embedding disabled, sorry If there's a throne, you're looking at a chairman. The Mundanes: Empty Boulevards
[Tonight's post is transcribed straight from the chicken-scratch scrawl on the first few pages of a just bought, probably never-to-be-completed (like all the others) composition book.]
On the subway. A little drunk, but not that drunk. Left a holiday party because my wife didn't have her keys, and if I don't get home soon she'll have to face a roomful of 7th graders tomorrow on even less sleep than usual. Still left later than I meant to said I would, because my non-music bosses started doing a Christmas Carol skit based on the CEO, and dessert somebody put dessert in front of me. I wanted to see what they were serving if you ordered "not the cheesecake." (See, I like cheesecake, but the other thing had a funny name, like "profiterole" but more Italian, and starting with a "t." Good-sounding.) (What they served was some kind of tiny cup of vanilla like ice cream, very disappointing.) Now I'm on the subway. Thom Yorke's wordless hum. Air-clearing, still slightly on edge acoustic guitar. "Jigsaw Falling Into Place."
[I'm transcribing this, btw, while watching "The Grinch Stole Christmas." Your brain is for spiders, you got garlic in your soul, Mr. Grinch]
They say nobody talks about the music on In Rainbows. They The same ppl mention Radiohead and the Eagles in the same over-capitalized e-mails. (They're both business stories, right?) But the business-- which started killing itself once the acountants took charge at some always-to-be-unspecified date-- is dead. Never to be reborn until, perchance, it is. In the meantime music is all of ours. Yours and mine. Do it yourself!!! Why not? You can do it a zillion times better than the Eagles. Nobody would listen to you, because the marketing armies that launched those old fucks are defeated vanquished. But as the shittiest band in the world next to U2, those turds Coldplay, has already proven, nobody but nobody can do THIS -- Radiohead. What Radiohead does. It's a biiiiiggg cult, but it might be the last cult worth joining. (Jesus was two millennia ago, maaan.)
[transcribing, Simpsons ad, Homer singing about a "spider pig," YES!!!!!!]
If from here on out we're all nobodys, or at best nobodys pretending to be somebodys, Radiohead are somebodys-- major-label approved! w/ the emotive grunge-era one-hit-wonder one hit (in the U.S.) to prove it!-- who are unafraid to be loved by the nobodys. In the land of the nobodys, the last living somebody is king. There are more nobodys today than somebodys (see previous post). Radiohead is AWSOME.
[You have all the tender sweetness of a seasick crocodile. ...Arsenic sauce?]
Didn't think much about In Rainbows when I first downloaded it, I admit. Everybody else was thinking about it-- where's the fun in that?-- plus I'd just dropped $80 on some record I might receive in a couple of months, w/o even hearing it, so both expectation and embarrassment were running impossibly high.
Since I filed my main 2007 year-end list, In Rainbows-- ranked too low on my list-- has been the album I have played most, even more than new Drive-By Truckers or old Saint Etienne. Maybe it's the kind of record that needs to be free of year-end pressure for me, not least because OK Computer is practically the record that introduced me to the post-Beatles variety of the critically acclaimed Album of the Year. I was a kid from a foothill town in Northern California, with too few real friends in next stop Nashville, and not yet any real friends in next stop Arizona. What the fuck?
[It came without ribbons, it came without tags, it came without packages, boxes or bags.]
I'm listening to Videotape now, so I'll write about that. The halting broken piano chords. The electronic beats, spare, in between headphones. The off-kilter drums in the left headphone, the way you don't expect to hear from any band, not that you can expect anything from Radiohead after they had, first, innovated beyond your teenage comprehension (OK Computer, Kid A) and, after an album you never cared about as much as you wanted to, retreated into boring, depressive gloom-rock (that POS (for Radiohead) political album that came after Amnesiac). I don't know what it means but the sound comes before the sign, the sign before the signification.
[Maybe Christmas he thought doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.]
It's just as well that I finally started talking about Disc 1 as Disc 1 ended, because Disc 1 is still something I admire, even adore, even maybe love, w/o ever feeling like I can touch it. The way Brent D. I think once described the diff between Loveless + OK Computer. Disc 2, which I thought I'd hear for the first time when my $80 slabs of vinyl beautiful vinly vinyl arrived in the mail, is what reignited my interest in this album when it finally leaked. From the mournfully percussive dark-side-of-the-moon goo goo goo joob of "Down Is the New Up"-- hit me, string section!-- w/ it's ladies + gentlemen, w/o a safety net , I shall now... -- to the "Karma Police" analogue "Last Flowers" -- regretful, fragile, and terrified where its precursor was accusatory and fuck you and terrified (appliances have gone berserk -- I cannot keep up... "snot-nosed little punk" is maybe a bit nicer than "arrest this man" for a "hitler hairdo" if not-- diff song-- kicking screaming Gucci little piggy) seeking relief like an old man, so like a fan of the Eagles, or the worst band in the world Coldplay, and fucking finding it, goddamn it, in the beats and drones and Climbing up the Walls and dystopian mists of Up on the Ladder climbing
to the deranged --
"Bangers + Mash"
to the perfect 4 Minute warning
(everyone has a different favorite song on this, WTF?)
I'
I need to go let my wife into the apartment now. She is waiting for me, possibly in the rain. I have a Santa hat in my bag which will make her laugh. [I should've said it was on my head!] And only one more stop to go, so I'd better stop.
MySpace link, scroll down for song He lay awake at night, tossing and turning underneath his printed quilt protector, tears welling in his eyes. Dominique Leone: Nellie McKay
Context is everything, but context can be changed.
(What was yours is everyone's from now on.)
As the novel moves toward a purer, more private expression it will cease altogether to be a popular medium, becoming, like poetry, a cloistered avocation. The Professor Brothers: The TA Interview
Remember when the days were long and rolled beneath a deep blue sky. Babycakes: Group Therapy
I'm still convinced the internet is changing everything. A pretty boring idea by now to anybody reading this blog, I guess. But like, everybody 20 years ago got their information from newspapers, radio, basic TV, cable TV, movies, CDs, tapes, records... many people still do. Not long before that, there wasn't even cable TV. As recently as a decade ago, even the most dedicated information junkies still had relatively few sources: just add to the list Salon, Slate, and the like, and online versions of news outlets from other mediums. (There were chatrooms and message boards, too, of course but those were different somehow, especially chatrooms. I'll have to think how -- this is a hole in my idea so far.)
Anyway, nowadays, as everybody has probably noticed, there are like a gazillion more voices. These new voices are less authoritative, maybe, but they also have revealed to us that the older media weren't as authoritative as we had assumed, so the shift is self-reinforcing. And just the fact that there are more of them opens them up to previously unheard or even suppressed perspectives (although the simple financial and social requirements behind computers and blogging still pose a class barrier of sorts, for now). I don't know whether it's all a good thing, for society, as an economic issue, or on an artistic level. But it's what's happening.
The blogosphere, too, is different than it was just a few years ago, with the discovery of an audience leading to corporate financing for some, copycat moneymaking schemes at others, and the entrenchment of publications you "have" to read because everybody else does, whether you like them or not. Just like the traditional media. And now, as more of us use RSS readers, the blogs that we actually read via RSS are privileged, too. We aren't as likely to see their comment sections, to interact with them, to click through their blog rolls. When we see random-ass, ugly, live journaly blogs like this one on Google, we're think of them as random-ass, ugly, live-journaly blogs-- different than the bigger blogs. As blogs become more established, we interact with them more the way we did with traditional media than the way we interact with a less-established voice.
But there's no requirement of expertise or journalistic responsibility, at all, for any of this. People sensationalize headlines worse than the New York Post just for clicks, and nobody writing or reading even seems to realize this is essentially lying for money and reprehensible. We can say whatever we want, hold forth on how, like, New Edition were sorely underrated, or how New Edition were totally shitty, and you have no idea whether I've actually spent time listening to the group for hours and hours or not (not as much as I should, mostly know them through the new jack soul-type groups they influenced and then the white boy bands that followed, but hope to revisit). Everybody can at least know all the names now, though, thanks to having so many sources at our fingertips. And everybody always has an opinion. But then again, how did we know "real" journalists weren't full of shit? We thought they weren't, we went to journalism school to be like them only better, but then the more closely you follow what went on in media right before the dawn of the blogosphere, the more ways you find out that people you respected let you down.
People used to sit for hours in front of, like, MTV. In the early 1990s, Disney was a big powerful brand. (People bought NEW Mickey Mouse t-shirts, unironically.) But now, as David Brooks, my sweet Brooksy, finally discovered, we're all deeply fragmented. The cultural capital is in knowing whatever is in the sources that the people you're arguing with don't also follow. So the process may be towards ever greater fragmentation, ever greater loss of authority by the existing authorities. Which brings me to a quote from an old New York Times clip from 2005 that was recently brought to my attention again.
"By weekend's end, it was clear that Intonation had succeeded on its own terms. But it was hard not to think about what was missing, namely the swagger and ambition and hunger of musicians ready to take over the world, or at least the country. Many of these acts seemed happy to stay right where they were, making music for fans who accept them as they are. Any park where Deerhoof is a crowd favorite can't possibly be a bad place. Still, two days is a long time to spend there, let alone a whole career."
What's weird is this was only two years ago. Almost all of us, even some of the most media-savvy, thought there was something bigger. There might not be ever again. It's possible that the age of the transcendent star is pretty much behind us for pop music, and the changes of the past few years are going to accelerate until the media universe becomes infinite, unprofitable, and unreliable. Or it could be that the sub-trend of the new-media establishment starting to act like old media will continue, and by decade's end culture will again be as stifling as it was under Reagan and Thatcher. Or maybe this is 1990, and next year we're going to get Nevermind and the year after that The Chronic. Until then, a successful band now is just a cult band with a really big cult. Bob Lefsetz, of course, doesn't get it:
"Radiohead is a cult band. The cult is quite large, but there's a distinct line around the group of people who care. Beyond that, no one gives a shit. Guy Hands and the media care about the business story, but they don't care about the music."
He contrasts this with the Eagles. Do people really care about the Eagles album? Well, yes. Do people really care about the Radiohead album? OF COURSE, it's great, especially disc 2, but Bob hasn't listened so he doesn't know. And I probably shouldn't admit this, but I haven't listened to the Eagles album.
This is how the future works. It's terrifying, but at least the Eagles are closer to dying than I am unless I die young or they live forever. Which is possible, given whatever deal they made with Satan to get them to the point where even some of the people closest to me kind of like them. It's you or me, Henley! Or David Brooks!
There was a new Robyn album out in 2005. It has since come out in the UK, and it will finally come out in the U.S. soon, or so I've read in the usual places. One way of succeeding in the new environment might be to constantly maintain your cult's interest through touring, blogging, new music, etc. Another way might be the Robyn route-- put out a really good album, and make sure everybody hears about it, so eventually you find the big cult you deserve.
Humpty Dumpty will not be put back together again.
Other recent clicking recommendations: - This old piece about Bob Dylan (and lager) by David Stubbs. I like how he's honest about his meager background with Dylan (and I like lager). - Bradford Cox is a better interviewer than I am. - Jonas Game shows up on Sweden's P3 Live radio show, which is occasionally hosted by Hello Saferide and Sakert's Annika Norlin. Link is to the recent archives, where you'll find a few other familiar names, as well.
We'll forget the sun in his jealous sky as we lie in fields of gold. Pete Townshend & the Deep End: Hiding Out
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.
The string section's screaming like horses in a barn burnin' up. Josh Ritter: Rumors (clip)
Got soap in my eyes yesterday. Stang like a pissed-off hornet. I half-remembered the reason pain probably hurts so much more when you're very young. It's because you're not old enough yet to know it won't last forever. Cue the waterworks! Now there's just a grimace and a few blinks, maybe a "fuck". Fuck. No more tears.
It's gonna be hard to believe if you know me today, but there was a time in college when I swore I didn't believe in love. Naw, man, it's just, like, a fantasy people make up to rationalize sex. Or, like, a brand the advertising firms and Hollywood sell us now that God is only friends with Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson. I just believed in John Lennon.
I count myself lucky to know one dear friend, in particular, who would not let my bullshit on this stand. He'd already loved and lost, hurt like hell, knew of what he spoke, and my words must've been salt in his wounds. Soap in his eyes.
You're free to push me, and I'm free to fall. Chromatics: In the City
Of course, everything changed when I met a girl who could put up with me. Belief is funny like that. I'll never forget my friend saying, even early on, something like, "So, do you still not believe in love?" Haw haw.
Now I'm getting married in, OMG, about three weeks. Love is real, and there's no way I deserve it more than this guy. I don't want to get exploitative here and go into too much detail, but: I'm sorry, man. Bro grabs.
The worst crime that I ever did was play some rock 'n' roll. Bird Names: Damnation
The New York Times' Patrick Healy can eat squirrel poop. (Irish! Good man, Chris Matthews would say.)
The Washington Post's Alan Ehrenhalt can eat Healy's squirrel-poop poop.
My Spin review of Swizz Beatz. (Better than squirrel poop!)
Sorrow at the thought of man's mortality accompanied by a fugitive sense that the moment is immortal. The Professor Brothers: Fliff Night, Part 1
Totally by accident, I ended up becoming the wrong kind of R. Kelly fan. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only guy who, when I was young and irresponsible, held a (young and irresponsible) negative opinion of Chicago's self-proclaimed "King of R&B." Like a good product of demographic marketing, I preferred the Smashing Pumpkins' Batman and Robin song to Kelly's "Gotham City"; I probably still do. I'd mostly stopped listening to Michael Jackson after "Black or White", so I never spent much time with his Kelly-penned No. 1 "You Are Not Alone". But even though I can see why those songs were hits-- just as I can see why Kelly collaborator Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" was a hit-- I still don't much want to hear them. If Kelly's 1993 debut, 12 Play, had come out a few months earlier, I might have played it between my (in retrospect for an 11-year-old in the Sierra Nevada foothills kinda strange) tapes by horny loverboys Silk, H-Town, and Jodeci. Instead I discovered the alternative rock radio station.
Perhaps like many of you, I was utterly blown away in 2003 by Kelly's "Ignition (Remix)", which remains one of my favorite recordings of the, um, 21st century. Unlike the following summers' hip-hop/indie crossover hits, Outkast's "Hey Ya" or Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy", I can still listen to "Ignition" even though I played the hell out of it. I didn't go nuts for what I heard of Happy People/U Saved Me, but I loved loved loved TP.3 Reloaded-era B-side "In the Kitchen (Remix)" (in retrospect a sign of the weird scenes to come inside the Kelly gold mine). I enjoyed the silly "Trapped in the Closet" saga with everybody else, even if my thoughts about it were complicated. Johnny Rotten: "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"
This year, I've found myself astounded again and again by Kelly's many inspired guest appearances. At their best, Kelly's cameos rival those of famed scene-stealers Ludacris and, more recently, Andre 3000. Kelly, whose own songs often feature rappers like Snoop Dogg or T.I., has used his string of guest appearances as if he were one, too-- showing up the actual emcees on Young Jeezy's "Go Getta" or Fat Joe's "Make It Rain (Remix)", and hyping his larger-than-life persona. On Swizz Beatz' "It's Me Bitches (Remix)", Kelly even vanquishes the shit-hot Lil' Wayne. Pitchfork's Dave Maher once suggested to me that perhaps an outsize character like Kelly or Dre feels more natural being weird in these one-offs than over the course of a full-length album, where those eccentricities can pile up until both dudes seem all too human. Makes sense: The only Kelly guest spot I've heard this year that underwhelmed was on Twista's unfortunate Mims parody, "This Is Why I'm Cold".
We mustn't misunderstand on purpose. Fanfarlo: You're One of the Few Outsiders Who Really Understands Us
So what's the problem here, you ask? Forgive me, Boss Schreiber, for I might not be as different as every hipster-basher imagines himself or herself to be from these douchebags. In a highly perceptive Pitchfork review, Ryan Dombal defines R. Kelly's current persona as "Singing Comedian," citing ridiculous concert footage and viewing the album as an attempt by the singer to spoof himself better than Dave Chappelle or Weird Al. In an equally great read at the Baltimore City Paper, fellow Pitchfork writer Jess Harvell takes aim at the kind of people who actually enjoy Kelly in this guise, i.e., "rubberneckers who couldn't have cared less about the lung-busting slow jams and ballads that were his bread and butter in the '90s." Ouch. Harvell also quotes the Mountain Goats' John Darnielle-- the singer-songwriter who just happened to write my favorite piece of "Ignition (Remix)" criticism-- giving the Kelly-as-comedian angle its inevitable racial twist: "I oppose the critical Buckwheatification of R. Kelly..."
The problem is that on one level they're right. Dombal correctly dings Double Up for occasionally being not very good as comedy and for lacking more pop songs as re-playable as "I'm a Flirt (Remix)" and "Hook It Up". Harvell mostly agrees about the album's flaws, and he's right that people looking to enjoy Kelly by laughing at his (to them) unintentional hilarity are missing out. To Darnielle's point: If there are white people who like a black artist only because they think he's missing his own jokes, that's pretty shitty. (Then again, Wesley Willis was awesome. Moral complexities are complex.)
On another level, they're talking about... people like me, fuck! Except I'm sure Kelly is well aware of how funny he is; anybody who has watched past the first few "Trapped in the Closet" videos would have to be able to see that. While I agree that Kelly's latest album is a disappointment and that many indie-oriented listeners might not be getting all they could out of his music, I'm not nearly as opposed as Harvell or Darnielle are to Kelly-as-comedian per se. Couldn't we just as easily imagine that, rather than white hipsters being even dumber than everybody (especially white hipsters) already thinks they are, maybe instead R. Kelly is actually even smarter than we give him credit for? (There, now you've got me ending sentences in prepositions!)
I'd like to be more familiar with Kelly's '90s catalogue. But when people who are bigger Kelly fans than I am tell me why that stuff was great, it's invariably for the same reasons you might say, I dunno, Japanese automakers are great. Harvell again: "One question you'd hope those who appreciate music for its camp or ironic qualities--or fans of 'outsider art'--occasionally ask themselves is at what point appreciating an artist more for their musical and personal eccentricities than for their craft becomes an insult." We should be enjoying Kelly's songs, it seems, for their "craft" and "formal excellence". Certainly not because they're funny. By that standard, though I'm pretty sure Jess wouldn't go this far, Kelly's more recent escapades-- "Sex Planet", "Real Talk", or even "Trapped in the Closet"-- are an insult to his own talent. Plus, nobody's even discussing R. Kelly TV yet.
What if Kelly's talent is bigger than all that? Part of his genius, from where I sit, is an ability to win the love of different audiences for entirely different reasons. There are people who listen to "Bump N Grind" ironically, and there are (were?) people who listened to it unironically. There are people who listened to R. Kelly's No. 1 collaboration with Celine Dion and found it inspirational, and there are people who didn't listen to it. There are people who want to hear him sing about the tragedies of our time, Hurricane Katrina or the Virginia Tech shootings, and there are people who want to laugh at his jokes.
A true entertainer, Kelly delivers to all of these audiences and more. Another thing: Smart people have pointed out the sublime craft of some of Kelly's early songs, such as "The World's Greatest", and helped me hear them in new light. But craft isn't the end-all, be-all, of course, or else we'd only listen to Brill Building songwriters or, like, Randy Newman. In a Rolling Stonereview of Newman's 1977 Little Criminals, Greil Marcus once spoke of "craft without vision." The implication: Some things (vision, apparently) are more important than craft. In other words, there can be defensible reasons-- try wit, humor, verve, or at least one of the threadbare synonyms for catchiness-- why I might enjoy "Ignition (Remix)" or "I'm a Flirt (Remix)" or, fuck, "Make It Rain (Remix)" more than I do Kelly's biggest ballads. So I'm not an asshole. Am I?
One of my favorite bands in the entire world is London's Art Brut, who have another great album coming out this year, It's a Bit Complicated. These guys strip me of my critical pretensions and reduce me to a gibbering, incoherent fan-- in the end, the funnest thing for a critic to be. Many people like to call them "ironic." Other people, myself included, insist singer Eddie Argos (who also writes a sharp blog for the Guardian) is being completely sincere. The catch: Art Brut can be both at the same time; they may truly be as stupidly excited about having "Formed a Band" as they sound, but they know how clever it is to sing a song about it, too. I contend that this ability to be (or seem) ironic without being insincere, more than any sonic similarities, is what Argos has in common with the Modern Lovers' Jonathan Richman.
By the time I heard Double Up's "Having a Baby", in which Kelly sings about childbirth both 100% banally and 100% hilariously, I realized that Kelly might be a second heir to the legacy of Richman songs like "Pablo Picasso", "Government Center", or the acoustic pop that got the ex-Modern Lover into There's Something About Mary-- songs where Richman's voice sounds totally heartfelt, but still somehow leaves you feeling as if you're in on (or missing) a secret joke. "In nine months a child will be born/ Baby you're pregnant in April, which means we're having a Capricorn," Kelly deadpans, and/or sings straight. On Modern Lovers' "I'm Straight", doesn't Richman sound at least a little, um, stoned?
Maybe I'm the wrong kind of Jonathan Richman fan. Bro grabs.
Herds of nerds stubbornly compete to become king of a fantasy world. Professor Brothers: History Lesson #1 (by Brad Neely, who also did this)
A reader recently e-mailed me with a smart question about my Pitchfork review of the great new Cub reissues.
READER: Just wondering what source you took the idea from for your conclusion on the Cub reissues review:
"It's been said that you can reason someone into believing in God, but you can't reason them out of it, and I wonder if it's the same way with true love: Once you've taken that leap of faith, does everything change?"
...[F]or some reason, the first part of your conclusion sent me off on some sort of mental/intellectual/odyssey thing...
I'd actually had a very specific piece in mind, and the e-mail caused me to go back and revisit it. I was thinking of a fantastic article by John Jeremiah Sullivan called "Upon This Rock", which appeared in GQ and was featured in Da Capo's Best Music Writing 2006. A lengthy feature on a Christian music festival, it includes the evocative passage below.
SULLIVAN: Belief and nonbelief are two giant planets, the orbits of which don't touch. Everything about Christianity can be justified within the context of Christian belief. That is, if you accept its terms. Once you do, your belief starts modifying the data (in ways that are themselves defensible, see?), until eventually the data begin to reinforce belief. The precise moment of illogic can never be isolated and may not exist. Like holding a magnifying glass at arm's length and bringing it toward your eye: Things are upside down, they're upside down, they're right side up. What lay between? If there was something, it passed too quickly to be observed. This is why you can never reason true Christians out of faith. It's not, as the adage has it, because they were never reasoned into it-- many were-- it's that faith is a logical door which locks behind you. What looks like a line of thought is steadily warping into a circle, one that closes with you inside. If this seems to imply that no apostate was ever a true Christian and that therefore, I was never one, I think I'd stand by both of those statements.
I hope I didn't just give away the ending. Gui Boratto: Beautiful Life (cross-posted from Pitchfork)
Elsewhere:
Maureen Dowd on George Tenet: "If you have something deadly important to say, say it when it matters, or just shut up and slink off." Cool, but what if you've never had anything deadly important to say in an entire career as a professional political scrivener? Then you make up NASCAR-related quotes and call Democrats sissy girls. Dowd's not a misogynist, you see.
Fellow NYTer Frank Rich's Sunday column, "Earth to G.O.P.: The Gipper Is Dead" probably gets a pass from most of his readers because it bashes conservatives. Rich is playing for the right partisan team or whatever, but he's just so clearly unburdened by concepts like "truth" or "logic" that it's pretty hard to imagine what-- other than no doubt unparalleled social connections-- even qualifies the dude for his job. The Republican convention looks like a country club? Look at the Democratic candidates just eight years ago: white males only. Approving Matthew Dowd namedrop? Apparently, all supposedly cynical political journalists are required ignore the fact that a guy who changed from Democratic to Republican to work for now-President Bush might now, with Bush's poll numbers mired at Nixonian levels, have a professional motivation to turn on dear leader. Then there's Rich's bewildering construction on immigration.
RICH: The sole piece of compassionate conservatism that Mr. Bush has tried not to sacrifice to political expedience — nondraconian immigration reform — is also on the ropes, done in by a wave of xenophobia that he has failed to combat. Just how knee-jerk this strain has become could be seen in the MSNBC debate when Chris Matthews asked the candidates if they would consider a constitutional amendment to allow presidential runs by naturalized citizens like their party’s star governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger (an American since 1983), and its national chairman, Senator Mel Martinez of Florida. Seven out of 10 said no.
Um, so Republican presidential candidates wouldn't fulfill Chris Matthews' thigh-rubbing fantasies and tell him the muscular dude, not they, should be president. Why was he even asking this question, again? And does this really show "xenophobia"?
Ah, the true soul of your Washington press corps. David Broder, would-be Xgau of All Pundits, on one terrifying possibility of the upcoming Presidential primary schedule: "The time from February to Labor Day will be boring beyond belief." Priorities, priorities. (via Bob Somerby)
I've always dreamed of moving to Pakistan or India and becoming a cab driver. Edwyn Collins and Paul Quinn: Pale Blue Eyes (Velvet Underground cover)
The New Republic's Clay Risen plays the role of a silly, logic-twisting political pundit: "Barack Obama is playing the role of the 'grassroots candidate'" he writes. "Obama plays the people's choice," Risen adds a graf later. In between, he cites the huge number of donors Obama boasts, indicating that the Illinois senator is, indeed, a candidate with grassroots support-- not just playing the role of one on TV. Oh no, some of the people who give to liberal Democrats are rich. Hedge fund managers, in fact. JOHN EDWARDS GETS EXPENSIVE HAIRCUTS! At one point, Risen even acknowledges that, in fact it's "somewhat inaccurate to lump [hedge fund managers] in with 'Wall Street,'" but two grafs later, he complains, "It's strange to see someone so young and so, well, liberal raking it in on the Street." Apparently, liberals are only allowed to get donations from poor people.
Meanwhile, TNR writer Thomas Edsall's report on the possibility Rudy Giuliani can not only win the Republican nomination, but reshape the party and win over Reagan Democrats is pretty terrifying to anybody concerned with civil rights and not going to additional misguided wars launched by complete fucking idiots. BTW, what's with Republicans and men who publicize their Viagra use?
Apparently "Mercury rising" is not a common expression everyone uses to indicate that they are going to get drinks and go clubbing. Shop Boyz: Party Like a Rock Star (Tom Breihan's take)
Back at Pitchfork, Jess Harvell totally nails his assessments of two of the year's big albums, new LPs by Dan Deacon and Battles.
