random thoughts

I bought three new releases in the past week. What does it say about me that two of them, the Living Sisters' Love to Live and Sharon Jones's I Learned the Hard Way are unabashedly retro. I have a blog entry coming about how interesting it is the very traditional songs have very modern sentiments. That is, if I wrote blog entries...

I've been wracking my brain trying to think of a good historical analog for the million of crappy glo-fi bands. The best I've come up with is the crappy Look-out! pop-punk bands from the early to mid-90's. The Look-out! bands would be those like Screeching Weasel and the Queers who sounded just like the Ramones and wrote songs about growing up in suburbia. Heck, I kind of liked these bands, but I was still in high school and should have known better even then. Repetitive, snide, somewhat clever. Some songwriting talent there (especially in Screeching Weasel, their song "Leather Jacket" is a pretty good kiss-off song) but forced through a very narrow channel. Maybe it helped me get through high school. Still, I can't imagine anyone not already initiated wanting to listen to this. And anyone already initiated should have been buying records by the Buzzcocks, the Clash, Ramones, X, Television, Blondie, or even records not obviously "punk." Nevermind what the indie kids would have been listening to at the time like Pavement or Fugazi or Guided by Voices. Hell, you got to a record store that carries, say, Screeching Weasel, it carries music by lots of other bands. But maybe that music says nothing to them about their lives... So I guess as fun as it is to say, "Damn kids with their Neon Indians and their Ducktails and their the Memory Tapes," I have as dark a secret in my past. And I'm not even bringing up the third wave ska.

So perhaps I'm bugged by the glo-fi blip not because I'm old and don't get it, but because I'm old and I do get it. In the 15 years since my pop-punk days, I've developed a somewhat wider perspective and my instincts are to be bored with the music and try find a historical analog and try to understand why I don't like it... This doesn't even touch on the difference in attitudes. Blissed-out, gauzy glo-fi is worlds away from dumb angry punk (cue Michael Azerad). Which is just reminds me that the kids have it different these days.

By the way, the 2000's pop-punk band Exploding Hearts were transcendent. Possibly better than the Buzzcocks.

cycling through sxsw

I just got back from cycling through a bunch of SXSW day events. Down Sixth street to the east side and back. Saw the IFC studio or whatever it is where Neon Indian was supposed to be playing. I tried to distract the crowd with "Whoa! Is that Ryan Schreiber." I passed the Levi's Fader party and heard some tunes from (a check of the schedule reveals to be) Freelance Whales. I was not part of the crowd. I'm going to see some California hip-hop artists tonight and doing some day events tomorrow. Most of the bands I'm going to see, I've seen before.

There was a mixture of sx hipsters and St. Patty's Day celebrators. I smelled weed and saw lots of fixed gear bicycles with white-wall tires. I was wearing my Levi 507's bootcuts, white Sperry's, burgundy Gucci plastic-framed glasses, my Mae Shi t-shirt reading, "I'm Glad You're Alive" and riding a mid-80's entry-level Bianchi 10 speed, some combination of hipsterisms past and present.

People were wearing badges that had the names of the organizations that they were affiliated with. For a lot of participants, SXSW is as much about the experience of feeling like a taste-maker as it is about the music. I guess this appealed to me at one point. I was a college radio DJ. My airname has appeared in College Music Journal. But my own interests and priorities have changed. I'm trying to have an academic career and don't have the time to spare to get back on the air. I've been involved in a couple of radio station civil wars, and I don't much like how I've acted in them, so that's another reason why I'm not on the air. About four and a half years back (right before I was going to see the New Pornographers), my appendix burst, and my health has become a higher priority. While my eating and exercise habits had little to do with my burst appendix, being reminded that you are mortal changes things. So I'm not on the air and okay with not being a taste-maker. And it's just as well, it's a young person's game and if you stay in it too long, you become the creepy old guy standing alone.

So I'm also not too clued into what's going on. I don't trust too many of the music sites. And there are a lot of other traditions to explore rather than chasing down the latest hyped act who may or may not be a bunch of musical illiterates who have hit on something sublime.

I'll just say that any of you kids thinking about looking up Neon Indian on youtube, instead listen to some of the tracks by Elis Regina and Tom Jobim.

Now get off of my lawn!

The 5000th Best Band of All Time

The Long Ryders are quite possibly the 5000th best band of all time. They were active in the '80's as part of the Paisley Underground scene. This was a scene of bands that lovingly recreated '60's and '70's hard-rock and psychedelic music informed by punk rock. Well-written, well-performed, and energetic, these bands are mostly forgotten. The movement was a reaction to the primitivism of L.A. Hardcore. The best-known bands to come out of that scene were the Bangles and Mazzy Star (which was an offshoot of a side-project of members of the Dream Syndicate and the Rain Parade). Overall, the bands in that scene made some pretty good music, and if you're at a record store that has used vinyl, you really couldn't go wrong picking up something by the Dream Syndicate, the Rain Parade, the Three O'Clock, or the Long Ryders themselves. And if you're at a college radio station, go dig through the vinyl stacks, pull out those records, find the adoring reviews written by DJ's and check out the visible track burn on the platter.

The Long Ryders were led by country-rock devotee Sid Griffin. He was so heavily indebted to the Byrds, Buffalo Springfields, and the Flying Burrito Brothers that their first full-length Native Sons reproduces the cover of a Buffalo Springfield album. And what a fine album it was. "Ivory Tower" features Gene Clerk on vocals and would rank highly in the Byrds cannon if it had actually been written by them. "Run Dusty Run" is a driving number about betting on a horse race in order to have money to elope. "Never Got to Meet the Mom" is a cute song about trying to say that right thing to a liberal girl. In fact every song on the record is pretty good. Generally, it's fun and upbeat and the band members seem like good guys with good record collections.

I like this band, and I listed to their albums every couple of months. And while 5000th is awfully high on the list of all bands, if you haven't heard this band, it's not worth making a huge effort to hear them. A couple of their albums are very well-done but they are not some forgotten '80's masterpieces like Mary Margaret O'Hara's albums. The Long Ryders were not very sonically original. I'm not sure that their melding of country rock and punk is all that noteworthy given X's much less-contrived take on the same a couple years earlier. And there's little to tie them to their time as a historical piece. Even the take on a liberal girl's political checklist in "Never Got to Meet the Mom" ring false. If you're going to compare country-classicist singer-songwriters, the handful of really great songs that Ryan Adams has written wins against the Long Ryders. I guess the band has reunited and I'd see them if they were in town. But since the mid-80's, Sid Griffin has found his natural calling as a music historian.

I suppose this post makes it sound like I hate the band. But it's more my attempt to explain what a rock band is up against. If you're given the choice between hearing a Byrds album or a Long Ryders album (which you would have in a record store if there were any left), the choice is pretty straightforward. Maybe if you like seeing live music, they would have been a fun night out with friends twenty-five years ago. And it is perhaps even worse now that you can call up entire back-catalogs from iTunes or sample old videos on youtube. And unfortunately, the solution a lot of bands try to the problem or originally is quirk. As in some odd production tricks or arrangements. Like double-tracked falsettos, or cracked notes, irritating grooves, or an almost unnerving over-reliance on space and emptiness (apologies to fans of Bon Iver, Bonnie Prince Billy, Bon Animal Collective, and Bonny Grizzly Bear). Embracing your lack of originality (see garage-band revival of 2002) is not a better solution.

The Iron Law of Gaga

Sometime last summer, my friend Matt or I formulated the Iron Law of Lady Gaga. It was "either you know who Lady Gaga is or you have retirement savings but not both." This was inspired by Matt's observation, after too many nights spent at some of Austin's douchier establishments, that there was a certain side of pop culture that virtually everyone in a particular subculture is familiar with. There are quite literally ten to twenty songs that are on repeat on your local autotune-FM station. At this particularly moment, some of them are by Lady Gaga, the Black Eyed Peas, Ke$ha, Jay Shawn, etc. You can literally familiarize yourself with all of them in under two hours. Anyways, this was before all of the articles intellectualizing Lady Gaga.

After formulating the Law of Gaga, we tried it out on groups of older people and it seemed to hold. I shared it with my parents. Within a week, they had each called me to tell that they had either gotten into a discussion about Gaga or seen her on TV. Isn't she outrageous. Since I will not be able to support my parents in their retirement, I am forced to declare the Iron Law of Lady Gaga does not hold. Less frivolously, as The Last Psychiatrist
would say, "if you're listening to it, it's meant for you." So Gaga the phenomenon after Summer 2009 is a different beast than Gaga the musician as of Summer 2009.

How to correct the Iron Law of Gaga? There's delving into the Gaga phenomenon which I'd rather not do at length. (My take: She writes pretty good songs. Someone was bound to hybridize Daft Punky dance-lite with R&B, and she does it well. The attitude expressed in her songs towards nightlife, dating, men, women and the way that it seems to resonate is kind of interesting. The things she says about her songs are not.) You could revise it to "Either you know the ten to twenty songs currently on repeat on your Top X radio station or you have retirement savings, but not both." This does not have the same resonance as the original formulation.

theme set

The Homesick Blues and the Radical Views, or How I Lost My Indie-Rock Credibility

I know that Rod Stewart has been a punch-line for over 30 years, but that doesn't keep his first four records (and the stuff with the Faces) from being really terrific. He is a punch-line because his early stuff was so great. Lester Bangs mentions hanging out with him and the Faces, and he even wrote a short story about Maggie May." Hell, Rod probably deserves rock and roll heaven for penning, "I could steal my daddy's cue and make a living out of playing pool."

But here we give a listen to "You Wear it Well" fron Never a Dull Moment.


In these facebook days, the situation is now more familiar than when the song was written. The narrator is writing to get back in touch with an old girlfriend. He tries, to be nonchalant, "I have nothing to do this hot afternoon but to settle down and write you a line." He blames himself for the break-up, and imagines her thinking that "he must be sinking or else he wouldn't try to get in touch with [her]."

He reminiscences about days spent more freely:

Remember them basement parties, your brother's karate
the all day rock and roll shows
Them homesick blues and radical views
haven't left a mark on you, you wear it well
A little out of time but I don't mind

He is stumbling over things to write about and reminding himself to "write about the birthday gown I bought in town" that she wore with a grace defying the times. And then his current situation comes into view belying his initial coolness. He's on a coffee break and trying to put a letter together before has to get back to work. And he's not just missing this girl but his youth and days he could spend at parties and rock and roll shows. The song was written in 1972, well into the 60's hangover, so he's also remembering more radical times. And seeing their cost. And yes, "The homesick blues and radical views haven't left a mark on you" is just brilliant. He seems to have survived even if he's laboring at some stupid job. But he's also a little pathetic: "I don't object if you call collect." And then he sends off the letter not even sure if it'll reach her: "After all these years, I hope it's the same address."

Of course, I focus on the lyrics but the music is great. A hard-driving folky stomp with violin and swelling organ. Some touches of blue-eyed soul but without any Joe Cocker ministrelsy.

One of my favorite songs. My radio show was even briefly renamed, "The All Day Rock and Roll Show." But mostly so I could start mic breaks with, "You're listening to the All Day Rock and Roll Show. We'll be here for another hour."

I learned about this song through the boozily affectionate Mekons cover. I was surprised that it was a Rod song, and bought Never a Dull Moment at Vinyl Solution for a buck.

A Listener's Manifesto

Okay, a theoretical post today.

Accepting the differences between the conventions of literary and music criticism, B.R. Myers's A Reader's Manifesto - obnoxious as it is - says some valuable things about music. I haven't read Myers's book, only the Atlantic article and that was when it came out back in 2002.

Myers essentially has two theses which don't have too much to do with each other. The first thesis is that the prose of many "literary" writers isn't all that good. He does some close-reading of Proulx, DeLillo, McCarthy, Auster, and Guterson and concludes that they are imprecise, wordy, and often nonsensical. The second thesis is that the popularity of such authors is mystifying, and a lot of people reading them would be better off reading Louis L'amour. I can't really judge the first argument only being familiar with DeLillo and McCarthy (and thinking Blood Meridian is really terrific and being unable to finish anything else by those two authors). That said, the second argument is an interesting one, even if it is even more subjective than the first and it weakens Myers's overall argument.

Here are some thoughts on Myers's essay and how it might relate to music:

1. As in music, there are certain tricks that almost guarantee success for writers. One kind of popularity-bait in fiction is jewporn, books about Jews that appeal to a certain sensibility. Its main exponent is Jonathan Safran Foer who Myers attacks in a much better Atlantic article. To their credit, the New York Times usually sees through some tactics. Wish I could say the same about pitchfork.

2. The antecedents of the named authors are not all that popular among readers. Who reads Conrad or Woolf for fun nowadays? In fact, the established writers who are popular with readers come from a different tradition. Examples based on perusing facebook and my bookshelf are Nabokov, Bulgakov, Tolstoy, Kafka, Borges, and Fitzgerald.

3. There is a tradition of story-telling classicism in post-war English prose. I'm thinking of Burgess, Kingsley Amis, and Graham Greene. They were part of a rebellion against modernism and heavily influenced by, I dunno, Kipling, Maugham, and Orwell. I don't know if anyone has to read Louis L'amour since there is genrish fiction that works on a literary level. Examples in sci-fi are Ray Bradbury and J.G. Ballard. So Myers embrace of genre fiction is somehow analogous to the recent celebration of, say, the Black Eyed Peas in recent best of lists. There is, of course, an analogous tradition of pop classicism. Why this kind of classicism is not embraced by the public may be a topic for a future post.

I'm struck by a similar phenomenon when I was interested in jazz and found that a lot of jazz newbies were into Coltrane and Miles Davis's modal stuff (which is great but not always fun to listen to) while my friends who knew everything about jazz were either into hard-bop and soul-jazz(Cliff Brown, Horace Silver, Jimmy Smith, etc.) (which is lots of fun) or downtown avant-garde (which is either fun or impossible to listen to depending on audience). Whatever is going on in pop music is a lot more complicated (most of the jazz newbies I knew were simply excited to be in New Orleans and decided that they ought to like jazz).