THE IRAQ EVERYWHERE LIKE SUCH AS

Home is an echo reflecting a place.
The Divine Comedy: A Lady of a Certain Age

vs.

from el Records' Abracadabra comp
If I had one day when I didn't have to be all confused and I didn't have to feel that I was ashamed of everything.
Mr. Martini: Number Four St. James Square

I talked to this creepy old lady at a bar yesterday. She kept saying what it used to be like on the French Riviera. I said I have the E! network thanks. She kept telling me would you believe I'm 33? I said no you're not. She said would you believe Bitchpork's Number 99 track of 2006 "Our Lady of a Certain Age" is totally a rip of an obscure single for the defunct el Records imprint? I said yes I fucking would thanks lady.

MORE IRONIC, MORE CYNICAL, MORE AMUSED BY MORE THINGS AND LESS TOUCHED BY ANYTHING

AKA "Popular Culture Has Consequences"

or

"PopMatters would be an awesome name for a website"


You say you want revolution / I want to know why
Blur: Ambulance (fan video)

I've been reading some old Greil Marcus pieces lately. One thing that stands out from his reasons for loathing Journey, the Doobie Brothers, or the Knack-- and from his interviews with the likes of Gang of Four or Rough Trade's Geoff Travis-- is how trivial and superficial music crit and appreciation has become now that "everything is cool". I mean, I'm part of the problem: I don't believe in guilty pleasures, and I don't care how high-minded or forward-thinking a track is if I can't find a way to enjoy it, too. But I don't think anyone in the current discourse agonizes over how pre-existing social frameworks, possibly bad ones, affect what we create, what we enjoy, the way the likes of Gang of Four used to. It's almost the type of thing you'd get laughed out of the cool lunch table for now to suggest that pop can change the world. But our culture does matter. Maybe that's why I write about this stuff.


What's wrong with cherry-picking facts? Then you can make the perfect truth pie.
Lullatone: Pajama in the USA (and Canada)

Seems like back then it wasn't necessarily enough for something to be merely enjoyable. That's what "rockism" probably meant to its practitioners, especially after punk came along: Good music, in that view, must not only be enjoyable, but also be a revolutionary force, something that changes the way we view the world, causes us to constantly question our inherited assumptions, our sexism, racism, ism ism. The kind of stuff the chattering classes have deemed tres gauche nowadays, much to the benefit of the presently established order. I'm not prepared to turn away from my current approach to evaluating music-- I'd be hard pressed to say the Lucksmiths' Naturaliste is going to make you a better person, though it might make you a happier one-- but at the same time, I'm not convinced that Marcus's punk-era outlook was wrong. The conversation around pop music, like every conversation in this age of increasingly fragmented media, is often way too insular. We treat popular culture as if it's endlessly interesting, sure, but not as if it should actually matter to anyone but nerds and college students with too much time and bandwidth.

(Then again, maybe times are just more trivial now. With the specter of World War II still in the near past, a sardonic lyricist like Elvis Costello could invoke the symbol of absolute evil, Hitler, and be sure to provoke a reaction in his listeners. And of course Vietnam, the civil rights movement, etc. The baby boomers' betrayal of the Sixties' promise has rendered revolution just another hoary old cliche. Which doesn't mean we should stop finding ways to open each other's minds.)


Correction the coat hangers should be upside down.
Jens Lekman: Julie

P.S. Like Homer Simpson, I'm nodding "yes" to every beat of Matt LeMay's Pitchfork beatdown of the "This Is NEXT" compilation. Unsurprisingly, music-biz blogger Coolfer calls the piece "weak and uninformed" without any evidence or explanation. Wait, an argument without support? On the Internet? I thought only Pitchfork writers supposedly did that! A so-called industry with year-over-year earnings increases and stock price gains like this one is clearly way smarter than Matt.

P.P.S. So apparently I'm following in the footsteps of Pitchfork's Chris Dahlen last year and receiving an "other notable" pieces mention in the forthcoming Da Capo Best Music Writing 2007 book for this silly old thing. Holy smokes! Such an honor, and thank you so much to everyone involved. Make sure to buy the actual book so you can have a nice printed copy of Nitsuh Abebe's superlative piece, "Making Plans for Daniel". Good company indeed.

P.P.P.S. Last time I asked, "Why has nobody called Michelle Rhee on her unverified credentials and apparent falsehoods?" The Washington Post's Debbie Cenziper has wisely called Rhee on one of the smaller apparent falsehoods. Better late than never. (Via Bob Somerby.)

P.P.P.P.S. Attention, Juggalos (and fans of photographers with an eye for what is interesting about ordinary people). Also see this dude's "Zero's Heroes" curatorial project at the same blog.

WHAT'S THIS LOOK LIKE A HOLIDAY INN

Maybe if I hold your hand you will understand.
Dick Cheney: Iraq Shuffle

I had prepared a 1,000-word post that would answer, after a fashion, a question from an esteemed reader. A while back, I posted the following: "Here's the thing. I write all the time about both politics and music on this blog, and I've clearly devoted my career to the latter over the former, but what's at stake in these issues is, I'm sorry, a whole lot more important than the loss of some really great bands." This reader wrote in to ask, "Wondering how it is that you came down on the side of music rather than politics for yourself, particularly as you go on to catalogue the various ways you find politics to be more important than music."

Well, shit. Like I said, those 1,000 words were going to answer that, tie in all kinds of bullshit ways that people treat discourse (political and musical) as if the symbols that compose language didn't also stand for a real something, and then eventually totally explain how this means we need a new, crazy way of approaching language to match the medium of our time-- that we need, like Finnegan's Wake, or Super Furry Animals, to transcend language. I think at some point I actually tried to address dude's question.


A song for the young believers, who woke up and found themselves neither.
The Standells: Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White (via Dennis Cooper)

Then this happened. I mean, I'll probably put up most of my previous, aborted post sometime (actually, I accidentally posted a draft of it, so there's probably a copy floating out there in a Google cache somewhere). But one of my daily reads, Bob Somerby's Daily Howler, posted this following exchange regarding young Atlantic blogger Matthew Yglesias:


SOMERBY:

YGLESIAS: This is what I've referred to as the "hack gap" and it seems to me that it's very important. The nature of two-party democracy is that elections are decided by the small minority of the public too confused or too ill-informed to realize that there are persistent, substantial differences between the two federal political parties. As a result, the issues (or, more likely, pseudo-issues) that are most important in deciding elections tend to be the issues that are least important in substantive terms.

Due to this unexplained “hack gap,” pseudo-issues tend to decide our elections. We’ve been discussing such issues forever. But guess what? As we continue, we learn that Matt doesn’t want to waste his time on these decisive pseudo-issues. Darlings, the lovely shall be choosers! Matt would rather spend his time working on things that he finds “interesting.” The gentleman wants an “appealing” way to spend his valuable time:

YGLESIAS (continuing directly): As a writer, though, I'd rather spend my time writing about things that I think are important or at least interesting. Harping away on haircuts, Bykofsky's appalling column, the way George W. Bush lied to the American public about what kind of cheese he likes on his cheesesteak (really!), etc. doesn't seem like an appealing way to spend my time. But the fact that the right has an army of people willing to pretend that this sort of thing is the most important thing in the world is a massive, massive impediment to having sensible policies about national security, taxes, health care, global warming, etc.

Darlings! Haircuts and earth tones decide our elections—and, thereby, the fate of the world. Their pre-eminence is also “a massive, massive impediment to having sensible policies about national security, taxes, health care, global warming.” But so what? Matt would rather spend his time writing about the things that are interesting! Writing about things that decide our elections “doesn't seem like an appealing way” for Matt “to spend [his] time.”


Let's see here. I also think this stuff is vastly important! I have also said as much, on my blog! So why the hell am I doing what I do, then? Is it because I love it, love the music, and the writing, and the writing about music (not so much music about writing, though there's not enough)? Is it because it's easier for a twentysomething smart-ass to find an outlet for music writing than political writing? Is it art for art's sake? Is it because I'd never want to end up in Washington, D.C., and I invent stuff like that as an excuse? Is it because I'm a big goddamn hypocrite?


Why won't you recognize how psychedelic I am / And love me?
Josh Ritter: Me and Jiggs (from 2002)

Then again, what the hell are you doing? Is that part of my rationalization process? Is this one of the five stages of grief? Why would I be sad? Lil' Wayne's so mother-fucking high he could eat a star! Lil' Wayne was in the New Yorker! Dick Cheney was against invading Iraq before he was for it ("How many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? ...Our judgment was, not very many"). Wait, does that mean I'm rehabilitated?

Why would a seashell illustrate Jens Lekman's homelessness? Where are all the homeless in this town? Why don't you ever run into Chicago-style crazies on the subway? Why has nobody called Michelle Rhee on her unverified credentials and apparent falsehoods? Why is nobody talking about the fact that other countries have much better health care, for much less money, than the U.S.-- the equivalent of a BMW that was half the price of a Hyundai? Why isn't everybody talking about the Tough Alliance? Is it because Josh Ritter actually sings in the inspired Dylan-esque torrents other critics write of hearing in Lil' Wayne (true!) and Jack White (words are meaningless, and regrettable), or is it because he doesn't have a punk pedigree? Is everybody reading Deerhunter's blog every day? Is there a Santa Claus? What's the Soft Pink Truth about the Shocking Pinks?

Um yeah but posting about Justin Timberlake is interesting and appealing to me. There was an article in the New Yorker about head trauma making people obsessed with music. Let's rationalize it that way. "My mind is on another continent." One blink for yes, two blinks for no, sweet dreams, sweet cheeks. Yours truly.


I'll never be free of memories.
Anonymous Keyboardist: Hot for Teacher

EDIT: a crygasm so powerful, it encompasses us, as a group, and we too are caught up, brought to a cathartic peak, and we all... release:


P.S. Oh hey, I forgot to mention, my Dizzee Rascal review ran in Spin.