"hell is other people's music."

9/27/05

PRELIMINARY NOTES FOR A CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

1. "avant-garde art, as a minority culture, must attack and deny the majority culture to which it is opposed" � renato poggioli, theory of the avant-garde
2. "roll over beethoven" � chuck berry, "roll over beethoven"
3. "no elvis, beatles, or the rolling stones" � the clash, "1977"
4. "they said that we were trash; well the name is crass, not clash" � crass, "white punks on hope"

that's all i have so far. this blog is going to pot and all i've done in this space recently is whine. well no more. in the last several days, i've rediscovered two albums i wrote off long ago: ...and you will know us by the trail of dead's source tags and codes and dear nora's mountain rock. i'm not going to give thoughtful justifications because this blog is going to pot and i'm happy to let wreckage pile up upon the wreckage. i will, however, say that, while neither is a neglected classic by any stretch of the imagination, neither were these two records deserving of the disappointment i felt and the scorn i heaped upon them after i first listened to � and then quickly forgot about � them.

i just now got an email in which the phrase "fucking the dog" was explained to me. apparently, that's what people who have real jobs say when they slack off at work. in that spirit, i propose a new phrase for academics: "fucking my sister," for use when one makes wildly inappropriate references. e.g. did you read that essay where gayatri spivak compared pepperoni to the holocaust? she was really fucking her sister on that one (apologies to ms. spivak for including her in this nonsense). in any event, i might write a good blog entry soon but i have to get back to this trash scape of reading i have in front of me and then get some sleep so i don't end up fucking my sister in class. the critique of political economy, by which i mean: tracing moments of avant-garde practice in d.i.y./punk rock, will come when it comes, no matter what peter b�rger says.

5. "the neo-avant-garde institutionalises the avant-garde as art and thus negates genuinely avant-gardiste [sic] intentions. this is true independently of the consciousness artists have of their activity, a consciousness that may perfectly well be avant-gardiste. it is the status of their products, not the consciousness artists have of their activity, that defines the social effect of works" � peter b�rger, theory of the avant-garde

9/20/05

SAYS SHE'S GONNA BUY SOME RECORDS BY THE STATUS QUO, OH YEAH

my mother used to say that it is one's responsibility as a citizen of this world to read the newspaper. well, as a responsible listener of music (and as someone scared of his music tastes ossifying and, on a broader level, losing touch with the "kids"), i've spent the last couple of days listening to a couple of new, much talked about records that i've been avoiding the way i avoid all popular things of whose quality i haven't been given any reputable indication. so the verdicts: clap your hands say yeah � talking heads and destroyer influences duly noted, but if i wanted to hear some of this jammy, white guitar rock collective thing, i would listen to the arcade fire and i don't; usaisamonster � is yet more boring jammy, white guitar rock masquerading as radical, experimental music and sucks. the question now becomes: will i continue to put up with hypey bullshit and be disappointed year after year (interpol, broken social scene, the arcade fire, etc.) or will i sit in my room staring out the window in suspicion of those darn kids and their silly haircuts while clutching my bikini kill, the dirt of luck, and butch LP's and comparing all new music unfavorably to melt banana?

9/15/05

DILETTANTEN ERHEBT EUCH GEGEN DIE KUNST

i'm listening to picaresque right now. i officially hate myself. this is worse than any of my prior admissions of shameful listening. worse than the strokes, worse than death cab for cutie, worse than the get up kids, worse yet than sublime. okay, maybe this isn't as bad as that time i listened to NOFX for old sake's sake, but i can't do it anymore; catchy or not, i can't listen to this bullshit for one more second. i'm putting on in the aeroplane over the sea for a similar effect, but one that doesn't make me want to smash white people's acoustic guitars like in that juicy fruit commercial.

there was this one time two years ago when sparky had moved out of the house on lexington and rachel blumberg, through the pop list, showed interest in moving in. the deal breaker was that we didn't have a space for her band to practice. no way i was going to put up with that bullshit. and kneel, he would have kvetched twice and died.

9/13/05

TELEVISION, YOU KNOW I LOVE TO TURN YOU ON

we just got cable. my new roommates seem to love television so we have four hundred channels, which i can't begin to imagine watching if i want not to fail out of grad school in the first semester. but the gilmore girls premiere was tonight and it made my life complete. you think i'm being sarcastic but i'm not. no show panders to the hopes and desires of its audience while cutting them off at the very end, just short of a full, totalised resolution, and keeps them coming back for more like gilmore girls. even in its tired, autumn years, it's still the best written show on television. and speaking of television, as seen on julianne shepherd's blog:

me: "yo, you know something that's fucked up? you know that new tv show w/neil patrick harris? i saw a preview for it, and there's this moment where neil exclaims i am totally putting that on my blog! and it is meant as a moment of zeitgeistical humor."

chris: "i mean, when you think about it, doogie howser was the original blogger."

9/06/05

DON'T YOU SAY "HEY" TO ME, YOU UGLY GIRL

more troubling business: "You can't take the city out of the yat, and you can't take the yat out of the city," said Frank Searle, a longtime Baton Rouge resident, using a slang term for New Orleanians derived from the local greeting, "Where y'at?"

"These people will not assimilate here," Mr. Searle said. "They put up with the crime in New Orleans, and now it's staring them in the face, but up here that's not going to be tolerated. People are going to handle it individually if they have to. This is the South. We will take care of it."

i've never been to the south, nor would i want to, but, you know, to kill a mockingbird was written in 1960. they made a movie about it and it's one of the most famous movies of all time and it won, like, 50 oscars. for the benefit of the blind, ted turner let leroy neiman paint all over the film in the 80's. i mean, i know that louisiana was once a major slave trade port and tradition is important and all but what the shit? seriously, runs to the gun store? what the fuck is wrong with these people? i've made reference to faulkner's worst mississippi nightmares before but...

9/03/05

HANGING OUT IN NEW ORLEANS ALL THE WHILE

i'm sad to have to tell that alex chilton is reportedly missing and is said to have been in new orleans when hurricane katrina hit. even though the latest big star album reportedly sucked, chilton is one of the greatest songwriters of the rock and roll period and i, for one, think that big star's 3rd/sister lovers is one of the three best rock and roll albums of all time. light a candle for alex chilton.

ADDENDUM (9/05/05)

a propos of my last entry about playing old songs more than a decade after the fact, i thought back to september of 2000, when we went to bumbershoot to see the reformed big star. i don't think i understood big star's 3rd/sister lovers before i heard the band's performance of empty space during "holocaust" and "big black car." last night, i was listening to my vinyl copy of the album � there are a handful of albums i love so much and that are suitably rare on vinyl that i own them on both c.d. and LP format and, in the interest of not wearing them down, i only listen to the LP's once in a long while � and i reflected on the sense of incompleteness of 3rd. the rock and roll arrangements on the a-side aren't fleshed out (at least not in the standard lead guitar/rhythm guitar/bass/drums way) but are imbellished with subtle and delicate string arrangements. the b-side deals as much with the notes that are played as with those that aren't. what you do hear is barely audible and you keep straining to fill in the gaps, some of which has just been recorded very softly and some of which is actually absent. the drums are beautifully mic'd to sound like they were recorded in a practice space, and you get the feeling of an album in its most idealised but incomplete form � a coming together of the album alex chilton had written down in his notebook and the one he heard in his head. of course, 3rd has gone down as rock and roll's kubla khan, a great unfinished masterpiece that turned out perfect. the rykodisc reissue of the c.d. gets the tracklisting (which chilton never authoritatively conceptualised) all wrong, but my version of the LP (which goes "stroke it noel," "for you," "kizza me," "you can't have me," "nightime," "blue moon," "take care"/"jesus christ," "femme fatale," "o, dana," "big black car," "holocaust," "kanga roo," and "thank you friends") is the best order i can imagine. if you have the c.d., program the songs in this order and leave out the outtakes and you'll have possibly the greatest rock and roll album of all time. last night, i also put on r.e.m.'s great, neglected up, whose debt to 3rd seems obvious to me, if to nobody else. i think of these two as part of a continuum of career reexamination albums that begins with lou reed's berlin, which chilton acknowledged as his inspiration while he was writing 3rd. reed, big star, and r.e.m. had all hit emotional rock bottom in their personal and professional lives � reed coming off both his commercial breakthrough transformer and the ensuing masterpiece metal machine music, on the basis of which he was written off by music critics the world over, big star having just recorded two timeless and clearly commercially viable pop albums that were completely ignored due to their label's mismanagement and meagre resources, and r.e.m. due to drummer bill berry's aneurysm and departure from the band after 20 years. r.e.m., taking its cue from 3rd, hired posies alumnus and sometimes big star member ken stringfellow, along with fellow seattle rock scene veterans scott mccaughey and barrett martin and a few studio ringers (joey waronker was one), and created their best album in fifteen years with nigel "ok computer" godrich on the boards. often it takes a reexamination of one's career to hit a turning point (see sonic youth's firing of drummer bob bert and hiring of the much more musically literate steve shelley and the ensuing classic EVOL or brian wilson being so inspired by the possibilities opened up by the beatles' rubber soul that he sat down and wrote pet sounds � both of these albums, in my estimation, stand beside 3rd as the three greatest rock and roll albums i've ever heard � but i'm more interested in the mid- or late-career plateau, that last gasp of experimentation in the face of irrelevance that reed, big star, and r.e.m. made. at a critical point in the trajectory of my songwriting career, having left monop�le! two years earlier and having written a first "solo" album of songs that weren't altogether different from what i had been doing for years, i had to put a drill to my temple, so to speak, and start anew. taking my cue from berlin, 3rd, and up, i made empty space both my musical and lyrical muse and recorded an album, prolepsis, more with the sounds of mic-ing silence and tape hiss than with instruments and words. i don't presume that that project stands next to the three aforementioned albums, but what i mean to get across here is that the one moment of silence in the middle of big star's "nightime," after the "i hate it here/get me out of here" part and before the strings and acoustic guitar come back in, might be the most interesting moment in any song pop song that i've ever heard and, certainly, it inspires me like no other.

Take care not to hurt yourself
Beware of the need for help
You might need too much
And people are such
Take care, please, take care
Some people read idea books
And some people have pretty looks
But if your eyes are wide
And all words aside
Take care, please, take care
This sounds a bit like goodbye
In a way it is I guess
As I leave your side
I've taken the air
Take care, please, take care
Take care, please, take care

ADDENDUM #2 (9/06/05)

i awoke this morning to very welcome news: alex chilton is safe and sound. pitchfork broke the story (to me, at least) and said that he was airlifted out of his house in the french quarter on sunday. of course, other issues abound. as happy and relieved as i am that chilton is okay, they're airlifting white, semi-famous, rich in any event (that 70's show using your song in their credits pays and pays and pays), cult-pop superstars with the same helicopters that hover over african-americans waiting for them to die, hovering for so long now that some began to shoot at them just to see if the people in the helicopters knew they were down there (oh, they knew and you know what? in that situation, i might have been tempted to shoot to kill). you know, what kanye said: "george bush doesn't care about black people." kanye, as i'm sure you already know, also made reference to the two AP wire photos of people chest deep in water with bags of food. the african-american gentleman was described in the caption as looting while the white couple was described as finding food (yahoo! news has since taken the latter down, citing "photo language controversy"). which makes me begin to think (and, of course, these opinions i'm giving are nothing new and are by now almost clich�s they've been repeated, and rightfully so, so often and by so many people this last weekend; i've just been lagging behind in dealing what's going on with my pathetic "alex chilton is missing" blog entries) about the american media's creation of a narrative with the horrific images of poor african-american people left behind by the relief efforts and the images of african-american people "looting," as well as the images and stories of violence and rape � focusing, of course, on african-americans. the implication i'm getting here is that these representations of crimes committed by african-americans in some way justifies the relief effort's white-people-first policy and puts a positive spin (i want to vomit just writing this) on the horrific images and narratives of african-americans being left to die in the ninth ward (a ha, hush that fuss � everybody move to the back of the bus). so, as glad as i am to hear that alex chilton is alright, i'm disgusted � as, i'm sure, is he � by the circumstances surrounding his rescue.

to lighten the mood, here's something delightfully inane, albeit something that is at the same time troubling and quite telling about the state of idiocy in this country i now once again inhabit (as if we haven't had enough evidence of political regressiveness in the press this week). but watch the moronic cultural commentary devolve into a petty squabble via an equally crude, if unintentionally funny, prank (the intended humour of the prank was wholly unfunny) on the occasion of another petty perceived slight.

ADDENDUM #3

currently soundtracking my life and this bullshit.

9/01/05

DREAM OF THE SOFT LOOK/ YOUR EYES HAD ONCE

i was just listening to bratmobile's cover of joan jett's "cherry bomb," from their epochal 1993 album potty mouth, and it made me reflect on the handful of times i've seen bratmobile � all after the band's reformation in 2000. while b-mob's recorded output since they reformed has been middling, they still put on an excellent show. but what i hadn't realised, being all caught up in the excitement of b-mob's shows, is that allison can't do that "i'm the fox you've been waiting for" thing with her voice like she did on potty mouth. we get older and our voices change; just listen to my latest record (though, come to think of it, that might be more a product of too many cigarettes than aging). and while i'm actually a big fan of superchunk's later work and would probably sell my left arm to see them live, if mac were to sing "slack motherfucker" now, it wouldn't sound right. this makes me all the more impressed by pete shelley. i saw the buzzcocks two years ago and, while pete shelley has turned into a flabby caricature of his '77 self (his hair still looks the same and he still dresses the same), the band still plays the same way as it did on another music for a different kitchen and � amazingly � shelley's voice sounds the same too. all of my records are in boxes on a slow moving truck somewhere in the midwest and i have nothing else to listen to, so often these days i put on tradition and the individual talents and contemplate making a deal with the devil to prematurely turn fat and wrinkly and, in return, have my voice sound the right way on the record.

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