clive davis dept. of recorded music

also, just found out about the clive davis department of recorded music at nyu. looks pretty new, but nelson george teaches there -curses for being at nyu too early. from oliver's blog i found this forum on the impact of hip hop journalism happening this tuesday. be there?

jitterbug parlance

just got back from a party where we watched "it's a great pumpkin, charlie brown," and you know, that snoopy as WWI flying ace sequence still weirds me out. there's so much space, slow pacing, in that cartoon, and the jokes are positively two-dimensional. it was actually sort of painful, like going back to read something you wrote five years ago. i'm still waiting for someone to sit in the pumpkin patch with me though - i believe!

saw dig! with some of the girl groupers after our totally amazing fall 04 meeting (at the city bakery, good times). courtney taylor (from the dandy warhols) narrates what becomes sort of a ridiculous, super rock-ist fetishization of his friend anton newcombe (brian jonestown massacre)'s madness. newcombe's messed up, violent, drug-addled garbage is not hidden from the camera and after watching about 30 minutes of his kicking fan's heads, screaming at girlfriends and harassing bandmembers, i was both annoyed that anyone would allow him to continue treating him that way (classic abuse - no one wanted to leave because they all believed he was a genius) and glad to have the evidence on hand so that anyone who really wanted to glorify the band in the future would have to contend with newcombe's fucked up behavior. still, the whole thing was so 'the last REAL rock band left on earth,' which is just b.o.r.i.n.g. to me. the david lachapelle video shots for the dandys were hilarious, as was courtney's sort of effusive descriptions of how awesome and well-adjusted his band was. afterwards, caryn talked about how all the cool bands in portland hated the dandys, but how they all now admit that they wished their projects had been successful like the dandys had been.

in other news, the arts section of the times today was totally gay, including this Tommasini review of ""The Queer Composition of America's Sound: Gay Modernists, American Music and National Identity." Notice how Tommasini refuses to contribute any praise or damnation about the scholarship of this book, although his mention of 70 pages of footnotes (musicologists are the antithesis of critics, they can and do back up EVERYTHING they say with actual research and evidence. imagine! how awful that would be! for rock!). He seems to pussyfoot around the idea of compositional methods having gender associations (while i'm sure danny tenaglia's ears are just tuned for such things) and ends with this circular argument (extra-textual, a whole world of boing argument in musicology that totally ignores reception history/theory):

"Ultimately, what we may most value about music is that it moves us in powerful but indistinct ways. It's the one thing that cannot be analyzed or deconstructed for its expressive content, and thank goodness for that."

Brahahahaha. Who's we? What's value? (what's music, har har) and why's he so thankful?

jandek appears live, seas of willfully obscure psych folkers ask, "why go on?"

the illusive jandek has crawled into the light, prompting me to think of a half-dozen onion style headlines about how syd barrett, roky erickson, linda perhecs and a long, strong lineage of 'authentically mad' or obscure artists will be giving autographs at walmart.

from the Jandek supa-fan website:
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It is now confirmed that Jandek played a live set at the Instal.04 festival in Glasgow on October 17. He sang and played guitar, joined by Richard Youngs on bass and Alexander Neilson on drums. The performance was not publicized beforehand or even identified as it happened, so many of the people in the room didn’t know until later whom they had seen and heard.
-

we don't play guitars

man, am jamming to the new chicks on speed, which has this crazy Blectum From Blechdom 'fuck our fabulousness, we're too damn weird' vibe. "Sell Out" is like some precocious post-Naomi Klein anti-shopping mantra and "Wordy Rappinghood" is everything that I wish Northern State were (namely, in love with language, silly, brilliant and willfully girlie) and "We don't play guitars" is so anthem to my inner 15 year old. There's this weird Peaches breakdown where she's like "I play the guitar...and I love it" and sweeeels into a shreddy little solo - i love/hate it, reminds me of her let-down with Iggy on her scary bearded lady album, FF. Peaches delivery just sucks, but I think she works it. I mean, she can barely spell her name out on the track - isn't that covered in the first week of sing-speech lyric stylistics 101?

In other news, I successfully got a new tire on my bottle shredded gas beast. Being self-reliant in traditionally male ways is kinda awesome.

Speaking of which, here's a little thing about writing electronic music criticism if one were so inclined into that form of retrofuture.

this vv le tigre piece is confusing to me. How is this criticism? It seems like a blog post, especially the line about Saved By the Bell. This album is on Universal, where has LT justified the decision? Please inform me. On the DUH and JD will kick your ass tip:

"Women in rock are sometimes so preoccupied with being taken seriously that they try to excise any stereotypically girlish traits, but in Le Tigre, there's even something girlish about the dulcet alto of JD, a self-proclaimed butch dyke with a mustache."

uptown kim's, downtown other and hearing the retrofuture of the near past

so I'm listening to Eardrum's 1999 album "Last Night" and i just can't think anything about it but 'man, i know i heard this in other music in 1999' and i'm not just saying that cause the dude who gave me the album has the OM connection, but really, it's the spatial, the skitterstepping, the musique concrete over shifty beats that so characterises the vanguard of this time, like having a post-rock sensibility but being more in conversation with the types of things going on in the idm/underground hip hop world. hrmrm.

that said, I HATE the Morningstide Heights Kim's for the following reasons:

1) it's small
2) there's a ton of space dedicated to DVDs and books, but really not too much space for new albums
3) the dudes who work there don't know very much about music and don't ever want to leave their kiosk perch, which
4) is really lame, like, why did they build it soo tall that you have to step up on a little step just to see the freakin clerk? duh, handicap accessibility and the general melodrama of standing eight feet in the air when you just want to get yr new blood brothers album for 10 dollars and zoom out
5) the replication their dumb filing system uptown (which i understand bc of the whole chain continuity thing) for a store serving a vastly different population and with radically understocked shelves of the so called 'best of' of mainstream music and cherrypicked alternatives. if you're going to have an 'electronic music' section, you know, and be proud of it, you should have more than 200 albums in stock. no?

and while i'm on the subject of 'so 1999', the leaf label is my new nominee for worse website for best label. all flash websites bore my brain and overtax my laptop - what do i want? information!

Here's my review of the Lenka Dusilova and Alvik show.

takin' my country back

gretchen wilson, big & rich and now honky tonkers for truth, whose "Takin' My Country Back," includes the amazing lines, "You took our jobs and sent 'em overseas/Now we owe billions to the red Chinese/You blew the budget and you bothed Iraq/and now i'm..."

which is supported by the music row democrats.

now that you've made me want to die...

can someone give me rational reason why every righteous post-Gravity hardcore boy hates the Blood Brothers? Is it because Jordan and Johnny don't play instruments (take their shirts off, are generally conventially attractive), because Ross Robinson produced them, because they have snaky, lame swing parts in the middle of their trash onslaught (which is why they are like so much better than most fake hardcore bands anyway, com'on VSS) or for some subtle, discerning man's thing that I can't possibly get bc I don't wear undersized black t-shirts every day?

I see Mr. Caramanica has left no stone unturned, now seeing pink in the NY Times style section.

CMJ = one day, mad dash back to Ohio for some family stuff. Saw Windsor for the Derby at the fishy Coral Room (bad sound, bad idea for a venue for 'thinking people's indie rock' of Secretly Canadian), Richard Buckner at the Merc, which was fabulous if a bit stilted (that's the way, no?), and USE at Piano's, where they of course rose above the shit system and rocked the house, with SO MANY seattle people in the audience, pumping fists, girlfriends and boyfriends holding hands and jumping up and down together - ecstatic! I love them, not in the least bc of lust for life frontman Noah.

And that is all - came back from the airport only to drive my car into a huge chunk of glass. Some kids standing nearby asked 'got a flat lady, so sorry' and when i pulled the chunk of glass out, i noticed it was standing straight up, the bottom covered in tar. Coincidence? A curse, perhaps.

while experiencing this uniquely fascinating work the amazed listener is witnessing a musical terraforming

said the press release for the new Ricardo Villalobos triple EP. the other side contains melty prose from my favorite critic bois of microhouse - how could this thing go wrong? curious warping mindnumbing (ir)regularity, snapping why-is-it-so-pert bass (like you snap the string when you meant to be smoooth, bass players, dig?), trippy guitars emulating harp patterns, sprinked chance of strings repeated as technique (god that opener, "hireklon").

on my desk right now: chocolate bar, pile of Christina CDs, the book 'griffin & sabin' which someone said 'don't read it' because i'm making a little creative writing postcard project (lemme know if you want one, i'll make you one if you send me a love letter), my crapped out first generation ibook (negative value), ipod, tea cup.

had a visit from my roommate from providence, which was lovely and life affirming. we sat in my bed and talked almost all day. who does this anymore? good times. next week she's coming back so that we can make a zine celebrating regional foods. hit me if you've got a delightful dish i wouldn't know - time is running out!

am going to CMJ MUSIC MARATHON/DEATH MARCH (title lifted from C. Brooks, who used the term to describe our hellish IKEA trip last week. Lindenberries be damned, I shall never buy legs seperately again!)

file under: i'm x-ing out my mom's homophobic vote

file under: i'm x-ing out my mom's homophobic vote, originally uploaded by pinkgerl.

well, here it is...there has been a creeping reactionary/republican sentiment in my mom's voice about this election, and yesterday when I called her to ask her opinions on local tax levy measures and such (my hometown is one of the most corrupt, mafia intense, poverty stricken places one could ever hope to live, and so sometimes the 'issues' don't matter as much as getting the money launderers out) and she said, "just don't vote for any liberals." this is a woman who got a degree in sociology and worked with poor families in Chicago during the late 1960s. i don't need thomas frank to tell me about how conservatives stole the heart of the midwest, i need him to tell me how to win that heart to the body in which it belongs.

they fought so that we could have a two-party system

they fought so that we could have a two-party system, originally uploaded by pinkgerl.

got my ohio absentee ballot yesterday - isn't it exciting that the Secretary of State in Ohio has decided to avoid all that 2000 controversy by just THROWING OUT any ballots for Nader!

less pale and less male

this piece uses the criticism that the Nation should be 'less pale and less male," which is funny as a former intern who used to rail against the harvard poly sci mafia that runs the place. i know that by even writing this, i am going to make dw come out of hiding to defend the alma mater - just saying. que up james brown, 'this is a man's world...'

sad dick cheney, right? can't believe edwards 'went there' with the gay daughter thing, but i think he had it comin' with the credibility attacks. still, it was embarrassing to watch. the whole thing reminds me of the trails that you read about in russia where, if you keep someone talking long enough, they will either contradict themselves or confess something. also, the debate tv format reminds me off the brady bunch opening credits, which makes it difficult to take seriously.

i'm late on it but so into the snow patrol album. "spitting games" is everything i like about the new pornographers - tight power pop songs with monster hooks and just big choruses - mixed with not just your early '90s shoegazer guitar sound. so good it should sell hybrid cars.

and finally, heard that le tigre dfa remix in magnetic field (brooklyn heights, not the les) tonight and really, i dislike k. hanna's vocal technique immensely. it hinders my otherwise liking the band, if there is a band beyond k.h. this is where i confess that i never liked bikini kill either. in other news, Madeleine Albright said "there is a special place in hell for women who don't help each other," today in the prestigious Columbia Spectator newspaper. I wonder if that means me about Scream Club. I hope the former secretary of state wouldn't be trying to meddle in my affairs. there is also a special place in hell for people like that, and if hell has a fire code, that room might be at capacity. (my convoluted beer coozie sentiment).

guidos replace mullet heads as new non-ironic ny element

nj guido.com gives those who steal nj working class fashion for their fabu pleasure a whole new realm of confusing and sincere ideas to adapt. cause some people just can't get enough of smooching their heads together for red-eyed prom photos.

there is no music itself

this is a boring blog entry related to what i study:

argh blargh, got into a dumb conversation with the musicologists today about 'the work' and 'the music itself.' someone in class asked, 'i'm confused and maybe i don't understand ethnomusicology very well, but do you guys listen to music for its pure aesthetic value' and what she meant was either the less harmless and maybe true 'does your field consider musical sound as its grounding principal' or the less benign but real question 'do you guys even listen to the music' or worst of the possible, 'how could you listen to that music and think of it as a discrete experience?' which i don't think she was asking, but other people ask that and while i would argue that popular music is important because it can make reference to things (other music, culture, politics, etc) it can also stand as 'a work' if that were something that we or anyone would ask of it. is it useful even to consider any music as a closed entity, with no author and no listener? maybe from a musicianship/teaching perspective.

anyway, i do think that there is a big problem in my field with not listening - not talking about listening and not actually listening, but i am also sure that the basis in anthro-derived methodology is absolutely needed in my work/thoughts about music and that the disconnect between critical/engaged/communal listening in an academic setting might have something to do with the fact that, as ethnomusicologists, many fear making judgements all together, or seem to be paralysed when asked to make on the fly comments about something that is 'outside of their interests.' this is, of course, the total opposite of music criticism where opinions might come out even before listening (like ethno, sort of, based on exterior elements, only not culture in general but industry/hype/pr culture) or without context or real, deep listening. where is the best place to be with listening? writing and thinking while the music is 'still fresh' or long after it has become 'a part' of the listener's brain?

well, whatever.

if there is one thing that i really believe that was passed to me by the dudes at brown u., it was that there is 'no music itself.' there is sound itself, but the study of that sound is science.

the sound of science, the science of sound, the science of the mind, mary timony, ash bowie, math rock, roads to space travel, baltimore, the aquarium, the sound of the sea otter tank, phillip glass, lincoln center, damrosch park, the freaky french circus people, the organgrinder, fritz lang's 'm', die kindermurder!, childlike, joanna newsom, fairies, tori, piglets, eeyore, tales of loss, songs of love and hate, famous blue raincoats, epistilary romances

march in place, vote for change

after an exhausing exit/return from philly, i am here to report about the Bruce/Stipe/Fogerty/Conor(?) version of the vote for change concert series, which got a decent sized NY Times piece by Pareles, excerpt here, cause Caryn Brooks turned me on to the Chicks:

The Dixie Chicks, who started their part of the tour in Pittsburgh, faced radio-station boycotts and a talk-show furor last year after their lead singer, Natalie Maines, disparaged President Bush onstage.

We have nothing to lose at this point, so any sort of fear or inhibition is out the window,'' Ms. Maines said by telephone this week. "We definitely want a regime change, and now that we're getting down to the wire I'm even less afraid to speak out. I just think things are absolutely life or death right now.''

We sort of weeded out the people who apparently didn't know who we were, though we never felt like we were trying to hide what we thought,'' she added. "Free speech is not free: we paid dearly. But we're more determined and stronger now. And from this point on, what fans we have will be our true fans.''

Missed Bright Eyes but heard some of the big lookin Bruce fans mumbling about his performance on the way out - indeed, when the patriotic Patti Smith cover secion of the performance came on - we are the world becomes because the night - Conor choked at his turn on the mic, then going for a second turn with Michael Stipe knocking the rythmn out on his back as he crooned (the beauty of seats on the side, bands are best in profile?).

It was my first REM and Bruce concert, and indeed the first time I'd been in a stadium in a good long while. The audience was overwhelmingly nice, covered in clever anti-Bush slogans, older and less ethnically mixed than I am used to for seeing shows, and between every song for both REM and Bruce, a loud hum of "bbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrruuuuuuuuuuuuu" came from the crowd - the problem with having an everyman's name is that it can't be chanted. Bruce fans. Narrative singer/songwriter parking lot in full effect. REM were overt - Stipe engaging the audience directly, dressed in all white, his eyes sad as always but his body dancing to every song. Snips of the things you would hear were sprinkled in, but not too heavily...these are performers, and perhaps Bruce knows how to build an audience to its fever pitch best; i realized that most of his songs must be crafted, at least the more uptempo ones, with the idea of the cathartic audience experience somewhere in his mind - fists in the air, they are one as the lights in the stadium go dental office bright and you see every mouth open, singing. See Dan Cavicchi as usual. So many people on stage, so many guitars blending into that epic chorus sound where the nasal whine rides - his voice is really beautiful and musical, something I just hadn't appreciated until last night, the whispers, the switch, like a pedal, into the earnest, rough and powerful rocker. The only painful part was maybe in the middle of "Mary's Place" where he broke down into this gospel call out to the audience, saving the soul of a Bush voter (Jon Landau, no less) by giving him the will to change. My god, it was like at U2 show or something ("Vertigo" umm. Adam Clayton, Peter Hook called and wants his bassline back...).

Anyway, I can't tell if it felt slightly brainwashing and weird because it was a political rally or because it was Bruce Springsteen arena show. In the finale, Bruce asked his legions to mobilize, to do something to help for this 'change' and mentioned thinking "Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards as being the best men for the job" while Stipe, ever the iron-on sloganier, wore his support on a t-shirt. Oppurtunists in Darth Vader costumes sold "start wars" t-shirts in the parking lots (and nitrious balloons) and everyone got in their SUVs, that they had paid $10 to park) and went home. Maybe this sounds cynical, and it isn't entirely, but I do wonder if the preaching from on high celebrity cause in the 11th hour stuff isn't a little Janus-faced. Shouldn't we, the audience and voters, have always been critical? Don't we already share some sentiments with REM and Bruce, and thus we love them and would be there regardless? Is this doing anything more than boostering the good feelings of celebs and the passive reception of an audience bathed in their good deeds? What happens after the election, are they Kerry's friends then?

Certainly, if so, then Kerry will need to look at the shitload of anti-artist, pro-IP goonies wheeling and dealing the Senate these days. What will he do when the chickens come home to roost? Does Kerry owe these artists anything?

And what if Kerry looses, will Bush banish the Boss? And if he did, could we impeach him?