Yep Roc has reissued three of Robyn Hitchcock's solo albums, which have been shamefully out of print for a while: Black Snake Diamond Role, I Often Dream of Trains, and Eye. They're also available as part of a five-disc set, I Wanna Go Backwards, which contains an additional two discs of demos entitled While Thatcher Mauled Britain. The set includes twenty to thirty tracks either previously unreleased or difficult to find. Robyn Hitchcock is a brilliant songwriter, and it's great to see these titles back in print - especially I Often Dream of Trains, which is a devastatingly sad and beautiful album.
When these albums were issued on CD initially, some pressings tacked on bonus tracks, some of which were rather ill-suited to the albums proper. The Yep Roc reissues draw from a broader range of tracks (including several that were previously on the Invisible Hitchcock compilation) but, oddly, they omit a couple few songs.
Here are three of those orphaned tracks. The first one is simply an alternate version of "The Man Who Invented Himself" featuring overdubbed and tweezed Gary Barnacle saxophones. I prefer the punchier, saxless mix - but this one has its period-specific pleasures as well. Appended as a bonus track to that same edition of Black Snake Diamond Role (on the British Aftermath label) is "Dancing on God's Thumb," Robyn's fine, if slight, take on a vaguely dance-y sound. (He'd explore that a bit further on the generally disastrously arranged Groovy Decoy/Decay album a year or two later: incidentally, Yep Roc supposedly will be releasing some version of that album in download-only format.) Finally, from the Midnight Music edition of I Often Dream of Trains, the completely out-of-context goof of "Mellow Together." That edition put its bonus tracks in the middle, rather destroying the flow of the original album - and this song, dumb voice and all, was completely jarring. I'm glad it's not on Trains any more - maybe it'll find a home on some hypothetical mopping-up compilation in the future.
Yep Roc plans to reissue some of Hitchcock's albums with the Egyptians early next year - unfortunately, it appears that ensemble's A&M albums are still tied up in litigation.
Robyn Hitchcock "The Man Who Invented Himself" (sax version) Black Snake Diamond Role, 1987 Aftermath edition (1981)
Robyn Hitchcock "Dancing on God's Thumb" Black Snake Diamond Role, 1987 Aftermath edition (1981)
Robyn Hitchcock "Mellow Together" I Often Dream of Trains, 1986 Midnight Music edition (1984)
PS: Check out my Milwaukee compadre Don's reprint of a 1996 interview he conducted with Hitchcock for the late, lamented Milk magazine, at his Timedoor site.
10.30.2007
10.29.2007
you throw tomatoes, I throw tomahtoes, let's call the whole thing off
Carl Wilson (who also blogs at the why-on-earth-hadn't-I-linked-to-it-before Zoilus) addresses the brouhaha over Sasha Frere-Jones' essay both at Slate and in a handful of recent entries in his blog (some thoughtful comments from readers there, too). Wilson usefully complicates the issue by suggesting that the key issue is class rather than race (of course, the two tend to run parallel paths) and points out that part of the stylistic issue for indie rock is that, insofar as it's defined or definable at all, it's defined in opposition to mainstream rock - and mainstream rock is clearly marked by its strong influence of '50s and '60s R&B. So what Frere-Jones really wants to know is why isn't there more hip-hop in indie rock - not why there's less blackness in indie rock.
The class issue begins to address that, I think. Upper-middle-class, highly educated white Americans tend to be very self-conscious about their privileged status, and well aware of the history of exploitation, often at the hands of their class ancestors. So while the Brits who made up Led Zeppelin might swallow old blues records whole, as if they were merely folk music (forgetting that many of their composers were alive and well and would have quite happy to get a nice royalty check), and in a less sensitive era, a horde of Pat Boones might have covered songs by black artists to make the world safe for Patty Duke, indie rockers are aware of the fact that they are not poverty-stricken black youth from the most desolate corners of American cities. (Nor are all hip-hoppers, of course - but the dynamic there is quite different.) And (as Wilson also points out) hip-hop, in jettisoning the most transferable aspects of music (melody and harmony) in favor of tracks that are essentially sound, rhythm, and rapping, may well have quite consciously attempted to render itself less assimilable. At any rate, hip-hop as a genre strikes me as one of the most overtly political genres around - and that politics is essentially a racial politics: it's the poetry of blackness in America today. The distance between indie-rocker Steve at The Sylvan School of Expensive Coffee Shops and the urban milieu portrayed in many hip-hop records is sociologically immense, so much so that I suspect many indie rockers who might like and respect a lot of hip-hop records don't do hip-hop themselves - because it strikes them as almost a sort of minstrelsy to do so. There are, of course, exceptions - and there are also plenty of indie rockers who, even if they're not doing hip-hop per se, certainly let their strong connections to its rhythmic structures beat through clearly in their own music. (New Jersey's Tris McCall, who contributed two cogent comments on my last post on this subject, is an excellent example: his music has become stronger the more his lifelong love of hip-hop has shown up in his tracks, even though he remains a highly educated white guy from (I'm guessing here) a middle-class background.)
It's not just indie rock, though, whose rhythms seem ever further removed from the sort of classic R&B ass-shaking pulse that Frere-Jones loves. I know even less about metal than I do about hip-hop - but what I have heard seems to have moved almost completely away from the notion that a beat is something to dance to. In terms of sound and approach, it's moved very far from its blues-rock origins as well. Black Sabbath's first album is pretty much a straight, hard-rock take on the blues - most recent metal that I've heard is as distant from that base as could be imagined. European and prog influences abound in the harmonic structure, and the beats seem more concerned with conveying raw impact than compelling anyone to dance. Again, I'm sure there are exceptions.
Wilson's larger point - that Frere-Jones' article would have been a lot stronger had he narrowed his musical focus on the one hand but broadened his cultural focus on the other - is relevant here, because the increasingly wide economic gap has increased the distance between both races and classes. That distance, though, isn't a physical one: a Yale undergrad playing bass for the Sylvan Curlicues most likely is aware that, say, the support staff for his university is drawn largely from impoverished neighborhoods that surround his ivy-strewn redoubt. I think that kind of self-consciousness actually has much to do with what sorts of borrowing are (and are not) audible in his band's music: folk and psychedelic musics that he thinks of as distant in time, German electronic music distant in both time and place, and maybe some Finnish music his grandmother sent him. But there aren't many Finns in New Haven. (If there in fact are, sorry.)
And here's where I come in. I'm a white guy from an upper-middle-class background who went to school far too many years to get too many liberal arts degrees. The annoying group of women one floor above me in the dorms my first two years at the University of Michigan, who came from families far wealthier than my own, seemed to think it reflected favorably upon their openmindedness and liberality to be into various dance musics (although what I mostly remember hearing is the Tom-Tom Club - whose grating and gratuitous referencing of African-American musicians by the very upper-class Tina Weymouth is about the best signifier I can find for this sort of thing). Something about that whole scene reeked of appropriation to me. In later years, many of these same folks (and their boyfriends, husbands, or lovers - the story was gendered at first only because that was the immediate example) were merrily buying "world music" CDs to enjoy with their wine. Nothing wrong with any of that in itself...but I often found myself wondering, don't you have your own music to enjoy? And you know, when I discovered things like the Feelies' Crazy Rhythms - music unmistakably the product of guys who'd had a bit too much to think, who probably didn't have to earn dollars by means of a shovel, who had the sorts of complexions that blotched red in their rare exposure to daylight - I was like, ah, this is my folk music.
And I can't blame Sasha Frere-Jones, or anyone else who wanted to dance and have a good time, for thinking this music was rather ill-suited to that. They're correct: the rhythm's more like that of an overcaffeinated hand shakily tabling a coffee cup while nervously awaiting a fourth refill than anything you can actually dance to. (Assuming you can dance, of course - and that stereotype about white people and dancing is certainly true of me.)
So what's Frere-Jones' point again? Is it that he wishes there were more music that he likes? (Everyone wishes that - at least he's a musician who can make more music he likes.) Is it that he thinks various marketing forces prevent that music from being heard? (No doubt true...but true of pretty much every non-chart genre.) Maybe it's that a lot of indie rock seems content to dig itself into its own little tiny hole in the ground, that some of it doesn't engage with anything beyond itself. That might be true - but notice that popular music generally has become far more niche-centric over the last twenty-thirty years. And as I said, insofar as "indie rock" is a genre, to the extent it defines itself in opposition to mainstream rock is, almost by definition, going to avoid the key aspects of that music's rhythm and feel - and therefore, eschew mainstream rock's R&B and blues roots. The so-called garage revival is a partial exception: its problem is its almost constant accompaniment by quotation marks. (And it's increasingly difficult to figure out what "mainstream rock" might be - aside from some derivative of indie rock, which has by this point, tracing its ancestry all the way back to punk, been around for longer than mainstream rock had been around before punk showed up to kick its flabby but impeccably coutured ass around. And "indie rock" itself is a fabulously diversified entity: Wilson points out that not a few months ago, Frere-Jones wrote an article praising the resurgence of more dance-oriented rhythm in indie rock.)
So I'm not really sure what Frere-Jones expected his article to have achieved (other than a brouhaha full of ballyhoo and balderdash in the indie-rock blogosphere). But I'm left thinking he concludes too much from people's musical tastes - and not all of their taste, only that part of it that, as musicians, shows up in the music they play. After all, many musicians might enjoy listening not only to music that sounds like their own music but also to jazz, classical, and Bulgarian folk music. Few of them try to put all of that into their own music. And ultimately it seems odd that Frere-Jones doesn't notice this: it seems like every interview with musicians that I've read lately suggests exactly that musicians tend to like a lot of music - and a lot of it is hip-hop, whether that's an audible influence or not.
The class issue begins to address that, I think. Upper-middle-class, highly educated white Americans tend to be very self-conscious about their privileged status, and well aware of the history of exploitation, often at the hands of their class ancestors. So while the Brits who made up Led Zeppelin might swallow old blues records whole, as if they were merely folk music (forgetting that many of their composers were alive and well and would have quite happy to get a nice royalty check), and in a less sensitive era, a horde of Pat Boones might have covered songs by black artists to make the world safe for Patty Duke, indie rockers are aware of the fact that they are not poverty-stricken black youth from the most desolate corners of American cities. (Nor are all hip-hoppers, of course - but the dynamic there is quite different.) And (as Wilson also points out) hip-hop, in jettisoning the most transferable aspects of music (melody and harmony) in favor of tracks that are essentially sound, rhythm, and rapping, may well have quite consciously attempted to render itself less assimilable. At any rate, hip-hop as a genre strikes me as one of the most overtly political genres around - and that politics is essentially a racial politics: it's the poetry of blackness in America today. The distance between indie-rocker Steve at The Sylvan School of Expensive Coffee Shops and the urban milieu portrayed in many hip-hop records is sociologically immense, so much so that I suspect many indie rockers who might like and respect a lot of hip-hop records don't do hip-hop themselves - because it strikes them as almost a sort of minstrelsy to do so. There are, of course, exceptions - and there are also plenty of indie rockers who, even if they're not doing hip-hop per se, certainly let their strong connections to its rhythmic structures beat through clearly in their own music. (New Jersey's Tris McCall, who contributed two cogent comments on my last post on this subject, is an excellent example: his music has become stronger the more his lifelong love of hip-hop has shown up in his tracks, even though he remains a highly educated white guy from (I'm guessing here) a middle-class background.)
It's not just indie rock, though, whose rhythms seem ever further removed from the sort of classic R&B ass-shaking pulse that Frere-Jones loves. I know even less about metal than I do about hip-hop - but what I have heard seems to have moved almost completely away from the notion that a beat is something to dance to. In terms of sound and approach, it's moved very far from its blues-rock origins as well. Black Sabbath's first album is pretty much a straight, hard-rock take on the blues - most recent metal that I've heard is as distant from that base as could be imagined. European and prog influences abound in the harmonic structure, and the beats seem more concerned with conveying raw impact than compelling anyone to dance. Again, I'm sure there are exceptions.
Wilson's larger point - that Frere-Jones' article would have been a lot stronger had he narrowed his musical focus on the one hand but broadened his cultural focus on the other - is relevant here, because the increasingly wide economic gap has increased the distance between both races and classes. That distance, though, isn't a physical one: a Yale undergrad playing bass for the Sylvan Curlicues most likely is aware that, say, the support staff for his university is drawn largely from impoverished neighborhoods that surround his ivy-strewn redoubt. I think that kind of self-consciousness actually has much to do with what sorts of borrowing are (and are not) audible in his band's music: folk and psychedelic musics that he thinks of as distant in time, German electronic music distant in both time and place, and maybe some Finnish music his grandmother sent him. But there aren't many Finns in New Haven. (If there in fact are, sorry.)
And here's where I come in. I'm a white guy from an upper-middle-class background who went to school far too many years to get too many liberal arts degrees. The annoying group of women one floor above me in the dorms my first two years at the University of Michigan, who came from families far wealthier than my own, seemed to think it reflected favorably upon their openmindedness and liberality to be into various dance musics (although what I mostly remember hearing is the Tom-Tom Club - whose grating and gratuitous referencing of African-American musicians by the very upper-class Tina Weymouth is about the best signifier I can find for this sort of thing). Something about that whole scene reeked of appropriation to me. In later years, many of these same folks (and their boyfriends, husbands, or lovers - the story was gendered at first only because that was the immediate example) were merrily buying "world music" CDs to enjoy with their wine. Nothing wrong with any of that in itself...but I often found myself wondering, don't you have your own music to enjoy? And you know, when I discovered things like the Feelies' Crazy Rhythms - music unmistakably the product of guys who'd had a bit too much to think, who probably didn't have to earn dollars by means of a shovel, who had the sorts of complexions that blotched red in their rare exposure to daylight - I was like, ah, this is my folk music.
And I can't blame Sasha Frere-Jones, or anyone else who wanted to dance and have a good time, for thinking this music was rather ill-suited to that. They're correct: the rhythm's more like that of an overcaffeinated hand shakily tabling a coffee cup while nervously awaiting a fourth refill than anything you can actually dance to. (Assuming you can dance, of course - and that stereotype about white people and dancing is certainly true of me.)
So what's Frere-Jones' point again? Is it that he wishes there were more music that he likes? (Everyone wishes that - at least he's a musician who can make more music he likes.) Is it that he thinks various marketing forces prevent that music from being heard? (No doubt true...but true of pretty much every non-chart genre.) Maybe it's that a lot of indie rock seems content to dig itself into its own little tiny hole in the ground, that some of it doesn't engage with anything beyond itself. That might be true - but notice that popular music generally has become far more niche-centric over the last twenty-thirty years. And as I said, insofar as "indie rock" is a genre, to the extent it defines itself in opposition to mainstream rock is, almost by definition, going to avoid the key aspects of that music's rhythm and feel - and therefore, eschew mainstream rock's R&B and blues roots. The so-called garage revival is a partial exception: its problem is its almost constant accompaniment by quotation marks. (And it's increasingly difficult to figure out what "mainstream rock" might be - aside from some derivative of indie rock, which has by this point, tracing its ancestry all the way back to punk, been around for longer than mainstream rock had been around before punk showed up to kick its flabby but impeccably coutured ass around. And "indie rock" itself is a fabulously diversified entity: Wilson points out that not a few months ago, Frere-Jones wrote an article praising the resurgence of more dance-oriented rhythm in indie rock.)
So I'm not really sure what Frere-Jones expected his article to have achieved (other than a brouhaha full of ballyhoo and balderdash in the indie-rock blogosphere). But I'm left thinking he concludes too much from people's musical tastes - and not all of their taste, only that part of it that, as musicians, shows up in the music they play. After all, many musicians might enjoy listening not only to music that sounds like their own music but also to jazz, classical, and Bulgarian folk music. Few of them try to put all of that into their own music. And ultimately it seems odd that Frere-Jones doesn't notice this: it seems like every interview with musicians that I've read lately suggests exactly that musicians tend to like a lot of music - and a lot of it is hip-hop, whether that's an audible influence or not.
10.27.2007
house in order
A song I've been listening to a lot over the last few weeks, "Wolves" by Phosphorescent, is a bit of a surprise to me, in that the first time I heard it, I didn't like it that much. A bit too easy to categorize, I thought - with its waltz-time ukulele, its mournful vocal, and its funereal harmonium. But something in the lyrics, first, grabbed me - and then the rest of the song fell into place, ukulele and harmonium included. I began to notice the way Phosphorescent (essentially Atlanta musician Matthew Houck) either artfully or casually had been none too careful about tuning the instruments (either the harmonium's out of tune with itself, or it's doubled with a slightly out-of-tune version of itself; and some of those ukulele notes are slightly off as well), and the way the song moves gradually from mournful country waltz to something a little bit less genre-specific through the additional of some electric guitar tracks that at times create a reverberant sonic space nearly Frippian in its ambience.
But mostly, it was the lyrics. I've babbled often about lyrics here - including the fact that I don't usually hear them until the music of a song is quite familiar, even if then. One quality I've frequently referred to is that of being evocative - and I think "Wolves" not only is evocative to a high degree, but the way it becomes so is useful (to me, at least) in understanding one way lyrics might have that quality. Is Houck singing about literal wolves, or are the wolves a figure of speech? Well, in favor of the first idea, the wolves' physicality, their form, their movement, their "tumbling and fighting," even the stain of blood around their mouths, all are directly and plainly described. Even though "wolves at the door" is a metaphor, it can also describe a literal truth. Yet these wolves seem more than literal as well. The wolves "make for [his] heart as their home," they're "blazing with light" in a manner not usually associated with corporeal wolves (sure, a white wolf might reflect moonlight - but that hardly constitutes "blazing").
More than that, what is the singer's attitude toward these wolves? At first, they seem to have trapped him - as you'd expect, he seems fearful, concerned, offering up what seems more like a desperate prayer (to "mama" - who doesn't seem as if she's actually present, nor that if she were she could do anything to help). Yet the rest of the lyric, and the music itself, presents the wolves with a sort of hushed awe: "they're beautiful" is the line that repeats at the end of several stanzas, and the hypnotic cross-rhythm with which Houck sings of the one wolf in particular - "blazing with light / is the whitest, and the tallest, / and the biggest one / all muscled and fine when she runs" - nearly re-presents that prayerful attitude, now directed to the chief wolf.
The net effect of all this is that the song clearly means more to the narrator than its lyrics can tell us: there's a numinosity to the literal, physical world he describes that transcends that literality and physicality. Note also the simplicity of his language, and that even when he uses figural language, it's at such a root level that it barely registers as figural (the "heart as home" line I mention above; and "bury their claws").
That simplicity means also that the lyric's meaning is more open than if it had been made of more complex and figurative language. We think of everyday words as simple, basic, and functioning primarily to name everyday objects or concepts - but that very commonness means they also have a rich (but therefore nonspecific) metaphoricity, a richness harder to control because of the words' unexceptionality. "Wolf" might connote wildness, or threat, but also beauty, or freedom, or grace. Rarer language can't manage such multifacetedness; its edges seem sharper, more defined, less capable of fitting smoothly into numerous figurative schema. It's why simple language can often be more cryptic than complex language. (As an aside: legal language is difficult not primarily because of obscurity, but because it must be far, far more specific in its naming than our daily language, which is quite comfortable with rather slippery and vague naming, whose context and, in speech, physical cues fix it to the intended object.)
The meaning of Houck's lyric would have been far clearer, then, had he been more metaphoric and used a more complex vocabulary. But meaning is boring - we have vanilla prose sentences for that. What's the point of saying in a song what can be more readily and simply said in an interoffice memo? That's not what a song is for.
Phosphorescent "Wolves" (2007)
But mostly, it was the lyrics. I've babbled often about lyrics here - including the fact that I don't usually hear them until the music of a song is quite familiar, even if then. One quality I've frequently referred to is that of being evocative - and I think "Wolves" not only is evocative to a high degree, but the way it becomes so is useful (to me, at least) in understanding one way lyrics might have that quality. Is Houck singing about literal wolves, or are the wolves a figure of speech? Well, in favor of the first idea, the wolves' physicality, their form, their movement, their "tumbling and fighting," even the stain of blood around their mouths, all are directly and plainly described. Even though "wolves at the door" is a metaphor, it can also describe a literal truth. Yet these wolves seem more than literal as well. The wolves "make for [his] heart as their home," they're "blazing with light" in a manner not usually associated with corporeal wolves (sure, a white wolf might reflect moonlight - but that hardly constitutes "blazing").
More than that, what is the singer's attitude toward these wolves? At first, they seem to have trapped him - as you'd expect, he seems fearful, concerned, offering up what seems more like a desperate prayer (to "mama" - who doesn't seem as if she's actually present, nor that if she were she could do anything to help). Yet the rest of the lyric, and the music itself, presents the wolves with a sort of hushed awe: "they're beautiful" is the line that repeats at the end of several stanzas, and the hypnotic cross-rhythm with which Houck sings of the one wolf in particular - "blazing with light / is the whitest, and the tallest, / and the biggest one / all muscled and fine when she runs" - nearly re-presents that prayerful attitude, now directed to the chief wolf.
The net effect of all this is that the song clearly means more to the narrator than its lyrics can tell us: there's a numinosity to the literal, physical world he describes that transcends that literality and physicality. Note also the simplicity of his language, and that even when he uses figural language, it's at such a root level that it barely registers as figural (the "heart as home" line I mention above; and "bury their claws").
That simplicity means also that the lyric's meaning is more open than if it had been made of more complex and figurative language. We think of everyday words as simple, basic, and functioning primarily to name everyday objects or concepts - but that very commonness means they also have a rich (but therefore nonspecific) metaphoricity, a richness harder to control because of the words' unexceptionality. "Wolf" might connote wildness, or threat, but also beauty, or freedom, or grace. Rarer language can't manage such multifacetedness; its edges seem sharper, more defined, less capable of fitting smoothly into numerous figurative schema. It's why simple language can often be more cryptic than complex language. (As an aside: legal language is difficult not primarily because of obscurity, but because it must be far, far more specific in its naming than our daily language, which is quite comfortable with rather slippery and vague naming, whose context and, in speech, physical cues fix it to the intended object.)
The meaning of Houck's lyric would have been far clearer, then, had he been more metaphoric and used a more complex vocabulary. But meaning is boring - we have vanilla prose sentences for that. What's the point of saying in a song what can be more readily and simply said in an interoffice memo? That's not what a song is for.
Phosphorescent "Wolves" (2007)
10.26.2007
boo!
Tonight is the last full moon before Halloween. I hope you're prepared.
Here's my suggested Halloween fright. After staying up all night baying at the moon this evening, do not sleep for the next five days. As soon as it gets dark on Halloween, go to sleep. Have your friend wake you shortly after you've fallen asleep, so you awaken at your groggiest. Your friend will lead you into a dark room illuminated only by a single candle, and will then seat you in a not all that comfortable chair. (Bonus points if the chair suddenly snaps to and locks you in place, like for a rollercoaster ride.) Then play these songs, at a sufficiently immersive volume.
Enjoy!
Magik Markers "Last of the Lemach Line"
These Are Powers "The South Angel"
Here's my suggested Halloween fright. After staying up all night baying at the moon this evening, do not sleep for the next five days. As soon as it gets dark on Halloween, go to sleep. Have your friend wake you shortly after you've fallen asleep, so you awaken at your groggiest. Your friend will lead you into a dark room illuminated only by a single candle, and will then seat you in a not all that comfortable chair. (Bonus points if the chair suddenly snaps to and locks you in place, like for a rollercoaster ride.) Then play these songs, at a sufficiently immersive volume.
Enjoy!
Magik Markers "Last of the Lemach Line"
These Are Powers "The South Angel"
10.25.2007
as pretty flies for white guys are we to the wanton critics
Sasha Frere-Jones is a racist idiot.
Look, it's fine that he wishes indie rock were more rhythmically enticing, more syncopated, and showed more influence from historically African-American musics. That's a matter of taste - specifically, his. (Of course, he's been willing before to enforce his taste on others: if you recall, Stephin Merritt was branded a racist by Frere-Jones, essentially for not having the requisite quota of rappers among his favorite musicians.) But his essay (in which he repeatedly uses the repugnant term "miscegenation" - you can try to revalue that term all you want, but it still reeks of an ugly racist myth, that of the black rapist sullying pure white Southern womanhood and polluting the race with his horrible mulatto infants) insists over and over that those musical and affective qualities listed above are somehow intrinsically African-American. Music produced by white people and influenced primarily by historically white genres is referred to with words like flat-footed, shaggy, sylvan curlicues (all describing Pavement), plodding and formless (Wilco), and lassitude and monotony (indie rock generally). Guess who's clumsily brooding in the corner over the "sylvan curlicues" of his poetic beard while all the cool kids dance? It's White Guy! (And hey: if "sylvan curlicues" sounds as if Frere-Jones wants a little more macho aggression to his rhythm, you'll probably enjoy his left-handed compliments toward Grizzly Bear - a choir of eunuchs, he says - that, toward a band led by a gay man.)
The larger point of Frere-Jones' article is that in the past, both white and black musicians borrowed from one another's styles - but now, Jones claims, the white kids are all eating by themselves at the same table. Okay, it's true that a lot of recently popular indie rock is heavily indebted to Brian Wilson, tends toward the ethereal and abstract rather than the ass-shaking, and draws from non-blues structures and instrumentation. At the same time, my inbox is filled constantly with mp3s from (mostly white) bands hepped up on crazed dance synthesizers, rapping wildly over home-brewed four-track funk, or borrowing production tricks from the murkiest dub records. Something is happening - but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Frere-Jones?
Okay, so he's just another aging critic (I should talk) whose grip on the newest new stuff is slipping a bit, and so he's beginning to get nostalgic for the music that got him off back when he had hair on his head: no crime in any of that. What irks me is his racial essentialism: African-Americans are all about the body; whites are all about the brain.
Thanks a lot. Hey, Mr. Anthony Braxton? With all that theorizing, that heady 12-tone pointillist jazz and philosophy, and the heavy-duty MacArthur Fellowship receiving? Cut it out and shake your ass. Mr. Paul D. Miller, DJ Spooky, that subliminal kid, whatever you want to call yourself? Put down the damned Derrida and make me dance!
UPDATE: I've since read Carl Wilson's several writings on this issue - my reply is here.
Look, it's fine that he wishes indie rock were more rhythmically enticing, more syncopated, and showed more influence from historically African-American musics. That's a matter of taste - specifically, his. (Of course, he's been willing before to enforce his taste on others: if you recall, Stephin Merritt was branded a racist by Frere-Jones, essentially for not having the requisite quota of rappers among his favorite musicians.) But his essay (in which he repeatedly uses the repugnant term "miscegenation" - you can try to revalue that term all you want, but it still reeks of an ugly racist myth, that of the black rapist sullying pure white Southern womanhood and polluting the race with his horrible mulatto infants) insists over and over that those musical and affective qualities listed above are somehow intrinsically African-American. Music produced by white people and influenced primarily by historically white genres is referred to with words like flat-footed, shaggy, sylvan curlicues (all describing Pavement), plodding and formless (Wilco), and lassitude and monotony (indie rock generally). Guess who's clumsily brooding in the corner over the "sylvan curlicues" of his poetic beard while all the cool kids dance? It's White Guy! (And hey: if "sylvan curlicues" sounds as if Frere-Jones wants a little more macho aggression to his rhythm, you'll probably enjoy his left-handed compliments toward Grizzly Bear - a choir of eunuchs, he says - that, toward a band led by a gay man.)
The larger point of Frere-Jones' article is that in the past, both white and black musicians borrowed from one another's styles - but now, Jones claims, the white kids are all eating by themselves at the same table. Okay, it's true that a lot of recently popular indie rock is heavily indebted to Brian Wilson, tends toward the ethereal and abstract rather than the ass-shaking, and draws from non-blues structures and instrumentation. At the same time, my inbox is filled constantly with mp3s from (mostly white) bands hepped up on crazed dance synthesizers, rapping wildly over home-brewed four-track funk, or borrowing production tricks from the murkiest dub records. Something is happening - but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Frere-Jones?
Okay, so he's just another aging critic (I should talk) whose grip on the newest new stuff is slipping a bit, and so he's beginning to get nostalgic for the music that got him off back when he had hair on his head: no crime in any of that. What irks me is his racial essentialism: African-Americans are all about the body; whites are all about the brain.
Thanks a lot. Hey, Mr. Anthony Braxton? With all that theorizing, that heady 12-tone pointillist jazz and philosophy, and the heavy-duty MacArthur Fellowship receiving? Cut it out and shake your ass. Mr. Paul D. Miller, DJ Spooky, that subliminal kid, whatever you want to call yourself? Put down the damned Derrida and make me dance!
UPDATE: I've since read Carl Wilson's several writings on this issue - my reply is here.
10.24.2007
a perhaps more pervasive meme than is desirable
I have no formal training in graphic design...but it seems to me, if you're going to use two very dissimilar sizes of type, necessarily the text in larger type will be emphasized. And it would seem to follow from that, that such text ought to accord with the overall message of the image. And finally (and maybe this is me as English teacher), it seems that if those emphasized words aren't just a list of nouns, say, but if they appear to form a sentence, that sentence should be a well-formed sentence.
All of which goes to explain why this ad for United Way - seen here in a quick and dirty snap of the back of a bus, but also used on billboards - bugs me.
WE RAISE IS EXPECTATIONS is not a grammatical sentence. What's more irritating is that it would have been so very simple to make everything work, just by making that "is" smaller (the same size as the other type), possibly moving it.
Could be my inner proofreader is taking over my brain - but that ad just makes me cringe every time I see it.
Unless...
It's supposed to be in Lolcat! That's it. I CAN HAS CHARITYZ?
All of which goes to explain why this ad for United Way - seen here in a quick and dirty snap of the back of a bus, but also used on billboards - bugs me.
WE RAISE IS EXPECTATIONS is not a grammatical sentence. What's more irritating is that it would have been so very simple to make everything work, just by making that "is" smaller (the same size as the other type), possibly moving it.Could be my inner proofreader is taking over my brain - but that ad just makes me cringe every time I see it.
Unless...
It's supposed to be in Lolcat! That's it. I CAN HAS CHARITYZ?
10.23.2007
new music: delicious hot, disgusting cold
It's been a while since I've featured actual new music here, as opposed to stuff from deep in past tenses of my musical grammar, but here are a few intriguing tracks that have come my way courtesy the diligent efforts of the musicians themselves and/or their slavering publicists.
Plushgun "Just Impolite": I like the blend of straight-up pop songwriting and semi-nostalgic synth wrangling here. It's a solid and catchy little number. Also, I've never met a metatext I haven't liked liking. The band's put up more tracks you can stream through one of those trendy players at the myspace website internet thingy.
Destroy Cowboy "1000 Candles": A fairly ambitious, complexly structured number - as that might lead you to expect, there's a tinge of ye olde progge here, with that smoky, murky synthetic chorale in the opening, a change of time signature midtune, and a general air of large intensity. But the band keeps the energy high, and I like the way the various melodic components come back in different textural guises.
Super Volcano "Instant Attraction": Recording's a bit murky, but actually that serves the song, in that the grunting bass and overdriven electric piano sound work well with the singer's sort of snide tone. Not so audible on this track, but this band also exudes a whiff or two of progness, particularly on a longer track downloadable at Super Volcano's myspace (where you can also hear another couple of tracks). I'm not fully persuaded by that aspect of this band yet - but in general I like it when bands are unafraid to mess with structure and sound, so better to fall slightly short in doing so than play it safe and bore everyone with the old same place.
(None of this music is actually disgusting. But just as James Joyce could never resist a pun, and thus put a picture of his father in a cork frame - because he was from Cork - I can never resist a semi-obscure musical reference, in this case to a Bonzo Dog Band song.)
Plushgun "Just Impolite": I like the blend of straight-up pop songwriting and semi-nostalgic synth wrangling here. It's a solid and catchy little number. Also, I've never met a metatext I haven't liked liking. The band's put up more tracks you can stream through one of those trendy players at the myspace website internet thingy.
Destroy Cowboy "1000 Candles": A fairly ambitious, complexly structured number - as that might lead you to expect, there's a tinge of ye olde progge here, with that smoky, murky synthetic chorale in the opening, a change of time signature midtune, and a general air of large intensity. But the band keeps the energy high, and I like the way the various melodic components come back in different textural guises.
Super Volcano "Instant Attraction": Recording's a bit murky, but actually that serves the song, in that the grunting bass and overdriven electric piano sound work well with the singer's sort of snide tone. Not so audible on this track, but this band also exudes a whiff or two of progness, particularly on a longer track downloadable at Super Volcano's myspace (where you can also hear another couple of tracks). I'm not fully persuaded by that aspect of this band yet - but in general I like it when bands are unafraid to mess with structure and sound, so better to fall slightly short in doing so than play it safe and bore everyone with the old same place.
(None of this music is actually disgusting. But just as James Joyce could never resist a pun, and thus put a picture of his father in a cork frame - because he was from Cork - I can never resist a semi-obscure musical reference, in this case to a Bonzo Dog Band song.)
10.22.2007
of vampires, and milk
It may become necessary to possess a clear understanding of the nature of mammaloid hemophages (commonly styled "vampires" when that mammaloid form is human-derived). To that end, I offer here a few words.
The process by which a hemophage is engendered is mysterious, as such transformation has never been observed directly either in the wild or under laboratory conditions. However, both common belief and mythology concur that engendering occurs when a hemophage feeds on a human, and that human is then compelled to consume the ichor of the hemophage. Studies of captive hemophages have confirmed that their ichor, while containing all the components that make up human blood, contains as well an enzyme which apparently destroys much of the remnant human genetic material and, in so doing, halts the aging clock. Almost all nerves are blunted, and while it is a myth that vampires feel no pain, in practice they become nearly impervious to its effects. A sucking chest wound produces pain in a hemophage roughly equivalent, to judge from observed laboratory reactions, to that caused by a shallow knife wound in a human subject. This imperviousness to pain and immunity to aging, as well as the ichor's ability to provide by itself all the sustenance a hemophage requires, has led to the common belief that vampires are all but immortal (with their mortality ensured only by a few and rather ritualistic actions; more on this subject anon). This is not in fact the case, but the hemophage will recover from many injuries that would, in fact, kill a human being, and will not die of old age, so long as a constant supply of fresh mammalian blood is ensured, which the hemophage's digestive system converts to ichor.
A word about commonly accepted mythology concerning the mortality of vampires. Legends claim that a vampire can be killed only by decapitation, by impalement of the heart with a wooden stake, or by fire or direct sunlight. This isn't strictly correct: laboratory observations confirm that certain grievous bodily injury, particularly if the hemophage is prevented from feeding, will cause death. But practically, the mythology is correct. Decapitation, of course, causes death primarily by severing the brain from its bodily source of ichor; neither the head nor the body can survive long without that connection. Similarly, fire will kill a hemophage so long as the body is heated to the extent required to bring ichor to its boiling point (approximately 113 degrees centigrade), which in turn will cause death. Sunlight is not invariably fatal to hemophages, but melanin is no longer produced in hemophages, and while a hemophage's skin remains relatively supple so long as it avoids direct sunlight, UV rays essentially effect an extremely rapid burning and dehydration of the epidermis. Ichor itself is powerfully reactive to sunlight, and the typical etiology of sun-based fatalities among hemophages involves such rapid sunburn that the shallow, fragile, parched skin is readily scratched: the smallest amount of ichor reacts explosively to sunlight, and the body is consumed as the epidermis essentially vaporizes in providing fuel to the reaction.
As noted above, common mythology has it that a vampire may be killed via a stake through the heart - but not just any stake. It must be a wooden stake. While metaphoric and poetic explanations for this phenomenon abound, in fact it is simply a byproduct of the fact that the lignin in wood reacts chemically with ichor to create a loosely-bonded solid which rapidly expands at normal temperature. (Rare cases in which a hemophage was impaled in extreme, arctic conditions reveal that under such conditions, the hemophage can survive - so long as it is able to feed immediately and copiously shortly afterwards.) This rapid expansion, coupled with the aforementioned parching of the exterior membrane, causes the body of the hemophage first to peel rapidly away from the expanding lignin/ichor compound, which itself then essentially explodes, leaving a characteristic dusty residue. Wounds from sharpened wooden stakes that do not pierce the heart can temporarily paralyze the hemophage, but the fatal character of cardiac impalement arises from the concentrated quantity of ichor, and the resultant rapid spread of the lignin/ichor reaction.
A rare and curious aspect of hemophage culture has only recently been discovered, and that is the extreme fear, verging upon panic, with which the hemophage regards milk. In general, owing to their virtual indestructibility, hemophages present an arrogant, indomitable mien - but even the largest, strongest buck hemophage will quiver in terror if presented with a simple glass of milk. Vampire lore has it that all vampires will be vanquished at a single stroke should a mythical substance known as lacto verginum, or "virgin's milk," be found. This milk, our hemophagic informants agree, instantly reverts ichor to human blood (and the vampire biology to human biology), a transformation which, mystically, also affects all other hemophages engendered by that vampire, as well as all hemophages engendered by them, in a chain reaction that ultimately restores all vampires to human form - but a human form bearing all the infirmities of the hemophage's true age. In essence, the mythological "virgin's milk" would destroy the race of hemophages at a stroke.
In fact, laboratory experiments demonstrate that everyday milk, whether that of cows, sheep, goats, or any other mammal, does appear to disrupt the enzymatic activity of ichor. It would appear, then, that vampires fear milk with good reason - although milk is effective in inhibiting ichor enzymatic activity only when consumed, or forcefed, in fairly large quantities. Smaller quantities of milk produce only a lethargic reaction, lasting anywhere from five minutes to several hours. The chemistry whereby these reactions occur is obscure. Some theorists hold that the fat content of milk is responsible, while others suggest that calcium binds with a component of ichor. (Support for the latter theory is found in the presence of calcium in garlic which, although not terribly effective as a repellent for the hemophage, is regarded as terribly unpleasant by most mammaloid hemophages studied under laboratory conditions.)
One final note. While public fear of vampires has been steadily increasing in recent years, in fact the hemophage is quite rare. Under most circumstances, a vampire attack is far less probable than, say, being struck by lightning, being abducted by an escaped prisoner, or being consumed alive by a werecow. Foreknowledge is forewarning, however, and such knowledge can never be a bad thing.
- from unpublished notes of Dr. Alvin Ventner of the University of Nebraska's School of Xenobiology, Lincoln, NE
The process by which a hemophage is engendered is mysterious, as such transformation has never been observed directly either in the wild or under laboratory conditions. However, both common belief and mythology concur that engendering occurs when a hemophage feeds on a human, and that human is then compelled to consume the ichor of the hemophage. Studies of captive hemophages have confirmed that their ichor, while containing all the components that make up human blood, contains as well an enzyme which apparently destroys much of the remnant human genetic material and, in so doing, halts the aging clock. Almost all nerves are blunted, and while it is a myth that vampires feel no pain, in practice they become nearly impervious to its effects. A sucking chest wound produces pain in a hemophage roughly equivalent, to judge from observed laboratory reactions, to that caused by a shallow knife wound in a human subject. This imperviousness to pain and immunity to aging, as well as the ichor's ability to provide by itself all the sustenance a hemophage requires, has led to the common belief that vampires are all but immortal (with their mortality ensured only by a few and rather ritualistic actions; more on this subject anon). This is not in fact the case, but the hemophage will recover from many injuries that would, in fact, kill a human being, and will not die of old age, so long as a constant supply of fresh mammalian blood is ensured, which the hemophage's digestive system converts to ichor.
A word about commonly accepted mythology concerning the mortality of vampires. Legends claim that a vampire can be killed only by decapitation, by impalement of the heart with a wooden stake, or by fire or direct sunlight. This isn't strictly correct: laboratory observations confirm that certain grievous bodily injury, particularly if the hemophage is prevented from feeding, will cause death. But practically, the mythology is correct. Decapitation, of course, causes death primarily by severing the brain from its bodily source of ichor; neither the head nor the body can survive long without that connection. Similarly, fire will kill a hemophage so long as the body is heated to the extent required to bring ichor to its boiling point (approximately 113 degrees centigrade), which in turn will cause death. Sunlight is not invariably fatal to hemophages, but melanin is no longer produced in hemophages, and while a hemophage's skin remains relatively supple so long as it avoids direct sunlight, UV rays essentially effect an extremely rapid burning and dehydration of the epidermis. Ichor itself is powerfully reactive to sunlight, and the typical etiology of sun-based fatalities among hemophages involves such rapid sunburn that the shallow, fragile, parched skin is readily scratched: the smallest amount of ichor reacts explosively to sunlight, and the body is consumed as the epidermis essentially vaporizes in providing fuel to the reaction.
As noted above, common mythology has it that a vampire may be killed via a stake through the heart - but not just any stake. It must be a wooden stake. While metaphoric and poetic explanations for this phenomenon abound, in fact it is simply a byproduct of the fact that the lignin in wood reacts chemically with ichor to create a loosely-bonded solid which rapidly expands at normal temperature. (Rare cases in which a hemophage was impaled in extreme, arctic conditions reveal that under such conditions, the hemophage can survive - so long as it is able to feed immediately and copiously shortly afterwards.) This rapid expansion, coupled with the aforementioned parching of the exterior membrane, causes the body of the hemophage first to peel rapidly away from the expanding lignin/ichor compound, which itself then essentially explodes, leaving a characteristic dusty residue. Wounds from sharpened wooden stakes that do not pierce the heart can temporarily paralyze the hemophage, but the fatal character of cardiac impalement arises from the concentrated quantity of ichor, and the resultant rapid spread of the lignin/ichor reaction.
A rare and curious aspect of hemophage culture has only recently been discovered, and that is the extreme fear, verging upon panic, with which the hemophage regards milk. In general, owing to their virtual indestructibility, hemophages present an arrogant, indomitable mien - but even the largest, strongest buck hemophage will quiver in terror if presented with a simple glass of milk. Vampire lore has it that all vampires will be vanquished at a single stroke should a mythical substance known as lacto verginum, or "virgin's milk," be found. This milk, our hemophagic informants agree, instantly reverts ichor to human blood (and the vampire biology to human biology), a transformation which, mystically, also affects all other hemophages engendered by that vampire, as well as all hemophages engendered by them, in a chain reaction that ultimately restores all vampires to human form - but a human form bearing all the infirmities of the hemophage's true age. In essence, the mythological "virgin's milk" would destroy the race of hemophages at a stroke.
In fact, laboratory experiments demonstrate that everyday milk, whether that of cows, sheep, goats, or any other mammal, does appear to disrupt the enzymatic activity of ichor. It would appear, then, that vampires fear milk with good reason - although milk is effective in inhibiting ichor enzymatic activity only when consumed, or forcefed, in fairly large quantities. Smaller quantities of milk produce only a lethargic reaction, lasting anywhere from five minutes to several hours. The chemistry whereby these reactions occur is obscure. Some theorists hold that the fat content of milk is responsible, while others suggest that calcium binds with a component of ichor. (Support for the latter theory is found in the presence of calcium in garlic which, although not terribly effective as a repellent for the hemophage, is regarded as terribly unpleasant by most mammaloid hemophages studied under laboratory conditions.)
One final note. While public fear of vampires has been steadily increasing in recent years, in fact the hemophage is quite rare. Under most circumstances, a vampire attack is far less probable than, say, being struck by lightning, being abducted by an escaped prisoner, or being consumed alive by a werecow. Foreknowledge is forewarning, however, and such knowledge can never be a bad thing.
- from unpublished notes of Dr. Alvin Ventner of the University of Nebraska's School of Xenobiology, Lincoln, NE
10.21.2007
afternoon undelight
For some reason, I've been noticing that our nation's cliché factories have been flooding the market with the verb to skyrocket - as in common spam subject lines concerning stocks, or descriptions of fads, etc. This usage strikes me as both amusingly inapt yet, ultimately, quite accurate.
First, I suspect a lot of people who use the phrase aren't necessarily aware of what exactly a literal skyrocket is, and how it differs from, say, a regular rocket. It's a firework, as it turns out - but like all such devices, once fired skyward, it inevitably returns to earth...usually in pieces or burnt to a crisp.
So if the idea is to talk about something rising or increasing dramatically, this is exactly the wrong word to use, at least if you're being all salespersonish about it. Those stocks might indeed be skyrocketing - they're up there now but they'll be crashing down to earth shortly. And then where's your bulging portfolio, Mr. Idiot "I Believe in Spam" Investor?
And that, of course, is the sense in which the phrase is often quite apt in the long run...since most of the stuff described as "skyrocketing" (like, say, Britney Spears' career circa 2000) will eventually fall to pieces in dramatic and destructive fashion.
First, I suspect a lot of people who use the phrase aren't necessarily aware of what exactly a literal skyrocket is, and how it differs from, say, a regular rocket. It's a firework, as it turns out - but like all such devices, once fired skyward, it inevitably returns to earth...usually in pieces or burnt to a crisp.
So if the idea is to talk about something rising or increasing dramatically, this is exactly the wrong word to use, at least if you're being all salespersonish about it. Those stocks might indeed be skyrocketing - they're up there now but they'll be crashing down to earth shortly. And then where's your bulging portfolio, Mr. Idiot "I Believe in Spam" Investor?
And that, of course, is the sense in which the phrase is often quite apt in the long run...since most of the stuff described as "skyrocketing" (like, say, Britney Spears' career circa 2000) will eventually fall to pieces in dramatic and destructive fashion.
10.19.2007
ouch.
From the Department of We Have the Technology (Or Should I Say, It Has Us):
What happens when an encoding error causes the DAT player to play that cheesy keyboard bit from Van Halen's "Jump" about 2/3 of a step too sharp...and the band doesn't realize until it's too late?
Here's what:
As RW370 points out, the pitch difference is readily accounted for by the difference between two common sampling rates...but that difference isn't correctable by transposing, because it puts the notes between the frets. Had someone noticed the pitch difference on time (during the intro, say...and please tell me that isn't an enormous US flag being waved...), presumably the guitar and bass could have been retuned up to the right pitch. But that's not really a likely thing to spot.
Anyway, although the video really is pretty funny to hear, it certainly isn't the band's fault that they're out of tune. I think the best option would have been to stop the DAT and just play the song without it: surely Eddie Van Halen knows how to play that riff (or a close approximation) on guitar. I mean, I'm pretty sure I could figure it out within a couple of minutes...and Mr. Van Halen is certainly a more accomplished musician than I am. (We shall draw a veil across the question of taste, however.) And I do give the band credit for at least trying to continue and put on a good show - a bad band, or an unprofessional one, might have just tossed their instruments to the ground in disgust.
The whole thing, though, is an example of why I hate it when bands use recordings in concert. It's not a recording (or rather, it shouldn't be): rearrange the song to something you can play onstage, or hire extra musicians to play the parts (and don't hide them offstage either). It's one thing if your whole thing is triggering samples: I don't think anyone would care if Aphex Twin is essentially pressing a sequence of buttons on his laptop. But if you're pretending to an old-school, physically-playing-the-instruments show, leave the prerecorded crap out of it.
But the real question is: Dave, are you kidding with that giant inflatable microphone? That's a sort of Spinal Tap in reverse moment: "No, you idiot: the microphone's supposed to be eight inches - not eight feet!"
What happens when an encoding error causes the DAT player to play that cheesy keyboard bit from Van Halen's "Jump" about 2/3 of a step too sharp...and the band doesn't realize until it's too late?
Here's what:
As RW370 points out, the pitch difference is readily accounted for by the difference between two common sampling rates...but that difference isn't correctable by transposing, because it puts the notes between the frets. Had someone noticed the pitch difference on time (during the intro, say...and please tell me that isn't an enormous US flag being waved...), presumably the guitar and bass could have been retuned up to the right pitch. But that's not really a likely thing to spot.
Anyway, although the video really is pretty funny to hear, it certainly isn't the band's fault that they're out of tune. I think the best option would have been to stop the DAT and just play the song without it: surely Eddie Van Halen knows how to play that riff (or a close approximation) on guitar. I mean, I'm pretty sure I could figure it out within a couple of minutes...and Mr. Van Halen is certainly a more accomplished musician than I am. (We shall draw a veil across the question of taste, however.) And I do give the band credit for at least trying to continue and put on a good show - a bad band, or an unprofessional one, might have just tossed their instruments to the ground in disgust.
The whole thing, though, is an example of why I hate it when bands use recordings in concert. It's not a recording (or rather, it shouldn't be): rearrange the song to something you can play onstage, or hire extra musicians to play the parts (and don't hide them offstage either). It's one thing if your whole thing is triggering samples: I don't think anyone would care if Aphex Twin is essentially pressing a sequence of buttons on his laptop. But if you're pretending to an old-school, physically-playing-the-instruments show, leave the prerecorded crap out of it.
But the real question is: Dave, are you kidding with that giant inflatable microphone? That's a sort of Spinal Tap in reverse moment: "No, you idiot: the microphone's supposed to be eight inches - not eight feet!"
10.18.2007
the big red font of dumbness
For some time I've noticed that a certain type of movie - the kind in which fart jokes, it can cogently be argued, reach their absolute apogee - tends to feature gigantic red print, most typically a sans serif, all caps. At first I was thinking this look originated (appropriately) with Dumb and Dumber...but my memory's misled me, because the images of that movie's posters I've been able to find display the type in blue. The font is similar, though.
Anyway, as it turns out someone else has already gone through the trouble of creating a collage of many of the movies featuring the Big Dumb Red Font. It is a nice sort of consumer-alert feature (aside from the presence of Eddie Murphy, Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, etc.), in that the promotion for these movies instantly informs viewers that they can park their IQ at home.
Update: And here's another page...
Anyway, as it turns out someone else has already gone through the trouble of creating a collage of many of the movies featuring the Big Dumb Red Font. It is a nice sort of consumer-alert feature (aside from the presence of Eddie Murphy, Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, etc.), in that the promotion for these movies instantly informs viewers that they can park their IQ at home.
Update: And here's another page...
10.17.2007
attn: all people who post at popular websites' comments boards
No one gives a shaved rat's ass whether you're "first."
Just stop. Now.
Thank you.
Just stop. Now.
Thank you.
10.16.2007
the world according to nouns
A longish tradition, whose most recent heir might be minimalism, holds that poetry (or indeed, language generally) is most piercing stripped of superfluity: adjectives and adverbs come in for particular abuse. Ezra Pound wrote that "the natural object is always the adequate symbol," and William Carlos Williams wrote "no ideas but in things." A recent book explores what its editor calls Evocative Objects (which is the book's title as well): its essays examine their authors' relations with everything from a cello to a laptop to a rolling pin.
It occurs to me that visual art is in some ways better equipped than language to be a vehicle for this minimalism of evocation, and indeed, some illustrators exhibit a fascination with particular objects, objects that recur in their work. I'm thinking of Peter Blegvad (also a musician) and his fascination with milk, for example, or his "amateur" essays exploring "numinosity," or his illustrations of objects such as a "yolk of leather in a tobacco egg" or an "arrow of ice wrapped in surgical gauze." I'll note, though, that Blegvad (with his tongue always hovering in close proximity to his cheek) argues that giving such illustrations evocative titles increases their numinosity - and of course, the words describing such illustrations (as above) themselves tend to be made up of common nouns (or common objects) in unconventional juxtapositions.
Three different approaches to a stripped-down lyricism of nouns in music. Wire's "Kidney Bingos" consists of almost nothing but nouns, and cleverly evokes '80s material excess: its plot appears to involve people who sell bodily organs to finance their clubbing excesses (probably not a coincidence that this song is Wire's most commercial-sounding). In another mood entirely, Syd Barrett's "Word Song" comes close to the spirit of Blegvad's investigations of numinosity, consisting of words that seem evocative or resonant to Barrett. Finally, the Minutemen pop out a raft of words, abstract and concrete, and query: "what's the verb behind it all?"
Wire "Kidney Bingos" (A Bell Is A Cup Until It Is Struck, 1988)
Syd Barrett "Word Song" (recorded 1970; Opel, 1988)
The Minutemen "The World According to Nouns" (Double Nickels on the Dime, 1984)
It occurs to me that visual art is in some ways better equipped than language to be a vehicle for this minimalism of evocation, and indeed, some illustrators exhibit a fascination with particular objects, objects that recur in their work. I'm thinking of Peter Blegvad (also a musician) and his fascination with milk, for example, or his "amateur" essays exploring "numinosity," or his illustrations of objects such as a "yolk of leather in a tobacco egg" or an "arrow of ice wrapped in surgical gauze." I'll note, though, that Blegvad (with his tongue always hovering in close proximity to his cheek) argues that giving such illustrations evocative titles increases their numinosity - and of course, the words describing such illustrations (as above) themselves tend to be made up of common nouns (or common objects) in unconventional juxtapositions.
Three different approaches to a stripped-down lyricism of nouns in music. Wire's "Kidney Bingos" consists of almost nothing but nouns, and cleverly evokes '80s material excess: its plot appears to involve people who sell bodily organs to finance their clubbing excesses (probably not a coincidence that this song is Wire's most commercial-sounding). In another mood entirely, Syd Barrett's "Word Song" comes close to the spirit of Blegvad's investigations of numinosity, consisting of words that seem evocative or resonant to Barrett. Finally, the Minutemen pop out a raft of words, abstract and concrete, and query: "what's the verb behind it all?"
Wire "Kidney Bingos" (A Bell Is A Cup Until It Is Struck, 1988)
Syd Barrett "Word Song" (recorded 1970; Opel, 1988)
The Minutemen "The World According to Nouns" (Double Nickels on the Dime, 1984)
10.15.2007
So a teacher, a lawyer, and a librarian walk into a bar...
And plug in.
Interesting set of interviews at Stereogum with one of my favorite bands, The Caribbean, about their day jobs (they're all "data machines," in the interviewer's amusing phrase). The band's excellent new album Populations is out on Hometapes right around Halloween: I do not know whether it is being released in costume. (Given that the inside of an earlier Caribbean release was designed to look like a tax form, that is a possibility.) Stereogum has an mp3 of "Stockhausen Serves Imperialism" at the bottom of the interviews (quick quiz: source that title reference!), while Hometapes has "The Go from Tactical" (which I'd posted a few months back) available at the band's page.
Interesting set of interviews at Stereogum with one of my favorite bands, The Caribbean, about their day jobs (they're all "data machines," in the interviewer's amusing phrase). The band's excellent new album Populations is out on Hometapes right around Halloween: I do not know whether it is being released in costume. (Given that the inside of an earlier Caribbean release was designed to look like a tax form, that is a possibility.) Stereogum has an mp3 of "Stockhausen Serves Imperialism" at the bottom of the interviews (quick quiz: source that title reference!), while Hometapes has "The Go from Tactical" (which I'd posted a few months back) available at the band's page.
10.14.2007
editor wanted
I'm not an editor of fiction, but I'm guessing that anyone who is might have some serious work to do if the following were offered up as the plot of a crime story:
A millionaire CEO is at home one evening, when a 6'5", 240-pound black man in his mid-forties walks in the millionaire's wide-open front door. The intruder is brandishing a sawed-off shotgun. Rather than attempt to escape, call 911, or just give the intruder whatever it is he wants, our intrepid millionaire hero instead uses the awesome powers his executive position has bequeathed him, and simply charms the intruder into sitting down for a chat for a couple of hours - it being understood that he's still being held hostage, along with his wife and two daughters, of course - and having a beer. Eventually, our intruder settles for a computer and an iPhone - devices that he could have found in nearly any house, no need to break into a million-dollar home in an exclusive neighborhood - and leaves.
Still, our CEO doesn't call the cops. Instead, the next day he calls the mayor to complain, and has a lackey set up an interview with the local press. He then sends out fliers and e-mails decrying the city's crime problem and its inability to protect its citizens, and further suggests that he and his wealthy neighbors ought to secede ("de-annexation") from the city to form their own private security enclave.
Back to our editor. The first thing such an editor might notice is that the intruder is both too stereotypical and too atypical. Too stereotypical: of course, he's a black man, and like all scary black men, he's physically enormous. Too atypical: despite his imposing bulk, he's carrying a weapon - but that weapon is the rather pulp-fiction-y "sawed-off shotgun," even though handguns are readily available and much easier to use. And even though nearly all such actual crimes are committed by men under 30, our villain is in his mid-forties.
The editor also doesn't think people will buy the details of the intruder's visit. He threatens the family with a weapon, holds them hostage for two hours...but sits down and shares a beer with the millionaire? The door's wide open...but rather take this as a sign of lax security, and return later when the family's asleep or away, he walks right in now, as if impulsively? And after all this, despite being in the home of a wealthy CEO who, presumably, has many items of quite a bit of value in the house, the intruder walks off with only a computer and an iPhone? Speaking of walking off, how did this intruder leave? What sort of vehicle was he driving? Or did he run off through nearby Lake Park to the shore, where a confederate was waiting with a powerboat?
The editor also doesn't understand why the millionaire victim is so calm about all this as to not bother to call the cops that night, or even call the mayor that night if that's what he wants to do. Instead, he gets in a good night's rest and decides that dealing with this crime can wait till the next day. If our villain knew this, of course, he'd breathe a huge sigh of relief: more time to get cleanly away and leave his trail utterly cold! Gotta wonder what our millionaire's neighbors think: so, you just toddled off to bed, leaving this half-drunk, crazed linebacker-sized black man with a sawed-off shotgun free to burglarize our houses? Thanks, neighbor!
Good thing this isn't fiction. Or at least, it's not being presented as such: John Jazwiec, CEO of a software firm, says this is exactly what happened to him. I'm just surprised Jazwiec didn't claim the intruder had stores of WMDs hidden under his coat. As for Jazwiec's proposal to establish a Green Zone on Milwaukee's beleaguered East Side war zone, columnist Joel McNally makes the sensible suggestion that, hey, Blackwater looks as if it's going to have a bit more room on its plate for its finely calibrated, proportionate response teams: maybe Jazwiec should get a hold of those folks to patrol the newly created Jazwiecistan.
A millionaire CEO is at home one evening, when a 6'5", 240-pound black man in his mid-forties walks in the millionaire's wide-open front door. The intruder is brandishing a sawed-off shotgun. Rather than attempt to escape, call 911, or just give the intruder whatever it is he wants, our intrepid millionaire hero instead uses the awesome powers his executive position has bequeathed him, and simply charms the intruder into sitting down for a chat for a couple of hours - it being understood that he's still being held hostage, along with his wife and two daughters, of course - and having a beer. Eventually, our intruder settles for a computer and an iPhone - devices that he could have found in nearly any house, no need to break into a million-dollar home in an exclusive neighborhood - and leaves.
Still, our CEO doesn't call the cops. Instead, the next day he calls the mayor to complain, and has a lackey set up an interview with the local press. He then sends out fliers and e-mails decrying the city's crime problem and its inability to protect its citizens, and further suggests that he and his wealthy neighbors ought to secede ("de-annexation") from the city to form their own private security enclave.
Back to our editor. The first thing such an editor might notice is that the intruder is both too stereotypical and too atypical. Too stereotypical: of course, he's a black man, and like all scary black men, he's physically enormous. Too atypical: despite his imposing bulk, he's carrying a weapon - but that weapon is the rather pulp-fiction-y "sawed-off shotgun," even though handguns are readily available and much easier to use. And even though nearly all such actual crimes are committed by men under 30, our villain is in his mid-forties.
The editor also doesn't think people will buy the details of the intruder's visit. He threatens the family with a weapon, holds them hostage for two hours...but sits down and shares a beer with the millionaire? The door's wide open...but rather take this as a sign of lax security, and return later when the family's asleep or away, he walks right in now, as if impulsively? And after all this, despite being in the home of a wealthy CEO who, presumably, has many items of quite a bit of value in the house, the intruder walks off with only a computer and an iPhone? Speaking of walking off, how did this intruder leave? What sort of vehicle was he driving? Or did he run off through nearby Lake Park to the shore, where a confederate was waiting with a powerboat?
The editor also doesn't understand why the millionaire victim is so calm about all this as to not bother to call the cops that night, or even call the mayor that night if that's what he wants to do. Instead, he gets in a good night's rest and decides that dealing with this crime can wait till the next day. If our villain knew this, of course, he'd breathe a huge sigh of relief: more time to get cleanly away and leave his trail utterly cold! Gotta wonder what our millionaire's neighbors think: so, you just toddled off to bed, leaving this half-drunk, crazed linebacker-sized black man with a sawed-off shotgun free to burglarize our houses? Thanks, neighbor!
Good thing this isn't fiction. Or at least, it's not being presented as such: John Jazwiec, CEO of a software firm, says this is exactly what happened to him. I'm just surprised Jazwiec didn't claim the intruder had stores of WMDs hidden under his coat. As for Jazwiec's proposal to establish a Green Zone on Milwaukee's beleaguered East Side war zone, columnist Joel McNally makes the sensible suggestion that, hey, Blackwater looks as if it's going to have a bit more room on its plate for its finely calibrated, proportionate response teams: maybe Jazwiec should get a hold of those folks to patrol the newly created Jazwiecistan.
10.13.2007
three...rocks.
About a month ago (inspired by Flasshe: I didn't know it had existed until I saw it at his site), I changed the site's link to my Flickr site to the image you see to the right near the top of the page, which brings up three randomly chosen images (selected from among those of my photos I've labeled "badge"). What's fun about this is the unexpected way the three images interact with one another.
So, a contest of sorts (which I'm sure will draw an overwhelming response): your favorite set of three images, screen-captured from this page. Experience the joy of hitting refresh repeatedly!
So, a contest of sorts (which I'm sure will draw an overwhelming response): your favorite set of three images, screen-captured from this page. Experience the joy of hitting refresh repeatedly!
10.12.2007
legal victories and idiocies
I'm glad these students won their case against an abusive slimelandlord. But I've never understood the logic of the city ordinance that says no more than three unrelated people may occupy certain rental properties: if a property is overcrowded or unsafe in some other way because more than three people occupy it, what difference does it make if they're cousins, sisters, fifth cousins, or identical triplet trainees at clown school?
Oh, that's right: it's the city's rather lame attempt to stop landlords from abusing students...which ends up abusing students by prohibiting them from saving money even if the space is perfectly adequate for more than three people. Why not produce a brochure indicating what things are truly unsafe (a basement apartment with no fire exit, say - as the landlord in a building I once lived in rented) and letting renters decide for themselves how many of them can comfortably occupy a space? Meanwhile, stop winking at landlords who don't maintain their properties, refuse to return deposits for no reason, charge tenants for work they never do, etc.
Oh, that's right: it's the city's rather lame attempt to stop landlords from abusing students...which ends up abusing students by prohibiting them from saving money even if the space is perfectly adequate for more than three people. Why not produce a brochure indicating what things are truly unsafe (a basement apartment with no fire exit, say - as the landlord in a building I once lived in rented) and letting renters decide for themselves how many of them can comfortably occupy a space? Meanwhile, stop winking at landlords who don't maintain their properties, refuse to return deposits for no reason, charge tenants for work they never do, etc.
10.11.2007
take that, Bill!
A free bookmark being distributed by UWM's IT folks kicks Microsoft's inane new document formats squarely in the teeth:
My only complaint: really, folks, the whole "tape on the glasses" meme is a bit moldy...
My only complaint: really, folks, the whole "tape on the glasses" meme is a bit moldy...
10.08.2007
does it mean you have to throw your body off a building?
Way back in the darks of distant days, I wrote about James Angell's excellent Private Player album. Even then (a year or two after its release), his label's website had imploded, his own website had no new information, and even an e-mail to an address listed at that site received no response. I was left to conclude that Angell had once again retreated to the Oregon wilderness.
So I'm glad to report activity on the Angell front. Because publicity doesn't seem to be his strong suit, some of this "news" is fully a year old, in the form of this Brooklyn Rail interview from November 2006, which gives the impression that a new CD was all but ready to be released. A year later, and Angell's myspace site (which I don't believe existed when I last wrote about him) has an entry from May of this year referring to ongoing work on a new CD, as well as three fine, diverse new tracks. The new album supposedly will be called The Pandemic Symphony and will be released on "the new Dream Makers label" - which, judging from the artwork of the label's other signings (including an act named, confusingly, Aangell), seems an odd fit. (There's a definite metal-y/goth-y/proggish feel to the designs...then again, Angell jokingly describes his music as "death metal/glam/lounge" at his myspace site...)
Samples of all the Private Player tracks are available at Angell's rather underlinked label site, but here are two of them in better quality:
James Angell "Ooh Love" (Private Player, 2001)
James Angell "Dear Dying Friend" (Private Player, 2001)
So I'm glad to report activity on the Angell front. Because publicity doesn't seem to be his strong suit, some of this "news" is fully a year old, in the form of this Brooklyn Rail interview from November 2006, which gives the impression that a new CD was all but ready to be released. A year later, and Angell's myspace site (which I don't believe existed when I last wrote about him) has an entry from May of this year referring to ongoing work on a new CD, as well as three fine, diverse new tracks. The new album supposedly will be called The Pandemic Symphony and will be released on "the new Dream Makers label" - which, judging from the artwork of the label's other signings (including an act named, confusingly, Aangell), seems an odd fit. (There's a definite metal-y/goth-y/proggish feel to the designs...then again, Angell jokingly describes his music as "death metal/glam/lounge" at his myspace site...)
Samples of all the Private Player tracks are available at Angell's rather underlinked label site, but here are two of them in better quality:
James Angell "Ooh Love" (Private Player, 2001)
James Angell "Dear Dying Friend" (Private Player, 2001)
10.06.2007
and the opposite of "multiple intelligences" is...
I saw an obnoxious bumper sticker today. I didn't have my camera, and I couldn't find the right image online, so I just redid it on my computer. It looked pretty much like this:
Now, my first guess as to its meaning is "marriage is for one man and one woman" - and in fact, phrases similar to that spew forth from the mouths of religious bigots all the time. But maybe I'm misrepresenting what this sticker means - after all, the graphic doesn't exactly say that, and there are other interpretations. For example:
1. "Marriage = same-sex restrooms": Well, I guess that's true - it would be rare for a man and a woman who marry to designate one restroom for each of them. Or perhaps the idea is that marriage will lead to same-sex restrooms: I'm old enough to remember when the proposed Equal Rights Amendment was supposed to lead us all to various hells, including that one. Anyway, same-sex restrooms certainly would've given Larry Craig an easier time defending himself...against some charges, anyway.
2. "Marriage is for white people": This is offensive and racist. I don't think marriage should be reserved only for featureless, geometrically simple white people. The more complexly shaped humans, of whatever color, should have an equal right to be misrepresented by simplistic bumper stickers.
3. "Marriage means one of you has to wear a dress": It's a bit old-fashioned, this insistence that one of the two people getting married must wear a dress - none of these newfangled casual weddings, nude weddings, or weddings in which the couple dress up as members of the Green Bay Packers - but it's rather sweet in its way. And look - I know dresses have gendered connotations...but come on, can't we get past those stereotypes and accept that some men might want to get married in a beautiful white dress? I say yes, we should.
4. "I am a hateful bastard sticking my bigoted, puritanical nose into other people's business to deflect attention from my own pathetic life."
Now, my first guess as to its meaning is "marriage is for one man and one woman" - and in fact, phrases similar to that spew forth from the mouths of religious bigots all the time. But maybe I'm misrepresenting what this sticker means - after all, the graphic doesn't exactly say that, and there are other interpretations. For example:
1. "Marriage = same-sex restrooms": Well, I guess that's true - it would be rare for a man and a woman who marry to designate one restroom for each of them. Or perhaps the idea is that marriage will lead to same-sex restrooms: I'm old enough to remember when the proposed Equal Rights Amendment was supposed to lead us all to various hells, including that one. Anyway, same-sex restrooms certainly would've given Larry Craig an easier time defending himself...against some charges, anyway.
2. "Marriage is for white people": This is offensive and racist. I don't think marriage should be reserved only for featureless, geometrically simple white people. The more complexly shaped humans, of whatever color, should have an equal right to be misrepresented by simplistic bumper stickers.
3. "Marriage means one of you has to wear a dress": It's a bit old-fashioned, this insistence that one of the two people getting married must wear a dress - none of these newfangled casual weddings, nude weddings, or weddings in which the couple dress up as members of the Green Bay Packers - but it's rather sweet in its way. And look - I know dresses have gendered connotations...but come on, can't we get past those stereotypes and accept that some men might want to get married in a beautiful white dress? I say yes, we should.
4. "I am a hateful bastard sticking my bigoted, puritanical nose into other people's business to deflect attention from my own pathetic life."
10.04.2007
Jumpin' Jack Flash
It strikes me as bizarrely ironic that at the same time everyone's all a-tizzy over "identity theft," credit card companies and businesses that use credit cards are making it disturbingly easy to use credit cards - whether it happens to be your credit card or someone else's. A lot of so-called "fast casual" restaurants will swipe your card without a signature or PIN, as will most gas stations. And of course there are those ads on TV implying that the dullardly deadweights who use grubby, disgusting cash are a positive drain on efficiency, a blasphemous assault against our national religion of wham-bam-charge-it-ma'am.
Or, we can just try to entrap you into driving away from the gas station without paying. That happened to me this afternoon. I need to fill up the gas tank, so I hook up the gas pump to the car's tank, slide my debit card in the reader, select which gas I want, wait for the tank to process the card (i.e., to read "0.00"), and fill up my tank with gas. Once I'm done, I notice that the receipt printer is apparently out of paper, since I don't get a receipt. No big deal: I know there's enough money in my account to cover it, and I can look up the amount later at my bank's website. Fortunately for my criminal record, however, I had to use the restroom, so I went into the store to do so. On the way out, I realized I was kind of thirsty, so I picked up a bottle of Diet Pepsi.
"Is that all?" says the cashier. "Yeah," I say - and then remember I didn't get a receipt. "Oh - and I need a receipt for pump 5." At which point the cashier informs me that actually, the pump hadn't accepted my card. "Uh, so how did the pump work then?" Oh, because I put the pump in my car before I slid my card into the reader, the reader was disconnected.
WTF? So if I hadn't happened to have used the restroom and bought a soda, I would have driven away, assuming I'd put about thirty bucks on my debit card. And some random cop would chase me down, and I'd have to explain the whole damned thing...that would have been big fun.
I've never heard of such a ridiculous system. I'm guessing this place is going to get a massive number of accidental drive-offs...and people who eventually discover, hey, that transaction never showed up on my debit card. Free gas!
Or, we can just try to entrap you into driving away from the gas station without paying. That happened to me this afternoon. I need to fill up the gas tank, so I hook up the gas pump to the car's tank, slide my debit card in the reader, select which gas I want, wait for the tank to process the card (i.e., to read "0.00"), and fill up my tank with gas. Once I'm done, I notice that the receipt printer is apparently out of paper, since I don't get a receipt. No big deal: I know there's enough money in my account to cover it, and I can look up the amount later at my bank's website. Fortunately for my criminal record, however, I had to use the restroom, so I went into the store to do so. On the way out, I realized I was kind of thirsty, so I picked up a bottle of Diet Pepsi.
"Is that all?" says the cashier. "Yeah," I say - and then remember I didn't get a receipt. "Oh - and I need a receipt for pump 5." At which point the cashier informs me that actually, the pump hadn't accepted my card. "Uh, so how did the pump work then?" Oh, because I put the pump in my car before I slid my card into the reader, the reader was disconnected.
WTF? So if I hadn't happened to have used the restroom and bought a soda, I would have driven away, assuming I'd put about thirty bucks on my debit card. And some random cop would chase me down, and I'd have to explain the whole damned thing...that would have been big fun.
I've never heard of such a ridiculous system. I'm guessing this place is going to get a massive number of accidental drive-offs...and people who eventually discover, hey, that transaction never showed up on my debit card. Free gas!
10.02.2007
no something could be one thing as something as your something else
Monkeys have typed again, producing a song curiously titled "Oslo Also."
This one has a l-o-n-g history: the chorus phrase popped into my head probably a year and a half ago (I wrote an entry mentioning it a few months later, when a peculiarly and coincidentally related phrase played a key role in a dream I had), and it was more a question of finding time to actually record the damned thing (and getting started is always the hardest for me).
For all of that, the song turned out surprisingly close to what I'd imagined in the first place. The chorus melody and harmonies came first, the basic arrangement idea quickly thereafter (synth bass, four trebly acoustics playing the same chord sequence in different voicings: recorded at different speeds), and the last things to have come together (other than mixing decisions and minor details) were the verse melody and arrangement for the fade.
The recording also took way longer because...well, I won't bore you further with tedious tales of technological turpitude - let's just say I'm learning the limitations of my software.
Lyrics are (mostly) up at the notorious Monkey Typing Pool page; they are sculpted nonsense. Mostly chosen for sound, converged on a couple-few images. I wanted to record a non-depressing, non-snarky song - because you know, I was in a really good mood for some very specific reasons.
More on the way, more quickly - I promise/threaten.
Monkey Typing Pool "Oslo Also" (2007)
This one has a l-o-n-g history: the chorus phrase popped into my head probably a year and a half ago (I wrote an entry mentioning it a few months later, when a peculiarly and coincidentally related phrase played a key role in a dream I had), and it was more a question of finding time to actually record the damned thing (and getting started is always the hardest for me).
For all of that, the song turned out surprisingly close to what I'd imagined in the first place. The chorus melody and harmonies came first, the basic arrangement idea quickly thereafter (synth bass, four trebly acoustics playing the same chord sequence in different voicings: recorded at different speeds), and the last things to have come together (other than mixing decisions and minor details) were the verse melody and arrangement for the fade.
The recording also took way longer because...well, I won't bore you further with tedious tales of technological turpitude - let's just say I'm learning the limitations of my software.
Lyrics are (mostly) up at the notorious Monkey Typing Pool page; they are sculpted nonsense. Mostly chosen for sound, converged on a couple-few images. I wanted to record a non-depressing, non-snarky song - because you know, I was in a really good mood for some very specific reasons.
More on the way, more quickly - I promise/threaten.
Monkey Typing Pool "Oslo Also" (2007)
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