Chaff 'n' Chaff

Walked around, took a bus. But that wouldn't make any sense because it's only four blocks. But it's a KILLER four blocks! Probably because it's actually five blocks, the same five blocks. I'm working on it. Emily walks more like ten or twelve blocks. But sometimes she takes the bus when I don't take her tokens (I had a doctor's appointment across town). In other news:

1. Tom Breihan:

Storch is a pop hack, and the world needs pop hacks, but that doesn't mean those pop hacks have license to attack actual musical geniuses [Timbaland]. After all, anyone who signed Brooke Hogan can't very well accuse anyone else of being unable to spot talent.

Wha?

2. Latest quote from tha jukebox:

...

(Sorry.)

3. About this new Arcade Fire album:

...

(Not sorry.)

4. Jonas Brothers are KIDS OF THE FUTURE. Which reminds me...however many years on (eleven? Twelve?), was Clueless really really important? I think it was. Has anyone commented on this?

5. Aly and AJ fans, PLEASE don't post on that VERY OLD thread from like September '05. You should keep reading and join up in the present. In hopes that this will happen, I will now post a lovely comment right here in its very own ultra-current post.

Well I'm 29 and I really like the song "Rush" even though I have no clue what they are talking about (drugs? peer pressure? running away from home?). I'm strictly athiest and have no problem with my kids listening to their songs, although I won't buy the album. But if you think Disney is promoting Christianity consider this: As far as I know, they still have a gay day at Disneyworld. My father who is a backslidden southern Baptist minister refuses to even discuss going to Disneyworld to this day, some 10 years since they began it. But who knows, maybe thinly veiled Christian pop music is their attempt to win over the conservatives.

Naw, I was way off. But my paranoia was founded to the extent that I was ON TO SOMETHING, meaning Aly and AJ were/are very important and I at least recognized it from the start. But it took me OVER A YEAR to figure anything out about 'em, so I do wish y'all'd pick up from a more current train of thought and not watch me thrash around at the Disney conglomerate and evangelists. Also, Jesus Camp still isn't sitting right with me, but that's a whole 'nother post.

6. Is it just me or have things been quiet lately?

7. I missed the Bunnies and Traps deadline, but YOU DON'T HAVE TO. DON'T BE A FOOL. 24 HOURS.

Look, Brie, I know yer gonna google this site someday. So I will apologize to you PERSONALLY for not getting things together for your 'zine.

Pre-bidet Chaff

In lieu of another place to put this stuff...

1. New column ran today.

2. So did Julianne Shepherd's column, which introduced me to "Lip Gloss" by Lil Mama (incorrect link from the site) and "Pony Tail" by Lady Te. The former is in the running for single of the year at this point.

3. No sign of new H-Duff in the Disney Top 30. Drew Seeley (misspelled on the RD site!) creeps on at 30. Jonas Bros. reclaim the top spot. Haven't actually listened to the station in a long time.

Oops, I blogged

This was supposed to be a comment on the latest entry of Clap Clap (read first for context, along with this interview I never knew existed). But I got ahead of myself and now I guess he's gotta come over to my house. I haven't been getting out much lately. (What if I actually found the cure for bedbugs? Where would I hang out?)

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Yer onto something here. But Lindsay's an easy way out of some of the issues you're getting at, because SHE has a (relatively) easy way out, a kind of escape hatch. She's a cross-platform artist, so her trajectory has this padding around it; she can deny the validity of either of her albums ("it was nice to do something other than shouting for a change," she says, referencing her second album -- the one she admits in the interview she had some input in, more than some, I'd guess, but whatever) without it cancelling out her career. Which is exactly what Mandy Moore is doing, unless she's sure that her new stuff is THAT GOOD. Which (so far) it really really isn't. (Better idea: write the song that's as good as "Candy" that also apologizes for being "Candy," but then she'd be Melissa Lefton! Then again I think several teenpop artists have essentially been doing this lately. And I think Avril might be doing it in her new single, but I'm not sure yet. Aly and AJ deal with feeling like phonies, too, but they think they're phony because everything they write comes out not meaning what they mean it to mean, if you know what they mean, and maybe they don't know what they mean. Also, bullies are mean. But they don't think they're phonies because of the type of music they play, or because of whom they play it to, because they know that would be a really stupid phony thing to say, and they probably wouldn't mean it.)

What won't happen, which is the bigger shame, is that no one is going to let the dust settle on the trainwreck that is Lindsay 05 to (hopefully just) 07 and then look back and say, hey, this music is actually pretty good! Turns out "I Live for the Day" is a song I could carry with me to the grave, huh. Whereas with Mandy Moore, [whose claim to fame in the first place was that she made a pop classic but was never really considered much of an in-it-for-the-long-haul artist *ed. forgot to write this part the first time around!] she's just grasping at straws, and poorly. She knows she doesn't get another teenpop hit AND gain cred, but she also doesn't have very much to offer otherwise (PS her new stuff is slowly being released on her Myspace page). So she calculates where the favorable respectable public opinion might lie and goes all in. More interesting (of an escape hatch case study) is Xtina, who didn't have to drastically change the sound (only the image). But everyone assumed the "soul singer" was in there, somewhere, waiting to "break free."

Likewise, Lindsay the Artist is "in there somewhere," no matter how far off the rails she goes. The real problem, or at least the one I'm interested in, is that LtA is also out there already, on her albums, maybe in a couple of her films (but I think her music career has been more successful on its own terms than her film career, where she usually has to bring something to the proceedings that stands out as a unique spark). She's obviously bright enough to acknolwedge an existing public image, fair or unfair, and test the boundaries of it, but I don't know if she's bright enough to juggle the contradictions of her current image without dropping anything, and music will be the first one to go. (But that's because "bright" doesn't necessarily enter into that part.)

Soooo, what's more difficult for me is not finding and arguing for the proximity of Lindsay to Devendra or vice versa, but between Ashlee and EVERYONE that could be listening to and enjoying her music! Takes herself and career seriously, makes seriously good music, but can still be described as self-evidently dismissable in the same breath as Pam Anderson and Tyra Banks. Lindsay "gets" a public failure to "get" Lindsay the Musician, to the extent that she can laugh it off, even though she's just gotta know some of her stuff is incredible. Ashlee doesn't have that (or really any other) escape hatch and probably never will (even if she does do a cred grab next go-round, though what would that even entail at this point -- Kylie dance spectacle? Writing/recording with Robert Smith? Plunk her down in a basement with an acoustic guitar and a four-track and I bet people will scoff on principle). But why not?

The Brie Larson Literary Achievement Awards Have Been Delayed Once Again Due to Inclement Weather

A few peeses that I wanted to discuss.

Jason Gross continues to tirelessly compile the Music Scribe Awards, and I envy his, uh, tirelessness. Some pix:

1. Amy Phillips from Pitchfork:

Listen to this PSA. Just listen to it. And then just try to tell me it doesn't make you want to put down the bong and start listening to rap music.

Full transcript below.

FEMALE VOICE: (Computer voice) Being popular was all I could think about last year. I wanted to, like, be cool with everybody. I listened to music that I didn't like and laughed at stuff that wasn't funny. I programmed myself to be a totally different person to everyone.

Computer voice starts to change into a real human voice.

FEMALE VOICE: But I wasn't myself. Now I'm not pretending to like indie rock or anything like that. And people think that's cool.

MALE VOICE: Live above the influence. Above weed. Check out abovetheinfluence.com. Sponsored by the ONDCP and the Partnership For A Drug-FreeAmerica.

Ha! Everyone knows you don't need to smoke weed to pretend to like indie rock.

2. uao: "Does Your CD Lose Its Value By the Bedpost Overnight?" (Blogcritics, December 28, 2005)

I didn't read this yet (looks interesting), but the title reminds me to write a post called "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the BEDBUGS Overnight"!!!! That's the name of this blog!!!!!

3. Skye Sweetnam's MySpace profile (oh wait, he overlooked this).

Others:

4. Jane Dark/whatshisface's year-end musings. Nice "Fergalicious" analysis:

24) “Fergalicious,” Fergie. At first it’s hard to know which crude Eighties triumph of trocheeic dimeter this is ripping off mercilessly; if it seems at first like “You Be Illin’,” but when the double-time electro kicks in halfway through, one twigs to the fact that it’s ye olde “Supersonic,” by JJ Fad. The metre varies for effect here and there (most peasingly in the “try an’ tell”/”clientele” rhyme), but mostly it’s intent on its extended, virtuosic trochees: “FERgaLIcious’ DEFiNItion: MAKE them BOYS go CRAzy” and on and on.Ever since rap’s rigid vocal metricality yielded to the conversational vernacularity of hip-hop — that is, ever since rap’s Rakim-midwived modernity — few songs have paid as much attention to classcial lyrical beat patterns as this, one of the most precise songs of the times.

And this (part of a) sentence:

..."Too Little Too Late," by JoJo, which hauls out Cher's AutoTune (and here we recall that "Believe," sung by a gorgeous octogenarian, was a pivotal moment in teenpop's story, collapsing the tween and disco audiences into a coherent mass)...

I think I kinda disagree with this, inasmuch as neither tween nor disco audiences are cohesive enough to "collapse" per se (and if they did it probably wouldn't be very coherent). But he's right in calling "Believe" a pivotal moment in the story, and I'd never really thought of it as such, not in those words anyway. Not sure if this pivotal moment effectively led to anything substantial or lasting, as the vocoder technique dated quickly enough and Eurodisco could find (and did find) its way into teenpop through plenty of outlets other than Cher (I'd need to double check my timeline on this). But it also makes me wonder whether or not "Believe" was ever an RD powerhouse waaaaay back in the day when they were playing the Jetsons theme and the Trashmen.

5. Eppy's new version of Clap Clap, with a link to this here site (back atcha), currently has his essay on Paris with an essay on Lindsay and Devendra coming soon. I go all longwinded n' stuff in the comment section of the Paris piece. No further comments.

6. Stylus column submitted, will not make the 2007 Brie Larson Literary Achievement Shortlist, but opened up some ideas (expanding on the stuff with Tom Breihan and anthropology) that I'd like to explore in the future by actually following them through. Like, doing some field work like I say HSM commentators shoulda done, if I can ever get out of the apartment. Of course you don't have to interview a buncha people, but since the premise of most of the reviewers of the HSM concert was, essentially, "well, let's look at this kiddie phenom -- what, you've never heard of this??" you'd think they'd be interested to know what the kids actually thought of the damn thing. Best I found was a blurb-ish article with one kid (and parent) interviewed. "It has a good message!" Which suggests this guy was asking the wrong questions, something like, "Do you think this film had a good message?" How about "Who's hotter, Zac or Drew?" "Are you a Sharpay or a Gabriella?" "When you play High School Musical at recess, who plays the part of Troy? Ryan? That mousy composer girl?" [More questions?]

More to come as it comes. Teenpop thread's down so here's a mess o' thoughts, too...I notice that Avril is back on the RD Top 30 w/ "Sk8r Boi," no sign of "Girlfriend" yet...fingers crossed! (Play my new song, muthafuckas! Stop coming on so strong and pretending like it's all in good harmless fun, beeotch!) Also, MR. C THE SLIDE MAN HAS A PROFILE PICTURE! RD is no longer a haven for UGLISTS. No sign of "With Love" in the Top 3, probably won't make a huge dent but I'll still quietly root for it, even though I'd have much rather rooted for "Play with Fire."

Amy Winehouse Is All Wet!!!!

Eek, I thought my sitemeter results were looking skeevy enough after putting the phrase "nip-slip" somewhere on my blog.

I don't know much about Amy Winehouse, but one fact has become clear. SHE IS WET. Wet with what, you might ask?

WHISKEY:

Mordy on the teenpop thread:

I love her voice. It sounds drenched in scotch and Lucky Strikes. [EDIT: This is in reference to Dorothy Parker (by way of an Amy Winehouse convo) so it doesn't really count! Apologies.]

Idolator:

Today's Washington Post has a rather sad profile of Amy Winehouse, the British soulstress whose voice sounds like it's been soaked in bourbon, and how she's made her way across the pond.

AOL Music Store:

...her Mercury Music Prize-nominated debut, Frank, blew away critics and fans with her whiskey-soaked vocals...

GIN:

Entertainment Weekly:

She looks like '60s girl-group icon Ronnie Spector, sings like a gin-soaked '40s jazz queen, and writes lyrics that could serve as a soundtrack for every unsuspecting subject of A&E's Intervention.

Zeon's Music Blog:

Her gin-soaked voice just kinda pours down into your ears and wraps you around.

WINE:

XO's Middle Eight:

The album is wine soaked, pot-smoked and cheatin obsessed.

Resonator Magazine:

One wine-drunk, wine-soaked Winehouse of a public disruption that puts a kick to your step like a heel in the small of your back.

BOOZE IN GENERAL:

Up Music Magazine:

...perfectly compliments Winehouse's new found alchohol-drenched rasp...

Oxygen.ie

Amy is in no danger of losing her license to kill as with THAT voice and THOSE lyrics neither the contenders for her throne (Lilly Allen, Jamie T) or her contemporaries from the new jazz revival of 2004, can match the pace of this booze drenched oeuvre.

JAZZ:

Guardian Unlimited Arts:

"Next time I'll be black and 32 - no, I will. I'll have a turban higher than Erykah Badu's," she deadpans about her striking, jazz-soaked vocal.

SOUL:

BBC:

London's favourite dark-haired, soul-drenched diva makes a welcome return to the limelight

Virgin Radio:

There's little of the debuts jazz leanings as Amy delves back into the girl groups of the sixties for this soul drenched little cracker.

Mosaic Thump:

...beautiful slice of soul drenched honey-of-a-single...

Cherwell.org:

Back To Black is a record drenched in soul

MOTOWN:

Dotmusic:

So it's anyone's guess why Amy Winehouse's souled-out, Motown-drenched follow-up isn't called "Frankly Foul-Mouthed".

IndieLondon:

The album kicks off in familiar fashion with the Motown drenched Rehab, the lead single.

THE 60s AND/OR THEIR GIRL GROUPS:

PopMatters:

Drenched in ‘60s girl-group cool, and sparkling with bad-girl attitude

New Zealand Listener:

Winehouse revels in their 60s-soaked creations and, perhaps as she has less to prove this time around, her husky Bassey-esque voice comes across in a truly impressive, natural way.

New Zealand Herald:

Back to Black is essentially a heartbreak album drenched in the sounds of girl groups like the Shangri-Las and the Supremes.

EMOTION:

Ilikemusic.com (Urban):

...drenched in emotion...


EVERYTHING ELSE:

Washington Post:

Hers is a voice marinated in regret and pulsing with pain, yet soaked in snarkiness while fully rooted in the saccharine sensibilities of '60s girl groups.

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There are more of these. But hey, I won't let myself off the hook, because I once wrote that you could tread water in ambivalence. (But I was talking about David Byrne and he sweats a LOT.)

EDIT: MOISTURE UPDATE!!!!!

WANTON SEXUALITY

Ask Men.com:

That’s especially true on songs like “In My Bed” and “He Can Only Hold Her,” both of which are dripping with wanton sensuality.

SOUL (BY ASSOCIATION)

The Indiana Digital Student:

The second half of the record is dripping with soul, as songs like "Josephine," "Gotta Hold On" and "You Know I'm No Good" all have smooth arrangements and great choruses. The latter features British newcomer Amy Winehouse, who adds what seems to be the sultriest voice of the last 20 years.

[Results 1 - 10 of about 11,100 for "amy winehouse" sultry. (0.12 seconds)]

EDIT 2: MOIST MOIST MOIST THE DRIPS KEEP COMING

MOTOWN AND OLD-TIME JAZZ

Beatmag:

...impeccably contemporary but marinated in Motown and old time jazz.


AND THE FINAL WORD

Pitchfork:

For some reason, the singer-songwriter is swimming in praise over in her native England.


WET COUNT:
Soul: 4 (+1 "Soul by Association")
60s/girl groups: 3
Motown: 2 (+1 "Motown & old-time jazz)
Whiskey: 2
Gin: 2
Wine: 2
Booze: 2
Jazz: 1
Emotion: 1
Wanton sexuality: 1
Praise: 1
Everything else: 1

AMY WINEHOUSE TOTAL WET COUNT: 24

'Droids and 'Bloids

Don't fight the future

1. Fun activity for a Saturday afternoon! Step 1: Stream "So Sick" from Natasha's Myspace. Step 2: Refresh Youtube until you get the SMACK THE DONALD game/advertisment (pop-up blocker highly recommended). Step 3: SLAP TO THE CLAP! Endless enjoyment

2. Li'l Bobby post on Anne Hathaway is an update of sorts of Barthes's Garbo figure (citing his "The Face of Garbo" essay from Mythologies), and led me to these haphazard points about the android-diva movement, as well as musings on TRULY TERRIBLE Mandy Moore/Diane Keaton flick Because I Said So. And a chance to see if Simon Frith is sticking:

Automaton might see a huge rise in teen comedy/R&B/teenpop/whatever else in ‘07! Coming off the heels of “Me & U,” the android-diva sound is set to demolish the half-assed Beyonce half-android-half-neo-soul thing (which I think is a good thing because the only thing less convincing than neo-soul is HALF neo-soul) — check out Natasha’s ONE NOTE android stylins on this song w/ Clipse, or even Hilary Duff’s (the archetype DISNEY-android, now followed by semi-androids Miley Cyrus and Ashley Tisdale) new, excellent dance-’droid stuff, “With Love” and “Play w/ Fire.”

Anyway, point is I saw Because I Said So, total dreck, but Mandy Moore (great android, not so great singer-songwriter lilty whatever, which is the direction she’s headed on her new album…not that that can’t be a good source of android material, cf. Branch/Carlton confessional, but that Mandy Moore just isn’t that kind of android!) whether consciously or not was going for some of the same appeal I think you’re suggesting of Hathaway. (As pretty strikingly opposed to Keaton, who really gave it her best and “deepest” shot with one of the most braindead scripts I’ve seen in a long time.) But I think Mandy Moore’s mask kinda sucks! She does have a good “aural mask,” the voice as intimation of/”window to” the body. Running with some of Simon Frith’s ideas about voice-as-body here, how the voice “gives the listener access to [the body] without mediation” (and he was working from Barthes, too, in “The Grain of the Voice”).

So the androids offer something like a “grainless” voice (which is how Frith designates the voices of back-up singers) that confound the kind of performer sympathy that pop uniquely offers — that is, on one level, there’s the “back-up singer” reaction, but the spotlight is on the grainlessness, hyper-focused in a close-up (especially in the extremely minimal production contexts of the android-divas like Cassie); and, further, unlike some dance music, there’s not really anywhere else for the spotlight to go (e.g. the producer, as in lots of dance music where the singer is sort of a placeholder, maybe the instrumentalist with a stronger “voice” in rare cases, like Santana featuring who-gives-a-crap syndrome) so we’re forced into the strange position of identification with a highly objectified voice. We admire the formal qualities not so much of the aural lips but the aural lipstick. Something like that.

A little too snarky re: neo-soul/Beyonce (and, if ya hadn't noticed, kind of talking out of my ass, but sometimes you have to power through). Also, I'm being very restrictive in my timeline, since android appeal goes way back (but then I am talking about it as a potential '07 phenom). But I might do a 'droid column. Right now I'm set to write about Tom Breihan's Venn Diagram metaphor from the previous exchange about his HSM post, trying to work through my own place in teenpop's audience. Might be more than I can chew for this month, though, so I'll have DROID DIVA on standby.

3. Bought my first issue of Star -- well, Emily bought it for me -- and was kind of fascinated/horrified reading through it. The REHAB issue (no Amy Winehouse). Mary Kate Olsen looked sick, completely emaciated, and the feature was just about her favorite accessories!!! Paris Hilton is designing clothing/bras (or something), no mention of her racial/homophobic slurs (this must have been more recent), which I want to be very careful not to defend (while dancing with her sister, very drunk, "we're like two n*****s!" and with a gay clubber on the dancefloor, "don't worry, he's a f****t."). Statements like these can be pretty easy conversation shut-downs -- inexcusable, period. But of course it's never as easy as that. It's a testament to Paris Hilton's malleable position as a scorn-magnet (in this case deserved scorn) that the reactions seem to be mostly accompanied by eye-rolls, like "well, she's finally done it." Or even in one kind of surprising case, "so much for trying to enjoy her album." But the harder truth is that I still hear language like this, casually, in similar contexts (probably closer to misguided wannabe-ironic than straightfaced and hateful) and it doesn't send me into shut-down mode -- because it can't. An event like this can't just serve as an excuse to stop thinking about Paris Hilton's (or anyone else's) social role, or what those words mean and how and why people use them, although obviously this sort of outburst can potentially change someone's perceived role (then again, I think that the Paris-hate tends to be so intense that most people won't even bat an eyelash about this incident, and it will be one more equally-weighted point in their litany of reasons why she's awful). For me this opens up more tough questions after a long period of not really thinking about her as much. And now I'm gonna go the bullshit route and not follow this through (yet).

4. Oh yeah, the BLOIDS. Um...well, the experience was kind of awful, honestly. At first I thought poorly of my most recent column, but then I calmed down and reread it, and I think most of my points still stand, except the Ashlee joke, which Emily didn't have the heart to tell me wasn't very funny at the time (it might have been obvious that I fudged an ending, which is a nasty tendency I should really try to kick someday). I would like to clarify that when I say I don't think Lindsay would be "better off" for not thrusting herself more into the public eye, I don't mean that she's better off as a bulimic or alcoholic as opposed to not being one (I hope that's obvious). These are her demons (as they are many people's demons) whether she's in the public eye or not, and coverage of her personal life usually reveals more about those covering it and those they cover it for more than it does about her. And, furthermore, "whom they cover it for" encompasses many more people than the ones making or reading the tabloids. Just about everyone. But I hope to deal with some personal issues these things are bringing up in the column, like the fact that I'm still not understanding my own role in this audience, or this conversation, very well.