So the latest issue of Magnet finally arrived - it seemed like people were talking about it, and the Robyn Hitchcock cover, for about a month before it showed up - and the CD accompanying the issue features two tracks with the most annoying vocals I've heard for quite some time. First up on the CD is Kimberlee (who has a truly horrible website as well)...and you know those proverbial scenes in operas wherein the heroine is singing full-throatedly away, even though she's been stabbed, shot, or otherwise near-fatally injured? Kimberlee sounds like the singer from an R&B opera who's just been strangled...only the producers went for realism, and asked her to sound as if she had in fact just been strangled.
Elsewhere on the CD (which also features a nice vocal performance from Robert Smith with Junkie XL, a track by Whirlaway called "Strangeplanes" which should be called "Stuck Inside an Effects Box with the Gazing at My Shoes Blues Again," and my faves the Wrens) we're subjected to an eccentric performance by the singer of a group confusingly named The Clouds - confusingly, because just a month or so back, antipopper posted a couple tracks by '90s Sydney band The Clouds. And I remember rather liking them, so when I heard this batch of Clouds, whose singer seems to be emulating Daniel Smith of Danielson Famile, but without the charm or control, I was confused... Come up with your own name, dammit!
(Note to my early morning readers: I do not in fact know of any operas in which illicit narcotics vocalize. I do, however, know that I can't spell early in the morning.)
2.27.2004
2.20.2004
avert your eyes, junior!
2.19.2004
thinking inside the litterbox
So, has anyone else noticed that percussion bit (played with brushes) on the Cure's "Lovecats" sounds exactly like a cat skritching its paws in a litterbox?
2.15.2004
thinking outside the boxxx
In a development that should surprise no one, the Pazz & Jop poll put Outkast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below as best album of 2003. In a development that, alas, should surprise no one, that result - combined with the fact that many critics who included Outkast in their lists named no other hip-hop/R&B titles - has led to a shitstorm of accusations, innuendo, grumbling, and (relatively rare) thoughtful analysis of why this is. (Most of you probably know that both the Jersey City Journal and Intellectual House o' Pancakes have extensive debates online, with many of the same participants - including myself, whose contributions I'd hope fall under "thoughtful analysis" but which you are free to recategorize...) The ILX site, however, found its debate initiated by some bozo who posted what amounts to a Nixonesque Enemies' List of such critics. I'm not sure what the purpose of this is, but the writer's choice of caption - "Tokenism-a-go-go" - goes a long way toward explaining it.
Here's my view: while it might indeed be the case that some people (critics, and actual people) like Outkast only because they're "supposed" to, or only because they feel they have to "like" at least one "hip-hop" act, it's probably a lot more likely that people like it because, uh, they like it. That is, once the CD - led by massive exposure for "Hey-Ya!" which is, in fact, a brilliant and infectious single - achieved a certain level of public notice, people were more inclined to check it out. I doubt that most people think in terms of genre when they're buying records - so there's no reason for a listener who likes the Outkast song to think, "Hmm, this is 'hip-hop,' so I should buy more hip-hop records." And I doubt even more that the average listener thinks, "This recording's by black artists - I like it, so I'll probably like other recordings by other black artists."
Thing is, we're talking about critics, not regular listeners. And critics, actually, are inclined to think in terms of genres, styles, analysis, etc. - and so it's a bit more reasonable to ask of them: if you like this hip-hop record, why not others? And here we get to the nub of Tris McCall's analysis: "Hey-Ya!" specifically, and Outkast generally, are closer to the sort of musical aesthetics preferred by (his term) "white hipsters" than a lot of other hip-hop records are. (Notice, for example, that "Hey-Ya!" is not a rap record - there's no rapping.) That in itself probably explains part of its popularity among critics who placed no other "hip-hop" recordings in their lists. Still, it's also true that if you're conscious of the contours of your taste (and if you're a critic, this is true by definition - and probably true if you are, consider yourself to be, or would like to be thought of as a "hipster"), and of critical discourse around popular music, you're surely aware of what's cool to like...and it is, undeniably, cool to like (some) hip-hop. So it seems undeniable that, for a certain percentage of those "hipsters" (some of whom are likely to be critics), there's some cool-making going on in their choice of Outkast. I also think that for McCall specifically, it's a lament that more people aren't checking out a whole realm of music that's been immensely rewarding to him. (I disagree, by the way, with a friend who claimed that his reaction was the sort of sour grapes characterizing people who need "pocket bands" no one else has heard of in order to maintain their coolness. Outkast has been popular for years; and hip-hop generally has been huge for at least a decade: if this were a matter of "I'm bummed that I'm no longer the sole cool guy at the party who knows this record," Outkast would be a very poor, even clueless, choice of record.)
But the approach taken by that ILX poster is pointless and reductive: critics, in entering a poll, are not endorsing sociological imperatives or setting themselves up as role models of cultural diversity (at least, I hope they'd avoid being so pretentious). I don't think anyone has an obligation to like any particular style of music, even if you could argue that critics have an obligation to be open-minded toward styles of music, at least except when they realize that they're allergic to a genre's defining traits. But open-mindedness doesn't necessarily lead to acceptance (nor should it, when we're only talking about whether someone likes a song) - so if someone just doesn't like the hip-hop he's heard, that shouldn't be held against him...even when he decides that he does like one particular hip-hop record. Implicit in the ILX guy's post is the notion that you can't like just one hip-hop record, or that doing so is somehow insincere, or even racist.
The other problem here is that top-ten lists are, by definition, limited. For all we know, every one of the critics smeared by Mr. ILX listed ten straight hip-hop albums immediately after the P&J form's cutoff. And why should hip-hopness - or blackness, to get to the real issue here - be the factor pointed at in noticing outliers in poll selections? My own 2003 list, for example, has only one entry that's folk-influenced, only one entry that displays rockabilly influence, only one album that suggests a familiarity with the Grateful Dead: in short, I could probably find something about every album on my list that makes it unique. But if I'd had one hip-hop album, suddenly I'm guilty of "tokenism"? (And is it better or worse that I have no hip-hop albums listed?)
The debate, to me, signifies the sad power racial hangups still have on us (by which I most definitely do not mean that I wish we'd just ignore race), and the extent to which we want to make our tastes bear an excessive burden of signification. Even though, for some people, those tastes are meant in such a way, I think it's overloading them to see such meaning as inherent in most people's preferences.
Here's my view: while it might indeed be the case that some people (critics, and actual people) like Outkast only because they're "supposed" to, or only because they feel they have to "like" at least one "hip-hop" act, it's probably a lot more likely that people like it because, uh, they like it. That is, once the CD - led by massive exposure for "Hey-Ya!" which is, in fact, a brilliant and infectious single - achieved a certain level of public notice, people were more inclined to check it out. I doubt that most people think in terms of genre when they're buying records - so there's no reason for a listener who likes the Outkast song to think, "Hmm, this is 'hip-hop,' so I should buy more hip-hop records." And I doubt even more that the average listener thinks, "This recording's by black artists - I like it, so I'll probably like other recordings by other black artists."
Thing is, we're talking about critics, not regular listeners. And critics, actually, are inclined to think in terms of genres, styles, analysis, etc. - and so it's a bit more reasonable to ask of them: if you like this hip-hop record, why not others? And here we get to the nub of Tris McCall's analysis: "Hey-Ya!" specifically, and Outkast generally, are closer to the sort of musical aesthetics preferred by (his term) "white hipsters" than a lot of other hip-hop records are. (Notice, for example, that "Hey-Ya!" is not a rap record - there's no rapping.) That in itself probably explains part of its popularity among critics who placed no other "hip-hop" recordings in their lists. Still, it's also true that if you're conscious of the contours of your taste (and if you're a critic, this is true by definition - and probably true if you are, consider yourself to be, or would like to be thought of as a "hipster"), and of critical discourse around popular music, you're surely aware of what's cool to like...and it is, undeniably, cool to like (some) hip-hop. So it seems undeniable that, for a certain percentage of those "hipsters" (some of whom are likely to be critics), there's some cool-making going on in their choice of Outkast. I also think that for McCall specifically, it's a lament that more people aren't checking out a whole realm of music that's been immensely rewarding to him. (I disagree, by the way, with a friend who claimed that his reaction was the sort of sour grapes characterizing people who need "pocket bands" no one else has heard of in order to maintain their coolness. Outkast has been popular for years; and hip-hop generally has been huge for at least a decade: if this were a matter of "I'm bummed that I'm no longer the sole cool guy at the party who knows this record," Outkast would be a very poor, even clueless, choice of record.)
But the approach taken by that ILX poster is pointless and reductive: critics, in entering a poll, are not endorsing sociological imperatives or setting themselves up as role models of cultural diversity (at least, I hope they'd avoid being so pretentious). I don't think anyone has an obligation to like any particular style of music, even if you could argue that critics have an obligation to be open-minded toward styles of music, at least except when they realize that they're allergic to a genre's defining traits. But open-mindedness doesn't necessarily lead to acceptance (nor should it, when we're only talking about whether someone likes a song) - so if someone just doesn't like the hip-hop he's heard, that shouldn't be held against him...even when he decides that he does like one particular hip-hop record. Implicit in the ILX guy's post is the notion that you can't like just one hip-hop record, or that doing so is somehow insincere, or even racist.
The other problem here is that top-ten lists are, by definition, limited. For all we know, every one of the critics smeared by Mr. ILX listed ten straight hip-hop albums immediately after the P&J form's cutoff. And why should hip-hopness - or blackness, to get to the real issue here - be the factor pointed at in noticing outliers in poll selections? My own 2003 list, for example, has only one entry that's folk-influenced, only one entry that displays rockabilly influence, only one album that suggests a familiarity with the Grateful Dead: in short, I could probably find something about every album on my list that makes it unique. But if I'd had one hip-hop album, suddenly I'm guilty of "tokenism"? (And is it better or worse that I have no hip-hop albums listed?)
The debate, to me, signifies the sad power racial hangups still have on us (by which I most definitely do not mean that I wish we'd just ignore race), and the extent to which we want to make our tastes bear an excessive burden of signification. Even though, for some people, those tastes are meant in such a way, I think it's overloading them to see such meaning as inherent in most people's preferences.
2.11.2004
they at least could have substituted Prince's old name...
So I fire up my computer at my non-academic job this morning, and Windows XP tells me there are two "critical" updates. One has something to do with some flaw or other (typical...), but the other informs me that "unacceptable characters" have been "discovered" in the Bookshelf 7 font. I'm not sure if the exact word was "discovered," but it was something to that effect: an odd word choice, considering that fonts are designed, not found beneath a rock or leaning against a tree. Curious, I looked at the font's character set...and had a pretty good idea what character was "unacceptable." The designer had included, amongst other doodads and wingdings, a swastika. Now I personally can't think of any situation in which I'd need to type a swastika, but I suppose such a situation might arise even for someone who's not a neo-fascist. Anyway, just to compare I printed out the old font's character set before installing the new one.
After I'd installed the new version of the font, I was surprised to note that the swastika was not the only character removed. Apparently, someone had decided that another glyph - the Star of David - was also "unacceptable." While I also can't think of a situation in which I'd need to type a Star of David, it seemed odd to call it "unacceptable" and pair it with a swastika. Is this Microsoft's bizarre idea of "equal time"? Did they want to forestall mail from Nazis claiming that, hey, if you removed the swastika, why are you keeping the Star of David? Very strange - and rather sad, in that I can't imagine there was a huge amount of pressure coming at Microsoft about these characters, since the fonts are rarely used.
After I'd installed the new version of the font, I was surprised to note that the swastika was not the only character removed. Apparently, someone had decided that another glyph - the Star of David - was also "unacceptable." While I also can't think of a situation in which I'd need to type a Star of David, it seemed odd to call it "unacceptable" and pair it with a swastika. Is this Microsoft's bizarre idea of "equal time"? Did they want to forestall mail from Nazis claiming that, hey, if you removed the swastika, why are you keeping the Star of David? Very strange - and rather sad, in that I can't imagine there was a huge amount of pressure coming at Microsoft about these characters, since the fonts are rarely used.
2.10.2004
this is pop?
Clap Clap has written a very useful anatomy of what we mean when we say "pop": obviously, we mean very different things, depending who we are and what context we're speaking in. While the definitions on offer there are generally lucid and make sense to me (that would be a redundancy, since hey, who the hell else is talking here?), I'd offer a couple of modifications. First, it should be clear that "pop" is not a particularly portable phenomenon: different regions will have different musics and artists that fit each of these categories. (This distinction just might help clarify the question of "world music" - or not; but then again, the schema shouldn't be thought of as an attempt to be all-inclusive.)
Second, I think there needs to be another category, kind of a modification of Pop I.5 ("music that sounds like the current pop sound but is not actually, for whatever reason, on the charts") and Pop II ("Anything that sounds like anything that's ever been pop" - "pop" here being "Pop I," or music that charts). Music described as "pop" when Pop II is the operative definition refers primarily to generally popular sounds, not to just anything that's been on the charts. For example, if I described a song as consisting of nothing but drums, tambourine, an amusing but slightly disturbing vocal, and a siren, very few people would consider this "pop" of any type...yet the song I'm describing, "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Ha!" by Napoleon XIV, was a chart hit. Okay, that might be an extreme example, but...consider a song that's reminiscent of Wall of Voodoo's "Mexican Radio" - I dunno, analog synths, harmonica, junkshop percussion, spaghetti western guitar, and snake-oil salesman vocal. That was a chart hit - but it was an outlier, sonically, and produced no soundalike hits (i.e., it didn't establish a popular style).
I don't know what to call this category - Accidental Pop? - but it's sort of an exception to Clap Clap's schema, in that although it technically fits into Pop II, songs that sound like "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Ha!" are unlikely to have "pop" used as a descriptor - since to do so would be more misleading than informative.
Second, I think there needs to be another category, kind of a modification of Pop I.5 ("music that sounds like the current pop sound but is not actually, for whatever reason, on the charts") and Pop II ("Anything that sounds like anything that's ever been pop" - "pop" here being "Pop I," or music that charts). Music described as "pop" when Pop II is the operative definition refers primarily to generally popular sounds, not to just anything that's been on the charts. For example, if I described a song as consisting of nothing but drums, tambourine, an amusing but slightly disturbing vocal, and a siren, very few people would consider this "pop" of any type...yet the song I'm describing, "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Ha!" by Napoleon XIV, was a chart hit. Okay, that might be an extreme example, but...consider a song that's reminiscent of Wall of Voodoo's "Mexican Radio" - I dunno, analog synths, harmonica, junkshop percussion, spaghetti western guitar, and snake-oil salesman vocal. That was a chart hit - but it was an outlier, sonically, and produced no soundalike hits (i.e., it didn't establish a popular style).
I don't know what to call this category - Accidental Pop? - but it's sort of an exception to Clap Clap's schema, in that although it technically fits into Pop II, songs that sound like "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Ha!" are unlikely to have "pop" used as a descriptor - since to do so would be more misleading than informative.
2.08.2004
you've come a long way, baby - now get back
I live in a weird sort of media bubble: I don't read every day's newspaper, I don't watch every night's TV news, and I don't listen to NPR every day (you probably guessed I'm not a talk-radio fan). Instead, I tend to read things in weekly or monthly journals of opinion, or occasionally online - but by the time I get to them, certain trends have peaked and become subjects of analysis rather than action before I even know they exist. One example: the media zoo surrounding one Dr. Judith Steinberg a/k/a Howard Dean's wife. Katha Pollitt (whose common sense, insight, and humor make her a personal hero of mine) points out in last week's issue of The Nation just how out of touch with most people's daily lives the media's perception of First Ladies is. The model seems to be something like National Den Mother, descending the stairs in heels and pearls into a wood-paneled rec room while bearing a plate full of cookies and a glass of milk. In "Mediaville," Pollitt writes, "it's always 1955." (And I thought the Super Bowl ads' ideal audience lived in 1963 - who knew that football fans were so fashion-forward socially?) As usual when bizarre moral panics grip the media, grotesque hypocrisy is barely kept under wraps. Diane Sawyer, who's married to Mike Nichols but uses her birthname professionally, queries Steinberg about her not changing her name to "Judy Dean"; professional journalists, many of them women, wonder why Steinberg can't up and quit her medical practice to follow Howard around the country like a faithful puppy (would they quit their jobs to follow their spouses around?).
At one level, I find the whole thing terribly sad: the women I know, and love, have their own lives, careers, and interests, and are far better people for it; and I would have thought that by now, we would be used to that concept. And perhaps most people are: maybe the real problem, once again, is who makes up the media and the political and economic elite. I hate to trot out overused cliches (like "trot out"?), but once again, F. Scott Fitzgerald got it right in noting that the rich are different from the rest of us. Some anecdotal evidence: in addition to my teaching job, I work part-time in a tax-accounting firm as an administrative assistant. In that position, I have access to the tax records of the firm's clientele, whose incomes put them, for the most part, firmly above the 90th percentile in terms of income and wealth. It's always surprised me what a large percentage of wives in this group are Mrs. Never-Had-a-Job; for these folks, apparently, it really is 1955, and Spousal Welfare is alive and well. So perhaps someone like Dr. Steinberg seems more of an aberration to those folks than she does to most people, or certainly to people like me, for whom Steinberg's career, persona, and fashion decisions seem utterly normal and unremarkable. And that is more than merely sad: that the leadership of the nation can be so out of touch with most people's daily lives. I wish I could say I was surprised.
At one level, I find the whole thing terribly sad: the women I know, and love, have their own lives, careers, and interests, and are far better people for it; and I would have thought that by now, we would be used to that concept. And perhaps most people are: maybe the real problem, once again, is who makes up the media and the political and economic elite. I hate to trot out overused cliches (like "trot out"?), but once again, F. Scott Fitzgerald got it right in noting that the rich are different from the rest of us. Some anecdotal evidence: in addition to my teaching job, I work part-time in a tax-accounting firm as an administrative assistant. In that position, I have access to the tax records of the firm's clientele, whose incomes put them, for the most part, firmly above the 90th percentile in terms of income and wealth. It's always surprised me what a large percentage of wives in this group are Mrs. Never-Had-a-Job; for these folks, apparently, it really is 1955, and Spousal Welfare is alive and well. So perhaps someone like Dr. Steinberg seems more of an aberration to those folks than she does to most people, or certainly to people like me, for whom Steinberg's career, persona, and fashion decisions seem utterly normal and unremarkable. And that is more than merely sad: that the leadership of the nation can be so out of touch with most people's daily lives. I wish I could say I was surprised.
2.07.2004
today's theme is vaguely Italian things!
Enough trivia - I'm weighing in now on the Big Issues.
1) Without doubt, the best carryout/leftover food container is your Chinese-takeout style folded paper container. They lie flat for compact storage, their folded form ensures both stability and leak prevention, and the square shape maximizes capacity and allows for good stacking. Those stupid styrofoam boxes are abominations, and not only for the obvious environmental reasons: they're flimsy, they flop open all the time, their orientation isn't as clear (so if you hold them upside down, look out), and they're just plain ugly (as opposed to the glorious form-follows-function of Chinese-style containers). The only exception is for pizza, which belongs on a rounded piece of cardboard slid into a large, flat bag illustrated with an "Italian" chef completely with white puffy hat, big black mustache, and that hand gesture designating tastiness (it probably has a name: anyone know what it is?). Fresh delivery or carryout pizza can come in a cardboard box - particularly your fat Chicago-style pizza - but putting leftover pizza in those styrofoam containers is an abomination.
2) The mis-/overuse of the word barista. While I'm not sure that we even need to borrow a word from Italy to designate a trained espresso maker, the word gets used to mean, essentially, "waiter" or "counter person" at a coffee joint...often whose training seems to be about equivalent to that of any other sad denizen of Minimumwageville. But if borrowing a word from Italian makes someone feel special...
1) Without doubt, the best carryout/leftover food container is your Chinese-takeout style folded paper container. They lie flat for compact storage, their folded form ensures both stability and leak prevention, and the square shape maximizes capacity and allows for good stacking. Those stupid styrofoam boxes are abominations, and not only for the obvious environmental reasons: they're flimsy, they flop open all the time, their orientation isn't as clear (so if you hold them upside down, look out), and they're just plain ugly (as opposed to the glorious form-follows-function of Chinese-style containers). The only exception is for pizza, which belongs on a rounded piece of cardboard slid into a large, flat bag illustrated with an "Italian" chef completely with white puffy hat, big black mustache, and that hand gesture designating tastiness (it probably has a name: anyone know what it is?). Fresh delivery or carryout pizza can come in a cardboard box - particularly your fat Chicago-style pizza - but putting leftover pizza in those styrofoam containers is an abomination.
2) The mis-/overuse of the word barista. While I'm not sure that we even need to borrow a word from Italy to designate a trained espresso maker, the word gets used to mean, essentially, "waiter" or "counter person" at a coffee joint...often whose training seems to be about equivalent to that of any other sad denizen of Minimumwageville. But if borrowing a word from Italian makes someone feel special...
2.06.2004
delete every word containing the letter "p"
Periodically, I discover that bands I like actually haven't been heard of by more than five or six other people. This fact allows me to reclaim a few tattered threads from a very worn garment that I've stashed away in an old mothballed shoebox labeled HIPNESS. (Most often I only think bands I like haven't been heard of by many people; instead, it's just that I haven't heard of the people. I reserve the right for this to be the case now, except I'm not letting go of these threads regardless.) Anyway, there are two very good reasons to help once again disillusion me of my belief that only myself and five or six other people have heard of Statuesque: first, their music is catchy, clever, audible, and not associated with any known terrorist groups; their lyrics are witty, also clever, also audible, but are under suspicion of containing encoded references to the Left-Handed Inuit Liberation Front. That was the first reason. The second reason is that the band's website is seriously among the funniest and best-written on the web. Maybe you won't buy the band's recordings (although you can listen to mp3s at the site, with no risk of arrest, fine, or pretending to be a fourteen-year-old girl on national television), but the website's worth your trouble. Unless you're one of those greedy bastards who intentionally overvalue their trouble and falsely label it as being RARE! Released only during a five-minute interval in the middle of a Swedish farm field in 1977! The third, unlisted reason is that Statuesque is only sort of a band, being primarily the musical vehicle for one Stephen Manning, one of those musicians operating under the delusion that he is, in fact, a band, and that people like that sort of thing and are likelier to buy products released by "bands" than those made by "people." Actually, he might be an intelligent beam of light from somewhere beyond Arcturus - I don't really know for sure.
2.05.2004
Our Consumer Selves Projected
What I can't explain, exactly, is why we decided to tape this year's Super Bowl so we could watch the ads. Perhaps a recently dead cultural-studies theorist briefly possessed us, I don't know. Anyway, Monday evening was spent fast-forwarding through the game itself to see what engines are slated to drive the American economy in the next year.
Evidently, the answer is: adolescent-minded boys. Some conclusions: I did not know until now that Bud Light thinks many twelve-year-olds are in their potential audience. An ongoing theme: animals (monkeys both humorous and interspecially amorous, dogs with unfortunate teething preferences, bears with sugar addictions, elephants justifiably frightened by small vehicles, delusional donkeys, farting horses, and wolves raising humans with less interesting results than Romulus and Remus). Also: "erections that last more than four hours may require professional attention":...oh baby, don't I know it. (Someone should tell Sting, who, it turns out, was indulging in time-honored guy behavior, by drunkenly bragging to impress another guy, in this case His Holiness Bob Geldof.) Football fans apparently dwell in a perpetual 1963, based on observation of the gender roles portrayed in these ads. And: some men love their razorblades entirely too much - which only proves the prescience of Saturday Night Live, who parodied the arms race in multibladed razors way back in the mid-seventies. As a sentimental favorite, I liked the Simpsons ad. Because I actually am a yahoo who laughs at gags Adam made up, such as the timeless banana-peel pratfall, the 7-Up million-dollar dunk ad had me laughing out loud. And the H&R Block ads, with the advice-giving Willie Nelson doll, not only was pretty cool just because, hey, it's Willie Nelson - but also because of the in-joke fact of Willie's tax troubles. And amongst the spam-makes-TV plethora of erectile dysfunction products, we have a new winner in the "weirdest sexual metaphor" category: chunky, middle-aged, mustachio'd ex-coach tosses footballs through a tire. Oh yeah baby - that's super sexy. It reminds of those guys who put a pissing Calvin on their pickup truck back windows directly above the words "My Ex-Wife" - and then wonder why they can't get a date.
Evidently, the answer is: adolescent-minded boys. Some conclusions: I did not know until now that Bud Light thinks many twelve-year-olds are in their potential audience. An ongoing theme: animals (monkeys both humorous and interspecially amorous, dogs with unfortunate teething preferences, bears with sugar addictions, elephants justifiably frightened by small vehicles, delusional donkeys, farting horses, and wolves raising humans with less interesting results than Romulus and Remus). Also: "erections that last more than four hours may require professional attention":...oh baby, don't I know it. (Someone should tell Sting, who, it turns out, was indulging in time-honored guy behavior, by drunkenly bragging to impress another guy, in this case His Holiness Bob Geldof.) Football fans apparently dwell in a perpetual 1963, based on observation of the gender roles portrayed in these ads. And: some men love their razorblades entirely too much - which only proves the prescience of Saturday Night Live, who parodied the arms race in multibladed razors way back in the mid-seventies. As a sentimental favorite, I liked the Simpsons ad. Because I actually am a yahoo who laughs at gags Adam made up, such as the timeless banana-peel pratfall, the 7-Up million-dollar dunk ad had me laughing out loud. And the H&R Block ads, with the advice-giving Willie Nelson doll, not only was pretty cool just because, hey, it's Willie Nelson - but also because of the in-joke fact of Willie's tax troubles. And amongst the spam-makes-TV plethora of erectile dysfunction products, we have a new winner in the "weirdest sexual metaphor" category: chunky, middle-aged, mustachio'd ex-coach tosses footballs through a tire. Oh yeah baby - that's super sexy. It reminds of those guys who put a pissing Calvin on their pickup truck back windows directly above the words "My Ex-Wife" - and then wonder why they can't get a date.
2.03.2004
Terror? Tyrannosaurus? Tinnitus?
I was going to write about The Invasion of the Solar Nipple Medallion (which is not, alas, the title of the new album by The Darkness), but instead I'm writing about the Tris McCall Report 2003 Critics' Poll results. First, the Wrens' Meadowlands won: Yay Wrens! As a long-time Wrens fan, I'm pleased to see them get some of the accolades they deserve (by the way, what exactly is an "accolade"? Can you mix drinks with it?) Apparently, though, I'm even more terminologically maladept and from-Mars culturally than I'd thought: the Wrens are "emo"? Yeesh. Doesn't help me figure out what the term means, though. I always assumed it's what happens when punk rockers simultaneously discover broken hearts and major-seventh chords.
What surprised me was Tris's remark that "support for Ted Leo...was almost exclusively concentrated among Jersey or ex-Jersey voters." Leo's moved to Jersey from DC, true - but in the rest of the obscure corner of the rock'n'roll galaxy I reside in, Hearts of Oak was a universal favorite. It placed a strong second in Aaron Mandel's Loud-fans List Poll (behind the New Pornographers' Electric Version), for example. So, given the fairly strong regional tilt to Tris McCall's poll (Jersey, NYC, and environs), it would appear that for some reason New Yorkers don't dig Ted Leo. Their loss!
Coming in at number 15 in the Critics' Poll is the Darkness. Tris claims that it can't be a very good sign that so many of the top-polling titles are "lovingly detailed historical re-creations": on the one hand, I get it - but I'm also dubious about whatever alternative there might be. I'll use the Lilys as case in point: their Precollection (#18) is their first album since Eccsame the Photon Band to be hailed as sounding primarily like itself and not, supposedly, like a lost transmission from the planet 1966. But comparing the band's prior album, The Three-Way, with actual music from 1966 reveals a lot of key differences. First, very few Kinks-style songs from 1966 had such twisty, sideways chord sequences, and even fewer sported such oddball song structures. In other words, if The Three-Way were just a glorified-tribute-band recording, it'd be a serious hash thereof. Instead, main Lily Kurt Heasley takes certain characteristics from that era (some guitar sounds, riffs, and drum rhythms, mostly) and runs some changes on them that, in a different sonic context, might sound almost like prog-rock. (The obverse of The Three-Way, then, might be an album that took prog-rock signifiers such as odd time signatures, analog synths, and virtuoso instrumental technique but applied them to Kinks-like song structures. In fact, the results would probably sound kinda like a latterday Dismemberment Plan album.) So these albums (the ones I'm familiar with, anyway) are "re-creations" with an emphasis on the word's second component, not on its first. And to me, at least, there's nothing wrong with that: it might even be inevitable. Frankly, I always mistrust musicians who claim to have heard nothing but music written prior to 1790 or something; I see nothing wrong with influence, even obvious influence, so long as you do something with it other than press Start on the photocopy machine.
To end about where I began: Justin Timberlake's JT placed in the top twenty. I'm deeply, thoroughly confused - given the makeup of the poll's participants. (The title of that album, henceforth, should be read as standing for "Janet's...": wait, I thought I had a joke there, but now I can't think of an appropriate word that begins with T.)
What surprised me was Tris's remark that "support for Ted Leo...was almost exclusively concentrated among Jersey or ex-Jersey voters." Leo's moved to Jersey from DC, true - but in the rest of the obscure corner of the rock'n'roll galaxy I reside in, Hearts of Oak was a universal favorite. It placed a strong second in Aaron Mandel's Loud-fans List Poll (behind the New Pornographers' Electric Version), for example. So, given the fairly strong regional tilt to Tris McCall's poll (Jersey, NYC, and environs), it would appear that for some reason New Yorkers don't dig Ted Leo. Their loss!
Coming in at number 15 in the Critics' Poll is the Darkness. Tris claims that it can't be a very good sign that so many of the top-polling titles are "lovingly detailed historical re-creations": on the one hand, I get it - but I'm also dubious about whatever alternative there might be. I'll use the Lilys as case in point: their Precollection (#18) is their first album since Eccsame the Photon Band to be hailed as sounding primarily like itself and not, supposedly, like a lost transmission from the planet 1966. But comparing the band's prior album, The Three-Way, with actual music from 1966 reveals a lot of key differences. First, very few Kinks-style songs from 1966 had such twisty, sideways chord sequences, and even fewer sported such oddball song structures. In other words, if The Three-Way were just a glorified-tribute-band recording, it'd be a serious hash thereof. Instead, main Lily Kurt Heasley takes certain characteristics from that era (some guitar sounds, riffs, and drum rhythms, mostly) and runs some changes on them that, in a different sonic context, might sound almost like prog-rock. (The obverse of The Three-Way, then, might be an album that took prog-rock signifiers such as odd time signatures, analog synths, and virtuoso instrumental technique but applied them to Kinks-like song structures. In fact, the results would probably sound kinda like a latterday Dismemberment Plan album.) So these albums (the ones I'm familiar with, anyway) are "re-creations" with an emphasis on the word's second component, not on its first. And to me, at least, there's nothing wrong with that: it might even be inevitable. Frankly, I always mistrust musicians who claim to have heard nothing but music written prior to 1790 or something; I see nothing wrong with influence, even obvious influence, so long as you do something with it other than press Start on the photocopy machine.
To end about where I began: Justin Timberlake's JT placed in the top twenty. I'm deeply, thoroughly confused - given the makeup of the poll's participants. (The title of that album, henceforth, should be read as standing for "Janet's...": wait, I thought I had a joke there, but now I can't think of an appropriate word that begins with T.)
2.01.2004
raving and drooling
First, a microrant about words (again): Paula, who serves up delightful offerings over at the Intellectual House o' Pancakes, is working her way through the DVDs of 24. (She isn't watching the current season, and hasn't seen the series to this point, so...ssshhhh!) Anyway, she mentioned that she "mourns the loss of Tony Almeida's soul patch" - and I must take this opportunity to grumble about the term "soul patch." It's insufferable in its assumption of a certain dubious hipness, first of all - and in particular, it's intrinsically self-congratulatory (if the speaker is referring to his own facial hair): "yeah, I got soul..." While I'm not sure what else to call it - the French call it a barbiche, but that would be insufferably pretentious; and "little square chin beard" is accurate if infelicitous - that shouldn't be much of a problem, because...they just plain look stupid, okay?
Now that I've gotten that out of my system, I will rant at greater length about a more serious topic: vinyl fetishists. I'm not talking about clothing; I'm talking about records, and particularly the folks who just love 7" singles. I understand the nostalgia factor, either for us oldsters or for folks who are into a sixties/seventies thing, but as a medium of sonic reproduction, they're just awful. Because the music was unlikely to be available in any other form, I'm subscribed to a tiny little label's series of 7" singles (the label shall remain nameless, as everyone involved has been perfectly nice to me, and none of the problems have been their fault). The series has brought home to me the serious limitations of the medium. Singles are unable to handle saturation of sound, particularly on the high end - and I know it's not my turntable or stylus, because older LPs display fewer of these problems. Several of the singles have been pressed slightly off-center, making the band (or me) seem drunk, and unfortunately I'm blessed with a pretty good ear such that very fine variations in pitch are painfully obvious to me.
To be fair, I think the label is almost more interested in creating collectible objects than in the music - and it's now rumored that the songs are going to see release on a CD. Even the mp3 format would be preferable to 45s: if the mp3s encoded at a high enough bitrate, the limitations in reproducing high-end sounds (like the notorious low-res cymbal sound that you can exactly reproduce by going "ksssshhhhhh") largely disappear, and at least the pitch is constant.
I've never understood the more general argument about vinyl and "warmth": most of the time, the excessive "harshness" these folks attribute to CDs arose from lame mastering decisions on the very earliest CDs, or from the fact that the source tapes emphasized the high end to compensate for the inability of vinyl to fully reproduce it, and when a medium like CDs came out that could reproduce everything on those source tapes, well, yeah, it sounded a little harsh. And even if it's true that analog reproduction catches subtleties that are lost in translation to the digital realm, in practical terms that's true only if you have a super-expensive turntable and stylus and a fussily taken-care-of, specially pressed piece of vinyl, and you listen to everything only once. It's rather elitist, that is: for most people, who can't afford such equipment and who listen to music repeatedly, you get far better results with CD. CD's superiority as a consumer medium is laughably obvious to me, and no amount of nostalgia for larger record sleeves and artwork, etc., compensates for the inferior sound quality LPs offer on all but the most high-end equipment (if there).
Now that I've gotten that out of my system, I will rant at greater length about a more serious topic: vinyl fetishists. I'm not talking about clothing; I'm talking about records, and particularly the folks who just love 7" singles. I understand the nostalgia factor, either for us oldsters or for folks who are into a sixties/seventies thing, but as a medium of sonic reproduction, they're just awful. Because the music was unlikely to be available in any other form, I'm subscribed to a tiny little label's series of 7" singles (the label shall remain nameless, as everyone involved has been perfectly nice to me, and none of the problems have been their fault). The series has brought home to me the serious limitations of the medium. Singles are unable to handle saturation of sound, particularly on the high end - and I know it's not my turntable or stylus, because older LPs display fewer of these problems. Several of the singles have been pressed slightly off-center, making the band (or me) seem drunk, and unfortunately I'm blessed with a pretty good ear such that very fine variations in pitch are painfully obvious to me.
To be fair, I think the label is almost more interested in creating collectible objects than in the music - and it's now rumored that the songs are going to see release on a CD. Even the mp3 format would be preferable to 45s: if the mp3s encoded at a high enough bitrate, the limitations in reproducing high-end sounds (like the notorious low-res cymbal sound that you can exactly reproduce by going "ksssshhhhhh") largely disappear, and at least the pitch is constant.
I've never understood the more general argument about vinyl and "warmth": most of the time, the excessive "harshness" these folks attribute to CDs arose from lame mastering decisions on the very earliest CDs, or from the fact that the source tapes emphasized the high end to compensate for the inability of vinyl to fully reproduce it, and when a medium like CDs came out that could reproduce everything on those source tapes, well, yeah, it sounded a little harsh. And even if it's true that analog reproduction catches subtleties that are lost in translation to the digital realm, in practical terms that's true only if you have a super-expensive turntable and stylus and a fussily taken-care-of, specially pressed piece of vinyl, and you listen to everything only once. It's rather elitist, that is: for most people, who can't afford such equipment and who listen to music repeatedly, you get far better results with CD. CD's superiority as a consumer medium is laughably obvious to me, and no amount of nostalgia for larger record sleeves and artwork, etc., compensates for the inferior sound quality LPs offer on all but the most high-end equipment (if there).
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