hey y’all. It’s not been a difficult week. Nor have I been having any personal problems. But it’d be disingenuous for me to keep not posting without giving some indication as to my radio silence. As it stands, I’ve been uninspired to write lately, if not uninspired to keep listening. Oh no, do I listen. New earbuds keep the tunes flow fresh, new albums keep the Itunes bulging, Chicago manual of style keep the prose crisp. But I’m gonna be gone for an indefinite while. Somethings need figuring out, and someones need attention. For those of you who suspect I’m reneging on my promises of new features, new entries, a cap on my WHY? series: don’t fret. It’ll come. Until then, enjoy my Das Racist video, and stay warm.
Odds, Sods
Hello you. Do you feel so depressed and despondent, insignificant, like a bit of wet body hair packed into a snarl of others deep in a shower drain, hoping only for a searing caustic wave of cleanser to dissolve the dead proteins that compose you and free you from this emotionally forfeit existence?
Then come hang out when you’re feeling more upbeat, cuz I’m staring down the weekend in a warm room with all manner of diversion, provision, and stimulation (intellectual and gastric), waiting for the fearsome potential snowstorm to sound its opening theme. I bought squash for steaming, and I brought music for you!
This has been a week of solo project hunting; here’s one from Brandon Boyd (singer for Incubus) solo joint “The Wild Trapeze” and here’s a selection from the first proper Tommy Stinson album (the bass player for no less than Guns N Roses, The Replacements, and Soul Asylum).
Other soundtrack selections from The Pirate Slut, Life 1/7/11-1/11/11 (holy crow, it’s 1/11/11? I gotta do some seriously intent wishing come 11:11 tonight!): my new source of boundless pleasure, Das Racist, the offbeat (to say the least) hip-hop duo from Brooklyn, offers up this gem, and a random jazz CD found at the store offers up this song to listen to in a candlelit room in a pillowy bed, with some pleasant company to boot. Or listen to it during a game of snow frisbee or whirlyball, your call.
This is a short entry, I recognize that. Anticipate beefy ones in the near future including: a new feature! and: the elusive final part of the WHY? series! and: some actual album reviews!
And, though it’s delayed, I want to offer thanks to all of you who followed up on my entry about getting in touch with me.
And finally: in a sobering note, musician and tattooist Jef Whitehead, aka Wrest, aka the sole force behind the black metal bands Leviathan and Lurker of Chalice, aka the subject of this past entry, was arrested recently for brutally assaulting his girlfriend. Now, while I touched on the implications of such things, at least generally, in this entry, I just wanted to say: shit man, hope they throw the book at him if what happened happened.
And now, on a lighter note: Brandon Boyd!
Check the hat!
2010: What It Sounded Like (Part 2)
Welcome back to part 2 of my year-end roundup. Though it’s passed January First and technically the new year has started, it should be noted that this is also just the second day after my birthday, which means that I’ve only been alive for two days into the new year, sort of? Whatever.
And aside from Gerry Rafferty’s death hitting the airwaves, nothing else much of note has happened today or yesterday, so I’m not worried. (Note: I have downloaded four different albums by three different acts today. By the time this post, or day, is over, I may have listened to one or more of them and decided they’re the second aural coming of the musical Messiah. So, okay, whatever.)
2010: The Best Continued, The Rest Revisited
1. Hip-Hop Round-up: Kanye West and Dessa, or, Two Artists Worth All The Hype
Hip-hop, like any other popular musical field, had its fair share of heavy hitters this year, both in current releases and in new discoveries. And, like any other popular musical field, I couldn’t with much authority say what 2010′s hip-hop would “mean” on a cultural or artistic level. What I can say is that I’ve heard two albums that received across-the-board positive reviews, and, upon listening to them, I can say that whoever those reviewers were, they were right.
: 
Enough has been written about Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy? Possibly. Catharsis, opulence, extravagance, resonance, lots of words that mean a lot of general things that really won’t do until you actually hear the album. I can say this; it fuses the hot-wire intensity of rock and roll, the bombast of arena metal, the sneering cocksureness of hip-hop, and wraps it in a meticulous musical cross-genre snatch-and-grab production that sounds gorgeous as it rumbles through my headphones, or across a party, or backscoring a slow-motion explosion. The weirdness of it, too, seems like it should be kneecapping his success, but it doesn’t. Consider that the album’s leadoff single was, on the full album, expanded into a nine-minute multi-part song, part rant/lament about Kanye’s inability to be a good boyfriend due to self-destructive and selfish urges, which then turns into a cello-backed Vocoder solo, and was accompanied by a 30 minute music video. Michael Jackson had his legend, and it’s the kind of legend that Kanye’s got in his sights. While I can’t say what the implications are of that, I’d like to think of Kanye West as a nexus of enough talent, enough acclaim, enough humor, enough emotion, enough pull, enough money, and enough energy to take hip-hop’s capabilities, not just as an art form but as a popular cultural form, to the next level. Where’s that? Dunno yet. Favorite track off it.
Dessa, meanwhile, is not a massive popular success. She doesn’t melt down on national TV, sell our arenas, or go multi-platinum. Instead of pure ego, she’s just a dervish of talent who looks like your camp counselor, she can sing the hook sweetly (without auto-tune) and rap twisty intricate rhymes about heartbreak, family, childhood, and any other number of heavy subjects in between. Her debut album, A Badly Broken Code, has nine reviews on Amazon, all 5 out of 5 stars. I would say more, but to be honest I don’t know much. All I know is that this album made me want desperately to write poetry, and I know how bad I am at that. One of my favorites off it, impossible to pick just one, really.
2. Hardwired To A New Crop Of Memories: The Band
Manuel, Hudson, Helm, Robertson, Danko.
My former roommate played them on a near-constant loop, along with a few other albums and songs, and as such they sunk into the background. They were songs I heard as he went to sleep, songs I heard as he got ready in the morning, songs we played when company was over. But then, on a particularly challenging night, we sat down to watch Scorcese’s concert film of the Band (in its original incarnation)’s final gig, The Last Waltz. I sat there and watched this.
Two hours later I sat there, floored. It was like the best kind of dramatic twist. What a show. What musicians. What songs. What the fuck. E.A., you were there, you remember. And then, naturally, came the deluge; the whole discography, the solo albums, the memories of that night and the shared reminiscence as my roommate moved away, and we could only talk over the Internet if we wanted eye contact. I moved into my Sublet of Shame, and when my roommate disappeared to Europe for ten days, I lay on her too-small couch and listened to Band guitarist Robbie Robertson’s solo album. Not too shabby for a guy who can’t sing too well but who can play the crap out of a guitar. I put on the vinyl of The Band’s records while I made cookies this Christmas. I read their biography, “Across The Great Divide”. I recorded the tone-deaf three-part harmonies me, my former roommate, and E.A. could scream out into my tiny Ipod recorder. Yeah, I’d say The Band was a very significant layer of the 2010 cake. One more clip plz?
3. Best Songs To Listen To While Driving Toward A New Apartment
“Have you heard the new Big Boi?” “Yeah man, Shutterbugg…buhbuhbuhbuhbuhbuh, buhbuhbuhbuh. And I put Shine Blockas on my Facebook.” “Listen to THIS.” “Wait, what exit is it?” “We’re only at 110th street, man, we’ve got like 40 more blocks.”
And this, too, on another trip, after having gotten stuck behind a young man on a stalled dirt bike, blocking the onramp, with a helpful cabbie trying to help him lift the bike into the back of the cab, but burning his arm on the hot engine, and finally passing the young man and the now-begrudging cabbie, and bursting out onto the bridge…thanks MissBleecker.
4. I Knew It!
Eight or so years ago I met a friend who was several years older than me, and she was therefore much cooler. She loved all sorts of bands of which I’d never heard, and upon finding that I was learning to pirate music, she conscripted me into burning a CD for her, one with her favorite songs she currently didn’t have. Unfortunately, I wasn’t nearly the Pirate Slut I am today, and couldn’t find the lion’s share of them. But I kept that blank cd and I’ve had it ever since, and I’m waiting for some opportunity, maybe her wedding, to give it back, loaded with something glorious and affirming. She loved a band called Built To Spill, this song in particular. Years later I start reading about how “Built To Spill’s fronted by a guitar hero who writes awesome lyrics! Every album of theirs is critically acclaimed!” On a recent train ride home, I finally got around to listening to them. It was like they would be the perfect match for me, what someone means when they say “I think you two will hit it off just great.”
And we have. Thanks, R.C.
5. NOT SAFE FOR WORK!!!!!
The only way to best describe South African rap group “Die Antwoord” is to say that they’re the acid test for even trace amounts of prudery. Example: this video, or as I think of it, the “complete opposite of Invictus”. And this song. Seriously, not safe for work, (or home possibly), unless you work where I work. And it’s Sunday.
Sense of humor and lyric sheet (possibly) required. Read about them if you’re interested; there’s no shortage of media whatthefuckery about ‘em.
6. Best Cover Song Off A Shockingly Dated Tribute Album – “Straight To Hell” by Moby ft. Heather Nova.
Joe Strummer was already spinning in his grave when they put this out.
“Burning London”, featuring covers of songs by the band The Clash by such 1990s luminaries as No Doubt, Indigo Girls, 311, Third Eye Blind, Ice Cube (?!), and yeah, more and more. It’s pretty hilarious(ly bad?) At your own risk.
7. Best Simultaneously Depressing And Inspiring Song To Underscore A Morning Commute.
I heard it for the first time in March. But I listened to it for the first time in May. Oh, Drive By Truckers, don’t ever stop, don’t you ever stop.
8. Breakup Album Of The Year
As one of the very first albums I reviewed for this blog this year, Hall And Oates’ “Abandoned Luncheonette” didn’t seem like it would be much more than a steppingstone in my somewhat misguided attempt to listen to all of my music in alphabetical album order.
See? Charming!
But on the same night I watched The Last Waltz, or possibly one soon before or after it, I and my former roommate listened to this album for its breakup-therapy qualities, which we had no idea we were doing. Hell, all we knew is that it had this song, H&O’s first notable hit and a gorgeous breakup song in its own right. But from the album’s first track that assures “it’ll be all right/when the morning comes”, to the weird bluegrass breakdown that closes the album out, it retains the awesome power to turn a breakup rockbottoming into feet-on-the-ground muted optimism. And I know this, because I’ve used the album myself, and lemme tell you: like AA, like fewer Americans, and unlike Airborne, Abandoned Luncheonette WORKS.
9. Low Fidelity, High Impact: The Mountain Goats, and their album “All Hail West Texas”
On the earnest recommendation of S.S., I walked out of my Sublet of Shame and boarded a bus that jounced down a hill toward the D train. I’d heard 1 song by the Mountain Goats before that day. The album “All Hail West Texas” is all lyrical storytelling based over acoustic guitar recorded on a boombox in an empty room somewhere, what people call “lo-fi” music. The reason I remember where I was when I heard it is because I usually think about how much riding the subway sucks in the morning when I’m riding the subway in the morning. But instead, I was taken out of that with gentle force and set down in Goats central figure John Darnielle’s world, and I didn’t leave until I clocked in that day. And for that, one reserves a memory corner of the brain. A taste from it.
9 continued – Lo-Fi Roundup, Wavves and Dum Dum Girls
Dum Dum Girls!
Wavves!
It would feel wrong to not mention, in the context of the Mountain Goats, a pair of “lo-fi” bands that really earwormed me and my current roommate this year. Wavves is straight-up noise-clatter-surf-rock-pop-noise. At first it was just frontman Nathan Williams noodling on his laptop to overdub blown-out layers of guitar, drums, and vocals into nuggets of it’s-sunny-and-i’m-stoned-and-i’m-in-the-bed-of-a-pickup-truck-on-the-way-to-a-beach-party-style rock and roll. But by their latest album, this year’s “King Of The Beach”, Williams hired a few sidemen, let ‘em write a few songs, and went for a cleaner production style, and out came this!
Dum Dum Girls, meanwhile, are fuzzed-out girl-group pop that is usually called “indie pop” because that’s a shorter way to say “pop music you couldn’t play on the radio but that you could play in a Lower East Side bar, or at a party where there are people who can say they like ‘indie pop’”, which is to say, it means pop with a twist. In this case, it sounds like it was recorded through a layer of dust and tomfoolery. See what I mean?
10. The Rest
It sucks, you know. I talk about how one should listen to as much as possible, to be open to all musical styles and tastes and impacts. And I try my damndest to practice what I preach. But in a year-end round-up of all the music that meant something to me this year, it’s not reasonable to write about every single song or every album or even every riff that tumbled out of my humming lips when I’m deep in the monotony of my job (usually, “War Pigs” or “Tom Sawyer”). You’d get bored. I’d get bored. And as I’ve said, boredom, antipathy, blankness, are all the worst-case-scenario for those who love music. To not care is to not feel is to not live is to switch off. So I’m left with the rest of the memories that I can’t write up or record in a way that could ever do them justice. How can I forget every time I put on “Fuck You” by Cee-Lo, at that party with MissBleecker, on two separate car rides to my new apartment? Listening to the Smiths’ “The Queen is Dead” after wandering home after delivering a five-minute speech about my writerly talents and process to a group of professors, my roommate, and a girl I never thought I’d see again? Being half-forced into full-loving Katy Perry? Listening to Traffic as I strolled in the sun to deliver my former roommate’s BlackBerry? Listening to LCD Soundsystem with S.M? The very first time I ever heard the album “Bridge Over Troubled Water” in its entirety? Ditto “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”? The smooth sounds of Walter Becker, and furthermore, every single one of 2010′s wakeup playlists that roused me to class or work or simply to the awake awareness that I’m alive and happy to be so? The endless repetitions of The Honey Infants? Planning over meatloaf to play for each other only songs we’d never heard, Fashionable Frowns included? Stop Making Sense with E.A. in my tiny hot room over cheap beer? Baraka Flocka Flame? American Idiot performed in all its misguided Broadway glory? Omnipresent Josh Ritter?
The answer, is of course, that I can’t.
2010: What It Sounded Like (Part 1)
Some numbers.
72 is the number of posts I wrote in 2010.
3 is the number of different residences I had.
4 is the number of pairs of earbuds through which I burned.
4965 is the amount of songs I obtained in 2010 (not counting the rest of this week).
38.51 is the amount of gigabytes that takes up.
14 days, 10 hours, 10 minutes, and 43 seconds is the amount of time that music takes up.
I have listened to a fraction of that.
(But 5 hours of that is voice memos, so forget about those.)
And then there’s unknowable hours I spent listening to that, and to music from past years, and to music I don’t have on my hard drive, and to the handful of live shows I got to.
So.
What did 2010 mean to me, musically? The usual suspects, of course. There were certainly some solid new albums from some of my favorite acts (see: The Hold Steady, Drive By Truckers). I continued to try my hand at various new genres and artists based on my faith in their inherent enjoyability. I heard songs used as underscoring on TV shows and rushed to google whatever lyrics I could hear so I could snag them for myself. And when I changed things (apartments, company, employment) so did I get tossed into a different cultural and artistic gumbo each time.
But aside from whatever big changes occurred in my personal life, and their subsequent reverberations in my music library, the greatest leap in 2010 was something rather simple and, indeed, self-referential. Namely, this blog. I started it with the vague idea that it would give me the incentive to listen to more of my frivolously massy library of unlistened music. While I was indeed correct, in that I wake up at least three days in a given week with a fresh sprouted desire to pick an album at random and immerse myself in it during a commute, or a walk, or even just a leisurely sit in my bathrobe with a deep mug of thick black coffee, I was also unknowingly building a foundation to a philosophy I wasn’t able to initially explain when the blog began. Being of course the philosophy that drives this blog, that philosophy which drives my actions and interests, that of accepting all music and trying as intently and earnestly as possible to gain something from it. At first, it was easier said than done. But as the year went on, and I began in earnest to update even if it was just a loose mp3 here or there, it sunk in. I stopped giving up as easily on music I wasn’t “getting”. I started trying to get others in on it, trying to get them to shake off the false limits their tastes had imposed. And I downloaded 14 days of goddamn music. So while 2010 may have not been the easiest year for many of us, myself included, I can say with confidence that it has moved me significantly forward in my path of pure artistic enjoyment, as well as taught me how to live that type of life more fully and to greater benefit. And it’s for that reason that I present:
2010: The Best
1. Best New Album-Enjoyment Project – Bon Iver, “For Emma Forever Ago”
Every winter for the last few years, I gamble. This is the wager: if I walk alone, through the frozen empty cornfield behind my house, late at night, listening to nothing but the sounds of the wind in the trees and the silence of fallen snow, and listen to a particularly beautiful and emotional album I have never heard, it will scratch itself into my very soul. 2 years running, I’ve won! (2009′s winner: Talk Talk, “The Spirit Of Eden.” 2008: Wilco’s “A Ghost Is Born”. This third year, I chose Bon Iver’s 2009 album, which all sources had told me was a fragile, gorgeous collection of ethereal songs about heartbreak, written and recorded in a remote winter cabin by their creator Justin Vernon. It seemed a natural choice, and while the jury’s still out until I repeat the process a few times, I can give a tentative thumbs way up. See for yourself, but just remember to bundle up!
2. Best Improbably Late Musical Discovery – Toto
Okay, some context is needed here. Somehow, for the 2-some decades I’ve been alive and listening, I never ONCE heard the song “Africa” by Toto (you know it, of course) and thought “oh, that’s Africa by Toto.” If I ever did hear it, it never registered. EVER. So when I read that some of the best session musicians of the 70s and 80s, guys who played on everything from “Thriller” to Steely Dan to Dire Straits to Bruce Springsteen (and that’s just the goddamn DRUMMER!), made a band called Toto together, I was champing at the bit to hear what they could do. Again, remember I had never heard “Africa”. Or “Rosanna”. So on April 3rd at 11:55, their multi award-winning album “Toto IV” hit my hard drive, it marked the very first time in my life I’d heard the song that everyone, even people I knew listened to NO music whatsoever, knew by rote. Which threw me. But goddamn could those guys write a catchy song, and even when they didn’t they sure could play. I’d blast their stuff in bars, on the subway, while cleaning, while running…and how do you explain that to people for whom their stuff sounds either played to death, pure cheese, or both? You don’t. You just turn up the Toto, is what you do. RUNNER UP IN THIS CATEGORY: “Sabotage” by Beastie Boys. How I managed to never hear this song, or realize I was hearing it, before April 17th, is still a goddamned mystery to me.
3. Best Musical Experiment Gone Horribly Right – How To Dress Well, “Love Remains”
Brooklyn’s Tom Krell, aka “How To Dress Well” recorded an album all by himself of gauzy overdubbed difficult-to-impossible vocals over skipping, dreamy musical landscapes, injected a hefty dose of 90′s sex-making musical influences, and caught weird lightning in a jar. I can only say this is an immersive album, one you listen to in silence, possibly in the dark, possibly walking around the streets of your hometown and marveling at the intricate emotional details that surround you at every turn. Or in a room lit by a scentless candle. But try to listen CLOSE.
4. Best Unexpected Local Live Delight – The Lives Of Famous Men
These young upstarts, whom I wrote up a month or two back, are gonna have their upcoming shows announced on this blog soon as I get word of ‘em. A tight rollicking set of propulsive and soulful emo-tinged art-pop blah blah blah genretag showingoff just go see ‘em, we’ll get beers! You and me. Consider they’re the only CD I’ve bought in recent memory.
5. Best Album To Completely Flip A Dark Mood On Its Ass – The Roots, “How I Got Over”
I’d listened to this album once, midsummer, on a long subway ride from my previous Brooklyn spot, and thought what I’ve usually thought upon listening to the Roots, a blistering live act and yours truly’s first ever real show, captured on record: “pretty good.” But that was it, until I woke up a little while ago feeling every kind of slumped; sour stomach and sclerotic thoughts, heavy limbs and depleted stores. I popped this album on during my commute and it was like being hit by a slow train of sunshine. Forget what you thought about the Roots, thinking you had ‘em down in your mind: their live band’s chops, rapper Black Thought’s thoughtful rhymes, their stylistic expansiveness, whatever. Forget that this album sports a number of indie rock’s notables as guests, including Joanna Newsom, Monsters of Folk, and the female portion of Dirty Projectors. “How I Got Over” is essentially a concept album in which the first 12 of the album’s 14 tracks, which are mixed to all flow seamlessly into each other, form a 36 minute soul-rap suite taking us from EXACTLY the feeling I was dragging that morning, to a midpoint turn at the title track, into a breathless finish in which the mantle of pessimism slips away and you grab onto hope with all your might. It’s one of the finest and tightest Albums, 40 minutes and fatless, that I’ve heard from a contemporary artists in a long, long time. RUNNER UP IN THIS CATEGORY: “#1 Record” by Big Star. To describe the first time I heard this in June: Imagine a stranger offering you a sandwich after you receive horrible news while extremely hungry.
6. Best Jukebox Drunken Singalong – Zac Brown Band, “Chicken Fried”
7. Best Live Show In Which My Friend’s Brother Was In The Band So That’s How I Got A Ticket – Bonnie Prince Billy and the Cairo Gang, 12/8/10, Town Hall
The only thing stopping me from writing this show up in full was the intense, sublime WEIRDNESS of the performance. The opening act which was actually the main act in costume, lit by living room lamps and performing a meticulous cover of an entire album from 1979 by someones named Kevin Coyne and Dagmar Krause. It just got weirder. Will Oldham, aka Bonnie Prince Billy, has a quavering tenor voice that sometimes can get beefy and sometimes cracks like reeds, and he hops around and stands on one leg when he sings. The band throughout the entire 2-some hour show walked this line between sounding totally sloppy and sounding intensely, practicedly, studiously sloppy due to their extreme rehearsed tightness, with wiry guitar lines and weaving harmonies and volume swells, and then Kid Rock’s latest guitarist came out with a mirrored guitar, and I was just, like, whoa. Just, whoa. See ‘em if you can, before whatever strange pocket of the musical universe they’ve been peering into swallows them up, leaving behind just the barely audible wheeze of keys player Ben Boye’s harmonium.
8. Best Covers That, While Not Improving On The Originals Because, Well, That Would Be Just Impossible, Come Asymptotically Close
Two way tie: Codeine Velvet Club’s diamond-bright remake of Stone Roses’ “I Am The Resurrection” which replaces guitar workouts with joyful horn sections, Ian Brown’s distinctively thin pipes with sparkling male-female harmonies, and what the hell, adds a marimba while they’re at it. It Still gives me the sensation of scaling Sunset Park like Rocky on the library steps. And, then, this gorgeous harmony puzzlebox of a cover of Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” by a band called The Rescues. Thanks to E.A. for this one! Enjoy. (Sorry Glee fans, I like this one better.)
Subcategory Winner: “Straight To Hell” by Moby ft. Heather Nova, Special Consideration For Being The Best Track Off This Clash Tribute Album, Which Is Of An Almost Superhumanly Underwhelming Nature. Seriously.
9. Best Song To Listen To As It Begins To Snow – “Hotel Chelsea Nights” by Ryan Adams
It’s an fair statement to say that this Prince-fueled album closer, detailing Adams’ fatigued (emotionally, physically, pharmaceutically) stretch in the titular hotel, is soulful. It’s another to try to sum up what it can mean when it underscores a singular happy moment in time. That, unfortunately, is only possible to do if you were there. So, G.S., thanks.
10. Best Provider Of Rock-Solid Feel Good Tunes, Directly And Indirectly – A.K.
Damn anonymity and my courteous respect as such! A.K., my close friend and confidant, has been providing me with new music for the years I’ve known him, and almost all of it’s worldclass fantastic. It may not be on the page, but the enthusiasm he has for it and the joy it brings him is about as infectious as Rage virus and almost as exhilarating.
YOU GOTTA CHECK OUT THE NEW KID CUDI ARRRGGGGHHHH
Whether it’s Weezer’s latest out-of-the-park power pop gem (we were in a bar, Weezer came on, I remarked I knew little of them, and that was the very last time I could say such and not be lying because he got me into Weezer like it was hard drugs), the theme song to HBO’s “How To Make It In America” (found a screener of the pilot lying in Union Square, watched it with him and our boys crowded into my tiny dorm room, tore through each succeeding episode and sang along to the theme loudly), or this touching ballad of selling drug-laced beverages to pay for matching cars and clothes in one’s favorite color, (kinda just played whenever he was around for a few months), he’s been the year’s DJ supreme. And he writes at http://champagnebottlelife.blogspot.com/.
OK folks, time for me to get some sleep. Expect the second installment soon!
2 Weeks
It was difficult this morning. Sure, I’d gotten seven hours of sleep. And sure, I had enough ingredients in my kitchen to cook up a hell of a breakfast. Carbs, fruit (juice), proteins, hot black caffeine…all could’ve been eaten in due time to make the train and head toward an assuredly easy day at work. But I sat dumbly by my computer, watching Burn Notice and sipping cold leftover coffee, throwing together a bowl of cornflakes along with the day’s outfit in the last 10 minutes of my pre-commute oasis.
I was sick last week and it knocked me for a loop. Three things I’ll never, hopefully, get used to (1. vomiting 2. delirium 3. stomach cramps) left me wanting nothing but their absence, much less a soundtrack. Which is to say, I felt less inclined to reach for my Ipod, and even less inclined to snag anything new to write about to give to you all. What can I say, sometimes I’m just not in the mood. Such was this morning, which I’m counting as the tail end of my sickness/fatigue; I decided “hey, let’s try a new band I don’t know much of but that others seem to love”, specifically, “Grizzly Bear”. Three songs in, I had to press PAUSE.
It wasn’t that Grizzly Bear was leaving me cold because of who they were. I was just in a hazy, fatigued mood that hadn’t been properly beaten back with food and preparation. I could’ve sat there and let the music wash through my skull as the train neared its destination, and maybe it would’ve been fun, but probably not. I couldn’t let my introduction to this particularly acclaimed album be fucked up by circumstance. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the type of foresight that I cultivate. I can’t imagine how many songs or albums weren’t given a fair shake because my balance was whacked-out by life. If I could, it’d probably drive me bats.
And in the spirit of the holiday and the end-of-year vibe: I recognize that most of you are linked to this blog via my Facebook, meaning I know you personally. I also recognize that people drift apart in different ways. Sometimes it’s a week break from speaking, sometimes its months, sometimes years and one day you’re lost in a distant winsome memory of good times long past and the guilt washes over you like a bilious tide that your correspondence has waned. Keep this fact in mind, all readers: I may not always call. I may not always answer. I may not always get back promptly, or update regularly. But if you think I care a lot about music, then recognize that it’s people I care about more. My people, strangers who look like they’ve got a story, customers who can’t recall what they need, and you. You, you, you you, yes you. I really truly care about each and every anonymouse tally that shows up in my stats tracker. It’s not enough to just say it, so call me. Right now, you can call or text. As you read this. I challenge you. And if I don’t answer, I’ll call back ASAP. If we haven’t spoken in a long time or we’ve got a reason not to be speaking, doesn’t matter. Just do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Now. Now. Now. Now. You.
All Apologies
Sick and sequestered in bed today, I’m going to get a jump on this business of updating! Who says you can’t be productive when you’re not at work. Sorries for real to any co-workers reading this, I would’ve been totally useless today.
Today is about finding yourself in the position of musical apologist. Here’s how that happens: sometimes, a band or musician is so compelling to you, you become interested to the point that nobody else truly understands. But rather than this interest waning, or you moving on to another interest that takes the former’s place, it stays with you for months, years maybe. And as that musician/band continues producing new material, you notice that everyone else has moved on from liking that band/musician, dismissing it as falling short of its former glory, or having never been worth their time at all. Albums drop and tours start and stop, and while you recognize that the newer stuff isn’t as good as the old, and in fact may not be that good at all, you still smile when you hear it. Your disappointment at the growing understanding of this inevitable disconnect from what initially sparked your interest, well, it lasts just a brief moment. But when you try to make others understand how you can feel the way you feel, and maybe convince them to feel the same way, it’s like pulling hen’s teeth. Somedays it feels like you’re shouting in an empty room. When you go to concerts and mingle with similarly minded fans, it feels great, but once you leave you feel unmoored, like you’ve been given a doomed task to complete, defending this music against aggressors and intruders, a watchmen with no gun and a dead flashlight.
You are also prone to willfully extended metaphors. And all out of bubblegum.
It’s important to distinguish this idea of music for which you’re an apologist, versus that of music as guilty pleasure, or from love for an undeservedly maligned musician or band. For example, “guilty pleasure” music you would talk about with a shrug and a qualifier waiting on your tongue, a “yeah I know, it’s (negative adjective) but it really makes me feel (positive adjective) sometimes”. You experience both revulsion and pleasure in a single sitting, listening to it. You have only a wispy desire to defend your affection for it to others, relying mostly on just never talking about it, and listening to it alone, monk-like, in an otherwise empty room. You know it’s not that good, but you’re compromising. And it’s never been good, and it’ll never be. Examples: Limp Bizkit at the gym. 3OH!3 in the car as you’re speeding into the sunset. Crazy Town. The Bloodhoung Gang. Music perfectly suited to one streak of mood and one set of circumstances, and nowhere else.
Also, too, must you not confuse this with your love for the underrated or unjustly maligned. A lot of negative opinion about certain bands or musicians can ultimately a problem of the beholder, reacting negatively to hype or some attitude they read into the music’s construction and/or fandom that they just can’t get behind. If you court a dislike for metal superfans, it doesn’t make Dream Theater any less good of a band. If you understand that people will hate on pop country because they believe it’s dumb, then just drive a few towns over and find the right bar, and you’re right there punching in Lady Antebellum into the internet jukebox. You don’t need to apologize for music that can already speak for itself.
I’ve asked my friends and coworkers how they feel about this, and they’ve offered up their own apologist-ized music. Kiss. Dashboard Confessional. Randy Newman. Get Up Kids. Bands they will, sometimes bedgrudgingly, defend, come what may. And who am I an apologist for? Well, my best example, as some of you can probably already attest, is Robert Richie, aka The Early Morning Stoned Pimp Of The Goddamn Nation, The American Badass, Kid Rock.
"You'll feel the Irish tornado/between your legs" - K.R.
Kid Rock got big after the release of his fourth album, “Devil Without A Cause”, pictured above, in 1998. Kid was one of several popular rap-metal acts at the time. He’d been rapping since the 80s, not making much of a name for himself due in part to his whiteness, but then DWAC went 11 times platinum on the strength of its singles, which you have doubtlessly heard quite a lot. It’s divided critics, check here; some say “ew!” others say “take the stick outcho ass and see how surprisingly good this is, motherfucker.”
Me, I had no interest in him when this was going on. I was a kid with a fragile and somewhat elitist streak when it came to music; didn’t like edgy stuff, preferred pop with my rock, and when I saw a hand flipping the bird on the DWAC CD cover I thought “no thank you!” and never give him a second look. And then.
Ten or so years later, a man whose musical opinions I very much respected played the entirety of DWAC to me in a dorm room on 3rd Avenue and I was, in a word, entranced. It wasn’t just that Kid Rock sounded better than I imagined/remembered him; he sounded AWESOME. It was like every cell in my head that dug clever rhymes, bombast and flair, country, blues, metal, and just general ass-stomping music, was being flipped and jammed down at the same time. I devoured his next few albums, breathlessly awaited the release of the upcoming one, and I still blast “Cowboy” at bars and into my head during sleepy subway rides back to my apartment. Now, Kid sings way more than he raps, and has moved away from metal and toward country, rock, and pop releases. I like every single one. To most, Kid Rock’s a novelty from the 90s who sticks around like a creepy relative overstaying his welcome at a party. To me, he’s the beloved subject of my deaf-ears-fallen-on apologies.
Because as he’s continued putting out music, it’s drifted away from DWAC’s winning formula (rap plus southern rock, add one dash rapping midget and a monster ego) and in doing so, provoked a less immediate reaction in me when I hear it. Don’t get me wrong; Kid writes a great pop song, a heart-rending ballad, and a finger-snappin’ rock tune, and I’m happy. But it’s less edgy these days, less funny too, and therefore it becomes difficult but inevitable to understand that the Kid Rock of 1998 is not the Kid Rock of 2010. Which is best, I think, for artistic stagnation and tail-chasing sours me quickly, but it also means that I have to admit to myself that Kid Rock’s new album is just not that good.
Reclinercore!
Kid’s new album features no rapping except from T.I., who contributes a verse to a song called “Care”. Characteristic of the Kid’s move toward the middle of the road, “Care” inverts the Kid’s “Rock N Roll Jesus” persona from his last album and quite literally goes: “I can’t walk on water.” Don’t get me wrong; it’s a well-recorded and played album, for producer Rick Rubin assembled a band of great sidemen, including a Chili Pepper and a Heartbreaker (of the Tom Petty And kind, not the NYC punk kind), and the songs glide past on highly polished rails of soft country, rock, and soul. Bob Seger and Sheryl Crow show up at some point. But the album’s about as edgy as a marble, and more than that it was supposedly culled from enough songs to make 3 discs, a plan Kid reportedly nixed. Which meant that either Kid decided “okay, no more rapping, I only sing straightforward songs about love, kickin’ back, feelin’ good, takin’ it easy, and bein’ middle-aged” and left off the edgy stuff, or that he just doesn’t have any edge left.
But I still like it.
Kid Rock’s a heart-on-his-sleeve Republican. He objectifies women in his songs, liberally borrows riffs and melodies from other artists, gets into fights at Waffle Houses, and by now his clever lyricism is mostly replaced by turns of phrase like the chorus of “When It Rains”, which goes “I wish I didn’t know now the things I never knew before.” Which, my point is, is not clever.
But I like it, still.
Because maybe it’s that I feel other people don’t get how good Kid Rock is, and I wanna feel like I’ve got inside info, like I’m the only sane and enlightened one on an island of haters.
No seriously dudes! Dudes! Come on!
Maybe it’s that his brilliance comes in intermittent flashes these days so it makes them seem brighter than usual. Maybe it’s that he’s learned to sing pretty damn well and can play like 10 instruments. Maybe it’s that I hang around too many East Coast artistic types, for whom such music as Kid Rock inspires the crawling terror or the howling pretensionisms. But I still like it even when it’s not good. And I cannot truly explain this to someone who hasn’t had the exact same experience with the Kid that I have. Which is nobody.
Kanye West just put out an album that incorporates a diverse group of musical influences, and features titanic egomaniacal rhymes about the insane crazy emotional life he leads as a huge star, and it’s all over critics’ top ten lists and the radio. But Kid did that already, 12 years back. Who knows, maybe in 12 more I’ll be trying to convince everyone why Kanye West shouldn’t just be written off as a relic of the 00′s. (Though I doubt it, and that’s gonna be a story for another entry.)
Speaking of Kanye West, here’s what happens when you type him and “Apologize” into my Itunes search field!
Hey readers! Who do you feel the need to apologize for?
EDIT/REDACTION: Okay, I listened to it a few more times. “Born Free” is pretty damn good. And I still like it. But duh.
Track Improvements
We who’ve had the privilege have all experienced the shameless assortment of vicissitudes that come complimentary with public transportation. In the case of NYC subways, these include: vomit (from people producing it in front of you, or people who having done so have long since left), trains ground to a halt in tunnels while a dispatcher redefines the definition of the word “shortly”, shuttle trains, route-home-skewing construction and/or suicides, weekend service changes…
I feel as if most of my music-listening is done on the subway. I have been using my big headphones recently, as Radio Shack is sending me through a Mousetrappian series of red herrings and false promises in my attempts to apply my replacement plan on my crapped-out earbuds. So I hunker down on a seat and listen to music and the weight of the ‘phones and the sound quality can really zone me out into MusicLand, which on some late nights is one stop away from SleepLand. Thankfully not yet have I continued on into StolenWalletLand, and/or the South Bronx.
Google "SoBro" and find a bunch of pics like this. Very Craigslist-apartment-posting-not-showing-too-much-y.
I listen to this today, like just an hour ago I mean.
Thanks to all you readers! The last part of “WHY?” is forthcoming; stay tuned, warm, and with uppricked ears!
It’s Sunrise Confession Time
She asks me “what are you reading about?” I say “Wikileaks.” She says “Man everyone’s reading about Wikileaks.” I say “yeah, shit is CRAZY.” She says “what’s so interesting about them?” I mumble through a few half-formed thoughts about cultural responses to mysterious groups of people, and Stieg Larsson, and electronic surveillance, and realize I don’t know what I’m talking about, and go back to reading.
Transparency becomes desired when its absence is undeniable. When something is obviously there, but hidden, we shift uncomfortably in our seats wishing in the bottom of our hearts that someone’ll come along and tip up the rock to expose the worms underneath. At least, “we” who are inquisitive, who haven’t learned to let none-of-our-business stay that way. Maybe we’re journalists in the making, or budding philosophers, or maybe we’ve been steeped in an information-soaked existence since we can remember. Information’s ready access is now taken for granted, especially the incredibly personal and often shockingly banal details of the lives of public figures such as actors or celebutatntes or famous musicians. To illustrate this point: celebrities have taken the public’s slavering desire for information on their lives, and harnessed its awesome force to save actual human lives (or, more accurately, induce donations that may possibly save lives if indeed charities mission statements are to be trusted…just sayin’, in case this all turns out to be a front, and I’m called to task.)
But but but. Consider: how did the public react to, and desire, such personal aspects of their beloved musicians, before it was all just a click away? Like, a few decades back? Were fans as desperate to get a piece of their idols? In some cases, yes, such as this particular lysergic episode. But they necessarily had to hear it in the music, not on the gossip news or on Twitter. The confessional singer/songwriter was one of several cultural responses to a dearth of “realness” and a surplus of artifice. While psychedelic music was noodling and fuzzing its way through the atmosphere, how radically different an impression could just one person with a guitar make? The answer is “very”. Check out this one from Joni Mitchell, with the late great Jaco Pastorius on bass.
Like any popular musical trend, it differentiated itself from those which came before, sometimes even within the same album by a single artist. This considerable hit by Kid Rock may seem clumsy and cheesy at first, auto-tuned to perfection and modestly plodding in tempo, but consider it closer, and in context. Placed amidst a set of rap-rock tunes where (mostly rapped) lyrics like “I’ma Kid Rock it up and down your block/with a bottle of scotch/and watch lots of crotch” are a fairly representative sample of the album as a whole, a sung line like “a lot of people fuck with me/it’s hard to hang out in crowds” is a pretty serious deviation.
Kid Rock: Soulful guy.
It doesn’t have to bring a tear to your eye, but you can’t deny that it’s shift in direction, albeit not a totally unexpected; the Kid was an avowed country and blues fan even while he was becoming 1997′s rap-rock’s demon redneck posterboy, and country and blues have nothing if not a rich tradition of emotional and heart-bearing lyricism. I mean, “Only God Knows Why” may not be Sylvia Plath with a dobro, but it’s difficult to reduce the impact of lines like “I take too many pills/to help me ease the pain” placed alongside “I feel like number one/though I’m last in line” and, if they’re all to be believed as an expression of the self (albeit exaggerated), which I see no reason not to, then bang, Kid Rock bares his soul. Or at least one he’s borrowed.
But now the rules have changed. Whereas a confessional musician used to create an idea of him or herself through music and relatively limited media coverage, now he/she’s placed in a virtual panopticon of coverage; paparazzi, social networking, viral video vectors. The artists loses full control of the confessional process as a result, and I’m left wondering; what role does the confession play now that the rules have changed thusly? Rick Ross, care to contribute?
Well, TPS, for one, it makes it harder to rap with credibility about being a drug kingpin.
Hip-hop aside, where the self is such a central conceit that a concept of “confession” becomes sort of moot, revealing parts of one’s self to the audience becomes less of a choice and more of a necessary artistic facet of the musician’s overall work. Transparency creeps into a celebrity’s life, whether or not by choice, and there’s the opportunity to simply embrace it and push it to a somewhat repugnant limit.
I’ve gotten a little digressive here, and I’m going to blame that on a stomach filled with black coffee and nothing else, but this whole post sprang from this one song. It breaks down into a few main themes: pot, sex, and solitude. This wouldn’t seem exceptional excepting how much its singer, Mr. John Mayer, was marketed at first as a pretty-boy sensitive singer/songwriter, the kind of guy you could bring home to your parents but who still had a deep yawning soul. Over the last few years, Mayer’s public image has been tempered with this idea that in fact, he’s a pretty-boy douchebag who sleeps with whomever he likes, is not shy about talking about it in interviews, and in fact can be pretty angry and nasty given the opportunity. I’d link you to something, but to illustrate my points, go look it up yourself. It’s really, really easy.
And this song doesn’t do anything to deny that image. He smokes pot in his house alone, then calls up a girl for emotionless sex, and then he lives a blur of a high life. But it’s not gauche or celebratory, it’s quiet and folksy, and vulnerable even. Is John Mayer creating, or validating, the character that celebrity-centric culture believes he is?
Because along with saving African babies, the constant public need for truth and dirt and details can be used on a much more basic level. It’s like finding a surveillance bug in your smoke detector; someone is listening, and if they don’t know how aware you are of how you appear, then you can easily feed them whatever information you want. Maybe John Mayer is perfectly happy playing blues licks and courting controversy because it keeps the records moving and the camera rock-steady on him. Maybe he’s not lonely or fucked-up over any of it. You wouldn’t know to listen to him. So I guess you’ll have to listen to the new Taylor Swift again, huh?
Day Before Thanksgiving (Brown Wednesday)
You’re in transit. Or not in transit though you’d like to. You’re sitting in front of a computer or staring into a smartphone. You’re not necessarily the type of person who feels elated or revved-up by holiday. You wonder if when you were younger, it was easy to slip into the mode where a certain day, one of the faceless many ascribed dates and events, was so thrilling and thrumming that a few days out you’d be trying to contain yourself and your excitement, and hours after it was over you felt drained and flat. Or was it all just a happy illusion like the way something always is that comes around rarely? Have you become more switched-on, tuned-in, plugmonkey braintrust knowingmuch antimystery?
You’re thinking too much. It’s not even Thanksgiving yet. It’s just Wednesday. Go take a walk for chrissakes.
Poor Quality Metal Video Roundup (In Lieu Of Actual Writing)
Music is my boss. Food is my boss. Stairs are my boss. Regular cleaning of myself and my surroundings is my boss. Coffee is my boss. Ryan is my boss. Ryan told me to watch this.
Here’s an old favorite that speaks for itself, really, unfortunately.
And because we all just need to have fun sometimes, sit back and watch this to see what a gifted man by the very un-metal name of Howard Jones can do with an old classic:
Sleep tight y’all.
