clap clap blog: we have moved |
HOME |
ARCHIVES |
E-mail Me: TSC | MP3
 
THE DAILY ROUTINE: Flux | Hillary | Zoilus | Jesse | Sasha F/J | PopText |  Tom B. | Popjustice | Bryan |  Anthony Recidivism | Boing | Stereo | Chris | Tiny |  Todd | DYFLY? |  Brooks |  Banana | Le Fou PUBLICATIONS I LIKE: Salon | PF | Stylus | OHINY | Gawker | Wonkette | Defame MP3BLOGS: Robots | Grammophone | Tofu | Bubblegum | Ticket | Catch | Douglas | Daughters | TTIKTDA | Byron | IHOP I SHOULD CHECK MORE OFTEN: Nate | be.jazz | Rambler | Some | Cyn | Simon | jaymc | Matos | Casper Gardner |  Keith | Marshall | No Fun | Diva | Waking | Marcello | Jakarta | A. Ross | Whatevs | Gutter RIP: NYLPM | Vadimus | Flyboy | TMFTML | Harm | Black Table |  Nick |
Thursday, June 30, 2005
And speaking of pants capital... posted by Mike B. at 2:41 PM 0 comments
Look, I hear where you're coming from. I can certainly see how you would get offended when your partners seem to be attracted to you for racially stereotyped reasons--thinking you're a Dragon Lady or a Hot-Blooded Latino or what have you. I understand that you don't want to be forced into playing a role for someone else's pleasure, and that you want to be looked at as an individual rather than a faceless representative of a racial group with socially constructed characteristics. That sucks ass. But on the other hand, you can't really help what turns you on. If you look at a Chinese lady and subconsciously think, before you ever talk to her, "ooh, she's hot, I bet she's strong and kind of bitchy and sexually adventurous," well, so it goes, and maybe you'll end up dating and marrying and having lots of adorable, racially mixed children. (Of course, if you look at a Japanese girl and think "schoolgirl!" that's kind of creepy, which is what makes the whole indie-rock Asian girl festish so particularly weird, but this is neither the time nor the place.) Just because they're artificially constructed doesn't mean you're not genuinely aroused. If there are more things that attract people to each other, it would seem to be for the better, and if it's kind of insulting, well, most things that go on in the bedroom sound gross and weird and offensive outside of the context of wanting to have an orgasm in the very immediate future. That's one of the things that's so great about the fucking: you do and say the things you can't normally do or say, and it's not because it's transgressive or subversive, it's because it's fun, like sex itself. Thus, while some would advise rectifying this situation by shattering the socially constructed stereotypes that hem us in and assign us certain roles we ourselves do not choose, I see a slightly different problem: there are no sexual stereotypes for white men. Black men, Latino men, even Asian men--there are well-established, preconceived notions of the way in which they are sexy, to say nothing of women of every ethnicity and race and social class and style of dress and religion and hair length, but white men are about as erotically charged as sheetrock. And really, wouldn't it be easier to add one more sexual stereotype than to eliminate all the existing ones? Yes it would, my friend, yes it would. My goal is for one day people to see a farm kid from Iowa and think, "Mmm, check out that white boy. He looks like he'd slap your ass just the right number of times." In furtherance of this goal, I will now assign sexual stereotypes to various groups of white men. My first impulse was to do it by country, but really, I'm an American, and I think we need to get away from tying ourselves to nationality. So, instead, I will do it by state, because that's always a pretty good indicator of your identity, plus in this globalized world I strongly believe in localism and community etc. etc. So states it is. (IMPORTANT NOTE: I am not doing this to make myself, as a white male, sexier. I am already sexy enough. Also, I've already addressed the ways in which rock critics are sexy.) Without further ado, your new sexual identity, white boy! Alabama - Cheap date, good post-sex conversation Alaska - Cuddling quickly turns to intense hand massages, anal sex Arizona - Will violently defend you from potential suitors but share you freely with blood relatives, and afterwards you have to pretend like it never happened Arkansas - Inbred from a troupe of trapeeze artists, thus very good at ceiling-based sex California - Video games an intensely charged seduction rite if you know how to read it Colorado - Mountain air = lotsa stamina, pot Connecticut - Under air of careful reserve, a wild thing waiting to get out, except remember how they're reserved, well for them that means using generic hamburger buns is wild, but if you get them drunk they'll fuck anything Delaware - Adept at doing it in small spaces District of Columbia - Love to double-team; also, one of their limbs has a mind of its own Florida - Air of mystery follows them everywhere, and if you puncture it they are yours forever Georgia - Fetch fast food lightning fast Hawaii - Well, there's bananas everywhere, and you know what that means Idaho - Loose as a goose and hard as a yard Illinois - Semen tastes like peanut butter, it's something in the water Indiana - Odd attraction to thumbs, chair legs Iowa - Dicks like a goddamn joystick Kansas - Will make popcorn, eat it, not give you any, then lick you for three straight hours Kentucky - Sex training mandatory in schools (don't believe the hype) Lousiana - Give them drugs and they'll fix your car while servicing you in other ways Maine - Pinches never felt so good as they did from a Maine man Maryland - Quick to anger, quicker to erection Massachusetts - Just want to be loved Michigan - Will hold up hand to demonstrate glove shape of home state, then will put it anywhere you want them to Minnesota - Twins, eh Mississippi - Burning, if you know what I mean Missouri - Eager to please, eager to leave Montana - Will slap your ass just the right number of times (hypothetical speaker above was horribly mistaken about state of origin) Nebraska - Can really husk that corn, if you know what I mean Nevada - Attracted to sparkly things, small asses, ice cream (long story) New Hampshire - Always want to be first, but will focus all their attention on you New Jersey - Not actually radioactive New Mexico - Ancient wisdom leads to mind-blowing orgasms New York - The upper part is conservative, but the lower part is super-liberal, if you know what I mean North Carolina - Believe your fort is impregnible but will do their damndest to take it, if you know what I mean North Dakota - Proud inheritors of the tradition of nipple worship Ohio - Balls sing songs of love, if you listen close Oklahoma - More like Oklahomo, if you know what I mean Oregon - Will fuck for social justice, with a fervor unseen by outsiders Pennsylvania - Untrustworthy but if you're not either, a funhouse galore Rhode Island - The inspiration for "Shoop" South Carolina - Party animals, culturally humanistic South Dakota - Aroused by images of Presidents, masonry Tennessee - Primary recipients of erotic dumb luck Texas - Size thing is exaggerated, but living with death as a constant possibility fills them with a certain spontaneous, nihilistic joie de vivre Utah - Eager to reverse polygamy stereotype by being either fiercely monogomous or part of a male harem Vermont - Will tap that ass like they tap a maple tree, which is to say very well Virginia - Smoking is sexy, virgins are sexy, and there you have Virginians Washington - Take-charge, feisty-chef types West Virginia - Great dancers Wisconsin - Protectors, pinball players Wyoming - The pants capital of the world for a reason So there you have it! Now when courting a white male, you can know what to expect. Meanwhile, if you are a white male, please do your best to fulfill your state's sexual stereotype. It'll just make everything better. posted by Mike B. at 11:39 AM 0 comments
Jesse (first entry on page at present, if not, we're talking 6/29 here) on the neighborhood, which I discussed previously. You may also be interested in something linked on a page he links to: Street Art Blows. posted by Mike B. at 11:23 AM 0 comments
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Two new Flagpole reviews: Telenovela, who are local kids and who I really really like, and System of a Down. You should read them. Just to note, I wrote this review fairly early in my relationship with SOD, so now I wouldn't say that they take themselves seriously at all--as Rob pointed out to me, when one song focuses on Tony Danza cutting in front of you in line at a celebrity softball game, it's not particularly self-important. As always, I'm baffled why more people aren't liking this, but I'm excited for Hypnotize to come out. posted by Mike B. at 12:22 PM 0 comments
42 REASONS WHY "1 THING" IS BETTER THAN "CRAZY IN LOVE" 1) Chorus backing is basically a looped drum fill. 2) I.e., breaking the beat and therefore hard to dance to. 3) And yet it is dancable. 4) Due mainly to the vocals, which dart in between the falling beats like a needle sewing up an avalanche. 5) Whereas "Crazy in Love" features one beat (chorus) with a steady stomp and another (verse) with fairly traditional snare-on-two, kick picking up the pickup. 6) All of which you don't even think about when you're listening to it, because it is so awesome. 7) Neither do you listen to it and think about "Independent Woman Part 2." 8) Does not have a guest verse with a shout-out to a record label by a record label executive. 9) Because now when I hear Jay-Z doing things like this, I envision the record label excutive I know, an older gentleman who resembles Danny DiVito but far less jolly, and that's not really a compelling image. 10) Especially when one is supposed to be "crazily" in love with him. 11) [Omitted for reasons of possible libel.] 12) Resembles that part in Terminator 2 when the liquid terminator is broken into pieces and they think they've won, but then he reforms and comes to kill them. 13) I.e., "Holy shit, we took away half of 'Crazy in Love''s beats and all its horns and yet it has somehow reformed into something even stronger and is now coming to make us dance until blood running from our eyes, we expire in a mushy heap, but our muscles keep twitching in time with the beat." 14) Strings! 15) Producer realized that while it's apparently very effective to just wedge two samples back-to-back, he could also overdub something to smooth the transition. 16) That thing is this wonderful you're-going-over-the-Bronx-river-in-a-brown-Oldsmobile combo of bells and cymbals and the aforementioned strings. 17) Makes whatever comes after it sound better, even "Crazy In Love," which I will from now on refer to as "CIL" because I got shit to do, damnit. 18) Less about being very in love, even though CIL sounds more like it's about being very excited about jumping up and down, and more about an ineffable rapture, which is exactly what "1 Thing" sounds like. 19) So much so that if you threw in a joke about booty and a reference to Jesus, it'd pretty much be a Prince song. 20) Actually, it sorta already is a Prince song. Forget that last one. 21) Although what song couldn't use a joke about booty? Even your basic Christmas carols. "O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see your butt / Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, you probably should've worn some boxers." 22) Wait, what was I talking about again? Oh right. 23) It's 10 seconds shorter! 24) Bongos! (Everything's better with bongos.) 25) Those goddamn guitar hits! Which are doubled by bass hits! Argh! 26) Backing vocals sound weirdly alien, like she is being watched over by interstellar beings, and this has some effect on the whole situation of her being outside a door, with the car keys in her hand. 27) Maybe the aliens are the one thing! Well, probably not. 28) Maybe it's a rewrite of Radiohead's "Interstellar Homesick Alien!" Again, probably not, but still. 29) The way the backup vocals almost overwhelm her at the end of the second verse. 30) Followed by a cut-out. 31) Followed by her hitting this perfect, beautiful note on "what you di-III-IIID!" 32) Which makes me just apologize spontaneously. 33) Oh wait, "hear voices I just don't understand!" I totally missed that! She totally means the backup vocals. Because they're wordless! Her backup vocals are the voices in her head, cooing her along to a threshold, which contains some sort of Schrodinger's cat situation! This is the best thing ever! 34) But now I've let out the secret! Oh no! 35) But it's OK because I've already apologized! Wshew. 36) Can it be a secret if the song containing it is the #1 summer jam of 2005? It can, because it does not really give the secret away; in fact, it never really tells you what the 1 thing is. Which is really, really, really spectacular. It's a fucking koan! 37) The syncopated "oh"s near the end, tumbling over themselves, instead of fighting that drum fill or pulling them together, singing along, in perfect harmony. 38) Doesn't go back into the hook after already going into the verse music, as CIL does. (Remember that?) 39) Sounds like she's saying "gabba gabba hey" but she is actually saying "knock knock knock, oh." 40) Which positions the singer very specifically in time, and frames the narrative: she is standing in front of a door, trying to decide if she wants to go in. The voices in her head push her forward and she pulls back, and she is trying to remember the one thing that made her go there in the first place, which thing would also push her finally forward, but we are left at the end with a fadeout, the singer locked in heroic stasis. 41) Another benefit of no Jay-Z: he doesn't get to run his bulldozer flow over the hook. 42) It is the song of right now, not the used-to-be. Sure, there's something vaguely distressing about the way it seemed preordained to be the #1 summer jam of 2005--it's from the same producer as the summer jam of 2003, samples basically the same thing, etc., etc. But it had stiff competition, and it's thrown them off. It just works. And it is here, now, everywhere, for us to hear and move our hips to secretly as we are walking down the street or sitting in our chairs, and to put our hands up to and shout when we are out drinking, the endlessly renewed gift of pop come to fruition once again, waiting only for the slightest encouragement to come barrelling into your life with a kiss and a drink and an invitation. posted by Mike B. at 11:18 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
This may be a bit too highbrow for y'all, but if I was still living in Bushwick and hadn't gone out the two nights previous, I would totally hit this: I'm extremely happy to invite you to this month's Darmstadt, "Classics of the Avant-Garde Listening Party". This month we are proud to present the insanely talented sorceress of the modern piano, Emily Manzo. Perhaps you heard her performing Steve Reich's legendary "Piano Phase" or more recently at the Kitchen in Suzie Ibarra's "Shangri-La" with the gifted young tenor, Nick Hallett. Ms. Manzo will delight and amaze us with a rare performance of John Cage's "Suite for Toy Piano" as well as works by Rob Reich, Mary Halvorson,Chopin, Eve Beglarian and Galina Utsvoltskaya.OK, it's a badly-written release, but "Suite For Toy Piano!" Love that thing. posted by Mike B. at 11:04 AM 0 comments
Monday, June 27, 2005
Two depressing days in Pitchfork: The Wilderness Electric Six We fall back so easily... More on Electric 6 some day when I have eaten a meal. posted by Mike B. at 5:51 PM 0 comments
Via TMFTML, here is a very long article on Suck, which longtime readers will recognize as another one of those primary influences on my current sensibility. Brief summary: Heather Havrilesky started there, as did Wonkette; it was one of the pioneers of link-as-sarcastic-comment, and calling it "one of the first blogs" hardly gives it enough credit, but I'm not sure I can do any better. Just go read. posted by Mike B. at 1:28 PM 0 comments
I'm sure this is just because I'm a young whippersnapper, but I can't remember anyone discussing "Television" as a band name. But maybe this is good. Twenty-five years ago, it would have seemed, especially in the context of post-punk, a kind of sneering social commentary on the emptiness at the heart of American blah de bloody blah. But that wouldn't have lined up at all with the band's actual sound, which isn't harsh or off-putting or confrontational. Sure, it's not poppy, but it's warm and welcoming, especially in contrast with the harshness of post-punk--Marquee Moon is one of the foundational moments for the whole "cathedral of sound" thing. The most you could do with that is something about television-as-narcotic, but there's too much love for the sound for that to be seen as in any way intentional. Viewed from a contemporary standpoint, though, Television's music is an almost perfect mirror of the emotional arc of most highbrow television dramas. Complex but mindful of the need for repetition, conventional in form but not in execution, interested in texture and tone as much as actual content, and willing to stretch out, in the abstract they sound a lot like most critically-praised HBO shows. Taking a mob drama and making it into a tangled psychological investigation is not unlike taking a guitar band and making six-string quartets. There's subtlety where you'd expect bluster. And just as the modern TV drama has taken soap-opera conventions and cloaked them in a gauze of respectability so that a self-described "discerning" audience could allow themselves to enjoy it, so did Television rescue major-key melodies from the pit of familiarity and recontextualize them so that the pleasure could shine through. Listen to a Television song--starting slow and simple, rolling along, building to a climax, and falling off--you've got a model for episodic TV. Of course, this is just dramas; if someone could start a band that sounded like Gilmore Girls, I'd be their biggest fan. Maybe this is why I like the Fiery Furnaces so much, although the comparison is left as an exercise to the reader. posted by Mike B. at 1:08 PM 0 comments
posted by Mike B. at 1:02 PM 0 comments
Well, I can't turn down a request like that. 1. Total number of films I own on DVD and video. See, here's where we start to get into trouble. I don't really buy films, because I tend not to rewatch movies; even if I do, I generally won't do it enough to make it more cost-efficient to buy than rent. What I do buy is TV shows, because those I can rewatch, they seem to be a better value ($30-$40 for 4-5 discs = me likee), and it's considerably less enjoyable to plow through those on a rental timeframe. So if we're onyl talking "films," probably about 30, and some of these are back from high school and I haven't watched them in years and should probably throw 'em out. The films I keep tend to be ones I'd want to show people randomly, like Bad Santa or Josie and the Pussycats. 2. Last film I bought. Again, see above. Honestly, I don't really remember. If we're counting TV shows, it would be Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Season 1. If we're not, it would be the Motley Crue, Guns 'n' Roses, and Sonic Youth video collections. As for movies, again, just no idea. 3. Last film I watched. Oddly enough, 3000 Miles to Graceland, which was on one of the broadcast stations Friday night while we were gearing up to get the apartment into shape. (Yes, I spent Friday night cleaning. It was that kind of weekend.) It was really enjoyable, even if they shouldn't have gone with the casting strategy of "if we can't get Nic Cage, we'll get Kevin Coster and tell him to do a Nic Cage imitation," because Kevin Costner does not play "dangerous" very convincingly. I mean, c'mon, dude danced with wolves. Just rewrite the part or get Nick Nolte. Anyway, yes, very good, in a self-conscious, excessive use of slo-mo, kitchy heist movie kinda way. I'm constantly surprised that I like movies with a generally negative critical consensus, and I should really keep this in mind while at the rental place, but instead I tend to get overwhelmed with anxiety and spend an hour picking something out. This is because I don't watch movies very regularly. I suspect if I did watch movies more regularly, I'd have a Hillary-esque critical tendency, but me and Miss Clap are TV people. Also, there's no rental place nearby. 4. Five films that I watch a lot or that mean a lot to me (in no particular order). It would be very easy to make this teenagery (Clockwork Orange! The Crow! Trainspotting!), but let's try not to, because me, I'm sew-fist-ee-kated. How to Get Ahead in Advertising. You may have gotten the impression from the version of this questionnaire I did with books that I underwent a bit of a post-collegiate shift in sensibility, and this would be accurate, although it was really more of a clarification of what I'd been tending to since junior year. Looking back, if there's a film that helped this along, it'd be this one. Sure, it was a condemnation of the Thatcherite 80s, but the satire was so gleeful and the comedy so sharp that the morality, as is appropriate for a comedy, began to slip. Contrast this with perhaps the best American equivalent, Wall Street, where the forces of evil are vast and tempting, and while eventually defeated, even the defeat comes at a terrible cost to the whistle-blower, whereas in Advertising, the forces of evil are irresistable--there's no tempting because there's no resisting--and, in the end, triumphant. I think I recognized the setup as similar to ones I would go with in my art, but whereas my treatment would be dour and elegaic, this was endlessly energetic and engaging, almost celebratory, of its sensibility if not (intentionally) its subjet, and by the finale, you begin to have a kind of weird affection for Richard Grant's character. Sure, the ending is sardonic, with its swelling strings and cliched shot of a man with fists on hips on a hilltop at sunset, but that final speech, which I replayed over and over again, is more effective at bringing a rueful tear to my eye than almost anything else. Certainly one of the best endings of all time, and the movie as a whole refuses to play it safe, either by going the agit-prop route or the affectionate satire of (the otherwise-enjoyable) Crazy People. Everybody is indicted, and no one is spared. Duck Soup. I watched a lot of older movies in my youth, courtesy of my dad, and if I had the memory for it this morning, a lot of these would doubtless be included, especially Buster Keaton and Laurel & Hardy shorts. But this one has stuck with me. I love the Marx brothers; I love that they worked all the material out onstage, before a live audience, ratcheting up the pace and tightening the jokes as far as they'd go. (My dad's favorite story is how they realized in Josie and the Pussycats. One of the earliest articulators of the ambiguous-but-generally-falling-positive attitude toward pop, presumably you're familiar with the story of how this was mis-marketed so everyone thought the product placement was sickening when it was, in fact, all unpaid and directly satirical; that this "b-but do you hate it or did you sell out?" critical attitude persists today is worrisome. But once you've got past that, you've got one of the bestest, shiniest movies of modern times, like a Matrix single that somehow works both as comment upon mass culture and genuine, effective embrace. Whoever decided to have the first Pussycats gig we see be in a bowling alley, with the girls mainly ignored, has listened to a decent bit of indie rock from Olympia, but whoever got Carson Daly to play himself is more of a fucking genius than any indie rocker I can think of. (Just kidding kids, I love you all, but c'mon, Cason Daly!) You get the sense that the parties involved genuinely enjoy boybands, but recognize that they're just too funny not to make fun of, especially when you can say things like "Du Jour means friendship!" (Plus, I think Babyface produced them.) Want any more evidence? Alan Cumming played basically the same role in this and the Spice Girls movie, which Josie is sort of equivalent to, except without all the sucky parts. Someday this will form a central part of someone's philosophy, and that will be a good day. Uh, this is getting really long, so I'm just going to toss off two final names, somewhat at random: Happiness and A Hard Day's Night. 5. If you could be any character portrayed in a movie, who would it be? I don't know, but in my dreams, I am the main character from Spirited Away. posted by Mike B. at 11:07 AM 0 comments
Guys, ew. A litigator for New Line, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he is working on this lawsuit, said the money paid to Mr. Jackson so far is in line with the contract he signed.Look, I've been involved with enough lawsuits by now to understand why you would think something like this, or even say it out loud, in private: because of some personal pissing contest and/or ego clash of executives way up the line, who have, in the final analysis, probably fucked up, your job is made almost infinitely harder, and even though you know that it's probably not the creative's fault, since they're the focus of the lawsuit, you direct your grumbling at them. But, holy shit man, don't say those things to the New York Times! Anyone with half a brain will see that "piggish" line, think of how much goddamn money New Line has, and be absolutely disgusted. And of course Jackson's going to read it and just get angrier. It serves no purpose and it really hurts your company's image. Sheesh. Anyway, that said, when I clicked on the story I was worried Tracy's dad would be at fault somehow, but looks like he's not, so pshew. posted by Mike B. at 10:40 AM 0 comments
Friday, June 24, 2005
Just a quick note/reminder while I'm thinking of it: for some reason, I am really bad at updating my links bar. Static HTML is like salty crunchy snacks to my procrastination impulse or something. So while there are a number of blogs I really want to add, and which are in fact part of my daily routine at this point, I haven't really gotten around to it yet. But I will soon, and in the meantime, I always try and link them in an in-context post. But don't be offended if you're not up there yet, because always remember: I am lazy. That also explains why, for instance, I've never done a redesign on the site, nor do I post pictures. Wait, did I say laziness? I meant it's an aesthetic decision. Yes, that's it. posted by Mike B. at 11:04 AM 0 comments
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Few random bits: - Hey, anyone else think that Dizzee's "I Luv U" just sounds like pop now? Which is good, you know, but I remember it being presented as this revelatory and revolutionary thing at the time. Wasn't, really, was it? - Another reason ILM impedes blogging is the persistance of "they're actually really really nice"-itis. Everybody knows everybody you could talk about, and yes, unsurprisingly they aren't raging ideologues most of the time. But Dick Cheney's got a gay daugher and Bush ostensibly believes in good ol' pacifist Jesus Christ, and you don't see those personal realities reflected in their public pronouncements, and you certainly don't see that in the general perception that public persona produces. You're not going to get near the top of the communicating-with-the-public heap, whether as a writer or a politician, without being a somewhat intelligent person, and most intelligent people embrace ambiguity and moderation over extremism in their personal interactions. But that doesn't mean the nicest, most broad-minded editor can't give folks the impression that it's OK to just like one genre of music. Or whatever. Ultimately the editor and writer are irrelevant; what matters is the reader, and ILM is just a wee bit too inside-baseball for me to trust their ideas on what people are getting out of reading about music. - Everybody say hi to Brooks! ("Hi, Brooks!") posted by Mike B. at 5:29 PM 0 comments
Might as well mention the Sanneh piece, about the Believer's music issue, which relates in some ways to the Eggers-bitching I did below. It's good, if maybe a bit too easy--that Rick Moody is a jackass isn't exactly front-page news at this point, although given that his stuff generally seems self-deprecating and sarcastic, it's easy to assume this was taken out of context, though then again that contemporary country quote is odious. It's also a bit no doy that overeducated middle-aged liberals (OMELs) like overeducated middle-aged liberal music; sure, it wasn't necessarily predetermined that OMELs would latch onto Canadian guitar bands, but c'mon, Iron and Wine! It's a chubby dude with a beard and an acoustic guitar singing about the woods. If OMELs don't listen to this, no one's going to. Most people get most excited about music they can relate to, and we relate most easily to what's most like us. Sure, it might suck, but it's neither unusual nor necessarily bad that people listen to what you'd expect them to listen to. It makes me nervous to talk about changing their taste in music--maybe it just needs to be expanded a bit. At the same time, and aside from a lot of objective evidence that certain music editors of certain OMEL-centric publications don't think their readers will read about anything that's not indie-ish (the New Yorker being apparently some sort of fluke), where my post compacted things--sort of "well, you know, they can't have too many friends, and they like to publish from their friends, and that's cool, and besides, it's only a correction, it's not canonical Eggers"--the quote at the end goes a long way towards expanding the inquiry, and it comes from, of all people, a dude from The Long Winters. He says, "indie-rock culture is the real ghetto of people who have convinced themselves that they're too sensitive to be yelled at or to yell." This is a perspective I hadn't even considered. The standards Eggers (and, let's be honest, most OMELs) has for himself also extend to other people, so he's not just controlling his own behavior, he's actually limiting the kind of art he's willing to come in contact with. In a quest for expanded respect, it's easy to end up not respecting much at all, simply because the artists involved don't fall into your standards of decorum. I've always hated this, as you perhaps know--it's porting morality onto art, and the results are never pretty. The two are not in any way, shape, or form compatible, because art is explicitly not life, in its essence unreal and therefore more free, in many ways. To take away this freedom is to take away a big part of why we have art itself. Any reason you have to not experience art is simply a rationalization and must be recognized as such. Some folks like to talk about the need for filters as if it's something we all agree on, but no, fuck that. If someone gives me music, I'll listen to it, and if I don't like it, I won't listen to again. Any justification I come up with for not listening to something--it's corporate, it's anti-feminist, it's hippie music, it's just a bunch of monkeys with bowling balls rolling them off planks and shreiking--is just a shield for my laziness. The worst thing that can happen is that you get exposed to a perspective you disagree with, and what's so damn bad about that? This is something that annoys me about all genre partisans, not just indie kids, although they are the closest at hand. Why would you want things to be so narrow? When you have the opportunity to go anywhere, why stay at home? Why not be expansive? This is why, by the way, it especially annoys me when indie-rockers talk about politics; you're not just preaching to a political choir, you're preaching to a music...um, choir. You know what I mean. Politics is by its nature concerned with the world, all-encompassing, omnivorous, devouring. When you seem to be closing your eyes to 99% of the world, why should we listen to have to say about politics? It never ceases to amaze me that people whose minds have ostensibly been broadened, who are apparently liberals, can choose to listen to such a narrow swath of artistic production, especially one that's so eager to confirm their prejudices. And then, of course, there is the Believer's reply to the above quote: "When it's genuine, though, it's different." We don't really need to address that anymore, do we? posted by Mike B. at 4:21 PM 0 comments
So, these musicblogs--they're pretty dead, huh? Seems that way to me, anyway. Can't remember the last time we had a good old-fashioned cross-referemced debate. Maybe the Ying Yang Twins, and definitely MIA, but it seemed like, aside from certain key points, the nexus of the discussion in both cases was ILM, or at least so I gather from reading, er, ILM. (Whose self-congratulatory nature is just endlessly endearing, by the way.) But still, that's two minimally vital discussions--the MIA one was great, but the YYT thing seemed ridiculous from the start--in 4 months, and I can't even remember what we had before that. Sure, the Dissensus folks still occasionally bat an idea around amongst themselves on their blogs, but even there, most of the discussion seems to take place on their chose message board. This doesn't even approach the rapid pace and intensity of two or three years ago. Normally I would chalk this feeling up to my own inability to keep up a good musicblog. Lately, though, I've had lots of things to say, and have even been saying some of them. But it increasingly feels like what I'm doing is played out, done, over--not necessarily from my perspective, but in the attitude I get from everyone else, to say nothing of what I'm reading on other blogs, i.e., almost nothing, at least not about music, at least not in the vital, engaged voices I used to hear. I mean, check out the NYLPM sidebar--how many of those blogs came into being in the last 6 months? Remember when there was a new one every few days that seemed worthy of a link? Let's just examine what's up with the old guard these days. Marcello stopped a month ago. NYLPM is still enjoyable to read, but Tom seems to barely post anymore. Jess is done, Skykicking is done, Woebot is done. K-Punk seems to mainly talk about anything but music. Simon cut down on posting and put a year or two of his life into writing a book about a 20-years-dead rock genre. Others have convereted to being either straight-up MP3blogs or just dispensers of short posts about songs. (Sasha's still working the short thing, but he always was, and his outside writing was far more central than than the blog itself.) There are certainly exceptions, some of which I don't read as much as I should--Gutterbreakz, Geeta, pop (all love), the Rambler, LPTJ, Le Fou, a billion others I'm doubtless forgetting. But still. There are two primary reasons for this decline, aside from various personal reasons with the participants and/or the arguably waning vitality of the world of music itself. One is MP3blogs. I don't think they necessarily set out to kill the old-style musicblog (although comments from certain folks have led me to think they're not entirely displeased with the situation), but the fact is, doing short write-ups accompanied by a song is both easier (if you don't care overmuch about quality) and, let's be honest, more fun to read 90% of the time. This isn't even getting into the philosophical concerns of them being better tools for our particular purpose, since simply letting someone hear what you're writing about is very powerful, but they do seem to encourage people entering the game to go that route, both because it's easier and because you get more traffic this way. That, in turn, seems to have diluted the vitality of MP3blogs themselves, because almost everyone converges around the same few artists week-to-week. Meanwhile, even the non-MP3-based blogs that have the greatest visibility follow much the same form of daily updates and short blurbs. The other is the message boards. I quite deliberately stayed away from ILM for a while, but now that I've been sucked in, it, along with Dissensus, seems to be absolute death for blogs, especially once they reached a certain critical mass of participants. One of the great motivators for blogging rather than just writing like normal was always that you can get feedback and responses to what you post--absolute catnip for those of us used to an audience that more closely resembled a void--but the audience for the boards is bigger than almost any individual blog, and that plus the expressly discursive envirionment is much more encouraging of actually getting responses, so if that's what you're after, why not go to a board? Questions, links, and theories I would have in the past expected to see posted on blogs are now almost inevitably funneled to ILM, where they're batted around but it's hard to say that definitive statements really ever arise. People on the boards periodically debate about the vitality and importance of the boards themselves, but the fact remains that they are discussion forums, and no matter how much we might want to change Western hierarchies of importance and legitimacy etc. etc., the only dialogues in libraries are Platonic ones, sourced at some point to a single mind (or two or three), and there's a whole book's worth of good reasons for that. I don't mean to complain about either of these reasons in and of themselves--hey, I spend most of my leisure time at work perusing message boards and short-form blogs--but I have always loved the particular blog form that was en vogue back in '01-'03. I love music, and I'm even a musician, but I'm also a writer and a reader, and at the end of the day I want to read about music almost as much as I want to listen to it, and MP3blogs and ILM, for all their good parts, aren't going to satisfy that jones in the way a substantial blog post will. It may seem kind of absurd to talk about blogs as centers of reasoned discourse, but compared to those other two forums, they undeniably are. MP3blogs are concerned with desciption and persuasion, rarely going on for more than a paragraph or two, and while I've seen some great writing there, and even some great interprative readings, it's a lot fewer and farther between than on old-style musicblogs. And while you will ocassionally see a longer post on ILM, there's a strong impetus to get things out as quickly as possibly and without opening yourself up to insults; even the best longer message board post would probably be better off on a blog, where you wouldn't have to filter out all the conversational white noise, and where you wouldn't be expected to compose a reply as soon as you read it. A blog where there's no daily posting expectation and no particular word limit (whether self-imposed or not) encourages thoughtful writing, and allows you to develop your ideas (ideas!) in a way that the rapid-fire environments common today don't. If this sounds like an elegy, maybe it is. I loved being able to read people writing at length about something they were passionate about, something I was passionate about too. I loved the musicblogs as a counterforum to the paid gigs that couldn't and still don't accomodate that kind of sprawl and particularity. And I loved the words, the writing itself, to say nothing of the ideas that were put forth. But maybe by a year or two in blogs had already attracted everyone who might be able to make use of such an opportunity, and maybe by a year or two after that they'd said all they had to say about the admittedly limited subject of music, or just, you know, gotten older. Maybe all those people have moved on to paying gigs, and don't have the leftover energy for blogging that they did back when it was merely a hobby. Or maybe Pitchfork just got less stridently indie; lord knows that served as an impetus for a number of musicblogs! Whatever it is, I'm not posting this hoping for a resurgance--I'm just pointing out what seems to be a reality, and explaining why I think it's a negative. But I certainly wouldn't mind a fresh burst of energy, a new crop of writers, not just talkers. Don't take this the wrong way--this isn't one of those "Well, I'm done, nice knowing you" posts that are so common in the blog world. As many people have pointed out, I always go on too long, and clap clap blog as a whole won't buck that trend. There's still lots of stuff I want to talk about, and there ain't no editor here that I can see, so I will be around for a while. Of course, if someone wanted to give me a book contract, I wouldn't say no. Books are even longer, mmm... posted by Mike B. at 12:14 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Flagpole reviews by me. The first is of the Farfisa-pop side project for Also, Hillary on a band apparently called The Orchid Tree. posted by Mike B. at 11:12 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
I'm actually fairly happy with my comments on this week's Stylus UK Singles Jukebox, so I will go ahead and point you there in der realen timen. Me and Joe often seem to disagree on things we should agree on, but thankfully we're together on the Bobby Valentino, which is a wonderful thing to have come on the radio, and deserves much higher than a 5.86. In other news: I am still apparently the only person who really dislikes the Juan MacLean, I am perhaps overly harsh with MIA, and I more or less admit I have no idea what "Come Up And See Me" is. Why didn't someone tell me it's an old song?! Oh, wait, you did? Damnit. posted by Mike B. at 11:49 AM 0 comments
Well, perhaps I spoke too soon about Mr. Eggers' response. The part that stuck in my craw in particular as I mulled yesterday was this bit: It was our hope at McSweeney's, and continues to be our goal with The Believer, that the literary world could be one of community, of mutual support, of spirited but nonviolent discourse—all in the interest of building and maintaining a literate society. It's what we teach at 826 Valencia, too: that books are good, that reading is good, that everyone can and should write in some capacity, and that anyone pissing in the very small and fragile ecosystem that is the literary world is mucking it up for everyone—and sending a very poor message to the next generation.Now, Eggers claims that this is the woo he's been pitching all along. But in my recollection--and this is as someone who's been out of the McSwyns loop for a year or so--it's never been put quite this explicitly, even granting that this was at the core of his arguments all along. And put this way, it annoys the hell out of me. You can see the obvious parallels between what I was bitching about yesterday in the old 'hood and the idea of "everyone supports everyone" that's being put forth here. (I imagine the more virulent anti-Eggersites would point out that the widespread resentment of McSweeney's stems almost solely from the fact that the Eggers cadre seems to only "support" a fairly small group of people, but that seems unfair; there's only so much they can do, and Eggers is always quick to point out the smallness of their staff.) The particular brand of support that seems to emerge in such situations always seems intensely self-interested, with the patina of communitiy laid on top, which as far as I can tell has always just made things harder, and in the end is a sort of nervous horse-hitching, a micobandwagon you calculatedly jump. This is a bit cynical, I realize, but especially at a young age, none of the writers I know are really capable of being supportive in the way Eggers is proposing, and that's why the competitive model has held for so long. I've been in enough goddamn workshops to know that "being supportive" is just the watchword we slide through clenched teeth. And, indeed, this may be the best response to the imagined anti-Eggers criticism above: Eggers believes in being supportive of stuff that isn't crap. I don't know if this is true or not--maybe he just doesn't want to say it out loud, which is certainly understandable--but that I could get behind. What it's harder to get behind is the last bit. I've long argued that if an art is so fragile that it needs to be protected in this way, shielded behind some sort of protective mother-figure from the mean bullies of the critical schoolyards, then maybe it's time we put it out of its misery. If something we love so much has withered away to the point where it can't withstand a few jokes at its expense, it's better for all concerned that we choose the time and place of its demise, rather than letting it be pricked to death. But this seems an awfully pessimistic view of literature, and it seems equally dangerous to send a message "to the next generation" that the genre is near-death. Given this view, why would anyone want to get involved with writing? I was a big fan of the critical ideas put forth by Eggers, Lethem, Julavits, et al, because they were much more nuanced than this. And, sure, maybe it's unfair to expect Eggers to convey these subtleties in the course of a paragraph in something called "a small correction." But then why include it at all? One of the first things I posted to this blog was actually a (supportive) response to that Julavits essay in the first issue of The Believer. I just went back and reread it, and was shocked to find that it wasn't anywhere near as embarassing as I assumed it would be. So I'm going to point you to that, although I would request that you just begin at the paragraph beginning "First off..." This, anyway, was what I took away from the essay, even though it seems to have been a fair ways off what Julavits (who is not Eggers, etc. etc., but you know) was thinking. Anyway, all that said, Mr. Wolk has an article on the Fall at the Believer's site, so go read that if you don't want to deal with more of my yammerings. posted by Mike B. at 11:06 AM 0 comments
Monday, June 20, 2005
In brighter news: Dave Eggers' corrections have become much more light-hearted. "The quote helps put some juice into his piece, but Neal knows I didn't say it. 'New age of literary celebrity'? Oh man. I don't even know what that means." Ha! posted by Mike B. at 5:10 PM 0 comments
I opened the special "New Brooklyn" section of the Times on Sunday to find: this. And then I read it. And then I snarled and threw it away. For those unfamiliar, let me explain: this is my former neighborhood. And by "former neighborhood," I mean I lived in one of the buildings described in the article. The stretch pictured at the head of the story was directly across the street from me, and the "Brooklyn's Natural" at the far right was where I often shopped. This was the first place I lived in New York, and I have since, fairly recently, moved out. And so I have a few responses: 1) "I guess we're pioneers, but we're not homesteaders, you know?" Pioneers? Cracker please. When I moved in it was July 2001 and there were only three other occupied apartments in the building. The first floor hadn't even been converted yet--we went down and took a desk and some envelopes and a sweater or two and a fog machine. There were no stores in the immediate vicinity; the only nearby bodega, two blocks down from the Morgan stop, closed at 8. Life Cafe opened a year after I got there, when Kristie was moving in. Cab drivers didn't even seem to know the area existed. And this is to say nothing of the people who'd been living there for years and years and years. The Catch-22 analogy is invalid, but if you want to push it, you're as much oil speculators as the brokers are. People like you chased my ass out. 2) Cheap? Are you serious? When I moved in it was already moderately expensive, but when I moved out those damn 800 square foot lofts were going for $2000 a month. Unfurnished! Some without walls! In what universe is this cheap? Oh, right: the universe of Rutgers dropouts in a band in Brooklyn. Which brings us to: 3) "It's dirty, it's cheap, and we can play music all night." Few quotes have brought quite such a chill to my heart. The dirty part is technically neutral, the cheap we've dealt with. As for the last bit? Well. What conditions have to exist in a building for you to be able to play music all night? Basically, there can't be anyone around who really needs to sleep at normal hours. In other words, no one living there can have a job. (Or children, but.) The problem is, dude, some of us did have jobs, and some of us did need to sleep. But y'all were playing music all night. And not good music. Oh no, not good music. What kind of music would you expect from a band with the word "Plastic" in its name, and made up of Rutgers drop-outs, one of whom describes the neighborhood as "like the new Haight-Ashbury"? That's right: hippie music. Motherfucking hippie music. Twenty-four fucking hours a fucking day. Look, no band needs to practice "all night." OK, maybe La Monte Young, but if I lived next door to La Monte Young, I would have killed myself long ago. (Nice to listen to and all, but maybe not something you want to hear muffled and constantly, whether you want to or not.) I'm certainly sympathetic to the desire to play music at odd hours, and indeed, the ability to make noise was attractive to me. But make music by yourself, man. Do you really need to play with your band all the goddamn time? Let me answer for you. No you do not. If you do, you need a better band, or to stop playing music and get a goddamned job. Speaking of which: 4) "Anybody you meet has got something going on." And that something is inevitably stupid. The thing no one wants to tell you about bohemia is that for ever legendary community that produced all this great art, there are 99 other scenes that resulted in nothing but horrendously narcississtic pseudo-art and a shared set of venereal diseases. Everyone seemed to have their thing "going on" because they didn't have to deal with being at a job for 10 hours a day--they had some mysterious outside means of support. And they all had to be supportive of each other no matter the merits of the project at issue. So, in sum: no one discovers anything new in New York, they just move there based on a complex set of values (proximity to Manhattan/subway lines, amount of space, sociability of neighborhood denizens, demographic makeup of the building, etc.) and you should not be proud of where you're living unless you've done some nice things with your apartment. Also, you should probably get a job, it would either make your art better or convince you that it sucks. And both are fine with me. And, finally, the neighborhood merited an article like this maybe two years ago, and has since spread even farther. That the Times is behind the curve is unsurprising; that they were able to find a chode of this magnitude (the reportedly quite nice Mr. Travis Harrison, who seems to be having fun with the whole thing, aside) to say this crap is just mind-boggling. posted by Mike B. at 2:18 PM 0 comments
Friday, June 17, 2005
It's Friday, so a few random notes. - Joan Jett and the Blackhearts' "You Don't Know What You've Got" is probably the best song anywhere ever. I thought it was on Bubblegum Machine, which woulda been nice because they archive everything, but no such luck. It's fantastic though. - We are now of the opinion that Katie Couric and Matt Lauer play industrial shows in their spare time. (Rumor has it that Matt is the man behind Pigface, but these are nebulous.) Katie is the drunken skeeze of a manager stumbling around the bar and accosting people who just came in to use the bathroom, Matt dresses in business casual and drinks motor oil and spits it on the audience. Dude is fucking hardcore. I mainly imagine them doing this in 169 Bar, for some reason. - Excerpt from a Publisher's Weekly interview with Klosterman that ties in nicely to my riff on A Supposedly Fun Thing below. *********** PW: Are there any rock journalists who have had particular influence on you? Lester Bangs seems like a natural reference point. CK: The first time I ever read anything by Lester Bangs is when my first book was compared to him. I used to read Spin and Rolling Stone growing up, but I was never that interested in rock critics. I think there are some rock critics who are great writers, some of the smartest people I've met, but I don't feel like they've influenced me in any way. I feel a little weird saying that, though, because it sounds arrogant. PW: So who has influenced you? CK: David Foster Wallace seems to be one of the only writers able to be very intellectual, almost overtly academic and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time. *** (thanks George) posted by Mike B. at 5:08 PM 0 comments
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Oh...well, OK, I do have a free moment here. Total number of books I own: Actually, all the books I own (bar like 10) are currently in boxes, and I'm going to take them all out this weekend, so were I that sort of guy, I could count them. But I'm not, so I won't. I did just buy 3 bookcases, if that helps. I guess somewhere around 300? I have more CDs than I do books, but that is because a) people do not send me free books (sadly!), and b) CDs are much smaller. I have to actively restrain myself from buying books these days, just because I know I'll be moving, on average, once every two years until I'm in my 30s, and books are goddamned heavy. There are always libraries. One day I would like to have a permanent residence and nice bookshelves, but for now, I'll take what I can get. Five books that had a big influence on me: The Public Burning, Robert Coover. I'm hesitant to recommend this to people because it is very long and the real payoff isn't until the very end. But that ending, good lord, it's the single best ending of anything ever, and given how well this fits in with my general worldview and obsessions, it's hard to conceive of The Public Burning being bumped from the top of my favorite-books list anytime soon. For all the times that Coover doesn't work, goes too far, relies on his schtick, here it all comes together, and I can't help but think the reason is his subject: politics. Few things in our contemporary culture, including entertainment (which is too self-conscious), reflect the postmodern absurdist aesthetic better than politics, and when Coover fuses this broad view with the narrow personal vision of Nixon, who narrates half the book, it gets closer to what politics is all about than most public policy books ever will. He embraces historicism but is writing close enough to the events concerned to imbue the whole affair with the kind of fire you don't usually get from what's essentially historical fiction. Maybe the very nature of mass culture, of making the distant struggles of individuals into a story shared by all and experienced in something close to real time, allows us to write books about public events in the same way we would write about family struggles. Or maybe not. Maybe this is just an anomaly. But it's a great one, and it serves as a possibility, an example of what could be. Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem. More for personal reasons than artistic ones, and there's a strong possibility I should replace this with something older and/or more embarassing--the Chronicles of Narnia, The Tao of Pooh, the Hitchhiker's "trilogy," something by Arendt or Rawls, etc.--but it makes the list anyway, even though I can't quite articulate why. The Wheel of Love, Joyce Carol Oates. My introduction to the short story, it resonated especially well with the area where I grew up--I read "Four Summers" and I know exactly what parks, lakes, picnic tables, boats, and people she's talking about. This is arguably a negative influence, because I now do the kind of tragic, breath-held melodrama she specializes in best, to the detriment of other styles, but so it goes. Still a terrific collection from the literary world's Robert Pollard. The Aesthetics of Rock, Richard Meltzer. Part 1 of why this blog exists. In fairness, it should be also noted that I read this after graduating from college, where one of my key classes in my last semester was a comedy class, and there are a bunch of things there that would make the list if they were books, and indeed, one day Rabelais and His World or that other Bakhtin book whose name escapes me might make this list instead. But for now, it's the Meltzer, because more than anyone else, he was able to write academically while not losing the tone of his subject, plus I was mature enough to recognize that aping his style was a dead end. It's got the denseness of a good pop song, has a sort of sensual pleasure componant when you're just reading-reading, and busts open possibilities that are still unexplored. I can understand why in the rock-crit canon Meltzer is "that guy who isn't Lester or Christgau, what'd he write again?" but maybe that's OK. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace. Part 2 of why this blog exists. I'm curious to see if this (our?) generation gets pegged as being Wallace's children, but it's clear his post-irony doctrine, his uneasy embrace of pop culture, and his quest for sincerity in the context of cool--all of which predates Eggers, by the by--are the watchwords of the ascendent crop of cultural commentators and artists. Certainly popism is just Wallacism that's acheived escape velocity and has finally managed to get past the self-consciousness, more or less. I feel this is the best of Dave's books, and yes, I know, Infinite Jest, but while it's certainly fantastic, it's sort of the Blueberry Boat to ASFTINDA's Gallowsbird's Bark, to get all blog-centric for a second. If it included "Tense Present" it would be completely perfect, but you can't have everything. I think my voice on this blog is, if anything, a little too Wallace-inflected, but I like that he's given me license to do that. He's just a fantastic writer, about almost anything, and his vastness of spirit is exhilerating. This comes through best in his non-fiction, and this is a great collection of it. Last book I bought: Somewhat embarassingly, David Kamp and Steven Daly's The Rock Snob*s Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Rockological Knowledge, which is pretty good, but still. Last book I read for the first time: Even more embarassingly, Jeff Chang's Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, which I've discussed previously. But before that it was The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, I swear. Five other bloggers to tag with this meme: Uh, geez, I dunno. How about Chris, once he gets back from Cali, Joe, because I'd like to know (Ayn Rand, I hear?), Mwanji, to get him writing, Cyn, unless she's done it already, and Abby. Wait, did I really say "a free moment"? Jeez... posted by Mike B. at 11:09 AM 0 comments
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Since we were talking about UG and all, I might mention that this post is very charming in its way. Also, she has alerted me to the fact that my former obsession, my great love, my destructive passion, Anytime, now has an East Village location that inexplicably delivers to my office! I ate there almost every night for a period when I was living in Bushwick, and now they can solve all my lunch woes. Mmm, lunch woes. posted by Mike B. at 11:40 AM 0 comments
Incidentally, this blog now intends to drop all previous obsessions and devote itself full-time to getting Kelly Clarkson to cover "Gigantic" on her next album. It's a great song, she'd sing the hell out of it, and it'd piss off all the right people. And then the IHYWYP dude could do a remix. Or not. But he should cover that song, too. posted by Mike B. at 11:16 AM 0 comments
If you are in the new york city area, your favorite band and mine, I Hate You When You're Pregnant, is playing a loft party with the somewhat less-exciting Japanther (and the unknown-to-me Jetomi) at 9pm. The address is apparently 440 Lafayette, 2nd Floor, in the borough of Manhattan, and the charge is $5. I am going to try to be there, cause hey, pink speedos, but I also had a bit of a rough day yesterday, so who knows. Listen to Gary Sinese. (Which I've posted before, yes.) LISTEN TO IT! GARY SINEEEEEEEEESE!!! posted by Mike B. at 11:01 AM 0 comments
Monday, June 13, 2005
Just to add a few things to Matthew's post about the Maxi Geil show: I've been a believer for a while, but with this show I now know the best way to bring people around. The album's good, but if they keep playing live shows like this, they're going to get a rabid fanbase in no time flat. They're just really, really good at getting people to dance, and given that you couldn't really hear the lyrics very well, that just leaves a whole other world to explore once you get the CD. It should be noted that Guy's outfit was super-yacht club, tight khakis and a navy blazer, with standard black dress shoes. This didn't really fit in with the Maxi character but worked amazingly well to highlight the dancing, which was especially impressive given that he held a drink in his hand for the entire gig. Super-classy, super-smooth. Get yourself to these shows now, while they're still small. Trust me on this. posted by Mike B. at 11:29 AM 0 comments
Friday, June 10, 2005
I haven't linked it before because I wasn't particularly proud of it, but nevertheless, here is my Nikka Costa review from Flagpole (alla way at the bottom), which upon reflection is actually sorta good. Or, at least, there's a good zinger at the end. posted by Mike B. at 12:27 PM 0 comments
Whoa. "Losing My Edge" but with every reference linked to an MP3. See, kids, this is why we love the internet... posted by Mike B. at 11:23 AM 0 comments
Thursday, June 09, 2005
A thread on ILM about Ultragrrrl that starts out horrendous and gets fairly good--for the good part, please scroll down, past the multiple postings of the picture of someone falling off a motorcycle--and is well worth reading if you've ever been worried that you care too much about hipsters. (Caring about hipsters so much that you regularly express your hate of hipsters counts, by the way.) A few quick bits before I get into the main thrust: 1) Jaymc said that Jessica Hopper is a scenester! He's gonna get his ass whupped. 2) As far as I can tell, the only reason Nick Sylvester's been so successful is because of his taut bod and face that could cut glass, to say nothing of his dreamy eyes. Whenever I see him, I just want to lick him and assign him articles, and the fact that I've done neither is simply a testament to my cowardice. 3) Marissa does not serve her argument well by saying "the men of ILM," given that really very few regular posters seemed to be supporting the virulantly anti-ultragrrrl line. I think the point made later about "music dicks" being basically the male equivlent of scenesterism, and that dickitude being in full effect on ILM, was a better way of going at things. 4) I back Miss Clap's theory that everyone on TV should be pretty, so her being on VH1 is fine with me. Male rock critics should put more effort into their appearance. If it's good enough for Prince, it's good enough for you, buster. I don't really care much about UG one way or the other, but maybe this is because I don't have cable and don't read Spin; her blog these days seems to primarily consist of party flyers and promotional pictures, and since I tend to read blogs for the writing, I just pass over it all. It's hard to ascribe the more extreme hatred directed toward her as anything besides, at best, bitterness, and at worst something much more icky. Certainly if I were to pick something to really hate, she'd be very far down the list, but we all know my ambivalent feelings toward hipsters. ("Anything that gets you laid is hard to argue with," basically.) But as to what she represents--Mis-shapes, Lit, NYC scenesters, all that--I can certainly register a hearty pang of disappointment. There's no denying that they appear to be having fun, and that all signs indicate they are, in fact, having fun. This simple fact goes a long way toward explaining the bitterness--I can cycle through theoretical explanations for the love of artistic suffering all day, but in the end people are going to hate you a lot more if you're having a great time than if you're miserable. (Note, for instance, how criticism of Conor Oberst always ends up couched in the high volume of poontang he's getting and/or his alcoholism being an affectation; his theatrical misery is not genuine, because if it was, the hatred would seem mean-spirited.) But having fun is great! Fun is the way you should experience music, because that's the heart of its appeal, at first if not always. In the abstract--having great parties with your friends and listening to music you love--sounds wonderful. There's nothing wrong per se with the way these folks are experiencing music, and given the overserious way most music fans seem to approach their passion, it's nice to see someone determined not to take it (or herself) too seriously, even if there's something offputting about the "I made out with so-and-so," the exhibitionism seeming to put the focus on the writer rather than the music. But even this, really, isn't so bad--the writer is really the listener, and the listener is the ultimate focus of the music, right? What's disappointing, then--and this is why I say disappointing rather than maddening or enhatenating as some might--is the music this otherwise admirable approach is applied to. Now, I know this might end up sounding like "their problem is that they don't share my impeccable taste," but, as others have said, I certainly don't dislike most Ultragrrl bands; I'm too lazy to check, but one of not both of Franz Ferdinand and the Killers made my top-10 last year, and I've always been vocal in my affection for the Strokes and Interpol, even if certain others (the Bravery, the Arcade Fire) have passed me by. But they just don't seem like the funnest choices to organize a scene around. The Scissor Sisters, Europop, neo-disco, shit, gimme a fuckin' 80s night. Hell, I really liked the electroclash scene, even as I recognized that I just didn't have the style to fully participate. But as much as I like Interpol, are they really the band that's gonna get me good and pumped up when the DJ throws 'em on? Not so much. Of course, as you know, I've never really seen the transcendence in post-punk. It seems, though, that ending up with these bands as a focus is an inevitable result of the methodology at play, with scenesters liking bands that are themselves scenestery. This doesn't necessarily disqualify those kinds of bands--again, I like not a few of 'em--but it does seem to tragically narrow the scope of inquiry, and given that--due to the retarded obliviousness of A&R folks, who I'll blame this on long before I blame it on Ultragrrrl et al--this is the kind of music that tends to get pushed toward the mainstream, that's really too bad. In other words, I wouldn't mind at all being part of this whole deal, I just can't muster the enthusiasm for the bands they do, and it's mystifying, in the end, why you would want to. Well, I suppose that's not entirely true. There's something odious about scenesters, and I'm actually thinking primarily of the straight dudes here. It's the sense of false camraderie, of achingly low standards, of coolness rather than passion--they're just not very fun to hang out with. And really, having a group of friends where you're all that much alike seems really weird. I mean, I want to hang out with other liberal arts grad as much as the next hipster, but do there really need to be more than 2 music geeks in any given group? Do you all have to be artists? Can't some of you be holding down day jobs and really interested in literature? Can't there be people who watch a lot of TV? Can't we all just hang out at a cheap, dirty bar and get drunk and flail around to whatever the DJ's playing instead? I hang out with them, and, you know, maybe I'm just too weird, or maybe I'm not being social enough, but good god, they're boring. Gimme a call when you're doing a DJ night that will be guaranteed to include Prince and George Michael. If we're going to act like we're in middle school, can we at least have the kind of awesomely pop-centric dances we had back then, too? Shit, I'll get dressed up stupid and go to a difficult club if I know I'm gonna hear music that'll justify the beer prices, and I don't mean italo-disco. (Which, god bless it, but still.) I know all y'all DJs want it to be like we're at a rave in England in 1991, but we're not, so shut up and play some fucking pop music. The whole thing is disappointing because the promise that I felt back in 2001 seems to have coalesced into everyone liking the same four or five bands in any given week--every blog's got an MP3, every mailing list's got a gig posting. And that's not what I'm here for, people. Variety is what I'm looking for, because I am a creature of pop, and I have a voracious appetite. Give me more! More and more and more! posted by Mike B. at 2:45 PM 0 comments
You think A&R would be a fun thing to do, but then you end up listening to a Freddie Jackson album real close to see if the mixes sound plausibly final. Yoinks. Is there a genre called drone-thrash, and if so, can I listen to some now, please? posted by Mike B. at 1:03 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Oh my god, people, System of a Down! They're so good! I know this is my latent metal-ism speaking up, but wow! So fun! They're like the Darkness, except working with 80s speed medal instead of 70s cock-rock! I can't even pin down why I like them so much, but I listen to them really loud on the train and I smile and I bop my head! Mezmerize is just such a good album! They're going slow and then they're going reallyfast and at first he's singing in a nice normal voice and then he's singing in this hilarious silly voice and they're all Eastern European and you less want to mosh and more put on bandannas and dance around a fire! And maybe find a tuba! And play that tuba! Wow! So good! Tuba! Yow! posted by Mike B. at 1:18 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Look: YOUR COMPLAINTS ARE CRAZY This tracklist is insane. I mean, just check out this run: "Hey Jealousy," Gin Blossoms "My Sister," the Juliana Hatfield Three "Whatta Man," Salt-N-Pepa "Back & Forth," Aaliyah "If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)," Me'Shell NdegéOcello "Freedom of '76," Ween "Cut Your Hair," Pavement "God," Tori Amos "MMM MMM MMM MMM," Crash Test Dummies I MEAN COME ON. posted by Mike B. at 6:14 PM 0 comments
Friday, June 03, 2005
We wanted to see Kung Fu Hustle last night, but that was sold out, so instead we saw--and this really was the best available choice--House of Wax. We'd been pretty excited to see it back upon release, but the reviews had been so very very bad that we stayed away. But that was the wrong decision, because the movie was remarkably good. Sure, the setup is ridiculous and badly-acted, and Paris was just a mistake, but everything else is really well done--scary, well-designed, well-paced. Basically, once they hit the main town, which happens about 20 minutes in, everything's good. It was also especially scary and nicely gory, both of which I hadn't really been getting from my horror movies of late. So keep your expectations low, but I think you'll be pleased. ADDENDUM: The movie has now been converted to chart form, by me, over at The Face Knife. I do not quite match Todd's level of style ("don't try and pick the wax off" v. "choke a bitch"), but I do make a joke about Paris Hilton and probably misquote something from the beginning of the movie. Zing! Take that, Paris Hilton-slash-movie screenwriter! posted by Mike B. at 11:36 AM 0 comments
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Here's the review, cross-posted for the lazy. I put back in a thing or two, because hey, blog. ****************** The fact that Paul Morley's Words and Music: A History of Pop in the Shape of a City (University of Georgia Press, Athens, 2005) has already been embraced by music geeks around the globe should come as no surprise. The book's aim to make its creator into the Lester Bangs of his generation, a position currently, and unfortunately, held by Simon Reynolds (perhaps the best argument yet for why Lester's death did his reputation nothing but good), is self-apparent, from a section devoted to why he is the best music writer ever to the laughably enormous scope of his musical references to the stylistic experimentation that would seem to be a requirement for any "serious" book of rock criticism. But, to his credit, all these are explained or explainable. The "Greatest of All Time" thing is winning and ultimately self-effacing while still being cocky, a reflection of our desire for music writers to be a nerd variant on the rockstar persona. The abundance of references and lists is fully explained at the end as an endless and ultimately futile attempt to map our world, to reduce the totality to a comprehensible scale, even if the explanation doesn't really hold water. And the style is a gamble that pays off in full. Words and Music, published in England in 2003, but only recently issued domestically by the University of Georgia Press, purports to be an investigation into the connections between two pieces of music: Alvin Lucier's experimental art-music composition "I Am Sitting in a Room" and Kylie Minogue's electro-pop masterpiece "Can't Get You Out of My Head," all within the narrative framework of a automobile trip to "a history of pop in the shape of a city," as the subtitle puts it. Morley admits up front that this framework is likely to break down, and it's no giant whoop when it does, but nevertheless, he manages to stay remarkably coherent while wedging in such great diversions as: a complete, albeit selective, timeline of the Earth's existence (arguably the book's highlight); a list of other possible song pairings the book could have been based on; and a great interview Morley did with Jarvis Cocker. (I must admit I skipped over the Fad Gadget liner notes, though.) He does this by also including great investigations into the high-art context of "Room" and Minogue's own career as a triumphalist narrative, to say nothing of his own (nearly failed) audition as Minogue's biographer. Morley's point, if I had to pick just one, is about the way the seemingly simple and limited world of a pop song is actually immensely complex. He does prove, sort of, that Minogue's song is related to Lucier's, and that particular reduction is useful, as are the endless connections he draws. But the best feature of Words and Music is the way Morley manages to declare so much (but leave even more up in the air) by constantly doubting himself and showing where things in the book itself could have gone differently, presenting it as simply one option among many, de-canonizing the text. (He even admits he may not have actually heard "I Am Sitting In a Room"!) This playfulness is a breath of fresh air in the accuracy-obsessed, self-righteous, geeky world of rock criticism, and by itself says a lot more about pop music than many critics' entire corpora. Morley's book is both a failure and a triumph because it reflects everything music writing currently is and represents much of what it could become. On the one hand, it is frustratingly obsessed with historicism over engagement with the work at hand, lazily using mentions of often obscure songs or groups in place of real description to make shallow critical comparisons. The book is too tied up with the past to apply its passion to what other people are passionate about, and too tied up in similarity to really examine the differences. But at the same time, it insists on taking pop music (as explicitly opposed to rock music) seriously, which requires the playfulness Morley does so well. For every eruption of cynicism, there are countless moments of optimism; for every failure to address pop as music in the same manner as the Lucier piece (in contrast to the intense technical focus on "Room," Morley's description of the genesis of "Head" is almost mystical); and for every misunderstanding of the pop pleasure principle, there's a wonderful recognition of the importance of context. To a critic, the peculiar triumph of pop music is that it expresses amazingly complex ideas in ways with which other people actively desire to engage, and it's one of the particular joys of criticism to parse these ideas, to draw them out and make connections and express them in one's own language. The form of criticism Morley's pointing toward is modeled after pop, which is to say it's both all-inclusive and endlessly energized; a hallmark of traditional rock criticism is the latter, and pop criticism has slowly engulfed the former by broadening its scope. However, often when it swings towards the energy of Bangs, it too easily embraces his inheritors' restrictive rage. We can and will find a way to talk about pop the way it talks about itself, in a voice that never limits and only enables. So what do we want? Something that, instead of trying to distill pop's purity of essence, seeks its endless expansion; something that internalizes the lessons of the poststructuralist theorists its more highbrow adherents constantly reference, accepting their invitations to play. Something that is not merely a slowly decaying grumble about its practitioners' inability to rouse themselves in their middle age to the chemically-induced summits of yore and instead seeks to understand the pleasures of the new young on their own terms by refusing the temptations of doubt and too-quick dismissal. Something that doesn't settle for the shallow, automatically-generated critiques inherited from our rockcrit forebears, dusted off and mapped onto an unwilling new context. Something not only as pleasurable as pop, but as intelligent, a criticism worthy of its subject. Words and Music is an incomplete roadmap, but it takes us a little closer to where we want to go. posted by Mike B. at 10:53 AM 0 comments
There's certainly no reason not to read all of the Flagpole reviews this week, since not only are there two of mine (Weezer and Fannypack), but also two from Hillary, one from Chris, and a few other good ones. You will also find my review of Paul Morley's Words and Music. It's a decent length and well worth reading, although I get a little manifestoy. My favorite line got cut, oh well. Since I'm unclear how many people clickthrough to the f-pole, from this blog at least, I may copy and paste that as a separate post. We'll see. posted by Mike B. at 10:41 AM 0 comments
|
|