today is the 25th anniversary of elvis's death on the pot that mournful day as punk was exploding all across the western world. in reading the trashy beach novel which is '24 hour party people' tony wilson describes the moment he found out - of another generation and too northern for sex pistols nihilism, he was moved, felt an era end.
interested then, the rolling stone article about how no one really gives a shit about elvis anymore. ya, i read mystery train but i'd be inclined to agree with those 18-year-old kids they profiled, and Public Enemy who seemed to think the King's legacy had no personal effect on them. likewise, my elvis was bob dylan or the psychedelic furs, sonic youth or the clash. maybe dylan has some of the elvis in him in tha he owed a larger debt to the tradition from which he came, he became a name through the old tradition of playing covers and paying your dues. but he evolved quickly where elvis became a pacified, pastel clad sinatra with only a truck driver's grace and little more. he wasn't even sexy like brando in streetcar, just a lumpen moving the shellac-ed hair about a stage. don't get me started on the comeback special.
on an unrelated note, i wanted to hate spoon but find that their blend of strokes rave ups and vaguely smarty lyrics shrouded in dumb sideliners making you not really sure - are these guys geniuses or just savants?- which is sometimes my favorite rock query. the iggy pop conundrum.

just finished a huge piece on the bluegrass band jim and jennie who have sort have become my pets. talking to 'bluegrass unlimited' magazine i got that unpleasant, itchy feeling of not knowing anything about a certain genre...wanting to dive right into it. bill monroe, at least.
saw a blues band last night and think i finally understand what that's all about. why should the blues be something i don't understand? well, i don't understand the cliched, white-guy in khakis relating thing and now i do. actually, yesterday there was an ad for the atlantic city george carlin show where he went off on his gravel-mouthed rant against white people singing the blues. don't know about the race card but the blues does seem like the black equivalent to country - a tradition with about five major themes to be taught and learned down the generations.
not at all like the blues is ladytron's new album, which i'm listening to right now. will it make it past the fischerspooner/adult world we live in now? things like trans am and ladytron, once thought kitsch, proved to be 'ahead of their time'? and depeche mode, ever faithful, has been around long enough for it all to come back around but couldn't even muster the pre-sets to get into the game. brushing off the gratuitous laments about the loss of youth and beauty (is the song about models? electro? i can't follow all the meanings) the album is pretty damn good in the lush, all keyboards go midtempo, cheesy handclap effect at just the right moment type vibe. i feel like i'm back on the gravitron circa 1987. and that's not a bad place to be.

someone tried to convince me that interpol was clever, charming even, but i can't help but think i'd rather listen to the cure or the smiths. the lead singer's four-note range and endless babble over weird, almost U2 guitar haze is novel until two songs in, when you realize, 'hey, this guy really can't sing.' and, listening to his lyrics, maybe he shouldn't. ' the subway, she is a porno.' no. the subway is transit and your voice is a lead weight on my head.
today, against my rebellion against troubleman (follow?) i picked up the milky wimpshake and loved it entirely from almost the first second. well, i like television personalities and sarcasm and self-depricating/secretly egotistical indie-pop only when it comes out of the undertones/dirty punk and leftist university-isms so how could i not? makes me want to fire up the four-track and start a hand-stitched fanzine.
listening to the zombies still like a disease. the route of all true indie pop is not the beatles, but them with their tireless attention to the backspin, to sentimental reflection and weirdly dusty melodies strung over warm walking/soul-fueled bass lines. time of the season is such an afterthought, it is the best argument for not trusting oldies radio. who ever did?

forgotten radio stations play forgotten things - the guess who's first album after bachman left - share the land. can't say i enjoyed it that much although after my introduction into the world of the boogie rock via the James Gang last weekend I at least began to understand where they were coming from. Unrelated, I think that Music from Big Pink is a terribly overrated album and if I hadn't sent my bs into Chunklet on the matter, I would add that to my list. anyway, the first song is this totally bizarre dis on people who ride public transportation called 'bus rider' which had this crude visciousness to it that, 32-years later, seems hilarious in its childish attitude. c'mon man, what's wrong with the bus? especially in fucking manitoba or wherever they're from. anyway, one of my least favorite oys of the piano is in gratutious honky tonk chatter thrown down under bands like this to give texture - it works in great rolling stones songs, is fabulous in early spiritualized and all over where layered with care. but this shit was awful. not that anyone reading this doesn't know deep in their hearts that the guess who sort of suck.

conceptualist v. concept driven...annoying distinction, but needed. john cage, a man i wish i knew more about than the sort of exploded cliches i've adopted for party chatter about idea over action. of course, others did it at the time - stockhausen and his om - but cage really explored it with all types of compositions - from radios, speaking, silence (argh, i'd love to bring a boom box to 4' 33" and get kicked out...oh, another of my musical audience annoyance pranks has been hatched), and of course, tape loops. ahh, to live in california in the '40s. all that concrete, all those pinko minds.
nina nastastia - good stuff - sort of like a country rasputina sans annoying super-fake vibrato. always trust touch and go, even in the promo. very inoften do i approve of extended jams where the strings, usually cello, is allowed to come out from the mix and have melodic dominance, but the song 'ocean' really gets me. she's not even country, she's just cat power without the twirled-hair ignorance and coy downplay, tory without the stigma or harpsichord (or overuse of breathy delivery)...
also, the new pop writer for the new york times who covered nelly today is trying to do some sort of 'larger commentary' on society with his bs about mr. cornell (i love finding out the real names of monikered stars, guilty pleasure) being a posterchild for the mundane, army-brat midwest existence. st. louis is everywhere, and nelly the every man. let's take off all our clothes.

britney spears should be horsewhipped for her cover of 'rock n' roll.' i'm not a fan of the bust mentalitiy 'wwjjd' what would joan jett do pseudo rock girl thing but fo real, man, that just put the nail in the coffin. luckily we're all up in the alicia keys funny hats and acid wash mismashed denim era + native american accent so i don't have to think about it anymore.

got the neko case album today and listened to it excitedly. as indie rock sputtered and died, so many defected to alt.country. case is the real deal, if a canadian can be country, which thinking about marlboro ads of big mountains glistening, moose, etc makes total sense. the music, unfortunately, is saccrine, overprocessed and borderline cliched. her voice lacks the sincerity that makes smaltzy country music okay - maybe i'm the cliched one thinking that sound needs a little dusk or gravel, world wearyness. it's hard to have a good balance, it only happened once for edith frost and then she lost it, wilco has it by sheer overattention to the empathetic quality of each tune, and guys like jason molina or oldham only use it as a touchpoint. does music need to push always? no, but neko seems to settle in production, songwriting and even in her own inflections...i'll listen more and maybe understand differently.

listened to aspects of physics, one of those amorphous acoustic-electronic bedroom style projects that everyone who 'has a friend who's really great/creative/into his computer' will be forced to like at some point in their lives. it's like mice parade sans the late '90s chic or badly drawn boy merciless pop sentiments. these albums are always prompting the question ' why do we need so much music' and why isn't this person just taking the time to actually do something real with the project instead of sending the dat off to be mastered and never thinking of it again? wouldn't the indie world be much better if people consolidated their efforts, pulled their bedrooms together and put out only the best? or is this one of those mountain goats scenerios, where documentation is synonymous with creation. does he even remember all of the songs he's written?
i'm playing devil's advocate in a way because i am all about documentation and believe in the semi-inspired whirlwind of lo-fi or singular, uncritically or commerically motivated music making. but is it meant for a general, disinterested or uninitiated audience? isn't the beauty of proliferation that individual scenes can have actual, solidified objects associated with it, a sound coming from a group, a locale, a membership...or has computerland destroyed that physicality entirely, or does that even matter? viritual communities, labels as communities (warp, aethestics, young god, mego)...
can publications have communities? the wire may, internationally...there seem to be for things like mc sweeneys or basement life (he he), even sound collector even if its more social then philosophical. hmm. it's hard to imagine publications like tiger's eye, creem, early nme - things people HAD to read to stay in touch with their communities. then again, at the nation everyone EVERYONE read certain pubs and you could jump into the next level of any author's argument virtually w/o having to reference the pub (the new yorker, nytimes, the guardian, salon, slate, the post, in these times, etc).

love life. maybe i'm the only one in the whole world that likes them but i might want it that way. i want them to play for me, be masterful, bruding, crepe-covered spindly and smart just for me. the goth kids on the boardwalk like post-industrial nu-metal ambient techno. there is no place in this world for the languishing shadows and otherworldly creep of a sad violin, a widow with a mocking pierrot tear. strange, young fear lovecraft, who was what tolkien would have been if he stopped being epic and told a good story. crafted with the sense of the inevitable, and that sureness being absolutely sensical.

they are a band to get behind. to create fantasies around. sadly, to discover in many years and say 'why did this not change things' and to mix into tommorow-influence.

the new spin, which i read today and replaced in the general mail bin, is a travesty. tricia romano is ridiculous and wrote half of the magazine. it's bad enough she gets inches in the voice. the entire front half of the book is nu-metal girlie mag charticles, including an advice column with lil bow wow. wow, could it have gotten any worse? i had to ask. alan light, former editor and secret amerimojo wannabe, got to write a tearful tribute to left eye. it read like yesterday's hamster fodder only with the poo pre-soaked into the pages. yee haw glossies.

okay...now it's just ridiculous. it's june 7, over a month since last time i wrote. things have been crazy.

music. i'm now living in south jersey, listening to classic rock radio almost exclusively and being way too nice to press people because they hold the one key to my sanity. new music. it's incredibly hard to explain to friends in the real world how difficult it is to be back, after five years, in a world where being really 'into' music makes you an outsider, a child, a geek. That's not the only thing that classifies me as such but...

So I just spent the last fourty five minutes of my life being assaulted by Weasel Walter's Flying Luttenbackers - the production was so bad it sounded like cotton spun all around my stereo, my room and my head - the volume barely escaping. weird that this muddy haze is not really a sound so much as sensation. Three piece no-wave brutality ending just as begun and CD out. Like most stuff on Troubleman, no reason to listen to it when you might be able to see it. Documentary.

what I've really been getting into is Neil Young. Old Man - the kick-in when his voice goes from remorse to yearn, so definite with his band following like a tail on a kite. God. The banjos, the occasional J. Neitsche orchestra, the clouds of clay dust even as he berates the south for not coming clean. Some of his songs are just plain cheesy - Oh Lonesome Me, Lotta Love - but the sentimentality is blunt and almost like that of a Werner Herzog film. Maybe, embarrassing?

final comment for today...why the fuck would anyone waste their time listening to something as derivative and inane as Pedro the Lion? The singer's voice is unstyled and grating, the music even a reductionist death cab with little invention or even reason to be noticed. yet, the very mundane-ness of the band, their ability to fit wherever 'slo-core' is still being beaten to death on stage, assures their continue marginal realm of success. bah.

long time, no blog. the hives, reactionary garage pop drivel sugar sweet to the ears with leader's ferocious shout-speak, perpetual organ and piano stabs a la john cale's sensible minimalism with the stooges. no less a construct than the studio pop on the radio, especially as scandinavian in origin, but somehow less offensively untrue than those strokes. they'll morph and move where the fine new yorkers are already out of mind.

macy gray's unneeded placement in the spider-man movie prompts suspicion - unsurprisingly on sony, innocuous cross-media pollination closes the world that much more. she appeared to be an amatuer, coked up version of herself prattling about the stage while that guy in the green tights whizzed by. i was much more disallusioned when i found out transformers was a 30 min. long commerical. of course, that didn't happen til college.

people have this strange fondness for 'outsider' music - last year's sleeper 'preston school' and now people babbling about gary wilson, horrible, cheesy lounge-singer eerily reminiscent of dan the automator only this wilson fellow worked it out 15 years ago. reissued to acclaim, the long-lost performer recently was found and is proudly performing at avant-shop other in-store. just because it was buried doesn't mean it was worth digging up. speaking of which, the wfmu record fair slipped right from under me this year - no $10 wasted on sci-fi songs interpreted by disco moog this year. alas.

funny article in the times today about electro. i might respect simon reynolds as a giver of music knowledge to the masses. nice balance of insider knowledge and general description. now luxx's friday night dance party, berwilliamsburg or whatever the fuck its called will suffer the same inundation as the area's bars did when the article about yuppies coming to williamsburg to meet girls uninterested in money or success ran in the times. amazing. brooklyn is still treated like some exotic other. maybe it is.

as i see it, the electro revival is the reaction against emo - soft-spoken confessionals and guitars by slovenly, mid-western hetero shy boys in big glasses. it's less accessable than new wave (even jocks know the words to hungry like the wolf) and celebrates the pan-sexuality often barred by riffage. interesting that it came out of post-punk, era of disgust and psuedo-political anxiety, perfect to our time. electro is the retro-post apocalptic escapism, irresponsible and ultimately devolutionary. in that, devo still remains the perfect band, the only band, and i have nothing else to say except the new eminem video is stoopid.

arrgh. today i downloaded every led zeppelin song worth listening to - it was from hearing 'cosmic dancer' on a mix tape today while riding to work - the combo of bolan's effete strings/acoustic with that weird bit of male arrogance just gave me the connection ...and i'm almost done with hammer of the gods, proving to be a hideous, fawning piece of journalism but a great late night read.

proofing a piece on the folkster dave van ronk, not a very good piece but interesting none the less bc it gives me insight to the 60s folk scene birth, their influences, and the importance of well-documented compilations - like Anthology - that do what no friend or radio station could - be authoritative and inviting to another, bygone world. that's the sort of journalism one should aspire to, not hipster pandering and tunnel visioned scene reports so much as that of enriching the culture, the conversation. arrgh.

section 25, the all girl goth new wave band on factory - after many listens, not that interesting - the monotone all style where joy division used it to connotate something disturbing, broken.

today was rainy, beautifully so, and i finally picked up the linda perhacs album from downtown music to celebrate. that store is so wonderful and cheery that i might become a regular - i always buy more than i mean to and never feel bad about it cause i know the album is going to be good. perhacs' voice is thin, reedy, over pure 70s smooth jazz bass and elegant fingerpicking - folk with a psych fringe and weirdo neo-country tendancies. i prepared the song 'who really cares' to play at a show once but backed out at the last minute cause the vocal part bouces over an octave as the bass line slips around. too hard for me at the time.

perhacs disappeared from the world after this one album. the reissue people can't even find her to give her the royalties.

also bought henry cow, intentional prog rock sounding more like pierre boulez and the worst free jazz mashed together with occasional guitar lines. scary that parts are actually acceptable - the album's called 'unrest' which makes me wonder. the downtown guy told me that cow was english and when they broke up in '77, members came to nyc to jump start american prog. thanks henry cow.

he also told me about this 20 band festival that happened at an art center in 1977 with bands featuring bill laswell and all the brewing nyc downtown underground artists - not no wave or punk or anything of the type - and it occurs to me that even subculture history has a hegemony. and sub-sub culture, etc.

lunch with a friend today, talking about the power of a real performer - 'focused energy' versus the unfocused nervousness of people like cat power. its completely random who has it and who doesn't - and i'm sure it switches depending on the music being played.

never want to think about siouxsie and the banshees again after this dive into the '77 world for q. having read england's dreaming, watched the filth and the fury and dumpster dived thru every '77 or siouxsie site on the web, i feel totally spent on the energy of that time and i still haven't heard a 1/10 of that music. mainly i feel like i never need to listen to the clash again. odd the presentation of class in england vs. the alignment with the avant garde in new york city. very much still the same way, even for pop bands in the UK. jarvis cocker as caste exploder.

am listening to the smashing pumpkins cover of 'never let me down again' and thinking how very much i love billy corgan's voice. kids i went to high school with complained that it was effete (though they would never use such a word) and emo (though the term wasn't invented then) - which it is. more than rites of spring, fugazi or any of those authentic punk guys, i imagine emo kids as closet sp fans, screaming sadness with their hush hush voice.

last night played with mates of state - an amazing, slightly voyeuristic experience to stand behind the drummer and have the keyboardist stare at him the whole time - like she is looking at you - so incredibly in love with each other, so locked into time - and her piano skills are fantastic - vocals yearning in unison - they shouldn't play so long though - the richness of her keys gets a little too much after 20 minutes, the rushing triplets exasperating. i'm sure it will come to me later but right now i can't think of any band doing music like there's.

we also played with this bad emo band 'circle and square' whom are destined to mediocre celebrity cause their lead singer is marginally attractive and is somehow friends with a vj from mtv. worse than being a bad band is being a band with no desire to be anything but famous. if it weren't for the cheesy guitar solos and inane lyrics (uninspired rythmns, blocky bass lines, boring drum patterns and lackluster vocals) i would have actually enjoyed them in a sunny day/slowdive kind of way. i was trying to at least bc, although they we 2nd out of 4 bands, they played the longest set. during the late bit of inter-song banter, the singer asked 'how many emo kids does it take to...' to which my very angry hardcore friend shouted 'at least four' and then called them 'james taylor-esque'. weird to be in a group that's heckling at your own show. poor form?

it's two am. i'm currently researching the creatures in attempt to know something for the five minutes of my siouxsie interview tomorrow -she's calling me! it seems so...normal. i wonder if someone dials the phone for her. in celebration, no, because i have to write about her three best albums, i bought three albums today - juju, kaledioscope, and hyaena - it will be a rare taste test this weekend.

am brainblind from the hood show. opener daniel someone or other, from the chix aesthetics label, sucked the grace of amplified sound from the very room with his neanderthal beats, uninspired melodies, dumb downtempo cliches. he introduced his set saying 'this is a conversation between word and sound.' sssschhuuuucccckkkkkk!

and he played for an hour. he read his lyrics off half-folded paper. he plugged his album at the front and end.

don't know why i thought seeing hood would be life-changing. chances are that when a band defines themselves by bedroom studio antics and lo-fi garish charm, they are going to pull off exactly that live. great. early mogwai washes with umm..phat beats jammed by the guy with cargos on, sideways facing drumkit played four-sticked with brushes and those fuzzy pom-pom sticks. the lead singer looks like my anal irish ex-room mate, i think it's the adam's apple. never trust people who bounce off their monitors. they took requests and mine was to leave before they could be swindled into an encore. haven't heard their new album, which is supposed to raise the cat's fur et al, but if that's the way it's going, i'll save my money for siouxsie.

also listened to st. thomas today - banjos are tricky, it's hard to not sound like the 'fields. lovely in parts.

watched two movies last night - the filth and the fury and nico icon - ahh, the music video nerd-out night. filth and the fury proved not as lousy as expected although splices of cheesy shakespeare films and embellished portraits of the late 70s england climate tainted the general truthfulness. enjoyed the bill grundy moments immensely - play by play with commentary after each uttered profanity. the whole thing seeks to paint malcolm mclaren as evil as possible, which he truly seems - like the runaways guy, only less perverse, more high-minded.

nico was strange - low budget post-fame gaze at a ruined starlet lost to her own self-inflated sense of mystery. damaging to think about that low, sultry voice meaning nothing to anyone in her whole, junked up and decidedly unglamourous life. ended with john cale at a grand piano in this warehouse playing the 'sail away' song from marble index, only his voice interpreting over living, strong as he ever is. that's my second fav. nico song, after one on chelsea girls unfortunately written and played by the young jackson browne, who was one of her lovers (lou reed, jackson browne, jim morrison, iggy).

plenty of people want to sing like nico, who wants to sing like bjork? who wants to be in a band that sounds like U2? is production more important than playing? reading this led zeppelin bio (hammer of the gods, recommended by one modest mouse), i am appalled by my own lack of ability to play - to really play, and think about the history even of rock music, and how punk changed it not so much because of sweet shortness, attitude or equipment, but rather in the idea that there had to be something behind, not ability but at least knowledge of the 'ol boys.

my band only knows eight songs and if you asked us to play a cover, we'd laugh you out of the crowd. that is of course, because my keyboardist can't hear a tune, let alone improvise over a chord structure. but ha! we have no chords, as we have only bass and keys, so....

am anxious to get home and spin 'gris gris' by dr. john, but have to see this band hurricane lamps first...

stole this book from work (actually, i'm going to pitch it to them so it's okay, right) about 'avant rock' with chapters dedicated to king crimson, jim o'rourke, sonic youth, glenn branca et al. strange sub-genre involved with the art/political reconfiguring of traditional idioms, cliches, for some hybrid expansive and meaningful but still gut wrenching experience. mostly decends into wankery, too many linear notes and fey attitudes towards volume (least abrasion be the point). interesting though the idea of transcending technique - thus defining it against 'art-damaged' punk like television. it's impossible to address this situation without looking into the psychology of the willfully outsider musician - namely, accuring enough cred to validate monsterous, dehumanizing pretension.

on that note, am listening to rye coalition and can't find one reason to hate the music - the dude's voice is awful - only the most superlative moments of steven tyler's screams. they have a song called 'stairway to the free bird on the way to the smokey water' which, though not clever, may be their perfect summary - nothing more than a conglomeration, again most outragous moments (ooh, the pickslide!) as common affair.

went to bed listening to 'the tired sounds of stars of the lid' which, after reading that toop book about ambient music, made a lot more sense to me. it finished only seconds after i closed my book and eyes for the night. love it when that happens.

tonight, tonight - saw panthers/the walkmen/the liars. panthers, hmm. whatever. the walkmen, as my dear blog reader(s) know, have been tickling my fancy for some time. they proved wholly mid-20s, not so witty onstage, frightfully self-assured from their BIG LONDON GIG only 30 hours earlier (it's amazing how that telegraph machine works, you can send messages anywhere! it only costs a buffalo nickel.) and generally didn't live up to their bonobravado (neologisms galore!) although at one point a heckler shouted "play Another strokes song" which really put them out. they'd been interviewed by fancy mtv mics in the dingy under room of merc. lounge before the show, 15 industry types were on the list for them. and the heckler called them on their shit. ta da! no dynamics, no passion, just dudes in button downs going through the motions. they covered a neil halstead song in poor taste.

then, there were the liars. recorded, i say they sound like p.i.l. which is no small thing. live, their wiry australian singer whose accent convientely gives them that british edge angled through the set with the lazy cockyness of a class clown. he's too tan, too blonde to be singing 'i'm soooo sick of fucking you...over' when all it looks like he does is the walkabout and the hula. did i just write that? anyway, their bass player, much like myself last weekend, has sat down with 'entertainment' a few times - only i learned it all on acoustic guitar (dude, check out my tattoo - the world's first flying acoustic guitar!) and was perhaps even more theft driven than, dare i say it, radio 4. aaron, the guitarist, he's great. but they are a cartoon, a void and worse than a void, a meaningless spectacle. yay de bord. triumph over content. and they're on mute, did a peel session, so on.

afterward, ran into a boy who's constantly trying to trick me into saying something condemning about the super cool things he likes. at halloween last year he told me low was the new joy division, now he's telling me the liars are the birthday party reincarnate. he's a beautiful looking boy, but he's quite stupid. so goes the other music fall out.

am interviewing siouxsie + the adverts in a few days. all nerves. punk rock, etc.

the new issue of spin is fucking hilarious. true to rumor - big, horrifically ugly photographs and two of my shinnier fingers high of text. about six record reviews. andy greenwald is the worst music journalist i've read in a long time, all his metaphors trip on each other's feet. you'd think only the strokes and dashboard confessional mattered in the world. which actually may be true, but pah!
richard hell - time - charming song called 'going going gone' which reminds me in title of that song on the reality bites soundtrack (discussion of 'so alternative' songs last night when 4 non-blondes came on the radio). in the midst of roir crappy tape hiss sounding live concerts, this song remarkably torch-like, simple and even a little countrified-Stones sounding. Hell has a great singing accent - part Dylan, part Jagger, with a sneer McLaren could never steal.
Guilty as charged - learned the Shin's "New Slang" on guitar (actually my room mate taught me). Rumors that the song sells fast food - that M2 has a video of it. Too sincere for success?
Magnetic Fields "69 Love Songs" this weekend at Lincoln Center - a glowing audience, very dinner theater. LD wore a smoking jacket, Stephin in his trademark mismatched stripes. He should never speak - only sing. His and Claudia's banter is like watching Harvard undergrads make eyes at one another in intro to philosophy - makes my stomach turn with its smug in-ness. Didn't know all the tracks - am warmed mostly when the strict 4/4 full-band is not in effect, when Claudia isn't singing (her voice is amateur at best, you'd think after 10 years of performing that she'd work on it). Actually, the most cloyingly fey, theatrical or crooning songs hit me most - even when the ever-debate over Merritt's ability to ever mean what he says reaches fever pitch. The near-betrayal is the most heart-breaking.
Has kicked me, unsurprisingly, into a wave of lyric writing. Probably enough material for half the record I've been writing since I got my acoustic back - with my jazzboy room mate showing me the ropes, i'm ruling all over the guitar these days. or not.
am bummed to hear that black cat music, a band i reviewed quite favorably, was terrible live this past friday. borderline couldn't even pull off their songs. who tours at that level of terrible?

didn't watch the grammy's last night, which bums me out a bit, but read neil strauss's not so interesting round-up of the gig - fucking 'o brother' won a ton - signifying to me that Time Out NY's "why music sucks," while mistaking the cause, may have put a name to the disease. it's not that music sucks, really, it's that it isn't growing as it has - the lull is mindnumbing, but the lull is natural. so many people i know don't even listen to new music anymore, just back cataloging their neil young records and waiting 15 years for this shit to sort itself out - Weird to think of people 'discovering' Wilco in 20 years, like, where was I when this was happening? to which they would say of course, Yes, where were you indeed?

Blah blah, the music industry has filed an anti- RAC group called California Music Coalition, backed by the sinister owner of international labels at Ark21 + various luxury industries and manufacturers. Criticism is duly noted, but it's fucked to think that this whole thing is going to boil down to legislation when it should be equally focused on artist coalition, petitioning their own labels for things, becoming truly human in their reflection on the industry as a whole. People like Courtney Love, whose dispicable treatment of the Cobain legacy gives me chills, only discredit the RAC in the eyes of true music fans, musicians, etc. Heinous and bloated self-interest prevails regardless. Am interested in finding out about Just Plain Folks.

Other things - have been listening to Philly band aspera, whose Walkmen-esque textures on the cheap are sort of seductive, though their e.p. sadly deteriorates as each song goes by. have to give back my ex-friend's copy of common's 'like water for chocolate' which has the best, deceptively simple drum pattern across the first three tracks. since the horrible 'scratch' documentary i saw a couple weeks ago, i've been paying more attention to breaks and the lack of them in most modern, non-hip-hip music. in an article in this weeks' village voice, sf jones cynically talks about the early 80s music scene 'imagine a time when different races joined one another on stage and in the audience, where people in that audience danced,' etc. the article is stodgy old-people talk, but the complaint rises. why is only retro-fitted dance music (but not soul, never that) the only acceptable form in the indie scene.

so desperate to listen to music at work i plugged in to insound's online stream of crap - actually liked the cave-in track, which isn't surprising to me as i've liked some of their stuff bfr. also, the neil halstead track is quite lovely though i didn't really like mohave 3 (blasphemy!) and was distrusting this output - there is a wierd, scquelching moment of complete randomness at the end of the track - very unprofessional and wrong sounding - i wonder what would possess him to leave it in.
not much else on my mind. was thinking of signing up to pressplay.com for the two week trial just to fuck around with it and see if it even works - i can't believe they want $30 dollars a month to be able to burn 20 tracks, download something stupid like 300 - who even has that much space on their computer? it's so stupid, and of course artists are complaining that after all their initial fuss about napster not paying them that now all these label-led content-on-demand sites are FUCKING THEM OVER EVEN MORE! and new artists are not even able to negotiate the rights to any of that money, whatever pathetic amount it is. the whole thing just reeks of old people misunderstanding/fearing technology, people hungry for money without understanding, people so afraid of an open market that they'll try to destroy any open content format that would give The Shins equal treatment with Britney. good article about it by neil strauss in the nytimes 2/18/02.
also, on a semi-music/corporate evilness related note - bust is back up! just bought a sub and hope to pitch them some stories.

been gone...and back, as it were. mardi gras day in new orleans have 'mardi gras mambo' in my head more than anything else. god damn it! host suggests i write 'tourist songs' for new york city - as if anything beyond 'ny, ny' could summarize the shattered ideals of that place better. hmm. i guess i could write tourist songs for brooklyn, since it seems only hip hop celebrates the boro.
met this crazy guy who knows tons about music - the type of person who targets his own ideas to the conversation bc he can talk on any subject, totally without pretension. realizing how valuable nerding out abt music is in other cities, why people use the internet more outside of nyc to figure out what's going on in the world of sound. the catch 22. anyway, he was a great guy and lent me david toop's book on ambient sound, which i will read dutifully as a former wire mag nerd.
the guy i'm staying with is a big jpop fan, almost listens to it exclusively when not in the back-catalog of goth/ambient stuff...very strange to think of latter genre as something all-encompassing..it seems rather flat to me, so disgustingly optimistic and naive...which is why i can't stand most indie-pop either, because it emulates this with that moment of bittersweet added as if to make it real. realizing how adult my reactions are to music now. did like mia doi todd however - a strange blend of cat power and nico filtered through non-western sensibilities. might have to pick some up if it isn't impossible. apparently on the other music kids' top tens for 01. fantastic.o.
just rereading and realize 'adult' in context sounds like a snub - which it isn't - only that i feel that i'm coming into my own adult reactions to music, added with the fact that i just finished 'mystery train' by marcus, my first read by him...and it continues to freak me out how much i 'don't listen' to music. how much more is always there, how much more thought can be done about it. marcus is a cock-sure dinosaur but it's interesting for me to see the ideas of such mainstream idols -elvis, robert johnson- exploded and laid bare, contextualized in a way that i might be able to do with a semester of cultural studies class devoted to each artist, a lot of money for back-catalog, some good wine and free time - things i simply do not have...
blah blah blah - who will be the people exemplifying our times? who the critics write about 30 years from now, the canon, as it were? hard to say, with media pluralism...some are obvious -radiohead, pavement (man, my brain's fried as this is all i can think right now), but who knows what history will pick up on? if in 20 years people will look back on matador or morr music or interscope the way people look at factory....nah..won't happen.
what else? parade bands - again, the maybe racist but entirely truthful statement that white marching bands just don't get it - that nola's black inner city bands always steal the show, that the all-girl marching bands blew me away (with all those talented high school girls, why aren't there all-girl rock/jazz bands in the south? why?) and the precarious and strange situation of a dance-troupe parading to that blur song -Who hoo! from their "we love America" album...among the dozens of others who just copy the 'bring it on' sentiments with c+c music factory et al. why are dancers so fucking cheesy? it's a tragedy. not that many tits or even costumes this year as lame patriotism invaded the country's only true debaucerous family-fun festival.
blah blah - i'm still trying to figure out what zydeco music is, that is my goal while i'm here.

ohmygodiwassowrong - former jonathan fire*eater hipster cuties the walkmen are ruling my world - 'we're been had' is the most charming, post-radiohead/neptunes music box self-deprication i've ever heard. 'sometimes i'm just happy i'm older - somehow it got easier to laugh out loud.'

'see me at age 19, with some dumb haircut from 1960, moving to new york city/ live with my friends - they're taking the same steps, we're foolish'

ya sure, he's the perfect blend of the strokes' guy and bono (is that perfect? is that my hell?) but somehow it elicits empathy in spite of the fact that i'm sure the lead singer of this band gets laid on command.

also, the abcs, the worst thing troubleman has put out since i've known the kids - pointless, reich-esque illustrations of how minimalist composition, much like punk, can go awry in the hands of the uninspired. plus...horns? gag. i'm only getting comfortable with the fact that rock music orginated with the sax, let alone the fact that it's still relevant.

DJed last night and managed to overcome my lack-of-transition lag...almost everyone in the bar (all tremendous 20 of them) came up to me at some point to say they liked what was going on - played the rad $1 records i bought on the street in lew of lunch yesterday - elvis costello, the tubes, psychedelic furs, heaven 17, and the go-gos (which sounds infinitely better slowed down a bit), along with a synthy set including my new favorite song ever, the tom tom club's 'genius of love.' i hadn't realized i had two copies of it on me and when some boy asked me what it was, then remarked how much he liked the song, i gave him one. random act of kindness. i told him that whenever he spins it he has to make people either make out or dance...

have listened to nothing of value this weekend - went to see metalux/rah bras and was annoyed beyond belief at the pretentious pointlessness of those two awful girls + dirty hippie kid of metalux. low, dull thuds and piercing formless synth. why bother? rah bras ruled in a pre-recorded, super richmond badass sex bomb kind of way. everyone in the band sings well, the really put soul into the music and although it has industrial-lite inklings, i full endorse it.

totally got in THE WORST mood ever tonite listening to two guys bro down about their fucking record collections while stumbling drunkenly through queens. how sick and stupid is a life defined by ancedotes gained from listening to/buying records? baseball cards, purely baseball cards to me. the rareness/exclusivity of the LP format makes me ill, although i do buy vinyl i am not a collector, and the plurality and democracy of internet music listening makes all of it beyond irrelivant - something the asshole wfmu east coast snobs can never really get down with - in the real world, the pathetic hording of precious pressed fossil fuels is now not even a sign of higher taste, just snotty insider cave thinking. ya, cool dude, let's throw on some flipper.

listening to peng - stereolab, revelling in the utter mid-90sness of mental dispair.

formulating what i want my solo/covers project to sound like :::

stereolab - peng 'super falling star'
nico - chelsea girls
young marble giants - collossal youth
the orb - orbus terrarum - that incredible string track
smashing pumpkins - gish - rhinoceros/suffer

and thinking about songs that are sonically built on lyrical quirks/conceptions - self-referential but also providing a sound argument (ouch!) for the lyrical content -
buzzcocks - noise annoys
spiritualized - 200 bars

top songs to put on a break up mix tape to make the other person feel like a huge dickhead.

1. all i really want to do - bob dylan
2. beautiful mind - the verve
3. broken heart - spiritualized

on unrelated note, smarmy room mate published his jackass photo on www.makeoutclub.com today, entering the sea of pathetic emo boys looking for a blow job from the internet. i wrote his bio (ha, just like AMG bios i write of pathetic emo boys looking for a blow job from the audience) and was credited as 'lacrimose' which is a word that'd never passed my lips til that moment. be my thesaurus, indeed.

came home from work and my stereo was playing songs:ohia's 'ghost tropic.' i must have accidentally set the alarm long ago, because i think it goes off around seven p.m. every nite, usually to the radio in this eerie, untuned crackle of voices. today is was as if i had some utopian future home, or like my bio-smart co-intern would say, a smart house run by monitoring a microchip in my skin which measures blood sugar levels, heart-rate or the humors - my infinite sea of black bile requires this album precisely as i enter the home! (lament!)
the serbian book has made several references to 'blistering indie rock' in the 30 odd pages i've read. c'mon man. he's also the guy who wrote that history of rave culture, generation esctacy or whatever. gawd. the sentences are too short for me, the politics too senimental. he obviously does not know about or really care for the music of which he writes. uses it as a platform for which to play out the 'drama of youth against oppression.'
reminds me of a really horrific book i opened today in my role as literary intern - on music from montemarte to the mudd club, or how popular music gained cultural integrity over 100 years. written by some sociology prof. in some no name school. total fucking blather. it's how i feel about kids who take ballet lessons, or violin lessons or work extra hard at math - at some point someone should straight up tell you, 'look kid, you are never going to be a genius at this and if you really love it, go ahead, but you might just end up sucking at it forever.' more than half of my friends really need that talk soon and no one has ever given that guy the talk.
am now listening to 'don't think twice, it's all right' as part of my continued melancholic week. always return to the classics in times of crisis, i guess. can't listen to anything that smacks too much of artifice...
also, room mate spinning the chamber brothers, who seem to be everywhere around me these days. weird stuff, sort of soul, psych, a little too straighforward or not straightforward enough, depending.

laid in bed in a funk tonite listening to the new lambchop album, sounds like a depressed meatloaf with neil young on guitar. apparent humor in the statement 'lambchop sounds like meatloaf.' not in a laughing mood. also, the singer from the swedish band 'club 8''s solo record, pretty good (wish i had listened to it bfr the indie pop comp, oh well, i'll have another chance) - a few radiohead meets her space elliot smith very 'now' jams, the first one catching me with offhand 'you don't need to tell me i don't need you anymore' lyrics.

finished the spitz book and on to a nation book about punk radio stations in bosnia - looks really good and helpful to my czech music/culture book. i worry that the gleam of the cz is so far gone that a mere mention to publishers will be laughed at. gotta kick up research and context, why it is so important now?

finishing the epic spiritualized article, seven pages in quotes and framing...can't wait to turn it in and have the editor shit that it isn't a slapped up q and a. i flutuate btwn the jason pierce love and hate, mostly bc my interview with the old bassist sean cook revealed the other side of the story, one i'd never bothered with. of course, they were fired in 99, the midst of the great disappearance. not much on the minds. funny how that works, how people forget about bands who take more than eight months between records and then suddenly "Oh ya!" there's this weird hype surrounded by dread that it will be reguritation or worse, some dolled-up tacky crap canning sounds of the top o the college charts. that's why bands like radiohead (ha ha and the pumpkins) were smart in recording way too much in the studio, using the offtracks or wacked out, late night stuff for an audience already primed - amazing to think of the band as so much business that you record what you've had, and in studio write where you want to go - for the pacifier. projecting.

"all those animals on the extinction list - they obviously didn't deserve to make it."

ahh, the decline of western civilization one. coupled with spitz's 'we got the neutron bomb' giving me the l.a. take. hard to believe darby crash thought he was a revolutionary during the same year gang of four put out their best work. the nyc spark carried to england, carried through media to the west coast - both the birth and the realization moved on, the copy continued on. all that i think of as crappy, nihilistic and unartful in punk originates in these hollywood babies - without context, senseless and squat. strange to me that i know someone who got a black flag tattoo on their 23rd birthday.

listening to mars, another cd burned for me by my friend of infinite good taste. psychedelic post punk. if i could have a visual of that factory beat - the canned, reverby garbage behind all that stuff - that's what i'd get a tattoo of. maybe this is the unknown pleasure jd cover? dunno.

'tired of waiting' a beautiful, non-blues kinks song. one of the best of all time?

eric burdon is one of the best singers of all time - the animals singularly informed my freshman year of college, linking me to my parents who played 'we gotta get out of this place' out their dorm room windows in the late '60s. always so deperate, so strained and i simply couldn't imagine them giving a lackluster show.

thinking of doing a covers project - just me reinterpreting things like 'noise annoys' by the buzzcocks and doing some lame wanna be nico style stuff. i'm pulled both ways - wanting to be badass and demure in my vocals. oh, the life.

i can't possible think of a more annoying thing than a mainstream revival of rockabilly. that said, the world needs more of the cramps.

done with my first mix cd -i'm pretty disappointed with it bc my songs were so long and therefore not many on the cd - astro-brite, cornelius, june panic, the mountain goats, amanset, pram, felix the housecat, and the annoying electro re-interpretations of the strokes 'the diff'rent strokes.' this girl is going to freak out cause it's all shameless cheesy electonic pop music. arrgh.

last nite jim and jenny at pete's candy story - one time great bluegrass band weighed down to tutorial style performance by godforesaken 'brother where art...' yuppie scum crowd. more attention to spiritually oriented songs and less enthusiam. i guess i'm used to going with my drunken, caterwauling friends who'd scream requests halfway through each song. probably not going to see them again.

am burning my first mix cd for the indie pop list. makes me feel incredibly old. the girl who sent me one made the most lovely little package, all the music really just fits in the waxy beige envelope. now i'm forced to realize people really listen to masters of the hemisphere and things like that - that given a mix of it, i may enjoy it myself. i like the idea of mixtapes from strangers although it is a bit frightening. i am sending a bit of my diary out to another home, another stereo, two ears that love sound as much as i do.

what else? just reviewed black cat music -super west coast doors blues drunk grain alcohol goodness - on Lookout!?! but so much more ballsy, badass though slightly over sincere. weird, 80s metal production and this great background double-tracking of the gruff lead singer ala Richard Ashcroft in the Verve. very decent.

also, Pram's "Gash." severly underlooked band? very subtle, like Hood, vaguely retro psych leanings - interesting that AMG calls them an electronic band. hmm. their singer's voice is a little thin, unlike the lushness they try to cop from MBV, rather sucessfully. a friend of mine sent me a burn of it - he is a Pram freak, which seems a bit impossible.

finally - thinking about "We've Got the Neutron Bomb" the Spin editor Spitz's reactionary take on LA punk...all of that era now etched in snappy pull quotes? was 'please kill me' the singular expression because it was so nihilistic and childish? the more i read abt the LA scene, all the name-giving and worship of the English sound, the more I think it was a huge shame. One good thing that came out of it - the Screamers. bought their demos 78-79 record today and it just rules. must incorporate the abrasive keyboards into our little stage set up.

played my first show in a year last night - very strange. probably over 100 people, most of whom i half-knew. after five years in nyc that's still a big deal. adrenaline rush like i haven't had in a while, my hands powerful but not my own - the songs playing themselves. during 'insignificant other' i had a mysterious loss of power in my legs, i had to keep changing rock stances just not to fall. i wasn't nervous so much as unsure - i didn't really care one way or the other if people liked us, i just didn't really want to hear about it. in previous bands i'd be really excited if people came up and complimented us, especially if it involved my singing, because it gave me confidence - but now i feel just as critical as those in the audience, know what they'll say and am annoyed at the paternal sentiment expressed therein 'i just think you really need an honest critique.' really? i just think we need to write better songs. ha ha. a rock critic with no time for her critics.
played with the boxes, an all girl hard rock type band with a man killer on lead. very straightforward structures and either a following or massive, drunken groupies.

sucks that the second i quit my paying job i become interested in music again and just want to buy things...great czech bands - lvmen, here, and iva bittova...the more hardcore i listen to, the more i get into bands like lvmen - dark and brooding rock songs with endless energy. damn me for getting into angel hair so late in life. www.tamizdat.org...

thinking about liquid liquid...cavern has to be one of the best, underappreciated dance songs. why do all artists either turn to attempting great dance songs or attempt to write sincere love songs? can't imagine being an industry 'song-writer' living in stockholm, conjuring up teenage sentiments in convienient end rhyme. i really feel like both creating those things and spending too much time listening to them is detrimental to my facilities as an intelligent adult. it's corrupting.
regardless, dance music. ha ha, paula adbul must have the worst non-video camera presence ever, but seriously the stuff of modern one-hit wonders? no, that dance music has always had its own seperate, always undervalued sub-genres written off as that of simpletons because it allows people to toss their feet down and hands up - from jazz to two-step and trance...but electronic has obscurist tendencies, like indie music, and tends to be forward looking at a cost. too many people, conversely, just want to be aphex twin, even james himself.

man, billboard magazine really is for industry choads. this isn't surprising so much for readership but in that they actually hype the revival of cracker as interesting and vital. publishing companies take out full page spreads thanking destiny's child for staying quiet and subservient enough to be the most uninteresting, toppest selling artists of the year. again. no wonder millions of dollars are wasted on redundant and unimportant crap.
thus said, starsailor. ha ha ha. who doesn't understand this to be 1)storm in heaven era Verve with those undeniable Beta Band beats (how bad are the BB? watching High Fidelity the other day I remember how silly that whole thing was, and i went for it whole heartedly) and 2)completely revisionist brit pop agitation. 3) the collective conspiracy of the drone on and blisscent mailing lists. the organ is overstated and reminds me for some reason of that Jacob Dylan headlight song. This is not a good thing.

blessed streaming media - keeps me feeling like i know what's going on if not in the world than at least in the minds of epitonic, insound, and other. suspiciously not recieving other music updates these days. conspiracy theories abound. have decided among my constantly piling new year's resolutions (i've kept them all thus far!) that i will include the final, conclusive study of distopian literature and film. it's a bit regressive but fitting of these rather dark times. am about to interview this guy who runs a club in atlanta for a mag. crazy that i don't really know anything about lighting/sound tech but am totally fascinated by this culture. smart lights. wall textures. infinite possibilities of patterns. clubs are more innovative than art galleries.

brian eno. 'a year with swollen appendices' making me question when one starts practicing and just does. is the mark of a true master that of alleviated self-doubt? total confidence...there's a difference truly between that and ego. he's a genius not just for music but in total living. collaboration is a by-gone idea in high art? save for commercial hip hop albums? ludacris is a jingle merchant. i love him still.
other things...the shins. are they senimental drivel? 'when you notice the stripes' is fantastic with it's slow decending '40s style female vocals. if it weren't for the fact that i hate the word 'haunting,' i'd call it that.