Monday, July 28, 2003
I was record shopping the other day and had a thought. Not quite a full-on revelation or epiphany, more a refinement of a notion I've been a long time in hatching. I was thinking about CDs I've bought this year. Actually, this was sparked by a CD I had just purchased seconds before and was putting into my CD player, The Coral, s/t. Basically I was thinking about the CDs I'd bought recently that had become new favorites. And I aked myself, how many of these CDs have forced me to listen in a new way? Not necessarily even in a profoundly new way (like John Cage or something), just a different style or sound of any kind. I was thinking that much of what I've bought this year have been new CDs by artists I've liked for a while (or similar artists). To me, they amount to updates. Really only a few albums have been in any way different. Only a few have really made me spin them a few times before I "got" them and could enjoy them. Those are interesting records. I figure they make you grow. The Ted Leo CDs I've bought this year have been pretty different for me and took some concentrated listens to crack. (A friend of mine used to call this "getting my head around it.") Now I adore him. Yeah Yeah Yeahs and some of the sort of 80s retro bands like Interpol have also made me stretch a little, believe it or not, because they resurrect sounds I never listened to in the 80s (with a twist). Notwist and Lali Puna were a bit different for me--that German lap pop sound. The Morvern Callar soundtrack has some stuff from Can that's widening my range. Max Tundra also, somewhat, though I'm still not sure I care about its sound.
I don't want to guilt-trip myself about albums I enjoy with almost no effort, like Dean Wareham and Britta Phillip's album (though I still needed their web site's liner notes to crack that album open wide and enjoy it voraciously); but I do want to encourage myself to expand my listening.
Sunday, July 27, 2003
Woke up this morning with a trace of a memory: an old tv show called Mr. Merlin. It was on for one season in the early 80s, and as a kid I liked it. I just listened to the theme song online (the Internet is amazing for tv nostalgia), and I can't believe how bad it is. I also realized that Clark Brandon, the young star of the show, reminds me a lot (in looks) of the actor who plays Clark in Smallville, Tom Welling. I also realized I later saw Brandon in a softcore flick called My Tutor, which I stumbled on as a kid (when we first got cable--an educational time) and was very surprised by. Now when I look it up the most interesting thing I see about it is that Crispin Glover was in the film as well. Ha ha!
Thursday, July 17, 2003
"Everything depends on getting people to pay for recorded music that they now get for free."
A 7/7/03 New Yorker article explores the music biz and how it makes a pop star. It profiles a record man who discovered a French diva and is spearheading a multi-million dollar campaign to make her a star.
The sprawling piece covers many interesting things:
- Hit song "science"
- A promotional campaign like this is "basically a five-million-dollar bet"
- Irish singer Carly Hennessy had a 2.2-million campaign lavished on her but only sold 378 copies of her CD in the first 3 months! (2002 WSJ article)
- Discussion of the "money note," that theatrical pop ballad moment that gives you chills whether you want to have them or not (Whitney does it in "I Will Always Love You"; Celine Dion does it in that Titanic song; and Cherie can do it)
- Teen People(!) is cited as a major promotion outlet
- Adult Contemporary is radio's largest format
- Clear Channel C.E.O. Lowry Mays has been quoted: "We're not in the business of providing well-researched music. We're simply in the business of selling our customers products."
- By the late 80s, thanks to CDs, the industry's major profits were in catalogue.
- EMI paid Robbie Williams $80million to be a full partner in his earnings (no wonder there were all those strange articles thi syear about Robbie's attempts and failures to break Stateside)
The role of TV, esp. "reality" tv, arises a few times but isn't explored in depth. Clearly TV (even more than film?) has great power to turn people on to music (he notes that Sting's last album didn't take off until a song was featured in a car commercial--we love those cool car commercials, don't we?); and to artificially create pop stars. He doesn't use the word artificial, but he does say the viewer-voting (democratic process) isn't how stars are made. "In the record business, a few guys still determine the fare of many," he writes with a whiff of relief or joy. I want to call him an elitist for that, only I agree. Viewer-votes take all the mystery (that's left in our commercial world) out of the star-fan system. He does ask if, in the words of a "pop impresario Malcolm McLaren", this is a "karaoke world" of no new musical musical ideas, just new performers of old ideas. Interestingly, at the very end, he reports that we may be headed towards what's happening in Spain, "where seven of the spots on the Top Ten charts were recently occupied by reality-show contestants." Personally, I love having tv as another source of exposure for good music, esp. in soundtracks (and sparingly, in service of the story-mood, not in service of crass synergy); I'm not wild about Star Search-style stars. Anyway, the best thing he writes about those "few guys," the thing that makes me root for them as a class of people, is that he believes they'll always have a role as filters--sifting through the slush piles for the good stuff. (Note my intentional publishing parallel.) Much as I'd love to do it myself, I don't have time, and I don't want to waste it on junk. And I think I'd be romantically deluding myself if I believed the results would be a lot different if I were the one filtering.
He has a huge discussion of the financial history of the music biz up to the woes of the Internet/mp3 era & the huge decline in CD sales of the last 2 years. It puts Flom's effort to promote Cherie into a more understandable perspective: he's trying to find someone who can be a star, because a star is someone who will motivate people to buy (rather than download) the music, "because it's like a piece of the artist." One interesting opinion given (that of Island Def Jam's Lyor Cohen) is that CDs "kept the whole business on artificial life support," as people upgraded their old music collections to the new technology. Emphasis on commodity over content development. He says otherwise the industry would have died early in the 80s and had to radically change. Many comparisons to the movie biz--the movie biz has been more successful at creating global hits; DVD's have been more protected (for now) from ripping/stealing than CDs, which are completely vulnerable. Even so, the author writes, the MP3 format is here to stay, citing interviews with kids who've never bought CDs and taking up the specter of a "darknet"--an underground economy where not only music but movies, tv shows, software and games are traded (basically already here in outline with Morpheus and KaZaA). The writer points out that mp3s can even increase the boom in catalogue sales because you offer everything all at once--no limits on the size of a retail space anymore. He has a fascinating discussion on popular music being influenced by its format (sheet music, 78s, 33s, CDs) and how these factors have influenced taste for singles vs longer form works. (MP3s could revive the singles business--though Moby is quoted saying that'd be a shame because albums are more interesting.) Niche markets could be better served ("Latin music, jazz, world, and anything that sells five to ten thousand"). Apparently, some strange ideas are being kicked around to save the music industry (charging everyone with Internet access a few bucks a month; or setting up an ASCAP-like system of accounting and fees).
I was most struck by the section covering work in the studio. A songwriter sits on the side flipping through "The Book of Positive Quotations" looking for lyric ideas. Naively, I'd thought pop lyrics were usually cliche because the writers were bad. But here we see a professional pursuing cliches & platitudes because of genre expectations. Then a producer has a bit of a breakdown. Talking about the production on a 10-year old Annie Lennox song, he says, "Brilliant production. But now the kids don't want that sound anymore.... They want simple! Like it's made in a garage! So you do an expensive production like this one, made in a facility like this that costs many thousands of dollars a day, and then you end up grunging it up so that it sounds like it was made in a garage." But do they want garage-sound by way of chic studio? Is that a little deceptive? And I wonder how many professionals are lamenting the same kind of thing in fashion ("They want jeans that are new but look like they were run over by a truck?"). In this man's single soulful utterance, there's just a pileup of cultural contradictions.
Wednesday, July 16, 2003
Monday, July 14, 2003
On a family vacation last week, I was reminded of just how much fun the Saturday night radio show "Solid Gold Saturday Night" is. Dick Bartley is an American institution who has avoided the schmaltz of a Casey Kasem and managed to keep a good thing going for quite a while. Looking at his web site, I see he worked in Chicago in the late 70s. I have good memories of hearing this show on family trips at night, returning home (usually from my grandparents' homes). The music still sounds fresh--Bartley keeps the mix fun but unlike many oldies stations he freshens up the mix with old rock songs that you don't often hear. Well, at least he was last Saturday night. I have half a mind to stay home this Saturday and see what it sounds like. Of course, I won't be in a car, in the back seat at night, singing (and goofing) along with my brothers and sister in the back while the folks reminisce up front. But I'd love to master more of these songs, learn who's who and be able to name acts and titles next time we get together.
New Yorker 7/7/03, p76-7, review of Arthur Kempton's Boogaloo: The Quintessence of American Popular Music. Sounds like a very good book. And the 3/24/03 issue had a long article about Theodor Adorno's music writing. Nov. 25th, 2002 issue profiles Paul Simon, with intriguing glimpses of his songwriting methods. The writer hung out with him for a while, and his eye is very good--he captures the little moments that satisfy the curiosity of someone interested in the life of a famous songwriter.
Thursday, July 03, 2003
Saw the White Stripes last night at the Aragon. They were terrific. The opening band, Whirlwind Heat, was spirited, energetic, cool, but musically a little dull. The WS get critized for not having a bass, but WH (a 3-man band, with drums, bass, and synth/vocal) was the band that felt like it was missing something: melody. No lead guitar; vocals all amelodic screeching; synth programmed with Forbidden-Planet style sound effects (lots of knob-twisting and guitar-style jamming). All the elements were there for a great rock band but one. It made me think, you got this far, to open for the Stripes--why would you hobble yourselves like this? Anyway, otherwise great attitudes, they def. rocked.
Before each band we were treated to old cartoons--Bettie Boop as Poor Cinderella & Alice in Wonderland, Little Audrey (voiced by Mae Questel, voice of Olive Oyl--the best was the Lewis Carrollesque Seapreme Court which creepily features an "eel-ectric" chair!), and Fleischer stuff--very cool. But we got impatient after half an hour of waiting for the Stripes and people started booing & thundering with each new cartoon. Huge roar of welcome when they took the stage. Never been in the Aragon before--has the rep of swallowing small bands whole. Crowd was supposedly 4500, but it felt like there were more than that just stepping on my feet. Very cool space, must have been a glorious old ballroom in its prime.
White Stripes played generously (105 min?) from every album I'd heard by them (the newest material didn't dominate as it does on many bands' tours). I was distracted by the crowd/heat at first, but after a few songs when Meg left her drumset for the mic to do "In the Cold Cold Night" (my favorite on the new album), I suddenly was electrified and was into it from then on. (The crowd adored her! Jack, too, of course.) Towards the end they drove from song to song nonstop, Jack's guitarwork more frentic and tricky and raucus by the minute. I *never* felt like I was missing something from this band! Meg lays down a simple beat, and Jack fills up the space with his rich vocals and restless guitar beautifully. You expect a blues-based band to stick to 3-chords, but what Jack plays is somehow so complex that you never get bored. This music is known as "back-to-basics" but it's never dull, or even simple.
Jack stopped in the middle of "We're Going to be Friends" (wearing red shirt and tight pants half-black, half-red) to say he'd just realized the girl he wrote the song for couldn't care less about him, but in the end he dedicated it to her anway, "wherever you are". Nice. What an act these two have--that whole siblings/lovers/messed-up boundaries of a couple thing (very queer) is simple, but it works surprisingly well on stage. He's all fire and she's icy but somehow sweet. I couldn't believe Jack's energy compared to other acts I've seen--when they left the stage I told my pal "They shot their wad--there's no encore." Wrong. They came back out one more time and played even more energetically. Never did play "Fell in Love with a Girl," but we were satisfied--in fact, worn out.
Wednesday, July 02, 2003
The guys at Sound Opinions did a show last night on their ten favorite (unranked) fave albums so far this year. I only heard a bit of it, and it made me realize how much more closely I've been following new music this year than ever before--much more than last year when I felt very unconected to most new music. Looking at the full lists, I'm a little disappointed--no Malkmus? Cat Power? Ted Leo?
I have one quibble about the show. In discussing the much-acclaimed new album by Prefuse 73, Kot called it a hip-hop album, and compared it to DJ Shadow. The song they played, however, Choking You, sounded more like electronica/dance to me. No samples, no rap, just pure instrumental with a melody. None of the cinemantic style of Shadow. So what don't I know about the def. of hip hop?
Tuesday, July 01, 2003
I go to the gym and pretend to work out twice a week. Lately I've taken to asking the workers there what music they're spinning. I love to hear the differences in taste from worker to worker--it's pretty wide. Last nite's guy actually told me he's studying sound engineering (!) which was more reward than I expected for asking. He was playing very mainstream hip-hop, but it was pretty good stuff--juicy, enjoyable. I was curious. He was only able to name a couple (I asked after he'd played 40 minutes of stuff), one of which was by Busta Rhymes. We talked about radio, which is where he said he hears this stuff, and I told him I don't listen to any radio--none. I can't stand commercials, and in my limited time to hear music I have a ton of CDs to play.
But when I got home, I turned to a couple of the radio stations he mentioned. One had 10 minutes of commercials before I gave up and the other one had chatters trying to defend use of the word "gay" in a non-homophobic sense. "It's like retarded," said one. "If I call you retarded doesn't mean I have anything against the retarded. It just means I think you're stupid." Well, that makes it better, doesn't it? Click. (For the record, this was 103.5 which plays rock as well as hip hop.) So then I remembered a local college station people rave about, out of Loyola. I didn't think I could get it, but I found it. It was an 80s underground show, which was interesting (playing music, anyway!), though to my ears some of it was too goth. Soon, the dj played a request, Rock Lobster by the B-52s, which admittedly is old now, but it's a classic. The dj wanted to make sure we knew he was only playing it because the requester was a nice guy and regular listener but that he personally didn't like it. No, the B-52s actualy have fun in their music. Jesus.
So I gave up on radio once again, and remembered why. But for a while there my conversation with the guy at the gym once again got me thinking about how our musical tastes tend to get managed into channels. Mine tends to be indierock and indiepop (with exceptions common to such taste--easy/lounge, kitschy retro, etc.). It's really hard to keep an open mind about music. But I want to keep trying. I'm certainly going to keep asking people what they're playing. It's a wonderful ice-breaker and conversational end in itself. Already at the gym I've bought one cd based on what I'v heard. It's a dance cd, which is what you'd expect at the gym, but it's fun, and it's a good one. And I wouldn't have bought it before.
