Sunk Pucks

My musical tastes tend to evolve in historical fashion. My starting point, the first time I really decided to get "into" pop music, was the early Rolling Stones, back when the thunder of the arena hadn't bleached their simple swagger. From thence, I have simultaneously gone forward and backward: Forward through 60's Invasion and Garage rock through to 70's Punk and now, 80's Hardcore (the move to Fugazi is tempting), backward through older and older blues (most recently I got into Big Bill Broonzy, a contemporary of Robert Johnson) and Jazz. Everything fits onto a gigantic Critical Tree in my head.

That said, I'm not getting a lot of what passes for punk these days. The music is starting to bore me. In the fight between the "arties" (music for creativity's sake) and the "social realists" (music for the revolution) that came in the wake of the Sex Pistols demise in 1978 and the DOA failure of the New York scene, the social realists won, hands down, driving the poor arties to New Wave and other excuses for bad hair. The social realists, meanwhile, insisted on making punk serve the call to arms of the New Tommorrow. The result has been as monotonous as Stalin-era Soviet painting. If a band's not emulating Black Flag, complete with screaming and stuffing every concievable musical phrase into a 3-minute song, they're emulating the Descendents, with trebly melodies and insufferably nasal and whiny vocals. Maybe I'm getting old, but it's all starting to hurt my ears.

Worst of all is the way the genre has marketed itself to oblivion. I refer to the hyphenation. Each sub-sub-sub-genre comes complete with costume, tune template, and ready-made audience. Reality overtakes parody: I used to joke about things like cow-core or emo-oi, only to see them sprout into being. Got a song about your sensitive side? Bang, you're emo, whether you like it or not. Got a riff lifted from Gene Vincent? You're punkabilly or psychobilly. Got a skull somewhere on your record? Welcome to horror-core. This is Glenn; he'll be making fun of you.

The point is, it's become as unlikely to hear something you haven't heard before on a punk record as it is on a Britney Spears disc. Punk, which was supposed to eschew the same old thing, has become the same old thing, dedicated only to cloning itself, with the same clothes, the same sounds, the same preachy solipsistic thug liberalism. Punks are the Teddy Boys of the Left.

The preceding is prologue to me adding Conservative Punk to the linksheet. I do so with a few caveats. The site has yet to really impress me. It defines itself as an antidote to Punk Voter, which is fine as far as it goes, but somehow insufficient. It's not enough to be negative, to define yourself as against the tide. Destruction may lead to creation, but, contrary to all those folk Jon Savage quotes in England's Dreaming, it is not creative in itself. Left to itself, destruction merely frees up space.

In other words, it's well past time for punk to learn how to praise, how to build, how to appreciate. Such things have worn the label of "uncool," for way too long. Snideness and gesture do not sustain: they must be followed up. This is going to require thought and effort, and openminded-ness (real open-mindedness, not the kind that leads you to what you already want to think).

And music. Let's not forget the music. Tell your truth with a smile and a swagger and they'll believe you believe it, and that's half the battle. Thunder in the night forever.

Classic Alternative

Ten years ago I was a senior in high school, getting all thrilled and excited about doing Taming of the Shrew for a high school Shakespeare festival in D.C. I had a crush on a girl in the show, but didn't do a blessed thing about it, because I was quite exceptionally gutless about those things (also, I dressed like Screech, but with less flair). I was looking forward to getting the hell out of Waldorf, MD and out into the big bad world.

In short, I didn't give a fuck about Kurt Cobain, alive or dead. When the news came that he'd blown his head off with a shotgun, I wasn't even surprised. Somehow, I had known it would be thus, that the live-fast-die-young-sex-drugs-and-rock n' roll script would claim him. It wasn't like the secret wasn't out that he was a druggie (I swear, they should outlaw heroin. Oh, wait...). I might have given thirty seconds notice to the fact that he was a suicide instead of an overdose, but that was it. When the little grungies gathered at his house for a candlelight vigil, I rolled my eyes. When the papers started blaring that "the voice of a generation is died" I sneered and told anyone who made eye contact that KC didn't speak for me.

It was when they called him Our John Lennon that I started on the path to understanding.

Truth was, I'd always been kind of a closet Nirvana fan. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was a truly magnificent moment in pop culture, pulling fury out of a mockery of a cheap exploitation of the very generational revolt of which Nirvana was thereafter declared the first wave. Remember the "Teen Spirit" deodorant commercial? Remember how insulting, how irretrievably stupid it was? Where on earth did anyone get the idea that my "generation" needed it's own anti-perspirant? Was this some kind of prank? Did anyone actually buy or use that stuff? Why?

So yeah, when Nirvana made a video making fun of them, I loved it. I loved it even more when the whole brand -- with their crappy, faux-cool commercial -- dissappeared soon after. And, in my most secret heart of hearts, I loved the song: blistering riff, mumbled vocals, perfect climax, the works. After growing up on the limp-wristed new wave pope and the nauseating hair metal in the 80's, I liked that bands were coming back to the basics.

But I never threw down money for Nevermind. I wanted to, but I didn't dare. Part of this was economic: I was a military brat whose parents were spending every dime they could lay hands on sending me to private school. I couldn't just bug my folks for spending money so I could buy music like all the yuppie kids. The other part of this was a need to not do what everyone else was doing. Since middle school I'd developed a determination to always avoid the crowd, not do what they were doing, not dress how they were dressing (hence the Screech look), and especially not think they way they were thinking. Grunge seemed to have inherited all the political poses (and even at 12 I knew them to be poses) of hippiedom; I had just discovered that Rush Limbaugh was an amusing counterpoint to Northern California's nattering leftiness. So I said "Nirvana sucks" and stuck with it.

But when the piles of hair started saying that Cobain was the Gen-X John Lennon, something in me shook loose. "Dammit," I said, or something along those lines, "Kurt Cobain is not John Lennon! John Lennon was John Lennon, Kurt Cobain is Kurt Cobain! Nirvana is not the Beatles, they're Nirvana! Let them be what they are!" So the path began.


Six years ago, I was just out of college, and had made the decision to stop being a phillistine and start getting into music. I signed up for one of those BMG twelve-for-a-penny dealies and as part of my free shipment, I got Nevermind. "What the hell," I told my roommate with a grin, "It's kinda required, isn't it? Like Frampton Comes Alive was twenty years ago. I'm just bowing to the trends" (remember how admitting how lame you were was so cool in those days?). So I got it, and I listened, and I liked, and I threw it on for mixed-tape fodder, and I hardly cared. The same shipment had Ramones Mania, because I'd gotten into my head that I desperately needed to have "I Wanna Be Sedated." The Ramones got me into the Velvet Underground, and the Velvet Underground got me into all the rest of Punk, and before I had known what had happened, Nirvana had clicked nicely into place on my musical appreciation spectrum. I got the Unplugged album and shivered at the last song (still do). I won't say that they're my favorite band, but I do appreciate their power and their heart. Both of which were evident in their lead singer, who managed the superhuman feat of having charismatic appeal without being all that charismatic.

Which brings us to the media nostalgia/grief machine and the fun they're having this week. Spin prepared a loving print-shrine for their fallen underground martyr that provided the inspiration for this blog entry. The radio stations have shifted to "Gen-X Weekend" formats and playing "Heart-Shaped Box" and "All Apologies" as though nothing was amiss. We got a new Nirvana single two years ago, and someone decided to publish the his private journals not too long afterward. No, I haven't read them, and no I'm not going to, and it's not because I'd feel dirty about it, like this guy did. It's because I've decided that I have no interest in anything Cobain had to say.


I've trodden the path to understanding that Cobain was a man of great talent, and Nirvana a great band. Their noise was pure, and from the gut, and had about it from the earliest days more than a hint of sadness. It stands the test of time. For Cobain the artist, I have nothing but respect and admiration.

For Cobain the man, I have nothing but contempt. I have nothing but contempt for a man who was intelligent and creative but made no effort to understand the wide world around him, who spent so much time huddled in the corner with his precious pain that he could never ever find a chance to get beyond it. I have nothing but contempt for a man who consciously made himself a rock star (and he did, popular legend to the contrary) and then whined like a kindergartener when he discovered that people were becoming his fans without his permission. I have nothing but contempt for a man who claimed to love his baby daughter and then left her, so irrevocably, and to the care of a woman he had to know would not make a good single mother (she's twelve now, and I don't think I'd be her for anything). Mostly, I have nothing but contempt for a man who took the coward's way out, who gave up on hope after promising it to so many. Shame on him.

And that was indeed the final irony of Courtney Love's words at the aforementioned candlelight vigil, words to the effect that if Kurt really hated being a rock star, he could have stopped. No, Courtney, he couldn't, and he knew it. What else was he going to do? Starved on an intellectual diet that demanded an ascetic withdrawal from anything that smacked of normality, Cobain couldn't have just dropped it and sat in a house and had a beer and painted something. Like the Cathars of the 13th Century, grunge/punk demanded spiritual purity of its perfecti leaders while the laity were off having the time of their lives. Kurt didn't have the philosophical readiness to deal with his disappointment, to find the thing that made him valuable and cling to it. He was so busy unleashing his demons that he neglected to hunt for angels. He never grasped that the reason you walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death is not for its own sake but to reach redemption on the other side.

More fool him. And more fool us, for not learning from him.

Vinyl Love...Denied!

So I called SST and wondered what the dilly-yo was up with my January order. The guy was really helpful, but it turns out the Bad Brains LP is STILL out of stock. So I said "Just ship me the Black Flag CD and be done with it." I'll check on it again in a month or five, but in the meantime, I still need to review the Rites of Spring album. For the moment, all I can say is WOW. I can also say, oh, looky, I've got a new source of RIAA-free music.

IIIIIII WANT TO BEEEEEEEE.....a registered Democrat, Part Deux

Dave Weigel of Reason Magazine questions the notion that pop culture is inherently leftist in a review of Dispatches From the Culture Wars: How the Left Lost Teen Spirit (link via Instapundit). I read the Post's review of this book months ago when it was released, based on that, I found the premise shallow at best, at worst a pretentious example of the navel-gazing that those in the pop industry are given to, the surety that they possess cosmic truth. Weigel leans more toward the "shallow" end, dinging author Danny Goldberg for never considering that maybe Democratic policies have something to do with whether the young respond to them. More to the point, Goldberg ignores the glaringly obvious fact that fans don't necessarily look to musicians for their politics:

Not every fan of Rage Against the Machine or the Dead Kennedys is against globalization and free trade. Marilyn Manson -- yes -- guardedly endorsed George W. Bush during the 2000 election, telling the defunct Talk magazine, "If I had to pick, I?d pick Bush and not necessarily by default. I know I don?t support what the other team is about." In the end, very few Dixie Chicks fans, judging by ticket and album sales, care all that much about the band?s stance on presidential IQ or geopolitics.

As someone who often grooves to the MC5's Kick Out the Jams while ignoring or skipping the album's stereotypical hippie rants, I can only say "duh." Who says that the young (or anyone else for that matter) is only interested in overthrowing authority or establishing national medical insurance (cause that's so badass)? Who says that music can only be a conveyer of the will to change? For that matter, why must the change only be the kind of change the DNC approves of?

I could also ask if the kind of arguments a three-muinute pop song contains will necessarily translate to public policy. But I suppose even asking that question marks me as a dull wanker, uncool enough for school and smart enough to get a job. How my soul chafes at its bourgeois confinement.

Music Update

Yesterday's post has inspired a bit of a retreat from the politics of the minute to something more personal. I haven't devoted as much of this blog to music as I would like, for a couple of reasons:


1) Haven't really found the format that I like. I can write a review and post it, but there hasn't been a regular rythmn of things. Reviewing music takes time, thought, and repeated listens, and I don't always have those things available. Plus, they'll get lost amid the rest of my screeds. This is all a subset to my larger concerns about the design for the site. I've been pondering a switch to BloggerPro.

2)I haven't really had new stuff coming in. SST's usual pokiness has been compounded by the fact that the Bad Brains LP I ordered is out of stock, so my January purchase is on backorder. Financial considerations led me to abstain on new purchases for February.

3)I've been trying to make the switch from an amateur critic to an amateur creator. I've got a brand name, an aesthetic, and some songs. What I don't really have is a band or again, the time to devote to it. Mayhaps that will change come summer.


Today, after thinkng on yesterday's post and reading old reviews at Punk Fix, I surfed over to eBay and bought the Rites of Spring album on vinyl. Reading Dance of Days made me consider the value of Dischord products. I've been meaning to start buying as soon as my last SST record arrived. Now I'm done waiting. I'm making the plunge into emo. I'm thinking that early emo will be more substantial and authoritative than modern practitioners like Dashboard Confessional. Here's hoping I'm right.

Janet's New Album Cover

(via Drudge)



Boy, am I tired of being right all the time.

I Ran So Far Away, Couldn't Get Away...

Lileks has inspired me again, this time with his songs and memories of the 80's bleat. I have followed a path with regard to 80's music that runs similar to the old Path of Faith: listening, unlistening, and understanding. When I was a skinny lad in Annapolis, I watched the 80's on MTV, not feeling any particualar affinity for what I was hearing, not knowing what other options their where. When I was a snot-nosed teen and young adult, I rebelled against the New Wave and called a flashy, wussy bourgeois pile of suck, and clung to my British Invasion and Punk records as "real music."

Then I saw 24 Hour Party People, and listened to "Personal Jesus" about 23 trillion times during the run of Getting Away With Murder (the director was a big Depeche Mode fan). Then I threw down on both Joy Division albums. I now see the bleakness, the ennui, as the logical step after the abortive Punk revolt. I can now add some of the better New Wave bands as part of my ever-expanding palette.

But Poison still sucks.

Methinks the Lady Doth Protest Too Much

In my cynical moments, I wonder if Janet Jackson has an album due to be released in the next six months, for which last weekend's flesh-popping was but the initial media storm (no publicity is bad publicity, right?). I might try to find out, but that would require far more caring about a Janet Jackson album than I'm willing to do, and far, far more caring about her aging, floppy bosom than I'm willing to do.

Janet Jackson doesn't strike me as being much of an actress. She gives off that same elfin deer-in-headlights gaze on camera as her brother does. So I don't think she could pull off being as surprised as she looks when Justin Timberlake committed "wardrobe malfunction." I'm perfectly willing to believe that the mammary exposure was accidental (I could be wrong about this, but if we actually think otherwise, let's have a full-fledged investigation and then deal with the consequences).

Believing that, I find all the kerfuffle about it excessive and not a little hypocritical. Has Michael Powell ever watched MTV? Howard Stern? Did he catch the VH1 expos? on all the famous chicks making out with other famous chicks? If he thinks Janet Jackson's nipple is the most inappropriate thing kids are exposed to, he's out of his mind.

Ah, but we can't do anything about any of those. Free expression and all that. So we get ourselves all tizzied out about the narrow range of inappropriateness that crosses the line into illegality and pat ourselves on the back that we're fighting the good fight "for the children." And then the fat kid in the neighborhood sings a songs about how we're a big fat stupid bitch, in D minor.

In fairness, prime-time TV is supposed to be a safe haven for family entertainment. But I'd find that argument a lot more convincing if more parents weren't letting their kids stay up past prime-time, letting them be out at all hours, letting them watch all the R-rated sex and violence as they can get their hands on. If Baby Boomer parenting continues into the next generation, no amount of squeaky-clean television is going to save the kids. And if parents return to the old practice of setting boundaries and meaning it, J-J's nip will remain the silly novelty it is.

When Peroxide Ruled the World

God knows why, but during the commercial breaks for the Star Trek Movie Marathon on Spike (which conspicuously lacked Wrath of Khan...what's that all about?) yesterday, I switched to VH1 and caught little glimpses of their special "When Metal Ruled the World" (I was indeed desperate to avoid another commercial for the John Benson Project. Is it just me, or is he begging for an on-camera atomic wedgie?). They of course refer to Hair Metal, not actual Heavy metal of the Black Sabbath/Motorhead/Metallica tradition, but the Music Historian in me watched anyway. I saw all the bad hair and all the grotesque lipstick, and some images of girls, too.

I sat through all of this for the purpose of enjoying the hair-god's inevitable fall: how the kids dropped Poison like so much radioactive debris when they heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit." But the show ruined it by making the unforgivable mistake of allowing Vince Neil to whine about it. He didn't like grunge then, and doesn't like it now, and can't understand why anyone would want to listen to something depressing and heavy when they could jam to the high-octane escapist fun that was Motely Crue.

Poor Vince. All those platinum records, and he never scraped together the wherewithal to buy himself a piece of self-awareness. Did no one bother to mention to him that every crappy pop act justifies themselves as "just being good fun?" That's how every teenage girl explained her loyalty to N'Sync or Britney or Andy Gibb. Hell, ABBA is a fun escape from the day-to-day grind if you've had enough champagne at a wedding.

You wanna know why Nirvana's downward spiral struck such a chord? It's simple. A lot of kids felt about music and pop culture the same way they did in the summer of '91. A lot of kids were tired of having to pretend to admire as rock heroes a bunch of useless drug chimps prancing in spandex making a bad imitation of the New York Dolls. A lot of kids identified more with songs about post-modern confusion and irony than songs about racing down the Sunset Strip in a red Lamborghini with five grand of blow in your schnozz. You can argue about whether Kurt Cobain was any more admirable, given that he and Nikki Six had similar tastes in narcotics. But Cobain was at least trying to say something, even if that something was negative and derivative.

I'm hoping that one of these days these hacks grasp that, that their time on the horse (bad pun! BAD!) lasts only so long as there's nothing better around. Nirvana was a potent blend of garage, punk, and blues. Hair Metal was an exercise in faux-musical sybaritism. So Vince, I'm sure Dave Grohl is really sorry that he burst your happy bubble. I'm sure if you got in touch with him, he'd apologize. Good luck with that.

Lame, Bragging Quizzilla Result

Good. You know your music. You should be able to
work at Championship Vinyl with Rob, Dick and
Barry


Do You Know Your Music (Sorry MTV Generation I Doubt You Can Handle This One)
brought to you by Quizilla

Music Review: the EP Double Secret Edition

The difference between an EP (Extended Play) and an LP (Long Play, or what we call an album) is primarily economic, EP's are cheaper. Back when all records were on vinyl, there was also physical difference: the former was generally shorter and smaller than the latter. Now that everything's digital, the difference is more subtle. The fourth Led Zeppelin album, comprising 8 tracks, costs at least $15 on CD, depending on where you shop. The Raveonettes EP, Whip it On, also comprising 8 tracks, cost me $7.99 at Border's. The idea is that albums, being the premier unit of musical product, put a great deal of money into their production, and thus demand a higher return, whereas EP's, generally functioning as musical advertisements for up-and-coming bands, cost less to make and package. As certain people like their music with as little hype as possible, EP's can be the more interesting buy.

As part of my shameful giving-in to RIAA in October (don't worry, I've climbed back on the wagon. Everything else I buy will be independent releases, until the beast backs down. I swear), I bought two EP's from the cusp of the New Rock scene: that of the aforementioned Raveonettes, and the eponymous release by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Herein I shall review them both:


Whip It On by the Raveonettes has an interesting gimmick: all songs are deliberately under three minutes, using three chords, and recorded in B Flat Minor. While the first two restrictions are not that interesting, the last one did catch my fancy. A great many bands, especially punk bands, have ridden the three-chord-three-minute wagon to utter forgettableness. It basically means you don't really wanna bother learning to play, either out of artistic obstinance or sheer laziness. But to specifically record everything in the same key, and as obtuse a key as B Flat Minor, is suggestive of something else: the desire to create a continuous mood, examining a sound from many sides, like the facets of a diamond. I love this disc, but I can only listen to it at certain times, and in certain moods. It is the perfect CD for driving at night, the tunes are all somber yet fast, and cool as pavement in January. On the rare occasions when I find myself on the DC Beltway after dark, this is the bad boy I want with me. It's become a niche CD, which are usually your favorites.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs only has 5 tracks, and cost me two dollars more (you figure it out). But it's the more impressive of the two. The Spin-telligensia have blown this group up to be THE punk band of the new millenium, and for once they've been right about something other than their own hipness. The songs on Yeah Yeah Yeahs are each originally anarchic, well within the punk tradition yet working it's own alchemies of rythmn and texture.

Like the White Stripes, the YYY's are only drums, guitar and vocals, but being a threesome, one person handles each. Nick Zinner on guitar makes good mojo, fusing blues and punk and dead space into a powerful groove. Brian Chase is likewise bangingly minamist (think Scott Asheton's son who went to Julliard). Most critics get excited about Karen O(rzolek), the band's vocalist, and with reason: she's strikingly varied, able to scream in Dionysiac self-immolation, yet also able to chirp poppily along, and only half-ironically. And that's only when she isn't drone-crooning with such an erotic ache that I find myself wanting to...well, never mind.

They're a bold band, and they get your attention, and after 5 tracks, you want more. That's the perfect EP. But word around the campfire is that their album Fever to Tell, disappoints. Other rumours, that Karen O is having a hard time adjusting to the demands of a professional touring pop band, and is even beginning to rethink her status as a role model for girls (good for her. Would that Madonna had such intellectual honesty), might point the way to the Icarus path for this group. But sometimes failure can be more interesting than success, if the failure aimed higher.


That's it.

Music Review - The Strokes: Room on Fire

When I quoted Lester Bangs a few weeks ago and said that no one listens to music, I realized that such a statement was to a degree ludicrous on its face. Of course people listen to music; it's not like it's good for anything else (sans LSD). What I meant was that very few (in elitist exaggerationist language, very few = none) listen to music charitably or unselfishly. This statement borders on ludicrosity (if it's not a word, then I just invented it) as well; I will explain. Most people put a piece of music in their respective audio systems and wait to be moved. The music is judged on one thing; whether it affects you in the way you want to be affected. The musicians themselves are non-entities; one's opinion on them as artists or human beings is based on whether their work pleases.

I'm not going to say that there's anything wrong with this; in one respect it's essential to approach music on a primal level. But in another respect, it's solipsistic. A piece of music touches more lives than just the ears that hear it. Every song has a creator who believes in it as art, and a promoter who believes in it as product. Every song was trying to achieve something intended at the same time to be personal to the artist and relevant to the world at large. Not all music achieves this goal. But unless you consider the goal, you can't judge it as a success or failure.

This goes for all music, even the kind you hate. Michael Bolton has devoted fans. KoRn says things in their music that a lot of kids appreciate. Some people find a great deal of truth in Snoop Dogg's ryhmes, and dig his beats besides. You can dismiss the fans of each as semi-literate sheep who are just to sheltered and intellectually lazy to get into "real" music, but you should keep in mind that they're saying more or less the same thing about you.

With that in mind, we proceed to reviewing the new Strokes album. The Strokes got a lot of attention with their debut, Is This It, two years ago, mostly because people were starving for something that didn't sound like N'Sync or the aforementioned KorN, something that sounded like, you know, rock. Call it the Nirvana Syndrome. Critics praised them as the New Velvet Underground (all bands from New York are VU clones in the minds of the superficial), and hailed Is This It as the biggest things since "Blitzkrieg Bop." The backlash set in just as fast, and before the Christmas season had begun, the Strokes, far from being rock's saviours, had become it's scapegoat: yet another collection of unoriginal wannabes sailing by on hype.

So far, so typical. The album underneath all this hooplah was actually quite a good one, not earth-shattering, but demonstrative of depth, poise, and liveliness. You can listen to it after the initial interest wears off, either deliberately or as background music, and it suits many moods. No, it wasn't revolutionary, but it was what people like me have been wanting to hear.

The second album, Room on Fire, released last month, hasn't met anything like the noise afforded the debut. The fans bought it and liked it, the detractors grumbled and soused and went back to fawning over Modest Mouse (not that there's anything wrong with that). This is typical as well. The problem is that both fans and critics of Room on Fire said basically the same thing about it: that it was essentially the same as Is This It. And that proves that people don't listen to music.

Superficially, yes, the albums are similar, both undeniably by the same band. But careful listeners will not the distinction: if Is This It was the band's homage to the late 70's new wave and punk scene (owing fare more to the Modern Lovers than the Ramones, but never mind), then Room on Fire is the Strokes' 80's album, full of trebly, almost synthesized tones as opposed the previous effort's constant garagey riffage. The songs are cooler, slower, and more comfortable, kept from degenerating into Who-level mod wussiness by Casablanca's vocals, which, in contrast to the rest of the band, are louder and hoarser, the sound of a man whose chill demeanor is starting to come undone.

Moreover, Room on Fire is more of an album than it's predecessor, a more cohesive whole. Several of the songs on Is This It were too thematically close together, which is probably the reason they were called "unoriginal". The new album doesn't have that problem; ideas abound and every song stands more or less distinct. That's an important improvement.

As you might surmise, I'm not going to try and determine which album is "better." Such objectivity is simply not possible. I can say that the Strokes are turning out worthwhile product, and under a good deal of pressure, are still playing with their sound. That's the sign of a band that is going somewhere. I'm definitely interested to see what they come up with next.

Assorted Rants, Or How the Mighty are Fallen

1. The Beatles. And the Boomer nostalgia machine strikes again. Every couple years or so they dust off songs we've bought, listened to, and recorded for 40 years, repackage them, and lay them on the altar of Our Long Lost Pop Innocence. Spare me. The Beatles were a good pop band with an honest dedication to crafting well-made pop songs, ones that shimmer with life even forty years down the road. That's all they were. Nuthin' wrong with that, but let's stop regurging up the same old slosh when there are thousands of bands trying to create something new that won't get heard because we keep wanting the same old slosh, served hot. For pity's sake, Let it Be.


2. JFK. See the first sentence of above. My birthday was yesterday, and every day after my birthday I have to put up with Camelot/Conspiracy fetishistas doing their merry best to make us feel gloomy before Thanksgiving. The man is dead. His son is dead. His presidency wasn't a golden age. The Kennedys aren't coming back to rescue us from our social anomie. They were a rich and pretty family that bought political power and used it to make asses of themselves. Their memory is not tragic. Lyndon Johnson was tragic; a shady backroom dealer with control issues who had no idea how to prosecute a war; a good-hearted man who hated bigotry and racism, who only wanted to lend the poor a helping hand, but left office in hatred and disgrace when he hit the wall of human power. Richard Nixon was tragic; an even shadier dealer who had no idea how to manage an economy; a farsighted-strategist who set in motion the dynamic that would end the Cold War twenty years later, who could not be forgiven by the cool kids because he was so earnestly uncool, and thus went over the edge of paranoia and went home in even bigger disgrace. John Kennedy is just dead. Deal.


3. Michael Jackson. Bleaaahhhhhh. Just Bleaaaaaahhhhhh. Who's to blame for this? What happened to that guy? How did he evolve from being the Golden Boy of Pop, the James Brown of his Generation with Beatles-like fan adoration, to that pasty pedophiliac Skeletor thing? I feel nausea, and not just at his face: at the machine that is now crushing him with all the glee with which they once deified him, and at us, because we buy it. Let him be carted off to prison if he so merits, but then let's shut up about him. If we should feel anything, we should be ashamed of ourselves, for devoting so much of our energy on someone who didn't need it or deserve it. Look at that face of his, if you can, and say to yourself: That is the face of a star.

Tunes

The vast majority of those who write negative customer reviews of New Rock bands on Amazon would do well to simply write "I AM NOT TRENDY" and spare us the left-field diatribes ("If you like this I feel sorry for you. This is such utter crap...etc."). We could then safely ignore them, and they might get a chance to engage in some self-analysis, and then try listening to the music.

Most people don't do this, as Lester Bangs noted long ago. Most people listen to image. They judge bands based on appearance, name (I even do this. I cannot like Blink-182, because their name is dumb. I can't relate to it), and reputation, deciding from these whether they want to make an investment in the music. They'll stick to a genre like the guy who orders the same thing every time he goes to a Chinese restaurant. It's safe.

I've intended this as a intro to review the new Strokes album, but I haven't the time. Parent-Teacher conferences loom.

Music Review: Jet - Get Born

The chief virtue of most Australian bands that make it stateside is their simplicity, their focus on their sound instead of their look. The Saints, Australia's premier late-70's punk band, never dressed punk (here's the cover of their 1977 album, (I'm) Stranded). AC/DC had Angus Young's schoolboy look, but that was only for Angus, and it was intended humorously. Unlike the The Strokes' rich-boy bum ensembles, the Hives' neo-mod uniforms and the White Stripes' peppermint chic, The Vines were the only band of the origonal "new rock" quadrifecta that didn't have a ready-made look (which may be why they've slipped off the radar screens). Australian boys play rock n' roll, unapologetically, and they know it ain't their job to look pretty. That's for the wankers from Pommey-land and pretentious Yanks.

I can't say that in perfect honesty that Jet is an image-free band. I see Beatle boots and flares on their cover, and artwork that seems to want to evoke Revolver besides. That's fine, though. Retro only partially ever becomes cool again, but in our retro-everything culture it never becomes completely out of style again, either. And it doesn't matter, because Jet's got the goods when you pop their CD (which has more Hard Day's Night-ish pychedelia fun painted on it) into your player.
Like myself, most fans will buy this on the strength of "Are You Gonna Be My Girl?" which seems to have the balls-out, garage-rock riffage that's so blessed hip these days. They won't be dissapointed, because half the album's in a similar vein: quick and gloriously sludgy rock songs that sound either like the Who or Sonics depending on your desire to claim them for your respective tribe. The other half is suprising, however: smooth, piano-led blues ballads that sound like they could have been scraped off the floor of the Abbey Road or Let it Be studios. One or two such songs are obligatory; to confidently toss on five or six takes guts and a sure sense of one's songwriting skills. That indicates promise in my book.

Comparisons to the Vines are inevitable, because the two bands are so aesthetically similar. It is generally the reviewer's task to run his musical-knowledge decoder ring accross the respective albums ASIN number and tell you which one is "better." I can't do that, not at this stage. The only objective difference between "good" music and "bad" music is the effort of the musicians to craft a sound unique to them. Jet has done so, and it sounds good. So have the Vines. Enjoy whichever you bought first, and call the others wannabes if it pleases you. Or buy 'em both and put them in two seperate stereos on either side of your room and let 'em fight it out. I give this piece of product the thumbs up. The rest is up to you.

Unlimited Supply! EMI!

EMI is going to sell their entire catalog online. Popular demand does have an effect. This could change things.

The Real Music Problem?

Last week in the Post's Outlook section Jeff How of Wired magazine describes a different threat to online music: The Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which according to Howe undoes the concept of "fair use." It's a compelling article, and makes a smaller argument couched in economic reality:

The major labels own scores of smaller ones, such as Elektra, Epic and Interscope, where much of the music is made, marketed and distributed. The people who work at the smaller labels, people I got to know while covering the music industry, are the ones now losing their jobs in droves, at least in part because of file sharing. They are not fat cats. They don't chomp cigars and relish caviar. They have much more in common with obsessed file sharers and the music lovers than they do with the lawyers and CEOs of the conglomerates they work for.

The terrifying (but unsurprising) thought this yields is that the music fan's online revolt might make it harder for scrappy indie acts to get signed and distributed. That means more Britneys, more 50-Cents. More mindless pop schlock.

All of which doesn't mean I'm ready to break boycott yet. I'm still angry at the labels for stupidly antagonizing music fans instead of investing in a new technology that could have revolutionized their businesses. But it does mean that perhaps we should start talking about the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and why it exists, and how we can secure the rights of the creator without destroying the rights of the user.

MTV Offering Online Music?

Could be huge.

St. Miles

Yesterday I left a Thelonious Monk CD on at low volume during one of my classes. I liked the effect so much that Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" was providing a modal counterpoint to all of today's lectures. Tommorrow I may try classical. We'll see if music really does stimulate the kiddies...

Ghetto-Fabulous

Hooray for me! I get to beat Whatever-Dude to the punch on the VMA's. Of course, I can't hope to match earlier efforts such as this and this because I didn't actually watch them. I've reached a point in my life where I no longer need to watch award shows to know what's going to happen. The predictable winners, the predictably unorthodox costumes, the funnyman struggling to keep up the impression that this is all so hip and fresh, I've seen it, and I need see it no more. Still, judging strictly by this Washington Post write-up, there were some interesting conclusions to be garnered from the evening's show.


1. Lesbian chic is so five years ago. And behold, Her Anglophilic Majesty, Madonna, descended from the heavens to accept tribute from two Whores, thus rendering a long-standing pyschological complex in spandex and glitter. Spearguilera (Christina may have actual pipes and a rougher image, but beyond that it's pointless bothering to tell them apart) performed "Like a Virgin," no doubt covered in see-through lace and clangingly obvious irony. And then she kissed them both, with tongue. And...

...yeah. I'm bored even trying to comment. Let's press on.


2. Anyone can be a Rap Star if he can manages to not look completely laughable in leopard skin. Can 50 Cent actually rap? Has anyone heard him? Does he ever perform, even in a video, without Snoop Dogg and a whole "posse" (We're still using this term? I thought it had been appropriated by white people long ago, and therefore anathema to the hip-hop community) with him? Has he said anything that other acts haven't said before?

I thought not.


3. Michael Jackson is the new Vanilla Ice. Jack Black did a Jacko impression last night; Eminem mocked him last week. It's open season, not just among the commonfolk, but among the Olympian stars. How the mighty are fallen.


4. Johnny Cash is almost good enough to win a VMA. He lost to Justin Timberlake. I think that says it all.