The January 2007 issue of Harper's Magazine features an article by David Graeber positing that Americans (and in fact, people generally) are far more motivated by altruism than most thinkers accept. One point Graeber makes illuminates (from a somewhat oblique angle) some of the ideas I pointed at in an earlier post, on the relation between the prevalence of religious belief and of socially destructive behaviors. Graeber argues that egoism and altruism "arise in relation to each other" and, perhaps more provocatively, that "neither would be conceivable without the market." He points out that historically, "it is generally in the times and places that one sees the emergence of money and markets that one also sees the rise of world religions - Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam." The emphasis on material goods and this world naturally brings forth a "countervailing" deemphasis of those very material things in favor of "spiritual" values...including altruism. The problem with market behavior is that, unchecked by any other values or belief, it encourages and justifies above all else short-term, self-enriching behavior. I say "short-term" because, logically, a valuable object you have now is always worth more than a potentially more valuable object you do not have now - even if it's possible that you might have it in the future, that's uncertain; whereas your current possession of such an object is a certainty. (Incidentally, the original, moral usage of "value" is overridden by a similar logic: one could argue that morals invariably attempt to outweigh present, perceived gains with future, probable losses, this-worldly or otherwise. And so the market invariably diminishes non-material values in favor of material value.)
That inherent selfishness of the market (and theoretical attempts to claim that, as a whole, the market sees to some sort of social good tend to read like rationalizations - and ultimately founder upon a logic of value similar to that outlined above) surely contributes to the social dysfunction outlined in Gregory Paul's article.
So Graeber provides indirect theoretical support for the notion that there's a correlation (not necessarily causation) between the prevalence of religious belief and the prevalence of the sort of social dysfunction Paul describes.
It also might provide support for the disdain many people feel for religious organizations once they become invested (in all senses) in this-worldly markets.
12.30.2006
12.29.2006
12.21.2006
the bits blow forward and the bits flow back
a/k/a The Year in Music: Part 2 - The Shlingles
Here are some highlights of the various tracks that found their way into my computer this year.
Envelopes "Sister in Love" - Take the off-center three-bar guitar part from Eno's "The True Wheel," add a circular organ part, and some group vocals, and you get this Swedish band's insanely catchy little number here. There are moments where the singer sounds kinda like the guy from the King of France (an underrated band that I think I've blogged about before), in that sort of nasal, wheedling way that's just short of annoying yet somehow intriguing.
Ben Folds "Such Great Heights" - Here's Ben Folds in the studios of Australian radio station JJJ, covering the Postal Service's hit with nothing but a couple of percussion players and some nuts and bolts and the like stuck inside his piano.* Essentially Folds has made his piano into a handful of different instruments of differing tonal and textural qualities. Plus...evil ringtones! (Geeks will have heard the voice of Viv Stanshall on that last line...)
* emendation: The Council on Grammar Relations has pointed out that, if this sentence is literally true, Mr. Folds is guilty of heinous abuse of percussion players, since the Geneva Convention specifically prohibits sticking percussionists inside pianos, accordions, sousaphones, and trombones. The sentence should read: "Here's Ben Folds in the studios of Australian radio station JJJ, covering the Postal Service's hit with nothing but (1) a couple of percussion players being pistolwhipped by a gazelle and (2) a piano into which Folds has forced his henchmen to insert nuts, bolts, and several percussionists' fingernails." I hope this is clearer now.
Dymaxion "U.S. 80s-90s" - Covering the Fall is harder than you think. Sure, most the songs are just based on riffs, and you'd think that if you just brought home those riffs and then shouted over the top, you'd be there. You'd be wrong, though - aside from the not-so-secret ingredient of Mark E. Smith's voice's unique timbre, there's the fact that even the simplest Fall songs often bring along some textural and structural oddities that tip the balance of the song just enough to make things interesting. (That might also explain why Fall fans like me can listen to 7,000 albums of songs that the average listener probably thinks are all the same.) Anyway, what Dymaxion does here is retain little but the riff (that bassline) and add gobs and gobs of odd noises and samples: a string chart that might be from "Glass Onion," a disconnected phone tone, a ba-ba-bah-dah backing vocal track, a horn chord that almost certainly is from "Spinning Wheel" by Blood Sweat & Tears (!) - and cohere them into something that, offputting at first, ends up maddeningly catchy. (At least for me - the damned song sticks in my head for days at a time and is dislodged with extreme difficulty.)
Daylight's for the Birds "To No One" - The band's promo folks sent me two tracks - this one and one other - and I was actually inspired to buy the album (okay, from eMusic - but someone's getting paid, right?). There's a sort of shoegaze-y thing going on here (which I'm always a sucker for), plus some Kraftwerk-y elektronische strings, and a bit of Stereolab Euroformalism...works for me anyway.
John McGlinchey "Spider" - This is from very early in the year. During the year I regularized my file-formatting system (bear with me) so on later tracks, I can tell where a song came from. This one, I'd forgotten - so I had to Google it to find out. No surprise: it came from the estimable Said the Gramophone, which posts a lot of these odd little, folkish but vaguely psychedelic numbers that seem somehow to bear traces of the dirt of unknown nations.
Jonathan Coulton "Skullcrusher Mountain" - I'd heard one or two of Coulton's tunes on other people's mixes before, but what sold me on him was seeing him as John Hodgman's accompanist at one of Hodgman's readings this past fall. And what specifically sold me is realizing that, goofy quasi-folkie or not, the man writes catchy, clever songs. And for me, at least, they're funny as hell too. There are at least two lines in this one that made me laugh out loud the first time I heard them. Plus, I think there are any number of songwriters who'd kill for that chorus - put "normal" words on it and you just might have a hit.
emendation the second
To recap:
Envelopes "Sister in Love"
Ben Folds "Such Great Heights"
Dymaxion "U.S. 80s-90s"
Daylight's for the Birds "To No One"
John McGlinchey "Spider"
Jonathan Coulton "Skullcrusher Mountain"
Here are some highlights of the various tracks that found their way into my computer this year.
Envelopes "Sister in Love" - Take the off-center three-bar guitar part from Eno's "The True Wheel," add a circular organ part, and some group vocals, and you get this Swedish band's insanely catchy little number here. There are moments where the singer sounds kinda like the guy from the King of France (an underrated band that I think I've blogged about before), in that sort of nasal, wheedling way that's just short of annoying yet somehow intriguing.
Ben Folds "Such Great Heights" - Here's Ben Folds in the studios of Australian radio station JJJ, covering the Postal Service's hit with nothing but a couple of percussion players and some nuts and bolts and the like stuck inside his piano.* Essentially Folds has made his piano into a handful of different instruments of differing tonal and textural qualities. Plus...evil ringtones! (Geeks will have heard the voice of Viv Stanshall on that last line...)
* emendation: The Council on Grammar Relations has pointed out that, if this sentence is literally true, Mr. Folds is guilty of heinous abuse of percussion players, since the Geneva Convention specifically prohibits sticking percussionists inside pianos, accordions, sousaphones, and trombones. The sentence should read: "Here's Ben Folds in the studios of Australian radio station JJJ, covering the Postal Service's hit with nothing but (1) a couple of percussion players being pistolwhipped by a gazelle and (2) a piano into which Folds has forced his henchmen to insert nuts, bolts, and several percussionists' fingernails." I hope this is clearer now.
Dymaxion "U.S. 80s-90s" - Covering the Fall is harder than you think. Sure, most the songs are just based on riffs, and you'd think that if you just brought home those riffs and then shouted over the top, you'd be there. You'd be wrong, though - aside from the not-so-secret ingredient of Mark E. Smith's voice's unique timbre, there's the fact that even the simplest Fall songs often bring along some textural and structural oddities that tip the balance of the song just enough to make things interesting. (That might also explain why Fall fans like me can listen to 7,000 albums of songs that the average listener probably thinks are all the same.) Anyway, what Dymaxion does here is retain little but the riff (that bassline) and add gobs and gobs of odd noises and samples: a string chart that might be from "Glass Onion," a disconnected phone tone, a ba-ba-bah-dah backing vocal track, a horn chord that almost certainly is from "Spinning Wheel" by Blood Sweat & Tears (!) - and cohere them into something that, offputting at first, ends up maddeningly catchy. (At least for me - the damned song sticks in my head for days at a time and is dislodged with extreme difficulty.)
Daylight's for the Birds "To No One" - The band's promo folks sent me two tracks - this one and one other - and I was actually inspired to buy the album (okay, from eMusic - but someone's getting paid, right?). There's a sort of shoegaze-y thing going on here (which I'm always a sucker for), plus some Kraftwerk-y elektronische strings, and a bit of Stereolab Euroformalism...works for me anyway.
John McGlinchey "Spider" - This is from very early in the year. During the year I regularized my file-formatting system (bear with me) so on later tracks, I can tell where a song came from. This one, I'd forgotten - so I had to Google it to find out. No surprise: it came from the estimable Said the Gramophone, which posts a lot of these odd little, folkish but vaguely psychedelic numbers that seem somehow to bear traces of the dirt of unknown nations.
Jonathan Coulton "Skullcrusher Mountain" - I'd heard one or two of Coulton's tunes on other people's mixes before, but what sold me on him was seeing him as John Hodgman's accompanist at one of Hodgman's readings this past fall. And what specifically sold me is realizing that, goofy quasi-folkie or not, the man writes catchy, clever songs. And for me, at least, they're funny as hell too. There are at least two lines in this one that made me laugh out loud the first time I heard them. Plus, I think there are any number of songwriters who'd kill for that chorus - put "normal" words on it and you just might have a hit.
emendation the second
To recap:
Envelopes "Sister in Love"
Ben Folds "Such Great Heights"
Dymaxion "U.S. 80s-90s"
Daylight's for the Birds "To No One"
John McGlinchey "Spider"
Jonathan Coulton "Skullcrusher Mountain"
12.20.2006
Intonorumori
Or boringly: The Year in Music: Part 1 - The Albums
While I still do most of my home music-listening in the form of physical CDs that I listen to as entire albums (in other words, in the mode of the last century), each year it seems I listen to more and more music as isolated songs. One reflection of this might be the mixes I put together each December for friends: for years, these were simply a CD with tracks drawn from the 20 best CDs of the year. A few years back, to provide a home for the stray tracks that I enjoyed but which weren't on CDs I owned, I started adding a second CD of songs from those stray tracks. And this year, I'm sending out a single CD-R (titled Blue Flag, after the cover image which I shot last summer) with 20 tracks from the top 20 CDs...and more than 80 stray tracks. Granted, I haven't let go of the concept of the album completely: those 80 extra tracks are themselves sequenced into album-like portions (four of them) rather than being merely plopped on the disc to come up in alphabetical order or left to the whim of the recipient's shuffle mode. (There's also a secret key: each sequence's initial track has something in common, a something I discovered when putting the mixes together on three of the sequences, after which I altered the other two to make them consistent... The mixes are up at Art of the Mix (scroll to the bottom to see the most recent ones): see if you can guess what the secret key is.
Anyway, today I'll say a few words about the top CDs of the year, in my usual contingent-upon-daily-whim fashion and with the usual provisos about stuff I haven't bought yet, stuff I haven't really familiarized myself with yet, and the disqualification on technical grounds (my own) of live albums, compilations, and EPs.
Top Tier:
Split here between two relatively traditionalist approaches (Hitchcock's return to pop-rock; the Willis's melodic rock, albeit damaged by '50s scifi movie-soundtrack electronics) and relatively expansive ones (the eccentric songcraft of Destroyer's Dan Bejar, and TV on the Radio's hyphen-hungry sample-jazz-tech-pop-funk-rock-folk-whateverness). I suppose that's pretty characteristic of me - I still love melody and clever chord sequences, but sometimes pure texture can drag me in as well (even if, in some cases, there's barely a song there at all). The Willis, incidentally, is an Oshkosh-based band that I discovered because its main writer is a graduate student in my university's creative writing program, but it's also a smart, powerful band with its own distinctive vision. That scifi soundtrack thing isn't an affectation; it fits with the CD's lyrical approach, whose songs' narrators often seem adrift amongst a mix of outdated and current technology. (I wrote a whole entry about them last year.) I'd spotted out "Are We Are" in last year's "singles" mix...and unfortunately, forgot that fact in putting together this year's "albums" mix. To make up for it, here's a different track, "Are Language" (they seem to like titles beginning with "Are"...), in some ways the most straightforward rock track on the CD.
Next Tier:
Grizzly Bear impressed with a blend of styles and genres that makes one imagine a '90s-bred Brian Wilson moving to broader sonic palette but beginning not from surf-rock but Guided by Voices, Helium, and the like. Two old favorites, perpetual entrants in my year-end charts, return: Lilys and the Loud Family. The latter act returns for its first album of new material in six years, augmented by simpatico Sacramento-based songwriter Anton Barbeau (see below for one of his solo albums). Scott Walker - not to be outdone - releases his first CD in eleven years - but it's worth the wait. The Drift is powerful, creepy, odd, yet moving and (at least after multiple listens) tuneful in a peculiar way. The richness of Walker's voice has curdled slightly, giving it a somewhat frayed and abraded texture but one that suits the sometimes grim subject matter of his songs. "Cossacks Are" (man those plural forms of "to be" are getting the love this year) is probably the most "normal" song on the CD. You've been warned.
Third Tier:
Two albums from two busy acts. Pollard (as usual) released at least two CDs this year; I prefer the more textured approach he and co-conspirator Todd Tobias follow on this CD to the bash-em-out style generally assayed on Normal Happiness. Amusingly, on my mix CD I chose the somewhat atypically bouncy "Dancing Girls and Dancing Men" - "amusingly" because it's musically quite close to the Yo La Tengo track I chose for the mix ("Beanbag Chair"). To rectify that redundancy, here's "I'm a Widow."
Most of this incarnation of the Minus 5 appear as Robyn Hitchcock's backing band on his own album; here's Scott McCaughey making the most of his own songs. The band has pretty much solidified both as a band (rather than an all-star pickup act) and as McCaughey's main song outlet (versus the Young Fresh Fellows, who seem to be on hiatus).
Next ten (in grouped order):
The Decemberists The Crane Wife; Don Dixon The Entire Combustible World in One Small Room ("In Darkness Found"); Matthew Friedberger Winter Women/Holy Ghost Language School; Momus Ocky Milk ("Moop Bears"); Pernice Brothers Live a Little
Anton Barbeau In the Village of the Apple Sun; His Name Is Alive Detrola; Squarewave Dullhead (new band from leader of Madison's popular late-eighties/early-nineties Ivory Library; here's the opening track "A Name That Isn't Mine" - and yes it ends like that)
Tom Verlaine Songs and Other Things (not as good as I'd hoped, but at least he's recording again); Yo La Tengo I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass
Honorable Mention: Elvis Costello & Allen Toussaint The River in Reverse; Elvis Costello & the Metropol Orkest My Flame Burns Blue; The Fiery Furnaces Bitter Tea; Tommy Keene Crashing the Ether; Tris McCall and the New Jack Trippers I'm Assuming You're All in Bands; Morrissey Ringleader of the Tormentors; The M's Future Women; Pere Ubu Why I Hate Women; Robert Pollard Normal Happiness; Stereolab Fab Four Suture; Tom Verlaine Around; We Are Scientists With Love and Squalor; Thom Yorke The Eraser
Best EPs: The Bye Bye Blackbirds Honeymoon; PAS/CAL Dear Sir; The Sky Drops Clouds of People
Relatively Disappointing: Mission of Burma The Obliterati; Sonic Youth Rather Ripped
Haven't had time to really evaluate yet but potential contenders: Anton Barbeau Drug Free; Jon Langford Gold Brick; Lansing-Dreiden The Dividing Island; Eric Matthews Foundation Sounds; Mouse on Mars Varcharz; Joanna Newsom Ys; Now It's Overhead Dark Light Daybreak; Gil Ray I Am Atomic Man!; Relay Still Point of Turning; The Strokes First Impressions of Earth
Busy Beavers (released at least two CDs of new material during 2006): Anton Barbeau, Elvis Costello, Matthew Friedberger (also counting his work with the Fiery Furnaces CD), Robert Pollard, Tom Verlaine
Next time: stray tracks!
The Willis "Are Language"
Scott Walker "Cossacks Are"
Robert Pollard "I'm a Widow"
Don Dixon "In Darkness Found"
Momus "Moop Bears"
Squarewave "A Name That Isn't Mine"
While I still do most of my home music-listening in the form of physical CDs that I listen to as entire albums (in other words, in the mode of the last century), each year it seems I listen to more and more music as isolated songs. One reflection of this might be the mixes I put together each December for friends: for years, these were simply a CD with tracks drawn from the 20 best CDs of the year. A few years back, to provide a home for the stray tracks that I enjoyed but which weren't on CDs I owned, I started adding a second CD of songs from those stray tracks. And this year, I'm sending out a single CD-R (titled Blue Flag, after the cover image which I shot last summer) with 20 tracks from the top 20 CDs...and more than 80 stray tracks. Granted, I haven't let go of the concept of the album completely: those 80 extra tracks are themselves sequenced into album-like portions (four of them) rather than being merely plopped on the disc to come up in alphabetical order or left to the whim of the recipient's shuffle mode. (There's also a secret key: each sequence's initial track has something in common, a something I discovered when putting the mixes together on three of the sequences, after which I altered the other two to make them consistent... The mixes are up at Art of the Mix (scroll to the bottom to see the most recent ones): see if you can guess what the secret key is.
Anyway, today I'll say a few words about the top CDs of the year, in my usual contingent-upon-daily-whim fashion and with the usual provisos about stuff I haven't bought yet, stuff I haven't really familiarized myself with yet, and the disqualification on technical grounds (my own) of live albums, compilations, and EPs.
Top Tier:
Destroyer Destroyer's Rubies
Robyn Hitchcock & the Venus 3 Olé! Tarantula
TV on the Radio Return to Cookie Mountain
The Willis bathtub.lightbulb.heartattack.
Split here between two relatively traditionalist approaches (Hitchcock's return to pop-rock; the Willis's melodic rock, albeit damaged by '50s scifi movie-soundtrack electronics) and relatively expansive ones (the eccentric songcraft of Destroyer's Dan Bejar, and TV on the Radio's hyphen-hungry sample-jazz-tech-pop-funk-rock-folk-whateverness). I suppose that's pretty characteristic of me - I still love melody and clever chord sequences, but sometimes pure texture can drag me in as well (even if, in some cases, there's barely a song there at all). The Willis, incidentally, is an Oshkosh-based band that I discovered because its main writer is a graduate student in my university's creative writing program, but it's also a smart, powerful band with its own distinctive vision. That scifi soundtrack thing isn't an affectation; it fits with the CD's lyrical approach, whose songs' narrators often seem adrift amongst a mix of outdated and current technology. (I wrote a whole entry about them last year.) I'd spotted out "Are We Are" in last year's "singles" mix...and unfortunately, forgot that fact in putting together this year's "albums" mix. To make up for it, here's a different track, "Are Language" (they seem to like titles beginning with "Are"...), in some ways the most straightforward rock track on the CD.
Next Tier:
Grizzly Bear Yellow House
Lilys Everything Wrong Is Imaginary
The Loud Family with Anton Barbeau What If It Works?
Scott Walker The Drift
Grizzly Bear impressed with a blend of styles and genres that makes one imagine a '90s-bred Brian Wilson moving to broader sonic palette but beginning not from surf-rock but Guided by Voices, Helium, and the like. Two old favorites, perpetual entrants in my year-end charts, return: Lilys and the Loud Family. The latter act returns for its first album of new material in six years, augmented by simpatico Sacramento-based songwriter Anton Barbeau (see below for one of his solo albums). Scott Walker - not to be outdone - releases his first CD in eleven years - but it's worth the wait. The Drift is powerful, creepy, odd, yet moving and (at least after multiple listens) tuneful in a peculiar way. The richness of Walker's voice has curdled slightly, giving it a somewhat frayed and abraded texture but one that suits the sometimes grim subject matter of his songs. "Cossacks Are" (man those plural forms of "to be" are getting the love this year) is probably the most "normal" song on the CD. You've been warned.
Third Tier:
Robert Pollard From a Compound Eye
The Minus 5 (self-titled a/k/a The Gun Album)
Two albums from two busy acts. Pollard (as usual) released at least two CDs this year; I prefer the more textured approach he and co-conspirator Todd Tobias follow on this CD to the bash-em-out style generally assayed on Normal Happiness. Amusingly, on my mix CD I chose the somewhat atypically bouncy "Dancing Girls and Dancing Men" - "amusingly" because it's musically quite close to the Yo La Tengo track I chose for the mix ("Beanbag Chair"). To rectify that redundancy, here's "I'm a Widow."
Most of this incarnation of the Minus 5 appear as Robyn Hitchcock's backing band on his own album; here's Scott McCaughey making the most of his own songs. The band has pretty much solidified both as a band (rather than an all-star pickup act) and as McCaughey's main song outlet (versus the Young Fresh Fellows, who seem to be on hiatus).
Next ten (in grouped order):
The Decemberists The Crane Wife; Don Dixon The Entire Combustible World in One Small Room ("In Darkness Found"); Matthew Friedberger Winter Women/Holy Ghost Language School; Momus Ocky Milk ("Moop Bears"); Pernice Brothers Live a Little
Anton Barbeau In the Village of the Apple Sun; His Name Is Alive Detrola; Squarewave Dullhead (new band from leader of Madison's popular late-eighties/early-nineties Ivory Library; here's the opening track "A Name That Isn't Mine" - and yes it ends like that)
Tom Verlaine Songs and Other Things (not as good as I'd hoped, but at least he's recording again); Yo La Tengo I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass
Honorable Mention: Elvis Costello & Allen Toussaint The River in Reverse; Elvis Costello & the Metropol Orkest My Flame Burns Blue; The Fiery Furnaces Bitter Tea; Tommy Keene Crashing the Ether; Tris McCall and the New Jack Trippers I'm Assuming You're All in Bands; Morrissey Ringleader of the Tormentors; The M's Future Women; Pere Ubu Why I Hate Women; Robert Pollard Normal Happiness; Stereolab Fab Four Suture; Tom Verlaine Around; We Are Scientists With Love and Squalor; Thom Yorke The Eraser
Best EPs: The Bye Bye Blackbirds Honeymoon; PAS/CAL Dear Sir; The Sky Drops Clouds of People
Relatively Disappointing: Mission of Burma The Obliterati; Sonic Youth Rather Ripped
Haven't had time to really evaluate yet but potential contenders: Anton Barbeau Drug Free; Jon Langford Gold Brick; Lansing-Dreiden The Dividing Island; Eric Matthews Foundation Sounds; Mouse on Mars Varcharz; Joanna Newsom Ys; Now It's Overhead Dark Light Daybreak; Gil Ray I Am Atomic Man!; Relay Still Point of Turning; The Strokes First Impressions of Earth
Busy Beavers (released at least two CDs of new material during 2006): Anton Barbeau, Elvis Costello, Matthew Friedberger (also counting his work with the Fiery Furnaces CD), Robert Pollard, Tom Verlaine
Next time: stray tracks!
The Willis "Are Language"
Scott Walker "Cossacks Are"
Robert Pollard "I'm a Widow"
Don Dixon "In Darkness Found"
Momus "Moop Bears"
Squarewave "A Name That Isn't Mine"
12.18.2006
pay no attention to the Dick behind the curtain...
In an exclusive interview to be published in the forthcoming issue of Entertainment Today, President George W. Bush reveals that his admiration for Ronald Reagan runs more deeply than mere politics. Once his political career is over in 2008 (a likelihood Bush is surprisingly sanguine in accepting), Bush says he'll be doing a Reagan in reverse and pursuing a career in showbiz. Already, Bush has impressed director Trenton Quarantino, who will be helming a remake of The Wizard of Oz. "I was amazed and surprised at the depth of W's talents," Quarantino remarks. "In fact, it wouldn't shock me at all if we ended up pulling an Alec Guinness, Kind Hearts and Coronets on this one, with W playing all three of Dorothy's traveling companions." Quarantino says Bush was able to draw on his Vietnam-era experiences in his portrayal of the Cowardly Lion, his domestic policies in interpreting The Tin Woodman, and the war in Iraq for his uncanny embodiment of the Scarecrow.
12.17.2006
dot all my i's and cross out my lies
A couple of recent acquisitions in the ADS music library covered today.
I'll start with PAS/CAL's Dear Sir, because its opening track "Little Red Radio" is not only a great pop song but seasonally appropriate. I'm not sure I can think of another track that plays what appear to be three tonally very different organ parts against one another - I'm particularly fond of the very distorted one in the left channel. The title track from the EP is a slice of psychedelia (its genre cued immediately by the drums and bass shoved into their own stereo channels: can you tell I'm relistening to these tracks in headphones while I write this?). Curiously, both tracks feature the speaker promising to be good. 'Tis the season, apparently.
And in the "how the hell did I miss this?" category: Charlotte Hatherley's Grey Will Fade. Andy Partridge is one of her champions, and that makes lots of sense - but even though Hatherley's compositions have plenty of left turns, she's much more interested in bashing away on her guitar (and her bass: she plays almost every note from both instruments on this album) than Andy's been lately (I mean, before the accident rendered him temporarily unable to do so, that is). Some other folks she's apparently impressed play with her on the album: Rob Ellis on drums (formerly with PJ Harvey), Eric Drew Feldman on keyboards (and the occasional bass: Feldman's played with everyone from Captain Beefheart to Pere Ubu to Frank Black), with Morris Tepper guesting on guitar on one track (another former Beefheartian).
But the real reason I can't believe I missed this when it came out in 2004 is that it's just jampacked full of brilliant, undeniable songs. I had trouble choosing two, but "Paragon" and "Bastardo" are among the better ones. "Paragon" jumps through a crazy series of chordal hoops, but finishes standing tall, if gasping for breath, firmly in bravura pop territory. "Bastardo" tells the sad tale of a new lover and a lost guitar...wait a minute: the narrator in "Little Red Radio" is begging for a new guitar...and promising to be "good." Well, apparently he was good in some ways...
(Hatherley's new album The Deep Blue is due out sometime in 2007.)
PAS/CAL "Little Red Radio"
PAS/CAL "Dear Sir"
Charlotte Hatherley "Paragon"
Charlotte Hatherley "Bastardo"
I'll start with PAS/CAL's Dear Sir, because its opening track "Little Red Radio" is not only a great pop song but seasonally appropriate. I'm not sure I can think of another track that plays what appear to be three tonally very different organ parts against one another - I'm particularly fond of the very distorted one in the left channel. The title track from the EP is a slice of psychedelia (its genre cued immediately by the drums and bass shoved into their own stereo channels: can you tell I'm relistening to these tracks in headphones while I write this?). Curiously, both tracks feature the speaker promising to be good. 'Tis the season, apparently.
And in the "how the hell did I miss this?" category: Charlotte Hatherley's Grey Will Fade. Andy Partridge is one of her champions, and that makes lots of sense - but even though Hatherley's compositions have plenty of left turns, she's much more interested in bashing away on her guitar (and her bass: she plays almost every note from both instruments on this album) than Andy's been lately (I mean, before the accident rendered him temporarily unable to do so, that is). Some other folks she's apparently impressed play with her on the album: Rob Ellis on drums (formerly with PJ Harvey), Eric Drew Feldman on keyboards (and the occasional bass: Feldman's played with everyone from Captain Beefheart to Pere Ubu to Frank Black), with Morris Tepper guesting on guitar on one track (another former Beefheartian).
But the real reason I can't believe I missed this when it came out in 2004 is that it's just jampacked full of brilliant, undeniable songs. I had trouble choosing two, but "Paragon" and "Bastardo" are among the better ones. "Paragon" jumps through a crazy series of chordal hoops, but finishes standing tall, if gasping for breath, firmly in bravura pop territory. "Bastardo" tells the sad tale of a new lover and a lost guitar...wait a minute: the narrator in "Little Red Radio" is begging for a new guitar...and promising to be "good." Well, apparently he was good in some ways...
(Hatherley's new album The Deep Blue is due out sometime in 2007.)
PAS/CAL "Little Red Radio"
PAS/CAL "Dear Sir"
Charlotte Hatherley "Paragon"
Charlotte Hatherley "Bastardo"
12.14.2006
subtraction and division
Oh man do I feel sorry for math teachers...
The most pathetic aspect of this whole thing is the 7,392 comments...of which half are from the same guy who still cannot get it right.
Realistically, though: what the hell is Verizon doing specifying its rates with such a bizarre number (.002 dollars or .002 cents)? Clearly, they meant to specify ".002 dollars"...but why not say "two-tenths of a cent per kb" - or better, "5 kb per penny"?
On another note entirely: having posted "Alone Again (Naturally)" a few weeks back, I didn't notice then an odd aspect of the lyrics - for a pop song, they're extremely enjambed. In fact, most verses are a single, lengthy sentence. Here they are, written out as prose to illustrate:
Somehow, seeing it like this, I imagine it spoken rapidly aloud in the manner of one of Eric Idle's characters...
The most pathetic aspect of this whole thing is the 7,392 comments...of which half are from the same guy who still cannot get it right.
Realistically, though: what the hell is Verizon doing specifying its rates with such a bizarre number (.002 dollars or .002 cents)? Clearly, they meant to specify ".002 dollars"...but why not say "two-tenths of a cent per kb" - or better, "5 kb per penny"?
On another note entirely: having posted "Alone Again (Naturally)" a few weeks back, I didn't notice then an odd aspect of the lyrics - for a pop song, they're extremely enjambed. In fact, most verses are a single, lengthy sentence. Here they are, written out as prose to illustrate:
In a little while from now, if I'm not feeling any less sour, I promised myself to treat myself and visit a nearby tower, and climbing to the top, will throw myself off in an effort to make it clear to whoever what it's like when you're shattered, left standing in the lurch, at a church where people're saying, "My God that's tough, she stood him up - no point in us remaining...may as well go home" - as I did, on my own, alone again, naturally.
To think that only yesterday, I was cheerful, bright, and gay, looking forward to - but who wouldn't do - the role I was about to play; but as if to knock me down, reality came around and, without so much as a mere touch, cut me into little pieces, leaving me to doubt all about God and his mercy, for if he really does exist, why did he desert me in my hour of need? I truly am indeed, alone again, naturally.
It seems to me that there are more hearts broken in the world that can't be mended left unattended: What do we do? What do we do?
Now looking back over the years, and whatever else that appears, I remember I cried when my father died, never wishing to have cried the tears; and at sixty-five years old, my mother, God rest her soul, couldn't understand why the only man she had ever loved had been taken leaving her to start with a heart so badly broken. Despite encouragement from me, no words were ever spoken, and when she passed away, I cried and cried all day: alone again, naturally.
Somehow, seeing it like this, I imagine it spoken rapidly aloud in the manner of one of Eric Idle's characters...
12.07.2006
the ball is gone in a flash...
For several years now, I've coordinated a swap of mix CDs - for long enough, in fact, that it was originally a swap of mix tapes. (I'm sure if it survives another year or so, it'll be a swap of mp3s...) Anyway, for some curious reason I decided to make a mix full of songs whose titles contained the names or nicknames of baseball players - whether the song had anything to do with the player or not (in a couple of cases, I don't think so...and in a couple more, it was the band rather than the song that was named after a ballplayer). The full track listing is here. The title (and the cover art, which I revised slightly to a less messed-with version of the same image) is derived from Barbara Manning's brilliant track with SF Seals, "Dock Ellis" - about the Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher who, he says, in 1970 pitched a no-hitter on acid. The song also incorporates some more Ellis lore, such as the time he intentionally hit the first several batters in the Cincinnati Reds' lineup. Something about the tunnel-y sound effects, and the generally droney aspect of the song, conveys a sort of disoriented yet intensely focused sensation that (I suppose) must have been what Ellis felt. (The song's also a good example of how to make a chord change count: drone on the same chord for a minute and a half, and when you finally do change the chord, it hits like...well, a fastball to the chest.)
The mix opens with late-seventies Milwaukee act The Blackholes' tribute to Braves pitcher Warren Spahn - that organ lick with its ringing harmonic stuck in my head for about twenty years. (Thanks to Jon'derneathica for ripping the track from a ratty old 45 and sending it to me.) On the mix the applause at the end fades into the little bit from Buffalo Springfield's "Broken Arrow" where the organist plays the first few notes of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," whose last dischord in turn is crossfaded with the opening of Warren Zevon's "Bill Lee." (Curiously - at least in my database, and among the collections of people who helped me assemble the mix - rockers seem quite fond of pitchers over all other position players. Why? Who knows...)
The last track on the mix is a bonus track of sorts: "Runs in the Family" by The Pursuit of Happiness. No baseball player there...except as a sort of British crossword-puzzle clue: TPOH's main writer was named Moe Berg, and Moe Berg was also the name of a (quite fascinating) baseball player... (No actual relation, as far as I know - but "Runs in the Family" seemed the best hint I could provide as to the track's inclusion.)
SF Seals "Dock Ellis"
The Blackholes "Warren Spahn"
The Pursuit of Happiness "Runs in the Family"
The mix opens with late-seventies Milwaukee act The Blackholes' tribute to Braves pitcher Warren Spahn - that organ lick with its ringing harmonic stuck in my head for about twenty years. (Thanks to Jon'derneathica for ripping the track from a ratty old 45 and sending it to me.) On the mix the applause at the end fades into the little bit from Buffalo Springfield's "Broken Arrow" where the organist plays the first few notes of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," whose last dischord in turn is crossfaded with the opening of Warren Zevon's "Bill Lee." (Curiously - at least in my database, and among the collections of people who helped me assemble the mix - rockers seem quite fond of pitchers over all other position players. Why? Who knows...)
The last track on the mix is a bonus track of sorts: "Runs in the Family" by The Pursuit of Happiness. No baseball player there...except as a sort of British crossword-puzzle clue: TPOH's main writer was named Moe Berg, and Moe Berg was also the name of a (quite fascinating) baseball player... (No actual relation, as far as I know - but "Runs in the Family" seemed the best hint I could provide as to the track's inclusion.)
SF Seals "Dock Ellis"
The Blackholes "Warren Spahn"
The Pursuit of Happiness "Runs in the Family"
12.06.2006
"do you like...gladiator music?"
In this installment of O! The Wonnerful Internets!: you know that music everyone associates with clowns and circuses, usually on calliope - the one that opens up that Leo Sayer/Three Dog Night hit from the '70s called "The Show Must Go On"? Turns out it was originally entitled "Entrance of the Gladiators" (!) and is from a piece by the Czech composer Julius Fučík. (Circus people, it seems, call it "Thunder and Blazes" - which also has a meaning in the sexual underground frequented solely by clowns and undertakers, and which I surely will not elucidate here.)
That is all for tonight.
That is all for tonight.
12.05.2006
rename all our heroes
Fans of the Go-Betweens, the Byrds, and various other thoughtful, semi-jangly, at-times-slightly-country-tinged acts should check out a fine new EP by San Francisco-based act the Bye Bye Blackbirds. Players on the CD have worked with a range of musicians including Beulah (guest player and producer Bill Swan), Yuji Oniki, and Belle da Gama (main writer Bradley Skaught).
Here are probably my two favorite tracks: "Suit & Make-Up" and "How I Knew It Wasn't Love."
Here are probably my two favorite tracks: "Suit & Make-Up" and "How I Knew It Wasn't Love."
12.02.2006
oh god I could do better than that...
Posters appeared a week or so ago for a talk sponsored by UW-Milwaukee's postdoctoral research wing, the Center for 21st Century Studies (guess what it was called until six or seven years ago), a center (shouldn't it be a de-center?) for various postmodern and theoretical hijinx. Anyway, this talk had the intriguing title "Suzi Quatro Wants to Be Your Man: Female Masculinity in Glam Rock." What's intriguing about it is...Suzi Quatro? WTF? More peculiarly, the prose on the poster (which, it turns out, comes from Philip Auslander's (the speaker) own abstract to a published paper the talk was to have been based upon - it was snowed out*) refers to Quatro in the present tense: "as a woman who performs rock music in an unabashedly 'masculine' fashion..." when she's barely released anything in the last twenty-five years.
*addendum: surprisingly, the talk went on (see the comments) and was apparently the only event on campus that day.
At first I was going to snark up on that blurb's prose, which is sadly ripe with PoMo cliche: "Focusing particularly on Quatro's ability to construct multiple subject positions..."; "destabilizes the gender codings from which it is constructed and celebrates the polymorphousness and performativity of identity"... Anyway, cliche aside, I first found myself asking, wait a minute: if you want to examine "the role of the female cock-rocker" or "female masculinity," aren't there some more obvious women to look at, one that play a more major role in history...like say, Patti Smith? Chrissie Hynde? Grace Jones, even? Or who are more contemporary: PJ Harvey, Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, or - far more obscurely - No Bra? Or - in a far more subtle fashion (in the background as a drummer) but in some ways to more subversive effect - Moe Tucker, who many early critics didn't even realize was a woman? Or the for-some-reason oft-overlooked Grace Slick...who wrote, sang, and played, and co-led one of the sixties' most prominent bands? While certainly Patti Smith refused to play by nearly any rules generally applied to female rockers of her era, what I think I was overlooking was the rest of that subtitle: "Female Masculinity in Glam Rock."
And at first, that just raised the whole question of relevance and obscurity all over again for me: glam rock fluorished for maybe five years at the most, with periodic resurgences thereafter, and was always more prominent in British music than in American. However...if you think about the ways rock has affected people's perceptions of gender and roles pertaining thereto, glam acquires an importance far beyond that which its relatively brief fling with fame might suggest. While rockers before glam sometimes seemed to question prevailing gender roles (Jagger and the Stones dressing in drag on the cover to "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadows?"; Ray Davies' occasional limp-wristed affectations and, of course, "Lola"), glam rock brought alternative gender conceptions flaming out of the closet. Suddenly, David Bowie's wearing a dress (and pretending to give Mick Ronson head onstage), Brian Eno's sporting four-foot faux-feather boas, and Lou Reed's appearing in drag on the back cover of Transformer. It's as if the years of baiting from construction workers and the like (cue "are you a boy or are you a girl" stereotype) were finally addressed head on, in the wake of Stonewall, with a loud affirmation of "Both. Neither. What's it matter anyway?"
The catch is, of course, all those flamboyant poseurs (in the positive sense of the word: posing, and fun, were key elements of glam) were, biologically, male. It was as if the boys could only keep swinging if the "actual," biological girls were kept well away from the clubhouse. And though I'm by no means a glam-rock expert, it's hard to think of any other female who even plausibly might be called a glam-rocker than...Suzi Quatro.
Still, her image and performances seem pretty weak tea. First (and there's nothing she could do about this) she was petite and, frankly, cute. All the leather jackets in the world couldn't disguise that (and tended in practice to emphasize it). And although second-wave feminism wasn't to peak for a few years yet, Quatro's music was primarily written by the well-known hired guns of Chinn-Chapman, or her husband, facts which tend to detract from Quatro as agent of her "performances" (in the larger, postmodern sense).
Where it gets interesting is this: right around this time (the early '70s), the cult of rock authenticity (exemplified by Rolling Stone's critical perspective of the era) was at its most prominent. The words "real" and its derivatives, and sanctimonious clucking at the notions of showbiz, selling out, even wearing stage clothes that were markedly different from street clothing (taking into account that rock stars' street clothing could be pretty out there), were fast becoming orthodoxy. So glam, flaunting its artifice, its manufacturedness (including the use of songwriters-for-hire), and its general air of campy showiness, was in these ways a predecessor of the more self-conscious wing of the punk-rock that would arrive a few years later. Furthermore: glam's male stars' overt performances of styles of dress, movement, and even sexuality typically coded as "feminine" had the odd effect of re-styling (or I should say, re-making/re-modeling) women's dress, movement, and style - the sorts of things Bowie et al. were imitating or exaggerating - themeselves into perceived "performances." This realization - or perspective - in turn made sense of the dis-ease felt by repressed, boundary-conscious men (like our construction workers) at rockers' play with convention - even those as mainstream by this point as the Vegas Elvis. In other words, it became possible to see not just Elvis impersonators as drag stars, but Elvis himself as a drag star. (It's been a few years since I've read it, but if I remember her work correctly, Marjorie Garber should get some credit on this idea.) In other words, gender itself is a performance - and the awareness of this changed rock and its approach to gender and sexuality, pretty much in ways that are still perfectly legible in later rock, even today. And not only in clearly glam-influenced acts (like Suede, Shudder to Think, etc.).
So even though Patti Smith and many of the other female rockers I mentioned earlier are clearly more important in themselves in rock history, I can sort of see an argument that would position Suzi Quatro - as one of the few female glam-rockers - as a key influence and inspiration for young women. (And in fact, asking around on some of the music mailing lists I'm on, a friend of mine mentioned that a female friend of his played in LA punk bands in the early '80s...and among her cohort, a lot of female musicians had, in fact, been inspired by Quatro's example.) And that's because once glam manufactured a sort of masculine femininity in rock, the notion of "female masculinity" (to borrow Auslander's term) could follow. So one reason it's maybe a bit harder to see contemporary female musicians as "female cock-rockers" or as somehow questioning given gender roles, that's in part because the field of available female gender roles has broadened considerably since the era of glam rock.
(It turns out an earlier version of the presentation Auslander gave is online as a PDF file linked from his website (itself linked above). I suppose I should read it to see whether I've totally gotten him wrong...)
*addendum: surprisingly, the talk went on (see the comments) and was apparently the only event on campus that day.
At first I was going to snark up on that blurb's prose, which is sadly ripe with PoMo cliche: "Focusing particularly on Quatro's ability to construct multiple subject positions..."; "destabilizes the gender codings from which it is constructed and celebrates the polymorphousness and performativity of identity"... Anyway, cliche aside, I first found myself asking, wait a minute: if you want to examine "the role of the female cock-rocker" or "female masculinity," aren't there some more obvious women to look at, one that play a more major role in history...like say, Patti Smith? Chrissie Hynde? Grace Jones, even? Or who are more contemporary: PJ Harvey, Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, or - far more obscurely - No Bra? Or - in a far more subtle fashion (in the background as a drummer) but in some ways to more subversive effect - Moe Tucker, who many early critics didn't even realize was a woman? Or the for-some-reason oft-overlooked Grace Slick...who wrote, sang, and played, and co-led one of the sixties' most prominent bands? While certainly Patti Smith refused to play by nearly any rules generally applied to female rockers of her era, what I think I was overlooking was the rest of that subtitle: "Female Masculinity in Glam Rock."
And at first, that just raised the whole question of relevance and obscurity all over again for me: glam rock fluorished for maybe five years at the most, with periodic resurgences thereafter, and was always more prominent in British music than in American. However...if you think about the ways rock has affected people's perceptions of gender and roles pertaining thereto, glam acquires an importance far beyond that which its relatively brief fling with fame might suggest. While rockers before glam sometimes seemed to question prevailing gender roles (Jagger and the Stones dressing in drag on the cover to "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadows?"; Ray Davies' occasional limp-wristed affectations and, of course, "Lola"), glam rock brought alternative gender conceptions flaming out of the closet. Suddenly, David Bowie's wearing a dress (and pretending to give Mick Ronson head onstage), Brian Eno's sporting four-foot faux-feather boas, and Lou Reed's appearing in drag on the back cover of Transformer. It's as if the years of baiting from construction workers and the like (cue "are you a boy or are you a girl" stereotype) were finally addressed head on, in the wake of Stonewall, with a loud affirmation of "Both. Neither. What's it matter anyway?"
The catch is, of course, all those flamboyant poseurs (in the positive sense of the word: posing, and fun, were key elements of glam) were, biologically, male. It was as if the boys could only keep swinging if the "actual," biological girls were kept well away from the clubhouse. And though I'm by no means a glam-rock expert, it's hard to think of any other female who even plausibly might be called a glam-rocker than...Suzi Quatro.
Still, her image and performances seem pretty weak tea. First (and there's nothing she could do about this) she was petite and, frankly, cute. All the leather jackets in the world couldn't disguise that (and tended in practice to emphasize it). And although second-wave feminism wasn't to peak for a few years yet, Quatro's music was primarily written by the well-known hired guns of Chinn-Chapman, or her husband, facts which tend to detract from Quatro as agent of her "performances" (in the larger, postmodern sense).
Where it gets interesting is this: right around this time (the early '70s), the cult of rock authenticity (exemplified by Rolling Stone's critical perspective of the era) was at its most prominent. The words "real" and its derivatives, and sanctimonious clucking at the notions of showbiz, selling out, even wearing stage clothes that were markedly different from street clothing (taking into account that rock stars' street clothing could be pretty out there), were fast becoming orthodoxy. So glam, flaunting its artifice, its manufacturedness (including the use of songwriters-for-hire), and its general air of campy showiness, was in these ways a predecessor of the more self-conscious wing of the punk-rock that would arrive a few years later. Furthermore: glam's male stars' overt performances of styles of dress, movement, and even sexuality typically coded as "feminine" had the odd effect of re-styling (or I should say, re-making/re-modeling) women's dress, movement, and style - the sorts of things Bowie et al. were imitating or exaggerating - themeselves into perceived "performances." This realization - or perspective - in turn made sense of the dis-ease felt by repressed, boundary-conscious men (like our construction workers) at rockers' play with convention - even those as mainstream by this point as the Vegas Elvis. In other words, it became possible to see not just Elvis impersonators as drag stars, but Elvis himself as a drag star. (It's been a few years since I've read it, but if I remember her work correctly, Marjorie Garber should get some credit on this idea.) In other words, gender itself is a performance - and the awareness of this changed rock and its approach to gender and sexuality, pretty much in ways that are still perfectly legible in later rock, even today. And not only in clearly glam-influenced acts (like Suede, Shudder to Think, etc.).
So even though Patti Smith and many of the other female rockers I mentioned earlier are clearly more important in themselves in rock history, I can sort of see an argument that would position Suzi Quatro - as one of the few female glam-rockers - as a key influence and inspiration for young women. (And in fact, asking around on some of the music mailing lists I'm on, a friend of mine mentioned that a female friend of his played in LA punk bands in the early '80s...and among her cohort, a lot of female musicians had, in fact, been inspired by Quatro's example.) And that's because once glam manufactured a sort of masculine femininity in rock, the notion of "female masculinity" (to borrow Auslander's term) could follow. So one reason it's maybe a bit harder to see contemporary female musicians as "female cock-rockers" or as somehow questioning given gender roles, that's in part because the field of available female gender roles has broadened considerably since the era of glam rock.
(It turns out an earlier version of the presentation Auslander gave is online as a PDF file linked from his website (itself linked above). I suppose I should read it to see whether I've totally gotten him wrong...)
12.01.2006
my feelings exactly
I'm not sure where this originally came from (it came my way via a mailing from the wonderful Atomic Records), but it expresses my thoughts today precisely:
poor Britney...
Apparently, as part of the divorce settlement, Fed-Ex gained custody of all of Britney's panties...
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