What? Sebadoh III, which I've been saying was the greatest album of the 90's to anyone with ears since all of those best of the decade lists came out six years ago, is sufficiently well-regarded to merit a two disc expanded reissue? Almost no one I know who listened to what was then much less ironically called "indie rock" (without the insufferable bunny quotes, at any rate) in the early 90's still even has a copy of Sebadoh III. Most have Nevermind and Slanted & Enchanted close by; Exile in Guyville and No Pocky for Kitty remain well represented; over the last decade, we've developed first name basis relationships with Loveless, Repeater, and Spiderland; and, now and then, I even see Pearl Jam Ten, outside of time, in all its denim-clad glory, as if unaware of its complete irrelevance. That's right: love for Pearl Jam Ten and barely a wistful memory of Sebadoh III.
and:
Among the legendary early 90's albums I've already mentioned, two stand out for their impact on the popular imagination. While both have meant a lot to me over the last fifteen years, they both also signal an end, which puts me in a weird relationship to them because they came out when I was ten and twelve, respectively. As much they each signal an end, they also symbolize for me a discovery. Like most people my age, Nirvana's Nevermind was the first punk rock album I owned. At the same time, it was punk rock's first and last intervention of its kind into the mainstream. When Nevermind blew up in 1992 — I turned eleven that year — Kurt Cobain was telling anyone with a microphone or a tape recorder about the Raincoats, Daniel Johnston, and the Pastels, all of whom would have a profound impact on the way I think about punk rock in later years. Never again would the biggest band in the world, a punk rock band at that, declare its love for such radical and marginal music. And never again would a punk rock band be given that kind of platform. (I should also note that Lifetime, as close to my heart as I continue to hold their memory, are no Raincoats.) The second album, Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville, closed the book on the popular imagination's fascination with the bedroom album and, arguably, played a huge role in what would, half a decade later, become known as the Lilith Fair phenomenon. Exile was, predictably, the first bedroom pop album I ever heard. Others had existed, from as small a scale as Patrik Fitzgerald or Daniel Johnston (before they scored major label recording contracts when their work was discovered and subsequently reissued) to Bruce Springsteen's universally lauded Nebraska. And, of course, many were to follow, some of which I count among my most treasured possessions: early cassettes and 45's by Get the Hell Out of the Way of the Volcano and Elliott Smith, e.g. But never again ("I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me" notwithstanding) would the entire world get to hear a complete unknown's bedroom pop album, unself-consciously written and conceived for its own sake.
the piece will be in independent culture, whose motto is "sweeping generalizations from a position of partial ignorance." i mention this because i discovered an interesting new journalisticritical strategy today: "i should note that i don't know shit. by the way, here's my opinion." dude comes up with a great headline that makes me laugh out loud ("krs-one and marley marl working together: who cares?") and, for some reason, decides to follow it up by undercutting his own credibility every step of the way, even when it is completely irrelevant. don't oversell yourself, dude.
in the past few weeks, i've been slowly writing a review of television personalities' amazing my dark places for independent culture. one reason it's been taking so long is that, while writing about my dark places, i've been listening to the album that has supplanted it as the early favourite for album of the year, ghostface's fishscale. my favourite song right now is just blaze's track, "the champ," which uses two bars from a guitar solo in a similar way to the last verse of ghost's brilliant my guitar, which was never released because he couldn't clear the sample. on "my guitar," ghost basically uses long passages from jazz-funk guitarist jimmy ponder's cover of "while my guitar gently weeps" wholesale and, as ghost's rhymes build to a feverish climax as only ghost can, ponder's guitar solo kicks in and the song ends with ghost spitting and ponder finger-tapping up a storm. it's rare that electric guitar samples from a non-jazz or funk context work for me in a hip-hop song, which is why "my guitar" works so well. but, while most are fawning all over "the champ" because of the rocky III quotes (all the dialogue was re-recorded at the last minute because they couldn't clear the samples), the way the aerosmith-esque (for all i know, it could very well be aerosmith) guitar solo, whose first bar is repeated twice before the solo plays out, marks transitions in the song is what makes it for me. it floats above the rest of the track like the guitar solo from run dmc's "walk this way" (the only part of that song that didn't completely suck) but, because it's just a little snippet from a guitar solo, a little ascending and descending blues scale, and because even that small unit is fragmented, its subordination as a sampled element creates this tension with its status as a guitar solo, as the focal point of some other composition.
for the version with the mr. t and burgess meredith samples, track down "the champion" from ghostface's mick boogie mixtape boiled salmon. for more wu-tang related camp, check out ol' dirty and macy gray's cover of "don't go breaking my heart," which is supposed to come out soon on yet another ol' dirty grave robbing c.d.
3/26/06
YR REVOLUTION WILL NOT HAPPEN BETWEEN THESE THIGHS
for reasons i can no longer remember, i picked up a copy of punk planet in the summer of 1999. i don't regularly read punk planet and i've never been a big fugazi fan (ian mackaye was on the cover that month), so i don't really remember what possessed me to pick it up. but the interview with ted leo, whose music i didn't know at the time but which i've come, over the last seven years and countless TL/Rx shows, to love dearly, had a big impact on me at what was already a pivotal time. that was a big year for me in terms of discovering new kinds of music, what with me moving to portland, starting college, the beginning of digital filesharing, the third mainstreaming of punk rock in a decade, and just getting older and a little bit wiser and more discerning. ted leo saying stuff in punk planet in 1999 (later anthologised in the we owe you nothing: the collected punk planet interviews):
i bring this up because i woke up the other day to jonathan listening to stars. i walked into his room and was like, "this is pretty. it kind of sounds like 'anthems for a seventeen year old girl.'" but man, why do perfectly intelligent people who don't accept bullshit in other forms (say, political ideology or trash t.v.) accept easy music? don't they know they're just listening to emo for slightly older and more respectable zombies? we all sometimes eat a bag of chips for dinner because we're too lazy to cook, but every day? to hell with easy music. to hell with straight, white, middle class boys with guitars and their traditional indie rock band lineups. indie rock is ideological too; to hell with the class position and cultural capital of indie rock. fuck: stars, the shins, the decemberists, death cab for cutie, and all the weakerthans albums except left and leaving.
3/17/06
SATELLITES FLASHING DOWN ORCHARD AND DELANCEY
okay, i'll come right out and say it. i'm not fully sure white people should have folk rituals. i mean, maybe slavs, but st. patrick's day? oktoberfest? obviously, i'm being facetious. but what is it about white people's folk ritual holidays that is so easily commodified and turned into a beer commercial? and why am i so offended by it? because it's certainly not that i long for a fully authentic and resistant st. patrick's day. no sir. (though i will apologise in advance to any fully and authentically resistant irishmen out there for the inevitable aristocratic, protestant, anglo-irish yeats reference below.)
i woke up today and sat on the fire escape watching people walk up and down st. mark's with my friend jonathan. it had been a nice thing to wake up to all week, but it was st. patrick's day and watching oafish straight white men walking down the street in packs with an even bigger sense of entitlement while singing house of pain raps made me sick to my stomach. what a rotten way to end my fantasyland week away from rochester, running about like a fat cat doing whatever the hell i damn well pleased and was of interest to me. (first sign that it was going to be a good week: i walk out of the terminal from a $54 jet blue flight and there's a driver waiting for me holding a sign with my name on it.) so we went to where nobody celebrates st. patrick's day: p.s.1. all week, new york stuff has been going through my head as i've been wandering around the city. breakfast on st. mark's: hanging out on 2nd avenue/eating chicken vindaloo. walking from st. mark's to houston: two inadequate descriptive systems. gallery hopping in chelsea: parties in chelsea, parties in chelsea/i've been to all the parties in chelsea. going out to p.s.1: sitting here in queens/eating refried beans. i looked for buren's stripes on bleecker street. i wondered what i should eat at joey ramone place. if i had a stash, i would have checked it in the trash at st. mark's. and still, all day today, my last day before returning to rochester, no matter how much i cursed anything even remotely irish under my breath, these words kept passing through my head, now and in time to be:
If I ventured in the slipstream
Between the viaducts of your dream
Where immobile steel rims crack
And the ditch in the back roads stop
Could you find me?
Would you kiss-a my eyes?
To lay me down
In silence easy
To be born again
To be born again
From the far side of the ocean
If I put the wheels in motion
And I stand with my arms behind me
And I’m pushin’ on the door
Could you find me?
Would you kiss-a my eyes?
To lay me down
In silence easy
To be born again
To be born again
There you go
Standin’ with the look of avarice
Talkin’ to huddie ledbetter
Showin’ pictures on the wall
Whisperin’ in the hall
And pointin’ a finger at me
There you go, there you go
Standin’ in the sun darlin’
With your arms behind you
And your eyes before
There you go
Takin’ good care of your boy
Seein’ that he’s got clean clothes
Puttin’ on his little red shoes
I see you know he’s got clean clothes
A-puttin’ on his little red shoes
A-pointin’ a finger at me
And here I am
Standing in your sad arrest
Trying to do my very best
Lookin’ straight at you
Comin’ through, darlin’
Yeah, yeah, yeah
If I ventured in the slipstream
Between the viaducts of your dreams
Where immobile steel rims crack
And the ditch in the back roads stop
Could you find me
Would you kiss-a my eyes
Lay me down
In silence easy
To be born again
To be born again
To be born again
In another world
In another world
In another time
Got a home on high
Ain’t nothing but a stranger in this world
I’m nothing but a stranger in this world
I got a home on high
In another land
So far away
So far away
Way up in the heaven
Way up in the heaven
Way up in the heaven
Way up in the heaven
In another time
In another place
In another time
In another place
Way up in the heaven
Way up in the heaven
We are goin’ up to heaven
We are goin’ to heaven
In another time
In another place
In another time
In another place
In another face
when i see isobel campbell, i don't want her singing songs with eugene kelly from her new album with mark lanegan. i want the isobel campbell who sang "is it wicked not to care" or "emanuelle, skating on thin ice" or even "tree lullaby." i don't like isobel campbell because she's a great songwriter or because she's a great performer. she's neither of these. i want to see the trainwreck, embarrassingly twee, thinking she's being self-conscious but actually totally not isobel campbell from the gentle waves records.
now, i appreciate the idea behind what i saw. men have been writing duets for women to sing with them for a long time, from lee hazlewood, serge gainsbourg, and sonny bono to, in recent years, dean wareham, calvin johnson, and, well, me. that shit's fucked up, yo. for belle to write songs for no less a cult figure and hero of mine than eugene kelly to sing with her is awesome. unfortunately, her recent direction is not particularly interesting. that hazlewood stuff she's been doing with mark lanegan pales in comparison to the recent dean wareham and britta phillips side project l'avventura. and both the scottish chamber popsters reading hazlewood through gainsbourg and the girl writing duets for a boy to sing with her is so similar in scope and so thoroughly outshone by camera obscura that it almost hurt to watch belle not doing what she does best, which is be gentle waves.
my earlier characterisation of belle's solo project was probably a bit unfair. her first album, green fields of foreverland, was everything i said: embarrassingly twee, thinking she's being self-conscious but totally not, and a trainwreck. but her second album, swansong for you was a remarkable retro pop album. it's probably better than anything belle and sebastian has released since the lazy line painter jane 7". and while i'd still rather have just witnessed belle singing those first, bad songs, swansong for you would also have definitely been welcome. what i got instead was yet another case of seeing an artist perform new work past her point of relevance.
this was nowhere more apparent than the last song, which saw the band do a cover of the vaselines' "son of a gun," with belle singing the girl parts. while i can now tell people that i've heard eugene kelly sing "son of a gun," it was hugely disappointing. from the opening lines, people were screaming. people were screaming because they recognised the song. people recognised the song because kurt cobain didn't understand it. but this was "son of a gun," one of the finest pop songs in all of pop songdom, that limited the percussion to a one-two beat on a snare drum and a bass drum, the song that encapsulated everything that beat happening ever tried to do in three minutes and forty-six seconds. to hear it performed by a bunch of over the hill session musicians (much respect eugenius, but gawd) leaves me grasping for a proper diss. i have written before about the boringness of the indie rock lineup. the acoustic guitar, bass guitar, electric guitar, and full drum set setup bores me to tears. tonight, it butchered one of my favourite songs of all time while also ruining an isobel campbell concert, which i'd been anticipating. belle's new songs may wear their lee hazlewood influence on their sleeves, but they're so ridiculously straightforward and unsophisticated, like, dare i say it, linda ronstadt doing nancy and lee, and the instrumentation of the songs is terrible: one guy's strumming chords, one guy's playing arpeggios, the drummer is playing the same beat as every other drummer in every other indie rock band. (yawn). far be it for me to tell a woman what to do and how to perform, but, isobel, for the love of the good name of scottish pop, stop running around the world performing second rate versions of camera obscura and l'avventura.
for anyone with an interest in the legendary monoculture records band centipede, the band's only full length album, nancy reagan flipbook, is available for download in its entirety here. i would normally extol the greatness of the band and its historical significance here but, for once, i'll let the music do the talking. i'll only add that it can only be properly comprehensible if listened to really fucking loud. for optimum results, listen to it in real space on good speakers but headphones will do.
3/12/06
A SELF-INDULGENT MEDITATION ON MY OWN ŒUVRE
i should let the title of this blog entry suffice as a disclaimer but first i'm going to qualify it. while this entry will indeed be a self-indulgent mediation on my own oeuvre, my friend and monoculture media conglomerate's chief legal counsel, one michael joseph lieberman, esq. (you may know him better as "centipede h.t.m.l." from back in his punk rock days), demanded it.
i demand that you immediately post the blog entry explaining the connection between "dark was the night, cold was the ground" and "nothing cold can stay." i'd sure like to know what i was thinking when i asserted the existence of the aforementioned many months ago.
so forgive me one and all and, if you do make it through this entry and are disatisfied, blame the lieb. that said, let us go then, you and i.
the story begins about six months ago, when the tradition and the individual talents album coniferous was released. messr. lieberman wrote the following to me:
[the song "nothing cold can stay"] reminds me, in an odd way, of blind willie
johnson's "dark was the night, cold was the ground," to which you might consider listening. i think it makes an interesting companion (or
perhaps counterpoint) to your composition.
after listening to the aforementioned blind willie johnson song, i had no idea what he was talking about. upon asking him about this, he responded, "When I said the TatIT track reminded me of this song 'in an odd way,' I did actually mean that the connection I find between the two is strange and obscure, even to me."
but then i finally got around after all these years to listening to some john fahey, specifically, the song "on the sunny side of the ocean" from his album the transfiguration of blind joe death, and now i get it. just listen to the fahey track and then "nothing cold can stay" and the similarities will be obvious, though i should note that the melodic similarity between the two tracks is completely coincidental, seeing as how i'd never even heard "on the sunny side of the ocean" until three weeks ago.
a little background before we start: the folk/americana of fahey and, slightly later, leo kottke, was deeply indebted to early 20th century gospel blues guitarists — cf. the racistly titled american primitive, which fahey himself compiled and released. also of note: when he was in college, fahey wrote his thesis on blind willie johnson. of course, none of this really tells you much about "nothing cold can stay." for that, we first have to look at the relationship of my songwriting to elliott smith, which is perhaps best illlustrated by the song "vancouver, or: song for neko case's voice" from my pop songs for guitar, drums, and cégeste album.
the elliott smith songs i have most in mind are "between the bars" and "i better be quiet now" (as opposed to the other unhosted songs, i'm not going to provide an mp3 to the latter. if you really want to hear it — and it's an amazing song so you should — i'm sure you'll find a way).* what i learned from elliott smith was how to write a solo guitar part that wasn't just use conventional chords (for an example of this kind of conventionality, see elliott's some song"). listen to how there's a bassline and a melodic line in the guitar parts to "between the bars" and "i better be quiet now." in some of his later songs (e.g. "i don't think i'll ever figure it out" or "memory lane"), elliott wrote more conventionally bluesy guitar parts, but it was already there in "between the bars" or, among other of his most well-known earlier songs (read: those that soundtracked memorable scenes in major motion pictures), "needle in the hay" and "angeles." it was from these songs that i got the guitar lines in "vancouver, or: song for neko case's voice."
"nothing cold can stay," which i had been working on since 2000 and which was earlier incarnated as centipede's "nancy reagan gives ron a handjob," works on the same blues logic as "vancouver" and the aforementioned elliott smith songs, though unconsciously so. the entire song is based on an E - A bassline that relies on a slight variant of traditional western guitar tuning (E-A-e-G-B-C# — i play the lowest two strings open). i suppose i'm tracing a genealogy from myself to elliott smith all the way back to fahey and, before him, blind willie johnson. i won't go into an analysis of the guitar part of fahey's "on the sunny side of the ocean" because it should be obvious following from my discussion of elliott's and my guitar parts. really, i am invoking fahey because we happen to use the same melody in parts of our respective songs and because of his affinity to blind willie johnson.
if you listen to "dark was the night, cold was the ground" (which you might know, though i don't, as the song from wim wenders' paris, texas), you can just barely make out the bass note that ties the song together. without it, he's just playing the same notes as the vocal melody and the song really doesn't work. listen to the difference between the arpeggios in the chorus of "vancouver" and the arpeggios in the opening sequence of "nothing cold can stay." in the former, you hear the individual notes that make up the chords, leading with their respective bass notes. in the latter, i led with the bass notes, but played after them notes that were outside of the chord but still in the same scale (E+) as their respective bases. these little melodies off of the E and A base notes then lead into the body of the song, in which i play melodies on top of the E and A bass notes.** in the song's third movement, i begin to play notes and melodies that aren't in the song's scale (if this doesn't make sense, what i mean is that the notes i play are discordant rather than harmonious with their base notes). in addition to my use of the slide, i suspect that it was this that began to remind centipede h.t.m.l. of blind willie johnson. i no longer remember the music theory to really explain it, but the little melodic divergences from the key the song is working in produces the austere quality in "dark was the night."
the major connection to be drawn between "nothing cold can stay" and "dark was the night, cold was the ground" is that they both work on unconventional reworkings of the gospel call and response.*** in my song, the melody off the E note is always "answered" by the melody off the A note. this becomes most clear in the aforementioned third movement, in which melodies that harmonise with the A note (in most parts, the very same melodies as in the song's non-dissonant second movement) follow the dissonant notes and melodies on top of the E note. "dark was the night, cold was the ground" is a much richer composition. blind willie johnson "answers" his "call" guitar lines by singing along with the "answer" lines. the singing makes the call and response nature of the song more obvious, but, in the same way as "nothing cold can stay," the song's call and response would be legible even without the vocals, though, again, i can't really explain it because his song is far more complicated than mine and i haven't retained the music theory that i learned more than ten years ago necessary to the task. plus, i wrote "nothing cold can stay" so it only makes sense that i have a better understanding of how it works. i alluded earlier to the austere quality of "dark was the night." those little melodic divergences from the song's key, i think, draw out the solitary nature of the song that is accomplished by the base note/melody logic which allows blind willie johnson to perform the song all at once and all by himself. the tension between the solitary nature of the song and the gospel call and response achieves a profound solemnity that, to speak metaphorically — for i lack the theoretical fluency to discuss music on a formal level without metaphors — is reflected by the melodic divergences.
* email me if the mp3's that i did provide are no longer available from yousendit.com. i'll send them to you by some other means. also, concerning elliott's "i better be quiet now," if you listen to the version of the song from his album figure 8, you'll hear at least two separate guitar parts. this actually illustrates what i'm talking about. when you hear elliott perform live, he plays these two or three or four guitar parts all at once. unfortunately, if you never got the chance, you've missed out for good on something amazing. but there are always bootlegs circulating on the internet.
** another of my former punk rock cohorts who ended up in a Ph.D program at the university of michigan, centipede m.r., once compared this song to the smashing pumpkins song "1979," which utilises the same device. for obvious reasons, i'd rather compare my work to elliott smith, fahey, and blind willie johnson.
*** it was centipede h.t.m.l. who drew my attention to the call and response nature of "dark was the night, cold was the ground," which i never would have noticed by myself and which helped me understand the unconscious call and response structure of my own piece. it is odd, though, that he could identify it in one and not the other. incidentally, i should also acknowledge that c.h.t.m.l. is hosting the monoculture records files linked to in this entry and deserves our thanks for it.
3/09/06
THIS IS OUR TOWN, IT'S SO DANGEROUS
according to the new york times and the gothamist, nick sylvester is on indefinite quiet time from the village voice for making stuff up. the voice's statement. from the times:
The Village Voice suspended an editor after he admitted fabricating material for this week's cover article, a look at the "secret society of pickup artists."
The weekly newspaper published an editor's note on its Web site Wednesday night that announced the suspension of Nick Sylvester, a senior associate editor, and that said the article had been removed from its Web site.
In an article about the effect that Neil Strauss's book, "The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists," has had on the singles scene, Mr. Sylvester closed with a description of a night in which he and three television writers from Los Angeles tested strategies for picking up women at a Manhattan bar.
"That scene," The Voice wrote, "never happened."
It attached a note from Mr. Sylvester, in which he said the account was "a composite of specific anecdotes" shared by two of those said to have participated. One of the people referred to in the article, the comedy writer Steve Lookner, was not involved at all, Mr. Sylvester acknowledged.
"I deeply regret this misinformation, and I apologize to Lookner for his distress, which I certainly never intended," Mr. Sylvester wrote.
The Voice's managing editor, Doug Simmons, said the paper was still reviewing the accuracy of the rest of the article.
Mr. Sylvester, who also writes for the online music magazine Pitchfork, joined the Voice staff in 2005.
He wrote mostly music reviews for The Voice. His few full-length feature articles included several interviews with characters who told somewhat fantastical stories.
In an August article about cheating on college campuses, Mr. Sylvester described a student who spent $500,000 to have a multiplication table tattooed over his entire body, a Harvard Medical School graduate who cheated with Morse code, a Boston College junior named Simeon Criz who cheated using a specially designed deck of playing cards, and a Manhattan doctor named Noam Feldstein who delivered "a hundred newborn babies each day."
Boston College said it had no record of a student named Simeon Criz. The board that licenses doctors in New York said it had no record of a physician named Noam Feldstein.
Attempts to reach Mr. Sylvester were not immediately successful.
to make matters worse for sylvester, he was forced to resign his position as an associate editor at pitchfork.
thing is, sylvester wasn't just making stuff up; he was pretending to be hipper than he really is: hanging out with jetset people whose cell phones his number's not actually in and writing about them doing stuff together that never really happened. echoes of jayson blair abound. blair, so one argument goes, found himself in a situation completely over his head and, the stress to produce getting to him, he did the unthinkable. race and class politics aside, you almost have to sympathise with sylvester in a way that some felt for blair. poor nick sylvester, at the voice and pitchfork, forced to be hip twenty-four/seven, pretending to like bands from brooklyn that no one but johannes silentio and myself actually listen to (i'm talking about the noisy ones, not the freaky folk ones), writing a feature on deerhoof every other week. and, of course, once you've conquered the hipster poseur world, it's no longer enough. being on guestlists is like jib — you always want more. so then you hustle like fuck to make the scene with the real jetset. first the suits and their expense accounts, then movie stars. someday... paris hilton? it's a rough life. sometimes dude just wants to wear sweatpants and stay in watching reruns of sitcoms from the nineties. and one day nick sylvester cracks and julianne shepherd no longer acknowledges that she knows him. let that be a lesson to you kids: being hip is tough werk. if fakin' it doesn't get to you, the coke will. and even if you manage to lay off the hard stuff and keep up with all the new bullshit, i'm guessing that the empty feeling inside has already eaten away whatever used to be there.
in the latest installment of the monoculture world headquarters: a retrospective project, monoculture media conglomerate has memorialised three of its former offices, including its longtime home office in vancouver, in photo essay form. see it here.
