, and this gives me comfort. Enough said. Except this: if he is ever on a bill you are seeing, just start punching him as soon as he starts playing. This will save time.
Lee Ranaldo / Jim O'Rourke / Carlos Giffoni - What is it about (most of) Lee's noise-improv performances that's just better than almost everyone else's? Is it the people he chooses to work with, or is it just his guitar, and the fact that he's an absolute master of the instrument? I don't know, but I would defend this statement pretty vigorously regardless, and this performance was head-and-shoulders above the other dronemongers on the bill.
Wolf Eyes - Bullshit. Total, utter bullshit. I'm glad you guys make your own instruments (although this "making" appears to be merely the clever linking of various old outboard gear, in which case I'm Richard D. fucking James), but could you learn something about making your own music sometime? Like, making it not boring? Critic-type people, you need to stop being impressed just because folks are from the midwest (it's not Brooklyn, OK, but it's not like these people are Tuvans or something) and because they bang their heads vigorously for no discernable reason. Good job looking serious and "scary," guys, but I did, in fact, fall asleep amidst your 30 decibels of noise. Whilst standing up.
Lightning Bolt - They set up in the corner of the venue during the end of the Wolf Eyes set (note to self: acquire own sound system) and began playing shortly afterwards, everyone having surged over there. In short, they were goddamn awesome, despite some technical problems, which were probably exacerbated by the mob of people with no particular barrier between them and the instruments. The new song about George Bush sounded pretty damn good, all things considered.
In long: I moshed. Do I usually mosh? Well, no, but on the other hand I don't really go to the kind of shows where one moshes. (Also, I use the pronoun "one" in sentences, even when speaking.) Sure, I've moshed in the past; the ones that spring to mind most readily are from when I was a teen, moshing at a Reverend Horton Heat concert, and from an Elastica concert in London, which was funny because I am 6'2" 200 lbs. and the other people were British, so I less moshed and more stood there while they bounced off me.
But I moshed tonight; as we in the front-left were pushed towards the band and tried to get an opportunity to actually see them, some serious moshing started. No doubt kids who take Ian MacKaye more seriously than Ian takes himself would say this moshing is just lame since I'm not into the moshing scene and I was just play-acting at hardcore, and while my moshing was lame in a physical sense--I'm 24 and I have a cold--the whole point of my musical philosophy is that sometimes I'm in the mood to mosh, and sometimes I'm not, and it's nice that I can appreciate music that's appropriate for each. Tonight, it was good to get out some aggression, so mosh I did.
At any rate, Lightning Bolt were very good and moshing is fun, sometimes, although not as fun as dancing.
posted by Mike B. at 3:48 AM
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Another valid reason to hate hipsters--from, I shit you not, the exact same guy who sent out the whole black-people-who-are-rude-are-racist thing:
Whether you live in the affected area or not is irrelevant. I'm sure we all will be affected one way or another by the influx of people if these structures are built.
-----
Some of you already know of a proposal to build a 20,00-seat stadium & 5,500 unites of high-rise housing in the land between Pacific Street, Atlantic Avenue, Flatbush Avenue and Vanderbilt. The story broke 10 days ago in the Newark Star-Ledger and there have been further articles in the New York Times, NY Post and the Brooklyn papers (as well as in the Cleveland Free Times. The sports teams that would be imported to use the stadium are the New Jersey Devils and the New Jersey Nets. (The Devils current stadium has ground level parking for 20,400 cars. Where would all these cars be parked?). The scheme's prime mover is Bruce Ratner, CEO of Forest City Ratner, the company that is constructing the Atlantic Terminal buildng going up near the Willamsburg Savings Bank clock tower. According to the Star-Ledge the construction would be over the LIRR railroad tracks, which are owned by the MTA, which is controlled by Governor Pataki. Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz has expressed enthusiasm for pro teams moving to Brooklyn and let on that there have been behind-the-scenes talks for several months. Mayor Bloomberg has also said he would welcome the teams to New York. Bloomberg's development advisor, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, has said he wants the sky-scraper housing scheme to go through even if the stadium falls through.
Even without the stadium, the massive housing complex would change the character of our neighborhood forever. 5,500 units of housing would double the population of Prospect Heights, creating congestion and noise and air pollution. The only way to acheive Ratner's vision would be a "wall" of 20-story sky-scrapers stretching from Flatbusy to Vanderbilt. The Prospect Heights Action Coalition's alternative proposal is a PARK, and affordable townhouses (on the Atlantic Commons model).
WE MUST EXPRESS OUR OPPOSITION TO THIS PLAN NOW. Bruce Ratner is pressuring local politicians to sign a "Memorandium of Understanding," giving him a $350+ MILLION in city subsidies. Communicating NOW - by fax, email, phone message and letter - will have far more impact than after the politicians commit themselves. It's VITAL that we KEEP THE PRESSURE ON our elected officials, especially Governor Pataki (who heads the MTA, and has the power to give away the MTA land for free).
PLEASE FIGHT FOR OUR NEIGHBORHOOD!
Am I the only one who sees a certain disparity in the same individual taking both of these positions?
It can be argued that the actions of the folks at the club are on pretty much the same anti-gentrification wavelength we're seeing here, and at least the former response doesn't keep jobs out of the community, unlike the latter. I actually think the stance in this message is a pretty good one, but it would be nice if the people taking it could do a little self-reflection and see how they're implicated in it, too.
posted by Mike B. at 3:08 AM
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