IF YOU EVER NEED A STRANGER (TO SING AT YOUR WEDDING)

Put your troubles away until tomorrow. If you're lucky, someone will break into your house tonight and steal 'em.
Jonathan Richman: Now Is Better Than Before

Make it Meltzer?

"Knot-tying is real big in Philadelphia. They're all married. The Tearsons, the Damskers, they're all married. Hooked. Hitched. Fuckin wedded before the eyes of Big Bozo upstairs. New York there's much fewer lefthanded ring fingers with the old metal on it. When was the last one to make it legal, the Richard & Lisa Robinsons? No there was the Bud & Linda Coppas. And way before that the Ed & Jeanie McCormacks. Christgau's always auditioning somebody for the role of permanent mate but he hasn't turned up anything just yet. Richard Goldstein and his honey-bear have called it 'quits.' Matrimony in NYC is fuckin shot to shit.

"Did I say is, I mean was. Cause there's a new one now and it's the best so far. Nick & Sunny Tosches. They went down to City Hall and this guy in a lavender shirt and tie did the honors and when she couldn't get the ring on her finger he said 'Whatsamatter, eatin too many potatoes.' As a matter of fact she does like the old tuber pretty much whether it's mashed, fried, baked or boiled. Or mashed. She drinks a lotta Almaden white from Californey-ay and speaking of Californ she has fornicated. With Nick. They fucked and fucked and fugged till the cows came home and then once for good measure and this was all before the nuptials had begun."

Um. Not exactly what I'm trying to say except for like two sentences in the middle there, and I know you don't even like Tosches (but!), but hopefully you get the idea. Congrats, dudes. And thanks for hosting a beautiful wedding.

I SWEAR THAT I CAN SEE FOREVER IN YOUR EYES

I'll take the subway to your suburb sometime.
Super Furry Animals: Hometown Unicorn

Taking a cue from Ned Raggett, I thought I'd atone for my recent silence (here anyway -- lots of me over at Pitchfork in recent days) with a look through the archives. I've written plenty of horrible but possibly interesting stuff, plus some other things that hopefully don't suck too much.

- Ben Folds: Songs for Silverman review, Pitchfork
I'm still getting called out for this one. I don't think it was that bad if you're part of the (admittedly small) audience that knows what "OTM" means, though I do wish I'd made it clearer how much I love and respect Folds' earlier work.

- The Boy Least Likely To: The Best Party Ever review, Pitchfork
My first Best New Music. If you throw a light on something magical, it doesn't have to disappear.

- Bees: Free the Bees review, Pitchfork
During my five-review trial period, I wrote this concept review about concept reviews. Somehow I was not fired. Somehow the site still exists.

- Joan of Arc: Presents: Guitar Duets review, Pitchfork
No wait, here's a concept review about concept reviews. Sheesh.

- Hercules: In the Alleyway review, Pitchfork
Terribly written, and the reference points I use could be refined a lot further, but this is one of the first records I really got behind for Pitchfork. It's still one that people would do well to check out.

- Depeche Mode: Remixes 81-04 review, Pitchfork
Far and away the most embarrassing thing I've written for Pitchfork. I didn't enjoy spending a weekend listening to this Depeche Mode remix double-album, and maybe I still wouldn't, but I'm not sure how you'd read this review and not come away with the impression that my problem with the album was largely my own ignorance.

- The Streets: A Grand Don't Come for Free review, PopMatters
OK, so it's a bit juvenile in retrospect, but I still credit this review for getting me in the door at Pitchfork.

- "Elliott Smith: A Fond Farewell" essay, PopMatters
I like Elliott Smith.

- "Failure Is Victory" post, Whopundit
I dug up here and in other posts an extensive listing of instances where Administration officials said that things turning shitty in Iraq was really a sign that things were turning awesome. Obviously, I was wrong and George W. Bush has been proved right by history, which is why all the major print and TV pundits not named Paul Krugman are people who were still pro-war even at the time I was writing this.

- "Sbarro Opens to Hungry Mouths, Excitement" quote in the Daily Northwestern
I convinced a well-meaning Daily reporter to rush into print a rave review that could potentially damage my credibility. I was, of course, joking.


This has of course nothing to do with anything.
Deerhunter: Fluorescent Grey (live at South Street Seaport)

So that's that for now. Some stuff is better left in the archives-- and will stay there until John Mayer and Kanye West meld into some kind of unassailable Super Frat Boy, laying waste to every lowly music scribe in his/their media-blitzing path and, if I get to the Emerald City before midnight, bestowing upon me both heat vision and the power to erase memory. (Kevin Spacey is the killer.)

P.S. Rap blogger Byron Crawford: Heroic, Lou Dobbs-esque warrior against "political correctness"... or a guy who gets really excited about Tucker Carlson's pee-pee and any chance to talk shit about gay people? Seriously, this is the political issue Crawford thinks is worth taking a break from music to blog about? A debate from last week about whether or not some spoiled preppy who only has his millions-paying job because of his daddy deserves to get publicly castigated for acting like a spoiled preppy?

THE CREME OF THE DE LA CREME

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!)

Your memories become fantasies if they are not shared, and your life in all its triviality becomes a legend.
Cousin Cole: Party Like a Rock Star (Remix) (also, here) (Dombal has this too)

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 Stone review 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.

When y'all get 80, 70, 60, 55 years old, Michiko Kakutani gonna be sittin' in a rockin' chair by herself.
Twa Toots: Please Don't Play 'A Rainy Night in Georgia' (via Skatterbrain)

EVERYTHING'S COMING UP PIZNARSKI

Famous-sounding words make your head feel light.
Pixies: Gigantic (live, 1988)

Clicks are currency here in the ad-sponsored online media Interzone, and that simple fact changes not just how we interact with content, but also what content we see in the first place. In 2007, is the concept of a Googleable name so newsworthy it belongs on the front page of The Wall Street Journal? Just a couple of years ago, was the notion of college kids eating cereal really so novel it merited an entire trend story in The New York Times? Magazines like Time have pandered hard with sex and religion covers for decades, but the online medium has only intensified the media's emphasis on easy sells over timely news pegs. The difference: It doesn't even matter anymore if people actually read the story, let alone find it worth money. The click is all that counts.

News websites have a few different ways to generate clicks. The most valuable to readers is breaking a fresh story, but while this may be the best strategy for maintaining long-term credibility, it requires resources (talented reporters with time to develop sources) and flexibility (you can't schedule scoops). Another way to generate clicks is to write a story with broad inherent appeal: No matter what you write about universal topics like sex, religion, or health, if you write an intriguing headline, people are going to click. Keep your common denominator low enough, and AOL or MSN might even throw links your way (= more advertising revenue). Finally, sites can run cultish stories targeting readers who make up in passion what they lack in numbers. Not everybody cares about Sirius stock (ticker: SIRI), but everybody who does seems to click on every Sirius-related news story.

From a news perspective, the effect of the latter two options is to trivialize and segment the dialogue even further than cable TV shoutfests have already done. Websites run stories that are the journalistic equivalent of Cosmopolitan coverlines: A Slate article on "Hillary's red-state accent" probably doesn't have any policy relevance, but that headline is like American Apparel near-nudity for grabbing clicks-- whether or not anybody actually finishes reading the durn thing. Further, Sirius might not be particularly important, but click-conscious editors will probably assign additional resources to them to keep up their numbers, and end up missing out on smarter, tougher, more important stories. At some point, forget investigative reporting.


Not only is a man in the cabinet, but the man is a midget.
Los Campesinos!: We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives (cross-posted from Pitchfork)

I'm beginning to believe that Web music discussion is affected by these same trends, though probably not as consciously (none of my editors have ever, ever broached the topic). Here, too, news portals and click-conscious bloggers must know they can get the most bang from their buck writing about topics with extremely broad appeal. Or topics with tiny but devout (often aka bored) followings. And this is where I get back to one of the things that's bold and awesome about Matt LeMay's band, Get Him Eat Him (although in response to Nick's post, I like the album but have no idea how I'd go about rating it-- knowing somebody involved with a band tends to make me worry both about being unfairly positive and about overcompensating for perhaps being unfairly positive): This is an environment where the Top 40, MTV, and American Idol acts still have cross-niche appeal to writers and readers; everybody likes and writes about the tiny amount of stuff that gets a national push from non-Internet media. It's also an environment where we, overloaded with information, devote an inordinate amount of time to albums nobody seems willing to admit they don't get (in fairness sometimes I probably just don't get 'em). The faltering mass culture and the above-reproach avant garde. [though: Why accept Clive Davis's story as credible? Doesn't it enhance a pop star's image to portray her as a rebel rather than a product?]

"ANYWAY" (hyuck hyuck) what Get Him Eat Him do is put together influences from unjustly undermentioned '90s indie-rock heroes like Chavez and Shudder to Think and write catchy songs and actually sing well. This is neither low-brow nor incomprehensibly outre. In fact it's so barely a few years ago ("Oh, I'm listening to an indie-rock band") it seems like the type of thing that could get overlooked in the New Promotional Order. A one-line post about a buzzed-about record you've never listened to in its entirety (but OMG it just hit oink) would be an easier, flashier lure for buzzers/ees. WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO GET PEOPLE TO LISTEN TO STUFF NOWADAYS??? Are we making music "work" or did the technology just get that way.


My Crystal Gayle shirt is ruined.
Jonathan Richman: Springtime in New York

Elsewhere:

Here's more on what I was getting at in the non-musical portion of the post that prompted this discussion with Dave Moore. If no journalism at least strives for objectivity (while inevitably failing), then we're further from a well-informed democracy:

"You can always dismiss a blogger, or a partisan paper like the New York Post, as biased. But The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal have long batted down this complaint. That's because it rings so empty. The MSM makes an earnest (albeit occasionally flawed) effort to achieve a neutral understanding of events, and that's the source of an authority and prestige that even its harshest critics in the political and corporate elite still must respect."

If you haven't gotten to Tom Ewing's latest Poptimist column yet, you should. Key point:

"[C]riticism isn't at the brass-rubbing stage quite yet. To fully avoid it, it seems to me as a reader that music critics will have to stop relying on their superior taste and expertise, and start trading on their ideas and the conversations they help spark."

One crazy addition: I read some of my favorite music writers also for the pleasure of their prose, savoring the vitality of their language as much as what the words convey (the way people can listen to an album that sounds good whether or not the lyrics match up) (cf. especially Meltzer, Bangs, and Xgau, yes he of the "Consumer Guide"). Good writing can function without necessarily being only overtly functional, right? (Not saying I can even achieve this, but ideally it's one more way we could make ourselves useful.)


Look at that, a bear mining for coal.
Yoko Ono and Cat Power: Revelations

WHERE IS THE DANGER

Well she laughs when she wants like you do when you're 5 years old.
Säkert!: Allt som är ditt

NBC's Brian Williams, when did you stop beating your wife? I will soooo blog about your Limbaugh-liking ass, Williams. Limbaugh. Licking. Ass.

The Chicago Sun-Times' Jim DeRogatis reminds us of lots of Bangs quotes in honor of the 25th anniversary of the rock critic's death. While I'm not sure they cast Bangs in his best light-- "All blues singers are great liars"? "The ultimate sin of any performer is contempt for the audience"?-- they at least include that Clash/"flashbulb moment" line. None of it touches the Astral Weeks piece, though. (BTW, "Rock Never Forgets"? Was DeRo's headline editor kidding? If rock remembers, it wasn't really there.)

Deerhunter's Bradford Cox recently interviewed author Dennis Cooper. "During the course of our discussion we decided there was a real lack of danger," Cox tells the San Diego Union-Tribune. "There is no Throbbing Gristle or G.G. Allin or Patti Smith, there is nothing that represents what I really think Punk is about. I want things to be dangerous in an authentic, introverted, non-confrontational way."

James Brown: Live in Montreux, 1981 (video)

Julianne Shepherd: @ Pitchfork talking about Lil Wayne (column).

Philip Sherburne on Battles' "Atlas" and the DJ Koze remix. T. Rex!

Here is where I stop linking to my individual Forkcast items.


Sosa's 595th homer leads Rangers by Jays.
Pink: U & UR Hand