Huh. Well, I guess Christgau kinda gets it.

Rob of QV sent me this, and helpfully does the legwork: Christgau's referencing Popmatters reviews of Manitoba and the Shins, both by Adrian Begrand, and Pitchfork reviews of Broken Social Scene and the Wrens, both by Schreiber.

While I do admire the piece's ambiguity--it's not just a rip on these mags/indie culture, it's an appreciation of their strengths as well--at the same time it's kind of annoying that Christgau's piece meanders off (albeit an artful meandering) to talking about how now he's heard about the Wrens and they're very good. This is annoying partially because there are so many points he glancingly brings up that could be productively expanded, but also because it's like, well of course Christgau's going to like the Wrens. They're folky and depressy and melodic but they don't try and rip off Dylan. They're a pretty Christgau-y band.

The article is discussed, with a large amount of the typical message-board white noise, on SoundOpinions. The PopMatters writer responds thusly:

That article is torture to read. What's he going on about?

I do take issue with what he said about my Manitoba piece...I think it's one of the best things I've written this year, and I meant every word of that review. As for that line in my Shins review, I totally agree with what he says...honestly, as soon as I wrote it, I thought it was awful, but I was inundated at the time, and completely exhausted, and just got lazy when I was desperate for a last sentence. This'll only remind me to stay on my toes.

Funny that he assumes I'm indie. I couln't be further from indie if I tried. I'm nowhere near as cool!

And, oh boy, where to start with this?

1) "That article is torture to read." *cough* Yes, well...

2) "I meant every word of that review." Sincerity does not equal quality. This reminds me of the bit in that language poetry essay in which it was said: "the 'intentional fallacy,' the main effect of which is sophomores claiming that The Odyssey is about holding on to your dreams, because 'that's what I got out of it.'" Christgau wasn't saying that you don't mean it: he was saying that you are stupid for meaning it, and a bad writer to boot.

3) "I couln't be further from indie if I tried. I'm nowhere near as cool!" Hahaha! Oh wait, that's not funny, you actually think this is true. Look, you write for Popmatters and like the Shins. You're indie. It's OK, dude! But if you're going to try and pass as non-indie, probably claiming to be a dork isn't the best defense. In case you haven't noticed, there is, mmm, a wee smattering of dorks in indie rock. By which I mean: IT'S ONE OF THE DORKIEST THINGS EVER. This is OK. Sure, there are some cool indie rockers, but mostly it's just dorks trying to be cool, which is hilarious, or dorks making up new rules of what's cool and then enforcing them, which is just...just horrible. And if you tried, I betcha you could be more indie. For instance, you could move to Nepal and never listen to any recorded music ever again. Hell, you could just buy khakis and listen to Norah Jones--that would still make you less indie.

Later in the thread, the claim is made: "From where he sits, he could still coast off of the past and act the sage, but no, much better to sabotage the only people who give a shit about actual music." Oh yeah, the only people. Except, I dunno...wait, wait, I don't even need to get into that yet. Let's just start with "actual music." Actual music?!?! Are you fucking kidding me? What the fuck does that mean? Pitchfork and PopMatters are the only places out there covering sound recordings of organized series of tones? What's everybody else covering, something that appears to be music but is secretly fudge? But look, even if you think that--unless by "actual music" you mean "indie rock," and if you do, you're a moron--you have to admit that there are a lot of other places out there covering good music. No Depression, Maximum Rocknroll, the Wire, Mojo, bluegrass magazines, country magazines...etc. It's just a retarded thing to say. Granted, there's a whiff of Christgau's desperation in this piece, but I think that's really just the smell of grumpy old man. Sure, he could be a bit more open to webzines, but the problem is that everything he said in here is right.

The biggest nod-nod moment I had was when reading Really, what level of understanding can we expect of a review that climaxes: "The album's a real winner, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that these guys are definitely the genuine article"?, but that's probably just me--I interpreted it as a knock against authenticity as the highest standard, but Christgau, being Christgau, probably didn't mean it that way.

The second best, though. is probably this:

A typical admirer describes the mildly pretty laptop eclectica of Up in Flames as "some of the most euphoric, mind-blowingly beautiful music we have heard in years"; even more absurdly, You Forgot It in People, a comfortable melange of well-loved feedback and occasional tune by a coterie of Toronto alt luminaries who'd better be nice to their bass player, is invariably categorized as "pop," as in "song after song of endlessly replayable, perfect pop." What do we learn from such raves about albums content to explore indie's romance of the enigmatic? That what was once alternative rock is now an alternate universe—a universe where no one listens to Mozart or Miles and any aesthete who dabbles in song form challenges Lennon-McCartney.

Now, I've got a bit coming up on the debasement of pop as a classification later, but I will briefly point out the odd parallels between that last bit and my whole discussion about the Unicorns, although I have no idea if Christgau had that particular Pitchfork review in mind when making this point.

But regardless, it's a good one. When you look back at older "indie" scenes you see music greatly influenced by things outside itself--avant-garde classical for No Wave, 50's rockabilly for early punk, 60's bands for early indie stuff, etc. But now you can make entirely self-referential indie records, ones with few or no influences outside the indie scene and the few selected mainstream objets that have been accepted into the canon. (Generally old/retro artists: Beach Boys, Beatles, etc.) And, well, and people are making these sorts of circular indie records, and people are praising these efforts to the hills. Now, I'm not necessarily saying they shouldn't, as I'm certainly no big fan of innovation being the paramount critical value. But at the same time, Christgau's right to imply that most of these things that are being presented as innovative really aren't in the slightest if you do the smallest bit of looking outside indie. So the problem isn't that these things are unoriginal: it's that they're perceived as being original when they're not, and that lack of perspective is both hampering the music, by making "slightly new" good enough, and hampering readers' listening options--if you like formlessness in the Unicorns, why wouldn't you also like Schoenberg? "Schoenberg who?" Well, maybe I'm being inaccurately snobby here, but the fact is that this weird lack of eclecticism--this Puritanism in an inherently dilletantish genre, to borrow Simon's terms--is fucking things up. As is the self-referntiality--note what I was saying about the Strokes going "back to the source" and gaining a lot from such exposure.

Christgau's also right to point out that these critical standards represent less a valuation of things like pleasure, technical skill, forward thinking, etc. and more the "romance of the enigmatic." I've noted before the disproportionate effect being mysterious and impenetrable can have on an artist's critical reception, but it's worth mentioning again. Indie kids like it when things pretend to have hidden knowledge or arrange things in such a way as to make the method, intentions, and even actual results unclear. See: spazzcore, dream-pop, post-rock, undie hip-hop, etc., etc., etc. All of these genres have produced great albums, but by and large the great albums, as far as I can see, are ones that overcome that impenetrability to make something more broadly relatable or figure out a way to include more up-front elements in their sound. Think the great pop songs at the heart of MBV, the great melody lines lurking in the last two Deerhoof albums, the glorious riffage of Mogwai. But it's also necessary to point out that this love of mystery extends to persona, too: the up-front allows no room for critical interpretation, or else doesn't allow the inevitable conclusion critics reach to seem clever. Thus Jack White, Jeff Magnum...christ, do I need to go on? And is this (gulp) authenticity? Is this innovation? Hardly. This is playin' y'all like a violin, friends, and it's sad that you sit there and feel good about yourself for "seeing through the facades" of mainstream poppers--when the whole point of mainstream pop is to have transparent facades--while remaining unable to see through the various artificialities of BSS, the Shins, etc., etc. And, even worse, when you do start seeing through these facades, you get bitter and cynical, responding to any praise with a furrowed-brow debunking of the obvious "rip-offs" of any new band, and yeah, people like this are fucking everywhere in the indie scene, the goddamn boomers reminding us that we'll never be as good as the early 80's downtown NYC scene; you do this instead of thinking about it, instead of thinking, huh, well, if it's all facades, then maybe the pop stuff isn't all that evil after all, huh? It doesn't get you to change your standards, doesn't open you up, only closes you down more and more in a search for the perfect unsullied music object.

But what about the point I think Christgau is trying to get at in his introductory remarks: "Structurally, the scene should be poised for takeover. But it isn't, and it doesn't want to be...Poised for takeover? What's to take over? Indie stars are already masters of all they survey." In other words: indie insularity and critical standards and pop allergies are preventing the music from reaching a wider audience. At this point it might be a good idea to throw in a quote from the Shins' James Mercer interview with PopMatters:

PM: So, how would you feel if you were more visible? I know a lot of indie bands have a particular hang-up about that.
JM: I think it would be pretty hard on me if there was [attention] like that.
PM: I know there's this backlash thing in the indie world-
JM: How do you mean?
PM: Whenever they perceive a band to go beyond its initial fanbase, there's this traitor sort of mentality.
JM: Yeah, sure. I remember after Modest Mouse signed to Epic and they were on tour for that record, there were a couple of places where the fans made it known that they were pissed. Somebody actually wrote "Sellout" in dirt on their van.
PM: Childish.
JM: It's just so strange.
PM: So you think a lot of attention would be hard on you personally?
JM: I guess. I think I'm just too lazy to cope.

So maybe it's that the artists themselves genuinely don't want mainstream success. The question remains as to why--have they been scared off by entertainment media representations of success, or by horror stories of past indie crossover successes/failures, or by fear of losing their cred/fanbase/popularity? In a way, Mercer is totally right: being a pop star is a hell of a lot of work in term of appearances, getting ready for appearances, dealing with fans, publicity, etc., etc., etc., and certainly a lot more headaches, biz-wise, than you'd get from dealing only with Sub Pop. But at the same time, it's certainly achievable, and given the general respect both for hard work and for sublimating the individual to the group good in these sorts of circles, it would seem to be an honorable move to do a lot of work by one's self to get a certain kind of music a lot more visibility; yes, true, you yourself would have to work pretty hard, but wouldn't it be worth it?

The answer for most in the indie world is, of course, no. I remember talking with some friends here about Liz Phair's new album and advanced my whole shtick about how I think it's great and how I wish more good indie songwriters would go for it because pop is so cool and you could get some really awesome songs out of it. In response, someone pointed out to me that, well, most people don't have the same open-minded view of and love for pop that I do; for most people, especially indie musicians, it really didn't matter what the Liz Phair album sounded like--it only mattered that she hired Avril's producers and was trying to get songs on the radio. That's it.

Which, boy, sure does suck, doesn't it?

So who's responsible for this? I think that's what Christgau's asking, and I think his answer is that it's not only this long-entrenched "sellout" attitude among indie fans that makes them get down on Modest Mouse (for only, uh, making the best goddamn album of their career), it's the actual positive positions taken by critics. It's not just the complaints they levy, but the albums they choose to champion. What critics view as a good work comes to be regarded as the standard of quality for this type of music, and so when a band is sitting there writing a song, if they share these values, given the opportunity to, say, drop in something that runs counter to that code, they're likely to avoid it. And this is a worse problem in the indie scene than in most others, because there's very little radio and no established festival circuit to expose people to stuff. It's mainly word-of-mouth fed by reviews and blogs and so forth. Pitchfork champions Broken Social Scene and all of the sudden it's in Virgin listening stations. This is a clear correlation, no matter what they say about the Junos. (Don't see a lot of Simple Minds or Our Lady Peace in Virgin, for instance.) And so they have a responsibility, and they're dropping the ball from where I'm sitting.

What Christgau's saying, I think, is that it's kind of problematic that indie has become such a community, because a good indie band can become the equivalent of a well-loved local band, rising to a certain level of satisfying success, but the standards that shape such rise actually make them unable to succeed in the larger world. And they might want to, and other listeners who don't get to hear them might want them to, but as everything's currently set up they're not going to. Sure, these are good albums, but as long as innocuous, unpleasurable unmentionables remain the pinnacle of indie achievement, most people aren't going to be interested, and as long as the mainstream remains anathema, there's going to be no engagement beyond the ironic. And that's really sad--it's really sad that this whole group of really talented musicians are limiting themselves in such a way, especially when what they're cutting themselves off from is actually quite vital and exciting and interesting.

But what Christgau's saying, again, is that it's not just a matter of cutting out the "sellout" bullshit, and it's not just a matter of giving Missy positive reviews. It's a matter of actually finding indie bands that could appeal to a wider audience and championing them alongside all the other bands we all legitimately like. We've done that well with the White Stripes and New Pornographers, but there's lots more to do. We shall see.

At any rate, great article from Christgau, and I'm glad he wrote it.
posted by Mike B. at 6:23 PM 0 comments

Friday, December 05, 2003

There is undisturbed snow outside my window and all is still and 5 people in my apartment are sleeping at 10:30 on a Friday night. It's very peaceful.

(Two of them are snoring, but that's beside the point.)

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

The YYYs' "Maps" is a surprisingly wonderful soundtrack to snow falling on Bushwick.

posted by Mike B. at 10:44 PM 0 comments

Space Ghost Coast To Coast is great for many reasons.

One of those reasons is that in a 13-minute show they'll happily devote 1.5 of those minutes to two of the characters simply saying the word "punch" over and over again.

Go buy the DVD right now, Chester.

posted by Mike B. at 10:44 PM 0 comments

Just sent this to a friend:

***
New Kid Rock album so good!

All country! (Mostly!)

First song: "I miss my babies and I'd like to fuck my wife."

Second song: "She's got a Cadallac Pussy, man, it'll drive you wild..."

Next-to-last song: references GnR! "They say we need just a little patience/but what do you do when your woman's too high maintanance?"

It's good.
***

It is good. But it's not all country--he throws in a weird amount of rap, metal...uh, rock...well, what you'd expect, I suppose, so it's not all that weird. But it's still a nice mix. A good leadin to contemporary country, that most impenetrable of mass forms for the modern musical fan, should you want it.

"Single Father" is pretty good, too.

But sweet jesus, the Bachmann-Turner Overdrive cover is bad. Like, really, really, really, really bad. Boy. I guess I'd like to hear from someone who disagrees, but it's just shallow, gimmicky, uninteresting, and painful. Just not fun to listen to, you know? Ah well.

Oh, although his singing is much better than it was on the Cheryl Crow duet.

posted by Mike B. at 3:47 PM 0 comments

Thursday, December 04, 2003

Random music-geek question: in Radiohead's "Just," there's this extended guitar note at the end of the final chorus (3:09-3:20) that just goes on at a comparable pitch and volume for just an ungodly length of time, and then descends to new pitches, before being muted while sounding like it could go on a lot longer. Any thoughts as to how this was done? E-bow? Compressor/sustainer pedal w/distortion?

posted by Mike B. at 5:48 PM 0 comments

Keep getting a spam whose subject line is, "Children come first," and I keep thinking just the worst possible thing about it. Why does spam have to be either porn or very non-porn?

posted by Mike B. at 5:16 PM 0 comments

Via a discussion on wallace-l that's not worth rehashing, we come to this page of Clay Aiken merch. It's kind of charming, isn't it? I especially loved the bit about "Who ever said we wanted edgy? Rocky road is overrated!" It's being "in-your-face" about not being edgy, which is sort of that old I'm-so-authentic-I-don't-care-about-authenticity-thing (thanks heather), but it's also shockingly honest, since most people who are "in your-face" in this way really aren't "edgy" in the slightest, although they may be trying to be. (Soda commercials, radio DJs, bad kids' cartoons, etc.) So good for them.

I am a bit unconvinced about the whole "When the media and the music industry tell you to eat Rocky Road, there's only ONE thing to do: bury them in vanilla" thing, but it's an interesting phenomenon, needless to say. On the other hand, it does mean that AUR as a cultural meme has progressed to the point where we're using "revolutionary" language to celebrate bland inoffensiveness. And I don't mean that as a knock, like "Oh they think they're so cool but it's just bourgeois pap, man." They really are celebrating bland inoffensiveness, and they're quite happy about it. What else can "vanilla" mean?

And in a way, they're absolutely right. This is indeed what the media and the music industry does. Their bland, inoffensive stuff sells just as well, if not better, as their pseudo-"edgy" stuff, but it's pushed off the cultural radar. Only occasionally does it crop up with Ms. Dion, "Everybody Loves Raymond," Regis Philbin, etc., etc., etc. Most of the time they're pushing stuff whose image is deeply rooted in the AUR sensibility of exciting and new and confrontational and transgressive = good. Even when it's none of those.

So I have a definite sympathy with these particular viewpoints, even as I recognize that what I consider vanilla they're possibly explicitly thinking of when they say "rocky road." Still, it's something we could all keep in mind. Maybe I'll buy a button.

posted by Mike B. at 5:15 PM 0 comments

*pounce*

Now that the initial shock of Liz Phair's descent into anonymous teen-pop has worn off, I think I'm finally able to separate the music from my disgust and view this track as the radio-ready abomination it is. Okay, I'm not...

(...)

So, if nothing else, it's time to admit that Phair was right, and I was wrong: the record has not been a complete commercial flop. Unfortunately, there's not much else to say about this tinny, overdigital, pitch-corrected hellsong, except that it's shocking just how much power TRL is comfortable handing over to twelve-year-old girls, the only American force with the time and energy to actually put in votes for their favorite video every single afternoon. --Ryan Schreiber

First off, allow me to just gloat for a moment. Aaaaaahh. It's good to be right. That said:

This is a definition of power that could only be suggested with a straight face in Pitchfork's world. TRL is "handing over" this power because it's the power to pick videos, instead of, I dunno, the power of life and death, or the power of the atom, or the power to eat entire worlds. Plus, the power to pick videos was previously held by, well, MTV itself, and we don't like them either, do we? (Of course, they still do a lot of filtering by picking which videos can be voted for, but that's beside the point now.) Oh yeah, and the videos being picked are the videos that are going to be watched on TRL, which is watched by 12-year-old girls. So it's teenage girls picking videos for themselves to watch. What's the problem, exactly?

Oh, the problem--silly me--is that these choices then reverberate across the culture, and so the pseudo-random choices of hormone- and angst-crazed teenyboppers have a direct result on the buying decisions of Wal-Mart and the Billboard chart and as a result Colin Meloy is eating a turkey sandwich tonight instead of finest caviar. Except that, as I say above, if TRL's viewers weren't making these decisions, it'd be the people who had been making them for the forty years previous, i.e. program managers and radio and TV directors. But there's only the smallest degree of difference, since, well, since teenagers are the ones who buy pop, and said programmers were simply trying to cater to these tastes previously, not push them. It's not like back in 1962 some CBS DJ said to himself, "Ooh, the Beatles, let's play that, they're an intelligent and advanced form of pop music that will in turn lead today's repressed and culturally ignorant teenagers down the road toward folk music, delta blues, and legitimate sociopolitical protest which will in turn change the fortunes of an entire nation." No. He was thinking, "Hey, this is catchy." See how these things work sometimes? Of course, here's what we're missing: lots of teenage girls are listening to Liz Phair. And ain't that a good thing?

But the last line there made me think. Who else has "the time and energy to actually put in votes for their favorite video every single afternoon"? Er, how about college students? Laying around, irregular class schedule, amazing access to modern media, passionate about music, why shouldn't they? Couldn't they all vote in a bloc and get, I dunno, "Hey Ya" played over "Right Thurr," "Pass the Dutch" over "Where Is The Love," or maybe even start doing write-ins and getting Interpol videos played and so forth? Geez, it seems like it wouldn't be that hard, and yet it still isn't happening. Why is that? Could it maybe be because they don't give a shit? And that they see TRL's hegemony as about as important to their lives as what's on the menu at a diner in Topeka that day? (Unless they go to college in Topeka, of course.)

It's like that lazy leftist political argument--the one that complains about the state of the world and the conservative dominance of politics but, when asked if they themselves are doing anything, simply replies that the system is set up so, like, I don't have any power, man, that because the world sucks and conservatives dominate everything, I can't possible change anthing--except, somehow, even more pathetic. Which is impressive! Look, in politics, I think it's usually an artful dodge, but the argument has some merit: there are a lot of structural obstacles put up to stop people from participating meaningfully in politics, and yes, you might not get what you want right away, you might have to keep at it with little reward for as many as five years before you see any results. But in terms of TRL, it's just stupid. You don't like what's on there? Sweet Christ, then go get some people together and vote for something different! This is Pitchfork we're talking about here, with a not insubstantial daily readership. Granted, they're not exactly the loyalist shock troops you'd expect to see following, say, Rush Limbaugh (or moveon.org), but if they actually cared enough about TRL and the sorry state of mainstream music etc. etc., it wouldn't be so hard for a central meeting point like Pitchfork to organize a regular resistance, eh? If it bothers you that much, sweet baby carrots, go for it, but stop whining about it.

Look, at some point you're going to have to accept that people listen to what they like, and while there's some filtering going on, it's not like there's a worldwide conspiracy of tweens oppressing the rest of us with their lack of musical diversity. The music of teenagers is over here, and the music of private college indie kids is here, and the music of baby boomers is here, and the music of public college kids is here, etc., etc. They're all separate, and, honest to Pete, top 40 music is doing nothing to bother you if you're on Matador's mailing list. You can blissfully leave it alone, and indeed, most indie kids do. But if you are going to engage with it, try to avoid the oh-so-clichéd, "This is crap!" reaction. Yeah, some of it's crap, and so is 99% of indie rock. But if you make no effort to understand these different little areas of culture, their different tastes and standards and expectations, then you'll never enjoy it, and that seems a shame. And it's definitely a shame that you still can't appreciate what Ms. Phair is doing.

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

Grammy nominees list can be found here. Enjoy.

Notable nods:

- Four actually good albums for album of the year! Missy, JT, Outkast, White Stripes. (!)

- Fountains of Wayne nominated for "Best New Artist." Hahahahahahaha. Guys, they put out two albums on Atlantic before this, OK?

- A bunch of good ones for record (i.e. single) of the year, too: "Crazy in Love," "Lose Yourself," "Hey Ya."

- FoW gets a nod for best pop group performance for "Stacy's Mom." They could win it, too--they're up against the Eagles, Matchbox 20, Bon Jovi, and No Doubt, all of whom, actual quality aside, did not have strong years. If there's anyone who deserves to win a goddamn Grammy, it's Fountains of Wayne.

- Only one of the people in the female rock category is actually a rocker. I don't mean that in a snide way: I don't think Pink, Michelle Branch, Avril or Lucinda Williams would classify themselves as such. Well, maybe Avril, but she's wrong.

- Tom Waits get a nom for covering a Ramones song?

- Both J. White and W. Zevon get nods for best rock songwriting.

- A mediocre Flaming Lips EP gets nominated for best Alternative album? Uh, Interpol? The Shins? Well, let's not even go down that path.

- Kelis' "Milkshake" gets a nod! Wahoo!

- I feel like Evanesce is gonna clean up, but c'mon voters, let's give Outkast some due here.

posted by Mike B. at 12:46 PM 0 comments

Should I be working? Yeah. Do I feel like posting? Yeah. Ah well. I'll skip lunch.

posted by Mike B. at 12:19 PM 0 comments

A few addendums to my Strokes post:

- Somehow I neglected to mention the fact that at the end of the song, Julian growls, "This is it!" Which, given the title of their first album, is hard to ignore. Many people have seen Room on Fire as a bafflingly direct continuation of Is This It (always an asking-for-it title given the context in which it arrived), and with this line Julian seems to be either acknowledging or making fun of these claims: the first one, well, we weren't sure, but this one, this is it: this is the one we've been promising. It's wonderfully cheeky and one of the few times the Strokes acknowledge the massive amount of criticism LP1 received. It's good that they ignore the subject, I suppose, but at the same time it would be nice to see a rock band take more than a line (Kurt's "Teenage angst has paid off well," Jack White's "Far from this opera forevermore...") to recognize or respond to the criticism that had been directed their way. Hip-hop folks seem all too eager, and while I'll admit that their critic-bashing gets repetitive and whiningly unspecific, it could be fun if done right. Engage with the culture, rock folks!

- Odd that such an analog-aspiring album is so Pro Tools-identified--why didn't they do it all White Stripes style in a reel-to-reel studio? I think it's good that they didn't, in a way--that confusion of the modern with the retro is part of their appeal--but it's still a bit odd.

- Odd too that, according to my info, they wrote most of these songs in the studio; they seem oddly well thought-out for that. Of course, it also explains the Pro Tools a lot more--you can hear in quite a few songs the way in which they could have just built up all the parts and then simply muted the ones they didn't want in there at the time. You should probably remember that the guru was in the studio with them the whole time and probably suggested not a few of the solos and leads--which, I gotta say, are really, really good on this album.

- I ignored--unintentionally, I swear--the prime example of using the technique I describe the Strokes adopting, i.e. not imitating the imitators but going back to the source. Why I didn't think of the wide world of Pet Sounds fetishists, I'll never know, but let's throw that in the mix now. You see a decent number of Pitchfork reviews talking about some sun-pop band "sounding like they haven't listened to anything after 1970," and that's true as far as it goes, since they're mainly trying to imitate a songwriting, production and arrangement style from the late 60's. Of course, they didn't really have any imitators to imitate--who would be Pet Sounds' pre-90's descendents, XTC? Elvis Costello? Spector's production work?--but still, the problem there is that they really don't acknowledge the modern in the way the Strokes do. You're just not going to make a better record than Pet Sounds while trying to sound like it, so let's just accept this and move on to the wide world of punk, new wave, grunge, etc., etc. Throw something else in there, boys.

posted by Mike B. at 12:16 PM 0 comments

While I understand and even sympathize with the concerns raised here, I can't really agree with the conclusions. Viz:

It's all too easy to sit in your bedroom in Pinner downloading all the latest ragga and garage joints from Soulseek (also read: ripping off many artists who can ill afford it), but does this help you actually know anything about the culture? I think not.

We're living accelerated times where access to information is at an all-time high, but said access can often be gained with no effort, removing any need for interaction between cultures, subjugating the contextual experience necessary to read these "texts" properly (and, yes, you better believe there is a proper way to read them) and effectively building up a kind of "virtual apartheid".

Reading through some of the posts on ILM's dancehall threads I am continually amazed by the pervasive idea that hearing/acquiring music (by whatever means) immediately equals understanding it, all this without ever having so much as set foot in a dance or been completely ignored in Brixton's Blacker Dread.

Sorry. No. This is like musical nimbyism (just realised the delicious irony of the phrase "not in my back yard" here!): enthralling in principle; exotic from a distance. But up close? Different story entirely.

This is kind of like the anti-piracy argument brought to cultural capital: if you can't afford to do it, you just shouldn't, man, even if you want to. Look, let's be honest. I don't think most of the posters on ILM are avoiding Brixton clubs because they're scared, but because, uh, they live in Seattle, or Chicago, or wherever, and it's, you know, a bit more expensive to fly from there to the UK than to take the tube down to South London. I suppose if you're already in London and you're into dancehall you really should be going to Brixton clubs, but I think a) most people would, and b) that it's interesting in a whole different way if you don't.

This particular view would, I think, cut off a whole bunch of very valid critical positions. For instance: should American musical critics be able to talk about Mozart without having visited 18th-century Vienna? Should UK residents be able to talk about the blues? (Or Detroit techno?) Should Jamaicans have to go to suburban Virginia to appreciate Missy Elliot and Timbaland? The idea that you have to have a geographic and interpersonal connection with a particular subculture in order to come to some understanding of their music seems very limiting to me. Sure, I won't have the same understanding of the musical climate of Mozart's world as someone who actually lived there, but I can read a bunch about it and listen to the music and read the scores and have a valid understanding of that culture. And sure, it seems kind of silly to be really into dancehall and not make the effort to get to Brixton when it's actually a living, vibrant scene, but can you still appreciate the music for what it is and come to some understanding of the culture without visiting the damn thing. I'd certainly like there to be less fetishization of seemingly closed-off subcultural musics, but at the same time I think it's this particular exclusionary attitude of the scene's participants and halfway in/halfway out bards, like Mr. Stelfox here, that fosters said fetishization. Telling some people that "You couldn't possibly understand what we're doing here" is a great way to get them to obsessively try to understand it. To a lot of people, closed-off scenes are like "graphic sexuality and partial nudity" notices before movies for teenage boys, and I think we're all aware enough of this phenomenon by now that if you want to keep the looky-loos away, you could adopt an appropriate strategy.

I guess mainly I'm curious what the solution should be--if you hear a new style of music and like it but aren't a participant in the scene, should you disregard it entirely? Or should you enjoy it but constantly reiterate that you are aware that you don't, like, actually understand it? If the latter, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find people who like dancehall and represent themselves as masters of the scene if they're not actual participants in the geographic location where it's going on. Maybe I'm wrong. But regardless, I think there's a value in also having critical viewpoints that understands dancehall in the same way it does Mozart.

Of course, I'm the kind of guy that would strenuously disagree that there's only one proper reading. Three or four, maybe, but not one.

Oh yes, and as for "virtual apartheid"--I think you may be overstating the power of ILM there just a wee bit, Dave.

(via somedisco, who is actually linking to the post directly below)

posted by Mike B. at 11:57 AM 0 comments

The Tard Blog.

Weirdly fascinating. I've worked in an environment like this, although I was mostly with the discipline cases, not the developmentally disabled kids.

posted by Mike B. at 10:44 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

Thanks once again to QV, we have two bits of Klosterman here for you.

Did I say "bit"? I meant "very long article about going to the places where rock stars died." And oh, it's a corker.

Also, from Esquire, a piece on Kobe that's pretty cool.

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

Fluxblog today posts a song from that weird all-demo "Blur" (i.e. just Damon) album I was talking about a while back.

Although I do "get" the title now--it's not supposed to be "ooh, crazy democracy!" but "crazy demos!" or something along those lines. Or so I assume.

Too bad they didn't turn out well. And yeah, I agree, sounds like Pollardism...

posted by Mike B. at 11:28 AM 0 comments

Speaking of QV, I was just talking to my friend Liz.

"Don't go to see this French film that's out right now called In This Skin," she said. "I saw it a few months ago it and it was horrible, a really voyeuristic thing about self-mutilation. The same woman was the writer, director, producer, and star, to give you some idea. She's like a French Vincent Gallo."

"That sounds like the worst thing ever," I said.

"I know," she said.

My friend Liz is pretty hilarious sometimes.

posted by Mike B. at 11:22 AM 0 comments

QV posts a Klosterman tangent to my Strokes thing. I particularly like the July entry--it hits about 12 cultural reference points I honestly haven't thought of for at least five years, but yeah, I always did think of Live as "that placenta band."

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

This here list is, uh, kinda interesting.

Aw, it's so cute when people try to be responsible critics and then fail utterly.

So in the intro we have this disclaimer:

And just for clairity, you're not going to find, Britney Spears or Menudo on here. This is a list reserved for the "gods" of music, not Top 40 pop-whores. We understand that Britney and Justin and Avril and who-the-fuck-ever else are going to put out mindless sugarcoated crap. That's what pop music is, after all. This list is for the masters, the designers, the influential forces of music, and some of the potholes they've left in their wake.

But then you look at the list and you have to wonder if these guys really count as non-top-40 masters of music:

Phil Collins
Post-Gabriel Genesis
Deep Purple
Hammer (MC)
Garth Brooks

And I'm not sure quite what to say about the Moby except that anyone who actually respected Moby gave up on him two albums before 18.

And I'm definitely not quite sure what to say about someone who thinks Phil Collins is more deserving of respect than Justin Timberlake... (Note that "more," it's important.)

posted by Mike B. at 8:35 AM 0 comments

Monday, December 01, 2003

I think I'm fully warm to the new Strokes album now. I think at first it's hard to think anything other than, "Whoa, this sure sounds like a Strokes album," but by now I've gotten used to it enough where I can appreciate them as really good songs, regardless of past history.

Which brings me to my favorite song on the disc: "Between Love and Hate."

One thing that critics get wrong about the Strokes, I think this album makes clear, is that they're ripping off the '77 punkers. Not true if you actually listen beyond the production and look beyond the leather jackets. For instance, it's never been asked--or if so, never adequately answered: exactly which punk band do the Strokes sound like? If they were ripping off Television, they'd sound like Sonic Youth. If they were ripping off Talking Heads, they'd sound like the Dismemberment Plan. If they were ripping off the Clash, they'd sound like Rancid. If they were ripping off Wire, they'd sound like Elastica. If they were ripping off the Dolls, they'd sound like a glam-rockabilly band. If they were ripping off Blondie, they'd sound disco. If they were ripping off the Buzzcocks, they'd sound like Green Day. If they were ripping off the Sex Pistols, they'd sound much louder. And so forth. I guess they do share certain things with the Ramones, but at the same time, when you think of Ramones descendents, you definitely don't think of a sound like the Strokes'.

And yet the comparison is impossible to avoid--and not necessarily untrue. They clearly yearn for the fashion and scene of the time, of course, and their production has a lot in common with the pre-80's guitar-band sound (viz. Sasha's point about them wanting their songs to all sound just as good in mono). But you sort of have to look past that and realize, as I say above, that they don't actually sound much at all like any of the actual punk bands in terms of songwriting, drums, guitars (there's the punk chug-chug-chug, but in the upper register instead of the lower), or even vocals, where Julian's swings from Lou Reed-stoned to Stiv-Bators-pissed-off don't really happen anywhere else, and that doesn't mean that he ripped these off, since who the hell thinks of combining the two?

At any rate, I think the key point--and listening to "Between" in isolation will, I think, really drive this home--is that the Strokes sound like '77 punkers not because they've ripped them off, but because they're taking inspiration from the exact same sources the punkers were, but resulting in something different. That point in turn ends up explaining a number of things. Let's get a-started.

So what I'm hearing here is a lot of 50's and 60's pop. Guitar-band pop, rockabilly pop, girl-group pop. It's all there. This song in particular has a lot in common with Chuck Berry, but over a more girl-group backing, and so it ends up being a bit "My Boyfriend's Back" as covered by the Modern Lovers or something. Julian may be delivering lines like "Thinkin' 'bout that high school dance/worryin' bout the finals" with a bit of a wink and a nudge, but it doesn't really matter, because the backing is straight in multiple sense of the word, and you can dance to the damn thing. And then when he hits the chorus of "I never needed anybody" it calls up the Beatles more than anybody else in my mind. And but so then the solo hits and you'd be way hard-pressed to call it anything besides countrified, wouldn't you?

And so it's taking all that stuff--Berry's/Spector's straight-faced teenagism, Lennon's angst and lyricism, Harrison's solos, Wilson's rhythmic perfectionism--and making something definitely informed by the last 25 years of pop music, but with its roots clearly in the first 25 years.

One of the reasons I think this is a Good Thing is that, as I say above, you can dance to the damn thing. It definitely swings and grooves and all that jazz, despite being sort of lethargic. But I think it only feels lethargic because of Julian's vocal production and because of our modern ears: listen, say, to an old MC5 or Rondelles album, and that feels pretty lethargic in comparison to Weezer or Britney. But it's not: it's just, you know, slower, and more mellowly produced. It's still highly danceable. Matter of fact, it's arguably bringing rock back to the kind of BPM that's allowed it to be eclipsed by hip-hop as default dance music. As the Timelords say, people don't like to dance to anything too fast, because it makes them look stupid. And so the Strokes, by being informed mainly by this older, danceable stuff, instead of its mid-period, occasionally dancable stuff, have produced not the next-level-angularity/artiness/harshness/whatever of the post-punkers, but the deniability that many in the '77 crowd possessed. And I think that's a Good Thing.

So do give the new album a whirl if you haven't yet, and try listening to it as a descendent of the 60's rather than the 70's and see what you think. It's no accident that this has managed to achieve some level of popular success.

posted by Mike B. at 4:58 PM 0 comments

Last night I took the train home from Port Authority and listened to John Mellencamp. Then I got in and Jesse put on some music, and it sounded, before the vocals kicked in, exactly like a Mellencamp song.

What was it?

The new Mountain Goats EP. Weird.

posted by Mike B. at 4:43 PM 0 comments

Porno spam contained the following opt-out line:

"R=E=M=0=V=E= y-o-u-r e-m-a-i-l H=E=R=E 582!869!108!"

Which is, well, kind of like language poetry, isn't it?

posted by Mike B. at 4:35 PM 0 comments

Tom Ellard's response to the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list:

The 10 best sock colours of all time.

1. Black
2. Blue
3. Little magenta diamond shapes
4. Polkadots
5. Pooh Bear
6. Striped like toothpaste
7. Ill defined grey
8. Puce, as in flea coloured.
9. Pink, sparkly
10. Rabbit.

Heh.

posted by Mike B. at 4:34 PM 0 comments

Was having a discussion last night with K. about how I hate Christmas in New York--everything's so damn busy and crowded and hot, and all the decorations looks cheap, and it's just everywhere and blech. She said: but the Christmas trees! And all the lights! And it's Christmas! And I was willing to concede that this was perhaps an irrational hatred.

Now I'm not so sure. Coming back from lunch on 56th street I suddenly encountered a four-foot-tall animatronic snowman singing "Jingle Bells" over and over. I turned my head in horror and glanced the salesman inside. I bet he gets that look a lot.

Now, I'm just saying that when I was home for Thanksgiving, I went out quite a bit on the day after the holiday. I went to the mall, "Consumer Square" (yes, they actually named a strip mall near me "Consumer Square," which I have to admit I kind of love for its directness), and to "Shopper's Stroll." I went a lot of places. And nowhere did I see anything even remotely like a four-foot-tall animatronic snowman singing "Jingle Bells." Where did I see said monstrosity?

In New York. Only in New York.

posted by Mike B. at 4:33 PM 0 comments