NOTE: Following post written sans "h," "y," and "?" (<-- copee 'n' pasted) due to effed keeboard after tea spill.
So Stylus is no longer. It's too bad, because a lot of good writing came from it.
I did some good writing in Sugar Etc., and I coulda done more -- I like to imagine I'll find an alternative, but I sorta doubt it. Some people didn't like it; life goes on.
I would claim to feel bad for not writing more, but as I've said before, I don't believe I'm a good record reviewer. Never was. I do "pieces," requiring a subtle mix of provocative ideas and crap, less crap needed, and a Big Weakness is still WRITING ABOUT MUSIC. I suck at it. And I'm still faking it a lot, and it's often transparent.
But I still possess a reasonable brain, good ideas. And one great aspect of writing at Stylus was it wasn't afraid of ideas or brains. Not all brains were good ones, and fewer ideas were, including several of mine. But some sense of "see if it sticks" just never let up. I appreciated it, since Todd contacted me at a time I wasn't sure if stuff I'd been writing (spewing) stuck (or stunk).
It stuck for a time, about as long as I wrote for Todd 'n' Nem. I sort of regret losing, in about an equal span of time, a few places to test ideas in (relative) quiet-not-private -- I feel a lot MORE isolated now, and it seems like lots of people don't understand I didn't and don't want a "project"; most of all I want to talk to people, or at least feel as if I could if asked or goaded into conversation. One aspect of a Good Online Music Place not even Stylus figured out was sustaining a public conversation. (Comments section was a bust, meaningful cross-critique too rare.)
(A bit self-indulgent so far, but again I wasn't a devoted contributor -- glad to see Brie made Todd's "Bluffer's Guide" feature.)
Don't call it a eulogee -- I'll send kudos etc. in private -- online mags are dwindling to dead and Next Big Place isn't around as of now: Small Places don't draw sufficient audiences, Big Places don't draw sufficient talent -- or seem to stifle it -- and Medium Places feel like temp, fluctuating convo spots, prob an internet norm. (I.e., internet equals lotsa Medium Places...but big online mags seem a bit different.)
For me, I'll miss a deadline most. Can't seem to talk about stuff I want to talk about. Can't articulate it, as if I'm missing a few letters on Da Cranial Keeboard. Not Clicking. Well, sour vibes all around in '07 (glad it's not O-SIX cuz "six" is busted too), but too few people are asking good (enuff) questions, and now we've got one less place to ask 'em on occasion.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
It's you-know-who, you-know-what
Damn, these songs clean up nice. [joke avoided]
OK, first impression is that Britney is giggling and whispering and threatening in the corners of every track here -- it's a very intimate album, much more so than anything else she's ever done by a longshot. "Piece of Me" is vicious, "Heaven" is still beautiful, but it's actually a little bit lighter somehow in its non-demo version (still love that line, somewhere between old-skool teenpop pretension and the Pixies..."fall off the edge of my mind for you" -- and there's the matter-of-fact whisper.
Anyway, she's carrying over that vibe of letting you in a little closer from "And Then We Kiss," with a healthy dose of low-key batshitness. Dance-confessional lives! (Also see: the leaked tracks from the new Veronicas album, which are totally breakneck thump-thump club bangers, and they're still angsty and shit.)
Also, I'm delighted to see that Paris Hilton is feeding right back into the ex-teenpopper gene pool. (They've been hanging out, right?)
"Freakshow" starts kinda like Lady Sov's "Random," keeps it weird and spare. More army-of-Britney, works about as well with Britney keeping it cool as it did with Paris keeping it the only voice she could do. At least as weird as Janelle Monae, very funny! This sounds like it was a (cheezy laser-gun) blast to record (esp. "Hot as Ice," previously "Cold as Fire").
I'm not sure if anyone's brought up Eminem's Encore as a comparison point for Britney at this point in her career (musically), but the comparison keeps coming up for me (not just because she's got a "Toy Soldier" track on here). Difference being that Britney going off the rails musically is exciting as compared to the rest of her (occasionally off-the-rails-ish but usually 100x bigger and more sure of itself), whereas with Eminem it was just a sort of bizarre detour off the road becase...like, what else was he going to do? (He hasn't gotten back ON the road since then, either.) But Britney has plenty of room to go weird, go personal, go on the DL a little, try things out, fail spectacularly (which she hasn't done here, though plenty of it is pretty strange, esp. for her).
What would have been a disaster is if she'd try to out-Britney herself as always (she already got her Big Britney Hit from Left Field in 2003, anyway, and no one particularly gave a shit about her baggage then, did they?) That's kind of what I take from the VMAs performance -- low-key song, low-key performance (botched), and the biggest disappointment wasn't that she was so listless, so whatever, but that you couldn't really imagine it being BIG BIG BIG even if the performance had been flawless. It was low-rent, and she fucked it up.
Well, whatever. She seems to have had her hand held pretty tightly until now (productions being melted down and reformed her persona), and she's kind of delightfully in over her head here; sometimes the beats swallow her whole. Sometimes they go for the Paris technique and make mountains out of molehill-style vocals, and the beats STILL kick her ass. But in her own way she's just as on-target as ever, in fact more on target -- every single song on this album is good, and I happen to know there's at least one or maybe two other songs not even on here. In fact, her consistency doesn't come close until now, even if the peaks are way lower -- maybe In the Zone, but there are a few duds on that one. Certainly not her first three albs (and I'll take her half gold half shit albums over Zone).
What I'm saying is, this is Britney Spears's best album.
I'm not sure if I'm ready to say that yet.
No, yes. I am. This is it. This is her best album.
OK, first impression is that Britney is giggling and whispering and threatening in the corners of every track here -- it's a very intimate album, much more so than anything else she's ever done by a longshot. "Piece of Me" is vicious, "Heaven" is still beautiful, but it's actually a little bit lighter somehow in its non-demo version (still love that line, somewhere between old-skool teenpop pretension and the Pixies..."fall off the edge of my mind for you" -- and there's the matter-of-fact whisper.
Anyway, she's carrying over that vibe of letting you in a little closer from "And Then We Kiss," with a healthy dose of low-key batshitness. Dance-confessional lives! (Also see: the leaked tracks from the new Veronicas album, which are totally breakneck thump-thump club bangers, and they're still angsty and shit.)
Also, I'm delighted to see that Paris Hilton is feeding right back into the ex-teenpopper gene pool. (They've been hanging out, right?)
"Freakshow" starts kinda like Lady Sov's "Random," keeps it weird and spare. More army-of-Britney, works about as well with Britney keeping it cool as it did with Paris keeping it the only voice she could do. At least as weird as Janelle Monae, very funny! This sounds like it was a (cheezy laser-gun) blast to record (esp. "Hot as Ice," previously "Cold as Fire").
I'm not sure if anyone's brought up Eminem's Encore as a comparison point for Britney at this point in her career (musically), but the comparison keeps coming up for me (not just because she's got a "Toy Soldier" track on here). Difference being that Britney going off the rails musically is exciting as compared to the rest of her (occasionally off-the-rails-ish but usually 100x bigger and more sure of itself), whereas with Eminem it was just a sort of bizarre detour off the road becase...like, what else was he going to do? (He hasn't gotten back ON the road since then, either.) But Britney has plenty of room to go weird, go personal, go on the DL a little, try things out, fail spectacularly (which she hasn't done here, though plenty of it is pretty strange, esp. for her).
What would have been a disaster is if she'd try to out-Britney herself as always (she already got her Big Britney Hit from Left Field in 2003, anyway, and no one particularly gave a shit about her baggage then, did they?) That's kind of what I take from the VMAs performance -- low-key song, low-key performance (botched), and the biggest disappointment wasn't that she was so listless, so whatever, but that you couldn't really imagine it being BIG BIG BIG even if the performance had been flawless. It was low-rent, and she fucked it up.
Well, whatever. She seems to have had her hand held pretty tightly until now (productions being melted down and reformed her persona), and she's kind of delightfully in over her head here; sometimes the beats swallow her whole. Sometimes they go for the Paris technique and make mountains out of molehill-style vocals, and the beats STILL kick her ass. But in her own way she's just as on-target as ever, in fact more on target -- every single song on this album is good, and I happen to know there's at least one or maybe two other songs not even on here. In fact, her consistency doesn't come close until now, even if the peaks are way lower -- maybe In the Zone, but there are a few duds on that one. Certainly not her first three albs (and I'll take her half gold half shit albums over Zone).
What I'm saying is, this is Britney Spears's best album.
I'm not sure if I'm ready to say that yet.
No, yes. I am. This is it. This is her best album.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Kill Me, Kill Me, Kill Me: 001/964
Ashlee Simpson - Autobiography
I'm not listening to it, not right now, anyway. (I listened to "Shadow" once to help describe the guitars at the end.) I've listened to this album at least 200 times. Maybe more than that, and that's not counting individual tracks, which easily double it. Yeah, probably more. I listen to it almost every day in the summer, at least once a week every other season. I listened to it three times in a row last weekend.
Why do I want to write a book about this album? Why does GOD want me to write a book about this album, if his random number generators can be trusted, which for the purposes of this experiment they can?
(1) I think people will think I'm being ironic (in the sense that isn't actually "ironic," more like "smug" or "sarcastic") or something, when I'm clearly not, which will help my sales and cause me to hugely resent my audience. (Wishful thinking, like anyone would even read such a thing.)
(2) Frank Kogan doesn't want to write the book (yet). (I checked.)
(3) I'm not sure what I'm trying to say yet, but I know it's important.
(4) It's an excellent album <--woops, should be #1!
(5) I still don't get it.
I don't get this album at all. Well, no, I get it a lot, but there's so much more to it I haven't seen. Er, heard. I tried explaining my relationship to Autobiography to a group of my peers the other day (wrote out my spiel and everything) and fell flat on my face. No one could tell if I was "serious" or not (I was), and everyone figured I was making fun of someone (myself? Someone who would like Ashlee Simpson? Someone who would HATE Ashlee Simpson?).
"You have to start in the middle and work your way out." This is true. The Ashlee closest to the one I "get" comes in around "Love Makes the World Go Round" and leaves sometime during "Surrender." Nia calls it the Messy Girl's Guide to Love ("Love Me for Me" specifically). I've called it "the kind of life my roommates led in their first year out of college" Jonathan over at Screw Rock has called it very mid-20s, if I remember our conversation correctly. There is a lot to talk about here, even though I bring it up like every week.
It's very comfortable-sounding music, and it's very difficult to talk about the musical aspect of it (specifically how there's nothing about the music itself, which is certainly excellent, that makes it so worthy of total intellectual obsession and devotion), because any way I describe it sounds BORING. "Y'know, sleepy singer-songwriter acoustic guitar with a few syncopated accents, 'Wild World'-style laid-back with a strong pulse" ("Better Off"). Pop-punk power-chordage down the minor scale, like a lite "Back in Black" ("Love Me for Me"). Post-grunge something-or-other, still not sure what I mean by that, exactly.
Shanks has developed a signature guitar style that's pretty immediately recognizable, actually; you think it's "derivative" and then you realize he was producing Sheryl Crow and Michelle Branch and Lillix 1.0 pre-Ashlee, and that these are probably as good a musical reference point as any (again, "musical reference points" aren't what draw me to this album, so the point, though fun to speculate about if that's your sorta thing, isn't crucial to connection). I haven't bothered to figure out exactly what he's doing musically. He has a way of doing complicated jazz-leaning charts that sound like power-chords, a way of lilting violently. You can hear it in almost-full force on Lucy Woodward's album, except Lucy rarely has anything interesting to say for herself, even with many of the same collaborators.
Ashlee has a lot to say! She sounds pretty dippy sometimes: "my hair's a mess, even when it's straight" -- hey wait, that's one of the good lines. Seriously, it works. OK, I'll break down the first few lines of "Better Off":
"The sky is falling" (cliche)
"And it's early in the morning" (specific)
"But it's OK somehow" (ambivalence)
"I spilled my coffee" (specific)
"It went all over your clothes" (half-specific, half-cliche?)
"Gotta wear mine now" (you think it's a cliche, then you realize she means it literally -- she just has to change real quick, oh well)
I can see her in her room, she's staring at these same four walls again ("Love Makes the World Go Round") and she's an empty page. When Richard Hell said that ("Blank Generation"), Lester Bangs pointed out the tension/discrepancy between "blank" as "we can go anywhere from here" (that's how Hell justified it) and "blank" as "void" (duh), as emptiness. ASHLEE'S DOING THE SAME THING, and she's aware of that tension, too. And beyond that, she's not talking about her generation, she's talking about how life works. You think you're starting to understand something, starting to love someone (maybe), and you get hurt anyway. Shit happens. Oh well, it's OK. At least I'm better off today than I was yesterday.
It's hard to argue it for some reason, but I can't emphasize enough that no one else in Ashlee's "celebrity class" is doing this. Not the people she's said to be ripping off (Avril, always obtuse, always surface, nothing to dig into) and not her contemporaries (Kelly C. is too tragic, Hilary is too blank, Lillix via Shanks are too boring). Ashlee either nails you with an insight, with that one line or idea that sticks in your craw if you let it, or the whole thing is just specific as hell. Nia's given the best commentary on the words in "Love Me for Me":
And Frank has commented on how the syllables in that one hit you like "quick jabs," similar in spirit to his analysis of Spoonie Gee, I think.
So working backwards: go back to the song-everyone-knows, the (non-hater) "Big Fact" of Ashlee (h/t Tom) in "Pieces of Me," and you see something very different happening, the jabs blurring into each other in that syncopated...I dunno, tilt-lilt? Like a pinball machine got jammed, overload, noise, but we're just havin' a good time heh heh. I dunno. "On a MON-day, I'm WAIT-ing, on a TUES-day, I'm FAD-ing..." like she's short of breath and trying to keep up with her own words, but it all codes "sweet," like oh, maybe this guy will save me.
We know better than that; this is the same "guy" (not in reality, but across the album) that's plucking her from the vine too soon (on her reality show, "Pieces of Me" is for Ryan Cabrera and "Unreachable," where that quote comes from, is "Josh," whom we only meet in the first episode). Anyway, she starts with the come-on ("Autobiography") and the sweetness ("Pieces of Me") but the majority of the album will undermine the optimism, and there's ambivalence in the early tracks, too: the way her words trip over themselves despite a lulling, easy rhythm, she says that the love lets her breathe, but you get the sense she's suffocating a little (I hear "make me happy is your mission," which a stupid line, as "make me happy -- submission," which is a much better line).
THIS IS A GIRL APPROACHING HER QUARTER-LIFE CRISIS. Psychobabble, whatever. Actually, Ashlee doesn't use psychobabble. Listen to what she's saying -- she is not expecting to be healed, in part because she's not sure what's wrong with her.
OK, there's a little psychobabble, but if you give her the benefit of the doubt, it doesn't read as such. "Shadow" should be about 80% psychobabble, and as far as I can tell, there's only one line that's even close: "my chains are finally free," or maybe "it's safe outside to come alive in my identity."
But that's also precisely what the song is about, in a very non-cliche sort of way -- about convincing yourself that things are better now than they used to be, you finally know who you are. But Jesus, Ashlee is not cool with that at all. What is this about having "more than anyone should" (when there's no reference whatsoever to privilege in the rest of the song -- no one should be comfortable with who they are? WTF?) and "don't feel sorry for me," like that's the biggest concern in anyone's mind? It's pathetic! And frankly, her closing assertion "mother sister father sister mother, everything's cool now" isn't exactly the most powerful assertion of some sort of healing. "Everything's cool?"
I mean, Ashlee fails big time in this song, but the song isn't a failure. It ends up compromised, which is more than you can say of, say, "Complicated" (that's what I'm thinking of with psychobabble, re: Jody Rosen's comment on the lyrics -- and he's right, but this isn't a feature of Ashlee's lyrics). Well, of course it's compromised. This is a song about forgiving your family for (consciously or not, and we get a sense of a little of both) hierarchizing the love. Middle child syndrome, sure, let's throw in the psychobabble, too. But it's not about your family recognizing how they brought you up, and it's not about the singer understanding that her parents always loved her. It's about everything being OK now. Y'know. Better than it used to be. Every day isn't worse than the last, thank god.
The breaking free stuff, the no-more-chains-hooray -- well, I guess it feels like a weight off. But not having a giant weight on you, not being in chains, is not the same thing as being happy, nor is it the same thing as understanding who you really are (or being more comfortable with who you really might be, to skirt psychobabble a bit). "Everything's cool now." How sad is that? And yet the song is triumphal, the guitars have a way of swelling like the strings after establishing that initial melancholy, that sad little warble at the end of the phrase. They crescendo and swell -- accompanied by a Shanks solo line (reminds me of "Baby You're a Rich Man" melody, and almost everything in it is Beatles, a reference point so obvious I missed it until Frank pointed it out!) -- even at the expense of the actually-swelling strings. (The decorative nature of the strings was nicely summed up by Ashlee herself, pleasantly yawning at them in the studio as they were being recorded.)
And damn, Ashlee sounds so in control of her slightly-lessening bewilderment and slow-building acceptance. (If you want stronger acceptance, check out Fefe Dobson's "Unforgiven," if you want stronger bewilderment, check out P!nk's "Family Portrait"; this one falls somewhere in the middle and is probably more interesting for it, if not as powerful/"healing" or as bewildering.)
Unreachable: "You can't push a river, you can't make me fall, but you can make me unreachable."
Giving It All Away: "Hey girl, screamin' for attention / Once you get it, you throw it away / I'm broken, I'm pickin' up the pieces /I won't live in all your mistakes."
Undiscovered: "All the things left undiscovered, leave me empty and left to wonder; I need you. ...Don't walk away."
There's latter-half Ashlee ("Surrender" onward -- "Surrender" and "Nothing New" are fairly surface-level spite-rock tracks and point the way toward stuff like "I Am Me," brilliant kiss-off but almost all surface pleasure, on her second album).
What is she saying? It's not cryptic, exactly, though certainly oblique. It's rug-pulling, pretty well executed, too: in that penultimate track, she throws out some of the most GODAWFUL cliches yet on the album, really really terrible stuff (comparatively, still better than 90% of Avril). "Big burning beds" and "smoking up your sorrows" and "selling your dreams for a bucket of change." I mean just AWFUL.
And then there's that third verse, and you prick up your ears a bit, and she switches up the chorus on you, "you're" not giving it all away anymore, "I'm" giving it all away now. That is, Ashlee's giving it all away. Which makes her both the girl who won't make "your" mistakes and the girl that made the mistakes. I don't get it.
"Unreachable," seemingly untouched (writing-wise) by any of her key songwriters (Kara DioGuardi, to a lesser extent Shelly Peiken [from "Love Me for Me"]), in fact co-penned by the dudes from Sugar Ray), not a bad line in it and a chorus that actually makes you think twice before you can write it off as nonsense. Because it's not nonsense; it's pretty damn evocative! Of what, who knows. Rivers, I guess, and Ashlee being one. Unruly, unthinking, powerful. Well, she's certainly thoughtful.
And come on, listen to her do her Courtney Love growl at the end of "Undiscovered" and try feeling nothing. Not going to happen, not if you're being fair, not if you're starting to get it. "Don't walk away," and her voice breaks, like she's John Lennon at the end of "Twist and Shout" and her voice is about to give, but she's gotta get those last words out. And the music just drifts off, kind of aimlessly, like oh, I guess we'll end it here, then.
Which is what I'm going to do, too. But I'm not finished with this one.
I'm not listening to it, not right now, anyway. (I listened to "Shadow" once to help describe the guitars at the end.) I've listened to this album at least 200 times. Maybe more than that, and that's not counting individual tracks, which easily double it. Yeah, probably more. I listen to it almost every day in the summer, at least once a week every other season. I listened to it three times in a row last weekend.
Why do I want to write a book about this album? Why does GOD want me to write a book about this album, if his random number generators can be trusted, which for the purposes of this experiment they can?
(1) I think people will think I'm being ironic (in the sense that isn't actually "ironic," more like "smug" or "sarcastic") or something, when I'm clearly not, which will help my sales and cause me to hugely resent my audience. (Wishful thinking, like anyone would even read such a thing.)
(2) Frank Kogan doesn't want to write the book (yet). (I checked.)
(3) I'm not sure what I'm trying to say yet, but I know it's important.
(4) It's an excellent album <--woops, should be #1!
(5) I still don't get it.
I don't get this album at all. Well, no, I get it a lot, but there's so much more to it I haven't seen. Er, heard. I tried explaining my relationship to Autobiography to a group of my peers the other day (wrote out my spiel and everything) and fell flat on my face. No one could tell if I was "serious" or not (I was), and everyone figured I was making fun of someone (myself? Someone who would like Ashlee Simpson? Someone who would HATE Ashlee Simpson?).
"You have to start in the middle and work your way out." This is true. The Ashlee closest to the one I "get" comes in around "Love Makes the World Go Round" and leaves sometime during "Surrender." Nia calls it the Messy Girl's Guide to Love ("Love Me for Me" specifically). I've called it "the kind of life my roommates led in their first year out of college" Jonathan over at Screw Rock has called it very mid-20s, if I remember our conversation correctly. There is a lot to talk about here, even though I bring it up like every week.
It's very comfortable-sounding music, and it's very difficult to talk about the musical aspect of it (specifically how there's nothing about the music itself, which is certainly excellent, that makes it so worthy of total intellectual obsession and devotion), because any way I describe it sounds BORING. "Y'know, sleepy singer-songwriter acoustic guitar with a few syncopated accents, 'Wild World'-style laid-back with a strong pulse" ("Better Off"). Pop-punk power-chordage down the minor scale, like a lite "Back in Black" ("Love Me for Me"). Post-grunge something-or-other, still not sure what I mean by that, exactly.
Shanks has developed a signature guitar style that's pretty immediately recognizable, actually; you think it's "derivative" and then you realize he was producing Sheryl Crow and Michelle Branch and Lillix 1.0 pre-Ashlee, and that these are probably as good a musical reference point as any (again, "musical reference points" aren't what draw me to this album, so the point, though fun to speculate about if that's your sorta thing, isn't crucial to connection). I haven't bothered to figure out exactly what he's doing musically. He has a way of doing complicated jazz-leaning charts that sound like power-chords, a way of lilting violently. You can hear it in almost-full force on Lucy Woodward's album, except Lucy rarely has anything interesting to say for herself, even with many of the same collaborators.
Ashlee has a lot to say! She sounds pretty dippy sometimes: "my hair's a mess, even when it's straight" -- hey wait, that's one of the good lines. Seriously, it works. OK, I'll break down the first few lines of "Better Off":
"The sky is falling" (cliche)
"And it's early in the morning" (specific)
"But it's OK somehow" (ambivalence)
"I spilled my coffee" (specific)
"It went all over your clothes" (half-specific, half-cliche?)
"Gotta wear mine now" (you think it's a cliche, then you realize she means it literally -- she just has to change real quick, oh well)
I can see her in her room, she's staring at these same four walls again ("Love Makes the World Go Round") and she's an empty page. When Richard Hell said that ("Blank Generation"), Lester Bangs pointed out the tension/discrepancy between "blank" as "we can go anywhere from here" (that's how Hell justified it) and "blank" as "void" (duh), as emptiness. ASHLEE'S DOING THE SAME THING, and she's aware of that tension, too. And beyond that, she's not talking about her generation, she's talking about how life works. You think you're starting to understand something, starting to love someone (maybe), and you get hurt anyway. Shit happens. Oh well, it's OK. At least I'm better off today than I was yesterday.
It's hard to argue it for some reason, but I can't emphasize enough that no one else in Ashlee's "celebrity class" is doing this. Not the people she's said to be ripping off (Avril, always obtuse, always surface, nothing to dig into) and not her contemporaries (Kelly C. is too tragic, Hilary is too blank, Lillix via Shanks are too boring). Ashlee either nails you with an insight, with that one line or idea that sticks in your craw if you let it, or the whole thing is just specific as hell. Nia's given the best commentary on the words in "Love Me for Me":
"It's been three days / You come around here like you know me / Your stuff, my place / Next thing you know, you'll be using my toothpaste." See how much life is contained within those three lines? These people, this place, the essential conflict. Those are the opening lines, by the way--she doesn't waste time, or words. And that's the thing. Ashlee's writing pretty fucking good poetry: detailed, evocative, every word earning its place, with a voice that's strong and distinct.
And Frank has commented on how the syllables in that one hit you like "quick jabs," similar in spirit to his analysis of Spoonie Gee, I think.
So working backwards: go back to the song-everyone-knows, the (non-hater) "Big Fact" of Ashlee (h/t Tom) in "Pieces of Me," and you see something very different happening, the jabs blurring into each other in that syncopated...I dunno, tilt-lilt? Like a pinball machine got jammed, overload, noise, but we're just havin' a good time heh heh. I dunno. "On a MON-day, I'm WAIT-ing, on a TUES-day, I'm FAD-ing..." like she's short of breath and trying to keep up with her own words, but it all codes "sweet," like oh, maybe this guy will save me.
We know better than that; this is the same "guy" (not in reality, but across the album) that's plucking her from the vine too soon (on her reality show, "Pieces of Me" is for Ryan Cabrera and "Unreachable," where that quote comes from, is "Josh," whom we only meet in the first episode). Anyway, she starts with the come-on ("Autobiography") and the sweetness ("Pieces of Me") but the majority of the album will undermine the optimism, and there's ambivalence in the early tracks, too: the way her words trip over themselves despite a lulling, easy rhythm, she says that the love lets her breathe, but you get the sense she's suffocating a little (I hear "make me happy is your mission," which a stupid line, as "make me happy -- submission," which is a much better line).
THIS IS A GIRL APPROACHING HER QUARTER-LIFE CRISIS. Psychobabble, whatever. Actually, Ashlee doesn't use psychobabble. Listen to what she's saying -- she is not expecting to be healed, in part because she's not sure what's wrong with her.
OK, there's a little psychobabble, but if you give her the benefit of the doubt, it doesn't read as such. "Shadow" should be about 80% psychobabble, and as far as I can tell, there's only one line that's even close: "my chains are finally free," or maybe "it's safe outside to come alive in my identity."
But that's also precisely what the song is about, in a very non-cliche sort of way -- about convincing yourself that things are better now than they used to be, you finally know who you are. But Jesus, Ashlee is not cool with that at all. What is this about having "more than anyone should" (when there's no reference whatsoever to privilege in the rest of the song -- no one should be comfortable with who they are? WTF?) and "don't feel sorry for me," like that's the biggest concern in anyone's mind? It's pathetic! And frankly, her closing assertion "mother sister father sister mother, everything's cool now" isn't exactly the most powerful assertion of some sort of healing. "Everything's cool?"
I mean, Ashlee fails big time in this song, but the song isn't a failure. It ends up compromised, which is more than you can say of, say, "Complicated" (that's what I'm thinking of with psychobabble, re: Jody Rosen's comment on the lyrics -- and he's right, but this isn't a feature of Ashlee's lyrics). Well, of course it's compromised. This is a song about forgiving your family for (consciously or not, and we get a sense of a little of both) hierarchizing the love. Middle child syndrome, sure, let's throw in the psychobabble, too. But it's not about your family recognizing how they brought you up, and it's not about the singer understanding that her parents always loved her. It's about everything being OK now. Y'know. Better than it used to be. Every day isn't worse than the last, thank god.
The breaking free stuff, the no-more-chains-hooray -- well, I guess it feels like a weight off. But not having a giant weight on you, not being in chains, is not the same thing as being happy, nor is it the same thing as understanding who you really are (or being more comfortable with who you really might be, to skirt psychobabble a bit). "Everything's cool now." How sad is that? And yet the song is triumphal, the guitars have a way of swelling like the strings after establishing that initial melancholy, that sad little warble at the end of the phrase. They crescendo and swell -- accompanied by a Shanks solo line (reminds me of "Baby You're a Rich Man" melody, and almost everything in it is Beatles, a reference point so obvious I missed it until Frank pointed it out!) -- even at the expense of the actually-swelling strings. (The decorative nature of the strings was nicely summed up by Ashlee herself, pleasantly yawning at them in the studio as they were being recorded.)
And damn, Ashlee sounds so in control of her slightly-lessening bewilderment and slow-building acceptance. (If you want stronger acceptance, check out Fefe Dobson's "Unforgiven," if you want stronger bewilderment, check out P!nk's "Family Portrait"; this one falls somewhere in the middle and is probably more interesting for it, if not as powerful/"healing" or as bewildering.)
Unreachable: "You can't push a river, you can't make me fall, but you can make me unreachable."
Giving It All Away: "Hey girl, screamin' for attention / Once you get it, you throw it away / I'm broken, I'm pickin' up the pieces /I won't live in all your mistakes."
Undiscovered: "All the things left undiscovered, leave me empty and left to wonder; I need you. ...Don't walk away."
There's latter-half Ashlee ("Surrender" onward -- "Surrender" and "Nothing New" are fairly surface-level spite-rock tracks and point the way toward stuff like "I Am Me," brilliant kiss-off but almost all surface pleasure, on her second album).
What is she saying? It's not cryptic, exactly, though certainly oblique. It's rug-pulling, pretty well executed, too: in that penultimate track, she throws out some of the most GODAWFUL cliches yet on the album, really really terrible stuff (comparatively, still better than 90% of Avril). "Big burning beds" and "smoking up your sorrows" and "selling your dreams for a bucket of change." I mean just AWFUL.
And then there's that third verse, and you prick up your ears a bit, and she switches up the chorus on you, "you're" not giving it all away anymore, "I'm" giving it all away now. That is, Ashlee's giving it all away. Which makes her both the girl who won't make "your" mistakes and the girl that made the mistakes. I don't get it.
"Unreachable," seemingly untouched (writing-wise) by any of her key songwriters (Kara DioGuardi, to a lesser extent Shelly Peiken [from "Love Me for Me"]), in fact co-penned by the dudes from Sugar Ray), not a bad line in it and a chorus that actually makes you think twice before you can write it off as nonsense. Because it's not nonsense; it's pretty damn evocative! Of what, who knows. Rivers, I guess, and Ashlee being one. Unruly, unthinking, powerful. Well, she's certainly thoughtful.
And come on, listen to her do her Courtney Love growl at the end of "Undiscovered" and try feeling nothing. Not going to happen, not if you're being fair, not if you're starting to get it. "Don't walk away," and her voice breaks, like she's John Lennon at the end of "Twist and Shout" and her voice is about to give, but she's gotta get those last words out. And the music just drifts off, kind of aimlessly, like oh, I guess we'll end it here, then.
Which is what I'm going to do, too. But I'm not finished with this one.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
KM: 002, 003, 004
Modest Mouse - Everywhere and His Nasty Parlour Tricks
Hey, why not. EP = less listening time!
Bought this in 2004 in NYC, I think. Starts a bit glitchy, reminds me that they were scratching records on occasion, or pretending to, until Moon and Antarctica. Lots of atmospherics in "Willful Suspension of Disbelief," some backwards guitar, atmosphere over content sorta works. Whatever.
"Night on the Sun" is apparently over 7 minutes long, and I'm hoping this raggedy-ass riff isn't the main feature throughout. "Turn on the light it's not on the sun, you're hopelessly hopeless, I hope so." Aly and AJ got better wordplay. There's that riff again. Damn, this one's pretty boring. Woops, I accidentally skipped it. <--not cheating, for future reference. (BTW, at the end of these little blurby things I'll decide whether or not I'm going to sell back the CD. This one is erring on the side of SELL BACK.)
Some squealy screechin' on the fiddle, another dumbass pseudo-backwater riff. Vocals come in in a round. Don't know what I been told, you'll never die when you never grow old. THANKS.
Unlike this music, Maryland actually feels like a swamp. I went back on a whim last weekend and even the color is a little different down there, kind of a deep orange/red or something. I'm wondering if it's just my rose-colored glasses. There's "The Air" w/ synth approximation of shaking an old can full of washers. Would prefer the real can (synth washers optional). Electronic distortion doesn't = rust. Need a new drum machine, drummer. Practice room pop! (Skip.)
Watching "M.A.S.H." on the couch. Also something I might do for a lark in the wee hours of the morning after a bout of insomnia, but why not just watch Youtube videos instead? (Skip.) Hey, backwards sounds. This one's OK at the twenty second mark. Handclaps! I'd keep this song, but won't. (Skip.) "I Came As a Rat," I like this song! But have it elsewhere. (Skip.)
VERDICT: SELL
They Might Be Giants - No!
This is great. I saw them perform "Robot Parade" on Conan back when this came out and figured I'd enjoy this, wasn't disappointed. Knew these guys made children's music since "Tiny Toons," which is to say since I first listened to them. How many of my friends know Flood by heart (more or less), and what does this say about me? (That I'm a dork?)
Heather Phares is one of my favorite AMG reviewers.
When are Arcade Fire going to put out a children's album, anyway? Aside from Funeral. Won't sell this album (No!, I mean) but don't particularly want to listen to it right now. Will keep it on in the background while I study lighting diagrams. (TS: spherical reflectors vs. parabolic reflectors.)
VERDICT: CUTE
Boredoms - Super ae
No wait, I'll listen to this while I study lenses. (TS: split focus vs. "macro" mode.)
No wait, I won't.
(Who was I kidding, anyway?)
VERDICT: WILL GIVE TO ANYONE WHO WANTS IT, I GUESS. MIGHT SELL.
Next up: Pavement - Slanted and Enchanted
Hey, why not. EP = less listening time!
Bought this in 2004 in NYC, I think. Starts a bit glitchy, reminds me that they were scratching records on occasion, or pretending to, until Moon and Antarctica. Lots of atmospherics in "Willful Suspension of Disbelief," some backwards guitar, atmosphere over content sorta works. Whatever.
"Night on the Sun" is apparently over 7 minutes long, and I'm hoping this raggedy-ass riff isn't the main feature throughout. "Turn on the light it's not on the sun, you're hopelessly hopeless, I hope so." Aly and AJ got better wordplay. There's that riff again. Damn, this one's pretty boring. Woops, I accidentally skipped it. <--not cheating, for future reference. (BTW, at the end of these little blurby things I'll decide whether or not I'm going to sell back the CD. This one is erring on the side of SELL BACK.)
Some squealy screechin' on the fiddle, another dumbass pseudo-backwater riff. Vocals come in in a round. Don't know what I been told, you'll never die when you never grow old. THANKS.
Unlike this music, Maryland actually feels like a swamp. I went back on a whim last weekend and even the color is a little different down there, kind of a deep orange/red or something. I'm wondering if it's just my rose-colored glasses. There's "The Air" w/ synth approximation of shaking an old can full of washers. Would prefer the real can (synth washers optional). Electronic distortion doesn't = rust. Need a new drum machine, drummer. Practice room pop! (Skip.)
Watching "M.A.S.H." on the couch. Also something I might do for a lark in the wee hours of the morning after a bout of insomnia, but why not just watch Youtube videos instead? (Skip.) Hey, backwards sounds. This one's OK at the twenty second mark. Handclaps! I'd keep this song, but won't. (Skip.) "I Came As a Rat," I like this song! But have it elsewhere. (Skip.)
VERDICT: SELL
They Might Be Giants - No!
This is great. I saw them perform "Robot Parade" on Conan back when this came out and figured I'd enjoy this, wasn't disappointed. Knew these guys made children's music since "Tiny Toons," which is to say since I first listened to them. How many of my friends know Flood by heart (more or less), and what does this say about me? (That I'm a dork?)
Heather Phares is one of my favorite AMG reviewers.
When are Arcade Fire going to put out a children's album, anyway? Aside from Funeral. Won't sell this album (No!, I mean) but don't particularly want to listen to it right now. Will keep it on in the background while I study lighting diagrams. (TS: spherical reflectors vs. parabolic reflectors.)
VERDICT: CUTE
Boredoms - Super ae
No wait, I'll listen to this while I study lenses. (TS: split focus vs. "macro" mode.)
No wait, I won't.
(Who was I kidding, anyway?)
VERDICT: WILL GIVE TO ANYONE WHO WANTS IT, I GUESS. MIGHT SELL.
Next up: Pavement - Slanted and Enchanted
Saturday, October 20, 2007
God was just shagged out after a long squawk
I decided that tonight, this very Saturday night, would be the first night of my record collection excursion (Kill Me, Kill Me, Kill Me). I filled out my ALBUMS LIST and numbered it (1 through...964?! I'm sure I've never even listened to half of these...) and crammed the list into a reasonable number of pages with imaginative use of margins and spacing and columns and such.
And then I found this nifty random number generator and set my formula and was all set to go.
I said, DISH IT OUT, O RANDOM UNIVERSE! I WILL LISTEN TO BRUCE HAACK OR SONGS OF THE HUMPBACK WHALE OR HALFCOCKED OR CAPTAIN BEEFHEART OR RAMSEY LEWIS! I WILL LISTEN TO ARCHERS OF LOAF OR WILLA FORD OR BILL EVANS OR TWELVE RODS! I WILL LISTEN TO CORBIN BLEU IF THAT IS WHAT YOU TELL ME TO DO! TONIGHT I AM YOURS!
It paused thoughtfully, and after that thoughtful moment it said to me, in no uncertain terms, "YOU WILL LISTEN TO ALBUM #705."
I said to the Random Universe, "THANK YOU!"
I scanned the page. As it turned out, #705 was Autobiography by Ashlee Simpson.
I'm not sure when I'll be coming back.
And then I found this nifty random number generator and set my formula and was all set to go.
I said, DISH IT OUT, O RANDOM UNIVERSE! I WILL LISTEN TO BRUCE HAACK OR SONGS OF THE HUMPBACK WHALE OR HALFCOCKED OR CAPTAIN BEEFHEART OR RAMSEY LEWIS! I WILL LISTEN TO ARCHERS OF LOAF OR WILLA FORD OR BILL EVANS OR TWELVE RODS! I WILL LISTEN TO CORBIN BLEU IF THAT IS WHAT YOU TELL ME TO DO! TONIGHT I AM YOURS!
It paused thoughtfully, and after that thoughtful moment it said to me, in no uncertain terms, "YOU WILL LISTEN TO ALBUM #705."
I said to the Random Universe, "THANK YOU!"
I scanned the page. As it turned out, #705 was Autobiography by Ashlee Simpson.
I'm not sure when I'll be coming back.
Friday, October 19, 2007
WTF I WAS TAKING A NAP
But I was awoken!
Here are two projects I'm going to be working on:
(1) Writing a book for the 33 1/3 series on Ashlee Simpson's Autobiography that won't be submitted to the series (because they won't want it) and will be read by only a handful of people I email it to. If I actually write it, which I might not.
(2) Using a RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR to systematically listen to every CD I've ever bought and writing a blurb about each one ON THIS VERY BLOG. I'm tentatively calling it: KILL ME, KILL ME, KILL ME: A Journey to the End of Taste, If by "Taste" You Mean An Approximation of My Tastes as Suggested by My CD Collection, Which Will Be Taken to Be Somewhat Representative but by No Means Exhaustive Since There Are Plenty of Albums That I Have Heard by Downloading Them or Borrowing Them from Friends or Libraries or Doing That AOL Streaming Album Thing which Incidentally Is Why I'll Never Have to Pay Money for Ashley Tisdale's Album Even If I Did Pay Actual Money No Foolin' for This Corbin Bleu Piece of Crap That Admittedly Has Like Two OK Songs on It.
Here are some projects I refuse to work on:
(1) Talking about the "black music" and the "white music" BECAUSE ARCADE FIRE SWINGS BABY (second section of "Wake Up" dumbos THERE GOES YOUR ARGUMENT BOOYA).
(2) Talking about the Arcade Fire, even when exploring their oeuvre to find just one drop of non-cubicle blood.
(3) Talking about Ashley Tisdale, except in the comments section, where I will be more than happy to talk about Ashley Tisdale.
(4) Figuring out how I can make a silly pun out of "Journey to the End of Taste." So far I've only thought of "Journey to the Taste of End," but I think I come out of it as a bit of a kiss-ass.
(5) Worrying about where all my fave blogs went :(
(6) Fretting.
(7) Masterminding PhillyCatShare for people who, like me, need a TEMP CAT for therapeutic reasons.
(8) Writing a song about DISHES because at least two exist that I am aware of.
(9) Posting all my juiciest DIRT where y'all can't see it.
(10) Wait, scratch 9.
(11) Figuring out things to do on Friday nights. I have important things to do that are very important.
(12) FRETTING but this time about something totally different.
(13) Changing back the Bedbugs lay-out. I don't want to appear cowardly.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Skye Friday (Late Edition) (PS I was right)
EDIT: Now with actual video!
Music Is My Boyfriend is awesome.
That is all. (Tick tock.)
XOXOX C4B
PPS - Best line "Get up to go shower, I'm dancin' for hours." THIS HAPPENS TO ME ALL THE TIME. (Except "hours" is more like ~15 minutes.)
SHSN (still etc. still etc.)
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
A critic doesn't kill (as far as I know)
No, and a critic doesn't sleep. A critic doesn't floss her teeth every. Single. Day. A critic doesn't do the dishes until it's time to do the dishes, and if he does them before that time, she can justify doing them before it was their time -- ahead of their time, he'll say.
A critic has an endless capacity to have taste, which is endless. The end of taste coincides with the death of the tastebuds, which are actually located in little tiny hairs in the ears. (The buds through which your taste is formed.) But it all goes back to the brain, and, being a sponge above all other things, the brain can retain stuff, including former vibrations of tastebuds of the ear.
A critic doesn't make love, nor should anyone else. A critic can talk and talk and talk. A critic cannot stop talking. When she has ceased to talk, he is no longer a critic. ("Don't talk" is an anti-intellectual phrase; luckily Vanessa Hudgens has to talk to shut me up, which I won't, so we're both still in the game.)
I met a critic once. We sat in a bar, the upstairs bar (presumably the racist upstairs bar, as many upstairs bars tend toward racism; my evidence is anecdotal). We talked about critical things, while remaining relatively uncritical. If you put two critics together in a room, uncriticism happens.
I met a non-critic once. We sat in a bar, the downstairs bar (presumably the less-racist downstairs bar, as etc.). One of us talked about critical things and the other humored me. If you put one critic and one non-critic together in a room, criticism happens, but does it make a sound?
My professor tells me that this is not what he was saying at all. Not at all. So here I became a non-critic, and my professor was the critic, and criticism happened (criticizing my criticism) and it didn't make a sound (because I didn't tell anyone).
My friend tells me that his friend is a critic.
My other friend tells me that her other friend is not a critic, but that other friend has another friend who is a critic.
"Everyone's a critic" doesn't stand. "Everyone who is a critic is a critic" would have been safer.
I am not a critic, because I obscure things instead of revealing them. So many things, like what I'm wearing right now (what's it to you?). And what my hair color is (I don't know what they call that color). And what I think of the state of music. I am of no particular opinion.
My particular opinions: undecided.
My particular opinions: anagrammed. (PIOUS MARLIN PARTY COIN.)
Still hiatus, still etc.
A critic has an endless capacity to have taste, which is endless. The end of taste coincides with the death of the tastebuds, which are actually located in little tiny hairs in the ears. (The buds through which your taste is formed.) But it all goes back to the brain, and, being a sponge above all other things, the brain can retain stuff, including former vibrations of tastebuds of the ear.
A critic doesn't make love, nor should anyone else. A critic can talk and talk and talk. A critic cannot stop talking. When she has ceased to talk, he is no longer a critic. ("Don't talk" is an anti-intellectual phrase; luckily Vanessa Hudgens has to talk to shut me up, which I won't, so we're both still in the game.)
I met a critic once. We sat in a bar, the upstairs bar (presumably the racist upstairs bar, as many upstairs bars tend toward racism; my evidence is anecdotal). We talked about critical things, while remaining relatively uncritical. If you put two critics together in a room, uncriticism happens.
I met a non-critic once. We sat in a bar, the downstairs bar (presumably the less-racist downstairs bar, as etc.). One of us talked about critical things and the other humored me. If you put one critic and one non-critic together in a room, criticism happens, but does it make a sound?
My professor tells me that this is not what he was saying at all. Not at all. So here I became a non-critic, and my professor was the critic, and criticism happened (criticizing my criticism) and it didn't make a sound (because I didn't tell anyone).
My friend tells me that his friend is a critic.
My other friend tells me that her other friend is not a critic, but that other friend has another friend who is a critic.
"Everyone's a critic" doesn't stand. "Everyone who is a critic is a critic" would have been safer.
I am not a critic, because I obscure things instead of revealing them. So many things, like what I'm wearing right now (what's it to you?). And what my hair color is (I don't know what they call that color). And what I think of the state of music. I am of no particular opinion.
My particular opinions: undecided.
My particular opinions: anagrammed. (PIOUS MARLIN PARTY COIN.)
Still hiatus, still etc.
Friday, October 05, 2007
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Symposeur
Hello. I've just participated in a round table discussion w/ several bloggers I read pretty regularly. It was great! Especially because by "round table" I mean we all wrote stuff individually and were surprised to see when we'd basically copied what everyone else said!
Well, not all of it. Some interesting contradictions in there, and I was very forceful with my commenting response, but in the deep dark recesses of my soul, I too fear troll invasions. My point, though, and the reason I'm so insistent, is that not everyone is a troll (even when they seem trolly), and (for now) I've realized that most trolls are disarmed when you overpower them with three thousand words or so. Not sure what the exact count is (let's say five consecutive comments at 500 words apiece -- that's 2500, close enough!).
When the trolls are overpowering the main content, there's a problem bigger than just trollage happening. (Says the optimist.) If every post were my Aly and AJ GOD & CONSPIRACY THEORY post (google it), I might have to change my position a bit, but damn, I wish every post got several comments a month for two years! Even from trolls. (And the time factor is major here -- it's not like all the A&A fans -- many of whom are quite perceptive and even right in some ways, for the record -- posted all at once.)
My other point, though, is that not everyone is INSANE and accordingly they don't have enough words lying around. But I don't think about those people, because enough people are insane (committed) and kind of bonkers (open to new ideas and unconventional approaches to etc. etc.) to have a really awesome conversation.
(Aside: Unlike Simon, I don't want to see any "blog battles/clashes," only "blogspats," which suggests the potential for compromise and understanding -- or at the very least a cool-down and then let's grab an ice cream bar and forget about it for a few weeks -- instead of a definitive struggle and suggestion of possible "victory." A crucial distinction. Sometimes when you have a blogspat, you act kind of like a jerk (even though you were right), and sometimes issues are irreconcilable. People break up and change and get back together, but more often they change and stay split anyway. This is part of life. But you can still talk to them on the weekends sometimes.)
Anyway, I think that's where interdisciplinary tactics come in -- finding a subject matter everyone is interested in and cramming them together in a very small space, even if they're not that inclined to do so (just reasonably inclined). And then doing it again, preferably in a different space (with different interested parties). Frank Kogan's term "interplanetary" nicely rockets us outta academia baggage, but I think the principle is nearly the same.
Top o' the head thought: Is there something about edging out of a comfort zone (listening to a new kind of music; thinking seriously about the "legitimacy" of a new kind of thinker -- say, teenyboppers of the US of A and Canada) that is commonly perceived as perversely enjoyable (leading to "guilty pleasure")? And does this "perverse" enjoyment need to be somehow transformed into enjoyment-enjoyment? This sort of describes my process into figuring out what this blog was about, to the extent that we can say it's "about" something -- a kind of titillation (y'know, tee hee) followed by more reasonable reflection that pretty much forever undid that sense of (perverse) giddiness (not that I wouldn't describe plenty of my posts as "giddy"). There was...
[pauses to capture the mouse that ATE MY SUNFLOWER SEEDS from my backpack yesterday.....WITH MY BARE HANDS (and half a cardboard box)!!!!!!!! See what we're capable of in our best moments, especially if the smaller, faster creatures are in their worst moments? The mouse seemed to be stunned or dying.]
...uh, there was a pretty clear separation point, even if it wasn't a literal "point." When skepticism transformed into acceptance and (I think) the conversation actually began. (It helped that a few people started talking to me. Sometimes I need a slap in the face and a glass of water.)
I don't think everyone is like this, not even sure if a lot of people are like this. How do we draw in a sociologist who's already kind of digging what Fergie is doing -- or if not, he/she doesn't necessarily preclude Fergie from being "the sort of artist" capable of doing something worth digging (and that exploring this, he/she might be doing some interesting and valuable sociology)? My new roommate (sociology grad student) happens to find this stuff pretty interesting (and tends to love the kind of pop I love) but probably wouldn't dream of participating in an online conversation like this. Or maybe you have to drag people into conversations even when they wouldn't otherwise do it.
Anyway. Just ramblin'. The new rockcritics.com is shaping up to be pretty awesome!
Well, not all of it. Some interesting contradictions in there, and I was very forceful with my commenting response, but in the deep dark recesses of my soul, I too fear troll invasions. My point, though, and the reason I'm so insistent, is that not everyone is a troll (even when they seem trolly), and (for now) I've realized that most trolls are disarmed when you overpower them with three thousand words or so. Not sure what the exact count is (let's say five consecutive comments at 500 words apiece -- that's 2500, close enough!).
When the trolls are overpowering the main content, there's a problem bigger than just trollage happening. (Says the optimist.) If every post were my Aly and AJ GOD & CONSPIRACY THEORY post (google it), I might have to change my position a bit, but damn, I wish every post got several comments a month for two years! Even from trolls. (And the time factor is major here -- it's not like all the A&A fans -- many of whom are quite perceptive and even right in some ways, for the record -- posted all at once.)
My other point, though, is that not everyone is INSANE and accordingly they don't have enough words lying around. But I don't think about those people, because enough people are insane (committed) and kind of bonkers (open to new ideas and unconventional approaches to etc. etc.) to have a really awesome conversation.
(Aside: Unlike Simon, I don't want to see any "blog battles/clashes," only "blogspats," which suggests the potential for compromise and understanding -- or at the very least a cool-down and then let's grab an ice cream bar and forget about it for a few weeks -- instead of a definitive struggle and suggestion of possible "victory." A crucial distinction. Sometimes when you have a blogspat, you act kind of like a jerk (even though you were right), and sometimes issues are irreconcilable. People break up and change and get back together, but more often they change and stay split anyway. This is part of life. But you can still talk to them on the weekends sometimes.)
Anyway, I think that's where interdisciplinary tactics come in -- finding a subject matter everyone is interested in and cramming them together in a very small space, even if they're not that inclined to do so (just reasonably inclined). And then doing it again, preferably in a different space (with different interested parties). Frank Kogan's term "interplanetary" nicely rockets us outta academia baggage, but I think the principle is nearly the same.
Top o' the head thought: Is there something about edging out of a comfort zone (listening to a new kind of music; thinking seriously about the "legitimacy" of a new kind of thinker -- say, teenyboppers of the US of A and Canada) that is commonly perceived as perversely enjoyable (leading to "guilty pleasure")? And does this "perverse" enjoyment need to be somehow transformed into enjoyment-enjoyment? This sort of describes my process into figuring out what this blog was about, to the extent that we can say it's "about" something -- a kind of titillation (y'know, tee hee) followed by more reasonable reflection that pretty much forever undid that sense of (perverse) giddiness (not that I wouldn't describe plenty of my posts as "giddy"). There was...
[pauses to capture the mouse that ATE MY SUNFLOWER SEEDS from my backpack yesterday.....WITH MY BARE HANDS (and half a cardboard box)!!!!!!!! See what we're capable of in our best moments, especially if the smaller, faster creatures are in their worst moments? The mouse seemed to be stunned or dying.]
...uh, there was a pretty clear separation point, even if it wasn't a literal "point." When skepticism transformed into acceptance and (I think) the conversation actually began. (It helped that a few people started talking to me. Sometimes I need a slap in the face and a glass of water.)
I don't think everyone is like this, not even sure if a lot of people are like this. How do we draw in a sociologist who's already kind of digging what Fergie is doing -- or if not, he/she doesn't necessarily preclude Fergie from being "the sort of artist" capable of doing something worth digging (and that exploring this, he/she might be doing some interesting and valuable sociology)? My new roommate (sociology grad student) happens to find this stuff pretty interesting (and tends to love the kind of pop I love) but probably wouldn't dream of participating in an online conversation like this. Or maybe you have to drag people into conversations even when they wouldn't otherwise do it.
Anyway. Just ramblin'. The new rockcritics.com is shaping up to be pretty awesome!
Monday, October 01, 2007
THE FIRST RULE OF POP IS...
...YOU MUST TALK ABOUT POP.
THE SECOND RULE: SEE RULE ONE, ADD. PERIODS. AFTER. EACH. WORD.
Don't call it a kick-start, I'm not even sure if I ever started. I'm just warming up, apparently, because NO ONE READS MY BLOG AGAIN. It sucks. I suppose I should post here more.
Here's something I just thought up offa the top of my head the other day, not sure if it stands.
PREEMPTIVE NOTE: I just thought this up offa the top of my head the other day, not sure if it stands. I'm not trying to outline a "project"/spin myself into an "ideological stance." I'm just talking about terms that need to be met in order for a conversation to happen. The rest are conventions.
[EDIT: Should actually link to partial inspiration here, the ol' Geezaesthetics Manifesto over at FreakyTrigger. A very funny piece that mostly settles for what Tom calls "aphorisms," which I could talk about more but will leave at that for now.]
There has been one interesting contention to Rule #2 so far: namely, pop music must be made with an audience in mind. The goal must be for people to listen to it. But I dunno -- without wanting to get into tricky territory as to what constitutes "wanting people to listen," let's say, for the sake of argument, that I've re-recorded "Like a Virgin" in GarageBand. (No, let's.) The second someone takes it from my hard drive in an act of THIEVERY, and gets it out into the world, much to my embarrassment and fleeting internet notoriety, it is still presumably pop music, even though it was made only for myself and not intended for others.
A few further points:
"Rules" need to be agreed-upon but aren't set in stone (cf. Wittgenstein-by-way-of-Frank-Kogan). If you can't agree on the rules of baseball, you can't very well play baseball (maybe you can play it, but you can't play it very well).
So here's something that happens occasionally: Pop music can be made by [that one girl from The Hills] because [she felt like it and had the means, pretty much 'cuz she was born RICH and a HUGE BRAT or so I've heard].
Getting into those tricky territories (amazing how many of 'em are) because the common argument from ewwww isn't that she can't, but that she shouldn't. I mean, of course she can. She did! But she shouldn't. But the more general point is that so long as a dismissal is fundamentally (proudly!) based on ignorance (I refuse to listen to this because ____), no conversation about the music can happen. Same holds for emo or indie rock or Nickelback or dance music or or or...
Difference between a rule and a convention: if you break the rule, the game either ends or transforms into a new game. If we decide that our music does not speak to their music, and our music is pop, then their music cannot be pop. BUT! If their music is pop (because someone else called it that), then our music has also ceased to be pop to the extent that we talk about it as such, not that it's actually ceased to be pop (we've ceased to discuss it as pop; now it's some shitty subgenre). BECAUSE ALL POP SPEAKS TO ALL OTHER POP.
Now, these people say their music (contemporary classical) is not pop music, and all listeners of pop music have come to a consensus that this music is, in fact, not pop music. NOW WE HAVE A RIFT. Two separate games that never come in contact with each other. Perhaps they've sprung from the same proto-sport (the one where you throw a rock at someone's head and steal their dinosaur or whatever) but at this point they are TWO ENTIRELY DIFFERENT SPORTS. Even though we can categorize them both as sports.
Example:
"I'd like to steal second base and then make a basket."
DOES NOT COMPUTE!
"I'd like to write a simple, repetitive riff that makes people think about THE VERY NATURE OF ART."
BUT WAIT! TRICK ANALOGY! Did I just (accidentally) describe a minimalist composer or the Stooges??
So really, these rules are in flux. Or perhaps the games are similar, and depending on where we freeze-frame them, sometimes indistinguishable. (A woman running on a field! QUICK NAME THE SPORT!)
At this point it should be clear that I'm not totally serious. I'm just VERY serious.
Here's a convention: The pop lifestyle is exotic but the feelings expressed in the songs have to be resonant (suggested by Lex).
We can find lots and lots of examples of this, more than we can find counter-examples, even (Michelle Branch springs to mind as a potential counter-example -- n.b., she usually sucks). But this (perhaps) is more akin to saying, "If no one's on base yet, you do not bunt."
Well, you could, but its usefulness would be questionable and people would probably laugh at you from all sides except for a few contrarians who'd probably think it was brilliant. (That is, to the best of my very limited understanding of sports. I only mean to say that it would not undermine the fact that you are still playing lacrosse.) [EDIT: Bunting for a base hit: counter-example to the convention.]
Wait. Here's a RULE: All pop exists in time, but not THAT much time already.
Derivatives: Don't bore us, get to the chorus. About a minute too long. IF THIS SONG DOESN'T END IN THE NEXT THREE SECONDS.
That is to say, pop has a beginning and an end. A duration. That finishes. A piece o' pop must be closed, even if the pop is open (and what will Britney do next, now that her "official" fuck-you song is much much worse than her unofficial-but-official and actually quite pretty semi-fuck-you song?). Especially during the Pop Open, which will be around as long as its members are contributing and someone feels like orgafunning the thing.
Not all music needs to be closed. My refrigerator, for instance, until one of us dies or moves. Or John Cage's special organ. Or that song I've had stuck in my head forever (Chopin: pop or not pop?). If we were to take Chopin and STOP BORING US AND GET TO THE CHORUS, we would have Nadiya. BUT! Chopin was also pop, because he was in conversation with other pop (e.g., Nadiya), made it for whatever reason he felt, etc. I made him pop and so did Nadiya. Sucked him right up. SO WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT? And what pop results?
----
AUTHENTIC AUTHENTICITY CLAIMS!
My claim to Chopin authenticity: I have performed several Chopin pieces. I have made pop music out of Beethoven, but not Chopin (I thought it would be "inappropriate"; this is because I was not yet pop. Actually, I just never really thought of it, so maybe I was. Alone at the piano, I can be quite shameless. My own private will.i.am. I make shameless pop by myself and for myself, because I feel like it).
Nadiya's claim to pop authenticity: "Is it right or wrong? Chopin play the song. There is no one to blame. So we can play the game."
NOTE: She never answered the question of whether it was right or wrong (which doesn't mean there isn't an answer), and I think sometimes there is someone to blame, but it's important to figure out who and why. Usually there's never one person to blame, so I'm fairly suspicious when someone blames only one other someone.
-----------
CRISIS! WOOPS! EVERYTHING IS POP NOW! And to prove it beyond a doubt: using a random method of selection*, I will provide a series of words, which I will then fashion into a Pop Universe, a la Foucault's Popdulum. Hermeneutic? I barely even...ah, shit.
*methods cannot be divulged, since this might compromise their randomness.
1 - AUTOGRAPH; 2 - INTELLECTUELLE [pop is obv. multilingual]; 3 - MEMBER; 4 - AMIS; 5 - WARSAW; 6 - SCHUBERT; 7 - BARITONE; 8 - SAND; 9 - UNDERSTANDING; 10 - CASABLANCA.
As you can see, these games are as easy as they are fun, like many sports that look VERY EASY when I watch them on television, like lacrosse. So long as we follow the rules! Another example:
1 - FRIDAY; 2 - VOWING; 3 - DONKEY; 4 - SABBATH; 5 - DARFUR; 6 - FAMOUS; 7 - PIZZA; 8 - SLUT; 9 - CHILLED; 10 - LIKE
The best thing about POP: THE GAME is that anyone can play it. EVEN YOU! Choose one of the following (or, if you're a show-off, all of the following) pop-sets and PLAY POP. Or, the only pop that one can play without knowing how to play an instrument (which I do, I mentioned Chopin earlier y'know) or without having an instrument handy (which I do, but I don't feel like it! And that's a reason to make pop, too!).
SET ONE
CONCENTRATED, ANALYSIS, SOUL, SWIMWEAR, DRUG, NETHERLANDS, LILY ALLEN, GLAMOUROUS, EX-HUSBAND, IMPRINT
SET TWO
CUSTODY, PRADA, BOYFRIEND, FAN, CATEGORY, ITUNES, SUPPOSE, MONEY, MIGHT, JESUS
SET THREE
TV, ILLINOIS, DIFFERENT, EMBED, BORN, RIGHT, R&B, DEMAND, COLLEGE, BIRTHDAY
SET FOUR
FLAVOR, ARCHIVE, BASTARDS, SINGLE, DIDDY, SWEET, MICHELLE PFEIFFER, NOBODY, PRINCE, STILL
SET FIVE
RADIOS, CRITIQUE, POP, DAVID BOWIE, MATHEMATICS, DEBATE, SELF-PROCLAIMED, INFECTIOUS, NOSTALGIA, YES
Have at it! First place wins a prize (FOR REAL!).
THE SECOND RULE: SEE RULE ONE, ADD. PERIODS. AFTER. EACH. WORD.
Don't call it a kick-start, I'm not even sure if I ever started. I'm just warming up, apparently, because NO ONE READS MY BLOG AGAIN. It sucks. I suppose I should post here more.
Here's something I just thought up offa the top of my head the other day, not sure if it stands.
PREEMPTIVE NOTE: I just thought this up offa the top of my head the other day, not sure if it stands. I'm not trying to outline a "project"/spin myself into an "ideological stance." I'm just talking about terms that need to be met in order for a conversation to happen. The rest are conventions.
The Unchangeable Rules of Pop:
(1) Pop is music listened to by people, who then think various thoughts about the pop.
(2) Pop can be made by anyone for any reason (which doesn't necessarily make it any good at all).
(3) All pop speaks to all other pop.
(4) Pop is more than (just) a feeling.
(5) Pop is a social activity. My pop is not your pop, but Pop is my pop AND your pop, even if you're wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.
[EDIT: Should actually link to partial inspiration here, the ol' Geezaesthetics Manifesto over at FreakyTrigger. A very funny piece that mostly settles for what Tom calls "aphorisms," which I could talk about more but will leave at that for now.]
There has been one interesting contention to Rule #2 so far: namely, pop music must be made with an audience in mind. The goal must be for people to listen to it. But I dunno -- without wanting to get into tricky territory as to what constitutes "wanting people to listen," let's say, for the sake of argument, that I've re-recorded "Like a Virgin" in GarageBand. (No, let's.) The second someone takes it from my hard drive in an act of THIEVERY, and gets it out into the world, much to my embarrassment and fleeting internet notoriety, it is still presumably pop music, even though it was made only for myself and not intended for others.
A few further points:
"Rules" need to be agreed-upon but aren't set in stone (cf. Wittgenstein-by-way-of-Frank-Kogan). If you can't agree on the rules of baseball, you can't very well play baseball (maybe you can play it, but you can't play it very well).
So here's something that happens occasionally: Pop music can be made by [that one girl from The Hills] because [she felt like it and had the means, pretty much 'cuz she was born RICH and a HUGE BRAT or so I've heard].
Getting into those tricky territories (amazing how many of 'em are) because the common argument from ewwww isn't that she can't, but that she shouldn't. I mean, of course she can. She did! But she shouldn't. But the more general point is that so long as a dismissal is fundamentally (proudly!) based on ignorance (I refuse to listen to this because ____), no conversation about the music can happen. Same holds for emo or indie rock or Nickelback or dance music or or or...
Difference between a rule and a convention: if you break the rule, the game either ends or transforms into a new game. If we decide that our music does not speak to their music, and our music is pop, then their music cannot be pop. BUT! If their music is pop (because someone else called it that), then our music has also ceased to be pop to the extent that we talk about it as such, not that it's actually ceased to be pop (we've ceased to discuss it as pop; now it's some shitty subgenre). BECAUSE ALL POP SPEAKS TO ALL OTHER POP.
Now, these people say their music (contemporary classical) is not pop music, and all listeners of pop music have come to a consensus that this music is, in fact, not pop music. NOW WE HAVE A RIFT. Two separate games that never come in contact with each other. Perhaps they've sprung from the same proto-sport (the one where you throw a rock at someone's head and steal their dinosaur or whatever) but at this point they are TWO ENTIRELY DIFFERENT SPORTS. Even though we can categorize them both as sports.
Example:
"I'd like to steal second base and then make a basket."
DOES NOT COMPUTE!
"I'd like to write a simple, repetitive riff that makes people think about THE VERY NATURE OF ART."
BUT WAIT! TRICK ANALOGY! Did I just (accidentally) describe a minimalist composer or the Stooges??
So really, these rules are in flux. Or perhaps the games are similar, and depending on where we freeze-frame them, sometimes indistinguishable. (A woman running on a field! QUICK NAME THE SPORT!)
At this point it should be clear that I'm not totally serious. I'm just VERY serious.
Here's a convention: The pop lifestyle is exotic but the feelings expressed in the songs have to be resonant (suggested by Lex).
We can find lots and lots of examples of this, more than we can find counter-examples, even (Michelle Branch springs to mind as a potential counter-example -- n.b., she usually sucks). But this (perhaps) is more akin to saying, "If no one's on base yet, you do not bunt."
Well, you could, but its usefulness would be questionable and people would probably laugh at you from all sides except for a few contrarians who'd probably think it was brilliant. (That is, to the best of my very limited understanding of sports. I only mean to say that it would not undermine the fact that you are still playing lacrosse.) [EDIT: Bunting for a base hit: counter-example to the convention.]
Wait. Here's a RULE: All pop exists in time, but not THAT much time already.
Derivatives: Don't bore us, get to the chorus. About a minute too long. IF THIS SONG DOESN'T END IN THE NEXT THREE SECONDS.
That is to say, pop has a beginning and an end. A duration. That finishes. A piece o' pop must be closed, even if the pop is open (and what will Britney do next, now that her "official" fuck-you song is much much worse than her unofficial-but-official and actually quite pretty semi-fuck-you song?). Especially during the Pop Open, which will be around as long as its members are contributing and someone feels like orgafunning the thing.
Not all music needs to be closed. My refrigerator, for instance, until one of us dies or moves. Or John Cage's special organ. Or that song I've had stuck in my head forever (Chopin: pop or not pop?). If we were to take Chopin and STOP BORING US AND GET TO THE CHORUS, we would have Nadiya. BUT! Chopin was also pop, because he was in conversation with other pop (e.g., Nadiya), made it for whatever reason he felt, etc. I made him pop and so did Nadiya. Sucked him right up. SO WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT? And what pop results?
----
AUTHENTIC AUTHENTICITY CLAIMS!
My claim to Chopin authenticity: I have performed several Chopin pieces. I have made pop music out of Beethoven, but not Chopin (I thought it would be "inappropriate"; this is because I was not yet pop. Actually, I just never really thought of it, so maybe I was. Alone at the piano, I can be quite shameless. My own private will.i.am. I make shameless pop by myself and for myself, because I feel like it).
Nadiya's claim to pop authenticity: "Is it right or wrong? Chopin play the song. There is no one to blame. So we can play the game."
NOTE: She never answered the question of whether it was right or wrong (which doesn't mean there isn't an answer), and I think sometimes there is someone to blame, but it's important to figure out who and why. Usually there's never one person to blame, so I'm fairly suspicious when someone blames only one other someone.
-----------
CRISIS! WOOPS! EVERYTHING IS POP NOW! And to prove it beyond a doubt: using a random method of selection*, I will provide a series of words, which I will then fashion into a Pop Universe, a la Foucault's Popdulum. Hermeneutic? I barely even...ah, shit.
*methods cannot be divulged, since this might compromise their randomness.
1 - AUTOGRAPH; 2 - INTELLECTUELLE [pop is obv. multilingual]; 3 - MEMBER; 4 - AMIS; 5 - WARSAW; 6 - SCHUBERT; 7 - BARITONE; 8 - SAND; 9 - UNDERSTANDING; 10 - CASABLANCA.
She wasn't going to do another goddamned autograph. She was above it now, she was smarter than all of them now. Très intellectuelle, said the iconoclast. She was a member of a higher class -- well, she had long been a member of a higher class, but now her BRAIN was in a higher class, too; "she has the wit, boldness, tragic dimension, and open proclivity toward masturbatory indulgence of an Amis heroine," said the other iconoclast. She didn't speak French, but it all sounded OK to her. (I came in from the rain and my shoes warsawggy. Now all I can think about is orange schubert.) HA! Her new single on the radio, that wild, computer-facilitated baritone! ROWR. A little peace love andundersandunderstanding, all she ever wanted. Just like heaven -- Casablanca, or so she'd come to undersand (I should rent it some time).
As you can see, these games are as easy as they are fun, like many sports that look VERY EASY when I watch them on television, like lacrosse. So long as we follow the rules! Another example:
1 - FRIDAY; 2 - VOWING; 3 - DONKEY; 4 - SABBATH; 5 - DARFUR; 6 - FAMOUS; 7 - PIZZA; 8 - SLUT; 9 - CHILLED; 10 - LIKE
Is it Friday again already? Nothing to do. Listening to myself again. (Vowing revenge versus vowing chastity: change the string arrangement. There must be a joke in there somewhere.) What was that idiot's name? Donkey? Hanky? Flopsy? What's tomorrow again? ...Saturday? Day of the...wait, I forget what day it is. (This reminds me that I have never actually listened to a Black Sabbath record. Where should I start? --ed.) Can I locate Darfur on a map? Can I locate Darfur on a map? Can I locate Darfur on a map? Why does everyone keep asking me that? Is it because I'm famous? Sometimes you just wanna get a zit without getting called PIZZA. FACED. SLUT. Or be a slut, without being called SLUT. FACED. SLUT. Drives a girl to drink. Drives a boy to drink, too. Boy drives, girl drinks (boy drank, too), girl drives (boy...too drunk!)...that was unpleasant. Dank. I had a nice stiff drink as soon as I was driven home. Something simple. They made me a pomegranate daiquiri, real chilled-like.
The best thing about POP: THE GAME is that anyone can play it. EVEN YOU! Choose one of the following (or, if you're a show-off, all of the following) pop-sets and PLAY POP. Or, the only pop that one can play without knowing how to play an instrument (which I do, I mentioned Chopin earlier y'know) or without having an instrument handy (which I do, but I don't feel like it! And that's a reason to make pop, too!).
SET ONE
CONCENTRATED, ANALYSIS, SOUL, SWIMWEAR, DRUG, NETHERLANDS, LILY ALLEN, GLAMOUROUS, EX-HUSBAND, IMPRINT
SET TWO
CUSTODY, PRADA, BOYFRIEND, FAN, CATEGORY, ITUNES, SUPPOSE, MONEY, MIGHT, JESUS
SET THREE
TV, ILLINOIS, DIFFERENT, EMBED, BORN, RIGHT, R&B, DEMAND, COLLEGE, BIRTHDAY
SET FOUR
FLAVOR, ARCHIVE, BASTARDS, SINGLE, DIDDY, SWEET, MICHELLE PFEIFFER, NOBODY, PRINCE, STILL
SET FIVE
RADIOS, CRITIQUE, POP, DAVID BOWIE, MATHEMATICS, DEBATE, SELF-PROCLAIMED, INFECTIOUS, NOSTALGIA, YES
Have at it! First place wins a prize (FOR REAL!).
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