so busy. can't even think! here are the citations added to my introduction to my thesis today. you know life is weird when you cite yourself in a paper:
Rockwell, John. "Art Rock" in Henke, James et al. (Eds.) (1992). The Rolling
Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll: The Definitive History of the Most Important Artists and Their Music. ISBN 0679737286.
Sohm, Hanns. Happening & Fluxus, koelnischer kunstverein koel, 1970.
Robinson, Lisa. Patti Smith: The High Priestess of Rock and Roll" Hit Parader, January 1976.
Bransford inclass notes 2005b
Vega inclass notes 2005b
Smith, Peter. 1989. Art Into Capital. The Oxford Art Journal 2 (1): 60-66
FREDRIC JAMESON, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991),
Boys Are for Noise
by Alec Hanley Bemis
LA Weekly
August 9-15 20002
http://www.laweekly.com/music/music/boys-are-for-noise/3691/
Village Voice
Fear of Music
Lightning Bolt, Ride the Skies; Black Dice, Cold Hands; The Red Scare, Strangers Die Everyday
by Nick Catucci
May 25th, 2001 7:00 PM
Lightning Bolt
Hypermagic Mountain
-Brandon Stosuy, October 19, 2005
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/l/lightning-bolt/hypermagic-mountain.shtml
Carr, Daphne.
“The Art of Noise: How the Providence, RI Loft Scene Hears its Godawful Racket”
4.25.2006
4.23.2006
official history
K's really been on lately, with this piece the pretends to be about NOLA hip hop but is really a pretty amazing critique of preservation culture:
A quarter-century from now, when the social problems that Juvenile and others so discomfitingly rap about have become one more strand of the city's official history, they may find themselves honored in just the kinds of musical tributes and cultural museums that currently shut them out. By then, their careers will probably have cooled off. They'll be less influential, less popular, less controversial; not coincidentally, they'll have a less visceral connection to the youth of New Orleans. And finally, their music — and maybe also their recording studios, their custom jewelry, their promotional posters — will seem to be worth saving. Perhaps, like so many other pop-music traditions, "gangsta gumbo" is a dish best preserved cold.
And this piece is a real feel good kinda thing, recycling old library books into art that can then be checked back out of the library. That's some punk shit right there. You'd think it was from the other Portland.
A quarter-century from now, when the social problems that Juvenile and others so discomfitingly rap about have become one more strand of the city's official history, they may find themselves honored in just the kinds of musical tributes and cultural museums that currently shut them out. By then, their careers will probably have cooled off. They'll be less influential, less popular, less controversial; not coincidentally, they'll have a less visceral connection to the youth of New Orleans. And finally, their music — and maybe also their recording studios, their custom jewelry, their promotional posters — will seem to be worth saving. Perhaps, like so many other pop-music traditions, "gangsta gumbo" is a dish best preserved cold.
And this piece is a real feel good kinda thing, recycling old library books into art that can then be checked back out of the library. That's some punk shit right there. You'd think it was from the other Portland.
4.22.2006
less of this, more of this
less of more
and more of less:
"hey everyone, do you review indie CD's? My buddy is starting a blog
and they're going to get reviews off the ground. No pay (obviously),
but a good place to air opinions. Bookmark this because they're going
to start advertising very, very soon!"
http://somersaultmedia.blogspot.com/"
and more of less:
"hey everyone, do you review indie CD's? My buddy is starting a blog
and they're going to get reviews off the ground. No pay (obviously),
but a good place to air opinions. Bookmark this because they're going
to start advertising very, very soon!"
http://somersaultmedia.blogspot.com/"
4.21.2006
boris boris boris
Okay. Something weird has happened to me in the last month. I have become an instant HUGE fan of two bands whose CDs I purchased based on recommendations of people I trust or magazines I trust or just on trust itself: the Knife's Silent Shout and Boris's Pink.
I am listening to Boris right now and my god, it is so mindblowingly awesome I can't believe it. It starts off with a seven minute homage to shoegaze and ends with "when we’re gone," a ten-minute song that blends absolute doom with absolute Beach Boys and lets the noise go surfing on melody without remorse. It rules! The packaging rules too, not just because I adore pink and find that it hilarious that an underground metal band would name their album pink and bathe everything on the album in pink, but because it is gorgeous good design in the classic art-school fetish kind of way. Plastic folded celophane cover, normal glossy stapled insert and this awesome perferated cardstock four-fold of little Boris "pink" paint chips, so you can paint your walls pink with Boris, which I am clearly doing right now as I listen in my room. Should I tear one off each time to make sure my walls are just the right shade of Boris after I listen?
Yay for music! okay, I'm going back to editing my thesis now.
I am listening to Boris right now and my god, it is so mindblowingly awesome I can't believe it. It starts off with a seven minute homage to shoegaze and ends with "when we’re gone," a ten-minute song that blends absolute doom with absolute Beach Boys and lets the noise go surfing on melody without remorse. It rules! The packaging rules too, not just because I adore pink and find that it hilarious that an underground metal band would name their album pink and bathe everything on the album in pink, but because it is gorgeous good design in the classic art-school fetish kind of way. Plastic folded celophane cover, normal glossy stapled insert and this awesome perferated cardstock four-fold of little Boris "pink" paint chips, so you can paint your walls pink with Boris, which I am clearly doing right now as I listen in my room. Should I tear one off each time to make sure my walls are just the right shade of Boris after I listen?
Yay for music! okay, I'm going back to editing my thesis now.
4.18.2006
the widening gap in chat about music
WORDCOUNT002:
ilm is saying that the VV music editor was fired for running a section that was "too academic."
i will say in passing that i have been told that if i want to stay in academia that my writing must become "less journalistic."
i believe in smart, thoughtful and engaged writing about contemporary culture by brilliant minds with dedication to craft. i believe that people come from all parts of the writing world to do this. i believe that spirited debate about culture is good for the mind and that it should go on at every level of discourse from newspapers to classrooms. i believe language should be no more or less complex than it needs to make its point. i am worried for the future of reading about popular music.
all this on the day the 2006 pulitzers were announced. positively orwellian.
ilm is saying that the VV music editor was fired for running a section that was "too academic."
i will say in passing that i have been told that if i want to stay in academia that my writing must become "less journalistic."
i believe in smart, thoughtful and engaged writing about contemporary culture by brilliant minds with dedication to craft. i believe that people come from all parts of the writing world to do this. i believe that spirited debate about culture is good for the mind and that it should go on at every level of discourse from newspapers to classrooms. i believe language should be no more or less complex than it needs to make its point. i am worried for the future of reading about popular music.
all this on the day the 2006 pulitzers were announced. positively orwellian.
4.14.2006
virtual blueprints and inner enos
MUSIC:
Am catching up with Isolee, Western Store, intensely feeling "Rockers," which Prof. Sherburne writes:
"...has nothing to do with rock'n'roll-- nor with reggae, for that matter. A tin-can and fingersnap percussive jam, it's a virtual blueprint for, well, almost every current track in a Wighnomys vein, right down to the use of reverb as an instrument. Every drum has its own little pocket of airspace and a frequency so unique you could tune a radio to it"
and trying to make sense of this ill-written essay on how dance music changes listening perception in the book Wired for Sound. Am in this class on music technology where we have these arguments about 'liveness' that I think would make any serious pop critic laugh hysterically. I mean, it's LIVENESS that is an illusion in studio mixing, not the arbitrary/artificial assignment of space that occurs in genres like dance music. I mean, isn't it obvious from this band that the residual cling of human touch to sound production is so much nostalgia?
--
My favorite autodidact Matos is set to burn up the emusic archives with the heat from his giant brain, as evidenced by awesome dozen on the history of the Harlem Hit Parade. Makes me want to give the Ink Spots another try after an unfortunate thrift store record bin encounter that left me not a fan.
--
Am just catching up on pitchforking for the week and this interview with Neko Case by my charming roommate is pretty funny, sample quote:
Not that more experimental artists aren't just as valid. I'm sure lurking under the surface in my mind are people like Brian Eno and Roxy Music wearing giant sideburns and leopard skin pants going, "You can put a saxophone on it!"
Right? The inner Eno -this is mine, queen of the nerds!
Am catching up with Isolee, Western Store, intensely feeling "Rockers," which Prof. Sherburne writes:
"...has nothing to do with rock'n'roll-- nor with reggae, for that matter. A tin-can and fingersnap percussive jam, it's a virtual blueprint for, well, almost every current track in a Wighnomys vein, right down to the use of reverb as an instrument. Every drum has its own little pocket of airspace and a frequency so unique you could tune a radio to it"
and trying to make sense of this ill-written essay on how dance music changes listening perception in the book Wired for Sound. Am in this class on music technology where we have these arguments about 'liveness' that I think would make any serious pop critic laugh hysterically. I mean, it's LIVENESS that is an illusion in studio mixing, not the arbitrary/artificial assignment of space that occurs in genres like dance music. I mean, isn't it obvious from this band that the residual cling of human touch to sound production is so much nostalgia?
--
My favorite autodidact Matos is set to burn up the emusic archives with the heat from his giant brain, as evidenced by awesome dozen on the history of the Harlem Hit Parade. Makes me want to give the Ink Spots another try after an unfortunate thrift store record bin encounter that left me not a fan.
--
Am just catching up on pitchforking for the week and this interview with Neko Case by my charming roommate is pretty funny, sample quote:
Not that more experimental artists aren't just as valid. I'm sure lurking under the surface in my mind are people like Brian Eno and Roxy Music wearing giant sideburns and leopard skin pants going, "You can put a saxophone on it!"
Right? The inner Eno -this is mine, queen of the nerds!
4.11.2006
jumble
I just want to say that I can believe and am ashamed to know that bodies are still being found in houses in New Orleans. Quote:
In February, FEMA agreed to pay for the search for bodies to resume, and on March 2 the agency's special operations team was able to begin a systematic check of the 1,700 structures in the Lower Ninth Ward, the site of the city's worst destruction.
Umm. The hurricane was in...August. ... ...
IN OTHER NEWS:
This piece about Steve Morse would be really inspiring if it weren't a retirement piece. Only goes to show what I sort of knew in the first place: getting a newspaper gig is the best way to have a sustainable normal adult career in music writing.
WHAT, ME WORRY?: So I'm playing my first show in NYC since my bumbled 2004 return. Details will not be revealed as I don't want the paparazzi to make me look like this. I will dutifully blog about the epic jams tomorrow though, lucky you.
In February, FEMA agreed to pay for the search for bodies to resume, and on March 2 the agency's special operations team was able to begin a systematic check of the 1,700 structures in the Lower Ninth Ward, the site of the city's worst destruction.
Umm. The hurricane was in...August. ... ...
IN OTHER NEWS:
This piece about Steve Morse would be really inspiring if it weren't a retirement piece. Only goes to show what I sort of knew in the first place: getting a newspaper gig is the best way to have a sustainable normal adult career in music writing.
WHAT, ME WORRY?: So I'm playing my first show in NYC since my bumbled 2004 return. Details will not be revealed as I don't want the paparazzi to make me look like this. I will dutifully blog about the epic jams tomorrow though, lucky you.
4.09.2006
old punks
here's a conversation that i'm bound to be having more and more often: what's to do about being an old punk. i had a nice chat with the British sociologist Andy Bennett at IASPM in February about his new research about greying punks and their imagined selves. He does a lot of work on the changing theory of youth culture and somehow ended up doing interviews with aging punks.
Which I was reminded of because of this funny piece about aging punks in the UK, which had me humming the melody to "Part Time Punks" for the next half hour. These '77 folks age better thanthe grups written about in NY Magazine. Adam Sternbergh's take on greying indie fandom is so materialistic and shallow and Manhattan-centric as so render his more subtle points about the shift in concept of generational divide at least partially moot. I mean, why did I have to wade through 2,000 words of white middle class guilt for owning nice clothes to get one mention of "passion"? The cynicism inherent in the text is made only more obvious by the lead dad who becomes foil for all things shallow about this generation.
Which I was reminded of because of this funny piece about aging punks in the UK, which had me humming the melody to "Part Time Punks" for the next half hour. These '77 folks age better thanthe grups written about in NY Magazine. Adam Sternbergh's take on greying indie fandom is so materialistic and shallow and Manhattan-centric as so render his more subtle points about the shift in concept of generational divide at least partially moot. I mean, why did I have to wade through 2,000 words of white middle class guilt for owning nice clothes to get one mention of "passion"? The cynicism inherent in the text is made only more obvious by the lead dad who becomes foil for all things shallow about this generation.
4.06.2006
zines and indie record stores
There is no small irony in using my blog to promote this, but if you are a fan of indie mags and zines, please take the time to sign this. The issue is dear to my heart as zines were my entry into music writing, my initial DIY community and yes, even the topic of my undergraduate thesis. I continue to applaud and support those who anachronistically produce paper editions because reading shouldn't always have to involve electricity. Buy a zine, go read in the park, enjoy the sunshine!
To: Amoeba Music
An open letter to Amoeba Music from the editors of The Big Takeover, Dumb Angel Gazette, Roctober, Scram and Ugly Things
Dear Amoeba,
We the undersigned, the editors of five of the most long-lived and influential underground music magazines in America, wonder why your stores, which are otherwise such cool temples of musical knowledge and commerce, carry no magazines.
With the recent closures of L.A.?s Aron?s and Rhino Records, there are two fewer places where our kind of independent and unbiased publications are easily available to music fans. Reviews and features in our magazines, uninfluenced by ad sales or record company payola, have demonstrable effects on record sales and labels? decisions to reissue vault recordings. More significantly, in stores where our magazines are available, customers can read reviews and immediately purchase music. Our readers are the people who shop at Amoeba Music, so why can?t they find our magazines--or any other magazines--when they are in your stores?
As our repeated attempts to discuss the lack of magazines in Amoeba with your owner Marc Weinstein and L.A. store manager Karen Pearson have met with no reply, we issue this open letter requesting a dialogue.
We believe that our five titles would sell very well in your stores, and that they would be welcomed by your customers. We are asking that people who would like to see these or other magazines available at Amoeba sign the attached petition, in the hopes of inspiring Marc or Karen to contact us and discuss what concerns need to be addressed in order to begin bringing magazines to Amoeba.
With best regards,
Jake Austen (Roctober, www.roctober.com)
Kim Cooper (Scram, www.scrammagazine.com)
Domenic Priore (Dumb Angel Gazette, www.dumbangelmagazine.com)
Jack Rabid (The Big Takeover, www.bigtakeover.com)
Mike Stax (Ugly Things, www.ugly-things.com)
* * * *
To: Amoeba Music
An open letter to Amoeba Music from the editors of The Big Takeover, Dumb Angel Gazette, Roctober, Scram and Ugly Things
Dear Amoeba,
We the undersigned, the editors of five of the most long-lived and influential underground music magazines in America, wonder why your stores, which are otherwise such cool temples of musical knowledge and commerce, carry no magazines.
With the recent closures of L.A.?s Aron?s and Rhino Records, there are two fewer places where our kind of independent and unbiased publications are easily available to music fans. Reviews and features in our magazines, uninfluenced by ad sales or record company payola, have demonstrable effects on record sales and labels? decisions to reissue vault recordings. More significantly, in stores where our magazines are available, customers can read reviews and immediately purchase music. Our readers are the people who shop at Amoeba Music, so why can?t they find our magazines--or any other magazines--when they are in your stores?
As our repeated attempts to discuss the lack of magazines in Amoeba with your owner Marc Weinstein and L.A. store manager Karen Pearson have met with no reply, we issue this open letter requesting a dialogue.
We believe that our five titles would sell very well in your stores, and that they would be welcomed by your customers. We are asking that people who would like to see these or other magazines available at Amoeba sign the attached petition, in the hopes of inspiring Marc or Karen to contact us and discuss what concerns need to be addressed in order to begin bringing magazines to Amoeba.
With best regards,
Jake Austen (Roctober, www.roctober.com)
Kim Cooper (Scram, www.scrammagazine.com)
Domenic Priore (Dumb Angel Gazette, www.dumbangelmagazine.com)
Jack Rabid (The Big Takeover, www.bigtakeover.com)
Mike Stax (Ugly Things, www.ugly-things.com)
* * * *
4.05.2006
gold mornings
Sometimes in the spring, I awake to the most beautiful of New York mornings. The sky is overcast and rain is emminent, but not ominous. It is just a matter of fact. People are walking unhurredly under the window and all the normal sounds of the day are going on as they should: Fritos truck engine rumbling at the beer distributor, breaks squeeking on the old delivery truck at the Chinese meat packing place, bus stop squells, inevitable baseball field maintenence interludes. Over all of it is the most luxurious glow of absolute yellow gold that I have only also ever seen in Prague, weirdly though when it's sunny. Everything brown comes especially alive, trees without buds, high-rise co-ops, sidewalks all seem to glow from all sides. It is dim-lit like candleflame but warm and beckoning to the eye like gilt on a pictureframe. It is the perfect window weather and encouraging to epic album listening the way NYC's blue skies beg for the latest hip hop track or some lovely indiepop comp. This is the best time to be writing, looking out the window, listening.
UPDATE:
About two minutes after writing this, it started snowing. How strange! This weekend it was absolute t-shirt time. Global warming wonders never cease.
UPDATE:
About two minutes after writing this, it started snowing. How strange! This weekend it was absolute t-shirt time. Global warming wonders never cease.
4.04.2006
Songs About Money Written By Machines
Panic! At the Disco has been at the top of the charts on Rhapsody for several months. I have been slightly ignoring them because I only have enough love in my heart for one pop punk band right now and that's My Chemical Romance (because, they went to art school and are from New Jersey, if you must know. Also, please have symmetrical choreography at my funeral. please).
Anyway, I have been obsessed about meta-rock ever since Cake's "Rock&Roll Lifestyle" and I think the genre is reaching fever pitch because today while listening to Panic! I was actually shocked to hear the chorus of "London Beckoned Songs about Money Written By Machines" (which gets zero points for sense or funny, see label owner Fall Out Boy's titles for pointers on that) and actually hear: this:
(Bridge)
Just for the record,
The weather today is slightly sarcastic with a good chance of
A. Indifference and
B. Disinterest in what the critics say
(Chorus)
Well we're just a wet dream for the webzines,
Make us it
Make us hip
Make us scene
Or Shrug us off your shoulders
Don't approve a single word we wrote
This is the second song on this band's DEBUT?! I mean, didn't it take classic rockers and prog rock at least...two albums to become jaded self-obsessed autorockers? Is there anything more boring than songwriters writing songs for/about rock critics? Did he just say "wet dream for the webzines" and why does he keep saying it over any over again? Is "Make us scene" a clever pun or just sad?
Oh god, does writing on this blog make me someone who they're so actively disinterested in that they b) wrote a song anticipating my criticism of it? Should I write a review anticipating hating the next pop punk band to come out before they even do?
Anyway, I have been obsessed about meta-rock ever since Cake's "Rock&Roll Lifestyle" and I think the genre is reaching fever pitch because today while listening to Panic! I was actually shocked to hear the chorus of "London Beckoned Songs about Money Written By Machines" (which gets zero points for sense or funny, see label owner Fall Out Boy's titles for pointers on that) and actually hear: this:
(Bridge)
Just for the record,
The weather today is slightly sarcastic with a good chance of
A. Indifference and
B. Disinterest in what the critics say
(Chorus)
Well we're just a wet dream for the webzines,
Make us it
Make us hip
Make us scene
Or Shrug us off your shoulders
Don't approve a single word we wrote
This is the second song on this band's DEBUT?! I mean, didn't it take classic rockers and prog rock at least...two albums to become jaded self-obsessed autorockers? Is there anything more boring than songwriters writing songs for/about rock critics? Did he just say "wet dream for the webzines" and why does he keep saying it over any over again? Is "Make us scene" a clever pun or just sad?
Oh god, does writing on this blog make me someone who they're so actively disinterested in that they b) wrote a song anticipating my criticism of it? Should I write a review anticipating hating the next pop punk band to come out before they even do?
4.03.2006
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