r.mutt's blog

6/30/06 PEACE i don't know what to say. but i've been listening to this song on repeat. if it helps anyone, click on the picture to download it. i hope you found the peace you were looking for dave. your friends miss you. 6/29/06 YR FUCKING COUNTRY OTHERS ME hey patches, you still gonna tell me canada isn't racist? ADDENDUM: patches wants me to tell you all that he never said canada isn't racist, just that it's not (presumably because nothing could be) as racist as i think it is —ed. according to maclean's, an astounding 26% of canadians think the natives have too much power. apparently, the definition of "too much" has changed and now means zero. 22% also think muslims have too much power. over what? i do not know. and this was actually conducted before those dudes tried to put us out of our misery and ice stephen harper. what with mass hysteria, i wonder the percentage is now. maybe, in both cases, by "power," they mean rights. on a somewhat related topic, here's an editorial called "did multiculturalism pave way for potential terrorist attack?" that begins on shaky ground and you only think it's going to get worse (and racist) before it takes a stance on the multiculturalist agenda that isn't all that different from mine. okay, i would never be so ridiculous as to suggest that the ghettoisation caused by multiculturalist rhetoric means that the terrorists win. but it does raise the important question of what we mean when we say "us v. them." it being canada and not the united states, we supposedly mean all canadians when we say "us." it being reality and not some liberal party fantasyland campaign ad, we don't really mean all canadians. just look at that maclean's poll. we mean those nice clean cut young straight white guys in the tim horton's commercials who travel to europe and are nice to everybody. we mean those crusty old assholes that look at me funny whom people have been telling me all my life to thank for fighting for my freedom in the second world war (thanks for interning those japanese-canadians by the way). we even mean those mountain equipment co-op-wearing yippies on fourth avenue who go rock climbing on weekends and collect native and east-asian art. we — or, i should say, they — mean whitey. which brings me to my next point: the correct answer to that poll is not america. it's whitey. really, the poll should ask, "what aspect of whitey has too much control?", with the possible answers the free trade global capitalists and the corporate sphere coming before america. so my problem is not even that sizable percentages of canadians think natives (read: won't die), immigrants (not white), and muslims ("terrorists," obviously) have too much power. the french? those sons of bitches just won't assimilate. and here we have the subtextual intended addressee of the very premise of the poll, the question "who has too much power?", a question which might be amended to more directly ask the same question: "who has power that properly belongs to straight, white, english canada?" patches, this is why this fucking country alienates me. and it's why my first reaction to any white person being mean to me is to assume that they're a racist. how could i not? speaking of alienation, i keep watching more episodes of the boondocks and i keep getting more offended. now, i'm not an african-american, but you don't need to be one to get tired of a preachy t.v. show constantly calling african-americans the n-word. i watched the best episodes first and, it being a funny and at times smart and on point show, i was willing to overlook its moralising stance on african-american popular culture, not to mention its constant invocation of that old chris rock joke that always made me nervous. but the more i see, the more it becomes apparent that aaron mcgruder, this middle class kid from college park at maryland calling people the n-word, is being an uncle tom. now, i get what mcgruder is trying to do. he finds the popular culture marketed specifically towards african-americans offensive and dangerous. in one episode, he compares it to fast food and, more specifically, fast food as portrayed in supersize me but, really, he's comparing it to crack. point taken. whitey is trying to keep african-americans down and one of His many tactics is using the entertainment industry to create a disempowering popular culture. but there is a hell of a lot of self-loathe in his representations of african-americans. he portrays them — who, in all fairness, he implies have been narcotised by african-american popular culture — as fat, lazy, and ignorant. then he proceeds to call them the n-word. does that sound right to you? i'm not that saying mcgruder is middle class and college educated and can't therefore be an authentic african-american. that would be ridiculous. but, tellingly, no more ridiculous than mcgruder's own character tom (as in uncle) dubois, who is a stereotypical upper-middle class "white" african-american. being that mcgruder relies so heavily on stereotypes, i wonder whether he's just an irresponsible satirist or whether he doesn't have any real idea of how working class and poverty-line african-american culture relates to the popular culture it receives. in other words, is he lazily repeating stereotypes because he's only seen it on t.v.? either way, to recreate stereotypes and then call them the n-word and, furthermore, to suggest that african-americans are incapable (read: too stupid?) of engaging with b.e.t. in any way other than to be rendered fat, lazy, and ignorant by it makes him an uncle tom in my books. i used to work with an african-american film critic who would say, whenever a movie like soul plane came out, that "hollywood thinks black people are stupid." the keyword here is thinks. i am reminded of the literary critic raymond williams' essay "the masses," in which he argues that his rural, working class family's critical relationship to popular culture is different but not necessarily inferior to his own relationship to high literature. the relevant question here, i think, is what we're comparing the masses to and according to whose standards. in refusing to compare his literary criticism to his family's reception of popular culture, williams evades the question. but what is mcgruder calling for? how would he like these african-americans to act? and these model african-americans would be acceptable to whom? to african-americans? to "enlightened" african-americans? to the civil rights generation? to just himself? or to pluralist middle class american liberals? i wonder. 6/27/06 THEY WANTED TO BE MY THURSTON MOORE i was out front smoking between bands at one of most star-studded shows i'd ever been to in portland — the organ, cinerama, and the new pornographers (ft. neko case but no bejar) at the aladdin theatre — when i noticed who was standing right beside me: janet weiss. then i noticed who she was talking to: stephen malkmus. and beside him, talking to someone i didn't recognise: carrie brownstein. that was the first time i ran into portland's biggest rock stars and i nearly shat myself. needless to say i was too scared to talk to any of them. yeah, i used to see sleater-kinney. but i also lived in portland for five years and never once went to see the band perform. and, as the portland mercury reported just hours ago, they broke up, so my streak is safe. ah sleater-kinney, whom my former employers decided were "the greatest portland band ever" and whom amy phillips earlier today declared, "america's greatest rock band," probably a nod to when that da vinci code marcus dude called sleater kinney "america's best rock band" in time magazine five years ago. of course, this is also the sleater-kinney who were always kind of the same and who hit such a rut in the late 90's that the only way out they saw was to finally leave kill rock stars and sign to sub pop a year and a half ago, hoping that new (read: more expensive) production techniques could change things up. i predicted the end right then. either sleater-kinney would give up the dream or they would survive for another half decade making mediocre indie-mainstream albums to smaller and smaller audiences like so many matador bands in mid- to late-90's that just refused to die. one question begs for an answer: will low, who signed to sub pop at roughly the same time as sleater-kinney, themselves give it up or are they going the bettie serveert/come/post-wowee zowee pavement route? either way, here's to sleater-kinney. you were never, at any point i lived there, the best band in portland and, certainly, you're not the greatest portland band of all time (particularly being that everyone still thought of you as an olympia band), but, as i've recently been opining, we all need to be looking to those early 90's for an example and you, who arose from the ashes of excuse 17 and heavens to betsy, have provided us with an excellent one. sleater-kinney did it so we don't have to. and the moral is obvious: just under eighteen months after signing to sub pop, the band no longer exists. some of yr friends are already this disillusioned. the indie-yuppie brass ring, the new über-matador, a.k.a. sub pop records, promises much but always fails to deliver if you actually care about what you do. and sleater-kinney were always a decent band fueled by actual committed people. props. 6/26/06 YOUNG LOVE AND A STONE-WASHED STÜSSY SHIRT as an addendum to my last entry, here are a few songs that resonate now as they did back when... 'cos ain't no one been writing songs like "generation spokesmodel" or "into yer shtik" or "overblown" in the last ten years. well, ted leo did, but even those songs were all written at least five years ago. "punk rock craze, it's the hottest thing going/don't look now." —superchunk "she's an indie rocker and nothing's gonna stop her/her fashion fits." —archers of loaf and, of course, the irrepressible "yeah the president sucks, he's a war pig fuck/this shit is out of luck." —sonic youth 6/24/06 MITCHELL'S GOT A NEW GIRL when i was in portland two weeks ago, i had coffee with a professor of mine from college, one whose seminar on 20th century poetics was perhaps more important to my intellectual development than any other i've taken through my first year of grad school. about ten years before she taught me, she was herself a student at reed and was in a band called lovebutt with jodi bleyle (this was before jodi was in team dresch and hazel). she (my former professor, not jodi bleyle) said to me, "it's weird. you and charles bernstein's daughter were the first people i'd ever heard say that they discovered punk rock through nirvana." in 1990, nirvana played at the student union at reed college. for her, nirvana was just a local northwest punk band until she started hearing them on the radio. we got to talking about this because i've been seeing this symmetry between the current situation which i keep belabouring in this space and that of the early 90's. referring to locals i used to see around town when i lived in portland, she said, "carrie brownstein and stephen malkmus, i see them as continuing to do the same things they did ten or fifteen years ago." and, while i have reservations about that particular statement, it's also precisely the point. (sidenote: on another topic i've belaboured for the last couple of years, she said, "a long time ago, kathleen moved to new york and married one of the beastie boys. she's in a completely other world now. you can't expect the current kathleen to live up to kathleen in 1991.") for the sake of argument, let's say that she's right about carrie brownstein and stephen malkmus taking part in the same project vis-à-vis cultural production as they respectively did back in the days of excuse 17 and the early pavement singles (i'll take this on later). this sentiment is precisely the point because, as those who have been around me for the last two or three months can attest to, i've been all about the early 90's. why the early 90's? well, while i think i am entitled to some nostalgia, there's more to it than just the metonymic association of an aesthetic style to a bygone time that i look back fondly upon. but, before i get ahead of myself, perhaps it is important to explain why i look back so fondly upon the early 90's. my personal relationship to it is one of wonderment, a fascination with the period from the perspective of a young teenager because it marks for me a time in punk rock when anything was possible. but i look back to it now because of the similarities between the current mainstreaming of "indie rock" and the alternative rock boom of the early 90's after "smells like teen spirit" broke through. the critical resistance of riot grrrl and lo-fi, the d.i.y. bedroom punk aesthetic, that nirvana was barred from playing alongside their friends at the international pop convention, i look back to all of this because that's what i want for independent guitar rock in the present. but you can't compare stephen malkmus and the jicks and sleater-kinney, even before they signed to sub pop, to slanted and enchanted, the pre-american water silver jews cassettes, or excuse 17. the distributive apparatus that matador and sub pop, both once again independent labels, use can't be compared to the underground punk rock network of the early 90's. if you want to compare anything in the present to shrimper or early kill rock stars, it would be hanson records or american tapes or jyrk or the other cd-r labels in the so-called experimental noise scene. this is not to say that i'm talking about aesthetics only in the bourdieuian cultural political way. the best guitar rock of the early 90's attempted to destroy conventional guitar rock by aligning itself with the sonic youth tradition. what loveless did with its array of fancy pedals and million dollar production, bands like pavement or early sebadoh did by using beat up old amps or playing their guitars through old headphones and recording it. while their former peers on major labels were "enhancing" their sounds with very expensive studio equipment, the lo-fi slacker rock bands embraced outdated technology (instruments, amps, microphones, and cassette recorders) to make guitar rock that didn't sound like guitar rock. their guitars didn't sound like guitars or, rather, didn't sound like what the corporate music industry had convinced us guitars were supposed to sound like. for me, this was a necessary move for the punk rock tradition. elsewise, we'd have had to abandon it. in a lot of ways, i see similarities between those early 90's bands and the experimental noise bands of today. but i still hold onto the (guitar) punk rock tradition and, furthermore, i still hold onto pop songs. and, as much as i am with the current pop (read: twee, indiepop, bedroom k folk) bands in spirit, i'm not sure that it's an altogether relevant reaction to the mainstreaming of this very tradition (ahem, james mercer and colin meloy). and anyone who would argue that the current "indie rock" bands are doing interesting and aesthetically innovative things is, i think, being wilfully naïve. those bands (broken social scene, e.g.) are innovating within the stylistic guidelines of the guitar rock tradition. they're building on, say, neil young: the very tradition we're supposed to be trying to resist being appropriated by. in other words, if broken social scene's guitars don't sound like guitars, they don't sound like guitars in an acceptable way; their aesthetic transgressions are immediately recouped by the tradition they take part in and, after "anthems for a seventeen year old girl," guitars are supposed to sound that way. case in point: the popularity of frou frou and stars in the subsequent years. these new bands, modest mouse, death cab for cutie, stars, and all the rest, may have participated in the punk rock underground before their commercial breakthroughs, but the current generation has no conception of the critical resistance of the early 90's, nor do they have any sense of the conditions that this resistance arose from, even though they are creating an eerily similar condition in the present. stephen malkmus and carrie brownstein, they can do what they want. i begrudge them, if not kathleen, nothing. they did their part, though i am not so naïve to think that pavement, even in the slanted and enchanted era, never played the game. krzysztof wodiczko once characterised the situationist aesthetic as the "manipulation of popular culture against mass culture." this differentiation between pop and mass is crucial and the popular — which should be democratic but is actually controlled by the culture industry and the corporate interests behind it (therefore becoming mass) — is, for me, too valuable to merely leave for dead. it must be reclaimed. inasmuch as punk rock is not merely a cultural political relationship to the means of production and must have some connection to the pop song that the sex pistols, television personalities, sonic youth, bikini kill, and thousands of others worked so hard to reappropriate, either some guitar rock band is going to pull that same weight now or punk really is dead and it's all prurient and yellow swans and wolf eyes from here on in. 6/20/06 THEME SONGS FOR THE HUMAN SPIRIT look, i'm one of those northwest nature boy folk singer douchebags. relate damn you, relate. r.mutt's diaryland profile tradition and the individual talents' friendster profile r.mutt's shopping list r.mutt blog archives