Monday, February 18, 2008
EVERYBODY I KNOW CAN BE FOUND HERE
The virtuosity that cool audiences today applaud, the sort Celine always fumbles, is not about having a multi-octave voice or flamenco-fast fingers: It's about being able to manipulate signs and symbols, to hitch them up and decouple them in a blink of an eye, to quote Homer but in the voice of Homer Simpson.
Mark Brown: Bill & Ted's Totally Deep Hole
Dave Moore writes:
"[T]he bigger personal issue I have with the book is that it gestures toward a 'poptimist' position that no one holds, identifies an "omnivorous" position that no one SHOULD hold (not because omnivorousness is bad, but because it's not a position), and offers in 'compensation' for these self-constructed lacking modes of analysis a half-baked vision of what's already good about good pop criticism in the first place."
And he says elsewhere:
"I get no sense of Carl being moved by Celine, before or after his thought experiment."
Frank Kogan expands on this nicely in Dave's comment section:
"What I think we - or Carl, anyway - need to look at is why Carl (and people like him) think we have any responsibility beyond this, beyond getting to know what people like in the music and why they like it. Why would I then feel an obligation to like the music for the reasons that other people like it, or to like it at all? Or to like the people at all? I'd say that this is where my responsibility is to judge the music and its various fans on what I think is its and their merits, based on my values and sensibility. That is, understanding someone else's values and sensibility doesn't require that I adopt them."
Going back to Houston do the hot dog dance.
The Coathangers: Nestle in My Boobies
About a billion years ago, a friend I lived in a dorm with maintained a website listing his "top 50 movies of all-time". Stuff like Star Wars: Episode 1 and, as I recall, both Antz AND A Bug's Life were on there, at least in its original form. I remember rudely questioning how he could really consider those movies the best of all-time, and he pointed out that it was a list of his top movies, not mine, so he could put whatever he liked on there. He was right, of course. Sure, there are gaps in knowledge that might eventually lead people's tastes to change, but virtually all lists of top anythings of all-time are some person's (or group of people's) list. A notion that seems to be forgotten whenever somebody comes out with a new list.
Come back to our wet bar. It's still here, but you're gone.
Harold and Kumar trailer (NSFW)
About a million years ago, I read Carl Wilson's Let's Talk About Love. I scribbled down page after page of thoughts. They were oh-so-clever. Except they really probably weren't, and I can barely read my own handwriting, so I've been putting off my would-be epic Celine post for way too long. This will not be that post-- but first, a few thoughts.
For starters, Let's Talk About Love is really, really good. Wilson (full disclosure: a fellow Pitchfork writer) manages to admit the inherent subjectivity of the critic yet maintains his authoritativeness. True to his subtitle, "A Journey to the End of Taste," Wilson has what seems to this relative newcomer to the subject like a thorough account of the history of philosophies on taste, with thorough research that makes it feel like you've read a lot more books on this particular topic than I have. It's also well-researched on Celine Dion, who is in many ways the perfect subject for such a piece; she's hated by critics and loved by people who are demographically opposite of critics, and she's misunderstood-- even when you've realized you have no good reason to dislike her music, you still hate her music. And it's a victory for sentimentality, which gets mocked in contemporary pop culture (at least by critics) even as matters like misogyny and singing about the lifestyles of the elite get passionately defended (classism seems more like a defense Vampire Weekend defenders bring up than a charge anyone should think is valid against them-- read the rest of this fantastic Mike Barthel post that briefly touches on this, though, anyway). I remember a Jens Lekman review that made fun of him for singing about kissing. And yet when Clipse return to their stash of coke metaphors, they're (rightly) appraised from a formalist perspective. There shouldn't be a difference.
However, the ending doesn't really feel settled to me, either. By the time you reach the end of the book, it leaves the reader with a whole bunch of reasons why their disdain for Dion might be due to existing social structures-- matters of nationality and age and gender and education. And yet... I still think Dion sucks. And I get the feeling Wilson does, too. I think this irrational, human element is what's most interesting about taste, and yet-- probably for practical reasons of time/length-- it's not fleshed out.
Another thought, perhaps not my best thought: Where does one draw the line between art, our taste in which is apparently based largely on social factors, and other speech, the kind we like to think we can evaluate rationally? When is a piece of discourse NOT potentially art and therefore subject to all manner of subjective decisions, also possibly biased by our own personal experiences, in the evaluation of it?
Over the holidays, I watched that Joel Osteen fellow on TV. Televangelist who is so slick he doesn't ask for money and therefore is swimming in 35+ million of it. Watching him, I can comfortably, smugly conclude that he is bunk and awful, just like Celine, though he has a book on The New York Times bestsellers list. If I can call a non-artist like that schmuck out as tedious, trite, a snake-oil salesman such as people have faced since the 19th century if not before, am I making an unfair decision, as Wilson's book makes me feel I at least partly am about Celine? Because his message does, as he argues in his own defense, make people happy (and these people presumably don't enjoy the educational etc. advantages that I do). Should I write a book contemplating Osteen's popularity, trying to like HIM? What about politicians I dislike? Maybe?
My notes go on and on like this, nothing much more interesting, so I'll leave it somewhere around here. I think Let's Talk About Love is a great jumping-off point for discussion, but I worry that ultimately its conclusion is that there's no accounting for taste. Could be it's best just to state what you believe, tolerate those who disagree, and get on with life. Tolerating something doesn't mean you have to agree with it, though Wilson's experiment in taste shows the attempt can still make for a fantastic read.
Oh yeah, I was in SPIN again-- forgot to mention that during my radio silence. Gorillaz review here.
The big wheel era shoulda last forever.
Johnny Bond: Ten Little Bottles
Latest dollar purchases at my old neighborhood's Salvation Army (the selection isn't quite what it used to be-- I hear there are going to be a million people living there soon.)
- Jean Michel Jarre: Magnetic Fields (Polygram; 1981)
- V/A: 20 Famous Country Hits Vol. 4 (K-Tel; 1970-1971)
- V/A: Country Cream: 'The Cream of Country Music' (Columbia; 1967)
- Eon: What Is Music/Spice (Juan Atkins Mix) (Sony; 1992)
- Metropolis: I Love New York< (A Tom Moulton Mix) (Salsoul; 1978)
- The Salsoul Orchestra: Salsoul Orchestra (Salsoul; 1975) (Eric B and Rakim and 50 Cent have totally sampled this)
- Dory Previn: Reflections in a Mud Puddle (United Artists; 1971)
- Patsy Cline: Stop the World / The Heart You Break (2 lps) (The Longines Symphonette Society; 196x)
- Stevie Wonder: Songs in the Key of Life (Motown; 1976)
- Prince: "House Party" (this one's totally bootleg)
"RECORD SELECTOR is a new space age device for storing and selecting your favourite records. Simply place all your albums in the record selector, move the first record forward and all the other records flip slowly forward. When the selector reaches the album you wish to play, simply remove it and return all albums to their starting position. When you wish to return the album to the record selector, again flip the first record forward. The other albums will automatically flip slowly forward and the selector will stop at the spot where the record was removed. You can then replace the album.
The Record Selector is available at the point of sale or send $4.95 to:
Record Selector
421 Wilson St. N.E.
Minneapolis, Minn. 55413"
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12 comments:
Well, the reasoning between the televangelist and Celine is a bit disingenuous. The televangelist is making arguments that can be parsed -- Celine, if she's making arguments, is making ambiguous ones, or implicit ones. But I don't buy most of the "implicit" arguments or ideas she's said to convey: I loved Carl's schmaltz chapter for the discussion of schmaltz, but I didn't really find it totally appropriate to call this Celine's milieu or sensibility (I don't think Celine really has a sensibility, and that her fairly diverse output ruins any attempt to find a unifying one). The difference between being schmaltz and occasionally schmaltzy.
Anyway, when you're disagreeing with the televangelist, you're disagreeing with a demonstrative ethos, with an ideology that's transparently on display; at least, you can point to stuff he says and say "I disagree with this statement because _____." This doesn't hold as true for music for a lot of reasons (like, there's music involved), but it definitely holds for a lot more conversations about music than it tends to be considered appropriate, at least in everyday conversations.
So your friend with Antz and Bug's Life doesn't just get to end the conversation by saying "it's my list" if your question was why he likes these films. And you might be able to say more about why you dislike than why he likes it. But I actually think it happens the other way around with Celine specifically, that even if the millions who like her/buy her music won't engage in a lengthy discussion about why they like what they like (and hey, maybe they will -- also liked his convos with the fans), they'll still have more to say about her than some of her vocal haters.
I say some, because there are plenty of haters who've listened to a LOT of Celine music. Xgau probably falls in this category. But Xgau and Frank Kogan could probably have a long discussion about Celine's work. Most haters hate on the basis of a few huge singles and don't know much about Celine's dance music, or non-ballad music. Or "Taking Chances," the great Kara DioGuardi-penned tune from her last album. And I'm not being high n mighty about it, I don't know much Celine either.
Anyway, to the extent that decisions of taste are based on ignorance, I don't judge them as valid in the least. (I couldn't actually put down that televangelist till I listened to what he was saying -- but I also probably won't listen to him; this really limits my role in any discussion about him.)
Anyway, my blockquote there is a little harsher than the comments section proved to be, I think; and Carl's not exactly picking on a straw man with his "omnivore" talk; people express the need to have omnivorous taste. But I think it's a stupid "platform," because it's really just a condition from which we start to have ideas, which are what's interesting to talk about anyway. I don't care what people are talking about, as long as they write about it well and make convincing arguments, that I can then disagree with all I like. And it won't all be subjective -- it's possible to misinterpret something (sometimes the misinterpretations can be more interesting than what's actually there) and it's possible to kind of miss the point (humor, sarcasm, etc.). So of course there's accounting for taste -- and once we start accounting for our own tastes, we're responsible for our accounting work.
(Case in point, William Bowers reviewed Hannah Montana the other day, and he has every right to dislike the whole lot of it. But his arguments fail for me because he gives me no indication he listened very carefully, and his stand-in "styles," seemingly self-evidently "corrupt" -- commercials and failed CCR crossover -- don't sound to me like they have much in common with "See You Again," or "I Got Nerve," or "Who Said," all of which, so I've been told, make an appearance in the movie. And that's not even getting into the real problem with that piece, which is his presumptuous, antagonistic relationship to the audience and unwillingness to actually talk to them, though maybe he does this in Pt. 2. You don't always have to do this, obv., but you do when your piece is posited as an experiment in anthropology, even a joke-experiment. He didn't do his homework...or his field work.)
Lots of good points there, as always. Of course I over-simplified the conversation with the old friend-- but ultimately, he CAN end it there if he wants. His goal wasn't to persuade me to agree with him so much as to publish for himself his own personal favorites at the time. If your goal is to convince people to agree with you, then you'd better be able to make an argument, but there's no reason to assume that was his goal. (I'm pretty sure it wasn't.) His list's not including Citizen Kane or whatever might make it less valid to AFI, but it didn't make it any less valid to him.
And you're right that the specific example of the televangelist is imperfect and probably opportunistic, and I left out a whole bunch of even less perfect notes on the subject, but it wasn't disingenuous. Basically, there are plenty of socioeconomic reasons why I instinctively detest his Chicken Soup for the Soul preachings, much as I detest Celine's Chicken Soup for the Soul music.
If it's worth second-guessing our dislike for certain art because that dislike is based on socioeconomic circumstances rather than anything inherent in the work, as Wilson's book suggested to me, then why shouldn't we second-guess our dislike for a similarly trite philosophy when the dislike is also rooted in socioeconomic circumstances? Where is the line between speech that is art and speech that we can be sure we are responding to rationally and not as a result of our education level, class, race, sex, age, etc.? Surely there's a better example than the televangelist, so hopefully we can talk about the questions rather than the (admitted) flaws in the example. I don't think it's as easy as you seem to assume to determine what, exactly, can be "parsed"; Dion can't be parsed, sure, but where to draw the line to what can, and how to separate socioeconomic blah blah blah from all that? That's the question.
And Carl does do his home/field work, and it makes for a good read. But I kind of wish (for some artists, anyway) people would just DO that and not make a big deal about having done it (I don't think anyone could have written the same book about "grappling" with the Smiths, whom I've never liked but kind of want to like) -- not just Carl, I think he's actually pointing to a pretty big problem in criticism of "other people's" music. Although in this particular case I don't think it's as "other" as most people seem to think. For the record, tho, his recovery of Celine's minority status is pretty awesome, probably my favorite chapter.
Artistry has something to do with "parsing," I guess, in that presenting something as an artistic work tends to create a layer of ambiguity -- I mean, a certain melody can carry the force of an argument (in a film, for example) etc. But I think it's a little more treacherous than trying to understand someone's mindset based on what they're publicly saying to constituents. And frankly I do think there's something to understand in, say, evangelist culture, which gets subtly conflated with Celine's music in a couple points throughout the book -- there are a lot of presumptions that go into what evangelism is on the part of...uh, the kind of people who write indie rock blogs? I dunno. But that doesn't make what they're saying right, even if there are varying degrees of understanding as to the context.
And it'd be pathological to try to understand everything and why everyone likes or doesn't like ____, but that's not really what we're talking about. Our "understanding" here is directed at a very clear assumed "them," and I think there's probably about as much to say about the assumed "them" of "people who write indie rock blogs." But the latter writes about their reasoning all the time, they have a lot of data that isn't readily on display, except in sales numbers and tickets sold and maybe fan message boards, for most Celine fans.
Not sure what my point here is. Oh, well, your friend doesn't sound like a very interesting guy to talk about movies with! I mean, I'm not going to change anyone's mind at a certain point, but it's not like a switch where you were on "disagree" and then flipped to "agree." It's really more about creating that understanding that Carl's looking for in the book, just by dint of being interested. And to that end, you could do a Let's Talk About the Rolling Stones or Let's Talk About Antz. But the assumption that "most Celine Dion fans" are going to be so different from yourself is kind of a weird starting point. (He doesn't stay there, obviously, that's what the book is. It's just weird that he had to start there. It doesn't even have to be an option.) There might be some macro-level observation here somewhere about not believing that anyone's that different from anyone else until proven otherwise (similar until proven different, I guess). But I'm not willing to go quite that far (it is what Carl's getting at with a more generous criticism in his conclusions, I guess, but as I said, I'd actually like to see more criticism with real teeth, the kind that just knocks the wind out of you, so I'm not sure what to do with that).
Surely what CW's trying to do isn't make us think about whether we can trust our judgements, but about whether we can trust the inferences we make about ourselves and other people from these judgements?
From that POV I think it might have been better to examine why we LIKE stuff rather than pick on something we dislike. I also think it's interesting that the people who already liked Celine, or bits of Celine - like Frank and Dave - are most hostile to the book when its professed project (giving her a 'fair hearing') should be up their street.
I found it interesting that Dave's criticism of the Bowers piece mirrored his criticism of Wilson's chapter on Celine in Vegas - a failure to engage with the real audience not the projected one. I think there's a real divide here, tying in with the decline of the public sphere you've written about previously Marc (at least I think it was you - gloomy prospects for democracy, Richard Sennett, etc.)
As in: what Celine and Hannah Montana are doing is creating a mediated and heavily capitalised "public space" (or a 'simulacrum' of same, or something), and there's a divide between critics who think 'well this is better than nothing at least for the people involved in it' and critics who find it horrible and are more drawn to more private, internalised art - something I find really offputting about a lot of the stuff Pitchfork praises, for instance, is how inward-looking it seems. (Not WHOLLY referring to yr Atlas Sound review Marc though I expect I'd hate the record!) It annoys me how critics always get stuck on Celine etcs "slick" or "excessive" production whereas the minimalism, repetition, distortion, drone, fuzz etc. you get in more 'artistically valid' music seems so passive-aggressive, diffident, lacking in gumption - anyway I am now ranting incoherently so I will cease!
(That final paragraph a possible attempt at 'parsing' music I guess)
Although actually Miley and Celine both do better in my book when they rein it in a little. I had a short discussion of Miley's vocal range on the ILM teenpop thread -- she does better when the melodies let her stay low, closer to her speaking voice, and the chirpy choruses of her "Hannah" material always go for semi-"money note" structure, that is amp everything upwards (including the melody) when you hit the chorus.
Similarly, I think Celine's performance on "Taking Chances" is really quite good, because even though (as Frank talked about a lot in his "Wrong Song Loves You Right" column) it's much more bombast than songwriter DioGuardi uses, it's a relatively restrained performance. You just know that Celine COULD have utterly demolished the high note ("What do you SAY..."), but she reins it in, and it's very effective! I think some of her dance stuff does this, uses her voice as a kind of dependable but not-running-at-full-power machine to sell the whole production. I think this is something that Carl goes into discussing the Ric Wake tracks, IIRC, which are presented in contrast to her full-power and then some songs.
what Celine and Hannah Montana are doing is creating a mediated and heavily capitalised "public space" (or a 'simulacrum' of same, or something), and there's a divide between critics who think 'well this is better than nothing at least for the people involved in it' and critics who find it horrible and are more drawn to more private, internalised art
1. "Better than nothing" is pretty faint praise, isn't it?
2. If someone were to do a proper study, there may be more people who hate Celine than like her, so she might be just as much a "cult" artist in her own way as Bradford Cox is... not that popularity OR obscurity should inherently lead to a more positive critical appraisal.
3. If it's the "public sphere" that makes Hannah and Celine worth talking about, then it's not about the music, is it? I mean, if a major corporation were to make someone else a star with a similarly unfashionable demographic, then perhaps critics who enjoy being contrarian would attach themselves to her, too, regardless of the music. It's just as silly as some indie kid in the 1990s assuming that anything made with a mass audience in mind is shite. Except in this case, it's complicated by factoring neatly into a corporation's marketing plans regardless of musical quality. (I expect Dave to rebut this thoroughly, because I take him at his word as actually loving the music, not just the contrarian position.)
4. Good points! Thanks so much for commenting.
Furthermore... in 2008, is engaging with a "public sphere" even such an inherently laudable idea? I like catchy pop songs as much as anybody, but even the biggest stars nowadays are competing for attention in an ever more crowded media universe. Being Celine Dion is not being Diana Ross. Being Daughtry is not being Led Zeppelin. Being Fall Out Boy is not being the Beatles. Everything is niche. (obligatory "The Long Tail" reference here)
Do we base how much we like books or movies on whether they are likely to be best-sellers, or whether we love them?
Agh, one more point... All that said, I feel like the Atlas Sound album is a pop album, incorporating influences that are unfamiliar to pop audiences, similar to the way the Beatles, Radiohead, or Timbaland also incorporate influences that are unfamiliar to pop audiences. It's not an "immediate" album, by any means, but it brings to bear an entire universe of influences that usually remain in the realm of non-song-based structures and applies it to the (in my mind) universal pop themes of loneliness, lovesickness, not fitting in, etc. Granted, these themes don't speak to everybody (esp. people who don't like those themes in their music, for any reason), but that has more to do with the person hearing the album than with the album itself.
she's hated by critics (except the ones who are even contrarian about GOOD stuff)
Excuse me, but what does this mean, and whom are you talking about? But anyway, supposing that Simon Frith and I actually are contrarian about good stuff (whatever that means), how does your saying this deal in any way whatsoever with what Simon or I say about why we like Celine or what we think is going on in her music? (My guess here being that you actually have no clue what I've said about Celine Dion, and if I had a mortgage I wouldn't bet it on your having heard "When The Wrong One Loves You Right" or "Reveal" or "I Don't Know" either [also wouldn't bet on Dave's having heard them - they weren't singles - but I didn't name them arbitrarily: they're my three favorite songs of hers].)
By the way, I haven't read Carl's book yet, was just reacting to several quotes of his that Dave put up on the Bedbugs comment thread, so for all I know Carl's book answers the question I ask.
Excuse me, but what does this mean, and whom are you talking about? But anyway, supposing that Simon Frith and I actually are contrarian about good stuff (whatever that means), how does your saying this deal in any way whatsoever with what Simon or I say about why we like Celine or what we think is going on in her music? (My guess here being that you actually have no clue what I've said about Celine Dion, and if I had a mortgage I wouldn't bet it on your having heard "When The Wrong One Loves You Right" or "Reveal" or "I Don't Know" either [also wouldn't bet on Dave's having heard them - they weren't singles - but I didn't name them arbitrarily: they're my three favorite songs of hers].)
By the way, I haven't read Carl's book yet, was just reacting to several quotes of his that Dave put up on the Bedbugs comment thread, so for all I know Carl's book answers the question I ask.
As you suggest, I really don't know what you've said about Celine, and of course, I've never heard the three songs you mention. It was sort of a vague strawman that I have no interest in defending and should never have included in that blog post to begin with; in fact, I have gone back and edited that out.
If I'm honest with myself, the fact that I slipped and put that phrase in my post actually has very little to do with Celine supporters like yourself and much more with a specific drunken argument with a good friend over whether the Replacements are better than Def Leppard, and my resultant, unreasonable sense that he's been reading critics who hate every band I love and love every band that has one or two famous songs.
Very sorry for any offense I may have caused. Next time we discuss this topic I promise I will actually do my homework and try not to make dumb, indefensible statements.
P.S. I don't think Wilson's book answers your questions, which was why I thought they were relevant (and good!).
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