1.23.2012
12.05.2007
The Music Issue lives on...
Looking for The Music Issue?
The Music Issue is now here at its new funboring home.
I will be keeping this archive up for some time but new posts go only to the funboring.com site.
Many thanks and great listening to you all on the other side of the screen.
The Music Issue is now here at its new funboring home.
I will be keeping this archive up for some time but new posts go only to the funboring.com site.
Many thanks and great listening to you all on the other side of the screen.
2.24.2007
"Don't you forget about me."
This is a long post.
Peter Scholtes said it well - it was like watching someone you loved dying on tv. Imagine a more impersonal horror. New Orleans, a city of supreme sensuality, of endless music, of tangled history, a city blending America with Europe in ways no other American city ever has, a town in which my dad was a teacher, that my aunt lived in for two dozen years, that I lived in for one youthful summer and visited since childhood - I watched it drown from a tv. I was in Germany, trying to dance in sold-out techno parties with a cadre of internationals. I lost my credit card, had no money, and became trapped in my hotel with no money for food, making myself sick watching German-language reporting of this American tragedy, inable to eat anyway at the scenes unfolding in places I knew like a backyard. That could have been...our house. I lost my voice.
It's been a year and a half, and I just got myself down to New Orleans. I went because it was Mardi Gras season, so I could Mardi Gras and work too. Work I did. First, for Habitat for Humanity, on the Musicians Village project, which aims to build something like 150 homes for musicians displaced by the waters:
Putting Jazz Back in New Orleans
By Patrik Jonsson, Christian Science Monitor. Posted February 27, 2007.
We worked for three days on the project. The first day we built window guards to keep people from stealing materials from unfinished homes at night. On the flight home I heard a cabinetmaker from NOLA talking about how contractors have been hiring security after he puts his cabinets in - people spend all night ripping them out. The second day we ripped aluminum to make trim - incredibly time-consuming and probably not the best use of labor, but it had to be done and we were there. The third day we teamed together with our pals Jim and Ben from the earlier days and built a deck on the porch of a bass player named Michael Harris. Now that was a good time. You need a deck? Call me.
Habitat has come under some criticism for their response in New Orleans:
Volunteer Group Lags in Replacing Gulf Houses
By LESLIE EATON and STEPHANIE STROM
Published: February 22, 2007
I also felt a little odd working for a Xtian group, but their one day of prayer (Saturday, biggest crowd) wasn't bad and in fact, if I switched "God" to "Y'all" in the speech "God, let us come together today to help one another out..." I was fine and in agreement with the vibe - yes, we should all be working down there when we can. In fact, it reminds me of what Evelyn McDonnell said of her experience in New Orleans. Being in the 9th Ward makes me want to pray, just in case.
I also went down to do some podcast stories for Associated Press - asap. I was inspired by my friend and Columbia University collegue Matt Sakakeeny, who did this great story on the Hot 8 Brass Band drummer and high school band teacher Dinerral Shavers tragic murder during the Xmas season:
My first piece was on Tipitina's, an uptown nightclub honoring Professor Longhair, a staple for the Tulane crowd. I'd written about Tip's a few years in the past (and also saw my first Fugazi concert there when I was 16) and decided it was the best of all possible venues. In addition to all the obvious - great booking, great staff, great sound - they worked with the city to make a musician's co-op office with computers, printers, fax machines, mail boxes and also around 200 practice rooms. They also teach high school students the basics of audio engineering and the music business in a mentorship program and give instruments to the city's strapped public school music programs. That's especially a big deal since Katrina:
New Orleans nightclub to the rescue
By Daphne Carr
A Struggle For Bands To Regain Footing
By JON PARELES
Published: February 20, 2007
As this NY Times piece reports, Katrina hurt students in the city's junior and high school marching bands, which have long been the training ground for tomorrow's pro musicians. Not to mention, they are the best part of the parades - even the ones that are a little out of tune play with such passion and the young women marching in their dancelines are unstoppable. The sound of their taps scuffing the city streets to the offbeat of the drumline is to me the essential sound of Mardi Gras:
Mardi Gras marching orders
By Daphne Carr
Saturday night we also dropped in to see the famous swamp tech impresario Quintron at his rebuilt Spellcaster Lodge in the upper 9th Ward. The community I always understood him to be part of is this artsy SanFran feeling boho group of folks who live in the Bywater area west of the French Quarter, and Q has been in the 9th ward for quite a long time.
Bohemian Rhapsody
By Daphne Carr
Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to record the songs of the Fi Yi Yi Mardi Gras Indian gang who we saw at The Backstreet Cultural Museum in Treme on Mardi Gras day. Curator/founder Sylvester Francis was giving a most righteous toast to the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi, who addressed the audience of dancers and singers, asking for people to join together for the community.
Injuns Here Dey Come
In Offbeat (author unknown)
We drove through different parts of town on that day, in the 3rd ward past the Magnolia projects where lots of Mardi Gras Indians where in the streets to Treme and down to the lower 9th. Here, after a week of rebuilding, celebrating, allowing myself pleasure at the creature beauty New Orleans can bring, I drove in silence, again in tears, again without a voice. How can these spaces still be empty? How can dozens of blocks be gone, their inhabitants inable to even find the streets without cardboard posts?
Dozens more blocks of homes empty, one trailer with someone building - a homesteader, a hopeful person, but how long until they have neighbors, old friends, history? We stayed uptown, where my family lived, and while I was staying there I felt relieved thinking "at least some part of what I remember is still here," but driving through these neighborhoods was enough to make the rest of the city seem gone - how could people turn their backs on their neighbors like this?
How can our country turn its back like this on people who suffered something so traumatic? The thing that made me most disturbed is that it looked Youngstown, OH, my hometown, or Detroit - 50 years of disinvestment and neglect but rendered instantly and flatly to such obviously cheerful, modest family homes.
My mom lives in a rance slab house on a street of the same - the houses of the 9th ward looked just like hers. This is the hardheaded way of learning empathy, just standing there looking at trees that used to shade folks on porches now shading empty lots, maybe forever, thinking 'this could be anywhere, but would the story end the same way every time?' But for me, I couldn't understand until I stood there.
One of the people whose writing I've liked (also Alex Rawls and the whole OffBeat gang - kudos) on the subject of post-Katrina is Peter Scholtes, who recently wrote:
If You Lived Here, You'd Be Gone, or "Katrina documentaries talk, argue, and ultimately fall silent before disaster." The whole time I was down in New Orleans I kept thinking "what else can I do about this?" and one of the things I kept thinking about was trying to get other music writers to go down to New Orleans to work, write and observe. I even had fantasies about running a music press junket, and may start bugging people about it soon.
In this year's Da Capo, I looked really hard for great writing about this situation and found some, but I see no reason why there shouldn't be reams of it. This is a story that needs to stay in the spotlight until everyone, EVERYONE, is embarassed about it and demands results and since New Orleans has been considered worldwide as the birthplace and sustainer of America's great music - jazz - and dozens of other vernacular musical traditions, I see no reason why music journalists shouldn't lead the brigade of folks keeping the city in the spotlight.
That said, I only went to New Orleans for a week. On the way home, I sat on the plane thinking - you know, I lived in NOLA for four months one summer and I've visited for a week or so for at least eight years. How long before a year of my life was spent in New Orleans? How long before I've 'lived' in New Orleans? People from the city joke that newcomers are people who've put in 15 years or less, and most people have been there through the generations. I'll never bee one of those people, it's too late. But it's never to late to start falling in love with it, start getting to know it, to start helping. A year and a half after the fact, it still needs some work. Find the time and the city will reward you.
UPDATES:
New Orleans Mon Amour, a film by Michael Almereyda for 2008
Bush acknowledges frustrations in New Orleans
March 1, 2007
Get angry again
If there were ever a good reason for blacks to be mad, New Orleans is it.
February 28, 2007
Peter Scholtes said it well - it was like watching someone you loved dying on tv. Imagine a more impersonal horror. New Orleans, a city of supreme sensuality, of endless music, of tangled history, a city blending America with Europe in ways no other American city ever has, a town in which my dad was a teacher, that my aunt lived in for two dozen years, that I lived in for one youthful summer and visited since childhood - I watched it drown from a tv. I was in Germany, trying to dance in sold-out techno parties with a cadre of internationals. I lost my credit card, had no money, and became trapped in my hotel with no money for food, making myself sick watching German-language reporting of this American tragedy, inable to eat anyway at the scenes unfolding in places I knew like a backyard. That could have been...our house. I lost my voice.
It's been a year and a half, and I just got myself down to New Orleans. I went because it was Mardi Gras season, so I could Mardi Gras and work too. Work I did. First, for Habitat for Humanity, on the Musicians Village project, which aims to build something like 150 homes for musicians displaced by the waters:
Putting Jazz Back in New Orleans
By Patrik Jonsson, Christian Science Monitor. Posted February 27, 2007.
We worked for three days on the project. The first day we built window guards to keep people from stealing materials from unfinished homes at night. On the flight home I heard a cabinetmaker from NOLA talking about how contractors have been hiring security after he puts his cabinets in - people spend all night ripping them out. The second day we ripped aluminum to make trim - incredibly time-consuming and probably not the best use of labor, but it had to be done and we were there. The third day we teamed together with our pals Jim and Ben from the earlier days and built a deck on the porch of a bass player named Michael Harris. Now that was a good time. You need a deck? Call me.
Habitat has come under some criticism for their response in New Orleans:
Volunteer Group Lags in Replacing Gulf Houses
By LESLIE EATON and STEPHANIE STROM
Published: February 22, 2007
I also felt a little odd working for a Xtian group, but their one day of prayer (Saturday, biggest crowd) wasn't bad and in fact, if I switched "God" to "Y'all" in the speech "God, let us come together today to help one another out..." I was fine and in agreement with the vibe - yes, we should all be working down there when we can. In fact, it reminds me of what Evelyn McDonnell said of her experience in New Orleans. Being in the 9th Ward makes me want to pray, just in case.
I also went down to do some podcast stories for Associated Press - asap. I was inspired by my friend and Columbia University collegue Matt Sakakeeny, who did this great story on the Hot 8 Brass Band drummer and high school band teacher Dinerral Shavers tragic murder during the Xmas season:
Drummer's Funeral Underlines New Orleans Violence
My first piece was on Tipitina's, an uptown nightclub honoring Professor Longhair, a staple for the Tulane crowd. I'd written about Tip's a few years in the past (and also saw my first Fugazi concert there when I was 16) and decided it was the best of all possible venues. In addition to all the obvious - great booking, great staff, great sound - they worked with the city to make a musician's co-op office with computers, printers, fax machines, mail boxes and also around 200 practice rooms. They also teach high school students the basics of audio engineering and the music business in a mentorship program and give instruments to the city's strapped public school music programs. That's especially a big deal since Katrina:
New Orleans nightclub to the rescue
By Daphne Carr
A Struggle For Bands To Regain Footing
By JON PARELES
Published: February 20, 2007
As this NY Times piece reports, Katrina hurt students in the city's junior and high school marching bands, which have long been the training ground for tomorrow's pro musicians. Not to mention, they are the best part of the parades - even the ones that are a little out of tune play with such passion and the young women marching in their dancelines are unstoppable. The sound of their taps scuffing the city streets to the offbeat of the drumline is to me the essential sound of Mardi Gras:
Mardi Gras marching orders
By Daphne Carr
Saturday night we also dropped in to see the famous swamp tech impresario Quintron at his rebuilt Spellcaster Lodge in the upper 9th Ward. The community I always understood him to be part of is this artsy SanFran feeling boho group of folks who live in the Bywater area west of the French Quarter, and Q has been in the 9th ward for quite a long time.
Bohemian Rhapsody
By Daphne Carr
Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to record the songs of the Fi Yi Yi Mardi Gras Indian gang who we saw at The Backstreet Cultural Museum in Treme on Mardi Gras day. Curator/founder Sylvester Francis was giving a most righteous toast to the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi, who addressed the audience of dancers and singers, asking for people to join together for the community.
Injuns Here Dey Come
In Offbeat (author unknown)
We drove through different parts of town on that day, in the 3rd ward past the Magnolia projects where lots of Mardi Gras Indians where in the streets to Treme and down to the lower 9th. Here, after a week of rebuilding, celebrating, allowing myself pleasure at the creature beauty New Orleans can bring, I drove in silence, again in tears, again without a voice. How can these spaces still be empty? How can dozens of blocks be gone, their inhabitants inable to even find the streets without cardboard posts?
Dozens more blocks of homes empty, one trailer with someone building - a homesteader, a hopeful person, but how long until they have neighbors, old friends, history? We stayed uptown, where my family lived, and while I was staying there I felt relieved thinking "at least some part of what I remember is still here," but driving through these neighborhoods was enough to make the rest of the city seem gone - how could people turn their backs on their neighbors like this?
How can our country turn its back like this on people who suffered something so traumatic? The thing that made me most disturbed is that it looked Youngstown, OH, my hometown, or Detroit - 50 years of disinvestment and neglect but rendered instantly and flatly to such obviously cheerful, modest family homes.
My mom lives in a rance slab house on a street of the same - the houses of the 9th ward looked just like hers. This is the hardheaded way of learning empathy, just standing there looking at trees that used to shade folks on porches now shading empty lots, maybe forever, thinking 'this could be anywhere, but would the story end the same way every time?' But for me, I couldn't understand until I stood there.
One of the people whose writing I've liked (also Alex Rawls and the whole OffBeat gang - kudos) on the subject of post-Katrina is Peter Scholtes, who recently wrote:
If You Lived Here, You'd Be Gone, or "Katrina documentaries talk, argue, and ultimately fall silent before disaster." The whole time I was down in New Orleans I kept thinking "what else can I do about this?" and one of the things I kept thinking about was trying to get other music writers to go down to New Orleans to work, write and observe. I even had fantasies about running a music press junket, and may start bugging people about it soon.
In this year's Da Capo, I looked really hard for great writing about this situation and found some, but I see no reason why there shouldn't be reams of it. This is a story that needs to stay in the spotlight until everyone, EVERYONE, is embarassed about it and demands results and since New Orleans has been considered worldwide as the birthplace and sustainer of America's great music - jazz - and dozens of other vernacular musical traditions, I see no reason why music journalists shouldn't lead the brigade of folks keeping the city in the spotlight.
That said, I only went to New Orleans for a week. On the way home, I sat on the plane thinking - you know, I lived in NOLA for four months one summer and I've visited for a week or so for at least eight years. How long before a year of my life was spent in New Orleans? How long before I've 'lived' in New Orleans? People from the city joke that newcomers are people who've put in 15 years or less, and most people have been there through the generations. I'll never bee one of those people, it's too late. But it's never to late to start falling in love with it, start getting to know it, to start helping. A year and a half after the fact, it still needs some work. Find the time and the city will reward you.
UPDATES:
New Orleans Mon Amour, a film by Michael Almereyda for 2008
Bush acknowledges frustrations in New Orleans
March 1, 2007
Get angry again
If there were ever a good reason for blacks to be mad, New Orleans is it.
February 28, 2007
2.09.2007
Ethnomusicologists Against Music As Torture
From the Society for EthnoMusicology (SEM) Website:
Position Statement on Torture (February 2, 2007)
On behalf of the Society for Ethnomusicology the SEM Board of Directors approves the Position Statement against the Use of Music as Torture, which originated in the SEM Ethics Committee and has the unanimous support of the Board of Directors.
The Society for Ethnomusicology condemns the use of torture in any form. An international scholarly society founded in 1955, the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) and its members are devoted to the research, study, and performance of music in all historical periods and cultural contexts. The SEM is committed to the ethical uses of music to further human understanding and to uphold the highest standards of human rights. The Society is equally committed to drawing critical attention to the abuse of such standards through the unethical uses of music to harm individuals and the societies in which they live. The U.S. government and its military and diplomatic agencies has used music as an instrument of abuse since 2001, particularly through the implementation of programs of torture in both covert and overt detention centers as part of the war on terror.
The Society for Ethnomusicology
* calls for full disclosure of U.S. government-sanctioned and funded programs that design the means of delivering music as torture;
* condemns the use of music as an instrument of torture; and
* demands that the United States government and its agencies cease using music as an instrument of physical and psychological torture.
For further information on the American history and praxis of using music as an instrument of torture, the Society for Ethnomusicology recommends the following article:
Suzanne Cusick, “Music as Torture, Music as Weapon,” Revista Transcultural de Música/Transcultural Music Review 10 (2006).
TMI SEZ: This issue was also very much in the heart of Best Music Writing 2006. Please also read what was our concluding essay, Disco Inferno.
Position Statement on Torture (February 2, 2007)
On behalf of the Society for Ethnomusicology the SEM Board of Directors approves the Position Statement against the Use of Music as Torture, which originated in the SEM Ethics Committee and has the unanimous support of the Board of Directors.
The Society for Ethnomusicology condemns the use of torture in any form. An international scholarly society founded in 1955, the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) and its members are devoted to the research, study, and performance of music in all historical periods and cultural contexts. The SEM is committed to the ethical uses of music to further human understanding and to uphold the highest standards of human rights. The Society is equally committed to drawing critical attention to the abuse of such standards through the unethical uses of music to harm individuals and the societies in which they live. The U.S. government and its military and diplomatic agencies has used music as an instrument of abuse since 2001, particularly through the implementation of programs of torture in both covert and overt detention centers as part of the war on terror.
The Society for Ethnomusicology
* calls for full disclosure of U.S. government-sanctioned and funded programs that design the means of delivering music as torture;
* condemns the use of music as an instrument of torture; and
* demands that the United States government and its agencies cease using music as an instrument of physical and psychological torture.
For further information on the American history and praxis of using music as an instrument of torture, the Society for Ethnomusicology recommends the following article:
Suzanne Cusick, “Music as Torture, Music as Weapon,” Revista Transcultural de Música/Transcultural Music Review 10 (2006).
TMI SEZ: This issue was also very much in the heart of Best Music Writing 2006. Please also read what was our concluding essay, Disco Inferno.
2.05.2007
Amen break lecture/acetate/youtube meltdown for the chin-strokers
In 2005, I was thrilled to be one-upped on a dance/revolution panel at EMP by Nate Harrison's fantastic conceptual paper on the "Amen" break. I think he went after me, and simply moved the stylus onto an acetate, on which he had recorded his paper. And then he sat there. For those of you who missed this real-time playback lecture can now watch the record spin on YouTube. Sadly, each time you watch youtube, the quality of the video won't degrade slightly, but you never know when some Viacom-type might come and smack down one of his many samples, no matter how fairly-used.
2.03.2007
I just want the boy to be happy
Converging on Pasadena yesterday, today and tomorrow: the legions of Morrissey faithful. I was among them yesterday, properly dressed and a three on the 10 point scale of psychedom for the show, comparatively. Now, mind you, LA's has a well documented fascination with the Moz, (this docu perhaps inspired by the great Klosterman piece anthologized in DC-BMW03 for Spin), so I didn't even bother getting too overdone. Out of my league.
I was a late blooming Smiths fan, coming after my NIN-superlative melodrama days and before my true rebirth into pop-lustre, so what I like/love now would have been red-hot had I had the tunes at the right time. That said, I feel like I needed to be 28 seeing Morrissey and loving it. Any time 10 years earlier and some post-punk fuck you stance would have set my sentiment-o-meter into the barf-red zone (being melodramatic and ANGRY was so much different for me back in the day than melodramatic and depressed, which I would have not copped to). Instead, I stood there wishing I knew the b-sides to songs sung loudly by my neighbors, and felt slightly ashamed when my pulse raced more for obvious tracks (the guilt of only-knowing-singles). Still, there wasn't a wiff of knowingness and exclusion to be had among the largely Mexican-American crowd, who sang and danced together like it was the indie rock prom we all wish we'd had. The beefy dude next to me was alone and shouted "I LOVE YOU" at the top of his lungs, then started taking cell calls. The last time that happened at a show I was at was Bright Eyes, but the crowd there was much less self-assured. Maybe in 23 years they'll surrender.
Morrissey, in my first vision of the man, is a true grotesque. He moves as he sings, in half-time, his whole being devoted to restrained inner monologue with sharp barbs of reality (usually punctuated by a whip of his mic chord). He seemed to me to be in a perpetual state of whithering onstage, and when he made some banter comment about "the last moment of his mortal self" or some such self-reference (...I thank you for buying tickets so early), I had a sudden feeling that maybe he's been decomposing on stage for the last 23 years, slowly - like some existential version of GG Allin threatening not sudden violence but the even more cruel fate of watching someone you love just rot before you in age. In the lowlights he looked like a mechanic and in the highlights, Jay Leno. Either way, this is not the physique of a man who is loved for what he looks or feels like on the outside.
I was constantly mesmerized but I couldn't tell why, other than this snakecharmer half-time thing he does, crooning against the pent up energy of his Hives look a like back up band (there seems to be a shortage of pop punk boy band suits in the warehouse so they had to wear...catering uniforms?!). I spent today listening to his covers, "Cosmic Dancer" and "Moon River" being two poles of last nights show for me - something very glam/Roxy Music about the whole stage show (the sax?) but Sinatra about the vibe. I told my gracious friend (whose plus one I was) that if Las Vegas were run by the Mexican Mob, maybe the Moz would have been Sinatra. Or, maybe Morrissey is the real El Vez? Prince has his own club, as do the Beatles, so maybe Vegas needs its own Morrissey star stage - the most beloved loser's lounge.
I was a late blooming Smiths fan, coming after my NIN-superlative melodrama days and before my true rebirth into pop-lustre, so what I like/love now would have been red-hot had I had the tunes at the right time. That said, I feel like I needed to be 28 seeing Morrissey and loving it. Any time 10 years earlier and some post-punk fuck you stance would have set my sentiment-o-meter into the barf-red zone (being melodramatic and ANGRY was so much different for me back in the day than melodramatic and depressed, which I would have not copped to). Instead, I stood there wishing I knew the b-sides to songs sung loudly by my neighbors, and felt slightly ashamed when my pulse raced more for obvious tracks (the guilt of only-knowing-singles). Still, there wasn't a wiff of knowingness and exclusion to be had among the largely Mexican-American crowd, who sang and danced together like it was the indie rock prom we all wish we'd had. The beefy dude next to me was alone and shouted "I LOVE YOU" at the top of his lungs, then started taking cell calls. The last time that happened at a show I was at was Bright Eyes, but the crowd there was much less self-assured. Maybe in 23 years they'll surrender.
Morrissey, in my first vision of the man, is a true grotesque. He moves as he sings, in half-time, his whole being devoted to restrained inner monologue with sharp barbs of reality (usually punctuated by a whip of his mic chord). He seemed to me to be in a perpetual state of whithering onstage, and when he made some banter comment about "the last moment of his mortal self" or some such self-reference (...I thank you for buying tickets so early), I had a sudden feeling that maybe he's been decomposing on stage for the last 23 years, slowly - like some existential version of GG Allin threatening not sudden violence but the even more cruel fate of watching someone you love just rot before you in age. In the lowlights he looked like a mechanic and in the highlights, Jay Leno. Either way, this is not the physique of a man who is loved for what he looks or feels like on the outside.
I was constantly mesmerized but I couldn't tell why, other than this snakecharmer half-time thing he does, crooning against the pent up energy of his Hives look a like back up band (there seems to be a shortage of pop punk boy band suits in the warehouse so they had to wear...catering uniforms?!). I spent today listening to his covers, "Cosmic Dancer" and "Moon River" being two poles of last nights show for me - something very glam/Roxy Music about the whole stage show (the sax?) but Sinatra about the vibe. I told my gracious friend (whose plus one I was) that if Las Vegas were run by the Mexican Mob, maybe the Moz would have been Sinatra. Or, maybe Morrissey is the real El Vez? Prince has his own club, as do the Beatles, so maybe Vegas needs its own Morrissey star stage - the most beloved loser's lounge.
1.20.2007
party girls
LA interjection:
This article on dance party gangs in LA has been much discussed in my household over the last few days. I find it profoundly disturbing, but I also feel a little hypocritical for my shock, since I know I was carousing at houseparties and raves in high school too. What is different here? One is perhaps an age thing, barely teens (like the Seattle rave murders last year), and another might be the marketing around these girls - less the playful feel-good sexuality of 90s rave days and more explicitly sexual. The flyers look less like high school parties and more like b&t meathead club flyers, advertising the women more than the party atmosphere/experience. Then there's the bartering to holdoff gang violence, which is something my newly LA-brain still can't really comprehend.
On the other side, here's a Mr. Roger's-esque peep into the LA school district's instrument repair shop.
This article on dance party gangs in LA has been much discussed in my household over the last few days. I find it profoundly disturbing, but I also feel a little hypocritical for my shock, since I know I was carousing at houseparties and raves in high school too. What is different here? One is perhaps an age thing, barely teens (like the Seattle rave murders last year), and another might be the marketing around these girls - less the playful feel-good sexuality of 90s rave days and more explicitly sexual. The flyers look less like high school parties and more like b&t meathead club flyers, advertising the women more than the party atmosphere/experience. Then there's the bartering to holdoff gang violence, which is something my newly LA-brain still can't really comprehend.
On the other side, here's a Mr. Roger's-esque peep into the LA school district's instrument repair shop.
1.14.2007
Byrning
Just read Will's piece on David Bryne and wonder if there has ever been a time since beginning of Talking Heads that he WASN'T an influence on up-and-coming bands? It has less to do with his collected works and more with the fact laid so bare at the end of this piece - Byrne has never allowed his celebrity to warp the scale of his ambitions, or rather, his ambitions were likely always bigger than his singular reach, and that is appealing to young musicians (and artists). Byrne is the lovable dilletante.
1.05.2007
jackin' pop
This picture is from the Gibson factory in Memphis, TN - was there a few days ago on my cross-country drive to LA, where I'll be living for the next eight months.
You may have seen my essay for the best album as voted by the Jackin' Pop poll. Check out this NPR story on the end of P&J to see what all the fuss about the JP poll has been this year.
Will post more in the near future, after I unpack.
11.21.2006
Vote for Stop Smiling as the Plug Awards best 'Zine
Yes yes, the tyranny of the superlative. I've been working as music features editor of Stop Smiling Magazine for over two years, and am excited that Plug is acknowledging how well put together the mag is and how hard everyone works on it. It's a labor of love. Support the cause!
Vote for the Plug Awards 2006
Vote for the Plug Awards 2006
11.02.2006
cmj06: the knife
The Knife - Webster Hall (late show)
More like theater than pop, The Knife took the stage on time. They were dressed, brother and sister, in their Monkey King suits which could be called "famous" if 11 shows played in seven years of music-making does make any kind of performance fame. There were screens in front and behind them, projects passing through the first and to the back but often forming a double-light that trapped the two between. Olof stood left and played what looked like "hitstix" while Karin, right, sang more often on key than anyone this side of the Celine Dion-divide, prompting those who care to wonder where there was a there there or were we merely being "entertained." No matter, we were clearly even if both confined their gestures to forward and mic-oriented. Karin's face was painted surprised and a bit terrified, her arms often like vampire bat wings in little v-locks, moving in time. Unlike this earlier video-dancing for "You Take My Breath Away," Karin's costume amplified her awkwardness and channeled it as high weirdness, like amateur expressionist choreography. The crowd, packed and paying up to 3x face-value last minute on Craiglist, ooh'ed at every subbass rumble or pad-flush as if it were a revelation. Upstairs, Philip S (the evening's DJ - congrats!) must have been thrilled. It was beyond prog, Genesis for the post-electronic generation, the weird space where the underground meets the BAM Next Wave Festival circuit, and crosses silently over. As for the music? Listen to the CD, but as loud as possible and in stereo surround, while imagining overwhelming amounts of Nordic-expat hairgel, sweating bodies, day-old Halloween decorations wilting in the heat and the general buzz of feeling like you're in just the right place at the right moment. If this sounds like heaven, then it was.
More like theater than pop, The Knife took the stage on time. They were dressed, brother and sister, in their Monkey King suits which could be called "famous" if 11 shows played in seven years of music-making does make any kind of performance fame. There were screens in front and behind them, projects passing through the first and to the back but often forming a double-light that trapped the two between. Olof stood left and played what looked like "hitstix" while Karin, right, sang more often on key than anyone this side of the Celine Dion-divide, prompting those who care to wonder where there was a there there or were we merely being "entertained." No matter, we were clearly even if both confined their gestures to forward and mic-oriented. Karin's face was painted surprised and a bit terrified, her arms often like vampire bat wings in little v-locks, moving in time. Unlike this earlier video-dancing for "You Take My Breath Away," Karin's costume amplified her awkwardness and channeled it as high weirdness, like amateur expressionist choreography. The crowd, packed and paying up to 3x face-value last minute on Craiglist, ooh'ed at every subbass rumble or pad-flush as if it were a revelation. Upstairs, Philip S (the evening's DJ - congrats!) must have been thrilled. It was beyond prog, Genesis for the post-electronic generation, the weird space where the underground meets the BAM Next Wave Festival circuit, and crosses silently over. As for the music? Listen to the CD, but as loud as possible and in stereo surround, while imagining overwhelming amounts of Nordic-expat hairgel, sweating bodies, day-old Halloween decorations wilting in the heat and the general buzz of feeling like you're in just the right place at the right moment. If this sounds like heaven, then it was.
10.13.2006
Schmucks
Am smoking thru NIN so no time to blog right now (I met the mayor of Mercer yesterday, nice guy) but here are some interesting reads (I'm sitting in a coffee shop and two high school boys are singing "Little Runaway" while chomping on chips, I am in absolute Bon Jovi overload these days):
Schmucks of CBGB
Unquiet Gabe on Greil's new book
Trevor Dann on Nick Drake (and Linda Thompson). A few summers ago I saw Tommy T. perform a Nick Drake tribute and he said, "if things had gone differently, Nick would have married my mom and I wouldn't be here." But it just doesn't seem that way, does it?
Schmucks of CBGB
Unquiet Gabe on Greil's new book
Trevor Dann on Nick Drake (and Linda Thompson). A few summers ago I saw Tommy T. perform a Nick Drake tribute and he said, "if things had gone differently, Nick would have married my mom and I wouldn't be here." But it just doesn't seem that way, does it?
10.07.2006
BMW06 Reading NYC: Oct 25 at Housing Works. Save the date!
Wow, A 3D animated Best Music Writing 2006 in living stereo for one night only!
Please come out to the BWM06 reading at Housing Works on Wednesday, October 25th, and (as per below) bring a book or two to donate to the venue. You could even bring a book of bad music writing so you have a spot for the BMW06 on your shelf. Trade up!
Da Capo Best Music Writing 2006
Housing Works Bookstore Café
Wednesday, October 25, 7PM
“One of the hottest literary hubs in New York:
the bookstore salon that the city has been missing.”
- New York Times
Admission is free, but donated books are welcome and encouraged.
PRESS QUERIES ONLY CONTACT: Chaya Thanhauser, Special Events and Marketing, Housing Works Bookstore Café: 212-966-0466, X1104 or Thanhauser@housingworks.org
Housing Works is proud to present an evening with the editors and contributors of DA CAPO BEST MUSIC WRITING 2006 on Wednesday, October 25 at 7:00 pm. The Year’s Best Writing on Rock, Hip-Hop, Jazz, Pop, Country, & More! Jam packed with some of today’s hottest music writers reading from their work, the event will be kicked off with an introduction by Mary Gaitskill and moderated by Daphne Carr. There will be two rounds of readings followed by question and answer sessions and a book signing at the end.
Praise for the DA CAPO BEST MUSIC WRITING Series:
“Each page makes me want to either dance or visit a rock star’s grave.”—USA Today
“A diverse time capsule that grapples with pop music’s most engaging issues.”—Blender
About the Contributors who will be reading:
Guest Editor Mary Gaitskill is a National Book Award finalist for her novel Veronica, which was also named one of the New York Times’ top five novels of the year. Her book Because They Wanted To was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1998 and her stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories (1993), and The O. Henry Prize Stories (1998). She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and teaches creative writing at Syracuse University. She lives in New York.
Andrew Hultkrans is the author of Forever Changes (Continuum, 2003), one of the inaugural six volumes in the 33 1/3 series on celebrated rock albums. From 1998 through 2003, he was editor-in-chief of Bookforum magazine. Over the years, his journalism and criticism have appeared in Artforum, Bookforum, Wired, Salon, 21C, Filmmaker, Tin House, Cabinet, and the pioneering cyberculture magazine Mondo 2000, where he was managing editor and columnist for three years in the early '90s. He is at work on a book about surveillance in America.
Nick Weidenfeld was born in Washington, D.C. He worked with Linda Tripp and Monica Lewinsky at the Department of Defense before becoming co-owner and editor of While You Were Sleeping magazine. He is currently the head of Program Development for [adult swim] on the Cartoon Network and is working on his own series, "That Crook'd 'Sip" inspired by William Faulkner's "The Sound and Fury" and David Banner's first record, Missisippi: The Album. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
Robert Christgau began writing rock criticism for Esquire in 1967 and since 1974 has been a full-time employee of The Village Voice, where the masthead now lists him as "gray eminence." He has published three books based on his Consumer Guide columns and two other collections, Any Old Way You Choose It (1973) and Grown Up All Wrong (1998). "The First Lady of Song" was his first contribution to The Nation.
Dave Tompkins has written about hip hop since 1992. His first book, I Have No Vocoder And I Must Scream, begins with a man yelling at an air conditioner. Participants include: Ray Bradbury, Rammellzzee, Can, a 16-foot hexagon called The OVC, a 96 year-old WWII speech splitter named Ralph, Miami, Stanislaw Lem, a Bavarian mental institution, Dr. Phibes and weird little kids and frogs. He lives in Brooklyn and writes for The Wire and Wax Poetics.
Elizabeth Mendez Berry's writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the Village Voice, Time, and Vibe, among other publications. She is from Toronto.
In 2001, Anne Midgette became the first woman to regularly review classical music for The New York Times. Her reviews and feature articles on music, theater, art, dance and film have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Opera News, ArtNews, Town and Country, and many other publications; she has also written in German for Die Welt and Opern Welt. With Herbert Breslin, she co-authored The King and I: The Uncensored Tale of Luciano Pavarotti's Rise to Fame. She is currently working on a novel.
Jon Caramanica is Music Editor of Vibe Magazine. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Vice, New York, Spin, and the Village Voice. He is at work on a social history of rap music.
Alex Ross has been the music critic of The New Yorker since 1996. His first book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, is forthcoming from Farrar, Strauss & Giroux.
Will Hermes writes for The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, and many other publications; he also contributes to National Public Radio’s "All Things Considered" and "All Songs Considered." He is co-editor, with Sia Michel, of SPIN: 20 Years of Alternative Music (Three Rivers Press), and author of the semi-fictional MP3 blog Loose Strife.
J. Edward Keyes has been writing about music since 1997, and has contributed to Entertainment Weekly, The Village Voice, The Chicago Reader, Philadelphia Weekly, MAGNET and various other publications. For two years he was a member of a one-man industrial band, about which the less said the better. He lives with his fiancée in Astoria, New York.
OW TO FIND US:
Housing Works Bookstore Café
126 Crosby Street (one block east of Broadway between Houston and Prince)
Subway: W, R to Prince; B, D, F, V to Broadway/Lafayette; 6 to Bleecker
General Information: (212) 334-3324
www.housingworksbookstore.org
Housing Works Bookstore Café Fighting AIDS One Book At A Time
Housing Works Bookstore Café is an independent cultural center that offers patrons a unique opportunity to join the fight against AIDS and homelessness. Arts-based philanthropy in practice, we allow visitors to make a difference simply by buying or donating books; eating at our cafe; coming to concerts, readings, and special events; or volunteering for our staff.
We are a non-profit organization that relies entirely on donations to stock our store and volunteers to run it. All proceeds directly benefit our parent organization, Housing Works, Inc., the nation’s largest minority-controlled AIDS service provider. Housing Works provides housing, healthcare, job training, and advocacy for New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS. As an activist organization, we are committed to implementing the systemic changes necessary to ensure that AIDS and public health policies are sound in concept and equitable in administration.
Please come out to the BWM06 reading at Housing Works on Wednesday, October 25th, and (as per below) bring a book or two to donate to the venue. You could even bring a book of bad music writing so you have a spot for the BMW06 on your shelf. Trade up!
Da Capo Best Music Writing 2006
Housing Works Bookstore Café
Wednesday, October 25, 7PM
“One of the hottest literary hubs in New York:
the bookstore salon that the city has been missing.”
- New York Times
Admission is free, but donated books are welcome and encouraged.
PRESS QUERIES ONLY CONTACT: Chaya Thanhauser, Special Events and Marketing, Housing Works Bookstore Café: 212-966-0466, X1104 or Thanhauser@housingworks.org
Housing Works is proud to present an evening with the editors and contributors of DA CAPO BEST MUSIC WRITING 2006 on Wednesday, October 25 at 7:00 pm. The Year’s Best Writing on Rock, Hip-Hop, Jazz, Pop, Country, & More! Jam packed with some of today’s hottest music writers reading from their work, the event will be kicked off with an introduction by Mary Gaitskill and moderated by Daphne Carr. There will be two rounds of readings followed by question and answer sessions and a book signing at the end.
Praise for the DA CAPO BEST MUSIC WRITING Series:
“Each page makes me want to either dance or visit a rock star’s grave.”—USA Today
“A diverse time capsule that grapples with pop music’s most engaging issues.”—Blender
About the Contributors who will be reading:
Guest Editor Mary Gaitskill is a National Book Award finalist for her novel Veronica, which was also named one of the New York Times’ top five novels of the year. Her book Because They Wanted To was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1998 and her stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories (1993), and The O. Henry Prize Stories (1998). She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and teaches creative writing at Syracuse University. She lives in New York.
Andrew Hultkrans is the author of Forever Changes (Continuum, 2003), one of the inaugural six volumes in the 33 1/3 series on celebrated rock albums. From 1998 through 2003, he was editor-in-chief of Bookforum magazine. Over the years, his journalism and criticism have appeared in Artforum, Bookforum, Wired, Salon, 21C, Filmmaker, Tin House, Cabinet, and the pioneering cyberculture magazine Mondo 2000, where he was managing editor and columnist for three years in the early '90s. He is at work on a book about surveillance in America.
Nick Weidenfeld was born in Washington, D.C. He worked with Linda Tripp and Monica Lewinsky at the Department of Defense before becoming co-owner and editor of While You Were Sleeping magazine. He is currently the head of Program Development for [adult swim] on the Cartoon Network and is working on his own series, "That Crook'd 'Sip" inspired by William Faulkner's "The Sound and Fury" and David Banner's first record, Missisippi: The Album. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
Robert Christgau began writing rock criticism for Esquire in 1967 and since 1974 has been a full-time employee of The Village Voice, where the masthead now lists him as "gray eminence." He has published three books based on his Consumer Guide columns and two other collections, Any Old Way You Choose It (1973) and Grown Up All Wrong (1998). "The First Lady of Song" was his first contribution to The Nation.
Dave Tompkins has written about hip hop since 1992. His first book, I Have No Vocoder And I Must Scream, begins with a man yelling at an air conditioner. Participants include: Ray Bradbury, Rammellzzee, Can, a 16-foot hexagon called The OVC, a 96 year-old WWII speech splitter named Ralph, Miami, Stanislaw Lem, a Bavarian mental institution, Dr. Phibes and weird little kids and frogs. He lives in Brooklyn and writes for The Wire and Wax Poetics.
Elizabeth Mendez Berry's writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the Village Voice, Time, and Vibe, among other publications. She is from Toronto.
In 2001, Anne Midgette became the first woman to regularly review classical music for The New York Times. Her reviews and feature articles on music, theater, art, dance and film have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Opera News, ArtNews, Town and Country, and many other publications; she has also written in German for Die Welt and Opern Welt. With Herbert Breslin, she co-authored The King and I: The Uncensored Tale of Luciano Pavarotti's Rise to Fame. She is currently working on a novel.
Jon Caramanica is Music Editor of Vibe Magazine. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Vice, New York, Spin, and the Village Voice. He is at work on a social history of rap music.
Alex Ross has been the music critic of The New Yorker since 1996. His first book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, is forthcoming from Farrar, Strauss & Giroux.
Will Hermes writes for The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, and many other publications; he also contributes to National Public Radio’s "All Things Considered" and "All Songs Considered." He is co-editor, with Sia Michel, of SPIN: 20 Years of Alternative Music (Three Rivers Press), and author of the semi-fictional MP3 blog Loose Strife.
J. Edward Keyes has been writing about music since 1997, and has contributed to Entertainment Weekly, The Village Voice, The Chicago Reader, Philadelphia Weekly, MAGNET and various other publications. For two years he was a member of a one-man industrial band, about which the less said the better. He lives with his fiancée in Astoria, New York.
OW TO FIND US:
Housing Works Bookstore Café
126 Crosby Street (one block east of Broadway between Houston and Prince)
Subway: W, R to Prince; B, D, F, V to Broadway/Lafayette; 6 to Bleecker
General Information: (212) 334-3324
www.housingworksbookstore.org
Housing Works Bookstore Café Fighting AIDS One Book At A Time
Housing Works Bookstore Café is an independent cultural center that offers patrons a unique opportunity to join the fight against AIDS and homelessness. Arts-based philanthropy in practice, we allow visitors to make a difference simply by buying or donating books; eating at our cafe; coming to concerts, readings, and special events; or volunteering for our staff.
We are a non-profit organization that relies entirely on donations to stock our store and volunteers to run it. All proceeds directly benefit our parent organization, Housing Works, Inc., the nation’s largest minority-controlled AIDS service provider. Housing Works provides housing, healthcare, job training, and advocacy for New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS. As an activist organization, we are committed to implementing the systemic changes necessary to ensure that AIDS and public health policies are sound in concept and equitable in administration.
10.03.2006
Tough chix and little kidz
I'm surprised to mostly agree with a list of AOL's ladies who rock...now but less so knowing the fabulous Jessica Robertson was involved in its making. She's no small Joan Jett herself. Girl, when are you going to get up on stage?
As for someone always in the spotlight, here's a Guardian piece quoting Pete Doherty on poetry. Yesterday there was poorly written but good story on British grime dudes expressing their love for poetry too, and helping make lists of books for kids to get interested in literature. I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff, I mean, I believe children are the future too, I guess. That said, one of the bummers of being out of NYC is not being able to work at 826 NYC this year. But hey, if you're full-time freelance in Williamsburg or Park Slope, I more than encourage you to get involved, not just because the kids are hilarious, but because everyone who works there is awesome and inspiring. And for christsakes, it makes you leave the house!
As for someone always in the spotlight, here's a Guardian piece quoting Pete Doherty on poetry. Yesterday there was poorly written but good story on British grime dudes expressing their love for poetry too, and helping make lists of books for kids to get interested in literature. I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff, I mean, I believe children are the future too, I guess. That said, one of the bummers of being out of NYC is not being able to work at 826 NYC this year. But hey, if you're full-time freelance in Williamsburg or Park Slope, I more than encourage you to get involved, not just because the kids are hilarious, but because everyone who works there is awesome and inspiring. And for christsakes, it makes you leave the house!
9.28.2006
writing about...other stuff
Douglas Wolk and Ann Powers have both lamented to me on separate occasions that a younger generation of music writers seem less obsessed with general "good" writing, and more obsessed with generations of music writers. That the profession has become inbred (my words, not theirs). And while we all need living, breathing mentors (Douglas and Ann are good ones), it is also imperative that a writer keep some kind of bookcase of influences, no matter how positive or negative, outside the relatively new field of popular music writing. While fiction is the staple, I am starting to notice among my friends a great trend: passion for other senses and writers who capture them well.
When I was in Seattle last spring, the lovely Kate Silver asked me "Who's your favorite film writer?" and in thinking about it, I began to pay attention to which critics my other music writer friends admired "outside our circle." Matos and Beta are foodies, and Beta has started his own blog about food, the Clean Plate Club.
Douglas is, of course, the master of deep thoughts on comic books (I recently finished The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, at his suggestion and gift, and I was thrilled by its fussy language, the characters' crispness, of how the characters seem to be enshrouded in melancholy), which means he must attend not just to the writing, but to the eye. He and I had a kind of brain-cracking conversation about "language about lines" or how to describe the signature way an artist makes their line. It made me start paying attention to how art critics discuss the elements of art when critiquing it. Is it more a question of formal language, accepted metaphors, or a series of relations? What elements of a work fit which parts of language better? Does time-based work need different language then spatial work? Why are there more grades of language for the eye than the ear? Who, besides food writers, attends to the most ignored (and most sentimental) of senses, smell?
This is the beginning of a confession for a crime I have yet to commit. I think I really, really love fashion writing. This piece by Guy Trebay, about the Milan spring fashion shows is an inspiration to me, managing to find a way to approach the nearly impossible subject(summarize multiple events a la CMJ) with a writer's eye, a fashion-addict's sense of detail, and some leveling as to the greater significant of the event in our time.
A year ago I went to dinner with a fashion writer, and I found myself listening enraptured to her description of her beat. I remember going home on the subway daydreaming about a subject swap. What would I do if I were to spend a few months writing about fashion? Would I be a heifer to the slaughter? Certainly I would have a lot of reading to do, a lot of touching and looking to do first, and I would likely never escape making reference to music (Clearly "Sexyback" was just made for this fall's runway, in spite of the fact that the beat isn't really in a walking gait) in my writing. But maybe that would be good, if not for fashion readers, then at least for my music writing.
Or is this the logic that has lead a whole generation of contemporary writers working with popular music/memoir to become the dominant style of "the rest" of music writing, aka, the slow death of the critical part of music criticism. I mean, how many books are there with music critics as characters? Who reads these books? Is is not the natural end to a cycle where music writers only pay attention to themselves? I mean, being Almost Famous is not a career goal, at least not for me, and while I respect my predesseors, mentors, even adversaries (who have shaped me too, maybe moreso) the one thing I see from the pop music part of my library is that each writer comes from a unique voice, attacks their subjects/themes with a new eye, writes with passion and quirk, and has something more to say than simply about music or writing. And you don't learn those things just listening to, reading (or writing?) about music. In other words, I see a lot more chiffon in my future, and I hope it improves my sillouette.
When I was in Seattle last spring, the lovely Kate Silver asked me "Who's your favorite film writer?" and in thinking about it, I began to pay attention to which critics my other music writer friends admired "outside our circle." Matos and Beta are foodies, and Beta has started his own blog about food, the Clean Plate Club.
Douglas is, of course, the master of deep thoughts on comic books (I recently finished The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, at his suggestion and gift, and I was thrilled by its fussy language, the characters' crispness, of how the characters seem to be enshrouded in melancholy), which means he must attend not just to the writing, but to the eye. He and I had a kind of brain-cracking conversation about "language about lines" or how to describe the signature way an artist makes their line. It made me start paying attention to how art critics discuss the elements of art when critiquing it. Is it more a question of formal language, accepted metaphors, or a series of relations? What elements of a work fit which parts of language better? Does time-based work need different language then spatial work? Why are there more grades of language for the eye than the ear? Who, besides food writers, attends to the most ignored (and most sentimental) of senses, smell?
This is the beginning of a confession for a crime I have yet to commit. I think I really, really love fashion writing. This piece by Guy Trebay, about the Milan spring fashion shows is an inspiration to me, managing to find a way to approach the nearly impossible subject(summarize multiple events a la CMJ) with a writer's eye, a fashion-addict's sense of detail, and some leveling as to the greater significant of the event in our time.
A year ago I went to dinner with a fashion writer, and I found myself listening enraptured to her description of her beat. I remember going home on the subway daydreaming about a subject swap. What would I do if I were to spend a few months writing about fashion? Would I be a heifer to the slaughter? Certainly I would have a lot of reading to do, a lot of touching and looking to do first, and I would likely never escape making reference to music (Clearly "Sexyback" was just made for this fall's runway, in spite of the fact that the beat isn't really in a walking gait) in my writing. But maybe that would be good, if not for fashion readers, then at least for my music writing.
Or is this the logic that has lead a whole generation of contemporary writers working with popular music/memoir to become the dominant style of "the rest" of music writing, aka, the slow death of the critical part of music criticism. I mean, how many books are there with music critics as characters? Who reads these books? Is is not the natural end to a cycle where music writers only pay attention to themselves? I mean, being Almost Famous is not a career goal, at least not for me, and while I respect my predesseors, mentors, even adversaries (who have shaped me too, maybe moreso) the one thing I see from the pop music part of my library is that each writer comes from a unique voice, attacks their subjects/themes with a new eye, writes with passion and quirk, and has something more to say than simply about music or writing. And you don't learn those things just listening to, reading (or writing?) about music. In other words, I see a lot more chiffon in my future, and I hope it improves my sillouette.
9.27.2006
trans-siberian snorkistra, havel in nyc, dc nostalgia
Am poking around in Ohio, not much to report. I did buy for my family today tickets to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. I have to tell you that I suspect it to be the most horrendous kitsch on the planet, the merging of my least favorite aspects of rock with my least favorite aspects of classical in a line not tred (or crossedover) since Metallica's S&M. I suspect that, Radiohead by even mid OK Computer tour, it's most favorable performance attribute would be its lighting design. Sigh, and I LIKE big budgets, and even prog rock, and even a well-placed rock cello. Well, at least they play a few Christmas numbers.
NEWS:
You there in the (ny) metroarea: I highly recommend seeing some of the events related to Vaclav Havel's residency at Columbia this fall. Havel is of course the first president of the CZ after the fall of Communism and the country's most famous playwright. He's also really, really into Frank Zappa. Dig the topic: the meaning of citizenship.
On a related note:
You're my (Miss Washington DC): Holy mall punk Jem Cohen, it's a google map, text message and streaming video tour of the old DC punk scene. Now can zoom into the actual roofs of gentrified neighborhoods while Ian Mackaye lectures you about them! Dig the idea, reminds of me of a zine I got in high school in which the author wrote about all the places that used to exist in his city, and what remnants of them could be seen if you looked hard enough. Place and time, history history. Anyway, when Ian M. says the word "punk" it comes off his tongue like its just a group of great folks, his friends, who made rad stuff happen in the 80s/90s. There's none of that "I know what I'm saying is about History" halo that say, Ian S. gets (does 13 point program hold up, sadly no) when he discusses "the meaning" and "the impact" of (sigh...) "punk." Is Ian M. terminally termite? Maybe, but the monk lives in part to remind us that at some moments, we all should fast.
NEWS:
You there in the (ny) metroarea: I highly recommend seeing some of the events related to Vaclav Havel's residency at Columbia this fall. Havel is of course the first president of the CZ after the fall of Communism and the country's most famous playwright. He's also really, really into Frank Zappa. Dig the topic: the meaning of citizenship.
On a related note:
You're my (Miss Washington DC): Holy mall punk Jem Cohen, it's a google map, text message and streaming video tour of the old DC punk scene. Now can zoom into the actual roofs of gentrified neighborhoods while Ian Mackaye lectures you about them! Dig the idea, reminds of me of a zine I got in high school in which the author wrote about all the places that used to exist in his city, and what remnants of them could be seen if you looked hard enough. Place and time, history history. Anyway, when Ian M. says the word "punk" it comes off his tongue like its just a group of great folks, his friends, who made rad stuff happen in the 80s/90s. There's none of that "I know what I'm saying is about History" halo that say, Ian S. gets (does 13 point program hold up, sadly no) when he discusses "the meaning" and "the impact" of (sigh...) "punk." Is Ian M. terminally termite? Maybe, but the monk lives in part to remind us that at some moments, we all should fast.
9.26.2006
CALL FOR PAPERS: EMP Pop Con 2007
Alright folks, let's do this:
Waking Up From History: Music, Time, and Place
The 2007 Pop Conference at Experience Music Project
April 19-22, 2007
Seattle, Washington
Music happens, then it ripples. What is the relationship between the circumstances that produce music and our swirling notions of pop's past, future, and zeitgeist? How do the times affect the notes? What factors literally and figuratively change the beat of a city? Some decry postmodern "pastiche," while others defend pop concoctions as multiculturalism in action or intoxicating aesthetics. But what are the power relationships at work when music stops time and lets us dance in place?
For this year's Pop Conference, we invite presentations on
music, time, and place. This might include:
*Reading time and place into musical innovation. The breakbeat as a refunking of sonic structure and origin myth; or the social history of changing time signatures.
* The racial, class, and gender components that constitute a pop place or time's "we"; the mutating New Orleans of the hip-hop, funk, R&B, and jazz eras, for example.
*Evolving notions of musical revivalism: retro culture, questions of periodization in music, and the validity of the concept of youth culture as a sign of the times.
*Geographies of sound, or how place is incorporated sonically. Lise Waxer called Cali, Colombia, an unlikely bastion of salsa revivalism, a "city of musical memory."
*The dematerialization of the album into the celestial jukebox and other new media. Does the Chicken Noodle Soup dance live on 119 and Lex or on Youtube?
*How dichotomies of nearness/experience and farness/history affect music fanship, music writing, and music making.
*The "place" of pop now, culturally, professionally, and certainly politically.
Proposals should be sent to Eric Weisbard at EricW@emplive.org by December 15, 2006. For individual presentations, please keep proposals to roughly 250 words and attach a brief (75 word) bio. Full panel proposals and more unusual approaches are also welcome. For further guidance, contact the organizer or program
committee members: Jalylah Burrell (New York Press), Jon Caramanica (Vibe), Daphne Carr (series editor, Da Capo Best Music Writing), Jeff Chang (author, Can't Stop Won't Stop), Michelle Habell-Pallan (University of Washington), Josh Kun (University of Southern California) Eric Lott (University of Virginia), Ann Powers (Los Angeles Times), Simon Reynolds (author, Rip it Up and Start Again), Bob Santelli (author, The Big Book of Blues), and Judy Tsou (University of Washington). We are excited to announce that presentations from this year's conference will be considered for a future issue of The Believer.
The Pop Conference connect academics, critics, musicians, and other writers passionate about talking music. Our second anthology, Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music, will be published by Duke in 2007. The conference is sponsored by the Seattle Partnership for American Popular Music (Experience Music Project, the University of Washington School of Music, and radio station KEXP 90.7 FM), through a grant from the Allen Foundation for Music. For more information, go to "Pop Conference."
Waking Up From History: Music, Time, and Place
The 2007 Pop Conference at Experience Music Project
April 19-22, 2007
Seattle, Washington
Music happens, then it ripples. What is the relationship between the circumstances that produce music and our swirling notions of pop's past, future, and zeitgeist? How do the times affect the notes? What factors literally and figuratively change the beat of a city? Some decry postmodern "pastiche," while others defend pop concoctions as multiculturalism in action or intoxicating aesthetics. But what are the power relationships at work when music stops time and lets us dance in place?
For this year's Pop Conference, we invite presentations on
music, time, and place. This might include:
*Reading time and place into musical innovation. The breakbeat as a refunking of sonic structure and origin myth; or the social history of changing time signatures.
* The racial, class, and gender components that constitute a pop place or time's "we"; the mutating New Orleans of the hip-hop, funk, R&B, and jazz eras, for example.
*Evolving notions of musical revivalism: retro culture, questions of periodization in music, and the validity of the concept of youth culture as a sign of the times.
*Geographies of sound, or how place is incorporated sonically. Lise Waxer called Cali, Colombia, an unlikely bastion of salsa revivalism, a "city of musical memory."
*The dematerialization of the album into the celestial jukebox and other new media. Does the Chicken Noodle Soup dance live on 119 and Lex or on Youtube?
*How dichotomies of nearness/experience and farness/history affect music fanship, music writing, and music making.
*The "place" of pop now, culturally, professionally, and certainly politically.
Proposals should be sent to Eric Weisbard at EricW@emplive.org by December 15, 2006. For individual presentations, please keep proposals to roughly 250 words and attach a brief (75 word) bio. Full panel proposals and more unusual approaches are also welcome. For further guidance, contact the organizer or program
committee members: Jalylah Burrell (New York Press), Jon Caramanica (Vibe), Daphne Carr (series editor, Da Capo Best Music Writing), Jeff Chang (author, Can't Stop Won't Stop), Michelle Habell-Pallan (University of Washington), Josh Kun (University of Southern California) Eric Lott (University of Virginia), Ann Powers (Los Angeles Times), Simon Reynolds (author, Rip it Up and Start Again), Bob Santelli (author, The Big Book of Blues), and Judy Tsou (University of Washington). We are excited to announce that presentations from this year's conference will be considered for a future issue of The Believer.
The Pop Conference connect academics, critics, musicians, and other writers passionate about talking music. Our second anthology, Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music, will be published by Duke in 2007. The conference is sponsored by the Seattle Partnership for American Popular Music (Experience Music Project, the University of Washington School of Music, and radio station KEXP 90.7 FM), through a grant from the Allen Foundation for Music. For more information, go to "Pop Conference."
9.19.2006
Marooned/Two Ton
Today Phil posted the final list and/or table of contents ofMarooned essays. I'm honored to be sandwiched between Douglas and Darnielle, and having read the Stereolab piece in advance, can see why Phil made it so. I'm most excited to read Miccio's and Breihan's pieces, and sort of overwhelmed and thrilled by how bizarre these writers' choices were. Popism sweeps, and there I am with an album of 40 Fenders and a kite-high psycrock koncepts. I accept it with good humor.
Motörhead - No Remorse, by Phil Freeman
Skunk Anansie - Stoosh, by Laina Dawes
My Bloody Valentine - Loveless, by Ned Raggett
Various Artists - History Of Our World Part 1: Breakbeat And Jungle Ultramix By DJ DB, by Michaelangelo Matos
Divine Styler - Spiral Walls Containing Autumns Of Light, by Scott Seward
John Martyn - Solid Air, by Simon Reynolds
Alice Coltrane - Journey In Satchidananda, by Geeta Dayal
Miles Davis - Bitches Brew, by Greg Tate
Scorpions - Virgin Killer, by Dave Queen
Stereolab - Transient Random Noise Bursts With Announcements, by Douglas Wolk
Spiritualized - Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, by Daphne Carr
Dionne Warwick - Legends, by John Darnielle
Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, by Matt Ashare
Dio - Ultimate Collection, by Anthony Miccio
The Meters - The Meters, by Jeff Chang
Stephen Stills - Manassas, by Kandia Crazy Horse
Brand Nubian - One For All, by Tom Breihan
The Cars - The Cars, by Rob Harvilla
Sonny Rollins - A Night At The Village Vanguard, by Derek Taylor
Iron Maiden - Killers, by Ian Christe
IN OTHER NEWS:
What with the return to Ohio to finish work on NIN, I'm feeling the mood of this Two Ton Boa video, even if the song is a little early-90s industrial retro, no? The dude playing bass in cartoon flower field is just too much tho. Sherry Frasier is just so rad indie girl next store, which makes the video feel like something your proud your friend made. Ahh, the elder days of unslick-promo.
Motörhead - No Remorse, by Phil Freeman
Skunk Anansie - Stoosh, by Laina Dawes
My Bloody Valentine - Loveless, by Ned Raggett
Various Artists - History Of Our World Part 1: Breakbeat And Jungle Ultramix By DJ DB, by Michaelangelo Matos
Divine Styler - Spiral Walls Containing Autumns Of Light, by Scott Seward
John Martyn - Solid Air, by Simon Reynolds
Alice Coltrane - Journey In Satchidananda, by Geeta Dayal
Miles Davis - Bitches Brew, by Greg Tate
Scorpions - Virgin Killer, by Dave Queen
Stereolab - Transient Random Noise Bursts With Announcements, by Douglas Wolk
Spiritualized - Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, by Daphne Carr
Dionne Warwick - Legends, by John Darnielle
Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, by Matt Ashare
Dio - Ultimate Collection, by Anthony Miccio
The Meters - The Meters, by Jeff Chang
Stephen Stills - Manassas, by Kandia Crazy Horse
Brand Nubian - One For All, by Tom Breihan
The Cars - The Cars, by Rob Harvilla
Sonny Rollins - A Night At The Village Vanguard, by Derek Taylor
Iron Maiden - Killers, by Ian Christe
IN OTHER NEWS:
What with the return to Ohio to finish work on NIN, I'm feeling the mood of this Two Ton Boa video, even if the song is a little early-90s industrial retro, no? The dude playing bass in cartoon flower field is just too much tho. Sherry Frasier is just so rad indie girl next store, which makes the video feel like something your proud your friend made. Ahh, the elder days of unslick-promo.
9.09.2006
teachers, mentors, firings, the future
Read this obit for RS editor Paul Nelson, which includes this:
Longterm contributor David Fricke says of Nelson, his first editor at the magazine, "He was the perfect definition of 'mentor' -- someone who recognized talent, gave it a chance and made vital helpful criticism in terms of language and perspective. I learned a lot from Paul not just about expressing one's passions and opinions, but how to formulate them and make them live on the page."
And here's Jody Rosen (many props, this boy is ON!) on Bob Xgau's firing:
He also earned the "dean" title by teaching. A huge percentage of the working rock critics of the last three decades are graduates of the Voice music section, shaped by Christgau's mentoring and fearsome line-editing.
Here's a sample of the "new" Voice style gallery rap:
On "Rap O'Clock," they joke about how they "use rap words like 'word is bond' like 'to the rhythm yo.' " It's rap music about rap, downtown music about downtown, hipster music about being hip. Haters call it gallery rap—as in, you know, art.
(Hey, I'm confused, what genre is that sad cool kid the clown prince of? Rap, you say?)
So, in view of the crumbly towers of my loved profession, with art schoolers invading yet another genre and having waged my own covert year-long battle uptown, I announce to you all that I am now no longer a resident of NYC, that I'll be back to freelance after the 33 1/3 and that, well, I'll be back to blogging with a vengance and a renewed passion. What is the future of music writing? I've been asking myself this question every day, and since my commitment to it has become a major conflict in my life, I intend to spend this year off from Columbia passionately arguing and hopefully affecting change for the the profession's future.
And since blogging/web publishing has certainly been the key factor in professional criticism's paradigm shift, I'll end this purposefully vague announcement by simply quoting someone else who has spoken better on the subject in the near past:
So, since I have no intention of giving up rock criticism, all reasonable offers entertained; my phone number is in the book, as they used to say when there were books.
Be Seeing (More Of) You,
Daphne
Longterm contributor David Fricke says of Nelson, his first editor at the magazine, "He was the perfect definition of 'mentor' -- someone who recognized talent, gave it a chance and made vital helpful criticism in terms of language and perspective. I learned a lot from Paul not just about expressing one's passions and opinions, but how to formulate them and make them live on the page."
And here's Jody Rosen (many props, this boy is ON!) on Bob Xgau's firing:
He also earned the "dean" title by teaching. A huge percentage of the working rock critics of the last three decades are graduates of the Voice music section, shaped by Christgau's mentoring and fearsome line-editing.
Here's a sample of the "new" Voice style gallery rap:
On "Rap O'Clock," they joke about how they "use rap words like 'word is bond' like 'to the rhythm yo.' " It's rap music about rap, downtown music about downtown, hipster music about being hip. Haters call it gallery rap—as in, you know, art.
(Hey, I'm confused, what genre is that sad cool kid the clown prince of? Rap, you say?)
So, in view of the crumbly towers of my loved profession, with art schoolers invading yet another genre and having waged my own covert year-long battle uptown, I announce to you all that I am now no longer a resident of NYC, that I'll be back to freelance after the 33 1/3 and that, well, I'll be back to blogging with a vengance and a renewed passion. What is the future of music writing? I've been asking myself this question every day, and since my commitment to it has become a major conflict in my life, I intend to spend this year off from Columbia passionately arguing and hopefully affecting change for the the profession's future.
And since blogging/web publishing has certainly been the key factor in professional criticism's paradigm shift, I'll end this purposefully vague announcement by simply quoting someone else who has spoken better on the subject in the near past:
So, since I have no intention of giving up rock criticism, all reasonable offers entertained; my phone number is in the book, as they used to say when there were books.
Be Seeing (More Of) You,
Daphne
8.16.2006
BMW06: table of contents
• Greil Marcus, Stories of a Bad Song/Threepenny Review
• Alex Ross, Doctor Atomic “Countdown”/The New Yorker
• Mike McGuirk/Rhapsody
Rush Hemispheres
Charlie Rich Behind Closed Doors
Ted Nugent Cat Scratch Fever
Kylie Minogue I Believe in You
Accept Balls to the Wall
Frosty Liquor Drink
Iron Maiden Number of the Beast
Boredoms Super AE
Kraftwerk Man Machine
Dream Theater Octavarium
• Robert Wheaton, London Calling—For Congo, Coloumbo, Sri Lanka…/PopMatters
• Jon Caramanica, Ghetto Gospel/XXL Magazine
• Elizabeth Mendez Berry, Love Hurts/VIBE
• Charles Michener, Going Bonkers at the Opera: Glimmerglass Flirts with Chaos/New York Observer
• Ann Powers, Crazy Is as Crazy Does/eMusic
• Miss AMP, Kevin Blechdom/Plan B Magazine
• Kimberly Chun, Touched by a Woman: Dolly Parton Sings about Peace, Love, and Understanding/Creative Loafing
• Frank Kogan, Frank Kogan’s Country Music Critics’ Ballot 2005/I Love Music
• John Biguenet, The DeZurik Sisters/The Oxford American
• Katy St. Clair, A Very Special Concert/San Francisco Weekly
• Nick Weidenfeld, Dying in the Al Gore Suite/The Fader
• Tom Ewing, The Beatles “Eleanor Rigby/Yellow Submarine”/Popular
• Geoffrey O’Brien, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”/The New York Review of Books
• Geoff Boucher, Ex-Door Lighting Their Ire/Los Angeles Times
• Dave Tompkins, Permission to ‘Land/Scratch Magazine
• Kevin Whitehead, Chops: Upstairs, Downstairs with Art Tatum (and Monk)/eMusic
• Robert Christgau, The First Lady of Song/The Nation
• Anne Midgette, The End of the Great Big American Voice/New York Times
• Bill Friskics-Warren, Bettye Lavette/No Depression
•Susan Alcorn, Texas: Three Days and Two Nights/Counterpunch
• John Sullivan, Upon This Rock/GQ
• Peter Relic, The Return/XXL Magazine
• Dr. David Thorpe, Thorpe’s Notes on R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet/Something Awful.com
• Raquel Cepeda, Riddims by the Reggaeton/Village Voice
• Wayne Marshall, we use so many snares/wayne&wax
• Andrew Hultkrans, Sweat and Lowdown/Artforum
• J. Edward Keyes, Where’s the Party? 13 Hours with the Next Franz Ferdinand/DIW Magazine
• David Marchese, High on Fire/PopMatters
• Monica Kendrick, Bang the Head Slowly/Chicago Reader
• Will Hermes (as Robert Barbara) Vegetarian militancy, sound magick, B&D, and the most astonishing live show of my life/Loose Strife
• Moustafa Bayoumi, Disco Inferno/The Nation
Excited? You can pre-order BMW2006 from Powell's right now. We look good in purple.
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