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)

THE CHAMP IS HERE

Justify all your phases.
Indeep: Last Night a DJ Saved My Life

The "Draft Alan Keyes" movement is totally on. From a right-wing mailing list to which I happen to subscribe:

Dear Friends of Alan Keyes,

Several times a week, we at RenewAmerica receive messages from moral conservatives and concerned citizens encouraging Alan Keyes to run for president in 2008 (messages we pass on to him).

Typically, these messages express dissatisfaction with the current field of candidates and ask Alan to enter the Republican primaries--the most wide-open presidential race in 60 years...

In response to these expressions of confidence in Alan, we've launched a new website--AlanKeyes.com--to rally support for Alan's possible candidacy.

Alan believes that the American people are the key to restoring and sustaining a renewal of the values that are essential to the future of our nation. He has therefore assured us that if enough grassroots support exists for him to run, he is prepared to run.

The bold and italics are both theirs. Music fans may remember Alan Keyes (who unsuccessfully ran against Barack Obama in his 2004 Senate bid) as the 2000 Republican presidential candidate who dove into a mosh pit at a Rage Against the Machine show. An even more conservative candidate, Gary Bauer, later criticized Keyes for supporting an "anti-family" and "pro-terrorist" band called "The Machine Rages On."

Good news for David Broder, would-be Xgau of all political pundits, who won't have to be bored anymore. But bad news, too, because the good Dean might have to wake up from his long multi-decade nap.

Plus: Wingnuts react!

ONE FOREVER AT A TIME

I'm in the building like the audience.
UGK: International Player's Anthem (feat. Outkast) [cross-posted from Pitchfork]

Tom Breihan puts it best: ""This is going to look ridiculous, especially if Bridget's reading this, but I've been engaged for a little more than a year now, and in that time no piece of pop-culture ephemera has made me more excited to be getting married than this video. Even if Pimp C is almost certainly not showing up to my wedding in a giant white fur hat, this thing looks like a whole lot of fun."

And the kids say there's no summer banger.

P.S. My Dan Deacon review in SPIN.

IT'S WEIRD THAT CHAIRS EVEN EXIST WHEN YOU'RE NOT SITTING IN THEM

Just for the record, "nonplussed" doesn't mean "not impressed."
Kermit the Frog: The Rainbow Connection

In an e-mail, a smart acquaintance recently likened modern politics to independent rock's big grunge payday. The Democratic party is an embarrassingly wimpy, centrist organization, the friend says; he's an indie dude who came up in the 1990s, so there's no use talking about "participating to change it from within." Seeing as we were probably in agreement about our ideals if not our politics, I decided it would be better to post my thoughts here than to shoot back an annoying e-mail. No point debating someone with whom you already pretty much agree, after all.

There are plenty of ways the parallel makes perfect sense. Obviously, yes, on an individual level a deep-pocketed political organization funded by interest groups will be nearly as hard for one person to change as one of the humongoid, incomprehensibly stupid major record labels. More importantly, though, in both cases good-hearted people shoot themselves in the fucking foot.

Indie rock is defined by its "independence", so its fans are reflexively contrarian, notoriously backlash-prone. Liberals can be the same way. Where part of the point of American Idol is that everyone (even indie-rock fans) watches it, and Republicans have been only too glad to line up behind the wealthiest village idiot, indie-rock fans volubly dismiss later albums by their favorite bands, and liberal politicans and pundits make it a point of pride to shore up their nonpartisan cred-- which for Joe Lieberman (and the previous editorship at The New Republic) essentially means becoming a Republican. For many individuals, and certainly hotshot center-left columnists like Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd, this independence means sighing, "A pox on both houses." In 2000 it meant Ralph Nader. And John McCain.


Also, the whole "comprises" the parts. A band is not "comprised of" anything.
The Crayon Fields: Do It Right/Helicopters (live)

I guess I'd kind of unwittingly assumed everyone else had the same epiphany as I did during the post-9/11 phase of the Bush Administration: Sometimes, it's OK to take sides, because one side's actions are clearly hurting people. It's less "lesser of two evils" than "the perfect is the enemy of the good." I forget that for people whose first election wasn't Bush v. Gore, particularly those who reached political maturity when the post-Nirvana sweepstakes was laying waste to independent scenes, this road to Damascus might be less evident. And for good reason, too.

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. The analogy includes a flawed assumption; democracy isn't the same as business (apologies to Larry Kudlow). Kids in schools, old people who need medicine, families in whatever countries some chickenhawk wants to bomb, young women who aren't ready for a baby, gay couples who want basic civil rights, working folks who deserve a basic living wage, etc., etc., are all affected by who is in charge in the White House. It hasn't been particularly cool to care about these things in my lifetime, but it's true.


I know a place where diamonds never fade away.
Fabolous: Make Me Better (feat. Ne-Yo, produced by Timbaland)

And stuff won't magically improve when Bush leaves office. The next generation of Republican presidential candidates is even worse, writes Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria (via Brad DeLong). The race for the nomination has turned into "an exercise in chest-thumping," according to Zakaria. "The competition to be the tough guy is producing new policy ideas ... that range from bad to insane," he opines.

Typical, naturally, of the conflicted indie/left relationship with both politics and commerce is the Arcade Fire. Like John Mayer, the Montreal indie-rockers make lots of allusions to politics on their newest record without ever coming down conclusively on a side; they "don't want to live in America no more," but they're not so much participating in a debate as opting out of one. Artistically defensible, of course, but if extended to a personal level fairly selfish, given the way democracy works (i.e., not like a major label -- i.e., what separates democracy from other forms of government is people voting, even occasionally for a turd sandwich).

Neon Bible benefits from major distribution and boasted a marketing campaign so good it was ripped off by R. Kelly. But the Fire have it both ways (neither way) on this, too: "Marketing campaign?" Win Butler laughs when asked about it in a Pitchfork interview, prompting Amanda Petrusich to seek a different phrase. The band debates even doing publicity at all, according to Rolling Stone, which quotes multi-instrumentalist Richard Reed Perry: "We're trying to navigate a culture where people manufacture a lot of garbage. The goal is not to sell the most records or be the most famous. I think everybody in our band thinks we're trying to do something that's real and has some lasting value to it."

...OK, I'm basically just jealous of Win's recent sinus surgery. Like I said, my friend and I were probably pretty much in agreement to start with. Pass the Claritin-D.


It's a clumsy image but it encapsulates the playfulness of that record and its blend of sexuality and emotionally stunted yet self-aware infantilism.
Billy Bragg: Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards (via Steve Gozdecki)

NO MORE TIME FOR SPECTATING

This opens a new chapter in our relations with all nations of this hemisphere.
The Lucksmiths: Great Lengths
(live; please bear with the slight distortion!)


Not so much antic despair as desperate antics.
The Lucksmiths: T-Shirt Weather (live)

I participated in an American tradition this weekend. I spent hours stuck in traffic getting the heck out of the city. Like many Americans, the other people in the car and I whiled away our time listening to music. I don't have a road trip playlist or anything, and anyway I wasn't so fortunate as to be driving. However, I did listen to Blur's Parklife for the first time in years. Still sounds good, even if the Syd Barretty stuff has worn a bit, and "Trouble in the Message Center" always felt a bit tossed-off. Nothing was better, though, than listening to Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville on a screened-in porch with friends, reading and overlooking a mountain lake.

Today education blog The Quick and the Ed basically did what offnotes does in reverse. Instead of starting off talking about some random thing or other and ending up talking about some random music thing (or other), blogger Kevin Carey gets music out of the way first, then talks about some edumacation thing. But not before dropping this pearl o' nugget:

"The challenge of the information age isn't in gaining access to information, it's making sense of it. It's not figuring out how to buy CDs, it's figuring out which CDs to buy--and which not to. Those are issue of judgement and taste, which only people can provide."

Exactly! That's why, ultimately, just racing to promote every old thing without stepping back to assess what really works is a doomed proposition. Yes, the MP3 era has probably changed listening habits in some ways permanently, but particularly if people's music collections continue to grow at such an exponential rate, listeners will still probably be interested in some help finding music that appeals to them. Given how irrational and subjective music fandom can be, I'm less confident than perhaps my colleague Chris Dahlen in the extent of technology's ability to meet the challenge.

I leave my pajamas to Billy Budapest.
MP3s: King Khan & the Shrines: "Welfare Bread" and "No Regrets"
[from the forthcoming What Is]

Jonathan Chait notes (free reg req'd, or bugmenot) that some right-wing thinkers are moving from "the conservatism of Paul Wolfowitz" to "the conservatism of Montgomery Burns." In other words, conservative thinkers are leaving behind the small-"d" democratic values the Iraq war was supposedly fought to promote, instead seeing the virtue of authoritarianism now that our own democracy isn't swinging their way. An economist from the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Kevin Hassett, rather enviously compares dictatorships to our democracy, noting that the former are "are not hamstrung by the preferences of voters for, say, a pervasive welfare state." Yeah, democracy really blows that way, don't it chief?

Lastly, I'd be remiss if I forgot to point out the great work Bob Somerby has done in the past week or so at the Daily Howler. (I know, I probably link to him every time, don't I?) In short: "Al Gore said our discourse is broken. And his critics rushed to prove that he's right." Somerby looks at the way reporters for the Washington Post and the New York Times have responded, as Gore wrote they would in his new book, not to the substance of his arguments, but with Maureen Dowd-esque irrelevancies. Chris Matthews is getting paid millions of dollars to speculate about Gore's possible plastic surgery (there, now even I have spread this rumor... this is how coverage of prominent Democrats works-- remember Gennifer Flowers? Kathleen Willey? "Clinton's New Girl Friend" that the Google Ads promise to tell me about? ...Botox?). Somerby has also written about the way Matthews, the Washington Post and others have rushed out to hype the possibility of negative info about Hillary Clinton in a pair of new books. In doing so, these high-paid pundits have treated former Timesman Jeff Gerth as a reputable source-- despite the fact the man not only concocted much of the Whitewater fable, but was eventually fired from the Times for his shoddy reporting in the Wen Ho Lee story. Look it up.


Waiting for you is like waiting for the man in the moon.
R. Kelly: The World's Greatest

RUDY GIULIANI IS THE ANTICHRIST

Snarky asides help to pay my bills.
The Tough Alliance: Silly Crimes

"Technological change is always a Faustian bargain," the late media theorist Neil Postman often said. For example, the automobile gave us the freedom to travel long distances quickly and independently, but it devastated urban downtowns and created sprawling exurban megalopolises (and robbed us of our legal prerogative to get good and soused). Shit, many people far wiser than I am have already observed how the Internet has not only democratized indie-rock fandom but also diminished its intensity; instead of handmade zines and brick-and-mortar stores, we have right clicks. Groovy.

More subtly, the online medium has also changed how we connect with our favorite bands. Web 2.0 hype aside, "interactive" doesn't necessarily mean a higher level of interaction. You've read this trend piece: To have an opinion on a band, all you need is facility with a search engine. To remove them entirely from your lives, just hit shift-delete. To be a fan...?

Hey guys, there's this Atlanta band called Deerhunter I really dig. Yeah like the movie. No, totally, pick up their CD! Buy that shit from my Amazon link! Instead of limiting themselves to the current (possibly doomed) model of "I make music, and you take it all from me for free and then shit on my memory when the next Joanna Newsom comes along," Deerhunter kinda let fans take their fandom to the next level. No, not like the prom.

Back when Blur were the most important thing in the world (who's going to take over the world when I die?), when I was in high school, I used to go into random record stores with import sections and look for their B-sides. This was before I was plugged into the music discourse that tells it's totally normal for sweaty, peach-fuzzed weirdos all over the country, THE WORLD EVEN, to look for B-sides in record-store import sections. And do you know what I would do? Why, sometimes I would even buy Blur import CD singles without previously hearing any of the B-sides!


I wanted to be an acquired taste.
Echo and the Bunnymen: Show of Strength (h/t: Dennis Cooper)

Maybe it's my blurred perspective as a critic, but it's hard to remember the last time I paid money for new music I didn't already know, from advance listening, I would like. Except, not. Deerhunter are one band that allows fans to return to the aforementioned pre-blogsearch (eff Technorati) fan scenario: People taking a financial risk on a band they like and getting to keep something to remind them of it (to put it crassly). Yeah, I suppose I could sell or throw away my Blur B-sides, but why would I? That would be like throwing away my 1981 Topps Joe Montana rookie card! Steve Albini has a bigger penis than I do!

Most famously, Deerhunter made their "Whirlyball" 7" available at only one store, as Pitchfork's twice-indefatigable Paul Thompson reported. A single, by a popular Internet band, that nobody on the Internet can get. I even have family in Atlanta, and I still haven't heard it (shut up, I don't have a family). So what if it might suck? Plenty of Blur B-sides did, too, though enough were golden to make the quest worthwhile.

More than that, Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox also has a solo project, Atlas Sound. Now, Deerhunter might be enough for most people, but any great band is also going to have some crazy fans who want to hear even more, so this is perfect. From MySpace listens, Cox's forthcoming Atlas Sound album is gonna be pretty sweet. But he also drops all kinds of 12"s and shit for total fanatics, like this split 12" with Mexcellent on Hoss Records, Fractal Trax. As with my Blur B-sides, once you own something like that, you've made an investment in an artist; you probably still won't like everything they do, but you won't abandon them for the next Zach Braff panty-dropper that gets seven and a half riffs from AllMachineStylusStone. You've interacted.

I finally got Fractal Trax in the mail yesterday. I ordered it with real money, but there was a press release in the box. Is that a standard thing these days? Apparently it's all Cox in his bedroom on four-track tape, playing guitars, percussion, and electric bass, plus manipulating tape. First track is "Axis I (F. Grey)", which perhaps unsurprisingly sounds like an outtake version of the title track to Deerhunter's Fluorescent Grey EP (kind of an inscrutable Excepter-ment to it, too); Cox's familiar vocal delay effects are everywhere, so I still can't tell what he's saying on the song's refrain. "Axis II" slips into some homemade beats akin to the outro of "Strawberry Fields" or that Sebadoh song that rips off the outro of "Strawberry Fields", with a heavy bass groove. I forget "Inhalents" right now, but then fourth track "'I Know, I Know'" seems to pick up the "was not seen again" melody of Cryptograms' "Heatherwood". A helium Battles/Dan Deacon voice goes, "I've seen where you and me part," and then Cox is all, "I know decay could swallow me," and "All your base are belong to us," and, like, Ian Curtis shit, man man.

You can't hear any of it online.

Maybe the RIAA should revert to vinyl.

I prefer my urinals to have dividers, thanks.


Thinking about what a friend had said, I was hoping it was a lie.
Frank Black: I Heard Ramona Sing (live, solo acoustic, 1993)

UPDATE: Yes! It's poppin'.

UPDATE UPDATE: Thnx to the also-indefatigable Brandon Stosuy, you actually can hear one track online. Once again, technology makes me look stupid.

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