2005: A YEAR IN WHICH THINGS HAPPENED

Which is to say, this is my year-end wrapup. There are section headings.

What 2005 was

2005 was trying to get pregnant, and there were signs of hope and some disappointments, but by the end of the year there was enough morning sickness to justify crossing your fingers. But it could just be food poisoning. Or a hangover. 2005 knows it's not supposed to be drinking, what with the trying to get pregnant and all, but it's been a hard year. 2005 is hoping for twins but mainly cares that whatever pops out is healthy. Some of 2005's friends are hoping that it dies in a particularly dramatic fashion, but they don't tell 2005 this, as this would be cruel, but they think it anyway; they remember 1999 with a certain relish. 2005 has been getting more and more subdued since the process began and the negative results started coming back ("negative results," it thinks about that phrase sometimes, a contraction of "the results came back negative," sure, but it shifts the emphasis, makes it sound a lot more final, and, not coincidentally, sums up a lot of other things 2005's dealing with right now that it'd rather now get into), to say nothing of the weight gain, and lord knows I'm the last person to be talking about weight gain, but it is a medical symptom after all. It's just the most visible sign. You used to be able to tell what 2005 was thinking just by looking at its face, but now there's like a thin film covering it, metaphorically speaking. 2005 is looking inside itself and seems to be lost there. If it weren't for the drinking, 2005 would be no fun at all.

What we learned about the music business in 2005

The legends we had read turned out to be true in spirit if wrong in specifics, and it was that latter bit that threw us off for a while. Because what usually gets complained about is the totality, but there are a lot of good people doing their best, but it only takes a few bad apples to spoil the bunch, another cliche that, whoops, turned out to be true, although maybe it's more like that "rotting from the top down" or something. You know what they say about rich people? You know who owns record labels? Well.

Why we're using "we" here all of a sudden

I believe it's called "distancing." Whoops, er, should've said "we believe" there. Ah well.

The moment of the year

We were not able to devote the attention to year-end pieces we would have liked to, and so we did not get to write about moments at all, but the musical moment of 2005 is not even in question. It occurred during the Electric Six show at the Bowery Ballroom, when Dick Valentine came out and played "Jimmy Carter." Now, the album this song appears on had not yet been released in the country we were in, and even then it doesn't carry any of the particular signs of a massive crowd-pleaser that some of their other songs do, i.e. it's a guitar-only power ballad about ex-presidents. But Miss Clap and I decided that this was our summer jam of 2005, and so when it started, we reacted much the way, say, any resident of MSG during a Bon Jovi concert would react when "You Give Love a Bad Name" comes on: we put our arms around each other, pumped our fists, and sung along at the top of our lungs. Thing is, not only were we not at a Bon Jovi concert at MSG, not only did not most people not know the song, but even if they did, they probably wouldn't react in the way we did. (Indeed, as we were told later, we attracted some odd looks.) So it was just us. But that was OK: indeed, that was actually kinda great. As much as I love that rush of being part of a crowd all reacting with joy to a beloved song etc. etc., this was something different, like a command performance, except without the command, like we had created a command performance for ourselves out of thin air. In a way, it's analogous to one of the pleasures of being a fan, when you know the catalog so well and have a great deal of affection for obscurities, you can get really excited when you attend a concert of the object of your devotion and they play one of those obscurities. But this was sort of a perfect version of that, distilled to its very essence, and thus the source of a feeling the song itself tries to convey: triumph. Now, this phenomenon is somewhat rare in music due to the contageous nature of fandom (the best example would be a particular type of gig that I'm told happens occasionally: you play a small town and not so many people show up, but those people have become fanatically devoted to your band and pass the night in a kind of ecstatic rapture), but you could make it happen wherever, with whatever. Might not be a bad idea. It helps if you have someone like Miss Clap as a co-conspirator.

Other people we meant to analogize to a stereotype of a developmentally disabled kid

Tyra Banks, Geraldo, a few others.

Why we're not going to see The Ringer

Apparently, it doesn't actually make fun of developmentally disabled people, and that would seem to be its whole raison d'etre.

A brief point about Hurricaine Katrina

There's this notion in cultural and artistic criticism that art, especially art that's primarily entertainment (there being, in cultural and artistic criticism, a weird divide between art and entertainment), has the unfortunate side-effect of dissipating energy for social change by acting as a valve to let off the pressure of opressive conditions, that if there were no entertainment the masses would have no option but to rise up. For instance, in a recent Harper's piece about Lars "von" Trier, Jim Shepard writes, in reference to Lars, "He knows movies keep people vacant and slack-jawed when constructive anger might be a more appropriate response to their lot in life." Now, there's a whole bunch of problems with this, but if you're looking for a practical critique, you might turn to the events of August, which precipitated a real social unrest, but only after numerous towns and one major city were almost entirely destroyed, and even then, the social unrest mainly concerned immediate concerns like food and shelter. I guess you could argue that the real reason for the unrest was that the masses could no longer watch TV, or that their sense of outrage had been dulled by years of exposure to the mass media, but it seems a more reasonable conclusion that art, as usual, isn't a factor, and that the only thing that's going to prompt social unrest, by and large, is a catastrophic event of one sort or another, and that, in effect, wishing for social unrest to be triggered is to wish for something fairly horrible to happen. It seems more sensible to observe, if you want to talk about social unrest, that the actual practical execution of revolt is a primarily bodily endeavor, and so the best way to trigger that is to threaten basic bodily functions. Thus rooted in the body, it would imply that not only does art not really suppress unrest (it's unlikely that showings of Wife Swap to hurricaine victims would have made them less agitated), but in terms of directly inspiring it, it has a hard task on its hands, since it has no real direct effect on the body. In other words, if you're looking to why people don't protest their own unjust conditions more vigorously, Hollywood blockbusters might be the wrong place to look.

A brief point about Robyn

I am told that it's somewhat surprising to see Robyn's self-titled album on my year-end list, so maybe I should say something about that, but I don't really have much to say aside from that I like different parts of it in different ways at different times. I can tell you about the first time I listened to it, though. I had to take one of those complicated train rides that is now required of me if I want to get to north Brooklyn from my current apartment, and so I was taking the overground shuttle train as I the CD whirred into existence. So I passed between buildings and yards as the intro speech played, dulled a bit now maybe but absolutely thrilling at the time, which is one of the curious qualities of the Robyn album--it's designed both for initial impact and for replay value, but those two things tend to function independently. And then, another moment of the year: the pause between the intro and "Who's That Girl," absolutely perfectly calculated, because when that Knife beat comes in, shit, it's like an answer track, a validation of the brag in the most casual way possible. And it sounded perfect, just then, on that minute or two minute long train ride as we passed over small streets and Atlantic Avenue and pulled into the station on Fulton street, seeing the tops of buildings in the distance, cars below, and I felt like there was a reason, a purpose, for what I was doing, besides just the errands I had to run and the places I had to go. And that's a big part of why Robyn is one of my three albums of the year.

What 2005 actually was

Not too shabby.

My New Year's resolution, which I do not usually do, make resolutions I mean

To write more, and to do whatever it takes to make that happen.
posted by Mike B. at 10:16 AM 0 comments

"I know you like that emo stuff, George Michael, but Lou Barlow made me this cassette personally..."

There's a foundational feel to Portia de Rossi's record collection, although I can't quite peg why. Certainly the Arcade Fire entry is interesting, since it's the only entry that's not 90s canon or Radiohead or Iggy Pop, and that explains a lot about the Arcade Fire's appeal. And if it ever seemed surprising that she was gay, this should dispel any doubts--I mean, flannel and "drama," c'mon! (But is Dinosaur Jr. really "grim"?)

But there's something else about it, something that seems to sum up a particular segment of the population that's in its ascendence now. It's odd how little we really talk about the effect of grunge on the current musical climate, perhaps due to the odd dominance of British viewpoints on pop music criticism. Or maybe it's just because it's so obvious, like how we never talk about the Beatles anymore.

But it does bear mentioning every once in a while that the musical tastes of the current generation were formed not just by hip-hop, disco, new wave, and punk, but grunge, too, for better or for worse.

(Via Recidivism, which you're checking every day, right?)

posted by Mike B. at 9:32 AM 0 comments

Friday, December 16, 2005

Oh man, you guys. I am way too busy to explain why Trace Adkins' song/video "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk" captures the elusive essence of pop, but Hillary does a damn fine job.

posted by Mike B. at 11:23 AM 0 comments

Monday, December 12, 2005

For all the horrible things in the paper, I can't think of a recent paragraph that chilled me to the bone more than this one:

But that's the baby boom for you. This vast American cohort has exhaustively explored life's other big themes: love and sex, work and child care. Now, inevitably, boomers are watching loved ones die, and confronting their own fragility. Assuming that Ms. Didion has struck a generational chord - think of that huge one on the piano at the end of "A Day in the Life" - it seems fair to expect a melancholy river of death-themed books, plays and movies until the last of the baby boomers follow their predecessors into the grave.

Dear god.

Oh, and don't forget, if you buy enough copies of her book, her husband comes back to life!

posted by Mike B. at 11:17 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

I have a write-up of the Backstreet Boys' "Incomplete" on the Stylus 2005 singles list up today, and its very inclusion is apparently causing a fuss, which I can't understand at all. Maybe those people don't like Bon Jovi either, but those people are fools. The write-up is kind of about my Thanksgiving break. I wish I had written more here about that break, but oh well.

Also, if you're having trouble getting the album off rapidshare,

posted by Mike B. at 12:58 PM 0 comments

Friday, December 02, 2005

Incidentally, if you've just come here looking for the album, it's down that-a-way. Imagine there being a big down arrow here.

posted by Mike B. at 1:17 PM 0 comments

Speaking of child abuse, we caught some of a Dateline segment last night, about a Russian girl who was adopted by an American man through an adoption agency and was subsequently abused and used in child porn. It's a horrible story, and given that the girl herself was brave enough to go on-camera and talk about it in public, it seems like all you'd really need to do is tell it straight and then delve into the fact that apparently there's no requirement in Pennsylvania that children adopted from foreign countries have to be monitored by a social worker. I imagine Frontline, say, would have done a fantastic job.

But no. Watch the clip for yourself--they seem determined to present it in the ickiest way possible, from the music to the weird sentimentality to the way she's being interviewed. I mean, the girl is clearly mature enough to tell her story for herself, she doesn't need some dude in a suit leaning in and saying in a breathy voice, "Did he hurt you?" or if she does, you don't need to include that dude in the broadcast. To say it's almost titilating is an understatement.

Probably the most egregious bit is at the end, where they flash examples of the kiddie porn pictures she was used in, but white out her body, leaving the surroundings. Now, sometimes when they do this it's OK, because you can't really tell what the picture was like before. But sometimes they do it in such a way that it's clear what the picture was of. In one, there's simply no way around it--it's obvious from the outline that it's a picture of a person with her legs spread, and then they cut from this directly to video of the girl herself. It's just absurdly gross. Guys, if you hate kiddie porn, don't show it, even in modified form, in your report about a girl who was raped, ok?

(I mean, there's a reason for that Brasseye episode--to make abundantly clear just how repulsive these sorts of reports are.)

Is this really the only way to do this? Do we only respond to accounts of horrible things when we're hit over the head with them, when they're presented in the most exaggerated light possible? I don't know. But I sure do wish TV news organizations, from local stations up to the newsmagazines, would stop doing shit like this.

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

Oh good, a children's album with songs by the guy from Low, the guy from Red House Painters, and Sufjan frickin' Stevens. So if you want to make sure your kids grow up depressed, get 'em this. Those guys are like the three horsemen of killing yourself.

Maybe you could follow up by sending your kid to bed without any supper and then keeping them awake by playing Jeff Buckley as loud as possible. And then telling them how disappointed you are that they're not asleep.

Buying this album sounds a little like child abuse, is all I'm saying.

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

Thursday, December 01, 2005

The Claps - Bever Fever

I finished my National Solo Album Month project, and you can get it by clicking all the stuff above this. I zipped up the whole album and it's a little shy of 40 megs, which is somewhat large, so if you'd like individual songs or a hard copy, just let me know. I forgot to include the "art" in the zip file, so here it is. I did it in a high-tech graphics program called MS Word.

Tracklist:

1. Intro, in which the relentless pounding of the drums attests to the fact that there is no God, plus fanfare
2. Johnny Ray
3. Abu Ghraib
4. Darlene
5. What She Needs
6. Your Sweater Says Twee But Your Ass Says Goddamn
7. Park Place
8. Fell For a Flirt
9. Beaver Fever
10. Outro, in which a pleasing resolution indicates that despite the foregoing ontological quandry, everything is basically OK, plus another fanfare

The album is about fucking and all the consequences thereof. Also, ideally, parts of it will make you want to have sex. It's a vicious cycle.

Enjoy! I'd really love feedback.

posted by Mike B. at 11:33 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

You're all going to go read Hillary's piece on Trapped in the Closet, right? It attempts to answer the laughing-at or laughing-with question by bringing in Stendhal and Ashbery. Sprezzatura--the new irony!

posted by Mike B. at 11:52 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Lots of things in this live U2 review are funny, of course, but leaving this question unanswered:

What makes Bono's political manifesto so easily consumed while Patti Smith was so bluntly rejected?

...except to say "MSG sure is big" is especially hilarious. Look, the person quoted earlier--

After Smith's exit, a red-faced frat boy screamed out, "Get off the stage freakin' hippie!"

...I'm sorry, the fratboy quoted earlier (anyone looking like the stereotype of a fraternity member has opinions that are not only erroneous but oppressive, and don't you forget it!)--was right. Patti Smith is a big ol' hippie (see above pic) as I'm sure she'd be the first to agree, and the thing about being a big ol' hippie is that you're defining yourself as different from most people, even if almost everyone seems to be definining themselves as that in some way or another these days. And when such a big part of your self-presentation is "I am not like you," when you express political opinions it comes off as either preaching to the choir ("OK, I'm like you, but not the rest of these people, and since we're so alike, I don't need to explain why the war sucks, right?") or self-aggrandizement ("I am unlike you in so many ways, such as my political opinions!") and you just end up looking like a jackass, which phenomenon in the current political climate is something I've been meaning to address for a while.

Bono, on the other hand, goes for the everyman thing--he's just a guy who likes to drink and pray and help people--and pulls it off well enough that he can convincingly portray his political opinions as universal. (It also helps that he's endorsing causes, not expressing opposition to existing causes.) People get behind him because instead of saying "you should all hate the war!" which even if I partially agree with I have a hard time cheering (and having seen Patti recently I can attest that her political rhetoric was a big turnoff) he says, in effect, "you all support helping Africa, right?" It's like being a salesman: never say no, always say yes, and you'll be more likely to get a yes in the end.

Also, Patti was the opening act and Bono was the headliner. But you know.

(via the apparently reborn The Shins Will Change Your Life)

posted by Mike B. at 4:37 PM 0 comments

Not to defend Michael Jackson or anything, but I don't really think calling Tommy Motolla a Mafioso constitutes an anti-Italian slur. More like a reasonable assumption, it would seem to me.

But then, I thought this:

...it will be a long, long time before we erase the memory of the bucktoothed, jabbering Mickey Rooney in "Breakfast at Tiffany's," or Sidney Toler as Charlie Chan.

Was a laugh-out-loud overstatement. (It will be a long time because Asian-American studies folks bring it up whenever the opportunity presents itself--the only people watching Breakfast at Tiffany's anymore are the gays, and the only people watching Charlie Chan movies are my dad, and I don't think either group considers them realistic portrayals.) But maybe I've just read too much Adrian Tomine, i.e. some, or I've spent too much time on a leftist college campus. Anyway, point being, I'm not very sensitive to these sorts of things, so what should I know.

(Of course, neither apparently is my friend Erica, who spent a year in China and whose subsequent recounting of that period tends to remind one of Krusty. O, we children of privilege.)

Here is a picture of Charlie Chan actively setting the race back etc. etc.:



And oh hey, they're doing a new version! With Lucy Liu! Sweet. I hope people protest.

posted by Mike B. at 3:59 PM 0 comments

We saw Bon Jovi last night at Madison Square Garden. It was my birthday present to Miss Clap, and by all accounts, she had a fantastic time.

It was a really enjoyable concert, both on the visceral level of it being a great show with great music, and on the more distanced level of constantly feeling like we were in an 80s video, which, since I only started listening to pop music in 1989, is something I missed out on. There were no pyrotechnics, sadly, but that was really the only thing lacking. If you're curious, the set list is here, nicely alternating new stuff and old stuff. Although, yes, "Good Love" is the song you think it is, more's the pity.

I'm a little too groggy right now to detail all the various high points, but there were two particular moments that would have to rank among the best I've experienced this year. The first was a predictable, staged one, though no less enjoyable for its stagey-ness. The second moment, however, was much more unexpeted.

Number one: we were already pretty impressed with the seats. They were floor seats toward the back (section 11), but they were on risers, and we were smack dab in the middle, so we had a straight line to center stage and full exposure to the PA. This was all apparent during the opening act and we were very excited for the full Jov experience.

So then the opening music kicks up, which is, for some reason, "Rock Superstar," and the big LCD screen flips over and down and covers up most of the stage, although we can see the musicians coming onto it, and there's this big grid of metal poles and it's awesome and it flips up and the risers are colored neon blue and there's the band but when will Jon come on, is he going to make a big entrance, and then there he is, not on the stage, but five rows in front of us--Jon Bon Jovi, playing his acoustic guitar and singing on a platform in the middle of the audience. It's stagey but undeniably thrilling, plus we get a close-up view of his butt, which Miss Clap attests is still pretty good. We can see his butt because he is wearing tight black jeans. He is also wearing a black leather coat unzipped so we can see his chest when he turns around to gesture at us during the guitar solos. It's exactly what you would want, and that's why it's so fantastic.

Number two: I knew from looking at previous setlists that they were going to do an acoustic version of "Always," one of Miss Clap's favorite songs, and I figured that since they were also doing acoustic versions of "I'll Be There For You" and "Blaze of Glory," it would be like what Prince did--taking some of their best-known songs and putting them in a slightly different context. And indeed it was a more somber take on the song, so much so that he even changed the melody. But as the song, and the night, wore on, it became clear that changing the melody was less an artistic decision and more a practical one.

Take it from someone who's tried to cover it: "Always" is a really, really hard song to sing. Between the low point at the beginning of the verse and the high point of the chorus, it'll take up all of your range, if not more than all of your range. Now, when he changed the melody, he changed the chorus melody to make it lower, and when he did this for the first chorus, it seemed like a nice little gesture, kind of a "we're gonna keep it restrained here" thing. But when he then continued to do it for the rest of the choruses, when you'd expect him to start rocking out a bit (especially since "acoustic" in this context just meant "full band but with more acoustic guitar" instead of "just a singer and an acoustic guitar" as it often would, so the possibility for rockin' out was ever-present), he didn't go back to the original chorus melody, the high one. He stayed low, and he stayed low, we came to realize, because he couldn't go high.

Moments during the rest of the show confirmed this: he changed the melody of a few other songs to be lower, and on other songs, when they reached the high parts, he would just stick out the mic for the audience to sing. And we would oblige--we were singing anyway--but he just never sang those parts, sticking the mic out over and over again, which was especially noticable since the high parts in Bon Jovi songs tend to be in the choruses, and the choruses tend to repeat quite a few times. Once the key change hit in "Livin' on a Prayer," he just pretty much stopped singing entirely.

Now, Jon Bon Jovi is nothing if not a rock star, and he is a really good one, running around the stage, grabbing people's hands, playing to the camera (which there were four of, projecting a live movie up onto the huge screen hanging behind the band), grinning, using all his space, drawing us in, pumping us up. So while doing this acoustic version, he nailed all the sensitive signifiers, including the classic stage-sit. But by the end something unexpected happened. He turned his back to the audience and faced a camera that he'd faced before, and the camera obliged, projecting his expressions up onto the screen above. But where before he'd struck poses of triumph or ecstacy--stretching his arms up, pumping his fists, dropping to his knees--now his face registered what looked like real defeat. And it was real defeat--he couldn't sing one of his best songs anymore because he'd gotten too old.

Now, what should happen next but the giant screen--the one exposing that expression to our hungry eyes--died, the connection shorting out in a hail of fuzz on one half and blackness on the other. Jon turned around, and the expression he'd had before was just intensified--the song and the spectacle, both wonderful in their own way, were also in another way a failure. He had preceded the song with an odd little bit of banter where he said the album the song was from and then chastized the fan club members for not liking the album, noting that the song was their biggest hit ever. He had laid it out as a challenge to the audience, and he had failed to meet it.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not plying some sad-old-rock-star trope here. That evocation of defeat went perfectly with the song itself, which, in contrast to Bon Jovi's other love songs that tend to focus on the strength or possibility of love, instead deals with love's aftermath, and while in isolation, the chorus--"I'll be there till the stars don't shine / Till the heavens burst and the words don't rhyme / Even when I die, you'll be on my mind" etc. etc.--seems like a traditional "here is much I love you" kinda thing, instead it's this utter wallow of desperation, because the baby in question is gone gone gone. The chorus is uplifting, but it's just self-delusion on the singer's part, an attempt to recast his groveling in a favorable light, and while it works at the time, any reflection brings the whole thing down. There's even a line about being unable to sing: "Now I can't sing a love song like the way it's meant to be, well I guess I'm not that good anymore." That moment at the end of the song last night, then, was a perfect interpretation of the song's core, a resetting, however practical in intent, that cut through the delusion in the original version to something remarkably honest.

Now, I came to that show for artifice, and I got it in abundance, and it was wonderful. But that little moment of honesty is probably, for all I might wish otherwise, what I will keep with me.

Along, of course, with the awesome lighting rig and the close-up view of Jon's butt.

God I love pop music.

posted by Mike B. at 11:07 AM 0 comments

Monday, November 28, 2005

There's something really appealing about the following excerpt from the story about marble falling off the Supreme Court building:

Ed Fisher, a government worker, said some of the marble pieces shattered, spraying the terrace four floors below the pediment with smaller chunks of stone. A group of students from Columbus, Ohio, tried to pocket some of the fragments as souvenirs, Fisher said.

"A few of us attempted to. The police officers were like 'you have to put that back,'" said Sarah Rosenblum, 13, a member of the 8th grade class.

I like that she first used the word "attempted" because she realized she was talking to a reporter, then lost her resolve and went back to teenager-ese. I guess it helps that this is the best possible way to tell that story.

Also, it's probably not a good sign that I see the headline "Pieces Fall From Supreme Court Facade" and think they mean this figuratively. They do not. If Sarah Rosenblum was writing the headline, she would have added "(The Supreme Court Like the Building, Not Like the Institution).")

I forgot that I had a review in Flagpole on Wednesday of T. Raumschiere's Blitzkrieg Pop. Man, talk about false advertising...

posted by Mike B. at 3:33 PM 0 comments

Normally I would not bother you folks with this stuff here, but since I already posted my in-progress, here's what I ended up going with:

Maxi Geil - Making Love in the Sunshine
Roman - I Found Love
R. Kelly - Sex in the Kitchen (Remix)
Missy Elliot feat. Ciara - Lose Control (Jacques Lu Cont Remix)
Rihanna - Pon De Replay [look, I can google!]
Amerie - 1 Thing
Vitalic - My Friend Dario
Robyn - Be Mine
Backstreet Boys - Incomplete
Rachel Stevens - I Said Never Again (But Here We Are)
Bratz - So Good
Art Brut - Good Weekend
Brooke Valentine - Girlfight
Kelly Clarkson - Behind These Hazel Eyes
Ludacris - Pimpin All Over the World
Juliet - On the Dance Floor
Weezer - Beverly Hills
System of a Down - BYOB
Akon - Lonely
Basement Jaxx - Oh My Gosh

The fourth one will probably end up getting folded into the non-remix votes and the first two won't register. I also had a hard time deciding what Juliet song to vote for, but I assume it'll end up being a moot point. Half of the songs or so are "meh, these could go anywhere in my top 50, really" choices.

Songs I almost voted for that may end up in a later edition of this list:

Ralph Myerz - L.i.p.s.t.i.c.k.
Kathleen Edwards - Back to Me
Hot Hot Heat - Goodnight Goodnight
M83 - Teen Angst
Dragonette - Competition
Ashlee Simpson - Boyfriend
Girls Aloud - Grafitti My Soul
Spoon - I Turn My Camera On

Spoon and Ashlee I haven't heard enough, the latter I actually forgot to get from Abby and so only heard for the first time this Thursday on Radio Disney, but daaaaamn, it's good. I really like "Teen Angst" but can't in good conscience vote for M83. The Ralph Myerz track I almost went with but Basement Jaxx got in instead. I don't really know if that Dragonette song or that Kathleen Edwards song were singles. The Girls Aloud will most likely end up in the Rachel Stevens slot, but I need more time.

Anyway.

posted by Mike B. at 12:28 PM 0 comments

Friday, November 25, 2005

Hey, lookit me, I'm on the radio. (I haven' t actually heard it yet, but so I am told.)

ADDENDUM: I've heard it! It sounds good. If you're curious, the first song played is called "Magotty Vagina" (for now, anyway) and will not be on the album, but if you come see the band, we often play it. The second one will probably be called "Abu Ghraib" and will be on the album; I wrote about half the lyrics for it yesterday while riding around central New York and looking at snowy hills and like that.

posted by Mike B. at 9:55 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Also, apparently a certain website wants its top 20 singles of the year voted for by Monday, and as I will pretty much be incommunicado until Monday, I need some help. Please give me suggestions. Here is what I have so far:

Maxi Geil - Making Love in the Sunshine
Roman - I Found Love
R. Kelly - Sex in the Kitchen (Remix)
Missy Elliot - Lose Control (JLC Remix)
Rhiannon - Pon De Replay
Amerie - 1 Thing
Vitalic - My Friend Dario
Robyn - Be Mine
Backstreet Boys - Incomplete
Rachel Stevens - I Said Never Again (But Here We Are)

I have put almost no thought into this so far, though. (I assume some part of the fifth song is innaccurate, whether it be the artist name, the title, or the spelling.)

ADDENDUM: Also, probably:

Art Brut - Good Weekend

posted by Mike B. at 12:10 PM 0 comments

I have an article in Flagpole this week about Thanksgiving and music, sorta. You should read it, and discuss it here, but keep your damn hands off me. I'm sorry, I don't know where that came from.

posted by Mike B. at 11:42 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Hi all--I know everybody'll be leaving for their Thanksgiving breaks in the next day or two, but just wanted to give you a heads up that I'll be included in an NPR piece about NaSoAlMo to be broadcast on All Things Considered sometime in the next week. I'll post an update when I get more specific info, so watch this space if you get a chance and/or check in with Douglas. The piece may or may not feature my song "Your Sweater Says Twee But Your Ass Says Goddamn," which is about pretty much what it sounds like.

The album's actually going very well--I have three songs totally finished, three songs finished except for vocals, and two songs I still need to work up, but I'm hoping to get almost everything but the vocals done before the break and then write lyrics on the Amtrak, which has been productive in the past for some reason.

Titles I am considering for the album itself:

Beaver Fever (as a song will be called)
Four Matched Pairs and One Outlier, Bounded (this assuming I end up filling out the half-hour with an instrumental intro and outro)
Ooh This Is Going to Make Simon Mad

Please note that I am really bad with titles, so any other suggestions are welcome. Here's one of the finishers.

posted by Mike B. at 2:18 PM 0 comments

Monday, November 21, 2005

The things you learn:

Gordon recalls that he and his colleagues fancied themselves the intellectual descendants of George Orwell and Edmund Wilson, with bits of Evelyn Waugh and P.G. Wodehouse thrown in for levity's sake...Jacob Weisberg, Slate's editor and a former Yale Daily News staffer, says, "Harvard is the place where people make more aggressively oracular pronouncements. At Yale, it was more like covering the anti-apartheid rally as if it were the invasion of Grenada."

Huh. See, during my four years at a college newspaper, I mainly thought of myself as me, and my concerns were writing well and possibly getting people to write angry letters about me. (I failed in the latter ambition.) I also had no idea I was supposed to be angling for a plush summer internship. If only I could have traveled into the future and watched episodes from last season's Gilmore Girls!

Of course, I also turned down an offer to be arts editor because I didn't want to deal with not sleeping one night a week, i.e. I was lazy. So it's less that I'm bitter and more that I'm surprised. I didn't even know this kind of thing was an option!

posted by Mike B. at 3:25 PM 0 comments

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Not really much time today, but a few little things to tide you over.

Two commercials that have been bugging the hell out of me lately: the version of the Walk the Line trailer (the "targeted at men" version, I assume, since the other one I've seen was kinda fluffy) that has a bunch of critical quotes and uses as its soundtrack what sounds like porno music, kinda bland funk with electronic drums. People! It's a movie about Johnny Cash! Why would you choose porn music when you could have "I Walk the Line" or "A Boy Named Sue" or, uh, anything he's ever done? Jesus.

The other one that's been driving me nuts is the Hallmark commercials they're running right now. All of them are offensive in some way or other but the one that really makes me depressed shows a bunch of people standing around a living room in sweaters, singing, and then you pan down to see one of those goddamn free-standing toy ornaments they sell, this particular one being a snowman at a piano that sings songs, and the people are singing along to the goddamn toy. Not singing along to an actual person at an actual piano but a toy snowman. And then they cut to the dining room, where the meal has been abandoned and a cat jumps on the table to eat the food. No one is eating because they've all joined a toy snowman choir. It's the saddest goddamn thing I've ever seen. It's like Christmas at the Anorexics'.

Speaking of Christmas, New York has been in the upper sixties until today, and humid as hell. And yet everyone acts like it's the weather we should be having in mid-November. I passed a baby in a stroller yesterday wearing a wool hat and a down jacket. It's sixty-eight degrees, people! This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that decorations have already gone up, including the horrible Christmas Village in Union Square, a bunch of candy-striped stalls where people sell gifts. This in and of itself wouldn't be so bad if it didn't make it much harder to get anywhere because it makes the most heavily trafficked parts of Union Square really crowded. Argh. I could conceivably have enjoyed these last few moments of warmth if we hadn't all been pretending it's Christmas.

You do all realize George Bush keeps absurdly pushing back against the criticism of pre-war intelligence because it's effectively distracting people from the fact that we're coming reeeeaaaal close to invading Syria, right?

If you wanted to discuss Tuesday's Gilmore Girls, this would be a good place to do so, as I have apparently forgotten the other thing(s) I had to say.

posted by Mike B. at 11:19 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Here is a Madonna review in Flagpole that is sort of the compacted version of a longer analysis I hope to get up later today. So if it leaves you wondering what the hell I'm talking about, just give me a few hours. (Lord willing.) But, of course, I do think it works on its own. Mostly.

posted by Mike B. at 11:36 AM 0 comments

Just last night, like a bolt from the blue, I realized why much of the NYT's (pop) cultural coverage, while good, is also hilarious. It's not really the cluelessness of it--I grew up reading an indescribably clueless local newspaper, to say nothing of Newsweek, who once claimed Nine Inch Nails was a rap group, and trust me, the Times is a lot more on the ball than the vast majority of their competitors.

No, it's hilarious because every article falls into one of two categories:

1) Look at this thing we found! Let us introduce you to it!

...or...

2) Look at this thing people are doing without us introducing you to it first! Why would they do something like that?

#1 is inherent both in the house style (formal, just a wee bit didactic) and their audience, which is big enough for a certain segment to be so aware of the subject for any article about it to seem obvious, another segment to be vaguely familiar with the subject and grateful for the article, and another segment so totally outside any field of reference that would include the subject that they pretty much need to be educated about it from the ground up. And this goes both ways--just as I would assume a society lady on the UES falls into the latter category when it comes to, say, Art Brut (the band, not the movement), so would I need a ground-up education when it comes to anything involving Staten Island. It's a little charming, a little insulting, and mildly hilarious.

When it starts to get really funny, though, is when those assumptions spill over into #2 and they start condemning things (formally, didactically). Because it's a different kind of condemnation than you'd get from, say, the Post. It's not self-righteous outrage, it's an almost parental sense of disappointment, the impression that you've strayed somehow, and that they're not going to make it a big deal or anything, but you've clearly taken the wrong path, since, after all, it is not a path the Times has chosen for you. And when I say "the Times," I do mean the institution, as I don't think it's necessarily individual writers' fault. Because the house style encourages restraint, propriety, and distance, you end up with an almost passive-aggressive criticism. Of course, this makes the whole thing even funnier since it seems like the Times often criticizes violations of precisely those norms--things that do not show restraint, propriety, and distance. Things, in other words, lacking good taste. Quel drole, no?

posted by Mike B. at 10:56 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

styx made my head hurt

Ow. Ow. Ow. Don't listen to "Mr. Roboto" after eating a Big Mac, kids. It's like too much America all at once or something.

(more substantive posts later.)

posted by Mike B. at 1:38 PM 0 comments

Friday, November 11, 2005

Hey sailor boy!

Was anyone else confused by this ad for Pitchfork's NYE "bash"? I just thought it meant Mu was playing, but that was not the case.


Not playing!

I guess they're just saying, "Hey, you should come, there'll be hot Asian girls!" Nice to see then being so open about indie-kid fetishes, I guess. Nothing wrong with that!

posted by Mike B. at 1:37 PM 0 comments

Of course, what is a birthday without a birthday song?

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

I just whacked the fuck out of my head on a shelf and have a shit ton of work-work to do today (all of which is apparently making me swear more) so just two quick things for now.

Number one, give a look to Daughters of Invention, a MP3-ish blog that looks to be Toronto-centric and is real good so far.

Number two, here is Miss Clap's comment on the NYT review of Get Rich or Die Trying:

I think Scott also figured out that 50 Cent is actually Kevin. I mean, you don't totally trash the special kid's dreams, but you tell them that they should try a little harder.

Hey, wait a minute--she tells me I should try harder all the time!

Also, if you feel the urge, you could wish Miss Clap a happy birthday, as it is tomorrow. In her honor, here is a picture of Prince with a mustache and a picture of Kofi Annan's Nobel Peace Prize:





(If someone wanted to give her a nice present, they could photoshop in her name to that last one.)

Happy birthday, baby.

posted by Mike B. at 10:36 AM 0 comments

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Janine points us to an interesting Boston Post article (bugmenot) about Def Jam Left, which will I guess be Jay-Z's boutique label for undie hip-hop. Since I've already compared two of his contemporaries to the developmentally disabled, let's start with the positive:

As Jay-Z told Billboard, the label is designed to be ''an artist-driven label with very low deals so people are not pressured by first-week SoundScan [sales], so we can build artists."

This certainly sounds great, although it's maybe worth noting that if any artists get developed at major labels these days, it's hip-hop artists. That said, Jay's A&R choices have been far from inspiring (both as Def Jam president and as a mentor previously), and if there's any better indication that he's simply looking to get a share of that college kid market, it's signing the uber-respectable Roots.

But what's more questionable is nonsense like this:

With Def Jam Left, and his inaugural signing of the Roots, Jay-Z has created a boutique label for rap artists with more on their minds than the run-of-the-mill topics stifling mainstream rap. For the most part, commercial hip-hop is where rock was in the early 1990s before Nirvana and its seminal 1991 album ''Nevermind" flushed away all that brain-dead hair-band nonsense.

There's so many lazy assumptions here it's almost impossible to parse, so let's just zero in on the subtext. The key error in the analogy here is that Nirvana didn't simply differ from Warrant in that Warrant was singing about fucking and Nirvana was singing about...uh, how everything sucked, I guess. (What was Nirvana singing about?) There was also a pretty big difference musically[1], as I think everyone would agree. But there's no mention here of bringing in "forward-thinking" producers[2] to go along with the "socially conscious" rappers. The implication being that you could finally "get" people to listen to raps about global warming if only they could get Just Blaze to give 'em a beat.

But how would this be an improvement over what folks like this writer perceive as the present model, i.e. get a great beat and people won't care so much about the actual rapping? If you think people aren't listening to the words anyway, then what the hell does it matter if the rapper is talking about? If the listeners are so undemanding as to listen to lyrics critics perceive them to not actually care about, why would they care about undie lyrics either?

This seems foolish. You can say "once there were mainstream audiences for both N.W.A and A Tribe Called Quest" but the fact is that even if you took the vocals off, anyone could tell the difference between Straight Outta Compton and Low End Theory. I'm not sure that would be true with the oppositions being proposed here--after all, Kayne did produce songs on both Jay-Z's and Common's albums. In other words, it seems insulting both to mainstream and undie hip-hop to assume that the latter's been unsuccessful simply because the producer suck (I do tend to think undie producers suck, but then I don't particularly like the MCs, either) and the former's been successful despite the fact that no one likes the rappers. This last point is clearly wrong, and not a bit short-sighted: even if they don't like the lyrics per se, there's a musicality about the vocals of lots of mainstream rappers--call it "flow" or whatever--that is a big part of what makes them appealing. "In Da Club" would be great even if he was reading his grocery list both because the beat's great and because of his voice, which is far more compelling than it deserves to be.

It's just all a little too reminiscent of the perpetual indie-rock daydream that if only our bands got promoted, man, everyone would recognize how good they are and they'd be successful. Well, no. For one thing, lots of bands get heavily promoted and don't do well; there's lots of luck involved. For another, the band that I think comes closest to this dream, the New Pornographers, clearly lack the kind of straighforward lyrics that would be necessary to have a radio hit, neither simple enough nor ridiculous enough to really connect. Ditto for undie rappers. I'm not saying there aren't scattered travesties, nor am I going to claim that A&R people aren't generally morons. But to claim that there's this huge untapped underground that just needs a major-label push to break through a la Nirvana seems way off.

[1] Although if you want to be that way, you could argue that in some senses it was just a recentering of influences--early pop-metal's debt to certain strands of punk and 70s hard rock was often noted, and arguably Nirvana just took it back to a different set of inspirations while also adding bits of 80s college-rock.
[2] Like the ones detailed in Making Beats, which I've been meaning to write up a response to for some time.

posted by Mike B. at 11:20 AM 0 comments

Actually, thinking about it more, it's even funnier to think of Trent Reznor as host of a children's television show. Especially if all the music was NIN songs done with toy instruments--you know, like "Head Like a Hole" arranged for Casio, animal keyboard and plastic-stringed guitar. It would be adorable!

posted by Mike B. at 11:12 AM 0 comments

Last night Miss Clap and I watched all of the Trapped in the Closet DVD. A discussion ensued afterwards about how R. Kelly is a bit of a Kevin himself. I disagreed. I would say that if 50 is Kevin, Kells is Dewey:



You know, the kind of kid who you can't quite tell or not if he needs to be in the special class, but you put him there anyway just to be safe. Sometimes he'll bowl you over with a burst of totally unexpected genius, but then other times he'll go nuts and bite someone's leg, and back in the special class he goes. (Let it be noted that Dewey is perhaps one of my favorite characters in all of television.)

posted by Mike B. at 10:43 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

...or, rather, it would be time to go home if I wasn't watching videos of Butterstick.



There's a good booty shot at the end, so if someone wanted to cut this to "Baby I Got Your Money" I'd be eternally grateful.

posted by Mike B. at 7:28 PM 0 comments

Ever have one of those random thoughts that make you laugh and you don't really know why? I had one the other day that was just the very basic concept of Trent Reznor as a parent. I think it was specifically the image of his kid wandering around the house and hearing dad in his home studio recording vocals at the top of his lungs.

And hey, Trent's looking pretty stacked these days, huh?



Anyway. Time to go home.

posted by Mike B. at 7:19 PM 0 comments

Not to stir up shit or anything, but is David Brooks saying Jews have no character? He starts his review of a book about admission policies at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton like this:

A few years ago, I wrote a book about the rise of a new educated class, the people with 60's values and 90's money who go to Starbucks, shop at Whole Foods and drive Volvos. A woman came up to me after one of my book talks and said, "You realize what you're talking about is the Jews taking over America."

My eyes bugged out, but then I realized that she was Jewish and she knew I was, too, and between us we could acknowledge there's a lot of truth in that statement. For the Jews were the vanguard of a social movement that over the course of the 20th century transformed the American university system and the nature of the American elite.

This is a large part of the story Jerome Karabel, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, tells in "The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton."

...and ends up here:

Furthermore, while he leaves the impression that he believes academic merit should be the dominant criteria for college admissions, and can't fathom why anybody would want to have jocks running around campus, he never steps outside the story, the way an essayist might, to measure what was lost and gained with the decline of the chivalric ethos and the rise of the meritocratic one. Those old WASP bluebloods may have been narrow and prejudiced, but they did at least have a formula for building character. Today we somehow sense that character matters, and it still vaguely plays a role in admissions decisions, but our thoughts about character - what it is and how to build it - are amorphous and ineffectual.

I'm just sayin'. (Emphasis mine, obvs.)

(ADDENDUM: Forgot to mention that this all just reminded me of Gilmore Girls.)

In other book news, there are certainly things I could say about this, both positive and negative (positive: good point about American literature seeming unable to address politics without only condemning it, although this is hardly the only subject it treats in such a way [pop culture, cough cough], negative: telling people for approximately the ten gazillionth time they should Write More Like Orwell--we know, we know--and not even bringing up The Public Burning), but maybe it would be easier to point you to the final paragraph of this (very good and admirably restrained) review, which makes a similar point in much less space:

Seth speaks of the "evil century past" and ends his book with the wish that we "believe in humane logic and perhaps, in due course, in love." If the new century seems set on disregarding these earnest hopes, that may be, at least in part, because we're still learning the lessons of the "evil" recent past through the literary romanticism of the 19th century.

Zing!

posted by Mike B. at 6:38 PM 0 comments

Over at The Rambler, Tim has a series of good posts up about the idea of "applicability" in music and how this might be a better way of talking about it than "relevance" i.e. it's not about whether the work itself seems to be addressing events in your life, either world-historical or personal; it's about whether the work makes itself a part of your daily life and an event in and of itself. It gets started here and there's a little more here, but for my money, he really gets rolling with this post. Key bit for me:

...a bugbear of mine is that music (especially classical music) is almost invariably talked about as though its components are such things as melody, harmony and rhythm, when in fact it is more useful to talk about music as formed of time, sound, memory, quotation, distortion, and so on. What's more, these terms actually apply to all music, rather than the small subset of Western art music 1600-1900, so they're doubly useful (if admittedly nebulous). These are qualities, like light, colour and space in the visual arts, that listeners encounter in every moment of their daily lives, and it is at these conjunctions that music can attain 'applicability'. Because when a work has something to say, or to reveal, about one of these things, that revelation can be passed through the listener into their daily experience.

After this he goes somewhere I'm not entirely sure I'm willing to follow him--it leans a little too heavily on the questionable idea of art as something grandly life-changing, and I'm not sure what he's describing (to be more than a little snarky about it, you're walking down the street, and then bang, Messiaen!) is in any way unique to art, at least not in any way that wouldn't be better accomplished by making the now-standard argument for a widening of the definition of art. (Isn't anything that changes our perspectives art?) But the bit I've quoted above is very good, and, it seems to me, very important. Although we're primarily concerned with different things (I think Tim's working on the vitality of art music whereas I'm dealing with understanding pop), it reminds me of something I used to blather on about: the necessity of discovering the meaning of pop songs not just in the lyrics but also, maybe primarily, in the music, and not through the shallow, uninformed "semiotic" readings that are usually the best we get on this score. Tim here is, in part, explaining why this is so important: it's these qualities, not the formal elements, that follow you out into the world.

He's also (though I think he's dancing around the point) making a great case for the importance of personal criticism. Personal criticism is oft-condemned these days, especially when folks who actually get paid to write things are feeling threatened by "bloggers." But when it's done right, personal criticism addresses the phenomenon Tim describes: the way music interacts with the rest of your life, with those horrible banal bits we seem to dislike associating with art, and this is maybe the primary way we experience music. Personal criticism isn't an excuse to write about yourself instead of the subject you're criticizing, it's an opportunity to take music into the social realm in which it actually functions. Personal criticism isn't narrow, formal criticism is, because it puts the subject in a box and tries to observe it in isolation; personal criticism lets it run free in the world, talk to other people, go to parties, drive to work, cook, clean. And, if anything, this gets us closer to the truth.

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

Yay, the internets is working again.

Anyway, you will find two new reviews by me in Flagpole this week: The OC Mix 5 and the Fiery Furnaces. They're both pretty good reviews, I feel, so check 'em out. Although maybe I shouldn't have leaned on the Bitter Tea crutch at the end of the Furnaces review. Meh.

posted by Mike B. at 6:28 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

I saw 50 Cent on Letterman last night and they made the mistake of interviewing him. While undeniably painful, the interview plus the performance (with the Late Show band doing the backing OMG most painful thing ever and a totally unresponsive audience of middle-aged midwestern tourists) made me realize something about Mr. 50: he's sort of like that one kid in the special needs class--let's call him Kevin--who likes thinking he's really tough and so the teachers always tell him he's tough and he says things like "I'm really tough!" and yells a lot when they play whiffle ball. You know that kid? Yeah. That's 50 Cent.

Don't get me wrong, I love the Kevins of the world--they're awesome and they don't take shit from anybody--but when they start doing things like this, you just have to say, "Kevin, calm down. Time for a nap, OK? You can promote your biopic later."

posted by Mike B. at 11:41 AM 0 comments

Monday, November 07, 2005

This may be slightly outside my readership's field of reference (as, honestly, it's pretty much outside my field of reference), but does anyone have anything to say about When Music Resists Meaning: the Major Writings of Herbert Brün? I saw it in St. Mark's Books and was intrigued, but it's a bit pricey for my blood (though it does come with a CD of his music) and I wasn't entirely sure it was up my alley. Anyone read the book itself or any of Brün's writing?

posted by Mike B. at 12:06 PM 0 comments

There are those of us who remember Esselle, although we appear to no longer even have the ability to "dig around," as Hillary used to direct us to do. (Ah! memories.) I probably should have realized something was up when I stopped getting referral links from the post about Brent's Beastie Boys review.

At any rate, it is sorta back, in group form, and is called Recidivism. It is very good and takes very little time to read because when things are short they are funnier. You should check it every day, or else you might miss something you would be sorry to have missed. Am I not selling this very well? Fair enough.

In somewhat related news, if you haven't been checking Quo Vadimus lately, you should.

Finally, the comments are actually working again, so Blogger's get turned off. Weep quietly.

posted by Mike B. at 11:47 AM 0 comments

Friday, November 04, 2005

OK, I'm just going to bite the bullet and turn Blogger comments back on. So, comment away if you'd like.

posted by Mike B. at 11:51 AM 2 comments

Uh, hi. I am here, it's just, well, things are busy. Also, what's up with no comments? Damned if I know. Last time I wrote a nasty note to the commenting company (who I pay, BTW) I got back one line of snark denying everything.

Anyway, I should let you know that I'm doing NatSoAlMo, a fact I am trying to post in as many public places as possible so I actually finish the damn thing. I currently have about half the songs finished except for vocals and another 2-3 partially written. It'll be mainly rocky electro-pop with some electronic pop-rock. And klezmer. Nothing but klezmer.

After this I think I'm going to start writing songs with real key changes (as opposed to truck driver's gear changes)--you know, like real composers do, with pedal chords and everything. Sticking with one key is working fairly well but I'm worried I'm getting too dependent on certain shifts, primarily to the fourth and sixth.

If I get time, I will write up a producer's critique of the new Madonna album. It does not seem terribly likely, however.

posted by Mike B. at 11:21 AM 0 comments

Monday, October 31, 2005

So people really like that new Madonna song "Hung Up" eh? They don't think it just sounds like the brilliant JLC remix of "What You Waiting For" with a melody stolen from four or five other songs? I mean, it's not bad, but I'm having a hard time hearing it without just wanting to hear the Gwen remix instead.

posted by Mike B. at 11:56 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Two new reviews in Flagpole: Franz Ferdinand and Richard Hawley. Both albums are very good and worth your time and money. I think I am going to start referring to Franz Ferdinand as "The Franz," as I did on a CD I burned yesterday. I also am unclear why people think they are a singles band. The last album was one of the few that year I enjoyed listening to most of the way through! As for Richard Hawley, it sounds especially good on a Sunday morning. Give it a back-to-back with the new Rosebuds album.

Perhaps more notably, here is an article about what various musicians would be like as zombies, written by Mr. Chris and myself. Accompanied by a drawing of zombie Mike Mills eating human Chris Buck, which should really be a t-shirt.

posted by Mike B. at 11:40 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Just in case you missed 'em, a few choice cuts from my MP3blog rounds:

First and foremost: Roman's "I Found Love" at MFR. It reminds me of one of my favorite overlooked tracks, Dykehouse's "Chainsmoking," but is a bit more rock, despite not having a very rock feel. Sort of New Romantics with a touch of 70s country. (Also worth checking out: Who Made Who, though not as crucial.) This one's going on repeat for a while.

The new Girls Aloud song, "Biology," is available at Fluxblog and is mind-meltingly good and pretty much ungraspable, in the best possible way. It's like one of those really happy babies who appears to be doing something shouldn't so you grab it to stop it but it just totally ignores you and gets free and wobbles over to the ashtray or drill press or what have you. White Stripes blues adds a glam beat then goes house then goes straight euro-pop and then goes somewhere else and you've lost track.

Finally, the writeup for OK Go's "Invincible" over at the redesigned PopText is more about Smallville than the song itself, but also applies, and you should go read it.

posted by Mike B. at 5:07 PM 0 comments

Tyler at Le Fou nails it about Rehearsing My Choir (again) and you should go read what he has to say, if you are interested in this sort of thing.

If at any point in the past I've intimated that it's not necessarily a fun album to listen to, I apologize. This morning it was just right in a way no CD's been for me for a few weeks now.

posted by Mike B. at 2:29 PM 0 comments

Monday, October 24, 2005

I knew I liked Jacques Lu Cont before, but I never knew he was so cute! I especially like how his looks compares with all the other boys there.

Madonna at Mis-Shapes seems like the kind of cultural moment about which one (and by "one" I of course mean "me") could write several thousand words, but since I don't think that's necessarily the best idea, let's just let this post serve in its stead.

posted by Mike B. at 2:50 PM 0 comments

And so it begins.

There's certainly lots to argue with here, mainly the idea that the way in which she thinks the album's enjoyable--as a subject to examine--isn't as legitimate or immediate a source of enjoyment as anything else, but I don't know if it's worth it. I do notice that both Amanda and The Modern Age consider it somehow necessary to have a clear idea of the narrative of Choir to enjoy it, which I fear may be my fault in some way; certainly this is leagues more transparent, narrative-wise, than Blueberry Boat, but because of the way that album's come to be perceived, maybe it's now impossible to regard any Fiery Furnaces album as superficially straightforward with a complex underpinning, which I think is the way Blueberry Boat was consumed. I just got into that album for fun, for more fun, and I think the songs still worked whether or not you really had any idea what was going on. The lyrics sounded good, and they sound good on Choir, too. I have absolutely no impulse to seize on the chronological through-line here, because each track is a great example of the kind of rambling, self-contained anecdotes grandparents are so good at. I think we may have gotten the wrong idea here. Don't stress the comprehension too much; it's a good enough album to be enjoyable no matter how much attention you're paying to it.

posted by Mike B. at 1:00 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

I give the Go! Team a middling review in Flagpole today. I'd never actually heard the full album until it got released stateside, but since that was due to me not liking the songs I'd gotten enough to want to download it, this is legitimate, I feel. Another one of those albums I'm like "be better! I know you can!" Maybe next time.

posted by Mike B. at 11:29 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

In 10 years, someone is going to write a great piece where they go through all the OC mix CDs track-by-track. It's really hard not to do right now, honestly.

posted by Mike B. at 3:06 PM 0 comments

Monday, October 17, 2005

Hello there New York Times readers.

My Blueberry Boat pieces can be found at the following links:

Intro What the series will be about.
one "Quay Cur"
two "Straight Street"
three "Blueberry Boat"
four "Chris Michaels"
five "Paw Paw Tree"
six "I Lost My Dog"
seven "Mason City"
eight "Chief Inspector Blancheflower"
nine "Spainolated"

As you can tell, I've never actually finished the series, which at this point I'm going to write off as a reflection of the album itself and its deliberately unclosed nature. Alternately, I am lazy. If you want to try a summary, though, you could always go with The High Hat.

ADDENDUM: For the record, Choir seems notable to me for the ways in which it avoids the narrative obfuscation of Blueberry Boat. Letting the vocals roll in free verse instead of rhyming couplets (as was generally the case with BB) allows much more of the story to come, and since the presumption here is that it's a reflection of an individual's life rather than a delibrately constructed epic story (of a sort), the kind of linkages that proved so fruitful with BB will probably be less notable on Choir, at least from the lyrics I've seen. [NOTE: I know somebody has helpfully transcribed some of the songs, but I can't figure out who. Anyone?] Still, there's lots more we could do with BB itself, really: The Face Knife himself recently pointed out that the refrain from "Straight Street" is actually a quote from the Hitchcock film The Lady Vanishes.

I can't lie: I haven't spent that much time with the album. So all of this could well prove wrong. If you're interested, you could also ask Matos and James Rabbit what they think. Also, one regular clap clap reader says she likes it better than Blueberry Boat. So there you go.

I've been meaning but unable to put up a tripartate live show report, but since we're talking about the Town Hall show anyway, let me just say that the new album parts reflected the Furnaces' tendency to drop the goodness level in the middle of their sets; I noticed myself drifting off at roughly the same chronological point in the Choir medley that I did in the megamix that dominated the last tour. It was very well played, but too loud to hear the lyrics and too samey to let the hooks come through. The rest of the show, though, was full of geekboy delights: "Quay Cur" all the way through! Blancheflower and Blueberry Boat with just Matt on the keys and Eleanor singing! Etc. etc. It was interesting to see them with the new rhythm section, especially the way Bob was playing the basslines for the new songs much the same way I remember Toshi playing them for the old songs; apparently that's just the way Matt likes his bassists to play. The Furnaces are a fun band to get geeky about because they really reward that; I would have enjoyed hearing this version of "Blancheflower" even if it was my first Furnaces show, but knowing how they'd done it before made it especially enjoyable.

Finally: woo, Bitter Tea!

posted by Mike B. at 12:58 PM 0 comments

Friday, October 14, 2005

Hi ho--my band is playing the Knitting Factory Old Office tomorrow night, but one of the bands we were going to play with has had to drop out at the last minute. If you have any suggestions for who we could get to fill the slot, like, right now, please post them here and/or e-mail me.

The Old Office is a very nice venue but has a somewhat small stage and not necessarily the best PA in the world, just FYI.

Also: uh, hey, my band's playing tomorrow! You should totally come.

posted by Mike B. at 10:51 AM 0 comments

Thursday, October 13, 2005

I have a number of items in the Voice's 2005 Best of New York issue, but the big thing is an essay about piers. I'm very happy with how it turned out.

There was a very funny little typo in my "Best Karaoke Bar" entry, but it has since been fixed, so I won't be a jerk and point it out.

More content here shortly, unless I get too drunk while playing video games. I mean, while getting forgiven for my future sins. I mean...

posted by Mike B. at 2:56 PM 0 comments

Saturday, October 08, 2005

Carl expounds a bit on my Liz review:

I think the more salient one has to do with the fallout that festers when fans treat artists as their jesters and slaves, as their aesthetic performing ponies, and basically think like consumers buying tastee-freezes rather than people trying to take in an artwork. (Not that it's un-okay to enjoy music like a frozen treat, but hating it is more complexicated.)

Also, USE live: holy shit, you guys. Everybody's coming next time they're in town.

posted by Mike B. at 5:54 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

At the prompting of a certain editor, here's the "director's cut" of the Liz review.

Imagine, if you will, a room filled with the excesses of a teenager who has suddenly gotten more money than they could ever use. This room has video game machines, movie theater screens, a full bar, a deep fryer, huge in-wall speakers, and, hey, why not, a dirt bike track. One day this hypothetical teenager moves out, and before the middle-aged couple that's going to live there move in, they do a renovation. And so all the toys are removed and replaced with tasteful, solid wooden furniture, the carpet is torn up and tasteful oak floors are put down, and the disco balls are removed in favor of tasteful filigreed metal light fixtures. Where there was a bar there is now a divan; where there was a dirt-bike track there is now an exercise room.

As you can probably guess, Liz Phair's last album, which was self-titled and included production work from the Matrix, is the first room, and Liz Phair's new album, Somebody's Miracle, is the second room. And where the first room might as well be painted in a shade of Manic Panic nail polish called "POP," the second room uses a color of paint Martha Stewart has decided to call "Adult Contemporary."

Maybe the second room sounds better to you; that would certainly be fair. I'm not sure I'd want to live in a room with a dirt bike track, either. Thing is, though, this isn't a living situation we're discussing here, it's an album of music, and that's a whole different set of standards. Liz Phair gleamed and smiled, yelled and whispered, lost its breath and jumped before it looked, and it was an absolute blast, the funnest fun ever. Her new album walks calmly down a pedestrian mall, hands in pockets, talking in even tones about its day at the office, backed by unobtrusive production: tasteful slide guitar, chiming electric guitar, drums blending smoothly into the mix. There are few effects. None of the song titles include the word "cum."

This is not to say it's bad, or even wholly mediocre. There's nothing obviously awful here, and on a few tracks it even distinguishes itself, generally the ones that sound most like the Rolling Stones: "Can't Get Out of What I'm Into"'s guitars ape the horn-imitating riff on "Satisfaction," and "Why I Lie" sounds not unlike "Honky Tonk Women." But overall, while it's not horrible, there's also no real reason to listen to it.

I loved Liz Phair as a whole, loved it more, much more, than any of Phair's other albums, loved not only the Matrix's giddy radio-pop, but the propulsive pop-rock of the other tracks. Phair's gift had always been for lyrics, and on that album the music rose to the occasion, too. But on Miracle, numerous tracks are basically "Divorce Song" without interesting lyrics and structure, and that's not much at all.

Phair famously took a lot of flak for making a "sellout" pop album, partially from fans but mainly from critics, who were savage in their strangled j'acccuses, and as of press time, there's been no reevaluation, even though the album deserves it. When she sat down to make this new album, then, all she knew was that not only did she fail to have a hit album, but she also pissed off a large portion of her fanbase. (She may not have realized that she gained a whole new crop of fans, like me, or she might have decided that we're not worth it; either way, it didn't seem to enter into the picture.) And so she backed off from the teen-pop thing, to try and win back the newly-relevant indie nation, while simultaneously maintaining a pop sheen that allow her songs to sit comfortably next to Cheryl Crow's. (I'm not saying this was calculated; if anything, Miracle is closer in sound to her previous albums than Liz Phair, so this is presumably more her style. If anything, the self-titled album was calculated. But sometimes being calculating pays off artistically, too.) But Miracle is so boring, it's the classic case of trying to please everyone and actually pleasing no one.

Who to blame for this? I blame you. You, the cowardly, narrow-minded little shits that constitute the oxymoronically-named "listening public," who heard Liz Phair and turned up your noses, who saw the half-naked press photos and exclaimed, "How can she do such things, when she has (gasp, faint) a child to think of?" Well, now she's made an album that won't embarrass anyone, and guess what? It's as interesting as baby food. Liz Phair was a masterpiece, and we could have had another one. Instead we got, well, Somebody's Miracle, and what do you really need to say about that besides the title?

It seems antithetical to the dictates of art to ask someone to make music that isn't disreputable, that won't bring shame upon their family, but that's what we asked for, and Liz delivered. So keep it up, kids, keep raising your voice in indignation when an artist ventures outside your tiny circle of acceptability; keep it up, and we'll get more shit like Somebody's Miracle, like Funeral, Picaresque, I'm Wide Awake It's Morning, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, You Forgot It In People, Paw Tracks, more boring, boring, boring music. Don't change a goddamn thing. Things are going great.

posted by Mike B. at 11:42 AM 2 comments

Three new Flagpole reviews: the Frames (dislike), the Rosebuds (like), and Liz Phair. I was going to take this opportunity to apologize for the Liz review, and say something along the lines of "I was very grumpy that night, apparently," but Hillary (who also has two excellent reviews this week) seems to like it, so I will point you toward it. I had a sense there would be some sighing over the new one, so, I don't know, I decided to just let my inner record nerd out of his cage.

There was more shit I meant to talk here, but duty calls.

posted by Mike B. at 10:59 AM 0 comments

Saturday, October 01, 2005

I will admit to being a bit suspicious about the Voice's review of the Bratz: Rock Angels album at first, but it gets good, even if it can't bring itself to actually endorse the album. (Yes, yes, the lyrics are horrible, but really, do they matter?) Give it a read. And get yourself that album already!

posted by Mike B. at 4:27 PM 0 comments

Saw Electric Six last night and it was pretty fantastic; "Rock 'n' Roll Evacuation" might be my concert moment of the year, not only for The Moment, but for the anticipation of The Moment, plus the fact that the rest of the concert (like the rest of their songs) tended to employ pretty uniform dynamics, so when there was that brief break, no one was prepared for it and it was able to cut through without the usual intrusions of cheers and "woo"s that break up any attempt at a quiet moment at live shows. Alternately, I was rocking out so hard that there was some huge animal rampaging through the room and I failed to notice. Miss Clap and I were, we were told, the only ones rocking out to "Jimmy Carter," but we were seriously rocking out, so it's OK. Before the third verse I yelled, "Now tell us about Ronald Reagan!" and then when he did the kind of toolish guys around us gave me high-fives, which made me feel bad. But then he said the slouching toward Bethlehem line and it was all OK. Man that song's good.

Dick Valentine didn't look anything like I expected him to. Kind of looked like Rob Thomas in my recollection, but I don't think that's right.

Anyway, go see 'em. Now the question is: do I brave the Knitting Factory to (finally) see USE?

posted by Mike B. at 4:15 PM 0 comments

Thursday, September 29, 2005

The lead story in Harper's this month is an essay by Ben Marcus that's intended as a rebuff to, well, basically Jonathan Franzen, although it's ostensibly a defense of experimental fiction. There's an excerpt up here that's very Franzen-centric, so if it intrigues you, it's worth getting ahold of the print copy to read the full thing; it might not seem like it, but Marcus does do more than just bitch about J-Franz. Not a lot more, but still.

It's funny. Now that I've read both Franzen's bitchfest and Marcus' rebuke, I should be able to pick on side or the other, but honestly, both annoy me to no end. Every time I'm about to agree with Marcus, he goes and says something that really loses me, and this is after being extremely put off by a lot of what Franzen's had to say about fiction over the last several years.

I mean, on the one hand, I'm a pop partisan, so I should be attracted to Franzen's plea for good writers to use their talent in the service of something more accessible to the general public. But then I read Franzen's fiction, which is presumably the kind of thing he'd like to see other people write, and I can't get through a page, let alone a whole novel. I would like to see literary fiction broaden its scope, get more imaginative, and maybe put a higher emphasis on readability over difficulty, all of which I think Franzen was proposing. But if by pursuing these goals you end up with a novel about a midwestern family with psychological issues, maybe I'm not so in favor of those goals after all. Unless the family members all shoot lasers out of their eyes and can time-travel.

On the other hand, Marcus correctly points out that what Franzen's proposing is a continued dominance of realism, and I've always had a big beef with that school, in most of its variations. ("Most of" because my fire-escape reading this summer has been Cheever and Flann O'Connor, so.) But a lot of Marcus' points are pretty noxious, especially the idea that experimental fiction is basically reading boot camp, training to make your brain betterer. The part where he takes Franzen to task for picking on a small press is pretty bad too--I mean, if it's publishing shitty books, it's publishing shitty books, and it should be called out for that whether or not it's also getting picked on by Republican congressmen, right? Macus' request for a full-bodied embrace of "language art" is a bit chilling, because man, I really don't like fiction that thinks of itself that way. Nor has "postmodern" fiction really endeared itself to me.[1] So, again, I kind of like the idea, but since I am familiar with the end-product, it's hard to get behind; I got a little farther in Marcus' book than I did in Franzen's, but that's not saying much.

My favorite fiction writer during this particular period of my life is (as previously mentioned) David Foster Wallace, and in a way finding myself stuck in the middle in this debate goes a long way toward explaining why he's my man. He does a remarkably good job of splitting the difference between the two camps, utilizing difficulty and complexity constantly, but less as brain-training and more as a way of increasing the pleasure you get from the work. It's realist but imaginatively so, and for all people might want to decry his frequent digressions, they're often the best parts, because he's just such a good writer. He's also very funny, which counts for a lot and is oddly absent from this debate. But then, maybe that's a big part of the problem.

[1] Part of the problem is that most of the "postmodern" fiction I've read strikes me as being the opposite of "language art," being, generally, badly-written and awkward.

ADDENDUM: Matt Bucher sends along this related post, about James Wood's (no, not that James Woods) prejudice toward realism. Worth a read.

posted by Mike B. at 3:51 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Last night's Gilmore Girls: discuss!

What does the contrast between Luke's day-to-day interactions with Lorelai and his frantic concern for her dog indicate? Is the conflict with Rory really the reason Lorelai is stalling? How long is Rory gonna continue on this life-path? (Last shot was fantastic!) Rory's bangs: yay or nay? And, of course, Hep Alien returns from tour, flush with cash!

(Trying to avoid spoilers in the main post here for the benefit of our foreign readers.)

posted by Mike B. at 10:54 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

A great post from Skykicking on Jaques Lu Cont remixes. I haven't heard the Starsailor one, but I would like to. (I would also have liked to post this closer to the April date it was originally posted, but oh well.)

Sunday was one of those days that his remix of "Lose Control" came up on shuffle for a second time and I thought, "Well, one more time won't hurt." Goddamn.

posted by Mike B. at 6:04 PM 0 comments

Hey, did everybody get their Harper's yet? I did, and there's a piece in the Readings section that's applicable to that discussion we were having about Carl finding punk spirit in conservative politicians. The excerpt is good, so find it if you can, but the whole thing is online here (as a PDF; here's a HTML version.) Clearly they're being funny (and it's interesting to see how the Harper's version chops and screws the original in a way that takes out much of this self-awareness--check it out), but they're also being serious, and that gives me some serious shivers.

posted by Mike B. at 6:00 PM 0 comments

I was talking with Sean, and he pointed me toward a little freakfolk band called Wooden Wand. Please go and read the Pitchfork review of their CD. Then tell me whether or not it is a parody, because I honestly don't know. It sounds like friggin' Fruit of Forest. (The album's title is Harem of the Sundrum and the Witness Figg, so just right there.) Here is a paragraph from the review:

The pieces establish a doleful sort of inspiration. "Leave Your Perch..." is a downer with soft, Grateful Dead guitar noodles bobbing over icy, shadowy strum and phaser humming like a firefly. "Perch Modifier" explicitly states some of the album's religious themes (God, angels, a bird singing "weak, rejoice, the day is new") and Toth's connection to landscape: "Look up to the clouds/ Do you ever look past your boots and onto the ground?/ Do you ever think back to when you were very small?/ That's when you didn't need to rule over all." The vocals double for the last line and the guitar pickings grow intricate, briefly, as if his heart's a-flutter.

But no; holy shit, it's a real actual existing band that you can go see, a band that from all appearances takes themselves seriously. (Very very seriously.) They also apparently take crack. Literally.

This fact is a pleasant combination of confusing and predictable, much like a certain phenomenon I was struck by when I first moved to Brooklyn 4 years ago: there were all these hippies. Now, I had come from a small midwestern liberal arts college, so I was far from unfamiliar with the hippie element. But this was Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York City--art students, hipsters, writers, gay parents and jazz musicians and coffeeshop refugees of all stripes, these made sense. But hippies? Weren't they supposed to be in the woods or something? (See my previous discussion of my neighborhood.)

But over time, they began to make more sense in the urban landscape, and not just because I saw them around all the time. Aside from the more general phenomenon of the bounderies between subcultural groups becoming increasingly fluid (seems like you basically choose whether you're going to identify as a follower of mainstream or underground culture and then go from there; the particular underground culture you pick is kinda immaterial, and you can move between them without attracting any effective charges of disloyalty, although you lose a lot of cultural capital when you 'cash out' and move to a new subgroup), these seemed like kids who identified with the general tenets of hippie culture--community, sincerity, social responsibility, anti-consumerism, "naturalism"--but had entered into it far enough along in its development that they didn't need to adhere to all its particularities. They were just hippies who weren't outdoors people. Fair enough. The folksingers in Greenwich Village in the 60s weren't either.

And so now, after the dominance of electroclash and nu-garage, two genres whose public perception emphasized the self-interested nature of the participants (even though, as frequently mentioned, almost no one made money from electroclash), the hippies are now running the hottest game in town: freakfolk. (Although, in fairness, I should note that the hippies I used to know do not and never really did like freak-folk, despite a heavy grounding in the jambands scene; they're more doing experimental indie rock now.) Thus, the old self-interest thing was out, and we were supposed to act like a community again--because we're making folk music, you see. This would have happened regardless of the attitudes of any of the participants (and it seems helpful to point out at this point that the Strokes took the Moldy Peaches on tour with them, but forgive my digressions); because part of what drew people to freakfolk was precisely this attitude of community, it was a self-enforcing dictum. Thus the social context, like the music, is a combination of the norms of the jambands scene and the experimental music scene. Two scenes, you'll note, that do not have the best record for quality control.

Thus, inevitably I suppose, after bubbling under for a few years, now that it's reached a certain critical mass, good freakfolk acts, instead of being able to only support other freakfolk acts because, well, there weren't that many no one new about any of them, so if they were doubling up who's gonna call 'em on it, now are supporting bad freakfolk acts, just because they need to support other members of the scene, and because the kids are passionate and authentic and really love the music etc. etc.

The same thing happens all the time with jambands, because it's about community etc etc. You're doing this kind of music, you're expected to support other people doing this music, even if they're not actually good, because they're stand-up guys, and besides, they'll be good one day...

...and that's why scenes die.

It doesn't matter when you've got a finished CD in your hands, of course, and anyone can save up a few hundred dollars and go make whatever kind of album they want, but these social factors have a huge effect on what kind of music people decide they want to make, how they want to make it, and what they want to do with it after it's finished, and all this has an incalculable effect on the music you end up being able to listen to; indeed, it may have a bigger effect than any of the other ones you care to name. And that's why all of this matters. I don't complain about scenesterism (just) because the cool kids aren't inviting me to their parties. It's because the unquestioning acceptance of the quality of art made by your circle of acquaintances that emphasizing "community" more or less demands is bad for the art itself, and as both a consumer and producer of art, that's important to me. It's also a big part of why I'm so enamoured of the monad theory of art-makin', but that, as always, is a subject for another time.

I'm just saying, as has been demonstrated time and time again (Prince springs most readily to mind), that unfortunately, being nice to people doesn't always produce the best art. That doesn't mean you have to be an asshole, but it does suggest that being critical rather than supportive is maybe the way to go.

posted by Mike B. at 4:52 PM 0 comments