Recent USE VALUE garnered from EXCHANGE VALUE

I have increased my social, aesthetic, and otherwise brain/tummy VALUE from the following commodities:

1. (Commodity - Functional:)
One (1) extra litter pan for increasing CAT POOP.
One (1) extra trash can for increasing CAT POOP.
One (1) postage meter for measuring cat weight. CAT POOP quantity has increased exponentially in the past two weeks; use value remains marginal.

(Use Value:)
KITTENS ARE KUTE. We think mom (Madge -- THE MADONNA, natch) might be sick :(.

^Yes, you were wondering why I haven't been posting more. I'd say it's the cats. But in fact it's because I'm busy.

2. (Commodity - Non-Functional:)
One (1) ticket, No Country for Old Men.
One (1) compact disc, The Dutchess. Artist: Ferguson, Stacy. (Heeeeey, Stacy.)
One (1) compact disc, Pure BS. Artist: Shelton, Blake.
One (1) compact disc, Clockwork Orange, Complete Original Score. Artist: Carlos, Wendy.
One (1) compact disc, In Colour. Artist: Concretes, The.
One (1) compact disc, M!ssundaztood. Artist: Moore, Alecia "P!nk."
One (1) compact disc, Boston. Artist: Boston.
One (1) compact disc, Tellem.com. Artist: Boy, Soulja.
One (1) compact disc, Dusk. Artist: The, The.

(Use Value:)
AWESOME ALL AROUND. I think. I haven't listened to half of these and I'm conflicted about the new Coen Bros. movie. Hm. Javier Bardem is scary as hell, tho.

Really liking the Blake Shelton alb, actually -- might give me an excuse to stick s'more country (male) on my year-end 20. Won't make 10, tho. "The More I Drink" = great. Only listened to it once.

3. Note to self: stop trying to enjoy films that end in the letters QATSI. No! It's important! Philip Glass!!!!!! DOODLYDOODLOO DOODLYDOODLOO DOODLYDOODLOO etc.

4. Albums that I may or may not write about this year since they do not pertain to top twenty lists as of now:

Veronicas - Hook Me Up
Girls Aloud - Tangled Up
Skye Sweetnam - Sound Soldier'd Up
Sugababes - Can't Spell Supababes without UP
Roisin Murphy (nee Rose Falcon) - Up Up Up
will.i.am - s'up
Cobra Starship - EMO SupERSTARS (not bad!)
Katy Rose (a.k.a. "the Falcon") - FALCONSTORM (I already wrote about it)

5. Thoughts on GLOBAL PROTEST. (Or, "Why M.I.A.'s Kala is my #1 album of the year!"):

FIGHT THE POWER.
FIGHT THE POWER.
FIGHT THE POWER.
FIGHT THE POWER.
I SPEND ABOUT $20 A WEEK ON COFFEE. THAT MAY NOT MEAN SHIT TO YOU BUT THAT'S HOW MUCH IT IS.

6. Thoughts on Radio Disney.

(6a) Taylor Swift is getting some airplay.
(6b) There are not, like, 10 Taylor Swift songs in the Top 30
(6c) Taylor Swift is not getting enough airplay.
(6d) Moot points all around because I still can't listen to it.
(6e) Lobby to end Emily Osment's music career, thereby making room for one (1) Taylor Swift song.
(6f, also 7a) Whatever.

8. When mom-cat (MADGE) licks kittenbutt (not KittenBOT) while nursing, my roommate says: T&A!

9. PhillyCatShare didn't give me ringworm. That may not mean shit to you, but I'm pretty happy about it.

10. FREE CATS. FREE MUSIC. <--political position

11. Analysis of point 10: what's really powerful about this slogan is its several possibilities for meaning. "Free" could be an adjective or a verb, making the following possible permutations:

(11a) Free (v.) cats, free (adj.) music. Empower cats (by freeing them) while enjoying music that was not a commodity cuz you didn't purchase it.

(11b) Free (adj.) cats, free (adj.) music. PhillyCatShare offers free cats, just as the internet offers free music.

(11c) Etc. x1

(11d) Etc. x2

12. Final point. Look. I'm really tired. I'm not putting my ALL into blogging. I'm only putting my AL into it. So if you aren't reading at this point, it's OK. I understand. This is why I want you (the person still reading) to talk about something else in the comment box. Anything else. You could talk about Blake Shelton, for instance. Or you could talk about USE VALUE. Or you could talk about CAT POOP. These are three options. Here's a fourth: Robert Flaherty.

13. Final point. Reading Meltzer's A Whore Just Like the Rest. Still digesting (not even halfway thru yet). You can start discussing it now if you like.

It's Dinner Music. Another Dumb Blonde?

Did a first listen on two late-year teenpop albums by post-teenpoppers, not to be confused with post-teenpop. Katy Rose is the inscrutable poetess behind the Run Lola Run-song-evoking "Watching the Rain" (which is a much better song, for the record) and excellent Avril-lite schlub-lilt ballad "Overdrive," also much better etc.

Her new album was released on CDBaby first as far as I can tell, and has now made its way to iTunes. Can't tell if there's a physical release anywhere. Katy's always been a touch dark (check out her fan board for some truly messed up Lord of the Flies meets Mean Girls action), and I'm really digging this album for its general batshitness. (Batshitty?) Still wading through her lyrics (nice Sylvia Plath dig in there somewheres, I think).

What's interesting about Katy is that her intonation is all Avril smugness, this sorta husky know-it-all voice from someone whose lyrics don't exactly suggest knowing it all, or even most of it. But she gets away with it. She goes the extra mile emo-poetry-wise and I actually laugh...with her! Because I can.

Album's all over the map, but a major improvement on her first one, I think, which was about 60% boring, 20% gold, 20% crap. This is about 80% weird, 10%...uh, silver, maybe, and 10% boring. Less boring = good!

Right now the one wrapping its way into my brain is "Sloth": she takes some kinda nasty prescription meds and it drives her intestines crazy. Makes her feel almost dirty (in the intestinal sense?) and so she loses...uh, something. Woozy loop with synth pizzicato strings and synths buzzing about when they feel like it. Nu-Xtina harmonies.

And for vintage Katy lyrical WTF, try "Pornography": "My wisdom teeth are coming in so I know what to do / I'll fall asleep to pornography but it's of me and you." Gets into a cacophonous little groove until these canned little power chords come in for the chorus. It's pretty great.

Plus one (1) ballad, not bad ("All Silver Rusts") and a flat-out ham-fisted Queen disco attempt to close the mother out. Ends up sounding kind of like Dahv (not a bad thing). I might stick this on my top ten list, actually. Because I can. (Woops I already did that.)

And then there's HOKU! Whose autograph, yes, yes, I did receive in the mail. Yes. Pictured above. ADDRESSED TO ME. "DAVID." THAT'S ME.

As for the music...uh, it's nice. S'fisticated even. Y'know, the kind of thing you might listen to at dinner with Hoku [EDIT: Or with Vanessa Hudgens, maybe, sounds like her stuff a bit, too]. I have nothing more to say about it. It's nice! Forgettable. I forgot it, anyway. But will probably listen to it again distractedly! More Tab? (<--do they still make this?)

Important TIE IT ALL TOGETHER revelation: every single name even remotely connected to teenpop this year went dance except Kelly Clarkson, who was promptly punished. (And the Jonas Brothers, who don't count anymore because Nick's voice changed.) (And Megan McCauley, maybe, but "Tap That" implicates her in this revelation as much as anyone else; in fact she was kind of at the HEAD OF THE CLASS until she disowned it and then sort of re-owned it a little.) (And Mandy Moore, who is clueless but put out a nice enough album and to be fair did cover Rihanna along with everyone else.)

Even the friggin' PIERCES are doing club ennui ("Boring"). So has teenpop become so marginalized/niche-ized that it just doesn't give a shit anymore (since none of it is seemingly selling as dance music, which isn't to say none of it is selling at all -- but all of the sellers are inside-Disney releases, so aesthetic impact is tricky; harder to tell these days what's a reflection of the audience and what's, um, being forced upon the audience because there is no alternative whatsoever to homeproduct trust me I checked; side note, Disney's been primarily dance from day one, only doing a foray into rock-rock from which they still haven't totally emerged even now [cf. Jonases who I guess can still count] around Hilary Duff mk. 1 -- but since she was their first and biggest success, the ball rolled as it rolled, and I imagine HSM and its alums have changed the game back to c. 2000 (more like c. 1990) sunshineteenybopper dance, which is as good a place as any to start my A*Teens blurb, I guess)?

So you can only find rock in country, you can only find jaded dance music in teenpop, the only place you can find Kylie is indie-swing, and the defining American pop sound in 2007 is what UK/Europe sounds like in every other year of the decade but 2007 (I still think Kate Nash is pretty good! [EDIT: And the Sugababes are doing a dance version of what the Veronicas did last year, which was a version of what Kelly C. did one to two years before!]), except the Americans have a much better star system. will.i.am is a bona fide star and the best Robyn can do is Britney back-up. Have you people learned nothing from Hollywood? We've seen this before: the star system eats itself but stays intact, no matter how ugly and insignificant and abused and etc. you try to make the stars. Britney could be a Xerox of a Xerox of her ass (and it is her ass, don't give me some bullshit about Robyn hopping up there while no one was looking) (and for the record I wouldn't say her new album is this at all, in fact I think she's deep deep into the grooves of it, the only thing missing from it is an up close/personal YAWN and/or SNEEZE and then, pause, "'scuse me" and back to the beat) and she'd still have more star power/presence than four Rachel Stevenses and a dozen Margaret Bergers and twenty Roisin Murphys and forty Sophie Ellis Bextors and...how many Sugababes can dance on the head of a pin? And just about every last one of 'em is better (give or take half...pleaetc.)! How fucked up is that??

Anti-Meme

(Nah, it's just a meme. I can't resist a bad pun.)

SEVERAL BEDBUG HAIKUS.

1. "The concept of musical fetishism cannot be psychologically derived. That 'values' are consumed and draw feelings to themselves, without their specific qualities being reached by the consciousness of the consumer, is a later expression of their commodity character. For all contemporary musical life is dominated by the commodity form: the last pre-capitalist residues have been eliminated. Music, with all the attributes of the ethereal and sublime which are generously accorded it, serves in America today as an advertisement for commodities which one must acquire in order to be able to hear music."

(Woops, that's a quote from Adorno left over on my clipboard. But I'll keep it!)

1-for-real. correct a statement
not paying attention no one
wants to be the one

2. such a thing 2 frank
kogan doesn't want to talk
he is no longer

3. i mistyped what
i tried to say i've never
seen more than we can

4. this point in her room
she's staring at these guys made
children's music

5. right up so i want
to talk he is of equal
importance avril

6. k shitty dare and
my insistence that the two
bonus tracks feels safe

7. also ask if this
is a theme relatively
common in teenpop

8. up apparently
because no conversation
about the singer

9. kevin federline
has a job so i want to
talk about more but

10. more young women in
hudgens' position than
cassie's but relate

11. except for a few
contrarians who'd probably
think it was kinda

12. writing spewing stuck
or stunk it stuck for a time
about as obtuse

13. so maybe i was
alone at the end of the
month in canada

OK that's enough for now. Create your own!

Skye Friday: Primal/Primate Dinner Scene Edition (The Quiet Wino)

1. WOW these videos are great. Won't review the album until I have a full working copy to listen to in headphones.

NANANANANA I GOT A BULLDOZER



Er, anyway.

2. I wanted to discuss further an interesting post over at Zoilus on all things dinner music. Or at least that's the part that I homed in on. Hopefully I won't start commentbombtrolling there all the time by keeping some of my thoughts HERE. (Eh, 50/50 shot.)

I wanted to flesh out the PRIMAL DINNER SCENE. There's a distinction, I think, between "dinner music" as we might use it for our personal meals (I'd say my favorite dinner albums are Kish Kash by Basement Jaxx and The Incredible Jazz Guitar by Wes Montgomery and the Getz/Gilberto collaboration [EDIT: Gah, I wrote this too fast -- my dad's rec is the Getz/Byrd Jazz Samba collaboration, but both work for dinner music]. Latter two are inherited from my dad. I might use the second two at a dinner party, too, but probably wouldn't use the first one, and wouldn't put it on a list of "dinner music" (not the same as my "My Dinner Music" iTunes playlist, which doesn't exist). My point is, when we use "dinner music," we're usually talking about other people's dinner music, the kind of music we imagine other people might listen to. So the next question I have is, who are these people listening to this dinner music?

One of my favorite Robert Xgau lines, from his Kid A review: "It's dinner music. More claret?"

As I said over at the comments section, interesting to note that this might work with a different type of wine, but it wouldn't work with, say, diet soda. ("More Fanta Fresca?" [dammit, Fresca is funnier, too]).

So there's RULE #1 of the PRIMAL DINNER SCENE: Red wine.

I suppose you could have white wine, too. But definitely wine. No beer, no hard alcohol, no mixed drinks. (Hm, "another mojito?" might work OK.)

RULE #2 of the PRIMAL DINNER SCENE: No one's allowed to shout. "D'ya want s'more wine" is unacceptable. A mild Thurston Howell accent preferable.

RULE #3 of the PRIMAL DINNER SCENE: Soft lighting. Maybe candles, or dimmed lights, or a lovely paper lantern. Mellow. No fluorescents.

So here's the scene, two to six people, drinking red wine, having casual conversation in a softly lit room, listening to _________.

Lends itself to what you might call "just-there" music -- Getz/Gilberto, say. But try a different setting.

Fifteen people at a large wooden picnic table, sun setting, everyone's eating popcorn chicken from a fried chicken place. Drinking diet soda. Listening to _______.

Or: Two people sitting on the rug distractedly watching a DVD compilation of Winsor McCay short animations with the sound off, drinking cheap beer and eating freezer-bagged edamame. Listening to _______.

Sure, there are clear musical cues in there (needs to be soft, not too obtrusive, etc.), but there are social ones, too. And I think if we figure out which ones fit "dinner music," we get a better idea of who it is we're avoiding when we use the phrase in its ambiguously pejorative sense. (I.e., "it's dinner music -- more claret?"; used in a positive review with dismissive connotations.)

We are avoiding WINE DRINKERS. We are avoiding QUIET TALKERS, or perhaps THURSTON HOWELLISH TALKERS. We're avoiding SOFT LIGHTING. Comfort, a sense of conventional refinement -- the "Finer Things Club" from last night's episode of "The Office." "Good Taste" from Frank's column last week. Whose good taste? Quiet winos!

So New College Rock is in a somewhat tricky place between College-type Boxed Wino and the Quiet Wino, the Good Taste Wino. Maybe the middle ground is the Starbucks Wino. Unfortunately this doesn't really follow in a clean syllogsim:

Quiet winos could play this during their dinner.
I do not wish to associate with the quiet winos.
Therefore, I should not associate with this music.

Well, for one thing, if indie's audience is predominantly middle class (still not sure about this, or at least not sure about where/how "middle class" fits into an audience equation) they're most likely to be quiet winos, right? I mean, I'm sort of one, except I drink diet soda. I enjoy quiet dinners, quiet dinner ambiance. Only difference is that I consider Basement Jaxx to be as conducive to quiet dinner ambiance as, uh, Kind of Blue. If the quiet winos are us then everything we listen to becomes dinner music. (And the question might not be, "what's wrong with dinner music," but "what's wrong with being a quiet wino"? Answers: because it's too fucking quiet, because I don't want to be associated with wine, I want to be associated with chocolate milk, because soft lights are irritating and besides these bulbs are like energy efficient even though they're really bright and kind of make my brain hurt, and they last like fifty years! Maybe "soft lighting" is on its way out of the rulebook.)

KMKMKM: 005

Pavement - Slanted and Enchanted



Hey, this is OK so far. Shuffles along, really groggy and gross, but it's not as, uh, lo-fi as I remember it being. Like, they're doing this shit on purpose. Which isn't annoying me as it once did (I've never been able to remember a single goddamn song from this album and since about six years ago I've probably listened to it about a dozen times, maybe) [EDIT: Eh, probably fewer].

The way Stephen Malkmus tosses out that laugh is pretty annoying. Hunh. Snutgh. Blurtgh. (Oh yeah, this song is called "Summer Babe." Because that is what they are saying now. Doesn't remind me much of summer babes at all.)

Do people really think that Stephen Malkmus is a good lyricist? (Oh yeah, this song is called "Trigger Cut." Because they just said that.)

Look, I'll level with you people here. This is not me. I do not relate to this music. I feel like a poseur when I listen to it, and I also feel like I wouldn't want to be whatever it is I have pretensions of being. I'm not sure what that is. A member of Pavement, perhaps. I still like "Cut Your Hair" OK.

I'll give it a shot, I guess. It's just, like, it makes me want to pretend I'm having a good time, while everyone knows that I'm not really having a great time. I don't even aspire to like it. I aspire to APPEAR to be liking it. It makes me wanna go hunh. Hunh-hunh. THAT IS NOT MANIACAL LAUGHTER. Or giggling. Or chuckling, even. I mean, gimme a laugh I can use. I can't laugh at these guys. I certainly can't laugh with 'em.

No, I'll give it till the end, I'm on like track 5. Still remember nothing about any of the songs, except that one is called "Summer Girls" (because they said that) and one is called "Trigger Cut" (ditto). I imagine guys puffing out their bottom lips and sucking their teeth. That sorta sneer. I imagine really awful haircuts. I imagine a guy getting really into it but not really keeping the beat (they can't either, maybe there's the connection)? Y'know, the guy that kind of lifts the back of his foot and drops it to the ground, the back-step, whenever he feels like it. And I imagine a girl next to him, she's going to the beat. Maybe she's enjoying herself. I mean some of these people have rhythm. I suspect that some of them are pretending NOT to have rhythm, but that's pure speculation.

OK, played with kittens through the "I'M TRYIN' I'M TRYIN'" song and gotta say that they growl better than he does. MRREAAAAAAAAWWRRRRRR, like when you just flip 'em upside down and start shaking. At least the crazy one does that (she's got a screw lose).

Hey, glockenspiel.

I'm not sure if this is a new song or not. Now I'm imagining people who wear fake mustaches "for fun," just like that, in quotation marks. Like it was kinda funny at first, but then they took it a little too seriously. And then they started playing video games with the mustaches on and there was just something kind of sad about it, y'know?

No more glockenspiel presumably = new song. Song 8. This one doesn't have the title in it, but it did sound like they were saying "mustache" at one point.

Briefly join a conversation over on the couch about how frequently cats barf up hairballs. Strong urge to turn off music in presence of company. ("I can see the fan"?)

OK this one I remember liking, Track 9. Slows down so you can't hear how bad the drummer is, at least not as, like, a statement. Not paying attention to the lyrics, but there's a nice melody. Restrained, kinda sweet.

OMG and now they're swinging a little! "Special" glam. I remember this one. Another one I imagine people shouting along to and making me uneasy for some reason. "Two States," that's right. That was good! And the next one's OK too, this sorta picks up at the end. I can't even begin to conceive of any time when this album could have ever been a big deal.

VERDICT: ...MIGHT SELL [BESIDES MAYBE I SHOULD BUY THE DELUXE VERSION TWO CDs WORTH OF THIS STUFF!]

Oh wait there are three more songs. OK, back to the kittens...after skipping 12. The last two are OK. Eh, whatever, some of it's alright I guess. <--wait, maybe this is why it was a big deal? Ends with a "special" waltz. Like the Shaggs, except Pavement didn't practice nearly as much.

NEXT UP: Whatever album is #7. My own laptop broke so I'll need to actually look through my CDs...A*Teens - The ABBA Generation. Whadda twofer.