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Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Eh...I hate to even get into this, because there seems to be some serious piling-on happening on both sides, but I'll ease into it, I suppose. "It" being the Ying Yang Twins' "Wait (The Whisper Song)." This all stems from: an Anthony Miccio Village Voice review, Jullianne Shepherd's and Jessica Hopper's responses, and Anthony's rebuttal. And, since they're pivotal, the lyrics are here. First off, I just don't like the song. Not even in the way where I hate it but deep down I know that it's just because it pushes my buttons really well and that's a form of love--in the way that I heard it and didn't really like it. The beat's boring and the lyrics aren't very good, irrespective of their offensiveness, which itself isn't that funny. The whispering is a nice idea, but they could've done something much more interesting with it. It's unfortunate, then, that we're arguing about it, because arguing about crappy art always seems kind of depressing and pointless, like making a big effort to get to a party you know is going to be kind of lame, but you're already in the process of going, and there's nothing better to do, so we might as well. So my response to the responses are mainly questions--questions, mind you, that I mean less as challenges and more as legitimate inquiries. When people dance to "The Whisper Song," what does it mean? Does it indicate ignorance, approval, or something far more complex somewhere in the middle? (And does context matter? Like, if I told you I just saw a mixed-race, mixed-gender, mixed-sexual-orientation crowd of liberal arts alumni dancing to it, is that different from an all-white, all-straight, all-male crowd at a sports bar, or the crowd at a lesbian bar? If so, why?) Dancing is different than listening is different than expressing artistic admiration is different than expressing personal approval. Also: if a female likes "The Whisper Song," does that mean she doesn't respect rape survivors? If a rape survivor likes "The Whisper Song," does it mean that they dislike themselves? What critics of the song seem to be positing is a necessary relationship between "The Whisper Song" and sexual violence, and I'm interested in the implications of that. Not to mention, and perhaps more pointedly: can you have a different opinion on "The Whipser Song" than Jessica and Julianne while also having a clear understanding of the realities of sexual violence? What's ultimately interesting about the song itself, so much as there is anything interesting about it (and clearly there is) is that people like it--which, incidentaly, is one of the reasons I really like pop culture, because this simple fact sometimes forces you to engage with things you otherwise wouldn't. The fact that our interest here stems not from the fact that the song exists (if you want to talk about porn-rap I have a song here called "What That Thing Smell Like" you might want to xxxamine) but from the scope of its acceptance, catching all genders and races in its net, forces us, I think, to approach it with this as a constant rather than something to be argued against; at this point, you're not going to be reversing Soundscan numbers, so it seems far more productive to try and explain why people like something. And that's why I think Jessica's question of "how long must we forgive in the name of hot beats?" is misguided, because you could not get this many people to listen to someone chanting "beat that pussy up" without those particular beats. We always have to keep our minds open to the question of how the music changes the lyrics' meaning, because it does, because these words are being conveyed in this particular form. And while I think the conventional explantion would be that the hot beats are masking the meaning of the lyrics, that they're sneaking in misogyny under cover of the groove, I've never been so willing to accept that. I think each effects the other, that they are changed into something new, and that those electro-toms behind those words mean something different than the words alone, and the fact that it accrues approval despite its off-putting lyrics is a constant check to our gut reactions, a reminder to not accept these things on their face value. That said, while I do generally like Anthony as a writer, I also recognize that the contrarian thing he sometimes does, and in particular does here, is the same thing I spent 6 months yelling at Pitchfork writers for doing, and just because I have fairly similar opinions to his doesn't make what he's doing legitimate, or the Voice article particularly good. I'm willing to grant that this was due to space limitations more than anything else, but, you know, that's what them blog things are for. I'd also like to say something about how if we're going to have an unashamed conversation about sexual violence, we should also be able to have an unashamed conversation about the frequently offensive things adults say to each other in the bedroom, about the realities of roleplay in sexual contexts, and about the way this song (although far less effectively than others) plays with the dynamic between pop lyrics ostensibly being a personal expression of private thoughts and their reality as something shared and sung and dance to by all, and whether we should address them then as something private or public (because even when public they mainly exist to be disseminated and transformed into the private), but Jessica's already mocked the idea of not equating the personal and the political, so I'll be quiet. I do agree with Julianne on the "it's OK to be wrong sometimes" front. Yay, agreement! posted by Mike B. at 6:21 PM 0 comments
I bought Jeff Chang's Can't Stop Won't Stop, started reading it, and got disgusted and put it away for a few weeks. I spent 9 hours in the car yesterday and ended up plowing through about half the book, and I'm glad I did, but it's still sort of poking me the wrong way, so to speak. So I figured I'd keep a running tally of things that annoy me. - The implicit Marxism--"IT'S CAPITALISM'S FAULT!"--etc. etc., whereas capitalism seems to be one of the central players in hip-hop, from the very beginning. - The whole section on Jamacia, which reads like a long-lost section of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. "The magic incantations of Marley the Grey made the Orcs sit down with the Rastas, but then the evil warlord, in a moment of treachery..." - The organization, which is haphazard; there are a few instances where information is conveyed in a way that would seem to assume that we don't already know it, even though he spent a few pages talking about in previous chapters. Plus I have no idea whatsoever what happened when due to his skipping around from the taggers to the DJs to the dancers pretty much at random. - The fact that not only could he find a few people to claim, but then actually printed said claims, that hip-hop was dead upon the release of the first ever official hip-hop record. I mean, c'mon guys. - The part where he mentions Run-DMC, then all of a sudden gives us 8 pages of history on crack, then goes back to talking about Run-DMC again, even though the crack stuff is actually applicable to the people he had been talking about right before he started talking about Run-DMC. So yeah. Sorta like the Steven Johnson thing, I'm not gonna tell you don't read it, just that there are problems with it that people I'd normally agree with don't seem to be mentioning. I mean, I understand that he's doing the history of the hip-hop generation rather than hip-hop the music, and I appreciate the context with the Bronx and the gangs and the clarifications on how exactly the breaking crews functioned, but I guess I'm mainly disappointed that this is another book about music that doesn't seem to talk about the music very much. 200 pages in and the only tracks I can remember being discussed are "The Message," "Rapper's Delight," and that single Basquiat cut whose name escapes me; I think he's mentioned more movies about hip-hop than actual hip-hop at this point. (The Pitchfork review mentioned the thinness of his focus when it comes to post-80s hip-hop, and while I haven't read those sections yet, I looked at the "recommended listening" list in the Appendix, and just off the top of my head I noticed the omission of Jay-Z, the Wu-Tang Clan, and Nas(!).) Even when he does get into it, he'll let Cool Herc talk about his setup but not really get into exactly what it was or explain the context of any of the elements, say, or mention in passing some of the songs the DJs were spinning but not really give you any feel for what you'd typically hear played. It's obviously not as shallow as Please Kill Me or any of those who-was-fucking-who books, but it seems to be equally sceney, and that's very frustrating. Oh well. posted by Mike B. at 5:50 PM 0 comments
I had wanted to do a post on Sasha's minstrelry piece, but then I got busy, and then I saw there was a lengthy ILM thread on it (which Sasha replied to) so I wasn't going to bother. But then I read the damn thing and the points I wanted to cover weren't even brought up, except once or twice. So whoopee, here we go. (A disclaimer or two up front. The piece was presented in the context of both an EMP panel/debate and a book on minstrelry, neither of which I have any familiarity with besides the summaries people have posted. Also, I have no idea if this is what Sasha's trying to say, just that it's a productive way to read it.) The thing I particularly liked about the piece (besides the fact that he explicitly draws some conclusions, which is not necessarily something you can rely on Sasha for, bless his heart) is--and this didn't really dawn on me until the third page or so--is that while our immediate association with the term "minstrelry" is a negative one, he's being more or less neutral about it. It's just a descriptor there for purposes of comparison. And, indeed, if you like modern pop (and I mean that in the broadest, Pop-III sense) and you're being honest with yourself, you have to be fiercely ambivalent about minstrelry, because, from what I understand, modern pop wouldn't exist in its present form without the historical existence of minstrelry. That almost all the music we listen to is engaged on some level in playing with race is hardly news, and while our liberal sensibilities might recoil a bit at this notion, if you're a fair-minded lover of pop, it's hard to argue with the results, to say nothing of the fact that black-music-as-played-by-blacks is the dominant musical form in America today. While there's something distasteful about racial appropriation (on all sides), it's far more shocking to our sensibilities than actually damaging to race relations, especially when stacked up against economic and political factors, and there's been so damn much racial appropriation in pop--again, on all sides--that there's really no clear way of saying who's stealing from who at this point, at least on a groupwise basis (individual artists will always steal, sometimes unfairly, from other individual artists). And that's why minstrelry is a productive comparison if you look at it as a value-neutral form rather than a charged term. What Sasha seems to be doing here is to suggest that white musicians, by restraining their minstrelric impulses, are actually doing a disserve to themselves and to music. This obviously runs counter to our traditional understandings, but I think he makes a fairly good case for it with the love/theft dynamic. Let me unpack it a bit and see where it goes. The basic idea here is that theft is OK when coupled with freely expressed love, and when both are fully admitted. This is to say that there is a point where by your theft you are doing more to advance the music than to hold it back, and at this point the sense of shame you're expected to feel as an inheritor/magpie in the kitchen is no longer a positive trait. The assumption here is that the people we can legitimately call "theives" lacked the love for the genre and thus had their own interests rather than a collective interest (for the style, for the scene, for the listeners) at heart, profit over pleasure, etc. etc. Those unfortunates who possessed both love and theft got caught in the middle of an awkward dynamic. Because if you do possess a real love for a form that you're undeniably stealing, and you're actually really good at making music in that form, what are you supposed to do? Not express that skill because you'd be taking the spot of someone more real? Might be a valid argument if that was an actually possible outcome, but that's in no way guaranteed without some sort of regulation designed to enforce aesthetic morality in the arts, which I assume we all agree would be a bad thing. So ultimately we need to draw a line between the management and worker class in music when it comes to this appropriation thing. White label owners profiting off the royalty-free compositions of their black artists is a bad thing, but is it really so horrible that Elvis got big? Don't forget to look behind the curtain, please. The love and the theft are often coming from different divisions of the corporation. (Believe you me.) This all goes in cycles, and what was theft once gets stolen again, taken back, reclaimed. But if you don't express your love because you're worried about getting called out on your theft, it's ultimately just as much, if not more so, a selfish act as it would be to hold back on the theory that it's impolite to wear a mask in the public square. Put your shit out there and see if people like it, and fuck them if they want to call you a thief. Because you are, and that's fine. I like Sasha's piece because it seems to be putting the value of collective good equal to the value of individual, or group, fairness. I like it because it encourages us to be honest about the legacy of theft in the music we love and to realize that you can drop the shame act a bit and still be OK. If you love it, you love it; no apologies necessary. posted by Mike B. at 12:14 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Earlier this month, me and my dad took a wander around Brooklyn Heights. Here are two things we saw, as demonstrated by pictures he took: Chinese bridal parties taking pictures on the pier A random fashion shoot in a courtyard; later, we saw a male model doing something similar in an alley posted by Mike B. at 1:16 PM 0 comments
I don't know if you all are regular readers of Something Awful, but if not, let me point you to their list of music trivia. It starts getting really good with the Tori Amos entry, and the RHCP thing is less funny simply because Motley Crue apparently went through a similar incident, except for real. posted by Mike B. at 12:58 PM 0 comments
Two reviews in Flagpole this week: British Sea Power, who I am still unimpressed by, and a local Athens band called Jet By Day who, regrettably, seem to be getting national attention. I try and be fair about them, because I recognize that they're not my thing, but it's really, really hard, and I mostly fail. But, failure's fine, especially when it comes to reviewing indie-screamo. Uh, I mean, "heavy-indie-southern-rock." Also got the following note: Will someone tell your reviewerTo which I can only say a) I'm pretty sure I agreed with you in re: Trail of Dead's rockingness, and b) British Sea Power rock? Really? Did I get the wrong album? posted by Mike B. at 11:29 AM 0 comments
I swear I posted about this before, but anyway, here is an interview with my band. I am the primary answerer of two questions, one of which involves me discussing how Eminem is an inspiration, and the other consisting of mean things about musicians. It may be of interest. posted by Mike B. at 11:21 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
This would probably be a little too indulgent of my OCD tendencies, but man, I wish they had one of these for the NYC subway. Not that it would stay current very long, but still. posted by Mike B. at 5:00 PM 0 comments
Monday, May 23, 2005
The poll results here at the WB11 for the season finale of Gilmore Girls are interesting--surprising support for Lorelai's decision and hate for Emily & Richard. You may also want to browse the UPDATE: Oddly enough, the discussion board got hacked and deleted, but even more oddly, I'd had a cache of it open in Opera for a few days, so here's the first page. posted by Mike B. at 4:43 PM 0 comments
Hi to all coming over from Brooklyn Vegan. Just FYI, if you were impressed by the perspicacity of my answers, I'm always available for sex advice, so if you want to send me a question or two, I'll be happy to answer it here. posted by Mike B. at 11:42 AM 0 comments
The Mountain Goats' "This Year" isn't a particularly good song, but I like it anyway. The first three verse stanzas are pretty much pointless on their own, only existing to serve as setup for the culminating line in the fourth stanza, "Twin high-maintenance machines," which hits pretty good until you think about it a little and it starts to remind you of Steppenwolf. (The band, not the book.) The singer belts out the lines in a totally inappropriate sort of lurge, and we know from previous experience that this forced hurl is not necessarily the best timbre for him, plus the music--well, it's nice that he was able make a distinct verse and chorus bit out of the same riff, I suppose, but that doesn't really excuse the paucity of the backing. Still, it all doesn't make too much difference when, after the third verse set (sixth stanza) he suddenly busts out with "There will be feasting / and dancing / in Jerusalem next year," ending smartly on a leading tone rather than on the tonic and sending him straight into the chorus. This is interesting to me because it's basically an adaptation of a common short-fiction technique: using familiar quotations from religion or pop culture, not to show off your obscurity as much as to present something we're all presumed to know as if to say, "Here, what I am feeling is so easy to understand that this person already has," while simultaneously ride on the inherited sense of profundity that a quotation carries with it. This will ring a bell for anyone who's ever read the creative writing of teenagers (favorites in my day included Nirvana, NIN, Ani, Tori, and Zeppelin--I can only imagine what the kids are quoting now. Anybody?) but JD's too good a writer to be using this as lazy shorthand. Instead, he's using it as productive shorthand, opening up a whole other series of associations and assumptions with, what, 10 words, always a good thing in these sorts of songs. I've been to three Passover seders now (well, 4 if you count the one at college, but I don't) and when they get to the climactic line of the ceremony, "Next year in Jerusalem!" it's always said with a real ruefulness. (I asked what they say for this line if you are having Passover in Jerusalem--"Next year at Aunt Ethyl's house"?--but it is merely omitted.) Because, of course, it's a line that predates the reformation of Israel by many, many years, and by now anyone with a brain knows that the fulfillment of that dream is not necessarily something to be celebrated. But what I love about "This Year" is that JD takes it back to its original context, which, because things are getting a bit too serious here, I'll call the "Mets context"--not a prophecy, in other words, but something to confer solace on the present-tense situation, a dream meant to give courage and hope rather than something can pencil into your daily planner, and I love that after all this very realist talk of cars and video games and scotch, he all of a sudden throws in this religious allusion that doesn't seem forced or slightly offensive, but instead fills in the gaps in the song (the interior mental state of the main character, which had only been hinted at before, is made pretty clear with this line) and works actually, not that different from how the allusion typically does, as I understand it. It's nice to see it reclaimed, because it is a great line, and Darnielle does it very well. posted by Mike B. at 11:22 AM 0 comments
Steven Johnson's done the promised response on his blog, and mainly pleads incompleteness, which is fair. I'll drop him a line when I get a chance and ask if it's OK to reprint his e-mail and my response, as they may be of interest. But for now, you'll want to check out the older piece he links, which is from Discover, if you're a subscriber or have access to a good library. (Of course, if someone wanted to Lexis-Nexis it to me, I wouldn't complain.) posted by Mike B. at 11:18 AM 0 comments
The Face Knife, on Revenge of the Sith and its place in the asshole-douche-Hammett cosmology. posted by Mike B. at 11:09 AM 0 comments
I am indeed a participant in this week's Stylus UK Singles Jukebox--sadly, my most half-assed blurb was used (see if you can guess!) while one of my better ones, for "1 Thing," was left out, but all's fair in criticism and indoor baseball, or something. posted by Mike B. at 10:46 AM 0 comments
Friday, May 20, 2005
I am shocked, shocked that I was not invited to participate in this. As such, I have decided to volunteer my services all free-like and answer up some questions. What is the quickest way to get a music critic in bed? The problem here is the use of the word "quickest." Seducing a rockcrit is a lot like tagging a small, skittish woodland creature: either you can shoot them with a tranquilizer gun and just have your way with them, or you have to spend a lot of time coaxing them, cajoling them, gaining their trust, and generally just doing your best not to scare them away. I don't mean either of these things metaphorically--if you want to be quick about it, well, you can pick up tranq guns at K-Mart, from what I understand, so have at it! (Also like tagging animals, people will ask you, "Why the hell would you want to do that?") But if you're going to go with the more subtle route, two important things to remember are that a) most music critics' sole turn-off is bad musical taste, and b) unless you're quite familiar with their opinions, you have no idea whatsoever what they think constitutes "bad musical taste." Sure, they might be at a Bright Eyes show, and so you'd think you could get to 'em by talking about something related but slightly different, like Iron & Wine, but listen, you have no idea. They could be getting paid to go to that show and are hating it. They could have embraced some sort of weird cosmology where Sam Beam's somewhat apolitical nature makes him a tool, whereas Conor is a big bright shining star. You just don't know. It's much more reliable to talk about things that aren't music, since rockcrits are simultaneously not too familiar with anything besides music while also liking to think that they are. Art's ideal, but books work well, too. When it doubt, remember: they are right, you are wrong. Sure, this is offensive, but it's all in pursuit of the booty. It's also very important to realize that the vast majority of music critics don't like sex. That's why they're spending all their time listening to albums and then writing about them instead of fucking. They might like dressing sexy or talking about sex, but when it comes to the actual business of gettin' sloppy with another human being, they give it one and a half stars. They've spent so long cultivating this universe of microdivisions of taste that the big gross exposures of intercourse represent a horrendous imposition. So while the sex might not be great, just remember--the cred of having bagged a rare rockcrit should make the whole weird situation far more erotic. Or at least a little. My boyfriend and I have a great sex life except for one thing: he is constantly putting on the worst music during sex, i.e. Supreme Beings of Leisure and other dated trip-hop type crap. I can't stand it and it turns me off completely but he insists we listen to it. Well, first of all, you should congratulate your boyfriend on not being a dupe of the "bad taste conspiracy" that you seem to be 100% behind; having the spiritual bravery to admit your wholly shameful musical impulses to your most intimate partner is no small feat, especially when it's causing said partner to massively lose respect for you and no longer want to continue the act of physical love. Now, if that shame trip doesn't work, you might consider making your musical requests during sex rather than before or after. And if that doesn't work, I dunno, punch him and put on Prince. Goddamn men and their music. Do all music critics fuck each other? How can I get in on the action? By becoming a rock critic and replacing the word "fuck" in your question with "verbally masturbate." My wife recently has begun to favor her dildo over me. I've been totally supportive of her desire to masturbate regularly but it's beginning to put a kink into our sex life. How can I compete with a dildo five times the size of my real thing? How should I approach her? Draw a little frowny face on it. No one likes things with frowny faces. If that doesn't work, whine about it like a little bitch until you get your way. Make sure to say afterwards, "Ha ha, my pleasure is more important than yours." Recently I've realized I'm aroused by scat porn and want to try it with my girlfriend. However, I'm also ashamed of being turned on by this and afraid if I tell my girlfriend she'll leave me. I really want to try it. How can I satisfy my sexual curiosity without jeopardizing my relationship? The key here is to "accidentally" introduce poop into the bedroom without it being out-and-out scat, and the easiest way to that is to engage in butt play at the farthest point in time from a shower or a bowel movement. (If you aren't fairly familiar with your partner's showering and pooping schedule, maybe you shouldn't be considering scat quite yet.) So you stick your finger in there a little and they're all, "hey, you know..." and so you're all, "baby, don't worry, you'll like it" and they're all, "but..." and then you kiss them, because they're going to say something that amounts to "there's a lot of poop in my butt and you're about to touch it," and that's never good for the mood. So you're going, and you're working it, and your partner's getting nice and worked up, and then you pull the anal intruder (so to speak) out of there and look at it and go, "huh!" (Or maybe something more smooth than "huh!" though I have no idea what that would be.) This is the crucial moment: if your partner continues to be aroused, then you can start to think about talking about it. If, instead, they get really, really embarassed and put on a robe and go to the bathroom and don't touch you too much for the next week or so, you're shit out of luck, har har har. If that doesn't work, just go ahead and take a poop on whatever available body part you can find, then run away from them while masturbating furiously. That's always worked for me. posted by Mike B. at 1:01 PM 0 comments
Hillary quite rightly points us to the new Kelly Clarkson video, for "Behind These Hazel Eyes." You gotta love someone who apparently said, "Could my next video be like 'November Rain' except from Stephanie Seymour's perspective?" And yes, I know that might be overstating the case a bit (it's like saying "It's like 'Thriller,' but from a zombie's POV!"), and admittedly it does lack a gutiar solo in a church courtyard in the desert, but it's really got everything except for that. Kelly's reclaiming the legacy of Tawny Kitain! Liz, are you taking notes for your next album? posted by Mike B. at 11:18 AM 0 comments
I must admit, I've been a bit confused with people's reactions to the new Sufjan Stevens album ("the one about Illinois"). I'm especially baffled by the idea that the lengthy titles indicate some sort of mental illness. Have you really never seen a McSweeney's? They seem wholly appropriate, drawing on the same filligried Midwestern Victoriana that Chris Ware does, and to similiar effect, i.e. to take some of the air out of the subjects being discussed. Which is nice, although a dry sense of humor wasn't what I was expecting out of a guy who, the first time I saw him live, was drowned out by the band playing next door! If I had to point you to just one thing, I think it would be the transition between parts one and two on "Come on Feel the Illinoise!" Now, I must admit, if there's a disappointment here, it's the fact that Stevens doesn't really seem to be embracing too much stylistic variation in his trip through these many states, although I do like his "state songs" style much better than the quieter one displayed on Seven Swans. Still, we've been through Detroit and Chicago now, and there didn't seem to be much effort to reference the signature sounds of those cities (unless you want to count the vibraphones as a Tortoise nod). But this transition is a significant exception. Sure, on either side of it are two fairly standard-issue, if pleasing, Sufjan vamps. In between, though, the break into one of the best little segues I've ever heard, worthy of a whole song for itself, and, although the instrumentation is that of a traditional concert band more than anything else (trumpet, clarinet, vibes, bass, drums, bells, xylophone, flutes), it sounds most like a disco breakdown, a comparison that would be even more obvious if the instruments playing this little part were different. So, I went ahead and did that. For comparison's sake, here's the original: Sufjan Stevens - Illinoise Transition Orig.mp3 And here's the electronic version, with a few minor changes (beat and bassline, mainly) but everything else intact except for the instruments used: Illinoise Transition Electro.mp3 Sure, it's not perfect, but I only spent about an hour on it, so all things considered, it was pretty easy to do. And I love it! Breaking it down like this just made me appreciate it more, and if it doesn't end up being one of my favorite pop moments of the year, well, then, I'm crazy. I think people might be put off Sufjan for some of the choices he makes, especially lyrically and instrumentally, but if a horn-hater like me (sad but true!) can embrace this, I think anyone can. posted by Mike B. at 11:02 AM 0 comments
Thursday, May 19, 2005
It's been too crappy a day to get out any significant posts, but here are two random notes. 1) I'm going to the Mets-Yankees game on Saturday! This is exciting. 2) There's something very endearing about walking by the offices of a punk book publishing company and overhearing the following: "He's like, 'C'mon, you gotta push it, you gotta keep going!' and I'm like, 'Uh, I have asthsma, I can't breathe.'" posted by Mike B. at 4:53 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Overheard while walking down Franklin Ave. in Prospect Heights yesterday: LITTLE BOY: I know what I want to be when I grow up. HIS MOM: What do you want to be when you grow up? LB: A sidekick! HM: Why do you want to be a sidekick? LB: Because everybody needs a partner! [pause] LB: I'd wear all black and I'd have a sword, so if anybody took out a weapon, I'd have a weapon, too. [pause] LB: I want to be Spiderman. Spiderman! That's for boys. As for girls, there is the NYC edition of Rock Camp For Girls, which you may want to work at or apply for or otherwise support. It looks fairly great. They need campers, workers, and gear. And, of course, money. posted by Mike B. at 11:30 AM 0 comments
Gilmore Girls! Gilmore Girls Gilmore Girls Gilmore Girls! *deep breath* Giiiillllllmore Giiiiiiirls! OK. So what the hey, people? I miss like four episodes and then tune in for that?! Here, roughly, is what I am wondering: - I initially assumed Luke would say yes, but are there reasons to doubt? Maybe he was rattled by Lorelai's sudden possible job offer? Although she did ask him, after all. - Did the elder Gilmores (all of 'em!) go about that all wrong or what? Your first reaction is always agreement, and then you slowly guilt them out of it, which wouldn't have been too hard with Rory, since she already felt like she made a mistake. But once the hammer's down, it's got to stay down. And it's amazing that they still feel comfortable going behind Lorelai's back, no? Especially in a really common situation like the one Rory's in. - What's up with Rory? Is everything going to go back to normal next season sort of like it did early this season (i.e. she'll reconsider over the summer, go back to Yale, have some doubts and a rough transition, but then settle in) or is she going to go somewhere else? (Miss Clap's theory is Oberlin.) Or bum around Stars Hollow? - When discussing with Matthew, he agreed with Logan's dad's assessment of Rory's chances as a reporter, but in the course of the finale, everyone went out of their way to reassure Rory that he was wrong/mean/manipulating. What do you think? More importantly, what will the show think? - If she leaves Yale, is this a way to extend the show for a few more seaons, given that the original end date was pegged to Rory's graduation from college? Anyway, discuss. ADDENDUM: QV's picture of Sebastian Bach and Abe Vigoda reminds me of the whole going-on-tour subplot, which my mind is too blasted to even consider, I feel. But, um, thoughts? I looked at the clock while they were discussing the on-tour thing and saw it was 8:55 and yelled, "What's going on? It can't be over yet. Is it going to be two hours? What's going to happen?" They packed a lot into that 5 minutes. posted by Mike B. at 10:56 AM 0 comments
I'm not going to point you toward Flagpole for my Keren Ann review, which is pretty half-assed, but will instead highlight the last paragraph of Michael Andrews' QOTSA review, which is so good that I can't tell if it's a joke or true or both: Perhaps its tone is best summed up by the title of a missing track recorded with Dean Ween, the master of which was stolen before the album's final press: "The Fun Machine Took a Shit and Died."That's good stuff. posted by Mike B. at 10:39 AM 0 comments
Steven Johnson's been nice enough to write me about my critique, and promises a response at some point on his blog. So, watch that space! ADDENDUM: He also reminded me of the bit about Dickens in Everything Bad, which I neglected to point out as awesome. I won't spoil it for you (I trust you're all going to read the book at some point), but if you've ever been annoyed by someone bemoaning the state of modern literature by pointing out that in Dickens' day, crowds thronged New York harbor to hear the latest news about Little Nell, and where is the mass audience for great books today blah blah blah, you'll be gratified by his critique. posted by Mike B. at 10:10 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
I would criticize David Cross' Pitchfork-sponsored Pitchfork parody, but I am afraid he would in turn pen a satire of my own site, which would be cutting and witty, and therefore totally different than his Pitchfork thing. Oops, there I go. posted by Mike B. at 2:42 PM 0 comments
Whoa, uh, lots of lyrical analysis. Sorry about that. More things about keyboard filters shortly, I promise. posted by Mike B. at 2:10 PM 0 comments
According to der messenger boarden, here are the lyrics for S-K's "Entertain": So you want to be entertainedGood lord, peoples. I think my favorite bit is "(???), well you’re using it like a whore." It's feminist Mad Libs! What could we put there? Iraq? The Alaskan Wildlife Refuge? The Constitution? Indie rock? I'm also a big fan of the final stanza. Whose side are you on, man? WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?!?!?! Oh sure, I could explain this away if I wanted to--I'd focus on the switch between "go away" and "don't go away" in the first verse to indicate ambivalence about finding and maintaining an audience, cast the final resolution to "please go away" at the end as a coy come-on playing hard to get, mention the "I am lying to you" thing, present the swagger of the bridge as a self-conscious use of rock readymades quite deliberately going for a well-established pleasure point--but I can't, because lord, it's all so sincere. I mean: "You can drown in mediocrity, it feels so light, so bright?" I mean: "All you want is entertainment / rip me open it's so freeing [or possible 'freezing']"? Even giving them the benefit of the doubt and seeing it as self-incrimination, just offhand I'd say it gets beat by a Pulp b-side ("The Professional"). But even that's a hard route to justify, critically. It seems entirely plausible that they wrote this being pissed off at television. The sincerity is hard to deny because it basically comes down to: Sleater-Kinney don't want you to like them. If you're liking them, you are not being true to the spirit of Sleater-Kinney! If you downloaded the leaked album, you are similarly betraying the S-K code of ethics! Enthusiasm is for the weak! Ideally, Rammstein would translate this into German and cover it. posted by Mike B. at 1:37 PM 0 comments
This season of America's Next Top Model would have been much more interesting if the theme song was Fannypack's "Feet And Hands." Don't have a car yet, no rims of chrome, No diamonds, no pretty stones Just a dresser drawer filled with broken cellphones But I didn't pay my bill, so no dialtone... Anticipation, gotta stop wasting Time, let's go, we can all catch a case in Federal court, cos I'm better at sports Spend the weekend in Wisconson at a chedder resort Spend cheese and Gs with the greatest of ease Rude girls know "thank you," "no, please" Got no condominiums, got no home trainin Gettin so wet you could think it's rainin Took a trip to Spain and points beyond Prince took me to an opera but I just yawned Spawn of the devil, but I chill in heaven Get my 40s and blunts from 7-11... Now we rep shows in other continents You rob Mickey Ds for condiments You should give your man my compliments The pillowcase is where the condom went... You will note the tension here between material need and worldly success, which doesn't entirely jive, but in the context of the show, it's a great representation of the humble beginnings of some of the contestants and their aspirational, occsionally vindictive, visions of success. I'm especially thinking here of two incidents: the notorious "Tyra loses her shit" moment and the South Africa visit. Tiffany is the legendary ANTM contestant who got sent home in the initial cull last season, after getting into a fight with a girl at a bar and yelling, "Bitch got beer in my weave!" She was back this year, and did make the cut, having seemingly chilled out a good bit, really to the degree that she seemed more mature than almost all the other girls. She is indeed from the ghetto, and yeah, "anticipation, gotta stop wasting time," but in the end it sure seemed like the "spawn of the devil...chill[ing] in heaven" were the judges, sitting up on a pedestal, less wise sages and more evil bastards. When Tyra acts crazier than Janice, well, given Tyra's repeated reminders that she herself is from the ghetto, Tiffany starts to seem like the classy one, and Tyra starts to seem like the one getting her "blunts and 40s from 7-11." We always suspected, really; the whole dismissal ceremony is just really manipulative and creepy. Miss Clap is fond of pointing out how the judges break the spirits of all the girls over the course of the competition. The other bit is almost a literal translation--they have, indeed, spent 3 or 4 episodes in South Africa at a fancy resort, and there were not a few incidents reminscent of "prince took me to an opera but I just yawned," especially with our friend Keenyah, who I'm sure has a distinct personality all her own, but I always just confuse her with the rich black girl from the gated community outside of NYC from last season. Her weird insistence on her own uniqueness, in the face of all available evidence, is baffling, and you get a clear sense that if she won, it wouldn't be with the kind of grace we've seen from Eva or whatsherface from Season 2. Tiffany's gone, taking with her the last interesting human being; Britney's gone, taking with her the last interesting personality, withered and beaten down though it may be by this point in the season; and who do we have left? Some people who could really benefit from the kind of bratty attidude Fannypack's so rich with. I've got my fingers crossed for a finale decided by freestyle battle. posted by Mike B. at 11:26 AM 0 comments
I have comments in the Stylus UK Singles Jukebox. They are just OK. You can read my overheated praise of the Stevie track in full. More posts shortly--that whole work thing is really intruding. ADDENDUM: After the fairly effusive praise for the New Order track, which I didn't actually write a comment for, I relistened, and was glad, because my comment would have been really mean. Ana better have like 3 good songs on the next Scissor Sisters album, because, man. Also, maybe you would find the Stevie song more interesting if you thought of it as a musical setting of Bill Cosby's recent grumbles? Less an updating of "Wonder's 'message' era" and more a new-millenium version of the album Cosby did with Quincy Jones. Still no? Finally: mein gott, I didn't listen to the S-K song long enough to realize that the lyrics were anti-entertainment. That's too bad, huh? Because oh, the things I would have to say. posted by Mike B. at 11:01 AM 0 comments
Monday, May 16, 2005
As I believe we've discussed it in the past, I will point you toward the Black Table's fairly good take on Family Guy. I would probably emphasize the weird soul-deadening disgust the show fills you with by the end more, but that's me. posted by Mike B. at 5:19 PM 0 comments
Abby's got a great find here with the Max Tundra remix of "Decent Days and Nights." It's very interesting. Partially this is because it highlights a side of Max Tundra that was present but not very obvious on Mastered By Guy at the Exchange--there's no beat for 3/4 of the song, and the trademark Max Tundra rapid-fire clean beat only comes in for about two bars at the very end. In the absence of drums and his distinctive cut-ups, we're allowed to appreciate the kind of repetition and build he also clearly loves, a repetition less drawn from dance and more from Reich, making it a sort of parallel track to Sufjan Stevens, which may or may not be a fruitful comparison. The Tundra technique here is great because the piano loop he introduces at the beginning and replays, as far as I can tell, through much of the song, is absolutely random and tuneless, but the more things he puts on top, the clearer the music becomes, which is the exact opposite of what usually happens when you layer stuff. As Abby points out, when that string part comes in, the clarity it imparts on everything else going on is breathtaking, which in a way is no different from the traditional rock technique of putting a chord-shifting bassline under a repetative guitar riff, thereby giving it the illusion of variation. But it's also quite different because that part goes away very quickly, and brings back in the xylophone and off-beat organ hits that were only accompaniment before, leaving only an aural memory of the progression. Then the drums come in, and all of a sudden what had been a kind of minimalist composition transitions to a full-blown orchestral ballad, almost "November Rain" in its bombast. It backs off from this, but the fact that he was able to get it to go there in the first place is just spectacular. posted by Mike B. at 4:29 PM 0 comments
Incidentally, if you haven't seen the LCD Soundsystem setlist, you really should. ADDENDUM: I posted this mainly because it made me laugh, but then I thought about it a bit and it's kind of creeping me out. It's like, I dunno, the Decemberists doing their setlists in the form of tech cues or Kraftwerk doing theirs in binary. (Yes, OK, Kraftwerk's setlists probably are binary, but you know what I mean.) LCD Soundsystem are well known for being self-conscious, self-deprecating record collection rock, but this just seems to be taking it to a ludicrous extreme. Maybe it's because the band in-jokes are apparently the same as the band's public jokes, or maybe it's because it acknowledges that people outside the band are gonna look at the setlist, but...ah, I dunno. Never mind. posted by Mike B. at 11:44 AM 0 comments
I had first heard about Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good For You on BoingBoing a few months back. (Johnson's previous book, Convergence, had been featured heavily in the discussion forums of Plastic, my primary discussion board at the time, so his allegience with the nerdosphere is well-established.) Then, right before release, there was the article in the NYT Magazine ("TV Makes You Smarter"), plus Jesse sent me an Amazon link to the book with the note, "This thing seems up you alley." It certainly does. If you're unfamiliar, Johnson's basic argument is that, contrary to the widespread idea that popular media has a negative effect on your mental and social skills, it is in fact beneficial to these things. In the course of making the argument he addresses TV, video games, and, to a lesser extent, movies and the internet, drawing on a number of fields of study (economics, media theory, neuroscience) in an attempt to make his argument more or less objective, while at all times shying away from the tendency some popcult boosters have to see its primary positives as hidden, "subversive" messages, instead doing his level best to take the genres on their own terms. Based on this description, it would be understandable if you'd think I would be all for this. But, sadly, I'm not, although I would certainly like to be. Maybe my frustration at the book stems from the fact that it's one of the first mainstream attempts to participate in a project very close to my heart, the acceptance of pop. Maybe if I wasn't so close to the subject it wouldn't be so hard to embrace. But it is. First, though, a few positive points, or at least defenses. It seems a lot of people have based their opinion of the book on the aforementioned NYT article, but that's not really fair, no matter how much it is or isn't Johnson's fault to highlight that particular portion of his work. I'll agree that, taking the article on its face, its case for the ensmartening nature of TV isn't that convincing, but in the context of the book, it comes alongside a lot of really sharp points about brain chemistry and general IQ trends and has far more evidence backing it up. So if you really want to argue with that, please, pick up the book--it's a good, quick read, and at least you'll know where Johnson is coming from. Second, although I haven't really read the Slate dialogue about it yet (quite intentionally), I have seen people saying things along the lines of "Oh great, now yuppies can feel their lives are validated because they watch TV." But this supposed that TV watching is the enemy of all that is good and right and boho and leftist, which, as we all hopefully know by now, is not the case. Johnson in particular comes at it from a uniquely geeky perspective--the introduction concerns his childhood love of stat-based dice baseball games, and the extensive focus on video games is no accident. (It's certainly hard to complain about this aspect of the book, given the almost universal disdain for gaming.) His attempt to bring actual scientific evidence to bear in a work of cultural criticism, especially since he doesn't seem to abuse it for his own ends. And, insomuch as he's trying to convince parents that pop culture isn't necessarily bad for their kids, he makes some great points about the apparently zombie stare of game-playing actually being an intense focus, one fixated on problem-solving rather than escapism. More than anything else, it's worth praising him for the content of his television section, which, purely as a piece of structural criticism, is fantastic and insightful, well worth reading in full (the NYT article left out a bunch of great stuff about economics and semiotics) if you're at all interested in the form. In addition to identifying some great new plot techniques, he also makes some good points about the way the wide availability of DVDs and the prevalence of syndication has encouraged show creators to make entertainment that rewards repeat viewing. But, that aside, I think the ultimate direction he took with the book was a mistake, a direction which, though it pains me to say so, was probably a direct result of the very male-geek perspective that otherwise makes the book so useful. One of his big premises is the "Sleeper Curve," the idea that pop culture has been getting more and more complex,[1] and that this, in turn, has made our mental processes more rigorous, more able to process complex forms of pop culture, and thus encouraging even more complex entertainments. But as he goes on, this idea tends to take on worrisomely subversive overtones as he tries to make the case that it's essentially tricking people into learning. This, in turn, locks him into a very geeky utilitarian position that results in fallacies such as this one: The modern viewer who watches Dallas on DVD will be bored by the content--not just because the show is less salacious than today's soap operas (which it is by a small margin) but because the show contains far less information in each scene. (p. 115)Now, honestly, who has ever watched a TV show and complained about there being too little information? I'm not implying that people prefer their TV stupid, just that stupid and smart aren't really the rubrics by which we actually assess TV. It just seems a wee bit autistic to insist that we make our critical judgments so objectively, to say nothing of the idea that the amount of information is a valid objective standard.[8] The weird thing is, he's not blind to this argument--he devotes a whole (albeit short) section to bemoaning the falloff in consumption of the book form, especially novels. So he understands, I think, that we consume culture for complex reasons, that our pleasure can be tied up as easily in something simple as something complex. It's just that the argument he's making forces him into implying things like after you watch The West Wing, All In The Family can no longer bring you joy. (Particularly not true when you consider that AITF can be more offensive than South Park.) Still, the complexity theory does lead to some interesting points. Of particular interest to clap clap blog readers would be this one: [A] significant financial reward does exist for entertainment creators who attract [early adopters] to their products, because it is precisely those experts who end up persuading other people to watch the show or play the game or see the movie. The way to attract [early adopters] is to make products complex enough that they need experts to decipher them. (p. 174-5)Hey, can you say Blueberry Boat? But, unfortunately, he goes on: The way to attract these experts, then, is to give them material that challenges their decoding skills, that lets them show off their chops. Instead of rewarding the least offensive programming, the system rewards the titles that push at the edges of convention, the titles that welcome close readings. You can't win over the aficionados with the lowest common denominator. (p. 175)This is a false dichotomy. A cultural object can be both straightforward and offensive; complexity is just one factor among many. For instance, if Blueberry Boat was about, say, space aliens instead of pirates and traveling salesmen, I would not have been interested, to say nothing of the fact that it also had to be in English and (to be honest) the follow-up to a masterpiece of an album like Gallowsbird's Bark. These are all just tracking variables in the great game of cultural capital; to focus on complexity in isolation leads you to some pretty worrisome conclusions. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the one instance he addresses pop music (in the endnotes, natch): If pop music today doesn't appear to be experiencing the same Sleeper Effect that other mass forms have, that's partially because the repetition revolution already transformed the music industry some forty years ago, when it switched in the mid-sixties from a business that revolved around throwaway singles [ed: !!!] to one anchored in albums designed to be heard hundreds of times...Ever since the days of the Victrola, popular music has gravitated to songs that would instantly lodge themselves in listeners' heads, but all that changed in the 1960s. Suddenly the top sellers were long-format albums that rewarded repeated listenings, that offered lyrical and musical complexity unimaginable in the jingle-driven markets that had come before. (p. 225-6)Well gee, Steven, when you put it that way, it sure does sound ridiculous, doesn't it? You mean albums intended for repeat listening like the second Boston album or Fleetwood Mac's Tusk versus "throwaway singles" like those offered by Kid Creole, Donna Summer and Aphex Twin? Gee, that sounds a bit...well, you know. It certainly does make the focus on complexity seem narrow-minded and quite conservative.[2] And that's exactly what's wrong with Everything Bad is Good For You: the second half of the title. Frustrating as schoolmarmish condemnations of pop culture may be, the fact is that our enjoyment of it is not rooted in edification, in what's "good for you"--it's based in pleasure, in entertainment, in, fundamentally, aesthetics, and that point of view is almost wholly absent here. It just seems very Newsweeky to try and sell people on pop culture based on its healthiness. I mean, ew. Since when are we concerned with what's good for us? Since when has art had to have a practical purpose? Johnson makes a point of how we can't judge new forms by the standards applied to the old ones, and quite pointedly precedes the first section of his book with the following McLuhan quote: "The student of media soon comes to expect the new media of any period whatever to be classed as pseudo by those who acquired the patterns of earlier media, whatever they may happen to be." --Marshall McLuhan (p. 15)Kudos to him for keeping this in mind, to say nothing of the fact that he made me like something McLuhan wrote.[3] But the fact is, in his focus on complexity and healthiness, he falls into exactly the trap McLuhan was warning about. For instance, near the end of his discussion of games, he comes around to addressing the content by admitting that, given the outline of the plot of a Zelda game he just laid out, he can see why people might regard them as foolish and kind of dumb: I suspect that some readers may be cringing at the subject matter of those Zelda objectives. Here again, the problem lies in adopting aesthetic standards designed to evaluate literature and drama in determining whether we should take the video game seriously. (p. 56)Great point! It seems here like he's heading toward a articulating a new aesthetics that will embrace what's so wonderful about video games. But, sadly, he turns away: If you approach this description with aesthetic expectations borrowed from the world of literature, the content seems at face value to be child's play: blowing up bombs to get to Dragon Roost Mountain; watering explosive plants. A high school English teacher would look at this and say: There's no psychological depth here, no moral quandaries, no poetry. And he's be right! But comparing these games to The Iliad or The Great Gatsby or Hamlet relies on a false premise: that the intelligence of these games lies in their content, in the themes and characters they represent. (p. 57)But the problem is that the content is the aesthetics. Johnson mentions that word just long enough to put it in our heads before moving right back to a practical consideration, the aforementioned complexity/healthiness thing--there's no aesthetics to speak of if you're ignoring the themes and characters and plot! (It's also telling that he never actually mentions what TV shows and games look like, a primary source of aesthetics, instead focusing on abstract ideas of structure.) The whole "different standards for different genres" thing is great, but Johnson simply isn't sticking to it. He's failing to articulate new aesthetic standards to replace the ones he thinks aren't applicable here--a task which I think is eminently doable, and long overdue--which means that he can't show how those new aesthetic standards could overcome the old ones--a task that is even more doable and even more overdue--and, therefore, can't really win the argument. If you have any doubt about my critique here, observe how he resolves the above argument. Check out what standards he thinks should be used to judge video games: I would argue that the cognitive challenges of videogaming are much more usefully compared to another educational genre that you will no doubt recall from your school days:A word problem? Gee, Steven, way to make me never want to play a video game again. "Hey dude, want to come over and play some word problems?" "Uh...no thanks." It seems a little weird to be arguing against video games being juvenile and shallow by comparing them to a goddamn elementary school math problem, doesn't it? Does Johnson really think people are going to say, "Well, I guess I was wrong about video games, they're at least as artistically valid as something come up by a standardized test writer in Idaho."Simon is conducting a probability experiment. He randomly selects a tag from a set of tags that are numbered from 1 to 100 and then returns the tag to the set. He is trying to draw a tag that matches his favorite number, 21. He has not matched his number after 99 draws.(p. 57-8) And this is exactly why his argument fails: practical considerations like healthiness and morality and intellectual rigor have never been the standard by which we've actually judged art; they've just been a stick used to beat it from Aristotle to Wilde to Karen Finley. Philistines might make charges like "corrupting the youth of Athens" but this is really only because "writing shitty philosophy" isn't a charge you can get someone executed by--"I don't like the art you're making" is still ultimately the argument that's being made, and this is nothing if not an aesthetic argument. Johnson's geek worldview leads him to think that he can actually make an objective argument and convince people, but unless the evidence is overwhelming, they're going to continue to use pop condescension as an easy excuse for sneers, because, well, because it makes people feel good to do it. If you actually want to change the majority viewpoint about pop culture, you have to do something that artists have been doing, again, for thousands of years[4]: changing our aesthetic standards. What's so frustrating about this to me is that it would seem to require only a small leap, only a minor change, to accomplish, but we're so set in our standards, so locked into these partisan positions that we can't seem to break free. But the only thing we need to change to embrace pop is this: being able to view pleasure as being as legitimate a standard as artistic worth, because they're both, after all, equally arbitrary[5]; being able to stop using a cultural product's status as entertainment as an easy way of dismissing it. I'm ultimately unhappy with Johnson's book because I'm uninterested in any argument about pop that doesn't embrace its possibility of rapture.[6] Pop's power comes from the fact that it is so popular, and it wouldn't be so popular if it didn't give people an immense amount of pleasure, and this pleasure is in no way, shape, or form entirely tied up with the number of plotlines in a given episode. Pop's genius lies in the new ways it has discovered to convey happiness, to impart joy. That video-game stare is concentration, sure, but it's also the look of someone who's having a very good time doing what they're doing. But we are unwilling to embrace this. Because of the particularities of our culture, we seem unable to accept the best argument for something being good is that it makes us happy, and until we are, I'm not so sure we'll ever be able to fully accept pop.[7] All of this said, I don't want to actually discourage you from reading Johnson's book; I just thought it could use a critique from someone who's sympathetic to its aims. Despite its fundamental flaws, a lot of the details are absolutely fantastic. [1] This all leaving aside, of course, the fact that he dates this trend more or less from the invention of television, ignoring any complexities in legitimately pop entertainments--radio, song, etc.--that predated TV. [2] I hate saying things like "conservative," but I'm doing so pretty deliberately here, because what Johnson's advocating reminds me particularly of goddamn T.S. Eliot and the whole "difficulty" thing which I thought we all abandoned when we realized it results in pretentious, unreadable crap. Uh, not that I have a grudge against Eliot or anything. (That "Hollow Men" riff was rockin!) But still, I don't think focusing on the intellectual rigor of a work is a particularly new or useful idea. [3] Perhaps, like Foucault and so many before and after him, he's been seized on and misrepresented by partisans. Maybe I should read him, but, eh, I've got TV to be watchin'. [4] An idea I'm stealing from Arthur Danto, who is interviewed here. [5] By which, to be clear, I don't mean that pleasure should be held as a higher value than artistic worth, just that they should both be considered. [6] The only time Johnson really does this is in a quotation in a footnote, taken from this article: "We need to learn not to treat differences in taste as mental pathologies or social problems...We do not need to share each other's passions. But we do need to respect and understand them." [7] Plus, pop opponents, think of it this way: the sooner people fully embrace pop, the sooner there can be a backlash, and you can start liking the counterculture unashamedly again, because you're actually rebelling for once, yeah! Anarchy! [8] UPDATE: Hillary, currently immersed in Dallas, even thinks they're wrong about the amount-of-information thing. posted by Mike B. at 10:28 AM 0 comments
Friday, May 13, 2005
Holy shit, people, the new Stevie Wonder single is like having a unicorn come and have sex with your heart. I wrote a full thing about it for the Stylus UK Singles Jukebox that'll be up Monday, so you'll have to wait for that, but I gotta say, please go listen to "So What's the Fuss" right now, and then please carry boomboxes with you all summer so I can hear it at all times. It has Prince and En Vogue! It has car horns! It has yelling! And Prince is playing guitar! And you can go to his site and watch two versions of the video, one of which is the "Visually Impaired Version featuring narration by Busta Rhymes"! Yes, that's right: Busta Rhymes describing what's going on in a Stevie Wonder video. And there's a remix with Q-Tip! Well, OK, that's not as exciting, but still: argh! Please go listen. posted by Mike B. at 11:00 AM 0 comments
Monday, May 09, 2005
Hello there. I have done an MIA remix (thanks Chris!), of "Bucky Done Gun," giving it a whole new backing track but otherwise not changing it. There is presumably a word for this. It was inspired by Munk and by NoMeansNo's "The End of All Things," which has inspired the remix's name. It is here: MIA - Bucky Done Gun (The Claps' NoMeansMaybe Remix) And, because I know some of you prefer your music to have as few guitars as possible, here is the guitar-free version: MIA - Bucky Done Gun (The Claps' Anti-Rockist Remix) Lemme know what you think! You could also check out Gardner's remix. It incorporates a string quartet tribute to the Pixies. posted by Mike B. at 10:56 AM 0 comments
Thursday, May 05, 2005
Another way of saying the below is to relate it to the idea of "your 'hood is your town." In other words, you're not from New York, you're from Bushwick, or the South Bronx, and modern ("urban") music reflects this sensibility, of the more insular neighborhood rather than the totality of the center, everyone mixing and mingling. More corner store than town square, more outer-borough than midtown (or even downtown). And of course I don't need to point out the amount of "NYC music" that's made by kids from the suburbs... Also, I know I didn't really give a good musical description of why modernist music sounds like cities outdoors, but that is because I don't have one. But if I had to come up with something, it would go like this: modern music's harmonic tendency has been towards compression and reduction, taking major/minor chords and removing the third to make power chords, having basslines describe chordal structure rather than having the actual chords themselves. In contrast, modernist music (until minimalism) seems to represent the endpoint of the increasing harmonic complexity we seee moving from triads to sevenths to ninths to elevenths to thirteenths...taking chords and adding more and more tones, making them denser and less precise. But this is what I think of when I think of cities: everything dense and confused, muddled, mixed-up. It's not easily understandable, and it's not straightforward. It's an eleventh chord. Same with the rhythms: instead of the straight 4-4 of most modern music, we have polyrhythms, plus the various intricate time signatures inherited from classical, to say nothing of 12-tone's total lack of a time signature or the new methods of notation invented by composers. If there's an argument to be made for modern pop music being wish fulfillment, being dangerously simplistic, it follows most strongly from the music, which takes the complexity of, say, Stravinsky and reduces them to the I-IV-V progression, takes eleventh and reduces it to two notes, takes the cities and reduces them to the suburbs. The fact that I do not agree with this view lies in the fact that I don't think it's a reduction. posted by Mike B. at 10:39 AM 0 comments
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
(This is the follow-up.) Part of the modernist project, as I understand it, was to make art that reflected the new world, especially the cities, and by and large, they succeeded, from music that included industrial elements such as klaxons and drills to more abstract expressions of the urban landscape in bop and minimalism. Many of these elements can be found in present-day popular music, but although some of these genres are commonly grouped together in the quasi-racist category "urban," they don't really sound like urban music. What they sound like is dark and indoors, but although these two descriptors would be most closely associated with the metropolis, this is an inaccurate understanding: what makes cities are their size and density, their people and their buildings. Modernist music accurately reflected the feel of cities because they conveyed the feel of cities outdoors, of the great crush of bodies and machines, of anonymous speed, of individuals massed until they lost their humanity.[1] This is the feeling I got from the Dirty Projectors, and from Sufjan Stevens. The Getty Address sounded best when I was going over the Manhattan Bridge, looking out at the water bound by tall buildings and covered by another massive bridge with hundreds of cars sliding across, every eye in every window sending forth a simple message of their own existence aggregated into a statement of scope. I fell in love with Greetings From Michigan on my first listen, taking the train from Brooklyn to Times Square and walking through that peculiar crossroads with Stevens' music injected straight into my ears, its presumed descriptions of northern country wastes, snowy and barren, sounding best among millions illuminated by advertising and culture and enveloping evidence of our own particular place on Earth. When I pressed stop, I was wonderfully sad. You could say it was Detroit being portrayed here, New York's dull deserted shadow, but it was the music itself, inherited from modernism (Reich, Brubeck, etc.) that so closely mirrored the uncontrolled visual accompaniment to my listening experience, and it sounded equally good a few months later, sitting by the west side highway, watching Chelsea joggers chug along and the sun hesitantly approach Jersey's juvenile skyline. And it worked for a simple reason: the people seemed to be moving not to its beat but to its melodies, and the sightlines seemed to be arranging themselves in parallel harmonies to those in the songs. This is all to say that modernist music succeeding in sounding like cities because it reflected the unfathomable size and speed, the sense that, no matter what you were seeing, there were a hundred thousand other things to see just in your immediate vicinity; there were amazing things going on that you would always miss, no matter what you do, because they are going by too fast. They conveyed the feeling of stepping out from your apartment or office straight into the breathtaking press of activity of Manhattan. But this feeling was in short supply in popular music after the 50's, because something changed in the 50's: all of a sudden, the main locus of activity was the suburbs, not just the upper-class suburbs of before, but suburbs for everyone, even if at first that meant "white people." And, accordingly to its status as "popular" lining up with the suburbs' status as same, music following the growth of the suburbs was itself suburban, which is to say decentered, massively portable, and contained. None of these are necessarily bad things. But Elvis was, after all, a country boy, garage rock explicitly implied suburban housing, and the most urban punks of them all, the Ramones, were technically suburban kids--what up, Rock-Rock-Rockaway--a poor suburb, sure, but suburban nevertheless. As for "urban music," it's really club music, and despite their association with an urban setting, a club can be located anywhere[2]; what's important is what's inside. The sound of music outside a club is muffled, distant--unreal. Popular music today is explicitly designed to be contained, to be bounced off some far wall. The most urban of urban musics, hip-hop, if not meant for a club, is meant for a car, a portable, personal club, four walls you can move along with you, a suburban room traveling through a city. This is no accident--as I say above, suburban music is popular because most people are suburban, or want to be in one way or another, and the music's particular portability and decenteredness is appealing to almost everyone. You can create a suburban room within a city, but you can't drop midtown into the suburbs. Whereas modernism sought to translate the feel of a new world, which ended up being a particular time and place, suburban music aspires to be universal, and has strangely succeeded in that aim, given the worldwide presence of rock, hip-hop, and dance[3]. Now, longtime readers know where my sympathies lie--I'm all in favor of decentered music that can sound good anywhere, especially as opposed to music that you can, supposedly, "only get it if you were there, man," so I'm certainly not suggesting that the above scenario is a problem, nor to I mean to denigrate the musics at hand by calling them suburban. (I like the suburbs.) But, aside from the fact that suburban is what they are, I am interested in other people making city music in the same sense the modernists did. What would it sound like? How could you represent the feel of a modern city? Are they so suffused by the erstwhile urban music that it's impossible to imagine a metropolis without hearing beats and bass? Or are there little oases where something different might emerge? [1] In contrast, today's music seems more interested in reducing individuals to a generalized ideal listener. Modernist music wanted to address everyone at the same time, modern music wants to address everyone as if they were the same person. [2] Like, say, a backwoods discotheque... [3] Also, as Dave Q suggests in this piece, dance can be made alone while wearing headphones, as opposed to the practical limitations of a rock band. Once you have the equipment, the only further requirement to make electronic music is an outlet, whereas other genres require an isolated or insulated room, other people, understanding neighbors, etc. posted by Mike B. at 4:46 PM 0 comments
Since people are posting new Sufjan Sevens tracks, here, just for comparison's sake, is Section VIII from Steve Reich's Music For 18 Musicians. I am now embarassed that I tried to claim him as more Copeland-y in my Dirty Projectors review, but I still stand by the basic point. posted by Mike B. at 1:36 PM 0 comments
I can't quite peg what it reminds me of, but I have to admit I quite like this. (Warning: it is Radiohead-related.) It's a bit more open and less cynical than the kind of prose we were seeing before from Thom et al, more playful and judicious. Less cyberpunk and more Cheever. I like Cheever. (Please note: not as good as Cheever, but that's an unfair comparison for almost anyone, because, goddamn, Cheever.) Also a bit Neil Gaiman, although I suspect more "a bit whoever Neil Gaiman is ripping off when he does this sort of thing, whoever that is." OK, yes, it mainly reminds me of stuff I was doing 5 years ago, but still. I wonder if I can find that track I did...oh yes, try here, sort of. Trust me, I'm embarassed by it. posted by Mike B. at 12:47 PM 0 comments
New Flagpole reviews: Trail of Dead and USE, both of which I thought ran already, but that is because I am easily fooled. I like both of these reviews. The Trail of Dead one advances the "robots" theory of pop. posted by Mike B. at 10:50 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
I have a new review at Stylus, of the Dirty Projectors album. It took way too long to write. That album's a beast. I also have a follow-up post on the review, about city music, and that will hopefully be up later today. ADDENDUM: Did I really think I'd have time to write a blog post? Hahahaha. No. Look, maybe we can work up some sort of telepathic mind-link thing here... posted by Mike B. at 10:44 AM 0 comments
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