I'm finally getting around to digitizing some old cassette tapes. On May 10, 1985, I saw what was then my favorite band (and who would remain that for probably another ten years), R.E.M., play at the Stock Pavilion in Madison, Wisconsin. (Incidentally, the Stock Pavilion is not named after anyone named "Stock": it's part of the University of Wisconsin's animal sciences facility.) A woman whom I believe was a co-worker of Rose's recorded the show, and I dubbed that cassette onto another tape. Here are some songs from that show - I'm surprised at how good they sound, given their source in a twenty-year-old second generation cassette. (I didn't futz with them digitally other than increasing the volume levels and dividing them into tracks, although I've provided fades on these versions.)
In particular, the vocals sound pretty good on "Green Grow the Rushes" - some nice two-part backing vocals from Mills and Berry. The band works up quite a head of steam on the sequence ending the main set: "Pretty Persuasion" (not included), "Life and How to Live It," and "Little America." The first encore (the band did three that night) began with a version of "Second Guessing" featuring a vocal countermelody not in the Reckoning version. The second encore began with a song curiously never released in a studio version, "Theme from Two Steps Onward," although it was played throughout the band's 1985 tours (typically in the same position as this night, opening the second encore), and studio run-throughs supposedly were attempted both during the Fables of the Reconstruction sessions and during sessions demoing tracks for Lifes Rich Pageant. (Apparently the band gave up on the song, at least for a while: this site doesn't list it as being played during any 1986 shows.) Although another slow, minor-key song wouldn't have worked on Fables (and slow, minor-key songs later became their bane), I think the track might have fit somewhere on Pageant. At least, I like the song pretty well. (I don't suppose anyone has one of the bootlegs with either of the studio versions...)
R.E.M. was also responsible for one of the weirdest moments of my concert-going life. Either the first or second time I saw the band was in Milwaukee at Summerfest on July 6, 1984. I remember that morning, standing at a bus stop in Madison (where we lived at the time), and for some reason I found myself thinking it would be cool if R.E.M. covered "Ghost Riders in the Sky." In fact (cue spooky Theremin music), they did play that song that night - which freaked the hell out of me. I hadn't read that they'd been playing it live, and it's not as if it was a song I was always thinking of. And I wasn't even wearing my swami hat.
R.E.M. live in Madison, Wisconsin, May 10, 1985:
"Green Grow the Rushes"
"Life and How to Live It"
"Little America"
"Second Guessing"
"Theme from Two Steps Onward"
3.31.2006
3.27.2006
on their hands, another dead star
Nikki Sudden, best known as a member of the Swell Maps and the Jacobites, died last weekend after a show, apparently of a heroin overdose. As usual with such rock-star deaths, I'm torn between sympathy for the presumptive pain that would drive someone to use the number one chumps' drug, and a sort of anger and betrayal if there was no such pain but instead only an idiot's disregard for the value of one's life, not only to oneself but to others. Anyway, outside of his friends and his family (who knew him as Nicholas Godfrey), Sudden will be remembered for his music, so here's some of that.
I only have a couple of Jacobites songs, so I can't say much about that band. But I like Swell Maps: they're in some ways like a more user-friendly Wire, with less of that band's sometimes imperious intellectuality (and I love Wire) and more off-the-cuff noise-as-fun. Swell Maps' more experimental side (when it works) sounds a lot like a bunch of guys having a great time; witness the balloon-playing in the lengthy coda to "Gunboats" which, even though it's a fairly dark song overall, also sounds as if the balloon-player was taking a bit of the piss out of that somberness.
Maybe their best-known song was "Read About Seymour," which is one of those songs that sound good even while sounding as if it was written at the same time it was recorded. Perhaps my favorite song of theirs was another early single "Let's Build a Car," which is a little more polished, a great single (despite all the rebellious posturing around late-seventies British punk, it was also a movement that brought back some of the disposable joy of mid-sixties pop singles).
Nikki Sudden was (and I think you can hear it in these tracks) an acolyte of Keith Richards; unfortunately, his body evidently lacked Richards' superhuman tolerance for abuse. That's it - we're done.
Swell Maps "Read About Seymour"
Swell Maps "Let's Build a Car" (single version)
Swell Maps "Gunboats"
I only have a couple of Jacobites songs, so I can't say much about that band. But I like Swell Maps: they're in some ways like a more user-friendly Wire, with less of that band's sometimes imperious intellectuality (and I love Wire) and more off-the-cuff noise-as-fun. Swell Maps' more experimental side (when it works) sounds a lot like a bunch of guys having a great time; witness the balloon-playing in the lengthy coda to "Gunboats" which, even though it's a fairly dark song overall, also sounds as if the balloon-player was taking a bit of the piss out of that somberness.
Maybe their best-known song was "Read About Seymour," which is one of those songs that sound good even while sounding as if it was written at the same time it was recorded. Perhaps my favorite song of theirs was another early single "Let's Build a Car," which is a little more polished, a great single (despite all the rebellious posturing around late-seventies British punk, it was also a movement that brought back some of the disposable joy of mid-sixties pop singles).
Nikki Sudden was (and I think you can hear it in these tracks) an acolyte of Keith Richards; unfortunately, his body evidently lacked Richards' superhuman tolerance for abuse. That's it - we're done.
Swell Maps "Read About Seymour"
Swell Maps "Let's Build a Car" (single version)
Swell Maps "Gunboats"
3.24.2006
God's Little Smoke Detector
As far more people should know, after the dissolution of his relatively successful 1980s act Game Theory, Scott Miller founded a new band called the Loud Family (a brief, and surely only lightly fictionalized, biography follows this entry). A changing (and less variable) stylistic climate, a label with distribution and promotion problems, and the new, unfamiliar band name pretty much doomed the Loud Family, so when, tired of beating his head against the brick wall of commerce and, with a job and family, sick of touring and playing the music industry game, Scott Miller "retired" after 2000's Attractive Nuisance, his fans went back to school and got depressed, or annoyingly begged him to come back. Apparently, it worked: a new Loud Family album (with second songwriter Anton Barbeau) is due later this year. Some clips from the album, to be called What If It Works? can be heard at the 125 Records website.
Miller was never the most prolific writer: nearly everything the band did ended up on its five studio albums. The one Miller song I can think of that ended up on another release was "Chicago and Miss Jovan's Land-O-Mat," which showed up on the fourth (and last?) volume of the Yellow Pills power-pop series. The song was recorded contemporaneously with 1996's Interbabe Concern, but stylistically its almost country-ish lilt had no place on the rather darker-textured album. Had it been an era of singles, this would have been a b-side.
The Loud Family also contributed three covers to the '90s spate of tribute albums. Feaeturing the same band as recorded 1994's The Tape of Only Linda, this version of "A Horse with No Name" (whence the title of the band's first album Plants & Birds & Rocks & Things) features swirly lead guitar from Zachary Smith (who actually plays all those little notes). From 1995 (in fact, according to the album's liner notes, from the very first day of that year) is their version of the Hollies' "Look Through Any Window." This track offers a rare glimpse of Scott Miller the bass player (apparently recorded during the interregnum after Rob Poor left to pursue his studies at MIT and before Kenny Kessel's arrival). The band also contributed a cover of "We're for the Dark" for Copper Records' Badfinger tribute album Come and Get It. This song was presumably recorded around the same time as Interbabe Concern and "Chicago...," since it features the band credited on that album (including here-today-gone-tomorrow drummer Dawn Richardson, who decamped for fame and fortune with some other band's tour about five minutes before the Loud Family's own tour was set to begin. But hey: she also played drums on about the worst song ever - that Four Non Blondes number that I'm sorry to have just reminded you of.)
It's too bad there were never any full-dress studio takes on some of my favorite Loud Family live covers: David Bowie's "Beauty and the Beast" (rehearsal mp3 here, though), Roxy Music's "Re-Make, Re-Model," and, uh, Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" (I don't know if the band ever did that one, but rumor has it that Miller and Kessel covered it live in an in-store appearance once or twice...)
The Loud Family "Chicago and Miss Jovan's Land-O-Mat"
The Loud Family "A Horse with No Name"
The Loud Family "Look Through Any Window"
The Loud Family "We're for the Dark"
At one time, Alias Records wanted the folks on Loudfans to submit stuff for an upcoming CD's press kit. This project never really took off, but in the meantime I wrote this. It never got used, and I should say that Alias Records, the Loud Family, the Pope, General Motors, and the CIA have nothing to do with me, and vice versa. I've since revised it to update the biography through the two more recent releases.
The release of the Loud Family's new title, Attractive Nuisance, marks the long-awaited return to the scene of one of pop's most intriguing ensembles. The band's main writer, reclusive pop genius Scott Miller, has lived for years alone in a trailer in the Mojave, programming computers and painting windowshades. Alias Records expects that Attractive Nuisance will finally bring commercial justice to their critically acclaimed act. For this album, Scott has cloned himself (with certain modifications to the nose and hair) four times and fashioned a delectable, multi-Scott "boy group," whose wicked dance steps and cuddly insouciance are certain to open the wallets of billions.
Needless to say, pop connoisseurs and critics alike are eager to know more about the Loud Family and its mysterious leader. What, they want to know, makes him tick? Here's a brief history.
After inventing the phonograph, Scott makes some recordings with his first ensemble, Alternative Learning. Recorded on wax cylinders with a steel stylus fashioned from one of his mother's knitting needles, these recordings were long thought lost, until what appears to be the sole remaining copy was discovered in a library in Columbus, Ohio.
A couple of years later, noted folklorist John Hammond travels to the remote town of Davis, California, making priceless field recordings of Scott's new group, Game Theory. Reissued under the title Irreal Folk Blues, these songs became a bible for handfuls of aspiring pop mavens.
Working as a truckdriver, Scott stops in to Sam Phillips' Sun Studios to record some of his favorite songs as a gift to his mother, Gladys. A secretary, impressed not only with Scott's singing and playing, but also by his hair, stylish overcoat, and risque dance moves, brings the recordings to the attention of Phillips himself. These recordings are released as Real Nighttime - the rest, as they say, is history.
Quickly forming a new version of Game Theory to capitalize on the media buzz, Scott and friends submit a tape of their newest material to Decca Records, hoping to get their winning sounds out to the masses. Notoriously, the tape is rejected - undefeated, the band submits the tape, now christened The Big Shot Chronicles, to the fledgling Enigma Records. The label is duly impressed, and signs the band upon whom their future fortunes will rest.
The band now set out to prove that they're not just another flash in the pan, embarking on their magnum opus, Lolita Nation. Originally, this album was to be recorded with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, and a full-fledged stage show, featuring choreography by Jerome Robbins and a cast of 200, including a synchronized swim team of trained seals, was slated for a year-long tour of major venues throughout North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia.
However, this was not to be: the master tapes including the orchestra mysteriously disappear, the seals perish in a boating accident, and Robbins backs out, not wanting to be associated with what was obviously becoming a major disaster. Undaunted, Game Theory redoes the album themselves, performing all their own overdubs - but the malign aura surrounding this disc would not dissipate. On the eve of the now stripped-down band-only tour, a troubled youth in Minnesota brutally kills his entire family with an axe. Apparently, he'd been listening to a song on Lolita Nation, "The Waist and the Knees," immediately before the attack. The resulting flurry of negative publicity causes Game Theory to cancel their tour.
Perhaps it was this bad image that motivated Scott's next step - or perhaps, it was merely his saintly soul. While recording what would be Game Theory's last album, Two Steps from the Middle Ages, Scott organizes an incredible cavalcade of musicians from around the world, effortlessly managing logistical difficulties which would stymie almost any other human, and mounts two enormously successful, simultaneous concerts in London and San Francisco, nearly every last penny of which goes to benefit famine victims in Ethiopia. Miller is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and, it is rumored, is a serious candidate for canonization.
This virtuous persona causes trouble for Scott, however. An image rehaul is in order. Scott forms a new band, dubbed the Loud Family, which records their first disc for Alias Records, Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things. On a television appearance, goaded on by host Bill Grundy, the band utters the words "Joyce" and "Nabokov" live on national TV. A nation is scandalized - but sales of the new disc skyrocket.
An interim EP, Slouching toward Liverpool, is quickly dispatched - Scott increases his media notoriety by appearing at a record company naked except for a leather jockstrap and riding saddle. Leaping upon the polished mahogany table, Miller bites the head off a goat. Alias hastily appeases the animal rights people, and another successful disc is unleashed upon the cheering millions.
For the Loud Family's next full-length, The Tape of Only Linda (yes it is too available on CD), the band decides to go for a back-to-basics, lo-fi approach, recording the entire disc on a $15 portable cassette deck (found at a Salvation Army store) in a phone booth on a crowded San Francisco street at three o'clock in the afternoon. Fans and critics alike are amazed at the sounds Miller and company were able to achieve under such primitive recording conditions. While it sells enough to be certified a Tin Record, such disappointing sales are unable to recoup Alias's massive promotional expenditures - including the notorious launching in San Francisco Bay of a 900-ft. tall statue of Scott Miller.
On the next album, the whimsically shifting breezes that have wafted personnel in and out of the Loud Family result in the inscrutable brilliance that is 1996's Interbabe Concern. While the band features a new drummer for three minutes (she leaves to accept a lucrative touring offer with a band that happened to be driving by the studio in its van), every other note on Interbabe Concern is written, arranged, performed, recorded, engineered, produced, mixed, mastered, pressed, designed, art-directed, drawn, photographed, painted, typeset, manufactured, assembled, distributed, sold, and delivered to all purchasers' homes by Scott Miller.* He even presses "play" for all listeners' first experience of the CD!
1998's Days for Days features the return of legendary Game Theory drummer Gil Ray, legendary Liverpool bass player Paul McCartney, legendary Spanish tenor Placido Domingo, legendary Denver quarterback John Elway, and the debut of a certain hungry talking chihuahua, later to become famous as a spokesdog for a national taco chain. The dog plays contrabass ocarina on an early version of "Way Too Helpful," whose working title, "Are Too Deee-Tourned," arose from its lyrics' exploration of the Situationist practice of détournement in relation to the whirring, beeping Star Wars droid's wanderings through the galaxy. (The new lyrics are about sex, tennis, and murder. I think.)
This, of course, was until now the Loud Family's most recent album - but we know that, having returned, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Attractive Nuisance - the brilliant new platter by San Francisco's Loud Family. Available at all your better purveyors of recorded music, on Alias Records.
* A well-placed source asserts that other band members delivered some copies. However, Scott forced them to wear "Scott" wigs so awed consumers wouldn't notice the difference.
Miller was never the most prolific writer: nearly everything the band did ended up on its five studio albums. The one Miller song I can think of that ended up on another release was "Chicago and Miss Jovan's Land-O-Mat," which showed up on the fourth (and last?) volume of the Yellow Pills power-pop series. The song was recorded contemporaneously with 1996's Interbabe Concern, but stylistically its almost country-ish lilt had no place on the rather darker-textured album. Had it been an era of singles, this would have been a b-side.
The Loud Family also contributed three covers to the '90s spate of tribute albums. Feaeturing the same band as recorded 1994's The Tape of Only Linda, this version of "A Horse with No Name" (whence the title of the band's first album Plants & Birds & Rocks & Things) features swirly lead guitar from Zachary Smith (who actually plays all those little notes). From 1995 (in fact, according to the album's liner notes, from the very first day of that year) is their version of the Hollies' "Look Through Any Window." This track offers a rare glimpse of Scott Miller the bass player (apparently recorded during the interregnum after Rob Poor left to pursue his studies at MIT and before Kenny Kessel's arrival). The band also contributed a cover of "We're for the Dark" for Copper Records' Badfinger tribute album Come and Get It. This song was presumably recorded around the same time as Interbabe Concern and "Chicago...," since it features the band credited on that album (including here-today-gone-tomorrow drummer Dawn Richardson, who decamped for fame and fortune with some other band's tour about five minutes before the Loud Family's own tour was set to begin. But hey: she also played drums on about the worst song ever - that Four Non Blondes number that I'm sorry to have just reminded you of.)
It's too bad there were never any full-dress studio takes on some of my favorite Loud Family live covers: David Bowie's "Beauty and the Beast" (rehearsal mp3 here, though), Roxy Music's "Re-Make, Re-Model," and, uh, Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" (I don't know if the band ever did that one, but rumor has it that Miller and Kessel covered it live in an in-store appearance once or twice...)
The Loud Family "Chicago and Miss Jovan's Land-O-Mat"
The Loud Family "A Horse with No Name"
The Loud Family "Look Through Any Window"
The Loud Family "We're for the Dark"
At one time, Alias Records wanted the folks on Loudfans to submit stuff for an upcoming CD's press kit. This project never really took off, but in the meantime I wrote this. It never got used, and I should say that Alias Records, the Loud Family, the Pope, General Motors, and the CIA have nothing to do with me, and vice versa. I've since revised it to update the biography through the two more recent releases.
The release of the Loud Family's new title, Attractive Nuisance, marks the long-awaited return to the scene of one of pop's most intriguing ensembles. The band's main writer, reclusive pop genius Scott Miller, has lived for years alone in a trailer in the Mojave, programming computers and painting windowshades. Alias Records expects that Attractive Nuisance will finally bring commercial justice to their critically acclaimed act. For this album, Scott has cloned himself (with certain modifications to the nose and hair) four times and fashioned a delectable, multi-Scott "boy group," whose wicked dance steps and cuddly insouciance are certain to open the wallets of billions.
Needless to say, pop connoisseurs and critics alike are eager to know more about the Loud Family and its mysterious leader. What, they want to know, makes him tick? Here's a brief history.
After inventing the phonograph, Scott makes some recordings with his first ensemble, Alternative Learning. Recorded on wax cylinders with a steel stylus fashioned from one of his mother's knitting needles, these recordings were long thought lost, until what appears to be the sole remaining copy was discovered in a library in Columbus, Ohio.
A couple of years later, noted folklorist John Hammond travels to the remote town of Davis, California, making priceless field recordings of Scott's new group, Game Theory. Reissued under the title Irreal Folk Blues, these songs became a bible for handfuls of aspiring pop mavens.
Working as a truckdriver, Scott stops in to Sam Phillips' Sun Studios to record some of his favorite songs as a gift to his mother, Gladys. A secretary, impressed not only with Scott's singing and playing, but also by his hair, stylish overcoat, and risque dance moves, brings the recordings to the attention of Phillips himself. These recordings are released as Real Nighttime - the rest, as they say, is history.
Quickly forming a new version of Game Theory to capitalize on the media buzz, Scott and friends submit a tape of their newest material to Decca Records, hoping to get their winning sounds out to the masses. Notoriously, the tape is rejected - undefeated, the band submits the tape, now christened The Big Shot Chronicles, to the fledgling Enigma Records. The label is duly impressed, and signs the band upon whom their future fortunes will rest.
The band now set out to prove that they're not just another flash in the pan, embarking on their magnum opus, Lolita Nation. Originally, this album was to be recorded with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, and a full-fledged stage show, featuring choreography by Jerome Robbins and a cast of 200, including a synchronized swim team of trained seals, was slated for a year-long tour of major venues throughout North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia.
However, this was not to be: the master tapes including the orchestra mysteriously disappear, the seals perish in a boating accident, and Robbins backs out, not wanting to be associated with what was obviously becoming a major disaster. Undaunted, Game Theory redoes the album themselves, performing all their own overdubs - but the malign aura surrounding this disc would not dissipate. On the eve of the now stripped-down band-only tour, a troubled youth in Minnesota brutally kills his entire family with an axe. Apparently, he'd been listening to a song on Lolita Nation, "The Waist and the Knees," immediately before the attack. The resulting flurry of negative publicity causes Game Theory to cancel their tour.
Perhaps it was this bad image that motivated Scott's next step - or perhaps, it was merely his saintly soul. While recording what would be Game Theory's last album, Two Steps from the Middle Ages, Scott organizes an incredible cavalcade of musicians from around the world, effortlessly managing logistical difficulties which would stymie almost any other human, and mounts two enormously successful, simultaneous concerts in London and San Francisco, nearly every last penny of which goes to benefit famine victims in Ethiopia. Miller is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and, it is rumored, is a serious candidate for canonization.
This virtuous persona causes trouble for Scott, however. An image rehaul is in order. Scott forms a new band, dubbed the Loud Family, which records their first disc for Alias Records, Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things. On a television appearance, goaded on by host Bill Grundy, the band utters the words "Joyce" and "Nabokov" live on national TV. A nation is scandalized - but sales of the new disc skyrocket.
An interim EP, Slouching toward Liverpool, is quickly dispatched - Scott increases his media notoriety by appearing at a record company naked except for a leather jockstrap and riding saddle. Leaping upon the polished mahogany table, Miller bites the head off a goat. Alias hastily appeases the animal rights people, and another successful disc is unleashed upon the cheering millions.
For the Loud Family's next full-length, The Tape of Only Linda (yes it is too available on CD), the band decides to go for a back-to-basics, lo-fi approach, recording the entire disc on a $15 portable cassette deck (found at a Salvation Army store) in a phone booth on a crowded San Francisco street at three o'clock in the afternoon. Fans and critics alike are amazed at the sounds Miller and company were able to achieve under such primitive recording conditions. While it sells enough to be certified a Tin Record, such disappointing sales are unable to recoup Alias's massive promotional expenditures - including the notorious launching in San Francisco Bay of a 900-ft. tall statue of Scott Miller.
On the next album, the whimsically shifting breezes that have wafted personnel in and out of the Loud Family result in the inscrutable brilliance that is 1996's Interbabe Concern. While the band features a new drummer for three minutes (she leaves to accept a lucrative touring offer with a band that happened to be driving by the studio in its van), every other note on Interbabe Concern is written, arranged, performed, recorded, engineered, produced, mixed, mastered, pressed, designed, art-directed, drawn, photographed, painted, typeset, manufactured, assembled, distributed, sold, and delivered to all purchasers' homes by Scott Miller.* He even presses "play" for all listeners' first experience of the CD!
1998's Days for Days features the return of legendary Game Theory drummer Gil Ray, legendary Liverpool bass player Paul McCartney, legendary Spanish tenor Placido Domingo, legendary Denver quarterback John Elway, and the debut of a certain hungry talking chihuahua, later to become famous as a spokesdog for a national taco chain. The dog plays contrabass ocarina on an early version of "Way Too Helpful," whose working title, "Are Too Deee-Tourned," arose from its lyrics' exploration of the Situationist practice of détournement in relation to the whirring, beeping Star Wars droid's wanderings through the galaxy. (The new lyrics are about sex, tennis, and murder. I think.)
This, of course, was until now the Loud Family's most recent album - but we know that, having returned, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Attractive Nuisance - the brilliant new platter by San Francisco's Loud Family. Available at all your better purveyors of recorded music, on Alias Records.
* A well-placed source asserts that other band members delivered some copies. However, Scott forced them to wear "Scott" wigs so awed consumers wouldn't notice the difference.
3.20.2006
discorporate
We're Only In It for the Money is often regarded as one of Frank Zappa's best albums, certainly the best of the releases recorded with the original Mothers (of Invention, as MGM/Verve's necessity had it). And as is well-known among Zappa fans, when the album was initially released on CD, Zappa claimed the original tapes had decayed to the extent that the bass and drums were unusable and needed to be rerecorded. As a result, Zappa hired the bassist and drummer from his then-current touring band (Art Barrow and Chad Wackerman, respectively) and had them redo the bass and drum parts. The problem (as an army of Zappa fanatics loudly proclaimed) was that neither player made any effort to play the sort of bass or drum parts compatible with the rest of the tracks, which were recorded in 1967 and 1968. (This was apparently per Zappa's request.) The results...well, they're generally considered appalling. I'm not going to disagree, particularly - although the much-maligned recording featuring Barrow's and Wackerman's contributions does have some virtues, virtues that unfortunately are lacking in the more authentic later CD issue. (The two are readily distinguishable: the Barrow/Wackerman version pairs Money with Lumpy Gravy. Links to alternate versions of the songs are at the bottom of this entry for the most part.)
The album itself is a brutal slam at some of the more absurdly naive preconceptions and preoccupations of the then-burgeoning psychedelic movement. Although Money parodies Sgt. Pepper structurally and in its notorious packaging, its target is primarily the American take on hippiedom, particularly that associated with San Francisco. (It should be noted that it outdoes Sgt. Pepper in being far more coherent a suite of songs, one that suffers from excerpting - but I'm excerpting anyway.) So after an opening, and rather creepy, sound collage featuring odd sounds and echoed whispering, the album's first track is "Who Needs the Peace Corps?" - which deflates hippie ideals by pointing out their obvious fashion-accessory status and their attraction to any loser looking for a party. "Flower Punk" is a hilarious version of the de rigeur '60s cover song "Hey Joe," here rearranged into a series of spastic 5/8 and 7/8 measures and helium-addled voices. The blathering nonsense (in stereo!) filling out the end of the song is, sadly, just as timely today: I'm sure you can hear much the same thing at any number of "jam band" shows (including the dazed confusion of "is the song over?"). (I've only posted the original version of this track.)
Zappa's cynicism - which feels far more comfortable to us today than the almost unbearable naivete of the hippies - isn't as pervasive as it was to become, however - because the album also contains what may well be the most emotionally honest and moving track Zappa ever recorded, "Mom and Dad." The bridge (even though Zappa's phrasing is full of contemporaneous jargon) cuts directly to the point, and the song's last few lines are among the few moments in a Zappa lyric that exude empathy - even if it does so with a twist both brutal and compassionate: if the speaker adapts the parents' attitude about their daughter's friends - "creeps" - it's clear that they're going to have to recognize their own daughter was regarded exactly the same. (And note that what might have seemed paranoid in 1968 - cops killing hippies - was all too realistic a few years later. A liner note claims that "this whole monstrosity was conceived & executed by Frank Zappa as a result of some unpleasant *premonitions, August through October 1967" - the asterisked note reads "All premonitions continuing to come true.")
Alright, so what about the music? The original version of "Who Needs the Peace Corps?" melds a fairly typical Zappa melody (note the large leaps in triplets in the instrumental interjections) with a descending guitar part (in the phrases at the ends of each verse) that really does seem as if it could have come off a Byrds album or something. Roy Estrada's bass begins on a somewhat odd note, which makes more sense the next time it comes around. Compare the remade version: Barrow's bass borrows the same melody, but he plays it an octave lower, with some fancy-ass slapping (not to be confused with fancy ass-slapping) and a big, round, slightly chorused fretless sound that no way in hell was like any bass part in 1967. Later in the track he introduces some discoid off-beat octave leaps that, again, are utterly unidiomatic - not to mention intrusive and showoff-ish. Wackerman's drumming is a bit less obnoxious(Barrow's bass also seems to be mixed as nearly the lead instrument), but its stereo panning and bright, wet-flesh-patting sound (ah - here's the fancy ass-slapping) are - again - completely era-inappropriate. That is, for 1967: they're all too mid-'80s.
"Mom and Dad" probably has the most radical changes of any song on the two versions of the album. In addition to the bass and drums having been redone, there's a recorder part that's inaudible in the original, and one of Zappa's patented "snorks" (an extended one) that recurs underneath the song's main melodic line. That line in this version is doubled in its second phrase by Barrow's busy bass-playing - which means that part obscures the little descending note at the end of the line. I like the idea of the recorder part - but it seems mixed too high to my ears, plus it's a bit out of pitch, I think - as if an in-tune recorder would be too sentimental. The overall effect of these changes (the snorks in particular) is to disavow the lyric's emotionality - typical of the later Zappa, who became sadly crankish in his later years.
Okay, so the original mix is much preferred. Why, though, are the rest of the instruments noticeably more muddy and indistinct compared to the bassed-out versions? "Mom and Dad" in particular sounds like a cassette recording compared with the redone version. I suspect Zappa's death had a lot to do with this: if he worked on the restoration of the original mix at all, he certainly didn't complete it. Instead, it sounds as if Rykodisc played it safe, and tried to reproduce the original Verve LP mix as best it could. That would include, controversially, restoring the censored content left out on that issue: the Barrow/Wackerman version of the album restores "don't come in me, in me" from "Harry, You're a Beast" and the "shut your fuckin' mouth about the length of my hair" line from "Mother People." Some argue that those two edits were, in fact, pre-emptive on the Verve version and performed by Zappa himself: this seems possible, in that the reversed-out lines in "Harry" are actually switched around so some are backwards, some have phrases switched, and some are forward: far more detail than a company hack would be likely to bother with. Similarly, the "Mother People" edit was actually mentioned on the printed lyric sheet - although, oddly, the word "fuckin'" was still censored even in its reversed version (a/k/a the track "Hot Poop").
So, who knows: maybe some day a restored version will be released with the original performances but sonically cleaned up. Unfortunately, it appears the original master tapes are all but transparent: I would assume that when they were transferred to digital in the mid-'80s, those digital masters were kept - but the fact remains that the other instruments on the '80s version are far clearer than on the '90s reissue.
Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention "Who Needs the Peace Corps?" (original)
Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention "Who Needs the Peace Corps?" (rerecordings)
Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention "Flower Punk" (original)
Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention "Mom and Dad" (original)
Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention "Mom and Dad" (rerecordings)
The album itself is a brutal slam at some of the more absurdly naive preconceptions and preoccupations of the then-burgeoning psychedelic movement. Although Money parodies Sgt. Pepper structurally and in its notorious packaging, its target is primarily the American take on hippiedom, particularly that associated with San Francisco. (It should be noted that it outdoes Sgt. Pepper in being far more coherent a suite of songs, one that suffers from excerpting - but I'm excerpting anyway.) So after an opening, and rather creepy, sound collage featuring odd sounds and echoed whispering, the album's first track is "Who Needs the Peace Corps?" - which deflates hippie ideals by pointing out their obvious fashion-accessory status and their attraction to any loser looking for a party. "Flower Punk" is a hilarious version of the de rigeur '60s cover song "Hey Joe," here rearranged into a series of spastic 5/8 and 7/8 measures and helium-addled voices. The blathering nonsense (in stereo!) filling out the end of the song is, sadly, just as timely today: I'm sure you can hear much the same thing at any number of "jam band" shows (including the dazed confusion of "is the song over?"). (I've only posted the original version of this track.)
Zappa's cynicism - which feels far more comfortable to us today than the almost unbearable naivete of the hippies - isn't as pervasive as it was to become, however - because the album also contains what may well be the most emotionally honest and moving track Zappa ever recorded, "Mom and Dad." The bridge (even though Zappa's phrasing is full of contemporaneous jargon) cuts directly to the point, and the song's last few lines are among the few moments in a Zappa lyric that exude empathy - even if it does so with a twist both brutal and compassionate: if the speaker adapts the parents' attitude about their daughter's friends - "creeps" - it's clear that they're going to have to recognize their own daughter was regarded exactly the same. (And note that what might have seemed paranoid in 1968 - cops killing hippies - was all too realistic a few years later. A liner note claims that "this whole monstrosity was conceived & executed by Frank Zappa as a result of some unpleasant *premonitions, August through October 1967" - the asterisked note reads "All premonitions continuing to come true.")
Alright, so what about the music? The original version of "Who Needs the Peace Corps?" melds a fairly typical Zappa melody (note the large leaps in triplets in the instrumental interjections) with a descending guitar part (in the phrases at the ends of each verse) that really does seem as if it could have come off a Byrds album or something. Roy Estrada's bass begins on a somewhat odd note, which makes more sense the next time it comes around. Compare the remade version: Barrow's bass borrows the same melody, but he plays it an octave lower, with some fancy-ass slapping (not to be confused with fancy ass-slapping) and a big, round, slightly chorused fretless sound that no way in hell was like any bass part in 1967. Later in the track he introduces some discoid off-beat octave leaps that, again, are utterly unidiomatic - not to mention intrusive and showoff-ish. Wackerman's drumming is a bit less obnoxious(Barrow's bass also seems to be mixed as nearly the lead instrument), but its stereo panning and bright, wet-flesh-patting sound (ah - here's the fancy ass-slapping) are - again - completely era-inappropriate. That is, for 1967: they're all too mid-'80s.
"Mom and Dad" probably has the most radical changes of any song on the two versions of the album. In addition to the bass and drums having been redone, there's a recorder part that's inaudible in the original, and one of Zappa's patented "snorks" (an extended one) that recurs underneath the song's main melodic line. That line in this version is doubled in its second phrase by Barrow's busy bass-playing - which means that part obscures the little descending note at the end of the line. I like the idea of the recorder part - but it seems mixed too high to my ears, plus it's a bit out of pitch, I think - as if an in-tune recorder would be too sentimental. The overall effect of these changes (the snorks in particular) is to disavow the lyric's emotionality - typical of the later Zappa, who became sadly crankish in his later years.
Okay, so the original mix is much preferred. Why, though, are the rest of the instruments noticeably more muddy and indistinct compared to the bassed-out versions? "Mom and Dad" in particular sounds like a cassette recording compared with the redone version. I suspect Zappa's death had a lot to do with this: if he worked on the restoration of the original mix at all, he certainly didn't complete it. Instead, it sounds as if Rykodisc played it safe, and tried to reproduce the original Verve LP mix as best it could. That would include, controversially, restoring the censored content left out on that issue: the Barrow/Wackerman version of the album restores "don't come in me, in me" from "Harry, You're a Beast" and the "shut your fuckin' mouth about the length of my hair" line from "Mother People." Some argue that those two edits were, in fact, pre-emptive on the Verve version and performed by Zappa himself: this seems possible, in that the reversed-out lines in "Harry" are actually switched around so some are backwards, some have phrases switched, and some are forward: far more detail than a company hack would be likely to bother with. Similarly, the "Mother People" edit was actually mentioned on the printed lyric sheet - although, oddly, the word "fuckin'" was still censored even in its reversed version (a/k/a the track "Hot Poop").
So, who knows: maybe some day a restored version will be released with the original performances but sonically cleaned up. Unfortunately, it appears the original master tapes are all but transparent: I would assume that when they were transferred to digital in the mid-'80s, those digital masters were kept - but the fact remains that the other instruments on the '80s version are far clearer than on the '90s reissue.
Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention "Who Needs the Peace Corps?" (original)
Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention "Who Needs the Peace Corps?" (rerecordings)
Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention "Flower Punk" (original)
Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention "Mom and Dad" (original)
Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention "Mom and Dad" (rerecordings)
3.19.2006
3.16.2006
3.15.2006
try to find me...
I've been obsessing a bit over the Arcade Fire's song "Cold Wind" since receiving it on a mix CD a friend sent me (his best-of 2005 compilation). There was something indescribably haunting and affecting about the song - so naturally, I had to try to figure out how to describe it. (Those who think analysis kills music dead should stop reading right now, or risk being party to the crime.)
The first thing I noticed is that one note in particular in the melody line struck me (the note on the first syllable of "sleeping" in the first verse). When I thought about why, I realized it was outside of the harmonic framework the preceding chords had established: it's an B natural over a Am chord, i.e., the ninth degree of the chord's scale, and the song's key is F, which does not contain a B natural. So the note is invested with quite a degree of drama, because it jumps outside the tonal schema the song had set up for itself. But, as is often the case when this sort of thing happens and works, it's not completely outside that scheme, nor is it completely unexpected. That's because the movement from that note to the following note (a C, the minor third of the A minor chord) finishes the suspension from the 2nd (or 9th: same diff), just as the melody line in general has lots of similar suspensions. In fact, it's pretty much built on them: from the 4th to the 3rd in the first phrase (over an F major), from a precarious raised 4th to the 3rd in the second phrase's B flat major (intervals considered in relation to the root chord, not the key), and following the phrase I'm worrying to death, another 2nd to 3rd resolution over a G minor (which, following after the Am with B natural, makes the return to the B flat of the F major key itself rather striking - especially since that B flat is suspended for the entirety of the arpeggiated acoustic guitar phrase between verses).
To be less technical about all this, the melody is always landing precariously in an irresolute place, tentatively resolving only to move back to another slightly awkward note. After that leap to the high note, the melodic motion is primarily downward, although every other note reaches upward. In later verses, when that high C pedal point in the violin shows up, it creates even more tension, since a pedal is, I'd say, a way of avoiding a resolution (by definition, it does not move), and while the C does eventually resolve by virtue of the chords around it coming to rest on an F major, immediately before that point the song rests for a couple of measures on G minor, with the vocal line oscillating between A (the second degree of that chord) and B flat, so there's a double suspension of sorts: the A wants to move somewhere, as does the high C. And as I said earlier, the guitar arpeggio withholds resolution by insistently repeating that B flat on the downbeat, so even when things appear resolved in F major, the home key, they're really not.
The other thing about most of those melodic suspensions is that they could, in theory, resolve either way, up or down. Although most of them, in fact, resolve upwards, in doing so they resolve to minor chords, and as part of overall downward melodic cadence as well.
Errr, so much for "less technical" - although this is all pretty amateur stuff compared to what actually trained folks might do - like I'm not even trying to confuse you with V of V chords or anything. (Check out Alan W. Pollack's Beatles analyses for the flavor.) One thing that impresses me about this song is that it's pretty distinct from the generally arm-waving stuff the Arcade Fire did on Funeral, so it's good to see they have a bit more range than that record shows.
(A couple of notes: the song's originally from the second Six Feet Under soundtrack compilation. Also: much of this analysis was done in my head in my car on my way to work (fact-checked with a keyboard later), so yes, I do have a life and don't spend all day in obscure and ponderous quibble-farming.)
The Arcade Fire "Cold Wind"
The first thing I noticed is that one note in particular in the melody line struck me (the note on the first syllable of "sleeping" in the first verse). When I thought about why, I realized it was outside of the harmonic framework the preceding chords had established: it's an B natural over a Am chord, i.e., the ninth degree of the chord's scale, and the song's key is F, which does not contain a B natural. So the note is invested with quite a degree of drama, because it jumps outside the tonal schema the song had set up for itself. But, as is often the case when this sort of thing happens and works, it's not completely outside that scheme, nor is it completely unexpected. That's because the movement from that note to the following note (a C, the minor third of the A minor chord) finishes the suspension from the 2nd (or 9th: same diff), just as the melody line in general has lots of similar suspensions. In fact, it's pretty much built on them: from the 4th to the 3rd in the first phrase (over an F major), from a precarious raised 4th to the 3rd in the second phrase's B flat major (intervals considered in relation to the root chord, not the key), and following the phrase I'm worrying to death, another 2nd to 3rd resolution over a G minor (which, following after the Am with B natural, makes the return to the B flat of the F major key itself rather striking - especially since that B flat is suspended for the entirety of the arpeggiated acoustic guitar phrase between verses).
To be less technical about all this, the melody is always landing precariously in an irresolute place, tentatively resolving only to move back to another slightly awkward note. After that leap to the high note, the melodic motion is primarily downward, although every other note reaches upward. In later verses, when that high C pedal point in the violin shows up, it creates even more tension, since a pedal is, I'd say, a way of avoiding a resolution (by definition, it does not move), and while the C does eventually resolve by virtue of the chords around it coming to rest on an F major, immediately before that point the song rests for a couple of measures on G minor, with the vocal line oscillating between A (the second degree of that chord) and B flat, so there's a double suspension of sorts: the A wants to move somewhere, as does the high C. And as I said earlier, the guitar arpeggio withholds resolution by insistently repeating that B flat on the downbeat, so even when things appear resolved in F major, the home key, they're really not.
The other thing about most of those melodic suspensions is that they could, in theory, resolve either way, up or down. Although most of them, in fact, resolve upwards, in doing so they resolve to minor chords, and as part of overall downward melodic cadence as well.
Errr, so much for "less technical" - although this is all pretty amateur stuff compared to what actually trained folks might do - like I'm not even trying to confuse you with V of V chords or anything. (Check out Alan W. Pollack's Beatles analyses for the flavor.) One thing that impresses me about this song is that it's pretty distinct from the generally arm-waving stuff the Arcade Fire did on Funeral, so it's good to see they have a bit more range than that record shows.
(A couple of notes: the song's originally from the second Six Feet Under soundtrack compilation. Also: much of this analysis was done in my head in my car on my way to work (fact-checked with a keyboard later), so yes, I do have a life and don't spend all day in obscure and ponderous quibble-farming.)
The Arcade Fire "Cold Wind"
3.12.2006
ponderation
Good thing I'm not a sucker for spam, because I can't keep straight which medications supposedly reverse hair loss and which are supposed to cure impotence.
I figure that means there are probably a lot of very gullible bald men wandering around with perpetual hard-ons.
I figure that means there are probably a lot of very gullible bald men wandering around with perpetual hard-ons.
Freudian typo
Wonder how long this will be up? In a "breaking news" item in the online version of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Bill Frist is quoted as reprimanding Russ Feingold's call for censure of President Bush and expressing hope that (to quote the article) "people in Iran were not listening to the program because Feingold's approach sent a 'terrible, terrible signal' that the country did not support its commander-in-chief while at war."
"Iran"?
Anyway, yes: it's truly terrible that people in other nations might get the idea that political disagreement is allowed. What sort of crazy ideas might they get then?
"Iran"?
Anyway, yes: it's truly terrible that people in other nations might get the idea that political disagreement is allowed. What sort of crazy ideas might they get then?
3.10.2006
you are familiar with these terms, I trust
Okay, so if you're like me (and in my blogging persona, I'm just as certain as Morrissey of the source of the sun's light - that is to say: who reading this isn't like me, at least in respect of what I'm writing about, or why are you here?), you figure that any writer as clearly proficient and literate as Dan Bejar of Destroyer (and "secret member" of the New Pornographers) must surely be conveying some wondrous something with his witty and allusive lyrical gems. Right? Yet no matter how often you pore over those lyric sheets (or, for the recordings without them, play over and over individual lines to parse out those curious quivering syllables), perhaps, you find, you just can't figure out what the what is the what.
Now, there's help. And not just help, but help that encourages drunkenness (surely one of the better kinds of help around), courtesy of Zoilus, who's compiled this wonderful Destroyer Drinking Game. What's really brilliant about this game is it essentially amounts to a list of ingredients toward a critical understanding of Bejar's preoccupations, the character of the scenes he sets and describes - and ultimately (before the alcohol takes hold, in a dry run, shall we say) provides as good an exegetical context of BejarWorld as we're likely to find. (Don't neglect the essay dressed as a review of Destroyer's Rubies that precedes the drinking game: some fine stuff there!)
Now, there's help. And not just help, but help that encourages drunkenness (surely one of the better kinds of help around), courtesy of Zoilus, who's compiled this wonderful Destroyer Drinking Game. What's really brilliant about this game is it essentially amounts to a list of ingredients toward a critical understanding of Bejar's preoccupations, the character of the scenes he sets and describes - and ultimately (before the alcohol takes hold, in a dry run, shall we say) provides as good an exegetical context of BejarWorld as we're likely to find. (Don't neglect the essay dressed as a review of Destroyer's Rubies that precedes the drinking game: some fine stuff there!)
3.09.2006
trivia!
a) Is there any symbol cooler than the biohazard symbol? I think not.
b) What do T-Bone Burnett's The Criminal Under My Hat and Blur's Leisure have in common (other than - duh - being musical recordings...)? Both albums contain not just one but two songs that share titles with Beatle songs - but that are not those Beatle songs. Leisure features "Birthday" and "Come Together," while the T-Bone Burnett album has "Every Little Thing" and "Any Time At All." Are there any other albums that contain multiple non-Beatle Beatle titles?
b) What do T-Bone Burnett's The Criminal Under My Hat and Blur's Leisure have in common (other than - duh - being musical recordings...)? Both albums contain not just one but two songs that share titles with Beatle songs - but that are not those Beatle songs. Leisure features "Birthday" and "Come Together," while the T-Bone Burnett album has "Every Little Thing" and "Any Time At All." Are there any other albums that contain multiple non-Beatle Beatle titles?
3.08.2006
a partial list of proposed roles submitted to Andy Serkis' agent
Sesame Street: The Movie - Oscar the Grouch
The Prisoner Movie - Rover
Jaws V - terrorist shark
George Romero’s Clive Barker’s Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds - Pigeon #37
The Fast + the 4ious - 1967 Plymouth Barracuda convertible
The Simpsons: In the Flesh (live action) - Nuclear Reactor II
The Flying Nun Movie – magic wimple
24 (day 6) - weaponized ebola virus
Mannix: The Movie - smashed pane of plate glass
Uwe Boll’s Frankenstein - the monster, a bolt of lightning, a leather strap, villager’s torch #52, Dr. Vicki Frank’s left breast
James Joyce’s Ulysses: A Woody Allen Film - the ineluctable modality of the visible
The Prisoner Movie - Rover
Jaws V - terrorist shark
George Romero’s Clive Barker’s Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds - Pigeon #37
The Fast + the 4ious - 1967 Plymouth Barracuda convertible
The Simpsons: In the Flesh (live action) - Nuclear Reactor II
The Flying Nun Movie – magic wimple
24 (day 6) - weaponized ebola virus
Mannix: The Movie - smashed pane of plate glass
Uwe Boll’s Frankenstein - the monster, a bolt of lightning, a leather strap, villager’s torch #52, Dr. Vicki Frank’s left breast
James Joyce’s Ulysses: A Woody Allen Film - the ineluctable modality of the visible
ongoing coverage
When is a cover not a cover? Well, here are two versions of the same song, both featuring the songwriter, Spencer Krug, in two different bands: Sunset Rubdown's "I'll Believe in Anything You'll Believe in Anything," and Wolf Parade, where the song is more snappily titled "I'll Believe in Anything."
Sometimes a cover is clearly a cover, even when it's barely recognizable as such. Maxïmo Park's take on John Lennon's "Isolation" (from the band's Missing Songs compilation of etceterage) keeps fooling me: it plays, I ask myself "which song is that?" and when I look, I keep being surprised that it was the Lennon cover - even though I know the Lennon song. (Yes, I pay about zero attention to lyrics, which would be the dead giveaway. For reference, here's Lennon's original.)
Sunset Rubdown "I'll Believe in Anything You'll Believe in Anything"
Wolf Parade "I'll Believe in Anything"
Maxïmo Park "Isolation"
John Lennon "Isolation"
Sometimes a cover is clearly a cover, even when it's barely recognizable as such. Maxïmo Park's take on John Lennon's "Isolation" (from the band's Missing Songs compilation of etceterage) keeps fooling me: it plays, I ask myself "which song is that?" and when I look, I keep being surprised that it was the Lennon cover - even though I know the Lennon song. (Yes, I pay about zero attention to lyrics, which would be the dead giveaway. For reference, here's Lennon's original.)
Sunset Rubdown "I'll Believe in Anything You'll Believe in Anything"
Wolf Parade "I'll Believe in Anything"
Maxïmo Park "Isolation"
John Lennon "Isolation"
3.03.2006
fish meets bicycle
Two songs that have nothing to do with one another.
In my random grabbing of CDs for the car, I picked up a disc from the Smithsonian folk music box set. This track, "A Wanton Trick" by Ed McCurdy (Milwaukee note: no relation to Pat I don't think), should demonstrate that songs with dirty lyrics were not invented by hip-hoppers: this one was released in 1957 (and its lyrics are from the 18th century). The word "prick" is actually a musical term, of course. Not that it couldn't mean anything else.
The other track is an apparently rare Swervedriver track, "It's All Happening Now," which was intended for release on Ejector Seat Reservation but never came out. Apparently it was available to members of the Swervedriver fan club for 7 minutes and 38 seconds and was then withdrawn. I found my copy on So(*coughcough*)ek, I think. Trivia: much of the lyric is borrowed from an obscure '60s folk musician named Robert Zimmerman, who released a handful of albums on a tiny record company with red labels.
Okay, so apparently both of these are, like, folk songs or something.
Ed McCurdy "A Wanton Trick"
Swervedriver "It's All Happening Now"
In my random grabbing of CDs for the car, I picked up a disc from the Smithsonian folk music box set. This track, "A Wanton Trick" by Ed McCurdy (Milwaukee note: no relation to Pat I don't think), should demonstrate that songs with dirty lyrics were not invented by hip-hoppers: this one was released in 1957 (and its lyrics are from the 18th century). The word "prick" is actually a musical term, of course. Not that it couldn't mean anything else.
The other track is an apparently rare Swervedriver track, "It's All Happening Now," which was intended for release on Ejector Seat Reservation but never came out. Apparently it was available to members of the Swervedriver fan club for 7 minutes and 38 seconds and was then withdrawn. I found my copy on So(*coughcough*)ek, I think. Trivia: much of the lyric is borrowed from an obscure '60s folk musician named Robert Zimmerman, who released a handful of albums on a tiny record company with red labels.
Okay, so apparently both of these are, like, folk songs or something.
Ed McCurdy "A Wanton Trick"
Swervedriver "It's All Happening Now"
3.01.2006
You know how to use a whistle, ref? Just put your lips together and blow...
Okay, granted: I'm not a frequenter of fratboy sports bars, so for all I know, the sort of bizarre, proto-homoerotic behavior implicitly dissed in this advertisement (reproduced below) happens all the time. But I doubt it: more likely, this is another example of the near-paranoia currently besieging the male psyche courtesy our wonderful advertisers (dovetailing nicely with our paranoid, increasingly fear-driven social and political culture). But still, it's passing strange.
First, this ad is one of a series of Miller ads apparently aimed at virginal bar-goers who haven't a clue how to act. Another ad in the series depicts two clueless yutzes obliviously blocking in a waitress and preventing her from delivering her tray full of drinks. This ad plays out a sort of exaggerated scenario, arrived at via a logic similar to the "Milwaukee's Best" ads, that leads inexorably from trivial violations of the unwritten guy code all the way to instant, total, sky-sent obliteration (by means of an enormous beer can falling from the heavens). The problem, obvious to any viewer of the ad, is that the fellow on the right is blatantly out of line by any sort of (straight-guy) men's room etiquette. Not only is he surreptitiously checking out Square-Headed Guy's equipment, he's leaning over towards him and actually allowing his left shoulder to touch SHG's right shoulder.
As I said, in my experience this doesn't happen: in fact, I've noticed over the past twenty years an increasing need on the part of men's room patrons for more and more private space. If one urinal is occupied, one simply does not go to the adjacent urinal, unless all other spaces (including toilet stalls) are occupied - and I've seen guys actually wait for someone to leave to avoid using a urinal directly next to another man. Add to that the increasing prevalence of those little metal walls separating the urinals, and it's obvious that the designers of men's rooms are aware that men, it seems, do not want even the slightest suspicion that any other man would have opportunity to check out the details of their genitalia. And of course, homophobic men (and homophobia is, of course, what's being encouraged in this ad, as sine qua non of true manliness) will see what they both fear and want to see. I mean, those of you who've met my wife will know that she isn't exactly gender-ambiguous, except perhaps that she's tall - yet I remember, one winter as we were walking on the East Side near some bars, a hostile, drunken idiot behind us taking us for two gay men, and muttering homophobic imprecations under his breath. His girlfriend was considerably more perceptive, and correctly recognized Rose's gender, and kept trying to tell her overheated man that he was wrong and that he should shut up.
I think those who see gay men everywhere (or terrorists, or communists, or persecutors of Christianity, or rapists and murderers and kidnappers and alien abductors) do so because to increase the intensity of the threat they think they're facing amps up both their sense of being in a heroic, beleaguered minority and their sense of cultural martyrdom. I mean, if you have to lose, it's more honorable to lose to the world champions than to the basement dwellers - and still better if you defeat the champs. But to see one's enemy everywhere also means one has to constantly reassert one's identity as enemy of the enemy - lest your fellow defenders of the faith mistake you for one of the alien Others.
So the viewer of this ad, I think, is meant to think, "Oh my god - I hope I'm not doing anything that might make anyone think I'm acting even close to the way this guy is!" Manhood self-questioned, he realizes he simply must buy another beer - beer being, of course, an unquestionably manly drink. Unless it's a light beer. Or an import. Or a microbrew. Or a "premium" with the fancy-ass gold foil on it. Nope, nothing but plain, old-fashioned American pisswater will do. Like Miller.
First, this ad is one of a series of Miller ads apparently aimed at virginal bar-goers who haven't a clue how to act. Another ad in the series depicts two clueless yutzes obliviously blocking in a waitress and preventing her from delivering her tray full of drinks. This ad plays out a sort of exaggerated scenario, arrived at via a logic similar to the "Milwaukee's Best" ads, that leads inexorably from trivial violations of the unwritten guy code all the way to instant, total, sky-sent obliteration (by means of an enormous beer can falling from the heavens). The problem, obvious to any viewer of the ad, is that the fellow on the right is blatantly out of line by any sort of (straight-guy) men's room etiquette. Not only is he surreptitiously checking out Square-Headed Guy's equipment, he's leaning over towards him and actually allowing his left shoulder to touch SHG's right shoulder.
As I said, in my experience this doesn't happen: in fact, I've noticed over the past twenty years an increasing need on the part of men's room patrons for more and more private space. If one urinal is occupied, one simply does not go to the adjacent urinal, unless all other spaces (including toilet stalls) are occupied - and I've seen guys actually wait for someone to leave to avoid using a urinal directly next to another man. Add to that the increasing prevalence of those little metal walls separating the urinals, and it's obvious that the designers of men's rooms are aware that men, it seems, do not want even the slightest suspicion that any other man would have opportunity to check out the details of their genitalia. And of course, homophobic men (and homophobia is, of course, what's being encouraged in this ad, as sine qua non of true manliness) will see what they both fear and want to see. I mean, those of you who've met my wife will know that she isn't exactly gender-ambiguous, except perhaps that she's tall - yet I remember, one winter as we were walking on the East Side near some bars, a hostile, drunken idiot behind us taking us for two gay men, and muttering homophobic imprecations under his breath. His girlfriend was considerably more perceptive, and correctly recognized Rose's gender, and kept trying to tell her overheated man that he was wrong and that he should shut up.
I think those who see gay men everywhere (or terrorists, or communists, or persecutors of Christianity, or rapists and murderers and kidnappers and alien abductors) do so because to increase the intensity of the threat they think they're facing amps up both their sense of being in a heroic, beleaguered minority and their sense of cultural martyrdom. I mean, if you have to lose, it's more honorable to lose to the world champions than to the basement dwellers - and still better if you defeat the champs. But to see one's enemy everywhere also means one has to constantly reassert one's identity as enemy of the enemy - lest your fellow defenders of the faith mistake you for one of the alien Others.
So the viewer of this ad, I think, is meant to think, "Oh my god - I hope I'm not doing anything that might make anyone think I'm acting even close to the way this guy is!" Manhood self-questioned, he realizes he simply must buy another beer - beer being, of course, an unquestionably manly drink. Unless it's a light beer. Or an import. Or a microbrew. Or a "premium" with the fancy-ass gold foil on it. Nope, nothing but plain, old-fashioned American pisswater will do. Like Miller.
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