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Thursday, September 30, 2004
ROCK 'N' ROLL BON MOTS #019
I feel that Snoop Dogg's "Murder Was the Case" would have been a lot better if its chorus went: Murder was the case that they gave me Now I'm gonna eat this baby But maybe that's just me. posted by Mike B. at 1:41 PM 0 comments
ONE-SENTENCE ADDITIONS TO PITCHFORK REVIEWS THAT WOULD HAVE MADE THEM FAR MORE HONEST
First in a series, maybe. Travis Morrison - Travistan "Also, we think he's a Republican!" posted by Mike B. at 11:43 AM 0 comments
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Wire writer Derek Walmsley was kind enough to drop me a line about the Fiery Furnaces, so let me mention his blog here: Pop Life. Definitely in the UK vein of music-bloggery, but that's cool too. Should listen to that Roll Deep track, I should.
posted by Mike B. at 11:14 AM 0 comments
Two new reviews on Flagpole for me: Clinic, and a local Athens band called Bugs Eat Books. Somewhat embarassingly, both reviews use the "well, these two songs are great, but..." technique.
Also, I get really nervous when I review local bands, especially ones that aren't, you know, local to me. I definitely got the sense from these guys that they'd be much better live than on record. But I'm a sucker for indie-pop. posted by Mike B. at 10:55 AM 0 comments
Updated the post downthread, too, but regular comments are back up. Talk to me, people.
posted by Mike B. at 10:11 AM
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
For Jesse, and for others, comparative setlists from the recent Fiery Furnaces tour:
Eleanor's Toshi's (the bassist) Pretty interesting. I might do something with this, but it's pretty interesting to note how they refer to the different sections in the songs, and how each person refers to those sections differently! Although I assume Toshi's setlist includes some sort of notation of when he switches between bass and keyboard (the "b" or "k" next to some songs). posted by Mike B. at 10:53 AM 0 comments
Tom Ellard's chime-in on the Franz Ferdinand thing below.
The writer is perhaps mislead. There are still interesting bands but The sandwich shop metaphor! And with that, I decided to wholeheartedly endorse "Snack Shop" as our band name. posted by Mike B. at 10:49 AM 0 comments
Comments are down but should be back up in an hour or so.
In other news, Squawkbox can kiss my ass. How about a little notification before you shut down my account next time, guys? UPDATE: Lies, all horrible, horrible lies. If you wanna talk, drop me a line or just, uh, wait. At most it'll only take 2 days! UPDATE 2: I turned on Blogger's horrible comments feature, just for shits and giggles. Click on the post's timestamp to leave 'em. UPDATE 3: Regular comments back up. Comment away. posted by Mike B. at 10:14 AM 1 comments
BB #06: I LOST MY DOG Intro, one, two, three, four, five. STRUCTURE Ends with a little bit of the last chord of "Paw Paw Tree" on piano, which then continues, following the vocals as the previous instruments decay, playing one chord per bar, with the whole thing a bit rubato (am I using that right?), i.e. not to a beat but just free-flowing. This is an intro, and it is capped with a wah'ed electric guitar noise that Eleanor describes as "This is where Matt makes a big jump and he says 1-2-3-4."
All told, this three and a half minute song orchestrates the same basic verse chord progression four different ways. Which is impressive, but since that's for 8 verses, it doesn't really match up with the Pitchfork theory.
Also: here is the old version of the song, which Matthew (who it comes courtesy of) says is a pretty accurate representation of how it was played before the recording of Blueberry Boat, and is from the SBN session. Totally driven by the electric guitar, no tempo change, no drum machine, the only keyboard part is a siren-y noise. I was going to map this but there's sort of no point--intro {[(verse chorus) X 2, break] X 4} outro is how it goes. I think I like the new version better.
Viewed in the context of the I-lost-my-woman song (ILMWs), where the dog leaving is usually the sort of last straw, the one thing that will love you unconditionally finally giving up, what's striking is how they've given agency back to the dog, who not only makes the choice to leave, but makes a further choice to improve his lot in life (arguably). Dogs can get hurt, as can people, and it's a remarkably un-self-centered song, refusing to view everything that happens through a lens of your own near-infallibility. There are possibilities out there for all of us, and the unexpected happens all the time. This is all further reinforced by the particular references that pepper the lyrics, most far removed from the mythologized Southern gothic (or Weimar Sunset strip) setting that characterize ILMWs--Dairy Queens, Super Ks, and e-mail on one hand, town criers and coroners on the other. Some things remain constant, like the police, the pound, and the market, but the way this is all intertwined with solidly modern realities makes the whole thing grounded in what we actually feel and experience than what we'd like to feel and experience, something at the root, I've always thought, of traditional blues and country songs. It's anti-romantic, and it's very nice. But what separates this from the typical alt/art take on traditional forms is that it neither rehashes an outdated version of the form in miserabilist ways (the "Uncle Tupelo Thing") now does what I'll unfairly call the "Watchmen Thing," i.e. exposing the dark and troubling underlying assumptions etc. etc. The Furnaces make something related, undefensive, and new, gaining stength from the tangential connection with tradition but not depending on it. It switches so many elements it's no longer a simple twist or inversion--it's like an alternative summation of the form, a new history not interested in the old. posted by Mike B. at 7:37 AM 0 comments
Monday, September 27, 2004
Interesting news. I'm curious as to whether or not Conan will be booking similar people when he moves to 11:30--and if so, whether that will be a sign of or an impetus to the continuing indie-fication of America. I mean, dude had the White Stripes on every night for a week, so, you know. Of course, there are glasses of milk that have better taste than Jay Leno, but Conan seems to be very particular in that way.
posted by Mike B. at 3:13 PM 0 comments
Incidentally, the interview with Sasha over at the New Yorker site is pretty fantastic.
Speaking of which, I'll be at his panel this weekend, if anyone else is going. Or did I mention this already? Eh, I can't remember. posted by Mike B. at 3:07 PM 0 comments
ROCK 'N' ROLL BON MOTS #018
For all the times I get annoyed at the praise lavished on Kurt Cobain's voice--what I love about Nirvana is tied up pretty intimately with the songwriting and instrument-playing--right now I'm listening to some non-Unplugged version of "Where Did You Sleep Last Night," and, I mean, goddamn. That's a hell of a voice right there. The arrangement doesn't make it as dramatic as it is on the album version, but when he jumps to the upper register at 2:02 and stays there for a few verses before a breakdown, it's just fantastic. The instruments are trying to keep up and failing, and that just makes it better, somehow. He croaks "through, through," and you get shivers. posted by Mike B. at 3:03 PM 0 comments
Huh. Well, I feel a lot better about my own anti-PF obsession now, I suppose.
posted by Mike B. at 11:20 AM 0 comments
The Fiery Furnaces show on Saturday was indeed fantastic. Matthew's got a setlist and a review, but let me add a few more thoughts.
It was a definitely different experience from the other times I'd seen them, but I'm unclear how much is their different approach and how much is my different perspective. More specifically, given how enmeshed I am in the albums at this point, I think I longed more than I usually did to hear the actual songs played live instead of rearranged, rocked-up alternative versions. For instance, while usually they grabbed me right away, this time I took a while to warm up to it, and I felt like the audience did, too. In restrosepct, I think the first part of the show was actually the most impressive--if you look at that setlist, I'm pretty sure they did the first 10 songs in 5 minutes, and all with sort of minor, almost minimalist-in-a-hardcore-way alterations to the music, so for instance Eleanor would simply start singing a line from "Crystal Clear" over the beat they'd established for "Wolf Notes," and then there'd be the usual break, but then they'd go right back into the same or a very similar groove. It was breathtaking, but to me it almost seemed more impressive than involving. Later in the show, a girl yelled out a request for "Leaky Tunnel," which of course they'd already played bits of as the second song. Maybe people just need to get more used to the approach. It would be nice to see them with a group of hardcore fans. That said, it was unquestionably a better set than they'd had before, and what they lacked (to my ears) in initial grabbiness they more than made up for with just general goodness as the set went on. "Blancheflower" in particular was great, as they had almost all the vocals but massively sped up the first part and had Eleanor sing it (which speeding up is especially impressive when you recall how wordy it is), and then just cut out all the instrumental breaks. As their jamminess on the album is part of its particular pleasure, this could be a detriment, but it wasn't--as much as I like Blueberry Boat, I'd definitely like to hear more of the songs this way. I'm particularly like to hear a start-to-finish version of "Quay Cur," given how fantastic the little verse breakdowns sound live. ADDENDUM: Fluxblog review of a show from last November, with at least 8 at-the-time unreleased songs, including a bunch of BB ones. Just for comparison's sake. posted by Mike B. at 11:17 AM 0 comments
From Carla Bozulich:
As you may know, I have a duo album in the works with the best drummer I know, More good stuff in the news section of her website. I'm excited, obvs. And--and!--new song! posted by Mike B. at 11:13 AM 0 comments
Two good posts on Quo Vadimus (second one with great Graham links) about the new season of Gilmore Girls. What did people think of the first episode? I know Matthew was a bit disappointed.
posted by Mike B. at 11:11 AM 0 comments
Fairly stupid article on Franz Ferdinand from an Australian paper.
That Franz Ferdinand are fond of such unrock notions as politeness, This was posted to the Severed Heads list and inspired the expected burst of "these kids today thinking they're making revolutionary music when it can't hold a candle to the truly revolutionary music of our generation and blah blah blah sellout," etc., but this particular crotchety-and-earned-it perspective is one of the reasons I love the list, even if I disagree with the consensus opinion on most things. It did evidence an interesting out-of-it-ness in that most people seemed to think the Mercury Prize meant that people with good taste did indeed think they were revolutionary, whereas meh, I think popists and rockists alike have been generally dissatisfied with the winners in years past. Did inspire some unexpected defenses, though, the best of which was along the lines of, "Fucking Britons, don't know how good they have it..." But anyway, that article! Whipping out the "music for girls to dance to" like it's an indictment! Sheesh. Folks, can we all agree rock music ain't gonna change the world, please? Or at least not the way you want it to. UPDATE: Also courtesy the list, here's the Guardian article it was adapted from, which says some more things. posted by Mike B. at 10:54 AM 0 comments
Friday, September 24, 2004
For no particular reason, here is the video for the Streets' "Blinded by the Lights," which I quite like.
posted by Mike B. at 10:59 AM 0 comments
Thursday, September 23, 2004
BB #05: PAW PAW TREE
Intro, one, two, three, four. STRUCTURE Starts off very quiet, with some sparse, delayed scufflings, which then become tonal, sounding like a mid-octave synth-bass patch with a 100ms 75% feedback delay on it. After 30 seconds some higher-pitched synthesized warblings come in. Then 5 seconds later we get a bass line and a reverbed, distant snare on the 2/4, while the scufflings and warblings continue behind, with some guitar feedback added. Then at 1:10 the delay becomes a cyclical clicking and a sub-bass rumble as everything cuts out, and the full backing comes in as it decays. The full backing consists of a bass playing the same line it did in the intro, a drum part that's the 2/4 snare with a kick added, an acoustic guitar, and Matt's signature wah-wah electric guitar noodlings. After 12 bars or so, the vocals come in with a line that was presaged by the lead guitar. Eleanor sings a stepwise melody that then shifts up a fourth when the chord does on the acoustic, as does the bass. The electric plays on behind this quieter, often out of time or tune or just making atonal noises. Then a little break with the guitar mixed louder, and back into a verse. Then a quick change into the chorus, with the only actual difference being the vocal melody. Here Eleanor sings a loping little line that starts a little late on the first chord and then breaks on the first beat of the second chord, and then resumes in a slightly different form for another line that breaks in the same place. It puts some air into the vocals, where there was already a lot of air, but it works really well to differentiate, and it's a great little melody. The lead guitar plays through the vacant chord. For the third verse, a LFO'd organ following the chords, which continues into the chorus. After the second chorus. After the second chorus there's a solo, with the lead guitar pretty much playing the vocal line from the verse. It's harmonized below, I'm not sure whether simultaneously or not. In the fourth verse, another electric guitar is added playing a rhythmic chord that doesn't seem to actually be particularly near the key of the song, and the wah'd guitar echoes this. They stop doing this for the final chorus, then resume in earnest for the outro. After the guitars handling it for four bars, they change key slightly and add a piano banging out a ringing chord on the one, along with a crash on the one, I think the first cymbal in the song. It increases in volume and intensity through the end of the song, totally against the mood and tonality of the rest of the backing, but then segues strongly into the first chord of "I Lost My Dog," which we'll get to later. In chart form: 0:00-1:15 Intro 1:16-1:54 Verse 1 1:55-2:24 Verse 2 2:25-2:43 Chorus 2:44-3:02 Verse 3 3:03-3:22 Chorus 3:23-3:40 Solo 3:41-4:00 Verse 4 4:01-4:19 Chorus 4:20-4:39 Outro ANALYSIS A pretty simple storyline here, at least self-contained, and kind of like a boy's adventure story mixed with a blues narrative, which form I think the lyrics definitely reflect, although it's unclear whether this was a conscious decision or just the usual Fiery Furances lyric-writing mode. Eleanor's character was on a ship that was forced to stop in a tropical bay. She was taken to shore and sentenced to work in the silver mines, but she tries to escape by cutting her bonds with a pickaxe. When caught, she is sentenced to death, and is tied at the top of a tree to await her fate. Word is sent back to Spain, but the King there will not intercede and so, presumably, she is put to death, or they "make mango mush" out of her. This song has grown on me a lot, and I really like it now--the melody is very pretty and the arrangement is sparse but effective. Lyrically, I like that there are a lot of places you can go with this, and a lot of questions left unanswered despite the straightforward premise--what exactly is her punishment? Why the King of Spain? And so forth. I also like the inversion being practices on traditional adventure stories--normally the escape would be successful, or there would be another escape, but here, no escape at all, very bluesy. It mingles different traditions to interesting effect. CONTEXT First, let's address the issue of setting. Everything in here, as I said, indicates a tropical setting: mangos, silver mines, a bay, etc. But what exactly is a paw paw tree? Well, it's actually a tree native to North America: "Our Pawpaw, which grows as far north as New York and southern Ontario, out west as far as Nebraska and Texas, and south to Florida, is known by several other names including the American Custard Apple, the West Virginia Banana, and the Indiana Banana." However, the page also notes: "The name of this plant is sometimes spelled Papaw - and in that form is often confused with another fruit that sometimes goes by that name, the Papaya, Carica papaya. (The latter is in a totally different family than our Pawpaw, and can only grow in tropical areas.)" So there's an interesting, and possibly useful, confusion here. I've already noted that there are links here both with North America and with more tropical areas, and I think in the end this confusion will be key to the particular way the timelines interact on Blueberry Boat, on the way present-tense is interrupted with backstory without any warning. There is a perfectly legitimate reason to place the papaw/papaya tree in the tropics, and to place the narrative there, too. But it can also take place in Michigan or Texas. The song begins with the line "At last when the choice was neither nor," and so the song begins as a continuation of something. "At last." I think this song is the end of the story of Eleanor's character in "Quay Cur"--this is where she eventually ends up. Matthew's character goes to Ireland, but Eleanor's heads the opposite way from Eskimo-land, to the tropics, once again taking her chances with the shipping industry, but meets an unfortunate end. That part of the story we're left to figure out for ourselves. Of course, going with the above, she could also just head south from Eskimo-land and also end up in paw paw tree-country. But we'll see. posted by Mike B. at 5:20 PM 0 comments
How do I feel about music right now? It's an odd question. Weirdly, given that I'm not posting very much, I actually feel pretty damn good about it, or at least I can find a lot of good/great stuff, which again is a bit odd because normally that'd be prompting me to write about it. But not so much. Still, there are a lot more albums I am currently or was recently totally nuts about than there were a few months ago: the Streets, the Killers, Franz Ferdinand, Annie (ANNIE ANNIE ANNIE!!!), Meow Meow, Ghostface (again), Phoenix, etc. And that's not even getting into the multitude of singles.
So what happened? A few things do stand out with the list above: 1) how many are also on the cover of Spin's recent "The Hip Issue" or some such bullshit, and 2) that some of them are kind of oldish, or at least old by the music blogosphere's album life-cycle. ("You're still listening to Franz Ferdinand?" Etc.) There are also a few that I feel have the possibility of breaking through--the Shocking Pinks, Madvillain, Soundmurderers, Dizzee Rascal (which I haven't really given a full audition to yet, but I'm going to review it next week, so it's on the top of the stack), etc. In other words, it's less that there's a feeling of some sort of coherent breakout as I remember happening in 2001 and 2003, for instance, with NYC indie-rock and dancepunk respectively--and I like those breakouts, mind you--just a sort of slow accumulation of stuff. Which is good, I guess. Maybe the more interesting question--at least to me (this is a blog after all)--is, why aren't I that excited about it? Is it that lack of a breakout-feel? Or is it something else? In a way, I'm almost feeling poisoned by the music lately, like it's stalking me--I appreciate that Annie's "Heartbeat" is such a good song that I wake up with it in my head, or that I lie in bed for a half hour on a Saturday morning trying to get back to sleep but reciting Franz Ferdinand lines instead, but at the same time it's starting to feel a bit like a curse, especially when I'm struggling to create my own music. Being a relatively recently-created music nerd, at least of the critical variety, I find myself asking more and more lately how good it is to have this essentially useless knowledge permanently stuck in my brain. Is this what I really want? Why is music always around? Why do I feel bad if I don't listen to it? Music is lovely--and of course I don't know what the alternative would be--and maybe this is all a load of self-indulgent crap anyway. (Well, moreso than usual.) But at the same time, I do wonder. posted by Mike B. at 4:51 PM 0 comments
Quick sneak preview of something that will, I swear, actually be posted:
I'm playing guitar (one of 80) in the recording of Glenn Branca's new symphony, which is going to be happening the second weekend of October. In a little bit I'll get a preliminary post up about the prep and like that, and I'll try and post something more-or-less definitive after each session. Hopefully it'll be interesting! In the meantime, maybe someone could advise me of the legality/tactfulness of posting some of the instructions and score. posted by Mike B. at 4:46 PM 0 comments
Thursday, September 16, 2004
I'm putting together the label copy for a release we're doing, a hip-hop comp called N@sty C0nfessi0ns. The guy who was supposed to get me the liner notes wasn't getting them to me. So in a fit of boredom/frustration/annoyance, I wrote my own. They, um, probably won't make it into the finished product, for reasons that will soon be clear, but I thought I'd reproduce them here.
*** BRIEF DISCURSION UPON THE SUBJECT AT HAND, COURTESY PROFESSOR LEON H. PLEFFHETTER, PhD. What is a N@STY C0NFESSI0N? There are many ways one could take this. One way, of course, would be in the sort of Tobias Wolffean sense of a confession meant to wound, emotionally I mean, a truth given up with the intention of causing distress to the confessee. We see this meme reproduced in a particular way in Khia’s “My Neck, My Back,” which could under certain circumstances be understood as a message to an ex-lover explaining why he no longer enjoys his paramour’s charms, i.e. that despite assurances to the contrary given during their assignation, the ex-lover was in fact a barely competent partner, sexually I mean. But this is not the primary mode being used here. I think a better approximation would be to imagine two interested parties, their clothes partially asunder, locked in erotic conflagration. To heighten the mood—one could also imagine this being done via the telecommunications network—the young lady would tell the young man of some previous exploit, perhaps, with another young lady one might assume, if the purpose is indeed to heighten the mood, or alternately of some fantasy she might have, some fantasy the young man could, mayhaps, one day fulfill. Again, however, I remain not entirely convinced that this really captures the true spirit of the fine compositions embodied herein. What fantasy or previous experience is really being expressed in a song like “Pull Your Shirt Up,” “Nothin On,” or “What That Thing Smell Like?” It is unclear. (Although one could make a case for “Brains.”) No, I think the true raison d’être of this particular document is to document the confessions of the male gaze, the particular impulses and urges men are compelled to suppress in favor of more socially acceptable expressions, and that these c0nfessi0ns are NASTY should come as no surprise. With lines like “Mama show your tits/jump up on the pogo stick/no homo shit” sandwiched in between the personal confession of “shit, I’d fuck me” and the third-person revelation of “I heard one of you rappers fucked a transsexual/now how the fuck you gonna touch another man’s testicles?” we get a revealing glimpse of the full onslaught of the masculine psyche. No doubt is left in the mind. And we want you to dance to it. This is my confession. posted by Mike B. at 11:49 AM 0 comments
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
My sincere sympathies to Simon and Joy. They don't know me, I guess, but my sympathies nonetheless.
posted by Mike B. at 3:51 PM 0 comments
So I might make this a quiz on Hillary's page instead, but for now, simple input will suffice. Which band name is better for a power-pop trio?
Snack Shop or Lotta Promise ? Note: I know I solicited bandnames a while back, and there were some very good responses there, but, you know, the screening process for this sort of thing is rigorous and brutal. I'll save 'em for, er, next time. posted by Mike B. at 10:52 AM 0 comments
In the comments to Hillary's post on The Benefactor, Josh Love (?) calls the contestants on said show "vapid vj-wannabe types." This is a good point. When me and my ladyfriend watch "The Player" (which is quite good, in its own particular way), she likes to talk about how on her version of said show, none of the boys would look like that--they'd be tall, Ivy League-educated geeks. (Also, some of them might be gay, but let's ignore that for now.) That's what turned me off to The Benefactor--I had no interest in any of the people there. This in contrast to what turned me off of The Apprentice, i.e. I wanted to punch someone every 30 seconds because of the management-sprachen that was coming out of their ugly little mouths.
Anyway, my point is that if there was one thing I could change about reality shows--and, like Hillary, I do heart them--it'd be the casting that always seems to rope in the same group of either LA hangers-on or wannabe LA hangers-on. This is why I like Amish in the City, for instance--it's sort of a collision between a regular reality show (and none of the "city kids" on that show are remotely interesting) and one that's really interesting and weird. Same with Top Model, which may benefit from its lack of guys. As a corrolary, I should note that I also tend to dislike when subsequent seasons of reality shows keep casting the same basic demographic profile. This is one of the things that turned me off American Idol, and to a lesser degree Survivor. (Although I do wish I'd caught the Sweetums season--ah well.) I understand the logic behind it, i.e. for the people who didn't watch the earlier seasons they were deprived of this particular effective mix, but I still don't really enjoy it. Top Model is one of the few shows that I think has justified a second season, as the charms were decidedly different. OK, there was still the religious diva, but while the lucious Christians v. Pagans conflict didn't play out again in such dramatic, hotel-enjoying fashion, it would have been dull the second time. Instead, we got a tweaked-out indie-rock crankhead from the heartland with a possessive boyfriend. And this isn't even getting into Katie. Awesome! posted by Mike B. at 10:44 AM 0 comments
New review up on Flagpole, this one of the new Thrills album. (Second from the bottom, scroll down.) Hopefully the last line makes my subjective judgment clear this time.
posted by Mike B. at 10:28 AM 0 comments
Sunday, September 12, 2004
So first I'm an imperialist capitalist pigdog and now I'm a goat? Starting to get worried here. ;)
posted by Mike B. at 7:33 PM 0 comments
Saturday, September 11, 2004
Walking home from the subway last night in Washington Heights, the sidewalk on one side of 177th street was blocked off with garbage bags from the elementary school. I could have squeezed by if kids hadn't roped it off by running unspooled casette tape between the poles of the scaffolding there. (The kids love that scaffolding--usually when I'm walking by there's a group of them hanging off the bars, ducking back and forth and trying to catch each other.) I cut through the street instead. When I reached the other side, it became apparent that the school had cleaned out their library, and, what's worse, I hadn't known, because if I had, I surely would have scavenged the educational records and filmstrips and outdated posters before they could be carelessly, and OK sensibly, tossed. (I'd done this four years ago with a school library upstate and came up with, among other things--I actually made an album in the library that summer with my four-track and manipulated media--these old issues of a magazine meant to promote Soviet Russia in the US. Awesome!) For a moment there, before I remembered again the densely-packed state of my apartment, I was filled with a sense of missed opportunity when I saw the broken LPs and tape boxes. Oh, the samples I could have grabbed! Oh, the collages I could have made! But then I remembered that, eh, I probably wouldn't have anyway. I almost did scavenge, but I'm a little leery of filth these days given the invasion of roaches we're currently experiencing in Miss Clap's abode, and I wasn't entirely sure what was in those garbage bags besides mixed media.
As I approached the corner, I saw that the kids had gone a little Halloween with the magnetic tape, breaking open the plastic cases and throwing it over wires, around poles, and in the barren, stunted trees beside the street. I wished that I had a machine that I could run over these tapes as they lay exposed and hear what was on them, run them back and forth like a needle or a scanner and play as they lay, at whatever pace their arrangement allowed. I wondered, too, what other magnetic fields it would pick up and what those would sound like mixed in with the narration of the pioneers' progress, what tones the power lines overhead would produce, what countermelody the cars' electronic guts would play against their bassy chuff as they sped by, whether cell phone interference would play out as a pleasing drone or simply a cacaphonous din, and if the voices would be intelligable or manifest as something else. I am tripped up by these wires in their loveliness, by the bits of beauty in this mess. I don't know what to do with them; I can't catch them and keep them, I can't really even explain them. So I move on and go home and do what I usually do, and that's OK too. posted by Mike B. at 4:36 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
A while back Fluxblog posted a track by this dude performing under the nom de demi-nude I Hate It When You're Pregnant called "Stuff in This World." I liked it, then gradually grew to love it. Well, another track of his, "Gary Sinese," just popped up on the ol' Winamp, and man, I am loving it even more. "GARY SINESE! GARY SINESE!" My typing does not do it justice, so go download it here. (It's actually the track right after "Stuff" on his second demo.) He sounds like the dude from The Divine Comedy and a hardcore singer dueting over a Legowelt production or something.
You can get all of his CDs here. No, I hate it when you're pregnant. posted by Mike B. at 6:21 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
I know there's not often a lot of interest in these sorts of things, but nevertheless, here's an excerpt from a letter that just came over the wire.
*** EMI has recently been engaged in discussions with Microsoft on a variety of issues of mutual interest. During the course of these discussions, an important development occurred: Literally in the last few days, Microsoft indicated a willingness to support an industr-wide copy control platform that will enable individual labels to set their own DRM rules (number of burns etc) within an industry pre-defined framework. [...] Microsoft are very rightly focused on the consumer and so one of the issues they have flagged up is that they want to know label intentions about offering consumers additional "value" as a quid pro quo for adding effective DRM into the consumer experience. This information would be provided to Microsoft one-on-one or via RIAA, as would label intentions regarding consumer education on how this content protection would work. RIAA and IFPI are fully in the loop and with their lawyers have agreed that we can respond to Microsoft's request as long as we do so in a way that is inclusive of relevant industries. The first step is to determind if there is a consensus on high-level functional specifications defining what functionality labels want in a DRM. If so, we can communicate that to Microsoft on their timetable, and we would make the same information available to other interested industry participants. Should there be interest in developing technical specifications, we would involve the other industry participants in any such effort. *** What follows is a set of specifications I'm too busy to type in right now. More later if there's interest. BRIEF UPDATE: The specifications, from what I'm seeing at a quick glance, would allow consumers to pick their own format (as long as it fell within the DRM specifications) and transfer it to wherever they wanted (again, as long as it fell within the DRM specifications) subject to whatever options the individual label/artist wanted. In return, the DRM-protected music would have "enhanced content," defined as it usually is these days--websites, videos, etc. The DRM options would be transferred along with the file and so it would stay protected even when burned or moved. posted by Mike B. at 5:10 PM 0 comments
Sunday, September 05, 2004
A brief overview of my weekend thus far:
Went to Coney Island on Saturday. Ate food, sat on the beach, rode the Wonder Wheel in the cars that slide back and forth, closing my eyes on the first spin 'round and keeping them open on the second (at Miss Clap's insistance). Which was good, as the sun set just as we came around and we saw it dip into the clouds behind the housing developments and the minor league ballpark. Walked on the pier in the closing dark and listened to a bunch of folks playing around with percussion and unaccompanied vocalisations and then watched other folks pull their crab traps up with twine onto the uneven boards. Later, someone came by with fishcakes fresh off the grill, free to whoever wanted them, cooked right there on the pier. Looked over the rail for a while at the ocean and the cruise ships. Settled on a bench halfway down the pier, a little ways down from a French hipster couple (the girl was wearing cowboy boots) and an older man playing music from a stereo, nothing but 70s dance music, and there in the cool air the girl got up and danced to it, a cigarette hanging from her mouth. Somehow the music sounded better, maybe best of all, coming from a boombox on a grocery cart, and while normally I wouldn't really even like something you'd describe as "funk/soul/disco" very much, in the context of Coney Island and a casette mix of "Can't Get Enough of Your Love Babe" and "Don't Rock the Boat" it was perfect. The older man said things like "I had all of these on 45" and "I was working down in Dallas, drunk when I got in, drunk when I got out" and in general regaled the french hipster couple. Got up and walked back to the beach and as we passed the percussion people an lady was standing on a bench and dancing. That's maybe my definition of good music: whatever makes awesome old ladies dance on benches. On Sunday, was riding the train and saw a dude wearing an army jacket with a patch that said, no lie, "I [heart] Rasta." It was awesome. It was the ultimate anti-trustafasarian move, because it was so insistently inauthentic, like an "I Brake For Crips" bumper sticker or an "Amish 4-Eva" notebook doodle. Later on Sunday, ended up in the apartment of an older lady "in high fashion" who'd been on the cover of the Metro section of the Times because a bunch of orthodox Jes were trying to kick her out of her rent-controlled building and she wouldn't let them. Old New York, or at least Old Rich New York, always unnerves me in the few times I've come in contact with it--the lady had a tiny kitchen and a huge bedroom and 100 pairs of shoes in individual plastic boxes and black and white pictures in her immaculate bathroom and Anne Coulter and Bergdorf Blondes in her living room. Maybe I'm limiting myself with the Old or the Rich--I've been freaked out by the movie exec's place apart from the Natural History Museum with all the modern art, too--but Old and Rich without fail. posted by Mike B. at 11:23 PM 0 comments
Thursday, September 02, 2004
Re-reading the "Chris Michaels" post, I'm struck by the degree to which the Iago comparison is useful, in that it brings out various parallels with Elizabethan/pre-Romantic dramatic techniques. I'm not saying it's necessarily as good as Willy S., or even I dunno Spenser, but the mode of expression is similar, and I wonder, if it's still in wide circulation in a few hundred years, what future teenagers will think of the particular half-ellipticalism outside of the present context which somehow makes it make sense. I'm particularly concerned with those pop lyrics that traffic in a kind of literary cubism, halfway between abstraction and archetypical literalism, between Pavement and Creed, or between Atmosphere and 50 Cent, if you prefer. Song that have retained the idea of narrative and character (i.e., not just poetic expressions of imagery) while discarding concern with motivation and justification.
For instance, in "Chris Michaels," there are certain self-expressed reasons for Melinda to be mean to Jessica, but there aren't any particular reasons for the vice versa, and there's definitely no justification for Melinda's general craziness. Sure, I can construct justifications, but just like with Othello, you could come up with three or four other explanations that were just as plausible if not more so, and the one offered in the text doesn't necessarily stand up to real-world standards. Same thing, for that reason, with murder ballads, which make a certain kind of contextual sense, but are really fairly inexplicable outside of that environment. Set a murder ballad to chart-pop and you have something that's far more grotesque, because you disallow the suspension of disbelief. I don't think that's necessarily the case with the Furnaces' lyrics, any more than it is with, say, Leonard Cohen or some of the more character-driven Sonic Youth songs (what's up with Goo, anyway?), or some Jay-Z stuff, and so forth. But that's musical context. How will they sound out of a historical context? I very distinctly remember being in classes with kids who were really incredulous as to the motivations of Shakespearean characters, or Oedipus, or people in Chekhov's short stories. But while those motivations would seem to be stupid, they nevertheless did not need to be explained to contemporary audiences, which is why there's no explanation there, and why modern adaptations both high- and low-brow of historical texts or stories often insert justifications more palatable to the modern sensibility--Medea was driven by sexism, for instance, or Hesther Prynne by...OK, sexism again, but if I was less logey I could think up more varied examples. What I'm asking, I guess, is: given that pop music, which I'm talking about in a very broad sense, is based on adolescent attitudes and experiences, to what degree does that experience and set of attitudes change over time, and to what extent will those changes make the songs unintelligable? Of course, a better question might be whether or not anyone would notice incongruity in songs. It's easy to pick out in a play or story because you're focused on the text and the characters, whereas in a song you have a bunch of other things (melody, rhythm, the usual) to focus on. But will things change? Will we develop an interest in looking more closely at pop songs? I guess I sort of hope so, but I also sort of hope not. Well, I'll be dead, anyway. Unless that cloning thing works out and I can harvest organs to my, uh, heart's content. posted by Mike B. at 7:44 PM 0 comments
BB #04: CHRIS MICHAELS
"Did you miss meeeeeee..." Intro, one, two, three. STRUCTURE A brief note here: I have come to realize that these sections are both the most time-consuming to write and the least interesting to read. (Not uninteresting, mind, just of lesser appeal than the textual analysis/interpretation.) And so, mostly in the interest of my own sanity/productivity, but with the knowledge that I won't get too many complaints, I'm going to try and tone this section back a bit, filling it out if/when I do a full compendium if there's need. In general, this is one of the few rocking songs on the disc; critics as well as Matt himself (who's following who is hard to tell) have singled it out as a real Who-derived song in light of Matt's comments that Blueberry Boat was inspired in part by Townsend and co.'s "Rael." That never comparison has never really connected for me, but I guess there aren't a whole lot of other antecedents for allegro-paced clean drums/guitar rock songs with melodic as opposed to strictly rhythmic piano stuff. I feel like there's a considerably better comparison outside of the prog spectrum, but since I can't think of one, let's grant the Who thing. It starts off with a solo acoustic guitar strumming a chord for a few seconds before Eleanor's vocals drop in, followed by a bass leading into the stinger for this opening section, which adds a melodic piano line and drums, which do have a distinctly Keith Moon-ish feel here with their continual fills (never much drop to kick-snare-hat-kick-snare-hat) interspersed with phrase-emphasizing shadow rhythms. The vocal line is quite nice, but has no particular stylistic or allusive quality; I do quite like the way it repeats a phrase twice before the chorus over different chords, then at the end of the stinger rises atypically right into the first note of the verse, a bit like those jump-rope rhymes[1] that head toward a naughty rhyme at the end of the couplet but is revealed to be a non-naughty homophone[2] beginning the subsequent couplet, i.e. "Miss Susie has a steamboat, the steamboat has a bell Miss Susie went to Heaven, the steamboat went to hell-o operator, please give me # 9, and if you disconnect me, I'll kick you from be-hind the 'fridgerator' there lays a piece of glass, Miss Susie sat upon it and cut her little ass- k me no more questions..." Sorry, I could quote that forever. They almost said "ass!" Tee hee! So anyway, this goes on for a bit, then there's an actual chorus (I don't throw around "stinger" for no reason, kids), in which the piano drops to a minor chord, followed by the bass, and then it ascends back up. Once around with this, then a few more verse/stinger pairs, another chorus, and into the second section, which starts on a minor 7th (I think) that feels like an ascension, adding a synth note following the root and regularizing the drums to a kick thump with crash on the 1. This is the bit where Matt sings "Plume bloom bloom blaby bloom/cheep cheep beep bee-bee beep" and he does vocals for the whole section. So we get a bit of verse, a lower chord, the "beep beep" bit which is louder, it descends to a new chord and has a measure with only 3 beats, then a part with arpeggiated piano and no crash, then another "beep beep" section that ends as the previous one did, and a tempo change into the third section. Here it slows down and we're back to acoustic guitar, with a strummed/trem'ed electric providing counterpoint. It's structured a lot like the first section: quiet verse and loud stinger/chorus with full drums and otherwise, where the Moon-isms continue (the drum lead-in to the section is a full bar of rolls). The second time around there's a cello. Eleanor sings this, beginning with "Remember that girlfriend of Al's..." The melody is very strong and particular. Then there's a slight speed-up into the fourth section, which Matt sings as it begins, or rather speak-sings. Again we're back to acoustic and electric, with the electric doing the wandering-wah'd solo that's all over this album as well as their recent live shows. The vocals are laid-back and narrative. Then there's a chorus that Eleanor sings that's a bit more disciplined melodically, and again very nice. The electric drops out and a piano and synth come in, playing straight chords. Also, drums. This repeats. Then a big whonk on all the instruments and a rest before we go into the fifth section, which is great and kind of nuts. Here's where it stops bearing any resemblance to the Who, unless Pete did some secret side project with Harry Partch when he was really stoned. Beyond that, I'm having a hard time pegging exactly what it is this section sounds like. It's driven by the vocals, which at this point I have a hard time describing as anything besides "sounding a lot like Eleanor Friedberger"; it strikes me as what she'd come up with if you caught her singing to herself, and in that regard it's a lot like the stuff on Gallowsbird's--"Leaky Tunnel" springs most readily to mind. She goes haywire with the meter, sometimes doing a bar of 4 then 3 then two of four, then some random 3, etc. But what's interesting is that it's shadowed by the piano, both rhythmically and melodically. Meanwhile, there are bells firing off in between the notes as they rise at the end of phrases; in some ways, it's the ultimate but different expression of the very live, in-room sound you hear on a lot of Furnaces recordings, in the sense that everything here is acoustic and could conceivably be played at once. Very nice. This only lasts for about 30 seconds, and then we're into the sixth section, aka the "Subcontinent Section." The tempo slows and we're back into classic rock territory, except not like even kinda proggish, just totally classic-rock, like if this was its own song and the guitars were a bit louder, it'd be Skynard or something. A real groover. Full drums, piano, bass, and two electric guitars, all pounding out a similar rhythm and even melody at the end of the phrase. Almost sounds like the outro to "Layla" but more rocking. Occasional synth noises. Good Moon-isms. Everything pauses sometimes and we get double-tracked Eleanor, or possibly Eleanor/Matt, hard to tell. It could totally launch into a solo if they wanted. Those little breaks. Then the final section, which Matt sings, and it alternates between verses that sound like the early verses, strummed acoustic and little breaks interspersed with distinctly nautical/naturalistic choruses, all swooning strings and flowing rhythms. The whole song ends on a synth buzz. In chart form: Section 1 0:00-0:29 Verse 1 (Eleanor) 0:30-0:43 Chorus 0:44-1:09 Verse 2 1:10-1:25 Chorus Section 2 1:26-1:42 Chorus (Matt) 1:43-1:55 Verse 1:56-1:59 Chorus Section 3 2:00-2:12 Verse 1 (Eleanor) 2:13-2:29 Chorus 2:30-2:51 Verse 2 2:52-3:07 Chorus Section 4 3:08-3:26 Verse 1 (Matt) 3:27-3:46 Chorus (Eleanor) 3:47-4:02 Verse 2 (Matt) 4:03-4:25 (Eleanor) Section 5 4:26-4:57 Verse (Eleanor, "crazy part") Section 6 4:58-6:42 Verse (Eleanor, Subcontinent section) Section 7 6:43-6:51 Verse 1 (Matt) 6:52-7:09 Chorus 7:10-7:21 Verse 2 7:22-7:59 Chorus ANALYSIS This song strikes me as a bit like a Wes Anderson film: overdramatized high school banalities interspersed with incongruous or even absurdist flights of fancy. I'm not sure I'm tracing all this right, and it probably wasn't meant to make storyline-sense, but nevertheless, I can make one up that I'd be willing to stand behind. Here it is. Eleanor is playing a character named Melinda. There is a new girl named Jessica at her high school who is clawing her way to the top of the social hierarchy, and Melinda doesn't like her at all. Melinda especially doesn't like Jessica when Melinda overhears her trying to disparage Melinda to the old folks' home where Melinda does her community service, telling them that Melinda is a woman of ill repute, has a babydaddy (and not the gay kind, either), etc. When Melinda confronts Jessica the next day about this, Jessica gets all alpha-girl and blows her off. We then get a glimpse of Jessica talking to her hockey-playing boyfriend, Tony, which scenario may simply be a figment of Melinda's imagination, as she don't seem too stable. Jessica is doting on Tony and lets her queen-bee guard down, but Tony is distracted, imagining Jessica as a bird wearing a blue-green sweater--note that blue-green is the color scheme for the artwork on Blueberry Boat--and holding sticks in her beak while drinking dripping water. Tony then asks what went on at school today, which could mean one of two things: either he goes to a different school from Jessica, or he goes to the same school but didn't know where she was at lunch. He then gets shot down for a date, which seems odd, although maybe this is simply Jessica's reaction to Tony being distracted. Again, this could all be taking place in Melinda's mind, which would explain the odd bird imagery and the imagined strife, in addition to making the "Did Kevin and Jenny show?" line a reflection of Melinda's yearning for a relationship. So Melinda clearly wants to start some shit. But how? She thinks back to a previous incident, in which she flirted with a guy named Al whose girlfriend was a longtime friend of hers. Melinda so charmed Al (go with me here) that it broke up their relationship and pissed Al's girlfriend/Melinda's friend off to an immeasurable degree. What this suggests to Melinda that the person to go after is not the boy, but the girl. And so she puts the information in Jessica's head, Iago-style (OK, I'm just freestyling now), that Tony has been cheating. But this is not a delusion; it is in fact true, because when Jessica confronts him, Tony gets all nervous and "wondered who had spied." This makes him paranoid, and he starts to take precautions like only communicating with his, uh, mistress[3] (Jenny?!) in baby talk with the windows closed, even though he knows Jessica is out driving. We're not privy to the details behind any of this, either as to how Melinda gets the information, how she relays it to Jessica in a way that retains her trust, nor who and how Tony's a-cheatin'. At any rate, this apparently fails to break up Tony and Jessica, so Melinda goes a little nuts, again Iago-stylee, stealing the credit card of a guy named Chris Michaels and using it to charge various things, in direct violation of federal law (trust me on this one). Tony has gone off on a trip to Columbia for the hockey team and Melinda waits at the airport to meet him when he comes back and possibly confront him. But he doesn't come back; he has stayed in Columbia to mend his broken heart, although the sounds of nature serve only to remind him that love is eternally fleeting. Melinda, incensed, leaves a message on his phone. It purports to be a sort of family history that would serve as a fable for what you should be willing to do for love, except it's unclear if Melinda heard it from a relative, heard it from some dude in the Aden airport, or just made it up out of her crazy crazy head. At any rate, having no idea what a lot of the stuff in this section means, I decided to turn it over to my friend Alex Vaughan, who's spent a decent amount of time in the subcontinent, and what he came up with was so good that I'm just going to let him handle this part. Just to mention, though, he wasn't familiar with the song when he did this interpretation, and he actually didn't even know a girl was singing it. I think it works incredibly well, though. So take it away, Alex. One of the things I really like about the song is its title--before I actually went through and traced the character lines, I thought Chris Michaels was somehow an important figure in the narrative. But he's not: he's just the dude whose credit card Melinda steals. We never even see him. Moreover, given that the credit card is stolen from a purse, presumably the credit card was actually not even the purse owner's to begin with, and thus was in the possession of someone in high school whose parent had given them the parent's Visa for emergencies[4]. Some of the music/text pairing make a lot of sense; in fact, it makes sense the whole way through until we get to the subcontinent section, really. The Who-isms at the start evoke a period high school piece in the way the more literal Who-isms did in Freaks and Geeks. When it shifts to the crazy bit is actually when Melinda is going crazy with the credit card and the phone call. But the actual music of the section in India doesn't fit much, even though it's very nice. It would probably have been cheezily literal to have Desi-esque music during the colonial Indian bit. CONTEXT This is basically the backstory, or to see it in explicitly novelistic terms, the first chapter/section, of the characters we see in all the rest of the present-day songs. (Quay Cur and another song yet to be named here being conceived of as flashback or ancestral memory/story.) It takes place in a Michican suburb of Chicago such as , which I'm calling because of a) the Michigan reference in "Blueberry Boat," b) the Chicago reference in "Spainolated" and c) the mention of Gunzo's in this song, which is indeed "the major hockey equipment supplier for the Chicago area." If anyone has any more specific guess about what town it is, feel free to chime in--the only other place-specific name is "Wolf Road," of which there is one in many towns, I assume, but sometimes it's a more major thoroughfare, such as in Albany, where it's one of the big commercial strips. Then again, a Michigan suburb of Chicago would be way unweildy, so maybe they've moved from Michigan to the Chicagoland area. It could, of course, also be Oak Park, IL, where the siblings F. are from. So maybe it's best to assume Eleanor's character was born in Michigan and moved to somewhere like Oak Park, which would explain some of her social awkwardness. At the end of the song, I think Eleanor's character ("Melinda") flees to Spain to escape the law as a result of her credit card fraud, and Matt's character ("Tony") has settled in South America to mend his broken heart. This song, along with "Blancheflower," are the only two places on the album where it feels enclosed, lyrically--everywhere else it feels impressionistic and expansive, like with the great distances traveled in "Straight Street" or "Blueberry Boat." But here everything is hemmed in and small, little disputes and little places all circling around and around. And so you can see the end of this song as kind of a good thing, with the two characters in question managing to totally escape their small town for a more rootless existence (although only temporarily in Tony's case, I think). Or, if you're more Biblically inclined, you can see it as an expulsion from paradise for their sins, especially given that in a recent interview Matt spoke of Oak Park as "a very pleasant place...very easy." But either way, most Chicago suburbs where teenagers would have their own credit cards tend to be places limited by their priviledge, in a way, places where you aren't forced to make the kind of compromises you see Eleanor's character making in "Straight Street," and the fact that these kids have to face those realities instead of being able to ignore them from their position of affluence is probably a point in their favor. So again (and there's a Wes Anderson comparison here, too), it's sort of about the corrupt world, but in a way seeing that as a good thing. Or maybe not--Melinda certainly does seem to be unhinged. And, of course, the crime she commits that forces her to flee is explicitly one of commerce, while Matt is almost literally swallowed by the outside world. He goes and does not return. To tip my hand a very small bit here, I will say that Eleanor's story continues with "Spainolated," and Matt's continues with "Blancheflower." But we'll get to those later. [1] This is officially the most annoying website in the entire universe. I screamed out loud at work while viewing it. [2] Whoa, I just surprised myself with my own nerdiness. [3] What the hell do you call your on-the-side highschool fuck-buddy? [4] I'm being generous, of course; with all the queen-bee talk it seems not unlikely that they go to the kind of high school where the kids have credit cards of their own just for regular spendin'. posted by Mike B. at 7:39 PM 0 comments
Via Monsieur Kottke, I notice this fake NYC subway map, would could be given to delegates to confuse them, but which actually dated from '02, so if it's baiting anyone, it's regular tourists. (What would RNC delegates care about express service in eastern Brooklyn anyway?) I like this for the following reasons:
1) I like fake maps. 2) There is an L express line, and my stop is one of the express stops. 3) An 8 line that goes to LaGuardia. 4) 5 different lines on Staten Island is pretty much the definition of overkill. And so forth. posted by Mike B. at 2:55 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
New Blueberry Boat post is half-finished and will be up by 8pm tomorrow.
posted by Mike B. at 7:31 PM 0 comments
Random notes:
- Good lord, Rilo Kiley is horrible. Like mid-period Green Day if they forgot how to write songs. And I like Green Day. Or like me if I, uh, sucked. - Speaking of which, TTIKTDA has a new Green Day song and it's fantastic. - Speaking of speaking of which, could someone put Blink-182's drummer in a band that knows how to write songs? This could include Basement Jaxx, mind you. - I find myself listening to the Killer album a lot, and despite certain claims made on certain other music sites, no one I particularly respect particularly likes it. But it keeps finding its way into my CD player. Why is that? It's my Turn on the Bright Lights for 2004--whenever I see that the band's playing, I'm like, "Oh, them again?" And then a day later I'm listening to the album again. I should do a post about this, but then again there are a lot of things I should do a post about. posted by Mike B. at 6:21 PM 0 comments
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