Thursday, March 03, 2005
From the frighteningly exhaustive Joy Division FAQ: On the bootleg "Girls Don't Cry", recorded during a Cure concert on May 24 1980, Robert Smith introduces the song "Primary" by saying: "This song is dedicated...to the memory of Ian Curtis". Robert Smith said, at that time, that Ian's suicide prevented his own. Damnit, Robert, why couldn't you have been a little bit faster then?
posted by Mike B. at 5:15 PM
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Glad as I always am to see Mommy & Daddy trashed, what the hell is "faux cowbell"? Is that like a synthesized cowbell, i.e. the cowbell sound on a drum machine or keyboard? "Faux" doesn't seem right for that, somehow. Are we just trying to emphasize the general faux-badness of the group by saying "faux" a lot? Is it a way of saying "fake" without being so obvious about it? I'm genuinely confused. Also, am I part of "pop criticism's reigning PC police"? Awesome! I had no idea we were, like, reigning! I just thought we were having wanky little self-contained circular arguments in a small corner of the internet. Well all right then! It's a good thing the writer is oppressed, otherwise he would not feel so good about writing music reviews. Wshew!
posted by Mike B. at 3:04 PM
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Shorter version of my MIA argument: if you reduce her music to a political statement, that statement is kinda stupid, at least insofar as most people seeking to analyze music as politics are only interested in policy-position messages or general grandstanding hoo-ha and miss the more complex and interesting political messages conveyed by the music as a whole etc. oh awesome Cher's "If I Could Turn Back Time" is on! What was I saying? Oh yeah. So the problem is if you reduce MIA to a political statement, it's a stupid one, as would be the case for almost all good pop songs. But the music itself, to say nothing of the lyrics, are adamently not stupid. It's the equivalent of taking a meal, adding up how much each ingrediant cost, and assessing its worth that way, rather than by how it, y'know, tastes. And this isn't even getting into the icky idea that Arular exists to make the public aware of the situation in Sri Lanka. Save me from the horrors of pop-music-as-PSA, please. We owe it more than that. As linked in a comment below, more on politics in art here.
posted by Mike B. at 1:19 PM
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For some reason, I've been reading old New Yorkers lately. Right now I'm working through the 5/13/02 issue, and the first TOTT piece, by Louis Menand, is called " Silly Ideas" and is about Harris Mirkin, the professor who wrote a pro-pedophilia article that resulted in the Missouri legislature pulling funding from the state university he works for. It also, in addition to being one of the most concise, smart summations of the sensible position on academic-freedom debates I've read (and thus applicable pretty much every time such an issue arises--see especially the first paragraph in regards to the recent blowup about the "little Eichmanns" dude), contains a line that should be tatooed onto every critics' forearm, as far as I'm concerned: Subversiveness is acceptable as a by-product of scholarly inquiry; but it is unworthy as a goal. For "scholarly inquiry," I think you can substitute "cultural production" without diminishing the accuracy of the statement.
posted by Mike B. at 10:53 AM
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Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Last night's Gilmore Girls: discuss. Did they end the breakup too soon? Will they break back up? Was the Emily thing resolved too neatly? Is the Emily thing resolved now, more or less, or am I just assuming wrongly? Also: Lane! And more Rory hoochitude! From the preview, looks like next week she's gonna make ol' prepster jealous, which was totally unexpected from my end.
posted by Mike B. at 10:43 AM
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Every review in Flagpole this week is by someone named "Michael" or "Chad Radford." Awesome! Well, three of the ones by "Michael" are by a Michael named me: Bellafea, T.I., and Fiery Furnaces. (Thanks, Chris, for not running all my hip-hop reviews in the same issue and making me look like a dingus.) As stated sometime previously, I love Bellafea so very very very much. You should seriously buy this EP, because you will fall in love as well, or at least enjoy yourself while listening to it. And the Fiery Furnaces' EP I liked a lot more than I thought I would, given that I'd heard most of the songs before--damn thing's got a flow! In the T.I. review I bring up the concept of "background crunk" and then just let it sit there. So, um, pick it up and run with it if you can. ADDENDUM: When, in the review of EP, I write: "if you play some of them before British pop songs, they sound the same!" The songs I'm referring to are "Single Again" and Rachel Stevens' "Negotiate With Love," whose intros are weirdly similar in all sorts of ways. Which I won't explore, of course, because lord knows I don't like to analyze the Fiery Furances too much.
posted by Mike B. at 10:06 AM
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Two things I've learned from recent debates: 1) If you're arguing with a bunch of book lovers, don't tell them, while arguing a larger, arguably more reasonable point, that TV is a more important art form than literature. You will get called a "cocksucker." 2) If you're arguing with a bunch of rock critics, don't call them, while arguing a larger, arguably more reasonable point, essentially a bunch of narrow-minded wankers. You will get called a "cock." This would all be different if I were trolling, but I'm not. I actually believe this crap! Well, therein lies my downfall. Also, being generally in a bad mood for some reason. So those are my lessons learned from arguing on the internet. And we all know what that's like, don't we? Share your message-board/mailing-list war stories, if you care to. If not, go eat some bacon. Bacon don't talk back. Bacon loves you.
posted by Mike B. at 10:00 AM
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Tuesday, March 01, 2005
ILM thread in progress about Christgau's MIA articles, which are more or less responses to the Reynolds article. Because I respect your desire not to read ILM, here's what I wrote by way of response: The article takes a sort of interesting "third way" approach--focusing on the authenticity/legitimacy of her political position instead of her persona, and he does actually address the album itself, albeit in a not particularly interesting way. Still, I'm not entirely happy we're STILL focusing on the goddamned political content of the album, nor am I entirely convinced that an engagement with Sri Lankan history is necessary to fully experience Arular. Maybe this is the over-educated politics major in me talking, but it's not that hard to grasp the outlines of the conflict, and that's all that's really necessary to know what's going on, since MIA's project is broader than that one situation. But a response to Reynolds' piece was highly necessary, so yay. I'm also not entirely convinced of the accuracy of his interpretation, but we can leave that for later. And, agreed that the quotes are very, very useful if we want to continue this discussion. Sins of the father etc.
posted by Mike B. at 5:32 PM
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So I'm not quite sure how I think about this. If you're wondering exactly what I'm wondering about, well, it's the first line: I’m going to hell anyway, so I may as well come out and say what you’d be thinking if you sat all the way through Tori Amos’ career from Y Kant Tori Read to The Beekeeper: the only way that we’re going to get a good album from her in this day and age is if someone has the decency to abduct and kill her daughter. Now, I've probably made some variation of this comment at some point in my life, maybe even more than once. And I recognize that it's meant in jest, and lord knows I'm OK with offensive humor. But it still rubs me the wrong way for some reason. Maybe part of it is what the author said in this ILM thread: Q: Dom, what earthly reason do you have for starting your review like that?
A: 300% readership increase. Welcome to capitalism. Uh, yeah dude, capitalism. I don't think that's quite the word you're looking for. I think the issue here is not that what he said is offensive, but that it's wrong, as in inaccurate, and while I'm always OK with wrong, funny, offensive things used to make some sort of point, here the point isn't followed up on, and he's admitting that the whole thing is purely self-serving, which makes it way more icky. The simple fact is, there are much better reasons for Tori's musical decline than a simple lack of tragedy in her life, as becomes abundantly clear from just the first few chapters of the book she just put out: the lady's insulated herself from criticism. Plus, the only good song directly influenced by a particular tragedy is "Me & A Gun"--"Spark" kinda sucks, and the two albums not directly following harrowing events are the best, Under the Pink and Boys For Pele. The problem isn't a lack of bad things happening, it's the support structure she's developed, which seems to be a wee bit too nuturing for there to be real artistic growth. Now, you could have taken this statement--which is, indeed, an exaggerated version of what presumably more than a few Tori fans have thought in their darker moments--and, instead of simply letting it sit there as fact, pointed out the ways Tori herself invites these kind of critiques. She's built her career and public image around being a sort of arbiter and resevoir of grief. She even says in the book that she's like her preacher father, who she recalls as spending a lot of his time dealing with death, consoling loved ones, presiding over funerals, etc. She calls it "holding a space," and says, "it's one I have to find in performance, when people are bringing their grief to me in a similar way." Eww! But Tori, you're not a preacher, and it's not one-on-one. (And I've been to the motherfucking meet-and-greets. Still not one-on-one, I'm sorry.) You're a goddamned pop star. So yes, what I'm saying is that these are expectations that Tori hasn't done anything to deflate, that she has, in fact, encouraged them by everything she's done. True, she's never talked about her miscarriages to the extent that she does in the book, but that's even worse--she just gave us a general overview, "this album was about my miscarriage," without filling in the more human details. While in the early albums there was a strength to it, an ownership to the grief, by the time Choirgirl came around it started to feel a little, well, exhibitionistic. Now, I'm not going to put the blame for this solely on Tori. The fact is, we encourage our musicians, especially women, to be exhibitionistic about their grief, to sell it to us, to reflect our own ideas of escalated sadness. There are economic incentives to commodify your tragedy, and that Tori did it is not surprising, especially given how well she did it at first, how transcendently. But by continuing to do it, she just perpetuated this idea of suffering as artistic worth, and this is an idea that's caused all sorts of problems for all sorts of artists, successful and, worse, unsuccessful. It's one of the most repulsive things about art, to me, and it's one of the reasons I'm so anti-tragedy. (And, coincidentally, anti-Arcade Fire, but again, only one of the reasons.) So by beginning the review in this way and by failing to follow up on it, Passantino commits essentially the same sin as Amos herself: he validates this idea of suffering-as-worth, sacrificing his good sense for purely self-interested reasons, and allows it to perpetuate rather than challenging it, putting its feet to the fire, and this, ultimately, is why I think the whole thing makes me feel icky. As one commenter said (and you have to filter out all the Tori-fan blather, you just can't help those people), it does feel a bit Pitchforky.
posted by Mike B. at 12:11 PM
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Monday, February 28, 2005
A co-worker just came up to me and asked, "Do you like indie? Do you have the Garden State soundtrack? Or Death Cab For Cutie? Or the Postal Service?" No, I said; I don't like that kind of indie. "What kind of indie is that?" Good question! I'd go with "folky indie," but is that even accurate? Surely we can come up with a better and/or more insulting name for it if we try.
posted by Mike B. at 5:53 PM
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Hey, have you read Anthony's transcriptions of Fred Durst sex-raps yet? You should. Sample line: "Down beneath the hairy is a chocolate covered cherry..WOO! Scary! Soggy Frankenberry!"
posted by Mike B. at 12:13 PM
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I'm offering this without comment, because I'm afraid "the people" would rise up and overthrow me and this blog would become naught but a parade of harangues against the state (as opposed to harangues against music critics), but I will say that it sounds so much like something Harm would write parodically that I'm sort of worried. We the HipHop community of Athens, Georgia have been fighting the media here in Athens since our re-emergence in 2000. We have been constantly misquoted, under-researched and basically neglected by the major Athens publications. The article in today's Red and Black (Feb. 24 '05) by Todd Zeigler, the assistant variety editor although good in its content just did not do Dreaded MindZ Family (DMZ Family) or the HipHop Community of Athens justice. I Montu Miller, Dreaded MindZ Family Chief Administrator will attempt to fill in the blanks and make necessary corrections to better inform the Red and Black staff as well as the students of the University of Georgia.
The first major mistake was advertising to the UGA community that Ishues will be performing with First Team at Tasty World tonight (Feb.24 '05). The DMZ Family press release sent to the Red and Black on February 20TH specifically states there will be a Dirty South Dancehall, celebrating the Caribbean roots of HipHop with a traditional Dancehall with toasting instead of Emceeing (Ishues was not mentioned anywhere on the press release). Now that over 30 thousand students have seen this article we will have to change plans to include Ishues in someway. People will be expecting to hear Ishues because they read it in the Red and Black and we try to never disappoint the community. This is not the first time an event has had to change due to the media's lack of research. Secondly, with proper research it should have been stated that HipHop has many elements and is not limited to the few that were covered. What culture has a hand full of elements that make it up? At least mention all the essential elements: (1) DJing (2) Emceeing (3) Graf Art (4) Breaking (5) Knowledge (The peoples experiences). The article forgot to mention Graf Art which is imperative to HipHop preservation. With proper research this could have been avoided. Lastly, we the HipHop community of Athens will not get use to not getting the respect we have earned and deserve. Like the rest of the world Athens still refuses to acknowledge HipHop as a living-viable culture. Would the japanese, russian or british cultures be covered in such a side note fashion? No I do not think they would, especially coming from a supposedly top-notch research 1 institution publication. It's wrong to spell any culture with a lowercase, HipHop is no different. That's usually how the HipHop community can recognize who accepts us as our own culture and those who push us to the side as a subculture that just branched off from Americanism.
We the HipHop community of Athens would like to know when a well researched, well organized and informative HipHop article will run in the Red and Black? We just want to be apart of the whole like most of the other cultures of Athens, Georgia. Stop treating us like your distant cousins when we are your brothers and sisters. The time has come to do more than minimum research and rushing out an article to fill space. We would rather receive the respect we deserve whole-heartily or not be covered at all. This year Athens will host a HipHop Conference at the Continuing Education Building sponsored by the College Language Association, Athens HipHop Weekend and various other nationally promoted events. Athens HipHop is nationally-known, yet our home media outlets still only scrap the surface to cover our community.
We greatly appreciate and respect all the work of the Red and Black editors, writers and staff. Just getting HipHop covered has been a battle, so we really do thank Todd Zeigler and the Red and Black for the kind words and front cover pictures in the Out and About section. With time, energy and effort we believe one day an article will run in the Red and Black that will satisfy both the Red and Black and the HipHop community of Athens. Athens HipHop reflects the vast plethora of people, places and things throughout the whole community, we are the consciousness of the people...We were here before 2000 and We will be here as long as Athens still stands...I do not speak for the whole Athens HipHop community for that would be impossible, but I do speak for the Dreaded MindZ Family, a large Family of HipHop leaders in the Athens HipHop community. HipHop hasn't Stopped-Can't stop and Won't Stop no matter what obstacles stand in our path.
Montu Miller,
Dreaded MindZ Family Chief Administrator and HipHop Community ActivistThe Underground Community of Athens Georgia is dedicated to Unity, Justice and Upliftment for all members of the Community...We will not rest until all are Unified, Liberated and (Re)Educated...Anyone here to assist in our struggle we welcome with open arms...Anyone here to get in our way be ready to fight to the death...Free Athens Georgia from corporate imperialism!!!Revolution Now!!!
Do you Yahoo!?Yahoo! Sports - Sign up for Fantasy Baseball. Can someone write an "I Used To Love Her" except about undie, please?
posted by Mike B. at 11:26 AM
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